Basic Trope: The story within another story is missing the latter half of its outer frame.
- Straight: Bob's Tale is presented as a flashback the titular Bob is having, however the story does not return to Bob at the end.
- Exaggerated:
- Not only does the story not cut back to Bob at the end, but the story ends with Bob dying.
- The story does this with several layers of nested stories.
- Downplayed: ?
- Justified: The flashback framing device was only put in as filler.
- Inverted: Narrator All Along
- Subverted: At first it seems that the story is about to end, only for the present-day Bob to interrupt the big "THE END" text and finish up the framing device.
- Double Subverted: Bob interrupting the "ending" was part of either the same flashback or a new one.
- Parodied: ?
- Zig-Zagged: ?
- Averted:
- The story returns to present-day Bob as expected.
- There is no framing device to begin with.
- Enforced: As the author Died During Production, this Unfinished Work never got to the the last parts of the story and the framing device was merely a casualty of this.
- Lampshaded: "You were expecting a last-minute plot wrap-up, weren't you?"
- Invoked: ?
- Exploited: ?
- Defied: See Subverted above.
Back to Forgotten Framing Device
