Basic Trope: Pretending a dead person is alive.
- Straight: Bob dies. Alice and Charlie hold his body in front of them and move his body parts in order to convince people he's still alive.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob has been dead long enough to clearly be decaying or is already a skeleton at this point. They still attempt this anyway.
- Multiple dead people become subject to this.
- The scheme to convince people that Bob is alive is surprisingly elaborate.
- Downplayed: Bob isn't dead, but just unconscious/sleeping/otherwise unresponsive, but the same idea happens.
- Justified: Alice and Charlie were unsure of what to do after Bob died.
- Both Alice and Charlie were already treated as suspicious people for reasons beyond their control by others. If Bob's corpse is found anywhere near them, the public would likely point fingers at them despite the two having done nothing. As such, they have to get Bob's corpse as far away from the public as possible without raising suspicion, so that he can appear to have died under normal circumstances without implicating them.
- Inverted: Bob is clearly alive, but Alice and Charlie pretends he's dead for whatever reason.
- Subverted:
- It turns out that Bob had a Disney Death.
- John sees through the ruse immediately.
- Double Subverted:
- But then he dies later, and Alice and Charlie are forced to pretend he's alive.
- Being friends with all of them and knowing they did not killed Bob (although it seriously looks like it), he tells Alice and Charlie to stop dragging Bob around like a puppet, go sit him down in his home office, and leave the house while he is still fresh enough that they can still convincingly use the "we didn't knew he was dead, we thought he was drunk" alibi.
- Parodied: Bob is reduced to Ludicrous Gibs... and this is still attempted anyway.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice and Charlie alternate between pretending Bob's body is alive and having Charlie impersonate him.
- Averted: Nobody pretends dead bodies are alive.
- Enforced: The writers are fans of Weekend at Bernie's.
- Lampshaded: "Well, who's going to fool people Bob is still alive? Anyone?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- "Just tell everyone he's dead!"
- Everybody instantly sees through the ruse.
- Discussed: "You know this is gonna get us arrested for negligence, or vandalism, or whatever the heck is the crime you charge people for dragging corpses around in any fashion that is not a properly-documented coffin, right?"
- Conversed: ???
Of Corpse He's Alive! Dead people can't do this!
