Basic Trope: A death of one important character matters more than thousands of Redshirt Armies.
- Straight: Through the course of the show, we see many Mooks and Red Shirts being killed by both the heroes and the villains, either for the sake of defense or because they have outlived their usefulness. But when the Big Bad Emperor Evulz kills Plucky Action Girl Alice in cold blood, all her teammates suffer from Heroic BSoD and mourn for the next few episodes, which was Emperor Evulz' Batman Gambit to slow them down.
- Exaggerated:
- Multiply the Red Shirts and Mooks by over nine thousand, and make Alice The Scrappy.
- Bob watches an entire planet blow up and suddenly bursts into tears... because it means his pet goldfish died.
- Bob reacts this way after spilling juice on his shirt.
- Downplayed:
- The heroes do sometimes think about the many people (whether they be Mooks or Redshirts) who died because of necessary actions or Emperor Evulz, but then realize that, to defeat Emperor Evulz, some must lose their lives. They just couldn't deal with Alice's death the same way.
- The cold-blooded execution of Alice is listed among various other war crimes, such as mass gassings, bombings, and burnings of innocent villages.
- Justified:
- Alice was a helpless prisoner when she was killed.
- People will typically be like this in real life; you'll be sadder when your mother dies than when 100 strangers are killed in a terrorist attack.
- Inverted:
- The heroes couldn't care less when Alice or another teammate dies or goes missing, but deeply mourn when people they hardly know lose their lives.
- The Dead Have Names, but the main character is a Red Shirt.
- Emperor Evulz's sidekick Leroy dies in battle, and the other villains mourn him.
- The Order of the Many leads an order who takes the opposite approach. They will gladly risk or sacrifice themselves to save the most lives and mourn sheer numbers more than those who are close to them dying.
- Subverted: And once they stop and look at the battlefield, they see that Alice's death is nothing compared to the horrors of war...
- Double Subverted: They killed Tropey, too!!
- Parodied: Emperor Evulz is on trial for having murdered 99 people. After the judge gives his sentence, Evulz shoots a member of the jury, causing the judge to change his sentence to something smaller.
- Zig-Zagged: Then they see that all those people died. And then Bob loses his favorite hat. Cue the waterworks.
- Averted:
- The heroes empathizes for Alice just as much as the others.
- Every significant character makes it out alive.
- No characters make it to the end.
- Enforced: The creators wanted to emphasize how important Alice is to her teammates.
- Lampshaded:
- "A bunch of armies wearing red shirts just died?" "Don't worry, We Have Reserves!" "Wait, Alice just died? OH GOD!"
- "It's strange, isn't it? We've seen so many armies and citizens killed, and killed many villains ourselves... but none of their losses matter to us nearly as much as Alice's does."
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz realizes this trope and kills one of the most loved member of the Five-Man Band, in order to make the others vulnerable.
- Exploited: As above, but Emperor Evulz does it accidentally and later exploits the heroes' reaction.
- Defied:
- Bob carries a group photo of some of the soldiers so he never forgets how important their Heroic Sacrifice is.
- The Brute and Bob's rival Clay quietly growls, "Robert, say that line, 'a million is a statistic', as many times as ya want, but yew are the one who ordered their deaths, an' fer that, yew deserve gettin' cleaved in two."
- Discussed: "I know it's selfish but I can't help but to mourn Alices death... even if millions died in that war."
- Conversed: "Why are the heroes so sad about their one teammate dying? An entire planet was blown up last episode."
- Implied: "Sir, five thousand are dead from the latest attack." "Find one the public emphasizes with and mark his death in public. We have to rally the people."
- Deconstructed: Several civilians call the heroes out on how they can lack empathy for the many but mourn for the few.
- Reconstructed:
- Then the heroes reveal that the few who died would have been future saviors of the Earth and since they are dead, humanity is doomed.
- The death of Alice is a form of Justice by Other Legal Means, a crime that can be definitively pinned on Evulz himself.
- Played for Laughs: Alice dies, and everyone briefly mourns her. By the end of the episode, however, they have completely forgotten that Alice ever existed.
- Played for Drama:
- Bob only mourns Alice's death, even though several thousand people died during the war. Once he realizes this fact, it throws him even deeper into despair.
- Bob realizes how rotten society is to the core for not caring nor giving credit for all the soldiers who died fighting the villains. Because of this he grows a loathing for humanity as a result.
- Played for Horror: The disproportionate focus on Alice's death at the expense of thousands of others is an early hint that our show follows a group of Sociopathic Heroes.
Destroyed a planet? Don't worry, A Million Is a Statistic.
