Basic Trope: All the suspects are equally guilty.
- Straight: Detective Alice rounds up Claire, Danny, Ethan, Franklin, and Gretchen as suspects for the murder of Bob, before discovering that they were all conspiring to kill Bob together.
- Exaggerated: Every character, even the extras, were equally responsible for Bob's murder.
- Downplayed: Detective Alice rounds up Bob and Claire, who turn out to be working together.
- Justified: They all hated Bob.
- Inverted: No one did it, Bob died of natural causes.
- Subverted:
- Alice rounds up Claire, Danny, Ethan, Franklin, Gretchen, and Hazel, the last of whom turns out to be innocent and is promptly let go.
- Alice says that Claire, Danny, Ethan, Franklin, and Gretchen did it, but it turns out that Alice was framing them; ''she'' committed the murder.
- Double Subverted:
- But later we find out that Hazel was involved in the scheme to murder Bob.
- Hazel is subsequently subjected to guilt by association.
- Alice was lying. Claire, Danny, Ethan, Franklin, and Gretchen really did do it.
- Alice was just a part of the conspiracy with everyone else, though she personally feels she was most responsible.
- Parodied:
- Even Detective Alice murdered Bob!
- As a Tomato Surprise, everyone was independently planning to kill Bob. This includes Alice, the entire police force, and Bob himself.
- Zig Zagged: Alice concludes that Claire, Danny, Ethan, Franklin, and Gretchen murdered Bob together, but it turns out that she framed them. Later, we discover that she honestly believed that Claire, Danny, Ethan, Franklin, and Gretchen did it, and that the evidence that led Alice to believe that was planted by 5 of her colleagues, who were acting together to ruin Alice's career. Then we find out that that was just a red herring: Only Alice's colleague Hazel framed her and Hazel also committed the crime.
- Averted: Bob had plenty of enemies, but in the end it was just his ex-wife, acting alone.
- Enforced: The book is a logic puzzle where everyone is guilty of something, and it's just a matter of who did what.
- Lampshaded: "Detective Alice always gets her man. All of them."
- Invoked: Bob knows he's dying, but wants to take his enemies down with him, so he arranges a Thanatos Gambit so that his enemies will strike, inevitably screw up somewhere, get caught, and Bob will have the last laugh from beyond the grave.
- Exploited: With so many suspects, cross-checked alibis, and plausible deniability, defense attorneys have a field day and the prosecution can't pin down a single one to convict.
- Defied: Bob killed himself and attempted to frame his enemies.
- Discussed: "Ever notice that an Asshole Victim has no shortage of people who agree that the world's better off without them in it that reached the decision to do it the exact same day and do it within minutes of each other? You'd think a team-up like this would happen more often."
- Conversed: "There's a bunch of hints that any of them could have done it. It's like they all did."
- Implied: "Bob's three ex-wives, the ex-boyfriend, three old ladies he swindled out of their life savings, the business partner he framed, the Russian mobster he double-crossed, his cocaine dealer, and they're all in the same house with him over the weekend. What did he think was gonna happen?"
- Deconstructed: The more people who are in on the conspiracy, the easier it will be for law enforcement to find a weak link to lean on and unravel the whole thing.
- Reconstructed: At the same time, it proves that everyone really can be a suspect, and they might not actually have all of them.
- Played For Laughs: The suspects individually attempted to kill Bob, and had no idea about each other until they were all found guilty.
- Played For Drama:
- Detective Alice is cornered when she discovers there are far more conspirators, even within the ranks, leaving her outnumbered.
- The humongous chain of people involved in this mess (be it actual perpetrators or those slapped with a Felony Murder rap no matter how unfair) definitely lead to a number of unnecessarily destroyed lives when the police arrest them all.
- Played For Horror:
- Bob's death was a very violent lynching and everybody in town was part of said event.
- Escalating the "played for drama" example above, Detective Alice discovers how far the chain of perpetrators go (and even then she can't be sure it's all of them) when they band together to try to silence her.
One of these tropers must have removed the trope link... wait... ALL OF THE TROPERS REMOVED THE LINK TOGETHER!
