History Main / Autocannibalism

* Technically called 'Autophagia', this is not classified as a specific disorder. However, some individuals with mental disorders, especially psychosis, Impulse-control disorders, and Obsessive-compulsive disorder feel compelled to eat their own flesh. In extreme cases, this can lead to infections, nerve damage, amputations, and death.

* There was a story about a Chinese general named Xiahou Dun. During battle, he took an arrow to the eye. When he went to remove the arrow, his entire eye came off on the tip. According to the tale, he declared, "Essence of my father, blood of my mother, I cannot throw this away!" and promptly swallowed his eye whole.

* ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms'' has a rare example of this trope played for badassery. When Xiahou Dun has [[EyeScream an arrow shot into his eye]], he proceeds to rip it out and eat it.

** In a plot point exclusive to the manga, Zeff cut off and ate his own leg while stranded on a deserted island with Sanji, who he had secretly given all the stockpiled food to.

* [[AllTrollsAreDifferent Trolls]] in some versions of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' are depicted as doing this if there isn't enough food for them, using their regenerative abilities to heal the damage. [[FridgeLogic Don't think too hard about how this would actually work]].

* In a plot point exclusive to the manga, Zeff from ''Manga/OnePiece'' cut off and ate his own leg while stranded on a deserted island with Sanji, who he had secretly given all the stockpiled food to.

-->'''Tsukiyama:''' ''"And I made a surprising discovery. I taste pretty delicious."''
* In ''Manga/{{Toriko}}'' gourmet cell users will suffer from "the autophage" (which they are at constant risk of due to their HyperactiveMetabolism) which gives them a power boost but kills them rather quickly.
* In the first chapter of ''Literature/TrinityBlood'' Abel Nightroad eats his own severed arm, with a mouth in his other hand, then grows the severed arm back.

* In ''Film/{{Eat|2014}}'', out-of-work actress Novella [=McClure=] develops this as a response to increasingly stressful events in her life. It starts with her chewing at the flesh at the side of her thumbnail as eviction looms, and culminates tearing huge mouthfuls of meat off her arms and foot and devouring them in a sort of manic state or trance.

* A particularly gruesome example occurs in ''Film/SplatterNakedBlood'', in which one of the women exposed to Eiji’s experimental drug ‘[=MySon=]’ cooks and eats various parts of her body, starting by frying her hand and taking a bite out of it, and culminating with a moment where she [[EyeScream drives a fork into her eye socket]], takes the eye out and eats it whole.

* In Jeff Long's ''Deeper'', a monster gets his comeuppance when he's paralyzed from the neck down and left to starve to death in a desolate cavern. He regains partial mobility in his hands, but it happens so very slowly that he realizes he'll die before he can crawl his way to food; he therefore finger-climbs his hand up to his face, and begins eating [[{{Fingore}} his own fingers]]. [[spoiler: And then gets attacked and killed before he can move anything else, meaning he chewed himself up for nothing.]]
* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': In ''Literature/PeaceTalks'' Thomas gets beaten so badly with nothing to feed on that his own vampiric nature starts feeding on him, which would have killed him in short order had he not been put in stasis. His Hunger doesn't even turn away from him when people are present he could feed on, and the only person he seems to be able to acknowledge at all is his brother whom he'd much rather die than turn it on.
* ''Literature/EndersGame'' has Ender munching on his own hand while sleeping--a slightly uncommon example in that it's not out of starvation but a manifestation of stress and guilt [[spoiler: after [[BreakTheCutie overworking Petra until she cracks up]]]].
-->"I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school."

-->"It's not done to eat your ''own'' leg, is it? You'd go blind."
* ''[[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus Monty Python's Big Red Book]]'' contains a poem about a little boy named Horace who eats himself [[BlackComedyCannibalism until all that's left is his stomach.]]

* {{Exaggerated|Trope}} in “The Savage Mouth” (short story) by Sakyo Komatsu: the unnamed protagonist not only commits this trope out of sheer spiteful perversity, but he takes advantage of cybernetic medical technology to replace each body part as it's removed so he can keep going. And cooks each piece with the care and sophistication of a gourmet chef. And records the entire process. [[spoiler: When the police find what's left of him - just a skull with a still-working cybernetic jaw and a dead, partially scooped-out brain - they ''immediately'' destroy the recordings and declare him the victim of a psychopathic MadScientist rather than horrify the public with the truth.]]

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'',
** The leader of [[PsychoForHire the Brave Companions]], Vargo Hoat, gets hacked to pieces one part at a time by Gregor Clegane while he is imprisoned. The flesh is then fed to Hoat and the rest of the prisoners. [[AssholeVictim It should be noted that Hoat absolutely deserves this.]]

* In Jack Heath's first Timothy Blake book, the star cannibal FBI consultant bites off his own thumb to escape the BigBad. And swallows it because he is a cannibal. In a later book, another character asks him why he didn't just dislocated it and the idea honestly did not occur to him.
* In ''{{Literature/Wander}}'', Temple tells Wander about a girl who had her limbs amputated and fed to her by the smilers.

* The Creator/StephenKing short story "Survivor Type" centered around a surgeon and drug runner who becomes shipwrecked on an island with almost nothing to eat, and is ultimately forced to eat himself by amputating first one foot (after an injury), then the other (no injury this time), then working his way gradually higher up, using the smuggled drugs as anesthetic.[[note]]King noted when talking about the story that after coming up with the idea he went to a doctor that he knew and asked if the scenario was at all plausible/possible, and said doctor gave him a very long odd look (kind of the nonverbal equivalent of the FlatWhat) before saying "Yes."[[/note]]

* In ''Series/{{Angel}}'' "To Shanshu In L.A.", Holland Manners warns Lindsey that the Senior Partners are watching the situation closely. Lilah suddenly comments that the last person who let them down was forced to eat his own liver.
-->"[[WithFriendsLikeThese I don't know what made me think of that]]."
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer:'' Referenced as one of Anya's past vengeance curses in "The Prom":
-->'''Anya:''' "... then, this one time, a girl wished that her ex would cannibalize ''himself.'' Even I had a hard time watching that one, let me tell you--"

* In Adam Warren's version of the ''Literature/DirtyPair'' universe (specifically "Run from the Future"), Kei and Yuri are at one point called upon to capture a cabal of autocannibalistic cyborgs who believed that eating their flesh allowed them to concentrate their life essence.

* Stem Cell of ''{{ComicBook/Livewires}}'' (an android) is forced to chew off most of her own artificial skin to digest and recycle into giant, flaming, self-replicating robots as a [[BatmanGambit gambit]] to complete her team's botched mission.
** In the aftermath, she considers "Autocannibal" for a new name.
* In ''Skull Island: Birth of Kong'', set in the ''Film/MonsterVerse'' continuity, features the Death Jackals: cannibalistic dinosaur-like predators that are known to eat their own limbs when hungry enough.''
* In ''ComicBook/TheSmurfs'' comic book story "The Hungry Smurfs", one of the Smurfs [[ContinuityNod wishes that he was still a sausage]] so that he could eat parts of himself during a village famine in winter.

* ''[[ComicBook/EarthX Universe X]]'' had Multiple Man eat a duplicate of himself while lost in the frozen wilderness. This result was him becoming the new {{Wendigo}}.
* Creator/DCComics villain ComicBook/VandalSavage, having lost his immortality in one story, restores it by eating a disfigured clone of himself.
* ''[[Creator/ECComics The Vault of Horror]]'' story "Two of a Kind!" has a dating couple who are secretly monsters (he's a flesh-eating ghoul, she's a vampire) who each initially plan to prey upon the other, but find they really do love each other. Unfortunately, during their date (a skiing trip) they end up snowbound in a cabin without any other means of nourishment. Not wanting to hurt the other as they starve, he ends up eating himself and she drinks her own blood. They end TogetherInDeath. Awww... but also ew.

* ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} was forced to do this during a storyline where he was stuck in a snowstorm. Unlike most of the people here, his HealingFactor made this less of an issue.

** In the intro of "WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror XV", Homer is eating his limbs while being cooked in a giant oven.
** In the second segment of "Treehouse of Horror XX", a zombified Ralph is shown eating himself.
** In the CouchGag of "Holidays of Future Passed", the family are gingerbread people and Homer eats his left arm.
** The third segment of "Treehouse of Horror XXVIII" is centered around Homer becoming addicted to eating himself until he drives his family away. In the end, he ends up selling his body to a celebrity chef and becomes a popular flavor throughout town.

** In a fantasy sequence in "A Midsummer's Nice Dream", when Homer smokes a joint with Cheech Marin, the smoke appears as candy hearts that Homer eats before eating his limbs and torso.

** PlayedForLaughs in "Graveyard Shift", where Squidward tells [=SpongeBob=] a GhostStory, prompting [=SpongeBob=] to [[RapidFireNailBiting bite his nails]]. Next cut is of him actually eating his arms (they grow back ridiculously fast), then going through them like a paper shredder, [[EscalatingPunchline then eating down a bucket of his own arms like popcorn]].
** "Just One Bite" had Squidward claim that he hates Krabby Patties enough that if he were at the bottom of a well for three years with nothing to eat but one, [[WouldRatherSuffer he'd sooner eat his own legs]], "and not just the extra ones".

* The music video for "Obscure" by Music/DirEnGrey features, among other bizarre things, guitarist Die ripping his heart out of his chest and eating it.

* The music video for Music/JackStauber's "Dinner is Not Over" briefly features Jack eating a copy of his own head and nodding approvingly to the audience.

* This happens at the end of the ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'' between [[ComicBook/{{Invincible}} Omni-Man]] and [[ComicBook/TheBoys Homelander]] in the "one forces it upon another" fashion. [[spoiler:At the start of the fight, Nolan vows to feed Homelander his own heart for murdering Debbie, and he [[NotHyperbole very literally]] makes good on that promise: The deathblow involves Omni-Man ripping Homelander's lower jaw out of its socket. Then, he rips out Homelander's heart, shoves it into the Supe's forced-open mouth, and makes him 'swallow' by crushing Homelander's head.]]

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' has autovory, eating a brain-dead clone of oneself alive while hooked up to the clone's sensory outputs. In some polities, one can buy clones of celebrities for this purpose as well. Or, for a slightly less disturbing example, the setting mentions the practice of cloning pieces of one's own body to eat being a "fad" for a while.

* The Creator/ShelSilverstein poem "Hungry Mungry" ends this way. Another poem "Me-Stew" is all about a chef having no idea what to put in his stew, so he puts ''himself'' in.

* ''WesternAnimation/The OwlHouse'': In the first episode, one of the inmates at the Conformatorium is a demon who's been imprisoned there for eating his own eyeballs. It's all right, they grow back.

How do you take the already disturbing concept of [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalism]] and make it even more screwed up? Why, by making the diner what's also being served, of course!

** ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders Stardust Crusaders]]'': [[TheDragon Vanilla Ice's]] Stand, Cream, is able to devour itself and its user to become a void that soars rapidly through the air and [[PowerOfTheVoid consumes everything it comes into contact with.]]
** ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureGoldenWind Golden Wind]]'': Polpo is seen eating his own fingers, which soon grow right back. Whether this is an ability of his Stand, [[CastingAShadow Black Sabbath,]] or something else entirely is left unknown.

A character eating a clone or duplicate of themselves also counts. Also see ITasteDelicious, which tends to be about characters finding themselves irresistibly delectable after becoming or being covered in food (try to keep examples of that on its page). Some of the more disturbing examples of LetsMeetTheMeat (like the image on that page) can involve this.