Detachment Combat

Aren't you glad we don't have characters this silly any more? Oh, wait...

"Rocket from their sockets!"

— Visual Eye, firing his eyes out of his head, The Tick

You're surrounded by bad guys, outnumbered many to one. What do you do? Call for back up? No, it's time to split up!

Detachment combat happens when a character, robot, monster, or spaceship has the ability to break into sections, with each piece capable of fighting separately. May be justified with Easily Detachable Robot Parts.

For flesh beings who do this, the fact that the limbs can work despite being, you know, detached is either not addressed or made into Required Secondary Powers; another secondary power is to levitate all those limbs, and superhuman coordination or Organ Autonomy (for robot characters/mechas, the technology used in building them likely justifies all of the issues above). Don't expect to see exposed organs or blood gushing out of the detached parts; they're either neatly covered or Made of Bologna.

A Rocket Punch is a form of this. Helping Hands is also a form of this if it's voluntary. Characters with Floating Limbs have justification for this, although they may not always be able to perform this.

Distinct from Pulling Themselves Together in that detaching is a feature and an attack, not the result of damage.

Contrast with Combining Mecha and the horrific mutilation tropes: An Arm and a Leg, Off with His Head! and Half the Man He Used to Be. User of this trope may fool their enemy into thinking that one of the three aforementioned mutilation tropes are happen, only to surprise them by making the detached body parts move. Similarly, tactically separating Combining Mecha can be useful in the right situation.

See also Disposable Vehicle Section, Losing Your Head and Drone Deployer. For different kind of detaching, compare One to Million to One; Blob Monster and Elemental Shapeshifter may be able to do something similar. Does not mean that the combatant appears not to care about the fight — that's Cavalier Competitor.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball Z: Majin Buu; being made of bubblegum-like goo, he can control any piece of it that's been separated from his body. Apart from using his legs to knock out Tien, he's catch his enemies by surprise by engulfing them in a piece of his goo and reabsorbing it into his body, along with them.
• Nana from Elfen Lied got her arms and legs torn off by Lucy, but her Papa gave her fake ones she can control with her vectors and she will sometimes shoot them at people for a long range attack.
• Big Volfogg of Gaogaigar fame could split back into his smaller form along with his support units Gundober and Gunglue for a rush attack, then re-combine.
• Gatchaman, called Battle of the Planets in the West: the five heroes can either go into battle in their individual craft, or combine into their super vehicle.
• In Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, The Alpha - Beta heavy fighter splits into the light Legioss (Alpha) fighter and the Tread (Beta) fighter — bomber.
• Getter Robo has used "Open Get" (decombining) to escape from enemy attacks as well as to split up and deliver a barrage of guns or wipe out a horde of minor enemies. Also, they have been known to Open Get, then combine into Getter-3 in midair and fall on the enemy as an attack.
• Go Nagai works:
  • One of Sirene's signature attacks in the Devilman series is her ability to fire off her arms at opponents — generally she'll fire one arm while keeping the other attached in most situations. She can use the detached arm to grab enemies and immobilize them, as seen when she used it on Ryo Asuka to stop him interfering in her fight with Devilman, or use her antennae to direct the arm towards opponents as a wickedly sharp missile or Deadly Disc to tear straight through them.
  • Several of the giant robots fought by Mazinger Z had this ability: Deimos F3, Velgas V5 (its parts had individual rocket propulsion and could attack separately), and a third one.
  • Mazinger Z itself and one of its successors, Mazinkaiser, also did it sometimes (detaching the Scrander Jet/Scrander Kaiser off themselves. Moreover, Mazinkaiser used its wings like a cutting, oversized boomerang).
  • Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer also did, not only by shooting their punches but also by detaching their MidSeason Upgrades and attacking with them.
  • Kotetsu Jeeg is an expert in this. Given that it uses magnetism to combine its body parts, replace them or shoot them, Jeeg can use any of them to attack (including its head). Also, it employs of variants or Rocket Punch!
• Gundam series:
  • The Turn-X Gundam from ∀ Gundam has this as its most notable ability - its limbs can break off, and divide into smaller pieces, to fly around and attack the opponent from many directions at once with beam attacks and a strange power that dries-out the energy of opponent mechas. Recreated on great detail in Super Robot Wars Z
  • The Great Zeong from the G Generation video games, apparently the original plan for the Zeong from Mobile Suit Gundam but nowhere near feasible for its time, does the same (and in fact, its various "segments" are based on Zeon mobile armors: the legs on the Bigro, the waist on the Big Zam, and the chest on the Apsaras). The regular Zeong can send its arms out on cables, and its head is an escape craft, but it's not quite the same.
• Hisoka of Hunter × Hunter allowed an opponent of his to cut off both his arms during combat. He then used the Functional Magic of his world, Nen, to control one of the detached arms to punch his opponent in the face. He had to get both arms surgically reattached later though.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Phantom Blood: Zeppeli explains that this is sort of how his Zoom Punch works: he temporarily dislocates his arm to extend the range of his punch, while using the power of the Ripple to block the resulting pain and heal himself.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Yuya Fungami's Highway Star can break its body down into dozens of small feet to rush a target. It proves useful against Koichi, who can only attack one at a time, and in the anime, it's used to great effect fighting Enigma, where as he's being turned to paper, Highway Star detaches and extends his arm far enough to rescue the similarly paper Koichi and Josuke.
  • Golden Wind: Bucciarati can do this with his zippers, detaching an arm and reeling it out on a length of zipper. Also, Ciocolatta can do this with some improvisation from his Stand Green Day and this leads to one of the nastiest, most gruesome usages of this trope.
  • Stone Ocean: Jolyne Kujo pulls this off while fighting Enrico Pucci due to her ability to unravel herself.
  • Steel Ball Run: Mountain Tim can do this with his rope Stand, Hot Pants can separate her body parts with her flesh spray, Blackmore can do this in rain (which he likes to use for sneak attack biting), and Johnny Joestar can separate his body parts with his holes.
  • JoJolion: Joshu's Stand, Nut King Call, can detach parts of people, but he can also detach parts of himself and move it around, such as by detaching his tongue and making it lick Hato's ears. Also, Wu Tomoki's Stand allows him to crumble into tiny stone fragments which can take control of someone if they get inside their body. In a play on this ability, he doesn't have much control over the fragments if they get small enough, so he has to rely on things like air conditioning systems and sprinklers to propel him around.
• In Macross, the Zentraedi command ship can detach the forward weapons section to use as a separate flagship leading the assault, while the rear section acts as a rear command post.
• Purgatory Viola from Metallic Rouge can detach her bladed forearms from the rest of her body and use them to attack from a distance. They remain connected to their stumps by tendrils of purple energy while she's doing this. Justified due to her nature as an advanced combat android.
• My Hero Academia: Setsuna Tokage's quirk, Lizard Tail Splitter, allows her to seperate her body into up to 50 different parts that she can move telekinetically. If any of those pieces get destroyed or can't function they'll regenerate.
• One Piece:
  • Buggy the Clown's abilities from the Chop-Chop Fruit let all parts of his body fly around at will, but only if his feet are grounded. The effect is the same when he's forcibly cut, rendering him immune to stabbing and cutting weapons.
  • Inverted with Trafalgar Law, who has the ability to detach other people's body parts and combine them with other people/objects.
  • Marine captain Berry Good can turn parts of his body into bouncy balls.
• Patlabor: The TV Series: The Griffon sacrifices its hydrojet pontoons to draw Noa's fire while the rest of it climbs out of the water to ambush her.
• In Parasyte, Migi can separate themself from Shinichi, and also split into multiple smaller Migis (though at their size they're not much good at fighting). Reiko Tamura also splits herself into two parts at one point when she's fighting other Parasites.
• Raideen: God Bird, Change! Head Cutter!
• Space Runaway Ideon: The titular Combining Mecha is frequently forced to separate one or more of its components when the enemy has them in a tight spot. Notably, the sub-mecha usually don't have to transform back from 'robot mode' to continue fighting.
• In his fight with Sunny, Tommyrod from Toriko loses his hand. Then it turns out that he deliberately let this happen, so that his hand (which can live on its own for few hours, due to the insect-like nervous system of Tommyrod) could attack the enemy from behind. Surprisingly, Sunny did the exact same thing with strands of his hair, which Tommyrod ripped off earlier.

Asian Animation

• Cubix: Robots for Everyone: Cubix can detach the numerous cubes that comprise his body to either take on various forms or launch them as projectiles at enemies.
• Mechamato: Champbot can detach his body parts to play as 4 runners in a 4 x 100m relay race, with his torso, two arms and pelvis with legs at each of the checkpoints. Each body part has a face and is equally capable in mobility, even his torso and arms which each gain little legs.

Comic Books

• Absolution has a minor character named Cluster, who can separate and telekinetically fling his body parts. Being an Avatar comic, it's gory.
• Many versions of the Fantastic Four's Fantasticar are able to separate into mini-vehicles each of the Four can pilot.
  • A What If universe of a communist Fantastic Four had a Reed Richards with the ability to warp space so pieces of his body can appear and operate remotely from each other.
• "Arm-Fall-Off Boy" of Legion of Super-Heroes infamy. It should be noted that Arm-Fall-Off Boy was just a joke in the comic's letters page, but he became a Canon Immigrant in at least one 'boot.
• When attacking Daxam with multiple yellow power rings, Mongul used his own severed arm wielding their own rings as a partner.
• MF Enterprises' Captain Marvel could separate any of his limbs from his body by yelling "Split!", as shown in the page pic; to reunite, he'd shout "Xam!". (No relation to Fawcett's or Marvel Comics' characters with the same name.)
• Hollywood Cyborg Garrison Kane of Marvel Comics could send his limbs out to attack people. A disembodied hand slapping him in the face managed to severely gross out Deadpool. One of his signature moves is launching a detached hand to grab a victim's throat and choke them out.
• The Puzzler from Superman could split into living puzzle pieces, which she could then propel at her foes.
• Steve Ditko worked on a hero that combined this power and being a Rubber Man. His name was Jigsaw, not to be confused with two villains sharing that name.
• Wildguard featured the Segmented Man, who could detach his body parts at the joint and become a living tornado, debris and all.

Fan Works

• In A Good Compromise, the USS Black Prince is a Hephaestus-class advanced escort, a variant of the Prometheus-class, so naturally it has multi-vector assault mode. The fic deals with some of the practicalities of having three independently operated sections: each section requires an independent warp core, and coordinating the three sections is more than a mortal captain can handle, so Prince's shipboard Artificial Intelligence Edward, is in charge of flying Beta and Gamma. Tyria Sark uses MVAM in part 3 to even the odds against a squadron of Jem'Hadar attack ships.
• This is Israfel's Instrumemory System power in A Little Angel on My Shoulder.

Films — Animation

• Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas can detach her sew-together arms or legs, although she's a noncombatant who uses this power for escape or distraction.
• Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story can move each of his body parts separately and takes advantage of this when he has to fight. Due to his potential for sight gags though, he always gets creamed in a comical way.

Films — Live-Action

• The animated suits of armor in Bedknobs and Broomsticks do this during their skirmish with the invading Nazis. One suit's upper half is lifted off for examination by a perplexed officer, so its legs boot him from behind. Another suit's upper torso, head, and arm keep popping off to avoid harm when a German soldier jabs at it with a bayonet, then settle back into place. Justified because they're Animated Armor, so their various parts are no less enchanted to move than the whole.
• One of the many random grab-bag of powers of Evil Cat, an ancient feline demon who possesses humans to go on a killing spree. After the Evil Cat took over Tina, at one point she detaches her limbs from the shoulders and uses them to attack Master Cheung who's trying to exorcise her.
• Inspector Gadget 2: G2 can split herself in half so that her legs work as separate combatants. Since she's a robot it's no problem.
• There's an alien from Men in Black II who starts out looking like a single tall humanoid. But when it begins to fight Agent Jay, it turns into five or six smaller aliens that fly around and attack Agent Jay by dive-bombing him.
• An early conceptual storyboard from Star Trek: The Motion Picture had the Enterprise facing off against the three Klingon cruisers that V'ger had assimilated at the start of the movie. During the fight the Enterprise is damaged, and she ends up separating her saucer section in order to avoid being a single target.
• Parodied in The Suicide Squad with TDK, played by Nathan Fillion. TDK turns out to stand for The Detachable Kid whose power to have his arms come off and fly around slapping soldiers, which is as useful as you'd think. He's one of the Cannon Fodder Decoy Protagonists just there to be killed while the actual Squad storms the island.
• Arcee from Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen does this, but there is a degree of ambiguity as whether she's this or a Combining Mecha. The writers of the film initially conceived her as being one robot made of three bikes which would even combine together into a larger robot mode but the appearance of the combined mode was ultimately dropped and Michael Bay changed her into three separate robots which the toys agree with. Even then, Bay considered them one character with three bodies while the toys gave them individual names and backstories. HOWEVER, the novelization and comics portray her in the way the authors intended, with the combined mode appearing briefly in each.
• The alien in The Thing (2011) does this; its arms drop off and scuttle about assimilating people. This only happens once, and may be a response to its body being fatally injured.
• One of the characters in the 1986 film The Young Taoism Fighter uses this.

Gamebooks

• The Fighting Fantasy world has the Living Corpse, a shabby zombie-like being that, when hit for the first time, splits into six parts, all floating around and attacking independently. Thus leading to a long, frustrating fight, as each time you won an attack round you randomly roll to see which part you hit, and if you hit a part you'd already disabled the hit is wasted.

Literature

• Displacers from The Beyonders can do this by "displacing" their body parts.
• The titular character of the Orson Cart series, a boy who was hit by a radioactive lawn mower and can now separate his body parts at will.
• Sometimes shows up in the Perry Rhodan universe. At the more mundane level, some fleet tender designs have a command section that can separate from the attached repair platform and operate on its own, although this is generally less for combat and more for emergency situations; serious military application tends to be more limited to unique Battle Star-type designs like OLD MAN^note (hemisphere with twelve detachable rectangular platforms extending outwards from the base), the SOL^note (cylindrical central section connecting two spheres), or the GILGAMESH^note (splittable dodecahedron with a central section for thirteen parts total).
• The H'rulka in the Star Carrier books fly around in gigantic ships (a necessity, given that H'rulka themselves are enormous gasbags that evolved on a gas giant) that turn out to be composed of smaller individual ships, with each of these being, essentially a one-man fighter. Of course, each of those one-man "fighters" is larger than a human frigate, but the H'rulka find them incredibly claustrophobic (a H'rulka doesn't even notice a human SEALS team entering his "fighter", the same way as a human might not notice an ant crawling around in his car).
• Wild Cards has an Ace who can do this. The parts can even regrow if not reattached in time.

Live-Action TV

• Angel: The Monster of the Week in "I Fall to Pieces" can detach an eye to Eye Spy or detach his hands and send them scuttering off to strangle people. Angel ends up knocking off his head, then buries him in separate metal boxes in a freeway construction site just in case he can reattach that as well.
• Doctor Who: In "Can You Hear Me?", Zellin can detach his fingers and send them after his victims, using the fingers as a medium to drain their nightmares. He can also regrow the fingers at will, so he can do this as many times as he wants.
• The Goodies. In "Double Trouble", the Goodies are fighting evil robot duplicates of themselves. They manage to tie up two of them, only to be confronted by a robot Tim who detaches his arms and head to attack his three opponents.
• Kamen Rider Double's forms that possess the Joker Memory have Finishing Moves that involve Double splitting in half vertically and striking the opponent with both halves.
• Power Rangers:
  • In Power Rangers RPM, Tenaya 7 can detach her (robotic) hand and send it out. Early on, she snuck it into the Rangers' HQ and pulled an All Your Base Are Belong to Us. With just her hand.
  • In Power Rangers in Space, Ecliptor once detached his head, which promptly started floating around, blasting Andros while his body was in the middle of swordfighting him.
• Cluster bots in Robot Wars, going into the arena as one unit, splitting up when the battle starts. The first and most notable was Gemini, and in the middleweight division, there was Typhoon Twins - which consisted of the lightweight bots Typhoon Lightning and Typhoon Thunder connected with essentially a piece of string and a sheet of paper at the start of the match. Originally a cluster bot was judged to have lost if one of the units was rendered immobile, but this was later changed...and then changed back.
• Star Trek:
  • In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the saucer of the Galaxy-class can separate and fight independently of the stardrive. However, the saucer section is only seen participating in combat in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II". On all other occasions, it is used as a large escape pod for the non-combatants like the families of the crew, which was the original intention of the saucer separation feature; using it as an actual weapon was a tactic of desperation.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: "Message In A Bottle" introduces the USS Prometheus, a "one-ship task force" capable of separating into three independently warp-capable sections for combat. Once split apart, the three component ships can surround an enemy vessel to create a devastating crossfire.
• Den Ace, an Ultra Series parody, had one of the finishing moves of the titular character involve detaching his head and throwing it at his enemy, after which it returns to him in a boomerang like fashion.
• Ultra Hawk 1, a fighter jet that can split three ways (Alpha, Beta, and Gamma) from Ultraseven.

Myths & Religion

• Nukekubi can detach their heads, which then fly off to suck peoples blood.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition:
  • Shard minds can break into shards and use it as movement and disorientation. It's not very effective though. Take a few feats and you can do it twice an encounter, throw it, and increase the aura. An epic feat makes it deal damage. And it doesn't have to roll to hit.
  • One ability by a Prestige shard mind class has your character explode into a hurricane of shards, covering several squares, able to move the hurricane, and still being able to attack anyone inside the field. Much, much more effective.
• An Infernal artifact armor in Exalted allows the wearer to split their body into pieces that may float around and fight independently.
• The classic (fourth edition!) Magic: The Gathering card Tetravus functions much like this. It has slightly more modern descendants such as Pentavus and Triskelavus.
• The Anatomic Separation power in Mutants & Masterminds.
• Lebendtod, a variant undead from Ravenloft, have this trope as their signature ability, although it's more useful to compel Horror Checks than to fight.
• In Pathfinder, characters with the Skeleton ancestry can take the "Well-armed" feat, allowing them to remove one of their arms and continue wielding a weapon with it. The detached arm has no locomotion and must be held by the other arm to be useful, but it gives them additional reach with their attacks and the unorthodox technique catches opponents off-guard.

Toys

• BIONICLE had an example in the heavy crowd-control Vahki model, the Kraahu. Intact, it could spray stun gas; when that was impractical, it could detach its six limbs and send them off to fight. This was a viable tactic for two reasons: a) all Vahki, including the Kraahu's individual parts, could fly, and b) said parts could give off a powerful electric charge on contact.
• LEGO Galaxy Squad: The main gimmick employed by the titular Squad is the use of vehicles that split into smaller vehicles/Mini-Mecha.
• One of the main attractions of M.A.S.K. are its Transforming Vehicles, converting from a normal vehicle into a combat ready Defense Mode. The Defense Modes of several vehicles split the vehicle up in multiple components.
  • Rhino is a semitruck that can detach the back of the vehicle to form a small battlecar.
  • Meteor is a jet, which can detach the fuselage to form a smaller jet, while the thrusters form heavy artillery.
  • Buzzard is an Indy car that splits up into two piloted two-wheeled vehicles and an autonomous flying drone. The back spoiler of the vehicle can also detach to form a hang glider.
  • The final toyline of MASK is the Split Seconds line. The main gimmick of this line is that all the vehicles split into two separate combat vehicles, with one being controlled by the pilot and another by a holographic clone of them.
• Transformers:
  • The original description for Autobot Commander Optimus Prime was that he had three components that he could control — his robot mode, his trailer/command base, and the small vehicle Roller. Later interpretations generally treat the trailer as non-living and Roller as an AI controlled but independent drone.
  • The Duocons Battletrap and Flywheel are both two different vehicles (A helicopter and SUV and a fighter jet and tank, respectively) that each combine together for their robot modes.
  • Magmatron has what is called a Tripartite Spark, and has three separate beast modes that combine into his robot mode. The beasts can also combine into a vague approximation of a dragon. Either way, the three beasts can act independently when separated and split up to better strategize.
  • Overlord (AKA Gigatron) is a massive self-combiner - his robot mode is made of two individual vehicles, a tank and a jet. The two combine into a huge robot that stands head and shoulders over Ginrai while combined with his trailer. As with Magmatron, Overlord's two vehicle parts typically attack on their own but can strategize due to being shared by a single consciousness.
• Masters of the Universe: This was the power of the toy version of Modulok, whose base form was a two headed, multi-limbed monstrosity. When faced with multiple opponents, he could split separate ambulatory parts and reassemble into different forms, ultimately able to split into two separate bodies. There were actually enough parts to make him three creatures, but the third tended to be rather weird in comparison. In fact, the mini-comic that introduced him actually had Modulok infiltrate Eternia Castle by sending his detached body parts to each of the Masters, attacking them as individuals before forming up to his true form. His minion Multi-Bot had the same power, and the two formed a very dangerous quartet.

Video Games

• Eight Man (1991) has a recurring robot enemy who can detach itself from the waist and attack you as two entities. Destroying one of the halves (usually the legs) will have the other wandering around in circles while trying to attack you; leaving it idle for longer periods of time and it will leave.
• Bound by Blades has Necromata, an Animated Armor boss whose head can detach from the shoulders, set itself alight, and chase after you as you're busy fighting it's body. It reconnects after flying around for a few seconds.
• Cuphead has two during one boss battle. Baroness von Bon Bon's waffle minion can separate into his individual pockets, which fly outward in straight lines. The Baroness herself can throw her head and regrow it while the previous one flies around and tries to attack you.
• One of the bosses of G-Darius, Eternal Triangle, could split its body into three segments, attack separately with each of them, and trap the player in an electric triangle barrier that his namesake suggests.
• Dead Space had this twisted example of a type of necromorph (Undead-like monster enemies that attack you throughout the game). This type of necromorph attacks similarly to most other necromorphs (get close enough and slash), but distinguishes itself by being tall and spindly in build. Once you 'kill' one of these by doing enough damage to it, however, it splits up into its head and four separate limbs and continues crawling, slithering (yes, the head slithers) and attacking the player via these appendages. And if you get overwhelmed by them your head gets torn off and its head replaces it.
• Demon's World have a giant floating Gashadokuro in Japan who can detach it's head and attack you as two different entities, though both of them have a Shared Life-Meter.
• Undead creatures of Evil biomes in Dwarf Fortress have the bad habit, when dismembered, to keep fighting as any part that has a grasping limb. Cut their hand off, and the hand may come to life and strangle you. Behead them, and the head will chase you and bite at you.
• Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City: The boss of the Molten Caves, the Gatekeeper, has the ability to separate its body parts so each of them can attack independently. When the parts regroup, they can shoot a potentially lethal laser attack, so the party has to strive to destroy at least one of the parts (though doing that will trigger a very dangerous Self-Destruct Mechanism to another part).
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Funny Face's normal attack is to disassemble his outer shell, having each part float out to attack the player before reassembling. As his parts fly off, you get a split second view of the shriveled husk of the person Funny Face used to be.
• Galaxy Angel II: In the climax of Zettai Ryouiki no Tobira, it's revealed that the Luxiole can split between the upper and lower sections, allowing both to be controlled independently (the upper half has most of the weapons while the lower one has the shield generators). This ability is used again in the battle against the Astral Sorbet in Eigou Kaiki no Toki when each one of the sections is equipped with one half of the Dual Chrono Break Cannon to fire from different directions.
• In Ganbare Goemon: The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, one boss is a daruma doll whose stacking segments try to slam into you by sliding across the screen one by one.
• Dr. Ion from God Hand is a oversized, battery-operated toy robot capable of dissembling and assembling himself. This makes him immune to launching attacks as he will simply fall to pieces when hit and then reform instantly. He also capable of switching weapon on the fly like replacing his right arm with a drill or a massive claw.
• Bjørn from Helheim Hassle is a reanimated Viking who has the ability to detach and manipulate his body parts, which he uses throughout the game to solve various puzzles and challenges.
• Kingdom Hearts series
  • The Guard Armor boss in Kingdom Hearts has autonomous limbs, which move and battle on their own when taken enough damage. It is necessary to defeat each of the limbs before finishing off the torso to beat it.
  • Finkelstein's Experiment from the second game shares this ability.
  • The Trinity Armor in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is much like the Guard Armor, except its individual parts actually turn into what resemble flying machines (i.e. its arms become a helicopter, etc.)
• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Stalblind, the boss of Thieves' Hideout can detach his own head, which will fly around the arena spraying black mist while his body continues trying to chop Link to pieces.
• Sir Daniel Fortesque from MediEvil can rip off his own arm and use it as a weapon, though it isn't very effective and is usually meant to be used a last resort if your weapon is stolen. He can also detach his head and place it on a severed hand.
• The Yellow Devil and its variations in the Mega Man games primarily attack by breaking their bodies into pieces and flying across the screen. They rarely stay fully formed for long, which is also generally the only time you can harm them. This tends to make them difficult fights.
  • Bounce Man from Mega Man 11 is also capable of splitting into pieces and bouncing around the room, but he never does this on his own; it is always done as retaliation for striking him with the Pile Driver.
• Monsoon of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is capable of separating his entire body due to his body being made up of magnets. He can make use of this ability to avoid Raiden's sword attacks, and to attack Raiden with his various body parts both independently and from a distance. In the end, Raiden kills him by slicing through the one critical part that he can't separate: his head itself right between his upper and lower jaws. The fact that the rest of his body finally exploded after that helped seal the deal.
• In Metroid Prime: Hunters, Weavel's body splits apart at the waist, and the bottom half becomes a turret, while the top half starts bouncing around and slashing at you with a sword. Justified, since he is mostly robot (he just has a brain and spinal cord left).
• A specific challenge in Mortal Kombat 9's Challenge Tower requires the battle to be conducted by throwing your arms, legs, and head at your opponent. After you do, your flung limb will regrow after a certain period of time.
• The Legendary Pokémon Zygarde has the ability to do this. It is comprised of several autonomous Cores that serve as the creature's brain and non-autonomous Cells that respond to the Cores and normally comprise its whole body. Normally it remains in its 50% form which only contains 50% of its whole cells, but it can send out a Core and some of its Cells as a canid 10% "drone" to attack for a short time.
• Unlike Rayman, whose power is merely a Rocket Punch, Plok can throw all four of his limbs at enemies.
• Shantae: Rottytops the zombie can fight baddies by detaching one of her legs and whacking them with it. She can also throw her head, and have her body teleport right under her head and reattach with her head.
• Skullgirls: Any place where Miss Fortune has a scar on her body is where she can detach her parts, owing to her being dismembered by the mob after she swallowed an immortality-granting gem. She utilizes this extensively in battle, especially with her head.
• One particularly irritating foe in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was a mantis-like robot that tossed out its bladed arms when the player got too close. Thankfully, he could only do it once.
• Spiritual Assassin Taromaru have it's Final Boss, a draconic demon-like entity who can detach itself from the waist. It firstly appears as lower half pair of legs with a human head above it's crotch, before the dragon-headed upper half drops into the screen, merging with the waist, and the boss battle begins in proper. And much of the battle have the demon separating itself to fight as two entities.
• Star Trek Online features unique consoles for saucer separation on the Galaxy- and Odyssey-class cruisers, multi-vector assault mode in the Prometheus-class escort, and dual vector separation on the Haakona Advanced Warbird (a Romulan ship built using stolen plans for the Prometheus). The Odyssey-class and Bortasqu'-class can also equip consoles that allow them to separate an independent section that is also available as a ship on its own, respectively the Aquarius-class destroyer and HoH'SuS-class bird of prey. Apart from the main faction ships, the cross-faction Elachi Sheshar-class Dreadnought Cruiser is also capable of deploying the Assault Vessel that serves as its lower hull.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game: Shogun, the boss of the stage House of Shogun, which is unique to the NES version, has the ability to cause his head to detach and fly around the arena as you fight him. Upon defeat, Shogun explodes until only pair of robot legs remain, revealing he was some variety of robot.
• Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion's Alisa Bosconovitch can remove her arms during a battle. She can also detach her head and use it as an explosive.
• Toribash
  • The game allows you to detach your (and your opponents') limbs through powerful enough strikes or pulls (using grabbing arms). Although you will get the equivalent of a stun if you lose a limb/body part, on your next turn you will still be able to control that body part, along with your fighter. As with nearly any situation that spawns out of the game, this can create some...interesting situations. For example, if someone tears off your arm, you better damn well grab his arm (or other body part) with the severed limb so he can't throw it down to the ground to disqualify you.
  • There are several game modes. Most of them are about not touching the ground outside the ring or with body parts which aren't feet/hands. One of them replaces your hands with long, thin sticks that instantly cut off every part they touch — essentially, swords. Due to arms being connected to pectoral muscles that are two orbs making up the whole chest, taking a cut or a stab to there causes the whole arm from shoulder down to fall off. But, to the point — that arm is fully capable of twitching around with its elbow and wrist, and its hand-sword is as lethal to the enemy as it was. You also don't get disqualified for it landing on the floor. Sometimes an enemy running into your severed arm is what decides of the ultimate victory of yours.
• Sekibanki of Touhou Project. Her spell cards has her head flying off from her body to shoot at you. One series of spell cards even has her creating duplicates of her flying head to fight you with.
• The second boss in Wolverine: Adamantium Rage had four bladed arms, which he would detach and fling around at will.

Webcomics

• Sockarang from Axe Cop, with the added twist that his arms are socks.
• Light and Dark: Ashley's head was unwillingly used as a weapon by Amy.
• Schlock Mercenary: As the Toughs' gear improves, they start getting access to things like autonomous combat armor that can detach, float, and shoot independantly of the wearer until they're essentially all Walking Armories.

Web Original

• In TOME, one of the "Ranks of Sanctuary" has this as his primary attack method. His secondary attack method is a giant cloud of poison gas which fills the entire arena to kill enemies who try to take their time and counter. He eventually ends up fighting an Evil Twin, leading to the line:
  "Why didn't you tell me my attack patterns were so annoying?!"

Western Animation

• This was the main gimmick of Fallapart Rabbit in Bonkers, though he always did it by accident and it was played for laughs.
• Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix: Rayman knocks out a security guard this way by using his floating right hand to neck chop the mook while being held at gunpoint.
• Code Lyoko has the Skidblamdir, carrying four Navskids. Hilarious in Hindsight when Moonscoop produced Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes.
• In Futurama, Bender once beats the slime out of sewer monster after it tears his arms off — the arms just crawl up the monster's back and punch it in the face.
• The fifteenth episode of Garfield Originals had Garfield cheat Dr. Liz Wilson's scale by removing his tail, legs and head.
• Megas XLR: The RECR could separate its limbs and torso, forming them into two tanks, two jets, and a UFO, and later recombine them as needed.
• The Owl House: Amity's abomination attacks by ripping off its own head and throwing it.
• Star Trek: The Animated Series: In "Bem", the titular character was a colony creature who could separate his head, upper torso, and lower torso (at least).
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: "Strange Energies": Ransom detaches and enlarges his head to confront the Cerritos directly, by trying to eat it, while his headless body remains behind and continues his alterations to the planet. He later grows disembodied hands for more accurate combat.
• Teen Titans (2003): The Titans can separate their T-Sub, much like the Fantasticar. Cyborg occasionally remote-controls his hands or limbs for various purposes, although it's never his first option.
• The Venture Brothers: Phantom Limb can control and reattach his limbs when severed.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers (Generation One). One episode saw Optimus Prime forcibly detached, his parts spread across New York City when the Decepticons attempted to convert Manhattan into their new base. His right hand (armed with his weapon) was used by the Decepticons as a turret.
  • Devastator, Superion et al. are actually Combining Mecha, but Sky Lynx is a notable exception: His vehicle form is a space shuttle, but he splits into a bird AND lynx in robot mode, two separate bodies that share one mind.
  • Of note would also be Nexus Prime, progenitor of the combiners and creator of the Enigma of Combination. Unlike other combiners, Nexus himself is the primary robot form, but he can still separate into five independent robots. Of course because of this nature, the five components are also fragments of Nexus's own mind and not all together there. They also seem to search each other out when separated, working to combine back into Nexus.

Real Life

• In a sense, this is how aircraft carriers operate: one large, slow section with living quarters and maintenance, sending out relatively small and fast pieces of metal (airplanes and helicopters) to carry out or fend off attacks then return.

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