Fatal Family Photo: Difference between revisions

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* Subverted in ''[[Transformers (film)|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 (film)|James Bond]] kills him in the opening of ''[[Casino Royale]]''.
* ''[[Top Gun]]'':
** Subverted inwith ''[[Top Gun]]''Cougar. In the opening sequence, Cougarhe has a photo of his wife and newborn son in his cockpit, and the sequence does make it look like he'll crash, until [[Military Maverick|Maverick]] guides his plane down. Cougar then resigns his commission for [[Genre Savvy|fear of widowing his wife and orphaning his son]].
** Played straight with {{spoiler|Goose}}. The moment he tells Maverick that he just wants to graduate from TOPGUN without incident because he has a family to go home to, the savvy viewer will start to get a bad feeling. When we actually meet them, you know he isn't long for this world, and you'd be right.
* {{spoiler|Nikolai}} from ''[[Predators]]'' shows a photo of his two children and becomes the next to die. {{spoiler|Edwin steals the photo and uses it to gain sympathy from Royce and Isabel. He too dies shortly afterwards.}}
* 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'' ?!
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* Agent Fielding pulls one out in ''[[Time Cop]]''.
* In [[Apocalypse Now]] it is not a photograph but a {{spoiler|tape recording of the family back home. And the character is dead before it finishes playing back.}}
* Played with and likelyeventually inverted in ''[[Captain America: The First Avenger]]''. Steve has a picture of Peggy in his compass. {{spoiler|He specifically takes it out before Red Skull's plane crashes and it's the last thing he looks at. Of course, Steve survives and wakes up seventy years in the future all right ... but Peggy isdoesn't mosthave likelymuch gonelonger to live by then, and passes on during ''Winter Soldier''.}}
* [[Saving Private Ryan]] has an interesting variation in that technically it was {{spoiler|a letter that Caparzo reveals after getting shot by an enemy sniper. Said letter gets taken by [[The Medic]], Irwin Wade, with the presumed intention of mailing it after the mission. Wade dies about half-way through the film, and the letter is taken by Captain Miller, who gets shot during the final battle}}.
** It is even clever lampshaded when {{spoiler|Reiben is seen removing the letter from Miller's coat as he is dying, with an extremely uneasy look on his face}}.
 
== Literature ==
* Referenced in [[Terry Pratchett]]'s [[Discworld]] novel ''[[Discworld/Jingo|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]].'' {{spoiler|Lupin! How could you have taken out that photograph of your newborn son! And you, Fleur, giving him reason, too! You fools!}}
** {{spoiler|I have to say I'm impressed with the rapidity with which this trope took effect, there. One minute he's stupidly playing show and tell practically in the middle of a battle, and no more than ten pages later...}}
** The weirdest part is that he only took out the picture and started blabbing about it to relieve the tension from the uncomfortable moment {{spoiler|Percy's sudden return}} had created.
*** As if to add insult to injury(or death), his wife dies as well. Good job, {{spoiler|Lupin}}
** Tangential example: {{spoiler|In the film version of ''[[Harry Potter and Thethe Order of Thethe Phoenix (film)|Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix]]'', Sirius gives Harry a photo of the Order (including Harry's parents, whom Sirius thought of as family). [[It Was His Sled|Sirius dies at the end.]]}}
* Played with in [[Dan Abnett]]'s [[Gaunt's Ghosts]] novel ''Straight Silver''. {{spoiler|Gutes}} 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.
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