History Main / DisposableWoman

** Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan dies in ''ComicBook/TheAmazingSpiderMan2022''#26 and is used in a way to motivate Peter AND a HeelFaceTurn Norman Osborn.

* ''Film/{{Taken}}'': The whole reason Amanda exists is to be killed to show that the bad guys are monsters and thus how important it is for Bryan to find [[{{Protectorate}} Kimmy]] ASAP.
** Bryan's ex-wife, with whom he is still in love, survives until the second sequel, when her murder is what sends him on another quest for vengeance.

* A recurring feature of the ''Franchise/KamenRider'' franchise is that women who become Riders are doomed to die, [[StuffedInTheFridge usually for cheap drama]]. Examples, subversions, and aversions:
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderStronger Stronger]]'': Yuriko[=/=]Tackle, the original Disposable Rider Woman. Not considered a Kamen Rider, which remains something of a sticking point among the fandom.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderAgito Agito]]'': The first Agito was Shouichi's sister, who died pre-series.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderRyuki Ryuki]]'': Miho[=/=]Femme only appears in the movie ''Episode Final'', where she dies quietly after a battle and is subsequently forgotten.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderFaiz Faiz]]'': Several women borrow a Rider Gear (only to be [[CurbStompBattle immediately knocked out of morph]]) but the only woman to have one long-term, the original Delta, operated mostly offscreen, only to die just before what would have been her first onscreen battle. Harsh. Another one, Rina Abe, also wore the Delta Gear but survives the series.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderBlade Blade]]'': Natsumi[=/=]Larc only appears in the movie ''Missing Ace'' and is killed, but in fairness so are her teammates.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderHibiki Hibiki]]'': Shuki is a {{Manipulative B|astard}}itch and AntiHero [[spoiler:who is sought her revenge against the Makamou for killing her parents in the first place]], so naturally she dies. (Mind you, this was part of the heavy ReTool to make the series - based on a Creator/ShotaroIshinomori {{Toku}} story that wasn't intended to be a KR series - in line with what PowersThatBe thought a KR series should be like. Neither this nor any of the other changes went over well.) Akira doesn't become a full Oni, but transforms once (we don't see her Rider form well) and survives the series.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderKiva Kiva]]'': Yuri, who uses Ixa a time or three in 1986, dies off-camera but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with being a Rider. Her daughter Megumi, who uses Ixa on two brief occasions in 2008, survives the series and moves on to get married in the ending. Neither is the long-term owner of the Ixa armor; like ''Faiz,'' borrowing it from its true male owners is often [[CurbStompBattle a bad idea]], but this time, there's exceptions: TheMovie (Megumi ''still'' just gets beaten up, but Yuri gets to use it well), and the time the male users defeated Rook but allowed the girls to have the final blow.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderDecade Decade]]'': Natsumi becomes a Rider in the GrandFinale movie and survives the whole series[[note]]Okay, so technically she '''did''' die, well before she became a Rider, but TheHero Tsukasa sacrificed a portion of his life to bring her BackFromTheDead. Fans have joked that she gets to survive because she's already satisfied the death requirement[[/note]]. The series also gives better treatment to some past Riders, allowing Larc ([[OneSteveLimit renamed Haruka]]) to live and upgrading Akira to a full-fledged Rider, Kamen Rider Amaki. Tackle's back, and is ''still'' dead (it's complicated) but she's a much more effective fighter than the original FauxActionGirl.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderGaim Gaim]]'': Yoko Minato is a subversion; while eventually also dying, lasted longer than most female riders, and shown to have excellent fighting skills.

* ''Manga/DeathNote'':
** Once Sayu is done serving as a motivation for Light and Soichirou, she gets all of one panel of credit for the rest of the series. [[spoiler:She doesn't die, though she does suffer from a very bad case of PTSD and stays on a state of shock for a while. A very tiny last panel shows her attending a Coming of Age Ceremony months after the incident and looking much better, though WordOfGod says she hasn't ''necessarily'' recovered yet. The anime, however, omits this panel entirely.]]
** This is Light's attitude towards anyone who professes love for him. He manipulates Misa Amane to become his tool and states from time to time that he has no problem killing her if she implicates him. His college girlfriend Kiyomi Takada, meanwhile, is made into his spokesperson, yet [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness Light kills her after she has proven her usefulness to him by killing Mello]]. [[spoiler:It's such a delicious irony that in the final chapter, when Light has a massive VillainousBreakdown upon getting outed as Kira and shot at by Matsuda, he begs for Misa and Takada to save him. As in, he ends up asking for help from women he heartlessly took for granted.]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV ]]

** ''[[Series/KamenRiderExAid Ex-Aid]]'': Nico Saiba, while a debatable rider, uses a mass-production transformation device called the Ride Player and survives the whole series and thus an aversion. Another one, Nozomi Aida, while surviving, is less successful, and this is the same case with an older women, Teruyo, though they make it alive. Many of the other female Ride Players don't make it alive. Poppy is a straighter example, being killed by Kuroto Dan, but as an AI, she gets resurrected in the end.
** ''[[Series/KamenRiderZeroOne Zero One]]'': While it remains to be seen if Yua, the third rider to be introduced, play this trope, most of her robot counterparts would fall squarely under this trope. The female [[RobotGirl HumaGear]] guests were not love interests to the hero Aruto (though some of them do help him), and they all tend to be corrupted into [[MonsterOfTheWeek Magias]] and destroyed. The strangest thing is while male Magias that were destroyed were sometimes given a ReplacementGoldfish on-screen, as of this writing, [[spoiler: it took episode 18 for a female Magia to be rebuilt]].

[[caption-width-right:350:At least she's not ending up in a [[StuffedIntoTheFridge fridge.]]]]

* ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'':
** Male example: Galadriel’s brother is swiftly killed off at the start of the series in order to force Galadriel into a revenge story against Sauron.

* This befalls several characters in the ''Series/TwentyFour'' universe, ''especially'' women who have been married to/dated Jack Bauer:
** Claudia, Jack's ex-girlfriend who lives in Mexico working for the Salazar brothers. As soon as she, her father and Chase Edmunds make plans to escape the Salazar ranch, her life expectancy is measured in minutes, not episodes. She ends up dying off-screen during their escape.
** Audrey Raines: kidnapped in the ''first episode she appears in''. Rescued several times from perilous situations by Jack until she gets captured and tortured by the Chinese for a year in the sixth season. She's now in an unresponsive coma. [[spoiler:And then she recovers by ''Live Another Day'' only to be shot dead in the finale.]]
* ''Series/TheWheelOfTime'': Perrin is given a wife, Laila (very briefly mentioned in the books as his likely future bride). He accidentally kills her the same episode she's introduced to show that his latent wolfbrother ability's coming up and getting him carried away while fighting, after which he can be devastated for it happening.

** The victim in the very first case of the [[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney very first game]], Larry's girlfriend, is an example of this trope: Larry moves on from her ''very'' quickly. Next time we see him, he's already dating another woman.

** Once Sayu is done serving as a motivation for Light and Soichirou, she gets all of one panel of credit for the rest of the series. [[spoiler:She doesn't die, though she does suffer from a crippling case of PTSD.]]

** And finally, we have [[spoiler:Chiaki Nanami from the Despair Side. Her death was organized by [[UlimateEvil Junko Enoshima]] to mentally break her classmates and push them into despair. Additionally, it's through her death that [[TheDreaded Izuru Kamakura]] is moved to tears by her last words and decides to betray Emoshima]].

** And finally, we have [[spoiler: Chiaki Nanami from the Despair Side. Her death was organized by [[UlimateEvil Junko Enoshima]] to mentally break her classmates and push them into despair. Additionally, it's through her death that [[TheDreaded Izuru Kamakura]] is moved to tears by her last words and decides to betray Emoshima]].

* ''Anime/DragonBallSuper''

* In ''Manga/YuGiOh'', Kisara's character boils down to 'quiet, mysterious girl who's powerful, but is killed to motivate Seto'. In the manga, she's randomly attacked in the middle of a conversation and dies, enraging Seto and allowing him to be possessed until the end of the arc. [[Anime/YuGiOh The anime]] has her sacrifice herself to protect Seto and then free him from the darkness before the end of the arc. In the original plan for the arc, her death would have served to motivate an un-brainwashed Seto to rebel against the Pharaoh, fighting a three-way war to avenge her death.

* A gender-inverted version exists in the WesternAnimation/{{Encanto}} fanfic [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/37866283/chapters/94556860 Mariano's Brother]]. Camilo's only purpose in the story is to get murdered by the story's antagonist at the halfway point. His death is his sister’s, Dolores, main motivation for the rest of the story.

** Later played straight again when [[spoiler:Zamasu describes to Goku how Black murdered the future timeline versions of Goten and ChiChi]]. This causes Goku to snap like he did during his fight against Freeza on Namek.

* In ''Anime/KillLaKill'', the reason [[NoNonsenseNemesis Tsumugu Kinagase]] is such a grumpy jerkhole is because [[spoiler: his sister was a life fiber researcher who lost her life when one of the experiments went haywire. He blames the life fibers for her death and for tricking her into believing that humans and life fibers could ever coexist]].

* A gender-reversed version exists in the WesternAnimation/{{Encanto}} fanfic [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/37866283/chapters/94556860 Mariano's Brother]]. Camilo's only purpose in the story is to get murdered by the story's antagonist at the halfway point. His death is his sister’s, Dolores, main motivation for the rest of the story.

* Linkara discusses this in the ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'' review of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheKillingJoke''. He explains that all Barbara Gordon's crippling does, in the broader picture of things, serves to motivate the men in the picture, that the moment and the prologue before it was only meant to give the men reason to go against the villains. He even suggests that the crippling shouldn't of even happened in the animated version as this was just a one-off movie.

** In Episode 47, [[spoiler:Future Trunks watches as his mother, Bulma, is killed by Goku Black, [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment who initially takes the appearance of a ghastly apparition]] or EldritchAbomination, rather than someone in Goku's body.]] Before revealing to the viewer that [[spoiler:the BigBad is someone who looks near identical to Goku, Trunks' girlfriend, Mai, appears to be killed by Goku Black. This is later [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] when she is shown to have survived the blast.]]
** Later played straight when [[spoiler:Zamasu describes to Goku how Goku Black murdered the future timeline versions of Goten and ChiChi.]]

* A gender-reversed version exists in the WesternAnimation/{{Encanto}} fanfic [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/37866283/chapters/94556860 Mariano's Brother]]. Camilo's only purpose in the story is to get murdered by the story's antagonist at the halfway point. His death is his sister’s, Dolores's, main motivation for the rest of the story.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'': After several games of being a DamselInDistress or OutOfFocus, Kairi finally gains prominence in Kingdom Hearts III only to be killed off ''twice''.
** In the first instance, she is one of many casualties as part of a TotalPartyKill, which happens purely to demonstrate her [[DeusExMachina princess magic]] being able to support Sora[[note]]the main protagonist[[/note]] and help him bring everyone else back to life.
** In the second instance, she is killed again ([[DeathIsCheap sort of]]) by the main villain, who explicitly states that he is doing so to motivate Sora.

** In the second instance, she is killed again [[(DeathIsCheap sort of)]] by the main villain, who explicitly states that he is doing so to motivate Sora.

* In the lost ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' comic ''Future of Despair'', [[spoiler:Panne]]'s only in-story role is getting herself killed so her CrusadingWidower [[spoiler:Henry]] can go {{mangst}}ing around [[spoiler:while [[ParentalNeglect heavily neglecting]] their son Yarne]] [[spoiler:until he himself dies]].

** [[ComicBook/{{Colossus}} Peter Rasputin]] broke up with ComicBook/KittyPryde because of Zsaji, a Disposable Woman he met during ''ComicBook/{{Secret Wars|1984}}'' and fell hopelessly in love with despite not even speaking her language. After spending hours together, she ends up sacrificing her life to save the heroes from ComicBook/DoctorDoom's KillEmAll attack after he absorbed the Beyonder's power. Karma then came and kicked his ass in the form of the Juggernaut. Afterwards, Wolverine lectured him on not letting Kitty down gently.

* A gender-reversed version exists in the WesternAnimation/{{Encanto}} fanfic [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/37866283/chapters/94556860 Mariano's Brother]]. Camilo's only purpose in the story is to get murdered by the story's antagonist at the halfway point. His death is Dolores's main motivation for the rest of the story.

** In the second instance, she is killed (sort of) by the main villain, who explicitly states that he is doing so to motivate Sora... who already had more than enough incentive to stop the main villain anyway.

** And finally, we have [[spoiler: Chiaki Nanami from the Despair Side. Her death was organized by [[UlimateEvil Junko Enoshima]] to mentally break her classmates and push them into despair. Additionally, it's through her death that [[TheDreaded Izuku Kamakura]] is moved to tears by her last words and decides to betray Emoshima]].