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{{trope}}
{{quote|''At your command
''(Yeech)''|'''[[Tom Lehrer]]''', "[[The Masochism Tango]]"}}
[[File:FireHeart.jpg|link=Indiana Jones and
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.▼
▲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.
Note that the "just ripped out" variety is [[Truth in Television]]: Cardiac tissue, unlike other types of muscle, generates its own muscular impulses, so a heart ''can'' continue to beat for a brief time after it is removed from the body.
See also [[...And Show It to You]], for times in which tearing the heart out wasn't enough for the killer.
----
=== 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
* 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 ''[[Kara no Kyoukai
** 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
** To drive the oddity of this example home: The criminal was alive, stumbling around, and begging Killua to give him his heart back until the moment it was crushed, at which point he [[No Ontological Inertia|fell down dead]]. No one present seemed confused or even surprised by this, including the guy who's studying to be a doctor. Apparently, in their universe, this is normal cardiac behavior.
** I assumed that it was just [[Rule of Cool|coincidence for drama's sake]].
** Hey, this is a world where [[Functional Magic|Nen]] is regularly used by the characters. Who's to say that the criminal wasn't a Nen user or something?
* Also during one of the early episodes of ''[[Trinity Blood]]'', since a Methuselah can't be killed by just shooting it or cutting it, you have to do something to the heart. Abel Nightroad does it as a finishing move, and [[...And Show It to You|rips out the Methuselah's heart, holds it in his hand right in front of the Methuselah, and crushes it while the other watches.]]
* In one strip of ''[[
* 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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* ''[[Shade the Changing Man]]'' discovers that his heart has been stolen by a squatter in his home after a battle. He embarks on [[A Worldwide Punomenon|a half-hearted rescue of it and when he finally catches up to it, has a heart-to-heart talk with it]]. {{spoiler|And then steps on it when he decides he's better off heartless}}. It appears from time to time, still beating, moving under its own power, and even has internal monologues.
* An issue of ''Nightmares & Fairy Tales'' tells the twisted tale of Snow White, in which the Evil Queen is told that beauty reflects the heart, so she has Snow White's heart cut out of her body and then procedes to rip her own heart out and replace it with Snow's, making herself beautiful and leaving Snow in a zombie-like state. {{spoiler|Snow later gets her revenge when she burns the Queen's original heart and rips out and reclaims her own.}}
* Somehow ''[[Scud the Disposable Assassin]]'' managed to combine this trope with [[Tear Jerker]] and [[Chekhov's Gun]]: In the end it turns out that Jeff's heart, {{spoiler|being forged by God himself, is completely indestructible. This means that Jeff will never die, and the now-suicidal Scud will never complete his original mission (meaning he won't ever self-destruct), meaning he can't finish the last job given him by the Seraphim: destroying Earth. Even as Jeff's body is ripped open and finally dies, the heart beats on. Of course, later Scud takes the heart with him into battle with the Seraphim, which in the end proves to save his life: by placing the heart in Sussudio's ribcage it reanimates her, and the first thing she does is greet Scud cheerfully. Of course, the second thing she does is [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|PUNCH AN ANGEL IN THE BRAINS]]}}. [[Who Wants to Live Forever?]] indeed!
* In Book Two of [[Suehiro Maruo]]'s ''The Laughing Vampire'', a female vampire uses the freshly-extracted heart of her victim for...self gratitfication.
* In the ''[[Blackest Night]]'' ''[[Starman (
=== 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
{{quote|
* 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.
* ''Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah'', a 2001 [[Godzilla]] movie, features this as a Plot Twist seconds before the credits. {{spoiler|It's Godzilla's.}}
* ''[[Indiana Jones and
{{quote|
'''Sacrifice Victim''': Om Namha Shivaye, Om Namha Shivaye, Om Namha Shivaye...'''''' }}
* When the [[Mayincatec]] cut out the hearts of their sacrifical victims they will often be shown still beating.
* ''[[From Dusk
** ''[
* Although the heart is never technically ''removed'', the beating heart of Draco the dragon in ''[[Dragonheart]]'' can be revealed by lifting up a flap on his chest so that Bowen can {{spoiler|destroy it.}}
* In ''[[
* ''[[Dreamscape]]''. After Tommy Ray kills a security guard by ripping his heart out of his chest, the heart continues beating.
* In ''[[Iron Man (
* In ''[[Queen of the Damned]]'', when Akasha rips another vampire's heart from his chest, the heart continues to pulse for a few seconds before she feasts on it gleefully and ''sets fire'' the bloody residue in her hand.
* The bad guys in ''[[
* Played for laughs in ''[[Robots]]''. The whole implication that Rodney Copperbottom is really carrying out ''extensive surgery'' on the outdated robots isn't really made clear until he brings out a still-active red pump from the body of a robot, [[Crowning Moment of Funny|and Fender faints from the sight]].
* Played for laughs with a transplant heart that hops off a table in ''[[Airplane!]]!''.
* Also [[Rule of Three|played for laughs]] in ''[[Dumb and Dumber]]''. During one of Lloyd's dream sequences, he imagines himself in a romantic dinner with Mary, when the waiter decides to get daring and Lloyd hands his ass to him, as well as many other people. So far, so good. Further down the scene, out comes a Chinese cook who outmatches Lloyd, until he jams his hand into the cook's chest, rips his heart out, puts it in a food bag and returns it to the cook - who only drops dead when he picks up the bag.
* [[B
=== Literature ===
* A gag in [[Christopher Moore]]'s ''[[Lamb:
* 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.
* The creepiest story in the [[Defictionalization]] of ''[[
* In ''The Knight of the Swords'' by Michael Moorcock, Corum has to kill the Chaos God Arioch. To do this he must destroy Arioch's heart. Which he keeps locked in a tower, so it will be safe. Corum is running around with the Hand of Kwll and the Eye of Rhynn, two other disconnected god body parts, so there's a lot of this sort of thing going on.
* Brutally inverted in Matthew Woodring Stover's ''[[The Acts of Caine
* In the [[Stephen King]] novel ''[[IT]]'', {{spoiler|Stuttering Bill kills the eponymous [[Cosmic Horror]] by tearing out Its heart and smashing it between his hands.}}
* The second of Barry Sadler's Casca series, ''God of Death'', had Casca sacrificed by pre-Aztecs who cut out his heart. But {{spoiler|Casca was cursed by Christ to live until the Second Coming. The priest cuts out his heart, and it keeps beating. And beating. And then Casca stands up, takes his heart out of the priest's hand, sticks it back into his chest, and announces, "No more human sacrifices."}} Nobody dares to argue very hard.
* In one of Gustav Meyrink's short stories, we can find {{spoiler|a very grotesque clock. In fact, it's composed of the severed internal organs of a guy, which were then stiched together by some crazy alchemist-like Moor and connected with wires and tubes in order to allow the head of the poor guy to go on living. The only thing he's able to say it's the time. Imagine the reaction of his two friends when they find him. His organs are all working, by the way.}}
* Elizabeth finds them tasty in ''[[Pride and Prejudice And Zombies]]''.
** Only if they belong to [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja|ninjas]].
* In ''[[The Culture]]'' novel ''Matter'', the story begins with a king being killed by his [[Evil Chancellor]]. The king was wounded in battle, and when the Chancellor visits him, he sticks his hand into the king's chest and squeezes on the king's heart until the king dies in agony.
* In Lawrence Watt-Evans' ''The Obsidian Chronicles'' there exists a form of magic that allows a person to remove their heart from their body in order to protect it from harm and thus their lives. This proves to be an effective method of purging the human body of [[Body Horror|dragon venom]].
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* In ''[[Bridge of Birds]]'' by Barry Hughart removing one's heart is a key to invulnerability. Alas, the ritual renders the person heartless both literally and [[Immortality Immorality|figuratively]]. Also, the heartless tend to long for the "cold" things (treasure) above all else.
** Also the usual fairy-tale choice of hiding places for the removed heart is lampshaded:
{{quote|
* In an alternate-organ variation, the first book of the ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' series mentions a variant of the [[Real Life]] Viking "blood eagle" torture, in which a victim's lungs are pulled out of slits in their back. In the universe of ''[[His Dark Materials]]'', where everyone has a daemon-spirit companion, ''this isn't immediately fatal'', as the victim's daemon is reputedly able to prolong life for a time by manually pumping the protruding lungs of its companion.
* Rare, not-done-to-be-creepy example: A short story by Michelle Lawrence, "[http://www.identitytheory.com/fiction/lawrence_lividity.php Lividity]", begins with the main character cutting out her heart and leaving it on the fence (still beating) for her married neighbor. It is a metaphor.
=== 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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* In ''[[The Gates]]'' {{spoiler|Officer Leigh keeps a beating heart in a box. It's implied to be her own, as she later says that her ex-boyfriend [[False Confession|"ripped her heart out"]].}}
* In ''Angel'' Wesley comes across a member of a race that worships Jasmine. Who is constructing a flesh and blood mandala as she is 'older than words' out of various bodies. Including those of at least three vampires, one of whom has had his body flayed and ribcage split open to expose his heart. As they haven't been staked, they are ''still living and concious''. Played for dark humour as the main example endlessly bitches about being trapped before ''having his tongue ripped out to shut him up''.
* In ''[[Once Upon a Time (TV series)|Once Upon a Time]]'', the Queen does this so that she has power over them and keeps the hearts in a special vault. It is revealed that {{spoiler|this vault also exists in the real world.}}
=== 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 [[
* Hard 'N Phirm's "El Corazon" is a song all about the heart, sung Spanish-ballad style. Part of the translation is: "It can continue to beat long after its removal from the body, as we see with this turtle's heart." (It makes more sense if you're seeing it performed live; there's a video going on behind them that illustrates the line.)
* Ludo's "The Horror of Our Love" is a song about a serial killer/kidnapper/rapist who falls in love with one of his victims. The climax of the protagonist's experience comes at the following lyrics:
{{quote|
You die like angels sing..." }}
=== Mythology ===
* Koschei the Immortal, out of Russian myth:
** See above [[Shout
* [[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 ===
* ''[[
* 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.
* In ''[[Scion]]'', the Aztec Scions have the ability to, once an enemy is defeated, rip out their still beating heart and eat it to gain supernatural powers, that make them rip open their chests and expose their beating heart, which is on fire. No other internal organs are shown.
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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.
* ''[[
* One of the "decorations" in ''[[Doom]]'' ''1'' & ''2'' is a still-beating heart on a pedestal.
* The object of the game ''Vexx'' is to collect hearts that still beat.
* Red Falcon, a recurring ''Contra'' boss, is a giant beating heart that may or may not be attached to anything.
** There is also a giant beating heart in the depths of a Strogg Factory in ''[[Quake
* In ''Gothic'', the demon final boss is protected by five hearts that must be slain before he can be killed.
* In ''Grand Theft Auto IV'' the beating "heart of the city" can be found in the Statue of Happiness.
* Slightly subverted in the videogame adaptation of ''[[I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream]]''. Gorrister's heart was removed prior to the events of the game, but as he's fond of pointing out, that old heart of his don't beat no more.
* In ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'', dancing girl Ellia is given one of Mantorok's five hearts, which contains its essence. Since {{spoiler|Mantorok doesn't die until just after the end of the game}}, the heart remains intact for over 1000 years so that Alex can use it in the final battle. Unfortunately, you don't see the heart beating in-game (presumably to match the other essences, which don't move in any way), so this trope is only partly adhered to.
** If you examine the heart you get to see it beating. And it's nightmarish.
* In ''[[Clock Tower (
* ''[[Paper Mario (
** And it has a lot more HP than its owner does.
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', however they're the cartoonish variety but this is so common, we have [[The Heartless]].
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* ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' has a room just before the final boss fight with a giant, beating heart.
* ''[[Grandia II]]'' has the Heart of Valmar, amongst other body parts. They're less soul jars, more bits of a god that possess people. {{spoiler|And all of them also mutate their human host into a representation of what they are. The Heart is about the closest to just being the organ it's named after. Complete with an attack where it gushes blood at you.}}
* Happens in ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro
** It's weird to say this, but one occurrence of this is actually the most beautiful and touching moments in the series.
* Part of the game mechanics in ''Obscure: The Aftermath'': each dispatched monster [[Everything Fades|dissolves into black powder]], leaving behind a still-beating heart. A few scenes after this is introduced, the player is given a syringe with which fluid can be drawn from the heart to create a healing serum.
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* You can collect these in [[Vexx]].
* [[Ninja Gaiden|Ninja Gaiden on Xbox]] had an upside down tower in what I'm assuming was Hell that had the walls of a floor covered with these. And they follow you closely.
* {{spoiler|True Assassin}} in ''[[Fate/stay
* In ''[[Mystery Case Files|Return To Ravenhearst]]'', a heart (implied to be {{spoiler|Charles Dalimar's}}) sits inside a steampunk device which you have to deactivate. It can be seen beating behind a glass porthole, and it speeds up if you push the attached "Adrenaline" pump.
=== Webcomics ===
* Though not actually seen, one has made an appearance in ''[[Fox Tails]]'', kept in a case by the [[Morally
* Ursula Vernon's ''[[
* Freddy gets his heart torn out on the first day of the job in ''[[Carnies]]''. It's a little different from other examples in that he was already undead to begin with.
* ''[[
* ''[[Homestuck]]'': The Land of Pulse and Haze is this. Not only are there oceans of blood, but there are broken ramparts and bridges from which beating hearts peek out of the masonry. Bonus points for the fact that this entire construct is basically one big fuck you to the player for this land.
=== 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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*** {{smallcaps| YOU NEED A HEART TO LIVE.}}
** Another Simpsons example: In the Treehouse of Horror short Hell Toupe, Homer, [[It Makes Sense in Context|possessed by Snake by means of a hair transplant,]] kills Moe by removing his heart with a corkscrew. The heart beats after it's removal.
* In ''[[Transformers]]: [[
** And ''[[Transformers Energon]]'' features Jetfire rescuing Inferno's spark after Inferno does a sun-dive. Good news for Inferno, but Jetfire holding Inferno's life essence casually in his hand is a bit weird.
** The ''Transformers'' series seems to be quite fond of the trope. The second movie used it on two separate occasions.
* A ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' show featured the heart of a vampire.
* One episode of ''[[
=== 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".
** An episode from Fat Albert uses a made up version (I think it "eats Cleveland"). But there really was a radio program about ''The Chicken Heart That Devoured the World'' so it's most likely a [[Shout
▲=== Natural examples ===
==
=== 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 ''[[
* Employed in the second episode of ''[[Darker
=== Film ===
* In ''[[Friday the
* In ''[[
* In ''[[
* Several scenes in ''[[Apocalypto]]'' feature these.
* While it's a [[Indulgent Fantasy Segue|dream sequence]], ''Dumb And Dumber'' has Lloyd removing a heart (which beats), putting it in a doggy bag and returning it to the victim...
* Sci Fi Channel movie ''Yeti''. The [[Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti|title monster]] rips the heart out of a victim's chest and it continues beating in his hand.
* In probably the best-known instance of this trope, [[Big Bad|Mola Ram]] does this during a cult ritual in ''[[Indiana Jones and
** And somehow his victim remains [[Narm|alive and screaming]] as he's lowered, sans heart, into the pit.
*** Since he also didn't break the victim's skin, let's just call it 'magic'. The heart was still magically connected to the body until the body burned up in the lava, whereupon the heart promptly burned up too.
* Threatened at the beginning of [[The Silence of the Lambs|Red Dragon]], although it never happens.
* ''[[Rat Race]]'' has a subplot about a courier transporting a donor heart for transplant, which gets lost by [[Captain Ersatz|The Italian Mr. Bean]]. At one point a character is holding it when he touches an electric fence, which [[Magical Defibrillator|starts it right back up again]].
* ''[[Cloudy
* A living heart-in-a-jar appears as a throwaway bit of weirdness early in ''[[
* In ''[[Film/Theatreof Blood|Theatreof Blood]]'', Edward Lionheart cuts out the heart of one of his victims while he's strapped to a chair.
=== 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 ''[[
{{quote|
'''Doctor:''' Fifty people don't just ''disappear'', where -- Oh. You didn't have the parts, so you used the crew... }}
* One of the episodes of First Wave had an autopsy preformed on the body of Cade Foster. When coroner (who commented about the body being too fresh) pulled out his heart it started beating for a few seconds.
=== 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|
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.
* ''[[
=== 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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* Nobel prize winner Dr. Alexis Carrel decided to take this trope to a new height. Taking tissue from a chicken heart, he kept it alive for ''over 20 years''. No one was able to completely replicate the experiment, and [[Science Marches On|later advances in biology]] proved it impossible, as cells can divide only a certain number of times. How Dr. Carrel got his results is still a mystery.
** Normal cells can divide only a certain number of times. One of the defining features of cancer is that, well, the mechanism that limits the number of times a cell can divide got broken in the cancerous cells. This, incidentally, means that most cell lines used in cell biology labs come from cancers; most of which have outlived the person it killed...
** Especially notable in one [
* Not a heart, but a close neighbor: researchers have built a machine to keep human lungs alive outside the body, to keep them fresh much longer for transplant. You can find videos of the disembodied lungs under a glass dome, ''breathing''.
** Not quite as creepy as it sounds, as lungs can't inflate and deflate under their own power even when they're inside the body. The machine makes them expand by altering the pressure surrounding the (passive) organs, which would work just as well for a couple of balloons as for lungs.
** They've done it with hearts too for the same reason. And they beat hard, strong, and fast within their chamber.
** And I thought what they did in ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' was fake...
* When scientists use stem cells to grow cardiac tissue, they look for [[Creating Life|spontaneous beating in the plate]] to see if/where it worked.
* While any human organ harvested for transplant will be packed in ice slurry for transport, this is particularly crucial for donor hearts. Because it keeps on beating, a heart that isn't chilled down immediately will quickly exhaust its available oxygen, resort to glycolysis to make ATP, and fill its tissues with destructive levels of lactic acid, effectively suffering the ill effects of a heart attack ''while outside the body''.
* [
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[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
[[Category:Beat Still My Heart]]
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