Needs Help: Impaled With Extreme Prejudice

Impaled with Extreme Prejudice is about a character being stabbed all the way through. That much is clear. However the "extreme prejudice" part is not always understood.

The idea is that the impalment is from a very large object like a telephone pole, and swords and spears do not count.

I did a Wick Check Impaled With Extreme Prejudice Wick Check and 41 of 85 were zero contex, 33 were "normal", and only 11 were extreme prejudice.

I fixed the tag because the thread was created without one which caused it to bypass the auto lock system.

I don't have any ideas at the moment, but I tagged the main trope page.

shot, my mistake. Bypassing was not my intention

Eh, it happens.

Anyway, I'm also sort of at a loss for what we can do here, short of conforming to the misuse, but I don't want to do that because the current definition is already pretty well-defined, focusing on the impact and shock value.

I don’t know what to suggest besides a large scale cleanup of the examples and wicks. I don’t think the name is what’s causing people to misuse the trope so a rename won’t help much.

Would splitting off a more general "death by impalement" trope help? IDK if it's a tropeworthy concept, but it's no less tropeworthy than half of the things currently on Death Tropes...

That's an idea I was considering.

I mean Impromptu Tracheotomy and Slashed Throat are a bit chairsy as well.

Edited by randomtroper89 on Feb 8th 2022 at 2:04:56 PM

I want to add, after looking at the trope in question, that normal weapons do count for impalements - so long as the impalee is impaled in an extreme fashion (like a sword running through them to the hilt).

So, mainly it's supposed to go all the way through or be with an Improvised / unconventional weapon?

Is going all the way through even common enough to be worth splitting?

Being impaled by a structure seems pretty different than when done in combat? Because it combat, it might lead to Left Stuck After Attack.

Edited by Malady on Feb 8th 2022 at 1:14:41 AM

We may be missing an "impaled on/by surrounding spiky things in the room", like the ice sculpture/fence examples in the wick check.

Yeah, I wonder about if that's sorta already part of the Spikes of Doom idea.

Huh, Impaled is the target of its "impale you and leave you a bloody, shish-kabob'd hero"

Edited by Malady on Feb 8th 2022 at 3:48:09 AM

We could probably split it?

"Nailed To The Wall" - for cases when the impaled one gets stuck like a butterfly specimen (Exhibit A: The Big Bad from Enter the Dragon)

"Nailed Above The Ground" - for victims impaled on upright poles / spikes, like... the current Impaled with Extreme Prejudice page image

We'll probably need to think of a name for cases when the impaled one gets... just an object running through his body part, without being embedded into anything. Like Jet Li in The Warlords

Well, is there an actual tropeworthy difference there?

Impaled To Nail as a trope for impaling people with the purpose of sticking them to the ground or a wall.

Full Hilt Impalement for people fully impaled with "common" weapon (i.e. sword). By fully impaled, I mean hilt is touching victim's chest or back and the pointy end (along with most of the rest of it) is sticking out of the other side.

Well, I know that, but that doesn't mean the variations are enough to justify a split down those lines. They have to have a different impact or purpose.

Not sure what to do here. I don't think we need to trope every possible "death by...", and many examples I'm thinking of fit Torso with a View.

"Stabbed and suspended in air (or fell on a spike)" is what I usually see by "Extreme Prejudice".

Also some cases of IWEP have the victim being impaled by multiple objects, which could be moved to Human Pincushion (only 415 wicks, that can be boosted)

Edited by RobertTYL on Feb 10th 2022 at 4:18:38 AM

That sounds reasonable, per the second paragraph of that trope's description.

I'd say we can at least move the misuse to more applicable tropes if they fit any other tropes, otherwise we'd delete examples that don't fit any other tropes.

Maybe we could tweak the description if necessary.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 9th 2022 at 5:09:16 AM

Pinned to the Wall exists?

(gasp) ... I can't believe I forgot that exists, I've entry-pimped stuff on that page before.

Although, because of the page image, I'm guessing most tropers thought PTTW is for non-fatal, comedic instances only (and for instances where a character gets impaled to a wall by a weapon gets listed as IWEP instead)

EDIT: The page does have fatal examples though, like Varsity Blood or The Shadow of Chikara

I mean, the "Stick around?" from Predator, that's Pinned to the Wall and not Impaled.... right?

Edited by RobertTYL on Feb 11th 2022 at 4:21:35 AM

Odd because the page description mentions multiple times that impalement (even the lethal variety) counts for Pinned to the Wall

Do we have any ideas for what to do with this trope?

Probably a cleanup would be my guess. The name and description seem clear enough about what this is supposed to mean that I'm honestly kinda baffled people are misusing it.

Secondary option could be a rename, though, maybe Through And Through Impalement?

Edited by StarSword on Feb 16th 2022 at 10:56:36 AM

How much is correct use if the wick check takes this into account?