History Main / FootprintsOfMuck

* ''Manga/ElfenLied'': Lucy in the beginning of the first episode [[spoiler: where she's naked and walks through the pools of blood of the people she slaughtered]] and in the second episode when she's fighting Bandou. In the tenth episode [[spoiler: after she kills Kouta's father and sister]], she's seen standing in a pool of their blood.

* Done subtly on the first page of ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}'' when the red-head prophet-of-doom walks casually across the puddle of the Comedian's blood, trailing bloody footprints.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/TheRing'' did this with Samara after she came out of the television, in the form of water from an old well.
* Played entirely straight in ''Film/TheLastSamurai'', when Tom Cruise walks in the Japanese house with his boots on, and he realizes when he sees his host cleaning the muddy footprints behind him that this just ''isn't'' done.

* Played for laughs in ''Film/ScaryMovie2''. The characters find a trail of bright red footprints leading down the hallway, prompting one of the male characters to comment "Ew! Someone's on the rag!"

* In the 1942 film ''Film/CatPeople'', there is a trail of muddy animal prints that turn into a human [[MagicPants shoe prints]].
* ''Film/CatsEye'': In "Quitters, Inc.", Dick checks the closet where thought someone was hiding the night before. The boots are gone, and he starts to think he had imagined it, then he notices muddy boot prints on the carpet leading away from the closet.

* ''Film/TheGravedancers'': When [[spoiler:Kira's]] body goes missing, Harris and the other follow a set of bloody bare footprints walking away from the room.
* At the end of ''Film/Joker2019'', Arthur Fleck leaves a trail of red footprints on the Arkham Hospital hall floor, suggesting that he may have killed the psychotherapist that he was seeing.

* ''Series/TheGoodies''. In the Kitten Kong episode the ComicTrio follow the [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever huge paw prints]] of Tinkles the Kitten across London on their three-seater bicycle, and keep running into things because the giant purrball can just step over objects they can't.
* After Jean-Luc and Robert Picard have their fight in their family vineyard in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Family", Robert's wife, Marie, follows their muddy footprints through the house to find them drunk on the family wine in the parlor.
* ''Series/MurderSheWrote'': In "Shear Madness", Jessica thinks she is alone in a rambling house during a storm. Hearing a noise, she heads upstairs and finds muddy footprints leading into one of the bedrooms.

* In the ''VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon'' games, bloody footprints mean Alma's child version (this page's poster girl) is around.
* ''Franchise/SilentHill''. Several of the games, if not every one of them. The first game and some of the others actually measure how far your trail of monster-blood footprint is. In ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'', there are disembodied bloody footprints accompanied by the sounds of a crying young girl that lead you past a few obstacles and help you find hidden areas. No explanation is given for this.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Kuon}}'', if your character walks through a pool of blood they will trail bloody footprints for a while afterwards.

* In ''VideoGame/VisceraCleanupDetail'' one of the small annoyances is that stepping in a puddle of blood, dirty water, or slime will coat your shoes in the substance, leaving behind dirty footprints for a short while.
* This is a puzzle in ''{{VideoGame/Detention}}'', where you [[spoiler: have to pour a glow in the dark liquid into a puddle to follow ghostly footprints through a maze of doors.]]

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': In "The Great and the Good", the murderer uses the schoolteacher's boots to plant muddy bootprints on her doorstep as part of a {{Gaslighting}} scheme to convince her that she might be the killer. Circumstances intervene to make the bootprints less effective than they might have been, but seeds of doubt are planted in her mind.

[[folder:Anime And Manga]]

It can be especially macabre when the traces are distinguishably done by [[DoesNotLikeShoes bare feet]] in a place where nobody would go barefoot, or when you hear the accompanied [[HellIsThatNoise sound of the footsteps]] ringing throughout the area, but you can't exactly make out who or what is lurking nearby until you turn around and come face to face with it.

* A version happens in the first ''LightNovel/TheGardenOfSinners'' movie with a puppy dog that walks by the main character tracking blood. We then see the body of someone who just jumped off a building and the resulting pool of blood.

[[folder:Film]]

* ''Literature/TheSagaOfBilly'': [[HorrifyingHero Atella]], goddess of Peace and [[WarGod War]], has her boots perpetually dripping with blood.

* ''Literature/TheSagaOfBilly'': [[HorrifyingHero Atella]], goddess of Peace and [[WarGod War]], has her boots perpetually stained with blood.

* ''Literature/TheSagaOfBilly'': [[HorrifyingHero Atella]], goddess of Peace and War, has her boots perpetually stained with blood.

* Subverted in ''Literature/BreakfastOfChampions''. When Kilgore Trout arrives in Midland City, he takes off his shoes and socks, rolls up his trouser legs and wades through the concrete trough of Sugar Creek. He intends to walk into the new Holiday Inn leaving muddy footprints on the front carpet to make somebody outraged and to answer them with an artistic statement about "man's first printing press." However, his feet leave no marks on the carpet, having been tightly encased in a fast-drying clear plastic substance that the Barrytron plant, thanks to a CrookedContractor, has been illegally discharging into Sugar Creek.

* In ''Film/{{Constantine}}'', Lucifer appears as a well-dressed man, but his feet are bare and covered in muck. According to the filmmakers, this is because in order to walk upon the earth, he must first taint it -- and indeed, the shot heralding him has the muck dripping from his feet to the ground before he reaches it.

* ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'': Unlike the dapper image he projects while DreamWalking, the GodEmperor Incubus [[MagicalBarefooter walks barefoot]] and tracks grimy water wherever he goes in real life. It appears to be some kind of side-effect of the BlackMagic he uses to empower himself, as the grime appears around his feet even after being dunked in clean water during the Discordance [[spoiler:and even after he's [[HealingFactor forced to regenerate himself back]] after having his skin and meat stripped off his bones]].

* ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'': Unlike the dapper image he projects while DreamWalking, the GodEmperor Incubus [[MagicalBarefooter walks barefoot]] and tracks grimy water wherever he goes in real life, likely from spending his free time in a silo of [[BloodBath bloody water]].

* In ''Film/{{Constantine}}'', Lucifer appears as a well-dressed man, but his feet are bare and covered in muck. According to the filmmakers, this is because in order to walk upon the earth, he must first pollute it -- and indeed, the shot heralding him has the muck dripping from his feet to the ground before he reaches it.

Contrast FertileFeet, where a character's footprints are a sign of life instead of foreboding. where If the footprints appear to have been made by a werewolf or some other sort of beast then it's HumanToWerewolfFootprints.

* In ''Film/{{Constantine}}'', Lucifer appears as a well-dressed man, but his feet are bare and covered in muck.

* Exploited by, Mortelli, who uses them to lure the protagonist into the alleyway behind the diner to question him about the break-in at his office.

* A version happens in the first ''LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai'' movie with a puppy dog that walks by the main character tracking blood. We then see the body of someone who just jumped off a building and the resulting pool of blood.
* In the opening sequence of ''Visualnovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'', Rena walks barefoot on some broken glass and drips blood onto the floor.