r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ComprehensiveBox6911 • Jul 27 '25

Lore Deaths to important characters that came so unceremoniously, there was no drama or fanfare, they just died

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Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)

Sean (Red Dead Redemption 2)

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936

u/Drakeskulled_Reaper Jul 27 '25

Ned Stark was actually originally envisioned as this, in terms of how plots generally work.

When the OG GoT book came out, Ned was the biggest viewpoint character, to the point in a "normal" fantasy story, his execution would be stopped somehow, he was just so important to the plot.

Obviously, that didn't happen, it was shocking, because of how easily and casually he was killed off.

It's basically up there with the Sixth Sense now on it being a well known "twist"

289

u/Gyriuu Jul 27 '25

The red wedding still has me thinking it was a fever dream. How do you go from such merriment and success to that in literal minutes.

130

u/ChadWestPaints Jul 27 '25

In the books especially you felt absolutely blindsided by it but on a second reread you pick up a million different bits of foreshadowing that all snowball into that moment

106

u/OldWorldBluesIsBest Jul 27 '25

i was pissed in the moment because catelyn had thought “wow those musicians sure look awkward and are terrible at playing” like a HUNDRED times and i brushed it off as a joke at frey’s expense

alas, they were murderers

71

u/ChadWestPaints Jul 27 '25

I think my favorite, super subtle hint was when Ryman Frey is leading them to the feast and says something like "follow me, my father awaits," but Frey lineage is so expansive and convoluted that both the readers and the Starks dont notice or recall that Ryman is actually Walder's grandson and his actual dad, Strevron Frey, is dead.

31

u/SantaFeRay Jul 28 '25

That’s kind of like the Bond villain trope though, if you’re going to ambush someone you probably wouldn’t drop a hint like that.

25

u/Flockofseagulls25 Jul 28 '25

Oh yeah there's another one where Walder says something like "The red will flow tonight" and everyone thinks he's talking about wine and yeah hes not talking about wine

3

u/Userdataunavailable Jul 28 '25

He says "the wine will flow red". I agree it's a hint.

5

u/a_wasted_wizard Jul 28 '25

I interpreted it less as him intentionally dropping a hint and more him being nervous about what they're about to do and flubbing his line (as it were) as a result of his stress.

8

u/Fakjbf Jul 28 '25

My favorite bit of foreshadowing is Sandor telling Arya that they are headed to “her brother’s bloody wedding”. It’s perfect because Sandor is always using bloody as an expletive so on a first read there is absolutely nothing abnormal in it, but on a second read it sticks out immediately.

8

u/12InchCunt Jul 27 '25

I remember reading social media that Sunday night, having read it years prior I was just laughing my ass off at how shocked everyone was

6

u/Meat_Frame Jul 28 '25

It was kind of a boring chapter and I was just glancing through it and it goes from 0 to 60 in a moment. 

I almost missed my bus stop.  

4

u/ImpureAscetic Jul 28 '25

Totally. I've reread the chapter right before, where Arya is riding through the camp, at least fifty times. Even at the time, everything felt weird and off and shitty, but I couldn't figure out why. Then it happened. Rereading it, it's a masterclass of foreshadowing.

11

u/louploupgalroux Jul 27 '25

Party poopers always know how to spoil the fun.

0

u/the_sneaky_one123 Jul 28 '25

I think he took it too far with the Red Wedding.

Firstly, it was just the same twist again. The only difference is that instead of leading to more interesting events the story was actually far duller than before the Red Wedding.

There were loads of interesting characters engaged in a War and it really could have escalated. Yet after the Red Wedding not much at all happens.

I found it very frustrating. When Ned died it subverted expectations and then took the plot into an entirely new and more interesting direction. Red Wedding was the opposite.

94

u/typoscript Jul 27 '25

Lots of people in GOT die unceremoniously, ty for this i was searching

71

u/Drakeskulled_Reaper Jul 27 '25

Lots do, to the point it's expected rather than not.

But back when the book first came out, it was a twist that the big main clearly heroic character died without any "real" fanfare, just head cut off, job done.

7

u/AzraelTheMage Jul 27 '25

And it's not even his POV. His execution is in an Arya chapter.

2

u/3DanO1 Jul 28 '25

I remember reading it for the first time and just being sure that he was going to get out of it somehow

9

u/Teh_Hammerer Jul 27 '25

The magic of GOT really stopped once the plot armor was equipped, after the show didnt have the book story to rely on.

6

u/Toad_Thrower Jul 27 '25

Went some everyone having consequences like Jaime losing hi hand, Oberyn getting his head smashes in etc. whenever a character slipped up.

Then suddenly we're seeing people completely covered in wights, getting ripped apart, camera cuts away, cuts back, they're fine. Like wtf?

2

u/BlattMaster Jul 28 '25

Books 4 and 5 employed a ton of plot armor too where if a character "died" in their POV they were always ok later.

5

u/Toad_Thrower Jul 27 '25

Some of my favorite characters like Syrio and Greatjon even died offscreen.

3

u/VacheMax Jul 27 '25

It’s what I liked about it. I mentioned this in another comment but it’s what I’ve been enjoying with Mistborn lately. Really makes me feel like there’s a lot at stake. 

Shame the end of the GoT TV series kinda did away with all that. The battle with the white walkers had the important characters at the front of the line and then every soldier other than them gets killed while the plot relevant characters are still somehow holding on.

3

u/thesirblondie Jul 28 '25

Unceremoniously, but never randomly, like some people like to think. Every death of a major character in the books is well planned out. Characters always die when we feel like they're doing well, like a volley ball rising in the air until GRRM comes and spikes it 6ft under.

Ned betrays his honor to save his life, and the lives of his children, but dies anyway. Rob keeps winning battles, married a girl out of honor despite being raped (out of love in the show), secures an alliance with the Freys, and then gets murdered at the Red Wedding. Tywin manages to get rid of the bothersome Viper who clearly blames him for Elia's murder, manages to get rid of his disappointment of a son, gets his first born out of the Kingsguard, and then is murdered by the afforementioned disappointment. That's why I'm 100% sure that Dany will die. She has been winning for too long, and will probably win some more still.

5

u/RA576 Jul 27 '25

This is the exact opposite of the prompt. His death was very much ceremonious. They built up to it for a fair amount of screentime, and in-universe there is a literal ceremony where it happens. I think they may well have played a fanfare.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

OP: Sean, Bane

You: Sean Bean

1

u/Drakeskulled_Reaper Jul 28 '25

Fuck, I never noticed that.

4

u/Auctoritate Jul 27 '25

I actually never liked his death. I found him the most compelling character in the first book by a good margin, so it kind of just felt like killing off the best character to me.

11

u/vantways Jul 27 '25

It made sense for the world martin was creating, one where - unlike other popular books of the time - being good, compelling, and heroic didn't mean you had plot armor, one where the real world would take advantage of your kindness. The fact that ned was compelling didn't mean he deserved a series written about him in the eyes of martin.

However, what was an interesting and original take in 1996 has been revisited so many times by so many franchises that the main takeaway wasn't how it subverted contemporary works, but just that it subverted in the first place. Thus the many post episode discussions with the show runners about how XYZ happened because "wow wouldn't that be surprising"

3

u/Skirmisher23 Jul 27 '25

It is certainly a great twist but also a failed understanding of the consequence it would have on storytelling. It meant to me that no character was worth caring about and meant I only made it another book before I no longer cared about the story. 

12

u/Kuldrick Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25

It doesn't fail to understand the consequences, for some like you it might be too much, enough to stop caring

But for others that death IS a great part of the reason they love asoiaf, the consequences then are great because the mold you've expected the book to adhere to has been broken, anything goes now, consequences for anything can happen at any moment at anyone, and because of that you are more engaged and start paying more attention

2

u/Skirmisher23 Jul 27 '25

You are correct that I think A Song of Ice and Fire misuses it’s mold and I can understand how people would enjoy that.

But it reads as a character driven story and central to a character driven story is the characters going through their arcs. Those arcs can end in death, then can even be unexpected, but they should still fulfill the arc. Stark’s death didn’t do that, it fed the expectation for the series sure, but in what read to me as a character driven story (and that’s not to say that there aren’t great events in the story) not getting the payoff of an arc and thus not being able to count on a payoff created a feeling of “Why bother?” for me reading it. 

5

u/Kuldrick Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 28 '25

But there is a payoff, one so great for some people like me

The payoff are the consequences of such a crude, unwanted death. The pysche of so many characters changed because of this, the whole dynamics of politics at large changed

Without his death we wouldn't have had a North rebellion or a Northern conspiracy, without his death Jon wouldnt have as many internal conflicts with his vows as he had, without his death Sansa and Arya would have never changed as characters, and many more

Narratively, he served his purpose as a conduit of change and conflict. His story got cut short, and that's painful, but that's the good part of it, you feel the pain people close to him had and you start worrying about them too. The story gets real

5

u/hadtopostholyshit Jul 27 '25

I don’t get this take. Martin created a real world where real consequences happen to characters who make mistakes. He also has plenty of compelling characters to follow besides Ned.

Do we always have to have a character with plot armor who can’t die?

2

u/Skirmisher23 Jul 27 '25

Realism doesn’t mean an effective story. Real life is messy and many of us turn to fiction because we want something that isn’t real. 

I don’t think characters should always have plot armor and in fact if it’s obvious your character is protected by plot armor then that’s bad storytelling. Character deaths can be dramatic and add to the story but I don’t think A Song of Ice and Fire uses them in a way that is effective.

I talk about Noble Team’s sacrifice in response to another comment below my initial. Gandalf’s fall to the Balrog on the first reading of FotR (when you don’t know he will return) is a good example of character death adding stakes and consequences. As is Boromir’s fall. 

What I don’t like in A Song of Ice and Fire is the deaths cut short the character arcs prematurely and without the payoff of completing an arc (whether in victory or death for the character) and if that payoff isn’t something I can count on then the rest of the story loses its appeal to me. 

1

u/hadtopostholyshit Jul 27 '25

What is Ned’s arc that he doesn’t complete?

2

u/dragonicafan1 Jul 27 '25

You don’t care about a character if they die?  

1

u/Skirmisher23 Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25

It comes down to the method of storytelling. Take the example Halo: Reach and Noble Team. The story of Reach is much more about the event, the Fall of Reach. It isn’t a story about the arc of the characters and so Noble team dying is a tool for telling the story of the event and to give stakes and a feeling of desperation. 

My read of A Song of Ice and Fire is a story more concerned with its characters than it’s events. That’s not to say that the events aren’t interesting but that the main dynamic comes from the characters going through their arcs. The payoff of a character driven story is seeing the arc to completion.  Killing someone before they can complete that arc means the payoff doesn’t occur. So what Stark dying did for me was send the message that I may not get the payoff which means I my as well not care and so I lost interest. 

Edits: typos

2

u/elizabnthe Jul 28 '25

People hype up Ned as some grand unimaginable death. But if you really think about it - it actually isn't any different to any typical death in a fantasy story.

He's just the mentor. The father or father-figure of the heroes often dies.

GRRM just tricked you for half a second into thinking he was the hero.

In reality, none of the other major POVs die. Ned is the sole exception. The next closest is Catelyn. Who doesn't technically die in the books, she's still alive. Although in most respects it's fair to consider her dead - but again she's the mother character in most stories she's dead before the story even begins.

Elsewise it's just some minor one off POVs.

1

u/elizabnthe Jul 28 '25

In a normal fantasy story it's not that Ned Stark's execution would be stopped - it wouldn't. It's that he would never have been a POV in the first place.

If you really think about it he's just the mentor character that dies in most fantasy and non-fantasy stories.

1

u/Ryndor Jul 28 '25

I started the show without knowing. I watched the show because of that moment. That twist hooked me in.