Basic Trope: Someone is smothered by a pillow. The smothering is far more effective and fast than in real life.
- Straight: Bob smothers Alex with a pillow. It takes no more than 10 seconds and is a quiet, clean death with very little struggling on Alex’s part.
- Exaggerated: Bob crams the pillow down Alex's throat. The latter is dead before he finishes.
- Downplayed: Bob smothers Alex, an a good 30 seconds of struggle ensures before the latter finally succumbs, which is both noisy and messy.
- Justified:
- The pillow is a heavy, dense throw pillow intended for decoration and not for sleeping on.
- The empty pillowcase is used to wrap around someone’s neck in a blood choke instead, which would be much faster.
- Alex is very elderly, ill or otherwise infirm.
- Alex was drugged to make it impossible for him to resist.
- Inverted: To Bob's shock, the smothering actually helps Alex's breathing.
- Subverted:
- Bob covers Alex face with a pillow, but uses it to muffle the gunshots from his handgun instead.
- Bob fails to smother Alex with the pillow, and the latter manages to fight him off.
- It turns out Bob was crushing a deadly insect that landed on Alex's face, and he removes the pillow once the insect is dead.
- Bob "smothers" Alex with a pillowcase that turns out to be full of bricks.
- Bob holds the pillow to Alex's face. Alex struggles and flails about before abruptly stopping, before it's revealed that he was only playing dead.
- Claire sees Alex pick up a pillow and slowly walk towards Bob, who is sleeping. Claire assumes the worst, but it turns out that Alex is just trying to supply Bob with another pillow.
- Alex appears to have been suffocated after a minute. Once Bob turns to leave the room Alex stops feigning death and starts strangling Bob.
- Double Subverted:
- The gunshots don't take, and after several more gunshots and a bout of panicked stabbing, Bob finally kills Alex by smothering him with the pillow. The latter only takes 10 seconds.
- After getting the upper hand on Bob, Alex takes his pillow and smothers Bob with it.
- After Claire leaves, Alex kills Bob with the pillow.
- Parodied: Throwing a pillow at someone's face is enough to smother them, as they flail in vain to take it off their face.
- Zig Zagged: There's several pillow murders in the series. Strong, healthy targets take an unusually short time to choke, while weak, sickly, victims take disproportionately long to die.
- Averted: No-one is smothered with a pillow.
- Enforced: They were running out of film, and had to make the death scene quick.
- Lampshaded:
- "Huh. That was easy. I should use pillows more often."
- "Inspector, can you explain why pillows are such effective murder weapons?"
- "Not what I meant by the term 'Pillow fight'!'"
- Invoked: Bob has noted the power of the pillow, and started using them as his weapons for covert assassinations.
- Exploited: Alex lets himself be smothered by the pillow at first, then plays dead, allowing him to get the drop on Bob when the latter thinks he was successful.
- Defied:
- Bob eyes the pillow, and after a few seconds of thinking, opts to just strangle Bob instead.
- Pillows in the ultratech future are designed such that it would be impossible to suffocate from them - even if it was torn apart and used to try to choke someone by shoving it down their throat.
- Discussed: “It’s not like it is on TV, you know. You’ll have to hold the damn thing to his screaming face for half an hour before the old man croaks.”
- Conversed:
- A forum conversation is started which discusses which type of pillow makes the best murder weapon and why. It's for a Book.
- "It's often shown that pillows are the best weapon for smothering someone to death with, but do you really think we'd sleep on 'em if that were the case?"
- Implied: After entering Alex's room, Bob shuts the door. A few minutes pass, and then he leaves quietly, dropping a pillow behind him.
- Deconstructed: Bob tries to smother Alex, but it takes so long he gives up and leaves.
- Reconstructed: During the smothering, Alex's asthma kicks in, and he finds himself unable to breathe. Pretty soon after, he dies.
- Played For Drama: Bob and Alex are good friends, but Bob has to do this as a Mercy Kill for Alex. He feels horrible about it the entire time.
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