History Main / FlayingAlive

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/27853170/chapters/68194306 Pulse and Void]]'', Yamada Hizashi aka Present Mic is captured by a villain with an energy-siphoning quirk and brutally tortured. When he's rescued, his back is basically a raw, gouge-covered piece of raw meat from flogging with a cat-o-nine tails-like device. Aizawa's InternalMonologue describes it as "butchered" and it's pretty accurate. (Dark artwork warning)

-->'''Fry:''' Hey, you know who would love fleaming stuff? [[TokenEvilTeammate My friend]] [[HeroicComedicSociopath Bender]].\\
''(Later in the episode:)''\\
'''Bender:''' [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike Hey, is that a fleam?]]

->''"A naked man has few secrets; a flayed man has none."''
-->-- '''Lord Roose Bolton''', ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''/''Series/GameOfThrones''

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* As with all gory tropes, ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'' has had this happen a few times, most notably in "Wishy Washy", where Petunia does this to ''herself'' with a potato peeler to [[NeatFreak get rid of the grime covering her]].

* ''WesternAnimation/CelebrityDeathmatch'' pitted Eddie Vedder from Music/PearlJam against Scott Stapp of Music/{{Creed}} over [[FelonyMisdemeanor their similar singing voices]]. Stapp rips off all of Vedder's skin with barbed wire [[CrossesTheLineTwice and tries to wear it]] to steal his identity. Notably, ''[[NormallyIWouldBeDeadNow Vedder survives this]]'' and manages to win the fight.

-->'''Fry:''' Hey, you know who would love fleaming stuff? [[TokenEvilTeammate My friend]] [[HeroicComedicSociopath Bender]].
-->''(Later in the episode:)''
-->'''Bender:''' [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike Hey, is that a fleam?]]

Skin is the largest organ on the human body by surface area, and we as humans like our skin to be intact. It protects everything inside the body from various diseases, and contains a great number of nerve endings — meaning that to have it forcibly removed is excruciatingly painful, and being stripped of enough of it will lead to a [[CruelAndUnusualDeath horribly]] slow death. As a result, flaying is the signature method of ColdBloodedTorture for some of the very worst of the worst among villains.

Scalping is a form of this that was particularly prevalent in InjunCountry -- where it was the accepted means of proving a bounty ''on'' a Native to a ''settler'' government... In real life it was probably more common to take the scalp from a dead foe than from a living one, as their main purpose was to turn in for bounty (more portable than the whole skin.) But there were certainly some documented cases of people surviving a scalping.

For examples of... [[HumanResources reusing]] the skin see GenuineHumanHide.

'''A Administrivia/{{No Recent Examples|please}} rule applies to RealLife examples of this trope'''. Real life examples shouldn't be added until '''150 years''' after the event.

* ''Manga/BungoStrayDogs'': The terrorist organization Decay of Angels murders a legislator by having him skinned alive then had his skin back sewn on inside-out.
* ''Manga/BurningHell'': One of the two villain protagonists is a Korean military medic turned serial killer who has this as his modus operandi, priding himself from his ability of keeping his victims alive through the whole process. When sent to a remote island as a punishment, he made a waxhouse-like garden out of the posed and preserved bodies of all the other convicts sent there. Then he tops that when it turns out he can do the same using a sword instead of a scalpel -- an over-the-top variation of a CleanCut that blows his opponent's whole skin clean off his body.

* The ''Manga/JunjiItoKyoufuMangaCollection'' story "Flesh-Colored Horror" centers around an elementary school teacher being concerned for the wellbeing of one of her students, who has mysterious damage to his skin and has a habit of peeling away pictures tacked to the wall. [[spoiler:She eventually discovers that the boy's father discovered a formula that let one peel off their skin like a suit, allowing them to walk around without it. He died out of the horror of his discovery. The boy's mother decided that a skinless body is absolutely beautiful and did it to herself, keeping her own skin in a tank of water and only wearing it every so often so she wouldn't dry out. She had been trying to perform the same process on her son, but her sister kept sabotaging it so that the formula was strong enough to damage the boy's skin but not strip it off. When the climactic fight causes the mother's skin to be destroyed, she rips off her sister's skin in an attempt to steal it for herself.]]

* ''ComicBook/HackSlash'' villain [[MeaningfulName Doctor Gross]] apparently did this ''to himself''. According to his bio in the back of the first omnibus collection, this was one of his trademarks as a serial killer.

*** Cassidy encounters a still-living victim of the Hacker-Slasher with his face flayed off then nailed back on upside-down, who can only beg "kuh muh".

** ''Fanfic/PagesOfHarmony'' arguably has it worse, as not only Rainbow Dash, but ''every single one'' of Twilight's friends gets this through scalping -- except for poor [[spoiler:Spike]] who gets the full Flaying Alive treatment. To make it worse, it could have been avoided in [[spoiler:Spike's]] case if only Twilight hadn't [[HeKnowsTooMuch considered him a threat]].

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/27853170/chapters/68194306 Pulse and Void]]'', Yamada Hizashi aka Present Mic is captured by a villain with an energy siphoning quirk and brutally tortured. When he’s rescued, his back is basically a raw, gouge covered piece of raw meat from flogging with a cat-o-nine tails like device. Aizawa’s InternalMonologue describes it as “butchered” and it’s pretty accurate. (Dark artwork warning)

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/SausageParty'', where a anthropomorphic potato getting peeled is treated like this.

* In ''Film/BirdsOfPrey2020'', Roman Sionis has his PsychoForHire Victor Zsasz cut the faces off Mr. Keo and his wife and daughter while they are [[UnwillingSuspension hanging upside down]] but still alive, after Keo turns down his offer of an alliance: both as a punishment, and as a warning to others of the danger of crossing him.

* The final onscreen victim in ''Film/ReturnToSleepawayCamp'' is killed this way, and its meant to be a callback to his earlier shown hobby of skinning frogs.

* ''Film/TheSuckers'': The EgomaniacHunter Vandemmer declares that a hunter has to know how to skin his prey, and announces he intends to practice on Barbara. He has cut her top off and is holding the knife threatingly in front of her face when he is tackled by George.

* ''Film/{{Train}}'' opens with this happening to a guy, though unlike the rest of the film's victims, he is mercifully unconscious.

** At their first meeting in ''Traitors, Thieves, and Liars'' commissioner Pokokoro informs Ateri that his species are cooked by skinning them alive and frying them in oil still screaming. While threateningly running a claw down his front.

* In ''Literature/TheMasterAndMargarita'', when Margarita apologises to the demon Azazello for being naked in front of him (ItMakesSenseInContext), he reassures her that he's totally fine with it, for he'd seen not only naked women, but also completely flayed ones.
* ''Literature/MerkabahRider'': In "The Dust Devils", the EvilSorcerer summons a minor demon which manifests as a wind that sets up a permanent dust storm around the town. He later sends it to attack the Rider, and it [[BlowYouAway blasts him with cyclonic force winds]]. The Rider finds the body of one the demon's previous victims who had the flesh stripped from his bones by the sand blasted by the wind.

* This is a tradition of House Bolton in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', who are based at [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace the Dreadfort]] and whose sigil is [[ObviouslyEvil an image of a flayed man]]. When Roose Bolton does it, it's as the House's traditional methods of both interrogation and punishment -- enjoyment may happen, but he primarily uses it as a political tool. However, his bastard son ([[BastardBastard in both senses of the phrase]]) Ramsay does it [[ForTheEvulz mainly for fun]]. The Boltons as a whole been doing it for centuries... and, one of the nastier rumours that may prove itself all too true is that they keep the skins (or parts thereof) of prominent victims and preserve them in the keep of the Dreadfort. Alongside other, more traditional trophies of war and what have you. Nice.

* ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'': When the Forsaken Lanfear learns that TheHero Rand, for whom she's a StalkerWithACrush in his current life and his PsychoExGirlFriend from his previous {{Reincarnation}} , has slept with another woman, she confronts him holding the skin [[ShootTheMessenger of the man who broke the news]].

* In ''Literature/ZeroSight'' the DarkActionGirl, [[TheVamp vampire]] and {{Deuteragonist}} Rei Bathory does this to extract informational from a mook. She ups the ante with a bit of psychological torture by licking her hand clean in front of him.

** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E20Villains Villains]]", Willow, in [[BewareTheNiceOnes full-on snap-out mode]] after [[spoiler:Tara's death]], does this to Warren, [[spoiler:Tara's killer]], when she catches up to him. It was fairly gruesome for standard television, but he didn't survive for very long after his skin had been removed (mainly because she then followed up by ''burning him''). [[spoiler:He got better in the comics continuation, though. He still had no skin, and was being kept alive by magic, but when the magic ended, he died instantly.]]
** Then, in the Season 7 episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E3SameTimeSamePlace Same Time, Same Place]]", the demon Gnarl rips its victims' skin off in strips, and eats it, while the victim is still alive. It's in the process of eating Willow's skin when Buffy catches up with it, and kills it.

* ''Series/TheWheelOfTime2021'': Eamon Valda starts doing this to Perrin, cutting skin from his back, and threatens that he'll take the rest unless Egwene confesses she's an Aes Sedai.

*** Members of Dragonmarked Houses who commit a terrible crime against their House would be expelled from it. This was known as "excoriation," after the (mostly) discontinued practice of having the shamed member's Dragonmark flayed from the skin. If the excoriate survived, the Mark would grow back elsewhere, but would be very painful to use.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' there's a type of undead called an ecorche. These creatures appear as skinless hulks of muscle and are capable of ripping the skin off their foes in one swift motion. For extra horror, they can squeeze themselves into these stolen skins to impersonate their victims, usually so they can get close to new, unsuspecting victims and skin them too. As a GeniusBonus, écorché is a real world term for those medical models of people without skin that show off the musculature.

* In ''VideoGame/BrainDead13'', Fritz does this in one death scene in the stairs by pulling off Lance's scalp with his HookHand and [[GenuineHumanHide using said scalp as a hat]]. Another death scene shows Fritz cutting off Lance's scalp with his sword or razor blade, making it fall off and exposing his brain. Yet ''another'' death has Fritz [[EyeScream grabbing unto Lance's eyes]] with his hooks and then pulling the whole skin, leaving him a skeleton.

* A few fatalities in the ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' series flay instead of directly kill. Unsurprisingly, they are among the cooler looking ones. The character most associated with this is Sheeva, who uses her four arms to either peel your skin off like a banana (in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat3''), or tear it into two pieces (in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''). One of her ''VideoGame/MortalKombat11'' fatalities also involves de-gloving her opponent's arms. And of course, ''VideoGame/MortalKombatX'' has the aforementioned Predator, who got a brutality ending with the opponent's corpse dangling skinless from one of its traps.

* ''WebAnimation/DingoDoodles'': In ''Fools' Gold'', [[spoiler: Gothi reveals in Episode 15 that this is the reason why she always wears a mask -- she had her face carved off by someone she thought was a friend the night the Foreclaimers were attacked by Xanu, over a thousand years before. This made the creator's teasing about a "face reveal" for Gothi earlier in the series something of a CerebusRetcon, since there wasn't technically a face to reveal. An even later reveal that Gothi was granted immortality calls into question whether the perpetrator ''meant'' to keep Gothi alive, however.]]

* Among the various [[{{Gorn}} brutal deaths]] suffered by people in the failed ''WesternAnimation/KorgothOfBarbaria'' pilot, one man (in the middle of a speech saying what HE'LL do to KORGOTH) has the entire front of his body ripped off to expose the muscles beneath, cuing a serious of horrified screams from the other, also-brutalized bar patrons. [[HumiliationConga Then Korgoth throws a glass of alcohol all over him]], cuing another series of screams. Then he [[ManOnFire sets the alcohol ablaze]]; no reaction shots this time, the guy just runs around screaming for a bit then falls over dead. [[ButForMeItWasTuesday Just another boring bar-fight for Korgoth.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Superjail}}'': In "The Inquisitor", Alice tries to help Jared by ripping off his live ferret mustache but accidentally removes all of his skin in the proccess.

* [[SoftGlass Unlike in the movies]], this can happen if you crash through a glass window at high speed (such as on a motorcycle) as hundred of razor-sharp shards of glass slice through your flesh.

* John Ratcliffe, the 17th century president of the Jamestown Colony (who appears in fictional form as the antagonist of ''WesternAnimation/{{Pocahontas}}''), was captured by the Powhatans and killed in 1609. A contemporary record, rediscovered in 2004, claims that he was flayed with mussel shells. His torturers threw the flayed skin into a bonfire, leaving his face until last. Some accounts suggest Ratcliffe was still alive when they eventually threw him into the fire as well.

* The ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' side novels mention that [[PickyPeopleEater Tsukiyama]] sometimes does this to his victims, which other Ghouls consider disgusting. In the first novel, he peels the skin from an elderly man as a delicacy.....and the second includes mention of the BattleaxeNurse that [[RewardedAsATraitorDeserves helped]] cover everything up facing the same fate at his hands.

* ''Manga/YuGiOhGX'': The (voluntary!) surgery that [[PlayingWithSyringes turned Yubel into their current form]] is heavily implied to have involved peeling all their skin off and replacing it with a dragon's hide, ''unanaesthetised''.