Basic Trope: Two lovers are finally together, but had to die for it to happen.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are in love, but because fate keeps them apart they can only be together once they die.
- Exaggerated: Every couple in the story is separated by circumstances, and has to die to be together.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob have to run away and leave their entire life behind to be together, but don't have to die.
- Justified: Alice and Bob's Feuding Families would never have approved of their relationship.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob meet and fall in love in the afterlife, and continue to be a couple after they're Back from the Dead.
- Alice and Bob are together until they die, but their differing religious beliefs cause them to end up in different afterlives, separating them from one another forever.
- Subverted:
- In despair, Alice and Bob realize the only way they can be together is to die. They break up because they feel they're to young to die.
- Bob commits suicide so he and Alice can be together. Alice chickens out at the last minute so she can be with Charlie.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice and Bob miss each other too much and kill themselves anyway.
- Alice decides she can’t be without Bob and kills herself while Charlie isn’t looking.
- Parodied:
- Alice and Bob have to die to be together because their families forbid them from being together because they don't approve of the hair style of their daughter's/son's significant other.
- Alice and Bob are forbidden to see each other, and kill themselves so they can be together in the afterlife. The problem is, Alice likes bad boys, so Bob is sent to Hell while Alice is sent to Heaven, meaning they are still forbidden to see each other.
- Zig Zagged: Alice and Bob are Star-Crossed Lovers who can only be together once they die. They break up because they feel they're too young to die, but they can't lie to themselves and become a couple again, and decide to stage their own deaths and run off into the wilderness. In the wilderness, Bob is killed by a wild animal, and Alice, grief-stricken, decides to kill herself. Just before she hangs herself Bob comes Back from the Dead and prevents her from doing so. Alice and Bob eventually return from the wilderness, which means they cannot be together unless they die. However, people decide whatever reason they had for keeping Alice and Bob apart was silly and allow them to be a couple. Unfortunately, the news reaches Alice and Bob too late and they have already committed suicide. In the afterlife, the Celestial Bureaucracy assigns them to different realms, so they still are not together. Fortunately, it turns out there has been a mistake and they are placed together. On the other hand, the afterlife in this universe is not forever and all souls will eventually reincarnate.
- Averted: All couples in the story can be together without having to die.
- Enforced: The producers feel a plot line like this will attract loads of fangirls.
- Lampshaded: “Funny, isn’t it? All they wanted their whole lives was to be together, but it wasn’t until they died that they got their wish...”
- Invoked: Alice, obsessed with Romeo and Juliet, chooses her boyfriends based on the one criterium that neither of their families will approve of their relationship, because she feels having to die to be together would be romantic.
- Exploited: After Bob dies, Alice volunteers on a suicide mission, figuring that if she has to die to be with Bob, she might as well die for some good cause.
- Defied: Bob makes Alice promise him that she will not be seeking death in case he dies.
- Discussed: “Honestly, now that Bob’s dead, I feel like I wanna die too, just to see him again.”
- Conversed: “Why do these Star-Crossed Lovers stories always end with the couple dying?”
- Deconstructed: The heavy psychological issues at least one of the couple needs to be coping with for this trope to be in effect are brought up. As it turns out, Alice and Bob are both Yandere: Bob believes Alice is being unfaithful to him, and thus plans a murder-suicide to definitively bind her to him. Only the suicide part succeeds, and Alice is left broken-hearted. Because she is unable to cope with her grief and believes she can never love anyone but Bob, she commits suicide.
- Reconstructed: Alice is suicidal after Bob dies for whatever reason. In this world there are therapists, and with their help Alice is able to process her grief and move on, and eventually have a fulfilling love life with Charlie.
Finally, you can be Together in Death with me, my love!
