Not Enough to Bury

"They're going to bury what's left of ya in a soup can!"

—The Demoman, Team Fortress 2

This is not quite Never Found the Body—it's found, all right. More specifically, bits and pieces are found. Usually refers to a very violent death, as either only a few measly fragments of a body is found, or it's been so destroyed you need a mop to clean it up and a bucket (not a body bag) to carry it in.

The inevitable result of Turbine Blender, frequent result of Ludicrous Gibs. Note that this doesn't preclude what's left of the person being buried.

As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.

Examples of Not Enough to Bury include:

Film

• Tends to be seen a lot in war movies. In scenes showing the aftermath of some type of heavy bombardment, at least one casualty is likely to be found like this - the trope will frequently be invoked word-for-word by the person who found him. May serve as a means of avoiding a teen-unfriendly rating while still conveying War Is Hell. Sadly Truth in Television.
• The Fifth Element: all that was left of the Supreme Being after her starship crashed was her right hand. She got better.
• This is the Running Gag when it comes to Steve Buscemi roles in Coen Brothers movies. He has died in nearly every movie he has been in (Barton Fink, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski) with fewer and fewer pieces of himself remaining each time.

Literature

• All that's left of Bluddbeak from the Redwall novel Triss is scattered feathers.
• In Discworld, it is said that if someone is affected by the blowfish poison, you don't need to make a funeral - just repaint the walls.
  • Also from Discworld some of the learning opportunities in the Unseen University have led to unfortunates being returned to the grieving parents as gloop in a bucket, with a note saying "we did warn him".
• In the third Harry Potter book it's said that the largest piece of Peter Pettigrew that was ever found after he was killed by Sirius Black was his middle finger. He was actually a traitor and cut off the finger to simultaniously fake his death and frame Black for his crimes.
  • Invoked in the second book as well, where Snape comments that whoever faces Neville Longbottom in a practice duel will likely be sent to the infirmary in a matchbox. (In the movie, it's Ron's malfunctioning wand that earns the quip.)
  • Subverted in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Barty Crouch Jr. murders Barty Crouch Sr. and transfigures him into a small bone...before burying the bone in the Forbidden Forest.
• In The Grimnoir Chronicles, the protagonist Gravity Master is seen altering gravity in order to smash people a few times, and it's implied many more times.

"The learned gentlemen from the university have asked me if I relied on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity or if I used the simpler rules of Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation on the evening in question when I accidentally took Sheriff Johnson's life . Shit. I don't know. I just got angry and squished the fucker. But I've gotten better at running things and I promise not to do it no more."

—Jake Sullivan, Parole Hearing, Rockville State Penitentiary 1928

• From The Hunger Games, Primrose Everdeen.
• Referenced in Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset: Maureen says of her own apparent death that when a person her size is hit by a semitruck, "they pick up the remains with blotting paper."
• In the Russian The Silmarillion parody, The Zwirmarillion, this is what happened to Finrod. They buried "several of the largest pieces of him they could find".
  • This is an ""attacked by a predator" example in the Real Life section below, since Finrod died wrestling a werewolf in the original.
• Happens to Jesmin Ackbar in Wraith Squadron when her X-Wing is disabled and crash-lands at full speed (it doesn't explode, it shreds instantly on impact from kinetic shock). A torpedo is therefore substituted for her corpse during her burial in space.
• In The Bible, Jezebel's body is devoured by a pack of feral dogs after she is defenestrated, leaving only her head and her two hands (as predicted by Elijah.)

Live-Action TV

• On NCIS three American soldiers in Afghanistan were blown up by a bomb and only pieces of their bodies were recovered. As they were shipped back to the States to be officially identified, the plane that was carrying them crashed, damaging the remains to the point where most ways of identifying them would be useless. The remains turn out to be those of only two of the soldiers since the third was instead captured by terrorists and held captive
• NYPD Blue: the Medavoy subplot of one episode involved a Hasidic Jewish girl who had been killed and butchered and partially eaten by animals, leaving not much body left. At the end of the episode after they caught the guy that did it, Medavoy gave the girl's father some crime scene dirt which had some of her blood in it; in the Hassidem(sp) circle you have to bury the whole body, and Medavoy wanted to give the father as much of the remains as there were available.
• In the first episode of Torchwood: Children of Earth, the villains blow up Jack with a bomb inside his stomach. In the next episode, they only find small pieces of his body remaining, from which he still manages to regenerate.

Music

• The Cat Came Back states that "20 pieces of the man was all they ever found."

Urban Legends

• The urban legend of the JATO car. Only fragments of the driver were found.

Video Games

• Happens to the unlucky FBI agent who gets thrown in a ore-grinder in Dark Corners of the Earth.

Web Comics

• Code Name: Hunter has an investigator look over a cursed set of drums. The next morning, all that's left is a pile of ash.

Western Animation

• Happy Tree Friends—very often, and Played for Laughs
• In Beast Wars, when Dinobot makes his stand against the Predacons and calls for Maximal backup, Rattrap half-jokes: "Dinobot versus six Preds ... there won't be enough of him left to make a toaster!" They do actually find Dinobot in one piece, though the damage he took is still fatal.
• In the pilot of Futurama, Professor Farnsworth hires the protagonists as his new delivery crew and gives them their career chips, which he pours from an envelope labeled "Contents of Space Wasp Stomach".
• This was sometimes what happened to Manfredi and Johnson, Those Two Guys often mentioned on The Penguins of Madagascar (although they never die the same way twice). On one ocassion they were eaten by flying piranha and what was left was buried with a teaspoon. In another, their remains fit on a manila envelope.

Real Life

• One way of disposing of a body is reducing it to this.
• When someone is attacked by a predator, very often, there's not a lot left. Many predators will even eat bones for the calcium.
• Many of the Sept 11th victims were found in only small fragments. Some still haven't been ID'd.