Basic Trope: A character who fights with the intention of dying, only sucks at getting killed.
- Straight: John fights Alice so she will kill him, but Alice lets him live.
- Exaggerated:
- John fights with a twig against Alice's Humongous Mecha with a battle cry of "Kill me!" The stick gets lodged in its steering system and it fails, leaving him completely uninjured.
- John is always getting into battles that he can not possibly win without even trying to defend himself in an attempt to kill himself, but ends up winning every time due to some technicality, mishap on the opponent's part, or the opponents recognizes he isn't trying and decides he isn't worth fighting against.
- Downplayed:
- John fights Alice hoping to get injured.
- John is Not Afraid to Die; if he takes down Alice and dies in the process, he's fine with it. If he stops Alice and lives, he's also fine with it.
- Justified:
- John has lost all hope, so he tries to provoke his enemies into killing him.
- Suicide by Cop
- Self-Sacrifice Scheme
- John is planning a Thanatos Gambit that requires a specific type of death to activate.
- John is suffering from a Fate Worse than Death and cannot take his own life.
- John is suicidal, but is raised in a culture that believes that Suicide is Shameful, so he wants to die in a way that is considered less shameful.
- John is religious, and the religion he's a member of glorifies warriors and teaches that those who die in battle go to heaven.
- John is a robot, and he cannot take his own life because he has a command to protect his own existence hard-coded in his programming. This keeps him from taking his own life, but it doesn't prevent him from pursuing a course of action that indirectly puts him danger.
- John wants to die, but he has a Healing Factor that causes any damage to his body to regenerate in a manner of seconds, so he can't take his own life. He's looking for an opponent that can actually kill him.
- John has a power that requires him to die in order to use it.
- Inverted:
- The undead John travels around the world, seeking battles and trying to find a way to return back to life.
- John is an Immortality Seeker.
- Subverted:
- John's death seeking behaviour is a ruse to psyche out his opponents so he can defeat them more easily.
- Why doesn't he just kill himself? Because part of him still wants to live, and he realizes that too late.
- Double Subverted: Jon's ruse causes him to be suicidal when he realizes how many people he's killed.
- Parodied:
- John runs around asking random people to kill him, but nobody takes him seriously and they dismiss him as a crazy person. Meanwhile, several people roam the land looking for a willing participant to execute, but by coincidence, none of them ever meet up with John.
- John is obviously a ghost, but refuses to accept that he already is dead and gets into various seemingly suicidal fights... But half the time, his opponents are not spiritually attuned enough to see his ghost, and half the time they do humour him but don't know how to actually cause the Cessation of Existence he craves.
- Zig Zagged: John thinks that his team will never win and loses the will to live, so he picks a fight with Alice. Alice is secretly in love with John, so she fights carelessly when she realizes that John is suicidal, which unintentionally gives John a perfect opportunity to kill Alice. This realization causes John's depression to end, as the fight is not hopeless after all. He mortally wounds Alice, only to realize that she purposefully didn't kill him earlier. Overcome with guilt, John asks the dying Alice to kill him, but she refuses and tells him that he needs to find a reason to live.
- Averted: No one seeks death.
- Enforced: The producers originally intended for John to commit suicide, but are not allowed to due to the network's policies. However, a Heroic Sacrifice would be just fine, so the producers start showing John repeatedly trying to sacrifice himself for others' benefit and subtly hinting that his reason is wanting to die already.
- Lampshaded: "Why don't you just commit suicide? Wouldn't that be easier?" "I suppose, but it wouldn't feel right."
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz orchestrates a major catastrophe in John's life, knowing he will become suicidal and will go out seeking his death.
- Exploited: Evulz decides to give John what he wants; with John out of the way, he is much closer to taking over the world.
- Defied:
- John decides that life is worth living and only chooses battles that he knows he can win.
- John commits suicide instead.
- John's suicidal behavior leads to the team signing him up for therapy.
- Discussed: "You know, John has been throwing himself into dangerous fights for a while. What if he gets hurt?" "I think that might be what he wants."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: John is warned that accepting a certain mission is guaranteed to result in his death. John says that he doesn't care and takes it anyway.
- Deconstructed: John's behavior is very self-destructive to his mental health, causing him to attempt suicide on several occasions.
- Played For Drama: John's death seeking behavior leads to the death of his team.
Go back to Death Seeker and kill me already!
