Often ties into Offstage Villainy, since the larger atrocities can't be displayed onscreen in full magnitude. Psychologically, proximity is more important than magnitude. Part of this is that the major deaths occur on stage or on camera, in detail and taking long enough to be dramatic. As long as the victims are sufficiently faceless, even a Final Solution can be considered not worth making any fuss about. The death of a single plot-important character is a tragic and often pivotal point the deaths of thousands of faceless Mooks, even if by torture, are simply background noise, so to speak. However, the Redshirt Army can be sacrificed with reckless abandon, and no one will so much as bat an eyelash.
In other words, when some sort of tragedy befalls a character such as The Hero (or even the villain), the audience is expected to sympathize with them or perhaps even cry for them. Far more important is the degree to which the audience knows the character(s) affected. The amount of sympathy that death, cruelty, or suffering is expected to evoke from the audience is often inversely proportional to the magnitude of its effects. Erich Maria Remarque, The Black Obelisk variants are often incorrectly attributed to Josef Stalin
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