Oddly Shaped Sword

Useful to look cool, less to stab your opponent.^note Although it's definitely going to hurt if you're able to do so and then pull the thing out.

Swords are cool. That's why heroes prefer them. But for some authors, it seems that a sword with a plain, straight blade, a curved katana or scimitar, or some other exotically functional real blade like the wavy kris is still not quite cool enough. They need to invent their own special blade. So screw functionality and ergonomics! They will design swords with the weirdest shape possible, as long as it looks cool. The odd shape won't have any practical purpose other than looking special, when it isn't outright Awesome, but Impractical… not that it will prevent the wielder from fighting perfectly with it.

Usually the "odd" shape can either being used to give the character using the sword a distinctive character or can also be used for "humour" or alternative to a family friendly weapon: seeing such an odd sword makes you think that you can't possibly harm someone with that.

While the odd shapes for blades may vary. There's also one template that some strangely-shaped blades tend to draw inspiration from and it's the Nanatsusaya no Tachi/Shichishito, the legendary Seven-Branched Sword. An ancient ceremonial sword, possibly originating in Korea, with three smaller blades on each side projecting from its main blade. It is one of the national treasures of Japan currently housed in the Isonokami Shrine in Nara Prefecture, Japan and not shown to the public.

Sub-Trope of Cool Sword and Impossibly Cool Weapon. Compare Improbable Weapon User, Laser Blade, Vibro Weapon and BFS. Can overlap with Serrated Blade of Pain. A defensive equivalent would be Scary Impractical Armor. Contrast Boring, but Practical.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Beet the Vandel Buster gives us Zenon who wields the deceptively named Excellion Blade,◊ which, despite the name, actually has multible blades, plural.
• Bleach: Nearly every Zanpakutou release that looks like a sword will have an unusual shape. During Ichigo's Bankai training, he has to retrieve his real sword among a Field of Blades. Every single sword in the field has a unique design, though the actual one is just (if a bit oversized) a regular sword. The most egregious example is maybe Izuru's sword: curved with two right angles and with no pointy end. One of his opponents even lampshades how impractical it is to fight (although shortly after he discovers one way the blade can be used)
  • Rukia and Hitsugaya's released swords (both ice element types coincidentally) are surprising aversions. Both blades still look like normal swords but they both gain accessories coming off the end of the hilt (a ribbon for Sode no Shirayuki and a crescent blade on a chain for Hyourinmaru). Captain General Yamamoto's Ryujin Jakka might also count if you could see the actual shape of the blade under all the flames. It makes them stick out in a host of oddly shaped blades and BFSs.
  • This is the case with some of the Arrancar's own sealed Zanpakuto, chief examples being Tesra (a katana with a saber-like handle and what can be described as a chakram blade between the sword tip and the guard) and Quinta Espada Nnoitra (previously an upward-pointing crescent blade on a stick with the cutting edge on the inside, in the present day he has a second downward-pointing crescent blade right below the upper one, again with the edges on the inside).
  • Iziru Kira's shikai Wabisuke, gives his sword a square hook on the end. It has the power to increase the weight of whatever it strikes. One enemy questions the practicality of the weird shape, and he later responds by demonstrating, after immobilizing said enemy, that the purpose of the hook is to decapitate immobilized enemies like a reverse guillotine, by hooking it under the neck and pulling up.
• Devil Hunter Yohko's title character wields a sword with a large bladed handguard; in one episode she demonstrates that she can un-dock the sword blade and use the remaining portion as a hand axe.
• In one of the Dragon Ball filler episodes. Goku happens upon Shula, the King of the Demon Realm. He wields a large sword with six branches along its blade, that he uses to keep a giant cursed gate open to make sure his demons can torment a nearby kingdom by nightfall.
• Gamaran has some examples: The Maruyama brothers have the Murder Sword Ginguruwa (Silver Wheel): a sword with a very short, knife-like blade and a long, curved blade coming out of the back of said short blade. Another example is provided by Shinsuke's Soenmaru blade: A broadsword hollow inside composed by two katana-like blades on the hilt. Last but not least, Kibe refers to his weapon as a sword, while it's actually a colossal, spiked iron club.
• The resurrected Yomi (Izumi) in Ga-Rei is able to materialize a seven-branched sword out of thin air, having lost the Shishiou.
• GoLion carries a strange looking sword as his main weapon.
• Joka from Hoshin Engi wields the Shihoken: technically a sword, it's better described as a nodachi designed and forged by someone obsessed with modern art. Considering that it works by erasing things with a big Kaboom, it doesn't need to be sharp or practical by normal swords' standards.
• Kill la Kill features two of these, which in part serve as Swords Of Plot Advancement, that each look like the separate halves of a pair of tailor's scissors, just ones enlarged to BFS proportions. They can also change size and shape, and become even more ridiculous when in Decapitation Mode. And yes, they do, also fit together to form a gigantic, double-edged pair of scissors! Take a look, but WATCH OUT FOR SPOILERS!!!
  • The scissor shape is a plot point: Life Fiber monsters such as Nui or Ragyo have a Healing Factor so rapid that their wounds begin closing before a blade can finish cutting through them, such that they can pull through things like decapitation and dismemberment unscathed because those extremities technically never left their bodies. The Scissor Blades, cutting in two directions at once and meeting in the middle, work fast enough to leave permanent injuries.
  • Later, the story introduces the Tailor's Dagger, a combat knife with three parallel blades made specifically to sever the threads of the Life Fibers (to prevent the fiber's regenerative capabilities). The OVA has four custom versions for the Elite Four, namely a three-bladed katana for Sanageyama Uzu, a three-bladed hatchet for Gamagori Ira, a knife with three blades shaped as musical notes for Jakuzure Nonon and a three-parted club-keyboard thing for Inumuta Houka.
• Kongoh Bancho: Kenpei Bancho's own sword Kanaria is, by his own ammission, a heavily modified phirangi sword, looking mostly like a longsword with a serrated segment near the hilt, a thinner katana-like blade half-way through broadening back into a flat tip with a triangular spearhead attached to the flat tip with screws, to give it a drilling attack. Kenpei Bancho admits that he customized his sword so that it could slice, dice, drill and impale as he wishes.
• In Naruto, among the swords owned by the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, only Zabuza's BFS looks like a real sword.
  • The Hiramekarei does look like a sword, albeit deviating from the conventional design. But it has an ability to transform into a hammer.
  • The Kiba swords: really thin dual blades with spikes protruding from them.
  • Nuibari which is a needle-like sword that is used to sew enemies together
  • Shibuki which has a cutting edge on one side and a paper bomb dispenser on the other.
  • Kabutowari which is actually a hammer and an axe connected by a chain...
  • The strangest of all has to be Kisame's Samehada, which barely even looks like a sword. It's more like a giant club made of thorns. It actually is not really a sword at all, but is actually a bizarre chakra-eating creature that lets its owner use it like a sword.
  • Kubikiribocho, Zabuza's blade, while it looks like an actual sword still has a very unique design. It is a BFS with a rectangular shape, so it almost resembles a cleaver, and it has a large hole cut out near the end of the blade, and a semicircular edge cut out of the edge close to the grip.
• One Piece:
  • Dracule Mihawk's Yoru isn't an especially odd shape - essentially a super-giant Gross Messer - but what is bizarre are its enormous crossguards that make it look like a crucifix.
    • But on the other hand he is so skilled that he carries a small blade around his neck called Kogatana that is the size of a small knife he uses as a way to play fair and to show his Code of Honour.
  • Arlong's Kiribachi is essentially a ten-foot metal pole with lots of triangular blades attached to it.
  • Jack's two swords are helical, like an elephant's tusks, with the edge on the inside.
• Rurouni Kenshin:
  • Sawagejou Chou, "the Sword Hunter" collects unusual swords. Renbatou consists of two katana blades whose hilts snap together to make one weapon with two parallel blades. Kenshin easily destroys it by getting his scabbard between the blades and twisting to snap them off. More effective is Hakujin no Tachi, which has a super-long, flexible blade that he can use like a whip. In the Hokkaido Arc he adds another sword... which is actually a stick with countless razor-sharp tiny blades attached to it, which serves as a propeller to throw these blades at the enemy.
  • Shishio Makoto's sword Mugenjin has a serrated edge like a steak knife that tends to collect the flesh it cuts. Shishio can ignite the collected fats and oils by striking the edge of the sword against his scabbard, and uses the flames for various special moves. Downplayed in that the Mugenjin looks like a perfectly normal katana at first sight, and it needs extreme close ups to show the barbed edge.

Comic Books

• '80s Sci-fi/Fantasy comic Dreadstar, Vanth Dreadstar's sword looks like he removed the head of a halberd and is swinging that around. So guarding his hand is a large axe and then a spearhead is the blade of his sword.
• Hellblazer: The Sword of Second and Third is the size of a knife and shaped rather like a tuning fork. Its magic is powerful enough to make it worthwhile, though.
• In X of Swords, the sword Pogg Ur-Pogg is... a giant 6-armed crocodile in red crystalline armour with a sickle-like blade. Quite a number of the swords featured in the comic are oddballs though none match the Pogg.

Fan Works

• Bait and Switch (STO): Morgan t'Thavrau's sword is modeled largely after a curved cavalry saber, but the basket hilt has a forward-pointing hook on it that she can use to trap an opponent's blade.

Film — Live-Action

• In the film version of The Lord of the Rings, the Uruk-Hai had L-shaped blades. The blades are essentially an oversized straight machete with a spike on the blunt side at the end of the sword. Being mass-produced cast metal, they would work just fine hacking up lightly armoured opponents but would struggle to deal damage to someone wearing plate armour. So the spike was (probably) intended to deal with that sort of protection, just like the reverse spikes on a polearm. Flip your grip and put a hole in them!
• The Man Who Saves the World has a big dumb-looking sword with a lightning-bolt blade. Behold!◊ ("The ultimate weapon: the painted-wood saw-blade"). Even in-universe it's completely useless to the Bare-Fisted Monk hero, who reforges it into gauntlets.
• Web of Death: Fittingly enough given the theme being Poisoned Weapons, the Venom Clan's best fighter uses a poison-coated blade shaped like a centipede.

Literature

• The depictions of Shardblades in The Stormlight Archive tend towards this, with spikes, spurs, and ripples common as decorations. Justified by the fact that Shardblades are Absurdly Sharp Blades that cut though things with magic rather than regular physics, and thus don't need a practical shape as much. Rhythm of War indicates that the ornate shapes are because the Shardblades are actually a Morph Weapon that's been "locked" into ceremonial form by the death of their spren.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: In "The Brain of Morbius", the Sisterhood of Karn threaten the 4th Doctor with impractical-looking flame-shaped daggers.
• Kamen Rider Blade: The Deer Undead wields two organic-looking Seven-Branched Swords which evoke a pair of antlers.
• Power Rangers and Super Sentai:
  • The Shark Sword from Power Rangers Samurai.
  • The Sword of Demons was an oddly shaped scimitar given to the Dragon Ranger in Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. This would be translated to Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers as the Sword of Darkness, but both served the same purpose - odd, yet cool looking blade.
• Bat'leth, the iconic Klingon sword from the Star Trek franchise, with a crescent (often complex shaped) edge on one side and multiple handles on the other side. Also less iconic mek'leth, which looks like a (backwards) scimitar with an additional knife attached under the crossguard.
  • The Bat'leth was intentionally designed to be a mix of several weapon types, the result being ergonomically sound but utterly impractical. The fighting style created to go with it is basically a form of Flynning, the weapon being great for blocking the kind of wide swings that it forces on it's user and bad at pretty much anything else.

Magazine

• Analog: The December 1930 cover depicts one Killer Gorilla holding a black dagger with an undulating blade. It stands out in the image because the rest of the cover has bright colours.

Tabletop Games

• Most swords -and other weapons- in Anima: Beyond Fantasy, with the bonus in quite a number of cases of being also a BFS. The epitome may be the Angelus and the similar Seoman Kephos, the Imperial Sword, both forged (and the former used) by Abel, but so cool as useless in Real Life (cue to Implausible Fencing Powers and the Rule of Cool).
• There are several in Magic: The Gathering, including the spiral-shaped Trepanation Blade, the hook-ended Pennon Blade, and the blade split down the middle seen on Sword of Feast and Famine and its cousins.
  • The bifurcated swords came back on Amonkhet, as visible in Prepare, because Amonkhet worshipped Nicol Bolas as a god and put a symbol based on his horns anywhere it could - that's it at the base of the sword there.
• The Vorpal Blade,◊ from Munchkin, is covered in spikes and curves that don't even always go in the same direction.
  • There's also the Funny-Looking Sword. It lives up to its name.
• Pathfinder:
  • Sawtooth sabres have a cutting edge with large teeth on it, meant to resemble a praying mantis's barbed arms (they're used by an assassins' guild devoted to the assassin god Achaekek, for whom mantids are sacred). You can use them as a martial weapon in which case they're mechanically identical to longswords, but if you take an Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat, you can treat them as a light weapon under the Dual Wielding rules.
  • The rhoka is a sword with two side-by-side blades, both serrated. It's used almost exclusively by the life-hating urdefahn.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar miniatures are heading this way, particularly for Chaos; wherever the shapes of Chaos daemon weapons follow a comprehensible form, the obsession with packing on pointless detail has led to the swords sprouting all manner of spikes, tendrils, loops, hooks, serrations and excess blades, to the point where you can't see the basic shape. And they only get worse from there. This also happens to their axes. Dark Eldar blades also have strange cutouts, excess points and other details on already-strangely-curved blades, which often curve in multiple directions.
• War Machine: Epic forms of Cryx warcasters also have bizarrely-shaped blades, often with too much blade mass. Epic Asphyxious even has a really odd weapon made of a fallen rival.

Theatre

• Don Quixote's sword in Man of La Mancha — it ends in an impressive spherical helix, though it is rather second-hand.

Video Games

• Befitting the religious and pious themes in Blasphemous, the Penitent One's weapon is a sword designed for self-punishment. The grip is a religious statue held upside down and covered in stone barbs that constantly pierce into the wielder's hands. The crossguard is jagged and uncomfortable. The blade itself isn't too weird, except the barbs continue about halfway up the edge. The coiling thorns mirror the Penitent One's distinctive helmet◊
• In BlazBlue, Ragna the Bloodedge wields the Aramasa, a sword he inherited (via Jubei) from the original Bloodedge, an unsung hero of the Dark War who singlehandedly halted the advance of the Black Beast for a year (unknown to Ragna, Bloodedge is actually an amnesiac Ragna thrown back in time). The sword has a somewhat wavy, almost hook-like shape to it. In its awakened state, the Aramasa is also capable of assuming the form of a scythe with a blade made out of crimson energy (the blade extends from the hilt and turns to resemble a scythe).
  • There's also Kagura, who uses a blade that is best described as a black, angled gravestone on a stick. Also, it's friggin huge.
• In Dark Chronicle, the vast majority of Monica's swords are appropriate looking. However the final sword that she can get, Island King, is nothing more than a tiki mask with a propeller on it.
• The Darksword from Dark Souls looks more rectangular than anything else, but the prize goes to Quelaag's Furysword, which is basically the segmented leg of a giant spider (that catches fire when swung).
• In Dark Souls II, the King's Ultra Greatsword◊ is really more of a giant statue of Vendrick's beloved queen Nashandra on a stick than a sword. It even has the moveset of clubs instead of swords and does strike damage instead of slashing damage.
• The Sparda sword in Devil May Cry has a huge crescent-shaped blade, and the position of the handle should make it quite difficult to wield. Lampshaded in the last line of this Manly Guys Doing Manly Things comic. Downplayed in that the Sparda is also a shapeshifting weapon.
• A lot of the higher-level swords and daggers in Dragon Age: Origins have serrated, zig-zagging, and/or wavy-edged blades.
• Many of the bladed weapons in Dragon Quest XI have odd designs, especially some of the greatswords having a shape that can only be described as that of a screwdriver (thin main body ending in an arrowhead), swords with cross-like parts near the tip or axes with a circular main blade with four drop-shaped, smalled blades attached.
• One of the National Weapons of the Vahnatai in Exile/Avernum is the waveblade. Instead of a normal blade these swords have a blade that curves back and forth. The number of waves in the blade is said to be a sign of the quality.
• In Fate/EXTRA, Saber wields Aestus Estus, a large sword that tapers and widens somewhat randomly and comes to three points on the cutting edge... Well, see for yourself.◊ It should perhaps come as no surprise that the true identity of the character who designed and uses such an insane sword is Nero Caeser.
• The Final Fantasy games have many examples;
  • Two of Cloud's swords, Organics and Apocalypse in Final Fantasy VII.
  • Auron's ultimate weapon in Final Fantasy X looks more like a really big wrench. Most of Tidus's swords◊ have odd shapes as well.
  • The blades of both Noel's primary sword and Caius's BFS in Final Fantasy XIII-2 are odd, to say the least, with Noel's looking like flames and Caius's looking like a ratty feather.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, Gladiator/Paladin and Dark Knight are both subject to this on several occasions, especially since many Dark Knight swords are also scaled up Gladiator/Paladin swords. The worst offenders are the Titan Tremor/"of Crags" weapons, which are basically giant stone clubs masquerading as swords.
• The infamous "Pizza◊ Cutter◊ Sword" from the promotional artworks of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
• Granblue Fantasy features several examples of this, such as Balmung with its strange split edge, as well as several items that are clearly not swords of any kind being classified as such, like a bouquet of roses.
• Some of the swords from Grim Dawn tend to have rough designs (as in, they're essentially metal scraps rearranged to serve as weapons) or implausible shapes, hooks and unnecessary barbs.
• Sol Badguy's Fireseal/Fuuenken in Guilty Gear is a blunt, rectangular blade.◊ It makes up for its supposed lack of sharpness due to its ability to generate intense flames (presumably thanks to an engine/exhaust-like mechanism installed in the sword) although the blade is still able to draw blood in-game. By the time of Overture, however, the weapon has undergone heavy modification and resembles a more traditional sword◊ (the tip of the blade is still fairly blunt, though). Back during his days as a member of the Sacred Order of Holy Knights, Sol instead used an unnamed sword◊ that appears to be little more than a giant slab of stone or concrete. In Xrd, Sol's trademark Fireseal is then switched out for a new sword named Junkyard Dog Mk.III, which is best described as a giant lighter (though both Xrd and Interquel pachinko game Vastedge hint that the Junkyard Dog might not be an actual sword, but merely a casing for the Fireseal that draws upon its power. Not that it makes things any less odd.).
• The Halo series has the energy sword and its two blades, emanating from the handle in a way that would be decidedly impractical if they were physical blades. Special mention goes to it for being both really odd and extremely well-designed to take advantage of its weightlessness in sword combat; plenty of edges designed to catch an opponent's blade while also protecting the hand. Justified to an extent, in that the sword was designed with the physiology of the Sangheili/Elites in mind, a species with symmetrical, two-thumbed hands.
• Infinity Blade is choc full of swords, some badass, some ridiculous. Actually scratch that, there are a lot of ridiculous swords. Special mentions go to the thornblade (not unlike the page example) which looks more like a meat-rack than an actual sword.
• Kingdom Hearts is bountiful in unusual weapons, though actual swords are rather lacking, the bladed weapons such as Lexeaus's Axe-Swords, Larxene's Knives and Xemnas's Ethereal Blades, often have concave indents, multiple prongs, and ornaments that don't appear to contribute to weapon efficiency. To say nothing of the Keyblade, which, at its most basic, is a key shaped sword. Once you get into the upgrades, you can get Keyblades shaped like buildings or ice cream or literal flames taking on a vague key-like shape.
• In the Kirby series of games, Meta Knight's sword, Galaxia, is this, with large spikes protruding from the golden blade. They range in number from zero to six depending on the game.
• The Soul Reaver from Legacy of Kain looks odd, but this kind of wavy blade actually exists, and is called a Flamberge. However, the undulations of the Reaver's blade are more pronounced than any Flamberge, thus seeming more kriss-like. It could be best described as a kriss blade crossed with a Flamberge design.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Link wearing the Fierce Deity's Mask wields the Double Helix Sword which has two blades that cross back and forth before coming to a point.
  • Though less exotic than some, in Skyward Sword, the Big Bad's sword is an Evil Counterpart to the Master Sword, and has a blade shaped like overlapping diamonds with spikes at the corners.◊
  • Breath of the Wild has the Goron greatswords such as the Cobble Crusher. They are blunt crushing weapons rather than slicing weapons, they get progressively wider approaching the point, and said "point" is typically covered in a heavy adornment that further shifts its center weight to make it better suited for smashing blows. Also, the swords the Rito use have a hollow space where the fuller would be to make them lighter. Additionally, the Lizalfos may wield boomerang-type weapons that can have as many as three blades, making it look like a cross between a boomerang, a kukri and a shuriken (and taking heavy inspiration from the African mambele knife).
• Swords in Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals have massive blades in the shape of a curved flame. Naturally, they typically overlap with Flaming Sword. The game's Dual Blade also possesses a curious one-edged design.
• Mace: The Dark Age has the Hell Knight, who carries a pair of scimitars that look almost like axes.
• In Monster Girl Quest, Luka soon finds the Angel Halo, which is...well...there's a reason if everyone he shows it to is shocked speechless.◊
• Given that they are carved from the bodies of the monsters the player hunts, it is no surprise that a lot of the swords—indeed, many of the weapons in general—in Monster Hunter are fairly strange looking. Examples include the Carapace Sword◊, Alatreon Great Sword◊ and the Sharq Attaq◊.
• In Musashi Samurai Legend the first four Elemental Swords may be unusual, but otherwise fine. Then there's the Void Sword: it looks like there are two blades merged: the one in the middle is straight and squared, the other one has a wave shape and is merged with the former. In Real Life this sword would be awfully hard to use properly.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, the Silver Sword of Gith.◊ Possibly justified by it being an Infinity +1 Sword of Plot Advancement. And by not being human-made. And being more of a focus for magical/planar energies than a sword.
• The Dark Dragon Blade in Ninja Gaiden. A fully upgraded Dabilahro also has plenty of unnecessary curves and flourish. Enma's Fang in Sigma 2 just… cannot be described with words.◊
• The Seven Punishment Sword in Ōkami is another example of the "flame shaped" variant.
  • Ninetails' Nine-Pronged sword counts as well. It also doubles as a lightning rod which is the key to defeating him.
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within has several weapons the Prince can pick up, including his main sword, which tend to have unusual designs such as the Spider Sword (A broadsword with a wide, fan-shaped tip), the Snake Sword (the handle is shaped like a twisting snake and the blade is wavy) or the Scorpion Sword (a massive, cutlass-like sword with edges and spikes over it). The Emperess of Time dual-wields swords with plain hooked falx-like blades coupled with an incredibly developed handle which can protect her forearms and a handle positioned so that the swords become, essentially, a set of Blade Below the Shoulder. They look like this.
• Ein's sword, the Einherjar, in Riviera: The Promised Land is bright yellow, bends backwards above the crossguard just to move back forward, and has an edge like a cleaver. It evokes feelings of a lightning bolt. Additionally, it cannot be broken, but can only be effectively used by Ein himself.
• Samurai Warriors: Kenshin Uesugi's standard weapon is a seven-bladed sword. Kojiro Sasaki can summon giant blades with a really weird design. Kunoichi's best weapon is a flame-shaped dagger. Ginchio Tachibana's sword has the blade shaped as a stylized lightning bolt.
• Sengoku Basara: Yukimura starts out with a spear. Ok, fine. His last weapon is a multi-pronged, flame like monstrosity. And he's not the only one. Hojo Ujimasa stands out too: His basic weapon is a pike with twelve blades that, in Real Life, would be a waste of wood and metal.
• While most weapons in the Soul series are fairly reasonable and realistic, several extra weapons you can buy/obtain tend to fall into this category, such as Siegfried's 7 Branch Blade (a zweihander with a wavy flames design, not unlike the page image). Revenant, an extra character in Soulcalibur III and IV, also uses twin wave swords known as Gatekeeper.
• The Excalibur from Tomb Raider: Legend: clearly not forged by people of this world, it resembles a dark, thick broadsword built by a drunken blacksmith who, halfway through changed his mind and tried to make an axe. Then again, since the assembled sword can shoot volleys of supernatural green lightning, its design is merely to show how "alien" it is.
• Vagrant Story has a number of odd-looking swords such as the Rhomphaia and Rune Blade both of which look like planks. The really weird one is the Holy Win. This greatsword blade is based on the holy symbol of St. Iocus and look like the blade has a flattened 'X' symbol going through it.
• World of Warcraft has some truly ridiculous blades, like the Sword of Justice◊, the Blackblade of Shahram◊, the Twinblade of the Phoenix◊ or the legendary weapon Thunderfury.◊ And the other weapon classes (axes, maces...) have similar offenders.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 gives us the Monado, a sword with a design that's almost cleaver-like, with the hilt and grip at the rear of the blade with the edge actually several inches forward of the grip, and a circular hollow within said blade to boot. And that's just when Zanza loaned it to Shulk for a stint. When he reclaims it, it can best be described as "skeleton-bat sword."
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has some weird shapes for its swords too. From Pyra's Aegis Sword (the Monado with a more angular design philosophy) to Catalyst's "scimitar" (a flower growing on a pole of sorts) to Malos' Monado (some weird middle ground between Shulk's Monado and Zanza's Monado), it's a wonder how they didn't become Awesome, but Impractical.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney: the emerald Shichishito, which literally means "seven-branched sword", its branches supposedly representing the different paths life can take before its inevitable end. The fact that it is shaped so oddly comes up when you prove that the defendant in the last case of Trials and Tribulations could not have shoved the sword all the way through the victim based on the wound and the blood on only the top branches.
• In Dancing Blade: Katte ni Momotenshi!, Momotenshi, the Super Mode of main heroine Momohime, wields a BFS with its tip shaped like a peach,◊ as a reference to Momohime's origins (she's a Gender Flip adaptation of Momotaro, the boy born from a peach).
• Fate/stay night:
  • Gilgamesh's Sword of Rapture, Ea, which isn't a sword per se but instead a lance-esque weapon made of three spinning segments and actually pre-dates the concept of a sword. Not meant for actual melee, it charges up an attack by having the segments spin in opposite directions to create enough friction to dislocate space-time. The Fate/Grand Order material book acknowledges its odd shape, admitting it is more suited to being called a Magic Staff than an actual sword.
  • Berserker's weapon is a slab of stone that has been roughly carved into a cross between a sword and axe. Being a Lightning Bruiser who can lift and swing that giant hunk of stone around with ease, it works for him just fine.
  • From the sequel, Fate/hollow ataraxia, we have Avenger's blades Tawrich and Zarich. They're shaped more like a beast's claws than swords. It's noted that their bizarre shape actually lessens their effectiveness: a standard sword would work much better in pretty much every situation.

Webcomics

• Homestuck has the SORD, a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff-themed weapon that looks like the already-on-this-list Caladbolg from Final Fantasy X, but run through the washing machine too many times. It's described as so shitty it's hard to even hold onto.
• Parodied in Oglaf, featuring a magic unique sword with a blade shaped like a corkscrew, referred to as the "Unsheathable Sword".

Western Animation

• The titular magiswords from Mighty Magiswords are all weirdly shaped, with their shape implying what kind of power they have (i.e., the pencil magisword is shaped like a pencil and is used like one).
• Drew of The Secret Saturdays has a broadsword that is normal except for a sunbeam-shaped sculpture at the top of the blade.

Real Life

• The sword depicted in the page image, along with a few other examples on this page, actually take after the Seven Pronged Sword, which exists in real life, along with several replicas. Inscription on the sword indicates it was made as a gift from one king to another, and unlikely to have ever been used in real combat.
• The flame-bladed sword is named such for its undulating blade shape that evokes the image of a fire. A wavy blade could distribute the force of impact better, prevent an opponent from grabbing it, and cause unpleasant vibrations when parried.
• An Antarctic Press "How To Draw Manga" book actually states that blades like what are described here are Awesome, yet Impractical and would be better served as mantelpieces.
• A number of oddly shaped swords are found in cultures across West and Central Africa: for example, this sword from Benin in West Africa, this sword from the Asante Empire in what is now Ghana, and many others. However, these were not designed as actual weapons, but rather as art pieces used for ceremonies and display, no more real weapons than the ceremonial mace of the British House of Parliament.
• Possibly the strangest-shaped swords that are actually a weapon people really used are Chinese hook swords. The main blade ends in a hook, while the grip has has a shorter blade coming out of the bottom and has a pointy crescent shaped guard. Traditionally they are dual-wielded.

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