Family-Unfriendly Death/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures

  • In one episode the villain was impaled on Elephant bones. Another villain was shot to death with a machine gun.
  • The episode where an undersea lab is attacked by what can only be described as sabertoothed C.H.U.Ds. As the survivors of the attack are making their way to escape pods, one lady scientist stops to try and grab the body of one of the dead creatures "for future study" (with the entire group yelling at her not to go near it). Whoops! Not Quite Dead! The scene cuts to a Gory Discretion Shot, but the clear implication is that the creature bit the woman's face off.
  • In the same episode, creatures like dog-sized piranhas with legs got onto the submarine after EATING A WHALE TO NOTHING BUT BONES ONSCREEN, and in one scene while they were running for their lives from the creatures, a female scientist was too slow, and we got a shot of the creatures swarming her as Race was forced to slam the door shut to prevent them from getting to the rest of them all, and you hear the woman being graphically devoured, complete with squelchy crunching sounds.
  • A line from the original series, as Dr. Quest tends the injuries of a spy in the police department: "It would be better if he were to die, Doctor. If he lives, he will be shot as a traitor."
  • And then we have "More Than Zero", the last episode of the Real Adventures series ever produced. It took the Nightmare Fuel Up to Eleven. While investigating a haunted house, two scientists get thrown into a room with the walls rapidly closing in on them. And, unlike most situations like that on the show, they die horribly offscreen. Not to mention the Lovecraftian appearance of the ghost itself and the caretaker dissolving into dust at the end.
  • In the movie Jonny's Golden Quest Dr. Zin betrays a scientist named Dr. Devlin who had come to work for him by blasting him with a laser cannon causing Dr. Devlin's skin to melt off until he's a charred black skeleton and crumbles to ash while screaming in agony the whole time!
  • There was also the episode in which Race and the boys faced off against a man who had a literal shadow puppet monster which had already killed several, and could reach them anywhere, at any time, and couldn't be killed since it was just a shadow, so they couldn't shoot it or capture it. Logically, they thought that if they turned out the lights, it would cease to exist. They were wrong-all that did was make the monster invisible!
  • Another from the original series had two villains pursuing the Quest group in a canoe which Race manages to sink. Looking almost as if they're smirking, several crocodiles slide into the river. One of the bad guys shouts that he can't swim, the other replies, "Well, you'd better learn fast!" ... and then their screams are utterly horrific, making it quite clear that the crocs are taking them before they have time to drown.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

  • The genetically identical Clone Troopers are given screentime to establish personalities and likeableness, and are still killed off. Notable examples include two naval officers being sucked into vacuum by having their escape pod cut open, Matchstick's Y-wing getting disabled and crashing into Tag's, Sergeant O'Niner's execution, Cutup's being eaten by a giant eel, and all the expected deaths by battle droid blasterfire. Nor is this limited to the Clones: Trandoshan scavenger Gha Nackht is stabbed through the chest by Grievous after capturing R2-D2; ditto for traitor Senate Commando Captain Argyus (although to be fair, he did mouth off to Asajj Ventress).
  • Also there was Pirate Turk Falso, who was Force Choked by Dooku to death. On screen.
  • How about the squads of clone troopers burning Geonosian's alive as they scream and plunge helplessly off a cliff?
  • There's also the Rodian Jedi being tortured to death on screen by Cad Bane and the battledroids. When he finally dies, the droid operating the controls announces it in such a disturbing tone of depression in comparison to their usually high-pitched voices, you can't help but shiver.
  • Cad Bane deserves more of a mention. This is the guy who manages to get away with gangland style, on-screen executions in a children's show.
  • Topped by a bomber committing suicide rather than be captured. How does he accomplish this? By jumping to his death from a balcony. It's almost like they're trying to see how much they can get away with.
    • They definitely do try. In one episode, the enemy general had the local villages bombed instead of the clone troopers. They were full of civilians, children even.
  • The producers have upped the ante again in the episodes concerning the Nightsisters. In "Monster", Asajj Ventress travels to the far side of Dathomir, where she holds incredibly violent contests to determine which Nightbrother clan representative should receive Sith alchemical augmentation and serve as her spy against Count Dooku. She does this by bringing the candidates to an arena, dimming the area lights and systematically murdering all but two of them with a scythe on a chain and their own weapons. Asajj clearly decapitates at least two while laughing maniacally, and when another throws a spear at her, she grabs it in midair only to whip it quite visibly into the chest of another man.
    • Then, after Ventress has selected Savage and brought him back to the Nightsisters to be imbued with their power, the "coven" tests his loyalty—commanding Savage to kill the only other survivor of the games, a man heavily implied to be Savage's blood brother. Savage does so, with a Neck Lift and the customary follow-up.
  • In the Zygerrian Arc, the prison warden lords over Obi-wan that, as a Jedi, it's against their code of honor to kill an unarmed opponent, even one as sadistic and evil as him. Commander Cody notes that clone troopers have no such rule and proceeds to throw an electrostaff clean through him, his hoverchair loses control and veers into the nearby console, letting the electrocutions finish off what the impalement started, this probably wouldn't have slipped through the censors if the warden wasn't such a utterly evil bastard..

Transformers

  • Beast Wars
    • Beast Wars is a very violent show, exploiting the Mecha-Mooks loophole as far as it can. Characters are bashed up, blown apart, shot, stabbed... And usually alive in the next episode. When someone actually dies, it tends to go even further: Tarantulas was vaporized by one of his own mad science devices, leaving nothing but his feet with smoke rising from them. The last we see of Terrorsaur is his desperately outstretched hand slowly descending into the lava. And we'll spare you the details of Depth Charge, Rampage, and Tigerhawk's deaths...
    • And let's not forget Beast Wars Megatron popping a cap in Optimus Prime's head. He got better, but still, giant gaping hole in the head of one of the biggest adored heroes of a generation.
  • Transformers Animated
    • Animated: Blurr. gets trapped in a tunnel and crushed by its closing walls. After which his killer (in disguise) casually hands his cube-sized remains over to the nearest Autobot who has no idea what he just tossed down the disposal chute. Considering the show had no "real" deaths up until this point, this made the emotional impact even worse.
    • More than one person on the AllSpark forums has claimed He's Just Hiding.
  • Generation One
    • And who can forget the original movie? Where most of the first two seasons' cast has bridges dropped on them in very graphic and sadistic manners, not counting those who died offscreen. Prowl melts from the inside out after being blasted by Scavenger, Ironhide has his computer-brains blown out execution-style by Megs, Optimus gets blasted and stabbed a dozen times(supposedly the fatal wound was due to a stab) while Hot Rod is held hostage, Kranix and another Lithonian are eaten by the Sharkticons, Gears gets digested by Unicron, the Conehead Seekers get chomped by Uni's robot form, and Ultra Magnus gets blown to pieces (originally was going to be drawn and quartered), although put back together shortly after. Shockwave was supposed to be stomped by Unicron, but they cut out the shot. Red Alert was also supposed to die by being shot in the back by Devastator, but that scene was never animated.
    • Did everyone forget the first 5 minutes of this movie? An entire planet of robot people, BILLIONS of "men" "women" and "children" are sucked into Unicron's hungry maw, chewn up, and used as fuel! Genocide in my children's film? More likely than you think.
    • Though deserved, Starscream's painful disintegration at the hands of Galvatron wasn't too family friendly either. Though we do find out by later in G1 that his spark is indestructible, most likely by popular demand.
  • Transformers Prime really hits the ground running, with Cliffjumper's death at the servos of Starscream a few minutes into the first episode, achieved via 'Scream jamming his claws through his chest, followed by his poor victim visibly bleeding out energon all over the floor with a look of utter shock on his face. The Autobots get some action in as well, with Bulkhead dispatching a Vehicon by essentially yanking its robo-guts out with his bare hands, and slowly at that. Granted, he was a drone, but it was still rather nasty (even if Miko thought it was awesome). Later episodes have lovely moments such as Tailgate, an old partner of Arcee's, being sliced open by Airachnid. Energon splatters everywhere. That one probably only got by because they used a Gory Discretion Shot.
    • And then there's Breakdown's death at the hands of Airachnid. She lures them into a trap, and then proceeds to slice them up. Then the remains get collected by MECH...
    • Insecticons always seem to be on the receiving end of one of these. One is leapt upon by scraplets (basically cybertronian army ants), and falls into a chasm while it's limbs fall off. Another gets into a brutal fight with Megatron, which ends with two of it's limbs being torn off before it's head is sliced off. And another gets toxic shrapnel in its torso after an explosion, causing it to writhe in agony before finally dying.

Other Works

  • SpongeBob SquarePants in "To Love A Patty" grabs some clams and smashes them into little pieces while still alive. The worst is when he holds one in the air for a few seconds before snapping its jaws and breaking the shell in half. You can see that one's tongue fly off.
    • Even more creepily is that Spongebob took care of a baby clam in an early episode. Yet he killed a bunch for really no reason... because of love.
  • Herman and Katnip: In one cartoon, the cat catches several mice, ties them to a stick, and starts roasting them alive with an expression of sadistic glee; to make it worse, the cat and the mice were Funny Animals of the most human-like sort.
    • Herman and Katnip had a lot of these, it was one disturbed cartoon. In the Christmas episode the supposedly heroic mice kill the apparently evil cat, turning his corpse(you can tell he died as he makes no movements, not even blinking) into Christmas tree, plugging his tail into a electric socket, all while Christmas carols plays! Is it any wonder that these creepy characters were the inspiration for the Itchy and Scratchy?
    • A lot of the Famous Studios/Harvey Toons cartoons have this kind of carnage. Baby Huey was regularly assaulted by foxes and other predators with fire axes and the like; his indestructibility doesn't make the scenes any less traumatic. One reason why the Famous Studios cartoons are so disturbing when similar stunts from MGM or Warner Brothers cartoons aren't: the expressions on the faces of the perpetrators are frighteningly malicious, and not in that Grinch-Eyebrows Evil Laugh way that Chuck Jones used in his run on Tom and Jerry.
    • One cartoon (A Bicep Built for Two) has Katnip being pursued by a giant body builder cat who stole his girlfriend, in the end Katnip uses two shotputs he'd been using as biceps to smash the bully's skull which kills him because his 9 lives come out, there was no blood though.
  • In Once Upon a Time (an adaptation of the fairy tale "Frau Holle"), the evil stepsister Trapped in Another World passes by an oven filled with animal-shaped cookies that want to be let out. The stepsister refuses to do so, and the animals then burn to death while screaming in agony.
  • In Alvin and The Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein, the main characters bury an (imagined) monster alive while singing, "We'll make this place his tomb!" Still not disturbed? Well, the monster was nice!
  • The Mighty Heroes had the Raven, with a plastic blaster that entombs people in a sheath of greenish plastic. Doesn't seem too scary until you think about the fact that it means they can't breathe.
  • One 1970's episode of Dynomutt Dog Wonder in which some supervillain's Weird Science ray gun made the completely human Blue Falcon melt into a blue puddle.
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog: "King Ramses' Curse". The titular King Ramses is a very gaunt and oddly animated figure with three curses. Two were mostly harmless, but the third was swarms of locust that quickly devour anything and anyone, including Eustace and two anthropomorphic cats.
  • While many episodes of Batman: The Animated Series are dark in tone, few can compete with the episode where the Joker manages to infect all of Gotham City with his Joker poison on April Fool's Day, rendering everyone in the city into laughing fits with huge, grotesque smiles as they slowly died.
    • In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the Joker is killed off fairly early in the story. There are actually two versions of the death scene. Originally, Robin shot the Joker. The Moral Guardians thought this was too violent, so the scene was reanimated to show the Joker getting wet and tangled up in wires, slipping and accidentally electrocuting himself. How this is supposed to be any less violent?
      • They thought that an indirect death is less violent than a direct death. Also, guns.
      • Also if Moral Guardians make any complaint, Bruce Timm would edit the scene while making it a million times worse. See? No guns were used!
    • Clayface lent himself to scenes like this. Two most shocking examples were when he absorbed Batman, and we see Batman's silhouette flailing around inside him, and almost not making it out alive, and when he absorbed his "daughter" a creation of his clay that had mutated into its own personality.
    • So the Ventriloquist has a split criminal personality manifested as a Demonic Dummy, Scarface. Scarface technically isn't alive, so he would get butchered in various methods, onscreen. He's been shot up by machine guns (twice) and shredded repeatedly.
  • While he actually survives, it was pretty startling to watch The Batman vs. Dracula and suddenly see the Joker falling into a river while his own joy-buzzers electrocute him and he screams while sinking. Add the occasional electrical surge where you see his silhouette sinking deeper into the water. The same movie also has the real death of Dracula: Batman uses a device that stores energy from the sun on him and he is burned alive and Batman gives him a blow that knocks him into pieces, sending ash and bone everywhere.
    • The main series when Black Mask pulled a You Have Failed Me... on his Number One by using Nth metal to make him float upward until he's stopped by a ceiling window, talking to him for a bit, then opening the window. It would probably be a lot worse if Mask's next action (picking a new Number One with the exact same line as the one he just killed) wasn't completely hilarious.
    • One episode of Batman Beyond had the intensely disturbing scene where a man fell into a hole slowly filling with toxic waste. His limbs fell off when he hit the ground.
      • The episode about "Splicers" which ended with the Big Bad injecting himself with so much Animal DNA he mutated in a gigantic blob-crab-monster. Yikes!
      • The episode where Bane died from taking way too many slappers.
  • Captain N: The Game Master. An episode, in the world of Tetris, a rather non-violent game with no enemies whatsoever, implied that many of the oddly shaped bricks that made up the wall were in fact former people. If that's not enough, Kevin and the group were captured and threatened with being turned into bricks and forced to stay trapped as part of the wall forever, complete with a visual of what that might look like.
      • This seems to be a reference to a Howard & Nester comic introducing Tetris that featured the exact same plot.
  • The Ghost of Christmas Future sequence in Mickey's Christmas Carol. Yes, A Christmas Carol is supposed to be scary at times, but here, Scrooge (McDuck, in this case) is pushed into his own grave by the Ghost of Christmas Future (played by Pete, cruelly laughing the whole time while taunting "Richest man in the cemetary!"), into a coffin belching hellfire and brimstone!
  • Superman: The Animated Series actually shows two scenes of a gas chamber execution. The first is of an innocent man accused of the crime, in which they show him desperately trying to keep his face away from the inrushing gas until Superman breaks in to save him, then in the very last seconds of the episode, as the corrupt cop really responsible awaits his death, he figures out how Clark Kent, who he tried to kill for finding out the truth, was able to survive. Then the scene immediately cuts to the executioner's hand pushing the switch over, and fades out. I can't begin to describe how absolutely morbid that is.
    • How can we forget Dan Turpin? After he frees Superman, and the timely arrival of the forces of New Genesis, Darkseid is forced to withdraw, but not without firing one final Omega Beam, which streaks toward Superman before curving around and instantly vaporizing Turpin.
    • Mala and Jax-Ur go out by getting sucked into a black hole. This would perhaps be acceptable, except that, well...
  • The animation version of The Animals of Farthing Wood loved this. One character, a puffed up bullying pheasant, got a My God, What Have I Done? moment when he sees the cooked and roasted body of his wife cooling on the windowsill (A death he inadvertently caused). A set of mice babies is impaled on a thorn bush by a vicious butcher bird, who not only gets a Karma Houdini but gets to mock the other animals for their squeamishness. A ultracute family of newts is hinted to have burned to death. A baby rabbit is shot. Mrs Mouse (the one who lost her babies) is killed and eaten by one of the main characters, who didn't recognise her. This is just a small selection.
  • Samurai Jack was notorious for using the Mecha-Mooks loophole to depict scenes of violence that, had the recipients been humanoid, would qualify as Gorn. Backgrounds of dead robots with close-to-human anatomies liberally distributed and oil everywhere are common, and every few episodes the titular character will be sprayed with veritable fountains of oil as he mercilessly hacks robots apart. Added to this is a heavy implication that many, if not all, or these robots are completely sentient, just in case you weren't feeling uncomfortable enough.
    • One particular episode focused on a robot that had developed a personality, and actually cared about a puppy. The puppy gets held hostage so the robot will fight Jack. It gets cut down in seconds, just like all the others.
      • Which is a fairly clear deconstruction of the whole idea of using Mecha-Mooks in the first place.
    • Another episode had a starving family come to Jack looking for food. However, they only eat metal, and think his sword would make a tasty treat. It's only after Jack slices off the face of one of them that they're revealed to be robots disguised as humans, at which point they begin tearing themselves apart and eating each other. Made all the more disturbing by having the red tinted metal under their disguises.
  • Many Looney Tunes cartoons, especially ones directed by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, feature characters committing suicide by shooting themselves in the head; there was no blood though.
    • One good example of a family unfriendly death occurs in a MGM cartoon titled "Wild and Woolfy". In one scene, the wolf villain comes across his old friend Slim, whom he hasn't seen in years. He greets him by shooting him -- at point blank range -- in the face, and we see his corpse fall over dead.
  • Another example occurred in the cartoon The First Bad Man, in a scene that is often cut from television the villain Dinosaur Dan during one of his robberies walks up to a shaggy haired caveman pulls up his beard like a curtain and shoots him in the head at point blank range with a non-bloody hole through his head and falls over dead.
  • Roku's death in a flashback in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Basically he gets hit directly in the face by a vent of poison gas and falls over, after which his friend abandons him and his dragon tries to cover him when they're both engulfed in a pyroclastic flow.
    • Combustion Man who dies from exploding after his third eye is messed up by Boomerang.
    • Also Jet, who dies from getting his chest crushed by a jagged chunk of rock.
  • The death of the cat people in the otherwise pretty tame Scooby Doo on Zombie Island: they disintegrate horrifically--it's worse than vampires, as you can actually see bone fragments.
    • In the flashback, when the pirates force the villagers into a crocodile infested waters...their deaths occur offscreen, but you still hear the screams and other horrible sounds, as the camera shows the horrified faces of the two girls that survived because they hid behind a tree.
  • The destruction of NOS-4-A2 in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. In just a few scenes his left arm is blown off in an explosion, and he is shortly grabbed by the werewolf Ty Parsec, who growls at him before throwing him. We then see him, graphically impaled on a metal spike, thrash around and scream before exploding into pieces. The only way Disney could have been able to get away with this would be because he was a robot and not a living creature.
  • One episode of Danny Phantom had Bumbling Dad kill off a ghost by squeezing it to death. True, it was a mutant beast and the ghost blood they ooze was green, but c'mon; that thing popped like a cherry!
    • This is nothing compared to The Ultimate Enemy. Let's just say it's a Deus Angst Machina and leave it at that.
    • Also, the death of Danny's clone - the disintegrating flesh, the sad, trapped look, the arm reaching out to his "father", the mouth opening slightly...
  • Captain Scarlet has this in spades, the main characters aren't afraid to use guns. There are even a few deaths that are family unfriendly simply because of the implications; for example, a plane full of people is forced to crash in the ocean in the second episode, it gets worse when a duplicate of the plane was used in a successful assassination of a world leader.
    • In the first episode, the original, full human Captain Scarlet is killed and then the Mysteron version is shot and falls off of a huge viewing platform, screaming as he goes.
    • Multiple members of SPECTRUM from red shirts to nearly-main characters are shot, crushed, drowned or pushed off cliffs. There's a fair number of scenes where the last you see of some red shirts is a flapping hand poking out from under a pile of snow or rocks that eventually goes still.
    • The crowning moment of this trope for Captain Scarlet has to be when the titular character throws an electric cable into a Mysteron agent. He screams and catches fire as he's electrocuted.
  • Thunderbirds has a number of harrowing deaths by implication: the first Fireflash to go missing was full of passengers. Seeing as the second one was intact on the floor of the ocean after crashing, one assumes all the passengers and crew of the first died of suffocation in the sunken aircraft while the aircraft's instruments were reading wildly off course.
  • Generator Rex has quite a few, and we aren't talking just Mecha-Mooks or Evos. Most onscreen deaths are actually Providence soldiers fighting alongside the main characters. You know things are tough when in the very first episode you see crashed dropships and the bodies of the Providence operatives that were sent to save Rex from Van Kleiss.
    • The show as a whole seems to be making a game of killing off said Red Shirts in the most brutal ways possible in a kids cartoon. So far, the highlights of this trend include a soldier falling into EVO-Piranha infested water, and screaming before being dragged under... Man, the show once even managed to avoid Bloodless Carnage; although it happened with a swarm of giant insects, the blood splatter they exploded into was red.
  • Ren and Stimpy: Spontaneous explosion, being run over, swallowed by a giant space monster, erased from history, inflated and popped, implosion, etc. They generally got better, needless to say.
  • Happens a lot in Batman Beyond. A really terrifying example is in the episode "Sneak Peek", where a tabloid reporter gains the ability to go through walls. He finds out that Terry is Batman and Terry tries to convince him not to reveal his secret. Unfortunately, this power goes bad and he starts to be like this permanently and falls through several stories. Terry tries to rescue him, but the reporter couldn't stay tangible for long and just keeps falling, presumably to the center of the earth.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy contains lots.
  • Graphic train wrecks aside, the cast of Thomas the Tank Engine is pretty much guaranteed Contractual Immortality...except for the piece of rolling stock that the Scottish Twins smashed into matchsticks.
    • And the one that Oliver pulled apart.
    • And by implication only, the engines that were actually scrapped-a few scenes have carcasses of 'dead' engines in the background.
  • G.I. Joe: Renegades manages a few. Ripcord makes a Heroic Sacrifice early on, Maj. Hidalgo gets vaporized into a pile of ashes by Baroness when he tries to extort more money out of her, and Cobra Commander feeds a pesky mole to his giant pet snake.
  • An unaired House of Mouse short featured a scene where Minnie Mouse buries Pluto alive in a nightmare his conscience created while he is forced to stay at Minnie's house while his owner Mickey is on vacation. Also, toward the end of the same short Pluto is actually dragged to Hell by the same conscience!
  • Happens in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic of all places. The Windigos, spectral horse monsters that feed off of the hatred of their victims and are slowly freezing the world, are killed when The Power of Friendship allows a powerful fire spell to be performed. We see them struggling to escape as they're engulfed by the flames and burned to death. It's not that graphic, but boy is it more than you'd expect from this show!
    • More drastic example happens to Celestia's pet bird Philomena, which burns to ashes on screen - of course, as a phoenix, she rises from her own ashes few seconds later.
  • A few deaths on Adventure Time, which happen by way of impalement, explosion, and being eaten to Ghost Princess, Clarence, and one of the fruit witches from "Dad's Dungeon", respectively. That last one is a rather bloody death too; pretty surprising since its mostly intended for kids.Apparently.
  • The Regular Show episode "Fists of Justice" featured one of the giant baby guardians of youth impaled through the chest with a mace-rattle, with a bloody gaping hole in the chest for good measure.
  • Ben 10 had its share of Family-Unfriendly Death as well in all three series, often relying on the fact most characters are aliens to get away with it:
    • The original show had Kevin 11 killing sentient robot Slix Vigma by impaling him on his diamondhead arm, and almost give the same fate to Ben. Another example includes villain Ghostfreak, who was burnt to ashes twice.
    • Ben 10 Alien Force put it even further by having actual human beings dying. The pilot depicts a Forever Knight dying by being disintegrated in the explosion of his own disfunctional weapon. As he dies, you can see his skeleton as he is disappearing. As if it wasn't enough, it's revealed mid-season that the DNAliens, the Hightbreeds' minions who the heroes frequently killed, are actually mutated humans themselves.
    • Similarly, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien had some gruesome death too. Those include alien crook Zanmaro being eaten alive by a giant carnivorous worm (though this one is played for comedy); Zombozo being hinted to have buried someone; Fallen Hero Carl Nesmith killing his doctor off-screen and leaving his dead body in a cold chamber, where he is found by Ben and Gwen; and, finally, Anti-Villain Old George being electrocuted by Bigger Bad Diagon until he turns into ashes.
  • The Young Justice episode "Revelation" contained a scene where a group of firefighters are exposed to Joker Venom and fall to the ground dead onscreen.
  • Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness: In the Episode "Big Bro Po" there is a very Nightmare Fuel based sequence where Bian's father, Taotie got in his Humongous Mecha and plumbed, then crushed Po to death IT INCLUDED BLOOD and then ended with Po On a table with a apple in his mouth and the father FLAT OUT TELLING HIS SON THEY WERE GOING TO EAT HIM!
  • In Help! I'm a Fish the villian is finally tricked into turning himself from a fish into a full human being... underwater. There are no cuts and no convenient camera angles. He drowns in real time, center frame.
  • Swat Kats pulled this off in the first episode produced (second to be aired) The Giant Bacteria, featured one-shot villain Morbulus being turned into the eponymous Giant Bacteria monster, who later divides into three parts, each of which is electrocuted to death by the end of the episode.
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