A fox is devoured by maggots in the opening credits of True Blood. The sequence shows a fox’s head decomposing in accelerated footage as maggots feed on the corpse.
True Blood’s title sequence was created by Digital Kitchen for HBO and is set to “Bad Things,” performed by Jace Everett. Rather than introducing the plot directly, it presents a disturbing collage of Louisiana landscapes, religious imagery, sexuality, violence, decay, and strange wildlife. The imagery establishes the show’s mixture of Southern Gothic atmosphere and supernatural horror.
The fox is one of several animal images in the sequence. A Venus flytrap engulfing a frog appears elsewhere, while other shots use snakes and additional natural imagery. These scenes connect the human behavior shown in the credits with the harsh, predatory logic of the natural world.
The footage is sometimes misremembered as showing a dog because the carcass is shown in close-up and quickly changes during the time-lapse effect. The credited animal is a fox, making “Fox” the precise answer rather than a broader response such as “a wild animal.”