I think this page should either be split into multiple tropes or have the examples be split into multiple sections (I've seen this done on some pages but I currently can't find any examples). This is because the trope seems to come in at least 3 distinct enough variations: character is revealed to be a hallucination of another character or something like that; character is revealed to be a literal supernatural entity such as a ghost or zombie; or character is revealed to have been killed and replaced by someone else a while ago. I don't see any downsides to dividing this page's examples up in some way, especially since there are so many examples.
At the beginning of the page, I added:
You probably thought these characters were alive.
NOPE! They're not. They're dead. But they (usually) haven't been taxidermized by Chuck Testa.
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Needs Help
, started by Troper48 on Jun 3rd 2020 at 11:33:45 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman