A plot pattern that occurs frequently in Shakespeare's plays. In modern works, it's often a homage to Romeo and Juliet. The pattern goes as follows:
- Alice and Bob are in love with each other.
- Something happens to Alice that makes Bob think she is dead, or otherwise unreachable.
- In despair, Bob commits suicide.
- Alice returns, and then realizing that Bob is dead, Alice commits suicide.
Often there can be variations but the end result is often the same. It is usually an example of love but it can also be an occasional example of despair over losing a valued rival.
Not to be confused with a Suicide Pact (mutually agreed beforehand) or Murder-Suicide (one of them killed the other and then themselves).
As usual, because suicide involves making oneself die, there will be spoilers.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Checker does this after Charlene dies in the incredibly bad Joseph Lai pseudo-anime Space Transformers.
Comic Books
- Used in an X-Men storyline that was a homage to Romeo and Juliet, making the rival families one of humans and one of mostly mutants to boot. He's shot. She kills herself. He proves to have been Not Quite Dead, finds that she is Quite Dead, and tries to kill himself... but the Healing Factor that saved him from the shooting won't let him die. He goes on to become the X-Man Icarus. Later on he dies anyway, killed by the Sentinel robot Nimrod.
Film — Live Action
- Played with in Bram Stoker's Dracula. At the beginning of the film, set in medieval times, Dracula's noble love throws herself off a tower when she hears false news of his death in combat. When Dracula returns, the bishop tells him that she is damned to hell for her suicide. Enraged, he renounces God and becomes a vampire, technically committing suicide.
- Played with in Ophelia, a Perspective Flip on Hamlet that borrows a bit from another of Shakespeare's plays. After her father is accidentally killed by her love interest Hamlet and he is subsequently sent away to England, what finally sends Ophelia into her Heroic BSoD is learning that Hamlet was supposedly murdered on the orders of Claudius (unaware that he actually escapes and secretly returns to Denmark). It looks as though this is what precipitates her drowning death... however, Ophelia then learns from Horatio that Hamlet is still alive, prompting her to fake her death to try and reunite with him. Upon digging her up, Horatio tells her that Hamlet has learnt of her 'death' and has been challenged to a Duel to the Death with her brother Laertes, with it being inferred that Hamlet feels he's got nothing left now but getting revenge on Claudius even at the cost of his own life. Ophelia tries to stop him and gets him to realise she's alive, but he still can't let go of his desire for vengeance. He dies, but Ophelia refuses to give into despair and escapes with her life.
Folklore & Mythology
- Also in the original myth of Pyramus and Thisbe (recounted by Ovid) that Shakespeare
ripped offreferenced when he wrote Romeo and Juliet. Probably the Ur-Example.
Literature
- In Blackbird (1986), two of the characters do this in a tragic re-enactment of the double suicide of Romeo and Juliet, which the friends have been studying.
- Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart is a 12th century text which has an example that predates Romeo and Juliet. While searching for Gawain in the countryside of Gorre, Lancelot gets taken captive. The rumor mill turns "Lancelot was seized" into "Lancelot was seized and put to death." His lover guinevere hears this and is distraught, nearly suicidal. Grieving Lancelot, Guinevere goes two days without eating and drinking. From there springs a rumor she's dying, which becomes a rumor that she's already dead. Lancelot hears this and is Driven to Suicide himself. He's conflicted about it — he's a Christian and shouldn't die "without God's consent" — but nonetheless decides to do it. He tries to hang himself with his belt, but his men save him. Then the lovers both find out the other is living, and all is well.
- In New Moon Alice tells Rosalie who tells Edward that Bella has jumped off a cliff. In return, Edward travels to Italy to be killed by the Volturi. Of course, Bella isn't really dead and she must herself go to Italy to stop Edward. Since apparently no one had access to a phone.
- In the Robotech novelizations, Roy Fokker does this after the death of Captain Kramer when he decides life just isn't worth living anymore, pulls out his IV, and leaves the hospital to see Claudia, effectively killing himself.
Live-Action TV
- Deliberately set up by Cleopatra on Rome. She and Antony make a suicide pact, then she leaves a fake suicide note and bloody knife to get Antony to kill himself in the belief that she's already dead, thinking that Octavian Caesar will spare her and let her remain in Egypt as queen if Antony is dead. Caesar insists on taking her back to Rome (he doesn't come out and say "as a prisoner," but that's really what he intends). Realizing that she's killed her lover for nothing and has no hope of avoiding capture and dishonor, she kills herself with the famous asp.
- In EastEnders, Leo finds his girlfriend Demi unconscious from an (accidental) heroin overdose, thinks she's killed herself, and overdoses on the remaining heroin... just as Demi wakes up. At that point, her parents arrive and find them, preventing her from killing herself in turn.
Theatre
Authors
- From Shakespeare:
- Antony and Cleopatra
- This in turn was inspired by Plutarch's Life of Antony (circa 1st century CE), making this both Older Than They Think and Older Than Feudalism.
- Pyramus and Thisbe itself come from a much older source — Ovid's Metamorphoses.
- Cassius and Titinius in Julius Caesar.
- Parodied in Pyramus and Thisbe (the Show Within a Show in A Midsummer Night's Dream)
- Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the most famous example. Juliet takes a sleeping potion as part of a plan for her and Romeo to get out of Verona. Friar Lawrence's information to Romeo explaining the plan never arrives, and when Balthasar tells him of Juliet's apparent death, he buys poison from an apothecary, goes back to Verona and heads for the Capulet tomb to die alongside Juliet, kills Paris who thinks he's there to do the evil version of Due to the Dead, and then poisons himself. Juliet wakes up, finds Romeo dead, and then kills herself with Romeo's dagger.
- Antony and Cleopatra
Individual works
- In the play The Servant Of Two Masters, the eponymous servant is trying to hide the fact that he is serving another from his two masters, Florindo and the cross-dressing, in disguise Beatrice. When each (at different times) finds the others belongings mixed in with their own- thanks to a mix up from the sevant- the servant claims he put the items there and that they belong to him, given to him by his recently deceased ex-master. Little does he know, that Beatrice and Florindo are actually lovers trying to find each other (made more difficult by Beatrice's disguise), and so on hearing of their beloved's demise, both decide to end it all... luckily, this is a comedy and they do so by drowning themselves in the same fountain and find each other just in time... leading to even more confusion.
Web Original
- Played with for laughs in one particular YouTube video by Smosh, about Batman and Robin making their own YouTube how-to guide
. It involves a 'euthaniser gun', a rabid dog, and Batsy picking a particularly bad time to pull a particularly Jerkass practical joke... Subverted, in that discovering his sidekick killed himself out of forbidden, untold love for him, Bats is completely unconcerned and breaks into a victory dance, because he'll have more hits now than Spiderman's Youtube video will. Cape in the crotch! Cape in the crotch!
- Parodied again in "If Romantic Movies Were Real" in the Romeo + Juliet skit, Romeo (Anthony) drinks the poison the same time Juliet wakes up, for Juliet it was the "easiest breakup ever!"
Real Life
- Rudolf von Habsburg, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his lover Mary Vetsera killed each other after the emperor demanded they break off their affair. Vetsera's suicide letters have been found, leading to urban legends and conspiracy theories.
