Why are death flags a necessity?

RogertheShrubber said:

Also it's odd to call this a "spoiler" since after all it was clearly intentional, you were meant to suspect or know of the coming demise of a character, there is likely an artistic reason this was done.

RogertheShrubber said:


And finally perhaps they are simply not interested in the impact a sudden unexpected death would create in the audience. Since after all such a thing is extremely common and frankly overdone in my opinion.

RogertheShrubber said:
I definitely wouldn't say this accounts for all circumstances of death flagging but it occurs to me that they might be done by the creator in order to direct the viewers attention as they would have it. For example in American Beauty or Sunset Boulevard, it begins by clearly stating that the main character does not survive the story. There are many other examples of "En Media Res" where character deaths are stated at the outset. This is done often times to call the viewers attention to the sequence of events which led up to this inevitable end rather than construct events chronologically only seeing causality once they have passed. This can build tension as well as cast otherwise mundane or uninteresting events in a far more captivating light and change ones interpretation of events through its specific context.

Nicholaevich said:
If you don't foreshadow every single event that takes place, someone will cry and call it bad writing.

Nicholaevich said:
If you don't foreshadow every single event that takes place, someone will cry and call it bad writing.

RogertheShrubber said:


It's not a spoiler because it was intended to be viewed as it was presented. If there were no death flag then presumably it would not be true to the creators vision. The fact that you don't appreciate it changes nothing, it is the way it was intended to be and it serves whatever purpose it was intended to serve. I would recommend seeking what that purpose might be and I think you'll find yourself appreciating death flags more (at least when they are used properly).

It's common and overdone in so many modern series, attack on titan is a great example as is game of thrones, the walking dead and so many others. It's a common writing crutch to use character deaths to carry the plot forward and frankly I find it cheap and uninspired not to mention trite. What's more They are almost always played up for shock value, something which I could not care less about if I tried.

All of the reasoning I give for what purpose overt forshadowing can serve also applies to what you are talking about I just decided to speak in terms of the simplest examples I could think of to make my points.

haunted said:
You know what’s coming but not WHEN, and the creator is hoping you’ll be left in suspense, anxious and tense, until the character finally dies. Then they want you to be sad. Most of the time, death flags are just things that close out a character’s arc and give them a satisfying death. In the specific examples you gave, it’s sort of cheap emotional manipulation to build tension but also, IMO, to deliberately make the death less disruptive to the viewer’s experience. They’re easing you into it. It won’t be a satisfying death but they don’t want it to turn your view of their work upside down.

Versus the shock death that catches you entirely off guard and either destroys you or makes you laugh. Most media isn’t hardcore or cruel enough to want to do this, or to pull it off if they try.

Both kinds are good sometimes and bad sometimes.

Holybaptiser said:
Do death flags even happen anymore? I see flags getting mocked a lot in some self-aware kind of jokes in anime all the time. I don't even want to get into the whole self-aware as a joke thing, but haven't anime in the past few years completely strayed from the typical death flag kind of predicaments and developments? Have I missed something when I was playing solitaire on my phone while watching a boring show?

HungryForQuality said:


I used to feel that way until I got my head out of my ass. Sometimes lack of foreshadowing allows for better immersion with the character(s) since you're on the same level of knowledge as them. Also, everything being known beforehand can be boring.

Unko- said:


Yeah there are certainly people who feel that way, I am not one of them at least.

CHC said:
They are not necessity. Usually it's just bad writing. When some side characters have to die, but they have never got enough characterisation to make their death matter, the scriptwriter would resort to some last minute character development right before they die. Those last minute developments are then identified as death flag. They were not originally designed to tell us who's going to die.