50 Movie Deaths That Destroyed Our Childhood

A Bug's Life (1998)

The Movie Death: Evil Hopper is picked up by a bird, taken to its nest and presented as food for its babies, who are all chirruping, getting ready to eat him alive.

How It Broke Us: It's the perfect natural order of things, but there's something absolutely terrifying about the bird's emotionless, twitching face feeding a live 'person' to its young. It's impossible to see a pigeon now without thinking that it wants to eat us.

Batman Returns (1992)

The Movie Death: The despicable Max Schreck finally gets his comeuppance at the hands of Catwoman, who tasers him, causing an explosion and electrocuting him to a charred, smouldering skeleton.

How It Broke Us: That one shot of Schreck’s ravaged corpse. It’s right out of a horror scene; a real VHS-pausing moment. And an image that will still pop up randomly in nightmares throughout our twenties.

We're Back! A Dinosaurs Story (1993)

The Movie Death: What started off as a light-hearted animated film about dinosaurs in the present day, ends with a dramatic and cruel turn of events that sees our hero get brainwashed and perform for a circus. It’s ok though because the villainous circus ringleader Professor Screweyes ends up getting eaten alive by crows.

How It Broke Us: It’s basically the worst scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds , but for kids.

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)

The Movie Death: Snow White takes a bite of a witch’s poisoned apple and falls into a “Sleeping Death”.

How It Broke Us: It’s not the death that’s upsetting – which we all know is only temporary – it’s the funeral held for her by the dwarves, even putting her in a glass coffin because they can’t bear to bury her. It’s heartbreaking. Also, extremely disturbing.

Hercules (1997)

The Movie Death: After Hercules makes a deal to give up his strength for 24 hours, damsel Megara ends up saving his life but is crushed by a pillar in the process and she dies in Hercules’ arms.

How It Broke Us: Sacrificing her own life to save his, in a complete role reversal of the hero/damsel in distress dynamic? It’s just so lovely. Excuse us. What? No, we’re... um... chopping onions.

Return To Oz (1985)

The Movie Death: The Nome King swallows a poisonous egg and starts to crumble, revealing a stone skeleton before completely disintegrating.

How It Broke Us: It taught us that even the yellow brick roads of Oz can lead to a dark and grimy place where no hope exists. Something that we bear in mind every time we visit Brixton.

The Lion King (1994)

The Movie Death: Following his final showdown fight with Simba, Scar is left to get mauled to death by his hyena henchmen.

How It Broke Us: In the pantheon of Disney deaths, there are many that don’t require a second thought, but having villain Scar get eaten alive by hyenas is memorable in all the wrong ways. It’s nature at its most fierce and it’s enough to make us scared to go outside in case we see a dog off a leash.

The Pebble And The Penguin (1995)

The Movie Death: The main villain Drake is ultimately killed by getting completely crushed by a boulder that falls on his head.

How It Broke Us: Such a brutal death that really shows us exactly how fragile we really are. And by ‘we’, we mean ‘penguins’.

Anastasia (1997)

The Movie Death: Anastasia kills the evil sorcerer Rasputin by crushing his reliquary underfoot, causing him to melt into a green ooze and then re-emerging as a screaming skeleton that gets shocked to death by green electricity.

How It Broke Us: His one death scene has more graphic fatalities than your average Final Destination movie.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

The Movie Death: Jack Skellington unravels the sewn skin of evil villain Oogie Boogie to reveal innards made up of bustling insects, which then fall into a pit of lava.

How It Broke Us: A character made up of insects? THIS is why we get scared when there's a spider in our bath or when a moth flies near our face.