Basic Trope: A character starts to lose their sight, which means they're dying.
Typical forms
- Played Straight: Alice, while on her deathbed, says, "It's getting dark!"
- Justified: Alice was dying as a result of organ failure, that included the loss of sight.
- Alice complains that her vision's blurry as she dies.
- Alice goes blind as a symptom of a Soap Opera Disease that could have killed her, but she ultimately survives.
- Inverted:
- Alice, a blind woman, gets her sight back just before dying.
- Just before dying, Alice hallucinates bright light.
- Subverted: Alice, while on her deathbed, says, "It's getting dark!" Turns out she's just sleeping rather than dead.
- Double Subverted: Alice, while on her deathbed, says, "It's getting dark!" Turns out she's just sleeping rather than dead. Then she dies for real.
- Parodied: Alice thinks that she's dying when the power goes out, or there's an eclipse, or she loses her glasses.
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Zigzagged:
- Alice's sight comes and goes as she's dying.
- Alice went blind all right, but whether she's dying is ambiguous.
- Averted: Alice is not dying, or is dying but doesn't lose her vision or is already blind.
- Enforced:
- Implied: Alice is squinting as though struggling to see when dying.
- Logical Extreme:
Tone and Style
- Exaggerated:
- Downplayed:
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama:
- Played for Horror:
Specific Characters
- Lampshaded:
- Invoked:
- Defied:
- Exploited:
- Discussed: "What happens when you die? Do you go blind?"
- Conversed: "Do people really lose their sight when they die, or is that just in fiction?"
Back to The Darkness Before Death.
