Buried Alive: Difference between revisions

A close cousin of this is the "Sand Neck Tie", where a character is buried up to their neck in sand, with the intention of death from the incoming tide, dehydration or nasty animal-related death.

* ''[[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]]''

* 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 severed -- so he was still very much alive. He went on to be a complete b*stard to the town that had punished him, because it was impossible to prosecute a legally dead man for any crime. However, some of his enemies decided to use that loophole to their advantage as well, because there is nothing in the world wrong with burying a dead man, either....

* 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.

* This almost happened in ''[[Snow White (Disney film)|Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs]]''; the Queen figured that once Snow White was apparently killed, her protectors, the dwarves would accidentally ensure her real death by burying her alive. Fortunately, they didn't have the heart to do so.

* The title character of Tim Burton's ''[[Vincent]]'', in the throes of one of his Vincent Price/Roger Corman/Poe fantasies, believes he's buried his wife alive, and digs up his mother's flower bed trying to "retrieve" her.

* 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.

* In Book 15 of the ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' series, ''The Darke Crusade'', High Warlord Magnaarn traps Lone Wolf inside an underground temple, which he brings down on the hero. Lone Wolf isn't killed by the collapse but is buried alive and has to tunnel a way out during ''sixteen days'' with only the food and water he was carrying. He still survives thanks to his Magnakai powers and determination, but is very weakened by the ordeal.

* [[Edgar Allan Poe]] was fond of this:

** "[http://www.poestories.com/text.php?file=premature The Premature Burial]", for one, published back in 1850, making this [[Older Than Radio]]. {{spoiler|In fact, it was so common in the bad horror literature of the time that this story is actually a ''parody''. It ends with the reveal that the narrator freaks out over waking up in a confined shipboard bunk, then stops reading horror stories "such as this" and gets a life. His catalepsy turns out to be [[Your Mind Makes It Real|all in his head]].}}

* ''[[Walker, Texas Ranger]]'': Several episodes have featured one of the main characters or an underage person (usually children) being buried by the villians, and Walker and the Rangers racing against time to stop the bad guys and locate the victim. Three such episodes aired within months of each other in 1996 alone:

** "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.

* [[Avenged Sevenfold]] has a song called "[[Buried Alive]]". Guess what it's about?

* 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"''.

* [[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 From the Dead]] (hey, he's practically [[The Grim Reaper]]; he can do that) with a new look, thirsting for revenge.

* In the ''Vampire: the Masquerade'', the Sabbat use this as part of their embracing ritual when there's a need for a large surge of Sabbat shock troopers. They beat the would be vampire senseless, turn them, bury them alive en masse with other candidates, and see which ones come up. The ones that don't? No need to waste time digging them back up, they weren't even worth the blood to embrace.

** 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.

* A portion of the ''[[The Haunted Mansion|Phantom Manor]]'' ride at [[Disney Theme Parks|Disneyland Paris]] has the Doombuggies going underground, where the dead are rising from their graves.

* 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.]]

* 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 (webcomic)|Bug]]'' tells us that if this happens to you, [http://www.bugcomic.com/comics/old-age/ you may be getting older.]

* 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."

* Brock Samson from ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'', in the episode, "Dia de Los Dangerous!", is buried alive, after [[No One Could Survive That|being shot with at least 20 apparently lethal tranquilizer darts and hit by a van]], all while keeping a brutal death grip on a poor enemy soldier. Nonetheless, he still manages to dig himself out, with the only side effect of all of this being Brock's extreme rage and being really thirsty.

* Done to Gwen on ''[[Total Drama Island]]'', as part of a challenge where the campers have to face their worst fears. Trent {{spoiler|forgot to dig her up on schedule, causing a rift in their budding relationship}}.

* 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 shear horrific quality of being buried prematurely led to the creation of [[wikipedia:Safety coffin|Safety coffins,]] which were essentially coffins with a bell or flag stuck above ground to give the recently buried a method of communication with the outside. One of these can be seen in the movie ''The First Great Train Robbery''.

** 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.

** Alfred Nobel was so afraid of being buried alive that he left instructions that the doctor who pronounced him dead were to cut open his neck arteries as well, just to be safe.

* [[Truth in Television|Real life example]]: Standard punishment for anyone who betrayed Ukrainian guerrilla fighters in '44.

* A gang of kidnappers in the American Southwest actually did this to an ''entire school bus full of children''. Thankfully, everyone escaped.

* On his deathbed, George Washington requested that his body be kept unburied for two days to make sure he was actually dead.

* 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.

* The movie ''[[Caligula]]'' uses this as a form of execution, by chopping off peoples' heads with an [[Advancing Wall of Doom]] [[Schizo-Tech|with lawnmower blades!]] [[Artistic License History|Despite this]], it's still disturbing to look at.

* In ''[[Shanghai Noon]]'', Roy's gang does this to him in the middle of the desert where vultures pick at his exposed head. [[Crowning Moment of Funny|He somehow gets out of it using a pair of chopsticks.]]

* In David Eddings' ''Malloreon'', the heroes come across a flock of vultures feeding on something on the ground. It turns out the bad guys have a habit of burying escaped slaves up to their necks in sand and leaving them. And this is in the middle of a desert.

* In Jerzy Kosinski's ''The Painted Bird'', the main character is buried to his neck by superstitious peasants who wish to "cure" him of a fever. This leads to a flock of crows pecking at his head.

* This one was confirmed as an effective [[Death Trap]] by the ''[[Myth Busters]]''. It took Tory 80 minutes to get out of dry sand and Grant gave up with wet sand after 10. Consider that neither was actually tied up.

* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', "Better than Life" -- with ants. And jam smeared on their faces....

* In one scene of the music video for "If This Is It" by Huey Lewis and the News, this happens to the News.

* In the ''[[Touhou]]'' [[Doujin]] 4koma ''[[Life of Maid]]'', the beach vacation arc ends with this happening to [[Chew Toy|Hong Meiling]] courtesy of [[Ninja Maid|Sakuya]], who was still a little pissed at her for [[Drives Like Crazy|wrecking their bus in a]] [[Azumanga Daioh|Yukari-esque]] [[Drives Like Crazy|rampage]] near the start of the arc. Being that Meiling's a [[Youkai]] and this is a [[Gag Series]], she gets better.

* In an episode of ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'', one of the local residents is buried under the sand at the beach and promptly forgotten. Cue the incoming tide. He is seen later as a ghost.

* In one episode of ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (animation)|Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers]]'', Gadget suggests this to the Pi-Rats as a way of torturing a pair of recently captured enemies. This doesn't make sense as ''she's one of the captured enemies''.