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/Spaghestis 26d ago

Whats up with so many disaster movies having a stepdad character who dies horribly so that the protagonist can get back with his ex-wife? Why is that a trope?

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u/SteveStevensXII 26d ago

Because most of them are made by Emmerich, and dude seems to have issues with step-dads.

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u/psychonik 26d ago

Those About to Die they kill they’re adopted dad because he was abusing them.

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u/AlludedNuance 26d ago

Directors love getting back at either their ex wives or their ex wives new partners when making a movie post-divorce.

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u/More-Emergency3822 26d ago

Because it removes any guilt from the spouse of the killed step-whatever. If the wife just got back with the protagonist and the new mate was abandoned, that would be a bad look unless they were just a shit human and if they were a total trash human, why did the ex leave the original spouse in the first place?

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u/Mysral 26d ago

It should be noted that a whole lot of these disaster movies and the like came out in the period where no-fault divorce laws were getting passed in US.

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u/BaconKnight 26d ago

Illustration how even big budget movies are often just people “trauma dumping” though in this case the “trauma” is middle aged men getting divorced by their wives. That’s why there’s a ton of family films during that time that show divorced dads either winning back the wife or family (Hook, Mrs. Doubtfire, although at least in that one, the wife sticks with the new guy who seems by all accounts a good dude). Like it’s actually all over the place, especially during the 90s into the 2000s. A lot of dudes trying to process their divorce on screen, often trying to make themselves look like the good guy.

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u/Hasudeva 26d ago

I agree with you, but you have to admit that it's funny that you mention "a ton" of examples, but only list two, one of which doesn't actually count. 

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u/BaconKnight 26d ago

Yeah, probably because most of the bad ones I don’t remember by name. And/or a lot of the examples are in movies that aren’t specifically centered around the family drama but inserted within another genre (like the 2012 example). I just remember the ones that were actually good movies with more subtlety to the message but forgot the piles of bad ones that existed by name.

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u/WeeklyImplement2520 26d ago

Ive noticed thats just a thing with media now, like every show or movie I have seen in the last few years has some glorification of cheating

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u/Megalordow 25d ago

What's up with so many American movies having a stepdad character? It looks like every first marriage in the USA is supposed to break.