People Die If They Are Killed

About

People Die if They are Killed is a memorable quote from the 2006 anime series Fate/Stay Night by studio Deen. Due to the redundancy of the statement and several translation issues from japanese to english, The quote has since become popular among fans of the series as well as 4Chan’s /a/ board being the prime examples of redundant statements and “lost in translation” found in subbed anime.

Origin

Though the quote originally appeared on the visual novel version of the series, it became notable on the 23rd episode of the Studio Deen animated adaptation. In the episode, main protagonist Shirou Emiya shares his wisdom to his Servant Saber, saying that “People die if they are killed”. The quote itself plays on an idiom that describes tough individuals who “won’t die if they are killed”.

Spread

Though there are no surviving records, the earliest examples of the quote is believed to have come from 4Chan’s /a/ board. Users would mock at the seemingly redundant statement and how it represents characters at being passionate yet very thick headed. The quote would also be accompanied by another statement or image that is synonymous/contradicts with it or with the image macro O RLY? and You Don’t Say?. The earliest surviving record of the quote was a screenshot of the scene in the image search engine site Danbooru on June 17th, 2006^[1]. On February 10th, 2007, the Danbooru wiki submitted an entry regarding the quote^[2] which was copy pasted from the Lurkmore Wiki^[3]. On 4chan’s Archive.moe, there are over 1.700 archived threads regarding the quote with the earliest being from February 4th, 2008.^[5]
On July 24th, 2008, Youtube user Albana uploaded a video titled “People die if they are killed !” which shows the scene of the quote. It has since gathered more than 652.000 views as of 2015^[4].