Blow Gun

This is why you lock the doors at night, kids.

A tube used to shoot darts at targets by blowing into it, often used by hunter-gatherer tribes. Expect poison and tranquillizer darts.

Its near-silence makes it an ideal exotic weapon for a hunter or sneaky assassin who doesn't want to give away their position, while the pipe's simplicity makes it easy to conceal or disguise as something else. It can even be used as a snorkel so the assassin can hide underwater.

Two potential gags are for the user to accidentally inhale the dart or for the target to grab the end of the gun and blow the dart back.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Berserk, the smallest one the Bakiraka assassins sent into the sewers to kill Griffith uses a blow gun as his main weapon. He peeks out of his hiding place and shoots a poisoned dart at Griffith, but Charlotte leaps in the way, which creates a problem for the assassins who are trying to bring her back alive.
• Used by a guy in Hunter × Hunter, who uses it to shoot a paralyzing dart at Gon.
• Jinzō Konchū Kabuto Borg VxV: In episode 30, the assassin sent by the father of Kameida Carmeda tries to kill Ryūsei with a blow gun.
• Ka Ryo Ten from Kingdom uses the blow gun she obtained from an assassin as her main weapon.
• Princess Mononoke: Jigo's men use blow gun pipes which they keep disguised as parasols when not in use.
• Ranma ½: Ranma uses one to shoot down the Principal's hot air balloon in the manga.
• Toriko: Gourmet Corps Sous-Chef Greenpatch uses a giant straw (obtained from the proboscis of a giant mosquito) as his weapon of choice, aide by his incredible lungs. While he normally uses it to suck in things and eat them, he can also use it as a non conventional blowpipe to shot powerful blasts of compressed air powerful enough to vertically drill through an entire island and reach the deepest caverns of the Earth.

Comedy

• One famous sketch of Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo has them as doctors (of the deadly end of the spectrum) trying to use a lullaby as a substitute for anesthesia. When that fails (because they accidentally ends up singing out loud after the patient fell asleep), they resort to plan B: curare, deployed with a blowgun and dart.

Comic Books

• All-Star Comics: Hartford Dormley uses a blow gun to inflict his captured partner Sam Brent with Professor Elba's "tonic" in order to prevent him from confessing anything about their racket to the Justice Society of America or the Police. The use of a blow gun means there's no noise to give away the cause of Sam's sudden lack of lucidity.
• Batman: In one possible future during the Armageddon 2001 series, the Joker frames Batman for the Penguin's murder by having a henchman shoot a poison dart this way, thus making it appear as if Batman knocked Penguin off a side railing with his Batarang and made the villain fall to his death.
• The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones: In issue #9, a Hovito Indian attempts to kill Dr. Jones on The Precarious Ledge atop a New York skyscraper using one of these.
• The Smurfs: Used by Papa Smurf in the comic book story "The Black Smurfs" (and its English version "The Purple Smurfs") to shoot an antidote pellet into an infected Smurf's mouth.
• Spider-Man: In Web of Spider-Man #1-3, the Vulturions (four criminals who learned to copy Vulture's wings) use those. The curare is fatal for humans — Spider-Man is too tough to die, but gets stiffer with every dart and actually comes close to succumbing.
• Tintin: Used by the Arumbaya natives of San Theodoros in The Broken Ear and Tintin and the Picaros, as well as by the villains in Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Blue Lotus.
• White Sand: The Kerztians use a more advanced version called zinkallin, in which the darts are shot from multiple tubes by compressed air.

Comic Strips

• One Charles Addams cartoon depicts a white explorer being subjected to a "blowgun wedding" by a tribe of pygmies.
• The Far Side: A strip has a native using a white explorer as a practice target while giving his son blowgun lessons.

Films — Animation

• The Kakamora in Moana use blowguns with tranquilizer darts as part of their attack. However, the tubes are very short, which might explain why they don't hit anyone. Except their own chief.

Films — Live-Action

• Used in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Ace is shot with dozens of little darts (with hilarious effects) before he passes out.
• The natives in Aguirre, the Wrath of God keep sniping at the conquistadors on the raft with these.
• In Apocalypto, Jaguar Paw improvises one with leaves. He creates the darts with thorns and poisons them with frog venom.
• Mini-me uses one on Mustafa in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
• In Blonde Savage, Tonga uses a blowgun to deliver a *Twang* Hello to Harper and Berger by firing a dart into the tree beside Berger's head. Realizing they are not alone, they panic and run.
• Used in Hudson Hawk (by CIA agents, who should logically have something better), with explicit mention of curare, which is treated as a temporary paralyser. Because it was improperly prepared, the victims recover sooner than anticipated.
• Indiana Jones:
  • Used by the Hovitos in Raiders of the Lost Ark in the opening sequence.
  • Also seen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the tomb sequence. Indy does the "blow the dart back" trick.
• Tim Allen's character in Jungle 2 Jungle contrives to shoot himself in the leg with semi-paralytic darts not once but twice. Once was mildly amusing, twice makes you despair for the writers.
• Legend: The goblin Blix uses one to fire a poisoned dart into a unicorn and kill it so he can cut off its horn.
• The old Charles Bronson movie, Love And Bullets have Bronson's character using a blowpipe on an assasination mission to take down his targets stealthily. He even scored a Moe Greene Special into someone's eye via blowpipe.
• The Pelegostos of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest use blowguns. One is used to knock Will out after he stumbles into one of their snares.
• In Primal, Frank uses a blowgun and darts dipped in curare to recapture the escaped monkeys. He later uses it in his final showdown against Loffler.
• In The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Colonel Moran's weapon of choice is some kind of sophisticated blowgun, rather than an air rifle as it was in the original story.
• In The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes' Greatest Case, Tonga is an expert with the blowgun and uses it to murder Bartholomew Sholto.
• In What a Carve Up!, the murderer kills Janet by shooting her with a curare-tipped dart fired from a blowgun.
• In Young Sherlock Holmes, an assassin uses a blowgun to shoot darts tipped with a hallucinogenic drug.

Literature

• Agatha Christie's Death in the Clouds featured a blowgun on a plane as the apparent murder weapon (it turned out the poison dart was pressed into the victim by hand). It wouldn't have worked anyway as real blowguns are several feet long (a policeman trying to reconstruct the scene by discreetly bringing the short tube to his mouth gets the entire plane staring at him), a fact that was self-deprecatingly pointed out in a later book.
• Ben Snow: In "The Edge of the Year 1900", a blowgun dart coated in curare is used as the murder weapon. The murderer actually pressed the dart into the victim in the dark. Using the dart was an attempt to frame the blowgun's owner.
• In The Colour of Magic, the leader of the Assassin Guild uses a blowgun as his weapon.
• In one Forgotten Realms novel, the pirate hunter Captain Deudermont is darted by a thug who wanted to claim the black-market bounty on him. Apparently, his darts are made from cat claws (don't ask how those could be used as darts) and no other ammunition is compatible with his blowgun.
• In Midworld and its sequel, human hunters on the green world use rifle-like blow guns called "snufflers", modeled on distant memories of their colonial ancestors' firearms. They're powered by tank seeds, which contain air bladders that burst when punctured, propelling their toxic-thorn projectiles with great force.
  • On a different planet in the same setting, the natives use a weapon that looks like a blowgun but actually isn't. Because of the way their lungs work, they can't produce a powerful gust of air when they exhale, so they outfit the "blow gun" with stretchy vines that allow it to act as a blow gun-slingshot hybrid.
• The Hunger Games: Maysilee Donner, one of District 12's female tributes in the Fiftieth Games (which featured twice the usual number of tributes) found a blow gun and darts in her pack. Taking advantage of the fact that everything in the arena that year (with the exception of rain water and food obtained at the Cornucopia or via sponsors) was poisonous, she quickly turned the blow gun into a lethal weapon.
• Shadow Police: In Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, the killer recreates the scene from The Sign Of Four by shooting one the victims with a poison dart from a blowgun.
• In The Sign of the Four, Tonga uses poison blow darts.
• Mraize of The Stormlight Archive is a spy usually seen with a blowgun, and in his first meeting he tests Shallan by asking her what its use it. He uses it to kill nearby cremlings, which turns out to be Properly Paranoid given there's not one but two factions spying through them or disguised as them. His mentor Iyatil tries to kill Brightlord Amaram with one, but is foiled by Talenel catching the darts out of the air.

Live-Action TV

• Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo: Parodied in a TV sketch of the comic trio where the blowgun is used to anesthetize a patient.
• Andor: The apparently orphaned youths on Kenari outfit themselves with long blowguns before approaching a downed Republic starship. They use the blowguns to kill a Republic officer after he shoots and kills their leader without warning.
• Deadliest Warrior: One of two long-range weapons used in the "Spartan vs. Ninja" episode by the latter party (the other being the shuriken).
• Doctor Who: The Doctor uses one against the assassin in "The Deadly Assassin".
  • Leela, one of the Fourth Doctor's companions, is skilled with a variety of weapons, including a blow gun which she uses to fire deadly Janus Thorns.
• Game of Thrones:
  • The Faceless Man known as "Jaqen H'ghar" used a poison dart fired from a blowgun to kill Amory Lorch at Harrenhal (on the request of Arya Stark).
  • The Crannogmen (a unique sub-group of Northerners, residing in forested swampy terrain), are known to use poisoned blow darts in their traditional guerrilla tactics. In the words of Meera Reed, “A well-placed dart can be as deadly as any blade”.
• Hill Street Blues: In an episode-opening gag, Hunter gets one of these as a gift in the mail, and of course ends up getting accidentally shot with it, which knocks him out.
• Jimmy Kimmel Live!: Used in a parody of the soap TV series Scandal. [1]
• MythBusters made these in the ninja special.
• The New Avengers: Used by an assassin in "Target!". Gambit turns the tables on him by blowing down the end of the blow gun, causing him to swallow the poison dart.
• Survivorman: A genuine Yanomami hunting blowgun was tried out in the Brazilian jungle.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The Unearthed Arcana (1985) supplement introduced the blowgun (which was 4-7 feet long) as an available weapon. The needle did only one Hit Point of damage, and was therefore only effective if poisoned.
• Mechanical Dream has the Biosniper from the Wilderness Bestiary supplement. The Biosniper is a Weirdsmith weapon in the form of a blowgun made from a still-living plant and does tremendous damage per shot, hitting harder than a ballista. As a living thing, it requires a bit of water every so often to stay alive.
• Traveller: One magazine article includes a Tech level 0 blowgun that costs zero credits, meaning there's no reason not to give your character one. It only deals nonlethal damage, and is consequently designed for being loaded with poisoned darts.
• Warhammer Fantasy has these as a Wargear option for Skinks, and a Huge version for mounting on dinosaurs.

Video Games

• 9 Monkeys of Shaolin has enemies using bamboo blowpipes trying to hit you with ranged projectiles in the earlier stages, though they're later replaced by archers and riflemen.
• The Apple ][ game Aztec revolved around robbing an Mayincatec tomb. In the deepest levels there were 8-bit natives armed with blow guns. The stun effect was deadly: if the native didn't get the player, the wildlife probably would.
• In Civilization Revolution, one of the barbarian tribes you can encounter has their spokesman threaten you with a blow gun.
• Dark Souls has the Blowdart Snipers in Blighttown, who are one of the major reasons the level is so hated. They wear camouflage that makes them hard to see against the dark background, their blowguns are very quiet and the darts are easily missed, especially in a chaotic fight. While the darts don't do any damage, they inflict the Toxic status effect, which is super-poison that can't be cured by the normal means and drains your health about ten times more quickly. Unless you have the rare cure for toxin, getting Toxic inflicted is essentially a death sentence. The only mercy is that they do not respawn like most enemies after they're killed.
• Dead Cells: Blowgunners are found in Morass of the Banished. They blow darts from below and jump between platforms to get in range. You can get the Blowgun weapon blueprint from them, which deals poison damage and deals critical hits if it hits the enemy's back.
• The Diablo series:
  • Diablo II has pygmy enemies that uses blow darts to attack the player character.
  • Diablo III: The witch-doctor uses one for their starting ability.
• Donkey Kong 64: Lanky's Grape Blowgun is essentially this, though it doesn't function much differently from the other Kongs' ranged weapons.
• In earlier versions, blowguns were an option in Dungeon Crawl. They didn't do much damage, but were excellent for inflicting status conditions (most commonly poison, but some other Status Effects were also available) from a distance without relying on magic. Curare needles were particularly effective, as they also inflicted damage through asphyxiation. Version 0.24 removed blowguns and changed needles to hand-thrown darts to cut down on inventory bloat.
• Aliciaconda from Dusty Revenge has her Instrument of Murder, a flute, which can shoot darts from a distance.
• Used by the Beast Folk tribes in Dwarf Fortress, and a total Joke Weapon compared to bows or crossbows unless the darts are dipped in the secretions of the procedurally-generated horrible gribbly things that lurk in the caverns Beneath the Earth.
• In the second chapter of Eternal Darkness, you receive these. It poisons enemies but does very little damage either way and has limited ammo. If you use it to Cherry Tap some zombies to death in order to save a particular NPC, however, you can get your sword (which just broke) repaired and then upgrade it to Dual Wielding with what would have otherwise been the replacement.
• In Hitman: Codename 47, if 47 does any aggressive action in the presence of the Colombian jungle tribesmen in the first two Colombia missions, they'll shoot at him with blow guns (and it's a One-Hit Kill). 47 can't grab said blow guns, but a Cheat Code allows him to use one (and it also causes One Hit Kills on the enemies).
• Teemo from League of Legends uses this as his trademark weapon in order to pump his enemies full of poison.
• Little Big Adventure: Twinsen, the player character, uses one in the second installment.
• Pirates (NIX) have native Aztec enemies in the Mayan jungles who attacks with blowpipes.
• Riot: As you're shooting your way through hordes and hordes of assorted enemies, sometimes the game will throw random Hollywood Natives enemies in the foreground - guys wearing feathers in their hair and shooting darts at you with their blowpipes.
• Spelling Jungle: The Dart Trickster is essentially a living one, blowing darts at Wali when he's passing by it.
• You can find blowpipes in some chests near the surface of Terraria. While getting ammunition for a blowpipe is a cinch (it uses seeds that you collect by cutting grass), the weapon is far outclassed by most other ranged weapons, at least one of which you should have at that point. Later on, though, you can buy a proper blowgun from the Witch Doctor and craft proper poison darts from stingers dropped by jungle hornets, making for a much more useful weapon.

Web Animation

• In the Happy Tree Friends episode From A To Zoo, Lumpy attempts to sedate a baboon mauling Sniffles, but accidentally sucks the dart in when taking his breath.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: In addition to her poisoned knives, Violetta has a blow gun she can use various darts in, including various poison-, tranquilizer-, Bottled Heroic Resolve-, and Super Serum-coated ones.
• In Strays, Feral starts putting one together, before the Tag Along Kid botches his assassination job.

Web Videos

• The Cinema Snob has this in Kickassia (mostly because Brad wanted to stand out with everybody wielding fake weapons, so his weapon was a packet of straws he bought in a gas station). He inhales one of the darts.

Western Animation

• Jonny Quest: In the episode "The Deadly Doll", the villain Korbay uses a blowgun to fire darts that have a poison that causes its victims to enter a coma.
• King of the Hill: A flashback shows that Cotton and Topsy attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro with a blow dart when attending a ball game in Yankee Stadium. The assassination failed when Tilly was in labor and all ran in to the ladies restroom which is where Hank was born.
• Looney Tunes: In one short, a Wacky Native tries to use a blowgun on Bugs Bunny, but Bugs blows in the other end just before the native does, so it ends up going down the native's throat. The same gag was also used against prehistoric Elmer Fudd.
• The Simpsons
  • Simpson Safari: While attempting to defend a nature preserve from perceived poachers, Marge and Lisa shoot bees through reeds to puncture the tires of the group’s jeep.
  • The Homer of Seville: When Homer becomes a successful opera singer, he attracts the attention of Julia. When he spurns her sexual advances, she attempts to blackmail him and eventually tries to assassinate him on stage with a poisoned blow dart.
• Totally Spies!: In the episode Wild Style, Clover is shot with a blow dart - which she initially mistakes for a large bug - injecting her with the Villain of the Week's serum and transforming her into a human-animal hybrid.

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