Undead Author: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|'''Jack Sparrow''': It's the ''Pearl''.
'''Prisoner''': The ''Black Pearl!'' I've heard stories. She's been preying on ships and settlements for near ten years. Never leaves any survivors.
'''Jack Sparrow''': No survivors? Then where do the stories come from, I wonder?
|''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: The Curse of the Black Pearl''}}
This happens whenever a character relates a story or an urban legend they've heard about some monster or location which never leaves anyone alive. Ten to one, [[The Law of Conservation of Detail|it'll directly affect them later]].
This of course [[Fridge Logic|raises the question]] of where the legend came from, if nobody has ever lived to talk about it? Perhaps the author was undead. Or maybe the author was the monster. Or perhaps the telling permits the author to have seen the monster in action but not be a target (e.g. using the quote as an example, perhaps someone on a ship saw the Black Pearl attack a settlement).
Compare [[Did You Die?]].
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* Averted in ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'', where Pierrot le Fou leaves ''almost'' no-one alive from his attacks, although the ones that do survive to tell the tale are eventually all hunted down and killed anyway.
** He's so little known that Spike has ''no idea who the hell is attacking him.''
== [[Comics]] ==▼
* Parodied in [https://web.archive.org/web/20120211200516/http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/gamespyarchive/index.php?date=2001-04-25 this] ''[[Nodwick]]'' strip.▼
== [[Film]] ==
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* Lampshaded in ''[[Kick-Ass (film)|Kick-Ass]]'', where Kick-Ass/David [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|tells the people in the audience]] who figured he wouldn't die at one point because he's still narrating to stop being a bunch of smartasses and lists several films with [[Posthumous Narration]] ({{spoiler|which doesn't include this one}}).
* Lampshaded in ''[[D.E.B.S.]]'', where the four DEBS members are preparing to spy on Lucy Diamond. Apparently nobody has ever fought her and lived to talk about it. {{spoiler|It turns out the various law enforcement agents sent to capture her died of various natural causes, including frostbite and ebola, as they tracked her to various secret hideouts around the world without taking adequate precautions against the natural dangers of the environments.}}
* Two mythological monsters, Medusa and the Basilisk, possessed magical auras that would kill anyone who looked at them (and, in some versions, anyone they looked at). Despite this they were often physically described in great detail in the legends. In the Medusa's case it could be argued that this was because looking at her reflection in a mirror wasn't lethal and someone could have seen only their reflection. But there is really no excuse for the Basilisk, who not only had a lethal reflection, but also breathed poison gas as a backup weapon (JK Rowling tweaked the Basilisk for the [[Harry Potter]] series so that indirect looks at it were nonlethal, but induced petrification).▼
** It also helps in [[Harry Potter]] that they have a literal undead author in the case of Moaning Myrtle.▼
* Scottish folklore says that anyone who hears the flowers of the Bluebell ringing will die immediately. Well, then who lived to tell about it?▼
** Someone who was deaf?▼
* This is an often-cited [[Fridge Logic]] issue with the old wives' tale that if you die in your dream, you'll [[Your Mind Makes It Real|die from the shock of it]] in your sleep and never wake up. If the people who die in their dreams never wake up, how does anybody know what they were dreaming about when they died?▼
* [[Snopes]].com has expressed bewilderment at people who send them that "My name is so-and-so, I am but three/Tonight my daddy murdered me" poem and ask if it's "real" or not.▼
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] in
** And again in ''[[
* Similarly [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] in ''[[Spellsinger|The Paths of the Perambulator]]'', when Jon-Tom narrowly avoids being killed by {{spoiler|an explosive pinecone}}. When he protests that there are no such things on his (our) world, Mudge half convinces him that there ''could'' be, if anyone who encounters one dies and is written off as the victim of a mundane hiking accident.
* [[Edgar Allan Poe]] was usually good about averting Undead Author. He even did it with ''[[The Pit And The Pendulum]]'', though he had to resort to a [[Deus Ex Machina]].
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* Many of [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s stories, considering his preference for first person and high protagonist mortality rate. Though ''Call of Cthulhu'' at least justified the account of the encounter with Great Cthulhu in that some of the sailors who delayed him managed to live long enough to write it down.
▲== [[Live Action Television]] ==
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' uses the "mundane hiking accident" variant in "Silence in the Library" for maximum [[Paranoia Fuel]]. The Vashta Nerada exist on ''every'' planet; the reason we never hear about them is because they exist in dark and isolated places, and, well, you know how people go missing in the woods...
{{quote|'''The Doctor''': Almost every species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark, but they're wrong, because it's not irrational. It's Vashta Nerada.}}
* The singer of ''[[The Lonely Island|Like A Boss]]'' is asked to describe an average day. Apparently an average day consists of chopping his balls off, crashing into the Sun and dying.
** And turning into a jet, bombing the Russians, sucking his own dick, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|eating chicken strips]]
** ''Trouble on Dookie Island'' ends with the [[Villain Protagonist]]s getting killed by the police.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
▲* Parodied in [https://web.archive.org/web/20120211200516/http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/gamespyarchive/index.php?date=2001-04-25 this] ''[[Nodwick]]'' strip.
== [[Oral Tradition]], [[Folklore]], [[Myth and Legend]] ==
▲* Two mythological monsters, Medusa and the Basilisk, possessed magical auras that would kill anyone who looked at them (and, in some versions, anyone they looked at). Despite this they were often physically described in great detail in the legends. In the Medusa's case it could be argued that this was because looking at her reflection in a mirror wasn't lethal and someone could have seen only their reflection. But there is really no excuse for the Basilisk, who not only had a lethal reflection, but also breathed poison gas as a backup weapon (
▲** It also helps in ''[[Harry Potter]]'' that they have a literal undead author in the case of Moaning Myrtle.
▲* Scottish folklore says that anyone who hears the flowers of the Bluebell ringing will die immediately. Well, then who lived to tell about it?
▲** Someone who was deaf?
▲* This is an often-cited [[Fridge Logic]] issue with the old wives' tale that if you die in your dream, you'll [[Your Mind Makes It Real|die from the shock of it]] in your sleep and never wake up. If the people who die in their dreams never wake up, how does anybody know what they were dreaming about when they died?
▲* [[Snopes]].com has expressed bewilderment at people who send them that "My name is so-and-so, I am but three/Tonight my daddy murdered me" poem and ask if it's "real" or not.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* The most popular origin story of the Skaven from ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' is a Tilean story called The Doom of Kavzar. The ending implies that everyone in Kavzar got eaten by rats. What's odd is even if the rats were smart enough to be regarded as proper Skaven, Skaven don't give a crud about the history of their kind.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* ''[[The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron]]'' has Jimmy pointing out the [[Fridge Logic]] of an urban legend about a theme park, questioning how Nick could know the kids' final words if they were never heard from again.
* Parodied in the ''[[Dilbert]]'' cartoon where a story of a co-worker killing an entire field hockey team and not leaving survivors was learned from reading it on her website.
* A variation, the ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'' episode "Over the Edge". Most of the episode is Barbara's drug-induced nightmare, courtesy of the Scarecrow. Her own death occurs at the start of it, and she can only watch the aftermath helplessly, a violent war between her father and Batman that tears Gotham apart.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Narrator Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Undead Author]]
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