Chalk Outline/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: An outline is made in the ground around a corpse.

  • Straight: In a crime scene, there are many body-shaped outlines of chalk on the pavement.
  • Exaggerated: The apocalypse has occurred. Most have died. And those people all have a chalk outline.
  • Downplayed: A boy stomps on an ant. The ant gets an outline.
  • Justified: The outline will help the authorities to get an accurate picture of the crime scene as they saw it.
  • Inverted: Someone dies on a chalk outline.
  • Subverted: Even though there are police tape and chalk outlines, it turns out to be just an artist's newest piece.
  • Double Subverted: The artist was using the work to cover up a murder.
  • Parodied: A chalk outline is made around a person hanging from a noose. Somehow.
  • Zig Zagged: A crime scene with chalk outlines is revealed to be an art show. An art show that was covering up a murder. Of crows. That turn out to have killed a bunch of people.
  • Averted: A person is killed, but is left there with no outline.
  • Enforced: Showing a dead body is not allowed, so a chalk outline is substituted and it is just implied that the corpse was ugly.
  • Lampshaded: "Why are you doing that? No one outlines a body in chalk anymore!"
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: The cops take pictures of the crime scene and leave a numbered marker to indicate where the body was.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

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