Death Dealer

Pick a card. Any card.

"52-card pickup is a staple of juvenile humor. But when the deck slices and dices, it's no laughing matter."

— Cheshire Cat, American McGee's Alice

Many Card Sharps may see their cards as useful tools, but this goes one step beyond that. Cards can, when thrown by the right hands, become a deadly weapon.

How (and why) someone is using cards as a weapon varies: it can be some form of Applied Phlebotinum, magic, control of kinetic energy, or even because the characters are just that good. Or they're a Paper Master and that's just what happened to be on hand.

They always make it look so easy in fiction, even though it's not so easy to throw a card this way in reality. (Seriously, try it the way any of the names below do so and see if it's as easy.)

May include boomerang powers and definitely causes Paper Cutting. And don't forget that they typically carry a clip of 55 of them (the 52 plus two jokers and the company card) in a case roughly the size of a pack of cards.

Very often overlaps with The Gambler, for obvious reasons, and Monster Clown, for not-so-obvious ones. In Japanese works, may also overlap with Phantom Thief.

The user might be, but isn't necessarily, a Card-Carrying Villain (sorry). Also likely to be a Card Sharp (with sharp cards), so the use of such a distinctive weapon may be the killer's Calling Card (we can do this all day). If they're so improbably good that the full house won't shut up about it, they're The Ace. (Yeah, we know, our card is marked. We can deal with it.) May or may not have Playing Card Motifs to go along with this.

No relation to Vlodemort's band, Frank Frazetta's helmeted, axe-wielding badass, Underworld (2003)'s many vampiric assassins, ^note both franchises feature character(s) who share the same moniker or the Paranormal Romance novel by Heather Graham Pozzessere.

Not to be confused with Arms Dealer or The Aggressive Drug Dealer. For cards that are a Portent of Doom, see Dead Man's Hand. Cards of Power is when the cards themselves are powered.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Rein from the Assault Team of Best Student Council uses cards as her signature weapon. The two other members use a Killer Yoyo and a bokken. Seeing as they're in an Absurdly Powerful Student Council, these things are a lot less lethal than the grown-up versions and are suitable for beating up some delinquents.
• Miime of Captain Harlock usually uses her cards for fortunetelling, but there is an episode where she kills a Mazone by throwing a card through her.
• In Cat's Eye, Hitomi Kisugi can throw sharp Calling Cards with great accuracy, although never to kill anyone (disarming at most).
• Codename: Sailor V: Ace/Danburite attacks with regular 52-pack playing cards, deliberately sharing a magician/Phantom Thief theme with Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon, but not overlapping with him.
• Meganoid General Edwin from Daitarn 3 in his Megaborg form looks like a stage magician.
• The characters of Descendants of Darkness will occasionally use magically enchanted hanafuda in battle.
• Dirty Pair:
  • In the novels (and the Adam Warren comics), Yuri carries a self-propelled throwing card with razor edges—better known as the "Bloody Card". Its only anime appearance was in the movie Affair of Nolandia where Yuri kills a whole crowd of mooks with it.
  • Only used by Yuri. Madam Barr uses one (with similar results) in OAV #6. Yuri also used it on a single mook in 005 Conspiracy. Yuri also used it in the Dirty Pair cameo appearance in the Crusher Joe movie.
• Duel Masters: In a flashback, Jamira can throws cards hard enough to embed them in wood.
• Fist of the North Star: In the anime, Shin's Dragon Joker uses playing cards as a calling card as well as a weapon. He even puts one out to send to Shin when Kenshiro eventually kills him.
• In Hayate the Combat Butler, Nagi takes down a Loan Shark by throwing a card into his head, flooring him with pain.
• Desert Apostle Cobraja from Heart Catch Pretty Cure uses autographed photos of himself as his weapon of choice.
  • KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode has Erisio, who uses cards to transform items into monsters. Later on, it's revealed he can also absorb people into the cards, which he does to virtually all the members of his group, including his boss.
• Tubalcain Alhambra, a.k.a. The Dandy Man, from Hellsing telekinetically controls cards and manages to slice several bystanders into pieces with them. They also explode. The cards themselves are magical, too, as Alucard cannot instantly regenerate his wounds when hit by them. Neither can Alexander when Alucard uses them on him during their final battle after absorbing Alhambra.
• Hunter × Hunter:
  • Hisoka, an Ax-Crazy Monster Clown, kills people with thrown cards. It's implied that he gives them lethal force using Functional Magic. His Bungee Gum also gives him total control over the cards' movement.
  • Wing shows that this is just a basic skill with good Nen control. He demonstrates this by giving a random piece of paper nearby the same piercing powers as Hisoka's cards.
• Qing Lang and his tarot deck from Innocent Venus.
• This is a big part of the Kaitou Kid's shtick. He has a gun that's modified to shoot poker cards which can apparently slice through metal and is such a trademark of his that any Kaitou Kid using a normal gun is immediately recognized as an impostor.
• Yomiko Readman from Read or Die is seen to be able to throw business cards with such force that they embed themselves in wooden ceiling beams, though this is less from her own strength than it is her ability to manipulate the matter of paper. It may not count if they're not actually playing cards in that scene, though.
• Yukari from Rosario + Vampire uses her (steel) tarot cards to this effect. Rather than throwing them, she levitates them with magic.
• Rozen Maiden has a live toy for this—a clown that throws cards just like shurikens—and they actually hurt the protagonist.
• Sailor Moon: Sailor Kakyuu fights by throwing cards with pictures of galaxies on them at her targets. Her power was foreshadowed by her crossdressing Bodyguard Babes. In particular the postcards Usagi was getting in the mail were from Seiya, not Mamoru.
• Friagne of Shakugan no Shana has a deck of exploding cards. Conveniently, they never run out and he can control them remotely.
• One of the main characters in Shin Hakkenden wields diamond-edged cards. Quite effective and made uber-awesome when he actually activates his jewel ability . . . in the last episode.
• Kaiba disables a gun-wielding mook by tossing a card at him in an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh!. He does it again in a later episode, throwing the top card of his deck to pierce a Rare Hunter's hand to prevent him from killing Anzu. Kaiba was upset that this card happened to be a Blue-Eyes White Dragon, as he was hoping to draw a common card so as not to get the man's "filthy blood" on a card so important to him.^note In the anime, there are only three Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards in the entire world.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
  • Judai once threw a card hard enough to destroy Titan's fake Millennium Puzzle.
  • "Boy", a character from one episode of the second season could do this rather well.
• Shira from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has done this fast and hard enough to pierce a police helmet. Demack sliced through chains with a card. Basically, cards in this series are completely indestructible.
• In YuYu Hakusho, minor villain Suzuki/Suzuka demands everyone call him "The Beautiful Suzuki/Suzuka". When Koto just calls him "Suzuki/Suzuka", he throws a playing card at her. She ducks and the card skewers the head of the demon sitting behind her, killing him. He's notably the prototype for Hisoka above, except far less creepy and threatening. And doesn't share his . . . predilections.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • Batman: The Joker, sometimes. In his case, the cards are prepped with a metal edge, so they're both heavier and razor sharp.
    • In one of his earliest Golden Age appearances, the Joker killed a man by treating a new deck of cards with Joker Venom. The poison was administered when the victim got a paper cut opening the new deck.
  • The Flash has Double Down, a hard luck professional gambler who was cursed. Now he can turn his skin into razor sharp, magic playing cards, and speaks in gambling metaphors and puns. Since his cards are magical, they can even wound Superman.
  • Minor Green Arrow foe Death Dealer uses razor sharp playing cards and exploding cards as weapons.
• James from Death Vigil has a power set based around magical cards. Unlike many examples on this list, however, the motif is more aligned with collectible cards than the standard 52-card deck.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Daredevil villain Bullseye is partial to the ace of spades as a murder weapon. This is, however, a minuscule subset of his true ability to One-Hit Kill with anything that he can throw.
  • Surprisingly averted in the original Master of Kung Fu series — Shang-Chi's enemy Death-Dealer has Playing Card Motifs, but despite his name he never uses them as weapons.
  • Taskmaster, amongst his many weapons, also has razor-edged cards. They need to be razor-sharp because he can copy Gambit's skills but not his powers.
  • X-Men:
    • Gambit uses his mutant power to turn ordinary playing cards into kinetic energy-charged bombs and apparently in other forms of media said energy can also be used to enhance their flight paths. He can do it to anything^note  famous exploits include devastating a wide area with a bucket of nuts and bolts, finishing off a villain who had him totally immobilized by spitting exploding chewing gum in his face and pushing Rockslide towards a Brainwashed and Crazy Juggernaut, but likes playing cards since they hold over 52 "shots" in such small packages, they're very easy to obtain and quick to "charge", they're easy to conceal even from someone who knows how his power works, they explode with force just about equal to a standard grenade, and they're also stylish. In a nod to Real Life, they hardly ever slice cleanly through objects but embed shallowly in them. Then explode after flashing the trademark pink glow.
    • In an issue of the Madrox miniseries, Jamie Madrox reflexively slits an enemy's throat with a playing card.
• In Rough Riders, Houdini has a pack of razor-edged playing cards to use as projectiles in emergencies, but he's not averse to using actual guns if those are in reach.
• In The Shadow #0 from Dynamite, the Shadow takes on a group of stage magicians. One of them attacks the Shadow by flinging razor edged playing cards at him.
• Casino is a villainess from The Solution in The Ultraverse who throws razor-edged metal cards.

Fan Works

• Zero Context: Taking Out the Trash has The Stoic Ellen Harrison use a deck of cards as weapons, controlling them remotely and altering their composition on the fly to use them for both attack and defense. She's skilled and precise enough in their usage that at one point she slices a machete into multiple pieces length-wise.

Films — Animation

• In Batman: Assault on Arkham, Harley Quinn apparently makes use of acid playing cards as weapons. We don't get to see her use them, but she's very excited to find them in the evidence vault of Arkham Asylum.

Films — Live-Action

• Jack from Blackjack (1998). While he doesn't kill anyone, Jack in the opening scene uses playing cards to slice up some gangster's neckties to show them he's not to be messed with.
• In The Black Panther Warriors, one of the eponymous warriors is named Blackjack Lover, who can throw playing cards with deadly accuracy, at one point even using his cards to decapitate a mook!
• Big Bad Sis enforces this trope. The protagonist use thin sheets of metal, disguised as playing cards, to dispatch enemies.
• In the City Hunter live-action movie, a gambler character (Kao Ta) uses cards as throwing weapons. He also exists as a minor villain in the manga, using the same shtick. Their standoff ends with a quick-draw, where the grip of his pistol is plated with the Ace of Spades.
• As in the source material, Bullseye uses a card as a weapon in Daredevil (2003). He doesn't use it to actually kill anyone, but it does leave a cut on Elektra's throat and stuns her long enough for him to finish her off.
• Early in Gentlemen Explorers, the Magician demonstrates the Chekhov's Skill of being able to throw playing cards with enough accuracy and force to shatter glass bottles. Later, he kills two Prussian guards by embedding cards in their throats.
• Ko Chun, the eponymous hero from the God of Gamblers movies, is an expert in using throwing cards as a backup weapon, and throughout the films have used flung cards to kill more than one faceless mook.
• In 1986's Heat, Nick Escalante (Burt Reynolds) slices a goon's face with a credit card.
• Now You See Me: Well, not death, but Jack's card throwing skills look like they hurt Rhodes somewhat. Then there's his card...
• Once a Thief: An Elite Mook in the final shootout is an expert in throwing cards, using them as projectile weapons against Joe.
• In Smokin' Aces, stage magician-turned-low-level-mafia-boss Buddy "Aces" Israel throws cards around so hard he embeds one into the leather of a couch, and uses another as a weapon against his chief henchman when he turns against Israel.
• Deleted scenes from Tomorrow Never Dies had a techno-terrorist (played by Ricky Jay) throwing playing cards as weapons.
• In Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies, the Djinn causes a card shuffler to go haywire, causing it to begin shooting cards at people with enough force to kill them.
• In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the aforementioned Gambit uses his kinetic energy manipulation powers to imbue cards with enough energy to knock Wolverine through a wall, though unlike in the comics they don't actually explode with the force of a grenade (a faint burst can be seen however). The cards also are clearly shown to be manipulated in flight path, showing that his energy manipulation has something to do with it.

Literature

• The Big Bad of Tim Powers' novel Last Call put out his son's eye with a thrown playing card near the start of the story. (He used magic to do it, as all the magic in the story has Tarot Motifs or modern Playing Card Motifs. He wasn't aiming for his son, though; Destiny took a hand.)
• Lord of Mysteries: "Clown" — the sequence 8 corresponding to the protagonist's "Seer" pathway — gives the beyonder supreme muscle control, coordination and flexibility as well as battle premonition and the ability to transform paper into paper darts — ideal for card throwing.
• In the Star Trek: New Frontier series, Burgoyne 172 learned this with normal playing cards and then upgraded to the rather harder isolinear computer disks used on Starfleet ships, taking out some Romulans with them.

Live-Action TV

• Gregor Molotov, a villain in The Cape, is a master magician who uses this trick to kill off four of his informants, so they can't squeal to anybody else.
• The first Victim of the Week in the CSI episode "Last Woman Standing" is killed when his throat is slashed open by a thrown playing card.
• Jonathan Creek once took out a man holding him at gunpoint with a playing card to the face; it didn't do much in the way of actual injury, but it did make him flinch and let go of his Human Shield and give the police an opening to take him down. He was able to hide it from the guy because of his card-palming skills - because that's the bit that seemed implausible... although Jonathan receives a copy of Ricky Jay's Cards As Weapons (see below) at the start of the episode and is seen practising the throws in idle moments, so it's not utterly implausible. Just, you know, very.
  • Despite this apparent feat of accuracy, Jonathan later admits that he had actually been aiming for his balls.
• A Monster of the Week from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger had a gambling theme and made use of exploding playing cards. When the heroes transformed into the likewise card-themed J.A.K.Q. Dengekitai, the energy from their Transformation Sequence blew his cards right back at him...in an imitation of J.A.K.Q.'s opening theme.
• Kamen Rider:
  • In the final episode of Kamen Rider Decade, Tsukasa pulls this one off against Apollo Geist; especially noteworthy since his cards are key elements of his Transformation Trinket. For bonus points, they came right back to him.
  • Speaking of Riders, in Kamen Rider Gaim, in #3 Kaito once threw a card at a TV, shattering it! He tries to do this again in #15 to Ryoma Sengoku, but his assitant Yoko stopped the card mid-flight by throwing a pen at it.
  • Kamen Rider Stronger villain General Shadow's shtick is cards. He throws 'em as weapons, plays card games with the other villains during downtime, and escapes any losing battle by disappearing behind a zillion cards that he tosses into the air. More recent team-up movies with their improved special effects allow him to turn into a giant, spinning, razor sharp card.
• The Magician: In "The Illusion of the Deadly Conglomerate", Tony is practicing sailing cards across the room when he flicks the final card harder and uses it to extinguish a lighted candle and then bury itself in the dartboard on the wall. When Dominick examines the card, he discovers that that particular card is metal. Tony explains that it is not really a magic trick, but a skill called 'card sailing'. Becomes a Chekhov's Skill later in the episode when Tony uses it to escape from the bad guys. He throws the metal card hard enough to puncture a gas line, and the leaking gas ignites off a candle Tony had placed there earlier, creating a fireball.
  • In "The Illusion of the Fatal Arrow", Tony uses a thrown card to smash the desk lamp a Professional Killer is using for illumination; plunging the room into darkness.
• MythBusters busted the "regular cards can be deadly weapons when thrown" part of this trope (with Ricky Jay once again making an appearance): even with a specially designed rig to throw the card faster than a human being, Jamie only reported mild discomfort.
• Tokusou Robo Janperson loves doing this as a sort of Dynamic Entry. His JP Cards (5 kinds, the usual being light-colored and proclaiming "Janperson—Dedicate Myself to Justice") are metal and sharp and thrown by a robot on top of that, so they'll embed themselves in anything up to and including concrete pillars.

Professional Wrestling

• Ace Austin uses many analogues of card sharks in his moveset. His Finishing Move, the Fold, brings to mind the folding of playing cards. On some ocassions, he will use actual playing cards as a weapon to blade opponents or gain the upper hand.

Tabletop Games

• In Champions:
  • Card Shark, a major crime lord in the Dark Champions setting, has razor-sharp cards on his character sheet and has killed with them several times.
  • Blackjack from European Enemies has gimmicked playing cards that he throws as weapons.
• The Huckster Arcane Background in Deadlands uses this often. Can range from throwing one card with a magical razor's edge (card sharp), to throwing them in front of projectiles to stop ranged attacks (ace in the hole).
• Dungeons & Dragons 5e: The Wild Card rogue (currently only an Unearthed Arcana subclass) can use playing cards to attack with in lieu of making a sneak attack.
• Exalted: A few Thrown charms allow you to throw cards (and pebbles and coins) as though they were shuriken. An Exalt with these charms are rarely unarmed.
• GURPS Supers supplement Supertemps. The super known as Dealer used a weapon that fired metal projectiles the size and shape of playing cards.
• Ogma in the Mage: The Awakening quickstart carries Mana-infused cards as a weapon. Justified by these being metal cards designed for combat use.
• Pathfinder: The Deadly Dealer feat allows you to turn cards into throwing weapons. The Card Caster Magus takes it further, and can throw spells at people through his cards.
• The Trickster Mage OCC from Rifts is an interesting case; he was introduced in an April Fool's edition of The Rifter and wasn't intended to be a serious OCC. A mage whose only abilities seem to revolve around levitating playing cards, the Trickster Mage's arsenal would be pathetic if he weren't so creative.

Video Games

• The boss of the Italy house in the NES game 8 Eyes uses sharp-edged metal playing cards.
• American McGee's Alice: Thrown playing cards are one of Alice's primary weapons.
• Dorothy Albright from the Arcana Heart series is a young Stage Magician who uses playing cards with all of her special attacks. It also has an unique mechanism tied to them where having five cards on the screen has her "dealing them out", with the attack being base on what kind of hand you got.
• In Battlerite, Zander's primary form of attack is to throw cards. The cards also heal allies.
• Loki of Bayonetta 2 throws enchanted cards to destroy angels and demons, and has a few specialized cards with out-of-combat abilities like teleportation and erasure. They only work for him, as seen when Bayonetta throws one of his cards at an angel corpse to no effect.
• In Castlevania: Bloodlines, Death himself is the Death Dealer.
• The Killer Clown soul in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow lets you throw surprisingly powerful cards.
• The second Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers game has the boss fight Card Cat who throws playing cards as weapons and is defeated by having the cards thrown back at him.
• Some characters in Chrono Cross can use 'shot', which seem to be some sort of thrown bullet. They can also use the various 'Deck' weapons, which apparently fling cards at people.
• Taken to extremes with King Dice from Cuphead who attacks you by sending a row of marching living cards from out of his sleeves after you as his one and only attack after you take out all his flunkies. It also helps that he's suddenly gigantic during the battle and the cards are much bigger than you are.
• Dynasty Warriors: Zuo Ci uses cursed cards that hit harder than any sword.
  • Technically, like Sheena, he is actually using paper seals infused with magic, but translation calls Zuo's weapon the cursed deck. Each talisman is longer than a regular card.
• Inevitably, Exit Fate has a character who uses these. They're not a very good weapon, but they do full damage from the back row (and he gambles with them, too.)
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VI has Setzer the gambler and his thrown cards.
  • They're also used in Final Fantasy Tactics A2 by the Trickster class, and surpass bows and guns for the greatest weapon range.
  • Final Fantasy VII had an enemy named Death Dealer. The cards were semi-random, but the most dangerous one killed with a spell like Death.
  • The Lady Luck dressphere in Final Fantasy X-2 uses a deck of cards for the standard attack command.
  • Astrologians in Final Fantasy XIV use globes and cards to execute their spells and other abilities. If you decide to auto attack an enemy, the character will slice their target with the cards. Since Astrologians are healers, attacking with the cards directly will only do pitiful amounts of damage.
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 has Ace, who has cards as his weapon of choice; his base weapon is a gambler's deck, but he also has hanafuda and tarot decks as unlockables.
• British Badass Normal Black Jack from Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich uses an acid-dipped ace of spades as his signature weapon.
• The Pierrot class series from Golden Sun: The Lost Age has card-based psynergies.
• Grandia III: Dahna has a Fortune Teller theme going on, and as such attacks by throwing tarot-like cards at the enemy. It makes her attacks connect near-instantaneously, with very little chance of whiffing (dodges notwithstanding), compared to other characters, who have to run up to their foes to strike them.
• Johnny of Guilty Gear packs a deck of cards with him in combat. Whether or not they deal damage depends on whether he uses the "Deal" command in the air, but all his cards explode when he turns them up by hitting them with his signature Mist Finer.
• The first stage of Hong Kong Ninja ends with you fighting Elite Mooks who can throw multiple cards in a wide arc, damaging you on contact.
• In Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, Baron Chairman, the boss of levels 3 and 5, hovers in mid-air and attacks by throwing playing cards.
• Kingdom Hearts
  • Luxord of Kingdom Hearts II uses a deck of cards that can change size as a weapon. He throws them less and more often manipulates them into assaulting the hero Sora in the manner of a Paper Master. He also uses them as minions and can even transform Sora into a card.
  • In 358/2, whether as an ally or playable character, he focuses more on tossing and manipulating them and can even form a barrier out of enlarged cards.
• Oswald from The King of Fighters XI, to the point where he straight up follows Playing Card Motifs explained on the trope page itself. His LDM, JOKER, even has fifty-two hits. And one of his DMs (Four Suits), ideally, hits 21 times (Blackjack!). Unlike most examples however, he's much more focused on close-range-combat via knife-slashing with his cards as opposed to throwing them, as only 2-to-3 of his moves (including JOKER) involve actually throwing his cards.
• Kirby
  • Kirby's Magician copy ability in Kirby: Squeak Squad allows him to do this.
  • Squashini in Kirby's Epic Yarn can strafe the stage with cards.
• Used by the gambling themed mage-assassin Twisted Fate from League of Legends.
• Roxis from Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis uses cards as his weapon, which he will either throw or chain together to form a whip.
• Mega Man
  • Spider from Mega Man X: Command Mission. In addition to straight damage, the different suits each have a different effect (2 hits, hits all enemies or boosts money or experience gained upon kill) when he has at least 75% WE left. There's also the Joker, which has no minimum WE requirement but like the name suggests, it randomly uses one of the 4 effects mentioned above.
  • In Mega Man & Bass, there's Magic Man, who throws two cards that look like they're shuffling themselves, and then it comes back to him like a boomerang. If he hits you, he steals some life. After beating him, you can do it yourself, but without the draining ability. You CAN pick up items and aim upwards with it. It's also the weapon that Dr. Wily is weakest against in the final battle.
• NEO: The World Ends with You has the Trick Cards psych, which enables its user to shoot ESP cards (like the ones Shiki used in the first game) like bullets at enemies. Certain pins also give the cards elemental properties.
• This is Jackle's weapon of choice in NiGHTS into Dreams…
• Nightmare Busters has a power-up which turns the player's Hand Blast into exploding cards.
• In PAYDAY 2, equipping the Ace of Spades throwable gives you a deck of 21 razor-edged cards, which are surprisingly effective at killing armored law enforcement.
• Persona
  • Persona 3 and Persona 4: Arena has Elizbeth who uses tarot cards as her weapon and uses the tarot cards to summon her Persona. Her siblings, Theodore and Margaret, also do the same thing.
  • Persona 4 and Persona 4: Arena has the main character and the other playable characters use tarot cards to summon their personas.
• In Pirate101 Bill Peacock follows up his pistol shots with a few thrown cards when he lands a critical hit and weasel gamblers/assassins throw cards as ranged attacks. Depending on the player's class these characters may join their crew.
• Clowns and Gypsies of Ragnarok Online have the Tarot Card of Fate skill, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It can inflict a variety of effects, including but not limited to a total debuff, stun, and instant death.
• Railroad Rampage has card-slinging outlaws as a powerful Elite Mook enemy, capable of throwing five cards in an arc, which can do greater damage to the player than bullets fired from pistols.
• Genjuro Kibagami in the Samurai Shodown games can fling one of these as a projectile. These (as well as most of his theme) are from hanafuda, rather than the Western tarot-derivative deck.
• Fortune Teller Lucia from Shadow Hearts: Covenant uses a deck of tarot in battle. Rather than fight with them directly, they are used for attack spells, buffs and debuffs.
• In Slap City, Business Casual Man can release the wave of cards from Solitaire when he has maximum amount of money. These cards usually KO enemies instantly.
• In Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, the generic enemy Inkspot Jackson throws a fan of playing cards at Sly.
• In Sonic Frontiers, Amy Rose now utilizes her tarot cards from CD as part of her arsenal. Now she can attack with not just her hammer and she can even drive with them too with her hammer acting as a broomstick makeshift for a bit of a witch motif.
• Super Mario RPG has an enemy called "Jester" who can throw playing cards as an attack.
• Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U: Master Hand has an attack in which he deals some platforms that attempt to carry you off stage as if they were playing cards.
• Sheena from Tales of Symphonia, though instead of throwing the cards long ranges she usually hits someone with them or has them swung around, floating in the air. Since there are supposed to be spells sealed on the cards, this may also fall under Paper Master or Onmyōdō.
• Raccoons in Trickster Online, after classing up into the Card Master class, can (and probably should) be played like this
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon has the Dealer class for the ladies, with cards serving as the weapon of choice for the class.
• Your Only Move is HUSTLE has the Game Mod Doubledown, who is The Gambler and fights with a combination of cards, gold coins, and bare knuckle brawling. Despite this seemingly simple moveset, Doubledown is no joke and can hold his own with a combination of zoning, pressure, and devastating card tricks, including a Coin-Targeting Trickshot.

Webcomics

• In Champions of Far'aus, the Stage Thief uses magically conjured cards for attacking, defending, and transportation, by controlling their movement with a magic wand.
• In Homestuck, the Midnight Crew's weapons are cards that can turn into weapons when used, a reference to Problem Sleuth's Object Duality Running Gag.
• Wonderlab features a TETH-class Abnormality known as "The Red Queen", whose primary ability is to use red cards to slice through the bodies of Agents who fail to satisfy it.

Web Original

• David Kintobor, one of David Gonterman's Author Avatars, possesses a Bloody Card that he got at a convention. It's soon updated to a Luna Card as a means to not kill any civilians in the ongoing battles.
• The cartomancer class in Noob, first seen in action in Season 3 of the webseries.
• Obligatory Whateley Universe example: Chaka threw some playing cards into a man's legs in the last chapter of Ayla and the Birthday Brawl. Regular playing cards.
  • Not her first use, either. In an earlier Chaka story, she fights off an armed superpowered ninja with playing cards, before she gets out the fighting chain. We are talking about a mutant who can throw things like sewing needles with lethal accuracy.
  • During a trip outside of the school, She-Beast is shown enchanting an otherwise ordinary deck of cards. However, in this case Jadis is infusing them with various cantrips meant to calm, confuse, or distract anyone who might attack her and her group, rather than do harm directly - since her father is a notorious Super Villain, she is constantly under the eye of anyone who might want to catch her committing a crime, so she is always looking to defuse any situation that might arise rather than escalate it.

Western Animation

• Batman:
  • Several versions of The Joker, notably the one from The Batman.
  • In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, he throws razor-edged playing cards at Wonder Woman in "Triumvirate of Terror!".
  • The Royal Flush Gang from Batman Beyond used high-tech devices disguised as playing cards in their arsenal (among other things). Mostly they seem to be small grenades, but there's also cards that are flashbangs, cards that turn into fancy red cloth that binds opponents, and one particularly special card meant for the Bat that's capable of blowing up a fair-sized hotel suite.
• Dexter's Laboratory: One "Justice Friends" short featured a The Joker-esque villain called Disgrunted Postman, who hurled razor sharp letters that cut Major Glory's cheek.
  Major Glory: Ah! Bills!
• Husk the gambling addict from Hazbin Hotel carries cards as weapons that are sharp enough to cut guns in half when he throws them, along with grenades shaped like dice.
• A one-shot villain, The Dragon of a Bond-Villain parody on Jackie Chan Adventures.
  "We hold all the cards! We have the upper hand! We—"
  "We could take it down a notch on the card puns."
• The Magician gives us Ace Cooper, a prestidigitator and superhero whose weapon of choice is absurdly sharp cards pulled out of his sleeve.
• Ricky Jay appears in The Simpsons episode "The Great Simpsina" where he attempts to kill Lisa by hurling cards at her with enough force to shatter a steam pipe.

Real Life

• Some stores sell what's billed as playing card shuriken—metal rectangles, ostensibly sharpened on the edges, with pictures of a card on each one. Not quite the same as a real deck of cards. While they might not be quite as effective as actual shuriken, they still do the job better than normal paper cards ever could. And unlike real shuriken, the lighter weight and slimmer profile makes it possible to conceal more of them and with greater ease. While a single one might not be that deadly (unless you score a lucky hit to the carotid artery or jugular vein), playing a game of "52 Pickup" with them could be rather effective.
• Card manipulation specialist Ricky Jay is famous for his ability to throw playing cards at great speed. He has even written a book called Cards As Weapons. In his recorded special Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, he demonstrates his skills by embedding cards into the skin of a watermelon. As noted in another category of this trope, Jay appeared as a villain in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Reportedly a scene showing his character utilizing Jay's card-throwing abilities was shot but the scene was cut. Professional poker player Chris "Jesus" Ferguson is also famous for this.
• This one (performed for the new Samsung Digital Camcorder H205 launch).
• Rick Smith Jr., who was a trained baseball pitcher, and learned to make use of his throwing arm to know how to sling cards very effectively.

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