Quotes / Buried Alive

Anime and Manga

"Did you really think sealing me in concrete and burying me in the yard was even going to slow me down?!"

— Ranma, Ranma ½

Comic Books

Harry Constantine served with Cromwell in Ireland, at the Drogheda Massacre - but where God's frigging Englishman did it out of Christian madness, Harry did it for the loot. And then he met his match in the Ribbon Queen, and she cursed the bastard to live forever. The spell wasn't that strong, just bloody amateur stuff. If someone wanted to, they could still do him in. So the queen put him somewhere no-one could get to him. No one did. Not for three hundred years. And then one day, along comes this arrogant little sod asking about his heritage... he knows what a shit Harry is, and once he's got his answers, he just fills in the grave again. 'Cos he thinks he's gonna be different. But he's not. He's John Constantine.

—John Constantine, Hellblazer: End Of The Line

Spinister: Again, about the premature burial... I'm sorry you weren't dead. Also: I'm glad you weren't dead.
MP3: I was conscious when you did it, Spinister! I resisted...!
Spinister: I thought it was human post-death reflex syndrome...!

— Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, "Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again!"

Fairy Tales

Meat and drink for the seven years were carried into the tower, and then she and her waiting-woman were led into it and walled up, and thus cut off from the sky and from the earth. There they sat in the darkness, and knew not when day or night began.

— Maid Maleen

But no sooner had Curlylocks taken the staff and moved it than the subterranean passages re-echoed with a terrible rumbling noise. The great pillar trembled, swayed and crashed down amid a whole mountain of falling earth, closing and blocking up the path between Reygoch and Curlylocks. They could neither see nor hear one another, nor could they reach one another...
There was the poor little fairy Curlylocks caught in the bowels of the earth! She was buried alive in that vast grave, and perhaps would never again see those golden fields for which she had set out,[...]

— "Reygoch"

The King had a daughter who was very beautiful, but she was also very strange. She had made a vow to take no one as her lord and husband who did not promise to let himself be buried alive with her if she died first. "If he loves me with all his heart," said she, "of what use will life be to him afterwards?" On her side she would do the same, and if he died first, would go down to the grave with him.

— The Three Snake Leaves

Film

Pugsley: Are they dead?
Wednesday: Does it matter?

— The Addams Family

Budd: Wriggle-worm, you see this? You see it, don't ya? That's a can of Mace. Now, you're going underneath the ground tonight, and... that's all there is to it. But when I bury you, I was gonna bury you with this. [holds up a flashlight] But if you're gonna act like a horse's ass, I'll spray this whole goddamn can... RIGHT IN YOUR EYEBALLS! I'll burn 'em out of your fuckin' head. Then you're gonna be blind, burnin', and buried alive. So what's it gonna be, sister?
[The Bride nods toward the flashlight]
Budd: That's a wise decision.
[He hoists her into the coffin]
Budd: This is for breakin' my brother's heart...

—Kill Bill Volume 2

"Don't let them bury me! I'm not dead!"

—Dr. Dennis Alan, The Serpent and the Rainbow

"When you wake up scream, Doctor Alan. Scream all you want. There is no escape from the grave."

—Dargent Peytraud, The Serpent and the Rainbow

Khan: I've done far worse than kill you, Admiral. I've hurt you, and I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her, marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet, buried alive... Buried alive...

Admiral Khan: KHAAAAAANNNNNN!!! (Cue Distant Reaction Shot of the planet's surface) KHAAAAAANNNNNN!!!

— Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Literature

And when the fresh asphalt had dried, along would come the lining machine, the driver under his big canvas parasol looking back frequently to makes sure the broken yellow line was perfectly straight, unaware that he was passing over a fog-gray Cadillac with three people inside, unaware that down in the darkness there was a ruby ring and a gold Rolex that might still be marking off the hours.

—Dolan's Cadillac

The man and his brigade came. They patted down the components vigorously, mixed up the cement with a half-hour pounding, howitzers and rockets commingling grit and everything else stacked in the sunken gutters of men like pestles and mortars, pasting everything into a good thick red base. The tanks came with their toylike motion, gunstalks rotating but silent. They did their job with other means. Plows mounted at their fronts, they traced along the lines dug in the dirt. With humdrum efficiency they shunted the hot sand into the trenches, pouring it over the contents, the mulch and ragged soup and the men who ran and tried to fire or to surrender or to scream until the desert dust encased them and did its job, funnelling into them so their sounds were choked and they became frantic, then sluggish and still, packed the thousands down together with their friends and the segments of their friends, in their holes and miles of dugout lines.

—Foundation

Sometimes, I wake him with my dreams, dreams in which my real daughter lies buried beneath a mound of earth, alive yet not alive, surrounded by pale things that have taken her and keep her close to them, both curious and hateful of her, her cries smothered by the dirt. I have tried digging for her, but I hit stone within inches. Whatever lies under the mound has secured itself well.

—The New Daughter

Live-Action TV

"Ok, buried alive. No need to panic." (Beat) "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLP!"

—Merton, Big Wolf on Campus

What's the fun in burying someone if they're already dead?

— The Master, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"People always get it wrong with Time Lords. We take forever to die. Even if we're too injured to regenerate, every cell in our bodies keeps trying. Dying properly can take days. That's why we like to die among our own kind. They know not to bury us early."

— The Doctor, Doctor Who, "Heaven Sent"

I'm alive... I didn't die... I'm immortal. That's it! I've got a power! I bloody knew it! I've got a power! Who's laughing now?
(Pause, as realization creeps in)
HELP! HELP! I'm alive! YOU BURIED ME ALIVE, YOU DICKS! HEEEEEELP!
(Beat)
I'm immortal. That's just great. Thank you. Thanks a lot! Un-fucking-believable...

— Nathan, Misfits.

Music

"I can't explain just how it feels
The thought of my premature burial
Inside this oblong box I lie
With the hopes I'll be buried alive"

Creature Feature, "Buried Alive"

"A realization arrives
A shovel strikes the earth above
I'm being buried alive

— Riot, "Buried Alive (Tell Tale Heart)"

Tabletop Games

"The scrape of shovels and the tumble of cold dirt soon muffled their pleas."

— Flavor text of the Magic: The Gathering card Buried Alive

As far as the cops are concerned, Darren Scott Cook is still a wanted man, but thirty years on, they don't think they'll ever find him. They're probably right: Darren's in a cement slab under the main building's boiler room. It's even marked "DSC4EVR." He's doing what those vampires up north thought their kind should do best - hide in plain sight.

—Midnight Roads

Video Games

"You've moved to a new area: A small, velvet lined box. You can't see anything. You have just enough space to twist onto your belly or your back. Oh dear God. Oh dear God."

— Description of a certain failure location in Fallen London.

Lying in this darkness is like breathing water. You wonder how many people in history have been in your position. You wonder what they did. Well, they died. Eventually. But it's all right. The thing is to stay calm. Your nose itches. You can't reach to scratch it. You have to rub it against the inside of the coffin lid. After a while, you find yourself screaming again. You don't remember how you started, and you're not sure how to stop.

—Fallen London

You may ponder the futility of your ambitions as you spend a deathless eternity beneath a mountain of rubble: you and your Soul Reaver will go equally mad as the eons pass. The Citadel of the Apostates will become your living tomb!

—The Elder God, Legacy of Kain: Defiance

The Gospel isn't done yet. You will record your own resurrection. You will complete your Gospel. Yes... Yes, return him to the Way of Sorrows! His tomb is waiting...

—Laird Byron, Outlast II

The city architects are duly remembered by history, while the true laborers are immortalized in a different way. Many lay trapped beneath its streets for all time.

—Ranse Truman, The Suffering: Ties That Bind

Webcomics

Jack: Oh, what, that underground thing? I just punched my way out.
Craig: What? What?! That doesn't make sense!!! You were over there when I buried you!
Jack: Right, yeah, I punched in your direction.
Craig: In my direction?!
Jack: It's not my fault if I can hear your incredibly nasal voice underground.

—The Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon

Web Videos

"A funeral is a solemn event. A time for reflection and seeing loved ones, sharing memories and moving forward. This is considerably harder when the deceased is not deceased. Tom is alive. He is not dead. We are burying him to elicit trauma upon him for the future."

—The description for "We Held A Funeral For Our Alive Friend..."

Mollymauk: I woke up without any names, or any past, buried in the ground two years ago.
Caleb: You woke up buried in the ground...?
Nott: Were you dead?
Mollymauk: Obviously not. [...] My first memory, my oldest memory is dirt, in my face, underground.

— Critical Role

Real Life

"When they were done digging, we tied them and stabbed their legs with bayonets. Some of them screamed, and we laughed and kicked them to shut them up. We then rolled each man into his hole and covered him with the wet mud."

— Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

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