No Longer with Us: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

Wait Grandpa, what're you doing here? Aren't you dead? <small>[[Zombie Apocalypse|Are you a zombie? o_o]]</small>

{{examples}}

* There was a German TV spot about old age insurance which went like this. The family, all in black, cries, with the father telling his wife and children that "grandma's now in a better place". Cut to the old lady getting tanned in Hawaii.

* Used in a UK TV advert for Direct Line Insurance with Chris Addison playing an insurance salesman who inadvertently confuses a potential customer by saying his grandmother is "no longer with us". She's actually in Australia.

* In ''[[Yotsubato|Yotsuba&!]]'', Asagi buys some CDs for her father while on holiday, then claims "I bought them without thinking, even though... he's not here anymore". There's a panel of her and her mother looking wistfully at the setting sun... and then Fuka points out that he's not dead, he's just [[Salaryman|at work]].

** It should be mentioned that Asagi likes trying to [[Mind Screw]] the other characters.

* Possibly a variation in ''[[Persepolis]]'': the man who is "on a trip" wasn't really dead, but it really was a white lie. In fact, he was in jail.

* ''[[The Long Halloween]]'', after Dent gets a face full of acid: the surgeon slowly steps out of the operating room, telling the waiting Gilda Dent and Gordons that Dent's "...gone". Cue reactions of shock and grief. Turns out he means that Dent ''escaped'', and then [[Almost-Dead Guy|collapses, revealing a scalpel embedded in his back]].

* In ''[[Fables]]'', a mundy reporter who has been investigating Fabletown can't help but notice that people who have "gone to the Farm" don't seem to be around anymore... not realizing that there is, in fact, a literal farm that the missing Fables have moved to.

* ''[http://commoncouchcrusader.deviantart.com/gallery/36069204 A Fire on the East]'': [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|Fluttershy]]'s parents arrive home after a firestorm has engulfed it. [[Fish Out of Temporal Water|Princess]] [[Large Ham|Luna]] is standing over an unconscious Fluttershy.

{{quote|'''Fluttershy's Dad:''' Where is she?

'''Princess Luna:''' ''(recoiling)'' [[That Came Out Wrong|Have I spoken wrongly? Do ponies not wish each other to be "at peace" in this day?]] }}

* The film ''[[Fried Green Tomatoes]]'' has a character named Buddy who is killed when his boot gets caught on a rail as a train approaches. Later in the film, it appears Ruth's son, who was named after Buddy, has met the same fate. The film cuts to a funeral, but then shows buddy in attendance. It turns out he lost his arm and the ceremony is in memory of it.

** In the present storyline, Evelyn arrives at the nursing home and finds a nurse taking down Ninny's paper rose garden. The nurse then tells her that Ninny is gone. Evelyn believes she means Ninny has died and doesn't understand how quickly the nursing home turns over the room and basically has a breakdown. The nurse then reveals that Ninny actually left in a cab a bit before Evelyn showed up.

* After the conjoined twin main characters of ''[[Stuck On You]]'' get potentially fatal seperation surgery, the doctor tells the pair's friends that "they lost them." Turns out some other doctor had relocated them to another room and didn't mention this to anyone.

* Ambiguously used by Death in Terry Pratchett's ''[[Discworld|Hogfather]]'': "{{smallcaps|The Hogfather is... gone}}" A better wording would be "disappeared" or somesuch, but given that Death is... well, Death, one might assume.... The TV movie makes the line a litle clearer: "{{smallcaps|There isn't an entirely appropriate Human word, so...let us settle for...gone.}}"

** This actually combines two lines in the book, the second being "{{smallcaps|He is...let me see...there isn't an entirely appropriate human word, so... let's settle for...dead. Yes. He is dead.}}" And when Susan visits the lifetimer room, the Hogfather's is broken, which is usually a clear indicator. It's just that for [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]s, death isn't necessarily [[Death Is Cheap|a permanent condition]].

* In ''[[Anansi Boys]]'', Fat Charlie is told that an old woman he's looking for has "gone home". He thinks it means that she's dead, but no, she's just gone back to the tropical island she came from.

* In the ''[[Fresh Prince of Bel Air]]'', Will had went to the hospital to get his tonsils removed, and befriended an elderly man named Max. After escaping, and returning to the hospital, he found Max was gone. Asking the nurse, she replied "He's gone off to a better place." (To be fair, the nurse did imply he was dead by ''sighing'', but then it shows what she thinks about her own workplace.) After Will had his tonsils removed, Max returned to his hospital room looking for his lucky hat. "Max, I thought you died." "I did die... in Pittsburgh!" It turns out "gone to a better place" meant sent to a hospital with ''cable'' in the patient's rooms.

* At the end of the first season of ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'', the Literal Doctor says George Sr. is "gone" when he escapes. In fact, this trope is pretty much the doctor's entire schtick as a character.

* Series one of ''[[The Catherine Tate Show]]'' featured the character of an unhelpful information-desk worker in a shopping centre. In one episode she is approached by a customer who has "lost her mother", and the information-desk worker replies that she is sorry to hear this, but it turns out the customer has just got separated from her mother in the store.

* ''[[Myst]] V'' begins with a letter from Atrus that strongly implies that he has died. Guess who shows up in the [[Multiple Endings|good ending]]?

* The second ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' game has Wright talk as though Edgeworth was dead {{spoiler|Up until the final case}}. In reality {{spoiler|he was on a soul searching journey overseas}}. This would all be very effective if Edgeworth wasn't on front of the damn box.

*** Considering that Edgeworth left a note that said, "Miles Edgeworth chooses death," it's not unlikely that Phoenix actually believed he was dead. Detective Gumshoe, on the other hand, was implied to have known what really happened.

* In one webcomic, a character tells us that his brother/cousin/whatever embarked on a ship called "''Eternity''". Literally: he signed as First Mate.

* ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'': "Something happened to Zoë." (The cast is let in on the joke a while before the reader is.)

* ''[[Housepets]]'' gives us a [http://www.housepetscomic.com/2009/07/03/pushing-up-daisies/ hat-trick].

* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' episode "Lisa's Wedding":

{{quote|"You're getting married! Oh, if only your father was still here to see this... but he left for work five minutes ago!"}}

* In the ''[[Rocko's Modern Life]]'' episode "Ed Is Dead," Rocko believes Bev to have killed Ed, based on what he has seen through his [[Rear Window Investigation]], as well as remarks to this effect by Bev herself. Ed comes back from getting a wart taken off his butt, and Bev is offended that Rocko would even think she'd kill Ed.

* When ska band [[Five Iron Frenzy]]'s trumpet player missed a show (he was attending a wedding), vocalist Reese Roper made a comment to the fans that Brad was "in a better place". This comment spawned rumors on the Internet that Brad really was dead. The band then made fun of the entire incident in their song "The Untimely Death of Brad".

* There's the one about the woman who asks after an acquaintance's teenage son, who hasn't been seen for some weeks, and is told he's "gone up to Jesus" {{spoiler|[http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/ Jesus College] }}.

* There is (or was; its name changed later) a day care or preschool in New Jersey with the name "A Better Place". Hey, where's your kid?

* This happens during an exchange in ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'' when Shaun is tearfully trying to tell his (clueless) mother Barbara that her husband Phillip had died. The group is riding in the car, Phillip and Shaun are in the back seat while Barbara is in the front and Ed is driving. Shaun orders Ed to stop the car, which he does jerking the wheel and slamming the breaks. Ed's behavior triggers the below discussion:

{{quote|'''Ed:''' Chill ooout, everyone's alright.

'''Shaun:''' [[Oh Crap|GET OUT!]] }}

* The inversion of this trope is [[Older Than Print]]: This is how Chaucer's ''Book of the Duchess'' ends. Notable because the narrator fails to figure out what's going on even though he has been listening to the knight eulogizing his lady for over eight hundred lines in terms that are, for a medieval dream poem, relatively non-euphemistic.

* Tragically inverted in the ''[[Kate Modern]]'' episode "Janet": "But whereabouts has she 'gone'? I really need to speak to her!"

* A more humorous inversion occurs in ''[[A Bit of Fry and Laurie]]'' where Fry goes into a bookshop to meet Charlotte Bronte, only to be informed "she's no longer with us".

* In an early episode of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' Lister talks about the death of his adoptive father when he was a child; his mother told him that Dad had gone to the same place as Lister's goldfish. Young Lister believed his father had been flushed down the toilet and was still alive somewhere beyond the u-bend.

* In ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'', Mary tells Laura in her letter not to worry about her, that she has gone to "a quiet, beautiful place". Of course, she really means that she's being sent home from the hospital to die. However, Laura, being eight, thinks Mary means that she's still alive, just in a literal on-Earth quiet, beautiful place.

* In ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'', a flashback sequence shows the young Antimony helping ghosts move on. Seven-years-old Annie doesn't understand the euphemisms used, even when they get quite transparent.

{{quote|'''Moddey-Dhoo:''' One more thing, pup. The boy don't know he has passed on.

** Then [[Subverted]]: she turns out not to be all that broken up about it, for reasons that [[It Makes Sense in Context|make sense in context]] (long story short: [[Death Is Cheap]])

* Parodied in the ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' episode "[[The Third Man|The Third Mouse]]", where minor characters believe Brain to be dead and try to tell Pinky. Pinky, however, doesn't understand ''even when they flat-out tell him that Brain is dead.''

* Happens at the end of the Strong Bad Email "virus" from ''[[Homestar Runner]]'':