Sure, skeletons are scary, especially if they're still walking around. But, you want a real gross out factor? Try a living person (not undead) whose skeleton is partially visible. While a corpse, animate or not, showing bones is a natural sign of decay, a living body showing its skeleton is decidedly unnatural.
A bit medically improbable, so usually indicates magic or super-science. (Although a prosthetic that only looks skeletal is very plausible.) Compare Dem Bones, supertrope of Skull for a Head. A common trait of Necromancers. Often Overlaps with Red Right Hand.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Film — Animation
- The twin babes born to Delia, Queen of Faeries in Ralph Bakshi's Wizards were diametric opposites: Avatar was the attractive cherub, while Blackwolf was the repulsive wraith with bare-bone arms. Both would mature into powerful wizards, destined to clash over the fate of the After the End world.
Film — Live-Action
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: the audience's first actual look at the curse's effects is in the Port Royal jail, when the Bosun reaches through the bars to grab Jack Sparrow by the throat. A beam of moonlight shines onto the Bosun's arm, which turns it skeletal.
- Star Wars:
- In the prequel trilogy, Anakin Skywalker gets a mechanical replacement for most of an arm. It's first seen as a golden skeletal hand, but he usually covers it with a leather glove. Unlike his son Luke later, he does not get or receive a fake-skin covering for it (or the technology at the time can't do it yet).
- In the sequel trilogy, Luke Skywalker's mechanical hand that he got in the original trilogy looks somewhat skeletal, because the fake-skin covering has been worn off over time.
- Terminator:
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day: After the T-800 cuts away the skin and muscle on his arm to prove his origins, what's left is a skeletal armature made of metal "bones". In-universe this gives the sight a double punch: "my god, it's just bones but it still works!" followed instantly by "my god, it's a robot underneath!"
- Terminator Genisys: The T-800 gets his arm's metal bones fully exposed due to acid.
- Total Recall (1990): The Martian cabdriver who befriends Quaid turns out to be a mutant: one of his arms is grossly deformed, twice the normal length and skeletally thin so it looks like just skin over bones.
Literature
- In The Dark Profit Saga: Jynn's first attempt at channelling solamancy in decades sears the flesh from his hand, leaving a skeletal hand that he animates with noctomancy. His liche father tries to invoke it for a "Not So Different" Remark.
- Harrow the Ninth: When Ianthe's transplanted arm proves to be incompatible with her magic, Harrowhark cuts it off and grows a skeletal replacement out of Ianthe's own bone, with the bare minimum of nerves and tendons necessary to move it. She leaves the flesh off because bone magic is her preferred discipline of Necromancy, whereas she finds flesh magic crass. Ianthe immediately finds it far more responsive than her old transplant, and later gets the bones plated with gold.
- In A Practical Guide to Evil: Hakram loses a hand in a fight with the Lone Swordsman, but the Warlock animates a skeletal appendage as a replacement. This earns Hakram the moniker Death-Hand (and apparently makes him a hit with the orkish ladies).
- In The Wandering Inn: After losing the skin on her right hand due to a Heroic RRoD induced Magic Misfire, holding back a hoard of undead to protect a fellow adventurer. Ceria Springwalker find's she can still move it and use it to cast ice magic.
Music
- Toh Kay's "The Man With the Skeleton Arms" is about a man with skeleton arms. He lost the flesh on his arms when he was caught in a fire started by the singer and his friend Flanagan, and his goal is to capture them and boil all the flesh off of their bodies except for on their arms.
Tabletop Games
- Undead grafts in Dungeons & Dragons can include skeleton arms, and the Pale Master prestige class includes one.
Video Games
- Mortal Kombat X: Shinnok in his Necromancer variation removes flesh in his forearm, showing nothing but bones. Oddly (or hilariously), upon getting "finished", his arms revert back to normal.
- Skullgirls: Marie's back has no skin and thus exposes her ribs and spine. This is likely because this is where the Skullheart is as it usually imbeds itself within the current Skullgirl. Sometimes her skin will peel off when performing certain attacks or getting hit. This is most notable with her hands and face.
Webcomics
- Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Regina's wing was stripped to the bone in her first fight with Dan, and she periodically re-strips it when it regenerates because she likes the look.
- Dominic Deegan: Jacob tears the flesh off his arm twice, and his face once, in his attempts to become "the zombie alive". Though it gets regenerated by white magic explosions.
- Goblins: One Alternate Universe version of Minmax is an Omnicidal Maniac Psion whose arms are replaced
by skeletal Hard Light constructs. He prefers to use his Mind over Matter powers, so their utility is unclear.
- There's a short comic on Johnny Wander called "Girl with the Skeleton Hand" about... a woman with one skeletal hand. She used to have a regular hand, but a little accident on a blind date with the physical incarnation of death stripped away the flesh and tendons from her right hand. She doesn't appear to mind, and in the sequel she discovers that her skeleton hand allows her to interact with ghosts the way her psychopomp date (and now partner) does.
Web Video
- Belkinus Necrohunt:
- Kara's left arm is nothing but bone, as the price for a Blood Siphon spell that didn't go as planned.
- Chandrelle has a similar skeletal right arm, though they usually use Illusion magic to cover it up.
Western Animation
- Aladdin: The Series: The evil Necromancer Mozenrath has a skeletal, albeit functional, right arm underneath the Artifact of Doom gauntlet that grants him his powers. It's implied that the gauntlet is draining his Life Energy and will eventually kill him.
- He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021): Prince Keldor's left arm from the forearm down was eroded down to the bone when he was cursed with the power of Havoc. After fully embracing Havoc and becoming Skeletor, he keeps the bony left hand and also gets a Skull for a Head.
- The Simpsons: In the first segment of "Treehouse of Horror XIV", Homer's right arm turns skeletal (and gains the Touch of Death) when he becomes the new Grim Reaper.
