Basic Trope: A belief or requirement that a sword must bleed something before being returned to its scabbard.
- Straight: Gurk the Gurkha insists his kukri must draw blood before being returned to its scabbard.
- Exaggerated: Gurk's kukuri must kill a loved one every time it is drawn.
- Downplayed: Hiro's sword must not be sheathed until a battle is over, one way or another.
- Justified: It's an Evil Weapon, and the kukri literally refuses to be returned to its sheath without blood.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Gurk takes out his Kukri, looks it over and return it to its sheath without consideration.
- The "requirement" is nothing more than the result of Gurk's superstition.
- Gurk later admits, using the blade to chop fruits, that the "must draw blood" thing was a story he made up because he was sick of people asking to see it.
- Double Subverted:
- Before he puts it all the way in, he takes it out and quickly nicks himself with it again.
- Or at least, it was just a superstition or a story until the thing got empowered by a demon.
- Parodied:
- The same rule is applied to a butterknife.
- The rule is applied to a blunt or soft object that shouldn't be able to draw blood at all, let alone hurt someone.
- Gurk must draw a picture of someone bleeding before his Kukuri can be sheathed.
- Alice is an Equippable Ally, and if she's untransformed without drawing blood she compulsively bites people.
- Zig Zagged: Kukris can be drawn and sheathed fine, but Gurk's katana requires blood. Then he finds an evil kukuri that also requires this, as well as a holy katana that does not.
- Averted: No such rule is mentioned.
- Enforced: Gurk only does it for the tourists.
- Lampshaded:
- "You must go through a lot of band-aids with that rule..."
- "A sword that must be fed blood? That's...creepy."
- Invoked:
- Gurk does this in order to prove his dedication.
- It's a rule of the culture to prevent people from being too eager to draw their swords pointlessly.
- Exploited: Gurk doesn't know if his Evil Weapon needs blood, but does this anyway in an attempt to keep it happy.
- Defied:
- "It needs to do what? No that's stupid, I use the damn knife all the time."
- Gurk draws the sword... and just keeps it on his shoulder instead, of sheathing it, allowing him to avoid the requirement.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "That's about as realistic as a Horny Viking."
- Implied: Gurk's hand is covered in cuts, and we never see him draw a blade without killing something.
- Deconstructed: Gurk needs to draw his kukri constantly due to training and using it to prepare food. As a result, he picks up a blood infection this way, and his hand is marked with cuts. His kukri is also rusting due to constant contact with blood
- Reconstructed: The kukri in question is the "war knife," rather than one for peaceful uses or training. The fact that he draws it without cause that often indicates his bad character and lack of respect for the blade.
- Played For Laughs: Gurk dramatically poses with his sword... and then has to cut his hand to put it back. He then sighs and gets out another band-aid, to put on a hand covered with them.
- Played For Drama:
- The blade Tyrfing is the most powerful weapon Gurk can use, but its requirement to killing a loved one for every use means that the situation has to be far, far past the Godzilla Threshold for this even to be considered.
- Gurk is always very careful to give his kukri blood after every use, and it's jet black with a glowing red eye. It turns out there's a demon inside it, and if it's sheathed without blood the demon will be able to break free.
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