The Secret Behind The Gruesome 'Dexter' Crime Scenes Is Even More Disturbing Than You Think

Fans of the show might notice Dexter changed his method of wrapping his targets as the series progressed. The cocoon-like plastic used to secure people in Season 1 had to be altered after the crew discovered it could be dangerous for the actors. Because the plastic covered much of their body, it cut off their ability to breathe. Meltzer came up with the idea to separate the plastic covering into sections and only hold down the top of the head, torso, hips, and feet.

Although this made life for the actors less dangerous, their job was not easy. Actors wore nothing under the plastic wrap, covered only by a G-string that matched their skin tone. The lighting and camera exposure helped cover them but didn't make the scenes more comfortable for the actors. To add to the difficulty of their job, actors had to lie on the table for a number of hours, unable to get up on their own. Meltzer noted, "They can't get up unless we let them off the table."

To help keep Rita's demise at the end of Season 4 a secret, the writers created a script with a fake ending. Producers didn't tell Michael C. Hall how Rita would perish until almost the same day as filming, and didn't inform Julie Benz of her character's final moments until an hour before she received the final script. They kept the filming crew small to limit the number of people who knew how the season would end. "It ended up being the last scene that we shot, so that we could get as many extra people out of there as possible," recalled Meltzer.

A bathroom with a bathtub on the soundstage served as the set; however, because it wasn't a real bathroom, it had no plumbing. Crew members had to install a plumbing system in order to fill the tub with blood, as well as remove it. Hall remembered the scene being tough, horrifying, and heartbreaking, especially seeing the infant actor sitting on the floor covered in fake blood. Hall later comforted upset fans on Reddit by explaining, "The baby's mother was right beside the camera. And we did our best to make it feel like playtime."

One Season 5 scene features Deb discovering two mostly decomposed cadavers, meaning maggots and flies covered their remains. To make this scene as realistic as possible, Meltzer used real flies and maggots instead of CGI or special effects. "Anytime a prop master can pick up a phone and call an animal trainer and say, 'I need 20,000 maggots' - that's a good day," he said.

He decided to use fake remains for the scene, most likely to portray decomposition without having to coat an actor in layers of makeup, as well as saving someone from being covered in maggots for several hours. Unfortunately, even the large amount of maggots Meltzer requested wasn't enough to make the scene authentic, so Meltzer sprinkled brown rice over the remains to make the swarm look bigger. He also released 5,000 flies onto the set, with a licensed insect trainer making sure no insects were harmed during filming.

The Dexter prop team used a variety of chainsaws and blades throughout the series, many of which were real . For the actors' safety, the team dulled the blades. They also created a variety of specially made devices, including one with a retractable blade . Since the handle for the retractable tool needed to be big enough to hide the blade, this special device is only on screen for a few seconds, usually as it moves rapidly towards its target.

Meltzer also created a prop with just a handle screwed onto a plate attached to an actor's chest. This made it look as if a blade was stuck in a target's chest without needing to puncture an artificial torso. Meltzer used rubber blades in a few shots, especially those requiring an actor to swing at other actors, or perform any action that posed a threat to anyone's safety.

Meltzer's on-set trailer must have been a museum of horrors; as prop master, he was responsible for storing Dexter's blades, bins of limbs, and the slide collection, among other items. Thanks to his work on the show, Meltzer made a name for himself in Hollywood as a master of blood, enabling him to take some side work on vampire-themed television shows during Dexter's run. In addition to creating his own recipe for the fake substance, which looked real and could be easily cleaned, Meltzer came up with other ingenious ideas that made his work on the show stand out.

In order to avoid the mess and set-up time needed to create realistic pools of blood, Meltzer's team invented a mess-free, portable version made from silicone. These thin red pools could be placed beneath an actor or prop body to produce realistic gore, but could also be picked up and moved with no clean-up required. The pools, as well as smaller spatter droplets often placed around them, stuck to surfaces and the prop team simply had to peel them off and put them somewhere else. 

Season 1's Ice Truck Killer (ITK) posed a problem for Dexter's prop department, despite their large supply of bins full of limbs. Since the ITK drained his marks, the remains he left around the city for people to find needed to appear even less lifeless than the props they had. They fabricated new sets of fingers, feet, and arms to make the remains seem more authentic. In order to make a block of ice containing several severed fingers with brightly colored nails, the team used silicone to form the fingers, painted them with real nail polish, and suspended them in acetate that resembled ice.

Since the storyline takes place during the Christmas season, episode 11, "Truth Be Told," involves the ITK leaving some of his work under a Christmas tree in a Santa's house display. The crew set up the scene in a public location in Long Beach that also happened to be a big tourist destination. People who passed by often stopped, not knowing what to make of the gruesome holiday scene being filmed in October. "There was a severed head under the tree. We got a few looks," Meltzer recalled.