Line #115 Main/GiantCorpseWorld


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7	[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/BeautifulDarkness https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bdp.png]]]]
8
9	->''"From Ymir's flesh the world was made,\
10	and from his blood, the sea,\
11	mountains from his bones, trees from his hair,\
12	and from his skull, the sky."''
13	-->-- '''Grímnir''', "Grimnir's Sayings", ''Literature/PoeticEdda''
14
15	Land ''made out of'' a huge corpse. The dead body of a creature or giant [[OurGiantsAreBigger so immense]], people can live, grow crops, and build houses on it. Sometimes it will be a literal, fleshy corpse, while other times its remnants will be transformed after death into more familiar substances such as stone and soil. Or maybe it consisted of those substances to begin with.
16
17	While these worlds are usually the regular, inert sort of dead, you may occasionally find ''[[TheUndead undead]]'' corpse worlds, which can cross over with tropes such as GeniusLoci and are more likely to be treated as inherently horrible places than other examples of this trope.
18
19	This trope is OlderThanDirt as numerous mythologies thought the world was made from the corpse of some primal god or monster.
20
21	A landscape made of just the skeleton would probably be a MonsterShapedMountain -- a stone mountain either shaped like a creature or made out of a creature. Typically a far less {{squick}}y variety.
22
23	For the still-living version, see GeniusLoci, TurtleIsland, UndeadAbomination, or WombLevel. See also RibcageRidge, which may overlap with this trope if the ridge is sufficiently big and inhabited. They may occasionally involve BodyHorror and {{Squick}}. Not the same as CorpseLand, a land full of corpses.
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25	----
26	!!Examples:
27
28	[[foldercontrol]]
29
30	[[folder:Comic Books]]
31	* Inverted in ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'': There is a giant ({{God}}, sort of) and there are things living in it (alien tapeworms having lived in his guts for so long they've evolved a civilization with cities), but the giant is very much alive. Instead, the team has to kill it (or rather make it brain-dead so as not to wipe out the aforementioned tapeworms) as it wants to de-terraform Earth into the {{Mordor}}-looking landscape that it intended Earth to have when it created the planet.
32	* ''ComicBook/BeautifulDarkness'' is about a community of fairies living in the corpse of a little girl who got lost in the woods and died.
33	* ''ComicBook/{{DIE}}'': In their quest to find the core of Die, the party travels to the sole island in the middle of a vast ocean. Traveling underwater, they learn that this large island is merely the fingertip of a ''massive'' human corpse reaching up from under the waves, with the party traveling to an air pocket in the cavern that is its nostril. Comparisons to Lovecraft are discussed at the implications of this revelation -- all before the party meets Lovecraft himself, as the [[DomainHolder Master]] of this place, [[MindScrew physically identical to the corpse they're inside]].
34	* Creator/DCComics: Terra's backstory is retconned into her being an engineered super-soldier from a [[{{Ultraterrestrials}} subterranean civilization]] that evolved in the body of a massive space alien that crashed on Earth. The spacesuit that protected it from the rigors of space travel kept its body intact as the DNA and MutagenicGoo of its body diverged evolution within it from that of all other life on Earth.
35	* ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'': In ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy2008'', the team were based in Knowhere, a Celestial skull at the edge of spacetime where a city had been built to observe the end of the universe.
36	* ''ComicBook/SecretIdentities'' has the Front Line's base in the body of a giant alien they killed on their first mission as a team. When newcomer Crosswind joins, the giant's antibodies have to be calibrated so they don't attack him. [[spoiler:The end of the comic has ''other'' aliens showing up to avenge their fallen]].
37	* ''ComicBook/XMen'': The [=1980s=] Brood storyline. The DeathWorld surrounding one of the alien bases is in fact the semi-decomposed corpse of one of the {{Space Whale}}s they had enslaved as {{Living Ship}}s. To give an idea of the scale, the tips of the ribs poke out of the planetary atmosphere.
38	* As of 2018, the headquarters for ComicBook/TheAvengers is Avengers Mountain, the body of a Celestial who fell to Earth some several billion years ago.
39	[[/folder]]
40
41	[[folder:Fan Works]]
42	* ''[[https://www.fimfiction.net/story/406258/the-city-that-breathes The City That Breathes]]'': The Dragon Lands formed over the remains of ''something'' huge, implied by the text to have been some colossal, spacegoing creature, that fell to earth and died. It carried smaller organisms within its body, implied to be ancestors of modern dragons, and the volcanism of the Dragon Lands is formed from a ruptured, fiery organ within the beast. Most of the creature's body is buried deep within the earth, but its immense spine, shoulder blades and wings form much of the geography of the modern Dragon Lands.
43	[[/folder]]
44
45	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
46	* ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy2014'': The mining colony of Knowhere is built in the decapitated head of an ancient celestial being. Due to the nature of the planetoid it inhabits, the main resource it mines is actually the celestial being's cerebral fluid.
47	* The Bone Slums in ''Film/PacificRim'' are shanty towns built in and around the colossal remains of a {{Kaiju}}.
48	[[/folder]]
49
50	[[folder:Literature]]
51	* ''Literature/AngelNotes'': The protagonist lives in a city built in and around the corpse of the UltimateLifeForm of Venus, which came to Earth to punish humanity for destroying Earth's spirit, Gaia, and with it, Earth's capacity to support life. Humans managed to kill it, however, and discovered that while ''Earth'' cannot support agriculture anymore, Venus still can, so they settled the alien's corpse and grow crops on it in order to survive.
52	* ''Literature/BasLagCycle'': The stories heavily feature the city of New Crobuzon, built in the shadow of the ribcage of a giant dead... ''something''.
53	* ''Literature/TheElderEmpire'': [[EldritchAbomination Nakothi, the Dead Mother]], slowly transformed the island where she was buried into a massive corpse, with flesh for ground, a recognizable ribcage, and even tendons stretching throughout the structure. One person theorizes that she was trying to build herself a new body.
54	* ''Literature/EndersGame'': Ender accidentally creates one of these, with the corpse of a giant he killed in a video game eventually becoming a village. Due to the Buggers having a telepathic link with him, [[spoiler:they end up building a recreation of this on a colony planet]].
55	* ''Literature/TheNevernightChronicle'': The city of Godsgrave is built on top of and out of the body of an ancient god that fell from the heavens.
56	* Creator/AlanDeanFoster: Played with in the short story "Gift of a Useless Man", in which a space traveller who crashes on an alien planet and is left almost completely paralyzed enters a symbiotic relationship with a telepathic, sentient insect colony, which could have been played for BodyHorror but ends up sweet.
57	* Creator/JacekDukaj: In "Linia Oporu", an in-universe MMO game is set inside a corpse of a colossal dragon, with whole cities in its guts.
58	* Creator/LuciusShepard has a series of stories about people living in towns on and around the body of a gigantic dragon -- who isn't ''entirely'' dead.
59	* In ''Literature/RavenOfTheInnerPalace'', the in-universe creation myth states that the continent it's set on was created from the torso of "a god who sinned", with the surrounding island coming from his severed limbs. Jiujiu mentions that she was hesitant to step on the ground for some time after first hearing the story.
60	[[/folder]]
61
62	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
63	* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'': "Home on the Remains" is set in a space "mining" colony that is actually looking for valuable substances in the corpse of an asteroid-sized SpaceWhale.
64	[[/folder]]
65
66	[[folder:Myths & Religion]]
67	* In Myth/AztecMythology, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl created all dry land from the body of the primeval sea monster Cipactli.
68	* In Myth/ChineseMythology, after the death of Pan-gu, his body was made into the earth, his blood the sea, his eyes the sun and moon, and the lice on his body were turned into people.
69	* In the [[Myth/PacificMythology mythology of Kiribati]], the god Na Atibu allowed his own child Nareau to kill him and use his body to create the world. His right eye became the sun, his left eye the moon, his brains became the stars, and his bones and flesh became the islands and trees.
70	* In Myth/MesopotamianMythology, the god Marduk slew the goddess Tiamat, and he created the world from her corpse.
71	* Myth/NorseMythology: According to a myth mentioned in various sources, Odin and his brothers, after killing the primal giant Ymir, made the whole world from his dead body: Ymir's flesh became the earth, his bones mountains, his blood the sea, and his skull the dome of the sky. "Grímnismál" in the ''Literature/PoeticEdda'' and "Gylfaginning" in the ''Literature/ProseEdda'' additionally mention the gods making Ymir's hair into trees, his brains into clouds, and his eyelashes into the fortification of Midgard, which separates the world of men from the world of the giants.
72	* In Costa Rica's Talamancan mythology, all non-human life was created from the blood of a little girl, and the oceans and all life in it were created from a [[ItMakesSenseinContext fetus-turned-tree]] and the birds that dwelled in it.
73	* The concept of UsefulNotes/{{Pandeism}} is that God died and became the universe, making the universe his corpse.
74	[[/folder]]
75
76	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
77	* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'':
78	** One of the setting's nastier {{eldritch abomination}}s is Atropus, the world born dead, a planet crawling with undead whose arrival in a system heralds disaster and that only leaves dead worlds in its wake. It's fairly consistent that it's the remains of ''something'' huge and (un)dead, but its exact nature varies -- sometimes it's an ''enormous'' atropal (the undead corpse of a stillborn god), while other times it's the head of a colossal primordial being.
79	** In late 3rd Edition, the sixth layer of {{Hell}}, Malbolge, was renovated using the corpse of its former ruler, Malagard the Hag Countess. Its mountains, for instance, used to be the Hag Countess' bones, and there was a tunnel that used to be her throat that still contracted and expanded rhythmically. This was ignored in subsequent editions, which reverted Malbolge to a rocky layer of boulders rolling down slopes.
80	** Generally the closest a god can get to being truly dead is [[GodNeedsPrayerBadly when nobody worships them any longer]]. What remains of a god at this point is an enormous physical corpse drifting in the VoidBetweenTheWorlds of the Astral Plane. The githyanki capital of Tu'narath is a metropolis built on -- and into -- the colossal, petrified corpse of a forgotten god. However, none of these gods are ever ''completely'' dead, and could be restored to life by sufficient numbers worshiping them again.
81	** In ''TabletopGame/{{Spelljammer}}'', kindori are {{Space Whale}}s large enough to generate their own air envelopes and support communities on their backs, though they'll go berserk if someone tries to install a ''spelljammer helm'' for rapid travel between the spheres. This isn't the case with ''dead'' kindori, however, and since their skeletons never deteriorate after their deaths, kindori corpses can be converted into macabre spelljamming vessels.
82	* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'':
83	** [[{{Hell}} Malfeas]] is an entire dimension made from the body of the former ruler of everything in Creation, Theion, now known as Malfeas. It's not ''quite'' a corpse world, however, as Malfeas is still alive, but that really only makes it worse, given the brutality involved in turning him into Creation's version of Hell -- he was forced into a contract in a moment of weakness that prevents him from using a CosmicRetcon to undo his defeat at the hands of the Exalted, and then his body was effectively castrated, disemboweled, flipped inside-out, and then had all of his organs stuffed back into his inverted skin alongside all of the other still-living Primordials (now the [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils Yozi]]) before being stitched back together, turning him into a bloody, fleshy world that can do nothing more than wriggle in self-loathing.
84	** Autocthonia is also bordering the edge of being a corpse world or not, as fleeing the war against the Primordials into Elsewhere sealed himself off from the Wyld, which means that he's unable to feed off of Wyld essence, and is constantly on the edge of death.
85	* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': In the kroot creation myth, their homeworld Pech was formed from the body of the goddess Vawk after she was fatally injured in a battle with another deity. Knowing that she was dying, she singled out a world central to her plans for creation and spread her wings across it, transforming her bones into mountains and her feathers into forests. With her final breath, she released a vast flock of eagles from which the kroot would one day descend.
86	[[/folder]]
87
88	[[folder:Toys]]
89	* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'': In "The Kingdom" alternate dimension, Mata Nui, who is usually a GeniusLoci, dies after Matoro fails to revive him. This causes a large exodus of nearly every being inside him to the island above due to the Pit Mutagen flooding most domes inside.
90	[[/folder]]
91
92	[[folder:Video Games]]
93	* ''VideoGame/BrutalLegend'' is set in a world created from the remains of the Eternal Firebeast Ormagoden, who was killed by the primordial First Ones and whose flesh/bones and blood became the landmasses and the oceans of the world, respectively.
94	* ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'': The High Heavens and Burning Hells respectively spawned from the remains of Anu and Tathamet after their MutualKill at the beginning of creation.
95	* ''VideoGame/DoshinTheGiant'': When Doshin dies trying to stop the TowerOfBabel, his corpse turns into an island. The player then has to play on the island that was their own body.
96	* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':
97	** The series has the twin moons Masser and Secunda. They are not typical sub-planetoids, but are in fact said to be the decaying remains ("flesh divinity") of the [[GodIsDead long-"dead" creator god]], Lorkhan, symbolizing how he was sundered during the creation of Mundus, the mortal plane. They, [[AlienSky like the rest of the cosmos]] in the ''Elder Scrolls'' series, are implied to look like as they do because [[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm it is the best mortal minds can do to interpret it]]. The two moons go through technically impossible phases; stars are visible behind the dark parts when they're not full, and they are unaffected by the series' occasional {{Reality Warp\|er}}ing {{Time Crash}}es, which allow their cycles to be used to determine the passage of time when [[RealityIsOutToLunch linear time is otherwise not applying]].
98	** The [[EldritchLocation Daedric Planes]] of Oblivion are the realms of the [[OurGodsAreDifferent Daedric Princes]], which are theorized to also be part of their [[GeniusLoci very beings]]. When a Prince is weakened through one means or another, it is said that his Daedric Plane ''[[FisherKingdom literally shrinks]]''. According to ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'''s [[TheHeavy main]] [[TheDragon villain]], Mankar Camoran, Mundus (the mortal realm) itself was originally the Daedric realm of the aforementioned "dead" god, Lorkhan. Very few other sources agree with Camoran, but he does offer a few valid points supporting his theory, such as Lorkhan being a [[OrderVersusChaos being of chaos]] like the Daedra rather than a being of order, like the Aedra (who he convinced/tricked into creating Mundus).
99	* ''VideoGame/FallenLondon'':
100	** The game is in "the Neath", which, if the story can be believed, is inside the skull of a dead god. [[spoiler:It's not really true, it's just an otherwise normal cavern that the Judgements -- the gods of the setting -- literally cannot see, which let the laws of reality start drifting. Though it does contain the ''angry thoughts'' of a dead god called [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Storm]], jostling around in the upper air and causing the weather.]]
101	** ''VideoGame/SunlessSea'' features two comparatively smaller examples, the Chelonate and the Gant Pole; the former is the corpse of a giant turtle large enough to be an island in its own right, with an entire town built in its rotting shell, while the latter is the submerged, petrified heart of something colossal, easily the size of most surface islands, and likewise hosting a settlement within itself.
102	* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'': In Lostbelt 6: Avalon le Fae, [[spoiler:the entirety of Lostbelt Britain is built on the corpses of the fallen, as the original landmass (and indeed, the rest of the planet) was wiped out into an endless ocean by the [[AliensAreBastards White Titan Sefar]]. The southern half of the island is built on the corpse of the Celtic god Cernunnos after he was poisoned to death by the Six Fairies, and the landmass grew as the faeries killed each other and their bodies became one with the land. All those fae who are born of it will [[TheCorruption inevitably decay into Mors]] as a result of [[SinsOfTheFather being descendants of traitors born from a cursed land]]. The northern half of the island has a similar origin and growth, but its point of origin is the fallen body of the primordial dragon Albion. As a result, the fairies born from ''this'' land were far less likely to fall into Mors corruption...but the southern faeries didn't like this and invaded the northern half to kill all of them, taking the land for themselves and continuing the process of making more land from their corpses and accumulating the curses of the fallen.]]
103	* ''VideoGame/FrackinUniverse'', a megamod of ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}}'', adds Atropus worlds, planets with landmasses made of rotting flesh, bone and brains, and oceans of blood and pus. These planets are... alive, or possibly ''undead'', sapient, and stark raving mad. Just setting down on the surface will drive you into temporary insanity unless you have certain protection. (Not to mention, everything else about the planet, including the wildlife, is very very dangerous, and disturbingly visceral.)
104	* In the VideoGame/GoldBox game ''Pools of Darkness'', one of the planes that the player party has to travel to is the corpse of the dead god Moander.
105	* ''VideoGame/{{Grime}}'' is set in the massive, headless corpse of a stone giant known as the Worldparent. Nearly all life in it is also made of stone.
106	* ''VideoGame/HollowKnight'': There are three notable examples:
107	** The corpse of the enormous Wyrm that was the Pale King's original form rests in Kingdom's Edge, its decay covering the landscape in white ash.
108	** The corpse or shell of a giant creature now serves as the exterior of the Colosseum of Fools.
109	** The Temple of the Black Egg's entrance looks awfully like a giant fossil of a six-horned bug.
110	* ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheCrystallion'' is set in a city built in the skeleton of a gigantic creature.
111	* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld'':
112	** The Rotten Vale is a region [[ElephantGraveyard where elder dragons go to die]], and is formed from the corpses of two immense serpentine dragons known as Dalamadur. They're so huge that even centuries (or possibly millennia) after their deaths, their bodies are still decomposing.
113	** The endgame area of the ''Iceborne'' expansion, the Guiding Lands, is heavily implied to stand upon the corpse of a Zorah Magdaros, a titanic [[MagmaMan volcano dragon]]; when one such dragon was previously encountered in the original story, it was speculated that the vast stores of [[LifeEnergy bioenergy]] it was set to release upon its death would be enough to birth an entire new ecosystem.
114	* ''VideoGame/{{Sacrifice}}'': The floating islands the world of ''Sacrifice'' is set in are leftover pieces of the corpse of the creator god.
115	* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'':
116	** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'' takes place on the corpses of two gods the size of continents, the Bionis and the Mechonis, on which biological and mechanical life respectively developed over time. [[spoiler:Of course, both giants turn out to be not dead, but in a deep slumber. Nasty things start happening when they begin to wake up.]]
117	** In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'', the region known as the Cliffs of Morytha is said to be the remnants of a Titan that died long ago, but miraculously hasn't sunk into the Cloud Sea yet as most Titans do when they die. Aside from some Nopon merchants, the only trace of civilization remaining are those of an ancient temple ruin. You later get to explore a small part of the Titan that was once [[spoiler:the kingdom of Torna]], now a barren, fossilized husk, having reached its final resting place far beneath the Cloud Sea 500 years ago. The Temperantia Titan meanwhile isn't ''quite'' a corpse yet, but it's in its dying stages as it floats on the Cloud Sea due to horrific damage it suffered during battles in the Aegis War and is a barren rocky wasteland where only hardy high-level wildlife survives and armed garrisons from Uraya and Mor Ardain remain stationed per its role as a demilitarized zone.
118	** ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'' has large parts of the Aionios landscape being made out of Titans from the second game or parts of the Bionis and Mechonis from the first game. Most obvious is the Urayan Mountains, which are very clearly the corpse of the Uraya Titan.
119	[[/folder]]
120
121	[[folder:Webcomics]]
122	* ''Webcomic/OneOverZero'': In the beginning, the webcomic consists of an infinite blank white void. Then Teddy Weddy (a bear from ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'') falls out of the sky, and dies. The rest of the story focuses on the strange, tiny creatures who find him and build a village on his corpse.
123	* ''Webcomic/Aurora2019'': The world is made of the fused corpses of six elemental Primordials -- Stone, Fire, Lightning, Water, Wind, and Life. Stone's corpse, with stony flesh, metal nerves and crystal bones, became the bulk of the material world; Water's instead formed the oceans, and Wind's the atmosphere. The other elementals' remains became distributed through the resulting mass.
124	* ''Webcomic/AwfulHospital'': The "Corpse World" story arc is to initial appearances a FantasticVoyagePlot, but it's eventually explained that Fern wasn't actually ''shrunk'', but rather transported to a universe ''modeled after'' [[ItMakesSenseInContext her own decomposing corpse]], complete with MegaMicrobes citizenry and scavenger worms going about the business of decomposing it.
125	* ''Webcomic/TheDreamlandChronicles'': A minor example. In Alexander's flashback, he and his Dreamland friends fight a giant cyclops, who ends up tripping and falling over a cliff into the ocean below. He's [[HoistByHisOwnPetard knocked out by his own falling club]] and never gets up. When Alexander returns to Dreamland after an eight-year absence, he revisits that area and finds out that grass and palm trees have grown the parts of the cyclops that remained above water, notably his butt. The nearby villagers use the butt islands as a vacation spot.
126	* In the ''Webcomic/{{Fans}}'' story "Marcworld", Marc gets zapped into a parallel dimension, which contains nothing but copies of himself in various sizes. The largest Marc dies and becomes the planet that all the other Marcs live on.
127	* ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'': The heaven-turned-WretchedHive of Throne is filled with the titanic corpses of the gods, which have been hollowed out and converted into things like [[https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/kill-six-billion-demons-chapter-4/ seedy high-rises]] called Hells or just regular [[https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/king-of-swords-4-35-home/ apartment buildings.]]
128	* ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'': The Tower's 43rd floor, "the Floor of Death", is made up of the rotting corpse of the floor's Administrator. It wasn't always this way, however, and the Administrator's body is mentioned as being "put to sleep".
129	* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': The continent of Kasslyne is made up of a pile of ogre corpses.
130	[[/folder]]
131
132	[[folder:Western Animation]]
133	* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' is set in the Boiling Isles, an archipelago formed from the rotting remains of an absolutely ''humongous'' creature in the middle of a vast ocean. The [[OurTitansAreDifferent Titan's]] carcass is the source of the Isles' BackgroundMagicField, and its bodily fluids are packed with immeasurable magical power and make travel between universes possible. The ancestors of the local races of [[OurDemonsAreDifferent demons]] are even said to have arisen from its decomposing muck. It seems to be something of a religious figure, as [[BigBad Emperor Belos]] claims [[GeniusLoci it's still alive]] and [[HearingVoices tells him how to rule]], despite being dead. [[spoiler:The first part is true, the last part is not--the barely-living Titan is doing his best to ''thwart'' Belos.]]
134	[[/folder]]
135
136	[[folder:Real Life]]
137	* When a large sea creature like a whale dies, the body sinks to the ocean floor and hundreds of organisms ranging from bacteria, worms to octopus and sharks arrive to feast. These are most commonly known as whalefalls and they can last for many years.
138	[[/folder]]
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Context Main / GiantCorpseWorld