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Imagine a fantasy story in which there once was a very powerful evil divine being, but it was defeated long before the beginning of the story. For the story it is very important that it was defeated, and things would be really bad if it was still alive somewhere, biding its time, waiting for revenge.

How can I convince my readers that that's really, really not going to happen?

My problem is that every idea I come up with sounds like a diversion - as if I was deliberately leading the readers astray in order to surprise them with a "hey guess what, he was still alive after all!" It's just so ingrained in the idea of dead evil gods that they're not really dead!

I have this feeling often if I attempt to write something that does not use a clichéd plot. I know the clichés so well that I expect them all the time, and cannot avoid them without sounding as if I'm doing the opposite - building them up.

So this is not just about the example, although that example is relevant to me. What are the tools I can use to convince at least most of my readers of something that I tell them?

This is really a version of the Chekhov's Gun problem. Things aren't in a story unless the writer puts them there, so readers tend to expect significance from important-seeming things that are mentioned. It doesn't really matter if they know the tropes or not.

So the question becomes, why is this detail in here if it's not going to play a role? Is it just background scene-setting? It's a cool detail, but a potentially distracting one. Can you do without it? It can still be a part of your worldbuilding, but as we all hopefully know by now, not all of your worldbuilding needs to make it onto the page.

Readers establish a sense of the story they are reading in the opening pages. That's where you set the contract. If you open with the death of this evil being, the readers will expect that being to be important and assume that the evil being will return. But if you tuck it in after the contract, maybe combine it within local lore of the world along with a few other stories that are not tropey or remarkable in any way, it will be less likely to be seen as anything suspicious.

What do you want to promise your readers that the story is? Rather than what it is not? Put that into the contract.

Answer: Introduce the lack/death of the evil being as a sort of afterthought, after the main contract is established. Downplay it.

Bonus answer: Or, use humor and break the fourth wall, presumably through the narrator.

I would not exactly try to convince them, just make sure they have some doubt.

I would do that by having (or inventing) a conflict: One character that believes the opposite of another character. Have one of them just "believe" the Evil One is still alive, kind of like a religious belief, while the other cites all the reasons why the Evil One is truly dead.

By the end of the story, neither has given up their position, but the Evil One has not arisen, as the "belief" guy insisted. If you prefer, you can reverse these roles; i.e. one person "believes" the Evil One is dead, and another cites all the reasons why the Evil One is not dead.

The conflict is just between "belief" and "reason", just pick one side to be right and one to be wrong, as you prefer.

Let readers do the same; they will either be vindicated, or if they bet on the cliché surprised, which is a good thing.

This sounds a little like, how do I subvert or avoid some common fantasy tropes? (This question, I asked, deals with subverting a trope).

The reason I do not think this is a duplicate question is unless I am mistaken, you are asking about establishing expectations within the reader that run counter to the classic tropes.

Reader expectations

Reader expectations can be difficult to anticipate and even harder to second guess. You find yourself chasing your own tail and getting nowhere if you focus too much on them.

When a reader knows nothing about you (this is their first book) they have no reason to trust you as an author. Nevertheless, be it through a recommendation or general curiosity, they have picked up your book and are reading. Anyone already reading your book has already invested some considerable trust. The trick then is to simply not blow it.

The only way to build any more trust than that is to make some early promises and then fulfil them in a timely manner.

Voice concerns through character

Generally, your protagonist acts as a reader surrogate. The reader lives in your world through them. You could create a somewhat genre-savvy character that makes the sort of suggestions that you are worried a reader may suspect. This would at least set them up to go and find that, no, the big bad really is six feet under.

It can sometimes work to have a character voice what you think a reader will think. However, think about that too much and you will end up in the non-stop loop that Vizzini gets caught in during the battle of wits with the man in black. At some point, you just have to stop and say, to heck with it - I'm going to tell a good story.

Play with the concerns

Another altogether different approach would be to play with the reader concerns. Set up situations where the cliche could play out. Readers that are expecting a cliche will then be surprised when something entirely "other" (and perhaps more logical) is what happens.

In this way, your readers will be kept guessing for as long as they are willing to invent red herrings for themselves. Over time, your readers will begin to trust that when you say the bad is dead, he is very much dead. No second chances here.

Just write it

I give this advice a lot but I think it applies here too. Just write the story. If, when you are done, the opening looks like it is not especially convincing - then you can edit (or even rewrite). If you are dead set on telling a cliche-free story, that will shine through your work quite well with no particular extra effort on your part.

It seems you need to come out as an omniscient, reliable narrator and directly tell your audience the fact you want them to have no doubt about. One, often problematic, way to do this is in a prologue. But there are many more ways.

A compelling example that comes to my mind, to highlight the general principle, even though I don't think you could easily make it work for your specific example, is including a map in a story. Imagine you don't have a map, and your characters are talking about some lost, ancient city, which is in the middle of a vast desert, surrounded by literally thousands of miles of wasteland on all sides. Now the readers would have to assess whether this information is in fact accurate, or whether the characters are poorly informed, or exaggerating. Then you add the map, and you clearly show that this is literally true.

You might include a fable in the story itself about how the evil baddie was permanently destroyed, and then add artwork, which you then give titles as an omniscient, reliable narrator, showing the truth of the fable.

Or you could include a few lines at the top of each chapter, with comments about your world, clearly told by you, as an omniscient, reliable narrator. You could perhaps take a couple of chapters to establish the pattern: first you give an interesting factoid about a geographic feature, then some other worldbuilding, then by chapter 3 (presumably still early on in the story) you find an interesting way to point out the big evil baddie is truly, irrevocably done in.