History Main / ConstructiveBodyDisposal

** ''Literature/TheCaskOfAmontillado'' (starting to see a pattern?) A man named Montresor tricks another man named Fortunato into the cellar underneath his house to tase a cask of wine he has aquired, but in reality he chains and buries him behind a wall, as vengance for [[NoodleIncident "Numerous incidents" and an unspecified insult]].

* There is a persistent UrbanLegend that the Hoover Dam has several corpses in its structure of workers who fell in during pouring. This is actually false. The dam was built by "compartments"; with the concrete being poured rather slowly and several workers being present, it would be virtually impossible for a worker to fall in the concrete and not be noticed or rescued. Even if they had died, the body would have been recovered, so as to not risk the structural integrity of the dam by having pockets of air in it where bodies decomposed.

[[folder:Film -- Animated]]

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]

* ''Series/ChicagoPD'': In the second season episode #16 ''''What Puts You on That Ledge''" -- Roman and Burgess investigate a squatter. Turns out he didn't want to leave because he had [[spoiler:put his dead wife's corpse]] in the walls of the apartment.

** ''[[Recap/DiagnosisMurderS4E13AHistoryOfMurder A History of Murder]]'' is kicked off, when the body of Dr. Gregory Nordhoff is unearthed when Norman breaks open a wall in the hospital to break ground on new construction. The killer placed him in the wall when he killed him 30 years later.

** ''[[Recap/DiagnosisMurderS4E13AHistoryOfMurder]]'' is kicked off, when the body of Dr. Gregory Nordhoff is unearthed when Norman breaks open a wall in the hospital to break ground on new construction. The killer placed him in the wall when he killed him 30 years later.

* ''Series/{{Monk}}'': In "[[Recap/MonkS1E12MrMonkAndTheAirplane Mr. Monk and the Airplane]]", Mr. Chabrol and his mistress murder Mrs. Chabrol, stash her body in a suitcase, and bury it in wet cement at the airport. It fails only because they happen to board the same plane as [[GreatDetective Adrian Monk]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSpectacularSpiderMan'': Spidey attempts to dispose of the ComicBook/{{Venom}} symbiote after tricking it into leaving Eddie Brock by putting it in a bag and dropping it into a patch of fresh-poured cement. In season two, Eddie tricks Spidey into revealing where he buried the symbiote, smashes the cement, and frees it. The symbiote is none the worse for wear after being trapped for what was at least weeks.

* ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'': a walled-up corpse along with a silencer can be found on the construction site earlier in the game by striking a newly plastered wall on the fifth floor. This is supposed to be a cameo of [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/MetalGearSolidSnake Solid Snake]] from ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' fame. It seems that in the ''Franchise/SilentHill'' [[TheVerse universe]], Snake failed his mission and met a most UndignifiedDeath.

* ''Manga/MajinTanteiNougamiNeuro'': Early in the series, Neuro and Yako solve a case involving some yakuza guys and the budding detective couple inherit the office that belonged to them. In one room Yako finds a braid of hair sticking from a walled-up corpse. It somehow gains sentience thanks to Neuro's demonic power. Akane seems to know what happened to her but refused to say anything about it and Neuro claims he's going to solve her mystery later as he's not interested at that moment. [[spoiler:[[RiddleForTheAges He never did]].]]

* ''Film/TheGate'': [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]]. In an attempt to scare him Terry tells Glen that a workman died while building his house years before he and his family moved in and that he was still stuck in the walls. [[spoiler:Later, when a zombie busts through the wall of their house, Glen whispers, "It's the workman" but Terry quickly informs him that he made it all up. The demons of the titular gate being able to take the form of human fears.]]

* ''Film/SexyBeast'': At the beginning of the film, Gal's retirement is disrupted first by a loose boulder ruining his pool and then by his mobster ex-coworker Don Logan arriving to [[ResignationsNotAccepted demand]] he do OneLastJob. [[BookEnds At the end]], Don's body is hidden under the rebuilt pool.

* ''Film/StirOfEchoes'': A father (Kevin Bacon) moves to a house in a Chicagoan suburb, and begins to be haunted by visions of a ghost girl. [[spoiler: The girl was a mentally handicapped teenager who was almost raped by two neighbourhood male teens, one of them the son of the man who is leasing the house for Kevin Bacon's character, and is a house renovator. The man, his son and the son's friend wrap the girl's body in plastic and immure it behind a wall in the basement.]]

** Subverted in "Wings". A flight attendant is murdered in 1960 and her body was wrapped up and placed inside of an unoccupied section of a hotel, which itself was soon abandoned and eventually torn down decades later, which lead to her discovery.

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': "[[Recap/CSINYS06E20 Tales from the Undercard]]" starts with the body of a retired boxer being found in freshly laid concrete on a construction site. CSI eventually determine that he had been participating in illegal underground fights. Thinking that he had died in one of the fights, his trainer and the fight organizer dumped his body in the concrete to keep the death quiet. Mac drops the bombshell that the victim had still been alive when they buried him.
* ''Literature/DalzielAndPascoe'': Becomes the crux in the television episode of "Bones and Silence", Dalziel investigates construction magnate [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Philip Swain]] convinced he murdered his wife despite it seeming she [[NeverSuicide committed suicide]]. All the while Swain's company is refurbishing the Police Stations car park. Following Swain murdering his partner, he attempts to also pass it off as suicide whilst also framing him for another murder he committed, eventually revealing the body is hidden under the car park. [[spoiler:Dalziel, realising the woman they saw dead wasn't his wife but really a missing drug addict, orders them to keep digging up the rest of the car park and sure enough also find his wife's body which forensic evidence one proves that Swain murdered all of them.]]

* ''Series/TheLastManOnEarth'': In season four, now living in Mexico the group move into an abandoned mansion unaware that it used to belong to a ruthless [[TheCartel Cartel]] boss the [[TheQueenpin Aabuela]]. They spend the season in blissful ignorance until near the end when Todd is trying to modify a room into a nursery and accidentally splits the plaster, revealing a dead body in the wall. Upon doing a thorough search they end up finding a total of seventeen bodies within the walls, as well as stashes of guns, drugs, and explosives. This leads them to abandon it and [[IdiotHero Tandy]] attempting to blow the house up to cleanse away the crime, which he still [[EpicFail fails at despite all the aforementioned available bombs]].
* ''Series/LoisAndClark'': "Don't Tug On Superman's Cape" features an eccentric wealthy couple [[UnholyMatrimony the Newtrich's]] who want to add [[PeopleZoo Superman]] to their [[CollectorOfTheStrange vast collection of unique treasures]]. Already amongst their collection they had Jimmy Hoffa's body, still stuck in a cement block with just one arm reaching out.

* ''Series/PrimeSuspect'': "Operation Nadine" kicks off when the new resident of a home has the concrete slabs covering his garden dug up, only for the workmen to discover the skeletal remains of a teenage girl buried underneath. Whilst initially assuming it to be a local girl who the police failed to find two years previously (prompting a large amount of resentment from the area's primarily West Indian population) it's quickly discovered the body is in fact quite a bit older and leads Inspector Tennison onto the path of a twisted SerialRapist, who killed one of his victims six years previously and then had the house's former resident help him pave over her to cover it up.
* ''Series/{{Psych}}'': The core of the plot in "Earth, Wind, and...Wait for It". The murderer of the week hunted down and killed a group of arsonists a decade ago and stashed their bodies behind the drywalls of construction sites. When the buildings are scheduled for seismic retrofitting in the present, he starts burning them down to try hiding the evidence.

* A variation in ''Series/{{Wiseguy}}''. Someone tips off the feds about a murder that mafia boss Rick Pinzolo committed years ago to "make his bones". However when they investigate the alleged burial site, they find that in the years since a construction company (that Pinzolo just happens to own) has built a mall on the site.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'': In the ''Far Harbor'' DLC, if the player opts to kill [[spoiler:High Confessor Tektus]] in order to resolve the main questline, they must hide the body in a fissure in a damaged wall, brick it up and move a shelfing unit in front of it.

** Convicts that die working on the generator construction site do not get kept in morgues for repatriation to England. One of the laws, Rationalised Healthcare, notes that the bodies of convicts who die are disposed of in the foundations of the generator.

* If somebody were to be unlucky enough to have any part of their body trapped in setting cement or concrete, two additional things happen to enhance the experience. Setting cement generates heat. Setting cement also expands slightly, which would constrict, even crush, anything within it. During the Marcos years in the Philippines, the delightful ruling couple ordered the construction of a prestige theatre and cinema complex so as to host an Asian film festival. To get it completed before the deadline, a lot of corners were cut and safety rules disregarded. The inevitable accident happened when up to fifty building workers were trapped under pouring concrete which began setting. Many were smothered and killed, but others endured both the crushing and burning effects, said to be excruciatingly painful. Rumour has it that Imelda Marcos ordered rescue and recovery attempts to cease so that construction would not be delayed, and that the men set in concrete were buried where they had been trapped so as to leave no trace.
* A popular theory about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa is that his corpse was dumped in the foundations of the then-under construction Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Busted by the Series/{{Mythbusters}}, who went over all the traditionally rumored burial sites in the stadium with ground-penetrating radar. Re-busted in 2010 when the stadium was demolished and no human remains were found.

** There was a similiar practice with bridges in Europe.

* There is a persistent UrbanLegend that the Hoover Dam has several corpses in its structure of workers who fell in during pouring. This is actually false. The dam was built by "compartments"; with the concrete being poured rather slowly and several workers being present, it would be virtually impossible for a worker to fall in the concrete and not be noticed or rescued. Even if they would have died, the body would have been recovered, so as to not risk the structural integrity of the dam by having pockets of air in it where bodies decomposed.

* ''Series/Psych'': The core of the plot in "Earth, Wind, and...Wait for It". The murderer of the week hunted down and killed a group of arsonists a decade ago and stashed their bodies behind the drywalls of construction sites. When the buildings are scheduled for seismic retrofitting in the present, he starts burning them down to try hiding the evidence.