25 of the Most Devastating Fictional Deaths

If you claim a writer has never been good enough to emotionally attach you to a character so hard that their inevitable death leaves you almost as devastated as if a real friend had died — or, let’s be honest, exactly as devastated — you’re either lying or ghoulishly heartless. Like, imagine being on a first or second or third date with someone and they reveal that they actually thought Dobby was kind of annoying and had no reaction to his death. You’d have to get up and leave. That’s some serial killer shit.

So when Redditor GoldenPhoenix21 recently asked r/AskReddit, “What fictional character death hit you the hardest?” Redditors didn’t have to look for very long through their closets of emotional trauma or even more recent purchases to name the imaginarily departed who still haunts them. Get ready to cry, because we’ve got dead pets, dead parents and even a few combinations of the two.