They Were Holding You Back/Playing With

Basic Trope: A hero's loved one is killed by a villain due to the fact of holding him/her back.

• Straight: Emperor Evulz kills Alice, Bob's Love Interest, because he believes she is holding Bob back.
• Exaggerated: Evulz kills all of Bob's friends and family because he believes that all of them were holding Bob back.
• Justified: Bob was a former Mook of Evulz's who performed a Heel Face Turn. Evulz is planning an extremely complicated scheme and Charlie is necessary for a vital part of the scheme. Since Alice actually was holding Bob back, her death is necessary for the scheme.
• Inverted: Bob, a Badass Blood Knight whose hobby is fighting villains, kills the rest of Emperor Evulz's Five-Bad Band because he believes they were holding Evulz back.
• Subverted: Evulz apparently kills Alice by shooting her. However, it turns out Alice was wearing a bulletproof vest, and she gets up and simply walks away after Evulz leaves.
  • Evulz killed Alice for the Evulz.
• Double Subverted: Evulz realizes Alice survived and kills her the next day.
• Parodied: Evulz kills Alice, and Bob, so happy to finally be rid of that hateful shrew, sends Evulz a thank you note and chocolates.
  • OR, Evulz kills Alice, which so thoroughly devastates Bob, that he becomes an utterly ineffectual and broken man.
• Deconstructed: Because Bob loved Alice so much, he goes mad from her death at Evulz's hands, something which Evulz didn't intend.
• Reconstructed: However, Bob's friend Charlie slaps him to bring him to his senses. Together, they decide to avenge Alice by killing Evulz.
• Zig Zagged: Evulz decides to have Alice killed by getting her shot by a sniper. However, the sniper turns out to be Bob and as a result doesn't fire at the last moment. Evulz, seeing all this, knocks Bob out, takes the rifle, and attempts to fire it. The rifle misfires, so Evulz takes a pistol out and shoots at Alice. He misses, so Evulz takes out a knife, charges at Alice, and attempts to strike her with it. He misses, so Evulz activates a C4, straps it on to Alice, and gets out of the area before it explodes...
• Averted: Evulz doesn't even try to kill Alice.
  • That's because whenever he has the urge to kill a loved one of a hero, he fights back by doing more "wholesome" activities.
  • As a result, when he has the urge to kill Alice, he decides to vandalize a building that Alice, by chance, works at.
    • Untwisted: He gets caught, so he runs out and detonates a bomb that he hid under the building in case of an emergency. Alice just happens to be inside when it goes off.
• Enforced: The writer of the episode just happened to be lazy when he was tasked with writing the episode and thus the death of Alice was the only scenario he managed to think of.