History WebVideo / AskAMortician

* CreepyChild: Doughty admits she was one, and often says she feels that children have to be educated out of an interest in death and decay.
** One of her favourite stories to begin her lectures is when she rediscovered her diary from 3rd grade: a Franchise/HelloKitty notebook with a single entry: "Today is Halloween. Finly its come" [sic].

** She then completed her cannibalism trilogy by discussing the famous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syJyPq7lRGc Uruguayan rugby players incident]].

* AffectionateParody: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lww_qcM4pk Took a while, but she got one]].

* HulaAndLuaus: Subverted. Doughty grew up in Hawai'i, and clearly has a deep connection to the place that goes beyond beaches and ukes (for one thing, she actually pronounces the name correctly). One of her most devastating videos involves a pilgrimage of sorts she took to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpR54iv5c0U a leper colony established by White people to segratate sick Hawaiians from their families.]]

* GenuineHumanHide: Made a video "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhT5YWV_c0s Were Books Really Bound In Human Skin?]]". (Short answer: yes, and usually by doctors). Caitlin describes the history of a few specific books, and also looks at the controversies surrounding them, usually revolving around whether the skin donor consented to the process.

* GenuineHumanHide: Made a video on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhT5YWV_c0s anthropodermic bibiliopegy]].

* TheCameo: She doesn't do Youtube collabs very often, though she did [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ6mbiqBh6M&t=129s one]] with WebVideo/TheBrainScoop, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MddVNafUVMc one]] with WebVideo/DoctorMike, and [[https://www.youtube.com/c/Themuttermuseum/search?query=doughty four]] with her "sister", Anna Dhody, curator of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.

** Discussed in her video "Is it Legal to Mummify Your Cult Leader?" She acknowledges that as far as she can tell, it does appear to have been Amy Carlson's genuine wish that Love Has Won treat her body as they did (taking it with them as they traveled and then setting it up in a shrine), so it's just weird, not desecration. However, she points out that there are ''many'' other issues with the situation even so--we have rules about what to do with corpses for good reasons (like getting coroner's reports so we can be sure if someone was murdered or not).

* SarcasmMode: In "Is It Legal to Mummify Your Cult Leader", when she's explaining why Love Has Won had to leave (read: was driven out of) Hawaii, she says that "Mother God" had started claiming to be the goddess Pele, and then puts on a high-pitched faux-cheerful voice to add that if there's one thing Native Hawaiians just love, it's white mainlanders co-opting their deities.

* HalloweenEpisode: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Xb8R0A9hI Several,]] though [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNkzUiSjKH0 they are]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3dF5tSfL0k surprisingly understated]].

** The sad fate of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UiD2KfksFI Elmer McCurdy]].

* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: Caitlin did an entire episode on the {{Trope Namer}}s.

* WartsAndAll: Her history videos tend towards this tone. For example, her videos about cases like the Donner party or the Aokigahara forest try to dispel some of the sensationalism that has grown around them in popular culture, and to remind viewers that the people involved had actual lives of their own, with the complexity that that entails.

'''Ask A Mortician''' is a Website/{{Youtube}} [[https://www.youtube.com/user/OrderoftheGoodDeath video series]] created and hosted by author and licensed[[note]]Despite what some may whisper[[/note]] funeral director Caitlin Doughty, which currently has over a million subscribers.

* LastDisrespects: Discussed in a few videos.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVgumSUZQRI&t=609s "Protecting Trans Bodies in Death"]] Caitlin states that transgender people are at risk of suffering this from their unaccepting next of kin, and uses Jennifer Gable as a case study in this. Gable had transitioned years before her death, yet at her funeral her father presented her body as male - much to the horror of her friends. Fortunately this can be avoided by creating a death plan and choosing someone to handle your funeral while you're still alive.
** In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy507E8TN_w "CARING FOR THE BODIES OF TERRORISTS"]], Caitlin talks about the controversy surrounding whether or not terrorists and other hated individuals should have respectful burials. She uses Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an example. The conclusion she reaches is that they should have at least that much.
** The video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csHEOffqX2I "Should This Funeral Director Be Forgiven?"]] discusses how Peter Stephan generally strives to defy this by taking any unclaimed body in his community. He ended up facing controversy because of this; both because he organized the burial of hated terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev and later because he took on more bodies than he could properly care for.

* MedievalMorons: Played with. Doughty has a degree in medieval history, and so is presumably aware that not ''everyone'' in the Middle Ages was a gullible, superstitious witch-burner; but given her areas of interest she tends to focus on subjects that highlight this trope, such as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfpwo5B0Iq4 corpse trials]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt2YYzlJjwY female sexual fantasies about baby Jesus]] (yes, really), and, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGpSheCNRk8&t=117s of course]], [[BurnTheWitch witch persecution]].