Basic Trope: A character turns out to have been dead since the story's beginning.
- Straight: Alice plays an important role in the story, but for some reason she remains unseen for much it, until it is revealed that she has actually been dead for some time.
- Exaggerated:
- We see Alice's biopic. It goes through her birth, graduating Harvard, shaping history, growing old... and it turns out that it merely was the Dying Dream of a stillborn baby.
- Almost everyone in the story has been dead all along.
- Downplayed: Alice had been communicating with the main cast by letters. She died while a few of her letters were still in the mail, and the cast didn't realize until the mail stopped coming.
- Justified:
- Alice is a ghost who must stay among mortals until she accomplishes some goal. She thinks she hasn't been alive for long enough and decides to muck around for a bit. Telling anyone, even the narrator, would just decrease the amount of time she has left and/or alienate others.
- Alice, aware that she was about to die, set up an extensive plan to come into effect after her death to get back at her killer(s). The complexity of the plan as it is being executed makes it appear like Alice is alive and actively pulling the strings up until The Reveal.
- Inverted:
- We see Alice's apparent death at the beginning of the story and how her allies try to cope with it. Turns out she was just in a coma, and that she wakes up near the end.
- Not Quite Dead
- Alice appears to be a ghost in her interactions with others, especially in her portrayal to the audience... but it turns out she was a living character all along.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated
- Subverted: It's a horror story, and Alice does hit a few tropes typical of the Dead All Along character... But she lives to the very end.
- Double Subverted: However, she is killed off at the beginning of the sequel... and you only find that out at the end.
- Parodied: Alice is a zombie trying to convince her living friends she is still a normal human, despite her limbs occasionally detaching and her phobia of guns. When she finally comes clean at the end of the story, Everybody Knew Already.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice is revealed to have been Dead All Along, but then she's brought Back from the Dead, albeit not all there. But that was All Just a Dream ... and when she wakes up, she learns she died in her sleep.
- Averted: Alice is either a Posthumous Character or never dies in the first place.
- Enforced: The producers cast a big star as Alice, the Red Shirt Satellite Love Interest. The writers have to expand Alice's role in story but wanted to kill her, so this is how they do it.
- Lampshaded: "What the—I was talking to a ghost all this time?"
- Invoked: Alice's friend, Carol the White Mage, summons her spirit and brings it with her to help her do various things.
- Exploited: Carol makes it known that Alice is helping her despite being dead, making her enemies nervous.
- Defied: The Grim Reaper makes sure to explain the situation to all the recently deceased, to avoid any possible confusion.
- Discussed: "I'm so sorry... But Now I Must Go. I can't hide myself among the living any longer."
- Conversed: "Wait, you're telling me Alice was dead since the beginning?! I suppose that fills up a few Plot Holes..."
- Implied: Alice and Bob visit the graveyard to visit Bob's great-grandfather's grave. They pass over the headstone with Alice's name on it, but they think that it was for a different person sharing the same name of Alice, or at least ob does and Alice doesn't say.
- Played for Laughs: Alice often walked through walls and pointed out that she was dead, but at the end, all the heroes are incredibly confused about the fact that she’s dead.
- Played for Drama: The protagonists are on a vital mission to locate Alice. Finding out that she's already dead serves as the story's Darkest Hour.
The main page was Dead All Along.
