Fed to the Beast is a trope about villains feeding their victims to beasts as a type of death trap, or as it being part of a cult ritual. Either way, it's meant to be a murder trap set up by someone intentionally. However, the vague title means it might be used for any time someone or something gets fed to a beast, and if this is the case the trope might be worth expanding.
Wicks: 50/50
Examples: 53
- Correct: 29/53, or ~54%
- Not a villain: 6/53, or ~11%
- Wandering into the beast: 5/53, or ~9%
- Other: 4/53, or ~8%
- ZCE: 9/53, or ~16%
- Overall correct: 54%
- Overall misused/unclear examples: 44%
open/close all folders
Correct (villains and cults feeding people willingly)
- Orphanage of Love: Subverted in The Promised Neverland: Grace Field House seems to be this, with thirty-eight happy children and a loving caretaker whom they all call "Mom." However, the First-Episode Twist reveals that the facility is actually a human farm, and all the kids who get "adopted" are actually eaten by demons.
- Volatile Second Tier Position: Bib Fortuna in Tales from Jabba's Palace. As majordomo to a crime lord with at least two vicious flesh-eating monsters on standby, he has to work very hard to keep Jabba happy at all times, and even then he ends up being forced to grovel on the trapdoor to the Rancor pit more than once.
- Animation.The Treasure Of Swamp Castle: The Governor and Puzzola attempt to feed Jónás to a bear.
- Characters.Drakensang: Has the disgusting habit of feeding the prisoners to his various pets, including hounds, wolves, boars, a wild bear and a Newt Kraken.
- Characters.Its Not The Raptor DNA: Bridges sometimes feeds people who anger him (like a poacher who attacked Sobek) to him. He threatens to do this to both himself and Dr. Wu. He also keeps a breeding pair of Tyrannosaurus rexes for the sole purpose of feeding their young to him. Because the young tyrannosaurs are inexperienced, they stand no chance whatsoever against a much larger and Ax-Crazy Spinosaurus.
- Characters.X2022: Pearl baits Bobby-Lynne into joining her on the dock. Pearl then pushes Bobby into the lake to become alligator food.
- ComicBook.Super Mario Adventures: In one issue, Wendy gloats over her plans to feed Mario to the piranhas. She later drops the heroes into a Reznor dungeon via a Trap Door.
- Film.The Battle Wizard: After capturing Tuan Yu alive, the Yellow Robed Master intends to feed him to the beast under the dungeon, a Killer Gorilla monster.
- Film.Moonraker (1): Drax sends his dobermans to kill poor Corinne once he learns that she assisted Bond in finding his blueprints.
- Film.Shanghai Grand: Madam Yiu’s Cool Pet is a giant boa constrictor which she keeps in her bedroom. She also attempts to have her enemies and prisoners ( such as Ding-lik) Fed to the Beast.
- Film.Three Big Men: How does The Spider dispose of a minion who failed him? By feeding him to his mice.
- Literature.The Scarlet Citadel: Tsotha pens Conan in the dungeon of the Scarlet Citadel with the intent of feeding him to his gigantic snake, Satha, and is revealed to have done this to a number of Pelias's apprentices while making him watch.
- Literature.Way Of The Tiger: How the priesthood of Nullaq carries on their sacrifices.
- Literature.Young Sherlock Holmes: In Red Leech, Duke Balthassar has Sherlock, Virginia and Matty thrown to his Komodo dragons to be devoured.
- Manga.Batman: The evil alien emperor accidentally falls into the beast pit that he intended to throw the losing duellists into to be eaten.
- Monster.Maciste: Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963): The evil Morakeb is the true power behind Babylon's throne, organizing sacrifices where innocent women are taken to Babylon to be sacrificed regularly, thirty in each sacrifice. Morakeb has a grieving father fed to lions when the man attacks him; murders his own spy when the man asks for a reward; and shows a willingness to completely wipe out an opposing city and all who live there.
- NightmareFuel.Zoo: Jamie and Logan think they've found safety in a small town... Until it turns out the townspeople vote every month on who to send outside the fence to basically feed to the animals. The townspeople honestly think that the animals accept their "sacrifice" to keep their town safe! And the scariest part? They may actually be right...
- Pantheon.Clothing Style: She, John and Michael try to keep their distance from Blackbeard, Risky Boots, Kaptain K. Rool, Euron Greyjoy, and Davy Jones. All of them consider Peter Pan a nuisance and are not above capturing his friends to use as bait... or in Davy Jones' case, fed to the Kraken. John and Michael prefer dealing with Risky Boots or K. Rool though because both will at least give the kids a "sporting chance" to escape and fight back.
- Podcast.Quest In Show: Droog Hemlock has taken hostages to halt Prince Pratt, and has magically shrunk him to a few inches tall, but inexplicably chooses to leave him behind with a dramite.
- Recap.The Metamorphoses Minotaur: Every nine years, King Minos forces the Athenians to offer seven young men and seven young women to be sent into the Labyrinth. On the third occasion Theseus, son of King Aegeus of Athens, arrives to end the killing of his people. He disguises himself as a peasant and volunteers to sent into the maze.
- Series.Narcos: Escobar threatens to feed Félix to his hippopotamuses, but doesn't follow through.
- Series.The Mist: The season 1 finale reveals that the military is rounding up people from outside the mist, transporting them to the town by train, and throwing them into the mist. Kevin believes that they are attempting to ''feed'' the mist. Wick in spoiler tags.
- TabletopGame.Predation: Slipping the secret to the abundant nautil supply of Coareas to an outsider is punishable by a slow and torturous death at the mouths of the Pariah King's two giant crocodile-like Machimosaurus rexes.
- UsefulNotes.Idi Amin: He also ordered many people to be executed by being fed to crocodiles. We shouldn't be calling real people villains, but that's what this example is aiming for, so...
- VideoGame.Changed: You the player, wake up from suspended animation into an unfamiliar hostile environment where latex goo monsters are running amok driven to assimilate you on sight. Not to mention an Ambiguously Evil doctor, who seems desperate to feed you to said monsters because you're a Typhoid Mary carrying the last of a deadly virus that wiped out civilization.
- WebVideo.Eventide Media Center: Path 3 of the Bluefish Waterpark's Stomach Twister leads to the stomach of what is implied to be a giant fish. Low context, but the rest of the page explains that this park is a front for a Giant Animal Worship cult.
- WesternAnimation.Muzzy In Gondoland: Corvax orders the prison guard to put Bob in cell No. 19. He knows they are holding an alien monster in there, who Corvax plans to have eat Bob. Fortunately for Bob, the alien is an intelligent and polite Gentle Giant who has no intentions to hurt him.
- YMMV.Rock N Rolla: A sadist when dealing with targets of his wrath, Lenny enjoys torturing his victims by dunking them into a river and setting vicious crayfish upon them, showcasing this horrid method by having two men tortured and killed in this way even after they've given him info he wanted. Part of a CM example
- YMMV.Tiger Fangs: Henry Gratz is the sleazy animal handler accomplice of Dr. Lang, assisting Lang in his plan to sabotage the rubber plantation. To this end, Gratz drugs several tigers with darts and sets them loose on the plantation workers, resulting in several deaths, in addition to tormenting the tigers on a regular basis. When a dart is discovered by Frank Buck and his hunting party in the skin of one of the tigers, and brought to a nurse for investigation, Gratz tries to kill the nurse by releasing a leopard in her room.
Not a villain or an unclear villain status
- Series.I Love Lucy: The show plays around with this quite a bit in the musical Scottish episode, in which Lucy dreams of returning to her ancestral Scottish village only to discover that as the last known member of the McGillicutty clan, she's slated to be fed to a two-headed dragon (played by Fred and Ethel). Though the dream ends before she can be eaten, this inspires considerable Black Comedy as the villagers first test her to determine whether she really is a McGillicuddy ("Aye, that ye are; none of the McGillicuddys ever could dance worth a hoot!") and compliment her that she looks "good enough to eat!" Ricky also does a hilarious singing lament about his being "In Love With A Dragon's Dinner." Since it's a parody IDK if these characters are meant to be seen as evil or anything.
- Recap.The Simpsons S 32 E 2 I Carumbus:
- After Obeseus kills the gladiator version of Rainer Wolfcastle, the Emperor has him thrown to the hippos.
- Bartigula condemns his father to be fed to the lions. Raphael comments "We're gonna need more lions."
- Rewriting Reality: In the Shining Armor Arc, General-Admiral Makarov is revealed to be an Equineoid Abomination Reality Warper, who is slowly changing reality to make himself beloved God-Emperor of the world, in the process turning into a Crapsaccharine World making its way to full Crapsack World. When Shining defeats him by feeding him to the Blank Wolf, it triggers a Cosmic Retcon that returns the world to its Lighter and Softer normal state.
- VideoGame.Kenshi: Hivers that lose their connection to their Queen have a completely free will, but are rejected by the rest of their Hive because of it, usually exiled or worse. Most of these Hivers are from the Western Hive, as the Southerners usually kill their Hiveless, who end up as King kibble. It's very rare, but sometimes you can find Southern Hivers in slave camps in the central United Cities territory, and if freed, they can join your party.
- VideoGame.Wandering Hamster: Skeppio and Rathmara's plan isn't to have Bob help them fight Jorungandling, it's to have the snake be distracted with eating him while they attack it. From what I can tell, these characters aren't villains.
Wandering Into The Beast
- Film.Moonraker (2): Bond falls into a pool when a man-eating python slithers in. After Bond kills the snake, Drax is disappointed that he wouldn't succumb to "an amusing death".
- Literature.Dread Nation: A bunch of inconvenient people just happen to wind up outside the fence/wire and get eaten by shambles.
- NightmareFuel.Care Bears: It's all Played for Laughs, but the death traps (yes, death traps) in Grams' story in the Nelvana episode "The Perils of the Pyramid" are creepy in their own right. They include being shot by a giant arrow, falling into a pit and getting buried in sand, crushed by a falling ceiling and winding up trapped in a pit with a giant cobra. Fortunately. The Professor in the story (Brave Heart Lion) manages to evade all of the traps due to the two young helpers (Hugs and Tugs) and through dumb luck (with Beastly being on the receiving end of the traps, but even he wasn't seriously hurt.) This is a trap by design, but I'm not sure I'd count it as murder since nobody is forcing anyone into it. It's similar to running into a wild cobra.
- Roleplay.The Sky Tides: Anyone who's ever gone under the cloud cover on an expedition to discover what's down there. Low context, but implies that the beast just lives there and eats people.
- YMMV.Kenshi: The King of the Southern Hive, a massive maintenance robot that protects the dome the Queen of the South lives in. As big as the Great White Gorillo, this Crimper is a horrifically strong monstrosity, worshipped by the Southern Hivers as their guardian, and the devourer of countless intruders and Hiveless.
Other
- Characters.Pico: The 3rd level of UFA revolves around feeding Magyar, a giant monster that lives in the Grand Canyon. It's rather tricky, since getting the Tractor Beam in its eyes will piss him off, as will accidentally incinerating the humans that serve as its prey. This is just feeding a monster in general
- DarthWiki.Rattledragons And Other Dangers Of Questing: Two examples, neither of them fitting the other categories.
- When Giants get too elderly to hunt, or if they're permanently disabled, this is considered the honorable way to go.
- Criminals, escaped slaves, and religious sacrifices are frequently left in the wilds to be killed by Giants.
- Machinima.Doctor Lalve: In Tiny Desk Corporation, it is explained that every so often a single Engineer is sacrificed to please a creature called the Oglagladagon. We just barely catch a glimpse of it as it swiftly yanks a poor Engineer away to his doom. It's unclear who's doing the sacrificing.
ZCE
- Characters.Arlo The Alligator Boy: Implied to be the fate of the man Ruff and Stucky interrogated.
- Characters.The Kostek War: By Veken, Tyhduo, Norvek, and Krote Page has since been cutlisted
- Film.The Valley Of Bees: Rotgier and later Armin are thrown to dogs who kill them.
- Recap.Angelo MMBC: Gabriel's tiger. It isn't innocent.
- Recap.Ink City S 1 Into The Woods: Trope Name Only
- Recap.The Blacklist S 3 E 4 The Djinn: The Djinn mostly deals with giving people their revenge fantasies, some of which are pretty horrifying.
- Theatre.Rag Dolly: After Bat's death she is returned to a canary, who is then fed to Wolf. I simply can't get a good feel of how we're supposed to feel or if Bat was murdered
- VisualNovel.Ballads At Midnight: Although this is meant to be Abigail's punishment, it is promptly subverted.
- WebOriginal.Fluffy Pony: A common occurrence, happens with dogs
, cats, snakes, black-throated monitor lizards, alligators, lions, bears, even Dinosaurs...
