Nothing but Skulls: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:skull_hill_923.jpg|link=Conan the Barbarian|right]]

 

{{quote|''"Disturbing, but tidy."''|''[[Runescape]]'' }}

 

Piles of bones composed of [[Nothing but Skulls]]. The rest of the bones vanish without explanation. It doesn't matter whether the victims were killed by ancient death traps, man-eating monsters or barbarian hordes; nothing remains but the skull.

 

After reading this page, skull will no longer sound like a word.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[His Dark Materials]]'': Oxford College has skulls in niches.

* ''[[Predator]]''; In somewhat of a subversion, goes for nothing but skulls ''with'' the spinal cord still intact. Presumably they go for more on Ebay.

* ''[[Ghostbusters|Ghostbusters II]]'', at least in terms of imagery. Viggo the Carpathian says, "On a mountain of skulls, in a castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood." Also a [[Badass Boast]] or whatever.

* In the opening scene of ''[[Muppet Treasure Island]]'', there's a cavern full of skulls. They sing a line of "Shiver My Timbers".

 

* In the ''[[MST3K]]'' episode "[[Cave Dwellers]]" there's a giant snake pit with lots and lots of skulls. "Oh look, anal-retentive snakes, they lined up the skulls!"

** More recently, we have "The Wedding of River Song", which featured a crypt full of ''living'' skulls, leftovers from the process of creating Headless Monks.

 

* ''Zelda'' series:

** Skulls often replace [[Crate Expectations|crates and jars]] in natural caves. There are usually no other bones, [[Everything Fades|or corpses outside undead-themed dungeons]], and the sheer number of them suggests that someone is [[Money for Nothing|shooting green rupees out of a slingshot]] to kill enemies. It's reasonable to assume the 'normal' skulls are just dead skull-enemies.

* ''[[King's Quest VI]]'': The Lord of the Dead was surrounded by a gigantic pile of bones, made up almost entirely of skulls, as shown in [http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b241/ATMachine/sierramisc/kq6lorddead1.png this screenshot].

* ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'': In one version, the Necromancer city can build a 'Pyramid of Skulls', which looks somewhat garish, but boosts your weekly production of Skeletons significantly.

'''DM:''' [[Durable Deathtrap|It's just a trap]]. Dungeons have them all the time.<br />

'''Aragorn:''' I'm not calling the device into question. I'm questioning the payload. Thousands and thousands of skulls? How does that work exactly? Was this a race of floating heads? }}

 

 

 

* Buffalo skulls were high in phosphorus and were bought up by fertilizer and explosive factories. They were piled in a giant mound before being shipped off.

** By the way, discouragment? It failed. Serbs rose again couple years after that, and actually got to be represented by one of their own.

* Assyrian armies piled up pyramids of skulls.

* The Mongols were also quite fond of this as a form of psychological warfare. Timur (who was a self-declared successor of Genghis Khan) reputedly built a pyramid out of 90,000 skulls outside of the city of Dehli to coax the city's surrender.

* Catacombs and ossuaries (where bones are taken after they've been in a grave for a respectable amount of time to free up graveyard space), they're stored by bone type and size, not by owner, because it's a more efficient use of space.

** In the Paris Catacombs, while there are all kinds of bones, skulls are carefully set in front of the piles to keep them from collapsing, or just for [[The Fun in Funeral|making fun shapes]] (there's a pattern of skulls in shape of a heart for example in one bone-pile.) The quick impression of the place comes close to the trope, even though careful scrutiny quickly proves it false.

* Memorials and museums for the Rwandan Genocide have... very neat stacks of skulls. A hell of a lot of them. There are a few reasons for this, the first being of course that skulls are small, easily stackable, and represent one clear death each, thus having a huge emotional impact. The second being that the large scale systematic mutilation of the victims and use of explosives in small confined areas (like churches) left it rather difficult to determine which bone belonged to whom, and it would be impossible to piece together every one of the thousands of skeletons.

* [[Pol Pot]] is famed for his love of this trope. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum has shelves of the skulls of his victims.

[[Category:Horror Tropes]]

[[Category:Nothing But Skulls]]