Ways for main character to influence world following their death

The main character of a story dies before the story itself ends. Nothing new here, you can keep a story interesting following their death. But I have an additional requirement: The dead main character has to exert influence to the story world even following their death (diminished capacity acceptable), and I'm wondering about ways to achieve this.

This is for interactive fiction, where the reader gets to make choices on behalf of the main character. I'm exploring death as a possible consequence of those choices, but don't want that to stop further choices down the line completely.

An afterlife of some sort is one possibility; undeath, e.g., becoming a ghost, appearing in other characters' dreams, having their consciousness stored in a computer... What other ways are there?

Answer

As I see it, there are two possible ways for a character to influence others after death, but each has a number of variations.

First, the character could directly influence others after death. This would involve some sort of continued existence either magical or supernatural in origin. Some examples:

• Ghost (or any other non-material existence after death, such as a poltergeist, or other spirit)


• Uploaded brain (into a computer or robot)


• Cloning (depending on how magical the cloning process is -- in a more realistic universe, a clone would be an identical twin born later, not a repeat of the original person)



• Time travel (which stretches the limits of "after")


• Resurrection (same person coming back)


• Reincarnation (returning as a different person)

Another way for a character to exert influence after death is not to actually be there but to leave some sort of intentional legacy.

• A will


• Letters to loved (or hated) people


• Bequest with ongoing results, such as founding a charitable organization or school

Unintentional legacies are also possible

• Inspirational speech


• Taught a significant skill or piece of knowledge to another character


• WWDGD: What Would Dead Guy Do? (In other words, a life philosophy built around that of the dead guy, who acts as a moral guide for the living character.)


• Published knowledge that helps others (Dr. Dead Guy's research suggests that we can find the solution to our problems in this star system.)


• Unpublished documents that come to light after the death (see Emily Dickinson).

And one that straddles the border between intentional and unintentional:

• Children


• Parts of the body, either from donated organs or in the form of frozen sperm/eggs/other material


• Genetic legacies, particularly in terms of diseases that might get passed along