History Main / CrammingTheCoffin

* The German crime show ''Series/{{Ein Fall fur zwei}}'' had an episode where the criminal hides a body by killing a dog and burying it above the corpse (so when the scene is dug up, the cops only find the dog and think it's a waste of time). Only when the investigators have a EurekaMoment and think to dig deeper does he confess.

** The 'body buried in the grave beneath a coffin' is used in "Beyond the Grave".

->''We're here this evening to bury John '''and nobody else'''''
-->--''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}''

* ''Film/MrBrooks'': Mr. Brooks explains this as a method of DisposingOfABody to Mr. Smith, then, being a DeathSeeker at this point, takes Mr. Smith to a cemetery with an open grave due to be used the next day and asks Mr. Smith to shoot him and cover his body with dirt. [[Spoiler:Mr. Brooks had changed his mind and gave Mr. Smith a disabled pistol, then kills Smith with a ShovelStrike and buries him at the bottom of the grave instead.]]

* An episode of ''Series/{{Castle}}'' ("Anatomy of a Murder") has the {{Body of the Week}} disposed of this way, and just like the trope description above, the ruse is discovered at the funeral when the pallbearers drop the coffin open.

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': In the second episode, Lestat de Lioncourt stuffs one of the two dead priests that he has killed into a sarcophagus at St. Augustine Church's cemetery.

* In ''Film/CrimeDoctorsManHunt'', the hoods Natalie hired to dispose of Armstrong's body dumped it in a crematorium retort where it would be cremated the next time the retort was used. The plan failed when the retort was closed for maintenance.* ''Film/DarkNightOfTheScarecrow'': After Otis and Skeeter dig up Bubba's grave and discover [[spoiler:his body in his coffin]], Otis murders Skeeter and buries the body in Bubba's grave alongside the coffin.

* ''Film/DarkNightOfTheScarecrow'': After Otis and Skeeter dig up Bubba's grave and discover [[spoiler:his body in his coffin]], Otis murders Skeeter and buries the body in Bubba's grave alongside the coffin.

* ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'': In "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax", the villains are too squeamish to commit murder outright, so they chloroform Lady Frances and hide her in the coffin containing the body of her old nurse, which is due to buried the next day. Which is still murder, only a slow and painful one by asphyxiation.

* The ''Literature/LordDarcy'' case "The Muddle of the Woad", a murder victim is hidden in a coffin and is discovered when the carpenter tries to deliver a coffin to the widow of the man who it had been intended for and finds it much heavier than it was supposed to be.

* The ''Literature/LordDarcy'' case "The Muddle of the Woad", a murder victim is hidden in a coffin and is discovered when the carpenter tries to deliver the coffin to the widow of the man who it had been intended for and finds it much heavier than it was supposed to be.
* Happens in the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery ''Literature/TheNineTailors''. A man, dead under mysterious circumstances, is buried in the family plot of a local lady who has just died because nobody will notice disturbance in the freshly turned earth; unfortunately her husband dies a few months later, and the grave is reopened, revealing the body.

* Happens in the ''Literature/LordPeterWinsey'' mystery "The Nine Tailors". A man, dead under mysterious circumstances, is buried in the family plot of a local lady who has just died because nobody will notice disturbance in the freshly turned earth; unfortunately her husband dies a few months later, and the grave is reopened, revealing the body.

[[quoteright:350:[[Series/SilentWitness https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/silent_witness.jpg]]]]

A SubTrope of DisposingOfABody, this trope involves hiding a body in a coffin that is already scheduled to be buried or cremated. This can be done with the connivance of a crooked funeral director or, for the more desperate or less organised, by breaking into a funeral home the night before a funeral.

* This is presumed to happen to Abigail Craven and Tully Alford at the end of the 1991 film version of ''Film/TheAddamsFamily''. PortalBook-summoned hurricane-force winds blow them out of the Addams mansion, and they land in freshly-dug graves, with Wednesday and Pugsley there ready to fill the graves with dirt. If they survived the fall, they could also be BuriedAlive.

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E14GoodbyeIowa Goodbye Iowa]]", Initiative soldiers search Spike's crypt, reading to kill any undead person on sight. Realising from the still-warm television that someone has been there recently, they lift the lid off a stone sarcophagus, only to find a skeleton covered by a burial shroud. After they leave, Spike appears from beneath the corpse. Buffy herself has pulled the same trick when hiding from vampires. Similarly, Giles once hid in an occupied drawer in a morgue.

* ''Series/MyLifeIsMurder'': In "Remains to be Seen", a husband and wife had arranged to be buried in the same grave. when the wife dies several months after the husband, the grave is reopened to allow her interment, but the gravediggers discover the BodyOfTheWeek atop the husband's coffin.