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| - They know more about the threat than anyone. Can tell the hero / heroine everything they want to know. They're a cop who's been hunting the Serial Killer for their entire career, or the Great White Hunter who knows more about dangerous animals than anyone. Perhaps they're an expert on ancient curses, or is schooled in the ways of killer robots. Whoever they are, they're the good guy's best and most reliable source of information regarding The Threat, its plans, its motivations, its patterns, its strengths, and its weaknesses. The two important criteria are that this supporting good guy:
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| abstract
| - They know more about the threat than anyone. Can tell the hero / heroine everything they want to know. They're a cop who's been hunting the Serial Killer for their entire career, or the Great White Hunter who knows more about dangerous animals than anyone. Perhaps they're an expert on ancient curses, or is schooled in the ways of killer robots. Whoever they are, they're the good guy's best and most reliable source of information regarding The Threat, its plans, its motivations, its patterns, its strengths, and its weaknesses. Unfortunately for them, they're not the hero of the story. Even more unfortunately, they're just useful enough to the hero that their death will make our heroes even more vulnerable, and their plight more dramatic. Worse still, since they're the expert on The Threat, their death by the Threat will augment the advantage the villain has over the heroes -- after all, if this Expert couldn't win against them, what shot do our non-Expert main heroes have? The above may be unfortunate, but this is just embarrassing: Not only will our Expert get killed by the Big Bad, but at no time in the confrontation will our Expert even pose a major challenge to the Big Bad. The Expert, (usually late in the game having imparted all their useful advice and wisdom about the threat), will be dispatched neatly, cleanly and almost effortlessly by the villain/monster/demon, making the audience wonder how in the hell this guy even lived long enough to ever become an expert on this particular threat at all. The two important criteria are that this supporting good guy: 1.
* has superior knowledge/training/exposure to the Threat, enough that they can educate the Real Heroes about it, and 2.
* when actually confronted with the Threat, they go down fast and put up a perplexingly feeble fight. Always keep in mind the second one. If our ill-fated supporting hero took out a couple dozen mooks, held their own (but then lost) a knock-down drag out fight, put three barrels in the shark before being eaten, or otherwise put up a decent fight before dying, they do not fit this trope. Compare/contrast The Obi-Wan, who is also wise to the threat and often killed by it nonetheless, but The Obi-Wan's death, if and when it comes, is often a Moment of Awesome, Obi-Wan Moment, or at least dramatic. Compare also The Worf Effect, which is where an enemy dispatches a more generally established badass with ease, rather than one specialized against them. Finally, consider Mentor Occupational Hazard, which is the tendency of mentors to the hero to die. Examples of The World's Expert on Getting Killed include:
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)