Out, Damned Spot!: Difference between revisions

Please note that examples of this trope need not always involve ''literal'' washing. Quite often, in fact, it is manifested in any general sense of feeling "dirty."

This is an example of [[Truth in Television]]: the New York Times published a study showing that some people wash their hands when they have feelings of guilt.

== [[Film]] ==

* Played very straight in the remake of ''[[James Bond|Casino Royale]]'', during the shower scene. Vesper's consumed by feelings of guilt after watching James kill a bunch of [[Mooks]], and he finds her sitting in the shower, clothed, and sobbing about the blood on her. The original plan was [[Fan Service|for her to be in her underwear]]. Daniel Craig, upstanding gentleman that he is, convinced everyone that this wouldn't make sense.

* ''[[Bullitt]]'': Used rather beautifully at the end.

* ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]'' has Nathan Wallace. He's very good at repossessing organs, but the fact that he actually enjoys his work leads to a lot of [[Out, Damned Spot!]] moments. It doesn't help that he's constantly being guilt tripped by Dead Marni and taunted by the Genterns.

** A good example comes at the end of "Thankless Job" - when the song ends, it [http://i47.tinypic.com/30cu9dw.jpg hits Nathan] about what he's doing ''while his arm is still in the corpse'', and he ends up spraying down his uniform and tools.

* Similarly, in ''[[Scotland, PA]]'' (which is ''Macbeth'' in a rural 70's Pennsylvania fast-food joint), Pat McBeth gets a small burn from frying oil when Duncan dies. As she sinks into madness, she becomes convinced that the burn is getting worse, even though it completely healed in reality. In the end, {{spoiler|she's driven to cut off her hand with a kitchen knife, then promptly faints and bleeds to death}}.

* ''[[Chicago]]'' has a bit at the beginning with a character having a hard time scrubbing the blood off her hands in the dressing room before being called up on stage.

* ''[[Redwall|Outcast of Redwall]]'': Veil in suffers something similar. His victim was poisoned, and the Abbey herbalist puts out an announcement that it will be easy to find the killer because the particular poison used will stain one's skin and fur red within two days if one touches it with bare paws. Veil, unaware that this is a complete and utter lie, starts frantically scrubbing his paws at every opportunity, even with sandstone, thus making them look red. He breaks into the infirmary to find the "herbal solution" the herbalist supposedly left there and dips his paws into the basin without looking, only to find that said basin actually contains beetroot juice, thus leaving his paws very obviously [[Red Right Hand|red]] and proving his guilt.

* ''[[On My Honor]]'': As the Newberry Award-winning book goes on, the guilt-ridden protagonist keeps smelling the river everywhere he goes.

* Another literary example: ''The leader with blood-stained hands'', from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's ''Rhymes and Legends'', depicts the tragic story of the Hindi [[Warrior Prince]] Pulo, a [[Byronic Hero]] who always wore gloves so nobody would see the ''permanent'' blood stains on his palms He got those by [[Murder the Hypotenuse|killing his older brother to steal away his beautiful wife]], so the stains remained there as a symbol of his crime. {{spoiler|And they didn't go away until he crossed the [[Despair Event Horizon]] and commited suicide to atone for his sins}}.

* In the novel ''Stormland'' by the icelandic author Hallgrí­mur Helgason, {{spoiler|the protagonist Bøddi begins seeing black flies crawling on himself, objects and the faces of everyone he talks to after shooting his brother through the eye and seeing the flies crawl around in his wound. The visions get more intense as his mental breakdown worsens.}}

* In ''[[The Second Coming]]'': {{spoiler|Judith, after she's cooked the poisoned pasta but before Steve's eaten it}} can be seen drying her hair and rubbing her head in a rather forceful manner.

* ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''. One of Tom Servo's repeated riffs: "But you'll never be able to get rid of the stain on your soul."

* On ''[[Lost]]'', having just killed Ana-Lucia and Libby, Michael asks Eko about Hell while scrubbing Libby's blood off the floor. The conversation ends with Michael going outside to throw up.

* ''Bad To the Bone'': The 1997 TV movie had an example that eerily echoed ''Macbeth''. Francesca ("Frankie") Wells (Kristy Swanson) is a [[Fille Fatale]] (she is 19, but often behaves as if she is several years younger) who has [[Self-Made Orphan|killed her own mother]] in order to [[Insurance Fraud|get her hands on the family inheritance]] and then talked her younger brother into killing her latest boyfriend so that they can take over the nightclub the boyfriend owns. Both are eventually arrested and charged with the murders, but Frankie jumps bail, gives herself a false name, and eventually winds up living on a seacoast villa with a rich man she has seduced. She spends one morning swimming in the ocean. The rich man sees her coming in from the surf and mentions that he once heard that the ocean is supposed to wash all one's sins away. In a splendid display of dramatic irony, Frankie tells him that, unfortunately, that isn't the case. A subtle yet effective [[Cry for the Devil]], especially given Frankie's [[Freudian Excuse|Woobie-ish backstory]].