Exposition of Immortality/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: He's an immortal / extremely long-lived supernatural. Look at his immortality.

  • Straight: The immortal character remembers, dreams of or otherwise shows things that demonstrate his longevity.
  • Exaggerated: The immortal has a huge collection of things collected through the ages and remembers a similar thing he did 500 years ago every time he possibly can.
  • Downplayed: The immortal makes choices that seem old fashioned, but can be otherwise attributed to eccentricity.
  • Justified: ???
  • Inverted: The immortal goes to great lengths to keep up with current trends and fashions.
  • Subverted: The immortal doesn't have any of the things that might demonstrate his unusual age.
  • Double Subverted: ...except for that one thing.
  • Parodied:
    • The immortal maintains a huge and obvious collection of artifacts that actually aren't proof of his long life.
    • Julius makes a literal exposition in a museum-like style with all evidence that he lived in the Ancient Rome. With texts in Latin.
  • Deconstructed: Julius feels sad when he sees the evidence of his immortality because that evidence reminds him of all the friends, loves and experiences that he has lost to the inexorable passage of time.
  • Reconstructed: Julius learns to see the memories of the era he lived with nostalgia instead of sadness.
  • Zig Zagged: Some immortals give evidence of their immortality and age, other don't.
  • Averted: Julius doesn't give any proof of his immortality.
  • Enforced: The writer wants to demonstrate the viewer how old Julius is.
  • Lampshaded: The immortal may say something like "What, did you think I'd keep something proving I'm a thousand years old lying around where anyone can find it?"
  • Invoked: Julius wants to impress his friends with all the old things that he has to prove he is an ancient Roman.
  • Exploited: Patricius uses this to expose Julius as an immortal to the world so that he becomes a test subject for Mad Scientists.
  • Defied: Julius tries to avoid the discovery that he is immortal because Mad Scientists would want him as a test subject, so he hides all evidence of his antiquity.
  • Discussed: "I have a cup used in the Roman Empire, a text written in the year 43, and a table that was common in Roman houses".
  • Conversed: Genre Savvy Characters talk about the trope in a Show Within a Show.
  • Played For Laughs: Declarations of immortality are met with flat disbelief or a character who is depicted as very old, but never directly referred to as immortal, does something that suggests they are. Like claiming your place of birth is a prehistoric continent.
  • Played For Drama: Julius has to be very careful about whom he shares this evidence with, because some Mad Scientist could be obsessed with using him as test subject to get immortality secrets.
  • Plotted A Good Waste: The (normally unintentional) trope is used quite intentionally.

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