Dropped a Bridge on Him/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character leaves the story or is killed un-climatically.

  • Straight: Alice drives off road and sinks in a nearby river. Back to the action!
  • Exaggerated:
  • Justified:
    • Alice was just an Recurring Extra or a Mauve Shirt.
    • Or the writer is trying to make a point about how sudden and random death can be, and how not everyone can have a big, climactic meaningful death scene.
    • The actress who plays Alice is leaving the show for good, and they need a way to get rid of the character without taking up a lot of time.
    • The lightness is a plot point, having people not notice Alice's death will later be part of the story.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted: The superhero comes just in time to save Alice from drowning in the river.
  • Double Subverted: But then Bob drives off road and knocks Alice back in the water. Back to the action!
  • Parodied:
  • Deconstructed: Many, many characters get bridges dropped on them in the series, leading the main characters to be paranoid of leaving their houses in fear of being killed suddenly.
  • Reconstructed: The main characters realize that life is worth the risk of a bridge falling on them, and leave their houses to continue their adventures. May or may not have bridges drop on the characters anyway, depending on the work.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice drowns in a river to no remorse of the other characters. She soon comes back as a ghost, and everyone suddenly feels apologetic for her death, and throws her a 'proper' funeral with her found body. She then promptly disappears from the series for no reason, and nobody ever mentions her ghost nor her funeral again.
  • Averted: Given a climactic death
  • Enforced: "Nobody likes funerals. Let's just not give Alice one, she wasn't the title character anyway."
  • Lampshaded: "Alice was found dead in the river." "How anticlimactic."
  • Invoked: "Let's go murder Alice."
  • Defied: Alice drowns in a river, and nobody mentions her after the fact-- except Bob, who is sincerely sorry for her death and practically abandons the group in mourning for a couple of weeks.
  • Discussed: "Hey, Dave, I haven't seen Alice in a while, have you?" "Eh, who cares,she wasn't very important anyway." "Yea, you're right. Wanna get some pizza?"
  • Conversed: "And jeez, do you remember that one time in this show where Alice died, and nobody gave a damn?"

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