Targeted Human Sacrifice

Uh oh... Alice finds herself captured and strapped to a wall/altar in the center of a big magic symbol. Candles are set in very specific places while an Ominous Latin Choir hums in the background. It's obvious that she is going to be used in a dark ritual to summon an evil god of sorts, or alternatively, unlock a magical lock to a MacGuffin. There can be several reasons why the evil forces go to the trouble of specifically capturing Alice, instead of just capturing a random innocent victim:


 * The Big Bad comes back stronger this way
 * They need it to overcome some specific power seal (Overlaps with 1, but is not identical to it)
 * The ritual literally can only be done with Alice's blood/life force.

The actual sacrifice factor can range anywhere from just needing Alice's fresh blood to needing her full life force. Not that it changes much, since whoever is in lead of the ritual is not going to leave her alive.

Subtrope of Human Sacrifice. The key difference between this trope and Human Sacrifice is that that one would work with any John Doe picked up from the street, this trope specifically needs Alice to make the ritual work, no exceptions.

Barrier Maidens tend to pe prime targets for this, for obvious reasons.

Anime and Manga

 * A group from Naruto called Akatsuki tries to do this not once, but nine times! They search for the nine Jinchuriki, including protagonists Naruto and Gaara, to extract their inner demons.
 * In Blue Seed, it is said that to stop the Arigami, the "Kushinada" (a human literally bred to be a human sacrifice) must be sacrificed.
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist, Father needs people who not only can open the Gate, but have done it once before and survived: this ends up being . Without them, he can't perform his ritual and capture the power of God. They are targeted more because of their skills and experiences than some particular power or bloodline, but finding replacements would be extremely difficult, so it counts.

Film

 * In Pirates of the Caribbean, to reverse a curse, the blood of a specific pirate is required - or that of his descendant Will Turner. They only need a small amount, as we learn when they attempt to use Elizabeth. But by the time they got Will, they were angry enough at him that they were decided to slit his throat instead.
 * The Big Bad from the first Scooby-Doo movie needs a pure soul for his ritual. The only soul meeting the requirements on the whole island is
 * Bleach: Memories of Nobody. The girl Senna (who is also the Memory Rosary) is captured by the Dark Ones (exiled Soul Reapers). They try to sacrifice her in order to collapse the Valley of Screams and destroy both the World of the Living and the Soul Society.
 * In The Wicker Man, Howie is slated to be the sacrifice.

Literature

 * In Harry Potter, book 4
 * In The Dresden Files likes this trope.
 * In Summer Knight  needs
 * In Blood Rites needs to kill both   to break the curse.
 * In

Live-Action TV

 * In Buffy the Vampire Slayer Glory needs Dawn because she's The Key, an interdimensional gateway recently turned into a human being. The fact that activating its power will involve killing her is basically incidental.
 * In Angel the demon Yeshka has the pretty exacting sacrifice requirements that people have to sacrifice their daughter, she has to be a virgin, and it has to be done on the father's fiftieth birthday.
 * In The Vampire Diaries  He also needs a vampire and a werewolf, but those are easier to get hold of.

Video Games

 * Almost happens to the Avatar in the beginning of Ultima VI.
 * In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Ganon's followers are gunning for Link because they need to sprinkle his blood on Ganon's ashes in order to resurrect him.
 * In A Link to The Past, Aghanim/ uses this on the descendants of the seven Sages to release the seal to the Dark World.
 * In The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games, sacrificing Zelda is needed to . When foiled, the perpetrators sacrificed themselves instead, and.
 * In Persona 3,  tries to sacrifice the heroes to bring about The Fall, but it doesn't work.
 * in Tales of Symphonia was to be sacrificed by the Big Bad  Though it is stated that several other people were used for the ritual before, it has never worked before, most likely due to the body not matching or whatever.

Web Comics

 * In Gunnerkrigg Court, the first generation of the Court hits upon a self-defense scheme that involves killing a particular person, and, so the negative parts of their soul become an angry superpowered spirit, trapped at the place they died. The man who came up with this scheme insisted that the chosen targets were the only ones who would work as a sacrifice, but it's implied that he also selected these two because.

Web Original

 * In SCP Foundation, SCP-089 is a golden sacrificial furnace that, every seven decades or so, will predict a catastrophic event and demand a specific child under six years old (giving the name) sacrificed to prevent it. (Clearly this device has some connection to the demon god Moloch, but nobody knows whether it speaks with Moloch's actual voice or is an oracle who warns of the cataclysms. That is why the Foundation is hesitant to destroy it.) There is another rather harsh condition - the targeted victim's parents must be convinced to voluntarily sacrifice their child - forcibly taking the child, threatening or blackmailing the parent, or using any form of artificial persuasion or brainwashing is not allowed. Remarkably, the Foundation has been able to meet this condition once (exactly how, they will not say, but they refer to this as "Protocol M8"), but also failed to do so at least once. (The location of the ensuing disaster and exact number of casualties is also classified, but measured in thousands.) Whether they can in the future is a troubling concern.