Basic Trope: The family members of a criminal deny that he is a criminal even in the face of proof.
- Straight: A lot of evidence is collected that points to Charlie as Bob's murderer. Alice, who is Charlie's mother, says that Charlie wouldn't do such a thing.
- Exaggerated: Everyone had seen Charlie set off a bomb on live television, killing hundreds of people. Alice sees the broadcast, but says that it couldn't be Charlie.
- Downplayed:
- Alice insists that Charlie was under the influence of drugs or major stress at the time of the murder, unable to believe he had done it in his right mind when confronted with evidence.
- Alice acknowledges Bob's guilt on an intellectual level, but not on an emotional level.
- Justified:
- Alice has known her own son as a kindhearted person, who has never given her any reason to suspect him of being ready to commit anything criminal.
- Alice is in denial; the idea that her son is a murderer is simply too painful for her to accept.
- Inverted:
- Charlie clearly didn't kill Bob, but Alice frames him because she hates her son.
- Alice refuses to acknowledge Charlie as her son because he refuses to become an assassin, which has been the family's profession since ancestral times.
- Alice does acknowledge Charlie as a murderer, and is delightfully proud of him for being a murderer.
- Charlie can't believe that his mother Alice is a murderer.
- Alice disowns Charlie the moment he is suspected of a crime. Even the people who think he is guilty feel that Alice is rushing to her judgement.
- Subverted:
- After getting over her initial astonishment, Alice accepts the evidence that Bob was killed.
- Charlie was a victim of a Body Snatcher although she couldn't tell from secondary sources. Alice is immediately hostile and distraught when she sees "Charlie" in person as she could tell he was effectively murdered.
- The "innocent oblivious mother" schtick is a façade on Alice's part, as she is his partner in crime.
- Double Subverted:
- ...except she just says this to get the police to leave her alone.
- ...Just not that it was Charlie who did it.
- Alice has some lines she would never cross and she refuses to believe that Charlie would indeed cross those lines. "Of course my son robs banks, I do the same, he would never massacre the customers and tellers".
- Parodied: Charlie mugs his own mother. She refuses to recognize him even when he tells her it's him, and later on she still denies that he did it.
- Zig Zagged: Alice demonstrates Ping Pong Naïveté regarding her son's activities, always knowing precisely enough about his life to suit the plot or her own motives.
- Averted: When Alice is told about Charlie, she accepts it right away.
- Enforced:
- The writers decide to show just how some parents are clueless.
- The writers need a frame narrative for Charlie's Start of Darkness and a sobbing mother sets the mood.
- Lampshaded: "Alice keeps insisting that Charlie is innocent." "Of course she does: she's his mother. No parent wants to believe their kid is capable of [insert crime here]."
- Invoked: Alice puts on an act of injured innocence to prevent herself being suspected as an accessory to Charlie's crimes.
- Exploited: Of all the people that could be used as a scapegoat, the real murderer picked Charlie, knowing that getting his mother to accept the 'facts' will waste the police's time even further.
- Defied: "Do you expect me to say 'Oh no, officer, that couldn't be my little Charlie, he was always such a good boy!'? Your mother isn't an idiot!"
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is a Stepford Smiler who brooks no argument from the rest of the family that Charlie is anything but her darling boy. Her other children resent the favoritism and are driven to follow in Charlie's footsteps.
- Alice was raised into a culture where family is sacred and it's taboo to speak ill of any relative in public. To tell to complete strangers like the police that her son committed a crime, even if it's murder, is so blasphemous to her beliefs that she feels compelled to defend him to her last breath.
- Reconstructed: Realizing it's an out of character moment, Alice insists on a thorough investigation, and it turns out that Bob tried to kill Charlie first, and Charlie accidentally shot back in self-defense. Yes, it was a manslaughter, but Alice was indeed right that Charlie isn't cold-blooded.
- Played For Drama: Alice keeps denying that Charlie is a criminal. As a result, Charlie manages to kill her. Even in the afterlife, Alice denies that Charlie was her murderer.
Hold it! Your mama didn't raise you to be no troper!
