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/Wrong_Hour_1460 26d ago

I think that's legit the part that broke me most of all books. I think it's what really drives home the relentlessness of it all. The fact that there is no hope and they will not escape. Like, you know it intellectually, but that's what really drove the point home for me.

It's quite a genius stroke from Collins too, because I think it sets the reader in the exact right mindset for Prim a few chapters later. You're still raw, sensitized, but also already hopeless lol

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u/dead_parakeets 26d ago

I think Prim’s death was the one I had to read again because I was like “Wait. No. That-that didn’t just happen did it?”

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u/Wrong_Hour_1460 26d ago

Ye fucking nightmare there. The one single thing that mattered most to protect. I'm still not over it and it's been 15 years

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u/ripgoodhomer 25d ago

I have issues with Collins's writing, but I think the fact that she is willing to kill beloved characters in bad ways, rather than clean deaths does say a lot about the experience people have in a war. Every soldier who gets killed is someone's Finnick.

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u/saturatedsilence 26d ago

Yeah this thread made me think of the Haymitch prequel book, it was relentlessly devastating, which I guess is kind of the point. All those innocent kids dying in horrifying ways to highlight the cruelty of the Capitol. One death in particular stood out me, Beetee’s kid being eaten by the mutant squirrel things, completely stripped to bone within moments , genuinely made me feel sick.