History Main / MultiarmedMultitasking

* ''WesternAnimation/MonstersUniversity'':A multi-armed monster is seen cramming for his final exams by holding up several textbooks and reading from them, and another is seen drinking several cups of coffee to stay alert.

* ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'': Mike and Celia book a reservation at a Japanese food restaurant to have a romantic dinner. The chef is a multi-armed monster who uses the extra limbs to prepare sushi at record speed.

* Downplayed in ''Sonnie's Edge'' by Creator/PeterFHamilton. Sonnie is the remote operator for BeastlyBloodSports. Khanivore, the monster she operates, has five CombatTentacles but there are limits to how effectively she can use them.

* [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Pilot]] from ''Series/{{Farscape}}''. One episode notes that having the ''mental capacity'' for Pilot's specific brand of multitasking is very uncommon and more important than the multiple arms themselves, because Pilot is required to manage and regulate dozens on-board functions at once.

* The ''Literature/{{Mermaids}}'' trilogy has Octavius the octopus. He's first introduced using two arms to push aside the curtain of his cave, two to wash his cooking pot, one to hold a plate of food, and three to eat. In ''Rani's Sea Spell'', Rani and Kai meet Octavius's sister Flora, who styles the sisters' hair, using some of her arms as curlers.

* Franchise/SpiderMan's villain ComicBook/DoctorOctopus is very good at using his tentacles to do this. According to the most reliable source, he could use his tentacles in combination with his regular hands to do one complex task and two simple ones at the same time. And there were also several stories where the "complex task" was a heated battle.
* The 2019 Spider-Ham mini has Ham meet Parker Peterman, an alternate universe Spider-Man who grew six arms and developed a hobby for each set that he does all at once. Even when he's rescuing Spider-Ham he's using a spare set to carve a wooden duck.

* Ceres from ''WesternAnimation/ObanStarRacers'', an Animesque racing series co-produced by French and Japanese animation studios.

* From ''Film/SpiderMan2'', Dr. Octopus does this when he built the new sun-generator machine, with his long metallic tentacles. Justified by the tentacles being intelligent in their own right and each one having its own camera.

* Myth/HinduMythology several gods (Shiva for one) are usually depicted with multiple arms each holding symbolic instruments like scales and scythes and swords.

* The 1979 pilot for sci-fi sitcom "Starstruck" features Dart, a four-armed alien creature who is the drummer in a band aboard a space station. Based on the pilot, if the show had been picked up for series a big chunk of the humor surrounding this character would be him handling multiple tasks at once.

* The ''Literature/{{Mermaids}}'' trilogy has Octavius the octopus. He's first introduced using two arms to push aside the curtain of his cave, two to wash his cooking pot, one to hold a plate of food, and three to eat.

* In ''Inventions of Professor Vagner'' by Aleksandr Belyaev the titular professor uses only two hands, but actually [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower trained]] himself to multitask with his two brain lobes and two body halves. By looking in two directions at once with different eyes, dancing polka and waltz simultaneously with different legs and so on. At one point he uses his right arm and right eye to demonstrate his research to a journalist, while his left arm and left eye are busy writing an article.

* There's a multi-armed sushi chef in ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc''.
** In ''WesternAnimation/MonstersUniversity'', a multi-armed monster is seen cramming for his final exams by holding up several textbooks and reading from them, and another is seen drinking several cups of coffee to stay alert.

* Long John Silver in ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet'' isn't multiarmed but still manages to pull off this trope in the kitchen, thanks to his multi-purpose cybernetic arm with little armlets.

* Celebrity chef Elzar in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''. His species was given multiple arms specifically as a Season 1 joke for how cooking shows go too fast for viewers to cook along to. The DVD commentary mentions that the animators went out of their way to have each arm work independently rather than have each arm on either side move in the same way.

* Elzar in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''. The DVD commentary mentions that the animators went out of their way to have each arm work independently rather than have each arm on either side move in the same way.

* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squiddly_Diddly Squiddly Diddly]]'' did this sometimes. (In fact his pic on Wiki/TheOtherWiki shows him playing three musical instruments at once.)

* There was once a ''VideoGame/MortalKombat'' fan fic where Sheeva was driving somewhere with the heroes, and had two arms on the wheel, one on the transmission, and one out the window (and no, it doesn't mention how she learned to drive).

* In the ''VideoGame/MortalKombat'' franchise, with its four-armed Shokan race, there are two examples of this: Sheeva, the ActionGirl Shokan, can pose with her upper arms in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9'', while her lower arms clap(by using her opponent's severed arms and hands, instead of her own): and in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat11'', Sheeva uses her four arms to play musical glasses as her Friendship. Another, non-Shokan character, the Kollector( who, as a Naknadan, has ''six'' arms), can use two of his arms to examine the pieces he rips off his opponent's bodies and stuffs into his bag, [[AxCrazy while at the same time shredding his opponent with his other arms,]] and for ''his'' Friendship, he becomes a OneManBand.

%%* Different Buddhas are sometimes depicted with many arms.

* Umba, Alita’s engineer in the Motorball arc of ''[[Manga/{{Gunnm}} Battle Angel Alita]]'', has a specialised robotic harness that features 20 arms, all of which he can control independently and perform the work of 10 engineers simultaneously. He uses them to replace all four of Alita’s limbs, damaged in a crash, in under six minutes.

* One early ''Dragon'' article about how many actions a PC can reasonably perform per round cited a player suggesting that their PC would draw a weapon, hold up a shield, drink a potion, and ''with their free hand'' do something else. The article quips that unless the PC in question happens to be a six-armed Type V (a.k.a. marilith) demon, this isn't reasonable.

* Franchise/SpiderMan's villain ''ComicBook/DoctorOctopus is very good at using his tentacles to do this. According to the most reliable source, he could use his tentacles in combination with his regular hands to do one complex task and two simple ones at the same time. And there were also several stories where the "complex task" was a heated battle.