Not The Illness That Killed Them

This trope is when a character with a fatal illness or disease dies from something else.

This is often used as a lesson of the unpredictability of life and death. For cruel irony, writers can have the character either be misdiagnosed or cured before getting killed.

Because some terminal illnesses can weaken the immune system, a character can end up dying from a minor illness from which they would otherwise have recovered.

If the person is unable to handle slowly dying from their illness, they could decide to end their life. However, if straightforward suicide isn't ideal, they can instead take part in some type of dangerous situation that could get them killed.

If this happens to a villain of a story, expect them to want to go down in a blaze of glory and be killed by the hero, especially if the hero has a no-kill policy, though it doesn't always work.

Can be used as a plot for a murder/mystery story. The victim can either be suffering from an illness or be very old and not have that long to live. Everyone is certain they died by natural causes, but they were actually murdered.

While the illness may be known beforehand, there can be cases when the illness is discovered postmortem.

Can overlap with Cheated Death, Died Anyway for those who get cured. Contrast with Life Will Kill You, in which a person in a dangerous field dies from something more mundane. Compare/may overlap with Convenient Terminal Illness, where a character feels OK about doing something that will likely result in their death because they have an illness that will kill them soon anyway.

Since this is a Death Trope, Spoilers Off applies to the examples below. You Have Been Warned!

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Buddy Daddies: Miri's mother Misaki initially wanted nothing to do with her daughter until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, after which she takes Miri back and tries her best to be a good mother. Unfortunately for both of them, Rei's father put a hit on them and Misaki is gunned down by Ogino not long after she and Miri reunite.
• Dragon Ball: Goku gets a fatal heart disease in "Cell Saga." He manages to heal from it at the end... only to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to save the entire Earth.
• One Piece:
  • The legendary pirate king, Gol D. Roger, found out he had a terminal illness shortly before his final voyage. Once he reached the final island on the Grand Line and learned all there was to know about the world, he disbanded his crew and surrendered to the Marines knowing they would execute him, because he wanted to go out dramatically with the whole world watching rather than passing quietly of a disease. With his Final Speech, Roger inspires countless thousands of people to set to the seas and kicks off the story.
  • Dr. Hiriluk suffered from an incurable sickness that was gradually killing him. His illness went into remission for a while after he was awed by the sight of a grove of flowering cherry blossoms, and it inspired him to practice medicine and find a way to share the cherry blossom miracle in his wintery homeland. His adoptive son and apprentice Chopper attempts to cure him with a rare mushroom, not knowing it is extremely poisonous (Hiriluk ate the mushroom knowing full well of its lethality because he saw how badly injured Chopper had gotten in the search for the mushroom). Shortly after meeting with his old friend and fellow doctor Kureha, Hiriluk ends up being lured into a trap when Wapol, king of the country, spreads a rumor that the 20 remaining doctors, who have agreed to serve him, are ill. Ultimately, he dies by committing suicide, by blowing himself up, to spare Chopper from accidentally killing his own father figure or allowing the corrupt king to execute him.
• The Rose of Versailles: Shortly before the French Revolution starts in earnest, Oscar starts coughing up blood as a sign that she has tuberculosis, making her realize she doesn't have much longer to live. However, instead of dying from this illness, she meets her end by being fatally shot during the storming of the Bastille.
• In Shaman King, Faust became a doctor in order to cure his Delicate and Sickly wife, Eliza. He succeeded and they lived happily for a while, until she was tragically killed by a robber.

Comic Books

• Ghost Rider: After Johnny Blaze realised that his father, a stuntman, suffers from lung cancer, he made a Deal with the Devil (Mephistopheles or Mephisto): his soul for his father's health. The father was completely healed the next day but died anyway later by failing his trick. When Johnny tries to blame Mephistopheles for his father's death, the latter replies that he has nothing to do with it: Johnny's father's death is a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome and, because he kept his promise, Johnny's soul is his property anyway.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: Deliberately invoked by Ironfist. Thanks to a mishap in his lab, he's slowly dying from a bullet inching its way toward his brain (resulting in him suffering blackouts and migraines). Prowl offers him a chance to join in on a Suicide Mission, which he accepts rather than just waiting to die. Tragically, he actually survives the mission, only to die soon after when the bullet reaches his brain and causes a fatal aneurysm.
• In Watchmen, Moloch, a former villain, is dying of cancer when Ozymandias has him killed to frame Rorschach for his death.

Fan Works

• Danganronpa: Memento Mori: Haruhi was diagnosed with the lethal Hanahaki Disease, which causes her to painfully cough up rose petals. She ends up as Chapter 2's victim, shot twice in the knees before being poisoned.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien vs. Predator: Charles Weyland, who is dying from terminal lung cancer, is killed by the Predator known as "Scar" when the latter stabs him with his wrist blades.
• Constantine (2005): John Constantine is dying of lung cancer caused by his smoking; but does a Heroic Sacrifice before that happens. Subverted when this infuriates Satan, who heals both John's wounds and the cancer to avoid John going to Heaven rather than Hell. Afterwards, John gives up smoking.
• Gran Torino: Walt has some kind of lung disease (most likely cancer due to his heavy smoking), but dies in a Thanatos Gambit by goading the local gangbangers into shooting him while he's unarmed, getting them all sent to jail for murder and freeing his neighborhood from their influence.
• Hellboy (2004): Professor Broom has terminal cancer, and spends much of the film worrying about what will become of Hellboy once he's gone. He's killed in a Kick the Dog moment by Rasputin and Karl Ruprecht Kroenen at the end of the film's second act.
• Mercenaries from Hong Kong: One of the mercenaries, Sergeant Lei Tai, accepts the film's Suicide Mission for money because his young daughter suffers from a kidney disease, and she would likely die within a year without a kidney surgery in time. Come the final scene, Lei's young daughter is kidnapped by the film's main villainess and shot in a standoff that goes wrong.
• Red (2010): When Cooper and the CIA have the retirees surrounded at gunpoint in the woods, Joe volunteers to step outside of the house first, knowing full well that the agents are going to open fire instead of arresting them peacefully. Despite objections, he insists on making the Heroic Sacrifice to give everyone else a chance to get away, because he knows that his pancreatic cancer is only giving him a few months left, and he's just waiting for his life to end at this point anyway.
• In the Saw series, John Kramer, the original Jigsaw Killer, was terminally ill with colon cancer. He's killed by getting his throat slashed open at the end of Saw III, in an especially egregious time where his cancer had advanced enough to cause a brain tumor and put him in a bedridden condition.
• The Shape of Things to Come: Dr. John Caball spends most of the film's runtime agonizing from having been fatally irradiated by the reactor of the "Star Streak". The possibility of getting Radic-Q-2 once the heroes arrive to planet Delta-3 exists but in his role as the team's mentor the writing is on the wall. What ends Dr. Caball, however, is his Deceptive Disciple Omus (the tyrant who overtook Delta-3, which is what led to Caball getting the overdose) capturing him and torturing him to death with a sonic weapon shortly after arriving on the planet.
• The Tomorrow War: This is revealed to be the reason that Dorian keeps going into the future even though draftees only have to serve one term; he has terminal cancer and would rather go down swinging instead of dying from his illness. He ultimately gets his wish during the climax, when he stays behind in the exploding ship in order to hold back the Whitespikes.

Literature

• In And Then There Were None, the killer, Justice Wargrave, reveals a terminal illness in a posthumous letter. The killer intended to murder a large number of people who had gotten away with killing others before committing suicide.
• Death Masks: The Knight of the Cross Shiro trades himself to a demon for the protagonist's freedom and is torturously killed. The protagonist later receives a letter from Shiro, dated two weeks previously, revealing that he had terminal cancer and anticipated his Heroic Sacrifice.
• I Want to Eat Your Pancreas centers around Sakura Yamauchi who has pancreatic cancer and doesn't have that long to live. However, she actually gets murdered by a serial killer.

Live-Action TV

• Breaking Bad:
  • In the first episode, Walter White is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given only a few years to live. He ends up dying in the last episode, two years later, but not of his cancer; he's killed by a stray bullet wound from his own machine gun turret, Taking the Bullet for Jesse.
  • During a period when Walt's cancer seemed to be going into remission, Ted states to Skyler that his father was able to overcome his cancer, but the disease utterly wrecked his body, and he ended up dying of the flu only a short time later.
• CSI: NY:
  • "What Schemes May Come" features a group of terminal cancer patients who make a suicide pact among themselves where they get to choose how they die. One of the men books a very expensive hotel room, has a romantic evening with one of the women, and gets her to stab him in the base of the skull with an icepick while they're in bed together. Another man chooses to be stabbed with a lance while jousting. When his opponent's blow doesn't kill him, he pulls the lance further into his gut, completing the job.
  • In "Heart of Glass", a man dies from being beaten and thrown against his aquarium which shatters, slicing him to death. During the investigation, the team learns that he'd been hiding the fact he had AIDS.
  • The wife of an Amoral Attorney in "Page Turner" has lupus. She works in the special editions section of the city library, so her husband laces a book with thallium because he knows she'll come into contact with it, causing her to die of radiation poisoning. Then he attempts to sue the city so he can retire.
  • A young health-obsessed waitress in "City of the Dolls" is found dead in her bed with no signs of foul play. The autopsy determines she was poisoned. Her next-door neighbor, who killed her to purchase her apartment, tear down the adjoining wall, and expand it in order to have room for a nursery, is told during interrogation that she had cancer and would've only lived a few more months.
• Forensic Files: The episode "Missing Pearl" focused on a case of a woman who was killed by her husband. It was revealed at her autopsy that she had cancer and had six months to live. The victim's daughter lamented that she wished her father had let the cancer kill her mother instead of speeding up the process.
• Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: In "The Autopsy", the mortician Carl has terminal stomach cancer. However, he ends up committing suicide by slitting his own throat to doom the alien parasite that had taken over his body.
• In Heroes, Hiro becomes smitten with a waitress named Charlene. Unfortunately she ends up getting killed by Sylar. Later in the first season, Hiro goes back in the past in an attempt to save Charlene. However, it turns out she was already dying because of a blood clot in her brain.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Shuichi Kitaoka/Kamen Rider Zolda from Kamen Rider Ryuki has terminal cancer and is participating in the Rider War. Though, he only dies in battle in the alternate movie and one special episode. He actually dies from his disease in the main tv series.
  • In the past, Kiriya Kujo from Kamen Rider Ex-Aid told his friend he had the Bugster Virus which was a guaranteed death sentence at the time. The news freaks out Kiriya's friend and he ends up dying in a traffic accident in his despair. There is a strong indication that he intentionally killed himself.
• The Law & Order episode "Armed Forces" has a down-on-his-luck Vietnam vet murdered. It soon comes out that he was terminally ill with cancer that he was not treating.
• Magpie Murders: Alan has terminal cancer, but is murdered by being pushed off the tower at his home.
• Money Heist: Midway through the Royal Mint of Spain heist (which comprises the series' first two seasons), Berlin is revealed to have Helmer's Myopathy. He ultimately dies being gunned down by the police in order to give the other robbers time to escape the Royal Mint at the end of Season 2, out of his own will due to his illness.
• Monk: A variation happens in "Mr. Monk and the Very, Very Old Man". The cold open has the world's oldest man Miles Hollings murdered. Everybody believes he died via natural causes, including Stottlemeyer. However, Stottlemeyer's wife Karen, who made a documentary on him, believes there is something amiss about his death. Later on, Monk and Stottlemeyer discover the person who killed him was the deputy mayor. Why? Because he ran over a teen while drunk years ago and wrote down his confession on paper and buried it in a time capsule also containing Hollings' memoirs. The mayor then made a bet that if Hollings lived another five years, they would unbury the time capsule to add another chapter.
• NCIS:
  • In the penultimate episode of season 8, Mike Franks goes out fighting against Jonas Cobb, the Port-to-Port Killer, who fatally stabs him. It's subsequently revealed that Mike had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and he's buried in the coffin that Gibbs had been making for him.
  • The episode "Last Dance" has convicted arms dealer Reymundo Diaz bribing his way out of prison and going on a bloody rampage with his henchmen across the US in search of Torres, whom he only knows as "Carlos Salazar" (the alias Torres had been using during an undercover stint to get Diaz arrested). It turns out the reason Diaz is searching for Torres now after having been in prison for six years is that he's dying from a rare and deadly cancer, and he's determined to make the people who put him away die with him. He instead meets his end with a bullet to the head from Torres in their eventual showdown.
• Psych: Subverted in "Daredevils", in which Shawn and Gus are tasked to find out who is sabotaging the stunts of a daredevil named Dutch. In their investigation, they learn that Dutch has a huge insurance policy that pays big if he were to die in his stunts. They also learn that Dutch has terminal pancreatic cancer. As it turns out, Dutch was the one sabotaging his stunts so that his wife and son could be well taken care of after he died. They failed because he is just that good. Luckily Shawn is able to convince Dutch not to go through with his latest sabotage and just spend his remaining time with his family.
• One of The New '20s "news" from Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update is about a 102-year-old woman who survived the Spanish Flu in The Roaring '20s and the Coronavirus twice. But as Michael Che literally explained:
  "However, she was not match for my car."
• Played for dark humor in Seinfeld. Gary Fogel was a friend of Jerry's who was misdiagnosed with cancer but pretended he still had it because he liked how people treated him. Later in the series, Jerry goes to his funeral with Kramer thinking he did have cancer. He actually died from a car accident when he tried fixing his toupee and lost control of his car.
• Sherlock: Jeff Hope, the villain of "A Study in Pink", confides in Sherlock that he has a brain aneurysm which could cause him to keel over at any moment. He ends up dying from a bullet wound when Watson shoots him to save Sherlock from his mind games.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed:
  • Assassin's Creed Rogue: Lawrence Washington, older brother of George Washington and member of the Templar Order, is suffering from tuberculosis that killed him in real life when he was assassinated by Shay. He even takes the time to thank Shay for giving him a quick death as opposed to the slower one in store for him otherwise.
  • Assassin's Creed: Odyssey: Overlapping with Dies Differently in Adaptation, Perikles, while suffering from the Plague of Athens that killed him in real life, gets his throat slashed by Deimos.
• Far Cry 6: Anton Castillo reveals towards the climax of the game that he's dying of acute leukemia which his Viviro treatment is no longer working on, and all his tyrannical actions carried out over the course of the game were to restore Yara to true greatness before he dies. Ultimately, by the Final Battle, once Dani corners him and his son Diego in Anton's tower, Anton decides it's Better to Die than Be Killed, and cuts his own throat with the pruning knife he kept from years of enslavement on the tobacco fields, after lethally shooting Diego to make sure that Libertad doesn't kill him too, for the Sins of the Father. To quote a previous Far Cry villain, "Cancer won't be what kills you".
• In Illusion of Gaia, there's a man in Watermia who challenges Will to a game where they take turns drinking from glasses while avoiding a poisoned one. When Will inevitably wins due to being psychic and knowing which one is poisoned, the man still decides to down it anyway. The next day, Will learns that the man had been diagnosed with a terminal disease and wanted to go out his way. His ghost in the Tower of Babel regrets that decision.
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2:
  • Adrian Toomes/The Vulture contracted spinal cancer, for which he teamed up with Dr. Octavius, who promised him a treatment for it; however, he is ultimately killed by Kraven, who is busting out numerous supervillains from prison and subsequently hunting them down for sport. Speaking of which...
  • ...It turns out that this is actually Kraven's goal in the game, as he too is dying from cancer (heavily implied to be in Stage 4), and wishes to die a Glorious Death from a superior predator capable of overpowering and killing him in combat, rather than "die in some sick bed". He gets his wish when Venom/Harry brutalizes him into submission and bites his head off.
• In Mass Effect 2, Thane Krios is dying of a drell respiratory disease. During the suicide mission, he can be killed by the various hazards the Collector Base presents. If he survives, it's downplayed in Mass Effect 3, where he suffers a mortal abdominal wound and the disease makes lifesaving treatment impossible.
• Red Dead Redemption II: The low-honor endings have Arthur killed off by Micah, who either stabs him in the side or shoots him in the head, instead of his tuberculosis, which would have been fatal during the time period the game takes place in.
• Rise of the Tomb Raider: Ana, the true Big Bad of the game, is confirmed to be dying, most likely from lung cancer because of all the smoking she does, which is why she's so desperate to find the Divine Source to save her life. Sadly, by the end of the game, Ana ultimately fails at her goal: all of her forces, including her brother and Dragon Konstantin, are killed in pursuit of the Source, and once she finally gets hold of it, she only possesses the immortality she sought for a few minutes before Lara destroys the Source. Afterwards, Ana goes into a Villainous BSoD over everything she did being All for Nothing, and then she finally dies — not from the cancer, as she'd feared, but from her superiors in Trinity deciding she has outlived her usefulness and sending a Cold Sniper to shoot her through the head.
• The Wham Episode of Silent Hill 2 reveals that Mary didn't die of her illness, as James repeatedly states... rather, James smothered her to death with a pillow when the burden of taking care of her and dealing with her mood swings became too much to bear.
• In Sonic Adventure 2, Maria Robotnik was dying of NIDS, but ultimately died from being shot.

Visual Novels

• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: Magnifi Gramarye was hospitalized after contracting liver cancer but died from a gunshot wound to the head.
• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: Subverted. At the beginning of his execution, it seems like this is going to end up happening to Chapter 5's culprit, Kaito Momota, who had been revealed to be dying of an illness a few chapters back. However, in the middle of the execution (shortly after achieving his dream of seeing space, no less), Kaito's illness finally does him in, much to Monokuma's chagrin.
• Dies irae ~Interview with Kaziklu Bey~: Claudia Jerusalem, a girl with terminal skin cancer and with a life expectancy of just another month, is ultimately killed when she ends up manifesting a Creation Figment she had no way of controlling which both burned her physically and consumed her soul for fuel.

Western Animation

• BoJack Horseman: In the first season, Herb Kazazz has advanced cancer and doesn't have that long to live. He then ends up dead in the next season. However, he didn't die from cancer. Instead, his cancer was in remission and he died when his car crashed into a peanut truck and he had a deadly allergic reaction. And just for irony's sake, his car crashed because he was tweeting how he was going "to live forever".
• Final Space: In Season 1, Lord Commander's powers are slowly killing him, and by the end of the season, he is a weakened and beaten shell of his original self. However, the first episode of Season 2 sees Nightfall kill him by skewering him with a spear.

Real Life

• Prohibition-era mob boss Hymie Weiss had terminal cancer, a fact which make him exceptionally reckless and dangerous, since he knew he was going to die soon regardless, including waging open war against Al Capone. Sure enough, Weiss ended up dying by being gunned down in an assassination by a rival gang, not by his cancer.

---