For me, it was always Optimus Prime from The Transformers movie.

    • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      10·
      7 days ago

      I just saw this for the first time recently. It hit me so hard that I had to call my therapist for an extra session. The look on her face was identical to my father’s when he passed.

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
        3·
        5 days ago

        My mom died when my sister and I were approximately Buffy’s and dawn’s ages, respectively. It was an absolute gut punch to watch for me too.

    • hansolo@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      7 days ago

      Ugh…Just laying on that couch… Can’t defeat natural causes with a wooden stake.

  • CookieMonsterDebate@lemmy.world
    232·
    7 days ago

    Sirius Black in Harry Potter. I had to go back and reread the paragraph several times, then put the book down. Seemed just so unfair.

    • Shard@lemmy.world
      52·
      6 days ago

      Put in there just as a cheap way to get emotional reactions from the audience, it’s the story telling equivalent of having the dog in the story die.

      • MaggiWuerze@feddit.org
        2·
        4 days ago

        Especially since his death didn’t really do anything. He didnt sacrifice himself or saved anyone and his death wasn’t discussed much after the initial shock. I assume he had to be out of the picture so Harry could go Horcrux hunting, without him interfering

  • Endmaker@ani.socialEnglish
    21·
    7 days ago

    Bambi’s mother.

    Runner-ups:

    • Carl’s wife from Up
    • The mother in Violet Evergarden
    • Ghost and Roach from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  • AdamBomb@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    7·
    6 days ago

    Optimus Prime was a real shock for sure. For me it’s any animal death.

    • Artax from The Neverending Story
    • The dogs from Where the Red Fern Grows
    • There’s a scene in the Sci-fi novel Armor where a puppy falls in a well and its owner, a child, unable to rescue it ,has to kill it by dropping stones on it to spare it drowning. I read that a long time ago, probably in the 80s, and it still haunts me.
    • PlatDrone@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 days ago

      One of my teachers read Where the Red Fern Grows to my class at the pace of a chapter or two every couple days (spare time in the lesson plan). I was impatient, so I got my mom to drive me to the public library, checked it out and finished the book that night. Had to wait almost 2 whole weeks before the class got caught up. I also didn’t want to spoil the ending for my classmates, so I just had to kinda hold onto the knowledge of the events and deal with it by myself while all the other kids were oblivious. Out teacher had us start watching the movie towards the end of the book, she had it timed perfectly so that the class (other than me) had no ideas for the back to back double whammy of loss that they were about to experience.

      • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        6 days ago

        I had already read that book prior to my teacher reading it aloud in class. She couldn’t read that chapter, so I volunteered to, having already had my trauma from the scene. We didn’t end up watching the movie, though.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
    12·
    7 days ago

    Arthur Morgan’s death scene in RDR2 really got to me. But perhaps even more so, when my horse was killed right before. I remember pausing the game for a moment because I had had that horse for so long and somehow it felt like a major deal that happened so quickly.

    Never had a game affect me like that before.

    • LordGimp@lemm.ee
      2·
      6 days ago

      Every one of these RDR2 posts about the horse in the last morgan mission makes me mad more people aren’t posting about Agro from Shadow of the Colossus

    • Endmaker@ani.socialEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      That’s a good one.

      Saw it coming a mile away (i.e. from the start thanks to the protocol that says to protect the pilot), but it was such a good execution.