Did a character die between episodes, and the only reason you know is because someone tells you? Did Godzilla just make some city burn down, only to have it rebuilt by the time the next movie comes around?
Here is a list of tropes where the writers decided to keep certain details offscreen.
- Actor Dies, Character Leaves: A character who used to make on-screen appearances is permanently kept off-screen from now on because their actor died in the middle of the series' production and the production crew refused to recast the character or acknowledge the actor's death by having the character die as well, therefore the audience is expected to assume that the character is still alive even if the audience never sees or hears them again.
- Actor Leaves, Character Dies: In the event that an actor becomes unavailable and recasting the character isn't an option, it's decided to kill the character off as a convenient excuse for the character to stop making further appearances on the show. Since this is a decision based on the original actor no longer being involved in the work's production, the character's death will usually happen off-screen.
- Age Cut: It's amazing how fast characters can age with movie magic.
- Ambiguous Criminal History: A character committed crimes offscreen.
- Ambulance Cut: The scene cuts to an ambulance driving to the hospital, which typically implies that what the character in the preceding shot was about to do resulted in the person getting injured to the point of requiring immediate medical attention.
- Answer Cut: A character asks a question or makes a statement, then the scene shifts to the answer.
- Behind the Black: Sometimes it's just less work to keep those characters out of sight.
- Bottomless Bladder: Anyone ever notice that Jack Bauer never spends one minute in a bathroom? Even to wash his hands?!
- Bus Crash: That character the writers Put on a Bus? Think he's going to show up again in later episodes? Think again, cause the writers decided to say that he died.
- Butlerspace: Where did that butler come from?
- Cataclysm Backstory: The society went downhill and set off the plot, but it happened quite a while back so logically, it's offscreen.
- Censored Child Death: A child dies, but their death is never seen onscreen.
- The Character Died with Him: As an actor dying in the middle of production isn't usually something that the production crew will be prepared for, choosing to kill off the actor's character when recasting isn't an option will often have the character's death confirmed only by the other characters saying so.
- Charge-into-Combat Cut: Two people or groups of people get ready to fight, but the scene shifts.
- Did They or Didn't They?: Two characters did something offscreen. It could have been sex, but we just don't know.
- Discretion Shot and most of its subtropes:
- Abuse Discretion Shot: Abuse not being shown onscreen.
- Battle Discretion Shot: They're fighting, and although we might hear it, we don't see it.
- Dead Hat Shot: We didn't see them die, we just see one of their belongings.
- Flashing Discretion Shot: A character flashes other people, but we don't see their private parts because we only see them from the back or the other characters' reactions when they expose themself.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Blood or brains are seen splattering against a surface, but we don't see what made them splatter.
- Kissing Discretion Shot: Two characters lean in to kiss one another, but we never see them kiss.
- Potty Discretion Shot: A character relieves themselves, but we don't see the waste and/or hear the sound of excretion.
- Rape Discretion Shot: Even the idea of rape can be scary, so seeing rape would be too scary for this type of work. Ergo, the scene cuts away when a character is about to be sexually violated and only shows the aftermath of the non-consensual sexual act.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: When the answer to Did They or Didn't They? is definitely "they did", but we still don't get to see it.
- Scream Discretion Shot: We hear someone screaming, but we don't see what made them scream.
- Shadow Discretion Shot: Something bad is happening, but we don't see it, we only see a shadow of it.
- Sound-Only Death: We hear a character die/something kill a character, but we don't see the death.
- Transformation Discretion Shot: A scene of a character transforming offscreen.
- Villainy Discretion Shot: A character does something extremely immoral offscreen.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Someone throws up, but we don't see it.
- Distracted from Death: A character dies off screen in the few seconds or minutes that another character is distracted.
- Empathy Doll Shot: A kid died. We don't see the death or the body, but we see one of the kid's toys.
- Exposition Cut: One character gets required information, but we don't need to hear it, so we don't.
- The Ghost: A mentioned character who never physically appears.
- Gilligan Cut: A protagonist's companion is shown performing an unpleasant task, despite refusing to do so in the previous scene, and may even wonder as to how they were convinced to do so.
- Great Offscreen War: A war happened, but it was before the events of the series so we never saw it.
- Heel–Face Return: A villain reforms offscreen.
- Hero of Another Story: An ally, acquaintance or predecessor to the main character(s) is implied to have their own heroic adventures, but we never see the character while they're in action and can only speculate on what their experiences were or how they saved the day.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: A work goes to ridiculous lengths to avoid showing a character.
- Hooked Up Afterwards: Two characters look like they'll hook up, but then it ends.
- Hyperspace Wardrobe: Someone can change clothes in the few seconds they're offscreen, or even just spin around so fast they resemble a small tornado to change.
- Implied Love Interest: Someone has a lot of love-interest-related tropes, but we never see anything romantic around that character.
- Implied Rape: A character is implied to have been raped off-screen.
- Implied Trope: A trope isn't directly shown, but is indicated to have happened offscreen.
- Inexplicable Cornered Escape: A character's improbable escape happens offscreen
- Inferred Holocaust: Something bad will logically happen, but we never see it happen.
- Infinite Supplies: Somebody has a whole lot of things that are logically hard to obtain and we don't know how they obtained them.
- Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: It's unknown how a villain affords their evil supplies.
- Informed Ability: When a character is stated to have an ability they never demonstrate.
- Instant Expert: Because why spend time learning when you can just assume you did?
- Invisible Celebrity Guest: The characters meet a celebrity but we never see said celebrity.
- Invisible Parents: This character has parents, we just never see them.
- It's a Long Story: A great way to avoid boring your audience.
- Jump Cut: One scene jumps to another.
- Killed Offscreen: We never see a dead character die.
- Light-Flicker Teleportation: When a character has moved after the lights flicker.
- Nobody Poops: Characters in fiction are often never shown going to the bathroom, typically because the audience doesn't need to see them relieve themselves and because bodily functions are not usually necessary or relevant to the plot.
- Noodle Incident: It was important to the character, but the details aren't given because they don't influence the story.
- Nothing Is Funnier: ...than an intentional lack of details.
- Nothing Is Scarier: ...than a scary lack of something.
- Offscreen Breakup: Two characters are a couple in one scene, and they've broken up in another, but we don't see what led to the breakup.
- Offscreen Crash: We hear a crash, but don't see what went crash.
- Offscreen Karma: No one saw the villain getting punished.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Did no one see your In-Universe Moment of Awesome?
- Offscreen Reality Warp: The scene shifts from one scene to another and back to the first, but something is different. We never see how the change happened.
- Offscreen Rebuilding: A city was destroyed and rebuilt and we never see the rebuilding.
- Offscreen Romance: Two characters are not in a relationship, they disappear, they come back in a relationship.
- Offscreen Start Bonus: The level of a game starts. There is more than one path one of which leads offscreen. Taking this path leads to a bonus.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Someone can move so fast they might as well be teleporting, as long as we don't see them move.
- Offstage Villainy: We don't see the villain do anything evil.
- Post-Apocalyptic Traffic Jam: We see the aftermath of the chaos and destruction which occurred during the apocalypse, but not the event itself.
- Post-Coital Collapse: Characters collapse into bed to imply they were having sex.
- Prison Cut: Someone goes from free citizen to being in jail/prison in the blink of an eye.
- Relax-o-Vision: The writers don't want us to see something bad, so they show us something good (if a little sappy/boring) while the bad thing is happening.
- Respawning Enemies: Enemies you defeated are somehow alive again when you return.
- Same Character, But Different: The Bus Came Back, and they developed a different personality offscreen.
- Sequel Non-Entity: I hope the character who disappeared wasn't your favorite.
- Single-Stroke Battle: During a duel, both characters leap in the air and strike, but we don't see what happens, and when they land, one is dead.
- Smash Cut: A scene abruptly switches to another.
- Snap Back: How did that turn back to normal?
- Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Similar to Age Cut but they've grown older too fast for it to make sense In-Universe.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Not only did we never see this character enter or leave, the other characters didn't either.
- Take Our Word for It: Because sometimes, you're better off not knowing.
- Teleporting Keycard Squad: You pick up a plot-relevant item. Suddenly, enemies appear in previously cleared areas.
- That Poor Cat: It seems to bear the brunt of objects that were on-screen but were/are thrown/crashing/falling offscreen. At least we're spared having to see the effects on the cat.
- Time Skip: Lots of time is skipped over between two scenes.
- Uncertain Doom: A character is last seen in a situation where they might have been killed, but since the audience never sees what happened and no clarification is given either way, it's hard to tell whether the character died or if they somehow survived.
- Undisclosed Funds: We're not gonna show you how much money this is, but trust us, it's a lot.
- Unexplained Injury: A character receives an injury offscreen that's not elaborated on and isn't acknowledged by the story or characters.
- Unreveal Angle: A shot is framed to show a secret being revealed without revealing said secret to the audience.
- Unseen True Form: A character who has changed their form does not have their true form appear.
- Villain of Another Story: A villainous character isn't involved with the current conflict nor are they necessarily the story's current antagonist, but it is implied that they have caused trouble before or that they're causing trouble in a setting the story isn't focused on. In many cases, they may be the nemesis of the Hero of Another Story.
- The Voice: We hear this character, but never see them.
- Voice-Only Cameo: A cameo that is only heard as The Voice but not seen.