History Main / OfCorpseHesAlive

* In UsefulNotes/Brazil, [[https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/videos-rj2/playlist/videos-rj2-de-terca-16-de-abril-de-2024.ghtml#video-12523551-id a woman took her uncle on a wheelchair to the bank in order to get a loan on the bank]]. The man was unresponsive, and the woman tried to make it look like he was okay by talking to him and even holding his hand so he could "sign the documents". The cashier asked why his skin was yellow-ish, and she stated that it was normal. Turns out, the man was dead, and the staff only found out after the woman and the corpse have left the bank, but thankfully she was found and properly arrested.

* In ''Film/{{Commando}}'', John Matrix breaks the neck of the bad guy who's supposed to watch him on the flight to Val Verde. Afterwards, John just puts his straw hat over his face and props the body in a way that makes it seems like he's sleeping.
-->'''John Matrix''' (to a stewardess): "Don't disturb my friend. He's [[BondOneLiner dead tired]]."

* A [[SpoileredRotten spoilertastic]] version occurs, appropriately enough, in ''[[ComicBook/{{Legacy}} Star War: Legacy]]''. After years of searching for a specific goal, [[spoiler:[[BigBad Darth Krayt]] finally finds a method to overcome death]]. The adjutant, [[spoiler:[[TheDragon Darth Wyyrlock]], kills him, [[ShootTheDog out of concern]] that Krayt's increasing instability would eventually lead to the downfall of the New Sith Empire]]. In the following weeks, [[spoiler:Wyyrlock pretends that Krayt is injured and comatose, relying on Krayt's legacy and Wyyrlock's own reputation for loyalty to strengthen his grip on the empire to lead it to a stable future]]. In the end, [[spoiler:Krayt wakes up, having ''survived death'', and is quite unhappy with Wyyrlock's manipulations]], eventually killing him in a duel.

* ''Film/BeverlyHillsCopIII'': Axel has a shootout with {{Mooks}} Kimbrough, Rondy, and Cooper and kills all of them. When more of them run in, Axel props one of the dead guys, Kimbrough, up, lifts his arm so Kimbrough is "pointing," and yells "He ran up those stairs!" They all fall for it.

** When the yakuza demand proof that the Son is alive and well, [[spoiler:Tangerine gets off the train to meet with them while Lemon puppets the Son's corpse from inside the train window to wave hello.]] They refer to this tactic as "the old Theatre/PunchAndJudy".

* In one story from ''Literature/ArabianNights'' the jester of a ruler dies from a fishbone in his throat; no less than three people try to shift the blame by getting rid of his body. When an innocent man is condemned to death for the alleged murder, all of them (in reverse order) confess what they did. [[spoiler:At the end, it turns out that he wasn't really dead, just unconscious.]] In a different version of the story, [[spoiler:he's really dead, but the sultan is so amused by ''everyone'' claiming to have killed him that he pardons all responsible, saying that this was the jester's last joke.]]

* Two women allegedly tried to [[http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/04/06/britain-airport-corpse.html sneak a corpse]] onto a plane in Britain in April 2010. They subsequently claimed that he had passed away in his sleep without them realising, and the police couldn't find any conclusive evidence to the contrary and had to let them go.

* When UsefulNotes/MaoZedong's son Mao Anying was killed in an airstrike during the UsefulNotes/KoreanWar, his death was concealed from the elder Mao for two months until his request to have him transferred back to China forced them to admit the truth.

* Played straight in an episode of ''Series/{{CSI}}'', when a corpse was stolen from the morgue in order to posthumously attend a party with some friends. When the arresting officers point out the person responsible committed a crime and has to be taken into custody, he calmly replies "He would have done it for me."
** Another episode of the series had a complete maniac of a Civil War re-enactor (and quite the perfect example of an AssholeVictim otherwise) [[UndignifiedDeath dying of an accident regarding his corset and it screwing up his organs' function]] and his secretary/re-enactor aide-de-camp taking the corpse and putting it on a railroad track as a train came closer in a way that would have him looking like he was naturally standing up (which made the train's engineer think that it was some kind of suicidal maniac until the investigators told him otherwise) because he liked to tell a story of one of his ancestors dying trying to prevent a train from entering Atlanta during the war and the secretary thought that re-enacting that was something that the man would have seen as AGoodWayToDie.

* In a episode of "Series/FamilyFeud", the question was related to what to do with a dead body in one's home. On of the contestants responds by telling how he would "... prop [the body] up on a chair, dress him up, make it look like he's chillin...". The best part is Steve Harvey completely losing it as soon as the he hears the answer.

* There's an accident version in the opening of ''When Eight Bells Toll''. The secret agent played by a young Creator/AnthonyHopkins boards a ship and breaks into the radio room, [[OhCrap only to be caught red-handed by a sailor pointing a revolver at him]]. He then notices the revolver is propped on the desk and the man's eyes aren't moving to follow him; on further examination, the sailor has been stabbed in the back with a knife that's holding him in position.

* Happens in an episode of ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow''. Drew has to pretend that the deceased person is still alive to get a promotion.

'''Larry Wilson:''' Yeah. ({{beat}}) ''I'' know that. ({{beat}}) ''You'' know that. ([[{{beat}} shakes head]]) ''Nobody else knows that.''

* In Lawrence Block's ''Literature/TheBurglarWhoPaintedLikeMondrian'', Turnquist is found dead in the bathroom at Bernie's bookstore. Carolyn rents a wheelchair and she and Bernie put a hat and sunglasses on the corpse, stick it in the chair and keep pushing until they find a convenient place to deposit the deceased.

** ''Detective Conan'' has a serious version of this (of course, being about murder and all that). A guy just murdered his brother and the Junior Detective League found his body. Next day, the brother tried to use the body manipulation to make it seems like that the dead guy is alive, trying to fool the League and the police.

* Used as a gag in ''ComicBook/{{Sturmtruppen}}'', where a series of strips has two privates finding themselves stranded with the corpse of their private Franz... but they decide to keep it with them and pretend he's still alive to use him for sentinel turns and to get extra rations of food, with noone suspecting a thing. This culminates in them having to show up to the Lieutenant, who not only mistakes the corpse's smell for the Sergeant's, but he also recruits them all for a high-risk scouting mission, much to the other two soldiers dismay.

* ''Film/BeverlyHillsCopIII'': Axel has a shootout with {{Mooks}} Kimbrough, Rondy and Cooper and kills all of them. When more of them run in, Axel props one of the dead guys, Kimbrough, up, lifts his arm so Kimbrough is "pointing," and yells "He ran up those stairs!" They all fall for it.

* In ''Film/CatsAndDogs'', [[BigBad Mr. Tinkle]] and his cat minions hijack his owner's Christmas Tree factory. They get in to do so by operating his motorised wheelchair, covering his mouth with a scarf, covering his eyes with sunglasses and voicing him.

* In ''Film/ColdPursuit'', after Kyle is murdered, his killers carry his body to an outside table, carrying on a conversation as if he is alive and drunk. The prop him up at the table, pop sunglasses on him, talk to him for a while, and then leave, saying they are going to get coffee.

* In ''Film/TheFleshAndTheFiends'', Burke and Hare carry Jackson's dead body between them, pretending that he his too drunk to walk. They fail to notice when Jamie steals a ring off Jackson's finger, which is what ultimately brings about their downfall.

* ''Film/LightsOfNewYork'': Barber tries to hide a dead gangster from the police disguising him as a customer, shaving him, talking to him and pretending he's asleep. Unfortunately, the body drops from the chair.
* In ''Film/AManCalledSledge'', Sledge knocks out one of the guards in the prison and is searching him for the keys, only to be told he doesn't have them. When another guard enters, Sledge and Ward grab the unconscious guard and haul him up against the bars of their cell so it looks like he is standing there talking to them. The ruse works briefly, but then fails when the unconscious guard's slip out from under him.

* There's an accident version in the opening of ''When Eight Bells Toll''. The secret agent played by a young Creator/AnthonyHopkins boards a ship and breaks into the radio room, [[OhCrap only to be caught red-handed by a sailor pointing a revolver at him]]. He then notices the revolver is propped on the desk and the man's eyes aren't moving to follow him; on further examination the sailor has been stabbed in the back with a knife that's holding him in position.

* ''Literature/TheButcherBoy'': At some point Benny dies because oh his alcoholism. Francie is unaware of this (due to his increasing SanitySlippage) and thinks he's just sleeping until the police enters his home to discover the corpse has been decomposing for a while.

* In ''Literature/TheDarkswordTrilogy'', the unstable political situation in Merilon causes the royal court to keep up the pretense that the Queen is still alive for over a year after her death in order to prevent her brother from taking the throne. They royal wizards use their magic to prevent her body from decomposing, and even to make it move and appear to hold court as usual -- but anyone looking into its dead eyes can see the truth.

* ''Literature/SpecialOperations'': In order to test whether their Dutch operation have been compromised, the Allies parachute a man who died of a broken neck, dressed up like a commando, into German territory, reasoning that if the Germans haven't compromised the network, then there people will report the man apparently died on impact with the ground, and if the Germans have compromised the network, they'll act as if everything is fine with him.

* ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'': Used by the Musketeers during the siege of La Rochelle to escape from a (previously damaged and deserted) minor fort in which they had gathered to eat, drink and plot: they and their valets set the corpses around the fort, so as to be visible to the advancing enemy party; while their enemies were shooting, they slink away at leisurely pace. In the scene, Athos is particularly badass.

* Pops up in one scene of the ''Series/{{Chuck}}'' episode "[[Recap/ChuckS2E20ChuckVsTheFirstKill Chuck Versus the First Kill]]". Chuck poses as his Fulcrum agent ex-girlfriend's fiancé to flush out her recruiter, a close family friend who may know where Fulcrum has taken Chuck's father. Unfortunately, family ties aren't much help and the man attempts to kill them, suffering a fatal heart attack in the process. Chuck, Jill, Sarah and Casey briefly pretend that Bernie had too much to drink and they have to help walk him out (complete with Chuck and Casey manipulating his corpse waving goodbye). Bonus points because the character's [[ShoutOut name]] was [[Film/WeekendAtBernies Bernie]].

* In one episode of ''Series/FatherTed'', Father Jack takes an extra large (and accidental) dose of Dreamy Sleepy Nighty Snoozy Snooze (a bran-based chocolate-flavoured sleeping aid banned in most European countries), preventing him from playing as the star player in the Annual All-Priests Over-75 Football Challenge Match (Against Rugged Island). In response to this [[LampshadeHanging completely ludicrous situation]], Ted concocts a plan involving a remote-controlled wheelchair and a pair of fake arms.

* In ''Series/JonathanCreek'', in the episode 'Satan's Chimney', one of the victims is found dead outside the castle, however multiple witnesses saw him driving out of the castle the night before. As it turns out, [[spoiler:the man was already dead and propped up in the seat of his car. The killer was able to drive the car because it was an American car with the steering wheel on the opposite side. When the witnesses looked out of the upstairs windows (which had a very steep angle down into the castle courtyard, obsuring their view), they saw the victim in what would usually be the driver's side in a British car and assumed he was driving.]]

* In the HalloweenEpisode of ''Series/NedsDeclassifiedSchoolSurvivalGuide'', the main trio plus Gordy and Crubbs do this with Principal Pal's "[[FakingTheDead body]]" after they assume they accidentally killed him with their haunted house. Fortunately it turns out the principal just has a weird sense of humor, and no detectable pulse.

* ''Series/OddSquad'': In the episode "Odd Squad Needs You", Otis agrees to film a commercial of the same name in the stead of Oscar, but soon runs into a whole host of problems stemming from his star, Oprah. At one point, as Otis figures out that he needs five more seconds of footage for the commercial, Orchid points out that Oprah has fallen asleep at her desk. Knowing that waking her up is a bad idea (since she is a TinyTyrannicalGirl), Otis finds a workaround and decides to puppeteer her, attempting to imitate her voice. Luckily for him and Orchid, Oprah is a HeavySleeper and doesn't wake up.

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'''s "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E10TheMagnificentFerengi The Magnificent Ferengi]]" has a sci-fi version of this where Gaila accidentally kills their bargaining chip, [[SmugSnake Keevan]]. [[TheEngineer Nog]] then tries to control Keevan's body via remote, but ends up [[{{Wallbonking}} running him into a bulkhead]]. They still get away with it. At the very end of the episode, we see Keevan's body repeatedly walking face first into the bulkhead.

* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' has a corpse used in such a manner in one episode, though only briefly. They use the corpse of an assassin who has died after they captured him to get into the facility he was working for by sitting him in the front of his van, duct taping his hands to the steering wheel, and hiding in the back with some sort of spiffy alien universal remote control.

* ''Series/{{Vera}}'': An underplayed (and serious) version in "Natural Selection". The killer props body of the VictimOfTheWeek up in a seat in the observation hut, and sends a text message from her phone, so witnesses are convinced they saw her alive when they left the island.

* ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'': A villain in "Blind Faith" episode forces unaware Gabrielle to marry dead king in order to take over his power.

* Music/FallOutBoy's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZnYpOuS4jA Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet]]." is basically the very definition of this trope. Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith of Music/PanicAtTheDisco find a very dead Pete Wentz on the beach. They contemplate calling 911 (and Jason Tate) and then decide to go to an amusement park with his corpse, take photos and then steal his jacket, wallet, and phone. Just watch it for yourself.

** In the Season 4 finale, Jerry, wearing an invisbility belt, puppets a corpse to convince her friend that she's still alive. It works for a bit until Jerry slips and reveals himself.

* The death of Chinese emperor UsefulNotes/QinShiHuangdi was kept secret for two months by his prime minister, Li Si, for fear that the Emperor's death could possibly result in an uprising. The Emperor died on a journey in the middle of a blazing summer, so the minister hid the stench of the fast decomposing body by surrounding the imperial carriage with carts full of rotting fish. It was an indication of how feared the Emperor and his prime minister were that not one person questioned the driving arrangements (or they didn't care).

* There is at least a popular theory that UsefulNotes/FranciscoFranco actually died on November 19, 1975, but he was kept on life support until November 20 so his death would officially happen in the anniversary of the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera.

* After the joint suicide of Austria’s Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress Mary von Vetsera, an attempt was made to state that Vetsera had died on her way to Venice, having her uncles prop up her body with a broomstick to cover-up her death in Mayerling as they left this lodge.

* In ''LightNovel/GoblinSlayer'', when the party is infiltrating a dwarven fortress occupied by goblins, High Elf Archer arranges a few goblin corpses to make them look merely drunk to avoid the alarm being raised too soon. She even pours out some of Dwarf Shaman's booze to complete the effect, he does not let that go.

* In the ''Series/{{Leverage}}'' episode "The 10 Li'l Grifters Job", the [[TheCon mark]] is killed during his own murder mystery-themed dinner party. Nate, realizing that he would be the prime suspect, tries to pretend that the really obvious corpse on the ground is a lifelike dummy and that the whole thing is actually [[AllPartOfTheShow all part of the game]] while figuring out who actually did it.
* On ''Series/{{Life|2007}}'', the detectives use this trick to convince a suspect that the accomplice he tried to murder is still alive by propping up the corpse in the back of their car. The guy buys it hook, line, and sinker, immediately spilling his guts in an attempt to get the cops to offer ''him'' a deal instead of the other guy.

* ''Series/MurdochMysteries:'' After RichIdioWithNoDayJob Roger Newsome is killed by a mob assassin, Murdoch places his body in a wheelchair and (hoping to draw out the killer) claims that he was only wounded and will be staying with Murdoch until he recovers enough to testify at the trial of the assassin's boss. HilarityEnsues.

* In the ''Series/{{Bones}}'' episode "The Double Death of the Dearly Departed", Bones and Booth load a corpse upright into the back seat of a car. When Bones expresses concerns about how exposed the corpse is, Booth reassures her that he'll just look like he's drunk. This scene also features dialogue-driven ProductPlacement.

* Pops up in one scene of the ''Series/{{Chuck}}'' episode "Chuck Versus the First Kill". Chuck poses as his Fulcrum agent ex-girlfriend's fiancé to flush out her recruiter, a close family friend who may know where Fulcrum has taken Chuck's father. Unfortunately, family ties aren't much help and the man attempts to kill them, suffering a fatal heart attack in the process. Chuck, Jill, Sarah and Casey briefly pretend that Bernie had too much to drink and they have to help walk him out (complete with Chuck and Casey manipulating his corpse waving goodbye). Bonus points because the character's [[ShoutOut name]] was [[Film/WeekendAtBernies Bernie]].

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'''s "The Magnificent Ferengi" has a sci-fi version of this where Gaila accidentally kills their bargaining chip, [[SmugSnake Keevan]]. [[TheEngineer Nog]] then tries to control Keevan's body via remote, but ends up running him into a bulkhead. They still get away with it. At the very end of the episode, we see Keevan's body repeatedly walking face first into the bulkhead.
-->[[CrossesTheLineTwice I can't turn him off!!]]