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"Comic book boomerangs, rather than being just sticks with a vague tendency to curve around, are nearly supernatural items with an ability to return where they started no matter what happens. They can bounce off the interestingly ridged skulls of alien conquerors, latch onto weapons or jewelry, or run off to the bar for a quick Jack and Coke, and yet still return to the waiting hand of whatever costumed goon threw it."
Lore Sjöberg, The Book of Ratings, "Green Arrow's Arrows"

A real-life boomerang is a flat wooden tool carved in such a way as to get some rotor lift when thrown turning end-over-end. Thrown properly, the boomerang will curve back on its course and return to its point of origin. It was originally designed for hunting fowl. If it missed, the hunter wouldn't have to go looking for it; and if it hit, they'd simply retrieve it along with the kill. Some boomerangs allow for more complex trajectories, though these are more for sport than hunting.

In fiction, however, a boomerang is virtually a living creature possessed of the single goal of returning to the thrower's hand, come hell or high water. This results in boomerangs doing things that are flatly impossible, such as continuing to fly after striking one or multiple targets then returning to the user. It becomes humorous in video games, particularly older ones where boomerangs are crudely programmed to return to the player after being thrown. If you're still moving, it'll chase you all over the screen until you stop to catch it.

This trope covers all weapons that can perform this trick, not just boomerangs. Many of the examples below involve weapons that aren't even meant to be thrown, like shields or escrima sticks. Does it really have to be stated that the Rule of Cool is involved? See also Boomerang Comeback for when the boomerang initially seems to miss and then catches the target by surprise. Many of these weapons also are a Pinball Projectile where they adjust their course by bouncing off things rather than aerodynamic maneuvering. Compare Exactly What I Aimed At.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Chikuma Koshirou from Basilisk dual wields kama scythes. He once threw them so that both of them cut off half a human head and still returned to his hands. They work solely by Rule of Cool, no magic involved, since when Kisaragi Saemon and Kasumi Gyoubu knocked the weapons off course, they just fell to the ground.
  • Averted in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. When Jiggler is attached to a power-draining ball by Pana, Bo-bobo uses a move to hit it like a pool ball. Jiggler tries to bounce off the walls and hit Pana, but he ends up smashing into the first wall he hits because he's "non-bouncy".
  • In Buso Renkin, this is actually the power of the Motor Gears.
  • The title character of Cutey Honey has her Honey Boomerang.
  • Eureka Seven's LFOs use "Boomerang Knives" for combat, several thousand feet in the air, yet when thrown, they always manage to make it back. In the video games, the boomerangs will actually chase you to come back.
  • Fate/stay night: whenever Archer throws one of his dual swords, it will always return to him as long as the other is still in his possession (due to their being "married" swords). Shirou uses this to great effect against Saber Alter: he throws both from the first pair and Traces a second. The first pair are deflected, but when Shirou attacks with the second set, the first set fly back to hit from behind at the same time.
  • The Colonel in Fist of the North Star uses boomerangs as his main weapon. Their ridiculous accuracy is revealed to be due to his Psychic Powers — it's easy to hit an enemy with a boomerang when you're controlling it with your mind.
  • In various Getter Robo entries, the Getter-1 lineage has the Getter Tomahawk Boomerang, which is the Getter Tomahawk, which ranges from an actual tomahawk-like axe to a halberd, thrown at its opponent like a buzzsaw that can cleave its opponents in half and return to the robot with ease.
  • Sango's boomerang Hiraikotsu from Inuyasha is as tall as she is, can shatter boulders, and returns to her after carving out a swath of total destruction (or even after being deflected!). It's made out of youkai bones and is magical, probably very nearly a living weapon, which probably explains why she has to shout its name every time she throws it. (In the manga, it is revealed that it does have its own thoughts.) Inu-Yasha defeated her one time by knocking her off balance while her boomerang was away. When it returned, she wasn't prepared to catch it.
  • Sette of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, whose Inherent Skill is the ability to fully control the flight path of her Boomerang Blades.
  • Mazinger Z. Several members of the Mazinger Family wield boomerangs, including Great Mazinger (Great Boomerang) and Grendizer (Shoulder Boomerang). The most extreme, however, is Mazinkaiser, whose Kaiser Boomerang is actually its own massive winged backpack, and in The Movie cuts a massive flying fortress in half.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED introduces beam boomerangs, which sound absurd, but might be justified by the fact that they're mechanized weapons, potentially with their own thrusters and guidance systems. And safety shutdown mechanism, since they are Beam-edge Boomerang — it's not safe to hold them or ridiculously catch them, even for a Gundam.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny has the detachable backpack of the ∞ Justice Gundam (yes, the infinity symbol is part of its name). Among its various purposes is to serve as ludicrously large beam boomerang, with beam blades on the front of each wing.
    • Played for laughs in the Gundam 00 movie's Show Within a Show.
  • Tessai from Ninja Scroll wields a massive double-bladed weapon that he can hurl with deadly precision, cutting down multiple men and even entire trees before returning to his hand. He is defeated when Jubei slices his fingers off right before the weapon returns to him. Since he is unable to catch it, the blade embeds itself in Tessai's head.
  • Ranma ½:
    • Ryôga's umbrella in the early manga.
    • The Kinjakan: a polearm weapon with a metal ring attached at the head. The user can send the ring flying with devastating force, ricocheting off walls, ceilings, people, and the ground (usually carving deep gauges where it impacts) and it will always return to the pole, with similar force and momentum. Novice users tend to run away when they see the ring coming back.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • "Moon Tiara Action!" Note that it obeys her commands — Sailor Moon once ordered it to stop right before it'd hit an ally.
    • In the first anime Zoisite used an actual boomerang when he was impersonating Sailor Moon (and it came back after it hit).
    • In the manga (both the main series and her own), the live-action and Crystal, Sailor Venus has a small crescent-shaped blade (actually a compact in the manga, but still usable as a blade) that can be used like this. Its most notable use is Venus' debut in the manga and Crystal, where she uses it on Zoisite and either critically wounds him (Crystal) or cuts him into many pieces (manga).
  • Kuniko in Shangri-La wields a boomerang as her weapon of choice, so it figures that she'd be able to let it do whatever she pleases.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
    • The Gurren actually uses two pairs of giant Cool Shades as boomerangs. It actually was once lost in the middle of a battle and thrown back at the user. Later, the Gurren Lagann uses both the sunglasses and its (wing-shaped) jetpack.
    • The Chouginga Gurren-Lagann also uses its shades (both the head-face's and the torso-face's) as an EXTREMELY big boomerang. They even return to the mecha after cutting one of the attacking Ashtangas in half along its entire length.
  • Used in the first episode of Trigun by a villain who throws/launches it using his belt-driven mechanical arm. Enormous in size and equipped with an Absurdly Sharp Blade, it is capable of slicing large rock formations and entire buildings in half. Despite the incredible speed the boomerang travels at, the main character (Vash) manages to move fast enough to leap onto it mid-flight and launch himself at the villain in order to incapacitate him.
  • In YuYu Hakusho, Kazemaru's shuriken will stay in the air until they hit a target-at which point they explode. Justified, as they are powered by spirit energy and filled with explosive.
  • Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: The Eagle's primary weapon is a small boomerang with the edges of the wings sharpened. It repeatedly goes through several Mooks' necks 1) without slowing down or 2) alteration to its aerodynamics. The only time it doesn't come back is when someone catches it, or he doesn't mean for it to come back, which usually means Stuff Blowing Up.

    Comic Books 
  • Alan Ford: Otto von Grunf once used a custom-made "Boomeknife", an "Australian-German product" which is a bent knife that returns to Otto after he threw it to launch the catapult mechanism required to send the plane flying, and even returns to his hand while in flight. Curiously, it resembles a Kurki. Parodied later on when Otto makes a Boomerang Hand grenade which, of course, returns back to the user before exploding. Becomes a Chekhov's Gun in volume Save Us Please, Thank You, where the villain is done in because he tries the above-mentioned bomb.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: In Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise we see Sokka has the boomerang he lost in the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender (or a very similar one) again, apparently having recovered it offscreen.
  • Batman: Batarangs and Birdarangs all fall under this. Bats even went as far as to invent a remote-controlled Batarang. This is also averted at times. Depending on the Writer, Batarangs can also be simple bat-shaped shuriken. While keeping the name. Most notably, this is what they are in The Dark Knight Trilogy.
  • Captain America: Captain America's shield is basically a giant, indestructible boomerang, capable of flying through a hail of weapons fire (ballistic and laser), tagging multiple targets and returning to Cap's hand without even losing velocity. Handwaved by it being made from an alloy of the indestructible metal vibranium, which is able to absorb vibrations. Lampshaded somewhat by the fact that Cap's temporary replacement, John Walker, could never get the shield to do more than fly in a straight line, while Cap (as "The Captain") was pulling off nearly identical feats with an inferior copy.
    • Soon after Cap was thawed out, Iron Man put gadgets into the shield. By using controls in his gloves, Cap could control the shield in flight. He soon took them out, for they messed up the shield's balance. So it can be done, he just doesn't like to do it.
    • In Liberty's Torch, a tie-in novel, it's definitely skill on Cap's part. Steve Rogers totally pwns another character at pool, and makes a casual comment about starting to play when he realized calculating angles on the fly would be handy "at work".
    • When Cap (temporarily) dies, Iron Man looks for somebody else to take up the shield. Everybody who tries to throw the thing accomplishes little more than making themselves look like idiots. Then Iron Man goes to Hawkeye, who is good enough to pull it off, but after a brief trial period deems himself unworthy to be the new Captain America. Cap's former sidekick Bucky Barnes then ends up as the new Captain America, and his cyborg enhancements allow him to pull off the crazy shield-throwing tricks.
    • When Vance Astro of the Guardians of the Galaxy picks up Cap's shield in the distant future, it takes him a good long while — weeks if not months — to even begin to approximate Captain America's famous stunts. This is despite the fact that Vance is telekinetic.
    • Parodied in an old Rat-Man story, where Cap (turned into a lawyer-friendly version of himself for reprints) first has his ability increased to ridiculous levels (as in "the thrown shield can even pass the vacuum between a strike and the other" ridiculous) and then tries to teach it to the title character. Keyword: tries (just ask Nick Fury's formerly remaining eye). It's also shown that Cap wasn't originally that good... After all, how do you think Nick Fury lost his eye?
  • Daredevil: Daredevil is incredibly good at this with his billy club in conjunction with his radar sense. Most egregiously in one of Kevin Smith's issues, where Daredevil throws it through a glass window where, instead of shattering the window completely, it just leaves a small hole, approximately 1.5 inches in diameter. Then it bounces around, knocking out the mooks and returns through the exact same hole.
  • The Flash: Needless to say, DC supervillain Captain Boomerang is pretty good at this. To the point that he was once able to make (specially prepared) boomerangs travel through time. His son Captain Boomerang Jr. is also capable of such stunts. He does have the advantage of Super-Speed, but his feats include picking bullets out of the air with bent paperclips, and holding his own in a prison riot with things he managed to find on the spot.
  • Kid Colt: Marvel Comics Western villain the Fat Man (originally a foe of Kid Colt) was an expert with the boomerang: able to win showdowns against gunslingers (being able to throw faster than they could draw and fire) and always having the boomerang return to him regardless of what it hit.
  • The Mighty Thor: Thor's hammer Mjolnir is enchanted by Odin to always return when thrown, among other things. Justified, as this ability is explicitly magical.
  • Nightwing: Nightwing has been shown doing this with escrima sticks (which aren't even meant to be thrown to begin with), bouncing them off the heads of two mooks, a wall, the floor, and back to his hand.
  • Paperinik New Adventures: Paperinik's Extransformer Shield. Justified by the hi-tech nature of the shield.
  • Project Superpowers: Lev Gleason's Daredevil (no, not that one, this one was renamed "Death-Defying 'Devil" by Alex Ross) uses a boomerang as his main weapon. He's so incredibly skilled with it that in-story people falsely assume that he uses some kind of superpower to control its trajectory.
  • Sin City: Miho occasionally uses her manji-shaped shuriken in this manner.
  • Spider-Man:
    • Fred Myers/Boomerang (who's basically Captain Boomerang with jet boots), like the Green Arrow/Hawkeye, carries an arsenal of different boomerangs for different jobs, including razorangs, gasarangs, etc...
    • The villain Tracer has a variation on this; his guns fire bullets that lock onto their target and will avoid any obstacle to get to them. This allowed him a leg up on Spidey in the quipping department; after Spider-Man claims he laughs at bullets, Tracer notes that his bullets laugh back.
  • The Tick: In one comic book (not the original comics, a licensed-from-the-cartoon version), The Tick invents a "Tick-arang". With typical Tick logic he believes it will return because he's written his name and address on the side, with the phrase "Return Postage Guaranteed." The amazing thing is... it works.
  • Tintin: Tintin in America features a Chicago gangster with a literal boomerang doing this.
  • Wonder Woman: One of the lesser-known tricks of Wonder Woman was the ability to do this with her tiara - though in this case, it's justified by the tiara being magic. Much like Batman's Batarangs, it was a pretty bloodless weapon in the old days, but Post-Crisis became a Darker and Edgier (literally) tool of destruction that beheaded a God at least once. She most famously used it on a mind-controlled Superman since Kryptonian Nigh-Invulnerability is no match for magic.

    Films — Animation 
  • Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion: Getafix the druid uses his golden sickle like a boomerang to pluck mistletoe in the trees. He has enough precision with it that he can catch a freefalling baby bird without harming it to bring it back safely to its nest.
  • In Disney's Hercules, the title character bends his sword and throws it like a boomerang during training. It conveniently cuts the heads off all the training dummies before returning to him, and even snaps back into sword shape once caught again, as if it were spring-loaded.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Subverted in Batman Returns — Batman takes a Batarang, programs it to hit multiple targets, and lets it fly. A small dog catches it like a Frisbee before it can return so that it can be used to frame him later.
  • The Beastmaster inherits a "caber," a pivoted, curved, bladed throwing weapon. He usually hits with it, but it also curves around and at least once homes in on a mook. How he catches the spinning blade without losing fingers is an open question.
  • Spoofed in Black Dynamite with Fiendish Dr. Wu's kung-fu projectiles, which rather than returning to the user's hand return to wherever it was that the user was aiming. This is done deliberately when he attacks Black Dynamite with one by throwing it to the side of Dynamite (Dynamite looks confused but then dodges it before it comes back), and later when Dynamite uses one against Dr. Wu by throwing it before he entered the room, and then somehow it came in through the window from outside.
  • Blade's glaive is used in this fashion right from the word go: in the opening sequence of his first film, he stood at the entrance of a circular room, while several vampires stood at regular intervals around it, ready to attack him. He proceeds to decapitate all of the vampires with a single throw before the glaive dutifully returns to his waiting hand.
  • The boomerang-ax from The Brothers Grimm. Justified in that it is enchanted.
  • The Flying Daggers in House of Flying Daggers are used in exactly this way. They can attack targets from multiple sides, curve around enemies, continue to attack if blocked by SWORDS, and even CUT AWAY BONDING ROPES.
  • The Farmer's weapon of choice in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is the boomerang, which he must hurl with great effort, apparently. And he carries it with him at all times along with his sword, even when he's harvesting.
  • The Glaive from Krull: a magical five-bladed throwing weapon controlled in flight by its wielder's will. Lost at the end when it couldn't free itself from The Beast's body. Justified (assuming the Glaive even qualifies) due to the fact that this ridiculously powerful magic weapon could fly, cut through Nigh-Invulnerable barriers, and hover in place.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • At one point in The Avengers (2012), Captain America breaks up a fight between Thor and Iron Man by throwing his shield in such a way that it bounces off both of their heads and returns to him.
    • Downplayed in Avengers: Age of Ultron, where Cap has a magnet in his gauntlet that helps him catch the shield.
    • Lampshaded in Captain America: Civil War, when Spider-Man comments that Cap's shield appears to not obey the laws of physics.
    • Doctor Strange (2016): During their fight in the Mirror Dimension, the Ancient One creates a pair of fans with her magic and sends one bouncing against the heads of the Zealots before coming back to her hand.
    • Thor: Ragnarok: To reveal "Odin" as Loki in disguise, Thor throws his hammer and stands just behind him, casually reminding him of the fact that his hammer always returns to his hand. Loki takes the hint and drops the disguise.
    • In Avengers: Endgame, beyond the usual suspects (Cap's shield, Stormbreaker, and Mjölnir), Thanos's massive double-bladed sword can be thrown by spinning it, and returns to his hand afterward.
  • Mad Max: The Road Warrior has the Feral Kid's sharp metal boomerang. It slices off fingers and returns to him without a problem. The Feral Kid wears a special glove to catch it, though. Too bad poor Toadie didn't have one of those. Subverted when his intended target Wez dodges it, and it keeps going and kills Wez's lover instead.
  • In Mystery Men, The Bowler does this with, true to her name, a bowling ball. Justified, since her father's spirit (and skull!) is in the bowling ball. Hence, this falls under Empathic Weapon.
  • Predator: The eponymous alien's disk and shuriken weapons are a high-tech version, though occasionally they won't come back due to being lodged in a wall. Or somebody's chest.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022): Tails's arsenal includes a boomerang that becomes a flying, glowing projectile that takes out all enemies before returning to the user's hand. Rachel uses it to knock out some G.U.N. agents surrounding Maddie.
  • In TRON and TRON: Legacy, the Identity Discs can, among other things, be thrown this way. In skilled hands, one can weave around obstacles to seek its target, reorient and attack several more times from varying angles if blocked (usually by another disc) or dodged by that target, and still seek out and return to its owner's hand.
  • In an old Italian film starring Toto, such a boomerang is used in the climax. It's so effective that not only it takes down a whole room of bandits, but it even knock on a door in order to return to the thrower (of course, hitting him in the head).

    Literature 
  • Discworld:
    • Averted in The Last Continent, where the eponymous continent's Creator is described as having a boomerang "that does not return to the thrower, typically because it's stuck in the ribs of whatever he threw it at."
    • One appears briefly in Raising Steam as a sneak attack by the fundamentalist Dwarves. Vimes sees it coming toward Moist and yells for him to duck; just as Moist is standing back up, Vimes pulls him down because it is coming back.
  • Everworld has the throwing blades of the alien Coo-Hatch race. After being thrown, the blade arc back to their owners, who catch them with their needle-like noses. They are sharp enough to slice through full-size trees like butter and cut through rock, so the aliens mention that they never give them to humans because it takes years of training.
  • Wulfgar's warhammer in R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels always returns to him after he throws it. In this case, it's not a matter of the hammer flying through the air, though — the hammer, being magical, simply rematerializes in Wulfgar's hands after it falls to the ground. This is based on the returning enhancement in Dungeons & Dragons, see below.
  • Ian Cormac, the lead protagonist of Neal Asher's The Polity books, has a shuriken that is programmable and can fly under its own power, returning to the user and even being remote-controlled in flight. Another character in the first book has a knife that will return to his hand as long as he is wearing the ring that comes with it.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger (adapted into Power Rangers: Dino Thunder), the Abaren-Ou can throw the entire body of the Pteranodon mecha as a huge-ass boomerang.
  • Batwoman (2019): Averted in "Who Are You", when Batwoman uses one of Batman's batarangs and misses, on the return trip it sails to her right and destroys a priceless vase behind her. Luke recalibrates them after this to account for her shorter arms.
  • Subject of a gag in one episode of Blackadder,, when (sort of) explorer Edmund returns from his travels with a boomerang (though it's just called "a stick"): it is rejected as a gift by Queen Elizabeth and so Percy attempts to get rid of it by gingerly tossing it away in a very wimpy and awkward fashion. After several seconds' delay, it comes zooming back and clobbers him in the head, amusing Elizabeth greatly.
  • In Kaiketsu Zubat, there's the showdown between Ken Hayakawa and Boomerang Jack. After Jack demonstrates his boomerang skill by throwing one into a sign and cutting it in half, Ken throws the boomerang in a way that somehow puts the sign back together and in its proper place, on top of embarrassing the villain's mooks by cutting their belts so their pants fall down.
  • The Outer Limits (1963): in the episode "Fun and Games", the alien creature Mike and Laura fight has a boomerang with a serrated edge. It can return to the person who threw it even if it hit something while in flight.
  • Some weapons wielded by the main characters in several Ultra series, such as the Eye Slugger and the Ultra Bracelet.
  • In Warehouse 13, an artifact football will always return to where it was thrown... a few hours later, after circling the entire world. Said football was later revealed to be an Artifact tracking device, that scans the planet for signs of Artifact activity, which is then uploaded to Warehouse 13's computer system.
  • Wonder Woman's ability to do this with her tiara as mentioned above, came up several times in her 70s live-action series.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess:
    • Xena's most famous weapon is her Precision-Guided Chakram, which always returns to her after ricocheting off walls, rocks, and enemies, often in really convoluted ways. This culminated in a "Groundhog Day" Loop episode where Xena, realizing she has no time to fix every problem on her own, spends some time planning ridiculous trajectories and using the chakram to interrupt every problem. Note the real-life counterpart of a war quoit is razor-sharp all the way around and definitely not something you'd want flying back at you. However, the lethality of the Chakram entirely depended on whatever the plot needed it to do. Sometimes it was insanely sharp, severing ropes and tree branches in a single flight. Other times, it would knock out enemies without so much as a cut on their cheek, and Gabrielle would use it as a back-scratcher. After a while, the fans just accepted that there was a button, somewhere on the chakram, that turned it blunt.
    • Later in the series, the chakram got upgraded into a weapon that could split in two after being tossed, bounce off of multiple objects, strike many people, and recombine in mid-air before returning to Xena. At this point, it was explicitly magical, not that anyone cared about how it worked.
    • An Alternate Reality Episode version of Xena who was some kind of ditzy socialite accidentally performed the exact same chakram trick by throwing a high-heeled shoe, but this was Played for Laughs.
  • Various members of the Ultramen from the Ultra Series, should they have a detachable headcrest, which could be launched as a powerful blade into their foes, slicing their targets to ribbons before returning to the owner. The most iconic example of course being Ultraseven with his Eye Slugger, a trait seen in several Ultras showing up after him, such as Ultraseven-21 from Ultraman Neos and the titular hero of Ultraman Max.

    Music 
  • Averted in "My Boomerang Won't Come Back", the tale of an aborigine who can't get his boomerang to just return.

    Myths & Religion 
  • Older Than Print in Norse Mythology:
    • Thor's hammer Mjolnir would never miss, and yet would always return to him.
    • Odin's spear, Gungnir, had a similar enchantment.
  • Similarly in Slavic Mythology, Perun's axe, it would appear, did the same thing as Mjolnir. (We're not certain, as evidence on Slavic myth is scanty, but it makes sense; Slavic and Norse myth are believed to be derived from the common Indo-European mythology and Perun and Thor are believed to have common origins.)

    Puppet Shows 
  • The Muppet Show has Lew Zealand and his boomerang fish act. "I throw the fish, and they come back to me."

    Tabletop Games 
  • Champions:
    • Supplement Enemies III. Stronghammer the Dwarf's warhammer has an enchantment that causes it to return to him after being thrown.
    • Any Hero System character with a ranged attack and combat skill levels can pull this off — one skill level per controlled bounce.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • In the 4th Edition, all magically-enhanced throwing weapons have this effect by default, presumably because nobody in their right mind would throw an expensive magic weapon if there was a chance they wouldn't get it back.
    • In the 3rd Edition it isn't a requirement, but almost always standard for weapons with an enchantment over +1, except arrows, bolts, and bullets.
    • There are also a few prestige classes that allow a character to pull the trick off even with non-magical weapons. The Hammer of Moradin can do it with hammers, and the Bloodstorm Blade can do it with any melee weapon. Better still when the Bloodstorm Blade takes levels in a class with skill at improvised weapons, becoming able to make boomerangs out of dinnerware, broken bottles, and furniture.
    • In the 2nd Edition (and perhaps the later, too), the thri-kreen (mantis-like insect humanoids) wield combat boomerangs called chatkchas. A chatkcha always returns to its thrower if it hits its target, but it won't return if it misses. Which is quite probably an error in the initial description, the chatkcha being supposed to come back if it misses and not if it hits. Unfortunately, instead of correcting the mistake, later sourcebooks ran further with it.
    • Dungeons & Dragons also has the Dwarven Thrower and Hammer of Thunderbolts, which are inspired by Mjölnir. Early editions of the Unearthed Arcana supplement had the Axe of Hurling and Darts of Homing as well. But averted with the Dagger of Throwing — with all the other returning weapons, you'd think it'd do so but instead it just does double base damage when thrown.
    • Additionally, the returning enchantment can be applied to any throwing weapon to turn them into an impromptu boomerang. A Greater Crystal of Return can give this property to any throwing weapon with at least a +3 enchantment.
    • The Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords features the Iron Heart maneuver "Lightning Throw", which allow one to throw any kind of weapon and damage several enemy in a line, before returning the weapon to the thrower's hand (and it isn't even a supernatural move).
    • Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia. The Babylonian deity Ramman has a 10-foot-long mallet that can be thrown to hit his enemies. After being thrown, it returns to his hand automatically.
    • Judges Guild adventure Portals of Irontooth. The magic item known as the Gnome King's Spear can be thrown as if it were a spear or javelin and will return to the caster after it hits or misses its target.
  • Earthdawn:
    • The magical Devastator Spear will return to its owner after being thrown.
    • The Hawk Hatchet has a kernal of True Air forged into it that causes it to return to the thrower's hand.
  • Exalted:
    • The Iron Raptor Technique enables you to throw any melee weapon like a boomerang and have it return to you.
    • You can attain similar effects with legitimate throwing weapons, such as the sky-cutter (a literal precision-guided boomerang). For the rare occasions anyone with a sky-cutter can't gain 2 successes on a Dexterity + Thrown roll, you can learn a Thrown-based version of Call the Blade to make it leap back into your hand.
  • Anything with the Loyal Weapon enchantment will do this in GURPS and will keep trying if someone tries to stop it.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Several characters in (most commonly, Eldar) use variations of this trope. Maugan Ra, an Eldar hero armed with a shuriken-launching BFG can cause his projectiles to ricochet off walls, depriving his enemies of the benefits of cover.
    • A better example would be the Eldar weapon called the triskele, a three-bladed dagger-like weapon that can be hurled like a boomerang or used in close combat.
    • There's one unusually strong Space Wolves character who has a weapon sort of like this. He's a Wolfguard who's an expy of Thor and besides his impressive strength, he has a Thunderhammer that he can throw and it returns to him (though in this case, it's done by teleporting through the Warp).
    • Interestingly, the actual Boomerang weapons only return on a miss, and even then are not a guaranteed catch.
  • World of Synnibarr. A Dwarf Hammer will return to the dwarf who threw it from up to 1,000 feet away. This ability only works once per Character Level of the dwarf per day and takes a while to do so.

    Video Games 
  • In Alien vs. Predator (Capcom), the disc would go through enemies and bounce off of walls, but always rebounded straight back at you at the wall or the edge of the screen. If you weren't there or you were in the middle of a damage animation, it flew by you and was lost forever. In the PC second version it lost ability to bounce, but can be "recalled" to you, using part of your energy; also, its guidance system is (still?) very loose. In the 2010 game, the Predator's disc will always find its way back to you. Also, its targeting is tied to your Laser Sight, so you can steer it around a bit in midair.
  • Stiletto Anyways from Anachronox fights with daggers. Depending on which set she's equipped with, they're thrown at the enemy and return every time.
  • Batman: Arkham Series:
    • Regular Batarangs avert this. After hitting their target, they would simply bounce off, never returning to Batman. You can even find them lying around after tossing a few. (However, they would cut through ropes fairly flawlessly, though that's more of an Absurdly Sharp Blade.) Also, the usual "multiple targets" of other video game boomerangs is averted in that you can only hit one target with a single Batarang; later upgrades let you throw more than one, letting you pick more targets (but never more than the amount of Batarangs you can throw). The Remote Control ones are justified, seeing as... well, they're remote control. (And they can be guided back to Batman, whereupon he will actually catch it. You don't have to do this, however.)
    • Played straight with Nightwing's Escrima Sticks, which can be thrown as projectiles, can hit multiple targets and will always return to Nightwing's hand.
  • The Guardian and Nomad bloodlines from Bloodline Champions. The former has an "Axe of Zechs" ability, while practically half of the latter's abilities consist of this. The former does it with a two-handed axe, while the latter at least really uses a boomerang.
  • The Infinity + 1 weapon of Breath of Fire I, the Tri-Rang, split and flew in three directions at once and hit every enemy in its path at least twice - multiple times if the enemy was big enough. (The game also featured lesser boomerangs of the lesser "hit and return" variety)
  • Kota from Bound by Blades has a pair of shields as his weapons, a large pavis shield for defense, and a smaller, circular buckler shield with blades attached to its sides. The latter can be thrown as a ranged attack, and after hitting an enemy it immediately bounces back to Kota.
  • In BugFables, one of the main characters, Vi, uses a beemerang as her weapon. Not only will it always return to her after being thrown, she can also have it hit enemies multiple times before returning or even stop it mid-air until it's recalled. Partially justified as the beemerang is a technological prototype.
  • Castlevania has had boomerangs as a secondary weapon since the first game. Some of them are crucifixes, some are X-shaped, and some are actual boomerangs. Interestingly enough, after reaching the limit of their range, the cross weapon tends to fly back in the opposite direction until you catch it or it flies off the screen. See here for more info.
    • In Vampire Killer, the crucifix and the axe both act as boomerangs, but you lose them if you don't catch them.
    • The Axe Armours do this with their axes.
  • In Crusader of Centy, the first skill the hero learns is throwing his sword, which will indeed spin around and come back like a boomerang.
  • Dark Angels: Masquerade of Shadows from Alawar Entertainment, features the Chakram which is a demon-killing throwing weapon that returns to its user's hand and also used for puzzle solving. What is unusual is such a weapon and combat featuring in a "hidden objects" adventure game, a genre not known for slugging it out with enemies.
  • The main character of darkSector has a glaive that acts like this, going so far as to have a puzzle at one point where you have to throw it over a fence and curve it down to hit a switch. Somewhat justified since when he first gets it, it actually seems to be coming out of him, meaning it's organically attached to him or something.
  • Darksiders features a Crossblade that works exactly like Wind Waker's boomerang.
  • Dead Rising has a boomerang that will return to you even if you move from where you threw it. It will only fail to return if you step behind something or leave the area.
  • In the Dynasty Warriors series, any weapon thrown as part of an attack will return to the wielder's hand, follow them as they turn — or move, if the attack allows it — and can hit multiple targets. This is odd enough with Zhu Rong's Boomerang... but it gets weirder with Sun Shang Xiang's chakrams, which aren't returning throwing weapons; and Yue Ying's War-Spear/Dagger-Axe, which she shouldn't even be able to use as a throwing weapon at all.
  • In the doujin fighter game Eternal Fighter Zero, Mizuka Nagamori throws her cello bow as a boomerang for one of her attacks. Her bow will hone in on her position on its return voyage, remaining airborne until she regains it. Mizuka can also control its direction by waving a conductor's baton.
  • Final Fantasy has several examples.
    • In Final Fantasy VII, Yuffie's shuriken work this way. Oddly enough, you can never get thrown weaponry back. Not sure why you can't just pick it up after the battle....
      • The extended re-release of the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children features Cloud hurling one of his swords several hundred feet, where it flies in a wide lateral circle and slices through three monsters along the way before returning to him. Not only does he throw it, the sword splits in two in mid-flight. And he catches the second sword with the blade of the first one.
    • In Final Fantasy VIII, Rinoa's Blaster Edges work the same way.
    • In Final Fantasy VI there were boomerang weapons that could be dual wielded! They could also be made to steal items using Locke's Capture/Mug command.
    • Same goes for Final Fantasy IV and V.
    • In Final Fantasy XIII, Hope Estheim's weapon of choice is a folding boomerang that can make a figure eight-shaped arc to hit the mook at least twice before returning to him, the game justifies this, he has a device on his wrist that makes his boomerang follow his arm movements.
    • Dancers in Final Fantasy XIV wield a pair of chakrams that they can direct with their Magic Dance.
  • Fire Emblem games have throwing axes that can be thrown from a distance. The attack animation has them thrown like 'boomerang'. This, however, has stopped since Shadow Dragon, as the thrower now, instead, takes out new axes from Hammerspace.
  • Your Thunder Hammer in God of Thunder, when thrown, comes back directly towards you, no matter how much you move after throwing it. If there's an obstacle in its way, it will stop against the obstacle and hover in mid-air until you move aside to give it a clear path to you. This becomes an important element in various puzzles.
  • Horizon Forbidden West: The Shredder Gauntlet class of weapons let Aloy throw out discs that spin into a machine for a short time, potentially damaging multiple components, before they come flying back toward Aloy. If she intercepts their path she can catch them and throw the same disc out again for more damage. Should she catch the same disc three times, it explodes on the fourth throw. Its ability to return to Aloy is justified due to the discs obviously being made with high-tech components scavenged from machines that include a limited guidance system.
  • The Pa Cheng in Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb is a shuriken-like weapon that, when thrown, homes in on enemies and always returns to Indy's hand. Justified by it being a magical weapon.
  • Once thrown, the Boomerang acquired in Joe & Mac will literally chase you wherever you run as long as it does not lodge into a mook on the way.
  • The Jungle Book has a boomerang as one of the weapons; interestingly, while it comes back to you after being thrown, you still lose one boomerang whenever you throw one.
  • In Kamiko, Hinome uses the Mirror of Yata as a boomerang that returns to her whenever thrown. For her special attack, she causes it to spin around her, circling around the screen and destroying everything in its path before returning.
  • Kid Kool and its Spiritual Successors by Vic Tokai all featured a partner that could be thrown at enemies but would return after a few seconds, though you would lose it if you took a hit:
    • Wicky in Kid Kool.
    • Bird Fly in Psycho Fox.
    • The skull in Decap Attack (whose counterpart in Magical Hat no Buttobi Turbo! Daibouken was an egg named Robogg).
  • In Kingdom Hearts, Sora has an attack that allows him to throw his keyblade multiple times. Each time he throws it, it travels until it goes offscreen before reappearing in his hand. This is explained in the same way as Wulfgar's hammer above: The keyblade is a magical weapon that will appear in the hand of the wielder whenever they want it to. Later games have it physically flying back, though the same principle may be in play. Advanced versions of the attack include Wind Raid, which uses wind to guide the blade on a crazy looping trajectory to hit as many enemies as possible before returning to the user's hand. Goofy's shield and Axel's chakrams also return to them when thrown.
  • Chakrams in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Not only do they come back when thrown, but they can do a few tricks in the air like hitting multiple targets before coming back to you. Justified since they're explicitly magical weapons.
  • Zig-zagged in Kirby by the main character and various enemies. Most boomerang attacks will go forward before reversing direction but will not return to the thrower if they've moved. One of the most common Copy Abilities is Cutter, which usually allows Kirby to throw boomerang-like blades that don't always come back. However, in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, the Cutter ability causes Kirby to throw a piece of himself as a boomerang, and given his greatly reduced mobility during this, it's guaranteed that the projectile will return home shortly after rebounding. Also, in Kirby's Dream Land 2 and 3, using Cutter while teamed up with Rick causes Rick to throw Kirby as a boomerang that tries to come back, though it's possible to avoid catching the projectile and even set up a situation where Rick can stand still and have Kirby orbit endlessly around him. In the same game, teaming up with Pitch for certain copy abilities turns Pitch into a returning projectile, though for Cutter he becomes a crescent-shaped blade that does not spin like a boomerang.
  • The remake of La-Mulana includes a chakram that behaves like one of these; it will make a good effort to return to you but doesn't always succeed. If it fails (or hits a hard surface) it falls to the ground; either way, successfully catching or retrieving it allows you to avoid wasting ammo.
  • In League of Legends, Sivir has two abilities that do this. The first cause her auto-attacks to bounce and hit nearby enemies, the other throws her crossblade straight forward, where it will return to her. She can move while it's in flight to alter the angle of its return so that it hits an enemy it would otherwise miss.
    • Lux has an odd defensive version of this. She throws her wand, and every allied champion it hits gains a defense shield. As with Sivir, moving while it's in flight can be used to make it hit more people, or hit the same person again on the return journey to reapply the shield. That said, it IS explicitly magical.
  • In the Jaleco arcade game Legend of Makai, your hero starts off with just a cheap sword. But he can quickly earn enough money to buy a throwing knife, a throwing axe, and ultimately a pair of throwing axes. Each of these will return to you regardless of whether you hit or miss an enemy.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's boomerang allows for limited control. Once he upgrades to the magic boomerang, it can travel the full length of the screen. The boomerang in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker physically locks onto multiple targets when you aim, and will hit them all when you release. And it's not even said to be magic! The similar Gale Boomerang in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is explicitly magic, as it's inhabited by the "Fairy of Winds". One little trick with the boomerang in The Wind Waker was to throw it upwind then sail downwind and watch as the boomerang chases the boat when trying to return to Link.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and sequel The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks takes it to a new level, with a boomerang that can follow any path you draw, making it no problem at all to throw it around corners, hit two enemies, grab an item, then navigate back to you. And, unlike many boomerangs in the Legend of Zelda series, such as the above Twilight Princess example, they don't Hand Wave it by labelling the boomerang magical.
    • The Magic Boomerang in Oracle of Seasons is similar, but instead of drawing a path, it's controlled with the d-pad. It doesn't turn very well, though.
    • What really takes the cake is the boomerang from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. If you have the boomerang and the flying cuckoo at the same time, you can throw the boomerang and pick up the cuckoo before it returns. The cuckoo will make you hover several feet in the air, and the boomerang will spin around underneath you until you land. You can move while hovering, and the boomerang will follow you wherever you go, which basically makes you into an invincible flying engine of death, since Link can't be harmed by enemies while airborne, and the boomerang is easily the most powerful weapon in the game. Almost anything it is capable of affecting will die in one hit, including the final boss.
    • There's also a spot in the Great Bay Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask where you can throw the Zora Boomerangs while being pushed around in a circle by the water current, letting you move faster than normal. If you keep running away, you can avoid the boomerangs indefinitely as they continue to chase you in a circle.
    • One of the only times the 'rang is not guaranteed to return to Link's hand is in Super Smash Bros. It will attempt to get to where Link's moved to but can't always make it, passing him by and travelling a good distance across the stage; this can be very useful in Break The Targets or for simply more amounts of projectile spam. Link can't use the move again until it's vanished.
    • Mostly averted in Breath of the Wild. Link not only has to catch boomerangs with a button press on the return trip, they can also be stopped mid-flight by solid objects in their path such as trees or rocks, and will eventually land on the ground if not caught; further, they return to where they were thrown from, so if Link throws it and then moves any significant distance, he's not catching anything. However, hitting enemies still doesn't interrupt their flight.
    • Parodied in this Cracked article, If Video Games Were Realistic.
  • Looney Tunes on Game Boy gives Bugs and Daffy auto-return frisbees that would swing around you if you dodge their first attempt. If you do manage to throw it off, it's pointless because the frisbees are actually infinite.
  • Selan's weapon of choice in Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals are icy chakrams. Both of her special attacks involve throwing her blade, with the basic special being guided by the D-pad. It's justified via the setting's Magitek.
  • Averted in Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter and the Marvel vs. Capcom series with Captain America. Cap's shield will not return to you, instead bouncing off an opponent or a wall with the intention of you catching it. You can actually miss it, forcing Cap to fight shieldless until you walk over it.
  • In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Captain America's shield can be controlled in midair, probably through the controls mentioned in the above comic book section. It's worth noting, however, that controlling it is damn near impossible in-game. It's better to just throw the shield and let it do its own thing. It'll return to you regardless.
  • In Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, the title character's shield acts very much like the Captain America example above: it always returns to him (regardless of what it hits) and with the right upgrades can bounce between enemies and/or hover in mid-air.
  • Mega Man has a number of weapons like this, some boomerangs (Quick Boomerang), some... not (Rolling Cutter, Shadow Blade, Ring Boomerang). Unfortunately, you don't get your weapon energy back if you catch them (a flaw that Mega Man X's Boomerang Cutter corrects). Mega Man Zero has a Shield Boomerang weapon that also returns when you throw it, though the throwing arc differs between games - in Zero 3, you can trick the Shield Boomerang into indefinitely revolving around Zero. This is actually pretty common for video game boomerangs, right down to being able to keep it going indefinitely. Model PX's charged shot (which is an especially bad example, as it holds still for a second before returning) can orbit Aile in Mega Man ZX, without having to keep moving or anything.
  • Minecraft: Tridents can be enchanted with the "Loyalty" enchantment, which makes your Trident return back to you after it's thrown and hits something.
  • In Mortal Kombat 4, Tanya's weapon of choice was a boomerang. While all characters could throw their weapons, hers would actually return to her if it misses the opponent. However, the trope is averted in that she has to retrieve it if it hits.
  • Aversion: The boomerang in NetHack is a decently powerful missile weapon that moves in a circular pattern when thrown. Among other effects, this means that you can't throw it in narrow passages. And yes, if it actually hits, it doesn't come back. Then there's Mjollnir, which has a 99% of magically returning to you after being thrown if you're wearing gauntlets of power (or otherwise have artificially maxed Strength).
  • In the original Ninja Gaiden, the giant shuriken — the Windmill Star — would return to you, no matter how doggedly you dodged it. A skilled warrior could use a single star to fight over a long period of time, simply by repeatedly jumping over it. The Xbox remake also features the Windmill Star as a somewhat hidden weapon. It's the single best subweapon in the entire game, being the only one (other than the bow, and that doesn't really count) that can hurt bosses, and also capable of killing sufficiently weakened mooks.
  • These get distinct names in different Phantasy Star games. In Phantasy Star III, they're slicers; Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star IV call them slashers. Whatever they're called, they're an iconic weapon of each game's resident Ladies of War.
  • Subverted in Pitfall The Mayan Adventure. Boomerangs are one of three weapons in the game, follow an improbably far-reaching curved path, and float around in the air upon return. They do disappear if you don't grab them again, however... and they don't return if they hit an enemy.
  • In Pokémon, the bones that Cubone and Marowak wield in battle exhibit this trope when Cubone or Marowak uses the Cubone family's signature move, Bonemerang.
  • Postal 2 has a precision guided machete.
  • The NES platformer Power Blade featured the protagonist, an Albert Wesker lookalike wield such a weapon. It centered on finding power-ups or Powered Armor to increase its effectiveness, as well as agents who will help you deactivate security to shut down computer networks, in a mix between Mega Man and Metal Gear.
  • Your frisbees in Purple always return to you after throwing. Should they fail to do so, they immaterialize and return as soon as possible passing through everything (or in case of Cluster F., split).
  • Ratchet & Clank: In the original game, your wrench can be thrown boomerang style in a straight line and will always come back after hitting a target only you are unable to move after releasing your boomerang. Ever since the sequel, you CAN move after throwing your boomerang and it always comes back to wherever you are (though you can only move maybe a couple feet in the time the wrench is flying). Justified, as both the wrench and armor Ratchet wears are stated to be magnetized.
  • In many console RPGs that have boomerangs or similar weapons, including the Phantasy Star and Dragon Quest series, their advantage is that they can hit multiple enemies in one attack.
  • Cham Cham out of Samurai Shodown II has one of these as her primary melee weapon (her heavy slash is basically to toss it about a metre in front of her). This actually makes it one of the best projectiles in the game, since it will plow through and disrupt all but a few other projectiles in the game: it can't destroy other melee weapons, and some projectiles escape just by not being where the boomerang goes. And it always returns, even while she's being grappled and pummelled. "Oh! How dangerous a boomerang is!"
  • Mitsunari Ishida from Samurai Warriors throws his war fan in this fashion. Also in the same game, in roughly increasing levels of absurdity:
    • Yoshimoto Imagawa has his kemari (soccer ball)
    • Oichi has her chakrams, similar to the example above.
    • Kunoichi and Nene can fling their twin knives out and they will return. The latter can even combine hers like fuuma shrunken.
    • Katsuie Shibata can throw his axes.
    • Okuni's parasol, It can also function as a kind of blender/shield that always hovers in front of her for sorry periods.
    • Kanbei Kuroda can multiply and launch his crystal balls, but they're more explicitly magical.
  • The Boomerang class of weapons from Secret of Mana can defy all sorts of conventional physics when sufficiently charged up, but will always return to the wielder when thrown.
  • Sengoku Basara has Goto Matabe, who uses a "Fang Blade" that can be tossed like a giant boomerang in order to clear crowds of enemies. It also serves as a useful torture device, either for sawing into the enemy or crushing them between the blades like a vice grip.
  • Somewhat subverted in The Simpsons: Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly, where boomerangs were the main weapon. They could ricochet at 90-degree angles from the ground and hard objects, but if you missed them on the way back, they were gone.
  • Aika from Skies of Arcadia uses these.
  • Spelunky features boomerangs that make every attempt to get back to you after being thrown, but can get cut off by surrounding terrain, especially if you move after tossing one.
  • In Star Ocean, Fear Mell fights with two throwing knives that always return (and some versions hit on the way back too). She wears a magical ring (that cannot be removed) to give her this power. Marvel Frozen similarly fights with a flying orb that she manipulates with her telekinetic power.
  • Star Wars games often have "throw lightsaber" powers that let Jedi turn their lightsabers into Precision Guided Boomerangs. This is more due to the Jedi's telekinetic Force abilities than the lightsaber, but to an observer, it looks the same.
  • Suikoden:
    • In Suikoden V two characters Sialeeds and Sharmitsa have Chakrams as their weapons which are actually considered boomerangs and come back on return, they can also learn a skill for boomerangs which another character who actually has a boomerang cannot use.
    • In Suikoden Tierkreis Various characters can use a boomerang as their weapon, a chakram is one of the weapons included in the boomerang category and works like one as well.
  • Super Double Dragon allows players to pick up and throw boomerangs at enemies, complete with return flight. However, in an odd and unintended aversion, they deal damage to the user as well. This was because the developers had yet to program the ability to catch them (along with many other things) when they were forced to rush-release the North American version, which was based on an incomplete build. They were able to add the ability to catch them for its slightly more complete Japanese release, Return of Double Dragon, although in a more conventional aversion, they're still lost forever if the player fails to catch them.
  • Boomerang Bros in Super Mario Bros. games. Mario also can do it with an e-reader upgrade in the GBA remake of Super Mario Bros. 3 and as a normal power-up in Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World.
  • Colette in Tales of Symphonia wields chakrams that do this.
    • Tales of Hearts R gives us Gall Gruner who wields a Machete and an axe that can attack again after being thrown.
    • Tales of Graces has Malik Caesar who fights with "Bladeaxes".
    • Tales of Vesperia has Nan of the Hunting Blades use a boomerang that is the same size as her. The fact it returns to her is annoying in a battle as if a character is in the way, they get hit again by it.
  • Averted in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989); boomerangs follow a fixed path, and if the player doesn't catch them on the return, they are lost. Boomerang-wielding Mooks, on the other hand, play it straight. Though not so much in other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games with Michelangelo's nunchaku, which are usually thrown in special attacks to make him less of a Close-Range Combatant.
  • If you throw a boomerang in Terraria, it will return to you, even if it has to offscreen teleport back into your inventory.
  • Times of Lore from Origin Systems, one available weapon is a magic axe that you throw at people and it will return to your hand.
  • Touhou Project: Elly's Scythe in Touhou Gensokyo ~ Lotus Land Story. Even if you FIRE at it, it just blocks the attack and makes Elly more of a pain than she already was.
  • Tribes: Vengeance features the Buckler, a weapon/shield exclusive to the Assault class. When thrown, the buckler will follow the player's crosshair, then after a certain point (or upon hitting an enemy) will bounce back in mid-air to return to the player's hands. If the buckler gets caught on an object, it will teleport back to the player's hands.
  • In TRON Deadly Discs, Tron's disc and those of the MCP's warriors rebound and return to their owners when they hit a wall. Tron's disc even goes so far as to also have Lag Cancel — if you don't want to wait for it to rebound when you miss your target, just press a button and it will instantly return to you.
  • In TRON 2.0, the Disc Primitive is just what it was in the film, and is the main non-energy-weapon. No self-guidance, but can be manually "corrected" through the flight. It ricochets off nearly any surface and will always return sooner or later — though it can be forced to return in case you need to use it as a shield. Ricocheting can be a problem, if you're using disc near "civilian" programs.
  • A couple Turok games feature the Razor Wind, a thrown circular saw that passes right through most enemies and, if it manages to get stuck, simply appears in the wielder's hand. What's more, it never seems to hurt the wielder despite its lethal shape.
  • Twisted Metal II's Roadkill had a boomerang missile that would shoot straight out, make a 90° turn and swing back to you. It was pretty sporadic as to whether or not you got credit back when you "cought" it, and sometimes it would just decide to fly circles around you. As a bonus, it did double damage if it hit an enemy on the way back.
  • Ty the Tasmanian Tiger: Ty's main weapons are a variety of dual wielded boomerangs that ALWAYS return directly to him, no matter what obstacles get in their way.
    • The Doomerang, which is player-controlled while your character stands immobile and vulnerable, making it Awesome, but Impractical, unfortunately.
    • There's also the Megarang, which automatically targets crates and enemies, and will merrily bounce from enemy to crate to enemy, before returning to Ty's hand, er, paw.
    • Then there's the Kaboomarang, which somehow returns to Ty even after exploding.
  • In the Ultima series, there is a weapon called the Magic Axe which acts EXACTLY like the cliche boomerang: when thrown, it will fly straight ahead, and return to its wielder once it hits its target or hits the edge of the screen, no matter how its wielder moves. It's one of the more powerful weapons in the game, up to the seventh in the series, Ultima VII — which introduces a two-handed sledgehammer called the Juggernaught that does the same thing. Itself subverted within the same game (perhaps unintentionally) if playing the game on a slow PC — the terrain tiles are moved before the weapon tiles are, making it entirely possible to have either the Magic Axe OR the Juggernaught wind up embedded in the terrain and unrecoverable. Which is painful in both, because there are limited numbers of Magic Axes (five) and Juggernaughts (one) in the game, so once embedded they are lost to the player for the rest of the game.
  • In Unleash the Light, Steven's Shield Throw functions like a boomerang. You can pick up to 2-3 targets to hit, and his shield hits all enemies in its path before returning to him.
  • Thrown melee weapons in Warframe will always come back to the player, allowing them to One-Hit Polykill enemies in the way. The Glaive (originally featured in darkSector), Kestrel boomerang, and Halikar mace will all come straight back to the user (though enemy Halikars take a curving path); and the Halikar will take enemy weapons with it. Several other weapons like the various scythes can be thrown with certain melee stances equipped; the "Reaping Spiral" stance will hurl the scythe forward while it spins through enemies and goes straight through cover and riot shields, before returning to the user's hands.
  • WarioWare: Get It Together!: Mona carries a boomerang whose trajectory can be guided with the control stick.
  • Jet's boomerang in Wild AR Ms 3 acts the same way, and is necessary to activate some switches.
  • World of Warcraft has a couple, surprisingly enough.
    • Linken's Boomerang is a quest reward named after the aforementioned Link. It used to be a fairly popular item for Paladins at the time, who usually lacked the ability to pull from a distance. The quest chain has since been removed from the game, though the item remains for those who still had it.
    • Much more enjoyable is the Booterang, which can be used in a daily quest. Note that these items obey the trope perfectly, following you around literally forever as long as you don't catch them or change zones, and it's easy to outrun them on a fast-flying mount. Since the items' use cooldown works independently of the graphical effect, it's also possible to have a ridiculously huge number of them on screen at once. Yes, this means you could fly orbits around Shattrath pursued by a swarm of 100 Booterangs, if you really wanted to.
    • Cataclysm introduces the engineering-exclusive Loot-a-Rang, which allows you to rifle through the pockets of a fallen foe and collect piles of gold and/or items from a distance.
    • Some of the Hozen (a race of monkey-like creatures) in Mists of Pandaria have a Bananarang attack which works like this.
    • One of the Hunter talents as of Mists of Pandaria throws a pair of Glaives that act like boomerangs, converging on the target for four times the damage each, but can hit other targets again on their way back to the Hunter.
    • Any other throwing attack kind of implies the return to the user since the weapon (or shield for some Paladins) is never lost, but the whole "hitting other targets on the way to the main target and back to the user"-concept is generally ignored.

    Webcomics 
  • Subverted here in Camp Weedonwantcha: when Malachi says it comes back, he means his friend Seventeen will retrieve it for him.
  • Goblins:
    • Chief has a spear that materializes in his hand after throwing it. It also splits into lots of spears when thrown.
    • Kin also had a crossbow with bolts that regrow in the quiver... but that takes an hour.
  • In The Gods of Arr-Kelaan, this is a major plot point that Satan tries to plan around. The magical pink mallet still goes through him to return to Ronson.
  • Knights of the Old Coding:
    • The comic parodies this, when it is revealed that Ryu's Windmill Star always returns, but he had slept through the class on how to catch a giant spinning blade of death. He eventually stops it — by embedding it in a Dragoon's back.
    • Similarly, when Kuros finds the Axe of Agor, he discards the Knife of Throwing, forgetting that it always returns until it stabs him in the back.
  • Double-subverted in Latchkey Kingdom. At first it zig-zags all across the room before disappearing down a hole. After several pages and most of a Boss Battle, it reappears and lodges itself in the Boss's throat at the perfect moment.
  • xkcd:

    Web Videos 
  • In the KateModern animated episode "The Wedding Video", Ninja!Charlie throws a bent katana at a group of enemies. It slices straight through them all and arcs around, coming to rest embedded in the wall next to where Charlie is standing.
  • In his Youtube channel JLaservideo, Jake Laser created a replica of Captain America's shield, made of carbon fiber with a ring of fiberglass. Amazingly, it works, as it bounces on the hit surfaces and comes back to him.
  • Played for laughs in the What If? entry "Short Answer Section II":
    Chad Macziewski: What if you strapped C4 to a boomerang? Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds?
    Randall Munroe: Aerodynamics aside, I'm curious what tactical advantage you're expecting to gain by having the high explosive fly back at you if it misses the target.
  • During the Year One Brawl, That Aussie Guy whips out "The Stereotype of Doom", throwing a boomerang that knocks down Linkara, Handsome Tom, MarzGurl, and Ma-Ti, before he effortlessly reclaims it, spouting a menacing "Oi" at the end.

    Western Animation 
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Sokka's boomerang does this to a lesser extent, and has been known to simply show back up after being lost, or be found again by sheer luck — a more mundane form of returning, but you can't doubt its loyalty. Lampshaded once when Sokka was stuck in a pit and an apple was just out of reach. While struggling to get free, the boomerang dislodges from him and falls in front of the apple, and Sokka remarks: "Now come back, boomerang." Furthermore, in one episode, the group's packs are stolen, and Sokka's boomerang with them. Later in the same episode, they run into the thieves and the boomerang is dropped. When Sokka sees it, he snatches it up, cuddles it, and proclaims "Boomerang! You really do always come back!"
    • In "The Western Air Temple", Sokka became the worst abuser in history. Based on the angle of two firebending attacks, he is able to locate and hit an enemy hundreds of feet away, at least one floor up, from behind a wall, and it still comes back. Add to this is the fact that it is a headshot, and when the guy gets back up and tries to attack again he explodes. Seriously. While it was completely insane, it's pretty awesome — and awesome enough In-Universe that The Legend of Korra reveals that even nearly 30 years later, he's still bragging about it a little (and can you really blame him?). Granted, there was Foreshadowing in a previous episode that hitting his third eye causes his mind/firebending to backfire and blow up in his face, so there's at least a reason for that part.
    • Then subverted in the Grand Finale, where Sokka throws it in a last-ditch effort to save himself and Toph. He then guesses (correctly) that it's not coming back when he realizes that he only delayed the inevitable... only to be saved by Suki's timely comeback. Made all the funnier by Toph (who is blind and thus only heard the ensuing carnage) asking the question, "What happened? Did boomerang come back?"
  • In both Batman Beyond and The Batman, the Batarangs are much more often just bladed throwing weapons that may or may not curve. And sometimes they're not. However, The Batman might also be a justified case, since here the Batarang is equipped with the same kind of weird technology found within the Grappling-Hook Pistol, the BatWave, etc. — remember that strange zinging noise the Batarang makes. In Batman Beyond, they were shown to be much less precise without the processing power of Terry's Powered Armor.
  • Wonder Woman also does it with her tiara in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, as a shout-out to her live-action TV days.
  • Code Lyoko:
    • Yumi's tessen fans act like this. It helps that she can use telekinesis to control them. Though in an episode she and Odd switch bodies, Odd is unable to make them return.
    • Ulrich's katana veers into this a few times when thrown.
  • The Herculoids. Zandor's shield, which could even return while carrying a person.
  • In the "A Better World" episode of Justice League, Wonder Woman uses her tiara as this against Justice Lord Wonder Woman.
  • In Krypto the Superdog, Ace the Bat-Hound also has a teleguided batarang.
  • In the classic Disney short "Mickey Down Under" (1948), Mickey uses a boomerang that's borderline self-willed. It barely needs to be thrown and just flies in circles at the slightest touch. Pluto struggles for a while with it, and both he and Mickey end up chased by the boomerang at the end.
  • Mickey Mouse (2013) episode "Outback At Ya!" takes place in Australia and revolves around Mickey ignoring a joey's warning about how "once a boomerang is thrown, its journey begins and ends in your hands". Mickey throwing it leads to disaster for everyone around him. Mickey fixes it by throwing the boomerang again and having it directly chase after him.
  • One episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has Tigger throw a boomerang at a beehive. Said boomerang hunts him down like a bloodhound for the rest of the episode, even into houses.
  • In one episode of The Penguins of Madagascar, Private uses a butterscotch lollipop as a boomerang.
  • An episode of Peter Pan & the Pirates had Smee cursed with a boomerang that always returned. Even from a locked chest at the bottom of the sea. Even with people clinging to it (and getting a free ride).
  • Skyland: Mahad's boomerang.
  • Skysurfer Strike Force: Soar Loser has a total of five boomerangs at his disposal and throughout the course of the show, they always came back.
  • In Teen Titans (2003), Robin's Birdarangs are examples, and one of his many shoutouts to Gatchaman.
  • The Tick's most colorful apprentices from "The Tick vs. Education": the Babyboomerangotan! A man in an orangutan costume... throwing baby dolls which returned to him. Except for the doll dubbed "the middle child", which exploded.
  • Transformers:
    • Optimus Prime from Transformers: Animated somehow manages to have a precision-guided axe.
      • Prowl's shuriken seem to work this way as well.
    • Before him, Cheetor in Beast Machines could stick his swords together to form a boomerang thingy capable of hitting several Vehicon drones in one flight path and still return.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender has the Blade of Marmora who can hurl their swords to bounce off objects, strike their target, and then catch the weapon. Slightly subdued in that the blade doesn't return to where they started, they jump to catch it where they knew it would end up.
  • Wakfu:
    • Ruel Stroud's shovel (the Enutrof's weapon of choice).
    • Remington Smisse has a Shushu dagger/scimitar also capable of this feat.
    • The Masked Gobbowler can do this by controlling a gobball infused with energy.
  • Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner: Wile E. Coyote and a boomerang. You can figure out the rest.
  • In Xiaolin Showdown the monks get a Mid-Season Upgrade in the form of artifacts personalized to their elemental powers. Clay gets the Big Bang Meteorang, which is a brown boomerang that splits into multiple boomerangs in flight, blows up the Mecha-Mooks in its path before returning as a single boomerang.

    Real Life 
  • Just for Fun: R.W. Wood (physicist, enthusiast of boomerang and surfing, and sort of daredevil) at one of his open demonstrations decided to show how the boomerang flies and sent it into a wide loop over the tribunes. Then one of his students raised an umbrella high enough to be in the way. Boomerang cut it down.

 
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Boomerang Belt Buckle

After Big Greg declares soda banning is now illegal, he throws his belt buckle at the soda vending machine to break off the chains and then the buckle returns back to him.

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Main / PrecisionGuidedBoomerang

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