The knife game, nerve, bishop, or 5-finger fillet, is a game wherein a person places the palm of his or her hand down on a table with fingers apart, using a knife, or sharp object, the performer attempts to stab back and forth between their fingers, moving the object back and forth, trying to not hit their fingers.
The order in which the spaces between the fingers are stabbed varies. In North America, the most popular version is to simply stab all the spaces in order, starting from behind the thumb to after the little finger, and back again. In Europe, a more complex order is used. With the spaces numbered 1 (behind the thumb) through 6 (after the little finger), the order would be as follows:
1-2-1-3-1-4-1-5-1-6-1-5-1-4-1-3-1-2 (repeats)
or an even more complex order:
1-2-1-3-1-4-1-5-1-6-2-6-3-6-4-6-5-6-4-6-3-6-2-6 (repeats)
as opposed to the American version, which would be thus:
1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2 (repeats).
It is the European ordering which is shown on camera in Alias, in City of Scars the player seems to play a combination of American and European.
On film, this was first seen in the 1962 Roman Polanski film Knife in the Water. The trick can be seen in both John Carpenter's Dark Star and James Cameron's Aliens. In 1996, it was shown in the movie Surviving Picasso. It is also seen in the episode "Picasso: Modern Art Goes Political" in Simon Schama's Power of Art as well as in The Hangover Part II a character loses a finger while playing. The episode depicts the first meeting between Pablo Picasso and future mistress Dora Maar when she cuts herself playing the knife game at a Paris cafe. It was later shown in an episode of the television series Alias, briefly in the bar at the start of the Lucas Arts game Full Throttle (where it is also a hidden minigame), in The Simpsons, the video games Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Rage (video game), the opening of the Samurai Jack episode "Jack versus Mad Jack", the "Family Limitation" episode in season 1 of Boardwalk Empire, the "Calamity Jen" episode in season 1 of The IT Crowd and in the web only film by Aaron Schoenke City of Scars . Many people (particularly school children) use a safer version with less harmful objects, like a permanent marker or a pencil.