This thread was opened a while ago apparently; bumping.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanI'm not surprised that the trope is being misused by people who think it literally means "a character was crushed by having something big and heavy dropped on her", especially if they are not familiar with the Star Trek movie in question. It's a name that invites misuse in that sense. Should we do a wick check to see if this misuse is rampant enough to warrant a rename?
That people just think the trope means "Character X was killed" is a bit more puzzling, but perhaps they just made a hasty generalization for seeing it being used in the legitimate sense, thinking that it's just a colourful expression for being killed off? This as well would indicate that a rename would be in order. It would be good if the trope name at least hinted at what the trope is about...
Edited: oops, over 2000 wicks. Renaming it would be a major undertaking. Just cleaning up bad examples would be a lot of work, I suppose...
edited 27th Nov '14 5:27:01 AM by GnomeTitan
This trope has fairly sizable wicks and inbounds. And googling the trope name shows a fairly consistent usage. Seems like the name has caught on.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanI don't see that many examples that take the name literally. Most of the misuse seems to be for death scenes that are brutal or humiliating. Or "mean-spirited" as the Lexx example says.
EDIT: I also noticed the main description does not even mention that the character must be important. That's only in the Laconic.
edited 27th Nov '14 5:53:17 AM by DiamondWeapon
I must confess that when I think about it, the meaning I tend to assign to "they dropped a bridge on him" is a fatal version of "they put him on a bus". Perhaps it has overtones of being a rather abrupt death — no long death scenes with proper farewells and so on.
Clock is set.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanDunno, isn't it okay for minor characters, Red S Hirts or Mooks to die unceremoniously, en masse?
MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWWYeah. This trope is about main characters being killed off in an unceremonious way.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanRe-clocking.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanData on links plz? Pretty sure just misuse cleanup would be easy.
MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWWClock is up with no progress; closing.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
This trope has been seeing quite a bit of misuse lately.
Particularly, a lot of people are misusing it as just "character dies because something fell on them." A good example of this is this, which I cut from DroppedABridgeOnHim.Live Action Films:
Gohan's death was not a proper example. He was beaten to a pulp by the villain BEFORE the house was crushed, and even afterward he got a long dying speech to his grandson. There was nothing anti-climactic about it, he wasn't even a main character. As near as I can tell this example was ONLY here because someone was looking for a trope about a character dying because something fell on them, and thought this was it.
A few more examples:
The scene in question is part of a montage of various minor Jedi characters being betrayed and killed by the clone troopers. None of them were major characters, and there were far too many to warrant extended, drawn out sequences for all of them.
Might be a legit example, as it's barely explained at all so it's hard to tell, but as near as I can tell from this, he got bit and had an entire scene or maybe an entire episode dedicated to him as a vampire... how is that anticlimactic? This trope isn't just for when somebody's favorite tertiary character dies in exactly the way you would expect such a character to die.
How is this relevant? They're alive at the end, but it's implied they might die... really? This is a case of people apparently just using the trope for "a character died."
There was an entire episode devoted to her end, she got to die in a Big Damn Heroes moment saving the life of someone else, and then she came back to life afterwards!! How is this an example?!
Again, he got a good death, and then had an entire storyline devoted to his second death - it sucked yes (by which I mean it was an awful thing for him, not that the storyline itself sucked), but it wasn't unceremonious or anticlimactic. It was hugely meaningful and served to make you hate the villainess more. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought this trope was for when a main character dies in an unceremonious fashion unbefitting a hero, not just when anyone dies, and not for when your favorite character dies in a way you dislike.
The characters in question "died" to save their comrades from certain doom. How is that unceremonious or unbefitting a hero? Also, I use quotes because the only character who ACTUALLY died was Tellah, who went out in spectacular fashion, casting himself to death to try and get revenge on the villain and then got to give a long death speech to his surviving allies.
Dropped a Bridge on Him is NOT just a synonym for Killed Off for Real, or for Back from the Dead.
Again, this just seems to be being used as "character was crushed" and not as it's intended use.I've realized that this wasn't the intention of the entry. It's still a bad entry, though, because Echo was a tertiary character at best who you only meet once, and was actually being used to set up Quill's Heel–Face Turn.I don't think the trope is necessarily as a critical level of misuse yet. It might not need an actual name change, but it has a LOT of bad examples that need to be cut and I don't really think I can do all that work myself.
edited 27th Oct '14 1:44:51 AM by wrm5