Amity Island police chief Martin Brody was the hero of the first two Jaws films, but by Jaws: The Revenge, the character was killed off. If there's one character most closely associated with the Jaws franchise, it's, well, the great white shark itself. After all, it's the only character to appear in every film, and it's hard to get more memorable than an enormous murder shark. As far as humans go though, that prize goes to Chief Brody, the voice of reason during both Jaws and Jaws 2.
When the slimy mayor of Amity Island wants to keep the beaches open for tourism reasons, even when there's a shark around killing, it's Brody that does his best to keep everyone safe regardless. Brody is the kind of honorable lawman a community would be proud to have protecting them, who works without a hint of corruption, even when he's wrongfully blamed for Alex Kintner's death by the boy's grieving mother.
In both Jaws and Jaws 2, it also ultimately falls to Chief Brody, played by Roy Scheider in both films, to take out the rampaging shark for good, despite the fact that he's by no means a man at home in or on the sea. Unfortunately, not even heroes are immortal, presuming those heroes are still human beings. Here's how Chief Brody died.
How Chief Brody Finally Died, According to Jaws 4
Sadly, Martin Brody didn't get the hero's death he probably earned. In fact, he didn't even get to meet his maker onscreen. To be fair, that's because actor Roy Scheider refused to return to his role for Jaws: The Revenge, although considering how terrible the final film ended up being, he made the right call. As far as Chief Brody's fate goes, we learn of it early in Jaws 4. Apparently his years of battling sea monsters took their toll, as Brody is revealed to have passed away of a heart attack. This event occurred not long before Jaws: The Revenge began, as his wife Ellen (a returning Lorraine Gary) is still actively mourning his death.
It's implied by Ellen later in the movie that Brody's heart gave out due to continuing fears of having to deal with another shark attack on Amity Island, and since it happened twice before, it's not really hard to blame him. One could argue his fear might've been stoked due to news of the Sea World shark attack Martin's son Michael experienced in Jaws 3-D just a few years earlier, but for the most part it appears that Jaws 4 ignores Jaws 3. Even though that would make it almost a decade since Jaws' Chief Brody last encountered a great white, living through that kind of experience changes a man, in this case, physically for the worse.