Basic Trope: A female character is on the advertising for a game, and she is meant to be sexually attractive, but she does not show up in the actual game.
- Straight: A game uses Alice, a lady in a bikini who the writers think the players will find hot, extensively in advertising. Alice is not a character in their game.
- Exaggerated: The game uses outright softcore porn featuring Alice and several other people to advertise their game. The game is not an RPG and doesn't have characters.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is a minor character in the game, but a major character in the posters.
- Alice is a major character in the game, but she always dresses modestly and never provides Fanservice like she's shown doing on the poster.
- Justified:
- The characters know they are in a game and Alice knows some gamers will find her attractive, so she jumps onto the posters and is too busy to play a role in the game.
- Alice represents Bob's idea of what Princess Charlene looks like based on photos from when she was an eleven-year-old… Charlene has developed quite differently though.
- Alice was lost due to a bug in the 1.0 pressing of the game; hopefully they'll put her back in the 1.1 pressing.
- Inverted:
- Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer.
- Alice is the only character in the game.
- Gender-Inverted:
- Bob in a suit is on the poster but all the game characters are women in bikinis.
- Bob in a Walking Shirtless Scene is on the poster but all the game characters are women in long, modest dresses.
- Subverted: Alice turns out to be the Final Boss of the game, which explains her absence in most of the time.
- Double Subverted: But then someone defeats Alice, so someone else replaces her.
- Parodied: Alice is on the poster in her bikini, but the game itself is set in a realistically-portrayed Middle Ages. Gamers still buy the game to find the lady with the modern haircut, modern makeup, and modern lingerie.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice is on the poster in her bikini, but not in the game. Except she is, as an Easter Egg. But in-game!Alice looks and acts very little like poster!Alice.
- Averted: Nobody appears on the poster at all.
- Enforced: Sex Sells, and the advertisers want to attract straight men, bisexuals, and/or lesbians.
- Lampshaded: "Where is that lady I was next to just before?"
- Invoked: A group of gamers play a prank by altering a game's poster and content so Alice (who appears on the poster and is a character in the game) is sexualized on the poster and nonexistent in the game.
- Exploited:
- Defied: Alice is a major character in the game, and is portrayed true to her in-game character.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Who was that lady in the bikini that was on the poster?"
- Played for Laughs: Alice is a comedian who is not invoking Sex Sells, so much as Jokes Sell, but she's only on the poster to tell jokes to attract gamers, she's not in the game.
- Played for Drama: A Damsel in Distress is put on the poster to encourage gamers to buy it and save her, but she does not appear in the game.
Back to Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game
