Basic Trope: A villain kills or otherwise harms someone close to the hero with the intent to hurt the hero emotionally.
- Straight: Emperor Evuls kills Alice to hurt Bob emotionally.
- Exaggerated:
- Evuls kills all of Bob's loved ones to hurt him emotionally.
- Evuls not only kills all of Bob's loved ones, but also anybody who ever had any meaningful connection to Bob during his lifetime, from teachers to barbers to that cute little gas station attendant in Utqiavik
who had to withstand Bob's angry tirade about high candy prices to those who liked his social media posts. He then gleefully informs Bob about the 15,395 people who died because of him. - Evuls' campaign to brings misery to Bob not only kills anybody who had a connection to Bob, he also feeds Bob's goldfish to his Right-Hand Cat, torches Bob's car, shreds Bob's hat, melts Bob's badge, runs over Bob's favorite gun with a steamroller, turns Bob's childhood toys into bongs, and blows up every building relevant to Bob's personal history beginning with the hospital Bob was born in.
- Downplayed: Evuls kidnaps Alice, but doesn't hurt her physically.
- Justified:
- Bob is too elusive to target directly, so Evuls uses Alice as bait.
- Bob constantly beats Evuls 1-on-1, so he needs a way to take him off his game.
- Evuls is a sadist who just wants to see Bob hurt. Collateral is no big deal in his mind.
- Evuls knows that Bob is more likely to be rash and make a mistake (e.g. Leeroy Jenkins) due to the emotional turmoil from Alice's death / condition. Even if Bob were to go on a rampage, Evuls is more than capable of dealing with him and triumph.
- Bob disrespected Evuls by not putting his whole effort on stopping him because he was preoccupied with worries regarding his secret identity (deciding what to buy for Alice's birthday, wondering if Alice has seen proof he is Arachnid-Being, calculating the 401-K of Aunt Alice, etc.) Evuls decides that Bob needs less distractions, needs to learn to keep his mind in the game or needs to be punished for said disrespect.
- Evuls really, really wants Bob to become his Arch-Enemy and to spread the lurid tale of doom of what started their enmity. Killing Alice is definitely going to ensure this.
- Evuls believes that Virtue Is Weakness, with Bob's love of Alice being a prime example, and decides to exploit this weakness or give Bob a lesson.
- Alice hurt Evuls too. He gets revenge for one slight and destroys another enemy psychologically — two birds with one stone.
- Inverted:
- Evuls helps Alice with the intent of an indirect effect on Bob.
- Evuls hurts Diablo to make Bob's life easier.
- Bob kills Diablo to hurt Evuls.
- Subverted:
- Alice is burned, with evidence suggesting she was the target of arson by Evuls. However, Evuls is able to prove he wasn't there to start the fire, so Alice's death was merely unfortunate.
- Alice, contrary to Bob and Evuls's expectations, successfully defends against the attack.
- Double Subverted:
- However, it later comes out that Evuls used a proxy.
- While Evuls wasn't there to start the fire (and maybe he had no knowledge that Alice was there), we discover that Henchman A was ordered to perform the arson and made sure to do it when Alice was inside.
- Alice fails to survive the second attack.
- Parodied: Evuls keys Bob's car to bring him emotional distress.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is a competent fighter in her own right. However, seeing Bob hurt by the loss of Alice makes the idea that much more appealing.
- Averted:
- Evuls simply fights Bob head on.
- Evuls's schemes only target Bob.
- Bob never feels any hurt from Alice being harmed.
- Enforced:
- Bob was originally meant to be a retired hero, but the executives insist he has a violent call to return to action.
- The writers originally have more ideas for Alice when she is alive, but the executives needed an excuse to write her out of the show because they hate the character.
- The executives want the show to be grimdark / angsty against the writers' wishes, so they have Evulz utilize tactics that not only he didn't dare used before but are downright creepy. Moreover, they dub the episode, "Alice's Gone" in hopes of achieving a boost in ratings.
- Lampshaded: "At least I had the decency not to stuff her into your fridge."
- Invoked: While Evuls intends to target Bob directly, his henchman pushes him to go after Alice instead.
- Exploited: Alice sets herself up as bait for Evulz, feigning defenselessness.
- Defied:
- Evuls refuses to target Alice, not wanting to cause unnecessary casualties.
- Evuls knows Bob would be furious if he killed Alice, and thinks the risk of it backfiring is too great.
- Alice kills any bad guy who so much as gets within a hundred miles of her, let alone thinks of killing her.
- Bob hides Alice in a secure location where Evulz can't find her.
- Bob undergoes specialized training or enhancements that annihilate all of his capacity to feel emotions. Evulz can kill as many people as he wants, but Bob won't lose any of his efficiency ever as a result of it.
- Emperor Evulz makes perfectly clear that he wants Bob and only Bob to get offed. A certain degree of collateral damage is inevitable, but any idiots in his minion ranks who believe they are being clever by deliberately targeting anybody who is not Bob as "bait", "distraction", "weakness" and the like are only going to earn a a bullet through the brain.
- Discussed:
- "I know losing Alice upsets you, but don't let it distract you. That's what Evulz wants."
- "[Bob, mocking voice] 'now you'll know how it feels to lose someone you love', 'now you'll know how it feels to lose something you love', 'now you'll know…' [normal voice, angry] For Pete's freaking sake, I'm standing right here, just shoot me, you idiots!"
- When Bob finds out that Evulz killed Alice for the sole purpose of dragging him out for a fight, instead of being emotionally hurt, he becomes pridefully hurt that Evulz doesn't even respect him enough to ask for a proper fight, he goes on an extreme tangent of how unnecessary her death was and that he could've just asked him for a fight, named a time and a place instead.Bob (To Evulz): OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! YOU JUST HURT AN INNOCENT AND A LOVED ONE BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO DRAG ME OUT. YOU COULD'VE JUST NAMED A TIME AND A PLACE FOR A FIGHT BUT NOOO, YOU HAD TO GO AHEAD AND KILL ALICE BECAUSE YOU DON'T THINK I WOULD EVEN ANSWER YOU! YOU ARE THE VERY FUCKING EPITOME OF SCUM!!!
- Conversed: "Alice was a perfectly good character! Is Bob's angst really more interesting than anything that keeps her alive?" "To be fair, I can't think of any way for Alice to suddenly become a major character, so..."
- Implied: Alice is murdered, but the culprit and motivations are ambiguous.
- Played for Laughs:
- Everybody Bob has a relationship with is murdered, but they were all Asshole Victims and it ends up being a Threat Backfire.
- The thing "targeted to hurt the hero" is something absurd like Bob's beloved collection of Supertrain memorabilia.
- Alice is murdered. After Bob finds her corpse, he spends the next fifteen minutes bawling in such a stupid fashion that nobody in the audience can tell if it's dramatic or comedic anymore.
- Played for Drama:
- With Alice's death, Bob decides to cut connections with anything and anybody that represented his normal life out of fear this will happen again, and the plot goes on to show that this is most definitely not good for his mental stability.
- Bob completely shatters in despair at Alice's death.
- Bob declares that This Is Unforgivable! and goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to annihilate Evuls once and for all. Even if his friends manage to convince him that Revenge Is Not Justice and not taint his life with Evuls' death, Bob does a pretty good job blowing up everything and beating Evuls to just this close of death.
- Played for Horror:
- Evulz's plan was to make Bob fall to the dark side and it ends up going too well. Bob ends up going on a grief-fueled killing spree, beginning with him casually snapping Evulz's neck and calmly telling all of the goons watching that they have a ten-second head start.
- Evulz murders Alice in a long Torture Porn sequence.
- Evulz overkills it with the theatrics to augment Bob's pain, such as forcing him to watch.
- Deconstructed:
- Evulz's plan to kill Alice has one very big problem: whether or not it "hurts" Bob, it will most definitely make him decide that Evulz no longer deserves to live, and will definitely do anything necessary to kill Evulz. And Evulz, contrary to popular belief, is not one of those villains who are okay with dying as long as they have corrupted the hero somehow.
- Alice's death was genuine collateral damage in the war between Evulz and Bob, in the sense of "wrong place, wrong time" - Evulz didn't even cared enough about Alice to entertain the thought of targeting her. But considering how much driven Evulz is to destroy Bob, nobody is willing to believe the former.
- The plan to kill Alice is Evulz's "nuclear option", to be used only if Bob and his allies have driven Evulz that much against the wall. Unfortunately for Evulz, the scum he hired as henchmen are too stupid and trigger-happy and prone at attempting this as an unwanted step of any scheme he orders them to perform. Unsusprisingly, this leads to Evulz's doom sooner rather than later and forces him to micro-manage a lot more than he wanted.
- Evuls's plan to kill Alice is based on the assumption that Alice is simply a normal person close to Bob, so she can be easily killed. Unbeknownst to Evuls, Alice is more than capable of wiping the floor with him. This miscalculation leaves him severely injured, or worse, gets him killed.
- Adding the step where Alice gets directly targeted overcomplicates the plan and causes it to implode. It shows too much of the villains' hand, sends too many goons (or their most powerful goon) away, and/or for further irony if Bob had not gone off to save Alice he would have just walked into their trap and stopped being a pest.
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