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6At the beginning of many shows — most commonly in PoliceProcedural or MonsterOfTheWeek shows — a nameless generic character or two, often a DisposableVagrant or {{jogger|sFindDeath}}, will wander around some deserted location, frequently either on a date or up to hijinks, and then one of three things will happen:
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8a) They will come across a horribly mutilated corpse.
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10b) One or more of them will be brutally killed.
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12c) They will narrowly avoid being killed.
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14This typically only lasts about a minute, or even a matter of seconds, before we cut to the show's characters, who have come in to investigate the death, deaths or deadly threat. The character/s from TheTeaser have almost no involvement from this point on; they might be asked one or two questions, but they're just as likely to get nothing but a brief mention ("A couple of kids found her three hours ago", etc) and that'll be it for them.
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16Obviously this doesn't apply to characters who die in some mysterious semi-obscure way in the opening seconds of a show, then go on to be the subject of inquiry, flashbacks and a thorough autopsy.
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18Compare DecoyProtagonist, where the initial character is teased as the protagonist. See also StartToCorpse and MonsterMunch.
19----
20!!Examples:
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22[[foldercontrol]]
23
24[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
25* ''Manga/OokuTheInnerChambers'': The entire plot opens with a little boy wandering in the forest and getting mauled by a bear. Then his family was infected by the Red Pox disease, the aftermath of which resulted in the storyline's setting.
26[[/folder]]
27
28[[folder:Comic Books]]
29* In the beginning of ''ComicBook/TheBraveAndTheBold: ComicBook/TheLordsOfLuck'', several dozen identical corpses are found by different parties all across the globe, which prompts Franchise/{{Batman}} and Franchise/GreenLantern to investigate.
30* [[ComicBook/Supergirl2005 2010]] story arc ''ComicBook/DeathAndTheFamily'' opens with ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'s foe [[MakeMeWannaShout Silver Banshee]] murdering an innocent, unnamed woman.
31* ''ComicBook/UsagiYojimbo'': Several stories begin with a random -often inebriated- character wandering into a dead end and getting murdered.
32[[/folder]]
33
34[[folder:Fan Works]]
35* In ''Fanfic/{{Reunions}}'', the old man who brings the cart full of wildfire to Harrenhal [[SuicideAttack blows himself up at the end of the prologue]].
36[[/folder]]
37
38[[folder:Film -- Animated]]
39* Leland Turbo from ''WesternAnimation/Cars2''.
40[[/folder]]
41
42[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
43* Maggie's boyfriend Jimmy is ripped apart by a FrankensteinMonster during the teaser of ''Film/ArmyOfFrankensteins''.
44* Douglas Winter (Richard Grieco) and his family in the pre-title sequence of ''Film/ArtOfTheDead'' who show what happened to the last person to assemble all [[AnomalousArt seven paintings]] in one place.
45* Rory--Tina's brother and Josh's best friend--is killed by a shark at the end of the pre-title sequence of ''Film/Bait3D''.
46* The two campers murdered by the ghouls in the opening scene of ''Film/DarkHeritage''.
47* The foreman and logging crew killed in the pre-title sequence of ''Film/DarkWasTheNight''.
48* In ''Film/DeathWalksOnHighHeels'', Nicole's father is a GentlemanThief murdered in a PlotTriggeringDeath before the opening credits.
49* The blonde woman being chased through the ParkingGarage in TheTeaser of ''Film/FearInc'' [[spoiler:Given what is later revealed about Fear, Inc., it is not surprising she is never heard from again.]]
50* ''Film/TheGravedancers'' opens with a young woman being attacked by an invisible assailant and then hanged, dropping a mysterious black envelope. Then the screen goes black and a 'One Year Later' caption appears before the screen fades in on Crescent View Cemetery. The woman is never referenced again. The black envelope does appear, however.
51* The teaser to ''Film/GreatWhite'' features a pair of tourists who have anchored their yacht at Hell's Reef. They become the first victims of the eponymous shark. They only appear again as corpses.
52* Jill, the sexy coed Professor Kapps kills to serve as a HumanSacrifice in the opening scene of ''Film/TheHazing''.
53* The two unfortunates who are chased and killed during the opening credits of ''Film/HobokenHollow''.
54* The sailor and his bride killed by Railroad Jack in the pre-title sequence of ''Film/JackTheReaper''.
55* ''Film/JamesBond'':
56** ''Film/DrNo'': In the opening scene, John Strangways, the Station Chief of [=MI6=] in Jamaica, is murdered by a trio of assassins, along with his secretary.
57** ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'': A fake James Bond is stalked and killed by Red Grant in TheTeaser.
58** ''Film/DiamondsAreForever'': James Bond pursues Ernst Stavro Blofeld and eventually finds him at a facility where Blofeld look-alikes are being created through surgery. Bond kills a test subject, and later the "real" Blofeld, by drowning him in a pool of superheated mud.
59** ''Film/LiveAndLetDie'': Three [=MI6=] agents are killed under mysterious circumstances within 24 hours in the United Nations headquarters in New York City, in New Orleans, and the small Caribbean nation of San Monique, while monitoring the operations of the island's dictator, Dr. Kananga.
60** ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'': An American gangster visits famed crack shot hitman Francisco Scaramanga to try to kill him to collect a bounty, but he is directed into a funhouse section of the estate where there are mannequins of gangsters. Scaramanga eventually retrieves his golden gun and shoots the gangster.
61** ''Film/ForYourEyesOnly'': An unnamed figure in a wheelchair (implied to be Blofeld) attempts to kill Bond. Bond turns the tables and [[SmokestackDrop drops his wheelchair down a factory smokestack]].
62** ''Film/{{Octopussy}}'': After fleeing from knife-throwing twin assassins Mischka and Grishka in East Berlin, mortally wounded British agent 009, dressed as a circus clown and carrying a counterfeit Fabergé egg, dies in the residence of the British West Berlin.
63** ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough'': Money laced with explosives explode ant [=MI6=] headquarters, killing M's friend Sir Robert King.
64** ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'': Bond gains promotion to 00 agent status by assassinating two targets: traitorous section chief Dryden at the British Embassy in Prague and his contact, Fisher.
65** ''Film/{{SPECTRE}}'': Bond kills Marco Sciarra, the terrorist leader, and takes his ring, which is emblazoned with a stylised octopus.
66* John's uncle who dies in the opening scene of ''Film/PigHunt''; killed by the [[FullBoarAction killer boar]].
67* Jenta, the PursuedProtagonist who steps in a BearTrap in the opening scene of ''Film/{{Rovdyr}}''.
68* Tiburon disposes some of some nameless mook in his Shark Pool in the teaser to ''Film/SharkWeek'' in a scene that serves no plot purpose whatsoever.
69* ''Film/TuckerAndDaleVsEvil'' has a cold open in which a TV news reporter and her cameraman are murdered by a disfigured slasher. This is never returned to again [[spoiler:but the events in the film reveal that it actually happened after them, and it indicates that the film's villain survived his apparent death and [[TheEndOrIsIt became a classic slasher]].]]
70* Diane, the captain of the cheer squad, is stalked and killed in pre-title sequence of ''Film/VarsityBlood''. She does not appear in the rest of the movie, although other characters do note her absence and wonder where she has gone.
71[[/folder]]
72
73[[folder:Literature]]
74* Most ''Literature/AlexRider'' stories start with someone being killed off by the villain before switching to the main action of Alex Rider.
75* ''Literature/CityOfNoEnd'' begins with an ActionPrologue of a handful of smugglers trading some LostTechnology and being eliminated as witnesses by a [[WarriorMonk Man]] of [[SuperSoldier Iron]].
76* ''Literature/DevilsGate'':
77** Subverted with Hudson Wallace: he appears in the prologue in 1951, and crashes his plane. Later we learn that he survived, and see him again as an old man in the epilogue.
78** Played straight with Captain Heinrich Nordegrun who is burned alive by the Death Ray in chapter 2.
79* Every narrator of the various prologues and epilogues in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' have ended up dead by the end of that book, and nearly always by the end of the scene.
80[[/folder]]
81
82[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
83* Almost every episode of ''Series/{{Bones}}'' starts with this character stumbling over a corpse.
84* Nearly ubiquitous in the revived ''Series/DoctorWho''. If the episode isn't part of a multi-part serial, this ''will'' happen (and the character almost always dies horribly). And some of the multi-part stories use this as well.
85%%* Steve Urkel from ''Series/FamilyMatters'' used to be one of these.
86* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': The show's sole ColdOpen in the pilot episode features three rangers of the Night's Watch, Will, Gared and Waymar Royce, heading out beyond the great wall of ice that seperates the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros from the lands beyond. Two of them are soon killed by undead monsters and the third flees, who is later caught by Eddard Stark's men and executed as a deserter.
87* ''Series/{{House}}'' has them almost every episode, with the audience spending most of the teasers guessing who will be the patient and who will be this.
88* ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'': Finrod, Morgoth and other nameless characters appear only in Galadriel's MinorKidroduction. Finrod and Morgoth become {{Posthumous Character}}s by the time of the Second Age and the rest are never mentioned.
89%%* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' does this a lot. As did ''Series/{{JAG}}'' too.
90%%** Years later, Jaleel White would appear in a teaser opening of ''Series/{{NCIS}}''.
91* Most of the characters at the beginning of most episodes of ''Series/NewYorkUndercover''.
92* Neatly parodied in ''Series/PoliceSquad'', where every episode had a [[SpecialGuest guest star]] who was killed while their name was being announced in the credits.
93* ''{{Series/Probe}}'''s "[[Recap/ProbeComputerLogic Computer Logic]]": The man who was being [[DramaticChaseOpening chased in the first episode's teaser]] dies near Austin's warehouse.
94* This happens in almost every episode of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', starting in the pilot where we are introduced to the boys' mother [[spoiler: only to have her burned alive before the opening credits.]] After that, the majority of episodes have a teaser where some poor soul is dispatched by the MonsterOfTheWeek. This is often a sign that it will be a monster-of-the-week episode but not always. The MythArc-heavy episode ''Are You There God, It's Dean Winchester?" begins with the death of a hunter named Olivia but turns out to be pivotal in setting up the season's mythology.
95* Very common in ''Series/TheXFiles'', particularly the [[MonsterOfTheWeek stand-alone episodes]]. The Teaser-Only Characters rarely survived the experience.
96[[/folder]]
97
98[[folder:Podcast]]
99* Podcast/TheAdventureZoneSteeplechase: Has Crystal Withakay open [[spoiler: most]] episodes of the Steeplechase campaign.
100[[/folder]]
101
102[[folder:Webcomics]]
103* ''Webcomic/LatchkeyKingdom'' features one in the chapter "Titan". He's unceremoniously KilledOffscreen right after the teaser ends.
104[[/folder]]
105
106[[folder:Western Animation]]
107* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'':
108** The episode "Darkheart" opens like this, with a couple of rock climbers scaling a plateau, before finding alien nanobot things. It cuts away immediately. One of them is seen answering [[GeneralRipper General Eiling's]] questions as the League arrives. As for the other, well; the teaser ends with the aforementioned partner finding their empty boot before the camera reveals the growing nanotech mass, so [[NeverSayDie draw your own conclusions]].
109** Amusingly played with in an episode which begins with a team of workers on an oil rig in the desert, then there's an explosion... and the frame freezes and zooms out, revealed to be a presentation put on by a CorruptCorporateExecutive.
110** "Eclipsed" opens with a military unit hunting a warlord named Fessan. They get a few minutes of screentime before one of them gets possessed by the VillainOfTheWeek and kills them all.
111
112* Used from time to time in episodes of ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDoo'', especially in its [[WesternAnimation/WhatsNewScoobyDoo later years]].
113[[/folder]]

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