Basic Trope: An Astral Projection is mistaken for a ghost.
- Straight: The Richardson family consists of Alice and Bob and their children Charles and Dottie. When the family cat Millie falls asleep or is knocked out, she astral projects and her apparition is seen by Dottie. She gets her parents and they see the knocked-out Millie and say "Sorry, I'm afraid she's gone." However, the next day, Millie's apparition flies back into her body and the cat wakes up, wanting a snack.
- Exaggerated:
- Even though Millie is clearly breathing in her coma, the family think "There's no reason for us to hallucinate, and we saw Millie's ghost, therefore Millie must be dead."
- All the Richardsons astral project, Millie included, and when they see one another's apparitions, they think each other has died.
- Downplayed: They are on the fence, and wonder "Is Millie dead?"
- Justified: Millie was in the dark, so it was hard to tell if she was breathing, and her apparition looked like a ghost.
- Inverted: Dead All Along.
- Subverted: Millie's apparition goes into her body, but then Millie dies anyway.
- Double Subverted: She's not dead. The soul was just having a hard time going back into her body.
- Parodied: A detective agency whose job it is to find out whether or not people are actually dead or just astral projecting.
- Zigzagged:
- Millie has several out-of-body experiences. Sometimes they believe she's dead, sometimes not.
- Some animals really are dead, some are astral projecting.
- Charles and Dottie think Millie is dead, but Alice and Bob don't.
- Averted: The Richardsons realise that Millie is not dead, or nobody has an out of body experience.
- Enforced:
- The writers are planning to have or have already had a "the cat has an out-of-body experience and it leads to something important" episode, so they write this episode to sort of say, "Millie astral projects sometimes. Remember this, please."
- To set up An Aesop that a Dead Pet Sketch would usually bring without actually killing off Millie.
- Lampshaded: "Our cat had an out-of-body experience yesterday. Gave us the willies, seeing what looked like her ghost".
- Invoked: Millie is The Prankster as well as the family cat and sometimes astral projects intentionally to scare the family.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: The Richardsons make sure Millie is breathing.
- Discussed: "Is that cat astral projecting or dead?"
- Conversed: "Thank goodness the cat was only having an out-of-body experience in that episode! Otherwise, I would have yelled at the writers for killing off Millie all week!"
- Implied: Millie's "ghost" is seen in the background of Episode One. A live and healthy Millie is seen in the background during Episode Two, which is confirmed to be set later.
- Deconstructed: The Richardsons bury the unconscious Millie.
- Reconstructed: Millie's apparition digs the body up and floats back into the physical Millie.
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