In the 2014 film The Fault in Our Stars, Gus has had his right leg amputated because of osteosarcoma.
Osteosarcoma is a cancer that begins in bone, most often affecting teenagers and young adults near the knee or shoulder. In the story, Augustus “Gus” Waters is a former basketball player whose treatment included the removal of his right leg. He uses a prosthetic limb and initially describes himself as being in remission.
The amputation is important to Gus’s character because it affects both his athletic identity and his fear of being remembered only for his illness. The film shows him as witty, confident, and romantic, but also as someone wrestling with the possibility that his cancer may return. A common mix-up is remembering only that he “lost a leg,” without recalling that it was specifically the right leg. Gus’s cancer later returns and spreads, becoming a central part of the film’s tragic second half.