History Main / NoPartyLikeADonnerParty

* ''WebVideo/AskAMortician'' did an excellent [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5xMpsYdzgg video]] on the real history of the Donner Party, concluding that it was actually much, much more horrifying and tragic a story than all the BlackComedy around it would suggest.
-->'''Cameraman''': Would you eat a person?\\
'''Caitlin''': Not right now, I wouldn't. But ask me three or four weeks from now... maybe.
** Also comes up in her video on the tragedy of the whaling ship ''Essex'', entitled "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS299VkXZxI The Real Moby Dick Was So Much Worse]]." Here, she discusses how choosing who the next person to eat wasn't always a case of drawing straws and leaving it to impartial fate, but how family connections, regional loyalty, and racial division can complicate the matter. Existing inequalities can get ''a lot'' worse in a survival situation.

-->The survivors of this 1972 airplane crash were different in how they approached cannibalism. It was thoughtful, rational, dare I say, sacred. Eating human flesh became their normal, allowing them to keep clear heads, and as far as "disaster cannibalism" stories go, this one is almost... uplifting?

* Jokingly referenced in the Website/CollegeHumor video [[http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6644920/in-the-unlikely-event about airplane safety instructions]] when the captain assures the passengers that if they crash in the mountains, there's no need to resort to cannibalism for at least one winter. However, if they do run out of food, they're going to [[KillThePoor start with the third-class passengers]] and gradually move up to the first class.

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[[folder:Film--Live Action]]

* Played for horror in the creepypasta ''Fanfic/AxisPowersHetaliaEpisode235'', which is about a supposed LostEpisode of the anime in which the Axis characters are stranded on a DesertedIsland and [[spoiler:Italy is killed and eaten by a desperate Germany and Japan]].

* Discussed on ''Radio/TheRickyGervaisShow'', when the trio talk about a shipwreck and the necessary cannibalism. Ricky naturally starts goading Karl by asking him, if Steve were killed, would Karl eat his penis to feed him for a few days - to which Steve interrupts "I should be so lucky."

* In Creator/PiersAnthony's ''Bio of a Space Tyrant'' series, the titular space tyrant's journey to Jupiter as a refugee from Callisto is chronicled in ''Refugee'', in which the space bubble he and his family are on is attacked multiple times by roving gangs of SpacePirates who seldom leave without murdering or raping anyone (and sometimes they commit rape ''and'' murder). It eventually gets to the point where every adult male has been murdered, the only ones left to pilot the bubble are inept women, and their food supplies are running low. Eventually, they decide upon eating the corpses of the men "buried" on the hull for food.

* Happens to the crew members stranded at sea in Carol Birch's ''Jamrach's Menagerie.'' Initially, they only eat the men who have died of illness or starvation, but then...

* In ''The Rook Series'' by B. Berry, Michael, Silvermin, and Tuesday are shipwrecked, and when they run out of food, they draw lots to see who will be eaten. [[spoiler: Tuesday gets the short end of the stick.]] At the end, though, it's revealed that [[spoiler: Michael, whose real name is Zachary, drew the shortest lot, and the narrative is Tuesday trying to cope with it.]]

* ''Testament'', by Creator/DavidMorrell. The protagonist and his daughter have to [[TryAndFollow hide above the snow line in a winter forest from implacable pursuers]]. The daughter dies, and the father is so desperate for food he wonders if he can bring himself to eat her. Fortunately a wolf which stole some food from their fire earlier returns with an animal it's killed -- turns out it liked the taste of the cooked meat and wants the human to make more.

* Richard Olson's historical novel ''The Ungodly'', about (yes) the Donner Party.

* The fantasy novel ''The Warrior's Return'' averts this in a scene where a group of snowed-in and starving soldiers, faced with their first dead comrade, decide (with a little prompting from their protagonist commanding officer) ''not'' to do this because they're all too aware of the possible consequences of starting to think of each other as food and instead give the deceased as decent a funeral as they can manage.

** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS12E21SimpsonsTallTales Simpsons Tall Tales]]", the story of Johnny Appleseed is retold starring Lisa as "Connie" Appleseed. The settlers decide to eat Homer once they run out of buffalo, but luckily, Connie saves the day by bringing them nutritious apples to eat -- although Moe had already taken a bite out of him.

** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS17E4TreehouseOfHorrorXVI Treehouse of Horror XVI]]", Burns decides to start HuntingTheMostDangerousGame. Homer resorts to cannibalism after being chased for just a few hours.

* ''Literature/TheBrokenEarthTrilogy'' takes place on a planet that periodically turns into a DeathWorld where volcanic ash can blot out the sun for years at a time. As such, cannibalism is regarded as an unfortunate fact of life when stores of vital protein begin running low. As stonelore says, "food is that which nourishes".

* ''WesternAnimation/LoveDeathAndRobots'': In "Exit Strategies" the robots find a bunker where the government's top officials tried to wait out the apocalypse, but after their automated hydroponics farms failed due to a fungal blight they resorted to "extreme democracy" to survive. The robots get a laugh out of the fact that the one they elected for cooking was the Secretary of Agriculture.

-->'''Red Shirt''': On behalf of all the red shirts that fell before me, it makes me very, very proud to speak the following sentence: I'm the only one that brought a gun.\\
'''Kirk''': [[OhCrap Uh...oh.]]

** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS12E21SimpsonsTallTales Simpsons Tall Tales]]" the story of Johnny Appleseed is retold starring Lisa as "Connie" Appleseed. The settlers decide to eat Homer once they run out of buffalo but luckily, Connie saves the day by bringing them nutritious apples to eat--although Moe had already taken a bite out of him.
--->'''Moe''': What, so now we're ''not'' eating Homer?!
** Used again in a WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror episode, where Burns decides to start HuntingTheMostDangerousGame. Homer resorts to cannibalism after being chased for just a few hours.

** A more recent episode has the family trapped on a cruise ship that mistakenly believes there is a pandemic happening back on land (actually a movie Bart tricked them with, wanting to extend the family vacation due to the utter misery he and the others had been going through back home). After about 10 days out to sea, society onboard has devolved into a ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' scenario, and one passenger freaks out because she thinks she has eaten people meat. It's never outright stated that this happened, but it's heavily implied.

* ''Literature/TheBrokenEarthTrilogy'' takes place on a planet that periodically turns into a DeathWorld where volcanic ash can blot out the sun for years at a time. As such, cannibalism is regarded as an unfortunate fact of life when stores of vital protein begin running low. As stonelore says, "food is that which nourishes".

* ''Film/Ravenous1999'': Calhoun claims that this is what happened to the travel group he was a part of as they got stranded in a cave trying to cross the Sierra Nevadas. After running out of food and killing all their work animals(even Calhoun's dog), he returned from chopping wood to find the others cooking a slave who had died from malnutrition. Then HorrorHunger took over and the group's leader, Colonel Ives, started killing people to sate it, so Calhoun [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere left to go get help]]. Later in the film, it turns out [[spoiler: Calhoun was ''lying'' and actually ''is'' Colonel Ives, and that he killed and ate the rest of the party. Reich only figures this out as Ives is killing the rest of the Fort Spencer rescue team. Much later in the film, Ives reveals to Boyd that he [[SubvertedTrope deliberately got the party lost in the mountains so he could eat them]], as he was already a {{Wendigo}} by that point]].

* ''Film/Ravenous1999'' has a group of pioneers who became stranded in the mountains and turned to cannibalism. However, because the film is also a take on the {{wendigo}} myth, anyone who eats other people gains that person's strength/life force, a HealingFactor that can overcome virtually all injuries or disease... and a HorrorHunger that compels them to continue eating more people. The film's villain is the last survivor of that pioneer group, and who, after eating everyone else in the group, is [[SuperStrength superhumanly strong]], [[MadeOfIron tough]], and absolutely determined to continue devouring others.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'': During Season 9, ''Danger Island'', Archer and Pam are held captive by a CannibalTribe, and Pam wonders if she'd ever eat a person, and dismisses this trope as an example because "it'd go without saying" if it was that or starving to death.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/JohnnyBravo'' episode "Biosphere Johnny", the scientists Johnny is sealed in with consider eating him until Carl intervenes and asks that they eat him instead. When the scientists come to their senses, it cuts back to Johnny after he's prepared Carl like a suckling pig.

--->'''Rick Tellmore''': ... (singing) I ate my son for a Blu-Ray Player! With a ho-ho-ho and a jingle-jangle-jingle! My son got ate and it tasted real good, ho ho jingle-jangle ho-ho!

* Subverted in the opening chapter of ''Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau'' by Creator/HGWells, in which Prendick and two others are adrift in a dingy. They draw lots to determine who'll be eaten, but the loser fights back and both of the other men fall overboard and sink like stones, leaving Prendick alone.

* The ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear'' book "The Hunger." The main characters hide out on Dagobah where they encounter a small tribe that calls themselves The Children. The Children take in one of the main party's wounded {{red shirt}}s for healing and claim they were forced to amputate one of his limbs. Later on, the wounded man is found to have ''two'' limbs missing and another red shirt dies mysteriously. One character almost has a bowl of the tasty-smelling stew they're cooking but stops when he notices the ring in it. It turns out that the Children are the last remains of a stranded survey team - when the team members were hit with starvation, the desperate parents fed the toddler kids the flesh of the dead until no adults were left. The children managed to survive by eating fungus and any of their own dead, and still remember [[ImAHumanitarian the yummy taste]] their parents used to give them, interpreting it as an act of love. The tribe's later MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment only serves to increase the horror.

* In ''Literature/DreamsOfJoy'', Joy goes to visit her friends on the commune she lives on in 1950s China. She returns to see her husband and his family staring at something on the table. It's another woman's baby, which is close to death. She takes the baby back to the other woman's house and finds them at the table staring at her baby. The practice was called Swap Child, Make Food, when families would trade babies (presumably no one wants to eat their own baby) that are close to death and eat them.

* In one episode of ''LightNovel/KinosJourney'', Kino encounters some snowed-in traders. Almost starving to death, they had eaten their cargo. Turns out they were slavers. Connect the dots...

* Brought up in ''Film/TheWayBack''. Seven men have escaped a gulag, and one asks the group's leader who he thinks will die first. The leader is confused and then horrified when the other guy says he assumed they'd brought so many people so they'd have [[ImAHumanitarian something to eat]]. Fortunately it never gets that far.

* Occurs in ''Series/The100'' during the TimeSkip between seasons 4 and 5. Trapped in a bunker with no way out and their Hydroponics Garden contaminated with a fungus that will take a year to recover from, the Wonkru survivors are confronted with this. They end up butchering those who were killed in gladiator combat (their method of dealing with lawbreakers). Octavia ends up enforcing human consumption under the threat of death to anyone who refuses, and even murders a man who doesn't want to eat his own brother. The entire process traumatizes all of Wonkru, and they dub the ordeal "The Dark Year".

When Rob sees Bob holding the knife to his dick, he suddenly said, "Stop! You're cutting your penis, right? Because if you're doing so, why don't you [[ADateWithRosiePalms jerk off first]]?" \\

* In one chapter of Fanfic/PokemonCrossing, a group of explorers got lost in the Route 111 desert. After weeks in the desert and eating all of their Pokémon, they draw straws and eat one of their own.

* An episode of the horror anthology ''Series/MastersOfHorror'' was "The Washingtonians". During the harsh winter at Valley Forge, UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington and the colonial troops resorted to cannibalism to survive. Unfortunately, Washington developed a taste for human flesh, quickly degenerating into ImAHumanitarian, and went out of his way to eat it. He professed a desire to turn America into a nation of cannibals. The Washingtonians are a secret conspiracy that has been hiding Washington's true history, as well as indulging in cannibalism themselves.

* Believed to have happened to the native inhabitants of Rapa Nui ([[EenieMeenieMinyMoai Easter Island]]).

* ''Film/WinnieThePoohBloodAndHoney'': In the prologue, it's revealed that Christopher Robin's animal friends (who are depicted here as [[HumanoidAbomination "abominations"]] rather than stuffed toys) were left to fend for themselves after he left for college. During the harsh winter, Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit and Owl ended up cannibalizing Eeyore to survive, [[StartOfDarkness turning them twisted and feral]].