Improbable Weapon User / Literature

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• Beatrice of "All the Time in the World" by Arthur C. Clarke once used a teddy bear as a weapon. Granted, it was an exploding teddy bear...
• Multiple characters in Anpanman. Some examples include the Donburiman Trio (Tendonman uses chopsticks, Kamameshidon uses rice paddes, and all three can throw their lids), Tekkanomaki-chan and Komaki-chan (both use bamboo sushi mats rolled up like a bo staff), Yakisobapanman (double metal spatulas), Chawanmushimaro (launches out ginko nuts and whacks them with his fan), Daikon Yakusha (daikon radish rapidly fired using a hand grater), and Datemakiman and Sakuramochi-nesan (both use bangasas as striking weapons; Sakuramochi-nesan also uses mochi as a trap for enemies).
• Bakemonogatari's Hitagi Senjogahara pulls a box-cutter blade and a stapler on Koyomi('s mouth). When he later catches up to her on the stairs, she pulls handfuls of sharp, miscellaneous office supplies from nowhere. She later states outright that she keeps them on her person at all times for self-defense.
• In the Belisarius Series, Antoninia's signature weapon is a meat cleaver which she once used to fend off attacking thugs. Later Valentinian who is a perfectionist with regard to hand-to-hand combat goes out of his way to insist that Rana Sanga's son learn how to use household accessories as weapons; even a prince might someday find himself without a sword.
• Older Than Feudalism: The Bible:
  • Samson kicks ass with an ass's jawbone. (Animal jawbones with flaked flint chips wedged into their tooth-sockets were actually used as primitive cutting implements by many Neolithic cultures. Hey, it's easier than carving a saw from scratch out of wood.)
  • Shamgar, another of the Judges, gets only one verse in the Bible, declaring that he killed 600 Philistines with an oxgoad... a stick used to make oxen move forward. From tent stakes to jars with torches in them to farm implements, one might get the impression that the ancient Hebrews considered it cheating to fight using something that was actually intended to be a weapon. And when you're fighting an oppressor, normal weapons aren't easy to come by.
• In Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan, Zakuro wields the deadly and powerful wet towel Eckilsax.
• Cinnamon Bun Series:
  • One of the first skills that Broccoli Bunch picks up after landing on the world of Dirt is improvised weapon proficiency, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. In no specific order, she has thus far wielded:
    • A mop.
    • An animated skull on a stick.
    • A spade (which is later upgraded into a warspade, of all things).
    • A candlestick.
    • And her go-to favorite, Cleaning Magic, which has proven lethally effective in certain cases.
  • Many of her friends also qualify as well:
    • Amaryllis gets an honorable mention for her use of Razor Floss.
    • Awen, on the other hand, gets pride of place for her use of a Wand of Cure Hysteria as a stabbing implement.
• Ciaphas Cain: One trooper uses a broken plate to attack a naval provost. Unfortunately for all involved, it hits him in the carotid.
• In The Cleric Quintet, Cadderly's favored weapons are a blowgun-walking stick, a hand crossbow with exploding darts, and a combat yo-yo. Pikel, the dwarf wannabe-druid, uses a small stout tree as a combination two-handed club and anti-personnel battering ram.
• Cradle Series: Eithan Arelius, being the Patriarch of a clan of janitors, at one point uses an ordinary broom to defend himself. The broom is enhanced with soulfire, making it far more durable than it has any right to be, but it's still just a broom. When that fails, he pulls out an ordinary pair of clothing scissors. These are also enhanced by soulfire, but even ignoring that they are absolutely unbreakable and can cut through anything. His opponent, who has plenty of experience with soulfire himself, has no idea how these seemingly ordinary scissors are cutting through all his defenses.
  Eithan: He initiated an open attack against me in Serpent's Grave, and I was forced to take out the broom.
  Emperor: I've never heard that expression. I assume you mean an actual broom.
• The Dresden Files:
  • When Harry Dresden is attacked by several Black Court vampires, what does he use to take them down? Holy water... balloons. He's also wielded shakers full of spices from a food-court pizza shop against them, because the contents include powdered garlic.
  • In the first book, Harry holds off giant magical scorpions with a housecleaning spell.
  • All of the above are topped by the use of a laser guided, air-dropped frozen turkey. This is actually part of a bad luck curse that he is able to redirect, which is also responsible for things like someone getting hit by a car while swimming and someone opening the trunk of their car to find it filled to the brim with bees.
  • Toot-Toot's weapons of choice are a nail strapped to a broken pen and a boxcutter. Of course, Toot-Toot is a pixie, so they are the right size for him, and Fae are vulnerable to iron, so they are potentially highly useful.
• Durarara!!:
  • Shizuo's trademark weapons are street signs and vending machines. Also, Mikado and Izaya, to a lesser extent, both get honorable mentions for harnessing the awesome power of the internet and unleashing it on their unsuspecting enemies.
  • Seiji manages to stab a pen into Heiwajima Shizuo, who Vorona couldn't penetrate his chest more than half a centimeter with a knife. Shinra's destroyed some of his best scalpels operating on him.
• Patricia C. Wrede has a short story in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles called "Utensile Strength" which features something called the Frying Pan of Doom. Anyone struck by the aforementioned weapon is transformed into a giant poached egg.
• In Fate/Zero, Berserker's "Knight of Owner" Noble Phantasm allows him to become an Instant Expert with anything he considers a weapon. This includes streetlamp poles and (in Fate/Grand Order) things like wooden logs or chopsticks. This is based on the myth where Sir Lancelot defeated enemy knights using nothing but a wood branch as if it were a sword.
• In the first Florida Roadkill book, a man is brutally beaten and eventually killed with a variety of convenience store supplies for insulting the cashier. The killers then pay for the items they used as weapons (and the drinks they had entered the store to purchase) and go on their way.
• Goblins in the Castle: Igor's weapon of choice is his teddy bear, which he uses to bop people on the head.
• In Gormenghast Titus Alone, an enraged Flay attacks Steerpike by throwing a live cat at his face.
• Jessamine Lovelace from The Infernal Devices, uses a parasol Henry made for her. The fabric is edged with electrum, though.
• Maelstrom from Is This A Zombie? fights by dual wielding bowls of pork ramen.
• In the Khaavren Romances, Khaavren's peasant servant carries a barstool as his weapon of choice after using it as an Improvised Weapon and finding it tolerably effective.
• In "Lamb to the Slaughter", a woman kills her husband with a frozen sheep leg. No, she's not a Lethal Chef, she crushes his skull with it. Then she roasts the sheep leg and feeds it to the police.
• A character in The Langoliers uses a toaster wrapped in a tablecloth to do some creative rearrangement of their resident psychotic's skull. Amazingly, said psychotic survives this, proving useful for once when the title entities arrive.
• Legacy of the Dragokin: Man in Shadow can use the shreds of his tattered cape as four extra limbs.
• Red Orm in Frans G Bengtsson's The Long Ships uses a chopping block as a thrown weapon in a fight. In the aftermath, several others try to throw it, but no-one manages to even lift it. This makes Orm very happy.
• The Looking-Glass Wars: Hatter Madigan's weapons include blades that come out of his wrist pieces, a backpack that looks like a swiss army knife when he wants something to fight with (including corkscrews), and a hat that he can split into blades that work as boomerangs. Since he comes from a place where imagination is one of the most important things to have, his crazy weapons are not impractical. He is well known as a very good fighter.
• Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!:
  • Sanae uses her very long pigtails, which end in improvised bolas, as her weapons (although not very effectively).
  • Touka uses a ladle, which she can use both as a melee weapon and a projectile.
• Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard:
  • Blitzen, despite being a dwarf, prefers making clothes and accessories over weapons. He makes it work by fighting with Expand-O-Ducks, metal duck sculptures that change in size, and his signature chainmail bowties.
  • Like most einherjar, Alex fights with the weapon she was holding, which in his case is...a roll of pottery wire. A roll of pottery wire enchanted to be extendable and sharp enough to cut through stone, that is.
  • Vidar, the god of vengeance and justice, fights with a giant spiked boot that Heimdall describes as being made from every shoe that's ever been thrown away (which makes sense if you know your Norse mythology, as Vidar is also the god of footwear).
• The Spartans of Mythos Academy are born knowing how to turn any item they can pick up into a weapon.
• Mahiro Yasaka from Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! uses forks; his mother Yoriko, a part-time monster-slayer, uses them better. Regardless, both of them are good enough that they've actually put the fear of...well, man into the hearts of the three Cthulhu Mythos deities who live in their house.
  Mahiro: Do not underestimate the fork. The fork... is the strongest weapon in the universe.
• The Old Kingdom series: The Abhorsens. Magic bells. Also, on a handful of notable occasions, magical rings that turn into cat collars with magical bells on them.
• In the novella Omega Rising, Omega's weapon runs out of power and she's forced to improvise. Her choice of weapon: a motivational poster.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Percy chokes the Nemean Lion with freeze-dried space meals — in the middle of the Air and Space Museum. If that's not improbable, what is?
• Not exactly "wielded", but the protagonist of Pest Control verbally invokes this trope when he realizes he can use New York City as a "weapon" against the foreign hitmen on his trail. Like, say, leading one gun-brandishing killer through the kitchen of an Italian restaurant, then on into its dining room filled with Mafia dons and their trigger-happy bodyguards.
• In A Proper Taming, Portia grabs a bedwarmer against a man who barges into her room.
• Yamani (read: Japanese) ladies in Protector of the Small use silk fans with blades hidden in the edges for combat and for playing catch. Kel explains to her shocked friends that they're used when a woman thinks she's going into a dangerous situation but can't wear a weapon openly.
  "There is a saying in the Islands. Beware the women of the warrior class, for all they touch is both decorative and deadly."
• In the Rainbow Magic series, in Isabella the Air Fairy's book, a goblin weaponizes cans of air freshener to keep the girls at bay.
• Smith from The Red and the Rest used a mini-fridge as a weapon in a pinch. Several chapters later, Mel uses a shaken-up can of orange soda as an impromptu grenade.
• There's a memorable scene in The Return of the Condor Heroes by Louis Cha when two guys duel. One takes out a fan and asks for the the other man's sword or spear to be shown. He responds by taking out a brush. Guess who's better?
• In one of Mercedes Lackey's Serrated Edge stories, an ordinary human takes down a Banshee with a bottle of (blessed) soda water (containing iron filings). When asked how he managed to get cold iron into water, he replied "Never piss off an engineer."
• Nicholai Hel (of the book Shibumi) practices a martial art where anything can be used as a weapon. He has used the usual means of killing, but he has also made use of everyday things such as a key, a plastic cup, an ID card, and a folded magazine.
• Manly Wade Wellman wrote a series of horror/fantasy stories and novels, the "Silver John" series, in which a wandering minstrel named John battles evil in the backwoods of Appalachia armed only with a silver-stringed guitar. Silver is said early on to be the one thing Satan fears, and that's who John is going after. (In The Film of the Book The Legend of Hillbilly John, his strings were made from old Spanish coins; his grandfather tried to fight the Devil using strings made from silver dollars, but ended up dead — silver dollars haven't had silver in them for years. "The government of men is in league with him.")
• A canon Slayers short story has Lina's father ward off a mob through expert use of a fishing rod. The attackers are initially incredulous, but once he demonstrates the ability to flick the hook precisely into his target's eye, no one is too eager to attack him any more. He also later uses it to land a blow on a dumbstruck demon.
• In the horror novel Stage Fright, the VR artiste's previous works include a "dreamie" in which two ghouls battle each other with shovels in a cemetery. It's unclear if they're human graverobbers or monsters, but either way, it's justified that they'd be good at wielding them.
• In Tom Swift and His Airship, towards the end, there is a fight and Mr. Damon sprays a baddie with selzer and then beats him with the bottles!
  ... Mr. Damon rushing toward the now disabled leader, playing both bottles of seltzer on him. Then, when all the liquid was gone the eccentric man began to beat Morse over the head and shoulders with the heavy bottles until the scoundrel begged for mercy.
• Trainspotting: Bar brawler Francis Begbie likes to carry around a variety of strange weapons, including sharpened knitting needles. Renton suspects that without his weapons, Begbie really isn't all that tough.
• In Up Periscope by Robb White, an American frogman ambushed and killed a Japanese officer with a bottle of Sake.
• Discworld:
  • A very improbable version of the trope occurs in The Wee Free Men: The Nac Mac Feegle have what are known as "gonnagles", also known as battle poets. Resident gonnagle Not-As-Big-As-Medium-Sized-Jock-But-Bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock's poetry is so bad it makes ravenous monsters keel over. Presumably these are based on the works of William McGonnagall, the worst poet in English history.
  • Pictsies also allegedly carry their babies with them into battle, if only as a backup weapon. Not necessarily a poor choice, as male infant pictsies evidently use their cradle as a boxing ring.
  • In Carpe Jugulum the Pictises give King Verence a rather large cup of their battle brew. In the following battle to recapture Lancre Castle, one of the weapons mentioned is a "ballistic King", doubling as Grievous Harm with a Body.
  • For Discworld's own Ur-example, there's Conina the Barbarian Hairdresser. A beautician by preference and a badass by genetics (being Cohen the Barbarian's illegitimate daughter), she combines her two aptitudes by using curling irons, crimps, and other salon implements in combat. Her Discworld Companion entry speculates that Conina might convert absolutely anything — a hairgrip, a piece of paper, a hamster — into a deadly weapon in a pinch.
    • Rincewind speculated that the man she stabbed with the scissors was probably better off than the one she raked on the face with the steel comb.
  • In Wintersmith Tiffany becomes the owner of a Cornucopia, which produces food on command and can also be used as a weapon...
    One big pumpkin, her Second Thoughts urged. They get really hard at this time of year. Shoot him now!
  • Sam Vimes's butler Willikins grew up on the streets of Ankh-Morpork. He used a cap with sharpened pennies fastened on the brim. Since Terry Pratchett is fond of historical trivia, this is actually Truth in Television.
    • After his house is broken into in Thud! Sam reflects on how comforting it is at times like this to have a butler who can throw a common fish knife so hard that it is quite difficult to remove from the wall.
  • Dwarf Bread. Implied to contain gravel as a major ingredient, it lasts for centuries, can be thrown with deadly force and accuracy, and forms a major part of dwarf culture. And in a desperate situation, you can even eat it. It would have to be very desperate though, it's use as a food source is primarily that when faced with the prospect of eating Dwarf Bread everything else looks damn tasty by comparison. Their chocolate follows the same guidelines; it's very mildly more edible (it eventually melts in the mouth) and significantly more dangerous (it has a totally-not-Tobleronesque serrated shape, and it contains nuts).
  • Gussie Two-Grins (mentioned briefly in Night Watch Discworld) was one of these, as Vimes describes him, anything was a weapon. Of course this was far from the only mention of 'not strictly speaking weapons' in the book, indeed mentions are made specifically of broken-off bottles, meat-hooks and other tools of butchery, and in one case, a hammer, wedges, and ginger, among many others.
    • In the same book there's a mention made of an apprentice who attempts to use a broken-off bottle as a weapon in the tense stand-off at the Watch House in Treacle Mine Road. Unfortunately, he does it wrong...which results in the rather tightly-gripped bottle entirely shattering into sharper-than-razor fragments. Vimes calls the only doctor in the city worth being treated by, and between the first aid Vimes applied and the doctor's surgery, the man keeps his life and his hand will work again. This goes a long way towards defusing the tense situation.
    • Vimes himself, of course, has been known to wield one of his wife's pet swamp dragons as a potential flamethrower.
  • The Assassins' Guild Diary reveals that among the assorted lethal weapons employed for inhumations by famed guild-school graduates, the Guild museum houses a one-armed teddy bear names Mr. Wuggle.
  • Rincewind, the failure wizzard once challenged a child Sourcerer with God-like powers with a brick in a sock. Later when he and the same child are faced against Eldritch Abominations, he is thankful socks comes in pairs and fills that one with sand to attack them so the boy could escape.
  • Nanny Ogg's cat Greebo has on occasion served as what basically amounts to a feline landmine of the "Bouncing Betty" variety.
  • Making Money gives us a demonstration of Sloshi, the official martial art of the Fool's Guild. Fighting Clown is taken entirely literally, and all the tricks of the trade including high-velocity custard pies, ladders and balloon animals are used with deadly efficiency - the latter are particularly useful in killing Cosmo's personal assassin, making for surprisingly good garrotes.
• X-Wing: Iron Fist: Ton Phanan cuts a would-be kidnapper's throat with a laser scalpel from his medical kit. While discussing that with New Republic Intelligence in the following chapter, Phanan remarks that under the right circumstances he can kill a man with anything in the kit, from surgical tools to bacta patches, and cracks that he quit practicing medicine full-time because he enjoys killing people he doesn't like more than healing them.

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