Basic Trope: A person is effectively killed by losing their "self".
- Straight: Bob has his personality erased by Applied Phlebotinum. Alice mourns as if he were dead.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob's entire civilization is "killed" by having their personalities erased.
- Downplayed: Bob suffers a blow to the head and has his personality changed noticeably.
- Justified: Everything that made Bob Bob is gone. "Bob" is, for all intents and purposes, a different person in the same body.
- Inverted: Bob is killed, but has a copy of his memories backed up.
- Subverted: It turns out that Bob was just a bit dazed. He's still there.
- Double Subverted: "New Bob" was just pretending to be "Old Bob". Old Bob's still "dead".
- Parodied:
- Bob shows some Character Development and Alice acts as if he's become a completely different person.
- Same as before, but up to the point where Alice plans a funeral for Bob, even though he's not dead.
- Zig Zagged: Bob shows signs of regaining his old personality, but only in periodic spurts. For the most part, he's "dead".
- Averted: Nobody is killed, physically or metaphorically.
- Enforced: The Moral Guardians won't allow Bob to actually be killed. The writers use this trope as the next best (well, tragic) thing.
- Lampshaded: "What do you mean Bob's dead? He's standing right there."
- Invoked:
- Alice destroys Bob's mind as a way of getting rid of him without being technically guilty of murder (obviously the legal system doesn't work that way, but nobody told Alice that).
- Bob intentionally erases his own personality as a form of suicide out of guilt for what a horrible person he is, hoping that the "new" Bob will be better than him.
- Exploited:
- Alice uses the still living but personality-less body of Bob as a slave.
- Alice "kills" Bob so that she can use his empty body to create a copy of Charlie.
- Defied: When Bob takes a serious blow to the head, Alice gives him a Mercy Kill to avoid this trope.
- Discussed: "What if I fall over and bang my head!? Even if I don't die my brain'll be all messed up and the Bob you know and love would be gone!" "We'd try and deal with the grief."
- Conversed: "So the brain tumor destroyed his personality without killing him?" "Well technically, he is dead; I heard they wanted a new character but couldn't afford to hire a new actor or get rid of the guy playing Bob."
- Implied: Bob is a minor character who our heroes find with a severe head injury. It cuts to them explaining to Alice that he might never be the same again without elaborating (or showing what Bob was like before or after the injury).
- Deconstructed: Whether or not Bob still counts as Bob or a new person is explored thoroughly, including the legal and ethical consequences of his unique status.
- Reconstructed: Ultimately, Bob and everyone around him come to terms with what happened, and he's accepted as who he is.
- Played For Laughs: "New Bob" tries to reclaim "Old Bob"'s life, with hilarious consequences.
- Played For Drama: Everyone struggles to cope with the change in Bob's personality and accept that he's truly dead. In some ways, having "New Bob" around as a reminder makes things even worse!
Back to Death of Personality...if it still counts as that, I mean.
