Too Cool to Live

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
—Hunter S. Thompson, referring to his Hetero Life Mate, Oscar Zeta Acosta.

Let's say a character is a Ninja Pirate. Let's say he also has a giant robot. Let's say that giant robot also has an Infinity+1 Sword. Let's further say that said sword is actually a katana. No, make that a chainsaw katana. Hell, let's say it's two chainkatanas... attached by a chain to make chainkatanachucks.

Clearly, this character is Made Of Cool. Equally clearly, this character, if he is not the Main Character, must die, because he overshadows the main character.

This is what happens when somebody is Too Cool to Live. This character is often relegated by The Plot Reaper to the job of being a Heroic Sacrifice, or the Sixth Ranger. Many a wise and awesome mentor has fallen victim to this trope.

Sometimes, a main character is Too Cool to Live, and so performs a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of a movie or television series. Apparently there was just no bus service in the area.

Sometimes results in a Disney Death due to Executive Meddling if the character is popular enough, but usually only if they Never Found the Body.

Alternatively, this character doesn't die, but is removed from the stage in some way. Or he turns evil, and his superior coolness is put to use as an obstacle for the hero to overcome. And we all know that Evil Is Cool.

It may be justified as it allows the next generation, mainly the hero, to improve greatly to make up for the loss of this person.

See also Too Good for This Sinful Earth—a character who is just too gentle to stay in the story and Too Powerful to Live—a villain who is just too dangerous. Also tends to cross over with The Obi-Wan. Compare Too Happy to Live. When this is about works rather than people, it's Too Good to Last.

Being Too Cool to Live can be very subjective, so please try not to editwar.

Compare Dying Moment of Awesome.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples of Too Cool to Live include:

Cross-Medium

  • As mentioned lower, almost any character played by Sean Bean.

Anime and Manga

  • STRAIGHT FUCKING COUGAR from S-Cry-ed. Especially jarring as his defeat made no sense, but still.
  • Hughes, Hohenheim, Fu, and Buccaneer in Fullmetal Alchemist, the latter three in the manga and Brotherhood.
  • Kaji from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
  • Kamina in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Though, Simon becomes more awesome after the Time Skip. Kamina himself admits this in the Lotus Eater Machine. But hey, that comes with the job description.
    • Kittan as well, although he did die laughing about how awesome it was (his sacrificing himself to save everyone via a giga drill breaker).
    • Pretty much everyone who is dead on the good side is this. Hell, even some of the bad guys; this is a World of Badass, after all.
  • Darker than Black: Lives and breathes this tropes. First season had November 11, Mai, and countless others. Second season has had: Tanya, April, and Goran. July however has made it.
    • July died as well in the second season finale. In general, if you are attached to a character in Darker than Black, flip a coin to see if they die or become horribly traumatized.
  • Daigouji Gai in Martian Successor Nadesico.
  • Neil Dylandy, the first Lockon Stratos in Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Also played with Hallelujah, but He's Just Hiding.
    • Sergei Smirnov and Ali Al-Saachez in season 2. The Movie added Graham Aker to the list.
  • Archer in Fate/stay night. Many say the same of Lancer. Heck, pretty much every Servant qualifies.
  • Roy Fokker in the original Macross.
    • Subverted with his Expy in the Macross Frontier: they've killed the other guy.
    • YMMV, since some of us thinks Michael is cooler than Ozma, thus playing this straight.
    • cooler as a person, perhaps. As a fighter, Ozma is way cooler. He beats Alto, which is a feat in itself!
    • Also subverted in the Love Triangle: Sheryl lives, not making place for Ranka
    • Played straight in the movies, where Alto The Hero Dies , and here he was the coolest!
  • Naomi Misora in Death Note, although the makers' reason was different; Word of God was that she figured out stuff about Kira too quickly. L was way more cool than the main character.
    • In terms of cool, they're closely followed by Mello, Chief Yagami, and Light. None of these make it either.
    • Matt/Mail Jeevas got only one scene in the anime, being his death scene. Yet his fangirls can be in countless numbers.
  • Balgus from Vision of Escaflowne. Sure, he was The Obi-Wan to The Hero until this point, but he was a giant of a man with Badass scars who took out an enemy mecha on foot with a BFS on a show where this sort of thing generally doesn't happen.
  • Mu La Flaga in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. Then "Bring 'Em Back" Fukuda lived up to his nickname and brought the character back in Gundam Seed Destiny, but really he might as well not have bothered.
  • Subverted in Rurouni Kenshin; Kenshin's master is a huge, muscular man who is a master of the style. It even sets him up for dying in this way, as the traditional means of mastering the final technique was to kill your master while using it. However, Kenshin's reverse-blade katana saves his master from certain death, yet Kenshin still masters the technique. His master then goes on to save the rest of Kenshin's band from the minions of Shishio, while Kenshin goes to fight the Big Bad himself.
  • Joichiro Nishi. Not only was he the only guy who seemed to know what the hell was going on, he was smart, badass, funny as hell and something of a Magnificent Bastard at that. So of course, he had to die.
    • Only Nishi? Perhaps the more obvious case of Too Cool to Live in Gantz would be Kato, who quite a few people preferred to Kurono before the latter's Character Development (thankfully, he comes back in the manga as well). Sakata and Suzuki easily qualify late in the manga as well.
  • Vanessa and Elenore in Madlax were odd examples in that they were somehow both Too Cool To Live and Too Cool To Die. Their idea of splitting the difference was...interesting...
  • Askeladd, and to a lesser degree Bjorn as well.
  • Minato Namikaze from Naruto is a particularly notable example. He was hailed as one if the strongest shinobi ever, saved the Leaf village from the Nine-Tailed Fox's attack, was shown to be able to wipe out whole platoons of shinobi in the blink of an eye (to the point where enemies were ordered to flee on sight from him), and could teleport anything, even a Spirit Bomb level chakra blast miles away without breaking a sweat. Needless to say, a lot of potential threats to the Leaf would not be deemed so dangerous if he was still alive.
  • Max Kaien from The Five Star Stories, except that he isn't dead. He was indeed too much of a Game Breaker to disrupt the plot, but the point itself was so tangled and complicated, that Mamoru Nagano simply had no need to kill him. Instead, he threw him away into the Alternate Universe, where he found at least some match to him, and surfaced only in occasional episodes ever since.
  • Ken from Shinkon Gattai Godannar. What can go wrong with a Badass pilot who has a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot for a mecha? Obviously, they had to take him out. Unless he's in the Super Robot Wars universe.
  • Festa in Fang of the Sun Dougram. He defeats an enemy Humongous Mecha on a bike and saves the titular Super Prototype. Five minutes later he goes for a drive and a grenade goes off in his bike. A grenade that a dying enemy soldier dropped there in the previous episode. A grenade that he conveniently didn't notice at all.
  • "Hot Ice" Hilda served as The Obi-Wan for Geene Starwind until she sacrificed herself fighting off Space Pirates. A long-time dream of fans is the creation of a Prequel detailing just how she got to be so Badass.
  • Danny in the Zatch Bell anime. He's a strong fighter barehanded, and has a spell that can heal all of his injuries (even resurrect him after getting shot to death) limitless times. So he dies in the same episode he appears, in a very stupid way and only to protect a statue.
    • But like darn near everything else in this series, it's a Tear Jerker anyway.
    • As a bit of an added punch, the statue he was hell bent on protecting broke before he was in that situation.
  • Cross Marian in D.Gray-Man necessitated a hunt across half of Asia by the Black Order, then sauntered in and saved Allen's ass on the Ark. His superiors at the Black Order were not amused by his tendency to go truant and put him under house arrest, and he spent quite a while lounging around headquarters, seducing women, racking up insane amounts of debt on the Order's tab, and completely outshining every damn person in the whole place, as was aptly demonstrated when Lulu Bell attacked. But then, he suddenly, mysteriously disappeared with very little evidence how; they Never Found the Body, and it's undoubtedly going to factor into the plot later, as it's well established that he's hard to take down.
    • Although because he was apparently shot in the head in a way that nothing human could have survived, and all the blood found at the scene was confirmed to be his, chances are he's either genuinely dead, or not human.
  • Yuuko is so cool that Clow Reed warped reality to delay her death before she died for real.
  • Jack Rakan of Mahou Sensei Negima, with a suitable send off. Fate had to rewrite the laws of reality to take him out, and even then, he went down swinging.
    • Even then he comes back in the next chapter to do a SECOND Obi-Wan Moment by smacking (literally) some sense into Negi after he gives into his Super-Powered Evil Side.
    • Subverted, now that he's WILLED HIMSELF BACK INTO EXISTENCE permanently.
  • One Piece has a character who is the strongest, most powerful, most awesomely manly, and all-around most utterly badass character in a World of Badass. He dies at the end of the arc in which he finally gets to fight. His name: Whitebeard.
  • In the Soul Eater manga, Mifune. Yes, his death allowed Black Star to find his own 'path' and all, but damn wasn't that samurai guy cool. Plus he left behind cute little witch Angela.
    • This is, in fact, one of the ways in which the Gecko Ending of the anime improved on the manga. He survives and ends up going over to the good-guy side (can't really call it a Heel Face Turn since he was never evil in any sense of the word).
    • While not as awesome as Mifune, the manga also has BJ. Nifty soul perception skills, he and Marie had a history, and member of a different part of Shibusen - Internal Investigations. He was every bit as weird as the rest of the staff...killed off within three chapters.
    • And now, possibly, Tezca the South American Death Scythe (the bear guy). Okubo seems to get steadily more bizarre with his characters, and the Demon Mirror could have been fun to watch had he not seemingly been offed by Noah. Of course, he is a mirror...
  • This was almost played straight with Joe Asakura aka Condor Joe in Science Ninja Team Gatchaman; he would have died and stayed dead if there wasn't a second series in the works, and early planning for the second series had him Killed Off for Real and replaced by an android. In the end, the trope was subverted by having him just barely survive, then implanted with cybernetics.
  • Reinforce (Eins) from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. She's untouched by Nanoha's point-blank Excelion Buster and shows the girl a real Starlight Breaker. Clearly too awesome to be allowed to stay alive.
  • Claymore gave us Teresa of the Faint Smile.
  • Vegetto (Vegerot in the VIZ translation) from Dragon Ball Z. Yep. Guy comes, dominates Buu-Gohan (In his base form in the anime, he just transformed for kicks.), even when turned into the world's most powerful candy, he lets himself get eaten by Buu so he can go save his friends. Unfortunately, he unexpectedly lets down his protective barrier and defuses.
  • Every single one of the Bleach's Espada that isn't Grimmjow.
    • Considering it's been years in and out of story since we've seen Grimmjow after that injury, it's very likely he's dead.
    • Subverted with Hallibel and her Fraccion.
    • Not to mention Gin.
    • And let's not forget about Kaien Shiba.
    • Shūsuke Amagai anyone?
    • That guy's created to die. He's filler, and a bad guy to boot.
  • Sakuragi from Rainbow Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin. This guy is looked up to by the other 6 main characters, including The Hero, after he completely tears them up in a 6 on 1 boxing match in a prison cell. He's also extraordinarily durable. He lives through nearly being burned alive in a locked cell, and being starved and paralyzed with ice cold water until he could just barely see those white pearly gates as his friends carry him in an epic prison breakout, only to die from a stab to the chest while on his way to see Mario's Heroic Rematch. This fatal blow is delivered, of course, by none other than the evil prison guard, Ishihara, who was so doped up on drugs that he didn't even know he killed anybody.
  • Prussia from Axis Powers Hetalia. I mean, he's the resident Darkhorse and have you heard of Prussia? I wonder why.
  • Leomon and his subspecies in every Digimon series in which he's an ally.
  • Cho-san from 20th Century Boys, the detective so awesome had he not died he would have resolved the plot of the entire manga 21 in-series and 7 real-life years earlier than without him.
  • In her first appearance, Mami Tomoe summoned a thousand rifles and wiped the field of Mooks from space. She then took Madoka and Sayaka under her wing. 3 episodes in, she's violently decapitated and devoured by a witch gone One-Winged Angel. Also qualifies as Too Happy to Live, since she had literally just pledged her friendship to Madoka.
  • Anubis from Ronin Warriors who had the most Character Development to boot.
  • Commander Daguza McAwesome from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. Even his death was awesome: He jumps out of the Unicorn with a rocket launcher, shoots the Sinanju in the head in an attempt to blind it, and salutes to Banagher one last time before being incinerated by the Sinanja's beam axe.
  • Fujimoto of Blue Exorcist, despite only being there for a two episodes/one chapter. He was the most powerful exorcist in the world, holding the rank of Paladin before he died. And he has a cute familiar that looks like a cat.
  • Zoalord Purgstall from Guyver caught on with fans for being a badass, honorable, caring guy who happened to be on the antagonist's side. Fans still cling onto to hope he'll somehow come back from the dead.
  • Tatsugoro, Otose's late husband, in Gintama who was an honorable, upstanding, all-around-awesome guy who fiercely defended his town, who got the girl and who was able to fight the baddest punk in town (who later became the yakuza boss and one of the four emperors of Kabukichou) to a draw. Of course he goes and dies, taking the bullet for that punk (who was also his friend and rival for the girl), which set in motion opposing set-in-stone promises from two of the series' most stubborn characters, Jirochou and Gintoki.
  • Spike Speigel from Cowboy Bebop is the main character version.
  • Badass Preacher Wolfwood from Trigun.

Comic Books

  • Rorschach from Watchmen, who would prefer that Dr. Manhattan vaporize him rather than let himself willingly abandon his moral code.
  • Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers is an Anyone Can Die series, so of course it offers up one of these to die before the rest of the cast. Rotorstorm is The Ace, able to simultaneously pilot two spacecraft and use both to hit small targets, and always ready with a Facing the Bullets One-Liner... and he dies first.
  • Lord Voll in Elf Quest. He would have been a Cool Old Guy father figure to all races of elves, laughing and flying around while guiding them in unlimited space travel and bringing about worldwide harmony. A single troll arrow kills him. In the end, it takes the elves another 1500 years to achieve what he could have given them in a day.
  • Marv from Sin City, whos only starring role in a full-length story basically serves as one big Heroic Sacrifice and ends with him dead in the electric chair.
  • Sync from Generation X.
    • And Blink, especially considering very shortly after her death, an incredibly Badass alternate reality version of her was depicted in significant detail.


Film

  • The T-800 from Terminator 2 and Terminator 3.
    • And Sarah Connor between these two films.
  • Father MacGruder. He kicked ass for the Lord, and we sure hope the Lord appreciated the effort when MacGruder met up with Him shortly thereafter.
  • From the Star Wars films: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Darth Maul and Boba Fett.
    • Apparently, while everyone agreed with "cool" describing Fett, they took issues with the "to live" part.
  • Ken Colton in the 1943 Batman serial.
  • Frankie Four-Fingers (Benicio del Toro) in Snatch. This also applies to Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones, bitch), but he lives a bit longer.
    • As well as Boris the blade.
  • Naveen Andrews' Badass Bookworm and Freddy Rodriguez' Drifter in Planet Terror, the first half of Grindhouse.
  • Col. Gondoh is Godzilla vs. Biollante. Needless to say, he gets an absolutely Badass final scene.

"All this intravenous stuff is no good for you. You should stick to smoking."


Literature

  • Garet Jax in The Wishsong of Shannara. The man is called a "weapons master" because no matter who his opponent is, and what weapon he uses, he will still manage to pull off a crowning moment of awesome and come out alive. Well, until he defeats an ancient Eldritch Abomoniation in a heroic sacrifice.
  • Inigo Skimmer is the best damn character in The Fifth Elephant (beyond Vetinari, who is, to be fair, employing him). He's also an absolutely superb fighter and Assassin. Sadly, when he's attacked by a large group of werewolves, not superb enough. One of the best Discworld characters, and he only got through half a book. Tragic.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Syrio Forel, Beric Dondarrion, and Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne, to name a few.
    • Robb Stark and Big Badass Wolf Grey Wind.
    • Eddard Stark however is pretty awesome and his death sets the tone for the whole series brilliantly.
      • Fittingly, in the HBO adaptation, he's played by Sean Bean, who tends to play these sort of characters a lot.
    • And Khal Drogo. His actor in Game of Thrones was so upset that the character got killed off that he proposed to the showrunners that a Backup Twin could show up in the second season.
    • Qhorin Halfhand. Too badass.
  • Everworld has a character with the appropriate name of MacCool who fits the trope very well for a minor character. MacCool is an elf who is a romantic rival to Christopher, and as his name implies, his characterization mainly consists of being cooler and more impressive than Christopher. He dies fighting against a danger very unfamiliar in Everworld: humans armed with machine guns. And of course, there is a perverse satisfaction in the fact that Christopher was the one who had known about the gunmen and how to protect against them, but MacCool didn't follow his instructions.
  • Primus and Septimus, from Stardust.
  • Talaan, the main Action Girl from Heroes Die, who, if this editor's memory serves correctly, may have been a better fighter than Caine.
  • Rachel from Animorphs. Though she does last quite a while (she dies in the final book).
  • Les Misérables: Enjolras and all the Amis. Gavroche. At the end, even Valjean has to be united with the For... wait, wrong fandom. And what for? They were all cooler than that whiney Gary Stu Marius.
  • The Wicked Witch of the West and her counterpart Elphaba.
  • In Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry first Kevin then later Dairmuid. Basically all the most cheerful characters. Though the later is partly a subversion as Dairmuid dies to save Arthur from this trope.
  • Joe Buckley in 1634: The Galileo Affair.
  • Shiro Yoshimo of The Dresden Files. He's a Badass Grandpa with A FREAKING HOLY KATANA... Although it turned out that he was diagnosed with cancer, and was going to die anyway, but he instead went out with A Crowning Moment of Awesome crossed with a Heroic Sacrifice
  • Roy Meritt from Daemon. His status transcends death, being revered by Darknet operatives well into the sequel.
  • Bridge to Terabithia: poor Leslie. This is intentional, as this book is Based on a True Story of how the best friend of the author's son was suddenly killed by lightning, AND she is described as remembered by Jess and others, thus looking cooler than she would otherwise.
  • It was a wonder Albus Dumbledore made it as long as he did.
    • Don't forget about Sirius Black and Tonks.
  • In the timeline of World War Z, General Raj Singh narrowly escapes this trope (unwillingly—he rediscovered tactics that would have worked against the Zombies with enough ammo, and has to be punched unconscious to be 'coptered to safety), only to play it straight during an evacuation—by manually detonating the bomb on a mountain pass, so that the safe zone remains ghoul-free.


Live Action TV

  • Tuvix, from the Star Trek: Voyager episode of the same name. Those MURDERERS!
    • Also One, the future Borg from "Drone."
  • Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Actually she was lucky—she got off with eight months in a coma and then most of the rest of the series in prison.
    • Likewise Kendra, Joyce Summers and Jenny Calender.
    • Doyle from Angel also fits this.
  • Curtis from 24. Whom TWOP calls the show's "Handsome Black Agent", who teams up with Jack and dies ignominiously.
    • And President Palmer.
  • Omar from The Wire. Not until the last season though.
    • Not to mention Snoop.
  • Gordon Walker from Supernatural
    • Likewise, Agent Henricksen.
    • Gabriel seems to be this in spades.
  • Chris dies at the end of the second series of Skins.
  • The BBC's Robin Hood introduces Meg, a smart, spunky girl who shows intelligence, compassion and an endearing sense of entitlement that gets Guy of Gisborne to stop moping and rethink his priorities. Meg's counterpart Kate spends the entire episode sulking and moaning (as per usual) and tops it off by trying to manipulate a dangerous situation so that her romantic rival is killed off. Now, guess who dies and guess who survives the entire show.
  • Victor from Burn Notice. He's as intelligent as Michael, he plays off Michael's personality very well (as well as providing copious amounts of Ho Yay), he would be very useful and interesting in Michael's day-to-day jobs, he is funny, he is played by Michael Shanks, and he dies in the episode where he teams up with Micheal. Damn it.
  • Alas, poor Peggy. When the battlestar Pegasus shows up halfway through Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica Reimagined, she was doomed from the start by virtue of being a more advanced and awesome battlestar than the Galactica. And so, alas, she was taken from us far too soon, at the hands of recently-promoted (idiot) Commander Lee Adama - after only appearing in any significant roles in a couple of episodes before her demise. Because Ramming Always Works.
  • Game of Thrones: Khal Drogo, just Khal Drogo...
    • not to mention Eddard Stark.
  • Seems like a fate of a member of the Super Sentai who got too cool for their own good. Examples include Choujin Sentai Jetmans Gai and Kyoryu Sentai Zyurangers Burai.
  • There's no way Dollhouse could keep Bennett around. She's just too damn distracting.
  • The white-haired British guy in Stephen King's Rose Red. Level-headed, brave, not too bad-looking, and friendly with the rest of the characters, even the crazy leader who, like a certain Jack Torrance was way too comfortable in the sapient, giant, evil house—yup, he was doomed.
    • What makes his death a real shame though was that he died saving the life of a woman who was stupid enough to leave the group in middle of a house that was trying to kill them. And why did she leave? She wanted some iced tea.
  • Adam Monroe from Heroes definitely fits this trope.
  • The Ninth Doctor from Doctor Who, who's the second most short-lived Doctor after the Eighth Doctor (who has the excuse of being in a TV movie), in spite of being concentrated amounts of eccentric awesomeness.
    • Really, all the Doctors, being Crazy Awesome, qualify to a certain extent. They all get replaced by another awesome incarnation right after regeneration, though, so it's all good.
    • The DoctorDonna.
    • Father Octavian, from the 2010 series. Iain Glen really is just THAT awesome. Even the Doctor is genuinely bummed out by his death.
    • Mrs. Moore from Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel also qualifies.
    • Rita from The God Complex is intelligent, competent, witty and all-around awesome, to the point that the Doctor jokingly tells Amy she's fired as his companion within a few minutes of meeting her. She is so very doomed.

Rory: Every time the Doctor gets chummy with someone, I have the urge to inform their next of kin.

  • An episode of Eerie, Indiana featured a classmate of Marshall's named Devon Wilde. His name alone tells you what was in store for him.
  • From Legend of the Seeker resident Badass, Deadpan Snarker, Hell-Bent for Leather, Agony Beam wielding, Tsundere,Cara and Knight Templar, Magic Knight, Badass Long Robe, Manipulative Bastard, Faustain Rebel, Darken'Rhal had a kid. Take a moment and guess what happened the same day said kid was born.
  • While Bryce Larkin might not be the most sympathetic guy in the series, he is certainly much cooler than the lovable loser the main character is at the beginning of the series. Accordingly, he is killed in the pilot. He gets better.
  • Sokichi "Boss" Narumi from Kamen Rider Double, a hard-boiled detective who lives by the ideal created by authors like Raymond Chandler and who radiates awesome and badass from every single fiber of his being, but deep down still has his soft side. And all this is before you factor in that he's also a Kamen Rider. To put it simply, the Boss is a smooth criminal.
  • Lawrence Kutner from House.
  • Brain Cooper was considered the car-fixin' Big Brother Mentor to pretty much every kid on the block. He was even one of the few people to tell Wayne to stop beating up on Kevin. He gets shipped off to 'Nam and dies in the first episode of The Wonder Years
  • Pearl from Vampire Diaries was a 400something year old Asian vampire who kicked all sorts of ass, put the series' biggest Jerkass in his place and still managed to be pretty high on the Friendly side of the Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness despite being introduced as an antagonist. And then a few episodes after she's introduced she gets a bridge dropped on her.
  • Travis in Blakes Seven.
  • Kristina Kell in Survivor: Redemption Island was probably the only player besides Rob on the Ometepes who had a brain. First thing she thought upon seeing the return of Boston Rob and Russell Hantz? Rob's gotta go ASAP. She proceeds to find a hidden immunity idol before the first tribal council with no clues. A show record. Unfortunately she's voted out fourth and booted early, ending hope of anyone interesting from the Ometepe tribe going far.
    • Kristina definitely had a bunch of enemies in the editor crew - She only got screentime when she was shown finding the idol, during tribal council, and on redemption island. The "recap" before the finale conveniently glossed over how Kristina caused a schism in Rob's tribe so early, and Probst didn't even so much as look in her general direction at the Reunion show.
  • Several characters on Lost. Mr. Eko steps out though because he died so early on and with so little time on the show.

Myth


Tabletop Games

  • Pretty much all the Planeswalkers in pre-Time Spiral Magic: The Gathering. Planeswalkers, previously, were godlike beings of immeasurable power over not just one world, but all worlds, and the games were supposed to represent their duels (which were more like petty games than actual wars, since they could not be truly hurt). However, Wizards of the Coast realized that this meant that any time a character became popular/powerful enough, they could no longer write stories or make cards about them, and also made it difficult for the players to relate to them. So it was decided to tone down the power of Planeswalkers, and in the process the board was wiped clean, with virtually every existing Planeswalker destroyed.
    • To give you an idea, post-time spiral, only Nicol Bolas and, later Karn have managed to survive. Venser, the first of the "Neo-walkers", also proved to be to cool to live. Phryexia as a concept has also managed to make it back from the dead, though.


Theater


Video Games

  • Persona 3:
  • Fire Emblem:
    • King Eltoshan of Augustria in Fire Emblem: Geneaology of the Holy War.
    • Sigurd.
    • Uther of Ostia in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword.
    • Archsage Athos
    • Dark Sage Bramimond.
  • Metal Gear Solid:
  • Random Hajile in Snatcher.
  • Mia Fey in Ace Attorney. So awesome that it doesn't even take - she keeps being channeled through the Phoenix arc by her younger sister and later her cousin.
    • It's not so much canon as firmly implied that he won't live long, but Godot.
    • Who else could become a Ensemble Darkhorse post-death than prosecutor and noble thief Byrne Faraday?
  • Final Fantasy loves these guys:
  • Kratos, of Tales of Symphonia decides to accompany a giant comet made of mana into outer space at the end of the game, never to be seen again. The big bad is dead, there's no reason for him to go, but he does anyway because he's "A relic of the past."
    • This looks just ludicrous when you realize that one of his largest Character Development points in the game was him coming to terms with his past and not simply giving up the ghost. What he does with Derris-Kharlan really isn't any better.
      • That's not quite right. He's going there to cast away all of Derris-Kharlan's Exspheres to help fulfil Lloyd's goal. Derris-Kharlan is about the same size as a planet. It's gonna take a heck of a long time.
  • Damnit Asch if you'd stop making Luke look like such an incompetent pussy, you wouldn't be dead now would you?
    • And the rest of the god-generals.
  • Don Whitehorse in Tales of Vesperia.
  • Zero averted this, thanks to fan outcry over his Heroic Sacrifice. (That, and the creator wanted him to be the new Mega Man but Capcom said no.) Depending on the endings you get, he dies later, but not canconically. In X5, he dies again, but comes back due to more Executive Meddling, and seals himself away at the end of X6. By the end of his own series, he dies permanently...but is brought back as Model ZX in Mega Man ZX along with the Guardians.
  • Wodan Ymir from Super Robot Wars. So imagine that you've got the awesome Sanger Zonvolt, and then you CLONED him, and said clone inherits ALL his awesomeness. Can the universe keep itself from imploding with the awesomeness those two emit? The clone gotta go.
  • Rundas from Metroid Prime 3. The kicker is that after the other bounty hunters fall to The Corruption, he's the first one you have to kill.
  • Nihlus Kryik from the first Mass Effect. Badass Spectre, intrigued by the potential of the human race, clearly established as a mentor for Shepard, dies thirty minutes into the game. Samara (from the second game) describes how he outwitted her after a two week game of cat and mouse: namely, turning her own Code against her. Bear in mind that Samara is a thousand year old asari Justicar that started fighting injustice around the same time Napoleon was marching on Moscow.
    • Samara and Morinth. Whichever one dies definitely counts.
    • Thane Krios and Mordin Solus from Mass Effect 2 are both very popular with fans and highly likely to die during ME2's suicide mission; Thane is terminally ill and Mordin is at a fairly advanced age for a member of a race with a 40-year lifespan, and neither character's skillset is well-suited to front-line combat. If they make it to ME3, Mordin is all but guaranteed to die during the mission on Tuchanka unless a very specific set of requirements (one of which is killing off another former squad member) is met, and Thane inevitably dies stopping Kai Leng from assassinating the salarian councilor.
    • Also in Mass Effect 3, Badass Automaton Legion dies no matter how the situation on Rannoch is resolved, either committing a Heroic Sacrifice to help save the geth, or going berserk and forcing Tali to kill them in order to save Shepard.
  • Parodied with Santino from Tales of Monkey Island. Dead to Begin With, a skeleton in fact, though his crewmates didn't realise. When he was alive, he was charming, handsome and looked up to and respected by all, and was also the only member of Coronado De Cava's crew who could swim proficiently and speak manatee, both necessary skills in obtaining the MacGuffin. Guybrush lampshades this by remarking to De Cava "Kinda put all your eggs in one basket there, didn't you?"
  • Bill Overbeck from Left 4 Dead. In the new campaign for L4D2, it is explained that Bill sacrificed himself in order for the other three Survivors to go on, allowing them to meet the L4D2 Survivors. Even worse is that you can actually see Bill's dead body later in the chapter.
  • Teddy from MOTHER 1. Appropriately enough, his appearance in the popular EarthBound fancomic The Chosen Four is a hillariously blatant Captain Ersatz of Kamina.
    • It should be noted that Teddy doesn't die, but the fact that he's injured to the point that he can't fight (or even speak) until the ending sequence still makes the trope applicable.
    • What about EVE? Too cool and powerful to stay with the team toward the end?
  • The Suikoden series loves this trope:
    • In Suikoden II you have Genkaku (your father figure) and Annabelle (Muse´s mayor).
    • In Suikoden III Jimba bites it, moments after revealing who he really is to his oblivious daughter, who'd spent a sizable portion of the game searching for him.
    • In Suikoden IV you have Glenn the chief of the Knights of Razriel and your father figure (more or less).
    • In Suikoden V you have Ferid and Arshtat, your parents. Actually, whenever you are the parent of the main hero please apply for a swift death and the hand of this trope.
  • Starkiller from The Force Unleashed because logistically he just can't be around to kick the Empire's ass for the rebels.
    • Except it didn't really take the first time around. So he was too cool to live and too cool to stay dead.
  • Your snarky prettyboy Glass Cannon Ensemble Darkhorse teammate Leon, from Tales of Destiny. In the remake, he got a nice Obi-Wan Moment Heroic Sacrifice, staying behind to activate an elevator allowing the rest of the party to escape a flooding abandoned mine.
    • Since Namco enjoys teasing their fans, the director's cut of the remake includes a New Game+ option to play through the game following Leon as the main character instead of Stahn. Fans were hopeful that there would finally be a story path where he wouldn't be Too Cool to Live. Nope, he still dies, and the game ends there.
    • If that weren't enough, Stahn himself dies between Tales of Destiny and Tales of Destiny 2. (Although due to messing around with the timeline, in the end he gets better.)
  • The World Ends With You: Sho Minamimoto. Zetta duh.
    • And yet he maybe didn't as he didn't get erased despite clearly being in the UG. He probably passed out at best.
  • Pankraz from Dragon Quest V
  • In the Halo series, Sergeant Johnson appears to fall into this trope twice, but survives off-screen the first time around.
    • Comes up again with all five members of Noble Team in Halo: Reach. To clarify, the dead characters are the elite squadron commander, the girl with the robot arm, the guy with the skull on his faceplace, the guy using a turret as his primary weapon and the main character who spends his/her last minutes trying to hold off the entire Covenant army. Too Cool To Live indeed.
  • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin features the grizzled, experienced, charismatic, and tirelessly selfless Captain Brenner, the undisputed commander of his unit of heroic soldiers, and, for all intents and purposes, the protagonist of the first half of the game. Since the younger, far more Bishonen Wide-Eyed Idealist newcomer Will has to have some plausible reason to take the mantle from Brenner....
  • In Dragon Age, Duncan and, very late in the game, Riordan.
  • E-102 Gamma from Sonic Adventure... and then his parts are used to create E-102r, a.k.a Chaos Gamma... and then he gets an extremely badass "younger brother" E-123 Omega (who was first voiced by Jon St. John, of course.)
  • In Baten Kaitos Origins, party member Guillo is a total Badass, a hilarious Deadpan Snarker, a big Game Breaker in combat, and has a compelling backstory. It sacrifices itself almost immediately after the final boss to save Sagi from a malfunctioning machina.
  • Ghost from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. He was all around a badass special forces mofo, but the thing that really set him apart was his iconic skull mask. He was killed off rather unceremoniously, however the fan reaction to him was so strong that there was talk of making a spinoff game starring him. The game seems to have been scrapped, however he did end up being included in Sony's ambitious Intercontinuity Crossover commercial Michael.


Webcomics


Western Animation

  • Jet in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
  • Tigerhawk in Transformers: Beast Wars is also the latest of latecomers, being only in a handful of episodes. Sell those toys!
    • Ditto Dinobot, Depth Charge, AND Dinobot 2.
  • Omega Supreme in Transformers Animated who performed a Heroic Sacrifice the episode that he came online.
    • Subverted when he was revealed to not only have survived, but brainwashed into becoming Megatron's chief weapon. Double Subverted when he ends up back into sleep mode anyway but triple subverted in that he is eventually brought back fully in control of himself and makes it back to his home-planet where he is finally recognized as the hero that he always was.
    • Also in TFA Prowl. Just when he's mastered the cyberninja arts and and has become totally awesome, he sacrifices himself to save Detroit.
    • Also in TFA, Blurr. A very competent secret agent who's able use his superspeed to curb stomp squads of Decepticons. Too bad The Mole realized Blurr was about to blow his cover and had to dispatch him (according to some cut material, he may still be alive...)
    • The newest member of the too cool to live Transformers club, Cliffjumper from Transformers Prime. Awesome car form? Check. Has cool viking horns on his head? Check. Voiced by The freaking Rock?! Check. Dead before the second commercial break? Check.
    • Skyquake, a Decepticon version of this Trope, could be considered the Decepticon version of Cliffjumper.
  • Subverted-Charles Foster Ofdensen from Metalocalypse. He died at the end of season 2 only to return in the nick of time in the season 3 premiere in a truly awesome fashion.
  • Hexxus in Fern Gully. It helps that he's voiced by Tim Curry. And he's the Big Bad.
  • Nabu from Winx Club. Seriously! On top of being an incredibly sweet and nice guy, he managed to single-handedly take out Duman and close a powerful magical portal that would've sucked all of the Earth fairies into oblivion in just one episode…only for him die after using up all his energy. None of the other Specialists ever reached the level of Badass that he did and they have had twice as much screen time. Though, with a fifth season in the works and the fact that he appears in the second movie which seems to take place after season 4, Nabu may be well on his way to being Not Quite Dead after all...
  • Rod "Torque" Redline from Cars 2. Voiced by Bruce Campbell, said many funny one-liners, and killed in his second apperence.
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