Undignified Death

Death sucks. That's why most people are afraid of it. Some people die of old age, or gradually succumb to one of a number of illnesses. When death comes, the lucky among us will go out peacefully with dignity. Some of us might go out fighting the good fight, saving the lives of some unfortunate person whom our consciences cannot ignore and force us to help. They'll all die "good deaths" (and in some cases, heroic deaths).

This trope is not about those people.

Undignified Death is about the people who die in ways that are, to put it completely bluntly, ridiculous and embarrassing. The manner of their demise are the things you read about on websites dedicated to the Darwin Awards. The kind of death that ends up the punchline of a joke told by a standup comedian who specializes in Black Comedy or Dead Baby Comedy.

This is a somewhat Subjective Trope in that, while we might find the way a person joined the Choir Invisible to be humorous and worth a laugh, to the person's family it is a tragedy. The bereaved naturally think you cruel and inhuman for laughing at such a tragedy. And it is a tragedy... someone has died, after all. But that doesn't stop it from being funny, when you think about it.

While it may be preferable to one, it sometimes overlaps with Cruel and Unusual Death when the death is not just embarrassing, it's also horrific. (In fact, the whole point of many Cruel and Unusual Deaths is to completely humiliate the victim and tarnish his/her name forever.) Often overlaps with Death by Falling Over. Super trope to The Can Kicked Him. Contrast Dying Moment of Awesome, which may well be the exact opposite of this trope, as well as Great Way to Go, which is never combined with this trope.

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

Examples of Undignified Death include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Fan Works

  • This is the stock in trade of Taylor "Atropos" Hebert in the Worm fic A Darker Path. Triggered with the spoilsport shard Path to Ending, Taylor is able to kill anything -- and when it comes to supervillains, she makes sure their demises are hilariously ironic.

Film

  • In Amelie, the eponymous character's mother dies when a tourist committing suicide via freefall lands on her.
  • In Hot Rod, Rod had always thought his father died testing a jump for Evel Knievel. In reality, he choked on pie.
  • In the 1966 all-star comic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Wrong Box, ten of the twenty competitors for the Tontine fall victim to this in a series of vignettes at the beginning of the film. In order:
    • army sergeant Brian Allen Harvey orders his men to fire a cannon, oblivious to the fact that he is standing directly in the line of fire;
    • amateur falconer Sydney Whitcombe Sykes is attacked by his own bird when he gives the order to kill;
    • intrepid explorer Ian Scott Fife plants a Union Flag on a mountaintop which promptly gives way under him;
    • dignitary Leicester Young-Fielding is hit squarely in the face by the ceremonial bottle of champagne at the christening of a ship;
    • army officer Alan Frazer Scrope is sounding the charge on a trumpet when an African native arrow flies down the bell of the instrument;
    • industrialist James Whyte Wragg, investigating claims that his coal mine is unsound, is crushed by falling debris after he taps a support post with his cane;
    • big game hunter Oliver Pike Harmsworth tells his guide that he will not shoot a rhinoceros until it is actually charging, unaware that it is almost on top of him;
    • Vyvyan Alistair Montague, upon dropping a handkerchief to signal the start of a pistol duel, is turned on and shot by the two duelers;
    • elderly, wheelchair-bound industrialist Derek Lloyd Peter Digby is pushed down a hill by his son, who wishes to inherit his fortune early;
    • and newly-knighted Sir Robert Park Collingwood is accidentally decapitated during the conferral of his knighthood by Queen Victoria.
  • "Ditto" Stiles, one of the High School teachers in the The Nick Nolte/Ralph Macchio black comedy Teachers, suffers a fatal heart attack attack at his desk, in the middle of class. What makes his death qualify for this trope is that the class period ends, and three more class periods come and go, before anyone (be it a student or a fellow teacher) notices that he's dead.
  • Pincus of Ghost Town acquired his ability to see ghosts after a near-death experience during a colonoscopy.
  • Donald Gennaro from Jurassic Park getting eaten by a T-Rex while on the toilet.
  • All of the jihadis in Four Lions end up blowing themselves up in stupid ways.
  • In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 some people made fun of Taserface's name. As Taserface is about to die, he contacts his killer's enemies (The Sovereign) to tell him where his killers are. All he asks in return is for is that they tell his killers the name of the man who sealed their fate, Taserface. The Sovereign person answering his call then laughs at his name as he dies.
  • Jabba the Hutt, from Return of the Jedi, the feared and dreaded gangster who ruled Tattoine with an iron fist and controlled much of the glitterstim trade... Was strangled by a slave girl. Okay, Leia was far from the typical prisoner, but she was tied up, forced to wear a skimpy outfit, and nearly helpless, but still took him out with the chain used to hold her prisoner. A rather pathetic - but well-deserved - end for such a vile creature.

Literature

  • In The Tomorrow Series, Chris goes missing for most of a book. At the end of said book, the group find his totalled car and decomposing body, and it becomes apparent that he got drunk and rolled the car. Most of the other main characters die from Heroic Sacrifices.
  • Machine of Death has at least a couple.
  • Many of the villains in Carl Hiaasen's novels. The stand-out is one who drowned by being held underwater by a sexually-deviant dolphin that wanted to have its way with him.
  • Adrian Mole once met a somewhat mentally disturbed woman whose father died because a dog fell on his head in Torremolinos. Of course, everyone she tells this story will laugh about it, Adrian included.
  • In one Warhammer Fantasy Battle novel, an empire soldier is killed by the way of being impaled on the spikes of an ork warboss helmet. As in, the ork warboss discarded the helmet and it just happened to land on the soldier.
  • The Graham Greene humorous story "A Shocking Accident" involves a young man whose father died in an embarrassing manner- a pig fell out of a window and hit him on the head. The story describes the man's futile efforts to describe the circumstances of his father's death in a way that won't cause the listener to crack up with laughter. At the end of the story, he realizes that his girlfriend is the right partner for him when she listens to his description and responds seriously and with empathy. In a case of Strange Minds Think Alike, she inquires about what happened to the pig, which is the first thing the guy wondered when he was first told about his father's death.
  • In Anansi Boys, Mr. Nancy's was singing karaoke at an island bar at the time of his death, and as he dies, his last act is to pull off the bikini top of a comely audience member. It's clear that Nancy thinks of this as a great joke, but when his son, the protagonist learns about it, he sees it as yet another example of his father being embarrassing.
  • This occurs frequently in Michael Dorsey's Serge Storms books.
  • In David Eddings' The Shining Ones, a hit is put out on one Avin Wargunsson: diminutive and little-loved heir to the Thalesian throne who was abusing his power and was a general embarrassment to his country. The people assigned to the job decide on a whimsical method. They bring in a barrel of expensive red wine, claiming it is for him, open the barrel, then proceed to stick him inside and nail the lid shut. Given the general dislike of the guy, he isn't found until several days later. He was described as still being significantly purple during the funeral, and despite their best efforts, the entire congregation ended up breaking down in laughter. Anyone else who heard the story eventually ended up doing the same; it was that funny to them.
    • There was some regret by at least the two killers. They wasted a perfectly good barrel of wine!
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, Tyrion kills his father while the latter is on the privy. Making it worse, he killed him by shooting him in the bowels with an arrow. It's still preferable to what his incestuous grandson Joffrey Baratheon goes through though.
  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: When the titular Aslan surrenders himself to the titular witch Jadis to save Edmund, she doesn't just stab him in the heart (like her minions wanted to do), she decides to shave off his mane first. And she doesn't even honor her bargain.

Live-Action TV

  • In the classic The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust", While dressed as "Peter the Peanut", Chuckles the Clown is killed by a rogue elephant who tried to "shell" him.

"You know how hard it is to stop after just one peanut!"

  • In Monarch of the Glen, an eccentric elderly character is pike-fishing with dynamite, when his dog (which he was training to fetch unsuccessfully all episode) decides he wants the explosives back. His last words are, if I remember correctly, "Oh."
  • In the very first episode of Dead Like Me, George dies after getting hit by a toilet seat that broke off of Space Station MIR as it reentered Earth's atmosphere.
    • Dead Like Me had more than just George's death. The Gravelings caused Rube Goldberg-esque chain reactions that caused bizarre, comical, and very undignified deaths for many of the show's victims.
  • News Radio: A coworker no-one can remember, "Ted", is asphyxiated after hours when his tie gets caught in the copy machine.
  • In The X-Files episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," there's a psychic who can see how people are going to die. When Mulder asks how he's going to die, the psychic won't give a straight answer, but comments, "You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation."
  • Miss Blankenship dropping dead at the desk during Season 4 of Mad Men.
    • Lane Pryce tries to kill himself by pumping car exhaust into his brand new Jaguar but the car will not start. He ends up hanging himself on his office door and is not discovered for 12 hours. The other partners have to force his body aside to open the door so they can cut him down. It's definitely not how the dignified British gentleman would want to be remembered.
  • 1000 Ways to Die frequently showcases this trope, as the show is all about deaths that are unusual, gruesome, or both. Examples include men being killed in toilet-related accidents, and other people being killed by or during sexual acts.
  • Supernatural has this exchange while Sam is stuck in a Groundhog Day Loop in which Dean dies everyday:

Dean: (on getting hit by a car): Did it look cool, like in the movies?
Sam: You peed yourself.
Dean: Of course I peed myself! Man gets hit by a car, you think he has full control over his bladder? Come on!

  • Gigi Cestone from The Sopranos; he suffers a heart attack while constipated on a strip club toilet and surrounded by porn magazines.
  • Gary Mitchel, the villain in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Where No Man has Gone Before". This episode is a precautionary tale of what happens when a human suddenly gains godlike power, and is a challenge for Kirk, putting him in a Fighting Your Friend situation. But even if this were Khan himself who had gained this power, it seems an insurmountable task, given how strong his foe is. Kirk shoots him from about ten feet away with a phaser rifle (supposedly the 23rd Century equivalent of an assault rifle), and barely even seems to notice. How does he meet his end? He's crushed by a boulder. Seems rather anticlimatic in hindsight.

Recorded and Stand Up Comedy

  • In a Kat Williams stand-up comedy routine, he says that his neighborhood is so bad that even the squirrels are dangerous and that if he does ever get killed by a squirrel, please lie about it.

Tabletop Games

  • In an issue of Dragon magazine, editor Roger Moore put together a list of the top 10 undignified deaths he had experienced in RPGs as both a player and a game master:
    • 10. Killed by the treasure after the adventure is over: This was a TPK where the party was unlucky enough to grab a bunch of cursed treasure, a spear of berserking, a brazier of sleep smoke, and a flask of curses. At very least, because they were all killed by it, the players didn't argue about whose fault it was.
    • 9. Killed even before the adventure has really started: This happened to Roger's own character, his newly made first level wizard killed by the first goblin mook the party encountered. He recalled that the rest of the party laughed at him, until their characters were all killed by the boss villain.
    • 8. Killed 14 times in succession by enraged party members who lined up and used a rod of resurrection on the victim so that each party member could claim to have killed the character, after the player has attempted for the third time in a row to slay the party for no particular reason: The victim’s excuse for doing so was that he was an anti-Paladin, and thus was supposed to do that. Not coincidentally, he was also the victim in number 7.
    • 7. Killed long range by enraged fellow party members who merely noted that the approaching victim was wearing black plate armor: The DM had told the player not to use an anti-Paladin again, but he did anyway. This one showed some Combat Pragmatism on the part of the halfling rogue, who attacked with a sling, using a boulder that had been polymorphed into a pebble, which assumed full size as it was about to hit the anti-paladin, due to the victim’s dispel magic field put out by his unholy avenger. Interestingly enough, the anti-paladin also had a ring of regeneration on, so the rest of the party just left him buried under the boulder.
    • 6. Killed after deliberately interrupting a hill giant who was taking a shower in a waterfall: This one overlaps with Too Dumb to Live, as the victim was a halfling wearing plate armor, which slowed his movement speed to a slow crawl. He also yelled insults at the giant at close range as the rest of the party was fleeing in panic. End result, death by a Chunky Salsa Rule.
    • 5. Killed as a result of killing a frog: The victim in this case was a 1st level wizard who cast the spell find familiar and got a frog, which he didn't want. He didn't seem to know what happens if a wizard kills his own familiar, so he wasn't role-playing very well to begin with.
    • 4. Killed by deliberately crashing one spacecraft into another spacecraft in the belief that a head-on collision at 40 km per second would result only in minor injuries: Obviously, this was not a D&D game (he didn't say what game it was) but he felt the need to include it.
    • 3. Killed after jumping into a 100 ft deep pit while trying to drink a potion of levitation that was for some reason left attached to the character's belt: The player specifically said he was going to jump first, then take the flask from his belt, then open it and drink it. The DM even asked again to confirm that was what he wanted to do. In the player’s defense, this was the Tomb of Horrors, so nobody in the party survived, but this clearly fits the trope
    • 2. Killed by a flumph: Roger bent the rules a little here, as he had never witnessed or experienced a death this way, but he claims he could not think of a more horribly embarrassing death than being killed by a monster that was elected by some gaming groups in the early 1980s as the most stupid and useless fantasy monster invented. For information on why, see its entry in The Scrappy. Well, except for one…
    • 1. Killed by a garlic bread golem: Again in Robert's defense, while he did include a garlic bread golem in an adventure he ran, having found it in an old collection of bad fantasy monsters from the late 1970s, none of the PCs in that group were killed by it. It was just as well, because his players knew where he lived.

Video Games

  • In Disgaea, Laharl's father King Krichevskoy apparently dies by choking on a black pretzel. This turns out to be a subversion; Krichevskoy was severely wounded from fighting Baal, the absurdly overlevelled Bonus Boss of the entire franchise, and was in the middle of his snack when he finally succumbed.
  • There are a couple of these in Ghost Trick but the prize has to go to Lynne for being crushed to death by a giant roast chicken.
  • Halo: Reach. We should remember the Reach in this regard. Some Spartans sacrifice their lives to blow up enemy motherships. Some kill their slayers back while impaled on power sword. And some... get shot in the head running from cover to cover. Ooops!
  • If you're rude to Conrad Verner in Mass Effect 2, he eventually storms off. A later news report states that while attempting to catch some youths riding the top of a bus, he fell off, struck several cars, and fell into the turbine of a bio-mass recylcing center. That may or may not be a euphemism for a sewage treatment plant.
  • Fatalities in Fighting Games can be brutal and bloody at the least, but some are downright humiliating:
    • Bo Rai Cho's fatality in Mortal Kombat: Deception is a blazing Fartillery. Possibly better that the foe doesn't survive it, because they'd never live it down.
    • Cassandra's Critical Finish in Soul Calibur IV is to knock her opponent to the floor using her behind, then use it again on the face. Twice.
    • In Primal Rage, Chaos is the embodiment of filth and decay, so he has a few attacks that involve puking and farting, but his fatality involves peeing on the foe. This was so disgusting, it was removed in a chip upgrade.
  • Story-wise, Scorpion's (thankfully non-canon) ending in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance has him killed by Moloch and Drahmin. The developers expected the fans to believe two of the most ill-conceived Dumb Muscle thugs in fighting game history took down the renown leader of the Shirai Ryu. Most fans would agree this was worse than outright omitting him from the third game.
  • In Bayonetta, the Big Bad (or so we assume) might well be the first villain in video game history to be winked to death. Okay, short version here, Father Balder seeks to resurrect Jubileus, ( the true antagonist and a Sealed Evil in A Can type of entity), in a ritual that requires putting Bayonetta in Jubileus' left eye (naturally he has to capture her first) and himself in the right eye. He succeeds, and all goes smoothly until Jeanne (whom he had left for dead, but now under the player's control) mounts a rescue mission and pulls Bayonetta free of the left eye. Jubileus, as a result, is no longer under Balder's control, and crushes him like a bug with a single wink.

Web Comics

  • This Irregular Webcomic strip.
  • In "[S] Wake", in Homestuck, Dream Feferi barely has time to notice Jack before he unceremoniously slices her in two and leaves her for dead. The look on her face "kind of" diminishes the impact.
    • In the same Flash (and the pages afterward), we also have Tavros, who challenged God Tier Vriska to a fight and lost immediately, despite being given a free shot—then was impaled on his own lance and pitched into an abyss to land hard enough to burst his new robo-legs with a look of dumb shock on his face.
    • Equius himself died with the most idiotic look on his face after being strangled.
    • Jade may well have topped all of the above: she was effectively killed by several tonnes of shaving cream. SHAVING CREAM.
      • Well technically, it was the bombs that were attached to the shaving cream that did her in.
      • No amount of bombs will ever change that they were attached to and delivered by way of several tonnes of shaving cream.

Web Original

  • The Darwin Awards, as noted, are pretty much built on this trope. With the added criterion that it has to be self-inflicted.
  • A piece called Australia: The Confusing Country (widely suspected to have been written by Douglas Adams) advises against putting your arm down a wombat's burrow as the wombat will think its burrow is collapsing and push up; crushing the arm between the wombat and the burrow roof and causing you to bleed to death. It then adds that "This is considered the third most embarrassing known way to die, and Australians don't talk about it much".
  • "Undignified Deaths" is a category in Chuck Shepherd's News Of The Weird column.
  • Survival of the Fittest has had a few of these over its run. The most notable example would be that of Carson Baye's in v3, where he stops to take a dump... only to learn that the area he's in has become a dangerzone. Cue Oh Crap.
  • On Death Battle, Starscream was not only done in by Rainbow Dash, she swallowed his Spark, even as he was ranting that she couldn't kill him. (Technically, he's correct, but this suggests he'll be trapped in her stomach forever.) No matter what one's opinion is of either show, it was kind of humiliating. Though, not exactly undeserved.

Western Animation

  • South Park loves this trope. In a recent[when?] episode a woman dies by falling down the toilet when the lid is left up.
  • Nemesis Enforcer from the G.I. Joe cartoon, specifically the animated movie. He was supposedly the champion of Cobra-La, the favored enforcer and bodyguard of their ruler Golobulus for centuries. Stories about vampires, lycanthropes, and other monsters were inspired by his actions that were witnessed by humans. So even though Sergeant Slaughter was one of the toughest of the good guys, it was a pretty sorry end for Nemesis Enforcer when the Sarge beat him to a pulp, broke his wings, and threw him into a spiked pit.
  • Phineas and Ferb: While it doesn’t actually happen, Doofenshmirtz’s death trap for Perry in Raging Bully is designed for him to be buried alive in Doonkelberry Cake. It’s still a scary way to die though. But at least Doofenshmirtz has the decency to allow Perry to try some.
  • In BoJack Horseman, the death of the protagonist's father (as BoJack describes it) was fittingly anti-climatic and absolutely bonkers:

BoJack: My dad died about ten years ago on account of injuries he sustained during a duel. When your father dies, you ask yourself a lot of questions, questions like, ‘Wait, did you say he died in a duel?’ and ‘Who dies in a duel?’ The whole thing was so stupid… Dad spent his entire life writing this book, but he couldn’t get any stores to carry it or any newspapers to review it. Finally, I guess this one newspaper thought he was pretty hilarious, because they ran this review and tore him to shreds. So my father, ever the proud mary, decided he would not stand for this besmirchment of his honor, he claimed the critic didn’t understand what it meant to be a man. So he demanded satisfaction in the form of pistols at dawn! He wrote the paper this letter saying anyone who didn’t like his book would challenge to a duel. Anyone in the world. He’d even pay for airfare to San Francisco and a night at a hotel. Well… eventually this found its way to some kook in Montana who was just as batshit as he was and he took him up on the offer. They met at Golden Gate Park and agreed, ten paces, turn, and then shoot. But in the middle of his ten paces, dad turned to ask the guy if he’d actually read the book and what he thought. But, not looking where he was going, tripped over an exposed root and bashed his head on a rock. (Pauses with a sad look.) I wish I’d known to have gone to Jack-in-the-Box then, maybe I could’ve gotten a free churro. Would have been nice to have something to show for being the son of Butterscotch Horseman…

  • Crossing over Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and Too Dumb to Live is Debbie Grund from King of the Hill, a girl who seriously tried to prove she was not a Dumb Blonde but only confirmed it in the end. Hank’s boss Buck Strickland wasn’t the most likeable guy, nor was he the most faithful husband, and Debbie was one of his many mistresses. When Buck’s wife Liz finds out about it, she kicks Buck out of their house, gains ownership of Strickland Propane, and puts Hank in charge. Then, after Hank tells Liz that tank wipe duty was the least favorite job of all the employees, she makes sure Debbie gets that job. After becoming the butt of every joke among the rest of the cast, Debbie tries to seduce Hank (but fails), tries to pull a Scarpia Ultimatum on him (fails again), and when she sees Buck and Liz reconcile at the Sugarfoot, she finally snaps, and decides to murder them. She gets a rifle and conceals herself in a dumpster near Buck’s car, waiting to ambush them when they leave. But she gets hungry, and decides to rush to the convenience store across the street, buying a soda and nachos. When she gets back to resume her ambush (not knowing her intended victims have already left, having taken Liz’s car) she finds it difficult to climb into the dumpster with her hands full and carrying a rifle under her arm, so she tosses the weapon into the dumpster, and then when she tried to crawl in, it goes off, killing her.
  • Adam, Hazbin Hotel. If he had died in an epic battle with Lucifer, that might have been dignified, but no, after Charlie talked her enraged father into sparing him, Adam refused to leave with any dignity, cussing them and their allies out… and was then stabbed from behind by the Cute and Psycho Niffty. Still, most agree that was more than he deserved.
  • Francis, Peter's asshole of an adoptive father in Family Guy. An old curmudgeon with exaggerated Fundamentalist views, he despises anyone who isn't Roman Catholic, and vehemently objected to his stepson marrying Lois for that reason. Thus, his brutal and humiliating death seemed both karmic and deserved. When Peter decides to dress as a hobo-clown to entertain at Meg’s party, he tries to impress Francis (despite Francis telling him he looked like a fool) with his “grand unicycle finale” which consists of him riding the unicycle down the hall stairs. Really dumb idea, as Peter loses balance, falls through the guardrail and lands on top of Francis, crushing him. Could have been worse, though, he could have ended up like Peter, with the unicycle wedged up his ass.
  • Bill Cypher, the Big Bad of Gravity Falls. A Chessmaster, Magnificent Bastard, Time Abyss, and God of Evil, he still remains one of the scariest villains in Disney history, yet his own arrogance caused him to be Lured into a Trap by a Twin Switch; even Stan can't help but mock him for falling for one of The Oldest Tricks in The Book. Even worse, he shamelessly pleads for his life before Stan flattens him in one punch.

Real Life

  • There are more rumors surrounding the death of Attila the Hun than fan-rumors about deaths on Game of Thrones. Most historians agree he died during his wedding feast to his last wife, Ildikó. (Far from his first.) While some claim she murdered him and as a result, was killed by his soldiers, this is unlikely. (Given the ruthlessness the Huns show to traitors, her fate would have been far worse.) A more likely reason was that he ate and drank too much at the feast and later suffered from internal bleeding or choked on his own blood, or maybe injured himself while drunk and bled to death. The most undignified rumor, however, was that he was into Casual Kink, and that Ildikó playfully punched him in the nose during sex, causing a nosebleed which made him choke until he choked to death. If true, this means one of the most dreaded and feared barbarian lords in history died after being punched in the nose. By a girl. During sex.
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