Recap / Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood E 8 The Fifth Laboratory

• Because You Were Nice to Me: One of the Slicer brothers is so amused (and perhaps even moved) by Ed refusing to kill them on the principle that they're still people, he's prompted to share the secrets of the fifth laboratory with Ed. Unfortunately, he barely begins to share even one secret before Envy and Lust silence him by destroying his rune, effectively killing him.
• Didn't Think This Through: Ed remembers too late that his new automail arm traded sturdiness in exchange for resistance to rust, which results in it breaking after fighting the Slicer Brothers and before preparing to fight Envy and Lust.
  Lust: Technical difficulties?
• Downer Ending: Not only have Ed and Al hit a dead end after Envy and Lust tear down the Fifth Laboratory, but Barry the Chopper has left Al with an existential crisis: is he real, or is he just an artificial soul?
• Irony: In life, the Slicer brothers were thieves and murderers who had been treated as less than human their whole lives by everyone. Yet, reincarnated as animated suits of armor, one of the brother muses that Ed is the first to ever refer to them as people.
• Never Say "Die": Justified. When the Slicer Brothers ask Edward to kill them, they word it more like they want him to "destroy" him. When Edward says he can't kill them, they insist he's not killing them: he's "destroying" them because they're objects now, not human beings. The trope is used to frame how the Slicer Brothers don't view themselves as people anymore.

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