Basic Trope: Something wipes out large chunks of the human race.
- Straight: In the past, a virus wiped out 90% of the human race, leaving only the protagonists and a select few others.
- Exaggerated: After the virus hits, people start randomly disappearing and buildings suddenly become abandoned.
- Downplayed: They are not dead. They are just placed in a suspended coma for an indefinite period.
- The virus kills a third to half the population, which STILL devastated the labor force.
- Justified: That was the point of the virus. The heroes were just resilient.
- Inverted: The virus causes a sudden boost in population.
- Subverted:
- The government creates a near-lethal virus, then says that it only kill mosquitoes.
- The virus fails because it is too lethal. It results in people in the immediate area dying hideous deaths including the people trying to deploy it and anybody who sees the piles of dead bodies arsons away the problem from a safe distance.
- Double Subverted: That was a cover story - they're only using the virus to kill dissidents.
- Parodied: The virus was specifically designed to kill only ugly uncharismatic people. Models are pretty much The Immune and any scientist who points out that it doesn't make any sense, were borderline and has their make up run or clothes get disheveled or out of fashion promptly has their head explode from the virus.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- There is no virus.
- Alternatively, the virus doesn't depopulate the earth.
- Enforced:
- The writer wanted to write an After the End story.
- The writer didn't want to have to deal with loads of characters, so this trope is a convenient way to deal with that issue.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: A terrorist group creates the virus and unleashes it on the countries they hate most.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Doctors work around the clock and find a cure before it's too late.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- After the virus hits, humanity gets hit hard. All of the millions of essential personnel who disappeared will never return, meaning their skills will never be recreated. The basics of a society's infrastructure - like agriculture, farming, and construction - go unfulfilled, meaning society itself collapses.
- 90% of the population is still a lot of people, and the protagonists would probably have had someone close to them die from this, which can leave some psychological scars, especially if someone was immune and had to see their family and friends die before their very eyes.
- Reconstructed: The survivors have to learn to adapt - which is what happened in the past anyway.
- Implied: A Cosmetically-Advanced Prequel shows far higher population density and there were no new frontiers opened up later to move them out of the way....
Back to Depopulation Bomb
