Informal Eulogy

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Bite the dust, Eager Young Space Cadet.

I'd like to say a few words. Uh, this guy's dead, the end.
—Crow T. Robot (As Dan Kester), The Giant Spider Invasion

The child of Have a Nice Death and Enemy Chatter wherein NPCs comment on the failure or death of the player character. It may also apply to other media.

Compare If You Die, I Call Your Stuff and To Absent Friends.

As a Death Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Informal Eulogy include:

Video Game examples

Action Adventure

  • In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, if you die during the battle with Albus, he gets a hold of himself and mutters, "Shanoa... please kill me..." Die during the Barlowe fight and he mocks you for your betrayal. Towards the end, when you fight Dracula, dying gives you the message "You danced well." Dying inside the Castle at all will give you an alternate Game Over screen with Dracula staring outwards with his creepy eyes.

Adventure Game

  • Being found out by the police in The Last Express would lead to a cut to a woman's diary/letter where she explains in the voiceover that she witnessed the PC being arrested, charged with murder and escorted off the train.
  • One of the most extreme examples of this trope comes from the obscure PC game Total Distortion, where the player is treated to a song mocking him for being dead that lasts for several minutes. Check it out here.
  • In the original MSX version of Snatcher, Metal will deliver a little eulogy if you die in a fight.
  • Tales of Monkey Island: At the very end of Chapter 4, when Guybrush dies from his mortal wounds and Elaine becomes enraged and points her sword at LeChuck:

LeChuck: Out of respect for the newly-deceased, I feel I should point out that you wave your sword like a dairy farmer.
Elaine: How appropriate... you fight like a Pox-infected undead cow.*sword clash*

Beat'Em Up

  • The Radio DJ in The Warriors would report on your failure/death in the gang war news, often mocking and patronizing you.

First-Person Shooter

  • "...Dibs on the suit," "Take his crowbar," and other comments in Half Life 2, if you were to die near allied Cannon Fodder.
    • "If you dare say 'that's gotta hurt', I'll kill you."
    • Alas, poor Lazlo. "He was the finest mind of his generation!"
    • And with a little more Genre Savvy, "He's done this before, he'll be OK!"
  • Halo had a couple that emphasized how in awe everyone was of the Master Chief, such as a teammate saying "Great, now what do we do?", or an enemy Grunt saying in astonishment "It...dies?". Others were more humorous, such as Sergeant Johnson commenting "Ha ha, Chief, real funny. Now get up. ......uh-oh."
    • There is also plenty of dialogue where enemies and allies will react to the deaths of their comrades and enemies, with Marines shouting exclamations like "Why is it always the beautiful ones?" and "That man had a kitten!" and Grunts making an honestly heartbreaking peal of "He was my best friend!"
    • "Reclaimer, the Archive is this way! ...Reclaimer?"
    • (Subverted) Grunt: "I'm still alive? This game RULES!"
    • And everyone's favorite: a huge, hulking Brute, screaming out "He was my LOVERRR!"
    • Two more: "Can I have his helmet?" and "I get his gun!"
  • Dying in the single-player campaign mode in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero would have the bots say "The Commander is down, repeat, the Commander is down!" over the radio.
  • Deus Ex's enemies (and friends, if you were stupid enough to shoot them—most of them are invulnerable) that said things when they manage to kill the player. Each enemy type has multiple, distinctive lines.
  • Particularly common in multiplayer-focused FPSes, where different voice sets have rather dismissive taunts for when they kill another player. "Target eliminated." "Die, bitch!" And so on.
  • The Dark Forces Saga has a few of these, including the Dark Jedi of Jedi Outcast/Academy saying "May the Force be with you." in a very snide tone, or "Now I am the master." if they best you in combat.
    • In at least the latter two, each bad guy has three phrases for each situation, including just having killed you. They'll say things like "And I thought Jedi were supposed to be tough," "Wish he'd put up a fight," and many, many more. For whatever reason they weren't included in the final game, but even the good Jedi have them, and you'd have heard them if you chose the dark side. "I must meditate on this!"
    • If you get mowed down by stormtroopers, there's the always popular "That's one less Rebel scum!" and in Jedi Knight 1, "He won't be giving us any more trouble!" (said in unison by as many as half a dozen stormtroopers)
  • In Left 4 Dead, players can cooperate as a team of four survivors. If one is killed, the others will sometimes lament their fallen comrade, especially if they walk near the corpse.
    • ...and all the emotion of that moment is instantly wiped out when, immediately after (or sometimes during) that eulogy, your character will yell out "Pills here!" or "Weapons here!" as you spot the dead comrade's stuff.)
    • "Louis! Oh god, Louis... I'm going to miss you... hey, shotgun!"
    • If one person is trolling and the other three shoot him down, that's just frosting on the cake.
  • In Perfect Dark, occasionally a dead enemy would be stumbled upon by someone who might remark "I never liked him anyway." Alternately, "He was my best friend!"
  • In BioShock (series), the splicers will occasionally deliver one of these when they kill you. Particularly creepy is the one the doctor splicers use. "Cause of death... hmm... Undetermined."
  • Guards in No One Lives Forever 2 would apologetically clean up the corpses of their fallen allies with body disintegrator powder: "sorry, comrade, but there's less paperwork this way".
  • Portal 2 has a couple of examples. In single-player, one character tries to convince you to walk into a crushing machine and save yourself the trouble of the upcoming boss fight; doing this will provoke a comment along the lines of "Wow, didn't think you'd really go for it." In multiplayer, GLaDOS has plenty of sarcasm for the bots when they get themselves blown up.
  • Team Fortress 2 has automatic responses from the various classes when they kill an opponent, quite a few of which fall into line with this trope. The best demonstration comes from the Soldier, who occasionally offers a hilariously perfunctory "You're dead, that's good, amen."

4X

  • In the original Civilization, defeat would lead to a Cutscene where archaeologists would discover the ruins of your culture thousands of years later and point out your most up-to-date technological advances. The scene ended with the phrase "(INSERT NAME HERE) SHALL RETURN!"

MMORPGs

  • High-ranking enemies in City of Heroes and City of Villains taunt you if they defeat you. It can get annoying when they continually defeat disposable pets.
    • Happens to certain dungeon and raid bosses in World of Warcraft too. Especially amusing are Priestess Delrissa's (a 5-man boss). In order of death:

"I call that a good start."
"I could have sworn there were more of you."
"Not really much of a group, anymore, is it?"
"One is such a lonely number."
"It's been a kick, really."

Platform Game

Krotera: The strong prevail, Anomaly... Your race is history.
Asha: Hah! Easiest bounty yet.
Asha: Finally...
Iosa: Nothing but a mortal.
Tor: Like a spark to the fire.

Roguelike

  • In Nethack, if you die inside a shop, there's a message about the shopkeeper cheerfully inheriting your possessions.
    • If you die outside a shop, but in view of a shopkeeper, the shopkeeper will sigh regretfully. Unless you had angered them, in which case they'll claim your stuff as restitution.

Role-Playing Game

Morte: Ugh. Another trip to the mortuary?

  • Wizardry 8 features a whopping 36 available voice sets to assign to your characters. Each set has their own informal eulogies for the death of a male, female, or special recruitable party member.
  • Baldur's Gate has a ton of these:

Xan: (spoken in a flat monotone, when a party member dies) Another death in our pointless crusade.

    • It's all the more fun when someone else in your party was familiar with the character who died.

Xzar: Montaron! I... I never loved you!
Montaron: And the mad wizard falls!... Saves me the trouble.
Jaheira: Khalid, you die on me and I swear you'll never hear the end of it!

  • In Tales of Symphonia, if you or one of your allies die during a battle they will utter something (both the person who dies and some other character). What they say depends on who dies and your relationship with that character. For example, if Kratos dies and has the highest affection rating, Lloyd will call out "No! I don't believe this!"
    • Some of the bosses have quotes like this, too. If you're killed by Yuan in the Tethe'alla Base, for example, he says "Curse your fate for standing in my way!".
    • In fact, this is pretty par for the course in later games of the Tales (series). In fact, in the remake of Tales of Destiny, not only do every human boss have something to say to you when your party dies, but who narrates the Game Over line "And they were never seen again," is dependent on which playable character you were using at the time you died.
  • Persona 3 has Mission Control begging the player character to get up, or denying that he could possibly be defeated, in various fashions when We Cannot Go on Without You is invoked.
    • And once the screen fades to black, Igor waxes poetic on the Main Character's death:

"Death is not a hunter unbeknownst to its prey; one is always aware that it lies in wait. Though life is merely a journey to the grave, it must not be undertaken without hope. Only then will a traveler's story live on, cherished by those who bid him farewell."

  • In Fallout 3, often when you brutally murder another pacifist human being you can hear their friends nearby shout "YOU KILLED HER!" Even if the recently-dead person is male
  • If you lose the boss fight against Baralai in Final Fantasy X-2 you'll hear him say "Sorry" over the Game Over screen.
  • Every boss that talks in The World Ends With You will drop a one-liner if they kill you, which takes precedence over your usual death screams. For example: "Another thrilling entreé!", "Do the math.", "Hey Uzuki! How 'bout that ramen?", "Now Shibuya... will be saved.", and "Open up your world!"

Shoot'Em Up

  • Your teammates screaming "Noooooo!" when you die in Star FOX 64/Lylat Wars.
    • If you're alone and fighting Andross, you'll just hear Fox scream instead. I believe you will also hear Andross laugh.
  • Classic examples from The Golden Age of Video Games:
    • Gorf would taunt you with "Bite the dust, <your rank>!"
    • The robots in Berzerk: "Got the humanoid!" "Got the intruder!"
  • Star Wars Rebel Assault: If you fail a training mission, your trainer may comment "Guess the rookie wasn't so sharp after all". If you run out of lives on the Trench level, the Death Star destroys Yavin IV, and the narrator says "the alliance was defeated" or something like that.

Simulation Game

  • Both Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2 had were recordings of wingmen reporting over the radio that the squad leader (the player) had just gone down. Radio gets cut off when the ship goes down, so you never get to hear them and the lines were unused.
  • In the Wing Commander games, your commanding officer will have a special eulogy on your behalf when you kick the bucket. Your wingmen get these, too, if they die in combat.
  • Dark Star One gives one of these every time you're killed, and also lets each enemy get off a final line if you kill them. Sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're mildly sad, mostly they're just pointless.

Stealth Based Game

  • Metal Gear Solid has one of the Mission Control characters, apparently hearing Snake's dying scream over the CODEC, frantically contact him as "Game Over" pops up, usually with some form of, "Snake, what happened? Snake?!? SNAAAAKKKEEEE!" Sometimes this changes - hitting the C4 wires during the fight with Ocelot in the first game leads to Ocelot shouting, "You idiot!" (The remake changed it to a more restrained "You stupid fool..."). If you die trying to resist the torture, you hear a snatch of a conversation between Liquid and Ocelot:

Liquid: You did it again, Ocelot!
Ocelot: ...Sorry, Boss.

    • And let's not forget

Campbell: Snake! What have you done?! You've changed the future! You've created a Time Paradox!

    • Super Smash Bros. Brawl also has the "SNAAAAKE" yells if you die while the Codec is playing a message. The Slippy one is particularly funny.

Survival Horror

  • Two escorted NPCs (Jimmy and a corrections officer) in The Suffering would comment on your death ("Shit! That guy was dead weight anyway." and "Oh my God in heaven, they killed him, oh god oh god...", respectively).

Third-Person Shooter

  • Red Faction 2 had some Enemy Chatter bites for when you killed other enemies in their vicinity ("That was my cousin! We grew up together" was one of them, IIRC).

Turn Based Tactics

  • Jagged Alliance and its sequels often had voiced lines when mercs who knew each other well died within their line of sight. One of them involved Fox, a pin-up girl cum combat medic. "NO! Not the Fox! Her centrefold will live on forever in my memory!"
    • In the sequel, characters often form "character pairs". They improve morale by fighting with each other. Sometimes they're one way. Steroid likes Grizzly for his brute strength, Grizzly doesn't care. Fox and Grizzly like each other. Gaston is infatuated with Fox. These are just a few examples, as the sequel has even more mercs than the first game, and many of them can interact.
      • "Alas, in death, the fox has left many a broken heart scattered about this place..."

Wide Open Sandbox

  • In some of the Grand Theft Auto games, when you're arrested, your lawyer can occasionally be heard as the screen fades saying things like, "Do you really think my client is capable of that?"
    • Others include: "My client hasn't ever been to the city," "Of course my client looks like the suspect. You look like an idiot, it doesn't mean you are one!" or "My client doesn't even know how to drive a car".

Non-video game examples

Anime and Manga

Literature

The Emperor had little patience with memorials, Mara knew, with extra contempt for the practice of saying words over the fallen. Mara said a few words anyway, half remembered ones from her childhood, before consigning Tannis's body to the emptiness of space.

Live-Action TV

  • Pushing Daisies has Emerson give a particularly hilarious informal eulogy for the villainous Dwight Dixon:

Here lies Dwight
Here lies his gun
He was bad
Now he's done.

Web Original

  • During Sarge's funeral in Red vs. Blue, Grif delivers a roast instead of a eulogy, and Simmons eulogy is actually a campaign speech for Sarge's old job.

Grif: Is he campaigning for your job at your own funeral? Classy.

Western Animation

  • The classic "Oh My God! They/We/You/I/She/He Killed Kenny!" running gag from South Park.
  • Yzma's eulogy for Kuzco in The Emperors New Groove starts out formal, but then she abruptly ends it with "Well! He ain't gettin' any deader! Back to work!" For the record, Kronk thinks it was lovely.
  • Parodied in the Rugrats episode, "The Mysterious Mr. Friend", when the babies bury an immobile Mr. Friend (whom they call "Mr. Fiend") in a grave:

Chuckie: I would like to say a prayer. [...] Like, uh, "Inkle finkle dinkle doo."
Phil and Lil: A-hen!

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