No Dead Body Poops

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"See, say what you like about us British, we're punctual and clean - none of this shitting-out-our-internal-organs-in-a-screaming-blubbering-heap for us. No, we just lay down and die, in neat piles."
—Charlie Brooker, commenting on Survivors
"That's what people do after they die - they wet and shit themselves. They never do show you that part in movies but maybe that's because it wouldn't be as poetic. Can you imagine if Simba's father shit himself after he died?"
—Ask That Guy With The Glasses

People die, for whatever reason. Some die a natural death, some get killed, some kill themselves, but still dead is dead. A natural occurrence is after all is said and done, is that someone tries to retrieve the body of the dead person. However, biology does not stop at death. Muscles control the retention of wastes in the bladder and the rectum, and these muscles relax soon after death. If the rectum or bladder happens to be occupied at the moment of death, the result in Real Life is the people who find the body wishing the dead person had worn brown trousers (and wishing they had brought a gas mask).

In fiction, this practically never occurs. Therefore, we have a case of No Dead Body Poops, where the death scene is almost always much much much less nasty than it could be in real life. This is not surprising, given that most people are not aware someone dying can be a crapshoot.

Even rarer than the post-mortem evacuation in fiction is recognizing the fact that serious abdominal injuries - gut shootings/stabbings and the like - can often let out what's supposed to stay in.

For examples of living people whose biological functions of this type aren't shown, see the Super-Trope Nobody Poops.

No examples of this trope being played entirely straight are listed below. We're not interested in having a huge list of every character dying without soiling themselves.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples of No Dead Body Poops include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Yoshiyuki Tomino's Mobile Suit Gundam novels, one character is described as losing control of their bowels while suffering a particularily violent death. Interestingly, she also seems to suffer a psychic version of this effect & begins uncontrollably broadcasting her worst memories into Amuro's mind in her death throes.
  • Referenced in the Rurouni Kenshin manga when Jin-e tries to kill Kaoru and talks about how the corpse will get rid of saliva and waste.
  • In Yomigaeru Sora Rescue Wings an earthquake victim suffers from crush syndrome and is shown becoming incontinent.
  • Leina wets herself twice in the first episode of Queens Blade. The second is a Bring My Brown Pants moment, but the first is this trope as she wets herself due to being strangled by Melona.
  • Seiko in Corpse Party averts this as she is hanged to death. Naomi tries to save her, but realises she is too late when she sees Seiko's urine soaking the front of her skirt and flowing down her legs.

Comic Books

I wasn't a superhero back then, okay? I was… I was just a little girl… and watched my daddy fall on the floor and shudder and groan and ████ himself and then die.


Fan Works

  • Trivia and AKK's Fanfics will mention this. Not so shocking when you consider the fanfic writers themselves. Both have medical backgrounds and are known for their brutally frank exploration of things floated under the radar...including the obvious.
  • There's a Fallout 2 fanfic where Lara (the chick from the Den) goes up to fight against Lo Pan, hand to hand. When it becomes clear that Lo Pan is losing, he pulls out a gun he hid under the fighting mat earlier (which is canon, by the way) and blows half her face away. As she lays dying, she involuntarily lets loose her bowels. Both of them.
  • Subtly referenced in the NCIS fanfiction Determined by Sergeant Conley.

There lay the still bleeding body of Stan Merdetzky, surrounded by the stink of death and its unpleasant releases.

  • Tiberium Wars doesn't shy away from this (War Is Hell being a central theme) with several scenes mentioning the stench of "corpse-shit" from the bodies littering the urban battlefields.

Film

  • Steve Martin plays an asshole action movie director in the Kasdan movie Grand Canyon. In an early scene, he berates a flunky for cutting out a scene where a criminal is shot in the head because there was "too much blood splatter." Later, after he himself is shot by a mugger, he lies on the street bleeding, and the camera reveals he'd also urinated on himself.
  • The Golgothan Shit Demon from the movie Dogma is a demon created from this exact excrement. Golgotha was the place where Christ was crucified so obviously it's made from the build up of hundreds of crucified criminals in a cursed place but on the other hand it was where Christ was crucified too so, while never stated, it might quite literally be "Holy Shit".
  • A related example is from the film Point Of No Return, the American Remake of La Femme Nikita, where Maggie urinates after being given a lethal injection.
  • In Repo! The Genetic Opera, after finishing disemboweling his latest victim, the victim's waste is emptied onto Nathan Wallace's shoes, as far as we can tell from his expression and the subtle sound effect.
  • At the start of Black Belt Jones, a pair of Mafia thugs kill a man, then hide his body in a wine cask. Their boss then orders, "Mark this one down to five dollars a bottle - he shit his pants when he died."
  • In Phantasm, after a man is killed by the silver sphere, a pool of pale urine slowly spreads across the floor from the corpse's legs.
  • The Takashi Miike film Visitor Q shows the father, erm, getting acquainted with the corpse of a female coworker. It gets worse when her bowels let loose and he keeps going.
  • In The Human Centipede, which is already teeming with Body Horror, this occurs upon the death of one of the victims. Too bad that victim's anus is sewn to another's mouth.
  • In Se7en, the guy who ate until he burst (guilty of the sin of Gluttony, obviously) is reported to be "sitting in a pile of his own piss and shit"- an easy way for the police to tell that he was dead without having to check his vital signs.
  • Kate Hudson voids her bladder in The Killer Inside Me after Casey Affleck beats her to death.
  • In the little known New Zealand film Carry Me Back the lads take their dead father back home, on several occasions the corpse farts prodigously.
  • In Monsters Ball, when a condemned criminal is to be executed he is shown with adult diapers.
  • A dying character shits himself at least twice in Cannibal.
  • There's a strangely brutal scene in which Bundy is shown getting cotton jammed up his ass before his execution in Ted Bundy.
  • Monster Clown butler Mr. Mascaro comments on this phenomenon while killing a security guard in Blood Dolls.

Mr. Mascaro: Two kinds of people I know about, little man - The kind that piss their pants when you kill them, and the kind that don't. Now, which kind do you think you are?
[guard dies, Mascaro looks down at the body]
Mr. Mascaro: Pisser.

Literature

  • In Robert A. Heinlein's novel Friday, the heroine explains to her friends in graphic detail exactly why they do not want to drag a dead cop to their secret hiding place (which is accessible only through the hot tub).
  • In Salman Rushdie's short story Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their Relationship, one of the dirty jobs Isabella gives Columbus is cleaning up the bodies of dead soldiers for burial, and the fact that they're wearing (usually full) diapers under their uniforms is mentioned.
  • In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, after Santiago Nasar gets stabbed in the belly, his fiancee's family notices the smell of shit coming from his protruding bowels.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire, where Tywin Lannister very obviously defecates after being shot. With a crossbow. On the toilet. And he does not, in the end, shit gold.
  • Tamora Pierce averts this some of the time, such as when one of the teenage gang members is strangled in Street Magic.
    • Also mentioned in Squire, where Kel knows she's fatally wounded a centaur because of the stink that alerts her to damaged (human) intestines. She ends up having to perform a Mercy Kill because no healer can cure a "belly wound".
  • The Godfather includes a scene where one traitor to the Corleones is garroted in a car and craps himself. The killer then rolls down the window to let out the stink.
    • Also the description of the garroting of Luca Brazzi.
  • In The Bible's Book of Judges, chapter 3, King Eglon is stabbed in the gut by the left-handed Ehud, causing "the dirt" to come out. The fact that "dirt" is excrement is made even clearer when Eglon's personal guard delay going in to check on him because they believe him to be relieving himself- they can smell it.
  • Most of the deaths in the Honor Harrington series involve people being blown up in space, but one in particular notes this as occurring. An undercover agent, realizing he's been made, judo flips over and snaps the neck of the man who's caught him, and notes in narration the smell of the voided bowels, presumably while his victim is still upside down.
    • David Weber also makes reference to this in Safehold, when "the stink of voided bowels" follows a character being killed.
  • This is referenced in Mission Earth series by L. Ron Hubbard. It is one of the alien invaders who are attempting to turn the world's population homosexual uses it to argue that this means the sphincter is central to life.
  • In Bryce Courtenay's book Tommo And Hawk this is used to confirm a character is dead.
  • In The Witcher novel, when Ciri's team gets slaughtered by a Psycho for Hire, he makes her take a look at the bodies "See, that's how people die. In their own piss."
  • Justified in Enderby, by Anthony Burgess: The title character, about to commit suicide, is very careful to empty his bowels first.
  • The trope is noted several times in The Acts of Caine books. Within the first few pages of the first book, in fact.
  • When Lestat, the main character of The Vampire Lestat of Anne Rice, is transformed into a vampire and has to "die" for this, it is described in great detail how his bowels empty while he isn't able to move and the rats come to eat the excrement. Yeah.
  • When Junior in Under the Dome cozies up to the two girls he killed, he notes the fact that they've defecated in their death.
  • Has been referred to indirectly in Discworld. In A Hat Full of Sky Granny Weatherwax depicts the chores done by a witch on a regular basis, which includes sitting with an old man during his last moments and helping the widow clean the body and change the bedsheets, which is no chore for the faint of heart.
    • In Making Money Moist von Lipwig has just, for intents and purposes, inherited the Royal Bank after its president passed away. He's trying out the bed in the suite provided, noticing that it feels all warm and squishy, then immediately shoots up and asks where his predecessor died. He's informed she died at her desk, sitting in her chair (which has since been replaced).
  • In one of the Hitman novels, Agent 47 kills a clone brother, who makes a long "farting" sound as he's strangled to death. Realistic much?
  • In John Varley's Steel Beach we learn that low gravity + explosive decompression + no space suits/clothing (clothing optional moon colony) + bowel gas = the 'Brown Rocket' effect.
  • Conan at one point justifies putting a man out of his misery with a list of what he would have had to endure before dying anyway. The stink of his own guts[1] is on the list.
  • In the Liveship Traders trilogy, Davad Restart returns to his carriage to find a dead pig hanging out of the window and the word "traitor" written on the vehicle in blood. It is also noticed that the pig's bowels had losened in death and as a result the coach was smeared with the pig's shit as well.
  • The Ender's Game companion, Ender's Shadow, averts this, as Achilles talks about how Poke voided her bladder and bowels as she died.
  • The Gentleman Bastard Sequence Sequence features a scene where young Locke and the twins end up buying a corpse from the day's hanging (long story) and Locke is annoyed that he had to be downwind of the corpse because ... well.
  • Referenced in a David Sedaris essay. His Greek grandmother came to live with the family when David was a kid, and his father was telling him and his sisters about how the grandmother found her brother dead in the streets, slain by mercenaries. David and his sisters pester the grandmother with questions like "When he died, did he crap his pants?"
  • Somewhat averted in BattleTech's Warrior trilogy, where Dr. Lear at one point goes into some detail on just what treating a soldier with abdominal injuries means for both the patient and the medics. No, she's not a fan of war at all.
  • Averted in the Outlander series, as it is often described that the deceased 'lose their bowels' shortly after death, except in the case of Roger, who lost his bowels when he was NEARLY hung to death.
  • Referenced in Dead Lines by John Skipp and Craig Spector. The antagonist tries to avoid soiling himself after committing suicide by fasting and emptying his bowels and bladder as much as he can beforehand, because he doesn't want his body to be found covered in effluvia. It is not stated whether the plan worked or not.
  • In his Island in The Sea of Time and Emberverse series, S. M. Stirling often describes people as "voiding" when they die, and battlefields smelling like sewers.
  • In The Book of the New Sun, Severian, while having the last talk with a prisoner he is to execute the next day, advises him to eat only a light breakfast to avoid this.
  • In Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers. Divine is described as voiding herself quite graphically after her miserable death from tuberculosis. The author doesn't shy away from the subjects of various bodily functions (even when one might want him to) and it's not a terribly romantic scene.
  • In The Dark Sleep, Escott first realized that his acting-troupe colleagues ... all 12 of them had been murdered when he catches the scent of blood, urine and excrement at the crime scene. He recognizes the significance of this, because he'd smelled the same thing during his WWI military service.
  • In Chris Ryan's Strikeback, the Hezbollah mention that the reason they're starving their captive is so this doesn't happen when she's executed.
  • Averted in the Michael Crichton book Prey, when in the beginning a person in a hospital is dying next to the bed of a small boy. The curtain's are drawn during the dramatic death, but the boy can still smell the bowels being emptied.
  • In The Dressmaker Stuart Pettyman does this after running head-first into a wall and breaking his neck.
  • Averted in The Riftwar Cycle; the stink of the bowels being voided is often mentioned when someone dies.
  • Not quite dealing with post-mortem defecation, but corpses in The Things They Carried are mentioned as belching as they are loaded onto carts.
  • Averted in Spider Robinson's Callahan's Legacy, when a character talks about a knife fight he had when he was younger. He specifically mentions that he knew, intellectually, what was going on, but becomes shocked and physically ill when he gets feces on his hand after stabbing someone in the abdomen.
  • Implied aversion in the Xeelee Sequence story Raft. One character sees "a shape hanging from rope" and "a pool of something brown and thick" beneath it.
  • One of the CSI: Miami tie-in novels averts it, the corpse is found in a car trunk and a 'number 3' is referred to, then it's explained.

Live Action TV

  • The League of Gentlemen does this with a bunch of people who died when the air supply to their bondage suits was cut off. When the suits are opened... eugh!
  • Actually played for humor in Supernatural, believe it or not. Sam is stuck in a Groundhog Day Loop where Dean dies (in various, hilarious ways) every day. Sam is aware of the repeating days; Dean is not. Sam tries to explain that in another version of that day, Dean got hit by a car and killed:

Dean: And?
Sam: And what?
Dean: Did it look cool like in the movies?
Sam: You peed yourself.
Dean (defensively): Of course I peed myself. Man gets hit by a car, you think he has full control over his bladder? Come on!

  • Obliquely referenced in a CSI: New York involving a man who was buried alive, dug his way out, then died. One of the clues that he'd previously been interred is that he's found wearing an adult diaper: a standard precaution in the funeral industry.
  • One episode of Twin Peaks had Agent Cooper mention this fact, but never actually depicted it.
  • Before his scheduled execution in Prison Break, Lincoln is presented with a diaper to put on beforehand for precisely this purpose.
  • Happens in Six Feet Under when a character is transporting a corpse back to the morgue and has to clean it up later.
  • One of the characters in The Sopranos urinates himself immediately after he hung himself in the basement.
  • In the House episode "97 Seconds", a clinic patient (and later, House himself) poops after deliberately electrocuting himself in order to have a Near Death Experience.
  • Mentioned in Oz, when a Catholic priest in the prison who had begun trying to reform Ryan O'Reilly and became his cellmate died suddenly in his sleep. Ryan gets to deal with the bowel failure, and in an unusually thoughtful and morose moment afterward, muses on the symbolism of the fact that everyone shits as they die.
  • On NCIS, the presence of urine on a carpet provided the first confirmation of an eyewitness's claim she'd seen a murder through her window. McGee explains this trope to account for it.
  • In an episode of Action, director Titus Scroad drowns face down in his pool. When Peter and Uncle Lonny go to investigate, Lonny muses on the possibility that he might not be dead, because "people usually shit their pants when they die". Then he sees "the turd in question".
  • Discussed in an episode of Game of Thrones: King Robert mentions how "they don't put that in the songs" during a conversation with Ser Barristan. Robert himself is nearly disemboweled a few episodes later and while lying on his deathbed mentions how it "stinks like death".
  • Mentioned in the pilot episode of Tales from the Crypt. A prison executioner (William Sadler) muses on the impending end of a death-row inmate's life and decides that the man will probably soil himself when he dies in the electric chair.
  • Not involving death, but still extremely egregious. In one episode of The Job, Mike is suffering a severe Potty Emergency when a criminal body-checks him into the bathroom wall, knocking him on his ass and unconscious. By all reasonable logic, this should have caused him to shit his pants.


Theatre

  • Referenced (sort of) in Waiting for Godot, except it's about the penile sphincter rather than the anal one.

Vladimir: What do we do now?
Estragon: Wait.
Vladimir: Yes, but while waiting.
Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection.
Estragon: (highly excited). An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow. That's why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
Estragon: Let's hang ourselves immediately!

    • Postmortem erections, by the way, are known as "angel lust," and occur when a body dies in an upright position. Gravity causes the person's blood to pool in his lower extremities, which causes the feet and legs to swell along with... the obvious.

Video Games

Forgemaster Garfrost yells: Garfrost hope giant underpants clean. Save boss great shame. For later.

  • In DikuMUD, one of the possible item drops from killing a monster is "steaming turds of [monster name]".
  • In the online flash game Don't Shit Your Pants, the goal is to... well... If you kill yourself, you appear to succeed at first, but then this trope comes into play.
  • Averted in Yume Miru Kusuri, of all games. This occurs when Aeka and Kouhei strangle Kyoka to death...or try to. Considering Kyoka actually survives (if barely, and thanks to this trope), it might not count.
  • When investigating a murder victim in L.A. Noire the coroner will refer to the usual evacuation smell.
  • Some of the shown deaths in Kara no Shoujo, particularly those of Tsuzuriko and Orihime, avert this (though only for the latter if Reiji dies alongside her).
  • The patient in Trauma Center doesn't die, but one of them has a hole in her intestines that is, essentially, leaking shit into her blood and poisoning her to death; you have to remove some of it from the liver and then patch the hole.
  • It's mentioned in Laura Bow and the Dagger of Amon Ra that several victims have "additional wet marks", which Laura declines to touch.
  • Lampshaded in Deja Vu

Atari ST Version Text: You realize with horror that you will be found dead without a proper change of underwear and socks. You cringe in the worst way till death mercifully takes the unbearable thought away. Start again.


Web Original

  • Mentioned in Team Four Star's Dragon Ball Abridged Bardock Father of Goku special. Dodoria blasts Bardock and his dead teammates, the latter ending up in a pile on top of Bardock, and he remarks "Oh God, you really do soil yourself when you die."
  • Also referenced in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Abridged, when Dio considers removing Jotaro's pants to see if he's really dead because "After all, they say after you die, you do sh*t yourself."
  • VG Cats example here.
  • A fan-edit for Puella Magi Madoka Magica crossed over with Hidamari Sketch showed this happening to Mami/Miyako. Note that this did not happen in the actual episode.

Western Animation

  • In The Venture Bros. When Race Bannon dies, he evacuates his bowels. The boys get Squicked out and Brock points out that, "They never show that part on TV".
  • Averted in South Park as a Running Gag in Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes.
    • In another episode, specifically as a Call Back to the above, it was an indication that a major character, Chef, had been Killed Off for Real. Cartman says "The last thing you do before you die is crap your.."- cue poop. Also see, Crosses the Line Twice.
    • To the point where it's now become a running gag to show a dead body unceremoniously letting out loud fart sounds to purposely ruin the drama going on.
  • In the Futurama episode "The Sting" the priest at Fry's funeral grosses out the audience by drawing attention to this having occurred.
  • Refered to in one episode of Family Guy. When Quagmire is playing dead to be rid of a woman, Peter attempts to confirm it by shouting "You know what'll prove it? When people die, they void their bowels. I said, when people die they void their bowels!" Quagmire sells it. Peter then makes fun of him for it.
    • In the season 3 episode, "Death Lives", Death told Peter he soiled himself when lightning struck him.
    • Also, when Peter takes first aid, he runs to assist someone (who's perfectly fine), freaking them out when he insists he has to check if they've soiled themselves.
    • Brian comments that Bertram voided his bowels upon being killed by Stewie.

Real Life

  • Some Samurai would fast before a battle so that "their bodies would not pass dirt upon death" in order to avert this trope.
  • Any mother who ever used the Stock Phrase "Always wear clean underwear, because it'll be shameful if you get run over by a car and are found to have been wearing dirty undies when you died". Er, hate to break this to you Mom, but, as Bill Cosby said in reference to mothers insisting that their children wear clean underwear in case they get in a car accident: "First you think it, then you say it, then you do it." He did come up with a workaround in that most mothers say "Have a clean pair of undies" when invoking this phrase, all he needs is to have them stored in the glove compartment.
  • The classic joke where the condemned orders fiber muffins for their last meal. Think about it...
  • Not death, but one of the (several) reasons patients scheduled to undergo surgery are often instructed to fast beforehand is if their operation requires the administration of a muscle-relaxant that will affect the anal sphincter. This is also cause to pity obstetricians, since the baby's head emerging from the birth canal compresses the lower intestine, like a tube of toothpaste (squeezed from the bottom, no less.)
    • More likely reasons are to avoid regurgitation/inhalation of vomit, and to have the operating zone reasonably clean in cases of intestinal surgery.
  • Some places in the United States where capital punishment is still practiced place the condemned in an adult diaper.
  • When the killers were about to be hanged for the Clutter family murders in Truman Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, one of them kept asking to use the bathroom because they wanted to avoid this. They had to be told no matter how much you get out before you die, it will still happen.
  • When a programmer says that their computer, program, or operating system "shit the bed," they mean that the computer/program/operating system crashed horribly. The phrase comes from this trope.
  1. ↑ from the abdominal injuries variant
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