"I landed the ship safely... for the most part. [puts leg on table] Eh? Pretty cool robot leg! I'm still workin' on it, maybe add some jets or a can opener..."
— Della Duck, DuckTales (2017), "What Ever Happened to Della Duck?!"
In the real world, losing a limb is a life-altering event. There is the emotional trauma, the physical therapy, the newfound difficulty of simple tasks like walking or grabbing objects, the inevitable body image issues, and possibly a forced career change.
Not so in this fictional universe. Through magic or advanced science, they have Artificial Limbs or cloned parts that are as good as (or better than) the original, or they're able to regrow lost limbs, just like a lizard. Dismemberment becomes a mere temporary inconvenience, even an opportunity to get an upgrade covered by health insurance.
Presumably, it's a matter of time that this will become Truth in Television, as fully-functional prosthetic limbs and lab-produced biological organs are already taking their first steps.
When a person (with no inherent healing powers) loses a limb and gets a replacement from doctors or healers with no loss of function and minimal angst, it's this trope. If the replacement is inferior to the originals or otherwise a burden or the recovery was grueling, the dismemberment wasn't exactly cheap, and if it turns out Cybernetics Eat Their Soul, that counts as life-altering too. If a character can shrug off limb loss because of their Healing Factor or Appendage Assimilation, it's a Good Thing You Can Heal. If they have or gain superpowers that make up for their new disability, it's a Disability Superpower or We Can Rebuild Him.
See also Death Is Cheap, Immortal Life Is Cheap, Plug 'n' Play Prosthetics. Like those tropes, it's a way to show things are serious without having to significantly alter the course of your characters' lives.
Subtrope of Throwing Off the Disability.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- AKIRA: Tetsuo Shima provides the page image. After losing his arm to a Kill Sat, he replaces his missing arm with a robotic one. In the animated film adaption, this arm slowly mutates him into a Eldritch Abomination that consumes everything it comes across.
- Berserk: Zig-zagged with regards to Guts' lost forearm. Theoretically, his prosthetic is very rudimentary, as the fingers don't move (except when wearing the Berserker armor) and it just has a magnet in the palm to help handle his sword. However, Guts suffered no visible loss of dexterity in his swordsmanship, and the freaking cannon in the arm makes it a net positive, ability-wise. Emotionally, Guts doesn't explicitly make much of his loss of limb, but he's not a very open person to begin with and had bigger losses from the same incident distracting him.
- Some of the eponymous warriors in Claymore can easily regrow lost limbs (and occasionally even more important organs, though not the brain), while others can reattach their severed appendages with no lasting consequences whatsoever. The most extreme case happens to Clare, whose arm is cut off and mangled beyond repair by an enemy; she ends up having to graft another warrior's arm onto her shoulder joint to restore her fighting capacity.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Inverted in Part 2. When Joseph Joestar gets his left hand cut off by Ultimate Kars, the scene is played with the appropriate level of shock and horror. After a Time Skip leading to Part 3, Joseph becomes the grandpa to the new protagonist Jotaro Kujo and receives a prosthetic hand. That new hand is often cut apart and destroyed for laughs, and constantly replaced.
- Played straight in Part 4 and Part 5, where the two resident protagonists (Josuke Higashikata and Giorno Giovanna) have the ability to heal others. At one point in part 4, Josuke actually heals someone from a hand.
- Very common and justified in World Trigger. Trigger users fight in artificially generated bodies formed from Trion energy. These bodies are generated fresh each time their trigger is activated so while loss of limbs (and other serious injuries) can cause problems due to loss of mobility, balance, and other issues as well as leaking Trion reducing endurance that's generally only a problem in a single battle. Afterwards their real bodies are completely intact and their Trion bodies are back in perfect condition next time around.
- One Piece has many characters who end up losing a limb, but are able to create prosthetic replacements using their Devil Fruit abilities and continue as if they never lost a limb in the first place. Examples include:
- Kuzan, former Admiral Aokiji, who lost half of his left leg during his fight with Akainu for the position of Fleet Admiral, but is able to create a prosthetic one made of ice using his Logia Fruit.
- Eustass Kid lost his left arm in a battle against the Red Hair Pirates at some point during the Time Skip. He was able to create a replacement using his Magnetism Fruit to gather up a bunch of metal and form it into a Mechanical arm.
- During the events of the Whole Cake Island Arc, Charlotte Perospero loses his right arm when Pedro sacrifices himself in order to allow the Straw Hats to escape. He is then seen immediately after with a replacement made from his candy-creating Devil Fruit. This ends up being zigzagged when he eventually faints due to the candy arm doing little to staunch the blood loss, but by the Wano Country Arc his candy arm gives him no real issues.
- Rebuild World: In this Cyberpunk setting, due to there being limb regrowth treatments (either re-growing from the body, or making a cultured one and then attaching it), Akira loses his arm(s) and/or legs a few times. The treatment's expensive, though.
- In the Final Battle of Naruto Naruto loses his right arm up to the elbow and gets a replacement limb made from Hashirama cells. Sasuke loses his left arm in the same fight, but doesn't bother to replace it due to seeing it as punishment for his past actions.
Fan Works
- In The Egg Team, Teddy loses his right arm very quickly after he is first introduced. However, after passing out from his injury, he wakes up with a mechanical arm. Not only does this arm serve as a perfectly functioning replacement, it also allows him to throw orbs of electricity.
Films — Animated
- Justified in the Toy Story franchise. Toys that aren't made with detachable body parts can easily be put back together if they only lose an arm. Even Bo Peep carries a roll of tape to reattach her arm if it comes off.
Films — Live-Action
- Ash loses his left hand in the second Evil Dead film, then engineers a clockwork replacement in the court of King Arthur. It's groovy.
- Star Wars: Prosthetic limbs are easy to acquire and tend to work just as good as the original, so exceptions to this (such as Skelly from A New Dawn, thanks to a mixup) are rare.
- Anakin loses his hand in Attack of the Clones, but has a prosthetic by the end. Unlike his son's, it has an obviously mechanical appearance but otherwise works the same, leading him to protect it with a glove. His next experience with dismemberment in Revenge of the Sith, on the other hand, is rather more dramatic...
- Luke has his hand cut off in the climax of The Empire Strikes Back, but gets a cybernetic replacement shortly after. Other than a couple of wistful glances, it's functionally and visually identical. By the time of the sequel trilogy, the hand has lost its artificial skin layer, but it's still functional.
Literature
- Played With in Bill the Galactic Hero. Bill loses his left arm and gets it replaced with his dead buddy Tembo's right arm, which upsets him until he realizes he can now salute with both hands. Later on, he shoots off his own foot to get out of a particularly onerous duty and ends up with a series of replacements notably including a giant chicken foot.
- Crystal Singer: due to their symbiotic relationship with the spores of Ballybran, Singers can recover quickly and completely from just about any injury that doesn't immediately kill them. One Singer who lost her dominant arm has an argument with a technician, who says he won't make her a new laser cutter that will fit the grip of her non-dominant hand since the severed one will just grow back in a few weeks anyway and it won't be worth the trouble.
- Of the humans who hibernate through winter in Early Riser, some go braindead and end us as ravening, flesh-hungry Nightwalkers. When these Nightwalkers are captured, most of them end up "parted out" for organ transplants and limb replacement. When protagonist Charlie strikes up a conversation with a woman whose husband "Nightwalked" some winters ago, the woman muses how her husband's "legs are on a gardener in Stourbridge right now, and his eyes are currently looking across the Sound of Mull."
- In The Hunger Games, Peeta loses a leg after his first round in the arena. It is replaced with a very good prosthetic and never mentioned again. The movie just left this out completely.
- Very much the case in Shadow of the Conqueror, due to the ability of Lifebinders to regenerate lost limbs as long as they have access to Light. Since Everfall is bathed in Endless Daytime, that's most of the time.
- Star Wars Legends: In Darth Maul: Shadow Hunters, Pavan gets his hand cut off by the titular Sith Lord. He's quickly rescued, put in a hospice, and told he'll get a replacement, so he's not sad about that at all. Too bad Maul bursts in and then kills him immediately.
Live-Action TV
- In the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 finale, Director Coulson catches a tainted Terrigen Crystal before it can shatter and disperse its toxin. Unfortunately, the crystal turns any non-Inhuman (which Coulson is) to stone. Before it can spread past his hand, Agent Mack chops it off to save his life. Later, Coulson is fitted with several prosthetic hands, each with its own special purpose. There are some psychological after-effects from losing his organic hand that prevent it from feeling right at first, he initially finds it impossible to tie a tie, and even after those problems are overcome, he has no feeling in the hand, but other than that, it would be easy to forget he had a prosthetic hand if not for the enhanced strength and cool gadgetry. During the sixth season, Deke Shaw is captured by Sarge, a genetic clone of Coulson. Shaw stabs him in that hand, proving that it isn't Coulson Back from the Dead.
- Altered Carbon. After Kirstin Ortega is badly wounded by the Ghostwalker and loses an arm, Takeshi Kovacs pays for the most expensive artificial limb available to replace it. Ortega doesn't even realise her arm has been replaced until she bends the railing on her bed while arguing with Kovacs.
- Doctor Who: In "The Christmas Invasion", the Tenth Doctor loses a hand, but regrows it as he had just regenerated from the Ninth. This hand becomes important later.
- In Legends of Tomorrow, Snart is chained on Cronos' ship and freezes his hand solid and smashes it to escape. It's regrown at the end of the episode thanks to the Waverider's future tech.
- The second episode of Lexx sees Stanley get his right hand (which contains the key to commanding the titular ship) torn off by Giggerota, who proceeds to mount it on a pike. Despite how ratty it looks by the time he gets it back, it's reattached with little effort thanks to the setting's advanced biotech. (It's also briefly turned into a left hand just to make fun of Stanley.)
- In The Orville, it's fairly easy to reattach or regrow lost limbs because We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future.
Multiple Media
- Transformers: It's generally shown across the many iterations of the franchise that any decent medic with access to some spare parts and Energon can whip up a replacement limb for one that's been destroyed or severed that's as good as the original in a short time.
Video Games
- One of the main tools in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an advanced prosthetic arm that not only perfectly replicates the main character's original arm, but contains an assortment of useful gadgets, even though the game takes place in Sengoku-era Japan.
- Played with in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, as the game deals with how much the body should be tampered with in terms of prosthetics. There's also a gang in-game that deliberately replaced their organic limbs with augmented ones.
- Played with in Kenshi. A wide range of prosthetics are available, with modern Hive-produced prosthetics being generally inferior to natural limbs while Old Empire-era robot limbs are stronger and more durable, with varying other benefits/drawbacks depending on type. Because the only universal negative effect of robot limbs is to the Swimming skill, many players in the mid- and late-game will endeavor to deliberately dismember their characters in order to create an army of Cyborgs.
- Rimworld players often invoke this in late-game stages, where even without mods bionic and even archotech organs and limbs start getting plentiful. Since the mechanized limbs actually provide a bonus to related actions, finding any excuse (or even none) to just amputate and replace to perform useful functions (or just move) faster is not unheard of. Transhumanist pawns absolutely love these replacements, too, though Body Purists will hate them. Also related, organ transplants are even cheaper since there are no immune system troubles involved and the technology comes earlier, so all you need to do is grab the nearest prisoner, cut them open, and replace that liver your alcoholic pawn ruined with a fresh one.
- Whenever the main cast of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Interlink into their Ouroboros forms, they are capable of nigh-instantly regenerating any limbs that may be severed from them. Much like the previous games' Blades, so long as their core remains intact, they can suffer just about any kind of attack without lasting damage.
Web Animation
- The Cold Road party from the Animated Spellbook. The narrator makes a reference to them having lost their arms and legs during one of Shifty Wick's daring escapes. "The restoration was not cheap."
Webcomics
- Questionable Content. Marten ponders the perverse incentive of the existence of really cool Artificial Limbs.
- In Schlock Mercenary, as long as they're stabilized in time, characters can even survive decapitation. In one notable example, a character cuts his own teammates' heads off so they can fit through an almost blocked teleporter! And it takes only a few days to clone them new limbs so long as their health plan covers it.
- In Team Fortress 2 Comics #1: Ring of Fired, Soldier loses his hand then gets it reattached a scene later (at a veterinarian office) all for a quick gag.
Soldier: Miss Pauling! Pyro cut off my hand!
Miss Pauling: Pyro, don't cut off people's hands. - Sam & Fuzzy:
- Aaron "accidentally" loses a hand after making a pass at his fellow ninja Sexxica, and has it replaced with a cybernetic replica. Somewhat justified since people with connections to The Underground such as members of the Ninja Mafia has access to much more advanced technology than what is allowed openly on the surface due to The Masquerade. There's an entire Cyborg Mafia operating in the setting.
- Mr. Y loses both his arms over the course of the story and has both of them replaced with incredibly advanced prosthetics, including built-in weapons.
- I'm the Grim Reaper: Scarlet loses both an arm and a leg in her fight with Brooke. However, she manages to still kill a sinner and get sent back to hell, where Satan restores her missing limbs. He does warn that if she's ever in a state where she can't kill a sinner and go back to hell, this wouldn't be able to happen.
- Casey and Andy: Andy has his right arm cut off in the final story arc. He's cool with it since Casey builds him a cybernetic replacement. If anything, he's more miffed that it was done by the past version of his girlfriend, Satan, who's even more nonchalant over the issue.
Western Animation
- Finn from Adventure Time ends up losing his arm trying to prevent his father from escaping the Citadel. Aside from being in a depressed funk for a few episodes, the loss doesn't affect him that much. Later, the flower that grew on his stump matures into a tree before breaking away to reveal a new arm, with a green thorn in the palm. When he loses his arm again a few seasons later, Princess Bubblegum swiftly replaces it with a robot one, and he goes on like nothing happened—to himself, at least.
- In DuckTales (2017) Della Duck loses her leg when she crashes on the Moon and builds a replacement. She seems no worse for wear, and the missing leg rarely actually comes up.
- Characters get mutilated semi-regularly in Futurama, up to and including decapitation. However, even the hilariously incompetent Dr. Zoidberg can reattach limbs and make them fully functional in a minute. Cloning new limbs doesn't take long either, as evidenced by Fry visiting "Handcrafters" after a dinosaur-feeding accident in "I Dated a Robot".
- In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Pony Head's horn is forcibly ripped off by Meteora during her rampage, but after one episode of angst, she's next shown with a prosthetic that looks just like her old one.
- On Wander over Yonder, after spending most of an episode mocking Wander for having his finger stuck plugging a black hole, Lord Hater ends up plugging said black hole himself. Being a skeleton, he just detaches his arm to escape and is shown back on his ship getting a mechanical replacement.
