History Main / SkeletonCrew

* ''Art/ShippingLeviathanArkOfApocalypse'' is a boat is manned by a a densely populated crew crowding every nook and cranny, varying from [[DemBones actual skeletons]] to AmbiguouslyHuman crew-mates in uniforms from different eras. Given the decrepit nature of the ship, this tropes was the idea.

[[quoteright:300:[[ComicBook/TheUnexpected https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Unexpected155_9622.jpg]]]]

[[quoteright:300:[[ComicBook/TheUnexpected https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Unexpected155_9622.jpg]]]]

If you're looking for a 1990s video game, [[VideoGame/SkeletonKrew click here]] instead.

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/MenInBlack'' the group discover that an alien posing as an intergalactic police officer is a murderer, when they discover hundreds of alien skeletons in his ship. Make even creepier by L's comment:

* Played with in the first episode of ''Series/RedDwarf'', in which Dave finds that [[EverybodysDeadDave everybody in the crew is dead]] and turned to small piles of white powder...which are mostly still at their duty stations.

* The crew of the H.L. Hunley fit this trope she sank for the third and last time. Warren Lasch (chairman of the Friends of the Hunley organization) commented,"We half-expected them to be piled up under the hatches trying to get out, but there they were, still at their stations." One possible explanation for this is that when Hunley's torpedo went off, the blast (only twenty feet away) transferred through the water and Hunley's relatively flexible hull into the cabin, killing everyone instantly from the pressure.

* One of ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''' [[BonusBoss Guardian]] encounters is the [[GhostShip Automated Dreadnought]], a ''[[MileLongShip titan]]''-class vessel that has been on a computer-directed patrol of a single system for [[AbsurdlyDedicatedWorker millions of years.]] If you manage to disable it in combat, your boarding parties find the mummified remains of its crew, still at their stations.

* Basic ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' module X2 ''Castle Amber''. One room had skeletons standing around: they were frozen in place by the magical effect that killed them.

When the heroes approach them from behind the life like poses, durable uniforms, and the back of the captain's chair can create the short-lived illusion that the crew is actually still alive before the ghastly truth is revealed. Recoiling in horror from that revelation, a clumsy hero might end up knocking over another crewman, who collapses from a life-like pose to a pile on the ground. InSpace with everyone wearing spacesuits, the illusion can be especially vivid with only the skull inside the helmet giving it away.

* Played for laughs in ''WesternAnimation/{{Madagascar}}''. When Alex asks the lemurs where the people are, they point to the skeleton of a parachutist hanging from a tree. Later we see the lemurs gathering in the wreck of a plane, with some skeletons still in their seats.

When the heroes approach them from behind the life like poses, durable uniforms, and the back of the captain's chair can create the short-lived illusion that the crew is actually still alive before the ghastly truth is revealed. Recoiling in horror from that revelation, a clumsy hero might end up knocking over another crewman, who collapses from a life-like pose to a pile on the ground. InSpace with everyone wearing spacesuits the illusion can be especially vivid with only the skull inside the helmet giving it away.