Basic Trope: The Grim Reaper is a loser.
- Straight: Mortis, God of Death is The Friend Nobody Likes to the other gods and can never win chess.
- Exaggerated: Mortis has trouble reaping anyone and usually gets beaten up when he does try to take souls.
- Downplayed: While effective and powerful, Mortis' job is the celestial equivalent of janitorial work which makes him the No-Respect Guy of the gods.
- Justified:
- Mortis is a long line of people who succeeded the previous God of Death during the death of the previous Reaper. He's either new and inexperienced, or was already incompetent and got the job by mistake.
- Knowing that power over death will corrupt its holder, the Top God deliberately chooses someone who will be largely ineffective to limit the damage they can do.
- Mortis is subject to The Peter Principle. He's pretty good at straight-up killing people, but he finds the stress of choosing who has to die to be too much.
- Inverted:
- Bios, Goddess of Life, is a loser.
- Mortis the God of Death is the strongest and scariest of all the gods, who always does his job to maximum efficiency.
- Subverted: Mortis is only acting incompetent because he doesn't want negative attention.
- Double Subverted: Acting incompetent causes Mortis reputation to plummet and he becomes the mask.
- Parodied: Mortis is terrifying in appearance and power, but everyone inexplicably treats him as a joke and he comes off as The Comically Serious by comparison
- Averted:
- The Grim Reaper is competent and does his job like normal.
- The Grim Reaper doesn't appear or exist.
- Enforced:
- The writer has struggled with the subject of death in the past,
- "Death is scary. Having its personification be goofy would be especially funny for the audience".
- This trope is used to justify and parody complains that Death Is Cheap in the work.
- Lampshaded: "With Mortis around, I'm surprised anyone can even die".
- Defied: When Mortis is acting inept, he's fired and replaced by Nekros, a competent God of Death.
- Deconstructed:
- Mortis is treated with so little respect that he snaps and becomes a menace, showing just how much of a "loser" he is.
- The natural order of life and death to spiral out of control because Mortis is unable to do his job competently.
- Reconstructed:
- Mortis used to be a Jerkass who tormented life. Becoming a loser humbled him and now he does his job better.
- People who die start voluntarily choosing not to fight death because they feel bad for Mortis.
- Invoked: Mortis is given power over death by a God of Evil who seeks to use the ensuing chaos for a wicked plot.
- Played For Drama: Mortis kills the wrong person, and he feels incredibly guilty as their family grieves for them.
- Played For Horror: Mortis's incompetence means that many people experience a Fate Worse than Death because he keeps not finishing the job.
Back to Death Is a Loser.
