Mystery Tropes

Tropes associated with Mystery Fiction and Detective Fiction.

Compare also What Is This Index? for standard questions characters tend to ask. See also Stock Puzzle.

Tropes:

• Absence of Evidence: When the absence of something is a clue.
• The Alibi: Someone can prove they were physically incapable of committing the crime.
• Amnesiac Hero: When the protagonist has amnesia.
• Anachronistic Clue: Something which can't come from the time period it supposedly came from, which is a sign something is amiss.
• Anonymous Killer Narrator: When the serial killer is the narrator of the mystery story.
• Anti-Climactic Unmasking: Someone rips off someone else's face-concealing costume (such as a mask, visor, etc), expecting someone extraordinary, but they get someone ordinary.
• Believer Fakes Evidence: A believer plants fake evidence to make others believe in the phenomena of their choice.
• Beneath Notice: Disguising oneself as a very plain, regular person.
• Beneath Suspicion: When the culprit was never suspected because no one thought it could have been them.
• Blood-Stained Letter: A letter or note that has blood on the paper.
• Bluffing the Murderer: Someone is pretty sure who committed the crime, so they trick the criminal into revealing themselves.
• Bookmark Clue: An important clue is discovered because someone used it as a bookmark.
• The Butler Did It: A butler turns out to be the one who committed the crime.
• Cast as a Mask: A character and their disguised self are played by separate actors.
• Chronic Evidence Retention Syndrome: Bad guys hold onto evidence for no good reason.
• Clock Discrepancy: Something seems to have happened at a certain time, but then it turns out it didn't, for instance because the clock had stopped.
• Closed Circle: A plot where the characters can't leave until it's over.
• Clueless Mystery: A mystery story where the reader/viewer can't follow along.
• Condensation Clue: A hidden message written with one's finger onto a mirror or window.
• Confess in Confidence: The criminal confesses to someone whose job requires confidentiality, such as a clergy member, doctor, or lawyer.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: There's a dangerous criminal at large, but luckily the investigators can talk to another, incarcerated criminal.
• Conviction by Contradiction: A whodunnit mystery is solved by finding a hole in the perp's story, like a logic puzzle.
• Corpse Temperature Tampering: Interfering with natural cooling of a dead body to obfuscate time of death.
• Costumes Change Your Size: A disguised figure's size is somehow different from that of the person underneath. A standard trope for "Scooby-Doo" Hoax mysteries.
• Cozy Mystery: A mystery story where there is no graphic violence, sex, or profanity, the murder victims were bad people, the detective is usually a woman with a down-to-earth hobby, the setting is a small community, and the story in general has a lighthearted vibe despite usually dealing with a murder.
• Creepy Red Herring: A blantantly creepy suspect is innocent.
• Curtain Camouflage: Hiding behind a curtain.
• Cut Himself Shaving: A character was attacked, but lies that the injuries are for a mundane reason, such as falling downstairs.
• Dame with a Case: Beautiful but untrustworthy woman who hires the Hard Boiled Detective.
• Death in the Clouds: A mystery story involving a murder on a plane.
• Detectives Follow Footprints: Looking for evidence can solve the case.
• Did Not Die That Way: Someone lies about the cause of someone else's death.
• Disability Alibi: A suspect is determined innocent because they have a disability of some sort that makes it impossible for them to have done the crime.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The villain turns out to be a seemingly harmless and irrelevant character.
• Dramatic Curtain Toss: Someone dramatically removes a curtain/tarp/veil, revealing something important.
• Driving Question: When the whole story revolves around solving some sort of mystery.
• Eagle-Eye Detection: A detective whose main skill is being really observant.
• The End... Or Is It?: The story ends with a reveal (or at least an implication) that danger is still present.
• "Eureka!" Moment: A character has an epiphany from seeing or hearing something unrelated that reminds them of the answer (e.g. seeing a dog, then realising the killer was the owner of the hot dog stand.)
• Everybody Did It: All the suspects were responsible for the crime in some way.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: When the killer in a murder mystery could have been anybody.
• Evidence Dungeon: The villain has a lair where lots of incriminating evidence is.
• Evidence Scavenger Hunt: A scene about protagonists searching for clues.
• Evil Plan: A plan that a villain has.
• Exposition Victim: Upon finding out who the killer is, the character speaks to them instead of fighting or running away.
• Fair-Play Whodunnit: The opposite of a Clueless Mystery—a mystery story where the reader/viewer can follow along.
• Fake Alibi: A suspect claims to have an alibi, witnesses confirm, yet the suspect is actually guilty.
• Fake Mystery: The mystery plot turns out to have been staged to prank the detectives.
• Fantastic Noir: Mystery and magic mix on the mean streets.
• Finger-Licking Poison: Someone was poisoned by licking something covered in poison.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis: Testing if a powder or liquid is drugs by sniffing or tasting it.
• The Game Never Stopped: Characters take part in a game involving a simulated death, then someone actually dies... or so it seems. As it turns out, the game hasn't ended yet.
• Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty: A suspect isn't proven innocent until the true culprit is exposed.
• Hide the Evidence: Hiding the evidence of something wrong or embarrassing is a major plot point.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Something is being searched for, and it turns out it was there the whole time but blended into the surroundings.
• Hidden Agenda Hero: The hero's motivation is never revealed.
• Hidden Villain: The villain's identity is not revealed until much later.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: A character accidentally gives themselves away by revealing information that their knowledge of proves they are guilty.
• Insists on Being Suspected: The detective counts themselves as a suspect.
• Intrepid Reporter: A journalist who actively searches for stories.
• Let Off by the Detective: The detective knows who did it, but sympathises with their motive (or feels they've been punished enough) and so doesn't say so.
• Lights Off, Somebody Dies: The lights go out, then when they turn back on, someone has been murdered.
• Locked Room Mystery: A crime that seems to have been impossible at first glance (for instance, a murder victim in a locked room.)
• Lotsa People Try to Dun It: It turns out that all the suspects tried to kill the victim.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: It's always the protagonists who find the important evidence.
• The Meddling Kids Are Useless: The protagonists did all the cool stuff, but ultimately it was some other person, such as the police, who solved the problem.
• Mistaken for Evidence: Something looks like a specific, suspicious item but it's something different.
• Mockspiracy: A conspiracy theory which turns out not to be true.
• Mockstery Tale: A story that starts out with a mystery, but the mystery turns out to be fake or unsolvable, so the plot goes somewhere different.
• Motive = Conclusive Evidence: A motive is treated as incriminating evidence.
• Mysterious Stranger: A recurring character who isn't known by the others, and who's deliberately set up as enigmatic.
• Mystery Episode: An episode in a serial work dedicated to solving a mystery.
• Mystery Magnet: Someone who coincidentally seems to attract mysteries.
• Mystery of the Week: The protagonists solve a mystery in every episode.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: An object hidden in a bunch of similar objects.
• Never a Runaway: Someone who is said to have run away actually befell some other crime.
• Never One Murder: Murder mysteries never have just one victim.
• Never Suicide: It looks like somebody killed themselves, but it turns out to be murder instead.
• Never the Obvious Suspect: Somebody seems to have been the culprit due to having obvious motive and ability to have done it, but it was somebody else who was the real culprit.
• No One Sees the Boss: No one, not even his underlings, knows the Big Bad's identity.
• Notable Non Sequitur: In a detective story, every out-of-place line turns out to be important.
• Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: An actor accidentally kills another actor due to a prop weapon being switched for a real one.
• Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: A killer inflicts additional wounds on a corpse to mask the true cause of death.
• Old, Dark House: One or more murders happens in an old, poorly-lit house.
• Only One Plausible Suspect: A whodunnit where the identity of the culprit is obvious to the viewers.
• Ontological Mystery: A story where the characters are locked somewhere and must find out how they got there, why, how to escape, and who (if anyone) is the cause of the situation.
• Orgy of Evidence: A criminal plants fake clues, but gives themselves away by the sheer number of fake clues.
• Perfect Poison: Killing someone with poison is unrealistically quick and easy.
• Placebo Eureka Moment: A character figures out a mystery on their own, but thanks someone near them anyway.
• Precrime Arrest: Someone gets arrested for a crime they haven't even committed yet.
• Proof Dare: The criminal dares the detective to prove their guilt.
• Propping Up Their Patsy: A culprit proclaims the innocence of another suspect to conceal their own culpability or further their own agenda.
• Public Secret Message: Sending a coded message to everyone because only the intended target of the message will understand the code.
• Put on a Prison Bus: The culprit is often defeated at the end by being arrested.
• Puzzle Thriller: A mystery story where the mystery is "how does it all work?".
• Recorded Audio Alibi: Someone uses a recording of themselves to establish an alibi.
• Red Herring: Something seems like a clue, but it misleads the audience.
• Reverse Whodunnit: We know who committed the crime, but we don't know how the detective will solve the case.
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Somebody finds something that gets their attention in a video, so they rewind and replay it over and over.
• Riddle for the Ages: A mystery the work never solves.
• A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: Somebody describes a frustrating mystery as three mysteries in one.
• Ripped from the Headlines: A crime story based on a real crime.
• Saying Too Much: Someone accidentally says something that reveals plot-sensitive info.
• Scary Minority Suspect: An immoral-seeming Token Minority character is portrayed as the obvious suspect of a crime.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The perpetrator disguises the crime as a paranormal or supernatural event.
• Secret Identity Apathy: The villains do not care about the true identity of the hero who's always thwarting them.
• Serial Killings, Specific Target: A murderer covers up the murder by killing other people with similar traits as the initial victim.
• Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes: A character has glowing eyes peeking out from a shadowed, usually covered face.
• Shell Game: Two or more identical things are shown, one is significant, and we initially know which it is until the objects get mixed.
• Sherlock Can Read: Someone thinks someone else used great detective work when they didn't.
• Sherlock Scan: A detective comes to a conclusion about someone they just met from looking at them.
• The Seven Mysteries: Mysteries come in sevens.
• Signature Item Clue: A distinctive item means that someone must have put it there and that's a clue.
• Spot the Impostor: Someone is seen with their impersonator and their friends have to determine who is the real deal and who is the disguised phony.
• The Stakeout: One or more people setting up camp somewhere and watch a location in secret to search for information.
• Stranger Behind the Mask: The answer to the mystery is something or someone we've never heard of.
• The Summation: When the detective does a speech about how they solved the mystery.
• Summation Gathering: During the Summation in a murder mystery, all the suspects, including the killer, are present.
• Suspect Is Hatless: Someone reports a crime while giving a description of the culprit that is too vague and generic to narrow down who the person responsible could be.
• Suspicious Missed Messages: Someone won't answer their phone? Better find out why!
• Ten Little Murder Victims: A group of people ends up somewhere, one of them turns out to be a killer, and they must find out which one before they kill everybody.
• That Mysterious Thing: Characters refer to something in ambiguous terms so the audience won't know what it is.
• Thriller on the Express: A crime story set on a train.
• Twist Ending: The plot leads one way, but then something happens at the end which changes everything.
• Two Dun It: There were two culprits all along.
• The Unsolved Mystery: A mystery story without a resolution.
• Varying Competency Alibi: A character is proven innocent when they're shown to be too competent or incompetent to do.
• Weather Report Opening: The story opens with a description of the weather.
• Wheel Program: A number of TV shows are run in the same slot under one title.
• Who Dunnit To Me: Someone survives a murder attempt or comes back from the dead after being killed and tries to find out who it was who killed them or tried to kill them.
• Who Murdered the Asshole: An unsympathetic person has been killed, but it is difficult to determine who's responsible because pretty much everyone who knew the victim hated them.
• World of Mysteries: A setting with heaps of mysteries in it.
• Writing Indentation Clue: Reading the indentations of notes written on a separate piece of paper.
• You Meddling Kids: The villain claims they would have gotten away with whatever they planned on doing, if not for the protagonists.
• You Wake Up in a Room: A character wakes up in an unfamiliar location.
• You Wake Up on a Beach: A story that starts with a protagonist waking up on a beach.