Basic Trope: A party-wide Heroic BSoD triggered by some staggering loss, whether an item or a life — or worse.
- Straight:
- Albert and his friends are shaken to the core after Pike, Albert's best friend, dies brutally at the hands of Blood Knight Sanguina.
- Jeff accidentally destroys a light sword, needed to fight the shadow wraiths, and the team knows it cannot be replaced.
- Exaggerated:
- A thief steals a sword that they can easily retrieve or replace. Everyone on The Team is Driven to Suicide.
- All the members of the growing resistance movement have a group-wide panic attack after their attempt to reach the Tower of Shadow reveals that the passage is blocked.
- The team falls into despair after their leader suffers from a gruesome paper cut.
- Downplayed: Their leader and several allies of theirs are captured and publicly executed; no one can talk as the survivors walk back to regroup, except the Sour Supporter, who mutters about how they will get killed on the other possible routes.
- Justified:
- Inverted:
- Pike's death causes the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to put aside their differences in the name of avenging him.
- Everyone celebrates Pike's death.
- Subverted:
- Pike's death doesn't particularly upset Albert or any of his other friends — at least, not to the point of anyone suffering a full-on BSOD.
- Pike dies, and everyone becomes even more devoted to their cause in his memory.
- Double Subverted: They suffer a Heroic BSoD later on after remembering Pike.
- Parodied: Albert and friends literally loose their team spirit to Carmen Sandiego.
- Zig Zagged: After Pike's death, Albert starts BSODing, while Willow suffers Survivor Guilt mixed with an unhealthy amount of self-blame. However, Marcy, Kelvin, Claudia and Raven spur the others on, insisting that stopping now would make his sacrifice meaningless. Then, when they finally find the Sword of Plot Advancement, Kelvin turns on them and reveals his allegiance to the Emperor, shattering Marcy and Raven's resolve and sending Willow into another Heroic BSoD while shocking Albert out of his.
- Averted:
- No one really cares when Pike dies.
- Everybody Lives
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Just great! With Pike gone, there's no way we'll defeat Emperor Evulz now."
- Invoked: Sanguina studied the group long enough to determine that Pike's courage in the face of adversity was key to spurring on Albert and the others, and deliberately took him out.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: The team stays together despite Pike's death.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Ironic, isn't it? Kill the right person and you kill the entire group!"
- Deconstructed: The dead character had deliberately made himself vital to the workings of the team, to ensure that no one would replace him, and so had undercut the possibility of succession.
- Reconstructed: But that was necessary for the team's cohesion. It takes them longer, but one of them finally takes the lead.
- Played For Drama: Emperor Evulz completes his plan to Take Over the World. The surviving heroes are executed, along with everyone they cared about.
- Untwisted: Albert and the others aren't jarred by Pike's death because they assume He's Just Hiding. But when they come across his broken body being publicly displayed as a warning to others, that triggers a full-on Freak Out for the entire team.
Back to Losing the Team Spirit
