"Psycho" Shower Murder Parody

"This is gonna turn out just like those cheesy teenage gore flicks. It's a good thing there aren't any showers around here."

— Andy, Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, "Dark Laughter Part 1"

One of the most famous movie scenes of all time and perhaps the most frequently spoofed, parodied, imitated, plagiarized, and referenced one. Alfred Hitchcock's movie Psycho (1960) has become infamous for the scene where a woman (Janet Leigh) is murdered while taking a shower. Back in 1960 audiences were utterly shocked when they saw this scene for the following reasons:

1. Audiences weren't permitted to enter the theater mid-screening. They had to be present from the start or they wouldn't be allowed inside.

2. Janet Leigh's character had been the film's protagonist for the first half of the story. Audiences identified with her actions when suddenly she was killed off. Up to that point, mainstream films had never let their central character die halfway through the film. Especially not that suddenly.

3. It was the most graphic movie killing ever at the time, even though it was in black and white and the knife was never seen penetrating flesh. A lot of the horror comes from Bernard Herrmann's musical score, which itself became a Standard Snippet in comedic horror scenes: "Psycho" Strings.

Of course, nowadays, the shower scene is a case of Once Original, Now Common. People have seen this scene parodied so much that there's a sense of overkill and thus the shock value of the original is lost. In fact, the Psycho Shower Scene Parodies themselves (always complete with "Psycho" Strings) have transformed into uninspired stock parodies that leave an audience sighing: "It's Been Done." Subtrope of Toilet Horror.

Footage from over 20 versions of this scene were compiled in a YouTube video titled "50 Years of the Psycho Shower Scene."

If a character is attacked while bathing or showering without parodying Psycho, see Deadly Bath.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• Bloody-handprint shower curtains on ThinkGeek are a direct shout-out of the scene in Psycho. (The bloody-footprint bathmat featured in the same ad is not.)

Anime & Manga

• A Channel episode 2. Yuuko and Tooru watch a horror movie that has a scene similar to it while they wait for their turn to use the bath.
• Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. When Captain Tessa Testarossa turns up at Sōsuke's high school, her Number Two Richard Mardukas (well aware of Tessa's infatuation with Sōsuke) threatens a terrible revenge should he attempt to molest her. Cut to an Imagine Spot involving Sōsuke dressed in his Bonta-kun costume attacking Tessa in the shower with a banana.
• Played nearly shot-by-shot in episode 47 of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, complete with the strings, when a paint-covered Escargoon goes off to take a shower and is then mistakenly beaten up by King Dedede.
• The entire shower scene is parodied in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, strings and all. It only serves to make Fuura Kafuka even creepier, too—while the stabber changes between every shot (Bruce Lee, Freddy Krueger, and the Drunken Master to name a few), it's Kafuka we see dashing around the corner out of the bathroom.

Asian Animation

• The Simple Samosa episode "Franky Dayaloo" features a scene where Franky is attacked with a bottle of ketchup in the shower, referencing the scene from Psycho. The scene is even presented in Deliberate Monochrome, just like the original movie.

Comic Books

• One issue of ALF's comic had a Melmacian version of Psycho where the Norman Bates character (Sy Coe) was obsessed with bread. Flour comes out of the shower instead of water, and then Coe attacks with a baguette.
• In De Kiekeboes album "Het Plan Sstoeffer" Fanny takes a shower and thinks: "If I'm quick, I'll be able to catch "Psycho" by Hitchcock on TV". While she is showering she is attacked by a spy, but she notices him just in time and knocks him out.
• A cover for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Grind depicts Leatherface attacking a showering woman with his chainsaw.
• Lori Lovecraft series is full of movie homages. In The Dark Lady, Lori is attacked in the shower in a scene highly reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho, including a panel that is a closeup on the plughole.

Comic Strips

• Pearls Before Swine: Pigita fell victim to one of these. Pig had intended it as a romantic gesture.

Eastern Animation

• KikoRiki: The scene was parodied in "The Sandwich", when Dokko takes a shower. The attacker turns out to be Krash, who wanted to give his friend a carrot.

Fan Works

• The Bolt Chronicles: Played with in "The Party." Two Siamese cats attempt to lure Mittens into playing a party game with them based on Alfred Hitchcock films which involve likely injury or death to their prospective guest. Psycho is not one of these films, however, as they say things didn't turn out so well last time they played a game based on it.
• Referenced (yes, a reference of a reference) in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: see the page quote.
• In "The Rogue Axolotl Anime Artist", Alternate Axol sneaks up on Melony with a knife while she's taking a bath. Interestingly, instead of trying to kill her, he tries convince her to join his harem of anime waifus.

Films — Animation

• Looney Tunes: Back in Action featured a moment early in the film with Kate Houghton exploring protagonist Damien Drake Jr.'s house, only to find Bugs Bunny in the shower. Upon being discovered, Bugs reenacts the classic scene (even dumping chocolate syrup down the drain to create the blood effect) before complaining "Doesn't anyone knock anymore?" This is just the straw that broke the camel's back on Kate's awful day.

Films — Live-Action

• Arachnophobia has a scene where a young woman is showering, but unbeknownst to her, one of the lethal, venomous spiders is crawling along her shower rod, before jumping onto her face and crawling down her body. She remains oblivious as it gets washed off her body until she notices the spider is on her feet and starts screaming... causing her family to barge into the bathroom, where she forgets all about the spider and has a Naked Freak-Out instead.
• Justified by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; the scene takes place inside a television, so it's highly possible that the cast is watching Psycho.
• In Mel Brooks Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety, the Psycho shower scene parody uses the shrill cries of an angry bellhop in place of the strings: "Here! Here's your paper! Here's your lousy, stinking paper! Happy now?"
  Thorndyke: That boy gets no tip...
• Done in Monster in the Closet. Each time the woman's shower is interrupted when she sees an ominous shadow on the curtain, it's just her husband asking her if she needs any errands done or if she knows where the keys are. Further twisted since it's the husband who is killed by the eponymous monster while his wife is showering.
• Done with a slight lampshade in the film National Lampoon's Vacation. Filmed from Clark's POV as he slowly enters the bathroom. The "Psycho" Strings emanate from the orchestra, and then he opens the shower curtain to find his topless wife showering. ...as he holds a harmless, ordinary BANANA and does his own (weak) vocal version of the infamous "REEE! REEE! REEE!" sound as the orchestral music fades away... Turns out it was only in jest, due to the blatant overuse of this joke.
• Phantom of the Paradise when Winslow confronts Beef (in a comic allusion to Psycho) and threatens to kill him if he performs, namely by stopping his mouth with a plunger.
• Planes, Trains and Automobiles when Neal discovers what Del did to the bathroom, and that he had been washing his face in the water Del was using to soak his socks.
• Police Academy 3: Back in Training. Sweetchuck is alarmed by the sight of a sinister shadow on his shower curtain of a man wielding a knife, only for it to turn out to be Zed clutching a tube of hair gel (a sight he finds no less terrifying).
• Also spoofed at the end of The Silence of the Hams, which is something of a parody mix between The Silence of the Lambs and Psycho. The killer in question is Alfred Hitchcock, who kills the director of Hams in the shower for making fun of his film. Then it turns out it was Dr. Animal Cannibal Pizza (Dom De Luise) wearing a latex mask.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, Mr. Beardo proceeds to parody the scene after finding Greg in the hotel shower, who is trying to clear off the mud (which serves the role of blood) off his body.
• A couple of Japanese films from a series titled Zero Woman subverts the scene by having the title character keep a gun in the shower and then using it.
• The Naked Gun 2½ has a hitman with a gun & silencer approaching Jane, who's singing in the shower. He's enjoying the song so much he starts singing along and so tips her off.

Live-Action TV

• Smallville: In "Cool," Sean Kelvin's ex-girlfriend, Jenna, calls out to him from the shower before being ambushed by him and frozen to death through his meteorite powers.
• Charmed: In an early episode, where horror movie killers come to life and hunt the sisters, Piper, running from one such killer, makes the very wise decision of hiding in the shower. After noting her own stupidity, she sees a shadowy figure approaching from behind the curtain... luckily, it's Prue.
  Piper: I'm being stalked by psycho killers and I hide in the shower?!
• Dead Ringers: Spoofed when George Lucas goes mad and starts making Special Editions of other people's movies, including Psycho. As a result, Janet Leigh is ambushed in the shower by Jar-Jar Binks... and then she kills him.
• Funky Squad: In "The Carnival is Over", Cassie heads home...and re-enacts the Psycho shower scene. Fortunately, it ends with a phone call rather than a knifing. But there’s a mechanical laughing clown on the other end of the line and a message scrawled on the mirror.
• During the mid-90's, Soap Opera Guiding Light based an entire storyline off this film, with local rapist Brent disguising himself as a woman in order to insinuate himself into the life of his unsuspecting victim. Becoming more and more unhinged as he realized the woman was putting her ordeal behind her and moving on with her life, he broke into her apartment one night, intending to kill her as she was showering—he ended up almost killing her friend instead.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: A very subtle one. In "The Barber Shop Sketch" Michael Palin's barber character flips into homicidal mode several times, uttering the line: "Cut, CUT, HEART, HITCHCOCK, MURDER, BLOOD, PSYCHO, HOMICIDE, SPURT, ARTERY, TREMOR CORTEX, Arrrgg...!"
• In Pretty Little Liars "UnmAsked," as part of an extended Psycho homage, A stalks Hanna in the shower, but is driven off when a phone starts ringing.
• The sequence is recreated shot-for-shot by Janet Leigh's daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in Scream Queens (2015) — Except that Jamie beats down the bad guy, saying “I’ve seen the movie like fifty times.”
• In Spitting Image Margaret Thatcher discovers former Prime Minister Edward Heath in her shower ^note  which is also a parody of the famous "All a Dream" scene in Dallas where the character Bobby, who had died in the series, suddenly turns out to be alive and well . He decides he'll return as Prime Minister, but Maggie simply slashes him with a knife.
• Done in a Hitchcock parody episode "Too Old To Trick Or Treat, Too Young To Die" of That '70s Show after Laurie unexpectedly finds Kelso using the shower.

Music Videos

• Ice Nine Kills has a whole song called, "The Shower Scene" that is a homage to the movie and named after the famous death, complete with the signature "Psycho" Strings for when the killing takes place. The song eventually got a music video, which is an even bigger homage to the movie and features a version of the titular moment, during the breakdown. It starts out seemingly normal with the Norman Bates figure dressed up as "Mother" ready to kill the lead heroine. But when he pulls back the shower curtains and prepares to stab the lead, he's surprised to find a dress on a clothes hanger in her place. In his brief confusion, the heroine, who was hiding behind him all along, emerges with her own knife and proceeds to kill the Norman Bates figure instead, completely inverting the trope.
• The music video for Brazilian singer Rita Lee's Vítima ("Victim") has a mysterious assailant break into her house and attack the singer while she is in the shower, with transparent plastic curtains. The next shot is a pool of blood going down the drain.

Video Games

• Jeanne subverts this in Bayonetta 3 by executing an unlucky Homunculus for trying to peek at her in the shower cabin.
• Fate/Grand Order: Spoofed in the event "Servant Summer Camp! ~Chaldea Thriller Night~", where Lancer Yu Mei-ren decides to take a shower in the middle of a horror movie scenario. She gets killed as soon as she enters the bathroom. Mei-ren being Mei-ren, she gets better.
• In the old Sierra game Laura Bow, it's possible to take a shower. In usual order, the game mocks you if you're stupid enough to do so, by asking if Alfred didn't teach you anything.

Web Animation

• In the Homestar Runner video "Jibblies 2", Coach Z proclaims that during Halloween when there's an insane monster running around there's no safer place to be than in the shower (which sort of makes sense given that it's a painting). He is immediately jibblified by the Horrible Painting wearing a shower cap.

Web Comics

• Housepets! gives us one in the arc "Be Mine!" with Sasha "attacking" a showering King with a scrub brush. King lampshades the situation in the previous comic by imagining hearing violin strings.
  Sasha: Kingy! Taking a shower without letting me return the favor, how bad of you!
  King: Just let me die here, and transition to Martin Balsam.
• Played with in The Order of the Stick, where Haley Starshine, while being pursued by her former rival Crystal in Greysky City, hides in the bathroom after her bow is sundered. Crystal enters to see someone in the shower and, thinking it's Starshine, attacks. It turns out what was actually in the shower was a sack of flour dressed up to look like Haley, who proceeds to pounce with a sap to Crystal's head. It doesn't work, but it at least bought Haley a bit more time.

Web Videos

• The 5 Second Films video "The Early Bird Killer", in which the presumably eponymous serial killer comes to kill a girl in the shower. The twist is that she had already been killed by another serial killer, who is currently taking a shower in her place.
• The Nostalgia Critic: In a Hyper Fangirl vlog, she sees Doug at a con and decides to pretend to stab him while making screeching noises. No other reason other than she's creepy and terrible.
• Sam & Mickey's "Psycho" has one, which ends with the cross-dressing Ken inviting the showering Barbie to have some daiquiris.

Western Animation

• Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: "Wake Me When It's Over" has Ickis scare a man in a shower room, complete with the man holding onto the shower curtains and pulling them down and Ickis swirling down the drain. A close-up of the man's eye is shown as he awakens and says "That's the last time I take a public shower."
• Hitchcock himself attempts to use this during his fight with Steven Spielberg on Celebrity Deathmatch, but unfortunately, due to using the same editing as in the original scene, the knife never actually touches Spielberg so he doesn't receive a scratch.
• An episode of Dexter's Laboratory ends with a shadow sneaking up on Dad in the shower brandishing a pointy object, but it turns out its just Mom with a brush that she scrubs Dad's back with. This ending is from the episode "Pslightly Psycho" that Mom spent in a semi-psychotic state due to the family swiping her signature gloves and setting off her germophobia (she snaps out of it by the end when she finds out they gave her a new pair as a Mother's Day gift).
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, "The Big Cheese" when Cheese surprises Eduardo in the shower.
  Cheese: I! FOUND! A! CARROT!
• Histeria! had a segment where the kids confuse Wild Bill Hickok with Alfred Hitchcock, leading to a parody where the "assailant" approaches the shower only to pull down the toilet handle.
• Kim Possible: "Return To Wannaweep" does it twice, once with Bonnie taking a shower and screaming at the cold water as a homage to Psycho's famous scene, and again when "Psycho" Strings play after Ron falls off his bike and water comes from his head.
• The Monster Farm episode "The Trouble with Woolly" parodied the scene where Norman Bates stabbed Marion Crane to death in the shower by having a showering Count Cluckula attacked with a plunger by the butler who is after Dr. Woolly's latest creation.
• In the ¡Mucha Lucha! episode "Curse of the Masked Toilet" the titular sentient toilet does this to The Flea with a luffa after he turns on the shower. Being that The Flea takes pride in uncleanliness, he's disgusted when in the following scene he's outside with his normally brown costume now white.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In the episode "Haunted House" when Stimpy's taking a shower.
• Robot Chicken sics Norman Bates on Bitch Pudding, but he opens the shower curtain to find Norma Bates' naked corpse instead.
  Bitch Pudding: (dressed as Norma) Sorry, but you can only RealDoll your dead mama for so long before she needs a freakin' shower!
• The Simpsons: In the episode "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge" there's an original parody of the shower scene. Instead of taking place in a shower, Homer is attacked by Maggie with a hammer in the garage. The "Psycho" Strings music is present, as are the same shots, and a can of red paint provides the same effect of blood flowing away in the drain.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Elmyra tried to bathe Dizzy in the "Wheel O' Comedy" episode segment "Devil Doggie".
• The Looney Tunes Show: Similar to the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends example, during the musical number 'We Are in Love', Lola stalks Bugs in the shower with a carrot that Bugs mistakes for a knife.

---