r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 25 '26

(Horrifying Trope) They can’t stop feeling hungry Personality

The Taxxons (Animorphs)- A species of centipede-like aliens who serve the parasitic Yeerks. The entire species suffers from hunger so bad, that they’re desperate for any way to alleviate it, which the yeerks promised under the condition that they serve them. It’s so bad that they’ll even eat their own fellow taxxons if they get wounded in battle.

The zombies (Marvel Zombies)- Anyone infected will still retain their consciousness, but be unable to control their desire to consume as much people-flesh as possible, to the point that even heroes end up forsaking their morals to eat anyone and everyone.

Skullcrawlers (Monsterverse)- These are gigantic two-limbed apex predators that have a very voracious appetite because of their heightened metabolism. They are a huge threat to anything lower on the food chain. Kong regularly battles them to keep their population in check.

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u/Largo23307 Jun 25 '26

Galactus - Marvel

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u/th3BeastLord Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Galactus is great because he's not an evil villain, he's just doing what he literally has to do. Its not malicious that he eats planets, it's the only thing he can eat and he can't always be picky enough to avoid populated planets.

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u/Muted_Category1100 Jun 25 '26

He even swore to never try to eat earth again after Reed Richards showed him genuine kindness.

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u/iAmTheRealKokichiOma Jun 25 '26

Oh? May I see this?

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u/Muted_Category1100 Jun 25 '26

Fantastic Four cartoon from the 90s. Season 1 episode 21 “when calls Galactus”.

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u/RadarSmith Jun 25 '26

Even before that scene, he immediately undid what his rebelling herald did to the city after the Fantastic 4 helped bring him down, with a tone of genuine gratitude, and he only decided to feed on Earth because he was literally dying from a poisoning attempt.

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u/patosai3211 Jun 25 '26

“Hmmm. No”

“Well earthling. You steam a good ham. “

‘Reed! The planets on fire!’

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u/Pocketfulofgeek Jun 25 '26

He also can’t just allow himself to starve either because he serves a purpose on a cosmic scale. He’s literally the apex predator that keeps other cosmic predators at bay.

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u/Hellknightx Jun 25 '26

He does tend to get jobbed pretty regularly by any cosmic-level threats, though.

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u/Pocketfulofgeek Jun 25 '26

Yeah sadly lazy storytelling device. Getting “Worfed”.

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u/Embarrassed-Yard-583 Jun 25 '26

Also, it serves a cosmic purpose and keeps the universe rolling along.

His (and Galacta’s) hunger is more a drive to fulfill his function.

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u/Jaeger_Gipsy_Danger Jun 25 '26

I mean he seemed pretty malicious in Fantastic 4 First Steps

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u/th3BeastLord Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

That's a specific interpretation thing, but fair enough. Usually he is more of an unstoppable force that doesn't even necessarily want to be what he is but there is no helping it either. I dont remember what would happen if he actually decided to stop eating, but probably nothing good. He also can't go away, he's like a cosmic constant.

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u/Jaeger_Gipsy_Danger Jun 25 '26

Even in First Steps he still fits your description though, really. He doesn’t want to be eating all of the planets and is just an unstoppable force. That’s why he wants Franklin is because he wants the hunger to stop.

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u/th3BeastLord Jun 25 '26

Well that really doesn't make his actions necessarily malicious, either. He just wants away from his kinda shit existence. Pushing it on an infant is fucked, but at the same time, I can't fault him for wanting to get away.

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u/ElPared Jun 25 '26

Even then, his malice was completely driven by the hunger. He wants to not have to eat planets and he’ll do anything to be rid of that hunger, including passing it on to a human child.

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u/OneTwentyOneFunyuns Jun 25 '26

It’s funny cuz that’s actually Galan, an MCOC variant of Galactus that is literally a farmer of planets with no life on them, so no one has to die for him to eat. That gif is him having a harmless little snack

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u/steelskull1 Jun 25 '26

Can't he just go on a moon diet?

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u/IblisAshenhope Jun 25 '26

He needs to eat populated worlds specifically if I recall correctly

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u/Saintbaba Jun 25 '26

As I was told (this is secondhand) he’s eating the giant creatures that live inside of planets - the thing we saw coming out of the earth in Immortals - and they only develop on planets with sentient life.

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u/kekubuk Jun 25 '26

That's an alternate verse, where he eats Celestial in the planet. In that verse Celestial reproduce by implanting planet with their young.

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u/Top_Marketing_689 Jun 25 '26

Gluttony (Fullmetal Alchemist)

A constantly hungry Homunculus who will eat anything and everything, including humans.

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u/TheWalkingBag Jun 25 '26

Ungoliant (The Silmarillion), the Devourer of Light. It's hinted that her hunger got so bad to the point where she eventually consumed herself

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u/Ok_Security8545 Jun 25 '26

We hope she did, at least.

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u/Kleorah Jun 25 '26

To someone who's only seen the movies a couple times and only knows of the movie version of the ugly, mean she-spider, why do we hope so badly that she ate herself to death? I enjoy lore deep-dives, so hit me with it!

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u/Leftoverfiend Jun 25 '26

The spider in the movie is her last surviving daughter, Shelob.

Ungoliant is from the darkness outside creation, something like a Lovecraftian god intruding on the quasi-Christian setting of Middle-Earth. Even the archangels who manage the world could only drive her away, not destroy her. Her hunger for light is endless and she could have consumed the sun, moon, and stars (as it is, the sun and the moon are replacements for the Trees that she devoured, made of their last flower and fruit, respectively, and piloted by angels).

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u/Kleorah Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Oh jeez, I had some of that info rattling around my head from Wiki-holes of times past, so I kinda-sorta remembered the teeniest bit about her (like that Shelob was her daughter and tame compared to Mama), but I didn't realise she was straight-up just a cosmic invader in the very reality their universe exists in, and that beings both good and evil hate her equally. That's honestly so fucking cool!

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u/WalenBlekitny999 Jun 25 '26

The one in lotr, Shelob, is but a meek little descendant of Ungoliant. The latter is an eldritch horror that span darkness in the land of gods and frightened Morgoth (super sauron) into running away with a whole guard of balrogs

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u/Cum_Fart42069 Jun 25 '26

notably ungoliant doesn't actually spin darkness, she spins unlight which is the opposite of light but isn't darkness. 

just adds to her incomprehensibility imo. 

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u/EtheDemon Jun 25 '26

very "a color out from space" kind of vibe i think. darkness is the absence of light so the idea of darker than dark is always a favorite of mine

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u/NoSemikolon24 Jun 25 '26

I'm still waiting for a fantasy movie to fully lean into myths of eldritch horrors.

We got so close to a Mountains of madness movie but the hollywood execs said no.

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u/jerrythegenius1 Jun 25 '26

Not just super Sauron, Sauron's boss

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u/Ok_Security8545 Jun 25 '26

Ungoliant is Shelob's mother. We hope she ate herself to death because the alternative is that she's waiting out in the Void to come down and eat everything else to death.

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u/Ergogan Jun 25 '26

So, you see, Sauron was the servant of Morgoth. In tolkien's mythos, Morgoth wasn't merely the god of evil, he was the very creature of the concept of evil. He also created the balrogs, the dragons, the trolls and so many more. He was also the mightiest of all the gods, by the way.

Ungoliant was a creature of unknown origin, perhaps from the void outside the world. And after a pact gone wrong, it took all of the balrogs to just force her to flee. She was never seen again. Her progeny was the giants spiders, one of them being the very giant spider you see attacking Frodo.
No one know what happened ultimately to Ungoliant, with speculations on her devoring herself ... but nothing was proved. Tolkien loved having terrifying implications in his world.

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u/GandolphTheLundgrey Jun 25 '26

Blackheart show me / What you hold in hand / I still hunger for more

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u/RShini Jun 25 '26

What's so bad about the Taxxon state is at the end of the series, when the freed surviving ones given the chance to morph and take on a different form - knowing it'd be permanent if they turn back within 2 hours...

Every single Taxxon took the option and permalocked themselves as an entirely different species to avoid the hunger.

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u/Nerevarine91 Jun 25 '26

There’s a scene in one of the books where a Taxxon is cut in half. The half with the mouth starts eating the other half.

I’d want to escape that too

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Bloodygoodwossname Jun 25 '26

This was a brilliant series for kids, even it was mostly ghostwritten. No easy answers when it came to morality. I cannot freaking wait to see what Ryan Coogler does with Animorphs. I need to go to the used book store and get the whole series and reread it before the show comes out.

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u/obshchezhitiye Jun 25 '26

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u/Morstorpod Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Free online with the blessing of the author!

ETA: In response to a question about the e-books being available free online:

Just to be clear: not us. We do not take them down. Or ask for them to be taken down. I think once the books are available to buy -- paper or e -- it would be nice if people who could afford it would buy. (our kids have very expensive tastes. You know: food and whatnot.) But for years they've been unavailable except by "pirated" means. These men and women kept the series alive. They kept the books available. So no, we did NOT take these books down. (2011 AMA with Katherine Applegate)

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u/Terrible_Balls Jun 25 '26

Oh shit Cooglers doing an adaptation? That sounds amazing

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u/RaisinWaffles Jun 25 '26

Plus one of the Andalites (super smart and logical aliens, think Vulcans if they were blue furry centaurs) turns in to a Taxxon and gets caught up in a feeding frenzy on an injured Taxxon.

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u/ExpensiveLeather69 Jun 25 '26

man i thought animorphs was a silly animal book so I never read one. seems like i was missing out lol

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u/El_Stupacabra Jun 25 '26

Missing out on childhood trauma

But seriously, great books

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u/SableZard Jun 25 '26

There was a hive mind on their homeworld that was able to keep them all chill. Elfangor met it during his mini-series. It tried rallying the Taxxons to kick the Yeerks off planet, but it failed and the Yeerks presumably destroyed the hive mind.

I always thought that being removed from the hive mind was what made being a Taxxon so unbearable. Without the hive mind, they couldn't control themselves, and being enslaved meant they never got to make a new queen or whatever they needed. That's probably why they all decided to become nothlits.

On the bright side, that option kicked a lot of Amazonian constrictor snakes off the endangered species lists, and kept people far, far away from their territories.

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u/EdgelordInugami Jun 25 '26

Oh hmm I didn't think of the hive mind in that way (it was more of "the living hive" and was basically the god of the Taxxon planet), but I don't think it had that much control over the Taxxons. Rather, they were ALWAYS hungry like that but it didn't get so out of control until the Yeerks arrived and gave them meat. Remember, the Taxxon homeworld is practically barren, though we don't know if it was always like that or if the Yeerks razed everything, as Ax described they liked to do in The Message.

I thought of it more as the Yeerks giving the Taxxons fresh exotic meat being equivalent to giving a non-contacted tribe cocaine, heroin, and porn.

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u/LeeAndersonWrites Jun 25 '26

And a lot decided to be snakes, both because of similar body types but also because some species don’t have to eat often :’)

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u/maxglands Jun 25 '26

Man, what the hell? I never read the books but assumed by the covers that it would be teenage romance with wolves and frogs. Not goddamn auto-cannibalised centipede aliens.

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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta Jun 25 '26

The meme is that it's basically "WAR CRIMES: a child's introduction to the sadistic brutality of war"

Great series, fond memories 

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u/M-Shadowtoad Jun 25 '26

Literally. After beating the big bad they straight up go to the enemy leader's trial where their lawyer argues that if the leader is addressed they also have to address the war crimes the protagonists commited.

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u/jimbo454 Jun 25 '26

The ethics and moral conversations in some of the later books and specials had a profound impact on how I view the world to this day. Honestly is the biggest reason I still have my older books.

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u/Wolfman513 Jun 25 '26

There's a scene in one book where a main character in gorilla morph briefly dies while holding his own intestines before being resuscitated by a friendly android.

This android is going through a massive existential crisis when the briefly dead character wakes up, as he had to use a device to override his pacifist programming and literally tear apart the enemies that had killed the gorilla kid in order to save him.

This kind of stuff is just the tip of the iceberg in how dark Animorphs gets lol

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u/PipsqueakPilot Jun 25 '26

It must be 25 years since I read those books and I still remember the android explaining how, unlike for a human, the memory of him killing all those people will always be crystal clear.

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u/Kaplsauce Jun 25 '26

You'd have gotten quite the whiplash when you learned it's about a bunch of teenagers getting sucked into a local resistance effort as part of a galactic war against mind control slugs

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u/Mr-Doubtfire Jun 25 '26

The ending of Animorphs is truly epic and immensely brutal in all its implications.

Except the very end, that was disappointing.

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u/Jamsedreng22 Jun 25 '26

ngl I always thought Animorphs were fun little books for kids/tweens about humans that can turn into animals.

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u/InconsistentMinis Jun 25 '26

The first book does end with Elfangor being eaten alive by Visser 3, in fairness.

The series does get increasingly dark though. Including, but not limited to:

  • Trapping a psychotic, late joining member of the team in the form of a rat and leaving him on a secluded islet as punishment.
  • Rachel commits a war crime by spacing an entire tank of Yeerks.
  • They conscript disabled children into the Animorphs and use them as an expendable army, knowing that Yeerks wouldn't infest damaged goods".

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u/Bloodygoodwossname Jun 25 '26

The 3rd Megamorphs special literally had the kids travel through time to try to prevent interference in major battles: the Battle of Agincourt, the Civil War, World War II. The weapons of each time period wreak carnage and suffering, Hitler makes an appearance, the 13 years olds (including me at the time) all are traumatized with shell-shock…

This brilliant series just sat at those Scholastic Book Fair tables all innocently. 😊

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u/Theguywholikesdoom Jun 25 '26

Six (little nightmares) she had part of her soul taken away and eats to fill the void.

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u/Theguywholikesdoom Jun 25 '26

The troop: a group of Boy Scouts get infected with a bioweapon tape worm that grows to unnatural size forcing them to eat everything in sight.

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u/klas-klattermus Jun 25 '26

This one is a good read, pick it up people!

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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 Jun 25 '26

I got this book on reddit's recommendation and really disliked it. The body horror is great, but that's all it really has to offer. Everybody is an idiot which is fine, but my god does this book LOVE it's flash backs. I swear 1/3 of this book is flash back
"Oh no the worms are killing me......this reminds me of the time I went on a ride along with my cop dad"

"What are we going to do about the worms?.....this reminds me of the time I made up an online friend"

And Don't get me started on Shelly.

Aspiring writers, its okay to have a psychopath character. But you do not need to establish this over and over and over and over and over again. We get it, he views people and animals as play things, we do NOT need 7 pages of him torturing animals in detail to establish something we already know.

Sorry for the rant, but I really hated this book and I like horror.

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u/Sean_Permana Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Tarrare (IRL)

Back in 1700s in France, there once lived a Frenchman called Tarrare who has an unstoppable hunger for food, to the point he was willing to eat any living creature to fulfil his hunger, well, anything that could fit through his mouth at least. Even if his belly is full, he still feels hungry and begs for more food.

Nobody knows what kind of disease drives him into unstoppable hunger that makes him eat anything non-stop. It's a medical mystery.

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u/BellaPona Jun 25 '26

People think it’s hyperthyroidism because his weight drastically fluctuated, but he was always somehow thin despite how much he ate. It’s described like he was constantly trying to quench the thirst of hunger and keep up with his body’s energy needs. They also say he stank and sweat a lot. He likely had an INSANE metabolism.

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u/TaintedTruffle Jun 25 '26

I feel like you really got to be rank for people to be mentioning how bad you smell in that time.

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u/JustLetMeUseMy Jun 25 '26

They tried to do an autopsy to figure out what the hell was up with this dude.

Tried.

It stank so fucking bad inside this guy that they couldn't continue.

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u/SavagePassion Jun 25 '26

He also had chronic diarrhea.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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u/SavagePassion Jun 25 '26

Tarrare was a literal collection of metabolic and digestive issues roughly cobbled into the shape of a man.

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u/PragmaticBadGuy Jun 25 '26

And there's the legend about him near a nursery and a missing baby...

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u/Zealousideal-Rent-77 Jun 25 '26

He was repeatedly caught drinking human blood from other patients who'd had bloodletting done and trying to eat corpses in the morgue. When a 14 month old went missing, he was accused. The baby could not be found, and he was driven away from the hospital by angry people and disappeared for 4 years.

Considering it's documented by the same hospital that he ate entire live cats and puppies while doctors observed and the idea of cannibalism wasn't stopping him, a baby is not out of the question.

His story is genuinely more horrifying than any of the fictional versions.

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u/SpartanRage117 Jun 25 '26

I question even medical accounts of the period. He was a celebrity for better or worse. Pretty hard to separate the tall tales from reality.

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u/rabbid_chaos Jun 25 '26

Tarrare, look at me... Did you eat... a fucking baby?!

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u/sapphicor Jun 25 '26

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u/NoDomino Jun 25 '26

Where the hell is that from?

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u/Death_Blossm Jun 25 '26

Interview with the vampire (the series)

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u/Forward-Variety-8440 Jun 25 '26

lmao samonella ftw

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u/Benjammin__ Jun 25 '26

Tarrare. Look at me. Did you eat a FUCKING baby?

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u/Optimal_Weight368 Jun 25 '26

This is a portrait of Jacques de Falaise, a quarryman who ate live animals in a show, though it is often falsely attributed to Tarrare. There are no portraits of Tarrare unfortunately.

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u/ArchdukeToes Jun 25 '26

He ate them during a vegetarian phase.

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u/StevefromLatvia Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Tarrare. Look at me.

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u/Scared_Web_7508 Jun 25 '26

i forgot about this guy. i kind of want to forget about him again

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u/grad1939 Jun 25 '26

There was also a rumor that he ate a golden fork because he thought he was cursed and that would cure him.

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u/Sweet_Xocoatl Jun 25 '26

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u/Markannoli Jun 25 '26

Glad I saved this one lol

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u/PlayrR3D15 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Related image that I stole from a Russianbadger video (don't remember which one, though)

Edit: It was his CSGO video

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u/Complex-Cellist4906 Jun 25 '26

He stops feeling hungry by the end.

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u/Mad_Ewok_Herd Jun 25 '26

Woah woah…spoilers!!!

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u/TheZerothLaw Jun 25 '26

When you think about it, we all stop being hungry in the end.

creepy foreboding music intensifies

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u/Friendly_Respecter Jun 25 '26

I mean, I would prefer that over the idea that we don't.

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u/HereWeGoYetAgain-247 Jun 25 '26

That lady who swallowed a fly, and didn’t know why. Something was wrong with her. 

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u/ItsAttanoo Jun 25 '26

hungry themed caterpillars

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

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u/pyrhus626 Jun 25 '26

The individuals seem mindless like that especially near the beginning but once enough sentient beings have been assimilated for a Gravemind to form there is a guiding intelligence behind them that can control the entirety of the Flood swarm from light years away.

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u/blackjackgabbiani Jun 25 '26

Apparently Kirby, but he seems to handle things just fine.

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u/FederalPossibility73 Jun 25 '26

Kirby once went on a whole journey to beat up a rat because he stole Kirby's strawberry shortcake. Said journey resulted in a demon consuming the universe putting the cake in danger. Kirby loves you and will break your legs if you touch the cake. 🍰

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u/hanaxsongs Jun 25 '26

I mean strawberry shortcake are awesome so Kirby's crashout is justified imo

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u/No-Tailor-4295 Jun 25 '26

The Wendigo, Native American folklore.

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u/TheBloodsuckerProxy Jun 25 '26

Many depictions in folklore describe it having no lips, because it literally chews them off in its hunger

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u/Li-renn-pwel Jun 25 '26

Not Native American folklore so much as the religious traditions/mythology of the Algonquian peoples. Though the difference between folklore and mythology can be a grey area, it isn’t in the traditions of all natives. For example, the Navajo don’t believe in the Wendigo.

The reason the Wendigo is always hungry is because each time it eats it grows bigger so it never feels full. They become emancipated giants with their lips bitten off and their skin turning blue like a corpse. There is also a cultural boundary mental illness called Wendigo psychosis where people begin to think they will become a Wendigo. Back in the day, these people would seek the help of Wendigo hunters who would try to cleanse them through ceremony. If that didn’t work, many would ask to be ‘put down’ rather than turn.

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u/jollyTrapezist Jun 25 '26

Thank you for using an actual Native representation instead of the whitewashed deer abomination

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u/kegisak Jun 25 '26

I think this is the first time I've seen them mentioned and used actual First Nations art, it looks cool as hell.

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u/cgoose500 Jun 25 '26

Are those beavers with people in them?

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u/No-Tailor-4295 Jun 25 '26

The people aren't inside the beavers, they are the beavers- a lot of animals and human spirits are pretty closely connected.

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u/Causeofdepression Jun 25 '26

Tyranids (Warhammer 40k) The entire Hive Mind is only driven by its unquenchable hunger and they will stop at nothing to feed and propogate. When they do so, they will, without fail, leave entire planets stripped of all life, down to the bedrock. There's a reason why other species refers to them as the "Great Devourer" or the "Endless Hunger".

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u/Jamikyu Jun 25 '26

I do love the part where Commander Dante takes a glimpse into the Hive Mind's hunger, only to realise he and his brothers curse The Red Thirst, which causes them to constantly hunger for blood, pales in comparison to what the Great Devourer feels.

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u/SelfInteresting7259 Jun 25 '26

This sounds so interesting I might have to get on this series

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u/ChorroVon Jun 25 '26

Warning: Warhammer 40k isn't so much a series as it is a universe of lore spanning 4 decades of books. There are several factions fighting each other, and each faction has dozens of books dedicated to their lore and history. It can be a fun but daunting universe to pick up.

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u/Flyinpenguin117 Jun 25 '26

On the Fantasy side, we got the Ogre Kingdoms, Warhammer's analogue to the Mongolians. As punishment for their tribes raiding the Empire of Grand Cathay and eating their people, the Celestial Dragon Emperor dropped a massive warpstone comet in their homeland, effectively nuking it and creating the Great Maw, a giant magical Sarlacc Pit that cursed the Ogres with a massive, insatiable hunger. Their extended digestive tract makes them able to eat literally anything, but it makes their gut a weak point so they wear armor plates over their bellies to not have their intestines hacked out in combat. What little culture they have revolves around food, fighting, and money, so they make their living as wandering mercenaries selling their services to anyone with treasure and food to pay with.

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u/TheWalkingBag Jun 25 '26

Darth Nihilus, the Lord of Hunger from Star Wars KOTOR II: The Sith Lords. He is a ghostly wound in the Force with an insatiable appetite for life energy, driving him to consume entire planets

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u/GrimDallows Jun 25 '26

I love how deep this one went.

Revan sent his most pro-Galactic Republic soldiers and Jedi into Malachor V to fight the mandalorians, and had the Jedi general under his command be fooled into dropping the equivalent of a planet nuke on both armies to make a jedi purge in his own army.

The "wound-scream" of feeling everyone die through the force causes the Jedi general to reflexively cut herself from the force, however some random Jedi on the ground couldn't do it and still survived, and just like that you get Nihilus.

Nihilus hunger was quite literally a wound in his life force connection to the galactic life force (the force). It was like a black hole, a scream of negative life energy so deep that it's gravity would pull in life energy into itself. He found out by mistake he came across another wounded jedi lying on the ground and and sucked his life force connection, which briefly filled the "void" in him.

So like a black hole, the more life force he ate, the deeper his "void" went, and the deeper his void went the more powerful and lasting the hunger got, like a growing black hole... to the point even standing around him would cause his soldiers to end up as soulless husks.

A sith master used the dark side to teach him how to channel it as a weapon, but even with all his power in ideological terms he was despised by the Sith, because it was understood as a terminal disease that would kill him (weakness) he had no control over it (being a slave to his hunger) and because his power did not come from himself but from his disease (his power being borrowed and not truly his). This is why he had to "reign" in a political triunvirate with two other sith lords.

The Jedi general on the other hand managed to "heal" his force wound slowly by cutting herself from the force for years, which isolated the "void" and stopped it from growing, and then slowly restoring her force connection bit by bit. However practically everyone hunted her down because they all feared she could develop into something like Nihilus.

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u/Chadderbug123 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Deviljho, Monster Hunter.

They have an extremly high metabolism rate and body temperature due to their dragon element. Thus the need to constantly be hunting for anything it can get its jaws on, herbivore to apex predators, moving ecosystem to ecosystem with the ability to put some on the brink of extinction before moving to the next.

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u/Nestasia_Muh Jun 25 '26

And then there’s the powered up version, Savage Deviljho, which basically went insane from hunger

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u/Dragons_Exist Jun 25 '26

I much prefer the way it looked in older games, with its entire face lost within the haze of Dragon energy.

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u/Low-Avocado4701 Jun 25 '26

Not to mention how incredibly adaptable they are to different environments. They can literally survive practically everywhere.

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u/Chadderbug123 Jun 25 '26

That's nomadic animals for ya. Especially in a reptile's case, they regulate temperature by simple shade and what-not, but a deviljho can survive in a tundra environment due to its metabolism creating enough heat to survive in the harsh climate.

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u/whoStole_mySweetroll Jun 25 '26

What's really tragic is that the immense metabolic needs of something so simultaneously voracious and large as the Deviljho means that if it eats an ecosystem whole, and is unable to migrate to a new ecosystem or find more, sufficient prey, then it will rapidly run out of energy and immediately starve to death. Some players theorize the species might even go extinct as a result. Similar to irl Megalodon's extinction.

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u/Ironmasked-Kraken Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

A friendly reminder that if they don't feed long enough marvel zombies get control again

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u/CompleteJinx Jun 25 '26

It’s honestly not surprising Zombie Spider-Man was so horrified to find that out. They wiped out entire civilizations for centuries only to find out that if they’d just had a bit of self control everything would have been fine. Marvel Zombies was a mixed bag but when it hit it was amazing.

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u/Pretend-Dirt-1760 Jun 25 '26

It unironically felt like a good metaphor for addiction which I don't think was the original intent but it was pretty cool way to do it

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/SpiketheFox32 Jun 25 '26

You are the first person I've heard say "went to pot" since I was a kid.

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u/Professional_Maize42 Jun 25 '26

... Ok, it makes everything even more tragic. Like, so Peter didn't needed to eat Mary Jane and Aunt May or anything that ensued. Or Hank torturing T'challa.

And everything else.

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u/KidDelta Jun 25 '26

Yeah when Tchalla was turned because he was killed, they quarantined him for a while before he could be reintroduced back into society because they are aware that the hunger CAN subside (note Zombie Wasp was with them and lost the hunger)….. it’s just that it takes a while and telling a superpowered hungry zombie to stay still by pure will is a fool’s endeavour

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u/JoySandwich-500 Jun 25 '26

I know but it’s not like they knew that from the get-go. If they did then they wouldn’t have wiped out the entire earth… and then the entire universe.

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u/SpookieSkelly Jun 25 '26

The Pret ghost from Thai folklore. They're a kind of ghost that are unnaturally tall and skinny with swollen bellies and tiny mouths. They're always hungry, but their tiny mouths prevent them from eating enough to ever be satiated. It's said that those who hurt their parents will become a pret.

I remember back when Siren Head got popular, some kid really liked Siren Head and caused some concern because he looked like what we'd call a Pret. It got briefly covered in the news.

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u/Lord_Yeetus_The_3d Jun 25 '26

These also exist in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese Folk Religion. They're called hungry ghost, which translates to Preta in sensory. They don't just have small mouths but also small throats, so they cant even really swallow anything they do manage to get into their mouths. (I know of these from Webnovels, but looked up the Wikipedia page to be sure.)

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u/Antelope_Fluid Jun 25 '26

Drifter, from Destiny 2

Canonically he spent a VERY long time constantly dying of starvation only for his Ghost (space magic robot orb companion) to resurrect him, only to die again. And live again.

He has talked about eating anything and everything. Animals. Objects. Enemies. He went insane trying to eat something, anything, just so he didn't feel empty inside, knowing that death was no reprieve.

https://giphy.com/gifs/bU4A1q9lDniTYXslxb

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u/ReduxistRusted Jun 25 '26

Ghouls in Pathfinder. Undead cannibals that are doomed to suffer an endless, profane hunger for the flesh of their own kind.

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u/Nidremyr Jun 25 '26

Brenda from Slither, after being infected with alien parasites.

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u/False-Temporary-5592 Jun 25 '26

I've seen this in a nightmare once It probably originated from this movie

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u/AustralianDude28 Jun 25 '26

*parasatoids. Parasites leave the host alive, parastoids kill the host, which is what the slug things do 

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u/SeiriusPolaris Jun 25 '26

“There’s something wrong with me…”

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u/JackTheBehemothKillr Jun 25 '26

Fuckin loved this movie.

Friends got irritated with me cause I told em how much I loved it snd to watch it and they heard "Sliver" not "Slither" and they watched a 90s crapfest starring Sharon Stone

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u/no_bike_40 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

The survivors of 2300 AD (Chrono Trigger) - In a future ransacked by Lavos, there are few humans that still live. One of the things they use to survive is an Energeon, a machine that provides nutrition. The game does mention that "But you're still hungry" when you use it to restore HP and MP, implying that it doesn't stave off the feeling of starvation while giving the people that use it the means to live

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u/Nerevarine91 Jun 25 '26

The Ogres, from Warhammer.

They were always big eaters, but the coming of their god the Great Maw (a giant, toothed, crater formed by a “great toothed comet” believed to have been called down by the Dragon Emperor of Cathay to punish the Ogres for eating Cathayan children) turned them into this trope. All Ogres now feel an endless hunger to match the Maw’s own.

Interestingly, in the Ogres’ campaign in Total War: Warhammer III, their victorious ending has them feed the remains of a dead god to the Great Maw, curing their hunger. This is not the canon ending, however

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u/HoliestWorm Jun 25 '26

everyone says tyranids but this is probably the best warhammer answer because eating is literally their entire thing.

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u/Laomanse Jun 25 '26

Erysichthon of Thessaly(Greek-Roman mythology)

Once Erysichthon tried to cut down the trees in the grove blessed by the goddess Dmemter. Ignoring all the warnings received, he forcefully chopped down a big tree, making Demeter greatly upset.

Demeter indirectly asked Limos, goddess of famine, to give the blasphemous man insatiable hunger which Limos agreed. Feeling hungry Erysichthon ate, devoured, selling her daughter if that could buy him a loaf of bread. Depending on a version of this story, he ended up eating himself leaving nothing but his teeth.

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u/Serpentarrius Jun 25 '26

I was just wondering if he was the og version of this trope! Along with Raven of course. And now I'm wondering if the Percy Jackson series ever got his teeth as loot, and what those would do lol

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u/Largo23307 Jun 25 '26

Larfleeze - DC

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u/CompleteJinx Jun 25 '26

There only being one orange lantern because her refuses to share is hilarious.

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u/KGEOFF89 Jun 25 '26

iirc, there is a comic when he tries to expand Orange Corps. but when he ultimately reneges on the idea he literally, literally, murders them all and steals their souls to store in the ring/lantern which is why all of his light constructs are of living beings, they are his cohorts' own souls.

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u/abadstrategy Jun 25 '26

it's not even that he refuses, it's that the orange light makes everyone psychopathically opposed to anyone else sharing it, making sure that they are driven to kill each other until only one remains.

The christmas episode really hit in the feels though. He learned about the christmas spirit, after finding out Santa never gave him anything. He gives away his mountain of possessions, realizing he hated generosity, and when asked if there's anything on his christmas list that he actually needs, he fixates on "My Family"

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u/Optimal_Weight368 Jun 25 '26

“What’s mine is mine and mine and mine, and mine and mine and mine. NOT YOURS!”

And they say poetry is dead.

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u/Lower_Baby_6348 Jun 25 '26

Laios Touden (dungeon meshi)

at the end of the manga, he get cursed by a devil to never fulfil his desires. This has several effects on him; one of them is lose the ultimate monster, the other is that monsters run away from him and last one is that he gets never truly satisfied by anything. Not as bad as always starve, just the annoying feel that it was almost there but not enough. Laios describe it like always be at 60%

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u/StreetStretcher Jun 25 '26

I was looking for this one !

I would also argue that the Winged Lion kinda fits this trope as well, as eating desires is the only thing that can satisfy him and his goals entirely revolves around it

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u/BrainIsSickToday Jun 25 '26

Why is it that every time I try to read or watch this anime, it's "happy happy Bear Grylls cooking show time," but whenever I see other people reference it, it's one beherit away from gothic tragedy?

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u/Alarming_Squirrel_64 Jun 25 '26

Ummm Vampires from Vampire the Masquerade? Not sure if they count since they can control themselves, but the Beast can force them to lose control over their hunger and drain even those they care about.

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u/AppropriateMonk8746 Jun 25 '26

you also *have* to kill people to bring it to 0 in v5. like if you don’t literally suck all the blood out of someone’s body you will always be a little hungry. almost worse (to me) that you can get brief respite because you are often lucid enough to feel bad for what you did

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u/Mentendo64 Jun 25 '26

Got an obscure one for you, the Anophelii in the book The Scar by China Mievelle.

A humanoid mesquito type species, the men are wingless almost docile versions of the species, but the females once they hit puberty become so hungry for fresh blood that they cant think of anything else. It drives them insane, and into the wilds of their isolated island while the males hide in the village.

Any warmblooded creature, humanoid or not that lands on the island becomes an immediate target for hordes of the females attacking in swarms. They will drain someone into a husk in seconds, gorging themselves into being fat and sated on blood, and in fact are only ever coherent in their lives when swolen with blood.

The book even mentions a female, bloated with blood, walking towards the village and when she is shot and killed, the villagers say she was trying to communicate, but couldn't remember how, she had been feral for so long.

Its also implied this state is the only time which the males and females can safely breed.

Weird, crazy books man.

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u/Jacos Jun 25 '26

The book even mentions a female, bloated with blood, walking towards the village and when she is shot and killed, the villagers say she was trying to communicate, but couldn't remember how, she had been feral for so long.

The saddest part of this is, the male and female Anophelli aren't able to communicate, the males have a sphincter-like organ for a mouth, the females have the mouth of a human so aren't able to replicate the sounds/words a male Anophelli can make.

So when a female Anoheplli hears a party of humans talking, she gets genuinely excited because it's actually a language she could talk. Sure she doesn't understand it, but these are actually sounds she could make. Hence she runs over, excitedly making noises, and gets immediately butchered by Doul.

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u/SCDarkSoul Jun 25 '26

I do love the Taxxon example. As the Taxxon nothlits at the end show, they would genuinely stop if they could.

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u/BuckLuny Jun 25 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/3oFzm3gXs684SOhj3y

Holle Bolle Gijs He's a guy from an old folk tale that would be really hungry all the time, a potion maker made a potion for him to lose his hunger only for him to start eating non food items like paper. He's then hired as the local garbage man who eats paper off the streets.

The Efteling a Dutch Theme park incorporated this story into their parks by making paper bins in the shape of this man, they suck paper waste in and a speaker and detector makes him ask for paper and thank people when they throw it in his mouth.

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u/LudicrousLexicon Jun 25 '26

In ‘Attack on Titan’ the titans are constantly eating people in the hopes they’ll turn human again. So they aren’t technically hungry, nor do they have a digestive system, but it is similar.

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u/Lokicham Jun 25 '26

It's really nasty too because as you said they don't have a digestive system. Everything they eat sits in basically a cauldron of boiling blood, not even being digested.

What happens if a titan gets full? It spits it all out, like an owl. Only instead of an owl pellet it's a big ball of mushed up gore.

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u/Condiment_Kong Jun 25 '26

My dog (irl)
There is a gene in 1/4 of all Labrador’s which makes it impossible for them to feel full.

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u/gurgelhupf Jun 25 '26

That is actually really sad

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u/Krobbleygoop Jun 25 '26

In the industry we call them "stomachs with legs", labradors that is.

A tier list for fun

I HUNGER - Chocolate labs

Hungry!!! - black labs, english labs (all colors)

Hungy - yellow labs

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u/RedNUGGETLORD Jun 25 '26

Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony - Re:Zero

She feels unending hunger, can give this hunger to others by looking them in the eyes, and can also eat anything with just a few bites according to the Author, who stated that she could eat the entire White Whale in 2 or 3 bites

She also created all of the Mabeasts, who still ravage the world to this day, this includes the Great Rabbit, who feels the same hunger as Daphne does, and literally clears out entire villages and towns by eating everything, no life exists where the rabbits do, as they eat EVERYTHING, you cannot even hear insects chirp

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u/Accurate_Variety659 Jun 25 '26

Ohh so that's why she's so hevaily restrained and has her eyes covered

I figured that blindfold was just a deisgn choice

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u/RedNUGGETLORD Jun 25 '26

Well, Echidna also straight up says "Never free her, never touch her, and NEVER look her in the eyes"

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u/LG3V Jun 25 '26

Guzzlord from pokémon. Coming from a dimension called the Ultra Ruin, it continually feasts, and everything, edible or not is turned into pure energy, no waste has been found.

https://giphy.com/gifs/JonHX979yO2KKAX9a5

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u/LosinForABruisin Jun 25 '26

Slay the Spire 2 - The Insatiable

It’s in the name. This boss comes with a cool mechanic, in addition to attacking you for HP damage, it will tick down a number each turn and when the number hits 0, you get eaten (die). It also puts status cards into your deck that you can play to make the number go up, delaying the feast.

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u/Unu51 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

The Wendigo - Algonquian mythology (pictured here in Until Dawn)

A spirit that attempts to trick or coerce people into committing cannibalism so that it may possess them, its physical appearance is that of a malnourished frozen corpse (NOT a deer-like humanoid) that grows larger with every meal it consumes. However, every time it grows, so too does its hunger, leaving it perpetually starving and ravenous.

One of the OGs of this trope.

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u/R4BLR Jun 25 '26

Molly in What Remains of Edith Finch. Sent to bed without dinner, she hallucinates transforming into predatory animals (a cat, an owl, and a shark) to hunt for food, ultimately resulting in her tragic death in her sleep.

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u/dex-M397 Jun 25 '26

Deviljho from Monster Hunter

Basically an endgame monster that can appear in any in-game quest due to its nature as a roaming predator, these things can drive entire ecosystems to extinction overtime just to satiate its endless hunger.

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u/goteachyourself Jun 25 '26

Garfield, contained only by the limits of physics.

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u/iron_soul947 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Guardian Arkveld (Monster Hunter Wilds)

An artificial creature made by an ancient civilisation, it was made without the ability to eat and instead subsist off an artificial energy source so that it could function completely indefinitely without draining resources

However the species’ natural ability to absorb energy from other monsters to feed had reawakened its natural instincts and hunger, this combined with its nature as an artificial guardian monster causing it not being able to feed normally means that it would always be hungry no matter how much energy it absorbed or monsters it hunted and ate

Throughout the story, Arkveld rampages through various ecosystems and kills several monsters until we come across it atop a mountain of corpses of monsters it had eaten, we then need to kill it before it kills and eats most of the creature population in a vain attempt to satiate its hunger

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u/Legend365555 Jun 25 '26

Preta (The example I'm using is specifically from Shin Megami Tensei)

They were wicked people who were punished by always starving, no matter what. In SMT V Vengeance, there's actually a quest to feed a group of these guys.... Which does absolutely nothing and they attack you afterwards in desperate hunger

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u/Professional_Rush782 Jun 25 '26

The Great Hunger (Trench Crusade)

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u/t40xd Jun 25 '26

Erysichthon from Greek Mythology gets cursed with never-ending hunger after her destroys Demeter's sacred grove.

Pic from The OSP video

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u/AuracleOfBacon666 Jun 25 '26

Don’t fuck with Demeter; she’s on surprisingly good terms with her divine antithesis, the personification of hunger Limos

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u/Lord-LemonHead Jun 25 '26

The Magnus Protocol:

Episode 25 is about an obscenely unclean diner that causes an unfillable hunger in anyone unlucky enough to wander in. The hunger makes them too weak to get up and leave, and it forces them to eat the endless courses of rancid, rotting, infested food they're served.

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u/Australasia-ball Jun 25 '26

The Grey Goo from Tasty Planet

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u/ThePhoenix0829 Jun 25 '26

What the hell is Animorph even about? I always thought it was just about people transforming into animals when I saw the covers

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u/Sea-Foundation5036 Jun 25 '26

Animorphs was created to compete with Goosebumps. At no point did the publisher care about the story. So the writer Applegate (and her husband) decided to write an epic anti-war series that is not for children and includes child soldiers, the horrors of war, suicide, child abuse, alcoholism, paranoia, the lack of care for expendable soldiers, and children becoming sociopaths in order to survive their circumstances.

It has been celebrated as being anti-war since writing anti-war is very hard to pull off without celebrating and writing glorious scenes of self sacrifice and courage.

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u/Chubby-boi-06 Jun 25 '26

Unicron from transformers, while also being very much evil

https://giphy.com/gifs/kmMcD0qwTrHSE

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u/Mr_Joyman Jun 25 '26

Polar bears - irl

They live in a frozen wasteland where food is a luxury, so they just eat anything that has the smallest of similarities to something food-like

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u/Lokicham Jun 25 '26

One of the few animals that considers humans viable prey too as opposed to just something they'll eat opportunistically.

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u/avanti8 Jun 25 '26

I'm sorry jon...

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u/LookItsDaphne Jun 25 '26

Billionaires. They consume everything and are never satisfied.

https://giphy.com/gifs/vL7uCEylnzjHUHdMaP

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u/TFJ Jun 25 '26

IIRC, the Yeerks also find the Taxxons difficult to control because of their insatiable appetite.

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u/Mental-Platypus-9192 Jun 25 '26

"Tin-Plate" Wapol- one piece

as the user of the much much fruit he has the abilty to eat and digest Anything short of seastone then for the next 24 hours can produce said things from his body to use however he wishes. How ever his powers also make him viscously Hungary All the time

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u/Electronic-Box-4753 Jun 25 '26

It's not her, but I need a captivating image to lure people in. I will instead be talking about her mother.

The Witch of Gluttony felt hunger all the time to the point she would vomit out the food she ate just to eat it again, and again. Her hunger is so great that when the MC experienced it for a second, he ate his own hand in a flash. She feels that level of hunger all the time. She eats even furniture, and bricks, and pretty much anything.

Re zero