Basic Trope: The hero of the story... dies.
- Straight:
- Alice, the main heroine, dies unexpectedly at the hands of Bob, the Big Bad.
- Alice pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to stop Bob, and she dies in the process.
- After defeating Bob once and for all, Alice dies of old age.
- Exaggerated: Literally everyone opposing Bob is rendered dead by the end of the story.
- Downplayed:
- Most of the unnamed characters die, but the main cast survives.
- As straight #3, but there is a clear time-gap between the two events.
- Justified:
- Alice was a big threat to Bob, and one of the top people on his hit-list.
- It's a setting in which Anyone Can Die.
- Alice was already dying, she was just making the most out of her numbered days.
- Inverted:
- The Good Guys Always Win
- Everybody's Dead, Dave
- The villain protagonist dies at the end of the series.
- Subverted:
- Our Hero Is Dead
- Alice's Plot Armor saves her from several close calls.
- Alice turns out to be a Decoy Protagonist. The real heroine is Mary, Alice's totally unremarkable best friend.
- Double Subverted:
- ...until she is tricked into eating shellfish, which she’s deadly allergic to.
- ...and then Mary dies toward the end after defeating Bob anyway.
- Parodied: The Author Avatar, attracted by this trope, tries to figure out who the hero is in a world of Grey-and-Gray Morality. Eventually, she goes insane, and commits suicide (In-Universe, of course).
- Zig Zagged:
- Alice supposedly dies and comes back, but it's unclear if she was Faking the Dead, made an Unexplained Recovery, or came Back from the Dead.
- Alice dies. Mary takes over hero duties. Uh oh, turns out Bob raised Alice from the dead and has turned her into his robot minion. She has to be put down by Mary. Mary is mortally wounded in the fight and with her dying breath activates a bomb that destroys Bob’s headquarters, saving the world, killing Bob, but also killing all her allies.
- Averted: The hero never dies, even in a Deconstructor Fleet.
- Enforced:
- This action was done to distant the work from other works in the same genre, where The Good Guys Always Win is almost a cliché.
- Improper handling of the cinematic explosives killed the lead actor and The Character Died with Him.
- Anyone Can Die in the given work; as such, the team decides to kill off the protagonist as to REALLY get such a point across.
- Lampshaded: While bleeding out: “Huh, really thought I’d see this story through till the end.”
- Invoked: Alice is already a Death Seeker, she's been deliberately trying to get herself killed and her eventual death means that she can finally set free from her immortality and die in peace.
- Exploited: Alice knows that she’s not surviving her mission so she decides to take out Bob as an Action Bomb.
- Defied: While Alice bleeds out on the floor, Mary uses the secret healing technique she’s been practicing for the past season in case this very thing happened.
- Discussed: “Alice, I promise, if you die fighting Bob, I’ll make sure the funeral is really nice. Horse-drawn hearse, paid mourners, the whole 9 yards!”
- Conversed: “It’s George R. R. Martin. Don’t get too attached to the heroes.”
- Implied: We cut away from the action just when Bob has Alice dead to rights. An epilogue features The Team escaping to safety, but Alice is never shown.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice's death comes off as an Ass Pull that serves to keep the plot interesting. Many Fix Fics made about the series insist that she was Just Hiding.
- Alice’s death comes from an outside illness unrelated to Bob. Life happens. Heroes, people, die in mundane, nonheroic, sad ways. Not everyone goes out in a battle against their nemesis or performing a Heroic Sacrifice. Alice’s death is a monument to that.
- Reconstructed: Alice’s death marks a turning point in the story’s quality. Her death may not have been heroic, but it reminds everyone how delicate and precious life is. Mary takes over as protagonist with a calm, but strong resolve to carry out Alice’s quest.
- Played For Laughs: Alice never lasts to the end of the episode, but she’s always back for more. Each death gets more and more humiliating and creative.
- Played For Drama: Alice leaves behind family, friends, and allies who really cared about her. Her death affects them all deeply.
- Played For Horror: Alice gets killed in a Cruel and Unusual way.
Back to The Hero Dies
