Last Grasp at Life/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A dying character's last act is to desperately grasp out for something to save themselves.

  • Played Straight: Bob is sinking into a bubbling pit of quicksand, and the last thing to vanish is his outstretched hand.
  • Exaggerated: ???
  • Justified: There's a floating platform nearby, but Bob's fingers only graze it before he sinks out of reach.
  • Inverted: Futile Hand Reach: Alice screams a Big No and stretches out her hand to Bob from the shore, even though he's twenty feet away.
  • Subverted: Bob's right hand breaks the surface of the Shark Pool... and turns out to be a bloody disembodied stump floating in a red cloud.
  • Double Subverted: ...Then his left hand reaches up, grabbing hold of his lost one, and Bob gasps for breath, revealing the dead shark held in a choke-hold under his mutilated right arm.
  • Deconstructed: Bob is told to hold still and lie on his back to stop himself sinking in the quicksand; unfortunately his movie-taught instinct is to thrash around wildly, which only drives him further downwards into the non-Newtonian Death Trap.
  • Reconstructed: Bob can see a strong vine hanging mere inches about him, and if he can just grab onto it he can pull himself out...
  • Parodied: Bob's hand sinks below the surface... and his left hand thrashes out to a Scare Chord. That one gradually sinks... and then the right one comes back up to an identical scare chord. Eventually even Alice gets bored and walks away.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob sinks hand-last, a few solitary bubbles reach the surface... and then with a burst of Heroic Resolve, it re-emerges... only to thrash around at nothing. Just before he seems about to go back under, Alice's hand grasps his and hauls him free.
  • Lampshaded: "What's he even reaching for? There's nothing there..."
  • Averted: Bob's head is the last part to vanish.
  • Enforced: The writers want to end the episode on a Not Quite Dead teaser, so have the submerged Bob's hand reemerge at the last moment.
  • Invoked: ???
  • Defied: Bob resolves to Face Death with Dignity, and crosses his arms.
  • Discussed: "Tenner says his hand pops out."
  • Conversed: ???
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