History Main / HelpingHands

* The first supernatural entity encountered in ''Literature/MoDaoZuShi'' is a severed left arm reanimated by resentful energy, killing several people and replacing their left arms with itself in its quest to find its original body. When finally subdued, it demonstrates the ability to point to the locations of its other body parts like a compass, kickstarting the overarching mystery of the novel.

* In ''Literature/{{Masques}}'', Aralorn has to get rid of an undead arm by crossing running water, and she mentions that taking the arm with her might result in the undead reassembling itself wherever the arm is.
* Patchwork, a.k.a. Modular Woman, from the ''Literature/WildCards'' novels, can tear off her body parts and use them remotely. She had people plant her eyes and ear (she needed the other ear to communicate with others) where they could spy on her boss's enemies.

* In ''The Iron Man'' by Ted Hughes, published as ''The Iron Giant'' in the United States and very loosely adapted into the film of the same name, the title character arrives on Earth as a large collection of disassembled bits that then have to assemble themselves. The book example probably belongs here rather than in the Robots folder, as the titular Iron Man behaves more like a ''kaiju'' than a HumongousMecha.

* In the 1838 penny dreadful ''Hugues, the Wer-Wolf'', a butcher who'd chopped the werewolf's hand off tries to get rid of the severed part by burying it or dropping it down a well, but it keeps turning up again at his home, as if it's crawling back when he's not watching. [[spoiler: A subversion, as it's strongly implied that his daughter is secretly retrieving it and planting it in her father's house, to punish him for maiming the werewolf with whom she's in love.]]
* C.H. (short for Crawling Hand) works as a masseur and bathhouse towel-boy in the fourth ''Literature/DanShambleZombiePI'' novel.
* In ''Literature/SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish'', the [[BadGuyBar Old Pink Dog Bar]] is home to the disembodied hand of its former owner, who bequeathed it to medical science on his deathbed; medical science didn't like the look of it and bequeathed it back to the bar. It is characterised by a fierce loyalty to the bar and an eagerness to employ extreme violence against anyone who breaks the rules, such as [[FelonyMisdemeanor asking for credit]]. The current barman doesn't believe in the supernatural, but he knows a useful ally when he sees one.

* ''Literature/TheIronGiant'': The eponymous giant is shattered into pieces falling off a cliff in the opening page of the book. A single hand animates, picks up an eye and starts piecing the rest of the iron giant back together.

* A number of horror B-movies during the drive-in monster era involved severed hands acting out revenge for their former bodies. A notable example might be ''Film/TheBeastWithFiveFingers'', in which the plot is driven by the vindictive hand of a dead pianist.

** Eldrad's hand survives the attempt to obliterate him in "The Hand of Fear", and spends some time as a creeping hand before Eldrad regenerates a full body from it.
** Honorable mention to the severed hand of the Doctor, which is lopped off in "The Christmas Invasion" and later shows up being kept in a jar in ''Series/{{Torchwood}}''. Though it doesn't go on walkabout it's alive, can be used as a Doctor-detector, and is later used as the basis for a human-Doctor hybrid.

* The TropeNamer for this are the Helping Hands from ''Film/{{Labyrinth}}. They actually do seem to mean well but are very literal minded.

* In the anime ''Vampire Hunter D'', we have the title vampire hunter's left hand, which has somehow gotten a Demon embedded in it. Said demon is shown by having a ''face'' in the palm of the hand, including eyes, nose, and mouth. After being severed in a rather gory scene that includes D being staked through the heart, the hand crawls back to D's body, reattaches itself to D's arm, ''pulls out the stake'', then attempts to revive D by a) eating earth for energy (with accompanying belch afterward), b) sucking wind to give him breath, then pounding on his chest to restart his heart. All this while a monster approaches that would be the [[DeaderThanDead Final Death]] for D. Naturally, he wakes up in time to kill the monster and progress through the story. Of course, all this is helped by the titular D being a ''dhampir'', a half-human half-vampire hybrid.[[note]] ''{{Dhampyr}}s'', from Balkan folklore, are the children of male vampires and female humans, with all the powers of vampires and none of the weaknesses. (The word was transliterated into Japanese as "danpiru", which was then transliterated back into English as "dunpeal" or "dhampiel", leading to all kinds of interesting confusion.)[[/note]]

* The 1949 horror film "The Beast with Five Fingers" revolves around a murderous hand that has detached itself from the corpse of a dead pianist and which attempts to kill the heirs to his will. Except the ending has some of the survivors suggest it was actually a plot by a greedy heir to kill off the others, only for that heir to end up killing himself after he went mad and began believing his own lie.

* In ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosEternalWingsAndTheLostOcean'' you have the Develish Hands and their [[PalleteSwap family of monsters]]. Unusual in that they're two hands, fused together at the bottom of the palm, and they crawl along akin to a GiantSpider.

** Crawling claws, a [[GoddamnedBats mindless, weak, but usually swarming]] monster originally from ForgottenRealms -- an animated severed hand in any shape from fresh to skeletal. It doesn't count as a proper undead, just a construct, thus is not turnable and even good wizards sometimes make one or two dozens. Mostly used as a guardian, but there's a more useful flying variety which can grasp and move at once, so those who can make them get hovering test-tube holders and suchlike. The vampiric variant, though, is much nastier.

* The iconic Choking Hands from ''VideoGame/{{Blood}}'', a tribute to ''Evil Dead''. They're the only "clingy" enemy in the whole game, and [[ButtonMashing the "use" key has to be mashed]] to toss them off[[note]]in the release build, a GameBreakingBug made it so they couldn't be shaken off, putting them square into "{{Demonic Spider|s}} with InstantDeathRadius" territory[[/note]]. They're [[FragileSpeedster extremely weak]] to compensate for their irritating attack strategy and speed easily capable of keeping up with Caleb. They return in ''BLood II: The Chosen'', and when they see the player, they'll stand on the wrist stump and [[FlippingTheBird give them the ol' one-finger salute]] before going after them.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Coraline}}'', the Other Mother's disembodied hand, which is an spindly abomination made of sewing needles, pursue Coraline all the way to the real world.

See EvilHand for when this happens ''before'' it gets lopped off.

When its deliberately done during a fight, it's an example of DetachmentCombat.

* The detached Cyberman arm and octopus-head-thing in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The Pandorica Opens". They even shoot out tranquilliser darts!
** An android does this when his hand blocks a door in "The Robots of Death." The person in the room later uses the hand against another [[spoiler: heroic]] android, which leads to the immortal line, "Please do not throw hands at me!"
* Thing from ''Series/TheAddamsFamily'' is the TropeCodifier.

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

** Crawling claws, a [[GoddamnedBats mindless, weak, but usually swarming]] monster originally from ForgottenRealms -- an animated severed hand in any shape from fresh to skeletal. It doesn't count as a proper undead, just a construct, thus is not turnable and even good wizards sometimes make one or two dozens. Mostly used as a guardian, but there's a more useful flying variety which can grasp and move at once, so those who can make them get hovering testtube holders and suchlike. The vampiric variant, though, is much nastier.

[[quoteright:350:[[Series/TheAddamsFamily http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/13932674847_f0541aaf48_b.jpg]]]]

[[quoteright:175:[[Series/TheAddamsFamily http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thing.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:175:A somewhat more helpful hand.]]

* The iconic Choking Hands from ''VideoGame/{{Blood}}''.