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  • In AI: The Somnium Files, the Cyclops Killer tries to murder Iris Sagan by strapping her to a table under an ice cutter. Ota Matsushita comes to the rescue, but gets stabbed in the stomach during the fight. If Agent Date fails to get to the scene in time, he sees the former get sliced in half on live stream and arrives to find the latter's corpse under the blade.
  • AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative deals with a Serial Killer who slices their victims in half and leaves each half as a calling card. In a variation of this trope however, instead of being sliced horizontally like many would, they're instead sliced vertically.
  • The half-zombies in Akuji the Heartless are zombies whose bodies ends at their waist, all that remains being their spine. They're surprisingly fast despite their predicament, and attacks by using their spines like whips.
  • Among Us: All the assassinations from Impostors, however depicted, result in this: all the other players find is the victim's lower body, with what appears to be a single comically large bone sticking out of the cut edge.
  • Badlands has vertical separation as at least one of your onscreen death animations. Notably, failing to shoot an ax flung towards you and catching it in your face, spiliting you all the way to the crotch. (However, the following cutscene shows you patched up, somehow.)
  • Defeated enemies in Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden randomly choose between splitting in half, fading away, and exploding.
  • Angels in Bayonetta die like this if a bladed weapon lands the finishing blow.
  • The boss Lokii from The Binding of Isaac is another boss, Loki, but ripped in half vertically. Both halves attack you.
  • Beyond Sunset: You're a Cyber Ninja, swinging a katana with an Absurdly Sharp Blade. Naturally, human-sized mooks will fall apart into two after each swing.
  • Blood Breed: Well, Half the Woman She Used to Be, but the Player Character will get bisected down the middle if she touches any of the giant exposed moving circular saw blades that are so liberally placed around the Killamoor Meat Works.
  • A special move in BloodRayne 2 allows you to cut a mook in half vertically.
  • Bloodstorm gives each character a "Sunder" move, which cuts off the opponent's legs and leaves their upper half sitting in a pile of their own entrails. Notable in that this doesn't automatically kill the victim, and the game will give you a bonus if you manage to pull off a win after being cut in half.
  • In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, you can find an ECHO where Knoxx notes how Athena killed "9 and a half men" when she went on her rampage. He later clarifies that she somehow managed to bisect someone perfectly and only managed to kill one half of him, with the other half still living but has to hop everywhere now.
  • Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway featured this early on; following an ambush on Baker's squad, a priest who had handed out cigars to the squad for saving his town loses the lower half of his body to a German antitank shell.
  • Cayne has the protagonist, Hadley, killing a mutant pursuing her by stepping on a switch and slicing it vertically via Portal Cut. With fascinatingly gory results.
  • ClayFighter:
    • This happens in the games as a "Claytality". Since this is supposed to be a parody, it's nothing but slapstick.
    • Two characters in the original game, The Blob and Blue Suede Goo, had attacks that briefly cut an opponent in half.
  • "Dark Ogre", the Final Boss of the arcade game The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy, dies from being pushed into a set of propeller blades, where he gets halved vertically.
  • Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun has Nod Cyborgs, tough infantry units that aren't subjected to the common weaknesses of normal soldiers. If they're damaged enough there's a chance they'll be blown in half, but the lack of legs merely slows them down.
  • Crash Bandicoot:
  • In Cry of Fear, the Sawer boss will cut Simon in half with his chainsaw if the player dies to him. This serves as incredible foreshadowing that the real Simon is paralyzed from the waist down.
  • In The Darkness 2, there is a finisher move that has the two demon arms grab an enemy by his feet and rip him in half. It's called 'Wishbone'.
  • Darkstalkers:
    • Ghostly samurai Bishamon's victory taunt consists of him threatening you with this: "Horizontal, vertical or diagonal?"
    • It should be noted that some of the characters Special Attacks (including Bishamon's) do cut their opponent in half. But unless they defeat them with the attack, they fall back together.
    • One of Jedah's victory poses shows him ripping through his defeated opponent and taking their soul.
  • Dead Rising 2:
    • Sullivan uses a sky hook to try to airlift himself out of Fortune City. Chuck, however, uses a set of handcuffs to clip one of the belt loops of his trousers to a railing, and makes good on his promise that he 'wouldn't make it out of here in one piece.'
    • One of the psychopaths, Seymour, taunts Chuck by boasting "I'm twice the man you are!", right before losing his footing and falling onto a running table saw which slices him in half through the abdomen.
  • Most of the enemies in Dead Space are capable of doing this to Isaac, but with the proper weapons, he can do it right back.
  • Subverted in awesome fashion in Devil May Cry by Vergil.
    Boomstick: Vergil once got completely cut in half, but healed so fast that it's impossible to even notice!
  • Diablo III: The angel Urzael does this to himself when he's killed by the player in Act IV, tearing his torso in two before collapsing.
  • Occurs in a cutscene during the "Awakening" expansion for Dragon Age: Origins, when the massive Inferno Golem literally tears a Darkspawn in half with both hands.
  • Dwarf Fortress:
    • Characters can have their whole lower bodies severed by an attack.
      The Axe Lord strikes the Goblin Maceman in the lower body with her =steel battle axe= and the severed part sails off in an arc!
    • Notably, with inorganic creatures (like bronze colossus or iron men), which do not bleed, this, pulping and decapitation is the only thing that will cause death. And even organic creatures killed this way can have their upper half brought back as a zombie.
  • Endoparasitic is an indie game where you start off as half an upper body, with a single limb, in a bio-lab's containment room, because you're playing as a sentient zombie parasite infecting an incomplete corpse. Most of the game has you dragging yourself around with your one hand while trying to find a new host. Yes, really.
  • Endless Nightmare: Hospital has half-zombie enemies, undead without their lower waists who crawls all over the place to chew you up. They're surprisingly fast despite lacking legs.
  • Eternal Darkness:
    • Some of the larger swords (such as the long sword found in the church levels and Kareem's ram dao) can do this to zombies.
    • This also occurs as the result of insanity effects. One has the player's avatar eaten away arms first, then head, then torso. Strangely, even after decapitation, the headless, limbless body can still walk around for a few seconds; it's only after the torso goes when the avatar finally keels over. Another similar effect simply vaporizes the head, arms, and torso all at the same time, leaving only a pair of disembodied legs.
  • Evil Night has limbless zombies, who splits vertically into half once they're killed (accompanied by a nasty ripping sound — sweet dreams). There's also a less-frequently encountered variety of zombies, the torso zombies, who only have an upper body and move around with their arms.
  • Exit Limbo: Opening allows you to perform enhanced uppercuts on enemies, and if they're finished off in this manner their bodies will fall apart from the waist. There are also infected enemies without their lower bodies, who continues crawling after you to attack.
  • Fallout:
  • Fear Effect: One of the scenarios in the second game, Retro Helix, has the players (as Glas) attempting to infiltrate a Siberian facility via air vent, each with a Deadly Rotary Fan. Choose the wrong vent, and the players are treated to a cutscene where Glas enters what he assumes is a safe vent... only for the rotary fan to suddenly activate and cut him into half from the waist.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • In almost every one of his various appearances, Odin's Zantetsuken slices enemies in two for instant death, and the halves slide apart. Final Fantasy VIII had Seifer counter the Zantetsuken and slice Odin in half. When Gilgamesh inherits the Zantetsuken, the upper half of the sliced enemy (and parts of the scenery) fly off violently. He uses this in his fight in the flashback of his battle in the War of the Magi in the castle sequence of Final Fantasy VI, cutting apart several Mooks in the process. Then it fails to even faze that last foe...
    • In Final Fantasy XIV, this is how the manipulative schemer Teledji Adeledji meets his end when he taunts Raubahn about the fact the Sultana was just assassinated. The Bull of Ala Mhigo holds his twins blades to Teledji just long enough for him to react before crossing them, cutting Teledji in half at his waistline and instantly killing him.
  • In First Encounter Assault Recon, you can blow mooks in half with the shotgun.
  • In Gears of War, the game's signature chainsaw bayonet lets you do this to baddies (or other players in multiplayer).
  • Ghost Sweeper Mikami - Joreishi wa Nice Body (an NES platformer adaptation of the anime) has zombies as one of the few enemies that requires two hits to kill. The first hit severs them by the waist; the upper disappears, but the lower — a pair of legs supporting half a torso — will continue attacking.
  • God of War allows Kratos to rip the basic enemies in half right from the get-go, letting you know Kratos isn't the type to play around.
  • In Half-Life 2, you come across headcrab zombies who are just a torso. You can use the gravity gun to fire a circular saw blade through a zombie's torso and cut them in half... but it only works on zombies, and only cutting them in half, no decapitations or amputations — and it doesn't necessarily stop them coming at you...
  • In ...Iru!, if you approach the purple, formless creature in the hallway, it'll knock you to the floor, and then drag you towards it. Then you're shown your dead body missing its lower half.
  • In I Miss the Sunrise, this happened to Chac during the Shine. He survives, but not well. However, you can give him Artificial Limbs if you complete a sidequest.
  • Years before Darth Maul came back in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the end of Solo, we have Maw, an Elite Mook in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, who survives being cut in half at the waist in an early cutscene and from that point forth uses telekinesis as a means of locomotion since he has no legs. Due to the badassery required to survive such an injury and the Ruleof Cool being in full effect in other areas as well, he was one of the more memorable villains in the game.
  • Jitsu Squad gives most of its characters edged weapons, and most enemies have a death animation where they split into halves (either horizontally or diagonally) with plenty of cartoonish-looking blood. And then there's also the Dark Action Girl Shade who's one of the last bosses, who's punished for her failure via vertical bisection.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising:
    • Pit does this to Hades via a giant energy blade three-fifths of the way through the final battle. Unlike most examples, he is just barely hurt and simply grows an entirely new lower half. The seam between his new and old halves becomes a valid weak spot for the next phase of the battle, however.
    • This is also the case with the Erinus enemy. When attacked, it splits in two with both halves coming after you.
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land: The Master Crown, the final boss of the Magolor Epilogue in Deluxe, is defeated by Magolor taking a fallen sword, turning it into a makeshift Ultra Sword, and cleaving it in half vertically.
  • Laura Bow: This can happen to the titular character in The Colonel's Bequest if she oils the arm on a suit of armor, causing the axe it's holding to swing down.
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, Rean does this to Ishmelga, who transforms from a black blob full of eyes and mouth into his sword form and tries to attack Rean for one final time. He fails due to Rean using Millium as the sword of Demise and cuts him into two.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker can have this happen to Stalfos enemies, with their top half and head trying to run away from Link and their feet trying to attack him. They can also, semi obviously literally be blasted to millions of pieces with just a head bouncing around.
  • LEGO Indiana Jones uses this to demonstrate the effects of getting shot on Henry Jones Sr., whose legs proceed to wander around aimlessly. When Indy lets him drink from the Grail, his two halves are reunited.
  • In LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, protocol droids have the ability to separate from their legs to enter small passageways, similar to an ability possessed by short characters in the previous games.
  • Legend (1998) has a special death animation for enemies, if their killing blows are a low-angle slash in the waist using a particularly curved weapon. Enemies killed in this manner will be split from the waist, and it can be achieved mostly by the curved dual swords, or by players using Tara who specializes in low-angled hits.
  • Most of the Boss Battles in Lollipop Chainsaw end with the Dark Purveyor getting chopped in half by Juliet.
  • Unlike in the rest of Azure Striker Gunvolt Series, bosses in Luminous Avenger iX 2 are robots instead of superpowered humans, and if Copen kills these bosses with his Razor Wheel or his CoLossal Malestrom, they'll get bisected before exploding, much like the below-mentioned Megaman Zero and ZX.
  • The mutants in the hospital level in Machine Hunter are humans stripped of their humanity after being experimented upon by aliens, with their lower bodies missing, and attacks everything in sight — including you — by crawling around with their hands. You killing them can be considered as a Mercy Kill.
  • Mega Man:
  • In Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Talion is able to cleave Orcs in two as an execution kill. More horrific, however, is the fact a particularly spiteful or resilient Orc captain has the potential to return to face Talion again, having been stitched/forged/stapled back together by their comrades, now bearing the title "The Machine" and boasting how they were able to survive being cut in twain.
    Orc Captain: You cleaved me in two! Any other Orc would have died but I survived. More than that, I thrived! My brothers put me back together, stronger than ever, but they didn't make me into what I am. You did. You created the Machine!
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • Very common in fatalities. Usually a horizontal cut, as it's easier to animate, but Kung Lao can do vertical cuts in a few games.
    • Also, story-wise, this is how Sonja died in the Armageddon, as one of the first things you see in the opening sequence is her dead body, torn in half. Who did it to her is never revealed. However, one of the few good things to happen as a result of Raiden tampering with the timeline is, she becomes one of the survivors in the new reality.
    • Canonically happens to D'Vorah, though it proves to be only a temporary setback for her.
    • Kabal uses a very rare variation in his fatality in Mortal Kombat 11. After dragging them along the ground, he proceeds to toss them and then cut them lengthwise. Not vertical or horizontal, lengthwise.
  • NanoBreaker has you dishing these out regularly to the Orgamech enemies using your Absurdly Sharp Blade, either horizontally or vertically — all of them accompanied by plenty of gorn and High-Pressure Blood in entire fountains. Then you're betrayed by your partner Keith, who halves you diagonally above the waistline, but you get better.
  • A possible result of using the Tsurugi of Muramasa on human-size or smaller opponents in NetHack: it happens on about 5% of hits, and kills instantly when it occurs.note  However, only Samurai can get it without wishing or bones, and have to take it from someone wielding it, and that instakill chance still applies when the player is targeted.
  • Off-screen example in NieR, when the Junk Heap siblings go to collect material, a robot causes debris to fall down and crush the older brother to death. The younger brother frantically attempts to pull him out, and...
  • Ninja: Shadow of Darkness: Skeleton mooks, upon receiving enough hits, will break apart from the waist... only for both halves to continue attacking you as separate entities! You can defeat the upper half with a Goomba Stomp while the lower half (a walking pair of skeletal legs that flails around trying to kick you, it's as hilarious as it sounds) can be defeated with some well-placed hits.
  • A hapless soldier in Nioh 2 tries in vain to block Ryomen Sakuna's axe. Ryomen Sakuna being a twenty-foot tall Buddhist statue brought to life by demons. You don't see it fully, but it's implied the soldier was cut in half vertically.
  • No More Heroes:
    • Travis can chop enemies in half with the finishing blow.
    • Travis does this vertically to Speed Buster in a cutscene after defeating her in the PAL version of the game (in the US version he decapitates her). Henry finishes off an assassin who came after Travis horizontally in the ending.
    • Travis also cuts Destroyman cleanly in two vertically. He somehow returns in the sequel as a pair of cyborgs, each half of his biological body supplemented by a robot half.
    • Travis does this to Nathan Copeland and Alice Twilight in the No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle.
  • This happens to enemies in Ōkami if you finish them off with a power slash.
  • Prince of Persia:
  • With the Blade, Whipfist and Claw powers in [PROTOTYPE] you can slice up people in three different ways: sideways, vertically and diagonally. Or you can just grab people with the Musclemass power, and pull them in half.
  • Seen with a Marine's corpse floating in space during Quake IV's intro cutscene.
  • Ratchet & Clank: The Megacorp Trooper and ExtermiBot enemies in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando will have their torsos explode after sustaining enough damage, the latter still being able to walk slowly and will attempt to kick Ratchet. The Terminator-esque Qwarkbot enemies in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal are the inverse of the latter, attempting to punch Ratchet after being reduced to a torso.
  • Skint in The Reconstruction. The actual bisection happens off-screen, but we do see him after the fact. It's not pretty. Fortunately, though, he dies from a relatively painless Mercy Kill instead of bleeding to death.
  • Resident Evil:
    • Resident Evil has this as something of a secret. If, rather than going from the dining room to the hallway where you encounter your first zombie and the mutilated body of Kenneth, you try to go back to the main hall twice the zombie will instead come into the dining room. Doing this gives the zombie enough time to eat the lower half of Kenneth's body and costs you a magazine of handgun ammo for your cowardice.
    • In Resident Evil 2, Leon can literally blast a zombie in half with a standard shotgun if they are close, while Claire can blast the legs off a zombie with a grenade round-loaded grenade launcher. And they still come after you.
    • In Resident Evil 2 (Remake), taking aimed shots to blow a zombie in half is one of the most effective ways to defeat zombies while conserving ammo. Though they remain active, a legless zombie is much easier to avoid and it takes a lot fewer bullets than it does to kill them.
    • In Resident Evil 4, Mendez' legs come off once down to about half-HP. The boss U-3 can instant-kill Leon via bisection with its Plaga pincers. In the earlier games, zombies could be bisected with the shotgun but would continue to crawl after you until you head-stomped them.
    • The Duvalia in Resident Evil 5 finishes off the player character by devouring their upper body.
  • This happens in one of the earliest scenes of Return of the Obra Dinn, where a kraken kills topman Maba by ripping his body in two.
  • SAR: Search and Rescue has an ex-human colonialist enemy, since converted into a monster by the mutant virus, whose lower body has melted off leaving behind his exposed spine. His sole attack is by crawling all over the place and trying to grab you.
  • A longtime feature of the Samurai Shodown series is being able to slice your opponent in half if you hit them hard enough and/or hit them in a specific manner (i.e., a crouching Strong strike). This is usually either at the waist or a Diagonal Cut.
  • Samurai: Way of the Warrior allows you to cut enemies into two by the waist as a special death animation. In a few instances you can halve them vertically.
  • Samurai Western allows you to slice enemies into halves diagonally as a Finishing Move. With a generous accompanying dose of red sauce each time.
  • Savage Halloween has Frankenstein's Monster enemies which needs multiple shots to kill, your first few hits removing everything under their waist. But they can continue crawling after you on their torso.
  • Part of Racter's backstory in Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Everything below Racter's hips is an incredibly advanced prosthetic.
  • Can be done to enemy ninjas, with a katana, in Shadow Warrior (1997).
    Lo Wang: Oooh, split personality!
  • Robo Army has the player fighting legions and legions of Mecha-Mooks, and since they're superpowered Cyborg soldiers, they can easily rip enemies into half. More often than not, robotic footsoldiers will be reduced to a pair of legs carrying half a torso, and landing a downward chop will halve most low-level enemies vertically.
  • Silent Hill: Homecoming:
  • S.L.A.I.: Steel Lancer Arena International has this happen in its opening. A Carro model grabs a Proton by the neck and hoists it into the air. It shoves its machine cannon into the Proton's midsection and opens fire until the Proton's entire lower half is blown off, landing some distance away before exploding. The Carro then throws the Proton's remaining top half behind it, which explodes in midair.
  • One of your many death animations in Skeleton Krew, should you get hit by exploding projectiles. Your upper body gets vaporized leaving you a set of legs carrying barely anything above the waist. Amazingly, you can still control your character (sans upper body) for a while, at least until you keel over and respawn.
  • In Smile (2020), the brown-haired entity is sometimes shown missing its lower half.
  • In the notoriously gory Soldier of Fortune series, enemies can be bisected at the waist by the shotgun, large caliber arms, or explosives. It's also how the Big Bad, Sergei Dekker, dies in the first game.
  • A death scene cut from the VGA remake of Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter had Roger vertically cut in half with what appeared to be a chainsaw, in a manner similar to the Laura Bow example above.
  • Splatter Master has you regularly bisecting enemies throughout the game, including bosses, thanks to your weapon being a chainsaw. The aftermath is as satisfyingly bloody and gorntastic as it sounds.
  • Spiritual Assassin Taromaru has various undead enemies, like the zombie hordes and lesser demons, who gets sliced into halves from the waist after getting hit by your attacks. Alas, their halved bodies will actually continue attacking.
  • In Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, the 'evil' option at the end of a boss battle against a Symbiote-possessed Wolverine involves you tearing him in half at the waist — duplicating the Hulk's impressive feat from years before, in a demonstration of just how strong your Symbiote is becoming. You don't get to see the actual damage — just the separate halves of him, pointing in opposite directions, while he bitches at you.
  • Splatterhouse has Rick repeatedly tearing enemies into sizeable chunks, or ripping them from their waists with his bare hands.
  • In Sprite Smash, one of the many enemy death animations is the enemy splitting in half.
  • The Suffering: The protagonist finds a prison guard who had somehow just been bisected horizontally. A mercy bullet is a good thing right now.
  • The Darvograhellix Reprocessing Organism from Super Cyborg, a boss that takes up the entire upper half of the screen, will explode in two upon being defeated... only for both halves to continue fighting as two entities.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Sephiroth's reveal trailer opens with him one-shotting Galeem this way with his sword.
  • Sweet Home (1989): If the male heroes die, a quick Cutscene shows them being rent in half.
  • Krang's Exosuit in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Project weaponizes this trope. His second phase has his legs run about the room, tossing anyone unfortunate enough to be in their way, whilst the torso fires Eye Beams and tries to hammer on you. However, both parts will take damage from your attacks, and after taking enough abuse, they will rejoin.
  • Zack "Half-Pipe" Boyd from Teenage Zombies: Invasion of the Alien Brain Thingys is missing the lower half of his body. He gets around on his skateboard.
  • A little effort and a lot of bloody-mindedness will inevitably lead to this in Toribash, where it isn't unheard of for a strong kick, a stomping attack, or even a plain old headbutt to cause an opponent to be violently torn in half at the waist or chest.
  • In Undertale, Undyne will take the blow if the protagonist tries to attack Monster Kid, suffering a cut from shoulder to hip and almost falling apart before refusing to die, generating enough determination to stay alive and take a One-Winged Angel form for the rest of the battle.
  • The Krall in the original Unreal sometimes lose their lower half when taking damage. This doesn't keep them from crawling towards the player and firing their boomsticks.
  • In Until Dawn, one of Chris's segments involves the Sadistic Choice of sparing either Chris's crush Ash or his best friend Josh from meeting this fate by a giant saw blade. The blade will go for Josh whatever Chris does — and he'll survive; the body it cuts in half is a prop, and the saw trap itself is part of a ruse.
  • Warframe: Slash damage has a chance to do this to enemies killed by it. It's not just an aesthetic effect: each part counts as a separate target when Nekros casts Desecrate. Canonically, this happened to Captain Vor, but he got resurrected thanks to his Janus Key. The gap between his torso and legs, now filled with energy, is his only weak point in his Corrupted form.
  • Wario can get cut in half vertically in Wario Land 3. Since he always comes back together as if nothing happened, it's only a minor inconvenience.
  • In The Wonderful 101, Wonder Red finishes off the first boss, Laambo, by bisecting him vertically with his own sword. Funnily enough, Laambo is still alive enough to hold his two halves together and keep shouting insults, and appears ready to continue the fight... until his sword splits in half too, at which point he finally explodes.
  • In World of Warcraft, this happens when you kill one of the various tree-style elementals.
  • X-Kaliber 2097 has the titular Absurdly Sharp Blade, which slices mooks into two with each slash. Most enemies are halved by the waist, though in some rarer occasions, you can divide them vertically.
  • Played with in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, during the fight with Egil, piloting Yaldabaoth. Halfway through the fight, you receive a vision; Egil is planning to use a technique called 'Bionis Slash X', which, if it succeeds, will cut the Bionis in two, dealing infinite damage. The player then receives a quest mid-battle to destroy the three devices around Egil to prevent this from happening.

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