History Main / PoweredByAForsakenChild

* ''Anime/DigimonDataSquad'' has the [[SarcasmMode good Dr. Kurata]], who removes the hearts of digimon in order to transform them into his MechaMooks, the Gizmon. It goes further [[spoiler:[[DespotismJustifiesTheMeans when he starts collecting digimon life energy to resurrect the Demon Lord Belphemon.]]]]

* According to Bennett The Sage during a guest appearance on WebVideo/AskThatGuyWithTheGlasses, Santa Claus uses the power of ''[[UpToEleven aborted babies]]'' to deliver gifts to people who don't have a chimney.

* In order to become an Apostle [[spoiler:or a God Hand]] in ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'', the "candidate" has to sacrifice the person (or people) they most love, who are then Branded and usually eaten alive by demons in the most horrible fashion possible. This betrayal serves to sever the newborn Apostole's ties to humanity and allow true evil to enter his or her soul. For worse, this can only happen ''[[DespairEventHorizon during the lowest point of the future Apostle's whole life]]'', when they're at their most vulnerable and liable to make the required DealWithTheDevil and throw his/her loved ones away to make them into this.

** Much of the plot revolves around figuring out what makes the HumanResources work best, since live human beings are ingredients to creating certain powerful artifacts. It is eventually stated that the Amestrian Alchemy [[spoiler:draws its power from human soul-energy provided by [[BigBad Father]]]] but the Xingese Purification Arts and Xerxes Alchemy are clean. As the series progresses it is revealed that Amestrian Alchemy really does derive from the Earth's energies as originally taught, but [[spoiler:Father keeps a buffer that prevents alchemy's full usage and forces them to draw from the human soul-energy in his PhilosophersStone. This conveniently gives him an "off switch" to every Amestrian's alchemy whenever he needs it. The Xingese were feeling this, by the way]].

* ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikers'' has the Saint's Cradle, a massively overpowered CoolStarship that can only power-up when commanded by a direct descendant of the Saint Kings of Ancient Belka. The problem? The last Saint King died over a hundred years ago without any heirs, so their bloodline is effectively extinct. So what is a MadScientist to do? Why, [[spoiler:clone the last Kaiser, infuse said clone (despite her being ''a six year old girl'') with a [[LostTechnology Lost Logia]], torture her until she is under his complete control, then make her activate the Cradle, despite how utterly ''painful'' the process is for her.]] The problem with ''that''? [[spoiler:Little Vivio just had to go and get herself adopted by not one, but ''two'' {{Action Mom}}s -- both of whom qualify at this point in the series as [[PersonOfMassDestruction People of Mass Destruction]], and are ''[[MamaBear less than happy]]'' with this MadScientist's shit]].

* [[http://readordie.wikia.com/wiki/File:Rod04_59.jpg Junior]], from ''[[Anime/RODtheTV R.O.D the TV]]'' appears first as a mysterious, [[DudeLooksLikeALady effeminate]] child antagonist, working as a [[ChildProdigy secret agent]] for the [[BigBad British Library]] towards their heinous goal. He's lived a lonely life, and is automatically drawn to those that show him kindness. However, after his [[spoiler:HeelFaceTurn]] it becomes apparent that Junior [[spoiler:was kidnapped as a baby from his I-jinn mother ([[Anime/ReadOrDie Nancy]]) and had basically been intended his entire life to become a vessel for The Gentleman. The process involves having all the old man's information DOWNLOADED into his brain. And ... what's supposed to happen to him? Um, you don't want to know.]]

** There seemed to be a some sort of explosion caused by an overflow of psychic energy, dissolving the children's bodies, trapping them forever in the Wired. The scientist comments how no matter what he does, bringing them back to real world is impossible.

** And in ''[[Anime/YuGiOhARCV Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V]]'', the Professor's ARC-V machine requires the souls of thousands of people in order to fuse the dimensions together, as well as to re-assemble his daughter. The latter part also requires him to use her four reincarnations as components. He succeeds in bringing his daughter back to life, but at the cost of Yuzu, Serena, Rin, and Ruri.

* In ''ComicBook/ElseworldsFinestSupergirlAndBatgirl'', there is no Franchise/{{Superman}} or Batman; the most powerful superheroes are their Distaff Counterparts, ''Comicbook/{{Supergirl}}'' and ''Comicbook/{{Batgirl}}''. Batgirl is trying to take down Lex Luthor, and elicits a reluctant Supergirl's help. They both travel deep underground Metropolis, trying to find the 'clean fuel source' that Lex Luthor discovered for the city years ago. It turns out that [[spoiler:it's her cousin Kal-El...who never got to grow up, but died as an infant in a jar.]] But considering that this is Comicbook/LexLuthor, are we truly surprised he'd stoop so low?

** The power rings of the death worshipping Black Lantern Corps of ''ComicBook/BlackestNight'' don't rely on emotions like the others. Instead they are powered by killing a lot of people. Killing a person and stealing their heart restores 0.01% power to ''every'' ring in the Corps. So it takes about 10,000 hearts to recharge all the rings to maximum power, minus the power used to steal those hearts of course. And when all the rings are charged to 100%, [[spoiler:[[BigBad Nekron]] appears]].

* In ''Comicbook/{{Micronauts|MarvelComics}},'' Baron Karza's body banks are pure BodyHorror. They've granted Karza and his followers effective immortality... by literally cutting up society's undesirables for spare parts, to replace their own organs when they wear out. When Mari was a naive young princess, she suffered an accident, but was very pleased with the lovely new legs she was given... until she learned they'd been stolen from her best friend, the court dancer, who was left crippled and would never dance again. The elite's dependance on the body banks is the foundation of Karza's dictatorship.

* In ''Fanfic/DivineBlood'', most of Kodachi Kunō's power comes from eating the minds [[CloningBlues of her mass produced daughters]], leaving their identities fragmented [[AndIMustScream and their souls chained within hers.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' and ''Anime/{{Bleach}}'' crossover''Fanfic/AHollowInEquestria'' Nightmare Moon IS this trope. Her first appearance was made possible by consuming the souls of 17 innocent foals, allowing her to exert total control over Luna's body and gain access to her alicorn magic. Fastforward a millennium to her season one defeat, she was ripped from Luna's body but her spirit remained alive, feasting on fear until gaining enough strength to return and consume the souls of 21 foals to regain her physical form, and become powerful enough to hold her own against Luna and Celestia simultaneously. And just for added measure, she bound her spirit to [[spoiler:Twist]] to ensure she had a foal hostage to exploit.
* In the ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'', [[spoiler:Fluttershy, upon learning how cruel the world can be, finds a source of powerful magic and sets out to turn Equestria into a perfect utopia by siphoning out all vices, sadness and wickedness of the world... using herself as container to hold them. She decides to bear all the evils of Equestria upon her back, and suffer eternally herself just so no one else has to ever suffer anymore. [[OneWingedAngel This also ends up]] [[BodyHorror grotesquely deforming her]]. She even refers to herself as the Forsaken Foal of Omelas.]]

** The sequel, ''Pegasus Device'', makes it worse by mentioning that [[spoiler:the victims must be fully conscious, because the fear and pain is an integral part of the process]].

* In ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5270746/10/Harry-Potter-and-Godric-s-Legacy Harry Potter and Godric's Legacy]]'' Voldemort performs an annual ritual which prevents him from dying by sacrificing an unborn child and sending its soul to hell in his place.

* ''Fanfic/MaybeTheLastArchieStory'': Mad Doctor Doom kidnaps Sabrina and gets her hooked up to a time machine which works by siphoning her magic energy.

** [[spoiler:Saria created the Soul-Charged Sword by binding her own soul to the blade after she was mortally wounded by Arborachnid, giving it its SwordBeam abilties in addition to letting her briefly act as a SpiritAdvisor.]]
* ''Fanfic/WithThisRing'': The Renegade gains access to a database of Apokoliptian technology, and is able to use that to build squads of flying blaster-armed drones, but they have poor battery life, because Apokoliptian power generation "is either too advanced for me to replicate safely or is of the 'runs-off-the-misery-of-paraplegic-kittens' variety."

* In ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'', the entire monster society is powered by the screams of children. Later on, [[spoiler:we get introduced to the Scream Extractor, which fits this trope even better by sucking out the screams of a single kidnapped child in order to gain more power, unlike ''scaring'' which didn't physically ''harm'' children by near ''suffocation''. Thankfully it never gets put into mass use, and in the end the monsters find a better power source -- popping out of closets and making kids laugh instead of scream.]]

* ''Film/{{Arcade}}'' features a video arcade named [[MeaningfulName "Dante's Inferno"]], where a new virtual reality arcade game called, boringly enough, "Arcade" is being tested. If you lose, you're trapped inside the game and die. Turns out the game is Powered by a Forsaken Child, whowas abused and, eventually, killed by his mother. The game designers decide it's a good idea to take a few thousand brain cells from the body and use them in the game.

* ''Film/MinorityReport'' has a pretty literal version: the Precrime department's method of predicting the future involves three psychics, kept in chemically-induced dream state 24-7 and hooked up to a computer, so that the detectives can piece together visions of murders from their recorded dreams. Where does literal come into it? Well, it turns out that the Precogs are actually the abandoned, mutated offspring of drug addicts. Doubly frightening was the knowledge that [[spoiler:one of the creators of the Precrime system was willing to kill the mother of one of the Precogs to ensure that they would ''stay'' Forsaken Children.]]

* According to ''Film/{{Warlock}}'', one of the ingredients of a flying potion is the rendered fat of an unbaptized child. While in modern times there are alternatives that are not fatal to the child, the character is from the 17th century, back when there were no alternatives (and he's also an evil bastard), and kills the child extracting it. The potion is based on a (supposed) actual witches recipe of the era ("fat of unbaptized brat" even gets a mention in Shakespeare). Likewise the nail in the footprint has a real-world source.

** The Mountain Men cure their periodic radiation poisoning through "blood treatments": they kidnap Grounders (who are naturally resistant to radiation) and use them as human dialysis machines, pumping their radiation resistant blood into the Mountain Men, and the Mountain Men's contaminated blood into the Grounders. This makes the Grounders incredibly ill, and if done often enough will eventually kill them.
** Later, the Mountain Men discover a way to make themselves permanently resistant to radiation, removing the need for the blood treatments. Unfortunately, this new treatment requires taking lethal quantities of bone marrow from captured Sky People.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E1NewEarth "New Earth"]]: The hospital has the cure for every known disease, through infecting thousands of expendable {{Artificial Human}}s with those diseases.

* In ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', the BigBad of the first season, Sylar, is capable of "acquiring" the superpowers of others through an unshown (until the beginning of season 3) procedure that requires killing them and removing their brains Technically he doesn't have to kill them to do it as he learned in volume 3. However the quickest route to it is studying the brain and (Unless the victim has a healing factor) the process of slicing their head open is shown to be fatal. It's implied in a later volume that he knew even before volume 3 he could absorb powers through empathy. He just liked knowing every little thing about the power, and the life of the person who had it meant little to him.

* In an episode of ''Series/MastersOfHorror'' entitled "The Fair-Haired Child", the plot involves a grieving couple appealing to an otherworldly force to resurrect their dead son. They in turn, have to feed him ten children. The child shows his um...gratitude to them in a similar way.
* The ''Series/{{Otherworld}}'' episode "Paradise Lost" had a immortality drug called Kaloma that was created by draining the life force of human beings.

** ''Series/StargateSG1'' had tretonin, a drug that granted the user perfect health-but had a side effect: the drug destroys the immune system, rendering the user dependent on the drug forever. The SG-1 team, after beginning negotiation for some of the drug, learn that the drug is actually created from the offspring of a Goa'uld queen the Pangarans discovered in a stasis jar. Normally this would not be so bad considering the Goa'uld are the series' BigBad, parasites that force their way into humans' brains and take over their bodies while most likely applying eternal mental torture to the host mind and are literally born evil since they inherit the memories of their parents. Unfortunately, much later, after the Tok'ra (the rebel faction of the Goa'uld who were allies with Earth) are brought to help analyze the drug, it is discovered the Goa'uld queen is actually the Tokra's long lost queen (and their last hope of reproducing as their number are dwindling and she was the only known Tok'ra queen). Naturally the Tok'ra object to such treatment of their queen. Eventually subverted when, later that season, the Tok'ra are able to synthesize tretonin without the need for live symbiotes. Because said Tok'ra queen showed them how before dying.

* ''Series/TheUmbrellaAcademy2019'': At the end of Season 3, [[spoiler: it is reveled that there is a machine disguised in Hotel Oblivion that can restart the universe. The machine is powered by particles that exist in the bodies of the 43 superpowered children, requiring seven of them to step on star sigils to activate the device. Reginald fuels the machine using Diego, Klaus, Five, Viktor, Lila, Ben, and Sloane. They are almost killed in the process, until Allison interrupts it by killing Reginald, though the machine had already been powered enough to create a reset button for the universe.]]

** And Starmetal is made out of the bodies of (usually) minor gods, although in this case the gods in question are not conscious (with one non-painful exception).

* ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' has this when you ask what the incredibly Dystopian society is eating. Depending on the version, it's everybody who dies, or everybody who dies who wasn't Blue rank or above. Including children. (Or just bland things like algae and synthetic protein, but even then, [[NoOSHACompliance people accidentally falling into food vats]] is disturbingly common.)

*** It iss possible to extract quintessence (the energy that makes reality ''real'') from the life force of a willing creature. Many mages use their own life force. Some use specially reared livestock. A few villains use specially raised ''children''. (A larger number of villains will attempt to use unwilling sacrifices, but this creates enough "resonance" opposed to the intended effect that it cancels out any potential benefit. They either don't notice, or don't care.)

** In ''TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression'', materials like these are called Larvae. They constitute any item which invoked an [[KarmaMeter Obligation roll]] to obtain, and offer increases to efficiency. Earlier editions followed up the section on Larvae with the quote from Doctor Orpheus at the top of the page. Notably, it is explicitly stated that the power of Larvae comes not from any property of the materials themselves, but from the mental effects of being willing to do immoral things ForScience: If a player comes up with some way to obtain the same items ethically, they provide no special bonus.

*** The {{Sourcebook}} detailing the [[AncientConspiracy Seers of the Throne]] includes their special servitors. The Myrmidons are fairly standard inborn SuperSoldiers (although they are cursed to have to follow ''any'' command given to them in [[CompellingVoice a certain language]]) and the [[HiveMind Hive-Souled]] are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. The Grigori (a kind of ghost spy which can sense and follow the connections between people and things) and the Hollow Ones (people who can have their [[FakeMemories personalities rewritten]]) on the other hand are created by wrapping a person in a shroud which tears out their mind and reworks it, and exposing someone to an EldritchAbomination which [[BlankSlate eats the part of their soul which lets them have any semblance of individuality]] (and the personalities they can be given are inevitably temporary), respectively. Neither process can be reversed.

*** The Court of Tears leeches the very possibility of goodness and hope from the world to fuel the magical lanterns that protect their fortress-city of Alhambra from the Darkness.
*** The Court of Mirrors has the gems created by Enduring Beauty. They are one of the most powerful magical resources in the setting and can be used for any number of impressive feats, but in order to create them you have to literally peel the beauty off someone's face, leaving them permanently disfigured.

** There is one variant noted in the early fluff which involved cloning a person, [[AppliedPhlebotinum applying some phlebotinum]] to cut-and-paste said person's soul into the clone, then spending a couple of decades (re-)teaching it skills and brainwashing it to think it was the original. Sure, it runs afoul of the Continuity Problem, destroys the soul of an innocent and wasted 20 years back in school, but hey, what with the other treatments out there, this body's good for another 2-3 centuries or so...

* According to TheDragon of ''WebAnimation/BrokenSaints'', the KnightTemplar he serves believes the [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans only true way to peace]] is to create an empath, give her a life full of joy and then unleash such misery unto her that her suffering overwhelms all of humanity into a state of empathy. [[spoiler:The forsaken child in question is Shandalla, one of the series' main characters. And for extra thematic appropriateness, the big bad is her father.]]

* [[RobotGirl Penny]] from ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' is the first artifical being on Remnant to have a soul and thus capable of generating an Aura. [[spoiler:Volume 7 reveals that her "[[FatherlyScientist father]]" Pietro Polendina accomplished this by donating a portion of his own Aura to grant her sentience. He has to repeat the process every time she is rebuilt, which leaves permenant holes in his Aura that do not regenerate.]]

--> '''Black Mage:''' It takes the happiness of others and turns it into pain and explosions. It's win-win.

* ''Webcomic/TheGamercat'' opted to [[http://thegamercat.com/2011/12/sacrifice/ interprete this way]] what happens to red fairies in ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda''. Of course, in case you feel terrible too, there are also healing potions, but... [[http://thegamercat.com/2012/05/potion-puree/ do you know how those are made?]]

* ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell'': InAWorld that ''lives'' by CarnivoreConfusion, [[http://www.kevinandkell.com/2008/kk0627.html this]] certainly doesn't seem out of place. Although it was meant as a jab at then-current bio-diesel fad.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'' , aside from [[spoiler: Future Dave's time machine that uses up one parallel universe per trip]], the hamsters' nefarious plan [[spoiler: involves using geniuses in PeopleJars as an energy source.]]

* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', Torg's magical talking sword Chaz is powered by the blood of the innocent to gain AbsurdCuttingPower and the ability to kill a PhysicalGod. He's only able to make much use of its full power when in a SugarBowl dimension being invaded by sadistic demons, so that there's plenty of such blood being spilled by others.

** [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2132 SCP-2132 ("Most Dangerous Fighting Exhibition and Obstacle Resort").]] The game scenarios the contestants are put through are thought up by a child kidnapped by Marshall, Carter and Dark.

** The fate the Bell Witch intended for her daughter: [[spoiler:to turn her into a god-like being, then enslave her to serve as the source of her own power]]. Fortunately, not only does Nacht [[PhlebotinumRebel turn on her mother]], as a result she gets the one thing she always dreamed of, [[spoiler:[[ChangelingFantasy proof that Marzena isn't her real mother]], breaking the hold she had over her]].

* ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall'': Linkara's [[spoiler:magic gun is powered by the soul of a little girl sacrificed by her parents to their evil god.]] [[MindScrew That's where it gets... weird]]. To be clear, he only found out when the viewers did, and was as horrified as you'd expect. [[spoiler:He almost shot himself with the gun, but the girl's soul talked him out of it.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': In the book ''Literature/TheJournalOfTheTwoSisters'', it is revealed that the act of [[PaintingTheFrostOnWindows raising the sun and the moon every day]] used to be this. Both the sun and the moon are obviously necessary for life on the planet to survive, but they won't move on their own. Teams of unicorn volunteers would work together to do the job, but their magic would be drained and result in RapidAging. When Celestia and Luna found out about this, they [[PhysicalGod proved their power]] by doing it by themselves (Celestia raised the sun, Luna the moon) with no side effects, and restored the lost magic to all the volunteer unicorns to boot. By the time of the cartoon, most ponies have forgotten that there was ever anything difficult about the process at all, since Celestia has been handling both the sun and the moon by herself for a thousand years.

** Shielding the outside of Evil Rick's fortress are hundreds of tortured Morties to prevent the other Ricks from tracking him down. According to "our" Rick this is obscene overkill, since you can get the same effect with "five Morties and a jumper cable." AndThatWouldBeWrong.

* In ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice Phantoms'', [[https://youtu.be/ZLui10GMdgY the Green Lantern Corps' analysis]] of the Kaizer-Thrall, an Apokolyptian weapon confiscated by New Genesis, revealed that it not only possessed sentience, but was, in fact, a human child. [[https://youtu.be/TKi21Ffyy4g Miss Martian later established contact with it,]] learning that the child was [[ComicBook/TeenTitans Danny Chase]], a trafficked metahuman who was handed to [[TortureTechnician Desaad]] for [[BrainInAJar his living brain to be used in the creation of the weapon]].

* ''WesternAnimation/OverTheGardenWall'': [[SatanicArchetype The Beast]] of [[TheLostWoods The Unknown]] exists because [[spoiler: of a SoulJar lantern kept lit with oil from the inside of Edelwood trees, which are grown from the souls of lost children [[DrivenToSuicide who submit to the forest]]]].

* Film continuity ''Anime/GalaxyExpress999'' had the upper class using android bodies, powered by tiny energy cells that were made by harvesting humans. (The aristocrats with android bodies in the TV series continuity do slaughter humans, but only because they're ''[[ImmortalityImmorality really, really, bored.]]'')[[note]]Though a sorceress and her (human) minions in one of the TV series episodes do sustain their immortality this way. (Her lone android minion explains that androids aren't able to do this.)[[/note]]

* In ''Comicbook/{{Micronauts}},'' Baron Karza's body banks are pure BodyHorror. They've granted Karza and his followers effective immortality... by literally cutting up society's undesirables for spare parts, to replace their own organs when they wear out. When Mari was a naive young princess, she suffered an accident, but was very pleased with the lovely new legs she was given... until she learned they'd been stolen from her best friend, the court dancer, who was left crippled and would never dance again. The elite's dependance on the body banks is the foundation of Karza's dictatorship.

* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', Torg's magical talking sword Chaz is powered by the blood of the innocent to become an AbsurdlySharpBlade that can kill a PhysicalGod. He's only able to make much use of its full power when in a SugarBowl dimension being invaded by sadistic demons, so that there's plenty of such blood being spilled by others.

* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', Torg's magical sword Chaz is powered by the blood of the innocent. He's only able to make much use of its full power when in a SugarBowl dimension being invaded by sadistic demons, so that there's plenty of such blood being spilled by others.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Spacetrawler}}'', the construction of the eponymous spacetrawlers is implied to involve horrific abuse of Eebs, and when the details are eventually revealed, they're every bit as bad as implied: [[spoiler:an Eeb is trained to telekinetically gather space debris--by injecting them with a drug that causes debilitating pain if they ever stop gathering said debris. Then the Eeb's body is dissolved, while still conscious, and their BrainInAJar is placed in the spacetrawler.]]

** The magic in the parallel world comes from the lives of the people from the normal world.
** In a filler arc the Infinity Clock requires a [[spoiler:Celestial Mage]] as a sacrifice to fully work. The person the villains use is [[spoiler:Lucy]]. She is absorbed but this comes to bite [[spoiler:Brain the Second]] in the ass when she uses the power of the clock against him.

*** Before this there was [[http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/x/man-003.htm the MAN-003 Patulia,]] a Mobile Armor that required a Newtype (in this case, [[spoiler:an IllBoy artificial Newtype named Caris Nautilus]]) to operate its wired beam cannons. Said Newtype was rescued before the machine could consume him.

** In addition to preying on humans to sustain themselves, the vampires of ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' can perform diablerie -- feeding on their elders to improve their generational status.

** A book in the Monktown Valley Library claims that bombchus are created by binding the souls of mice to bombs, though WordOfGod states that its an InUniverseFactoidFailure.

* ''Manga/MadeInAbyss'' has cartridges, designed as a means of preventing the Curse of the Abyss by [[MadScientist Bondrewd]]. It is revealed that they were created from orphaned children, subjected to a process in which they were stripped of all "unnecessary" body parts and crammed into boxes the size of lunchboxes, while [[AndIMustScream still alive]]. They then would experience all the effects of the curse in place of whoever carried them (in this case, Bondrewd).

* ''Manga/MadeInAbyss'' has cartridges, designed as a means of preventing the [[StressVomit Curse]] [[Hallucinations of]] [[BloodFromEveryOrfice the]] [[WasOnceAMan Abyss]] by [[MadScientist Bondrewd]]. It is revealed that they were created from orphaned children, subjected to a process in which they were stripped of all "unnecessary" body parts and crammed into boxes the size of lunchboxes, while [[AndIMustScream still alive]]. They then would experience all the effects of the curse in place of whoever carried them (in this case, Bondrewd).

* ''Manga/MadeInAbyss'' has cartridges, designed as a means of preventing the [[StressVomit Curse]] [[Hallucinations of]] [[BleedingFromEveryOrfice the]] [[WhatOnceWasMan Abyss]] by [[MadScientist Bondrewd]]. It is revealed that they were created from orphaned children, subjected to a process in which they were stripped of all "unnecessary" body parts and crammed into boxes the size of lunchboxes, while [[AndIMustScream still alive]]. They then would experience all the effects of the curse in place of whoever carried them (in this case, Bondrewd).

* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': The humans the First Silver Weapon was created from are still alive inside it, powering it like a beating heart. [[spoiler:Killing them weakens it, but doesn't destroy it.]]

* Let's just say that ''a lot'' of the ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'''s activities are this and save ourselves some time.
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-001 SCP-001]] ("[[http://www.scp-wiki.net/djkaktus-s-proposal djkaktus's Proposal]] -- The Children"). The title children have had their souls removed and replaced with extra-dimensional entities, giving them RealityWarping powers. All of them are brain-dead and exist only to act as {{Living Weapon}}s.
** One Wiki/SCPFoundation short story involved "button day"; [[spoiler:entire families voluntarily submit to/are brainwashed into suicide by melting to combat overpopulation.]]
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-231 SCP-231 ("Special Personnel Requirements").]] Special mention goes to [[NoodleIncident Procedure 110-Montauk]], an unspecified unspeakable ritual regularly performed on a young girl to prevent the escape of an EldritchAbomination (or so the Foundation thinks...).
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1514 SCP-1514]]. SCP-1514-1A is a tank full of red liquid holding SCP-1514-1B, which was once a fetus that was taken from its mother. It controls SCP-1514-2, a system of X-ray laser {{Kill Sat}}s orbiting the Earth.
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1875 SCP-1875]] is a chess computer, of all things, powered by the ([[AndIMustScream still conscious]]) minds of a chess champion's twin daughters. [[spoiler:And they are not happy about their fate]].
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2132 SCP-2132 ("Most Dangerous Fighting Exhibition and Obstacle Resort").]] The game scenarios the contestants are put through are thought up by a child kidnapped by Marshall, Carter and Dark.
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2669 SCP-2669]] is a faster-than-light space probe that develops a HiveMind that is constantly battling the Foundation for control. To distract it from its attempts at a ColonyDrop, the Foundation regularly [[BrainUploading uploads the minds]] of ''newborn infants''. To expedite this, the Foundation has set up a fake adoption agency in a refugee camp.
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3034 SCP-3034]] is a [[DirtyCommunists Soviet WMD]] consisting of a NumbersStation with a CreepyChild counting backward from 200, with an ApocalypticLog leaving explicit instructions to not let her finish and mentions of a "[[DealWithTheDevil deal]]" of some sort. When researchers tried to analyze the background noise of the countdowns, they learned it was actually ''thousands of screaming children''. After one researcher went rogue and tried to contact the entity, [[NothingIsScarier thousands of children around the world vanished as the background noise grew louder, and the countdown shortened by one]].

** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2669 SCP-2669]] is a faster-than-light space probe which develops a HiveMind that is constantly battling the Foundation for control. To distract it, the Foundation regularly [[BrainUploading uploads the minds]] of ''newborn infants''. To expedite this, the Foundation has set up a fake adoption agency in a refugee camp.

* In the ''Franchise/GhostInTheShell'' franchise, it is possible to produce [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot hyper-real androids with all the neurological affectations of a living human]] via electronic "[[MindRape Ghost Dubbing]]". This process drains and kills the original after only a few copies are made, and in the ''Ghost In The Shell'' universe, it is a serious crime punishable by life in prison or [[DeathOfPersonality getting your brain wiped]]; plotlines concerning the process appeared in ''Ghost In The Shell: Innocence'', a few ''Stand Alone Complex'' episodes, and the original manga.

* ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty:'' Shielding the outside of Evil Rick's fortress are hundreds of tortured Morties to prevent the other Ricks from tracking him down. According to "our" Rick this is obscene overkill, since you can get the same effect with "five Morties and a jumper cable." AndThatWouldBeWrong.