Monstrous Cannibalism

Nicky: I thought you said monsters didn't eat humans.
Oblina: True, but I never said we don't eat other monsters.

— Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, "The Switching Hour"

To display how vicious, ravenous, or just plain evil a predatory species is, writers often have the strong among them literally prey upon the weak. While cannibalizing outsiders or eating sapient creatures is nasty enough, doing so to members of one's own social group is indicative of betrayal as well as cruelty, suggesting an evil or Horror Hunger so indiscriminate that no one is exempt.

With non-sapient creatures, Monstrous Cannibalism conveys how voraciously hungry the predators are and may indicate that their species as a whole is starving and desperate. For sapients, it demonstrates a ruthlessness that bodes ill for any other species they interact with: if their instincts or culture make eating their weaker fellows a standard practice, what hope might a stranger have of being spared? In either case, seeing them turn upon their own for food is often what pushes a species over the Moral Event Horizon into being monsters in the eyes of the audience, not just beasts or antagonists. On the other hand, insofar as an animal could be perceived as monstrous, cannibalism is very much widespread in the animal kingdom.

In a way it is a parallel trope to I'm a Humanitarian and to Cannibal Tribe for monsters instead of humans, if the tribe eats its own as well as enemies/strangers. Compare To Serve Man, in which victims from outside one's species are preyed upon, and No Party Like a Donner Party, in which cannibalism is an abhorrent last resort. Contrast No Zombie Cannibals and Ape Shall Never Kill Ape.

May result in a Food Chain of Evil within the group. Overlaps with Evolutionary Pressure Cooker if the monsters are deliberately trapped together in order to induce this and strengthen the winners. A common way for the Monster Lord to establish its dominance over its underlings. Sometimes overlapped with Always a Bigger Fish. Done pragmatically (particularly to an individual one deems to be a rival or traitor) it can also overlap with Eating the Enemy.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk: During the Enoch Village fight, Isidro is disgusted to observe that the trolls devour their own wounded as well as humans and livestock.
• In Bleach, Hollows eventually devour each other to gain power and go up the Sorting Algorithm of Evil. Adjuchas are practically forced to do this, or else they will revert back to Gillians and lose their personalities forever.
• Cells at Work! CODE BLACK: This is how apoptosis (cell death and recycling into raw materials) is depicted. When an old red blood cell dies in the Liver (herein depicted as a titty bar), one of the dancers takes him out back and devours his corpse.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: The titular demons aren’t seen or commenting on preying on each other, they normally prey on humans since that’s their means of sustainment, but according to the 2nd Databook, the most powerful of the elite Twelve Kizuki demons, Kokushibo the Upper-1, has consumed other demons in a display of utter dominance over those below him, particularly doing so against demons who tried to challenge him for his Upper Rank 1 spot; the only one who Kokushibo hasn’t eaten after daring to fight him is Akaza, Kokushibo really held high hopes for the Upper-3 to become a suitable rival towards him, allowing Akaza to challenge him several times throughout the years.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Pride devours Gluttony despite them being essentially two parts of the same being.
• The Greatest Magicmaster's Retirement Plan: Fiends become stronger by eating mana, but they can also generate mana, which means they can eat each other to become stronger. Fiends who get stronger this way are known as Variant fiends and usually require several skilled mages to take down.
• Heterogenia Linguistico: Dragons apparently see nothing wrong with eating their dead, though Hakaba is shocked to find out the meat he just ate is from the parent of the dragon he just met. When he asks his traveling companions how they would feel about being eaten after death, they all seem fine with it as well. Susuki even seems offended by Hakaba refusing to eat her if she died. Later on in the middle of a blizzard, they have to resort to eating one of the people in the camp who didn't survive the cold. Most of these cases are different species eating each other, though.
• Inuyasha: Subverted. When fighting the youkai brothers Hiten and Manten, Manten is killed by the team, and Hiten pulls out and eats his brother's heart (manga only; in the anime, he bites into Manten's head). While the main characters think it's hideous that he's eating his brother, he's actually absorbing his brother's powers and the Shikon Jewel Shard embedded in his brother to defeat the people who killed his brother. Hiten even says outright that he believes that eating his brother will allow them to be together even after Manten has died. Still gross, but not as depraved as this trope usually is.
• Monster: The in-universe Czech children's story that gives the series its name revolves around a nameless monster that split itself in two, then travelled in different directions to find a name. After the monster of the east travels to an unsuspecting kingdom and completes its Assimilation Plot, he runs into the monster of the west. The monster from the west doesn't see the point in hiding their true nature by becoming people, so the monster from the east eats the monster from the west.
• At one point in Neon Genesis Evangelion, Evangelion Unit 01, piloted by Shinji, is battling an Angel when it suddenly loses power. At that point, the Eva very suddenly frees itself from its restraints, finishes off the Angel, and begins eating it savagely. It counts as cannibalism since the Evangelions are secretly Angels.
• One Piece: Charlotte Linlin unintentionally did this to Mother Carmel and her friends at the orphanage. On her 6th birthday, Linlin was presented with a giant dish of her favorite sweets. She got so excited that she teared up, and unable to see past the tears, started devouring everything fervently. When she finally came to her sense, all the food was gone, some of the table and chairs were gone, and everyone had disappeared, leaving behind scraps of clothes. Linlin subconsciously repressed this memory till this day.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Kyuubey combines this with a bizarre case of Autocannibalism when he's shown to devour his own corpse after it gets blasted by Homura and the new one appears. In this case, it's half this trope and half of the Incubator's fanatical desire to prevent entropy and avoid wasting energy.
• Tokyo Ghoul: The titular species is stated to engage in this, though attitudes vary heavily about it. Some frown on it, primarily because Ghoul flesh is stated to taste unpleasant, while others take pleasure in hunting weaker Ghouls for sport. It is noted that cannibalism is more common in the most violent Wards, partially because eating their own kind actually increases the cannibal's strength. Some cannibals even experience a mutation and gain the rare Kakuja-type kagune. In a twist, protagonist Kaneki Ken makes other Ghouls his primary food source after the time skip in order to become more powerful. Others note the serious toll it takes on his sanity.

Card Games

• Cardfight!! Vanguard: The Tachikaze clan has this as its schtick. When some Tachikaze cards attack, you can sacrifice one of your other units to give them power boosts and new effects. It becomes especially apparent with the name of their clan's keyword: Engorge.

Comic Books

• Marvel Zombies: The intelligent undead are quite open about the fact they'd like to devour one another, but are balked from doing so by the fact that zombie flesh tastes unbearably awful to them. A few stubborn ones try anyway but have to spit out any bites they take out of a fellow zombie.
• In Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, a comic miniseries spin-off from Kong: Skull Island, the ravenous pack reptiles called Death Jackals are alleged to hunger specifically for the flesh of their own kind. They even eat their OWN limbs!

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): At first, this trope is defied by the human-turned-chimera Titan Vivienne Graham, who understandably doesn't want to eat Alan Jonah's troops when she hasn't even had time to come to terms with the fact that she isn't human anymore. Ultimately, this trope is zig-zagged: later in the story, Monster X has no compunctions against eating pieces of other, hostile Ghidorah-derived creatures for their internal energy, and the lack of a cannibalism taboo is mutual among the vicious Ghidorah-related antagonists.
• The Bridge: The Gyaos here are far more mindless and primal than most kaiju, and reflecting their animalistic nature will often turn to preying on weakened or injured members of their own flock to sate their insatiable hunger. The Albino Hyper Gyaos's narration mentions that she had to fight off members of her own flock countless times when they tried to attack her. This finally comes to a head after being heavily injured by Mothra in a fight and she's forced to slaughter the remainder of her flock in self-defense.
• Digimon Adventure 02: The Story We Never Told: A lesser, humorous example; Tentomon — a Digimon resembling a large beetle — refers to regular mosquitos as 'cannibals' when they bite him.
• In Shadowchasers: Power Primordial, Taramanda devours her underlings as a form of execution for the worst of failure, and it is hinted that this is common for the ophidia. She has Hebi-Na broken out of prison simply to kill her this way; Hebi-Na survives because she is able to share information. (Very relevant to the plot.)
• One Punch Man: Hero's Harem:
  • The pollution-eating monster Vaccine Woman's primary tactic for defeating monsters made of pollution becomes to simply devour them whole and digest them — initially, this was an accident that kept on repeating itself until eventually she just decided to run with it.
  • The fic's version of Great Food Tub, presented here as an attractive and obviously female Lizard Folk, suffers an irresistible compulsion to eat other monsters, which leaves her a very sad and lonely monster who just can't resist her urges when she's not hugely stuffed full of digesting food.
• Partially Kissed Hero: Goblins have no problem with eating their own dead.
• The World is Filled with Monsters: In its introduction, Blightweaver casually devours the corpse of one of its fallen daughters. When Vermillion is shocked at this, Blightweaver calmly remarks that it ate its daughter because it is in its nature to consume everything.

Films — Animation

• The Flight of Dragons: Sir Orrin ran afoul of the evil dragon Bryagh when he caught him eating dragon eggs.
• How to Train Your Dragon:
  • The gigantic Red Death dragon is introduced by devouring a small Gronckle dragon when it fails to deliver food in the first film.
  • How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: The Deathgrippers share a similar hunger for dragon flesh, and hunt their fellow dragons as a coordinated team.
• Moana: Tamatoa, a giant crab monster, offhandedly mentions eating his own grandmother and taking a week to do so.
• Toy Story: This is what Buzz and Woody think the mutant toys in Sid's room do to other toys and outright call them cannibals. It turns out the other toys actually take the toys that Sid damages to repair them.
• The Transformers: The Movie: Unicron is a mechanical planet that transforms into a humanoid robot. He devours other mechanical planets and the humanoid robots who inhabit them.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Amazing Spider-Man, the horrifying impact of Connors' reptilian transformation is graphically expressed when Peter discovers the lab rodent which Connors had imbued with similar abilities, transformed into a half-lizard mini-monster and messily devouring its former cagemate.
• Arachnophobia: As with most spiders, these are said to eat their own. The only reason why the barn is devoid of any normal spiders is that the Queen eats any that go near.
• The Bad Batch, set in a desert to which people are exiled for unspecified crimes, features a gang of cannibals who devour their captives one or two limbs at a time.
• Bloodthirsty: The shots of the movie's ending reveal wolf!Grey eating her birth father Vaughn's remains (who's also a werewolf).
• Dam Sharks: After the first dam explodes, an underwater shot shows several of the bull sharks reacting to blood in the water. One bumps sideways into a smaller shark, grabs it, shakes it until it goes limp, and swims off chewing on the carcass.
• In Daybreakers, desperate vampires who can't afford the rising cost of the dwindling supply of human blood resort to feeding on their own kind or themselves. Such cannibalism accelerates their transformation into subsiders.
• The Deadly Spawn: The big alien eats one of the little ones at the climax of the movie as part of a fake-out: for a second, it looks like it ate Charles.
• Deep Blue Sea: The super-smart sharks are said to prefer eating other sharks, presumably to remove competition. The researchers feed an unmodified tiger shark to the genetically engineered makos, which quickly proceed to tear it apart. However, at no point do the enhanced sharks target each other, making it seem more like pack competition than sheer bloodthirstiness.
• Doctor Sleep: To show how inhuman they have become, the members of the True Knot greedily consume the Steam emanating from Grandpa after he dies.
• The Food of the Gods: Mrs. Skinner claims that her adult chickens, which hadn't grown any larger from eating the Food, were all eaten by the baby chicks that did become giants.
• Galaxy Quest: When the team comes across a group of blue Teletubbie-esque creatures, one of them is injured so is offered some water by its friends, until the others immediately jump it and start to eat it.
• Slimer ends up eating the possessor ghost when it inhabits a pizza in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
• The Girl With All the Gifts: This is implied to occur among the feral children. After Melanie beats their leader to death, they're seen eagerly clustering around his body.
• The Great Wall: The Taotie carry home the corpses of their slain siblings to feed back to their queen.
• Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959): One of the pack of Slurpasaurs is killed by Hans, and its carcass is immediately devoured by the others.
• In Jurassic World, the Indominus rex is revealed to have had a sibling that she killed and devoured as part of the story establishing that she's dangerous, savage, and mentally unbalanced.
  Owen: What happened to the sibling?
  Claire: She ate it.
• In Karate a Muerte en Torremolinos, the ninja zombies eat their victims. Malvedades also bites the heart of one of the Human Sacrifices.
• In The Last Man on Earth, Robert keeps finding the drained corpses of vampires in his yard, as the savage ones which besiege his house have been living off the weakest of their own number.
• Implied to be why, in Lifeforce (1985), there are only three intact space vampires on the alien ship when it's discovered by humans, plus dozens of desiccated Bat People corpses.
• In The Lord of the Rings, orcs will resort to cannibalism if other meat isn't available. The Two Towers has a scene in which an orc captain executes one of his soldiers for disobedience, then declares "looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" as the rest of his men tuck into the corpse. This is averted in the books, where orcs have a very specific taboo about orcs eating the flesh of other orcs though likely this is just a theoretical rule meant to make individuals of a group feel relatively safer with each other and thus something that the opposing groups use as propaganda, though they have no issues about eating other sapient races, and don't seem to mind other creatures eating the flesh of dead orcs.
• Lost in Space: The space spiders immediately eat any of their number who are injured. This turns out to be a Chekhov's Gun when Future Smith (who's been mutated into a Half-Human Hybrid by being bitten by one) is eaten alive after being stabbed.
  "They eat their wounded."
• In The Meg, the second megalodon makes its debut on-screen when it lunges up onto the research vessel's deck and seizes the carcass of the first meg, presumably to chow down on. The conclusion of the final battle, in which hundreds of normal-sized sharks converge on the mortally-wounded second meg and devour it, is technically an aversion: yes, they're ravenous sharks, but not the same species of shark as their victim.
• In Pandorum, when Bower, Manh, and Nadia kill one of the Hunters, the rest of its pack show up and immediately start to devour its corpse.
• In Pitch Black, when the last survivors are running to the shuttle, Alien Blood starts falling all around them from the flock of creatures above the canyon. It appears that the ravenous creatures have begun killing and eating one another in midair.
• In Reign of Fire, the gigantic male dragon pounces on and catches one of the smaller female dragons, presumably to eat. The humans who witness this conclude that the dragons must be starving.
• In Superman Returns, after Lex Luthor swindles his step-family out of their fortune, he leaves the house for a time, leaving two little Pekinese dogs behind. Later, when he and his gang return, there is one dog licking a pile of bones that has some fur around it. Lex's girlfriend Kitty comments "weren't there two of those?"

Literature

• Animorphs:
  • Taxxons suffer from a Horror Hunger so extreme that they will dive down and eat anything wounded in the area, be it humans, other Taxxons, etc.; in one horrific case, a badly-maimed one started to eat itself.
  • The series Big Bad Visser Three when frustrated often kills his own men. One horrific case involved shapeshifting into the natural predator of the Yeerk species, the Vanarx, and eating them.
  • Visser Three's twin brother goes even further, grinding up and eating fellow Yeerks because it allows him to survive without kandrona rays.
• In Chess With A Dragon, the mantis-like aliens' culture incorporates cannibalism of one's rivals or inferiors, to such a degree that "gracing the table" is a standard penalty for anyone that loses badly while gambling. Two of the ones involved in the novel's conspiracy actually formed their alliance by working together to ensure another's loss at the gaming table, purely because they think the targeted player looked tastier than the others.
• C. S. Lewis:
  • The Pilgrim's Regress: John and Virtue come upon a dragon hoarding its gold. In the dragon's poem is a line like "At times like these I wish I hadn't eaten my wife." He did so not out of hunger, but out of greed and paranoia regarding the gold.
  • The Screwtape Letters: This is the fate of demons who fail and the ultimate fate of Wormwood (by his uncle Screwtape himself). A demon's natural prey is human souls; eating other demons is their way of filling in the gap and cutting out incompetents.
  • The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: When Eustace gets transformed into a dragon after finding a dragon hoard, he starts eating the remains of the real dragon before he realizes what he's doing. The narrator notes that this is because dragons are dragons' favourite food.
• Cthulhu Mythos:
  • In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, it's mentioned that ghouls traditionally eat their own wounded after a battle, although Pickman has been discouraging the practice.
  • "The Lurking Fear": At the end, one of the odd-eyed subterranean monstrosities turns on a weaker companion and eats it. To the narrator's eyes, it looks like a routine practice.
• Deptford Mice: Rats are known to eat each other. After Jake emerges from the temple of the Raith Sidhe after his battle with Fletch, Audrey is sickened because it is clear to her that he feasted on his opponent's body.
• Destroyermen: The Grik, a species of sapient dinosaurs, eat each other all the time. They prefer eating other species to preserve their numbers, but they won't hesitate to send a handful of Uul (or incompetent Hij) to the cookpots if nothing better is available.
• In The Dinosaur Lords, Shiraa kills and eats a fellow Allosaurus after the latter bothers her for too long. Played with in that Shiraa isn't evil — she's simply hungry and acting according to her instincts.
• The Dresden Files: In Turn Coat, the fae spiders threaten Harry on the Way to Edinburgh, so he kills one to make the others back off. As he departs, he notices the others drooling as they gather around their dead comrade; next time he passes by, there's just drained-dry fragments of exoskeleton left there.
• In The Edge Chronicles, shrykes are perfectly willing to kill and eat their own species, especially when they are young and in a blood frenzy. Mother Muleclaw III in particular devoured her own siblings as soon as she hatched, something which was noted as a good sign for a future roost-mother. This works against them when Mother Muleclaw is killed in battle — without her leadership, the young and inexperienced shryke army disintegrates and eats itself.
• Empire of the Vampire: All vampires qualify to some degree, preying primarily upon humans, though they only rarely eat the flesh of their drained victims. Blood Esana take this to another level, however, being vampires who feed on other vampires for practical and religious reasons. Other vampires view these cousins the same way humans view ordinary vampires.
• In Foundation and Earth, Trevize is cornered by feral dogs on the deserted planet Aurora. He shoots one to try to scare the pack away, only to watch the survivors eagerly devour the dead dog's remains.
• Fragment: Every creature on Henders Island is so ravenously carnivorous as to do this any time one of their own kind is dead or wounded. Indeed, the native hendros' standard means of evading packs of predators is to kill or maim the largest one in the group, thus causing its fellows to break off pursuit so they can devour it.
• Garrett, P.I.: In Faded Steel Heat, Venable the thunder-lizard keeper insists that his guard-dinosaurs only eat fresh meat, not carrion. Their preference is so strong that, given a choice, the larger males would rather kill and eat the smaller males than munch on a carcass they didn't hunt down themselves.
• Gor: In Beasts of Gor, Tarl and his friend are being hunted in the Gorean Arctic tundra by a pack of wild sleen, tenacious hunting mammals with six legs. Tarl's friend sets a trap: a knife with a piece of meat, its hilt frozen in a large slab of ice. One of the sleen bites the meat off the knife, slicing its mouth in the process. It then tries to lick the blood off the knife, slicing its tongue further. The other sleen, smelling blood, kill it and eat it.
• In The House on the Borderland, the Recluse kills several of the pig-things which are besieging his house, and another pig-thing promptly starts scavenging from the carcasses. Repulsed, the Recluse shoots it as well when he realizes what it's doing.
• How to Survive Camping: In "Why We Don't Keep Horses", the strange dapple stallion eats meat of all kinds, which is quite nastily shown when it kills and eats the other horses.
• InCryptid:
  • Finfolk are Metamorphosis Monsters that slowly transform from a humanoid body to a mermaid one, while also losing their memories of life on land and higher brain functions. Eventually, truly old finfolk become gigantic fish with no intelligence to speak of and show no hesitation in eating their own children and grandchildren. This goes the other way as well, since, according to second-stage finfolk, the third-stage finfolk are delicious.
  • Waheela are known to eat their own cubs if hungry enough. Istas was born into a litter of five. By the end of winter, there were only three left.
• In Jurassic Park, the raptors are seen eating their own wounded, as well as raptor eggs. It's suggested, however, that this was because they were raised in captivity, and that they never did it in the wild.
• Ology Series: In Dragonology, hydras feed chiefly on other dragons' hatchlings — although they'll happily eat humans if no baby dragons are around.
• Redwall: Rakkety Tam introduces wolverines as a new villain species. How do we know they're much worse than all the previous series' villains? Because they eat each other! And other beasties too, but the whole series is a little vague about that.
• Simon R. Green:
  • Forest Kingdom: In the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series' book 2 (Winner Takes All), when showing itself to a group of people at one point, the Lord of the Gulfs (a Transient Being embodying famine) demonstrates its power by calling up a huge crowd of ghostly figures in the last stages of starvation. At its bidding, the ghosts turn upon each other, screaming in horror at their own deeds even as they devour each others' ectoplasmic flesh and bones.
  • Ghost Finders: In the first novel, the ravenous shark-vampires turn upon and devour their fellows every time the agents manage to injure or kill one.
  • Secret Histories: From the used-to-be cars in Little Stoke, to the piranhas in Crow Lee's fountain, to the huge monsters that besiege Drood Hall in the alternate reality, a lot of nasty critters feed on their own dead or wounded.
• Solomon Kane: The flying harpy-like creatures from "Wings in the Night" are alleged to have eaten their own kind when drought depleted their usual prey.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: The Cannibal, one of the wild dragons that lived on Dragonstone during the Targaryens' civil war, got its name from its habit of eating dead dragons, young dragons, and other dragons' eggs.
• Terry Pratchett:
  • Discworld:
    • Going Postal: When junior postman Stanley tries to parley with Mr. Grylle, suggesting he use the post office to send a letter to his grandmother, Grylle matter-of-factly replies that he ate his grandmother. The impression conveyed is that wild banshees don't consider this unusual.
    • Snuff: Downplayed. Goblins are known to eat their young, a fact repeated by the average racist (99% of the Disc's population) to prove they're "evil beasts". What is not widely known is that goblins only do this when faced with famine that would guarantee the death of both mother and child, and that the mother then makes a special pot to contain the child's soul until it can be reborn, hopefully under better circumstances.
    • Unseen Academicals: History depicts the race of orcs as savage warriors that devoured their own dead after a battle. Whether this really happened is unclear, although Nutt's ability to revive when stabbed suggests that fallen orcs vanishing from battlefields because they got back up again may have been misinterpreted as proof they'd been eaten.
  • Strata: Zigzagged with the Shand, a race of civilized carnivorous aliens. On the one hand, going unfed for longer than a couple of days reduces them to a feral state in which they'll kill and devour other sapient beings as readily as animals, and they sometimes experience cravings specifically for Shand meat. On the other, they are a civilized people who will encourage other races to Mercy Kill them if they're starving before they can go wild, and their cannibalistic inclinations are accommodated by a voluntary dueling tradition.
• In So I'm a Spider, So What?, eating a blood relative gives the "Kin Eater" title along with levels in the Heresy Magic and Taboo skills. The Word of God Religion considers both of these skills heretical and will execute anyone found to possess them.
• In Trail of Lightning Maggie and her grandmother are attacked by cannibals on her sixteenth birthday. It's implied that after the Big Water some people did this to survive, but in this specific case, they're outright gleeful about it.
• In The Traitor Son Cycle, the Wild creatures have no taboo against consuming sapient beings and one of their most important post-battle rituals is eating their fallen enemies, even if they happen to be of the same species.
• The Voyage of Máel Dúin: Island no. 8 is populated by large horse-like animals who rend out pieces of flesh from each other's flanks, "so that out of their sides streams of crimson blood were breaking". The voyagers flee in terror at observing this.
• In The Wheel of Time, it is often said that Trollocs "will eat anything, so long as it's meat." They prefer humans, but will eat their own if it's convenient — trollocs are very lazy. This actually works to their advantage in war, because they need no supply lines: after a battle, they just cook up their own fallen.

Live-Action TV

• Grimm: The Hundjager are said to consume their mother from inside the womb. They have been shown to be cold, unmerciful, and relentless trackers and assassins who usually work for the Verrat.
• Lost Tapes: it's right there in the title of one episode: "Wendigo: American Cannibal". A group of campers become lost in the mountains and a search and rescue team goes to find them. It turns out that one of the campers has begun turning into a wendigo and picks off the campers AND the rescue team one by one, and is never caught.
• Penny Dreadful: In "Good and Evil Braided Be", Dracula brutally lashes out at a minion who dared speak to Vanessa and thus disrupt his plans, flinging the wretch against a wall, then gives his other familiars permission to feed on their hapless fellow. They pile on ravenously and tear their former companion apart to get at every last drop of his blood.
• Predator Wars: A severe drought-hit South Africa. Several lionesses find a leopard dragging a kill into a tree, and in desperation one of the lionesses climbs up the tree after it (lions typically avoid climbing trees due to their weight). She successfully pulls the leopard's kill out of the tree (the leopard having escaped by climbing higher than the lion can), but when she tries to get out of the tree herself she falls and breaks her back. The other lionesses eat the leopard's kill, and when the dead lioness falls out of the tree they eat her as well.
• Primeval: The team catches a baby raptor in a shopping mall and uses it as bait to set up an ambush for an adult that's still on the loose. They expect that, being from the same pack, the adult will come to the crying hatchling's aid, but it pounces on and eats the leashed juvenile instead.
• Stargate SG-1: The Goa'uld sometimes engage in ritual cannibalism of other Goa'uld (which are really parasitic snakes possessing humans) to show them as Always Chaotic Evil.
• Stargate Atlantis: The vampiric Wraith are shown to not be averse to feeding on members of their own species. This practice increased significantly during the Wraith Civil War since there were not enough humans to go around (the Wraith having been woken up early from their hibernation), and fellow Wraith are the only species other than humans that they're capable of feeding on.
• In Supernatural, the Leviathan race are expressly shown to be cannibalistic to emphasize their voraciousness. For instance, the monsters' leader Dick Roman consumes one of his minions alive for losing a holy tablet to the Winchesters. He punishes another underling by making him eat himself.
• Sliders: In "Dinoslide", the Sliders return to the world where dinosaurs did not go extinct but are an endangered species, just to find out that all dinosaurs are now dead except for one particularly tough T. rex who ate the other rexes after they ran out of prey.
• The Wheel of Time (2021): During Season 1's third episode, one Trolloc eats another wounded Trolloc.
• The X-Files: The ending of "Our Town" implies that the cannibals ate their leader.
• Z Nation: By Season 3, the zombies are becoming desperate enough to avert the No Zombie Cannibals trope. Murphy and 10K witness a rolling ball of zombies attempting to eat one another.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: This trope applies to many evil races:
  • This is a particular hallmark of sahuagin culture, in which the maxim "meat is meat" is used to justify their preying upon everything from other races to deformed sahuagin hatchlings to their own dead.
  • Dragon Magazine's article "The Ecology of the Flind" attributes this gnoll subrace's physical superiority and fearsome reputation to their tribes having ritually preyed upon regular gnolls for generations, ensuring only those flinds who could best an ordinary gnoll will ever breed.
  • "Volo's Guide to Monsters" claims that regular gnolls are happy to cannibalise one another if food becomes scarce during extended peacetime. Sometimes, a gnoll shaman will resurrect the bones of devoured gnolls as a type of undead called "Witherlings", allowing them to continue participating in hunts without it depriving the surviving gnolls of precious food.
  • "Volo's Guide" also claims that the creatures known as Yuan-Ti are descended from humans who mutated themselves into Snake People through rituals that involved cannibalising their slaves and prisoners - an act which represents them rejecting a humanoid mindset of being bound by taboos and morality, in favor of embracing a much harsher, dispassionate, reptilian mindset.
  • Mystara: Subverted in depictions of trolls. While they readily chomp on one another whenever they're feeling peckish, their regeneration powers ensure that any troll who's nibbled upon will quickly and painlessly recover. It's implied that some man-eating trolls are actually inoffensive by nature, but simply too stupid to grasp that non-trolls they try to make friends with don't like having their arms or legs bitten off.
• Kobolds Ate My Baby: While kobolds consider human babies to be the tastiest thing in existence, other kobolds are a very close second.
• In Nomine:
  • Haagenti, Demon Prince of Gluttony, began life as a lowly demonic familiar and reached his current extent in large part by eating his way up the ladder — his ascension to Princely status was marked by his devouring the Princes of Sloth and Oblivion.
  • One of the most straightforward ways for ethereal spirits to grow in power is to kill and consume other spirits whose Image resembles their own. The closer the resemblance, the greater the benefit — a spirit in the form of Jack the Ripper would have to go through thousands of humanoid killers to get the same power boost as he'd get from consuming another Whitechapel Murderer. As a result, ethereal society is often ruled by paranoia and a ruthless food chain, although most established Domain enforce strict rules about dueling and feuds in order to avoid degenerating into cannibalistic free-for-alls.
• Pathfinder:
  • There is no food as dear to a neothelid as the flesh of its own kind. They find cannibalism to be a euphoric experience, and in their species' early days large numbers of neothelids perished to their conspecifics' hunger. This practice has almost entirely ceased in modern times, however, as the neothelids' low numbers, slow reproduction, and many, many enemies mean they cannot afford to kill one another anymore.
  • Furcifers are predatory, chameleon-like beasts that are born as plantlike seedlings that later mature into animals. Multiple furcifer seeds will typically sprout in the same spot; the first to grow a body and become mobile will then consume its siblings as a first meal.
  • Empress bore worms arise when a swarm of ordinary bore worms starves to the point of cannibalism. The last worm left will grow to tremendous size, devouring everything in its path, before expiring and releasing a new swarm of normal-size offspring from its carcass.
• Shadowrun has something show up from the depths of the Metaplanes in 5th edition, an eldritch entity that is briefly brought into the world because a group of researchers decided to see what would happen if ghouls were made to eat their own. Given that there's a lot of talk about the drastic measures the ghoul nation of Asamando has resorted to in order to avoid famine, it's strongly implied that this happening to a nation is a matter of "when," not "if." It's implied, though not stated due to copyright issues, that they accidentally dragged one of the Horrors out of the Astral Plane.
• Warhammer:
  • Only War: The Drakons of Cuyavale are actively cannibalistic. One of their primary population checks is that, although their clutches hatch into enormous swarms of hatchlings, most of the newborns will end up eating each other before reaching maturity.
  • Warhammer Fantasy:
    • The Ogres' Chaos-resistant metabolism is such that they are perpetually hungry and can eat vast quantities of food, while their society is tribal and social status is usually earned by fighting and killing your superiors (often your siblings, parents — or on the flipside ambitious children and grandchildren trying to usurp you). Add to this that they live in the bleak and inhospitable Mountains of Mourn, where resources of all kinds must be carefully husbanded, and in ancient times they were cursed with an angry god of gluttony and consumption called the Great Maw, and cannibalism becomes an endemic part of their lifestyle and culture. This is so common that having a body part eaten is a common penalty for losing a contest — a friendly match will typically result in the winner just taking an ear or a finger, but a serious competition will end with the winner beating the loser to death and devouring his cooling corpse.
    • The Skaven also practice this kind of cannibalism, but with them it's played up as much more to do with low viciousness, culling the weak, dark warp-driven hungers, and the fact the race is constantly on the verge of starvation because it breeds so explosively. Newborn Skaven are also known to devour their siblings, which is seen as a sign that they will grow to be strong and notable.
    • Many Orc and Goblin tribes also behave this way, though in their case it's simply a matter of pragmatism and a complete lack of sentimentality over the remains of the dead.
    • Beastmen have no compunctions whatsoever towards eating the flesh of their own kind. Dead Beastmen can expect no particular burial rites beyond being devoured by their living kin.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The Tyranids consume all lifeforms, including their own units once they're no longer needed. A number of Tyranid subspecies actually don't have digestive systems, as they're not intended to survive after the battle they were spawned for, but to be consumed as soon as it's complete. Hive Fleet Hydra is particularly known for this, intentionally seeking out the remnants of previous defeated Hive Fleets to consume as fuel for their infamously exceptional reproductive abilities.
    • Played straight with Chaos Space Marines, but averted with loyalist Space Marines, some chapters of which have flesh-eating or blood-drinking as part of their rites for millennia, and aren't about to explain or justify themselves (Astartes can absorb memories from what they eat) to an outsider, leading to mistaken impressions and Inquisitorial attention.
    • For the Kroot, eating other sapients is their way of life, as they're able to modify their DNA based on their diet. Consequently, in addition to eating their enemies, they also consume their own dead in a highly ceremonial manner. They're very aware of the effect they have on other species and like to play up this aspect to ensure they're left to their own devices.
    • Orks, like in Fantasy, regularly dine on Grots and Squigs despite all of them coming from the same type of spores (although Orks eating other Orks are rare, but not unheard of). The Squigs are this too, as they will often eat whatever they can get their maws around. The only Orkoid lifeform that doesn't eat another Orkoid is the Gretchin, and that's largely because they're too small to eat anyone else.
• The World of Darkness:
  • Vampire: The Masquerade:
    • Vampires can completely consume another vampire's blood to eat their soul and steal their power, which is one of the few ways for vampires to lower their Generation.^note Vampire power is measured by how distant their descent from Caine is; the lower their Generation, the stronger they are. This activity is so common it has its own name: diablerie. This is considered to be the sole irredeemable deed that a vampire can commit, which is also why it's extremely common on the Sabbat side of vampirism.
    • The Nosferatu clan lives in mortal terror of a "brother clan", sired by the same Antediluvian, known as the Nictuku, whose raison de etre seems to consist solely of hunting down and eating Nosferatu.
    • The Nagaraja bloodline are highly obscure and loathed by most who know about them because of their particular flaw: They have to rely on human flesh as well as blood. Quite a lot of flesh. It helps that they have shark-like teeth to aid in this endeavor. Oh, and that they're necromancers.
  • Vampire: The Requiem:
    • In 1st edition, once a vampire hits Blood Potency 6, they cannot sate their thirst on anything less than the blood of other vampires.
    • In 2nd edition, this still applies, but vampires can also take a Merit called Unnatural Affinity that lets them consume blood from other supernatural beings as well, and all vampires can take nourishment from "inferior blood" if they're willing to spend Willpower.
    • As in Masquerade, vampires can devour each other's souls in an act called diablerie for a power boost.
    • The Nosferatu bloodline called the Noctuku are apex predators to apex predators, preying on other vampires' blood and flesh. While Noctuku are normally loners, they're known to form Cannibal Clans called clutches that systematically prey on other vampires. If their activities are ever discovered, they're hunted by vampires unironically enforcing the double standard that only humans should be hunted and killed. As you might surmise, they're a Mythology Gag/Shout-Out to the Nictuku above.
    • Another bloodline, the "En", are also cannibals... but of the megalomaniacal king variety. They gain power over a city and give free rein to their dark appetites, creating children only to feed on them later (unless their child gets the drop on them).
  • Werewolf: The Forsaken: In the 2nd edition, Primal Urge inflicts dietary restrictions based on its potency similarly to Requiem's Blood Potency. At the highest level (8-10), one of the few things that a werewolf can eat anymore is the flesh of other werewolves.

Video Games

• Arcanum: The chapter of the manual dealing with Orcs notes that they prefer to cannibalise rather than bury their dead. It's also an accepted orcish custom for an orc mother who gives birth to triplets to present one of the newborns to the father, who eats it in celebration of his own fertility; this is done in part because, while twin births are more common than singletons among orcs, three babies at once is considered too much for the mother to deal with (since she only has two arms and two breasts).
• The Battle for Middle-earth has Mordor do this to orcs. Mountain Trolls (but not Attack Trolls) can eat the human-sized orcs to regain health. Orcs can also be made to kill and eat each other for experience, or sent to the Slaughterhouse and turned into resources.
• In Bendy and the Ink Machine, Susie relies on ink from other ink beings in order to somehow stabilize her own form and make herself "more beautiful".
• Chimera Beast has the Eaters, one of which you play as. In the final level, the regular enemies contain other Eaters which the player's Eater can eat, and the Final Boss is a much bigger Eater who's higher up on the food chain than the player.
• Chrono Trigger has the Hydraconda enemy, who will sometimes "counter" attacks by attacking and eating another Hydraconda, healing their own HP by the HP of the victim.
• Darkest Dungeon: The Bloodsuckers of the Crimson Court have no compunctions about eating their own kind. Half-eaten corpses of Bloodsuckers litter the Courtyard, and the Viscount has one of them (an Esquire judging by what's sticking out of the cocoon) hanging in his dining hall.
• Devil's Hunt: The Lesser Demon enemies are introduced in a cutscene where a Lesser Demon chomps down and messily devours a low-level Forsaken. Even your character, Desmond, is unnerved.
  Desmond: Hey, leave... whatever that is... alone!
• Devil May Cry 5:
  • A Behemoth is so gluttonous, it also cannibalizes its fellow demon kin. The other demons are afraid of being eaten, so they had to chain its mouth.
  • An Empusa Queen can willingly cannibalize its fellow lesser Empusa demons in order to feed on their blood and become stronger. The first Queen encountered does so in its Mook Debut Cutscene just to demonstrate its aggressive nature and special gimmick.
• In Dragon Age, the darkspawn are known to kill and eat each other when there's nothing else available. Even though they don't actually need to eat at all.
• Downplayed in Eastshade: although the only bait that will reliably catch the very large, very old sandfish "Old Pops" is a regular-sized sandfish, nobody points out that it's this trope or holds the big fellow's eating habits against him. He's simply so large, there's nothing else big enough in the lake to sate his appetite.
• In Elona, cannibalism causes one to go temporarily insane unless one undergoes a mutation that makes them OK with eating other people. From that point on, they'll kill and eat anyone they encounter, each other included. This is such a problem that Claymores (man-eating-monster-slaying Action Girls wielding greatswords) are lifted wholesale as a character class.
• Fallen London: It's implied that Seekers of the Name will eat other humans when their Horror Hunger is out of control. Your character can do it too, if you're a Seeker.
• Gwent: The Witcher Card Game: The Monsters faction has access to the Consume mechanic, allowing their units to chow down on each other and gain power equal to the unit that was destroyed.
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park: The fourth Raptor level pits you against other Velociraptor, which you can eat to regain health.
• In Mass Effect 3, you encounter a new type of mooks called Cannibals, batarians who were turned into husks by the reapers. Their special ability is to eat their own kind in order to restore health, showing how much of a monster the reapers have turned them into.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): The Deviljho is a giant predatory Brute Wyvern that will eat anything and everything, including other Deviljho. It's theorized that this is what causes it to turn into a Savage Deviljho.
  • Monster Hunter 4: The Seltas Queen can summon a Seltas to serve as her thrall in battle. However, she's also perfectly willing to eat said Seltas if she runs low on stamina.
  • Monster Hunter Generations: The Astalos is prone to eating its own babies if given the chance since they look like its favorite snack of Neopterons.
• Scratches: Blackwood's journal recounts a gruesome incident of this trope that he'd witnessed in Darkest Africa, in which members of a corrupted tribe devoured one of their own number.
• In the underwater obstacle course of Silt, the only way to get past some of the large Bobbitt worms is to get smaller Bobbitt worms to chase you, then dodge your pursuers so they swim into the bigger worms' cannibalistic maws.
• StarCraft:
  • The Primal Zerg kill and eat other creatures in order to absorb their genes and become more powerful. They gain the most essence by eating one another.
  • In StarCraft, the Defiler can eat other Zerg to regain energy, with an ability called Consume. This is transplanted to Infested Kerrigan and the Zerg Samir Duran.
• Miranda, the player character of Steel Harbinger, is a Half-Human Hybrid after nearly being assimilated by alien pods into one of the half-machine hybrids. And she regains health and extra lives by devouring other hybrids she killed.
• Super Cyborg is set in a time where earth has been taken over by assorted monstrosities caused by an out-of-control mutation outbreak; at one point you can come across a giant insect called a Captured Bedlaah about to be devoured by a Giant Spider called an Akhamafold Octopod. It does seem odd that two monsters spawned from the same virus would cannibalize each other.
• In The Last of Us Part II, the player character can feed Runners^note the first-stage fungal zombies to Clickers^note third-stage fungal zombies by using the grab and drag mechanic to shove a Runner into a Clicker, which will promptly devour its fellow infected.
• The Plague Eaters of Darkest Dungeon 2 have the ability to devour fallen allies for health and a moveset upgrade, or take a bite out of allies with the "Fodder" status effect for health. Enemies with "Fodder" aren't killed by the attack, by the way.
• In World of Warcraft, gnolls will eat any meat they can find, including deceased members of their clans or outcasts who are killed for trespassing.

Web Animation

• An interesting subversion in the fifth and final episode of Dinosauria, "The Last Tyrant". The female T. rex is shown in the aftermath of the asteroid impact to have partly consumed the carcass of her mate who died in the cataclysm. However, this does not paint them as monstrous, even earlier showing them affectionately nuzzling as they guard their nest of eggs, and in fact highlights her desperation to survive in a devastated world, perhaps one of the rare uses of this trope to make a character more sympathetic.

Web Original

• The skull-faced giant worms infesting the "living cavern" SCP-2385 have been observed via drone camera swallowing one another whole. The giant mummified pterosaur dubbed SCP-4959 frequently ingests its smaller pteradactyloid minions along with the prey they bring it.
• Hamster's Paradise: The maniacal ripperoo is willing to sometimes work in coordinated groups to take on more difficult prey but most of the time they will cannibalize one another to remove competition with even the mothers encouraging their pups to use their own weaker siblings as hunting practice. These cannibalistic tendencies are carried over to their sapient Always Chaotic Evil descendants, the Harmsters, but one tribe in particular, the Frazettas, take this even further and feed almost exclusively on smaller Harmsters or on the Brutes, the animalistic descendants of rival Harmster species. However, this trope is also given a Deconstruction/Surprisingly Realistic Outcome as this propensity to eat the flesh of their own kind gives rise to a horrific disease that is spread by eating infected flesh and by biting that destroys the Harmsters after a massive world war weakens them.

Webcomics

• Awful Hospital: The Eye Slob has demonstrated a willingness and, indeed, eagerness, to devour others of his kind, and levels up from doing so.
• Charby the Vampirate: The Demon King Samrick has eaten his own subjects on occasion. Certain demons have a tendency to eat each other as well, so when he hosts a party in his grand palace he has to stipulate that there will be no killing or eating of fellow guests along with a dress code.
• Darths & Droids: Rather than the porgs looking reproachfully at Chewie roasting their brethren in The Last Jedi, the comic's interpretation of that scene is that they're attracted by the smell. Chewie/Ben is horrified by this, since this is how you end up with Mad Porg Disease.
• Drowtales: Food is chronically scarce Beneath the Earth, and drow (especially homeless lowborn) will eat each other when desperate enough, and they're in such dire straits by the time the comic takes place that this is fairly common.
• The Gamer: When negative emotions fester, they form weak monsters variously called minions or scraps in instant dungeons. On their own, they pose relatively little threat, but they become stronger monsters more universally called demons by eating each other. Jee-Han still feels queasy seeing that happen in front of him despite how strong he's gotten and how long he's spent in the Abyss.
• Modest Medusa: The protagonist's mother eats her own children on a monthly basis. This is exactly as horrifying to protagonist and reader as it sounds, made worse by how their species attain sapience around the same time that the adults get "hungry".
• Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger: When the Kvrk-chk are introduced, it's stated that they devour their dead on the spot, at social gatherings it's considered common courtesy to tear off a limb as a gift to the host, and their youngest adults have to disperse far from home every thirteen years to avoid being eaten by their younger siblings. To say nothing of their attitude towards other sapient races.
• Scurry: When a member of Erebus' pack breaks his leg trying to attack Atlas, Erebus declares that he's no use to the pack anymore and the unfortunate wolf is promptly set upon and devoured by his packmates, highlighting the wolves' savage and Always Chaotic Evil natures.

Western Animation

• Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: According to the first episode, whilst monsters find the idea of eating humans to be disgusting, they don't have quite the same aversion to eating each other. This is made drastically clear in the same episode, where the Gromble eats one of his students for having a running nose. Yes, he spits off to the side a moment later, but it's unclear if he's spat out the student or just the excess mucus from the student.
  • In "Krumm Goes to Hollywood", the Gromble chews Ickis up like gum and inflates him into a balloon as part of his efforts to force a confession about Krumm's presence.
  • In another episode, the Gromble swallows Krumm, chews on him, and then violently spits him across the room.
  • In fact, the Gromble does this so much that his toy comes with a unique small monster student figure to chew on.
  • Another episode involves Ickis, Oblina, and Krumm babysitting a "bonsty" — a newly born baby monster. Unfortunately for them, this one belongs to a species that, for the first 24 hours of its life, eats everything in sight, favoring other monsters. It almost eats the Gromble!
  • In "The Rival", a stressed-out Oblina threatens to have Ickis for dinner when he tells her that she's imagining the rivalry between herself and new student Smeldra.
• Gravity Falls: When we are introduced to the leader of the Manotaurs in "Dipper Versus Manliness", an elderly member of the tribe steps into view... and is promptly seized and devoured by the actual, towering leader.
• Primal (2019): In "Spear and Fang", the horned tyrannosaurs are either the same species as Fang or at least a closely related species. This does not stop them from seeing Fang's offspring as prey.
• Samurai Jack: In "Jack Tales", Jack encounters a family in the middle of the woods. The baby seems dead set on eating his sword and they all attack Jack, fighting over it. Eventually Jack slices the mother's face off, revealing a robotic interior. The family collapses into infighting as they tear the plating off and reveal themselves as robots, trying to eat each other. Jack wisely backs off and leaves them to their fate.
• In Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Zorak (a giant mantis) mentions that his mom ate her dad, and he himself ate his little cousin as he mentions it during a family reunion. His uncles don't seem to have a grudge, though.
• Transformers
  • In The Transformers, Skullcrusher, a Decepticon who transforms into a crocodile is noted in his bio as having the habit of consuming any Autobots he kills. This is something that not only freaks out Autobots but also other Decepticons because Transformers don't need to eat anything besides Energon.
  • One of many reasons Tarantulas is viewed with disgust and repulsion by even his Predacon comrades is his loathsome habit of eating other creatures purely because he enjoys it. He even makes a very serious attempt to eat Cheetor:
    Cheetor: This is a dumb plan, Web-head! I don't have any real blood! Just mech fluid!
    Tarantulas: Oh, my filters will adjust. It is the act I enjoy more than the nourishment!
  • Though it's largely Played for Laughs, Dinobot eats the corpse of his beast-mode-only clone after defeating it, making it also a very bizarre form of Autocannibalism.
• Trollhunters:
  • Gatto, the leader of the Volcanic Trolls, frequently eats his minions "by accident" when they bring him food and tries to eat the main party twice.
  • It's implied that Gunmar and the other Gumm-Gumms ate the Changelings of the Janus Organization after deciding they were no longer useful since all that's left of them when Jim and co. return is bones.

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