Line #84 Main/VictimizedBystander


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6	->''"Delirium's driving warrants attention from a highway patrol officer, who scolds and angers her. She punishes him by inflicting hallucinations upon him: 'I think you'll have invisible insects all over you now for all your life and for ever and always.'"''
7	-->-- ''[[ComicBook/TheSandman1989 The Sandman: Brief Lives]]''
8
9	Victimized Bystander is an [[SuperTrope Umbrella Trope]] that can be divided in 3 types:
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11	* Broken Bystander (or Scarred Bystander): This is a bystander who suffers a traumatic experience because of the main plot; usually these characters are nameless and rarely mentioned. Example: ''Film/TheMatrix'' has a little girl whose mother morphs into Agent Smith to her astonishment.
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13	* Victimized Bystander: This bystander is usually used for comical or exemplified purposes: their cars will explode, houses wrecked or they will be assaulted. Quintessential example of that is the Cabbage Man from ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''. It's a RunningGag that the Gaang will somehow cause his cabbage cart to get destroyed and he'll scream [[CatchPhrase "MY CABBAGES!"]]. His life might not be ruined forever, but his livelihood is ruined for at least the rest of the day
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15	* Cursed Bystander: This bystander will experience a (sometimes) life-ruining event for a scene (or two). [[JustIgnoreIt When said character experiences this they will often be met with ridicule or no reaction or acknowledgement at all]]
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17	Victimized Bystanders are bystanders who mostly will be chosen at random to suffer for an action usually not punishable. When they're just doing their duty, these replaceable minor characters' entire lives will be ruined. The latter can be described as a form of DisproportionateRetribution.
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19	In case of some [[AndIMustScream the bystanders will never be able to speak, see, hear or do anything again.]] In case of the others, they must now live without teeth. In more common cases, they are crippled for the rest of their lives. And for what? ''Five seconds of mild comedy''?
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21	Explained: Someone's life is ruined so the protagonists can move further in the storyline and the ''unfortunate associates'' of either good, evil, or neutral suffer off-screen.
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23	This trope manifests when a (often a minor) character's life is ruined in a few seconds and never mentioned again. Opposite this trope is when a [[AWinnerIsYou character wins the lottery and is also never mentioned again]] [[JustForFun/MadeOfWin (or anything in that direction.)]].
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25	But in particular this trope is reflected in Capri Sun's Disrespectoids' commercials since the children who turn into the ''disrespectoids'' are [[JustIgnoreIt (instantly) faced with ridicule and laughter]], [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse while there isn't a single plot line which undoes the spell (more like a curse)]]. This is often associated with FridgeHorror, but it happens often ''enough'' to recall it a million times. This trope can be applied a lot to victims of MindControl, since (usually due to TheMasquerade) no one will ever know the person wasn't acting of their own free will.
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27	Compare OffscreenInertia and WhatHappenedToTheMouse
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29	!!Examples:
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31	[[foldercontrol]]
32
33	[[folder:Advertising]]
34	* ''Axe'''s chocostein used an Axe product and turned into a chocolate monster [[AndIMustScream unable to express himself]], not even when women start literally ''eating'' him.
35	* Three jealous women try to court the attention of a guy at a party in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVsL_G5kl9Y this bubble gum commercial]]. When he decides to divert his attention to another woman, they get back at her by inflating her behind to a ludicrous degree. Cue her falling over due to the added weight, shooting a terrified look at the guy.
36	* The Disrespectoids in ''Capri Sun'''s commercial campaign has children subject to permanent life altering disfigurations just for not respecting Carpi Sun packages, such as being turned flat for running one over with an RC Car or turning into a bobblehead for hitting the pouch with a baseball bat.
37	* In a Dutch commercial about Greek cuisine somewhere in the early (20)00s, there was a woman cooking Greek food for her family. Her son tries to taste a piece of meat. Before he can eat it, she turns him into an ancient Greek statue. Later, when they all gather around the table to eat, he is not present, which makes the viewers believe that he'll be a statue for eternity.
38	* In one of the early American Platform/NintendoDS commercials, the protagonist is laughed at by fellow students in the showers. The protagonist responds by shrinking their reproductive organs. Later in the same commercial he drags an airplane across the sky to draw a heart. However, the plane sticks to his finger, shrinking it in the process. As he attempts to shake it off we see a shot from inside the cockpit of one pilot projectile vomiting on his co-pilot and an air stewardess. The ad ends with the pair walking away, the plane still attached to his fingertip.
39	* In the online version of the Nintendo DS commercials, the site contains a ''mini-game'' where you must go into a movie theatre to test your ''DS Powers'', but first you must shrink the afro of the gentleman blocking the view. Imagine his reaction after you've ruined his time at the theatre by constantly moving the movie, and his initial reaction to the loss of his hair, which he might've spent his entire life working on.
40	* The Jackass-inspired series of adverts for ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'' that ran from the mid-to-late 2000s absolutely reveled in this trope. Each advert showcased a bunch of young boys using a weapon from the series of games, always to disastrous results:
41	** Three guys attempt to use a [[TransformationRay Sheepinator]] on a cat. The cat jumps away from the beam, causing it to hit a woman who just happened to be walking into the garden. After she's turned into a sheep, one of them yells, clearly distressed, "Dude, that's my mom!"
42	** A guy gets shot with [[TransformationRay a weapon that turns him into a chicken]]. While his friends try to catch their scared chicken friend, one comments that they may not be able to turn him back into a human.
43	** Two guys turn their friend's girlfriend into a cow while the pair is kissing.
44	** A [[ShrinkRay shrink ray]] is used so that a guy can sneak in to the girls' tent unnoticed. When the miniaturized guy makes a run for the tent, an owl dives down and grabs him, causing him to scream in pain while the owl carries him away into the trees.
45	** While testing out the Gravity Boots, a guy gets catapulted into the sky. His friends on the ground try to reverse the effect to no avail, at which point one of them notices that [[TurbineBlender a plane is flying directly above them]].
46	** One of the more sadistic ones features a bunch of kids playing with a decoy blow-up doll made to look like one of them. They place it on a riding lawnmower and push it into the road, causing one of their mothers to hit it straight on, believing she just ran over her own son.
47	* A commercial for Turkish chips depicts three guys on the beach who discover that their snacks have [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext the power to suck in and shrink people]]. One of the guys uses it to suck in a poor woman, who he then promptly devours. They then try to repeat the process with a lady on a boat, but just as she is about to be eaten she is saved by a group of women who get the guys back by doing the same to them.
48	[[/folder]]
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50	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
51	* In ''Manga/{{Parasyte}}'' one of the parasites turned a boy's right arm into a giant penis after he offered to show her an animal.
52	* In ''Anime/YuGiOh'', Atem (Yami-Yugi) punishes people who lose at his shadow games with life-long delusions.
53	** Though since Kaiba was subjected to one of these early on and recovered, apparently they aren't permanent.
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56	[[folder:Comic Books]]
57	* ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'': In the story "Brief Lives", Delirium gives a highway patrolman the permanent delusion that he is covered in stinging insects as "punishment" [[DisproportionateRetribution for pulling her over for very reckless driving]]. It is outright stated that he'll be suffering this delusion for the rest of his life.
58	* In ''ComicBook/XMen'', we get a clue of just how badly Mikhail Rasputin's mind has cracked when a teenager on a bike crashes into him in the street and gets thrown into a tree (and judging by what the tree looks like, he might still be conscious). The boy receives no help as the other characters never find out about it. As far as we know, he is still there.
59	[[/folder]]
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61	[[folder:Fan Works]]
62	* ''Fanfic/ChrysalisVisitsTheHague'': Only a handful of Chrysalis' countless Equestrian victims have survived long enough to testify about their experiences. And her various human victims are only given glancing mentions before disappearing from the narrative altogether.
63	* In ''Fanfic/FantasyOfUtterRidiculousness'', the [[Franchise/TouhouProject Three Mischievous Fairies]] are fascinated by some Pop TV memorabilia that they find. This being a crossover with ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'', where anything Pop TV-related gets blown to pieces, a stray missile inevitably explodes right where the trio is standing.
64	* ''Fanfic/MuseHysteria'': When the Darkness Proxy grows desperate to locate the unknown Princess of Heart, they start abducting random girls to perform a "Princess Test" in the form of ElectricTorture.
65	[[/folder]]
66
67	[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
68	* In Disney's ''WesternAnimation/AladdinAndTheKingOfThieves'' opening song "There's A Party Here In Agrabah", Genie transforms a female bystander into a fatter version of herself with glasses, before moving on with the rest of the song.
69	* In ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch'', there is a fat tourist with an ice cream cone, which he drops any time he runs into Lilo. In his last scene in the film, the ice cream is knocked off by the wing of a passing spaceship. Throughout [[Franchise/LiloAndStitch the franchise]], he ''[[ButtMonkey constantly]]'' loses his ice cream.
70	* In ''WesternAnimation/WhatsUpBalloonToTheRescue'', Chin Ling ([[TokenMinority the only Chinese character in the movie]]) is subjected to casual racism from our [[PoliticallyIncorrectHero "heroes", Gutto and Dr. Crum]].
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72
73	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
74	* ''Film/FreebieAndTheBean'': Dozens of bystanders are injured or killed during the film's wildly destructive chase scenes. Probably the biggest example is when the villain drives through a parade and knocks over a bunch of marchers, none of whom are shown or mentioned after that scene.
75	* In ''Film/IronMan2'', when Tony Stark was in court, he claimed that foreign nations and business competitors are decades away from successfully recreating his achievements, and that the armor is in fact his own property. He did this by showing video clips of their (the competition's) failures. One of these had Hammer testing his own suit, with a man in the iron suit, spinning the torso 360° while the legs remained still. Hammer noted later that the pilot survived.
76	* In ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'' Sheriff Pepper (from the previous film ''Film/LiveAndLetDie'') just happens to be vacationing in Thailand when Bond shows up and [[FlashedBadgeHijack carjacks]] him (while he's still inside), ultimately crashing his car into a display window.
77	* In ''Film/MenInBlackII'', it's implied the video store guy murders his mother after being neuralized by the protagonists and misinterpreting their commands.
78	* [[NominalImportance The "Very Unimportant Person"]] in ''Film/OceansThirteen'' has one of the worst nights of his life just because he was doing his job -- reviewing the antagonist's hotel while Danny Ocean's gang was working multiple cons to ensure its opening would be disastrous. At least after harassing him, humiliating him, and making him physically ill, [[AvertedTrope this trope is later averted]] when they fix a slot machine so he wins an 11 million dollar jackpot.
79	* In ''Film/PulpFiction'' after Butch runs him over a disoriented Marsellus Wallace starts shooting wildly into the crowd around Butch's wrecked car, missing Butch but hitting an innocent bystander who falls to the ground screaming.
80	* In ''Film/SonOfTheMask'', the neighbor's head was transformed into a giant nose. This was because the god Loki thought her to be nosy. She was later demonstrated to the protagonist's wife as an example to confirm his stories: Norse mythology being real and their son the product of a Mask.
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83	[[folder:Literature]]
84	* ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'': The four bratty children who suffer for their misbehavior in the factory survive, but with "reminders" of their mistakes. Augustus is thin as a rail from being squeezed through the pipes, Violet is purple, Veruca is covered in garbage, and Mike is a 10-foot giant (the end result of being put through a taffy puller to de-shrink him).
85	[[/folder]]
86
87	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
88	* On ''Series/{{Angel}}'', there was a man who could turn any man he touched into a woman-beating and murdering psycho. At the beginning of the episode, he caused some man to murder his wife. He was apparently arrested by the police, and never discussed again.
89	* An episode of ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' played with this idea. It featured a fat woman at a basketball game who was chosen to try to shoot a basket from half court as part of a promotion. An obnoxious heckler [[YouAreFat started mocking her for her weight]]. Because the incident was televised, she became an object of ridicule around the city, her boyfriend broke up with her, and complete strangers would come up to her on the street and tell her to eat a salad. Unlike in most cases, however, she wasn't forgotten; the episode was about the DisproportionateRetribution she brought on the heckler.
90	* In ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'': "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis", the Gang, repeatedly and unknowingly, hit this one guy's car, eventually totaling it and sending it into flames. This is then promptly lampshaded when the guy goes mad from his misfortune--though our leads, being JerkAss[=es=], fail to notice or care.
91	* In ''Series/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'', the title character was confronted by a security guard while going to a rock concert with a few of her friends. When the guard couldn't let them in, Sabrina cast a spell that caused his teeth to fall out. The guard noticed and ran off.
92	* The final episode of ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' [[PlayingWithTropes played with this]] by having everyone whom the main characters had ever wronged track them down and see justice done.
93	* On ''Series/Warehouse13'', there are many artifacts that control a person, usually causing them to try to murder people. After an artifact is neutralized, they are usually freed from its control. It's rarely discussed whether they end up in jail for the rest of their lives because they happened to own an evil antique.
94	[[/folder]]
95
96	[[folder:Roleplay]]
97	* In ''Roleplay/DawnOfANewAgeOldportBlues'', Daigo first uses his vampiric blood to transform a DisposableVagrant into a monster, then has it kill a civilian and [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals his dog]] simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It shows how much the advent of his powers has pushed Daigo over to the dark side.
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99
100	[[folder:Video Games]]
101	* ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'': In ''VideoGame/HeartOfTheSwarm'', it's possible to destroy a car. A Marine will exit the nearby house and exclaim "My car, man, I just paid that thing off!". In ''VideoGame/LegacyOfTheVoid'', you can destroy another car... and the same Marine pops out and says "My car, man, why does this keep happening!?!"
102	[[/folder]]
103
104	[[folder:Webcomics]]
105	* The people who end up on [[TheOmnipotent minus's]] bad side in early ''Webcomic/{{minus}}'' strips.
106	[[/folder]]
107
108	[[folder:Western Animation]]
109	* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': In ''May the Best Stan Win'', Stan gets into a fight with his future self at Hershey Park. During their fight they knock a [[Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory fat German boy named Augustus]] into a chocolate river. At the end of the episode the boy's [[BlackComedy lifeless body]] is shown [[UndignifiedDeath stuck in a tube of liquified chocolate]].
110	--->'''Augustus' Mother''': ''(sobbing)'' Augustus is dead!
111	* In ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' during the episode where Joe is introduced, a baseball player tastes joke gum that makes him addicted to heroin. After he laughed at the joke, he realises that he's feeling a cold chill.
112	* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'', New York City and all its inhabitants are turned to stone and many people are smashed, including one woman who had her arms smashed off, with their apparent deaths never acknowledged.
113	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Noveltoons}}'': In ''Out of This Whirl'' a motorcycle cop pulls over a suburban housewife to write her a speeding ticket. Said housewife is spending the day with a Martian who does not take kindly to this interruption. The Martian uses his [[ShrinkRay ray gun]] to shrink the officer down to a tiny size. Once he's been miniaturized to the point he can no longer operate his motorcycle, the housewife and Martian drive off leaving the hapless patrolman behind to spend the rest of his life the [[IncredibleShrinkingMan size of a mouse.]]
114	* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'':
115	** Abracadaver, of the episode of the same name, is seen transforming people into cards, saw-boxes, and trees. He also generates giant saws on skyscrapers. It gets worse when you realize none of the above (excluding the saws) get undone, yet people just happily laugh after the magical zombie magician is locked back in his Iron Maiden.
116	** The girls tend to cause a large amount of collateral damage as part of their heroing. It's actually mentioned once in "Town and Out" when the girls move to a different city and they blow up a bridge to stop some bank robbers from escaping and are treated as criminals as they caused at least thousands of dollars in damages along with causing traffic problems for years all for a pair of bank robbers that stole at most hundreds of dollars.
117	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In "Fraudcast News", Squeaky-Voiced Teen accidentally crushes a man when attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. The man's girlfriend, who he had just been making out with, makes Squeaky-Voiced Teen her new boyfriend.
118	* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' had a conflict between the recurring Goth Kids, Vampire Kids and Emo Kids, only for everything to turn out to have been part of a [[CandidCameraPrank TV prank show]] involving a supposedly-haunted greenhouse, and none of the groups were actually the intended target of the prank (and [[KarmaHoudini the TV producers get away with this]]). The goth, vampire and emo kids are rather confused by what happened.
119	[[/folder]]

Context Main / VictimizedBystander