Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Improbable Weapon
Windmill blades. Yes, windmill blades.
Edward Van Helgen: Choose your weapon.
Guybrush: I choose the banjo.
Edward Van Helgen: I accept.
Here's a riddle: When is a Croquet Mallet like a billy club? I'll tell you: Whenever you want it to be.
The high probability your wackiest party member, like the Team Pet, will use some sort of bizarre and, well, improbable "weapon" - that is, in the sense of an object you could conceivably hit something with. And some of these 'weapons' don't even go that far.
This usually seems to just be a way to give that character some sort of upgradeable item to explain ongoing power increases. Curiously, all the shops will sell these upgrades, despite there being seemingly only one such user on the planet.
Many games also have a gag weapon for each of the party members, which is essentially an Improbable or Nerf Arm version of their regular weapon, such as a Paper Fan Of Doom for the sword-wielder, a broom for the Staff Chick, or a squeaky-mallet for someone who normally wields an axe or hammer. Of course, this might end up subverted with an Infinity Plus One Marshmallow Slingshot.
This trope is surprisingly not that far from reality when you consider how martial arts weapons have included not just spears, swords, and knives, but farming tools, boat oars (see also Miyamoto Musashi), fans, metal rings (no, not even chakram, just round metal rings), and... small wooden benches? Hell, this doesn't even go into the army's trench shovel or some of crazier weapon combinations from about the 17th to early 20th century (brass knuckle knives, ax pistols, and flintlock cutlery.)
Note: Many "improbable weapons" can indeed cause significant damage. Examples of these are frying pans, certain shovels (most notably trench shovels, as mentioned above), a solid mass of frozen food (giving a whole new meaning to Lethal Chef), bed warmers , scissors, rolling pins, and so on.
This may be one of the stranger examples of Truth In Television. For one-time examples see Improvised Weapon. If someone manages to pull this off with an actual weapon see Improbable Use Of A Weapon.
See also Trick Arrow, Nerf Arm, Killer Yoyo, Parasol Of Pain, Rings Of Death, the aforementioned Paper Fan Of Doom, the aforementioned Frying Pan Of Doom and Rolling Pin Of Doom, Throw The Book At Them, Instrument Of Murder, The Death Dealer, and the silliest of them all, the Musical Assassin. Compare Martial Arts And Crafts, Joke Item and Lethal Joke Item. See also Abnormal Ammo.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- The Tokyo Mew Mew girls have a habit of using these. Mew Lettuce, the worst offender, has a pair of castanets, though at least she shoots water from them. Mew Pudding has tambourines can that rend the earth and encase a target in jello, and Mew Ichigo has a bell that shoots out waves of sparkly healing power. (The remaining two team members, Mew Mint and Mew Zakuro, use the more reasonable bow-and-arrow and whip, respectively.)
- Cure Lemonade from Yes! Precure 5 also uses castanets, which is odd, because her teammate, Cure Mint, is an Expy of Mew Lettuce.
- Several anime have characters who use yo-yos as weapons; while this is not as implausible as it sounds (according to popular legend, yo-yos were in fact weapons originally), it nonetheless stretches things when they have explosive yo-yos, which can go off several times without being destroyed themselves... Probably the most spectacular example of this weapon is the Robot Romance classic Combattler V, a friggin' GIANT ROBOT that wields yo-yos with blades that slice enemies like a rotary saw.
- Yo-yos are just the beginning. If you're a sukeban, you've got to have a "signature" weapon. Examples include bicycle chains, cup-and-ball toys, bamboo umbrellas, guitar picks (shuriken style), billiard balls, and even a bowling ball carried by one really enormous schoolgirl.
- Read Or Die. Some people use paper fans. And then there's Yomiko Readman, who uses just plain paper.
- There are a number of characters in the various Read or Die/Dream canons who can use paper as weapons called Paper Masters. There's also a character in the Read or Die manga who wields giant matches. And later on another character wields a giant protractor.
- Nicholas D. Wolfwood, the secondary hero in the Anime/Manga Trigun could be seen as the king of the unusual weapons. He, a gun-toting, hard-drinking (apparently Catholic) priest, uses a cross called "The Punisher" as his signature weapon. A cross six feet tall, three feet wide and made of steel. The common version of the cross has one of the "arms" housing six automatic pistols on a rack, the "foot" housing a machine gun that would fit on a helicopter, the other "arm" holding ammo for this gun, and the "head" holding a recoilless anti-tank missile launcher. It's heavy because "it's full of mercy(alternately, God's love)". Yeah, right.
- Nicholas's teacher and Gung-Ho Guns mentor, Chapel the Evergreen, also wields a cross/weapon (which fans call "Neo-Punisher"). His splits into twin miniguns.
- Midvalley the Hornfreak will jazz you to death with his killer saxophone.
- Rai-Dei the Blade proves that Katanas Are Just Better by hiding a gun in the hilt of his sword.
- The minor villain Cho from Rurouni Kenshin has a whole collection of strange swords, including one that is several feet long and so thin it can be waved around like some sort of razor-sharp ribbon. (This is an actual type of weapon, called Urumi.)
- One of Berserker's Noble Phantasms in Fate Zero allows him to pick up anything and turn it into a Noble Phantasm-rank weapon. This includes random columns of concrete and other Servants' Noble Phantasms, at one point Dual Wielding a spear and an axe. And lest we forget, an F-15J. When the jet crashed, he ripped off the entire M61 Vulcan unit and fired it from the hip. In mid-mir. Finally, he went Guns Akimbo with a pair of MP-5K's. In fact, when he finally took out his 'true' Noble Phantasm, it turned out to be a sword - the least outlandish weapon he ever used.
- Haruko, Naota and Atomsk from FLCL all utilize electric basses (and a guitar) to great effect. Electric guitars are apparently the weapon of choice for extraterrestrials. They're also used as baseball bats.
- Panther Claw head Hiromi Tanaka from Cutie Honey The Live, in addition to having a stomach that can shoot missiles, uses frozen seafood as a weapon of choice. I swear!
- Some of the Exorcists in D.Gray-Man have Innocences that are shaped like ordinary weapons, like a katana or a hammer, but most of them are very strange. We've seen characters with acupuncture needles, pendulums, soccer balls, and what looks like harp strings.
- Violinist of Hameln has most of the characters fighting with musical instruments. The main character uses (guess what) a violin, his friend Raiel plays a piano, and his sister, Sizer plays on a flute attached to a gigantic scythe, of all things. Of course, the results are pretty awesome, but still.
- More amusingly, the series protagonist (Hamel) has been known to throw Flute (and his other allies) at enemies as a form of attack.
- He also occasionally throws his instrument, though this rarely turns out well.
- Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh throws cards as a weapon.
- Knocking thugs out cold or making them
drop their weapons stop pointing.
- He also uses the card as a shield, though. Apparently, cards are able to defect bullets.
- Spoofed in the beginning of this Abridged episode of 5D's, where Jack throws his card at Yusei from atop an elevated highway. Yusei not only catches it, but throws it up right back to him.
- From Yu-Gi-Oh again, Duke Devlin sometimes throws his dice with devastating results against Faceless Goons.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh GX, Amon and Ekou both use explosive cards whose effect read as instructions on how to detonate it.
- GaoGaiGar's "Driver" weapon series (Dividing, Gatling and Bolting) are apparently giant, space-warping hardware tools. Meanwhile, HyoRyu, EnRyu, and their combined form ChouRyuJin use the ladder and crane of their alt-modes as giant tonfas. FuuRyu and GekiRyuJin fire energy missiles from the churner of a cement mixer. Big Volfogg uses a motorcycle's exhaust pipes as a machine gun. And then there's Mic Sounders...
- Speaking of HyoRyu and EnRyu, they also have the Pencil Launchers, and ChoRyuJin can use the Eraser Head. They are as silly as they sound.
- And of course, The Captain Koutarou Taiga's preferred weapon is consistently a golf club. Even when he puts on his ID Suit. He even calls the attack.
- Get Backers. Perfume, mirror fragments, thread, needles, and cloth seem to be the worst offenders. The "poison perfume" is justified by some kind of magic, but... thread. In practice, it's pretty Badass (at least in the manga), but...
- If I remember correctly, in the manga they were not threads but harp wires. Slightly more believable as weapons, but still unique.
- Busou Renkin has plenty of these. Exploding fun balls, Tokiko's leg-blades, and many more.
- Many of the characters in Blade Of The Immortal use weapons that look incredibly cool... until you start asking questions about how they'd work in reality. The creator, Hiroaki Samura, hung a lampshade on this with the "Samura's Weapon Shop!" feature, which explains all the weapons, including the ones that don't make any sense. Examples: two sickles connected by an expansible chain ("The chain fits into one of the scabbards, and can stretch out to about seven feet. Whether this is good for anything is another question entirely."), a blade with little curved hooks on both edges ("What the hell is this thing? Don't ask me."), and two blades so narrow they look like kitchen skewers ("To be perfectly honest, I wonder why he doesn't just use a normal sword..."). Later, the sadistic Shira, who's had one hand cut off by Manji, makes up for this by (warning: squicky) sharpening the protruding bone and using that as a weapon. It works about as well as you might expect.
- Surprisingly, these examples work in real life: the chain-and-sickles is a variation of the traditional Japanese Kusari-gama, also used by Guilty Gear X's Axl(in the same two-sickle formation); the hooked blade can be justified by the additional damage caused by ripping action of the hooks upon cutting (the jagged edges of the wound heal slower), in the same fashion as soldiers who used to saw teeth into their bayonet blades; as for the narrow sword, almost all swords from the renaissance onwards were very thin, flexible blades, useful for only their stabbing action (they could only inflict superficial cuts, nothing like a medieval claymore).
- Hagi's signature weapon in Blood Plus is his cello case.
- A cyborg assassin in Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex uses a gun implanted in her right arm that fires coins. Just how it manages to shoot rolls of coins in a way that would make a SPAS-12 combat shotgun green with envy is never explained. The reason why she chose that particular and weird weapon can be imagined, though; she appears to have distinctly anti-capitalist principles, so the coin shotgun must be her idea of irony.
- Pics! Unfortunately only dimes fit right in a 12 ga. and they are a bit light to do much at distance, but it works in theory.
- Reborn. First there's Joshima Ken, who uses different sets of teeth to adopt the abilities of different animals. Kakimoto Chikusa who uses yo-yos that shoot out poisoned needles. M.M who uses a clarinet that, when played, creates special sound waves that cause the substance the clarinet is aimed at to boil instantly, which is called 'Burning Vibrato'. Levi who uses umbrellas that discharge electricity. Bianchi who specializes in poison cooking. I-Pin who enhances her martial arts skills with special gyoza dumplings laced with garlic, which numbs the brain and forces the victim's muscles to involuntarily move on their own. Uh, yeah...
- If you don't think a blanket woven out of the strongest metal in the world, or being able to use your blood as a weapon is improbable, then you've got no idea. Black Cat indeed features some improbable weapons.
- Metal Armor Dragonar features one of the strangest sniper weapons in any Real Robot anime series: The Caulking Gun. To elaborate, it fires a shell that penetrates Humongous Mecha armor, then proceeds to inject a fast-hardening foam substance that damages computer systems, destroys circuit conductivity, and for the very unluckiest of victims, suffocates the pilots by filling the cockpit. Particularly effective since every robot in the series can fly, and is usually doing so.
- Dr. Black Jack has been known to use scalpels as weapons.
- Outlaw Star has Grappler ships (including the titular ship). Ships with arms. That tend to use giant, EVA-style knives. And similar melee weapons, including axes. And oversized handguns. And let's not forget about the assassin and crew member Twilight Suzuka, who is a master of the bokken (a wooden sword, normally used for training or situations where lethal force is inadvisable) that would make Tatewaki Kuno green with envy. Not only is her bokken the weapon she dispatches her quarry with, but she is so skilled with it that she can smash massive craters in solid stone and steel from a distance with a single swipe of her sword (using this on the roof to escape in her debut episode) and cut a bus cleanly in half with a single vertical swipe.
- Speaking of Tatewaki Kuno, he probably counts somewhat towards this trope, due to the fact he is capable of cutting through concrete and trees in a single swipe, as well as thrusting so fast that the air pressure can shatter a statue. In the world of Ranma One Half, however, he pales compared to the other characters who show up. As this is the anime that gave us Martial Arts And Crafts, it naturally has an equally bizarre and improbable array of weapons for martial artists to use.
- In the main characters alone, Kodachi (gymnastics ribbon) and Happosai (pipe) are the most obvious, but Mousse (who throws everything bar the kitchen sink) is close behind. Ryoga and Shampoo are honorary members of this trope; the former used his bandannas as projectile weapons, as well as his belt as a sword in the very early series (but gave them up- though he continues to use his umbrella as a short staff and projectile weapon) and the latter uses a real weapon in the form of her chui (the basketballs on short staves), though one that's almost never seen in the real world (those oversized heads? Solid steel. These days, you're only likely to see hollow replicas).
- The oddest weapons, however, tend to be seen by the minor characters- and the anime outdoes the manga in this regard. Who can forget Sotatsu Jikei'ien, who wields ink, paper, and a calligraphy brush the size of a man? Or Tamari Kaminarimon, who uses tops, hacky-sacks, thread and a kendama as weapons, and can presumably also use playing cards and marbles like her fellows do? And what about Prince Kirin, who uses chopsticks and rice?
- Can't forget the school of Martial Arts Tea Ceremony.
- Ranma Saotome is the most improbable weapons user, since he will grab anything in arm reach and use it as a weapon. Examples: Pinwheels, paper fans, pencils, boulders, tennis rackets, spoons, bras, chopsticks, brooms, rocks, tables, etc...
- But we forget Ukyo, who cooks at high speeds and uses Okonomiyaki batter as liquid cement, and uses a relative of the spatula as her main weapon. Also, if it breaks, it is her Berserk Button.
- While Kodachi's usage of gymnastics equipment is pretty strange, her skill with Instant Knots allows her to make some truly bizarre impromptu flails. Like using her own brother as a bludgeoning weapon — the anime even had the announcer declaring that it was fortunate for her that brothers were a legal weapon in the tournament.
- One Piece should be a chief offender of this trope, as characters have used spinning tops, perfume, a saxophone, balloons, paint, ramen, and even clouds. And let's not even get into some of the weapons the characters make with their Devil Fruits.
- Let's not even go into CP9. One of them fights by covering their opponents in soap.
- Two Words: Exploding. Boogers.
- Don't forget about the cola farts. They're awesome.
- One of the chief engineers at Water 7 used knots as weapons. Actual ropes tied into knots.
- Many of the O-Parts in 666 Satan qualify, especially Futomomotaro's Mackerel Sword which is even weirder than it sounds: it's a rigged mackerel with a hook for a handle that can release methane gas.
- In Ashita no Nadja, Sylvie uses a parasol as a sword, and Grandma Anna loves to swing her frying pan around.
- In Speed Grapher Saiga uses his photographic camera as a weapon.
- The Law Of Ueki's sequel runs on this trope. Among the weapons found are mops, hair dryers, a suitcase full of money and a washing machine.
- Jojos Bizarre Adventure. Bubbles. Spinning, shining, razor-sharp, deadly vampire-slaying soap bubbles. What.
- And his grandfather uses wine the same way.
- Everyone in Hunter X Hunter. To name a few, there's bank interest, gum, a dart board, a vacuum cleaner, a giant pipe and a fishing rod (used by the main character, no less). All of which are put to serious good use, like fighting giant ants bent on world domination.
- Rozen Maiden much? Okay, they're dolls, but still, Souseiseki charges at people armed with a pair of giant scissors, and when forced into melee Suiseiseki whacks people with a watering can.
- One Quirky Miniboss Squad from Berserk uses torture tools as weapons. These include pliers used to pluck out peoples eyes, saws, some sort of grappling hook, a restraining device mounted on a long pole, and a massive wheel. Also, Ganishka's demon soldiers wield bizarre looking horn things that are used sort of like spears.
- Sui the Blood Knight from Double Arts uses a hoop as her signature weapon,which folds up to fit behind her back. She calls it Avis. It is,however,made out of solid iron.
- In Soul Eater, Kim Deil uses a lantern as her Weapon. The aptly named Jackie (Jacqueline Dupree) manages to combine flying broom, flamethrower, and explosive device in one improbable, manically grinning package.
- Justin Law also sort-of counts as an Improbable Weapon. He is a guillotine, meaning that his Weapon form proper is fairly useless for Technicians in Shibusen's line of work. However, he gets around this by transforming parts of his body into bits of his guillotine form; blades on his forearms, for example.
- And then there's the South American Death Scythe, Tezcatlipoca, who calls himself the 'Demon Mirror'. We've no idea how he uses this to fight, however, because Medusa scarpers before he and his *monkey* Tech get a chance to attack.
- 69 shows that the Demon Mirror's powers involve creating reflections of people, which he uses to disrupt Justin and Medusa's fight.
- Vita of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Take a close look at the shape of her hammer's standard form. Now, note the balls she uses as projectiles. That's right, Vita fights using a croquet set. And yes, she did play croquet in her spare time when she was living with Hayate on earth.
- How did Bleach escape being listed? Inoue Orihime uses her HAIRPINS. Specifically, she uses the six FAIRIES who live in her hairpins. Not only that, but her powers are arguably the strongest in the entire series.
- Coon in Free Collars Kingdom uses an anchor. It gets better though. He's a cat.
- Master Asia from G Gundam was known for taking down Mobile Suits with sashes (pieces of cloth) and BARE HANDS.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: If there's a weapon more improbable than motherfucking galaxies, I don't want to know.
- When Kamina commandeers his own mecha, the Gurren, he has its broken swords fashioned into a mecha-size copy of his own legendarily badass shades - and still uses them as a weapon on many special occasions...
- To be fair, though, that was more of an Improvised Weapon, as it was only used in the final battle. The Cool Shades definitely count, though.
- Mahou Sensei Negima's Mana uses thrown yen pieces. Though, rather than the coins, my wonder is: how the hell does she keep so many up her sleeve? Her opponent used a super-powerful cloth as her weapon.
- Asuna uses a fan in serious combat until she manages to upgrade into a sword. And not a war fan, an actual paper fan, and it's not entirely played for laughs due to some special intrinsic abilities. Also, Evangeline fighting with strings (it was still awesome though) and Makie's ribbon (moreso in the anime than the manga, where despite being an ensemble darkhorse she gets little screen time due to being very weak), which is apparently magic or something because it can do anything.
- While not much of a combatant, Makie has shown and inhuman amount of skill with her rhythmic gymnastics ribbon, using for such things as crossing pits in Library Island Indiana Jones style, as well as being able to pick up and throw people.
- During the Tournament Arc, Setsuna uses a deck brush in lieu of her sword to get around a restriction on bladed weapons.
- Don't forget Chao's most powerful and greatest attack, the greatest psychological weapon created by the powers of the future...a copy of her family tree, which she claims contains the identity of Negi's future wife. The result? "Negi party obliterated! New record: 57 seconds!"
- All this is outmatched by Chachamaru's pactio artifact... a catgun. A friggin catgun.
- As in a gun that is simultaneously a cat, or as in a gun that shoots cats?
- Mostly the former, judging by the appearance, although it hasn't been used yet, so both might be true.
- While Mahoujin Guru Guru's heroes keep to standard fantasy-fare like staves and magic swords when using weapons, an exception exists in JuJu. JuJu is a battle priestess of her church and carries with her a portable altar. In battle, she prays at it for her god to smite bad guys down, and He does. Taking it a bit further, this tends to put JuJu into a power-mad trance which can be broken only by someone shaking a magic baby rattle at her.
- In the first volume of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, a man uses statistics to kill people. Statistics. And it's badass.
- Eclair from Kiddy Grade often creates a whip made out of her lipstick by drawing a line of lipstick on a surface then pulling it off the surface as a whip.
- Bakemonogatari's Hitagi Senjogahara pulls a penknife and a stapler on Koyomi('s mouth) in the first episode. When he later catches up to her on the stairs she pulls handfuls of sharp, miscellaneous office supplies from nowhere. In the second episode she states outright that she keeps them on her person at all times for self-defense.
- Russia of Axis Powers Hetalia is known for using a pipe. Like, the kind of pipe in plumbing.
- Actually, it's a water spout. And it's more awesome than it sounds.
- He's not the only one: China uses his wok and cooking implements, Hungary uses her frying pan and Greece uses a metal cross.
- Blazer Drive no stranger to this trope. The characters use stickers for practically all their attacks. Dachi, the main character, uses a gauntlet that sends out wires which he uses in conjunction with his electrical attacks. Heck one of the characters uses a hammer comprised of a giant fork and a jelly roll!
- The first episode of Ga Rei Zero utilizes bike-fu. Seriously.
- Also, an iron and chain. The kind of iron you use to get wrinkles out of your clothing.
- Princess Tutu can block swords with a fan.
- The Death Note, being a notebook that kills people who's name is written in it, could easily be used as a weapon instead of a method of execution.
- Harima used a mic stand to disrupt Hanai & Yakumo's (fake) wedding in School Rumble.
- Mugen from Samurai Champloo wears geta that have metal plates fitted to the bottom of them, which he uses to deflect sword attacks. He is also able to use them as effective blunt weapons, or can throw them with a great amount of force.
- Speaking of Mugen and throwing, baseballs.
- There is also the leaders of the graffiti gang, who use an oversized butterfly knife and a practice katana with nails sticking out of it.
- how is Bobobobo Bobobo not here? Bobobo fights using his nose hair. when this fails, he uses his armpit hair. Not to mention one of the main enemies fights by getting eaten (he's made out of Jello). Also in bobobo's arsenal are a Magical Girl that comes out his head, an ongoing love-drama between two squirrels that live in his Afro, not to mention cross-dressing just to make an opening in his enemies' defense.
- In the Chibi Wrap Party OVA for the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime, Scar pulls off his scar and throws it like a shuriken. Automail and alchemy also apply, such as a girl who can fire a deer slug from her kneecap, or using blood, giant statues of a muscular bald man, or (in the games) a Paper Fan Of Doom as ammunition or defensive/meelee objects.
- Basquash, which could be called "Weaponized Basketballs: The Animation." Main character Dan escapes a gladiatorial pit fight by turning down swords, spears, and flails in favor of a ball and his trademark Lightning Ball shot.
- Sailor Neptune of Sailor Moon uses a Mirror, the Deep Aqua Mirror, as her weapon though not as a phsyical one. Pluto uses a staff, the Garnet Rod, shaped like a key which holds her real magical weapon, the Garnet Orb, at the top. After their Super Upgrades Jupiter get's Oak Leaves and Mercuy gets a lyre.
- Pokemon Special has Mewtwo and his Big Friggin' Spoon, which he once used to perform a Diagonal Cut on a building.
- Megumi from Muteki Kanban Musume learned how to throw blackboard chalk with high precision, after she witnessed how her teacher managed to hit Miki with a piece. Later she switches to hot dog skewers, since they are easier to order for her bakery—and of course much deadlier.
Comic Books
- King of the Comics' improbable weapon users is..... Badrrrrrrrrrrrr drumroll, Bullseye! Starting from probable to improbable, billy clubs, javelins, sais, shuriken, broken glass shards, rocks, flash lights, dolls, apples, gumballs, teeth, toothpicks, playing cards, seaweed, and to top it off.... A paper airplane knocked someone the fuck out.
- You forgot straightened paper clips, to say nothing of the time he murdered several men by flicking his fingernails at them.
- No, that was Ultimate Hawkeye, who has the same "power set" as regular Bullseye.
- To quote one of his funniest uses of this abilitys to date in the mainstream univers "So which eye, left or right?""Which one is harder?" "From the distance, with the wind factor, useing a yap dog? Left eye." And lo, the yap dog did indeed hit the left eye, yapping the entire time in flight.
- Bullseye: They have me on stool softeners and liquid food because they're afraid that if I have a solid bowel movement I'd kill someone with it. And I would, too."
- Superheroes tend toward these sorts of weapons; Captain America's shield for instance.
- Truth In Television somewhat, shields were commonly used as a weapon to bash an enemy off balance (and skulls).
- Gambit has the useful ability to turn any inanimate object he touches into a bomb. He has a preference for playing cards but has alternatively used small change, his staff, poker chips, sand, credit cards, billiard balls, a bus, and in a particularly vicious example, someone's moustache.
- Ultimate Gambit uses this trope to his advantage in his first appearance (whether intentionally or not) to such an extent that his foe assumes that Gambit was powerless when not using his "trick cards". He was quite wrong.
- The best example was Gambit charging the metal in Wolverine's skull.
- Spitting his gum into the X-cutioner's face was pretty good too.
- The Gambit in Age of Apocalypse killed Wolverine, not that Wolverine, by sticking a large rock down his pants, charging it, and then pushing him off a cliff. Boom.
- Gambits power works by inducing objects with kinetic energy, this not only makes these objects explode but also allows them to be propelled like a missile.
- Among villains, the Joker has killed with acid-squirting flowers, super-juiced joybuzzers, popguns where the "Bang!" flag is a deadly spear, and many others.
- In his '90s run on X-Factor, Peter David introduced Professor Rick Chalker, who surgically transformed himself into Number One Fan by having his hands replaced with giant, razor-sharp fan blades. Ironically not the sharpest tool in the drawer, he realized too late that he was trapped in his impenetrable lab by his lack of hands, and out of frustration, slapped himself in the forehead (with gruesome results). He was brought back to life along with his relatives Vic (who electrocuted himself while testing his super exoskeleton in the rain) and Dick, but their collective ineptitude quickly killed them for good.
- The Green Goblin and his successors are known to use plastic ghosts along side their other weapons.
- Hush, from Batman fame, was a standard gunslinger in his original appearance, but turned evil doctor in a couple later, throwing scalpels, syringes, and having Catwoman in an iron lung.
- Night Thrasher frequently used a bulletproof skateboard as a weapon in his early days. It even had a "snikt" retractable blade!
- A crossbow-taser was a favorite of Night Thrasher's step brother Bandit. Even more weird in that his own body generated the electricity for it.
- The Action Girl version of Rapunzel from Rapunzel's Revenge ties her Rapunzel Hair into long braids and uses them as whips and lassos.
- Blade's Wordsword. Instead of using spell books how they were intended, Blade tore out their pages and paper mached himself a sword out of them. In his own words: "Great against demons, not so great in the rain."
- Though its somewhat understandable, the last time he tried to cast a spell he got possessed.
- Cross Gen comics had a few of these. "Now, give me what I want or I'll show you what else I can do with furniture."
- Most silver age super villains had a theme centered around an improbable weapon or odd piece of technology.
- It's a gun, Frank. A gun that shoots swords◊
- Spider Man villain Typeface was a signsmith who used big letters as weapons.
Fan Fiction
Film
- Desperado had guitar cases that served as rocket launchers and machineguns.
- In the sequel Once Upon a Time In Mexico, we also get a guitar case with a flamethrower.
- In the James Bond movie Goldfinger, henchman Oddjob uses his razor-rimmed hat as a throwing weapon.
- Ditto Kung Lao from the Mortal Kombat series. For convenience's sake, his hat magically reappears on his head as soon as it flies off-screen.
- In the original Austin Powers movie, Oddjob spoof "Random Task" throws his shoes as weapons. When he tries this move on Austin late in the film, he only succeeds in giving the superspy a minor headache, prompting an incredulous response: "Seriously, man- who throws a shoe?"
- Night At The Museum II showcases the all-metal flashlight as one of these.
- Smith manages to kill someone with a carrot in Shoot 'em Up. TWICE! He even uses one as a trigger finger when his hands are injured.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles features Casey Jones, who has a penchant for sporting goods, including golf clubs, hockey sticks, and a cricket bat.
- Part of Jackie Chan's signature style is finding novel uses for various improved weapons collected from around the scene of the fight.
- Practically every main character in Mystery Men uses an unusual weapon. Examples include thrown forks, a shovel, a possessed bowling ball, and flatulence. The film also includes a weapon designer who only creates improbable nonlethal weapons.
- TRON. Sole weapon: glowy Frisbee. That the user could control its flightpath. And that could chop other characters in half, even split heads (though all we saw were jewel-like bits coming out of the helmet when this happened.
- Anton Chigurh of No Country For Old Men has a cattle bolt gun, which uses compressed air to shoot out a retractable metal rod. He apparently uses it because it's good for blowing out locks, and not many people can tell it's a weapon. To a lesser extent, there's his silenced shotgun with a pistol grip.
- The irony is that shotguns are better at shooting out locks than the bolt gun.
- Pam Grier as blaxploitation hero Jackie Brown: "I've got a black belt in barstools!"
- Walking Tall was all about laying the smackdown with a two by four.
- Buford Pusser, the man the movie was based on, actually did this in real life. Considering the extensive list of epic feats he managed with it, the man practically defines Ungodly Badass.
- Then there was the guy with the bean bag gun in The Rundown.
- And they were both played by The Rock (see Professional Wrestling below).
- In Dogma, a demon gets its clock cleaned with a golf club ... which just happened to have been blessed. Not to fight demons, mind, but to improve a cardinal's golf game.
- In Lord of the Rings, during the attack in Moria Sam manges to use frying pans to smash the baddies and knock them unconcious.
- The lawnmower massacre scene in Peter Jackson's Braindead (known in the US as Dead Alive).
- In the Thai film Sick Nurses, a character fights a horde of demon nurses with a pregnancy test.
- Someone from the Get Smart movie (I forget who) is said to be capable of killing people with random office supplies, including post-it notes.
- Dude, wasn't that also The Rock?
- Undercover Brother uses afro picks as throwing knives.
- See No Evil: Kane's main method of killing people is a meat hook.
- In Trick R Treat, Sam uses a razorblade hidden in a chocolate bar and an ultra-sharp lollipop.
- In The Host, Gang-du gets increasingly skilled with a stop sign.
- Oldboy stands out as particularly creative when it comes to violence. Among the objects turned into murder weapons are a hammer, a pair of scissors, a broken CD, and a toothbrush.
- The villain in Lady Vengeance is hacked and stabbed at with a number of weapons, but it is the blunt plastic scissors that kill him...
- "I'll kill you with a teacup." ...and then he does.
Literature
- Patricia C Wrede has a short story 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. (The story also features a barbarian hero cook-off, and is great fun.)
- Similarly, the video game Fable has a sub-quest that lets you find a frying pan for use as a weapon....albeit one with 100 damage points and four augmentation spots. The trick, however, is to have all six clues to its whereabouts before you dig it up; if you cheat (or dig it up unintentionally) and skip gathering all of the clues, the frying pan will have no augmentation slots or damage points whatsoever.
- 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.
- And 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.
- Beatrice of "All the Time in the World" once used a teddy bear as a weapon. Granted, it was an exploding teddy bear...
- Female Yamani (Japanese) characters in Protector of the Small use silk fans with blades hidden in the edges for combat and for playing catch
- Samson + ass's jawbone, making this Older Than Feudalism.
- Not such a stretch, as 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.
- Manly Wade Wellman wrote a series of horror/fantasy stories and novels in which a wandering minstrel named John battles evil in the backwoods of Appalachia armed only with a silver-stringed guitar. Justified in that silver is said early on to be the one thing Satan fears, and that's who John is going after. (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 character in Stephen King's novella The Langoliers uses a toaster wrapped in a sheet and manages to inflict lethal damage with it. No, really, he does.
- Ask a friend to wrap a toaster (a large, heavy item made of metal) in a thin sheet then hit you in the head with it as hard as he can repeatedly. The possibility it could inflict lethal damage may become far less hard to swallow.
- 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 Neal Stephenson's Anathem, Lio has an interest in martial arts, but being one of the avout is restricted to ownership of three items - the "bolt", "cord" and "sphere", with the first two being used to make a sort of robe. When he attempts to use his skills against a bunch of peons, they respond by pulling his hood over his face and beating him up. After this setback, he develops a form of martial arts that turns his bolt into a weapon and uses it to beat the snot out of his attackers the next time they meet.
- In the Dragaera 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.
- The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor contains Hatter Madigan. His 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.
- 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.
- In Up Periscope by Robb White an American frogman ambushed and killed a Japanese officer with a bottle of Sake.
Live Action TV
- Ultraman Leo is famous for jury-rigging a number of "found" weapons in his fights. His most famous example is a pair of nunchaku he fashioned out of a pair of factory smokestacks which he bound together using an anchor chain.
- And he later had the Ultra Umbrella that he could poke enemies with and block their attacks with while it was open.
- In many recent Super Sentai (and of course, Power Rangers) series, the Sixth Ranger usually gets the oddest weapon. Recent series' improbable weapons include a pool cue (Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger) sword/baseball bat/microphone (Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger), quill pen (Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger), magic lamp gun (Mahou Sentai Magiranger) and metal detector (Go Go Sentai Boukenger).
- Inverted with the original Green Ranger's flute dagger.
- The Adventures of Pete and Pete had "Papercut" a schoolyard bully with origami mastery who could create painful paper-cutlery from any readily available paper. He demanded his opponents always through rock in Rock Paper Scissors.
- Buffy qualifies as an Improbable Weapon User, since she frequently uses improvised weapons to kill vampires, especially in the early seasons. Most of these are improvised stakes, ranging in size from a pencil to a mop handle. She also decapitates a vampire with a cymbal in the pilot.
- Sammo Hung in Martial Law could make anything a lethal weapon
- Captain Feathersword of The Wiggles wields... well...
- Look in your medicine cabinet. If it can fit in your ear, my mother can kill you with it. Except a moist towelette, you know, with a moist towelette, my mother can only MAIM YOU!
Professional Wrestling
- Practically every signature weapon used by any wrestler. The most iconic example in the business may be the original Shiek who would carve his oppoent's flesh with a sharpened pencil or launch fireballs at them. The second most iconic example may be the dreaded fork of Abdullah The Butcher
- Honkey Tonk Man's Guitar, Mankind's Mister Socko, Barbie the bat wrapped in barbed wire also used by Mick Foley, Rowdy Roddy Piper's Coconut, Tajiri's Green Mist, Curry Man's Curry, Candice's Metal Wand, Chris Nowenski's Metal Face Mask, The French Flag of La Resistance, The Folding Table which is sometimes lit on fire by the Dudleys, Zach Gowen's prosthetic leg; It never ends.
- The late great Owen Hart was known to use bags of popcorn to deadly effect when he fought Mick "Mankind" Foley.
- John Cena often uses chains or the ring ropes themselves.
- Finlay is known for using the ring apron as an impromptu net to trap opponents.
Tabletop Games
- In Exalted, various Martial Arts:
- Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style is all about fighting with your clothes, namely sleeves, cloaks etc.
- Solar Hero Style, the signature Martial Art of the Solar Exalted, can be used with any improvised weapon such as unattuned daiklaves (a type of BFS), stone columns and even other characters.
- The Weapons Of The Gods RPG, based on the comics of the same name features Dugu Four Ultimates: a Kung Fu whose example is parrying your opponent's God Weapon with your tea.
- This page lists several home-made Prestige Classes for Dungeons And Dragons that use unusual weapons as part of their gimmick. The Gambler is obviously modeled on the Setzer example listed at the top of the page, while the Necrobounge beats people to death with other dead guys, which is awesome.
- In Dungeons and Dragons, it is possible to use other party members as improvised weapons (usually by flinging the enraged dwarf into the middle of the fray). Given a forgiving DM, it is likewise possible to gain weapon proficiencies in Angry Dwarf, Frying Pan, Tree, and Tavern Door.
- In 7th Sea some Swordsman Schools specialize in improvised weapons, specifically Tout Pres and Shield Man (for the Explorers' Society). Such schools are usually not officially sanctioned by the Swordsman's Guild.
- In the Pathfinder RPG, based on 3.5 edition Dungeons And Dragons, there is a feat called "Caught Off-Guard". This makes you not only proficient with all improvised melee weapons, but denies your opponents their Dexterity bonus to AC, making them easier to hit. If you're a Rogue, you'd also feasibly get your Sneak Attack damage. That means wackiness like dealin 1d4+4d6+2 subdual damage with a rubber chicken.
- An actual feasible build in Mutants And Masterminds, where a simple throwing feat plus Attack Specialisation can let you easily build a superhero with Bullseye-style accuracy throwing whatever you feel like (playing cards, USB drives, computer mice, plaster flying ducks, teaspoons, Warhammer figures...)
- In In Nomine, Malakim of Creation have the inherent ability to use ANYTHING as a weapon.
- One of the weapons suggested for priests following benevolent death gods in GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy is the "Sacred Shovel of Zombie Beheading".
- In Mage the Awakening, the Adamantine Arrows have a spell entitled "Weaponize Object". It literally works on anything the Mage can pick up, and does damage based on either how tough the object is OR how big it is.
- Most of the weapons in Magic The Gathering are serious ones. However, Goblins get to break that rule, even outside of the joke sets. For example, the card Noggin Whack depicts a fish tied to a brick being used as a thrown weapon.
Video Games
- The Final Fantasy games have a wealth of Improbable Weapon Users, including:
- Setzer (playing cards and dice) and Relm (paintbrushes) in Final Fantasy VI.
- Oddly enough, Relm is also shown not to be the only wielder of paintbrushes in her world: in the very beginning of the game when Locke is up against a small army of monsters, Mog shows up with three parties worth of generic moogles wielding a variety of weapons; the leader of the all-generic-moogle party is actually wielding Relm's starting weapon, Chocobo Brush. (Thanks to the game's programming, the leader of the all-generic-moogle party is actually Relm.)
- Cait Sith (megaphone) and Red XIII (headdresses) in Final Fantasy VII. Yuffie occasionally used origami cranes as weapons. Cait Sith also used dice and armies of toys in his limit breaks. To be fair, Red XIII is really just attacking with his fangs and claws. The headdress is more or less there just to have a place to put Materia onto, and somehow increase his attack.
- Each character had a 'gag weapon' with no Materia slots but high attack. The list - a baseball bat with nails in for Cloud, gardening gloves for Tifa, a boxing glove for Barret, an umbrella for Aerith, a hairpin for Red XIII, a shell trumpet for Cait Sith, a mop (although actually a Squeegee) for Cid and a water pistol for Vincent. Yuffie had two gag weapons - a plastic windmill, and a rubber ball. This concept was even carried over into the prequel Crisis Core where Zack uses a beach umbrella whenever he is in Costa Del Sol.
- Cait Sith doesn't actually attack with the megaphone though, the fist of his ginormous mog does the pounding. For some reason though, shouting commands through a different megaphone makes his mog stronger. Magic megaphone? But if you say magic than all of these weapons are be quite probable; after all, anything is possible with magic.
- Final Fantasy VIII also had some rather strange weapons, but the best one is a heavy anchor thrown at the enemy. Which the character then has to retrieve. The characters limit breaks tops it with a Dragoon-style Jump Attack. And lets not forget the awesome but in reality impractical gunblade.
- It should be pointed out that despite the name, and despite the fact that most of them look like handguns with sword blades instead of barrels, gunblades do not actually shoot any projectiles. Pulling the trigger sends a massive vibration through the cutting edge, making it cause more damage as it moves through a target. It's also of note that Gunblades exist and have since the 16th century, although they're officially named 'Pistol Swords'.
- That just begs the question as to how the hell you're actually supposed to hold on to something like that, nor even counting the fact that in Squall's Limit Break he does it around 17 times straight. Also, how the hell do you reload?
- Yeah, they do, but most pistol swords are essentially guns with knives running down the length of the barrel. The longest one I'm aware of is as design for a 9mm with a 30 inch blade patented in 1866, but, to my knowledge, that was never made, only designed. The normal ones are usually around 11-14 inches, grip included. Not the 3-4 foot blade on a six inch handle Squall's swinging around.
- Quina (fork) in Final Fantasy IX. Although this refers to Quina's culinary theme, tridents are a classic military weapon, and no torch-bearing angry mob or traditional devil warrior would be complete without a good pitchfork. Quina's forks are generally big enough to stand in for either. Stranger are the lacrosse-like "racket" weapons Garnet and Eiko often use, hurling projectiles of unstated composition and endless supply.
- In Final Fantasy X, Wakka fights by throwing sports equipment at the enemy (a "blitzball") - although, oddly enough, spike-covered combat versions of this type of ball are commonly found in weapons shops. Considering how heavy a blitzball must be to move fluidly through water, it makes some sense. Also, Lulu's stuffed plush toys have the capacity to move and attack the enemy by themselves, though they cause very little damage, because her strength is so weak. Their Weapon Abilities are far more valuable.
- Final Fantasy Agito XIII is awash with them, including a whip-sword, tarot cards, and a flute.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics, certain classes can use dictionaries as weapons. If it helps matters, they attack by reading from it - presumably definitions man was not meant to hear. Also, all women can use handbags, but that's more of a practical weapon than a dictionary. And just to top it off, the "Dancer" class uses different types of cloth to attack.
- The descriptions of some of the book weapons indicate that they contain very powerful words. Because that makes, you know, more sense.
- Could be that they contain stuff similar to D&D's power words
- The earliest example is, in fact, Final Fantasy III, with the Scholar (books again!), Geomancer (instruments) and Bard (harps) jobs. And yes, the aforementioned weapons are used as bludgeoning tools. In the remake, the harps are now played rather than swung. Probably songs man was never meant to hear.
- We already used that pun.
- Maybe they're just really... REALLY bad at their job...
- Likewise, Final Fantasy V uses the Geomancer and Bard jobs with their instruments and books, respectively. The weapons are still laughably bad, but they are played rather than swung now.
- Spoony Bard Edward in Final Fantasy IV uses harps to attack. The sequel lets him use bows and knives, too, though this doesn't let him use his Bardsong ability.
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and its sequel continue the tradition with instruments, souls (the first one) and books (the second one).
- In Final Fantasy XII we have the "measures" weapon class, which includes sextants, Scales, and calipers.
- Final Fantasy XIII has male lead Snow Villiers, whose weapon is his trenchcoat. Okay, so he doesn't actually use it to hit enemies, just to buff his stats, but still...
- Oerba Dia Vanille uses "Blind Rods" whose head piece looks like a pair of antlers and body consists of four long wires with hooks that deal damage to enemies by latching on and pulling.
- Also, Lightning and Cid Raines use a variant of the gunblade.
- Like Lulu mentioned above, Shiki Misaki in The World Ends With You animates her stuffed
pig cat Mr. Mew for attacking (apparently scratching with non-existent claws). Then there are various environmental objects that Neku's Psychokinesis pins and Joshua's divine cell phone send at the Noise... Beat's skateboard is, ironically, one of the more realistic weapons in the game: he just uses it to smack the crap out of everyone.
- In Scribblenauts, Maxwell's weapons are damn near every noun in the English language.
- In Kingdom Hearts, Goofy's weapon is a shield (though it is used to ram into the enemy). Vexen uses a shield as well. Not to mention the hero Sora's use of a giant magical key that he hits people with.
- The sequel (and the spinoff) feature a Quirky Miniboss Squad with a variety of improbable weapons, including a sitar.
- Don't forget the Lexicon!
- Or the giant, animate playing cards! And dont forget the first game, which had an enemy a foot tall that attacks you with a book two feet across and eight inches thick.
- And the gag weapons. BANANA!
- Marluxia's sinister lily. You shouldn't be surprised to hear that the makers of Final Fantasy had a hand in this, if you haven't heard so already.
- The Squaresoft game Bahamut Lagoon, while not having specific characters with improbable weapons, does have various items that all characters can throw to cause damage or status effects. These items include Sweet Memory, Porno Mag, and Botched Cookie.
- If you raise Ayla in Chrono Trigger to very high levels, her only weapon - fists - become "Iron Fist" and later "Bronze Fist". It's also possible to equip Crono with a Mop.
- Here's the fun part: ** Level Crono can still solo Lavos with it, too.
- Are you saying using fist is improbable. I guess you can say that, in a realistic view, swords trumps fists but than again, in a realistic view, using swords against laser shooting, planet exploding god-like beings is pretty ridiculous too.
- The DS Updated Rerelease actually shows that Ayla's fists change every twenty to twenty-five levels, only changing name at very high levels. Of course, the game continues to be cryptic by refusing to show details on exactly how her fists change.
- Klarth F. Lester from Tales Of Phantasia uses a book, and Arche uses a broom. Somewhat justified, as they're spellbooks and flying brooms, and are used more to boost the magic power of the characters than to hit people with.
- A running gag in the Tales series is for the player to find extremely powerful but unlikely weapons for the characters late in the game. In Tales Of Symphonia, for example, Lloyd can buy a pair of giant paper fans and Presea (who usually uses an axe) can buy a giant toy hammer; Will in Tales Of Legendia receives a sledgehammer at the end of one Side Quest that has its weight (a whopping 765 kg) actually painted on it.
- As a possible Shout Out to Legendia, Karol Capel from Tales Of Vesperia gets this exact same weapon.
- This one is actually an in-joke: in Japanese, "765" is pronounced "namuko"- which sounds like the name of the company that made the game: Namco
- The best one, though, would probably be Sheena, from Symphonia; she uses cards with shinto wards inscribed on them. Her gag weapon is even more ridiculous; she beats enemies up with paper money.
- That makes sense though, since summoners in mediveal times delivired cards to summon people to court. Guess they did the research.
- Her joke weapon is actually a Money Bag, presumably full of coins.
- How does one bring up Tales Of Symphonia and not mention Genis, who uses a kendama, a child's toy?
- For one, Genis is a kid. For two, I believe the reason given is that when casting magic it helps to have some sort of concentration, which is something you need to use a kendama. Also, presumably the rhythm of the kendama helps as well, judging by one of Genis's EX skills.
- Except that the Kendama can actually be deadly...have you seen those skits where Lloyd throws the kendama around?
- Anise in Tales Of The Abyss one-ups that one again: She quite sensibly uses maces and magic scepters as weaponry... But she never actually attacks with them. Instead, she attacks by animating her stuffed bear with magic and turning it into a seven foot tall engine of destruction. She's the game's Cute Bruiser, incidentally.
- Most of the weapons used by the heroes in Tales Of Vesperia tend to sit within the realm of probability—swords, maces, hammers, knives, polearms, bows, etc. That is, except for Rita, who uses sashes. Long pieces of cloth.
- Though her other weapon type, chains/whips, is much more reasonable. Except some of these are actually the above-mentioned kendama - far less reasonable.
- In Tales Of Symphonia, Presea and Zelos can randomly start a fight wielding a giant plush bunny or a bouquet of flowers, respectively, if they have their formal outfits on.
- Tales Of Eternia's Meredy uses a whistle to command her actual attacking weapon, her Team Pet Quickie. Chat uses handbags full of infinite cannonballs, which she throws.
- Tales Of Hearts carries on the tradition. Kohak's Soma Elrond's weapon half takes the form of a baton, and Beryl's Thiers produces a paintbrush as tall as she is.
- How have we talked about Tales games without mentioning Tales Of Legendia? Will uses a hammer, which is a normal weapon, but he never really uses it to attack, Shirley uses pens and brushes, Grune's weapons are urns, and Norma's are straws that she uses to blow bubbles at enemies. Granted, none of the spellcasters can learn any physical attacks, they're still odd weapon choices.
- Shirley actually throws her Teriques, and is the only caster to actually have an attacking combo because she can send it halfway across the battlefield.
- Tales of Graces goes on with it. Malik has a BOOMERANG SWORD. He throws it... and it flies back. And not to mention Hubert, who wields twin swords (which are connected to be a staff...) that can change to twin pistols AND a bow.
- The characters in Chrono Cross have weapons that include stirring spoons, fishing lures and carrots, among others. Making things slightly less ridiculous here is that, for the most part, you have to have them specially made by blacksmiths... although enough merchants do sell them that one wonders why.
- That's Truth In Television. If your neighborhood's market sells weapons but not carrots, I certainly don't want to go there.
- A fan-made game mod for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion allows the PC to equip a particular slaughterfish as a gag weapon. It does just enough damage to get the City Watch on your case.
- Princess Toadstool's weapons include a Parasol, War Fan, Frying Pan, and a Special Glove in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and Super Smash Bros Melee. In her own feature game, Super Princess Peach, she employs a parasol named Perry who can change shape. And devour enemies.
- Forget Toadstool. One of Bowser's weapons is a little Mario doll. Wich he promptly uses to switch places and attack throwing THE REAL MARIO.
- There are several characters in the Shadow Hearts series who fight with improbable weapons.
- Alice Eliott (Shadow Hearts) uses books. Bibles, mostly. To smash people with.
- Joachim Valentine (Shadow Hearts: Covenant), in true pro-wrestler fashion, uses an arsenal of "found" weapons which include a locker, a mailbox, a frozen tuna, and a submarine. (His teacher, the Great Gama, fights with a pirate statue.)
- Anastasia Romanov (Shadow Hearts: Covenant) uses Fabergé eggs.
- Gepetto (Shadow Hearts: Covenant) attacks with an ambulatory puppet which mimics his movements; his "weapons" are improved varieties of marionette string, the ultimate being the Red String Of Fate.
- In Shadow Hearts: From the New World, odd weapons include vintages of alcohol, guitars, and swords made by sticking a hilt on a vaguely cylindrical object (including a bus stop sign, a cactus, a firecracker, and a Sword In The Stone with stone still attached).
- Persona 2 Eternal Punishment has Baofu, who uses Yen Coins to attack with. Justified because it is stated in-game that he uses chi to throw his coins with the force of bullets but still.... coins?!
- At least that one is explained...unlike Jun's flowers and Michelle's guitar-case-machine-gun-thing.
- Persona 3 has a number of 'gag' weapons that are remarkably powerful, gained as side quest rewards. These include the Toy Bow (with suction cup arrows), Nailbat (wielded as a two-handed sword), and this editor's personal favorite, the Bus Stop Sign.
- The PSP remake due to altering the weapon system adds even more joke weapons. The male lead (who can only use swords now) has several large kitchen knives, the female lead that uses bladed spears also gets several hockey and lacross sticks (the ultimate of which has the Atlus logo on it) and Mitsuru gets a few umbrellas. And of course the Bus Stop Sign returns although you won't see it much.
- And Persona 4 has Kanji's beginning weapon, the folding chair. Similarly, Yukiko's weapons are all folding fans that she tosses at her enemies.
- Kanji keeps getting better; first weapon you can buy him is a desk.
- Kanji really takes the cake here. Half of Kanji's weapons are shields (that he blugeons people with) and half are random heavy objects (that he blugeons people with) but it makes sense because Kanji's just a thug that throws his weight around during battle rather than a trained fighter.
- And the protagonist that usually uses swords also gets two sets of sports equipment weapons one of which is poor and one of which is pretty good. A golf club (with a cheap bargin bin one, and a well made titanium one) and a baseball bat (a wooden one and a metal one with the Atlus logo on it)
- Komachi Onozuka of the Touhou series also uses coins in her spell card attacks. And those coins will come at you fast, and they will HURT.
- The fps game Blood has a voodo doll, stabing hurts the enemy or you if there are none, and it can skin monsters alive.
- In Time Crisis 2, the second boss character, a bloke in sunglasses, picks up an ICBM and swings it at you......despite it surely weighing several tonnes. Then when you shoot him enough he drops it and it rolls away like a cardboard tube.
- In its pseudo-sequel Crisis Zone, at the end of the Garland Technology Center stage, you fight a pair of elite soldiers: A thin athletic man with paired foldable blades on his wrists, appropriately named "Edgey", and a hulking brute with an anti-tank rifle named "Tiger". While Edgey spends his time dashing about and flinging throwing knives at the player, Tiger tends to simply use his greater bulk to shrug off hundreds of rounds pumped into him while firing his weapon in return. However, on occasion he will throw a large box, kick a ladder, or even pick up and swing a steel girder.
- Several of the characters in the Guilty Gear series are armed with... off-kilter weaponry. Cute Bruiser May uses a ship's anchor that's literally as big as she is tall, Faust uses a giant scalpel, Bridget (famed for inspiring another trope) is a Killer Yoyo user, and on close inspection Sol's Fire Seal sword resembles a large Zippo lighter. Among the assassins, Millia's hair and Zato-1's shadow are living bioweapons, and Venom uses a pool cue. Dizzy's metamorphing wings are sentient, Baiken has a Swiss Army Weapon replacing her missing arm, I-no uses a guitar and her living hat, the ghosts possessing Zappa throw him at enemies, A.B.A drags around a huge key, and Anji uses paper fans of doom. Lampshades are hung in various character's win comments against these characters, as they comment on their foe's tastes in arms.
- Fina's weapon in Skies Of Arcadia is a floating blob by the name of Cupil. Feeding him "chams" allows him to upgrade; he then attacks by changing into an anvil, frying pan, cannonball, lance, etc... or, in his final form, just gets big and eats them. To add insult to injury, Final Cupil is also the Infinity Plus One Sword.
- Vyse and Aika, from the same game, get gag weapons if you complete a sidequest (Gamecube remake) or download them (Dreamcast original): a tuna fish and a giant lollipop. Each has an incredible spike in one stat, to the near-absolute loss of all the others.
- The Swirlmarang (Aika's giant lollipop) has a 100% chance of causing panic if it hits anything not immune to it, effectively making it a Lethal Joke Item.
- In the first Xenosaga game, chaos used gloves as his weapon. However, the upgrades were more like downgrades, going from large padded safety gloves down to old ragged pair of holey (Holy) gloves. In retrospect, chaos's character had the ability to destroy gnosis simply by touch, the gloves acting to seal his power, so really, "downgrading" to get more power isn't so implausible (in a fantasy-ish way).
- Lunar: Eternal Blue has one in the form of Jean. Well, it's unorthodox before she learns Martial Arts and fights barehanded, but she still throws Bladed Dancer Fans.
- The two main characters of Lunar: Dragon Song both fight with unconventional weapons: Lucia with umbrellas and Jian with shoes (which he does at least kick with, not throw).
- Kisala in Rogue Galaxy also uses shoes as her secondary weapons. Her primary weapons are a pair of daggers, though, and the other characters wield a fairly traditional combination of guns, swords, and other "real" weapons.
- Phantom Brave took this trope to the logical extreme, allowing you to use almost anything as a weapon, so long as you can pick it up. This includes rocks, shubs, and even people.
- Disgaea seems to have lampshaded this - for the description of the weapon "Lion's Heart" it has, "Why is this in the weapons category...?"
- While not a weapon persay, Mario Superstar Baseball has DK use a boxing glove instead of a baseball bat. This continues into the sequel, where Baby DK uses a Banana, King K. Rool uses his scepter, the Kremlings all use bats that look like spiked dumbbells, and Funky Kong uses a surfboard.
- Cream the Rabbit in Sonic The Hedgehog is known to use her pet Chao, Cheese, as a weapon. Similarly, in Sonic Adventure, Tails uses his tails as a flail-like weapon, with a pendant augmentation that allows him to spin at a much higher speed.
- In The Typing Of The Dead (based on House Of The Dead 2), you defeat hordes of zombies by typing, rather than using the Light Gun. In CutScenes, the characters are depicted as wearing Dreamcasts (The PS 2 remake used a PS 2) as backpacks, and using a computer keyboard instead of a gun.
- The browser-based MMORPG Kingdom Of Loathing is full of improbable weapons, such as the duck-on-a-string and the aptly-named ridiculously overelaborate ninja weapon. What "normal" weapons there are tend to come in ridiculous variations (like the flaming cardboard sword and the denim axe).
- The female characters in the Dynasty Warriors series of games tend to fight with improbable weapons: either sharpened fans, or, in one especially memorable instance, a flute that magically sets people on fire.
- There were/are actual Iron Fan weapons, which were basically a normal fan with an iron frame with sharp points instead of a wooden frame.
- Samurai Warriors continues this, with Okuni's umbrellas, Oichi's kendama (Cup & Ball), and No's gigantic claws that pop in from Hammer Space. Mitsunari and Shingen's fans-as-weapons seems slightly more probable than those.
- Dynasty Warriors 6 seems to be stepping away from this - most characters' weapons are quasi-reasonable, with the strategists' being the most unreasonable (claws that fling a wirethingie? a feathered war fan?).
- The titular character in American McGee's Alice is all about unlikely weapons, as her entire arsenal is toys from her childhood. Razor sharp cards, explosive jack-in-the-boxes, demonic dice, and deadly jacks are just some of the deadly tools of her trade. Her BFG is an actual real-life weapon, though, but still extremely exaggerated in its utility.
- Phantasy Star Online includes a sidequest that requires you to find weapon fanatics, talk to them with the appropriate enthusiasm, and eventually talk to their leader. The "ultimate weapon"? A frying pan.
- Then there's the Chain Sawd, a hybrid chainsaw/sword that absorbs HP.
- The Priest, Sage and Taekwon Master (AKA Star Gladiator) classes in Korean MMORPG Ragnarok Online are able to equip a variety of books as weapons, ranging from Bibles and diaries to ancient stone tablets. The priests and sages hit the opponents with them while the Taekwon Masters seem to simply hold them for inspiration.
- In fact, the first Book a sage gets is their own hardcover graduation thesis. So... knowledge is power?
- And lest not forget the Bard class and their instruments.
- Not exactly a weapon to wield, but Honorable Mention: Paladins can throw GOD at you.
- In Diablo 2, when you go to the village of Tristram, you can find the corpse of Wirt (the annoying kid from the first game who would sell you overpriced magical items every so often), and rob his body, getting a LOT of gold....and his peg leg, which you can use as a club with 3 sockets....although if you didn't socket it, at the end of the game you could combine it with a Tome of Town Portal in the Horadric Cube to go to the Secret Cow Level. Still, the image of using someone's peg leg as a weapon is quite strange.
- In ''WorldOfWarcraft'' this is continued with the item "Wirt's Third Leg", a rare level 40 1-handed mace.
- But first you could find Wirt's Other Leg in the final mission of the Blood Elf campaign in War Craft 3: The Frozen Throne.
- And Hellgate: London has its own "Wart's Peg Leg", which functions as a "sword" but gives you added defence as well.
- The Soul Calibur series has joke weapons for most of its characters. The joke part is played up with silly sound effects that the weapons make upon hitting the enemy. Worth mentioning are Xianghua's giant calligraphy brush, Siegfried/Nightmare's sawed-off galley oar, Taki's tobacco pipes, Voldo's tambourines, and Raphael's cane (which comes complete with its own Laugh Track).
- Soul Calibur also features a sword for Siegfried that looks like a squid and goes squish when it hits something.
- Said squid appears in Soul Calibur 3 in Nightmare's arsenal.
- And in Soul Calibur 4 he has a surfboard on a stick. Yes...a surfboard on a stick.
- One can argue that Tira's standard weapon, essentially an edged steel hula hoop, is an example as well.
- This comes full circle in IV, where her joke weapon is a literal hula hoop.
- Gordon uses a crowbar. In itself, it's not exactly improbable, but he uses it to stop an alien invasion.
- One cannot forget the CHINESE TAKE-OUT.
- Several characters from the Samurai Shodown series have wacky weapon choices; the contender for top spot is Morozumi Taizan's giant calligraphy brush. Also of note is Wan Fu's stone pillar, Seigfried's oversized gauntlet...
- In Dwarf Fortress throwing was bugged in that even something as inconsequential as a thrown fly or a thrown glob of vomit would cause ridiculous wounds.
- Condemned: Criminal Orgins, and Condemned 2: Bloodshot for the Xbox 360 have many improvisational weapons, including prosthetic limbs, crutches, and weirdest of all, exploding dolls. The game did feature firearms and hand to hand combat, but in the first Condemned, Ethan didn't carry any extra ammo, and so could not reload (however, the weapon could be used as a bludgeon both to conserve ammo and as a fallback if he ran out - the firearms were the only example of Breakable Weapons, though.), and in the second, ammo had to be scavenged from other weapons of the same type, or ammo boxes - which were, as usual, hard to come by. This led to the player relying on melee weapons (in the original) and his fists (in the sequel).
- Being a doujin fighting game starring various Visual Novel characters by Key Visual Arts, Eternal Fighter Zero has nearly every character as an Improbable Weapon User. Weapon examples include cellos, vacuum cleaners, jars of jam, giant taiyaki, ice cream cartons, stuffed animals, and lots of pulpy peach juice.
- Planescape Torment's various improvised weapons. Let's see, a scalpel, a zombie's arm, your *own* arm, a *hollow* axe, a fingernail, three different sets of teeth ...
- Super Smash Bros has several instances of this:
- Luigi can use himself as a missile attack.
- Peach, as mentioned above. She can also bring out Toad as a counterattack.
- Mr. Game&Watch, using elements from the various Game&Watch games he is derived from, uses bacon, a turtle, a chair...
- Wario has fart moves. He can also eat bombs with little effect on himself, but damaging nearby enemies (and himself). And then after he's finished riding his motorbile he can throw it at you.
- And not to mention the various items if you play with them that is.
- GTA San Andreas lets you bludgeon your enemies to death with such items as flowers, or a double ended dildo.
- Their primary purpose is to be given to girlfriends as gifts, but still. If CJ's strength is maxed out, he can beat any ped to a pulp with flowers in a matter of seconds. Oh, the
humanity hilarity.
- Manhunt has quite a few gory weapons that can be used to massacre the various mooks, but the very first one you get is a plastic shopping bag, which is wrapped over a mook's head to suffocate him.
- In Devil May Cry 3, Dante gains the boss Nevan's soul in the form of a guitar. That fires balls of lightning and bats. And has a scythe blade attached to it. It works much better that it seems, though, having high crowd control value and power. Then there's Cerberus. While three-section weapons are nothing unusual in of themselves (see the Shikai and Bankai versions of Ikkaku Madarame's zanpakut?, H?zukimaru for an anime example), Cerberus' three sections are attached to a central ring instead of being linked one-to-the-next.
- Then in Devil May Cry 4 the game's first protaganist uses a sword with an engine inside.
- Also in "Devil May Cry 4" there is the gun pandora, which is a floating missile platform/chakrum/missile longbow/cluster missile launcher/big friggin' laser. Of course its most powerful attack comes in its normal form (a briefcase) when Dante merely drops it on the ground and opens it.
- Earthbound has Ness saving the world with increasingly powerful baseball bats, sling-shots and yo-yos. Or Jeff and his incredibly powerful bottle rockets. Paula wields a frying pan. The prequel game is similar.
- And in Mother 3, Lucas and Flint wield wooden and metal rods, Kumatora equips gloves for weapons, and Duster uses boots. Improbable in more ways than one with Duster, since one of his legs is partially paralyzed.
- And while we're talking about yo-yos, Mike in Startropics uses one quite effectively to avert an alien invasion. Sure, he eventually gets it powered up, but still...
- The yo-yo was initially developed as a weapon, so this isn't exactly outside the realm of believability.
- Ebisumaru in the Ganbare Goemon series can be said to have an entire arsenal of improbable weapons, with a new one for almost every game. This list includes flutes, noisemakers, paper fans, hula hoops, dance ribbons, squeaky hammers, hammers made of meat, spring-loaded boxing gloves, frying pans, rice spoons, badminton paddles, and even skewered oden. All he needs is a good umbrella to round things out.
- The title character Goemon himself is using pipes and coins for fighting
- Makoto from Enchanted Arms uses a saxophone for his weapon. This could possibly be justified by him also "singing" at a very high volume and blowing really hard into, which means that the enemies are taking damage from the intense volume of the sound that the sax is making - except that he uses the same animation for healing party members... So Yeah.
- Led Campbell from Septerra Core used a huge wrench as her weapon.
- Virtually anything in NetHack can be wielded in combat or thrown at enemies, including pickaxes, eggs, potion bottles, gems, coins, or the dead bodies of your enemies. The latter is actually quite effective when you're wielding a dead cockatrice. There's even an in-joke/tradition about beating one late-game enemy with the most improbable weapon you can think of.
- Besides his Sinister Scythe, Prometheus from Mega Man ZX can kill people with his blue hair. And it would be pretty damn unavoidable against anyone who can't jump high enough or wall-jump.
- There's also Quint from the Gameboy Mega Man series, who uses a nuclear-powered pogo stick.
- In Powered Up, Roll can take down hordes of robots with a broom. She can also be equipped with a flag, a net, an umbrella/parasol, a candy cane or a fish.
- Apart from the already mentioned Leg, World Of Warcraft has quite a few gag weapons, such as a fish or a bear bone (which would be a pretty decent weapon if it didn't drop off enemies that are over twice the required level). Not to mention a slew of engineer toys that are just as likely to backfire as they are to do what they are intended for.
- Cookie's Tenderizer. Nothing says you mean business like a rolling pin!
- On the topic of the fish, Dark Herring is a fish, wielded as a dagger, that does more damage than the swords of one of the canonically stronger characters in the game. It can be dual-wielded as well. "Herring Seeks your life" indeed.
- Combined with some of the treants (walking trees) and ancients (giant walking trees who threw boulders as their primary attack in warcraft 3), many Monty Python jokes can be made.
- This Adventurers! strip, featuring a rolled up newspaper swung with such force as to leave its victims in flames.
- In Tron 2.0, while there WERE other weapons, the hands-down most useful one was a frisbee. A glowing one that doubled as a shield. Could be upgraded later on to exploding and multiple-throw versions. Throwing it to attack left you defenseless until it came back - and no, you couldn't switch to another weapon while it was in flight. This made the multiple-throw version useless, as you were defenseless until all the discs you'd thrown had come back to you.
- The disc weapon is in keeping with canon, where it IS the most powerful weapon inside a computer.
- In the Penny Arcade game On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One, your character uses a rake. By the end of the episode, it's a super-powered rake with spikes on it, but it's still, essentially, a rake. One of your other party members uses his fists, dipped in super-urine.
- The sequel breaks your rake and gives you a hoe.
- In Zombies Ate My Neighbors, the protagonists Zeke and Julie can wield at least a dozen non-weapons as weapons. Water pistols, exploding six-packs of soda, fire extinguishers, weedwhackers... The only probable weapons in the game are the bazooka and the flamethrower.
- The twist here is that every weapon (even the joke weapons like tomatoes and dinner plates) could One Shot the right enemy (For instance, the plates could take out Mummies in two shots and the tomatoes were great for use against Martians)
- Leon from Star Ocean: The Second Story fights with books: he opens it, and some sort of spectral valkyrie pops out to lay a smackdown. Chisato from the same games has Tazers, Precis the Gadgeteer Genius has robot hands coming out her backpack, and Opera has a laser rifle... That she smacks people with. Welch from the psp remake uses a freakin' handy stick.
- Shantae uses her hair. HER HAIR!
- As does Sindel from Mortal Kombat.
- And Emeralda from Xenogears.
- And the main character from Kabuki Quantum Fighter.
- Suetake from Otogi 2: Immortal Warriors. Aside from the fact that Suetake is a magical levitating tree/human hybrid, his default weapon is a wagon wheel. A levitating, magical and most likely pointy wagon wheel, nonetheless, but it's still a WAGON WHEEL.
- In the Simpsons arcade game, three of the four playable characters use improbable weapons, while the last (Homer) uses no weapons at all. Bart attacks with his skateboard, Marge with a vaccuum cleaner and Lisa with a jump rope.
- Homer being a boxer, on the other hand, is of course canon. Although his fighting style should have mostly revolved around being punched in the face. I guess that makes him the tank.
- Culotte of La Pucelle Tactics may take the cake for shear variety of improbable weapons. He throws mushrooms, monsters, lollipops, bombs, apples, rocks, and many other unusual things at enemies. And those are just his "normal" attacks.
- One of his skills involves throwing a series of those 'weapons' at the enemy. The skill description reads "Everything but the kitchen sink..."
- River City Ransom has conventional weapons one would expect to find in an urban environment, like clubs, pipes, bike chains, rocks, and brass knuckles, but you can also beat people up with trash cans, car tires, twenty-foot long poles, and ladders. You can even pick up enemies that have been knocked down and beat up thier buddies with them.
- Rival Schools is flush with these. The first game has Natsu and Roberto, both of whom are able to set folks on fire with their volleyball and football/soccer ball attacks (Their classmate Shoma isn't included as his implement of choice can be considered a weapon). The first game's Updated Rerelease adds Ran, a school newspaper report who damages opponents by taking their picture with her camera! And the sequel, Project Justice, introduces Momo, who wreaks havoc with her tennis racket, and Yurika, who uses her violin in her attacks!
- Don't forget Hinata who kicks the opponent by throwing her infinitly respawning shoes at them.
- In the Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni Daybreak videogame, the characters use a wide variety of weapons that are either dangerous everyday tools or seemingly harmless toys to beat the crap out of each others. These include quite a few water guns, rulers, pieces of chalk, a mop, a golf club, a shovel (used to throw large rocks), a ceremonial hoe, a fire extinguisher that shoots fire, a handsaw, a flying buzzsaw, a large wooden beam, a pot (smashed onto someone's head), a few homing explosive syringes, firecrackers, fireworks, banana peels, a boxing glove on a spring hidden in a cardboard box, the flash from a camera, and a life-sized KFC Colonel Sanders doll apparenty filled with molotov cocktail.
- In the upcoming Postal 3, one of the weapons in the game is apparently a live badger in a harness. Really.
- Team Fortress 2 has the demoman's rum bottle, soldier's spade, and arguably the medic's bonesaw (odd in that he uses it in the same way you'd use a knife).
- The scout has also been given a baseball, which stuns opponents if the bat is used to hit it at them. Plus an earlier update allowed the Heavy to kill someone with his "bang!" taunt.
- Don't forget the engineer's wrench and (to a lesser extent) the scout's baseball bat...
- And now the Sniper has "Jarate" - a mason jar filled with (his)
urine Jar-based Karate, not to mention the Huntsman bow, which is an actual weapon, but being used in the 20th century, with all sorts of automated turret guns, flamethrowers, rocket launchers and grenades about? Yeah.
- Among the melee weapons available to the survivors in Left 4 Dead 2 you will find a frying pan and an electric guitar.
- Lucky Glauber from The King Of Fighters series uses a basketball for several of his attacks.
- Vivi the Sky Witch of Luminous Arc uses a magic lamp that doubles as a machine gun.
- Don't forget Mel and her giant leaves.
- Cecille wields a staff before changing class. Sure, that doesn't sound too improbable. However... her staff is taller than her, and she never becomes fatigued from wielding it. (Then again, no characters become fatigued from wielding weapons.)
- In Luminous Arc 2, quite a few of the characters do this, so much so that it sometimes seems like the real weapons are the improbable ones (slight exaggeration).
- We've got Althea, who uses a wand that looks like a duster (along with her magic); Dia, a Musical Assassin of a Witch whose weapon is a conducting baton; Kaph, the Musical Assassin whose guitar fires bullets; Luna, who uses a fan, as I recall; Alice?, who uses a rolling pin; and so on.
- Let's not forget Pop's whisk, Sadie's trumpet, Josie's fishbone staff...
- Kyosuke Nanbu's Alt Eisen Rise from Super Robot Wars. Ignoring the improbability of a giant robot, it's necessary to understand the mechanics behind some of the parts - the Tesla Drive that allows a unit to fly, and the Dual Tesla Drive that gives it highly maneuverable and fast flight. The Alt Eisen Riese is equipped with a Dual Tesla Drive, but it can't fly; this is because it's so heavy and awkward that it needs the Dual Tesla Drive to stand up.
- Its little brother, Battle Moon Wars, has some improbable weapons too. LIKE WARCUIED'S RED MOON! THE MOON!
- In Legacy of Kain: Defiance a certain cheat code would allow you to give Raziel a cardboard tube to replace the Soul Reaver, in a nod to the Penny Arcade strips about the cardboard tube samurai.
- Suikoden is full of these. Shovels, book belts, bundles of rope, shawls. Any game in the series will likely have at least half a dozen strange weapons. And they can all be sharpened by the same blacksmith.
- The Gaia Online MMORPG zOMG uses rings, because conventionally weaponry simply has no effect against the Animated. Some rings mimic normal weapons, like Katanas and Cool Guns. Others can pass for magic spells, like the Solar Ray and Fire Rain rings. Other rings have you fighting with Radioactive Water Balloons, Duct Tape, Beehives, and of course, Cooking Spray. You can also buy some pretty cool improbable weapons like a Shovel Blade, an Exploding Easter Egg, and a
Keyblade G-Blade.
- Since they introduced alternate weapon skins in City Of Heroes, there's been a few of these available, mainly for the War Mace and Battle Axe powersets. War Mace gets a baseball bat, a shovel and a wrench, while Battle Axe gets the same shovel turned on its side. Your enemies aren't strangers to this either- see the Scrapyarders, why will sometimes use jackhammers against you.
- And Jurassik, a Devouring Earth giant monster, who uses a car caught in a tree branch as a giant mace.
- Custom shields add another layer of absurdity by providing a manhole cover to use in place of a conventional shield. Added y player request, no less.
- Super Punch Out, being a boxing game, shouldn't feature weapons. Nevertheless, one Luchador boxer uses (illegal) wrestling techniques, one boxer uses Jeet Kune Do, one boxer attacks with their Bishonen hair,a clown throws deadly balls, and one particular old man likes to hit you with his walking stick repeatedly. It might be easier to mention the boxers that fight fair. And of course, the ref will never call them on it.
- Amaterasu, from Okami is a prime example of this, seeing as her 'default' weapon is a large, flaming, mirror, which Amaterasu uses to (literally) beat enemies to death with.
- She also uses bead necklaces. And big swords. The second wouldn't be so weird if, you know, she wasn't a dog.
- In the Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind you can find and use a severed Nord's leg as a bludgeoning weapon.
- Ty The Tasmanian Tiger has exploding boomerangs, which return to you unharmed after hitting their target and reducing it to rubble. I wish I was making this up...
- In Medi Evil, if Sir Dan completes a task for a witch, she gives him a bucket of magic chicken drumsticks. When armed, you can throw them at your opponents, which appears to do nothing, until they suddenly turn into a delicous roast chicken. How that works is an entirely different question.
- Lufia: The Legend Returns features several characters wielding Improbable Weapons
- Seena the fortune teller uses various kinds of crystal balls and magic wands/rods.
- Ruby the gambler uses playing cards, and many of her IP moves are based on gambling. One of her attacks actually has you play a simple card game in which you guess if the next card will be higher or lower in value than the previous one. The attack starts with a base power equal to your current IP, and doubles with each successful guess. How exactly this is supposed to deal damage is a mystery...
- Isaac the inventor uses a plethora of strange gadgets, including a music box, a "slay speaker," and a machine simply called "Custom 65."
- Aima the martial artist typically wields "fists" - apparently special gauntlets designed to increase the effectiveness of punches. One variant you can find is called the "Rocket Fist," which presumably uses rocket boosters to speed up the punch (or possibly even launch Aima at the foe? The battle animations offer little insight into the exact mechanics of the combat).
- Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistral's inventor, Lexis Shaia, uses a variety of tools as weapons, including the memorably named 'vice pliers'.
- Will, the main character in the Super Nintendo game Illusion of Gaia uses a flute to bash enemies.
- The Legend Of Zelda has some unusual ways of beating Ganondorf. In Ocarina of Time, you can take down Ganon with Deku Nuts, only needing the Master Sword for the finishing blow. Also, in Twilight Princess, you can distract Ganondorf with a FISHING ROD, allowing you to then slash the idiot. Honestly, what is wrong with him? You would think that the Gerudo King would be smart enough NOT to look at a lure in the middle of a heated fight...
- Likewise, using an empty bottle against Ganondorf's projectiles in the first fight against him in Ocarina of Time actually works! When fighting the wizard in Link to the Past, the Bug Catching Net can also reflect the projectiles back. The net is also Link's Joke Weapon in Soul Calibur 2.
- Several Wild ARMs games have at least one character fitting this trope.
- Lilka (umbrellas) and Marivel (Hob and Gob, two little robot thingies) in Wild ARMs 2.
- Arnaud (feathers) and Yulie (a set of three hoops) in Wild ARMs 4.
- Wild ARMs XF has a ton of weirdness: iron fans (Arcanist), books (Elementalist), spanners/wrenches (Gadgeteers), bells (Fantastica), slingshots (Excavator), batons (Martial Mage), and some weird three-winged throwing blade (Stormrider).
- Blue Dragon has you using your own shadow to fight for you. This isn't much of a problem, except one of the characters is actually an experienced swordsman (well, swordswoman), yet never uses her sword in combat.
- Through use of cheats in Fallout 3, a fire hydrant can be used as a weapon.
- In Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg all the weapons are (if you could not guess from the title), eggs. It is slightly strange though in the fact that you can use eggs to break fences, crush enimies, and smash rocks, yet if an egg touches some thorns, it'll crack.
- Throughout Castle Crashers players can find and use several strange objects as weapons. The list includes a frozen chicken, a dead fish, a lobster, umbrella, pumpkin peeler, carrot, golden key, a branch, a vine, a wooden spoon, a skeleton leg, the gun from Alien Hominid, a unicorn's horn, a steak, a sausage, a lollipop, a candlestick, a fishing rod, a wrench, and a leaf. these can be found from killing enemies, blowing up walls, or digging them up with a shovel.
- In fact, even the shovel can be used to damage enemies.
- Don't forget the horn, which can deal serious damage and fling enemies into the air with a single note.
- Maria Renard from the Castlevania franchise tosses rapid-fire doves, kittens, or dragons at the enemy. She also uses a turtle shell as armor.
- Aeon from Judgment fights with something that can only be described as a clock-spear. It's a clock with a pointed blade attached to it.
- In Portrait of Ruin, the best subweapon to use against Richter is a cream pie.
- And in Aria of Sorrow, using the Killer Mantle soul causes Soma to hit enemies with a piece of cloth, dealing a little damage and switching the enemy's HP and MP. Since Golems have no MP, this makes Killer Mantle a one-hit kill on otherwise nigh-indestructible enemies. It's basically the only way to kill Iron Golems.
- In Metal Gear Solid 3 you can kill guards with a friggin' Fork - even Signit Lampshades this trope by asking why the hell Snake is carrying it with him.
- Between the two Touhou fighter games, the character Yukari Yakumo, whose power allows her to creates holes in space (gaps) that allow for instantaneous movement from one place to another, makes effective use of a strange arsenal: dropped statues, road signs, and a train. Yes, a train.
- Also, as mentioned above, Komachi Onozuka throws coins really fast.
- In many fanworks, Yuka Kazami often uses blooming sunflowers to unnerving and occasionally deadly effect.
- Alice Margatroid fights using dolls. This is far more awesome than it sounds.
- And how can we forget Aya, who, in Shoot the Bullet, defeats bosses by taking pictures of them. You take pictures of bosses, and after you've taken enough, they blow up. I wish I was kidding.
- The heroes of Superhero League Of Hoboken tend to obtain and use a wide variety of weapons over the course of the game, from pointy sticks and rusty nails, to cyanide-laced silly string, tee-ball set, and arsenic-dipped deer antlers, to devastating weapons like the dobermann, the modified jet engine and the nest of trained hornets. TRAINED HORNETS.
- Lina from Riviera The Promised Land is a master of fruit-fu, being the only character of the four-girls-and-a-guy band who can use Overskills with Banangos and Applecots.
- The titular character of The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang fights monsters by spinning his cape and throwing his hat like a boomerang.
- In League Of Legends, legendary warrior Jax is so powerful and skilled that league officials only allow him to fight with a lampost. His Ascended Fanboy follower Urf tries to imitate him with a spatula and a fish. Twisted Fate fights with playing cards. Anne the Creepy Child transforms her teddy bear into a monster to maul people.
- Genzo of Daiku no Gensan (Better known in the US as Harry of Hammerin' Harry) normally falls under Drop The Hammer... but in Hammerin' Hero, he gets alternate jobs which give him access to some improbable weapons. At the normal end is a baseball bat. Others include things like records, boomboxes, sushi, whole raw fish, anchors...
- In Shadow of Rome, once you've decapitated someone, you can pick up their head and hit people with it.
- In Mana Khemia Alchemists of Al Revis, the main character Vayne attacks with his cat (assuming the form of a katar and a BFS). Jessica uses her bag (wich has everything inside it, and one of her spells can drop swordfishs on the enemies. And the ghost Pamela uses her mana-possessed stuffed teddy bear as a weapon. Oh, of course, we have cards (Roxis), mecha-swords which can shoot, fire and throw shurikens (Flay) and an alien pod (Muppy).
- In the sequel, Mana Khemia 2 Fall of Alchemy, it is just as bad. We have books that are alive (Chloe), hoops (Etward), a giant robot fist (Enarsia), her magical maid (Liliane), her 3 Puni 'brothers' this worlds version of slimes (Puniyo), and a toy ball (Gotou). You could also incluse the shapeshifting morning star and sword of light (Ulrika and Razeluxe). The only real weapons are claws (Yun) and a ten foot mace! (Pepperoncino).
- Cornet, the main character from Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, uses a trumpet as a weapon.
- Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden has a few questionable ones in the X Box game series. In the first game, he aquires a wooden bokuto which requires about 7 upgrades until the shop owner Muramasa forges the damn thing into an oar. Don't ask. And in the second game, he comes into the possession of a Kusari-gama, or two sickles connected by a freakishly long chain (its length will never be found out, as it changes to fit the situation, or combo you decide to use), a scythe (It is improbable only in the fact that you have to be nose to nose with your enemy to actually hurt someone with it in real life, which is why they were originally intended to cut down wheat), a weapon called the Falcon's Talons (Claws similar to Wolverine's not only for his hands but for his feet as well), and when you upgrade the Lunar Staff fully, on either end of the staff you get maces that detach at Ryu's will.
- In the adventure game Bioforge, at one point the protagonist can bludgeon an enemy character to death with his own severed arm.
- In the Nintendo DS remake of Dragon Quest V, Debora uses press-on fingernails to devastating effect.
- In Eternal Sonata, Frederic Chopin uses a conductor's baton as an offensive weapon.
- Pain Killer has a gun that shoots Shurikens and lightning. To quote Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw from Zero Punctuation, "It could only be more awesome if it had tits and was on fire."
- One weapon in Cave Story gets weaker when powered up - when fully leveled, it shoots rubber duckies.
- Resident Evil 5 has a large number of chickens running around (just like in its predecessor). If you leave these things alone long enough, they will lay eggs which can be eaten to heal your wounds. Alternatively, they can be equipped by the player to be thrown like grenades. If they hit an enemy in the face, the enemy will be stunned long enough to be hit with a special melee attack (e.g. kick or straight). RE 5, however, adds in the "rotten egg" which WILL NOT heal you and instead takes your right down to "dying" status if you are foolish enough to eat it. Its deadly power can be a boon since if you throw it at a regular enemy, it will be a one-hit kill and you don't even have to hit them in the mouth.
- In Resident Evil 0, Billy uses his handcuffs (one bracelet's on his wrist, the other isn't) as brass knuckles to punch a Devestator (a mutated zombie gorilla) in a cutscene.
- The game Chex Quest starts you off with the "Bootspoon", which, you guessed it, is a spoon. It can be upgraded, however, to the "Super Boot Spork," essentially an electric spork. The "Super Boot Spork" is, in fact, an excellent weapon, as, when jabbed, it does not have to be pulled back, leaving the enemy in a helpless state of constant recoil until defeated.
- Lego Island 2 has protagonist Pepper Roni using throwing pizzas at enemy Bricksterbots, which for some reason causes them to explode. Later, the Brickster modifies the design so that they can no longer be killed this way, so Pepper uses a boombox to make the Bricksterbots dance faster and faster until they collapse from exhaustion or dizziness. Then he hits them with a pizza and they explode. So Yeah.
- Fable 2 has a wanted sheet with the charge was "Assault with a weapon that no one thought was fatal but tragically was".
- In Sengoku Basara, most of the characters are Improbable Weapon Users. A few notable examples are:Motochika's freaking anchor which he also uses to surf, Itsuki's huge hammer, and Masamune, who fights with 6 katanas!(Amusingly enough, he's voiced by the same seiyuu as Zoro)
- Prince of Persia: Warrior Within had several joke weapons, including a teddy bear, a lawn flamingo, a glove, and a glow-in-the-dark sword.
- The Worms series, which has featured such weapons as the Exploding Sheep, the Old Granny, and the Concrete Donkey. No, seriously.
- In Mabinogi almost any tool can be used as a weapon. Not only the already weapon like gathering-axes, cooking knives, sickles, and blacksmith hammers; but also metallurgy (ore panning) sieves, cooking ladles, fishing rods, and L-rods (magic dowsing rods). All tools have a damage rate that is lower than bare-hand damage. However, nearly all wieldable tools can be upgraded to make them effective, if still low-powered, weapons.
- Event weapons (the ones which aren't simply alternate versions of normal weapons) are typically either effective but silly-looking ordinary weapons, toy versions of common weapons, or special-purpose weapons which are magical and/or elaborately improbably. An example of the first type is the "cat paw club", a club weapon with very good damage stats, shaped like a giant furry cat's paw. The second type have lower stats than their normal versions — eg. toy boy and arrow set has lower damage and shorter range than any standard bow. Examples of the third type are the ice sword (a sword made from an ice crystal); and a(n edible) magic wand made from a giant pocky stick, that turns monsters into giant edible cookies.
- Special weapons invariably have a limited lifespan; either through deliberate time limits (the ice sword melted after the end of the event), or by making them unrepairable.
- Runescape has several strange weapons, including a rubber chicken and flowers.
- The World Ends With You uses pins. Now, these Pins have psychic powers. But what about your team mates? A stuffed animal, a cell phone, and a skateboard. Improbability at it's finest!
- The Dark Cloud series includes several of these, the most notorious being the Frozen Tuna.
- Max even lampshades this in Dark Chronicle, taking out his wrench and saying, "I usually use this to fix stuff but it makes a pretty good weapon too." (Naturally it builds up into maces and hammers that are not quite so improbable when you consider how much that can hurt...there's a reason Clue had a Wrench listed as one of the weapons)
- In Pokemon, first-generatiion 'mon Farfetch'd uses a leek.
- Dead Rising has water guns, C Ds, cash registers, King Salmon, chairs....
- The trademark weapon of Opoona is the "Energy Bon Bon." It resembles a small rubber ball, which can be equipped with elemental effects and special upgrades.
- A few fighters in Battle Fantasia use unorthodox weapons, such as Olivia's flag, and Cat Girl waitress Coyori's plates and pies.
- Die By The Sword allows you to sever the limbs of your enemies, pick them up and use them against them.
- A glitch in Golden Eye allows you to use a paintbrush as a weapon.
- Actually, if you look closely, that's no paintbrush. THAT'S JAMES BOND'S ARM.
- Hakuoro's primary weapon in Utawarerumono is a pair of steel fans used for both attacking and defense. Which was a real weapon.
- Tesse the super powered robot maid in Waku Waku 7 is the game's resident Improbable Weapon User, wielding brooms, giant syringes, and built-in floor buffers. And that's without even getting into her projectile attack, which allows her to throw different objects depending on how long you charge the attack. These range from the practical (Bullet Bills, giant bombs) to the improbable (cups and dishes) to the downright absurd (potted cacti, geese and small dogs.)
- Baten Kaitos has Gibari, who fights with oars, and an interesting variation with Lyude. On screen, Lyude uses a rifle as a weapon, but all of his attack magnus are of various brass musical instruments, which are still described as if they were firearms.
- Not actually used as a weapon, per se, but Godot from Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations has been known to chuck his coffee mug at Phoenix's head with unerring accuracy; Maya refers to them as "coffee grenades".
Webcomics
- Lampshaded in this Girl Genius strip:
"Zeetha, why are you using a shovel instead of your swords?"
"Silly girl! You can't dig a hole with swords!"
- and here during the Bar fight:
"You just said 'No weapons.'"
"That wasn't a weapon, that was a chair."
"Well than, give me a chair!"
- Sword-Chucks, yo!
- "It's a rat-flail!"
- MS Paint Adventures. Grand Piano Scythe! Owen Stilson Dogg Bust Scythe! Teaspoon Scythe! A-BOMB SCYTHE!
- And those are just the Gambit Schema attacks for one character. The regular weapons include a set of keys (revolver), a tube of lipstick (chainsaw), a paint roller (taser), paint stripper (flamethrower), a hairpin (machine gun, a teddy bear (knife), a sextant (sniper rifle), and a typewriter (the series' Infinity Plus One Tommy Gun). Thanks to the Good Bad Bug Running Gag, anything can be a lethal weapon.
- Lots of this pops up during the battle with DMK too. Cinderblocks, stone busts, crates and barrels, candy, and even two time-traveling versions of Pickle Inspector are used as weapons. It's safe to say that MS Paint Adventures practically runs on this trope and What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome.
- Speaking of MS Paint Adventures, Rose Lalonde from the latest adventure Homestuck uses knitting needles as a weapon.
- Also from Homestuck, Mr. Egbert's weapons of choise are cakes and SHAVING CREAM.
- The STRIFE SPECIBUS is pretty much made of this trope, as almost anything can be used as a weapon, from crowbars to fancy santas and stuffed plush bunny. Bro rivals Mr. Egbert up there, by using Lil' Cal in his fight against Dave. He also knows the art of "weaponizing a sylladex", or loading it with heavy items to be expelled as projectile weaponry when needed.
- Dr. Mc Ninja at one point uses frozen shamrocks as shuriken, which he found very...ridiculous.
- In Questionable Content when Martin and Steve are attacked by the vigilante Vespavenger they defend themselves with what's on hand, a stop sign and a trash can lid. Lampshades JRP Gs when Martin comments,"I am nowhere near effeminate or spiky haired enough for this.
- The stop sign makes a reappearance, along with a broom, when Martin, Faye, and Dora confront the Vespavenger.
- In Buck Godot Zap Gun For Hire, we have the Hoffmanite Throwing Fork and the apparently more dangerous Spoon.
- Xykon once killed an entire room full of elite paladins with a bouncy ball. Granted, it had a symbol of insanity on it, causing them to attack each other, but still, a freaking bouncy ball!
- MSF High: Donvovan is forced to be one of these by his sword. Yo-yo, Frying Pan, anything BUT "sword"!
- In Shortpacked we have Amber who wields a vicious pushy-popcorn-ball-popper-thingy.
Web Original
Western Animation
- The Transformers franchise has wound up with a number of these, generally being something fairly unremarkable when they're transformed.
- A number of Transformers with helicopter alt-modes as of late have the ability to use the rotors as weapons in robot mode. These include Bulkhead from Energon, Evac from Cybertron, and Blackout from the 2007 movie.
- A great many Transformers with animal alt-modes can use their tails as whip-like weapons once transformed. Some even have something particularly nasty at the end, like a blade or a big spiked ball.
- Engines forming guns. This happens a lot.
- And, of course, anyone whose transformation leaves them with their alt-mode's head on one of their hands has a pretty nasty weapon. Not only can its jaws clamp down hard in close-range combat, but it can usually shoot some sort of beam attack as well.
- The epitome of this, though, has got to be the Breastforce, from the Japanese-only series Victory. Their robot modes have chestplates than can be removed to turn into little robo-animal partners or hand-held guns.
- Prowl; hubcaps into shurikens. Jazz; tailpipes into nunchucks. That is all.
- The majority of the Transformers Animated Autobots use improvised weaponry (grappling hooks, wrecking balls, welders) to one degree or another. This is topped by Ratchet, whose most powerful weapons are essentially powered-up medical equipment.
- American Maid, from The Tick, uses her shoes as weapons. Unlike Jian above, she does throw them, and they apparently have some pretty pointy heels. She would occasionally use her tiara as a weapon, as well.
- To say nothing of Captain Musilage, Babyboomerangotan and.... THE HUMAN BULLET!
- Don't forget the woman who can shoot poodles out of a poodle gun.
- The Box Ghost in Danny Phantom uses boxes, cardboard, and anything square. Although sometimes he will use contents inside the box, one of which had very, very sharp scalpels. He also uses bubble wrap. Ember McLain has many functions for her guitar, but when she runs out of option, it doubles as her choice weapon. Technus uses 21st century machinery at his disposal, including, but not limited to computers, cars, satellites, and even an online video game.
- Also, one of the Fenton weapons is an ordinary baseball bat...with the word "Fenton" on it.
- Adam West's Cat Launcher in an episode of Family Guy.
- And who can forget Quick Draw McGraw's alter-ego El Kabong whose weapon of choice is a guitar... nothing special, just a regular guitar he that he uses to beat folks about the head and shoulders.
- Various Veggie Tales episodes feature a mop, ballistic pies and dodgeballs used as weapons.
Real Life
- Someone in New Zealand was charged with assault with a weapon - namely a hedgehog. Seriously.
- According to various legends, robbers have tried holdups armed with venomous snakes, Super Soakers, and in one case a booger on the end of his finger.
- For the purposes of convicting a serial killer in Texas, bath water was ruled a deadly weapon.
- The Russian Special Forces have combat techniques that use their trench shovels, because "they are as maniable as knives, but have more range and striking power".
- Though not nearly as effective as his fictional counterparts, sleight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay holds the Guinness World Record for throwing a playing card the furthest, is capable of piercing the rind of a watermelon with a thrown card, and wrote a book titled, "Cards As Weapons".
- There is a Guinness World Record for number of cucumbers cut with thrown playing cards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1GZd9_iSEA . Funnily, enough, this isn't the one I watched on TV - the one I watched was filmed in China. The guy manages 6 in 1 minute. The world record is 21.
- Professional Wrestler Sid Vicious got his ass kicked by Brian Pillman, stormed out of a bar, and came back armed with a squeegee.
- Russel Crowe's incident with a telephone probably counts for this.
- Seemingly in response to all of the shoe-critics on this page, a man has recently assaulted George W. Bush with not one, but two shoes. Both thrown (and missed).
- In actuality, this is because, in Iraq, hitting someone with a shoe is an extreme form of insult since in the Middle East the feet are considered to be very unclean.
- Examples of real life weird weapons also include:
- Hawaiian swords (a wooden paddle with shark teeth along the edges). Similarly, Aztec swords were set with blade segments of obsidian.
- The latter were actually very deadly - they were called "Macuahuitl", and you really didn't want to get hit by them. Obsidian (volcanic glass) is incredibly sharp due to lacking crystalline structures, on the order of molecular thinness. We're talking sharp enough to easily decapitate you. Obsidian was also used for arrowheads and tools, amongst other things.
- Obsidian may replace steel in surgical instruments since it can hold a much finer edge.
- Clothes A"kung fu" long sleeved robe with lead weights sewn into the sleeves. Also French police used to wear short capes with weights in the hem and would whorl them around in riots.
- 'Duckfoot' pistols with 5 barrels on one trigger, for people who don't care who they hit. Intended for riot control situations, where you've got a lot of enemies.
- A cutlass with a pistol in the handle (Yes, a freaking gunblade)
- A Soviet combat knife with a single-shot pistol built in the handle. There's also a Chinese version that fires four .22LR rounds.
- A man was charged with assault for smearing peanut butter on a doorknob. The victim was allergic, but it still warrants a mention.
- People in the Phillipines can use yo-yos to kill pesky snakes in fields.
- The yo-yo was originally an Aboriginal weapon used to smack enemies around with. Originally it was just a smooth rock on a string.
- The bolas are a similarly-designed weapon of weights on a string. They differ from the yo-yo in that they have a longer string and are used differently— bolas are used to entangle and capture enemies and animals. However, the article on them in the Other Wiki mentions that they can be thrown with sufficient force to break bones.
- In Sweden, a metal snuffbox is colloquially as a "slagsmålsdosa" (fighting box). And yes, there are many instances of people fighting with them.
- A shoplifter in a Memphis Wal-Mart escaped arrest by throwing her two-month-old nephew at a security guard.
- It could be simply because of his sheer badassery, but the famous samurai Musashi is said to have defeated his rival Kojiro with only a wooden sword. Some reports have him using an oar.
- It was both, he fashioned an extremely long sword from an oar as Kojiro wielded a longer version of the Katana than Musashi in duels.
- I raise: I heard that some samurai (forget who) defeated someone with chopsticks.
- Don't know about "defeated", but Musashi scared off a few robbers by killing several flies with chopsticks.
- Liver-Eating Johnson, a man in the Wild West best known for going on a vengeance-spree against the Crow Indians (take a guess how he got his name), was said to have escaped from a Crow camp by killing a guard and then using the guard's leg as a weapon, and later food.
- Okinawan villages were regular targets of evil lords who twirled their mustaches while cackling. Some Japanese fishermen, in response, made an entire martial art half-based off of two-handed swordplay, half-based off of staff combat, all for...an oar. From paddling boats. And won. This obscure but deadly martial art is called "chikin sunakachi", or "ekudi".
- In the United States anything can legally be a "deadly weapon". So you can be charged with "assault with a deadly weapon" and anything can be called the "deadly weapon", including your bare hands. It really makes the entire charge meaningless in itself, as it is just another way to increase the penalty for the crime, charging you twice for the same crime.
- In the US, assault is technically any non-consensual physical contact. "Aggravated" assault is assault committed with the intent to harm the victim; use of a weapon pretty clearly establishes intent.
- Wasn't someone accused of using his own AIDS infected saliva? It wouldn't have worked, but they say he didn't know that.
- One legally minded fellow found a law in the US worded in such a way that a piece of string could be ruled not just a "deadly weapon" but a firearm. When he contacted the government about the issue a letter was returned to him explaining that, yes, string could be considered a firearm under certain circumstances.
- In the late 19th/early 20th century a man named Edward William Barton-Wright created a martial art called Bartitsu based around defending yourself with a walking stick.
- France did this first: a combat sport known as La Canne, or Canne de Combat. La Canne is what happens when you take fencing, use a blunt weapon- a Canne, or cane- focus the sport on bashing moves and wild circular swings, remove parrying, and add a bunch of jumps, rolls and dodging moves.
- Leon Trotsky was assasinated with an ice axe.
- An Indian soldier Yogender Singh Yadav used his ice axe to hack down opponents in an assault on a enemy position during one of the Kashmere wars.
- One can see how an ice ax would make a good weapon. But they are seldom used for that.
- The French martial art of savate developed after fists were legally classed as a weapon and restricted. Savate depends on kicks and slaps instead.
- Savate depended on kicks and slaps, but then they started getting their butts handed to them by English sailors, who used their fists. So a savateur learned boxing in England, and added it to savate (though savate has a very odd move called a swing (pronounced as if it was French), that's not usually found in boxing). Go watch some modern savate: the hand moves are all boxing.
- Carlos Hathcock, a famed Marine Corps sniper (one of his famous achievements being a Scope Snipe), once used a .50 machinegun modified and mounted with a scope◊ as an improvised sniper rifle. He set the record for the 20th century's longest combat kill; the distance was 2,286 meters. Also counts as an Improbable Use Of A Weapon.
- There are actually forms for a Boat oar in Shaolin Kenpo.
|
|
