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Eaten Alive

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Samwise: Lovely, big, golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish... Even you couldn't say "no" to that.
Gollum: Oh yes we could. Spoiling nice fish.... Give it to us... raw... and wr-r-r-riggling.
— The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Being eaten alive. Probably one of our oldest Primal Fears, and quite universal, given that we have long shared this planet with some rather nasty predators. This isn't quite the threat it used to be for those of us who live in parts of the world where humans have made most dangerous land animals extinct or endangered (those in the sea, not so much), but stories of monsters of all kinds (dragons, aliens, demons, zombies, etc.) remind us that we can become prey again very easily. It's probably the most common fear we have as kids.

Sometimes the victim is Swallowed Whole, but other times, they are savagely ripped apart piece by piece (this is especially common if one is overtaken by multiple creatures out to eat you).

See also Fed to the Beast, where someone is deliberately consigned to this awful fate, and Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth, for when the eater changes its mind. This is one of the more gruesome ways of pulling a Disney Death; if someone sees an animal with some clothing in its mouth (especially clothing stained with blood), he isn't likely to wonder about the lack of a body.

Super-Trope of Devoured by the Horde, where a character is eaten alive by multiple parties. Compare and contrast Stewed Alive, which is usually Played for Laughs and involves Black Comedy Cannibalism. When done pragmatically, you have Eating the Enemy. Sometimes if you are eaten, you don't have to worry about being digested, because Getting Eaten Is Harmless.

If you were looking for the film Eaten Alive by Tobe Hooper, you'll want this page.

A No Recent Examples rule applies to Real Life examples of this trope. Real life examples shouldn't be added until 150 years after the death.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 
    Advertising 
  • This happens to the Cinnamon Toast Crunch squares in their commercials and in other marketing spaces like cereal boxes.
  • A Fruit Roll-Up and Fruit By the Foot get eaten by a photo booth.
  • This trope or the fear of this trope is a core theme of M&M's marketing. Justified, since the main characters are large chocolate candies. For example, the 2013 Super Bowl commercial called "Love Ballad" had actress Naya Rivera begin to lick the back of the Red M&M, then her girlfriends join Naya in eating him — "It hurts but I kinda like it!"

    Anime & Manga 
  • Attack on Titan:
    • If you are a human who comes into contact with a Titan, chances are this is going to be how you die. They don't need to eat you to survive, but that won't stop them from doing it. Then there's the power of the Nine Titans, which is passed on when the current host is eaten by another Titan. Since the power comes with a 13 year time limit, eventually the owner will have to submit to being eaten so someone can inherit their powers.
    • Faye Yeager, Grisha's younger sister, was fed to dogs by a military officer after she and her brother broke the law. The person responsible said it was a good character-building exercise for his sons. She was 8.
  • Ayakashi Triangle: Sosuke's Engulfing Shadow is a giant mouth that can eat away someone's Life Energy in an instant, which for ayakashi is also their bodies. At one point, Suzu deliberately feeds him her omokage, and she feels the pain of it being chewed apart and swallowed.
  • Berserk:
  • Bio-Meat: Nectar: The eponymous Bio-Meat are bred to eat anything, and they do.
  • Blood-C:
    • Happens to Nene and Nono. It's subverted though, as they turn out to be alive, and their following real deaths are very different.
    • In fact, this happens more often than not. For example, one of the Elder Bairns chomps on a struggling civilian as the group destroys Saya's hometown. The only exceptions are the bakery man from episode 3, who is torn to pieces before being eaten, the fishermen of episode 4 and the policeman from episode 7, who are killed but not eaten, and a few of Saya's classmates, who are killed before being eaten.
  • The reason Yanagi is a ghost in Blood Lad is because she was eaten by a Man-Eating Plant in the first chapter.
  • Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.: Maple will often get swallowed whole by monsters. As her defense is to high this doesn't harm her and she starts eating the monsters from the inside. This happened so much that the devs stopped giving the monsters stomachs, causing her to get caught in the mouths. She still has fun with it.
  • In Cross Ange, the DRAGONs, aside from being vicious kaiju with magic potential, are carnivorous beasts who'll gladly rip apart any human being they find. In Episode 3, Red Shirt rookie Miranda Campbell is knocked out of her Paramail and ganged up on by several ravenous DRAGONs, screaming for help as she is horrifically ripped apart. Her death made the equally gory end of her fellow rookie, Coco Reeve, look tame in comparison.
  • In the Amon: Apocalypse of Devilman OVA, Amon, in an act that cements his utter monstrousness, does this to a little girl.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • Cell "eats" people by stabbing them with his tail and sucking them until nothing remains except their clothes. All the while the people being eating are fully conscious and screaming in agony. Androids 17 and 18 arguably have it worse, since they get swallowed whole by Cell.
    • Buu turns people into living candy or chocolate before eating them. Given what happens with Vegeto, the people transformed are fully aware of what is happening, but can't move and prevent themselves from being eaten alive.
  • Fate/stay night:
    • In the Heaven's Feel route, Lancer is still alive even after having his heart crushed and ripped out by True Assassin because of his Battle Continuation skill, but is grabbed by the Shadow to be eaten. In the visual novel, it rips the guy apart first. In the movie, he's simply eaten.
    • In the same route, Gilgamesh lets his guard down during his attack on Sakura and he ends up getting gobbled by the Shadow.
    • A scene exclusive to the second movie of this route sees the Shadow blanket some of Fuyuki in black, instantly devouring anyone in the area.
  • In Fushigi Yuugi, this is the fate of the Priestesses of the Four Gods. They summon the God, become one with him, and begin to be painfully eaten alive for every wish they get fulfilled. It's described as being changed from the inside out and incredibly painful, and two instances are physically shown. The first is Yui, who begins to get scaly skin and is Swallowed Whole by Seiryu after her third wish. The other is Takiko, who is shown to hunch over, gaining a claw arm and something akin to a turtle shell as her back after only one wish.
  • All the gigantic plants and bugs are out to eat you in Green Worldz, so it happens a lot. There's even a scene wherein the protagonist Akira subjects a female human hybrid villain to being eaten by another fellow gigantic human hybrid baby because the heroes are in rough shape and out of options to kill her, since she has a Healing Factor ramped up.
  • In episode 8 of Haganai Season 1, Sena is playing a Visual Novel in the clubroom. Yozora then mentions that the game would be godly if a shark suddenly appeared at the pool Sena's character is currently at. At first Sena berates her for suggesting such an awful thing, then that's exactly what happens. Sena thinks it's just a joke at first, thinking the hero will simply vanquish it. Then the shark eats her character, and she suffers from a Sudden Downer Ending. Even Yozora is shocked at the random twist in the game before recollecting herself to call it a good game, while Sena angrily snaps the disc in half.
  • In Hekikai No Aion, this happened to Shimon, the Parental Substitute of the protagonist. He was eaten alive by the mermaids.
  • Happens a lot in Hellsing.
    • Special mention goes to Luke Valentine, who gets both of his legs blown off and becomes "dog food" after Alucard goes One-Winged Angel.
    • In the TV series, Incognito eats Helena because he sees her as a threat.
    • Officer Heer gets eaten alive by Nazi vampires during Millennium's declaration of war on the Hellsing and Iscariot Organizations.
  • The BETA in Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse (and the games it's based upon) exist solely for this trope. By the time the main story begins, the BETA have devoured their way across Eurasia.
  • Naruto: The title character gets eaten by a giant snake while in the Forest of Death during the Chunin Exams. He escapes by creating so many shadow clones from within the snake that it explodes.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • Asuka dies horribly at the hands of the Mass-Production EVAs, who devour her EVA (with which she is symbiotically synced), in End of Evangelion. And poor Shinji just has to come across what's left.
    • A straighter example exists in Rebuild of Evangelion: During the original conflict between the EVAs and Zeruel in Evangelion, Zeruel is eventually defeated when EVA Unit 01 gorges itself on his exposed and prone body. In Rebuild 2.0, however, Zeruel, in one swift, supernatural movement, devours EVA Unit 00's entire torso (including the entry plug sustaining Rei Ayanami). However, Shinji unprecedentedly manages to rescue her... or so we think.
  • One Piece features a heavily implied example in a flashback: When Charlotte Linlin, aka Big Mom, was six years old, she stuffed herself on some Croquembouche on her sixth birthday, and in her feeding frenzy, seemingly ate her surrogate mother Carmel and the other children from their orphanage along with it. The event isn't shown onscreen or directly confirmed due to how dark it is, but it is very strongly implied due to the distant screams, tattered clothing littered around, one of the few witnesses' horrified reaction, and the fact that Linlin somehow acquired Carmel's Devil Fruit a couple days later without having eaten said fruit directly.
  • In the "Daughter" episode of Pet Shop of Horrors, when the mother and father feed a rabbit that looks like their daughter sweets instead of the vegetables prescribed by Count D, it results in the poor girl fatally "giving birth" to a whole litter of Killer Rabbits that descend upon the couple. The father is killed and eaten by the rabbits, and the mother only barely avoids getting eaten as well due to sweets being poison to the rabbits, resulting in all of them dying.
  • Mami Tomoe of Puella Magi Madoka Magica goes out this way courtesy of a monstered-out Witch. It is one of the most Cruel And Unusual Deaths of the entire series and considered by many note  to be one of the most shocking moments in anime of that entire decade. In the Spin-Off manga Puella Magi Oriko Magica, Mami manages to avert this fate. Too bad someone else suffers it: none other than Kazuko-sensei, who's devoured by one of Witch!Kirika's familiars in front of her students.
  • Region: The victims of the plague of starving rats swarming over Tokyo suffer this fate.
  • In Re:Zero, Subaru suffers this fate at the jaws of a horde of Killer Rabbits. He gets better, of course, but the mental trauma is so severe that he spends several minutes after his revival bashing his head against the floor, trying to overcome it.
  • In Tokyo Ghoul, this is a legitimate concern for humans and ghouls alike. Lucky victims are already dead before the ghoul begins chowing down, but some are perfectly willing to get started quickly. On multiple occasions, protagonist Kaneki rips into an opponent for a quick boost. Most famously, this happens to Yamori after Kaneki manages to escape and defeats him in battle. To add insult to injury, Kaneki mortally wounds him by devouring his kakuhou and then leaves him to be killed by others.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Jerkass and Manipulative Bastard Divine/Sayer experiences this in the Dark Signers arc. One of the Dark Signers, Misty, had become one due to the fact that her little brother had been killed by Aki/Akiza, one of the Signers and a psychic Duelist, and had subsequently acquired control of an Eldritch Abomination by the name of Earthbound God/Immortal Ccarayhua, a skyscraper-sized lizard. Yusei later finds out that Divine was the one who murdered him, and Misty learns this immediately afterwards thanks to an Engineered Public Confession. Divine, Smug Snake that he is, tells Misty that her brother was too weak to be of use to him. Then Ccarayhua devours him.
  • This is how Gourmet from YuYu Hakusho gets the powers of Toguro and Murota — but it's revealed that it's been just Toguro all along, taking control of Gourmet's body and then forcing him to kill himself before it's all him.
  • Zombie Land Saga: Sakura is eaten alive by a wild boar in episode 10.

    Comic Books 
  • The end of EC Comics, "Carrion Death!" (Shock SuspenStories #9) does a good job of capturing this Primal Fear:
    And I feel no pain as the vice-like jaws of the raw-necked vultures close upon my flesh and peel it from my bones. I cannot move... I cannot stop them...

    I can only watch in silent horror as they feed upon me. I can watch only until one of them plucks my eyeballs from my skull...
  • Fritz the Cat, Secret Agent for the C.I.A. contains what is probably the earliest depiction of vore in comics. Fritz is swallowed whole by a giant creature, along with a female Chinese agent who betrays her country because she loves Fritz. Together, the two escape out the back way.
  • Happens with nightmarish regularity to villains in Monster Allergy. It usually happens when Dark Spirits (who feed on monsters) are involved, but the Gaiga Monsters do it too, with The Nameless One being tricked into eating itself.
  • In Old Man Logan, a mutated and insane Hulk does this to Wolverine. He and his inbred clan have been eating their enemies for years. None of them had adamantium claws and a healing factor, however...
  • In Red Robin, the Council of Spiders member Sac has his spiders eat their way out of their hosts in massive groups when he's done using the unfortunate hosts as puppets.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942): In the Huntress feature, the "Earthworm" has his rats swarm and consume those who annoy him, usually starting with the face and neck.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): While on Hope's End, Natasha has nightmares about being eaten by a Scavenger Worm, and Diana ends up knocked for a loop and almost eaten by one when trying to save an elderly slave, which kicks off the Slave Revolt which leads to the Revolution that abolishes slavery in the Sangtee Empire.
    • Wonder Woman (2006): The fallen Amazon Alkyone ends up eaten by one of the megalodons in the waters off Themyscira. She later cuts her way free.
    • Wonder Woman (2011): In the New 52, Apollo and Dionysus cut open and cook parts of the First Born, and then eat them in front of him. It later becomes an early hint that these are not the real Olympians, since cannibalism was something they found abhorrent, though Dionysus's involvement muddles the issue.

    Fan Works 
  • Child of the Storm:
    • A highly disturbing example comes with Chapter 21 (several readers claimed to feel physically ill after reading it) and the introduction of the veidrdraugar a.k.a. the Hunting Dead, which moderately graphically (the use of the Gory Discretion Shot somehow makes it more horrific) depicts the horrific death of a baby and a young family. Unsurprisingly, this chapter servs as a Wham Episode and the character that instigates it, Gravemoss, is established as a Knight of Cerebus and an Omnicidal Maniac.
    • Peter Wisdom a.k.a. Regulus Black narrowly avoids this after a couple of the above mentioned monsters get the drop on him. He'd taken out one of their number, but unfortunately, they hunt in packs.
    • You know that part in Norse Mythology where Fenris bites off Tyr's hand? In this verse it happened to Sif (she managed to get it reattached, but still has the scars) after going after Fenris, seeking to test herself against him. Then, after biting it, Fenris (described as being about the size of a house) swallowed her whole. She managed to cut her way out from the inside, with one hand, retrieve her other hand, and make her way to safety, all while being covered in digestive fluids. Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth indeed.
  • In Must Love Ned Flanders, an unusual fanfiction of The Simpsons, Maude Flanders comes back as a zombie and Naomi worries that she will eat Rod and Todd.
  • The Engels the New Earth Federation fields against the Turian forces in Shanxi and afterwards in Mythos Effect will occasionally reach out for any remaining ground troops, especially wounded, and chow down. Desolas Arterius dies this way — in front of his brother.
  • The Loud House fanfiction The Nightmare House has a few cases of this almost happening in the kids' nightmares:
    • Leni gets captured by spiders who consider eating her.
    • Lily gets put in the mouth of a Blob Monster who plans to eat her.
    • Lincoln almost gets a bite taken out of him by Lana's demonic impostor.
  • In Episode 71 of Sonic X: Dark Chaos, Trinity finds a recording of Tsali torturing a little Seedrian girl to death by slowly feeding her to his Tsali Endoskeletons.
  • White Sheep (RWBY): During the Battle of Beacon, Jaune summons the Grimm dragon that was sleeping near Vale and sends him after Adam for cutting off Yang's arm. The dragon ends up eating Weiss along with Adam (he was trying to use her as a Human Shield) but Ruby makes him spit her back up. Weiss comes out covered in spit, slobber, and Adam's gore, and promptly pukes. Later, Ilia's reasoning for her Heel–Face Turn is a blunt "I don't want to be eaten by a dragon."

    Films — Animation 
  • In Alice in Wonderland, the Walrus eats all the baby oysters behind the carpenter's back.
  • A Bug's Life: This is Hopper's fate in the climax, when he is picked up by a larger bird, who promptly drops him into the wide-open beaks of its hungry progeny below.
  • Dinosaur:
    • A scout gets eaten by a Carnatourus.
    • Aladar pretends to eat one of the little lemurs.
  • In Firebreather, the two monsters that are terrorizing the city must be hungry, because they keep trying to eat all the people close to Duncan. However, Duncan stops them from eating anyone, including his "Guardian Angel", who wanted to kill him after he found what Duncan was.
  • In Hercules, the Hydra eats Hercules. It's clear he's still alive because A) he cuts off its head from inside and B) the film's only about halfway through.
  • The Ice Age franchise:
    • Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs:
      • Little Johnny the aardvark gets eaten by a baby T. rex. Both he and the victims of the example below end up fine.
      • Manny and Diego are ingested by a carnivorous plant.
    • In Ice Age: Collision Course, Gavin eats Granny, who eventually has to be coughed up.
  • The Lion King:
    • Scar comes perilously close to doing this to Zazu, before Mufasa interrupts and forces him to spit Zazu out.
    • Scar himself falls victim to an implied example at the end. While the hyenas could have quickly gone for the kill and then eaten him, considering it's understandably a Gory Discretion Shot, it's quite likely that they weren't feeling very merciful towards their ex-boss after hearing him slag them off like that...
  • In Peter Pan, the Crocodile swallows Captain Hook whole, before he re-emerges intact. During a tense moment, Hook tries to prevent being eaten by standing at the edge of the creature's mouth, holding it open with all his might. Hook is definitely a menace to Peter Pan, but in this instance he almost gets consumed by an oversized crocodile.
  • Sausage Party is an entire movie about food in a supermarket that thinks that humans choose them to bring to the "great beyond", only to find out the hard way what really happens to food.
  • The Shrek franchise:
  • The Transformers: The Movie: The fact that Unicron does this to your entire planet and every man woman and child living on it is what makes him so scary.
  • Trolls: Bergen eat the trolls this way, and it nearly happens to Creek. Being eaten alive gives him enough time to desperately plead for his life and sell out his village.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The common fate of anyone overtaken by the zombies in any Zombie Apocalypse movie, if they don't join them.
  • In 1994 Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes Returns, the third victim in the "tiger murders" is devoured alive when his car is filled with flesh-eating tiger beetles.
  • Anaconda: Rather contrary to how real anacondas behave, the one in this film seems to eat its still-living prey after constricting them for a short while. One of the victims even gets spit out and has just enough energy left to wink at the heroine.
  • China and Dirtmaster in The Barbarians are eaten alive (offscreen) by a dragon after they find the ruby MacGuffin. After the beast is slain, the former's corpse is found inside it, still holding the stone.
  • In The Bay, the victims are at first thought to have contracted a virus or bacteria, but their symptoms are in fact caused by mutant isopods eating them from the inside. A more conventional example happens to people unfortunate enough to swim close to an isopod swarm.
  • in Deep Blue Sea, Samuel L. Jackson's character is a CEO of a company studying sharks to develop medical products, giving a Rousing Speech about how they are going to escape their entrapment from a murderous great white shark that is killing the rest of their co-workers. He is, however, interrupted during his speech by said great white, who jumps out of the tank, swallows him whole, then jumps back in.
  • Dinosaur Hotel: Laura and the Games Master are eaten by the T-Rex outside the hotel at the beginning and end of the game respectively.
  • It's mentioned in Four Brothers that the only thing people fear more than being burned to death is being eaten alive.
  • From Beyond: Bubba is devoured living by the creatures from the other side. Not Swallowed Whole either, more like all the meat being stripped from his bones.
  • Dan and Joe meet this fate, courtesy of a pack of hungry wolves, in the movie Frozen.
  • Glorious: Gary is messily and slowly devoured by Ghat for interfering with his plan, who sprays the entire restroom in Gary's blood and guts. Afterwards he apologizes to Wes for making such a mess.
  • Hatched: This is the T-Rex's primary method of killing people. It does this to Christine, Luna, and a couple of soldiers.
  • The Hug: This is revealed as Aiden's fate when his hand bursts out of Pandory's mouth.
  • The Jaws series and other killer shark movies will invariably feature at least one scene where someone is eaten alive by the shark.
  • The Jurassic Park franchise:
    • In the original Jurassic Park, several humans get eaten by dinosaurs, and all of the others keep getting threatened to get eaten:
      • Donald Gennaro, after abandoning the Hammond children in a car to go hide in the bathroom when the T-Rex shows up, gets the ignominious honor of being nommed on the toilet after the T. Rex knocks down the building he's in. In the original novel, it's Dirty Coward Ed Regis, the Public Relations manager of InGen, who does this (and gets eaten).
      • The worst cases are Robert Muldoon and John Arnold, who fall prey to the raptors, of which it's explicitly stated earlier in the film that they don't bother killing their victims first, they just slice them up and start eating them alive.
      • Nedry gets eaten by the Dilophosaurus. The book describes this scene with gruesome detail, while the movie gives us a nice discretion shot.
      • Other dinosaurs get eaten as well, including a Velociraptor as the T. Rex appears Just in Time.
    • Jurassic World:
    • The above Mosasaurus examples foreshadow the fact that the Mosasaurus ends up subjecting the Indominus rex to this fate.
  • Killer Klowns from Outer Space has a particularly terrifying example. The Klowns' primary weapon is a type of ray gun that cocoons victims in cotton candy, melting them into something the Klowns drink. With a crazy straw, no less.
  • King Kong:
  • Little Shop of Horrors:
  • In Men in Black II, Serleena transforms into a lingerie model and is ambushed by a mugger. The mugger drags her behind a bush, not knowing that she's an alien◊. Serleena then proceeds to consume the mugger whole and alive. She then pukes him back out later, realizing that her disguised form doesn't have a huge belly, and walks away with the mugger's clothes.
  • The fate of anyone unfortunate enough to get caught by the scarab swarms in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. And the little pests are damn quick at it. Imhotep only escapes this fate (which is part of him being entombed alive at the beginning of the first movie) due to being cursed with immortality.
  • Lizzie of My Favorite Martian uses a dangerous piece of alien gum to turn herself into a huge alien monster to save Tim from a pair of Mooks. She tosses one into some computers, and when the second thug tries to run for it, she corners him and gulps him down whole, complete with a big burp and embarrassed giggle afterward. Yikes. Tim even provides a Bond One-Liner by proxy:
    Tim: [looking rather shocked] Did you do something with your hair?
    Alien Lizzie: Glad you noticed!
  • In one of Kristen's nightmares in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Freddy transforms himself into a giant snake creature and tries to eat her from the feet up. He lets her go when Nancy comes to the rescue.
  • Night of the Living Dorks: Konrad does this to the gym teacher when said teacher, having been found out to be gay, offers Konrad to engage in BDSM with him.
  • Nope: Jean Jacket devours Ricky, as well as his family and audience, in an uncomfortably long sequence featuring internal shots of the alien's bizarre digestive anatomy. It's implied that the screaming indicates they're alive inside of the alien for some time before being digested.
  • This happens to Hannibal Chau in Pacific Rim when he is swallowed by a baby kaiju. He survives the experience and cuts himself free.
  • The 1976 mondo film Savage Man, Savage Beast infamously contains a scene, presented as "found footage", where a Belgian tourist in South Africa named Pit Dernitz is attacked and eaten by lions in front of his terrified family.
  • Many many people in Sharknado and its sequels. Frequently pieces of people are chomped off (heads are a particular favorite), but several times people are swallowed whole. In a few cases, they even survive the experience.
  • Kevin of Sin City has his limbs sawed off by Marv. His pet wolf, who eats what remains of the people Kevin kills after he's finished with them, is attracted to the blood and eats him alive until finally his head is sawed off. And the worst part of it all? He never makes a single sound during the entire thing, much less the scream that Marv wanted from the sick cannibal farm boy who murdered Goldie.
  • Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi:
  • In This Is the End, James Franco gets his face devoured by Danny McBride and his gang of cannibals after he gets himself rejected from Heaven for his pompous attitude.
    McBride: You may not have invited me to your party, but you're the guest of honor at mine.
  • Tremors: Many an unfortunate victim is consumed by the graboids. Only Burt Gummer survives the experience in Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, thanks to being protected in an oil barrel and the creature being cut open shortly after.
  • In Troll 2, Arnold catches some goblins in the act of eating their victims, prompting this memetic exchange:
    Arnold: They're eating her. And then they're going to eat me! OH MY GOD!
  • In Willow, when the title character is attacked by a troll, he panics and casts a transformation spell on it but doesn't specify WHAT the troll should turn into. As the troll horribly mutates into.. something, he knocks the thing into the water, which very quickly grows into a massive two-headed dragon-like monster and proceeds to eat many of Sorsha's men, as well as any Troll unfortunate enough to get too close.
  • XX: In "The Box", Mary has a nightmare in which she's carved up by her family, who then devour her flesh, all while she is still alive.

    Literature 
  • Animorphs:
    • This is the fate of Elfangor, who gives the kids their morphing powers. Moments afterward, Visser Three arrives, morphs into a huge alien, and devours Elfangor alive. The screaming features in several of the Animorphs' nightmares.
      • This is a semi-regular occurrence around Visser Three, as his favorite way to execute people is to eat them. Even members of his own species are unsafe, as he'll gladly morph into a Yeerk predator called a Vanarx and drag whichever minion pissed him off out of their host's ear.
    • Taxxon encounters usually end this way for their unfortunate victims.
    • In The Android, Marco, in wolf spider morph, gets eaten by a crow. He demorphs his way out, causing the crow to explode.
    • In The Forgotten, Rachel, in grizzly bear morph, falls unconscious on top of a fire ant mound. By the time she wakes up, they're in her eyes and ears, and demorphing doesn't help because they continue to eat her regenerating flesh. When she finds a stream to wash them off, she's almost immediately set upon by a piranha shoal.
    • In In The Time of the Dinosaurs, Rachel and Tobias get eaten by a kronosaurus, which they subsequently break out of, thus killing it.
  • Benny Rose, the Cannibal King: Benny Rose doesn't just feed off his child victims, but consumes them piece by piece while they're still alive. This is how he meets his end, as the protagonists turn the tables on him and consume him piece by piece.
  • The Bible: Jonah, who refuses to visit Nineveh to do God's bidding, is thrown overboard from a ship and is eaten by a whale; and three days later, the whale coughs him up on the beach at Nineveh.
  • In Henrik Drescher's children's book The Boy Who Ate Around, the main character Mo ends up eating everyone in his town and then the whole world.
  • Bruce Coville's Book of...: A couple of the monsters do this.
    • Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters:
      • The titular character of The Beast With a Thousand Teeth attacks and devours humans alive, until it discovers it prefers pastries instead.
      • Mr. Alfmordorschen and Timor devour Timor's entire class at the end of Timor and the Furnace Troll.
    • Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters II: Implied to have happened to a couple of the protagonist's classmates in The First Excuse, who fell victim to a monster masquerading as a school bus.
  • Curly in The Call of the Wild gets her face ripped apart by dogs, then after they knock her down, they surround her and eat her alive.
  • Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: One chapter is called "Gobbled Up", in which several characters are gobbled up by the Vermicious Knids. It is not stated how they do this, as Knids do not have mouths, which makes it all the more frightening.
  • Chrysalis (RinoZ): Before eating, Crinis does make sure to disable her food with her chainsaw-like Ripping Spines, but she doesn't always bother to make sure it's completely dead. On several occasions, when she gets going, Anthony laments his panoramic vision and lack of eyelids.
  • In Das Dorf der Mörder (roughly translates to The Village of Murderers) by Elisabeth Herrmann, a man is murdered by being sedated and fed to a group of peccary pigs. It is described only from the perspective of the police and the pathologist, but that's gruesome enough because, of course, they diligently analyse the drugs used and conclude that the man was fully aware of what was happening.
  • In Dragon Bones, one of the villains is eaten alive by a basilisk. Because the main villain doesn't need him anymore.
  • Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile would like to do this to children, but all his attempts to do so are foiled by the other animals.
  • This is the entire "plot" of the Gorn novel Eat Them Alive, about people being gobbled up gruesomely by giant praying mantises.
  • Galaxy of Fear:
  • The Goosebumps franchise:
  • The original Jurassic Park novel has a scene not used in the movie, where a velociraptor starts eating a man's intestines while he's still conscious enough to try and push its head away.
  • Cato in The Hunger Games is ripped apart by dogs for twenty hours on end. By the time he gets a Mercy Kill, his skin and limbs have been gnawed off. And he was alive the whole time, on live television.
  • In Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret, Winter eats some Bickerwicks without chewing them enough. Thus, they start arguing while they digest and get her caught by the Big Bad.
  • In Marriott Edgar's humorous poem "The Lion and Albert", the eponymous lion swallows the eponymous boy Albert whole, after Albert has poked him with a stick. This, however, allows for a subversion in "The Return of Albert", in which the lion just spits him out again — much to the annoyance of his parents, who'd been planning to collect on his life insurance.
  • In Nation, First Mate Cox gets eaten by sharks. Even with an axe in his chest, too, he's still alive enough to be Slasher Smiling when they get there.
  • In Homer's The Odyssey, a Cyclops eats most of Odysseus's men.
  • In Henrik Drescher's parody of Pat the Bunny called Pat the Beastie, the two children, Paul and Judy, end up being eaten by the Beastie after they torture him too much.
  • Professor Moriarty Series: At the end of Moriarty, the professor has the man who ordered the murder of a boy raised as his son (although unknown to Moriarty, they aren't related by blood) rubbed with fox body parts and then sics several hunting dogs on the man, who is promptly mauled to death.
  • In Rebuild World, Akira and his vehicle are swallowed whole by the Overgrown Snake. Worse still, this isolates him from the outside world and prevents Alpha from supporting him. Alpha expects him to die as a result, but he manages to blast his way out with a minigun, as the snake's insides are a lot softer than its armored exterior.
  • Saintess Summons Skeletons: Alith is emergency rations, at her own insistence, when she and Sofia are trapped for months in the fallen city of Zangdar. As an undead, Alith doesn't actually need to eat, and Sofia can heal her with mana, so she's a renewable, if disturbing, food source.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Biter, a cannibalistic thug from King's Landing, eats most of his victims alive.
  • In the Starfire novels In Death Ground and The Shiva Option by David Weber and Steve White, the invading insect-like aliens eat sentient populations that they conquer. They prefer their prey alive and roughly child-sized. They even go so far as to raise sentients on ranches in a manner similar to how humans raise cattle or other livestock. Humanity's reaction to this was understandably severe. Humanity begins using anti-matter warheads on their enemy's worlds in a bid to exterminate them.
  • In any adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's The Steadfast Tin Soldier, expect to see the titular character suffer this while being carried through the sewer drains.
  • The Vorgs note  in Alastair Reynolds's Terminal World eat their victims' brains by inserting probosces through the nose and drinking. The first time the protagonist witnesses this, he reflects that at least the victim will die once the brain is pierced — then he remembers that lobotomies used to be performed in a similar manner. A moment later he sees that the victim is still conscious.
  • In Titus Groan, Titus's father Sepulchrave is eaten alive by a flock of owls. Voluntarily, because he's batshit insane and suicidal.
  • This is implied to be the fate of Madeline Raith in Turn Coat. Her cousin Lara drains her of life energy, as is standard for the White Court, but also starts tearing at her flesh. Harry flees before he can see what happens next, but it's implied that Lara didn't stop at eating her life force.
  • Happens in the very first chapter of Twig. The Mad Scientist the Lambs are after is fed to and eaten feet first by his own creation.
  • In The Vampire Chronicles, Mekare decapitates Akasha, the Mother of all vampires, whose heart or brain she and Maharet believe contains the spirit that animates all vampires. Were that spirit to die, so would her spiritual descendants. Luckily for them (but probably not for her), Akasha's superpowers keep her alive long enough for the twins to eat the relevant body parts, making one of them (apparently Mekare) the new queen of the damned.
  • Lampshaded at the beginning of The War Against the Chtorr series. The protagonist can't understand why it was necessary to shoot dead a little girl to stop her from being killed by the Chtorran worms. He's shown the first pictures taken of a Chtorran feeding, which clearly show the arterial blood spray from the victim as he's torn apart.
  • Words of Radiance (second book of The Stormlight Archive): Shallan and Kaladin, working together, manage to kill a chasmfiend. The fight ends with Kaladin in the beast's mouth, since that was the only way he could stab it in the brain.
    Shallan: It was beautiful.
    Kaladin: It would be more beautiful if it hadn't tried to eat me.
    Shallan: From my perspective, it didn't try, it succeeded.
    Kaladin: Nonsense. It didn't manage to swallow me. Doesn't count.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 1000 Ways to Die naturally features a few deaths involving this. To name a few examples:
    • A hippie who chains himself to a tree gets eaten by a bear.
    • A guy gathers semen from a pig, and it returns the favor by eating him.
  • Animorphs: In the first episode, Visser 3 morphs into something huge and eats Elfangor alive. However, it's in silhouette and the shot cuts away the moment it happens.
  • Batman (1966): Robin gets eaten by a giant clam and continues to wiggle around in it in the resolution to the cliffhanger.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: This happens a lot. One of the most nightmarish examples is Gnarl, who paralyses his victims and then eats their skin, one long strip at a time, while they're still conscious.
  • Charmed (1998): The Charmed ones are living through fairy tales due to the balance being destroyed, and the big bad wolf eats their grandma and Piper. It ends badly for the wolf.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "Love & Monsters" has a variation of this. The Absorbaloff doesn't eat his victims so much as he... well, absorbs them. It's treated similarly, though.
    • "The End of Time": The Master's resurrection goes wrong thanks to Lucy's meddling, leaving him with — among other things — an insatiable hunger. Throughout Part 1, he eats various humans by leaping at them with his mouth wide open and devouring them so thoroughly, he only leaves a skeleton behind.
      The Master: DINNERTIIIIIME!!!
    • "The Beast Below": The Star Whale is regularly fed humans, which it swallows whole. This nearly happens to the Doctor and Amy as well, though they manage to avoid this because the Doctor does something with the sonic screwdriver to make it vomit.
      The Doctor: [to Amy] Nothing broken, there's no sign of concussion... and yes, you are covered in sick.
  • The Discovery Channel documentary Eaten Alive claimed that this would happen to Paul Rosolie, who would get Swallowed Whole by a green anaconda wearing a special suit for protection. Even before the special came out, many people expressed skepticism, and much to everyone's disappointment, Rosolie wasn't eaten by the anaconda. He stopped because the snake started to crush him before swallowing... which is exactly how large snakes hunt.
  • Goosebumps: Much like in the original book, Adam gets eaten by the titular blob in "The Blob That Ate Everyone".
  • Game of Thrones: After being defeated and captured, Ramsay Bolton is fed alive to his own hungry dogs.
  • House of the Dragon:
    • True to his name, the Myrish terror of the Stepstones, prince-admiral of the Triarchy, Craghas Drahar "the Crabfeeder" captures the seafaring vessels he comes by and nails their sailors on the driftwoods, to be feasted upon by particularly-carnivorous crabs. People subjected to this, understandably, die screaming.
    • In the season 1 finale, the gigantic dragon Vhagar chomps both Prince Lucerys Velaryon and his dragon Arrax in a single bite.
  • Kamen Rider Ryuki: Masashi Sudou/Kamen Rider Scissors meets his end in this way when he is betrayed by his Contract Monster, Volcancer. Considering that this is a Sunday-morning TV show, it's easily one of the most traumatizing deaths in the entire Kamen Rider franchise.
  • There are a few examples of these in the ''Power Rangers' franchise:
    • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers:
      • In "Power Ranger Punks", Finster slips Kimberly and Billy a potion that makes them misbehave, and thanks to them, the others all get eaten by an overgrown frog. Fortunately, Kimberly and Billy snap out of it and save the others (but before that, Billy gets eaten alive first after figuring out their weakness).
      • "Welcome to Venus Island": The Rangers fight a Venus flytrap monster who opens up its chest and fires a beam at four of them, pulling them into its stomach. The consumed Rangers fight their way out with some help from Trini and Tommy.
    • Happens to Darkonda in the finale of Power Rangers in Space, after hitting Dark Specter with planter-buster missiles, he swings around and prepares to target the Dark Fortress (taking out Astronema and Ecliptor in one blow)...before Dark Specter suddenly appears and swallows Darkona's Velocifighter, right before Specter's body goes kaboom.
    • In the Power Rangers Mystic Force episode "Hard Heads", four of the Rangers battle the monster Serpentina, who transforms into a giant snake and devours all of them. The remaining two Rangers, Nick and Vida, are later able to free them.
  • Space: 1999: One story features a monster infesting a spaceship that can take control of its victims and force them to walk into its maw. A few moments later it spits out their remains, having apparently digested the rest.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: In "Basics, Part 2", Hogan is killed at the mouth of a cave where a giant serpent lives in a lightning-quick discretion shot. Later, more of the Voyager crew are attempting to sneak across a cavern where the serpent sleeps in a pit. It doesn't work — a nameless crewman slips, awakes the beast, and gets Swallowed Whole just like Hogan.
  • Happens to Battobas in the next-to-last episode of Seijuu Sentai Gingaman after managing to lure the Gingamen to be ambushed by the Earth Demon Beast...only for said beast to end up eating him; his last words are even calling the monster dumb for doing this.
  • The Walking Dead: Believe it or not, this happens more often than not in this television series about reanimated corpses. Quite shocking, actually. The zombies will actually try to eat people in this show. In fact, the much prefer to eat people alive rather than dead, but they will eat freshly killed corpses. Subverted in that case. A very notable example would be when Alicia Witt's character gets her face eaten off by a singular zombie. Not a horde, just one zombie.
  • Wizards of Waverly Place: A jealous Mason eats Dean and Max shrinks him down to mini wheat size.

    Music 

  • "Eaten Alive" by Diana Ross (covered by Michael Jackson), although probably meant more symbolic. That said, the original video — which shows the protagonist stranded on an island populated with beast-people reminiscent of Dr. Moreau's creations and following a Diana who progressively turns more and more into a great cat — certainly heavily implies the literal version towards the end.

    Music Videos 
  • In the video for Lit's "Miserable", the band members are playing all over the body of a gigantic Pamela Anderson in a white bikini. At first things seem to be fine, until one of the guitarists who were standing on her lips falls into her mouth and she eats him. Pamela then proceeds to chase after all the other band members and one by one each of them gets devoured by her. Some people speculate that this was supposed to mean that she's a "man-eater".
  • The video for "Me Olvide Ti" by Los Retrovisores features a brunette lady suddenly turning into a giantess a la Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. She stomps around a city before finding the band and chasing after them. Eventually she corners them on the top floor of an apartment building and reaches inside. She gets a hold of the lead singer and drags him out of the window before giving him a quick look, lowering him into her mouth, chewing him up and swallowing him.

    Podcasts 
  • Subverted in The Adventure Zone: Balance. Taako's Umbra Staff is a magical umbrella which eats the magical essence of a defeated magician and gives him power. Normally, wizards keep their magical essence in their wands, so the umbrella eats that... but Edward's a lich, meaning that his soul and his magical essence are the same thing. When Tres Horny Boys manage to force him out of his body, the Umbra Staff immediately eats him whole and spits out a few fragments. However, it later turns out that the Umbra Staff doesn't actually consume liches but rather imprisons them. Unfortunately for Edward, the Staff already has an occupant: Taako's twin sister Lup, who promptly murders Edward for what he put her brother through.
  • In the Alice Isn't Dead episode "Omelet", hapless trucker Earl suffers this fate as a lesson in Humanoid Abomination the Thistle Man's sense of humor. He bites off Earl's flesh at the site of an artery, and keeps digging more out from the wound to eat, in a rote, automatic manner as poor Earl bleeds out. Making matters worse is the series's Character Narrator's realization that there's no element of biological necessity in this. The Thistle Man is simply showing off for her, as a "demonstration".
  • Riley from Less is Morgue has a nasty habit of doing this to people, on account of their huge appetite and impulsive nature. They eat Jon the Pizza Man alive in "Pizza Time", and Brains Vincent in "Be Our Guest".

    Puppet Shows 

    Roleplay 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons has plenty of monsters with the Swallow Whole ability, as well as swarms of creatures that attack by taking countless little bites out of their prey, but one creature takes this trope to a horrifying extreme. The Vaath is a insect/lizard hybrid monster from the Lower Planes, with a bite that injects a paralyzing venom into its prey. Then the Vaath uses its maw-tipped feeding tendril to burrow into its helpless victim's body, and the fiendish predator is sadistic enough to make sure its prey is alive when the Vaath begins to consume its organs. Worse, the Vaath is telepathic, and not only broadcasts its enjoyment of the meal to anything in range, but also the exact flavor and texture of the victim's innards. And no one, not even the most vile of souls from a cannibalistic culture, is immune to the horror of learning what one's own intestines taste like.
  • RuneQuest has probably one of the strangest and most metaphysical examples of the trope in history. In the mythology of Glorantha Kajabor, the God of Entropy had been killed and was threatening to destroy the dead gods who were defending Hell from his onslaught, when the benevolent spider goddess Arachne Solara ate him alive and soon after gave birth to Time.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • This trope is one of the very few things Orks genuinely fear. During the Third War for Armageddon, seeing the Flesh Tearers Space Marines fall prey to their bloodlust and start devouring their enemies had the almost unprecedented effect of shattering the Orks' morale so thoroughly that they fled the battlefield.
    • The last phase of a Tyranid invasion involves the hive fleet sending out trillions upon trillions of Ripper swarms; tiny worm-like tyranid lifeforms whose only purpose is to eat biomatter so that it may be consumed by the fleet. Most imperial guardsmen are known to commit suicide if they live to this stage, as the Rippers will happily devour anyone and anything even if they're still alive. Worse still, they'll take their time but will immobilize their foes; leaving you to agonize at their jaws while being completely unable to do anything about it. The Rippers themselves are then eaten alive in-turn when they toss themselves into the digestion pools, which melts them down into a meat slurry to be funneled up to the hive ships to produce more tyranid bioforms and continue the cycle.
    • Some Tyranid weapons weaponize this. The basic fleshborer's name is not a euphanism; it fires a tiny black maggot that finds any crack in your armor or soft cloth and digs in straight through you. The entire process lasts about a few seconds but it's devastating enough to be comparable to a bolter round (which is a rocket-propelled grenade) in lethality. The aptly named Devourer does something similar (and resembles an infested, swollen penis head to boot). At the far end of the spectrum, there's the Red Terror and Mawloc, who just straight up devour anyone unlucky enough to not get out of their way (the Mawloc is suspected to be made from the Red Terror, who might be a "prototype").

    Video Games 
  • At the end of Anatomy, the basement that the player is in slowly grows a mouth with teeth, as the tape recorder describes how they had interfered with the house and will be devoured.
  • The final boss of Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django has an attack where he grabs you in his mouth and chews, steadily depleting your health. If you don't quickly escape, however, he'll soon swallow, resulting in an instant Game Over regardless of your remaining health.
  • Bravely Default: This is Airy the Fairy's fate near the end of the game: After she fails to kill the party one last time, Ouroboros decides to snack on her. You fortunately don't get to see it, but you do get to hear nasty crunching sounds.
  • In Catherine, this is how Steve Delhomme meets his end in the nightmares, being eaten by Shadow of Vincent.
  • Choo-Choo Charles: How Charles disposes of most of his victims. Most notably, during the climax, Warren Charles III is devoured by Charles while chasing after the protagonist.
  • Dark Souls has several enemies that can do this to you. Most horrifically is the Gaping Dragon.
  • This happens to almost every slain enemy in Digital Devil Saga. What did you think fueled those nifty demon powers? However, there is a little nuance to it. Any slain enemy in battle is eaten by the party afterward, getting points toward unlocking new abilities. However, there are special skills that can be used in battle which are Hunt type attacks that, if they succeed in doing enough damage to kill an enemy, will result in that enemy being consumed directly in one hit while the fight is still going on, for a bonus amount of Atma points. This does carry a risk though that the character doing the consuming develops a stomach ache ailment for a time, but having the passive skill Iron Stomach prevents these aches from developing in the first place.
  • In Digimon Survive, this is the fate of Shuuji in all but the Truthful route. After abusing Lopmon physically, the poor creature got a dark evolution that turned him into an uncontrolable monster that turns on him and eats him.
  • Dino Crisis:
    • This'll happen to either of the main characters in Dino Crisis 2 if they're caught stunned on the ground by the Giganotosaurus during their fight with it. It picks them up and chows down on them, with the game flashing to Game Over on the first bone-crushing bite.
    • Same for the T-Rex in the first game.
  • Dishonored: Rat hordes are like piranha with legs — they will quickly swarm towards the nearest human and bite a muggle to death in five seconds, followed by complete consumption of the corpse in twenty-five. You can summon a rat horde.
  • The Killer Rabbit of Dragon's Crown will constantly attempt to eat your party throughout its battle. It even has an attack where it chomps off a large chunk of its targets' heads as a One-Hit Kill when it Turns Red. The Treasure Art for killing it solo naturally shows a group of knights getting devoured by a horde of Killer Rabbits.
  • In the Don Bluth animated games Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, and Space Ace, numerous death scenes show the player character — Dirk or Ace — either being eaten alive or the eater preparing to do so.
  • Fear the Dark Unknown: If Chloe cannot escape the grip of the undead Grandmother, she will be eaten while visibly wriggling to get free.
  • In ...Iru!, a giant, formless purple monster is summoned in the hallway that eats Nakamura.
  • The Troodons in Jurassic Park: The Game inject you with paralyzing venom, drag you back to their nest, and lay their eggs inside you. The venom keeps you alive, unable to move or speak as you incubate the babies, which eat you alive after hatching.
  • Keep Out: Mr. M can be eaten by the fish in the sewer.
  • In Kenshi, if your character is knocked out by Fogmen or cannibals, they will often carry you to a post or cage, and at some point will start to eat you one limb at a time if you fail to escape in time. Some creatures, such as Beak Things, will also start devouring you if they defeat you.
  • In Kindergarten 2, Lily and Billy are hiding out beneath their new school to investigate its dark secrets. In the mission "Breaking Sad", you need to collect a hair sample from Billy, but he refuses to give you one. When you come back later to try again, you find Billy's decapitated corpse and one of the principal's mutant monsters eating a squirming Lily's head.
  • In LEGO Star Wars II and The Complete Saga, you can call down a LEGO Gammorean guard, which gets eaten by the LEGO Rancor after it chases the guard for a little.
  • Some monsters in Monster Girl Quest! do this, typically shown if the player loses to them. It's even a form of instant death in the sequel Monster Girl Quest! Paradox RPG, where certain skills will instantly kill the target if it has certain status effects (e.g. Digestion).
  • Odin Sphere: If Cornelius fights King Gallon during Armageddon, he is swallowed off-screen and eaten by the maggots inside King Gallon's stomach, like his father King Edmund before him.
  • [PROTOTYPE]:
    • The fate of Alex Mercer's victims. Unusual in that he doesn't chew or swallow, he simply engulfs his prey in his own mass, absorbing them whole (and yes, it's painful, judging by the screaming). It's noted explicitly that he paralyses first, breaking their necks or spines, but death is an optional and undesirable extra.
    • The larger infected sometimes do it as well; the introduction of the Hunters features one snapping up and chowing down on a screaming Marine.
  • Played for Laughs and combined with Mood Whiplash in Puyo Puyo Fever 2, where the otherwise happy farewell between Sig and the Ocean Prince is interrupted when the latter character is suddenly eaten whole by a whale. Sig's only reaction is an emotionless "oops".
  • Numerous monsters in the Resident Evil series can do this to the player.
  • In Sacrifice Girl: The Curse of Demon Snake, one of the ways that you can die is by being eaten by one of the titular demon snakes.
  • In SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab, SpongeBob gets eaten by a giant Alaskan Bullworm, in which he spends the entire chapter building a biplane along with Old Man Jenkins so he can escape.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • In the Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II expansion Mysteries of the Sith, Mara is stripped of her weapons and fed to a Rancor, which will eat her as a One-Hit Kill if she gets too close.
    • In Star Wars: Battlefront, you can go to Jabba's Palace, and if you approach the great Hutt, you get sent down the infamous trapdoor to the Rancor. If you get too close, it will pick you up and eat you.
    • In Star Wars: Battlefront II, you can get eaten by a Rancor as well.
    • In story mode of The Force Unleashed, Shaak Ti willingly throws herself in the Sarlaac pit of Felucia. In two player mode you can play on Felucia and throw your opponent into that same pit.
    • The Force Unleashed II:
      • In story mode, a Rancor gets eaten by a beast bigger than it, and the evil general guy gets eaten by it as well.
      • In two player mode, you can play in the arena, and if you stand in the middle for too long, the beast eats your character.
  • Failing the quick time event against the T-Rex in Tomb Raider: Anniversary results in Lara being flung up into the air by the dinosaur and then being swallowed alive on the way down.
  • In the white chamber, one of the endings involves the main character being either eaten alive or torn to pieces by what we assume are either vengeful spirits or just zombies. Either way, it's pretty gruesome.
  • Zombie Madness: If the zombies catch a family member, they eat them.
  • In Zoo Tycoon (if you have the Marine Mania or Dinosaur Digs expansion pack), you can put guests in with the sharks or the T-Rexes, where they will be eaten. Sometimes the T-Rexes escape and eat guests as well, but only the male guests. Also, if dinosaurs or any big cat of any kind escape, they eat their zookeepers and scientists.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • AstroLOLogy: In "Pet Peeves", after Virgo's attempts to discipline Sagittarius' pet alligator prove fruitless, it simply picks her up and eats her before going home to its owner. However, Virgo is then able to manipulate it from within its stomach to force it to do chores and later spit her out.
  • Hanazuki: Full of Treasures: The Chicken plant in "What's a Chicken Plant?" seems to enjoy live prey, as it eats Lime Green Hemka, Yellow Hemka, and Blue Hemka. Hanazuki also forces her way in to save Yellow.
  • On The Edge: The Torture episodes feature methods involving animals devouring the victims.
    • The episode The Boats features Scaphism, a Persian method of execution involving placing the victim in an enclosed boat coated with milk and honey and leaving them in a body of water, where insects and maggots eat them alive. Shigeo uses this to punish a marriage fraudster.
    • The opening of Breaking Wheel has Shigeo punishing a criminal by caging him in a hole full of rats. In the main plot of the episode, he also threw the delinquent into the hole, since he got bored of just watching him suffer in the breaking wheel.
    • The episode Feeding to Vultures involves Shigeo shoving a criminal, who kidnapped and raped a model, inside a maggot-filled donkey carcass, and leaving him alone inside a cage full of vultures. This torture started in ancient Greece and was used against heretics.
    • The episode Feeding to Army Ants has Shigeo covering a criminal's body in honey and release army ants on him, which proceed to feast on the bastard until he dies. This torture started in South America, specifically in the Amazon rainforest.
    • The episode Torture Sommelier vs Dagger-weilding Yakuza has the titular Kagawa being fed to hungry dogs by Shigeo and Rukawa for raping and killing the client's daughter. This torture is mostly used in Mexican cartels, and the ending narration states that other countries used dogs as a method of torture as well.
  • In RWBY:
    • Torchwick suffers this at the hands of a Griffon Grimm.
    • This is the Curious Cat's ultimate fate at the teeth of a pack of Jabberwalkers. Due to the unique abilities of Jabberwalkers, he also suffers Cessation of Existence when he would normally ascend.

    Web Comics 
  • Bronze Skin Inc.: This is the fate of Messy Miles. After spending most of chapter 5 trying to trespass on Bronze Skin Inc. property in order to pester the giantess Charlotte, she plucks him off of her buttock and devours him.
  • Off-White: Askr, the human white spirit, was eaten alive by a two-headed, dragon-like creature. This has more significance than most examples, because her death might lead to the extinction of the entire human species.
  • The Petri Dish has a Running Gag of botched experiments swallowing people.
  • Schlock Mercenary: This trope is the reason why giving Sergeant Schlock a BFG actually counts as an act of mercy; he'll just swallow armed goons whole and melt them down into mass for himself without a care in the world if you try to make him go unarmed.
  • Sleepless Domain: In Chapter 8, Heartful Punch is caught off-guard by a monster, and it proceeds to pull her into its mouth as Undine looks on in horror. In the end, this is very narrowly averted, but only thanks to a massive Heroic Second Wind on Undine's part.
  • Unsounded: Duane is usually pretty good about restraining himself before he loses control and consciousness at night, but one night when Sette moved him after he started losing control Turas entered the room to an unrestrained hungry zombie and was messily eaten alive. Duane was grossed out in the morning when he saw the ruined mess of a man and had to pry open his bandages to dump Turas' innards out.

    Web Original 
  • Hamster's Paradise: This is the modus operandi of the maniacal ripperoo, a theropod-like carnivorous rodent. They lack the features of other predators that allow them to kill their prey quickly so they instead developed hooked claws and piercing teeth to tear their victims apart and eat them while their still living. This lead them to become naturally sadistic as the agonized screams of other animals meant food, leading to this sadistic behavior being reinforced.
  • Help Not Wanted has Ogrell Syn'Gorrsh getting torn in half and devoured by two wyverns. Convenient, given that he was a cannibalistic Serial Killer.
  • Since the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park is a Womb Level and much of its anatomy consists of functional digestive organs, this is a standing environmental hazard for tourists and explorers. Specialized equipment is required to counteract digestive juices during "back-country" hikes, and much of the man-made architecture in the park is specifically designed to prevent peristalsis (i.e. swallowing). Most of the victims of the 2007 Incident met this fate; in particular, an elevator of people trying to escape got drenched in gastric acid, and by the time rescue crews reached it the occupants were dead or mortally injured from being partially digested.
  • Whateley Universe:
    • Part of the backstory of Helen Goodkind, mother of Phase. As a small child, she was kidnapped by two mutants. One ate her sister alive in front of Helen, piece by piece. Helen spent years in an institution afterward, and now hates and fears mutants.
    • This was the fate of several of Carmilla's early victims, and she still needs live food from the school cafeteria. More disturbingly, a later story shows that it's not over for at least the former yet — since Carmilla is a fledgling demonic eldritch abomination, they've ended up in their own special kind of hell whose inhabitants still like to prey on each other...

    Web Videos 
  • Don't Hug Me I'm Scared naturally features this, being a Gross-Out Show masquerading behind the presentation of a kids show. Specifically, the fifth episode has the Duck Guy awaken to see his body cut open and his innards slowly pulled out and devoured by a can monster, giggling as he eats. Duck Guy can only gape and watch in horror as he's slowly eaten alive. It is also worth mentioning that there is a barely-visible IV drip, implying that he is being kept alive for as long as possible. Which is just messed up.
  • Hell's Paradise:
    • An unnamed man in the first episode gets his guts ripped out by a zombie.
    • Quinton is torn apart and eaten by zombies after trying to abandon the group.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventures from the Book of Virtues shows the story of Odysseus and the cat that ate too much and ate all his neighbors.
  • In one episode of Amimaria, the gang travels back in time to when frogs were so big they could swallow a gorilla whole. They then encounter a gaggle of gigantic frogs who subsequently eat them. Fortunately Gabooboo gather enough courage to fight the frogs and force them to spit them out Just in Time.
  • Arthur does this a lot:
    • Buster writes a comic making fun of Francine in which she's a giant slime the eats Mr. Ratburn and Bionic Bunny. Later, Buster's character in the story eats the slime.
    • In one fantasy, Arthur imagines that D.W. is gigantic and looking for her breakfast. When everyone runs away, she tells them to "Come back here! I'm hungry!" After chasing them for a little, she reaches down to the camera and it fades to black, suggesting that she picked someone up and was about to eat them.
    • D.W. tells Arthur and Buster the story of OD.W.eus (Odysseus), and during one part of it, the Cyclops (Buster) eats Tommy and Timmy.
    • In an episode where the gang is dared to skip school, Arthur and Buster have a dream that they get eaten by a giant clam and get digested.
    • In "Rhyme For Your Life", Dr. Rhyminstein gets eaten by the Purple Orange.
  • In one Batman: The Animated Series episode, Robin meets a girl, "Annie", running from Clayface, who eats her later on in the episode. This, of course, ticks Robin off, and he tries to kill Clayface when he says that he can't bring her back. However, this example has a bit of a twist, as the girl was a part of Clayface in the first place. Emerging weakened from his most recent defeat, he had shaped part of himself into the semblance of a young girl, detached "her", and sent her out to scout the area to make sure it was safe for him to emerge. Because of their shared weakness, "Annie" promptly got amnesia, forgetting not only "her" mission but "her" identity. Clayface doesn't so much eat "her" as re-integrate a rogue portion of himself. He wants the knowledge "Annie" gained while apart from the larger Clayface, so her memories survive.
  • In Camp Lazlo, the Lardadoodle in "The Big Weigh In" will eat anything within reach, including Lazlo and Lumpus.
  • In Chuck's Choice, Sal eats Norm offscreen in "How To Restrain Your Dragon".
  • One of the most chilling scenes in Code Lyoko is the scene in "Marabounta" where Yumi is devoured by the out-of-control Marabounta. Fortunately, it's only her Lyoko Avatar (her true self survives, just like is often the case for anyone who "dies" on Lyoko), but that doesn't make the scene or the episode in general any less frightening (especially since it's after Aelita, who, at the time, can't survive if it happens to her).
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog:
    • In one episode, Eustace gets eaten by a dragon that wasn't meant to eat him, in which later the water dragon lets him out.
    • In another episode, a real man-eating dragon eats Eustace without any remorse.
  • Cracké has this in spades, with the crocodile and a carnivorous plant loving to eat Ed. While Ed often gets torn apart, he can seemingly survive anything and put himself back together.
  • In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Micro Ducks From Outer Space", a shrunken Scrooge falls into Gyro's glass and is nearly drunk.
  • In Extreme Ghostbusters, the team are hunting down a bunch of vampire clowns who eat people whole, leaving only their clothes, with Roland as one of their victims. Fortunately, they are able to save him when they beat the master clown.
  • The Fairly OddParents!: Happens to Cosmo and Wanda in "Tiny Timmy!"; thankfully, they go on their own "Fantastic Voyage" Plot like Timmy does.
    • In "So Totally Spaced Out", this is how the Gigglepies are defeated; they are made of manure, which is considered a rare delicacy on Yugopotamia, so Timmy wishes the Yugopotamians had spoons, forks, bibs, and empty stomachs, so they can eat all the Gigglepies.
  • A very cruel example of this happens in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends when Terrance imagines a living (and very loving) pizza slice, then proceeds to eat it as it screams in agony.
  • In G.I. Joe: Renegades, Cobra Commander's new pet eats a scientist that lies to the commander's face.
  • Gravity Falls:
    • In "The Inconveniencing", after Lee is trapped on the cover of a cereal box by the ghosts at the Dusk 2 Dawn, the mascot threatens him with a cereal spoon and quips, "I'm bonkers for eating you alive!" We then cut to the horrified reactions of the other kids as Lee lets out a scream.
    • In "Dipper vs. Manliness", the leader of the Manotaurs is introduced, and an old Manotaur comes out. It turns out that he's a sacrifice to the real leader, who eats the tribute.
    • In "The Land Before Swine", Old Man McGucket gets swallowed whole by a baby pterodactyl. He's seen trying to crawl out of its mouth later, and at the end it's all but stated he ate his way out of the beast's belly.
  • Hercules: The Animated Series: There are several instances of monsters trying to eat someone alive. In the case of Hercules, the hero-in-training is eaten and somehow escapes. Phantasos ate Hercules as a three-headed Hydra and Typhon, though they were in dreams.
    Hercules: [in his nightmare of being eaten by the Hydra] Help. Can't...get out. Stuck in...pancreas!
  • The Tex Avery MGM Cartoon Jerky Turkey ends with Joe the Bear (owner of Joe's Diner) eating both the pilgrim and the turkey. Inside the bear's stomach, the two pissed antagonists hold up a sign saying "Don't Eat At Joe's!"
  • Jonny Quest:
    • The murderous treasure hunters Perkins and Montoya are eaten by crocodiles after being knocked off of their boat in a firefight with Race.
    • An evil pygmy shaman has one of his tribesmen staked out to be eaten by a panther, possibly as a Human Sacrifice, in "A Small Matter of Pygmies." — fortunately, the Quest family stumbles across the scene and Race shoots the panther before it can kill the man.
    • Dr. Ashida's henchman Sumi throws him to his own voracious giant carnivorous lizards after Ashida abuses Sumi too much at the end of "Dragons of Ashida".
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic features this as a very common threat, but usually not something that actually happens.
    • Fridge Horror ensues when thinking about dragons, and the fact there seems to be nothing they won't eat. Ponykind seems to be well aware of this. For added horror, they seem quite alright with cannibalism, which might explain why there's so few dragons despite them having large clutches of eggs regularly.
    • In "Luna Eclipsed", this is what Nightmare Moon is said to do according to legend if not appeased on Nightmare Night. However, she's returned to her normal form at the time and thus it's all just pretend scares.
    • A notable near-swallow is a bat getting in the mouth of a Quarray Eel in "May the Best Pet Win".
    • A chimera tries to eat Apple Bloom in "Somepony to Watch over Me", despite her offering it a bunch of pies, because, according to it, it prefers to eat "filly fondue".
    • An exception is Trixie's "Manticore Mouth Dive" trick from "No Second Prances", a magic trick where she shoots herself into the mouth of a hungry manticore, only to appear unharmed in a box nearby with the help of a teleportation spell.
    • The Quarray Eels strike again, with Maud seemingly unaware of the danger while in one's mouth in "Rock Solid Friendship".
    • Another exception happens in "She Talks to Angel", where a snake eats a baby elephant.
    • An oblivious Torterra-like creature nearly eats Spike when he's too close to a tree it thinks is tasty.
  • In one episode of The Powerpuff Girls (1998), the Professor invents a thing called Beebo that eats everyone because it thinks it has to.
  • Redwall: Asmodeus the adder eats Redtooth the rat.
  • Regular Show:
    • A demon-thing named Susan gets eaten by a bigger demon-thing that looks like her.
    • In the episode "Ello Gov'nor", the characters watch a movie about a taxi cab that gets possessed by its old driver and kills everyone who was involved with someone that killed him, then eats a man who was just walking his dog after running him over.
  • In one episode of Sabrina's Secret Life, Sabrina goes to a Halloween party with the Gargoyle Flu and spreads it to the rest of the guests. When Sabrina and Salem go to the magic world, they encounter a ghost that was at the party and is completely paranoid. When trying to avoid Sabrina and Salem, it bumps into a goblin that Sabrina danced with the other night. The ghost begs for forgiveness, but the goblin replies: "Forgive you?! I'm going to eat you!" The goblin grows in size and fulfills his threat. The goblin then threatens to eat Sabrina and Salem, but turns into a doll before he can.
  • The Simpsons:
    • "Treehouse of Horror II" has King Homer having a habit of eating people, which has led to a rather poor stamina. Throughout the episode he eats Mr. Smithers, Shirley Temple, and Marge's father.
    • In "Simpsons Tall Tales", Homer, in the role of Paul Bunyan, has an unfortunate tendency to accidentally swallow the people making his giant-size meals, as he never waits long enough for them to vacate the frying pan before he eats. This particular trope happens to Lenny and Groundskeeper Willie, who states that he found a way out. "It's not pretty, but it'll do."
    • "Treehouse of Horror XVII" has Homer eat some strange space goo that ends up turning him into The Blob. Much Swallowed Whole ensues.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • Plankton is eaten in several episodes. First by a reoccurring old man extra in "The Algae's Always Greener" and "Krabs à la Mode", then Miss Gristlepuss in "Banned in Bikini Bottom", then Pearl in the controversial episode "One Coarse Meal", next the Abominable Snow Mollusk in "Frozen Face-Off", then Mr. Krabs in "Plankton's Good Eye" and "The Hankering", and finally by Patrick in "King Plankton". Interestingly, out all of these episodes, six of them are related to the Krusty Krab, such as a disguising himself as a Krabby Patty on one occasion, hiding in a ketchup bottle and a soda on three occasions, while on two occasions he's mistaken for a pickle inside of the Krusty Krab, on one he's looking for the Krabby Patty formula inside of the chum, on one he's eaten twice, and finally, Pearl is Mr. Krabs's daughter. This is eventually lampshaded by Karen in a Continuity Nod to "Plankton's Good Eye".
      Karen: Hold still.
      [Karen pulls an x-ray down to reveal Plankton inside Mr. Krabs's stomach]
      Karen: This isn't the first time this has happened.
      [The x-ray shows Plankton struggling inside Mr. Krabs's stomach]
    • In "Whelk Attack", a bunch of giant sea whelks come and eat everyone in town, albeit covering everything in purple slime first before devouring.
    • In "Frozen Face-Off", Mr. Krabs reveals that he was once eaten by a huge squid-like monster, and in the end, as mentioned above, Plankton gets eaten by the monster after getting mistaken for a jellybean.
  • Sylvester eats Tweety more than once in Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird, just to catch some gratuitous violence from Grandma and having to spit him out again.
  • Just like the Sylvester example above, Tom eats Jerry several times in Tom and Jerry, though in this case Spike the bulldog is the one who makes him spit him back out.
  • In one Winx Club episode, Musa gets knocked out and eaten by a giant turtle. Fortunately, the others manage to save her.

    Real Life 
  • All too common in nature, whenever a famished predator is sufficiently formidable that it doesn't need to kill its prey to halt its struggling first. Lions, wolves, African wild dogs, cheetahs, snakes, hyenas, fish, lizards, turtles, dogs, leopards, eagles, baboons, vultures, alligators, crocodiles, bears, dholes, pelicans, and probably more have been caught doing this. Put charitably, many animals also simply lack the means to safely kill their prey before eating it, and so kill it by eating it. This is actually quite effective and can be quick, as even if an animal is swallowed whole it will likely suffocate within a few minutes of being consumed. When being eaten piece by piece, the resulting blood loss hastens death much more than waiting for it to bleed out from initial wounds might.
  • Some kea, large parrots from New Zealand, will cling to a living sheep's back and take bites out of it to access the back fat (most kea don't do this, it being unclear why some learn to do so). This does not directly kill the sheep, but it may die later from infection.
  • Sharks and piranha are famous for doing this in some situations, though with large prey sharks will usually wait for it to bleed to death or near death before feeding.
  • Most predatory insects do this, especially if their prey is another insect. Insects don't die by blood loss if they lose a limb. Go see a mantis feed, as an example. They've also been known to engage in cannibalism. Locusts feed on grass normally, which is pretty low on protein. So what do they do when they don't have enough good food? They go find a dead locust... or a living one who has just molted (and is therefore soft and weak), and they dine. For extra gruesome points, it's the young ones who do it most often in groups. It could be why they move and form such huge swarms: they move because they don't want to be eaten.
  • Uloboridae spiders, who lack venom glands but compensate for it with a particularly nasty way to kill their prey: wrapping it in silk so tightly and for so long that its exoskeleton gets crushed and broken. After that, time for the spider to inject digestive fluids into the package, let them enter into the victim's innards through the wounds caused by cocooning them so, and suck the resulting soup. Lather, rinse, repeat, and all of this taking place while the prey is potentially still alive and has not still asphyxiated.
  • Swallowing live prey is more common in nature than you might think. All amphibians and most fish swallow all their prey alive, and a good number of reptiles and birds will at least do this to small prey. And of course, there's anything that eats ants or krill/plankton, which simply gulps its prey down by the dozens, if not hundreds (except anteaters, which crush ants against the roof of their mouths before swallowing).
  • A recent hypothesis on the feeding behavior of dromaeosaurid dinosaurs (think Velociraptor) suggests that they used their sickle claws to pin down struggling medium-sized prey so that they could start eating right away. Pack-hunting species may have simply weakened the animal together and then started feeding, as the body position of the prey animals' skeletons suggest that they were in death throes as they died. Additionally, some scientists have suggested that larger theropod dinosaurs may have eaten sauropods this way.
  • Mantises eat like this, first devouring things like limbs and wings that could aid in struggling, then moving onto the rest. After that they simply munch on until they happen to hit something vital, which kills the prey (though they often do prioritize eating the head to stop further struggling). Female mantises sometimes also eat the heads of their male partners during mating (especially when being watched), but the males continue to mate despite being headless!
  • Parasitic wasps such as the tarantula hawk paralyze prey like spiders and insects before laying their eggs on the still-living victim. Once the eggs hatch, the wasp larva eats it alive from the inside out, devouring its organs in a specific order to make sure that it doesn't die before the larva is ready to form a chrysalis and become a new adult wasp.
  • Internal parasites often need to be Eaten Alive, either as eggs or after hatching, to gain access to new hosts.
  • This trope happens to plants all the time, as most herbivores don't consume the entire plant, just preferred parts of them. Some plants fight back against this trope with thorns, tough outer coatings, and toxic or indigestible substances, but fruiting plants exploit it by purposefully coating their seeds with expendable nutrient-rich tissues that seed-dispersing animals will eat.
  • Even humans do it. For example, the traditional Korean dish Sannakji is live octopus that's prepared and served either whole or cut into small pieces, with the arms still squirming due to the octopus's complex nervous system.
  • That said, there are some animals that can survive being swallowed alive. The bombardier beetle, for example, after being swallowed by a frog can cause a rather unpleasant chemical explosion inside of the frog's stomach that causes it to toss the beetle back out.
  • Battleground scavengers were part of the reason that medieval weapons were built to have spiked ends. The rules of chivalry would often say that if time permitted, you were to Mercy Kill an opponent; partly so they didn't die a slow death of their wounds, partly because whatever scavengers would be drawn to the scent of death and feed on the fallen wouldn't particularly care if the wounded fighter they ate was still alive as long as they couldn't fight back.
  • Epomis beetles feed on frogs and other amphibians in this way. They first disable their prey with a bite to the throat/underside (larvae) or pelvic region (adult beetles), then begin feeding. Sometimes they end up on the receiving end of this trope, but that doesn't mean they get digested; one observed case of a frog eating an Epomis larva resulted in the frog regurgitating it a few hours later.

 
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Sombron eats Hyacinth

After being able to move again, thanks to Sombron having Morion of Brodia being sacrificed and being turned into a Corrupted, Sombron wants more royal blood, to which he then literally eats Hyacinth after transforming into his draconic form.

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Sombron eats Hyacinth

After being able to move again, thanks to Sombron having Morion of Brodia being sacrificed and being turned into a Corrupted, Sombron wants more royal blood, to which he then literally eats Hyacinth after transforming into his draconic form.

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Main / DevourTheDragon

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Sombron eats Hy...

Boyfriend to De...

Lacey's Death

Oh My God, They...

''Hero's Duty''

A Quintessentia...

Chrissie's Last...

Hunting in the ...

Death of Alex K...

Yazneg gets Eat...

Wotchagot and H...

Nickel and Tear...

The Blob That A...

Tirsiak

Arioch and The ...

Hunter Vs. Shar...

Origami snappin...

Paper Macho Cha...

A Bug's Life

Count Yorga, Va...