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Basic Trope: A man who married and murdered many women for whichever reason.

  • Straight: Bob married a wife, and then kills her. He then did the same with 4 other women.
  • Exaggerated: Bob had killed more than 50 wives, with his latest wife being none the wiser.
  • Downplayed:
    • Bob plans to do this, but is only on his second wife when he's caught.
    • Bob doesn't actually marry or even date his victims, he just uses marriage as a theme for his crimes.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted: Bob eventually did not kill the latest woman he married.
  • Double Subverted: Until several years later. Or someone else killed her.
  • Gender Inverted: Black Widow
  • Parodied: Bob shamelessly shows people his framed wives collection.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob's a repeat widower, but evidence is conflicted on whether he murdered them, the deaths were unrelated to Bob, or they all simply left and were presumed dead.
  • Averted: Even though Bob hates his wives (and does not learn from experience), he legally divorces them instead of murdering them.
  • Enforced: It's a story about a real life wife murderer who actually did this.
  • Lampshaded: "You sure have been married a lot of times Bob." "What can I say? I just never find the right one..."
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited:
    • What better way to get rid of a woman you hate than setting her up on a date with Bob?
    • Alice is a Black Widow who decides to go after a "challenging target" after killing innocent men becomes to boring for her.
  • Defied: Bob's prospective second wife gets suspicious about her predecessor's death and informs the police.
  • Discussed: Bob and Alice get married, and Bob tells Alice that she isn't to go into one room of his house. When Alice tells her friend Carol, Carol suggests that Bob might be hiding his dead ex-wives in the room like Bluebeard.
  • Conversed: "How come these women don't get suspicious around a man who's been a widower so many times?"

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