History Main / PeekABooCorpse

* Ann Radcliffe's Gothic romance ''Literature/TheMysteriesOfUdolpho'' (1794), when Emily, our innocent heroine, opens the wrong door and AAARRRGGGH! [[spoiler: Actually, it's a waxwork, thereby subverting the trope. It's still an extremely creepy waxwork, though.]]

** Subverted when Daffy is SherlockHolmes. He opens the door to 221B Baker Street only for a body to fall at his feet, which he immediately diagnoses as being assassinated by curare poisoning. The 'corpse' then complains that he tripped over the step.

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* ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' [=McCoy=]'s making his way through the Regula I station when he bumps into a [[CatScare Rat Scare]]. Relieved after the initial shock, he turns around - slap-bang into a corpse, hung upside down.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} 3'' regularly does this. In addition to falling out of closets and vent shafts, they are occasionally seen being levitated or otherwise manipulated by the demonic forces.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom 3}}'' enjoyed this heavily, having bodies fall out of vents or fly across rooms with no warning, often designed to spook the player and make them waste ammo on a non-threatening body. The most prominent is towards the beginning where after grabbing a PDA, a body on a rope swings from the ceiling in front of the player.

** ''Film/{{Poltergeist}}'' featured, among other things, the mother of the family being assaulted by corpses in the unfinished backyard pool. Later on, the entire family had to escape from a house where corpses in coffins were literally popping themselves up out of the floor and blocking their way. One even tossed itself onto the windshield of their departing car for good measure. And those skeletons were ''real''.

* ''Film/KillerWorkout: Jaimy gets a JumpScare from a fake arm someone has hidden in her locker as a gag. Just as she is recovering from the this, the locker next to hers falls open and Rachael's corpse tumbles out.

* ''Film/KillerWorkout: Jaimy gets a JumpsScare from a fake arm someone has hidden in her locker as a gag. Just as she is recovering from the this, the locker next to hers falls open and Rachael's corpse tumbles out.

* ''Film/KillerWorkout: Jaimy gets a JumpsScre from a fake arm someone has hidden in her locker as a gag. Just as she is recovering from the this, the locker next to hers falls open and Rachael's corpse tumbles out.

* Creator/StevenSpielberg is probably the PuppetMaster of Peek-A-Boo Corpse.

* Parodied in ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}''. The [[FaceFramedInShadow shadowy figure]] that follows you as you walk through TheLostWoods outside the Ruins is suddenly revealed as a skeleton. However, this particular skeleton is immediately established as a FriendlySkeleton with a fondness for practical jokes.

* ''{{Doom 3}}'' enjoyed this heavily, having bodies fall out of vents or fly across rooms with no warning, often designed to spook the player and make them waste ammo on a non-threatening body. The most prominent is towards the beginning where after grabbing a PDA, a body on a rope swings from the ceiling in front of the player.

* An episode of the detective series ''Series/SimonAndSimon'' featured a scene where the GirlOfTheWeek opened a closet in a nice, clean, unassuming house to find herself staring at a decaying, socket-eyed female corpse. Since the stench of decomposition would probably have been fairly noticeable, one might wonder why the woman wasn't more cautious about opening the door. (Yes... one ''might'' wonder... if one hadn't been so traumatized by the scene that they ducked under their bed and started to cry like this then-9-year-old editor did... Damn you, ''Simon & Simon''...)
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** Parodied when the Doctor and his friends split up to search a school for evidence of the villains' evil plot. One character opens a door, we hear a high, terrified scream...and (eventually) see that he has discovered a closet full of vacuum-packed rats. Quoth the Doctor: "You decided to scream? Like a little girl? Nine, maybe ten years old. Pigtails, frilly skirt..."
** Mind you, the show isn't immune from this in itself; it used it straight in an earlier episode. Fortunately, the exact shot of the Peek-A-Boo Corpse had been used in the trailer, so everyone was expecting it.
** A notable example in the Classic series is an episode CliffHanger in "The Ark in Space", when the Doctor's companion opens a door and an alien Wirrn appears to lunge out at our heroes. The following night the audience discovered it's a dessicated corpse.
* ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', twice in the second episode. First, the frozen corpse of Molly's partially decapitated father is sitting at the dinner table. Then again, Hiro finds the partially decapitated corpse of [[spoiler: Isaac Mendez. This is the first hint that Hiro isn't in the present, since we just saw Isaac Mendez, and he was perfectly fine]].

* Happens all the time in Series/{{Psych}}. Then Gus vanishes if not stopped first.
* A fairly common way to open an episode in Series/{{NCIS}}. One prime example is the opening scene of episode 10 of season 4, "Smoked." Workmen at the Quantico Marine Military Base are replacing a furnace when the well-preserved (smoked) body of a dead man falls out of the chimney, which scares the bejeebus out of them.
* An episode of ''Series/TheGreatestAmericanHero'' pulls a PG-rated version of this on the ''viewer'', having a murder victim literally spring back to "life" as a white-faced zombie.
* ''Series/{{Bones}}'': The opening to nearly every single episode. A corpse in the mail, in a garbage truck, scattered amongst the tree branches... Take your pick.
* ''Series/JonathanCreek'' had a few of these. Maddie opens a new wardrobe, that she checked inside before it was brought up to her flat and was with all the way upstairs... and the body of a woman she met the day before almost falls on her. She also nearly steps on a dead body in the dark in ''Mother Redcap''.
* In ''Series/LoveHate'', Fran planned to dig up Noelie Hughes' mother's corpse (three months dead) and put her sitting in Noelie's home, waiting for him when he came out of prison. Thankfully, the smell from the coffin puts them off and they abandon this plan.

* As described in ''Castle'' above, ''many'' crime drama shows, including ''Series/LawAndOrder'', ''[[Series/LawAndOrderSVU SVU]]'', and ''Series/{{Elementary}}'', use this trope to open episodes. Characters will be going about their day, or doing some kind of mundane chore, only to discover a body (either freshly killed or possibly decades old). ''SVU'' has even done a BaitAndSwitch variant at least once: one episode opened with a young man staring at a girl from the shadows as she waited for an elevator. He then emerged and moved toward her...and greeted her as a friend, as they live in the same building! As they share a laugh about the situation, the elevator doors open--and surprise, there's a corpse inside.
** The overuse of this trope was parodied in a ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' episode hosted by Jake Gyllenhaal. In one sketch, Jake plays an actor who's at the "Law and Order School of Acting"; the end goal is to win the role of the person (including an obnoxious jogger or loudmouthed fisherman) who discovers the body in each show.

* The leftover lunch of the monster or EldritchAbomination.

[[quoteright:350:[[Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/marion_corpse.jpg]]]]

* Subverted in ''Film/TheMachinist''. At the start of the movie the main character is shown in an attempt to dump a body, and later his fridge starts leaking blood after he fails to pay his electric bill. When opened, it only contains a large fish he caught.

* In ''Film/SororityRow'', Jessica and Cassie are startled when the discover [[spoilerMegan's]] corpse hanging in the shower as they attempt to escape through the closed off wing of the house.