Cyberpunk Edgerunners

In this universe, the more technological implants someone gets, the greater the chance of suffering from cyberpsychosis, which causes them to lose consciousness and suffer hallucinations that lead them to go insane and kill everyone around them (except for Adam Smasher, who already has no compassion and therefore already has the disease)

Madoka Magica

To become a magical girl, one must enter into a contract with Kyubey, which requires the girl to relinquish her soul—transforming it into a "soul gem." This gem must be recharged using "witch seeds," which are obtained by killing witches. This traps the girl in an endless cycle: she will either die at the hands of a witch, or fail to recharge her gem and end up transforming into a witch herself.

Uma Musume Cinderella Gray

In the series, we see several examples of horse girls whose careers are cut short due to fractures. Even when this doesn't happen,it is explained that the immense physical toll taken by every race eventually reaches a point where their hearts can no longer pump enough blood to sustain such extreme exertion—a phenomenon reflected in what happens to Oguri Cap at the end of the series

Clark (Backrooms) - Clark, an abusive alcoholic who lost his house after his divorce who had no one left in his life but his two employees and his therapist, after discovering the insanity and bizzarreness of the Backrooms. The fact he is free to be his flawed self there without ever needing to change or having someone oppose him deeply appeals to him.

Viltrumites being sent to Earth (Invincible) - Viltrumites were power obsessed Darwinist society that raised everyone to be conquerors and nothing more. Grand Regent Thragg sent the remaining Viltrumites to Earth to repopulate and discreetly take over, but after feeling love and compassion for the first time in their lives, Kregg and Lucan completely give in. Kregg gets like 15 wives who he all loves and protects despite Thragg's orders to be distant, and Lucan marries one woman and has a child with her despite Thragg's orders to have as many children with different partners, with Lucan saying that he didnt want to because it would hurt her feelings.

The Shape of Water - Elisa Esposito, a mute woman working as a janitor, falls in love with the Amphibian Man. Unlike her fellow humans, he sees Elisa for what she is, as she is, and it seems that he is the first one to do so.

Wicker - The Fisherwoman and her Wicker Husband. He is soft spoken, kind, a good listener (and lover!) and fills the Fisherwoman's life with love.

1. Oogie Boogie [Nightmare Before Christmas]: A bunch of bugs in a burlap sack.
2. Spiders-Man [Marvel]: A bunch of spiders that ate Peter Parker alive, gaining his memories.
3. Roaches [Look Outside]: A bunch of politically-minded roaches in a trench coat.
4. Kyuss, The Worm That Walks [Dungeons & Dragons]: A necromancer that averted death... by becoming a bunch of worms.
5. HORUS Balor [Lancer]: Those "flames" are a bunch of nano-bots, and the entire chassis is made of them.
6. The Swarm [Prey]: A bunch of adaptive nanobots that (though this is a spoiler) imitate a human form.
7. Wishiwashi [Pokemon]: A bunch of lil fish.

Nightbreed- Clive barker called it "the star wars of horror." And wanted to make a full trilogy of movies plus a TV show. But the film flopped and barker hasn't made a movie since.

After earth- will smith kind of went nuts trying to make this the next big thing. Wanting movies, shows, kids programming with nasa and even after earth themed cologne. There was also theory that the movie had a bunch of sicenctolgy beliefs in it and Smith was trying to brainwash people into joining scientology. Smith broke after it bombed and his son/costar Jaiden almost cut ties with his dad entirely.

Game of Thrones: Tywin Lannister dies at the hands of his estranged son Tyrion, after the former finds him in bed with the woman he loves. He corners his father on the toilet and while he tries to talk him down, he keeps insulting said woman even though Tyrion warned him to not. In the end he still shoots him in the chest with a crossbow.

Yellowstone: In the Season 2 finale, Kayce Dutton sneaks into Teal Beck's home, corners him while he is sitting on the toilet, and shoots him. Kayce tells Teal that he promised his wife he would kill him in the most humiliating way possible as payback for the Beck brothers kidnapping Kayce's son. Teal pathetically begs for his life after getting shot the first time but Kayce still shoots him before leaving.

1) In Full Metal Alchemist (2003), the homonculus Lust is a recurring antagonist manipulating and scheming against the protagonists. In the 2010 reboot Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Lust is much more dangerous and after murdering several characters, fans of the original series expect her to kill the flame alchemist Mustang. However in a spectacular comeback, Mustang uses his power to cauterize his mortal wounds and returns to their duel, incinerating Lust repeatedly until she disintegrates, permanently defeating her.

2) Battlestar Pegasus appears briefly in one episode of the original series (1978), in the end valiantly sacrificing itself against the cylons to buy time for the colonial fleet to escape. In the 2004 remake, Pegasus and Galactica combine forces and destroy the pursuing cylon fleet as well as the cylon resurrection hub, and Pegasus remains with the colonial fleet for several more seasons.

By this, I mean cases where power systems or specific abilities are restricted to people of a certain gender.

Ichi the Witch: In this series, there are beings called “Majiks,” spirits that grant humans magic if they defeat them in a challenge of the Majik’s choosing. However, only women are capable of using magic, which is why only women can complete these challenges and become witches. But there was one Majik whose challenge required a man to pierce its heart. This essentially made it invincible, since no man could use magic and therefore no man could complete the challenge. Or so it would have seemed, if the protagonist hadn’t taken advantage of the moment when the Majik was weakened after a fight against the strongest witch, seizing the opportunity to stab it and becoming the first male witch.

Goddess of Victory Nikke: In this world, Nikkes are cyborg super soldiers with mechanical bodies and the brains of human women, they were designed to fight the Raptures, mechanical monsters of supposedly alien origin that committed genocide against humanity. During the first invasion, most men had died in the war, meaning that most of the test subjects used in the creation of Nikkes were women, on top of that, the process had a higher failure rate in men, as male test subjects tended to become violent. This led to the entire process being redesigned to be used exclusively on women, since it was more efficient that way, and nowadays, only women can become Nikkes.

Fire Emblem: Throughout the series, one recurring gameplay mechanic has been gender-locked classes, as well as certain spells and weapons being restricted to either women or men. In some cases, the lore explains these restrictions. For example, Pegasus Knights are women because pegasi generally refuse to let men ride them, while the Aura tome can only be used by women because its creator deliberately placed that restriction on it. However, this isn't always the case, as there are several instances where the only explanation is gameplay balance, one example is the War Master class, which is only available to men in Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

Nawaki (Naruto) He dies by stepping on a paper bomb trap, the equivalent of a real life landmine in a war

Goku (Dragon Ball Z) in Trunks’ bad future, he dies of a heart virus

Optimus Prime (Transformers The Movie) He dies from suffering from gun wounds in his battle with Megatron

In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Professor Zei spent a long time searching for Wan Shi Tong's Library, finally finding it and willingly staying trapped there as it was what he was always searching for, by the time of Legend of Korra we find his body, still there with scrolls in his hands.

In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, we met Tera Sinube, an old Jedi who helped Ahsoka recover her lost lightsaber, and in The Kenobi show we find out that he was killed by the Inquisitors and his body was kept on display.

Dying Night - Cyberpunk 2077

The first iconic weapon the player gets, clearly assembled by V out of spare parts in an attempt to create a multitool capable of surviving Night City. "Gives you the additional hope of seeing yet another Night City sunrise."

Requiem - Re9

Leon's custom hand canon, made for the express purpose of splattering multiple zombies at once. Wings adorn the grip.

Sole Survivor - Fo76

Not much background to speak of, but the gun tells the story itself. Its unique weathered texture and "THIS IS NOT THE END" along with multiple tally marks in chalk inscribed on the weapon make it my personal favorite on this list.

El Diablo - Tlou Part 1

Found near the end of the game, El Diablo has an extremely well-loved appearance, especially the grip, most likely from the stress of the .500 Nitro Express rounds it fires.

The Survivalist's Rifle - FNV

Formerly owned by Randall Clarke, The Survivalist, the rifle is modded with wooden barrel and stock and was his weapon of choice during the American annexation of Canada. "STOP" and "ARRET" are engraved on both sides of the stock so Randall could easily communicate to the Canadians that they should get away very fast.

This Machine - FNV

An M1 Garand with "Well This Machine Kills Commies" scratched into the side. A reference to Woody Guthrie and his guitar, which sported the marking "This Machine Kills Fascists".

The Redeemer - DBD

The Deathslinger's modified speargun made to bring in bounties dead or alive. On its hit cooldown animation, Deathslinger wipes blood from the section of the gun that is engraved "Bayshore", the name of the man who ruined his life.

All Tomorrows: If you've been on Reddit long enough to find this post, you already know why this is here.

Children of Time: (Art Source) I have only read CoT and CoR so this might not apply to the later books. In the distant future the old empires of Earth are destroyed by an aggressive computer virus. The only direct survivor of this time is Dr. Kern, who achieves immortal by gradually uploading her digitized consciousness into her observation satellites system and then into a hive mind of partially uplifted ants. What's left of embodied humanity after the collapse number in the thousands and are restricted to reservations while the terraformed worlds around them are dominated by uplifted spiders and octopus.

The Changing By MyriDude on Deviantart: A glitch in reality causes much of earths surface to become covered by a form of strange matter called Broma. Broma exposure causes extreme mutations in humans turning them into everything from hermaphroditic centipedes to fusing together into forest sized flesh puddles.

Eclipse Phase: Earth is rendered uninhabitable by rogue AI's called TITANs and most of the 5% of humanity that survived got of the planet by digitizing their minds and egocasting into the solar system. 10 years later, baseline unaugmented human bodies are a rarity and the label of transhumanity has spread to encompass AGI, uplifted animals and infomorphs.

Seveneves: After the Hard Rain, the eight remaining humans in the universe use parthenogenesis to repopulate, resulting in humanity splitting into multiple sub-species. Most these new races are only separated psychologically, but others have stranger augmentations like Neanderthal DNA or controlled epigenetic changes.

Overwatch - D.va was a game streamer before being drafted into the Meka squad, composed of celebrity mech pilots. After fighting against the omnics, the Meka squad were hailed as heroes, which got them brand affiliations, sponsorships and what you expect of typical celebrity. Inspite of that, D.va was always preparing herself in case trouble arrived and didn't hesitate to sacrifice her life for her country

My Hero Academia - All Might is the number 1 hero in a world where heroes are celebrities. In spite of that he is genuinely kind and selfless

South Park - In this scene, instead of the usual hopping animation when they walk, they actually move their legs.

Owl House - When Amity and Luz share their 1st kiss

Helga's mom with her "smoothies"

Spongebob and Patrick with their sundaes

Lisa and Nelson with chocolate

A layered metaphor occurs where a place, person, or event is represented abstractly through something else. It’s typically used in storytelling to represent changes a character goes through or the story itself, but it can also serve as foreshadowing for events yet to happen.

Mr. House collecting snow globes: Fallout New Vegas

Mr. House is the mayor of New Vegas, a shining beacon in the middle of the Mojave desert. One of the side quests he appoints for you is finding commemorative snow globes for his collection because he enjoys looking at them.

House is also one of the few pre-war humans who survived the nuclear winter by putting his body into a sealed life-support chamber where he never ages and can only view the world changing around him. Meanwhile he remains immobile and frozen in time while wastelanders flock to New Vegas to observe it from the outside, much like a snow globe.

Zuko’s Twin Swords: Avatar the Last Airbender

In Avatar prince Zuko excels at firebending but is also an equally skilled swordsman who can hold his own even without bending. In one episode he describes the swords as being “two parts of the same whole” as the swords combine together to fit in a single sheathe.

This represents Zuko’s dual nature of being both a prince and exile of the fire nation. When he is forced to infiltrate territory he can’t be seen in, he dons a blue mask to protect his identity and uses the swords instead of fire bending. Later in the story the metaphor represents the internal struggle between his own nature and the generational trauma of his grandfather Sozin, and how he needs to accept and embrace those two sides of himself in order to become whole again.

It's hilarious when an actor is brought back to reprise a previous role that ends up being a parody of that character.

1. Robert Patrick (T-1000) - The terrifying and unstoppable T-1000 from *Terminator 2: Judgement Day* shows up in *Wayne's World 2* in a hilarious cameo.

2. John Hurt (Kane) - The executive officer in *Alien* who has the xenomorph burst from his chest shows up again in *Spaceballs* and experiences the same dilemma. "Oh no, not again!"

3. Toshi Toda (Korean Store Owner) - He receives an unfortunate end at the beginning of *Menace II Society*. However, he seemed perfectly fine and well in *Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood* during the same scene they parodied.

4. Joe Pesci (Vincent Gambini) - After the success of *My Cousin Vinny*, Joe Pesci would eventually reprise the role in 1998 by releasing a lounge album titled *Vincent Laguardia Gambini Sings Just For You* - complete with full on expletives from the character.

Just like real life, games where bullets aren't just freely given to you when you get a gun or dropped/spawned on the map; there has to be considerably more effort expended to continue to have access to bullets and dying/respawning or dropping a generic ammo crate won't replenish your supply, making them far more precious a resource than as you would get in a typical game.

Foxhole; all the guns, bullets, and other pieces of kit that you fight with has been mined, manufactured and then driven to the front lines by players to be taken by the frontline troops into combat. The logistics players from both sides even staged a strike once, and the game basically broke down and became unplayable until the developers stepped in to make the logistics changes that improved the experience for them.

Factorio; aside from a few magazines of pistol ammunition from your survival kit at the beginning of the game, the player has to defend themselves against the wildlife with bullets made from resources mined out of the ground, processed and then loaded into the player's weapons or into automated gun turrets either by hand or through automation, with more advanced/effective bullets requiring longer and longer logistics chains to supply them, and expanded resource extraction which will attract the attention of increasingly evolved biters.

Wardogs (and its predecessor Arma 3: KOTH along with similar games in this subgenre of shooters); players spawn a good distance away from the actual combat zone; the bases are far enough that trying to get into the zone on foot would take a decent chunk of the game, and there is no war materiel in the zone. Because of this, every body, bullet, grenade, and vehicle that makes it into the combat zone was flown or driven there by logistics players in trucks and helicopters (even the Spawn Vehicle that teleports people into the zone has to be driven there initially and kept safe as it is a very juicy and rewarding target to destroy) not to mention every bullet costs in-game currency to buy from the store, though funnily enough the 'starter rifle' is free the bullets for it won't be.

Honorable mentions to Squad, Hell Let Loose and the Project Reality mods that are arguably their spiritual predecessor, these games still demand you bring supplies forward.

EVE Online: 99% of the ships, weapons and ammo found on the market is put there by a player, with only some parts available from NPC merchants. The movement of goods is mostly done by players as well, with some taking on a 'space trucker' lifestyle fulfilling shipping contracts, mining the raw resources for industry, or running player-owned stations to manufacture ammunition all the way up to full ship hulls (including the coveted Titans and other capital-class vessels) for their alliance.

1. Apollo Creed (Rocky)
   After being a major character in the first 3 movies, Apollo dies in the ring in Rocky IV, which motivates Rocky to avenge him, and of course is the catalyst of the Creed movies. While it did end up making for some good stories, Sylvester Stallone actually regrets killing him off, instead wishing he had just had Apollo be traumatized and/or crippled after the movie, and felt that could have made a good character arc for him.

2. Randy Meeks (Scream)
   After surviving the first movie, Randy is killed halfway into the second one trying to goad Ghostface into coming out of hiding to attack him. The writers actually ended up really regretting this, since his extreme knowledge of slasher movie tropes and being the meta guy was a big part of the movie’s charm, and they have said if they knew the series would go on for so many more movies they would have kept him around. He does however appear via a pre recorded message in the third movie, and his niece and nephew are major characters in the legacy movies.

3. John Kramer AKA Jigsaw (Saw)
   Killing off the series’ main antagonist in just the third movie is pretty widely seen as not the smartest move, but it is very likely they also didn’t think there’d me so many more movies after this. To make up for this, many of the sequels have so many flashbacks featuring him (with revolutionary de-aging techniques mind you), and Saw X is even set in between the first movies so they can have a reason to keep him around.

4. Ulysses Klaue (MCU)
   Despite being one of Black Panther’s biggest villains in the comics, Ulysses is killed only about halfway into the movie by Kilmonger. This was one of the only major criticisms of the movie, with fans really enjoying how comical yet threatening he was. Ryan Coogler has since stated that he wishes he didn’t have to kill him off, but he felt the movie already had a ton of characters to keep track of, and he also couldn’t think of a way to keep him alive without derailing the movie’s plot.

5. The Metroids and maybe even the Space Pirates? (Metroid)
   This one is more so a theory and not 100% confirmed, but I always found it funny how the second Metroid game involved Samus exterminating all of the metroids, with the next game having the last one die as well, and the third game having her wipe out most of the Space Pirates. While Metroid Fusion did have Metroid clones show up near the end, as well as a Ridley clone, this reason is why I personally believe the Prime games are all set in between 1 and 2, so they could have a way for Samus to fight these guys again without having to retcon anything.

Halo: Reach - Lone Wolf: Noble 6 performs a final stand against The Covenant as the UNSC Pillar of Autumn makes its escape before the planet's glassing. There is no way to survive the overwhelming swarms of Elites rushing in and sooner or later, the player will die. If one is skilled enough (or bumps the difficulty down to Easy), they can earn an achievement called One Last Firefight for earning 150,000 points during the entire survival segment, which can take past an hour to do so.

Red Dead Redemption - The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed: John is attacked in his own homestead by an overwhelming amount of U.S Marshals under the orders of Edgar Ross, who chose to dishonor the deal he had made with him and have him killed off for being part of the Van Der Linde gang after all. Knowing there was no escape for him, John sends his family off on horseback and buys them time by staying behind to fight the government men himself. The player then can activate Dead Eye to take down as many agents as possible, but no matter how many John manages to kill, he will be subsequently gunned down.

Left 4 Dead - The Sacrifice: The final campaign for Left 4 Dead 1 is The Sacrifice, where the Survivors finally manage to find a sailboat they can use to escape the apocalypse on an island. However, they must first raise a bridge to get the boat through so they can escape. Whilst raising the bridge, the final generator jams and only one Survivor can go back down to turn it back on, which will spell out certain death for them (which canonically has been chosen to be Bill). Whoever chooses to sacrifice themselves can try to survive the incoming horde as much as they want, but they are dead as soon as they step off that bridge.

Cyberpunk 2077 - Don't Fear The Reaper: The secret method of storming Arasaka Tower, often considered by many the canon choice, purely because of how awesome it is. V and Johnny, realizing that they're out of time and (depending on how you played) out of options, decide that the best course of action to finally get into Mikoshi is to simply blitz through Arasaka's front door and fight their way inside, or die trying. It is a suicide mission in every sense of the word, because if the player dies at any point during this mission, they are earned with the same ending that they'd otherwise get for choosing the game's Suicide ending. However, if the player succeeds in not just fighting through Arasaka's forces, but also Adam Smasher himself, they earn special variants of either The Sun ending or the Temperance ending.

Halo 2 - Noble 14: An interesting meta example. When it was announced that the Halo 2 multiplayer servers were about to be shut down for good on April 16th, a bunch of fans got on to play the last few games they could. However, when the service was finally officially shut down, they quickly discovered that the lobbies they were in remained open so long as they didn't log off. As such, the final remaining 14 players attempted to keep their Xboxs on for as long as possible, not allowing the game to die up to May 11th, almost a solid month after the game's servers were supposed to close for good. And the only reason the last two disconnected was because they were manually booted offline by Microsoft.

(Guilty Gear) Baiken, In her reaction to Faust’s super in Guilty Gear Strive, her face literally morphs into a Hanya/Oni mask face, but this isn’t a gag, this is a callback to Elphelt’s quote against her in the previous XRD game. According to Elphelt, she can actually just do that

(Phineas and Ferb) Isabella makes heart eyes when she sees Phineas, but in the episode Act Your Age, it’s revealed by adult Baljeet that he and others can literally see the heart eyes: "When she looked at you, her pupils actually formed little hearts. Like, I do not know how that is physically possible. She changed her eyeballs!"

I’ve always found characters becoming popular to be a bit dangerous when it comes to how they’re being written, because it creates a bias on how they’re treated compared to other characters. Sometimes there are even characters that the writers loves too much, that they aren’t willing to let them face actual stakes that make the audience feel that tension where they should be worried and give them accomplishments that don’t feel earned because it feels like they’ve lost that element to them that made them interesting or entertaining to watch.

Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead is someone that feels more like a mascot for a franchise, rather than an actual character that’s on a journey. He’s basically known for his masterful survival skills, is the kind of person that you’d want on your side during an apocalypse and that’s it.

Steve Harrington in Stranger Things felt like one of those characters that fulfilled his purpose in the narrative early, but was only kept around because the writers knew how much the fanbase loved his character and also enjoyed working with his actor. He was that one character everyone knew the writers wouldn’t have the balls to either kill off or have written off the show. But this could be applied to almost every other popular character in the show!

Maeve Wiley in Sex Education also seemed like a character that the writers had a huge bias towards, especially when you compare how much Otis Milburn had to suffer whenever it came to conflicts they had or actions they did that affected other people. We rarely ever see people holding her accountable enough, and she rarely ever apologized or seemed to acknowledge how her actions caused giving the guys she was involved with a lot of emotional pain. With her very poor communication skills giving mixed signals to Jackson, Otis and Isaac being the biggest thing.

Rachel Berry in Glee seemed more like she was a favourite with the writers, rather than the audience. Rather than giving her a storyline where she’s humbled from having a massive star ego complex after choking on her audition to attend one of the best performing art schools. She gets everything handed to her on a platter where it only boosts her ego more.

Spoilers ahead… duh

Herod, Quick and the Dead

Herod is the big bad of the movie and the final scene is almost perfect. He looks down to his shadow and he can see sunlight in the middle of it cause there’s a hole in his chest. Would have been the perfect end but instead we get him getting shot one more time and he does a goofy backflip.

Inspector Javert, Les Miserables

End of the movie guy just can’t process a good man having to do bad things and able to turn his life around and comes to the decision to kill himself by throwing himself off a bridge. The music swells and he falls and that should have been it, but no, we also get the scene of a doll and cartoony bone crack sound effect of him hitting some concrete in the river.

Zara, Jurassic World

Zara is a bit of a throwaway character but has one of the most over the top deaths that just feels so dumb. She’s the girl that got scooped up then tossed between a few flying Dino’s before finally getting snapped up by the big Dino shark crocodile.