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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31759
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

We, as the audience, get sad when something feels incomplete. When any central character dies, the story or the world feels incomplete because we got used to them and/or because they are important to whatever is going on.

As for making a background character's death sad, focus on what is left behind after they are gone. Those things will likely be incomplete. Drawing the audience's attention to them will highlight the dead character's absence and leave a taste of that "damn, he/she will never come back to fix this".

Here are some examples I've come up with to illustrate this:

- The heroes enter a saloon. The bartender is an old friend and is, as always, cleaning the drinking glasses. Bad guys enter, shooting ensues and the bartender is killed. Weeks later the heroes come back to the saloon, now owned by someone else. One of them orders a drink and it comes in a dirty glass.

- One of the background characters is always talking about how much she wants to meet her family once more and reconcile with them. When the day comes she is very excited, puts on nice clothes and buy gifts. While driving to meet them, she gets into a car accident and is killed.

Original score: 2