Ken: Okay! Um... See my thumb? Now, look. I'm pulling it off! Look at that! Amazing, right?
Zane: That's just your other thumb.
Ken: Is it? Is it, or am I really pulling off my thumb?
Zane: No! It's your other thumb. You're bending one down, and folding your fingers over the other.
Ken: But doesn't it look a little... magic?
Zane: No, it doesn't!
Zane: That's just your other thumb.
Ken: Is it? Is it, or am I really pulling off my thumb?
Zane: No! It's your other thumb. You're bending one down, and folding your fingers over the other.
Ken: But doesn't it look a little... magic?
Zane: No, it doesn't!
Wanna learn a party trick?
First, present your two hands. Next, on one hand, bend the thumb so that only its joint is visible. This will be the base thumb. With the other hand, bend your opposing thumb. This will be the pulling thumb. Let it touch the base thumb. Then cover the gap between your thumbs with the ring and middle finger of your pulling hand. With the trick ready, slowly distance the pulling hand away from the base hand so it looks like you plucked off your thumb.
In a nutshell, this is a goofy hand trick where someone makes it look like they broke their finger off their hand. Usually in media, this is seen as a lame and basic trick. But there are cases where the audience can be very gullible, and actually believes in the person’s trick. There are even cases where the audience will become horrified, believing this is Fingore.
Compare other magic tricks such as What Have We Ear? and "Pulling Out Scarves" Trick. For other hand gags, see "Got Your Nose" Gag and Bunny Ears Picture Prank. And for more magic tricks, see Hocus Tropus. See also Life-or-Limb Decision and Body Horror for more gory examples.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Crayon Shin-chan: One of the manga-exclusive stories has a Beach Episode where Shin-Chan and family, including their friends from Matazuresou Apartments, go out for a seaside outing. Turns out the Noharas' neighbor Omata is an exceptionally good cook when slicing up seafood and vegetables for a barbeque, besides pranking his friends by making it look like he lopped off his forefinger at one point.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency: During a fight with Santana, JoJo punches his opponent, letting his hand get absorbed in the process. He recoils in shock, before revealing that it was a trick by him; he managed to pull his hand away just in time, tucking it inside his sleeve. He playfully does a detachable thumb trick seconds later, to everyone's chagrin.
- Non Non Biyori: in an episode of the second season, Konomi convinces the six-year-old Renge that she's a thumb-detaching monster by playing this trick. Renge, being Renge, panics.
- On My Hero Academia Season 4 Episode 8, Suneater of the Big Three. During Tamaki aka Suneater Flashback, he showed Mirio this trick. That makes him over enjoys.
Comedy
- Occurs in the Charity Spoof Harry Potter and the Secret Chamberpot of Azerbaijan: Professor McGonagall demonstrates this trick to a class of students who all react in slack-jawed awe, except Ron who recoils in shock.
Film — Animated
- Barbie: A Fairy Secret: When Ken is expected to duel Zane for Princess Graciella's hand, he laments that he doesn't know any magic spells. The closest he can manage is a desperate attempt at pretending to pull off his thumb, which doesn't fool Zane but does get him to try calling off the duel, seeing how outmatched Ken clearly is as a human against a fairy. Graciella still insists on seeing them fight, though.
- The Simpsons Movie: While residents of Springfield try to escape the dome, Cletus distracts Russ Cargill by showing off his detachable-thumb trick and very slowly explaining how it works.
- Three Heroes on Distant Shores: Alyosha shows this trick to the islanders to entertain them. In the end, he teaches his clone to do the same trick.
Film — Live-Action
- Encino Man: Dave does the trick while thinking of ways to test the intelligence of Contemporary Caveman Link.
- The Last Samurai: Algren entertains Taka's youngest child with the extensible thumb trick, unable to speak to anyone in a common language at that point.
- In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, this was how Francis Cornfine, a former Hollywood tour bus driver, was able to convince Oz's denizens that he was an all-powerful wizard.
- In Parenthood, Gil does this trick for his niece at his son's birthday party. However, due to both her young age and her lack of social interactions/uptight upbringing, she's mortified by the trick and starts screaming after viewing it.
Live-Action TV
- Lamb Chop's Play-Along: Series host Shari Lewis performs this trick in a "Something Fascinating" segment
in season 2 episode 6 ("What's Your Name")
Visual Novels
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All: During the third case, Phoenix and Maya talk about this trick, and she says that Pearl was able to do it, but Maya could not figure it out. In response, Phoenix does it, much to Maya's amazement.
Web Animation
- GoofySpooky — "Magical Incident": Two boys come across a mysterious woman who claims to be the best wizard of the world, and they ask her to cast some spells to see her magic. The first trick she performs is detaching her thumb with a smug smile... and suddenly she shakes her tongue while making a crazy face. One of the boys is disappointed with how niche her magic was and claims she's not a real wizard. This angers her, and she decides to prove them wrong. She detaches her thumb again, only this time, she literally tears it off while spilling Black Blood, much to the horror of the kids.
Webcomics
- Out-of-Placers: When Vizlet is worried that the yinglets may distrust Elim due to the security breaches he's caused, a Description Cut reveals that he is now entertaining the some yinglets with this trick. This works because most yinglets are dumb and tend to be an easy crowd.
- Penny Arcade: An exterminator taken by a Deepcrow (a Giant Flyer with a spider eyes and a sideways beak) turns out to know such "magic" and use it to break the crow.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: In "Wax Museum", Anne Boonchuy does this trick to impress a small town after they get scared by her freakiness. In fact they're so impressed that they give her money for it.
- One Beavis and Butt-Head episode had the boys visiting a doctor who did this trick to impress them. Being teenagers, though, they couldn't care less, and Butt-Head even flat-out told him that he was stupid for doing that trick.
- Fanboy and Chum Chum: Fanboy does this trick in the first episode during his pretend Wizard Duel against Kyle. Chum Chum is disgusted and proceeds to Faint in Shock.
- Futurama: On the "Near-Death Wish episode." Ned Farnsworth does this trick, that makes Fry happy.
Fry: Stop, Shabba-doo, you’re freaking me out. (Laughs)
- In an episode of King of the Hill, Peggy does this trick to try to explain the concept of misdirection to a group of gullible locals. Jimmy Wichard immediately starts screaming bloody murder.
Peggy: Things are not always as they appear to be. This looks like I pulled my thumb off.
Wichard: Ee-AUUUGH! She pulled her thumb off! Call a doctor! - The Owl House: At the start of the first-season episode "Really Small Problems", Luz uses this trick to fool Gus into thinking that humans really can detach their thumbs.
- Phineas and Ferb: Baljeet's act for the circus in "Jerk De Soleil" is to detach his thumb and then re-attach it.
Baljeet: Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, come on thumb, it's healing time!
- Robot Chicken: A sketch from "Bionic Cow" has an old man entertaining his niece and nephew by doing this trick while saying his "war injury" is acting up again. However, Sylar then appears and kills him to steal his "power" for himself – along with his explosive diarrhea.
- The Simpsons: Parodied in "Trilogy of Error"; Marge accidentally cuts off Homer's thumb when he tries to grab a brownie she's slicing, and a series of events leads to Homer hitching a ride to Dr. Nick's on Cletus' pickup truck. On the way, Homer demonstrates the "Detachable Thumb" trick to Cletus with his severed thumb. Cletus is impressed and tells Homer he could be one of them "TV Magic Queers".
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Ghost Host," the Flying Dutchman haunts Squidward, performing a bunch of horrifying tricks. The last trick that really scares Squidward is detaching his finger and putting it back, while bellowing "Oooh... scary..."
Squidward: No! No! That's impossible!
- Teen Titans Go!: In "Real Magic," Raven hears the other Titans screaming. When she asks what the commotion is, they alert her that Robin pulled off his thumb. It turns out Robin was just doing a magic trick, as he puts the thumb back on his hand, relieving the Titans... but then pulls it off again, scaring them again. Robin explains that he started performing magic tricks after seeing the Amazing Mumbo Jumbo from their previous fight, much to the joy of most of the other Titans... but Raven, a dark magic user, doesn't approve of it and warns him how his amateur magic can anger the magic god and put their world in big trouble. Eventually they get confronted by the magic god, who turns out to be an amateur magician like Robin, and was angered by Raven for heckling Robin's magic tricks and nearly forces her to work in his mines. Robin insists the magic god give her another chance, and convinces her to perform amateur magic like him by detaching her finger like Robin did earlier.
Raven: [sarcastically] Look. My thumb is missing.
- Trollhunters: In "The Shattered King", Tobias 'Toby' Domzalski is presented to the Quagawump Trolls as a reincarnation of their Shattered King; they demand he demonstrate his magical powers to prove that he is the Shattered King. Toby does this trick, which is enough for the Quagawumps, who accept his claim.
- W.I.T.C.H. (2004):When Will is told that she is the Guardian of the Quintessence, she dismisses it by saying that the only magic in her is the thumb trick, and she does it while talking.