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{{trope}}
[[File:300px-
{{quote|''"The Earth is suffocating. Swear to cut me open, so that I will not be buried alive."''
|'''Frederic Chopin'''}}
The villain has the hero incapacitated. Maybe he drugged him/her. Maybe he conked him/her on the head with an inanimate carbon rod. Maybe, and this seems unlikely, the hero has willingly given himself/herself to the villain.
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{{examples}}
== Complete Burial ==
=== Anime
* ''[[Mazinger Z]]'': [[The Dragon]] and [[Two-Faced]] [[Cyborg]] Baron Ashura was originally two persons were buried alive together for being caught trying to break their [[Star-Crossed Lovers]] destinies. One half of each body was destroyed, so he stitched them together to create Ashura.
* ''[[Naruto]]''
** A [[Filler]] episode has a villain who isn't satisfied just doing
** There's also Gaara, who can do this with his sand to restrain particularly tough enemies, though he generally prefers the less subtle technique of ''making them implode''.
** Later on, in the second season, Shikamaru uses explosives to dismember Hidan and then buries him in the middle of a forest. Because Hidan's special power is immortality, his head is cursing Shikamaru as it's buried. However, Hidan is not TRULY immortal; [[Word of God|he has to keep killing people with his]] [[Religion of Evil|Jashinist ritual]] [[Word of God|to retain eternal life]]. So rather than sitting in that filled hole living forever, he gets to die...
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* In the manga ''[[Goth (manga)|Goth]]'', one of the chapters has {{spoiler|a murderer who buries his victims alive in his backyard with a bamboo pole connecting the coffin to the air above. Afer keeping them alive for a little while, he sticks a hose into the pole and floods the coffin, drowning the person below. As seen by the number of poles sticking out of the ground in his backyard, you can be sure he's been doing this for a while.}}
===
* One issue of ''Tales from the Crypt'' has a tale of a man who was hanged and declared dead. The twist was that his neck was broken but his spinal cord was not
* A story from ''The Haunt of Fear'', "Chatter-Boxed!", set in December 1941, features an elderly man who suffers from catalepsy, making him appear dead when he isn't. He leaves instructions to be buried with a telephone, allowing him to call for help lest he regain consciousness. Sure enough, he is buried after having an episode behind the wheel and does exactly that, only to find every phone line tied. After futilely trying to get a call through and finally running out of oxygen, the operator angrily snaps at the man's blue-faced corpse for being ignorant of what's just taken place: the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
* ''[[Batman]]''
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* Pretty much the whole point of the movie ''The Vanishing'', and its Dutch original film and book, which are ''Spoorloos'' and ''Het Gouden Ei'', respectively.
* Budd does this to the Bride in ''[[Kill Bill]]: Volume 2''. She escapes, though not without difficulty.
** What makes it really creepy, however, is that ''the entire
** Interestingly, Budd gives her a flashlight when he does so, as both a sign of respect and knowing it could help her escape.
* [[Roger Corman]]'s film adaptations of Poe's stories often played with this trope. ''His'' version of ''[[The Fall Of The House Of Usher]]'' had Roderick ''purposely'' bury his sister alive, to keep her from marrying and perpetuating their cursed, criminal family line. Corman's version of ''[[The Pit And The Pendulum]]'' featured a character being driven mad by the idea that he may have buried his wife alive accidentally. And his take on ''The Premature Burial'' ends with the main character seeing his worst fears realized.
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* In ''[[The Prestige]]'' Robert Angier does this to Alfred Borden's assistant both for revenge and to keep him busy digging, instead of going after him.
* There were two ''Buried Alive'' movies, each one beginning with a spousal near-death by poisoning and subsequent rushed funeral (which apparently skips autopsy and embalming altogether). After this, the intended victims wake up, dig their way out, and plot elaborate revenge for their unfaithful spouse and his/her lover.
* In the movie ''[[Dirty Harry]]'', Scorpio demands ransom from the city of San Francisco after he kidnaps a teenage girl. He claims his prisoner only has enough air to last until 3:00
* The movie ''Ghost Story'' begins with characters telling a scary story about a man buried alive and scratching at the inside of his coffin, yelling out "Still aliiiive...".
* In ''The Burrowers'', the title monsters paralyze their victims and bury them up to their noses in dirt.
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* One of the victims in ''[[Uncle Sam]]'' is knocked unconscious with spray paint, has his leg broken, and is knocked into an empty grave, which is then filled in.
* Imhotep was wrapped up and buried alive in ''[[The Mummy (film)|The Mummy]]'' for attempting to raise the dead Anck-es-en-Amon. [[The Mummy Trilogy|The remake]] ups the ante by burying him alive with flesh eating scarabs.
** In the backstory of the 2017 remake, [[Evil Sorceress|Princess Ahmanet]] is given this as punishment for murder, the "tomb" she is interred in being designed as her prison.
* This accidentally happens to the doctor's wife in ''[[Tremors]]'' when one of the [[Sand Worm|Graboids]] drags the car she is hiding in underground.
* This is averted in ''What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?''. {{spoiler|Captain Cash is mistaken for a German Colonel who is believed to be dead, and while he is unconscious, he is put in a coffin for burial. But when the Germans bury the coffin, it falls through into the catacombs beneath the city, the coffin breaks, and Captain Cash wakes up and climbs out unharmed.}}
* {{spoiler|Godzilla gets buried during an avalanche in the arctic}} at the end of ''[[Godzilla Raids Again]]''.
* This is the apparent fate of [[Nun-Too-Holy| Mother Superior]] in ''[[St. Agatha]]''; {{spoiler|but the cliffhanger ending shows the well-meaning police opening the coffin [[Sequel Hook| and letting her escape]]...}}
=== Gamebooks ===
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*** Poe wasn't so much fond of this, as frightened to DEATH of it. It was his one worst fear, so naturally he wrote his horror stories about it.
* In the second novel of ''[[The Shadow]]'', one of The Shadow's helpers is buried alive by the villains despite the fact that the villains have killed and buried all previous visitors to their house. Harry is rescued by The Shadow, who tunnels sideways into the grave from a nearby tomb.
* David Eddings had his sorcerer Belgarath do this, near the end of ''[[The Belgariad]]'': {{spoiler|Zedar the apostate}} was
* [[Jack Vance]]'s ''[[Dying Earth (novel)|Dying Earth]]'' novels mention the Spell of Forlorn Encystment, which keeps its victims alive indefinitely inside solid rock some sixty kilometers underground. A few victims are (accidentally) released and found to be in near-catatonic states.
* Pre-subverted in the third ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'' book. Mulch Diggums, a dwarf whose entire race can dig through the dirt using only their jaws and hands and breathe while doing so (and we've known he can do this for three books), convinces two [[Dumb Muscle|dumb henchmen]] to do this to him. Needless to say, he has a good laugh about it afterwards. Hell, he has a good laugh ''during'' the burial, which he passes off as "shaking in fear". Right, Mulch.
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** Seeing as how those are all eternal punishments, they would fit more under [[And I Must Scream]].
* In [[David Gemmell]]'s ''The Swords of Night and Day'', [[God Save Us From the Queen|Queen Jianna]] [[Bad Boss|buries an advisor alive]] inside a large stone chamber after he speaks his mind too freely. She later decides to reverse the decision, but by the time he's dug up he'd found a way to hang himself.
* The short story ''The Extension'' dealt with a man who was so afraid of being
* An interesting take on this trope came from ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo (novel)|The Count of Monte Cristo]]'' when Edmond makes his escape from the prison. He plans (rather hastily) to switch places with the body of his friend and mentor and once he is buried in the shallow grave, dig himself out. He has to change his plans rather quickly when, instead of burying him, the guards proceed to chuck him over a cliff into the ocean.
* Part of the backstory of ''The Three Coffins'' by [[John Dickson Carr]] was a jailbreak by
* The ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' book ''Killer Profile'' mentions a serial killer whose MO was burying his victims in homemade coffins, which had pipes leading to the surface, so they could breathe. The guy also enjoyed giving his victims false hope by leaving them with a bit of water and hammer they could try and escape with.
* Used in the Mary Higgins Clark book ''Moonlight Becomes You'', which starts out with the protagonist buried alive and desperately pulling one of the aforementioned bells to signal for help. The story then flashes between the present and to several weeks earlier, showing how she came to this fate and leaving the reader to decipher who her would-be killer is, all the while inserting her frantic efforts to remain conscious until help arrives, which it does at the last minute.
* Dutch novel ''The Golden Egg'' has a girl undergo this treatment when travelling Europe. Her boyfriend spends the rest of the novel trying to find out where she is until at the end he meets his girlfriend's killer, and says he'd do anything to find out what happens to her. The killer proceeds to drug him and bury him ''as well''.
* ''[[Discworld]]''
** A variation of the trope occurred in ''[[
{{quote|'''Death:''' {{smallcaps|Dark in here, isn't it?}}}}
** Windle Poons from ''[[
* This happens to {{spoiler|Lisbeth Salander, after she was shot in the '''fucking head'''}} in ''[[The Millennium Trilogy|The Girl Who Played with Fire]]''. {{spoiler|[[Crazy Awesome|She digs her way out with a cigarette case and then shoves an axe through the face of the man who put her there.]]}}
* In [[Michael Crichton]]'s ''The Great Train Robbery'', the characters exploit the fear of being buried alive for their benefit. Because it was a serious concern at the time (so says the book), coffins were rigged with bells and escape latches and such which would pop open if the person moved around inside the coffin. They fake a dead body and have the coffin open on the platform, grossing out the police inspector who otherwise would have searched it and found the hidden man.
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** "Deadline": With the state facing a budget crisis, state senator vows to disband the Texas Rangers as a cost-cutting move ... then won't allow Walker to help find his daughter when she is kidnapped and buried alive by a gang of bank robbers. Only when Walker does find her (and of course, beat the bad guys) does the senator realize the value of the Rangers.
** "Miracle at Middle Creek": Walker and a young boy are trapped in an underground crevice, having been forced there by a band of bank robbers. Why? To ensure cooperation by the boy's father when the heist does take place. This time, Trivette saves the day.
** "Cyclone": A sadistic extortionist and his band of thugs hijack a school bus full of
* An episode of the ''[[Tales from the Crypt]]'' TV series, which was adapted from a comic, has a magician do this as his final trick. A doctor had transplanted into him the organ that gives cats nine lives, so he could die and just come back. After using this to make a small fortune at a sideshow, his final stunt (before he ran out of lives) was to be buried alive in front of hundreds of witnesses. {{spoiler|Only once he's in the ground does he start reminiscing about what an interesting life he's had, before he realizes he didn't count the death of the cat among his lives. He's on his ninth, not his eight....}}
* Happens to Nick in ''[[CSI]]''. He is rescued, though not until he's suffered quite a lot.
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** In the final episode, {{spoiler|Sloane, who has become somewhat immortal due to a Rambaldi thingy, has this happen to him. He's trapped in a cave with his legs pinned after Jack (a good guy) blows himself up}}.
** Sydney herself had this happen to her as well in a previous episode, [[All Up to You|leaving Marshall to find out her location]] before she suffocates.
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', the Season 1 episode "Nightmares". Rumor has it that this trope is one of Sarah Michelle Gellar's greatest fears. Apparently, Joss Whedon does not settle for merely tormenting his characters.
** He had her claw her way out of her grave in the Season 6 premiere. Bastard. This was, in fact, an interesting variation of the theme, as she was ''actually'' dead when they buried her. Willow used a ressurection spell to revive her and ''thought'' it didn't work. It ''did'', and Buffy... didn't react well.
* ''[[Angel]]''
** This was done to a previous occupant of Cordelia's apartment. ''In the apartment walls!''
** {{spoiler|Connor welds Angel into an airtight coffin and drops him to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean}} at the end of season 3. {{spoiler|[[Who Wants to Live Forever?|Angel being immortal]], this won't kill him, but instead makes him sorta really insane. Which was kind of the point.}}
* In ''[[The Incredible Hulk]]'', David Banner faced one of his most horrific situations when he is confused for a lookalike gangster and rival gangsters capture him, ignore his protests that they have the wrong man and take him to a construction site. There, they force him into a shallow grave, put a sheet of clear plastic on him and pour concrete on him to bury him alive. When you see that kind of murder method, you're on the edge of your seat until the very last image of Banner just before his head is covered is his eyes going green to start his change into the Hulk.
* ''[[
** A much earlier episode also highlights how unlikely this is to occur by accident. In an interview, it's pointed out that undertaking practices(which, among other things, included draining all of the blood from the deceased) ensured that if you weren't dead when you came in, you most certainly were by the time you were in the ground.
* During a [[Dream Sequence]] in the "Doppelganger" episode of ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', Sheppard begins to bury Ronon alive. Ronon wakes up at that point.
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** In a rare example of a hero doing this, {{spoiler|Hiro assures the other heroes that the immortal Adam Monroe will never hurt another person. Cut to [[And I Must Scream|Adam screaming in a coffin]], buried in the same cemetery where Hiro's father (who Adam killed), was interred.}}
** Also, as retribution for all the crimes he had committed against not just the world, but {{spoiler|Parkman's wife}} only minutes before, {{spoiler|Parkman locks Sylar in his own mind, alone and powerless. Not only that, to prevent anyone from finding him and trying to help, he seals Sylar up behind a wall in his basement. Not only THAT, while Sylar was trapped in his own mind doomed to wander New York City alone forever, his super fast brain had an increased perception of time, making every second he spent in reality feel like days. Even though he got better and was really only buried alive for about half an hour, over three years had passed in his mind.}}
* In ''[[Being Human (USA)|Being Human]]'', being buried alive is used as a form of punishment for vampires. Their nature means they won't suffocate or be crushed by the soil, but they will grow very weak and slowly go insane from hunger. Suren was buried alive for over ''[[And I Must Scream|80 years
* ''[[Bones]]'', Temperance Brennan and Jack Hodgins are buried alive (in a car!) by a kidnapper/serial killer called the Gravedigger.
** They'd previously helped identify the remains of twin boys who'd died after the Gravedigger left them buried alive inside a metal tank. As the name implies, this villain's M.O. was to subject victims to this trope, then demand a ransom in return for information on where they were buried.
* In the ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' episode "Scared to Death", there was a killer who, under guise of "getting you over your phobia," trapped you in your worst fear and then waited until you scared yourself to death. The final victim was a bit more direct cause of near-
** In the episode "Revelations," the killer {{spoiler|forced Reid to start digging his own grave so he could bury him alive.}} The BAU saves the day, though.
* ''[[Torchwood]]''
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** Dean and Sam also earlier do this to an immortal murderer. He's also ''chained'' into his coffin.
* In ''[[Roswell]]'', this happens to Laurie Dupree. Luckily for her, the attacker specifically wanted to keep her alive, so set it up that she could breathe.
* One episode of ''[[Crossing Jordan]]'' involved a serial killer who buries his victims
* ''[[Cold Case]]'' had a similar episode where a teenage boy had been buried alive. The killer in question walks into the station 20-something years later to confess to the
* ''[[Alfred Hitchcock Presents]]''
** The classic episode, "Breakdown", has Joseph Cotton paralyzed in a car accident and taken for dead. {{spoiler|He is saved at the last minute when an alert coroner notices a tear glimmering in his eye.}}
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** Also happens in the end of the episode "Fresh Bones" to an evil Marine sergeant in charge of a Haitian refugee camp, who turns out to be using the Haitian's native Voodoo to incapacitate/kill whistleblowers who were going to expose his ordered abuse of the refugees.
** And technically, even Mulder himself was buried alive during the episode "Deadalive".
* In the British sci-fi drama ''[[Misfits]]'', we have a rare case of this trope being played (mostly) for ''laughs''. {{spoiler|And it happens to the main character, no less. Nathan, after suffering a [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice|brutal death]] some days before, turns out to have the power of Resurrection. He's thrilled to find himself alive and starts gloating ridiculously about his newfound power, actually uttering the phrase: "Who's laughing now?!" When it sinks in that he's ''buried alive'' (yes, he's a bit of a dumbass) he gets furious and starts hurling hilariously futile abuse at no-one in particular. Then he just lies back and begins [[
* In the America soap opera ''[[Days of Our Lives]]'', some 16 years ago, crazy Vivian hated Carly so much she injected Carly with some Chinese herbs, forcing her into a seemly dead state, had an open casket funeral with all Carly's loved ones, buried her with a radio to taunt her, some water and enough oxygen to prolong the slow torture and the rolled over her grave, laughing. Carly was saved just in time, though she seems quite traumatized by it all to this day. Not that we can blame her.
* This trope is often seen on soap operas. Several examples have the villain trapping his or victim in certain
** ''[[General Hospital]]'': Ryan Chamberlain faked his death to escape from the asylum.
** ''[[Passions]]'': Sheridan Crane's death was faked (to escape criminals who were pursuing her) and she was buried to continue the ruse. Unfortunately, plans to rescue her immediately were hindered when the criminals in question kidnapped her would-be saviors, leaving her in considerable peril (Sheridan's claustrophobia didn't help matters much). Although she was ultimately rescued at the end of the "day", the scenes played out for over a ''month''.
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* ''[[The Pretender]]''
** The victim in "Back From the Dead Again" was buried alive.
** In "Red Rock Jarod", the villain of the episode buries a hostage alive in a remote
* ''[[1000 Ways to Die]]'': In "Dung For", this accidentally happens to a farm hand after he is caught having sex with the [[Farmer's Daughter]].
* ''[[Leverage]]'' has two examples:
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* The victim in the ''[[NCIS]]'' episode "Left For Dead" was buried alive.
* ''[[NCIS: Los Angeles]]'' had Sam being buried alive in a prior mission, alongside with a partner of his, by Croatian soldiers. He was the only one who survived the event. Because of this, when a girl was buried alive by two boys whose uncle was an ex-con, Sam took up the mission without hesitation, focused on it with resolution like no other, and was fully ready to beat them up when demanding where she was, due to this being a very personal traumatic experience and a very huge [[Berserk Button]] for him. Luckily, she managed to be digged up before she ran out of air.
* ''[[Murder Call]]'': In "The Burial", the [[Victim of the Week]] is as obnoxious ad executive who is [[Beach Bury|buried up to his neck in the sand on the beach]] as an endurance test. The killer attempts to make it look like [[Make It Look Like an Accident|he passed out from the alcohol and was drowned by the incoming tide]], but he was actually killed by having sea water [[Force Feeding|forced down his throat]].
=== Music ===
* [[Avenged Sevenfold]] has a song called "
* Referenced in the [[Scissor Sisters]] song "I Can't Decide" (where what can't be decided is "whether you should live or die"): ''"Or I could bury you alive / But you might crawl out with a knife / And kill me when I'm sleeping"''.
* Referenced in "The Mariner's Revenge Song" by the Decemberists:
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=== Pro Wrestling ===
* [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]] wrestler [[The Undertaker]] has fought in several Buried Alive matches, where a grave site is created near the stage area of the arena, and the objective is to bury one's opponent alive. Usually these end with Undertaker buried, and disappearing for several months, only to come [[Back
=== Tabletop Games ===
* In
** A popular Sabbat pastime is to go out, find a grave with a ''failed'' inductee, dig them up and try to kill them. Since the released vampire is both insane and probably in [[Unstoppable Rage|frenzy]], this is not a safe form of entertainment.
* ''[[Dungeons
** The "Imprisonment" spell, which was inspired by [[Jack Vance]]'s "Spell of Forlorn Encystment" (see above). It bury a victim in suspended animation deep below the surface.
** A non-official sourcebook introduced the "Entombment" spell, which bury alive a creature on the spot. If a saving throw is passed, the subject is only buried to the waist... but if the spellcaster memorized the spell twice and casts it a second time, then the victim no longer has a saving throw.
* ''[[Geist: The Sin Eaters]]''
** There's mention of a geist, the Gravedigger, who in life did this to his murder victims (hit them with a shovel, bury them alive, listen to them scream). He met his end when he didn't hit one hard
** This is also what's necessary to activate the Oracle Manifestation using the Grave-Dirt Key. It allows the user to astrally project, but they need to effectively be suffocating from their burial. Once they get back into their body, however, they erupt spectacularly from the ground with all the damage from suffocation healed up. At the highest understanding of the Oracle, a Sin-Eater can effectively wander freely as long as they want; the corebook makes reference to an urban legend amongst the Bound about a Mafioso who was buried in wet cement while knocked unconscious and has been using the Oracle for ''decades'' to keep his body in suspended animation.
* This comes up sometimes in ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', for example the card Claustrophobia [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=380259] depicts someone in a cramped space with wood above him and the flavor text "Six feet of earth muffled his cries."
=== Theme Parks ===
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=== Video Games ===
* The Allied ending of ''[[Red Alert]]'' had {{spoiler|Stavros bury Josef Stalin in the rubble of his ruined Kremlin, after gagging him.}}
* In the ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' mission "Deconstruction," you have to stop a nearby construction company from screwing with your newfound gains. Smashing up their portables would have been plenty, but C.J. goes the extra mile by also trapping the foreman in a porta-potty, pushing it into a hole, and filling it up with concrete, all while listening to him scream "OH GOD WHY!" Stone. Cold. And the reason C.J. did this? [[Disproportionate Retribution|The guys who were working for the man called Kendl, C.J.'s sister, a hooker, and C.J. wanted to teach them some respect.]]
* ''[[Baldur's Gate]] 2''
** There's an optional subplot about finding some evil criminals who are robbing guys and burying them alive.
** Not to mention the Protagonist is threatened with a magical version of his by a loony
** And the various demiliches, mages and superpowered imps who show up in the expansion or as [[Bonus Boss
* Happens to Stan in ''[[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge|Monkey Island 2 Le Chucks Revenge]]'', where Guybrush has to get Stan to jump into one of his own coffins and nail the lid shut so he can steal a key from his office. Stan subsequently stays shut in the coffin until [[The Curse of Monkey Island|the sequel]], where Guybrush can finally open Stan's casket after the two are shut in the same crypt together.
* Dwarves in ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' have an [[Too Dumb to Live|amusing tendency to do this to themselves.]] Due to a quirk in how they build walls, they will always prefer to build them from the west side. This occasionally results in them walling themselves into an enclosed area and dying of dehydration.
* ''[[Eternal Darkness]]''
** The game has the quicksand variant as a hallucination
** {{spoiler|On a more serious note, Roberto Bianchi is commissioned to aid in the construction of a monument. At the end of the chapter, he and several other architects are chucked down into an oubliette-styled hole. And then the concrete pours in. The end of the chapter's final shot is Roberto's face and body as he tried, in futility, to escape his end.}}
* That's one of the ways to die in ''[[Lode Runner]]''. To be buried alive inside bricks.
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* Though this never happens in-game, the Nameless One in ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' is warned by one of his past incarnations of the extreme danger that being buried (alive or dead) held for him. Given his immortal nature, [[And I Must Scream|he would be doomed to an eternity of terror, suffocation and amnesiac reawakening]].
* ''Heiankyo Alien'' revolves around digging holes to trap aliens in. Once an alien is trapped, the hole has to be filled back in.
* In ''[[Monster Girl Quest]]'', should Luka be defeated by the Mandragora, she has her way with him, and then drags him underground, [[Sex Slave|holding him in an unending embrace]] and telling him he can keep from starving by eating her leaves as she sleeps. Of course, [[Stockholm Syndrome| seeing as he seems to ''prefer'' that to starving...]]
=== Web Comics ===
* One ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' strip featured Gabe doing this to Tycho as his latest April Fool's joke. The previous two were telling him his birth father wanted to meet him, and creating a billboard identifying him as a pedophile.
* ''[[Bug
* This happens early on in ''[[The Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon]]'', to the titular character. He gets out of it.
{{quote|'''Jack:''' Oh, what, that underground thing? I just punched my way out.
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=== Web Original ===
* Sarge of ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' once allowed himself to be buried for his funeral when his obsessive dedication to orders caused him to think he'd died and been replaced. He survived due to the ground giving out beneath him and landing him in an underground cavern before he ran out of air.
** This happened earlier to him in an April Fool's Day episode when Grif mistook him for dead in a Warthog explosion. He survived because, as he put it, "I ate my way out! The soft earth was like a delicious butterscotch brownie to me."
* ''Deus Ex Machina''. {{spoiler|Plague deliberately built a pipe to the surface so that he could still breath. He managed to stay down there for four days before he escaped. Lots of bad people died when he escaped.}}
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=== Real Life ===
* This was a very real fear in the 18th and 19th centuries. Back in those days, most civilizations had unreliable ways to identify death, and so stories of the recently buried screaming for help were not uncommon. We can't know how often people were in fact buried alive, but the
** Mary Roach's ''Stiff'' includes a section on live burial, the bizarre methods doctors once used to try to distinguish death from mere unconsciousness (e.g. an automatic tongue-pulling device!), and so on. She notes that the "coffin bells" never once saved a person who'd been prematurely buried, although some were disinterred when the corpse's decomposition caused its weight to shift and sound a false alarm.
** These days, accidental live burial would only be possible if the person's body was neither autopsied nor embalmed. In most jurisdictions, one if not both procedures are required by law for the majority of human burials.
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* [[Truth in Television|Real life example]]: Standard punishment for anyone who betrayed Ukrainian guerrilla fighters in '44.
* Another [[Truth in Television|Real life example]]: In 1968, the young [[The Ojou|heiress]] [[wikipedia:Barbara Jane Mackle|Barbara Jane Mackle]] was kidnapped, drugged, placed in a coffin and buried alive as her captors demanded a $500,000 ransom from her family. After three days, she was found weakened yet still alive. She wrote a book about it named ''83 Hours 'Til Dawn''.
*
* On his deathbed, George Washington requested that his body be kept unburied for two days to make sure he was actually dead.
** This is actually ''still'' common practice in the form of the wake. A wake, for those who do not know, was when the family and friends of the deceased would place the corpse, in the coffin, in a prominent place in their home. The said family and friends would then sit up with the dead in case they woke up. This was done for 1 to 2 days before burial.
*** The Irish folk song "Finnegan's Wake" provides an excellent example of why this was done.
* [[Harry Houdini]] once tested an escape in which he was buried six feet deep without a coffin, and had to dig his way up. ''Once.'' He lost consciousness just after his hand broke the surface, and had to be pulled out.
** He also spent over an hour in a sealed, underwater coffin to demonstrate that it could be done, to disprove another performer who claimed to use mystical powers to accomplish the feat. There was another buried alive escape planned, but it's not clear if it was ever performed prior to his death. Although rather ghoulishly the coffin that was to be used in the escape was put to use transporting his remains.
* 33 Chilean miners buried alive for 69 days in 2010. Their rescue was watched by the world in awe at the things humans can achieve when properly motivated.
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* In the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, a number of rescue personnel were trapped for days in the rubble of the fallen towers. The plight of two of the pinned firefighters was portrayed in the [[Oliver Stone]] film ''[[World Trade Center]]''.
* In the Roman Empire, the Vestal Virgins were killed this way if they ever broke their oath of chastity.
* Subverted with Anthony Spilotro, on whom the character of Nicky Santoro from ''[[Casino]]'' was based (see the entry in Film above), and his brother Michael. While sand was allegedly found in their lungs, indicating live burial, it was confirmed years later that they had been murdered in a basement before being buried in the cornfield.
* In an interview, JK Rowling said that her own boggart would be her being buried alive.
* An incident in the [[Gulf War]] involved a few hundred Iraqi soldiers attempting to make a [[Last Stand]] in a network of trenches, only for coalition forces to instead bury these enemy soldiers using bulldozer equipped tanks.
== "Sand Necktie" variation ==
=== Anime
* In ''[[Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water]]'', Count Herton gets this treatment from the Grandis Gang. Not to let him die, though, but just to teach him a lesson, as his madness was making him quite annoying.
===
* [[X-Men|Wolverine]] once did this on a beach, with the tide coming in, to an old man who had, decades earlier, tormented him while Wolverine was in one of his endless experimentation/black ops involvements. He made note of the fact that the man had repented and spent years trying to make up for it, but buried him anyway. Given the sheer amount of punishment Wolverine goes through on a daily basis, it seemed [[Disproportionate Retribution|rather excessive]].
* One ''Far Side'' cartoon features two cowboys buried like this by Indians. One is gloating about the shadow cast by his partner's hat. "Sure is nice in the shade, yessiree." ** Another features two Indians dragging a cowboy overlooking several different anthills, each with neon signs advertising their cowboy-torturing skills.▼
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* The [[Anthology]] movie ''[[Creepshow]]'' has a segment all about the Sand Necktie variation. Leslie Nielsen plays a deranged millionaire (but not ''[[They Might Be Giants|the]]'' deranged millionaire) who buries his wife and her lover, Ted Danson, in the sand at low tide. Then the tide comes in and they drown. {{spoiler|Then they come back as undead and do the same thing to him}}.
{{quote|"I can hold my breath for a long, ''looooooooooong'' time!"}}
* Happens to the title character (played by [[Dwayne Johnson]]) in ''[[The Scorpion King]]''
* This is done to a character in ''[[The Gods Must Be Crazy]] II'' in order to save his life.
* In ''[[Jeremiah Johnson]]'', this happens to a side character when he gets captured by hostile natives. Since he was bald, they decide that scalping him would be a waste of time.
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* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'': Harry Dresden does this to a ghoul in the desert, and leaves a trail for fire ants to follow to it. He later gives it a [[Mercy Kill]].
* ''[[Discworld]]''
** In ''[[
** One of the capital punishments from the days when Ankh-Morpork still had conventional laws was to be tied to one of the city bridge's pilings at low tide, then left there for 24 hours. As the Ankh, like the Thames in London, rises with the tides, this is functionally equivalent to the "sand necktie", as per the example below. Also possibly equivalent to conventional live burial, depending on whether the Ankh's toxic sludge really qualifies as "water".
* Happens to Nancy Drew in the 5th book in her ''Files'' series, although she's actually tied to a piling, not buried in sand, though the villain's
=== Live-Action TV ===
* This one was confirmed as an effective [[Death Trap]] by the ''[[
* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', "Better than Life"
* This happens in an episode of ''[[CSI]]''.
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=== Music Videos ===
* In one scene of the music video for "If This Is It" by Huey Lewis and the News, this happens to the News.
=== Newspaper Comics ===
▲* One ''[[Far Side]]'' cartoon features two cowboys buried like this by Indians. One is gloating about the shadow cast by his partner's hat. "Sure is nice in the shade, yessiree."
** Another features two Indians dragging a cowboy overlooking several different anthills, each with neon signs advertising their cowboy-torturing skills.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:The Ground Beneath Our Feet]]
[[Category:Death Trap Tropes]]
[[Category:Truth in Television]]
[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Buried Alive]]
[[Category:Tropes Examined by the Mythbusters]]
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