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The Never Say "Die" trope as used in popular culture. Certain concepts considered "too sensitive" are only ever referred to by euphemisms. The most common …
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All cadets except seniors in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets...
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An anime sub substitutes any instance of "sent to the Shadow...
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Western Animation / Never Say Die - TV Tropes. Follow. Never...
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In the third game the translators really had no choice, as...
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Never Say Die / Anime & Manga. Main. Awesome. Characters....
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Many tropes originated in literary works. Literature being...
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Literature. 1Q84: Aomame refers to her murder victims as...
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Literature. 1Q84: Aomame refers to her murder victims as "being sent to another world". Subverted most notably in #22. Rachel initially wants to say she's going to 'destroy' Sixth Ranger Traitor David, but that's a 'weasel word' and she admits to herself (and the reader) that she wants to kill him. Badly.
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Certain concepts considered "too sensitive" are only ever referred to by euphemisms.
The most common example is euphemisms for death in children's shows, even in cases where a character is killed, and they are rendered dead, the script will never use those two words. Almost always, the writers don't even get very creative with poetic descriptions, and will apply basic synonyms of "destroyed" to living things that we usually associate with inanimate objects, or have the characters unable to finish their sentences ("Is he...?"). Hell is also constantly neutered; when the plot absolutely needs something similar, they often resort to calling them "Nether-something" (of course, except for the Netherlands, aka Holland).
Another frequent method is to hastily add dialogue that suggests the people we've just indirectly seen killed didn't really die--e.g. showing a city being destroyed, and having a character note: "Good thing everyone in that city evacuated at the last minute!"
Sex and certain bodily functions also receive this treatment, especially in shows from the earliest years of television. For example, in I Love Lucy, Lucy was never referred to as "pregnant" despite her condition being the focus of more than a few episodes, and the two were never shown in the same bed together, despite being a married couple.
For one reason or another, children's shows also shy away from using "God." Whenever religion comes into play, it is generally replaced with something along the lines of "the big guy". This one also has its roots in ancient tradition: in Judaism, it is considered blasphemous to use any of God's various actual names except in specific prayers, so His titles ("God" is considered a title; also "the Lord", "the Name", etc) are used instead, and over time even these have become somewhat taboo, to the point where very observant Jews will write "G-d". Words such as Damn and Hell will likely be replaced by "Dang it!" while Hell is replaced by underworld or Hades and so on , even though many people claim that anything in the Bible isn't a swear.
It should be noted that one likely reason for this trope is because the demographic is most likely one that doesn't understand the concept of death all too well.
•4Kids! Entertainment became synonymous with this trope in the anime fandom.
•Yu-Gi-Oh!: Like DBZ, almost every mention of death is switched out for "sent to the Shadow Realm" in the 4Kids translation. Which makes it sound even worse if you know the concept of Heaven and Hell and think of "send to the shadow realm" as a euphemism for "condemn to Hell" body and soul.
•Sometimes they didn't use the Shadow Realm excuse, when the story arcs being worked on didn't leave place to shoehorn it in. Namely, Pegasus's researchers "vanishing" after researching the God Cards, Noah getting "his body inutilized" (and later "saving himself in a backup file" when his Virtual World is destroyed), Amelda's little brother getting "captured" by the Kaiba Corp, Raphael's family being "saved" by lifeboats after a shipwreck... you get the picture.
•Parodied quite often by Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.
•Averted hard in Yu-Gi-Oh! the Movie by Anubis. Quite ironic since the movie was made by 4Kids.
•Yu-Gi-Oh GX: All mentions of death are replaced to being "sent to the stars", though death was still heavily implied.
•In Avengers: The Initiative, this is specifically mentioned. Cloud 9 is shocked when she blows up an enemy plane, saying that "I mean in cartoons when that happens you see the guy bail out with a parachute..."
•In the WITCH comic book, the rather violent and quite graphic death of Big Bad Nerissa is described as her being "destroyed".
•The film Muppet Treasure Island plays with the trope: Billy Bones' death after getting the Black Spot (a) is totally overblown for comedic effect, and (b) gets a reaction of "He's dead!? But this is supposed to be a kids' movie!" along with, "Guys... we are standing in a room with a dead guy!" There's also a "character" (just a skeleton wearing a pirate hat) named Dead Tom (introduced in succession after Old Tom and Really Old Tom). This was taken further when a pirate is crying over a recently shot Dead Tom until another pirate patiently explains he was already dead. That's why he's called Dead Tom. The bereaved pirate unceremoniously drops the skeleton and moves on.
•This is spoofed in Looney Tunes Back in Action, where the villainous Acme Chairman orders one of his henchmen to "Destroy the duck! And when I say destroy the duck, I mean KILL HIM! Messily and painfully!"
•Nobody's allowed to die in George of the Jungle, they just get really big boo-boos.
•Bodily functions taboo lampshade: In Pleasantville, Jennifer is astonished to find the girls' room at Pleasantville High has no toilets. Apparently it exists only as a ceramic-tiled girls' chat-retreat with running water, as the Fire Department exists only to get cats out of trees. As for death . . . what's that?!
•Also lampshaded by that Reese Witherspoon's character is the one who directly or indirectly teaches the whole town about sex, most hilariously when she gives her own "mother" the talk.
•In a variation on this trope, the film The Pope Must Die (about a newly elected Pope being plotted against) was forced by Catholic outrage to change its name to The Pope Must Diet (about a fat...newly elected Pope...being plotted against). The "t" was added to the cover art as if cut from a magazine. No dieting happens in the movie.
•Subverted in Animorphs, most notably in #22. Rachel initially wants to say she's going to 'destroy' Sixth Ranger Traitor David, but that's a 'weasel word' and she admits to herself (and the reader) that she wants to kill him. Badly. While Cassie comes up with the only safe alternative to killing David, Rachel is stuck struggling with her violent tendencies for the rest of the series.
•Again subverted when a family of campers gets caught up in a battle between Yeerks and free Hork-Bajir, who have, until this point, stubbornly refused to believe that the battle was real no matter what evidence they'd shown. They'd appeared to believe, but we find that they didn't really get it until this scene happens: (Paraphrased)
•Piers Anthony does this on purpose in his Xanth series. Instead of going to the bathroom or engaging in sexual activity, characters merely see ellipses (. . .).
•Semi-used in The Dark Is Rising series. The Balance Between Good and Evil means that both heroes and villains are universally immortal, making banishment to another dimension the favoured way of defeating an enemy.
•In The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, the Big Bad seeks to assassinate the title character. That this is rendered as making him "sleep forever" is especially ridiculous in a story which begins with a global nuclear war, though one might well question the suitability of the latter for a children's story.
•In similar vein to the real life examples below, the Discworld brings us this saying;
•Sesame Street: Averted famously in the "Goodbye, Mr. Hooper" episode that opened the 16th season. Will Lee, who played longtime "Grandpa" figure and crumedgeony storekeeper Harold Hooper, had died in December 1982, while filming for the 1982-1983 season was still ongoing. The remainder of his episodes were aired in early 1983, after which his character is absent and no mention is made of either that or why he is missing ... the subject not dealt with until that fall. Several options on how to explain why Mr. Hooper was missing were debated, including him having retire and leave Sesame Street, before the definitive episode on explaining death to a child became the final product. The producers decided to make it part of the show that Mr. Hooper died and, on the advice of child psychologists, they pulled no punches. Big Bird is told that Mr. Hooper died (not "passed away," not "moved on") and will not be coming back. Big Bird is confused and angry, and the adults (with actors not attempting in the least to hide their tears - many holding hands throughout) tell Big Bird that's it's okay to be sad and to miss him. One of the best moments in the history of TV.
•Also a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for the Children's Television Workshop and PBS, and a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming for the show, despite the sadness of the moment.
•The A-Team. Since it was classified as a children's show, you have the ridiculous premise in which the A Team amasses a massive arsenal of machine guns and weaponry, faces off against a similarly armed force, exchange thousands of retorts of gunfire - and no one dies. Man, their aim sucked.
•Parodied in Family Guy when Peter and company, dressed as the A-Team, attempt to stop a construction crew from demolishing a park using guns and ramming into things with their vans. The main characters are surprised when the construction crew assumes Peter and friends are trying to kill them.
•Webster: In early first-season episodes, the title character (played by pint-sized Emmanuel Lewis) was told that his parents were "away" (they had actually been killed in a car accident) and that he was merely staying with George and Katherine. George decides he can no longer put off telling Webster the truth ... and does in a truly heartbreaking scene.
•Power Rangers goes overboard with this, sometimes to (unintentionally) comic effect, speaking of people as having been "destroyed." In one particularly comic example, a well-known proverb becomes, "Those who live by the sword shall come to their end by the sword." Which made it all the more surprising when the Pink Ranger in Time Force screams that she would "not let [her fiance's] death be in vain," (though at other times, she says that he was "destroyed"). Of course, it turns out that he's Not Quite Destroyed.
•Similar to the Goonies example, Black Sabbath wrote a song insisting that you "Never Say Die," and named the album after it. Averted in which the title was not picked for the sake of euphemism, but instead, it is to give a message of optimism to listeners.
•Iron Savior would also like to remind you to "Never Say Die".
•The Hanzel und Gretyl track SS Deathstar Supergalaktik has this in its lyrics, probably as a reference to the lightheartedness of Star Wars.
•The Cheetah Girls' song "Girl Power" contains a literal example of this trope, as the phrase "Never Say Die" is actually in the refrain.
•YUI has a song entitled "Never Say Die".
•The Gothic Archies song "Freakshow" has the lines "real people ask you why/with a face like you've got, won't you just lie down and..." with the obvious missing word being "die".
•In the Mage Knight miniatures game, a critter is explicitly dead when its dial is turned and three skulls appear in its stat slot. In Hero Clix, by the same company, there are no skulls - instead, three big red 'KO's appear, and the rules specifically refer to such as state as being 'defeated'.
•Kissing up to 1980s action cartoons, Cartoon Action Hour follows this trope with a capital N--unless of course, you playing The Movie.
•In the Yu-Gi-Oh Card Game, any card with the word "Death" in its name has it changed to the deliberate transliteration of "Des." So we have Des Koala and Des Frog instead of Death Koala and Death Frog. Additionally, cards with the word "Demon" in their name got it changed to "Archfiend," so "Red Demon Dragon" is "Red Dragon Archfiend" now.
•More importantly, there were already some cards with Archfiend in their name. Then they released a card that involved cards with "archfiend" in their name — which, naturally, caused a whole bunch of problems in the english version, as it'd arbitrarily (or so it seems) affect some of the archfiends but not others!
•In Magic: The Gathering, creatures are "destroyed", even though the amount of damage is "lethal" and they go to a discard pile called a "graveyard". Likewise, players with no life left just "lose the game".
•This is because "destroy" is the term for sending a card from play to the graveyard via damage or "destroy" effects, and includes things that aren't alive such as enchantments and lands. There's no reason to create a separate term for the same game mechanic when it's applied to creatures. Traditional Planeswalkers meanwhile are incredibly difficult to actually kill, their physical bodies simply being a projection of their will.
•At Disney Theme Parks, it's mentioned that "Big Thunder Mountain Railroad" is haunted because it's built on a "sacred place" to natives. Obviously, an Indian Burial Ground.
•That's strange, since at New Orleans Square they have an attraction whose very concept is death (The Haunted Mansion)! And the theme song "Grim Grinning Ghosts" explicitly starts out with "When the crypt doors creak...."
•In the early years of Bionicle, "destroy" and "defeat" were used. This has been mostly averted in later years, however. Interestingly, its replacement, •Even HF seems to be veering away from this slowly.
Nobody ever DIES in Nintendo. They're either "defeated" or they turn into an item and float away. Ingrid: She had a very important mission assigned to her. Her mission was to take him out. Carmen: On a date? Ingrid: No. Uh, take him... Carmen: Oh, you mean... (makes a cutting sound and motion to her neck) Ingrid: I shouldn't be telling you this. Good thing there were no people in that building ...
Basic Trope: Words related to death are avoided Straight: Bob is gunned down by a barrage of lasers. When his partner Alice is asked what happened to him, she replies "They destroyed him." Exaggerated: Bob's entrails are violently ripped from his body and stuffed into his mouth, suffocating him...
Apr 15, 2014 · Basic Trope: Words related to death are avoided Straight: Bob is gunned down by a barrage of lasers. When his partner Alice is asked what happened to him, she replies "They destroyed him." Exaggerated
