http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays

Worst Muse "Kudos for including such a well-developed gay character! Have you figured out how you're going to kill them yet?"

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This trope is the presentation of deaths of LGBT characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heteronormative counterparts. In this way, the death is treated as exceptional in its circumstances. In aggregate, queer characters are more likely to die than straight characters. Indeed, it may be because they seem to have less purpose compared to straight characters, or that the supposed natural conclusion of their story is an early death.

The reasons for this trope have evolved somewhat over the years. For a good while, it was because the Depraved Homosexual trope and its ilk pretty much limited portrayals of explicitly gay characters to villainous characters, or at least characters who weren't given much respect by the narrative. This, conversely, meant that most of them would either die or be punished by the end. Even somewhat sympathetic characters would usually receive punishment, as their sexuality was perceived as a negative trait (similar to how one would write a sympathetic drug addict). However, as sensitivity to gay people became more mainstream, this then transitioned into the Too Good for This Sinful Earth narrative, where stories would tackle the subject of homophobia and then depict LGBT characters as suffering victims who die tragic deaths from an uncaring world. The AIDS crisis also contributed to this narrative, as the Tragic AIDS Story became its own archetype, popularized by films like Philadelphia. And then there are the cases of But Not Too Gay or the Bait-and-Switch Lesbians, where creators manage to get the romance going but quickly avoid showing it in detail by killing off one of the relevant characters.

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Also known as Dead Lesbian Syndrome, though that name has largely fallen out of use post-2015 and the media riots about overuse of the trope. And, as this public outcry restated, the problem isn't merely that gay characters are killed off: the problem is the tendency that gay characters are killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters, or when the characters are killed off because they are gay.

Can be seen as Truth in Television in some cases, as gay and lesbian people are at a substantially higher risk for suicide and assault  see the tropes Gayngst-Induced Suicide and Homophobic Hate Crime. The fact that AIDS hit the gay male community most prominently provided potent fresh fuel for this long running trope (which, like many things about the eighties, still has an effect on more recent works). There may also be a higher prevalence of this trope in Period Fiction because of its supposed realism since historically there was lots of homophobic persecution  though undoubtedly plenty of acceptance, too. Another issue, however is that the stories where gay people quietly lived out their lives in peace are often less documented, and considered less dramatically compelling for straight audiences, leading to what can still be a skewed picture of the past.

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However, sometimes gay characters die in fiction because, well, sometimes people die. There are many Anyone Can Die stories: barring explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight deaths in these, it's not necessarily odd that the gay characters are dying. The occasional death of one in a Cast Full of Gay is unlikely to be notable, either.

It's also, however, a question of a sheer numbers game. Even when there is a perfectly valid narrative reason for the writers to chose to kill off the character, or it serves the story perfectly, it's often the case that killing one queer character is removing the only positive representation within the narrative. Additionally, given the ratio of mainstream queer narratives that end in tragedy, compared to ones with a genuinely happy ending, any addition to the list of the dead is often greeted with dismay, no matter how technically well executed.

The exact opposite is found in Preserve Your Gays, which is often a reaction to this.

Specific variants:

Gay Guy Dies First: When the often only queer character dies early on, before straight characters.

Gayngst-Induced Suicide: When an LGBT+ character commits, or attempts to commit, suicide because of reasons connected to or caused by being LGBT.

Homophobic Hate Crime: When a character is attacked and often murdered by homophobic characters.

Out of the Closet, Into the Fire: After a character comes out they are quickly killed, harmed, or cosmically punished.

Tragic AIDS Story: The story involves the miseries of HIV/AIDS, often starring gay men, sometimes treated like a punishment for homosexuality.

Vasquez Always Dies: The most lesbian-coded character, or the closest thing the work has to a butch character, always seems to get killed off, or has the most violent and drawn-out death.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Comic Books

Fan Works

Films  Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Podcasts

The premise of Alice Isn't Dead is refusal to believe in this trope. The series follows a trucker searching for her presumed dead wife, Alice, who the protagonist is sure is still alive somewhere.

Played very straight in Wormwood: A Serialized Mystery. Two occult detectives meet. It's Love at First Sight. They become partners and find themselves in Wormwood, a Creepy Town where they immediately spot a werewolf . . . you can guess where this is going. note Just had to know? One dies tragically in the other's arms.

Theatre

Video Games

Web Animation

There are three homosexual characters in Tactical Noobs, all of whom die horribly within seconds of being introduced. The first blasts himself with a rocket launcher. The second two are flame-throwered by someone who disagrees with their choice to vote Barack Obama for president.

Consciously avoided out-of-universe with RWBY: During the writing process of Volume 5, a minor character referred to as "Pilot" was to have made a passing reference to having a boyfriend, part of the CRWBY's first steps at confirmed-LGBTQ representation, but the character would have been killed off in the following episode. When the script went out to the team, however, several members quickly pointed out this trope and the issues with killing off the show's first confirmed gay character, and so the reference to the pilot's boyfriend was dropped, with later LGBTQ characters (including Ilia, Saphron, and Terra) avoiding this trope. Though Clover Ebi was never explicitly stated to be LGBT+ by the creators themselves, many gay and bisexual fans identified him as such due to his chemistry with Qrow - starting from their first conversation ending in a callback to the flirtatious barmaid in Volume 4. The popularity of Clover/Qrow also grew when RWBY twitter and former animators teased the ship. Then Broken Base ensued when he dies in Episode 12 of Volume 7 , leading to debates if his death should be considered this trope or not.Regardless, writer Eddy Rivas has since come out and apologized to LGBT+ fans for any pain or emotional betrayal they might have felt as that was never their intention.



Webcomics

Chess Piece deconstructs this: Danny's gay lover commits suicide and comes back as a ghost. It's implied as to why, but still.

Western Animation