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{{trope}}
[[File:human resources schlock3 1531.jpg|link=Schlock Mercenary|
{{quote|''[[Lampshade Hanging|"It was all there in the job title: The head of 'Human Resources'."]]''
|'''''[[Doctor Who]]''''', "The Runaway Bride"}}
Extracting resources from the bodies of living, dead, or dying people. "Extracting resources" is usually as visceral as taking organs from the living, though sometimes as vague as harvesting [[The Matrix|"bioelectrical energy"]]. It is common for the bodily integrity of the donor/victim/walking resourcebag to be transgressed: there is [[Body Horror|a strong horror theme]]. There are a few exceptions, such as reclaiming water from the dead in [[Dune]], which is played as a religious and cultural practice.
Sometimes a particular group is preyed upon; [[Condemned Contestant|criminals]], the homeless, and [[Disposable Sex Worker|disposable sex workers]] are popular for this. [[I'm a Humanitarian|Cannibalism]] is a special subtrope, as are some varieties of [[People Farms]]. Thematically allied with [[Powered by a Forsaken Child]]. [[Organ Theft]] is a prominent subtrope, as is [[You Are Who You Eat]]. See also [[To Serve Man]]. Compare [[Creepy Souvenir]], when folks take body parts as trophies. [[Genuine Human Hide]] is a subtrope that refers to the use of human skin (usually but not always as clothing).
[[I Thought It Meant|This does not refer to]] the HR department, or more specifically, unflattering portrayals thereof. For that, see [[Inhuman Resources]]. This can be a type of [[Living Battery]].
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== Anime and Manga ==
* It is implied in ''[[Macross Frontier]]'' that the dead are recycled for their organic biomass. This would be understandable since the show takes place on a colony ship, where resources are non-renewable. However, this seems to only apply to civilians. Military personnel are exempt and are given a more conventional burial.
** On top of this, the Macross universe had Earth get bombarded by particle weapons which resulted in the near-extinction of the human race and the apparent loss of a huge amount of biomass to judge by the color of the planet seen from space. At this point, fifty years later, recycling everything seems to be as much an accepted fact of life as indoor plumbing is today.
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* ''[[One Piece]]'' has Warlord of the Sea Gecko Moria use his devil fruit power to remove shadows of people which then power his zombies.
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' loves this trope. Not only are {{spoiler|philosopher's stones}} people in both continuities, but the homunculi are also powered by people-rocks. In the end of the manga/''Brotherhood'', {{spoiler|Father eats the souls of all the people in Amestris and then uses that power to eat God himself...until Hohenheim reveals that he's been derailing Father's plan for years and activates a countermeasure that rips all the Amestrian souls out of Father and restores them to their original bodies}}.
** The anime one-ups this by revealing that {{spoiler|''all'' alchemy is powered by souls from an [[Alternate Universe]] (ours), shunted into Amestris through the [[Gate of Truth]]. The reason alchemy had been growing in potency lately was because our world was undergoing [[World War
* Revealed as a major plot twist in ''[[Galaxy Express 999|Adieu Galaxy Express 999]]''. It involves the literal nature of the Ghost Train ({{spoiler|It transports recently dead people.}}) and the source of the energy capsules consumed by humanoid machines ({{spoiler|Their bioenergy is extracted in a huge plant.}}).
* The [[Big Bad]] in ''[[Vandread]]'' is Earth, coming to harvest all the colonies for replacement parts. Strangely enough, Earth isn't real efficient in their harvesting. Spines come from one world, skin from a different world, there's even planets to be harvested strictly for genitals.
* In ''[[Nabari no Ou]]'', the kinjutsushō Daya's ingredients include the [[Organ Theft|brains]] [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|of children]].
* The Hundred Eyes Clan in ''Maranosuke'' harvests the bodily fluids of girls via [[Out with a Bang|intense sex]] to create an [[Immortality Immorality|immortality potion]] that basically reduces the victims to... it's not pretty. Those that haven't been entirely drained can somehow be modified into custom sex slaves by [[Complete Monster|Zegenshi]] using basically the same process. The real kicker, while [[The Dragon|Zegenshi]] used it to make himself [[Really 700 Years Old|around 500,]] the [[Big Bad]] was ''already'' immortal and is just harvesting [[For the Evulz|for the fun of it...]] and [[Mommy Issues]].
* In ''[[Mazinger Z]]'', the Mooks used by Dr. Hell are cyborgs created using human corpses. He also used such methods to "recruit" [[Co-Dragons| Baron Ashura and Count Brocken.]]
* In ''[[Shuna's Journey]]'', the gods of the golden grain farm uses captive human slaves to do ''something''. Shuna isn't sure what that ''something'' is, whether they are turned into the green monsters that farm the grain or the water that irrigates the land. The grain from the farm can feed impoverished villages, so human resources are needed to make other humans survive.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* The [[Marvel Adventures]] [[Spider-Man]] ran into this with his "smart-cloth" black outfit, which required to use the host's bioelectric energy to do its wearer's commands. Spidey ended up loaning to [[The Fantastic Four|Reed Richards]] to analyze, but Johnny ends up letting it loose and it runs into a disgruntled thief named Eddie Brock and voila, the Marvel Adventures take on Venom is born.
* In ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' the dead are recycled after the funeral services and processed into food.
* In Grant Morrison's ''[[Seven Soldiers|Seven Soldiers of Victory]]'', in Klarion's puritan underground town the dead are risen for workforce as "Grundys." And yes, they are indeed similar to Solomon Grundy.
* In the ''New X-Men'' comic a group led by ''[[Complete Monster|John Sublime]]'' calling themselves the U-Men do this in order to gain a mutants powers, although its rarely successful. Sublime was even revealed to have a massive facility in Hong Kong with hundreds of imprisoned mutants, many of them already missing numerous body parts.
* In ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'', when Dr. Eggman lost the ability to [[Unwilling Roboticisation|roboticize Mobius' populace as his slaves]], he invented the Egg Grapes to [[Nightmare Fuel|use their life force as a power source]] just like ''[[The Matrix]]''.
** Unlike ''The Matrix'', however, it's also heavily implied that he didn't bother to try to nourish any of his prisoners in the Egg Grapes, just discarding the ones he "used up".
** In the UK's ''[[Sonic the Comic]]'', Robotnik's plot during the buildup to issue #100 involved connecting the Emerald Hill Folk to a machine to form a gigantic [[Wetware CPU]].
* In the ''[[Strikeforce: Morituri]]'' "Electric Undertow" limited series, it is revealed that {{spoiler|1=the alien VXX199 are hiding behind the Earth's Moon, where they are secretly modifying humanity so they can induce spontaneous combustions and harvest the psychic energies released.}}
* Vandal Savage, an immortal caveman from the [[DC Universe]], has to claim the body parts of his descendants in order to live. These have included [[Green Arrow|Roy Harper]] and his daughter, [[Secret Six|Scandal Savage]]. Eventually he {{spoiler|consumes a clone of himself}}. Note that Lex Luthor claims Savage invented cannibalism... and means it.
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* In the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
== [[
▲* In the [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|FIM]] Fanfic ''[[Rainbow Factory]]'', rainbows are made out of {{spoiler|foals who fail their flight exam. Specifically, their ribs are broken, and then they are mutilated in what is essentially a giant meat grinder.}}
* "[[Soylent Green]] is people!"
** "Soylent Green is [[Future Food Is Artificial|soy and lentils!]]"
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* In ''[[Daybreakers]]'', the mostly-vampire population uses vast "farms" of humans as their main blood supply.
** In ''[[Blade]] Trinity'' the vamps have the same idea.
* ''[[Hellraiser]]'': the [[Artifact of Doom| Lamont Configuration]] was invented by [[Predecessor Villain| Philip LeMarchand]], a French toymaker turned mass-murderer who used the bones, fat, and organs of his victims to build the notorious devices.
* Arguably in ''[[Gamer]]'' where people derive pleasure by controlling others in twisted versions of [[The Sims]] and an FPS with real guns.
* In ''[[Escape From L.A.]]'', the Beverly Hills area is inhabited by a group of freaks who, due to undergoing too much plastic surgery, must regularly kidnap prisoners and harvest them for body parts in order to keep themselves alive. Snake very nearly ends up becoming one of their next victims.
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* In ''[[Robots]]'', it's heavily implied that the upgrades sold by the [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]'s company are made from the corpses of robots too poor to afford upgrades, smelted down by the Executive's [[Evil Matriarch|mother]], the film's [[Big Bad]].
* Clapet, the butcher in ''[[Delicatessen]]'', recruits handymen who are eventually killed, butchered and sold to his tenants as cheap meat.
* In ''[[
== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Upton Sinclair]] book ''[[The Jungle]]''. Sinclair's account of workers falling into rendering tanks and being ground, along with animal parts, into "Durham's Pure Leaf Lard".
* ''[[House of the Scorpion]]'' people clone themselves so when needed, they can kill the clones and use their organs to extend their lives. One of the central characters lives to be 148 through this method.
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* The [[The Igor|Igors]] from ''[[Discworld]]'' harvest their dead for spare parts, with some body parts being handed down from generation to generation (When they say, "He's got his father's eyes," they're not being metaphorical). Also, they offer their services as surgeons to villages on the condition that they can harvest the villagers' body parts once they die of natural causes. A village can refuse to let the Igors collect on their payment, but then they'll never offer their services to that village again. "What goeth around, cometh around. And thometimeth, it thtopth."
** "The glath clock? My grandfather built it with thethe very hands!" And that was when Jeremy noticed the stitches going around Igor's wrist...
** There are several [[Discworld]]-series cases of Troll Resources, as these [[All Trolls Are Different|silicon-based folks']] diamond teeth are quite valuable. In ''[[
*** This makes the long-standing feud between Dwarfs and trolls very sensible. One species enjoys searching for valuable minerals, the other is ''made'' out of valuable minerals ...
* ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'' featured factories which would harvest all the useful parts of a body. Children were taught that death was acceptable and even good (the hospitals had the best toys and gave out candy when someone bit the dust), so long as society as a whole continued, so that no one was mortified that human beings were being scrapped for parts like old cars.
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* In Laura Mixon's ''Burning the Ice'', corpses are recycled into the artificial food source called mana and eaten in a ceremony honoring the dead. The colonists live on an icy moon of a gas giant planet so everything has to be recycled for them to survive.
* Norman Spinrad's ''[[Bug Jack Barron]]'' has as its main plot point an experimental immortality treatment {{spoiler|made by subjecting children to massive amounts of radiation and then harvesting their endocrine system for a transplant. To boost [[Aesoptinium]] levels, the majority of the kids being harvested were bought outright from impoverished black families.}}
* As shown in ''[[
* In some of [[George R. R. Martin]]'s science fiction stories, there's a profession called a "corpse handler". What they do is control a number of human corpses linked together by bionic technology and use them to perform manual labor (forest clearing, construction, and the like).
* ''The Innocents Abroad'' by [[Mark Twain]] contains a joke about the Egyptians burning mummies for steam train fuel. Unfortunately the story has been taken as true, right up to the present day. "D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent--pass out a King!"
* In the [[Necroscope]] series by Brian Lumley on the world where vampiric beings originated, the various Whamphryi overlords/ladies would stage raids on the human population to collect resources for the "provisioning". They would take captured people and mix them with their own metamorphic flesh, turning them into anything ranging from battle mounts capable of flight to living plumbing systems to pipe water throughout their tower-like homes. It was mentioned in one book how they would even grow stairways for their towers out of the bones and cartilage of hapless captured people, or any underling who manged to displease them enough.
* In the book ''[[The Time
** In the [[Garrett P.I.]] series, the urban legend that wizards' spellbooks are bound in the skin of [[You Have Failed Me...|unsatisfactory underlings]] is so old, it's become a joke of the profession.
* ''[[The War of the Flowers]]'' by Tad Williams features the main character enjoying some pixie dust. Given that he's an aging rocker, this isn't so unusual, but he's later reminded that he's in a reality where there are actual pixies.
** Another example involves how the fairies [[Magitek]] works- they used to power it with belief, but since humans have become less superstitious while the energy needs of fairy society have gone up, that's no longer feasible. The new energy source involves leeching magic from living, usually lower-class, fairies, usually against their will. Though normally not fatal, the process leaves the victims burned out shells who are sickly, magic-less, and frequently insane.
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* In the ''[[Breaking the Wall]]'' trilogy, the Thirteen Orphans' each possess a Mahjong set that's passed down family lines, with tiles made from bone and bamboo. It is revealed in the second book that the bones came from the original Orphans, exiles from another world who wanted to keep the link to their homeland alive, strengthen the powers of their descendants, and also give their bodies a more portable form in the hopes that they could one day be returned to their homeland proper.
▲== Live Action Television ==
* The clockwork robots in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" rebuilt the ship out of parts of the crew.
** Also from "The Runaway Bride": "It was all there in the job title, the head of Human Resources."
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* ''[[Angel]]'' had an episode where humans were harvested for parts for transplant to rich people.
== [[Music]] ==▼
▲== Music ==
* [[Child Ballad]] #10, "Twa Sisters": the body parts of the drowned girl are fashioned into a musical instrument, either a harp or a fiddle. The song is covered by Loreena McKennitt in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=408za7FeNJo "Bonny Swan"].
== [[Oral Tradition]], [[Folklore]], Myths and Legends ==
* The "Hand of Glory" was the severed hand of an executed criminal, clutching a candle, which gave a light only the Hand's holder could see. Supposedly it was a useful tool for medieval housebreakers, who could rob a house after dark without its illumination alerting residents or neighbors.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==▼
* ''[[Dungeons
▲== Tabletop Games ==
▲* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'': flesh golems. It's worse in [[Ravenloft]] (creators usually are driven by obsessive insanity, while golems, no matter how innocent they start out, sooner or later become [[Axe Crazy]]), but otherwise it's merely a [[Nausea Fuel|very unappetizing]] variant which is still considered better than [[Undead]]. [[Ravenloft]]'s Hands of Glory and the Eye of Vecna are also examples.
** Similar to the ''Biofab War'' example, certain ships in the ''[[Spelljammer]]'' setting use a sadistic variation of the typical spelljamming helm called a lifejammer. Instead of a spellcaster fueling the ship with his or her magical power, lifejammers are powered by the life force of whichever poor victim gets strapped into the helm. Neogi slavers are fond of using them, as are the undead, and their use is banned in pretty much every civilized region of wildspace.
* A running joke in ''[[Warhammer
** To the point where an infamously ruthless general forced his armies across minefields to clear then for his tanks.
** Commander Chenkov once ordered for a wall to be built to protect against his enemies. When the men informed him there wasn't enough mortar and bricks, he ordered them to start shooting his own men, and made a wall ''out of their corpses''.
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*** Oh yes, we don't want to know what happens to the bodies of all the psykers that are dragged into Emperors Chamber every day. It won't smell good, I think.
** The Tyranid top them by attacking with their [[Cannon Fodder]] troops to cause the enemy to waste ammunition before the real attack starts, since they'll just lap up those troops' biomass (biomass being ''anything organic'') to make more later, then eat up the enemy's. Said troops don't even have a digestive system! They're ''supposed'' to get wiped out.
* In ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' Alpha Complex's main food source is from algae tanks which are in part fed by recycled citizens.
* In the [[New World of Darkness]] ''Immortals'' sourcebook, the Patchwork People are [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]s and [[Aristocrats Are Evil|evil aristocrats]] who maintain their immortality by [[Immortality Immorality|thieving organs and hormone extracts from innocent victims]].
* Kind of an everpresent problem in ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]''.
== [[Theatre]] ==
* ''[[Macbeth]]''; ingredients in the Weird Sister's recipe include "Nose of Turk", "Tartar's Lips", "Liver of a blasphemous Jew", and "finger of a birth-strangled babe".
== [[Video Games]] ==
* The recycling tanks in [[Alpha Centauri]] are implied to be for this purpose.
* In ''[[Front Mission]]'' for Super Famicom {{spoiler|the main villain uses the heroes girlfriend's brain as a computer for his mech. You can eventually install "her" into your own wanzer}}.
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*** Update: Death Knights have apparently gotten better at it, because their "Raise Ally" button is now a full battle resurrection.
* ''Supreme Commander'' and ''Total Annihilation'' are just about robots, but they have harvesting wrecks (or immobile enemy structures or your own units) for resources.
* Zerg Defilers in ''[[
** And Samir Duran as well. But then, he ''is'', well... whatever the hell he is.
* The Hierarchy in ''[[Universe At War|Universe at War: Earth Assault]]'', [[Camp|intentionally designed]] to perpetuate every single [[Alien Invasion]] sci-fi cliche in the last sixty years, gathers resources with walkers that can harvest buildings, cars, wrecks, cows and people.
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* Killing enemies with Damage Traps in ''[[Deception|Tecmo's Deception]]'' only makes them drop gold. However, if you successfully finish them with a Capture Trap, you have the choice of taking the gold off their corpse, sucking their soul out to restore your [[Mana Meter]], or entombing their actual ''bodies'' to be used to create a monster for [[Summon Magic]].
* ''[[Breath of Fire II]]'' allows the option to save {{spoiler|Ryu's father}} from a life-powered machine, only to have {{spoiler|him}} volunteer to enter another later on... [[Stupid Sacrifice|for the sole purpose of making]] [[World in the Sky|your town fly.]] And this is ''after'' {{spoiler|Nina's sister}} already [[Senseless Sacrifice|irreversibly sacrificed herself]] to be a [[Giant Flyer|living airship.]]
** [[Breath of Fire IV]] isn't much better on those regards. {{spoiler|The ammo for the Carronade Nuke used against Fou-lu the [[God-Emperor]]? His girlfriend Mami, who was tortured into insanity beforehand. No wonder Fou-Lu [[Go Mad
* ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' is quite literally made of this. The plot revolves around a virus that warps and re-purposes human bodies for its own ends; the creatures Alex fights are grown from infected humans (which in concept art is depicted as packed-together human bodies, still somewhat alive, being gradually assimilated into the larval form of the creature); one boss fight is against a woman literally encased in human flesh, which she uses like a gigantic set of [[Power Armor]]; and Alex himself absorbs people to take their memories, appearances and mass to fuel his abilities, 'consuming' them alive.
* In [[American McGee's Alice]], the Hatter's clockwork inventons are [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|fueled by insane children]]. [[Alice: Madness Returns]] uses them for the Infernal Train, as well.
* ''[[Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds]]'' has human blood as a Martian resource.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy Type-0]]'', "Phantoma" can be absorbed from dead organic enemies (Including human soldiers). Absorbing Phantoma replenishes the character's MP, and collected Phantoma is used in the Altocrystarium to power up spells in multiple parameters (Strength, range, MP consumption, etc.)
* The demons in ''[[Corruption
* The main facility in ''[[The Last Guardian]]'' is kept powered by {{spoiler|The kidnapped children taken by the creatures. They are swallowed whole, rendering them unconscious until they are regurgitated into chutes atop the main building}}
* ''[[Bayonetta|Bayonetta 3]]'' has a truly crazy example in the battle against the boss of stage 6, and by that, "crazy even for ''this'' franchise. The heroine has a new technique in this game called Deadly Sin, where she enhances the powers of the demons she summons (reserved for [[Boss]] battles); to do so, she ''rips out her own heart'' to use as a component for the spell. Doesn't kill Bayonetta or even hinder her slightly, this seems to be a benefit to being an Umbral Witch, but hey, a job that results in automatic eternal damnation is sure to have ''some'' decent fringe benefits, right?
* In the ''[[Dark Souls]]'' franchise, killing enemies will cause them to drop Souls, which the player uses to increase their stats, skill levels, augment and upgrade weapons, all that stuff.
== [[Visual Novels]] ==
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* Metacreatures in ''[[Shikkoku no Sharnoth]]'' are spawned from corpses by the host of the Metacreature.
== [[Webcomics]] ==▼
▲== Webcomics ==
* [[Suicide for Hire]]: [http://suicideforhire.comicgenesis.com/d/20060507.html Hunter's project on utilitarianism]. Apparently he does this a lot, as his on-off girlfriend Chryseis later asks him "Have you ever considered doing a project for that class that ''didn't'' involve the slaughter of hundreds?"
* Belkar in ''[[Order of the Stick]]'' has a bad habit (one among many) of using the heads of slain kobolds as hats, salsa bowls, or litter boxes for Mr. Scruffy.
** He later lists the uses of a still conscious head of an Eye of Fear and Flame: portable [[Eye Beams]], [[Anachronism Stew|alarm system, bottle opener, can crusher, paperweight, bowling ball]], [[Mundane Utility|nutcracker, stool]]... and [[Squick|emergency chamber pot.]] Which is when the skull decides he'd rather die than literally "take Belkar's crap."
**
* ''[[Darths and Droids]]'' decided to [http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0466.html add this] (along with [[Fridge Horror]]) to ''[[Star Wars]]''.
*
{{quote|'''Federov''':
'''Central''':
* ''[[Nerf Now]]'' has a [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|less optimistic]] take on the subject [http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/1759 here], via ''[[X-COM (Video Game)|XCOM 2 (2016)]]''.
* ''[[User Friendly]]'' has "[[Acceptable Professional Targets|Spammers]]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190928031428/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=2017092 the other dink meat]".
== [[Web Original]] ==▼
▲== Web Original ==
* In ''[[The Return (fanfic)|The Return]]'' as well as the [[I'm a Humanitarian|Other White Meat]], Succubae feed on human sexual energy. One of the markers of the "[[Grey and Gray Morality|good guys]]" is that when they do it, their victims are still alive afterwards. Alexia's victims are not so lucky.
== [[Western Animation]] ==▼
▲== Western Animation ==
* The following exchange occurred on [[The Simpsons]]:
{{quote|'''Homer:''' Marge, please, old people don't need companionship. They need to be isolated and studied so it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use.
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* A season 2 episode of ''[[Metalocalypse]]'' reveals that the favorite sewing material of band's new fashion designer is "special leather". The final scene, which shows the room where he harvests this material, is so [[Squick]]y that even the band is horrified.
{{quote|'''Nathan''': [[Crowning Moment of Funny|OH, WHAT A HORRIBLE-Oh, you're fired by the way.]]}}
* In ''[[Celebrity Deathmatch]]'', there was a [[Black Comedy]] example with the [[Humanoid Abomination| Super-Freaks]], where created by [[Stone Cold Steve Austin|Stone Cold]]'s gene-splicing experiments, using the DNA of dead celebrities.
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* There is actually a name for binding books in human skin, Anthropodermic bibliopegy.
▲== Real Life ==
** See also [https://anthropodermicbooks.org/ The Anthropodermic Book Project] — a team "testing alleged anthropodermic books to see if they’re of human origin". On October 2018:
{{quote|Alleged Anthropodermic Books Identified: 49
Books Tested or In Process: 30
Books Confirmed as Human: 18
Books Proven to Be Not Human: 12 }}
** A copy of ''De humani corporis fabrica'', bound in human skin was donated to a University.
* [https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/book-its-cover There were widespread and persistent rumours] about this during French Revolution, particularly human skin pants, human skin book binding ([[Hypocritical Humor|unsurprisingly]] including ''Droits de l’Homme'') and a whole tannery busily specialising in this (there certainly was enough of ''raw material'' available to keep them busy).
* Mary Roach's ''Stiff'' examines the various fates awaiting actual human remains, including dissection, vehicular crash-testing, being plastinated as a permanent anatomical display, or getting processed into cement for an artificial reef and/or fertilizer to sustain a memorial tree.
* The organ donor system; you agree to it, then fall over dead, and some doctors cut all the useful bits out of you to use in someone else. Often it is illegal for the donor's family to profit by this; in some countries there is a small payment.
* During
** And then there's [[Mad Scientist|Joseph]] [[Complete Monster|Mengele]], who was quite happy to use prisoners in his "experiments".
** Some Americans took [[wikipedia:American mutilation of Japanese war dead#U.S. reaction|"souvenirs"]] from the corpses of Japanese soldiers in WWII.
*** There's currently{{when}} a war crimes tribunal about American soldiers who may have done this "souvenir collection" with Afghan civilians.
** This type of souvenir collection isn't all that uncommon. Most of the time, when a soldier wants a trophy, he'll take something like a gun, or a hat, but every now and then there's someone who'd rather have an ear or a nose. War is a terrible thing, and it turns perfectly normal people into sociopaths.
*** Doubtful, they were probably already sociopaths and War simply gave them an
** There was something particularly dehumanizing about jungle warfare between opponents separated by the East/West cultural divide. Trophy-taking and corpse desecration were rampant on both sides in the Pacific Theater of WWII, and occurred again during the Vietnam War. In contrast, where US forces verified dozens of cases of US troops taking Japanese trophies, in the European theater the only verified case was of a single German corpse scalped by a Native American soldier.
* McDonald's restaurants. Today, the tray liners display nutritional information. In the late 1980's, they had a picture of happy-looking employees with the caption, "People, our most important ingredient."
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Narrative Devices]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Food Tropes]]
[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Human Resources]]
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