Poking Dead Things with a Stick

His next merit badge is in the bag!

Farnsworth: Something's wrong! She's not responding to my poking stick.
Fry: Poke harder, damn it!

— Futurama, "Rebirth"

In life, you just never know when or where you might come across a person or animal that is dead, or appears to be dead. People might react to such a discovery in all kinds of ways... but some individuals, in particular, cannot help but be a little curious. Is something (someone) truly dead? Are they just sleeping? Do they need help? There is often no way to be positively sure with just a simple observation, but, worse yet, the discoverer is often likely to be (1) woefully unprepared to handle the situation and (2) too timid to risk touching an unmoving body with their bare hands and fingers. So what does that person do? They grab the nearest tree branch or stick and give their specimen a few good jabs. Who knows? Maybe the subject will somehow react to it.

In fiction, this is something that's commonly Played for Laughs. Even if characters try to rationalize why they would think poking a lifeless body from a distance would be in some way helpful or useful, it almost always is an act of Comedic Sociopathy that shows a complete lack of respect for the person or thing they are prodding, especially if they know for sure that their subject is truly deceased. While it may not necessarily be an indicator of bad attitude, it will indicate a general lack of helpful knowledge for the situation.

In the event that this activity results in a subversion where someone or something being poked and prodded turns out to not be dead after all, expect everyone involved in the situation to be startlingly surprised.

If a character happens to be poking around an unresponsive person that they know, that person may be the Butt-Monkey or The Friend Nobody Likes.

This may overlap with Please Wake Up when characters are unable to realize or accept that someone or something is dead.

If a child or juvenile engages in this sort of activity, it may be a subtle indication of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior.

If poking something turns out to have been a rather unwise decision that puts characters in danger, see Curiosity Killed the Cast.

See Also: Desecrating the Dead, when further violation of a corpse occurs; Stop Poking Me!, a rather meta video game trope where NPCs become annoyed when a player interacts with them too often (by clicking on them repeatedly with their mouse).

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dropkick on My Devil: In Episode 2 of the anime adaptation's third season, after Jashin-chan is sliced in half, Hatsune Miku V4X is seen poking her disembodied tail with her leek.
• Slayers: Played With in the anime adaptation. When Amelia faceplants hard into the ground during her introduction, her butt up in the air, Gourry pokes her with a stick and asks if she's alive. She is.

Film — Animation

• Open Season: After Shaw pulls into town with Elliot the mule deer tied to the hood of his truck and appearing dead with his tongue sticking out, a visibly disturbed Boog curiously picks up a stick and pokes him with it. However, Elliot turns out to not be dead, as he opens one eye and notices Boog, prompting both the deer and bear to reactively scream.
• Over the Hedge: Discussed after Ozzie the opossum feigns being struck by a car. A boy suggests poking Ozzie with a stick, but this proves unnecessary, as Ozzie hams up his playing-dead role. This corny act keeps the humans distracted while Verne and company make their escape.

Film — Live-Action

• Cabin Fever: When Paul finds the vagrant's dead body in the reservoir, he climbs down a ladder with a stick to poke at the corpse and turn it over in the water, only for the ladder Paul is standing on to give way and drop him into the water with the corpse.
• Dead End (2003): Upon the discovery of Brad's corpse on the side of the road (that is kept entirely offscreen but the other characters treat as a horribly gruesome, shocking, and incredibly gross sight), Frank picks up a stick and pokes at the remains, prompting questions from Richard.
  Richard: What is he doing?
  Laura: He's trying to get Brad's phone.
  Richard: ...With a stick!?
  Frank: You got a better idea?

With Frank's efforts with the stick failing to yield results, Richard takes it upon himself to reach in with his hand and retrieve a blood-drenched cellphone with a severed ear dangling from the antennae.

• In G-Force, Speckles the mole plays dead in an attempt to get out of the pet shop. To make it convincing, he has to silently endure the shop owner prodding him with a pen.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: Upon discovering the kraken's massive carcass washed up on a beach, Pintel and Ragetti poke one of its tentacles with a branch and then climb on top of it after confirming it is dead.
• Return of the Jedi: Played With. Wicket, the Ewok, certainly thinks Leia might be dead when he discovers her unconscious body and pokes her with his spear to check on her status. He is immediately startled when Leia wakes up.
• River's Edge: John tells Matt and Layne about the horrible crime he had committed and shows them to the riverside where he left his girlfriend's nude corpse to prove it. Layne's first instinct when he sees the body is to pick up a nearby stick and poke it at the hip. Later, when Layne is telling more of his teenage peers about the dead body, he swears it was real because he poked it with a stick.
• Trick 'r Treat: In the flashback to the "Halloween School Bus Massacre," Sam is seen on the outskirts of town, poking at a dead crow with a stick.

Live-Action TV

• Danger 5: In "Revenge of the Lizardmen", Tucker pokes Holly with his katana when she's shot down by the lizardmen.
• Friends: In "The One With The Giant Poking Device", the friends think their neighbor, Ugly Naked Guy, is dead, so they construct a "giant poking device" (really, just a very long stick) to poke him from their window.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In the Cold Open for "The Gang Finds A Dead Guy", Mac and Dee discover a body in the bar that they think is asleep and try nudging awake with a pool cue before they realize it's dead.
  Dee: Who is this?
  Mac: I dunno, I never seen him before.
  Dee: Well, can you get him out of here? He stinks!
  [Mac approaches the body, thinking that someone had passed out.]
  Mac: Hey, let's go— [Gets a whiff of the body, having evacuated his bowels due to dying] Oh, my J— Oh, my God! He shit his pants, Dee! Dee, he shit his pants!
  Dee: I don't wanna know that!
  Mac: [Grabs a pool cue] I'm gonna poke him with this. [Starts poking the corpse whilst covering his nose] Get up, old man! This isn't the American Legion, wake up!
  [No response from the corpse]
  Mac: ...Yo!
  Dee: What's the matter?
  Mac: He won't wake up.
  Dee: Well, poke him harder, in his ribs!
  Mac: [Poking the old man again] Wake up, old man! Wake! Up!
  [The body slumps over]
  Mac: Holy shit, that bitch is dead!
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Reunion", when the Klingon chancellor dies, before beginning the process of choosing a successor, they hold a traditional ritual known as "Sonchi" ("he is dead") in which the appointed arbiter of succession and the contenders for the position all take turns challenging the corpse to fight and jabbing the body with a "painstik" (a high-powered electrical prod) to confirm that the chancellor is actually dead — presumably because, being Klingons, they'd be risking civil war if he turned out not to be.
• Supernatural: Discussed in "Playthings". Sam asks Dean, who wants to check whether Rose really had a stroke, "What do you want to do, poke her with a stick?" Dean half-nods, obviously thinking it's a good idea. Sam responds, "Dude, you're not gonna poke her with a stick!"

Music

• Insane Clown Posse: Referenced by Shaggy during his verse in the song "When I'm Clownin'":
  (When I'm clownin') I-I-I-I'm super sick,
  Bozo bopper, shoot you quick.
  Why you? Cause you's a dick,
  (Is he dead?) Poke 'em, use a stick.
• Tony Mason: His song "Barney's on Fire" mentions at the end that someone poked Barney with a stick to make sure he was really dead.
• Tripod's song "The Day When We Found That Body" is about a romantic date ruined by the discovery of a dead body:
  Our love is so much better than that dead body.
  I hate to think our relationship hung by a thread of whether we saw a body or not.
  Hey, look, I kept a memento,
  It's the stick we poked it with.

Video Games

• The premise of the [adult swim] game Floater, in which you shove a floating corpse into obstacles to score points, all set to a jaunty banjo rendition of "Cripple Creek".
• Night in the Woods: Just when things start to turn sinister, the main four characters find a severed arm on the sidewalk just outside the diner. Mae and Gregg talk about poking it with a stick, which cues a Mini-Game where Mae, controlled by the player, manipulates the severed limb by poking at it with a stick. Depending on the player's choices, either Mae can push up the sleeve and discover a cultist tattoo, or she can kill a nearby bug.
• South Park: The Fractured but Whole: Early in the DLC mission "Bring the Crunch", the New Kid, Fastpass, Professor Chaos, Mintberry Crunch and Professor Timmothy encounter the dead body of one of the camp councilors of Lake Tardicaca, who has 10 knives in their body and a meat cleaver in their skull. When Professor Chaos wonders if the councilor is just sleeping, Professor Timmothy (telepathically) responds, "No, he's super dead, I poked him with a stick."

Webcomics

• No Rest for the Wicked: The Boy finds Prince Ricardo in a heap after he was knocked out by a thrown rock, so the boy pokes him with his walking stick, asking if he's dead. Ricardo jumps up, cuts the stick into pieces, and faints again.
  Boy: —Wow! You're the third-liveliest dead man I ever met!
• White Ninja Comics: The comic prominently features an image of its title character, the White Ninja, looking sad and poking a dead fish out of water with a stick. This image has taken a life all its own as an Internet meme on social media platforms. The image is commonly captioned with the words "C'mon, do something" and often photoshopped to include other pictures, symbols, logos, etc. over the dead fish to imply that something is being "dead" or hopelessly idle and in need of being poked back into any sort of action with a stick.

Web Original

• The Adult Swim game "Floater" is premised around poking a floating corpse with a stick so that it crashes into obstacles like rocks, beavers, whirlpools, Exploding Barrels...
• The video Dead Guy Freeload by Keith Hanshaw begins with a man discovering a dead body, picking up a nearby stick, and poking it, before devolving into a dark, twisted instructional video on how to loot the body before calling the police and emergency services. The image of the man poking the dead body with a stick has taken a life all its own as a minor Internet meme with the added caption LOL IS U DED?
• DR. BEES: The first animated short in this series ends with the title character revealed to have died in a desert, where a chubby Boy Scout discovers his body and pokes at it with a stick.
• Heavy is Dead: The Heavy from Team Fortress 2 pokes the Heavy's corpse with a stick to confirm that the Heavy is dead. Don't think too hard about this.
• How It Should Have Ended: In the Spider-Man: Far From Home episode, Peter Parker receives help from all the previous theatrical Spider-Men to defeat Quentin Beck. When Quentin Beck is down, Peter asks E.D.I.T.H. if he's real and E.D.I.T.H. says all the drones' illusion projectors have been deactivated. The other Spider-Men aren't too sure about that, so Spider-Ham pokes Beck with a stick to confirm he's real and see if he's dead or not.
• Referenced in a Season 1 episode of Inanimate Insanity, where when Paper faints, Bow instantly assumes he's dead and wants to poke him.
• The short film Kids These Days, directed by Christopher Dinnan and produced as part of a 48-hour challenge, is about two kids who kill their grandmother so that they can buy a dog. After the kids kill their grandmother, they mess around with the corpse and even poke at it with a stick.
  Grandson: Poking Dead Grandma with this stick is fun!
  Granddaughter: I want to try! [Grandson passes her the stick] You're right, it is fun.
• The Onion: The article "Poke with Stick Confirms Raccoon's Death"—two brothers, ages 9 and 11, obtain conclusive proof that they have found a dead raccoon after prodding it several times with a stick after earlier tests involving throwing rocks and an empty soda can yielded no results.
• PONY.MOV: In "SWAG.MOV", Spike idly pokes the corpse of Rainbow Dash. However, she wakes up screaming, revealing she was never actually dead.
• Uncyclopedia: Stick Poking is described as an "American pastime" that "began when a caveman got a stick and starting poking dinosaur corpses."

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: A variant occurs in "The Job", where Darwin pokes Mr. Small's unconscious body with his foot, and freaks out thinking he stopped breathing (he's fine).
• Cartoons That Never Made It: The end credits of "Rupert the Grouper" show Rupert's dead body (since he suffocated to death from being out of his fishbowl too long during the title sequence) being poked with a stick.
• Family Guy: In "To Love and Die in Dixie", Chris and his new friend, Sam, have fun poking a dead body with a stick during their first meeting.
  Chris: You know, it's true. The best things in life really are free. [Poke, poke]
• Futurama:
  • In "Rebirth," when Leela comes out of the birthing machine lifeless and unmoving, Farnsworth uses a "poking stick" to try and wake her up. It doesn't work.
  • "Yo Leela Leela" sees Leela creating children's television show Rumbledy-Hump, one episode of which features an Educational Song about not licking living creatures, ending on the following maxim:
    [I]f you're not sure if it's alive or dead / Poke it with a stick and lick the stick instead
• Love, Death & Robots: In the episode "Sonnie's Edge", Dicko pokes Sonnie with his Classy Cane at the end when she is lying on the ground dying.
• The Simpsons:
  • In Treehouse of Horror X, the "I Know What You Did-Iddly-Did" segment sees Marge accidentally run over Ned Flanders with the car. Homer ascertains that he's dead in a super-technical medical way—poking him in the eye with a stick.
    Homer: [Squelch] He's dead alright. [Squelch, squelch]
    • Later, when Ned catches up with the family and is revealed to be undead, Homer again pokes him in the eye with the stick.
      Homer: [Squelch] He's undead alright.
  • In "Simpsons Tall Tales", the family decides to ride the rails to Delaware. After everyone hops on board a train car, Bart discovers a "dead hobo," and his first instinct is to pick up a stick and jab it at the hobo's foot. However, the hobo turns out to not be dead, and he is jolted upright by Bart's poke with the stick, which comes as a shocking surprise to the Simpsons.
  • Played With in "The Blunder Years", as Homer gets to the root cause of a traumatic childhood experience, he recalls his younger self crawling into a drainage pipe at a muddy quarry to find out what's clogging it. Young Homer pokes at the clog with a stick without knowing what it is, and when the pipe is unclogged, the water flushes him back out, and he discovers to his horror that the clog was a dead, decaying body.
  • In "Treehouse of Horror XIV", in the segment "Reaper Madness", after Homer kills the Grim Reaper with a bowling ball, Lisa has a stick in hand and uses it to poke the Grim Reaper's bare skull.
    Lisa: Dad, do you realize what you've just done? [Poke] You've created a world without death!
  • In "Oh Brother, Where Bart Thou?", when Bart adopts a brother named Charlie, one scene has him teach Charlie how to poke a dead raccoon with a stick.
    Bart: When poking a dead animal, don't go straight for the eye. Build up to it.
  • In "The Squirt and the Whale", Bart and Milhouse head toward where a beached whale is lying, and Bart says it will be "the biggest dead animal we ever poked". They don't get the chance, however, as Mayor Quimby had decided to have the carcass blown up.
  • Mentioned in "New Kid on the Block" when Lura tells Bart that she likes Jimbo Jones because he's a rebel.
    Laura: You know that body they found behind the mayor's house?
    Bart: [shocked] Jimbo killed him?
    Laura: No... but he poked it with a stick.
• South Park: In "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", Stan pokes Kenny's corpse with a stick to prove to Cartman that Kenny's really dead.

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