History Main / HideAndSeekHorror

[[folder: Puppet Shows]]

* ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'': Played for laughs in ''Dog Days''. Greg and Rowley have a sleepover and watch a horror movie. In the middle of the night, they hear a small voice coming from the closet that says, "I'm hiding...can you find me?" They run up the stairs and Greg tells Dad that the house is haunted and they have to move immediately. Dad roots through the closet and discovers that the noise is from a talking doll named Hide-and-Seek Harry.

->''Run, run, run! Creep up on my grave!''
->''Run, run, run! Stalk the night away!''
->''Scuttle off into the night, but what'll be behind you?''
->''Don't you speak! Hide and seek!''

While this trope can and has happened in RealLife before, most examples involve the deaths of children, so '''Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease'''

* ''Series/CriminalMinds:'' In "100," the season-long BigBad has found the safe house where Hotch's wife and four-year-old son have been put for their own protection. Hotch and Hailey know he isn't going to get there in time to save both of them. But to give Jack a chance, Hotch tells him (over the phone), to "work the case" with him and stresses that he ''needs'' Jack on the case with him. Jack seems to understand what this means and takes off immediately, happy to be given the grown-up responsibility. Turns out Hotch was exploiting Jack's child-like misunderstanding of his job; a flashback shows Jack thinks "working the case" means hiding in the blanket chest in the home office. Hotch knows that this is an unlikely place for Foyet to look. Sure enough, when Hotch arrives at the house and eliminates the threat, he finds Jack unharmed in the blanket chest. Jack's innocent "I worked the case, Daddy, just like you said" is a gut-punch.

* ''VideoGame/TheCoffinOfAndyAndLeyley'': One of the first scenes establishing just how deranged Ashely is is a flashback to her and Andrew as kids, in which she asks their friend Nina to play hide-and-seek, then tricks her into hiding in a box that she bullies Andrew into locking. She then leaves Nina inside the whole night to punish her for [[{{Yandere}} having a crush on Andrew]], and is gleeful when she dies of suffocation, using the incident to blackmail Andrew into never leaving her side.

* In ''Series/PunkyBrewster'', the children are playing hide and seek when Cherie hides in an old, abandoned refrigerator. She is pulled out in time and revived by Punky using CPR. The episode--along with being a VerySpecialEpisode about CPR-- both explains and shows the dangers of hiding in old fridges.

* ''Series/FraggleRock'': A variation occurs in the episode "The Terrible Tunnel". The Storyteller tells Wembley and his friends the legend of the titular Terrible Tunnel, which in ancient times, sucked Fraggles into it, trapping them inside. It took the efforts of the brave Fraggle knight Sir Blunderbrain to free them, at the cost of getting trapped in the tunnel himself. After hearing the story, Wembley becomes It in the Marco Polo-like game Hidey-Ho and [[BlindMistake due, to being blindfolded, answers the calls of the tunnel's ghostly voice, thinking it's the voice of another Fraggle]].

* ''Series/FraggleRock'': A variation occurs in the episode "The Terrible Tunnel". The Storyteller tells Wembley and his friends the legend of the titular Terrible Tunnel, which in ancient times, sucked Fraggles into it, trapping them inside. It took the efforts of the brave Fraggle knight Sir Blunderbrain to free them, at the cost of getting trapped in the tunnel himself. After hearing the story, Wembley becomes It in the Marco Polo-like game Hidey-Ho and [[BlindMistake due, to being blindfolded, answers the calls of the tunnel's ghostly voice instead of the voices of the other Fraggles]].

* ''Series/FraggleRock'': A variation occurs in the episode "The Terrible Tunnel". The Storyteller tells Wembley and his friends the legend of the titular Terrible Tunnel, which in ancient times, sucked Fraggles into it, trapping them inside. It took the efforts of the brave Fraggle knight Sir Blunderbrain to free them, at the cost of getting trapped in the tunnel himself. After hearing the story, Wembley becomes It in the Marco Polo-like game Hidey-Ho, answering the calls of the tunnel's ghostly voice instead of the voices of the other Fraggles.

* ''Series/FraggleRock'': A variation occurs in the episode "The Terrible Tunnel". The Storyteller tells Wembley and his friends the legend of the tituluar Terrible Tunnel, which in ancient times, sucked Fraggles into it, trapping them inside. It took the efforts of the brave Fraggle knight Sir Blunderbrain to free them, at the cost of getting trapped in the tunnel himself. After hearing the story, Wembley becomes It in the Marco Polo-like game Hidey-Ho, answering the calls of the tunnel's creepy ghostly voice instead of the voices of the other Fraggles.

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/30334746 Ready or Not]]'': Elia and her children are being hunted down by Lannister soldiers. To avoid scaring her young daughter Rhaenys, Elia tells her they're playing hide and seek and she has to hide from the men hunting them. Rhaenys hides under her father's bed, but is killed anyway and becomes a supernatural monster/avenging spirit who kills Tommen, Myrcella, Tywin, and Cersei when they hide under the same bed at different times years later.

* ''Film/ReadyOrNot2019'': Grace marries into a family with a tradition of playing board games, which are chosen by drawing a card from a mysterious puzzle box. When the draws the "Hide and Seek" card, she's roped into a DeadlyGame where the entire family is hunting her down while armed to the teeth, and she has to hide and survive until dawn.

* ''Series/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'': In the episode "[[Recap/AreYouAfraidOfTheDarkSeason2TheTaleOfOldManCorcoran The Tale of Old Man Corcoran]]", brothers Jack and Kenny are invited by a local group of kids to play with them a nocturnal game of hide and seek in a local cemetery. They agree to do it, but better watch out for gravekeeper Old Man Corcoran! [[spoiler:The group of kids are all ghosts whose "hiding spots" are their own graves. Marshall, their leader, almost convinces the brothers to hide with him in an open grave, which is his own. At the end of the episode, Old Man Corcoran scares the brothers and reveals the kids they were playing with were all dead, since the man dug their graves himself.]]

-->''The next door neighbor's son''

* ''Theatre/MurderInTheDark'': Whilst stuck in the farmhouse former pop-star [[JadedWashout Danny Sierra]] and his brother [[TheReliableOne William]] reveal they hate the song "Three Blind Mice", cause when they children their babysitter used to love playing a twisted version of hide and seek she dubbed "Murder in the Dark" where she turned off all the lights in the house, had them hide then stalked them with a torch whilst wearing a horrible witch mask and if she found them, she would pin them down and pretend to stab them to death, all whilst singing the nursery rhyme. The memory which still terrifies them both now decades later. [[spoiler: As it turns out having to relieve this particular fate only ending his actual death is the final stage of Danny's [[IronicHell eternal damnation]] before the cycle starts again for him.]]

* ''VideoGame/PoppyPlaytime'': In the second chapter, Mommy Long Legs has the player play several games to gain parts of a code to escape. The final game she has them play is hide and seek, though this is a thinly-veiled attempt to hunt them down and kill them after they were forced to cheat in the previous game, which is Mommy's BerserkButton.

* In the "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQdNjtRd9wM Hide and Seek]]" episode of the ''VideoGame/TaikoNoTatsujin'' WebVideoSeries, Don plays hide and seek with his twin brother Katsu, but while he's hiding, Katsu walks by, stands around with an empty BlankStare, and walks off without acknowledging Don at all. Don stays hidden for the rest of the day before going home, still terrified, only for Katsu to show up upset at Don for not coming to find him. Don realizes that [[EpicFail he was the one who was supposed to be the seeker and had forgotten]], which would explain why Katsu hadn't come looking for Don... but then Katsu says that he'd also been hiding the entire time, meaning [[FridgeHorror who had been the one Don had seen earlier...?]]

* In the "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQdNjtRd9wM Hide and Seek]]" episode of the ''VideoGame/TaikoNoTatsujin'' WebVideoSeries, Don-chan plays hide and seek with his twin brother Kacchan, but while he's hiding, Kacchan walks by, stands around with an empty BlankStare, and walks off without acknowledging Don-chan at all. Don-chan stays hidden for the rest of the day before going home, still terrified, only for Kacchan to show up upset at Don-chan for not coming to find him. Don-chan realizes that [[EpicFail he was the one who was supposed to be the seeker and had forgotten]], which would explain why Kacchan hadn't come looking for Don-chan... but then Kacchan says that he'd also been hiding the entire time, meaning [[FridgeHorror who had been the one Don-chan had seen earlier...?]]

* In the "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQdNjtRd9wM Hide and Seek]]" episode of the ''VideoGame/TaikoNoTatsujin'' WebVideoSeries, Don-chan plays hide and seek with his twin brother Kacchan, but while he's hiding, Kacchan walks by, stands around with an empty BlankStare, and walks off without acknowledging Don-chan at all. Don-chan hides for the rest of the day and goes home, terrified, only for Kacchan to show up upset at Don-chan not coming to find him, getting Don-chan to realize that [[EpicFail he was the one who was supposed to be the seeker and had forgotten]]. All is well as Kotaro figures Kacchan had left the game midway since he was tired of not being found... before Kacchan says that he'd been hiding the entire time, meaning [[FridgeHorror who had been the one Don-chan had seen earlier...?]]

* In the "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQdNjtRd9wM Hide and Seek]]" episode of the ''VideoGame/TaikoNoTatsujin" WebVideoSeries, Don-chan plays hide and seek with his twin brother Kacchan, but while he's hiding, Kacchan walks by, stands around with an empty BlankStare, and walks off without acknowledging Don-chan at all. Don-chan hides for the rest of the day and goes home, terrified, only for Kacchan to show up upset at Don-chan not coming to find him, getting Don-chan to realize that [[EpicFail he was the one who was supposed to be the seeker and had forgotten]]. All is well as Kotaro figures Kacchan had left the game midway since he was tired of not being found... before Kacchan says that he'd been hiding the entire time, meaning [[FridgeHorror who had been the one Don-chan had seen earlier...?]]

Hide-and-seek is surprisingly popular in horror media or as a plot device to inject a bit of horror into a situation, due to how easy it is to compare the game to a person trying to hide from someone or something (a monster, a serial killer, a PsychopathicManchild or whatever) that wants to kill them. It's also a mechanic or mode in some video games, where the player has to hide from an enemy NPC or other players.

* [[TruthInTelevision/GToI Truth In Television]]: There have been incidents where children (and even adults) have suffocated from hiding in airtight spaces while playing hide-and-seek. This trope is also why modern refrigerators have magnetic closures so they can be opened from the inside: old-fashioned (1920s-1950s) refrigerators closed using mechanical latches, and children sometimes hid in abandoned refrigerators while playing hide-and-seek, which caused them to suffocate.

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'''Indices''': {{Youngsters}}, GameTropes, HorrorTropes, SubvertedInnocence