10 Horrifying Movie Deaths That Happen Off Screen
4. Bambi's Mother - Bambi
Deaths don't have to be gory and unsettling to hit hard, as more than one Disney film has proven over the years.
Sacrificing Anna and Elsa's parents to the sea, letting Mufasa get stampeded into a pulp, and ageing a woman to the point of impossibility before booting her out a window are just a few of the atrocities on Walt Disney's card - but all of them pale in comparison to just how intensely Bambi's mother has permanently scarred our waking adult lives. Still not ready to talk about it, but here we are anyway.
After spending a good chunk of the movie teaching her fawn about the forest, Bambi's mother tells him to run after hearing poachers in pursuit - managing to follow until one awful gunshot rings out and Bambi is left alone in the world in their wintery, empty home.
You don't need to see anything to understand the weight of what's just happened, and it remains one of the most heartbreaking, soul rending, incredibly painful moments in cinematic history. Give us blood and guts over family breakdowns any day of the week.