History Main / SawAWomanInHalf

* ''Series/BykerGrove'' has two girls get sawn in half on the same box with the girl's feet sticking right beside the other girl's head.

Sometimes, the second rectangular blade can get stuck and the magician will pull on the head of the assistant, causing the blade to fall. This is used as a joke on several occasions. A few magicians who love their BlackComedy may have some 'unusual' embellishments to the act: The assistant may fake falling unconscious, shriek when the blades go through her, and on some rare occassions the blades they use have fake "bloodstains" on them when they are withdrawn from the boxes during the restoration. A few might even add fake blood fountains gushing out dramatically as part of the act. Sometimes the dividers get stuck, and the magician has to either take hold of her head or feet and pull, although this gimmick is usually considered tired and is often parodied instead of played straight (at least one version of this black comedy element has the girl able to force the dividers to rise in their slots by straining really hard out of indignation at the magician's rudeness at ''pulling her hair'' to get the dividers unstuck).

* Used hilariously in the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' short "WesternAnimation/ShowBizBugs", in which Daffy Duck is not intimidated by the whole scenario because [[TemptingFate he thinks it's all a trick]] (in fact, he even ''describes the trick's mechanics to the audience'' in the process). [[RuleOfFunny Cue Daffy's upper body detaching from his lower body.]] "It's a good thing I have Blue Cross."

* An [[https://youtu.be/9TYc15XFZ0M?si=1AzdcN9jA8y3dl2J Advertisement]] for an El Salvador Shoe company called MD En Tiende features a female magician performing the illusion and chooses a woman from the audience to participate. Said volunteer is placed in the box with the the female magician holding the saw to begin the illusion. Just as she looks down at the woman in the box, she notices the shoes the Volunteer woman is wearing and, overtaken by Jealously, the Magician pits down the saw and picks up a chainsaw. The last shot we see is the magician starting the chainsaw with the Volunteer and the Audience screaming in panic. A Quick Caption by the Volunteers squirming Feet reads “Puros Celos” which translates to “Pure Jealousy” in English

* In ''[[http://archiveofourown.org/works/4663602/chapters/10643406 Charles Alexander Tompkins]]'' Remus mentions the time the Marauders did a Muggle magic show for a Hogwarts talent competition and sawed Peter Pettigrew in half. It took Madame Pomfrey two weeks to put him together again.

** The halloween special took it to another level, as after sawing her in half, the challenger would have to guid top half of the box over to the lock on the other side of the room.

* In ''Celebration'', at the end of the first act, Potekmin reminisces on his former career as a StageMagician, working for nearly seven years with 23 different partners on the routine of sawing a woman in half, which would have given his act the big finish it desperately needed. What he learned was that the sawing part was easy, but the second half, putting her back together, was hard.

* In the ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'' episode "I Get a Trick Out of You", Lumpy attempts to pull off this trick on Cuddles, but unfortunately... it doesn't end well.

** In another, Fozzie attempts the trick with a substitute lady, namely, a comedy robot in a wig. The effect on Fozzie was rather [[IncrediblyLamePun shocking]].

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* The 1982 ''Night of 100 Stars'' gave us an interesting spin on this trope. Doug Henning did this to ''two'' beautiful assistants (Florence Henderson and Priscilla Lopez) within the same segment. When it came time to put them back together again, Henning gave the ladies each other's bottom halves. (Henderson is white and Lopez is Puerto Rican, and the two were wearing different colored outfits to boot.)