Basic Trope: Before a character dies, you get to know his backstory.
- Straight: Right before Alice’s death, she flashes back to the pivotal moment in her life that brought her to where she is now.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice’s whole life, from birth to death, flashes before her eyes as she dies.
- Alice is going to die in five minutes. In that time, she relays to Bob her entire life story.
- Downplayed:
- Alice, on her deathbed, reminisces on her life.
- Alice’s past is already known, and only a minor secret of hers is revealed before she dies.
- Justified:
- Alice knows she doesn’t have long to live, and is casting back to earlier points in her life because she doesn’t want to think about her imminent demise.
- Alice has been suppressing a dark secret for the whole story. Now that she is dying, she finally feels free to admit it to herself.
- Alice is an android whose malfunctioning brain is causing her to relive past experiences before her death.
- An old enemy plans to murder Alice. Before Alice’s death, the killer reveals what Alice did in the past to earn her this fate.
- Inverted: ???
- Subverted: During a life-or-death situation, Alice flashes back to crucial events in her past, but ends up surviving the ordeal.
- Double Subverted: Bob dies instead. Alice’s flashbacks, which included Bob, were actually fleshing out his origins before his demise. Alice was the red herring.
- Parodied:
- Alice reveals what her college major was. She is then crushed by a falling anvil.
- Alice is suicidal, and genre-savvy Bob suggests reminiscing on her past to incur death.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: No last-minute reveals ever happen before a character’s death.
- Enforced: ???
