The Morbid Prank Stranger Things's Creators Played on Noah Schnapp's Mom

Even though you know it's all make-believe, it can't be easy for the parents of a child actor to watch their kid suffer through a traumatic event in a movie or on a television series. And few people probably have it worse than the parents of the young cast members of Stranger Things, who have endured countless run-ins with very bad things in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. Fortunately for the show's creators, Noah Schnapp's mother seems to have a sense of humor about it all.

Noah's character Will Byers might have endured the most suffering in the Netflix series, as the first season is centered around his disappearance. In the fourth episode, "The Body," Sheriff Jim Hopper discovers that although Will is confirmed dead, his body is actually a fake, and that Will is still alive somewhere. That prop body set the stage for a pretty morbid prank the Duffer Brothers decided to play on Schnapp's mom.

"We immediately took Noah’s mom aside, told her we had something to show her, and led her into a dark closet where we had propped up this frighteningly realistic corpse of her son," the directing duo told Entertainment Weekly. "After the initial shock, she loved it."

As hard as it may be to believe, Noah's mom apparently did find it amusing. She even took photos with the body and texted them to her friends.

Here's hoping we don't see another Will body in the third season of Stranger Things, debuting on July 4—if only for Noah's mom's sake.