History Main / EarAche

[[quoteright:297:[[Series/{{Castle}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/castle_beckett_ear_yank_3423.jpg]]]]

* In ''Series/{{Castle}}'', Detective Beckett has a tendency to yank Castle's ear when he irritates her by listening in on conversations, getting close to her, and generally annoying her. Which is often.

%%* Raven yanked on Cyborg's ear in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' once.

* [[Recap/TheLastOfUs2023S1E1WhenYouReLostInTheDarkness In the premiere episode]] of ''Series/TheLastOfUs2023'', after a shootout, one of the surviving Fireflies offers to take Ellie to the State House instead of Joel and Tess, but leader Marlene vehemently objects.

* ''Fanfic/TheBoltChronicles'': In "The Spaceship," Mittens is consumed with passion and runs off to find her sweetheart, Bolt. When she sees the dog ensconsed in front of the TV, Mittens dashes up to him and vigorously pulls at his ear, trying to drag the pooch into the study for some alone time. Bolt's reaction suggests he finds this painful.

* In the second season of the AnimatedAdaptation of ''WesternAnimation/TheAnimalsOfFarthingWood'', towards the season's end, Vixen gets in a fight with Scarface's mate, Lady Blue, and wins the fight by biting the blue vixen's ear off, sending her fleeing in tears back to her mate.s

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?", after Homer insults a chef's cooking, he attacks Homer with a meat cleaver. Homer thinks all his strikes missed, only to discover he has a chunk cut off one of his ears.
-->'''Homer:''' Uh, not bad. If Lasagna is Italian for pile of puke!\\

* ''Film/HongKong1941'' has a particularly cruel and nail-biting torture scene, when an informant is put through ColdBloodedTorture by having a stick of firecracker, butt-first, shoved into his ear, and the wick lit on the other side.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Getty_III#Kidnapping John Paul Getty III]] was kidnapped in 1973. His grandfather, then the world's richest man, American multi-billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, refused to pay his grandson's $3 million ransom. Subsequently, one of the boy's ears was cut off and sent to a newspaper.
* Probably the only universally known fact about Creator/VincentVanGogh was that he cut off an ear. Which is kind of ironic, given he didn't. It was only the lobe, and it probably wasn't him that did the cutting.
* A common punishment for runaway slaves in the Antebellum South was to have an ear chopped off.
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear War of Jenkins' Ear]], the Anglo-Spanish and naval part of the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheAustrianSuccession, gets its rather odd name from a very odd bit of history indeed. In 1731, Robert Jenkins was captain of the British merchantman ''Rebecca'' when Spanish coast guards intercepted and boarded it, suspecting that Jenkins was a British {{privateer}} (they had been plaguing Spanish traffic for some time at this point). Despite not finding any evidence of piracy, the Spanish cut off Jenkins's left ear as a kind of message to Britain. This incident didn't amount to much at the time, but when tensions between Great Britain and Spain increased in the late 1730s, Jenkins came out with his story once again, presenting the shriveled ear to a committee of Parliament as evidence of Spain's misdeeds. This, with a few other similar affairs, led to the British declaration of war in 1739, and [[SillyReasonForWar one of the most amusing casus belli]] of all time.
* The notorious [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Force "Tiger Force"]] Special Operations unit was accused -- among other things -- of collecting "trophies" from the corpses of those they killed during the Vietnam War, including entire ''necklaces'' of ears.
* Predating this was the practice [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead of collecting the severed ears (among other body parts) of Japanese soldiers in the Pacific theater]] during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, to the point that UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt was given a letter-opener by a Congressman that was carved from the arm of a Japanese soldier.
* The punishment for counterfeiting money in Colonial America was to have your ears cropped -- that is, have the fleshy bits around the "shell" sliced away. (You also got branded on the temple.) Ouch.
* The old cliche of parents/teachers/other authority figures leading troublesome children around by the ear.
* Gallus Mag, the legendary 19th century lady bouncer at the Hole in the Wall pub in New York City (as mentioned in ''The Gangs of New York''), was said to rip the ears off particularly troublesome customers and keep them preserved in a jar of alcohol.
* If you suffer from hyperacusis, [[labelnote: Note]] A hearing disorder that makes your ears extremely hypersensitive to sound [[/labelnote]] you've probably experienced a few ear aches from a few ignorant folks.
* The perpetrators of the so-called '[[ColdBloodedTorture Hi-Fi Murders]]" in 1974 actually killed one of their victims by inserting a ballpoint pen into his ear canal & stomping on his head until the pen protruded through his throat.
* [[Music/SpiceGirls Spice Girl]] Geri Halliwell had to dash to hospital, when she scratched her ear, and a false nail came off and became stuck inside.
[[/folder]]

* ''ComicBook/Hawkeye'': A self-inflicted case of this is the original reason for Clint's deafness - faced with a villain with a sound-based weapon, Hawkeye blew out his eardrums by activating a sonic arrow in his mouth.

* In ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'', Mask de Masculine uses his fingers to poke out his own eardrums to [[DisabilityImmunity render himself immune]] to [[MagicMusic Rose's sound-based Bankai]].

* ''TheBoltChronicles'': In "The Spaceship," Mittens is consumed with passion and runs off to find her sweetheart, Bolt. When she sees the dog ensconsed in front of the TV, Mittens dashes up to him and vigorously pulls at his ear, trying to drag the pooch into the study for some alone time. Bolt's reaction suggests he finds this painful.

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia''; Kyoka Jiro's AchillesHeel is her ears, as her Earphone Jacks lead directly to her brain and loud noises can stun her easily. A number of opponents ([[MakeMeWannaShout Present Mic]], [[SuperIntelligence Saiko Intelli]], and [[StuffBlowingUp Katsuki Bakugou]]) have managed to take Jiro out by overloading her hearing with loud blasts of sound into the objects she's plugged in to, leaving it up to her teammates to try and salvage the situation.

--> [[spoiler:O-Othinus-sama]], my earlobe! You're going to rip it oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooffffffffffffffffffffff!"

''[several of them chuckle, in a brief break of the tension]''\\
'''Krillin:''' ''[sigh]'' [[DoomedDefeatist We're gonna f]][[SoundEffectBleep *]][[DoomedDefeatist cking die]].

** In "[[Recap/JauneArcLordOfHungerMalachor Malachor]]", Jaune [[DreamingOfTimesGoneBy has a dream of Nihilus' past]] where he witnesses a younger Nihilus use his [[MakeMeWannaShout Force Scream]] on a group of Mandalorians. It was so loud that the Mandalorians surrounding him to collapse to the ground and writhe in pain as blood pours out of their ears, implying that the sonic attack burst their eardrums.

* The ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'' fic ''[[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12785530/1/ Every Step of the Way]]'' sees Present Mic subject a villain to his scream point blank after she helped torture Aizawa. This is a guy whose voice can literally level buildings. It’s agonizing, causing her ears to rupture and bleed among other things. Permanent deafness is probably the least of her worries.

* ''Film/TheBigRedOne'' (deleted scene). The Goums (French native cavalry) cut off the ears of the German soldiers they've killed and swop them for American cigarettes. The Sarge tells him men to stop this trade because the Goums are cutting ears off dead American soldiers as well.

* In ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'', Mask de Masculine uses his fingers to poke out his own eardrums to render himself immune to Rose's sound-based Bankai.

** ''[[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean Stone Ocean]]'': After Jolyne obtains her Stand, Stone Free, it's first display of [[RazorFloss its powers]] is slicing off the ear of a prison guard who was sexually assaulting Ermes. Later, when held in a chokehold by Viviano Westwood, Jolyne sends a thread into his eardrum to stun him.

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': In the third episode, Louis de Pointe du Lac severs the ear of Alderman Fenwick with his [[AbsurdlySharpClaws vampire fingernails]] in revenge for supporting laws that target colored businesses in Storyville.

* Played for laughs in Film/TheLordOfTheRingsTheFellowshipOfTheRing. After Merry and Pippin set off one of Gandalf's fireworks without his permission, he lifts them up by the pointy tips of their ears and glares down at them like they are misbehaving children.
* ''Film/{{M3gan}}'': During [=M3GAN=]’s fight with Brandon, she grabs his ear and stretches it painfully until she ''breaks off his lobe''.

* In ''Manga/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime (Manga)'', an angry Roura pulls one of Link's long, Hylian ears in one scene.