History Main / PortalCut

* In Creator/MercedesLackey's ''[[Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar Owl]]'' trilogy, the protagonist Darian loses his parents to WildMagic. Years later, he tracks down their campsite and finds a nearly perfect granite sphere, with the buried bones of a foot pressed against it. Using the bones in a SympatheticMagic spell, he finds that the magic swapped his parents' campsite with a mountainside to the far north, with his father's foot outside the area of effect.

** And in ''[[DownloadableContent Burial at Sea]]'', [[spoiler:you see the portal scene from an alternate universe Comstock's point of view, where he was unable to bring Elizabeth all the way through. But instead of her pinky, ''she loses her head''. This breaks his ambitions for Columbia and he sought escape by going to [[VideoGame/BioShock1 Rapture]], leading to the DLC story.]]

* Zig-zagged in the Franchise/StargateVerse:

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': One episode has the ''Enterprise'' crew discover a PortalNetwork created by the [[{{Precursors}} Iconians]]. The away team observes the portals cycling through various target destinations. At one point Data decides to stick his arm through a portal only for Captain Picard to pull his arm back and chastise him for doing that, as his arm could have been severed if he had it in there when another destination change happened.

* ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'': In the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", after pulling everyone out of the other dimension with moments to spare, someone observes, "Another few seconds, and half of you would've been here, and the other half..."

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Hachigen Ushouda uses barriers to behead several Menos Grandes during the fight for Karakura when Aizen and his troops invade the Living World. He later uses one of his barriers to amputate his own arm after it had been hit with Barrigan's rotting power and teleport it into Barragan, turning the rotting attack back on him.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Hachigen Ushouda uses barriers to behead several Menos Grandes during the fight for Karakura when Aizen and his troops invade the Living World.

* ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'':

** In one strange but relatively harmless SG-1 example, a group of Jaffa are retreating through a Stargate in a panic, and the gate shuts down just as the last one runs through; the end of the [[BoomStick staff weapon]] he was carrying then clatters to the floor, having been severed by the portal as it disengaged. There was no reason for the gate to shut down so suddenly -- as discussed, safeguards exist to prevent just that -- but it underscored just how much of a rush the Jaffa were in to get out of there; the equivalent of dropping something as you run out a door and then not even bothering to notice or pick it up.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", after pulling everyone out of the other dimension with moments to spare, someone observes, "Another few seconds, and half of you would've been here, and the other half..."

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* This is how [[spoiler:Bahamut]] is defeated in ''WebAnimation/DeadFantasy''.
[[/folder]]

* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' Riff tried to use this to pull off the SawAWomanInHalf trick. There were a [[http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=070813 couple]] [[http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=070815 complications]]. It also cuts [[http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20040824 chains]].

* ''WebVideo/CriticalRoleExandriaUnlimited: Calamity'': When a [[CrowdPanic panicked crowd]] tries to escape the city, one group forces a large teleportation platform to activate when it's well over its maximum load. A lot of body parts are left behind.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' has Scrooge and the gang teleported to another dimension by a druid circle similar to Stonehenge during a game of golf. Launchpad and Huey are in a golf cart which is stuck between two of the stones at the time the portal (outlined by the stone circle) activates. The back half of the cart still outside the circle is severed and they spend most of the rest of the episode comically carrying around the front half as if nothing happened.

* Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse:

* ''Series/{{The Sandman|2022}}'', "[[Recap/TheSandman2022S01E03DreamALittleDreamOfMe Dream a Little Dream of Me]]": Johanna Constantine has a FlashbackNightmare of a past case that ended badly when her friend Astra ignored her warnings and came too close while Johanna was trying to close a portal to Hell. Astra was dragged into the closing portal; Johanna caught her hand and tried to pull her out, and was left holding ''just'' her hand when the portal closed on her arm, neatly severing it and leaving the rest of Astra trapped in Hell.

* In the ''Series/TalesFromTheDarkside'' episode "Ring Around The Ringhead", though it's not shown on screen, it's mentioned that an inter-dimensional portal tore off somebody's arm when a greedy jeweler tried to exploit it.
* In ''Series/{{The Twilight Zone|1959}}'' episode "Little Girl Lost", after pulling everyone out of the other dimension with moments to spare, someone observes, "Another few seconds, and half of you would've been here, and the other half..."

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/DrowTales'': A rather unusual example can occur with nether gates. They act as portals to AnotherDimension for {{Mana}}, the substance of demons and LifeEnergy of Fae, but not for physical objects. As such, if a Fae passes through a large enough nether gate, it can rip their "soul" from their body.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{DuckTales|2017}}'' has Scrooge and the gang teleported to another dimension by a druid circle similar to Stonehenge during a game of golf. Launchpad and Huey are in a golf cart which is stuck between two of the stones at the time the portal (outlined by the stone circle) activates. The back half of the cart still outside the circle is severed and they spend most of the rest of the episode comically carrying around the front half as if nothing happened.

* ''WesternAnimation/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' has an odd example. In "Brain Drain", an unstable transmatter gate nicknamed "Old Chompy" apparently has a tendency to not only short out, but to randomly switch destinations, sending Brainiac 5's [[LosingYourHead head to one planet and his body to another]]. Incidentally, the gates had a ''very'' strong resemblance to Franchise/{{Stargate|Verse}}s. However, in the Live-Action TV section, you'll see that the real thing has safeguards that make it better at avoiding such things.
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/MartinMystery'', the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Sandman]] tried to get into to the waking world through a portal in a computer screen, managing to get an arm through before Martin turned off the power. Instead of acting like a guillotine though, the closed portal was more along the lines of a slammed window, pinning the Sandman's arm and trapping him.
* In ''[[WesternAnimation/WhatIf Marvel's What If?]]'', Zombie Wong gets decapitated this way early in episode 5.

** A RunningGag with the Picture Teleporter in the episode "Picture This!" In their first demonstration of the device, Phineas and Ferb teleport an apple off of Buford's head, taking off a bit of his hair with it and giving him an impromptu buzzcut. When they teleport Ferb's skateboard back from their grandparents' place, they accidentally take their grandfather's feet with it. [[AmusingInjuries It's played for laughs, though,]] so there's no blood, and the boys immediately send the feet back... backwards.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' CouchGag for "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS26E17WaitingForDuffman Waiting for Duffman]]", the family sit on the couch and keep getting sucked into a portal above them. Eventually, one of the Barts gets off the couch and uses a nearby remote to close the portal, then notices that one of the Homers lost his head.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{ThunderCats|2011}}'', Grune is being sucked into AnotherDimension and grabs onto Panthro's arms, telling him pulling him out is the only way either can survive. Panthro decides to take his chances, and Grune is sucked in, taking both of Panthro's arms with him. For the sake of BloodlessCarnage, the ends of the arm stumps are glowing the same color as the portal but were still bandaged up afterwards as if they were bleeding.

* The ''Literature/CrossTimeEngineer'' series employs Portal Cuts for many purposes, including [[CoolSword embedding a super-thin layer of diamond in the center of a sword to make the edge]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'', the Hobgoblin acquires the portal-opening Time Dilation Accelerator and goes on a crime spree. Then he loses a part of his cape this way, [[OhCrap making him realize]] that he ''really'' needs to find a battery for the device that's ''not'' about to go dead.

** Then there's the ring transporters. What's in the rings on one side is exchanged with what's in the rings on the other. The only time we see this used to cause bodily harm is in the original movie (trapped partially under the rings by O'Neill, Ra's {{Dragon}} gets relieved of his head) but there's one awesome scene where Jonas Quinn teleports from underwater. When the effect finishes, there's a nice cylindrical column of water surrounding him as he arrives at the destination teleporter, which immediately falls away once nothing's holding it together.