Bury Your Gays: The Deadly Cost of Queer Representation

Queer characters have always lived on borrowed time. In film, television, and literature, LGBTQIA+ figures have long served as cautionary tales, tragic sidekicks, or beautiful martyrs. Even as representation increases in volume, it often lacks the most essential ingredient: survival.

This recurring narrative device — where queer characters are killed off disproportionately, often for shock value or to further another character’s story — is known as the “Bury Your Gays” trope. And it’s not just a screenwriting shortcut. It’s a mirror held up to cultural discomfort with queer joy, love, and longevity.

The roots of the trope go deep, far beyond TV. For much of the 20th century, queer characters were written with one fate in mind: death, punishment, or disappearance. This wasn’t just a narrative choice. It was law.

During the era of the Motion Picture Production Code (aka the Hays Code) in Hollywood, LGBTQ+ characters could only exist on screen if they met a moral consequence. Homosexuality was seen as deviant and characters coded as queer had to pay for it. Think Rebel Without a Cause (1955), The Children’s Hour (1961), or Midnight Cowboy (1969).

In The Children's Hour, Martha Dobie, played by Shirley MacLaine, accused of being in love with her friend Karen, ends her life after admitting her feelings. Her declaration of love becomes a death sentence, not just narratively, but emotionally. It told audiences: queer love is fatal.

There are even names for the type of queer death on screen, and none of them are good. There’s the Gay Guy Dies First, a blink-and-he’s-gone side character sacrificed for tension. The Gayngst-Induced Suicide, where queerness is framed as unbearable pain. Homophobic Hate Crimes masquerading as plot devices. The cruel symmetry of Out of the Closet, Into the Fire, where coming out is met not with growth but punishment. The Tragic AIDS Story, where the legacy of a real epidemic is reduced to moral suffering. And, of course, Vasquez Always Dies: the butch, the bold, the queer-coded warrior who bleeds out while the straight leads mourn heroically. Different scripts, same message: queerness is expendable.

While representation has improved, the death toll hasn’t necessarily slowed. For every Heartstopper or Schitt’s Creek, there are ten shows that use queer death as a plot twist, a motivator, or worse, an aesthetic flourish.

Perhaps the most infamous modern example is Lexa’s death on The 100 in 2016. After finally consummating her relationship with Clarke, Lexa is shot by a stray bullet minutes later. The outrage was immediate. Fans flooded social media, trended hashtags (#LGBTfansDeserveBetter), and raised tens of thousands for LGBTQIA+ charities in protest. The message was clear: you gave us love, then you gave us trauma.

This wasn’t an isolated case. Queer characters killed off in quick succession across the recent TV landscape include:

• Tara Maclay in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was shot through a window just after reconciling with Willow. A scene that haunts queer viewers to this day, and is probably as infamous as Lexa’s death on The 100

• Poussey Washington in Orange is the New Black was suffocated by a guard in a scene that mirrored real-life police brutality.

• Delphine Cormier in Orphan Black was only temporarily dead but still used for dramatic bait.

• Paulie in Lost and Delirious, Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain, Caroline in Transparent, Omar in The Wire… the list stretches across decades and genres.

The issue isn’t just that these characters die. It’s how and why they die. When a character is one of few queer people on screen, especially in a genre show, romance, or prestige drama, their death lands harder. They’re not just one character. They’re the only representation a viewer might see of themselves. That’s not just poor storytelling. That’s erasure.

This isn’t just about feelings either. It’s about visibility, identity formation, and cultural reinforcement. For many queer viewers, especially young ones, these characters are lifelines. Killing them reinforces the belief that queer people are tragic, expendable, or doomed to suffer.

Not all is bleak. In recent years, we’ve seen a welcome shift toward queer narratives rooted not just in trauma, but in survival, joy, and complexity. Heartstopper gives us queer teens who navigate anxiety, homophobia, and coming out, but who also get to hold hands, fall in love, and actually be happy. Our Flag Means Death delivers a heartfelt, ridiculous, and refreshingly sincere queer love story between two men that, for once, isn’t tragic or sidelined. And The Owl House quietly made history as the first Disney show to centre a bisexual protagonist who doesn’t die, doesn’t vanish, and actually gets a complete and fulfilling story arc. And also featured a same-sex kiss and non-binary characters.

These stories prove it’s possible to give queer characters depth without making them martyrs. The fight against “Bury Your Gays” isn’t about banning queer tragedy. It’s about balance. About giving queer people the narrative freedom to live as fully as anyone else — joyful, flawed, complicated, but alive at the end.

Because when the only way we know how to tell queer stories is through funerals, we forget that survival itself is radical. As Pose taught us: “You deserve to be loved. You deserve to be seen.”

Not buried.