Face Death with Despair

"...T-This wasn't supposed to happen! This is wrong! This is wrong! O-O-O-Open the door! Please! I'm begging you! Help me! Please, get me out of here! Get me out of here! A-Ah... Oh my God, oh my God, there's no time left...! A...Aahh... Aaahhhh... Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaht—!"

— The last words of the Ninth Man, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

When some characters realize they are about to die, they Face Death with Dignity, calmly accepting their fate. But other characters...not so much. This trope is when a character completely breaks in the face of death, pleading for their life, reduced to Inelegant Blubbering, or expressing a complete lack of desire to die. Some choose to completely shed any trace of dignity as they're about to die.

This trope can be used to invoke different audience reactions depending on how it applies to your characters. On a sympathetic or likeable character, it becomes a tool used for horror, shock, and tragedy as said character suffers in their final moments. A strong audience reaction often happens if the likeable or sympathetic character about to die is a young child. If your character is a Hate Sink or otherwise unsympathetic, it can be a source of satisfaction, letting karma play out for everything that character's done. The latter is more likely to go out with an utter lack of dignity. Often this is the prelude to a Cruel and Unusual Death.

The trope can be indicative of a Hesitant Sacrifice. After all, someone who dies unwillingly is prone to panic in their final moments. This can be a Karmic Death for those who kill or cheat in cold blood. Ain't Too Proud to Beg is a very common overlapping trope because times are just that desperate. The people who beg the most tend to be those at their most vulnerable, like felled villains or innocent normies caught in a bad spot. Of course, there's the possibility those who care little about dignity are stalling for time, or lowering their executioner's guard for a counter of their own.

The character doesn't even have to die in the end for the trope to count, just their reaction to facing death can warrant this kind of response. This is different from Oh, Crap! in that in the former, a character simply realizes that things are about to get really ugly.

Often overlaps with Villains Want Mercy, Please, I Will Do Anything!, Oh, Crap!, This Cannot Be!, Tears of Fear, and Villainous Breakdown. Compare Undignified Death, which has to do with deaths that are embarrassing or ridiculous.

As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Akame ga Kill!:
  • Chelsea breaks down in silent, defeated tears after suffering fatal wounds from Kurome's puppets, right before she is cut to pieces by Natala. Noticeably, she is the only Night Raider to not Go Out with a Smile.
  • Seryu breaks down more noticeably as she lays blown in half, right before her Taking You with Me towards Mine. She starts sobbing noticeably loud when she sees her Imperial Arm and dog, Koro, is mortally damaged and can no longer regenerate, and that they're both going to die alone in the middle of nowhere.
  • Run is ready to Face Death with Dignity after he suffers mortal injuries killing Champ, but his teammate, Kurome, refuses to let him die; she stabs him with Yatsufusa to bring him back to life, and Run can only react with heartbroken shock. After all, Yatsufusa cannot bring back the dead; it only reduces the people killed by it into People Puppets. But Kurome is pretty messed up mentally, and she personally believes she's saving Run. Run, meanwhile, can only express his lament that Kurome was warped to this extent to not just let him die with dignity.
  • Syura gets a wonderful comeuppance at the hands of Lubbock and dies trying to deny that he's just had his neck snapped, that he can't die until he's made The Empire his hellish playground.
  • As Izou lays dying, mortally wounded by Akame, he asks her to take up his sword, Kosetsu, and use it to cause even more bloodshed and destruction. Akame refuses to honor Izou's last wish and leaves him to die in despair.
  • Dorothea, Syura's top subordinate, is outright pathetic when Leone is preparing to smash her to paste with a huge boulder, and she spends her last moments screaming and crying about not wanting to die, due to her Mortality Phobia.
  • Prime Minister Honest, the Big Bad, goes out screaming and begging for his life as he faces a particularly cruel, unusual, and undignified death at the hands of a bunch of very angry Revolutionaries.
• This trope is extremely common in Attack on Titan, to a point where you could pick out more examples where this trope was averted than played straight. Justified in that this is a setting in which humans are tasked with slaying hordes of mindless giants with a taste for their blood, so watching comrades die horribly is the norm for these characters.
• Blood-C: This is very common given that all of the Elder Bairns' victims died in very gruesome deaths with some begging for help. It doesn't help that the mastermind behind this doesn't care at all while the heroine, Saya, tries her best to save them only to fail horribly.
• Chrono Crusade: Towards the end, Chrono and Rosette are waiting for their impending deaths as the sun sets. They're both calm at first, but Rosette eventually breaks down in tears and admits that she doesn't want her life to end yet. Chrono tries to keep it in, but he ends up weeping as well.
• Cross Ange: Poor, poor Miranda Campbell. Her last minutes of life are not pretty, so it's easy to see why she'd go out screaming and crying. Not only does she watch her friend Coco so suddenly die in brutal fashion, but she then gets knocked off her Paramail and caught in the jaws of a ravenous DRAGON, as several more come to eat her alive. All she can do is scream for Ange — who is attempting to leave Arzenal because she doesn't think she's a Norma — to come and save her before the DRAGONs tear her limb from limb. There are even Tears of Fear shown in Miranda's eyes as she falls, right before the DRAGONs get her. Ange sees Miranda's horrible death as well, and then the DRAGONs attack her, sending her into a hysteric panic as she tries to get away from the man-eating beasts, not wanting to share the same fate.
• Death Note's Light Yagami, who has spent the entire series killing people with the Death Note without so much as batting an eye and has developed quite the god complex, is entirely undignified when it's his turn to go out at the very end, reduced to abject terror and begging for his life when Ryuk puts Light's name into his own Death Note, as he told Light he would do at the very beginning of the series.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, it is the certified behavior of most demons in the series with zero sympathetic traits as they are about to die, some of the most vicious demons did have a final moment of clarity where they retract to a more fragile or self-reflecting state, earning a moment of pity from Tanjiro Kamado who does offer his final sympathy as the dying demon can no longer hurt anyone else as they pass on; those who don't act that way, however, die cursing everything in their vicinity and aren't given a shred of pity, notorious examples include: the Big Brother Spider Demon. Enmu, the Lower Rank 1. Gyokko, the Upper Rank 5. The biggest of all, of course, is Muzan Kibutsuji himself, the leader and progenitor of all demons dies by the end of the series throwing what can only be described as a child tantrum, begging Tanjiro not to leave him alone, the absolute monster who ruined countless lives was reduced to such a state.
• In the 2016 remake of Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan, Gigazombie's dragon Tsuchidama realizes he's about to suffer the consequences of failing to deliver Gigazombie's slaves on time, and immediately panics while pleading for his life. It doesn't work, cue Gigazombie melting Tsuchidama into a mud puddle mid-begging.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Gluttony, who is betrayed and devoured by his fellow homunculus Pride, spends his last moments crying out how it hurts, begging not to be eaten, and calling out for the long-dead Lust to save him. Gluttony's death is a case of this trope played for sympathy, as all the heroes who witness it are shocked and disgusted by Pride's actions.
  • While he can't die due to being immortal, Homunculus/Father's final fate is essentially to return from whence he came: beyond The Door to Truth. Upon being condemned, even as the hands from within lash out to pull him inside, he cries out and panics as Truth fixes him with the same usual blank grin, and even remarks that his final punishment is "despair for the conceited", indirectly invoking this trope by name.
• Most people faced with the horror that is Alucard unleashed in Hellsing do not go out with any kind of dignity, but special mention has to go to Enrico Maxwell, who goes out crying out for Anderson, who betrayed him in true Iscariot fashion by destroying the glass box protecting him from Alucard's ravening familiars.
• Maria no Danzai: Both Kowase and Shikimi break down once their fates are sealed, exactly as Maria intended.
  • Left with no other options, Kowase tries to use the cleaver Maria left him to cut off his own hand. The blade breaks because it's an old cleaver and Kowase puts too much force while trying to cut the bone, leaving him to drown helplessly as he flails about.
  • Shikimi initially doesn't even react to being dropped down the well... until she notices that she's surrounded by a swarm of insects, that is. Once they start crawling all over her and entering her orifices, she breaks down screaming and begging for mercy.
• In episode 15 of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, after Nemo orders the lower decks to be closed due to Deadly Gas being present, Ensign Fait, one of several crewmembers trapped inside, tries to Face Death with Dignity if it means everyone else survives, only to break down in his final seconds.
• The last twist of the knife regarding Akemi's death in Saikano (more so in the anime than the manga) is that Shuji did his utmost to let her Go Out with a Smile by holding her in his arms in response to her Dying Declaration of Love, only for her to be overcome by the fear of her imminent death and break down hysterically crying and sobbing about not wanting to die, before suddenly violently retching up blood and going limp. It drives home that there's nothing pretty or peaceful about death in this series.

Comic Books

• At the end of Creature Tech, when the revived Giant Space Eel is reunited with its original, revived, (alien) rider, Jameson, who wanted to use the eel to destroy the world, tries to kill Dr. Ong for ruining his plan. When Ong manages to get the Symbiote that Jameson is wearing, which gives its host superpowers, to kill him, it rejoins him (the Symbiote liked Ong better). As Jameson brags that his demon hand, which he got for selling his soul, would keep him from going to hell for his sins, Ong uses the Symbiote to chop off the hand. When the demon shows up with several companions, Jameson's taken to hell, and he fearfully states "I regret" as he's about to be eaten.
• Judge Dredd has the story arc "The Day The Law Died" in which the Ax-Crazy and narcissistic Chief Judge Cal orders the execution of everybody in Megacity One. The first poor wretch queued up for execution is Aaron Aardvark, who'd changed his name to be first in the vid-phone book. When Aaron protests that he doesn't want to die, he gets slapped for such truculence and gets hauled away sobbing.
• Masters of the Universe: During DC's He-Man: The Eternity War, when the heroes manage to free Eternos from Hordak's clutches they also manage to capture "Lord" Imp, who is acting as governor of the city. Almost immediately the snakemen want to cut off his head and Imp, in a display of what a craven coward he is, immediately begins blubbering for mercy despite having spent his tenure as a villain with 0% approval rating.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: This shows up a lot, as the miniseries is a deconstruction of the portrayal of heroic portrayals of warfare. The Decepticon Borehole pleads for his life and attempts to flee before being torn apart by Kickoff. Pyro spends the entire series searching for the perfect, glorious death but when he actually tries to make a Last Stand he winds up whimpering in fear as he's overwhelmed by a horde of angry Decepticons. Skyfall is Driven to Suicide when he finds out that all the crimes he's ever committed have been broadcast to all of the Autobots. And then realizes that the method he used to kill himself is neither fast nor painless.

Fan Works

• Androgyninja's A Drop of Poison: During the Konoha Crush attempt, Sakura teams up with Shikamaru, who holds a unit of Oto-nin still with his Shadow Pin while she slits their throats. Some handle this better than others; while the last to die looks her in the eyes the whole time, one of the other Oto-nin spends the whole time desperately sobbing, clearly terrified at watching their teammates die one by one.
• Danganronpa: Memento Mori: The second murderer deliberately targets one of their weakest classmates, all for the sake of getting her collection of medals back. They're dragged off to their death screaming and crying the whole way.
• Danganronpa: Komm Susser Tod: The third murderer, a very Sympathetic Murderer, goes to their execution screaming that they don't want to die and pleading for their parents to help them.
• A Darker Path: Jack Slash keeps trying to negotiate and bluster and otherwise remain Defiant to the End — until Atropos promises to tarnish his memory and tear down his reputation, so that "not even the edgiest of edgelords will want to be you." Then he breaks down.
  Jack Slash: No. You wouldn't. You can't.
• Island of the Slaughtered: Every single one of the fifteen campers who got killed went out this way. When Chris, who abandoned the campers in order to save himself, returns to the island hoping to engage in some Engineered Heroics, the Narrator makes a point of mocking his cowardice and promising that he will suffer a Fate Worse than Death for his crimes.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: Most of the Wolf's victims do not go gently at all, especially as he's just delivered a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle (the Mountain (twice) and Littlefinger) or is torturing them to death (Ramsay and Euron). The few exceptions actually earn his respect and a swift death (commending one Lannister soldier for spitting on him, telling him he's a better warrior than the Mountain, and notably not taking his skull as a trophy after decapitating him).
• My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator: In Nine's final moments, he is filled with helplessness and terror as everything he has done on I-Island to defeat the Slayer was All for Nothing. The man who destroyed his organization, made a mockery of him and his friends before coldly offing them one by one. All he can do is look into the eyes of a merciless Slayer before the trigger is pulled.
• Pokeronpa Legendary Killings:
  • When the first Battle Trial concludes and Groudon learns that they're going to be executed for their crime, they promptly lose their cool and beg for mercy.
  • Ho-oh attempts to flee the Battle Arena once their crime is exposed by flying away. This doesn't work.
• War of Remnant: A RWBY Anthology: While Raven tells Ruby that Summer faced her death with dignity, taking a fatal blow to protect Raven and spending her last breath proclaiming how much she loved her children, this was all a lie. In truth, Summer died crying in utter terrified agony, pleading about how she didn't want to die.

Films — Animated

• Bambi: When the birds are hiding from the hunters, one pheasant gets so freaked out at the prospect of being killed that she tries to make a break for it, only to be shot instantly.
  Pheasant: He's almost here! I can't stand it any longer!!
• Beauty and the Beast: When Beast grabs Gaston by the throat and threatens to drop him, the hunter immediately freaks out and clings to Beast's paw, begging for his life. Later, when he falls from the tower after backstabbing Beast, Gaston goes down squirming and screaming his lungs out, his eyes showing skulls in his pupils if one pauses the screen at the right moment.
• A variation is seen in Corpse Bride. At the very end, after Lord Barkis, who tricked Emily, the titular corpse bride, into stealing her family's jewels and eloping with him so that he could kill and rob her is defeated, he decides to walk away from Victoria, his recent Impoverished Patrician wife (whom he likely would've killed once he received his dowry, or in a fit of rage since her father couldn't afford it), as well as Victor and Emily's wedding, the residents of the Land of the Dead want to punish him, but Elder Gutknecht holds them back saying that as they're in the Land of the Living, they need to follow their rules. When Barkis gives a sarcastic wedding toast that lambasts Emily, he drinks the poisoned wine meant for Victor and dies, Gutknecht realizes that the rules of the dead now apply to Barkis as well, and tells the others "he's all yours." As the crowd of the Dead slowly approaches Barkis, he screams in a panic and desperately tries to open the door behind him to escape, which is eventually opened by the group of dead spirits that drag him off to a gruesome Fate Worse than Death.
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney): In his final moments, Frollo fails to kill Quasimodo and Esmeralda and loses his balance when the gargoyle he previously damaged begins to break down due to being unable to hold the judge's weight, with the judge screaming in horror as he hallucinates the gargoyle coming to live with a devilish glare to drag the judge to hell as both fall to the molten lava below.
• The Iron Giant: After Kent orders the ship Nautilus to launch a nuke at the Giant, General Rogard makes him see that since the Giant is standing in the middle of the town - where they are, too - both of them, the rest of the army, and innocent citizens are going to die because of his idiocy. Freaking out, Kent steals a jeep to drive away but is stopped by a contemptuous Giant and held at gunpoint by the entire army.
  General Rogard: Hold him, men! Make sure he STAYS here, like a good soldier.
• The Lion King (1994): In his last moments, Scar calls the hyenas his "friends" as he hadn't tossed all the blame on them shortly before and they didn't hear him. The hyenas, of course, won't buy that and jump over Scar as he cowers, begs, and tries to make excuses for his betrayal. However, the shadows show that he does at least go down fighting.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: After Jack pulls the thread that keeps Oogie-Boogie's cloth body closed, the latter berates him and whines "my bugs, my bugs" as the insects that stuffed him fall in the same lava pit he wanted to throw Sally and Santa Claus.
• In The Princess and the Frog, Dr. Facilier begs for his life as he gets dragged off into the underworld for failing to pay his debt to the Voodoo spirits by shouting "No! I'm not ready at all!", an ironic reference to his earlier Villain Song "Friends on the Other Side" where one of the choruses was "Are you ready?"
• Soul: Upon realizing he'd died just after landing the gig of his dreams, Joe refuses to go to the Great Beyond, running away, insisting it's not his time, and pretending to be a mentor to get out of dying.

Films — Live-Action

• Ace Ventura: Downplayed in that Ace doesn't die, but when he encounters the Big Bad, we cut to Ace's Friend on the Force who is driving with the rest of the police to the location and assures Melissa Robbins (Ace's employer) that Ace is cool under pressure. Description Cut to Ace on his knees and crying to the Big Bad not to kill him.
• Air Force One:
  • The hijackers hold a gun to the head of the president's Deputy Press Secretary to force him to come out of hiding. She cries and begs for her life until the moment they shoot her.
  • Gibbs, the traitorous Secret Service agent spends his last seconds before Air Force One crashes in the Black Sea (after he's been left behind to die by President Marshall) moaning in despair.
• Avengers: Infinity War:
  • When Thanos takes Gamora to Vormir to get the Soul Stone, the Red Skull says that in order to get it, whoever seeks it must sacrifice the person they love most. Thanos sheds tears upon hearing this, and Gamora, who was abused by Thanos most her life, laughs at the revelation that he will never possess the stone since he didn't love anyone, only for Red Skull that he cries not because he can't have the stone, but what he must do to get it, and Thanos softly tells Gamora: "I'm sorry little one." As he sadly drags her to the edge of the cliff, she tries freeing herself and begs him not to throw her off by desperately crying out: "This isn't love, This isn't love!"
  • Once Peter Parker realizes that he's being turned to dust by Thanos's snap, he starts crying, embraces Tony Stark, and pleads, "I don't want to go. Please, Mr. Stark, I don't want to go." Considering he's a 16-year-old kid, this is a perfectly understandable reaction.
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: In Near Algodones, when the Cowboy is on the gallows again at the end of the story, an old man next to him is blubbering incessantly. The Cowboy jokes, "First time?"
• Lavrentiy Beria goes out this way in The Death of Stalin. As NKVD chief he arranged the death, imprisonment, and suffering of countless people without batting an eye, but when it's his turn to be executed, Beria breaks down into a blubbering coward and begs for mercy up until the moment he's silenced by a bullet. The circumstances were even more pathetic in Real Life: Before killing him, Beria's executioner ended up shoving a sock into his mouth just to stop his incessant groveling.
• Django Unchained: Invoked by Django in the final act when he confronts Stephen after he kills the remaining members of the Candie organization. Stephen tries to Face Death with Dignity as the last member standing, but Django blows away his kneecaps and leaves him screaming in agony and uselessly swearing Django will suffer for this as the dynamite Django set in the Candieland manor goes off.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: At the end of Part 2, Lord Voldemort is killed by his own Killing Curse spell when it rebounds after his final Horcrux is destroyed. But unlike in the novel, where he instantly drops dead, Voldemort lives long enough to see his body disintegrating into dust and his final emotion is one of pure fear and agony as he realizes his worst fear coming to life.
• Hot Fuzz: When Professor Tom Weaver, one of the members of the Sandford Neighborhood Watch Alliance, is two seconds away from being accidentally blown up by a sea mine, his act is to have a huge Oh, Crap! look on his face and whine out an "Oh, God, no!"
• Lethal Weapon (1987): General Peter McAllister spends his last seconds on Earth freaking out at the fact that he is trapped in his car, which is upside-down and on fire, and said fire is about to set off the handful of grenades he brought with him.
• Miller's Crossing: Bernie Bernbaum tearfully begs on his knees for Tom Reagan not to kill him: "I can't die out here in the woods, like a dumb animal!...Look in your heart!" It actually does work in getting Tom to spare his life... The first time.
• Nine Dead:
  • Christian starts begging and pleading when he is told that he will die first.
  • Eddie breaks down into tears when the captor tells him he is going to die next. Father Francis sacrifices his life to save Eddie.
• Saw:
  • At the end of Saw, Adam is shell-shocked when the Jigsaw Killer reveals himself before him. After being electrocuted by Jigsaw and watching him shut the bathroom lights and walk out the door, Adam breaks down screaming in despair as the killer seals the door and leaves him to die.
    Jigsaw: Most people are so ungrateful to be alive... but not you. Not anymore. (Walks out the bathroom's door as Adam screams incoherently) Game over! (shuts the door)
    Adam: DON'T! DON'T! NOOO! (more incoherent screaming])
  • In the opening scene of Saw II, Michael gets terrified and can only let out Rapid-Fire "No!" just before the Death Trap he's in kills him.
• Star Trek Into Darkness:
  • When Admiral Pike is mortally wounded by John Harrison's attack, Spock mind-melds with him and senses his confusion and fear as he dies.
  • When Kirk is dying of radiation poisoning after saving the Enterprise, he freely admits to Spock that he's scared.
• Star Wars: Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine, the Big Bad of the Skywalker Saga, is usually calm and collected in his grand scheme to rule the galaxy and crush opposition to his rule with sadistic glee. But being a Sith Lord who hungers for immortality and believes that becoming one with the Force is a Cessation of Existence, he genuinely fears death and unlike his many apprentices who all Face Death with Dignity, he ends up screaming in terror when he's about to die in both Return of the Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.
• Train to Busan: When Yong-suk is infected by one of the zombies, he looks at his hands and shakes his head before screaming, "It can't be!" The transformation is then complete, and his former personality is gone.

Literature

• According to America (The Book), this was how Nathan Hale's final moments played out:
  Before his execution at the hands of British authorities, patriot Nathan Hale said, "I regret that I have but one life to give to this country." Continued Hale, "...but what I really regret is that I'm giving it now." And then began the begging.
• In both the book and the Film of the Book for Stephen King's Firestarter, Orville Jamieson, one of the Shop agents, cries out as he realizes Charlie is about to kill him.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Just before Dumbledore is murdered by Snape, he feebly pleads to be spared. This is wildly out of character for Dumbledore, who had long lectured about there being no need to fear death. It turns out to be a clue that he and Snape were still allies and had planned his being "murdered" together in secret.
• The death of Miss de Saint-Yves in The Ingenue is not described by the author as being pretty but rather filled from the shame of submitting to what was needed to save her lover.
• The Saga of the People of Laxardal: Thorkel of Hafratindar sees the sons of Osvif lying in ambush for Kjartan, but does nothing to warn Kjartan, and passively watches Kjartan die. Afterwards he adds insult to injury by badmouthing Kjartan and mocking his death throes. For this Kjartan's brothers seize him in his farmhouse and "when Thorkel was brought outside to be killed, his behaviour was anything but courageous."
• Secret Vampire: Poppy is absolutely terrified when she finds out she's got terminal cancer; she's only sixteen years old and naturally assumed she'd have her whole life ahead of her, she felt perfectly fine a few weeks ago and now she's only got about three months left to live. When James says he can save her by turning her into a vampire, she weighs up her options and quickly agrees, wanting to keep living even if she wouldn't be human anymore. She subsequently feels guilty when people praise her for being so brave and calm about her diagnosis, because she feels she's only able to cope with it because she knows she has a chance to be saved, and that she'd be a lot less calm if she didn't.
• Sherlock Holmes: At the end of The Valley of Fear, it's mentioned that McGinty, who had ordered men murdered without a second thought, went to the gallows cringing and crying.
• The Stormlight Archive: Rhythm of War revisits the events of King Gavilar's assassination from his perspective, cementing him as a Villain with Good Publicity and a megalomaniacal Godhood Seeker. He died realizing that he had utterly failed in his ambitions and endangered the entire world in the process.

Live-Action TV

• Breaking Bad: Invoked at several points when you have characters who completely crumble under pressure when faced with death.
  • Walt and Jesse's final confrontation with Tuco kicks off when Tuco holds Jesse to the ground at gunpoint and the latter begins crying and panicking as he's seconds away from being shot to death. Though with some quick thinking, Jesse is able to knock away Tuco with a rock to the head and regain his footing, ultimately subverting his own death.
  • In his debut episode "Better Call Saul", Saul Goodman is kidnapped by a disguised Walt and Jesse and brought to an empty hole in the desert where it appears he'll be tossed in if he doesn't comply. This is one of the few times where Saul shows pure fear and despair, begging for his life as he thinks he's about to get disposed of. Better Call Saul added a Blindfolded Trip, as he begs and pleads to kill or torture him anywhere but the desert.
  • Subverted in the season 3 finale when Gus orders his hitmen to kill Walter and dispose of his corpse at the superlab. Mike and Victor think this is a straight example as Walter completely loses his cool at the prospect of his own death, begging to be spared and offering them Jesse, who is also on their hit list. It's only when Walter calls Jesse that it turns out to be a ploy to eliminate their replacement cook. Once the ploy is initiated, Walt drops the act and starts acting self-assured and confident again.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Genesis of the Daleks", when Davros is confronted and about to be executed by his own creations, the titular Daleks, he starts breaking down and shouts about how, as their creator, they should be taking orders from him. The Daleks ignore his angry pleas. As a last act of desperation, Davros tries to use the cut-off switch he installed in his chair to shut down their production line and they promptly exterminate him. It would later turn out that he was put into stasis by his life support mechanism rather than killed, but at that moment it appeared he was going to die.
  • Discussed in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang". While they are being held captive by the followers of Weng-Chiang (AKA Magnus Greel) Jago tells Litefoot that he's "not all that brave when it comes to it", meaning being confronted with the prospect of one's own death. Litefoot says he doesn't suppose anyone is particularly brave under those circumstances, to which Jago says he thought he should tell him anyway in case he "lets the side down" by losing control of his emotions when the time comes for them to be killed. Litefoot assures him that he won't, though it never comes to that.
  • In "Resurrection of the Daleks", Davros appears to be killed off again by a virus that the Movellans created to destroy Daleks, owed to the fact that he, as a Kaled, shares much of his genetic code with his creations. As soon as he realizes what's going on, he freaks out and angrily shouts that it shouldn't be happening to him, as he isn't a Dalek. Once again, he gets better.
  • In "The End of Time", the Doctor is initially unwilling to save Wilf at the cost of his own life, protesting that it's not fair and he could do so much more. Though he eventually does so, the Tenth Doctor's last act before regenerating (which he regards as a kind of death) is to whimper "I don't want to go."
  • In "The Big Bang", when the stone Dalek confronts River Song and realizes who she is, it immediately starts begging for mercy, understanding that, since she's much more ruthless than any of the Doctor's other allies, it's far beyond screwed.
• Game of Thrones: Being in a Crapsack World that has a Zombie Apocalypse around the corner, there would be, at least, several characters facing their demise in despair:
  • The Red Wedding shows Houses Bolton and Frey massacring the Stark bannermen. Catelyn Stark and her son, Robb, watch the entire thing happening including the brutal death of Robb's pregnant wife, Talisa. Towards the end, Catelyn takes Lord Walder Frey's wife at knifepoint and begs him to spare Robb, who she tells him to flee. However, Robb is in a state of hopelessness after witnessing the deaths of his wife and his unborn child. Then, Lord Roose Bolton stabs him in the gut while delivering the words, "The Lannisters send their regards." At this point, Catelyn loses it after seeing her son die and lets one of the Freys slash her throat, believing that everything that she and her son fought for is gone.
  • In season 4, King Joffrey Baratheon begins coughing after drinking wine on his wedding day. Upon realizing that the wine he drank from has been poisoned, he panics as he begins to choke, vomit, and bleed horrendously before he finally dies with his last expression being that of pure terror.
  • In season 5, Lord Janos Slynt disobeys a direct order from recently-elected Lord Commander Jon Snow. Since Slynt is a Dirty Coward who hid during the previous battle against the Wildlings and only got his "Lord" title by dishonorably betraying Lord Eddard Stark (Jon's father), he starts to blubber and beg when Jon Snow sentences him to death in a pathetic attempt to save his own life.
  • In season 6, Lord Ramsay Bolton looses to Jon Snow in the Battle of Bastards where he's given to Sansa Stark to decide his fate. Sansa decides to have Ramsay's hounds devour him as punishment for the atrocities that he's committed. Though initially confident that his hounds won't eat him, he breaks down and spends his last moments terrified before hounds decide to eat him.
  • In Season 7, Euron Greyjoy captures Ellaria and Tyene Sand during his raid on his niece's fleet. Then, he brings them in front of Cersei Lannister who is angry at them for the murder of her daughter. Cersei has them locked up in a cell, chained up, and gagged. As she remains furious at them for what they did to Myrcella, Cersei gloats about giving them a cruel punishment. Then, she gives Tyene a poisoned kiss using the same poison that killed Myrcella. When Tyene finds out what poison it is, she looks at Ellaria and tearfully cries, "Mama". Ellaria looks on in despair, knowing that she would watch her daughter die and rot for the rest of her life. As Cersei leaves, Tyene tries to reach out to her mother who also tries to comfort her as they remained chained up and gagged.
  • In Season 7, Lord Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish gets exposed as the one who betrayed Ned Stark which kickstarted the War of the Five Kings. During the trial, he kneels down and begs Sansa Stark to spare him because he loves her. Sansa, who had been his pawn for most of the series, refuses and lets her sister, Arya, execute him.
  • Queen Cersei Lannister does not handles herself any better, either: when Dany decides to finally embrace the Targaryen madness (because of Cersei's machinations) and orders her troops kill everybody on King's Landing, Cersei spends the whole sequence on a big state of Oh, Crap! that only deepens when she tries to escape and discovers the palace's escape tunnel caved in. She spends her last seconds before the ceiling falls on her and flattens her holding on to her brother, all while she cries and whines how she doesn't want to die.
• The Good Place: Played for Laughs; Janet (the Good Place's AI avatar) is programmed to plead for her life when someone threatens to push her kill switch. When we see this in action, she follows the pleading with something to the effect of "Just kidding".
• El internado: Las Cumbres: Pax gets separated from her friends and is abducted by ritualistic serial killer El Verdugo ("The Executioner"). After failing to escape, all Paz can do is sob and beg for mercy. The others get there before El Verdugo kills her, but cannot stop him before he finishes the job.
• Julius Caesar (2003): When Senator Tallis is going to be executed, he's frantically crying and begging that he wants to see Sulla (who ordered said execution) right until the moment his head leaves his body.
• Midnight Mass: Bev Keane, a recently turned vampire, spends her final moments desperately trying to dig a hole in the beach to save herself from the rising sun, crying in fear before the sunlight kills her. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of the turned townsfolk, who calmly await their fate with their loved ones. It would almost invoke pity were she not so reprehensible.
• Our Flag Means Death: Played for Laughs; after he and his crew are captured by the navy, Stede looks like he's prepared to Face Death with Dignity. But then he's brought before a firing squad blindfolded and hilariously begging for his life. Thankfully Ed is there to save him before any shots are fired.
• The Sopranos: Happens frequently on the show when they're about to be whacked and know it's coming, which helps make the murderers (frequently one of the protagonists, look less sympathetic and more cruel).
  • When Mikey is cornered by Chris and Paulie in the woods, he starts crying and begs for mercy, pinning his murder of Brendan on Junior in a futile attempt to bargain for his life. Even as he's riddled with bullets, he's screaming and struggling for life.
  • When Matthew is dragged out to be executed by Big Pussy and Tony, he pleads for his life, pinning his attempted murder of Chris on Sean and wetting himself. Tony makes him think his pleading is working, only to tell him it didn't, at which point Matthew is reducing to crying and screaming for his "mommy".
  • Adriana, who has been revealed to be a rat, spends her last moments before being executed in the middle of the Pine Warrens dragging herself away from her executioner and repeatedly moaning out a pitiful "no!".
  • When Lorraine is murdered by Phil's hitmen for refusing to kick up to him, her last act is futilely trying to crawl away while crying and begging.
  • Vito is caught by Phil and his underlings, and then is brutally beaten to death for being gay. Although he has duct tape wrapped over his mouth, his face is an expression of absolute terror and he's shaking his head frantically trying to change Phil's mind, to no avail.
• Squid Game:
  • As a Deadly Game, many of the titular contest's participants face immense despair in their final moments as they're at the mercy of the game's guards, sobbing, begging, or otherwise showing a complete loss of hope.
  • One of the most poignant examples comes from the death of Jang Deok-su in "VIPS". After spending the whole game killing, stealing, and being a complete piece of shit to get ahead, Deok-su is put in a position at the fifth game that all but guarantees certain death for him, and decides to hold up everyone else so that they can die before him. One of his victims, Han Mi-nyeo, decides to pull a Heroic Sacrifice by falling with him to their deaths, giving everyone else a chance to live. Deok-su breaks down into pathetic begging and screaming as Mi-nyeo prepares to drag him off the bridge.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Legate Broca asks that he be allowed to speak to the Cardassian rebellion to get them to stand down before the Dominion commits genocide against the entire planet. The Founder Leader says it's equally likely that they will get Broca to defect, so she orders his execution. As the Jem'Hadar guards take him away, he begs to be spared and cries that he is loyal to the Founders.
• Torchwood: When Owen learns that he is about to die (this time for good) by irradiated coolant in a nuclear power plant in "Exit Wounds", he panics about not wanting to die, shouts at Tosh to try to find a way out for him, and intends to rage his way to oblivion. He does eventually exhibit the opposite trope, but only after Tosh tells him that he's breaking her heart by panicking like that.
• The Twilight Zone: "The Obsolete Man". Romney Wordsworth is sentenced to death for being obsolete, but invites the Chancellor who sentenced him to participate in his execution. Wordsworth locks the door, and announces there is a bomb that will kill both of them. Wordsworth calmly accepts his fate and reads his Bible, while the Chancellor pathetically begs for his life. Wordsworth lets the Chancellor go at the last second. The Chancellor is himself found obsolete by the tribunal, and is beaten to death by its members.

Music

• The titular song of Iron Maiden's Powerslave is a pharaoh on his deathbed despairing that he's worshipped as a god but in the end he's a "slave to the power of Death".

Religion & Mythology

• The Book of Mormon: The Nephites were supposed to be gathering to Cumorah for a Last Stand, but when they actually see the endless Lamanite hordes coming for them, Mormon records that "every soul was filled with terror" and they proceed to fold like wet paper.
• The Four Gospels:
  • Prior to the crucifixion, Jesus is said to have prayed overnight in the Garden of Gethsemane, so overcome with stress and fear that He wept blood. Given that He was to be tortured to death, this serves as a way to remind readers that Jesus was still susceptible to human failings and emotions, despite His divine nature.
  • A famous passage of the crucifixion in is about Jesus agonizing on the cross, calling out to God, who He feels has abandoned Him.
    My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Video Games

• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons has Amy, one of the Poe Sisters in the Explorer's Crypt, who reacts thus, when defeated a second time alongside her sister Margaret:
  Amy: Aaaahhhh!!! I don't wanna...
• Poppy Playtime: When Mommy Long Legs's arm gets caught in the grinder, she utterly panics and screams, "HE'LL MAKE ME PART OF HIM!!" before her torso is crushed. The "he" she refers to is the Prototype, which reaches under a door and gathers her remains shortly after she's dead.
• ULTRAKILL: In contrast with his fellow Superboss Sisyphus Prime, Minos Prime's last words are of utter despair. Not because he himself is afraid to die, but because in reaching his final end so soon he has failed to bring salvation, or even avenge, his beloved subjects and mankind as a whole.
  Forgive me, my children... for I have failed to bring you salvation, from this cold, dark world...

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
  • Played for Horror in the first execution during the killing game (after the one from the prologue). Leon Kuwata, having just been found out by the rest of the class for killing a classmate, is dragged away to be executed, but not before he breaks down into screaming and tears, complete with a Big "NO!". As the first execution in the game, none of the other students have precedent for what to expect, so Leon's death is made as painful and cruel as possible to show just how the stakes are for everyone.
  • Played With in the final execution. Junko Enoshima, after failing to convince the survivors to vote for Makoto and stay in Hope's Peak Academy, decides to execute herself so that she can feel the "despair of death"... except that her brain is so warped that despair causes her what can be observed as absolute joy and glee, and faces the execution with a constant maniacal grin on her face, which only vanishes moments before her end.
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: Within the first twenty or so minutes of the game, the Ninth Man dies after locking himself behind a door from the rest of the main group. His final moments are spent in utter panic, confusion, and terror as he's about to be exploded by a bomb in his stomach, as a demonstration to the rest of the cast of what awaits them if they disobey the rules of the Nonary Game. Of course, given that he was just holding a terrified girl at knifepoint a minute ago, and acted like a complete Jerkass before then, you don't really feel too bad for him. You'll feel even less bad once you learn just how evil he actually was about 20 hours later.

Web Animation

• Something About: In "Something About Kirby's Adventure", when Kirby corners Nightmare on the moon and prepares to kill him, Nightmare frantically tries to bargain with Kirby, offering him a domain to rule (or a house in Boca Raton) if he spares him, only for Kirby to ignore them all and summon Jesus to destroy him with the power of scripture.

Webcomics

• Unsounded: Stockyard starts off as an imposing and dignified crime boss. He dies while blubbering about his father and begging for a child to save him while the smoke eels in the area mock him using his own memories.

Web Original

• In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, this is Played for Laughs as Vegeta is finishing off Android 19. After Vegeta pulls off the clown bot's arms, he again asks, "Do you feel fear, android?" Unlike the previous response, 19 panics and replies in a deadpan robotic voice, "No. Please. Get away from me." Vegeta's response? "All I needed to hear."
• The Onion: Loved Ones Recall Local Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer is a subversion of the usual "dignified cancer survivor" stories, centered around a man so weak-willed he dies of cancer in a month rather than fighting it and gaining a few months, even asking his wife never to remarry.
  "They say it is in times of great trial that a man's true colors show," said Russ' best friend, Larry Ahrens, summing up the feelings of those who knew the man. "And in Russ' case, he had a yellow streak a mile wide."

Western Animation

• Zig-zagged in Around the World with Willy Fog. During the journey across America, Rigodon and Tico are captured by a band of Sioux Indians and are seen tied up inside a teepee. Tico is worrying about what the Indians are planning to do to them and Rigodon tries to reassure him, telling him to think about something more pleasant, such as Fog winning his wager. However, when two of the Indians, including the tribal chief, approach them, the two friends panic at the thought of being killed. Tico wails that he's "too young to go", and Rigodon yells "please don't" over and over as an Indian approaches him with a knife, closing his eyes and turning his head away, only for the Indian to cut his bonds. It turns out that the chief merely wants to question them.
• Gravity Falls: Once Bill Cipher realizes that Stan is pulling a Heroic Sacrifice in order to ensure he's erased, Bill begins frantically begging Stan to call the whole thing off, offering him anything he wants. Stan, who had watched Bill torment his family several times before, doesn't budge.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Lord Tirek and Cozy Glow cower in despair as they are Taken for Granite by Celestia, Luna and Discord. Chrysalis, on the other hand, still tries to run to attack her enemies before being frozen forever in that position.
• The Owl House: In Season 3, Emperor Belos/Philip Wittebane faces the prospect of dying as his decaying body is falling apart and he is nowhere close to completing his goal of wiping out the witches of the Boiling Isles. He is genuinely afraid of death because he knows deep down he is guilty of murdering his brother Caleb and the many Grimwalkers based on him, and doesn't want to die without performing a "heroic" deed to override his sins. After he's defeated by Luz in the Grand Finale, Belos ends up melting in the boiling rain and the former Emperor ends up begging Luz to save him, claiming that they are both humans and are better than the "evil" witches. He ends up getting an Oh, Crap! moment when he sees those "evil" witches ready to stomp him into paste.
• Played for Laughs in Smiling Friends when the Straw Nihilist Grim, who seconds prior was preaching that life is pointless, immediately becomes a blubbering mess when held at gunpoint. This causes all of his followers to leave in disgust after seeing that he was a fraud.

---