History Main / ImprovisedArmour

* In ''LeagueOfExtraorinaryGentlemen,'' Mr. Hyde uses a steel door in order to block enemy bullets.

** ''[[HeroSystem Post-Apocalyptic Hero]]'' gives its' front cover character a Stop sign shield and a helmet that started life as sporting equipment.

* In ''PlantsVsZombies'', some of the zombies have obtained armour that makes them more powerful, such as traffic cones, metal buckets, American football gear, screen doors, bobsleds...[[spoiler:a HumongousMecha]].

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A CrazyPrepared od DisasterScavenger character makes [[BulletproofVest body armour]] or a [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe shield]] out of [[MacGyvering materials to hand]], quite possibly to back up an ImprovisedWeapon.

A CrazyPrepared character makes [[BulletproofVest body armour]] or a [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe shield]] out of [[MacGyvering materials to hand]], quite possibly to back up an ImprovisedWeapon.

* When {{Deadpool}} wore a bunch of frozen meat to beat Bullseye. In his own words. "I am the meat".
* An issue of ''ThePunisher'' (One of the Summer Specials back from the late 80's - Early 90's) had the titular character fighting an evil school principal with a penchant for handing out guns to his students (don't ask). This (like many fights in schools) gets dragged to the library, where The Punisher decided that to survive the situation, he needed protection. A little duct tape and some textbooks later, we have the glorious invention of '''book armor!'''.

* Unable to acquire an armored vehicle, Michael Westen of ''BurnNotice'' once filled the insides of an SUV's doors with phonebooks.
** This was deemed plausible by the MythBusters. It worked quite well, but you'd need so many phonebooks to cover the windows it's [[AwesomeButImpractical impractical for]] RealLife.

* Pick a ScavengerWorld, any scavenger world. One post-apocalyptic ''{{D20 Modern}}'' setting featured illustrations of thugs using American football shoulderpads for armor and a Stop sign for a shield.

** Used in larger scale in WorldWarII. Tankers would weld spare tread links onto their tanks or even use sandbags. Later, when shoulder-launched anti-tank weeapons became more common they would use thin metal sheets or wire mesh as socalled slatt-armor to detonate the shaped charges away from the tanks armor.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly Ned Kelly]]. His homemade armour didn't do him much good, though.
** Kelly was taken down when he was shot in the ankle, one of the few areas he was unable to cover. His armour showed signs of over twenty direct hits, several to vital areas, and all of them had been stopped by the heavy metal. Overwhelming numbers on the side of the police decided it, but the armour was far from useless.
*** Ofcourse it also slowed him down and tired him, and generally hindered his actions, as well as protected him.

* During the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_hollywood_shootout North Hollywood shootout,]] both of the bank robbers wore full suits of patchwork body armor, including bullet-proof vests wrapped around their legs.

* Convicted NZ murderer [[http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/3351986/No-penalty-for-attack-by-Burton] Graeme Burton] pack newspapers and magazines under his prison uniform when he stabbed another inmate.

* Pick a ScavengerWorld, any scavenger world. One post-apocalyptic ''{{D20 Modern}}'' setting featured illustrations of thugs using American football shoulderpads for armor and a Stop sign for a shield. In ''{{Fallout}} 3'', Super Mutants wear bits of tire as shoulder guards, while their Behemoths wield car doors as bucklers.

* There are many examples in the {{Fallout}} 'verse, but the most obvious are the Raider armours from Fallout 3. Highlights include using sieves as a bikini, a cow skull as a shoulder pad and an empty shell of a spherical hovering robot as a helmet.

* In ''Batman,'' Bruce Wayne hides a small silver tea-tray inside his jacket, as body-armor against the Joker's gun.

* In ''Total Recall,'' Quaid (Arnold) uses a dead innocent bystander as a human shield to stop enemy bullets by holding up the dead body from falling.
* In ''League of Extraorinary Gentlemen,'' Mr. Hyde uses a steel door in order to block enemy bullets.

[[AC:{{Advertising]]

* A recent ''{{Strongbow}}'' advert had a guy giving a {{Braveheart}}-esque RousingSpeech to massed ranks of tradesmen with suitably working class {{Improvised Weapon}}ry and armour - the shield wall is made up of satellite dishes and dustbin lids, various "soldiers" are armed with spirit levels, paint rollers and garden tools, and most of them are wearing hard hats.