Virgin Sacrifice

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When being Genre Savvy goes horribly wrong.

A subtrope of Human Sacrifice, Virgin Sacrifices typically fall under three main categories:

• As payment to a god or some other power, either to keep them functioning or to win their favor in general.
• As payment to a god or some other power for the exclusive use of some powerful Applied Phlebotinum.
• As a necessary fuel for one's own continued existence (eg: a vampire who needs to feast on — or bathe in — virgin blood every once in a while in order to continue living).

Popular places to conduct virgin sacrifices include, dark, skull-lined altars under glowering idols and the edges of active volcanoes. Abandoned churches with upside-down crosses in them make a nice setting for any vampiric or Satanically-themed sacrifices (although, if the church in question is in use, the alley next to it works just as well).

Virgin Sacrifices are usually young, female, pure-minded, and sometimes raised from birth to accept — even celebrate — their honored position as Virgin Sacrifice. If not, then they're usually a Love Interests or a member of the heroes' party who got kidnapped and carted away for sacrificial purposes. (If said member of the party is, in fact, not a virgin, you can expect some hilarious hijinks to occur when that fact is uncovered.)

In the ultra-rare case that a male virgin is required for a Virgin Sacrifice, expect the situation to be played for as much humor as possible. Also, expect the victim to be far more upset that his friends have discovered his virgin status than he is about actually being sacrificed.

The virgin will usually be saved right from the sacrificial altar by the Big Damn Heroes, or via an elaborate scheme by her allies to impersonate the hungry god.

Despite the most obvious logical solution, Virgin Sacrifice situations are hardly ever resolved by giving the sacrifice-to-be an opportunity to have an intimate encounter, thus rendering the Virgin Sacrifice unsuitable. (Unless the victim is male and the story is a Sex as Rite-Of-Passage comedy.) In a few cases, the save-the-sacrificial-victim sex may be non-consensual. That's probably the only time a "heroic character" can rationalize and "get away" with rape, if the hero is male and the Sacrificial Victim is female. Most professional writers probably shy away from plotlines like this due to the amount of Squick they dredge up, although such a scenario has been the plot to many a rape Fanfic. And this is not exactly helped by the fact that the squickiest of such ceremonies (which are not shown on TV for obvious reasons) involve the virgin being raped as part of the sacrifice.

Also note that virgin sacrifices are never the most obvious solution — children — for obvious reasons. The most common in-story justification is that the victim's virginity is ritually significant for some reason connected to the fact that they might have but didn't, which lets the prepubescent population off the hook.

While human sacrifice is Truth in Television — though less frequently than religions have been accused of it — the Virgin Sacrifice is not so accurate.

Often tied in with a Town with a Dark Secret and A Fete Worse Than Death.

Subtrope of Virgin Power and Powered by a Forsaken Child. This is most definitely a down side to Nature Adores a Virgin.

Examples of Virgin Sacrifice include:

Anime & Manga

• Fushigi Yuugi
  • The power that Miaka and Yui (and before them, Takiko and Suzuno) are granted is not only a Virgin Power, it also can result in this if the wielder of the power isn't strong-willed enough to keep from being absorbed by the god she's calling upon. Takiko (who was dying already) succumbs to it after making two Selfless Wishes, Suzuno makes her three Wishes and lives, Yui is absorbed into Seiryuu after making three selfish wishes, Miaka makes three selfless wishes (one of them brings Yui back to life) and survives
  • In Nuriko's character novel, Yukiyasha Den, the eponymous snow demon feasts only on beautiful, young, virgin girls. He, or better said she kills Nuriko's friend Byakuren, and once she realizes what she's done, she runs off in horror and never is seen again.
• Pretty much a staple of the hentai series Bible Black. Heck, the first episode even begins with a virgin being sacrificed. Subverted as the girl was raped beforehand, therefore not a virgin. Too bad that the chick who was sacrificing said girl didn't know that she was no longer a virgin....
• Played straight in the anime series Vandread, with whole worlds up for the Virgin Sacrifice, both literally and figuratively, in combination with the subplot of Earth using its colony worlds as organ banks in a program known as the Harvest. The worlds of the principal characters, Tarak and Majere, are literal worlds of virgins (in a heterosexual sense) that have been taught that each is the other's enemy for precisely that reason: Tarak and Majere are to supply the sexual organs, and Earth wants them in as pristine a condition as possible. There is also the episode where the Nirvana encounters its first harvester ship; the planet in question has not physical virgins, but mental ones — kept in ignorance and taught that the harvesters are gods, sent to take them to Paradise. It's revealed during the episode that these people were kept in ignorance so that they would never progress; the harvesters are not going to take them to Paradise, but was sent to harvest their spinal cords.
• Parodied in Bastard!! as a vampire feeding on captured holy swordswomen bites into one and vomits before starting a rant about girls these days. Seems not all holy swordswomen are as chaste as they're meant to be.
• In Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight, the dark priestess Naneel arranged for her ressurection by placing part of her life force into a baby who would be one of the three main components for the resurrection ritual. But the child fell into the hand of a far more benevolent person (the priestess Old Neese) who raised it as her own daughter Leylia. When the resurrection was finally to take place Leylia had long since been married and a child of her own, which made her unsuitable as the sacrifice... but her daughter, Young Neese, would also work... The girl is aware of this, though, and decides to face the enemy rather than hiding.
• In Phantom Quest Corp, vampires can only subsist on virgin blood — and it is not enough the woman is technically a virgin, she must also be good and pure and straight-edge. No wonder the Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire is anemic....
• Anatolia Story has Queen Nakia summoning Yuri Suzuki to use her as this for a death spell that would kill Nakia's stepson, Prince Kail Mursili. Too bad Yuri and Kail met, he kissed her (and let her learn their language like this) and claimed he had already slept with her. . .

Comic Books

• One was required to summon a demon in the Ramba story "Vendetta from Hell". Ramba spoils the satanists' plans by rescuing their sacrifice. And then having sex with the intended sacrifice.
• Dreamkeepers has a sacrifice go all the way to completion. As the first scene in the comic!
• In one issue of Marvel Comics version of Captain Marvel, Marlo was attending the grand opening of a comic book store when the store owner revealed himself to be a wizard and, after seeing that she was the only one uneffected by his mind control soda (she'd accidentally spilled it), told her that the whole thing was just an elaborate ruse. After she pointed out how overly complex his plan was, he asked her to name an easier way to find 100 virgins on a Saturday night in LA. Her answer: "Star Trek Convention."
• The male version occurs in Red Sonja: Blue. The sacrifice attempts to claim that he is no virgin but his claims are dismissed because the Evil Sorcerer making the sacrifice comes from his village and knows him, and because the demon involved can smell the innocence on him. The claim appears to be a desperate attempt to escape his fate rather than any shame at being a virgin, however.
• Parodied on the cover of XXXenophile #11, which features the volcano god rejecting the sacrifice for failing the most basic criterion.

Comic Strips

• The humorous male version appeared in Mad Magazine's "Monroe" series.
• One The Far Side comic has two woman being carried up the side of a volcano by a group of natives. One woman assures her friend, "And you were worried they wouldn't like Americans! Why, they lit right up when we said we were Virginians."
• Implied in this strip of Dilbert.
• At one point in Doonesbury, Uncle Duke was governor of American Samoa. When the local volcano started to erupt, a virgin sacrifice was needed, with several young women vying for the honor. As the winner was preparing to dive into the crater, her younger brother was loudly complaining about why boys couldn't be virgin sacrifices too. ("I can be just as chaste as any dumb girl!")

Films — Live-Action

• The movie Once Bitten is a comedy about a virgin male who attracts the attention of an evil vampiress. The vampiress needs to feed on virgin (male) blood three times before Halloween in order to maintain her beauty. The victim manages to escape from the vampiress's clutches by convincing his frigid girlfriend (who's been holding him off the entire movie for "just the right time") to finally have sex with him.
• The Tsui Hark film Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain contains an encounter where the young hero and a master swordsman discover an evil cult that sacrifices virgins. As they are about to fight them, the hero realises they want virgin males and can detect him.
• Predated by the movie Andy Warhol's Dracula; in that film, Dracula only subsists on virgin blood (the first two girls he tries to drink from, being non-virgins — heck, we see them having sex with the ostensible hero — make him vomit). The "hero" has no qualms about raping the virgin girl to save her, leading to the grotesque sight of Dracula licking her hymenal blood off the floor in desperation.
• Joe Versus the Volcano, featuring Tom Hanks as the virgin. He doesn't seem to be worried about his friends finding out, mainly because he doesn't really seem to have friends. He manages to get laid before the end of the movie, and the volcano spits him back out and sinks the island he was to be sacrificed for.
• The original version of The Wicker Man. Note that the American version remake omits this element because (say it with me now) an A-List Hollywood actor is not a virgin. Not even if he's Nicholas Cage. And yes, Edward Woodward does play a male virgin in the original, so there. Given an extra twist because it wasn't just the fact that he was a virgin that made him so perfect, but the fact that he would willingly refuse sex from an extremely gorgeous woman out of virtue. That kind of purity can be hard to find, and Lord Summerisle made it clear that while a child sacrifice was valued, it was nothing compared to "The right kind of adult."
• In Dead Gentlemen Productions Demon Hunters: Dead Camper Lake, Chris is taken as a virgin sacrifice to re-summon Duamerthrax the Indestructible. As expected, there are a fair number of "Wait, he's a... naaaaaah," moments.
• In the film remake of the old series Dragnet, P.A.G.A.N. acquires a young woman as a virgin sacrifice to be thrown to a giant snake. Predictably, the heroes rescue her, she becomes a love interest, and she's not a virgin by the end of the film.
• The movie Dragonslayer, inspired by the story of Saint George (see below), features a town that selects virgins via lottery to feed to a dragon. It's the villagers' own superstition that leads them to do this, though; the dragon is basically a wild animal and probably couldn't care less about who it eats. Worse: the lottery that determines which virgin girls will be sacrificed is always rigged to spare either the Princess of the real or the daughters of the people who can bribe the King. When the Princess finds out, she becomes a Death Seeker to atone and willingly sacrifices herself
• In Lesbian Vampire Killers, the blood of a virgin must be mingled with the blood of the last of the McLaren's to resurrect Carmilla the Vampire Queen.
• The title character in Jennifer's Body is thought to be a virgin by a satanic rock band and thus is sacrificed to the devil in exchange for success. Although, since she's "not even a backdoor virgin", she becomes a man-eating demon instead. Oh well.
• Poked fun at many times in Year One.
• The monsters in Sleepwalkers must eat virgin souls to continue their incestuous, cat-hating existence.
• Conan the Barbarian has the Cult of Set sacrificing virgins to a giant snake. Conan saves one by accident (he kills the snake while stealing a jewel just before the virgin jumps into the snake's pit).
  • In the sequel Conan the Destroyer, he saves a virgin princess from being sacrificed... intentionally this time.
  • And in the 2011 film Conan has sex with the potential sacrifice before she's captured, yet it apparently makes no difference despite it being stated earlier that the sacrifice must be both of pure blood and a virgin.
• The Alchemist in Vidocq requires the blood of young female virgins to keep the mask that gives him his powers in the mend. The details are unclear, but one escaped subject seemed to have had her tongue cut out, and his laboratory contained mutilated human remains and rags that may have started out as human skins.
• The Lair of the White Worm has this idea as the centerpiece for the climax.
• All three versions of King Kong have featured variations on this trope, even if it does seem unlikely (at best) that Dwan, the Distressed Damsel from Dino De Lauentiis' remake/reimagining of the film, is technically a virgin (it was the 1970s, after all).
• Subverted in The Cabin in the Woods. The ritual calls for one of the sacrifices to be designated "The Virgin", but the sacrifice actually being a virgin isn't strictly necessary. As the Director puts it, "We work with what we've got." Further Subverted in that according to the rules of the ritual, the virgin's death is optional if she survives to the end.
• 1991 TV movie Cast a Deadly Spell. In this film noir/horror pastiche set in an alternate 1940s Los Angeles where everyone uses magic except private detective Harry Philip Lovecraft, a cult leader has fathered and raised a daughter for the sole purpose of being the Virgin Sacrifice during the summoning of a Thing Man Was Not Meant to Know. Unfortunately for Daddy and his ritual, she got around his strictures by boinking an L.A. police officer...

Folklore

• Many variations on the story of Elizabeth Bathory's alleged Blood Baths to rejuvenate her youth and beauty tell it with Bathory bathing in the blood of virgins.

Gamebooks

• In the Lone Wolf book The Chasm of Doom, the virgin Madelon is planned to be sacrified at the edge of the Maakengorge by bandit lord Barraka and the Disciples of Vashna, in order to raise Darklord Vashna and his army of undead. She's saved by Lone Wolf — unless the player mucks it up.

Literature

• Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice by A.M. Ambrose is a snarky satire/fantasy novel about this trope.
• Discworld
  • In Guards Guards, Terry Pratchett's subversion of the myth of sacrificing virgins to a dragon is that the only virgin Ankh-Morpork can provide in a hurry is the way-over-forty reclusive dragon-breeder Lady Sybil Ramkin, a rather large lady who hospitalises at least three of the brutal soldiery trying to chain her to the sacrificial slab. Border on the Zig-Zagging Trope, in fact. Since Carrot's lady-friend Reet is clearly not a virgin, and Sam Vimes assumes the role of hero, it's pretty much required that Lady Ramkin be a virgin so that he can rescue her. This is Discworld, after all; somebody female's got to be a virgin.
  • In a previous Discworld book, The Light Fantastic, the voluntary Virgin Sacrifice complained after her Unwanted Rescue that that was "seventeen years of staying home on Saturday nights down the drain".
• The rarity of male virgin sacrifices is mentioned in Mercedes Lackey's The Fire Rose. The villain needs a virgin sacrifice, and remarks that while the gender doesn't matter, it's so much easier to verify a woman's virginity than a man's.
• Subverted in a few other Lackey books. In One Good Knight, the townspeople offer up girls as virgin sacrifices to pacify a rampaging dragon, and at least one isn't virginal in the least. (It turns out that the royal wizard summoned the dragon as a means of social control — and the girls are all spared). In Burning Water, Tezcatlipoca needed to sacrifice a woman who had borne at least one child to return to Earth.
• In Roger Zelazny's novel The Changing Land, a wizard employs a "virgin detector spell" to locate a suitable sacrifice. The wizard is in a hurry to regain his power after a mishap and sacrificing a virgin is the quickest and easiest way. Naturally, the Big Damn Heroes arrive just in time.
• In the novel The Day of the Dissonance, some fairies decide to sacrifice a young girl who they have captive, stating that bathing in virgin's blood would help them. The sacrifice is called off when the girl breaks into hysterical laughter at being told this. Seems she was held captive by pirates for quite a while and doesn't qualify.
• In the novel Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff, an attempt by an evil keeper (a magic user who safeguards the balance between good and evil) during World War II to open a gateway to Hell in the basement of a bed and breakfast in Kingston, Ontario fails because her intended sacrifice of a teenage girl she assumed was a virgin turned out not to be and the keeper is placed in suspended animation. Then, in the present day she is accidentally revived and sets about to recreate her plan, this time with the chaste 20-year-old male cook/housekeeper of the B&B whose virginity is a surprise to his boss, Claire Hanson, the female protagonist of the series, who was further surprised to find out that her 17-year-old sister was not a suitable sacrifice because she had already become sexually active.
• A short story in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthology series covers a lot of ground with this trope. The local religious elders are known to cheat when it comes to selecting victims, "randomly" selecting girls who turned them down, and once a girl is known to be the next chosen, removing her from contention is unwise because the boy who helps her tends to find that it's harder to prove a male isn't a virgin. So the protagonist (female, next victim) finds the dragon she's supposed to be sacrificed to, finds that he doesn't care about the sexual history of his meals, and convinces him that fat priests are a better food source.
• Less extreme example in Lawrence Watt-Evans's Ethshar series. One of the many, many ingredients needed for wizardry is blood of the virgin. Wizards are just buying it in reasonable amounts from virginal donors. It is implied in Taking Flight that virgin of any gender will do. Virgin's tears are also magically potent.
• In On a Pale Horse, Luna knows she's living on borrowed time, and sets herself up to be eaten by a dragon. The preference of dragons for virgin (not necessarily human) prey is actually explained: generations ago, the species was nearly wiped out by a strain of venereal disease that unlucky dragons contracted from eating infected animals.
• In a play on the story of The Minotaur, Minea in The Egyptian is to be sacrificed to the Cretan God... Only God Is Dead and rather than being sacrificed, she is killed to keep this a secret. Yeah, it's that kind of story.
• In Juliet Marillier's The Dark Mirror a virgin sacrifice is actually carried out to its gruesome conclusion — what's worse, the "good guys" are responsible for it.
• In Heart's Blood, a villain performs a virgin sacrifice in order to gain magical powers. A situation in which the heroine might be required to become a sacrificial victim is averted when she has sex the night before.
• We first meet one of the protagonists of the Farsala Trilogy, Soraya, when she is preparing to be sacrificed to ensure the continued protection of her country from invaders. At that point, most readers probably think it wouldn't be all that sad, but her father engineers her escape.
• Conan the Barbarian
  • In Robert E. Howard's story "The Scarlet Citadel", the evil Tsotha, upon learning that Conan has returned and has freed his old rival Pelias, loses it:

"Oh, Set!" he lifted his hands and invoked the serpent-god to even Strabonus' horror, "grant us victory and I swear I will offer up to thee five hundred virgins of Shamar, writhing in their blood!"

• • In The Hour of the Dragon, the wizard Xaltotun carries a young virgin girl to an alter with the intent to sacrifice her as part of a powerful spell, but he is interrupted by two good magicians who are allies of Conan.
• One of the earliest Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures has Ace offered up as a virgin sacrifice. By a Nazi Mystic Cult. This may seem surprising given her later reputation, but it was one of the earliest novels.
• In Dragon's Bait, this trope is invoked in universe by an evil cleric and a girl's village. Alys is falsely accused of witchcraft and the evil cleric declares they can kill two birds with one stone by sacrificing Alys (a virgin) to a dragon who is terrorizing another nearby village. Lampshaded by the dragon who says the "virgin" thing was made up by men, because the important people in a village aren't likely to be virgin girls.
• In David Weber's Bahzell series, the demon god Sharna and his minions tend to want these. Being the Scorpion God of Evil Bastardy in a series where the heroes don't/can't always make it in time, this tends to end up as, well, Squick.
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland goes for the squicky version of this, with the sacrifice being ritually raped and then disemboweled.

Live-Action TV

• One of the last episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess revolves around this trope, and the virgin involved in it. Or, more specifically what happens when said virgin wants to be sacrificed. And what happens when she turns around and devotes herself to the Goddess of Love and Sex, Aphrodite. Hilarity Ensues.
• A first season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer involves a Praying Mantis demon that uses virgin males to fertilize its eggs, then eats them. Its chosen victims are a jock and Xander, both of whom are insistent that A Man Is Not a Virgin after Buffy rescues them.
• Angel
  • An episode of went with the hijinks route when a wizard tries to sacrifice his own daughter. Unfortunately for him, virginity is a requirement, and he discovers he hasn't been isolating her from men as effectively as he'd thought.
  • In season four, Jasmine-possessing-Cordelia had to use fresh virgin blood so she could give birth to herself. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • In The Shroud of Rahmon, Cordelia converses with Wesley about her feelings on virgin sacrifices, particularly women:

Cordelia: Why is it always virgin women who have to do the sacrificing? Wesley: For purity, I suppose. Cordelia: This has nothing to do with purity. This is all about dominance, buddy. I can bet if someone ordered a male body part for a religious ceremony, the world would be atheist — (snaps fingers) — like that.

• Supernatural
  • Combined with Someone Has to Die in "Jus in Bello". Apparently the easiest way to kill demons is a ritual requiring the vital organs of a virgin. Lampshaded by the virgin (Nancy) to her friends:

"When this is over, I'm going to have so much sex." "... really?" "But not with you."

• • It comes up again in "Like a Virgin", although the "sacrifice" in question is possessed by the "Mother of All" rather than killed outright. She could still be alive, just trapped in her own body, not that that's a big improvement. Dean comments that in his experience, "being easy is pretty much all upside."

Myths & Religion

• This trope turns up in a lot of fairy tales, especially ones where a dragon is holding a town hostage and demands regular feedings. It's referred to as the wikipedia:Princess and dragon Princess And Dragon motif.
• In The Bible, Jephthah's daughter. Instead of being commendable, this is taken as Jephtah being an idiot about swearing oaths. Many in the recent centuries have gone further and asserted that it was a dedication to service rather than a literal sacrifice, which was considered as a Fate Worse Than Death for women back then, but this is not conclusive or the most common interpretation.
• Happens a lot in Greek mythology, such as Cetus and Andromeda: the latter, who's the princess of Ethiopia, must be sacrificed to the first after her mother severely insults either the Goddess Aphrodite or the Nereids with a Blasphemous Boast. Enter the hero Perseus, who falls for Andromeda and saves her via using the head of Medusa to petrify and kill Cetus.
  • Iphigenia was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to appease the goddess Artemis. (Although his wife Clytemnestra had him murdered for it, and some variants, the goddess snatched her away and substituted a deer.)
• One of the classic examples is the story of Saint George, in which a town in North Africa is plagued by the depredations of a dragon who demands that the townsfolk offer up a virgin for it to devour on a regular basis. The dragon is usually interpreted as a metaphor for Satan and/or pagan beliefs.
• In Japanese Mythology, the snake demon Yamata no Orochi demanded for the sacrifice of the maiden daughters of two minor deities every seven years. The Thunder God Susanoo intervened after meeting said couple and their only remaining daughter, Princess Kushinada: in exchange for the girl's hand in marriage, he got Orochi (and his eight snake heads) drunk and killed him.

Tabletop Games

• FATAL: Requires virgin sacrifice. And recent rape victim sacrifice, and infant sacrifice, and...
• The Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition supplement The Book of Vile Darkness has a mechanic for evil spellcasters to make sacrifices to gain bonuses to spells. One option increases the sacrifice's power if the victims is "pure", in whatever sense the DM deems appropriate (i.e. whatever most fits the person the PCs need to rescue).

Theater

• In Euripides's The Trojan Women and Hecuba, the Trojan princess Polyxena was sacrificed at the demand of Achilles's ghost.
• In Euripides's Heracleidae, the children of Hercules seek sanctuary. The Athenians intend to protect them, but grow reluctant when the oracle says they must sacrifice a noble maiden to succeed. One of Hercules's daughters, Macaria, volunteers for the role.
• The Golden Calf scene in the Schoenberg opera Moses and Aaron includes the sacrifice of four naked virgins.
• In I'm Sorry, the Bridge Is Out, You'll Have to Spend the Night, Dr. Nasser needs a virgin sacrifice for his mummified pharaoh. Turns out that it doesn't have to be a woman; he's more than happy to use hapless protagonist John Wellgood upon discovering that he's the only virgin around (which takes John aback when this is revealed to him, as he believed that his fiancée Mary Helen was also a virgin.)

Video Games

• Happens Twice in Romancing Sa Ga
  • Early on in the game, during the Quest "A Suspicious Demise": Humans that worship Saruin sacrifice virgin women to gain power; you can stop them mid-ceremony.
  • And later on, during the "Water Dragon Rite" Quest, Daughter of Kjaraht's potentate is captured and offered to Strom, one of the 4 Elemental Lords; you can free her, but it involves a very annoying Chain of Deals or killing Strom. Killing Strom is much easier than having to go about his request.
• In the introduction of Castlevania Rondo of Blood, a group of cultists, led by the dark priest Shaft, sacrifices a woman to revive Dracula.
• The ill-fated Rope Maidens in the first Fatal Frame game are virgins, raised in total isolation from human contact, that are then violently ripped apart by the neck and limbs in order to preserve the seal in the Hellmouth under Himuro Mansion. The latest one, Kirie, accidentally fell in love with a servant boy, with disastrous consequences for the ritual.
• An instance of a male Virgin Sacrifice is found in Ben Jordan case 3.
• In La-Mulana, you can see a never-ending procession of virgins plunging themselves into a spiked pit, which causes their blood to drip down and heal the Mini Boss Shu.
• Rance II involves an evil priest attempting to divert the life force from forty virgin girls into an Artifact of Doom, allowing its wearer to become omnipotent. Unfortunately for said priest, however, Rance has just the thing to cure the girls of that unfortunate condition...
• Blood Magic in Dominions can't use just any blood: it has to be virgins, and even then, most virgins aren't good enough for the job.
• A sidequest from Drakensang involves this. Namely, you have to stop the Too Dumb to Live Mayor from sacrificing a maiden to the Dragon Jafgur in an attempt to spare the village. However, if you decide to go straight to Jafgur and kill him the mission is considered failed.
• In the backstory of The King of Fighters' Orochi Saga, 1800 years ago, the Orochi Hakkeshu captured eight girls known as the Kushinada maidens and sacrificed seven of them to awaken Orochi; the last one was saved by Yasakani, Kusanagi and Yata before they sealed Orochi away.. In the present, if a player uses a certain team (Iori Yagami, Kyo Kusanagi and Chizuru Kagura), the sub-bosses (Chris, Shermie and Yashiro Nanakase) reveal that they're planning something similar even if to a minor scale: kidnap and sacrifice a schoolgirl who's the last known descendant of the surviving Kushinada, and who happens to be Kyo's Tsundere Love Interest Yuki.. This is foiled, logically.

Web Comics

• The webcomic Jack of All Blades features the "party member who is not actually a virgin" twist and the male virgin sacrifice in the following strip. Oh, and the villains make the sacrifice to summon a god that will destroy the world.
• The Order of the Stick
  • Subverted: when a female sacrifice mentions that she's not a virgin, her captors explain that their god prefer sacrifices "who's been around the block a few times".

Lien: Damn it, how does my mother keep being right about this stuff?

• • Also, V is encouraged by an imp to use virgin's blood as a means of strengthening a spell. V rejects this recommendation, partly on moral grounds, but mostly because there aren't any virgins to be had on the deserted island where this conversation takes place.
• Played with in the cross-over of Clan of the Cats and College Roomies from Hell, where a spell requires the sacrifice of two were-beasts and a "virgin for better digestion".
• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic had one character barely escaping such a sacrifice in the flashback. The page is called "A Wolfish Smile." We already saw this smile, since it was the start of Wolf's long career...

Web Original

• One item on Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do In An RPG: When a ritual requires a virgin sacrifice, may not look knowingly at the Paladin, Monk, Hermetic Magician, or Hacker.
• Subverted in Lonelygirl15, in which it turns out that whether or not the victim actually is a virgin makes no difference to the ceremony, and the "purity bond" is just religious mumbo-jumbo to keep the victims in line.
• Played with in the Hitherby Dragons episode "Angus' Bad Day": Apparently, in a pinch, it doesn't really matter if the person whose blood is being spilt is a virgin, so long as the implement with which the blood is being spilt has never had sex.
• Whateley Universe example: in "Ayla and the Grinch", when a demon wants to bring itself further into this reality using a sacrifice of multiple virgin girls, but it is in Los Angeles, it goes to... a local Miss Teen U.S.A. pageant.

Western Animation

• Futurama
  • It appears that the tribe of sewer-dwelling mutants have taken to worshipping Nibbler as a god, believing a virgin sacrifice will prevent mass-scale slaughter. Leela volunteers as the sacrifice to draw Nibbler out — only to be derisively mocked. ("Nice try, Leela. But we've all seen Zapp Brannigan's webpage.") It transpires that there's no-one else available, however, meaning they have to use her anyway: "So when El Chupanibre comes to take the (airquotes) 'virgin'..."
  • Also in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", when the governments of the world decide to crack down on the Trekkie movement for becoming too powerful, they bump them off in the manner befitting virgins. Cue two men tossing Trekkies into a volcano, saying "He's dead, Jim... He's dead, Jim..."
• Drawn Together. Toot Braunstein is stranded on an island and eating everything in sight. The natives use up all their virgins appeasing her, so they have to resort to using the sluts.

"NO! I gave that beast my daughter, I will not give it my wife! (That's right, I know. I've always known.)"

• An early episode of Johnny Bravo has Johnny being offered as a virgin sacrifice by a tribe of Hot Amazons. Johnny reacts with an offended "Virgin?"
• A flashback on The Critic showed Jay Sherman and his then wife sunbathing on a tropical island on their honeymoon. He is then approached some of the island natives:

Tribal Leader: I'm sorry Jay, but to appease the volcano we must sacrifice a virgin. Jay: (to his wife) Did you have to tell everybody? (next scene: Jay is tossed into the volcano, but is "rejected" via eruption) Jay: (present day) After that, they had ten years of pestilence and plague!