Is Death Only the Beginning? How People Mourn Artificial Characters in Social Media

Aug 25, 2026

Analyze audience reactions to the death of narrative-driven fictitious characters with predetermined fates across video games and TV series. Based on 3,000 online comments about 16 character deaths, the study applies Kübler-Ross and Kessler’s five grief stages and uses LIWC2015 psycholinguistic analysis plus thematic coding. Results show grief processes strongly resembling reactions to real characters, while language differs by gender, narrative role, interactivity mode, and media form. Themes include aural effects, nostalgia and beauty, resurrection and transmedia, spoilers, comparisons to real life, franchise impact, and viewer-gender effects, informing future character design.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages48

Reading Time2 h 1 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Fictitious characters and predetermined fates

Emotional responses and empathy gaps

Method and analysis

Grief-stage coding framework

Psycholinguistic and thematic analysis

Findings

Similarities to grief for real people

Language differences by gender, role, interactivity, and media form

Discussion

Unique themes for on-screen deaths

Implications for character development

Article Is Death Only the Beginning? How People Mourn Artiﬁcial Characters in Social Media Sercan Şengün1 , João M. Santos2 , Joni Salminen3,4, Milica Milenkovic5, and Bernard J. Jansen6 Games and Culture 1–48 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions) [DOI: 10.1177/15554120231190195](DOI: 10.1177/15554120231190195)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/15554120231190195)[journals.sagepub.com/home/gac](journals.sagepub.com/home/gac) Abstract We analyze the audience response to the death of narrative-driven ﬁctitious characters with predetermined fates, whether part of a virtual or cinematic story, and speciﬁcally from video games and TV series. Our aim is to contribute to the studies of identiﬁcation and empathy with ﬁctitious characters in media, as well as to close the research gap around these studies by speciﬁcally focusing on the death of the characters. We collected 3000 online comments on the deaths of 16 characters from video games and TV series. We coded each comment according to the ﬁve stages of grief by Kübler-Ross and Kessler and performed quantitative (using LIWC2015 psycholinguistic analysis software) and qualitative analysis (using thematic analysis). Overall, we found a strong resemblance between the processes of grief for real and ﬁctitious characters and uncovered differences of language when discussing the death of a character based on (a) their gender; (b) their role in the story; (c) their interactivity mode; and (d) the form of media. Finally, qualitative analysis revealed unique and novel themes for on-screen deaths, such as (a) the effects of aural cues; 1 Games and Interactive Media, University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA 2Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte), Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal 3School of Marketing and Communication, University of Vaasa, Finland 4Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland 5Union–Nikola Tesla University Belgrade, Serbia 6Qatar Computing Research Institute Doha, Qatar Corresponding Author: Sercan Şengün, Games and Interactive Media, University of Central Florida, 12405 Aquarius Agora Dr. Orlando, FL 32816-1344, USA. Email: [sercan.sengun@ucf.edu](sercan.sengun@ucf.edu) (b) nostalgia and beauty; (c) resurrection and transmedia; (d) spoilers; (e) comparisons and real-life connotations; (f) the effects on the franchise; and (g) the effects of the gender of the viewer on these discussions. We discuss our ﬁndings in detail, along with implications for future character development. Keywords death, ﬁctitious characters, video games, television, ﬁve stages of grief Introduction Along with television (TV) series, digital games are among the fastest-growing forms of entertainment. Accordingly, the characters depicted within the stories told in these media operate similar to characters in traditional stories (printed, oral, etc.) in the ways that we are “charmed by [their] personalities, inspired by their acts of courage, moved by their experiences,” and how they help us to “broaden [our] perspectives about others [and] become more tolerant and empathetic”(Emery, 1996) . In this study, we refer to these characters interchangeably as virtual, ﬁctitious, or artiﬁcial characters; that is, people or beings that do not exist beyond the realm of media such as a game, movie, or television series. However, we do acknowledge the nuance that these concepts might carry for various ﬁelds such as media, game, and literary studies. We deﬁne their unifying point as being narrative-driven and having predetermined fates in their stories, as opposed to having fates that are determined by audience choices, such as can be found in certain types of video games. In this aspect, they reﬂect an authorial intention (Farrell, 2017) as to when and how they will succeed, fail, or die as a part of the story. The relationships that people forge with ﬁctitious chara

FAQs

What research question does the study focus on regarding character death?

It asks how people react when artificial characters die and how those characters are mourned, including whether the process resembles mourning in real life.

How were the audience comments collected and analyzed?

The study collected 3,000 online comments about the deaths of 16 characters from video games and TV series, coded them using five grief stages, and then applied both LIWC2015 psycholinguistic analysis and thematic analysis.

What factors influence differences in language when discussing a character’s death?

Differences are tied to the character’s gender, their role in the story, the interactivity mode, and the form of media.

Aug 25, 2026

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