Line #51 Main/MutilationConga


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4	[[quoteright:350:[[Film/Terminator3RiseOfTheMachines https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/t3_arnie_damage.png]]]]
5	[[caption-width-right:350:He'll be back... but his face won't.]]
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10	A character gradually accumulates injuries over the course of a story, but rather than [[BeautyIsNeverTarnished shrug them off looking none the worse for wear]], they show the traces of each and every one of them and end up a bleeding, black-eyed ImplacableMan limping toward their goal. By the end, they quite literally look like the world has [[TheChewToy chewed them up and spat them back out]].
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12	Expect a lot of ClothingDamage and an attitude of single-minded TranquilFury. Can be just as easily PlayedForLaughs or PlayedForDrama — the latter can work as a subversion of JustAFleshWound, as it shows that what doesn't kill you can still slow you down a hell of a lot.
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14	RasputinianDeath is a subtrope where the injuries are each of the NoOneCouldSurviveThat variety, and the final fatality [[KilledOffForReal actually sticks]].
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16	Compare with CrushParade when characters and objects are repeatedly run over and trampled by different things; CoveredInScars when a character bears the marks of past injuries for the rest of their life. SerialProstheses might result from this. Contrast DeathByDisfigurement, where one lasting wound will spell a death sentence in short order.
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18	----
19	!!Examples:
20	[[foldercontrol]]
21
22	[[folder:ComicBooks]]
23	* ''ComicBook/MarshalBass'': First Samson gets a horseshoe to the head. Then a tomahawk to the head. Then several punches to the head. Then a horse kicks him in the head. Finally [[spoiler: he is shot]]. In the head.
24	* ''ComicBook/We3'': Over time the animals become more and more beaten up, losing mechanical parts and gaining injuries to their flesh. Most harrowing is the [[spoiler: headshot]] 3 takes, which sticks with him til the end. [[spoiler: Ends on a slightly happy note; by the end, 1 and 2 have had their metal parts torn off, leaving mangy and injured but still normal looking animals.]]
25	[[/folder]]
26
27	[[folder:Fan Works]]
28	* Happens to the hero of ''Fanfic/SleepingWithTheGirls'' over the course of his adventures, and manages to be played for both Drama and Laughs at the same time.
29	* Snap goes through this in ''Fanfic/PlayTheGame''. His determination to save Rudy and Penny is strong enough for him to keep pushing himself forward. His willingness to keep going despite the pain he is clearly in ends up freaking resident Big Bad ''Bardot'' out.
30	[[/folder]]
31
32	[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
33	* ''Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff'' has [[DeanBitterman Mr. Rooney]] go through this as part of his HumiliationConga. In his crusade against Ferris, Rooney ends up with a busted nose courtesy of Jeanie and an extensive collection of bitemarks from the Ferris' Rottweiler.
34	* By the end of ''Film/{{Fargo}}'', Showalter is not only fuming from the PlethoraOfMistakes but also limping from Shep's NoHoldsBarredBeatdown and bleeding heavily from a gunshot to the jaw.
35	* Brendan gets repeatedly beaten up in ''Film/{{Brick}}''; by the end of the movie he's limping and coughing up blood.
36	%%* Ash during the course of the ''Franchise/EvilDead'' trilogy.
37	* John [=McClane=] was pretty beat up by the end of the first ''Film/DieHard'' movie -- the three sequels, not quite so much.
38	* The whole premise of ''Film/DeathBecomesHer'': WhoWantsToLiveForever if you stop healing from your injuries?
39	%%* Boris the Bullet Dodger in ''Film/{{Snatch}}''.
40	%%* Ken suffers from this in ''Film/AFishCalledWanda''
41	* ''Film/JohnWick'': John's body takes a lot of abuse during his RoaringRampageOfRevenge. He gets even more banged up in ''Film/JohnWickChapter2'', and by the end of ''Film/JohnWickChapter3Parabellum'', Wick's body is decorated with bruises, stab wounds and bullet holes.
42	%%* This happens to Carl's police car in ''Film/{{Jumanji}}'', until it gets eaten by the giant [[{{Pun}} carnivorous]] vines.
43	* The T-800 in ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay'': first he cuts off the outer flesh of one arm to prove he is what he claims to be to Dyson, then he gets shot up by the cops and beaten up by the T-1000. By the end, he's been impaled through his torso, his legs barely function, one of his arms is completely torn off and a large chunk of flesh is missing from his face and his chest:
44	-->'''T-800:''' I need a vacation.
45	* In ''Film/KillBill'' this happens to [[Creator/DarylHannah Elle "California Mountain Snake" Driver]]'s {{eyes\|cream}}: the first is snatched out by [[spoiler:Pai Mei as punishment for disrespect when she was studying kung fu under him]] (as shown in a flashback), and the second by [[spoiler:the Bride during a duel, who then proceeds to ''crush it underfoot'']].
46	* ''Film/TheMillenniumTrilogy'': Lisbeth in ''The Girl Who Played with Fire'', after a [[spoiler:gunshot to the head, being BuriedAlive in a shallow grave, and surviving an epic fight with her father]], is so bloodied up that her badass DumbMuscle half-brother takes one look at her and runs for his life, thinking she's a zombie.
47	* Eric Idle's character from ''Film/NationalLampoonsEuropeanVacation'', who repeatedly runs into the Griswald family. Hilarity ensues, and Idle's character becomes progressively more injured.
48	* Damon Wayans' & Kadeem Hardison's characters in ''Film/ImGonnaGitYouSucka'' suffer a series of injuries throughout, mostly by being repeatedly captured and thrown down [[TheWindowOrTheStairs flights of stairs]].
49	* Happens to Hardison again for his character in ''Film/VampireInBrooklyn'', who becomes TheRenfield, and steadily suffers from injury and rot until the end, [[spoiler:where he finds his master's ring and gains all his power, restoring his body ([[BiggerIsBetterInBed and then some]]) in the process.]]
50	* Both of the ImplacableMan main characters in ''Film/NoCountryForOldMen''. They repeatedly manage to wing each other, escape, take cover and perform horribly squirm-inducing self-surgery on their wounds before limping back into their game of cat-and-mouse.
51	[[/folder]]
52
53	[[folder:Literature]]
54	* In the ''Literature/{{Dragaera}}'' series, Vlad Taltos also seems to be accumulating injuries, to the point that Steven Brust [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] it with a Creator/TimPowers {{pastiche}} as part of an extended joke at the end of ''Literature/{{Iorich}}''.
55	* It happens as a jump cut rather than extended narration, but ''Literature/{{The First Law}}'' trilogy features an inversion of this: [[ImAHumanitarian an]] [[PowerAtAPrice Eater]] being [[ColdBloodedTorture interrogated]] by [[StateSec the Inquisition]] and [[CursedWithAwesome painlessly]] collecting a series of third-degree burns, deep cuts, broken limbs, and other horrific injuries as her HealingFactor starts to run down. The session yields questions instead of answers and, in the face of her defiance and apparent immunity to pain, one of the non-plussed [[TortureTechnician Practicals]] even claims to be "half-way to breaking, myself" by the end.
56	* The T'lan Imass from the ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'', being already a race of [[DemBones walking skeletons]], can take quite a lot of damage before they are considered damaged enough to be put to rest somewhere with a nice vista. In ''Literature/HouseOfChains'', Onrack gets half his skull bitten off, chewed by a [[CanisMajor Deragoth]], and loses an arm, but keeps going cheerfully.
57	* Wolfgang Smith in the ''Literature/YoungBond'' novel ''Literature/DoubleOrDie'' is initially described to be a very normal-looking man, especially next to his tall, skeletal brother Ludwig. He then starts losing bodyparts in several incidents: he loses his right ear when a spark plug flies off from a burning car, Bond knocks out several of his teeth with a piece of marble, he loses four fingers from his left hand when they are caught between two colliding barges, and lastly, [[spoiler:his legs are sliced off when a towrope cuts off and whips across the deck of the ship he's on]].
58	* Appears frequently in the works of Creator/JackChalker, though given Chalker's [[AuthorAppeal other interests]], the actual mechanism is frequently (but not always) a ForcedTransformation. Chalker actually addressed this through an AuthorAvatar near the end of ''The Messiah Choice''; heroic tales require genuine sacrifice on a heroic scale.
59	[[/folder]]
60
61	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
62	* ''Series/DoctorWho'': [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]] puts the Tenth Doctor through the wringer. By the end, he's been zapped with lightning and gotten cuts and other injuries from falling through a skylight, all ''before'' the radiation that actually makes him [[TheNthDoctor regenerate]].
63	* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Lord Beric Dondarrion bears the scars of all the fatal injuries he was resurrected from, including a missing eye and the mark of a hangman's noose.
64	* It’s a bit of a dark RunningGag that each season of ''{{Series/Hannibal}}'' ends with SmugSnake Dr. Frederick Chilton being subjected to increasingly debilitating and disfiguring injuries.[[note]]This is in contrast to the book and film series that inspired the show, where Chilton is probably eaten by Hannibal Lecter at the end of ''Film/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'' but is otherwise intact through most of the stories in which he appears.[[/note]] Fans like to joke that Chilton is the ''Hannibal'' AlternateCompanyEquivalent to Rickety Cricket from ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' (see below).
65	** At the end of Season One, his abdominal organs are pulled out by a CopycatKiller to Hannibal himself; we learn at the start of Season Two that he was saved, though he lost a kidney and some of his gastric function.
66	** At the end of Season Two, he’s shot in the face by a patient weaponized against him by Hannibal; in Season Three we catch up with him wearing dentures, makeup, and a prosthetic eye to conceal the damage.
67	** At the end of Season Three, Chilton’s lips are bitten off by Francis "Red Dragon" Dolarhyde before he’s strapped to a wheelchair and set on fire. Notably, this was Freddy Lounds’s fate in ''Literature/RedDragon'', while the show's [[GenderFlip female counterpart]] ''Freddie'' Lounds [[SparedByTheAdaptation is unscathed]], despite a Season Two fakeout that initially lead the viewer and characters to believe exactly this had happened to her ''and'' the preservation of the plot point that it was Lounds's writing about the "the Tooth Fairy" that enraged Dolarhyde in the first place— he just took it out on Chilton instead!
68	** Creator/BryanFuller [[WordOfGod has stated]] that if there had been a fourth season of ''Hannibal'', Chilton would have still lived to see it (with the help of extensive skin grafts) and presumably been mutilated yet again in the climax.
69	* Barney in the ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' episode "The [[Film/LethalWeapon Murtaugh]] List" tries to live like a 21-year-old for a weekend, and this is what happens.
70	* Poor [[TheChewToy Rickety Cricket]] in ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' suffers some kind of permanent injury or deformation almost every episode he appears in, frequently because of the carelessness or maliciousness of the main characters. Over the course of the series he's had his neck slashed open, lost an eye, had his kidney stolen, had a toe bitten off by a cat, and ''had half his face burned off''. This is on top of numerous non-anatomical degradations such as falling out of the priesthood, becoming homeless, and getting addicted to hard drugs.
71	[[/folder]]
72
73	[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
74	* Wrestling/{{WWE}}'s revival of {{Wrestling/ECW}} had Colin Delaney, a {{jobber}} who would take brutal beatings and come out wearing more and more bandages every week.
75	[[/folder]]
76
77	[[folder:Video Games]]
78	* The health meter in ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' is a picture of Doomguy's face getting progressively bloodier and more beaten up the more damage the player takes.
79	* The gun-toting mugger in ''VideoGame/DejaVu1985'' suffers from this. Each of his first three confrontations can and should end with a punch to the face, and he gets both eyes swollen and a bloody nose before the fourth time, when such a punch gets you shot.
80	%%* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' is a non-comedic example.
81	* RecurringBoss examples include Klungo in ''VideoGame/BanjoTooie'' and King Bulblin in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess''.
82	* In ''Videogame/SpecOpsTheLine'', Captain Walker becomes increasingly scarred as the game progresses; by the end, he's covered in burns, walks with a heavy limp, and his voice goes from crisp and concise military jargon to parched and bloodthirsty curses. The physical damage also reflects his SanitySlippage.
83	[[/folder]]
84
85	[[folder:Web Animation]]
86	* ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'': Quite a handful of episodes will have at least one character (usually among the starring ones) gradually accumulate more and more injuries as they become the [[CosmicPlaything most unluckiest being alive]]. Expect that character to suffer a slow and agonizing death. Major episodes that do this are: “Eye Candy”, “The Chokes on You”, “Water Way to Go”, “Brake the Cycle”, “An Inconvenient Tooth”, “Ski Ya, Don’t Wanna Be Ya”, “Can’t Stop Coffin”, “Whose Line is it Anyway?” and all of the “Sniffles vs. The Ant Family” episodes.
87	[[/folder]]
88
89	[[folder:Web Videos]]
90	* The main character of ''WebVideo/TheHorriblySlowMurdererWithTheExtremelyInefficientWeapon'' is beaten to death with a spoon. For years on end. By the end, his body is just one giant bruise.
91	[[/folder]]
92
93	[[folder:Western Animation]]
94	* One WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry cartoon ("WesternAnimation/MouseTrouble", 1944) has Tom showing the cumulative effects of each bit of comic mayhem befalling him -- completely atypical of the usual business.
95	* ''WesternAnimation/GIJoeRenegades'': In Major Bludd's first appearance, he loses an eye. In his second appearance, his arm gets ripped off by a crocodie.
96	* The ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "It's About Time" begins with Twilight Sparkle getting a visit from her disheveled future self (actually, she's from next Tuesday). Over the course of the episode, her efforts to prevent the "impending disaster" she believes is coming result in her gradually accumulating the injuries her future self had.
97	* Joshua, a minor character from ''WesternAnimation/{{Clarence}}'', gets injured in every episode he appears in. Unlike the other characters on the show, he keeps his scars for following appearances, including [[EyeScream an eyepatch]] and [[AnArmAndALeg a hook hand]].
98	* Baxter Stockman undergoes this throughout ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'', until he is a BrainInAJar by Season 3.
99	[[/folder]]

Context Main / MutilationConga