History Main / CorpseLand

* Cybertron in [[Creator/MichaelBay Michael Bay's]] ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' is depicted as this while Optimus narrates the history of the Great War to Sam and Mikaela. The only thing moving is a lone Autobot limping to safety... before being impaled by Megatron's spear.

* ''LightNovel/{{No 6}}'': The main characters have to climb a mountain of dead bodies.
* Any place with a sufficient concentration/accumulation of dead bodies in the New World of ''LightNovel/{{Overlord}}'' can become a nexus of necromantic energies, which cause the spontaneous creation of TheUndead; weaker forms appear at first, but if some sort of necromantic critical mass can be reached it can [[FromBadToWorse cause a chain reaction]] where ever greater numbers of undead of ever stronger varieties appear until a run-of-the-mill ZombieApocalypse will seem mild in comparison. This is why cemeteries in large cities such as E-Rantel are walled off and guarded and the weak undead that periodically appear are routinely culled, and why the Katze Plains, where the Re-Estize Kingdom and Baharuth Empire have their annual war/battle, is uninhabited despite ostensibly being in a strategically advantageous geographical location.

* ''Franchise/DeadSpace'' uses this as its primary setting, aboard the ''Ishimura.'' While an artificial environment, a good bit of the ship seems to have "gone wrong," with most of the safeguards on dangerous areas disabled and the whole ship being a great deal more of a death trap than usual. Also, you know, the roving horde of mutant space zombies that now call the place home.

* In ''Literature/GrandmasterOfDemonicCultivationMoDaoZuShi'', the Yiling Burial Mounds are the remnants of a centuries-old battlefield tainted with resentful energy and restless dead. Legions of cultivators over the centuries have attempted to purify the corrupted land and failed, and no one has ever emerged from it alive. [[spoiler:Until Wei Wuxian walks out at the beginning of the Sunshot Campaign, after creating demonic cultivation and creating the Yin Tiger Tally. He later retreats to it alongside refugees from the defeated Wen clan, establishing a settlement to survive.]]

* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': The AlternateDimension known as Deadworld is one giant graveyard, having once been the homeworld of four now-undead [[EvilCounterpart Dark Judges]] who [[InsaneTrollLogic reasoned]] that [[AllCrimesAreEqual life itself was a crime]].

* The ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' games and its relatives use this frequently; notably, almost all found items in the games which in any other title would just be lying around are looted from corpses. New Londo Ruins in ''VideoGame/Dark SoulsI'' takes the cake; ''most of the walkable floor'' is made entirely of corpses.

* A game mechanic in ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII''; Undead structures can only be built on Blight, ashen, bone-studded terrain generated by their Ziggurats or headquarters building. The corpses are continuously generated by graveyards, though only up to five at a time.
* In the ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', Deadwind Pass is a stretch of gray, barren mountains inhabited solely by {{giant spider}}s, vultures, and an ogre tribe. Everything else is either dead or left long ago.
** In Northrend, the Dragonblight is an ancient dragon graveyard littered with the skeletons of wyrms and other creatures. Icecrown Citadel appears to be a glacier at first, but on closer examination you can find corpses frozen in the ice, including Frost Wyrms being excavated by Scourge forces.
** In Outland, Hellfire Peninsula is a shattered, dusty battlefield whose wildlife is universally violent, predatory and often demonically possessed. Flames erupt from hellish chasms, undead soldiers roam the ruins of their fortresses, the only water available is from swamps of mutated poison slimes, and one of the major local landmarks is the Path of Glory, a road the Horde made from the bones of slain Draenei.
*** The Bone Wastes of Terokkar Forest are covered with the remains of Draenei once entombed in Auchindoun.
* In ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'', this is often the fate of a planet that gets glassed by the Covenant; in ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', we can see this process happen live as the Covenant glass New Alexandria. Post-war, the people who work to restore glassed worlds often feel unnerved by the fact that the "glass" they're clearing is partly made up of people killed during the glassing.
* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' had areas where bodies were stacked in piles or covered with sheets. Other places had barricades that have been overrun.
* Pools of the Ancient Dead in ''VideoGame/MediEvil'' is a barren, swampy area where the dead from a long ago battle still roam.
* In ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', Evil Biomes are filled with mutated plants that resemble clusters of [[EyesDoNotBelongThere eyeballs]] or [[CreepyLongFingers fingers]], [[GrimyWater murky water]], and [[TheUndead undead monsters]], and any dead monster not quickly incinerated or processed into supplies zombify. There are also dust storms that carry "[[ThePlague Forgotten Beast Syndrome]]," which may involve anything from [[EyeScream everyone's eyes rotting away]] to [[ZombieApocalypse turning them into undead]] DemonicSpiders known as Husks. It says a lot when one hopes the cloud of fog that's enveloped your subjects is [[DeadlyGas merely poisonous]]...
** An ASCII-based form of this graced the exterior of the infamous LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}} after its residents resorted to magma-cannoning all their troubles away, since no one bothered to clean up the remains. Fanart tends to go a little overboard, depicting a massive wasteland of trashed goblin equipment and [[DemonicSpider elephant]] bones.
* ''VideoGame/TheWitcher2AssassinsOfKings'' has some, complete with skeletons and evil spirits.
* The ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' series has Char "The Ultimate Sin of the COG", the area where the [[KillSat Hammer of Dawn]] was used on the Locust to halt their attacks, roughly '''75%''' of Sera. In a disturbing mirror of Pompeii, there are ashen remains of every man, woman and child who were unable to reach the safe zone.

* In ''VideoGame/NetHack'', the Valley of the Dead is strewn with corpses of "previous" adventurers the first time the player arrives there.
* ''[[{{VideoGame/Crysis}} Crysis 2]]'' involves a deadly alien disease that is ravaging New York City. In the game the player is constantly walking past quarantine zones filled with grotesque corpses.
* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', when Shepard goes onto [[spoiler:the Reaper-hijacked Citadel]], they end up in a long hallway piled with corpses on either side. In this case the corpses are recent and have actually been stacked there for processing.
* UsefulNotes/{{Dubai}} has been reduced to this in ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine''. Take your pick: withered, mummified corpses littering the open roads or ruins, the results of the monster sandstorm and failed evacuation attempt. Fresher corpses hanging from scaffolds or street lights, deserters or looters punished when [[BigBad Colonel Konrad]] declared martial law. Rotting, bloated corpses hidden in tunnels or buried buildings, the scenes of massacres or mass executions. Charred, partially-melted corpses that result from White Phosphorus mortars. And then there are the moments later in the game where [[PlayerCharacter Captain Walker]] starts hallucinating corpses with glowing eyes, clawing their way out of the sand to reach for him and his squad...

* In ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'', the entire continent of [[PenalColony Wraeclast]] is essentially this. Zombies endlessly roam the coastline and one of the characters even remarks that nothing stays dead for long in Wraeclast.

* Dunwall in ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' is currently in the midst of a plague born by [[SwarmOfRats swarms of large angry rats]]. Despite the quarantine efforts, the death count is considerable. The bodies of the dead are collected, taken by train to the abandoned and flooded Financial District, and unceremoniously dumped off the raised tracks, forming an enormous pile that the waters float corpses down throughout the rest of the district.
* Mount Todd Forest in ''VideoGame/{{Wick}}'' is a forest haunted by no less than seven ghosts, the remains of a family who died under mysterious circumstances. The emponymous game "Wick" involves locking some poor sod in at midnight with a single candle and a book of matches and seeing if they make it to 6:00. ''Most players end up dying.''
* The Rotten Vale in ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld'' consists partially of massive rotting skeletons and partially of rock caves lined with smaller corpses. It is also eventually revealed to be where [[spoiler:Elder Dragons]] go to die. A bit of an unusual variation in that it's portrayed as a perfectly natural thing and an integral part of the ecosystem, not a corruption of it.

* Pudge the Butcher from ''VideoGame/Dota2'' hails from one of these. The Fields of Endless Carnage are cursed to prevent dead bodies within their borders from ever decaying or returning to the earth, "no matter how deep you dig the grave." Pudge was tasked with butchering corpses to feed the local scavengers, [[ImAHumanitarian and eventually developed a taste for them himself]].

* Literature/TheBible delivers on this trope in the Book of Nahum:

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/BlackCrab''. While the soldiers are ice-skating across a frozen sea at night, they literally stumble across the bodies of civilians frozen under the ice. There's speculation as to what happened; did a boat capsize, or were they killed by the enemy? It's pointed out that their own side could just as easily have been responsible.
* Jason's [[MentalWorld dreamscape]] from ''Film/FreddyVsJason'', as it's filled with the bodies of all his victims.
* Cybertron in [[Creator/MichaelBay Michael Bay's]] ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' is depicted as this while Optimus narrates the history of the Great War to Sam and Mikaela. The only thing moving is a lone Autobot limping to safety... before being impaled by Megatron's spear.

* Aokigahara Forest in ''Film/TheForest2016''. It's a very beautiful forest, however, it's filled top to bottom with the restless dead forms of people who died there (IRL, it's a popular place to commit suicide in Japan).
* In ''Film/IlyaMuromets'', after Ilya is released, there is a full minute's worth of a panorama showing the aftermath of Alyosha and Dobrynya's warriors holding a border position against the Tugars' flanking maneuver.

* The Rotten Vale in ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld'' consists partially of massive rotting skeletons and partially of rock caves lined with smaller corpses. It is also eventually revealed to be where [[spoiler:Elder Dragons]] go to die.

* ''VideoGame/MuramasaTheDemonBlade'' has an example in Kisuke's sixth dungeon; "Kawanaka Island, the Ancient Battlefield of Hachimanbara", a former warzone where the soldiers who once fought there continue to do so even in undeath. The whole place is choked with such evil and general negativity from its bloody history that normal people who find their way here will be driven insane by the atmosphere alone; literally the only kind of humans who can even enter this land without any ill effect are Masters of the Oboro swordfighting style(which both playable characters Kisuke and Momohime/Jinkuro conveniently are).

* ''Film/BlackCrab''. While the soldiers are ice-skating across a frozen sea at night, they literally stumble across the bodies of civilians frozen under the ice. There's speculation as to what happened; did a boat capsize, or where they killed by the enemy? It's pointed out that their own side could just as easily have been responsible.

* In ''Literature/MoDaoZuShi'', the Yiling Burial Mounds are the remnants of a centuries-old battlefield tainted with resentful energy and restless dead. Legions of cultivators over the centuries have attempted to purify the corrupted land and failed, and no one has ever emerged from it alive. [[spoiler:Until Wei Wuxian walks out at the beginning of the Sunshot Campaign, after creating demonic cultivation and creating the Yin Tiger Teal. He later retreats to it alongside refugees from the defeated Wen clan, establishing a settlement to survive.]]

* A fairly common theme in ''Series/YTheLastMan''. Between [[{{Gendercide}} half the population]] dropping where they stand at once and the unavoidable knock-on effects, systematic disposal of corpses (to say nothing of 'decent' burials) in more heavily populated areas is difficult at best. New York City was functionally written off even before evacuation due to infrastructure and disease issues was ordered; while the Pentagon (where the federal government holed up) has taped off a large number of rooms to clear out piecemeal.

* A game mechanic in ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII''; Undead structures can only be built on Blight, ashen, bone-studded terrain generated by their Ziggurats or headquarters building. The corpse are continuously generated by graveyards, though only up to five at a time.

* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' had areas where bodies where stacked in piles or covered with sheets. Other places had barricades that have been overrun.

* In ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', Evil Biomes are filled with mutated plants that resemble clusters of [[EyesDoNotBelongThere eyeballs]] or [[CreepyLongFingers fingers]], [[GrimyWater murky water]], and {{undead}} monsters, and any dead monster not quickly incinerated or processed into supplies zombify. There are also dust storms that carry "[[ThePlague Forgotten Beast Syndrome]]," which may involve anything from [[EyeScream everyone's eyes rotting away]] to [[ZombieApocalypse turning them into undead]] DemonicSpiders known as Husks. It says a lot when one hopes the cloud of fog that's enveloped your subjects is [[DeadlyGas merely poisonous]]...

* Mount Everest has hundreds of dead bodies littering the land of people who failed to climb it, with no one bothering to bury them. This is true for most mountains over 8,000 meters high, although none are as bad as Everest.

* A town in the movie ''Anime/NinjaScroll'' had this. It was a place that was littered with diseased corpses.

** ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'': The "Battle of Bones" area, named after an event that changed it forever. Due to drought and the expanding Anauroch desert, a lot of goblinoids (more than a quarter million ''combatants'') had to migrate, humans and allies (more than half of that) were determined to stop them in a convenient pass and much slaughter ensued.

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', when Shepard goes onto [[spoiler:the Reaper-hijacked Citadel]], s/he ends up in a long hallway piled with corpses on either side.

* A lot of Civil War battlefields along the Mason-Dixon line in ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'' are like this, especially Gettysburg. What makes them even worse is that the piles of heaped bodies can experience DemonicPossession and become unique Undead called "Gloms" -- which are, as you might expect, [[BodyOfBodies heaps of animated corpses fused together by a single animating Manitou]], which keep growing bigger and bigger as they absorb more corpses into their mass.
* The "Battle of Bones" area in ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'', named after an event that changed it forever. Due to drought and the expanding Anauroch desert, a lot of goblinoids (more than a quarter million ''combatants'') had to migrate, humans and allies (more than half of that) were determined to stop them in a convenient pass and much slaughter ensued.
* The Mournland from ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'', which used to be the nation of Cyre until it was destroyed by a magical disaster called the Day of Mourning. One of the side effects of the disaster is that dead bodies don't decompose naturally inside the Mournland- they just lay there still looking like they're less than a day old even if they've been there for years.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' has the shadowlands, which are created whenever there's a massive act of slaughter in a concentrated area. They're half-open gates to the Underworld that open all the way when night falls, and are often populated by hungry ghosts and zombies.

* In ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' the plane of Grixis is inhabited by dead things, undead things, demons, and the occasional desperate necromancer. Due to a lack of green or white mana it's incapable of producing new life. Grixis land art in particular tends to be covered in skulls.
** Black-aligned lands usually have this theme.

** Nehekhara (AncientEgypt) is dotted with the tombs of the kings of Khemri, who were buried with their servants to rule the afterlife. Unfortunately, the rituals went wrong, and they returned as skeletons and mummies. Now there's a single country with a few dozen legitimate rulers, each technically correct when they say they're the rightful king.