Basic Trope: A disabled character dies.
- Straight: In a movie, Alice uses a wheelchair due to having been born with severe leg paralysis. By the end of the movie, she's dead.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice keeps getting resurrected and dying again and again.
- There are multiple characters with disabilities in the movie, all of whom die.
- Downplayed:
- Alice dies, but there are other characters with disabilities who live.
- Alice dies, but at least one character without disabilities dies too.
- Justified:
- The killer was a psychopath and/or disliked Alice for some reason, or was under some strange mind control that made them violent, or was too clumsy with a knife.
- The killer thought she would be an easy target because of her disability.
- She was severely depressed and did not know how to get help, or she was mesmerized into killing herself (although that's more like murder).
- She was just unlucky.
- She was very elderly or had a terminal disease.
- She decided her disability affected her quality of life too severely, and it's perfectly legal in her country.
- She's the victim of the evil regime's enforced-euthanasia policy for the disabled, enacted to improve the nation's genetic stock (on account of the fact her disability was genetic) and so the overstretched healthcare budget can be spent on the fitter and more "deserving".
- It's a disaster film and when the disaster happens she just wasn't fast enough to get to shelter.
- Inverted: All the non-disabled people die, leaving only Alice.
- Subverted:
- It looks like Alice is dead, but she's just unconscious.
- Alice gets resurrected.
- Alice contemplates suicide over her condition, but right as it looks like she's going to go through with it, she manages to get the help she needs.
- The villain targets Alice thinking that she'll be easy prey, but she turns out to be a Handicapped Badass in disguise and takes him down.
- Double Subverted:
- She dies for real later.
- Alice and the villain have an epic fight, and just as it looks like she has him on the ropes, he sucker-punches her for a fatal blow.
- Parodied: On her first appearance, Alice says or is carrying a sign reading, "My name is Alice. My legs are paralyzed. I'm going to die in sixty minutes' real time, late tonight elapsed time."
- Zig-Zagged:
- Some characters with disabilities die, some don't.
- Alice is thought to be dead several times in a row.
- Averted:
- Alice survives.
- Alice is not disabled.
- Enforced:
- Alice's actress could only commit to so many episodes, so her death was written in at the end of her contract.
- The sets were designed and built before Beth, who has a disability, was cast and they didn't accommodate her condition. They were not redesigned because of Executive Meddling, a lack of money, or both.
- It's a disaster film and the disaster montage needs casualties that hit hard for the sake of the "nature doesn't cares about you, it'll just kill you" symbolism. So the writers add Alice, who hits all of the audience's sympathy buttons by being a cute and frail being… and who dies one of the more gruesome deaths.
- The story is about the abuses the disabled suffer, Anvilicious though it may be, this is the most effective way to get the point across.
- The story deals with the issue of physician-assisted suicide, which naturally requires showcasing a character who would want that.
- Lampshaded: "Ahh! I'm gonna die! Disabled people always die!"
- Invoked:
- Bob kills Alice.
- Alice kills herself.
- Exploited: Alice is a queen, so her brother Bob kills her to become king.
- Defied: Alice has a high-security home, protects her wheelchair from the back, learns self-defense, and learns everything on being healthy and psychologically OK.
- Discussed: "Dang it, my best friend died. I wish you got to know her, she was in a wheelchair..."
- Conversed: "Why do characters with disabilities always die?"
- Implied: It's unknown if Alice died or not.
- Played for Laughs:
- Alice's death is played for Black Comedy.
- Alice questions whether life with her condition is worth living, and her friends and family try to convince her that it is. Yet their efforts at such amount to a Sickeningly Sweet cavalcade of generic feel-good platitudes and mindless inspiration porn which does nothing to address Alice's quality-of-life concerns. Listening to all that drivel just makes Alice want to kill herself even more.
- Played for Drama:
- Alice has a dramatic scene with her dying and Charlie crying beside her.
- The severely disabled Alice is killed by her Resentful Guardian.
- Alice tries to Face Death with Dignity but it's obvious one of her final regrets is how her disability turned her into The Load.
- Alice struggles to achieve a life worth living with her condition, but every time it seems she's found a possible solution, it fails. When she determines that she's out of options, she decides to end it all.
- Played for Horror: A Serial Killer targets the disabled.
We can't keep Bury Your Disabled. It's in a wheelchair, so we have to delete the page.
