Film — Live-Action
Narrator: In the frozen land of Nador, they were forced to eat Robin's minstrels. And There Was Much Rejoicing.
"Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!"
—Uglúk the Uruk-hai upon chopping off the head of a rebellious orc, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
So how do you get rats off an island, hmm? My grandmother showed me: we buried an oil drum and hinged the lid, then we wired coconut to the lid as bait, then the rats come for the coconut, and [mimics skittering] they fall into the drum... and after a month, you've trapped all the rats. But what do you do then? Throw the drum into the ocean? Burn it? No. You just leave it. And they begin to get hungry, then one by one... [chewing sound] They start eating each other, until there are only two left. Two survivors. And then what? Do you kill them? No. You take them and release them into the trees. Only now they don't eat coconut anymore. Now they only eat rat.
— Raoul Silva, Skyfall
"You ever been to the tail section? Do you have any idea what went on back there? When we boarded? It was chaos. Yeah, we didn't freeze to death, but we didn't have time to be thankful. Wilford's soldiers came and they took everything. A thousand people in an iron box. No food, no water... After a month, we ate the weak... You know what I hate about myself? I know what people taste like. I know that babies taste best..."
—Curtis Everett, Snowpiercer
"Then winter came. The nights grew deathly cold, with the land barren and completely devoid of food. One fateful night, when on the brink of starvation, Pooh decided that in order to survive, the group must consume one of their dearest friends. And thus, Eeyore was no more."
— Opening monologue of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey
Literature
The gates to food stores hung awkwardly off their hinges, open to the world they'd unsuccessfully tried to keep out.
And scribbled everywhere were messages from the long dead. Warnings pocked the walls, some informing desperate neighbors to keep away, others to prevent future travelers like himself from venturing farther. Pleas marked those inches that warnings did not scar. The people in their final days, begging their gods for food, for rain, for deliverance. Then every so often, though more frequently as you approached the center of the city, carved onto the doors was the same message over and over again. Part curse, part denouncement, what it actually said was eloquent and terrible, but what it amounted to was quite simple: I ate my neighbor. It never failed to make Yulric smile.
And scribbled everywhere were messages from the long dead. Warnings pocked the walls, some informing desperate neighbors to keep away, others to prevent future travelers like himself from venturing farther. Pleas marked those inches that warnings did not scar. The people in their final days, begging their gods for food, for rain, for deliverance. Then every so often, though more frequently as you approached the center of the city, carved onto the doors was the same message over and over again. Part curse, part denouncement, what it actually said was eloquent and terrible, but what it amounted to was quite simple: I ate my neighbor. It never failed to make Yulric smile.
— An Unattractive Vampire by Jim McDoniel
Winter really hit us in early December. The snow was over our heads, literally, mountains of it, thick and gray from the pollution. The camp got silent. No more fights, no more shooting. By Christmas Day, there was plenty of food.
[She holds up a miniature femur. It has been scraped clean by a knife.]
They say eleven million people died that winter, and that's just in North America. That doesn't count the other places: Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia. I don't want to think about Siberia, all those refugees from southern China, the ones from Japan who'd never been outside a city, and all those poor people from India. That was the first Gray Winter, when the filth in the sky started changing the weather. They say a part of that filth, I don't know how much, was ash from human remains.
—Jessica Hendricks, World War Z
The last vision was terrible. Zak saw the survivors, starved into madness, turning on a corpse. He and Galt and the other Children could clearly see how horrified the parents were by their own acts. What they had done was a last, desperate attempt to save their children. It was the act of beings so hungry they had lost their minds. As the parents fed their starving children, they cried.
The Children had relished the thought of eating human flesh because they remembered it from their childhood. But this vision had shown them how desperate their parents had been, and how horrible their final act really was.
The Children had relished the thought of eating human flesh because they remembered it from their childhood. But this vision had shown them how desperate their parents had been, and how horrible their final act really was.
— Galaxy of Fear: The Hunger
Wendy had a true claustrophobe's terror of the elevator. She envisioned the three of them trapped in it between floors while the winter storms raged outside, she could see them growing thinner and weaker, starving to death. Or perhaps dining on each other, the way those rugby players had. He remembered a bumper sticker he had seen in Boulder, rugby players eat their own dead. He could think of others. You are what you eat. Or menu items. Welcome to the Overlook Dining Room, Pride of the Rockies. Eat in Splendor at the Roof of the World. Human Haunch Broiled Over Matches La Specalitie de la Maison.
A good thing, that I've lived to see better times, for in my youth how very many crews there were that starved to death, adrift among the dark currents of space, their only choice being whether to draw lots or vote democratically, the simply majority deciding. He will agree with me, who remembers the oppressive atmosphere of those gatherings where such distasteful matters were debated.
—Ijon Tichy, The Star Diaries, "The Twenty-eighth Voyage"
Johanssen: They picked me to survive. I'm youngest. I have the skills necessary to get home alive. And I'm the smallest and need the least food.
Johanssen's Father: What happens if the probe fails, Beth?
Johanssen: Everyone would die but me. They'd all take pills and die. They'll do it right away so they don't use up any food. Commander Lewis picked me to be the survivor. She told me about it yesterday. I don't think NASA knows about it.
Johanssen's Father: And the supplies would last until you got back to Earth?
Johanssen: No. We have enough food left to feed six people for a month. If I was the only one, it would last six months. With a reduced diet I could stretch it to nine. But it'll be seventeen months before I get back.
Johanssen's Father: So how would you survive?
Johanssen: The supplies wouldn't be the only source of food.
Johanssen's Father: What happens if the probe fails, Beth?
Johanssen: Everyone would die but me. They'd all take pills and die. They'll do it right away so they don't use up any food. Commander Lewis picked me to be the survivor. She told me about it yesterday. I don't think NASA knows about it.
Johanssen's Father: And the supplies would last until you got back to Earth?
Johanssen: No. We have enough food left to feed six people for a month. If I was the only one, it would last six months. With a reduced diet I could stretch it to nine. But it'll be seventeen months before I get back.
Johanssen's Father: So how would you survive?
Johanssen: The supplies wouldn't be the only source of food.
Live-Action TV
"People are worked up, sir, because they are so poor that they are forced to have children as a cheap alternative to turkey at Christmas."
— Blackadder, "Sense and Senility"
Dear Sirs:
As a Naval officer, I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism! It is now known that we have the problem relatively under control, and it is the RAF who now suffer the largest number of casualties in this area. What do you think the Argylles ate in Aden? Arabs?!
Yours, etc.
Captain B.J. Smethwick, in a white wine sauce, with shallots, mushrooms and garlic.
As a Naval officer, I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism! It is now known that we have the problem relatively under control, and it is the RAF who now suffer the largest number of casualties in this area. What do you think the Argylles ate in Aden? Arabs?!
Yours, etc.
Captain B.J. Smethwick, in a white wine sauce, with shallots, mushrooms and garlic.
— Monty Python's Flying Circus, Royal Episode 13
I'll have a cut of Johnson's leg, please.
Music
Sitting around the campfire
Scraping the shit off your shoe
You're wondering what is for dinner
You've a horrible feeling it's you...
Scraping the shit off your shoe
You're wondering what is for dinner
You've a horrible feeling it's you...
— Bowser And Blue, "In Darkest Canada"
They shocked the world cause they wanted to live
They had no food, no alternative
Lost in the snow weak in the mind
Starving and cold ate their own kind
They had no food, no alternative
Lost in the snow weak in the mind
Starving and cold ate their own kind
— GBH, "Passenger on the Menu"
Tabletop Games
Hunger unwound what little hope was left and moved us to what humanity would not once have contemplated.
— Comdeus Canto, survivor of the expedition from the Inferno’s Child, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
Hours became days. The snack machine ran out of food by day three. They were reduced to drinking water out of the backed-up toilets by day seven. On day twelve, Andre Gates, Axes And Arcana developer, died when he choked to death on a twenty-sided die. Lycanthrope developer and Black Spiral kinfolk Evan Stump pulled out "an old family recipe." Ten days later, Evan had the building to himself.note
— Black Dog Studios' Last Game, Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Apocalypse
Video Games
Day 14
Somebody has been cutting meat off Shoji's body. I didn't see who it was and I don't want to know. I am so hungry right now - I can't blame them for being hungry too.
Somebody has been cutting meat off Shoji's body. I didn't see who it was and I don't want to know. I am so hungry right now - I can't blame them for being hungry too.
For days we steamed north-west - not west - into the empty dark. Our supplies ran out, and still no sign of port. Hunger set in, and terror, and what I pray was madness. Ravening, desperate, raving, we agreed to draw lots, with the loser giving up life and flesh so the others could go on. The first of us to draw the short straw was the captain. The second was my brother. My dear, solemn, solid Richard. There were more after. Seven times we drew. Seven of our number went into the pot, and not a one of them quietly. Those of us who made it back to port swore never to speak of our crime, but one of us - someone with a keener conscience than mine - confessed. I fled the noose to zee again. I regret it all. I will do anything. Please.
— The Navigator's Confession, Sunless Sea
"For I was hungry, and I ate you. I was thirsty, and I drank you." What happened in there? Your memory is patchy. The cutlery. The difficulty with the tablecloth. That business with the mouse. If only it had moved faster. If only the sous-chef had been more co-operative.
Ser Yuhelmeric has taken me into his confidence. He says I am an honest man. I wish I were a braver one.
The mutiny has been quelled. Among the starving, half-mad knights were Ser Yuhelmeric's most trusted officers. He wielded the axe himself.
Ser Yuhelmeric received me in the chapel afterwards. I told him we will not last a fortnight without food. He smiled and told me that Fury has blessed us with a bounty of fresh meat, then returned to his prayers. I joined him.
The mutiny has been quelled. Among the starving, half-mad knights were Ser Yuhelmeric's most trusted officers. He wielded the axe himself.
Ser Yuhelmeric received me in the chapel afterwards. I told him we will not last a fortnight without food. He smiled and told me that Fury has blessed us with a bounty of fresh meat, then returned to his prayers. I joined him.
—Torn Journal Page found in Dusk Vigil, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Web Original
Wartime survivors (customers who lived) always followed the Geneva Convention (acted very polite to each other), because anytime one of them violated it (was rude), they were summarily executed (shot at the instant they were rude), and shipped off in a body bag, assuming that much of the casualty of war (deceased ex-customer) was left; combatants didn't always have rations (bag lunches), so they often engaged in foraging for food ("Donner Parties,") a practice better left undescribed.
"We've only been stranded for an hour, don't panic."
"I'm gonna eat her."
Western Animation
Emily: SOMEONE STOLE THE FREAKIN' HAM!!!
Josh: It's gonna be okay.
Emily: Is it, Josh? If an earthquake hits today, guess what we're eating?! EACH OTHER!
Alex: I don't know, you're all too bony for my taste.
Josh: It's gonna be okay.
Emily: Is it, Josh? If an earthquake hits today, guess what we're eating?! EACH OTHER!
Alex: I don't know, you're all too bony for my taste.
—Close Enough, "100% No Stress Day"
Webby: Hot dog costumes!
Huey: I'm sorry, what?
Webby: You know, in case we get lost at sea and one of us— probably Louie— goes mad with hunger, we'll put these on! Louie hates hot dogs, so he probably won't eat us.
Huey: Are you saying Louie would rather eat us than hot dogs?
Louie: I do hate hot dogs.
Huey: I'm sorry, what?
Webby: You know, in case we get lost at sea and one of us— probably Louie— goes mad with hunger, we'll put these on! Louie hates hot dogs, so he probably won't eat us.
Huey: Are you saying Louie would rather eat us than hot dogs?
Louie: I do hate hot dogs.
Lois: (seeing Ben's frozen corpse) Oh, that poor boy. We should bury him. It's only right.
Brian: Yeah, yeah, w-we should, Lois. We should. (beat) Or... we could...
Lois: Could what?
Brian: ...Eat him.
(everyone gasps)
Lois: Brian!
Brian: Look, it we don't eat something soon, we're all gonna pass out from exhaustion and freeze to death just like him!
Meg: Are we really considering this?
Lois: We're talking about eating a person.
Chris: Yeah, I'm not so sure about this.
(widen to reveal Peter already eating an arm)
Peter: Oh, I thought we decided. I'm sorry.
Lois: Well... I-I guess we don't have a choice.
(the family slowly approaches the body and prepares to eat)
Stewie: I am oddly prepared for this. (puts on a bib with a picture of Ben on it)
—Family Guy, "Into Fat Air"
I ate my son for a Blu-Ray Player, with a ho-ho-ho and a jingle-jangle-jingle, I ate my son and he tasted real good, ho-ho jingle-jangle ho-ho!
—Rick Telmore, South Park (Titties and Dragons)
Real Life
I liked Harris. He might have been better done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree of satisfaction.
— Mark Twain, "Cannibalism In The Cars"
"The number of incidents of the use of human flesh in cooking decreased this month to 56."
— NKVD (Police) Archive for the Leningrad District, June 1942 - ninth month of the 900-day Siege of Leningradnote
"From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource – cannibalism – as a means of prolonging existence."
— John Rae, discussing an Inuit story about the lost Franklin Expedition
