Weapons That Suck

Who ya gonna call? Lu-igi!

"The Suck Cannon is a prototype weapon under development by the Blarg. What we know about this device is that it uses new quantum technology to suck up small enemies, then convert them to explosive projectiles. Simply hold down ◉ to suck enemies into the gun."

— Description of the Suck Cannon, Ratchet & Clank (2002)

Literally.

Sometimes, in a work of fiction, the good guys will use Energy Weapons to defeat the bad guys or the monster. Usually, said laser beams work like some science-fictiony approximation of a bullet. Occasionally, though, the beam will do something totally different: suck the target into the weapon.

Most of the time, this doesn't kill or otherwise destroy the target, it just traps them, to (presumably) be disposed of or imprisoned elsewhere later. A lot of the time, when some supernatural menace won't go down under Frickin' Laser Beam fire, you need a Frickin' Vacuum Cleaner to get the job done!

For when a character uses themselves as the vacuum, see Vacuum Mouth. See Ghosts Abhor a Vacuum if this gets applied specifically to phantoms.

Not to be confused with Tractor Beam. For weapons that suck figuratively, see Joke Item and Scrappy Weapon.

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Examples:

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• One of the Budget Direct adds had the detectives investigating a family being attacked by a homicidal pool cleaner. "That sucks. It's a good thing you're covered by Budget Direct."

Anime & Manga

• Doraemon:
  • The VR Portal from Doraemon: The Record of Nobita's Parallel Visit to the West, where computer of simulations of demons and monsters are spawned from, where in the ending Doraemon fixing and deactivating the machine causes various monsters that escaped from it to be sucked right back in.
  • Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum have a number of high-powered Super Vacuums, which was used by the gang to contain an expanding artificial sun to prevent it from causing a meltdown in the finale.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Ken Oyanagi's Boy II Man lets him suck in pieces of his opponent's Stand each time they lose in a Rock–Paper–Scissors game.
  • Stone Ocean: To defeat Ungalo's Bohemian Rhapsody, Weather Report conjures his own drawing of a hero and gives it the power to undo all the damage done by using a powerful vacuum to send all the fictional characters back to where they belong.
• A jar-o-demon-sucking showed up in Negima! Magister Negi Magi during the Demon Arc.
• One Monster of the Week in Futari wa Pretty Cure was a vacuum cleaner possessed by a Zakenna.
• Miroku from Inuyasha, cursed with a black hole in his hand that will eventually kill him, for both senses of "suck".
• Hunter × Hunter: Shizuku uses an actual vacuum cleaner as a weapon, albeit infused with her Battle Aura.
• One Piece: Kyuin of the Donquixote Pirates wields a vacuum cleaner that is used to great effect against the dwarves.
• Team Rocket uses vacuums now and again in Pokémon: The Series anime.
• Ranma ½:
  • In one episode of the anime, Soun Tendo intends to use a magical gourd to swallow up and imprison Ranma's shadow, which has come to life and has started making trouble (long story). The problem is, it only works if he can call out the Shadow Ranma's name... and he doesn't know it. This is a reference to Journey to the West.
  • In a different story, Ranma uses a magical box to catch an oni that's currently possessing the body of Happosai, sucking both of them into it.
  • In the manga, there exists a magical compact mirror that can suck in anyone who looks at their own reflection (and a fair bit of the accompanying landscape.) The victim is sealed up in a non-infinite mirror world, with no escape, unless someone outside pats the back of the compact and effectively slaps the victim out of it.
• The Mafuuba technique in Dragon Ball is kind of like this. It doesn't work unless you have some kind of object (in this case, a rice cooker, but any sealed container with the proper talisman will work) to trap your target in, though it's not the object itself that actually sucks them in.
• Vampire Hunter D has a symbiotic life-form living in his left hand which can—among other things—consume and inhale various substances.
• Chikuma Koshirou from Basilisk has the Kamaitachi technique which sucks people and weapons and then shreds them to pieces.
• The Metroid (Manga) features the Space Pirates using an artificial singularity as a weapon at one point.
• In Shirokuma Cafe, Mama Panda uses a vacuum to punish her son whenever he tries to laze around the house.
• Kill la Kill has the "Emergency Rescue Suction Device", which destroys COVERS by extracting their human hosts via a vacuum.
• Buster Keel!, in a Shout-Out to Journey to the West has Gold using a magical gourd on Keel and Lavie to suck them inside it and leave them there, at the mercy of the monster Soul Eater, a creature that forces people to assume their "original" form before consuming them. Unfortunately for Gold and the Soul Eater, Keel's original form is that of the dreaded Dragon Ape.
• Hoshin Engi: The Unsho Sisters own the paope Kongen Kinto (Golden Coalescence Ladle), a large pot which they can use to suck people and things inside, storing them in as prisoners or to protect them. The pot's suction is indiscriminate, and cannot store excessively big items. In fact, Bukichi manages to smash it by throwing a massive boulder at the pot's mouth, closing it up and causing the Kongen Kinto to overheat and explode.

Asian Animation

• Motu Patlu: In "The Devil Toothpaste", Motu uses a vacuum to defeat the GermiGarmi Plus toothpaste.

Comic Books

• Amulet: In Volume 6, Navin, Aly, and General Pil fight the Dark Scouts via sucking them up using street-cleaning vacbots.
• Marvel Universe:
  • This was first method Spider-Man used to defeat the Sandman, by sucking him into a industrial vacuum cleaner.
  • Reed Richards would later pull the same trick on Sandman when the villain served as part of the Frightful Four.
  • Howard the Duck's enemy Black Hole has a dimensional portal thingamajig stuck in his chest like a black disc, and he can suck people and things into it. Everyone's reaction is that it's disgusting.
• Adam Strange in his original stories had one enemy alien race that used this form of sucking weapon.
• Transmetropolitan features someone trying to sell Channon the "Chupacabras", a gun that can drain a target of blood in 4 seconds. Channon, who is a highly professional gun-for-hire, comments that 4 seconds to kill someone is far too long, and that she wouldn't be caught dead packing a "Goatsucker".
• One episode of Lobster Random had one that sucked out people's brains in order to make a drug that sent people on massive ego trips and sent the minds to another dimension for use in Warathraal's army. When Lob asks "It sucks?", Ms Teak simply states, "No, it's rather effective."
• In one Silver Age Batman story, The Joker uses a vacuum cleaner the size of a truck to suck up loot (and Batman).
• In the final Marvel issue of Mighty Mouse, "Survival Of The Hippest," a mysterious cloaked figure is using a vacuum cleaner to suck the hipness out of late night talk show hosts (all funny animal caricatures of Johnny Carson, Pat Sajak and such). Mighty Mouse counters it by using his breath inwards as a vacuum and subsequently defeats the villain, who is unmasked as a funny animal caricature of Arsenio Hall. The P.R. (public relations) medics lampshade it at the end:
  Medic: Gee, Mistah Mouse, I'm sorry to hear youse lost your hipness again.
  Mighty Mouse: No, you've got it all wrong. I won! I'm more hip now than I ever was!
  Medic: You sure? The audience said you really sucked!
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: The Golden Policewomen use a suction based non-lethal weapon called the Inhilerator to capture foes.

Fan Works

• In Mega Man Reawakened, Roll's vacuum attachment from the cartoon is seen; she often uses it to suck up enemy projectiles.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager fanfic "The Flux of Mortal Things", Seven of Nine uses a subspace inversion mine to destroy a derelict Borg vessel so no-one can salvage its technology.
  The photosensitive viewscreen went dark as a blinding flash eclipsed the radiance of a sun, ripping the sphere apart and hurtling the radioactive fragments across space. Then suddenly the explosion appeared to reverse itself as every particle of matter in a million kilometres tried to push through a tiny hole in subspace.

Films — Animation

• In Aladdin, Aladdin defeats Jafar by tricking him into wishing he were a genie. Jafar is promptly sucked into his new lamp in a Frickin' Vacuum Cleaner effect, because genies must be released by new masters.
• Similar to the Jumanji example, the end of Cool World features cartoonist Jack Deebs, transmogrified into a cartoon superhero, returning the Spike of Power to the roof of the Las Vegas Plaza Hotel, thus curing everyone in the city who had been turned into cartoon characters, and sucking all the denizens of the Cool World back where they belong with a vacuum cleaner-like effect. (It Makes Sense in Context, but you gotta watch it.)
• At the beginning of Incredibles 2, the Underminer uses an enormous tube to vacuum the money from the bank (and, inadvertently, Mr. Incredible) into his giant mining drill.

Films — Live-Action

• Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.. Dr. Who plans to foil the Daleks Planetary Core Manipulation by diverting the bomb meant to penetrate the Earth's crust from its course down another shaft to disturb the Earth's magnetic field, which will create a powerful magnetic force that will "suck the Daleks into the core of the Earth!" Not sure if it's that powerful, but the motorized dustbins are shown going haywire or crumpling under the forces unleashed.
• In Ghostbusters, the guys use their proton beams not to actually blast the ghost, but to position it over the ghost trap and suck it in. For some reason, parodies of the film always have the proton beams as the thing that sucks the ghost, with no mention of the trap.
• The titular board game in Jumanji uses strange magic to this effect. First, it sucks in Alan Parrish into its fictional jungle, then it releases a series of creatures, villains, and strange meteorology into the real world. In the end, everything is sucked back in one huge vacuum cleaner-like effect.
• In Spaceballs, the bad guys' gigantic space ship transforms into Mega Maid, a Humongous Mecha that can suck up an entire planet's air supply.
• Gargamel in The Smurfs used a leaf blower for capturing Smurfs while chasing after them in FAO Schwarz.
• The aliens in The Arrival use some sort of black hole generator to destroy evidence.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • The Dark Elves in Thor: The Dark World have grenades that create powerful implosions.
  • Ant-Man: The shrinking technology is combined with C4 explosive to create a form of compression bomb, utterly destroying a research facility and any information inside while avoiding collateral damage (the staff has been evacuated).
• Help!: A hand dryer in a washroom is rigged to vacuum at high intensity to pull the coveted ring off Ringo's hand - it rips off bits of the guys' clothing and pulls the plumbing off the walls before it's shut down.
• In the climactic fight of Kung Fu Zohra that's full of Improv Fu, the eponymous Zohra uses a vacuum cleaner to momentarily incapacitate Omar (her violent husband), by having his mouth blocked in its power nozzle by the sucking.

Literature

• Deathlands has implosion grenades, apparently activated by Anti Matter. It's the only weapon that proves effective against Project Cerebus.
• In the Thursday Next series, Spike captures a Supreme Evil Being using a specially designed vacuum cleaner, to the demon's surprise.
• Weapons That Suck have a role in China Miéville's Un Lun Dun Specifically, the UnGun, which sucks up the Smog at the climax of the novel.
• The eponymous heroine of C. J. Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle wields a sword which, when unsheathed, opens up at its tip a rift in the fabric of reality which sucks up things and sends them to nothingness. Useful for blocking arrows, destroying castle gates, and killing people.
• Older Than Steam: There are quite a few examples of Magical Artifacts That Suck in the Chinese epic Journey to the West, including magical gourds and jade vases that suck people in and slowly digest them with the container's equivalent of stomach acids. In the specific case of the Crimson Gourd and the White Jade Pot, for the tool to work you have to call the victim by name and the victim has to answer. Interestingly enough, even a fake name will work, as long as it's a name the victim goes by.
• In the New Jedi Order series, the Yuuzhan Vong's dovin basal creature is essentially a living black hole generator. Ordinarily it serves as the Vong equivalent of a deflector shield generator, sucking up laser fire and missiles. It has also been known to make small starships literally disappear when they fly into it by mistake, and in at least two cases to perform Colony Drops by diverting a moon and several space stations onto the planet.
• In Steve Perry's The Man Who Never Missed The Confed's military uses an implosion bomb to finally take out Khadaji, once they figure out that he's the sum total of the 'Shamba Scum' resistance movement.
• In a rather cute Halloween coloring book sold in Big Lots stores in the 2000's (titled simply Halloween), mad scientist Dr. Zoogle's creations keep going out of control, and he and his assistant Bo always dispose of them with a giant vacuum cleaner.
• Spaced Out (2016): While it's not a weapon, Dash defends himself from Patton Sjoberg in the second chapter by sticking the Urinator to his face. For context, the Urinator is a vacuum-like part of Moon Base Alpha's toilets designed to extract the water from urine so it can be used again.
• Fengshen Yanyi:
  • Cihang Daoren's Crystal Vase can suck people inside of them, melt their bodies and spit out their belongings.
  • The Xiao Sister's dreaded Golden Basin of Primordial Chaos is a fancy golden basin which can emit a blinding light from the opening: anyone caught in the light is inevitably pulled inside and left at the mercy of the user. The Xiao Sisters use this treasure to capture all the Twelve Kunlun Immortals one by one.
  • Yuanshi Tianzun holds the Jade Coffer, which can drag people inside them and quickly melt them into red goo.
• Universal Monsters: In order to trap the monsters back in their movies, the lead trio have to suck them back in via filming them with a modified camcorder, equipped with a disc that's been programmed with a reversed version of the program that fixed the faulty film projector. They have to augment it with other specialty modifications in later books:
  • Book 2 has them having to film and capture the original Wolf Man and its servants ( John Winokea and Sheriff Marshall) before adding a silver dreamcatcher, with a woven-in pentagram, to the camcorder to capture the true villain — Maleva the gypsy.
  • Book 3 has them use the recording disc in Herr Frankenstein's computer, later realizing that since Herr Frankenstein had adapted to using modern technology, they had to use his own equipment against him.
  • Subverted in book 4, where the camcorder isn't used at all — instead, Captain Bob crushes the scarab representing Anck-Su-Namun's heart, and then she embraces Imhotep before both crumble to dust. Captain Bob and Joe later figure out that the scarab and the Scroll of Thoth acted as a conduit to send the pair back to the movie.
  • Subverted again in book 5, as the camera isn't used this time either — instead, after it kills its tormentor (another film escapee), the Gill Man simply finds true love, is enveloped in a beam of white light from the sky and returns to the movie.
  • In book 6, the final battle ends when Goldstadt Mansion blows up, and the faces of the six monsters, Herr Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius all emerge from the smoke before the mansion and spirits are sucked into the ground, leaving only "an acre of blackened mass of smoldering cinders and dead vegetation." The epilogue implies that since the second projector and the associated DVDs were inside the mansion, everything got sucked back into them when the mansion was blown up.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who. The Daleks' multi-purpose "plunger arm" has this as one of its functions. When a mook taunts a Dalek threatening him with the plunger: "What are you going to do? Sucker me to death?", the sucker shoots out over his nose and mouth and the Dalek creates a vacuum inside it, with nasty results.
• Farscape. In "The Maltese Crichton", Zhaan does a Reverse Polarity on Crichon's module to suck a Sufficiently Advanced Alien in the form of Super Smoke into the module's engine.
• In The Mighty Boosh the evil spirit of Jazz is subdued by being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Sadly this doesn't stop the spirit as he just rolls the cleaner to Howard and "Get's inside him."
• Monkey: The baddies have a magic bottle which will suck you inside if they point it at you, they say your name, and you answer to it. Monkey escapes it by turning into a wasp and later tricks the baddies by posing as someone else and giving a false name.
  • This jar is also present in the source material, Journey to the West.
  • And in Dragon Ball, which was loosely based on Journey to the West. Only there, the bottle sucked you in if you didn't answer.
• The Vacuum Bot in Power Rangers RPM, capable sucking all the oxygen out of Corinth and sucking in the attacks and weapons of the Zords during battle.
  • Power Rangers Mystic Force had the Solar Streak Megazord, a secondary train-themed Megazord piloted by the Solaris Knight. It's finishing move was to suck the monster into the central furnace where it would explode. The SSM would then pose in victory and let off the excess energy in steam form.
• Reaper:
  • In the first episode, Sam is given a demonic dirt devil vacuum in order to recapture a soul that escaped Hell.
  • Most episodes feature something that works in a similar fashion, sucking up the baddy-of-the-week.
• Angel. The Resikhian Urn used to trap Sahjahn, a non-corporeal demon.
  Holtz: Get Out!.
  Sahjhan: Or what? You can't kill me.
  Holtz: But I can trap your dimensional essence in a Resikhian Urn. Wonderful devices the urns. They last a lifetime. That is, if you live forever.
• Ultraman Ace: One of Ace's abilities is the Ace Vacuum, which the titular hero sometimes use to suck up enemy choju's gas-based attacks. Notably used in the battle against Garan, where Ace sucks away Garan's poisonous breath and turn it back on the monster.

Tabletop Games

• From Monsterpocalypse: the Oppressor unit from the Subterrans has huge vacuum cleaners bionically grafted onto its arms.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • A magic item called an Iron Flask. It can suck a targeted creature into itself and store it indefinitely. (It only works on extradimensional creatures, however, and the chance of it working is better if the user knows its True Name.)
  • Also, the Mirror of Life Trapping can do this to any living creature who see its reflection in it, and can hold several victims at once; not only could a wizard use it against an enemy, he could set it as a booby trap, and then speak to any prisoner trapped inside. (Not that he should expect an answer, of course, unless he had something to bargain with.) The danger in using this is, if the mirror is broken, every prisoner is freed, and will probably be very angry at whoever put them there. (And even worse, might be insane; the longer a prisoner remains in it, the greater the chance of that happening.)

Video Games

• Astroneer: While not a weapon per se, the terraforming tool essentially functions as a phlebotinized vacuum.
• Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg: Saltim's mirrors are these; they can be used to suck in Billy and trap him, after which Saltim will then deliver a big punch to the mirror, damaging Billy and sending him out of the mirror.
• Cuphead: Esther Winchester pulls out a vacuum gun for the second phase of her battle. With it, she sucks up various objects for blowing them out.
• Luigi's Mansion:
  • The Poltergust 3000 in Luigi's Mansion. Once Luigi stuns a ghost with a flashlight, he can capture the ghost by pulling it into the vac.
  • The Poltergust 3000 appears briefly in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga during the coffee side quest along with Professor Gadd, who also shows off a Poltergust 3001, which also doubles as a sort of hoverbike.
  • Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon features a new model called the Poltergust 5000.
  • Luigi's Mansion 3 gives yet another upgrade, the Poltergust G-00, which can use the vacuumed ghost protoplasm to create a clone of Luigi named "Goo-igi".
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • The Suck Cannon sucks in enemies or crates and lets you use them as ammunition.
  • The third game had the Rift Inducer, which shot out a black hole that was an insta-kill to any small or medium-sized enemy. In "A Crack In Time" however, it was changed to summoning an Eldritch Abomination that grabbed mooks with its tentacles.
  • Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One features the Vac-U, a non-combat version of the Suck Cannon, which is (mostly) used for picking up bombs or fellow players and throwing them around to solve puzzles.
• The Persephones in Castlevania use vacuum cleaners with skull-shaped canisters. For fun, let one of them catch Charlotte in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Link's Gust Jar in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.
  • A very similar Gust Bellows appears in Skyward Sword, but it blows.
• Mario Party 10: The Luigi amiibo Party board has an event that takes the form of a giant Poltergust 3000 vacuum that can suck up items taken from the other players. It allows the the player using it to either steal a few coins from all of their opponents, or they can pay coins to try and steal a Star from one of them. The drawback is that the Star steal has a chance of instead sucking up a worthless ball of paper and giving the player nothing. The chances of the star steal succeeding go up if the player chooses to pay more coins.
• One of SonSon's abilities in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is to suck an opponent into a vase....thing she's carrying, then cook it. Given SonSon's origins, this is likely a reference to the vase from Journey to the West, possibly combined with Laozi's eight-way trigem cauldron, given the "cooking" aspect.
• In Quest for Glory II, you have to defeat an air elemental by sucking it into a bellows (after weakening it with earth).
• In Shin Megami Tensei, the Red Baron (aka Maou Belial) is unbeatable unless you have "the gushing jar". Then it will just suck him up.
• Mega Man\Rockman Trigger's Vacuum Arm in the Rockman Dash / Mega Man Legends series. Comes with three levels of suckitude, from "why don't you just walk up and grab the Zenny" to "Whoa, there was money behind me on the other side of the room?"
• In SaGa Frontier, characters of the mystic race get the Mystic Sword, Mystic Glove, and Mystic Boots. Dealing the finishing blow with any of these three weapons sucks the monster inside of them, allowing the character to gain boosted stats and a skill of the monster's.
• Terry from Skully has an enchanted vase, meant for trapping elementals, whose function appears to be lifted from the gourd of Journey to the West fame. He first uses it to suck in Wanda, the Water Elemental who refuses to stop fighting, before later releasing Wanda in an Enemy Mine moment; later on when all his siblings, Wanda, alongside Wind Elemental Brent and Fire Elemental Fiona, turns on him, Terry promptly sucks everyone in.
• A couple of pins in The World Ends with You have the "Black Hole" attack, which will instantly kill any enemy that gets drawn into its area of effect (though you earn no experience or treasure for it).
• Disgaea 3 has an attack where you shoot the enemy with an energy ball, suck them into the gun, shake the gun around (doing damage in the process) and then shoot them back out. The attack is called 'Cocktail Shaker'. Yeah, it's that kind of game.
• Inverted in Fallout 3: the Rock-It Launcher is a vacuum cleaner designed to blow rather than suck, with enough projectile force to knock a body to bits.
• The Bloonchipper from Bloons Tower Defense. It chips apart bloons after vacuuming them in. It can even be upgraded to suck in the massive blimps that appear on later rounds and shred them apart in a manner that definitely does not befit their Damage-Sponge Boss natures.
• The Thrustodyne Aeronautics Model 23 (AKA the Jet Gun) from Nazi Zombies. It pulls zombies towards it and turns them into pools of blood. Due to its method of obtainment and its overall performance, not only does it suck, it also... sucks.
• Johnny Garland uses a vacuum in Shadow Hearts: From The New World. It does no damage, but it drains Stock from an enemy and gives it to him.
• There are two weapons like this in Shadow the Hedgehog. The first is a vacuum-gun that can suck enemies, crates and debris into it's nozzle to use as ammo for shooting with that works a lot better in theory than in practice. The second is a special unlockable Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg inspired vacuum-gun that simply sucks up everything in it's path and rewards you with either one or three extra lives when it's full depending on it's level.
• The Sims:
  • The Sims 3 expansion Ambitions adds new professions to the game, one of those being Ghost Hunter, and your main tool of a the trade is the Banshee Banisher which is used to suck up spirits or ghost Sims.
  • The Sims 2 has the SimVac aspiration reward, which sucks skill points and aspiration points out of another Sim, or if the Sim using it has a low aspiration meter it may backfire and transfer them to the target sim instead.
• In the Breakout clone Shatter, your bumper can generate a vacuum which can draw in your balls for better control. It also sucks up bricks, which can cause damage to the bumper and deactivate it for a short time, so you have to be careful how much you use it.
• The Dismantled MacGuffin in Lighthouse: The Dark Being is this, called a "Particle-Ionizing Vacuum Cannon". When assembled, the player has to use it to take down the Dark Being, which effectively sucks it inside and traps it in a crystal bottle that the Being can't escape from.
• Oriental Legend, a Beat 'em Up arcade game based on Journey to the West, have the Golden and Silver Horn brothers as bosses in the first stage, and they will use their gourds to suck you in which can drain your life if you're caught. After defeating them you can collect their gourds for yourselves.
• In Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, Kaptain K. Rool's blunderbuss is an example (you have to throw cannonballs at it so they explode in the gun). It can also work the other way, firing various types of poison gas cloud, cannonballs, barrels, mines... and function as akin to rocket skates for K. Rool to charge across the arena.
• The various sweepers in the Blinx: The Time Sweeper series.
• TumblePop is all about this trope, featuring two guys armed with vacuum cleaners that suck enemies inside and then release them in a Giant Ball of People.
• Rockman 4 Minus ∞ has the Recycle Inhaler, which converts enemies into E-Tanks, Extra Lives or healing items after using it to suck them up.
• The Nameless Mod has Vortex Grenades, which are a Too Awesome to Use item that one can go through an entire playthrough without finding one. When you throw it, it sucks everything in the area into the vortex (including you if you're not careful) and smashes all the enemies into each other, resulting in Ludicrous Gibs.
• In the Mass Effect series, the Biotic power named "Singularity", specialty of the Adept class and Liara T'Soni, creates a miniature black hole that sucks all unshielded enemies into its orbit and keeps them helplessly suspended in the air while you pick them off.
• Mega Man 9 has the Black Hole Bomb, which, after it explodes, draws in and instantly destroys minor monsters, and damages significant monsters even outside its visible blast radius.
• In Super Methane Bros, the two brothers' weapons can trap enemies in gas bubbles, but to actually defeat them they have to suck the bubbles in and blow them out so that they crash against the stage walls.
• Kyuiin is an old Japanese PlayStation scrolling shooter later re-released for the Play Station Network, in which the players fly on a magic vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner can shoot the usual beams, but also suck up enemies and bullets: this is not mandatory, but needed to power up the gauge of the Smart Bomb beam that destroys almost everything on screen.
• Borderlands has the singularity grenades, which draw enemies into the area of effect before detonating.
• The Darkburst beam combo in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes creates a black hole that sucks enemies.
• The Darkness: Black hole ability.
• The Space Eggs in the bonus levels in Angry Birds Space.
• In addition to the proton packs and ghost traps, David Crane's Ghostbusters (1984) from Activision also has a ghost vacuum that you can equip your Ectomobile with to suck up ghosts in the driving game sequence.
• In Toy Commander, the first half of the "Taking Over" mission involves your car going through a maze to turn on a vacuum cleaner. This vacuum cleaner sucks up the enemy tanks attacking your plane's base.
• One of the mini-games of the PC adaptation of Monopoly Junior involves a vacuum cleaner sucking up ghosts in a haunted house.
• In Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure, during the battle with Hamton, Hamton will use his vacuum cleaner to try to suck Buster towards him. The vacuum eventually powers down, giving Buster a proper chance to attack Dr. Gene Splicer and free Hamton from his mind-control helmet.
• In The Gunk, you deal with the titular Gunk infestation - which manifests into assorted blob-like enemies - with your gadget gloves, built with suction devices that sucks in Gunk monsters into nothing.
• In Halo 5: Guardians, two of the power weapons you can requisition in the "Warzone" multiplayer mode are the "Void's Tear", a plasma pistol with special overcharge shots that can suck in and tear apart even tanks, and the T-50δ, a beam rifle which creates an unstable gravimetric vortex at wherever it fires at.
• Shantae: The Magic Lamp. Initially used by Risky in Shantae: Risky's Revenge to suck out Shantae's genie powers, later used by Shantae in Shantae and the Pirate's Curse to suck up Dark Magic, different kinds of smells, and various items dropped around the area.
• Dynamite Headdy has the Vacuum Head which allows Headdy to suck up any enemy on screen.
• Wii Play: Motion's minigame Spooky Search features a weird machine that sucks away the ghosts the player drags in front of it.
• Two Point Hospital: Janitors can remove the ghosts of dead patients with an ordinary vacuum cleaner, provided they have the ghost-catcher skill.
• In a 1983 arcade game called Rug Rats^note Not to be confused with Rugrats, you play as a vacuum cleaner, and the goal of each level is to suck up all the dust monsters.
• Dragon's Dogma: Daimon has a special White Hole ability that causes a shining vortex to appear right below him on the ground. Player characters and minions that are too close (or even a short distance away) will be sucked in, massively draining stamina so they can't hold onto Daimon for dear life. Any minions killed by this move can not be resurrected until the battle ends, and if the player dies to this move it's game over. Players have an ultimate-level magic called Maelstrom that sucks enemies (and only enemies) in and spits them out in the sky (if they're not massive, then it just deals lots of damage over time).
• After Anodyne gave it's protagonist a broom, Anodyne 2 gives new protagonist Nova a vacuum. Nova was created to shrink down to microscopic size and purify the corruption of the various characters by vacuuming up the evil dust.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: SuperSponge: The Coral Blower works a lot like the Reef Blower from the cartoon where SpongeBob can suck up objects and shoot them out at enemies or obstacles. The only downside is that you lose a lot of mobility and friction and you can't Ground Pound while having it on your back. Thankfully, you can equip and unequip at any time.
• In Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, Dingodile as a playable character switches his flamethrower out for a vacuum cannon capable of sucking up and tossing explosives as well as being able to use it to hover and double-jump.
• In the Animaniacs Licensed Game for the Sega Genesis, in Stage 4, the Brain uses his Vacuuminator (from "Pavlov's Mice") to suck up some dishes on a nearby shelf. The Warners have to dodge these dishes and avoid being sucked in until the Vacuuminator overloads and explodes.
• Splatoon 3 introduces the Ink Vac, which allows you to suck up enemy shots and then fire them back with a powerful explosive blast. The Final Boss sees you use a giant version of the Ink Vac to suck up the blobs of fuzzy ooze.
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has the legendary SMG, the Throwable Hole. When reloaded, you throw it away where it turns into a vortex on the ground that sucks smaller enemies in and does constant dark magic damage before exploding. If you throw another one into the vortex, it doubles in size and the explosion does more damage.
• An arcade game of The Real Ghostbusters has the ghost sucked in by the proton beams.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3:
  • The Apocalypse Tank's secondary weapon is the Magnetic Harpoon, which drags a target vehicle into the tank's front-mounted grinders (or with heavy vehicles and buildings, the tank to the target) where it is pinned and mauled. It can be used to one-shot ships by dragging them onto land (or amphibious units over cliffs).
  • The Hammer Tank's Leech Beam is a much slower version that rips off bits of metal from the target, healing the tank, and if the target dies under the effect, gives the tank an extra weapon.

Web Comics

• The Eskimo in this Mountain Time episode uses his Cube of Doom to defeat the Vikings. It doesn't work.
• Gayle and Kaz from Work Sucks use a pair of gunk-shooting guns in a friendly duel, but Gayle's (after some modifications) sucks Kaz into a vortex and traps him in a hammerspace ball here.
  • While not exactly a weapon, a printing machine, of all things, does this too.
• Khun's Manbarondenna from Tower of God proved it self surprisingly effective against shapeshifters by sucking them up mid-transformation.

Web Original

• How to Hero at one point when discussing the pros and cons of having a retired superhero for a mentor, mentions a new-fangled villain who has a giant vacuum that sucks up cars and compares them to an old-fangled villain who had a giant vacuum that sucked up horses and buggies and notes that the lessons learned from the older case are completely irrelevant to this newer case.

Western Animation

• Danny Phantom and the Fenton Thermos. They also have a vacuum that does the same, but is rarely ever used.
• The Jackie Chan Adventures had the "Lost Urn of Wei Chun," a three-compartmented box, complete with ghost-trap sound effects homage, to trap the first Three Dark Warriors of Daolong Wong. But, when faced with the 2nd Three Dark Warriors, we get this exchange:
  Jackie: Uncle, we need another urn!
  Uncle: There is only one Urn of Wei Chun... And it is already occupied!!!
• The Monster Buster Club and their vacuuvators.
• The Smurfs in the cartoon show episode "Smurfing For Ghosts" use a Ghostbusters-type backpack weapon that acts like a vacuum cleaner for sucking up ghosts. Gargamel in "The Trojan Smurf" also had a weapon that acted like a vacuum cleaner for sucking up Smurfs.
• In Mega Man (Ruby-Spears), Roll has a vacuum cleaner attachment on her arm that she uses as a weapon.
• The magical Moon Mirror in an episode of She-Ra: Princess of Power. It's supposed to work as a Cool Gate to other universes, but Shadow Weaver operates it wrong and it goes haywire, sucking up everything in sight.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: Prorok uses one to deadly effect, as Voltron fights it next to a veritable minefield of highly explosive crystals.
• Similarly, when Filmation's Ghostbusters fight the Invertroids in the dimension of mirrors, they manage to reverse the Invertroids' Cool Gate, sucking them all back to their home dimension.
• The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Mysterious Mr Mist", Superman uses an ordinary vacuum cleaner to suck up Mr Mist. However, Mist manages to escape while Superman is busy rescuing Lois.
• In the Action League NOW! episode, "In the Belly of the Beast", The Mayor attempts to suck up the Action League with a vacuum cleaner. He sucks up The Chief, Stinky, and Thunder Girl, but has to break The Flesh apart before he can suck him up. As Meltman evades The Mayor in the bathroom, he gets him to suck up an entire roll of toilet paper, clogging the hose and causing the vacuum to malfunction and explode. When The Chief asks The Mayor why he did this, The Mayor asks him, "Would you believe I'm a neatnik?".
• In one Super Friends episode, Brainiac uses a suction gizmo to pull Green Lantern's ring right off his finger. As usual for Legion of Doom inventions, the device was never seen again afterwards.
• In the Dennis the Menace episode, "Strike up the Band", Henry and Mr. Wilson pursue a Purse Snatcher at a department store. They use a vacuum cleaner to catch the Purse Snatcher, and while they succeed in doing so, the vacuum works too well; after it sucks up the Purse Snatcher, it also sucks them up, along with many items on the shelves. Eventually, the vacuum cleaner becomes overstuffed and explodes, allowing the Purse Snatcher to escape.

Real Life

• A vacuum cleaner is a good tool against certain insects:
  • Need to go up against one of the scariest insects in the world, the suzumebachi or Japanese giant hornet, whose stings kill about 70 people a year? A vacuum cleaner is your best bet. (If you have balls of solid titanium, that is.)
  • Need to get rid of annoying houseflies, wasps or other insects? Vacuum them. Bonus that any dust in the dust container will clog their air tubulae and suffocate them immediately.
• Suction is a fairly popular method of capturing prey among aquatic organisms. Its primary advantage is that there's no need to actually come into contact with the prey before snaring it, just get within a certain distance of it. It also helps with multiple small prey items. An additional means of killing the prey is recommended for anything dangerous, as the mere act of "vacuuming" it up usually leaves the victim alive and quite agitated. While suctioned prey is often suffocated in the process of being swallowed, specimens of deep sea fish have been found killed by their struggling prey while in the process of trying to swallow them.

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