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The World's Expert on Getting Killed: Difference between revisions
The World's Expert on Getting Killed (view source)
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{{trope}}
They know more about the threat than anyone. Can tell the hero/heroine everything they want to know. They're a cop who's been hunting the [[Serial Killer]] for their entire career, or the [[Great White Hunter]] who knows more about dangerous animals than anyone. Perhaps [[Haunted House Historian|they're an expert on ancient curses]], or is schooled in the ways of killer robots. Whoever they are, they're the good guy's best and most reliable source of information regarding The Threat, its plans, its motivations, its patterns, its strengths, and its weaknesses.
Unfortunately for them, they're not the hero of the story. Even more unfortunately, they're just useful enough to the hero that their death will make our heroes even more vulnerable, and their plight more dramatic. Worse still, since they're the expert on The Threat, their death by the Threat will augment the advantage the villain has over the heroes—after all, if this Expert couldn't win against them, what shot do our non-Expert main heroes have?
The above may be unfortunate, but this is just embarrassing: Not only will our Expert get killed by the [[Big Bad]], but at no time in the confrontation will our Expert even pose a major challenge to the Big Bad. The Expert, (usually late in the game having imparted all their useful advice and wisdom about the threat), will be dispatched neatly, cleanly and almost effortlessly by the villain/monster/demon, making the audience wonder how in the hell this guy even lived long enough to ever become an expert on this particular threat at all.
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* In the first season finale of ''[[Blood Plus]]'', Saya, Haji and Eric team up with a squad of professional chiropteran (vampire) hunters. They die to a man fighting baby chiropterans.
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', Lieutenant Colonel Hughes upon working out the secret plan of the Big Bad and running out to inform his superior Col. Mustang, is attacked by two main enemies who work for the Big Bad. He fights back, but in vain and is killed without relaying any of the info. This then adds to the plight of the hero's and makes it personal.
* The Anti-BM unit in [[Bio
* ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'': Mami Tomoe is a veteran Magical Girl who introduces Madoka and Sayaka to the risks and rewards involved so they can decide if they want to enlist. She gets eaten by episode three's [[Monster of the Week]].
** The protagonist who ''truly'' knows the most about the dangers Magical Girls face, Homura, is actually a subversion. She's the only character who not only survives the series, but never dies in any of the shown timelines {{spoiler|since she's the reason these, and the other, timelines even exist}}.
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** Dr. Henry Wu, who should theoretically know as much as Muldoon about the creatures he helped to create, also gets it in the book. To be fair, he was holding the [[Idiot Ball]] at the time.
** Ian Malcolm being the only person who '''knows''' from the start that the Park is unsafe, still goes there anyway. Just so he can be the [[Only Sane Man]] and [[Deadpan Snarker]]. Fittingly, he is killed in the book. But he survives the film and it is [[Ret Conned]] in the book sequel that [[Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated]].
* Carson Wells from ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'' is the character most familiar with serial killer Anton Chigurh. Chigurh doesn't even break a sweat in catching up with him.
** Well, he did call Chigurh unstoppable. The World's Expert on an [[Implacable Man]] isn't exactly immune to bullets.
*** The un-initiated Llewelen is, however much more problematic for Chigurh.
* Major Valentina Koslova from ''[[The Jackal]]'' is assigned to help Preston and Mulqueen track down the title assassin, bringing with her all her useful knowledge about the villain. Still, her confrontation with him doesn't last long.
* Charles Remington in ''[[The Ghost and the Darkness]]'' is the world's authority on man-eating lions, and how to make them dead. One of the lions takes him in his sleep, it seems.
** Repeated with the [[Badass]] hunter in ''Prey''.
* Phillip Fitzroyce, from the ''[[Jaws 3]]-D'', is described as a skilled hunter and naturalist who has every confidence he can take down the killer shark that is threatening the movie's fictionalized Sea World park. He lasts about five minutes against the beast.
** This happens in the first film as well with Quinn.
*** To some extent it's really his pride that does him in. He's been hunting and killing sharks for years, and can't quite accept that this particular one might be more than he can handle.
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* ''[[The Rage: Carrie 2]]'' combines this with [[Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome]], killing off a [[Zen Survivor]] who tried to prevent the slaughter this time around.
* Happens towards the end in ''[[Spy Kids|Spy Kids 3D]]'' where a teen comes in who calls himself [[The Chosen One|"The Guy"]]. He enters the last level before the others do. You'd think a video game expert would last long, but one hit and all 100 hit points he had were ''gone''.
* The ball-collecting scientist in ''[[Planet Terror]]'' is the only person in the world who knows ''anything'' about the cause of the zombie apocalypse - a green gas referred to by professionals in the business as "the shit" - and what might be done to fix everything. Guess what happens just as he's about to tell the viewers and protagonists about it.
== Literature ==
* ''[[Harry Potter]]'': Book 6; Dumbledore, an expert in magic and Voldemort, gets himself cursed by making a foolish move while retrieving Voldemort's ring horcrux. Justified by the fact that, by his own admission, his desperation to find out who killed his sister (his enemy or [[Kick the Wrong Dog|his own misfired spell]]) clouded his judgement.
** Mad-Eye Moody in ''[[Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows]]''. He is described as a master duelist and an expert in fighting Dark Wizards, but is killed personally by [[Big Bad|Voldemort]] literally five chapters into the book. He doesn't put up much of a fight before going down, either. To be fair, though, he ''was'' left in a bad position, [[Failure Is the Only Option|had no way of winning the battle]], and may not have had a chance to properly defend himself.
*** ''Avada Kedavra'' is unblockable, so he could only have survived if he dodged it. Considering Mundungus Fletcher disapparated, distracting him and probably throwing his broom off-balance, it's not likely he was able to.
** Gilderoy Lockhart is a parody of this trope. He's amazing. A genius. He's defeated evil monster after evil monster- and his written works on how he did it has made him famous. Oddly enough, he seems rather hesitant to do anything in real life. {{spoiler|Turns out that he's been stealing the defeats of evil monsters off other people, and erasing their memories.}}
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* In ''[[F.E.A.R.|Project Origin]]'', Snake Fist/Terry Halford is your best chance of bringing down Alma. Which results in [[Surprisingly-Sudden Death|an Assassin ripping his head off]] seconds after you meet him.
* In ''[[The Witcher]]'', Raymond Maarloeve, a private eye motivated by the death of his family at the hands of the organization known as Salamandra, had amassed information on the group and its head, Azar Javed, with the hopes of bringing them down. Raymond decides to aid the protagonist, Geralt, in dismantling Salamandra. The endeavor doesn't end well for him, despite Geralt successfully defending him from Salamandra's initial backlash.
** Spoiler: {{spoiler|Azar Javed himself kills Maarloeve, and begins impersonating him using magic, which Geralt may or may not discover early on, depending on the player's actions.}}
* In ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood|Assassin's Creed Brotherhood]]'', one Borgia Captain claims, in [[Enemy Chatter]] you can eavesdrop on, to know how Assassins operate and thus how to deal with them, but other than being on horseback (and thus being able to flee faster), he's no harder to kill for all his bluster than any other Borgia Captains. As a result, players have been known to time their kills of him to maximize the dramatic irony. For example...
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