The Hero Dies



Exactly What It Says on the Tin. May or may not herald a Downer Ending. This trope is an aversion of Decoy Protagonist, Our Hero Is Dead and Not Quite Dead. May or may not be The Bad Guy Wins. Also note that the Hero doesn't have to die in order for the Bad Guy to win.

Sometimes this could lead to another character to take his place.

The ultimate variant of Anyone Can Die, and one of the main causes of a Bittersweet Ending. Might overlap with Heroic Sacrifice. Compare Dead to Begin With, when the hero's dead from the very start of the story.

Spoilers ahead, obviously!

 No, seriously, if you don't want to be spoiled,  ' turn back now! '

You Have Been Warned.

Anime and Manga

 * In the finale of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, Ed is killed by Envy. Al, who is the new Philosopher's Stone, transmutes himself a few moments later to revive him.
 * This counts for the second death of Yusuke Urameshi in Yu Yu Hakusho, not in the beginning when he's Dead to Begin With.
 * Jonathan Joestar dies at the end of the first part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, sacrificing himself to take Dio with him. It isn't until part 3 that we find out that his death was in vain, as Dio's head took his body and used it to revive himself.
 * Nana from Nana's Everyday Life.
 * Seita and Setsuko from Grave of the Fireflies.
 * The first major arc of Death Note ends with Light tricking Rem into killing L, the second with Light's own death at the hands of Ryuk. So by both interpretations - L as the hero and Light as the villain, or vice versa - the hero dies.
 * Ash is killed by Shin's brother in the final chapter of Banana Fish.
 * Spike from Cowboy Bebop, though he may actually be a subversion. While there's a boatload of evidence that Spike is walking up the stairway to heaven, Word of God is that Spike's status is completely open to interpretation.
 * Byronic Hero Lelouch is killed at the end of the series, dying in the arms of his sobbing sister Nunally. Magnificent Bastard that he is, Lulu planned the entire thing to atone for the horrible things he'd done trying to build a better world and to give Nunnally, Kallen, and the rest of humanity a chance for a better future.
 * He didn't plan it from the very start of the series, but as It Got Worse and his actions caused or helped cause countless deaths, he has a My God, What Have I Done? moment and decides that the only way he can truly up for all the tragedy he caused is with his own life.
 * Aya was supposed to die in the final episode of Weiss Kreuz Gluhen, but a manga sequel was greenlit and they retconned it so that he survived.
 * Legend of Galactic Heroes. Both of them. Yang Wen-Li didn't even make it into the last season.
 * The ending to Yu-Gi-Oh! is that Atem passes on to the afterlife, finally freed from the Millennium Puzzle.
 * Ichise in Texhnolyze.
 * Along with the entire human race.
 * Though inconclusive, the nameless Gun God, the main character of Angel Notes, which is part of the Nasuverse, is possibly dead.
 * In Chrono Crusade, the titular Chrono's source of his powers is Rosette's own life, meaning every time he uses his powers it shortens her lifespan. When the series starts, she's not expected to live beyond thirty. And at the end of the manga, when the epilogue skips ahead eight years...
 * The anime version still uses this trope, but in a different way - due to having used up so much of her life during the final battle, Rosette's life span is shortened to the point where she only has months to live. Rosette and Chrono both go into hiding, getting their own log cabin to live the rest of their short lives together in peace before dying. Leaving the series here would have made is a Bittersweet Ending - however, it's then revealed that the villain may still be alive after all...
 * Phantom of Inferno. In the anime, both Reiji and Ein die at the very last scene.
 * The Sky Crawlers. The anime film's Hero goes one-on-one with, and dies at the guns of, the Teacher who was previously known as Lynx/Cheetah, the player character of the Wii game, The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces.
 * Witchblade. In the anime, Masane performs a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the Witchblade and every single I-Weapon that crowded around her.
 * Toward the Terra ends with Jomy dying side by side with Keith. Except then there's the coda...
 * Munsu from Shin Angyo Onshi, aka Blade Of The Phantom Master, dies like a true warrior after the antagonist is killed.
 * Wolf's Rain does this with pretty much everyone.
 * Goku (who provides the above image) from Dragon Ball has sacrificed his life twice in the series; the first time being when he held his evil brother Raditz still for Piccolo to shoot him with his Special Beam Cannon, knowing fully well that he would have to die too. The second time was near the end of the Cell saga: Cell has inflated to massive size and is threatening to blow up the earth. Thinking quickly, Goku uses instant transmission to send Cell and himself to King Kai's planet and stays during the detonation so that the world will be safe. He is resurrected both times.
 * Captain Noah from Space Carrier Blue Noah dies after saving the world, him being the hero the show is named after.
 * Ash Ketchum from Pokémon: The First Movie is killed (or near enough) by a crossfire of psychic attacks. He gets better by a stream of Swiss Army Tears.
 * Hagino/Ekaril from Blue Drop. It's all ultimately for nothing.
 * The movie adaptation of Macross Frontier. Alto (and likely Brera) are caught in final explosion. And Sheryl is likely doomed to A Fate Worse Than Death ... unless she manages to wake up on her own.
 * Madoka from Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica. Several times. She eventually manages to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
 * The main character in Millenium Actress dies after telling her life story in an interview.
 * Kimba the White Lion has this happen at the ending of each of its adaptations with the exception of the 60's anime sequel and the 2009 TV special.
 * In Bakuman｡ no one dies in the main story but, Nanamine's Classroom of Truth and the main characters' Reversi kill off their main characters. The former is a Shoot the Shaggy Dog example, in which even he fails to escape the survival tournament for his class. The latter combines is a case of Dying as Yourself, and is seen in-universe as a fitting conclusion to the story.
 * The manga Claudine finishes with the main character commiting suicide.

Comic Books

 * V for Vendetta.
 * The Sandman. (sort of)
 * David Knight in Starman. Not much of a spoiler, since he dies in the first few pages of issue 1 and the rest of the series is about his brother Jack's time as Starman.
 * Blue Beetle in Countdown To Infinite Crisis.
 * Sgt. Rock is killed by the last bullet fired in WWII.
 * Sin City does this in two major stories and a few of the short stories.
 * Ultimate Spider-Man
 * And now Hellboy...
 * Captain America (comics), who died in his eponymous comic at the end of the Civil War.
 * The Death of Superman (sometimes called The Death and Return of Superman) due to his coming back.

Fan Fiction

 * John Freeman dies in the final chapter of Half Life Full Life Consequences. He gets a statue out of the deal, and his son becomes president.
 * The main character dies in the Pokemon fanfic No Antidote.
 * Ronan of Naruto Veangance Revelaitons dies three times during the story, but it actually sticks when he dies a fourth time in Benji's ending.
 * In A Sad Story, Harry Potter dies.

Film

 * Ellen Ripley in Alien 3. She gets better. Sort of.
 * Neo and Trinity die at the end of the last Matrix film, though it isn't a downer ending, since he fulfilled his purpose successfully.
 * Nada (played by Rowdy Roddy Piper) from They Live!. At the end, he dies giving the camera the finger. Arguably a metaphor for the whole movie.
 * This happens in Gladiator, the hero arguably succeeds.
 * Lester from American Beauty tells us that he's dead in the beginning of the film.
 * Ah Jong of John Woo's The Killer dies without fulfilling his promise to have Jenny's eyes fixed. The Big Bad is finished off by Inspector Li Ying, the other primary hero, but Li is arrested by his fellow officers afterward because he did it in cold blood right in front of them.
 * Three Hundred: With the sole exception of Dilios, whom Leonidas sent back home to rally Greek support by telling the tale of the 300 Spartans, everyone on the Spartan side ends up dead on the third day of the Battle of Thermopylae. Most definitely not a case of The Bad Guy Wins, since their sacrifice delayed the Persian army long enough for Athens to be safely evacuated before it was destroyed, and for the Greeks to begin their own campaign to drive the Persians out of Greece forever. The movie skips past a year of this campaign during the epilogue, but there's another graphic novel in the works that will be set in that missing year; a movie sequel based on this new novel has not been ruled out.
 * The captain, the sub, and a whole load of the crew in Das Boot.
 * In fact
 * In both the book and the movie of Cold Mountain, Inman dies after making it home to Ada and fathering a child.
 * Carlitos Way
 * No Country for Old Men, in particular the movie, takes full advantage of this trope. Not a Kill'Em All, but definitely a The Bad Guy Wins and a Downer Ending.
 * The 3:10 to Yuma 2007 remake ends with the death of the protagonist. After he had survived all the obstacles, too. Not a case of The Bad Guy Wins, though, as even the self-styled heartless villain was touched by his Heroic Sacrifice and stubborn determination.
 * Jericho in End of Days. Not a case of Downer Ending, as we clearly see he's headed for a better place.
 * Von Ryan's Express.
 * The bureaucrat protagonist of Akira Kurosawa's classic Ikiru dies in the neighborhood playground he created to justify his life.
 * William Wallace in Braveheart.
 * El Wray in Planet Terror.
 * Captain John Miller and nearly all of his squad from Saving Private Ryan.
 * Jack Dawson from Titanic.
 * Harry Stamper from Armageddon.
 * 12 Monkeys.
 * Children of Men.
 * The Australian film Gallipoli.
 * Curtis in Operation Crossbow.
 * Possibly Nina in Black Swan, who stabs herself with a mirror shard, thinking she has killed Lily, and completes the performance while bleeding profusely.
 * Bruce Lee's character in Fists of Fury/The Chinese Connection.
 * Ofelia in Pan's Labyrinth.
 * Luke in Cool Hand Luke.
 * Professor Immanuel Rath in The Blue Angel
 * Donnie in Donnie Darko.
 * Rooster Cogburn dies of old age in the remake of True Grit.
 * In L: Change the World, to capture Kira L writes his own name in the Death Note, giving himself 23 days to live. The film is about how he chooses to spend them.
 * In The Book of Eli, Eli has succumbed to his gunshot wound by Carnegie and died upon reading all the contents from his memory of the King James Bible to Alcatraz press company.
 * Firefighter Jack Morrison in Ladder 49.
 * Jack Sparrow, at the end of the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. He gets better.

Literature
"I was dead, and right content."
 * Sherlock Holmes in "The Final Problem." It didn't stay "final" for very long.
 * All Quiet on the Western Front.
 * Harry Dresden as of the end of Changes. He then spends the next book, Ghost Story, solving his own murder. As a ghost.
 * The novelization of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, aside from many other differences from the plot of the anime, has Amuro Ray die several chapters before the end of the book. Despite Yoshiyuki Tomino's reputation as "Kill'Em All Tomino", he said that he only did it because he thought it would be a single complete story and that if he had planned on making sequels from the start, Amuro would have lived.
 * 1984. Winston and Julia are caught, tortured and Mind Raped by O'Brien, a guy who was supposed to be their link to "the Brotherhood," but is actually a member of the Inner Party. They are broken so thoroughly that all love that they had for each other is dead (particularly since the two were forced to betray each other through means of Room 101, which faces them with their worst fear—for Winston, it was rats, though since the story is in Winston's perspective, we never do find out what Julia's worst fear was), and then executed by being shot in the back of the head. Not just a Downer Ending, but a Shoot the Shaggy Dog, given the last four words: He loved Big Brother.
 * Outbound Flight. Lorana Jinzler died in a Heroic Sacrifice. She was the only unambiguously good character in that half of the novel. The other major characters, who might be called heroes, survived—but Thrawn and Car'das and Doriana weren't entirely good people.
 * In Firewing, Shade the Bat kills himself in the Bat Underworld to give his son, Griffin, and his friend, Luna, life force to feed on and become living, breathing bats again. In the end, he still survives, but in the form of the foliage of the forest floor. When he's dead, he flies around the world and can be anything he wants to be.
 * Jean Valjean dies at the end of Les Misérables. Admittedly, so does almost everyone else.
 * The Death of the Vazir Mukhtar. Guess what the Persian translation of the main character's new official title is? Yeah.
 * In The Last Chancers last novel, Kage, possessed by a Slaaneshi daemon, decides to commit his first ever act of altruism and jumps off a cliff to his death, taking the corrupt governor with him.
 * Parrish dies at the end of Parrish Plessis, commiting suicide when she realizes even her Heroic Willpower isn't able to hold off The Corruption any longer.
 * David dies at the end of the third Dragons book, Firestar, by Chris D'Lacey. Initially, this looked like it would be the end of the series, making it an unusually harsh ending for a book aimed at the 8-12 bracket. The series did creep on, and David came Back From The Higher Plane Of Existence, with the implication being that he became one with God(ith) and saw all the knowledge in the universe through his daughter's eyes, but if unexpected, the ending of Firestar can be a real punch.
 * Nathaniel dies in the third and final book of the The Bartimaeus Trilogy, resulting in a Bittersweet Ending, Tear Jerker and Heroic Sacrifice all in one.
 * Uncle Tom's Cabin: Tom is whipped to death by the plantation owner.
 * Jerry Westerby in The Honourable Schoolboy, the second volume of John Le Carre's The Quest for Karla trilogy.
 * Speaking of John Le Carre, Leamas in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
 * Antony and Galen in the second and third books, respectively, of Marie Brennan's Onyx Court series. Technically, all the mortal heroes of the series could count, as given the large time skip between books, the hero of the previous one is always dead by the time the next one comes around, but Antony and Galen get special mention for dying during their respective stories.
 * In Phantastes, this is the happy ending.


 * The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas; both Bruno and his Jewish friend Shmuel die in the concentration camp. The last scene focuses on Bruno's father, realising he basically caused his own son's death, and crying.
 * Elend AND Vin at the end of the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

Live Action Television

 * Jack Shephard dies in the final scene of Lost, and we even get to see him moving on to the afterlife.
 * Xena, after "dying" several times throughout the series, dies for the final time in the series finale.
 * Buffy died at the end of the Season 5 episode "The Gift." The next season, they brought her back. She also died at the end of the first season, but only for a few minutes and was revived with CPR.
 * A minor example—in the Alternate Universe episode "The Wish," Cordelia Chase, the episode's central character and the one who wished the universe into existence, is killed halfway through. The rest of the main character (besides Oz and Giles) are later killed in quick succession before the original universe is restored.
 * When Flower died on Meerkat Manor, the show was completely shattered. Next Generation with Rocket Dog just wasn't/isn't the same... She was their star and the pillar that held the show up.
 * Victor "I don't believe it!" Meldrew was stuck down by a car in the finale of One Foot in the Grave. Noticeably, the climax of the episode wasn't his death, but rather his wife's reaction to it.
 * Nick Cutter is shot midway through the third season of Primeval
 * Robin Hood dies at the end of the third season, joining his wife Marian who had died at the end of the previous season. Despite attempts to set up for a forth season, the show was inevitably cancelled.
 * Robin Of Sherwood also died, and was replaced by a new Robin.
 * Farscape's John Crichton (one of the twinned two, anyway) died a hero's death at the end of Season 3's two-parter Infinite Possibilities. Luckily, there was a backup "copy" on Moya.
 * In the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left", the Tenth Doctor is killed in the parallel universe created by Donna's mind after he floods an abandoned Torchwood base with him inside it, creating all sorts of chaos and havoc.
 * In "Father's Day", the Ninth Doctor is consumed by Clock Roaches after Rose created a paradox saving her father. After her father fixes this error, he and everyone else on Earth returns.
 * In "The Impossible Astronaut" Eleven is killed to death, mourned, and cremated, only to show up a few minutes later, completely clueless as to why everyone is so upset. Their past, his future, cue plot arc.
 * In The Sarah Jane Adventures story Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane, the Trickster makes a deal with Sarah Jane's friend and switches places with 13-year-old Sarah Jane, making her fall to her death. She later relinquished her deal, causing time to return to normal.
 * Earth: Final Conflict is a rare case where the hero died at the end of the first season, but the show still continued without him.
 * Torchwood:
 * Captain Jack. Repeatedly. Firstly by Dalek extermination on Doctor Who, and over 1300 times (not all chronicled) since.
 * Owen Harper is shot by the leader of The Pharm, Aaron Copley, is made undead, and presumably dies again after being trapped in a nuclear plant control room flooded by radiation.
 * Toshiko Sato is shot by Jack's brother Gray.
 * Ianto Jones dies from a virus inflicted by the 456.
 * In Torchwood: Miracle Day, Esther Drummond is shot by the Three Families while temporarily immortal to stop Torchwood from making humanity mortal again. They refuse, and Esther succumbs to her wounds.
 * Rex Matheson is shot by an agent of the Families, but gains Jack's healing ability.
 * The team fall under the category of this trope because they are all heroes (at least by series 2), and get roughly the same amount of screen time.
 * Shinji Kido, the titular Rider of Kamen Rider Ryuki. Got better by way of Reset Button in the finale.
 * Also, his American counterpart, Kit Taylor. Unlike Shinji, he didn't actually die—he was just sent to the Advent Void. He also got better.
 * Jonah Gabriel from The Shadow Line was killed off in the final episode of the series.
 * Bill Henrickson bites it in the last episode of Big Love after getting shot by an angry neighbor.
 * The Sopranos, according to some.

Theater

 * Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, obviously since he's the salesman.
 * Bobby Strong, the hero of Urinetown, dies midway through the second act.
 * Antigone commits suicide out of spite.
 * Hamlet. Granted, he doesn't go alone.
 * Also Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Julius Caesar... essentially, the title character of every Shakespearean tragedy (although how heroic they are is a matter of some debate in each case).
 * What's interesting about Julius Caesar is that the title character dies halfway through the play, spending the rest of it as a corpse, a ghost and some military inspiration. Whether or not this in fact makes Brutus the hero is up for debate.
 * The same applies to the title character of nearly every tragic opera as well.
 * Sweeney Todd, although he's more of an Anti-Hero.
 * Repo! The Genetic Opera kills off its title character, the Repo Man Nathan Wallace, near the end of the play.
 * Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Also, pretty much everyone else in the cast... except the lovers Marius and Cosette, and the two most horrible people in the entire play - The Thenadiers - who become rich in addition to living. Pretty dramatic example of the trope.

Video Games

 * Kratos from God of War dies many times throughout the franchise, only to come back out of Hell every time. In the ending of the third game, he stabs himself with the Blade of Olympus to end his life for good. It is actually up to speculation whether he is truly dead or alive, since his body goes missing after the credits roll.
 * Those who have played Final Fantasy VII will know how things will end for Zack in in the prequel game Crisis Core.
 * Was supposed to happen to Terra in Final Fantasy VI, but was left out of the final game.
 * Jade Empire. You get better.
 * Zero makes yet another Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Mega Man Zero 4. This time, it's permanent. Mostly.
 * Betrayal at Krondor ends with the Heroic Sacrifice of Gorath, who, if not necessarily the main protagonist, is still undeniably the hero of the story.
 * The Command & Conquer series actually does this a fair amount. For GDI, one of your operation commanders, Carter, eventually is seen with beginning Tiberium poisoning, but is killed by a Nod obelisk in his gunboat. McNeil, the GDI commander in Tiberian Sun ends up 'killing' Kane, but in the following expansion, Firestorm, he is killed right before the first mission when an ion storm downs his command ship (though if the Tiberium Wars novelization is canon, he wasn't on board when it happened). GDI also loses everyone on board the Philadelphia (space borne command center) in the opening stages of Tiberium Wars. If Nod is your faction, they lose both the first and second wars, with Kane being reportedly 'killed' each time. Slavik of Tiberian Sun dies right before C&C3 Kane's Wrath starts. And in C&C4, the player character themselves dies in the ending, no matter which side you choose to play as. Subverted with Kane in this case though, as he completes his plan for Ascension and leaves Earth through a Scrin portal.
 * The protagonist of Persona 3 by Heroic Sacrifice. Well, he was a fairly obvious Messianic Archetype...
 * Chrono Trigger has Crono die. You can ressurect him by playing around with Time Travel, but it's completely optional and you don't need to do so to beat the game.
 * Planescape: Torment, but that's what the hero has been trying to achieve. And Death Is Not The End.
 * At the end of Final Fantasy X, Tidus sort of dies when he realizes it was All Just a Dream.
 * To be specific,  he was a dream created by the Fayth. The dreams of the Fayth, which include Zanarkand and the rest of its inhabitants, were kept alive by both their deep sleep and the Big Bad. When he dies, Tidus vanishes.
 * Harry Mason, the hero of the first Silent Hill, dies halfway through 3. He also dies in the non-canon Bad Ending of the first game. And in The Room, Henry dies in the worst ending.
 * It's been implied that the bad ending of Silent Hill 2 (James driving his car into the lake) actually is the canon ending.
 * One possible ending of Dragon Age Origins involves the Grey Warden performing a Heroic Sacrifice to kill the archdemon.
 * Mass Effect 2, twice, same hero. Once is at the beginning and unavoidable, though you do get better thanks to Cerberus. The other is the bad ending, which you get for being lazy on an epic scale.
 * You literally go into Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinestrals KNOWING that Selan and Maxim will die at the end of, due to it being a prequel of Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, which starts off with a 100 years in the past flashback of their deaths.
 * The end of BioShock (series) 2 always involves Subject Delta dying, though it's his influence on Eleanor that determines how things end up and several of the endings involve her taking his essence so that he live on through her as a Spirit Advisor.
 * Possibly the ending of Driv3r, where Tanner gets shot by the Big Bad and flatlines.
 * Subverted. He shows up alive and well in Driver: San Francisco.
 * Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation was supposed to be the end of the series(at least on the PS 1), with Lara suffering a No One Could Survive That fate. It ended up being an Our Hero Is Dead instead, with her getting better in Angel of Darkness.
 * Possibly the epilogue of Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow. Since the series has apparently been terminated, we may never know.
 * Ikaruga, by Heroic Sacrifice.
 * Michael Beckett, the protagonist of FEAR 2 is killed near the end of F 3 AR by Paxton Fettel.
 * In Fire Emblem 4, the main character, Sigurd, is betrayed and killed at the end of the first half of the game, along with most of his army, in one of the most depressing scenes in gaming. The second half of the game centres on his son, Celice.
 * Soki did a Heroic Sacrifice in Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams.
 * In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a nuclear explosion kills the American protagonist and his entire squad, as well as rendering their accomplishments moot.
 * Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a doozy. Of the four heroes you control, two die, not to mention another character you control for all of five minutes. That's three out of five player characters dead by game's end, not to mention multiple NPC squadmates, but that's more Anyone Can Die.
 * The final story mission of Red Dead Redemption has John Marston walk out to face his doom at the bullets of an army, in order to give his wife and son a chance to escape and live better lives. Widely considered to be a Dying Moment of Awesome.
 * Ash Crimson, the protagonist of The King of Fighters XIII, erased himself from existence when he eliminated the Final Boss, his ancestor Saiki.
 * This deserves more of an elaboration. Ash Crimson, being an effeminate pretty boy who was toted as the new protagonist of the current saga (The Tales of Ash, which began with KOF 2003) did not hold well with the fandom (the Japanese notwithstanding). It Got Worse when Ash started upstaging EVERYONE, not by means of skill, but by having better flame powers than anyone else and giving zero effect in battle. He simultaneously hit Villain Protagonist and Creator's Pet-dom by stealing the powers of Chizuru and Iori. Then came XIII, where it's revealed that he's a Fake Defector Guile Hero with a Jerkass Facade whose plans were carried out to protect Elisabeth, his older sister figure and the one person he cared about. With his smile-wearing Heroic Sacrifice, he's gone... for good. In a series where only the main villains die. No one was expecting it to end this way. No one. Ash got an Alas, Poor Scrappy treatment from the majority of the fanbase, earning him some major Woobie points and possibly saving him from the heap.
 * Noble Six dies in a Last Stand at the end of Halo: Reach.
 * Medal of Honor 2010: Rabbit is captured by the terrorists and mortally wounded, and his rescuers encourage him to hang on while the rescue chopper arrives, with the first person view periodically blacking out, but he ultimately expires.
 * Nathan Hale in the ending of Resistance 2. Though he had just succumbed to The Virus he'd been struggling with the whole time, so he technically wasn't a hero when he died.
 * Nariko from Heavenly Sword succumbs to the curse of the title sword and dies at the end. Though not before taking King Bohan with her in a final showdown.
 * Although he is only a man and not really a hero per se, Commander Video rushes to his death to stop the Mingrawn Timbletot once and for all at the end of BIT.TRIP FATE.
 * Martin Septim from Oblivion dies to summon the God Akatosh in order to kill Dagon. He may not be the player, but Martin is arguably The Hero.
 * The silent protagonist Anon from Tron Evolution died protecting Quorra from a huge falling aircraft.
 * In L.A. Noire, Cole Phelps is killed by a rush of water during the final case in a sacrifice to save an old member of his unit. The last cutscene before the credits takes place at his funeral.
 * In The 3rd Birthday, depending on how you look at it,
 * Ending D of Nie R has the player character sacrificing his entire existence in order to bring Kainé back to life after the Shade Tyrann takes over her body.
 * In case you don't know exactly what that means, the D Ending of Nier is the last ending you can possibly get in Nier. It is the last ending because getting it erases your entire save file piece by piece as Nier himself is erased from existence. It's pretty hardcore.
 * In Fahrenheit (2005 video game), Lucas died from the fall caused by the Oracle when he is saving his ex-girlfriend Tiffany. However, he got better.
 * If you play the good Karma final mission against the beast in In Famous 2, Cole's actions will led to every conduit's as well as his own demise. The people of new Marais will honour and remember Cole as a hero for his deeds.
 * of Fallout 3 dies if you take the 'good' path, this was fixed by the add on broken steel.
 * One possible ending to Deus Ex Human Revolution. To ensure that mankind chooses its own destiny, Adam Jenson destroys Panchea, bringing it crashing down on him (as well as every other character present).
 * If you choose to fight the emperor, Starkiller in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will die fighting the emperor to buy time for the resistance to escape. Though he "indirectly" got Better in the sequel.
 * According to the official timeline that was released in the artbook Hyrule Historia, there are three splits in The Legend of Zelda timeline. One split eventually leads into the NES games, and involves Link from Ocarina of Time dying instead of fulfilling his destiny.
 * In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Victor Vance, the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is killed during an ambushed drug deal in the opening cutscene.
 * Asura's Wrath titular character dies THRICE from his first betrayal to  and his fighting against  he dies . He gets better from his Heroic Willpower.
 * An interesting case in Xenoblade Chronicles.
 * Final Fantasy XIII:
 * in the sequel.
 * Final Fantasy XIII:
 * in the sequel.

Visual Novel

 * Shirou dies at the end of the Heaven's Feel route of Fate/stay night (Unexplained Recovery in one ending). Saber dies at the end of the route she's the heroine in, after being sent back to her own time and giving up on the Grail.
 * The Yarudora game Sampaguita has, in Good End 3, the protagonist Taking the Bullet for his lover Maria. What makes this a Good Ending (unlike Normal End 2, which follows the same sacrifice pattern, but doesn't include the following), is the protagonist awakening as a ghost two years later, and finding that Maria is now safe, and living happily with the baby boy born from her and the protagonist, conceived during the time they were cohabiting. The baby is able to see him, and he manages to make Maria aware of his presence via a power outage.

Webcomics

 * Captain Kaff Tagon and Seargent Schlock in Schlock Mercenary (arguably the two primary characters) are killed and stripped of all memories/former self, respectively. Averted via time travel.
 * ...eventually. The strip ran for quite a while looking like leadership of the Toughs was going be by Kevyn, with a degree of awkward mentoring from Tagon's father. Technically, the time travel was mostly required to avert the death of everyone in the galaxy.
 * John Egbert's physical self in Homestuck ends up getting killed by Jack Noir. He gets better when his Dream Self replaces him, and in fact this event allows him to reach the god-tiers... and then his god-tier self is also easily killed by Jack Noir. Fortunately, god-tiered characters have conditional Resurrective Immortality.
 * All of the kids and all of the trolls die at least once. As of the current plot a lot of people have died twice, and most of these second deaths have proved to be permanent.
 * Act 6 invokes this trope with the apparent death of a newly introduced main character. After about a month, it turned out that she actually did not die, but the fact that the event came out of nowhere certainly shocked readers.
 * Irregular Webcomic. Twice.

Web Original

 * In The Gamers Alliance, quite a few prominent heroes end up dying over the course of the story arcs.
 * Broken Saints ends with two of our four heroes committing Heroic Sacrifices
 * Bree Avery sacrifices herself in the first Lonelygirl15 Season Finale.
 * Maddison Atkins and Adam Wilmott died in the original version of Maddison Atkins.

Western Animation

 * Transformers: The Movie. Optimus Prime dies.
 * And that's just the first example. Optimuses die a lot...
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang is killed by a lightning blast to the back from Azula. While Aang was ressurected a few minutes later, his death had disastrous consequences. Namely, the Fire Nation took over the Earth Kingdom (their only obstacle to world domination besides Aang himself) and Aang was rendered unable to use the Avatar State until the final episode.
 * He dies again before The Legend of Korra, this time because sealing himself in an iceberg for several years did a number on his lifespan. The show follows the adventures of Aang's successor and Reincarnation Korra, with Aang acting as her Spirit Advisor. Note that due to how Avatars are made, the very premise of the show required Aang to die.
 * In Futurama: Bender's Big Score, a future version of Fry named Lars dies because he is doomed Temporal Paradox. Time clones being doomed (DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMEEEEEED) is in fact central to the plot.