History Main / ChalkOutline

!!'''As a DeathTrope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

* Played straight, save for the dirty great big safe on top of the head of the outline, in ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit.''

--> '''Jerry''': How does that even help? "Oh his arm was like this [raises arm over head] when he hit the floor. So the killer must have been Jeff!"

* ''Series/TheXFiles''. Played for dark laughs when a victim has their head shoved into liquid nitrogen and is then [[LiterallyShatteredLives thrown to the ground]]. The chalk outline of the body is perfectly normal until it gets to the head... which is a bunch of little X-marks.

* ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'': One episode revolved around the title duo walking into a recently vacated crime scene that had one of these. Butthead had been pressing Beavis's BerserkButton during the whole episode and after a fight, ends up lying exactly inside the outline as Beavis stands over him with the murder weapon.

--> '''Coroner''': From the stench it's obvious he's been dead for several hours. The victim appears to be about 70 years old-
--> '''Jay''': *gets up* I've been declared dead by better coroners than you!
--> '''Coroner''': GAH!!! *drops dead from shock right into the same outline*
* ''WesternAnimation/DCSuperheroGirls2019'':
** In the episode "[=#GothamCon=]", the montage of Barbara and Harley frolicking in Gotham City includes a part where they're lying in chalk outlines. Once they get up and leave, the chalk outlines then start dancing.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/DCSuperheroGirls2019'' episode "[=#GothamCon=]", the montage of Barbara and Harley frolicking in Gotham City includes a part where they're lying in chalk outlines. Once they get up and leave, the chalk outlines then start dancing.

* The music video for Music/{{Beck}}'s "Girl" features two chalk doodles folding in to become the outline of a body in a crime scene.

* An old ''Dragon'' article about realistic falling damage referenced the outlines of wizard and familiar, chalked on the cobblestones by the Greyhawk police, to illustrate how smaller creatures will strike the ground with less force, since less speed,[[note]]smaller creatures have a lower terminal velocity because they have a higher surface area/weight ratio, while the density is presumably the same; this is why a mouse can survive being dropped off the Empire State Building according to legend[[/note]] means less kinetic energy.
* ''Escape Tales: Low Memory'' has a first chapter ending showing a chalk outline of Elizabeth being killed by a burglar. A second chapter ending also has a chalk outline surrounding the second body, the same person in the first chapter but this time a suicide.