Basic Trope: A happy situation or ending is ruined by a sudden plot development.
- Straight: Bob stops the Big Bad and marries Alice, but Alice dies in a car accident after the wedding.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob are about to get married when a huge asteroid crashes into Earth directly above their wedding, killing everyone in a 200-mile radius.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob have Wedding Smashers, but fight them off. Instead of a happy or sad ending, they get a Cliffhanger or "And the Adventure Continues".
- Justified:
- The God of the world is a sadistic jerk.
- The Big Bad had planned Alice's death in case Bob stops the wedding.
- Bob has bad luck, he just has the strength of will to overcome it most cases.
- Inverted: Deus ex machina
- Subverted: Alice dies in a car accident after the wedding, but goes to the hospital and makes a full recovery.
- Double Subverted: ...but the hospital catches on fire, and she burns to death.
- Zig Zagged:
- Alice escapes the burning hospital, and she walks out of it when she's run over by ''another'' car. She is escorted to another hospital, where her heartbeat flatlines. A doctor, however, is on hand and uses CPR to revive her. But then, a tsunami washes over the whole hospital and Alice starts drowning. It is then revealed that Alice can breathe underwater - but then wind knocks the building over. However...
- During the final showdown with the Big Bad, the villain and the hero take turns pulling lots of new powers out of nowhere and appearing to curb stomp each other until one of them eventually runs out of new powers.
- Parodied: The series is an extremely dark Black Comedy, and whenever something good is about to happen, something ridiculously horrifying happens to the protagonist for no particular reason.
- Averted: The story ends without any unexpected plot twists.
- Enforced:
- Alice's actress isn't coming back for the second season, so they have to get rid of her to make room for the new girl.
- The writer wanted to have An Aesop about how life is fragile and that you can die at any time.
- Bob wasn't too popular with the audience, or may be something of a Karma Houdini Jerkass so the writers decided to add a layer of Emotional Torque by having something horrible happen in order to make him sympathetic.
- Lampshaded: "Hey, what were the odds that Alice was just going to die just after the wedding?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- On the way home from the wedding, Alice drives more carefully than usual, and avoids an accident by a few seconds.
- The Big Bad saves Alice from the asteroid, wanting to kill her himself.
- Discussed: "Don't think you're safe just because you stopped the mafia boss. There are still a lot of drunk drivers on the road."
- Conversed: "Alice dies in a car accident? What a stupid ending."
- Deconstructed
- People start to lose faith in life, The universe, and everything as more and more horrifying things happen to undeserving people.
- Bob loses his faith and realizing the truth of the universe, decides to jump off the highway bridge.
- Reconstructed
- But they get better.
- Bob stops and realizes that life is too beautiful to waste it when life gives him curve balls... Then a truck runs him over when he walks back.
- Played For Laughs: Bob is a Cosmic Plaything and The Chew Toy, and may or may not be an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist.
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