Baguette Beatdown

Violence is her bread and butter.

The hero is walking away from his triumphant victory at the local grocer with his spoils and is attacked. He has no weapon to defend himself with, but fortunately he just bought some ISO-Standard Urban Groceries, so he improvises and pulls out his trusty baguette to demonstrate that pain is not just the French word for bread.

After all, bread is the staff of life. Bonus points if the opponent grabs one too, cuing a Sword Fight. Same if the victor takes a bite of the weapon on the way from the battlefield.

A Sub-Trope of Nerf Arm, Edible Bludgeon, and Food Fight. A person using such a weapon may be a Chef of Iron, while anyone who can bake a loaf capable of concussing someone is a Lethal Chef.

Not what is meant by a Cockney hitting someone with his "Brown Bread".

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Pictured above is a scene from episode 5 of Zombie Land Saga, in which Kotaro makes his morning greeting as a stereotypical Frenchman carrying a baguette, which he uses to smack Ai in the head for snarking about it. Ai immediately retaliates by grabbing the baguette from Kotaro's hand and outright clobbering him with it, knocking him to the ground and breaking the baguette.

Comic Books

• The Boys is not a series where you would expect this trope to be deployed, but during The Frenchman's reminisces, we get Le Saintes Des Haw-Haw, where Frenchmen settle their differences by jousting on Bicycles, using baguettes as lances. Frenchie claims that his father was killed by his childhood enemy thrusting a rock-hard stale croissant into the front wheel of the bicycle, which (if true) would count as de-nerfing this trope. Then again, he is just plain crazy (as well as Ax-Crazy)...
• In the comic book version of The Tick, Paul the Samurai bakes a baguette around his sword to sneak it past customs. When fighting ninja later on, he doesn't bother removing the outer bread coating (though he does eventually eat it).

Comic Strips

• In a Garfield strip from 1980, Garfield enjoys "Playtime" with various foods. The second panel is him offering to "... take that machine gun nest out with my trusty bazooka here." The bazooka in question is a baguette. In another strip, Garfield shows Jon a weird lump in the tablecloth and offers him a baguette so he can flatten it. Right before Jon does it, he suddenly notices that Odie is missing...
• In Peanuts, after Peppermint Patty returns from France, she takes a loaf of French bread to class and accidentally knocks Marcie off her seat.

Fan Works

• The aptly-named Miraculous Ladybug fanfic Brought Down by Baguettes: Marinette's parents beat the stuffing out of Hawk Moth using a bread paddle and several rock-hard stale baguettes.
• In The Family that Chooses You Harry deliberately mangles the pronunciation of several French picnic foods and Alicia chases after him while hitting him with a baguette.
• The Infinite Loops: One Star Wars loop has the Jedi's lightsabers replaced with baguettes, for no readily apparent reason (possibly based on the Dead Ringers example mentioned below). This temporarily drives Obi-Wan mad.

Films — Live-Action

• In Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers (don't worry if you never heard of it), Chong's character discovers the weapon potential of day-old french loaves.
• In Clerks, Dante and Randal have a knock-down drag-out in the Quick Stop, during which Randal whacks Dante across the face with a loaf of bread.
• There's a brief Baquette duel in the So Bad, It's Good B-Movie Dead Right when the main protagonist chases down the serial killer in a supermarket.
• In Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, there is a scene where Herbie is waiting at a stoplight at an intersection when a truck driver gets a French woman carrying some groceries angry at him. She proceeds to pound on the side of the truck with a baguette, causing no obvious damage to the bread or to the truck. It does result in the Love Bug getting dirty.
• In Johnny English Strikes Again, Johnny does this to a hapless street vendor while wearing a VR headset.
• A minor example in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again: during the musical number for "Waterloo", Harry grabs a baguette (appropriate, as it takes place in a French restaurant) and mock-duels with a waiter.
• The Toxic Avenger: Even though it's probably not something he is proud of, Michael Jai White can be seen in the video example below, during one of his earliest on-screen appearances, invoking this trope against homeless people.

Literature

• Discworld:
  • Battle Bread is a specialty of dwarven bakers. Of course, since gravel is one of the primary ingredients, it's also almost completely inedible, and is more effective as either a blunt instrument or a motivational tool. "Well, we could camp here for the night and dig out the bread for dinner... or we could keep going and see if we run across a convenient deer or berry patch or something. Failing that, we could eat our own feet." Some pieces are specifically designed for war. For dwarfs, bread baking is an art of warfare.
  • A new revelation, in The Complete Discworld Atlas, is that there is such a thing as Dwarf Chocolate, which shares a catering philosophy with Dwarf Bread. It is also used as a weapon of war. It takes the form of a long rectangular block, with a line of serrated triangles of rock-hard chocolate rising from it, which in combat is used as a sword or a club. It also contains nuts. There is a suspicious resemblance to Toblerone.
• In Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small novel Squire, Kel and company batter Neal with baguette-type loaves of bread because he won't shut up about how hot the queen is (and is going into a lengthy quote on the subject of hot queens).

Live-Action TV

• Almost Live!:
  • Used in an episode of Mind Your Manners with Billy Quan.
  • Also a baguette No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in this Special-K moment.
• An episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm ends with Larry successfully fending off a mugger using a loaf of French Bread.
• Dead Ringers: "Your bakery products are weak, old man!"
• The Goodies episode "Kung-Fu Kapers" (the Ecky Thump episode) has Tim briefly make use of a French martial art (called Oh-Hon-Hee-Hon or something like that) that involves hitting the opponent with a baguette... it has no effect whatsoever! Note that Ecky Thump is a "martial art" Bill learned when he was younger that basically revolves around hitting people with black pudding.
• In Heroes, Hiro tries to defend himself against his katana-wielding father with a baguette. It works about as well as you'd expect.
• In one episode of Kaamelott, King Arthur tries cutting a loaf of bread but can't even dent it with his knife. He is then informed that the peasants are revolting, and hadn't brought fresh bread to the castle for weeks. Arthur leaves the table to have a serious discussion with the rebels — and, after reflection, pick up the stale bread as a bludgeon.
• Kamen Rider Zi-O: Geiz grabs Sougo at breakfast and threatens to slice his throat with half of a baguette from the breakfast table. Sougo even runs a finger along the cut edge to check its sharpness.
• Leverage:
  Nate: Did you just kill a guy with an appetizer?
  Eliot: I dunno, maybe.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Shot at Dawn", a pair of wheelchair-bound old duffers from Feuding Families get into a jousting match with baguettes that interrupts Inspector Barnaby's dinner.
• M.I. High: In "Don't Cook Now", the MI High team get in a fight in the kitchen of a restaurant. Oscar squares off against one of the bad guys who is wielding a pair of baguettes, picking up a baguette of his own to defend himself.
• The Nanny: Fran was being forced to babysit this horrible little brat (her boss is a theater producer, the brat was the son of a critic.) He is pulling around Gracie by the hair, so Fran stops him by beaning him with a baguette.
  "Put the bagel down and step away from the breadbox!"
• Psych: During Shawn's fight with the rednecks at the cultists' farm stand, he grabs a pair of baguettes to defend himself.
• In the first episode of She Spies, D.D. is forced to fight a man who grabs a fencing foil. D.D. grabs a large baguette and proceeds to defeat him. A little later, it is shown to be subverted, as the loaf of bread was a prop from a movie set, and had been baked around a lead pipe.
• When Things Were Rotten: In "The Capture of Robin Hood", Robin attempts to use a baguette to defend himself against the Sheriff's sword. He winds up with sliced bread.

Music Videos

• A loaf of bread is among the Edible Bludgeons and Improvised Weapons used in the Beastie Boys video for "Ch-Ch-Check It Out".
• "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)" by Benny Hill features a Food Fight Cock Fight between Ernie (Errrniie!) and his rival Two-Ton Ted from Teddington, a bread delivery man.
  Now Sue, she ran between 'em, and she tried to keep 'em apart
  And Ernie, 'e pushed her aside, and a rock cake caught him underneath his heart!
  He looked up, in pained surprise, and the concrete-hardened crust
  Of a stale pork pie caught him in the eye, and Ernie bit the dust.

Puppet Shows

• On an episode of Fraggle Rock, the Gorgs are having lunch outside. When Boober and Wembley are discovered in the garden, Junior attempts to thump them with a loaf of French bread.

Tabletop Games

• One less-than-serious article in an April edition of Dragon magazine included an exaggeration: the garlic bread golem!

Video Games

• Should you eat the Stale Baguette in Kingdom of Loathing, you are mugged and beaten with it. You lose some hit points and Meat, but you still get the extra Adventures.
• In Kingdom o' Magic, in order to depose the High Steward of Minar Tragedy you have to get a sword baked into a baguette so you can get it past the guards.
• LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has an unlockable extra that replaces all lightsabers with baguettes.
• In Octogeddon, the massive robot Enemy Mime in Paris has an attack during which it strikes Octogeddon with a gigantic baguette.
• The Other: Airi's Adventure: Baguettes are one of the weapons that only someone with the Cook class can use. Presumably when using a physical attack, this is what happens.
• Loaves of bread are available as weapons in Phantom Brave. With proper fusion, they can be quite powerful, granting the wielder a wide range of techniques.
• The MMORPG RuneScape used to have a random event called the Sandwich Lady. Every so often she would appear out of nowhere and offer you one of a selection of treats (only one of which was actually useful for healing past level 10). If you picked the wrong one (or if you ignored her), she would knock you unconscious (guess what with) and you would wake up in a random city. Fortunately, this event has since been removed; she is now the owner of a bakery stall that you can steal from. However, if she catches you, she'll still hit you with her baguette, though this time it will not knock you out but instead alert a nearby guard to attack you.
  • In Old School RuneScape, a stale baguette is a Joke Item that can be used to whack other players.
• In one of the competitions between Hu Delta Phart and Getta Loda Yu in the third game of The Spellcasting Series, you win a fight by casting a spell turning the lead Yu's weapon from a lead pipe into a loaf of bread (and a modified version of the spell turning the head Phart's weapon from a banana into a sword).
• In Tibia, there is a club weapon called "Stale Bread of Ancientness". You guessed it, it's a baguette.
• Mimi Baker/Mimmy Bread from Tales of Legendia uses a baguette as her weapon of choice when she shows up in the arena. She also uses renamed versions of Chloe's artes, such as Tiger Bread (Tiger Blade), and Bread Rain: Alpha (Sword Rain: Alpha), which she calls out appropriately.
• The classic LucasArts point and click adventure game Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders features a stale baguette that could be used to kill a two-headed squirrel. You receive the baguette by annoying a baker into throwing it at you. The bread breaks the sidewalk.

Web Animation

• In the Flash Power Rangers parody Go Go Parody Rangers!, the team's Megazord's Power Sword is a baguette!
• RWBY has the quite-literal Food Fight in the first episode of Volume 2, where besides just throwing food at each other, the members of Teams RWBY and JNPR also go to melee range, grabbing foods that simulate their weapons of choice. The sword-wielding Blake and Pyrrha play it title-straight while Ren uses two leeks in place of his paired daggers, Yang dons a pair of turkeys as boxing gloves, and Nora creates a warhammer by spearing a watermelon on a stick.
• The Spy Fights Godzilla ᶠᵒʳ ˢᵒᵐᵉ ʳᵉᵃˢᵒⁿ: At one point during the battle between Godzilla and the Kaiju-sized Spy, the latter whacks the former with a giant baguette.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: Not shown but implied when the Jägers are preparing for an attack on Mechanicsburg and they're all carrying or grabbing weapons, one of them is leaving a bakery with a baguette held high.
• France in Polandball will frequently wield a baguette, possibly with a nail in it.
• Scary Go Round's briefly featured a set of vigilantes including the Butcher, Baker, and Candlestick Maker. Baguette whack
• Sluggy Freelance would like to remind you to make sure it's a baguette and not a sandwich before fighting with it.
• Swords has the recurring character of the Bread Knight, whose running gag is to ask buying weapon, shield, armor, etc. to the entirely wrong people. Starting with asking for a sword at a bakery, and seen brandishing a baguette for the rest of the comic.
• A running gag or nearly so early in Swords and Sausages. When the "heroes" first appear, they threaten guards with stale bread, then beat one, then narrowly dodge some thrown stale bakery, and are chased by guards and a loaf-armed baker.

Web Original

• In Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk, the Ranger inadvertently attacks a weremole with a tuna sandwich. It ends badly for him.
• Kass Basher (formerly titled "Whack-A-Kass"), a Neopets minigame, uses a baguette as one of the "baseball bats".

Web Videos

• Jack & Dean's Baking Bad short film climaxes in a ridiculously impressive Baguette fight between the two protagonists. It started with Dean being high on bread and flour, and still doesn't make very much sense in context.
• Benzaie of Channel Awesome frequently references Baguette Fighting as France's national sport.
• The French amateur series France Five, an Affectionate Parody of Sentai shows, has amongst its Five-Man Band the hero "Yellow Baguette". In the first episode, he fights with a sword shaped like a baguette, before switching to croissant boomerangs in later ones.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Puss in Boots: In "Brothers", Toby tries to help Puss fighting a figure cloaked in shadows by hitting it with a baguette, but ends up clonking the cat instead.
• In an episode of Codename: Kids Next Door, Numbuh Five grabs two baguettes to fight Stickybeard in a grocery store. The villain mocks her for choosing a "sword" made of such a soft material. She retaliates by using the baguettes to knock all the cans off nearby shelves, and onto helpless Stickybeard.
• It's revealed in The Loud House episode "Cheater by the Dozen" that Lori did this to Lynn after the latter incorrectly claimed they were out of bread.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Forced Kin", Mojo Jojo uses a baguette to whack a hapless grocery store employee. At the climax of the episode, he flies into an Unstoppable Rage and manages to beat the apparently-invincible villain with his bare hands and a baguette, culminating in a slow-motion final blow.
• Wakfu episode 8 "Xav the Baker" pushes this into a whole new level with a ninja-baker fighting by means of a giant Bread Golem.

Real Life

• As a general rule of thumb, any French bread more than two days old can get pretty hard, making it a valid candidate for this trope.
• Live demonstration of this trope.
• A joking version of this was used in the one and only battle of the Conch Republic War of Independence (Key West, Florida, 1982; TOW has the story). As a protest against a US Customs roadblock, Key West declared independence and bonked someone in a US Navy uniform over the head with a loaf of Cuban bread (similar to a baguette but longer and softer), then surrendered. Baguette Beatdowns have appeared from time to time since, including a 1995 protest against an unannounced army reserve exercise.
• Have you ever... been so pissed you hit a cop with French bread?
• Inverted by Egyptian protesters, as some with nothing to use as a helmet strapped bread to their heads.^note Gives a whole new meaning to "bread riot"... This is less loony than it sounds, though, since Egyptian bread is a thick, tough brown pita that could easily provide the same degree of protection as hard leather. Still, as plausible as it might be, you kinda have to admit that it looks hella funny, which is why when a newspaper photographer miraculously captured the magic moment in which a bread-helmet-wearing Yemeni protester was seen yelling at the top of his lungs and Milking the Giant Cow, the image immediately went viral. If you want any further details on this, just read Know Your Meme's page on the so-called "Bread Helmet Man".
• South African rusks aren't the soft, super-sweet baby treats closer to cookies/ biscuits you're probably thinking of. (For those, you need to ask for Marie biscuits.) Oh, no: real rusks are yeasted cobblestones you can easily break teeth on if you forget to dunk them enough, and which can last years if stored properly. They have served as ad hoc thrown weaponry at many a riot (it's a packed lunch, not a weapon — honest!). Also, the crumbs make for very irritating practical jokes of the "thumb tack on seat" kind. Just ask anybody dealing with kids after break, especially if it was muesli rusks.

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