Basic Trope: A character leaves the show but it's done in a mean-spirited way.
- Straight: The actress that plays Alice has had enough of being on the set of Long Runner and quits. Meanwhile, a plotline ensues where Alice is Put on a Prison Bus.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is actually killed off, and suffers a Cruel and Unusual Death.
- Alice is quite literally sent to hell.
- Alice is given such an extensive and thorough work of character assassination in the road to being written off that the audience loves the fact she was written off if only because that means the writers won't hurt her anymore (maybe…).
- Downplayed: Put on a Bus
- Justified: Alice has done some bad things in the series she thought she got away with, but apparently did not.
- Inverted:
- After having spent all of the last season in prison, Alice comes back.
- After Alice's actress's forced retirement her character leaves due to a dream come true like going to space.
- Subverted: Alice is just going to live with her aunt Betty in the country.
- Double Subverted:
- It's revealed a few episodes later that she died.
- Aunt Betty is a horrible douchebag and Alice despises her, so moving to live with Betty is practically a punishment in its own right, if not outright torture.
- Parodied: In the animated series Adventures of the Troper Squad, Alice's voice actress, Susan, quits. In the next episode, a voice from above says "ALRIGHT SUSAN, PAYBACK TIME." Alice is than run over by a herd of elephants, gets attacked by jetpack-wearing monkeys wielding flaming chainsaws, and is forced to listen to an Ear Worm.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice's actress has no plans to leave the show, nor do the producers and writers have any plans to do away with the character.
- Enforced:
- "It was so unfair of the actress to just up and leave in the middle of the season! Let's exact revenge on her character!"
- Alice has become some variant of The Scrappy, and the audience wants her not only gone, but gone in a way that's cruel enough to satisfy them.
- "Donna has been such a diva, her costars are complaining that they can't work with her anymore and are threatening to leave. Let's fire her, and in doing so, get rid of her character, Alice!"
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Alice's actress makes sure to include a clause in her contract that states that if she leaves the show, her character cannot be sent to a Fate Worse than Death.
- The producers resist the urge to be petty and do horrible things to Alice just because the actress quit.
- The writers make clear that it will be a cold day in Hell before they do character assassination to their creations for the sake of executive requests and bones shall shatter (in a figurative or literal fashion) if anybody else ever does it.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Put on a Bus to Hell
