History Main / SawAWomanInHalf

* An [[https://youtu.be/9TYc15XFZ0M?si=1AzdcN9jA8y3dl2J Advertisement]] for an Argentine 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

* An [[https://youtu.be/9TYc15XFZ0M?si=1AzdcN9jA8y3dl2J Advertisement]] for an Argentine Shoe company called MD En Tiende feature 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 volunteer she notices the shoes Volunteer 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

* A Spanish advertisement for shoes where a female magician is performing the illusion and chooses a woman from the audience to participate. Just as the volunteer is placed and strapped in the box, the female magician notices her shoes and becomes overtaken by envy, and the last shot we see is the magician starting the chainsaw, threatening to saw off the woman's feet.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[Music/TheBeatles Suddenly...she's half the woman she used to be.]]]]

* The Woody Woodpecker short, "The Great Who-Dood-it", opened with Woody cutting a woman in half with a two-man crosscut saw, and stopping in horror when the woman screams.
* When [[WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends Garfield and Jon]] visit a magic shop, the shop owner's dog, Merlin, chases Garfield while Jon is looking for a trick. At one point, Merlin is tricked into entering such a box, and Garfield sets to sawing the box in half. Sure enough, despite fretting on the part of Merlin, the box and Merlin are halved without injury to the latter.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', where Bender tries to become a magician, he saws Zoidberg in half with human feet sticking out of the opposite end whereupon he opens the case, and reveals that he has not been really sawn in half, much to Bender's detriment, and to the disappointment of the rest of the crew.
* Used by ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' villain Mumbo in his barrage of magic tricks-turned-deadly. He actually calls for a lovely assistant from the audience and yanks Starfire down with a cane. As he prepares to perform the "trick", he adds:

* The plot of an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{CatDog}}'' is that the titular pair are separated by this trick, but the magician is pulled away before he can reunite them. The pair at first enjoy their newfound freedom before trying to find a way to re-attach themselves. The episode ended with the magician revealing that they weren't separated at all, and the Cat half was just an inflated balloon (who somehow talked?). Then they [[RealAfterAll separate for real]] in the last second.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Homer Defined", Milhouse is forbidden to see Bart because Bart's a bad influence on him and Bart looks back on some old photos of them together. One of them has Bart preparing to saw Milhouse in half; the next shows Milhouse with a scar in his chest.

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'', King Jerard was holding auditions for a new court magician (to replace [[EvilChancellor the one he threw in jail]] in a previous episode); the applicant shown ("the Amazing Manfred") did this trick during his interview, but wasn't able to put his assistant back together. Naturally, he didn't get the job, and as he was kicked out, his angry -- and still cut in two -- assistant told him she was quitting.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': In "Uncommon Bond", Trixie attempts to practice this trick on herself, but the legs sticking out of the box clearly belong to a dummy.
* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' episode "Abracadaver", the titular villain traps some people in saw-in-half boxes complete with saws hovering over the boxes, cutting them. He soon uses this on Buttercup in retaliation for punching him into a wall.

-->'''Haney:''' It only looks like I'm cutting it, but in reality-- ''(board falls out of the box in two pieces)'' Oops! ''(Tingley runs for it)'' Ms. Tingley, wait!

[[folder:Film]]

* Riff from ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' tries this using inter-dimensional portals to make the trick work. [[http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=070813 Things don't go exactly as planned.]]

* Gynette from ''Webcomic/StubbleTrouble'' did this trick in a magic show, the real trick being that she can separate her body parts at will.

** A similar kill is done in ''Film/TheBananaSplits'', with Fleegle trapping social media personality Thad in a box and forcing his fiancée Poppy to help as he saws Thad in half.

* [[ImpliedTrope Implied]] in ''Anime/DigimonTheMovie''. Kari tells Tai she can't leave her friend's birthday party because she volunteered to be sawed in half by a magician. Tai warns her to tell the half with feet to hurry home.

* In ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' #26, Cain and Abel do a version of the trick to entertain Morpheus' guests; like all interactions between the two, it ends very badly for Abel.
* The non-serious 34th issue of Creator/MarvelComics' ''ComicBook/WhatIf'' series proposes an alternate reality where Comicbook/DoctorStrange and associates were this kind of magicians instead of arcane sorcerers. Baron Mordo's betrayal of the Ancient One is interpreted as him performing his latest trick; sawing the Ancient One in half!
* A single-panel cartoon in ''Plop!'' #23 depicts two paramedics walking alongside a morose-looking magician while carrying his assistant on a stretcher - still inside the box, with the saw sticking out of the middle.

* Music/WarrenZevon's ''For my Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer'' compares the singer's unlucky in love romantic history with that of a stage magician, including a centrally placed Saw A Woman In Half reference:

* The 2000 movie ''Picking Up The Pieces'' has magician Tex (Creator/WoodyAllen) do this to his LovelyAssistant Candy (Creator/SharonStone, who played an unfaithful wife) and it's how she dies when it GoesHorriblyWrong.

If someone ''actually'' gets cut in half, he's HalfTheManHeUsedToBe.

Other stage illusions closely related to this classic include the Zig-Zag Lady (Where the girl in the box is divided by having the box slide apart along several pre-determined division points, producing a signature zig-zag shape) and Mis-made Girl (Where the Girl goes into a box that is divided into four parts and the magician initially "accidentally" scrambles her during the first attempt at restoration). Another related trick is instead of cutting the box into pieces, the box is impaled with multiple swords to the point where it looks like it shouldn't be possible for the person inside to avoid all of them. Sometimes both tricks are done at the same time by cutting the box in half and then impaling to two halves.

Other stage illusions closely related to this classic include the Zig-Zag Lady (Where the girl in the box is divided by having the box slide apart along several pre-determined division points, producing a signature zig-zag shape) and Mis-made Girl (Where the Girl goes into a box that is divided into four parts and the magician initially "accidentally" scrambles her during the first attempt at restoration).

* The Creator/AgathaChristie novel ''They Do It With Mirrors'' features a lot of discussion of this trick and how it is done. Although no one actually performs the trick during the novel, Literature/MissMarple realizes that the killer's method of murder used a very similar trick.

* This line from ''Film/Water1985''
-->'''Dolores:''' [[AwfulWeddedLife Where has the magic gone?]]
-->'''Baxter:''' If you want magic, I'll take you home and saw you in half!

* ''Animation/{{Pucca}}'': It happened to Clown, who was showing just as much skepticism as Daffy did.
* ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'': In the ''WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail'' [[http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail198.html magic trick]], Strong Bad is asked to create a magic show, including putting Homestar himself in a box and taking a saw to him. As enthusiastic as he is about it, however, he doesn't ''quite'' seem to recognize the reference to the classic trick; when he finally attempts to take a saw to Homestar, he's got him standing upright, wearing a cardboard box with a pair of unconvincing fake arms attached to it. The arms fall off prematurely, interrupting whatever he had in mind, but it's enough to convince Coach Z that he's "a Level 3 Dark Wizard" all the same.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i_ZxNB4jXs This commercial]] for Shaw Cable on Demand has an Expy of Disney/TheLittleMermaid as the LovelyAssistant after a wizard saws her in half. Only problem is, his movie is called "on demand" and he vanishes (unwillingly) before he can restore her.

* The 1975 ''It's Magic! Magic! Magic! Game'' by Remco has the players as stage magicians, who must perform with their LovelyAssistant the SawAWomanInHalf Illusion, as well as the DisappearingBox and Levitating Assistant illusions.

* Done in an [[Advertising/MAndMs M&M's]] commercial with Red as the magician and Yellow as the (unwilling) assistant.