Board 8 > Best of the Trope Season 2: Day 225 - Empty Shell

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Best of the Trope!

Here are the rules. Each day, I will post a trope from TV Tropes, and each poster can name up to three examples of that trope. Whichever nomination gets the most mentions wins! Posters may also name as many Honourable Mentions as they like, but they are purely optional and will not count towards the running score. You may look at the TV Tropes page for that day's trope for examples, but you do not have to pick all your examples from the page. You can nominate whatever examples you like, as long as they qualify for the trope. Each trope will last around 24 hours before the next one goes up.

In the event of a tie between 4 or more nominations, a tiebreaker poll will be run the next day to determine a winner.

Posters may also nominate any tropes they wish to see come up during the series. This is optional, and you don't have to do it every day, or at all. Tropes will be randomly selected from the list each day, except for some occasions where I will pick a thematically appropriate trope that may or may not be on the list.

Here's the list of previous tropes, so if you wish to nominate some tropes, check on here that it wasn't previously done. http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Best_of_the_Trope

Trope list:
Wide Eyed Idealist
Torch the Franchise and Run
Grand Finale

The winners of yesterday's trope, Woobie Destroyer of Worlds, were Carrie White (Carrie) and Mr Freeze (DC Comics), who got 3 votes each.

Previous winners: Day 191 onwards
Cruel and Unusual Death - Executions (Danganronpa)
That One Level - Escape from the Water Slums (Jak II) / Water Temple (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence - Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)
The Reason You Suck Speech - Quagmire to Brian (Family Guy)
Magic Knight - Geralt (The Witcher) / Bayonetta
Dem Bones - Jack Skellington (The Nightmare Before Christmas)
Acrofatic - Po (Kung Fu Panda)
Game Breaker - Detective Mode (Batman Arkham Series)
Fluffy the Terrible - Fluffy (Harry Potter)
Deathbringer the Adorable - The Grand Master of All Things Bad (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon)
Storming the Castle - Leeroy Jenkins
BFS - Buster Sword (Final Fantasy VII)
Fat Bastard - Eric Cartman (South Park)
Mentor Occupational Hazard - Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)
Oddball Doppelganger - Mimikyu (Pokemon)
Mood Whiplash - The destroyed village ends "A Girl Worth Fighting For" early (Mulan)
Names to Run Away From Really Fast - Shelly DeKiller (Ace Attorney)
Hostile Show Takeover - Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club)
Lean and Mean - Voldemort (Harry Potter) / Waluigi (Super Mario Bros.) / Slenderman (Marble Hornets)
Identical Stranger - Guy Incognito (The Simpsons) / Kingsonn Dededoo (Brawl in the Family)
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You - Bowser (Super Mario Bros.)
Humiliation Conga - Yzma (The Emperor's New Groove)
Shock and Awe - Pikachu (Pokemon)
Fat and Skinny - Junkrat and Roadhog (Overwatch)
Enemy Mine - Mario and Bowser (Mario RPGs)
Kindhearted Simpleton - Forrest Gump
Evil Costume Switch - Black Suit Spider-Man
Trauma Conga Line - Shinji Ikari (Neon Genesis Evangelion) / Spider-Man
The Woobie - Butters (South Park) / Kate Marsh (Life is Strange)
Trash the Set - Raccoon City (Resident Evil)
Angst? What Angst? - Claudette is diagnosed with breast cancer (The Room)
Knight in Sour Armour - Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid) / Batman

Today's trope is Empty Shell. Here is the link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EmptyShell

This character is... barely a character. For many reasons, they've gone past the Extreme Doormat and Stepford Smiler and become nothing. They aren't a pushover or empty of real personality, they are completely dead inside. They are this side of a Convenient Coma because there is still something there... they move, talk, eat, sleep, but they have no drive, ambition, or capacity for emotion. Basically, the body is an active biochemical machine, but the part that made them alive and human is gone.

In Real Life, the closest term is probably "catatonic". However, catatonia is as likely to result from the inability to initiate movement as it is from lack of consciousness; the individual could be anything from fully conscious to nearly comatose, and you could never tell. More functional examples can usually be explained as a lack of a sense of self; they cannot form meaningful emotional connections to anything within their lives and often imprint on others, which often makes them appear as if their personality was cobbled together from scraps.

How did this happen? Here's a few ways: regular old Crapsack World induced trauma, psychological torture, Mind Control, Mind Rape, Lobotomy, and high-end uses of an Agony Beam. It can be done metaphysically by being drained of all their Liquid Assets or Life Energy or having their Soul or part of their Soul Anatomy stolen. Then again, sufficiently radical body alterations can do this too, like being "upgraded" into a machine body or a less-than-successful attempt at resurrection.

Sometimes it's curable or a permanent Fate Worse than Death. Expect these characters to be the preferred People Puppets for Telepaths and Demons for being not so much Weak-Willed as having no will at all. Contrast The Soulless, who are like Empty Shells filled with drive and ambition, and lacking all moral restraint. Compare to Soulless Shells, who died and were brought back without their souls.

TL,DR: These characters are alive on the outside, but dead on the inside.

Nominations:
Rei Ayanami (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
Michael Myers (Halloween)
Shedinja (Pokemon)

Shedinja (Pokemon)
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Tommy (Tommy)
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Michael Myers (Halloween)
Shedinja (Pokemon)
Doomsday (DC COmics)

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Doomsday
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Me
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Shedinja
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Nominate Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Just occurred to me that somehow we never did that one
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jcgamer107 posted...

Me

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Khal Drogo (Game of Thrones)
Nobodies (Kingdom Hearts)
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Rankings so far:
Shedinja (Pokemon) - 4 votes
Michael Myers (Halloween) - 2 votes
Doomsday (DC Comics) - 2 votes
jcgamer107 - 2 votes
Rei Ayanami (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
Tommy (Tommy)
Khal Drogo (Game of Thrones)
Nobodies (Kingdom Hearts)

Michael Myers (Halloween) - 2 votes
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DeathChicken posted...

Michael Myers (Halloween)

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hylianknight3 posted...

Shedinja

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Shedinja

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