Sword Chucks, yo!
"I need gopher-chucks!"
Nunchucks are fun! The Ninja love them, and they are one of the most famous martial arts weapons around (next to the katana). The best thing about them is the fact that they are so easy to make! All you have to do, is take two random items, and connect them with a rope or a chain, and there you go! Instant Chucks!
Forget practicality, this one runs on pure Rule of Cool. Being such an easy weapon to make, a Combat Pragmatist can make some while locked in battle. Probably the most popular way to make the chucks for a hero is to break the shackles he was bound with, or use the ball and chain he was attached to. If he is fighting multiple enemies, Asskicking ensues, if not, they will be discarded very quickly.
Sub-Trope of Mix-and-Match Weapon. Compare with X on a Stick.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bleach:
- Hisagi's zanpakutou transforms into a kusarigama that possesses a blade at either end of the chain instead of a blade at one end and a counterweight at the other. As a chain weapon, he requires two hands to wield it properly and, because it has two blades instead of the normal one, it's a particularly lethal weapon.
- Ikkaku's bankai transforms his three-section staff into three giant blades loosely based on the monk's spade. As with Hisagi, his weapon is technically a chain weapon that requires two hands to use. His three bankai blades have been noticed to be exceptionally powerful but fragile because he chooses not to use his power correctly for the sake of fun.
- Subverted with Ukitake. When his zanpakutou transforms, he gains two swords that are linked by a cord. However, the cord has a different purpose entirely. Ukitake cannot use his swords in accordance with this trope and is an example of Dual Wielding instead.
- Tengen Uzui, the Sound Hashira from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba wields a pair of large cleaver-like blades chained together at the hilts.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has Bardiche and his Riot Zanber Stinger, which is a pair of energy sabers connected by an energy cable. In other words, Laser Blade chucks.
- In One Piece during the Thriller Bark arc, resident shipwright and strongman Franky crafts a pair of makeshift chucks by using stone pillars. Ridiculous, yes, but quite effective, as Tararan's face will attest to.
- In Yaiba, during the fight between Giant Yaiba and Goemon inside the Onimaru Fortress, the latter used a whole train as a nunchak/sansetsukon againts Yaiba, and it's quite effective.
Fan Works
- Heaven's Hunter
has Kanta make a pair out of two artificial moons and a hell of a lot of magic chain.
Film
- One of the titular 3 Ninjas makes a set by grabbing a piece of conduit pipe and bending it in half, with the wires inside keeping the two pieces together.
- The second movie of the The Toxic Avenger series have Toxie fighting a pair of mooks using a pair of dried fishes attached with a string.
- In Big Stan Stan Minton does this in a prison with three bars of soap, and we are even shown him working on them with a prison shiv so he can affix the rope to attach them.
- Dragons Forever: While Jackie Chan and friends fights off the main villain's mooks, the seemingly distressed damsel, May, gets cornered in a booth with a random mook, who thinks May would be easy to pick on. Unfortunately for him, May turns out to be a capable asskicker herself, as she then picks up a mic attached to a stand, using it as an improvised nunchuck to beat up and knock out said mook.
- Dragon Tiger Gate have nunchucks made from flip-flops. Granted, it's made by the main characters whom are kids at the time, but still.
- The climax of High Risk has Frankie (a Bruce Lee-wannabe character whose stunt doubles perform all his onscreen fights) fighting the burly henchman, Kong, who proclaims himself as Frankie's biggest fan, to the point of bringing a pair of nunchucks he bought from "Frankie's fan club". By this point, Frankie finally decides it's time to get serious, so he grabs a pair of hotel concierge stanchions attached with a velvet lanyard and uses that as an improvised chuck.
- In Hot Bot, sex shop owner Benny has a double-ended dildo that comes apart with the two halves being linked by a chain. He uses it as a set of nunchucks to knock out Agents Koontz and Frazier when he rescues Limus and Leonard from Senator Biter's fundraiser.
- In the Line of Duty 4: Witness: Rachel gets to fight a bunch of mooks in a mechanic workshop, where she ties up two wrenches together as an Improvised Weapon. Wrech-chucks, everybody!
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, Michaelangelo uses a pair of salamis joined by a string as a pair of readymade nunchucks. Despite having perfectly good nunchucks on him at the time.
- In Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, The Chosen One gained the help of two gophers and made Gopher-chucks in the middle of a fight.
Live Action TV
- The sketch-comedy Almost Live! did a series of Kung-Fu parodies in which the combatants sometimes construct nunchucks out of harmless everyday objects.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 had Joel & the 'Bots come up with several "'chucks" during a break while watching Master Ninja. They included "up-chucks (plastic vomit)," "nun-chucks (nun's habits)," and "Chuck Woolerys (covered in wool)."
- Ultra Series:
- An episode of Ultraman Leo had Leo fighting against the spear-wielding Alien Kettle. Unarmed, Leo responds by grabbing a pair of smokestacks from a nearby factory, putting them together and voila, smokestack-chucks!
- In the later installment, Ultraman Z, the titular Ultra can combine powers from his predecessors to enhance his current fighting form. By combining the aforemention Leo's powers with Ultraman Zero, Z can create instant bladed nunchucks from Zero's dual sluggers.
Literature
- In Night Train to Rigel, weapons and objects that could be used as Improvised Weapons are banned on Quadrails and all the various species have been attempting to figure out ways around it. The Bellidos, a species that always carries guns, turns out to have figured out the first effective way to do it: take two of their ceremonial handguns which are made from hollow plastic, fill them both with water, then tie them together with string. Instant nunchucks.
Podcasts
- Ne-on from the Cool Kids Table game Star War wields a pair of lightsaber nun-chucks, which Josh calls light-chucks. Any problems that would arise from them are cancelled out with Ne-on's Force abilities.
Video Games
- Bayonetta used gun-chucks.
- The animated trailer for the The Bad Seed DLC for Dead Cells has the Beheaded wield frying pan-chucks at one point. The frying pan-chucks, now known as the Panchaku, have been added to the game by the Enter the Panchaku update.
- In Last Ninja 2, the ninja can make nunchucks from... two toilet pulls found on the first level. (At least, that's what it looks like, since he finds them in toilets.)
- In the Yakuza series there are normal types of nunchaku, and then there's bunch of weird ones like two sticks of dynamite and two frozen sardines linked together by chain and others.
Web Comics
- Fighter of 8-Bit Theater had the grand idea to connect two swords together and make Sword Chucks. They become a Running Gag throughout the comic and are derided as pretty much the most useless and unwieldy weapon ever. Then he ends up actually making some sword-chucks using his own two swords, the swords he stole from Drizz'l, and the recently-slain Black Belt's nunchucks, and fights Kary, the elemental fiend of fire, to a standstill.
- Near the end of the comic he uses "glorious chainsaw method" to kill dragons with them, which only works because it is an idea he is too stupid to know he can't act on it.
- A fan comic had Fighter make Wand-Chucks, which were two wands tied together like a flail and give them to Black Mage as a gift. Black Mage calls it the stupidest idea ever and starts spinning them to make a point, only for the magic to start discharging everywhere and he accidentally burns down the countryside. Black Mage looks around at the devastation and then calls it the best gift ever.
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Mongo wields the wonderfully ludicrous Chainsaw nunchucks during the "D.A.R.E To Resist Ninja Drugs" arc. He does the classic nunchuck warmup moves — while the saws are running.
- Parodied in The Dreadful, as banana chucks are as effective as you'd expect them to be.
- Eddie, in Emergency Exit, has the ability to create Malletchucks, which he wields with very improbable dexterity.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner: in a Show Within a Show segment, Strong Bad reprises his role as Film Noir hero Dangeresque. He apologizes for arriving late to a meeting, explaining that he "had to stop at Cool Weapons Surplus for a new nunchuck-gun." This weapon is improvised in the sense that it is a nunchuck uselessly-taped to a gun.
- In the Rooster Teeth series RWBY, there's a character named Sun Wukong, with the typical staff you'd expect, but treated like all weapons in the series. True to the show, his staff is also a pair of sticks, and those can be a pair of gunchucks.
Web Original
- Chris Sims of the Invincible Super-Blog had a "Batman using unconventional nunchucks" contest. Entries included Nunchucks made of Sharks, ...and alligators, and car batteries and more...
- Uncyclopedia had a list of fictional melee weapons the contributors wish was real. It included Bananachucks, Weasel-chucks, Sword Chucks, and Sephiroth-chucks.
Western Animation
- Futurama: In one episode a giant Zoidberg attempted to use a train as nunchucks against a giant Bender. It didn't last.
- In another episode, Fry attempts to use a giant nutcracker this way in a fight against Zoidberg: he makes some impressive movements with it, but then bonks himself in the face with it, and then just uses it to choke Zoidberg instead.
- In The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, episode "Mario Meets Koop-zilla", a super-sized Mario picks up a train and wields it like nunchucks or a sectioned staff to fight an equally super-sized King Koopa.
- In another episode, after learning Plumb Fu, Luigi wields pipe-chucks.
- One plot arc in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has the turtles imprisoned by Triceratons in a gladiator training compound. When they're forced to rely on improvised weapons during an attempted prison break, Mikey uses a set of nunchuks made from toilet brushes.
- In general this is also why Michaelangelo is more controversial than his brothers with the censors. Improvised swords, bos, and even sais will just be glorified sticks. Improvised chucks will have much, much more leverage behind the strikes (or even just tricks) combined with less control; a strong recipe for disaster for any kid viewer. Or adults for that matter. And that's why in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), Michaelangelo's chucks were replaced by a grapple hook after a couple of seasons.
- An episode of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) that parodies old-school Japanese kaiju films have a monster (one based off a pufferfish) fighting the girls in what appears to be Townsville's equivalent to Tokyo, complete with it's own sky monorail. The monster notably grabs a bullet train on said rails and uses it as a nunchuck (and making Funny Bruce Lee Noises all the way) to attack the girls... it's worth noting the train is on the move and likely contain dozens, if not hundreds of people, all of them likely mashed into a bloody pulp by the swinging.
