Basic Trope: A character is extremely skilled at hiding the truth.
- Straight: Alice is capable of fooling an actual lie detector.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice manages to fool the entire cast, and has managed to trick Bob into believing his name isn't even Bob.
- Alice literally has superpowers that force everyone to believe everything she says.
- Downplayed:
- Alice tells the truth most of the time, but when she does lie, it's impossible to tell.
- Alice never technically lies, but does manipulate the truth in a way to her advantage.
- Alice can look people in the eye and lie with zero discomfort. However, some people can still catch on to what she says.
- Justified:
- Alice has spent her whole life practicing lying.
- Alice is Surrounded by Idiots that believe anything she says.
- Inverted: Cassandra Truth.
- Subverted:
- Alice shows above average intelligence and is skilled in manipulating others but isn't good at lying.
- Alice brags about her lying skills, but then during an important, tense situation, her lies fail.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice is a smart girl that isn't good at lying, but it turns out she was lying when she told Bob she was bad at lying.
- It turns out Alice actually intentionally sabotaged her friends' plans as part of a complicated scheme that involved many well-crafted lies.
- Parodied: Alice says the exact opposite of what she means in every sentence she says, even when she asks a question.
- Zig Zagged: Alice lies all the time. But wait, it turns out everyone else was wrong about everything she ever said. Except actually, Alice just made them think that. But that wasn't really Alice! Or was it?
- Averted: Alice isn't very good at lying, but isn't bad either.
- Enforced:
- "We need someone to fool the protagonist constantly."
- "We need someone to make sure the plot line stays hidden."
- Lampshaded: "You managed to actually make someone believe that?!"
- Invoked: Dr. von Überwald creates a creature that is exactly like a human, apart from the fact that it phsyically cannot tell the truth.
- Exploited: Bob use Alice's constant lying to get her into serious trouble.
- Defied: "Yeah, I thought but always lying, but that's too much effort really."
- Discussed: "I'm glad I'm not one of those people who always lie!"
- Conversed: "No-one lies that much!"
- Deconstructed: Alice has to tell an Awful Truth to a innocent child. Sure, the child will cry, but not doing it equals to cross the Moral Event Horizon for Alice, so Alice, knowing Brutal Honesty is the right thing to do, goes to the child and... lies. Because she is a Consummate Liar, this is inevitable for her.
- Reconstructed: Her lie is comforting, but the fact that she has to do it to a child makes Alice feel guilty about it... and so, when asked later to confirm her lie, she can't bring herself to do it.
- Played For Laughs: Alice says, "I am a four-hundred-foot tall purple platypus bear with pink horns and silver wings." and is believed.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice cannot tell the truth, even when she wants to. She lives a lonely, sad life.
- Alice develops a bad rep and a trail of angry people who discovered her lies. And she eventually runs into someone with a Berserk Button of being lied to. It's not going to end well.
- Implied:: Alice says a lot of crazy things with complete seriousness, and everyone believes her. They turn out to be false, but it's not clear if Alice was lying or if she's just a persuasive Cloud Cuckoolander.
Back to Consummate Liar ...or could that be a lie?
