History Main / WaterSourceTampering

* One short adventure for ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' involved [[spoiler:a pair of devils]] that were poisoning a town's water supply with a toxin that induced hallucinations.

* ''VideoGame/CityOfVillains'': Arachnos and the Rogue Isles' various {{Mad Scientist}}s dump the waste from their mad-science projects into the Rogue Isles' sewer system, where it then gets processed into the Isles' water supply. The effects of this are most evident in the lower-level zones, such as Mercy Island and Port Oakes. Plagues and mutations are common. One of the early-game factions is the Infected, made up of citizens who have mutated into power-mad, barely-cognizant zombies from drinking the tainted water.
* Poisoning a city's water supply was a potential espionage action in ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} II''. Succeeding reduced the city's population.

* ''VideoGame/PathfinderWrathOfTheRighteous'': In a sidequest that's one great big homage to ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', you stumble upon a group of mineshaft-dwellers whose ancestors had sealed themselves inside a mine to ride out the cataclysm of the Worldwound opening. They need you to find out why their water supply has recently gone bad, [[spoiler: which turns out to be a group of demons that had defiled the nearby temple from which the water flows, in order to flush them out]].

* ''VideoGame/Uncharted3'': The secret of King Solomon's ifrit is eventually revealed to be a [[spoiler:potent hallucinogen, hidden in the brass bottle, which he secretly introduced into the water supply of Ubar. After having primed the citizens of Ubar to believe he was going to unleash an ifrit upon them, and seeing as the city is in the middle of the desert and nobody had any choice but to drink the tainted water, they all had a catastrophic mass hallucination and set the city on fire themselves.]]
* ''VideoGame/WeHappyFew:'' Just in case you thought you could get away with not taking your [[GovernmentDrugEnforcement Joy]] in Wellington Wells, the water supply appears to have been laced with the medication. And, of course, [[ResourcesManagementGameplay you have to take a drink sometime...]]

* ''Series/{{Leverage}}'': Played with. "The Three Days of the Hunter Job" sees the team {{Gaslighting}} a crooked reporter into believing that the water supply was tainted with a "self-replicating viral nerve agent" in order to discredit her when she reports it on live television.

* [[Recap/TheShadowRadioS01E19 One episode]] of ''Radio/TheShadow'' had an unseen villain killing people by poison and falsely claiming to be The Shadow. It is quickly figured out that the murderer is killing by putting poison into buildings' water supplies. The real Shadow tracks the villain down and prevents him from dumping the poison into a water tower.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[WesternAnimation/ToyStory "Somebody's poisoned the water hole!"]]]]

* In Medieval Europe, one of the motivations for anti-Semitic violence was that Jews were accused of poisoning the wells used by Christians. This is the ultimate origin of the name of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well that logical fallacy]].

* In the aftermath of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Great_Kant%C5%8D_earthquake Great Kanto earthquake]] in 1923, ethnic Koreans were accused of taking advantage of the chaos and poisoning the local wells, leading to a massacre by the military and vigilantes that killed around 6000 people. The false rumor was based on the fact that the well water appeared murky and cloudy, but this is a common effect of earthquakes that was not known until decades later.

* In Flint, Michigan, the water supply was changed from the Great Lake to the Flint River, notorious for filth. This caused many people to suffer from lead poisoning due to the increased acidity of the water corroding the town's lead pipes and caused national outrage at Governor Rick Snyder.
* During the Herero and Nama genocide that occurred in Namibia between 1904 and 1905, German colonial forces systematically poisoned wells in the desert.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E138BlackLeatherJackets Black Leather Jackets]]", the aliens plan to [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar exterminate humanity]] by contaminating water reservoirs all over the world with deadly bacteria. Thousands of advance troops have been sent to Earth for that purpose. Steve reports to their leader that every living thing in the state will be dead within 48 hours.

* ''WebAnimation/SuperThings'': The first news blip of the fourth "News Zings Today" episode involves breaking news of a contamination attack of the water source of Kaboom City, courtesy of the Double Acids. The two of them achieved this by having Count Garlik swim in the water plant's source water tank ([[SkinnyDipping minus his swim trunks]]), thus contaminating the water with garlic. [[spoiler:Luckily for the city, and unluckily for the two of them and the remainder villains, they contaminated the line that goes to Prison Island, rather than the Kaboom City line]].

* In ''Film/TheChallenge'' (1970 TV movie), a CombatByChampion takes place on a Pacific island. The US combatant poisons all the water sources on the island except one in the hope of ambushing his opponent there.

* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'':
** A frequent plot of ComicBook/TheJoker is to slip Joker venom into Gotham's water supply.
** In his first appearance, PoisonousPerson Dr. Phosphorus attempted to poison Gotham's water supply by submerging his toxic body in the city's reservoir.
** {{Deconstructed}} in one ''{{Franchise/Batman}}'' comic, where Bruce deduces Narcosis, the VillainOfTheWeek, ''won't'' put his hallucinogen into the water supply, because it's too easy to shut off. Instead, he plots to put it in the ''milk'' supply.
** The plot of ''[=Batman/Punisher=]'' sees Frank Castle and Jean-Paul Valley fighting to stop Jigsaw from using an experimental rocket fuel from destroying two reservoirs and the water supply in Gotham and forcing the city into paying Jigsaw's newly-acquired construction company to pay for a new one.
* Often used as a plot point in the adventures of [[ComicBook/{{Blueberry}} Lieutenant Blueberry]]: one or more characters finally come across a water source after a long trip through the desert... only to find out that the bad guys (or at any rate, someone who does not want to see them come out of the desert alive) have poisoned it by throwing in a dead animal, usually a horse.
* A ''ComicBook/CaptainAmerica'' arc, during Cap's "The Captain" phase, had Madam Hydra/Viper putting drugs into Washington D.C.'s water supply. What did said drugs do? Turned everyone who drank the water into half-human, half-snake hybrids.

* ''ComicBook/SupremePower'' (an AlternateCompanyEquivalent to the DCU and especially the Justice League) was all too happy to show how terrifying this would be in the spinoff where Nighthawk (the Franchise/{{Batman}} analogue) deals with an OmnicidalManiac who has developed an always lethal poison and is trying to kill off a major city with it. It gets {{Deconstructed}} when Nighthawk points out to the man that the water reclamation plant doesn't connect directly to the reservoir and there are safeguards in place to shut it off automatically if it's contaminated.
* ''ComicBook/TheUltimates'': The Chitauri had been dumping gamma butyrolactone to dampen people's thoughts. And they had been doing it for some time already.
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: A possible future shows the hero doing this when the inmates of a fortified prison manage to take the president hostage. As everyone in this future has taken/is on the [[FountainOfYouth age regressing immortality drug L-3]] she dumps an anti-L-3 agent into the water supply for the prison, causing all of the troublemakers to rapidly age up physically to their actual geriatric ages.

[[folder:Films — Animation]]

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
* ''Film/BatmanBegins'' had a variation. Scarecrow laced Gotham's water supply with his fear toxin for months, without anyone realizing it. The toxin had no effect in this form. [[spoiler:It needed to be absorbed through the lungs to have an effect — the bad guys' ultimate plan was to use a microwave emitter to vaporize Gotham's water supply, thereby exposing the whole city.]]
* [[UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan The Soviet tank crew]] in ''Film/TheBeastOfWar'' is shown emptying poison canisters into a well while attacking a village. Later on, one of the mujahadeen is killed when he drinks from a poisoned well.
** The Soviets' poisoning of every water source they come across ends up biting them in the butt later -- [[spoiler:a Soviet helicopter crew unknowingly drinks from a pond the tank crew had poured cyanide into earlier and all die — before they can radio assistance for the stranded tank.]]

* In ''[[Creator/JohnGrisham The Appeal]],'' this is the basis of the lawsuit that drives the plot.

* In some versions of Myth/ArthurianLegend, this is why King Uther dies-his enemies poison the castle's well.

* Mentioned in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'', the fifth book of ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': Tyrion opines that Daenerys Targaryen is a fool for not poisoning every well within a 20-mile radius of her city of Meereen the moment she learned an enemy army was coming to lay siege. Tyrion notes that if she'd done so, the enemy's only water supply would have been a noxious nearby river that drinking from would have invited an outbreak of all manner of waterborne diseases within the ranks.
* In the Literature/DirkPittAdventures book ''Sahara'', the plot-driving ecological disaster is caused by the CorruptCorporateExecutive's improper disposal of nuclear waste that subsequently leaked into the water supply. At the end of the film, [[spoiler:he gets subjected to LaserGuidedKarma — Dirk and Al have him tied down out in the open sun until he sunburns, then trick him into drinking that polluted water. He dies a raving loon.]]

* In ''The First Virtue'', part of ''Literature/StarTrekStargazer'', a fanatical Cordracite poisons her city's water supply in order to escalate a conflict with another race, [[FalseFlagOperation assuming they'll be blamed]].

** "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E22TheMostToys The Most Toys]]" has Kivas Fajo do this as part of a PoisonAndCureGambit — which itself is a cover [[XanatosGambit for his real goal to get his hands on Data]], so he can add a Soong-type android to his collection of rare items.

** Homer says that Shelbyville vowed to spike Springfield's water supply in revenge for Springfield burning down their city hall, but "they don't have the guts." Three guesses what happens to Marge [[MushroomSamba next.]]
** In "GI-(Annoyed Grunt)", where Homer joins the Army Reserve, Homer is put in charge of a squad composed of the lowliest soldiers, and after Homer escapes the base where the war-game is held, [[ColonelKilgore the Colonel]] leads his battalion into nearby Springfield to hunt him down. Despite being told that his actions to capture one man wastes money and makes the Army look bad, [[HonorBeforeReason the colonel insists on continuing his hunt]]. The occupation of Springfield only ends when Marge convinces everyone to pour alcohol into the reservoir, and once the battalion gets drunk and passes out, several gun-wielding residents surround the Colonel when he wakes up and Marge negotiates a truce.

** Tragically (and ironically), there were a number of anti-Semitic riots and lynchings in late 12th-century Britain which ended with Jewish corpses and pieces thereof being dumped down a well, poisoning it after their deaths (most notably after the Clifford's Tower Massacre in York of 1190 AD — and the well they were dumped in supplied one of the richer Christian parts of town...)

* ''Film/Zone39'': Central Union is in the process of misappropriating water from working-class towns to supply other areas with clean water.

'''Townspeople:''' He '''''DID?!?'''''\\
'''Tom:''' No, but are we gonna sit around and wait till he does?!?

* ''Night Chills'', a novel by Creator/DeanKoontz, sees a government group test a form of MoreThanMindControl against a small town. The first stage was to dose the city's water supply with a hypnotic drug to make the townsfolk more susceptible to a series of subliminal programming they'd use during phase two.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'': Malvina Hazen, the [[AxeCrazy utterly insane]] khan of Clan Jade Falcon during the Dark Age, ordered one hapless planet's water supply to be contaminated with nuclear material because of a small group that had defied her on the planet. The planet in question was largely desert and had limited potable water, making this slightly more believable.