Horowitz is very particular about who gets cast. "Nothing looks worse than a bad dead body," he said. He explained that about half the people who audition to play a corpse can't keep their eyes still, whether they're open or closed. One time, a man playing a dead body left the set because he found his makeup far too disturbing.

"It's a hard, cold, metal autopsy table," Horowitz tells the people who audition for the part of a dead body. Because of the body drawers, he warned, "This is not the place for claustrophobic people."

"I try and weed out the faint of heart."

Brian Dietzen, who's been performing fake autopsies as Jimmy Palmer since the end of NCIS's first season, had his own take on the cadavers.

"Your whole body is freezing and your spot is on fire," he said of the bodies who have to lie on a cold metal table with the examiners' lights pointed at them, largely naked in the middle of a roomful of people. "It's kind of like living an anxiety dream."