Grave Robbing: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:Graverobber.png|link=Girl Genius|frame|In some areas, graverobbing is an honorable family business.]]

 

{{quote|''"And it's my job... to steal and rob... '''GRAAAAAAAAAAVESSSSS'''!"''|[[Large Ham|The Graverobber]], ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]''}}

 

'''The Prince:''''' [[Mathematician's Answer|It's a lot easier than robbing the living.]]''|''[[Prince of Persia (2008 video game)]]''}}

 

If they happened to have fought [[Aliens and Monsters]] before taking the crypt's stuff, it probably counts as [[Plunder]].

 

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* [[Yu-Gi-Oh!|Bakura, the Tombrobber.]] Some justification in that his start was robbing from the evil kings who sacrifice his village for dark magic.

== Comic Books ==

* Used for a [[Stealth Pun]]/[[The Cameo|Cameo]] in [[Dan Abnett]] and Andy Lanning's [[DC Comics]] [[Elseworld]] ''The Superman Monster'', which combines the [[Superman]] mythos with ''[[Frankenstein]]''. [[Mad Scientist]] Victor Luthor is provided with corpses by a resurrectionist who is clearly this universe's counterpart of Mitch Shelley, the [[Resurrection Man]].

 

== Films -- Live-Action ==

== Literature ==

* Jerry Cruncher's side job in ''[[A Tale of Two Cities]].''

* [[Harry Potter|Voldemort]] {{spoiler|steals the Elder Wand from Dumbledore's tomb}} in the last book of the series. {{spoiler|This backfires ''epically''.}}

** And Bill Weasley works as a cursebreaker for Gringott's tomb raiding expeditions in Egypt.

 

== Music ==

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** And ''eating'' the dead.

* Many ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' cards are based around this, usually allowing the exhumed creature to be played again.

** The [[Ravenloft]] adventure ''Ship of Horrors'' pits heroes against a grave-robbing clan {{spoiler|of reanimated corpses}} which provide bodies to a nasty necromancer.

*** According to ''Van Richten's Guide to the Lich'', there's even a high-level spell Ghoul Lattice that makes the work easy by digging a maze of tunnels that connects to all graves and other underground pockets in area that may be a mile or more wide.

*** "Tomb robbers" turning out to be there about a certain [[Sealed Evil in a Can]], so a clash with tomb guards accidentally breaks the can, which they otherwise could avoid.

*** Adventurers breaking and entering a crypt only to face a room seemingly empty except one old man with a pipe, who answered the obvious question by stunning everyone (as in "power word"), introducing himself as Elminster and stating that "despoilers of tombs" will leave him and his friends alone—right now. ([http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=2942 Lords of Darkness])

* Tomb robbing is the [[Planet of Hats|Hat]] of the Yitek race in the ''Talislanta'' game.

* In ''[[Exalted]]'', grave robbing is discouraged not only for cultural reasons, but also because desecrating a tomb/corpse will unleash a raging Hungry Ghost (one of the person's souls that remains with the body to protect it) on the local area. Powerful people often recieve highly secure tombs as much to reduce the chance of anybody angering the resident ghost as to protect their valuables and dignity (although lavish tombs also help keep the ghost placated).

 

== Videogames ==

* One of the Imperial City sidequests in ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] IV: Oblivion'' sees you investigating a trader who sells stuff at ridiculously low prices. It turns out, his "goods" were actually supplied by the local grave digger gang.

* Quite a few ''Zelda'' games have Link go into tombs or graves to find items. One of the better known times is in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'', when he goes into the former keeper of the Graveyard's tomb and races the ghost to get the hookshot (on the other hand, the ghost willingly hands it over, so does that count?) A more obvious example in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask|The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask]]'' would be on the Third Day, when the keeper of ''that'' graveyard breaks into the Royal Family tomb and not only openly admits to Link that he is looking for treasure hidden there, he asks Link to help him.

* One early quest in ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' requires you to rob the grave of a deceased legendary wizard so you can get the key to his tower. Humorously, before you can rob his grave, you have to win a grave robbing shovel from another enemy in the area called a grave rober (yes, it's supposed to be spelled like that, the area in question is the Misspelled Cemetary). And later on, you can fight grave rober zmobies, who keep trying to rob their OWN graves, and get pissed and attack you out of frustration because they keep failing to find anything to rob.

* You need to dig up several graves in ''[[King's Quest IV]]'', although you return the items to ghosts to which they belong so it's not ''exactly'' stealing.

* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' has an entire guild of people known as the Collectors whose job is to find dead bodies and turn them in to the Dustmen, a local sect that uses the corpses as zombie laborers. Of course, the Collectors almost always strip the bodies of everything valuable first. One of your party members, [[Half-Human Hybrid|Annah]], is one...and met you by finding your [[Player Character]] dead and collecting his body. (The game starts with you waking up at the morgue, and you meet up with her again later.)

* ''[[Minecraft]]'' lets you rob treasure from pyramids in the desert. Each pyramid can contain things like gold, iron, diamonds, bones, and rotten flesh, but they're also guarded by TNT traps that trigger if you step on the pressure plate. Doing so will destroy all the treasure and kill you.

 

== Webcomics ==

* In ''[[Endstone]]'', [http://endstone.net/2009/03/30/issue-1-page-9/ what started the present-day story.]

* Done adorably in ''[[Frankie and Stein]]'' when Stein, armed with his book "Graverobbing for Dummies" goes a'hunting for the perfect parts with which to make a friend.

** In the same episode he is seen emerging from an open grave saying that "no one can say that I don't own John Larroquette's spine".

* According to Disney's ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire|Atlantis the Lost Empire]]'', grave robbers are also known for their tendency of double-parking.

 

== Real Life ==

* In Scotland back in the day, selling corpses to medical schools could be quite lucrative as mentioned in the article. Thus, many were obtained through not-so-legal methods.

** Not just Scotland, the practice was common in many countries. "Doctor riots", mobs beating up medical professionals after a grave had been found desecrated, occurred in several US cities in the nineteenth century. Scotland is most famous because of those jolly chaps [[wikipedia:Burke and Hare murders|Burke and Hare]] who realised that waiting for bodies to be buried, then digging them up took longer than making fresh bodies out of unsuspecting boarders.

** Note that at the height of the British graverobbing trade, stealing the corpse itself wasn't actually against the law: officially, a dead body had no monetary value, so taking one wasn't a criminal offense. Stealing anything buried with the corpse ''was'' illegal, so graverobbers often stripped a body naked and threw everything it wore back into the coffin. This legal loophole existed because the government knew that medical schools needed bodies to study, so dragged their feet about closing it.

* Egyptian pyramids were often targeted by thieves for the incredible amount of wealth stored in there. Tutankhamen's tomb is famous for being one of the rare exceptions.

** Tut's was a cave tomb in the Valley of Kings, the smallest and most easily overlooked. None of the pyramids has anything worth stealing left in it.

** Speaking of body desecration, [[Fridge Logic|currently there is a number of mummified corpses on display in the central museum of Cairo (and maybe other ones too) for all those tourist drones to gawk on and serve as an attraction (along with the tombs themselves)]].

* Leonardo Da Vinci often resorted to this [[For Science!|to advance his research]], as did Michelangelo for his art.

* Ed Gein, the infamous source of inspiration for [[Psycho|Norman Bates]], [[Silence of the Lambs|Jame Gumb]], and [[The Texas Chainsaw Massacre|Leatherface]], exhumed bodies from graveyards and created trophies out of their bones and skin.

* The [[Values Dissonance|United States]] [[wikipedia:Pillaging#Looting of Native American archaeological sites|systematically plundered and destroyed many Native American sacred sites]]. This practice continued well into the 20th century until it was banned by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990.

** [[Fridge Logic|Not sure how this gains anything,]] since the same amount of work (or more) is going into the fake burials. Then there's the smell and health hazards of the real bodies lying around.

** The fires used to incinerate wood (or garbage) aren't nearly as hot as crematorium fires (a few hundred degrees versus a few thousand—thus much, much cheaper to run), so homeboy just lit some trash on fire, gave the ashes to the bereaved, and threw the bodies in a mass-grave in a nearby swamp. But yes, the smell was how the dumb-ass got caught.

* [[I Love the Dead|Necrophiles]]...well, they are not always murderers so this trope will be used to fulfil their urges and its better than killing the living but still....

* A man in Russia was found to have stolen 26 bodies of teenage girls and young women from their graves, dressed them up like dolls and in one case a teddy bear, and kept them at his home. No one seems to be quite sure why.

 

{{reflist}}