History Recap / TalesFromTheCryptS4E3OnADeadmansChest

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Scarlett gives a huge one to Danny as she throws him out, telling him that Nick can't think of him as the high school rebel he used to worship anymore, and further stating that Nick is taking on the brunt of the band's workload since Danny's usually showing up at sound checks and rehearsals drunk or high, or just not showing up at all.

->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(dressed as Music/ElvisPresley and wielding a guitar, using a severed ear for its pick; singing)'' ''Don't be cool.'' ''(speaking to the viewers)'' Greetings, ''poison'' girls. Are you ready to rock and roll? Good. Then slip into your ''gore'' jacket and prepare to sing along. Can't carry a ''tomb''? That's okay. I'm just playing by ''ear'' myself. ''(snickers)'' Tonight's terror tune concerns a young headbanger who lets a woman get a little ''too'' far under his skin. I call this ''decomposition'': '''On a Deadman's Chest.'''

Exorcist is currently one of the hottest rock groups hitting the music circuit. Despite the band's success, tensions between the bandmembers are highly tense. To Danny Darwin, the wild, hard-partying, and utterly restraint-free lead singer of the band, the problem is Scarlett. Scarlett recently married Nick Bosch, the band's lead guitarist and songwriter, during their latest tour, and she has been driving a wedge between Danny and Nick, telling Danny that he's bringing Nick down to his level, whereas she thinks her new husband is better off applying his talents to either another band or a solo career. Danny is backed up in his beliefs by Vendetta, his groupie, who similarly dislikes Scarlett for not being down with her and the other groupies. She decides to calm Danny by introducing him Farouche, who has a reputation for creating tattoos of something that gets under a customer's skin. To this end, Danny is given a huge tattoo of Scarlett right on his chest. After one crack too many, Danny flies into a rage and brutally murders Scarlett, which causes his tattoo to being itching furiously and change into a bloody version of Scarlett. He tries to get the tattoo removed, but it just won't go away, almost as if it has a mind of its own.

!!Tropes:
* AnimatedTattoo: Danny's tattoo changes when he kills Scarlett, showcasing her as dead and bloodied. The end of the episode even has the dragon depicted on it burst out of Danny's chest and attack him. Vendetta got a tattoo from Farouche before the episode began, hers being a snake who flicks out an actual tongue.
* BigBad: Vendetta, since she clearly orders Danny around and gives him the idea to get the tattoo and kill Scarlett.
* BitchInSheepsClothing: Vendetta seems to be the reason why Danny hates Scarlett so much. She's the one who gives Danny the idea to get a tattoo, then gives him the idea to get rid of Scarlett. The end of the episode has her turn on him, saying he acted on his own volition.
* BothSidesHaveAPoint: Danny and Scarlett hate each other with a passion, but both of their arguments carry valid points. Danny claims that Exorcist is the biggest rock group in the country at the moment, and with Nick being taken away from the band, their popularity would surely plummet. Scarlett, meanwhile, argues that Nick is being brought down to Danny's level as long as he's staying his friend, and decides that his talents for the guitar and for songwriting would be better off being used for a solo career, or at least another band.
* TheCameo: A good amount of musicians have cameo appearances. Music/HeavyD plays Farouche, [[Music/TheAllmanBrothersBand Gregg Allman]] plays Toland, the owner of the club where Exorcist performs, [[Music/QuietRiot Rudy]] [[Music/{{Whitesnake}} Sarzo]] plays Exorcist's bassist, and [[Music/SexPistols Steve Jones]] plays Hulk, the band's roadie.
* ChestBurster: The dragon on Danny's tattoo manages to tear itself out of his chest and attack him.
* ColdHam: Vendetta hardly changes her stoic and blunt tone of voice when she talks Danny into killing Scarlett, possibly to show how carelessly evil she is.
* CreepyChangingPainting: In Danny's mind, the tattoo of Scarlett on his chest returns after he gets it removed, showing Scarlett viciously smiling at him. After he kills Scarlett, it changes again, showing her as dead and bloody.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Scarlett is strangled and beaten bloody against everything in her bathroom by Danny.
* DisproportionateRetribution: Farouche got his eye taken out by a salad fork after one of his customers wasn't happy with the tattoo he gave him.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Danny makes his burning hatred for Scarlett blatantly clear by insultingly introducing her to the audience and telling the hot girls therein that Nick is officially off the market, publicly hoping that she doesn't start pussy-whipping him.
* EvilWearsBlack: Vendetta is always seen wearing black, hinting that she's the true villain of the story.
* EyeScream: Farouche wears an eye patch to cover his missing eye, which was stabbed with a salad fork by techno musician Baby Doc.
* FlayingAlive: Danny manages to finally get rid of the tattoo by using a glass shard from his dressing room mirror to slice off the skin it's painted on.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Vendetta's tattoo of a snake flicking a realistic tongue straight out of her skin hints at what Danny's tattoo does near the end of the episode.
** Danny also glimpses a ceramic dragon in Farouche's parlor, which later gets painted onto his chest.
** His murder of Scarlett is also glimpsed as he gets the tattoo.
* ForTheEvulz: Vendetta persuades Danny to murder Scarlett, partially before she takes Nick away from them and breaks up the band, and partially for a "what the hell?" moment of flippancy.
* GilliganCut: As Vendetta unzips Danny's pants to give him oral sex, the episode cuts to him freshly having his tattoo removed.
* {{Groupie}}: Danny's groupie, Vendetta, sets the plot of the episode in motion by introducing him to Farouche.
* HateSink: Scarlett is almost never portrayed in anything but a negative light as far as Danny is concerned, given that she shits on him, rebukes his friendship with her new husband, and seems to verify his claims that she's breaking up the band, Despite this, her own claims about Danny have their own merits.
* TheHedonist: Danny and Vendetta are absolute hedonists, craving nonstop sex, drugs, booze, and hard rock music on a daily basis. The latter is also revealed to be playing Danny like a fiddle, giving him the idea to go to Farouche's place, and then giving him the idea to kill Scarlett ForTheEvulz. Nick used to be one too, but Scarlett was helping to straighten him out.
* {{Homage}}: Danny's tattoo reappearing and changing its appearance after he kills Scarlett, as well as tormenting him with agonizing itching and pain, clearly borrows a thing or two from ''Literature/TheTellTaleHeart''.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Despite Danny loathing Scarlett for marrying Nick and taking away everything that made him such a fun guy, Danny is shown to be firmly wrapped around the little finger of Vendetta, his own groupie.
* IResembleThatRemark: Vendetta and the rest of Exorcist's slutty groupies also share Danny's hatred of Scarlett because she treats them like a bunch of sluts. Which, of course, they are.
* KarmaHoudini: Vendetta gets away with sending Danny to Farouche's parlor and convincing him to kill Scarlett. The worst she gets from all this is a pair of smacks across the face.
* LaughingMad: Danny ends the episode being driven insane by his whole ordeal, giggling to his friends about what he did to Scarlett while holding the skin of his chest for them to see.
* MaleFrontalNudity: During his and Vendetta's sex scene, a very slight portion of Danny's dick can be seen at the top of the screen. It's the series' only moment of male frontal nudity that managed to make it past the censors.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Did Danny's tattoo really come to life and try to kill him? Or was it all in his head after he killed Scarlett, and permanently lost his mind? The episode's ending hints that it's the latter.
* MeaningfulName: Danny's groupie is named Vendetta, and she persuades him to embark on his crusade against the loathsome Scarlett.
* MusicalEpisode: While it doesn't follow the trope's typical format, this episode is ''loaded'' with musical references. The Crypt Keeper dresses up as famous musicians in both of his framing segments, the episode itself focuses a major rock band undergoing a stressful situation, and famous musicians appear in various cameos.
* NightmareFetishist: Vendetta gets noticeably turned on by Danny admitting that he followed her advice and killed Scarlett.
* NoEnding: The episode ends right when Nick finds a LaughingMad Danny holding the flayed skin from his chest, the tattoo itself appearing as though it never changed, and admitting that he killed Scarlett twice. How this impacts the band and their friendships with Danny is left up to the viewer, though its likely that Danny may have died from blood loss and the rest of the group split up.
* NoIndoorVoice: Danny screams over half of his dialogue, cementing him as certifiably nuts after years of rock and roll stardom.
* NothingIsScarier: How do Farouche's tattoos come to life? No answer for what he does to them that allows them to rip themselves out of peoples' skin is ever revealed.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Scarlett gives a huge one to Danny as she throws him out, telling him that Nick can't always think that he's the high school rebel he worships anymore, and that he's taking on the brunt of the band's workload since Danny's usually absent from sound checks and rehearsals or showing up drunk.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Nick throws down his guitar and walks offstage when Danny insults his new wife in the opening scene.
* SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll: Danny is the quintessential burnout rock star, with no cares whatsoever, a continuous hunger for drugs, booze, and groupie sex, and a flaming temper combined with an onset of psychopathic tendencies.

* ScaryMusicianHarmlessMusic: Exorcist's music is largely hard rock and heavy metal, and they play it safe when they're onstage. Danny, on the other hand, is portrayed as borderline insane when he's not performing, the years of rock stardom, his toxic relationship with Vendetta, and Nick's own relationship to "that bitch" Scarlett having clearly taken their toll on the guy.
* SirSwearsALot: Danny drops several f-bombs during his opening scene alone, and drops more and more throughout the episode.
* ShoutOut: The band who orchestrates the plot of the episode is named [[Film/TheExorcist "Exorcist".]] Given that the episode is actually directed by the person who directed the film, it's highly likely that this was an intentional in-joke.
* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: The end of the episode hints that Danny's ordeal with the dragon, or possibly even everything regarding his haunted tattoo, was him going through a severe case of SanitySlippage.
* VisualPun: Danny's tattoo of Scarlett truly allows her to get "under his skin". The dragon bursting out of his chest near the end turns it into a LiteralMetaphor.
* WeUsedToBeFriends: Before Nick married Scarlett, he, Danny, Vendetta, and the rest of the band would go out and party all night, every night. When Scarlett entered the picture, Danny and Vendetta think she took away everything that made Nick such a fun guy, and think that she's plotting to break up the band.
* WitchDoctor: Farouche his heavily hinted to be a new-age witch doctor, given the amount of voodoo supplies he has in his tattoo parlor.
* WorldOfJerkass: Every character in the episode has a tendency to be a jackass, given that the majority of them are the feuding members of a burned out rock group and the toxic women they love.
* YokoOhNo: Scarlett can be seen as a pretty blatant ersatz of Ono (even resembling her in appearance), given that she married Nick and has Danny and Vendetta believing that she's trying to break up the band. His beliefs have some merit when its revealed that he's basically been crashing at Nick's place and she wants him thrown out.

->'''Crypt Keeper:''' ''(dressed as Music/JohnLennon, with skeletons dressed as the rest of Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand behind him)'' Well, Nick might have been the group's guitarist, but Danny turned out to be the real ''axe'' man. ''(snickers)'' Still, you've got to like where the band is going. Any day now they'll be appearing on America's ''chop'' forty! ''(cackles)'' So till next time kiddies, me and my ''gore''-age band have got to jam. You know what they say: "You're never too ''cold'' to rock 'n roll!" ''(wails on his guitar)''

* OutDamnedSpot: Danny goes to a laser surgeon to have his haunted tattoo removed. It reappears a short while after he undergoes the treatment.

* NoEnding: The episode ends right when Nick finds a LaughingMad Danny with holding the flayed skin from his chest, the tattoo itself appearing as though it never changed, and admitting that he killed Scarlett twice. How this impacts the band and their friendships with Danny is left up to the viewer, though its likely that Danny may have died from blood loss and the rest of the group split up.

Exorcist is currently one of the hottest rock groups hitting the music circuit. Despite the band's success, tensions between the bandmembers are highly tense. To Danny Darwin, the wild, hard-partying, and utterly restraint-free lead singer of the band, the problem is Scarlett. Scarlett recently married Nick Bosch, the band's lead guitarist and songwriter, during their latest tour, and she has been driving a wedge between Danny and Nick, telling Danny that he's bringing Nick down to his level, whereas she thinks her new husband is better off applying his talents to either another band or a solo career. Danny is backed up in his beliefs by Vendetta, his groupie, who similarly dislikes Scarlett for not being down her and the other groupies. She decides to calm Danny by introducing him Farouche, who has a reputation for creating tattoos of something that gets under a customer's skin. To this end, Danny is given a huge tattoo of Scarlett right on his chest. After one crack too many, Danny flies into a rage and brutally murders Scarlett, which causes his tattoo to being itching furiously and change into a bloody version of Scarlett. He tries to get the tattoo removed, but it just won't go away, almost as if it has a mind of its own.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Scarlett gives a huge one to Danny as she throws him out, telling him that Nick can't always think that he's the high school rebel he worships anymore, and that he's taking on the brunt of the band's work since Danny's usually absent from work or showing up drunk.

* NightmareFetishist: Vendetta gets noticeably turned on by Danny admitting that she followed his advice and killed Scarlett.

* NoEnding: The episode ends right when Nick and the rest of the band finds a LaughingMad Danny with holding the flayed skin from his chest, the tattoo itself appearing as though it never changed, and admitting that he killed Scarlett twice. How this impacts the band and their friendships with Danny is left up to the viewer, though its likely that Danny may have died from blood loss and the rest of the group split up.

* GilliganCut: As Vendetta unzips Danny's pants to give him oral, the episode cuts to him freshly having his tattoo removed.