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{{trope}}
{{quote|''At your command
''(Yeech)''|'''[[Tom Lehrer]]''', "[[The Masochism Tango]]"}}
[[File:FireHeart.jpg|link=Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom|frame|[[Narm|And it's]] [[Incendiary Exponent|on fire]].]]
Classic creepout device: This heart no longer occupies its usual place. But it ''still beats''. Blood seeping from the severed arteries is optional. This may be supernatural (with the heart functioning as a [[Soul Jar]]) or natural (in which case it's usually just a momentary gross-out after the heart is [[...And Show It to You|ripped]] from a living victim's chest), but it's '''always''' creepy as hell.
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See also [[...And Show It to You]], for times in which tearing the heart out wasn't enough for the killer.
----▼
=== Supernatural examples ===▼
▲----
== Anime and Manga ==▼
{{examples}}
* In ''[[Film/Howls Moving Castle|Howls Moving Castle]]'' Howl sells his heart to a demon in exchange for more magical power.▼
▲=== Anime and Manga ===
▲* In ''[[
* In a [[Filler]] episode of ''[[Naruto]]'', a ninja disguised as Kabuto links his heart to Naruto's. Any damage to his heart also happens to Naruto's. The guy ''pulls his heart out of his chest, arteries intact'', and as such it is still beating. The scene (which was essentially impossible to tone down in a way that doesn't make the scene incomprehensible) is why they put a [[Content Warnings]] at the beginning of the episode.
*** Near the end of the episode, {{spoiler|the ninja in question is revealed to be a ''female'' - the same one that had tried killing Naruto and co. in the previous episode. From the context of said episode, she most likely ''died'' soon after using what her accomplices referred to as a dangerous technique, but considering that a later scene (if not the next one) shows that said accomplices had brought her to Orochimaru, known by fans to have some medical experience...}}
** In Shippuden, [[Psycho for Hire|Kakuzu]] tears the hearts out of his enemies and absorbs them into his own body to extend his life. [https://web.archive.org/web/20100731032931/http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/336/05/ In a modified] [[Gory Discretion Shot]] one can see him holding a still-beating heart in his hand.
* In ''[[Inuyasha]]'', series villain Naraku controls one his subordinates, Kagura, by keeping her heart with him at all times. If she displeases him, he [[Cold-Blooded Torture|tortures]] her by squeezing it.
* This, along with many other horrifically [[Gorn|violent]] happenings, occurs in the first 10 minutes of the anime, ''[[Elfen Lied]]''.
** Anybody else notice [[Groin Attack|where it landed]]? Granted, it had no actual force of impact, and so it probably didn't physically hurt the unlucky target, but smart money says that guard couldn't get it up again for weeks.
* In volume five of ''[[
* In the fifth ''[[
** Bonus points that the victim ''still'' manages to hold a philosophical conversation. Welcome to the Nasuverse!
* During the Hunter Exam in ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'', Killua must fight against a criminal who can crush limbs, and [[Ax Crazy|very much loves it]]. His response? [[Not-So-Harmless Villain|Taking his heart out, still beating, and destroying it in front of his face]].
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* In one strip of ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'', Russia's heart somehow falls out and splats onto the meeting table, to the horror of the other Allies. [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/axis_powers_hetalia/v01/c004/2.html Shown in a silly yet still creepy way.]
* Dark Schneider, the title character of ''[[Bastard!!]]'', is also known as 'The Immortal', for very good reasons. When he tears his own heart out to save his adopted daughter/lover, we are treated to a double-dip into this trope. Not only does his heart continue to beat for a while outside his body, splattering blood all over her, but later, when he regenerates, he couldn't just regrow his heart inside his body, nooo... instead, his heart reforms in the air over his gaping chest-wound, and starts BEATING, before tendrils shoot out of the hole to grasp the newly-formed heart...
* When Linna starts virtual reality training in ''[[Bubblegum Crisis
=== Comic Books ===
* A variation is found in an old ''[[Superman]]'' comic. In an attempt to live forever, a character is implanted with a pacemaker that is remotely tied to a device at the Earth's core. Too bad that every heart murmur he experiences now sends shockwaves throughout the planet, and vice-versa. Ouch.
* Appeared in an old ''[[Batman]]'' comic where Batman is fighting a vampire, but can't stake him because he transplanted his heart somewhere else. He has to find the heart by listening for a heartbeat when he gets the vampire excited. Batman notices that a clock is ticking louder. The vampire put his heart into the clock....
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=== Fan Fic ===
* In ''[[Neon Exodus Evangelion]]: Apotheosis Now'', {{spoiler|Lucifer does this to the [[Artificial Human]] Matthieu, but instead of a heart, he pulls out a sphere like an Angel's core. He continues to live until Lucifer crushes it.}}
=== Film ===
* ''[[Angel Heart]]''. Twice. Once to Margaret, {{spoiler|the other time, before the events of the film when Johnny ate Harry's still beating heart to steal his soul.}}
* Davy Jones uses the [[Soul Jar]] variant in ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]''.
* ''[[The Last of the Mohicans|Last of the Mohicans]]'': "When the grey-hair dies, Magua will eat his heart." And he does, cutting the still-beating heart from his body.
{{quote|'''Magua:''' Grey-hair! [[Pre-Mortem One-Liner|Before you die]], [[Just Between You and Me|know that I will]] put to the knife your children so that your seed is wiped from the earth forever.}}
* In ''Bride of [[Re-Animator]]'', the main characters use {{spoiler|Meg}}'s preserved heart when creating the Bride. It's an indicator of Dan's inability to move on after {{spoiler|Meg}}'s
* In ''Bordello of Blood'', a heart ''begins'' beating while outside of the owner's body. (In fact, it reconstructs itself first.)
* In ''Dark Floors'', the mummy Amun rips out the businessman's heart and shows it to him.
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=== Literature ===
* A gag in [[Christopher Moore]]'s ''[[Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff|Lamb the Gospel According To Biff]]'' is that during Biff and [[Pals with Jesus|Joshua]]'s time at a monastery, one of the monks teaching them self defense claims to know a trick involving tearing out someone's heart. Most people are skeptical. Every day he asks the class if anyone is willing to help him demonstrate. Nobody ever is, on the off chance he isn't lying.
* In Neil Gaiman's short story ''Snow, Glass, Apples'' (in which ''Snow-White'' is shown from the perspective of the evil queen), the Queen has Snow-White's heart cut from her chest, but it continues to beat, and the girl lives on. When she finally kills the girl with a poisoned apple, the heart
* In [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s ''The Tell-Tale Heart'', the killer-protagonist imagines he [[Terrible Ticking|still hears]] the beating of his victim's heart.
* Seen in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' when Dany visits the warlocks.
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=== Live-Action TV ===
* One episode of ''[[Strange World]]'' featured a surrogate mother who was being used in an experiment, {{spoiler|it turned out to be a human heart, not a baby, growing in her uterus.}}
* In the ''[[Fringe]]'' episode "Power Hungry", a heart sitting on a lab table starts beating due to "residual energy" from the [[Power Incontinence|power incontinent]] [[Shock and Awe|electrokinetic]] who killed the owner.
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=== Music ===
* The music video for the Nine Inch Nails song "Closer" features a heart on a board attached to a bunch of electrodes, since most of it is [[Nightmare Fuel]].
* The [[Tom Lehrer]] song "The Masochism Tango", as quoted above.
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=== Mythology ===
* Koschei the Immortal, out of Russian myth:
** See above [[Shout-Out]] by '"[[Bridge of Birds]]''.
* [[Older Than Dirt]]: In the ancient Egyptian text called ''The Tale of Two Brothers'', the younger brother Bata removes his own heart and places it on top of a tree. He tells his older brother Anpu/Anubis that he will receive a sign if anything happens to the heart, and that if something ''does'' happen, he is to revive the heart by putting it in a bowl of water. Of course, the heart is eventually knocked down when the [[Femme Fatale]] cuts down the tree, and it dries up into something resembling a date. Anpu finds it and puts it in water, whereupon it grows to its original size and starts beating again, hence reviving Bata. This could be classified as Literature as well, but the story contains a number of mythological elements.
=== Tabletop Games ===
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' has the Setites, whose custom Discipline, Serpentis, includes an ability that allows them to remove their heart and place it in a jar, which keeps them from being sent into torpor when staked. At elder levels, they can do this to someone else for one hell of a bargaining chip.
* In ''[[Exalted]]'', one of the weirder things the Sidereal Exalted can do with their [[Martial Arts and Crafts]] is to inflict "Jigsaw Organ Condition" on a victim, which causes their body parts to be very easily separable. Said parts still function when detached, making it possible for them to pull someone's heart out and ''hold it hostage'' against their good behavior.
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=== Video Games ===
* 'The Heart of Darkness' from [[Legacy of Kain]]. In the first game, it was nothing more than an [[
** Hilariously touched on during the outtakes of the Soul Reaver 2 voice sessions for mook dialogue for the scene for Janos: "Look at his black heart! How still it beats!....How it STILL beats!"
* Subverted in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'''s expansion ''Wrath of the Lich King'', there's a questline where you find the eponymous Lich King's heart and there's a race to destroy it before he can get it back. Turns out {{spoiler|the Lich King destroys it himself anyway, since he sees it as his last shred of "human weakness"}}, but it is not beating: It's frozen.
** As [[O Jthe LION|I]] recall,{{spoiler|it was [[Knight in Shining Armor|Tirion]] who destroyed the heart, after seeing that Arthas couldn't be redeemed, and it did weaken him (at least for a bit). The Lich King does have lines about it being the remnant of his human weakness, though.}}
* In the ''[[The Elder Scrolls|Oblivion]]'' quest 'Mehrunes Razor', you find that the final test that must be passed to obtain the eponymous artifact is to devour the still-beating heart of Mehrunes' previous
** There's, of course, the central [[McGuffin]] of ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] III: Morrowind'' - the heart ("divine center") of the god, Lorkhan.
* In ''Shadow Warrior'', one of the 'weapons' you could
** The demon in question is called a Ripper, and is so named because if it kills you, it will rip out ''your'' heart.
* ''[[Baldur's Gate]] II'' has one part of a quest where you need to get one of these from a demon to be able to leave a particular dungeon. The expansion, ''Throne Of Bhaal'', requires you to destroy one (in fact, two) in order to make an enemy vulnerable, allowing you to kill him.
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=== Webcomics ===
* Though not actually seen, one has made an appearance in ''[[Fox Tails]]'', kept in a case by the [[Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate|Morally Ambiguous Doctor]], revealing how he is able to control one of the otherwise uncontrollable Kitsune. It's her heart, and apparently, squeezing it is quite painful to her. (Probably inspired by the [[Inuyasha]]-example above.)
* Ursula Vernon's ''[[Digger]]'' inverts this: the heart is not beating on its own, nor is it a sign that its owner is alive. Instead, a team of slaves pull on ropes that force it to beat and keep an [[Only Mostly Dead|otherwise dead god]] alive [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|against his will]], even though the rest of him has rotted away to bones. When the protagonist skeptically lampshades this, pointing out that the heart isn't even hooked up to anything, she receives the explanation that [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|it's the metaphor of the thing that makes it work]].
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=== Western Animation ===
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'': "Lisa's Rival" had Lisa taking rival Allison's diorama of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and replacing it with an animal heart. Then, in a direct [[Homage]] to the poem, she imagines herself hearing the heart in the gym floorboards. So, yeah, subversion.
** In another episode, Homer picks a fight with a group of Shaolin monks during a trip to China - their retaliation concludes with one of the monks ripping his still-beating heart out, showing it to him, and then ''shoving it back into his chest'', whereafter he walks away no worse for wear (and was mildly annoyed that he didn't wipe his hands).
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=== Other ===
* There's the classic Bill Cosby routine about him listening to a radio drama about a chicken heart that not only keeps beating...but grows...and grows...and grows. I forget if that was an actual episode he was remembering.
** ''Lights Out'', episode "The Chicken Heart".
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=== Anime ===▼
▲== Anime ==
* Under this header because the characters ''react'' like it's a biologically natural occurrence, and no supernatural powers are stated to have been used, but in ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'', Killua rips a man's heart clear out of his chest during one of the tests in the Hunters Exam, and stands several feet away from him, holding the still-beating heart in his hand. The guy, however, is still very much alive (if in extreme pain), even begging for Killua to "give that back" and doesn't die until Killua crushes the heart to bits, at which point he instantly falls over, dead as a doornail. What the ''hell'' are humans in ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'' made of, anyway?
* ''[[Battle Angel Alita]]'' at one point pulls out her robot heart to use as stakes in an arm wrestling game - placing it directly on the table, on her right side. It's still attached and functional though.
** In a similar (but grosser) vein to the trope, she also attaches a severed head to her circulatory system to keep it alive.
* One episode of ''[[Black Jack]] 21'' centers around a mysterious, way-ahead-of-its-time artificial heart. Its very existence is creepy enough, but after Black Jack removes it from the owner (replacing it with a more realistic artificial heart), it KEEPS BEATING on the table where he leaves it. It also ''[[Power Glows|glows]]''.
* Employed in the second episode of ''[[Darker
=== Film ===
* In ''[[Friday the 13th (film)|Friday the
* In ''[[Airplane!]]!'', a still-beating heart intended for transplant jumps around on (and off!) a desk.
* In ''[[Tomorrow Never Dies]]'', [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] is threatened with this. "He should stay alive just long enough to see it stop beating."
* Several scenes in ''[[Apocalypto]]'' feature these.
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=== Literature ===
* In [[Philip Jose Farmer]]'s [[Nature Hero]] deconstruction ''Lord Tyger'', the horny [[Tarzan]]-like title character at one point rips a baboon's heart out of its chest, and while it's still beating he '' '''(Painfully [[NSFW]] and [[Squick]]-tastic)''' '' {{spoiler|''shoves it into the reluctant heroine's vagina like an organic vibrator until she comes''}}. ''What the '''hell'''''.
=== Live-Action TV ===
* Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern have both swallowed beating snake hearts on camera as part of their Travel Channel shows. (See below.)
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Girl In The Fireplace" features the repair robots of a damaged starship repairing its systems with the organs of the crew - an eye as the lens of a camera, and a beating heart as a pump wired into the pipes.
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=== Music ===
* [[Meat Loaf]]'s ''Bat Out Of Hell'' features the lines: "And the last thing I see is my heart,/Still beating,/Breaking out of my body,/And flying away,/Like a bat out of hell."
* [["Weird Al" Yankovic]]'s song ''CNR'' paints the late actor Charles Nelson Reilly as a Chuck Norris-style [[Memetic Badass]] who, among other things, could "rip out your beating heart, and show it to you right before you died".
* [[Avenged Sevenfold]]'s song about murder, necrophilia, zombies, and love, "Little Piece of Heaven" includes this gem:
{{quote|"Ripped her heart out right before her eyes
Eyes over easy, eat it, eat it, eat it!"}}
=== Video Games ===
* Kano's fatality in the first ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' is to rip out his opponent's still-beating heart. Jarek and Kobra both used this as one of their fatalities, as well. This is [[Hand Wave
** ''Deception'' has the Hara-kiri moves, where dazed characters kill themselves to deny the fatality to their opponent. When it's performed with Kobra, he rips ''his own'' heart out.
** Almost every fighting game with fatalities has used a similar move at least once. ''Mace: The Dark Age'' gives it to the heroic priest. ''[[Primal Rage]]'' and ''War Gods'' have variants where the character eats the heart afterward.
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=== Western Animation ===
* Kano's heartrip (see below) was performed by Luna on ''[[The Boondocks]]''. Not in the game, but on a live person she had defeated in a mystical martial arts tournament on a mysterious island... Shang Tsung shouted at her to "finish him".
=== Real Life ===
* ''Extremely fresh'' snake hearts are a delicacy in Vietnam, and swallowing them on camera is a popular stunt among tourists. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovwj0FYN0Qg Look if you dare.] A great many amateur [[YouTube]] videos document the same phenonemon.
** In Japan Frog Sashimi is served with the heart still beating (also considered a delicacy).
* On a lighter note, [https://web.archive.org/web/20091026201721/http://history.missouristate.edu/jchuchiak/aztecs40.gif Aztec sacrifices] involved ripping out the heart while it was still beating. Yeah, [[Truth in Television|it happened]].
** Debated. This may be a case of an [[Unreliable Narrator]]. The Spanish reported that this was how Aztec sacrifices were performed, but the method of removing the heart does not seem conducive to the kind of quick removal necessary (ie they went through the ribs, which would take some time to break). Furthermore, most Aztec artwork shows the sacrifices being decapitated, not having their hearts ripped out. So, many scholars now believe that the Aztects beheaded their sacrifices, and removed the hearts much later.
* One rather strange Darwin award involved a guy trying to ('''[[NSFW]]''') {{spoiler|use a bovine heart as a sex toy using a car battery to make it beat, and he ended up electrocuting himself}}.
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