A kind of offscreen death, primarily in fantasy stories, where the protagonist has some chance encounter with a ghost (either in a vision or while travelling through some kind of ghostly underworld), only to find out that they're the ghost of someone they knew before they left or from earlier in their journey, and whom they believed to be alive until then. They died or were killed while the hero was away, and now they get the news straight from the deceased themselves. Usually allows the deceased to have a few parting words with the protagonist before finally passing on, thus serving to avoid Never Got to Say Goodbye. Sometimes the very shocked and saddened protagonist may go Please, Don't Leave Me as the deceased fades away, if the deceased was someone they were close to.
Note that for this to apply, the character must either be one who was preestablished earlier in the story as alive, or which we could reasonably expect to have been alive earlier in the story. Any random character who died well before the story and shows up as a ghost would not count.
Compare and contrast Posthumous Character, for when a character is considered long dead before the story even starts. Compare Doomed Predecessor where an explorer is introduced alive (or missing) and is later found dead. Also compare Dead All Along, where a character assumed to be alive turns out to be a ghost.
As this is a Death Trope, UNMARKED SPOILERS are below.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Star Wars: Legacy begins 88 years after the chronologically previous work in Star Wars Legends (the novel Star Wars: Crucible). Although Force users can live for centuries, even human ones, Luke Skywalker is revealed to the audience to have died during the Time Skip when he appears to Cade as a Force ghost.
Fan Works
- All Assorted Animorphs AUs: At the end of "What if the Animorphs could use magic?", Jake is horrified to discover that his suicide mission to save Ax was for naught when he meets Ax's ghost.
- In Yesterday Upon The Stair, Izuku (and the readers) learn that Tensei Iida didn't survive his encounter with Stain when Izuku comes to class and sees his ghost standing beside his brother.
Films — Live-Action
- In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Elizabeth Swann finds her father, Governor Swann, among the lost souls in Davy Jones's Locker, despite him being alive before she set off on the journey to revive Jack, revealing that Cutler Beckett really did follow up on his Deadly Euphemism about him.
Gamebooks
- Give Yourself Goosebumps have a few bad endings where this happens.
- In The Twisted Tale of Tiki Island, you and your cousin Gina end up being pursued by several Ghost Pirate skeletons. You might lose Gina at one point, and depending on your choices, you end up being trapped by a ghostly skeleton... wearing Gina's swimsuit. You then realize there's no escape, she's dead, and you're next.
- Several bad endings in Checkout Time at the Dead-End Hotel, after you chose to pull a Let's Split Up, Gang! in Hotel Morte to find Drew Mortgarth, have you rendezvous with your friends, only to realize they're dead and are now among the hotel's resident ghosts, and they want you to join them. In one of the bad endings, it's your friend's mother who is revealed to be a ghost.
Literature
- Min spends the entirety of Dragon Pearl searching for her brother Jun... Only to discover that he's been dead for a while when she meets his ghost on the Fourth Colony.
- In the Elenium, it's eventually explained to Sparhawk that in his absence, Sephrenia and a select group of his fellow Pandion Knights performed a magic ritual to keep the poisoned Queen Ehlana alive at the expense of their own life energy. Every month, one of them will die unless the cure is found, with Sephrenia being the last to go. Neither he nor Sephrenia knows which one will die each month until each knight's ghost appears to inform them of the passing; Sephrenia, who is Really 700 Years Old and has known all of these knights since they were children, takes it extremely hard every time.
- In The Rescue, the third book of the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, Soren the owl has a vision of the scrooms (owl ghosts) of his parents, his first meeting with them since he was stolen from their nest, and learns that they were killed by his brother Kludd shortly after he was stolen.
- Warrior Cats: In the prologue of Darkest Night, Needletail shows up as a ghost to speak to Tree, a cat who she'd met during her life, and he's surprised and asks how she died.
- Yumi and the Nightmare Painter: Referenced for laughs when Nikaro is temporarily stuck outside his body as an invisible spirit. Unknown to him, Design can see spirits, so she takes one look, drops a bowl of soup, and exclaims, "Storms! Nikaro? Are you dead?" He then hurriedly explains while she tries to act natural in front of the other customers.
Live-Action TV
- Angel: Cordelia Chase had last been seen in a coma in the finale of season 4, but she suddenly returns midway through season 5 to help Angel deal with the return of an old enemy and take a trip down memory lane. At the end, it's revealed she died earlier in the hospital and the Cordelia who assisted him was a ghost sent as a favor by the Big Good.
- Ghost Whisperer:
- "Ghost, Interrupted" features a flashback to a younger Melinda visiting her grandmother, who has the same gift as her, in a nursing home. When Melinda asks her how she knows the difference between a ghost and a live person, Mary Ann says she'll be able to feel what a ghost is feeling when she looks at one. Melinda then realizes she can feel what her grandmother is feeling, and runs to her grandmother's room to find her dead.
- The two-part season one finale has a plane crashing in Grandview. The audience is at first led to believe that one of the victims of the crash is Andrea's brother, but it turns out Andrea herself died in the crash. The Season 2 premiere is her final appearance on the show.
- In the first episode of The Haunting of Hill House (2018), Steven Crain walks into his apartment to find that his sister Nell is waiting for him there. Given that Nell's been trying to call various family members for the past twenty-four hours, Steve is eager to find out what's wrong... but she can only stare mournfully at him in total silence. At that moment, their father calls, revealing that Nell made a nighttime journey to the eponymous Haunted House and is now dead of an apparent suicide. Horrified, Steven turns around — and finds that Nell is now standing behind him, screaming.
- On Midnight, Texas, Creek leaves town but comes back in a later episode. At the end of that episode, she calls for Manfred to come outside. He does and is very shaken to see she's a ghost.
- Misfits:
- In season 2, Nathan meets his half-brother Jamie, and the two of them bond over their mutual hatred of their father... right up until the two of them narrowly avoid getting killed in a fire. After this, Jamie seems curiously eager to get Nathan to reconnect with his dad, and Nathan reluctantly consents to a face-to-face meeting to clear the air; however, when they finally meet up, their father is uncharacteristically sorrowful - and doesn't seem to notice that Jamie is there. Turns out that Jamie didn't escape the fire after all - and Nathan has the power to communicate with the dead.
- In another season 2 episode, the team end up getting on the bad side of an aspiring supervillain with the power to psychically control milk. Following a confrontation with said supervillain, we briefly lose track of Kelly and Alisha - up until the former bumps into Nathan, seemingly unharmed. However, this turns out to be Nathan's mediumship at work again: Kelly quickly reveals that she's been murdered and that the supervillain is now holding Alisha hostage; for good measure, we cut to a reveal shot of Kelly's body, having been drowned in milk.
- Variation on Person of Interest: In "The Day The World Went Away" Root takes a bullet for Finch, and is seen going into shock as she's taken to hospital. Later Finch gets a phone call from someone who sounds like Root... but it's then revealed that Root died and The Machine has adopted her voice in tribute.
- Star Trek: Discovery: In "Vaulting Ambition", Stamets encounters his husband, Dr. Culber, while trapped in the mycelial network, and Culber reveals that he was killed in the real world (as seen in the previous episode) and that his spirit now resides within the network. After a tearful goodbye, Stamets escapes the network and returns to the normal universe. Luckily, in season 2 they're able to find a way to resurrect Culber.
Manhua
- Old Master Q has a comical, Played for Laughs take on the trope. Master Q is strolling alone one night and meets his friend, a one-shot character named Liu, which he greets and remarks that he haven't seen Liu for a long time ever since Liu had that terrible disease a few months ago... until Master Q and Liu passes a glass storefront and Master Q realize Liu doesn't have a reflection. Cue Master Q going Oh, Crap! before running off.
Myths & Religion
- The Odyssey:
- Odysseus is surprised to find his mother Anticlea in the Underworld, and we learn that she died of grief or suicide during the many years of his absence.
- In the underworld, Odysseus to his distress also finds the ghost of Agamemnon, whom he last saw when the Greeks departed from Troy, and asks him how he met his death. Agamemnon reveals that his wife had remarried while he was gone, and her new husband killed him upon returning home.
Video Games
- Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin: Early on, Jonathan and Charlotte meet a ghost who calls himself Wind. Later on, though, Wind reveals himself to be the ghost of Eric Lecarde, one of the protagonists of Bloodlines and a friend of Jonathan's father John Morris. In the interim, Eric was killed by Brauner but managed to bind his own spirit to Dracula's Castle.
- There are several characters in Final Fantasy X who become Unsent (the spirit of a person who wasn't laid to rest by a Summoner who can still interact with the world and doesn't actually look or act any different, but may degenerate into a fiend if left to fester) along the course of the game (Seymour, repeatedly) or were Unsent all along (Auron, Maechen). And then there's Tidus and Jecht, who were more or less sentient physical dreams.
- Neverwinter Nights 2: Depending on your actions, Bishop may fight for neither you nor the Big Bad in the final battle and simply leave the final dungeon before its collapse. Even if he did, you still meet him in a vision of the atheist's afterlife in Mask of the Betrayer. Apparently, his head start getting out was not enough.
- Early in Paranormal HK, you're separated from your friend, Kathy, before encountering a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl wearing Katy's blue dress, making you realize everyone around you has been taken by supernatural forces. Subverted later on, however - the ghost girl that looks like Kathy is actually a doppelganger, the real Kathy is still alive.
- Sally Face: The end of Chapter 2 has Larry's ghost appear to Dr. Enon in the present when he visits the treehouse, while Sally's recollection of the past had yet to reveal that Larry ever died. Chapter 4's events of the past show Sally texting Larry in his final moments before running to the treehouse to confirm the worst, but we never see the body, despite Larry being able to help from the other side.
Web Animation
- At the end of Walrusguy's Youtube Poop "The Ewoks Go Mad From the Revelation That Their Show Is No Longer Canon
", Dr. Raygar appears to be fine after returning from Endor. Admiral Kaz snidely remarks that he should just consider himself lucky that he survived his mission. Raygar promptly corrects him.
Dr. Raygar: But, Admiral Kaz... I didn't survive my mission.
Admiral Kaz: What?!
Dr. Raygar: [now a Force Ghost] So long, Admiral Kaz.
Web Comics
- Subverted for surrealism in pictures for sad children. In one comic, Gary finds his father's ghost in his apartment, then angrily calls his mom to ask why nobody told him his father died. Mom has no idea what he's talking about, and she puts Dad — still very much alive — to talk on the phone with Gary. Yet the ghost is still definitely haunting Gary's place. The characters never figure out how this is happening.
Western Animation
- In the Family Guy episode "Coma Guy", Brenda (Glenn Quagmire's sister) re-appears as a spirit on the boat in Peter's coma, indicating that she died off-screen.
- The Simpsons: While Dr. Marvin Monroe was considered dead for a long time before turning up alive in "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", after that episode he disappeared for another fourteen years (barring a few cameos) before returning as a ghost in "Flanders' Ladder". He hasn't been seen since that episode.
