Basic Trope: Gay characters die in the course of a story, while straight characters get happy endings.
- Straight:
- Ted and George are gay, and Alice and Bob are straight. All four fight the Big Bad, but George dies. Ted is left alone miserable while Alice and Bob live on.
- Ted and George both die.
- Stella and Claire are a lesbian couple, and Stella or Claire or both die.
- Sex Signals Death for a character having sex with another of the same gender.
- Claire and Bob are a couple, but Claire is bisexual and has been in an relationship with Stella. Claire dies. or Bob is bisexual and he dies.
- Claire or Bob are the only gay/bisexual character and they die.
- Anyone Can Die but gay/lesbian/bisexual characters' deaths are more excessively graphic or tragic compared to the straight characters' deaths or straight characters die less than they do and/or there is more straight characters than gay/bi.
- Cameron, the show's only non-binary character, is killed.
- Exaggerated:
- There are loads of characters, the vast majority of whom are gay or lesbian. Alice and Bob are the only straight characters, and the only characters who stay alive.
- The Big Bad's plot involves murdering all the gays in Tropeland. It works, as he finishes killing them just before Alice and Bob defeat him.
- Your only non-straight character dies and goes to super hell literally seconds after coming out.
- Downplayed:
- Ted and George's car is destroyed, so the straight lead characters Alice and Bob end up better off, but every character makes it out alive.
- Ted and Alice both die, and are mourned by their husbands George and Bob. Bob eventually gets over his grief and gets involved with Claire, but George remains single for the rest of his life.
- Justified:
- The Big Bad is a crazy homophobe who actively focuses his efforts into killing George and Ted while practically ignoring Alice and Bob.
- Unfortunately Truth in Television; being gay in real life, has been and still is often prone to its downsides due to the prejudice from other social groups. In most countries you can't get married if you're gay or have children in a same sex relationship, and in many places, homosexuality itself is still illegal. Also, you might have trouble being accepted by your peers, your family, or your religious group. The author uses this trope as he/she is gay and is using this trope as a metaphor for how society makes life harder for being due to their orientation and reflects the hardships he/she has been through.
- The character's arc works best if it ends tragically.
- The death actually happened in real life.
- The story takes place in the afterlife meaning that almost all of the characters are dead.
- Inverted:
- One of the characters in the straight couple dies, leaving the other miserable. The gay couple goes on with life.
- Alice and Bob both die.
- Ted and George are immortal.
- Preserve Your Gays
- Subverted:
- It seems like George has been killed, but he manages to survive within an inch of his life thanks to sheer determination.
- Faking the Dead
- Death Faked for You
- The couple dies but they are shown to be reunited in a happy afterlife.
- George is somehow resurrected.
- In a setting where ghosts can interact with the realm of the living, George returns to the cast as a specter. It takes some adjustment but he and Ted make it work.
- George repeatedly dies and comes back to life.
- Double Subverted:
- ...Sadly, George only lives long enough to die from his injuries later in a hospital.
- As George goes to inform his same-sex love interest he's okay it turns out the love interest died of something totally unrelated to the rest of the story.
- Parodied:
- Alice, Bob, Ted, George, and Stella all go fight the big bad. Ted and George die immediately, and Alice, who is pretending to be Stella's girlfriend so she can repel another girlfriend, is killed too. This makes Bob, Alice's real boyfriend, complain. Somehow Alice is magically revived, while Stella remains dead.
- The show has no romance involved and no reason why anyone's sexuality would be relevant. Nonetheless, as the team prepares to fight the villain, Bob states "I am feeling particularly heteroflexible today" completely out of the blue. This somehow causes him to spontaneously explode into a fountain of Ludicrous Gibs. The other characters briefly mourn Bob, and agree never to speak of his death again.
- Zig Zagged:
- The character that dies is only Ambiguously Gay or Ambiguously Bi.
- The show at first kills off Ted and George, but then they are both brought back. Then Alice and Bob are both Killed Off for Real. A gay villain is killed, but two straight villains manage to survive until next season. Then they turn out to have been lovers. And then it turns out in the afterlife Everyone Is Bi.
- George cheats death, but then Stella is Killed Off for Real, and Ted and George are Driven to Suicide over the loss of their friend. Then Bob (who is straight) dies, and George is brought Back from the Dead for some reason.
- The show at first kills off Ted and George and Alice and Bob are survived, but then Stella and Claire join the team. Then Alice is Killed Off for Real and leaves Bob left alone miserable. Then Stella makes a Heroic Sacrifice and dies to kill off a gay villain and save Bob and Claire. Then Claire realized that she is actually bisexual and Bob eventually gets over his grief and gets involved with Claire.
- Averted:
- Every character gets a Happy Ending, regardless of their sexuality.
- There is an equally balanced cast of gay and straight people, and an equal amount of them are Killed Off for Real.
- This show is set in a Crapsack World, and everyone is either miserable or dead at the end. There are simply no exceptions made for characters on the LGBT spectrum.
- There are no LGBT characters.
- The show has a Cast Full of Gay, so even if a few characters die, there are still plenty of LGBT characters left alive.
- The character's death fits the character or the death is from natural causes and neither death has anything to do with the character's sexuality.
- Anyone Can Die with no exceptions to anyone.
- Nobody dies, ever.
- Enforced:
- "To show that things are serious, let's kill off a minority."
- One of the writers is a Heteronormative Crusader.
- George is killed because his actor left the show.
- Lampshaded: "Damn it! Damn it to hell! Why does every guy I love end up dead?!"
- Invoked:
- George ends up engaged in a hopeless fight, but Ted decides to stay along with him until the end. If he's meant to die, he'll die with him too.
- Ted's brother, who wants to inherit the family fortune, makes sure the homophobic villain knows about Ted's sexual preferences.
- Exploited: Stella pretends to be straight (perhaps with a fake boyfriend) in order to cheat death.
- Defied:
- Detecting the clear signs of the universe conspiring to kill them, Ted goes to great lengths to ensure his and George's survival.
- Alice and Bob help them out, Ted and George live on thanks to their help.
- Discussed: "I thought gays didn't get happy endings." "Oh, that's just superstition."
- Conversed:
- "Have you ever noticed how gay characters seem to have a higher mortality ratio than any straight co-protagonists?"
- "Bob's crush on Joe doesn't speak well about his chances."
- Implied: The gay characters are Put on a Bus and their fates are simply not mentioned, leaving the audience to figure out what happened to them.
- Deconstructed: George considers himself an inferior person as a gay man, due to his conflicting religious views and sexuality. This leads him to care less about his own life and take too much risk in a battle, leading to his death.
- Reconstructed: This leads Ted, who also considered himself an inferior person, to come to terms with his sexuality and persevere.
- Played For Laughs: Ted and George make a Heroic Sacrifice and die to save Alice and Bob, because they believe that if anyone deserves to survive, it's the straight characters.
- Played For Drama: Ted, George, Alice, and Bob all fight the Big Bad. During the dramatic climax scene, Alice and Bob manage to escape. However, Ted and George are left behind, and die so horribly that no one is gay ever again.
- Untwisted: Ted, George, Alice, and Bob all die. At Alice and Bob's funeral they were revealed to be married to Claire and Daniel respectively.
You might as well bury your gays now, because they died on the way back to the main page.
