White Shirt of Death/Playing With
Basic Trope: A character wearing a white shirt dies an often unusually bloody death.
- Straight: Bob wears a white shirt into combat and is stabbed to death, with stains dramatically covering the shirt.
- Exaggerated: Bob enters battle wearing a white shirt, and then is promptly blown into bloody shreds by a grenade. All the other deaths in the battle are surprisingly lacking in blood.
- Justified: The bright white of Bob's shirt made him an easy target to pick out, and so he suffered a more direct, bloody hit than the others in the battle.
- Or: A magic-user in the series has cursed our heroes' white shirts, making them more vulnerable to attack while wearing them.
- Inverted: Bob, dressed in his white shirt, is the only one who leaves the battle without any blood on him.
- Or: Bob wears a black shirt into combat and suffers an unusually bloody death.
- Or: Bob wears a white shirt into combat and is harder to pick out because of the snow and is the only person who lives.
- Subverted: Bob goes into battle dressed in white, and it seems like he's about to die painfully, but he manages to escape and survive.
- Double Subverted: ...Only to die at the last-second at the end of the fight.
- Parodied: Bob is a Gary Stu. In order to kill him, he's given a white shirt to wear into battle.
- Deconstructed: Bob's injuries also sever nerves and he's unable to feel the pain. An onlooker sees the blood and he's rushed to the emergency room. Had he worn red, he might not have made a full recovery.
- Reconstructed: ???
- Zig Zagged: Bob wears a white shirt to one battle and gets injured badly. At the next one, however, he escapes unscathed.
- Averted: Nobody wears a white shirt to the fight.
- Or someone does, but doesn't die or lose very much blood.
- Enforced: The fight scene didn't look violent enough for the series' target demographic, so they made the characters' shirt white to help the blood stand out more.
- Lampshaded: "...Ouch, the white shirt makes the blood look even worse."
- Invoked: Knowing that he will probably die in battle, Bob wears a white shirt to make his death dramatic-seeming and spectacular as he leads the suicidal charge against the enemy.
- Defied: Not wanting to stick out and thus be easily targeted by the enemy, Bob refuses to wear white to the battle.
- Discussed: "Hmm, what'll we wear to the fight?" "Well, the ones wearing white always seem to end up in danger..."
- Conversed: "Oh, you know that guy is going to die. No one wears a white shirt into battle and have it remain white at the end."
...You might want to wear green instead- you might get killed on the way back to White Shirt of Death!