Basic Trope: An outline is made in the ground around a corpse.
- Straight: In a crime scene, there are many body-shaped outlines of chalk on the pavement.
- Exaggerated:
- The apocalypse has occurred. Most have died. And those people all have a chalk outline.
- A boy stomps on an ant, and it gets an outline.
- Downplayed:
- The location of important body parts such as the head is indicated with a dot of chalk.
- The chalk outlines were made pre-photography in a different location while detectives pondered the implications of the relative positioning.
- The outline is not on the scene itself, but edited onto a photo of the scene.
- Justified: The outline will help the authorities to get an accurate picture of the crime scene as they saw it.
- Inverted: Someone dies on a chalk outline.
- Subverted: Even though there are police tape and chalk outlines, it turns out to be just an artist's newest piece.
- Double Subverted: The artist was using the work to cover up a murder.
- Parodied: A chalk outline is made around a person hanging from a noose. Somehow.
- Chalk outlines are made for all sorts of other random crimes including a series of chalk footprints for jaywalking.
- Zig Zagged: A crime scene with chalk outlines is revealed to be an art show. An art show that was covering up a murder. Of crows. That turn out to have killed a bunch of people.
- Averted: A person is killed, but is left there with no outline.
- Enforced: Showing a dead body is not allowed, so a chalk outline is substituted and it is just implied that the corpse was ugly.
- Lampshaded: "Why are you doing that? No one outlines a body in chalk anymore!"
- Invoked: Golems have chalk embedded into their frame so that if destroyed they will leave a chalk outline of their rough shape after they disintegrate.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: The cops take pictures of the crime scene and leave a numbered marker to indicate where the body was.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: All that chalk contaminates the crime scene, making the investigators' job that much harder.
Back to Chalk Outline
