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Basic Trope: A character recently broke up with a Love Interest and is now destroying all of the latter's pictures, gifts, possessions, etc.

  • Straight: After a particularly bad breakup with Bob, Alice tears up the pictures they're in together and throws the halves with Bob in them into her fireplace, along with the teddy bear he got her for Valentine's Day.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Downplayed:
    • Alice goes for Defenestrate and Berate instead. She isn't trying to utterly destroy the things, just get them out of her house after Bob's refusal to pick them up. Of course if they happen to break, she doesn't care.
    • Alice sells the items well below their value. She doesn't want money, she wants them gone now.
  • Justified:
    • The breakup or divorce was particularly acrimonious, and this is Alice's way of gaining some closure.
    • Bob did something heinous, such as cheating on her with several different girls.
  • Inverted:
    • Alice burns pictures of her current boyfriend Charles.
    • Alice (obviously not quite over the breakup/divorce yet) rescues all the stuff Bob gave her from her burning house.
  • Subverted:
    • Alice and Bob break up, and Alice simply moves all of the Bob-related stuff to the attic, closet, or basement, or a rented storage unit.
    • Alice gives Bob all his stuff back.
  • Double Subverted:
    • But she finds a way to get rid of it later, such as selling the gifts he gave her at a garage sale, pawning her engagement or promise ring, etc.
    • Then several days later she finds a special gift Bob gave her and burns it.
    • Or she hears through the grapevine that Bob cheated on her repeatedly while they were together, and in a moment of anger decides a little bonfire is in order.
  • Parodied: Alice burns her own things (including ALL her own clothes) instead of Bob's... And she doesn't realize until quite some time has passed.
    • One of the things Alice burns is a life-sized plush of Bob.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: Alice and Bob don't break up or divorce In-Universe.
  • Enforced: Rule of Drama
  • Lampshaded: "Your CDs? Yeah, tough luck, pal. I sacrificed them to the fire gods."
  • Invoked: Alice and Bob break up, and Alice puts all the stuff from their relationship in storage. Two weeks later, she hears from her Girl Posse that Bob cheated on her repeatedly while they were together, and starts to feel very hurt and angry.
  • Exploited: Alice can't quite bring herself to burn the items, but she also can't just leave them around her home. So she throws them away in garbage cans that homeless people are known to use as makeshift fireplaces, so that they can do the dirty work for her.
  • Defied:
    • Alice decides to just let it go and be thankful that she got rid of him when she did, and just get on with her life.
    • Alice decides putting Bob's stuff on eBay (particularly anything he might want back) will be just as cathartic with less risk of burning her house down.
    • One part of the pre-nup drafted before Alice and Bob's marriage is a clause that will bring down the law like a ton of bricks on top of a runaway train carrying a million gallons of molten phenol on any member of the couple that destroys the items of the other (such as, yup, with arson) in case of a dispute or divorce.
  • Discussed: "And these are Bob's things. I've decided to keep them for myself rather than burn them like you suggested."
  • Conversed: "I know he was a cheating jerkass, but did she really have to destroy all his stuff?" "At least she's not actually setting fire to Bob."
  • Played For Laughs: She burns his Goofy Print Underwear and evil spirits fly away from it as it burns.
  • Played For Drama: Bob murders Alice when he finds out that she has burned his things.
  • Played For Horror: Alice places Bob (squirming and screaming) on top of the pile of his belongings, Joker-style, and sets it ablaze.

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