Basic Trope: A character's death is horrible, unorthodox, and painful.
- Straight:
- Bob is slashed apart by Evil Overlord Steve in nonvital areas several times and is forced to watch himself bleed out.
- Bob is executed by Steve, and his execution is Death of a Thousand Cuts.
- Steve splashes acid and salty water at Bob, lowers him into the ocean, and sends his pet sharks to eat him alive.
- Bob is sliced all over to bleed out slowly and painfully as Steve strangles him.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is slashed, blown up, dragged by his hair through a wood chipper, and tossed into the sea by Overlord Steve.
- Bob is injected with motor oil, has his kneecaps peeled off, his chest torn apart, his intestines ripped out, his limbs pulled out by the Rack, to which his somehow alive body is to be thrown into a sea of salt water. All because he spit on Overlord Steve's morning cereal.
- Steve places Bob in a torture chamber containing several malnourished Tasmanian devils that promptly tear Bob apart.
- Bob is shot in the eyes, has his limbs ripped off, his nose cut off, his hair torn off, his heart ripped out and is gently poked in the head by Steve.
- Everyone in the work suffers a Cruel and Unusual Death.
- Overlord Steve uses Bob as a test subject for the Agony Beam. This device is constructed to make the victim's nervous system feel the maximum amount of every type of pain and discomfort simultaneously. Bob dies after turning into a pile of bloody goo.
- Steve places Bob through every execution method possible. He survives every single one... and finally dies of a lethal injection after everything.
- Steve constructs an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine that slowly flays Bob alive and tears off his limbs one-by-one. Said machine also pours salt on him throughout the process.
- A chain of unusual events at the factory Bob works at ends with Bob being Ground by Gears, leaving him so horrifically maimed to the point where even his wife Alice can't recognize him until he sees his iconic spectacles placed over what's left of Bob's face.
- Downplayed:
- Steve kills Bob by throwing him into a vat of lab-constructed fluids. The process is obviously painful, but doesn't mutilate him much.
- Bob is intentionally infected with Necrotizing fasciitis and Naegleriasis by the regime.
- Bob is injected with cancer cells by the regime and left in a room to die. While it is very torturous, it's not really graphic.
- An explosion rips apart Bob in seconds, but those seconds are shown to be complete agony.
- Justified:
- An ordinary death is uncertain, and Steve knows that if that happens, it would come back to bite him. So, he wants to make sure he finishes the job.
- Steve is out to set an example to anyone else who dares stand up to him.
- Steve is a sadist and enjoys this sort of thing.
- Bob is a total psychopath who deserves far worse than the dignity of a bullet to the head.
- Steve feels Bob has committed something that hurt him hard and Steve wants Bob to feel the same they did during their dying moments.
- Bob betrayed Steve in a setting where betrayal is the gravest, most evil thing you can do, and his horrifying death reflects that.
- Steve wants to make an example out of Bob to scare the citizens into never deciding to rebel.
- Bob enters a situation that is extremely deadly. The work plays out like it would in real life. Bob gets no Plot Armor and no Deus ex Machina, letting the event go naturally and obliterate him.
- Death Is Cheap, meaning a simple and painless death would be a minor inconvenience.
- Inverted:
- Bob’s death is quick, painless and bloodless.
- Bob's resurrection is incredibly painful.
- Bob survives his injuries, and really wishes that he didn't.
- Bob's death is mundane and depressing.
- Subverted:
- Bob survives.
- Bob turns out to have already died before the horrible and painful stuff happened, and everything else was just overkill.
- Bob is spared from his absolutely horrific fate and is allowed to have a merciful, more peaceful death.
- Steve gets defeated by Bob's friends. before he could harm Bob.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob survives, but the experience is so traumatic that he's Driven to Suicide.
- It's later revealed that Bob was alive the whole time - he was so damaged that his eyelids stayed perpetually closed - and was put through a Rasputinian Death.
- But then Bob explodes on his deathbed due to being briefly exposed to Steve's Agony Beam while leaving Steve's skyscraper.
- While escaping, Bob slips on a puddle of blood from Steve's latest torture victim, falls out of the window of Steve's skyscraper, and lands on a garbage truck's trash compactor that just so happens to be closing.
- Parodied:
- Bob's "execution" is getting snuggled to death by kittens, who he cowers like a little girl in the presence of.
- Bob is killed through use of the Loud of War.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Steve slashes Bob in his nonvital areas and leaves him to bleed out. Bob survives, but the experience is so traumatic that he’s Driven to Suicide, yet he survives his suicide attempt (though missing two of his arms, is left confined to a wheelchair due to his entire leg bones being held up by tape literally, and the fact that a small part of his brain is sticking out of his nose).
- It's not clear how much of the gruesome torture was inflicted while Bob was still alive, as Steve continues to take out his anger on the lifeless Bob.
- Averted:
- Bob's death is not very gruesome and somewhat anti-climactic.
- Bob dies of old age, which he accepts.
- No one dies in the story.
- Bob is robbed instead of killed.
- Lampshaded:
- "Geez, Steve! Bob was a robber, but you didn't have to go that far. The orders were to arrest him, not torture him."
- "Why are villains always doing this to us? It's like they want us to know how evil they are to the very end!"
- Invoked: As revenge for killing The Dragon, Drake, Steve intends to humiliate Bob by brutalizing him.
- Exploited: Bob manipulates Steve into torturing him to death, hoping it gives Alice enough time to Back Stab Steve and heal him.
- Defied:
- Steve decided that even Bob didn't deserve what was about to happen and stopped it.
- Steve chides Bob for thinking he'd do something as inefficient as torture and shoots him.
- Bob, an Determinator, escapes.
- Bob's team breaks in and rescues Bob.
- Steve takes away every nonvital organ and limb. Steve takes medical precautions so that Bob does not die during the procedure. Or ever.
- Discussed: "I'm going to enjoy doing this. You know why, Bob? Because I love to hear you scream. Give me one last chance to before our little squabble ends once and for all."
- Conversed: "Jesus, writer. You got some pent-up aggression you felt like taking out on Bob or something?"
- Implied:
- We only see Overlord Steve dragging a very panicked Bob into a room and his screams of agony, along with blood slowly pooling out of the door. Whenever someone mentions Bob, everyone winces.
- The otherwise unflappable coroner Carl is seriously shaken by whatever he found to be the cause of Bob's death.
- Played for Laughs: No matter how gruesome and painful Bob's death is, he only sighs like his death is a mere disappointment.
- Played for Drama: Alice is clearly haunted by her husband Bob's gruesome death at the hands of Steve, and even after Steve is arrested and executed for his crimes, she is still unable to get over what had happened to Bob.
- Played for Horror: Steve skins Bob alive, cuts off his limbs and yanks his intestines out of his mouth, before leaving him to rot in a ditch and bleed.
I watched this blank page have its letters punched into it. Slowly. Letter by letter by letter. While I was forced to repeat "Back to Cruel and Unusual Death" one trillion times without stopping. How dare you, editor?