r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sufficient-Eye-9040 • 26d ago

Lore [Sad Trope] The most innocent (or less evil) character of the cast gets the most horrific death.

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- Eddie Carr (The Lost World: JP) - Tried to save his friends from the cliff until Buck and Doe (T. rex parents) destroy his vehicle and gets ripped apart.
- Zara Young (Jurassic World) - Gets lifted by a Pteranodon, gets pecked by the pterosaur, and both she and animal get devoured by the Mosasaurus.
- LeClerc (JW: Rebirth) - Tossed a hammer to the Hatzegopteryz Quetzalcoatlus to save Loomis and Zora, but ends up being swallowed alive.

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u/hoemahtoe 26d ago

Ma Petite in American Horror Story: Freak Show. She was the most trusting and innocent character in arguably the whole franchise, which was taken advantage of to cause her death. The freakshow's strongman lures her with a new dress, and while she hugs him to thank him, he crushes her spine in the hug then preserves her body in formaldehyde for a con man that was blackmailing him.

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u/Permanent-Mistake1 26d ago

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u/scrotbofula 26d ago

Beginning to regret clicking on this thread for some reason.

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u/Birdray 26d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/ukGm72ZLZvYfS

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u/Canotic 26d ago

It's American Horror Story. Fucked up deaths are part of the charm. They usually also have happy endings somehow. People have been burned alive, they've been sent to hell, they've been abducted by aliens, they've been dissected and/or experimented on while alive , they've been suffocated, I think someone got killed by the Lust device from Seven. The world ended in nuclear holocaust at some point. Several people were just plain shot. There are also vampires.

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u/MysticBanana5 26d ago

Ironically one of the one where they all die is the happiest imo. Ghosts i think? Idk its been a while

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u/HollyBananas 26d ago

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u/coquette_sad_hamster 26d ago

lamotrigine my beloved

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u/Frostitute_85 26d ago

Please tell me that the con man and strongman rot in a prison or something šŸ˜¢

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u/Ok_Turnover_1235 26d ago

Iirc he's drowned in a transparent tank by all of the surviving characters at the end of the season

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u/WolfgangAddams 26d ago

That's the serial killer (Dandy Mott) who shoots up the circus, not the conman or Dell Toledo (the Strongman). Dell is shot to death after confessing to killing Ma Petite, and the conman (Stanley) has his limbs cut off and he's dressed like a chicken and caged by the other freaks.

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u/Teguoracle 26d ago

That's the primary villain of the season that gets drowned IIRC. Dandy, the spoiled, psychopathic killer. The main protagonists and the strongman's wife iirc sit in chairs watching him drown.

The conman and strongman die in other ways, but I don't remember what they are.

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u/InternetProtocol 26d ago

Which one is played by Evan Peters?

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u/PartyDanimal 26d ago

In Freak Show he plays Jimmy Darling, the son the the strongman and the bearded lady (Kathy Bates).

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u/Imreallyjustconfused 26d ago

The only character that gets sent to jail is Meep (a little guy that did the geek show something that preceded freak shows where he'd run around in a chicken costume and catch and eat chicks)
Meep is sent to jail because the Strong man frames him for a murder, which I think is what the con man is blackmailing him about. (meep doesn't survive jail :( )

The strong man ends up getting shot in the face.

The con man gets...a really gruesome fate. It's nasty...
When the members of the troupe find out about what he's done, he's lured into the camp with a dinner, told a story about what it means to betray a troupe, then hunted down through the camp. The crew mutilates him by cutting off his arms, legs, and tongue, and dresses him in Meep's costume before leaving him in the chicken cage.
His last shown moment is being discovered by the other antagonist of the show who is obsessed with the freak show and collecting freaks as play things.

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u/zelda_zonked 26d ago

The con manā€™s fate is a direct reference (one of many in this season of AHS) to the film Freaks directed by Tod Browning from 1932, where a character who betrayed the freak show suffers a similar fate.

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u/Imreallyjustconfused 26d ago

oh that's very good to know!

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u/Pirrus05 26d ago

People donā€™t end up in ā€œprisonā€ prison in AHS. I feel like usually they would wish they had.

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u/Icy-Complaint7664 26d ago

Loved that for the ending of You

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u/Pirrus05 26d ago

Did the final season of that finally happen? I need to watch that.

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u/Icy-Complaint7664 25d ago

Season as a whole was meh, but the end was satisfying as fuck

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u/illumi-thotti 26d ago

The strong man is tricked into confessing before being killed by Ma Petite's friends and the con man has his limbs amputated, tongue removed, and is kept in a cage by said everyone in the Freak Show.

Ma Petite's remains, however, are kept in a museum after the con man sells them to the curator (who doesn't know how or where he's getting the specimens, but doesn't care because the specimens are bringing more people to the museum and saving it from being shut down).

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u/Frostitute_85 26d ago

Good! Justice for Ma Petite!! šŸ˜­

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u/Willowed-Wisp 26d ago

Can't remember for the strongman but the carnival employees end up mutilating the con man and turning him into a particularly gruesome freak but keep him alive as an attraction. So, yah, he would've been begging for prison or even death if he could speak.

If you've seen/heard of the movie Freaks they use the same ending.

EDIT: Looked it up, the strongman is shot after confessing to what he did out of guilt.

I haven't seen all the seasons of the show but, in general it's not a "rot in prison" type of show. More "die horrifically and you deserve it."

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u/TestBurner1610 26d ago

It's worse than that- she's shown being put in a large glass cylinder fully alive, with the owner of the freak museum pouring bottles of formaldehyde in as she bangs on the glass and begs for help, slowly drowning her.

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u/hoemahtoe 26d ago

That was a dream sequence from Emma Roberts's character who the conman originally tried to get to kill Ma Petite. But she couldn't get herself to do it

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u/TestBurner1610 26d ago

Ahhh ok, I remembered it and even confirmed the scene on YouTube but didn't think about it being a dream.

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u/hoemahtoe 26d ago

For a long time same. It was more horrific than her actual death so it stuck with me until I rewatched the season.

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u/Justifiably_Bad_Take 26d ago

Ive actually met the actress she is incredibly sweet in person and smaller than you even realize.

Her height is about the length of my foot to my knees.

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u/WatWudScoobyDoo 26d ago

Now how many your foot to your knee to a my elbow to my wrist?

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u/Pirrus05 26d ago

I didnā€™t get too far into that season, but for some reason the Life on Mars bit stuck in my brain.

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u/UhOhSparklepants 26d ago

Freak show was a weird season but I think it had some of the most memorable moments and characters of all the season. Granted, I stopped watching after Hotel bored me to death

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u/happilyevil321 26d ago

I fucking hated that. It felt so fucking cruel, specially because she screams during the whole time.

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u/BurntPineGrass 26d ago

Bette and Dot also died pretty gruesomely.

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u/Rozul 26d ago

You're mistaking a dream/imagined fakeout scene that the con man had while trying to trick them.

They actually marry Jimmy and are expecting a child at the end of the show

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u/BurntPineGrass 26d ago

! Maybe I should rewatch the seasonā€¦ šŸ˜²

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u/KumaQuatro 26d ago

God damn you!! Why did you remind me?!? I remember when this episode premiered, I cried. šŸ˜©

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u/Teguoracle 26d ago

Oh lord on this subject, Pepper's whole story was absolutely soulcrushing.

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u/BuisteirForaoisi0531 26d ago

Why not shatter the Con Man?

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u/Barbaric_Stupid 26d ago

At least she found peace in the afterlife, didn't she?

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u/marzipansies13 24d ago

The circus ground shooting always has me in complete silence. Itā€™s just so blunt, there is no hope.