History Recap / CreepshowS1E10NightOfThePaw

* ZombieApocalypse: Angela's poor wording of her third wish turns all the bodies in the morgue into zombies, including her husband, who devours her. It's even hypothesized that she could actually be the cause of the zombie apocalypse in the [[Recap/CreepshowS1E12TimesIsToughInMuskyHoller next episode]].

** Marjorie is buried in the Homewood Cemetery, which has the same name as the town in ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode [[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E5WalkingDistance "Walking Distance"]].

* WhisperingGhosts: Marjorie's voice whispers her husbands name and pleads with him to help her, after his wish brings her back to life.

* ItWasADarkAndStormyNight: The majority of the episode takes place in the late hours, during a strong thunderstorm that floods the nearby interstate, keeping Angela from leaving the Whitlock home.

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* WhisperingGhost: Marjorie's voice whispers her husbands name and pleads with him to help her, after his wish brings her back to life.

* DarkAndStormyNight: The majority of the episode takes place in the late hours, during a strong thunderstorm that floods the nearby interstate, keeping Angela from leaving the Whitlock home.

Next morning, the storm has cleared and Angela sets out to leave, but not before questioning Whitey on why he saved her. It is then that Whitey reveals his intentions: his grief over his situation with Marjorie and the paw has rendered him suicidal. Being a Christian, Whitey can't go through with it, as suicide would be too great a sin. As such, he used his final wish to have the paw send a murderer to relieve him of his misery. It is also revealed that Angela is the exact murderer he was wishing for, as she was on the run after performing a mercy killing on her terminally ill husband.

* AdaptationExpansion: This particular adaption of ''Literature/TheMonkeysPaw'' gives the titular paw some origins: an Indian fakir cast a spell on it, granting it the ability to give whoever possessed it three wishes that would backfire horrifically on them. He did this as a warning to those that attempted to fight fate that they would be doing so at their own peril. Whitey and Marjorie themselves acquired the paw when it was smuggled out of Mumbai by a now-deceased client.
* AffectionateNickname: Avery goes by "Whitey" by pretty much everyone in the story.
* AndIMustScream: Marjorie, after being brought back to life, is stuck in her buried coffin and unable to breathe for weeks before Whitey finally remembers that she's been buried. When the stitches holding her jaw closed are cut, one of the first things she does is sink her teeth into Whitey's leg in a blind rage.

* CameBackWrong: Anyone brought back to life by the paw is made undead.
* ContrivedCoincidence: Fate systematically engineers events to transpire so that Angela is forced into Whitey's house, and conjures a storm that floods the interstate, preventing her from leaving. Angela treats all of this as coincidence, not believing what Whitey tells her one bit.
* DangerousClifftopRoad: The opening car chase takes place on one of these, where Angela's car crashes after it sails off said cliff in a storm.
* DeathByFallingOver: Marjorie ends up dead after she falls off a stepladder while decorating a Christmas tree.

* DivineIntervention: Whitey came to the conclusion that him receiving the paw and being able to bring his wife back to life was an act of God, since he claims that [[UsefulNotes/JesusChrist His son]] was able to rise from the dead and conjure miracles, much like the paw itself does.

** Whitey's wish for his wife to come back to life was destined to fail from the start. While she ''did'' come back to life, he failed to remember that her corpse was still ''buried underground in a coffin''; by the time he remembered and dug her back up, she was now a zombie.

* {{Fingore}}: Angela has two fingers on her left hand mangled beyond repair in her car accident. Whitey takes the opportunity to amputate them to save the hand itself.

* HatesBeingAlone: When Marjorie passed away, Whitey was tormented with by the absence of his beloved wife, and ultimately used the paw to wish her back to life.
* ICannotSelfTerminate: Whitey has been DrivenToSuicide after unknowingly subjecting his wife to a state of undeath via the paw. He can't kill himself because he practices Christianity, which deems suicide an irredeemable sin, so he wishes for Angela to end up in his house so she'll kill him.
* IdiotHero: Angela, a bumbling fugitive and FlatEarthAtheist who ends up making one stupid decision after another, to the point where she engineers her own death via her actions and poor wording.

* JackassGenie: The paw's wishes grant horrific affects on its current owner. The fakir who enchanted it to grant wishes in the first place did this as a way to warn people not screw around with fate.
* LingerieScene: Angela gets an extended one in Whitey's basement. Since there was really no need for her to be completely stripped, it comes off simply as an opportunity to employee gratuitous {{Fanservice}}.
* TheLostLenore: Marjorie.
* ManOnFire: Whitey is briefly set ablaze when he grabs the paw out of the fireplace. The flames disappear the instant Angela shoots him.

** Angela later accidentally wastes two of her own wishes for similarly trivial things, like finding the keys to Whitey's hearse and actually getting it to start.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Thanks to her combined stubbornness and stupidity, Angela manages to become a wanted fugitive, kill a kindly (albeit suicidal) old man, and reanimate every body in the hospital morgue into ravenous undead, just before she is devoured by her zombified husband.

* RefusalOfTheCall: After hearing the truth about why Whitey summoned her to his house and then receiving the paw from him, Angela refuses to kill him and instead throws the thing into the fireplace. In trying to retrieve it, Whitey begins burning to death, forcing Angela to shoot him and accomplish what she wanted to avoid.

** Avery's nickname "Whitey" is a possible reference to Mr. and Mrs. White from the [[Literature/TheMonkeysPaw original short story.]]

* TooDumbToLive: Angela is, to be blunt, one of the '''stupidest''' characters in the series. She's proven herself to fit this trope for a number of reasons:
** After discovering that Whitey's story was true and that she really is carrying a genuine, wish-granting monkey's paw, she accidentally wastes her first wish looking for the keys to Whitey's hearse, and then wastes her second wish to actually get the thing to start.
** To prove that she hasn't learned a ''thing'' from Whitey's story, when she gets to the morgue and finds her husband's body, she merely says "get up" to the corpse, which prompts him, as well as all the other bodies in the morgue, to reanimate and kill her.

** In short, everything that happens to Angela in the story is her own fault.
* UngratefulBitch: Angela never once thanks Whitey for saving her life, instead yelling at him for cutting off her fingers and threatening to kill him if he tries anything.

* YouCantFightFate: The entire reason why the monkey's paw was enchanted by the fakir. Whitey tells the ever skeptical Angela that one simply can't challenge destiny, but she refuses to listen.
* ZombieApocalypse: Angela's poor wording of her third wish turns all the bodies in the morgue into zombies, including her husband, who devours her. It's even debated that she is actually the cause of the zombie apocalypse in the [[Recap/CreepshowS1E12TimesIsToughInMuskyHoller next episode]].

** Marjorie is buried in the Homewood Cemetery, which has the same name as the town in the Twilight Zone episode [[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E5WalkingDistance "Walking Distance"]].

* ExactWords: The first thing Angela says when she uses the paw to bring her husband back to life? "Get up." That's exactly what he, and every other corpse in the morgue, does... just before he eats her alive.

* JackassGenie: The paw's wishes grant horrific affects on its current owner. The fakir who enchanted it to grant wishes in the first place did this as a warning to people not screw around with fate.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: The episode points out the glaring flaws that come with the use of a monkey's paw. Notably, Whitey did end up bringing Marjorie back to life with said paw, but she was still in her coffin, which had since been buried.

* MundaneUtility: Marjorie used the first of her three wishes to remember a lost recipe, and the second on something that Whitey doesn't even remember.

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Marjorie does essentially become a zombie, but her biting Whitey's leg doesn't gradually zombify him. It may be because she was brought back to life by magic and not by a plague or infection that could gradually spread.

* TheTeaser: Before the story's title is presented, there is a brief comic book style cold open that depicts Angela on the run from the police, and having her car sail off the edge of a cliff.
* TooDumbToLive: Angela is, to put it bluntly, one of the '''stupidest''' characters in the series. She's proven herself to fit this trope for a number of reasons:

** Marjorie is buried in the Homewood Cemetery, which has the same name as the town in the

Next morning, the storm has cleared and Angela sets out to leave, but not before questioning Whitey on why he saved her. It is then that Whitey reveals his intentions: his grief over what his situation with Marjorie and the paw has rendered him suicidal. Being a Christian, Whitey can't go through with it, as suicide would be too great a sin. As such, he used his final wish to have the paw send a murderer to relieve him of his misery. It is also revealed that Angela is the exact murderer he was wishing for, as she was on the run after performing a mercy killing on her terminally ill husband.

Whitey explains that Marjorie couldn't resist the power of the paw, using her first two wishes for mundane uses, but then used last wish for enough money to save their struggling funeral business. Unfortunately, the money came from an insurance payout after Marjorie fell off a stepladder and died. Overwhelmed with grief and loneliness, Whitey used the paw to wish Marjorie back to life. After weeks of hearing Marjorie's voice and seeing her in disturbing visions, Whitey realized that the revived Marjorie was trapped in her already-buried coffin.