History Main / GuttedLikeAFish

* In the first episode of ''Series/Loki2021'', the titular God of Mischief tries to threaten a [=TVA=] receptionist into giving him the Tesseract this way. [[ThreatBackfire It hilariously backfires]] when the guy '' doesn't even know what a fish is''.

* ''Literature/TheNumairChronicles'': Arram sees a female gladiator getting disemboweled in the arena. He vomits in disgust and horror.

-->For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—\\

And fixed his head upon our battlements.

* ''Fanfic/TheMountainAndTheWolf'': As part of their desecration of the Isle of Faces, the Wolf's men (Norscans and Iron Islanders) take a captured Green Man, cut him open and nail his guts to a tree, wrap them around the tree andthen set it on fire. The man doesn't scream until the tree starts burning.

* In ''VideoGame/SleepingDogs'', [[spoiler:Jackie suffers this fate off-screen. When Wei found Jackie's body (via a text message), his insides are visible while dangling in a chain.]]

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': In "[[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E3IsMyVeryNatureThatOfADevil Is My Very Nature That of a Devil]]", Louis de Pointe du Lac disembowels Alderman Fenwick and then exhibits the latter's corpse on the gates of St. Louis Cathedral with the intestines drooping loosely.

While gutting [[AgonizingStomachWound does not necessarily lead to death]], the good majority of the examples are deadly, so '''Beware The Spoilers!'''

* In ''Film/HowTheGrinchStoleChristmas'', the Grinch sees he has no messages on his answering machine and checks his outgoing:

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': In the third episode, Louis de Pointe du Lac disembowels Alderman Fenwick and then exhibits the latter's corpse on the gates of St. Louis Cathedral with the intestines drooping loosely.

* Shows up in ''Literature/The13Clocks'', with {{Unusual Euphemism}}s:

* ''Literature/AbleTeam''. In "Amazon Slaughter", the former-Khmer Rouge bodyguards of the BigBad crucify a mercenary pilot after he [[YouHaveFailedMe mistakenly bombs his own side.]] Their commander decides he's dying too quickly, so has one of his men gut the pilot to increase his suffering.
* In the backstory of ''Literature/TheBelgariad'' by Creator/DavidEddings, Belgarath ran across a troll and managed to disembowel it to buy enough time to escape. It actually recovered and retrofitted someone's armor to use as a crude cuirass, so the same strategy was no good the next time.

* In ''Literature/TheElenium'' by Creator/DavidEddings, a particularly spiteful doctor gives Sparhawk some suggestions for what to do when he finds the ones who poisoned Ehlana; slit his belly horizontally below the bellybutton, then kick him over. Everything just falls out.

* When Sheriff Teasle and his deputies try to forcibly cut Rambo's hair in ''Literature/FirstBlood'', he freaks out, wrenches the razor blade from Teasle, and slices open the stomach of one his deputies, spilling his guts out.
* Wolf Cowrie narrowly avoids this in ''Literature/HungryAsAWolf'' when going toe-to-toe with a Wendigo. While he does get clawed pretty badly down the front, his reflexes and his healing factor save him; even with his HealingFactor he needs a lot of stitches afterwards.

* Many Creator/StephenKing books contain this. He especially likes to have characters step on a loop of their own intestines.
* In ''Literature/TheNumairChronicles'', Arram sees a female gladiator getting disemboweled in the arena. He vomits in disgust and horror.
* In ''Seeking Who He May Devour'', by Fred Vargas, it is mentioned that according to the lore, werewolves are hairless when in human form because all their hairs are inside their bodies; cutting them open "from the throat to the balls" to check for hairs is the best way to identify them. When Massart, the asocial, hairless butcher is suspected of actually being the werewolf that killed dozens of sheep [[spoiler: and Suzanne]], it seems that Soliman and the Veilleux really want to do that to him.
* In the second book of the ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' series, Zedd heals a woman who "held her guts from spilling out of a ripping wound in her abdomen."
** Frankly, this happens a ''lot'' in the ''Sword of Truth'' series.
* What happens to [[spoiler:[[BuryYourGays Mistle]]]] in ''Literature/TowerOfTheSwallow'', while her lover [[spoiler:Ciri]] is ForcedToWatch.
* In the ''Literature/WarriorCats'' series, the BigBad is killed in this manner when the cat he tried to order around got fed up with it - the wound is bad enough that he [[CatsHaveNineLives loses]] ''[[CatsHaveNineLives all]]'' [[CatsHaveNineLives of his nine leader's lives]].
* In ''Literature/TheHungerGames'', the second book reveals that Haymitch ''almost'' suffered this fate during his Games. When it came to the finals, the other finalist inflicted a horrible gut wound on him, which forced him to walk while keeping his intestines from spilling out. The wound was stitched after he won the Games, however.

* In ''Literature/NecromancyCottageOrTheBlackArtOfGnawingOnBones'', sea demon Holly Nemov survives being eviscerated after a local god, owing him a favour, rescues him. Holly spends his life afterwards extremely traumatized as a result, and on his friend Casey's birthday, he has a nervous breakdown and stabs himself in the stomach with a cake knife... which he ''also'' survives. Lucky Holly, or maybe not.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* This is one of the components of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered Hanging, Drawing and Quartering]], probably the single most cruel punishment ever given out for treason (namely the "Drawing" part, which has ''nothing'' to do with art whatsoever.)
* Francesco de Pazzi was subjected to this after the Pazzi Conspiracy failed to kill Lorenzo de Medici, with his body hung out a window in public.
* Actual fish being butchered.
* This is typically part of an autopsy, though being dead, the "victims" don't care.
* Sadly, this has happened to more than a few women who tried to reject a man's romantic advances.
* The signature method that [[UsefulNotes/{{JackTheRipper}} Jack the Ripper]] butchered women.
* In 1593, a young, pregnant, newly widowed woman from Bad Wimpfen (a historic spa town in the Heilbronn district of Germany) [[DrivenToSuicide died by suicide]] after she slit open her belly in a cross with a large knife and threw out the fetus, her intestines, and her spleen. She lived for about ten more hours and rejected priests' blessings and consolation due to believing herself an [[BeyondRedemption irredeemable]] daughter of [[{{Satan}} the Devil]]. After her death, she was placed into a sack and thrown in a river.
* Similar to the above, a merchant from the Grossglockau municipality slit up his abdomen, pulled out his stomach, and threw it on his bed in 1617. The person who recorded the unfortunate incident noted the man lived long enough to regret what he did before passing.
* Some jurisdictions in fifteenth-century UsefulNotes/{{Germany}} specified that anyone who debarked a tree on common land would have their guts nailed to the tree, then be driven in circles to disembowel them (though [[Creator/TheBrothersGrimm Jacob Grimm]] studied that period and didn't find any records of this happening in practice). Slavic and Baltic pagans reportedly killed UsefulNotes/{{Christian|ity}}s in a similar manner. During UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution, an Iroquois ambush party inflicted this (after a litany of other tortures) on a lieutenant sent by UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington to destroy pro-British UsefulNotes/{{Native American|s}} settlements.
* Mummification involved this (though the people were already dead at the time), after which the person's organs were put into special containers called canopic jars. Ironically, the ancient Egyptians didn't understand the importance of the brain (and had no way of removing it intact) but such a moist organ had to come out so they whisked it into slurry and poured it out through the nose.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]

* ''WebAnimation/TeenGirlSquad'': In issue 15, The Ugly One's OverprotectiveDad threatens D&D Greg with "I gut you like sheep!" Then he follows through on that threat. D&D Greg complains that the gutted sheep that said it wasn't so bad was lying.

* ''Film/TalesFromTheHood2'': In "Good Golly", Golly Gee kills Philip by disembowelling him [[WhipItGood with a bullwhip]].

->'''Sidney:''' How do you... gut someone?
->'''Stu:''' You take a knife and you slit 'em from groin to sternum.
->'''Billy:''' Hey. It's called tact, you fuckrag.
-->-- ''Film/{{Scream|1996}}''

* ''LightNovel/GoblinSlayer'': Rhea Scout dies in Volume 3 when he gets slashed in the stomach by Goblin Slayer after a failed attempt at killing him and Guild Girl in revenge for his demotion and banishment in Volume 2 for stealing from his party.

* ''Series/{{Hannibal}}''

* In the first episode of ''Series/{{Loki|2021}}'', the titular God of Mischief tries to threaten a [=TVA=] receptionist into giving him the Tesseract this way. [[ThreatBackfire It hilariously backfires]] when the guy '' doesn't even know what a fish is''.

* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS02E21AllHellBreaksLoosePartOne "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part One" (S02, Ep21)]], Andy has his stomach ripped open by a demon, and they show a close up of the torn bloodied tissue in his gaping wound.
* In ''Series/TheWalkingDead'', Negan kills [[spoiler: Spencer]] by slashing his stomach open so his guts spill out onto the street.

* In ''Literature/JurassicPark'', Dennis Nedry dies in this fashion when he has the misfortune of encountering a Dilophosaurus, nicknamed a "spitter" among fans of the films. It blinds him by spitting into his eyes, then [[spoiler:rips open his midsection, similar to the way Grant described in the film version. Likewise, Nedry was alive when it began to eat him. His final thought was to pray for a quick end]].
** [[spoiler: Henry Wu meets his end this way courtesy of an actual raptor.]]

* Hannibal from ''Film/{{Hannibal}}'' cuts a man open then throws him out a window with a noose around his neck. His intestines fall out and splatter on the ground. A little earlier in the movie, Hannibal had described how this same method of execution was used on the person's ancestor (see the entry on the Pazzi family below under Real Life).