The term life review, or flashback before death, refers to a phenomenon widely reported as occurring during
near-death experience
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detac ...
s,
in which a person rapidly sees much or the totality of their life history. Life review is often described by people claiming to have experienced this phenomenon as "''having their life flash before their eyes''".
The phenomenon also refers to a widely-used trope in fiction, film, and television where a
recap
Free Law Project is a United States federal 501(c)(3) an Oakland-based nonprofit that provides free access to primary legal materials, develops legal research tools, and supports academic research on legal corpora. Free Law Project has several i ...
montage of a character's life is shown in a sequence before that character's death.
Research and phenomenology
Commentators
[Hagan, John C. "Near-Death Experiences. I Hope You Are Comfortable With Them By Now!" ''Missouri Medicine'', 112:2 March/April 2015][Long, Jeffrey. "Near-Death Experiences. Evidence for Their Reality". ''Missouri Medicine'', 111:5, September/October 2014] note that near-death experiencers undergo a life review in which the meaning of their life is presented to them, but also how their life affected other people, as well as an awareness of the thoughts and feelings of these people. Bruce Greyson
[Greyson, Bruce. "Implications of Near-Death Experiences for a Postmaterialist Psychology." ''Psychology of Religion and Spirituality'', 2010, Vol. 2, No. 1, 37–45] described the life review as a "rapid revival of memories that sometimes extends over the person’s entire life". The memories are described as being "many". The review might also include a panoramic quality. According to Jeffrey Long
the experience of a life review is often described from a third-person perspective.
In fiction
Life review, or ''My Life Flashed Before My Eyes'', also refers to a widely-used trope in fiction, film, and television where a recap montage of a character's life is shown in a sequence before that character's death.
In films
* In ''
Armageddon
According to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Armageddon (, from grc, Ἁρμαγεδών ''Harmagedōn'', Late Latin: , from Hebrew: ''Har Məgīddō'') is the prophesied location of a gathering of armies ...
'' when Harry detonates the bomb, images of his daughter and wife briefly flash on the screen.
* In ''
Vanilla Sky
''Vanilla Sky'' is a 2001 American science fiction thriller film directed, written, and co-produced by Cameron Crowe. It is an English-language remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film '' Open Your Eyes'', which was written by Amenábar ...
'', David experiences this when jumping off a building.
* In ''
Train to Busan
''Train to Busan'' () is a 2016 South Korean action horror film directed by Yeon Sang-ho and starring Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok, Kim Su-an, Choi Woo-shik, Ahn So-hee, and Kim Eui-sung. The film mostly takes place on a high-speed train ...
'', after being infected with the zombie virus, Seok-woo has a flashback of himself holding his daughter as a baby and he smiles then jumps off the train seconds before fully transforming into the undead.
* In ''
American Beauty'', after Lester Burnham is shot, he narrates through a series of important life events.
In TV
* In
The 12 Days of Christine
"The 12 Days of Christine" is the second episode of the second series of British black comedy anthology series '' Inside No. 9''. It first aired on 2 April 2015 on BBC Two. It was written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and directed ...
, an episode of
Inside No. 9
''Inside No. 9'' is a British black comedy anthology television programme that first aired in 2014. It is written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton and produced by the BBC. Each 30-minute episode is a self-contained story with new chara ...
, it is revealed that the entire plot is Christine's life events replaying as she dies of a car accident.
* In the season finale of
Stranger Things (season 4)
The fourth season of the American science fiction horror drama television series ''Stranger Things'' was released worldwide on the streaming service Netflix in two volumes. The first set of seven episodes was released on May 27, 2022, while the ...
, Max's memories from the previous seasons replay during a near death experience.
See also
*
Mass hysteria
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria, or mass hysteria, involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for c ...
*
Aerial toll-houses
Aerial toll houses (also called "telonia", from the / ''telonia'', customs) are a belief held by some in the Eastern Orthodox Church which states that "following a person's death the soul leaves the body, and is escorted to God by angels. Duri ...
*
Clinical death
Clinical death is the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing, the two criteria necessary to sustain the lives of human beings and of many other organisms. It occurs when the heart stops beating in a regular rhythm, a conditio ...
*
Out-of-body experiences
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly us ...
*
Effects of adrenaline on human memory
*
Terminal lucidity
Terminal lucidity, also known as paradoxical lucidity, rallying or the rally, is an unexpected return of mental clarity and memory, or suddenly regained consciousness that occurs in the time shortly before death in patients with severe psychiatric ...
References
{{Reflist
Near-death experiences
New Age
Pseudoscience