Sandbox / An Axe to Grind

Examples taken from An Axe to Grind, which was disambiguated with tropeworthy concepts being split off by TLP.

Anime & Manga

• Ah! My Goddess: Lind carries a halberd as her weapon of choice.
• Akumetsu has used axes a few times.
• Noda from Angel Beats! uses a giant halberd most of the time, though he sometimes fights with guns.
• Flora and Schierke spend some time forging a giant axe for Guts to wield against the Trolls that are attacking their village in Berserk, but Guts turns it down because he's already doing just fine with his big whacking Dragon Slayer, thank-you-very-much.
• In Black Lagoon, the Hansel personality uses an axe as his main weapon, it fits his personality too.
• Bleach:
  • Jidanbou uses not one, but two enormous axes. Or at least he did, until Ichigo smashed them.
  • Segunda Espada Baraggan Louisenbairn, who sports a very huge axe for a weapon/Zanpakutou. After activating his Resurrección, he has an even bigger axe called Gran Caida which he wielded even as a Vasto Lorde.
  • Quinto Espada Nnoitra Gilga's Zanpakuto in its sealed form can be considered as an axe, but it looks really weird for an axe if we can really call it an axe. The light parts are the blades.
  • Kenpachi Zaraki's Zanpakuto in Shikai takes the form of a gigantic axe.
• In The Brave Fighter of Legend Da-Garn, Ga Ohn has two of them stored in his shoulders.
• Buster Keel!: Blue, in a nod to Sandy's weapon of choice from Journey to the West, carries a massive axe-like weapon with the blade shaped like an upward-pointing crescent blade. He can split the weapon in half to dual wield or detatch the blade with his water magic to create a flail. Secondary character Yancys uses a battleax callded "Hoop" (sounding similar to the Japanese word "Fuubu", Wind Axe), which she can use to channel her wind magic.
• Kotori Itsuka from Date A Live uses a massive pole axe in her Spirit form.
• Buso Renkin: In keeping with his barbarian warrior look, Victor's Buso Renkin, Fatal Attraction, is a great-axe that, after his transformation^note we never get to see what it looked like beforehand, manifests as a jagged, lightning-bolt shaped axe with gravity control powers that can be split into two smaller axes.
• Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai: Beast King Crocodyne carries a unique axe with an almost completely circular blade as his weapon of choice. While Crocodyne can't use magic on his own, the axe is enchanted and allows him to cast wind spells of the Swoosh family.
• Many of the dwarves from Delicious in Dungeon have axes as their weapon of choice. Even Senshi, who's much more interested in cooking than combat, uses one. He doesn't maintain it very well, however.
• Korikkakumon from Digimon Frontier wields a pair of axes.
• In Digimon Fusion:
  • Starmon and the yellow Pickmon can combine into one for Shoutmon X2.
  • Who could forget the far superiorSkullKnightmon Big Axe Mode? That's... quite the axe.
  • As a homage to Getter Robo, Olegmon has a pair of axes. When he tosses them he shouts DUAL TOMAHAWK BOOMERANG!
• Yuno of Future Diary often uses an axe precisely because its easy for her to get her hands on one. She has been known to use other weapons however.
• Gaiking:
  • Gaiking has an axe, simply called the "Gaiking Axe".
  • In Gaiking: Legend of Daiku Maryu, both Gaiking and Vulking have axes, each dubbed "Great Axe".
• Two assassins from Gamaran come from a Ryuu specialized in Dual Wielding axes. One of their opponent points out how dangerous such weapons are, as they can easily smash a katana blade and break the defense. Later in the same series, the former members of the Sojin Ryuu uses axe-bladed polearms in combat. In the sequel series Shura, Sanjin of the Genkai Tenpei dual wields Indian bhuj axes, with an extra dagger hidden in the handle.
• Getter Robo:
  • Each version of Getter 1 has this. From a fairly standard-sized tomahawk (relative to the mech itself) in the original to twin, double-bladed ones for G, a massive one for Shin Getter that's actually more of a halberd than a tomahawk and a GIANT, double-bladed, double-ended ax for Shin Dragon (which is already absolutely gigantic to begin with). And then there's the above "Final Getter Tomahawk"; it is to axes as the Goldion Crusher is to hammers.
  • In Super Robot Wars NEO, Getter Robo-1 unlocks this weapon after the final Getter Robo-related event.
• Hawk, the hitman villain from Goemon Ishikawa's Spray of Blood wields two shorts but massive axes as his weapon of choice, which he can use with frightening effect in defense (using the flat side to deflect Magnum bullets) , finesse (throws one of them at a running Fujiko with enough precision to just graze her bust and cut a little of her top) and sheer might (chopping down whole trees and, at one point, bringing down a whole buddhist temple).
• GunBuster: The titular robot was equiped with Buster Tomahawk (or, how Noriko Takaya would tell: "BUSTAAAA TOMAHAAAAWK..."): twin, fifty-foot-long axes folded into its shoulders. The weapon was meant to be a Getter Robo Shout-Out but it didn't make it to the anime. However it was included in Super Robot Wars where Getter Robo's Ryouma teaches Noriko.
• Zeon mobile suits (particularly those of the Zaku bloodline) are often equipped with 'Heat Hawks,' axes with an extremely Hot Blade that can cut through armour, in the original Gundam continuity. At that time, Zeon Mobile Suits couldn't use beam weaponry, so this was the next best thing.. Eventually they split the difference and make beam versions, too. These also are used by the Zaku Expys in Gundam SEED Destiny.
  • The Graze Ein from Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans takes it up a notch by Dual Wielding a pair of unique, extra-large axes designed specifically for its oversized arms, compensating for its lack of reactor power with sheer crushing leverage and momentum.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Denmark is drawn with an axe in the trading cards. Since he hasn't officially showed up, we don't know if it's just decoration or if it really is his weapon of choice.
  • This Denmark sketch◊ featured in Himaruya's blog confirms said axe as Denmark's preferred weapon.
  • Another sketch◊ in Himaruya's blog has Spain as the owner of a halberd, confirming the fandom theories about him being an axe user.
• In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, axes are the weapon of choice for infantry in close quarter combat.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Fate's Bardiche, whose basic form is, well, a bardiche, a long poleaxe.
  • Force introduces Deville of Hückebein, whose Divider is a massive battleaxe.
• In the Mazinger series:
  • Mazinger Z: Some Mechanical Beasts used axes. In the Mazinger vs Devilman film, the first Beast showed up used a double-bitted, throwing axe.
  • Great Mazinger: Some War Beasts also were axe-wielders. General Juuma -one of the Co-Dragons of Ankoku Daishogun- wielded one in the Mazinger-Z vs Great General of Darkness (and nearly skewers Mazinger's head -and Kouji- with it). In the proper series, Garalya (in the episode 2) was the first War Beast in using an axe — specifically, a huge double-headed axe with a "handle" of minimalistic length.
• Midori Sugiura from My-HiME uses one as her Element.
• In Naruto, one of the weapons of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist is Kabutowari, or "Helm Splitter". Called a blunt sword, it consists of an oversized axe and hammer joined together by a cord. The tactic employed by its wielder was to wedge the axe blade into an enemy and then drive it in further by hitting it with the hammer. And yet, is called "sword".
• Asuka of Neon Genesis Evangelion, with her fondness of melee weapons, has Unit-02 equipped with a massive battle axe when the Evangelions fight Leliel. After Unit-01 is absorbed into the Angel's body, Asuka sinks her axe into the side of a building and promptly uses it as a foothold for Unit-02 to avoid being absorbed by the Angel.
• One Piece:
  • Early villain Morgan has an axe for a hand.
  • Brogy the giant used the Bruiser Axe, which held up for 100 years before he sacrificed it to help the Straw Hats leave Little Garden safely.
  • Yama and the Enforcers in Skypiea all use Axe Dials, which replicate the slicing force of real axes.
  • Sentomaru uses a large Battle Axe which makes him resemble the folk hero Kintaro more, though he usually attacks with Sumo moves.
    • So do the blugori guards of Impel Down.
  • One of the most infamous pirate captains of the past, former member of the deadly Rocks Pirates, was known as "Silver Axe", though he's currently The Ghost.
• Otherside Picnic: Toriko states that a woman wielding an axe is beautiful (she's from Canada and has lesbian parents, so...). After she uses an axe to save Sorawo from the dangers of Otherside, Sorawo has to agree.
• Panzer World Galient: Plenty of Humongous Mecha are equipped with battle axes -like General Zaba's panzer-, some of them -like The Dragon- combining this trope with Dual Wielding.
• Chris Armalite from Scrapped Princess carries a large axe with a chain attached to it for extra reach.
• Utu from The Tower of Druaga had a regular axe that he exchanged for a beam axe in the second season.
• Transformers:
  • Dinoking in Transformers Victory uses an axe.
  • The Transformers: Cybertron incarnation of Metroplex (who is giant in comparison to the ordinary giant robots) has his shovel/bucket wheel assembly become an axe called Sparkdrinker in robot mode. He brutally smashes Megatron through two floors (in a building for giant Transformers) with it. Things get even more awesome when Optimus Prime wields it.
• In Ushio and Tora, the Elezar Scythe also has a small axe blade in the back of the scythe blade. It's also revealed near the end that an axe was the favourite weapon of Shagaksha, a.k.a. Tora's human self.
• Violet Evergarden: The titular character owns a custom-built battle-axe that's bigger than her body, named Witchcraft. Since she received it as a gift from her only father-figure, Major Gilbert Bougainvillea, she is naturally quite attached to it, and even after the war is over, she still uses it in Chapter 3, when she is dropped into an active battlefield to meet with a client, and needs to create a safe letter-writing environment.
• Kyo Aguri in Weiß Kreuz Gluhen had an axe he could also shoot a chain out of. Didn't help him much.
• Isurugi uses a rather large one in World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman.
• Axes are the weapon of choice of Yaiba's Gerozaemon, the Frog Man of the Hakki. Also the Rock Soldier and Ruby in the Pyramid Arc, with an axe made of rock and energy respectively.
• Bui from YuYu Hakusho. A typical Big Guy example at first blush. In fact, he's not really a Big Guy. All that armor he wears is not for protection, but rather to keep his immense power in check, and as you can expect the fight only really begins once he takes it off and he starts using his inherent powers instead of axes.
• Zatch Bell!: Buzarai of the Faudo Cultists used axe-based spells. The anime gives enough detail to another cultist, Hougan, to show that his spells revolve around flaming axes.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering: Axes turn up now and again as equippable artifact cards. Notable examples include the Thirsting Axe, which drives its wielder to spill blood, and the Bloodforged Battle-Axe, which creates a copy of itself every time it strikes a target.
  To split wood with it would be sacrilege. This tool has but one purpose, and that is war. — Flavor Text for Warlord's Axe
• Munchkin has a whole expansion called Unnatural Axe, and the card by that name is a very big axe indeed◊. With spikes.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Artifact Labrys, a sentient axe that can summon herself when a fellow Artifact is destroyed.
  • The Axe of Despair, or Daemon's Axe, is an Equip card that boosts ATK by 1000 points and features a horrific, ghoulish head as part of the handle in the original Japanese artwork. Notably, the rules have no provisions against equipping the aforementioned Artifact Labrys with the Axe of Despair, resulting in a situation where a futuristic space axe is wielding a demonic flesh axe.
  • The Axe of Fools is a more situational card. It also boosts the equipped monster's ATK by 1000, but it also negates their effects and the monster's controller loses 500 Life Points during the Standby Phase. So, power at a steep price for one of your monsters, or cripple one of the opponent's monsters one way while making it stronger in another.
  • Gravity Axe - Grarl is an Equip Spell that boosts a monster's ATK by 500 and prevents the opponent's monsters from changing their battle positions. Its proper wielder is Guardian Grarl.
  • Several monsters wield sizable axes, including but not limited to Axe Raider, Axe Dragonute, Tiger Axe, Battle Ox, Rabid Horseman, and Giant Axe Mummy.

Comedy

A fine specimen of Henpecked Husband has both an axe and an axe to grind with his wife in Bodo Wartke's "Ja Schatz". Needless to say, his murder fantasies vaporize at the slightest resistance. Na gut, was solls - hack ich halt Holz!^note Well it's no good - I'll go chop wood!

Comic Books

• 2000 AD: Sláine has an impressive axe.
• Alan Ford has the issue titled The first thing to do is to kill all lawyers, which features an unknown assassin murdering lawyers by slamming an axe in their heads (with Bloodless Carnage). Notably, it had four more issues with an identical structure and plot in which a killer murders people of a certain category (accountants, clerks, doctors, dentists) with an axe until his identity is found out and is caught.
• Viking Commando was the feature character of DC Comics All-Out War comic. A Viking warrior who was transported through time to the D-Day landing, he carried an axe called Iron Fang that had been magically strengthened by his journey through time to the point where it could cleave tank armor.
• In Arak: Son of Thunder, the preferred weapon of Arak (who is a Native American raised by Vikings) is the Viking small axe.
• In Arawn, the Sun Axe is Math's indestructible weapon, capable of shattering almost any weapon with its blows.
• Ares, the God of War in the Marvel Universe, could use whatever weapon he pleased. He chooses to use a savage axe.
• Artemis has a giant god forged battle axe she names Mistress.
• Badd Axe, best known as one of The Hood's Initiative recruits during the Dark Reign. He sleeps with the damn thing! Thor has speculated that it was forged by Hephaestus himself, making it nearly as formidable as Hercules' mace or his own hammer!
• A log-splitting handaxe is the signature weapon of Dead@17 heroine Nara Kilday. She doesn't seem to keep one on her, though, so she's always picking up new ones.
• Calie, from Zenescope's Escape from Wonderland, literally and figuratively has an axe to grind. With her daughter kidnapped, Calie takes up a woodcutting axe that mutates into a BFA in her quest to rescue her daughter and get revenge against the Eldritch Abomination that cursed her family line.
• The odd weapon used by Buffy originally "appeared" in the future, wielded by Fray.
• Green Lantern: Butcher, the embodiment of the Red Lantern Corps, uses an axe when he's inhabiting the body of a lifeform capable of wielding it properly. True to his name, he also has a belt full of cutlery tools, including a rather menacing cleaver.
• Hawkman's secondary signature weapon is a battle-axe. He's likely to fight with it if his wife Hawkgirl is wielding a mace, his primary signature weapon.
• The Incredible Hulk:
  • During Hulk's time as a gladiator and rebel leader in the "Planet Hulk" storyline, he favored axes as his main weapon. He dropped them for a sword (that he made himself) in "World War Hulk", but promotional art shows him with an axe as well.
  • After the Hulk left Sakaar, his son Skaar was left to contend with the aptly-named Axeman Bone.
• In In the Shadow of Dragons, Roarn the dwarf warrior uses a battle axe and sometimes throws it at his opponents..
• In Lanfeust, a short but large-bladed labrys is the weapon of choice of Baron Averroe aka, Pirate Thanos, and his emblem features such an axe over a stylized skull.
• The "Atomic Axe", which can cut through anything (even abstracts like time itself), is the weapon of choice for the Persuader, foe of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
• The Mighty Thor:
  • An enchanted double edged battleaxe is the favorite weapon and insignia of the villain Skurge the Executioner. It's capable of opening portals throughout space.
  • Jarnbjorn, an uru axe made with anti-Celestial black magic, before he acquires and after he loses Mjolnir and his qualification.
  • Beta Ray Bill gets one in his 2021 solo miniseries. His ship Skuttlebutt develops a robot physical avatar and she makes a new high-tech battle axe to replace his broken Stormbreaker. It's made from polycarbon nanite steel, has latching alternate blade attachments, and can do mini-power thrust action so it's capable of returning to hand when thrown.
• Mouse Guard has several examples:
  • Celanawe, naturally, given that he is the Black Axe.
  • Lieam, by the end of Winter.
  • Midnight also uses such a weapon (and has an axe to grind with the Guard).
• In the Franco-Belgian comic The Quest For The Time Bird, an axe is the weapon of choice of legendary warriors Bragon and Le Rige.
• Sachs & Violens: The executioner in the Snuff Films uses a double-bladed executioner's axe to kill his victims.
• Sin City: Part way through the first story, "The Hard Goodbye", Marv acquires a hatchet at the Roark family Farm and uses it to kill Painted Cop and his goons.
  "That there is one damn fine coat you're wearin'."
• Super Dinosaur: Tricerachops has an enormous axe as her weapon of choice.
• Superman:
  • In The Black Ring, Vandal Savage brings one for his confrontation with Lex Luthor.
  • In Man of Steel (2018), Rogol Zaar wields a huge double-bitted battle axe. Upon his defeat, his axe was reclaimed by Supergirl wielded by Kara during The Killers of Krypton, where it becomes an important plot point.
  • In The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), Batman wields a battle axe when he, Superman, and the denizens of Themyscira fight against the forces of Darkseid.
• The Headsman of the Thunderbolts wields a giant axe and has a disturbing fixation with cutting heads off. This is implied to have something to do with his Aloof Older Brother using a logging axe to behead his beloved dog. Later 'Bolts member Troll wields an ancient Asgardian war axe, which can only be lifted with super-strength.
• Revolutionary War hero Tomahawk took his name from his skill with his namesake axe.
• The Ultimates: The Ultimate universe version of Thor's Mjölnir has an axe attached to it.

Comic Strips

• Time-travelling caveman Alley Oop's weapon of choice is a stone axe.

Fan Works

• Advice and Trust: Axes are Asuka Langley Sohryu's favoured weapon. During her first battle in the fic she used a huge battle-axe.
• In Amazing Fantasy, Mysterio goes at Peter with a rusted axe after weakening Peter with ethyl chloride.
• In A Ballad of the Dragon and She-Wolf, House Glover is given the ancestral weapon Pugilist: a Valryian steel ax with a pommel carved in the shape of their sigil of a clenched fist.
• In A Growing Affection, Sakura's axe is her primary weapon, until about the middle of book 3. Gouki Namikaze is an axe-wielder, too. Both learned the weapon from Tsunade (who is never seen wielding one), and the latter received his unique weapon from her.
• Aska: Ayra uses a "rune axe" that materialises instantly whenever she needs it. It's probably used because of her ties to Norse Mythology and Vikings.
• The Bridge: After he recovers from getting blasted into a weapons rack, Xenilla rejoins Princess Cadance's fight against King Sombra by using a bearded axe to counter Sombra's scythe as Cadance's sword was too light to damage it. He manages to break the scythe later on in the fight with a strong cleave.
• Camp Nightmare: The camp counselor wields one as he attempts to behead Calvin.
• Carnage Necropolis: Ash uses a fire axe to take down Tentagator. What's impressive is that he did it with ONE arm, as the other was ripped off by Tentagator (though it loses some impact when you remember Ash is being boosted by the L-Ject he was infected with, and he dies soon after killing the thing).
• In Child of the Storm, Uhtred prefers to wield a single headed war-axe.
• Crumbling Down: After Lila's true nature is revealed to the class, Alix grabs a fire axe and has to be talked out of hacking Lila up with it (because Marinette wants to utterly destroy Lila by revealing all of her lies and cruelty on television until "nobody will believe she's even Italian"). The fire axe becomes a Running Gag for the rest of the story, although Alix only gets to brandish it menacingly after Alya's exposé airs, with the goal of preventing Lila from escaping the classroom until the authorities can arrest her for assisting Hawk Moth.
• In Danganronpa: Last Hurrah, Samuru Yagyuu, the Ultimate Executioner, has an axe that he uses to behead people. Surprisingly enough, when he commits murder, he uses poison on his victim.
• The Evabon Saga: Gard's weapon of choice however he has used other weapons.
• Fate/Harem Antics: Archer/Francis Drake normally wields guns and cannons, but she has a boarding axe for melee combat.
• Forum of Thrones: Several characters have chosen the axe as their weapon of choice.
  • Samantha Ducard is the most major character who wields an axe as her weapon of choice. Two axes in fact, small hatchets, but she still puts them to good use.
  • Leonard Hill wields a massive battleaxe, befitting of his status as a badass.
  • Cleaver Clint Volmark uses a variation of the typical axe, an oversized meat cleaver, which also gave him his nickname.
  • During the Raid on Maybros, Durren Stallhart is shown fighting with two axes at once.
• One of Stalkkus' weapons in humanoid form in the Godzilla fanfilm Godzilla vs the Kaiju Killer.
• The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World: Zarrack the "viking" has a Dynamo Axe that crackles with electricity. He loses it to a furious Paul, who pulps the handle and pounds the unbreakable axe blade into the ground.
• In The Night Unfurls, axes are common weapons for troops to use, though there are a couple of notable axe users:
  • Luu-Luu, the Princess Knight of Rad, wields an oversized axe.
  • Kyril uses the Hunter's Axe during the climax of the Leaping Lizards Arc, as well as the Hunt for Mandeville Arc.
• Samuel D. Axe, the protagonist of one of the best-known One Piece OC fanfictions, uses a diamond axe as his main weapon, and is even named after said weapon.
• Just like his canon counterpart, the Denmark of Outcast favors a large battle axe as his weapon of choice — with the major difference being that he's a human teenager at an exclusive boarding school instead of the centuries-old personification of a country. The fact that he's allowed to keep a literal Axe at School is pointed out several times.
• Robb Returns: The Casterlys, and the Lannisters that come after, have a sky-metal axe called Rocktooth. Tyrion Lannister ends up finding it in the Nightfort.
• In RWBY: Second Generation:
  • Orion uses a massive double-sided axe as his primary weapon. It’s also incredibly modular, as it can split into twin hatchets that, as per the series’s standard, are also guns
  • India also uses a pair of twin axes, with the added bonus of being lined with Wind and Fire Dust.
• Thousand Shinji: Asuka is her world's champion of physical combat and masters all kind of weapons, but axes are her weapon of choice (she is a Khornate berserker so it goes with the territory). Throughout the history she handles from tiny hatchets to huge bronze battle-axes capable to cleave a man in half in a single blow. Her Unit-02 is equiped with a chain-axe, and eventually replaced by a Bloodthirster axe against the MP Evas.
• Under the Northern Lights: The reindeer berserk Heikko the Humongous fights with a huge double-headed axe.

Films — Animated

• Many Vikings in How to Train Your Dragon wield axes, but Astrid is notable for carrying a large double-bitted axe that she's not afraid to use.
• Unsurprisingly, the Tin Man wields a massive axe as his weapon of choice in The Steam Engines of Oz.
• Toy Story 2: When Stinky Pete sees that Woody and his pals are going to ruin his trip to Japan, he breaks out the (pick)axe...

Films — Live-Action

In General:

• Many kung fu films feature an "Axe Gang" in which all the members wield axes.
  • The Boxer From Shantung (1972)
  • Project A Part II (1987)
  • Drunken Master II (1994)
  • Fist of Fury (1995)
  • Shanghai Affairs (1998)
  • Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
  • Marrying The Mafia II (2005)
  • Ip Man (2008)

By Movie:

• The ABCs of Death: In the "U" segment, one of the mob is carrying an axe that he employs to good effect against the vampire.
• Addams Family Values: Debbie's slideshow includes one where she pulls an axe on her heart surgeon husband. "'Sorry Debbie, the Pope has a cold.'"
• A.M.I.: Artificial Machine Intelligence: One of the weapons used by Cassie and Liam is an axe. Cassie uses it to chop her friend's head open, and Liam uses it to chop Cassie in the leg, leaving her with a limp.
• In Antebellum, Eli takes a hatchet along with him during the final escape attempt, and uses it in a fight against the General who is wielding a sabre. During the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that follows, both men drop their weapons and the General winds up grabbing the hatchet and killing Eli with it.
• Art of the Dead: When Louis is possessed by Wrath in the garage, he grabs an axe and attempts to kill Kim. Shortly after, the Envy-possessed Donna gets hold of it and buries it in the head of the prostitute.
• Asylum (1972 Horror): In "Frozen Fear", Walter murders his wife Maggie with a hatchet. Later, Bonnie uses the same hatachet in an attempt to fend off Maggie's animate body parts.
• Just try to guess killer's weapon of choice in a movie called Axe!.
• In Black Christmas (2019), Nate grabs the hatchet used to chop firewood and uses it to defend the girls against Black Mask. Black Mask takes it off him and uses it to kill Marty.
• Blood Pi: Amber uses an axe to start killing people late in the movie.
• Blood Widow: Laurie grabs one to use against the killer. She swings it, and the killer chops the head off the axe.
• Todd fights and kills the psychotic Cropsy with one in The Burning.
• Call of the Undead: The Mob Boss finds an axe and uses it as a weapon. Chloe's mom uses it to chop up the serial rapist/murderer.
• The killer grabs an axe for a brief time near the end of Cherry Falls.
• Clawed: One of the class tries to chop up The Shadow Of Death with an axe. Keyword being try.
• Clown Motel: One of the clowns has a small hatchet.
• Clownface: An axe is one of the weapons Clownface uses when committing murder.
• In Clownhouse, Geoffrey kills the lunatic Cheezo and saves Casey by buying an axe in Cheezo's back.
• Dawning of the Dead: In one scene, a fire axe is use to chop a zombie's head in half.
• In Dead Again in Tombstone, Bull Dog's hand-to-hand weapon of choice is the tomahawk, and he has several hanging from his jacket. Alivia uses one of Bull Dog's tomahawks to finish off Madame Du Vere.
• On Mrs. Webster's urging, Jodie buries a hatchet in her mother's skull in Deadly Advice.
• The Big Bad of Deadpool (2016) movie dual-wields those, as if to hammer his Card-Carrying Villain role home even further.
• In The Deserter, Capt. Kaleb carries a tomahawk as one of his primary weapons, and insists that everyone in the squad learns how to fight with one. There is a grueling tomahawk battle between Kaleb and Jackson during training.
• In Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Groton uses a double-bitted felling axe to kill his victims.
• During their final fight in Dick Tracy, Detective, Splitface attempts to bury a hatchet in Tracy's skull. He fails.
• Most of the vikings in Erik the Viking use swords. Thorfinn Skullsplitter prefers his trusty battle-axe.
• In Evil Dead, Ash is more associated with chainsaws, but his original choice for a weapon to fight the Deadites with was an axe.
• Faceless: When Morgan breaks into the clinic at night, Gordon attempts to kill him with an axe.
• In Fiend Without a Face, Major Cummings (Marshall Thompson) gets an axe from... somewhere, and uses it to kill one of the brainlike "fiends" after it gets Melville.
• In Firestorm (1998), Jesse carries a pulaski—a firefighting tool that is a combination of an axe and an adze—that he puts to good use as a weapon over the course of the movie.
• Grandmother's House: Near the end of the movie, David grabs an axe to use against the killers. He ultimately uses it to hack up his grandfather, whom he now knows is his biological father.
• The Gravedancers: When alive, Emma used an axe to murder her lover and his wife. When she comes back from the dead, she continues to use an axe as her weapon of choice.
• In Godzilla vs. Kong, a giant axe made from a bone and a dorsal spike from Godzilla's species is found within the Hollow World, having belonged to Kong's ancestors. Kong himself uses it in battle against Godzilla during their fight in Hong Kong, and it's even able to absorb and discharge energy from Godzilla's atomic breath. It also doubles as a Chekhov's Gun, given that it's used to finish off Mechagodzilla.
• In Guns, Girls and Gambling, the Professional Killer known as The Indian uses tomahawks as his weapon of choice, and is devastating with them.
• Halloween at Aunt Ethel's: At the start of the film, Aunt Ethel uses an axe to chop a girl's head.
  • Another axe is used later on in the film by someone else.
• Michael Myers uses one in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Rob Zombie's Halloween II (2009).
• Hayride: The movie's resident killer uses an axe for quite a few killings.
• The Hazing: The axe that Jacob uses to recreate the Axe Before Entering scene from The Shining becomes an important weapon for the pledges fighting against Professor Kapps spirit. Delia winds up burying it in the skull of the possessed Doug.
• Hazmat: Jacob's weapon of choice on his murderous rampage is a fire axe.
• Headless Horseman: Doc uses an axe to cut Ava free when she is grabbed by the tendrils sprouting from Headless's neck during the fight in the general store. Headless later uses the same axe to chop off Doc's head.
• In The Hollow, Crusty Caretaker Klaus' preferred weapon is an axe. On being rescued from the police cruiser, his first act is to return to the graveyard to retrieve his axe.
• Horrific: Appropriately, on the undead executioners carries an executioner's axe as his weapon in Crypt of the Undead.
• The House That Dripped Blood: In "Waxworks", the proprietor grabs a real executioner's axe from one of the displays in the museum and attempts to kill Philip with it. He succeeds.
• In Hungerford, Cowen and his friends get an axe. They use it to chop a bug that leaps out of someone's body.
• The pirate who sneaks aboard the fishing boat at the start of The Island (1980) butchers everybody on board with a double-bitted axe. Several of the pirates use boarding axes when storming the schooner. And Nau garbs a fire axe during his final fight with Maynard.
• In The Initiation, the killer murders Chad by burying a hatchet in his skull.
• An axe is featured prominently in Island of Terror, first in a failed attempt to kill one of the monsters, and later as the deciding factor in a Life-or-Limb Decision for Peter Cushing's Dr. Stanley character.
• Justice League (2017): the New God Steppenwolf wields a giant axe with glowing Tron Lines as his weapon 9f.
  • He uses the axe in Bloodier and Gorier fashion in Zack Snyder's Justice League, cutting Amazons left and right with it when invading Themyscira. Which bizarrely restores full meaning to the taunt "My axe is still slick with the blood of your sisters!" he gives Diana/Wonder Woman in the theatrical film, which is not in Zack Snyder's version.
• In Killer's Kiss, Vincent takes a fireman's axe off the wall and comes after Davey in the climactic fight.
• In Krull, one of the bandits that Colwyn recruits to his cause, Kegan, uses a battleaxe in combat. Kegan is a Boisterous Bruiser casanova, played by a very young Liam Neeson.
• In Lizzie Borden's Revenge, Lizzie uses a fire axe as her weapon to massacre the sorority sisters.
• Gimli, as shown in the trope picture, uses a few to effect in The Lord of the Rings. His pledge to join the Fellowship specifically emphasizes his weapon of choice.
  Aragorn: You have my sword.
  Legolas: And you have my bow
  Gimli: And my axe!
  • Several dwarves use it in The Hobbit, including Gimli's father, Glóin, who uses one of the same axes.
• Marz, the titular Madman uses an axe picked up from a petrified tree stump to kill his victims. Well, that, and the noose left over from his hanging.
• In The Magnificent Seven (2016), Jack Horne carries a rifle and a pistol, but his preferred weapon is his tomahawk, which he wields with deadly efficiency.
• Mandroid: During the film's climax, the homeless mute Drago has working for him chops a policeman in the back with a fire axe to get his machinegun.
• Nicolas Cage's 2018 action-horror movie Mandy (2018) has his character Red Miller battle a cult and possibly demonic beings with a mighty battle axe that he forges for himself, emphasizing the movie's Sword and Sorcery inspiration.
• In Marketa Lazarová the Captain can often be seen wielding a big axe.
• In Mohawk, the tomahawk is Calvin's preferred weapon, and he is an expert in both throwing it and using it hand-to-hand.
• In Monster Party, Elliot's preferred weapon is a meat cleaver. Later, Patrick arms himself with a hatchet when he goes hunting Casper and Alexis through the mansion.
• Mortuary (1983): Christie chops Paul In the Back with an axe to save Greg from being killed by him.
• Mosul (2020): Iraqi police officer Kawa inherits a survival hatchet/tomahawk from a previously-killed member of the Nineveh Province SWAT, which he uses several times in the film, including executing his traitorous former partner.
• One Night in October: The scarecrow killer uses an axe to chop up the kids.
  • Michelle grabs an axe to attack Freddie and Hewitt with.
• Killer in The Prey loved his axe so much that he provided the previous page quote.
• In Psychos, Larry uses an axe to chop his way through the door to the attic like he's Jack from The Shining.
• Pumpkins: Macy grabs an axe to defend herself against Pumpkin Man. She never gets to use it against him. In fact, it actually goes the other way around.
• Ripper: Letter from Hell: When Molly, Kane and Jason all go running out into the storm, Jason grabs the axe from the woodpile. The killer later takes it off him and uses it to murder him.
• Rise of the Scarecrows: One of the Scary Scarecrows uses a hatchet as a murder weapon.
• Frank kills Eddie with one in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• Rush Week has the killer carrying a battle axe.
• In Savaged, Mangas Coloradas provides Zoe with a tomahawk that she wields to great effect in the final battle with the rednecks at the mine.
• In Savages Crossing, Phil switches to an axe when his gun runs out of bullets.
• In Scare Campaign, Emma can only watch helplessly on the monitor as Rohan attacks Marcus and Dick with an axe: seemingly butchering both of them.
• At the end of Serenity, River dual-wields a scimitar and an axe while fighting the Reavers.
• In The Shadow of Chikara, Moon uses a tomahawk as a personal weapon, including burying it in the back of a Union soldier during the opening battle.
• Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Ivan and the rest of the Hutsul men carry their shepherd's axes everywhere. They have small double-blades and long handles, making them useful as walking sticks, wood choppers and weapons.
• Jack Torrance from The Shining used an axe as his weapon of choice on his Axe-Crazy rampage.
• Silent Night, Deadly Night has Billy carry an axe while dressed as a Santa Claus.
  • Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. Ricky, inspired by his brother Billy, uses an axe in the finale.
  • Silent Night (2012), the remake of the original, has the killer Santa use a double-sided axe as his primary weapon (although he has plenty of others).
• Snowpiercer features a fight against an axe-wielding gang of enforcers.
• An axe is the signature weapon of the Huntsman in Snow White & the Huntsman, and its sequel, The Huntsman: Winter's War.
• The first victim in Some Guy Who Kills People is found with a hatchet buried in his head.
• Blondie from Sucker Punch uses a tomahawk during the WWI dream sequence.
• Unsurprisingly, Paul Bunyan favours a woodcutter's axe in Tall Tale.
• A pack of Foot Soldiers try these on the turtles in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), with typical results. They do succeed, however, in collapsing the floor and dumping everyone down into the basement turned junk shop, where things get worse for the Turtles.
  Donatello: Good thing these guys aren't lumberjacks!
  Michaelangelo: No joke! The only thing safe in the woods... would be the trees!
• They/Them (2022): The killer uses an axe to kill some of the victims.
• In Thor and its sequels, Volstagg of the Warriors Three has an axe as his weapon of choice.
• In Timber Falls, Clyde kills Lonnie after he discovers the hidden entrance to cellar by burying a axe in his skull.
• An axe gets used at several points through Train. Sheldon uses it perform a Mercy Kill on Todd.At the end of the movie, Vlad uses it to try and kill Alex, before tossing it aside and deciding to use his bare hands. Alex manages to grab the discarded axe and hit Vlad in the stomach with it.
• In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, Jetfire's cane can turn into an axe, which he uses to slice up a hapless Decepticon or two in the final battle.
• In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Optimus wields an axe to devastating effect. It winds up lodged in Megatron's severed head.
• In The Tripper, the killer's weapon of choice is double-bit lumberjack's axe.
• In Uncle Buck, Buck engages in Twerp Sweating with his niece's boyfriend Bug by bragging about having a hatchet that he keeps in his car for maiming and is sharp enough to castrate a gnat. When his niece simply derides it as a bluff, Buck actually takes said hatchet out of the trunk.
• In Varsity Blood, the killer carries a massive battleaxe as one of his primary weapons.
• A View to a Kill: During the final fight at the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, Max Zorin famously grabs a nearby axe and attacks the heroes in a last attempt to kill Bond and Stacy.
• The Vikings: The weapon of choice of the eponymous warriors.
• In The War Lord, all of the Frisians (who are portrayed more like Horny Vikings, with no horns on their helmets) carry battleaxes.
• The killer in Whiteout uses an ice axe as his preferred weapon.
• Winterskin: In the prologue, the intruder who broke into John Carver's house chops him to death with an axe.
• Although the killer in 'Wishcraft uses a variety of weapons to dispatch his victims, his favourite seems to be an axe, which is what he uses in his final battle with Brett.
• The Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz always carries one, since he was a lumberjack in the previous life.
  • In The Witches of Oz, the Tin Woodman and the Nome King use axes.

Gamebooks

• In Blood Sword, the 2nd book Kingdom of Wyrd - there's a golden axe to be found in that warped dreamscape. This is the legendary Axe of Heraklos, which gives the user a bonus to hit and damage. But in the hands of the Warrior, this axe can be thrown and return to their hand.
• In Wizards, Warriors and You, the Warrior's arsenal is a regularly changing assortment of exotic and magical weapons but one of the few weapons that stayed through the series is a big mundane Battle-Axe. That's how effective the axe is, where he'll ditch a magical throwing mace or even the useful triple crossbow, he'll still keep the Battle-Axe around.

Literature

• In the Ahriman Trilogy, it would be weird if someone called the Axe-Man wasn't an example of this trope. He's the Ax-Crazy variety.
• Patrick Bateman, the titular American Psycho, murders Paul Owen (Paul Allen in the film) with an axe.
• A Poison Dark and Drowning: Maria has an axe on hand at all times. Her first scene in the book is when she throws it at one of Nemneris' familiars, and manages to chop it in the face.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the hill clans favor axes, particularly Shagga, who wields one in each hand. Tyrion uses an axe because his dwarfism makes a sword unwieldy. Loras, in spite of being a slender youth, wields an axe during Renly's tournament. Victarion Greyjoy favors a battle axe. Axes are the weapon of choice of the Sparrows later the Poor Fellows of the Faith Militant mostly because they can't afford swords.
• In the Tales of Dunk and Egg, Gentle Giant Dunk carries a sword, but believes that he's virtually peerless with an axe or mace.
• Black Crown sees King Marion fighting with an axe in the first short story, perhaps because he knew he would be fighting the armoured King Valerius.
• In Black Legion, the warband Fifteen Fangs uses chain axes as their weapons. Main character, Khayon, also has an axe, called Saer (Truth), which he took from a Space Wolf champion centuries earlier.
• The Chronicles Of Alice: Hatcher is never seen without his axe throughout the story, to the point where it's how he got his name.
• Conan the Barbarian: Conan generally uses swords as his weapon of choice, he has used the battleaxe from time to time in Howard's stories, such as in the first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword," which has King Conan taking one to the assassins trying to kill him in his bedchamber after breaking his sword.
• Gaspard Caderousse in The Count of Monte Cristo was originally an innkeeper and a witness to the plot against Dantes, whose only guilt was in not revealing it under pressure from Danglars, and thus failing to exonerate Dantes. Years later, when Dantes approaches Caderoussse under a fake name and gets him to reveal everything he knows, he even leaves a diamond as a reward. Later on, however, he talks to another character who arrived at Caderousse's inn the next day, and reveals that Caderousse was urged by his wife to kill the rich jeweller who arrived to buy the diamond with an axe, and thus get all his money: that character wakes up that night by the blood dripping from the ceiling, hides, and sees that Caderousse was the only one of the three left standing. Caderousse claimed his wife attacked the jeweller and they mortally wounded each other: less charitable interpretations either have him commit both murders, or finish off the survivor of the struggle, since it was well-known he despised his wife. Either way, the trope is still in play.
• Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment commits his infamous twin murder of an old lender and her sister with an axe.
• In The Dinosaur Lords, Rob's weapon of choice he never parts with is a giant axe called Wanda.
• Discworld:
  • Plays with the idea of Dwarfs being commonly portrayed with axes. There, it's their cultural weapon so Dwarfish officers of Ankh Morpork can carry them around, and in Dwarfish mines carrying a huge axe strapped to one's back is perceived as more of being properly dressed rather than heavily armed. The particular axe preferred by these dwarfs is mentioned to be a multipurpose tool: It's got a pick on one side, for prospecting, and an ax on the other in case anyone tries to stop you.
  • Some of the more progressive female dwarfs eschew the traditional dwarf armor in favor of dresses. They retain the axe, though, because, as one of them puts it, "I said I was female. I didn't say I wasn't a dwarf." Later books have gone into some detail about the smaller and more decorated, but still functional, pickaxes carried by openly female dwarfs, as though they might do a spot of mining on the way to a soirée.
  • The elite personal guard of the Low King of the Dwarfs are worthy of special mention. Each is armed with a single axe. While other warriors may bristle with weapons, they bristle with one weapon.
  • Thud! has a climactic moment when a reformist Dwarf priest uses a hand strike to the throat to silence a conservative Dwarf priest. He describes it as "like using an axe, but without the axe". This particular modernizer doesn't carry an axe at all, yet is considered among the highest authorities in his culture; he insists the axe is a state of mind and thus not a physical necessity.
• Kaz the minotaur of Dragonlance fame. His weapon of choice was a magic axe, Honor's Face, that could be returned to his hand at will (among other awesome abilities).
• In David Gemmell's Drenai saga, the warrior Druss the Legend was also called "Druss the Axeman" (among a great many other things: The Captain of the Axe, Deathwalker, the Silver Slayer, etc) because his signature weapon was Snaga, a powerful axe that had a demon inside. For the first part of his adventures at least. Then he exorcised it. And was no less (perhaps even more) deadly with it gone.
• Several of the Church Knights from David Eddings's The Elenium and The Tamuli series were axe-users. Three examples: Boisterous Bruiser Ulath, Badass Bookworm Bevier and Only Sane Man Side Kick Berit all wield axes of varying sizes and types. Ulath uses a double-bitted axe, Berit an infantry axe and Bevier a lochaber axe. Adus, a brutal Psycho for Hire also resorts to an axe during his final confrontation with the heroes, despite having used a sword in his previous appearances.
  • Also notable as a rare example where the difference between fighting axes and tools is made clear, with Berit being given a dressing down when he tries to use his weapon to cut wood.
• Fitz from Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy.
• Fellow Man by Norwegian author Olav Duun has a Gender Flip version of the trope. Ragnhild, the female protagonist is out to chop some firewood, and has to look for the axe in the smithy. When she gets there, she is threatened by the antagonist of the book, a jerkass and Magnificent Bastard of a father-in-law, and she is pushed so far by him that she eventually chops him down. After that, she proceeds to chopping firewood.
• Fengshen Yanyi, every time a new commander is appointed by King Zhou to fight the "rebels" of Xiqi, he's granted the yellow axe and white pennant of authority. Several characters also employ axes in combat, though usually they are all normal warriors with no taoist magic, with the notable exception of Chong Heihu, a general who dual-wield golden axes and can use the magical Red Gourd in combat. The strength of his axes is also downplayed, as his opponent Su Quanzhong thinks he cannot win because his short axes can't match his longer halberd in range.
• Forest Kingdom: As explained in the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series, in his original identity, Hawk was a master swordsman. After he lost an eye, his sword skills declined, so the High Warlock gave him an enchanted axe that has the power to disrupt sorcery.
• The Four Horsemen Universe: Bjorn Tovesson, the commander of Bjorn's Berserkers (a merc unit with a Viking motif), successfully attacks a "king crab" Ziq'tal merc with a battleaxe sized for his CASPer in the Short Story "Surf and Turf".
• Jean Tannen from the Gentleman Bastard series is skilled with a large variety of weapons, but prefers to fight with two axes he calls the Wicked Sisters, and considers to be family members rather than weapons. Jean does not conform to the usual axe-fighter tropes, though, being a well-educated and well-read cat burglar and con man.
• Gotrek of Gotrek & Felix is not only a Death Seeker but also carries a magical axe. Over the course of the series he has unsuccessfully tried to get himself killed fighting dragons, demons, hordes of undead; you get the picture.
• In Hometown, a common wood-splitting axe is the weapon of choice for Luther Harfield, both in life and beyond.
• Norbert the Nutjob in How to Train Your Dragon is one hell of an Ax-Crazy. He has a HUGE double headed axe, with one head black and one head gold, and sharpens it lovingly all the time.
• In The Hunger Games, (well, the sequel,) Johanna Mason from the lumber district is quite adept with an axe. At the Fiftieth Games (which had forty-eight tributes instead of the usual twenty-four) one of District 1's female tributes was armed with an axe. She reached the final two, along with District 12's Haymitch Abernathy, but was killed when Haymitch used the force-field surrounding the arena to deflect her axe back at her.
• Ex-Con Keith Blackwell in Idoru uses a collapsible war axe not dissimilar to the US army tactical tomahawk.
• Older Than Feudalism: Some variations of The Iliad have Achilles wielding an axe just before he's killed.
• Journey to the West examples:
  • Heaven's general Julingshen, Sun Wukong's first opponent in his war against the gods, wields a massive axe called "Flower Storm". It's quickly destroyed by Wukong's much more formidable Ruyi Jingu Bang.
  • Earthly demon Sai Taisui wields a similarly-named axe called "Flower-spreading Axe" as his main weapon, though when Sun Wukong pushes him in a corner he uses his magical fire-and-sand-summoning bells.
  • One of the Lion demons attacking Sun Wukong with their nine-headed grandfather favors a battleaxe as his weapon, which is a surprisingly sensible choice when your brothers wields spades, caltrops and a triangular bamboo beam.
  • One of the last opponents of the book, the Great King Pihan (Protection from Cold) has a massive axe as his weapon of choice, and alongside his brothers he proves to be a match for Sun Wukong.
• King Kull, another Robert E. Howard's creation, famously used the axe, with his catchphrase being "With This Axe I Rule!"
  • In the Kull/Bran Mak Morn story "Kings of the Night", the Vikings use axes.
• The Valerian footsoldiers of the Lensman series use the space axe as their weapon of choice. It's functionally identical to the Medieval poleaxe, but in SPACE! As Valerians are canonically Dutch Heavyworlders. The space axes were extremely massive, on the order of 35 pounds, so that even a slow swing was deadly. This was because the Deflector Shields in the Lensman universe provided resistive force proportional to the cube of the impacting item's velocity. As in Dune, the slow blade penetrates the shield.
• Captain Kotov in Night Watcher uses a huge butcher's axe (practically a BFA) as his signature vampire-hunting weapon, because it was the best weapon he could find when he first had to confront a vampire, and it turned out to be surprisingly good for the job. He's a bit Ax-Crazy, yeah.
• A lot of characters in The Oathsworn series fight with bearded axes, great axes, throwing axes, and when nothing more is available, blunt wood axes.
• The Keldara from the Paladin of Shadows series are very good at using axes for throwing and melee.
• In the Paradox Trilogy, Cotter's weapon of choice is a giant axe, so massive that he requires Powered Armor to lift it.
• Neeva from The Prism Pentad use a large axe made of steel as her favourite weapon.
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms has quite a few users of both axes and halberds.
• The Saga of the Sworn Brothers: The saga takes its time to describe the weapons of the young Thorgeir Havarson, of which the foremost is "a broad axe, a mighty weapon, keen-edged and sharp, with which he had sent many a man to dine in Valhalla" (i.e. killed them). The saga also somewhat apologetically comments that "[i]n those days, very few men were armed with swords". The poetical description of Thorgeir's weapons is undermined by the fact that at this point, Thorgeir is still a teenager who has not yet killed anyone, much less sent them "to dine in Valhalla" (a place that neither the author nor the audience of the saga believed in). This suggests the entire passage is tongue-in-cheek, and that likely teenage Thorgeir simply cannot afford a sword, and that his "mighty weapon" is actually a completely ordinary battle-axe.
• Jason, from The Saints, is thrilled to add an axe to his arsenal.
• The Lizard Folk Hargrod from Shadow Keep.
• An axe is the weapon of choice of the titular Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an axe with a four-foot head.
• Space Captain Smith: The lemming men of Yull are a species of human-sized lemmings that are culturally a mish-mash of Japanese samurai and modern North Korea. They also love battle-axes as much as dwarves in fantasy stories do and that's their only weapon in non-ship combat despite being a space-faring people.
• The Star Kingdom: Stephanie Harrington and her fellow Probationary Rangers keep Pulaskis^note A fire axe with a horizontal hoe blade on the back of the head for clearing brush nearby whenever they travel into the woodlands of Sphinx in Fire Season.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • Gimli from The Lord of the Rings was the main inspiration for countless other axe-armed dwarves from fantasy fiction. Strangely enough, while J. R. R. Tolkien does portray the axe as the traditional weapon of the Dwarves (the Dwarven battle-cry Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! is translated as "Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!"), all the main dwarves in The Hobbit fought with swords, and Dáin Ironfoot's army carried mattocks and short swords.
  • In The Silmarillion, Húrin (a Man) uses an axe to great effect in his heroic last stand, taking down seventy trolls with it before being captured. Gothmog, Lord of the Balrogs, has a massive, black one made of fire. Also, the Dwarves of the First Age use oversized axes with full helmets and masks to fight Dragons at close range
  • Though the two are not commonly associated in pop culture nowadays, the Elves of Middle-Earth do indeed use axes in battle, with the Sindar indicated to outright favor their use.
  • The fiefdom forces sent to reinforce Minas Tirith in The Return of the King include 200 axemen from Lossarnach.
• Twilight of the Gods, an '80s Sword and Sorcery trilogy by Dennis Schmidt has the protagonist Voden's father, Borr Skullcracker feared for cleaving through enemies with ease using his battle-axe.
• Novak, the anti-hero of the zombie noir Undead on Arrival, uses a hatchet (paired with a small sledgehammer) as his preferred method of dispatching the undead.
• Li Kui, from Water Margin, was well known for his twin axes and, not surprisingly, being a little Axe-Crazy.
• A moon-bladed hand axe was Perrin's weapon of choice for some time in The Wheel of Time. The man who gave it to him did so on one condition: that the day he grew to like using it, he'd throw it into the woods and go the other way, and after a particularly deadly battle drives Perrin to cut off a prisoner's hand he fulfills the promise.
• Wiro Sableng: The titular character wields a sacred axe known as 'Kapak Naga Geni 212' (Geni Dragon Axe 212), which grants him a lot of supernatural powers in addition of being used in conjunction with his martial arts.
• The Tin Woodman from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Used it more extensively in the books than in the film.
• The aptly-named Hatchet Face of Worm uses an axe, along with his powers, to stalk and kill capes.
• The Marvellous Land of Snergs:
  • The King of the Snergs Merse II is armed with one sword and one axe.
  • Golithos' weapon of choice is a huge battle axe.

Live-Action TV

• On Bitten, the final attack by the werewolf "mutts" begins when one of them, in wolf form, rushes Jeremy from the woods. Jeremy grabs an axe that he earlier used to chop wood and tosses it at the wolf. The axe hits the wolf in the head and kills him instantly.
• The Salamanca cousins in Breaking Bad carry a silver fire axe as their weapon of choice when preparing to kill Walter White.
• Axes frequently show up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, usually in one of two forms — In addition to fire extinguishers, Sunnydale High School is also equipped with fire axes.
  • Joyce uses one of these when she goes Mama Bear on Spike. And Giles (and later Angel) owns several medieval battleaxes, and they seem to be the preferred weapon for fighting demons. When Gunn joins Team Angel, he uses a home-made axe created from a hubcap.
  • The Council thought to train Buffy with an axe. Blindfolded. The attacking Watcher was lucky not to be killed, the training dummy Buffy was meant to be protecting...not so much.
  • The "Scythe" found near the end of Buffy is clearly a Lochaber Axe (though it includes a short straight blade on the head and a sharpened wooden stake for a base).
  • Which crops up again in the comics, which shows a... extremely fit looking Buffy nursing it as though it were a guitar.◊
  • And now Willow's gone a little Axe-Crazy and stolen it, thinking it will help restore magic. She absconds to England and goes to Angel, who threatens her (he'd just fought a horde of demons and thought she was another one before answering the door); she's broken off the end in case she needs to stake him. She later goes ahead with the ritual she had planned, by using the axe on Conner.
• The old History Channel show Conquest had the host discuss the benefits of axes in one episode. Before starting a sparring session, he gives a protracted warning to his partner that once he starts swinging his axe at the man, it can't be stopped. He then lunges forward screaming and swinging his axe wildly, causing the overwhelmed sparring partner to break and run without putting up a fight.
• Dark Hole: Tae-han uses an axe to defend himself from the zombies.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Poison Sky": Sylvia Noble smashes the windshield of her car with an axe she has in the house because of burglars as her father's been trapped inside because it's being controlled by the Sontarans.
  • Bors, a medieval fighter in "The Magician's Apprentice", holds an axe as he awaits his challenger in the arena. Enter the Doctor, standing on a tank, playing a screaming electric guitar solo.
    Bors: Dude! What is that?
    The Doctor: You said you wanted an axe fight! ...Oh come on! In a few hundred years, it'll be really funny! It's a slow-burner!
• Cindy Trueman and her little sister Gladys in Flander's Company use them. Cindy's is made of Adamantium.
• Forged in Fire has had its contestants make battleaxes twice. The first time it was a viking battleax, the second time it was a tabar.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Loras wields an axe during his melee with Brienne.
  • Tyrion prefers to fight with an axe, probably because his stature would make using a sword extremely awkward. He uses a double-bladed axe to chop the leg off a soldier of Stannis' army during the Battle of Blackwater.
  • Both the Thenns, Styr and Loboda on the show also wield axes.
  • Shagga son of Dolf is mentioned to have insisted on two battle-axes prior to the Battle of the Green Fork.
  • The Ironborn are famous for utilizing axes in combat instead of the usual sword.
    • Yara wields a pair of tomahawks in "The Laws of Gods and Men," utilized both for melee and for throwing.
    • Euron wields a massive bearded axe when he joins the fray. While it's probably coincidental given that the style of axe is centuries old, it's worth pointing out that Euron's axe is essentially a pimped out version of Zombietools' Kraken model, which is a very appropriate choice for a Greyjoy.
  • Sandor uses a wood axe as his main weapon in Season 6 and uses it to take vengeance on a group of renegade members of the Brotherhood Without Banners.
  • House Cerwyn's sigil is a war-axe.
• A few of the Immortals on Highlander have used axes instead of swords, most notably Kanwulf ("Homeland"),Silas ("Comes A Horsemen"/"Revelations 6:8"),and Caleb Cole ("Mountain Men)".
• Kamen Rider:
  • The Kunaiguns in Kamen Rider Kabuto have an axe mode aside from the gun and knife modes, but Kamen Rider Hercus prefers to wield the ZECT Kunaigun in axe and gun modes.
  • In Kamen Rider Den-O, Kintaros wields an axe, as does his version of Den-O, which is actually named Axe Form. This is because Kintaros is based on the Japanese myth of Kintaro the Golden Boy, who himself used an axe.
  • In Kamen Rider OOO, OOO's ultimate form, Putotyra specialises in the use of an axe named Medagabryu. His other forms can use it too, but only Putotyra can use it's alternate mode.
  • In Kamen Rider Ryuki, this is Kamen Rider Tiger's weapon of choice. His Kamen Rider Dragon Knight counterpart is even named Kamen Rider Axe.
  • In Kamen Rider Wizard, the title character gets an axe-sword combo (called Axcalibur) in his Super Mode.
  • In Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, we are introduced to the Gashacon Parabraygun; the weapon of choice for Kamen Rider Para-DX Perfect Knock Out Gamer Level 99, which also comes with a gun mode.
  • With Kamen Rider Zi-O, the 20th anniversary series of the Heisei era, features Kamen Rider Geiz's Mix-and-Match Weapon, which has two modes: the Time Severe Axe Zikan Zax, with axe (Ono) being the form it takes when Geiz is in melee combat.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One has Zero-One Shining Assault Hopper wielding the Authorise Buster, which has both axe and gun modes, the latter of which is the preferred weapon mode for Vulcan Assault Wolf.
  • Kamen Rider Revice has the Ohinbuster50, which has both axe and gun modes. Revi (and by extension, Vice) can use this weapon to finish off enemies, weak or strong.
• The Kids in the Hall has a recurring character in which Dave Foley plays an affable axe murderer.
• The villainous Mordred in the 1998 adaptation of Arthurian Legend, Merlin, wields an appropriately sized axe as his main weapon.
• Mouse (2021): Jae-hoon kills some of his victims with an axe.
• Garrett's "Twin Timber Axes!" from The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg.
• Psychopath Diary: In-woo has an assortment of axes among his weapons collection. He tries to kill Dong-sik with one of them.
• Will Scarlett in the BBC's Robin Hood fought with an axe and a hatchet, on account of him being a carpenter.
• Turgut Alp in Resurrection: Ertuğrul primarily fights with a hatchet as opposed to the swords used by the rest of the cast.
• Stranger Things: Joyce brandishes one from her shed after the Demogorgon first bursts through the walls of her house, fully intending to face it and save her son. She later uses it to hack down one of her house's walls, where she made brief contact with Will. Unfortunately, the portal doesn't last long.
• The various iterations of the Super Sentai/Power Rangers are also fond of axes. It's most common among Green and Black Rangers (which are generally considered "the same", because most teams have the primary colors, pink, and either black or green.)
• Tales from the Crypt: In "Lover Come Hack to Me", Peggy's mother uses a battleaxe to hack her husband to pieces, and later Peggy uses the same axe to do the same thing to her husband Charles.
• One client at Tattoo Nightmares indicated that this was how his new girlfriend destroyed his surfboard — when she thought that she'd been conned by him and his roommate ("you guys both played me?"). An ax to grind, indeed.
• Not surprisingly, the main characters of Vikings often carry axes.

Music

• A guitarist may refer to his instrument as an "axe" and few will question him. Typically, the louder the music he plays, the more likely and more acceptable this is.
  • Gene Simmons of KISS regularly uses a bass made to look like a battle axe.
• Gorillaz: Noodle, the Axe Princess.
• Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie uses one in the iconic cover of Killers◊, and also on the "Run to the Hills◊" single.
• From the band Glory Hammer:
  • The "crystal laser battle axe" of the King of the Astral Dwarves of Aberdeen on "Apocalypse 1992" on Space 1992: Rise of the Chaos Wizards.
  • "The Hollywood Hootsman" from ''Space 1992: Rise of the Chaos Wizards":
  With his mighty battle axe,
  He slaughtered everything,
  'Til all of California,
  Did call the Hero King!
• The Insane Clown Posse are fond of using axes as murder weapons in their songs. One Horrorcore band called Axe Murder Boyz take their name from one of ICP's lyrics.
• ""Shia LaBeouf" Live" has cannibal hermit Shia LaBeouf in his cottage sharpening an axe. When you fight him later, you manage to get ahold of the axe.

Mythology & Religion

• Though he's more commonly associated with his hammer, Thor from Norse Mythology is sometimes described as wielding an axe in earlier myths, and is also a sacred symbol of his, given it was a favored weapon among farmers and lower-class Vikings (due to its cheaper cost compared to a sword).
  • Forseti, the son of Baldur, was sometimes described as wielding a golden battle axe.
• Perun in Slavic Mythology enjoyed a lightning axe, and was a common symbol of his.
• One of Aesop's Fables describes the story of a woodcutter who lost his axe in the woods. But, after displaying a character of honesty, the god Mercury gifts him with two treasured axes, in addition to his original one.

Pinball

• The antagonist of Bally's Centaur uses a large metal axe with a pick on the back.
• The male warrior in Gladiators is using what looks like an electric axe.
• Eddie uses a lumberjack-like axe during his fight with the Beast in Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast's Wizard Mode.

Podcasts

• There's one installed in the spooky forest room in the Cool Kids Table game Creepy Town that the monster uses to kill Die.
• Torq from the Critical Hit Podcast seems to believe that axes are the only weapon worth wielding. Then he gets a Rotating Blade Axe from Thony.
  • Flint from The Fallen Gods wields dual battle axes. He replaces one with a magical one he finds in some ancient ruins, and the other with a powerful one he gets thanks to a deal with the enigmatic Mara.
• Through most of the Balance Arc of The Adventure Zone, Magnus Burnsides' weapon of choice was a magical axe named Rail Splitter.

Professional Wrestling

• The Executioner, one of many failed gimmicks given to a wrestler to setup a feud with The Undertaker, wielded an ax. He ended up jobbing to Goldust and never being seen again.
• Inquisidor has an ax on his mask and twirls an additional axe during his entrances.
• During the last half of the year in Progress Wrestling, Jimmy Havoc has taken to using an axe more to threaten people with but he did attempt to act on the threat. It has become pretty associated with him to the point of a Lego figure of him being given away with a DVD of his matches came with an axe as an accessory

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech: Hatchets were the first close-combat weapon to be used. One mech in particular, the AXM-2N Axeman, was the first mech used by Adam Steiner in the animated series. The axe in this case weighs five tons, being designed for use by Humongous Mecha. Vibroaxes are one of many types of melee weapons available in the RPG Spin-Off, MechWarrior.
• Bleak World has the fire axe as probably the best melee weapon in the game.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Although it's not required per se, the traditional barbarian stereotype is waving an axe about as large as himself. In fifth edition in particular, the greataxe's damage (1d12 where most two-handed weapons do 2d6) synergize with the barbarian's brutal critical ability adding a single extra damage die of the sort the weapon does. They're also a popular Dwarven weapon along with warhammers and crossbows.
• In In Nomine, it's the favored weapon of Michael, Archangel of War, the local incarnation of badass. In fact, even though the game has rules for adding miraculous powers to angels' weapons and entities of Archangelic power levels are kept deliberately vague, Michael's axe is explicitly statted in a player supplement: its only power is to teleport in on command. He doesn't need any others.
• Iron Kingdoms: One of the titular kingdoms is the Empire of Khador, whose gameplay is often summarized in three words: "Axe to face!" This unofficial motto is made incarnate in Kommander Orsus Zoktavir, the Butcher of Khardov. He calls his Lola.
• Pathfinder:
  • Axes are, as per standard, the weapons most commonly associated with dwarves. One particularly notable example is the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, a legendary two-headed throwing axe forged as a symbol of dwarven culture when the dwarves first emerged into the surface world. Besides being a very good fighting axe, it can be used to summon an earth elemental once per week. It also seeks to be used by a dwarf; non-dwarves who wield it take Charisma damage as long as they hold it, and over time begin to become shorter, hairier and more at ease in the dark. Over a couple of weeks, this results in a permanent transformation into a true dwarf.
  • The nascent demon lord Treerazer wields the Blackaxe, a gigantic waraxe carved from obsidian and dripping with acid, as both his favored weapon and symbol. It's an especially deadly weapon against plant life, dealing additional damage to plant creatures and allowing its wielder to heal themselves by striking a tree, which afterwards crumbles into ash. It's also inextricably bound to Treerazer himself, who always knows where it is and who's using, can cast spells through regardless of distance and can call it into his hand at a moment's notice no matter how far away it is.
• In Rocket Age, the Martian Sun Axe is a long, heavy double bitted axe given as a reward to particularly brave Maduri. These weapons are so powerful that they can cleave through enemies standing too close together.
• In Warhammer axes are much more popular than the hammer of the title, which is mostly limited to Dwarfs and a few humans.
  • Not normally a weapon you associate with slender and graceful elves, but the White Lions of Chrace are an elite bodyguard unit of the Phoenix King who use greataxes in battle. This is a tradition harkening back to the band of woodsmen who saved King Caledor I from a Dark Elf assassin party when they ambushed him on a hunting trip. When King Caledor made the woodsmen his official bodyguards, they retained the axes that cut through the assassins with as much contemptable ease as the great trees of Chrace. Warhammer elves are considerably more hardcore than your usual stock fantasy elves.
  • Dwarfs take it up to twelve; the Khazalid word for "axe" (az) doubles as a prefix meaning "warrior". An "azdawi" or "axe-dwarf" is a Dwarf warrior, an "azumgi" or "axe-human" is a human warrior, etc. This applies even if the warrior in question uses a completely different weapon and has never touched an axe; axe <-> warrior as far as Dwarfs are concerned.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Chain-axes were popular close combat weapons used by assault troops during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras of the game’s setting. Some particularly archaic and/or barbaric assault troops still use them during the main 41st Millennium era: furthermore, they are popular with Khorne worshippers, as the axe is considered as a sacred weapon to the Blood God.
    • Many factions in the game use power axes, an axe with a force field that disintegrates solid matter when it hits. In fact, it is the traditional melee weapon, and badge of office, of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Often taking the form of large halberd-like axes, the blades of these weapons typically sport a cog-like serrated edge in imitation of the Machina Opus, the holy symbol of the Omnissiah.
    • Axes of all types, from regular to power axes, are popular amongst members of the Space Wolves Chapter of Adeptus Astartes as they fit with their Viking visual theme.
    • The traditional form of the incredibly versatile choppa is that of a brutally primitive axe or cleaver.
• In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the labrys was the signature weapon of the Black Furies.
• In Zombicide, set after a Zombie Apocalypse, the survivors players take charge of start with a weapon each, can come equipped with a fire axe. This can be used to breach doors, though it makes quite some noise while doing so.

Theme Parks

• With all the murdering going on, it's no surprise this shows up once in a while in Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights.
  • As you might expect from her, Lizzie Borden likes this trope.
    • The 1994-95 scarezone Horrorwood featured The Lizzie Borden Band and Axe Corps, who carried around what you might expect considering their namesake.
    • The 1996 haunted house Universal's New House of Horrors had a Jump Scare with her bursting out of a closet wielding a bloody axe.
  • Hell's High from 1998 had two men at the end of the house threatening guests with axes.
• The Haunted Mansion: Constance Hatchaway's weapon of choice is, naturally, a hatchet, which can materialize in her hands on command. She's implied to have used it on her wealthy husbands and her new target appears to be the RIDERS.

Toys

• While a few BIONICLE characters use axes at one point or another, Axonn takes the cake with his giant axe.
• Nerf now gives us foam battle axes and foam hatchets, which, judging by their popular reception, are awesome.
• The Transformers "Power Core Combiners" toyline's first wave of releases features Smolder, a Decepticon fire engine whose weapon of choice is an axe, and Chopster, who transforms into Smolder's axe. They're both Ax-Crazy, to boot.

Video Games

• An axe shows up in the fifth level of 2Dark, and is very effective at sneak kills.
• In the game Afraid of Monsters, made by the same team as Cry of Fear, David Leatherhoff uses an axe. The axe is the most powerful melee weapon in the game and falls neatly into the "Psychopath" variety, as David is hallucinating and killing real people while he's chopping up "twitchers".
• In The Age of Decadence, axes are one of the melee weapon categories. They deal high damage, but have high AP cost per attack. Attacks from them can break shields apart, and it's also possible to execute a whirlwind attack with them.
• In Age of Empires, Axemen are the standard Tool Age Infantry serving as a power up of the Clubmen. They become obsolete in Bronze Age, as they do not evolve in the next tier infantry, swordsmen.
• In Age of Empires II has more axe-wielding troops, mostly Unique Units. As of Definitive Edition, we have:
  • Throwing Axemen, Franks UU, infantry carrying huge double-bit axes and able to attack from a distance, dealing melee damage. When upgraded fully, they are comparable to archers. Possibly a nod to Francisca, though those axes were small and light.
  • Berserkers, Viking UU, fast-moving infantry armed with dane axes and round shields, they regenerate health when not engaged in combat. Definitively a nod to Horny Vikings
  • Boyars, Slavs UU from HD onward, are heavy horsemen wielding large axes and shields. Unsurprisingly they deal a lot of damage in melee.
  • The Northern Swordsman, an editor unit, used to be a reskinned Longswordsman with a round shield. It was reworked so that he wields a small axe intead. again in a viking flavor.
  • The Inca campaign is symbolized by an axe and hairdress, and the hero Pachacuti is often shown carrying a long-handled axe in his hand. His hero unit even uses said axe in combat.
  • In Lords of the West, the Sicilian UU Serjeant are soldiers with long shields and norse helmets armed with small axes, to link their origins to the actual Normans.
  • In Dynasties of India, the Gurjara stable UU Shrivamsha Rider are armed with bhuj, a local axe weapon resembling a large knife blade on a short handle.
• Age of Mythology:
  • The Egyptian have axe-wielding infantry which is good at dealing with other infantry as part of their cheap infantry units (alongside spearmen and slingers).
  • The Norse have Ulfserkers and Raiders equipped with axes, as well as the long-ranged Axe Throwers. Notably, those are all basic troops, while elite soldiers such as Huskarls wield swords instead.
  • The Myth Unit Einherjar carries two Dane Axes in his hands and isn't afraid to use them. Upgrading them to Giantsbane add an extra blade on the axe.
• In Age of Wonders, the dwarves use axemen as their basic melee infantry rather than the swordsmen most races have, and their berserkers and boar riders also go into battle with axes.
• Antarctica 88: The Player Character finds an axe near the start of the game. It can be used to chop through the boards covering a hole in the side of the garage, as well as enemies (though it takes a few swings).
• Andy's Apple Farm: While playing "I Spy" with Claus, one of the things he'll make you guess is the axe lying on the ground. Things begin to take a turn as Claus's sprite darkens and his words become jumbled. The game cuts to you playing as Claus, running away from a quickly-approaching, axe-wielding Andy. When he catches you, the scene changes again, featuring two human characters... one of which is viciously murdering the other. Then it cuts back to Claus gleefully giving you a bonus sticker.
• Axes are a weapon option in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, popular with dwarves and orcs. High damage, slow, but also capable of hacking open a door or stubborn chest without being damaged.
• Assassin's Creed
  • In Assassin's Creed III, Ratonhnhaké:ton, more commonly known as Connor Keway, makes use of a tomahawk with the axe head in the shape of the Assassin's crest, fitting his Native American ancestry.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Unity, Arno can choose from a selection of axes if he prefers a heavy weapon to a one-handed sword. Dead Kings also provides him with the Guillotine Gun, which is a mortar with an axe head serving as a bayonet.
• The title character is given an axe to wield in the intro of NES platformer Astyanax, but this is only the starting weapon. Over the course of the game, collecting the axe items will upgrade it to a barbed spear and then a sword.
• The Ravager class in Aura Kingdom is restricted to greataxes as weapons. Predictably they're slow, but because they're so long they deal powerful damage to both the target and enemies within their range.
• In The Battle Cats, Axe Cats fight with these, surprisingly enough. Since they are stronger than the normal Cats, early stages become much easier, but they are still outclassed later on, and you'll not be able to do the kind of Zerg Rush possible with the normal Cats due to their high cost.
• Battle for Wesnoth: Axes are used as the melee weapon of melee-fighting Dwarvish Fighters and Skeletons along with their advancements. The more mobile-oriented Dwarvish Scout uses axe both as a melee weapon and as a throwing weapon.
• Zig-zagged in Bendy and the Ink Machine: In Chapter 1, Henry only uses his axe to clear his path. In Chapter 2, he does the same, but his axe also becomes an Improvised Weapon. In Chapter 3, he's given an axe to demolish Bendy cut-outs, but he can also use it as a weapon against ink creatures. At this time, he may also use it to remove wooden boards to access a door. In Chapter 4, the axe is a weapon again.
  • Played straight with Sammy Lawrence, who always carries around an axe.
• Bloodline Champions has the Vanguard use a scythe-like axe for their default weapon. The Harbinger's default is a crude weapon with a sharp edge curved inward described as a 'hatchet'. The Guardian uses large two-handed axes.
• Bloodborne:
  • The Hunter Axe. In a world with saw cleavers, whip canes, tombstone hammers, etc., this is "just" an axe (that can extend into a halberd). Still, it's one of the better weapons in the game.
  • The Old Hunters Downloadable Content, however, adds the Whirligig Saw, which functions as an axe but with a circular saw instead of a blade, which can be thrusted into mooks spinning until they die or your stamina runs out.
• In Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, perhaps the deadliest weapon after Soul Reaver that Kain uses are his axes "Havok" and "Malice" that he earns after the final death of Malik. With these axes he can do a barrage of swings or whirl around like a human axe tornado and often killing enemies in a single blow.
• Borderlands:
  • Most of the Psychos in this and Borderlands 2 wield axes. In the first game, they're made of scrap metal. In the second game, they've been upgraded to Buzz Axes, which have buzz saws for blades.
  • Axton uses a hatchet as his melee weapon.
  • Krieg, a playable (though DLC) character who is also a Psycho, uses a massive buzzaxe for his melee attack and action skill, which with certain skills can be upgraded to have dynamite strapped to it or give it a chance to do fire damage.
• Bravium, two of the different weapon types include "Shield and Axe" and the "Two-Handed Axe" weapons: the former allows you to regenerate faster while walking backward and increase defense with the shield, both can occasionally weaken enemy defense upon hit. Although labelled as "The Viking's best friend", nothing stops the Wizard from using them. Mixing a Diamond Rune with a Death Rune temporarly nets you a huge double-bladed axe seemingly made of bones.
• Brütal Legend: The Seperator "Touch not this awesome axe, or suffer the wrath of the Tainted Coil!!"
• The Axe Knights from Castlevania. There's also a fair few examples of Axes as primary weapons. They're slow and even stronger than the slow two handed swords, but often have a blind spot where enemies can be just about missed. The main example though is the Axe subweapon, present throughout the entire series. For some reason, the character just lobs the axe into the air in an arc. Nonetheless, it's really useful for those flying enemies!
• City of Heroes has a Battle Axe powerset for Tankers and Brutes, which may be ported to the other melee classes at some point (if you can get your head around the idea of a stealthy Stalker with a giant axe). As of a recent update, said axe can be customised between different colours and different models, including a fireman's axe, an energy axe and a shovel. (the edge of the shovel; the blunt end is an option for the War Mace powerset) Notable NPCs with Axe powers include the Classical Mythology styled street gang known as the Warriors, and the heroic yet demonic Infernal. (and his Evil Twin)
  • Infernal takes it one step further by setting his axe on fire.
• Axemen feature as early melee units in Civilization 4, with a bonus against other melee units. This is mostly used against spearmen and swordsmen, because when two axemen (or their upgrade, macemen) fight each other, the bonuses naturally cancel each other out).
• Windwalker in The Combatribes uses one.
• Cry of Fear has one monster in the "Psychopath" variety that uses them: the patients at the asylum. They lurk in corners before jumping out and attempting to chop you into pieces.
• In The Darkness II, a side character named Jimmy fights with the Dark Axe. Some members of The Brotherhood will also fight with axes.
• Axes are one of the weapon types in Dark Souls. There are also Greataxes, which are much bigger, stronger, and slower. These are available to the player, and are also used by too many enemies to list here.
  • The Bandit class in Dark Souls and the Warrior class in Dark Souls III start the game with a Battle Axe, while the Pyromancer class in both games starts with a Hand Axe. Dark Souls II has no option to start as a Pyromancer while the Bandit starts with a Hand Axe.
• The Wraith in Dead by Daylight has one that is in the shape of a skull as his weapon of choice.
• Kind, practical housewife Blodeuwedd from Dead In Vinland doesn't seem like the sort of character who usually has an axe as her weapon of choice, but then again she is the wife of a Viking warrior and pretty accomplished at woodcutting.
• Fire axe is the best anti-zombie melee weapon in the alpha version The Dead Linger. Since the game got cancelled in 2015, it'll likely stay that way.
• In Deadly Premonition, an axe is the signature weapon of the Raincoat Killer.
• Deltarune: Susie, The Berserker, suddenly gets an ax in her first battle, and immediately takes a liking to it.
  Susie: Dunno how I got an ax, but, like, that's cool.
• Defense of the Ancients (and Dota 2):
  • Mogul Khan is better known as Axe, and Axe uses his axe to counter-attack blows with a quick whirl of his axe or execute a low-health enemy, even through effects that can normally negate death.
  • While not nearly as impressive as the one wielded by Axe, Troll Warlord and Beastmaster also wield axes - two of them, in their case. Both of them also have the ability to throw their axes - Troll Warlord because he starts as a ranged attacker and via one of his skills (either slowing or blinding enemies with them depending on whether he's in ranged or melee form), while Beastmaster can use his axes as boomerangs.
  • On the item side, Quelling Blade is a basic axe that adds bonus damage to non-hero units. It can later be built into Battle Fury, a bigger axe that allows melee wielders to hit enemies in an area-of-effect with their basic attacks.
• In Devil's Dare, Kingston, one of the playable characters, fights with a giant, two-handed axe.
• Choosing the Barbarian from the character select screen in Diablo II will prompt him to let out a yell and start grinding an axe while you choose his name. His starting inventory includes an axe. Diablo II also introduced one-handed axes that the Barbarian can use with a shield or in each hand, while the first game only had two-handed axes. Axes have more consistent damage output, with higher minimum but lower maximum damage than swords and maces.
• Axes have been one of the staple weapon types in the Disgaea series, with hammers, scythes and even maces being grouped into this class as well. Though explicitly shown to be stronger than swords (attacks and skills even lower enemy defense), they suffer from low accuracy and a lack of multi-target skills. Both were remedied in the third game, though axes now lower speed as well, reducing your chance to dodge an attack. Some Item Worlding can remedy the negative accuracy and speed.
• In Dm C Devil May Cry, Dante's first reclaimed Devil Weapon is a massive red axe with a fiery blade named "Arbiter". Contrasting the fast, herd-hitting Angel Weapons, Arbiter is slow but very powerful and can smash through enemy shields and rock formations. It can also shoot the blade as an explosive projectile.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, axes had the highest crit chance of any melee weapon aside from daggers. They also had better base damage than maces and hammers and better armor penetration than swords. If you completed the Witch Hunt DLC on Nightmare difficulty, you were awarded an Infinity Minus One Axe called the Dragonbone Cleaver as a New Game Plus starting item.
  • Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition also had axes available as melee weapons, but they no longer had stat differences from swords and maces.
  • Across the series, Oghren, a dwarven Berserker, in Origins and the Iron Bull, a qunari Reaver in Inquisition, are the two party members that wield axes by default and both are the heavy hitters of their respective teams.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Axes are a usable weapon in the series, being also used by some enemies.
  • Dragon Quest III: The best (non-cursed) weapon for the Soldier/Warrior is the Demon Axe (Headmans Ax in remakes), which you find in Baramos's Castle.
  • Dragon Quest VII: Axes are rare, but also a good choice of weapon for Kiefer/Aishe (who both can wear heavy equipment) and Ruff, the local wild child who otherwise uses boomerangs and claw-like weapons.
  • Dragon Quest VIII: Yangus' best and most effective weapons are axes.
  • A weapon class in Dragon Quest IX as well, that deals bonus damage against plant-type enemies. However, it's not very useful as there are no high-end monsters to use it on.
• In Dragon Project, Xenota Axe is a magical axe that deals earth damage, making you immune to paralysis for 30 seconds and stagger for 10 seconds.
• Axes are a popular weapon choice in Dwarf Fortress, partly because they're considered "dwarfy" but mostly because there is currently only one "axe" item that's used both in battle and for felling trees. (Truth in Television up to a point, as touched upon in Real Life below.) Falling slightly out of favour after the massive combat mechanics overhaul that finally enabled swords to thrust as well as cut, however, whereas previously an axe and a sword were roughly equivalent in battle. Only slightly however; if removing body parts outright is specifically what you want, an axe is still your better bet.
• Dyna Gear have a power-up that upgrades your throwing swords into heavy axes. Shorter in range, but deals heavier damage, and clears an area of enemies faster.
• In Dynasty Warriors, Dian Wei used a giant axe which was later replaced with a flail in 6 before returning to his axe. Same goes for Xu Huang, who gets another polearm of sorts in 6 but returns to a great axe in 7: their styles are also completely different, with the former employing short-ranged, brutal strikes and even tosses while the latter has a more graceful technique with lots of spinning and waving. Jia Chong in 8 gets a pair of throwing axes. Zhang Liao goes for the gold in this trope, having been given twin long axes since 7. Most notably, the Great Axe from 7 onward (based on Xu Huang's earlier weapon) drags hit enemies with it, apparently chopping them squarely in the middle.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series, one can find a variety of one-handed "War Axes" and two-handed "Battle Axes" to use. Naturally, Orcs and Nords get racial bonuses to using axes in several games. Out of the non-playable races, Minotaurs favor axes (along with warhammers), and are strong enough to use two-handed battle axes with one hand. (Sometimes even Dual Wielding them.)
  • In the series' Backstory, the legendary Chimeri/Dunmeri hero, Lord Indoril Nerevar, used the "Named Axe" as his primary weapon for a time and used it to slay the Parliament of Craters. (He would later move on to using the Flaming Sword, True Flame.)
  • Boethiah, the Daedric Prince of Plots, is typically depicted as wielding a massive battle axe in his male statues. (Boethiah's female form statues instead wield a Cool Sword.)
  • Morrowind is notable as the single most damaging (per strike) weapon the in game is a Daedric Battle Axe with a Damage Health on Strike enchantment, enchanted with Almalexia's soul for the max number of blows before it runs out.
  • In Oblivion's Knights of the Nine expansion, the Aurorans, a race of lesser Daedra in service to the Daedric Prince Meridia, have battleaxes as a favored weapon. As Giant Mooks to the expansion's Big Bad, they naturally wield them one-handed.
  • Skyrim:
    • Axes are part of the generous selection of weapons on offer. Quite fitting for a game taking place in the homeland of the Nords.
    • Skyrim also reveals that axes are of great cultural significance to the Nords. An old custom involves sending your axe to another Nord. How he responds will determine if you have business to address.
    • Wuuthrad is a battleaxe and the iconic weapon of the ancient Nordic King, Ysgramor. It has a screaming Elf carved into it and deals extra damage to Elves. Finding its pieces and reforging it is part of the Companions questline.
    • Tsun, the old Nordic god of "trials against adversity" and shield-thane of Shor, wields a beefed-up ancient Nordic battleaxe when he is met in Sovngarde. Game files reveal that it is actually the most powerful axe in the game, exceeding even Dragonbone weaponry in damage.
• Eternal Card Game includes axes as weapons, both for units and the players themselves.
• Michael Edwards of Eternal Darkness is a fireman, and he starts his chapter carrying his trusty fire axe. Unfortunately, shortly afterwards, he finds an OICW, effectively limiting how much use the axe will see in practice.
• Axes will instantly kill the common Haunted in The Evil Within, but will break immediately afterwards. Joseph sometimes wields one during the levels where he follows closely behind you. During "The Consequence," the second DLC, Juli uses axes she finds littered around the area to defend herself from Joseph, who's become haunted and violent via Ruvik's influence over STEM and is out for her blood.
• Your hero in the arcade actioner Ex Mutants carries a huge ax as his default weapon, which can fire projectiles with every swing.
• Eyra the Crow Maiden: One weapon that enemies and crows drop is an axe that Eyra can pick up and wield against enemies.
• In The Fall: Last Days of Gaia, there's the Long Axe melee weapon. It's quite powerful, but takes a while to swing. Out of combat, it can also be used to chop chunks of meat down to size!
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 3 has the Auto Axe (a modified concrete saw) from The Pitt, the standard Axe from Point Lookout, and the unique Dismemberer.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has, in addition to hatchets and standard fire axes, a unique Infinity +1 Axe named Knock-Knock.
  • The Old World Blues expansion gives us the Zeerust proton axe as well as a throwing variation. This is a Shout-Out to Wasteland, Fallout's spiritual predecessor.
  • Fallout 4 has Grognak's Axe, which is a replica of the one used by the comic book character Grognak the Barbarian. In addition, it's possibly to modify tire irons to create Bladed Tire Irons, which resemble rusty hatchets.
• In The Feeble Files, the holy relic of Feeble's species is an axe. It's used to destroy the Big Bad.
• In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, axes are the strongest type of one-handed melee weapon, but they inflict penalties to the wielder’s Defense.
• The Warrior class from Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy III can use a few axes as weapons. However, he likes swords better. (Technically, the Warrior should use swords instead of axes because axes have a lower inherent accuracy, reducing the possibility of multiple hits, which is the biggest source of damage multiplier in the game.)
  • Both The Beastmaster and Warrior classes in Final Fantasy XI use axes as a weapon of choice. While Warriors use giant axes to the best ability, halberds are still considered polearms, and thusly Dragoons are best at them.
  • The Marauder class and its job, Warrior, in Final Fantasy XIV, primarly uses axes, though some more recent weapons have branched out a bit into hammers as well. Similar to its MMO predecessor, Dragoons get in on the Halberd action.
  • Lani from Final Fantasy IX. In her first scene in the game, when she learns that she doesn't need to spare any of your party members on her mission to obtain Garnet/Dagger's pendant, she speaks as though her axe has a mind of its own.
    Lani: "My axe is pleased to hear that."
  • Axes appear periodically in other Final Fantasy games, but not at the same frequency as swords, spears, and some other weapons. They tend to be used by Viking or Berserker-type classes.
  • Axes in Final Fantasy Tactics are favored by Squires and Geomancers, but are generally unreliable compared to other melee weapons due to their Randomized Damage Attack nature.
  • Kaeli from Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is a White Mage in nature (definitely not squishy), but her standard weapon is an axe (later the mighty Giant's Axe).
• In the SNES game The Firemen your AI-controlled partner Danny not only puts out fires with his axe but also uses it to destroy killer robots.
• One of the three basic weapon types from Fire Emblem (along with swords and lances). Axe users have a tendency toward Big Guy archetypes: the pupil-class Journeymen, then the Fighters and Warriors, Brigands, Pirates and Berserkers, and certain types of Armor Knights and Generals. In a subversion, the axe is also the secondary weapon of the Hero, which is less of The Big Guy and more like the Jack of All Stats.
  • Axes also frequently show up as special weapons that only some characters (generally with S axe use rank) can handle. The below mentioned Helswath is only one of them: we have the Pugi in Thracia 776 (which, in a variation, can be used only by Osian), Armads and Basilikos in the Elibe continuity, Garm (Sacred Relic of the Grado Empire) in Sacred Stones, and Urvan in Radiant Dawn.
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War:
    • The sacred weapon of choice of the Crusader Neir (founder of House Dozel) was his BIG FRICKING AXE Helswath. This one is the heaviest FE weapons period: it gives insane bonuses to strength and hits from two spaces away, but is also insanely slow and only available to people with major Neir blood (none of whom are playable).
    • House Dozel in general is specialized in axe use, whether their members can use the Helswath or not. From there alone we have Duke Lombard, King Danann, and the princes Lex, Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba: out of them, three (Lex in the first generation, Iuchar and/or Iucharba in the second) join your group.
  • In The Blazing Blade, Hector of Ostia is actually the first Lord who specializes in axe use. He even gets to use the aforementioned Armads after the Sacred Weapons are unlocked (and it was formerly wielded by Durban the Berserker, one of the Twelve Legends). One type of axe is used as a ranged boomerang, though it doesn't do much damage.
  • Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn:
    • Boyd deserves a mention for being Ike's axe-wielding Friendly Rival and Lancer, at least as far as the early-game goes. He's also notable for being one of the best axe users in the series, and for a very good reason.
    • In Radiant Dawn, Ike gains axes upon promotion. (And the axe became Greil's weapon of choice after he handicapped himself willingly so that he could not use a sword again.)
    • The wyvern riders switch from being lance users to axe users.
  • In Awakening, the War Cleric/War Monk class (promoted from the Clerics/Priests) can use axes as well — giving birth to the "NUNS WITH AXES" meme. There's also Walhart, who wields the unique and powerful Wolf Berg axe (which he keeps when he joins you as a Secret Character late in the game).
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, both Big Bad Garon and his daughter Camilla specialize in axes.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses the protagonist and each of the three lords specializes in a different weapon of the weapon triangle. Representing axes is Edelgard of the Black Eagles. Other notable axe-wielders include Annette of the Blue Lions and Hilda of the Golden Deer, who can wield their respective regalia axes Crusher and Freikugel. There's also a sacred axe called the Axe of Ukonvasara you can find at the beginning of Part II on all routes save Crimson Flower.
• Axes show up as the weapons of a couple of the classes in For Honor. Unsurprisingly, axe-wielding classes are mostly Vikings, namely the Raider, who uses a long-handled Dane Axe as their primary weapon, and the Berserker, who dual-wields one-handed axes. That said, the Knights have their own axe user, the Lawbringer, who carry poleaxes, the most versatile weapons ever created.
• Frostbite: Deadly Climate: One of the weapons your character can use is an axe.
• Frozen State: Your character can wield an axe in the game. It can be used to chop down trees.
• The Warrior class from Gauntlet uses an infinite supply of magical throwing axes.
• Gitaroo Man plays with this with the very first stage. Since all the characters are Musical Assassins, the first enemy is a demon wielding an axe. Not a guitar, an actual axe. He charges it up by strumming it like a guitar, but attacks you with unusually musical chopping of air.
• God of War (PS4): Having lost (hidden away, rather) his signature chain blades from the previous game, Kratos now wields a magical battle axe that can be infused with elemental forces and thrown.
• The arcade game Golden Axe, where the dwarf Gilius Thunderhead wields the titular axe (he's stuck with a boring old steel one in the home versions, though).
• While riding your airbike, you can pick up and buy axes (among many other weapons) to throw at your enemies in Data East arcade game Gondomania.
• GreedFall: Various axes are available to your character under the One/Two-Handed Heavy Weapons skill depending on their size. Looking closely at their stats shows that they deal somewhat less physical damage then the equivalent swords, but are more effective against armor and more likely to stun the enemies by the sheer force of impact.
• In Grim Dawn, taking a page from Titan Quest, features axes as melee weapons sitting squarely in the middle when it comes to damage, armor-piercing and requirements parameters. Unlike Titan Quest, it does features Two-Handed Axes, a class which includes scythes and halberds.
• Axes are one of three weapons usable by Warriors in Guild Wars, AoE attacks for Player Versus Environment gameplay. (Though hammers have the ability to knock foes down and swords have some really good skills like Dragon Slash, so they're fairly even.)
• Moraxus in Heroes of Newerth is a demon who loves axes, whether he's hitting things with one, throwing several of them at enemies, or creating a barrier that's made of axes.
• Hexen II has the Paladin use throwing axes as his green mana weapon.
• White Heart's weapon of choice in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series.
• Ajna from Indivisible uses her mother's axe as her primary weapon, though she's good with her bare hands and uses the other weapons she obtains as well. Though her heart's in the right place, Ajna has a bad habit of smashing through problems without considering the full consequences, and the heavy, destructive axe that serves as her main weapon reflects this.
• Inunaki Tunnel: You find an axe at one point in the game that you can use to cut down a tree to get across a river.
• The Jenny Fox enemies in Ittle Dew hurl axes at you every two seconds. According to a sign, they might also use them as gardening tools.
• Jade Empire has Black Whirlwind, a Sociopathic Hero with twin axes who was likely inspired by Li Kui from Water Margin.
• Jotun: A large, two-handed axe is the only weapon of Thora, a decidedly non-Horny Viking trapped in Norse purgatory. The axe proves more than sufficient to deal with the magic, elemental giants she needs to defeat in order to escape.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Lexaeus, The Brute of Organization XIII, uses an over-sized weapon referred to as a tomahawk in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II, and as an Axe Sword in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days.
  • Some Keyblades are rather axe-like in design, usually being a decorative pole that ends with a blade-like attachment at the end. Special mention goes to Master Xehanort, the Big Bad of the entire franchise, who swings around a massive Keyblade with an axe design despite possibly being the oldest known Keyblade wielder in the series, bar maybe Yen Sid.
• Kingdom of Loathing has a few axe weapons, such as the wooden axe, the denim axe, and the drywall axe. Also, players under the Avatar of Boris challenge path are restricted to using Boris's trusty axe, Trusty.
• Parceval in the Capcom arcade brawler Knights of the Round.
• Kirby:
  • In Kirby: Triple Deluxe, Masked Dedede uses a halberd in his second phase.
  • In Kirby Star Allies, Francisca uses a double-sided axe in both of her battles.
• Kona: Carl can wield a lumber axe.
• Left 4 Dead 2 has a fire axe as one of the melee weapons. The opening cutscene shows Rochelle using the pointy end on an infected mook. It's also the most common melee weapon in the game, with wide range but the slowest attack rate.
• In Legacy of the Wizard, the hero's father Xemn wields throwing axes.
• Legendary Axe for the Turbo Grafx-16, involves the barbarian Gogan who wields the legendary axe Sting, a weapon with a powerful attack that diminishes with each strike until you allow it to recharge.
• Legend of Legaia:
  • In the first game, Gala uses axes as one of his primary weapon types, along with clubs and maces.
  • In Duel Saga, Ayne wields a massive axe as big as the other party members. As his Variable Art finisher, he spins and throws the massive axe at the target.^note As he is 9-10 feet tall and extremely muscular even for his height, it's more reasonable than it sounds
• Yeah you can eventually buy a very powerful magic sword for chopping down enemies, but your most useful weapons will be thrown axes that return to you in Jaleco arcade game Legend of Makai
• Several enemies in The Legend of Zelda series use axes against Link such as Dairas, Lizalfos, Bokoblins, Iron Knuckles, Stalmasters, Gold Phantoms, and more. However, Link himself didn't get to use anything other than swords as his main weapon until The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In Breath Of The Wild one of the first weapons you have access to is a woodcutter's axe, and you're able to scavenge bigger and better ones as the game progresses.
• Firefighters in Liberal Crime Squad come equipped with fire axes (except at C+ Free Speech law, when they come equipped with M-2 flamethrowers and torch to the ground any building publishing the Liberal Guardian).
• Magic Rampage: There are a few of these, notable the Umbranian Cutter and the Lightning Axe.
• Voodoo in the 2010 Medal of Honor defaults to his hatchet for close combat. A mission late in the game has you investigating a seemingly abandoned camp where you find a dead Taliban fighter with said hatchet buried in the back of his head. Taliban fighters in the game's multiplayer mode carry hatchets for their Quick Melee attack.
• In The Matrix: Path of Neo sometimes the last wave of enemies in a training level will use throwing axes as their only weapons.
• The Robot Master Tomahawk Man from Mega Man 6, Mino Magnus from Mega Man Zero 4. King from Mega Man & Bass also wields an axe.
• In Mercenary Kings, your character can act as such with the Violence Axe weapon, which is one of the most powerful melee implements.
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has (former) Wind of Destruction Khamsin from the Blade Wolf DLC. A foul-mouthed Cyborg with a humongous chainsaw axe with a rocket booster at the back to give a speed boost or add more force to every swing.
• The Minecraft axe, though primarily a tool for chopping wood, can be used as a weapon. It takes twice as much damage in durability when used to attack, but will disable the use of a shield when swung while dashing. In Java Edition, there are more considerations; the swing rate is slower than a sword's, and it lacks the "sweep" Herd-Hitting Attack that swords have in this version, but an axe deals more damage per swing - vital in PvP battles due to reliance on critical hits (inflicted when an attack lands while falling, which means your cooldown isn't going to wear off before you land anyways) to do efficient damage.
• Minecraft Dungeons: Axes are an available weapon option. They have wider attack range than swords do, and even have a spin attack that damages all enemies from in a 360 degree radius. However, they trade the sword's speed for strength.
• Mini DAYZ has hatchets and fire axes as wieldable weapons, plus they can be used to chop down trees for various wood items. The fire axe in particular is considered an Infinity -1 Sword due to its above average battle stats (especially damage) and usefulness as a Utility Weapon, which some players will even use over the game’s Infinity +1 Sword - an actual medieval sword - since it can only be used as a melee weapon in a game where close-ranged combat with zombies and bandits is something you should avoid at all costs.
• In Miscreated, this is one of the items you can equip your character with.
• In Mitsumete Knight, this is the signature weapon of enemy General Borankio the Unshakable.
• Monster Hunter has the Switch Axe and the Charge Blade, two Swiss-Army Weapon-classes. The former is huge axe that can change into a huge heavy sword which can trigger explosions, while the other is a sword and shield set which combines into a huge axe (also triggering explosions).
• Ermac and Nightwolf from Mortal Kombat. Ermac has a plain old axe, while Nightwolf uses a tomahawk.
  • When he was brought back for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Scorpion was the first to use a weapon in a chain combo. Prior to that, characters only used weapons as special moves such as Kano's Knife Throw. Scorpion's weapon? A big, double-bladed battle axe. Since then Scorpion has dropped the axe and has since stuck to using swords to fit with his Japanese ninja origins.
• Axes of the single handed, two handed, polearm, and throwing variety are available as weapons in Mount & Blade. Most notably, the expansion, Warband, included the powerful and extremely rare (and not on merchant sale lists) Two Handed Sarranid Battle Axe, an all-metal weapon which could only be acquired by attacking high level Sarranid units and hoping it Randomly Drops from the one unit class that has a chance of carrying it.
• Subverted at one point in Neverending Nightmares. Thomas picks up a bloodstained axe in the dark and using it to... chop down wood to clear a path. Later, however, on one ending path your evil counterpart will use the same axe to One-Hit Kill you.
• Herbert Wallace, the main hero of Nightmare Creatures 2, uses what appears to be a fireman's axe to cut down and execute the supernatural beings facing him.
• Ninja: Shadow of Darkness has a short battleax as the second collectible weapon for the titular hero (right after the ever-iconic katana, of course). It's range may be short, but it can deal severe damage and kill most low-tier enemies with a couple of strikes when powered-up.
• In Nioh, one of the weapon classes is Axes, starting from huge, double-bit axes in London to classical, long-handled Japanese axes of various types and size. More often seen in the hands of enemies rather than NPCs, safe for the Obsidian Samurai (Yasuke) and Katakura Shigenaga (who wields a billhook-like poleaxe).
• Nioh 2 marks th return of the Axes weapon class alongside a new entry, the Hatchet. There are also users of both weapons, such as Yasuke and Shibata Katsuiie.
• One of the melee weapons (the best one, in fact) that can be found in Odium.
• Several enemies in Odin Sphere wield giant axes, including Aesir warriors, Berserkers, and Axe Knights.
• One Way Heroics has axes as a possible weapon. They are powerful but inaccurate. Their main use is that they do extra damage against walls, which is good when the Darkness is about to consume you and you're trapped in a dungeon. They also deal extra damage to skeletal enemies, and the Pirate class starts with one, which gives them an early-game advantage since the axe is much stronger than the other classes' starting weapons.
• In the Onimusha series we have some examples, mostly hostiles:
  • In Onimusha: Warlords, huge, minotaur-like Genma known as Oowassha are armed with humongous single-bladed axes, are slow as molasses but can hit like trucks. A variation carries double-bit axes they can throw away as a special attack, after which they rely on massive cleavers to finish the job.
  • Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny features the Oowassha again, along with Ginghamphatts' second boss fight, where he carries a huge axe.
  • The Chigo great axe in Onimusha 3: Demon Siege is Samanosuke's substitute for the BFS Enryuu as a very powerful but slow-hitting weapon which mostly attacks with swiping motions. It can also summon magma bursts within quake range. An Elite Mooks version of standard zombies appears, armed with hatchets.
  • Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams features the Genma Axemen: tall, skeletal Genma in samurai armour equipped with broadaxes which they swing in predictable, slow arcs. Their upgraded version is better armoured and can strike twice in a row.
• Outbreak The New Nightmare: Your character can use a fire axe as a weapon against monsters.
• Persona:
  • In the first Persona, the axe user is Mark/Masao Inaba.
  • Axes show up in Persona 3, possessing the greatest damage potential, but the worst accuracy rating. They are part of a group of weapons called Bludgeons, which also include hammers, maces, and a bus stop sign. And for the short time he's with your group, tough guy Shinjiro Aragaki uses an axe.
  • Persona 4: Arena has Labrys, a Robot Girl who wields a giant axe.
  • In Persona 5, Haru Okumura uses axes.
    • Persona 5 Strikers, a spin-off game of Persona 5, has a song called Axe to Grind.
• Pokémon Black and White has the pure Dragon-type Haxorus who has axe blades for teeth. Unsurprisingly, it has a whopping attack stat of 147. Several Bosses use this Pokémon, including Drayden and Iris.
• Pokémon Legends: Arceus has the Bug/Rock-type Kleavor, an evolution of Scyther in the Hisui region that turns Scyther's scythe-like forelimbs into a pair of stone axes that get Stronger with Age.
• The axe, a normal woodsman's or fire axe, is one of the most coveted items in Project Zomboid. As a weapon, it's got all-important reach (which weapons in the Blades category generally don't), multi-hit, good knockback, and used well it can often kill at one blow. But since all weapons eventually break, and axes are rather rare, you may want to resist the temptation. Only axes can fell trees for lumber, making the humble axe one of the gatekeepers of the extensive Carpentry build menu. Plus, axes are far more effective at battering down doors than most other weapons.
• Enri from Purgatory (RPG Maker) can find a demonic axe, that can grant her demonic powers when she wields it. She uses it to kill The Butcher, the Ax-Crazy Serial Killer who has been trying to hunt her down during the game.
  • In the sequel, Enri uses this to turn Giant Spiders into red splats. She tries to do the same to D-033, but ends up breaking her axe.
• Axe weapons show up Ragnarok Online as the primary weapon of choice for the Merchant class series. Of the Merchant-derived classes, only the Blacksmith line can fully utilize axes compared to the Alchemist line.
• Ravensword: Shadowlands has a selection of one-handed axes to choose from as weapons that the player can use. Certain enemies use them too.
• The executioner miniboss from Resident Evil 5 follows this trope. His axe is so large he has to lug it around Pyramid Head-style and takes huge swings at Chris, even knocking out some of his fellow Majini in the process. It also has a spiked hammerhead.
• Rune has a weapon class devoted to axes along with swords and hammers, each varying in size, damage, speed, and rune power.
• Frantz from Rusty Hearts has axes as his secondary weapon.
• While at first it was devoid of axemen, Samurai Warriors eventually added Shibata Katsuiie in 2XL (Dual Wielding axes with the ability to throw them like boomerangs), Shimazu Toyohisa in 4 (a long poleaxe with a giant blade) and Sanada Masayuki (a spear with an axe blade and a banner).
• Takeda Shingen from Sengoku Basara carries a double-bitted battle axe as big as he is (and he's pretty big). It can also create tornadoes. A closer look reveals that it has Shingen's infamous war fan embedded in it, and it's actually called "War Fan Axe" (Gunpaiono) in the original Japanese series.
• Axes are one of the equippable weapon types in Serpent In The Staglands.
• Two of the playable characters in Severance: Blade of Darkness, Naglfar and Tukaram, can use these. The latter is all about the two-handed axes: the former, being a dwarf, sticks with the one-handed ones.
• Axes are one of the available weapon options of the warrior heroes in Shadow Era.
• Shania from Shadow Hearts 3 dual wields them.
• Browser-based MMORPG Shintolin features hand axes and stone axes.
• The Rusty Axe is overall the best weapon in Silent Hill 4: The Room, as it's comparatively fast, hits pretty hard, has a good range, and its charge attack, a vicious overhead swing that Henry performs with his whole body, is the most damaging attack in the game (save for the swings of the Pickaxe Of Despair and revolver shots, both Awesome, but Impractical either because of slowness or scarce ammo), and the one that keeps you invulnerable the longest. Subverted in that it's a relatively small one-handed model (a better term for it would be a hatchet, actually).
• In Sir, You Are Being Hunted, an axe is a good backup weapon if your gun is out of ammo and you need to smash some robots to pieces.
• Skylanders:
  • Three Skylanders use axes of varying types:
    • The first Skylander to use an axe (introduced in the first game Spyro's Adventure) is the orc Voodood of the Magic element. He uses a double-bitted axe, but it also comes with the ability to fire its head while attached to a magical chain, letting him use it like a grappling hook to get closer to enemies staying at a distance. He can also infuse it with magical electricity to lay down tripwires.
    • The second Skylander to use an axe (introduced in the fourth game Trap Team) is the Life Trap Master Bushwhack, a tree elf. His axe is instead a single-bitted axe (similar to that of a lumberjack) made of Life-elemental Traptanium, letting him summon thorns with each slash to damage enemies that stay nearby and either fire exploding acorns while doing a Spin Attack or summon a leafy hut to protect and heal himself.
    • The third Skylander to use an axe (introduced in the sixth game Imaginators), is the ghoul Smasher Sensei Chopscotch of the Undead element. In contrast to the other two axe wielders, she is much smaller, but her double-bitted axe's head is considerably bigger than their weapons, and she uses its weight to do a long-lasting Spin Attack and can also use it to either attract enemies closer to her or lay down "Trails of Pain" that further damage opponents who cross them.
  • Additionally, there is a class of enemies known as Axecutioners, large ogres clad in executioner attire with massive double-bitted axes that they throw at Skylanders as boomeranging projectiles, though also have the ability to teleport, performing a Spin Attack while doing so.
• Axe is the weapon of choice of Gustav in Sol Trigger.
• The boss of Mushroom Hill 1 in Sonic 3 & Knuckles uses one to cut away pieces of wooden columns at the player.
• Redflanks in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters carry a large axe. They can also throw it, and then see it come back.
• Text-based Sryth has multiple axes, even if none are truly notable. However, one of its quests is literally named after the trope.
• Rock and Astaroth from the Soul Series. Their weapon sets often include hammers as well.
• In 1994's StarTropics: Zoda's Revenge, an axe is present, but only as a thrown weapon.
• The protagonist of the freeware Station 37 is a firefighter, and so only uses an axe, whether to chop down doors and debris, or to combat the aliens.
• In Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity, this is the weapon of the Berserker classes, along with the named characters Gallant and Viper.
• Axes are wielded by Juggerknights in Stick War 2.
• In Stranded Deep, an axe is a way of felling trees first, crude but functional weapon second. Proper axes you may find inside the wrecks obviously make for superior weapons to the crude axes you are forced to craft yourself.
• The Cannibal class in Streets of Rogue starts out with one of these. Other classes can also pick up and use these, since they are a powerful melee weapon still.
• Amazons in the fourth stage of Strider (Arcade) will either carry axes or boomerangs.
• Gremio from Suikoden, among many others.
• The Axem Rangers from Super Mario RPG.
• The Alsignos from Super Robot Wars NEO uses an axe.
• In Super Smash Bros., the Villager from the Animal Crossing series can use the axe as long as his or her tree is planted on the battlefield. This has resulted in the character becoming a Memetic Psychopath.
• In Surgeon Simulator 2013, among your surgical tools is, inexplicably, a hatchet. Said hatchet's intended use? Slicing the brain stem. Though it works pretty well for getting through that pesky skull, too. The Meet the Medic level has the Pyro's axe.
• In Surviv.io, axes are the most common melee weapon around: you can find them stuck in the tree stumps, they'll ocasionally be present inside a sealed container in an underground bunker, and a bloodied axe may sometimes be mounted on a cabin's wall in place of a shotgun. It's very much possible to cut down someone unarmed or wielding a pistol/low-powered SMG indoors, but you are still better off with a weapon out in the open. Its greatest strength is in allowing you to open containers much faster, thus saving your precious seconds in this fast-paced game.
• Barbatos Goetia of Tales of Destiny 2 has a mean axe, and a hidden special move called World Destroyer where he slams his axe down and kills everyone in one hit. Talk about cheap.
  • Presea from Tales of Symphonia is a prime example of the "Cute Bruiser with implausably huge axe". Interestingly, this tiny little girl's ability to not only lift but actually effectively wield a massive axe is justified through Applied Phlebotinum. Other examples in the Tales series include Cless Alvein, Yuri and Karol, and Rid Herschel (all primarily sword-users, but they can wield axes as well), Mary Argent, Loni Dunamis, and Innes Lorenz, whose weapon is described as an "axe blade" which can probably rival Presea's Gaea Cleaver for raw size and power.
• An axe is the default weapon in Tallowmere, and it is an all-around serviceable. It's a melee weapon, so you can only use it up close, but it can hit enemies in front of and above you, and you can swing it decently fast.
• In Tangledeep, axes can hit every foe adjacent to you, albeit at reduced damage. Some abilities allow you to do things like fling magical axes away, and have them return like a boomerang.
• The Pyro from Team Fortress 2 uses a fire axe as his melee weapon.
  • Also, the unlockable melee replacement, the Axtinguisher, is a different fire axe wrapped in barbed wire. It inflicts critical hits on burning targets - for those times when fire simply isn't enough.
  • The Third Degree is an axe that copies damage against an enemy to the Medic healing them or vice versa.
  • A community weapon update gave the Demoman the Scotsman's Skullcutter, a bloodstained two-bladed great ax with 20% more damage. It's so huge and heavy it actually slows the Demoman down, however. It also easily lops off heads on a killing blow.
  • The Demoman may also employ the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker, a giant, haunted axe with a demonic face in the blade. It also decapitates enemies on a killing blow and powers up the Demoman at the same time with each head taken.
• Phantom armors from Telepath RPG chapter 2 and ghost knights from Telepath RPG: Servants of God fights with axes.
• The marines from Quake used Axes as their melee weapons. When the original Team Fortress was developed as a mod for that game, the Medic used an axe to heal.
• In Tech Romancer, Twinzam V's Fire Formation uses a spiked battle-ax in most of its attacks, including its Final Attack where it does a V no Jigiri. Also, one of G. Kaiser's equippable weapons is called Axe Blow, which creates four axe heads around each of its fists, much like Mazinger Z can do with its Rocket Punches.
• This is the specialty of The Berserker mech in Templar Battleforce.
• In Terraria, there are plenty of axes that make surprisingly good weapons for their ability to be automatically swung and decent damage. One of them, literally called The Axe, is actually a "Flying V" guitar that functions as an actual axe AND a hammer. It also takes "an axe to grind" even more literally, perhaps too much so, as it requires an average of 200 boss kills against Plantera, with only a .5% chance of dropping, and Plantera being a fairly difficult boss.
• Axe is obviously the weapon of Classic Jason in Terrordrome the Game: Rise of the Boogeymen, though a certain input can change his weapon to a fork instead.
• In Titan Quest, Axes are part of the three main melee weapons alongside swords and maces, and sit squarely in the middle: they do more damage than swords, but less than maces, their speed is usually medium and they have a smaller chance than swords (or spears) to inflict pierce damage. From the Ragnarok expansion, Defenders can now use their ability to stun with melee attacks with Axes as well.
• Axes and Polearms are both prominent, of course, in the Total War series of games, with barbarian factions and units tending to be the biggest users of the former, and militia-class units the biggest user of the latter.
• Ultima: Ultima 4 and many of the later games had Magic Axes which are Precision-Guided Boomerang weapons that would return to your party member's hand after being thrown. Origin Systems liked this weapon so much that they had it appear in different fantasy rpg game, Times of Lore.
• Unhappy Ever After: Axes are one of the types of weapons you can equip on your characters.
• Unturned gives you a choice of two: a basic axe and a fire axe. The fire axe is less common but also a complete upgrade from the axe. Both can be turned against trees to get lumber for crafting.
• The best Melee weapon in Urban Dead. Also, the same in Dead Frontier - until you get your hands on a katana.
• In Vagrant Story, axes come in single-handed and dual-handed ("great axe") varieties.
• Hulk Davidson from Viewtiful Joe.
• The fire axe is Lee's signature weapon in the first two episodes of The Walking Dead (Telltale), until The Lethal Connotation of Guns and Others kicks in.
• The World of Darkness:
  • In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, the fire axe (available in Los Angeles, the second city) is the first weapon that does more damage than an ordinary punch. Although weaker than the sledgehammer (from Hollywood, the third area), it's also faster, making it a good choice until you pick up a katana in Chinatown (the fourth area).
  • In Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, halberds give the most bang for the buck in early stages. The drawback is requiring a heavy investment in strength.
• The Warcraft and World of Warcraft Franchises have a lot of these to go around.
• Most Orcs in Warcraft III. True, there are sword users, but orcs are mostly associated with axes in the series, grunts even having a victory animation where they flip it in the air and catch it. The Tauren Chieftain (who has a poleaxe taller than himself) even says "I have an axe to grind." upon training. On the other hand, the human Militia unit (essentially a Peasant that picked up some basic weapons and armor at the town hall), wields a small axe along with a small metal shield, contrasting the steel kite shield and sword of the standard Footman.
  • Alongside some of the units for the main factions in Warcraft III. Quite a bit of creeps have axes to them. Such as most trolls whom mostly carry around tomahawks to throw at their opponents. Alongside that there are most bandits, carry around axes or hatchets.
  • In World of Warcraft, orcs have a racial ability that increases their skill with axes.
    • "ARCANITE REAPER! HOOOO!"
    • And its cousin, the Arcanite Ripper.
    • And then there's the legendary Shadowmourne from Wrath of the Lich King.
  • The Hellscream clan has in possession of a powerful axe called 'Gorehowl', first possessed by Grommash Hellscream, who eventually used it to kill off the Pit Lord Mannoroth and releasing the demon's curse from the Orcs, and later passed down to his son Garrosh who uses it in conjunction of many of his conquest. Safe to say, they have quite a short fuse to go along with the axe.
• Warframe has not only the Dual Zoren hatchets (which can be used to craft the fire-based Twin Basolk), there is also the Scindo and its Prime Variant, the latter even stated to have been an executioner's tool.
  • Tyl Regor can use Ack and Brunt, an axe and shield combo that you can also use.
• There are multiple types of axe ghosts (the kinds that charge found swinging an axe on seeing him) in Wario Land 4, with Hotel Horror especially having a freaking ton of them (about four to every door in the hotel).
• Warriors of Might and Magic includes several powerful axes of magical nature, including the, hard-to-build Meteoric Axe and the Axe of Vim.
• Wasteland has the proton ax as its strongest melee weapon. The more common and far weaker fire axe is also present.
• Nishiki from When Yanderes Cry can obtain an axe, which helps him get around the mansion and get out the last room.
• In Wilds.io, axe is the default melee weapon; guests can only obtain others if they drop from the defeated NPCs, while registered users are eventually able to buy the others with in-game currency. Either way, it is pretty balanced in range and damage and can do an unblockable Shockwave Stomp special attack. It is also useful for cutting down trees, which nets you logs; those can be used to either repair the fort gate, or to stoke the healing stoves/campfires.
• Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries: Red Riding Hood's weapon in the game is an axe.
• You Have to Burn the Rope: The player character's main weapon. Though it does nothing of importance.
• Yunica Tovah wields a battleaxe in Ys Origin.

Visual Novels

• In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, an axe was left beside the sedated Captain, in order to lure Ace to kill him. And, in the "Ax" ending, Clover goes Ax-Crazy and slaughters the other characters including the protagonist.
• In Spirit Hunter: NG, Kubitarou of Kintoki's weapon of choice for decapitations is a large, menacing axe. This references the folklore hero Kintaro, who was known for carrying around a hatchet.

Webcomics

• Red from No Rest for the Wicked has a woodsman's axe, and she's made a hobby of hunting wolves with it.
• thog in The Order of the Stick.
• In The Brick Testament, the tenth plague of Egypt in Exodus is portrayed as God walking around in Egypt killing people with a large axe.
• Axe Cop. He has a whole school of martial arts devoted to its use; it can also be used as a skateboard and an electric guitar, and I think it can sometimes shoot fire, lasers, other axes, etc...the comic was written by a six-year-old, after all.
• Hogan of the Webcomic Crossover & Cameo Archive has appeared in many webcomics, with his trademark axe, chasing after authors who use too many cameos.
• In Wayfarers Moon, the axe is Lily's weapon of choice.
• In Our Little Adventure, Pauline's weapon of choice is a greataxe, though she used a Dwarven waraxe for awhile.
• In Guilded Age, Byron dual-wields a pair of axes.
• In El Goonish Shive, Abraham uses one to kill abominations.
• Rusty and Co.:
  • The Ancestral Weapon they are searching for.
  • Cleave-Hand. This also doubles as Hook Hand.
  • Handsome D'an the illithid, who's carrying a huge axe with him.
• Charby the Vampirate: One of the powerful magical weapons is Dinora's Axe and it's chosen wielder is Zerlocke. Like its fellows the weapon is quite capable of altering it wielder's emotions, body and behavior making its use turn him Ax-Crazy.
• Girl Genius:
  • Mamma Gkika's weapon of choice is a large-bitted battle axe called Dollink (Darling).
  • Ognian's weapon is a long-hafted one with three normal-sized heads.
  • Zeetha tells Agatha you are in serious need of some princess lesson, and "First lesson. Every princess needs a battle axe."
• In Homestuck, the Alpha-session incarnation of the Hegemonic Brute wields one against Dirk that is appropriately called "AXE TO GRIND" due to the times he's been killed off before in previous incarnations. Needless to say, he gets killed off again.
• Shorty from Skullkickers uses Dual Wields them. Notably, his axes aren't cartoonishly oversized; in fact, they aren't much bigger than hatchets.
• Waterworks: One of the weapons that the protagonist uses. Per a Running Gag, she acquires it from picking up a can of "Axe" deodorant.
• In My Life at War, Dhuvalian LIMBs wield giant axes with welding torch nozzles along the blade.
• Before his name was revealed, Aetius of The Silver Eye was lovingly known as "Axe-Man"
• The Fourth: Skava and Derk run afoul of a lumberjack with a comically sized axe at one point.
• Champions of Far'aus: Wila, the Hyperia pantheons previous Highpriestess fought with an axe.
• From the Yamara: "Oh my God! There's an axe in my head."
• In chapter 11 of Crimson Knights Erikr acquires one when she discovers it in Jikelsfortress' old armoury.
• Mara's iconic weapon is a jawbone axe, from the jawbone of a very large creature.
• Trevor (2020):
  • Dr. Maddison angrily hacks down the security terminal with a fire axe.
  • Purdy picks up the axe, and uses it to save himself when Trevor grabs him by the ankle.
• Sleepless Domain: Each member of the former Magical Girl trio known as Team Spear used a different type of polearm as their individual weapon of choice. Leana, as Sunlight Spear, wielded a halberd, a type of pole weapon that combines an axe blade with the stabbing head of a spear.

Web Original

• Ranger has the same axe he used in his universe in Arenas. He uses it to finish Grunt.
• Golgotha from Noob, who has a Psycho for Hire aspect to her personality.
• Axes are commonly used by PPC agents, though not quite as much as swords.
• Strippin prefers to use this as his default weapon for Dark Souls II.
• Mahu: In "Frozen Flame", the infamous Wolvenguard wield two-handed axes.
• Dream uses an axe against the Blazes in the Nether to kill them faster.
• Sabaton History: The "Blood of Bannockburn" video recounts how shortly before the Battle of Bannockburn properly started, the English knight Henry de Bohun tried to take out Robert the Bruce by jousting him, but fell to what host Indy Neidell refers to as "Bruce's superior battleaxe-in-the-face tactic".

Western Animation

• The Boondocks:
  • In "Stinkmeaner Strikes Back", Stinkmeaner's ghost (who was possessing Tom's body) tries to attack Robert with an ax, in a scene that spoofed The Shining.
  • In "Freedomland", Ed II holds an ax and tries to slice off Huey's foot with it.
• On The Fairly OddParents!, Vicky, as well as a few other characters, have used axes. One of Vicky's more common gags is preparing various horrors when Timmy's parents aren't looking, including grinding her executioner's axe. (When they look over, she promptly kicks the grindstone aside, holds the axe behind her back, and whistles innocently.)
• Looney Tunes:
  • The final scene of the Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner short "Fast And Furryous" features the Coyote leaning against the back of a billboard watching for the Road Runner.
  • In "Much Ado About Nutting", one of the tools the squirrel uses in his attempt to break open the shell of the coconut he is deadset on consuming is an axe. He drops the axe on said coconut... and the axe is the one splitting in two, while the coconut remains intact.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In "Headhunters", Dipper and Mabel find someone has vandalized a wax dummy of their Grunkle Stan by chopping off its head with an ax. The culprit turns out to be a bunch of vindictive living wax sculptures who were after the real Stan.
  • In the season 1 finale "Gideon Rising", the contents of Lil' Gideon's pockets include an axe.
  • In the season 2 episode "Into the Bunker", Wendy uses an axe to great effect while helping explore the bunker.
• Harry, King Hugo's right-hand man in Potatoes and Dragons, wields an axe.
• Chronozoid carries a a curved axe blade attached to an Epic Flail on Skysurfer Strike Force
• Transformers: Animated: Optimus Prime has the "Boomerang Tomahawk" version with an energon axe with an extendable handle and a rocket attached. It also fits in with the firetruck theme (his other weapons are grapples and fire-retardant foam).
• This is based on an axe made of energon that G1 Optimus could turn his hand into. It became somewhat of an iconic weapon for the character (thus why the Prime above carries one), despite the fact that it only appeared in one episode..
• In We Bare Bears, Ice Bear seems to be fond of wielding axes for different things, like cutting up his breakfast and murdering rogue vacuum robots.

Real Life

• Older Than Dirt: Hand axes were either the first or second major invention, before or after the knife and before the spear or club. Hand axes (An axe head wielded in the hand, like an axe without a handle) would be used for many of the same purposes we think of an axe being used for today. And some of them were used as weapons, even if it pretty much amounted to bludgeoning someone with a wedge-shaped rock.
• Axes symbolized power among the ancient Mediterranean peoples.
  • The labrys was a double-bitted axe which served as a religious symbol of power for the Minoans and Etruscans. Today it is also a symbol of female empowerment and lesbianism due to its association with the Minoan priestesses, who appear from surviving artefacts to have had a far more important role in their society than in the succeeding Mycenaean civilisation.
  • The Romans had the fasces. The fasces was a bundle of reeds, symbolizing the republican principle of strength through unity (a single reed breaks easily; a bundle does not) and thus the imperium (civil and military power) of the officials whose lictors (bodyguard/policemen) carried them. Outside the Pomerium (the sacred inner precincts of Rome), the fasces contained an axe blade, possibly derived from the labrys; the blade represented the imperium-holding official's power to impose the death penalty (which power he did not have in the Pomerium; only a dictator had such powers).
• The fasces later became a popular symbol of republics that saw themselves as successors in spirit to the Roman Republic, such as the United States of America (e. g. in the Capitol in Washington and on old coinage - It's situated quite prominently on the reverse (back) of the 1916 - 1945 Mercury Dime◊, for example) and the French Republic. Later also of the Fascist movement in Italy (which actually took its name from fasces). The Vichy régime in France instead of the republican fasces used a francisca (see below for its relationship to France) as its symbol: a double-bitted axe with red-white-and-blue blades and a marshal's baton as its handle.
• The stereotype of vikings being associated with axes has a fair bit of truth to it: In decentralized Scandinavia iron was expensive, so swords were mostly wielded by nobles as symbols of wealth, and spears were impractical for raids and civilian feuds. The norsemen took their axes to battle and to personal quarrels all the way up to the 19th century (mentioned in folk songs, The Icelandic Sagas, local legends, and even in the national anthem of Norway), and made polearm versions called dane axes for war. The pole-axe is present in the Norwegian coat of arms, and Telemark county weapon shows a battle axe.
• The Anglo-Saxon Huscarls at the Battle of Hastings were reputed to be carrying two-handed daneaxes, whirling them around above their heads in a show of strength. This terrified the Normans, who didn't use axes. Earlier that year, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, it is said that a single Viking warrior with a similar weapon stood on the titular bridge and held off the entire Saxon fyrd (army) on his own for some time. Never mess with a daneaxe!
• The axes of the Germans were well known to the Romans—they would throw them at the enemy like javelins with the intent of splitting some shields, then charge in with melee weapons. The Francisca got its name from its popularity among the Franks in particular; an alternate theory is the other way around, that the tribe got its name from the weapon.
• The Varangian Guard, Rus' Vikings permanently hired to guard the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire, were noted by multiple sources firstly for their height and secondly for the very large Danish axes which served as their primary weapons. To the Greek-speaking Romans, they were known as pelekyphoros phroura—literally, the axe-bearing guard.
• The Tactical Tomahawk has become popular among American military since the war in Vietnam. Much more versatile than the standard combat knife, it can be used in close quarters as a weapon or thrown in desperate situations. It can of course chop through wood if needed, or even be used as a hammer, as well as for any of the number of things—opening a can, breaking through something, excavation, or just nudging something difficult out of the way—that fall in-between.
• The Walking Axe is the closest thing to a modern polearm. Designed centuries ago by shepherds for defense, forestry work and mountaineering, it combines the tomahawk's light weight, the halberd's reach and back spike, the swinging power of a long splitting axe in one tool.
• Rukhsana Kauser in a daughter bear moment used this to kill a terrorist who was threatening her parents.
• Lizzie Borden was a suspect in the axe murders of her parents in 1892. After a short trial, a jury declared her not guilty. However, many people believed she got away with murder (and many still do even today).
  Lizzie Borden took an axe
  And gave her father forty whacks
  And when she saw what she had done
  She gave her mother forty-one
• The last criminal to be executed in Finland from civilian crimes was Toivo "Kirves" Koljonen, a fugitive prisoner who killed a family of six with an axe - the father of the family had been conscripted in the army. He was executed by firing squad along with Soviet infiltrators in 1943. The word kirves means "axe" in Finnish.
• For a different kind of "fighting", the ax is an essential tool of firefighters: used to hack through doors and debris, break padlocks, etc. Also, in most civilized countries, authorities will always frown when people use or carry in public implements like the machete, kukri or Bowie knife and other stuff which looks too martial, even for mundane woodcutting purposes. Axes and hatchets on the other side are regarded as just tools.
• Symbolic in ancient imperial China. An axe is given to a general and used to perform rites signaling that a fight is about to start.
• While Samurai were usually associated with katana or lances, broad axes known as Masakari◊ weren't unheard of, though they were usually employed to break down barricades, as in combat they lacked the versatility of a sword and the reach of a spear. For the latter, a variation known as Fuso◊ or Axe-Spear did exist, though apparently it had a more ceremonial value. Finally, wandering ascetics known as "Yamabushi" carried axes with them both as self defense and as a tool to gather wood and open a path in the forest.
• On July 13, 1941, Red Army soldier Dmitriy Ovcharenko was hurrying back to his unit with a cart full of ammo and supplies, when he was intercepted by two German trucks containing about 50 soldiers and three officers. One officer knocked his rifle out of his hands and began to interrogate him. Suddenly, Ovcharenko grabbed an axe he had in the cart and decapitated the officer in a single blow. As Germans froze in shock and horror, he immediately produced three grenades from the cart and tossed them at the trucks, killing 21 more and making the survivors, including both officers, scatter and flee. Ovcharenko then pursued a fleeing officer, lopped his head off as well (the third officer escaped), took all their documents, plans and maps and delivered them to his commander along with supplies. He was made the Hero of Soviet Union◊ for that.
• The Hutsul culture of Ukraine is strongly identified by the type of axe that men traditionally carried everywhere, called a bartok. It has a small double-head and a long handle.
• When Sweden entered the Thirty Years' War, all soldiers were required to have a sword. However, since the equipment was paid for by the village in which the soldier lived, many skipped the sword for economical reasons and rocked a Musket/Axe combo instead. Since most of the soldiers were peasants, axes were cheap and easy to come by.
• Carry A. Nation, an early 20th Century American female activist and Dry Crusader, (in)famously vandalised several bars and other drinking establishments with a hatchet.
• Visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress Mamah Borthwick, her two children, and four workers were murdered at Taliesin, the home Wright built for her, by a mentally unstable servant. He set fire to the home and killed the people who emerged from the flames with an axe. He never gave a motive for the murder spree.

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