History Main / BloodForMortar

* Shew in ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' as part of his FaceDeathWithDignity carried the capstop to the top of Thouzer's pyramid, then as he's executed, the stone crashes his body, completing the construction.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* Invoked in ''Film/ThreeHundred'': A Persian emissary sees that the Spartans have stacked up the bodies of the Persian soldiers, and they tell him their blood served as mortar.
* ''Film/LethalWeapon3'': The BigBad demonstrates how vile he is when he tosses a subordinate that [[YouHaveFailedMe failed him]] into a pile of concrete being poured as a house's foundation, holds him down until he drowns, and continues pouring concrete so the man will be buried in the foundation.
* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] and [[DefiedTrope Defied]] in ''Film/TheTenCommandments1956''. When Moses' fellow Egyptians ask why he will not let a Hebrew woman die during the construction of a temple, he states that "blood makes poor mortar" and frees her.

[[folder:Graphic-Novels]]
* There is a graphic Novel titled ''[[https://majorspoilers.com/2019/05/21/road-of-bones-1-review/ Road of Bones]]'' based on the very real Russian Kolyma highway, where the dead convicts are buried under the road as it's the only permafrost-free area they have. [[ItGotWorse it gets worse.]]

* There is a Hungarian ballad, Aves Kelemen, which is about a group of masons building a castle but it keeps crumbling (if they build by day, then it'll crumble by night, if they build by night, it'll crumble by dawn) until they get a sign/decide to kill one of their wives and add her blood to the mortar. The first wife to show up bringing her husband's lunch is that of Kelemen, so she is promptly killed and the castle stands.

* ''Literature/ThirteenStoreys'': Reclusive, [[CorruptCorporateExecutive sociopathic billionaire]] Tobias Fell has Banyan Court specifically to his specifications, whilst also burying many of the workers and other people he decides to dispose of (such as disagreeable business partners) in the foundations and walls of the building. This is entirely designed to create a "spiritual faraday Cage" to protect him from the ghosts of his victims instead passing their vengeance off on other innocent people.
* In [[Literature/TheBlackCompany Shadows Linger]], The Black Keep [[spoiler:is being built by minions of The Dominator using fresh corpses they buy from unscrupulous people in the nearby city]] It appears to be made of black stone, but during one foray into it, Shed gets a better look and sees corpses frozen into the stone.
* According to ''Literature/AlwaysComingHome'', some people in the Valley (and everyone in two of the towns) mix some of a slaughtered animal's blood with clay, to be used later for making bricks.

* ''WesternAnimation/MonsterHouse'' [[spoiler:The house became possessed as a result of the owners's wife falling into the house's foundation and getting buried in cement. The kids find a shrine to her in the basement of the house and accidentally break a lair of cement which reveals her skeleton.]]

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/PussInBootsTheLastWish'': To cross a cliff, "Big" Jack Horner has several of his bakers grip each other and assemble as an improvised bridge for him to walk on. While they're capable of withstanding his weight, Jack then orders his carriage to follow rolling, which leads to the bakers losing their grip and all but one of them falling to their deaths. Jack's response to this is nonchalantly dismissive about life-risking work:
-->'''Jack:''' Well, you know what they say: Can't bake a pie without losing a dozen men!
[[/folder]]

* The albumin in blood has also has properties similar to proteins in milk; so like making cheese from milk, blood can be processed to make curds and pressed into blocks. In southern Chinese cuisine, this is called "blood tofu". In Russia, it is sometimes combined with sugar and condensed milk to make snack bars.

* Japanese WW2 war crimes included both alleged and confirmed uses of human bodies to fill in pot-holes and ruts in roads so their tanks could keep advancing without bogging down. Likewise, in the 1950’s soviet political prisoners used as slave labour building the trans-Siberian Kolyma highway found that because of permafrost, the only place they could bury the dead was [[NightmareFuel under the road itself,]] to the point where skulls eroding out of the road-surface is a [[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/17/russia-uncovers-road-of-bones-on-frozen-highway-in-siberia common occurrence today.]]

* In a WebAnimation/YouTubePoop by WebAnimation/DaThings, [[https://youtu.be/kkE-ji1Mbo0 Crunch'n Crunch's Crunchity Crunches]], Advertising/CapnCrunch is horrified to discover that the Crunchlings' home city is made entirely out of Crunchling bodies.

* ''WebVideo/OutsideXbox'': In one TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons campaign, titled 'Hammer Time', the party come upon an enchanted hammer belonging to the legendary Ethelfrith the Builder, allowing them to command his building crew of (now) 60 undead skeletons. Luke's character, Dob instructs a group of skeletons to build an orphanage after they accidentally tear down the old one, which they do by using stone from a quarry ... [[spoiler:and the orphans as the mortar. Turns out, the skeletons have a curse on them that causes them to obey any command given by the hammer's wielder, but in the worst way possible. Crosses over with LiteralGenie, as learning this makes the party ''much'' warier of how they word requests, which just made the DM more able to comedically make the skeletons more ''emotionally'' hurtful]].

* ''Franchise/TransformersGeneration1'': The Constructicon foreman Scrapper likes to take the bodies of fallen Autobots and make them part of whatever construction he's currently working on.

We've all heard the Aesop about how "you can't get blood out of a stone". Apparently nobody told the architect of this building, who thinks blood and gore is a great construction material to mix with stone. Using HumanResources, their blood, bones or other parts are added to the building. It may become a HumanArchitectureHorror (unless [[AndIMustScream those aren't corpses]]), or is otherwise just creepy.

* Creator/RobertWestall's story "The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral" is about a cathedral which turns out to have incorporated a human sacrifice due to a Middle Ages master builder with secret pagan beliefs. In the story, the cathedral is being repaired, and attempts to absorb the protagonist as a new sacrifice.

* ''Literature/ThirteenStoreys'': Reclusive, [[CorruptCorporateExecutive sociopathic billionaire]] Tobias Fell has Banyan Court specifically to his specifications, whilst also burying the many of the workers and other people he decides to dispose of (such as disagreeable business partners) in the foundations and walls of the building. This is entirely designed to create a "spiritual faraday Cage" to protect him from the ghosts of his victims instead passing their vengeance off on other innocent people.

* [[https://www.worldoftales.com/Asian_folktales/Chinese_Folktale_2.html An old Chinese legend]] contains a variation. It tells about a bell which did not come out right during the casting. The ruler said the person who made the bell would be killed if he failed again. His daughter was foretold that a young maiden's blood needs to be added, so she jumped into the molten metal. It worked.

* ''WebVideo/OutsideXbox'': In one TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons campaign, titled 'Hammer Time', the party come upon an enchanted hammer belonging to the legendary Ethelfrith the Builder, allowing them to command his building crew of (now) 60 undead skeletons. Luke's character, Dob instructs a group of skeletons to build an orphanage after they accidentally tear down the old one, which they do by using stone from a quarry ... [[spoiler:and the orphans as the mortar. Turns out, the skeletons have a curse on them that causes them to obey any command given by the hammer's wielder, but in the worst way possible. Crosses over with LiteralGenie, as learning this makes the party ''much'' more wary of how they word requests, which just made the DM more able to comedically make the skeletons more ''emotionally'' hurtful]].

* In the area of ''Ravensblight'' stands Darc Mansion, built-in 1817 by Gideon Darc, who sold naval and artillery shot during the War of 1812 (some say to both sides...) thereby making his fortune. The place has been abused, neglected and even struck by lightning and set aflame, but still stands as the pulverised human bone has been mixed into the mortar.

* An {{urban legend|s}} about Hoover Dam claims that some of the 96 people who died during its construction wound up paved over into the dam. [[https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/history/essays/fatal.html In reality,]] human flesh makes for a far weaker construction material than concrete, and the manner in which the dam was constructed would have made it impossible for a hapless construction worker to drown in wet concrete.

* There are cathedrals that have their walls covered entirely in human bones. They aren't literally made out of the bone though, the bones are simply inserted into the plaster. The reason for this, is that the churches ran out of space in their crypts. Putting the bones into the walls of the church was considered a respectful way of reburying those who had to be exumed so that new corpses could be buried. Still creepy though.

* The Rotblood Norscans of ''VideoGame/VermintideII'' used this for at least some of their construction, and the characters do not react well to discovering that fact.