History Main / BodyMotifs

** And hands, too. Hands must be popular in {{Gainax}} works.

* Gemkind in ''StevenUniverse'' have this going on, with their personal gems' locations on their bodies often corresponding to some aspect of their personality.

* Gemkind in ''Steven Universe'' have this going on, with their personal gems' locations on their bodies often corresponding to some aspect of their personality.

* The Highness Dukes of ''Series/HyakujuuSentaiGaoranger'' are all patterned after body parts: Shuten has lots of eyes, Ura is basically a walking nose, and Rasets is a mass of mouths.

*** Izumi's womb was taken for her child.
*** Edward lost his leg since he was "the leg that supported the family" and sacrificed his right arm to save Al's soul.
*** Al lost his body of flesh and was thus unable to feel his brother's warmth.

* ''Jacob Have I Loved'': Sarah Louise develops a theory that a person's hands, not their eyes, are the window to the soul.

* TS Eliot had a thing for talking about separate body parts, especially eyes, to symbolize what he viewed as the fragmentary nature of modern life. See "The Hollow Men" and "The Wasteland" for some of the more prominent examples.

* George Macdonald, in ''The Princess and Curdie'', gave Curdie the ability to ability to tell what a living being was truly like by taking its hand, or other limb, in his own. The "hideous animal" Lina's paw feels to Curdie like "a child's hand"; his own mother's "horny, cracked, rheumatic old hand, with its big joints, and its short nails all worn down to the quick with hard work", feels like that of Irene's great-grandmother (implied to be an angel); the king's courtiers have hands that feel like the limbs of pigs or donkeys.

* Samuel Beckett's classic [[{{Absurdism}} absurdist]] play ''Waiting for Godot'' substitutes clothing for this purpose, but the association is still there: the high-minded Vladimir is always looking at his hat, and the humbler Estragon complains that his boots are too tight. Lucky also cannot speak unless he has a hat on.

* This seems to be the entire idea behind the ''Crimson Chin'' [[ShowWithinAShow Comic/Webshow Within A Show]] in the ''[[WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents Fairly Odd Parents]]''. Aside from the eponymous hero and his [[HeyItsThatVoice Jay Leno]]-parody chin, nearly his entire rogues gallery is based on various body parts. This includes the Bronze Kneecap, Iron Lung, Copper Cranium, Titanium Toenail, Gilded Arches, Golden Gut, Brass Knuckles, Hair-Razor, and his own evil counterpart, the Nega Chin.

* This seems to be the entire idea behind the ''Crimson Chin'' [[ShowWithinAShow Comic/Webshow Within A Show]] in the ''[[WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents Fairly Odd Parents]]''. Aside from the eponymous hero and his [[HeyItsThatVoice Jay Leno]]-parody chin, nearly his entire rogues gallery is based on various body parts. This includes the Bronze Kneecap, Iron Lung, Copper Cranium, Titanium Toenail, Gilded Arches, Golden Gut, Brass Knuckles, and Hair-Razor.

* ''VideoGame/NeverendingNightmares'' takes place in a WorldOfSymbolism dreamscape, and so the particular focus on arms is probably not a coincidence. The main character inflicts SelfHarm on his forearms, some enemies' arms are bound, there are severed arms laying around in one particularly gruesome section of the game...

Like most motifs, the symbolism is normally dependent on the associations most people have with that particular part. The eyes, ears, hands, tongue and nose are all connected to the five senses. A person's back can be related to "backstabbing" or "turning your back on someone." The neck is usually seen as a vulnerable point - partly due to years of vampire tales, but also because that's where many predators aim for when taking down their prey.

* In ''Film/RedEye'', the camera has an appropriate fixation with Rachel [=MacAdams'=] eyes, which are gradually turning all red and veiny as she stays up all night. The camera also likes CillianMurphy's eyes, which remain icy-blue.
** Many films featuring CillianMurphy focus on his eyes, because, [[HypnoticEyes well...]]

* In the ''Franchise/StarWars'' saga, the severing of the hand or arm occurs frequently. This is such a well known motif that in ''Episode II: Attack of the Clones'' Anakin's [[IncrediblyLamePun disarming]] is teased during the factory sequence before actually occuring at the [[IncrediblyLamePun hands]] of Count Dooku. In ''StarWars'' the severing of the arm or hand of an adversary is the most common way to defeat an opponent ''without killing them'', making Count Dooku's actions particularly significant.

* Lampshaded by Caleb in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' when he tells [[spoiler: Xander]], "I hear you're the guy who sees everything," just before [[EyeScream gouging out one of his eyes]].

* Creator/TimothyZahn often uses a hand-as-title motif in his Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse novels. In TheThrawnTrilogy, Mara Jade was revealed to have been the Emperor's Hand, a sort of agent. In the HandOfThrawn duology, characters speculate that the Hand of Thrawn is an agent like Mara or a superweapon; it turns out to be a five-towered fortress with a massive repository of Thrawn's greatest weapon, knowledge. [[spoiler: And a very special clone.]] The Empire Thrawn set up out in the Unknown Regions is called the "Empire of the Hand". Most recently, in ''StarWars/{{Allegiance}}'', the five do-gooder renegade stormtroopers accidentally name themselves the Hand of Judgement. The 501st Legion, Darth Vader's personal BadassArmy, is sometimes called "Vader's Fist", though to be fair the 501st is an AscendedMeme / Reverse {{Defictionalization}} and not Zahn's creation. At the end of ''Allegiance'', the Emperor's Hand saves the Hand of Judgement from Vader by claiming them as hers, saying "You have the entire Five-oh-first. You certainly won't begrudge me my Hand of Judgment." Then she hears the five out, concludes that while they ''are'' technically deserters they are also good Imperials, and lets them leave, telling them to lose the name. There's only one Hand in the Empire, and she's it.

* In the 2013 Sci-Fi novel ''Literature/TheImpairment'', eyes are the recurring theme with the concept of "perception" and how we "see or view" people to be something of an [[{{Anvilicious ideal]] that college professor Norman Oswald goes out of his way to even humiliated two of his own students, [[JerkAss two nasty and judgmental students that is]], to drive his point how Kyle Griffin's peers are wrong to jump to conclusions of his guilt in the matter of his position as suspect in the murder of his roommate Zack Oliver, of whom we know was killed by an extra-terrestrial. A lot of attention is also drawn to many character's eyes for which we see the true emotions their faces may not be showing and of course, it's through Kyle's eyes we see extra-terrestrials which are linked to the one he saw kill his roommate. The flask that Kyle is given even has an engraved in it for which is rather mesmerizing to say the least.

* The Highness Dukes of ''HyakujuuSentaiGaoranger'' are all patterned after body parts: Shuten has lots of eyes, Ura is basically a walking nose, and Rasets is a mass of mouths.

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' does a rather subtle theme involving the senses. Most good guys, if they have heightened senses, have heightened sight and/or hearing. The bad guys on the other hand, (particularly the Orcs and Nazgul) have heightened smell, and are often either impaired in the light or even partially blind. The effect of this is giving a much more animalistic or uncanny feel to the bad guys, while the good guys have cleaner, more human senses emphasized. The major obvious exception is Sauron, whose symbol is the eye.

** Jeanne's green eyes match the green eyes of most of the robots, [[spoiler:presumable due to Diego's obsession with her]].

** There is also one of the many connections between [[spoiler:Lord Engligh]] and [[spoiler:Caliborn, as they both lose a leg.]]

* ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' uses faces as a motif (more so than [[ThisIsADrill drills]]) - all their mecha are designed as giant heads with limbs, creating a significant shift in the status quo when the Gurren Lagann becomes the first truly humanoid mecha. After the first TimeSkip, civilisation has been rebuilt, with faces as a recurring motif in architecture - and finally, the Anti-Spiral mecha deliberately subvert this motif, being designed without a face or anything that might indicate that they were of this world.