Grim Reaper

The Grim Reaper is a popular personification of death in Western culture in the form of a hooded skeletal figure wearing a black robe and carrying a scythe.

The tool symbolizes the removal of human souls from their bodies in huge numbers, with the analogy being to a farmer (reaper) cutting through large swaths of grain crops during harvest.

[2] The Grim Reaper is a blend of various medieval or older European personifications of death, with its earliest direct inputs evident in art of 14th-century Europe in connection with the bubonic plague pandemic then ravaging the continent.

[2] A horseback rider killing humans with an outstretched weapon is another common symbol for mass die-offs in this era,[4] as is the Danse Macabre, a group of dancing skeletons leading people to their graves: also a possible input.

[1] The full Grim Reaper appearance (hooded skeleton, black robe, and scythe) became common by the mid-19th century, for instance as described in multiple Edgar Allan Poe short stories.