Amputations in Video Games.
- 2Dark: "Delicatessen" has the left arm missing, and Dr. Krach is missing both legs.
- AdventureQuest Worlds: During the Etherstorm saga , Galanoth, Dragonslayer extraordinaire, goes up against Desoloth, quite possibly the most powerful dragon in existence, and tries to take him down. Unfortunately, Desoloth bites off Galanoth's arm, and he's only saved from death by his friend Warlic summoning up all his magical power to restore him. Unfortunately, he cannot bring back Galanoth's arm, so he has to get a new one. He obtains it from X'Dir, who had sought to use it as a bargaining chip to try to get Galanoth to join Desoloth during the Etherstorm War, only to meet with the Dragonslayer's full-on wrath.
- Against the Storm: Its noted that the most powerful of the Viceroys, the Queen's Hands, are missing an arm. Becoming a Hand yourself by completing the Queen's Hand Trial reveals why. The ceremony for becoming a Hand involves shaking the Scorched Queen's hand, and since she's a Phoenix covered in flames, the handshake burns your entire arm off.
- Arabian Magic: The second boss, Asura, is a six-armed giant wielding six scimitars. But as you fougth her, she Shows Damage by losing arms, and by the end of the battle she now have six stumps. After she formed an alliance with you in the aftermath of her defeat, she will return to assist you in the Final Boss battle, and her arms are back at that point.
- Batman: Arkham Series: Aaron Cash, after a nasty run-in with Killer Croc, is left with a missing left hand, and a deep burning hatred for the supervillain.
- BlazBlue:
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm': In one of the bad endings, Catie wakes up after a battle to find that her left arm is gone, among other body parts.
- Brain Dead 13: Lance can end up dead like this in a "manicure" if you don't help him escape Vivi's attempts to cut off his hand.
- Buried: An Interactive Story uses the Deliberate version. Roger has the chance to use his gun and save Dennis from the entities, but knows that shooting would blast off Dennis's hand. It's up to the player whether he goes through with it.
- Call of Duty:
- Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: Then-Lieutenant Price and Captain MacMillan attempt to assassinate Renegade Russian Imran Zakhaev, whose arm gets blown off in the process. MacMillan assumes that shock and blood loss will finish him off. They don't.
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare: In the first gameplay segment, Mitchell gets his left arm sliced off by a stray piece of shrapnel after blowing up an enemy gunship. For an extra kicker, his best friend was the one who blew up that gunship in a Heroic Sacrifice, as his arm got stuck inside the gunship while he was planting explosives on it and Mitchell was unable to get him loose, even with his exosuit's Super-Strength. He gets a perfectly functional cybernetic replacement later on, from said best friend's father... who becomes the Big Bad and wrecks the prosthetic with a socket wrench when Mitchell turns on him. In the finale, the Big Bad ends up dangling from Mitchell's prosthetic and Mitchell, unable to let go of him due to the arm's servos not functioning anymore, pulls out his knife with his other arm and cuts the prosthetic off to send the one who gave it to him in the first place plummeting to his death — "giving back the second chance", as Mitchell puts it in the game's closing monologue.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III: The first level has the main character get his/her arms and right leg, courtesy of a robot grunt. It's violent. Very violent.* So much so that many people got nightmares from it
.
- The Cat Lady: This is the first Sacrifice of Blood necessary to leave the Queen of Maggots' realm and return to the world of the living. Fortunately, it's only temporary.
- This comes up in both the second and third game in the Dark Cut series. In the second, you must amputate your own leg after it's hit by shrapnel. In the third, to escape the possessive AI, you must saw off your own hand.
- Dead Space enforces this hard:
- Dead Space:
- The game is literally begging you to cut off the necromorphs' limbs to effectively deal with them. Headshots will not work here.
- An audio log found in the second half of the game documents a (former) survivor's efforts to remove his own limbs before committing suicide so his remains can't be turned into a necromorph. It doesn't work.
- Any fail animation with Issac losing a limb is a sure sign that you're as good as dead.
- Dead Space: Extraction: The main character Nathan McNeill has to amputate his own arm after a huge Necromorph impales it and he needs to get out of there fast.
- Devil May Cry 5: Nero gets his Devil Bringer torn off by an unknown assailantnote later revealed to be a dying Vergil wanting to get at Yamato (the demon sword that Vergil used to use). To compensate, Nico replaces it with a series of Devil Breaker arms that Nero can use as a replacement against the demonic hordes. He eventually regrows his arm after gaining his Devil Trigger ability.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition: In the final DLC, Solas removes most of the Inquisitor's left arm in order to prevent the mark from consuming them completely. However, certain epilogues show that they get a crossbow Arm Cannon to replace it.
- Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code: When Joshwa rushes to the gate of Mount Sinai, a Cainite ambushes him and chops his arm off. In Ur, the Cainites graft the arm of Nimrod, one of their fallen warriors, onto Joshwa.
- Endoparasitic: Cynte. Both legs, in fact. He's left with only one arm to maneuver and aim.
- Everhood: Red starts the game with one of the arms stolen. Later another character, Blue Thief, loses both their legs.
- Extinction: You spend most of the games dealing with the kaiju-sized Ravenii monsters by hacking their arms and legs off, in order to cripple them long enough so you can decapitate them - the only method to eliminate them permanently.
- Fear & Hunger: Throughout the game, the player character and their party are susceptible to losing their limbs from enemy attacks. Losing an arm means that you can't wield two-handed weapons or a shield, while losing both legs reduces your speed to a crawl.
- Fear Effect: Partway through, Glas gets his arm cut off. He gets it back in the true ending. Notably, this is one of the few cases in video games where the trope affects not only the plot but the gameplay; Glas is, naturally, unable to dual-wield his weapons after that point.
- Final Fantasy XIV: The climax of the "A Realm Reborn" arc ends with the Sultana's bodyguard and general, Raubahn, losing his arm when trying to avenge the faked death of his charge.
- Flesh Birds: In one of the cabins, you find a man holding the bloody stump where his arm should be. After you talk to him, a bird breaks in through the window behind him and carries him off.
- God Hand: Gene had his right arm cut off by Felix when he tried to save Olivia. Olivia repaid him by putting the titular limb on the stump. Later, Azel tears the left God Hand off of himself in a panic as he is being consumed by Angra.
- God of War Ragnarök has Kratos skewer Heimdall's arm with a Drapunir spear to pin him to a wall at one point, with a warning to cease hostilities if he values his life. Heimdall subsequently threatens Atreus, causing the Ghost of Sparta to detonate the spear, blowing Heimdall's arm to chunks.
- At one point in Hyperviolent you come across one of the outpost's survivors, spacesuit and helmet intact, beckoning for you to rendezvous with him on a taller balcony. You made it all the way up (killing zombies and monsters as you do) and upon finding the guy, you realize he's still infected, courtesy of his right hand being ripped off in the outbreak and the virus entering his stump. He'll give you his keycard using his one good hand telling you to "get out while you still can".
- Kindergarten 2 has a type 1 example played for laughs. Nugget gets trapped behind a sewer grate, and if the player doesn't help get him out, he chews his own arm off, leaving behind only a heavily bleeding stump. Not because the arm was stuck or anything, mind you. He just figured that was necessary in that kind of situation. Despite trailing blood everywhere he goes, he still survives the day with little ill effect. After all, "Nugget is quite durable."
- The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: The golem loses its left arm at the elbow early in the game after it becomes stuck in a cavern wall after a failed attempt at crushing the dragons and, in its struggles to free itself, accidentally tears it off.
- Link in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has his right arm heavily damaged from Ganondorf's attack, which corrupts his body with Gloom and reduces his max health down to three hearts. Upon waking elsewhere after the attack, Link finds himself with his right arm replaced with a new one that belonged to Rauru, who informs him that he had to amputate Link's arm to stop the Gloom from spreading further and killing him.
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance sees Colossus missing his right hand and part of his right leg below the knee after the fight with an Odinforce-empowered Doctor Doom. This is reversed with all the rest of the horrible things Doom did when Odin gets his powers back.
- Max Payne 3: Becker's left arm gets ripped off when one of his own grenades explode in close proximity.
- Megami Tensei II: At one point, you are required to put your right arm into a demon statue's mouth to retrieve an item. The statue then bites your arm off, which prevents you from attacking or using the COMP and makes you lose Hit Points every time you walk. You must get a new arm from Cyber Labs that is hard enough to grab the item without getting bitten off.
- Metal Gear:
- Metal Gear Solid:
- Revolver Ocelot loses an arm thanks to Gray Fox, and then proceeds to replace it with the deceased Liquid Snake's arm before the events of Metal Gear Solid 2 as part of a convoluted plot to fool the Patriots.
- Gray Fox himself loses his left arm while sacrificing himself to help Solid Snake defeat Liquid.
- After becoming a cyborg, Raiden loses both of his arms in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, cutting off his right arm to free himself from being pinned by debris and losing the other while saving Solid Snake from being crushed by Outer Haven. In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, he loses an arm in his first battle against Jetstream Sam, which not only results in Raiden getting a new and improved cyborg body, but basically sets off the main plot.
- Big Boss and Miller lose an arm and a literal arm and leg, respectively, in the aftermath of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, hence the name of the following game, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. When the two of them finally have Skull Face, the orchestrator of the events of Ground Zeroes, at their mercy, they use his own gun to sever his left leg and right arm as payback for their own lost limbs.
- New Legends sees you losing an arm automatically halfway through the game, after you defeat General Kuun. Being Defiant to the End, Kuun responds to your victory by hurling his battleax at you before he succumbs, removing your arm in the process. You spend the next stage with only one arm until you found a magical stone replacement.
- No More Heroes: Shinobu has her hand sliced off by Travis after their fight (Type 3). This doesn't happen in the Japanese version, leaving fans to wonder if it was canon, but No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle has her show up with a cybernetic replacement hand, confirming its canonicity.
- Plants vs. Zombies: When a zombie is reduced to half of its max health (armor not included), its left arm is blown off.
- On Shrink Ray Island from Poptropica, there's a dead fly on C.J.'s windowsill and one of its legs is dismembered.
- Both Propagation games grant you extra points for removing zombie limbs, with a "severed arms" bonus in your tally. And in the sequel, your ally Owen was killed when a monster called the Brute ripped off his legs - you find Owen's bloodied corpse after splitting up with him, with nothing below the knees.
- Ratchet: Deadlocked: Al is hit by a blaster shot and has several parts replaced by cybernetics. The blaster only hit Al in the butt, yet he winds up with cybernetics in many random and seemingly unrelated places, leading some fans to suspect Al is just a little too into robots. Perhaps he had an "interface port" installed for Helga...
- Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: During Rivet's backstory, she was ambushed by a warbot, which severely burned her arm to the point of uselessness with its Eye Beams, but didn't completely blast it off, requiring manual amputation. This would imply an attempted Type 3, though when that very same warbot mentions their side of the story to Ratchet, it's revealed that they never intended to cause damage at all, but their programming accidentally turned a warning shot into an attack, which makes the event a Type 2.
- Resident Evil:
- Resident Evil 2:
- It's possible, but rare, for a non-lethal shot to a zombie from the side — or even successfully pushing one back after it grabs you — to cause one of the zombie's arms to fall off. With the Custom Shotgun, an upwards-aimed shot tends to blow off off one arm by vaporizing the shoulder along with the head.
- This is the best way to deal with zombies in the remake. Headshots no longer do any more damage than a body shot, barring a lucky critical hit. However, it only takes a couple of bullets to blow a leg off, rendering them unable to walk. At that point, they can only crawl slowly on the ground, and due to the way the AI works, they are completely unable to attack you if you are behind them. This makes them very easy to finish off with a knife.
- Resident Evil 7: Biohazard's Ethan Winters has his left arm chopped off in the game's prologue, and the same can happen to one of his legs if Jack catches up to him. They both get reattached almost immediately thanks to Ethan's infection.
- Resident Evil Village sees Ethan's right hand being chopped off by Lady Dimitrescu and likewise getting reattached shortly after.
- Return Of The Obra Dinn: Happens to both Seaman John Naples (who got his leg cut off by the Captain's Steward Fillip Dahl, possibly in an effort to free the mermaids from the lazarette) and Bosun Alfred Klestil (who got his arm ripped off by a kraken at the end of Chapter VII, though he only makes it through to the beginning of Chapter IX).
- RuneScape: A recurring antagonist in the cave goblin quests has a Ring Of Life, ensuring that whenever you have him on the ropes he can teleport to safety. In the quest "The Chosen Commander", to show how much more dangerous the warrior god possessing your friend is, s/he cuts Sigmund's hand off before the Ring Of Life can activate, and then kills him. If you return to Lumbridge Castle after this quest and talk to Duke Horacio, he says with appropriate horror that Sigmund's severed hand teleported into the castle courtyard at some point.
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: The prologue ends with the protagonist getting his left arm chopped off by a high-ranking samurai who proceeds to abduct his lord. Our hero promptly receives a fancy prosthetic limb and sets out on a Roaring Rampage of Rescue.
- Severed Steel is a First-Person Shooter starring the titular agent who begins the game waking up with her lower left arm missing. Early in the game she promptly gets ahold a prototype Arm Cannon, cappable of vaporizing walls.
- Star Wars Chess: Many animations involving C-3PO have him losing limbs. This can happen regardless of whether or not he's on the winning side.
- When he captures a Stormtrooper, his hand gets shot off before he wins.
- When he captures Darth Vader, His whole arm gets cut off by Vader's lightsaber. He then proceeds to pick up his arm, clash it with the lightsaber, and somehow deactivates it, allowing him to club Vader with his arm.
- Tales of Monkey Island: In the second chapter, Guybrush loses his left hand in a swordfight.
- Taming Dreams has Berdanre, who lost his arm, leg, and spouse in a tragic accident.
- ThanksKilling Day: Near the end of the game, when the kid's father is seen grappling with the killer turkey monster, the latter takes his arm off.
- Twisted Metal 2: Axel was stuck inside a vehicle created by his father for 20 years; his arms and legs held captive by the two-wheeled monstrosity. In his ending, he wishes for the courage to stand up to his father, which Calypso surprisingly grants. Finally standing up to his father, Axel frees himself from the machine by ripping his limbs off, much to his father's horror. Quite rare for this trope, this is actually seen as a moment of triumph here.
- Undertale: During the final fight with Mettaton EX, you can blow his arms and legs off if you shoot his heart enough. This lowers the required Ratings level needed to Spare him.
- The Walking Dead: Season One:
- The player can choose to initiate a Type 3 when a man's leg gets trapped. Especially notable because not only are you the one to do it, it's rather realistic, being incredibly gory, and even with you brandishing a fire ax, it takes four swings to make it all the way through, the receiver passing out from shock and soon after dying due to blood loss.
- In Episode 5, after he's bitten, Lee can cut his arm off (or have someone else do it) in an attempt to save himself from the zombie infection. It doesn't work; he'll die at the end of the episode no matter what.
- The Walking Dead: Season Four: In episode 4, Clem's leg is lacerated to the bone by Minerva and then chomped on by a walker. As she succumbs to the infection, she tries to force AJ to make the same choice she had to with Lee — let her turn, or put her out of her misery. AJ instead lops off the infected limb, which proves enough to save her.
- Wasteland 2:
- Casey James performs a Type 1 in order to ensure peace between two feuding tribes.
- The Choppers are elite guards who chop off one of their arms to prove their loyalty.
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Earthblood: Before the game, Major Graner had her arm maimed by a werewolf. It was so badly mutilated that it had to be amputated and was replaced with a prosthetic.
- Wild ARMs: Rudy cuts/shoots his arm off to escape from Zeikfried in the Gate Generator.
- The Witch's House: The invisible chef asks you for a hand. If you agree, he cuts your hands off. Any "hand" will do, so you can just give him the severed arm of a teddy bear.
- Wildermyth: A hero who is defeated in battle but not killed will be left short a limb. Maimed heroes rejoin the adventure after a period of recuperation, replacing the lost limb with a makeshift prosthesis such as a peg leg. At least one story event can also result in a hero sacrificing a limb to escape a grim situation.
- Wulverblade: Sometimes, when you kill an enemy, limbs will fly off.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Downplayed with Dunban and his right arm. After using the Monado long enough, it eventually caused permanent damage to his arm, rendering nigh-unusable. That’s why he only fights using his left arm.
- Yomawari: Midnight Shadows: In the ending, Mr. Kotowari cuts off Haru's left arm when she's unable to escape from Yui's evil spirit.
