History Main / DeadManWalking

* In the first ''Film/IronMan1''-movie, Yinsen describes certain bomb victims that people in his village called "the Walking Dead". These people have had small bits of shrapnel enter their bloodstream, and live for about a week before their organs are torn to shreds. This happens to main character Tony Stark as well, who only survives by having an electromagnet implanted into his chest to keep the shrapnel from entering his heart.

* Wrestling/TheUndertaker, in 2002 started using theme music with ominous bells and the phrase "Dead Man Walking". Fans remember it as the year he beat HulkHogan.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}} Dead Souls'', Goro Majima gets bit by a zombie. By the next chapter of the game, he is falling ill and his eye is turning red. He goes to a sauna in a last-ditch effort to cure himself. [[spoiler:Ultimately subverted: the zombie that bit him wore dentures and never actually infected him. The sickness and the redness in his eye? Just allergies.]]

* TheUndertaker, in 2002 started using theme music with ominous bells and the phrase "Dead Man Walking". Fans remember it as the year he beat HulkHogan.

-->Marine Sgt. Hegarty: [[BerserkButton You never mess with a Marine's coffee]], if you want to live, Agent [=DiNozzo=].
-->Tony [=DiNozzo=]: [laughs] That's right. Dead man walking!

* In the third episode of ''Stargate Atlantis'' Rodney who was starving, because an Ancient device didn't allow him to feed, abused this phrase and its variants.
* An episode of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' is titled "Dead Man Walking". In which Jack tries to resurect someone with a magic resurrection gauntlet against the warning of his companions.

* Variation from ''Discworld/TheFifthElephant'':

Invoked by DeadStarWalking. Sometimes used to describe a state in a game that's UnwinnableByDesign.

* As a dog is being led away to be put down at the [[PoundsAreAnimalPrisons pound]] that Lucky's taken to in the EddieMurphy film version of ''Film/DrDolittle'', one of the dogs comments "dead dog walking."

** ''NCIS'' also brings it up in the episode "Forced Entry":

* In ''Film/LooneyTunesBackInAction'', Daffy gets fired from Warner Bros. Studios and is led out of the office by Kate and Bug's calls out "Dead duck walking!"

* Another [=WH40K=] example: Within the NightLords legion there was a practice of placing a suspended execution upon legionaries who warranted death, but were too valuable to be executed at present. Their gauntlets were painted [[MarkOfShame arterial, or "sinner's" red]] and their lives continued at the whim of their primarch.

* An ''{{NCIS}}'' episode titled "Dead Man Walking" involves a victim who has gotten radiation poisoning and the team has to figure out whodunit before he dies.

* [[HitmanWithAHeart Thane Krios]] from ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. He has an incurable disease that slowly destroys his ability to breathe, and all the doctors say he'll be dead in less than a year. If he survives ''Mass Effect 2'''s SuicideMission, then when you meet him again in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', he tells you that the doctors say he'll be dead in around three months...and [[{{Determinator}} he last talked to them nine months ago.]] Later on, [[spoiler:he manages to drive off Kai Leng from Captain Kirrahe despite his disease, leaving him barely able to breathe]].

* In the Episode "Bridesmaids Revisited" from ''GilmoreGirls'' Rory and Logan are at the wedding of Logan's sister. They encounter the groom in the hallway, and Logan has to help him get ready for the ceremony. He grabs his shoulder and calls out that phrase as they walk to his room.
* In ''TheITCrowd'', after Roy finds out via an online quiz that he will die tomorrow, he tells everyone to ignore it and that everything will be fine. Then, as he is walking to his desk, Moss yells out "Dead man walking!"

* The second ''{{Futurama}}'' Christmas episode has "Deactivated robot walking" when Bender's being taken to the [[strike: electric]] [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment electromagnetic chair]].

* There's a chilling scene in ''LadyAndTheTramp'' at the pound in which some of the dogs obliquely reference this trope when a dog is taken by a human into a back room, hinting that the dog will be put to sleep.

* In ''Film/NightOfTheComet'', the {{Technically Living Zombie}}s [[spoiler: are doomed to dissolve into dust if they go too long without drinking human blood, and by the end of the film, they've pretty much all crumbled into nothingness from starvation]].

* An ''NCIS'' episode titled "Dead Man Walking" involves a victim who has gotten radiation poisoning and the team has to figure out whodunit before he dies.

* There's a chilling scene in LadyAndTheTramp at the pound in which some of the dogs obliquely reference this trope when a dog is taken by a human into a back room, hinting that the dog will be put to sleep.

* On ''{{Mythbusters}}'', the Narrator often intones the phrase jokingly when referring to the (inanimate) victim of the day's experiment - usually Buster the crash test dummy but there's been [[TheAllegedCar "Dead Car Driving!"]] and others.

* ''TheThickOfIt'' episode "The Rise of the Nutters"
-->Malcolm Tucker: [Ben enters a party] Oh, here he is. Dead man walking.

* [[HitmanWithAHeart Thane Krios]] from ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. He has an incurable disease that slowly destroys his ability to breathe, and all the doctors say he'll be dead in less than a year. If he survives ''Mass Effect 2'''s SuicideMission, then when you meet him again in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', he tells you that the doctors say he'll be dead in around three months...and [[{{Determinator}} he last talked to them nine months ago.]] Later on, [[spoiler:he manages to drive off Kai Leng despite his disease leaving him barely able to breathe]].

As an idiom, the phrase "dead man walking" is most infamous as a call-out once traditional in American prisons; when the wardens would lead a man on Death Row down the hall, declaring "Dead man walking! Dead man walking here!" Dead Man Walking means YourDaysAreNumbered and you and/or the people around you know it. Now that prison wardens no longer use it (least not where they can be noticed), modern use of the term broadened somewhat to other types of doom, even benign "doom" such as losing a job (which may actually be the original meaning, but so far no one's been able to trace it conclusively).

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