Killed Mid-Sentence/Playing With
Basic trope: A character was in the middle of saying, but Death won’t let him finish his thought.
- Straight: Bogged down in the middle of a trench fight, Frank’s last words are “I think we need to get over there and-”
- Exaggerated: Every single Red Shirt dies this way.
- Downplayed: Frank says “I wanted you to know that…” right before he dies of lung cancer.
- Justified: It’s not like everyone gets to go out with a set of Famous Last Words.
- Inverted: Frank was killed while somebody else was in the middle of talking to him.
- Parodied: Frank’s overused catchphrase is cut off.
- Alternately, in a foreign film, both Frank and his subtitler are killed at the same time, and the rest of the film is not subtitled because of the subtitler's apparent death.
- Frank is shot in the middle of his sentence, but he was holding a sign that says the end of the sentence.
- Subverted: Frank is shot in the middle of his sentence, but he actually manages to say “Ow! That…really hurt!” before dying.
- Alternately, Frank is cut off by being shot, but it turns out he’s only unconscious…
- Double Subverted: …until he dies in the hospital during surgery.
- Averted: Frank is not killed in the middle of his sentence, dying either before he can speak, or after he spoke.
- Frank neither dies nor is in danger of dying.
- Enforced: To prove that Anyone Can Die.
- Invoked: Frank’s assassin deliberately waits until he is saying something important to kill him, just to screw around with the witnesses.
- Defied: Frank stays alive long enough to finish his sentence.
- Lampshaded: “Jesus Christ, that guy didn’t even finish his sentence!”
- Discussed: “And then Frank said something I’ll never forget: ‘I wanted you to know…’” “Know what?” “That was it. He never finished his sentence. Took a bullet to the head.”
- Conversed: “Damn! That guy just got slaughtered mid-sentence!”