Rasputinian Death: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''He didn't die of old age, either. He was poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled, drawn, and quartered. [...] There was a prophecy. Just before his'' head ''died, his last words were "Death is but a door. Time is but a window. [[We Will Meet Again|I'll be back]]."''|'''Ray Stantz''', ''[[Ghostbusters|Ghostbusters 2]]''}}

The trope takes its name from [[History Marches On|a myth spread by Prince Felix Yusupov]] about the assassination of [[Rasputin the Mad Monk|Grigori Rasputin]] in 1916. Ironically, Rasputin's [[Real Life]] death wasn't at all Rasputinian; the 1916 autopsy report (as discovered after the [[Cold War]] and reviewed by American and Russian doctors in 2002) shows that Rasputin was shot in the head with a .455 Webley and died instantly. But his killers wanted to portray him as a near-indestructible minion of Satan, so they made up an elaborate story about how he survived poison, beating, and bullet wounds only to drown in the Neva. Later embellishments by Yusupov (he thought up a new one every time he was short on money) even had Rasputin dying of ''hypothermia'', having attempted to claw through the ice that covered him.