A Love to Dismember

That is not how you give...never mind, too late now.

"That right hand of yours... I've got it displayed in my bedroom. I go to sleep with it every night. Doesn't that make you hard?"

— Barus, Clover

A character has a... physical relationship with a severed body part of some sort, taken off some person. This is about the most pleasant way of putting things — for obvious reasons, this trope induces some very heavy Squick, and is usually a sign that the character in question is severely disturbed.

See also I Love the Dead, Mummies at the Dinner Table and some examples of Body in a Breadbox. Sometimes combined with Out with a Bang for added Squick. Often overlaps with but isn't quite the same as Creepy Souvenir. Alas, Poor Yorick is the non-sexual version of this.

noreallife

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

Examples by creator:

• Manga artist Suehiro Maruo loves this trope, especially concerning eyeballs.

Examples by work:

• A slightly less insane example from Battle Angel Alita: at a spare body parts shop, Yugo spots the hand of his deceased brother killed some weeks before by a hunter-warrior, that world's bounty hunters. He convinces the vendor to trade his brother's hand for his own, arguing it's younger and will fetch a better price, thus having his brother's hand attached to himself as a keepsake.
• Berserk:
  • Rakshas is the latest in the new Band of the Falcon/Hawk. He jumped to Griffith's aide only to state that he will protect him as long as he gets to have his "beautiful head" when the time comes to kill him.
  • When Griffith was imprisoned and tortured for a year for the crime of sleeping with the princess of Midland his tongue was cut out which, as the torturer reveals to Guts and crew, he had kept as a keepsake around his neck before he taunts them by perversely licking Griffith’s severed tongue like he was tongue kissing it in a moment of depravity. Unfortunately, he says this right to Guts, who is already in Tranquil Fury mode, and it is the last thing he does before he smashes his BFS straight through the door of Griffith's cell and straight through him.
• At one point in Black Cat, Creed, Train's Stalker with a Crush, tells Train that he would at least want to have Train by his side even as a dead body rather than let Saya have him.
• Black★Rock Shooter has a pretty mild version. Yomi gives Yuu a friendship bracelet made from her hair. Then she starts trimming it in class. It'd be more disturbing if it was something like skin or nails, but still...
• Blood+:
  • Threatened, but not really acted upon when James promises to bring Solomon (post Heel–Face Turn) the severed head of his love "to kiss."
  • Mentioned in the manga as well, where a villain promises to bring Van Argeno the lower half of Saya's body. Argeno is less than pleased.
• Barus of Clover severs Kazuhiko's hand, telling him when next they meet that he's been sleeping with it every night. "Doesn't that make you hard?"
• In Code Geass, Mao decides he wants to take C.C. to a "quiet, white, immaculate, special house" he built in Australia. Unfortunately, to get to Australia, he needs to take her on a plane, and she's apparently too big to bring aboard, so he's going to have to make her compact. Cue him revving a chainsaw. Mind you, C.C. does have a Healing Factor, so being "made compact" won't actually kill her. Of course, in some ways, that's even worse...
• Deadman Wonderland: During an interrogation scene between the two, Genkaku licks some blood from Nagi's arm while saying that Nagi's hand has become very cute (after Nagi's hand was cut off by Hibana).
• Wietoo from the manga Eden's Bowy milks this one for extra mileage. After an artificial human 'puppet' he builds rips his younger sister into pieces and splatters them over the room, Wietoo is seen first cuddling, and then passionately kissing, his sister's severed head. Later, he uses her retrievable body parts to make a new 'puppet' which he continues to sexually molest at intervals.
• One Depraved Homosexual villain from Inuyasha threatens to cut off Miroku's face, make it into a wall hanging, and kiss it every day.
• Yoshikage Kira from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable is a Serial Killer who has a fetish for women's hands but is uninterested in everything else about women. His usual M.O. is to kill a woman, cut off her hand, and then carry it around with him and treat it as a girlfriend — complete with dinner dates and romantic walks.
• The body part in question isn't quite severed, but in one chapter of Nightmare Inspector, a man bricks his wife up in a wall, killing her. Her rotting hand and forearm, however, still jut out from the wall, and the man stays with them and talks to them at times.
• Miranda Barma of PandoraHearts is Yandere for Glen's/Oswald's head.
• Peacemaker Kurogane:
  • Suzu recovers the head of his beloved Yoshida (who was decapitated during the Ikedaya Incident), who he was implied to have a crush on. He has it varnished and carries it around, in a affectionate way, while talking to it as if Yoshida were still alive. He also lays seductively with the skull at times while dressed skimpily and licks his master's skull in the cd drama in a moment of depravity while longing for him.
  • In chapter 24 of the sequel manga, Itou orders Hijikata to have "Kondou-kyokuchou beheaded in apology for betraying me", and then tells him that he'd "like that idiot's head to be given to me to do with as I please".
• In Requiem of the Rose King, Richard kisses his father's severed head on the lips.
• In the School Days anime, at the end, Kotonoha cuts off Makoto's head from his corpse, and carries it around. The final scene shows her cradling it in her arms on a yacht, saying, "we're finally alone together, Makoto".
• The Ghoul Karao "Torso" Saeki from Tokyo Ghoul :Re is called like that for the body part he takes home with him. His apartment is shown to be filled with the headless, limbless corpses of women. He likes to cuddle with them, and refers to one as his "lover". After he's forced to go on the run, he notes that it's hard to sleep without a cold body beside him. When he kidnaps Mutsuki (whom he has a stalker crush on) in chapter 64 he cuts off his arms and legs and tells him they're going to get married while holding his arms and legs and saying with a Nightmare Face "I worked very hard for these!"
• Rex Godwin of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds worships his brother's severed arm, and 62 episodes in forcefully removes his prosthetic left arm in order to make his brother's arm his own.
• Zanuff the Butcher: The titular butcher is a Serial Killer with an unhealthy obsession with dismembering pretty women. The thing is, he absolutely hates this part of himself.

Comic Books

• During Blackest Night, Black Hand carries around the skull of Bruce Wayne's clone and often licks it.
• DV8: One character's "girlfriend", Lucille, is a head stolen from a store mannequin.
• Judge Dredd: A variant in the second Fall of Deadworld story, where the still-conscious head of a recently-zombified evil Judge is cut off by his female colleague, who then kisses him before putting it on a spare body.

Fan Works

• Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles): It's creepy enough that Pinkie Pie wears an outfit made out of cutie marks, wings, and severed horns, but she eventually decides to stuff Rainbow Dash's corpse and keep her so she doesn't miss her beloved friend.
• Hivefled: The Grand Highblood has a huge pile of the skulls of the teenagers whose souls he has collected, and he and Condesce take naps cuddled up together in it. In his youth, he killed his flushcrush and painted a picture of her in her own blood. It's borderline spelled out that He Loves the Dead in general.
• A Peaceful Afterlife: Kira's MO, who nearly relapses several times with Charlie.

Film — Animation

• Oogie Boogie does this by accident in The Nightmare Before Christmas. He finds Sally's bare, flirtatious leg quite attractive until he finds out it's not actually attached to anything. Fortunately, Sally's a patchwork girl, and the leg is reattached.

Film — Live-Action

• 300: Rise of an Empire: Artemisia, the commander of the Persian navy, has the best Greek warrior from a scouting party brought before her. When he insults her, she decapitates him and makes out with the severed head. Even her generals appear disturbed by this.
• The Villain Protagonists in the slasher flick August Undergrounds Mordum make one of their victims cut off his own penis so they can stick it into his girlfriend.
• Bloodsucking Freaks has a Depraved Dwarf use a severed head to fellate himself.
• In Body Bags, the Creepy Mortician who hosts the segments grabs two dismembered heads and makes them kiss each other. This gets even weirder when it turns out that he's actually a zombie himself.
• In Cemetery Man, a character has a relationship with the severed, zombified head of a girl. He keeps her in a broken television. Slightly different, as the head is not just an inanimate object that he does things to, she's an actual living being who holds conversations with him and returns his affection.
• Header is about hillbillies drilling holes into people's skulls so they can literally fuck their brains out.
• Before the action starts in High Tension, the apparent antagonist is seen in his truck getting fellated by a severed head.
• In the Days of Whore has a leper's penis break off while he is having sex. The woman he's with proceeds to use it like a dildo.
  "My dick broke off! My dick fell off! My dick fell off! My dick, my dick! My dick fell off! My dick is gone! My dick is gone, it fell off!"
• In Lamberto Bava's Macabre, a woman's lover is beheaded in a car crash. She continues to have the affair with his head...
• In May, the titular character dismembers different people so she can sew all the parts together and create the perfect friend. Those parts are all things she particularly admired and desired, such as her crush's hands and her co-worker's neck.
• The unnamed serial killer in Murder-Set-Pieces screws a severed head.
• Re-Animator has a twist on this: Meg is forcibly given head by... well, an undead disembodied head.
• Reefer Madness: The Musical: Ralph decapitates Sally when he becomes Ax-Crazy and tries to eat her, then later kisses her severed head.
• The eponymous character in Sick Girl castrates a man, jams his severed penis onto a homemade strap-on, and rapes another girl with it.
• After decapitating one victim in Violent Shit II, Karl Jr. messes around with the head.

Literature

• In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman spends a while walking around the room with the severed head of one of the prostitutes he just killed still impaled on his erection.
• Subverted in the Black Dagger Brotherhood, Zsadist keeps a skull in his room. The skull being the skull of his former owner, who he killed and cut the head off of to make sure she was dead. He keeps the skull around so he can remind himself that she's dead, often by stroking it.
• The tale of "Isabella and the Pot of Basil" from The Decameron (and later on, a Keats poem) tells of the titular character preserving the head of her lover inside the aforementioned pot. 19th- and 20th-century depictions such as those painted by Prerraphaelites like William Holman Hunt, Waterhouse or John White Alexander◊ fall squarely in this trope.
• Seiji from Durarara!! is quite a bit obsessed with Celty's head. Then again, Celty is a dullahan... Shinra also has the hots for Celty's headless body. His father makes depraved sexual comments in regard to Celty's headless appearance.
• In Lords and Ladies, a portrait of Lancrian Queen Ynci the Short-Tempered shows, "One hand ... caressed the hand of a captured enemy warrior. The rest of the captured enemy warrior was hanging from various pine trees in the background."
• In the seventh book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, Feather Witch is revealed to have kept one of Brys Beddict's severed fingers, and the narration is not shy about what she does with it.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Magister Illyrio mentions that he still has the hands of his second wife, who died of plague many years earlier. It's not implied that this is anything more than a weird keepsake though.

Live-Action TV

• Ally McBeal: One client is charged with murder, accused of chopping off his wife's hand with a chainsaw and causing her a heart attack. He claims she had a heart attack first, and then he cut it off after her death to have a thing to remember her by. He's pronounced not guilty, and he wonders whether he could ask to have the hand back. Cage and Fish had mostly weirdo clients.
• In Dexter, the Ice Truck Killer is referred to as having chosen not to kill a hooker when he realised she was an amputee. She says that he "started worshipping it (her fake hand)" and did "some freaky stuff with it (as well as her stump)". Given his obsession with dismemberment, it is implied that he may have used the parts of his victims for this as well. It's later revealed that they are lingering issues from his mother's death and dismemberment by a bunch of gangsters with a chainsaw. He's Dexter's big brother Brian.
• The Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters" has a variant on this, in that the main character's girlfriend is attacked by a monster which leaves her as a just a concrete head (but still alive) — yet it's stated that they still have a "love life". Interpret it however you will.
• The Hitcher of The Mighty Boosh has been known to simulate the act during the stage shows, yielding the following memorable quote... "Yeah, I'm a stump fucker! Which is a concept we couldn't quite get past BBC 3!" Can't imagine why.
• In the Torchwood episode "Day One", Jack holds the Doctor's hand... after the jar he usually keeps it in is broken.

Music

• "Bowling Balls" by Insane Clown Posse is about a man who has a disturbing obsession with human heads, and keeps them as his friends — sometimes girlfriends.
• "Corpse Grinder", by The Meteors, includes such lines as "I'll take you out [of the freezer] when I'm on my own/And defrost you so we can be alone."
• "The Dismemberment Song" by Blue Kid is exactly what it sounds like.
• Tom Lehrer's song "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" from the album Songs by Tom Lehrer is sung by a man about his love's hand, which he cut off of her the night she died. (He made it a point to joke that, of all the songs he'd ever sung, that was the one he got the most requests not to.)
  I'm sorry now I killed you, for our love was something fine
  But till they come to get me I shall hold your hand in mine!
• "TV Set", by The Cramps:
  "Oh baby, I see you in my TV set, oh baby, I see you in my TV set,
  I cut your head off and put it in my TV set, I use your eyeballs for dials on my TV set..."

Mythology and Religion

• Christian tradition from the 4th century was that Salome asked for John the Baptist's head to be cut off so she can kiss it. Probably factually inaccurate: according to the Jewish historian Josephus, Antipas executed John for political reasons.
• The Egyptian goddess Isis used magic to revive her murdered husband Osiris just enough to impregnate her. But some versions of the myth state that she was unable to find his penis after Set dismembered him.^note Said penis had been eaten by a fish before she could recover it, so she made him an artificial one out of gold.

Theatre

• The title character of Salome (and Richard Strauss's operatic adaptation) orders John the Baptist's head to be cut off so she can kiss it.
  Salome: Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now.

Video Games

• Dr. George Greggs, the operator of the Organ Replacement Lab in Dead Space's Fourth "Misplaced Affection" Webisode, kept Jane Gauthier's fingers with him while he was locked up in his lab. At the end, he is seen stroking them, and when he is killed by the necromorphs that break in, his severed arm and her fingers mutate and become connected. CECL-RC notes the irony in Greggs' wish to forever be with Gauthier; because of the Necromorphs, the two will always be together "in sickness, though not in health".
• Happens in Dragon Age II. Hawke investigates the disappearance of several women who disappear either completely, or only part of their remains are found. It's revealed that the abductor/killer sends the victim white lilies before abducting them. Not too much later, Hawke's own mother Leandra disappears and Hawke him/herself finds white lilies that were delivered. Hawke then tracks down Leandra's whereabouts, and finds out that the killer was abducting women in an attempt to stitch together his dead wife, and the last piece was Leandra's head.
• In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the traitor to the Dark Brotherhood keeps the mummified head of his mother (who was killed by the Brotherhood previously) in his cellar.
• The ending of Emogame has Chris Carrabba skull-fucking Steven Tyler, then cutting off and marrying his head — which still has Chris' 62-pixel-long penis running through it.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Edda removes the head of her fiance Avere from his grave and travels with it around Eorzea. The pages of her diary you can find around Tam-Tara Deepcroft indicate she seems to fluctuate between believing the head is still alive and knowing it's dead but being unable to let go due to feeling responsible for his death. Despite this the same pages also indicate her and the head shared "intimate" moments. Eventually, due to the influence of the voidsent in Tam-Tara she seems to meet this in the middle and treat it as alive as well as understanding that she needs to make it a new body to be whole. The results aren't pretty.
• Lollipop Chainsaw is a game about making zombie-killing look Sickeningly Sweet — which is why our zombie-hunting cheerleader protagonist Juliet Starling saves her boyfriend Nick from an infected bite on the arm by severing his head and keeping it alive with "a magic ritual". She then proceeds to run around with his magically animated head dangling from the back of her belt, occasionally using it as a weapon. That's the sort of thing you get in a Suda51 game.
• The Soldier from Team Fortress 2 has a collection of severed heads of his enemies who he talks to. He is devastated when he can't find his heads anywhere, and even more so when he thinks they have been disposed, letting out a Big "NO!" in the process.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night: In Bad End #01 of 40, Ilyasviel kills Shirou and rips his head off, while casting a spell that makes him unable to die unless his head gets smashed, and takes him home to do God knows what. This is what you get for not accepting Saber's offer to be her Master.
• Hatoful Boyfriend has this happen if you romance Doctor Shuu, in which case he severs your head to preserve it.
• In The Shell, Kusaka takes a bunch of body parts, puts them all together and has sex with them.
• In Tears to Tiara, Arthur offers to make a dried head out of a Demon Lord his sister has taken a liking to. He objects to their marriage, you see. Fortunately, he never gets to actually fulfilling this threat.
• In one of the more disturbing bad endings of Togainu no Chi, Keisuke has a special moment with Akira's intestines.

Webcomics

• Homestuck:
  • Gamzee finds the dead body of Tavros, who had been one of his best friends in life, and with whom he was in love. He rips off his head and is then shown Flash Stepping back and forth, kissing it and covering his mouth with Tavros's brown blood.
  • Dirk and Jake's Big Damn Kiss is also a severed head smooch. Justified in that the kiss allows Dirk to be resurrected, and Jake is rightfully horrified by the whole thing and has to be badgered into it.
• Oglaf:
  • This page involves an adult Salome being presented with a severed head by a diplomat who is under the impression that she has a fetish for that kind of thing. She has him beheaded... which does nothing to quash the rumours.
  • A hidden follow-up strip has her about to kiss the gifted head when one of her handmaidens interrupts.

Web Original

• Lucy Lacemaker from Satellite City repeatedly mentions her desire to decapitate her colleagues (mainly Winifred, Wexle, and Hyzenthlay) and play with their bodies, and in the case of the latter, even draws very detailed illustrations which she then shows to her. Given the fact that the Kivouackians can apparently survive being decapitated and dismembered without any lasting harm, this might be more or less creepy than the usual version of this trope.
  Sullivan: Lucy, do you know what necrophilia is?

Western Animation

• Played for Laughs in the non-canon Halloween Episode of 6teen, "Dude of the Living Dead". During a Zombie Apocalypse, Caitlin's latest boyfriend gets infected, and as she and her friends board up in a saferoom, his arm gets severed by the door as he tries to reach in. Caitlin, devastated by their all-too-soon breakup, copes by clutching onto his arm like it's a stuffed toy. Eventually, her friends have to call her out on her melodramatic creepiness and let go in more ways than one.
• Played with in the Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "Muriel Meets Her Match". Cat-burglar Maria Ladrones keeps her husband Mano's severed hand around with her, but the hand is alive to the point that it effectively still is her husband.
• Bobby Hill in King of the Hill had an experience with one of Luann's practice heads from store mannequins for her beauty school.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) brings us "The Finger", an overweight human with polydactylism who is in pursuit of Bigfoot. He takes advice from a Shrunken Head he wears around his neck, and if that isn't weird enough, he calls it "Mama".
• The Venture Bros.:
  • Non-sinister, still vaguely creepy example: During the second Season Finale, the cast is going through the wreckage of Phantom Limb's ship and keep finding his invisible extremities. Gay superhero The Alchemist picks one up and begins to speak before squeezing it a couple of times, saying "Oh, oh, I'm keeping this," and stashing it in his robes. Three guesses as to what it was.
  • Brock keeps Molotov's eye in a jar of water next to his bed.
    Molotov: Awww, you kept it.
  • Baron Ünderbheit has the heads of his seven wives mounted on the wall, as well as keeping the hand of one (still wearing the wedding ring).

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