The said man-mountain shall have a daily allowance of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1724 of our subjects.
— The Emperor of Lilliput, Gulliver's Travels
If a giant person or animal is looked after by a smaller race, this is undoubtedly a massivenote undertaking. In fiction, the Boring, but Practical realities of this are often handwaved or ignored, but sometimes, fictional settings describe very imaginative ways of doing this, using supplies and equipment intended for beings their own size. The impracticalities of having an enormous pet are sometimes lampshaded in fiction, perhaps as a reason for explaining to a child why they cannot keep a massive dinosaur as a pet. The Square-Cube Law may apply: if a giant is twice as tall as normal beings, it will not need twice as much food, but eight times as much.
When a character is transformed into something much larger, perhaps by Forced Transformation, these difficulties can be one reason why they are now Blessed with Suck.
This trope can be downplayed if the character concerned is not a giant, but simply larger than most, and their logistics are discussed. This trope can be inverted when a larger race looks after a smaller character. However, this is generally far less dramatic, and examples should only be included if the logistics are "unusual" in some way, or discussed, such as finding clothes for the small guest, or building accommodation especially for them.
Compare Giant Food, where a small character finds themselves in a land of giants, and sees their food. See also Easy Logistics, in which the logistics of a vast army are discussed. Just Think of the Potential! can be involved if somebody takes on or breeds a large being, but does not think through how to look after it.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Delicious in Dungeon: Ogres aren't gigantic, but they are the largest and heaviest of the human races, and it's theorized in-universe that the reason they're a Dying Race is because of this trope. Being so large, they eat a lot, are very vulnerable to environmental changes that impact food production, and because they're too heavy to ride horses, they can't move around as quickly as the smaller tallmen race they compete with.
- My Girlfriend is 8 Meters Tall: The Japanese government runs a department which attends to most of the needs of the gigantified Chieri and Neiro, from providing housing (which are essentially giant residences for each of them to live on their own), creating school stationery big enough for them to use, and of course food.
- To Love Ru: In one episode, hoping to prove himself as capable to Lala's father, Rito sets up a resort and spa for visiting aliens. A couple of the aliens are towering alien women who, while humanoid, are of Kaiju-like stature. Part of the service Rito provides for them is scrubbing their backs...by using a push broom in a manner similar to cleaning a pool.
Comic Books
- In Civil War, after Goliath is killed in battle, the Avengers are unable to find a way to shrink him back down to the size of a regular human and cremation is not feasible for a body that size, and thus Tony Stark has to shell out money for thirty-eight contiguous burial plots in order to inter him. The whole thing is a massive black eye for the pro-registration side.
- In a story from anthology comic Weird Science, "I Created A... Gargantua", a scientist's experiments to induce growth in a short man goes awry and he can't stop growing. The main plot point is his increasing appetite, eating both himself and the scientist out of house and home. He tries to make money by at first becoming a laborer, but is let go because he eats more than his employers can afford. Becoming a sideshow falls through because he gets too big to really hide inside anyplace to do a proper paid presentation. Eventually, the government rallies public support for a military execution with news stories about how he's singlehandedly eating the nation into starvation.
- The Man: Inverted when John finds himself having to look after the titular six-inch Man. John improvises lots of things for his comfort: clothes made from a sock and parts of a glove, a mitten to sleep in, a hammock made from a table tennis net, and a home-made tiny towel, flannel, and wash basin. The Man also lampshades that things would have been very different if the sizes had been reversed: if John had been woken by a starving naked six-foot man, he would have run screaming for his parents and called the police, rather than accommodating him.
- The Ogre Gods: The titular ogres are giant humanoids using regular humans as servants and food, using complicated mechanisms and machinery to dress them and needing a town below the castle to serve as People Farms.
- Preacher: Allfather D'Aronique is so morbidly obese he basically needs a new plane every time he takes one due to the stress on the landing gear. When he's evacuated via helicopter (which he wouldn't do normally as they make him sick), he has to be put on a pallet carried under the helicopter (allowing Starr to cut the rope).
- Suske en Wiske: In "De Brullende Berg" (The roaring mountain), the protagonists meet a giant from the Himalayas who made his way to Belgium and stays at their house for a while. When he gets hungry, he easily consumes four bathtubs full of potatoes, 20 breads, several meters of sausage strings, and lots of beer.
- The Transformers (Marvel): This is the reason that the titanic Decepticon Trypticon was hardly used by the Decepticons. While incredibly powerful, he also had massive energy requirements, meaning that every time he was deployed, he strained Decepticon logistics. In one notable instance, he was actually recalled from battle because it was judged he'd exceeded his allocated energy expenditure. His opposite number Omega Supreme likewise never took part in battle because his energy requirements were similarly massive. However, the Autobots got around this by making him their base's guardian, meaning he spent most of his time in his more fuel-efficient base mode.
- Transformers: The War Within: Discussed. During the "Dark Ages" (when Optimus Prime and Megatron were both missing, resulting in both Autobot and Decepticon armies fracturing into numerous splinter groups), the combiner teams were forced to split up so as to deny any one faction their power. Despite the intensified civil war, the disparate factions kept to this agreement, partially because no one faction had the resources to keep a combiner going for very long.
Fan Works
- Domovoi: Jaeger logistics were already complicated enough in Pacific Rim, but the reveal that they become sapient due to repeated exposure to their pilots' consciousness from drifting adds further complications as they now have to accommodate the entertainment needs of Humongous Mecha. It's for this reason that the Jaegers eventually have their drives transferred to human-sized replicas of themselves while their real bodies can be maintained and only brought out if needed for combat.
- Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter): One of the first things that becomes apparent after Harry's transformation into a dragon is that he has an immense appetite. The Dursleys give up on looking after him and reach out to the magical world to hand him over, after he eats "Twelve [sheep] in the last week, along with six hundredweight each of coal and scrap steel, sixty-two liters of petrol, and about fifteen-thousand liters of water. That's on top of him eating everything in the garage on his first night here — including a Transit van!" Fortunately, Hagrid has various contacts and is able to arrange bulk quantities of coal, petrol, etc, along with immense amounts of meat. When it's necessary for Harry to visit America for several weeks, however, carrying enough food for him becomes a serious concern. Professor Snape ends up renting a large motorhome, which is further expanded on the inside to accommodate all the scrap cars, etc. Unfortunately, moving an expanded space puts a lot of strain on the passengers, leaving them constantly tired, and recuperating keeps them so hungry that their group acquires a reputation for cleaning fast food outlets out of their entire stock.
- God Help the Outcasts: It's explained how life can be a bit difficult for Susan as a Giant Woman, mostly due to basic necessities and luxuries being difficult or outright impossible. The army has to construct extra-large furniture for her (namely a bed, a table, and a chair), she has a very limited wardrobe due to how hard it is for her to acquire new clothes, and she has to deal with the fact that she can't really touch people anymore without taking extreme precautions (with the exceptions being B.O.B. and Insectosaurus).
- Welcome to Prehistoric Kingdom: Several chapters devote segments to showing just how much time, effort, and thought goes into caring for all the giant dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals the park houses - there's dedicated farm and ranch land for growing food, a research team devoted entirely to figuring out how to address each species' needs, and it's repeatedly noted that they have to hire enormous amounts of workers just to keep up with their rescue plans.
Films — Live-Action
- Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022): With his days as an actor long behind him, Chip is shown to live in a chipmunk-sized one-story house with a normal-sized puppy. To fill her food dish, he keeps his attic full of kibble and pulls on the door string to dispense it.
Literature
- The BFG: The Queen's palace staff work very hard to provide breakfast for the Big Friendly Giant, referring to him as "this gentleman": making a chair and table for him using a piano, a chest of drawers, four grandfather clocks, and a ping pong table, all described in detail. As for the much larger man-eating giants: the Queen refuses permission to kill them, so they are transported to England using nine of the Air Force's largest helicopters. All the diggers in England are commandeered to dig a massive pit for them to be kept in for the rest of their lives, and snozzcumbers are grown to feed them. At the end of the story, a massive house is built for the BFG to live in.
- The Chronicles of Narnia:
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: When Eustace has been turned into a dragon, he sadly overhears his party discussing how they will look after him when they are ready to sail; would towing him be any good, could he keep up by flying, and how are they to feed him? Fortunately, Aslan intervenes to lift the enchantment before they set sail again.
- The Silver Chair: Inverted, when the heroes stay in the giant castle Harfang. Jill notes that as the giants provide them with clothes, they must be used to guests their size.
- Clifford the Big Red Dog: "Welcome to the Doghouse" is a Whole Episode Flashback detailing the logistical problems the Howards faced after moving to Birdwell Island with Clifford; primarily, building a doghouse large enough for him to live in. Eventually, the residents all chip in out of gratitude for Clifford's helpfulness.
- The Enormous Egg is about a boy and his Triceratops, which mysteriously hatched out of a chicken egg. The kid's family adopts the dinosaur as a pet, but as it grows, they can no longer afford to feed it. The government could step in and feed it agricultural surplus, since a live Triceratops is a scientific marvel... If a senator hadn't decided that dinosaurs are un-American and need to be banned.
- The Famous Five: Downplayed, in that Timmy is a big dog, and the only time George wishes he was little is when he is hurt, because he is so very heavy to carry. The Five sometimes have to find tricky ways to move him as he cannot climb, such as lowering or raising him down cliffs on a rope. This is handwaved in the first book, when George rescues him from a well by climbing down a ladder, and somehow, she gets him onto her shoulder; and it is not explained how they get him up a rope and ladder later.
- The novel by H. G. Wells on which The Food of the Gods is based concerns two well-meaning scientists who discover a growth nutrient, and add it to the diet of some farm animals, which produces giant livestock. Professor Redwood also gives the stuff to his scrawny son Teddy, who grows to giant size. The hazards involved with giant organisms among normal society quickly become pressing, as the subjects become dependent upon the "boom food," while clothing, housing, and keeping giant people gainfully occupied are problems in themselves.
- George's Marvellous Medicine: When Grandma has grown very tall, smashing through the living room ceiling and the roof, she has to be lifted out with a crane, and has to sleep in the hay barn with the mice and rats.
- Green Smoke: R. Dragon cannot fly long distances, so he enlists the help of the little girl Susan to find a furniture van to transport him, and persuades the driver to stand by the Exact Words of their own slogan: "We take anything anywhere".
- Gulliver's Travels:
- The tiny Lilliputians use vast amounts of their man and horse power to look after Gulliver: transporting him to the capital city on a huge platform with wheels pulled by many hundreds of horses, giving him a disused church to live in (in which he can only lie down), and lots of people to make clothes for him. In the animated film, some of these methods are shown in detail. As the Emperor declares that Gulliver shall be allowed to eat enough food for 1724 of their subjects, this illustrates the Square-Cube Law: Gulliver is twelve times as tall as a Lilliputian, and 12 cubed is 1728.
- Inverted when Gulliver visits Brobdingnag, and is the small one himself. A small wooden room is built for him, which the giants can carry around.
- Hayven Celestia: The krakun, 36-meter-long dragon-like reptiles, each individually needs dozens of smaller slaves to support their lifestyles. Even a dingy bachelor pad for one krakun needs a cleaning crew of about fifty human-scale (or geroo, as it were) slaves, to whom the building might as well be a Mouse World.
- Jurassic Park
- Jurassic Park (1990): Tons of food has to be imported into Isla Nublar in order to feed the dinosaurs, the carnivores in particular, with the T.rexes being fed ground up sheep, and when the issue of what to do about the huge volumes of dung, compys are just let loose where the larger dinosaurs roam so that they eat the dung as well any rodents that may be roaming about. The park is stated to have the qualities of hardened military facilities, with large moats and electric fences (to keep the dinosaurs, particular the carnivorous ones, away from the cars carrying tourists), the hotel and other places where tourists stay and staff work are stated to be built like fortresses. The park is mostly automated to make sure the dinosaurs' needs are met and properly tracked, while requiring the least amount of staff. Even though John Hammond, owner of InGen, boast that he "spared no expense," in reality, he cheapened out on a lot of things; for example the automated system has a lot bugs because he refused to hire additional programmers, and refused to raise the pay of Dennis Nedry, his lead programmer, despite making him do most of the work; Hammond also refuses to provide military grade weapons to Robert Moldoon, the park's game warden, who insists are necessary because of the animal's large size. Late in the story it's discovered that the dinosaurs are breeding because of their genetic make up, but were not tracked because the computer system was programed to only count a certain number of dinosaurs.
- The Lost World (1995): Sara Harding is sent to Isla Sorna, aka: "Site-B," the real "birthplace" of the dinosaurs (the lab on the park on Isla Nublar was just for the tourists) to study the dinosaurs living there, though mostly as an excuse for Lewis Dodgson to gain access and steal samples and make his own version of "Jurassic Park." When Ian Malcolm and his expedition are sent to observe the dinosaurs and make their case to keep the island isolated, they discover more proof of Hammond's negligence. They find the rotting carcasses of several large dinosaurs that had been scavenged by carnivores, and a pack of feral Velociraptors who made the area their nesting ground sometime after being set loose during the aftermath of the tropical storm that hit the archipelago, and set in motion the 1989 "incident" on Isla Nublar. Ian's expedition concludes that InGen had no real system for disposing of dead dinosaurs; they simply dumped the carcasses somewhere on the island and hoped that they would either decompose or be consumed by scavenging, non-dinosaur animals.
- Matilda: When the enormous Miss Trunchbull faints, it takes six adults to carry her out of the room.
- Monday Begins on Saturday: One of Privalov's first impressions of the town of Solovets in general and of NIIChaVo operations in particular is watching a colossal truck pull a giant tank-car through town, accompanied by road blocks and police motorcycles blaring warning horns. A local then explains to him that inside the tank is Zmey Gorynych (the giant multi-headed dragon from Russian Mythology and Tales), being transported to a nearby testing site for a scientific experiment.
- The Star Beast: John Thomas' mother tries to get the local government to kill Lummox, John Thomas' 600-kilogram alien "pet" in part because of how much she eats (which included at least one car), and the trouble she causes while he's at school.
- Tales of the Magic Land: In "The Yellow Fog", Arachna, a giant evil witch, has a tribe of gnomes bound by oath to her. When she was put to magical sleep for five thousand years, they took care of her body, and the first thing they do after she wakes up is to provide her a feast.
- Temeraire: The care and feeding of dragons, being sapient multi-ton carnivores, is a recurring plot point. The traditional European method of feeding them a whole, fresh cow every day is logistically inconvenient during campaigns, often forcing them to make do with things like dead cavalry horses or wild pigs. It's a game changer when the Chinese concept of cooking food for dragons gets introduced, bulking out their meals with easily stored and transported grains and vegetables in addition to the meat. (China's aerial corps is an order of magnitude larger than any Western nation's due to rice porridge and a huge network of supply depots). Later, Napoleon's invasion of Russia is significantly bolstered by the innovation of feeding his dragons on hard-wearing dried meat in the Incan style — conversely, as the bitter Russian winter sets in, the dragons on their side begin facing starvation. The show avoids Easy Logistics, so the Aerial Corps has the ongoing financial and logistical challenge of feeding all its dragons — supply lines for 20-ton carnivores get complicated. Some of the protagonist's greatest triumphs in later books are Boring, but Practical things like convincing the dragons to accept alternatives to fresh meat while on campaign.
- The Village Dinosaur by Phyllis Arkle: When a huge living dinosaur is unearthed, the young boy Jed looks after him, with the help of the village. While some people take the view of Just Think of the Potential! and try to make money from the dinosaur, Hilarity Ensues with trying to feed the massive beast, stopping it destroying everything by simply walking through it.
Live-Action TV
- Game of Thrones: In "Winterfell", Sansa complains about the cost of procuring food and supplies for not only the combined forces of Jon and Daenerys's armies, but also her full-grown dragons. Daenerys's reply that dragons will eat "whatever they want" does little to make Sansa's job easier or reduce tensions. It's later mentioned that the dragons eat two dozen livestock a day, and that's only the bare minimum of their daily diet.
Daenerys: (in Dothraki) How many today?Dothraki: Only eighteen goats and eleven sheep.Jon Snow: What's the matter?Daenerys: The dragons are barely eating.
- House of the Dragon: In "Smallfolk", it's shown that House Targaryen goes to great lengths to keep its dragons fed, shipping dozens of livestock to King's Landing every day. This becomes a flashpoint for public unrest during the city's food shortage, as people can barely afford meat while watching wagonloads of sheep be escorted to the Dragonpit.
- Prehistoric Park:
- The second episode has Bob wonder how they can afford to keep feeding Terrence and Matilda, the Tyrannosaurus rex siblings who were rescued in the first episode. While they're quite small at this point, they are rapidly growing and become gigantic predators over the course of the series.
- In the third episode, Nigel accidentally brings a herd of titanosaurs to the present, and Bob's attempts to keep them contained with a wooden fence that doesn't even come up to their chests prove futile as the sauropods simply smash through the barrier. After other failed attempts, they resort to just letting the titanosaurs roam around the park. A later episode also shows Bob having to plant thousands of trees each year just to feed the titanosaurs in the long run.
Myths & Legends
- Paul Bunyan: Various stories surrounding the folk hero will bring up how the regular-sized people accommodate Paul's giant nature. As an example, the amount of food he consumes is so huge, they have to cook it on a giant griddle greased by several men skating on it with shoes made out of ham.
Tabletop Games
- Grim Hollow: The Ogresh are a race of giant humanoids with enormous appetites. They are extremely picky about where they will claim territory - it must have farming communities willing and able to grow enough food to sustain them, and be as far from the territories of other Ogresh as possible, since two Ogresh in the same locality will always eat crops faster than they can be replenished. The fact that their survival hinges on their ability to maintain good relations with others has led to them evolving a natural talent for diplomacy and reading body language.
- The premise of the board game Takenoko is that the Emperor of Japan has been gifted a panda by the Emperor of China as a symbol of lasting peace between their nations... and is being forced to convert a section of the palace gardens into a bamboo farm for the sole purpose of satisfying his new pet's appetite.
Video Games
- Resident Evil 4 (Remake): Leon can find a file in the game titled "Rearing Log" which documents the growth of the first El Gigante that is encountered by the player. In the file, the author not only mentions that El Gigante continues to grow and can no longer stay at the town hall, but also that after being relocated to the quarry that it ate most of the village's cows, leaving only a few remaining.
- Starfield: During the UC Vanguard questline, you can speak with Lieutenant Gualter, the logistics officer of the Red Devils base on Mars. With the Xenoweapons division reforming to deal with the Terrormorph threat, he now has to find sources of food for the numerous massive alien species the base houses for experimentation and have it transported. He mentions having to find a farmer that can regularly ship thousands of tons of feedstock to Mars, and has a very But for Me, It Was Tuesday tone, as if such immense challenges were normal in his line of work.
Webcomics
- Homestuck: Vriska's Lusus has to be fed other trolls (and forced Vriska to do it), while Feferi's Lusus being significantly larger than even Vriska's Lusus has to be fed other troll's Lusii
- The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: When Galatea's plan to produce an army of furry creatures like herself with which to take over the world instead accidentally produces a single gigantic furry baby creature, the logical next question is what to do with said baby. The alien Princess Voluptua takes it to a lower gravity planet to live, where the now-grown Djaliana (or "Jolly") now uses her size to help with the ongoing process of Terraforming that planet. The aliens also gave her some cybernetic parts to help her survive at her titanic full size.
Web Videos
- In the Afterlife SMP, players who hold the Giant origin are twice as tall as a normal player, meaning that they must construct or revamp their bases to specifically accommodate their great height. By the mod's design, they are also too big to use a normal bed as a result, causing them to have to arrange four beds in a 2×2 fashion in order to sleep.
Western Animation
- China, IL: "Baby Boom" centers around a genetic experiment that results in a massive baby roughly half the size of the campus of UCI. The logistics of taking care of the child results in most of the UCI faculty spending much of their time shoveling literal tons of crap, and the expenses of feeding the baby quickly drains the city's finances and the citizens' attitude turns sour
.
- Garfield and Friends: In the episode, "Nighty Nightmare," Garfield has a nightmare in which he eats so much that he grows into a giant that consumes all food in sight. At one point, the National Guard has to be brought in to feed him giant trays of lasagna.
General: This is your cat. How much more food will it take to satisfy him?
Jon: I don't know if he can be satisfied, General. - The Simpsons:
- In "Bart Gets an Elephant", Bart wins an elephant named Stampy as the gag prize in a radio phone-in contest. Pretty soon, the family is struggling to afford the costs of taking care of him - they charge the neighbourhood kids a fee to see and ride him, but can't turn a profit compared to his food bill. Homer tries feeding him free peanuts from Moe's Tavern, but Moe accuses him of Taking Advantage of Generosity and Stampy gets sick because the peanuts don't provide the right nutrition. They take him to an arboretum, but he eats all the leaves from all the trees in a single visit. Homer tries to sell him to an ivory dealer to recoup his losses, but eventually decides to donate him to an elephant sanctuary instead.
- "Simpson's Tall Tales" features the story of Paul Bunyan. The entire town needs to focus their efforts on feeding him giant flapjacks every morning, much to their dismay. It isn't until Paul unintentionally keeps destroying the villagers' homes that they finally take action to drug him and try to move him away.
- Inverted in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Terratin Incident". Unusual conditions on the planet below are generating an unusual radiation that's causing everyone on the ship to slowly shrink. While the crew tries to solve this problem, they also have to jerry-rig the ship's controls to be able to be used by them as they get smaller (mostly cables that run from the controls to the floor so groups of people can pull them to activate the controls).
- The Transformers:
- Most Transformers can recharge themselves with a single Energon cube. In "Thief in the Night", the cityformer Decepticon Trypticon is said to require 50 Energon cubes (the equivalent of 50,000 barrels of oil) an hour in order to stay functional.
- Used as a plot point in the episode "Five Faces of Darkness" (which takes place after The Transformers: The Movie), the Decepticons are shown as having fled to a miserable little speck of a planet called Charr. Their situation is so dire that even their much vaunted combiners are more trouble than they're worth. This is demonstrated when the Constructicons try to form Devastator, who was once considered The Juggernaut, and not only is he unable to completely form due to one of his components literally falling off due to lack of energy, he is so weak he's brought down by a single blow by rival combiner Menasor.
Real Life
- This can be a problem with the care and transport of very large animals, such as elephants or whales. For short distances, whales are transported in wet slings; and for longer distances, animals are kept in slings, crated, and moved by air.
- Monarchs in countries such as Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia kept herds of sacred white elephants, and would sometimes exploit this trope by gifting an elephant to nobles or courtiers who displeased them. Officially, the gift was a sign of a monarch's favor, but would often end up being a Morton's Fork for the recipient - the elephants were protected by law that prevented their owners from using them for labor, keeping the elephant alive would place an enormous strain on their finances, sometimes bankrupting them, and refusing a gift from a monarch or allowing the elephant to die would result in social disgrace. Hence why the phrase "White Elephant" means an unwanted gift.
- The Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of only a small number of aquariums to exhibit ocean sunfish (the largest living ray-finned fish), found that ocean sunfish have an extremely rapid growth rate - going from fifty-pound juveniles to more than sixteen times that weight in a single year. On one occasion this resulted in them having to airlift an ocean sunfish from their Open Ocean exhibit and fly it out to sea via helicopter so it could be released, as the fish was too big to be moved via more normal means and would quickly have become too big to be safely moved at all if left to grow further in the exhibit.
