50 Movie Death Scenes That Left You TRAUMATISED
3. Mufasa - The Lion King
Both Littlefoot and Bambi have already represented animated animals having to come to terms with the death of a parent on this list. Arguably however, the most famous scene in a category as tragic as young children witnessing a parent's demise is of course Simba and Mufasa (Jonathan Taylor Thomas and James Earl Jones).
As far as Disney classics go, The Lion King is up there with some of the best, a title it has earned even in spite of traumatising an entire generation. In 1994, any child who watched the film, and there were a lot of them, had to watch Mufasa die.
This was something that was engineered by Jeremy Irons' Scar, as he lured his royal brother into the path of a wildebeest stampede, before hurling him off a cliff to his death. With this, Scar became the King, and one of the saddest death scenes of all time was born.
As horrible as Simba losing his dad was, it was the young cub's reaction to it that made this particular moment so tough to watch. Mufasa's son either didn't understand what had happened, or didn't want to accept it, possibly a bit of both, but the image of a young child trying to vein to wake a parent that was never going to wake is one that burns into the brain forever.