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Playing With / Accidental Suicide

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Basic Trope: A character unintentionally kills themself.

  • Straight: Alice, believing herself to have the ability to fly, jumps off a cliff and plunges to her death.
  • Exaggerated: Alice, still at her car, slips on a banana peel, which causes her to trip, and tumble all the way to the cliff's edge. She catches herself on a rock and in her relief, decides to wipe the sweat from her brow. Using the hand holding on to the cliff.
  • Downplayed: Alice had actually been suicidal before her jump and in her head, had rationalized jumping into a win-win situation. She would either confirm her belief or end her life.
  • Justified: Alice actually did have the power of flight, however unbeknownst to her the cliff was embedded with gemstones of her Kryptonite Factor.
  • Inverted:
    • Suicide, Not Accident; Alice's body is found at the bottom of a cliff, seemingly having accidentally slipped and fallen. Later, a video is found in her phone that functions as Alice's suicide note.
    • Bungled Suicide; Alice wants to kill herself, but she keeps messing up, effectively saving herself by accident.
  • Subverted: Alice, believing herself to have the ability to fly, jumps off a cliff and plunges to her death. She finds out however that she actually has the ability of self-regeneration. She completely heals and survives.
  • Double Subverted: Though Alice does have the ability to self-regenerate, the bottom of the cliff is ocean and Alice can't swim. Her failing lungs continuously regenerate under water, effectively making her continuously drown forever.
  • Parodied: When Alice jumps off the cliff, the theme to Superman plays...only to abruptly stop as Alice experiences an Oh, Crap! moment, before quickly plunging to the bottom of the cliff.
  • Zig-Zagged: Same set up as Inverted, except the police later find out that the video is years old, and Alice had made significant progress by attending regular therapy sessions since, with her therapist confirming that Alice hadn't had any recent bouts of suicidal ideation. The cliff Alice fell from was also part of Alice's regular running path, making it more likely that she merely slipped. Still, Alice did receive some bad news about her personal finances recently. And actually, it seems like she was struggling to pay off a debt to a loan shark who may or may not have put out a hit on her...
  • Averted: Alice is neither delusional nor suicidal and never jumps off the cliff in the first place.
  • Enforced: Alice is a character in the Dumb Ways to Die adverts.
  • Invoked: Tricked to Death; Alice was convinced by her coworker Bob that she can fly, with Bob banking on her testing it out, in order to get her out of the way as a potential love interest for Casey.
  • Lampshaded: The narrator says, "Alice was about to learn that she does not, in fact, know how to fly."
  • Exploited: Alice was told years ago by a well-renowned fortune teller that she was going to accidentally kill herself one day by falling off a cliff. In order to get insurance money to help her impoverished family, she keeps a note on her person that reads "I am not suicidal. If I'm dead, someone murdered me," in the hopes of capitalizing off her unavoidable fate.
  • Defied: Alice jumps but realizing the truth, grabs a nearby tree branch and saves herself from death.
  • Discussed: "If suicide requires the intention to kill oneself, can you ever accidentally commit suicide?"
  • Conversed: "Did you hear about Alice? Girl was so cuckoo bonanza, she thought she could fly and killed herself trying to prove it!"
  • Played For Laughs: See the Parodied example.
  • Played For Drama: See the Downplayed example.
  • Logical Extreme: Alice, convinced of her ability to fly, constructs a makeshift rocket suit and attempts to soar through the sky. However, her contraption malfunctions, causing her to crash into a skyscraper and inadvertently cause significant property damage.
  • Played for Horror: The scene of Alice jumping off the cliff is portrayed with intense suspense and terrifying visuals, highlighting the grim consequences of her misguided belief.
  • Implied: The story cuts to Alice standing at the edge of the cliff, looking contemplative. The next scene shows her friends and family mourning at her funeral, implying that she tragically lost her life in an accidental fall.
  • Unparodied: Despite the potential for comedic exaggeration or mockery, the trope is portrayed seriously, without any humorous or satirical elements. The focus remains on the tragic nature of Alice's accidental death.
  • Untwisted: The story sets up the expectation of Alice accidentally killing herself, but ultimately reveals that her belief in her ability to fly was a result of a brainwashing experiment conducted by a mysterious organization. Her fall from the cliff was staged to make it appear accidental, but she survives and becomes a key player in uncovering the truth.
  • Deconstructed: The traumatic impact of Alice's death on her friends and family is explored as they are all wracked with confusion and grief since to the best of their knowledge, Alice wasn't suicidal. They all begin to wonder what they missed and if they could have stopped her, without knowing such questions have no answer as Alice truly wasn't suicidal to begin with.
  • Reconstructed: Before jumping, Alice recorded a tape outlining her plan to jump due to her belief that she could fly and sent it to a lawyer just in case she was wrong. The lawyer sends the tape to her family, offering them the closure they need to move on, knowing that Alice really did unintentionally kill herself.

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