Basic Trope: A character's death is ridiculous and embarrassing.
- Straight:
- Bob loses in a fight to the death, begs for mercy, and wets his pants before he is decapitated in front of his friends.
- Bob drowns in raw sewage.
- Bob dies from auto-erotic asphyxiation.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is stripped naked in front of his boss, gets a pie thrown at his face, slips on a banana peel, is beaten up by a man in a bunny suit, receives a Groin Attack by a clown, forced to admit his most embarrassing secrets to his family and friends, and is crushed to death by a pile of teddy bears, an anvil, and lastly an elephant that farts on him in a worldwide broadcast.
- Bob is a bodybuilder and gets beaten to death by a million babies.
- The Clown God destroys the entire Earth with a comically large pie.
- Bob is trapped in a death loop of humiliating deaths while he is recorded and broadcast to public television.
- Parodied examples of Cruel and Unusual Death.
- Downplayed:
- Bob gets a stroke while on the toilet.
- Bob dies from indulging his partner in Erotic Asphyxiation.
- Bob gets murdered by the Depraved Kids' Show Host and gets on the news.
- Justified:
- Bob is an Asshole Victim targeted by a Karmic Trickster.
- Bob was really dumb and was very susceptible to fatal mistakes.
- Evulz wants to prevent Bob from becoming an Inspirational Martyr. Mockery is best for this goal. A death that will turn him into a "World's Dumbest" meme is perfect.
- Inverted:
- Dying Moment of Awesome
- Bob gets stuck inside of a Chicken Mascot that he cannot ever take off. The suit has secret mechanisms that give him immortality while making him mute.
- Bob gets revived with the power of several ancient gods.
- Bob was born inside of a dumpster.
- Subverted:
- Bob survives.
- Bob gets shot before he was able to be beaten to death by the millions of babies.
- Double Subverted:
- But then he commits suicide out of embarrassment. He commits suicide by purposely slipping on a Banana Peel and falling on some sharp poop that impales his eyes.
- The gun was fired by a fetus.
- Parodied:
- Bob's death is played for Black Comedy.
- Bob dies from getting his dick stuck in a ceiling fan. The video is played in court and the case devolves into a Try Not To Laugh challenge as people giggle and get charged with contempt of court.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Bob survives, but it's so embarrassing that he tries to commit suicide but repeatedly fails in many humiliating ways. He eventually succeeds but comes back in the next episode to suffer a humiliating death again.
- Bob is said to have died of a blow to the head, which leads people to believe that he died fighting Emperor Evulz's fearsome right hand man General Drake. However he actually survived the fight and instead died from a random fall at home. Further investigation reveals that the fall would not have been fatal if Bob did not already have a head wound.
- Averted:
- Face Death with Dignity
- Nobody dies.
- Enforced:
- "Bob is hated by all the fans! Let's kill him off in the most humiliating way possible!"
- "What can be more cathartic than to have our villain die in a way that's really embarrassing?"
- Lampshaded: "Haha, Bob's death is hilarious!
- Invoked:
- Evulz sets up a deadly chain reaction trap that makes him drown in raw sewage. Bob falls for it.
- Evulz wants to kill Bob in a ridiculous way because he doesn't want to make him a martyr but still wants him dead.
- After fifty episodes of Evulz terrorizing Bob in order to force Bob to slay him (A Good Way to Die), Bob decides he is going to indulge him... partially. Evulz is going to die precisely in the way he does not wants to go, and he is going to spend his last seconds on Earth mortified about it.
- Exploited: Someone records Bob's death and makes millions in ad revenue.
- Defied:
- Bob avoids the banana peel.
- Face Death with Dignity
- Do Not Go Gentle
- Bob's friends find some way to Maintain the Lie (maybe an El Cid Ploy, and they willl erase their memories to be thorough) to make damned sure nobody will ever know Bob died in such a way.
- Discussed: "I want to see Bob die in a hilariously ridiculous fashion!"
- Conversed: "I like Bob. This character is badass. Why did they make him go out like this in this work?" "The mighty One-Man Army dies by being skewered in his buttocks? The writers are geniuses."
- Implied: Bob's death is a Noodle Incident but every time someone talks about it they get a Thousand-Yard Stare and add "nobody should go so distastefully". Even Bob's enemies.
- Played for Laughs: After everything Bob has done and continuously got away with as the story's Hate Sink, he gets a Humiliation Conga in the final act that culminates with him being set on fire by an elephant's fart and stomped on by a marching band playing "Louie, Louie". Bill can only answer to that with a deadpan "there is a God".
- Played for Drama: The late Bob's friends lament how he was a hero who deserved a far more dignified death than what he got.
- Played for Horror:
- The Day of Bob is a side-story in a Final Destination-style franchise and Bob's awful death is just another sign that whatever cosmic force is annihilating the cast has an extremely sick and twisted sense of humor on top of an unfathomable morality.
- Bob is brutally raped and tortured to death on a worldwide broadcast, and people are Forced to Watch and laugh or else get in the same position as him.
- Bob's death is darkly hilarious but also presented by the news and horror podcasters as "we are all equal in death and when the universe decides we are to die, it rarely grants us the dignity we desire or deserve" and in the case of the pundits and the more blatant tabloids as a "it could happen to you, too" piece of interest.
- Deconstructed: Bob's family is harassed by both reporters and trolls after Bob's death makes headlines. Bob's grave is often defiled with jokes and the children are bullied relentlessly by kids and adults alike.
- Reconstructed: A reporter dies after slipping on the children's tears and into a giant blender full of urine.
Back to Undignified Death
