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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Tone 17:32, 3 September 2020 (UTC) reply

List of last words in fiction

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A massive list of random examples of the last things fictional characters have said. Most of the examples are unsourced, and those that are sourced are only using the pieces of fiction themselves. There is no actual sourcing being used at all to discuss the concept as a whole, and I'm not finding any that talk about the concept in any kind of set that would allow this to pass WP:LISTN. This is also FILLED with WP:OR. While the overall concept of Last words in general may be notable, this list is completely WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Rorshacma ( talk) 16:34, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Shellwood ( talk) 16:59, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shellwood ( talk) 16:59, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per WP:IINFO. This is just a compilation of trivia, and even restricting to works with WP articles, this list could run into tens or even hundreds of thousands of entries (or more). – Deacon Vorbis ( carbon •  videos) 17:28, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. ★Trekker ( talk) 18:29, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - The main article seems to have the same issues, but this variation is even more indiscriminate due to the infinite nature of fictional characters. If the main list is going to exist, it can handle the few actually notable fictional last words. TTN ( talk) 20:04, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete This is even more arbitrary than I first thought. I thought this would be last words in a book or other work. Nope, this is the last words attributed to fictional characters. This really has so much Tolkien that it seems like it is a manifestation of Tolkienfruft. There is no reason to have such a thing as a list. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 20:35, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. There may be a few fictional last words which are notable, but they can be on the main list. Rhino131 ( talk) 20:53, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per WP:NOTIINFO. No indication as to why these phrases are notable either on their own or as a group. Ajf773 ( talk) 21:19, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I looked at the very first revision, and it contained only one entry I could defend, "Rosebud", from Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane is generally placed on practically everyone's list of most important films. And it revolves around Kane's mysterious dying utterance - "Rosebud". "Rosebud" is widely quoted, in other contexts, like Rosebud (The Simpsons). Scholars write theses about "Rosebud" [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].

    Shakespeare has Julius Caesar say, " et tu Brutus?" - also an iconic phrase, subject to scholarly attention. The phrase is so widely used people may use the phrase who have never heard of Shakespeare, or read Julius Caesar.

    I'd support a list last words that was free of fancruft, and only included phrases that were the subject of scholarly attention. I'd also support a list of last words where the word or phrase had entered our shared cultural heritage to the extent it was used without an explicit reference to its original context.

    Hal 9000's death scene, in 2001, is also very memorable, very unusual. It too would be something scholars write theses about.

    My suggestion? Only words or phrases iconic enough to have their own standalone article should be in the list. Et tu Brutus? would be an example. I was surprised we did not have an article on Rosebud (cultural relevance of Rosebud), or reasonable equivalent. With that restriction this would be a much shorter and manageable list. Geo Swan ( talk) 23:30, 27 August 2020 (UTC) reply

  • @ Rorshacma, Shellwood, Deacon Vorbis, *Treker, TTN, Rhino131, and Ajf773:, I threw out all the cruft, and started with a stub, written as per my comments above - a much shorter list of dying phrases each demonstrably notable in their own right. I invite your comments on it. Geo Swan ( talk) 01:17, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
    • This is far better. I would not mind if it was kept like this. ★Trekker ( talk) 01:19, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
    • If we were able to limit this just to the entries that had enough notability to have their own articles, then I would probably be fine to keep it as a navigational list. But, I do agree with TTN that when its that limited, then there is no real reason for it to be split off from the main List of last words article. Though, that article is in just as bad of a shape as this one was before your revision. Rorshacma ( talk) 01:32, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
    • Yeah, I think applying the same inclusion criteria of only blue links (both full articles and sections of main articles directly covering said quotes) to the main list and merging them both would be a fine outcome. It feels like the main list really should be reformatted into an article about last words. I'd have to imagine there is commentary on the concept itself in terms of of actual documentation of last words as something of cultural importance. But just removing the bloat is a good enough first step. TTN ( talk) 01:39, 28 August 2020 (UTC) TTN ( talk) 01:39, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
      • @ TTN and Rorshacma:, but wouldn't Roy Batty and Charles Foster Kane's last words be off-topic in List of last words, when every other entry there represents the last words of a real person? Geo Swan ( talk) 01:41, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
        • Something akin to the older article structure would suffice if the same inclusion criteria is applied to the main list. I assume that would cut the current list down by 80-95% and then both sections can be built up from there. TTN ( talk) 01:47, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
        • Yes, ideally the notable fictional examples would be separated into their own section after the notable real life ones. Rorshacma ( talk) 02:17, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
          • I don't see how adding a section, that doesn't really fit, would be superior to adding, say, {{ see also|List of last words in fiction}}. Geo Swan ( talk) 13:40, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Weak delete With the trimmed article, there will be very few quotations that are both last words and so notable they need their own article, and such a fragment of a list is hardly worthwhile. And no, there should not be a separate article on "Rosebud": Citizen Kane covers analysis of how that fits into the film well (or the theses should be used to improve that page or a section within it, to avoid duplication). Surely academic discussion of HAL 9000's last words would fit within that article rather than separately! Perhaps there should instead be a list that goes with Category:Quotations from film more broadly but even then film/fiction quotations so rarely need to be discussed separately from their articles that listing only those with their own articles is not a great endeavor though, and many in the category that do are song or film titles too. AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes links to a number of article sections, usually the better way to present them. Otherwise put the best back into List of last words (none of which have separate articles – naturally!). Perhaps there's a way to establish inclusion criteria to this, but having articles isn't it. Reywas92 Talk 08:05, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
    • Reywas92 I very strongly disagree with your comment "...but even then film/fiction quotations so rarely need to be discussed separately from their articles that listing only those with their own articles is not a great endeavor..."

      Iconic phrases enter English's cultural lexicon all the time, and a significant fraction of those iconic phrases continue to be used, and understood, long after many English speakers no longer know the original context where they were coined.

      Just the other day I watched a YouTube video on USAAF bombers. It explained that while the gunners in the (smaller) Luftwaffe bombers gun positions were surrounded by 60 round drum magazines, the machine guns gunners used in big USAAF bombers were loaded, on the ground with a continuous belt of ammunition 27 feet long. The narrator explained that the common idiom "the whole nine yards" often used to expending one's entire resources, all at once, was coined referring to firing all the bullets allocated for an entire mission in one long continous burst. I've heard that phrase used my entire life. I did not know its derivation. As I wrote above, phrases like "Rosebud", or "Et tu, Brute?" are routinely used by people who have no idea of their original context.

      I feel very strongly it is a grave disservice to readers to send them to a larger article when what they are really interested in is the meaning of a phrase. Doing so represents a danger that someone will feel that the explanation of the phrase is off-topic, and trim it from the larger article, without realizing the chaos this will cause.

      Back in 2007, when I was a newbie, and hadn't really encountered anyone with an incurable urge to merge, I started an article on the phrase " There's a sucker born every minute". Before I started this article I knew what lots of people thought everyone else knew - that the phrase was coined by P.T. Barnum. When researching the phrase I found that Barnum's biographers all agreed that he did not coin the phrase, that none of the people who really knew him well believed he coined the phrase.

      At the AFD I found a surprising number of participants thought the phrase should redirect to Barnum's article, in spite of all the RS who said he didn't coin the phrase.

      As I said, I had never really encountered contributors who wanted to merge things, merely for the sake of merging before. So I spent a couple of hours studying the results of google searches for where the phrase was used.

      What did I find? About a third of the writers who used the phrase, would lazily say "As PT Barnum once said 'There's a sucker born every minute'". Another third of the writers who used the phrase, (generally the better writers) would say the phrase was frequently attributed to Barnum, without claiming Barnum actually coined it. But it was the final third I thought was the most significant. The phrase had a life of its own, and a third of the writers who used never mentioned PT Barnum, at all.

      More than a billion people learned English as a second language, and are likely to be confused by cliched phrases like "There's a sucker born every minute" or "like tears in rain". If they click on a link to the phrase, they really deserve to go to an article on the phrase. If the mergists had succeeded in cramming everything about the phrase routinely but incorrectly attributed to Barnum into the Barnum article we could have very seriously eroded readers confidence in the wikipedia. If the phrase was changed to a redirect to P.T. Barnum#famous sayings, and some innocent contributor changed that to P.T. Barnum#famous utterances that would result in everyone who wanted to know what the phrase meant suddenly finding themselves at the top of the P.T. Barnum article. That would be very jarring. They could be forgiven for thinking that the wikipedia would suddenly send people to random pages. How would they know there was a connection between some 19th century circus owner and a phrase they wanted explained?

      So, I very strongly disagree with your general premise that iconic phrases, that have a life of their own, that measure up to GNG, should be shoehorned into larger articles. In particular, I am pretty confident that "Rosebud" is regularly used and understood to signify a mystery, by people who are unfamiliar with Citizen Kane. Geo Swan ( talk) 13:35, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply

      • Who the heck says Et tu Brute without knowing it was used by Caesar? Who the heck uses Rosebud wihout knowing Citizen Kane? That really baffles me, I have certainly never seen that word used by itself without some sort of reference to the film. You're sure building a straw man with Barnum there! That phrase really is known and used outside of the him as a circus leader and I would not suggest keeping it with his biography with the actual original irrelevant to him. But I simply fail to see how you expect to build a list of last words in fiction with an inclusion criterion of having their own article when the vast, vast majority of such movie quotes are tied to their movie alone. Examples of last words in fiction that have meanings or significant content disconnected from the film context and which should have their content split apart are few and far between. Sure, if it's an independent phrase, absolutely create a separate article, but there's not enough of them to maintain this list. Reywas92 Talk 19:50, 28 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Merge to List of last words. There are more famous fictional last lines than just "Rosebud":
  • WRT merging into List of last words - I have several concerns with that.
  • All the entries in List of last words are supposed to be the last words of real people.
  • The List of last words article is, itself, a mess.
    • Lots of entries in that list may be documentable, but are totally uninteresting
    • Lots of entries in that list may be documentable, but lack the context that would make them worth covering. Consider the entry for George V:
"God damn you!"[31][177][note 41]
— George V, king of the United Kingdom (20 January 1936), to a nurse giving him a sedative
Cursing the nurse giving him an injection is a lot more interesting when one knows that is generally accepted that his family and doctor "hurried on" the death of the very ill King with an overdose. The King was not looking for a hotshot, so this may have been, well, murder.
I know merges of articles on related topics seems so natural to some people that they are mystified when asked to explain them. I don't see it. I don't see why the merge makes sense. I think my rewrite is policy compliant. And I think List of last words is a mess, would require a lot of work to fix. Geo Swan ( talk) 02:55, 30 August 2020 (UTC) reply
I'd say the discussion here could likely be used as a consensus to TNT that article. Combining both stubs and working to define proper inclusion criteria while also trying to set up some kind of structure for actual discussion on the significance of last words in both real life and fiction would likely be the best course of action for both lists. TTN ( talk) 02:59, 30 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete: This lasted for over a year...   //  Timothy ::  talk  17:43, 30 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete as WP:OR and WP:IINFO. Fictional characters die frequently and they all have "last words". Shooterwalker ( talk) 03:24, 31 August 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete- Useless compilation of trivia. Reyk YO! 10:20, 1 September 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - How is this encyclopedic? Why does it exist? Is there a single article from a reliable secondary source devoted to this topic that isn't a clickbait list? Do even the biggest of film buffs care? Dark knight 2149 10:36, 1 September 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete: Open and shut case. Every reason why has already been covered above. Don't understand the discussing. Normal Op ( talk) 19:29, 2 September 2020 (UTC) reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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