In the film The Outsider, his death is dramatized for the screen. He is shown drunk and freezing on a mountain top and unable to climb down. He falls asleep and is shown frozen to death with his arm and hand reaching upwards, like the time he raised the flag on Mount Suribachi. In the song The Ballad of Ira Hayes, he was described as being drunk and drowning in two inches of water in a ditch.