History Main / UndeadLaborers

* One ''{{ComicBook/Hellboy}}'' gag comic shows that the skeletons, skulls and random bones that are an integral part of every Hellboy comic are actually animated and closer to the ClassicalyTrainedExtra trope (one of them mentions getting to play [[AlasPoorYorick Yorick's skull]]).

* Although it involves VoodooZombie rather than the undead, the Creator/MichaelSwanwick ''Darger and Surplus'' story "Tawny Petticoats'' has the pair of con artist protagonists visit post-Singularity New Orleans, which has a large workforce of zombie slaves--people who are working off a debt (or in some cases were probably just shanghaied) and are kept in a drugged halflife until they WorkOffTheDebt, although it's implied that in most cases, the owners never free and the debt is a pretext.

* The Scourge faction in ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' is entirely comprised of different types of TheUndead, so it is an example of both TheNecrocracy and this trope, as their basic worker units are ghouls that are only good for harvesting lumber.

* Many powerful Necromancers, Vampires and other intelligent undead overlords in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' use undead labourers for a variety of construction tasks. Most prominent is the Great Necromancer Nagash, whose Black Pyramid was built by thousands of skeletons and zombies and thus towers over the more normal human-built pyramids of Khemri, where it sits (he eventually fled to the north, where he established the mine-fortress of Nagashizzar by hollowing out the mountain known as Cripple Peak, likewise excavated by zombies). The Tomb Kings of Khemri even have mummified architects called Necrotects, who supervise skeletal work-gangs in the repair, rebuilding and expansion of their tomb-cities.

* ''LightNovel/Overlord2012'':

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' 2nd Edition.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'': Subverted with Karrnath's elite zombie forces. While they don't quite have free will, the fact that they have intelligence combined with being animated by energy from a plane of death and evil means that they default to killing things before too long. Per WordOfGod, part of the reason that Karrnath agreed to entomb their undead forces after the Last War was because they were worried about what would happen if they ''didn't''. If you tried to use elite undead soldiers as farmhands, they'll eventually wander off and start killing innocent people. Mindless undead are another story, and the Blood of Vol sometimes uses simple zombies or skeletons as laborers, but they're usually too expensive (and the practice considered too abhorrent everywhere else) to be really common.

* in ''[[VideoGame/ShadowHearts Koudelka]]'', this is a mayor plot point: [[spoiler: It's revealed that every attempt to use the [[TomeOfEldritchLore Emigre Manuscript]] to [[BackFromTheDead bring back the dead to the living world]] will be [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption doomed to fail]] because the Formors who created the tome could never "unravel the secrets of the soul". As such, they could not restore the dead as they were in life and simply brought them back as mindless corpses to be used in slave labour]].

* In ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'', zombies are called 'plods' and commonly used as cheap labor. Duane, one of the protagonists, is unusual in the fact that he is actually a revenant rather than a zombie, keeping his mind and magic skills. [[spoiler: We later see that he reverts to the state of a plod at night, and the consequences of Sette not keeping control of him during that time.]]

* In ''Literature/OldKingdom'' books ''Lirael'' and ''Abhorsen'', Hedge uses hundreds of murdered refugees to dig up the SealedEvilInACan, as they're both tractable and able to withstand the frequent lightning strikes at the excavation site. He tells his "employer" Nicholas Sayre that they're very unwell--as Nick himself is very unwell, the excuse passes.

* In ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'', [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1700 SCP-1700 ("Debtshop")]] is an anomalous textile factory that reanimate people who died while wearing their scarves. The zombies created by SCP-1700 are forced to act as slave labor, creating more of the SCP-1700-A (magical yellow scarves) that animated them.

* ''Manga/Overlord2012'':

[[folder:Fanfic]]

--> She assumed that Crowned Death found it more economical to use his undead forces for construction than to make the dungeon heart spend gold. In particular if the latter could be used to fuel his arrival in this world instead.

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* In the [[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E21Primeval penultimate episode]] of the fourth season of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', the BigBad--an {{Cyborg}} FrankensteinsMonster revived into a body made from human and demon parts--reanimates his creators, a MadScientist and a PunchClockVillain, into a pair of these.
[[/folder]]

* in ''[[VideoGame/ShadowHearts Koudelka]]'', this is a mayor plot point: [[spoiler: It's revealed that every attempt to use the [[TomeOfEldritchLore Emigre Manuscript]] to bring back the dead to the living world will be [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption doomed to fail]] because the Formors who created the tome could never "unravel the secrets of the soul". As such, they could not restore the dead as they were in life and simply brought them back as mindless corpses to be used in slave labour]].

* in ''[[VideoGame/ShadowHearts Koudelka]]'', this is a mayor plot point: [[spoiler: It's revealed that every attempt to use the [[TomeOfEldritchHorror Emigre Manuscript]] to bring back the dead to the living world will be [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption doomed to fail]] because the Formors who created the tome could never "unravel the secrets of the soul". As such, they could not restore the dead as they were in life and simply brought them back as mindless corpses to be used in slave labour]].

[[folder: Anime & Manga]]

* Common for necromancers in ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}, especially for the Deathlords, some of whom has thousands of them. The Deathlord known as The Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Waters has the citizens of the Skullstone Archipelago use them as part of the religion he created.

* The [[WitchSpecies Sartan]] {{necromancer}}s of [[LethalLavaLand Abarrach]] in ''Literature/TheDeathGateCycle'' reanimate ''all'' their dead, and set most of them to work at whatever tasks they performed in life (with living necromancers to supervise, as the dead can reproduce learned skills but not adapt well to changing circumstances, and as such will often end up mindlessly repeating whatever they were last doing to no effect without someone to babysit them). They also maintain an [[NightOfTheLivingMooks army of the dead]].

* In Creator/GrantMorrison's version of ''[[ComicBook/SevenSoldiers Seven Soldiers of Victory]]'', in the underground Limbo Town, they do not bury their dead but instead turn them into laborers in their fields.

-->--'''Tyler Kamstra''''s [[https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/wizard/spells.html analysis]] of the AnimateDead spell in ''TableTopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''

-->'''Tyler Kamstra''' in [[https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/wizard/spells.html his analysis]] of the AnimateDead spell in ''TableTopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''

* In the [[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E21Primeval penultimate episode]] of the fourth season of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', the BigBad--an {{Undead}} {{Cyborg}} MixAndMatchMan made from human and demon parts--reanimates his creators, a MadScientist and a PunchClockVillain, into a pair of these.

* One ''{{ComicBook/Hellboy}'' gag comic shows that the skeletons, skulls and random bones that are an integral part of every Hellboy comic are actually animated and closer to the ClassicalyTrainedExtra trope (one of them mentions getting to play [[AlasPoorYorick Yorick's skull]]).

* ''Webcomic/TheWeeklyRoll'': Torvald the dwarf necromancer [[https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/the-weekly-roll/ch-14-the-backstory-of-torvald/viewer?title_no=358889&episode_no=16 made deals with other dwarves,]] paying them in exchange for raising their bodies as undead (once they died of natural causes) and renting them out as tireless laborers. He was kicked out of his clan, not because of what he did, but because he ''didn't pay taxes on it''.