Fate Worse Than Death: Difference between revisions

This is often a useful plot device in a story where the implied threat is so serious that the only satisfying conclusion might be a character's death (either as the [[Asshole Victim|only fitting punishment]] for the villain or requiring a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] by the hero) but the character just has too much [[Plot Armor]] to be [[Killed Off for Real]], or the having him turn up alive because they [[Never Found the Body]] would simply cheapen then story. This way, the conclusion truly means something but the character is potentially recoverable.

 

 

{{noreallife|despite the redefinition of the trope, this is still a [[:Category:Rape Tropes|rape trope]], and All The Tropes does not care to [[squick]] its readers.}}

* In the same vein as ''Dexter'', [[Serial Killer]] Patrick Bateman from ''[[American Psycho]]'' commits some of the most sadistic and gruesome tortures ever conceived by the imagination. In fact, Bateman actually keeps his victims alive intentionally longer, just so they can experience more agony.

* So do some characters in [[Michael Moorcock]]'s ''Elric of Melniboné'' saga and the ''Dorian Hawkmoon'' saga.

* In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ''[[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner|Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]'', Death and Life-in-Death gamble for the Mariner. Life-in-Death wins, to the Mariner's sorrow.

* The [[Stephen King]] short story "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French," which depicts a despairing woman caught in a time loop that ends in a horrid plane crash. Evidently she is {{spoiler|dead and in Hell, and Hell is repetition.}}