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Dropped a Bridge on Him: Difference between revisions
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[[File:wonderella_in_heaven_6175.png|link=The Non Adventures of Wonderella (Webcomic)|right|Death in superhero comics sucks [[Back From the Dead|either way.]]]]
{{quote|"''[[Pun|Bridge]] [[In Soviet Russia, Trope Mocks You|on the]] [[Funny Moments (Sugar Wiki)|captain!]]''"|'''[[William Shatner]]''', after filming {{spoiler|his death scene}} in ''[[Star Trek Generations (Film)|Star Trek Generations]]''}}
When a character is permanently written out of a show, especially killed off, in a way that is unexpectedly anti-climactic or mundane, they Dropped a Bridge on Him.
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'''As a [[Death Trope]], all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''
{{examples
== Media in General ==
* Some (though not ALL, mind you) cases of [[Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome]] are also cases of this trope. Many more examples are given on that trope's page, but a few are worth noting here:
** Alice Hardy, the heroine of ''[[Friday the
** Paxton, hero of ''[[Hostel]]'', who is quickly dispatched in ''Hostel: Part II'''s opening.
** Hicks and Newt in the third movie of the ''Alien'' saga. This really pissed off fans because it made the climax of the previous movie [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|completely pointless]] (not to mention that it completely [[Canon Dis Continuity|decanonized]] all the Alien comics Dark Horse had published since ''Aliens'' was released, in which Newt had grown to young adulthood and [[Took a Level In Badass|taken a level in badass]]).
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** Vanessa's death may better fit a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] or [[Taking the Bullet]]. The foundations were well set up in the proceeding episodes, it is definitely a very in-character sacrifice and not an arbitrary, collapsing bridge in the jungle. True, she didn't expect to die ... but her belief doesn't make it an unrealistic turn of events. She put herself in front of a sniper's bullet. She then earned her heartwarming reward, to be reunited in spirit with her Mother and Father ... pretty much making it clear she didn't miraculously survive the shot.
* In the end of the first arc of ''[[Rave Master (Anime)|Groove Adventure RAVE]]'', the protagonist's father dies shielding him with his own body from falling rocks. That would be heart-warming, if not for the fact that said father and son have always exhibited superhuman levels of strength and endurance, and also the traditional feats seen in Anime. A bridge was definitely dropped here.
* Vamdemon's deaths from ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' and ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]''. To quote one Digimon forumer, each of his forms was [[Clipped
** And let's not get started on the deaths of Arukenimon and Mummymon.
** In the movie, Big Agumon (as he's called in the end credits) literally gets a bridge dropped on him, allowing him to digivolve into Greymon - a minute or two later he and Parrotmon are destroyed in his own attack.
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** And another one is how Jose gets hit ''by a carriage'' right after he and Carmen have resolved to separate but stay in friendly terms until they truly reach their dreams.
* In the ''[[Hellsing]]'' manga, Alucard is erased from existence right before the climax of his confrontation with Walter. Schrodinger committed suicide and blended his life essence with the blood of millions that Alucard was absorbing, causing himself and Alucard to become a set of imaginary numbers due to a quantum irregularity in which Schroedinger ceases to exist if he can no longer recognize his existence. Yes, math and [[Techno Babble]] killed [[Dracula]]. It took him thirty years, but he got better.
* In Part 2 of ''[[Jo
* ''[[Zoids]]'' features a number of these, possibly the most infamous in episode 13 of ''Zoids: Fuzors''. The climactic, three-way battle between the Liger Zero Phoenix, the Buster Fury and the Matrix Dragon (the latter which had been hyped as one of the most powerful Zoids ever just an episode prior) ends with the Buster Fury and the Matrix Dragon getting shot in the back by the Energy Liger. As a final indignity, the Berserk Fury and the Buster Eagle are seen in the following episode looking *better* than they did after they'd been shot, but being declared as "damaged beyond repair, no good even for scrap." What? (Made even more inane when you remember this is a [[Merchandise
* Although a major side-villain and somewhat expected to die at some time during the series run, ''[[Full Metal Panic]]'''s Seina quite literally does have one dropped on her. By her own brother. The Behemoth's activation causes the structural supports for the warehouse to collapse around the main cast during their escape, including the water-filled room Seina is hanging onto a rail in. But we don't get to see that right then. Instead we see her about to shoot Andrey Kalinin despite the fact he came back for her. We see the gun go off as a cliffhanger to episode 11. In episode 12, we see Kalinin alive and Seina mortally wounded. In a flashback we then see her hit by a large girder which caused the gun to go off. That was pretty darned random.
** If you consider the fact that Seina was a nihilistic bitch who had no one left to care for her in any way, and that Mithril would have probably have her killed (or at least locked up for life) for her acts of terrorism, her trying to save Kalinin and then literally dying in the arms of the only man she half-cared for was actually the best ending she could have received under the circumstances.
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* The manga version of ''[[Kimba the White Lion]]'' has [[Childhood Friend Romance|Kitty]] who got killed off by a plague that came out of no where.
* In the movie version of ''[[Akira (Manga)|Akira]]'', Kaori suddenly meets her end when a mutating Testuo accidentally pulls her in and she's crushed by his insides. Her death in the manga [[Sacrificial Lion|was more plot-relevant]], as she's shot to death by Tetsuo's unnamed liutenant and perishes in Tetsuo's arms.
* In ''[[Queens Blade]]'', Shizuka is brutally [[Stuffed Into the Fridge|fridged]] in a [[Family
* Offscreen, but in [[Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime)|the 2003 anime version]] of ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (Manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', Izumi dies somewhere between the end of the series and [[The Movie]]. Justified that she was quite sickly but still.
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** The reception was so poor that the entire series of events was retconned in The [[New 52]] and now Ryan is back to being the sole Atom.
* Terra 2 from ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]'' gets pointlessly killed one day to [[Dying to Be Replaced|make way]] for a [[Legacy Character]], in the form of her sister. She didn't even live long enough to even reunite with said sister, let alone having her true origin revealed to her: she was a princess from a underground kingdom who was given human form (of Terra, oblivious of the fact that Terra was evil), who was ultimately kidnapped by the Time Trapper and mindfucked into thinking she was from the year 2001 as part of an underground group of rebels fighting against the mad son of Donna Troy.
* ''[[Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash|Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors]]'' kills off a number of surviving characters from both the ''[[Friday the
* All the way back in [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|1942]], Fiction House's ''Rangers Comics'' changed its focus from supehero stories to more down-to-earth stories involving American soldiers. The Rangers of Freedom, the super-hero team, became ordinary army rangers. Most of them got bayoneted off-panel before the story ended.
* A villain example occured in the [[Spider Man]] miniseries, ''The Hobgoblin Lives''. Jason Macendale, the second Hobgoblin and major villain for nearly two decades, was quickly shot and killed in one page in order to make way for the original Hobgoblin to return. The writer was Roger Stern, the creator of the original Hobby. He was disappointed that his original version of the character had a bridge dropped on him as well (not to mention that Stern left [[Marvel Comics]] before he could reveal who the Hobgoblin really was). Despite this, Jason Macendale was still a popular villain and should have been powerful enough to avoid his death or at least survive it.
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** Many Jedi die quite abruptly, but [[Canon Immigrant]] Aayla Secura is executed particularly brutally, being shot over and over as if to assure us that she's really dead. Amazingly, some people still [[He's Just Hiding|insisted that she wasn't]].
** Averted with Mace Windu. Samuel Jackson explicity refused to participate in the movie if a bridge was to be dropped on his character. That said, his death scene was one of the most memorable of the film.
** Count Dooku was powerful enough to [[Curb Stomp Battle|curb stomp]] [[The Obi
** Kit Fisto is also a pretty cool Jedi who gets some screen time in ''Attack of the Clones'' and ''[[The Clone Wars]]'', but he is hacked down in about a second by Palpatine.
* The character of Fox in ''[[The Warriors (Film)|The Warriors]]'' was originally meant to be a more substantial presence in the film, particularly in that Mercy, the girl the gang picks up during their escape back to Coney Island, was originally meant to be his love interest. Since the two actors playing Fox and Mercy had no chemistry together, the script was rewritten so that Mercy hooked up with gang leader Swan instead. The actor who played Fox actually left the film over this, so he was written out of the script by being run over by a subway train during a scuffle with a cop.
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** Oh, don't worry, he returns in ''[[For Your Eyes Only (Film)|For Your Eyes Only]]''... and is apparently killed in the opening sequence. By being dropped down a chimney. [[Villain Decay|While pleading for his life]].
{{quote| ''Please, Mister Bond! I'll buy you a delicatessen! In stainless steel!!''}}
** [[It Makes Sense in Context]], given the fact that the person who owned the copyright to Blofeld was trying to use it to wrestle for control of the series proper. Knocking off a [[Lawyer
** Which is all well and good until you realize it doesn't make much sense to do it at that time in Roger Moore's fifth outing and just as many films since Blofeld's last appearance.
** He isn't listed in the credits. [[Fanon Discontinuity|It isn't Blofeld, it isn't Blofeld,]] [[Madness Mantra|it isn't it isn't it isn't...]]
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* Danny Glover's U.S. President in Roland Emmerich's ''2012''. Introduced the subtrope Dropped An Aircraft Carrier On Him.
* In ''The Crawlers'' a.k.a. ''Troll 3'' a.k.a. ''Creepers'' a.k.a. ''Contamination .7'', the heroes confront the [[Big Bad]] and demand to know the location of the illegal dumping site he's been using to dump chemicals so he can embezzle money. He laughs at how they expect him to cooperate and pulls out a gun. Even though he could just shoot at least one of them or just tell them the location and run off with his embezzled money while they're busy, he instead shoots himself in the head.
* Wash in ''[[Serenity (Film)|Serenity]]''. Also an example of [[
** Joss says in the [[Serenity (Film)|Serenity]] commentary that he originally didn't intend for anyone other than Book to die, but then he finished the script and realised that the stakes weren't high enough, and that it was kind of implausible for them all to get through unscathed. Therefore, he did his evil Joss trick of picking the character that would be the most heart-wrenching to kill and proceeding.
* ''[[Sherlock Holmes (Film)|Sherlock Holmes]]: A Game of Shadows'' has drops the bridge on Irene Adler, unceremoniously during a flashback.
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* Inverted in ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia|The Last Battle]]''. The (previously major) character of Susan does not appear, and is abruptly dismissed within a couple of paragraphs as having had an offscreen change of character, causing a lot of fan resentment. The inversion comes when it turns out that she's the only major character who ''isn't'' dead, everyone else having died in a train crash and therefore being eligible to enter the Narnian afterlife.
* Hollyleaf at the end of the third arc of ''[[Warrior Cats (Literature)|Warrior Cats]]'', right after her [[Go Mad From the Revelation|sudden plunge off the deep end]]. [[Never Found the Body|Well]], [[No One Could Survive That|maybe]].
* Arthur Conan Doyle's stab at killing off [[Sherlock Holmes]] might not have caused such a massive [[
* The death of Tiger Cub in the second ''[[Night Watch]]'' book is narrated by an enemy and consists of only slightly more than "So I killed her." Justified, since he barely knew her, but the readers did.
** She is barely mentioned later, when Anton takes over as the narrator, despite being good friends with her.
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** Another character had a bridge dropped upon them in the 1980s. Kamelion was supposed to be a companion for the 5th Doctor who could change his shape into other humanoids. For some reason, the robotic form of Kamelion was portrayed by... a real robot. Problems arose when ''the only person on the planet who knew how to operate the blasted thing died without telling anyone else how to work it.'' This bridge was more out of necessity than anything else, but the fact that he barely shows up for two episodes and was cut out of another makes him a victim of a forgotten bridge at that.
** And then there was the ''galaxy-scale'' bridge dropped on the Time Lords (including Romana, presumably) before the new series.
*** It doesn't stop them from returning in ''The End of Time''. Then a bridge is dropped again. Sort of. Or it's the same bridge that they're sent to. [[Timey
* On ''[[Star Trek Enterprise (TV)|Star Trek Enterprise]]'', Trip kills himself in the series finale to rid the ship of 3 dim-witted space pirates, despite a full squad of MACOs being on board.
** Retconned in the novels: The entire incident was staged by Section 31, and has not been declassified yet. Oh, the holodeck introduces many, many plot holes.
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* NBC's ''[[Las Vegas]]'' had a tendency to kill off the Montecito's owners at a rate of about one per season, but none quite so bizarrely as when Monica Mancuso was carried off of the roof of the casino by a strong gust of wind.
* A literal bridge dropping happens to Shane in ''[[Degrassi Junior High]]'' - while a bridge fell on Kirk, Shane falls off of it while tripping on LSD. Shane survives but is brain-damaged, his parents pull him from the school, and the kid who gave him the drugs (and watched him fall off the bridge, doing nothing) [[Karma Houdini|suffers no consequences]]. Shane is basically ignored and forgotten by the rest of the cast, and the show implies that this is poetic justice for how he (mostly) ignored and forgot a girl who he got pregnant. In ''[[Degrassi the Next Generation]]'', his daughter tracks him down, and it turns out that he spent the rest of his life in a wretched [[Bedlam House|sanitarium for the mentally retarded]], abandoned by his family, and weeping over the girlfriend and child he never did enough for and never got to see.
* ''[[
* The death of [[McLeaned|Lt. Colonel Henry Blake]] in ''[[MASH|M* A* S* H]]'' After getting to go home, the last line of the episode announces that his plane has been shot down, with no survivors.
** However, this is a total subversion of the trope: even though it was a senseless death, it was perfectly in line with everything that the show was meant for, i.e., war is hell, and people die indiscriminately, regardless of whether they are important people or not. So his death, though anti-climactic in theory, was not inappropriate or unsatisfying, but very appropriate, well-done, and respected by viewers. Of course, it wasn't respected by viewers in the '70s when it actually ''happened'', but that was because it is the [[Ur Example]] of this trope in TV comedies.
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* ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'', a ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' parody webcomic. It takes place immediately before the events of the first MGS game, and the last handful of comics show the lead-up to Shadow Moses. [http://www.gigaville.com/comic.php?id=498 Comic #498] has Liquid Snake grinning like a kid in a candy store, exclaiming "It's happening. it's happening.... it's finally happening" just as Solid Snake is about to get his Tactical Espionage Action on. [http://www.gigaville.com/comic.php?id=499 Comic #499:] Dead Decoy Octopus disguised as Anderson, dead Baker, dead Psycho Mantis, dead Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven eaten by his ravens, broken Metal Gear on top of dead Grey Fox, dead Liquid Snake. It's not called "The Last Days of Foxhound" for nothing, after all. Of course, Liquid got better...
{{quote| '''Liquid:''' That sucked.}}
* The Other Warriors in ''[[
** And then there's [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/05/07/episode-1125-unexpected/ this.]
* In ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'', the fly headmaster of Caliban Academy is killed by a sheet of glass falling from a truck in his second appearance in the comic, enabling Fran Caudal to take on his position.
* Valeska Kohler from ''[[Panthera]]'' goes out this way when Oosterhuis/Ari goes [[One
* Gaia from ''[[Draconia Chronicles]]''. Unlike the two Tigresses who fell in chapter one, [[Dying Moment of Awesome|who went down fighting]], Gaia's death was abrupt, meaningless (she was clearly a noncombatant) and pathetic. Her death doesn't even get any acknowledgement aside from a small passing remark from Queen Oscura.
* Happens to Mom and Dad in ''[[Homestuck]]''. They don't even get a death scene.
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** Ultra Magnus in ''Headmasters'', at the hands of Sixshot. Also, near the beginning of the season/series, Optimus [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrifices himself]] to stabilize Vector Sigma.
*** And then there's Galvatron, who survives being at the center of the destruction of Cybertron, only to apparently be [[Killed Off for Real]] by having an ''iceberg'' dropped on him (there wouldn't happen to be a bridge frozen somewhere inside that iceberg, would there?).
** In order to facilitate the [[Merchandise
*** Terrorsaur and Scorponok's death could also be seen as being [[Put On a Bus]], since both are seen glowing while they sink into the lava-- implying they too were going through Transmetalization. Had the story called for it, they could have returned and used their Transmetalization as an excuse for how they survived.
*** This was also done in the series finale, in which Megatron shoots Quickstrike and Inferno with the Nemesis' guns while attempting to kill the protohumans, who survive mysteriously unharmed. To add insult to injury, the very last scene shows the protohumans cooking and playing with the pieces of their corpses.
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