Losing the Team Spirit/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A party-wide Heroic BSOD triggered by some staggering loss, whether an item or a life -- or worse.

  • Straight: Albert and his friends are shaken to the core after Pike, Albert's best friend, dies brutally at the hands of Blood Knight Sanguina.
  • Exaggerated: All the members of the growing resistance movement have a group-wide panic attack after their leader and her Five-Man Band are captured and publicly executed, followed by her trusted second-in-command revealing that he was working for The Empire all along and gave Emperor Evulz all of their infomation.
  • Justified: The person was the only one who could deal with the Big Bad.
  • Inverted: Pike's death causes the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to put aside their differences in the name of avenging him.
  • Subverted: Pike's death doesn't particularly upset Albert or any of his other friends -- at least, not to the point of anyone suffering a full-on BSOD.
  • Double Subverted: Albert and the others aren't jarred by Pike's death... because they assume He's Just Hiding. But when they come across his broken body being publicly displayed as a warning to others, that triggers a full-on Freak-Out for the entire team.
  • Parodied: The team falls into despair after their leader suffers from a gruesome... paper cut.
  • Deconstructed: The dead character had deliberately made himself vital to the workings of the team, to ensure that no one would replace him, and so had undercut the possibility of succession.
  • Reconstructed: But that was necessary for the team's cohesion. It takes them longer, but one of them finally takes the lead.
  • Zig Zagged: After Pike's death, Albert starts BSO Ding, while Willow suffers Survivor Guilt mixed with an unhealthy amount of self-blame. However, Marcy, Kelvin, Claudia and Raven spur the others on, insisting that stopping now would make his sacrifice meaningless. Then, when they finally find the Sword of Plot Advancement, Kelvin turns on them and reveals his allegiance to the Emperor, shattering Marcy and Raven's resolve and sending Willow into another Heroic BSOD while shocking Albert out of his.
  • Averted: The team stays together desipte Pike's death.
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: "Ironic isn't it? Kill the right person and you kill the entire group!"
  • Invoked: Sanguina studied the group long enough to determine that Pike's courage in the face of adversity was key to spurring on Albert and the others, and deliberately took him out.
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Plotted A Good Waste: ???
  • Played For Laughs: ???
  • Played For Drama: ???

Back to Losing the Team Spirit.