Together in Death



""Death cannot stop true love. It can only delay it for a little while.""

- Westley, The Princess Bride

Fate may have kept them apart, the world may have frowned on their love, and conflict may have wormed itself between them, but they're finally together - too bad they had to die for it to happen.

Together in Death is when a couple is literally or metaphorically reunited in death. They might be buried together, seen together in the afterlife, or their corpses discovered embracing one another. It's not necessarily a romantic couple - it can just as easily be a pair of siblings, a parent and child, or a couple of True Companions.

This is a good way to show the couple's devotion to one another, even into death; it is also a tidy way to show a (lasting) reconciliation. Often forms part of a Bittersweet Ending.

Compare Reincarnation Romance, You Are Worth Hell.

Anime andManga
"Ranma: Let go of my hand, babe! Akane: I can't, honey! Ranma: If you don't, both of us will fall. Now, take this bag and get Ryoga to help you back up the cliff! Akane: No way. I can't do that to you! We're getting married to each other, aren't we? A married couple should always be together, even when they die. If we can't be together in this life, then at least we'll be together in heaven."
 * Several times in Wolf's Rain:
 * Toboe and Quent. "Look after him, old man."
 * as well.
 * And . But it's only played straight with
 * Princess Serenity and Prince Endymion from Sailor Moon.
 * Itsuki and Sensui from Yu Yu Hakusho.
 * In the (somewhat (in?)famous Tear Jerker) ending of the anime version of Chrono Crusade, Chrono and Rosette's bodies are found sitting on a bench together, their hands clasped and smiling peacefully. They're buried together in a grave with a single headstone. Also, Rosette and Joshua met Chrono when they found him sleeping in the tomb of Mary Magdalene, although that's a bit of a variation since he was actually alive.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist: A parent and child example in the movie with
 * This is also invoked with in the manga and Brotherhood.
 * from Black Lagoon, as shown.
 * from Fruits Basket. More exactly,
 * Rather ironically,
 * Subverted in Weiss Kreuz: when Tot is fatally stabbed, Nagi has a telekinetic meltdown which destroys the house they're in and apparently kills him. Seeing the two lying next to one another in the wreckage, Yoji moves Nagi's hand to rest on top of Tot's in a Together in Death pose. After the surviving cast members have left, however, Tot gets up... and in another episode or two, Nagi shows up in perfect health and the incident is never mentioned again.
 * In the Battle Royale manga, this happens with Sugimura and his love interest (Kayoko Kotohiki)
 * Additionally, one couple (Kazuhiko Yamamoto and Sakura Ogawa) does a double suicide at the start.
 * Not to mention
 * In Fushigi Yuugi, Snifffff...
 * In Mazinger Z, Dr. Hell found the bodies of a man and his lover who had been Buried Alive together for being caught trying to break their Star-Crossed Lovers destinies. One half of each body was destroyed, so he stitched them together to create his most loyal supporter Baron Ashura.
 * In Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen, the two halves of Baron Ashura are actually.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Jack tries to do this during his duel with D-Carly by playing a trap card that would cause both of their life points to drop to 0 at the same time. She manages to stop him by activating a trap card that causes only her life points to 0 before Jack can activate his. Jack wasn't too happy about this turn of events.
 * This is later played straight with the Godwin brothers, Rex and Rudger, who, after Rex is defeated by the team of Yuusei, Jack, and Crow, walk together into the afterlife.
 * Romeo and Juliet in Romeo X Juliet. Considering it is based on (no matter how loosely) Romeo and Juliet, it's sort of a Foregone Conclusion from the start.
 * At the end of Winter Cicada, Akizuki performs Seppuku so as to no longer be a burden on his lover, Kusaka. Kusaka weeps over him, then performs Seppuku as well.
 * Happens in the eighth Pokémon movie with  Also, in Noodles! Roamin' Off! when Musashi and Kojiro (Jessie and James) believe they're about to die, they reconcile for an earlier fight and promise that if there is an afterlife, to meet up again there.
 * The 7th does this in Mirai Nikki. It's also a metaphorical You Are Worth Hell.
 * Ai no Kusabi
 * In Basilisk, after commits suicide both to not kill   and to screw up Ofuku's plan,   kills himself as well.
 * Subverted earlier, when a maddened and dying  tries to kill   too to invoke the trope, but
 * Given a very dark and tragic twist in King of Thorn with the final meeting between . One of the two has a chance at living, but wants them both to die together so they can be Together in Death. The second wants the first to take the opportunity to go on living. They argue over it. Tragedy, Freak-Out, and The End of the World as We Know It ensue.
 * Fall and Digree in Nora.
 * in God Mars.
 * In Umineko no Naku Koro ni, the second twilight's requirement of "tear[ing] apart the two who are close" often winds up playing around with this trope. Probably the most notable one was actually an intentional aversion where Beatrice . And in the process frames him for the entire thing. Or Did She?
 * However, the ending of the series.
 * In the movie version of Eureka Seven, Eureka claims that she will continue to exist as long as her lover lives or did not forget his memories. This implies Eureka won't ever outlive Renton and will automatically follow Renton in death, regardless of her will when that time comes.
 * in the Ikki Tousen manga.
 * Inversion/Subversion/SOMETHING: in Dance in the Vampire Bund, seeing as, making it something more of a Together In UNdeath.
 * The 'together in the afterlife' variant is used for in AIR.
 * Sakura Gari has  invoke this when
 * In Rurouni Kenshin, Shishio and Yumi plot to take over Hell.
 * In the (thankfully non-canon) OVA, Reflections
 * In Code Geass, the immortal C.C. apparently desires this outcome with her Yandere (disambiguation) Mao for a while as she tells him to wait for her before giving him a Mercy Kill and then spends most of the series attempting to ensure her own demise.
 * in Black Butler.
 * Subverted in the end of the Cardcaptor Sakura manga, as
 * die after they protect their son and Konoha from.
 * Deconstructed in Clannad dies in 's arms and then he dies soon after from despair.
 * Macross Frontier - The Wings of Goodbye invokes a variation with (Warning: Love Triangle Ending Spoilers)
 * in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
 * Puella Magi Oriko Magica has
 * In Uzumaki, this happens to
 * Given what happens later, we can safely assume this is what happened to the two Star-Crossed Lovers who stretched, twisted and contorted their bodies together like mating snakes so their feuding families couldn't separate them before plunging in the lake.
 * and his lover and mother of his child, Rouge were reunited this way in One Piece.
 * A non-romantic example could be after being separated for quite some time and were properly "reunited" after their deaths by being buried next to each other.
 * in D.Gray-man. Also Bak's parents where, For arranges their bodies so that they were leaning towards each other and holding hands.
 * Grave of the Fireflies provides a brother/sister example. Two children starve to death in WWII Japan, but their much-happier spirits/ghosts are shown together throughout the film.
 * Invoked by from Tiger and Bunny, who commits suicide to be with   after giving a Deathbed Confession.
 * Windaria - is to reunite with his true love in the afterlife. The opening shows his soul bird flying to the place hers went off to.
 * Alas this is probably a good example of a Macekre in which there is no such bittersweet ending. The original ending was a subversion; Izu (Alan)
 * In [[Ranma Â½, this trope is conversed, but not actually carried out, after Ranma and Akane eat Love Mushrooms.
 * In [[Ranma Â½, this trope is conversed, but not actually carried out, after Ranma and Akane eat Love Mushrooms.


 * , in Victory Gundam. Not only that, but

Comic Books

 * Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man, always saw himself more as a detective than a superhero -- and after his wife Sue's murder, it seemed the DCU was determined to make him a Butt Monkey as well. But he got a measure of victory by the end of 52 -- he trapped Felix Faust and the demon Neron in Dr. Fate's tower, while they thought they were tricking him. It cost him his life, but he was reunited with Sue -- and it seemed they were going to spend the afterlife as Topper, instead of Nick and Nora.
 * Then the most recent Crisis Crossover just had to come along and muck it all up...
 * To be fair, they're still together in death. It's just their bodies that are, er, busy, not their souls.
 * There's a comic book version of the Turandot opera where this is invoked:
 * The battery of the Star Sapphires is built around crystallized remains on Zamaron found this way. They turn out to be the original selves of Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

Fanfiction

 * The Hill of Swords takes after.
 * The Legend of Spyro fanfic Passing The Torch takes place far after the trilogy, with Spyro now in his twilight years, having far outlived everyone he knew and looking forwards to Passing the Torch to his successor so he can be reunited with them in the afterlife.

Animated Film

 * In Corpse Bride, the undead Emily falls in love with Victor, but their Accidental Marriage isn't legal because of the fact that Emily is dead and Victor alive. In order to validate the marriage, they must repeat the ceremony in the land of the living, and Victor must kill himself during it. Victor, devastated by the loss of his living love, Victoria, accepts this plan and proceeds to go through with the ceremony,
 * Occurs in The Princess and the Frog.
 * in the climax of Toy Story 3. Manly Tears were shed.
 * from Atlantis the Lost Empire, who are both last seen as a recently added giant floating stone head and the Atlantean Crystal, respectively, while their son-in-law and daughter become the next king and queen.
 * In Bolt, when, she insists that Bolt leaves her there. But Bolt chooses to
 * During the song "Worthless" from The Brave Little Toaster, a Texan wedding car and a funeral hearse are both crushed to death at the same time by a Car Crusher at the end of a conveyor belt.

Live-Action Film
"Vasquez You always were an asshole, Gorman."
 * Bicentennial Man: "See you soon..."
 * Titanic ends with Rose dying and being reunited, not just with Jack, but everyone who died that fateful night.
 * Also noteworthy is Ida Straus, the elderly woman who decides to die with her husband Isidor instead of taking a place on a lifeboat, a course of action that will almost certainly result in her having to live on without him. Their last scene is of them in a bed, holding hands, as the water begins to pour in. This is based in a Real Life example of the trope -- see the bottom of the page.
 * The plot of Cloverfield revolves around the protagonist, Rob, trying to reach his estranged girlfriend, Beth, during a crisis involving a giant monster attacking the city. The reunited couple dies after professing their love for one another, in a military bombing aimed at the nearby monster.
 * In the final moments of Somewhere in Time (with Chris Reeve and Jane Seymour), a Downer Ending where the Star-Crossed Lovers seem to be separated forever and then both die is transformed into a Together in Death Bittersweet Ending by showing them meeting and embracing in the afterlife.
 * The myth of Katerina and Arturo in the movie Overboard.
 * A good example of the non-romantic variant is probably found in the final scene of Return of the Jedi, where Anakin Skywalker is shown reunited with his two Jedi mentors.
 * The death of Maximus in Gladiator (though since the protagonist was dying from poison and internal bleeding, this may or may not have been a hallucination).
 * The unnamed young couple in Fritz Lang's Destiny, after the young woman accepts fate and (literally) surrenders to Death.
 * At the end of Braveheart, William Wallace sees his wife's ghost throughout his entire torture/death.
 * Classic example; The Ghost and Mrs Muir. Lucy Muir and Captain Greg (the ghost) become closer as he dictates his life story to her, which she then sells to a publisher to make her fortune. Realizing that it could never be, he leaves reluctantly. At the end of the movie, when Lucy dies of old age, Captain Greg is there to escort her spirit to the afterlife.
 * The Constant Gardener Justin (Ralph Fiennes), after obsessively investigating the murder of his activist wife Tessa(Rachel Weisz),
 * in Hero. Made even worse because
 * The French film Love Me If You Dare (French title Jeux d'enfants). Since our Star-Crossed Lovers can only be together on a dare, they end up getting themselves . It's hard to say how aware they are of the consequences of what they do, though.
 * It's also hard to say whether they died or not, because you seem to see a shot of them living to an old age. Is it heaven? But still.
 * Aliens: Inverted Trope: Private Vasquez is covering the heroes' retreat, only to end up mortally wounded and crippled, with more bearing down on her. Lieutenant Gorman doubles back to help her, and ends up trapped with her, the both of them huddled together holding a live grenade. Catch is, there really wasn't much mutual affection between them, with quite a bit of active animosity towards Gorman from Vasquez.


 * In 28 Days Later, the protagonist returns home to find his parents' partially-decomposed bodies cuddling in their bed and their last message to him.
 * "Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever" we are told in the movie adaptation of The Crow in which Eric Draven is murdered along with his fiancee the night before their wedding and comes back from the dead for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. The theme of the first film, increasingly amplified throughout the subsequent franchise, is that "If two people are truly meant to be together, nothing can keep them apart. Not even death."
 * A nonromantic example comes at the end of Glory when Colonel Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick) and Denzel Washington's character are buried side-by-side along with the rest of the the all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment. This was Truth in Television, as the Confederate soldiers who put Shaw there intended it as an insult since he was their white commander, but Shaw himself would've been honored by this.
 * A non-human example occurs in the film Rodan. During the climax of the film, the area where the Rodans are nested is being bombarded with an areial assault. The female Rodan falls into a volcano and dies. Unable to bear being without his mate, the male Rodan dives into the volcano with her and dies as well.
 * The ending of Escape From The Planet of the Apes. Cornelius is shot and, either dying or already dead, falls from his perch to the deck of the derelict ship he and Zira have been hiding on. Zira, already wounded, crawls over to him and lays down beside him to die.
 * Kelly and Katsumi from Sayonara. The U.S. Air Force is insisting that he come back to America without her, so the two, inspired by a puppet show depicting a traditional star-crossed-lovers/together-in-death story, commit suicide by consuming poison. Marlon Brando's character finds their bodies when he comes--a little too late--to inform them that the Air Force has decided to allow airmen to take war brides home.
 * In Dil Se, Meghna is a suicide bomber, and she's all ready to complete her mission. Amar embraces her, and in doing so, sets off the explosives.
 * in The Notebook after spending many years being Happily Married.
 * Implied at the end of Bram Stoker's Dracula as Drac/Vlad is finally forgiven by God. As Mina watches, the vampire curse lifting from her as she gives the final blows. She notices the fresco in the building above her lighting up with a picture of Vlad and Elisabeta (the lover Mina is supposedly reincarnated from) apparently reunited in Heaven.
 * Beetle Juice has a rare lighthearted approach, where Adam and Barbara Maitland are stuck as ghosts haunting their own home. Even in death, they remain a Happily Married couple.

Literature
"Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him, Ned, I drove the spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my feet. They made up songs about it. Yet somehow he still won. He has Lyanna now, and I have her."
 * At the end of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, they find skeleton so intertwined with  that when they try to remove it, it falls to dust.
 * In The Mill on the Floss,, previously estranged, embrace each other as they drown.
 * The fantasy novel Bridge of Birds has no fewer than three couples thus reunited.
 * Inversion: The Scarlet Letter makes its point more poignant by emphasizing the fact that Hester and Dimmesdale's graves, though near each other (and even sharing a single tombstone), were not touching "as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle".
 * Combined with Ironic Hell in The Divine Comedy-- the illicit lovers Paolo and Francesca di Rimini embrace in Hell, but according to the usual interpretation, their union serves as an eternal reminder of their sin rather than a continuation of true love beyond the grave.
 * Really, really creepy variation in Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy.
 * in Mortal Engines, in A Darkling Plain.
 * Horlick and Claire Minton from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle die in this way, falling to their deaths while still holding each other's hand.
 * Two examples in The Amber Spyglass: when people die, their daemon dissolves into its component particles, and the person's mind goes to the Underworld, a Nothing After Death. Lyra and Will find a way to  Also, , having completed his mission, simply loses the will to hold himself together and disintegrates, rejoining him in a way with.
 * And themselves, who couldn't be together in life, but will be able to reunite in the land of the dead.
 * In Dragonfly In Amber, Claire finds a pair of skeletons, almost like the page image, in a cave, and reflects on this trope.
 * The Story of Edgar Sawtelle has two:
 * JRR Tolkien's tragic lovers Beren and Lúthien from The Silmarillion. They are separated and reunited in death, twice! Special because, being a human and an elf, they would not have had the same fate after death, but, through divine intervention, got the one exception. After their first death they were sent back for a short time to live a happy life together, and after their second death Lúthien's spirit was allowed to follow Beren's out of this world, as human souls do.
 * Likewise Arwen in Lord of the Rings chose a mortal fate after death in order to be with Aragorn even if she survived him long enough to go to Lothlórien and die on Cerin Amroth where she made her promise in the first place. She also famously is Lúthien's descendant (so is Aragorn) and near-likeness.
 * So could this. Awwwww.
 * Eponine plans this for her and Marius in Les Misérables but changes her mind to I Want My Beloved to Be Happy in enough time make to make it a Heroic Sacrifice on her part instead.
 * The end of The Last Herald-Mage trilogy by Mercedes Lackey has Vanyel reunited with Stefan/Tylendel as ghosts. They're still around six hundred years later, too, to provide a handy assist to the modern heroes.
 * At the end of The Day Watch, after Alisa gives her testimony, Igor chooses to dematerialise along with her.
 * Wuthering Heights. When Linton is buried next to Catherine, Heathcliff takes the opportunity to open her coffin and look at her. He bribes the sexton to ensure that he'll be buried on her other side when he dies and knocks out that side of her coffin so they can be sealed in together. Then he wastes away and starves himself to death, whether with the specific intent of killing himself or just because all he cares about is dying so he can be with Catherine.
 * Moia and Gordo in Troika.
 * Harry Potter sees Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks like this at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Their son survives them though.
 * The Deadly Distant Finale to Jon Cleary's The Golden Sabre mentions that the male and female leads died in a plane crash several decades after the main events -- holding hands, happy to be together, even in this.
 * In a non-romantic example, the Distant Finale of Douglas Reeman's HMS Saracen reveals that the ship's captain died twenty-three years after he won the Victoria Cross commanding Saracen in World War II. A minor character realizes the probable cause of death was a heart attack brought on by seeing film of Saracen being used as a target for a missile test, and thinks, So even at the end, they had been together.
 * In one Bruce Coville edited collection of short stories, ("Not From Detroit") an old man beats up Death with a wrench when Death claims his wife. When Death explains that he can't let her come back to life, the old man asks Death to take him as well since he and his wife wanted to die together. Death agrees and brings back the wife just long enough so that they can die holding hands together. Death is even nice enough to let their souls out during the ride to the afterlife so they listen to tunes on his radio.
 * Sadly averted in the case of . afterlife is a private one, and
 * In Septimus Heap, one of the important characters is a ghost named Alther: Formerly a wizard, he now flies around the castle as a ghost. When he was alive, he loved another wizard named Alice Nettles, who also loved him.
 * The eponymous fern from Where the Red Fern Grows does not appear until the end of the book.
 * In The Phantom of the Opera, Erik, who sleeps in a coffin, makes a reference to this trope. He notes to the object of his affections, Christine, that he will "have the coffin enlarged... for later on, when we come to the end of our love."
 * A Dog of Flanders ends this way. All their lives they had been together, and in their deaths they were not divided...
 * In Mistborn,  is killed in the final battle when he leads an army of men on a suicide mission.   attacks   in a way that kills them both, stating that   was the only reason she had left to live. The   later tells their friends that he has spoken to them, and they are happy where they are. He even arranges their bodies so they are holding hands as they lay among flowers.
 * In the Warrior Cats novel Crookedstar's Promise,
 * In A Song of Ice and Fire this is Robert's opinion of Rhaegar and Lyanna. He's not pleased about it.


 * In The Jungle Book, when Mother and Father Wolf die Mowgli sings their death-song and seals them in their lair.
 * In Edgar Pangborn's short story "", the title character and his friend (lover?) don't die in each other's arms, but they are taken back to 's village for burial, the implication being that they'll be buried side by side.
 * Vlad Dracula and Elizabeth Bathory in Count and Countess.
 * At the end of Beachwalker, it’s heavily implied that  go to the afterlife together, possibly with him escorting her there.

Live Action TV

 * The two skeletons found in an early Lost episode might be an example, but their past and identity is unknown.
 * Since the reveal, this may actually count as a subversion since.
 * It's revealed in Across the Sea that Adam and Eve are
 * Although they're definitely not Adam and Eve, this is played brutally straight in late Season Six with.
 * Speaking of Lost, . Sniffle.
 * A creepy example in Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Tormented": after the protagonist is Hoist by His Own Petard, the body of the antagonist is discovered and lain on the beach beside his; her arm automatically wraps itself around him.
 * An episode of The X-Files has a nasty variation on this: a pair of skeletons are found lying in a field. It turns out to be the skeletons of a married couple that were captured by a carnivorous fungus. The organism gave off hallucinogens that made the couple believe that they were lying down and cuddling in their own bed.
 * In Season Six, How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, this occurs twice, once with the ghosts Maurice and Lyda who died via Suicide Pact and are together in the afterlife, and once with the illusion of the bodies of Mulder and Scully under the floorboards. It is also implied that the ghosts drove other couples to suicide. Nearly played straight when Mulder and Scully are  shot.
 * In Season Four, The Field Where I Died it is revealed that Mulder and Scully have been closely tied in previous incarnations already.
 * in Kamen Rider W. Even more of a Tear Jerker because in life they'd grown to hate and manipulate each other, but are seen in the end embracing and wishing  well.
 * In Kamen Rider OOO, last act before  is to lay a lollipop upon  last Core Medal as a parting gift to  then has a vision of  This could possibly imply that they will be together in some sort of afterlife, since it's later shown that
 * In a Heroes tie-in, two of Sylar's victims are depicted this way; one of whom lied in order to protect his love's ability. It's quite a Tear Jerker too.
 * "I'll see you on the other side, ."-
 * In the season finale of the BBC's Robin Hood, Robin
 * In the Bones episode "Aliens in a Spaceship," there's a spectacularly sad platonic example. Twin brothers had been sealed in a vat with only 12 hours' worth of air, and there's an unusual amount of blood pooled on the bottom from one of them, caused by a mysterious wound that punctured an artery in his neck. They find out how it happened easily enough (a pen was used) but it takes until the end of the episode to find out why:
 * Medium does an interesting take on this.
 * The Series Finale does a Tear Jerker version.
 * The latest version of Wuthering Heights shows Heathcliff and Cathy together looking down from an upstairs window as Cathy II departs to start her new life.
 * from Dinosaurs.
 * The Speculative Documentary by Animal Planet Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real had the body of the mother dragon and the child dragon in the museum together after it was recovered and studied by the scientists.
 * Star Trek the Original Series: The alien Energy Beings Sargon and Thalassa in "Return to Tomorrow".
 * Crossing Jordan with a couple that's always arguing about something. Lily and Bug were assinged to their case. The reconstruction has the argument start small(about cat food), slowly mutates into vase throwing, hand-to-hand combat up the stairs, one of them pushing the other over the rails, then falling themselves because of a falling bookshelf. Turns out the book shelf was falling, and they accidentally died from the fall trying to save each other.
 * Henpecked Husband Jack Duckworth's final scene in Coronation Street featured the return of Vera Duckworth, who had died two years earlier, and they dance away together.
 * In the series finale of Angel
 * American Horror Story:
 * The fate of  on Misfits..
 * Babylon 5: Although never outright stated, it is heavily implied that John Sheridan and Delenn found each other again Beyond The Rim, which almost begins to make up for.
 * Being Human (UK): "I have to be with my -

Music
"He lies in St. Mary's kirk and she lies in the choir, And out of her grave grows a rose and out of his a briar.
 * The W Rock band Ministry Of Magic has a song called the Phoenix Lament, the final line of which is "Golden lights are cords for songs of love; something death can not erase."
 * Parodic folk singer Les Barker has a song called "Maybe Then I'll Be A Rose", which deconstructs this trope as it appears in English ballads:

So at last their souls entwine and now as one are climbing; Ten out of ten for true, true love, nought out of ten for timing."


 * Appears in the alternate lyrics to the Hungarian song "Gloomy Sunday," where the singer laments the death of a lover and states an intention of committing suicide to join him/her. Developed its own urban legend and inspired a film.
 * Johnny Preston's "Running Bear" (written by the Big Bopper) is a Romeo and Juliet story which ends with Running Bear trying to swim across the river to White Dove. When he gets in trouble she jumps in to save him and both are drowned. "Now they'll always be together in the happy hunting ground."
 * This is the subject of "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie.
 * So many times in Sound Horizon Specifically, after Marchen's untimely death, we learn the Elisabeth refuses an arranged marriage. Crucified, Elisabeth sees her love as he offers her revenge.
 * The song "Jake + Olive" by Mac Lethal is about his grandparents' love story: how they met in Ireland, and broke up only to reunite in America. After several decades together, Olive died from a lifetime of smoking, and Jake joined her a month later. The music video is a major Tear Jerker.
 * The subject of "Intermission" by Pagan's Mind.
 * Milky the Milk Carton (and his strawberry milk carton lover) at the end of the music video for "Coffee & TV" by Blur (combined with Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence).

Myth and Legend

 * In a Greek myth described in The Metamorphoses, the old couple Baucis and Philemon were turned into trees when they died, which grew so close as to intertwine.
 * Forbidden lovers Tristan and Isolde had a vine and a rose grow on their respective graves, which likewise intertwined.
 * The intertwining rose and briar also shows up in "Barbara Allen", Child Ballad #84. Probably related to Tristan and Isolde, but the internet doesn't seem to know the details of how.
 * The same happens in an old Spanish romance poem. A young count is killed for being in love with the local princess and she dies few hours later: when they're buried in a church, a rose and a briar grow from their tombs. When the evil Queen orders to have them cut down, a hawk and a dove are born from them and they fly away together.
 * Also in Child Ballad "Fair Margaret and Sweet William"
 * Pyramis and Thisbe: (Classical Mythology, famously parodied by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Nights Dream) Ovid tells us that the fruit of the mulberry bush under which the star-crossed lovers died turned red with their blood, and their ashes rest in a single urn.
 * Husband and wife Ceyx and Alcyone from Greek mythology. After Ceyx is lost at sea, Alcyone throws herself into the sea, and both are transformed into kingfisher birds by the gods.
 * The Lovers of Teruel. According to this Spanish myth, The Ojou Isabel waited for the return of her Victorious Childhood Friend Diego, who had left Teruel to search for the fortune and fame he needed to marry her. After several years, Diego returned home... right after she had married someone else. After a secret last talk, poor Diego literally dropped dead at Isabel's feet; the next morning, she showed up in his funeral clad in her wedding dress, and after a Last Kiss she also fell dead. They were buried together.
 * At first subverted, but ultimately upheld in the Guarani myth explaining Iguazu Falls. Naipi and her lover Taruba ran away so she wouldn't sacrificed to the snake god of the river, M'Boi. M'Boi made a huge waterfall in front of their canoe and turned Taruba into a tree at the top of the falls and Naipi into a rock as she fell to the bottom, thinking that this would be the worst punishment imaginable, to be able to see each other but never touch each other. However, on some days you can see a rainbow from a tree at the top of the falls to a rock at the bottom, and that is Naipi and Taruba's way of being together.
 * The famous Butterfly Lovers from Chinese folklore. They've been compared to Romeo and Juliet. Intelligent and beautiful Zhu Yingtai disguises herself as a man to attend school, where she falls in love with scholar Liang Shanbo. While they become good friends, despite Yingtai's many hints, Shanbo remains an oblivious nerd who doesn't realize Yingtai's true gender until years later. He falls in love with her, but she's been betrothed to another man. Shanbo pines away and dies. On her wedding day, Yingtai throws herself into Shanbo's grave, and both are resurrected as butterflies. It's particularly Asian in that it's not necessarily Together in Death, but together in rebirth.
 * In one version of Deirdre of the Sorrows, Deirdre and her lover Naoise are buried beside one another and trees grow from their graves to intertwine.

Opera

 * Radames and Aida from the musical Aida as well as the opera its based on are buried alive in a single tomb.
 * In Donizetti's Lucia di Lamermoor, Edgar stabs himself when he learns that Lucia has died.
 * In Wagner's Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde immolates herself in Siegfried's funerary pyre.
 * Wagner's adaptation of the Tristan and Isolde legend is one long exploration of this trope.
 * Tosca throws herself over the wall of the prison after her lover is killed.
 * And in doing so, she calls the name of Scarpia, not her lover.

Poetry

 * Appears in "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.
 * The ultimate fate of the lovers in this poem.

Theatre

 * Haemon and Antigone in the eponymous Greek tragedy.
 * Romeo and Juliet, the modern archetypal Star-Crossed Lovers.
 * Most versions of Swan Lake end with some version of this - unable to be together in life, Princess Odette and Prince Siegfried plunge together into the lake to be united in death. In the Matthew Bourne version, when both the Prince and the (possibly imaginary) Swan are dead, the Prince's younger self is seen cradled in the Swan's arms as the ballet ends.
 * Attempted by Horatio at the end of Hamlet, but his best friend Prince Hamlet (who's dying in his arms) stops him before he can drink the rest of the poison. Which makes Horatio a lot luckier than most characters in a Shakespearian tragedy.
 * Audrey and Seymour both wind up eaten by the same plant in Little Shop of Horrors, and at the end their heads appear in adjacent pods.
 * All of the students in Les Misérables (and actually everyone else who died over the course of the show). When they realized their death that night were certain, they all silently decided to have one last drink together and fight till the end.
 * Subverted in The Adding Machine. After Zero dies, Daisy appears to him in an Arcadian afterlife, where she suggests that they "can always be together now." He gets bored and decides to leave the place.

Video Games
"I'm coming for you, Yomiel..."
 * In Ghost Trick, Yomiel's fiancee tries to invoke this trope by killing herself after Yomiel dies. This is one of the largest causes for Yomiel's Start of Darkness.

"Matthew: Leila... Isadora: Harken... Where are you? I... I can't see anything..."
 * While exploring in Bioshock, you can find the remains of a couple who committed suicide together lying in their bed. Listening to the nearby audio diary, you find out why:
 * In the fourth game in the Quest for Glory series, when you tell the old man Nikolai that you saw his wife's ghost in the woods at night, he will leave town and try to look for her. The next time you go out into the woods at night, you see them both as ghosts, and they thank you for reuniting them.
 * The "In Water" ending of Silent Hill 2. It's not actually shown, but it is very heavily implied that James.
 * Aeris and Zack in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.
 * Lenne and Shuyin from Final Fantasy X-2. Both got shot to death and died by each other's side. Their spirits did not end up together....
 * Heartbreaking aversion with Aribeth in Neverwinter Nights. You find her in Hordes of the Underdark, trapped in the betrayer's circle of Hell, being psychologically tortured by her realization that she never really loved Fenthick in life.
 * Mask of the Betrayer has an interesting take on this in one of its more bitterweet endings for female PCs:
 * Similar example on BioWare's part was a Dummied Out (but easily restored) female-only ending for Knights of the Old Republic. If the female Player Character has completed the Romance Sidequest with Carth, but chosen the Dark Side, he shows up at the Star Forge to make a last-ditch plea for you to  and die on the Star Forge with him.
 * Metal Gear Solid 3: If the player pushes the first-person-view button It's probably one of the very few comforts to take in the game's Downer Ending.
 * The Last Days of Foxhound goes one step further and occasionally shows The Sorrow and The Boss happily together in the spirit world.
 * Fire Emblem has the potential for multiple cases of this if you're not careful with your units, and the writers for the death quotes damn well knew it.


 * A straight example, however, comes from Fire Emblem 7: Blazing Sword, from the most surprising of places. If the right conditions are fulfilled, the backstory of  is revealed,
 * Alice and Decus from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Though Decus was annoying and Alice was plain evil, you can't help but feel for the pair, especially if you know their backstory.
 * Sora and Takeshi in Ever 17 for Sora's ending are both trapped in HIMMEL together after Takeshi refused to escape without her. This means that this route doesn't really 'fit' into the same sort of story mold as the other routes and especially not the true end, but yeah.
 * Maxim and Selan of the Lufia series. In Fortress of Doom, it's seen that the couple die side by side at the end of prologue. However, in the Sequel/Prequel Rise of the Sinistrals/Curse of the Sinistrals, it's revealed that Maxim (and Selan in DS) continues to stop the island from falling on his town before dying from using too much power.
 * The  in Dead Rising 2. Once
 * In The Curse of Monkey Island, one of the game's puzzles involves reuniting two dead lovers (a ghost and a skeleton, respectively). When the heartbroken ghost discovers that her lover had never intended to abandon her, their spirits are shown reuniting and then vanishing happily together.
 * The Shadow Hearts series contains several examples, especially in its canon endings:
 * Most notably, Yuri and Alice. After spending Shadow Hearts: Covenant mourning his dead lover, series hero Yuri tells her spirit that he will soon return to her and never leave again. At the end of the game, he commits suicide by allowing himself to be impaled. In his mind, Alice's soul is seen descending from the sky while his is finally released from its curse. The two souls embrace, and then disappear together.
 * Lady and Killer. In Shadow Hearts: From the New World, heartless villain Lady displays her first sign of emotion when the party kills her partner, Killer. After she is defeated in turn, she crawls over to Killer's body and embraces it, whereupon both bodies are lifted into the air, share a tender moment, and then disappear together.
 * James and Elaine. In Koudelka, James sacrifices his life to confront the monstrous Elaine, screaming, "I have always loved you!" Their bodies are lifted up and consumed by light. As the screen fades to black, you hear Elaine's voice whisper, "Let's go, James. Let's go home. I have such fond memories of those days."
 * In the second ending of Nie R, after killing, he appears in a white void with
 * 's dying words are that he's going to meet with again.
 * In Chapter 4 of Eternal Darkness, Chandra is not only killed by a jealous mistress but explicitly cursed to be with a man only in death. She persuades Karim to join her in guarding a MacGuffin indefinitely, then seals the deal with a Kiss of Death.

Visual Novels

 * Saber and Shirou finally get a proper happy ending in Fate Stay Night's Realta Nua's bonus ending of Fate. To unlock it, you have to die every way possible, and finish all three routes, and get all five endings. Doing so gets you perhaps the most heartwarming scene in the whole game, combining I Will Wait for You, Died Happily Ever After and Together in Death for amazing effect.
 * One of the ending in Girls Love Visual Novel Akai Ito had.

Webcomics

 * in The Order of the Stick, with the twist that.
 * : No...not a prison. Not anymore.
 * Non-romantic semi-example:.
 * Another non-romantic example: Then they play blocks together. It was quite the Tear Jerker for many people.
 * Don't you mean Crowning Moment of Heartwarming?
 * More like both.
 * According to Word of God,  in Cuanta Vida.
 * The first panel of this Simulated Comic Product comic shows a young man next to his dead wife's tombstone, vowing he will use science to be re-united with her. The rest of the comic shows a montage of his scientific career,
 * Parodied in Buttlord GT after nearly everyone dies. "Awesome! All my friends are dead and safe!"
 * , two minor characters in It's Walky!
 * Something of a recurring theme in Homestuck.

Web Original

 * In the 'Cracked.com'' short film "Worst Second Date Ever", the main character attempts to enter a suicide pact with a Hispanic maid he's dating, claiming that they're Star-Crossed Lovers. It doesn't go as he planned and it ends in a rather lighthearted note.

Western Animation

 * In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, of all things,  No, they don't get better. In fact, though we still don't get the word "dead," there were none of the expected attempts to sweep it under the rug or make it Only Mostly Dead - it even gets referenced later on.
 * Presumably this was the logic for in the season one finale of Wakfu. With no one to bury him, his remains are blown away by the wind.
 * Happens to Ferdy the fox at the end of There's Good Boos Tonight.
 * At the end of the American Dad episode, "May the Best Stan Win", Stan and Francine are shown as skeletons in the same coffin.

Real Life
"Eng: "He's my brother. We've been together even from before we were born. I won't live without him!""
 * This recently discovered pair of skeletons are speculated to be the oldest embracing couple, at about 8,100 years old. The couple pictured above is believed to be the second oldest.
 * According to popular accounts, when it became clear that her revolution was doomed to failure, Boudica and her daughters drank poison and the Romans found them like this.
 * Many of the bodies found at Pompeii and Herculaneum are intertwined like this. (Sometimes in couples, sometimes in large groups. Practically the whole city was Together in Death.)
 * A Muslim woman marries an Hindu man. Their local council disagrees for religious reasons and threatens to kill them. They kill themselves first to not be separated. Damn it.
 * Thebes had a special military unit - 150 pairs of male lovers, known as the Sacred Band. When Philipp of Macedon (father of Alexander the Great) brought Greece to its knees in the Battle of Chaeronea, the band was slain. They were all found "Heaped upon one another", all were buried in the same place.
 * Upon seeing their bodies, the same Philipp who had vanquished them is recorded as saying: "Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly."
 * Isidor Straus was the co-owner of Macy's, and a passenger on Titanic, along with his wife, Ida. When the ship hit the iceberg, Ida refused to get into a lifeboat, telling her husband: "We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go." They were last seen alive sitting together quietly on the boat deck.
 * They're the elderly couple seen cuddling together in their bed in the 1997 movie as their room gets filled with water, and a deleted scene shows Ida refusing to enter the lifeboat. See the Film example.
 * They appear in almost every dramatization of the story, even the 1943 version made in Nazi Germany (which doesn't mention that they were Jewish).
 * Admira Ismic and Bosko Brkic, a Bosnian Muslim and Orthodox Serb who were very much in love and dating since their teens. Then the Siege of Sarajevo happened. The couple tried to flee the city for Serbia, had a ceasefire brokered from all sides, and were still shot as they tried to cross a bridge. Bosko died instantly; Admira was wounded, but crawled over to his corpse so she could put her arm around him and die.
 * And nobody dared get the bodies for quite some time. It was days before they were finally retrieved and buried (side by side.)
 * Remains were uncovered of a woman who had been buried with her hand resting on her dog's back.
 * Dogs and cats whose owners die will sometimes refuse to eat or exercise, hoping to invoke this trope.
 * Somewhat more recently a 60 year old man suffered a heart attack while trying to revive his 59 year old wife after she collapsed.
 * Chand and Eng, the first surviving Siamese twins. When an elderly Chang died in his sleep, the just as elderly Eng woke up and wrapped himself around his brother's corpse, verbally invoking this trope as the reason to refuse a surgery that would separate them. He finally died three hours later.


 * Similarly, there was a case of Juraci and Nadir Climerio de Oliveria, a pair of coinjoined twins in Brazil. They were Different As Night and Day, and each controlled half of their mostly-shared body much like the Hensel twins. Nadir was less healthy than Juraci as a general rule. When Nadir had a lung infection, and separation would have saved Juraci but ensured Nadir's death, Juraci wouldn't hear of it, saying that she would rather die with her sister. Once Nadir died anyway, and Juraci knew she would die as well, she still didn't change her mind, and according to their father, showed no fear. Juraci died ten minutes after Nadir. They were only 16.
 * Buckminster Fuller's wife was comatose and dying of cancer in a hospital. While visiting her, he exclaimed, "She is squeezing my hand!", before having a heart attack and dying. His wife died 36 hours later. They are buried together.
 * Reportedly, Joe DiMaggio's final words were “I'll finally get to see Marilyn.”
 * Interestingly for a man so frequently associated with hate, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun actually committed suicide together. In Hitler's case a major factor was the fact that the war was lost, but Eva had no real reason to kill herself beyond complete devotion to him.
 * This also happened with one of Hitler's most loyal officers, Joseph Goebbels. His wife Magda asked him to shoot her through the head. Goebbels did so and then promptly shot himself as well.
 * Goebbels also poisoned his own six childeren just before.
 * A non-romantic example is Hitler's generals Hans Krebs and Wilhelm Burgdorf, who reportedly committed suicide together the day immediately after Hitler and Eva died.
 * This is from a eulogy written close to two thousand years ago: "Amyntor, Philip's son...died holding his shield over a wounded friend."
 * Nick and Mary Yankovic, the parents of "Weird Al" Yankovic, died together in their sleep due to accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Al has said that he took some comfort in knowing that neither one of them ever had to live without the other. They'd been married for 55 years.
 * This is the idea behind the Temple Sealing ceremony in the LDS Church; such a marriage is not "until death do us part" but beyond.