Power Grid

5 Times Characters Ate Organs

by The Mary Sue Staff | 12:34 pm, April 4th, 2012

Allow Us To Explain

Are you hungry? Couldn’t you go for a nice, juicy, bodily organ right about now? Maybe raw? No? Huh. That’s weird, because everyone in this week’s power grid did just that. Some did it for fun, some for pleasure, some because they thought it would make them strong, and others, because they were just looking for a good meal. And no, these organs weren’t always of the animal variety.

While we included some non-human organ eating scenarios in our list, the majority are straight up cannibalism. One would hope that eating anything that belonged to a human would be left strictly to zombies but alas, in pop-culture, that’s just not the case. Heck, it’s not even the case in the real world. Survival scenarios have sadly resulted in cannibalism in the past but the act was also prevalent in many cultures throughout history. And yes, serial killers have done it too.

We’re going through a period of pop culture right now where zombies and flesh eating are commonplace, but there’s just something different about flesh eating and cannibalism when you make it specific to one vital body part, or remove the supernatural element from the motivation. Then you’ve just got somebody choking down a pretty specific and vital body part because they’ve got no choice.

We’ve left the real, scary cannibals at home, and are here to discuss some of the most fantastic instances of organ consumption in fiction. If you’re hungry well, you won’t be after this. Things will get very, very graphic from here on out. You have been warned.

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TAGS: A Song of Ice and Fire | Game of Thrones | Hannibal | The Sandman

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_R7GVNIKWG3S2UTHEQOMSZXT4M4 Anna B

Great list! Strangely appropriate image of the church (?) organ.

I’m reminded of when I was in law school, when there was a test question about a transaction between two people suing over the failed sale of one such musical instrument. After the test, my friends and I discussed the answer and one of them said it was an illicit transaction and therefore unenforceable. When asked why he thought it was illicit, he said it was because it was “organs”. Further conversation determined that he did not mean “internal organs” but “sexual organs.” Ah, this is what law school does to people.
http://twitter.com/ChrisLindsay9 Chris Lindsay

Tooms in the X-Files ate livers, I believe?
Anonymous

The twin vampires in Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned had to eat the organs (brain and heart, I think?) of Akasha in order to keep all the other vampires alive. I was so bummed when they cut that part out of the movie.
Frodo Baggins

I’m really glad you left out the part where that evil wizard in The Sword of Truth ate a little kid’s balls.
http://www.facebook.com/eric.lindberg3 Eric Lindberg

Digger! I love that comic. Awesome that you referenced it. Best moment (and most appropriate to this list):

“But you’d die without your heart!”

“Not be getting too far without liver either.”
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=681460421 Lauron Haney

This is a good list, but I wish that you had included the scene from “American Horror Story” with eating the (very juicy) sheep brain.
JoAnne Pope

In American Gods, didn’t one of the Egyptian gods eat small slices of organs from cadavers he’d done autopsies on?
http://twitter.com/UrsulaMinor K Shorten

Oooh yeah, he did too.

From Chapter 8:

” From the heart, the liver and from one of the kidneys, he cut an additional slice. These pieces he chewed, slowly, making them last, and ate while he worked.

Somehow it seemed to Shadow a good thing for him to do: respectful, not obscene.”

(I had the ebook with me – not crazy, I swear)
http://twitter.com/lichenlight K B

“Neal” Gaiman? I wouldn’t be so picky, but it’s not like his name isn’t all over the entire web!
http://profiles.google.com/ashleysue Ashley Sue

Why is this a thing?! Also, why did I read so much about people eating themselves. Blergh.
Anonymous

omg, “the cobra event” rocks so hard. i also read it in junior high…just after finishing his previous book “the hot zone”. if characters werent bleeding out of all their orifices, the book did not make it to my reading list, haha. i should really check out “demon in the freezer”. i *think* its about weaponized viruses, too.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=560699935 Becky Sanders

It’s Neil Gaiman. With an I.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Christie/536168272 Jason Christie

“Why I suddenly love this series.”