Johnathan Joestar: You monster! How many people did you kill to heal those wounds?
Dio Brando: Do you remember how many loaves of bread you've ever eaten?
Some characters have a Hyperactive Metabolism, and can regain health or energy quickly by consuming foodstuffs around them. However, sometimes it's no ordinary food being consumed, but living creatures, typically enemies.
Any RPG game where you can kill a creature, find meat on their corpse when you loot it, and then regain health from eating it right then and there, counts.
This is an Eating Solves Everything subtrope, since eating solves a problem. The problem is damage, the solution is to eat. But since it must be raw "meat" that's eaten for healing, this can't overlap with Medicinal Cuisine, because that involves food that's had some treatment to make it more edible, instead of this, where the only preparation that's allowed is to bag it up for later.
Can overlap with Cannibalism Superpower, where new abilities are gained by the consumption of things that have them. Vampiric Draining is related but does not necessarily involve food-like consumption, with actual blood-drinking vampires likely to cause an overlap of both tropes along with Fantastic Diet Requirement, because blood is a specific and vital substance and vampires are supernatural and they need it to live, possibly. Life Drain, a parasitic-natured attack where life is drained from another creature and the attacker's health is increased, works on the same principle of consumption, if only figuratively. If there's a Man-Eating Plant that needs healing, this is probably how they'll get it.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bleach: In episode 164 of the anime, Espada #8 Szayelaporro Grantz modified his Fraccion (subordinate Arrancars) so he could heal himself by eating them.
- Chainsaw Man: Devils and fiends can heal from injuries by eating human flesh and viscera.
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Defied when Enmu, who had fused with the Mugen train to survive being decapitated once earlier, tries to regenerate his neck by devouring the Mugen Train's passengers when Tanjirō slices through it with his sword, but Rengoku stops this by slashing the writhing tentacles with his own sword.
- MegaMan NT Warrior: Downplayed as he does not actually devour them whole, but when ShadeMan.EXE absorbs data from FlashMan.EXE and SavageMan.EXE to regenerate his arms, which had been disabled by LaserMan.EXE and Regal earlier.
- In the Metroid manga, it's revealed that Ridley can consume other creatures to replace injured or destroyed parts of his body.
- Naruto: Zabuza's sword "Executioner" can Heal It with Blood by harvesting Blood Iron to fix the damage done to it.
Comic Books
- Cavewoman: Meriem Cooper has a powerful Healing Factor and as a result is hyper-metabolic. While this means that she could eat anything in large enough quantities to fuel her superhuman body (and she has a big love for burgers) when in the field she just prefers to slay dinosaurs and eat them (often the very dino that was trying to kill and eat her a minute ago).
- Chew: One of the Food-Based Superpowers acquired by the Vampire is that of a "Victumedicus", which allows him to heal very quickly assuming he's well-fed.
- Dungeon: The Early Years: Horus and Alcibiade get out of undeath (they'd cast a preemptive necromancy spell before starving to death) by devouring an entire herd of cows.
- Orphan Blade: The Kasha Mask makes its wearer impervious to pain and allows them to heal from almost any injury by consuming the flesh of others. The downside is that it also bestows Horror Hunger on its wearer.
Comic Strips
- Knights of the Dinner Table: This is a game mechanic in Weird Pete's work-in-progress game "Fairy Meat", shown to be a Game-Breaker when Brian Van Hoose has his character eat its own arm to heal.
Fan Works
- With This Ring: In the distant future reached by the Renegade, the Sheeda have made biomass-collecting servants that look like zombie children. They initially try to eat the Renegade and Artemis, but when that gets nowhere, the survivors proceed to eat their own fallen, which allows them to heal their injuries and regrow lost limbs. Justified since they're specifically designed to consume and process any available biomass source and make it available for other purposes.
Film — Animated
- In Sausage Party, The Douche has fallen out of a shopping cart in the supermarket; as shop-soiled and damaged goods he is thrown out the back of the store with the trash. With his applicator broken and a split in his casing causing his contents to spill, he staggers around in agony. Then he meets a damaged carton of fruit juice who pleads for help. His first response is to rip off the juice box's price label to use as a band-aid on his split casing. Then an evil light glows, the Douche grins as he realises — and he drinks the juice carton. Suddenly The Douche, via this act of vampirism, is renewed — even his broken applicator repairs itself.
Film — Live-Action
- Jeepers Creepers: The Creeper eats the body parts it needs to replace its injured ones.
- Jennifer's Body: After Jennifer gets demonically possessed and becomes a succubus, she becomes sickly and listless if she avoids eating humans for too long. Eating them restores her to health.
- In Ravenous (1999), eating the dead gives the person superhuman powers, including fast healing, making them virtually unkillable as long as they have time to recover.
Literature
- Creature of Havoc Has the titular creature, a carnivorous reptilian monster who can regain stamina after fights by feasting on kills. They especially love gobbling down Hobbits.
- The Garden of Sinners: Lio Shirazumi, after having his Origin of "Consumption" awakened by the Big Bad, gains an impressive Healing Factor whenever he eats somebody. The only injury he cannot regenerate, in fact, is the arm that Shiki chops off using her Mystic Eyes of Death Perception (because by doing so, she also erased the very notion of his body having two arms from existence).
Tabletop Games
- In Deadlands, the Harrowed have regeneration powered by eating meat. Any meat, from a lightly broiled steak to corpses of outlaw gunslingers.
- In Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition:
- Lizard Folk player characters get the "Hungry Jaws" ability, making them able to take a bite from a living enemy and gain temporary hit points equal to their constitution modifier.
- At 3rd level, the Path of the Beast Barbarian gains the ability to grow sharp claws, bestial fangs, or a spiked tail while raging. If they choose the fangs/muzzle, they gain the ability to make a bite attack, and if they're below 50% health, once per round when they bite an enemy they regain hitpoints equal to their proficiency bonus. Due to how restricted this ability is, it's viewed as Awesome, but Impractical compared to what's gained from the claws or tail.
- Magic: The Gathering: A card printed as part of a The Lord of the Rings crossover set, Shelob, Child of Ungoliant
, is capable of creating copies of creatures that are killed by it or other spiders, except they become Food tokens, artifacts that can be sacrificed to gain three life or trigger other abilities.
- Vampire: The Masquerade: Downplayed Trope. In all editions, Kindred regenerate by drinking blood — 5th Edition has Rouse Checks, which have a 50% chance of failing and raising a vampire's Hunger by 1, while previous Editions use a Blood Points mechanic. Hunger can be lowered and the Blood Points replenished by drinking blood and not doing so greatly increases the risk of going into a Hunger Frenzy.
- Warhammer: The Ghorgon, a minotaur-like monster in the Beastman army themed around constant, mindless hunger for meat, has a rule called Strength from Flesh that allows it to recover damage inflicted on it when it kills another model, which in-universe represents how the creature's flesh heals and knits itself closed as it devours its foes.
- Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The cannibalistic warriors of the Seventh Circle of the Varanguard believe that they can gain the strength of their defeated opponents by eating their flesh. Whether this is true or not is unknown but their wounds do heal far quicker when they eat their foes' flesh and their in-game rules allow them to heal lost wounds after destroying an enemy unit as they stop to feed on the fallen.
Toys
- Transformers: Generation 1: Skullcruncher can devour his enemies in crocodile mode. Within his body, a unique "digestive system" breaks down the parts and repurposes them, allowing him to regenerate battle damage.
Video Games
- Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: The Zombie Dragon boss needs both bodies to be defeated, and if not defeated nearly at the same time, the survivor will eat the fallen to regenerate 300 Hit Points in three 100 HP bites, as a one-time thing.
- Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!. Each time the monster eats human beings, it gets back some lost health. Civilians provide the most, military (soldiers, tank crewmen, and helicopter pilots) the least.
- Cubivore: This is one way you can heal yourself in the game. Cubivore is designed around the concept of chomping the flesh off of other cube beasts and becoming the top predator. Eating other beasts not only restores your health, but you can also change into different forms, and grow lost limbs back that other beasts chomped off of you.
- Dawn of War: Kroot units gain hit points, including increasing their maximum HP, by consuming corpses.
- Depth: The sharks regenerate health by killing and eating seals swimming around the map. The "Blood Feast" mutation also allows the shark to heal a portion of its health after killing a diver.
- Diablo II: The Barbarian can render his enemies' corpses into healing potions for drinking.
- Digital Devil Saga: A key part of the setting is that people can turn into demons that are capable of devouring their enemies, and it’s quickly established that your characters are not above doing this either. After winning a battle, your party recovers a small bit of their HP from eating the enemies off camera.
- Dishonored: A bone charm called "Gutter Feast" allows the player character to restore mana from eating white rats.
- Dota 2: Lifestealer regains health by killing enemies. Given that the passive ability that allows him to do this is called "Feast", it's assumed that he's eating them.
- Dubloon: A Man-Eating Plant can eat its allies alive to regain its Hit Points.
- Ecco the Dolphin: Ecco regains health by eating fish.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
- When you are in werewolf form, you can eat bodies, which fills up some of your health bar and lets you stay in werewolf form longer.
- The Ring of Namira allows its wearer to eat from corpses, increasing their health and health regeneration for a period of time.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 5: The Chomper enemies all have an attack where they try to chomp one of the heroes. The Chomper, regardless of variant, will heal from this if it lands.
- Evolve: The Monster spends much of the game killing wildlife to eat their corpses, which replenishes armour and accumulates energy needed to get stronger. They can also eat the corpses of any Hunters they kill for the same purpose (even if said Hunter was a robot), although eating the corpse is also useful to keep Lazarus from resurrecting them.
- E.V.O.: Search for Eden: Killing enemies results in them leaving behind meat to consume to restore your HP. Other than using EVO points to evolve your character on the fly, eating meat is the only way to restore HP.
- Fallout:
- From Fallout 3 onwards, a perk called "Cannibal" exists, which allows the player character to consume a corpse to restore some health at the cost of Karma.
- Fallout 3:
- The Cannibal perk lets you eat humanoid corpses to regain lost health.
- The Hematophage perk, a potential reward from the "Blood Ties" quest, which allows blood packs to restore 20 HP instead of 1.
- Far Cry Primal: Takkar eats meat from his inventory, whether it's straight up alone, or with a plant wrapping that can enhance the healing, or gives him a boost whilst also healing Takkar. The same logic applies to the predators he can travel with. Takkar can either feed them himself, or they'll start eating the dead bodies of enemies or hunted animals.
- The "Devour" Command in Final Fantasy VIII allows characters to recover health and gain other bonuses by eating weakened enemies, as unusual it is to imagine a group of teenagers swallowing live dragons, tyrannosauruses, and giant robots in one fairly quick action...
- flOw: Eating the other creatures and these creatures' cells not only regenerates your health, but it also makes you grow.
- Invasion Of The Space Invaders From Outer Space Episode 1: Harvesting enemies gives you back 5% of your health.
- League of Legends:
- Cho'gath's Carnivore ability heals him and restores his mana every time he kills an enemy. Given the name of the passive and his ultimate ability, Devour, the implication that he's devouring them to heal himself is clear.
- Nunu and Willump's ability, Consume, takes a bite out of an enemy and heals them for a sizable amount. The damage dealt and the self-healing is greater against monsters and minions than champions.
- Maneater: The main mechanic is devouring other animals (and humans) to restore health.
- Metroid Fusion: Thanks to being injected with a drug made from Metroid cells, Samus is capable of consuming X-Parasites to restore her health, missiles, and suit abilities upon defeating them.
- Monster Hunter: World: Played With; large monsters can kill and eat smaller ones, but doing so only restores their stamina for the purposes of World's fatigue system, not any health.
- Pandora's Tower: Elena is suffering from a curse that is gradually turning her into a monster. If she eats beast flesh, the course of the metamorphosis can be rollbacked to a major extent, but it won't stop. The only way to get rid of the curse for good is by feeding her Master Flesh, which Aeron has to seize from the bodies of the Towers' guardians (the game's bosses). Even then, it also takes Aeron strengthening his bond with Elena for the mission to succeed (without that, Elena will either become a monster anyway or need to sacrifice herself to save the land, depending on the ending).
- Primal Carnage: The dinosaurs heal a small amount of health whenever they successfully perform a bite attack on a human (implying they're ripping chunks of flesh out). One of the main gimmicks of the Tyrant class dinosaurs is that they One-Hit Kill humans by eating them, regenerating a large portion of their health in the process.
- Primal Rage: You replenish your character's health in battle by eating worshippers.
- Alex from [PROTOTYPE] can restore his health by grabbing and devouring enemies or random civilians. He can also absorb their memories and skills.
- In Rampage, monster characters can regain lost health by eating human beings such as civilians, soldiers and photographers.
- Runescape: One of the first bosses the player can encounter as part of the Dungeoneering Skill, the Gluttonous Behemoth, is surrounded by carcasses that it can eat from to heal; in order to beat it, players have to obstruct the carcasses, either with their bodies or with something like a bonfire.
- Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: Hollow Howlers, as said in the Monster Compendium, are "floating skulls" that can "drain life with Chomp", a.k.a eating part of the enemy to recover.
- In Spore: You can kill other creatures during the first and second phases and then feast on their corpses, which regains your health. You can't be a herbivore if you want to do this, though. Any Cell or Creature with carnivorous or omnivorous mouth parts can eat others for health recovery. The Cell's proboscis actually sucks the life from other living Cells.
- StarCraft II: In Co-op mode, Dehaka has the ability, "Devour", that allows him to eat enemy units. This not only heals him based on how much Health the unit has, but it also gives him a temporary bonus ability based on what kind of unit he ate. For example, Air units grant him a temporary long-range Breath Weapon attack that can hit both ground and air targets, while armored units temporarily grant him a defense buff.
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Wario's neutral special allows him to chomp down on other fighters to recover 0.6% health per bite.
- Ultimate Spider-Man (2005): While playing as Venom the player can replenish his health bar by eating people; criminals and police officers will only moderately refill it while consuming civilians will refill it much faster.
- Ultros: Killing creatures causes them to drop meat-based food items. The more skillfully you dispatch them — measured in terms of how many different moves you use — the better the rewards, ranging from near-worthless bloody pulp to pristine prime cuts that provide huge amounts of health and nutrition.
- Warcraft III:
- Ghouls and Abominations both have the Cannibalize ability that heals them while they consume a corpse. Fridge Logic comes when you have to research the skill so they can actually eat the dead.
- Night Elf buildings are sentient, semi-mobile treemen called Ancients. When uprooted, they can eat a normal tree to slowly regenerate a lot of health.
- In Warpath: Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs regain health by eating the dogs, smaller dinos like compys, and humans that wander into the battlefield.
- Werewolves Of London: You can kill and eat people to regain lost health.
- Wolfenstein 3-D: If your health is very low, you can slurp up bloody bones scattered throughout the levels to get some Hit Points back.
Webcomics
Real Life
- This is, to a very technical extent, true for any life-form that eats others, considering how they build and grow themselves on other things they have eaten or consumed.
