History Main / WakingUpAtTheMorgue

!Examples:

* In the first ''Film/{{Blade}}'' film, a vampire whom Blade set on fire wakes up in the middle of his own autopsy and takes a bite out of the medical examiner. Why did Blade only set him on fire, instead of staking him? Because the M.E. becoming a vampire is important to the story.
** It was justified by that vampire and the BigBad being exceptionally hard to kill. Apparently, Blade had staked him before and it didn't take. Hence the fire, and the M.E. developing the magic ammo.
*** And then Blade kills said vampire as an afterthought in the final fight, using a wire built into his belt as a decapitating garrote. Why he didn't resort to that instead of burning is a mystery for the ages.

* BetsyTheVampireQueen in the ''Undead'' series by Mary Janice-Davidson discovers she's a vampire on waking up in a funeral home after a truck hits her. But having died isn't important to her; what's important is the ''hideous pink shoes'' she's in.

* [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]] in [[Recap/DoctorWhoTVMTheTVMovie the Doctor Who TV Movie]], thanks to the doctors not knowing about his alien nature, even though he tried warning them, he dies when the doctor are performing exploratory surgery. He later awakens in the morgue, having no clue to who he is, thanks to the anesthetic delayed his regeneration process.

* ''BehindTheMask : The Rise of Leslie Vernon.'' [[spoiler: During the end credits, Leslie Vernon is shown being wheeled around in a morgue. While the lab technician's back is turned, Vernon sits up on the table.]]

* ''InnocentBlood'', a recently-vampirized mob boss wakes up at the morgue. He is quite disgruntled to find a thermometer sticking out of his stomach and a man standing over him with a bonesaw.
* A man wakes up at his own funeral - or actually his ''wake'' in ''TheShippingNews''. The main character, Quoyle, has trouble explaining this to his young daughter, who doesn't quite understand the difference between death and sleep.
* In ''DeathBecomesHer'' Madeline fainted after finding out that she died. She ended up waking up in the morgue in a body bag.
* Parodied in ''{{Fletch}} Lives''. Fletch fakes being dead to sneak into a morgue. He hides in a locker to avoid getting caught and ends up scaring a janitor.
* Sean William Scott's character does this in a post-credits in the movie ''CopOut'' with no explanation as to how he survived

** Though, this could be because he's [[spoiler:or perhaps it would be a better description]] a ShapeShifter who even has the ability to spontaneously create the clothing of the person whose identity he takes.

* In the first ''Film/{{Blade}}'' film, a vampire whom Blade set on fire wakes up in the middle of his own autopsy and takes a bite out of the medical examiner. Why did Blade only set him on fire, instead of staking him? [[PlotInducedStupidity Because the M.E. becoming a vampire is important to the story.]]

* While it's not immediately after his assumed death, in ''GhostTrick'' [[spoiler: Yomiel uses Sissel's body to infiltrate the police morgue and possess his own seemingly-dead body. Yomiel then gets off the table and walks out the door. The medical examiner promptly quit his job in order to devote his life to finding out what the fuck just happened.]]

* In ''Film/{{Nightbreed}}'', Eric Boone is shot to death by the police after his PsychoPsychologist frames him for his crimes. He awakens at the morgue as a new member of the supernatural Nightbreed and escapes to go live with them.

* ''{{Nightbreed}}: The Interactive Movie'' highlights one of the problems with trying this mid-game. The player has to ''allow themself to be killed'' in order to awaken his hidden powers, which obviously isn't preferred. It doesn't help that this only works after a specific, completely un-hidden-power-related event has taken place (which involves another apparent fail condition, by the way). Then again, interactive movies are not known for their logic, self-consistency or quality...

* Conner [=MacLeod=] does this as part of the backstory in ''Film/{{Highlander}}''. He is an immortal who can only die permanently if his head is chopped off. As a result, other methods of death just end with him standing up again as soon as his body has healed enough to stop being dead.
** Also used in ''HighlanderIITheQuickening'' by Conner and [[spoiler:Ramirez]] to sneak into the shield facility. When they wake up, they snarkily compare how many bullets they took getting 'killed.'

* In the ''{{Castle}}'' episode "Undead Again", a man who happens to be the main suspect in a murder is found dead. Since it's a zombie-themed episode, Castle expects him to rise like a zombie. Pearlmutter assures him that he won't, then jabs him in the forearm. Cue rising like a zombie. [[spoiler:Of course, he wasn't a zombie, but had been dosed with a drug that put him in a fugue-like state and no memory of what happened during that time (in this instance, told to kill the victim of the week by a rival, the man who dosed him.)]]

* After witnessing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt and having a CreepyChild drop a demonic parasite that devours his eye and burrows into his head, the [[ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne Demi-Fiend]]'s day starts as he wakes up at Shinjuku Hygienic Hospital's morgue. And everything promptly gets worse.

* In the ''{{Castle}}'' ep "Undead Again", a man who happens to be the main suspect in a murder is found dead. Since it's a zombie-themed episode, Castle expects him to rise like a zombie. Pearlmutter assures him that he won't, then jabs him in the forearm. Cue rising like a zombie. [[spoiler:Of course, he wasn't a zombie, but had been dosed with a drug that put him in a fugue-like state and no memory of what happened during that time (in this instance, told to kill the victim of the week by a rival, the man who dosed him.)]]

Believe it or not, this is an example of TruthInTelevision. Rare today (though there is the occasional, erm, incident...), but more common in ages past when medical science wasn't all it is now. The only thing worse than waking up in the morgue, of course, was to be actually BuriedAlive, which could also happen from time to time. And better not think what would happen if you're slated for dissection...

* The protagonist in a ''DarkConspiracy'' novel wakes up just as they're preparing to harvest his body for organs. He manages to alert them to the fact that he's alive, only to have the doctor order the orderlies to strap him down as he prepares to continue anyway.

* In the live-action ''Street Fighter'' movie, an example that involves FakingTheDead as Guile wakes up in a morgue (scaring Chun-Li in the process) after apparently getting shot by Ryu and Ken during their prison break. Of course, it was all part of the plan [[spoiler:to get Ryu and Ken on Bison and Sagat's good side so that they could take them down later]].

* Betsy the Vampire Queen in the ''Undead'' series by Mary Janice-Davidson discovers she's a vampire on waking up in a funeral home after a truck hits her. But having died isn't important to her; what's important is the ''hideous pink shoes'' she's in.

* Played with in MichaelCrichton's ''The Great Train Robbery''. The crew exploits a Victorian-era fear of this by having a member fake being dead, but give a false positive on the bell attached to his finger in his casket so that the police would be reluctant to search the coffin with the grieving widow right there.

* In ''CurseOfMonkeyIsland3'', Guybrush has to fake his death with a paralysing drink in order to get into a crypt by way of burial. He then has to do it ''again'' to get into another crypt.

* It's not technically a morgue, but in Kingdoms of Amalur, you wake up in a rotting pile of corpses which is where the resident MadScientist has been storing his failed reincarnation experiments.

* Doc from TheWhiteBoard wakes up in the morgue in the back of the paintball shop covered in a sheet and with a toe tag. Neither why he was placed in the morgue nor why his paintball shop has a morgue are explained.

* Happens in the pilot of ''NewAmsterdam''. Initially it appears to be a throwaway gag and a way to explain John's [[BlessedWithSuck "gift"]]. It actually ends up having serious repercussions across the season, as in this day and age you can't just stroll out of the morgue without explaining yourself.

!!Examples:

[[folder: Anime/Manga ]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* In ''{{Preacher}}'' Cassidy shoves a knife through his own throat in order to leave a serial killer's house in a bodybag during daylight hours. Once the sun's gone down he pops out of his bag, bums a cigarette from the morgue attendant and goes on his way.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* Waking up in the morgue does (rarely) happen in real life. A woman named Allison Burchell, who had a severe form of a rare condition called cataplexy, was mistaken for dead on three separate occasions. It was more common in the past, before advances in medical technology made it possible to detect very faint signs of life. This probably led to several people being BuriedAlive.
* A really creepy version of this happened with turn-of-the-century magician Walford Bodie. He was prone to severe seizures, and carried a note explaining the care that he should be given if he was found apparently dead. He revived several times after these seizures, but at one point he had a seizure, and the doctor treating him either didn't read the note, or didn't find it, and he was autopsied even though he probably wasn't actually dead.
* [[http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/buried.asp Snopes]] has a good list of these, some of which are hilarious, others horrifying.
* [[http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN149975820070917 Venezuelan dude]] was being examined in the morgue when the doctors noticed he was bleeding, and decided to stitch the wound without thinking there was anything odd (even if bleeding is a luxury of living beings). Then he sits on the table, screaming.
* A russian woman, Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, suffered a fatal heart attack after waking up during her own funeral, and finding herself surrounded by mourners.

[[folder: Roleplaying Games ]]

* The basis for Bound characters in ''TabletopGame/GeistTheSinEaters''.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* The Puma Sisters wake up in the morgue in ShirowMasamune's ''DominionConflict 1: No More Noise''. But they're not very surprised--after all, they went to sleep there, thinking it was awfully nice of Newport City Police to provide such nice beds for them.

* Happens in the 2007 movie ''RiseBloodHunter'': The reporter Sadie Blake after being attacked and left for dead by a vampire wakes up in a cold box and has to kick it open to get out. [[spoiler: after hunting down and killing her attacker, she ends up dead again and the last shot is of her body being shelved into a cold box in the morgue. The ''very'' last shot is of her kicking open the box. ]]
* In the first ''{{Blade}}'' film, a vampire whom Blade set on fire wakes up in the middle of his own autopsy and takes a bite out of the medical examiner. Why did Blade only set him on fire, instead of staking him? [[PlotInducedStupidity Because the M.E. becoming a vampire is important to the story.]]

* In one issue of ''AstroCity: Local Heroes'', mention is made of the time Supersonic simply revived at the morgue despite being to all medical appearances 100% dead. A lawyer uses this as precedent to suggest that the woman his client "killed" could have been still alive before her autopsy was performed.

* After witnessing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt and having a CreepyChild drop a demonic parasite that devours his eye and burrows into his head, the [[ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne Hito-Shura]]'s day starts. And everything promptly gets worse.

* In "Doctor Who:The Movie",the Seventh Doctor lands with the TARDIS in the middle of a shootout in San Francisco.As soon as he comes out,he is shot.The bullets are removed,but his double heartbeat is mistaken for fibrilation,and when doctors attempt to fix it,they destroy his circulatory sistem,killing him on the operating table.Because of the anasthetic,he regenerates later,during the night,as a morgue attendant watches Frankenstein,causing the man to faint(the Eighth Doctor knocked down the steel door with his bare hands,clad in only a shroud and with memory loss,mirroring the scene in the movie,the Eighth Doctor raising up as Doctor Frankenstein says "It's alive,it's alive,IT'S ALIVE!")