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A sling is essentially two strands of rope connected by a pocket. You place a stone or other projectile in the pocket, whip the contraption around, and let go of one end of rope, letting the bullet fly.
Despite the fact that slings require considerable training to use effectively, are quite lethal (just ask Goliath) and have very decent range (about a quarter of a mile), in fiction slings are generally perceived as being a weak weapon. They are usually given to kids, beginning adventurers, angry peasants, or idiot Mooks, and are very rarely treated as the lethal weapons they are.
When a sling is used in fiction, the slinger will always whirl it round and round several times before loosing the bullet. This is just for show— in reality, the more (and faster) it's swung, the less accurate the aim.
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Examples:
Anime and Manga
Film
Literature
- In Clan of the Cave Bear the Clan use slings for hunting small game - rabbits and such - but it's considered bush league stuff. "Real" hunters hunt in groups using spears to kill big game. A boy might use a sling, but once one has hunted using a spear he becomes a man. (Females can't use slings or spears though. Ayla has to get special dispensation from the old gods in order to be allowed to use one after she's already taught herself how and can wield it better than any male in the Clan, using a talisman that makes her a little bit male.)
- Slings are a common (and deadly) weapon in Redwall. Otters in particular favour them, along with javelins, as they aren't damaged by water.
- Roger Zelazny's This Immortal aka And Call Me Conrad. The titular hero is forced to use a sling in a duel. Being unfamiliar with the weapon he has to practice all night before the duel the next day. By the time of the duel he's hit or miss, but due to his strength what he does hit gets destroyed. This example plays "multiple swings before release" straight.
- David Drake uses slingstaffs in some of his ancient alternate histories, like the Belisarius Series, and the end books of The General series, where the action shifts to a different planet. They're much easier to learn than plain slings, so slingers can be trained instead of merely recruiting those who've used slings their whole lives. This averts the "multiple swings" trope. They're usually used to throw the primitive grenades that are being introduced ahistorically.
- The Bible has David's famous defeat of Goliath with a sling. It also mentions what ELSE David has defeated with the sling: lions, wolves, bears, etc.
- In Shannon Hale's River Secrets, this is Razo's preferred weapon.
- Guido in M.Y.T.H Inc in Action discussed low-tech military ranged weapons. Slings were mentioned as the worst one in terms of training: unless you mobilize people already familiar with a weapon, sticking to crossbows is the only option.
- The main characters in The Wheel of Time start out carrying slings. They never use them against anything bigger than a raven, even after they were told that slings are actually "real weapons".
- In the Videssos Cycle by Harry Turtledove, the displaced Roman legion includes some slingers from Iberia. (A case of Shown Their Work - Iberians were indeed noted by the Romans for their skill with the sling, remembered in the name of the Balearics ('Isles of the Slingers')).
- In the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher, at one point Tavi is cornered by woodcrafting assassins firing arrows. He takes one of them out with a sling to the head, scrambling his brain so bad that he continues to draw and nock the arrow before realizing he's dead and falling over. This is treated as a surprise, however, since most people dismiss a sling as a farmboy's weapon. *
Probably because with woodcrafting, it's possible to draw a bow with greater strength than any normal human could, and give the arrow impossible accuracy and ballistics as it twists in flight at your command. Earthcrafting, which would affect the stone, is more useful for just tossing a big honkin' boulder, and would only effect the stone, not the sling.
- Wolfhound plays it dead straight. Two seasoned warriors are chased around an island by a bunch of sling-swinging cannibals.
- In Warrior Woman, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a mighty warrior with a sword and shield faces off against a small man with a sling and dagger in the gladiatorial arena. The protagonist thinks it's a mismatch. She's right, although she misses her guess on who's going to win; the mighty warrior drops with a hole in his forehead.
- In Time Scout, Corydon, the Greek Hoplite, favors a sling, to great effect.
- In The Redemption Of Althalus, a large numbers of shepards are recruited by a mercenary army due to their skill with slings. While the mercenaries were initially skeptical, when they learn one of them took down several warhorses at range, while they were being ridden, they change their tune.
Live-Action TV
- The "Scott of the Sahara" sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus. Lieutenant Scott uses his underwear as an improvised sling to defeat a giant electric penguin.
- Tested repeatedly in Deadliest Warrior - they never really seem to do very well.
- It's not that they're bad, just not as good as some other long-range weapons
- Ethan on Lost used one. It was not depicted as weak.
- In Pillars of the Earth a main character uses a sling (with correct form) in early episodes, but to little effect.
- Xena: Warrior Princess had an episode about David and Goliath. What makes this one strange is that the writers apparently didn't believe (or thought the viewers wouldn't believe) that a sling was a lethal weapon in its own right, so they had Xena give some exposition about how giants have a weak spot in the middle of their forehead.
- Averted in Game of Thrones, during an ambush, a soldier gets his head smashed by a slung rock.
- In The Pillars Of The Earth, William is hit in the head by a slung stone during an attack on Kingsbridge. It knocks him to the ground with a nasty bruise, which is enough to drive his men off, but does no lasting damage.
Mythology
Tabletop Games
- In Dungeons & Dragons it was a classic weapon. In 3+ editions, the sling is classified as a "simple" weapon, which means it requires the same amount of skill to wield as, say, a club. The staff sling and variety of normal ammo mysteriously vanished from the equipment list at the same time.
- A variant staff-sling/polearm was used by the Kenders of Dragonlance.
- Since they can be used by anybody (especially by the Squishy Wizards who'd otherwise have to eat up spell slots) they're likely make up a large part of barrages in Baldur's Gate and its sequel to stunlock foes and interrupt spellcasters using the Pausable Realtime gameplay. With enough training, though, these can do some serious damage.
- Since the earliest days of the game, the sling was associated with hobbits/halflings. In 4E, it's their racial weapon of choice.
- Warhammer Fantasy features these for missile troops who are of lower rank than the average archer, like slaves or Halflings.
- In GURPS the sling and staff sling are dangerous but inaccurate. They're also the only ranged (non-bow) weapons that rate as a Hard skill.
- The staff sling in particular is ridiculously powerful, able to outperform almost anything short of a revolver.
- Exalted has these for its sneakier, less flamboyant Exalts. (Even though there are only about three of these.) The main benefits are that they are easy to hide and that they use the throwing skill but the range increment for bows - meaning that the Solar charm that triples attack distance suddenly goes from providing an extra few meters to an extra few hundred.
- This being Exalted, they actually are weak weapons, because the competition is Magitek beam cannons and all sorts of Magitek bows. This also being Exalted, where skill and supernatural power trumps gadgets quite reliably, that doesn't matter nearly as much as you think.
Video Games
- A Heroes of Might and Magic game had slings as the weapon for halflings.
- Similarly, the Halfling slingers in Master of Magic were among the most cost-efficient units.
- NetHack has slings, and sling skills. Lots of ammo around in the form of rocks and worthless glass. Too bad they're useless.
- These are the primary ranged weapon for Celts in Nethergate. They're not as powerful as Roman javelins, but ammo's plentiful—you can pick up any rock off the ground and use it as a bullet.
- Baldur's Gate, as above.
- Slings and bullets are a ranged weapon available for use in Icewind Dale.
- In Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, one of the early weapons in the game is a sling.
- In Space Quest II, Roger has to improvise a sling with his jockstrap in order to knock out a security guard.
- Used in Runescape as a new elementary ranged weapon.
- In ADOM even regular slings are quite decent weapons, and one of the best artifact weapons is a sling.
- In Rome: Total War, the player can recruit units of Slingers. They can't shoot over the heads of allied troops and are worse than arrows against armored enemies, but they are much cheaper and good against soft targets.
- The War in Heaven, an Angels Versus Demons first-person Action Game featured a sling as part of the Angel's arsenal.
Western Animation
- Galaxy Trio episode "Versus Growliath". Meteor Man uses his belt as an improvised sling to hurl a shrinking gas cannister at the enlarged title opponent, bringing him down to size.
- In Thunder Cats Pumyra's Weapon of Choice was a sling.
Real Life
- The ancient Greeks had the opposite misconception regarding slings; they believed that lead pellets could penetrate armour and even become super heated in the air (although it's certainly true they had much better range than arrows or javelins, this wasn't true).
- They actually could punch through armor at a close ranged when used with a lot of force, provided that the armor was the stuff the Greeks would be wearing and not something like 16th century plate. The theory that they super-heated in the air may have to do with how their lead bullets would deform on impact.
- They liked it so much they invented and used Cestrosphendone(a sling-propelled dart) and Fustibalus (staff-sling).
- The Greeks would emboss taunting messages and holy symbols on mass produced bullets for the benefit of their targets.
- Roman military auxiliaries would use slings with lead bullets which they would cast before a battle. Their usefulness should be readily apparent, seeing as they are harder to use than either bows or javelins, both of which were readily available in that era and no-one would take weak equipment into battle given better alternatives. According to some sources the island group of the Balearic islands (which consists of Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza) takes its name from the supremely skilled slingers it produced: Ba-le-yaroh, Punic for "the ones with the office of throwing stones".
- Slings still see occasional use in modern times to throw grenades, Molotov Cocktails and the like (as recently as the 2008 riots in Kenya). Apart from that they're basically only of interest to hobbyists and athletes.
- The Aztecs used slings as one of the main ranged weapons of their military. According to Cortés, the dents they left in his soldiers' armor were identical to those left by musket shots.
- In Spain, a shepherd with a sling managed to hit the rotor of an helicopter. The pilot had to make an emergency landing, and it was featured in a number of Spanish newspaper articles such as these.
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