Corpse

Most enemies leave behind corpses when they die. The exceptions are lost souls and pain elementals. Additionally, arch-viles and nightmare arch-viles leave behind a generic "bloody corpse" tile that doesn't count as a corpse for the purposes of respawning or resurrection. (It does count for various skulls though.)

Gibbing

Gibbing a monster prevents it from leaving a corpse and from dropping items. This can be useful if arch-viles are present (or on Nightmare! difficulty).

To gib a monster you must kill it by dealing a large amount of damage. The amount of damage depends on the maximum health of the monster and the damage type of your weapon. Melee, bullet, shrapnel, and piercing weapons must deal 400% of the monster's maximum health to cause a gib. Plasma and acid weapons must deal 200% of maximum health to gib. Fire weapons are the best at gibbing; they only need to deal 150% of maximum health.

It is also possible to gib corpses after the monster has already died. Corpses that are named after enemies (which excludes the arch-vile's "bloody corpse"), have 1 HP, and as much armor as the corresponding enemy. Corpses don't block bullets, so you'll usually need explosives to destroy them, which includes your weapons, but also barrels or using monster's projectiles. (In practice, most non-BFG explosion will destroy all corpses in its radius.) Plasma shotguns (including plasmatic shrapnel assemblies) and skulls also work, but they are much more rare. Notably, despite also being a shotgun with a modified damage type, piercing-damage shotguns (ie. Nano shrapnel) do *not* destroy corpses.

There are a few other ways to dispose of corpses:

• An enemy killed on a square already containing a corpse will replace the previous corpse with its own. Particularly useful for open areas with no doors, like Hell's Arena.
• An enemy killed on a door will be crushed, and won't leave a corpse.
• An enemy killed in a fluid will sink or dissolve.
• An enemy killed on stairs, or a teleporter, will have its body parts split apart as well.

With the exception of monsters killed in acid or lava, these techniques don't technically "gib" the corpse, thus, they don't prevent it from dropping useful items or ammo.

In a "normal" game, they will only be useful when fighting arch-viles, but when playing Nightmare / AoDk or any challenge / level that includes respawning monsters, they will often be invaluable.

Respawning

On Nightmare! difficulty level, corpses sometimes respawn into new enemies. The newly created enemy is the same kind as the enemy that left the corpse. Respawning is prevented if the corpse is destroyed or if the player or another enemy is standing on the corpse.

Every 10.0s on a level, there is a chance for corpses to respawn. There are two checks for a corpse to respawn: a global check that must be passed if any corpses are to respawn, and then another spawn for each corpse. For the global check, the chance of passing starts at 20% when entering the level and grows by 1% for each subsequent check. The chance of passing the per-corpse checks starts at 10% and increases by 1% for every 100.0s spent on the level.