Alas, Poor Scrappy/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Everyone hates The Scrappy, but their departure leads to tears.

  • Straight: Eddy is hated by a lot of people, but when he abruptly dies, everyone finds themselves mourning.
  • Exaggerated: Eddy irritates everyone around him to the point some consider to kill him, but when he breaks his leg, suddenly everyone's fawning all over him.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted: Eddy dies and nobody cares. At best.
  • Double Subverted: ...Until the ending, when Alice breaks down in tears, and her grief affects the others (and the audience).
  • Parodied:
    • A dummy that looks exactly like Eddy is "killed", and everyone starts weeping, then real Eddy comes on screen and everyone reverts to their previous emotions.
    • "Well, I'm sure we'll miss him very much." "I'm not dead!" "Yup, He couldn't have survived that." "Yes, I did!" "Let's go and have a drink in his memory." "Come back!"
  • Deconstructed:
    • Eddy is actually extremely insecure and has deep-seated issues that he hides with his outward persona. After learning that all his friends find him irritating, he tries to change his ways, but is rebuffed and rebuked. Finally, he is Driven to Suicide, and when Bob discovers his Suicide Note and realizes their role in it, he can't help but mourn.
    • Eddy is automatically mourned by everyone, except Bob. Try as he might, Bob cannot remind anyone of how annoying Eddy was when he was alive. Fed up with the Valorization of Eddy, Bob revives Eddy from the dead, just to prove that Eddy was annoying.
  • Reconstructed:
    • Then, cut to Eddy's funeral. Everyone talks about how little they appreciated him, and how he deserved better.
    • Upon Eddy's revival, Jim finds Eddy to be so annoying that Jim shoots Eddy. Even Bob feels he didn't deserve that.
  • Zig Zagged: The party mourns Eddy, then goes to pointing out his flaws, then some feel guilty about it, which causes an argument over when is it's okay to speak ill of the dead, then another scrappy dies...
  • Averted: Everybody still hates Eddy, and his death doesn't alter anyone's opinion of him. And There Was Much Rejoicing.
  • Enforced:
    • "We need to show how close the True Companions are, and how they care about every team member! No matter how widely hated!"
    • "If The Scrappy will make a Heroic Sacrifice it will trigger an emotional response, for the audience will feel bad for hating him before that."
  • Lampshaded: "I thought we didn't like Eddy." "Yeah, but that was before... you know..."
  • Invoked:
    • Eddy fakes his death so that people will like him.
    • Or, if you want a bit more tragedy, Eddy becomes a Martyr Without a Cause, desperate to give his life for anything that seems noble, just so he'll be remembered well.
  • Defied: "Look, Eddy lived an asshole and died an asshole. I'm not going to shed any tears for him."
  • Discussed: "Have you ever noticed how everyone is always sad when someone dies, even if he was an jerk nobody liked?"
  • Conversed: "It's like in those TV shows, where the asshole dies and suddenly everyone loves him."
  • Played For Laughs:
    • While everyone is sitting around weeping and saying how much they miss Eddy, flashbacks showing him while he was still alive and hated are interspersed. The memories undercut the sentiment and make it seem absurd.
    • "Eddy was always there for us! Well..except the time he left us with that man eating tiger to go and get ice cream. (sniffle) He just loved that ice cream!"

Back to Alas, Poor Scrappy, how we knew him.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Alas,_Poor_Scrappy/Playing_With?oldid=934209"