History Main / DisposableVagrant

* ''Podcast/TheLastPodcastOnTheLeft'' refers to this idea as the "Least Dead". They note how multiple serial killers, such as Gary Ridgeway and Robert Pickton, were able to get away with their crimes because their main targets were prostitutes, whose deaths garnered little official attention, or ''black'' prostitutes, who got basically none.

* A somewhat funny, if you have a dark sense of humour, variation occurs in Creator/CSLewis' ''Literature/OutOfTheSilentPlanet''. The protagonist [[StumbledIntoThePlot walks into the plot]], despite not being actually homeless or disposable. But as a lecturer on vacation, he, as he blightly tells the men about to kidnap him for nefarious purposes, doesn't exist until the academic year begins.

* Creator/CSLewis' ''Literature/OutOfTheSilentPlanet'' opens with mad scientist Dr. Weston debating whether to kidnap a homeless retarded boy or his best friend from college for his rocket expedition.

* ''Series/{{Arrow}}''. The Count got his moniker from the twin-injector marks he left in the fifty-six vagrants and prostitutes he murdered to perfect the drug Vertigo. Despite this serial killing spree, no-one knows who the Count is until the drug hit the streets and starting killing pretty young socialites, and our hero Oliver Queen only finds out when his sister Thea gets high and crashes her car.

Vagrants, the homeless, drifters, runaways, society's castoffs; there are many, ''many'' names for them, none of them nice. Most people [[BystanderSyndrome look away]] and pretend not to hear them when they ask for change, if not outright disdain and mistreat them for the crime of having been left behind by society — or having left society behind. With so many moving around, who would even care enough to notice the bum who is usually in the street corner of [[JustForFun/TropeTan Trope and Tan]] every morning has gone missing?

* Never demonstrated on screen, but ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'' gave us [[Mad Scientist Dr. Krieger]], who occasionally mentions that he exploits the poor as scientific fodder or entertainment.

* In one ''ComicBook/XMen'' story, ''The Watch'', Marvel's biggest JerkWithAHeartOfGold himself Wolverine befriends an elderly homeless man he rescues from an angry driver. The old guy's only prized possession is an antique pocketwatch he intends to give to his son someday. When the guy goes missing, Logan realizes something is up because the old man left the pocketwatch behind, something he'd never do. So Wolvie stakes out the local homeless shelter, and, get, whaddaya know? [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Bloodscream]] and [[RatMen Vermin]], the {{Mooks}} of evil [[IAmAHumanitarian cannibalistic]] sorcerer Mauvais, are abducting homeless people for their master to eat to regain his powers. Mauvais figured nobody would notice a few derelicts, drifters and druggies going missing. But he didn't count on Logan. Cue him kicking much fanny and stopping the kidnappings, albeit too late to save his friend, after which he tracks down the guy's son and gives him his estranged father's pocketwatch - the closest thing to a happy ending ''The Watch'' gets.

* ''Film/AnAmericanWerewolfInLondon''. Three of of David's victims in his transformed state are Ted, Joseph and Alf (who is in fact played by the same guy who was the doomed tramp in ''Film/NightOfTheBigHeat''), a trio of homeless men living in a dump. Averted insofar as their deaths are quickly discovered and reported in the news, and, like all of David's other victims, their spirits haunt him to make him feel guilty about killing them.

* ''Film/TheHand'': The first person murdered by the hand is a one armed wino who bumps into Jon in alley and harasses him.
* In ''Film/HardTarget'', the BigBad is the head of a hunting business which allows rich men to hunt homeless or down-on-their-luck war veterans. Homeless or down-on-their-luck so no one cares, war veterans to [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame make it interesting]].
* ''Film/TheManWhoNeverWas'' chronicles the [[BasedOnATrueStory true story]] of MI-5 dressing up the body of a deceased man as a fictitious Marine officer carrying papers regarding a planned invasion of Sardinia, with the intention of misleading German intelligence. In real life, the body was that of a vagrant, described by one of the organizers as "a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and that the only worthwhile thing that he ever did he did after his death".

* In ''Film/SurvivingTheGame'', the BigBad is the head of a hunting business which allows rich men to hunt homeless or down-on-their-luck war veterans. Homeless or down-on-their-luck so no one cares, war veterans to [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame make it interesting.]] No, this is not a redundant entry.

** In ''[[Literature/TheShapesOfMidnight The Impulse to Kill]]'', an interesting variation is provided when the protagonist chooses not homeless people to kill, but criminals who he dupes into attempting to rob him because he believes no one will care if would-be thieves are killed while committing robbery. He's right. [[spoiler:At first, at least. Past a certain point, the police start getting suspicious that so many people keep getting killed attempting to rob him, forcing him to move and begin again in a new town.]]
** In ''[[Literature/TheBordersJustBeyond The Barren Place]]'', the descendants of the Iroquois living in Seneca Center regularly sacrifice drifters, vagrants and even gainfully-employed people passing through town to the spirits of their ancestors, figuring nobody will realize they've gone missing. [[spoiler:The protagonist, Sannerton, isn't homeless, but he has come to Seneca Center to write undisturbed and hasn't told anyone where he is, allowing the tribe to kill him without arousing suspicion.]]

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E12BadWolf "Bad Wolf"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays "The Parting of the Ways"]]: The Dalek Emperor spent centuries covertly abducting prisoners, refugees and the victims in deadly game shows. He then converted them into a new Dalek army.

** Later subverted in the final scene of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E2DayOfTheMoon "Day of the Moon"]], when a CreepyChild approaches a homeless man and says, "I'm dying. But I can fix that. It's easy, really... see?" She holds out her hands, and we wait for her to suck his life out in some gruesome fashion... but instead [[spoiler:she begins to glow, and then erupts with the golden energy of a Time Lord regenerating.]]

* In ''Series/{{Primeval}}'', one of the MonstersOfTheWeek was a prehistoric crocodile-like beast had been feeding off the homeless population of a construction yard for years. It only becomes a problem when one of the workers burns the creature's lair (thinking it was a hobo den) forcing it to look for prey elsewhere.

* Jimmy [=McNulty=] from ''Series/TheWire'' both exploits and inverts this trope when he fabricates a fraudulent serial-killer case around the corpses of vagrants, in order to attract media and political attention and divert funds to real police work. {{Exploited|Trope}}, because he only gets away with it by doctoring files on deaths nobody otherwise cares about, and inverted because "drawing attention to the vulnerability of the homeless" is the reason given for openly courting the media (although he's fully aware that what really gets it into the headlines is the juicy "serial killer" angle). He even "abducts" one live vagrant (putting him up in an out-of-the-way dosshouse) to add a sense of urgency to the case.

** ''Prime Runners''. The serial killer Corey Martin preys upon homeless metahumans (humans, dwarves, elves, orks and trolls) because very few of them will be missed.

* ''Webcomic/MonsterSoup's'' Noni [[DiscussedTrope talks about]] Oubliette Castle's history, which includes [[http://monstersoupcomic.com/?comic=ch3-p14-the-masters-lair Prisoner's that disappeared but didn't escape]] when the castle served as a prison for {{Muggles}} and [[http://monstersoupcomic.com/?comic=ch3-p16-the-hallway a few students that went missing, but weren't missed because they were orphans]] when it served as a college with dorm.

** In one Halloween episode Lisa's teacher invites a homeless man into the class on the pretense of offering him a hot meal so the students can see Homer, the new Grim Reaper, reap someone.

** After Homer foolishly exposes himself as Mr. X, to get the Pulitzer and million dollar prize, he starts making up news so people can visit his website. When Nelson says they are dissecting "hobos" at school, homer politely brushes him off, saying he doesn't need to report real news anymore.

* An early episode of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' has Peter mention that RudyGuliani had New York's homeless population secretly murdered as part of the urban restoration projects.

-->'''Enrico:''' [[GoLookAtTheDistraction Look, a dreefter, let's kill heem]]!

* In ''Fat White Vampire Blues,'' vampire protagonist Jules is a sympathetic character, but is ''not'' a FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire; he may munch the occasional criminal if they come after him, but mostly he preys on those who won't be missed, and there's no shortage of those in New Orleans. Subverted at the end, however, when he finds out that the seemingly anonymous homeless woman he fed on at the very beginning of the book was a beloved pillar of the community who constantly did everything she could to help others despite having nothing herself. [[HeelRealization This makes Jules realize]] that no, he's not "just eating" he really has spent the last hundred years murdering people.

* Film/TortureGarden'': The first victim Colin murders at the behest of the cat in "Enoch" is a tramp he finds sleeping in the barn.

** 1st Edition supplement ''Sprawl Sites''. In one of the adventure seeds a Banshee (elf vampire) settles into one of the poorest neighborhoods and preys on local vagrants and squatters.

* In ''[[Literature/NightWatch Final Watch]]'', when a renegade vampire needs to murder and drain five dozen people to ascend into a High Vampire, he goes after migrant workers, knowing that, since they are mostly not registered, nobody is going to miss them.