History Main / BeatStillmyHeart

[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Narm}} And it's]] [[IncendiaryExponent on fire]]. ]]

!!Supernatural examples:

[[folder: Anime ]]

** Anybody else notice [[{{Groin Attack}} where it landed]]? Granted, it had no actual force of impact, and so it probably didn't physically hurt the unlucky target, but smart money says that guard couldn't get it up again for weeks.

* In the fifth ''Literature/{{Kara no Kyoukai}}'' movie, [[spoiler:Araya does this to Touko. Her heart keeps beating until he crushes it.]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* Somehow ''ScudTheDisposableAssassin'' managed to combine this trope with TearJerker and ChekhovsGun: In the end it turns out that Jeff's heart, [[spoiler: being forged by God himself, is completely indestructible. This means that Jeff will never die, and the now-suicidal Scud will never complete his original mission (meaning he won't ever self-destruct), meaning he can't finish the last job given him by the Seraphim: destroying Earth. Even as Jeff's body is ripped open and finally dies, the heart beats on. Of course, later Scud takes the heart with him into battle with the Seraphim, which in the end proves to save his life: by placing the heart in Sussudio's ribcage it reanimates her, and the first thing she does is greet Scud cheerfully. Of course, the second thing she does is [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome PUNCH AN ANGEL IN THE BRAINS]].]] WhoWantsToLiveForever indeed!

* In the ''BlackestNight'' ''Comicbook/{{Starman}}'' issue, [[spoiler: the Shade's heart gets ripped out by the zombie Black Lantern Starman... then the heart promptly engulfs the zombie, trapping it in the Shade's shadow void.]]

[[folder: Fanfic ]]

* In ''{{Neon Exodus Evangelion}}: Apotheosis Now'', [[spoiler:Lucifer does this to the ArtificialHuman Matthieu, but instead of a heart, he pulls out a sphere like an Angel's core. He continues to live until Lucifer crushes it.]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* ''AngelHeart''. Twice. Once to Margaret, [[spoiler: the other time, before the events of the film when Johnny ate Harry's still beating heart to steal his soul.]]

* IndianaJones: Temple of Doom, Mola Ram. Oh, god, the horror. ''It was on fire.'' And when you're watching that as an 8-year-old? Ladies and gentlemen we have a new definition for "good old-fashioned HighOctaneNightmareFuel".
-->'''Sacrifice Victim''': Om Namha Shivaye, Om Namha Shivaye, Om Namha Shivaye,''''''

* Played for laughs in ''{{Robots}}.'' The whole implication that Rodney Copperbottom is really carrying out ''extensive surgery'' on the outdated robots isn't really made clear until he brings out a still-active red pump from the body of a robot, [[CrowningMomentOfFunny and Fender faints from the sight.]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* A gag in {{Christopher Moore}}'s ''Literature/LambTheGospelAccordingToBiff'' is that during Biff and [[PalsWithJesus Joshua]]'s time at a monastery, one of the monks teaching them self defense claims to know a trick involving tearing out someone's heart. Most people are skeptical. Every day he asks the class if anyone is willing to help him demonstrate. Nobody ever is, on the off chance he isn't lying.

* Brutally inverted in Matthew Woodring Stover's ''[[Literature/TheActsOfCaine Blade of Tyshalle]]''. Tell ya what, just go to the {{HighOctaneNightmareFuel/Literature}} section of HighOctaneNightmareFuel and search for the Tyshalle example. It would have been less nasty if he [[spoiler:took the heart out]]...
* In the StephenKing novel ''{{IT}}'', [[spoiler: Stuttering Bill kills the eponymous CosmicHorror by tearing out Its heart and smashing it between his hands]].
* The second of Barry Sadler's Casca series, ''God of Death'', had Casca sacrificed by pre-Aztecs who cut out his heart. But [[spoiler: Casca was cursed by Christ to live until the Second Coming. The priest cuts out his heart, and it keeps beating. And beating. And then Casca stands up, takes his heart out of the priest's hand, sticks it back into his chest, and announces, "No more human sacrifices."]] Nobody dares to argue very hard.
* In one of Gustav Meyrink's short stories, we can find [[spoiler: a very grotesque clock. In fact, it's composed of the severed internal organs of a guy, which were then stiched together by some crazy alchemist-like Moor and connected with wires and tubes in order to allow the head of the poor guy to go on living. The only thing he's able to say it's the time. Imagine the reaction of his two friends when they find him. His organs are all working, by the way.]]

** Only if they belong to [[InstantAwesomeJustAddNinja ninjas.]]

* Rare, not-done-to-be-creepy example: A short story by Michelle Lawrence, "[[http://www.identitytheory.com/fiction/lawrence_lividity.php Lividity]]," begins with the main character cutting out her heart and leaving it on the fence (still beating) for her married neighbor. It is a metaphor.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* One episode of ''{{Strange World}}'' featured a surrogate mother who was being used in an experiment, [[spoiler: it turned out to be a human heart, not a baby, growing in her uterus.]]

** And in the [[MusicalEpisode musical]] [[NoirEpisode noir]] episode "Brown Betty," a "glass" heart is pulled out of several characters' chests, switched around, popped back in, etc., etc., and continues to beat throughout.
* Done to [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel magnificent levels of horror]] in the season 2 finale of ''TrueBlood''; [[spoiler: Sam]] pulls out [[spoiler: Maryann's]] utterly black heart and ''[[{{Squick}} squishes]]'' it.

* In ''TheGates'' [[spoiler: Officer Leigh keeps a beating heart in a box. It's implied to be her own, as she later says that her ex-boyfriend [[FalseConfession "ripped her heart out"]].]]

* In ''Once Upon A Time'', the Queen does this so that she has power over them and keeps the hearts in a special vault. It is revealed that [[spoiler: this vault also exists in the real world]].

[[folder: Music ]]

-->"..And I hold your beating chambers until they beat no more
-->You die like angels sing..."

[[folder: Mythology ]]

* Koschei the [[strike:[[BlindIdiotTranslation Deathless]]]]Immortal, out of Russian myth -- his soul/heart (a vortex of flame) is hidden inside a needle, which is hidden inside an egg, which is hidden inside a duck, which is hidden inside a [[strike:wolf]] [[EverythingWorseWithBears bear]], which is kept in an iron chest, which is buried under an oak tree(or chained to the branches), on an island that flickers in and out of existence. Someone ''still'' manages to find it and destroy it. Koschei is immortal until his soul is destroyed.

* OlderThanDirt: In the ancient Egyptian text called ''The Tale of Two Brothers,'' the younger brother Bata removes his own heart and places it on top of a tree. He tells his older brother Anpu/Anubis that he will receive a sign if anything happens to the heart, and that if something ''does'' happen, he is to revive the heart by putting it in a bowl of water. Of course, the heart is eventually knocked down when the FemmeFatale cuts down the tree, and it dries up into something resembling a date. Anpu finds it and puts it in water, whereupon it grows to its original size and starts beating again, hence reviving Bata. This could be classified as Literature as well, but the story contains a number of mythological elements.

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

* Tiyet, darklord of the {{Ravenloft}} domain of Sebua, is cursed to hunger for the still-beating hearts of others. [[spoiler: And her own, which was removed and hidden long ago, and which she'll be compelled to consume if she ever comes across it: the only way she can be destroyed.]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* Subverted in ''WorldOfWarcraft'''s expansion ''Wrath of the Lich King'', there's a questline where you find the eponymous Lich King's heart and there's a race to destroy it before he can get it back. Turns out [[spoiler: the Lich King destroys it himself anyway, since he sees it as his last shred of "human weakness."]], but it is not beating: It's frozen.
** As [[{{OJtheLION}} I]] recall,[[spoiler: it was [[KnightInShiningArmor Tirion]] who destroyed the heart, after seeing that Arthas couldn't be redeemed, and it did weaken him (at least for a bit). The Lich King does have lines about it being the remnant of his human weakness, though.]]

* Slightly subverted in the videogame adaptation of ''{{I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream}}''. Gorrister's heart was removed prior to the events of the game, but as he's fond of pointing out, that old heart of his don't beat no more.
* In ''EternalDarkness,'' dancing girl Ellia is given one of Mantorok's five hearts, which contains its essence. Since [[spoiler: Mantorok doesn't die until just after the end of the game]], the heart remains intact for over 1000 years so that Alex can use it in the final battle. Unfortunately, you don't see the heart beating in-game (presumably to match the other essences, which don't move in any way), so this trope is only partly adhered to.

* ''GrandiaII'' has the Heart of Valmar, amongst other body parts. They're less soul jars, more bits of a god that possess people. [[spoiler: And all of them also mutate their human host into a representation of what they are. The Heart is about the closest to just being the organ it's named after. Complete with an attack where it gushes blood at you.]]
* Happens in ''VisualNovel/{{Umineko no Naku Koro ni}}''. Twice.

* Toward the end of ''Bioshock'', one villain activates [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel "Code Yellow,"]] which [[spoiler: commands your heart to stop beating, little by little. This reduces your maximum health until you find an antidote, at which point the lost health returns]].

* You can collect these in {{Vexx}}

* In ''[[MysteryCaseFiles Return To Ravenhearst]]'', a heart (implied to be [[spoiler: Charles Dalimar's]]) sits inside a steampunk device which you have to deactivate. It can be seen beating behind a glass porthole, and it speeds up if you push the attached "Adrenaline" pump.

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' revolved around "Ricardio, the Heart Guy", who as the name suggests was a guy who happened to be a living heart. Turns out [[spoiler: he used to be the heart of the Ice King, brought to life by a spell gone awry.]]

[[folder: Other ]]

!!Natural examples:

[[folder: Anime ]]

* Under this header because the characters ''react'' like it's a biologically natural occurrence, and no supernatural powers are stated to have been used, but in ''HunterXHunter'', Killua rips a man's heart clear out of his chest during one of the tests in the Hunters Exam, and stands several feet away from him, holding the still-beating heart in his hand. The guy, however, is still very much alive (if in extreme pain), even begging for Killua to "give that back," and doesn't die until Killua crushes the heart to bits, at which point he instantly falls over, dead as a doornail. What the ''hell'' are humans in ''HunterXHunter'' made of, anyway?

[[folder: Film ]]

* In ''Film/{{Friday the 13th}} Part VI'', Jason shoves his '''hand''' through a guy's chest and rips his heart out.

* ''CloudyWithAChanceOfMeatballs'' parodies this, when Steve the Monkey, [[spoiler:while fighting a semi-sentient Gummy Bear, shoves his hand into its "chest," tears out a glob shaped like a heart, and ''eats it''.]]

* In {{TheatreofBlood}} Edward Lionheart cuts out the heart of one of his victims while he's strapped to a chair.

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern have both swallowed beating snake hearts on camera as part of their Travel Channel shows. (See below.) [[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

-->'''Repair droid''': We did not have the parts.
-->'''Doctor''': Fifty people don't just ''disappear'', where -- Oh. You didn't have the parts, so you used the crew...

[[folder: Music ]]

-->"Ripped her heart out right before her eyes/ Eyes over easy, eat it, eat it, eat it!"

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* Kano's heartrip (see below) was performed by Luna on ''TheBoondocks''. Not in the game, but on a live person she had defeated in a mystical martial arts tournament on a mysterious island . . . Shang Tsung shouted at her to "finish him."

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* ''Extremely fresh'' snake hearts are a delicacy in Vietnam, and swallowing them on camera is a popular stunt among tourists. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovwj0FYN0Qg Look if you dare.]] A great many amateur {{YouTube}} videos document the same phenonemon.

* When scientists use stem cells to grow cardiac tissue, they look for [[{{CreatingLife}} spontaneous beating in the plate]] to see if/where it worked.

* Brutally inverted in Matthew Woodring Stover's ''{{Blade of Tyshalle}}''. Tell ya what, just go to the {{HighOctaneNightmareFuel/Literature}} section of HighOctaneNightmareFuel and search for the Tyshalle example. It would have been less nasty if he [[spoiler:took the heart out]]...

* OlderThanDirt: In the ancient Egyptian literary text known as ''The Tale of Two Brothers,'' the younger brother Bata removes his own heart and places it on top of a tree. He tells his older brother Anpu/Anubis that he will receive a sign if anything happens to the heart, and that if something ''does'' happen, he is to revive the heart by putting it in a bowl of water. Of course, the heart is eventually knocked down when the FemmeFatale cuts down the tree, and it dries up into something resembling a date. Big brother finds it and puts it in water, whereupon it grows to its original size and starts beating again, hence reviving the younger brother. This could be classified as Literature as well, but the story contains a number of mythological elements.

* In the ancient Egyptian literary text known as ''The Tale of Two Brothers,'' the younger brother removes his own heart and places it on top of a tree. He tells his older brother that he will receive a sign if anything happens to the heart, and that if something ''does'' happen, he is to revive the heart by putting it in a bowl of water. Of course, the heart is eventually knocked down when the FemmeFatale cuts down the tree, and it dries up into something resembling a date. Big brother finds it and puts it in water, whereupon it grows to its original size and starts beating again, hence reviving the younger brother. This could be classified as Literature as well, but the story contains a number of mythological elements.

* On a lighter note, [[http://history.missouristate.edu/jchuchiak/aztecs40.gif Aztec sacrifices]], anyone? Yeah, [[OlderThanPrint it's old]] and [[TruthInTelevision it happened]].

** Not quite as creepy as it sounds, as lungs can't inflate and deflate under their own power even when they're inside the body. The machine makes them expand by altering the pressure surrounding the organs, which would work just as well for a couple of balloons as for lungs.

* In the fifth ''Anime/{{Kara no Kyoukai}}'' movie, [[spoiler:Araya does this to Touko. Her heart keeps beating until he crushes it.]]

* Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern have both swallowed beating snake hearts on camera as part of their Travel Channel shows. (See [[/folder]]

, below.)

* [[LastOfTheMohicans "When the grey-hair dies, Magua will eat his heart."]] And he does, cutting the still-beating heart from his body.

* That scene from ''LastOfTheMohicans'', which doubles as a CrowningMomentOfAwesome for [[MagnificentBastard Magua]].
--> "Grey Hair! [[JustBetweenYouAndMe Before you die,]] know that I will put under the knife your children so your seed will be wiped from the earth forever."

* In volume five of ''[[JoJosBizarreAdventure Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure: Gold Experience]]'', Bruno Buccarati uses his Stand's ability to create zippers to remove his own heart and ''pick it apart'', just to stop it from beating and thereby alerting the enemy of his position. Earlier, during ''Starlight Crusaders'', Jotaro had his Stand grab his own heart and stop it for the very same reason.

* In one strip of ''AxisPowersHetalia'', Russia's heart somehow falls out and splats onto the meeting table, to the horror of the other Allies. [[http://www.mangafox.com/manga/axis_powers_hetalia/v01/c004/2.html Shown in a silly yet still creepy way.]]

* AvengedSevenfold's song about murder, necrophilia, zombies, and love, "Little Piece of Heaven" includes "Ripped her heart out right before her eyes/ Eyes over easy, eat it, eat it, eat it!"

* Avenged Sevenfold's song about murder, necrophilia, zombies, and love, "Little Piece of Heaven" includes "Ripped her heart out right before her eyes/ Eyes over easy, eat it, eat it, eat it!"

*** [[/folder]]

[[folder: YOU NEED A HEART TO LIVE ]]
.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[AC:{{Anime}}]]

** I assumed that it was just [[RuleofCool coincidence for drama's sake]].

[[AC:ComicBooks]]

[[AC:{{Fanfic}}]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

* In ''QueenOfTheDamned'', when Akasha rips another vampire's heart from his chest, the heart continues to pulse for a few seconds before she feasts on it gleefully and ''sets fire'' the bloody residue in her hand.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

* In EdgarAllanPoe's ''The Tell-Tale Heart'', the killer-protagonist imagines he [[TerribleTicking still hears]] the beating of his victim's heart.

* In ''The Knight of the Swords'' by Michael Moorcock, Corum has to kill the Chaos God Arioch. To do this he must destroy Arioch's heart. Which he keeps locked in a tower, so it will be safe. Corum is running around with the Hand of Kwll and the Eye of Rhynn, two other disconnected god body parts, so there's a lot of this sort of thing going on.

* The second of Barry Sadler's Casca series, ''God of Death'', had Casca sacrificed by pre-Aztecs who cut out his heart. But [[spoiler: Casca was cursed by Christ to live until the Second Coming. The priest cuts out his heart, and it keeps beating. And beating. And then Casca stands up, takes his heart out of the priest's hand, sticks it back into his chest, and announces, "No more human sacrifices."]] Nobody dares to argue very hard.

* Rare, not-done-to-be-creepy example: A short story by Michelle Lawrence, "[[http://www.identitytheory.com/fiction/lawrence_lividity.php Lividity]]," begins with the main character cutting out her heart and leaving it on the fence (still beating) for her married neighbor. It is a metaphor.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

* In the ''{{Fringe}}'' episode "Power Hungry", a heart sitting on a lab table starts beating due to "residual energy" from the [[PowerIncontinence power incontinent]] [[ShockAndAwe electrokinetic]] who killed the owner.

* One ImagineSpot on ''{{Scrubs}}'' has Turk and The Todd battling Ninja!Surgeons, one of whom gets his heart ripped out of his chest. Good thing they're at a hospital...

[[AC:{{Music}}]]

-->"..And I hold your beating chambers until they beat no more

[[AC:{{Mythology}}]]
* Koschei the [[strike:[[BlindIdiotTranslation Deathless]]]]Immortal, out of Russian myth -- his soul/heart (a vortex of flame) is hidden inside a needle, which is hidden inside an egg, which is hidden inside a duck, which is hidden inside a [[strike:wolf]] [[EverythingWorseWithBears bear]], which is kept in an iron chest, which is buried under an oak tree(or chained to the branches), on an island that flickers in and out of existence. Someone ''still'' manages to find it and destroy it. Koschei is immortal until his soul is destroyed.

[[AC:TabletopGames]]
* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' has the Setites, whose custom Discipline, Serpentis, includes an ability that allows them to remove their heart and place it in a jar, which keeps them from being sent into torpor when staked. At elder levels, they can do this to someone else for one hell of a bargaining chip.

[[AC:VideoGames]]

* One of the "decorations" in ''{{Doom}}'' ''1'' & ''2'' is a still-beating heart on a pedestal.

* ''DevilMayCry'' has a room just before the final boss fight with a giant, beating heart.

* In ''Wizards And Warriors'' (the 2000 Heuristic Park title), the lich G'Ezzered Ra, at the end of the game, has had his still-beating heart ripped from his chest by his archnemesis Cet, and the lich is now chained to a wall for an eternity of agony.

* [[spoiler:True Assassin]] in ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' has a Noble Phantasm that does this to people by exchanging their heart with a magical double and keeps the heart alive and beating while [[spoiler:Assassin]] destroys it at his leisure. We see it get used on [[spoiler:Lancer and Kotomine -- unfortunately for Assassin, it doesn't work on the latter ''since he hasn't got a heart''.]]

[[AC:WebComics]]

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]

*** [[AC: YOU NEED A HEART TO LIVE]].

[[AC:Other]]

[[AC:{{Anime}}]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern have both swallowed beating snake hearts on camera as part of their Travel Channel shows. (See [[AC:RealLife]], below.)

[[AC:{{Music}}]]

[[AC:VideoGames]]

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]

[[AC:RealLife]]

... Hey, what's that thump-thump noise?

* ''SeriousSam 3 BFE'', when a beheaded rocketeer's heart is removed with a melee kill, it still beats a couple of times.

[[AC:TabletopGames]]
* Tiyet, darklord of the {{Ravenloft}} domain of Sebua, is cursed to hunger for the still-beating hearts of others.

* In [[{{ptitle3tzv6fw4}} Philip José Farmer's]] NatureHero deconstruction ''Lord Tyger'', the horny {{Tarzan}}-like title character at one point rips a baboon's heart out of its chest, and while it's still beating he '' '''(Painfully {{NSFW}} and {{Squick}}-tastic)''' '' [[spoiler:''shoves it into the reluctant heroine's vagina like an organic vibrator until she comes'']]. ''What the '''hell'''''.

* One episode of ''BlackJack 21'' centers around a mysterious, way-ahead-of-its-time artificial heart. Its very existence is creepy enough, but after Black Jack removes it from the owner (replacing it with a more realistic artificial heart), it KEEPS BEATING on the table where he leaves it. It also ''[[PowerGlows glows]]''.

** There is also a giant beating heart in the depths of a Strogg Factory in ''QuakeIV'', You have to destroy it before you can move on by increasing the electric shocks it receives to keep it beating until it beats so fast that it dies of a heart attack. To make it creepier, you can hear a distant scream from some unseen source as you do this.

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