Basic Trope: A situation that wasn't intended to be lethal ends with someone dying anyway.
- Straight: Alice startles Bob while he is working with a sharp knife. He swings around and unintentionally stabs her.
- Exaggerated: Alice startles Bob while he is preparing dynamite to blow up a tree. He swings around and the dynamite explodes, killing several people including Alice and himself.
- Downplayed: Bob accidentally stabs or cuts Alice, but not fatally.
- Justified:
- Bob is inexperienced with handling dangerous objects.
- Bob was drunk.
- Alice startled him at an incredibly bad moment.
- Inverted:
- Bob swings around, accidentally deflecting a knife and stopping it from killing her. (May or may not be Hero's First Rescue.)
- Stab the Scorpion
- Subverted:
- The knife almost hits Alice, but she gets out of the way at the last moment.
- Bob actually meant to kill Alice, just not in that way at that moment.
- Double Subverted:
- ...meaning that it hits her in the throat rather than the heart.
- The knife connects, but isn't immediately lethal; it's Alice's failure to seek medical care that ultimately kills her.
- Parodied: Bob is currently in the fetal position alone in his house because he accidentally killed every single person he came across today in a series of Contrived Coincidences.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is conflicted as to whether he actually wanted to kill her or not. Did some part of him mean to swing the knife in that particular manner, or was it the accident he originally thought?
- Averted:
- The situation between Bob and Alice does not get lethal.
- Bob murders Alice on purpose.
- Enforced:
- "We need a death to create a turning point in the story, but it can't be too tragic. And it can't be a murder because the characters are all friends, and our antagonist hasn't shown up yet." "Let's have Bob accidentally kill Alice. She's the least popular character."
- It's one of various kinds of safety PSAs.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, no! I killed Alice!"
- Invoked: A Manipulative Bastard wants to kill Alice by proxy, and manipulates Bob into a situation where an accident can happen.
- Exploited: Someone uses Bob's accident to convict or blackmail him.
- Defied:
- “I am going to be working with dangerous objects, so above all don't disturb me!"
- ”Murder is murder, I don’t care if it was an accident or not. You’re still going to prison.
- Discussed: "I'm sure Bob just accidentally turned and swung his knife directly into Alice's heart. This isn't a movie!"
- Conversed: "That must have been an accident. Alice and Bob were friends."
- Implied: When somebody asks how Alice died, Bob first hesitates but then replies "It was an accident", while looking very guilty.
- Played For Laughs: Alice is sneaking up on Bob as a prank, she yells "Boo!" he spins around and accidentally kills her, and everyone agrees it was her fault and that Halloween pranks on people with knives are outlawed.
- Played For Drama: Bob can never forgive himself for Alice's death. He falls into years of depression and drug abuse, before ultimately killing himself.
- Played For Horror: Bob realizes what he has done, and tries to atone for his actions. But everybody still treats him like a murderer. Eventually Bob snaps after all the harsh accusations, and be the exact same murderer people accused him to be. He not only stops at those people, but the witnesses of those murders too. Eventually, he kills everyone. The murder tactics were disturbingly brutal.
- Plotted A Good Waste: The writer needs a death to create a turning point in the story, and goes with an accidental death.
- Deconstructed: Alice's family suffers from her loss, and Bob is hauled away to Troperville Prison.
- Reconstructed: Alice was a single woman and distanced herself from her siblings years ago, so only her friends suffer from her loss. Also, Bob is acquitted when the prosecution can find no evidence that he killed Alice in a premeditated attack. He retains sufficient traumatic memories to avoid anything sharper than his fingernails for the rest of his life, and people come to know him as a very nice man rather than "the guy who accidentally killed Alice".
Back to Accidental Murder, unless some careless novice troper deleted all our examples of that trope.
