And Then A Skeleton Popped Out

Confirmed 144,027

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About

"AND THEN A SKELETON POPPED OUT" is a parody creepypasta and sarcastic expression used to mock creepypastas that are too predictable in outcome or troll pastas that are poorly written on purpose.

Origin

The phrase was first used by an anonymous 4chan user in response to an /x/ (paranormal) board post^[1] re-telling the "who was phone?"^[1] story, an often-reposted creeypasta originally posted in 2008 that is well-known for its comedic element:

"A FEW YEARS AGO A MAN WAS WALKING DOWN A ROAD BECAUSE HIS CAR BROKE DOWN AND HE SAW A CAR COMING UP BEHIND HIM SO HE STUCK OUT HIS THUMB TO HITCH HIKE AND THE CAR STOPPED AHEAD OF HIM. HE RAN UP TO THE PASSENGER SIDE AND OPENED THE DOOR. WHEN HE OPENED THE DOOR A SKELETON POPPED OUT"

The story is often accompanied by a clip art of a skeleton (shown below), in a similar vein to its usage in 2spooky.

Spread

Due to the rampant growth of copypasta trolling on 4chan's /x/ board, the story soon became used as a staple response to criticize creepypastas that are all too predictable in outcome. On January 1st, 2010, a Facebook fan page^[3] for the phrase "And Then a Skeleton Popped Out" was created. On May 7th, 2010, Urban Dictionary^[5] user LeJesseRawrs submitted an entry for the phrase, defining it as a phrase "used at the end of a story to spice it up, make it interesting, or to just keep someone's attention." On August 19th, 2010, an article about the troll pasta was submitted to Creepypasta Wikia.^[4] On May 27th, 2011, YouTuber Shadowbreaker9001 uploaded a dramatic reading of the creepypasta, gaining over 11,000 views (shown below).

On March 4th, 2014, Redditor yesofcourseitdid^[7] posted a compilation of short creepypastas edited to have the phrase appear at the end, gaining over 220 points. On October 30th, Imgur user FEMACampCounselor^[8] uploaded several "And then a skeleton popped out" trollpastas with humorous GIFs.