History Main / TheLivingDead

* Narrowly averted in Hitchcock's ''Film/Psycho'', in which Janet Leigh could be seen swallowing while her character was meant to be dead. Hitchcock's wife Alma caught the error during screening and Hitchcock corrected it prior to the film's release, replacing the shot with a still image so that there was no possibility of his "dead" actress moving.

* In the premiere episode (not the ''Literature/CasinoRoyale'' one, as often reported) of ''Climax!'', an anthology of dramatic adaptations performed live, the corpse actually got up and walked away, unaware that the cameras were rolling. See [[http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/deadman.asp this]] ''Website/{{Snopes}}'' link.

** '''Jack:''' The casting assistant was gorgeous, and as convincing as my performance was for "Male Corpse on Slab", there was one part of me that refused to play dead.\\

* Dutch {{Longrunner}} PoliceProcedural ''Series/{{Baantjer}}'' had actors hired to play dead bodies and actual Dutch celebs would feature as stiff of the week.

** This trope luckily saved the life of long-running Third and Fourth Doctor companion Benton. Due to the fact that the production team didn't know at the time that "The Android Invasion" would be his last appearance, his [[OffscreenInertia last scene]] ended up being his assault by the androids - for the rest of the story we only see his robot duplicate and [[WhateverHappenedToTheMouse Benton's fate is unknown]]. Fortunately, John Levene's eyeballs can be seen moving about under his lids, meaning at least we know he wasn't killed. The production subtitles on the DVD even point this out.

Modern special effects have introduced another option, of course; for that reason, this trope rarely appears in more recent movies (big-budget ones, anyway), which tend to have larger budgets and therefore can afford the special effects and editing to ensure that dead actors appear properly dead.

!!Examples

!!!In fiction

!!!In real life

* In Anime/MyHeroAcademia All Might plays a dead villain in one of the students' training exercises. Tsuyu tickles his nose with her hair and he stifles a laugh, confirming to her and her classmates that he was alive but supposed to be pretending to be dead. However, [[spoiler: in the end it turns out that All Might was actually pretending to be a dead person pretending to be alive. He runs away while the students aren't looking and their teacher, Aizawa, docks points for not noticing that the "victim" was actually alive, even pointing out that All Might gave them a hint when he laughed after Tsuyu tickled his nose. In other words, they mistook his corpsing for bad acting when it was actually meant to be a hint!]]

* In the premiere episode (not the ''Literature/CasinoRoyale'' one, as often reported) of ''Climax!'', an anthology of dramatic adaptations performed live, the corpse actually got up and walked away, unaware that the cameras were rolling. See [[http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/deadman.asp this]] ''{{WebSite/Snopes}}'' link.

* Creator/UweBoll's [[Film/AloneInTheDark2005 adaptation]] of ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark'' had a character get killed, and as the heroes were leaving her body the actress starts getting up a split second too early.

* Uwe Boll's [[Film/AloneInTheDark2005 adaptation]] of ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark'' had a character get killed, and as the heroes were leaving her body the actress starts getting up a split second too early.