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13[[quoteright:350:[[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goodman_body.png]]]]
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16!!!'''For the ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' film, go [[Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMansChest here]].'''
17
18What do you do if you have a dead body on your hands and somebody snooping around whom you don't want to see it? Why, stuff it into a convenient empty chest or trunk until that busybody goes away, of course. This is only a temporary solution and you will still have to move the body later, but [[TemptingFate what could possibly go wrong?]]
19
20This trope comes in two versions: dramatic and comedic:
21* In the dramatic version, the person hiding the body (usually the killer but not always) will suddenly realise that a body part or piece of clothing is protruding from the chest just as someone (detective, loved one of the deceased, etc.) is poking around and have to desperately conceal the fact. Then, there is still the matter of moving the body later.
22* In the comedic version, expect the box with the body to go missing, get mixed up with an identical-looking box, or have all kinds of people wanting to open the chest for all kinds of innocent reasons. HilarityEnsues.
23
24Named for the real, original Dead Man's Chest, which was the name of one of the Virgin Islands.
25
26Note that the chest in the song "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest" was probably the equivalent of his footlocker. If the hiding place is someplace a lot odder than a footlocker, that's BodyInABreadbox. For other ways to conceal a body inside something, see CarpetRolledCorpse and CrammingTheCoffin. Can also overlap with PunkInTheTrunk if the trunk of a car is used.
27
28'''A Administrivia/{{No Recent Examples|please}} rule applies to RealLife examples of this trope.''' Real life examples shouldn't be added until '''150 years''' after the death.
29
30!!As this is a {{Death Trope|s}}, [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff unmarked spoilers abound]]. [[Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned Beware]].
31----
32!!Examples:
33[[foldercontrol]]
34
35[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
36* This is ultimately what happens to Mokuzu Umino in ''[[Manga/SatouKashiNoDanganWaUchinukenai A Lollipop or a Bullet]]''. She tells Nagisa that [[TheRunaway they should run away together]], but she goes to her house to get some stuff. After 1 hour of not returning, Nagisa goes to the Umino household and sees [[AbusiveParents her dad]], Masachika, [[TearsOfRemorse come out crying]], with a luggage bag. Nagisa enters the house and finds a bloody machete, the same one Mokuzu's dad had used to dismember their dog a few days prior; then Masachika returns alone and kicks her out. Nagisa and her brother Tomohiko later go to the same place the dog was... and [[OffingTheOffspring they find the dismembered remains of poor Mokuzu]].
37* ''Manga/SakuraNoIchiban'': In chapter one, the killers stuff wooden crates full of the corpses of the dead women they've killed. Misao discovers this when the box Asami was standing on broke and her feet got tangled with one of the dead women's long hair. In her attempt to free her feet, Asami manages to flip the corpse on top of her.
38[[/folder]]
39
40[[folder:Comic Books]]
41* In ''ComicBook/TheMazeAgency Annual'' #1, a dead body turns up in one of Gabe's moving boxes when he is moving into Jennifer's apartment. Naturally this leads Gabe and Jen into investigating where the body came from.
42* ''ComicBook/SinCity'' plays with this trope in "That Yellow Bastard", Shlubb and Klump have a conversation about what to do with the dead body they are sent to collect. Klump steals a CoolCar due to the RuleOfCool, only for Shlubb to quickly point out that [[CoolButImpractical there is no trunk]].
43[[/folder]]
44
45[[folder:Comic Strips]]
46* In ''ComicStrip/DickTracy'', murderous musician 88 Keyes kills his singer/accomplice and hides her body in his grand piano; planning to have the piano put into storage. As it is, Tracy caught the movers as they were just about to haul the piano away, searches it, and finds the body.
47[[/folder]]
48
49[[folder:Film — Animated]]
50* ''WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}'': Quasimodo hides the wounded and unconscious Phoebus under the table when Frollo comes to visit unexpectedly.
51[[/folder]]
52
53[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]
54* Creator/AlfredHitchcock loves to use this trope in his movies:
55** In the film ''Film/{{Rope}}'' two killers strangle a victim, hide the body in a chest, and then serve a cold supper to the victim's friends and family off the lid of the chest. This might well have helped inspire the infamous dinner scene in ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow''.
56** ''Film/TheTroubleWithHarry'' involves various persons finding Harry (a corpse), and hiding him, only for others to find him and hide him, until they all get together and decide on the ideal place for the police to find him.
57** In ''Film/{{Frenzy|1972}}'', the killer hides a body in a sack that he dumps in the back of a lorry full of sacks of potatoes. He then realises that his tie pin is still clutched in the dead woman's hand and has to retrieve it from the back of the moving lorry. And the movie ends with the tie-strangling rapist dragging an empty trunk up the steps to dispose of his latest victim, where he meets the police inspector, who dryly observes: "Mr. Rusk, you're not wearing your tie".
58** In ''Film/RearWindow'', Jeff ''thinks'' Thorwald stashed his wife's body in a chest... but he actually cut her up and disposed of her remains all over the city, and the chest actually contained her clothes.
59* In Creator/{{Fernandel}}'s movie ''L'armoire volante'', the protagonist's aunt gets frozen to death during a moving journey, so the workers put her body in a wardrobe closet among the moved furniture. This closet, however, gets lost and HilarityEnsues as the protagonist chases and searches the closet all over the country.
60* The cheesy ExploitationFilm ''Film/{{Axe}}'' shows a young woman kill an attempted rapist with a straight razor and stuff his body into a trunk.
61* In ''Film/{{Bernie}}'', Bernie hides Marjorie's body in her meat freezer.
62* In ''Film/BreakheartPass'', Peabody's corpse is hidden by placing it in a coffin in the baggage car.
63* Not exactly a chest per se, but Bond in ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'' stuffs the bodies of [[spoiler:Obanno and his henchman]] in a nearby utility closet after their fight. Mathis later [[spoiler:uses the bodies as a PunkInTheTrunk]] to frame another bad guy.
64* A character's body is stuffed in a freezer in ''Film/{{Cornered}}''.
65* ''Film/DeadlyAdvice'': After killing her mother, Jodie stuffs her body inside a chest and waits for her sister to get home.
66* ''Film/DeadtimeStoriesVolume2'': In "Dust", after George kills Dr. Flesch, he and Audrey hide the body in their chest deep freezer.
67* ''Film/DeathAtAFuneral''. The funeral is the father of the protagonists, and when a man shows up threatening to expose their sexual relationship to the wife if they don't pay him off, the resulting scuffle kills him. Their solution? [[CrammingTheCoffin Hide him in Dad's coffin]]. Which of course leads to the inevitable scene later where it turns out he's NotQuiteDead when he emerges from the coffin in the middle of the proceedings.
68* In ''Film/TheGentlemen'', Raymond is keeping Aslan's body in his freezer. Just under the steaks.
69* In ''Film/GingerSnaps'', the protagonist sisters hide the body of a girl who, while wasn't murdered, slipped in their kitchen and died of severe blunt trauma to the head. They stuff it in the fridge.
70* In ''Film/GoreOrphanage'', Buddy is stashed in the same windowseat that he hid his comics.
71* The ''Film/{{Hitman}}'' movie does this as a ShoutOut to the original games. He not only puts the bodies in a shipping crate but nails it shut as well.
72* In ''Film/HolmesAndWatson'', Holmes and Watson spend a minute or so attempting to stuff Queen Victoria's body into a trunk that is too small for it.
73* ''Film/{{Horrific}}'': In ''Terror Vision'', Dr. Jordan and Morty stuff the body of the dead prostitute into a crate and hide it in the attic. It only takes about ten minutes for another character to discover it.
74* ''Film/HorrorExpress'': The alien kills the baggage man and places his corpse in the crate he had escaped from.
75* In ''Film/InvisibleAvenger'', the Shadow finds Tony's body stuffed into an upright piano in a back room of Tara's club.
76* In ''Film/ISawWhatYouDid'', Steve stuffs his wife's body into a trunk that he hauls out to his car and drives into the woods to bury.
77* In ''Film/{{Jo}}'', the body that has to be hidden keeps straightening its arm at the worst moments so it can't be hidden in a chest and the main character (Creator/LouisDeFunes) has to find other solutions.
78* The first scene of ''Film/KeepingMum'' depicts sweet, polite Rosie Jones setting out on a journey by train - while her large case in the luggage compartment ''seeps blood''. (It turns out, though, that her case doesn't contain a body, just ''pieces'' of one!)
79* In ''Film/KillerWorkout'', the body of Rachael, the first victim, is stuffed into a locker in the female change room, where it later falls out as a PeekABooCorpse: terrifying Jaimy.
80* In ''Film/TheKillingKind'', Thelma and Terry stuff Lori's body into a trash can to sneak it out of the house. Because rigor mortis has set in, Terry is forced to break her arm so she will fit. When they arrive at the dump, her hand is just sticking out of the top of the can, and the gatekeeper only fails to notice because he looks away at the wrong moment.
81* In ''Film/MurderSheSaid'', Miss Marple finds the body of the woman murdered on the train concealed inside a sarcophagus in Luther Ackenthorpe's collection of Egyptian artifacts.
82* In ''Film/PeepingTom'', Mark murders Vivian on the film set and leaves her body in a trunk on the set. The next day the director decides to re-shoot the scene with new action that involves one of the actors opening the trunk. Mark picks up his camera and films the reactions of the cast and crew as the body is discovered.
83%%* Naturally in ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanDeadMansChest''.
84* ''Film/{{Shock}}'': After murdering his wife, Dr. Cross packs her body into a trunk and has it shipped to his lodge, so he can dispose of it later and MakeItLookLikeAnAccident.
85* ''Slumber Party Massacre'' trilogy:
86** One body in [[Film/TheSlumberPartyMassacre the original film]] is discovered inside a fridge when a younger character tries to snatch a beer from it.
87** One character is proved to be a RedHerring in [[Film/SlumberPartyMassacreIII the third film]] when his body is found hidden inside a chest in the basement.
88* When the young apprentice drops into Film/SweeneyTodd's studio, Todd is startled to see that the hand of Pirelli is sticking out from the chest he stuffed his body in.
89* ''Film/TortureGarden'': In "Enoch", Colin stuffs the bodies of the tramp and the nurse into a steamer trunk and is loading it into the boot of his car when the local bobby arrives to ask him some questions about the missing tramp. The helpful policeman offers to help Colin load the trunk and, as he is doing so, notices blood leaking from the corner of the trunk.
90* ''Film/WeekendAtBernies'': Inverted, as the protagonists must actually keep the body on display, pretending that Bernie is still alive.
91* The plot of ''Film/TheWrongBox'' revolves around two men concealing [[spoiler: what they think is]] their uncle's corpse in the hope of collecting an inheritance, packing him up in a barrel, and shipping him home...but it's wrongly delivered to their cousin who, when finding it, fears has been killed by his grandfather to collect said inheritance. He hides the body in a piano which is then collected by repossessors and into the attention of the police.
92* In ''Film/YoungFrankenstein'', Frankenstein and Igor are trying to hide a body in a wagon, but the arm is still sticking out when someone comes along. Frankenstein places himself in such a way as to pretend the arm is his, and HilarityEnsues.
93[[/folder]]
94
95[[folder:Literature]]
96* In ''Literature/AuntDimity's Good Deed'', Gerald Willis produces a box containing the remains of Sybella Markham Willis and explains the story of how the Willis family came to be on both sides of the Atlantic. Willis Sr. promises to arrange for the remains to be buried with her husband in the Willis' family plot in Boston.
97* In ''Literature/BloodsuckingFiends'', a chest freezer serves this purpose, not once, but twice. Our protagonist is stuck with the problem of explaining that not only did he not kill either of the people in the freezer, one of them isn't even dead.
98* In the Tabitha King/Michael [=McDowell=] PosthumousCollaboration ''Candles Burning'', part of the humor/horror is that a human body ''won't'' fit into a footlocker without some...rearranging.
99** [=McDowell=] also uses this trope at the end of his RoaringRampageOfRevenge novel ''Gilded Needles.'' One of the final victims is delivered to their home in an elaborate tea chest.
100* In ''Literature/TheDayOfTheJackal'', the Jackal leaves the body of a photographer who tried to blackmail him in a chest. In this case, though, putting the corpse there was less because of being in a hurry and more to ensure that it wasn't likely to ever be found. He even rationalises away the possibility of RevealingCoverup by noting that the photographer had done work for the underworld before and thus there would be quite the gaggle of possible suspects to run through. In fact, his isn't one of the deaths that gives the Jackal away.
101* Creator/CornellWoolrich's "The Dilemma of the Dead Lady" is a fine example. A jewel thief murders his unwitting accomplice, but because she's kind of wearing the stolen jewels, he needs to take her along on his ocean voyage--and things get worse from there.
102* Creator/EdgarAllanPoe examples:
103** In "Literature/TheTellTaleHeart", the body is dismembered and hidden under the floorboards. There's no ''actual'' clue that would give the location away to the police, who are about to leave on peaceful terms when the narrator begins to hallucinate that he can hear the corpse's heart beating....
104** In "Literature/TheBlackCat", a murderer is given away by his own pride and a karmic pet he buried with his wife.
105* In the Creator/ElleryQueen short story "The Three Rs" (in the ''Calendar of Crime'' collection), it is made to appear that the victim's body has been placed in his trunk, covered in quicklime, and shipped off to his summer cabin.
106* The Creator/RobertBloch short story "Frozen Fear" has a man kill his wife, dismember her, and store the parts in a freezer (he plans to dispose of them the following winter by burning them. [[OrganAutonomy Supernatural]] karmic revenge ensues. Notably adapted as a segment of the 1972 British horror anthology ''Asylum''.
107* The Literature/HerculePoirot short story "The Adventure of the Clapham Cook" by Creator/AgathaChristie, a killer gets rid of a body by stuffing it in a trunk and having the trunk set to a railway station marked 'to be collected'. He later sends to trunk on to Glasgow in an attempt to lose it. This story was later adapted for the small screen as part of the ''Series/{{Poirot}}'' television series.
108* In the Literature/MegLangslowMysteries ''Owls Well That Ends Well'' the body of Gordon-You-Thief is found locked inside a trunk at a giant yard sale.
109* In "The Muddle of the Woad" (one of Randall Garrett's Literature/LordDarcy stories), the men who are delivering the Duke's coffin discover that there's already a body hidden in it. And before that, the corpse had been hidden inside a "preservator" -- a large chest enchanted to keep foodstuffs preserved.
110* Played with in ''Literature/{{Thud}}''. Sam Vimes gets threatened by two trolls from the troll equivalent of the Mafia. When Vimes meets with the boss later, he apologizes to Vimes for his underlings' disrespectful conduct and offers to install a new rock garden in Vimes' home... all the while sitting next to a very suspicious box that Vimes notes is too small to contain a ''whole'' troll...
111[[/folder]]
112
113[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
114* The ''Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents'' episode "Bad Actor" has a guy who kills someone and uses the bathtub and some strong acid to get rid of the body, after dismembering it. Needless to say, when he finally gets down to the head, company comes calling, and he has to hide the head in an ice bucket.
115* ''Series/TheBoys2019''. After killing Translucent, the Boys shovel up [[LudicrousGibs what remains of him]], including his indestructible skin, put it in a zinc case that Homelander's X-Ray vision can't see through, and dump it into the bay. They know the Supes will find it eventually so this is just meant to buy time; when the Supes do recover the case, they find the words [[BringIt COMING FOR YOU]] spray-painted on the inside of the lid.
116* In the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode, "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E4IncaMummyGirl Inca Mummy Girl]]", the mummy hid the body of the real Ampata in one of his trunks.
117* ''Series/{{Castle|2009}}'':
118** In "A Chill Goes Through Her Veins", a body is hidden inside a freezer to allow it to be smuggled out of an apartment building. The freezer is later placed in a storage unit and turned on, and that is where the body remains for years.
119** In "In Plane Sight", the body of the murdered air marshal is stuffed into a suitcase in the cargo bay of the plane.
120* This happens several times on ''Series/TheCloser'':
121** In one episode, a morbidly obese man is stuffed in the trunk of his own car for several days. The decomposition and the sheer size of his body makes it impossible to get him out of there in one piece.
122** In another episode, a cooler containing a body is left in a storage facility for five years. The owner of the facility has no idea what's in it but nevertheless thinks there's something not quite right about someone abandoning a cooler sealed with duct tape, and tries unsuccessfully to get the LAPD to take a look at it. Finally, he has enough and ''mails'' the box to the Major Crimes Division.
123* ''Series/ColonelMarchOfScotlandYard'': In "The Case of the Misguided Missal", the body of the VictimOfTheWeek is found stuffed inside a chest in [[LockedRoomMystery a locked room with solid stone walls]] in the university.
124* ''Series/{{CSI}}'':
125** One episode featured a spurned lover who stuffs his ex-boyfriend's body in a trunk, which is kept in private storage. Problem is, the body won't fit, so he cuts off the head and leaves it in a car which is then stolen.
126** Another episode involves a bouncer stuffing an annoying homeless man inside a duffel bag, and dumping him (to his death) down a hill. The Nevada desert heat, as well as several months of decomposition, give the cadaver the consistency of chunky soup. Never mind the stench, the bag ''sloshes'' when moved.
127** In "Long Road Home", a body is stuffed into a gear box containing a set of drums and dumped in an alley.
128** In "Immortality", Grissom is sent a limbless body inside a suitcase.
129* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'':
130** In "Hammer Down," the 2nd part of the "CSI Trilogy," the team discover a woman's body stuffed in a barrel that fell off a semi during a traffic accident.
131** In another episode, a dead woman was stuffed into her own suitcase before being thrown into a lake.
132* ''Series/DeathInParadise'': In "Switcharoo", the police find the body of a missing witness hidden in the chest freezer of his house.
133%%* Done in a disturbingly cold-blooded fashion on ''Series/DesperateHousewives''.
134* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E6TheVampiresOfVenice "The Vampires of Venice"]], desiccated bodies of several victims are kept in trunks in the basement.
135* ''Series/{{Elementary}}'': In "Terra Pericolosa", the body of a murdered security guard is hidden in the base of a display case at the archives where he worked.
136* ''Series/FatherBrown'': In "The Kembleford Dragon", the body of Kembleford's stationmaster is found stuffed inside a steamer trunk.
137* ''Series/FawltyTowers'': "[[Recap/FawltyTowersS2E4TheKipperAndTheCorpse The Kipper and the Corpse]]" features Basil stuffing the dead body of a guest into things, and some [[ButtMonkey hapless guest]] into the things the corpse has also been shoved into.
138* ''Series/{{Gotham}}'': In "The Anvil or the Hammer", Nygma wheels the dismembered body of Officer Dougherty through the police station in a pair of oversized suitcases.
139* ''Series/JonathanCreek'': In "The Three Gamblers", Maddie is searching the farmhouse when she opens an old wardrobe and finds a body in its underwear with a bullet hole in its forehead, and realises that this is the policeman who is supposed to be guarding the place, and the policeman with her is actually the killer.
140* ''Series/LawAndOrder'' has had at least two episodes in which corpses turn up in chest freezers.
141* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' has also had at least one case of Dead Baby In a Cooler.
142* ''Series/MajorCrimes'':
143** In "Citizen's Arrest", the body of a young man is found in a barrel labeled "Hazardous Waste" at a recycling center. The killers know that the owner ships the barrels labeled hazardous up north to a landfill without opening them, where they are to be buried for a thousand years. Had their plan been successful, the body would never have been found, but unfortunately for them, while the barrel is still at the recycling center it's accidentally tipped over and the lid comes off, thus exposing the body.
144** In "Chain Reaction", a body is stuffed inside a cello case (fortunately off-screen).
145* In ''Series/TheMentalist'' episode "Redline", the killer stuffs the body into the trunk of a sports car when security shows up unexpectedly. The killer is unable to retrieve the body and the car ends up on the showroom floor.
146* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'':
147** A dismembered body is placed in a wicker hamper and left in a railway station in "[[Recap/MidsomerMurdersS14E3 Echoes of the Dead]]".
148** In "With Baited Breath", the body of the third VictimOfTheWeek is found stuffed into a chest freezer.
149* In the first season of ''Series/{{Misfits}}'' a rather hilarious version of this happens. The Misfit's probation worker goes crazy thanks to the storm and kills one of them, and to avoid blame (they're all juvenile delinquents) they bury the bodies under a bridge, transporting it using Kelly's boyfriend's car. Then they find out the bridge is being demolished to make way for a wildlife centre, so they dig up the bodies, hoping to rebury them under the concrete of the new centre. However, Kelly's boyfriend won't lend his car out anymore, so they steal their new probation worker's car to move the bodies. Then before they can move to bodies out of the car, their probation worker appears and drives home. The next morning she comes into work, smells something in the back of the car, and Nathan has to distract her by throwing a brick at her car to avoid her noticing the two corpses in her car boot.
150* ''Series/{{Monk}}'':
151** In "Mr. Monk Takes a Vacation," Benjy sees a woman being murdered, but there's no evidence of any crime when Monk searches the room in question with the hotel's head of security. Monk quickly pieces together who was responsible, but realizes that no case can be made against them without the body. That is, until Monk figures out from a picture he, Sharona, and Benjy posed for on their arrival, that the body is being hidden in a trunk that's part of a public advertising display, with some quicklime being used to mask the odor of the decaying flesh.
152* ''Series/MurdochMysteries'': In "Monsieur Murdoch", the VictimOfTheWeek is found stuffed inside a steamer trunk at Union Station.
153* ''Series/{{NCIS}}''
154** One episode involved-- eww-- bodies in barrels. They sloshed, at best, and they'd been out in the sun for quite a while.
155** Another body was disposed of in a sealed barrel, leading to the corpse turning into [[{{Squick}} soapy goo]].
156* ''Series/NewTricks'': In "The Little Brother", a trail of clues leads Brian to a woman's body inside a box in a storage unit.
157* ''Series/{{Psychoville}}'' did this in an episode which parodies Hitchcock's ''Film/{{Rope}}''. Minutes after serial killers David and Maureen have dispatched their latest victim, a man claiming to be a police inspector shows up at the door. He's really an actor auditioning for a role in one of the "murder mystery" acts the victim ran. HilarityEnsues as they hide the corpse in various places around the room while trying to keep the inspector off their tail (and David having to pretend to be the victim so as not to give away that the man is dead)
158* ''Series/ResidentAlien'': HughMann alien Harry Vangerspeigle hides the body of the real Dr. Vanderspeigle in a padlocked freezer chest in his cabin, covering it with frozen vegetables and meat.
159* ''Series/{{Ringer}}'': Bridget stuffs her self-defense victim into a red chest.
160* ''Series/{{Shetland}}'': At the end of the first episode of season 7, a body in a suitcase is fished out of the sea, but it turns out not to be Connor Cairns, the missing teenager the police have been searching for. Who this body is and how it ties in to Connor's disappearance is a major subplot of the season.
161* In the SoapOpera ''Series/SunsetBeach'', Tim gets stuffed into a chest temporarily after being murdered, before finally being [[CementShoes buried in cement]].
162* ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt'': In "[[Recap/TalesFromTheCryptS2E8ForCryinOutLoad For Cryin' Out Loud]]", after killing Miss Kielbasa, Marty shoves her body into a bass drum case.
163[[/folder]]
164
165[[folder:Music]]
166* In the video for Golden Earring's "Twilight Zone", the spy protagonist hangs up the phone, then leaves his hotel room, pausing to shove the hand that's protruding lifelessly from a footlocker down into it and out of sight.
167[[/folder]]
168
169[[folder:Theatre]]
170* The play (later a Frank Capra film) ''Theatre/ArsenicAndOldLace'' centers on a series of dead bodies being hidden in unlikely places like basements and window seats. Needless to say, HilarityEnsues.
171* The one-act comedy ''Busy Bodies'' by Pat Wood. A scheming couple hire a hitman to kill off their wealthy aunt, but when he's accidentally killed just before she arrives they have to keep hiding the body from her. She ends up going insane due to constantly running into his PeekABooCorpse.
172* ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'' and [[Film/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet its movie adaptation]]: Sweeney Todd does this with the body of Pirelli, his very first victim. It's both the dramatic ''and'' comedic variety -- Pirelli's still-twitching hand is sticking out of the chest, but Todd is able to buy time by promising Pirelli's mentally-challenged ward, Toby, a bottle of gin.
173[[/folder]]
174
175[[folder:Video Games]]
176* (At least) two murders in two separate ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' games involve corpses being stuffed into handy containers, once a car trunk and again with a safe. Upon seeing the rope outline of the bodies in both murders, Phoenix's assistant somehow comes to the conclusion that the victims died when the doors slammed shut on them.
177** In ''Investigations'', our 'chest' is a ridiculously garish suitcase. The sequel has a chest ''made of chocolate'', intended as a sculpture for a dessert cooking show.
178* In ''VideoGame/FullThrottle'', the main character is disposed of in the dumpster behind the bar he was ambushed in. Subverted in that he wasn't killed.
179* From ''VideoGame/HitmanBloodMoney'' onwards, you are able to stuff bodies into a handy container, which will ensure that it isn't discovered 'til well after you've vacated the premises. After all, leaving bodies just lying around is asking for trouble, and unless somebody actually sees you do it, it'll never come back to bite you. From ''VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution'' onward, you are able to take disguises from hidden bodies, as well as put two bodies in at a time.
180* ''VideoGame/{{Killer 7}}'' has the dead body of Harman Smith hidden in a safe in a Seattle elementary school, where Emir Parkreiner stuffed it after killing him.
181* In ''VideoGame/TheLastExpress'' one of the ways to stop anyone from finding the body is to stash it in your bed, this is only a temporary solution though. You can also just chuck it out the window, but then the police will find it and search the train at the next stop.
182* Happens to Archibald Carrington in the second ''VideoGame/LauraBow'' game. He's locked in a trunk with a bunch of flesh-eating beetles, whilst his [[DeadPersonImpersonation doppelganger]] gets impaled on a stuffed porcupine.
183* At the beginning of ''VideoGame/PoliceQuest4OpenSeason'', you find the corpse of a 6-year old boy in a dumpster. Near the end of the game, there's a refrigerator with a severed head in it.
184* Though the ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}'' games don't encourage murder, living and dead bodies could be dragged to concealment. Unless you're going for [[SelfImposedChallenge total ghosting gameplay]], the efficient way to deal with guard patrols is to knock on the backs of their heads and move them out of view of the others. In maps with meandering patrol routes, this meant running back to move a body more than once, especially if you're not familiar with those routes yet.
185* In ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}} 7'' there's a chest with someone's remnants and personal possessions. Players may also learn the cause of death... ones too careless to learn ''Identify'' spell may learn this by demonstration.
186[[/folder]]
187
188[[folder:Webcomics]]
189* ''Webcomic/{{Fishbones}}'': Young Ferris stumbles upon one of these, which tips him off that his father's business partners are in the mafia.
190[[/folder]]
191
192[[folder:Western Animation]]
193* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', "City of Thieves": Inverted; Finn finds a small treasure chest stuck inside a skeleton's chest cavity.
194* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'', "The Nasty Patty": Spongebob and Mr. Krabs think they've killed the health inspector (actually he just been knocked out) and have to keep him hidden from two cops.
195[[/folder]]
196
197%%[[folder:Real Life]]
198%%[[/folder]]
199

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