Basic Trope: A murder scene is staged to appear like suicide.
- Straight: Charlie kills Bob with a gunshot to the head and leaves the gun in his hand.
- Exaggerated: Charlie kills Bob with a gunshot to the head, slits Bob's wrists with a razor, hangs his corpse from a noose, writes a fake suicide note, and leaves the razor and gun in his hands.
- Downplayed: Charlie dumps Bob's body in the woods, and then mentions his poor mental health to anyone who asks.
- Justified: The best way to get away with the crime, in Charlie's eyes, is to pin the death on the victim.
- Inverted:
- Bob shoots himself with a gun, with Charlie's fingerprints on it.
- Charlie feels so guilty over Bob's suicide that he insists that he murdered him, going so far as to plant evidence incriminating himself.
- Subverted:
- Charlie looks like he's going to leave the gun in Bob's hand, but instead shoots him in the head again.
- After heavy investigation, it turns out Bob actually did kill himself.
- Double Subverted:
- Charlie then leaves a shotgun in Bob's lap.
- Charlie's staging was more complex than initially assumed, and he was ultimately behind it all.
- Parodied: Charlie kills Bob in a way that Bob physically couldn't do to himself (such as shooting him multiple times in the back of the head), and the latter's death is ruled a suicide.
- Zig-Zagged: Charlie kills Bob with a rope, then ties it to the ceiling as a noose, but doesn't hang Bob's corpse. Then he takes out a razor and looks at Bob's wrists, only to put it back. Then he takes out a gun, shoots Bob in the head, and leaves the gun in his hand.
- Averted:
- Charlie kills Bob without staging the scene.
- Bob actually committed suicide and no one thinks otherwise.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "For once, I'd like to see an actual suicide case." "Dude, that's messed up." "So is murder." "Yeah, fair point."
- Invoked: Charlie intentionally makes Bob's murder look like a sloppy attempt at making it look like suicide to lead investigators to another suspect.
- Exploited: Alice frames Charlie for the "murder" of Bob, knowing nobody will believe it was a mere suicide.
- Defied: Bob fights back, even if he won't live, he will make sure Charlie won't be able to stage the scene.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The authorities catch onto the pattern of many suicides turning out to be murders. As a result, the family members and friends of suicide victims are met with great suspicion, making their grieving process much harder.
- Played for Laughs: Bob's suicide was an over-the-top comedic mess that no one believed for even a second.
- Played for Drama: Bob's "suicidal depression" was actually fear of his upcoming demise.
- Implied: Most of the story is a simple drama about Bob's friends and family mourning his tragic suicide. However, some hints start trickling in suggesting Charlie might have murdered him.
- They Plotted A Perfectly Good Waste: Charlie's death is assumed to not have been suicide only to be revealed that it was (Charlie, through Complexity Addiction or sheer dumb luck, made his suicide "unconvincing"); this and denial leads to everybody else in the cast jumping at shadows for the rest of the tale, if not their lives.
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