Basic Trope: A group of characters leave a departed member of the group's chair open.
- Straight: Jason is dead. His classmates leave his chair open as a memorial.
- Exaggerated: Jason dies, and the school makes it forbidden and punishable by expulsion to sit in his chair.
- Downplayed:
- People can and do sit in the chair, but the others tend to be touchy about it and there are people who will not sit there, no way, no how.
- Jason's chair was not a specific chair, it's just customary to have one empty chair at the table no matter how many people are seated.
- Averted:
- No one dies.
- People freely sit in Jason's chair whenever they please.
- Justified
- Mrs. Von Trope, the teacher, was very careful and meticulous in using her assigned seating to maximize the students' performance, and she's not about to jeopardize that.
- In their culture, it's taboo to sit in the chair of a dead person- it's believed that if you do, you'll die next.
- It's the only thing were they can put the memorial stuff for the amount of time needed for everyone to (somewhat) get to terms with his death.
- Lampshaded: "Wait, so some kid dies and now you're never allowed to sit in his chair ever again? Your math class is weirder than I thought it was."
- Inverted: Jason dies, and people are in a hurry to sit there because he died.
- Subverted: Turns out, Jason's alive and he's been sitting in a different chair the entire time as part of a social experiment.
- Parodied: Jason's ghost is hanging around in that seat, and he slaps you on the butt if you try sitting there.
- Enforced: The producers are getting complaints that Jason's death wasn't as sad as it was supposed to be because no one seems to care, so they incorporate this trope.
- Exploited: Zoe, a new girl trying to make everyone hate her so they leave her alone, sits there knowing the rest of the class will be angry with her for it.
- Implied We see the seating arrangement in the classroom before Jason dies, and after his death, Kyle, who sits behind him, complains that there's no one for him to copy off anymore.
- Played for Drama: Jason's twin sister Lily, the main character, is reminded of Jason and sent into a grief spiral whenever she sees the empty chair.
Go back to Empty Chair Memorial, but don't sit on it.
