Does The Dog Die?

August 23, 2018 4:36 AM

Want to watch the latest film/book/Video Game release but need to know if particular squick will be present? Then "Does the Dog Die?" is the site for you!

For each (potentially upsetting) scenario there is a simple Yes/No rating with pre-hidden section that outlines when/how the trigger happens and roughly what it involves.

The Site currently tracks:

Does;
- the dog die?
- a cat die?
- a horse die?
- an animal die? (besides a dog, cat or horse)

Are;
- any teeth damaged?
- needles/syringes used?
- there bugs?
- there clowns?
- there ghosts?
- there jumpscares?
- there snakes?
- there spiders?
- there strobe effects?

Does a car crash?
Does a dragon die?
Does a head get squashed?
Does a kid die?
Does a parent die?
Does a plane crash?
Does an LGBT person die?
Does it not have a happy ending?
Does someone abuse alcohol?
Does someone break a bone?
Does someone die by suicide? - National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255)
Does someone drown?
Does someone fall to their death?
Does someone fart or spit?
Does someone have a seizure?
Does someone have an eating disorder?
Does someone have cancer?
Does someone miscarry?
Does someone self harm? - S.A.F.E. ALTERNATIVES® (1-800-DONTCUT)
Does someone use drugs?
Does someone vomit?

Is a child abused? - National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-Child)
Is electro-therapy used?
Is Santa (et al) spoiled?
Is someone burned alive?
Is someone hit by a car?
Is someone misgendered? - Misgendering: What Is It and Why Is It Harmful?
Is someone possessed?
Is someone sexually assaulted? - Via UnconsentingMedia.org
Is someone tortured?
Is there a claustrophoic scene?
Is there a hospital scene?
Is there a mental institution scene?
Is there a nuclear explosion?
Is there a shower scene?
Is there blood/gore?
Is there body dysmorphia?
Is there domestic violence? - National Domestic Violence Hotline [phone])
Is there eye mutilation?
Is there finger/toe mutilation?
Is there hate speech?
Is there sexual content?
Is there shakey cam?
Is there shaving/cutting?

Their 'Contact Us' has a page of a smiling Doggo and seems rather welcoming if you want to help enhance the site.
Thank you for visiting our site! Please don't hesitate to contact us about a new category you would like to see tracked. Don't be afraid that we will reject your idea as "silly." On the contrary, our goal is to make DoesTheDogDie.com a website with information you can't find anywhere else. If it matters to you then it matters to us!

Was previously mentioned on the Blue in 2013, but site has has apparently (?) had major usability and GUI overhaul since then.

Enjoy!

posted by Faintdreams (46 comments total)

I laughed when I saw Game of Thrones on the list. No car crashes, though!
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:41 AM on August 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

Appropriately, John Wick is a trending movie on this site.
posted by doctornemo at 4:45 AM on August 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

I quite enjoy looking at certain films / tv series and trying to guess beforehand which of the list of items is a No.. because the works themselves are so problematic.

Yes I am speaking of Supernatural TV show and Avengers:Infinity War in particular!
posted by Faintdreams at 5:32 AM on August 23, 2018

Also is it just me or 'Does a Dragon Die?' seem an odd subcategory? I mean why don't Dragons come under any animal that is not a dog or cat? If it's because it's mythological creature why doesn't that have it's own category?

I do love taxonomies.
posted by Faintdreams at 5:35 AM on August 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

How much of a movie's or game's plot can you reconstruct from this list?
posted by phooky at 5:49 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

doesthebunnygetboiledinapot.com
posted by cjorgensen at 5:56 AM on August 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

In 2014, in about a 3-week period I saw John Wick, The Babadook, and Tracks in the theater back to back to back. Almost gave up on watching any movies ever again.
posted by doctornecessiter at 5:58 AM on August 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

I had to ask my dad about the dog's fate in John Wick 2--although John Wick tries to be a good pet owner, circumstances are against him.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:04 AM on August 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

The answers for Avengers: Infinity War, in which...

[Click for spoiler]

half of all animal life dies

are interesting
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:23 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

The answers for Avengers:infinity War appear to only apply to on screen deaths though, which seems fair (ymmv)
posted by Faintdreams at 6:28 AM on August 23, 2018

Is someone tortured?

Well, that covers every Adam Sandler film. Those poor audiences.
posted by adept256 at 6:35 AM on August 23, 2018 [7 favorites]

I thought the ending of The Babadook was about accepting grief, and even nurturing it, lest it overwhelm you by not letting it in. In the end this horrible monster is somewhat tamed and put into service honoring the memory. Without giving too much away, I thought it was a happy ending.
posted by adept256 at 6:42 AM on August 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

I'm still waiting for the sequel where John Wick dies and his dog goes on to avenge him.
posted by charred husk at 7:03 AM on August 23, 2018 [11 favorites]

Without giving too much away, I thought it was a happy ending.

I agree, and I loved the movie.

(But still: they did kill the dog.)
posted by doctornecessiter at 7:05 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

This site can be inaccurate. (Content note: caucasity)

I held off on seeing Get Out for months because I saw a few promo stills with a dog, and this site said the dog died. The movie was important enough that I decided to suck it up and go. Turns out the warning was for the deer Rose killed in the opening scene, and the dog barely appears in the movie.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:06 AM on August 23, 2018

Also is it just me or 'Does a Dragon Die?' seem an odd subcategory? I mean why don't Dragons come under any animal that is not a dog or cat? If it's because it's mythological creature why doesn't that have it's own category?

I'm going to be checking that specific category when the last How to Train Your Dragon movie comes out. If Toothless dies, I need to be prepared.

This site also makes me think it's relatively safe to see Alpha.
posted by gladly at 7:11 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thanks for this.

I love Wes Anderson but he seems to hate dogs for some reason.
posted by freakazoid at 7:13 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Get further into your ol' echo chamber with our spiffy site.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:18 AM on August 23, 2018

Get further into your ol' echo chamber with our spiffy site.

I like it here in my non-rapey, non-tortured-pet, non tooth-violence echo chamber. It reflects my real life much better than Hollywood ever did. I have always liked this site.
posted by jessamyn at 7:24 AM on August 23, 2018 [60 favorites]

Avoiding entertainment media that includes elements that you don't like isn't living in an echo chamber.

The term "echo chamber" is used to refer to people who are isolated from dissenting opinions. A dog does or does not die isn't an important policy debate, and avoiding movies in which dogs die isn't avoiding movies with a particular point of view.

I particularly like is there shaky cam because movies that use a lot of it can trigger my motion sickness. I know, I've just got to suck it up and expose myself to alternate points of view, but sometimes I don't feel like it!
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:35 AM on August 23, 2018 [29 favorites]

Also, looking at some of their list of triggers: sexual assault, miscarriage, domestic violence, eating disorders...

I can easily imagine why some people might want to avoid watching movies with those things in them. It would take a pretty appalling lack of empathy to accuse those people of wanting to live in an echo chamber.

I've always thought that fandom had the right approach by widely using content labels. Sure, there is no standard so it can be kind of hit-or-miss, but it's really nice because it helps you pick what to view, either based on the things you like or dislike. One of the side effects is that a wider variety of content is available because your audience is the people who see those content labels and click anyway, not everyone. You don't need to tailor your stories to be appropriate / effective for the general audience.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:46 AM on August 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

One time I Am Legend showed up on cable and I texted my friend John who had seen it and I asked him if it was too gory or scary because I can’t take that stuff.

No man, it’s not too bad.

Okay cool.

I start watching and there’s that beautiful dog and I pause it and text John and ask about the dog and he says, no, it’s okay. I don’t wanna give it away but it’s fine.

I unpause and pretty soon it starts looking dire for the dog and I think how in the heck is Will Smith going to save the day? when, gulp.

I shut off the TV and call John this time instead of text and he’s laughing and I say what the hell man?

Hey man nobody warned me about it either and if I had to see that then you should, too.

What the hell?

It was pretty bad, hunh?

I’ll talk to you later, I said and hung up.

So, uh, I hope this website is a lot more reliable than my friend John.
posted by notyou at 7:51 AM on August 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

It's not just making the choice of 'not watching' though, either. Personally I greatly appreciate the 'is there sexual assault' category. Not so much because that's a dealbreaker in a movie, but so that I can be ready for it when it happens.

There are certain things people might not be emotionally prepared to be surprised by. This should not be ire-educing or 'echo chambery' for people.
posted by nogoodverybad at 7:55 AM on August 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

I'm still waiting for the sequel where John Wick dies and his dog goes on to avenge him.

You're thinking of Dog Wick.
posted by RobotHero at 7:55 AM on August 23, 2018 [9 favorites]

There was an in-queue MeTa post about it and I've just approved it.
posted by jessamyn at 7:58 AM on August 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

It's not a standard feature ▶

I discovered myself that the details tag isn't filtered out here :)

posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:00 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

"Dark Souls 2: There are snakes. There are bugs. There's ghosts. A dragon dies. An animal dies. A horse dies. There are spiders. Someone is burned alive. There are jumpscares. A dog dies."

Really you could just put that on the back of the game box instead of some crap about Drangleic.
posted by neckro23 at 8:12 AM on August 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

I love violent media and love stepping out my of artistic comfort zone. A lot of great art happens there.

But not everyone is me and I wouldn't ever want to inflict something on someone who wasn't up for it. I love Funny Games. I will not watch it with someone without making sure they really want to see it.
posted by East14thTaco at 8:17 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm still angry about that beautiful GSD in I am Legend.

And I'm so motion-sick I had to run to the toilet halfway through Beasts of the Southern Wild, so I'm very grateful to people who are willing to provide these warnings.
posted by suelac at 8:20 AM on August 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

I just want to clarify my comment above about seeing John Wick/The Babadook/Tracks back to back to back: I actually loved all of those movies, and I'd recommend them to everyone* as long as you're aware that they all contain dog deaths. If I'd seen any of them individually I'd have been okay, I just unluckily got an coincidental onslaught.

* Having said that...Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe not Tracks. I'm a big stickler for audience members not talking during movies, but the dog death in that one was so heartbreaking that I uncontrollably said aloud, "Oh no! Oh no no no no..." and almost stood up...Not to actually leave the theater but to just pace a little to distract myself.

Tracks was easily in my top five favorite movies from that year, but there's a decent chance that I'll never watch it again; don't know if I can handle that part again.
posted by doctornecessiter at 8:42 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

I like that the picture for Are There Snakes is Indiana Jones. It's got me thinking about, how do you choose pictures to represent these things, but without them actually being the things that people want to avoid?


Also, Orphan is tagged for spoiling Santa, and I'm now trying to picture someone who is okay with everything else in that movie but draws the line at spoiling Santa.
posted by RobotHero at 9:09 AM on August 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

I really like this site, and wish I'd known about it before. I think I could probably help them add to the "Does someone miscarry" section, though. In the six months after my first pregnancy loss alone, I could have added at least 20 movies/TV shows, because a miscarriage (or threat of one, equally upsetting) seemed to happen in every other thing I watched, even things I'd chosen because they seemed pretty innocuous and where I was least expecting it.

But that's the way with triggers. I'm sure it happened in lots of media I consumed before then; I just didn't notice it. But wow, after I went through a couple of traumatic experiences, did I ever notice it.

Prior to suddenly developing a couple of severe triggers myself, I thought I understood the concept intellectually, and so I conscientiously provided content warnings in my literature and gender studies classes for things like sexual assault and abuse, as seemed appropriate. Now that I have some triggers of my own...well. Now I truly get it on an emotional level, and I sure do appreciate a good warning myself. I'm not at the stage anymore where I work hard to avoid all media with my triggers, but I like being prepared so I can brace myself if I choose to watch or read it.

There is something about being blindsided by a trigger that is viscerally affecting. It's not a learning experience; it doesn't help me "get over" the trauma, or desensitize me, or "toughen me up" somehow. It's just upsetting and puts me in a funk afterward.

Yes, I received therapy for what happened to me, because I realized I needed to work on being able to get through daily life in one piece. Those triggers were all around me all the time anyway--that is life, and there's no escape from reality--so I was going to have to learn to deal with that somehow for the sake of my mental health. But to have it implied that in my TV, movies and books, which I was consuming as a temporary escape from the sadness of my real life, I somehow need more (surprise) reminders of what happened to me, so I'm not just living in an entertainment "echo chamber"? That seems awfully unkind.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:32 AM on August 23, 2018 [14 favorites]

I love Wes Anderson but he seems to hate dogs for some reason.

His last film was a doggo lovefest called I Love Dogs, at least phonetically.

Then again, Yoko Ono is the real hero, so maybe he's just being arch.
posted by rokusan at 9:33 AM on August 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

I like that the picture for Are There Snakes is Indiana Jones. It's got me thinking about, how do you choose pictures to represent these things, but without them actually being the things that people want to avoid?

I was wondering about this as well. Some of the pictures are a bit on the nose -- "Are any teeth damaged?" is Edward Norton from American History X (ouch!), "Is there eye mutilation?" is the eye from Un Chien Andalou, and "Is someone tortured?" appears to be a picture of... actual fingernail torture?
posted by neckro23 at 9:54 AM on August 23, 2018

I sure could have used this site yesterday when I was googling to find out if the dog dies in Voltron. There are people on the Internet who will write fanfic about a lot of things and they have surprisingly high search rankings.
posted by khaibit at 9:58 AM on August 23, 2018

Is there a way to find out which films/books/video games have the highest number of “Yes” answers? I’m very curious.
posted by ejs at 11:00 AM on August 23, 2018

Get further into your ol' echo chamber with our spiffy site.

Go jump in a lake, edgelord. The delights of watching animal torture are not an issue I feel the need to remain open to new points of view on.
posted by praemunire at 11:50 AM on August 23, 2018 [15 favorites]

Get further into your ol' echo chamber with our spiffy site.

How dare people want any content-related curation of their media! I bet they even look at the MPAA ratings for movies they watch!

Yo Dawg! I heard you like that Japanese anime stuff like "My Neighbor Totoro", and I hear "Grave of the Fireflies" is by the same folks! You liked WW2 stuff like "Hogan's Heroes" about camps in Europe, so I bet you're gonna LOVE "Philosophy of a Knife", about hijinks in camps in the Pacific theater!
posted by rmd1023 at 11:51 AM on August 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

More seriously, I've pointed a lot of folks at the website (both parents of young kids and just people in general). I hadn't noticed they'd added a bunch more types of content to warn about. Very cool!
posted by rmd1023 at 11:54 AM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

"- an animal die? (besides a dog, cat or horse)"

They should probably refine this category to note that humans are also excluded, as well as aliens/animals from other planets.

Actually, it seems there's not really a category devoted to just people dying. Some specifics, like a parent or child or X-type of person, but not one just for "Do people die?"
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:03 PM on August 23, 2018 [2 favorites]

I love Wes Anderson but he seems to hate dogs for some reason.

He kills Jeff Goldblum's cat in Grand Budapest Hotel, so not just dogs.
posted by octothorpe at 12:39 PM on August 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Without giving too much away, I thought it was a happy ending.

I saw a movie, and those who have also, will probably recognize it from my description, but it was about a young girl who lived insider her imagination, and dreamed she was a fairy princess. It was told in all flashback, and by the end, it was up to the viewer to decide if she'd gone back to the land of fairy or died at the hands of nazis.

Now, I'm not going to watch a whole movie where the young innocent protagonist is killed by nazis, and I believe in magic, so of course I viewed her as finally going home.

My girlfriend said, "I can't believe we just wasted two hours watching a movie where the girl dies in the end!" I started to point out that if that was the interpretation she was going with, then the girl had actually been dead the whole time, and had died at the beginning of the movie, since the movie was all a flashback, but realized there was no way to win with that one.

I'm still going with happy ending.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:48 PM on August 23, 2018 [3 favorites]

It's fantastic for those of us who, when blindsided with a cat/dog death, start physically shaking and dissociating. Which is not nice when you're consuming media in the privacy of your home, but a bloody nightmare in a dark cinema. This site has saved me many a hysterical panic attack.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 4:03 AM on August 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm so glad to see they've branched out beyond dog death. This is an invaluable site. And handily enough, there's also a reverse lookup for most topics! Just in case you wanted to have a eye mutilation film marathon or something.
posted by subocoyne at 4:33 PM on August 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

neckro23: "Is someone tortured?" appears to be a picture of... actual fingernail torture?

Thank you SO MUCH for that comment, sincerely. I am so upset by finger/toe injuries that I had to try three times to even read it, with my mouse cursor on the scroll bar in case I needed to jump away quickly. Coming across an image of that with no warning would have ruined my entire day (maybe week).

I see from the list in the OP that the site warns for finger/toe injuries, so it should be useful for me, but perhaps I'll just get my partner to check it for me before we watch anything together. Unless there's an image of IV drug use on there too, which is his squick. :-/
posted by daisyk at 12:19 AM on August 26, 2018

Then again, Yoko Ono is the real hero, so maybe he's just being arch.

Maybe Wes Anderson is being arch?
posted by East14thTaco at 7:48 AM on August 26, 2018 [1 favorite]