Put on a Bus to Hell: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

So an actor's walked out of the show, leaving you and the other writers in a bit of a sticky spot. You don't want to [[McLeaned|kill their character off]], but you're still feeling pretty malicious, and just having them [[Put on a Bus]] isn't nasty enough. The solution is to Put Them On A Bus To Hell - write them out in a way so mean-spirited that it's clear to all and sundry that you're doing it out of spite.

** Such is the coolness of Oz, however, that it's still kinda hard to hate him. [[Tear Jerker|It doesn't make you feel much better about the ending, but still...]]

** Riley was similarly written out, with his alienation from the group turning to mind-melting stupidity that nearly gets him killed, and quitting when Buffy can't forgive him. Again, he gets an encore episode where he's portrayed more nicely, if blandly.

*** And then he basically becomes the force that binds the universe together.

** He also gets an encore that flips the script, this time ''literally'' in hell. In the Angel comic series, he gets to be an almost angelic leader of a refuge district of the LA hellscape.

* In ''[[Degrassi Junior High]]'', Nicole Stoffman (who played Stephanie) left the show in the third season to further her career elsewhere. In the next episode, Stephanie's brother says that their mom has sent her to a private school with a strict dress code, "including knee socks." Stephanie was a fashionista who spent the entire show trying to be glamorous and pretty, so she could escape her [[Control Freak]] mother's iron fist. If she doesn't rejoin the cast, it sure sucks to be Stephanie.

** In ''[[Degrassi the Next Generation]]'': Dan Woods, who had been commuting between LA and Toronto, wanted to leave the show because his productions for [[Speed Channel]] were taking off; Principal Raditch spoke to Rick three times in the two days before the shooting, entirely clueless as to how deeply troubled Rick was, and was [[Reassigned to Antarctica]] not long after.

* Wade from ''[[Sliders]]''. Sabrina Lloyd supposedly didn't return for season four due to behind-the-scenes drama, and her character's fate sure seems to confirm this: how does "taken by the villains to spend the rest of her life being '''used for breeding purposes'''" sound? The way she was brought back was not much friendlier, basically kept in a [[Brain In a Jar|jar with her brain exposed]] to be used to control the same villains' new advanced dimension-hopping machine. She destroys the base in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]], but appears to Rembrandt once more afterward, so there's hope for her survival... if you can call being trapped in the ruined Kromagg base in a mutilated, [[And I Must Scream]] condition "hopeful."

** Hey she evolved into some sort of Spirit of the Slide. Beats breeding sow or pickle in the jar any day. Plus she still looks over Remy so that's a plus.

** Given that most fans feel the series had [[Jumped the Shark]] well before any of this, it's usually all treated as [[Discontinuity]].

** Of course, [[Your Mileage May Vary|your opinion of that]] depends on how much you like his mother-in-law, a character who seems to be intended to be the show's [[Team Mom|mother figure]], but more often comes across as a [[Control Freak]] with a [[God Mode Sue|messiah complex]]. Many fans were cheering that a character finally [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|called her out on her behaviour]] without apologising a couple of scenes later. (And, since he didn't know that she was losing the baby or even that she'd tripped when he walked away from her, he can be forgiven that one, despite it being presented as a [[Moral Event Horizon]] to make us seem him as the [[Designated Villain|bad guy]].)

* This seems to happen a lot on soap operas. One of ''[[Home and Away]]'''s more blatant examples was Alex Poulos, who was ostracised by most of the town for [[Sarcasm Mode|the heinous crime]] of dumping his current girlfriend for his ex and left town in shame. In case viewers didn't get the message, he came back a few years later, revealed the girl in question had left him, used his unknowing sister as a drugs courier, put his nephew's life in danger by leaving drugs lying around and left town in even more shame.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

 

 

* The Spirit Squad are probably an example of this as well, as their grand exit from WWE under those characters involved being shipped off to Louisville (home of WWE developmental territory OVW) in a giant crate by D-Generation X. Three of the members have not (as of this edit) been seen on WWE TV since, the fourth (Kenny <s> Doane</s> Dykstra) returned pretty much solely to job up until his release in late 2008, and the fifth and sole remaining member returned to portray Dolph Ziggler, the guy who really, really likes shaking peoples' hands and repeating his own name (and now be a total [[Jerkass]] Heel).

** Ziggler actually went on to be rather successful.

** Ten years later, when 'Taker was going to change from the more realistic "American Badass" leather-wearing, short-haired biker back to the original gimmick of being literally undead, his brother Kane buried the American Badass alive, only for him to come back as the Deadman.

*** From a very recent episode of Smackdown! after The Undertaker got a legit injury in a match with Rey Mysterio