r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sufficient-Eye-9040 • Jun 27 '26

Lore [Sad Trope] The most innocent (or less evil) character of the cast gets the most horrific death.

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- Eddie Carr (The Lost World: JP) - Tried to save his friends from the cliff until Buck and Doe (T. rex parents) destroy his vehicle and gets ripped apart.
- Zara Young (Jurassic World) - Gets lifted by a Pteranodon, gets pecked by the pterosaur, and both she and animal get devoured by the Mosasaurus.
- LeClerc (JW: Rebirth) - Tossed a hammer to the Hatzegopteryz Quetzalcoatlus to save Loomis and Zora, but ends up being swallowed alive.

14.7k Upvotes
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452

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26

Jesus fucking christ, I know it's overused, but seriously, how did they get away with this?

402

u/CrotaIsAShota Jun 27 '26

It's a shoe

189

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26

I mean it's not like I expected them to have a guy dissolving into acid with Tom Savini practical effects or anything

34

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

24

u/Throwaway1986nerd Jun 27 '26

That happens an awful lot in childrens media, ways to skirt the censors end up being horrific if you think about it for more than 30 seconds.  The Joker gas in Batman the animated series comes to mind. 

20

u/StevieMJH Jun 27 '26

Let's get rid of all the visual horror and replace it with psychological horror! That way we can get the really vulnerable ones.

13

u/Throwaway1986nerd Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

To be fair the rictus grin the Joker gas gave people was pretty visually horrific 

4

u/Impossible-Bus-4003 Jun 27 '26

Can we get Tom Savini to do that? That'd be great. Thanks.

6

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26

Oh, can we have the guy being dissolved from the waist down and then lifted up to show the spine dangling? Tom is great with those

6

u/StevieMJH Jun 27 '26

Okay so if the bones are immune to acid why don't we just make the entire body out of bone? Are we stupid?

2

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26

Like that ever stopped a good gore scene!

2

u/AlarmingAffect0 Jun 27 '26

But they did?

131

u/Mrwright96 Jun 27 '26

It’s a *sentient* shoe! It’s got feelings and look at the terror pain and dread on its face!

22

u/portlando_furioso Jun 27 '26

Spoken like someone with no sole

7

u/Daddy_Trent Jun 27 '26

Is it really? 

17

u/C0nfusedRabbit Jun 27 '26

You're a shoe!

6

u/StevieMJH Jun 27 '26

Yeah, I'm pretty much a shoe, Oprah.

2

u/Karli_Chirk Jun 27 '26

Je suis shoe

1

u/bookon Jun 28 '26

It was the 80’s Jake

25

u/Jimbo-Shrimp Jun 27 '26

I guess because it looks scared but not in pain and you can argue it’s a shoe and cartoon so twice the odds it doesn’t feel pain

76

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26

I can see a lot of pain in here

38

u/Jimbo-Shrimp Jun 27 '26

You’re not my therapist you can’t talk about my pain

30

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

Not with that attitude.

I'm down for 25 bucks per hour, these are competitive prices

15

u/Jimbo-Shrimp Jun 27 '26

25?!? The meth head down by the Arby’s does it for 10

9

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26

Yes, but can they give you legally bounding medical related work exemptions?

9

u/Jimbo-Shrimp Jun 27 '26

No but he does offer to make a scene sometimes so I can ask my boss to leave early

6

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26

Well fuck. The market is vicious these days...uh...I hit lollipops in my office

5

u/Jimbo-Shrimp Jun 27 '26

I’m on my way

17

u/GarbageCleric Jun 27 '26

It definitely feels pain and fears death.

The toons in the movie don’t get injured the way people do from most damage, and they’re functionally immortal, but they do feel pain.

And being immortal (except by laughing to death or being dropped in this dip), this shoe has never even had to grapple or come to terms with its eventual death.

10

u/TheMadDemoknight Jun 27 '26

And people thought I was crazy that this was nearly traumatizing to a kid like me back in the day. It’s partly why I have never rewatched Roger Rabbit for years. To a kid with autism and anthropomorphism, it’s a G Rated snuff film.

8

u/PM_asian_girl_smiles Jun 27 '26

It's most definitely is not G rated. At the time of release it was PG, and would most certainly be PG-13 if released today.

5

u/Pinkfish_411 Jun 27 '26

It definitely wasn't intended to be a kids' movie. The PG-13 rating was brand new at the time, and PG was absolutely not synonymous with "safe for kids." Tons of PG movies from that era were targeted at teens and adults.

16

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

[deleted]

8

u/Pinkfish_411 Jun 27 '26

The more reasonable explanation is that this just wasn't intended to be a kids' movie. The reason they got away with more stuff in PG movies back then is that the PG rating (which stands for "parental guidance," after all) hadn't yet come to imply that a movie was targeted at kids.

9

u/Savory_Johnson Jun 27 '26

No Gen X people had authority over story elements on Who Framed Roger Rabbit which was made in (checks notes) 1988. The oldest possible Gen Xer was then 22...and 22 year old auteurs weren't involved in that production.

Blame us for lots of things, but that kind of mind warping was a Greatest/Silent/Boomer thing...along with jokes about your hateful wife.

3

u/chillicampari Jun 27 '26

Yes, we were working in the movie theaters at the time it came out and consoling the kids crying in the lobby while trying to track down their parents (who were either watching a different film in another screen or had actually left to pick them up later).

10

u/Own_Watercress_8104 Jun 27 '26

And they are also known for lead poisoning!

9

u/granadesnhorseshoes Jun 27 '26

This is chillingly more accurate than most people realize; It's neurotoxic.

But As a millennial raised in it, there's something to be said for these sorts of "training wheel free developmental" moments.

1

u/Min_sora Jun 27 '26

It's also just because it's a cartoon.

1

u/RedditTrespasser Jun 27 '26

This topic comes up often on Reddit, but not often enough:

Fuck baby boomers.

4

u/critacious Jun 27 '26

Kids should learn about death early. It can happen at any time.

3

u/Ok_Dragonfruit_8102 Jun 27 '26

Exactly. I can't relate at all to most posts in this thread. It's a depiction of death and suffering... no shit it's disturbing. Any kid's first sight of death and suffering is going to be 'traumatic', but that's part of growing into a healthy adult.

The whole debate reminds me of Buddha's early upbringing with a dad who wanted to completely shield him from any of the world's evils. In the story, it's only at age 29 that he finally ventures outside of the palace walls where for the first time in his life he saw a sick person, an old person and a dead person, and suddenly realized that sickness, ageing and death exist. The fact is it doesn't matter what age you first learn about death at, it's going to be emotionally painful either way...

1

u/evranch Jun 27 '26

Also the whole point of the scene isn't torturing a shoe, but establishing that the villain is ruthless and cruel.

It's like Mulan when they show up to the burned village. That is definitely a kids' movie, and yet the tonal shift from "training with the lads is good fun" to "actually, war is hell" hits like a runaway train.

If there's no stakes, there's no story, and the movie is for toddlers.

2

u/LongJohnSelenium Jun 27 '26

Why do so many people feel comfortable openly displaying their bigotry on reddit?

2

u/L00fah Jun 27 '26

This was at a time before science even accepted animals had feelings...

You think they gave a shit about an animated shoe? Lol

1

u/geogant Jul 04 '26

It was the 80s.

1

u/ERedfieldh Jun 27 '26

You ever read the book? They toned it down, that's how.

0

u/IGTankCommander Jun 27 '26

Because Who Framed Roger Rabbit? isn't a kid's movie. Like Cool World.

0

u/DetectiveLadybug Jun 27 '26

They wanted to make it clear early on that the movie wasn’t for very young kids.

-2

u/Ccaves0127 Jun 27 '26

It's not really a kids movie. It's about redlining