Basic Trope: A character's death is danced around euphemistically, usually within a Dystopia.
- Straight: Whenever anyone opposes Emperor Evulz, they're declared insane and sent to a "re-education facility" to learn to love the emperor. What actually happens is that they are being executed.
- Exaggerated:
- Emperor Evulz claims that the people he killed have been sent away even when he personally shot them dead in plain sight.
- The public is told that within Evulz's realm no-one dies anymore. The old and sickly, they are told, are sent on a long, well-deserved holiday, while in reality they are euthanized.
- Downplayed:
- Whenever the Emperor kills someone, he just said that person disappeared.
- Whenever Emperor Evulz "releases" someone, he leaves them in the wilderness on a deserted island to fend for themselves. Some of them survive off the land, but most starve and die.
- Justified: The Emperor's position is reliant upon his good name, he can't just up and kill someone and have everyone know about it.
- Inverted:
- Bob kills Emperor Evulz. When his loyal followers ask where he went, Bob tells them that the Emperor decided to retire and moved to a faraway country to live the rest of his days.
- The Emperor really does send people to be re-educated, but to maintain his stance as a hardass he says he killed them.
- Subverted:
- The Emperor claims to send people to re-education facilities, even going so far as to give the address for one of them. When the Genre Savvy heroes go and investigate, they find...a ton of people in "Emperor Evulz' Friendly Down-Home Re-Education Center" being rehabilitated.
- While foreigners, like The Hero, might think that Gone to Haraskamu is a Never Say "Die" euphemism, it's actually the Valhalla of Tropestani mythology. In other words, Evulz is actually showing Due to the Dead to a Worthy Opponent.
- Double Subverted:
- Those people are all actors or illusions, meant to throw off suspecting heroes.
- If he believed in Haraskamu (and meant it) it would have been respectful, but he only uses it to fool his subjects into thinking him a respectable man.
- Parodied: As soon as the Emperor claims he's going to send someone to the re-education center, he takes them behind the building and loudly and obviously shoots them.
- Zig Zagged: Some of the people in the re-education center are legitimately being rehabilitated, others are just actors to make it seem that more people are there than actually are, and others are death-row inmates who are there until Evulz is really sure he wants to execute them.
- Averted: When the Emperor needs to kill someone, he says he's going to kill them.
- Enforced:
- The creators of the work aren't allowed to discuss mature concepts, so they decide to use Released to Elsewhere instead.
- The trope is used to show how despicable and vile Evulz can be, as nothing is quite as cruel as killing someone and telling everyone else that he or she is still alive in another place.
- Lampshaded: "Your Majesty, why have we never seen a single person successfully 're-educated' though the rehabilitation program runs for decades now?"
- Invoked: Realizing that his poll numbers are dropping since he's overtly killing people, the Emperor looks for a workaround.
- Exploited: The Emperor uses this tactic to make him seem less villainous.
- Defied: Emperor Evulz wants his dissenting subjects to damn well know he'll kill them, and do it painfully and so that everyone could see it.
- Discussed: "Is Emperor Evulz really sending those people away or is he killing them?"
- Conversed: "I hope those characters are okay. Sometimes they say they're elsewhere, but actually, they died!"
- Deconstructed: People become suspicious about possible reasons why they are not allowed to visit or even call their loved ones with that fate, and why nobody is rehabilitated with success. More and more start to understand that they get killed, what finally sparks a rebellion.
- Reconstructed: The rebellion is crushed, and in the end, the rebels just end up Released to Elsewhere too.
- Played For Laughs:
- The Elsewhere has the really silly name Evilidittittity, and the characters always struggle to pronounce that name even right.
- When anyone arrives there, they are killed by being given a drug that forces them to walk into an abyss in a silly way, resulting in Black Comedy.
- Played for Drama: Alice ends up being sent to that place and she sees someone get murdered and so must escape before being murdered too.
- Implied: There's a rumour that the people who supposedly got sent away are dead, however, it never gets comfirmed.
I know your dog meant a lot to you, but it's time for you to say goodbye to him. He'll be Released to Elsewhere so he can play and frolic all day long.
