History Main / IndustrializedEvil

* ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'': In the final boss' chamber, [[spoiler:the Hyron supercomputer, used by the Illuminati to predict how to control humanity, is revealed to be [[WetwareCPU built out of a hive mind of enslaved brain-augmented women]], all of whom beg to be put out of their misery]]. It's implied that the realization that this horrifying process and its results were going to be applied to ''the rest of the human population'' is what caused [[spoiler:Darrow]] to snap and commit genocide in a desperate attempt to wipe all traces of this and other human-resources technology.

* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', the vampire and SinisterMinister [[spoiler:Malack]] drops his AffablyEvil act when he reveals to Durkon that once he inherits the rule of the Empire, he intends to sacrifice a thousand sentients every day to his God of Death. He's thinking of [[ANaziByAnyOtherName developing some sort of special chamber for maximum efficiency]] so that he can harvest the blood for his vampire ruling class. WordOfGod is that this is a reference to the RealLife meat industry; the author is a vegetarian.

* The Machines in ''Film/TheMatrix'' famously turn humans into [[LivingBattery batteries]] (physics notwithstanding, due to {{executive|Meddling}}s thinking [[ViewersAreMorons viewers wouldn't understand]] a WetwareCPU). Keep in mind that [[spoiler:this was the machines ''being '''merciful''''' to the humans who had treated them like crap]].

Why should vampires spend hours hunting a [[WarmBloodbagsAreEverywhere juicy bloodbag]] when they can just breed and slowly exsanguinate people in PeopleFarms? Or for that matter, the [[{{Dystopia}} repressive police state]] may just build an all purpose AgonyBeam rather than bother with psych evaluations to put political prisoners in [[{{Room 101}} tailor made torture chambers]]. A werewolf may decide that rather than wait for college students to wander into his forest to hunt, he could just kidnap people off the street and [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame release them for sport]].

Add HorrorHunger, PoweredByAForsakenChild, HumanResources, or AndIMustScream with this trope for extra (evil) fuel economy. Since the execution of this idea requires order and discipline, the perpetrators will usually be LawfulEvil unless they are an uncharacteristically well organized [[NeutralEvil Neutral]] or ChaoticEvil, or they represent BlueAndOrangeMorality. Less vile examples may be ObliviouslyEvil or an example of HumansAreCthulhu. Often involves the construction of a NightmarishFactory. Compare LuddWasRight, where technology and [[ScienceIsBad science are considered bad]] in and of themselves. May be a part of a FinalSolution scenario.

* ''In the Penal Colony'' by Creator/FranzKafka describes a torture and execution machine that is designed to kill the condemned through pain and blood loss over a period of twelve hours (pausing briefly to let the condemned rest and, still strapped into the machine, eat a bowl of porridge). The beauty of the machine is, supposedly, that it is inhuman in a "good" sense: it is impartial, precise, persistent, and, of course, without hate towards the condemned. The horrible ordeal transforms the mindset of the condemned so that he will die at ease, feeling that justice has been served, even if he regarded himself as innocent before.

->'''Moran:''' That's what you get, Mr. Holmes, when industry marries arms.
->'''Holmes:''' My horror at your crimes is matched only by my admiration at the skill it took to achieve them.
-->-- ''Franchise/SherlockHolmes: [[Film/SherlockHolmesAGameOfShadows A Game of Shadows]]''

* Subverted in ''Anime/{{Simoun}}'', where at first the [[{{Arcadia}} pastoral Simulacrum]] is presented as morally superior to the early industrial Argentum but eventually proven to be similar behind the facade.
* In ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'', ghouls that are captured by the CCG are sent to Cochlea for their imprisonment and eventual execution. Those not kept alive as Informants are either selected for experimentation or marked for termination. And how does one execute a large number of super-human beings that cannot be injured by conventional weapons? Simple! A large number of prisoners are simply loaded into a massive industrial press, and then crushed like trash and flushed into the sewers. The whole matter is handled in a very banal manner, with the Warden stamping papers to mark which prisoners will be part of the next mass disposal. The audience learns all this after [[TheCutie Hinami]] is selected for Disposal, and several groups unite in a desperate bid to rescue her from the prison. As a final triumphant Screw You to the CCG, [[spoiler:Eto creates a {{Kaiju}}-sized armor to smash the machine to pieces]].
* TheReveal (one of them, anyway) in ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemistTheSacredStarOfMilos'' is that [[spoiler:Table City]], in its original design, was a huge, mechanical transmutation circle, designed to turn whoever was in the appropriate chambers into blood, which is distilled into a Philosopher's Stone [[spoiler:also known as a Sacred Star]]. We don't get to see exactly what happens to the [[spoiler:Amestrian soldiers]] in the chambers, but ''a lot'' of blood is shown going through the pipes...
* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' has an lower-tech example of this after the TimeSkip: [[spoiler: The airships used by the nation of Marley hang Eldian prisoners from equipment racks, then launch them out of the back of the hangar. These prisoners are transformed into Titans mid-air, raining down on enemy forces from above. Other nations use regular munitions to attack from the air, while Marley uses ''people'' as disposable military equipment]].
* ''Manga/ThePromisedNeverland'' is what happens when brain-eating demons adopt ''factory farming''. Children are raised in a giant pen and given a strong education for the sole purpose of having that knowledge absorbed by their consumers. Some demons help the protagonists because the farms are outright sacrilegious, but hope to restore the traditions of hunting down humans for food. Eventually, the series concludes that even demons would ultimately reject people farming; not because of any ethical concerns, but because the only people psychopathic enough to oversee these cruelly profitable systems would [[RichInDollarsPoorInSense ultimately gain undeserved power through product]] [[TheCaligula and rule poorly]].

* One horror comic ("The Pit of Horror", ''Adventures Into Weird Worlds'', 1952) has the Devil see that demons are getting lazy and complacent, so he brings in a human expert. The expert soon has them torturing souls with sadistic enthusiasm, so the Devil gives him his reward, a chest of jewels, and returns him to Earth at the same time and place he was taken from... which was a few seconds before he was scheduled to die. [[HoistByHisOwnPetard And guess where he's headed...]] Read it [[http://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/2016/01/satan-is-waitin-pit-of-horror.html here.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/FerngullyTheLastRainforest'', the forest is threatened by a gigantic automated logging machine capable of converting acres of pristine wilderness into barren wasteland and piles of wood. The human operators are ObliviouslyEvil, but the BigBad turns out to be a CardCarryingVillain.
* In ''WesternAnimation/MeetTheRobinsons'' [[spoiler:Doris the hat]] has turned the future into one giant [[Film/TheMatrix Matrixesque]] factory creating bowler hats, with everyone enslaved by bowler hats like it.

* The Pie Making Machine in ''WesternAnimation/ChickenRun'', from the chicken's point of view. Seing how the farm was already a pretty clear allusion to a concentration camp, the implications get even more horrifying.

* In Disney's ''Film/TheBlackHole'', [[spoiler:the humanoid robots are actually the mass-lobotomized crew of the Cygnus]]. Dr. [=McCrae=] finds herself on an assembly line, where she is about to be turned into one.
* In ''Film/{{Daybreakers}}'', a VampireApocalypse has forced humans to near extinction, and the remaining people are plugged in as [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/daybreakers_5084.jpg living plasma batteries in farms]].
%%* ''Film/BladeTrinity'': [[spoiler:the vampires' 'final solution', see ''Daybreakers'' above]].
* The Machines in ''Film/TheMatrix'' famously turned humans into batteries (physics notwithstanding, due to {{executive|Meddling}}s thinking [[ViewersAreMorons viewers wouldn't understand]] a WetwareCPU). And keep in mind that [[spoiler:this was the machines ''being '''merciful''''' to the humans who had treated them like crap]].

* ''Film/Conspiracy2001'' is a dramatisation of the Wannsee Conference where the FinalSolution was planned. It's largely a discussion of logistics, money and technology, with the only objections based around largely practical concerns, and the use of euphemisms such as "storage problem". Most notable when Eichmann reads out an account of a mass killing by gas chamber as if he's describing the test of a new piece of factory machinery, right down to a projected estimate of Jews killed per year with the new system. One of the participants explicitly compares it to a production line.

* ''Film/TheCabinInTheWoods'': The organization needs to ensure that, every year, a group of at least five young people accidentally induce their own destruction as part of a ritual sacrifice. [[ApocalypseWow Bad things will happen if the sacrifice is not made.]] Solution? Stick five teens in the woods and hope for the best? No. A cabin rigged with pheromone sprays, intelligence-reducing drugs and other special effects to enforce GenreBlindness when the basement full of [[ArtifactOfDoom artifacts of doom]] is finally discovered? Still not enough. Instead, the organization has [[FromBadToWorse dozens of horror projects across the world, killing multiple victims every year (including children in some cases), for possibly thousands of years to ensure they get the sacrifices they need.]] If in doubt, repeat, repeat, repeat.
* The focus of the ''Film/{{Cube}}'' film series is on a network of giant, mechanical Cubical mazes built up of thousands of smaller cubes, some of which are boobytrapped. It's inferred that they're some way of testing human behavior under stressful conditions, punishing dissidents of the regime and/or testing chemicals and other weapons, with one captive deciding that they ''have'' no purpose but were simply the product of a senseless, secretive bureaucracy gone mad.
* In ''Film/JupiterAscending'', galactic society's most lucrative commodity is a LongevityTreatment produced by harvesting the human populations of entire planets for HumanResources. As one {{aristocrat|sAreEvil}} explains, when money truly can buy more time, it's the most precious thing there is.
-->''"Abrasax Industries: Humanely Sourced -- Ethically Harvested"''
* ''Film/ICareALot'': Marla tortures Jennifer but does so through legal means, like putting her on minimal meals and reducing her time outside to almost zero.

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' book ''Literature/{{Eric}}'', the new lord of hell tried this approach -- since souls don't actually feel pain, he established a lot of rules that changed hell into a tedious, bureaucratic horror. [[EvenEvilHasStandards Even the demons were horrified]] (but somewhat proud of humans for having devised such tortures) and quickly arranged to have him KickedUpstairs. Hell gets considerably better after that, because both souls and demons now know things could be a ''lot'' worse.

* In ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', Mordor and especially the post-FaceHeelTurn Isengard are depicted in an early industrialization stage. This is an oft-repeated trope in Creator/JRRTolkien's work because Tolkien had an intense dislike of industralization.
** In one of the discarded editions of ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' orcs used tanks during the siege of Gondolin.
** This is specifically ''Sauron's'' MO. This makes sense, since Sauron before his FaceHeelTurn was employed by Aulë the smith of the Valar.
* In ''Literature/CloudAtlas'', the Archivist uses this trope's very words [[spoiler:to refer to Sonmi-451's description of fabricants being slaughtered and recycled.]]

%%* The ''Series/BabylonFive'' Technomage novels described this as being the ultimate source of Shadow vessels [[spoiler:and Technomages]].

* In the setting of ''Literature/{{Pact}}'', magical power is gained primarily by making deals with various supernatural creatures, or Others. The type of currency varies with the Other, but a lot of the more unpleasant ones enjoy human suffering of some stripe. Johannes Lillegard, a lone practitioner already possessed of impressive power, took this rule and applied some basic economic theory to it by creating a vestige, a copy of a large section of a mid-sized town, where the population could be tormented until death and then restored, and then marketing it to Others as a sort of amusement park, where they can hurt people ''all the time'' without concern for TheMasquerade.
* ''Literature/Timeline191'': Jake Featherston, UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler analogue and President of the Confederate States of America takes an industrialized approach to his [[FinalSolution population reduction]] of the CSA's African-American residents, experimenting first with mass shootings, then trucks that asphyxiate the prisoners during transport, and finally, with Auschwitz-style gas showers. One of his henchmen, Jefferson Pinkard, tests each of these methods in turn, doing his best to bring logic and efficiency to the process of mass murder and genocide.
* ''In the Penal Colony'', by Creator/FranzKafka, describes a torture and execution machine that is designed to kill the condemned through pain and blood loss over a period of twelve hours (pausing briefly to let the condemned rest and, still strapped into the machine, eat a bowl of porridge). The beauty of the machine is, supposedly, that it is inhuman in a "good" sense: it is impartial, precise, persistent, and, of course, without hate towards the condemned. The horrible ordeal transforms the mindset of the condemned so that he will die at ease, feeling that justice has been served, even if he regarded himself as innocent before.
* In ''Literature/ParadiseLost'', the fallen angels attempt to recreate God's thunder by creating war-machines and cannons from the PrimordialChaos that precedes the Earth. Satan and Belial immediately brag that these machines make their victory eternally certain, just before the loyal angels figure out that giant hills (i.e. symbols of nature) make better projectiles than cannonballs.
* Since [[EasyRoadToHell all humans go to Hell]] in ''Literature/Damnation101'', once a human is throughly and viscerally introduced to what the rest of eternity will be like for them, they will eventually be placed on an assembly line, carried by a meat-hook through the jaw as a demon student enacts physical trauma onto them with whatever tool they choose.
* The Line, from ''Literature/TheHalfMadeWorld'', isn't simply evil industrialized, but industry made evil -- the valuation of profit and production over everything else, including human life. Imagine a {{megacorp}} if it existed during the late 1800s: all smokestacks, oil drills, churning gears and pistons, concrete and barbed wire, and harsh electric lights. Its name comes from the railway line that links its ever-expanding list of Stations together, factory-cities where people are as standard-issue and disposable as the machines they handle. Its leaders are the trains that travel the line, having become sentient {{Mechanical Abomination}}s under the influence of the WeirdWest.
-->'''Lowry:''' The smallest youngest Station of the Line produces more goods in its factories in an hour - produces more goods ''by mistake'' every day - than Kloan and Greenbank and Gooseneck would ever have produced in ten years, in ''twenty''. As you are to the [[MagicalNativeAmerican Folk]], we are to you.
* [[TheEmpire The Dawn Empire]] in ''Literature/ShadowOfTheConqueror.'' Led by [[EmperorScientist Emperor Dayless]], they harnessed the {{Phlebotinum}} of their world to create {{Magitek}} guns, factories, [[TheSkyIsAnOcean skyships]], and other technological wonders, including those that could [[FantasticNuke wipe out entire cities]]. Easily conquering several nations, they turned half the world into a hellish [[CommieLand USSR-styled industrial state]] where tens of millions were slaughtered in [[Main/ThePurge purges]] or warfare, with Dayless himself ruling over them all as an iron-fisted EvilOverlord with absolute power.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS1E23ATasteOfArmageddon A Taste of Armageddon]]", the Enterprise discovers two planets are involved in a bizarre war in which computers simulate the conflict, and civilians deemed "killed" in the simulation are required to report to {{Disintegration Chamber}}s. The people willingly go to their deaths, believing that in doing so, they are preventing an actual war from breaking out. Kirk and crew's revulsion at this is that there ''is'' an actual war where people still die from it, and this "simulation" setup removes the WarIsHell aspect that makes war something to be avoided (that and they decided that the ''Enterprise'' and crew became a casualty in their "simulated" war and had to report to the disintegration chambers).
%%* The process of assimilation employed by the Borg in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''.

* On ''Series/{{The 100}}'', Mount Weather [[DeadlyEuphemism "harvests"]] people [[HumanResources for their blood and bone marrow]] with routine, clinical efficiency. When one of their human dialysis machines gives out, they dump the body down a trash chute and rig another person up in their place.
* ''Series/SquidGame'': The organisation behind the games runs a very tight ship. Every aspect, from the players to the workers' schedules are carefully regimented and ordered. The killings are brutal but efficient, and the corpses from every game are immediately disposed in industrial ovens in a very clear alusion to ThoseWackyNazis.
* In ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', when Crowley becomes the new King of Hell, he gets rid of all the usual torture in favor of a giant line in a shabby corridor where all the damned queue up only to go back to the beginning once they reach the end (“That’s efficiency”). As Crowley explains, conventional torture tends to attract masochists. ''No one'' likes waiting in line.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' has The Guild, which engages in a variation of this, transporting thousands of slaves to the homes of TheFairFolk at the edge of the world (where their souls are consumed) for profit. They even get to take the {{Empty Shell}}s off their hands and put them to simple hard labour.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}} has two:
** The [[YouDirtyRat Skaven]] are a race full of MadScientist who considers safety guidelines [[NoOshaCompliance a funny joke more than anything]] (they're perfectly okay making unstable warmachines, as long as they personally aren't in the blast radius when they inevitably malfuction).
** The Chaos Dwarfs are more pragmatic and careful than the Skaven, but embraces the aesthetic even more, not having "cities" as much as "giant factory complexes" through their lands. Part of the reasons the [[{{Mordor}} Darklands]] are so hellish to live in is because the Chaos Dwarfs have spent the last millenia polluting them.
* Given the scale of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', this crops up a lot. Most notable are a number of Chaos factions: the [[ReligionOfEvil Word Bearers]] enthusiastically work entire planetary populations to death building monuments to the Chaos gods; the [[TheEngineer Iron Warriors]] herd captives into sacrificial trucks just to establish the maximum range of the guns of fortresses they're besieging - and that's the ''easy'' way out compared to what their slaves get; the [[TheHedonist Emperor's Children]] render down entire cities for combat drugs. Of course, the [[BlackAndGreyMorality "good"]] guys aren't much better - to be a citizen of the [[TheEmpire Imperium]] is to be just a tiny, replaceable cog in a galaxy-spanning war machine, and citizens are worked to death, slowly poisoned with industrial toxins, or sacrificed for a minor tactical advantage on an hourly basis, to the point where more than one world has been left to its own devices in the face of an Ork invasion because the mines didn't have enough material left in them to justify committing troops to defend it.
** In fact, there is even a Daemonic Demigod of IndustrializedEvil, [[BrutalHonesty Vashtorr the Arkifane]], who is somewhere between being a Daemon Prince and full blown god of Chaos on the scale of the Great Four, and has been described as having come into existence in the Warp as a result of mortals' obsessive pursuit of technological innovation at all costs, especially inventions that resulted in unexpected and terrible consequences. His realm, the Forge of Souls, is said to have fire fueled by the souls of the damned, and he fuses Daemons with machines to create Soul Grinders. Every chaotic machine and act of tech-heresy committed by mortals empowers and fuels Vashtorr, and when he takes corporeal form he appears as a hideous amalgamation of flesh and machine.
* One ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' adversary, Alling Third, is [[OurLichesAreDifferent a cyborg lich]] whose ritual to enter that state involved feeding an entire barbarian tribe, one by one, to a machine designed to torture them to death.

* In ''VideoGame/Prey2006'', the Sphere pretty much runs on this, by abducting organic lifeforms and using them either to make cyborg enforcers or to render them down into biofuel.
* In ''VideoGame/QuakeIV'', the Strogg takes captured humans and puts them through a industry line that saws off body parts and attaches cyborg limbs. The player even goes through this, in first person.

* The infamous "merperson farming" in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress.'' It involved making a pool filled with merfolk, then draining it, leaving them (including the children) to suffocate so you could collect their valuable bones. Even the game designer and fandom, both normally huge fans of VideoGameCrueltyPotential, [[EveryoneHasStandards found the practice sickening]], with the developer greatly lowering the value of merfolk bones in the next update.
* ''VideoGame/AmnesiaAMachineForPigs'' [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin unsurprisingly]] is focused on traversing the titular machine - a giant, sprawling monster of pipes, gears and pistons, buried beneath the streets of London that was designed to [[spoiler:automate mass human sacrifice]]. Furthering the trope, [[spoiler:the protagonist first designed the machine as his own answer to the approaching horrors of the twentieth century (that he had seen in a vision), such as the great World Wars.]] He viewed that as an even more terrifying industrialization of inhumanity and became so disgusted with mankind, set out to "make pigs of them all".

* The whole ''VideoGame/{{Oddworld}}'' series is built on this, with the first opening in [[NoOSHACompliance Rupture]][[NightmarishFactory Farms]] [[EvilInc No. 1029]], an enormous slaughterhouse that is consuming the region's fauna to extinction. Spying on a boardroom meeting, Abe the Janitor learns that the company is so villainous, they're going to turn [[CarnivoreConfusion the Mudokon cleaning staff]] (Abe included) ''into meat products for higher profits.''

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'''s expansion ''Warlords of Draenor'', features the Iron Horde, an AlternateTimeline version of the original, antagonistic [[TheHorde Horde]] from ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' and ''VideoGame/WarcraftII.'' However, instead of utilising BlackMagic like its prime universe counterpart, the Iron Horde instead uses the technology taken from the main ''Warcraft'' universe by its founder, Garrosh Hellscream - and takes it to a new level, turning its homeworld into a [[PollutedWasteland wasteland]] through industry just as surely as the original Horde [[{{Mordor}} did through demonic magic]]. For example: whereas the ''Warcraft II'' orcs used ogre magi, [[DumbMuscle dumb brutish creatures]] given magical ability and intelligence through corrupting elven runestones, the ''Warlords of Draenor'' orcs use [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYueIdI_2L0 ogre ''gods'' with battleship-sized cannons mounted to their backs]] and supported by [[TankGoodness tanks]].

* ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork 4'' introduced [[ArtifactOfDoom Dark Chips]], powerful but [[TheCorruption highly corruptive]] battle chips that are [[TheHeartless powered by hatred and evil]]. Come the next game, the villains' headquarters are a factory dedicated to mass-producing the things.
* In ''VideoGame/RuneScape'' [[OurVampiresAreDifferent this is how human born vampires are made]]. During the quest River of Blood, the player discovers a factory where humans are placed into cages on an assembly line which are lowered into a pool of vampyre blood and then carried over a mound of a magical mineral, turning them into vampyres.
** The way Vampyres extract blood from their victims also qualifies as this trope; pure humans living in the regions of Morytania controlled by the Vampyres are required to pay regular [[HumanResources 'blood tithes']] to their Vampyre overlords. Fortunately(?), of the six settlements in Morytania, only one, Meiyerditch, is simultaneously inhabited by living humans and controlled by the Vampyres[[note]]Canifis is inhabited by werewolves, who the Vampyres hate but can't drink, Port Phasmatys has been cursed to become ghosts, Darkmeyer is the vampyres' own city, Mort'ton has been overtaken by a foul mist that reduced its inhabitants to the zombie-like (and unappetizing) Afflicted, and Burgh de Rott ''is'' inhabited by ordinary, living humans, but they're hidden from the Vampyres in a section of the ruins of Mort'ton.[[/note]] The people of Meiyerditch, however, are forced to live in filth and squalor under the ever-present threat of Vampyre tithers stopping by to collect their blood with the cold efficiency of a tax man. Many of the 'tithers' are themselves, for that matter, [[TheQuisling mortal humans]] who were promised a better life for themselves and their families if they went to work for the Vampyres.
* ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'': In the final boss' chamber, [[spoiler:the Hyron supercomputer, used by the Illuminati to predict how to control humanity, is revealed to be built out of a hive mind of enslaved brain-augmented women, all of whom beg to be put out of their misery]]. It's implied that the realization that this horrifying process and its results were going to be applied to ''the rest of the human population'' is what caused [[spoiler:Darrow]] to snap and commit genocide in a desperate attempt to wipe all traces of this and other human-resources technology.
* In ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'' Hell essence, which fuels demons and is refined into [[spoiler:Argent energy]], is derived from tormented souls of the damned. As the natural process for creating it is slow, the [[spoiler:Maykr]] erected massive slaughterhouses throughout Hell. The damned are delivered in massive crates and assessed, with the unworthy discarded into slurry pits and the worthy processed on. The souls are tormented until ready and then are extracted as Hell essence while the soulless bodies are discarded [[spoiler:to become demons]]. In order to ensure the flow of essence never ends, the [[spoiler:Maykr]] have guided demonic invasions to populated worlds while ensuring enough of a population survives to allow for future harvests. Of course, [[spoiler: she]] ''claims'' she has some way to turn Argent back into individual, sapient souls, but Doomslayer ain't buying it (and we never see the machinery for doing so).
* In ''VideoGame/{{Dusk}}'' the portal to the Nameless City is powered by offerings of flesh and bone on concrete altars. To facilitate this, the cultists of the town of Dusk have erected a gigantic human sacrifice machine known as The Thresher. [[spoiler:You have to go inside]].
* In ''VideoGame/XCOM2'', the aliens, purely out of benevolence for their new human charges, have set up clinics where people can benefit from the aliens' advanced genetic technology to cure diseases and infirmities and generally improve their quality of life. Or that's what they want you to think. In truth, the clinics are a front for genetically profiling people, and the ones who are a match for furthering the aliens' end goal tend to disappear and wind up as HumanResources in hidden black sites. Then XCOM starts having some success in fighting back, and the aliens decide to accelerate their timetable and "process" all of humanity.

* In ''Webcomic/HellInc'' the business of damnation is run according to the standards of a modern corporation. Sure, there's still fire and brimstone, but there's also an orderly check-in procedure, forms to fill out, an accounting department, an IT department and an entire class of white-collar demons who keep Hell running from their computer desks without ever getting their hands dirty.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendsOfTreasureIsland'', at one point Long John Silver is killed and sent to Hell. He's given the tour of place and shown the demons "[[MinionWithAnFInEvil torturing]]" (in the Bowdlerized way you'd expect from a kids' show) the damned. Silver scoffs at this and claims he can implement a much more evil system in exchange for being released from Hell. He is allowed to do so, and when he is finished, we see that he has basically turned Hell into a huge machine where the damned are placed in conveyor belts. The machine itself doesn't even seem to do that much torture, which the head demon comments upon. Silver replies that that's the whole point: the damned are simply shuffled around from place to place by an indifferent machine with no rhyme or reason and fully aware of the pointlessness of it all. The head demon calls it brilliant and Silver is returned to Earth.
* In one ''Itchy & Scratchy'' short in ''Westernanimation/{{The Simpsons}}'', Scratchy has died of illness. Itchy, sad that he'll never see his frenemy again, is inspired by a news story about scientists cloning a sheep, and builds a machine to clone Scratchy... so he can keep killing the clone again and again. However, the clones come out so fast that killing them all gets tiring, so Itchy sets up a killing machine right next to the cloning machine to automatically kill the Scratchies as they emerge.

** In fact, there is even a Daemonic Demigod of IndustrializedEvil, [[BrutalHonesty Vashtorr the Arkifane]], who is somewhere between being a Daemon Prince and full blown god of Chaos on the scale of the Great Four, and has been described as having come into existence in the Warp as a result of mortals' obsessive pursuit of technological innovation at all costs, especially inventions that resulted in unexpected and terrible consequences. His realm, the Forge of Souls, is said to have fire fueled by the souls of the damned, and he fuses Daemons with machines to create Soul Grinders. When a Daemon makes a deal with Vashtorr, they will be turned into a Soul Grinder and must pay a debt to him, so he sends them out to kill, and with each death they suffer, the debt grows bigger. So Vashtorr sends out his Soul Grinders, they die, their debt grows bigger, they are sent out again, they die, their debt grows bigger. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

** In fact, there is even a Daemonic Demigod of IndustrializedEvil, [[BrutalHonesty Vashtorr the Arkifane]], who is the somewhere between being a Daemon Prince and full blown god of Chaos on the scale of the Great Four, and has been described as having come into existence in the Warp as a result of mortals' obsessive pursuit of technological innovation at all costs, especially inventions that resulted in unexpected and terrible consequences. His realm, the Forge of Souls, is said to have fire fueled by the souls of the damned, and he fuses Daemons with machines to create Soul Grinders. When a Daemon makes a deal with Vashtorr, they will be turned into a Soul Grinder and must pay a debt to him, so he sends them out to kill, and with each death they suffer, the debt grows bigger. So Vashtorr sends out his Soul Grinders, they die, their debt grows bigger, they are sent out again, they die, their debt grows bigger. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', the vampire and SinisterMinister [[spoiler:Malack]] drops his AffablyEvil act when he reveals to Durkon that once he inherits the rule of the Empire, he intends to sacrifice a thousand sentients every day to his God of Death. He's thinking of [[ANaziByAnyOtherName developing some sort of special chamber for maximum efficiency]] so that he can harvest the blood for his vampire ruling class. WordOfGod is that this is a reference to the RealLife meat industry; The Giant is a vegetarian.
* In ''Webcomic/HellInc'' the business of damnation is run according to the standards of a modern corporation. Sure, there's still fire and brimstone, but there's also an orderly check-in procedure, forms to fill out, an accounting department, an IT department and an entire class of white-collar demons who keep Hell running from their computer desks without ever getting their hands dirty

** The [[YouDirtyRat Skaven]] are a race full of MadScientist who considers [[NoOshaCompliance safety guidelines]] as a funny joke more than anything (they're perfectly okay making unstable warmachines, as long as they themselves aren't i nthe blast radius when they inevitably malfuction).
** The Chaos Dwarfs are more pragmatic than the skaven, but embraces the aesthetic even more, not having "cities" as much as "giant factory complexes" through their kingdom. Part of the reasons the [[{{Mordor}} Darklands]] are so hellish to live in is because the Chaos dwarfs have spent the last millenia polluting them.

As with RealLife automation, one of the "benefits" of this approach is a potentially vast scale of application. While even the single murder of an undeveloped InnocentBystander can be tragic thanks to the RuleOfEmpathy, mechanizing/serializing it and putting it on a national or even global level gives a sense of extra dehumanization and elevates the horror to near incomprehensible levels. And it's precisely because AMillionIsAStatistic that using this trope can be risky; the flippant treatment of human life and lack of "anchoring" individuals can alienate audiences. It's not even a case of ShowDontTell, unless the threat or horror is represented as tangibly real it can't be conveyed even by dialog.

[[caption-width-right:350:Crush, kill, destroy? No: [[UnusualUserInterface perforate]], [[PeopleJars plug in]], [[HumanResources drain]].]]

* The ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "The Wish" shows how The Master might have adapted to modern times by "evolving" vampire practices, replacing hunting humans with a literal abattoir.

* In ''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick'', the evil Necromongers have a highly automated process to convert the inhabitants of conquered planets.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode, "A Taste of Armageddon", the Enterprise discovers two planets are involved in a bizarre war in which computers simulate the conflict, and civilians deemed "killed" in the simulation are required to report to {{Disintegration Chamber}}s. The people willingly go to their deaths, believing that in doing so, they are preventing an actual war from breaking out. Kirk and crew's revulsion at this is that there ''is'' an actual war where people still die from it, and this "simulation" setup removes the WarIsHell aspect that makes war something to be avoided (that and they decided that the ''Enterprise'' and crew became a casualty in their "simulated" war and had to report to the disintegration chambers).

Add HorrorHunger, PoweredByAForsakenChild, HumanResources, or AndIMustScream with this trope for extra (evil) fuel economy. Since the execution of this idea requires order and discipline, the perpetrators will usually be LawfulEvil unless they are an uncharacteristically well organized [[NeutralEvil Neutral]] or ChaoticEvil, or they represent BlueAndOrangeMorality. Less vile examples may be ObliviouslyEvil or an example of HumansAreCthulhu. Compare LuddWasRight, where technology and [[ScienceIsBad science are considered bad]] in and of themselves. May be a part of a FinalSolution scenario.

* ''Literature/{{Timeline 191}}'': Jake Featherston, UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler analogue and President of the Confederate States of America takes an industrialized approach to his [[FinalSolution population reduction]] of the CSA's African-American residents, experimenting first with mass shootings, then trucks that asphyxiate the prisoners during transport, and finally, with Auschwitz-style gas showers. One of his henchmen, Jefferson Pinkard, tests each of these methods in turn, doing his best to bring logic and efficiency to the process of mass murder and genocide.
* ''In the Penal Colony'', by Franz Kafka, describes a torture and execution machine that is designed to kill the condemned through pain and blood loss over a period of twelve hours (pausing briefly to let the condemned rest and, still strapped in to the machine, eat a bowl of porridge). The beauty of the machine is, supposedly, that it is inhuman in a "good" sense: it is impartial, precise, persistent, and, of course, without hate towards the condemned. The horrible ordeal transforms the mindset of the condemned so that he will die at ease, feeling that justice has been served, even if he regarded himself as innocent before.

->'''Moriarty:''' That's what you get, Mr. Holmes, when industry marries arms.

* In ''VideoGame/RuneScape'' [[OurVampiresAreDifferent this is how human born vampires are made]]. During the quest River of Blood, the player discovers a factory where humans are placed into cages that are mechanically carried over a mound of a magical mineral and then lowered into a pool of vampyre blood, turning them into vampyres.

* Given the scale of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', this crops up a lot. Most notable are a number of Chaos factions: the [[ReligionOfEvil Word Bearers]] enthusiastically work entire planetary populations to death building monuments to the Chaos gods; the [[TheEngineer Iron Warriors]] herd captives into sacrificial trucks just to establish the maximum range of the guns of fortresses they're besieging - and that's the ''easy'' way out compared to what their slaves get; the Emperor's Children render down entire cities for combat drugs. Of course, the [[BlackAndGreyMorality "good"]] guys aren't much better - to be a citizen of the [[TheEmpire Imperium]] is to be just a tiny, replaceable cog in a galaxy-spanning war machine, and citizens are worked to death, slowly poisoned with industrial toxins, or sacrificed for a minor tactical advantage on an hourly basis, to the point where more than one world has been left to its own devices in the face of an Ork invasion because the mines didn't have enough material left in them to justify committing troops to defend it.

* Given the scale of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', this crops up a lot. Most notable are a number of Chaos factions: the Word Bearers enthusiastically work entire planetary populations to death building monuments to the Chaos gods; the Iron Warriors herd captives into sacrificial trucks just to establish the maximum range of the guns of fortresses they're besieging - and that's the ''easy'' way out compared to what their slaves get; the Emperor's Children render down entire cities for combat drugs. Of course, the "good" guys aren't much better - to be a citizen of the Imperium is to be just a tiny, replaceable cog in a galaxy-spanning war machine, and citizens are worked to death, slowly poisoned with industrial toxins, or sacrificed for a minor tactical advantage on an hourly basis, to the point where more than one world has been left to its own devices in the face of an Ork invasion because the mines didn't have enough material left in them to justify committing troops to defend it.

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' of course with "mob farms" or "xp farms", which are all centered around the idea of breeding, trapping, and ultimately killing massive waves of living mobs with little effort on the player's part so the player can gain experience and cool loot. YouBastard.