Normally, people want to avoid getting disabilities. However, there are some cases where a person would actually inflict one on themself intentionally. Why would someone do such a thing?
- In some cases, it will be a method for obfuscating a Disability Alibi: one would commit a crime, inflict a disability on themself which would have prevented them from committing that crime, and then claim that they got the disability before the crime was committed (possibly having been faking it for some time before the crime, then inflicting the disability for real before anybody takes a closer look).
- Some people may prefer to collect disability benefits rather than remain fully abled, or as a Wounded Gazelle Gambit.
- There are a small number of groups that encourage, or even require, their members to do this.
- In some fantasy settings, one may do this in order to get a Disability Superpower.
- It may be done as a Heroic Sacrifice: a person causes themself a disability in order to prevent the same—or worse—from being done to someone else.
- In some cases, The Atoner may do this to themselves, especially in a manner which would have prevented the bad behavior.
- They may have Münchausen Syndrome (aka Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self
), meaning they want to have a disability for psychological validation.
- They may be Envying the Afflicted and want the attention that comes with being disabled, such as being treated as Inspirationally Disadvantaged.
- They are Draft Dodging and know they can't be conscripted to military service if they are disabled.
- They have to make a Life-or-Limb Decision.
- They are giving themselves a disability in order to gain a Disability Immunity .
Contrast Obfuscating Disability, when they're faking it. Compare and contrast Self-Mutilation Demonstration, when a person injures themself just to demonstrate they actually have regeneration superpowers.
Examples:
- Beautiful Pain by Natsuneko: Hokuto throws herself in front of a speeding truck during her desperate attempt to elope with Lily, and ends up paraplegic as a result and thus unfit for the Arranged Marriage she fled from. The Twist Ending then reveals that Hokuto is The Chessmaster who timed everything just right to end up disabled and in Lily's permanent care for the rest of their lives.
- Berserk: During the Eclipse, Guts was restrained from rescuing Casca from Griffith by an Apostle biting into his arm. Guts resorted to chiseling his arm off with a broken sword to break free. It's for naught though since another Apostle simply slams his head into the ground (costing Guts an eye).
- Blue Exorcist: In the Kyoto Saga, Mamushi Hojo shoves one of the Eyes of the Impure King into her right eye socket in order to smuggle it out of Kyoto, in the mistaken belief that the caretakers in the Myoo Dharani Sect, who are responsible for guarding one of the eyes, have become compromised. After it's extracted, she wears an eyepatch over the wounded eye.
- Claymore: Galatea blinds herself with her own BFS off-screen during the mid-series Time Skip, leaving a horrifying scar across her face. This is because all Claymores have peculiar silver-colored irises as a side-effect of their mutations, and she needs to go incognito among the people of Rabona to escape the Organization's Internal Death Squad. This is not as crippling for her as for most examples, however, since her Super-Senses allow her to function and to fight pretty much unimpeded even without sight.
- Code Geass: Rozé of the Recapture: The last episode has Rozé use her Geass on herself to never speak again and render herself mute, acknowledging just how dangerous her Geass is and how her constant usage of it brought danger to other people, including Ash.
- Fist of the North Star: Shew/Shuu, the Nanto Star of Benevolence, fought a young Kenshiro in a Hokuto/Nanto martial arts school duel, with the understanding that the loser in each duel would have to die. Kenshiro lost, but bravely accepted his fate. This act moved Shuu that despite winning, he pleaded for the young Kenshiro's life to be spared, seeing great potential in the boy. As compensation for defying the rules and sparing Kenshiro's life, Shuu slashed out his own eyes instead and would live blind for the rest of his life.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: In the OVA "The Blind Alchemist", the titular alchemist Jude worked under a very wealthy family and had reportedly performed a successful human transmutation to revive their daughter Rosalie after her untimely death, sacrificing his eyes to complete the process. In reality he failed, the entire family puts on a facade to make him believe he hadn't wasted his sight and efforts.
- Homunculus: Nakoshi asks Ito to seal the hole in his skull made from being trepanned, but just before the surgery, Ito's scalpel-wielding hand is visibly shaking due to their conversation. Since he's already been given a local anesthetic, Nakoshi asks Ito to instead sew his right eye shut, putting him in a state where he will constantly see homunculi rather than choosing to by closing or covering that eye. However, this only lasts for a few hours, as the ensuing exchange between the two about their respective homunculi unsettles Nakoshi enough that he takes a box cutter and cuts the stitches.
- Kagurabachi: Seiichi Samura purposefully blinded himself by cutting his eyes with a dagger. He had two main reasons for doing this. As a Buddhist, Samura wanted to detach himself from Earthly desires. On account of his actions during the Seitei War, Samura was consumed with guilt and wanted to distance himself from the sight of ending lives. Despite his blindness, however, Samura is still an absolute juggernaut on the battlefield.
- One Piece:
- In the anime, Chef "Red Leg" Zeff dove into the water to save Sanji from drowning, but his leg had gotten caught on an anchor chain. He ended up having to sever it to save both of them. Compare this to the manga, where he had to eat his leg to survive, having given Sanji all of their rations. This would later be replaced with a wooden peg leg.
- Fujitora slashed his own eyes with his sword out of disgust and sorrow for all the evil and cruelty he witnessed in life. Despite his disability, his sense of hearing, mastery of Observation Haki, and control over gravity make him a formidable opponent who can still get around largely unaided.
- Alix Senator: The priests of Cybele all castrate themselves as well as their victims, resulting in Fat Bastard Sissy Villains.
- Hawkeye overcame a sonic-based mind control attack by using one of his own sonic arrows to deafen himself.
- A Dilbert strip had Dilbert become paranoid when the bosses aren't speaking to him that he's going to be let go in the next round of layoffs. He panics and decides to injure himself to go on disability leave to keep it from happening. As we heard him scream in pain, the bosses just go back to wondering why so many employees are going on disability leave recently.
- The Great Alicorn Hunt: Discussed in the Windy City arc, where Doctor Hospice Care tells Rainbow Dash about ponies who seem to think being permanently disabled in some way is a thing to be proud of and to strive towards, including a mare who was so obsessed with the idea of being blind, she purposely poured bleach into her own eyes to make herself incurably blind.
- Wonder Woman: Bloodlines: When fighting Medusa, Wonder Woman takes one of the gorgon's severed snake heads and uses the acidic blood to blind herself, thereby making her immune to Medusa's petrifying stare. Fortunately, the Purple Healing Ray is able to restore her sight after Medusa is defeated.
- The Crow: City of Angels: How psychic Sybil ended up a Blind Seer: her visions tormented her so much that she gouged her own eyes out to make them stop. It didn't help.
- John Wick: Chapter 4 features Caine, a former High Table assassin who allowed himself to be blinded for reasons not explicitly stated. It's assumed that it was part of his retirement deal with High Table.
- The New One-Armed Swordsman: This figures into the backstory of Lei-Li, the titular character, and an expert in Dual Wielding swords, only to lose a Sword Fight to Lung Er Zi, a villainous kung-fu expert who specializes in "defeating two-sword experts". Lei-Li can choose to live with his defeat or redeem himself, or sever his right arm, so he chose the latter. He's the only protagonist of the One-Armed Swordsman series confirmed to willingly amputate himself, even though his life isn't in any form of danger.
- Played for Laughs in Scary Movie 1: Brainless Beauty Buffy meets the Ghostface killer in the girls' locker room. Thinking the killer is just her schoolmate Cindy wearing a costume, Buffy mocks the whole scene by "getting in character" of the killer's victim, then falls to the ground. To further mark her as the "helpless" victim, she deliberately dislodges her own leg, exposing its bones. Even the Ghostface killer is aghast at the serious injury.
- X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes: After Xavier's experiment to increase his range of vision works too well, the sights he sees slowly drive him insane. At the end of the film, he is driven to rip his own eyes out.
- A Certain Magical Index: The Agnese Forces stick pens into their own ears to burst their eardrums so they stop being affected by Index's Brown Note spell. Although they can be healed back later.
- In Death on the Nile, the night that Linnet Doyle was murdered, her husband Simon had an airtight alibi when witnesses saw him being shot in the leg as it was determined that after being shot, he was incapable of walking. However, it later turned out that being shot in the foot was just an act on the part of himself and the shooter; having been left alone, he murdered his wife, returned to the location where he had been seen last, and shot himself.
- Harry Potter:
- Discussed in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Upon discovering that Snape is to referee in the upcoming Quidditch match between the Gryffindor and the Hufflepuff teams, Ron and Hermione suggest to Harry the idea of feigning injury and actually hurting himself to get out of playing since they suspect Snape is going to use the match as a front to cause Harry harm, but it's ultimately subverted when Harry overrides them by reminding them that the Gryffindor team would have no one to replace him if he backs out now.note
"Don't play," said Hermione at once.
"Say you're ill," said Ron.
"Pretend to break your leg," Hermione suggested.
"Really break your leg," said Ron.
"I can't," said Harry. "There isn't a reserve Seeker. If I back out, Gryffindor can't play at all." - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Peter Pettigrew cuts off one of his own hands as part of the ritual to restore Lord Voldemort to power, since the spell calls for the "flesh of the servant, sacrificed willingly, to revive their master". He's given a magical prosthetic hand shortly afterwards by Voldemort as a reward for his service.
- Discussed in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Upon discovering that Snape is to referee in the upcoming Quidditch match between the Gryffindor and the Hufflepuff teams, Ron and Hermione suggest to Harry the idea of feigning injury and actually hurting himself to get out of playing since they suspect Snape is going to use the match as a front to cause Harry harm, but it's ultimately subverted when Harry overrides them by reminding them that the Gryffindor team would have no one to replace him if he backs out now.note
- Heaven Official’s Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu: Xuan Ji breaks her own legs in hopes of keeping Pei Ming, who doesn't like "forceful women" such as herself. Pei Ming takes care of her but doesn't continue their relationship, resulting in Xuan Ji committing suicide and becoming a broken-legged ghost.
- A Practical Guide to Evil: When Catherine becomes First Under the Night, her body was essentially rebuilt from scratch and she could easily have had perfect health, but she chose to keep the Achey Scars in her leg as a reminder not to let her power go to her head.
- The Smiling, Proud Wanderer: Dongfang Bubai, Zuo Lengchan, and Yue Buqun all castrated themselves so that they can study a manual that gives a Next Tier Power-Up.
- Angel: "Blind Date" features a person named Vanessa Brewer, who made herself blind as part of her life with the Order of the Nanjin, who believe that the way to enlightenment is to see with one's heart, not with one's eyes.
- The Boys (2019): Sister Sage's powers include her super-intelligence and a mild healing factor. The downside is that in order for her to relax, she has to give herself a Lobotomy. During the time it takes her brain to recover, she enjoys reality TV, eats junk food, and has sex with the Deep.
- Dad's Army: In "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker", Walker gets called up to join the army and will have to leave the Walmington Home Guard as a result. The platoon, not wanting to lose their Friend in the Black Market, tries to help Walker fail the medical by giving him flat feet. Walker is forced to jump off a ladder and land flat on his feet hundreds of times. Sadly, this doesn't work, and Walker is called up... until a Plot Allergy to corned beef has him discharged and returned to the Home Guard.
- Haven: In season 2's "Fear & Loathing," Ian Haskell's Trouble involves being able to steal other people's Troubles by touching their blood. The catch is he can only have one at a time. Having felt mistreated by the town, he wants a Reality-Changing Miniature that will allow him to destroy it. He steals Nathan's Feel No Pain Trouble, which he uses to shimmy down a very narrow chimney into a museum that houses it by dislocating both shoulders, and casually popping them back into place. He ends up Hoist by His Own Petard when he thinks that Nathan not being able to feel anything means he's invincible, so he succumbs to The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort and inadvertently commits Suicide by Cop.
- M*A*S*H: Attempted in one episode. A soldier shoots himself in the foot to try and get himself declared unfit for duty and sent home. Father Mulcahy ends up talking to him to try and get him to reconsider.
- Monk: In "Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus", Monk's top suspect in the the murder, acrobat Natasha Lovara, claims to have broken her leg weeks earlier, which would mean she couldn't have done the gymnastic feats the killer was seen doing as they escaped. She initially had no X-rays done due to her Romani beliefs, but she is soon ordered to by the courts, and sure enough her leg is very broken. However, it turns out that she ordered the circus's elephant to break her leg after the murder, knowing that it would be checked.
- Once Upon a Time: Rumplestiltskin's backstory involves this. He was born some 300 years ago before the Dark Curse is cast, and grows up ostracized by his peers for having a coward as a father. Thus, he decides to be drafted in the Ogre Wars to prove he is not a coward and clear the family's reputation. However, an imprisoned Seer warns Rumple that his actions will leave his son fatherless. In a Prophecy Twist, Rumple thinks that being a soldier in the wars will kill him, so he gets a mallet to break his foot/leg, so he can be sent home as an incapacitated soldier. From then on, Rumple begins to walk with a crutch, until he becomes the Dark One down the line, with his subsequent actions scaring his son into fleeing from him into the Land Without Magic, leaving him to grow up without his father.
- Titans (2018): In season 4, the Titans find themselves in a town where all inhabitants are mind-controlled by the Church of Blood through sound played over the radio. The only two people unaffected are a waitress named Megan and her father, since they're both deaf, with Megan's father admitting he inflicted the deafness on himself specifically to escape the mind control.
- Norse Mythology:
- Odin put out one of his own eyes in exchange for the opportunity to drink from Mimisbrunnr, the Well of Wisdom.
- Tyr allowed his sword-hand to be bitten off by Fenris the wolf as part of the Norse gods' plan to subdue him with Gleipnir the unbreakable chain.
- Christianity: Jesus recommends this in a hyperbolic sense in The Four Gospels. Though, it's generally accepted in Christian thought that he is not advocating literal self-mutilation but using it as a metaphor, meaning his followers ought to be serious about controlling their own sinful thoughts and actions.
"But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to depart into hell." (Matthew 5:28-30)
- The Magnus Archives: About halfway through Season 4, Jon discovers how to quit the Magnus Institute: the Eye, the manifestation of the fear of surveillance and paranoia that gives the Institute its power, has no control over those who don't have eyes. While neither Jon nor Martin can go through with it, Melanine King, who has been severely traumatized by the whole ordeal, decides to gouge hers out a few episodes later, and mostly seems happier for it.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978): After having cured all diseases and injuries, many people find themselves bored with perfect health and give themselves pseudo-injuries and diseases as a means of making their lives more exciting and challenging. On the planet Brontitall, Arthur Dent meets Lintilla, a clone woman who was doing archaeology with a pseudo-fracture.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Some orcs can gain power from their gods by inflicting an injury upon themself: the Eyes of Grummsh can gain magic power from their chief god Grummsh by removing one of their eyes, while the Hands of Yurtrus remove their tongues to gain Plaguemaster powers.
- The Eye of Vecna and Hand of Vecna are two extremely potent magical artefacts, crafted from the remains of Vecna, one of the most powerful liches in the multiverse. In order to attune to them and use them to their fullest potential, the wielder must willingly cut off their own left hand or gouge out one of their own eyes and graft the item onto the wound.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The Adeptus Mechanicus take Machine Worship to such a level that they gradually remove parts of their own bodies and replace them with tech.
- The Iron Hands Chapter Astartes also purposefully remove their own body parts so they can replace them with more cybernetics. Unlike the Adeptus Mechanicus this is not done out of worship of machines but because they believe their flesh is inferior to tech. Their Primarch Ferrus Manus' own metal covered hands inspired them to do this. Ironically, Ferrus himself was disturbed by this and vowed to one day remove the metal from his hands to lead by example in ending the practice. However, his untimely death at Fulgrim's hands prevented him from doing so.
- Oedipus the King: Oedipus cut out his eyes after he realised that the woman he slept with was biologically his mother.
- Arcanum: William Thorndop is a former bandit and was once the continent's finest Gunslinger, who had a My God, What Have I Done? moment over one of his kills and found a new lease of life through religion. He now lives the life of an Actual Pacifist hermit, and cut off his index and middle fingers with a knife as a demonstration of his commitment to never pulling a trigger ever again.
- Baldur's Gate III: The player character has the option to allow Volo or Ethel to remove their eye in an unsuccessful attempt to rid themselves of the mindflayer parasite. In both cases, they're given a glass eye as a replacement, but while Ethel's is just an ordinary eye that imposes a permanent minor penalty on attack rolls, Volo's is actually magical and grants a permanent See Invisibility effect.
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: Played with. While Eiji Mitamura isn't actually disabled at all, having faked his paraplegia with injections of anesthesia to the legs, he's totally reliant on his wheelchair until it wears off. He only went through with paralysing himself to prey on Ichiban's sympathies from his time acting as the actually-paraplegic Masato Arakawa's caretaker.
- RimWorld: With the Ideology DLC, you can make ideoligions that venerate blindness. As such, they allow you to perform blinding ceremonies, with the subject allowing themselves to have their eyes stabbed out.
- StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void: Being severed from the Khala is a Fictional Disability akin to being blind for the Khalai. When Big Bad Amon uses it to enslave the Khalai to his will, however, Artanis manages to briefly break his control and convince his people to sever themselves because blindness is preferable to enslavement.
- WarCraft:
- The Shattered Hand is an orc clan whose members are encouraged to cut off their right hand and graft a Blade Below the Shoulder onto the stump, in honor of their founder, Kargath Bladefist, who cut off his own hand in order to free himself from some shackles.
- Another orc chieftain, Kilrogg Deadeye, willingly sacrificed his left eye as part of a divination ritual.
- Dominic Deegan'': The reason the prophet Luana is a Blind Seer is this. It was to avoid being further tempted by the sight of the Heart of Magic.
- Ennui GO!: Corrupt Corporate Executive Galatea chemically blinded herself to make it easier to dehumanize her customers.
- Homestuck: Downplayed—Terezi is a Blind Seer who learned to smell and taste colors, and was manipulated by Aranea and Gamzee into letting Aranea heal her eyes. She regrets it, and blindfolds herself with a red scarf to try and regain her ability before she goes "CLOWN HUNT1NG".
- The Order of the Stick: Stongly implied for several of the High Priests representing the gods during the Godsmoot event - the priestess of Odin has an eyepatch, the priestess of Hodor is blind and the priest of Tyr has a Hook Hand. Since all of these injuries mimic injuries sustained by the god that each priest worships, it's likely these injuries were self-inflicted for ritual purposes.
- Family Guy: In "Believe It or Not, Joe's Walking on Air", Joe becomes a huge Jerkass after regaining mobility of his legs and threatens to leave Bonnie. Bonnie tries to get her husband back by shooting his spine, but misses all her shots and injures his buttocks, ear, arms, leg, and foot instead. In a mix of desperation and anger, Joe tells her to give him the gun so he can shoot himself. This results in him becoming a paraplegic again.
- Hazbin Hotel: In the finale of season 1, Lute gets her arm trapped under a piece of rubble, with Vaggie deciding to spare her. Lute, being both a Determinator and not the most mentally stable of people, rips her own arm off and attacks Vaggie rather than accept defeat.
- In Justice League, Aquaman was sent plummeting into a volcano along with his son by the treacherous Ocean Master. Aquaman decides to use his belt buckle to sever his chained left hand to free himself and rescue his son before they both die falling into the lava. He would later replace said hand with a prosthetic harpoon.
- Regular Show: In "Video Game Wizards", Mordecai asks Skips to be his partner at the tournament so that they can win the Maximum Glove, but Rigby makes a fuss over how he chose someone with better skill over his best friend. When Mordecai makes that realization, he pauses the game, and Skips agrees to step out. Skips injures himself just to allow Rigby to play.
Referee: Sir, what's the problem?
Mordecai: Uhh, my friend hurt his hand. He can't play.
Referee: His hand looks fine to me.
[Skips punches a metal column and mangles his hand]
Skips: Wanna check again?
Referee: [Stunned Silence] - The Simpsons: In "King-Size Homer", Homer intentionally gorges himself until he hits 300lbs, in order to get himself labelled medically obese and get a working-from-home station installed in his house, rather than partake in the employee fitness regime.
- In order to avoid the crisis in Vietnam, some young men who were picked in the draft found ways of dodging it. Some of them resorted to harming themselves in extreme ways (including shooting off their toes so they'd be deemed unfit for service).
- Assad conscripts in the Syrian Civil War did similar things, which is unsurprising given their commanders' tendency to treat them as expendable and their enemies' tendency to take no prisoners.
- This man
hacked off one of his legs and threw it in a furnace to avoid being assessed as fit to work. He was then told they'd just find him a job that didn't require two legs.
- In 1858, Boston Corbett (who'd go on to become famous for shooting John Wilkes Booth) castrated himself with a pair of scissors to get rid of sexual temptation.
- One Darwin Award winner
thought to collect disability for life by giving himself a permanent injury. The method he chose was cutting a leg off with a chainsaw, but bled out too fast.
