Ranking RWBY non-villain deaths - least gruesome to most gruesome
< QUICK AND (RELATIVELY) PAINLESS DEATHS / DOWNRIGHT DISTURBING DEATHS >
In “The Final Word”, Harriet realizes too late that she and the others won’t be able to escape the blast radius of the bomb in time. Vine decides to use his Semblance to conceal himself and the bomb to lessen the explosion. Sure, it worked, and the explosion didn’t last too long, plus Vine had already disintegrated by the time the dust dissipated, but it meant that he had to be alive for every second of it, which could not have felt good.
No, I’m not counting the destruction of her robot body in “PvP”, since it was likely painless and she was eventually rebuilt. No, I’m talking about the cruel twist ending to her arc in “The Final Word”. During the battle in the pocket dimension, Cinder stabs Penny with her Shadow Hand to get the Winter Maiden powers, and while that fails, Penny is still too wounded by Cinder’s claws, and, while Jaune tries to boost her Aura, Penny refuses due to the risk of Cinder getting her powers, and instead chooses to let Jaune kill her so she can pass her powers to Winter. While this is an undoubtedly painful experience, Penny doesn’t visibly struggle against her wounds and chooses to sacrifice her own life with a smile on her face.
In “The Lost Fable”, the backstory reveals that the original Ozma died of an illness. If it were just that, he would have gone in the Natural Causes category. Unfortunately, he gets tossed back and forth between being revived and being killed by the Brothers, which could not have felt good.
In the same episode, the God of Light forces Ozma into a reincarnation process where his soul possesses like-minded people each time he dies. His first reincarnation after his death was incinerated by Salem after their battle, then, according to Jinn, several of his next few incarnations drank themselves to death trying to forget the war. Holy cow, Ozma.
18. THE ATLAS CARGO PILOT
In “Dread in the Air”, after an epic battle against the Lancers, the cargo ship Weiss rides suffers too much damage and crashes to the ground. While Weiss is lucky to survive, the pilot is confirmed to have died. For as epic as it was, the battle was very stress-inducing, especially considering he wasn’t an aspiring hero like Weiss, so I can’t imagine it was pleasant to be trapped under the remains of a cargo ship, slowly succumbing to his wounds, unable to return home like he said he wanted to.
In “Kuroyuri”, during the same Nucklevee attack that killed An, Li is unable to carry Ren to safety and manages to get him to escape before he had to witness his death battling it. Given what we see this same Grimm put Team RNJR through, we can only imagine what it did to Li.
In “Argus Limited”, the Lamp of Knowledge ends up luring Grimm toward the titular train. Dee and Dudley try to take action against them, but Dee is carried off by one of them. Whether the Grimm killed him or he died left behind in the snow, it wasn’t pleasant.
In “End of the Beginning”, after impaling Amber and gaining her powers, Cinder engages Ozpin in a battle to the death, which she succeeds in with a blast of fire.
In “Uncovered”, Cinder emerges from the cave under the Spring Maiden vault and struggles to walk while exhausted. Fortunately for her, a woman with groceries finds her lying on the ground. And this results in Cinder choosing to kill this poor woman for her clothes. Imagine being this woman. You just finished a grocery trip and are returning home in the rain. Then you find this beaten-up woman with a monster hand, and the next thing you know, you’re dead.
Okay, I was not expecting to talk about three Cinder casualties in a row. In “Heroes and Monsters”, while she’s already in immense pain from the battle against Cinder shown in “Beginning of the End”, Ozpin tries to pass her powers to Pyrrha via the Aura Transfer Machine. Unfortunately, the sound of Pyrrha in pain causes Jaune to look away from the entrance door, thus giving Cinder the opportunity to shoot an arrow at Amber and claim the powers for herself.
In “Dread in the Air”, Khan discovers that Adam staged a coup on her, turning many of her soldiers against her, before Adam straight up stabs her. While it wasn’t long before she succumbed to her wound, she did just experience betrayal from the soldiers she trusted just before it, which had to sting very hard.
In “A Tale Involving a Tree”, having possessed Neo’s body, the Cat reveals that Alyx did feel guilty for the bad things she did during her time in the Ever After. While Lewis returned to Remnant, Alyx stayed behind to amend for her wrongdoings, before being killed by the Cat. And, no, I don’t believe she ascended into the Blacksmith, because it wouldn’t make sense for the Brothers to give their Remnant creations the ability to immediately reincarnate upon death, and Alyx was murdered against her consent, unlike Ruby and Neo, who wanted to become something new.
In “Ace-Operatives”, Forest gets dropped off in midtown of Mantle near an alley, before walking into it and encountering Tyrian, who gives him a little scare before slaughtering him. Whether the death was fast or not, the scare Tyrian gives him beforehand is what escalates the gruesomeness of it.
In “With Friends Like These”, after Ironwood gives out the order to arrest Ruby and her group, Clover instantly turns on Qrow. When their Manta crashes into the snow, Tyrian breaks free from his restraints while Clover and Qrow fight, and instead of focusing on apprehending the deranged murderer, Clover keeps trying to capture Qrow, leading to Qrow choosing to team up with Tyrian to try to wear him down, but Tyrian seizes the opportunity to stab Clover from behind with Qrow’s sword, which leads to him slowly bleeding to death and clinging to life just long enough to tell Qrow to stop Ironwood. We actually see for ourselves how long it took for Clover to finally black out, so we know how painful it had to have been for him.
In “Witch”, after Hazel spends his whole story enacting revenge on Ozpin for sending basically child soldiers, especially his sister Gretchen, to die fighting his battles for a war that he doesn’t have a plan to put an end to, Oscar manages to get through to him. In return, Hazel then chooses to lay down his life to let the heroes escape from Salem, an act involving him restraining Salem in place as she burns, and Oscar using Ozpin’s magic to blow them up. Of course, it only delays Salem a few hours, but destroys not only the giant whale Grimm, but Hazel as well.
