Basic Trope: Scares because of a body turning up where/when it's not expected.
- Straight: As Alice is fleeing a Malevolent Masked Man, she pulls open a car door, only to have Bob's headless corpse fall out of the driver's seat onto her. She screams in terror.
- Exaggerated: Alice is fleeing a Malevolent Masked Man and pulls open the car door, causing all the headless passengers inside to fall out and scaring Alice so much she had a heart attack.
- Downplayed: Alice is fleeing a Malevolent Masked Man and pulls open the car door, causing Bob's headless body to fall on her. She flinches and bites back a scream of terror.
- Justified: Bob was quite strong and tough. If he's dead, things have gotten that much worse.
- Inverted: The fleeing Alice pulls open a car door to find Bob inside. She screams from surprise.
- Subverted: Alice opens the car door and sees what appears to be Bob's headless body... but he was hiding in his shirt. His head then pops out, revealing him alive.
- Double Subverted: He was actually headless; his head was decapicated.
- Parodied: Alice and Charlie are fleeing a Malevolent Masked Man and discover Bob's headless body in a car. When Charlie doesn't scream, Alice scoffs at him for not doing things properly.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Bodies only turn up in places like morgues and funeral homes.
- Alice notices Bob's corpse ahead when she's approaching the car and promptly disposes his body to escape.
- Enforced:
- The creator insists on the author writing a scene like this because it's traditional.
- The director decided to throw in the unexpected finding of the corpse of one of the stage technicians during the last take of scene 55.note
- Lampshaded:
- Invoked: The Malevolent Masked Man leaves his victims' bodies in the most surprising places he can imagine.
- Exploited: The Malevolent Masked Man hears Alice scream when she finds the body and uses it to hunt her down.
- Defied: Alice is too focused on escaping that she doesn't notice or care that Bob is already dead when she hijacks his car.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Huh, she's opening a door and the music's turning ominous...think a corpse will fall out?"
- Implied: Charlie is catching up to Alice on getting to the car and hears her scream from afar.
Okay, this link looks safe enough, so - Aah! A Peek-a-Boo Corpse!
