History Main / DismemberingTheBody

* This is what happens to Miki Makimura near the end of nearly every incarnation of ''Franchise/{{Devilman}}''. After the existence of demons is exposed to the public, a mob comes after Miki for her connection to the titular character. Despite her fighting them off, they manage to surround her and chop her to pieces. Akira arrives to see the crazed mob parading her body parts in front of her burning house, with much focus on her severed head on a pike. This causes Akira to snap out and butcher the mob for what they've done to his love. The same ugly fate also sometimes befalls her little brother Taro depending on the version.

* This is what happens to Miki Makimura at the end of nearly every incarnation of ''Franchise/{{Devilman}}''. After the existence of demons is exposed to the public, a mob comes after Miki for her connection to the titular character. Despite her fighting them off, they manage to surround her and chop her to pieces. Akira arrives to see the crazed mob parading her body parts in front of her burning house, with much focus on her severed head on a pike. This causes Akira to snap out and butcher the mob for what they've done to his love. The same ugly fate also sometimes befalls her little brother Taro depending on the version.

* This is what happens to Miki Makimura at the end of nearly every incarnation of ''Franchise/{{Devilman}}''. After demons were exposed to the public, a mob comes after Miki for her connection to the titular character. Despite her fighting them off, they manage to surround her and chop her up. Akira arrives to see the crazed mob parading her body parts in front of her burning house, with much focus on her severed head on a pike. This causes Akira to snap out and butcher the mob for what they've done to his love. The same ugly fate also sometimes befalls her little brother Taro depending on the version.

* This is what happens to Miki Makimura at the end of nearly every incarnation of ''Franchise/{{Devilman}}''. After demons were exposed to the public, a mob comes after Miki for her connection to the titular character. Despite her fighting them off, they manage to surround her and chop her up. Devilman arrives to see the crazed mob parading her body parts in front of her burning house, with much focus on her severed head in a pike. This caused him to butcher the mob for what they've done to his love. This also sometimes happens to her little brother Taro.

* In ''Literature/{{Xanth}}'' book "Crewel Lye", Threnody does this to Jordan's body to ensure Magician Yang that he won't [[PullingThemselvesTogether pull himself together]]. She did make sure to know where each piece was, so she could gather all of them once it was safe.

* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'': In "[[Recap/NCISS02E13 The Meat Puzzle]]," Ducky has the unenviable task of sorting through the tiny pieces of not one, but '''three''' mutilated corpses that are all mixed up together.

* In ''Literature/{{Jumanji}}'', after Alan Parrish's disappearance into the titular otherworld, one nasty rumor that started flying around was that his father chopped him up into little pieces and hid them throughout the house.

* ''Literature/TheGraceOfKings'': A rebel army disinters the reviled [[TheEmperor Emperor Mapidéré]]'s body from his ostentatious mausoleum and allow an angry mob to tear it apart.

* This is what happens to Miki Makimura at the end of nearly every incarnation of ''Manga/{{Devilman}}''. After demons were exposed to the public, a mob comes after Miki for her connection to the titular character. Despite her fighting them off, they manage to surround her and chop her up. Devilman arrives to see the crazed mob parading her body parts in front of her burning house, with much focus on her severed head in a pike. This caused him to butcher the mob for what they've done to his love. This also sometimes happens to her little brother Taro.

* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'': In [[Recap/FateGrandOrderS3E8FairyRealmOfTheRoundTableAvalonLeFae Lostbelt 6]], after they killed {{Cernunnos}} through treachery, the original [[TheFairFolk Six Fairies]] ripped apart his Priestess' body and used the dismembered parts to create humans for their land as she was the only human to have survived Sefar's rampage across the world.

* ''VisualNovel/ZeroTimeDilemma'': Junpei ends up falling victim to this in the Pantry escape room. Though various, initially unsuspecting, limbs are shown and used throughout the puzzles in the area, clearing the puzzles reveals who they actually belong to. Suffice to say, Akane and Carlos are rightfully horrified.

* ''Series/{{Hannibal}}'': [[SerialKiller Hannibal Lecter]] is fond of [[DeadGuyOnDisplay displaying his victims' bodies]] in creatively macabre ways, sometimes in multiple parts. [[SacrificialLion Beverly Katz]] is arranged in thin vertical slices between panes of glass.

* In the novel ''Literature/DoubleStar'' by Creator/RobertAHeinlein, "Jock" Dubois makes a HeroicSacrifice against a Martian who takes the protagonists by surprise in their hotel room. Dak Broadbent and Lorenzo Smythe then have two bodies to cut up so that the pieces can be disposed of in the bathroom oubliette. Dak finds himself unable to cut up the body of his good friend Jock, so Lorenzo has to do it for him

* ''Literature/AliBabaAndTheFortyThieves'': When Ali Baba went looking for his brother Cassim, he went to the Forty Thieves' hideout where he last told of his brother of their wealth. He discovered his body quartered at the entrance, where he returned him home in pieces. He tried to keep his death a secret, recruiting his brother's slave, Morgiana, in helping him hide the body.

* ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'': "[[Recap/GhostInTheShellSACS1Episode10 SA: A Perfect Day for a Jungle Cruise ? JUNGLE CRUISE]]" deals with the re-emergence of a war criminal Batou encountered during [[WorldWarWhatever World War IV]]: an [[DividedStatesOfAmerica American Empire]] Navy SEAL who was ordered to partially skin civilian victims in a T-shirt shape as a terror tactic. He cracked as a result of committing these acts and is now a SerialKiller using the T-shirt skinning as part of his M.O.

For this trope to be in effect, the body must end up in at least two pieces (more is fine). Compare HalfTheManHeUsedToBe, where the dismemberment happens pre- or mid-mortem. Simply stabbing/hitting a corpse isn't sufficient, those examples should go under PummelingTheCorpse. This may lead to a SealedEvilInASixPack scenario if the dismembered has some way of coming back from the dead.

For this trope to be in effect, the body must end up in at least two pieces (more is fine). Simply stabbing/hitting a corpse isn't sufficient, those examples should go under PummelingTheCorpse. This may lead to a SealedEvilInASixPack scenario if the dismembered has some way of coming back from the dead.

* Fairly common in ''Series/CriminalMinds'', either as a forensic countermeasure, ritual compulsion, partialism (the sexual attraction to individual body parts), or some combination thereof.
** "Rule 34" featured an [=UnSub=] who carved up a victim into his arms, legs, and a bifurcated chest, and mailed them to various addresses, keeping the head for himself.

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** Granny Weatherwax threatens a vampire (vampyre) with this treatment in ''Literature/CarpeJugulum''. Since vampires are immortal, it won't actually kill him, but being staked, burned to dust, scattered to the winds, and left as a cloud of atoms floating through space for billions of years is close enough for the townsfolk.
** In ''Literature/SmallGods'',the Omnian Quisition took the heretic Koomi of Smale to every town in Smale to demonstrate the fallacy in his arguments. There were a lot of towns, so they had to cut him very small.

* Happened in the Creator/ErastFandorin's homage to Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, the short story ''Table-Talk, 1882'': Fandorin solves the mystery of what happened to a murdered girl's body by deducing that she was dismembered and smuggled out of her home in small boxes.

* Fairly common in ''Series/CriminalMinds'', either as a forensic countermeassure, ritual compulsion, partialism (the sexual attraction to individual body parts), or some combination therein.

* This often turns up in ''Series/{{CSI}}'' and its spinoffs as a method of disposing of a body, but there have been a few instances where it was ritualistic or for intimidation (for example a guy in ''Series/CSIMiami'' who did it based on a song to try and look cool).
** In the original, a killer hacks up a body and disposes of the pieces in a bunch of garbage containers at the ends of driveways in a neighborhood. Cue gruesome shots of gore being collected by the team.
** Another episode featured a man who was 'zippered': essentially, the killer fired a fully-auto gun back and forth across the victim's waist until he was cut in half.
** ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': In [[Recap/CSINYS08E16 "Sláinte"]], a body is dismembered and strewn around: legs on a bench at a bus stop, arms in a newspaper box, torso dumped in a garbage pile. Mac [[ConnectTheDeaths plots the locations on a map]] and discovers that they are three of the four corners of the neighborhood formerly known as Hell's Kitchen. When he and Jo search the last corner, they find the victim's head.
** In NY's, "[[Recap/CSINYS05E13 Rush to Judgement]]," a wrestling coach is murdered, dismembered, and the pieces scattered in various places. Identification is made from his fingerprints once a hand is located, but the cause of death isn't confirmed until all the parts are found.

** After killing Makima with a surprise attack, Denji carves her body into small, digestible pieces as part of his plan to bypass her [[NighInvulnerability ability to regenerate from all damage taken from attacks]] as he reasons that consuming her flesh as an act of love will bypass the condition.