Basic Trope: Someone is suspected of a serious crime (often murder), but then is murdered, proving them innocent.
- Straight: Alice is investigating a Serial Killer. Her prime suspect is Bob... until Bob gets killed.
- Exaggerated: Alice outright thinks she saw Bob killing someone, but he was just cooking. She later sees Bob being killed by the actual killer.
- Downplayed: The killer shoots Bob, who ends up surviving. It's still enough to prove him innocent, though.
- Justified:
- The killer didn't know that Bob was a suspect. If they had, they wouldn't have killed him, as then they'd have no scapegoat.
- Bob was also investigating the killer in order to clear his name, and managed to get close enough to doing so that the killer had to silence him to avoid being found out.
- Inverted:
- Alice initially suspects that Bob isn't the killer. Then, she realizes he is when he and she are the only ones left alive.
- Alice is trying to figure out who has the power to turn dead people into zombies. She thinks it's Bob, but then realizes it isn't when he dies and comes back as a zombie.
- Subverted:
- It turns out that Bob was the killer, but there's another murderer loose!
- It turns out that Bob was the killer after all, and he committed suicide.
- Bob turns out to have been the killer and faked his own death.
- It turns out that Bob was the killer and he died in an accident.
- Double Subverted:
- Then, Alice suspects the murderer to be Carol, only for Carol to die...
- The police thought it was suicide or an accident, but it turns out to have been murder all along.
- Parodied:
- Zigzagged: Alice is investigating a serial killer. She suspects Bob, only for Bob to die... check that, he faked his own death. She suspects it was Carol, but she dies... but then it apparently turns out to have been an accident... but then we get a hint that it might not have been.
- Averted:
- Bob was the serial killer.
- There is no crime.
- Bob is wrongly suspected, but he doesn't die.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: "Shame you had to die to prove your innocence."
- Invoked: Someone who hates Bob frames him for being the Serial Killer knowing that either Bob will be falsely arrested for the crime or get murdered by the real killer for trying to "take" the killer's identity.
- Exploited: Bob was in fact the killer, and he faked his death to avoid being caught.
- Defied:
- Bob proves his innocence and teams up with Alice to avoid being killed.
- The killer knows Bob is a suspect and thus avoids killing him.
- Implied:
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama: Alice feels deeply remorseful about suspecting Bob and feels responsible for his death.
- Played for Horror:
Back to Suspect Existence Failure.
