History Main / CollateralAngst

* ''Literature/LittleWomen'': It's painful for Beth to die young; it's more painful for Jo to live without her little sister. [[CreatorBreakdown As Louisa knew firsthand]].

* In ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'' Sue Dibny is raped, but the story completely ignores the issue of how the attack affects her in favour of focusing on how it affects ''everyone else''. The comic's multiple narrators are all men, so while rape as a plot device is used by bad writers as "a thing that happens to women", an actual woman's take on the attack isn't provided, let alone the victim's own experience.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse'': Defied. The death of [[spoiler:a policeman close to Spider-Man]] is considered by Miguel to be such a superhero-formative event that he lambasts Miles for saving Pavitr's, and is willing to [[spoiler:let Miles' newly-promoted NYPD captain father die to ensure the safety of his universe.]] Miles rejects Miguel's assessment, fully believing that he can be Spider-Man without suffering such a loss.
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[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/GranTorino'', Sue is beaten and gang-raped by her own gangster cousins to get back at her, her brother, and Walt for standing up to them and challenging them, though the movie focuses more on Walt's reaction, partly because the attack immediately followed his own browbeating of one of the gangsters. Not to mention that he was the main character of the film.

* ''VideoGame/StarCraft2'': In ''Wings of Liberty'', Raynor feels responsible for letting Kerrigan being overrunned and turned into a monster by the Zerg during the first game. The campaign revolves around him trying to find a way to either kill her or make her return human.

Compare and contrast with AesopCollateralDamage, where a peripheral character's undeserved suffering is also used to teach the protagonist a lesson. Compare with DisposableWoman, which can be seen as the extreme version of this trope.

* Both Kisa and Rin are viciously attacked by Akito in ''Manga/FruitsBasket''. Rin, in particular, is badly injured after being pushed out of an upper floor window. However, both girls seem to discount these events in their catalogue of tragedies. Kisa is more worried about the bullying she suffers at school, while Rin desperately searches for a cure to the Sohma curse in between hospital visits. Their love interests, Hiro and Hatsuharu respectively, on the other hand, angst constantly about their failure to protect their girlfriends. Hiro especially sees his inability to stand up to Akito and prevent the attack as an insult to his masculine pride and proof that he is unworthy of Kisa.

* The ''Franchise/GreenLantern'' plot arc where Kyle Rayner's assistant Terry Berg gets gay bashed focused more on Kyle dealing with the angst of such a thing happening to his best friend, tracking down the assailants and scaring the bejeesus out of them, and eventually deciding that he was running out of faith in humanity and taking off for the stars. All while Terry, the one who actually got attacked, lay in traction.

* This is basically the role of [[ComicBook/{{Batgirl}} Barbara Gordon]] in ''ComicBook/TheKillingJoke'', to the point that her only dialogue after she is shot and paralyzed is devoted to her worrying about how her father and Bruce will take it.

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* Creator/DavidWeber makes a point of using this with his character deaths; the focus is almost always on the pain of the dead character's surviving friends and family. This is part of a larger, overarching WarIsHell Aesop, in which Weber makes damned sure to remind his readers that no matter how noble or necessary a death might be, it's still going to hurt like hell for the people left behind. A prime example occurs in ''[[Literature/HonorHarrington At All Costs]]'': losing [[spoiler:Javier Giscard]] in battle hurts like hell, as is par for the course for Weber, but the ''real'' agony is in [[spoiler:his lover Eloise Pritchart]]'s reaction to losing [[spoiler:the man who was essentially her husband in all but name]]. (The reaction in question is, of course, an utterly broken heart.)

* ''VideoGame/StarCraft2'': In ''Wings of Liberty'', Raynor feels responsible for letting Kerrigan being overrunned and turned into a monster by the Zerg during the first game. The campaign revolves around him trying to find a way to either kill her or make her return human.

* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'': "I Am the Night" is all about Batman's distress about Commissioner Gordon being wounded on the field. So much that Gordon himself and his daughter are the ones who comfort him and Bullock is clearly expected to be viewed as incredibly mean for chastising him.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Defied. An early episode had Homer believing that he was going to die of food poisoning. As Marge sobs profusely, Homer calmly but snidely tells her that he is the one dying, not her.