Basic Trope: A goodhearted innocent character in a Crapsack World dies.
- Straight: Alice is an All-Loving Hero who tragically dies of cancer, and missed by all of her loved ones.
- Exaggerated: Alice is a Purity Sue (or at least is considered one In-Universe) whose cancer causes her excruciating pain up to her death, and she is missed by the entirety of the world's population. Her angel form complete with a white gown and halo is then seen rising up to the skies right before dying again and getting sent to Hell because God deemed her "Too good for Heaven".
- Downplayed: Alice is a Nice Girl who moves out of her neighborhood. Her next-door neighbors miss her.
- Justified:
- The angels have called Alice to return home to heaven where she belongs.
- Alice refused any further treatment as she would rather die than jeopardize the future of her kids by consuming all of ther family's savings in keeping her alive when it's clear she can't survive.
- Inverted:
- Alice is an Asshole Victim who dies. Everyone either doesn't miss her or is happy about it.
- Alice is deemed not good enough for heaven, so is kicked back down to earth.
- Alice decides she's Too Sinful For This Good Earth and goes Redemption Equals Death (redemption optional).
- Alice is a Karma Houdini, a horrible person who has nothing bad happen to her despite being an asshole.
- Alice murders everyone in sight because she sees herself as "the only one good enough for this earth".
- Subverted:
- Alice wakes up after a Disney Death.
- Alice was Faking the Dead.
- Alice was actually a horrible person, some kind of abuser, and/or a Complete Monster, who was also a Villain with Good Publicity that got what she deserved, or was Faking the Dead as part of her Evil Plan.
- Double Subverted:
- Then she actually dies.
- But then it turns out to be Malicious Slander by a rival jealous of all the love Alice got.
- Parodied: The Grim Reaper has a list of good people and a list of bad people, and only goes after the good people and leaves the bad people alone.
- Zig Zagged: She keeps seemingly dying then "coming back to life". Her loved ones present cry and mourn during the former and are indifferent during the latter.
- Averted:
- Alice is of
average/neutral morality and her death is met with about the same level of grieving one would expect. - Alternatively, Alice doesn't die.
- Alice is of
- Enforced: "Y'know whose death will really get the tears flowing? The nicest character in the whole story!"
- Lampshaded: "Why must the good die so young?!" "Because No Good Deed Goes Unpunished."
- Invoked:
- Alice acts nice when people are watching so that when she eventually dies, they'll organize a beautiful funeral and grave for her.
- A Serial Killer specifically targets nice and popular people to spite as many possible friends and family members as possible.
- Exploited:
- Bob is a funeral director that gives Alice cancer and then offers to organize a funeral for Alice, knowing that her loved ones will pay big bucks to honor the deceased.
- Evulz, The Rival to Alice's father Bob, explicitly targets Alice for assassination. He would have done it anyway, but seeing how much of an angel Alice is makes him decide to go the extra mile in finding the most excruciatingly painful and long manner possible for her to die, in order to drive Bob (and hopefully the rest of the neighborhood) insane with grief.
- Alice's parents raise her to be a nice kid so that when they murder her at the age of 5, they get as much sympathy and donation money as possible.
- Defied:
- Alice becomes the ward of Victor, a wealthy widower who gets Alice into the highest ranked cancer research center. She gets cured for good and keeps on being the good-hearted person she has always been.
- Alice pulls out a gun , warding the journalist approaching her with a knife away.
- Discussed: Charlie, Alice's husband, comforts their kids during Alice's final days and reassures them that she will always live on in their hearts and that she was an amazing person.
- Conversed: "Ugh, the whole 'killing the nicest character' thing gets so sappy after a while." "Right? It's like, 'sorry for being a good person.'"
- Deconstructed: Killing the nicest, most innocent character in the whole series can be pretty heart-rending, yes... although in some cases it backfires because the audience finds it too heart-rending. This has the effect of making the audience feel punished for rooting for Alice.
- Reconstructed: While Alice ended up dead, she died in a Heroic Sacrifice and/or Dying Moment of Awesome. She then ended up as Inspirational Martyr who inspires her surviving family/friends/lover to make the Crapsack World they lived a much better place, making sure that she didn't die in vain.
Back to Too Good for This Sinful Earth so you can die the most heartwrenching way possible.
