Basic Trope: A character who never speaks on screen, despite apparently being capable of it.
- Straight: Alice has no voiced lines.
- Exaggerated: Alice has no voiced lines in spite of being a major character in a long TV series.
- Downplayed:
- Characters are depicted talking on the phone to Alice, but during her rare on-screen appearances she's never shown talking.
- Alice's voice is heard in some scenes, but it's muffled by other sounds, making it impossible to discern what she's saying.
- Justified:
- Alice has laryngitis.
- Alice doesn't speak another character's language.
- Alice's friends are very talkative, denying her a chance to speak aloud.
- Inverted:
- Alice has more lines than any other character in the show.
- The Voice
- Subverted: Alice seems to be voiceless, but starts speaking normally halfway through the show.
- Double Subverted: ...but that was the local ventriloquist, Bailey, throwing her voice.
- Parodied:
- Alice's friend Charlie remarks on how eloquent and musical a speaker she is. We never hear this.
- There is a body swap episode, and Alice stays silent despite her mind being that of Denise.
- Alice never speaks unless she is offscreen.
- Zig Zagged:
- Alice mostly never speaks, then sometimes does.
- It's never clear if the silent Alice is the same person as the mysterious Alice who only talks over the phone.
- Averted: Alice always communicates through talking.
- Enforced:
- Alice's actress has laryngitis when they're about to shoot, so the scenes are rewritten so that an already dialogue-light part has no dialogue in it.
- Alice's actress left the show after last season: in order to properly write her out they had to use a Fake Shemp without an appropriate voice double.
- Lampshaded: "Alice really isn't talkative today, is she?"
- Invoked: Alice goes mute by choice.
- Exploited: Bob takes advantage of Alice's silence to give a big speech of his own.
- Defied: "I'm going to talk, and everyone who might be watching is going to hear me!"
- Discussed: "Alice, are you Ok? Did you swallow your tongue?"
- Conversed: "Is this Alice character mute?" "I...honestly don't know."
- Deconstructed: Alice's silence leads to a case of Poor Communication Kills.
- Reconstructed: Alice is usually written as silent, but does have some speaking lines when the storyline requires it.
- Played For Laughs: All the other characters refers to Alice as "that notorious chatterbox" whom they dread running into because it is almost impossible to stop her when she first starts talking. Coincidently; Alice never speaks when she is on-screen.
- Played For Drama: ???
Back to The Voiceless
