Death of Personality

This trope covers situations when a person is treated as effectively dead and gone even though their body is still physically alive. This is generally because the "person" has been erased in some way. This can cover mild examples (like memory loss) or more serious examples (like Loss of Identity or damage to the soul). It can occur accidentally or through happenstance (e.g. illness or injury), maliciously (e.g. being assimilated by The Virus or invaded by a foreign consciousness), or punitively (Speculative Fiction settings often use mind-wiping and personality overwriting as a form of capital punishment). This trope and its subtropes are often treated as a Fate Worse than Death or a means of making someone Deader than Dead. Yet some of the following methods are reversible; an amnesiac could remember everything, a possessing entity could be given the boot, Fake Memories could be recognized as fake. So treat these as "death" only if no such reversal occurs. Subtropes (examples of which should go on their relevant page) include: Assimilation Plot: A plan which revolves around doing this to everyone. The Assimilator: A specific character or creature who can do this. You lose your individuality to the Hive Mind in the process. Blank Slate: When the person's lost all their experiences and memories. Brainwashing for the Greater Good: This trope is generally why it's portrayed as a bad thing. Clone by Conversion: When someone is "killed" by being turned into a copy of someone else. Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: When this is caused by having machinery integrated with your body. Despair Event Horizon: When the despair is so intense and horrible that it irrevocably crushes someone's very identity. Empty Shell: When the whole personality's gone, essentially leaving a philosophical-zombie. Fake Memories: If there are enough of them. Grand Theft Me: Something destroys or suppresses the old personality and replaces it. Split-Personality Takeover: When a second personality "kills" or overwhelms them from within the same mind (rather than coming from outside the person). Identity Breakdown: One of the possible resolutions to a character's persistent uncertainty about who or what they are involves completely disassociating with whatever identity a character once had in favor of a new one Lobotomy: Surgical removal of the personality. Loss of Identity: When someone's consciousness remains, but they've been changed so much they're not sure if they're the same person anymore. Mind-Reformat Death: When a character, AI or human, dies because of an electronic plot device erasing, replacing, changing, or overwriting their minds. More than Mind Control: When someone's original identity, personality and allegiance are completely changed or replaced, usually by The Corrupter. Scatterbrained Senior: When played for drama, how a person will begin to forget their loved ones' names and who they are as their memory dies. The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: In particularly extreme cases. Transhuman Treachery Technically Living Zombie: At least the mindless variety. That Man Is Dead: When what's left of the "dead" person spells it out. Can be used both for literal cases of this trope and for when the character merely believes they've changed so radically as to become a different person. Contrast Un-person, who is merely treated as if they no longer (or never did) exist. Compare Mind Control and Brainwashed, which usually just force a person to act differently without damaging their personality. See also Alternate Personality Punishment, where the new, technically innocent personality is punished for crimes they literally cannot remember committing. As a Death Trope, all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned.