Basic Trope: If you get hit once, you die.
- Straight: Bob dies after being hit once by an Elite Guard.
- Exaggerated: Bob explodes into Ludicrous Gibs after the guard pokes him with a feather.
- Downplayed:
- Bob dies after being caught in an explosion.
- Bob normally has more hitpoints. The Elite Guard just has very strong weapons.
- Bob can take a few hits from a very minor injury, anything else just kills him.
- Bob himself has one hit point, but the enemies have to get through his armor first.
- Justified:
- The villains are all decked out in armor that's just bristling with Spikes of Villainy, so touching them is a bad idea.
- The weakest enemy weapon in-series is a tank cannon and Bob is basically a normal human, so it'd be more surprising if he didn't die in one hit.
- Bob himself is a Glass Cannon.
- Inverted: Bob takes 30 hits to kill, and the villains are extremely fast and die in one hit.
- Alternatively, Bob is an Infinite-Hit Point Wonder.
- Subverted: The first thing Bob picks up in level one is a Power-Up that gives him an extra hit point. This is the only time he'll get one and it doesn't respawn...
- Double Subverted: ...but it turns out that "extra hit" refers to hitting the enemy an extra time right before he dies, so Bob has to go to town on the enemy until they're a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
- Parodied:
- Bob has one hit point, but possesses 65535 lives and he respawns on the spot.
- Every time when Bob dies from the hit, he will be recovered to be hit and die again.
- Zig Zagged: Bob only dies in one hit at first, but it turns out that is only on the default normal difficulty. However, he still dies in one hit on the easiest difficulty. At least that's the way it is for the first few levels. But after a few more levels with a health bar, Bob is back to dying in one hit in the final level.
- Averted:
- Bob's enemies think he will die in 1 hit,he can take more than one.
- Bob has a health meter.
- The first to third thing Bob picks up is a Power-Up that gives him an extra hit point and the game passes it around like candy on Halloween.
- Enforced: The developers want the video game to be as difficult as possible.
- Lampshaded: "If only Bob wasn't made of glass bones and paper skin."
- Invoked:
- Bob is Driven to Suicide and uses the spikes on a villain's armor to impale himself.
- Emperor Evulz makes Bob extremely vulnerable at the start of the game so that his forces will have an easier time killing him.
- An enemy wizard throws a spell that will reduce Bob's max health to one hit point until he dies and respawns if it connects.
- Exploited: Knowing that the guard is scared of ghosts, Bob charges in and is killed. The guard thinks Bob is a ghost and freaks out, allowing entry to the final dungeon.
- Defied: Bob drinks a lot of health potions and suits up in Powered Armor before going into action.
- Discussed: "You better not have any literal run-ins with the bad guys."
- Conversed: "It takes one hit to kill you, doesn't it?"
- Deconstructed: Bob lives in constant paranoia and terror because of his extreme frailty.
- Reconstructed: To make up for his lack of durability, Bob trains himself to become more agile in combat. Since he can't take any hits, he learns to avoid them instead. He soon learns to dodge punches, breath attacks, and even a hail of arrows.
- Played For Laughs:
- Bob is killed by falling fruit. His next life is suitably mortified.
- Bob slips into a banana peel, then dies with a Death Throw, Mario-style.
- Played For Drama: Bob's opponent rubs it in how he only needs to get one hit in to kill Bob, forcing him to fight conservatively and achieve a Flawless Victory.
Back to One-Hit-Point Wonder
