Basic Trope: An unrequited female love interest meets a tragic end that juxtaposes the purity of her feelings.
- Straight: Anne is primarily known for exuding innocent beauty. She falls in love with Bob, who rarely notices her and ends up marrying Alice. Anne fades into irrelevancy and eventually dies from a heart attack.
- Exaggerated: Anne is Purity Personified thanks to heaps of gushing by the narrative / other characters. She has loved Bob since the day they met. Not only did Bob reject her, but Alice decided to get into his pants with the intention of humiliating Anne. Eventually, Alice hires a hitman to kill Anne, the assassin makes a comment about her being friend-zoned before killing her.
- Downplayed: Anne is a somewhat wholesome person who enters a relationship with Bob, but it ends on a sour note. Anne falls into financial trouble since Bob left her.
- Justified:
- Anne struggles from personal issues that inadvertently pushed her into a scenario where she’d die after losing Bob.
- The gods of this universe like seeing "pure and innocent" people / "perfect" love interests fall in love, fail to have their feelings returned, and meet a tragic end.
- Inverted:
- Anne is rejected by Bob, but makes a lucky investment in a new business and becomes one of its CEOs.
- Anne marries Bob, but their love is cut short when she falls into a ravine.
- Subverted:
- It's not Anne, but Alice who fades away, shrinking into the role of wife and mother to a degree even a Stepford Smiler seems charming and full of personality.
- Bob was actually the Romantic False Lead, and now that he's dumped Anne, she realizes Charlie has also been harboring unrequited feelings for her. They hook up and have their Happily Ever After.
- Anne is not actually the flawless and beautiful yet overshadowed runner up. She's actually a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who had carefully cultivated her Nice Girl facade, and is furious at Alice showing her up. Her ultimate tragic end is actually richly earned.
- Knowing that Bob doesn't notice her, Anne heads towards the sea. The audience is led to believe that something bad will happen thanks to the surrounding mood / somber background music, but it turns out she's just steadying herself by going out for a small swim. After that, Anne chooses to pursue her own interests and move on.
- Double Subverted:
- Which is what Alice wanted everyone to think, as part of a ploy to make Anne think she has a chance to win back Bob before finally fully crushing her spirit.
- Which is taken to absolutely inhumane levels of tragedy when Anne discovers Charlie is cheating on her with Alice and Bob, only to be murdered for finding out and to collect the insurance money.
- Parodied: Anne is a romance novel fangirl, dressing in Victorian fashions and desperately searching for a crush that will spurn her so she can have a tragic end. Despite this, she's actually well liked and has various aspiring boyfriends, which annoys her to no end.
- Zig-Zagged: After being rejected by Bob, Anne's ultimate fate flip flops as she becomes The Chew Toy, with sudden windfalls and new boyfriends appearing just as she's about to despair, and disappearing before she's finally happy.
- Averted:
- Anne fails to get in a relationship with Bob and moves on with her life, upwards of downwards.
- Romance is not present.
- Enforced: The producer knows that the "utterly perfect / innocent love interest who dies" archetype sells well, so they ordered the writers to kill off Anne in order to wax poetic about how uncontrolled love is a meaningless thing that causes death and misery.
- Lampshaded: Anne notes that her dying of heartbreak, or from a senseless accident now that she has been dumped would be incredibly cliche; and yet, it doesn't make her heart hurt any less, nor will it make her immune to truly random accidents. She even notes that someone, somewhere, is probably dead or dying at that moment not long after having their heart broken.
- Invoked: Anne, wanting to get back at Bob is planning to manipulate him into dumping Alice by faking her heartbreak and a near death experience.
- Exploited: Knowing about Anne's nature and impending heartbreak and probable death, Charlie takes out a life insurance policy on her, and lets her know that if she dies of heartbreak the proceeds will go to fund Bob and Alice's wedding. This angers Anne enough that she's shaken out of her downward spiral and takes steps to move on with her life.
- Defied:
- Mary tries to hook Bob up with Anne after hearing about how much she loved him.
- Bob decides to partially fund a suburban home for Anne to increase he qualify of life, preventing her untimely death.
- Discussed: Bob and Charlie talk about Anne, with Bob noting she does not take rejection well. Charlie says to lighten up, it's not like she will become completely heartbroken and die a miserable shadow of her former self.
- Conversed: "It's like watching a slow motion train wreck, she can't get him to notice her, and she's never going to get over losing him."
- Gender Inverted: Andrew has fallen in love with Alice, who marries Bob. Andrew is drafted into the next war before he can get over her and is killed in action.
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