Combat Cue Stick

Heads will roll... hopefully into one of the pockets.

Much like baseball bats and golf clubs, cue sticks are sports equipment that frequently appear in fiction as weapons. Usually they are Improvised Weapons in Bar Brawls but some characters will use them as their weapon of choice. This is not too surprising as they are very close in length to staves.

Combat Cue Sticks are sometimes broken in half by the wielder, either to use as clubs or eskrima sticks or to be used as stabbing weapons using the broken end.

The effectiveness of this weapon usually depends on the importance of the character. In the hands of the main heroes, they are often very useful. On the other hand, Mooks or one-off troublemakers may find them utterly worthless, even if the opponent is unarmed.

Sister Trope to Martial Arts Staff. Some users of this weapon might have an entire moveset revolving around pool, snooker, or billiards, making them an example of I Know Madden Kombat.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• One Piece: Inverted. During the Enies Lobby Arc, a CP9 member with a Kabuki theme named Kumadori used his staff as a deadly cue stick against Chopper. It was powerful enough to pierce through solid stone.
• Pokémon Adventures: Gold uses a cue stick as his weapon of choice. Not only can he use it to call out his Pokémon, but it's also strong enough to shatter ice and keep Lugia, a legendary Pokémon, from closing his mouth to use his breath attacks.
• Reborn! (2004): Gamma's Box Weapon is a cue stick surrounded by multiple electrically-charged pool balls which he can shoot at opponents.

Comic Books

• Daredevil: Daredevil meets "Stick" in a pool hall. Several losing gamblers think that Stick had lied about being blind to hustle them. Daredevil's martial arts mentor + pool cue = Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Sleepwalker: 8-Ball has his whole costume and arsenal themed entirely around pool. This includes a cue stick that magnifies any force applied to it more than a thousandfold and transmits that force to anything it strikes. He also uses bombs designed to look like pool balls.
• Spider-Man: During The Other story arc in The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski), Mary Jane uses a pool cue to fight off a Loony Fan who has been stalking her.
• Ultimate X Men: Beast's introduction has him fighting off an anti-mutant racist who attacks him with a pool cue.

Films — Live-Action

• Carlito's Way: At a drug deal meeting with his nephew, Carlito makes a show of teaching some goons a trick shot at their pool table. When his nephew's dealer ambushes and kills the nephew, Carlito smashes a goon in the face with a cue before grabbing his gun to shoot his way out.
• Clue: Subverted; Colonel Mustard picks up a cue in the billiards room. Miss Scarlet frantically backs away from him, thinking he's trying to use it as a weapon, but then he just knocks one of the balls across the table and puts it back.
• The Dark Knight: After killing Gambol, the Joker tells Gambol's two remaining Mooks that there will be "tryouts" for which of them can get into his employ. The Joker then breaks a pool cue in half for the men to use as weapons in a fight to the death.
• Dead Fire: Amos C. Tucker (a pool player) beats up one of the villain's goons using a pool cue he calls "Charlene". The beatdown involves using it as a bo stick, disassembling it to continue the beatdown as escrima sticks, and reassembling it to give the goon the Coup de Grâce by hitting him in the forehead with the cue's tip.
  Tucker: Let me introduce you to a friend of mine. She's a little skinny, but boy, can she dance.
• From Dusk Till Dawn: During the first vampire attack, the humans use table legs and pool cues to fight off the monsters.
• The Golden Child. When Chandler Jarrell is threatened by Tommy Tong, he picks up a pool cue to defend himself. Tong chops off the end of the cue with his sword, but Chandler's partner Kee Nang appears and frightens him away with her martial arts skills.
• Hard to Kill: Several Mooks are playing pool in the senator's mansion when Mason Storm finds them. They attack him with their cues (including one who breaks his in half to use as makeshift kali sticks), and he returns the favor, eventually stabbing one of them in the neck with a broken cue.
• Hong Kong Godfather: The film has a fight scene where Wei beats up several punks in a billiards club, using a billiards cue as a weapon.
• Kong: Skull Island: James Conrad's Establishing Character Moment has him beating up a pair of thugs with a cue stick.
• The Mighty Gambler: The intimidation scene where Jason confronts the Loan Shark and his underlings culminates in Jason grabbing a cue stick and using it to beat up several of the Loan Shark's mooks, before finally shoving the stick's broken end into the horrified Loan Shark's mouth.
  Jason: "Who's threatening who now, asshole?"
• Rush Hour: Lee unwittingly causes a Bar Brawl by using a word he is unaware is a racial slur. The fight has Lee defending against cue attacks, breaking cues in half, and finally wielding two cues to finish off his opponents.
• Out for Justice: Like in the aforementioned Hard To Kill (which was released a year before Out For Justice), Steven Seagal's character uses a cue stick to fight off enemies.
• Shaun of the Dead: Shaun, Liz, and Ed all use pool cues to fend off a zombified Big John.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day: During the Bar Brawl scene, one of the bikers attacks the T-800 with a pool cue, breaking it on the back of the robot's head. The Terminator doesn't flinch and responds by throwing the guy through a window.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Some episodes had characters breaking pool cues to use them as makeshift stakes.
• Cobra Kai: During the Bar Brawl in "Take A Right", one of the patrons tries to hit Tommy with a pool cue.
• CSI: NY: One of the victims in "Corporate Warriors" is a man who was found dead from a splinter to the heart. An eyewitness tells the CSIs she saw the victim in a fight with another man using pool cues as weapons. Turns out, the splinter did indeed come from said cue stick.
• Firefly: At the start of one episode, Mal gets into a Bar Brawl using cue sticks after pickpocketing a slave trader. Notably, the balls are holographic (presumably so that they can't be used as weapons), but the sticks are not.
• Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger/Power Rangers Wild Force: Tsukumaro Oogami/Merrick Baliton has a Mix-and-Match Weapon which can transform into a pool cue to perform a Finishing Move.
• Leverage: Redemption: The Villain of the Week in "The Hurricane Job" tries to attack Eliot with a pool cue. This being Eliot, he simply breaks the cue and knocks the guy out with ease.
• The Originals: The second episode has Rebekah fighting off some vampires using a pool cue in a bar.
• Trigger Happy TV: One sketch features two men in dog costumes, one of whom is always brutally attacking the other one in public. In Series 2, one sketch has the Dalmatian confront the brown dog at a pool table, snapping a cue in half and beating him unconscious with it.
• Supergirl (2015): In "Exodus", Alex uses a pool cue to fight off several CADMUS agents who attack the alien bar.

Video Games

• The Final Boss of 64th Street: A Detective Story, the kidnapper, is fought in his personal pool table room, where he'll grab a cue stick and use it on you. You can relive him of his weapon and use it back on him though.
• Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl: Pool cues are among the various weapons available to the player for use.
• Azure Sheep: A pool cue is the first melee weapon you can acquire in the game. You already have a handgun and a shotgun though since you're playing as a Black Mesa security guy.
• Basingstoke: Cue sticks are a weapon you can wield against zombies. They can stun swarmers and prowlers, but also break easily.
• Fallout: The games have featured pool cues as melee weapons since Fallout 3.
• Grand Theft Auto: A pool cue is available as a melee weapon in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, and Grand Theft Auto V's Online Mode.
• Guilty Gear: Venom is an assassin whose fighting style is themed around billiards. Not only does he fight with a pool cue, he can also create billiard balls and use them as projectiles.
• Hitman: Pool cues are among the various Improvised Weapons players can use to kill targets.
• Kingdom of Loathing: The pool cue is a 2-handed weapon you can find Spookyraven Manor's (haunted) billiards room. The weapon itself has unremarkable stats, but it increases your Pool Skill, which you need it to beat the ghost at a billiards game required for the associated questline.
• Cue sticks are a prominent weapon in the Biker Bar scenario of Paint the Town Red.
• Slaps and Beans have at least two scenes where Bud and Terrence gets into a fight near pool tables (one at the first stage, and one near the end). They can grab nearby cue sticks as clubs during fights.
• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception: The opening Bar Brawl includes pool cues as one of the numerous Improvised Weapons you use.

Webcomics

• Aqua Regia: Attempted and failed miserably in this case; to be fair it was used against an Implacable Man Cyborg. Cue the hero being grabbed by the neck and almost killed.

Web Videos

• Bennett the Sage: At the start of the Elfen Lied review, Sage recalls being lured into a hotel conference room and "beaten" severely by several of his friends and (at that time) co-creators at Channel Awesome^note everyone was using wiffle ball bats and similarly harmless items, which culminated with someone breaking a pool cue across his back as he tried to get away. This was supposed to be faked, as the cue had been set up with a break spot, but it actually broke several inches below that spot, meaning he actually took the hit, which left a long welt across his back.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series: The Creeper's origin episode has him beating up three of Joker's thugs in a Bad Guy Bar using a pool cue.
• In the Pinky and the Brain episode, "Brinky" Pinky and Brain's son Romy, (a result of Pinky and Brain's DNA getting mixed together while creating a clone) goes to a biker bar where two bikers chalking cues near a pool table ask each other for a game, when they agree they just start beating each other with the pool cues; Romy casually calls to play the winner.
• Tom and Jerry: In Cue Ball Cat, Tom appropriately uses a cue stick while tormenting Jerry.

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