Cross Attack

"Say your prayers!"

Crosses are symbols associated with Christian religion and peace. Because of the irony of it, some creators may include crosses as a way to induce violence in their work. This trope is about crosses being used for attacks. It can come in two variants:

• Cross-shaped Weapons: Either a cross used as a weapon or a cross attached to a weapon like a blade or a whip. They're often wielded by a Badass Preacher or soldiers of a Church Militant to show their affiliation to Christian religion. Also, it can add an extra deadly factor to an already dangerous character; crosses look scary if someone wields them as a weapon to hurt and potentially kill people. Villains and demons sometimes can have these too because of the blasphemy of turning a holy symbol into their weapon.
• Cross-shaped Spells: Powers that generate energy beams or explosions with the shape of a cross. Magic attacks with cross imagery or physical crosses used as the source of the magic attack can count too. They may occur when Religion is Magic.

Sub-Trope of Improbable Weapon User. Often a result of Anime Catholicism. See also Holy Burns Evil, for when it is the holiness of the cross as a religious symbol that harms or keeps away evil beings. Not to be confused with Cross Counter.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Angel's Egg: The nameless young man (who may be the Christ or Anti-Christ) in Mamoru Oshii's animated film carries a large, cross-shaped weapon in his back.
• Blood Blockade Battlefront: Klaus Von Reinherz wears a knuckleduster with a cross-shaped ornament to channel his Brain Grid Blood Battle Style, shaping his blood into elaborate skeletal crosses to strike enemies. He was trained to hunt vampires known as Blood Breeds, but he puts his skills to work fighting various extradimensional and mundane threats in Hellsalem's Lot.
• Chrono Crusade: The Order of Magdalene uses weapons with cross imagery to fight demons. The nun Rosette's guns fire bullets that show crosses in the air, the barriers used to trap the demons glow with cross-shaped energy, and the minister Remington's energy blade looks like a cross relic until it's activated.
• D.Gray-Man: The power of Allen Walker's Innocence can be channeled into a beam of light at the first Invocation which leaves a cross-shaped light behind each target hit. It's capable of hitting and destroying multiple Level 1 Akuma in a single blow.
• Digimon: One of Angewomon's attacks is "Heaven's Charm", which fires energy in the shape of a cross.
• Fairy Tail: Larcade of the Spriggan 12 dresses like a Buddhist monk. Ironically, he uses a large metal cross as a weapon to bludgeon and impale his foes.
• Lyrical Nanoha: Hayate's Armed Device is named "Schwertkreuz," which means "Sword Cross" in Gratuitous German. It normally takes the form of a small gold cross, usually hung on a gold chain like a pendant. The gold cross is originally the remaining non-magical fragment left behind by Reinforce and is used as part of the Device with Hayate's stated intention. When activated, it takes the form of a cross-shaped Magic Staff, serving as the cannon-body for Hayate's spells.
• Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan: The religious Youkai Shokera wields a giant cross-shaped spear that shoots cross-shaped beams.
• One Piece: The vampire-themed swordsman Dracule Mihawk wields cross-shaped blades. For weak opponents, he uses a knife hidden in a cross-shaped pendant around his neck, and for worthy opponents, he uses a huge sword with a handle that resembles an ornate cross.
• Puella Magi Kazumi Magica: Kazumi's weapon is a large cross-shaped Magic Staff. She can use the cross as a melee weapon at close range, but it's most effectively used to fire magic beams from a distance.
• Rave Master: Solasido's signature weapon is named Holy Cross. Just like its name indicates, the weapon has the shape of an X, with a hole at the center for grabbing purposes. Solasido is able to spin the cross with ease as a boomerang for the use of defeating more than one opponent at a time. He uses it for fighting the Demonoids that attack his city.
• In Soul Eater, Spirit Albarn's weapon form is a cross with a Sinister Scythe blade on it.
• Tokyo Mew Mew: Mew Zakuro's weapon is a cross that generates an energy whip. This goes in line with her being the only one in the Magical Girl team who is depicted as a practicing Christian in the anime.
• Trigun:
  • Nicholas D. Wolfwood works as a travelling priest and carries a large cross wrapped in cloth. He claims that the cross is heavy because it's "full of mercy", but it actually hides a huge gun called the Cross Punisher, with the bottom of the cross housing a machinegun and the top housing a rocket launcher. In the anime, the arms also serve as gun racks to store multiple handguns. In the anime, Wolfwood got his Punisher from an assassin priest. In the manga, Wolfwood got his Punisher from the Eye of Michael, a cult that patterns itself after Christianity but worships Knives as a god and provides him with assassins.
  • Chapel the Evergreen, the anime-only priest mentioned above, serves as a member of the Gung-Ho Guns and wields his own Cross Punisher that splits into two machineguns.
• Trinity Seven: The ultimate weapon of the Great Demon King Dis Trinity is named Dante Cross. It looks like a giant coffin with a cross that functions as a Wave-Motion Gun that fires devastatingly destructive magic beams.
• Violinist of Hameln:
  • Flute pulls out huge, mallet-sized crosses to beat down on the object of her ire.
  • Queen Horn, a White Magician Girl with powerful healing magic, shoots laser beams from a Magic Staff that has crosses embedded on it.
• Yaiba: Shiro's Spear has a cross-shaped blade, a nod to Shiro Amakusa's religion.

Comic Books

• In one cover◊ for Hellblazer Bloodlines, Occult Detective John Constantine is seen having recently beaten a demon with a cross-shaped weapon.
• In the first storyline of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic, Buffy charges a demon while holding a large cross. The demon sneers that he is not a vampire and not afraid of the cross; Buffy impales the demon's head with cross' mounting spike and says, "Might wanna start."

Films — Live-Action

• Equilibrium: The custom handguns carried by Grammaton Clerics (the elite enforcers of a quasi-theocratic regime of Libria) produce exhaust flares that replicate the regime's cross-shaped crest (a variant of the cross potent).
• Priest (2011): The titular character uses cross shaped shurikens in his battles against vampires. He also carves crosses into the tips of his bullets.^note A technique used in real life, as it can make the bullet fragment upon penetration and cause more damage
• Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial: Mirror Knight's strongest attack is named "Silver Cross" and it fires a cross-shaped energy attack from both his hands.

Literature

• Bakemonogatari: The Vampire Hunter Episode carries around a giant cross that he throws at vampires like a boomerang. It's effective since vampires are weak against crosses. It's also ironic; Episode is half-vampire himself.
• In A Certain Magical Index, some members of the Roman Orthodox Church wield cross-shaped weapons:
  • Vento of the Front wields a hammer that's vaguely in the shape of a cross. It represents the hammer that nailed Jesus to the cross.
  • Bishop Biagio Busoni wears multiple necklaces holding several dozen crucifixes of small size. His fighting style is to throw the crucifixes at his opponents, then magically make them enlarge to the size of cars in midair.
• The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious:
  • One of The Hero Seiya's many skills is using his Dual Wielding to generate X-shaped Sword Beams.
  • The Grim Reaper-like monster Crossed Thanatos carries a large black cross that it uses to try and crush its targets and the cross can also shoot laser beams.
• Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere: The Reine des Garous, the Werewolf Queen, wields the divine weapon Argent Croix, a silver cross that acts as a ballista to fire bolts made of light. It was made from the stake on which Joan of Arc was burned for accusations of witchcraft.

Live-Action TV

• Inspector Morse: In "Service Of All The Dead", the murder weapon is a crucifix-shaped letter opener. Morse finds the idea tacky: "Would you slit open your letters with the cross of Christ?"
• In "'Til Death Do Us Part" (S1E5) episode of Murdoch Mysteries, the item used to kill the victim is a crucifix present in the room.
• One of the cursed artifacts in Friday the 13th: The Series, the Cross of Fire, had a switchblade knife built into the base, for use by a crusading monk to defend themselves if they were attacked. Subverted to a darker use when the curse requires the blade be used to kill so as to power its vampire-destroying ability.

Video Games

• Skeith from the .hack series of games gets a pagan cross as his primary weapon (or a 'red wand' in the English version). When he uses his Data Drain move, the cross teleports behind the victim, giving the impression of a crucifixion.
• Arcana Heart: Elsa la Conti, a nun from the Celestial Union's European branch, beats down her opponents with a metal staff shaped like a cross.
• The Black Heart: When Animus uses his Impaler special, the last and most damaging blade is a glowing metal cross.
• BlazBlue:
  • The vampire Rachel Alucard summons up a massive rose-covered cross to act as a lightning rod during her Astral Heat.
  • Makoto Nanaya's weapon is a pair of cross-shaped tonfas that she uses to enhance her punches.
• Large crosses double as boomerang-style throwing weapons in the Castlevania series of video games. Richter Belmont's Item Crash for this particular subweapon summons a screen-filling cross, with a carving of Jesus Christ on it, to smash down foes. Also, rosaries (with large crosses on them) will instantly destroy all enemies in the room.
• Crescent Pale Mist: One of Vizet's attack patterns is a Spread Shot of crosses.
• Dante's Inferno:
  • Dante uses a small hand-held cross to shoot blasts of holy light at his demonic opponents. The blasts themselves are shaped like crosses. Lucifer counters this attack with an Evil Counterpart that uses inverted crosses when it's used on him.
  • Dante's Archnemesis Dad Alighiero uses a much larger cross to fight his son. Ironically, Alighiero himself was killed with his own cross by the Turkish assassin who killed Dante. His Signature Move, Sins of the Father, also launches several cross-shaped homing projectiles.
• Disgaea
  • The series has a recurring gun attack called Totenkreuz, which is German for "crux mortis" or "death cross". The character using this attack charges energy into his gun before firing a thick shot, which looks like a fiery laser, down on the target(s). Upon impact, the shot explodes into a gigantic flaming cross. Unlike most of the attacks in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, this one remains almost unchanged from its Disgaea: Hour of Darkness incarnation.
  • The White Dragon's Holy Flare attack creates a similarly shaped explosion.
• In Dungeon Fighter Online, not only does the Priest use a giant mace-like cross as a weapon, most of their skills (particularly the Crusader) resemble crosses. Crusader carries these attacks into his DNF Duel moveset.
• Dungeon Keeper: Monk units flail at enemies with their rosaries. This somehow deals a decent amount of damage, though not enough to keep up with dedicated melee units.
• In Epic Battle Fantasy, Natalie's Genesis Limit Break summons a massive cross so huge it can be seen from space, before blasting the entire enemy formation with holy damage. It also appears as her Smart Bomb attack in Bullet Heaven, where it blanks out the whole screen with a burst of light.
• Fallen London: One possible encounter with Jack-of-Smiles has him attack several churchgoers during a ceremony; since you're not armed in church, you have to resort to smashing him through a window with an actual processional cross, described as "a good ten pounds of silver and mahogany".
  God will understand.
• Fatal Fury: Rick Strowd has a move called Hellion in Real Bout Fatal Fury 2, which is a quick hook followed by an uppercut that leaves behind a cross-shaped trail of energy.
• In the free-to-play MMORPG Forsaken World, the Kindred race, Vampire class uses a large stylized crucifix as their main weapon, in which it is used as a more conventional staff to help increase their magical power.
• Gift: Gift's wooden Magic Staff is shaped like a cross.
• Granblue Fantasy: The preacher Will's weapon is a big sword with a crossguard that makes it look like a giant cross.
• As the resident Religious Bruiser of Guilty Gear, Ky Kiske makes use of several cross shaped projectiles. Most notable is his jumping dust attack, which has him summon a lightning bolt in the shape of a crucifix.
  • While not as religious as Ky, Leo Whitefang is also a veteran of the Sacred Order of the Holy Knights. As the Second King of Illyria, he wields massive twin greatswords shaped like crosses.
• In Gungrave: Overdose, the deadman Fangoram wields a giant cross-shaped gun (resembles the cross punisher from Trigun a bit) called the Center Head. It's the last gun of the Cerberus Series to be made and is outright stated to be the strongest of the Cerberus line.
• Heroes of the Storm: Whitemane's Searing Lash ability burns a line of fire into the ground. If it hits an enemy hero, it creates a second line through the center in a cross shape.
• Honkai Impact 3rd: Theresa Apocalypse, who dresses like a nun, uses mechanical cross-shaped weapons that, depending on the version of her being used, can provide ranged damage through projectile attacks (either with weapons enclosed in the cross or the cross itself) or be turned into a melee weapon as a charged attack.
• Inazuma Eleven: Cross Drive is a shoot technique that creates an energy that looks like a cross. In the anime, it is only used by Max and Tamiyama, but in the games, it can be used by other characters.
• In Kid Icarus: Uprising, one weapon is a blade those various forms of attacks are all crosses. The charged shots are large crosses with equal-length arms, the rapid-fire shot is lots of tiny traditional crosses, the weapon itself is cross-shaped, and the melee attack extends the weapon with a cross-shaped Laser Blade. The weapon is called the Crusader Blade.
• The King of Fighters:
  • Heidern has a move called Cross Cutter that fires an "X" shaped projectile towards the opponent.
  • Leona, Heidern's adopted daughter, has a move called X-Caliber which, as the name says, is an "X" shaped move and the only difference from her father's move is that she performs the move while jumping.
  • In The King of Fighters 2002, Vanessa inherits the cross-shaped move Hellion from Rick Strowd from Real Bout Fatal Fury 2.
• In La Pucelle, the demon hunter Croix's gun is shaped like a cross. Though parts of it were edited down in the US release to resemble an actual gun, the discerning eye can still see a cross handle somewhere down the middle.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, Crow Armbrust's Deadly Cross and Cross Rebellion S-Crafts have him firing a large X-shaped Sword Beam at his enemies.
• Marvel vs. Capcom:
  • Wolverine loves this trope:
    • From the first game, he makes an "X" with his default Strong Punch.
    • In the second game, he gains two new moves: one is called Berserk Barrage X which finishes with a Strong Punch and another called Weapon X which finishes the opponent doing an "X" after beating the opponent.
    • In the fourth game, he gains a new Limit Break called Fatal Claw in which he writes an "X" on the screen, dealing damage to the opponent.
    • In the fifth game, he gains a new move called Berserker Slash in which he combines a Charged Attack with Strong Punch.
• Mega Man Battle Network has bombs that explode in the shape of a cross.
• Nightmare Creatures II: the boss of the Graveyard level is a roaring, demonic undead who swings a processional cross at you. He loses his grip on the cross halfway through the battle.
• In Ninety-Nine Nights, the Mighty Glacier Badass Preacher Klarrann uses a giant cross and his own strength to bash waves of enemies as well as call down lightning.
• Prayer of the Faithless: Mia's "Aurora Seal" attack of two cuts of her blade, first from left to right then from top to bottom, as seen in the trailer.
• In Project × Zone and its sequel, Erica Fontaine's weapon of choice consists of a pair of machine guns called Gabriel and Rafael, which are shaped like crosses to reinforce her status as the Token Religious Teammate.
• Punishing: Gray Raven: Amberia is a war machine whose upper human torso is covered in a shawl that resembles a nun's habit. Her attacks are firing cross-shaped projectiles and growing spikes from the ground, with some spikes being cross-shaped too.
• The Crusader-line job class from Ragnarok Online has a number of cross-shaped attacks. Examples are the Crusaders' Holy Cross and Grand Cross, Paladins' Gloria Domini and Royal Guards' Overbrand.
• Skullgirls: Valentine uses shuriken that is known as "Dead Cross" which is used in some melee attacks and as a projectile.
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Simon and Richter Belmont are Guest Fighters. The cross boomerang returns from their parent franchise as their side special attack. They both share a variant on Richter's cross item crash as their Final Smash.
• Touhou Project:
  • The vampire Remilia Scarlet has two attacks that involve creating a giant energy cross from her own body.
  • Remilia's younger sister, Flandre Scarlet, has an attack called "Counter Clock" that creates X-shaped spinning gears to attack the opponent.
  • Yumemi Okazaki fights with cross-shaped explosions.

Web Animation

• In the Something About series, Kirby (or rather Kirbo) uses a crucifix as his ultimate weapon from time to time, notably causing Nightmare to immediately burst into flames.

Webcomics

• Park Mujin from The God of High School. His Charyeok Longinus takes the shape of a cross on his palm to emit cross-shaped energy blasts and shields. Ironically enough, his main targets are devout followers of God.

Western Animation

• American Dad!: In the post-apocalyptic Rapture's Delight, Commander Jesus Christ wields a crossbow that's even more cross-shaped than most crossbows.
• In the animated adaptation of Castlevania, Trevor Belmont is seen wielding an Indian chakram with extra blades in the shape of a cross. When pressed on why a Christian symbol would work on Hindu vampires, he explains it isn't about the holiness of the symbol, but the symbol itself: certain geometric patterns, like crosses, confuse a vampire's senses.
• An episode of Xavier: Renegade Angel sees a boy using a cross (with a dagger in one end) to kill a sentient explosion.

Real Life

• Many swords are cruciform simply due to having a crossguard, and it is said that during The Crusades, knights would use their swords as crosses when lacking a real one. The knight praying with his sword as a cross is a common motif in artwork.
• The German wurfkreuz is a cross-shaped throwing weapon that translates literally into "throwing cross". It has no blades, but each limb of the cross is spiked, making it savagely dangerous both for punching into mail or in grappling like an overdesigned rondel

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