Fatal Family Photo



Retirony's equally devious brother, not that either of them have photos of the other. Whenever a character shows the others a picture of their family and/or loved ones, they're shot to the top of the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality.

It mostly works as a cheap "look at my lovely family" moment so we feel bad for them when the character dies. This isn't immediately lethal though; it usually takes a while to kill the character because it bumps the Red Shirt into the Mauve Shirt's sweet spot for "less likely to die meaninglessly, much likelier to die meaningfully because it'll hurt more."

It also may indicate the character's willingness to die for someone else. Since their family is dear to them, they'd willingly make a Heroic Sacrifice for their friends or True Companions too.

The variation where the picture directly leads to the character's death could be seen as a subtle acknowledgment of the trope.

Contrast Personal Effects Reveal, which often involves finding a family photo after the death. (If said person was an antagonist of some sort that the protagonists shot, expect a heaping helping of irony and/or regret.)

See also Retirony and If We Get Through This.

Anime & Manga

 * from Macross 7, has to be the master of this trope. Not only does he show us a picture of his wife and daughter before he's killed in combat, but, and the photo he shows us is in a  . He tugs more at our heart strings by telling us  ... what's more after he dies a senseless death and his team mate (one of the Love Triangle, goes to deliver the   to his wife and child, it's implied that his wife was cheating on him. This series doesn't kill very often so they make sure to get their millage. The only other death of note is the Heroic Sacrifice.
 * In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga,  carries a photo of his fiancée with him during the Ishbalan war. Genre Savvy Colonel Mustang then points out that if they were in a war story, carrying a photo of her around and showing it off so proudly would be a sure-fire way to die ironically on the battlefield. Its subverted as this is a flashback and the audience knows that he does make it back to his girlfriend and marries her and has a kid. Of course, this is a reference to the fact that all through the series, he's showing off pictures of his daughter and occasionally of his wife...
 * Plus, the family picture partially causes
 * Also played with in manga Hohenheim's case: he chats about his family picture with a young mother on a coach, the coach gets attacked by thugs, Hohenheim gets shot while defending the other passengers... Turns out that  " . Oh good, the picture has nothing."
 * The moment Kinue Crossroad was seen looking at the picture of her family in Gundam 00, it was obvious her time was up. Didn't take long.
 * Season 2 has the same thing happen to Barack Zinin.
 * is arguably killed by at least five family photos on his mantelpiece at home.
 * Strangely subverted in the second OVA of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, where Mr. Gilboa looks at at a folded piece of paper that the audience views from the back side, only for it to be revealed to be just written orders
 * In the Excel Saga anime, the titular main character is working part time at a construction site where her co-worker Pedro weeps passionately about being separated from his adoring family. Naturally, he provides us with a photograph as well as some lampshaded flash back footage. Later on, the construction site catches fire and he dies horribly when he runs back into the inferno to retrieve his family photo.
 * That doesn't stop him from becoming a major character, though.
 * In Saikano, all of the characters that carry the photos of their loved ones to war die horribly.
 * This doesn't really count as everyone in Saikano dies horribly.
 * The first episode of The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk lampoons this trope heavily.
 * Happens picture-perfectly in the second volume of Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure. Joseph and Cesare accompany a young Nazi soldier and friend of Cesare to witness the Three Men In The Pillar, and the young man shows them a picture of his girlfriend. Guess who's among the first victims when the men awakens?
 * Miaka takes a happy picture with her True Companions in the middle of Fushigi Yuugi.
 * Subverted in Zipang. The American pilot of the Dauntless divebomber keeps looking at the picture of his wife just as it looks like he's about to ram his plane into the Mirai. However, he jumps off and parachutes to safety just before impact, carefully keeping his wife's photo before he does.
 * Played with on Digimon Tamers. During the final arc, we see a scene where one of the computer programmers none-too-subtly looks at a framed picture of him and his son and granddaughter,
 * Done ridiculously fast in Legend of Galactic Heroes's early episode, where you literally can't count to six before the two Alliance gunners die after one shows the Fatal Family Photo to his friend.
 * The manga of Black Cat has an accountant for the mafia show off a picture of his family to Train and Sven. Being, well, a runaway from the mafia, he gets killed by an assassin shortly after.
 * Rurouni Kenshin: While he doesn't have a photo to show off, Tomoe's fiance begins talking to his comrades about how the two of them were childhood sweethearts and that he was going to marry her once the war was over (a war he got himself involved in in order to impress her).... right when Battousai shows up.
 * Later on, the events that took place would turn into a
 * Happen in early episode of Tekkaman Blade, a professor is killed after he shows D-Boy his families photo before his Heroic Sacrifice. While D-Boy's anger against the millitary because of said events is normal for well... Normal person, it feels REALLY out of character if we considers how D-Boy acts up to this point, and the fact that his rage is against the millitary member.

Comic Books

 * Slightly subverted in the original G.I. Joe comics during 'Nam'', Snake-eyes was always carrying around a picture of his sister as a good luck charm... while he doesn't die he is horribly wounded and the picture is damaged... when he gets back to The States he learns that it is his family who dies... so the photo didn't do in the soldier but did in the family.
 * To further twist the knife, the other passenger in the auto accident that killed his family was the brother of a used-car salesman. The salesman became so embittered over the accident that he started a scheme for revenge that ultimately led to.
 * Played straight in the first issue of IDW's Transformers: All Hail Megatron. A pilot who goes into battle against the Decepticons has a picture of his girlfriend taped inside his cockpit. He doesn't last long.

Film
"Joe Don Baker: Travis is a cute kid. Yer a lucky man, Bob.
 * In the beginning of Shooter Swagger's spotter shows off a picture of his wife and has a chat with the main character about her. He is dead within four and half minutes.
 * The Core: shows those damn photos so often that anyone with half a brain can see that he won't make it out alive.
 * Alien vs. Predator (the first movie): Then again, the victim's photos were the only distinguishing thing about his character (most of the other characters weren't so lucky).
 * Deliberately averted in the original Alien; the filmmakers didn't want any conversations about family members the crew might have had back home.
 * Averted in Apollo 13. Astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise look through family photos aboard the crippled spacecraft, but the crew survives the journey home.
 * In the first Terminator movie, Kyle has a picture of Sarah Connor he treasures.
 * Black Hawk Down has Mike Durant showing others a photo of his family. Long after the Black Hawk he was piloting crashes, he's surrounded by Somalians and his photo is lost in the crowd.
 * Leads to a death in the film Sum of All Fears, where an Israeli pilot's picture of his wife and kids falls off his plane's control panel, his brief distraction of quickly picking the photo back up and placing it into it's original place leads to him now seeing too late the surface to air missile that's flying towards him and he explodes.
 * Tom Clancy himself states that this is the reason why various Air Forces do not allow pilots to bring up family photos, Making this the first in a series of Did Not Do the Research
 * Parodied and Lampshaded in Hot Shots! One of the pilots shows everyone pictures of his perfect family, and his beautiful, perky wife even shows up at the base to tell him how things are going with the house they just bought. He also puts off putting the single last signature needed onto the insurance on his life until after this flight, and takes some crucial evidence to the JFK assassination and a winning lottery ticket along with him; his call sign? Dead Meat.
 * He also walks under a ladder, has a black cat cross his path, and accidentally breaks his wife's mirror.
 * One of the cops at the beginning of The Last House On the Left remake is talking to his colleague about his daughters and their pictures are shown. Is done in such a hammy way it hurts.
 * It happens in the ending of The Hitcher remake; one of the cops on the cop bus that's carrying John Ryder takes out a photo of his daughter.
 * Doubly-subverted by Grig in The Last Starfighter, when he shows the hero a picture-cube of his family. Grig ultimately survives, and since he has twelve thousand offspring, the cube starts flashing rapid-fire/near-subliminal images of every last one of them.
 * Independence Day. As Russell Casse is flying underneath the invader's ship, he looks at a picture of his three children in the cockpit just before he performs a Heroic Sacrifice by flying his jet into the ship's primary weapon and destroying it.
 * During the Joe Don Baker stinker Final Justice (as presented on MST3K), Joe Don Baker's Texas lawman is looking at family photos with his partner, moments before the partner is gunned down:

Crow: Uh oh."


 * Used as foreboding in Deep Impact. When Jenny's estranged father returns and gives her several family photos, it begins a series of events where Jenny gives up the chance to escape the mega-tsunami created by the smaller half of the comet and spends her last moments with her father.
 * Subverted in Transformers, at least partially. Jorge Figuerosa talks about going back to his mother's house and eating alligator stew, while Captain Lennox actually talks to his wife via webcam and sees his baby. Neither of them die in the movie (although Fig died in a cut scene).
 * We see a brief shot of Dryden's picture of his wife and kids on a table when James Bond kills him in the opening of Casino Royale.
 * Subverted in Top Gun. In the opening sequence, Cougar has a photo of his wife and newborn son in his cockpit, and the sequence does make it look like he'll crash, until Maverick guides his plane down. Cougar then resigns his commission for fear of widowing his wife and orphaning his son.
 * from Predators shows a photo of his two children and becomes the next to die.
 * In Anthony Mann's Men in war, American soldiers find the family photo on the corpse of a North Korean. So those Dirty Commies are simply men ?!
 * Subverted in Ballistic Ecks vs. Sever.
 * Played straight and subverted in Das Boot. Lieutenant Werner looks at family photos from Cadet Ullman, Navigator Kriechbaum and the Chief Engineer. At the end,
 * Oli makes the mistake of showing off pictures of his daughter, and to an Elite Hunting customer, no less. Of course, given that this is Hostel, keeping the photo hidden probably wouldn't have helped.
 * Agent Fielding pulls one out in Time Cop.
 * In Apocalypse Now it is not a photograph but a
 * Played with and likely inverted in Captain America the First Avenger. Steve has a picture of Peggy in his compass.
 * Saving Private Ryan has an interesting variation in that technically it was.
 * It is even clever lampshaded when.

Literature

 * Referenced in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Jingo, where a young soldier who has been killed is remarked to have shown his sergeant a picture of his girlfriend the night previous.
 * Harry Potter.
 * The weirdest part is that he only took out the picture and started blabbing about it to relieve the tension from the uncomfortable moment  had created.
 * As if to add insult to injury(or death), his wife dies as well. Good job,
 * Tangential example:
 * Played with in Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Straight Silver. laments that he has no photographs of his dead daughter and granddaughter; they had intended to send him some after, but then Chaos destroyed their planet. Then he dies.
 * Inverted in The Things They Carried. In one section, Tim O'Brien is showing Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend when an attack on the camp begins. O'Brien survives, but Kiowa doesn't.
 * In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40000 Ultramarines novel Warriors of Ultramar, a Guardsman has just such a photo.
 * from Percy Jackson and The Olympians. Before moving out on their mission to  pulls out a picture of his girlfriend,   A mere fifteen pages later, he is dead. The worst part?
 * Appears somewhat differently in All Quiet On the Western Front: after Paul kills a French soldier, he founds pictures of his wife and daughter.
 * Don't forget the boots ! The uncle of the schoolmate of Paul give his boots to his nephew when he enlist, needless to say, he die and then one another take the boots... and die too...and so on.
 * In the Halo Expanded Universe novels, some of the otherwise nameless soldiers and personnel have families back home, but are still just as expendable in the novels as they are in the games. To name an example, the first guy you see die from the first game dies while clutching a picture of his family.
 * Referenced in Tanya Huff's Confederation of Valor series. The first book has one of the soldiers offering to show another one a video of his four-year-old doing a silly dance - until a more Genre Savvy soldier stops the both of them.
 * In Laura and the Silver Wolf, the father of an Ill Girl Laura brings her their photo from earlier days.
 * In The Naked and the Dead, Sociopathic Soldier Croft captures a Japanese man. Croft first treats him so nicely, that he ends up showing him a picture of his family. Croft then shoots him in the head.
 * In The Naked and the Dead, Sociopathic Soldier Croft captures a Japanese man. Croft first treats him so nicely, that he ends up showing him a picture of his family. Croft then shoots him in the head.

Live Action TV
"Connor: That's your family. That's your family, and you were just gonna leave them like that? How were they gonna feel if you didn't come back?
 * Parodied and Lampshaded in an episode of The Goodies. When one Nazi sentry starts showing his partner a photo of his girlfriend in Dusseldorf, the other starts telling him to put it away and ends up screaming at the top of the lungs to the British commandos he is certain are about to leap and murder them that he is not with this guy.
 * Played straight several times in 24, but subverted in season 7. Jack & Tony go to a dock to intercept a weapons shipment, where we see a security guard working the night shift and getting off the phone with his wife, who is pregnant with twins. Jack & Tony inform him of the dangerous shipment and convince him to go undercover for them. After the guard leaves the room, Jack feels bad for him and Tony tells Jack that "we both knew he was dead as soon as he walked out that door." But Jack defies tradition and saves the guard's life when he's about to get killed for "knowing too much", even though it jeopardizes the mission.
 * Subverted on Stargate SG 1, in "Heroes, Part 1". One of the members of SG-13 passes round an ultrasound picture of his unborn child. He then goes on to be the first one to get shot,
 * Sort of referenced in season 5 of Supernatural.
 * Kinda Invoked in that Hunters take group photos just before going out on a big hunt.
 * The West Wing, of all shows, has an example in the second episode. An Army doctor giving President Bartlet a checkup tells him all about his wife and their newborn baby, shows him a picture, and says he's leaving them for a while to work in a teaching hospital in Jordan. We had to get to like him in a hurry, because the episode ends with the news that his plane was shot down over Syria, and the entire next episode ("A Proportional Response") is spent convincing Bartlet not to go ballistic and bomb the shit out them in retaliation. (This is all possibly Lampshaded when Leo is talking about how he knows Bartlet liked the guy, and Bartlet responds that he did, but he barely knew him, it's not like it was his son.)
 * On Babylon Five, Captain Jack insists on showing off a picture of his daughter to a heavily disinterested Doctor Franklin and Marcus Cole.
 * Averted in Space Above and Beyond, Lieutenant West carries a picture of his girlfriend on his dogtag chain and lives through the entire series. His quest to find her and rescue her after her colony is attacked by the Chigs in the series pilot is his primary character arc on the show.
 * Lost: Early in "The Candidate," Jin is talking to Sun about having finally seen their daughter in a photo. Neither survives the end of the episode...
 * Mocked in Generation Kill. Evan Wright shows off his girl back home picture, and the Marines tease him about it. But it's the picture that suffers the most, as they steal it and use it for "recreation" for the entire tour.
 * The opening of the new Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. On the space station that had been set up to allow for human-Cylon communication, there sits a representative of the human race, who has sat there every day in case the Cylons show up wanting to talk. You know he's done for the second you see the framed photograph of his wife and kid.
 * Averted in Jericho with Major Beck. His family is mentioned soon after his first appearance but the photo he keeps on the inside of his helmet isn't shown until the final episode. Instead of being killed, he finally completes his Heel Face Turn. (Also a potential inversion, as it's very likely his family has already been killed.)
 * Invoked/Lampshaded in a sketch of That Mitchell and Webb Look, when they decide they need to kill someone off to boost their ratings. Who should turn up but a minor player mooning over his lovely girlfriend's Facebook page..?
 * Played completely straight in Doctor Who, in the Waters of Mars. At the start of the episode, a member of the Martian Base's team is seen in an office of sorts watching a recording of their family. Later the crew member is trapped in the same room by the falling water, and, aware that they cannot escape, watches the recording again just before they are killed.
 * A variant in Burn Notice: directs the heroes to a picture of his dead family, serving to humanize him- in, of course, the very same episode in which he's fatally shot.
 * On The Amazing Race, generally when a team talks about how much they miss their family back at home, especially early in the race, you can expect them to get eliminated that episode.
 * On an episode of Cold Case: As the victim of the week is pushed to the floor by her soon-to-be killer, the camera pans away to a picture of her and her parents stuck to the refrigerator door. What makes this especially wrenching is that the girl's mother had died recently and she and her father had moved to a new town for a fresh start. The picture is the last one taken of them as a happy family. Fridge Horror kicks in full force when you realize that the father will now have to contend with the loss of his wife and daughter within one year.
 * Zig Zagged on Mash, where finding a picture of a dying soldier's family back home makes BJ want to take extrodinary measures to save him, if only for 24 hours, so his kids "won't think of Christmas as 'the day Daddy died.'"
 * Given a twist in Angel. After Jasmine's spell over LA is broken, Connor talks a depressed cop out of killing himself. He then takes out a picture of his wife and daughter which sends Connor (who has some issues with his parents) into a rage.

Cop: I don't know.

Connor: You don't know?"

Music
"Tonight some red-eyed Wiarton girl lies staring at the wall,
 * White Squall, by Stan Rogers, features a rookie sailor on the great lakes not quite cautious enough of the dangers of the eponymous meterological phenomenon. He's eager, enthusiastic, cheerful, first to sing, ... and only too happy to show around the picture of his wife, whom he married in the spring; so:

And her lover's gone into a white squall."

New Media

 * A Discussed Trope in the Battlefield: Bad Company blog by Sweetwater (We're dead, 6/16/2008), calling Haggard and Bobby Sanford stupid for discussing home, and for Sanford showing a photo of his wife and daughter, calling that particular action 'like signing your own death warrant!'. As You Know, his proof for it is war movies. Also played straight as the Sanford guy does die (apparently, by a tank while trying to defecate).
 * There was something similar to this in a web game that used to be on My Chemical Romance's website during The Black Parade era, only the trope is averted if you shot down enough enemies.

Video Games

 * Inverted in Gears of War 2, where Dominic shows everyone a picture of Maria, his wife who had gone missing in the war. It turns out that
 * The first Gears of War plays it straight with Rojas. The first mention of him is when you see an unidentified corpse from a bridge, and one of your squadmates says something along the lines of 'I hope that's not Rojas. His little boy turned two last week". The corpse you saw WASN'T Rojas, but you do find his mutilated body later.
 * Ace Combat Zero has Patrick "PJ" James, who was the Butt Monkey of the Crow Team of fighter pilots due to his girlfriend back at the air base. Nevertheless, both as Crow 3 and as Galm 2, he's perfectly fine. Well, until after successfully destroying, he announces to you that he's going to propose to her when he gets back...
 * In the introduction sequence of Xenogears we see the Captain open up and look at a photo locket before he sets off the Self-Destruct Mechanism. As the scene plays out the camera focus pulls back to show us that it's a photo of his (presumed) wife and child. On a second play through of the game you.
 * Barry Burton of Resident Evil. The guy's a nut for his family and keeps a photo of them in his pocket. Later in the game, If the player decided, Barry will be knocked off a cliff to his death, leaving the photo of his family behind. In a reverse example, in Jill Valentine's ending (if Barry survives, and if the player dosen't rescue Chris Redfield) Barry will show the same picture to Jill and talk a bit about his family
 * In the original, if you do things wrong while playing as Jill, Barry will be fatally mauled by a monster and give you his family picture before dying.
 * Defied in Grand Theft Auto IV: there's a mission where the characters are ambushed by the Feds and have to run. You're riding with the guy who was supposed to watch for them, who says it's because he was distracted thinking about his wife, who he just got married to. He offers to show Niko a picture in the middle of the chase. Niko's response: "I don't want to see a fucking picture!" He actually can die, but you pretty much have to shoot him yourself to make it happen.
 * Done more than once in the Metal Gear franchise:
 * In Metal Gear 2, Snake and Natasha/Gustava take cover in a sewer and she tells him about her mother and ex-fiance. As soon as she leaves the sewer, she gets blown up.
 * In the Metal Gear Solid radio drama, Snake teams up with an original character named Allen Iishiba to save Meryl after she and a crew of UN Peacekeepers crash lands on a hostile territory. While resting, Allen talks about his childhood girlfriend waiting for him at home. Needless to say, Allen doesn't get to see his girlfriend again.
 * In Metal Gear Solid 3, Sokolov shows Snake a picture of his wife and daughter. He gets tortured to death in the very next cutscene.
 * Also in MGS3, Johnny Sasaki shows Snake a photo of his family if you trigger the cutscene. If you feel like being a complete asshole, you're free to kill him as soon as you escape afterwards. Otherwise, feel free to subvert it.
 * One of the items you can get from the Cola Wars battlefield in Kingdom of Loathing is the "picture of a dead guy's girlfriend", found in the backpack of a dying soldier.
 * Heroes Over Europe plays it straight. Since the beginning of the game, a friend of one of the main characters keeps mentioning his beloved wife. Fast forward a few missions, and he gets hit by a german plane; he refuses to bail saying he can hold the plane together. Sure enough, a few minutes later his remains are inside the flaming wreckage.
 * Inverted in Metal Slug. Why does Allen O' Neill keep on coming back from the dead? According to the developers, it's because he's Made of Iron... and has a wife and kid to go back home to.
 * In Civilization, The idle animation of the infantry unit will show him looking a wallet photo, hold it close to him with a warm bubbly feeling being putting the photo back in.

Webcomics

 * Lampshaded in this Schlock Mercenary comic.
 * As well as this page of The Dragon Doctors. Well, more a lampshading of a subversion, since it's a Foregone Conclusion that she survives.

Web Original
"“So give the little people names and make sure you have one of them tell the others about his girl back home just before you move them into arbalest range,”"
 * In Ruby Quest,
 * It happens to of all people in V4 of Survival of the Fittest. In one scene he's shown looking at a photograph of his wife and children..
 * Steff lampshades it in chapter 495 of Tales of MU when Mack mentions that she prefers the stories of individuals in history to the stories of big battles, in reference to the games of Stone Soldiers Steff, Ian, Shiel, and Dee are playing.

Western Animation
"Skowie: (lying in a pool of blood) I'm not going to make it.
 * The Simpsons:
 * One episode had a flashback to Skinner and his buddy in Vietnam. IIRC his buddy got killed showing Skinner his pictures of his girlfriend, because the photo album was brightly-colored and broke his camouflage.
 * McBain's partner Skowie is shot soon after showing a picture of him with his wife.

McBain: Oh, stop talking crazy!"

"Officer: Please! I have a house and children and pets... and a toilet and toilet-children.
 * Averted in Robotech: New Generation and Shadow Chronicles, where Scott and Marcus carry the locket showing Marlene around -.
 * Averted by both Brutto and T'Phai in Roughnecks Starship Troopers Chronicles
 * During the Klendathu campaign a scorched photo and half-written letter were found in a trench, presumably belonging to some nameless Red Shirt.
 * A police officer begs Invader Zim for his life:

Zim: *Cuts the officer's brain out and replaces it with a squid's.*"

Real Life

 * Major Dale Buis is reported as "showing his new friends pictures of his three young sons" shortly before being attacked and gunned down by six Viet Cong guerrilla fighters.
 * Let's be honest: this happens to almost every soldier who doesn't make it home.