Pummeling the Corpse
"I hate to kick a man when he's dead. They just don't put up much of a fight."—Officer Joe Vickers, Psycho Cop Returns
A character has just killed someone, usually through a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. They keep pummeling the body long after it's clear that the victim is already dead.
Optional but common: an onlooker or friend pulls the killer back, repeats some variation of 'you can stop, he's dead' or 'I think he's dead already' and may administer a Cooldown Hug.
Related in spirit to Beating a Dead Player. See also There Is No Kill Like Overkill.
As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Comic Books
- From Sin City the death of the completely deserving title character of the story "That Yellow Bastard" at the hands of a pissed-off Hartigan.
Hartigan: "After a while, all I'm doing is punching wet chips of bone into the floorboards. So I stop."
Film
- After shooting Gary in the head in Psycho Cop Returns, Officer Vickers begins "arresting" his body, but when it proves "uncooperative", Vickers starts kicking and stomping it.
- Michael Bolton in the printer scene in Office Space.
- In Boondock Saints, Rocco beats the sick hitman that he and the others were targeting to death with a cue ball until the brothers pull him off and force him to cool down.
- Subverted in Star Trek: First Contact; Picard rears back to bludgeon a Borg he's just shot, but Lilly pulls him back before he does so. "I think you got him!"
- In Starship Troopers, Sugar Watkins curses continually while repeatedly shooting a dead bug. Even after Dizzy pushes him off he fires a few more rounds into the bug.
Literature
- In The Silmarillion, the Balrogs pummel Fingon's corpse into the mud even after they kill him.
Live Action Television
- The murderer of the week in the CSI episode "Bad To The Bone" provokes and beats a man several times his size to death. The gang of kids in the episode "Fannysmakin'" also hand out such beatings to random tourists, although only one of their victims actually dies (who, ironically, wasn't a tourist).
Manga and Anime
- Possibly the end of Puella Magi Madoka Magica episode seven, but it's hard to tell.
- It moves me deep within my heart to watch a fresh recruit stabbing over and over into the bloated chest of a long-dead enemy.
- In the manga version of Ark by Sound Horizon, Soror does this to the man who is implied to have been molesting her, with her brother doing the "it's okay, you can stop now" thing.
- Renton, of all people, has one of these moments in Eureka Seven (anime, at least.) Then he notices the severed arm sticking to his mecha...
- Atem ends up doing the card game equivalent of this to Weevil/Haga in Season 4 of Yu-Gi-Oh! His lifepoints are already at 0 and his soul is being sucked away, but Atem just keeps attacking directly because he's angry (justifiably so).
Video Games
- The end of God of War III... well, it's really up to the player how long you wanna keep pounding the living crap out of Zeus, but considering how all the blood is obstructing your vision, you're probably gonna keep going for a bit... just to be ABSOLUTELY sure that he's REALLY, REALLY dead.
- Max Payne delivers the ballistic variant of this on Jack Lupino when he finally takes him down, wanting to make very sure that he stays that way. He only stops when Mona Sax shows up and tells him "I think he's dead already."
Web Comics
- Happens in Goblins when Kin kills Dellyn Goblinslayer, and then keeps on stabbing. He deserved every one of those, by the way.
Web Original
- When Aradia from Homestuck finally gets her hands on Manipulative Bitch Vriska, the result isn't pretty. However, we later find this trope was subverted when it turns out Vriska was not dead.
Western Animation
- Parodied in Family Guy during the execution of the Surfin' Bird record.
- The Simpsons: In a flashBack we see why Moe was kicked out of The Little Rascals. (He played Stinky, the kid who always got a face full of exhaust from an exhaust pipe.)
Moe thinks back to an episode where the Little Rascals are playing marbles. He flicks one away; it bounces into an exhaust pipe
Moe: "Oh, no! My favorite aggie!"
Alfalfa runs off, looks in the exhaust pipe. The car starts and blows soot in his face
Moe: (smashing Alfalfa's head into the ground) "You stole my bit! That's my bit...ooh! Ooh! You stole my bit!"
Director: "Cut! Oh my God! He's killed the original Alfalfa."
Moe: (in the present) "Yeah. Luckily, Alfalfa was an orphan owned by the studio."
- Homer's attack on the Hamburgler in one episode of The Simpsons (not actually fatal but the line still came up).
- In Teen Titans, "Apprentice: Part 1", Robin delivers one to an already mangled Slade-bot out of anger after discovering that the warehouse they went to contained neither Slade nor the Chronoton Detonator.