Here lies Mr Lancer. He had no life to lose.
Bernice: I'm afraid the fire has killed uh... um.
Charles: What was his name?
Ajax: I'm not sure.
Mambo: I forget.
Bernice: Never mind, not important.
Charles: What was his name?
Ajax: I'm not sure.
Mambo: I forget.
Bernice: Never mind, not important.
— Duckman, "Apocalypse Not"
A character dies, and everyone else responds with indifference.
Some characters are so hated, their death results in widespread partying. Others elicit no reaction whatsoever. This trope is for the latter, a character's death making no noticeable difference to their friends and family (if any).
It can be used for Black Comedy, but it's usually Played for Drama to portray the dead person as The Woobie (or if they're a villain, how everyone is too drained to be happy that they're gone), or to demonstrate just what a Crapsack World the work is set in.
Character types prone to receiving this include Butt-Monkeys and The Friend Nobody Likes. May involve a Lonely Funeral and Dying Alone.
Compare Angst? What Angst?, "Better If Not Born" Plot, Forgotten Fallen Friend, Hated by All, A Million Is a Statistic, The Power of Apathy, and Red Shirt. See also Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones, Never Speak Ill of the Dead, and The World Mocks Your Loss. Contrast And There Was Much Rejoicing, Incriminating Indifference, and Tear Jerker, although the fact that no one's sad about the death may itself be a cause for sadness, In-Universe and out.
As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Code Geass: Luciano Bradley, a Sociopathic Soldier with severe bloodlust for killing and beating up people as his stress toys, is disliked by his teammates to the point that Gino and Suzaku don't even acknowledge his death at Kallen's hands.
- Fairy Tail: Downplayed when Lucy learns that her cold and neglectful father, Jude, whom she'd disowned but had only just started to patch things up with, passed away during the seven-year Time Skip. Despite the sorrow she feels, Lucy finds that she's Unable to Cry for him, which she takes as proof that she hates him. It's only later when she reads a letter he left her affirming his love for her all those years that she breaks down and mourns.
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: Gan'an Shinomiya, the head of the Shinomiya Group and Kaguya's father, was an Abusive Parent who treated her like she didn't exist and simply leaves the actual parenting and upbringing to her servants and his third oldest son, Un'yo. This is mainly because Kaguya's mother was a prostitute, and Gan'an wasn't even fully sure whether she actually was his daughter. However, in his own way, he still loved and cherished Kaguya regardless, even if he wasn't open with his affections. Played With after he passes away towards the end of the series, and Kaguya finds herself Unable to Cry over his death. While she wasn't outwardly affected, she was truly sad emotionally when she lamented not having the chance to take his photo.
- Raideen: In episode 30, Rei Asuka and Ichiro Hibiki explore Tibet to gather information on Princess Lemuria's whereabouts but are suddenly attacked by a Fossil Beast. While Raideen defeats it and Ichiro remains unharmed, Rei is nowhere to be seen after being attacked relentlessly. Not only does nobody question her disappearance, she's never brought up in the anime ever again.
- YuYu Hakusho: Discussed and Subverted. This is Yusuke's argument for why he's okay with going to the afterlife at the start of the series — being a delinquent who has been a drag on his mother, the staff of the school (the principal in particular) hating him, another local delinquent fighting him everyday, and who just had a fight with his childhood best friend/love interest where she outright told him to drop dead — he's okay with moving on because at least he died saving a kid's life and he won't be mourned. Of course, when Botan shows him the truth — that his mother is near-catatonic with grief over losing the son whom she did love dearly, the principal was harsh on him because he genuinely saw something good and noble in Yusuke (which becomes something of a major theme in the series), said deliquent Kuwabara was always fighting him because he respected him, in a "if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best" way, and his childhood friend/crush Keiko is utterly heartbroken with grief not just because he died but also because the last thing she said to him was that she wished he was dead — that he realizes that he does actually have reasons to return to the land of the living and takes the offer.
Comic Books
- Doom Patrol:
- In the Doom Force Special, being a vicious parody of X-Force (1991), Shasta the Living Mountain makes a Heroic Sacrifice to stop the villain of the week and save the world. Absolutely none of his teammates actually care, because he was always whiny and his powers (becoming a living mountain) were usually completely useless.
- Lampshaded in the first issue of Keith Giffen's run, where Nudge is killed off and Grunt disappears into the jungle with her body, and the team's counselor is disturbed that nobody else on the team seems broken up about the fact that they lost two of their teammates on the same mission.
- Peter Pan: When someone dies in Neverland, the inhabitants gradually forget they ever existed over a few days, leading to them treating death with indifference since they know they'll be forgotten about eventually. Even Tinkerbell's murder of a mermaid (by luring her to the crocodile) goes unpunished because of this.
- Preacher: Arseface's Bungled Suicide gets him zero sympathy from anyone: certainly not from his abusive father, it's the last straw for his mother who leaves them (and the drugs, alcohol, and Bible), the girl who was attracted to him chews him out for his Wangsting, and after that the mere sight of his mutilated face causes even paramedics to feel sick.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Archie Comics: Nate Morgan, the Minister of Science for the Kingdom of Acorn, ends up becoming roboticized by Eggman in Issue #100, and in Issue #110, Sonic is unable to stop Station Square from firing nuclear warheads at Robotropolis, which kills all of the roboticized people inside, Nate included. Despite being King Max's closest friend and Sonic's teacher, nobody seems to mourn his loss in particular, and he's never mentioned again beyond this point.
- IDW: After Issue #50 ends in Dr. Starline being Killed Off for Real, it only takes an issue later for Sonic to give this little gem:
Belle: I saw it myself. Dr Starline is... no more.
Sonic the Hedgehog: Big oof.
- The Transformers: Lost Light: Rung isn't just not mourned after he dies overloading himself to make enough Matrix bombs to destroy the enemy superweapon in the series finale, he ends up being completely forgotten by the rest of the crew. This isn't intentional cruelty on their part, it's because long ago he was shot with a strange weapon that causes everyone to forget he exists if he isn't near them.
Comic Strips
- FoxTrot: When Jason has an Acid Reflux Nightmare of Yet Another Christmas Carol (with himself as Scrooge), the woman rooting through his personal belongings to sell them (games and cartridges) only comments that they're obsolete, then wonders if the curtains might be worth something. The obsolete comment hurts Jason more than the indifference to his death.
- Pearls Before Swine: One Sunday strip had Rat's head explode from smiling after finding out from Pig that none of the strip's characters had done so up to that point. This was followed up by titling the following Sunday's strip "Coping With the Death of an Unloved One", featuring Rat coming Back from the Dead only to find out from Goat and Zebra that no one missed him while he was gone and that his lack of presence had caused them to actually enjoy being in the strip for once.
Fan Works
- Chloé's Inferno: After Chloé Bourgeois is assassinated by Hawk Moth following her outliving her usefulness, she is sent to Hell. One of the many tortures she suffers includes her discovery that nobody else cared about her death — her even-bigger-Alpha Bitch of a mother had her body cremated the second the plane touched down, her father and sister organized a vigil that nobody attended and they wanted to leave ASAP, and everybody else in the class went as far as to make pithy jokes about how she is out of their hair forever.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
- Freeza is pretty callous to most members of his armies. His aides Zarbon and Dodoria and the elite Ginyu Force are exceptions, but nearly everyone else can expect to be marched into certain death on a whim, and as demonstrated with Cui, (who was a more powerful soldier than most), Freeza and his elites don't even bother remembering their name properly, as they all insist on referring to Cui as Kiwi after his death.
- When Vegeta kills Guldo, Gohan expects the rest of the Ginyu Force to be devastated, but it turns out they didn't even notice right away. When they do notice, they simply debate whose responsibility it is to tell Captain Ginyu without a shred of remorse for Guldo. Even Ginyu doesn't care and had a Side Bet with Burter that Guldo would die. Ginyu is more concerned with the soda Burter now owes him.
- As yet another example of his status as Memetic Loser, it is shown at the beginning of the Android saga that the Z warriors didn't bother to bury Yamcha when he was killed by a Saibaman. When he asks Bulma where he was buried shortly before Vegeta returns from his failed attempt to find Goku after Namek's destruction, it shows his original body rotting in the crater he died in. Considering, in the original material, Tien, Yamcha, and Piccolonote were put in cryo-coffins to preserve them for training by King Kai and eventual revival by Namek's Dragon Balls, this could mean that either they assumed King Kai wouldn't take Yamcha, or they didn't care to preserve him for revival.note
- During one of the "Cell Games" videos (a series of short videos where characters from various anime and video games challenge Cell, the final Big Bad of the show), the cast of Pokémon the Series has stumbled upon Cell and Ash is attempting to duel Cell with his Pokemon and capture Cell, as he believes Cell is an unknown Pokemon. During the bout, Team Rocket attempts to interfere but Cell blasts them and the balloon they were in away with a ki attack. Brock wonders if they're going to be okay, but when Misty replies and asks if he actually cares, Brock admits that he doesn't. Nobody speaks about Team Rocket or their fate after that.
- A Better Man: In the opening chapter, Harry attends Vernon Dursley's funeral in the canon timeline and notes that no one really seems too sad that he's gone — even Petunia, who was sobbing and wailing during the funeral, calms down suspiciously quickly once the neighbors aren't around to judge her, suggesting her "grief" was largely performative. This is in stark contrast to the final chapter, where an alternate timeline version of Vernon who seized the chance to be a better man is given a hero's funeral and mourned by hundreds of people whose lives he impacted in a positive way.
- Irreversible Damage: Susan is very clearly the only member of the family to be upset when Manny dies. Greg does not care beyond being irritated that he has to attend the funeral, Rodrick's response is limited to suggesting "Rest in Hell, Satan" as an inscription on his tombstone, and their dad also doesn't seem particularly torn up about it. After Manny is brought back to life and then dies again from peach allergy poisoning, Greg explicitly hopes that Susan won't re-resurrect him because the world is better off without him.
Film — Animated
- Coco: Hinted at when Ernesto de la Cruz's gravestone was changed to say "Forget you" after everyone found out about the horrible crime he committed when he was alive. Miguel and his family celebrate their ancestors in peace, unaffected by the villain's much-deserved death (in this setting, the spirits of the dead fade away when no longer remembered by the living) in the spirit world.
- The Emperor's New Groove: Yzma performs the eulogy for Kuzco and tells the palace staff to get back to work once it's done. They comply without a tear, looking as bored as they did during the eulogy
. Kronk later wonders why Yzma is so worried about making sure Kuzco doesn't come back and points out that no one seems to care that he is gone, unaware that Kuzco is listening behind them. This was the wake-up call Kuzco needed to change his life, and after returning to human form, he works on being a better emperor and a better person.
- Mickey's Christmas Carol: The Spirit of Christmas Future takes Scrooge to a graveyard. Several weasels remark about how nobody ever came to mourn this man's grave before departing. Scrooge asks the Spirit who the grave belongs to. The Spirit then speaks for the first time, revealing himself to be Pete, and drops a Wham Line: "Why, yours, Ebenezer. The richest man in the cemetery!"
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: One of its villains, Jack Horner, is killed by falling into the Wishing Star, after spending the entire film being a unrepentant sociopath. As Jack cries out, asking what he did specifically to deserve this fate, everyone present glares at him in disbelief and disgust.
- Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town: The Big Bad, Burgermeister Meisterburger, would eventually die offscreen and his lineage goes with him. Because he was a cruel and petty tyrant, no one is really sad or mournful about his death, and the Burgermeister is completely forgotten by all.
- Strange World: Early in the movie, the first pilot of the crew's ship is killed onscreen by being snatched by one of the pterodactyl creatures and pulled through a window. Literally no one touches on (or even mourns) his death; the closest they come to addressing it is naming Meriddean the new ship's pilot.
Film — Live-Action
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has Modok/Darren sacrifice his life to try and kill Kang after receiving a Heel–Face Turn. Afterwards, he dies surrounded by Scott and co., exclaiming that he's happy to die as an Avenger and calling Scott his brother. Perhaps it's due to him randomly proclaiming himself to be an Avenger, the fact that up until recently he was an enforcer for a brutal warlord (and had committed plenty of other crimes as a human) who had tried to kill Scott several times, the fact that he claims to see Scott as a brother despite the aforementioned attempted murder, or his goofy appearance, but Scott and co. are more weirded out by his final moments than anything else and respond with obviously fake consolation.
- In Clue, Mrs. White seems to feel this way after the death of two of her husbands.
Miss Scarlett: Do you miss him?
Mrs. White: [dismissively] Well, it's a matter of life after death. Now that he's dead, I have a life.
Wadsworth: But he was your second husband. Your first also disappeared.
Mrs. White: That was his job; he was an illusionist.
Wadsworth: But he never reappeared.
Mrs. White: [shrugs] He wasn't a very good illusionist. - Played for Very Dark Laughs in El Mariachi, after the Big Bad Moco is finally gunned down. Despite being surrounded by his henchmen, his killer directly in front of them holding a now-empty gun, their sole reaction is... to walk away. His Dragon even strikes a match off his face to light a smoke, as a smug Call-Back to how his boss used to treat him.
- High Fidelity: Rob's ex-girlfriend Laura's father dies two-thirds of the way through the film, and she calls him at work to tell him while bawling her eyes out. Rob matter-of-factly tells Barry that Laura called him to tell her dad died, and Barry comments, "Oh, drag," then moves on to making a top-five list of the best songs about death.
- The Rise of Skywalker: Going from a Hitler expy in The Force Awakens to a Butt-Monkey in The Last Jedi, here General Hux is revealed to be The Mole who tells secrets to The Resistance, just because "he doesn't want Kylo Ren to win." General Pryde summons him and after Hux tells his cover story, Pryde simply picks up a random Stormtrooper's weapon, shoots Hux, not being fooled one bit, and then leaves the room like he's nothing.
- Saltburn: After Pamela dies offscreen, all the characters are indifferent about it (except potentially Oliver, and even he isn't upset about it). This is particularly notable from Elspeth, as the two were close enough friends that Elspeth let her stay at Saltburn for months.
Elspeth: I wish we didn't have to go to London.
Felix: I didn't know you were going to London.
Elspeth: Pamela's funeral.
Oliver: Pamela died?
Elspeth: She'd do anything for attention. - Saw IV: During a forensic investigation at the classroom with the Spike Trap, an unnamed photographer gets her head impaled by a spike that accidentally shot out from the crossbow used to set up the trap (which a forensic officer was dusting). Other than a small Oh, Crap!, the rest of the police officers and FBI agents present treat it like nothing and simply continue with their jobs.
- Threads: When Ruth Beckett dies, it's long after she's suffered debilitating effects from UV and radiation overexposure from years of working as a farm labourer. When she first collapses in the field while tilling soil, the rest of the labourers barely acknowledge what's happened before continuing their duties. Her daughter, Jane, manages to get her into her own bed, but Ruth passes away, while Jane (either due to a Lack of Empathy or simply not understanding the concept of death) vainly tries to rouse her with limited syntax ("Work... up!") before taking a couple of useful personal items and departing the house for good.
Literature
- The war-themed literature of Derek Robinson has this in abundance. In his novels of WW1 air combat, the turnover of pilots in RFC squadrons is so fast that some of the unlucky ones barely even get to unpack. One old hand in a fighter squadron actually says it, out loud, that he doesn't bother learning the names of the new boys until they've survived for at least a fortnight. Therefore a lot of deaths go barely noticed and unremarked.
- Brother Cadfael: The death of Gilbert Prescote is very quickly glossed over despite him being an important background character (responsible for keeping the town and castle of Shrewsbury for King Stephen): his wife has their son and heir to raise, his daughter is in love with the presumed murderer, and his official duties fall to his Hyper-Competent Sidekick Hugh Beringar. He wasn't even an Asshole Victim like many unlamented victims in the series, but it helps that the actual murderer shows great repentance over it.
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens has the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come teleport Ebenezer Scrooge to a cemetery, where a headstone stands, overgrown and derelict. The Ghost points to it, and Scrooge hesitantly pulls away the overgrowth to reveal his own name; no one has come there to mourn or tend his grave; earlier, before the revelation of Scrooge's name, the Ghost takes Scrooge to the funeral of "a disliked man" — despite being attended by a few men, these men are soon revealed to be merely business partners of the deceased, and have only attended with the promise that a free lunch was provided to them. As further proof, the Ghost takes Scrooge to a pawnbroker's shop, where Ms. Dilber offers his bedcurtains for cash. "Brass rings 'n' all? With [Scrooge] still lying in the bed?" asks the shopkeeper. "Aye, that I did," cackles the woman.
- This trope carries on to pretty much every adaptation of the story, but some versions add a twist. For example, Scrooge (1970) has Scrooge's death unmourned but not disregarded - his funeral procession is attended by everyone who owed him money, and while the coffin is taken away they dance in the streets (and on the coffin) while singing "Thank You Very Much".
- East of Eden: The Narrator only spends a short sentence on the death of Liza, Samuel Hamilton's wife.
- Fate/Apocrypha: After Mordred sneak-executed one of the Masters of the Black Faction, Celenike Icecolle Yggdmillenia, her surviving Servant Astolfo makes a contract with Sieg to stay alive, and they return to the remaining Black Faction group, the Yggdmillenia family, who's more surprised at how Sieg made a contract with their Servant, forgetting that one of their members has just been killed. However, as Celenike is basically a thoroughly unpleasant, despicable, and selfish excuse of a human being who also doesn't contribute much to the Black Faction's efforts in the Holy Grail War (like saving her Command Spells just to fulfill her own lust rather than helping the faction attain the Holy Grail), it makes more sense that the Black Faction chooses to pretend like she never existed in the first place.
- In Gulliver's Travels, this is how Houyhnhnm society functions. A member who feels death approaching will go to say farewell to his neighbours, but the concept of mourning is beyond them. One case described by Gulliver is a family who was supposed to come over to his master's house. Only the wife with the children showed up, and a few hours late, explaining that her husband died and she was busy looking for a proper place to lay the body.
- Judge Dee: The fact that Mrs. Liang isn't celebrating the success of her decades-long feud against Lin Fan (who'd driven her family to ruin, her daughter to suicide and murdered her son and much of her family) tips off the judge to there being more to the case. Sure enough, the woman was actually Lin's estranged wife posing as her own mother (who died in the ambush) and hounded him from one end of China to the other for years, even arranging for him to murder their son.
- In the Left Behind series, enforced against Pontifex Maximus Peter Mathews. Nicolae Carpathia, being the Antichrist, has a certain degree of hypnotic suggestion over the non-Saved. He first instructs everyone listening (basically the entire world) that they will not be surprised or even care about the news, and then informs the world that Mathews has died, having been murdered by Carpathia due to Mathews attempting to usurp his power. Mathews had previously been the head of a global unified religion, meaning he was a person of tremendous importance, but because of Carpathia's suggestions, quite literally no one is sad to see him go and his memorial service is canceled due to lack of interest.
- The Neverending Story: The impetus behind Bastian leaving the Yskalnari is when he sees that they don't mourn or even miss their dead. As soon as one dies, the others all ignore the fact that they ever lived.
- A Piece Of String is a short story by Guy de Maupassant about a miser that finds a piece of string on the road to a village festival. A rival mistakes this for the miser finding the prince's purse, and failing to return it. The miser's reputation is ruined, followed by his business. He expires, alone and destitute, still trying to convince anyone who'd listen, "It was a piece of string."
- Red Square, the third volume of Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko series. The titular character, police detective Arkady Renko, has spent most of his life avoiding contact with his father Vasily, a once-dreaded Red Army General also known as "The Butcher of Ukraine" and "Stalin's favorite general." Over drinks with his pathologist, discussing an informant who was killed by a firebomb, they discuss what he believes is the worst way to die. Arriving home, Arkady is informed that his father is dead and left behind a letter. Arkady treats the question philosophically: once upon a time in his father's life, his death would have been greeted with tears from some and cheers from others, but by the time he actually died, there was no one left who cared one way or the other - the worst way to die is to do so knowing that you're already dead, because no one notices or gives a damn when you actually pass on.
- The Rising of the Shield Hero: The King of Faubley is killed by Tact, who announces his ascension to the throne. All of Faubley just accept it with a shrug, since the King was a horrible excuse for a human being, having raped, tortured, and killed 9,999 women in the past.
- Being unmourned ends up being the tragic fate of Furet from Scrapped Princess. As he fights to save an amnesic Pacifica from the Obstinate Arrows he sacrifices himself to draw them away, eventually getting shot down and left crawling in the rain before expiring. And worse, Pacifica ends up captured anyways and eventually regains her memories, forgetting everything about Furet in the process. The most he gets is when Shannon stumbles upon his corpse and gently closes his eyes even if to him, Furet is just another nameless body.
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- A Feast for Crows: At the funeral for his father Tywin, Jaime Lannister is surprised and mildly disturbed to realize that he is neither sad nor angry about it, even when he's more than capable of feeling sadness or anger over other things.
- A Dance with Dragons, no one on the Night's Watch particularly cares when Jon Snow personally executes the greedy, corrupt Janos Slynt for repeated insubordination, despite Slynt's protests that he has powerful friends in King's Landing. His ally Alliser Thorne briefly looks as if he might object, but steps aside to let Jon do the deed. After Slynt's head rolls, Owen the Oaf asks if he can have Slynt's boots because they're almost new and lined with fur.
- In one Sophies Adventures book, Dawn kills Sophie's pet woodlouse, however, Sophie is the only one who cares; her parents shrug it off with "It was only a woodlouse".
- Toby Alone: Sim Lolness wasn't moved at all by the death of Maya's mother, his burdensome mother-in-law. He kept doing his routine activities until his wife Maya called him out.
- Watership Down: Enforced in Cowslip's warren, where the rabbit burrows are clean and plentiful, and the food is top-notch. But as Fiver points out in a passionate "Reason You Suck" Speech, snares that quietly cull the rabbits are all around. Cowslip and company are content to be killed one by one because the living are so comfortable that they pretend any missing rabbit never existed.
Live-Action TV
- Andor: In the opening scenes of the series, the eponymous protagonist Cassian Andor is forced to kill two members of Pre-Mor corporate security after they harass him and attempt to shake him down for a bribe. Given the circumstances, most of the other Pre-Mor employees don't much care for the pair of Dirty Cops, and indeed Chief Inspector Hyne wants the whole thing covered up, even going so far as to say that he's surprised that one of the officers didn't meet a fate like this sooner between the man's corruption and general jerkassery. Andor would have gotten away with it clean, had it not been for the Lawful Stupid Deputy Inspector Syril Karn forcing his colleagues into conducting a proper investigation while the Chief Inspector is away on business.
- In the finale of The Brittas Empire, "Curse of the Tiger Women", Brittas' long-time thorn in his side Councillor Drugget dies by eating cursed biscuits after trying to force him into early retirement. However, seeing as Brittas and the rest of his staff already have their hands full trying to deal with paternity issues, a staff mutiny, and the fact the leisure centre is about to blow up, no one gives Drugget's a second thought. Bonus points go to Julie, who watches Drugget die and complains that he's always making it about himself, before going on to talk to him about her own issues.
- This seemed to be the case with Caitlin Snow in the first episode of season 9 of The Flash (2014) — when her sister Frost died the previous season, they had a funeral for her but we never saw the team do the same for Caitlin, who'd died in an attempt to bring her back. Subverted when it's revealed in the Series Finale that she was actually being possessed by the Goddess Khione (explaining why she was her doppelganger), and when she ascends, Caitlin is back.
- The Golden Girls: In "It's A Miserable Life," the girls join a campaign to save the neighborhood's oldest oak tree, but run into trouble with Frieda Claxton, a notorious grump who actually owns the property that the tree sits on and has no interest in preserving it. When Rose gets sick of Frieda's bad attitude, she delivers a shocking "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her—so shocking, in fact, that Frieda drops dead after hearing it. Rose is overwhelmed with guilt and arranges a funeral, but nobody else shows up because Frieda's cruelty and misery left her alone and friendless.
- Homicide: Life on the Street:
- In "I've Got A Secret", Bayliss and Pembleton investigate the murder of a burglar. No one who knew the man is particularly sad to see him go. His girlfriend isn't happy but relieved since he frequently beat her, and his partner is only concerned because he's the initial suspect.
- When James Douglas is murdered in "Prison Riot", none of the detectives particularly care, especially since he had killed numerous people For the Evulz. Only Bayliss actually cares about solving the murder, and only because he believes All Are Equal in Death.
- When Munch's hated ex-mother-in-law dies, Munch's ex-wife asks him for help with the funeral arrangements (because his brother owns a funeral home). She expects a lot of people will show up to pay their respects to her mother, and is quite distressed to find that only one person showed up, just to make sure she was dead.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: When Frank's favorite hooker, Roxy, suddenly dies from a crack overdose when he proposes to her (long story), the Gang respond by dragging her corpse out into the hallway for someone else to take care of (though Frank at least gives her a heartfelt if fractured eulogy first, thanking Roxy for her "services").
- Law And Order: A Serial Rapist is murdered. The police investigate his widow, who says during the investigation:
widow: All my grieving has been reserved for the women whose lives Henry destroyed.
- Midsomer Murders: One episode has a woman infuriated that the only reactions to the Victim of the Week's death are indifference or outright joy, and has to be told point-blank that she's the only person to miss the Asshole Victim.
- In Only Murders in the Building, Tim Kono's sudden death is met largely with indifference from his neighbors at the Arconia. The building only agrees to hold a ceremony for him for legal purposes, and during the ceremony, people are more upset about the death of a cat than they are about his death.
- Seinfeld: After George's fiancée Susan dies after licking envelopes with cheap glue for their invitations, instead of being devastated, George is instead relieved because he couldn't stand the pressure of getting married. This gets referenced in the Series Finale, where this is presented as evidence during the trial against the four main characters.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): In "The Vile Village, Part 2", after the real Count Olaf has Jacques Snicket, who was mistaken for Count Olaf, killed, "Olaf"'s funeral is left unattended.
- In the Smallville episode "Spirit", Dawn Stiles' spirit, after winning the Prom Queen title while possessing Chloe, reads a speech attempting to make people pay honors to the deceased Dawn Stiles, but aside from a few chuckles, there is no reaction. When a student gets killed every few weeks, one Alpha Bitch isn't something to mourn for long.
- In Superman & Lois, the murder of Smallville's former Mayor George Dean is met with very few tears from the citizens, who mostly remember him for being a corrupt bully. This greatly upsets his poor son Junior, who loved his dad and feels that people have lost sight of the fact that he was still a person.
- That '70s Show: Red dreams that no one but Kitty attends his funeral, due to having called everyone a "dumbass."
Music
- Used to a tragic effect in the Arab Strap song "Safe & Well", which is sung from the perspective of the ghost of a person who died in the pandemic but no one seemed to care. What makes this tragic, is the fact that this was Based on a True Story that Aidan Moffat heard on the news about a "woman who died alone and lay undiscovered, decaying in her flat for months".
Can you hear me through your wall?
Can you smell my cooking?
Can you see my clothes dry on the line?
Are you even looking?
How can you say I'm safe and well?
Can you hear me praying?
All boxes ticked and paperworked, as life goes on decaying - The Beatles: "Eleanor Rigby" is a song about a lonely old woman whom life has passed by. In the final verse, she dies and nobody except her parish priest attends her funeral.
Eleanor Rigby died in the church
And was buried alone with her name
Nobody came. - In The Chicks song "Goodbye Earl," the only people who know for sure that Earl is dead are his killers, but no one else is particularly put out that he's gone.
It turns out he was a missing person who nobody missed at all.
- Joy Electric: In "Five Stars for Failure", Ronnie vents about his own feelings of inferiority, ending with a verse about how nobody will even notice if he dies:
If I were to die,
would the world take note?
Would teenagers cry?
Would anybody know?
Would I be in the headlines?
Simply, no. - The Protomen's Act II gives Emily Stanton a lonely funeral as her coworkers are too busy with work to attend and the Priest's words are drowned out by Wily's broadcast, which is less about her death and more about pinning the blame on Dr. Light. Light is the only person who truly mourns her loss.
- The Swedish version of Sabaton's "A Lifetime at War" is sung from the viewpoint of a soldier in the Thirty Years War who fears this will be his fate when he falls, unmourned and forgotten after spending so many years far from home.
Video Games
- Arcanum: One grave has the following epitaph:
Here lies a man who died
Nobody mourned
Nobody cried
How he lived
How he fared
Nobody knows
Nobody cared - Batman: Arkham Knight: Near the end of the game, Scarecrow's fear toxin causes Joker (in Batman's body) to go through his worst fear: no one remembering or caring about him. A newspaper reads "Joker dies; Gotham doesn't care", Penguin is considered Batman's main nemesis, and the only person attending his funeral is Harley.
- Cyberpunk 2077: At the start of the game, the Player Character V is a member of a three-person mercenary crew that also includes the hitter Jackie and the hacker T-Bug. At the end of Act 1, a botched heist leaves V the Sole Survivor of their crew, and while Jackie gets an elaborate funeral and several side dialogues commemorating him, nobody ever seems to mention T-Bug ever again for the rest of the game. However, if you speak to a shopkeeper with connections to T-Bug in Act IInote , the trope gets Subverted as the shopkeeper solemnly remarks on T-Bug's death, indicating the two at least knew each other and that she was missed. On the other hand, it is also implied that T-Bug deliberately enforced this trope, purposely remaining aloof and disconnected from most people in Night City, as she intended to do a "clean break" and cut her contacts once she made enough money to retire from netrunning altogether and thus leave as few people as possible whom would miss her or try to track her down.
- Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: The killer of Chapter 3, Korekiyo Shinguji, is an insane Serial Killer with an incestuous lust for his sister who murders Tenko and Angie just so he could give his sister "admirable friends" in the afterlife. Unlike the previous two executed victims, whom everyone at least tried to save or encouraged to escape, nobody really protests his execution even if they don't condone it. Himiko, who was close enough to Tenko to hold a grudge against Korekiyo for murdering her, is pretty much the only one who condones the execution.
- In Death Road to Canada there are many, many things that can hit your characters' morale and potentially push them over the edge, but oddly, the death of a companion is not one of them.
- Dragalia Lost: Xenos has destroyed the entire multiverse and rejected redemption multiple times. When everyone creates a new world, they bring everyone Back from the Dead. This includes people who have done nothing but cause trouble and misery, such as Beren. However, Xenos is notably absent from this. After being the cause of this whole mess, and trying screw the heroes' attempts at creating the new world after losing the final battle, it's not hard to see why. When Xenos is dead, everyone is living happily in the new world, not even batting an eye at his absence.
- Fear & Hunger: Termina: As almost none of the other contestants hold any sympathy for the Bremen army, and considering that he's a lieutenant in it, nobody will restrain you for murder, or show any indication of caring, if you kill Pav.
- In Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, Bernadetta's abusive father can be left to die by the players in Scarlet Blaze, and when that happens, Hubert is more concerned about the fact that they must now find a new bishop while Bernadetta sounds like she couldn't care less.
- Persona 2:
- One of the Arc Villains and top member of the Masked Circle is Prince Taurus, aka Ginji Sasaki, an idol group producer who successfully managed to convince Lisa's friends to join the Masked Circle, and later tried to do the same with Lisa. In the final dungeon of the game, the team finds his corpse fried by a laser trap. Lisa remarks that she doesn't really feel sorry for him or triumphant, and the rest of the squad is mostly happy that they dodged the trap rather than caring for the fried corpse.
- Eternal Punishment: Nobody in the party really cares that they murdered the JOKER — if anything they're more like "glad THAT'S over, now let's move on to Sudou". Unfortunately for them, they DO have to care that they killed the JOKER after his death triggers a Hate Plague.
- By the end of Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair, two or three people are dead- Momoko Mori kills her boyfriend Hiro Shiratake for cheating on her with her best friend Kamen Eiga(in reality, he had asked Kamen out only for her to refuse him), then left Kotoba Gaikoku to die in a fire so she could hang herself. Kamen chooses to remember Momoko fondly despite Momoko's betrayal of her, and if Kotoba dies, his best friend Taiko will fondly reminisce about how they became friends. Hiro, however, has no friends, so none of the cast mourns him. The most that happens is that Rei Shirayuki from Genba is shocked by how a witness from a case she worked ended up as a victim in another case.
- In GENBA no Kizuna, the victim, Loan Shark Kurou Mikazuki, is Hated by All to an even greater extent than Hiro. He personally wronged all four members of Raptor Pack Productions in various ways- threatening and insulting Ryuunosuke Hazama, throwing rocks at Terano Takamori's bearded vulture Alexis, and sexually harassing Shiku Jura and Amber Harding. All this culminated in him trying to have the Kaseki mansion torn down in a fit of rage, causing Shiku to tackle him to try to stop him, which in turn led to him attempting to murder her by strangling her to death, forcing her to kill him in self-defense. The four members of Raptor Pack Productions aren't all that bothered by his death- only by the possibility of the Dokuganryuu family seeking revenge for one of their members' deaths, and of Shiku having to live with the trauma of killing someone. Of course, the former turns out to be a non-issue, since the rest of the Dokuganryuu family hated Kurou, not just for his unpleasant personality, but for the fact that he tried to assassinate the family head and only had to remove his left eye as punishment.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: Exaggerated with Darth Anathel. Not caring for your fellow Sith is already par for the course for the higher ranks of the Dark Council, but even Darth Thanaton, whom was rather disliked by his colleagues, elicited some emotion in his passing. However, when Sith Inquisitor players electrocute Darth Anathel to the point of his clothes igniting, lift him out of his seat and throw him across the room, his fellow Dark Council members completely ignore what's going on and continue to leave the room.
Web Animation
- Red vs. Blue: This happens repeatedly to Doc, the biggest Butt-Monkey in a series full of them. When he's accidentally stranded in an alternate dimension, none of the Reds and Blues even notice until they happen upon him two seasons later. Later, when they wrongfully believe he's dead, absolutely nobody cares and they quickly move on. This is ultimately subverted in Restoration, as when he dies for real saving Wash, Wash spends the entire movie hallucinating him out of guilt.
Webcomics
- The web artist avogado6's work usually concerns people being objectively better off dead. "Regretless Life" has a man die of suicide and is shown that nobody cares (his "friends" just laugh, his coworker finds someone else to dump his extra work on, his mother never wanted him in the first place, and someone else adopts his cat). Rather than take revenge on them, the dead man is happy about this, as his only fear was that he'd make people sad at his passing, allowing him to go to the afterlife without regret.
- The Order of the Stick:
- When Tsukiko (a delusional necromancer who thought her wights loved her as she loved them) is murdered by Redcloak (who overrode her control of her wights to kill her), the Monster in the Darkness is the only one to think her death is sad.
MiTD: I'm just really sad now, thinking about Tsukiko. She just wanted to be loved.
Demon-Roach: So what? Who cares?
MiTD: Exactly. That's why I'm sad.- When the Order is trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine, Belkar ends up dying in the fantasy. All-Loving Hero Elan is the only one who shows any sort of shock. A strip later, the illusion shows the rest of the Order at Belkar's grave. Elan is frowning with a sad expression on his face, but Haley and Durkon aren't showing any emotion at all. Roy (who Belkar gives no end of grief) and V (his Sitcom Arch-Nemesis) are already walking away dismissively.
- Spare Keys for Strange Doors: When Andrew's ghost attends his funeral, he says he doesn't like seeing his family sad, but if the alternative is that they rejoice, or worse, not give a crap, he thinks it goes well overall.
Web Originals
- Seinfeld - "The Twin Towers": Elaine is blasé that her then-boyfriend was killed on 9/11 since she was planning on breaking up with him anyway and it saves her the trouble. She's not very happy to learn that he survived.
Websites
- CollegeHumor: In "Chris Brown's Publicist", Chris Brown brags about murdering Sisqó (among numerous other crimes) and asks his publicist how they should do damage control. The publicist shrugs and says nobody would probably notice anyway. When the papers report on it, the headline reads "Chris Brown murders unknown guy".
- Cracked:
- "The Monkeysphere", or the idea that it is biologically impossible to truly care for more than about 150 people, treating the 7 billion others as, basically, NPCs only there to fill space and whose deaths are utterly meaningless to you. The hard part is accepting they think the same of you.
- 4 Surprisingly Insightful Plots From TV Sitcoms mentions a Daria episode where no one cares an Asshole Victim died.
In the 1997 Daria episode "The Misery Chick", when an asshole jock dies, Daria and a few other students at her high school struggle with their feelings. They acknowledge that it wasn't "good" that a person died so young ... but they still can't make themselves feel bad about it.
"You're sorry that he died," says Daria, "but you don't think that you feel sorry enough ... and you're worried that you're not as nice a person as you thought."
It's the same message, and one we don't get a lot in popular culture: You don't owe anybody your grief.
- "The Monkeysphere
- The Onion: An article headlined "Ugly Girl Killed" describes how an ugly six-year-old girl was killed and nobody, including the police and the media, paid any attention.
Western Animation
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Whenever Master Shake dies, Meatwad and Frylock rarely show concern for him and tend to shrug it off. Since Shake is a Jerkass who regularly torments everyone around him, it's understandable; on the rare occasions he's actually nice to them, they'll actually mourn him.
[After one such unsympathetic death, which resulted in Shake's remains filling Carl's swimming pool.]
Carl: Fryman, I am so sorry that, uhh... I can't press charges here.
Frylock: Yeah, me too. - Beavis and Butt-Head: In "Beavis and Butt-Head Are Dead", the titular duo fakes their deaths in order to skip school. Mr. Van Driessen is the only one who's actually upset; the other adults celebrate, but the students don't have much of a reaction to the news at all. When Van Driessen asks why, Daria explains that, while their dying was a bit sad, they didn't exactly have bright futures ahead of them anyway.
- Danny Phantom: Implied in the Bad Future timeline of The Ultimate Enemy special, where Danny's family, friends, and English teacher Mr. Lancer all died in a horrific explosion that Danny was unable to stop, causing his Start of Darkness as Dark Danny. His family and friends are memorialized with a statue with the inscription "Gone but not forgotten". Mr. Lancer's, off to the side, just says "Gone". note
- Daria: As mentioned under Web Original, the episode "The Misery Chick" deals with the death of Tommy Sherman, a Jerk Jock extraordinaire who blatantly hits on students, insults people to their faces, and generally treats everyone around him like junk. When Tommy dies in a freak accident, the students all struggle with their feelings, because while someone dying young is sad, the fact remains that Tommy was a horrible person—he didn't deserve to die, but he doesn't deserve to be venerated as a tragic hero just because he died. It's lampshaded with Brittany, who confesses that she fears she's a horrible person because she's not mourning Tommy enough (largely because he propositioned her, so she knows firsthand just how nasty he was); Daria cheers her up by assuring her that a truly bad person wouldn't have that fear.
- Darkwing Duck: In "Dead Duck", Darkwing Duck died (though it's All Just a Dream... Or Was It a Dream?) and visited his own grave. Darkwing's grave turns out to be his photo taped to a traffic cone. He's less than amused about it.
- In the Duckman episode "Apocalypse Not", everyone in the city finds themselves trapped underground because of Duckman's excessive partying (It Makes Sense in Context). Later in the episode, Cornfed, the rest of the Duckman Family and a waiter named Akers accompanying them find a door that could potentially lead to safety. Akers refuses to go first on the grounds that he's a minor character, which makes him expendable to both them and the audience. Wouldn't you know it, the second he goes through that door, he plummets into a pit of flaming knee-pads (again, context) and they all immediately forget his name or that he was ever with them.
Akers: You're the regulars. I'm the guest star. I'll die and you'll instantly forget me.
- Family Guy:
- In "Meg Stinks!", a flashback shows Brian's nephew Scrappy Brian being Eaten Alive by a dinosaur. Brian just looks annoyed, and his indifference is clearly meant to be a potshot to Scrappy from Scooby-Doo.
- In "Better Off Meg", Meg is wrongly thought to be dead. Whilst some characters, such as the employees at the local Quizno and (surprisingly) Meg's family to some extent, do mourn her death, not many do — during her funeral alone, barely anyone shows up, and an actual photo of her couldn't be found for the funeral booklet, Principal Shepherd mistakes her for another male student, and Stewie and Brian don't even properly go to the funeral, instead sending holograms in their place whilst they go to the arcade. Meg is horrified at this and uses this as an incentive to start a new life.
- The Loud House: In "A Flipmas Carol", Flip's Opinion-Changing Dream ends on the Ghost of Christmas Future/Yet to Come, who looks and sounds just like his acquaintance Lucy Loud, shows him a Bad Future. In this bad future, he died from a freak accident in his store and no one cared; the only person who came to his funeral was the local grumpy old woman Scoots, and even she only showed up because she was expecting pizza.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Slave the Day", the Gangreen Gang wrongly thinks that Big Billy was run over by a train. When Arturo reminds Ace of this, Ace casually says he forgot about that, but he doesn't even look upset. Billy then tells the Powerpuff Girls that he feels like his old friends don't care about him.
- Samurai Jack: Played tragically. Due to how Ashi and her sisters were raised, none of them grieve for one another whenever they die, instead shrugging off the deaths of their sisters to prioritize killing Jack. After Ashi learns compassion, she starts to show some remorse for her fallen sisters.
- The Simpsons:
- When Bleeding Gums Murphy dies in "Round Springfield", we see that the only people who came to his funeral were Lisa and her family. This, plus the disrespect he was given (such as Reverend Lovejoy misidentifying him as a sousaphone player) is what inspires Lisa to honor his legacy by showing off his music to the people of Springfield.
- In "Fraudcast News", when Geezer Rock collapses and supposedly crushes Mr. Burns, everyone in Springfriend except Smithers is more saddened about the loss of Geezer Rock.
- South Park: Lampshaded with a bit of Break the Fourth Wall, when Ms. Crabtree was murdered by a serial killer.
Detective Yates: She was considered an ancillary character. Somebody the audience wouldn't miss very much. [....] I know she hadn't been in any recent episodes, but dammit she deserved better than this!
- Transformers: Prime: In "Thirst", CYLAS the Terrorcon (aka a Cybertronian zombie) is dealt a lethal blow by Airachnid, who tries to rip out his Spark...only to find the barely-alive Silas inside. Leading to this conversation:
Airachnid: [smirking] Thank you for setting me free.
Silas: No... thank you. [dies]
Airachnid: [beat] Whatever. - In Young Justice, the Justice League and Superboy's pet Wolf are killed during the events of the episode "Failsafe", but none of the team grieves over it and instead tries to stop the alien invasion in progress. This is meant to foreshadow the events of the episode are a training simulation — nobody is actually killed.
Other
- The Bible: 2 Chronicles 21 speaks of King Jehoram regarding this. After he died from an incurable bowel disease (likely a fatal case of dysentery), none of the people of Judah mourned for him nor did they bother making a fire in his honor or bury him in the tombs of the Kings.
- An epigram of Fredrick, Prince of Wales, the son of George II, who, per Hanover tradition, had a mutual dislike towards each other, and father of George III, and despite being liked by anyone else, had this much to say:
"Here lies poor Fred who was alive and is dead,
Had it been his father I had much rather,
Had it been his sister nobody would have missed her,
Had it been his brother, still better than another,
Had it been the whole generation, so much better for the nation,
But since it is Fred who was alive and is dead,
There is no more to be said!"
