Basic Trope: A character who survives in the original work dies in the adaptation.
- Straight: Bob survived in the original work, but gets killed by Emperor Evulz in the adaptation.
- Exaggerated:
- In the beginning, Evulz kills Bob in a rather gruesome fashion.
- In the adaptation, Bob dies at a point before he is introduced in the original work.
- Downplayed:
- Bob dies in the original work, but is killed sooner in the adaptation.
- Bob's fate is ambiguous or player-determined in the original work, but he is explicitly killed in the adaptation.
- Bob was killed in the original work and subsequently resurrected, while the adaptation has him die permanently and never brought back to life.
- In the original work the Distant Epilogue shows Alice and Bob as an elderly couple, in the adaptation Alice is a widow in said epilogue.
- Justified:
- The adaptation includes a relatively small change that triggers an alternate outcome, where something that should have saved Bob in the original story is not present in this alternative reality.
- The adaptation has gone beyond the source material.
- It’s set years after the original and Bob died during the time skipped.
- Inverted:
- Spared by the Adaptation.
- Bob in the original work was a Posthumous Character who died before the events of the story. While that's still the case in the adaptation, he gets brought back to life by Alice.
- Subverted: Bob's death turns out to be fake.
- Double Subverted: As Bob explains this to Alice, Evulz pops up out of nowhere and kills him for real.
- Parodied: The author walks onto the scene and apologizes to Bob, then walks off as Bob is killed by Evulz.
- Zig Zagged: Bob keeps dying and coming back, which definitely doesn't happen in the original.
- Averted: Bob survives the adaptation as expected.
- Enforced:
- Executive Meddling and/or the author: "The story is good, but it's not dark enough. Let's make it Darker and Edgier by killing off Bob."
- The author decides that the original was too unrealistic and is editing out an Ass Pull in favor of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome.
- Lampshaded: Bob's last words to Emperor Evulz are: "How did you get there?"
- Invoked: Evulz acts differently in earlier scenes, such as avoiding a mistake he made in the original. This results in him being more likely to kill Bob.
- Exploited: The writer has Alice turns her friend's death into a call to arms for her fellow fighters.
- Defied: Alice saves Bob just before Emperor Evulz attacks. This didn't happen in the original, if only because Evulz never got the chance to strike in the first place.
- Discussed: Alice and her friends mourn Bob's death in a scene unique to the film, and talk about how unexpected his death was.
- Conversed: A Genre Savvy character talks about how the film adaptations in his world "always kill off the best characters in the books".
- Implied: Bob is nowhere to be seen in the adaptation, and all of the characters refer to him in past tense.
- Deconstructed: The plot change causes other changes in the storyline that drastically alter the outcome of the plot. For instance, Bob's death traumatizes Alice and Evulz delivers a Breaking Speech on why he means serious business.
- Reconstructed:
- The effects of this alternate outcome are replaced by carefully arranged In Spite of a Nail influences to realign the plot back to the original. For instance, Alice continues her quest but with a new motivation to avenge her fallen friend.
- Alternatively, Alice comes to terms with the death and becomes a better character for it.
Back to Death by Adaptation
