Basic Trope: In a story where Death (usually) is Cheap, a character dies and never returns.
- Straight: Bob gets killed trying to steal Steve’s wallet, and in spite of the show having every death be temporary, Bob remains dead.
- Exaggerated:
- Everyone is brought back for the finale except Bob.
- All Deaths Final
- Downplayed: Put on a Bus to Hell
- Justified:
- Bob comes from an alternate universe where death isn’t actually cheap.
- We’re in a story that’s set in the same universe where Bob lives, but in the distant future instead of the present where the stories of Bob’s universe normally take place. Therefore, most of the characters, including Bob himself, have died from natural causes or something else. Plus, in a meta sense, justifying why everyone is still alive despite the fact that this is supposed to be the distant future would be a massive headache for the writers to explain or justify in-universe.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Double Subverted:
- But the revival did not last and Bob was eventually killed forever.
- But then Steve finishes Bob off with a gunshot to the head.
- Parodied:
- Bob is killed mere seconds after he makes his debut in the show.
- Bob is so hated that the production team not only kills him off, they ask the company's legal teams to write up a legal contract that expressly forbids anybody who ever does any related work for the company (comics, et al) from ever writing him back to life (as for fan stories, well, they do their best attempt at stopping that, too).
- Zig Zagged:
- Flip-Flop of God frequently says Bob is dead, but also says he’s still alive as well.
- Bob is a character in a series of anthologies consisting of short horror stories. In one of the stories he dies, and it's made clear that it's permanent in this universe. However, the next story, set in a different universe, has him alive and well.
- Averted: No characters ever permanently died.
- Enforced:
- "Bob has escaped from prison too many times enough. It is time for him to have his true punishment!"
- The writers decided to kill Bob to give his girlfriend, Alice, some character development.
- The Character Died with Him.
- They legitimately forgot that Bob could be brought back like all the other characters. Or that they couldn't find anything else to do with Bob.
- Lampshaded: "Bob’s… actually dead? But how? This has never happened before."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Since Steve, Bob's killer, has the MacGuffin, Emperor Evulz uses Bob's permanent death to convince Chris, Bob's best friend, to join him in his quest to obtain it.
- Defied: Bob was spared or has escaped before his death was successful.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Damn, out of all the characters, they chose Bob to permanently kill."
- Implied: Bob experiences a Chuck Cunningham Syndrome after having been in a dangerous situation that could’ve killed him.
- Deconstructed: Since this is a universe where everybody is used to seeing dead people come back to life, the realization that somebody actually died for real shocks everyone and some of them even get some kind of existential crisis out of it, since they now realize that death might actually be permanent now.
- Reconstructed: After a few more episodes of death remaining cheap, the characters stop overall caring about permanent deaths, and assume it was simply just that one time.
- Played For Laughs: And There Was Much Rejoicing
- Played For Drama: Bob’s friends and family spend several more episodes mourning his death, and praying for the current impossibility of him maybe coming back.
Back to Killed Off for Real
