Life or Limb Decision/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character is faced with a Sadistic Choice: sacrifice one of their limbs or die.

  • Straight: Bob’s leg gets trapped under a large boulder, and he has to cut it off to escape.
  • Exaggerated: Bob has to cut off three separate limbs, all of which are trapped.
  • Downplayed: Bob has to cut off some of his fingers to escape.
    • Bob has six different limbs. He can miss one.
    • Bob can regenerate his limbs.
  • Inverted: Bob's leg has somehow been cut off, and he has to reattach it to escape.
  • Parodied: Bob's leg gets trapped under a large boulder. Despite help already being on the way, he cuts if off anyway because he doesn’t want to miss the latest episode of his favourite TV show.
  • Subverted: Bob's leg is trapped under a large boulder, but despite the intense pain, he manages to break free after some effort without sacrificing his limb.
  • Double Subverted: The limb has sustained enough trauma that he later needs to have it amputated anyway.
  • Deconstructed: Bob cuts off his limb to escape, but he bleeds to death not much later.
  • Reconstructed: This is still preferable to slowly dying from hunger, his only other alternative. At least he had a shot at making it out this way.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob cuts off his trapped arm, regenerates it, is trapped again, has to cut it again, repeat ad nauseum.
  • Averted: Bob doesn't get his leg trapped.
  • Enforced: The writer needs to portray Bob as a character who would be willing to do anything to survive, including sacrificing parts of his own body.
  • Lampshaded: "If I manage to get my leg trapped and with nobody to help me, I'd probably have to cut if off."
  • Invoked: See parodied above.
  • Defied: Faced with having his leg trapped under the boulder, Bob decides to wait for help for as long as he possibly can.
  • Discussed: "And then I was faced with a terrible choice: cut my own leg off or die."
  • Conversed: "I just saw this movie where the guy gets his leg trapped under a rock, so eventually he cuts it off to escape."
  • Played for Laughs: Bob cuts off his leg to escape... too bad he cut off the wrong leg.
  • Played for Drama: The work goes into the physical and mental consequences of Bob sacrificing his leg to survive.
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