Zipping Up the Bodybag

How do you show for certain that a character has been Killed Off for Real and hasn't just been wounded or crawled away to take cover until the end of the fight? Show a close-up shot of them being zipped up in a bodybag. Pulling a blanket over their heads serves a similar purpose. Dies Wide Open will also often be invoked. Just the sound of the zipper on the bodybag can have the same sort of finality as a nail being put into a coffin. That character is dead. Deceased. No more. He is an ex-parrot.

Unless, of course, it's just a setup for a Bodybag Trick or Waking Up At the Morgue, both of which this trope is obviously related to. Can easily be used as a Meaningful Background Event.

Sub-Trope of He's Dead, Jim.

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

Examples of Zipping Up the Bodybag include:

Film

• All That Jazz ends with the main character being zipped up.
• The Hunt for Red October: Early in the film, we see Political Officer Putin being zipped up as Captain Ramius expresses his regret over the unfortunate death from slipping on some spilled tea.
• Loaded Weapon 1. Played with, since the guy isn't even dead yet.
• The Movie of Master and Commander uses this trope in the old fashioned way, stitching up the dead bodies up in their hammocks before dropping them over the side.
• Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan: Midshipman Peter Preston
• The Terminator: Kyle Reese

Live Action Television

• NCIS: They did this to Mike Franks. What showing him die wasn't enough? *sob*
• One of the Horatio Hornblower TV films featured a scene similar to the Master and Commander example above (produced several years earlier), with a character snarking about another sailor taking such care that you'd think he was sending a gift home to his wife. The character doing the careful stitching insisted that he just wanted to make sure it was done right.
• Happens about Once an Episode on any given Police Procedural or Forensic Drama.
• The Wire, we see Omar's body bag being zipped up in the morgue at the end of an episode. Furthermore, in this scene, it's shown that there was a mistake with the ID tags, which the ME has to correct, which further emphasize the point: he's no longer a character, just a statistic.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons: After Red Barclay dies from beef poisoning during a steak eating contest with Homer, the coroners zip up the body bag on Red. They give an extra one to Marge just in case, because Homer doesn't look so good either.