As a Death Trope, contains many spoilers. Tread with care.
Times where Anyone Can Die in Western Animation.
- In a rarity for a children's programme, The Animals of Farthing Wood had a fairly high mortality rate, with a lot of the major characters being killed off as the series went on. By the end of the show, only a few of the original animals still survived.
- The Arkham series inspired Batman: Assault on Arkham features the Suicide Squad as the lead characters, with Batman and the Joker taking a backseat this time around. The story takes place after the prequel, Origins, but before Arkham Asylum, and considering that out of the entire squad, Harley Quinn and Deadshot are the only two you see in later games, the last 10 to 15 minutes of the film becomes this. Something puzzling is that Arkham Origins and Arkham Origins: Blackgate took care to hint at a Suicide Squad feature in the near future, with Deathstroke, Harley Quinn, Bronze Tiger and Captain Boomerang all receiving clipboards that seemed to hint at their inclusion. Of them all, Boomerang and Quinn show up on the team, and ironically are among those who don't die, compared to the newly introduced villains for the Squad specifically for the film, which may or may not be a clue towards a future Suicide Squad game.
- Beast Machines, the sequel series to Beast Wars, trims Rhinox, Megatron, and Optimus from the surviving eight. The death count of its new arrivals is harder to calculate; it depends on whether or not taking a character created by the extensive reprogramming of an old one and reverting him to factory settings counts as death. The new character definitely permanently ceases to be, but you may not consider that to be "dead." If it is counted, the death toll of Beast Machines new arrivals just tops 50%.
- The animated series Exo Squad also used this trope, inspired by Macross and Robotech, quite daring for the time.
- Downplayed in Family Guy. So far, the only main or central characters to die have been Stewie (who died in an episode that was All Just a Dream) and Brian (who was brought back to life not even three episodes later). Nevertheless, several minor and recurring characters, such as Francis Griffin and Diane Simmons, have been Killed Off for Real.
- Final Space truly loves this trope, depending on what part of the Cerebus Rollercoaster it's on.
- Season 1: Avocato is killed right after rescuing his son halfway through, and the finale has a truly massive Final Battle where KVN and the SAMES are killed, and it culminates in the entire Earth and everyone on it being destroyed.
- Season 2: Though KVN and Avocato get betternote , the first episode has the Lord Commander be unceremoniously gunned down, and the finale has Nightfall die.
- Season 3 has a truly massive amount of casualties. AVA is killed during the confrontation with a Titan in the first episode, Fox is killed by Invictus and has his corpse puppeteered, Clarence and recurring antagonist Todd H. Watkins are both fatally wounded in a shoot-out, Kevin Van Newton pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to activate the KVN Net, Bolo is murdered by the Lord Commandernote , and the season finale has Mooncake possibly killed by Ash.
- Frisky Dingo is one of the few [adult swim] original cartoons where death is permanent, which it makes liberal use of by killing off both major and minor characters left and right during the second season.
- Since the series Futurama starts in the year 3000, everyone Fry ever knew (excluding his girlfriend who froze herself) is dead. Also, the crew die at various points of the series, either getting better or just a What If? question, including when all the crew, excluding the Professor, died in the very first episode of the return onto Comedy Central. Fry has also passed through space and time several times.
- Harley Quinn (2019): Being an adult animated series with a Denser and Wackier tone as well as exploring a more realistic look at the trappings and consequences of superhero tropes, the show has demonstrated a willingness to kill off characters no matter how important they are in other continuities, whether to demonstrate the stakes or for a quick, dark laugh. For instance, the first season finale has Scarecrow die, Harley kills the Penguin in the premiere of the second season and even Nightwing dies partway through season four.
- Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts becomes shockingly liberal with Character Death after Dr. Emilia introduces the Mute cure: a permanent Death of Personality which regresses the Mutes to normal animals. A number of secondary characters from prior episodes are Killed Off for Real through this method in the third season. While Dr. Emilia herself survives to an ambiguous Fate Worse than Death, she manages to kill Hugo/Scarlemagne, the series' initial (and redeemed) Big Bad, first.
- Kulipari: An Army of Frogs downplays this trope. The show doesn't kill off too many characters, but the characters who do die are fairly major recurring characters. Even Queen Jarrah, who is one of the show's main antagonists, is killed before the season finale.
- By the second episode, Maya and the Three establishes no one is safe with the deaths of Maya's brothers and hundreds of Teca troops in battle (on top of King Teca being gravely injured and only barely getting out alive). By the end of the series, the death toll is even bigger and includes Zatz, Picchu, all of the gods except Ah Puch, and Maya herself.
- Characters in Regular Show die nearly Once per Episode. Most of the time, it's innocent civilians or the Monster of the Week who end up dying, but the main characters often have a tendency to be killed, even if they inevitably get better. It's been calculated that, on-screen, 1,077 characters have died over the course of the series.Mordecai: Do you ever think about how many people we've seen probably die?
Rigby: Ehh, I'm sure they're all fine... - Rick and Morty has this to the point where someone made a compilation
, and that video didn't even include deaths from Season 3. - Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends killed off characters with surprising aplomb for a cartoon in the late nineties; many one-shots, named or not — such as the old leader of the Conduit, Kao Lin, and Ti-Yet's old enemy, Su-Ak — bit the dust, but the casualty rate also encompassed several recurring antagonists (like Hanek, Kahn Mort, and Baron Samedi) but several of the good guys as well, most of them towards the end of the series; Mrs. Smith-Heisen is coldly killed by the series' Big Bad, Spot gives its life to contain a nuclear explosion, and Jerich, Ruck (a redeemed baddie), and Logan's adoptive father all sacrifice their own lives battling the Shadoen fleet. Even main characters weren't exempt from this; Trueblood, part of the main cast roster since the first episode, is torn apart by Rinaker (revealed as the Shadoen agent Wraith and the ultimate main villain of the series), and Wraith in turn is conclusively killed off for real at the end of the series alongside the entire Shadoen fleet. Unlike many instances of this trope, when a character dies, they stay dead.
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated goes in this direction by the end of season one, and especially in the finale, although all the deaths come undone in the end.
- The Simpsons: Since the Treehouse of Horror Halloween episodes are not part of the show's canon, the writers frequently end up killing off lots and lots of characters for black comedy; not even the Simpson family themselves are safe.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars doesn't touch any of the characters from the films because most of them are Doomed by Canon already, but they are not afraid of introducing an original character and then kill them in the same episode. Jedi and well as clone troopers. Sometimes any original, named character surviving past an episode is a surprise. Sometimes. Each season killed off at least one major recurring character, as listed below.
- Season 1 introduced the Domino Squad in the fifth episode. Then killed them all, with the exception of Echo and Fives.
- Season 2 killed off Padme's "uncle," Senator Onacconda Farr.
- In an early episode of Season 3, we're introduced to General Ima-Gun Di and Captain Keeli, a Jedi Master and his Clone Trooper lieutenant, both of whom have unique designs, interesting personalities, and are both fairly badass. By the end of the episode, they're both dead. Ziro the Hutt is killed almost halfway into the season, with the death of the Toydarian King Katuunko coming shortly afterwards. Near the end of the same season, they killed Even Piel, a background Jedi master. This happened just after the viewers were getting past the death of Echo.
- Early on in Season 4 General Tarpals died to capture General Grievous. They even had Obi-Wan pull a fake death later the same season.
- Season 5 took out Adi Gallia in the season premiere, and then killed off Pre Vizsla, Savage Opress, and Duchess Satine near the end of the season, all within the same arc.
- Season 6 killed off the final member of the Domino Squad, Fives, as well as Rush Clovis.
- Though not quite to the extent of its predecessor series, Star Wars Rebels was not shy of unexpectedly killing off major characters when opportunity arose.
- One of the best examples happens in Episode 11, where Governor Tarkin calls the resident two comic relief bumbling bad guys into his office, and promptly has the Grand Inquisitor behead them both for their failure. Said Inquisitor himself would perish in the Season 1 Finale, when he chooses to fall to his death rather than face the Emperor's wrath, to the surprise of many people who expected him to be a long-running recurring villain.
- Minister Maketh Tua was blown up in her shuttle in the Season 2 premiere. The Season 2 finale would kill off the three remaining inquisitors, the Fifth Brother, the Seventh Sister, and the Eighth Brother, in rather violent fashion, and would possibly kill off Ahsoka Tano, too.
- Cool Old Guy and close friend of Ezra's Morad Sumar would unexpectedly die in Season 3 when Thrawn forces him to test a speeder bike they both know has been sabotaged to kill its pilot. Mandalorian bad guy Gar Saxon dies in Season 3 in only his second appearance, Darth Maul perishes in a Single-Stroke Battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi, and recurring Rebel commander Jun Sato takes out both Admiral Konstantine and himself by crashing their flagships into each other.
- Season 4 really upped the ante in this regard by killing off Imperial officers Slavin and Titus the moment they return. Following that, Old Jho was executed offscreen, and the final episodes of the series would kill off Vult Skerris, Kanan Jarrus, Hydan, Gregor, Rukh, and Pryce.
- This is a major gimmick of the Total Drama series. Well, technically, not die, but be eliminated, and can return to the show (and will — in the end of the season, to try to come into the next). Still, the number of active characters is rapidly decreasing and no one is safe, even the most popular and beloved of the characters.
- Transformers: Beast Wars probably had one of the highest Saturday-morning cartoon mortality rates out there.
- In the first episode of the second season, Terrorsaur and Scorponok fall in lava and die with relatively little fanfare.
- Near the end of the season, Dinobot sacrifices himself with quite a bit more fanfare to save a tribe of proto-humans.
- Tigatron and Airazor die, come back as Tigerhawk, and then almost immediately die again, this time for good.
- Inferno and Quickstrike get toasted by their own boss. Depth Charge and Rampage go up in an immense explosion. Tarantulus gets hoisted by his own petard. And this is only counting deaths that lasted.
- It's easier just to say that 22 characters were introduced (Including a fusion of two previous characters and a clone of another previous character) and that only eight of them survive to the end of the series (Optimus, Rattrap, Rhinox, Cheetor, Waspinator, Megatron, Blackarachnia and Silverbolt).
- Transformers: Animated:
- In the first season finale Megatron kills Starscream with the Allspark key, although he gets better a few episodes later. In the third season it got worse.
- Blurr is crushed into a cube by Shockwave in Transwarped, Master Yoketron is left to die in Prowl's arms by Lockdown, Prowl sacrifices his life to stop the Lugnut Supremes from blowing up, and Starscream dies after the Allspark fragment keeping him alive is sucked out of his head. Since this was the final episode of the show, he probably didn't get better, though the comics show Blurr having survived.
- There's also the sorta-deaths. Ultra Magnus is beaten nearly to death by Shockwave and we never do see him wake up from his coma (Word of God: Had they gotten a season four, Magnus would have bought it and Sentinel would have taken his place, and the dangerous acts he commits in his hubris would have only escalated.) and the Constructicons are blown up, with only Scrapper seen to survive. There's also the business with the gathering of the Allspark fragments. Since many of them had brought other Transformers to life and removing Starscream's fragment killed him, he may not have been the only casualty. Word of God says Wreck-Gar survived, but hasn't specified the fates of anyone else brought to life by an Allspark fragment. We're given hope in the fact that all the Allspark fragments were clearly not collected (Prowl's sacrifice was necessitated by the fact that not enough were gathered, and the reconstituted Allspark looks barely even half-complete, in fact — they left enough fragments out there to make the hoped-for comic continuation able to still use them as a plot point.)
- The makers of Transformers: Prime have said that "when we kill a character, we kill a character", but in practice, ended up downplaying this trope. Of the small number of named characters to die, most (such as Cliffjumper, Skyquake, Tailgate, and Makeshift) died in the same episode they were introduced, with only flashbacks to flesh them out a bit more. Dreadwing, Breakdown, Optimus, and Megatron were the only exceptions, and the latter two came back from the dead.
- The Venture Bros.:
- After pointing on at great length in the "Lepidopterists" episode how 21 and 24's Genre Savvy made them indestructible, went on to brutally kill 24 in the Season 3 final episode. His burning severed head lands right in 21's hands, making sure everyone knows he's dead for good.
- The titular brothers were killed at the end of Season 1. For awhile, this seemed to be final, until they got better when the second season finally started, two years later.
- Chuck Jones spoofed opera in What's Opera, Doc?. Saith Bugs Bunny, "What did you expect? A happy ending?" just before he died in Elmer Fudd's arms
- Much like the comic it's based on, What If…? (2021) showcases alternate timelines from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and rips away all the Plot Armor protecting the heroes in the original timeline. While some episodes have relatively few causalities, others can be downright brutal and show that no one is safe all because of a single change. These can range from Hank Pym killing the Avengers, to the Earth succumbing to a zombie plague, to Doctor Strange accidentally destroying the entire universe.
