Bloodlust

BAD TOUCH! BAD TOUCH! Stranger danger!

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"

— Khornate Battlecry, Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy

A character who has an odd fascination with blood, such as talking about how they wouldn't mind drinking it up, enjoying the sight of blood being spilled, etc. Often, they may be seen licking blood off of their weapons. Very often a sign of an Ax-Crazy character, but not always (as seen as in the picture). You still would be (probably) safer if you stay out of their sight, though.

In real life, licking a cut is an instinctive reaction — the saliva can help to clean the wound, on top of promoting growth of new skin cells. Anyone who've ever had a pet will probably have noticed the same behavior in them if they're ever wounded... and unless you deliberately suppress the instinctive reaction, licking or sucking on a minor cut is a perfectly natural response. So actually, most of us probably know what blood tastes like, without there necessarily being any fetishistic subculture involved. Please note, this can get you very sick.

Despite this trope being titled like a real word, meaning a desire for violence and bloodshed, this trope is not technically related to that definition — the trope Blood Knight is about people who definitely have bloodlust in the sense of the actual word. For when this is a Fetish for a character, see Hemo Erotic.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Adekan: Anri and Shiro occasionally lick up blood and there's a flashback where Shiro erotically licks Anri's wounds to heal him up. In one chapter Shiro licks Kojiro's wounds on his face after punching him.
• Ladd Russo of Baccano! wears a white suit on board the Flying Pussyfoot so that the blood will show when he starts. When one of his associated is brutally massacred, Ladd dances in glee, on top of his body, no less, with liberal splashing of his bodily fluids like it was a puddle of rainwater.
• Grell Sutcliffe, Madame Red, and Sebastian from Black Butler.
• Bleach: In the anime-only Invasion Arc, one of the shinigami clones is revealed to have this. Yumichika can't attack his clone because he thinks his clone is far too beautiful. However, his clone has no qualms about tearing Yumichika to shreds precisely because he thinks he'd look even more beautiful covered in blood.
• In Brave10, in Kamanosuke's strange Ho Yay way, he says he wants to see Saizou cut and bleeding, and is actively jealous and disappointed seeing the massive scars on his back at the onsen because they indicate there was a bloody battle he missed. By the climax, the Death by a Thousand Cuts power of his opponent only seems to make him stronger as they fight.
• Depraved Homosexuals Genkaku and Mockingbird from Deadman Wonderland are depicted as having this.
• Road Kamelot from D.Gray-Man once licked Allen's blood from a candle she had used to stab him in the eye.
• Frieza from Dragon Ball Z gets very excited when his opponents start to bleed, and if some splatters on his face as he's torturing them he will lick it off.
• Barry the Chopper from Fullmetal Alchemist has such a ridiculous obsession with blood that it's humorous.
  • Subverted with Lust herself in that it has been theorized by fans that she is a representation, not of sexual lust, but of blood lust, though not in the literal way that this trope describes.
• Andrea of Gankutsuou has a scene in the anime where he deliberately squeezes a glass in his hand, breaking it, and causing his hand to bleed. He then licks the blood off his arm.
• There is a certain scene in The Garden of Sinners where Shiki definitely invokes this trope ("It was the first lipstick Shiki ever wore"... you imagine the context), though it was most likely a minute's whim rather than full-out blood fetish.
• Takuma Fudou of Get Backers expresses a desire to "slurp up Ban's blood."
• Hellsing:
  • Alucard would bathe in the stuff if he could.
  • In the first anime, a character named Boobanshee/Bubbancy (actually a corruption of a Baobhan sith, pronounced roughly the same way in Japanese) tricks the entire Hellsing organization, save Seras and Alucard, into thinking that she is Integra's sister, Laura (a reference to Carmilla). Later, she attempts to drink Integra's blood, and even bites and licks her chest, after which Integra realizes that she has no sister; shortly after Bubbancy is dispatched and Integra refers to her as Countess Karnstein (another Carmilla reference). She also licks Integra's blood from her hand while saying that Integra's blood is "delicious".
  • Almost EVERY vampire in Hellsing is like this. Granted, they also get a power boost when they do, but that's beside the point. Even Seras shows signs of this!
• Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru: During their fight, Kevin squeezes Minoru's throat hard enough to make him cough up blood, catches some on his tongue, and drinks it. In his words "Delicious flavor...LET ME DRINK MORE!"
• Himiko Toga from My Hero Academia has this in nightmarish spades. She practically craves it, and the way she gets it pales in comparison to the obvious pleasure she gets from licking it up or sucking it out. In fact, she does need it for her Quirk to work: after she drinks enough of a person's blood, she takes their form.
  • Stain the Hero Killer is no different, although he doesn't get any pleasure from it like Toga. He also needs to lick a person's blood for his Quirk to work: once he licks some of a person's blood, they're paralyzed for an amount of time according to their blood type.
• Anko in Naruto, possibly inherited from Orochimaru.
  • Gaara as well, but not his own.
  • Hidan certainly revels in blood, but this is somewhat justified by its necessity in maintaining his immortality.
• Evangeline of Negima! Magister Negi Magi licking Negi's wound.
• Rob Lucci from One Piece is this considering after piercing Luffy's body with his claws, he licks his blood off his claws with a satisfying look on his face. This is before he tosses Luffy right out the window.
• Belphegor from Reborn! (2004). The Bloody Prince? Prince the Ripper? The sight of his own blood makes him even more desirous to rip his opponents apart and see their blood. More likely than not, Bel also likes the taste of it.
• Gorobei from Samurai 7 has, on at least two occasions, apparently derived pleasure (if not flat-out orgasmed) from suffering cuts.
• Played with in Speed Grapher; Suitengu must have a fetish for blood, since the super powers in the show all reflect the characters' paraphilias and the empowering process kills them if they don't have one to use, but unlike almost every other empowered person, he never gets creepy with it.
• Arcueid from Tsukihime doesn't necessarily crave blood, but she gets really turned on with something as small as a bleeding gash in the arm. This is true of all True Ancestor vampires in the Nasuverse: they don't need blood to survive, but they feel a strong urge to drink it anyway, an unfortunate trait inherited from their progenitor, Crimson Moon.

Comic Books

• The Elseworld Batman & Dracula: Red Rain had a Dracula that wound up oddly Joker-like who got a taste of the Dark Knight's blood and really, really liked it.
• In Hex Wives, Isadore's special witch ability is that she gets stronger and more violent the more blood that's spilled in her presence. Doesn't matter who's blood it is, or who spilled it- the longer a battle goes on the more powerful she becomes and the more she likes it.
• In exchange for its massive power, the Witchblade demands blood. While Sarah from the American comic tries to overcome the feeling as much as possible, Amaha from the anime gives in to its insatiable hunger for violence.

Fan Works

• Advice and Trust: Asuka is real enthusiastic about shedding the enemy’s blood when she fights. She was practically giddy when she slashed and stabbed Bardiel.
• A Crown of Stars: Asuka is a warrior. She loves fighting and spilling the enemy's blood, although she is not as severe as other examples. Shinji is both drawn to and pushed away by her bloodlust.
  She was a fiery, unstoppable valkyrie, dancing in blood and death like a redheaded avatar of Kali... and he trailing right along with her, drawn to her fire even more than he was pushed away by her bloodlust and his own dislike of fighting.
• Himiko Toga's bloodlust is a problem she is trying to deal with in Green Tea Rescue. It's noted that her thirst is so strong that the U.A. staff gives her artificial blood to drink to keep her calm, and she has therapy sessions to make sure she doesn't go off the wagon and knife one of her fellow students for a drink.
• HERZ: The first word Asuka chose to describe her emotions during her battle against the MP-Evas was "bloodlust". Asuka was drowning into it as she fought them.
• Ill Met by Moonlight: Subverted with Steven. Being half-vampire, Steven becomes sick if he goes too long without fresh blood. With that said, he does not seem to enjoy the taste, quickly dowsing the taste down with a regular human breakfast shortly after.
• Lord of the Castle: Alucard succumbs to this after feeding on the blood of demons in a desperate attempt to save his allies, but this is explained as a side effect of what amounted to self-imposed starvation and could return should Alucard continue to starve himself because of his refusal to drink human blood. The Justice League then offers a loophole to avert this by having Superman, Hawkgirl, J'onn, or Wonder Woman offer their blood, since they aren't human.
• When she fought an Angel in chapter 6 of Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, Asuka was blinded by bloodlust.
  Her pretty face was twisted in a sick, vicious snarl. She was less a teenage girl and more a warrior blinded by bloodlust.
• The One I Love Is...: When Rei confessed to Shinji that the dummy plug system used her brain patterns he could not believe it because the dummy plug program fought with savagery and a thirst for blood he did not manage to associate with demure, quiet, stoic Rei.
  This killing frenzy... this hunger for blood and destruction... Rei?
• Thousand Shinji: Asuka is a Hot-Blooded Khornate berserker. She craves fighting, spilling the enemy's blood and even drinking it. Her boyfriend Shinji finds her arousing. Her bloodlust increased when she ascended to godhood and became Goddess of War, Rage and Blood. Her followers sacrifice their enemies' blood to her.

Film — Animation

• In Finding Nemo, Bruce the great white acts like a junkie craving a hit when he smells Dory's blood after she accidentally scratches herself. The sharks had been treating their desire to eat other fish like an addiction, and the smell triggers a relapse.

Film — Live Action

• Angst: The unnamed serial killer seems to have a fondness for blood, as he narrates a time he slashed a pig's throat to watch the blood gush out, and later when murdering a young woman he drinks her blood.
• Bloodthirsty: Grey develops a desire for blood, hence the film title, as part of her meat craving. At one point, she licks up blood from a piece of meat in the refrigerator. Her hallucinations involve this partly as well.
• The original Dracula movie had a scene where Renfield accidentally cuts his finger and Dracula stares hungrily at the blood seeping from the wound.
• Iron Angels has the Cold-Blooded Torture scene where the main villainess, Madam Yeung had a captive's bare chest sliced open with a needle, then runs a finger on his injuries before licking her fingertips.
• Little Shop of Horrors: Audrey Two is hungry for human blood , and the song Feed Me (Git It) is about how much he loves it and why Seymour should get it for him.
• Masked Avengers: Inductees of the Masked Gang works themselves into a frenzy by drinking water mixed with blood of their executed victims.
• The CAT-III Exploitation Film, Run and Kill, has a Cold-Blooded Torture scene where a triad boss had an imprisoned captive strung to a standing rack, and having a pointed, hollow bamboo stick shoved into the captive's kneecaps so it trickles blood into a tall jar. The boss then intimidates the captive by gulping down the blood.
• In Scream and Scream Again, Keith is obsessed with blood and completely drains all of his victims: seemingly drinking all of it.
• Shanghai Grand: In the refugee ship massacre at the start of the film, the Dragon Lady henchwoman gleefully kills a captive by chewing his throat out, and gleefully licks the blood from her lips with a twisted smile on her face.
• The entities in Terrified are attracted to, and consume, blood. When an apparently magnetic entity hiding in a cupboard cause a knife to fly into the bottom of the cupboard and impale Rosentock's palm, he hears it "sucking". Albreck advises Funes to clean his hands when he returns from one of the haunted houses with his hands covered in Jano and Rosentock's blood, to avoid attracting the entities.
• In Theatre of Death, both Charles and Dr. Schiller believe that the killer suffers from a compulsion, either physical or psychological, to drink blood. They are proved correct.
• Tower of Death had a savage martial artist, Lewis, who keeps lions as pets for feeding his defeated enemies to, and embraces his pets' lust for blood, right up to hungrily chowing down a raw steak after a fight.
• Vampire Diary: A subset of the 'weekend vampire' subculture known as 'Sangs' actually drink blood. Vicki, who claims to be a real vampire and to need blood to survive, drinks blood to the level that she actually kills her victims.

Literature

• Some of the more unsettling villains in the Anita Blake series express a profound interest in the red stuff. Only partially justified by being vampiric, as this does not seem to affect the Friendly Neighborhood Vampires to an extent that the author would feel a need to impress it upon the reader.
• Sociopathic Hero Alex of A Clockwork Orange is this trope, at least until the government "fixes" him through some good, old fashioned Cold-Blooded Torture until he's violently ill at the sight of it.
• In Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel, Count Dracula goes from being a charming gentleman to a raging fiend with the flip of a switch — and the switch is Jonathan Harker cutting himself shaving.
• Shrykes in The Edge Chronicles are already dangerous, but when they get a taste of blood they go into horrifyingly violent rages where they rip apart and devour everyone in their path, even each other if the battle-flock is young or badly disciplined.
• In Matthew Laurence's Freya series, Sekhmet happily cleans herself after a bloody massacre (she is part lioness), saying, "It's been so long."
• Both berserks and wąpierze in The Girl from the Miracles District have overwhelming lust for blood, leading to them often tearing their enemies apart with their teeth or drinking blood of the dead.
• In The Guardians, when vampires drink blood from someone attracted to them, they are overwhelmed with lust and sex is inevitable. However, the choice belongs solely to the blood donor; they may resist or succumb, but the vampires cannot resist.

• In The Mortal Instruments, after Simon becomes a vampire, he needs blood. Badly. After he is imprisoned by Inquisitor Aldertree, the latter tries to starve him to death to find out the secret of his being able to walk in daylight.
• In Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, by Brandon Sanderson, shedding blood will draw the wrath of the shades like nothing else. An accidental bump or nosebleed doesn't count, but blood shed in anger, exposed to the air, will enrage every shade in the vicinity. First, they will hunt down and kill whoever shed the blood, then, being enraged, they'll kill anyone else that happens to be nearby.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Joffrey Baratheon has a huge appreciation for seeing people in bloody combat and especially when he orders people to be killed or maimed. The HBO series takes this even further by implying he has a sexual fetish for seeing bloody corpses, showing a shot of Joffrey with the body of a tied-up prostitute riddled with crossbow arrows.

Live Action Television

• Game of Thrones: Not only does Joffrey Baratheon seem to only enjoy inflicting pain and death like his counterpart in the books, but it's taken further as being a sexual fetish for him, seeing as how he enjoyed one whore beating another and later putting arrows in said whore.
• Mythbusters: Kari Byron, of all people, expressed an attraction to blood in one episode. But she doesn't taste any, it's just pretty.
• In Supernatural, both vampires and djinn drink human blood. Sam also becomes addicted to drinking demon blood, and Crowley becomes addicted to injecting himself with human blood.

Music

• "The Red Means I Love You" by Madds Buckley is from the point of view of someone who is obsessed with tasting the blood of the person they're fascinated with, despite said person's objections. It's even based on Himiko Toga from My Hero Academia in the Anime and Manga folder!
  A lunatic
  Call me what suits your taste, I just wanna taste
  And I've always heard it's what's inside that counts

Mythology and Religion

• In Egyptian Mythology Sekhmet was created by Ra to punish humanity for disrespecting him. Unfortunately she acquired a taste for blood so she continued to slaughter people well beyond retribution, but luckily this was used against her as the other gods tricked her with booze mixed with red ochre to look like blood, causing her to pass out and pacify.

Professional Wrestling

• A trademark of Freddie Blassie, as biting became less of a cheat and more of just what he did.
• Canadian wrestler Vampiro, unsurprisingly, has a thing for blood. Similar wrestling vampires include and are not limited to Gangrel and Kevin Thorn.
• While wrestling for TNA in the UK during 2015, Bobby Roode promised to make Eric Young bleed. It ended up being Young who bit open Tommy Dreamer and continued to gnaw at his open wound though.
• Winter in TNA developed The Gimmick of drinking (out of a glass during her free time) and spitting(during matches as a cheat) blood on her opponents and was all too happy to drain it out of other people. Not quite so happy to see her own spilt, however.

Tabletop Games

• The art for the Magic: The Gathering card Blood Lust is an accidental occurrence of this. The card itself was based around the "Desire for violence and bloodshed" bloodlust, but a miscommunication with the artist resulted in its picture being more in line with this trope.
• In Pathfinder the augurs, the least of the Cenobite-inspired kytons, have abandoned the kyton belief in continual self-improvement through surgery in favor of just obsessing over blood. They look like metal balls with covered in blades, and it's not rare for them to be destroyed because they're too busy rolling around in spilled blood to pay attention to threats.
• Warhammer 40,000 has the Blood Angels chapter of Space Marines, who have numerous unspecified rituals surrounding blood. Additionally, a genetic defect known as the Red Thirst has a random chance of triggering a usually temporary overwhelming need to kill and spill blood, sometimes leading to a Leeroy Jenkins-style destruction of battle plans.
  • Then there's Khorne and his followers.
    • BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!! BLOOOOOD FOR THE BLOOOOD GOD!!!!!

Video Games

• Bloodborne: The entire population of Yharnamites is obsessed with blood, from alcohols to medical use, everything is about the use of the blood, to the point calling someone a vampire would be redundant.
• Darkest Dungeon has two examples:
  • The Hellion, a Barbarian Hero who can inflict heavy bleed upon enemies, at the cost of becoming winded.
  • The Flagellant, a Combat Sadomasochist who becomes stronger the closer to death he is.
• The sequel, Darkest Dungeon II, also has the Hellion and Flagellant. While the Flagellant is now a Poisonous Person, the Hellion now has "Bloodlust" as an ability, which clears winded and gives her a damage boost against bleeding enemies. Both characters also chide the Player Character for giving them a bleeding resistance buff.
• Dark Souls II has Titchy Gren, priest of Nahr Alma, he's obsessed with blood so much he has a covenant of Blood Knight.
• Dragon Age II: An Aggressive Hawke can end up proudly announcing, in combat, that they love the smell of fresh blood.
• Fate/stay night: As an example of a good (sort of) person doing this, Rider seems to find blood a bit of a turn on and also drinks it. When Shinji makes her, it's generally fatal and to get some strength from it, plus not her idea. However, she also seems to simply like the taste and neatly avoids answering Tohsaka about whether or not she's still doing so by saying if she was, Sakura wouldn't find out anyway. Bloodsucking is a bad thing in the Nasuverse but Rider gets away with it anyway.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening has Henry, whose in-game blurb describes him as "a harrowingly optimistic Plegian who loves blood".
• Guilty Gear: Zato's win quote against Millia went along the lines of "Finally! Only your blood can satisfy me!"
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: During your second fight with Ghirahim, he licks Link's blood off his blade when he lands a strike with it.
• Mass Effect 3: In multiplayer mode, Vorcha characters have the Bloodlust power, which causes them to become excited and frenzied for a short time whenever they kill an opponent (mechanically represented by giving a stackable buff to their running and melee attack speeds as well as the rate their Healing Factor works for a short time after every kill).
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty's Vamp, sort of. He has a blood fetish, due to sucking his dead relatives' blood to survive in the aftermath of a church bombing.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Mortal Kombat 9: Skarlet, a DLC character, was created from the blood of Shao Kahn's enemies and gains additional power by bathing in the blood of her own opponents, which is taken to logical extremes with her Fatalities.
  • Kotal Kahn in Mortal Kombat X acts like a stereotypical Aztec tribe leader, indulging in the blood of his enemies as a source of ritualistic empowerment. According to the comic series, he passed this along to the Mayans when he was serving as their god, which unfortunately led to a lot of deaths as they began to eat the hearts of their conquered foes from other lands and contracted ailments that their bodies were not prepared to fight.
• Street Fighter: Vega^note Balrog in Japan, the masked Spanish ninja. He talks about how his enemies should "soak in their blood" and that he can hardly wait to taste it. (Why yes, he's evil.)
• Suikoden: Several True Runes are stated to cause an insatiable thirst for blood in the bearers, most notably the Beast Rune, which ends up causing an enormous amount of bloodshed through its bearer, Luca Blight.

• Tears to Tiara 2: Melqart, Hamil's Superpowered Evil Side says to him a couple of times. "Tear your enemy to pieces. Eat their flesh. Drink their blood." It's Not Hyperbole.
• Theresia: Dear Emile: The initial protagonist is deeply comforted by the smell of blood. It reminds her of her mother.
• Touken Ranbu: Matsui Gou is ecstatic whenever blood is involved, gets nosebleeds frequently, likes to bring it up at every opportunity and is a Combat Sadomasochist who enjoys soaking everything with his own and his enemies' blood.
• Warcraft
  Blood Mage: My blood cries out for the vengeance of my people's blood, which can only be repaid with twice as much blood! Or maybe three times as much blood! Like, if you went to hell and it was full of blood, and that blood was on fire, and it was raining blood, then maybe THAT would be enough blood. Maybe but probably not...
  • The actual bloodlust spell increased a unit's damage (and sounded damn awesome) in II and increased their attack speed, movespeed, and size in III.
• The Wind Road has the intro for the Butcher, a bloodthirsty Implacable Man villain; killing a chicken by biting the throat, then sucking the blood dry. Before making dinner. Apparently using a knife is too civilized and humane.

Webcomics

• Charby the Vampirate is an extreme case. This cost him a girlfriend, and he barely avoided killing his only "normal" friend's grandmother.
• Daniel has a tough time ignoring his cravings for blood...or more particularly, life.
• Unknown Lands: By nature Inara and Mischief are drawn to blood, though both generally ignore it. When they fight the elves they both give in at different points and lick it from their weapons with Inara eventually biting through an opponents throat.
• In Weak Hero, Wolf only really starts to get excited about a fight when he's beaten his opponent so badly that their blood flies everywhere. When beating down Gray, there's a close-up shot of him delightedly licking off the blood that's spattered on his face.

Web Original

• In Alien Abduction Role Play, Hiboritch fails to clean himself properly after handling Tori's bloody, mutilated corpse. This provokes a feeding frenzy from his colleague Acktreal Domma.
• The Gungan Council has an entire family named the Bathorys. Guess what they like.
• Pretending to Be People features the denizens of the Den of Sin, who delight in lapping up blood, be it from everyday injuries, gunshots, or Blood Sport participants who have been crushed through the perforated floor of a plexiglass cage.

Web Videos

• In Welcome Back, Potter, Voldemort has taken to drinking the Minister of Magic's blood For the Evulz.

Western Animation

• The Batman: In "The Batman Vs. Dracula," Vampire Joker is shown raiding a blood bank, and when he breaks the glasses holding the blood, causing a sort of blood rain, he's immensely pleased and even laughs in glee!

Real Life

• Truth in Television: A few people do enjoy the taste of blood. In fact, there's an entire subculture based around it. They're called Sanguinarians.
• Most carnivorous animals. Domesticated dogs will even leaf through used feminine products for it.
• In a more prosaic case, the traditional diet of the Maasai people of Africa consists in large part of cow blood and cow milk.

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