History Main / MadeOfPlasticine

--> '''Narrator:''' I mean, CRAP MAN. Look at that! That's, like, his stomach-plug, on the ground back there, you don't see that every day!... Tha- that doesn't really seem possible when you think about it. I mean with body organs and cartilage and stuff. I mean I'm no doctor, but that was like one clean chunk!

** Nevertheless, ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'' itself did have at least two occasions of soldiers ''disintegrating'' either from explosives detonating point-blank or extremely large-caliber weapons fire. (a 20mm cannon that ''decapitates'' one man and grotesquely maims two others. Several other soldiers are shown having lost limbs to mortar and shell fire.) This may be an example of RealityIsUnrealistic, however, since small arms aren't shown to cause as much bodily destruction.

* Death in {{Literature/Worm}} is seldom allowed to be neat and clean.

* In ''{{Harvester}}'', so much as getting hit on the head with a baseball bat will make a character's organs explode out of them.

* In BramStokersDracula, Dracula's death both averts it and plays it painfully straight. The heroes try to stab him in the heart with a bowie knife and decapitate him with a kukri (which is accurate to the book, which did ''not'' kill him with a wooden stake,) but neither penetrates cleanly, leaving him only wounded with a cut throat and a knife stuck in his chest. [[spoiler: Mina Harker]] eventually strikes the deathblow by pushing the knife further into his heart (absolutely fine, he was lying down, not struggling, and she put her full weight behind it,) but then pulling the knife out of him with no apparent effort, and then ''cutting his head off with it'' with one blow. Given that she is a woman with no extreme strength or training, and the bowie knife was nowhere near the size of a meat cleaver, much less a proper sword, the decapitation looks completely ridiculous.

** ''Franchise/RoboCop'' (1987):

* PaulVerhoeven used to be very fond of this trope:

* Psycho-Pass is all too happy to use this particular trope, and anything hit by the Lethal mode of the Dominator guns... well, [[this http://psychopass.wikia.com/wiki/File:Dominator-eliminator.gif]] is the awful result. Warning: not for weak stomachs.

* Some have [[LampshadeHanging hung a lampshade]] on this, most notably in ''Film/FromDuskTillDawn'' when Tom Savini's character talks about vampire bodies being "pushier and mooshier" than humans, despite their superior strength.

* Played with in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/RexTheRunt'', where Wendy shoots Vince. At her defense trial, Rex points out to the court that Vince is "[[LampshadeHanging Made of plasticine,]] and can sustain no damage." The joke being that this is a claymation show, and Vince really IS made of plasticine

* An aversion, demonstrating the toughness of the human skull: a 1970s broadcast of testimony from a mob trial described a man who ran away, despite having just been shot several times in the head from point-blank range.

The human body is a pretty tough little piece of biological machinery. It's made of complex organs, protected and supported by a strong skeletal structure (four times stronger than concrete), boasts tendons and muscles capable of exerting dynamic strength upon objects it interacts with, and has the ability to heal and regenerate most kinds of damage over time. Humans, especially athletic ones, can take a lot more punishment than most people think. While [[DontTryThisAtHome you shouldn't press your luck]], it is a fact that human beings can walk away from catastrophic accidents and savage attacks with little sign of external damage and occasionally survive wounds that should have been fatal by conventional wisdom.

* Any adult-oriented, violent anime. Especially any anime involving {{Samurai}}, {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, or TheLegionsOfHell. In fact, the physiology of anime humans sometimes seems to revel in adding MadeOfPlasticine flesh to its already gratuitous HighPressureBlood.

** Any mook in ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' is MadeOfPlasticine, and usually destined to be ripped apart by Kenshiro or one of the other MadeOfIron {{Badass}}es of the series.

** Played with in ''Discworld/UnseenAcademicals'', when Mr. Nutt (practically the embodiment of AwesomenessByAnalysis) pauses in his tussle with a vicious football hooligan, to discuss the precise mechanical forces and tissue-resistance involved if he were to invoke MadeOfPlasticine and yank the ruffian's head off.

* In one of the Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse Eighth Doctor Adventures, a villain [[HeartTrauma rips the Doctor's heart out]] bare-handed. [[AWizardDidIt It's never explained how this was managed]] -- the Doctor certainly isn't usually MadeOfPlasticine. He got better, of course, and in a week at that, as he has a HealingFactor (not to mention having [[BizarreAlienBiology a second heart]]), and [[{{Synchronization}} other factors were apparently involved]].

!!Examples

* ''Franchise/{{Hellraiser}}'' - The human body is often presented this way, especially the skin, which is treated like a garment, especially in ''HellraiserIIIHellOnEarth'', where Pinhead plants a hook in a girl's forehead and pulls on said hook, which yanks the girl's entire skin from her body like a sheet from a mattress.
** Pinhead's pins. In ''HellboundHellraiserII'', these are shown to be fairly long nails that are driven into the skull. In real life, they are, basically, half-nails glued to Doug Bradley's face, and therefore move around a lot more than nails actually would if they were sticking into the bone, creating the sensation that Pinhead's head is just a big water balloon, an elastic casing filled with goo.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

** Don't forget that scene in ''Manga/DragonBall'' where Goku launches himself with a Kamehameha Wave and punches ''straight through'' King Piccolo, who then proceeds to spit an egg out of his now nonexistent stomach, make a short FinalSpeech without his lungs, and then [[MadeOfExplodium explodes for no apparent reason]]. Goku's punch not only came within a hair of tearing King Piccolo in half, it also apparently cauterized the wound so that Goku could be clearly seen through the (blood-and-gore-less) hole.

*** Then again, Vegeta and Piccolo are aliens, and for all we know, they could have a wildly different biology than what we believe they have. Saiyans might have redundant nervous systems for all we know.

* A mook is killed by the hero in ''Film/AssaultOnPrecinct13 (2005)'' when he's bench pressed up into a hanging icicle, which impales his skull.
* Laughably gratuitous ''Platoon'' B-ripoff, ''Film/DeadlyPrey'' has {{Badass}} Mike Danton, at one point, kill an enemy {{mook|s}} by stabbing him through the heart with a ''twig''.

* [[HumanoidAbomination The Titans]] of ''ShingekiNoKyojin'' fall apart surprisingly easily. It's a plot point, hinting at their peculiar nature and origins, and they've got a worryingly effective HealingFactor [[GoodThingYouCanHeal to compensate]].

* Famously, in the Creator/WesCraven film ''Deadly Friend'', one character has her head completely destroyed by a ''thrown basketball.'' [[http://youtube.com/watch?v=lSW2pPlZF-M No, seriously!]]

** Or the flying tyre which causes one of our heroes head to disintegrate into RedMist. Because apparently a broken neck and/or skull fracture aren't visceral enough for TheGrimReaper.

* ElGoonishShive had a [[http://www.elgoonishshive.com/sketchbook/?date=2011-12-21 sketchbook entry]] taking the vampire aspect of this to its logical conclusion.

[[quoteright:330:[[Film/KungPowEnterTheFist http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/punch_thru_gut_9696.jpg]]]]

* In one [[SoBadItsGood downright absurd scene]] in ''Roleplay/SurvivalOfTheFittest'', a fully grown man (wearing ''body armour'', mark you) is cut in half at the waist (whilst standing) by an injured and likely exhausted teenager. One handler was heard to remark 'What was that guy using - [[Franchise/StarWars a lightsaber?']]