Helping Hands: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Did you just chop apart the evil zombie or robot you were fighting? Keep an eye on all the parts, because it's only a matter of time before that severed hand starts to spider-crawl after you, or scuttle off for some nefarious purpose.

 

 

See [[Evil Hand]] for when this happens ''before'' it gets lopped off.

 

 

== Robots ==

 

* The detached hand of B-4 grabs at Worf's ankle in ''Star [[Trek Nemesis]]''.

 

** And then the miniature robot started running around in Lister's "joy department".

** In another episode where the main characters are back on the Dwarf and imprisoned, another part of Kryten's "fully simulated anatomy" detaches itself and starts to scurry about the cell.

* In ''[[Terminator]]: [[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' one of the terminators manages to seek out its decapitated head by first tearing off the head of some hapless human for the sake of eyesight. Those things are apparently ridiculously modular...but cease to work completely when you destroy the easily accessible (when they're immobile) chip in their skulls.

* Tenaya 7 in ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' often detaches her hand to have it get into places she can't.

 

 

* Optimus Prime was disassembled, and controlled his limbs to re-unite, via robot telepathy, in an episode of ''[[Transformers]]''.

** A both robotic ''and'' zombie version occurs in the ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' episode "Shadowzone". After shooting off {{spoiler|Zombie!Skyquake's}} arm (using ''Starscream's'' disembodied arm, no less), Jack, Raf, and Miko are then promptly pursued by it.

* All parts of ''[[The Iron Giant]]'' can move on their own, for self repair purposes.

** This was also in the original book.

 

== Zombies & Other Spookiness ==

* The mascot for Hamburger Helper is a disembodied glove with a face on it.

 

* In the anime ''Vampire Hunter D'', we have the titular vampire hunter's left hand, which has somehow gotten a Demon embedded in it. Said demon is shown by having a ''face'' in the palm of the hand, including eyes, nose, and mouth. After being severed in a rather gory scene that includes D being staked through the heart, the hand crawls back to D's body, reattaches itself to D's arm, ''pulls out the stake'', then attempts to revive D by a) eating earth for energy (with accompanying belch afterward), b) sucking wind to give him breath, then pounding on his chest to restart his heart. All this while a monster approaches that would be the [[Deader Than Dead|Final Death]] for D. Naturally, he wakes up in time to kill the monster and progress through the story. Of course, all this is helped by the titular D being a ''dhampir'', a half-human half-vampire hybrid.

* The pirate captain Buggy from ''[[One Piece]]'' ate a Devil Fruit that gave him this power.

** Unfortunately, he could feel pain in his detached bits, as he found out when [[Groin Attack|Luffy kicked him in his disembodied fork]].

 

* Ash's severed hand in ''[[Evil Dead]] 2''.

* Governor Swann gets to deal with a undead hand in the first ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' film.

* Null the biker zombie from ''[[Braindead]]'' after getting chopped to pieces his body parts and organs continue to attack Lionel.

* In the horror-comedy ''[[Idle Hands]]'', a slacker's hand gets possessed by a demon. He eventually cuts it off, only for the hand to continue trying to kill people.

** They ''were'' trying to help, not their fault "she chose ''down''."

* The ''[[Phantasm (Film)|Phantasm]]'' series does this a couple of times, first with severed fingers, later with whole hands.

 

* Patchwork, aka Modular Woman, from the ''[[Wild Cards]]'' novels, can tear off her body parts and use them remotely. She had people plant her eyes and ear (she needed the other ear to communicate with others) where they could spy on her boss's enemies.

* Necromancers who stay alive way too long in ''[[Nightrunner]]'' turn into Dyrmagnos, beings with withered corpse bodies. If you cut them up without separating the body parts, they will rejoin. The wizards' museum has a pair of hands from an infamous Dyrmagnos which still move after hundreds of years.

* The severed hand of an executed sorcerer seeks vengance on the man who betrayed him in the [[Solomon Kane]] short story "The Right Hand of Doom".

* In ''The Iron Man'' by Ted Hughes, published as ''The Iron Giant'' in the United States and very loosely adapted into the film of the same name, the titular character arrives on Earth as a large collection of disassembled bits that then have to assemble themselves. The book example probably belongs here rather than in the Robots folder, as the titular Iron Man behaves more like a ''kaiju'' than a [[Humungous Mecha]].

* The wights in [[A Song of Ice and Fire]] have limbs that continue to move about and attack even after dismemberment.

 

* ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]''. The episode that plays with this trope is even called "Helping Hand"! Although it isn't very helpful after Alex uses it to clean up the shop, then doesn't give it a break or reward it in any way.

* [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Buffy]] herself once had to sell a detached mummy hand to a picky customer. [[Groundhog Day Loop|It didn't go so well.]]

** Played straight for a spell in the classic story "Hand of Fear".

 

** In 3.5, Warlocks have an invocation that severs their ''own'' hand, which animates and crawls around like a spider, to be used as a sort of scout. They can also do this with an ''[[Eye Scream|eye]]''. Don't worry, the limbs come back.

** 'Bigby's Many Hands' line of spells, which summon the disembodied hands of, presumably, the Wizard Bigby, which do various 'things' depending on the spell. Similar spells are 'Mage's Hand', which is for non-combat purposes, the 'Spectral Hand', and others, including one even called 'Helping Hand'.

*** Although a very strange thought experiment on 4chan's /tg/ board suggested using an array of them with simple instructions (monitoring other hands and raising or lowering fingers as needed) to create a massive undead Turing-equivalent computer. ''Then'' someone suggested capturing some pixies, putting [[Good Thing You Can Heal|Rings of Regeneration]] on them and repeatedly cutting off and reanimating their hands to give an [[Serial Escalation|endlessly self-improving undead CPU.]]

* The advantage Independent Body Parts from ''[[GURPS]]: Powers''.

 

* The iconic Choking Hands from ''[[Blood]]''.

* One of these is available as a non-combat pet in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''.

* Guybrush's left hand gains a mind of its own when it's infected by the [[Hate Plague|Pox of LeChuck]] in ''[[Tales of Monkey Island|Tales]] of [[Monkey Island]]'', and acts on its own whether or not it's attached to Guybrush's arm.

 

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Autonomous and Artificial Appendage Index]]

[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]