Basic Trope: A character gets into trouble, but the narrative focuses on someone else's reaction towards the incident.
- Straight: Alex, a professional athlete, gets involved in a car accident and has his limbs amputated, which ensures that he could no longer play sports again. Instead of showing how Alex must deal with his loss of career and function, the focus shifts towards Barbara, Alex's fiancee, who must now rethink about how much their relationship actually means to her, and whether she loves him enough to continue with the marriage—even though he is now an invalid who would need to be cared for constantly, and can't earn as much money as he used to, if at all.
- Exaggerated: Alex never actually appears in-story. The audience is told about the incident via a news report. The narrative then explores the reaction of Jeff, the driver, who is remorseful that his carelessness has ruined another person's life; Bob, a fan of Alex who must come to terms that his hero isn't invincible; Alice, Alex's Annoying Younger Sibling who regrets having been so bratty towards her brother, etc. Basically, the show gives everyone but Alex the limelight.
- Downplayed: The story shows both Alex and Barbara's perspectives and how each deals with the tragedy, but Barbara's POV is featured a lot more than Alex's.
- Justified:
- Due to his severe injuries, Alex falls into a coma, or gets brain damage. It is impossible to continue the story from his perspective.
- Alex is a total asshole, but Even Evil Can Be Loved and Barbara is his childhood friend from when he Used to Be a Sweet Kid. People care more about how Barbara is coping than they do about Alex himself.
- Inverted: The narrative insists on focusing on Alex, even when it's not plausible to do so (e.g. Alex dies and goes to heaven, and his accident is promptly forgotten, as are the friends and relatives he's left behind to deal with the aftermath of his death).
- Subverted: Alex gets into an accident, and the story spends three episodes focusing on Barbara. After we see her life finally stabilize, the focus goes back to Alex.
- Double Subverted: Except not really. After focusing on Alex during the introductory scene before the opening credits, the camera then pans to Jeff, the car driver who has finally worked up the courage to apologize to Alex in person. Alex angrily turns Jeff away, and threatens to sue him, and then the remainder of the episode (and the next four) focuses on Jeff.
- Parodied: The scene opens with a TV news report on Alex's accident. A random viewer gasps in outrage... because the news ticker mentions that the prices of sugar has gone up. The next few minutes follows the discussion between the viewer (who is an investment banker) and his peers/clients about the economic trends of the consumer goods sector. As the episode comes to an end, the narrator asks about Alex's fate, only for one of the characters to pipe up, "Who's Alex?"
- Zig Zagged: The work is presented as Alex's memoirs, which is written years after he's recovered and moved on from his injuries. Alex's role in the story reads more like a First-Person Peripheral Narrator as he vividly describes his friends and family's emotional reactions to his ordeal, while offering very little opinions about his own accident.
- Averted: Alex's angst about his accident is the main focus of the narrative.
- Invoked: ???
- Enforced:
- Alex is not the main character to begin with. The story is about Barbara, and the trouble Alex faces is meant to serve as a catalyst for Barbara's Character Development.
- The writers want to show that tragedies affect many parties, and not just the victim. Barbara is forced to rearrange her life and perhaps even give up some of her own dreams if she wants to stay with Alex, and that is indeed a valid source of angst, even if she is not the one caught in the accident.
- Alex was not the only victim, and due to the incident's Ripped from the Headlines nature it would have been disrespectful to focus on his point of view.
- Lampshaded: "The way Barbara is acting, you'd think that she was the one who lost everything in the car crash."
- Exploited: Dan, a witness to the accident, pretends to be a close friend of Alex and uses the media sympathy / attention to make a public statement against reckless driving, and gain attention for himself.
- Defied: Barbara's friends tells her to stop whining about Alex's accident, as she's not responsible for his predicament, nor is she particularly harmed by it.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Geez. Barbara is great and all, but I wonder how Alex is coping through all of this."
Oh, no! Did something happen to Collateral Angst? This is my fault. I shouldn't have clicked away from the Main Page.
