Shadow Discretion Shot

"Let's give him all he'll EVER need!"

Moral Guardians really do not like kids seeing things like violence, torture, death, or creepy transformations straight up. So Animated Series tend to get around that by alluding to them. A shadow thrown by the events the Moral Guardians would not want showed directly is all the viewer gets to see. Sometimes there's a witness standing in the shadow looking shocked, horrified, disgusted, etc.

Sometimes it is a dodge for a live-action or other movie, because the imagination of the audience/viewer will do all the real work. Also, it is sometimes better to imply through shadowplay than to use an actual shot because the special effects will not be sufficient to uphold the Willing Suspension of Disbelief ... or it is simply too difficult to render safely with real actors. In Crime and Punishment Series, it is also useful as a way to keep the murderer's identity hidden.

Least frequently, it is a cue to the viewer and characters within the work that something is off about the person whose shadow we are viewing; a Living Shadow perhaps.

Compare and contrast with Gory Discretion Shot and Sound-Only Death. Played for laughs or deception, you end up with Big Shadow, Little Creature. See also The Shadow Knows. Not to be confused with Censor Shadow (in which the scene is viewed directly with key portions hidden in shadow). A Monochromatic Impact Shot will show the event directly, but shadow out the whole thing to a limited palette. Related to Vomit Discretion Shot but obviously less horrifying. Compare Sexy Silhouette, which is used in a similar fashion to suggest but not outright display nudity.

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Examples

Advertising

• When an elderly delivery bot is upgraded in one of Shaw's commercials, the shot shows the shadow of the transformation process cast upon Bit and Bud's reactions.

Anime and Manga

• Doraemon: Nobita's New Dinosaur have a scene where a ferocious Tarbosaurus mauls another dino to death, shown in shadow form.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Used during the flashback showing Malik receiving his tattoos. (That sounds less dark than it should—said "tattoos" are actually scars carved in with a white-hot knife and he was ten years old at the time.) The dub version cut the scene entirely.
  • A Shadow Discretion Shot of Pegasus gaining the Millennium Eye, complete with his screams of agony, however, was not cut from the dub, though the blood was removed when we looked back at his face.
  • Also used in a flashback episode showing how Yuugi's grandfather found the Millennium Puzzle, when his companion betrays Yuugi's grandfather, shooting him and attempting to steal the Puzzle, the tomb's curses summon up an insect monster that dismembers and eats him, showing only the shadow of this happening (though we still get to hear it just fine).
  • We also get to see the shadows of everybody at Kul Elna being boiled alive in molten gold, while Bakura looks on in horror.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light opts for a black-on-red silhouette when Kaiba launches his first attack on Yami and his monster appears behind him - and drives its dagger right through him. The only other thing that can be seen is the life energy flowing out of him afterwards.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters has a red-on-black variation when Yami Yugi deals the fatal blow to Ultimately Perfect Great Moth.
• Played with (like everything else) in an episode of Excel♡Saga, where Excel is driven to distraction by the silhouette of a Visual Kei artist, Key, playing a guitar on the other side of a curtain. Due to the positioning of the instrument and the enthusiasm of his playing, the resulting shadow makes him look like he's stroking a very large phallus.
• Devil May Cry: The Animated Series: Done intentionally by Dante in the first episode with a theatre backdrop to prevent Patty from directly witnessing the violent combat against the demons trying to kill her.
  Dante: Sorry, honey, but this show isn't for kids.
• Elsa Maria's barrier in Puella Magi Madoka Magica naturally induces this, by making everyone look like silhouettes. Were it not for the effect, the battle against her would be easily the most brutal fight in the series. This doubles as symbolism for Sayaka's Black-and-White Morality, which is horribly broken over the course of the episode.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) in a flashback scene where Colonel Mustang is about to immolate a Child Soldier with his flame alchemy, the camera suddenly pans off to the side at the critical moment, showing the wall behind them lighting up and his shadow stretching.
• Used during the infamous "goosh goosh" scene with Buppa and an unfortunate Bishōnen in Tokyo Tribe 2.
• Used in the Devil Man manga when a group of people at the rave party transform into demons.
• Ayakashi Triangle:
  • Parodied when Rochka sees Matsuri's crotch during a brief moment where he'd become a hermaphrodite. Her body is covered by a phallic shadow, but the comically improbable size and positioning indicate it's the shadow of something else, like Matsuri's entire body.
  • When Matsuri is split into male and female halves, both naked, the male half ends up on top of Suzu. Looking closely, there's a shadowed part of his body visible between his legs. Either it's his foot, visible thanks to heavy Barbie Doll Anatomy, or else his actual penis.
    It's there! It's really there!

Comic Books

• Used in Anya's Ghost when Emily is telling Anya how she was almost murdered by a passerby at her house before falling into a well. The story is bullshit.
• In the finale of The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle, we get to see the shadow of Moe the gorilla as he dismembers the hag who had been hurting Will. And what the shadow shows is still a little graphic.
• In Detective Comics June 1942 issue #64, "The Joker Walks the Last Mile", there is a shadow of the Joker strapped to an electric chair in the death chamber as the warden pulls the switch and shocks him to death. Not a pretty sight on page 4.
• Used twice, and then revealed for later impact in Sunny Side Up.
  • When Sunny sees lighters on sale at the store she and Buzz buy comics at, she remembers a quick Flashback Cut of a hand around a lighter. This is later revealed to be a memory of when she went to go find Dale for dinner and found him smoking under a bridge with his two bad-influence friends, and Dale told her to say she didn't see anything.
  • While eating dinner with Gramps, Teezy and Ethel, Teezy asks Sunny about the Bicentennial celebration in Valley Forge and if there were fireworks. Sunny has a Flashback Cut of what appears to be her sitting on the grass enjoying the night's fireworks with people standing around her, and she says yes. It's many chapters later where this is revealed to not be a pleasant memory; that night her brother Dale showed up drunk after being gone all day and got into a fight with their father, then accidentally hit Sunny hard enough she was bruised before storming off.

Films — Animated

• Particularly common in Disney Animated Canon films, usually as a way of dramatically portraying the Disney Villain Death.
  • The Lion King: When the hyenas turn on Scar, their leaping on him to tear him apart is rendered in shadow, with a quick pan upwards and a roaring curtain of flame to hide the scene.
  • The Little Mermaid: When Ursula undertook her transformation to her Giant Monster form, we got a silhouette of her laughing with her head thrown back and her tentacles waving. However, with Ariel's painful transformation from mermaid to human, in which her tail is literally torn in two, they only darkened the lighting a bit. If you lighten the screen on your monitor during her transformation, you can see plenty.
  • Tarzan: In the final battle between Tarzan and Clayton, the latter is more interested in killing Tarzan with a machete than paying attention to the vines and their fall from the treetops, despite Tarzan's efforts to warn him. Tarzan lands safely on the ground and looks away. Then there's a lightning flash and the audience gets to see, rendered in shadow, that Clayton accidentally hanged himself on the vines. Blink and you'll miss it, though; the shadow itself appears for only a brief second right on a tree in a dark background, and you'll more likely be focused on Tarzan himself rather than the background where the shadow appears.
  • The Emperor's New Groove: The trope is spoofed. You hear Yzma's evil laughter, see her Glowing Eyes of Doom in a roiling mass of smoke, which clears to reveal she's a tiny little kitten.
  • Fantasia: Mickey Mouse hacking the enchanted broom to bits in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is done this way. As originally planned, we were to have seen this moment played out right in front of the camera. It was restaged in silhouette specifically to make it less scary.
  • Bambi's fight scene with Ronno is framed this way.
  • Beauty and the Beast: For the first third of the movie, the Beast is seen only in shadows, saving his big reveal to when Belle first sees him. The scene of him taking Maurice away to the dungeon is done with his shadow over the servants.
  • Shows up a few times in The Great Mouse Detective, first with the opening scene of Fidget kidnapping Hiram Flaversham. The fight itself is quite intense and violent, with the inside of Hiram's toy shop left completely trashed once it's over, but all we see of Hiram and Fidget themselves are their shadows being cast over Hiram's daughter Olivia as she watches from a cabinet. A little later, when Ratigan's cat, Felicia is about to eat one of his henchmen, it cuts away to the shadow of her dangling him over her mouth. Finally, when Ratigan prepares to kidnap the Queen, her guards are dragged away from their stations outside her door and the shadow of the scuffle is shown for a few seconds through the door's window.
  • Dumbo: The clowns celebrating after the show are shown as shadows seen from inside the tent. Also, the Delivery Storks at the opening and the roustabouts setting up the big top in the rain.
  • The final phase nightmare-inducing donkey transformation scene in Pinocchio.
  • Aladdin has one as the genie-empowered Jafar turns from banishing Aladdin to advance on Jasmine and her father.
  • Mushu uses the Shadow Discretion Shot in Mulan to pull off the image of an intimidating fierce dragon, until we see he's just a little guy.
  • Inverted (somewhat) in The Princess and the Frog: Eli La Bouff is shown sternly telling young Charlotte that he won't be playing "Mr. Pushover" for his spoiled daughter anymore — then he produces a then-puppy Stella.
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Grimhilde's final stages into her transformation into an ugly old hag are rendered in shadow.
  • In Pinocchio, the last phase of Lampwick's transformation into a donkey, as he loses his ability to stand upright or speak, is only shown in shadow; when the camera cuts back to him, he's fully changed into a panicking non-sapient donkey.
• The Prince of Egypt uses this when Moses' snake devours the two produced by Huy and Hotep, cutting back just in time to see their tails vanish into its mouth.
• In The Brave Little Toaster, most of the scene of Elmo St. Peters extracting a motor from the blender is shown as shadows, cast over Toaster and his friends looking on in horror.
• In Chicken Run. the scene where Edwina is beheaded was, originally. However, Nick Park cut the shot of the axe coming down, and only the axe being raised, making it a Sound-Only Death.
• The Land Before Time has one where Littlefoot's mother is fighting the Sharptooth. The Sharptooth leaps onto her back and the camera cuts away to Littlefoot and Cera watching on with the shadow of the ongoing fight on the cliff-face behind them, showing the Sharptooth violently ripping chunks of flesh out of her. It's pretty horrific, especially for a kid's film.
  • There was originally an uncensored version of the scene. Reportedly, Don Bluth ordered the footage to be burned after seeing it. However, there is an urban legend that a handful of VHS copies include the scene.
• An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island has a scene where one of main villains, NYPD chief Chief Mc Brusque, and one of his men beat a mouse that is smaller than either of them because he was protesting. To be even more brutal, the protestor had big glasses that after the beating were broken.
• We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story has a scene where Professor Screweyes turns Louie and Cecelia into apes, with their transforming shadows projected onto Rex's stomach. Play the scene of Rex transforming them back to human in reverse and it looks similar.
• Used in Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, to save Emily's first lover's identity, although it's pretty obvious anyway.
• In Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, when The Joker attacks Arthur Reeves and injects him with Joker Venom with a needle, the injection is shown in shadows.
• In the Jetlag Productions version of The Nutcracker the final phases of the nutcracker’s final battle with the seven headed Mouse King is rendered in shadow including when he fatally stabs him, we then cut to him holding his wound before he explodes for some reason.
• Igor has one of these when Schadenfraude pulls out the shrink ray. This also happens when Jaclyn shifts back into her true hunchback form near the end of the film.

Films — Live-Action

• Lights of New York: The scene of the policeman being shot.
• Disney gives us a live action example in The Three Musketeers (1993), when Captain Rochefort skewers a hapless thief in the Bastille's dungeons.
• Used in Nosferatu, for the relatively subtle scene of Orlok ascending a staircase. Still, creepy as hell. Shortly after that, there's a somewhat less famous use of it when the shadow of his hand clutches Ellen's heart, causing her to pass out.
• I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang has a scene where a jail warden makes an example of an inmate who "didn't give us a good day's work" by taking him to a side room and whipping his bare back. The whipping is shown in shadow on a wall.
  • Parodied in Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run, when it's revealed that the shadow itself is what's being whipped.
• The Zombie Apocalypse film Land of the Dead has a particularly grisly scene wherein a zombie tears a victim's head off with such force that the spinal cord comes out of the body with it. This is only visible in shadow, presumably because it is difficult to render such an effect believably with special effects, and the film does not otherwise shy away from extremely gory shots.
• The original Night of the Living Dead (1968) has one of these, when zombified Karen hacks her mother with a garden trowel in the basement.
• The transformation of Kalibos from man to monster in Clash of the Titans is done with only his shadow. This was in the days before morphing, so the only way to show it inexpensively was to do an animated shadow.
• Spoofed in Tank Girl. The Rippers are known to be vicious, violent monsters. And the first time Tank and Jet lay eyes on them, the audience gets to see nothing more than their shadows. They turn out to be Kangaroo Men, basically gentle (if horny) unless they need to be vicious in a fight, or are provoked.
• The murder scene from the 1945 horror film The Body Snatcher.
• Subverted in Beowulf (2007). We see Wealthow's reaction as Grendel's shadow appears to be tearing a man in half. Then we see the real thing, and yes, he's definitely tearing a man in half.
• Subverted for comic effect in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. As Robin woos Maid Marian, their shadows fall on a screen which the Merry Men are all watching. At a high point in the action, Robin's sword tilts at a suggestive angle on his belt, causing the company to break into spontaneous applause.
  • Spoofed outright during the fight between Robin and Rottingham at the end of the movie: At one point all we see of the duel is their shadows cast against a wall. They both then move their swords to their off-hands and continue the fight with shadow puppets.
• Possibly the first ever use in film, or at least a very early one, appears in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, where the struggle of Alan and his murderer, and the murderer stabbing Alan to death, is only shown by the shadows on the wall of Alan's room. Though we see shots of Alan's terrified face, the murderer is never actually seen except as a shadow. The later events seem to reveal that the murderer was Cesare; however the Twist Ending reveals that Francis is delusional, and points to the possibility that he himself was the murderer.
• Kung Fu Hustle features an excellent shadow discretion shot for the Musical Assassin. We see various things getting mysteriously sliced in half in time with the music, first little things seen directly, then shadow discretion shots, leading up to a character being suddenly beheaded.
• In Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, when Jason kills a construction worker by smashing a wrench over his head, this is shown in shadows but not his blood splattering all over the wall.
• Several times in The Mummy (1999), Anck Su Namun and Imnotep killing the Pharaoh starts with us seeing it, but then changes to this. Anck Su Namun's suicide is done this way, so we just see the silhouette lifting the knife and striking. Likewise, the Mummy's absorption of one of the doomed Americans is done with shadows only. And the destruction of Anck Su Namun's animated corpse is shown entirely in shadow. The same way the Pharaoh was killed in fact. To cap it off, an all-encompassing shadow comes in as Beni, trapped in the treasure room of Hamunaptra with his torch going out, becomes surrounded by the flesh-eating scarabs and darkness completely takes over just as they start to eat him alive.
• Used in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). Zaphod's second head is cut off behind a curtain, and the viewer just sees silhouettes and hears the sound of the surgical instruments and Zaphod pleading and...
• Subverted in The Sorcerer's Apprentice in the mop shoutout scene. The camera cuts back to reveal that he keeps missing, despite what you saw in the shadow.
• This is how Gone with the Wind got around strict Hays Code prohibitions on pregnancy references, by staging the childbirth scene entirely in silhouettes.
• Parodied in Hot Shots! Part Deux, where President Benson and Saddam Hussein's shadows are shown fencing against each other, and then Benson and Saddam walk by in the foreground, drinking Gatorade and toweling off their foreheads.
• In the film version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, when Fawkes uses his claws to tear out the Basilisk's eyes, they only show the shadows. Justified because the Basilisk kills by looking people in the eye, so it's likely that that was all that Harry saw as well.
• At the conclusion of the 2003 Willard, a limping Ben's shadow comes into view on the shade of an upstairs window, only to be attacked by the shadow of an enraged Willard.
• Inverted in the second and third Austin Powers movies where perfectly innocuous actions seen in silhouette are mistaken for something horrifyingly perverse.
• In The Amazing Spider-Man, the Lizard's first transformation back into a human is shown as a shadow, the silhouette's right arm falling off in clunks.
• At the climax of Shaolin Mantis, the Big Bad is killed when the hero brutally rips open his stomach and pulls out his guts, all over the place, but we as the audience only sees the shadow of that scene reflected on a white wall.
• The main villain of Magadheera gets his head ripped off in this manner, seen only as a shadow reflected on sand.
• Used at the end of Switchblade Sisters, with the fight between Maggie and Lace.
• In Cat People, the climaxing fight between the therapist and the panther is depicted as a shadow play against a wall.
• Played with in the opening of the The Crazies (1973). What appears to be the shadow of a man about to murder an innocent little girl turns out to be her father, driven insane and madly hacking at the furniture with an axe.
• In Labyrinth, the Goblin King's transformation from owl to man is rendered in shadow.
• At the end of The Children's Hour Martha's suicide is depicted this way. Karen tries to break open her bedroom door but when she does the camera lingers on her crying, only to pan away to a chair knocked over while a silhouette of Martha's heels sways in the background.
• Played straight in the The Kentucky Fried Movie segment A Fistful of Yen when Loo follows a henchman past a series of paper screens out of frame, but the viewer sees him dispatch said thug by their shadows. Immediately lampshaded when Loo realizes his shadow is visible and he puts on an impromptu shadow-puppet show.
• The Warrior's Way have Yang slicing up a number of enemy mooks in the final battle, but seen as shadows behind a tarp. Including removing one of their heads.
• Werewolf by Night (2022): When Jack is forced to turn into his werewolf form, we see a shadow turning into a werewolf while the camera focuses on Elsa terrified out of her wits.
• Little Shop of Horrors: When Seymour chops up Orin's body with an axe, only the shadow of him doing this is visible.

Live-Action TV

• Animorphs: Visser Three going One-Winged Angel in the first episode is seen only via shadows cast on the wall and a single prosthetic claw sliding into view.
• Mouse (2021): The attempted murder of Mu-won is shown by the killer's shadow hitting him (off-screen) a hammer.
• Psychopath Diary: The characters' silhouettes are all that's shown when In-woo beats a man nearly to death.
• The Vashta Narada in Doctor Who are a living version of this trope. They are an enormous swarm of microscopic aliens that when joined together take on the appearance of a shadow without a source. They mimic the shape of the their victim's shadow, and by the time their prey realizes something's going on, it's already too late.
• The Adventures of Superman: In "The Evil Three", Jimmy struggling with one of the bad guys and the other knocking him out with a blow to the head is shown in the shadows thrown on the wall.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "Back to Reality", the despair squid is showed only in shadow. Of course, this was almost certainly shown because they couldn't afford a squid special effect.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In the episode "It's a Good Life", Dan's transformation into a jack-in-the-box by Anthony is depicted with a shadow.
• In the Granada TV version of The Adventure of the Naval Treaty, the fight between Holmes and Joseph Harrison (where Holmes gets knifed across the knuckles) is shown in distorted shadows.
• Used in Kamen Rider OOO for Maki's One-Winged Angel transformation into Giru. Said shadow still shows quite a bit of Body Horror.
• Smallville: Mixed with Kissing Discretion Shot, Lana being pinned down by a sorority of Lesbian Vampires and turned into one of them is relegated to the shadows after their leader cuts her tongue open and kisses Lana to force-feed her vampire blood.
• In Supernatural the daeva are seen only as shadows attacking their victims in the episode "Shadow", and the death of the first victim is depicted using her shadow, which is covered by a spray of blood.

Music

• In the video for the Vocaloid song Circle You, Circle You, this trope comes into play when some scientists cut off a little girl's head.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: In the episode "Red-Handed and the Invisible Thief", Red wakes up to find her radish bars missing and assumes someone stole them. When no one will confess, Red sets a trap in her room, putting two radish bars by her bed as bait, just before she and Mokey lie down for a nap. The camera moves around the room to show Lanford, Mokey, and Red asleep, then focuses on the radish bars, in a handkerchief next to a flickering lantern. Next, the camera moves away from the radish bars, so that all that can be seen is the shadow of the lantern. Moments later, the shadow of a hand reaches in, picking up something. This scenario is repeated during their second nap, after Red puts Wembley's radish bars out as bait and has him watch from hiding.

Tabletop Games

• The Yu-Gi-Oh! card art for Dark Room of Nightmare uses this to imply torture.

Theatre

• At the end of Wicked, Elphaba's melting is only seen in silhouette from behind a screen. As it turns out, she faked it, taking advantage of this trope in-universe.

Video Games

• Breath of Fire IV (or more properly, the Japanese Playstation release) provides a rare example that can also be considered to be a Gory Discretion Shot—specifically, the depiction of Fou-lu decapitating Soniel. The scene was depicted entirely via a fade to black-on-red silhouette (with normal scenes before and after; the Gory Discretion Shot bit involves "shadow blood" being shown in the decapitation.
  • This scene is also notable because, despite its Bowdlerisation via Japanese conventions of Shadow Discretion Shot and Gory Discretion Shot, the scene was still Bowdlerised in its entirely from both international releases for PlayStation and all releases for Windows (which were only released in Europe and Asia—yes, including Japan, whose Windows port of Breath of Fire IV had all of the international versions' censorship).
  • The Comic-Book Adaptation of Breath of Fire IV ended up completely subverting the tropes in question via ramping up the violence and gore and depicting the scene (in what was already a Bloodier and Gorier adaptation) in what is easily the bloodiest scene in the entire manga—apparently as a very deliberate Take That! to the international censorship.
• Call of Duty: World at War: The opening scene shows a Japanese officer torturing an American POW, but if you turn on the mature content filter the camera will be fixed on their shadows, the scene actually becomes a lot more scary when you can't tell what he's doing.
• Earlier promos and previous trailers of Cuphead had the Devil threaten to decapitate Cuphead and his brother Mugman when he set out to claim their souls after winning the game (Word of God even says that they have their immortal souls inside their cups-for-heads as their lifeblood, which may be the reason why the Devil wants their heads so badly). The shadows on the wall show him making a cutthroat motion on their necks to drive home the point of this threat.
• The company logo for Darkling Room shows a bare-headed man's silhouette standing in a doorway; his shadow, cast on the floor by the light from the door, is wearing a hat. Similar hats are worn by the evil ghosts of the Ager brothers in Darkling's game, The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure.
• Dragon Quest VIII - Dhoulmagus repeatedly murders people by running them through with a long magical staff, and this trope comes into play each time this happens. It's even used in the 3DS remake's added flashback to his Start of Darkness!
• In Fatal Frame III, those who die from the Tattoo Curse vanish into an ashen outline.
• In Week 6 of Friday Night Funkin', the week's opponent, Senpai, is shown as a black shadow when Spirit, the week's second singer, bursts out of his head.
• In sharp contrast to the bloody finishers on other bosses, when in Godof War Ghost Of Sparta it comes time for Kratos to kill his mother (who'd been transformed into a monster), the simple and merciful stab to the heart is shown via shadow.
• In the intro cinematic to the campaign mode in Heroes of Might and Magic 2, the assassination by poison of the third Royal Seer is shown through a shadow on the wall of the banquet hall, and an empty cup rolling past the camera after the shadow collapses. This may have been done to bypass graphical limitations, since the campaign cinematics generally avoid showing characters close up.
• Happens several times in the horror-sci-fi Adventure Game I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, when a particularly awful event is happening, such as a merciless stabbing, a rape or a wolf attack.
• Sands of Destruction uses this in the Valley of the Dragons, when Naja kills Kyrie: we see the silhouette, but Naja's claw is quite clearly going through Kyrie's chest.
• In Syphon Filter 2, Stevens executes an innocent police officer, with shadows and the bright muzzle flash showing the act.
• Twisted Metal Black gives us Mr. Grimm's flashback to when he and his squadmate Benny were trapped in a hole in Vietnam. When Benny dies from his injuries and Grimm has been starving long enough for self-preservation to win out, his consumption of Benny's corpse is presented this way.
• In Warcraft III, Arthas stabbing his father was shown this way.
• This happens in the cutscene before your first terror mission in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. A man is cornered by Chryssalids in an alleyway, and his brutal death is shown in silhouette.

Web Animation

• Combined with Gory Discretion Shot, in the RWBY episode "The Lost Fable" we see Salem thousands of years ago trying and failing to commit suicide by stabbing herself after being made immortal by the Gods for tricking them into fighting with each other. While we don't witness the act itself, we do see it through the sunlight shining in through a window. This, along with Ruby's horrified reaction while witnessing this, makes it clear what happened.

Webcomics

• Subverted in this Girls with Slingshots strip.
• Neilen the elemental changeling combines a couple kinds of discretion shot including the shadow in this Dominic Deegan comic page.
• The Habeas Jennifer's Corpus page of Hijinks Ensue uses one.
• In Blip, Lucifer did this until he was revealed. Turns out that he's Bishōnen. In the strip before Hester met him, Atlantes (and his snake) had discretion shots.
• In Commander Kitty, when Zenith's Tagged goons abduct Nin Wah's crew, all we see is a shadow of Moose screaming as a tentacle reaches for him.
• The first character death in Crimson Flag was one. And 211 strips later (after the writer started drawing) was a shadowed-out decapitation.
• During the first nightmare animation in morphE. Curio is chained to a wall and gets to witness the Independent woman slicing someone's throat. We see the act shadowed on his face.
• My Impossible Soulmate: "Corruption" has a brief flashback to Belial's corruption by Verrine, with the act itself shown purely in silhouette.
• Trevor (2020): Trevor gutting Colin is shown in silhouette.

Western Animation

• Classic Disney Shorts uses this trope a lot.
  • In "The Cactus Kid," a relatively serious gunfight between Mickey and Pegleg Pete takes place in the dark, with flashes of light illuminating their silhouettes.
  • In "The Gorilla Mystery," Beppo the Gorilla is often seen only in shadow, though here the effect makes him more menacing rather than less.
  • Lampshaded in "The Mad Doctor," when Dr. XXX approaches Pluto with a scary-looking knife. Their shadows on the wall mimic the action... until Dr. XXX attacks Pluto's shadow, cutting it rather than the actual Pluto in half.
• Batman: The Animated Series uses this trope liberally, and it fits quite well with the series' Film Noir-inspired aesthetic:
  • There is a sequence wherein a Mad Scientist is experimenting on/torturing Selina Kyle's cat, Isis. All we see is the shadow of the man with the needle, and the shadow of Isis attempting to escape.
  • "Robin's Reckoning" part one. The deaths of Dick Grayson's parents, the Flying Graysons. The viewer sees their shadows reaching for each other, then the shot changes to the severed rope, and finally Bruce Wayne's horrified face. The original take was more graphic, but the Moral Guardians objected. The producers have since admitted this way was much more powerful.
  • The page image comes from "Feat of Clay". Matt Hagen's desperate attempt to steal Roland Daggett's Renuyu (a salve that temporarily turns a person's skin into something malleable like clay) after his supply was cut ends poorly when Daggett catches him in the act. His goons attempt to drown Hagen in Renuyu. This backfires when the overdose transforms Hagen into the shapeshifting menace Clayface (which makes this double as a Transformation Discretion Shot).
• The Spectacular Spider-Man subverts this; we get Gwen and Martha staring in horror at the shadow indicating Dr. Curt Connors is turning into the Lizard, but then they bring the camera around to show the rest of the transformation.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • An ominous shadow falls across the floor. Aang, Katara and Sokka hide, fearing that it's an enemy firebender. It turns out to be the first appearance of Momo the lemur.
  • They also quite literally invert the trope in "The Storm". We get a bright light discretion shot, due to Ozai's firebending move to scar Zuko at the Agni Kai. The viewer sees the firelight playing on the faces of the crowd, plus Iroh's reaction of horror and dismay between the smiles of Zhao and some kid we've never seen before. What the viewer hears is another story.
• El Tigre: White Pantera and Puma Loco turn into monsters after eating fake Guacamole De Los Angeles and we only see their shadows deforming. It's a couple shots later when Manny and Frida return when we see what they've turned into.
• Yin Yang Yo!: Coop the chicken transforms into Evil!Coop, and we see the shadow of the scrawny chicken falling across the titular siblings before the transformation completes.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: In "Frenchfry", the titular creature cooks addictively tasty meals. Lilo, Stitch and Pleakley partake so much that they become literally big and round. Pleakley continues consuming, and when Lilo returns home, we get a shot of his shadow on the door they're trying to come in through. Then we see he's ballooned four or five times his normal size, as part of the Anvilicious lesson about eating right.
• The 7th life of Garfield: His 9 Lives has this during the final shots of a Painful Transformation (though doesn't reduce the horror considering what is shown and the overall tension of the segment).
• This is used in the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Song of the Night 'n Dale" when Dale pokes Su Lin's rear end.
• Used in Danny Phantom where in an alternate future, Danny's last image is that of his killer, seen in shadows to the viewers.
• American Dragon: Jake Long plays it for laughs, as Principal Rotwood makes the horrifying announcement to the class that there will now be mid-midterms. He leans into the shot and onto Jake's desk at the end of it.
• In Invader Zim when he used a robotic hand to rip out his former friend Keef's eyes and replace them with robotic ones.
• Justice League Unlimited - In the episode wherein Batman is dreaming a different life courtesy of the Lotus-Eater Machine plant, we get direct shots of Thomas Wayne kicking Joe Chill's ass. When the Mercy gets pulled loose by Wonder Woman and the fantasy gives way to reality, Bruce's mind remembers how this scene really ended, and the view changes to just shadows as Chill overtakes Thomas and fires on him, returning Batman to the agonized reality that he lost his parents as a small boy.
• The Owl House: Emperor Belos' true form isn't properly seen until the season 2 finale "King's Tide", but it was first hinted at as a shadow seen in "Hunting Palismen" when his condition worsens.
• Parodied in Rocko's Modern Life when Rocko with an insane look on his face appears to murder Heffer with a hammer, as it turns out he's using it to hit his vacuum cleaner, and another episode when Beverly Bighead appears to murder Ed, as it turns out it was a clay sculpture.
• ReBoot: Kilobyte kills a guardian, and we see her shadow fade in and out as she is drained of energy.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Last Exit to Springfield", when Lisa sees herself in the mirror after having the orthodontic appliance put on and laughs maniacally (spoofing the Joker's scene in the 1989 Batman movie), her shadow is shown on the wall.
  • Also parodied at the end of "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds"; Mr. Burns makes millions off the dogs he got from Homer turning them into racing dogs. Marge come down into the basement as we see a silhouette that appears to be Homer who has hung himself. Turns out he's clinging from the rafters batting the light-on-a-string to make himself feel better.
  • In "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge", Marge suspects that Becky is going to kill her. When she can't get to sleep one night, she is startled by the door opening. She sees Becky's shadow holding a gun, but she's only returning Marge's hairdryer. She also returns her brush, which casts a shadow of a knife.
  • In "Cape Feare" when Bart is trying to sleep in the boat house he sees a menacing shadowy figure holding a knife, it turns out to be Homer offering him a brownie while shouting.
• The Teen Titans (2003) episode "Crash" uses one Played for Laughs. Gizmo refuses to help the virus-infected Cyborg until Raven pulls off her hood...the shadow implies what Gizmo sees is some sort of Lovecraftian horror. A completely terrified Gizmo agrees to help rather than be subjected to it again.
• In the King of the Hill episode "Ser-punt" when Dale and the two "exterminators" beat Joshua the snake to death is rendered in shadows.
• The ending of the Porky Pig cartoon "One Meat Brawl" has shadow figures of Porky, his dog and the groundhog they're hunting in a massive fight. Turns out, they're casting shadows with their hands so nobody actually gets hurt.
• Done in Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5 when Krytus impales Zemerik.
• MAD parody Pokemon Park has a shadow discretion shot of a Pikachu eating one of the hapless workers.
• In Ed Eddn Eddys Big Picture Show, Edd and Eddy fight in silhouette as Ed looks on sadly.
• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, we get a shadowed shot of Wolverine slicing apart some time-displaced velociraptors, while Spider-Man looks on, cringing. Doubles as a Gory Discretion Shot, as we see the shadow of some blood and guts spraying out, (though everything is clean when they show them in full).
• In Courage the Cowardly Dog, there's an episode, "Heads of Beef," where Courage sees Jambon's wife bite off a man's head, but the scene is rendered in shadow. It's actually just a meat sculpture, although the audience discovers it later, Courage never realizes this, and he runs out of the restaurant screaming when Jambon's wife wants to eat him - or, rather, a meat sculpture of him..
• Total Drama: Jo's naked workout. Played for Laughs, because of a bird vomiting. This is one of the moments on the show that got past the television censors.
• Moral Orel: In "Alone", when Agnes Sculptham is listening to Reverend Putty on the radio while remembering when Mr. Creepler raped her. We see her imagining Creepler climb out of the window and approach her, they hold hands and "become one," but in shadows. She enjoys this fantasy.
• In Family Guy's Very Special Episode "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q.", there is a scene of Quagmire, Peter and Joe witnessing Jeff beat Brenda in Quagmire's window, the beating being rendered in silhouette.
  • Parodied later on in the noir parody episode. Two goons threaten Peter, and as the camera pans to his shadow, he appears to get shot, but it turns out just his shadow was killed.
    "Luckily, they let me go with a warning. My shadow wasn't so lucky."
• At the end of the Merrie Melodies cartoon One Meat Brawl (1947), the final brawl between Porky, his pet dog, and a pesky groundhog is shown as shadows. Cut to the three characters watching the shadows fight!
  Porky Pig: Shadowboxing! (laughs) This way no one gets hurt!
• Todd McFarlane's Spawn uses this trope frequently. One prime example comes from the very first episode, just a couple of minutes in. Spawn bends a mob enforcer's arm back at an impossible angle and makes him shoot himself with his own gun. But, perhaps the best example comes from episode 11 (Season 2, Episode 5); after protecting Wanda from one of Jason Wynn's assassins, Spawn finishes the guy off by lifting him into the air with his chains and snapping him in half! While both of these deaths are shown only in shadow, Wanda witnesses the latter firsthand, and is justifiably horrified at the sight.
• In SWAT Kats, there's a scene in the episode "The Giant Bacteria" wherein the title critter gobbles up a farmer and a cow. Both times, it's only shown in shadow (and when the farmer gets nommed, there's the added bonus of the creature's body obscuring the shadow).
• In Gargoyles, Hakon beginning the Wyvern Massacre is shown as a shadow cast against the Captain's horrified face.
• Steven Universe: In "Steven the Sword Fighter", when Holo-Pearl impales Pearl, part of the scene is shown as shadow.
  • In "Change Your Mind", this happens when White Diamond removes Steven's gem. Although if you brighten it enough, you'll see that it wasn't actually their shadows being shown but instead the actual characters, and that they were actually drawn in detail.
• This is how turning into a toadstool is shown in Toad Patrol.
• Gravity Falls: Parodied in "Little Gift Shop of Horrors". During the "Clay Day" segment, the characters watch a fierce off-screen battle between Claymation monsters while talking about how stop-motion is really expensive and time-consuming. All the audience sees is the traditionally-animated shadows of the fighting monsters. Soos even comments he's glad he is looking at it and seeing it all.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), Snake's mutation into Snakeweed is shown via shadow, however his screams let us know it was excruciatingly painful.

Real Life

• Prince's performance◊ at Super Bowl XLI was intentionally done behind a curtain or sheet. The Moral Guardians still took umbrage over how phallic the performance appeared. This was, however, a Prince performance, and therefore rather watered down. In addition, the man is playing a guitar. It's difficult to impossible to avoid a phallic representation in such an instance. This could be considered an inversion of the trope, because the shadow made the phallic imagery more blatant.

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