* Many roles, many movies: De Niro has a long and varied career spanning decades. Keeping track of every death in every movie would be a monumental task.
* Ambiguity: Some deaths in movies are not always clear-cut. De Niro might have characters that are presumed dead, disappear, or their fates are left open to interpretation.
Instead of counting deaths, we can talk about some notable examples of De Niro's onscreen demise:
* Taxi Driver (1976): Travis Bickle, his iconic character, survives the rampage but is seriously wounded.
* Raging Bull (1980): Jake LaMotta's boxing career ends, and he's left with lasting physical and emotional scars.
* Casino (1995): Sam "Ace" Rothstein's life is destroyed by the mob.
* The Irishman (2019): Frank Sheeran's character faces the consequences of his actions and ultimately dies.
While it's fun to speculate on the number of times De Niro has died on screen, it's more interesting to consider the impact his characters' deaths have on the films themselves.