Winged Soul Flies Off at Death

Guess he couldn't weasel his way out of death.

What happens when characters die in a cartoony setting? Why, their souls leave their bodies! You can see it happening: an exact duplicate, except winged and usually white and translucent, sometimes with halo and harp or a trumpet (being those attributes typically given to angels), starts flying up from the collapsed body. If the dead character's soul flies upwards, then they Died Happily Ever After. If the soul flies downward, then they missed Heaven and will go to the other place instead; alternatively, a (likewise ephemeral) crack in the ground may emerge and suck them in. In this case, the soul might resemble a demon instead of an angel, being translucent red and sporting horns. That said the angelic version is so iconic that quite a few cartoonish baddies take that route instead, and it often sticks... until the end of the episode and their next appearance in a cartoon that is.

If you grab the soul and stuff it back into the body, naturally the dead character will come back to life. Otherwise, it's bound for Fluffy Cloud Heaven to meet God (or possibly for Fire and Brimstone Hell to meet a Big Red Devil).

Usually an animated or comic strip/book trope.

A Death Trope, although often an unpermanent one.

A sub-trope of Heaven Above. Compare Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence (soul ascends without the cartoony aspect... usually); Astral Projection (soul ascends from a still-living body on command); and Giving Up the Ghost, the Japanese near death equivalent that is always Played for Laughs. See Death Throws for a related Video Game trope.

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

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Played for Laughs (dark ones) in Fairy Tail, as Elfman delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to a villain that's so severe that he actually grips this to stuff back in the poor sap's body to continue the beating.
• At the end of each Fullmetal Alchemist manga volume, the characters who have died in that volume are pictured with a halo and wings. Except for Shou Tucker, who was evidently so evil that he ended up in Hell instead.
• At the start of The Fuma Conspiracy, Inspector Zenigata recounts how he saw the 'death' of Lupin, imagining the titular thief floating up to heaven with angel wings and a halo. Zenigata becomes a monk so he can pray for Lupin's soul.
• In episode 17 of Jewelpet Sunshine, the gang become prehistoric savages and kill an elephant to eat it. The elephant's winged soul flies up into the air afterwards.
• Parodied in One Piece; Lao G inexplicably dies of old age during a battle, and we (As well as people in-universe) see this trope happening. An ally of Lao G tearfully calls out his name, causing the soul to return because Lao G can't hear well at his age, and he needed to ask what's going on.
• In Yaiba, this happens to Sasaki Kojiro (in the past, is a long story involving time travel).

Asian Animation

• Crazy Candies: In Season 2 episode 31, Marshyo and Jackey pass by a candy person so fast and so many times that it kills them, sending their soul flying upwards.

Comic Books

• Happens to Lobo of all people after he is killed in an ambush by two other bounty hunters. True to form, it doesn't last long.
• Happens to Gerhard Shnobble at the end of the The Spirit story named for him.
• Suske en Wiske: Happens to the villain Savantas in "De Sprietatoom". He then returns to Earth to repent for his sins.
• Referenced in Tex Willer, as two of their many euphemisms for "being killed" are "getting a pair of wings" and "going playing the harp on a cloud".

Films — Animation

• Brave: Mor'du's ghost, in human form, rises regally from the corpse of his crushed ursine body, nods respectfully to Merida and her mother, and then turns into a Wisp and departs.

Films — Live-Action

• Happens in Big Man Japan with each of the defeated monsters. Quite odd to see in a live-action film.
• Constantine (2005) has a variation in The Stinger after the end credits. Chas Kramer, who died earlier in the movie, appears in half-angel form atop his own tombstone and rockets into the sky.
• In Ghost (1990) this happened to at least one character, albeit without the wings and harp. Several characters got dragged away by demonic shadows.
• In Monty Python's Life of Brian, at the end of the opening credits, his soul in winged angel form flies up from an opening flower bud (it's that kind of film) and rises up towards the sun, and is then promptly burned and cast back down.
• In Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, the dinner party host and guests die of salmon mousse poisoning, and their souls leave their bodies. However, instead of flying to heaven, they drive (the cars' souls also leave their bodies).
• "Seven James Bonds at Casino Royale. They came to save the world and win a gal at Casino Royale. Six of them went to a heavenly spot. The seventh one is going to a place where it's terribly...hot."
• A couple episodes of The Three Stooges had this.
• Topper omits the wings but otherwise plays this straight, as the ghosts of George and Marion rise from their bodies after they're killed in a car wreck.
• Laurel and Hardy: Happens to Ollie near the end of The Flying Deuces when, after death, he literally flies off to Heaven as an angel.
• In Faust the souls of Faust and Gretchen ascend to Heaven after they are burned at the stake.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as Eddie causes the Toon Patrol weasels to die laughing (with the exception of Psycho, who loses his footing), their souls drift upward. One soul (Psycho) sets off the machinery as it rises. Psycho even says, "Bye-Bye!" as he sets off the machinery. It is worth mentioning that, since toons are subject to the Rule of Funny in much the same way as humans are to the laws of physics, and were reportedly unkillable before the invention of "the dip", it is possible that the Toon Patrol did not actually "die" in any meaningful sense, but were instead using/beholden to the trope as the culmination of a (in-and-out-of-universe) Brick Joke. ^note  Note that Smart-Ass, who gets punted into the dip by Eddie, doesn't get an angel.
• In Blade Runner, during his climactic fight with Deckard, Roy Batty is holding a white dove. After he delivers his final speech, "I've seen things you people won't believe...time to die", and dies, the dove flies away up into the sky.
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: After getting shot to death, Buster Scruggs emerges from his body as a winged angel flying into heaven with a harp and singing a duet with his still-living murderer.

Literature

• Kind Hearted Cat Lover Oliver Herford's illustrations for his "Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten" show his beloved cat Hafiz doing this when his nine lives are spent.

Live-Action TV

• Horrible Histories: In a Vicious Vikings sketch depicting a Mortal Kombat-style video game in which Vikings fight monks, some of the slaughtered monks' souls, coloured blue with angel wings, fly off after they are killed.
• In the last episode of the first series of The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer after Vic's life support machine has been switched off by Bob his spirit is seen rising from his body, dressed in a completely white suit but without wings or harp and coincidentally looking very similar to how he would look on the later remake of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) where he played Marty Hopkirk.

Manhua

• For several Old Master Q strips, this tends to happen to the titular character or supporting cast whenever they die, depicted as souls in a white garb with wings and a halo. However the comic runs entirely on Negative Continuity, they come back immediately in a following strip.

Music

• Combined with Together in Death: Milky the Milk Carton (and his strawberry milk carton lover) at the end of the music video for "Coffee & TV" by Blur.
• Cool-T in the video for "The Magic Key".

Myths & Religion

• Ancient Egyptian art depicts the soul (ba) of a deceased person as a bird with the face of the deceased.

Video Games

• Clockwork Aquario: After the Player Character loses their life, they jump off the screen and float back onto it as an angel. If the player still has lives left, the angel can be moved around the screen to position it for the next life. Otherwise, it'll just fly up and off the screen.
• In the Crash Bandicoot series, a lot of the many different possible deaths involve this (sometimes leaving behind a body, sometimes not). The "default" death animation in the second and third games (many different ways to die had their own) was Crash's body simply disappearing and his blue, winged soul flying off; it has a variation where Crash is playing the didgeridoo on his way up.
  • In Crash Bash, though, every playable character turns into a winged ball of light when they die in the minigames, even the evil ones.
  • In Crash Twinsanity, the villainous Dr. Cortex has a variation on this where he'll turn into a blue, winged soul just like Crash does, but when he tries to fly off, he falls back to the ground.
  • With the N. Sane Trilogy remake, this became Coco's stock death animation. In fact, it makes up 80% of her death animations as she was a late unplanned addition to the game.
  • In Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time all the playable characters do this, though in Cortex's case his soul is red and has devil horns.
• Fancy Pants Adventures: Whenever Fancy Pants Man dies, his angelic soul with halo and wings will leave his lifeless body and ascend to heaven saying goodbye to his dead body. Remix and Super avert this though.
• In StarTropics, a winged angel version of Mike complete with halo flies up from his body whenever he dies.
• In Kirby Mass Attack, the player controls multiple Kirbys, and any who die transform into little winged angel ghost Kirbys and fly away. It's also played with; any surviving Kirbys can revive the one who just got killed by grabbing his soul and forcing it back down to the ground.
• In EarthBound, dead party members follow you as translucent ghosts lacking feet but having a halo over their head. They can be revived at the hospital (where it's implied that they were there from the moment they were beaten, so maybe the body gets transported to the hospital but the soul stays with the party until the doctor reunites them).
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Koume and Kotake die this way after you defeat their combined form, Twinrova. Humorously, they argue with each other over their ages even as their souls are spirited away to the heavens. Since they were evil, why they are ascending is something of a mystery.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: This is referenced with the heads of Igos du Ikana and his two lieutenants still bickering after defeat, showing they are still not at rest even after being killed twice.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Everything you kill, even bugs, explodes in a flash of light and smoke, leaving behind a purple ghostly afterimage. For monsters, the image appears as a skull.
• In Theme Hospital, when a patient dies, s/he either turns into an angel and flies off to heaven, or the Grim Reaper appears and creates a hole in the ground that swallows the person's soul.
• Prehistorik has your character first turn into a skeleton, then fly away, winged, white-skinned and with a halo, into heaven.
• Quite a few Taito games did this, including Kuri Kinton, Kiki Kai Kai, Monkey Mole Panic, Space Invaders '95: Attack of Lunar Loonies, and Operation Wolf.
• Also happens to both player characters in Namco's The Legend of Valkyrie.
• The defeat animation in Pirate101 for the cursed monquistadors combines this with Dragged Off to Hell. A fissure appears below them and a large red flaming hand reaches up and grabs them dragging their body into the gap but leaves their soul which has angel wings and a halo and flies off into a patch of clouds that appear.
• Both Tom and Jerry: The Ultimate Game of Cat and Mouse! and Tom and Jerry: Frantic Antics! have Jerry fly away as a harp-toting, halo-bearing angel if he dies.
• In the Joe & Mac series, if either Joe or Mac loses all their energy, they transform into winged souls wearing a toga and fly off.
• In Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure for the PC, if Cosmo dies from anything other than falling off the screen, he too wears a toga, wings, halo and carries a harp, and flies off.
• Should anybody lose all their health in Super Dodge Ball, this happens to them.
• In Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest, Laura dies this way by going into the chute at the start of the game, or by walking into the broken railing in the upstairs hall.
• A common way for Alex Kidd to die.
• As well as to the protagonists in the Monster Land/World games in the Wonder Boy series.
• This happens to Pit in Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters whenever he dies.
• In Badlands, the game over scene has main character Buck's winged angel soul appearing on screen and then twirls his cowboy hat on his finger while waving goodbye to the player before accidentally losing his cowboy hat and then finishing his wave as the words "Game Over" appear and then flying off.
• Pikmin: When a Pikmin dies, a small ghostlike spirit will float up from where it fell, wail, and fade away. These spirits retain the color they were in life — red, yellow, blue, etc. — and, in Pikmin 3, the Rock Pikmin will maintain their blocky, jagged shape and the Winged Pikmin their insect-like wings (making them actual examples of winged souls). A similar thing happens for enemies — when a creature dies, a ghostly "bubble" (pink-orange in the first two games, light blue with a little tail in the third) with two eye-like holes will rise from the body and fade away.
• The death chibis in Long Live the Queen, although they're not exact duplicates of Elodie, just little soul-blobs with wings.
• Done upon death in SegaSonic the Hedgehog.
• This happens to a playable character in the Mr. Driller series, whenever he/she gets crushed by blocks or runs out of oxygen.
• In the 1941 stage in Time Gal, while on the wing of a falling plane, there's a Time Stop moment where you have to choose the correct option to progress further into the level. One of these options is "Pray to God" ("Hope for Luck" in the English version). Should you choose this option, the plane will crash into the side of a ship, and you see Reika's spirit ascending into heaven.
• This also happens to the player character in Congo Bongo.
• A mainstay of the Twinbee series: whenever one of the eponymous ships loses its life, its soul will fly upward towards the top of the screen. Should you manage to retrieve it with your next ship before it flies off-screen though, you will retrieve all lost power-ups.
• Happens in Clash at Demonhead when Bang dies. It's guaranteed to be seen at least once in a playthrough, because dying in one area is the only way to progress.
• Enemies in the Sega Master System Light Gun Game Gangster Town do this when shot. Shooting their winged souls before they fly offscreen clips their wings and awards even more points.
• The "Cursed" creep in Bubble Tanks Tower Defence. When killed, it releases a "Ghost" creep that phases through your towers to the exit.
• Whenever you stomp on a cockroach in your home in Animal Crossing, a small cockroach-shaped ghost flies up where you stomped it for a few seconds.
• In Muramasa Rebirth, the second DLC character Gonbe dies this way(unlike the other DLC characters, and the main game protagonists), minus the wings and halo (just his legless spirit rising up to the heavens); this is to tie into a learnable ability of his where his deceased wife Otae grabs and forces his spirit back down, reviving him ONCE per battle.
• In Thy Dungeonman II, you can talk to a healer in the hope that she can cure you of your plague. Unfortunately, she just asks a lot of questions. When you've answered the seventh one, the plague sets in. You pass out and die, and a little Thy Dungeonman angel floats towards the ceiling.
• In Zombies Ate My Neighbors, this happens whenever one of the neighbors is killed.
• Strangely happens to a cookie of all things in the SNES version of Yoshi's Cookie. In one of many Running Gag, you see between Mario and the runaway cookie every time you clear a stage, the cookie rolls off a cliff and dies. Mario sees the cookie ascend into the afterlife, causing him to have an Aside Glance and wonder what the heck just happened.
• In Sid & Al's Incredible Toons, if Al gets shot or pushed into something sharp, he keels over and pushes up flowers from his body while his kitty soul flies away with halo and harp.
• In the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Dreamcast, and PC versions of Donald Duck: Goin' Qu@ckers, the first boss, Bernadette the Bird, has her angel fly off after being defeated.
• In the flash game Hang A Roo, the titular kangaroo floats off with halo and wings whenever he gets hanged.
• Lamona from Hazelnut Hex turns into a ghost after her defeat, before floating away off-camera while cacking. There's also a giant ghost boss who turns into a dozen smaller ghosts that fly away.
• In the first two Patapon games, after Ban the Tatepon and Don the Yumipon have finished helping out, they split in half and turn into butterflies.
  • This is an interesting one since the Japanese believe that a human's soul/spirit takes the form of a butterfly
• Both allied units and enemies in Paladog give out one when they die. Handy to note, since units can get knocked down/stunned with a similar animation to dying, so seeing this occur means that the unit is indeed dead.
• This can happen as a result of an unlucky roulette spin in Sengoku Basara 4. If the roulette stops on a skull space, chances are your character might get a humongous golden pot with the Xavist logo on it dropped on the head, your character breaks down and while it's not so much your soul flying away as it being carried away by two bearded angels, you still have to get it back by rotating the analog stick fast. If you do it well, you will get some Tenka Medals.
• In Zombidle, killing villagers sometimes causes a ghost to float out of them, flying off the top of the screen. Once Bob the Necromancer gets his hands on a certain item, he can collect them instead and use their ghosts to craft recipes for powerful items.
• Whenever the player dies in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Isaac's soul would fly out of his body as one. It's also the secret character.
• One of the many death animations in Atomic Bomberman. Another death animation had a little demon instead of a little angel.
• Parodied in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, when Korekiyo dies, his ghost flies into the sky, only for his spirit to be melted away by Monokuma and his sister throwing salt at it.
• In Cuphead, this is what happens to the titular character and his brother Mugman when they get killed (complete with their straws acting as a halo; Word of God says that beneath their cups-for-heads reside their spiritual essences or, in other words, their immortal souls). Those playing in co-op mode can discover that either Cuphead's or Mugman's souls can show their shiny pink hearts as they are flying away. If the surviving player can successfully parry the soul and resurrect them, they can return to life with only one hit point, and every subsequent death they suffer has their soul fly off faster each time. Once their soul has flown away completely, it will remain until the player either dies or has completed a level and gotten the soul contract from each boss (or has beaten a mini-boss at King Dice's Boss Bonanza in the patched version).
  • Parodied during the fight with Sally Stageplay. After beating her second phase, her dress turns into an angel costume and she's pulled offscreen by a pulley.
  • Also happens in the battle with Baroness Von Bon Bon. The jawbreaker midboss she has sent gains a halo when defeated, floating off the screen while Bon Bon prepares for the next phase.
  • In the 'Delicious Last Course' expansion, upon defeating Esther Winchester, the can of beef sausages that constitutes her form releases the soul of each individual sausage as they ascend, complete with wings and halo. Some even play banjos on their way, in place of the usual harps.
  • Also in the expansion, the souls of the Pawns will float away once all of them have been defeated.
• ToeJam & Earl both turn into ghostly angels (despite being aliens) and fly off-screen when they run out of energy in the first game. If it's your final life, they add a little wave goodbye to the fourth wall.
• In Lady Bug, the title character becomes a pair of disembodied wings and halo and flutters off-screen when it's killed.
• A little-known game published by Psygnosis called Creepers had any creepers who died during a level gain thin angel wings and a halo and fly upwards. This was a little confusing, considering that the Creepers were larvae, and winning a level results in them turning into butterflies.
• Hostages: Rescue Mission, AKA Rescue: The Embassy Mission on the NES, depicts this on the map screen if a team member is killed.
• Happens in the video game adaptation of Spy vs. Spy when one of the Spies falls victim to a Booby Trap or the other Spy escapes.
• Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places): After Dr. Nonookee is crushed by the piano, he appears as a floating angel, playing the harp and slowly ascending to Heaven... before a flaming hand appears out of nowhere to snatch him where he belongs.
• In the Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa arcade game, the Ghost Town stage has the trope of a dead person's angel appearing and flying away used by the zombie enemies and Boothill Buzzard (the stage boss).
• At the end of Creature Crunch, the giant cat serving as the final obstacle preventing Wesley from leaving Dr. Drod's mansion has to have eight of its nine lives taken in order to get it out of the way of the door. Every time Wesley makes the cat lose one of its lives, an angel with wings and a halo ascends from the cat's remains.
• One of the death animations for enemies in Ninja Baseball Bat Man. Comes with a short tune of Fur Elise for some weird reason.
• Game & Watch: If a person hits the ground in Fire, the miss icon is an angel with a halo. The Gallery remakes change misses to bandages with the fallen person storming off in a huff.
• In Earthworm Jim, Evil the Cat pounces on Jim during the second half of his battle. If Jim successfully counters the attack, Evil turns into a numbered angel. Jim wins when he shoots Evil nine times.
• Ninja Clowns: Whenever one of the ninja clowns loses a life, their soul flies up, winged and holding a harp.
• Playing with Fire: Dead players fly away as angels.
• Chaos Faction: In the first game, once a player dies and they still have at least one life remaining, they'll fly off as a winged soul before respawning.
• The Wonderful 101:
  • When failing, the continue screen shows the latest playable Wonderful One's soul sobbing over their fallen body. Continuing will reunite the body and soul while selecting not to continue has the soul fly up.
  • Recruitable civilians can be killed by stage hazards, represented by small ghosts rising up from where they were.
• In Cowboy Kid, if Sheriff Sam and/or Little Chief lose all their energy, they become winged souls and fly away.
• In The Battle Cats, when a cat or enemy dies, its soul flies up into the sky and disappears. Most units get a swirly generic soul, but Moneko, Neneko, and their variants get a soul that looks like them, and Legend Rares have a crystal-like, rainbow soul that fragments and flies away. Some Aku enemies have a more demonic-looking soul, which casts one final surge attack before flying off.
• This happens in River City Girls whenever a playable character's health is depleted. However, if you are playing co-op, the other player can stomp that soul back into the player's body, reviving them.
• When Mike loses a life in StarTropics, his soul floats away as he facepalms in shame.

Webcomics

• An early Casey and Andy strip had Casey shoot Andy dead, resulting in an angelic winged Andy. He then smashed his gun, resulting in an angelic winged gun, grabbed that and shot Andy again.
• Done for an April Fools' Day strip in the webcomic Darken; the characters who'd died in the just-concluded story arc are surprised to find themselves with wings and headed upwards. An angel lampshades that people tend to forget that "forgiveness" is a part of the "good" religions.
• A symbolic version of this shows up at the end of Brawl in the Family's Plumber's Best Friend. After Yoshi sacrifices himself to give Mario a second jump, he is shown hatching again in a Level in the Clouds setting, before swallowing a blue Koopa shell, sprouting a pair of wings, and flying off into the sun, as though ascending to heaven.
• In El Goonish Shive, a sketchbook strip shows the boar in heaven with angel wings and a halo.

Web Original

• The Google Doodle for Erwin Schrödinger's 126th birthday showed a live cat walking out of one side, and a cat soul (with Wing Ding Eyes) floating out the other.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Rival", a young Darwin and Gumball nearly get run over by a truck thanks to one of their baby sister Anais's deadly pranks, and Darwin has to stop his soul from flying off and shove it back into his body.
  Darwin: That was horrifying!
  Gumball: Yeah, well at least your soul was going upwards.
• Donald Duck:
  • In a cartoon about fire safety featuring Donald (Donald's Fire Survival Plan), he panicked several times, resulting in his death, and the soul being forcibly yanked back three times before the instructor gave him another chance.
  • In another Donald Duck cartoon, Soup's On, Donald's nephews trick him into thinking he's dead by dressing him up as an angel and hoisting him up on a mattress. (It works until he actually tries to fly).
• A few Tom and Jerry cartoons have done this with nine of them for Tom's nine lives. Though on at least one occasion, only one is seen for Tom.
• In the WWII short Animated Film Booby Traps, Private Snafu is blown up, does this while playing 'Those Endearing Young Charms' on his harp, and is blown up again.
• Infamously in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "One Beer", in which Buster, Plucky, and Hampton get drunk, drive off of a cliff, and die. The ending shows the whole thing to be a PSA filmed by Buster and co. Uh-huh. The FCC knew they were being trolled and yanked the episode after one airing.
• Happens at the end of The Cat Came Back, not only with Mr. Johnson (who blows himself up in a failed attempt to get rid of the titular cat, which he was trying to do throughout most of the short), but also the cat itself (after Mr. Johnson's own body falls on top of it and crushes it). And all his nine lives.
• A standard ending for many Looney Tunes shorts.
  • Happens to the vulture in "A Corny Concerto" for instance.
  • The 1948 short "Back Alley Oproar" with Sylvester and Elmer Fudd. Sylvester insists on singing when Fudd wants to sleep. This leads to wacky hijinxs that end with Elmer setting off a load of dynamite, and Elmer's winged soul ascending to Heaven immediately after, along with all nine of Sylvester's lives.
  • The 1954 Sylvester and Tweety Bird short "Satan's Waitin'". Nine versions of Sylvester go to visit a Satanic bulldog after Sylvester is killed in various ways.
  • In "Dough Ray Me-ow", Heathcliff, a big dumb cat, is heir to a fortune, and his parrot pal Louie is next in line. Louie eventually kills Heathcliff, and as his nine life angels ascend, Louie gloats that the money is his, as Heathcliff can't take it with him. The angels all bolt back and Heathcliff sits up, saying "Da-a-h, if I can't take it with me, I ain't goin'!"
  • In "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat", the two mice Hubie and Bertie convince Claude Cat he's dead by dressing him as an angel and tying him to a balloon so he floats upward.
  • Show Biz Bugs: Daffy doesn't have wings (beyond what he already possesses), but this is essentially what he does at the end of the short following his literally explosive stage act.
  • The 1964 short "Dumb Patrol", with Bugs as a World War One pilot against Yosemite Sam (as "Baron Sam Von Shpamm") ends with Sam caught in a ammo dump explosion. He flies off as a harp-playing soul... in a devil costume.◊
    Bugs: I've heard of Hell's Angels, but I never thought I'd see one!
• Futurama: At the end of "Hell is Other Robots", Bender flies Leela and Fry out of Robot Hell using a robot's wings. On the way out, an energy ring shot at him is hooked on his antenna to complete the angel allusion.
• Happens to Batman in the "Emperor Joker!" episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Radio Bart": Happens to Scratchy after being eaten by a crocodile in a well. Midway through flight Itchy shoots him down again with a revolver.
  • "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase": Happens to Grampa in the intro for the "Love-Matic Grampa" segment. Animated in a simplistic style, it shows that Grampa was crushed to death by a falling shelf, and his winged soul flew off "but got lost along the way" (the intro shows him getting struck by a jet and losing his wings), and falls into Moe's love-tester machine, which he ends up possessing.
  • "Loan-a Lisa": Subverted in an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon in which, in a parody of the beginning of Up, Itchy kills Scratchy and his wife, and when their souls are flying upward, Itchy sucks them up with a vacuum and sets it on fire.
• Anna & Bella: Bella's soul starts spiraling up to heaven after the car accident. Anna grabs it and starts yanking it back down into Bella.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: "Dudes, he made me experience high tide!".
• Bunny: The bunny sprouts wings as it flies off into the bright light.
• Kaeloo: In the first season finale, the soul of Yogo the sentient yogurt does this as it rises from its grave. In Episode 92, Adele's soul does this too, before the Grim Reaper steals it.
• Scratch and Crow: The end of the short has the chickens exiting their tomb and flying off to heaven. (Chickens, of course, cannot fly.)
• Used in the The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy short "Mortal Dilemma", where Grim notices a driver is close to running over some kids because he's too busy talking on his cellphone to look where he's driving. With a snap of his fingers, Grim kills the guy's cellphone and the cellphone's spirit flies off with wings and a halo.
• South Park did this once, having Satan's soul ascend to Heaven upon his death.
• The seventeenth episode of Garfield Originals has a spider die and then rise to the heavens as an angel wielding a harp.
• Cat Burglar: In this interactive short, Rowdy, the titular Villain Protagonist, has only three lives instead of the usual nine due to bad luck with his prior criminal escapades. Each time he loses a life due to the player guessing wrong during any one of the quick-time trivia segments throughout the short, his spirit ascends skyward, complete with wings, halo, and angelic harp music, before a cutscene plays where said spirit calls you out for being careless, with the loss of his first (read: seventh) leading to him specifically reminding you that his remaining lives are in your hands.
  Rowdy: So let's get our heads in the game — 'cuz if you don't, I might lose mine!
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • In "To Heck and Back", Heffer undergoes a Near-Death Experience when he chokes on a chicken bone. As Rocko tries to revive Heffer with chest compressions, Heff's soul is literally farted out of his body and flies off to Heaven. But as he reaches the Pearly Gates, his wings suddenly melt away and are replaced by weights, which send him plummeting down to Heck.
  • In "Tickled Pinky", Rocko gets sedated for an appendectomy, and has a dream in which his appendix is a little kid named Pinky, whom he consoles with a trip to the carnival (and other, increasingly silly last requests) before he's taken out. When Rocko wakes up to find out that his appendix has been removed, he tearfully takes it home in a jar and buries it in his backyard. Fortunately, Angel!Pinky, along with all his baby teeth and tonsils, visit just before ascending to Heaven and gives Rocko a proper goodbye. In the same episode, Heffer undergoes a liposuction and his fat ascends to Heaven, though not before complaining that he didn't even get to go to the carnival.
  • At the end of "Kiss Me, I'm Foreign", Filburt uses a Squirrel Away grenade to kill a squirrel couple living in his shell. After the squirrels die, their souls fly out of Filburt's shell.
  • In "Manic Mechanic", when Rocko's car gets wrecked, its soul flies off to Heaven, but returns to its body when Filburt finds a "broken"/"fixed" switch that's set to "broken" and sets it back to "fixed". At the end of the episode, when both Rocko's car and Filburt's motor scooter get wrecked, their souls fly off to Heaven.

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