Human Sacrifice: Difference between revisions

{{deathtrope}}

{{examples}}

* [[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni|Hinamizawa]]'s festival used to be about this.

** This is also {{spoiler|Hanyuu}}'s origin: she was a normal human once, but she was sacrificed to become a presiding deity over the shrine.

* Subverted and Played For Laughs in the ''[[Ranma ½]]'' manga. After Akane enters a long-distance swimming competition, she reaches the end first, only to be grabbed by an enormous jellyfish. When Ranma hears from the officials that they have to present this jellyfish king with a young maiden once a year or it will punish them, he springs into action. As it turns out, they weren't trying to make her a Human Sacrifice. All it wanted to do was take some pictures with Akane and present her trophy. By "present a young maiden," they meant that they had to "present a young maiden for it to hold."

 

* Human tribes in ''[[Elf Quest]]'' have a habit of doing this with Elves. The very first episode starts with a torture scene.

* In ''[[Spawn]]'', the cult of Urizen - a [[God of Evil]] so malevolent and so dangerous that the rulers of Heaven and Hell [[Enemy Mine|cooperated to seal him away]] - had a unique variation. The cult initially had 13 members, most of them insane rich people. Once per month, during the New Moon, one of their number was elected to be a sacrifice, and would be hunted by the others, killed, butchered, and then cooked and [[I'm a Humanitarian|eaten by the rest of the cult]] in an evil version of a formal dinner party. By their own accounts, this "blended" the victim's soul into theirs, and when only one was left, that cultist would be the vessel in which Urizen would return. However, Spawn sabotaged the eighth ceremony, placing a curse on the intended sacrifice which caused the remaining cultists to die horribly when they ate his flesh, literally puking their guts out and being consumed from within by hellfire. Unfortunately, while this eliminated the cult, Urizen would still be a big problem later.

 

* ''[[The Final Sacrifice]]'', of course. Apparently necessary to summon an invincible army of Canadian Aztecs or something.

* In ''[[Race with the Devil]]'', two families witness a human sacrifice during a Satanic ritual and go on the run to escape the cultists pursuing them. It's also implied {{spoiler|[[Bolivian Army Ending|to happen to them at the end]].}}

* ''[[Thir13en Ghosts]]'' (a remake of the older film ''[[13 Ghosts]]'') puts a spin on this, in that the ritual requires a ''willing'' sacrifice. Initially, [[Dragon-in-Chief|Arthur]] (who is orchestrating the ritual) plans to be the sacrifice himself, {{spoiler| until he realizes he was tricked into doing so by [[Big Bad| Cyrus]].}}

 

* Prevalent in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' literature

** In [[Dan Abnett]]'s ''[[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' novel ''The Guns Of Tanith'', cultists sacrifice Yael by torture.

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' story "[[A Witch Shall Be Born]]" Salome institutes this as part of the [[Religion of Evil]].

** In the [[Backstory]] of "[[The Devil in Iron]]"

{{quote|''When I was a child in Stygia the people lived under the shadow of the priests. None ever knew when he or she would be seized and dragged to the altar. What difference whether the priests give a victim to the gods, or the god comes for his own victim?''}}

** In "[[The Vale of Lost Women]]" Livia runs into this.

* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[Three Hearts and Three Lions]]'', a water spirit reveals she has no soul by her idle comments about the human sacrifices that a barbarian tribe offers her annually; she says only that it's not that useful because she's not a cannibal, but they do wear nice clothing.

* A renowned anthropologist in ''Pastwatch'' by [[Orson Scott Card]] postulates that slavery - our heroes' motivation to meddle with the past in the first place - actually emerged as a relatively benign alternative to human sacrifice. (This is relevant because the Tlaxcaltecs, who never got that cultural meme, may well have taken over the world in another timeline.)

* The first part of ''[[Special Circumstances|Princess of Wands]]'' features a cult that sacrifices people to first summon then feed an [[Eldritch Abomination]] they worship.

* In [[Keith Laumer]]'s ''[[Retief]]'' short story, "The Brass God", the Hoogan Pope wants to sacrifice the entire Terran diplomatic team for consorting with demons (actually another unrecognized alien species), but when it's pointed out that this might make the Terrans reluctant to keep funding his theocracy, he decides he'll be satisfied with sacrificing Retief alone.

* Practiced by some of the cults on the Street of (the) Gods, which appears in a couple of [[Simon R. Green]]'s novel series. It's widely regarded as unsavory, but it's not ''technically'' banned as long as it doesn't endanger the tourists.

 

* ''[[Kolchak the Night Stalker]]'' episode "Legacy of Terror". An ancient Aztec cult is performing Human Sacrifice to bring back their deity.

* Several demons in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' and ''[[Angel]]'' are after human sacrifices.

* The show ''[[Myth Quest]]'' had an episode where the male protagonist went to the Aztec empire and almost became a sacrifice.

 

* [[Chained to a Rock|Chaining-to-a-rock]] sacrifices are fairly common with dragons and other monsters anyway, and the ur-example was probably Andromeda with the sea monster from Greek mythology. The monster was killed when Perseus showed up to rescue her and turned the beast to stone with Medusa's head.

* Also from Greek mythology we have Agamemnon, who offended the goddess Artemis and was forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to appease her (though sources differ on whether the girl was actually killed or taken off to be a priestess of Artemis). His wife Clytemnestra did not take this well, setting off a cycle of bloodshed in true Greek tragedy fashion.

* Every single [[Aztec Mythology|Aztec]] god ([[Token Good Teammate|except Quetzalcoatl]]) demanded some form of this, often in very specific and highly inventive ways. See [[Real Life]] below.

 

* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'':

** In ''The Book of Vile Darkness'' (the [[Splat]] Guide, not the [[Tome of Eldritch Lore]] in the game itself) it states that "official" sacrifices to evil gods make infernal invocations cost less. Yes, you can say you massacred that last village in the name of Dread Lord Bane, but unless you do the full thing with the [[Ominous Latin Chanting]] and bloody altars, it doesn't fully count.

* Likewise, ''[[Geist: The Sin Eaters]]'' allows a Sin-Eater to regain [[Mana|Plasm]] if they kill someone in a way resonant with their Threshold. A Torn (death by violence) might just beat someone to death, a Silent (death by deprivation) might strangle them, and a Prey (death by nature) might sic a mad dog on them. Doing so to gain Plasm usually dings their [[Karma Meter|Synergy]], though.

* In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' the [[Lizard Folk|Lizardmen]] are incredibly fond of blood sacrifice, and their god Sotek appeared after the death of thousands. They manage to be one of the nicer races all the same though, because they mostly sacrifice the [[Exclusively Evil]] Skaven and Dark Elves. And most of the humans they kill are ones who mistook themselves for Conquistadors.

** ''Worlds of Cthulhu'' magazine #3, adventure ''The Golden Scorpion''. The [[PC]] ''will'' be sacrificed by the Aztec descendants they encounter. The only question is, what will they decide to do afterward...

* The ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' gamebook ''[[What Do You Mean It's for Kids?|House of Hell]]'' features a demonic cult that carries out human sacrifices. One of the illustrations in the original edition of the book depicted cultists ready to sacrifice a nude woman upon an altar; this got yanked in subsequent printings.

* The Sarrukh of the ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' practiced ''Sarrukh'' sacrifice. This was not actually truly evil - the sacrifices were honoured volunteers, and the deity they were sacrificed to wasn't evil, he just had made a "you sacrifice to me, I help you" pact with the Sarrukh. Then they started to want to sacrifice slaves of ''other'' races, the deity took measures to accommodate them, and the Sarrukh rapidly slid into deep evil, dragging some fragments of their deity with them.

 

* ''[[Black and White]]'' allows you require them from your followers, if you wish to be an evil god.

** And at least in the second game, you can do it yourself by throwing followers into the giant fire in the temple to quickly gain mana.

* One of Kotal Kahn's Fatalities ("Totem Sacrifice") does this to his opponent in ''[[Mortal Kombat 11]]'', complete with an altar.

 

* The Mobian Inquisition of ''[[Exterminatus Now]]'' spends a lot of its time fighting [[Cult]]s, so the protagonists have found themselves interrupting an anthro-sacrifice a few times.

* ''[[Exiern]]'': [http://www.exiern.com/?p=10 The plan]

* In ''[[Our Little Adventure]]'', [http://danielscreations.com/ola/comics/ep0158.html one is accidentally prevented in the labyrinth.]

 

* In the ''[[Justice League]]'' episode "The Terror Beyond", Hawkgirl mentions that her home planet, Thanagar, used to worship the [[Eldritch Abomination]] Icthultu and sacrifice people to it in exchange for knowledge. They eventually decided this was a bad idea. Dr Fate tries to perform the Thanagarian ritual sacrifice to prevent Icthultu from gaining access to our universe. Since his subject is the zombie Solomon Grundy, he would have just resurrected eventually (and in fact does during ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', though it's shown that he [[Came Back Wrong]]), but either way, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|the Justice League interrupts the sacrifice before it can be completed]].

* In the TV special ''[[Garfield]] in Paradise'', a native princess (and her cat) are nearly sacrificed to a volcano.

* This is what supposedly happens in the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Britney's New Look."

 

* Many human cultures have practiced human sacrifice, but none on a scale to match the Aztecs or Mexico. Their entire empire was organized mainly to secure sacrificial victims to appease hungry gods who would destroy the universe if not steadily fed. Since a brave warrior was believed to be the sacrifice most pleasing to the gods, the Aztecs forced their subject-ally nations to fight staged "flower wars" with them, the only purpose of which was for each side to take captives from the other, for sacrifice. Aztec infantry tactics and weapons, therefore, aimed at crippling rather than killing their opponents. This later proved a disadvantage when they had to fight the Spanish.

** Which explains a great deal about [[Mayincatec]].