It ends with the man crushed, The Reaper laughing, and the car getting nailed by the train. There was a PSA shown in theatres that warned about the dangers of trains, showing a nervous man playing cards with The Grim Reaper interspersed with a car racing to a road/railroad crossing.The reaper had no idea the Cool Old Guy has just bought some handy tools from the company the ad was advertising, and used them to booby trap the entire house. Another advertizement featured the grim reaper getting kicked out of a house Home Alone style, by the same Cool Old Guy he wanted to take.The PSA "dark and lonely water" features Donald Pleasance dressed up as Death ("The spirit of dark and lonely water") who then proceeds to monologue about the children who he's here to reap.which he picks up and gently replaces in the nest from which it'd fallen. An ad for an SUV portrayed driving it as so much fun it filled even Death with the joy of life: he's first seen looming over a baby bird.Australia had a landmark 1987 AIDS education ad which portrayed the reaper going bowling.A more kinder interpretation may portray him as The Sacred Darkness.Īs a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. As with most public services, expect hilarity to ensue if Death Takes a Holiday. See also Enemies with Death and The Problem with Fighting Death. Compare to Horsemen of the Apocalypse for when the rest of the Four Man Band show up, and Afterlife Express, when the Grim Reaper is or rides on a vehicle, especially a train.
Thus, the concept of being able to defeat or kill Death in combat ( Castlevania) or Grim-Reaper figures themselves being able to die ( Death Note) can seem absurd to Western viewers.Ī subtrope of Psychopomp. Shinigami are more typically spirits associated with death, rather than being the singular Anthropomorphic Personification thereof. Japanese media then proceeded to play with the character to the point that many shinigami no longer have anything in common with the Grim Reaper, aside from the name. When this concept was imported to Japan in the 19th century, they translated the name as Shinigami (literally spirit of death, or god of death ). Still other representations of death forgo the neutral and buffoonish guise entirely and make Death a God of Evil that must be fought.Ĭonversely, actually meeting him may reveal Don't Fear the Reaper is wiser dying is not as bad as feared.Ī frequent modern variation is the notion that instead of the Grim Reaper, you can be a Grim Reaper - that it's a position offered to certain people after they die. Even when he's still treated as a menacing figure, there will be humor involved.
He first appeared in Western art and folklore with the outbreak of the mid-fourteenth century plague epidemic (known to us as the Black Death).Īs with most folklorish characters, he is no longer taken seriously and may even come across as benign, or played for laughs as a bored civil servant type. The Grim Reaper, in his days as a frequent figure of folk tales, was originally used as a menacing, sombre symbol of the inevitability of death. But even these characteristics are filtered through a Christian veil. Often he picks up the characteristics of Charon, the boatman of the river Styx in Greek theology. He is sometimes described as mute, and in some accounts you can challenge him to a game of chess for the right to stay alive. This god (not a god of death), in turn, was drawn from the Ur Example of the Sassanid sect's Zoastrian god Zurvan Akarana. These dual accouterments are Older Than Steam, but both were drawn from the ancient Greco-Roman god Χρόνος (Chronos). He is also often shown with an hourglass as a symbol of elapsing life. Either way, he is generally seen as a tall skeletal spectre in a black hooded robe, who wields a Sinister Scythe when he visits commoners and a sword when he visits royalty, though the scythe is the most common of his symbols.
The nature and purpose of the Grim Reaper actually varies between two different versions: one version describes him as a simple guide, the being who takes you to the next world after you die (the fancy word for this is Psychopomp) the other sees him as the actual entity of death-you die when he touches you.
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