Grave Robbing: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

{{quote|'''[[Sidekick|Elika]]:''' ''You rob the dead!''<br />

 

A grave robber (or [[Tomb Raider]]) digs up a grave or breaks into a crypt or mausoleum to steal the corpse inside, whether it be [[For Science!|for medical research]], profit by selling the body to medical researchers (which used to be done by shady professions called Bodysnatchers or Resurrectionists), [[Mad Scientist|resurrection of]] [[Creating Life|the dead]], or... [[Necromantic|whatever reason]]. This also includes stealing treasure, valuables, and [[Artifact of Doom|Artifacts Of Doom]] that happen to be buried with the corpse, not just the corpse itself, especially if the tomb belonged to royalty. In some situations this can also include vandalism of the corpse if the robber is trying to make a statement or just feels [[For the Evulz|especially spiteful]].

 

 

This is often part of [[The Igor]]'s job description. This is the primary way of encountering a [[Mummy]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** Besides, he was also the self-pronounced "King of the Thieves", and generally believed that it was within his right to steal whatever the hell he wanted.

* ''[[Naruto]]'': How exactly did {{spoiler|Madara get all those Uchiha eyes}}?

** And then he's actually shown stealing {{spoiler|Nagato's eyes, from his tomb}}.

 

 

 

== Films -- Live-Action ==

** Actually that's a common misconception. Burke and Hare never robbed graves but went straight to creating their own bodies. The doctor who bought them was always impressed at how fresh they were.

* As can be expected from the title, [[Young Frankenstein]] has an example of this.

* The ''[[Phantasm (Film)|Phantasm]]'' films feature large-scale graverobbing by the Tall Man, who animates and shrinks the dead to provide slave labor on another planet (or another dimension, other time, etc).

* The main characters In ''[[Plunkett and Macleane]]'' meet when James Macleane attempts to take a ruby from a buried thief in the cemetary. However, Will Plunkett was already waiting and takes it for himself at gunpoint.

* Most versions of ''[[Frankenstein's Monster]]'' have this as the primary method of retrieving "materials" for the creation of the monster.

 

== Literature ==

* Jerry Cruncher's side job in ''[[A Tale of Two Cities]].''

* [[Harry Potter|Voldemort]] {{spoiler|steals the Elder Wand from Dumbledore's tomb}} in the last book of the series. {{spoiler|This backfires ''epically''.}}

** And Bill Weasley works as a cursebreaker for Gringott's tomb raiding expeditions in Egypt.

* In Andre Norton's Witchworld, taking a weapon from a tomb was considered acceptable in some cultures. One just had to ask the dead corpse for it. No corpse has so far risen to smite those who did it.

* In Lynda Robinson's Lord Meren mystery series, the tomb of heretic pharaoh Akhenaten is broken into, and his body dismembered, by his vengeful political enemies. Their intention is to deny him an afterlife.

** By ''throwing them to one another'', no less. "Oi, here's that liver yer wantin'. Catch!"

* In [[Mark Twain]]'s ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'', this is what Dr. Robinson, Injun Joe and Muff Potter are doing in the graveyard (presumably for medical research, as the ringleader is a doctor) until Joe murders Robinson.

** The actual Ghouls in his other stories rob graves for food.

* The Orcs, sorry, ''Shanka'' inhabiting the ruined city in Joe Abercrombie's [[The First Law|''Before They Are Hanged'']] live on dead bodies from mass graves.

{{quote| ''Many a thief sought to gain the treasure which fables said lay heaped about the moldering bones inside the dome. And many a thief died at the door of the tomb, and many another was harried by monstrous dreams to die at last with the froth of madness on his lips.''}}

** In ''The Hour of the Dragon'', necessary to revive the [[Big Bad]].

* ''[[Forgotten Realms|Return of the Archwizards]]'' trilogy begins with an elven tomb guards' routine patrol detects what they think is yet another desecration by a bunch of human "adventurers". [[It Got Worse]] when these specific humans turned out to be extremely uninterested in the tomb stuffed with traps, magic and valuables other than as a place marker.

* The [[Matthew Hawkwood]] novel ''Resurrectionist'' is about the grave robbing trade that supplied the medical schools in Regency England.

 

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** Well, yeah. They're a bit late to provide any benefit to the patient they're digging up.

* ''[[Night Gallery]]'' episode "Deliveries in the Rear". A doctor uses grave robbers to obtain bodies for dissection.

* ''[[Call of Cthulhu]]''. In several adventures ghouls are noted as stealing grave jewelry and other valuables buried with the dead.

** And ''eating'' the dead.

* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' has enough of it to make twists and [[Subversion|subversions]] relatively common.

** The [[Ravenloft]] adventure ''Ship of Horrors'' pits heroes against a grave-robbing clan {{spoiler|of reanimated corpses}} which provide bodies to a nasty necromancer.

** [[Forgotten Realms]] [[Sourcebook|sourcebooks]] and novels has "fun" with long-dead (and of course sometimes un-dead) people's tombs. This includes things like...

*** "Tomb robbers" turning out to be a bunch of ghouls, eating corpses but always ready to diversify the diet.

*** Adventurers breaking and entering a crypt only to face a room seemingly empty except one old man with a pipe, who answered the obvious question by stunning everyone (as in "power word"), introducing himself as Elminster and stating that "despoilers of tombs" will leave him and his friends alone--right now. ([http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=2942 Lords of Darkness])

* Tomb robbing is the [[Planet of Hats|Hat]] of the Yitek race in the ''Talislanta'' game.

* Some of the character bios (in game and in the instruction manual) outright state that [[Tomb Raider|Lara Croft]] is often accused of this.

** The series is named '''''[[Tomb Raider]]'''''. You don't need the manual to to figure it out.

* ''[[Fallout]] 2'' allows players with a shovel to dig up graves. Beyond an odd few sidequest important ones, they give you the "gravedigger" reputation (bad).

** It's also very profitable. And of course, the reaction when you {{spoiler|dig up a ghoul who has accidentally buried. This leads to funny comments and one confused PC}}.

* In [[Arcanum]] You are required to dig up 2 graves (1 if you know where you are going) to beat the game. You can also dig up various other graves.

* One of the Imperial City sidequests in ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] IV: Oblivion'' sees you investigating a trader who sells stuff at ridiculously low prices. It turns out, his "goods" were actually supplied by the local grave digger gang.

* One early quest in ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' requires you to rob the grave of a deceased legendary wizard so you can get the key to his tower. Humorously, before you can rob his grave, you have to win a grave robbing shovel from another enemy in the area called a grave rober (yes, it's supposed to be spelled like that, the area in question is the Misspelled Cemetary). And later on, you can fight grave rober zmobies, who keep trying to rob their OWN graves, and get pissed and attack you out of frustration because they keep failing to find anything to rob.

* You need to dig up several graves in ''[[King's Quest IV]]'', although you return the items to ghosts to which they belong so it's not ''exactly'' stealing.

* In ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'', one of the people John Marston is forced to interact with is Seth Briars, a thoroughly insane, extremely [[Squick|Squicky]] Grave Robber who prefers the company of corpses to real people. This reaches its natural conclusion in the [[Halloween Episode]] ''Undead Nightmare'', where Seth's reaction to the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] is to play poker and hold parties with the walking dead, and to express disgust with Marston for wanting to end the curse that brought them back to life.

* Elika accuses the Prince of being this in the 2008 ''[[Prince of Persia]]''. He doesn't deny it.

* Egyptian Burial Tombs in ''[[Civilization]] V'' increase the amount of money plundered if the city is captured, presumably because of grave robbing.

* ''[[Minecraft]]'' lets you rob treasure from pyramids in the desert. Each pyramid can contain things like gold, iron, diamonds, bones, and rotten flesh, but they're also guarded by TNT traps that trigger if you step on the pressure plate. Doing so will destroy all the treasure and kill you.

 

* In ''[[Endstone]]'', [http://endstone.net/2009/03/30/issue-1-page-9/ what started the present-day story.]

* Done adorably in ''[[Frankie and Stein]]'' when Stein, armed with his book "Graverobbing for Dummies" goes a'hunting for the perfect parts with which to make a friend.

 

 

* Bender of ''[[Futurama]]'' apparently has a grave robbery ''kit'', and by the end of the episode "The Luck of the Fryrish" is "one skull away from a Mouseketeer reunion."

** In the same episode he is seen emerging from an open grave saying that "no one can say that I don't own John Larroquette's spine".

 

 

** In late 2009, unknown grave robbers stole the corpse of former Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulos for unclear reasons. It was found a few months later in another cemetery, but the case remains unsolved.

* In South America, "dentista da meia-noite" (midnight dentistry) is a common practice in which the grave robber breaks into mausoleums and steals gold teeth from the corpses.

* The [[Values Dissonance|United States]] [[wikipedia:Pillaging#Looting of Native American archaeological sites|systematically plundered and destroyed many Native American sacred sites]]. This practice continued well into the 20th century until it was banned by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990.

* Thanks to the recent economic recession (combined with a strong lack of morals,) some morticians have developed a new form of grave robbing: Cremating blocks of wood or burying 150 pounds of concrete or garbage, leaving the real bodies to rot in a storage shed, and charging the surviving family members for services rendered.