Discussion Main / OfCorpseHesAlive

This is currently in the Real Life folder:

• Operation Mincemeat was a variant where the British simply lead the Germans to believe that the body they found had been alive a good bit longer than he actually had been. Taking from a morgue the body of a man who had died with no next of kin, they created an entire cover identity for him as a military officer before dropping him in the sea with some plane wreckage, off the coast of Spain, along with fake Top Secret documents, in order to throw the Germans off guard before the Allied invasion of Sicily.

All true, and very interesting. But Operation Mincemeat did not involve any attempt to pretend that the dead man was still alive. So it's not really an example of this trope, is it?

The same goes for these items:

• The infamous Cadaver Synod, which took place in 897. A year after his death, Pope Formosus was put on trial by his successor, Stephen VI, for breaking a minor bylaw of the church. The trial consisted of digging up his body, dressing him in his papal clothes, accusing him of the crime, convicting him of the crime, stripping him of his papal clothes, and throwing him in a river.
  • They also cut off the fingers used for blessing, a permanent way of stripping someone of their priesthood.
  • Persons who were posthumously found guilty of heresy by the Spanish Inquisition were likewise dug up, dressed in robes, and burned at the stake.
  • That didn't work out well for Stephen VI, incidentally. It turns out that while blaming your predecessor is standard political policy, desecrating his corpse is considered to be a bit much. Stephen VI ended up deposed, imprisoned and killed for it.
• Philosopher Jeremy Bentham attended the 150th meeting of the College Council at University College in London...despite having been dead since 1832. When he died, he wrote in his will that he wanted his body dissected in a public autopsy, mummified, and put on display in the University. It is there that he still remains, occasionally coming out to College Council events when necessary.
• Comedian Lewis Black proposed that the United States re-elect Ronald Reagan as president. His thinking is that when America's enemies see them swearing in a corpse as president they would declare them too crazy to mess with.
  • He further suggested that Reagan once again be sworn in by also-deceased Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
  • The Onion supports reanimating Ronald Reagan's corpse to be the new face of the Republican party, because no one represents Republican ideals as much as a 100 year old dead man.

Unless we're redefining the trope to mean "any kind of shenanigans involving a dead person", these are NOT valid examples.