Rename: If You Should Die Before You Wake

As Noir Grimoir said in this YKTTW, this trope "needs a serious rename." I suggest Nurse Comes To Worst.

Hard to think of a good name for this.

See That He Never Wakes?

No. Like the current title, it implies that the hospitalized character has to remain unconscious.

It doesn't indicate hospitalization at all. It sounds like simply "dying in your sleep"

How important is the hospital to this trope? I thought it was only incidental (because where else would a person in a coma be), but the core of the trope was to assassinate a person in a coma for the reasons listed in the description.

Well, maybe we can think of something that clearly implies "hospital". Can't think of a good one though.

Noting that the Trope Namer of "If I should die before I wake" is a line from a common child's prayer. Completely unrelated to the trope at hand.

Bad Snowclone fresh out of YKTTW. Supporting a rename.

Agreed. I'll set up a Single Prop.

Here it is.

edited 26th Apr '11 6:20:58 PM by KrisMahai

I don't think a hospital is important. After all, they do this trope in fantasy media all the time where a character is in magically induced sleep and they're rarely in a hospital then.

There's nothing in the trope to indicate that it's simply killing someone while they're sleeping or unconscious except the name. It's the trope for the specific instance of killing them while they're in the hospital. There are more than enough examples of that to make it a trope on its own; if we don't have "Killed while asleep or unconscious", then YKTTW it. Don't hijack a subtrope.

Then some of the examples need to be removed then. The common theme is killing people when they're sick or unconscious. Not while they're in hospitals. A Song Of Ice And Fire and The Lord Of The Rings didn't happen in hospitals.

edited 26th Apr '11 8:18:46 PM by shimaspawn

Correct, if the trope is "murder or attempted murder of a hospitalized person":

• Several villains do this to a police detective in the Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex episode "The Fortunate Ones: MISSING HEARTS".
  • This is done all the time! When nobody is able to kill the Major in combat, they try something else and send an assassin to kill her when she gets her cybernetic body replaced and is nothing more than a Brain in a Jar for a few minutes.
• In the 14th album of the XIII series (Danger to the State) Irina Svetlanova disguised as a nurse attempts to do it to the main protagonist.
• The Omen.
• Barely averted in both the first and second Godfather films. In the first Michael Corleone arrives to find the police guards have been 'reassigned'. He gets a nurse to move his father's bed to another room, then bluffs the killers by standing outside (with a friend) and sliding a hand inside his coat when the carload of killers turn up. In the second film the hitman, having distracted the nurses, is about to press a pillow over the patient's face when a squad of Cuban soldiers, who have been tipped off about the hit, march in and shoot him.
• Elle Driver disguises herself as a nurse and attempts to do this to The Bride in the first volume of Kill Bill. Fortunately Bill calls at the last minute and cancels the hit.
• Bethany from Dogma saves "existence" by doing this. ...to God
• Similar thing happens in Hard Boiled, only that the victim is not unconscious but rather, in a plaster cast from tip to toe, which only makes the murder (with a scalpel) crueler.
• The Steve McQueen thriller Bullitt (1968). A hitman sneaks into the hospital with the intent of finishing off his target, but is recognised and chased off by Bullitt.
• Telefon. A priest who's been brainwashed to commit sabotage is captured alive. A female KGB agent purchases a nurses' uniform from an on-sight outfitters, while Charles Bronson (posing as a doctor) rings up the duty nurse and tells her that another nurse will be replacing her, as she's to report somewhere else. The false nurse then injects air into the IV tube of the patient.
• The climax of the film U.S. Marshals.
• Dean Koontz's The Door To December features a hitman sitting in his car, preparing to sneak into a hospital in the middle of the night to whack a certain patient. The next time we see him, he's still sitting in his car — with his neck crushed by an unknown assailant.

• Able Team ("Justice by Fire"). A corrupt FBI agent goes to interview the sole survivor of an Able Team ambush. It turns out he's willing to tell everything about those paying the FBI agent, who notices that the food service workers in the hospital don't have any form of identification. A few hours later, a man dressed as a food service worker presses a pillow over the patient's face.
• New Tricks had a villain from the previous season attempt to smother Jack Halford while he was in hospital recovering from a car accident.
• Law And Order had this done to a child to make his mother keep quiet.
• Done in the first season finale of Twin Peaks.
• In 24, this happens to Janet York.
• In an episode of Family Matters, Carl ends up in a hospital after being hit with a bullet during a shootout. A shooter, seeking revenge for his relative who Carl recently arrested, dresses up as a doctor and sneaks into the hospital room intent on killing Carl. Steve sneaks up behind the shooter and knocks him out with the metal squatting pan.
• An unusual humorous (if morbidly so) example occurs in Rescue Me, in which a character suffering from kidney cancer awakens from a musical dream sequence gone awry to find a well-meaning uncle attempting to smother him as an act of mercy because the doctors say he's taken a turn for the worse.
• Leverage, "The Beantown Bailout Job." The bank manager behind the whole scam is on his way to the hospital to kill the only witness, who's lying in a coma... only to find the Massachusetts State Police waiting for him when he arrives.
• The X Files. After A.D. Skinner is shot Scully thinks this has happened to him when she finds his room empty and the police guards missing. It turns out he's being transferred to another hospital. She decides to accompany Skinner there in the ambulance, which is just as well as that's where the attempted murder occurs.
  • And Skinner himself attempts to do this to the comatose Mulder in "Deadalive", thinking he is saving Scully's unborn child by doing so. It fails, but ends up saving Mulder from a life of alien replication.
• In The Pretender Miss Parker is sent to kill Sydney's twin Jacob, who was in a persistent vegetative state after a car accident caused by him wanting to leave The Centre. She faked his murder with Sydney's help. In a later episode this was found out, which lead to sweepers were sent in to do the job properly. They did not arrive on time.
• In Boardwalk Empire, one of the gangsters attacked in the first episode turns out not to have been killed by Jimmy and Al and turns up badly wounded. Since Nucky is afraid he will start talking and name names, he arranges things so that his brother will smother the guy with a pillow while pretending to question him. This plan is interrupted by the FBI, but things don't go better for the patient after that, as the Knight Templar Agent Van Allen tortures him for information via Open Heart Dentistry, and he dies after giving up information.
• Call Of Cthulhu supplement The Fungi From Yuggoth. In the playtesting of the first adventure "The Dreamer", the PCs entered Paul LeMond's hospital room to find the cultist Clarence Rodgers strangling him. Rogers had infiltrated the hospital dressed as an orderly.
• Attempted on the main character in Sanitarium
• The reason Gil from Girl Genius had to send out Captain Vole to try to get Agatha is because waves of assassins were trying to kill his hospitalized father. He just had to buy him enough time to being able to defend himself, without having to move from the bed.
• In one of the arcs of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni , Satoko is killed like this when she is left as the sole survivor of Hinamizawa Disaster. (Moved following identification as "correct)
• Gaara tries this with Rock Lee in Naruto, pre Heel–Face Turn. He is stopped by Shikamaru and Naruto. Lee didn't know any particular information. Gaara was just nuts enough to want him dead; he couldn't comprehend why Gai would risk his own life to protect his protege, when Gaara's own mentor tried to kill him. Rather than try to confront the fact that other people have love and he doesn't, he decided to remove the reminder. (Moved following identification as "correct)

Incorrect, if the trope is "murder or attempted murder of a hospitalized person":

• In Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings, it's hinted that Gríma did this to Théodred.
• Happens very early in A Song Of Ice And Fire to Bran Stark after he witnessed Twin Cest. Subverted, when it turns out Joffrey arranged it as a Mercy Kill. He thought it was, nobody else did.

Can't tell if the person is hospitalized or simply unconscious/comatose/sleeping

• Happens to Rally in Gunsmith Cats. No outside assistance, and indeed she was never more than half awake as she shot the assassin down and threw the bomb under her pillow out the window.
• Happens in Fringe, episode 1x09
• Castle. In season one, this almost happens to a man in witness protection - luckily, it turns out just to be a trap, and our heroes catch the would-be assassin.
• After being shot, The Mentalist's Bosco nearly died this way. Luckily, his Action Girl friend/co-worker/one true love, Teresa Lisbon manages to stop the shooter in a Crowning Moment Of Awesome. Poor Bosco dies anyway, but at least he and Lisbon get to have their Anguished Declaration of Love before he does.
• In the end of Dreamfall, Zoe Castillo is drugged by Helena Chang to save the real world via dreaming. After she is done, Helena injects her with even more drug, to make sure she never wakes up again. Apparently, it only works half-way: Zoe cannot wake up but possesses a lot of power even when sleeping.

That's 30 that are correct if the trope is murder or attempted murder of a hospital patient, and two that are wrong. And 6 that I couldn't tell.

edited 30th Apr '11 7:47:15 PM by Madrugada

The Higurashi one takes place in a hospital. I don't know about the rest.

31 right, 2 wrong, and 5 unknown, then

For the Naruto example, Lee is both comatose and hospitalized. (At least, in the anime; I haven't read the manga.)

edited 26th Apr '11 10:55:21 PM by JackAlsworth

32, 2, and 4

I don't think it should be so much about hospitals as about sickbeds. Otherwise you're needlessly excepting any settings that don't have hospitals. There really doesn't seem to be any point, for example, in excluding the Lord of the Rings example. He's sick; he's being treated medically; he's killed before he can recover. If that isn't part of this trope, then I would say the trope is being unnecessarily specific.

Anyway, under the assumption the crowner doesn't have a sudden turn around:

Coma Comeuppance - possibly a little judgemental on the victim, but it flows off the tongue nicely.

Sickbed Slaying- could be "Sickbed <any synonym for murder>" but slaying has Added Alliterative Appeal. Sickbed Suffocation is a common method.

edited 27th Apr '11 10:26:40 PM by Blackfire

...Sounds like we may need to send the whole thing back to YKTTW.

Maybe.

I do think that there's a qualitative difference between someone being attacked or killed while they're simply home sick, and the presumption that they should be safe from a killer while they're in a hospital or other place where they are supposedly being carefully monitored and people can't just come and go at will.

But I can also agree that it should still be this trope even if it isn't a modern hospital — I'm thinking specifically of the Brother Cadfael mystery Dead Man's Ransom. It's set in the 1100's, so there are no hospitals, but the injured man is killed while he's in the infirmary at the abbey — the closest thing there was to a hospital, and again, a place that is supposed to be secure from outsiders just wandering in.

Yeah. I agree entirely with that, actually. It's what I meant by sickbed, but I suppose sickbed could just as easily apply, as you suggest, to being at home with the flu, so it's probably not appropriate.

That's what I was getting at where hospitals don't matter. It's more about the fact that they're being watched over while they're convalescing and they should be safe. A king in his own bed having close watch from the royal healers would still be the same theme, just without the hospital.

Should I set up an Alternative Names crowner? I don't want to do so until we firmly decide on the definition.

Seeing as we don't have names yet, probably not. I think we're close to a definition though. They need to be:

• Convalescing, preferably in a coma, though otherwise vulnerable works to
• In a location where they're being taken care of and watched over
• In a location that shouldn't be easily accessible by outsiders

edited 30th Apr '11 7:43:38 PM by shimaspawn

We do have a clear consensus to rename, though, so I'm going to lock the single prop and unhook it.

^^ That definition looks good to me. I don't think a strictly defined "hospital" is important.

Maybe I'll make the Alternative Names crowner, and just let people add names on their own. Or no?

edited 30th Apr '11 7:46:37 PM by KrisMahai