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Playing With / Driven to Suicide

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Basic Trope: A character ends their suffering by killing themself.

  • Straight: Bob kills himself since Alice no longer loves him.
  • Exaggerated:
    • Every character kills themself due to suffering, leaving no one alive by the end.
    • Bob kills himself after getting a ham sandwich, when what he really wanted was a hamburger.
    • Losing Alice turns Bob into an Omnicidal Maniac, and he kills everyone including himself.
    • Bob kills himself over a papercut that won't heal.
    • Bob decides to kill himself over the tiniest, most outlandish theory that the world sucks and he should kill himself to relieve the suffering.
    • The townsfolk commit suicide en masse after their homes are destroyed.
  • Downplayed:
  • Justified:
    • Despair Event Horizon
    • Go Mad from the Revelation/Driven to Madness
    • Since Alice no longer loves him, Bob has no one left to live for.
    • Bob suffers from depression; losing Alice was the last straw in his long battle with his psyche, and he sees no other way out.
    • Alice had an actual magic aura that caused Bob's pain to ease whenever they were together, and Bob found quickly that he was in love with Alice. Now that the pain is back, he can't stand both it and losing Alice.
    • Bob has a load of enemies, and only The Power of Love from Alice helped him stand against them; when she's gone however, Bob loses the power and decides Better to Die than Be Killed.
    • Bob can prevent a great evil, but it requires a Heroic Sacrifice only he can perform.
    • Bob performs a Suicide by Cop to ensure his family can live their lives safe without having to pay for his past mistakes.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted:
  • Double Subverted:
    • The grappling hook breaks.
    • But, later on, he really does commit suicide.
    • They break up later on, driving Bob to suicide for real.
    • He then tries again, and succeeds.
    • Bob's supposed murder turned out to be suicide all along.
  • Parodied:
    • Bob feels suicidal because he's immortal and can't die.
    • Bob kills himself with a papercut.
  • Zig Zagged: A character ends his suffering by killing himself, but this brings him to Hell. So he resurrects himself to end his eternal torment... just so he can take down all of existence with him.
  • Averted:
    • Bob is depressed, but does not consider killing himself.
    • No one is depressed enough to consider suicide.
    • Bob does kill himself, but by accident.
  • Enforced: "We need to show Bob's anguish over Alice's rejection, but we DON'T want to have any Wangst." "Oh! Let's just end it quickly and have Bob kill himself."
  • Lampshaded: "Didn't you hear, Alice? Bob committed suicide, and it's all because you turned him away."
  • Invoked:
    • Alice wants Bob's money, so she comes up with a plan to marry him and ruin his life in order to drive him to suicide.
    • Ordered to Die/Suicide Dare
  • Exploited: Bob kills himself... because his ghost is an extra-dimensional demon, and the only being that can legally kill Alice on purpose.
  • Defied:
  • Discussed: "Maybe I only have one option left: suicide."
  • Conversed: "So Bob committed suicide? Seriously, someone ought to found the Good Samaritans in that city or something".
  • Implied:
  • Deconstructed:
    • Characters debate at length whether Bob was too mentally ill to "choose" suicide or if suffering makes suicide noble.
    • Bob's suicide is the cause of anger and sadness for everyone in society; others label him as a coward for giving up on life whereas others consider him selfish for leaving his family, friends, and the rest of society to deal with life's problems.
  • Reconstructed:
    • A character ends his suffering by killing himself after settling his affairs. The character makes his death seem like an accident so his loved ones would not feel guilty for his suffering (and/or to make sure the insurance policy on him gets paid out).
    • But it doesn't help that everyone is rather dismissive of Bob's claims of being depressed, and even his loved ones didn't bother to help him deal with his depression, so Bob made the right choice in escaping from these humans.
  • Played For Laughs:
  • Played For Drama: Bob is totally depressed due to how people dismiss his claims of having problems, even by his own loved ones. As he chooses to take his life, this causes others to vehemently point out that Bob has really crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
  • Played For Horror: Bob’s corpse after his suicide is very disturbing.

There was a link here, but it was unfortunately Driven to Suicide.

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