Playing With / Long-Dead Badass

• Basic: A badass character dies before the story starts.

• Straight: Bob tells main character Alice about Corman, his badass friend who was the leader of the team and is now dead.
• Justified:
  • When Corman died, they needed a replacement badass. Enter Alice, who they hope will be able to fight as well as Corman could. The story starts when Alice joins the team, because she is the main character.
  • Corman's last wish was for the team to find Alice. The story starts when Alice joins the team, because she is the main character.
  • Corman was a hero from centuries ago that inspired Alice to start her journey to become a warrior that is the focus of the story.
• Inverted:
  • The weakest person on the team died before the story started.
  • The team badass dies in the epilogue.
• Subverted:
  • Corman faked his death. He returns midway through the book.
  • Or, the whole team was lying to Alice about him being dead. He's actually just fine and hiding in a bunker until The Big Bad returns.
• Double Subverted:
  • But he wasn't actually the badass, either, but The Smart Guy. The real badass, Dana, died before the book took place- no one mentioned her because her death was shameful to them.
  • That's his identical twin, Ezekiel, who has been pretending to be Corman this entire time and has no badass skills whatsoever.
• Parodied: Bob shows Alice some videos of earlier fights. In all of them, Corman manages to bungle the fight very badly. Bob and the rest of the team still insist he was awesome at fighting.
• Deconstructed: ???
• Reconstructed: ???
• Zig Zagged: ???
• Averted:
  • No one died.
  • The person who died was not the badass.
  • The badass died during the book.
• Enforced: ???
• Implied: Bob tells Alice, "I'm glad you're here. We needed someone else who was good at fighting, we haven't had one since...the battle..."