Drop the Hammer

"...and my other hammer crushes suns!"

"YOU WANT ME TO PUT THE HAMMER DOWN?!"

— Thor Odinson, The Avengers (2012)

Hammers used in battle have a long history, because the first weapons villagers will use to defend their farms from raiders are the work tools they already own, such as a blacksmith's hammer. They come in different sizes, from squeaky mallets in a play fight to giant sledgehammers. The lighter ones inspire laughs, while the bigger Warhammers inspire terror. Some are thrown, but most are used to pound things into a bloody smear in the ground. It sometimes comes with Shock and Awe due to a certain god of thunder. Might be a Rocket-Powered Weapon, especially if it’s so preposterously heavy that even a super-strong wielder can’t swing it without assistance.

Used by The Big Guy, the Mighty Glacier, and the Cute Bruiser. Also a favorite of clerics in High Fantasy settings, smashing someone's head in with a hammer often lets them get around the "no spilling of blood" rule enacted by their gods. ^note  On the contrary, blunt force trauma, such as that inflicted by a hammer, can easily cause bleeding. Imagine breaking a bone with a hammer: there will be blood involved. As with simply punching the target (or hitting them with other blunt objects), the forces involved can cause the skin to rip and tear, opening wounds that will then bleed. This also ignores internal bleeding, which heavy impacts readily inflict.

Historically, blunt force weapons like maces, hammers, and flails were far more effective against heavily armored knights than blades because of their ability to transmit force through the armor to the flesh and bone underneath. War hammers appeared in Europe during The Late Middle Ages to combat plate armor. They usually featured a pick-like beak on one side that could pierce some of the thinner plates, and a hammer head on the other for inflicting blunt trauma to targets such as the head; this part often featured claw-like prongs or a texture resembling a meat tenderizer to help it bite into the armor's surface instead of glancing off. Either end could also be used as a hook to control an opponent. A one-handed warhammer used a relatively small head around the size of a modern claw hammer’s, relying on the top-heavy balance and the acceleration provided by a long handle instead of excessive mass.

You will often see hammers used in fictional combat that have very large steel heads like sledgehammers, and which would be impractically cumbersome and stamina-wasting in real combat where the enemy isn’t just going to hold still and let you whack them with all your might. English archers did use large mauls (which they used for driving stakes) as Improvised Weapons if their position was overrun, but these maul heads were so large because they were made of wood (which isn’t as dense as steel), so they were not ideal weapons.

There's no denying that big freaking hammers have visual impact, and imply Super Strength or Charles Atlas Superpower when used. What’s funny is how they’ve become so popular that The Coconut Effect has set in, to the point where if you showed a fantasy character with a realistically-sized warhammer the audience would think it looked too small. It is fairly common for characters who use sledgehammer-types as their weapon of choice to be Black, probably due to the influence of American folk hero John Henry and the African demigod Makoma. Another cliche is to show Viking and Barbarian characters as preferring big hammers.

This trope also covers smaller handheld hammers intended to be used as tools. While they aren't as big and intimidating as War Hammers or Sledgehammers, they are still something to be afraid of if they're grabbed as an Improvised Weapon, as they can crack skulls as well as their bigger brothers. Claw Hammers and Mallets are especially popular with this in mind. In fact when using claw hammers, the other end of it which is the eponymous "claw" can be used like a pick to just straight up stab somebody with it. Just like how the other end of some war hammers have pick-like beaks.

See also the Hyperspace Mallet, the weapon of choice for cartoon animals seeking to inflict Amusing Injuries (as well as the angry Anime female's favorite tool against perverts and other sources of irritation). Also see Carry a Big Stick for other kinds of bludgeoning weapons. Not to be confused with When All You Have Is a Hammer…, although you can achieve this with a hammer if it's the only thing you have to work with. Also not to be confused with the slang term for driving at top speed (which originated among long-haul truckers who, after putting the pedal to the metal, used to use a heavy hammer to keep it there in the years before cruise control became a standard feature). Hammer and Sickle when paired with Sinister Sickle. Thunder Hammer is what happens when this trope is paired with Shock and Awe.

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Example Subpages:

• Video Games

Other Examples:

Advertising

• In some commercials for the early 80's electronics superstore chain Federated, pitchman "Fred Rated" (played by Shadoe Stevens) would smash up electronics with a comically-large sledgehammer, with the slogan "Federated smashes prices!"

Anime & Manga

• Skuld of Ah! My Goddess with the extendable polo-style mallet she uses for debugging. Which mostly involves chasing around furry hybrid rabbit-insect creatures and pounding them in the head.
• Daisuke Ido from Battle Angel Alita uses a rocket hammer (it accelerates during the swing).
• Vento of the Front from A Certain Magical Index uses a hammer to channel the winds. Sasha Croitsef wields hammers and saws, and she's strong enough to smash through walls with them.
• Saki in Corpse Princess uses a huge, fancy-looking hammer as her weapon of choice.
• Despite being called a Hammer, the weapons used by Daitarn 3, the original Gundam, the ∀ Gundam and the Raider Gundam are not hammers. They're more like flails.
• Lavi of D.Gray-Man has a hammer, maybe six inches long, as his weapon. When he activates it, it grows very, very large, usually with the head reaching human-sized. We haven't seen any specific limit, but he's made it so large that he once demolished a building with a mis-swing. In another instance, he makes the hammerhead as large as a house. He's explicitly mentioned once in response to a reader's question that, since it's his Empathic Weapon, he doesn't notice the weight.
• Digimon Adventure:
  • Zudomon had a massive hammer made of Chrome Digizoid that could kick up energy attacks or be used for good ol' bashing. (It could even be thrown to strike an opponent, and return like a boomerang). In Norse Mythology, Thor's hammer Mjöllnir shared the same properties — it grew or shrank as needed, could be thrown like a boomerang (and hit with the force of thunder when it did). The only thing Mjöllnir lacked was the ability to throw an energy bolt. Considering that Mjöllnir is supposed to be lightning when thrown, the energy bolt isn't so much missing as used differently.
  • Puppetmon, a child-sized marionette-based Mega-level Digimon, had a (significantly smaller, but still large in comparison to himself) hammer as a weapon. Power Levels being what they are, though, Puppetmon was stronger (Zudomon's an Ultimate, one stage below Mega), so when the hammers collided in one battle, Zudomon's hammer was sent flying and the force knocked him back to his Sleep-Mode Size.
  • And then there's Grumblemon of the fourth season: he can usually be found Dual Wielding giant sledgehammers to knock around multiple, far-larger heroes in a way that'd make Puppetmon jealous.
• Shin from Dorohedoro uses an average hammer as his main weapon. It is incredibly surprising however the amount of damage that he can do with it.
• Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai: Early on in the series, Maam's melee option was a "Spear Hammer", a Double Weapon with a spearhead on the lower end and three conical spikes on the head, which she mostly employed as a hammer. After becoming a martial artist she ditched the weapon alltogether.
• Gray's Ice-Make: Hammer, Ice-Make: Ice Hammer and Ice-Make: Ice Impact and Erza's Holy Hammer in Fairy Tail.
• GaoGaiGar's Goldion Hammer is one of the biggest hammers ever in media. Its entire gimmick is a shockwave so powerful that it turns things it strikes into photons, and it's so powerful that GaoGaiGar suffers severe damage just from the backlash of its use, and needs another mech to act as a giant oven mitt to use it safely, which can be seen in the above picture replacing GaoGaiGar's right hand).
  • In the Expanded Universe, King J-Der is able to use the same hammer in the form of the "Silverion Hammer." King J-Der being a transformed battleship, the hammer, a bit taller than GaoGaiGar, is proportionally the size of a mallet. It makes a surprise return in Super Robot Wars BX
  • GaoGaiGar FINAL features the Goldion Crusher, a hammer with a handle made out of three giant spaceships, and a head roughly twenty times the size of the handle, making it several orders of magnitude bigger than the Goldion Hammer. GaoGaiGar actually hangs off the end of its handle. In a show notorious for its revival of over-the-top shouting and Calling Your Attacks, just imagine how the main characters handled it. Especially when they use it to smash the Sun. This attack is rendered in full beauty in Super Robot Wars W.
• Sana and her mother in Kodocha regularly use the squeaky toy version.
• In The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, Sir Noi Crezant, the Lizard Knight, has been sent to gain the aid of the great warrior Amamiya Yuuhi in hopes of finding the Princess Samidare and protecting the planet from the incredible 'Biscuit Hammer' poised to crack the Earth in two. They try to destroy it with the Blues Drive Monster, which... also has a hammer. And the hammer's creator himself, when he's finally fought, wields a big spiked one.
• The Gigantform of Vita's Graf Eisen in Lyrical Nanoha is larger than she is.◊ It grows even larger when she uses it with the Gigantschlag attack, to the point that she's barely visible holding it.◊ Its standard Hammerform is probably the best for enhancing spells. The Raketenform adds a spike on one end and a rocket-jet on the other for fast and powerful strikes — whereas Gigantform is probably intended for larger, slower opponents, the rocket form is probably for faster, human-sized ones. The last form, seen in Season 3, is the Zerstörungsform, which is a combination of Gigantform and Raketenform, except with a drill on the business end — it's probably intended as an anti-structure weapon, for use against completely immobile but fortified targets like engines.
  • Graf Eisen's Zerstörungsform is the insane lovechild of the aforementioned Goldion Hammer and the Giga Drill. It helps that Graf Eisen is voiced by Tetsuya Kakihara.
  • Cranked up even more in Force, where Vita gains a new weapon called Warhammer. It's huge and looks like it has a fusion reactor in the middle.
  • Hopefully it really IS a fusion reactor, since the team of terrorists they are fighting now runs off Anti-magic.
• The Gundam Gusion in Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has one about three times the size of its head. And it has thrusters on each corner to maximize the impact on any target. Considering the beam weaponry-devoid setting of the story, it's considered a very lethal weapon in the right hands. The Barbatos also carries a mace, which Mikazuki pulls in full effect, serving as both melee weapon and ranged projectile, and it has an in-built Pile Bunker. After losing the mace, Mika uses a Wrench Mace for combat, and the said Wrench Mace was supposed to be a tool for repairing Mobile Suits.
• Usopp of One Piece fame has three of these: a normal one used for carpentry (though it's a surprisingly good weapon; he managed to beat one of Arlong's Quirky Miniboss Squad half to death with it), the "Usopp Pound", a massive-looking hammer that supposedly weighs five tons but is really two frying pans bound in plastic on a stick that weights 2 kg, and the "Golden Pound", an even bigger hammer, supposedly weighing ten tons, that is really a balloon which pops upon impact.
• In Powerpuff Girls Z, Buttercup wields an oversized Daruma Otoshi hammer with casual ease. As a testament to her strength when transformed and how heavy the weapon actually is, her teammates (working together) can barely lift the thing.
• In Ranma ½, the Hyperspace Mallet shows up often enough and in a pretty impressive size — Kodachi uses one with a head about the size of Akane's torso in her first ambush. Shampoo, meanwhile, prefers to alternate between Carry a Big Stick (or two) and wielding a BFS.
• Record of Ragnarok: as expected, Thor uses a large hammer as his weapon of choice until it gets broken by Lu Bu. What the Valkyries did not expect was for Mjollnir to actually have a Super Mode which turns it so big it utterly dwarfs his wielder and allows him to gradually turn Lu Bu into a shapeless red paste.
• The Seven Deadly Sins features the giant Diane, wielding the sacred treasure Gideon, a warhammer even larger than she is. It amplifies her racial ability to control earth, to the point where she can obliterate vast swathes of terrain, and toss mountains around.
• The appropriately-named Marie Mjölner from Soul Eater is a hammer when in weapon form.
  • More like a tonfa.
  • A possible subversion as we are treated to her nicknames prior, the Demon Hammer and The Crusher. Her name is also a transparent hammer reference. Then when she is unveiled she is shown to look identical to the short-handled Mjölnir. Then the view point pulls back and we realize she is tiny and toy-like. She only grows into a Tonfa when it is revealed that her power is contrary to most hammer wielders, speed.
• When Mashiro first appears in Tayutama, she's wielding a significantly-sized mallet. She's a goddess, but still, that's some impressive hammering.
• One of the weapons of Brave Backdraft in Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head Kidou Kyuukyuu Keisatsu is the Rescue Booster Hammer. Unlike other examples, it's primarily a tool for rescue work. For instance, to break down a wall in a burning building where people are trapped. Still, it's a giant and destructive hammer.
• In Vividred Operation, Aoi's Naked Hammer is about the size of her torso and has rockets mounted in the head to give the swings even more power. When she Docks with Akane to become Vividblue, the hammer grows to about six feet long.

Arts

• Thor's Fight with the Giants: Like in the myths, Thor is battling the giants with his Mjölnir hammer.

Comic Books

• Hammerstein in ABC Warriors has a lump hammer for a hand.
• In the Asterix series, village blacksmith Fulliautomatix is often wielding his hammer when charging into battle with Romans or a fight with his fellow villagers (most likely Unhygienix the fishmonger).
• The Awesome Slapstick: Slapstick's primary weapon is his oversized cartoon mallet.
• Black Science briefly uses Krolnar, a giant wielding a massive hammer capable of squashing a person flat.
• The main character of the Italian comic Cattivik uses a large wooden (or sometimes steel) hammer in order to mug people. And he often ends up being hit by it or being forced to swallow it, courtesy of a particularly large, victim.
• In Death of the Family, Joker attacks Alfred with one. In another comic◊, Joker uses a large wooden mallet to attack Clark Kent, who spends the milliseconds of Joker's swing to decide how to fake the impact in a convincing way.
• El Toxico: When battling a giant ant, El Toxico cracks open its exoskeleton with a hammer.
• Harley Quinn is often shown using large mallets. Lottie in Earth 2: World's End, who is kind-of-sort-of the Earth-2 version of Harley, wields a very non-comedic iron-headed sledgehammer.
• Knight and Squire: As the Bad Kings each prepare to take a section of the UK, Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots, is shown heading for Scotland with an actual energy hammer.
• In Last Days of the Justice Society, Alan Scott as Green Lantern lays the smackdown on the Midgard Serpent during the Ragnarok battle in Asgard by projecting himself as Thor (not the comic book version mentioned above), complete with Mjölnir.
• Luba in Love and Rockets always carries a hammer, often to fight off guys attracted by her large breasts.
• Aside from the obvious of Thor and Mjölnir (see below), we should mention Marvel Comics' version as well. In that universe, he is the god Thor.
  • When the Skrulls tell them that (their) God is on their side, Nick Fury, on Thor's side, responds with "Well, my god has a hammer!" And it was awesome.
  • Marvel's Thor stories eventually give Mjölnir a twin - Stormbreaker, whose bearer is Thor's brother-in-arms, the anthropomorphic cyborg alien horse Beta Ray Bill.
  • Also, there was Thunderstrike, given to Thor's temporary replacement for a job well done. Though it was technically a mace.
  • Loki once had the hammer Stormcaster^note The hammer was originally unnamed, and in the issue of What If? it was featured in, it was called Stormbringer made for a depowered Storm, whom he attempted to manipulate to take Thor's place in Asgard. Though she ultimately rejected his offer, an alternate version who did stay in Asgard would become part of the Thor Corps.
  • Honorable mention goes to Thor-El, a one-shot character from the Amalgam series created through a joint effort by Marvel and DC. He was a combination of Thor and Superman, and used a hammer, but its name, if it had one, wasn't mentioned.
  • In Fear Itself, a bunch of Hammers like Mjölnir have appeared, for those of the "Worthy", designed by The Serpent and for those of the "Mighty", those hammers made by Odin and his dwarves after a deal with Iron Man.
  • Then there's the perfectly ordinary sledgehammer that Deadpool gives the Walrus, covered in rhinestones and glitter-glue to convince the Walrus he's been chosen as Worthy. Since Deadpool's miniseries in Fear Itself was written by Chris Hastings, it turns out to be a magic sledgehammer that can kill werewolves...
  • Thor used to have a debilitating weakness: if he let go of his hammer for more than a minute, he turns into doctor Don Blake, with a crippled leg and a limp (and presumably a dry wit and acid tongue), and the hammer turns into a flimsy walking stick. Fortunately, this was removed (after Odin felt that Thor had earned it), thus making Thor practically invincible.
  • During a team-up with the Odinson (Thor), Teen Jean develops the ability to create a hammer out of psychic energy.
• Mosely receives a powerful golden hammer from a mysterious being. It is super powerful and could turn into a cane if needed.
• In the Red Daughter of Krypton Supergirl storyline Rankorr forms a hammer construct to fight Atrocitus.
• Red Sonja: One More Day: The Nameless Beast, who serves as The Brute to Graven Sul fights with a large hammer. It doesn't stop Sonja from taking his head off.
• Scott Pilgrim: Ramona Flowers' purse contains a girl-smiting hammer, among other things.
• Steel, aka John Henry Irons, DCU Superhero in Powered Armor. As a Gadgeteer Genius, his hammer is (usually) a bit more complicated than just a lump of metal on a stick. Initially it was just steerable once thrown, but the version he developed during the Christopher Priest run "harnesses kinetic energy", meaning that the further it travels, the harder it hits.
• Wulf in Strontium Dog carries around a big massive hammer called the Happy Stick.
• When Calculus is first seen in Destination Moon, the multiplex helmet he is wearing is being attacked with a hammer to test its strength. ("Glass isn't nearly tough enough," Calculus explains.)
• So do Rack and Ruin in Transformers: Generation 1. Well, okay, one of their hands is a hammer and the other is an anvil that can be used identically anyway.
• One of Wolfskin's weapons is a huge, round wooden mallet.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: During Inventa and Torcha's escape attempt in #33 Torcha takes out their guards by hitting them in the back of the head with a hammer.

Eastern Animation

• The Nut (1967) is a Polish short about a walnut rolling around avoiding all kinds of obstacles, one of which is a hammer.

Fan Works

• Pudgypudge and his Naruto fanfic, Bring The Hammer Down. A tale of Naruto going through Shippuden as an angel, wielding a holy warhammer.
• Examples from the Calvinverse:
  • Calvin tries to smash Rupert's foot with one in Calvin and Hobbes III: Double Trouble.
  • In Calvin & Hobbes: The Series's Crossover with Batman, The Joker briefly tries to use one of these against Calvin. Sheila also uses one of these in her debut appearance.
• A Diplomatic Visit:
  • During the meeting between the Princesses and Swift-Pad, Swift-Pad presents Luna with the hammer his people had specifically created for her over a thousand years ago, which she had commissioned for use against a powerful foe. It was incomplete when she became Nightmare Moon, but they held onto it until the present day, and her ability to recognize the runes on it is what proves to Swift-Pad that she's the same Luna from back then.
  • During her meeting with the agents of the Equestrian Border Patrol, Luna pulls out that same large hammer and hits the floor with it as a way of catching everyone's attention.
• The Firefly fanfic Forward has, for the purpose of Actor Allusion, given Captain Reynolds a proficiency with (and tendency to use) a sledgehammer.

• The Dragon and the Bow: Fishlegs uses a warhammer to fight a Grunckle head-on, and Snotlout carries around a mace. Hiccup also smacks Snotlout and Tuffnut with his blacksmith hammer after they've thoroughly insulted him.
• The Night Unfurls has the Kirkhammer, one of Sanakan's weapons of choice in the original story. Like in Bloodborne canon, it has a sword as the haft that can attach itself onto a great stone head to form a large hammer.
• Nobody Dies:
  • A Running Gag has Rei using a rubber mallet in a really unexpected way...
    Gendo: A squeaky mallet.
    Maya: I have no idea how she destroyed Sub Commander Fuyutsuki's car with it.
    Yui: How do you bend steel with a squeaky hammer?!
    Gendo: From a 45 degree angle, apparently. [Yui facepalms]
  • It's also Mana's weapon of choice in Jet Alone Prime.
• In the Kingdom Hearts fanfic Omega Dawn, we have Kairi's Justice's Gavel.
• Oversaturated World: Sailor Plasma's sledgehammer.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Vix-Lei carries two hammers on her, a warhammer she calls "Señor Hardhead" and a squeaky one called "Lady Kabonk". She's also seen admiring (and cooing at) a massive hammer with a head as big as she is at one point, which serves to break the tension between two of her teammates when they see it.
• In Rabbit of the Moon, Bell takes up a Kirkhammer for his rematch with the Silverback, but finds it too unwieldy to use against such a speedy foe. Gehrman remedies this by revealing its function as a Trick Weapon, allowing Bell to pull out a much lighter sword to do the beast in. Bell does use the hammer to smash the Silverback's leg and arm first.
• Split Second (My Little Pony): Twilight's weapon of choice is the Justice Hammer, a Conditional Magic Hard Light warhammer larger than her own body that grows stronger the more advantages she gives to her enemy, thus justifying Explaining Her Power To The Enemy.
• In Squad 7 and their Accidental Instructor, Sakura takes to using a warhammer which, combined with her Super Strength, causes her to hit hard enough that the shockwave of a missed attack will send people flying.
• Angus, a District 10 victor occasionally seen in the We Must Be Killers stories by Lorata is often referred to as the "sledgehammers" victor.
• Wonderful (Mazinja): One of the weapons of Wonder Red is a giant hammer.

Films — Animation

• In Inside Out, Jangles the Clown wields a big mallet.
• In Kung Fu Panda 2, Master Thundering Rhino wields a large war hammer. He can use it well enough to beat Lord Shen's kung fu, but it's no match for the peacock's cannon.
• In the fourth Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf film, Mission Incredible: Adventures on the Dragon's Trail, Sparky receives a big hammer as his weapon. The hammer automatically increases its weight to 10,000 tons to inflict serious damage on enemies.
• Subverted by Fix-it Felix of Wreck-It Ralph. His hammer is purely a Healing Shiv, regardless of his say in the matter.
  Felix: WHY DO I FIX EVERYTHING I TOUCH?!

Films — Live-Action

• ABCs of Death 2: The intruder uses a hammer to murder the man's wife and child in "S is for Split".
• Played with in Adventures in Babysitting. At one point an auto mechanic is required. He arrives in a descending cargo hoist, carrying a sledge hammer and looking very much like the pictures of Thor (Marvel-style) that one of the children has been drawing, but never actually uses the hammer for anything beyond being a thematic prop (and an excuse to show off substantial muscles by toting it like it's nothing).
• In Alita: Battle Angel, Dyson Ido uses a rocket powered hammer/pick or mattock which is nearly as big as he is.
• Anna and the Apocalypse: Used for Black Comedy during Turning My Life Around when one of Anna's neighbors tries to use this on a zombie but he apparently Failed a Spot Check and hits it on the top of the head, which is protected by a hard hat, rather than aiming for the face, which ends poorly for him.
• Beware the Woods: When the old lady goes to attack the group, she's armed with a sledgehammer.
• In Blade II, a member of the Blood Pack named Lighthammer wields a large maul with retractable spikes.
• In the anthology film Body Bags, in "The Gas Station" segment the killer gains access to the locked gas station booth by bashing the front window in with a sledge hammer.
• Brahms: The Boy II: In the film's climax, Sean uses a croquet mallet to shatter Brahms' porcelain head.
• Braveheart: A rather darkly funny example here. In an early fight scene, Wallace is being chased by an Englishman with a sword; he picks up a large warhammer, making the Englishman soil his armor and run for it. The guy doesn't make it. By the first actual battle scene, he's acquired his massive honkin' claymore, but Wallace also uses a smaller bec de corbin warhammer to dismount an English soldier and pierce a few helmets.
• Call to Arms is one of the few wuxia films that features hammers as main weapons. Specifically in the final battle, where the heroes managed to grab on two large hammers and kick ass including smashing the Big Bad to death.
• This is the serial killer's weapon of choice in The Chaser.
• A Classic Horror Story: At the start of the movie, a mysterious hooded figure raises a large mallet to bring down on something off-screen.
• Clown Kill: Charlie Boy uses a claw hammer to knock Jenny unconscious.
• Conan the Barbarian (1982). Thorgrimm (one of Thulsa Doom's associate bad guys) wields one. His habit of smashing things without thinking gets him killed during the Battle of the Mounds when Conan sets up a trap that relies on him smashing what he thinks is Conan's helmeted head, which sends a spike the size of your average birch tree right through his chest. Ouch.
• Conjoined: Stanley manages to kill Alisa by taking the claw end of a claw hammer to her forehead.
• Subverted in one scene in the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004): Michael discards his (almost certainly more useful) crowbar in exchange for a croquet mallet, and then promptly gets jumped by a zombie. As expected, the mallet promptly breaks across the zombie's head without fazing it; he ends up killing it by driving the broken-off mallet-handle under its chin and through its brain.
• Dawning of the Dead: When Katya is battling three zombies up on the roof of the building, she takes a claw hammer and buries its backside into a zombie's skull.
• In Django Unchained, Calvin Candie wields a hammer threateningly when he figures out Django and Schultz's real motives for dealing with him.
  • In the "mandingo" fight (fight to the death that two slaves are forced into for gambling purposes) shown earlier, when the victor completely subdues his opponent by cracking his bones, he is given a hammer by Candie to deliver the coup de grace.
• The Driver in Drive (2011) brings a claw hammer to put the hurt on a criminal flunky. He crushes the guy's hand and threatens to hammer a bullet into his skull.
• A thief is beaten to near-death with a hammer in Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!.
• In Following, several characters use claw hammers as weapons for self-defense or torture.
• The Funhouse Massacre: Rocco The Clown commits some murders with the mallet from the ring-the-bell game. After that, it seems to have become his go-to weapon.
• Michael Myers uses a claw hammer to off a security guard in Halloween II (1981).
• Hayride: The killer uses a sledgehammer in at least one of his murders.
• Ilsa from Hellboy carries a sledgehammer and later uses a smaller hammer to shatter some glass.
• The climactic duel in Jade Warrior is fought with a pair of heavy blacksmith's hammers.
• During the final battle in Julia X, Julia selects a sledgehammer as her weapon to take on The Stranger. Earlier she uses a claw hammer to attack him; stabbing him in the back with the claw before whacking him in the head with the hammer.
• There's a hammer claw to the stomach in Las Vegas Bloodbath.
• In The Loved Ones, a claw hammer is one of the tools Lola's father uses to torture Brent.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Thor, again. And my god does he use it well. Like in Norse mythology, his hammer is called Mjölnir.
  • In The Avengers, Captain America makes the mistake of ordering Thor to "put that hammer down." Iron Man warns him that this was a bad idea... but not soon enough to prevent several hundred feet of the surrounding forest from being flattened from the shockwave caused by an unstoppable hammer meeting an indestructible shield.
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, Thor seeks out the dwarven smiths of Nidavellir to forge a new hammer to replace the loss of Mjölnir called Stormbringer. It features an even bigger head and longer shaft, and classifies as a Maul since one side of the hammer head is an axe blade. It additionally can be used to summon the Bifröst.
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Thor is narrowly saved when Thanos is struck from offscreen by Mjölnir, which returns to the hand of Captain America. Cap proceeds to use Mjolnir and his shield in conjunction to deal out some cathartic punishment on the Mad Titan.
• In Metallica: Through the Never, the mounted cop attacks protesters, and later Trip, with what is apparently a magical sledgehammer. When Trip smashes it to the ground later, it destroys much of the city.
• In M.F.A., Noelle beats one of her victims to death with a hammer in the change room at the football stadium.
• In Mikey the title character uses a hammer to try to kill his second foster mom after she finds out his past.
• The Monster: Kathy finds a carpenter's hammer in the ambulance for some reason, so she gives it to Lizzy to defend herself with.
• Nutcracker Massacre: Late in the movie, the Nutcracker confronts Clara and Paul with a claw hammer, which he attacks Paul with. Paul uses the same Nutcracker to finish the Nutcracker off by smashing one of the two gems that give it life.
• In Oldboy (2003), Oh Dae-su fights a corridor filled with mooks using only a claw hammer. He later uses it for some improvised dentistry.
• Jodie Foster has to use a sledgehammer against a thief in Panic Room, who then falls straight down a flight of stairs and instantly recovers as though nothing happened at all.
• Payback features one small sledgehammer used for torture's sake, smashing up Porter's fingers.
• In Pixels, Sam wields a giant hammer in the final battle and uses it to take down Donkey Kong.
• Playing With Dolls: One of the killer's weapons is a sledgehammer. He uses it in the climax to kill one of the guards surrounding the kill area.
• "Hammer Girl" from The Raid 2: Berandal.
• In Rambo: Last Blood, when Rambo attacks a Mexican brothel to save Gabrielle, his sole weapon is a common claw hammer that any hardware store carries... which he uses to break open the skulls (and groins) of the cartel guards and several of the Johns there.
• Manu in [REC] uses a sledgehammer as a weapon against the infected. The Medeiros girl appears to be using a hammer as a weapon during the finale.
• Morrell in A Room For Romeo Brass wields a claw hammer.
• In Savior, in the scene at the beach, the marauders' brute uses a huge hammer to deliver the killing blow to Vera .
• Scarred: Jonah Kandie seems to use a hammer a lot to knock people out from behind.
• In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Ramona keeps a sledgehammer in a bag that really shouldn't be able to hold such a thing.
• Kevin from Sin City uses a sledgehammer to lay The Big Guy Marv out cold.
• The obscure slasher film Sledgehammer (1983).
• In Streets of Fire, hero Tom Cody and villain Raven fight a duel, each armed with 12-pound sledgehammers.
• In Tall Tale, John Henry wields his sledgehammer in combat just as effectively as he drives steel with it.
• Talon Falls: One of the park employees knocks Sean unconscious with a sledgehammer to the face.
• In Ten Dead Men, Ryan kills Keller with a masonry hammer the Projects Manager had brought along as one of his torture tools. Later, one of Franklin's thugs attacks Ryan with a sledgehammer.
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:
  • The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) has Leatherface kill two of his victims with a sledgehammer. Ironically, he kills more people in the movie this way than he does with a chainsaw (with which he kills only one person).
  • In both the original movie and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, the Sawyer family try to invoke this with Grandpa, holding a victim down so he can kill them with a hammer. Both times are unsuccessful, partially due to Grandpa being over a hundred years old.
• The Toolbox Murders and its remake both feature characters getting stabbed and brained with a claw hammer.
• In Train, the conductor attempts to kill Alex with a sledgehammer. This does not go as well as he might have hoped.
• During the final battle with the killer in The Tripper, Final Girl Samantha grabs a claw hammer and batters him repeatedly about the head.
• Violent Night has the Badass Santa using a mallet to kill mercenaries, because in his past life as a viking warrior, he was quite skilled with a warhammer, which he called "Skullcrusher".
• Pink Floyd - The Wall translates the "HAMMER!" chant of "Waiting for the Worms" into making the crazed fans turned fascist troops a "Hammer Army" with two crossed hammers as its symbol. (which in a bit of Misaimed Fandom, inspired an actual Neo Nazi group) There's even a memorable animated sequence with marching hammers.
• Orgrim from Warcraft (2016) uses an enormous hammer capable of turning the head of anyone hit with it into little more than red mist. His nickname, Doomhammer, comes from the weapon.
• In Wendigo, Otis murders The Sheriff by smashing his head in with a claw hammer.
• In The Wild Hunt, Bjorn carries around a gigantic sledgehammer he calls Mjölnir, which is not made of foam like the other LARP weapons. Unfortunately Bjorn proves to be an ineffectual coward when things in the game go bad. In the end, however, he uses it in brutal fashion to avenge his brother.
• In Yojimbo, one large-sized mook of Ushitora carries a big wooden mallet as a weapon.
• You Were Never Really Here: Joe uses a ball peen hammer he purchases at a hardware store as his weapon of choice.
• In Zombieland, the somewhat-cowardly lead character winds up grabbing a sledgehammer from a "Test Your Strength" Game and using it on his greatest fear (a clown zombie).

Gamebooks

• In the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and the RPGs based off them, monsters like Stone Golems and Crystal Warriors cannot be harmed by edged weapons and must be destroyed with maces or warhammers.
• Stubble the dwarf from Legend of Zagor uses an ax as his default weapon, until he receives an Infinity +1 Sword halfway through, in the form of an enchanted Stone Hammer which can boost his SKILL and LUCK score. It's also capable of harming supernatural-based enemies like demons or ghosts which is immune to normal weaponry.

Literature

• 1066 and All That has an illustration showing Edward I, "Malleus Scotorum" (Hammer of the Scots), raising a hammer over a Scotsman's head.
• In 11/22/63, Frank Dunning uses a sledgehammer as his weapon of choice on Halloween night when he murders (or attempts to murder, depending on whether or not Jake interferes) his family.
• 1632 has some Scottish mercenaries deciding that ogling the wife of Tom Simpson is a bad idea for many reasons. Including the fact that Tom is a very big, muscular man who was a college football linebacker just short of making it in the NFL. When one of them asks Tom out of curiosity what his weapons of choice would be in a duel, he responds with "ten pound sledgehammers". This quickly confirms for them just how any such duel would go.
• Durnik in The Belgariad, as a blacksmith, wields a hammer. Later, when he becomes a disciple of Aldur, his silver amulet is decorated with a hammer. His Moment of Awesome just before being handed the amulet was to pulverise a demon lord with guess what weapon.
• In the Codex Alera series, Knights Terra — supernaturally strong earthcrafters — fight using this trope, wielding huge mauls that can crush most opponents flat.
• The preferred weapon of Baron Edmund Talbot, aka Charles the Hammer, former ruler of Anarchia, in John Ringo's Council Wars series.
• Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness features a weapon called the Hammer That Smashes Suns. It might look more like a giant crossbow. That fires comets.
• Jenna Rhodes's Elven Ways has the demonically-infused warhammer, Rakka. Wielded by that world's equivalent of a Tolkien High Man warlord, Rakka can cause a massive shockwave in its first strike, though subsequent attacks grow weaker as the demon inside gets tired.
• Fengshen Yanyi: some characters elect to use the chinese melon hammers (blunt weapons with large, round and sometimes multi-faceted heads) as weapons. Some Immortals even wield hammer Fabao (magic tool), such as Holy Mother Huoling's Primordial Chaos Hammers (which are thrown at Jiang Ziya) and Patriarch Tongtian, who uses the Purple Lightning Hammers.
• Roran's weapon of choice in the Inheritance Cycle. He kills 193 people with it in one go, and ends the day standing on a house-sized pile of bodies. This earns him the name Roran Stronghammer. The hammer isn't even that special.
• The Legend of Drizzt: Drizzt Do'Urden's friend Wulfgar wields a huge magical warhammer called Aegis-fang in battle; aside from him being strong enough and the hammer being powerful enough to stagger a giant when he throws it, it returns to his hands after it's thrown.
  • In another D&D campaign world's novels, the smith from the Majere brothers' home town certainly used a hammer in fighting before he had his hand cut off by the dragonarmies' soldiers. Later, he wound up with the Dwarven Hammer of Kharas which (when used in conjunction with the Silver Hand the returning gods blessed him with as a replacement) allowed him to forge new Dragonlances.
• A picture book called Little Rabbit Foo Foo depicted the rabbit as using a motorcycle and a net to scoop up the various other forest dwellers, and then a hammer to "bop them on the head".
• In the Malazan Book of the Fallen Verse by Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont, the Ascendant Caladan Brood wields a great hammer so badass that it has the power to awaken the sleeping earth goddess Burn (whose body is apparently the earth itself). No one wants Brood to Drop The Hammer any time soon...
• In The Reynard Cycle, the smith priests of Fenix the Firebird wield war hammers when they go to battle.
• A long handled hammer is the weapon of choice for most of the characters in The Runelords books. The description of the weapons, however is somewhere between a medieval poleaxe and a military pick.
• The Shining's Jack Torrance is well known for being Ax-Crazy with an actual axe, but his weapon when he finally goes nutso in the original Stephen King novel is a croquet mallet.
• "Grond", Morgoth's "Hammer of the Underworld" in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion is a mace in some adaptations, a hammer in others. Not to be confused with the giant wolf-shaped battering ram named after it that features in Return of the King, despite equal massive smashiness.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Robert Baratheon's signature weapon is a large warhammer said to be so heavy that few men were able to lift it. Robert wields this one-handed with a shield at the Battle of the Trident and kills Rhaegar Targaryen with a blow hard enough to crush his breastplate. This trait seems to be shared by Robert's bastards. Gendry was trained by a blacksmith, and carries a hammer. Edric Storm was sent a miniature hammer by Robert for his nameday.
  • Similarly, Donal Noye, the one-armed blacksmith of the Night's Watch, uses a warhammer in the battle against the wildings. He also happens to be the person who forged Robert's hammer.
  • In A Dance with Dragons Archibald Yronwood wields a great warhammer.
• The Stormlight Archive: The setting has the Magitek Shardblades and Shardplate which are usually used together. For those who have Plate but not Blade, there are the non-magical Shardhammers. These are so large and heavy that they can barely be lifted by two men, and usually have to be transported by cart.
• Khynan Rhys Gower, of Time Scout, prefers a war maul for a close quarters weapon. He'll substitute a croquet mallet if he has to.
• Novak, the anti-hero of the zombie noir Undead on Arrival, uses a small sledgehammer in his offhand. Additionally, other fighting men are described as carrying "guns and hammers." Makes sense, as after a zombie apocalypse, you take what you can find and there are hammers everywhere.
• Grayson Khnum in Void Forge uses a sledgehammer in the first half of the book, and later upgrades to dualwielding it with a warhammer.
• Perrin Aybara in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time often finds himself torn between choosing a blacksmith's hammer and a battleaxe. He eventually discards the battleaxe, as it only capable of destruction, whereas a blacksmith's hammer is capable of both destruction and creation. In Towers of Midnight, he trades in his blacksmith's hammer for Mah'alleinir, a massive warhammer (itself shaped like an oversized blacksmith's hammer) that is also the first weapon forged with the One Power in three thousand years.
• In The Legend of Drizzt, the dwarf Bruenor creates the magical warhammer Aegis-fang for Barbarian Hero Wulfgar. Wulfgar can use it either in melee combat or as a missile weapon, and it'll magically return to his hand after he throws it. He can also summon Aegis-fang to his hand on command if he's ever separated from it.

Live-Action TV

• Battlebots: Aside from the ones equipped on some robots, there was the BattleBox's own Pulverizers.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Olaf the troll in "Triangle" wields a hammer that even Spike has trouble lifting. Buffy can swing it like a ten pound maul. And does so, repeatedly, on Glory in "The Gift".
  • In "When She Was Bad", vampires have exhumed The Master's skeleton as part of a ritual that involves messing with Buffy's mind, a sledgehammer that was wielded by one of the vampires she slew presents a perfect opportunity for her to work out her remaining issues while making him Deader than Dead. Though in the comic it's shown that he's actually been alive again for quite a while.
• In the Cade's County episode "Company Town", Sheriff Sam Cade has to do battle with a recalcitrant miner in front of a hostile group in a miners' bar with both of them using the supposed miner's weapon of choice, a pick hammer.
• El Chapulín Colorado most often uses his "Chipote Chillón" ("Squeaky Mallet") as his main weapon. Silly-looking, but pretty damn effective most of the time.
• Daredevil (2015): Wilson Fisk kills his abusive father by striking him repeatedly over the back of the head with a hammer.
• Dexter's fourth season features the Trinity Killer, who finishes out a cycle of ritual murders by bludgeoning a father to death with the claw end of a framing hammer.
• Making a warhammer is one episode's final challenge in Forged in Fire.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Robert Baratheon is mentioned as having wielded a warhammer in battle.
  • This trait seems to have passed on to Gendry, his illegitimate son, who likewise wields a blacksmith's hammer to crack the skulls of some Goldcloaks. As of Season 7, when he joins Jon Snow, he wields a warhammer eerily resembling his father's, which he forged himself, with no small skill. Shame he loses it after one episode.
  • Jon Snow wields a blacksmith's hammer in desperation when his sword Longclaw is knocked away during the Battle of Castle Black.
• Kamen Rider
  • Kamen Rider Kiva has Dogga Form, empowered by Battle Butler Dogga/Riki and wielding a gigantic fist-shaped hammer as well as lightning attacks for finishers.
    • In a comedic sequence later in the series, Riki pulls out a cartoonish mallet (complete with "100t" on the side) during an attempt to assassinate Otoya. He hesitates because the victim is a good friend, and when the latter notices, Riki claims "I saw a mosquito" and runs off into the background trying to "swat" it.
  • Kamen Rider Fourze has the Hammer Switch, which makes a rather small hammer on his left hand. Still effective, however.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim has Kamen Rider Gridon and his Donkachi warhammer, which is the size of a standard warhammer. Adding to Gridon's general Joke Character status, it produces a cartoony *PKONG!* sound on impact.
  • Kamen Rider Ghost has the Gan Gun Saber, which can become a hammer when it combines with the Spider Lantern; though he can use it whenever he wishes, it tends to be used as the weapon of choice for Benkei Soul.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has the Gashacon Breaker, which can swap between mallet and sword modes; since he's themed after Platform Games, it's almost certainly an Homage to Mario.
• In The Mandalorian, when Storm Troopers attempt to interrogate the Mandalorian Armorer on Nevarro in her forge, she puts such a ferocious beatdown on the Troopers with her forging hammer that the helmets of two of them visibly shatter when she lands her swift and heavy blows on them.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Crime and Punishment", the second Victim of the Week has his head smashed in with a hammer taken from the display in his own hardware store.
• A standard way of interrupting sketches on Monty Python's Flying Circus was smashing characters with a giant hammer. This would replace the Knight with a Chicken and the 16-Ton Weight in series 3.
• Mouse (2021):
  • The Head Hunter uses a hammer to kill one of his victims.
  • Yo-han almost kills Ba-reum with a hammer.
• Odd Squad: While she never uses it for battle — this is a PBS Kids show, after all — Oona, the Lab Director in Season 2 and Oscar's former apprentice, keeps a large mallet in the lab that she uses to smash gadgets with, in order to take them apart and use the parts for other, more commonly-used gadgets. In line with her Cute and Psycho personality, she finds quite the sadistic pride and joy in doing this.
• Several Power Rangers and Super Sentai characters and mecha have hammers as personal weapons, on the good and bad sides of things. Heroes include Dai Sentai Goggle Five 's Goggle Yellow, Kousoku Sentai Turboranger 's Black Turbo, Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger 's Hurricane Yellow / Power Rangers Ninja Storm 's Dustin, GoGo Sentai Boukenger 's Bouken Black / Power Rangers Operation Overdrive 's Will, and Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger 's Kyoryu Cyan. Mecha include Kagaku Sentai Dynaman 's Dyna Robo, Hurricanger's Senpuujin and Kyoryuger's Kyoryujin, all of which have hammers as secondary weapons.
• One of the Whammy animations from Press Your Luck had the Whammy decked out like Boy George and Tempting Fate by singing "Who would ever hurt a Whammy?" Then halfway through the next line a giant toolbox hammer would pound him through the Fourth Wall.
• In Spartacus: War of the Damned, Lugo favors a large war hammer.
• Strangers From Hell: Jong-woo wields a hammer in the final fight. Moon-jo briefly gets hold of it and attacks Jong-woo with it.
• Sweet Home (2020): Sang-wook kills Yun-jae with a hammer — the same hammer Yun-jae tried to kill him with.
• Tales from the Crypt: In "Collection Completed", Anita kills Jonas by hitting him in the head with the gold-plated ballpeen hammer he was given as a retirement gift from the tool company.
• Top Gear: While he has never used it in battle, per se, Jeremy Clarkson's tool of choice during a challenge is, has been, and always will be a hammer.
• The Umbilical Brothers have an act that involves a few hammers hitting a koala puppet (the show this appeared on used the trio of puppets as pseudo-mascots and the koala (as he mentions during the act) was always on the receiving end of some rather brutal actions by the other two who were known - aptly - as the Threatening Bears):
• The Walking Dead: Tyreese uses a regular hardware store framing hammer (essentially a longer, heavier claw hammer) for his main melee weapon.

Music

• Stop! Hammer time! Alright, with the exception of the singer, there are no actual hammers in the song. Let's just get the joke out of the way.
• And One's "Metalhammer"
• Parodying the old folk tale of John Henry is The Arrogant Worms Filk Song “Steel-Drivin' Man” about Mike McCormick, a feckless layabout who for some reason takes John Henry's place in the tale, only to get crushed by a falling meteor in the middle of losing badly to the spike-driving machine.
• Maxwell Edison (majoring in Medicine) in The Beatles' "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" from Abbey Road. He wields a silver hammer that goes "bang bang" and then "clang clang" when it comes down upon his victim's head. It makes sure that s/he is dead.
• Cannibal Corpse's "Hammer Smashed Face".
• Finntroll: "Trollhammaren!" about a troll killing Christians with his mighty hammer.
• From Gloryhammer:
  • The first album, Tales From The Kingdom Of Fife had 'The Hammer of Glory'
  • The second album, Space 1992: Rise Of The Chaos Wizards has The Astral Hammer, luckily hidden on Earth by the Starlords, and then found and wielded by Angus McFife XIII
• You can't drop the hammer without mentioning the mighty HammerFall. The band name, songs like “Hammer of Justice,” “Let The Hammer Fall,” “Reign of the Hammer,” “Raise the Hammer,” and “Bring the Hammer Down” (Slam it down to the ground). Suffice to say, the guys love hammers.
• “If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning, I'd hammer in the evening…” The Italian version "Datemi un martello" in particular has the narrator specifically requesting a hammer to smash the heads of people (plus the telephone in which her mom will request the girl to get home).
• The cover of Metallica's Kill 'Em All literally translates the trope, a hand releasing a bloodied hammer - a suggestion of Cliff Burton, who reportedly carried a mallet everywhere and at times would smash stuff with it.
• Queen — "We're just waiting for the hammer to fall."
• Steamhammer Sam, who'd have guessed you'd be an unhappy man?
• "Hail to the Hammer" and "Hold the Heathen Hammer High" by Tyr. The Hammer of Thor too, and probably a few other songs. Heri has said "we have a lot of songs about hammers."/s
• Last thing you'll hear is the blast when the hammer drops.
• "Little Bunny Foo-Foo/hopping through the forest/scooping up the field mice/and bopping them on the head" [camp song, apparently memorialized in a picture book [see Literature]
• "The Hammer of Wrath" by Lovebites is about using said hammer to bring down justice on the wicked.

Myths & Religion

• Older Than Print: The thunder god Thor and his hammer Mjölnir from Norse Mythology.
• The "Steel-drivin' Man" John Henry, who faces off against a steam drill using nothing but a hammer.
• The legend of John Henry may or may not have been inspired by legends passed down from former slaves about Makoma, a West African mythic hero who used an iron sledgehammer to fight giant monsters. Probably best known in the Northern hemisphere for his legend being adapted as a Hellboy comic.
• The Finnish sky-god, Ukko, wielded a hammer called "Ukonvasara".
• In Classical Mythology, notably in The Iliad, the Greek warrior Ajax wields a massive warhammer as his weapon of choice. He's so big and strong that he can wield the hammer with one hand, while lesser men would need two.

Podcasts

• Merle of The Adventure Zone: Balance wields a warhammer.
• Tempered Steel from Fallout Is Dragons wields a lightning hammer.
• Jylliana from Jemjammer wields a large hammer in battle. Note that she's the party's cleric.
• Half of the Past Division party uses hammers. Drake uses an enchanted warhammer that does flame damage, and Peter carries a massive maul.

Pro Wrestling

• Triple H's foreign object of choice is a sledgehammer, although he usually thrusts it at his opponent/beatdown target, as an overhand swing is too dangerous.
  • Key word being "usually". When Randy Orton made the mistake of punting not just Vince McMahon (which would be bad enough for Orton if he hadn't won the Royal Rumble a few days later and locked in a WrestleMania title shot) but Trips' wife Stephanie McMahon as well (and defeating Shane in a match the previous night), he went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge with one the next week which The Legacy narrowly escaped without major injury.
  • An even earlier example of Triple H using not only an overhand but an overhead swing is against Vince McMahon at Unforgiven '06. DX has just been through a Hell in a Cell match versus Vince, Shane McMahon, and Big Show. After leaving Shane and Show bloodied and lying prone on the mat, Shawn Michaels and Hunter turn their attention to Vince. Hunter raises the hammer over his head and brings it down so hard on Vince's back that it cracks in two. Whether or not that was meant to happen, the "HOLY SHIT" look on Hunter's face is priceless.
  • Shawn used Hunter's sledgehammer in tribute the night after New Year's Revolution '07. Hunter had just torn his other quad, and Shawn was wrestling Rated RKO in retaliation. Shawn beat Edge and Orton, rolled out of the ring, found Hunter's sledgehammer and stared at it for a good three minutes, then beat them some more. The lesson? Don't fuck with the man with a sledgehammer, and if you do? His best friend will kill you.
• The Estonian Thunderfrog's Hammer Of Peace, which is his by virtue of no one else in Chikara being able to successfully wield it. When it strikes the ring, wrestlers are repelled from it.
• Luke Harper and Erick Rowan in their Bludgeon Brothers gimmick use sledgehammers as weapons.

Roleplay

• In the third RP of Darwin's Soldiers, Alfred uses a sledgehammer to kill a Dragonstorm experiment...by knocking its head clean off. In the same RP, Sharon also uses a hammer to kill a guard.
• Destroy the Godmodder: Several in the second game. Terra Firma is an enormous hammer with a head over 20 feet in width.
• Mortal from The Insane Quest uses a hammer for fighting. He keeps insisting it's called a mallet, though.
• From Open Blue, Admiral Flota Vladimir Ilyavich Tokarev, HERO OF THE TRIBES, uses a Maul, a giant warhammer, in personal combat.

Tabletop Games

• 7th Sea: The Eisen Ultimate Blacksmith clan, the Nibelungen, have a fighting school dedicated to using their huge blacksmith hammer.
• Cyberpunk 2020: there's a rocket sledgehammer... with a two use solid fuel rocket in the head, you start it swinging to aim and press the button on the handle, then hang on.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Hammers and maces tend to be less effective than swords and axes (until 3rd Edition, when warhammers were given damage dice equal to those of longswords and battle axes for the first time), but they are still often used for a variety of reasons.
  • Clerics in First and Second Editions have a restriction to only use blunt weapons, based on the apocryphal story that Crusades-era holy men used blunt weapons on the battlefield to get around a restriction against drawing blood.
  • In Third Edition, clerics are no longer limited to blunt weapons, but warhammers and maces are some of the best weapons available to them as a default. In particular, the Minotaur Greathammer is one of the few weapons considered worth spending a feat for proficiency on.
  • There are certain types of enemies that take greatly reduced damage when not struck by a particular type of weapon. One of these (usually possessed by skeletons) is bludgeoning damage, so prepared adventurers will bring a mace or hammer along just in case.
  • In Fourth Edition, any Dwarf can use the warhammer and throwing hammer regardless of class. Getting up close and personal with a Dwarven wizard or warlock may not be as good an idea as originally thought.
  • In Fourth Edition, the two-handed Mordenkrad is a superior weapon and has the Brutal 1 trait, allowing users to reroll 1s on damage dice until a 2 or more is reached.
  • The game also has a number of famous magic hammers, such as the Dwarven Thrower (can only be wielded by a dwarf, but can be thrown and automatically returns to the wielder's hand after each attack), the Hammer of Thunderbolts (a very powerful magic hammer that was a blatant expy of Mjolnir and required a Girdle of Giant Strength and Gauntlets of Ogre Power to make use of its full power), and the Maul of the Titans (which was inexplicably statted as a greatclub instead of a two-handed hammer, it dealt extra damage to items and structures).
• Exalted, naturally, not only has hammers, but big fucking hammers made of one of the five magical materials. These are called Goremauls. The Abyssal signature character Falling Tears Poet is often seen carrying one that could probably fell an elephant in one blow. The Grand Goremaul is even bigger than the average Goremaul and could be used to smash out the front door and back door of your house in one blow.
• FUDGE suggests allowing heavy metal blunt weapons like hammers and maces to ignore half of armor's damage resistance, making them better than sharp weapons when dealing with people in heavy armor. Like almost everything in Fudge, this is provided as more of an idea for GMs to use if they like than a hard-and-fast rule, but it's there.
• Games Workshop games:
  • There's a reason it's called Warhammer, you know. The titular weapon is named Ghal Maraz (Dwarf for "skull-splitter") and was wielded by Sigmar Heldenhammer, the Empire's founder-turned-god with a hammer for a holy symbol. Stat-wise it's one of the nastiest weapons in the game. The Dwarfs additionally favor hammers as much as they do axes. Incidentally, Heldenhammer is German for "Hero-hammer," which was Warhammer's nickname during the character-centric 4th and 5th Editions.
  • Priests of Sigmar carry large warhammers as a combination of weapon and holy symbol. They also tend to wear heavy armor in keeping with Sigmar's role as a warrior god.
  • Warhammer's successor, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, does not shirk in the hammer department. The Stormcast Eternal faction loves hammers, seeing as they're Sigmar's chosen warriors. Additionally, Khorne doesn't ignore hammers either, with two of the Blades of Khorne Heroes using hammers, with one, the Skullgrinder, being notable for being a Blacksmith using his anvil on a chain as a hammer.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Thunder Hammers, though cumbersome, are wrapped in an energy field that delivers an electro-sonic shockwave with every impact, stunning anything hardy enough to survive a blow from them. The Inquisition's Ordo Malleus ("order of the hammer") makes use of consecrated variants when they go out Demon Slaying. Among the most famous examples is Captain Lysander's Fist of Dorn, finely crafted and passed down through the mightiest of Imperial Fists commanders.
    • The Salamanders chapter of Space Marines are known to prefer Thunder Hammers along with flamers and melta weapons, as it helps to reinforce forging and smithing motifs.
    • Clan Raukaan of the Iron Hands possess the Mindforger, which works similarly to a Force Thunder Hammer although it's not really one.
    • The Black Knights of the Dark Angels’ Ravenwing wield heavy, spiked hammers known as corvus hammers. These brutal weapons were designed in imitation of the monster-slaying weapons of knights of pre-Imperial Caliban, and are capable of smashing bone and crushing heads with a single swing.
    • Orks being Orks, their Tankbustas' "tankhammers" are nothing more than rockets on long sticks they bludgeon enemy armor with. Given their ranged accuracy, this is a more reliable way for them to get tank kills.
    • In the Horus Heresy novels, Eidolon of the Emperor's children wields a big-ass hammer.
    • The Emperor's Children's primarch Fulgrim created one named Forgebreaker, which was used by three primarchs.
• GURPS: Ultratech has rocket boosted warhammers that increase the force of impact.
• Iron Kingdoms: Warmachine occasionally involves giant steam and magic powered robots with even bigger hammers. The aptly named Hammersmith even dual wields them.
• There are a few hammer artifacts in Magic: The Gathering. One from the Mirrodin set has the unusual distinction of killing both the wielder and the target.
• In Steamlogic's Mechanical Dream, there's three "Weird-tech" hammer weapons powered by orpee fruit. The Double Sledge which is a huge hammer with motorized propellers that allow the hammer to hit twice in succession. There's also the Pure Crusher which uses orpee to increase its density (the hammer can weigh hundreds of pounds) to increase damage and the similar Impact Hammer which uses orpee to generate a shock wave after successfully hitting a target.
• Mutants & Masterminds has the villain, Hexenhammer. His preferred weapon, also called the Hexenhammer, is designed to shut down or seriously weaken the abilities of any magical character who gets hit with it. (Considering that the name is rather obviously inspired by the Malleus Maleficarum, this shouldn't come as a big surprise.)
• In Nomine: Fitting his preferred approach to combat — reactive and often slow, but overwhelmingly powerful once brought to bear — the Archangel David favors the use of a great two-handed warhammer.
• Rocket Age: Martian War Priests use Hamaxes, hybrid axe hammers, which can do tremendous damage to people wearing armour when the hammer side is used.
• Rolemaster averts the 'big block of steel on a stick' style of War Hammer, depicting it as a quite realistic long-handled weapon with a smallish hammer head and a back spike (The Standard System edition even includes a picture). It also included a similar War Mattock, which is a two-handed weapon, as opposed to the one-handed War Hammer.
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse: One tribe, the Get of Fenris, are descended from Nordic stock, and conflate Norse mythology with the Garou's animistic view of the world. Artifacts of the tribe include the Jarlhammers, seven unique and immensely powerful "fetishes" (imbued items or weapons). There are also non-unique "Lesser Jarlhammers".

Theme Parks

• In Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular at Universal Studios, one of the Smokers attempts to use a giant metal mallet against the Mariner, but it proves useless against the hero's reflexes.

Toys

• BIONICLE:
  • A web serial includes a good Alternate Universe version of Makuta, the Big Bad, who carries a warhammer. He then brutally deconstructs the non-violent, non-lethal connotations of this trope by brutally deconstructing evil alternate versions of Takanuva.
    Mazeka: Where's the third one?
    Makuta: There. And there. And some over there.
  • Onua has this as his main tool in the 2015 relaunch of the line. It can split into shovels that go over his hands.

Web Animation

• For that extra punch, RWBY's Nora Valkyrie has a grenade launcher/hammer called "Magnhild". From afar or up close, something's going "boom". Seeing as she's based off of Thor, it's appropriate.
  • Elm uses another hammer called Timber which doubles as a grenade launcher. It doesn't do her much good against Blake and Yang, though.
• Super Mario Bros. Z:
  • Axem Yellow used one. Makes sense, as he was patterned after GutsMan.EXE. He also had an axe.
  • Mario and Luigi use them as sub-weapons, and Mario has unleashed the righteous fury of the Hammer Brother Suit.

Webcomics

• White Mage of 8-Bit Theater has a hammer as her weapon of choice, as the white magi of Final Fantasy frequently used them.
• Big Bad Khrima of Adventurers! wields "The Mallet of Extreme Pain".
• Kendall's magic weapon in Agents of the Realm is a giant warhammer that seems to be a catalyst for her Dishing Out Dirt powers as well.
• In the prologue of Bastard, Jin uses what appears to be some sort of sledgehammer or mallet wrapped in cloth to almost murder his tutor.
• In Champions of Far'aus, Gwen Rockcrusher, Champion of the light god Parthelax, fights with a mallet-like hammer.
• In the classic Commedia dell'Arte and Punch & Judy shows, Pulcinelle/Punch uses a blunt club. Commedia 2X00 trades it out for a huge cartoon mallet—the better to bludgeon Super Fighting Cyborgs.
• Mink of Darken uses a massive hammer.
  Mink: It's so ecclesiastical! And smitey! Oh come on!
• Melna from Dominic Deegan uses one to great effect, and somehow managed to decapitate someone with it.
• Dumbing of Age: Blaine, carpenter by trade and Korean mob money launderer by association, ends up using a ballpeen hammer as a weapon in book 10.
• Susan in El Goonish Shive and her friend Sarah were fond of the Hyperspace Mallet, until the writer got tired of that particular joke. (A Q&A strip explicitly stated that it could only be used for comedic circumstances, though. Tedd's bugging her, that's one thing. Get mugged in an alley or need to sneak into the Big Bad's lair, though, and it pays to know a Half-Human Hybrid who exemplifies Beware the Nice Ones...)
  • Comedy relief part was dropped later, but it's confirmed that the Hammer-call works only if the would-be target is male and does something offensive specifically towards women, so the indiscriminate violence of random muggers and sentinels doesn't fit. This depends on the perception. In retrospect, it might just be dependent on mental gender rather than physical gender.
  • After the immortal Jerry disables the Hyperspace Mallets (having been the one who created them in the first place), Susan gains a spell that lets her recreate them for her own use against anybody.
• The Arkenhammer, one of the Tools of the Titans in Erfworld. It can tame mighty dwagons, summon lightning through The Power of Rock, perform other magical feats, and is a formidable weapon in close combat. In keeping with the outwardly cutesy appearances of everything else, however, it's also a plastic toy squeaky mallet. As one fan put it: "It's only a toy if you're a Titan; mere mortals have to settle for using it as an insanely powerful artifact." It turns every fifth walnut it cracks into a pigeon, and supposedly every fifth bird it kills into a walnut.
• Chapter 11 of Furry Fight Chronicles has Dinedon, the manager of Team Executor, announce the arrival of his Combagals with a large gavel that is just as big as him.
• In Girl Genius, Tarvek is seen messing with a hammer in the library. It is helpfully inscribed with "It's Hammer Time!"
  • Hoffman's "Kinetic Energy Accumulator". Whack things with it for a week, switch it to "Discharge", and obliterate clank vehicles with a hammer that looks like a toy.
• Ronson from The Gods of Arr-Kelaan is an odd case. His hammer is a tiny pink rubber mallet that can kill gods. It was originally some sort of transforming artifact and when he got ahold of it he thought of a mallet, and it got imbued with his divine power or something.
• Hanna of Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name wields an ordinary hammer that he has customized with some runes. While the runes don't seem to have any flashy magical effect, the hammer is just as effective at wounding vampires as it is at pulling out nails.
• Homestuck:
  • John Egbert has hammers as his primary weapon specialty. It proves to be a problem when he couldn't lift his sledgehammer. He gets a much lighter one later though, the Pogo Hammer!
  • All the main characters are given a chance to set their weapon specialty for the rest of the "game." John, picks the hammer mostly because it allows him to free up space in his inventory, commenting that he "can't imagine it's going to be all that relevant."
  • Thanks to Item Crafting, he later gains the gigantic Telescopic Sassacrusher ("of course you have no hope of lifting it whatsoever"), the burn-inducing Wrinklefucker, and the magic-enhanced Fear No Anvil, courtesy of alternate-timeline Dave. Even later, through other means, he gets the awe-inspiring Warhammer of Zillyhoo. Even later than that, he enhances it with the Fluorite Octet, Vriska's extremely powerful set of magic dice. It has proven to be really, really nasty, and to have hilarious side effects; one blow is enough to not only knock off 10% of Hero Killer Jack Noir's health bar, but also put him at risk of an encounter with an elf, a pony stampede, or, as ended up happening, the bestowal of a ridiculous hat.
• Krunch Bloodrage of Looking for Group uses a big ol' hammer to bash heads when he isn't using his fists. His father dual wields a pair of one-handed maces when he "surrenders". OTOH, Krunch's brother Rayd favors the battleaxe.
• In Magience, Dagger's weapon of choice is an enormous hammer.
• Durkon Thundershield from The Order of the Stick. Being a Dwarven Cleric of Thor, it's not surprising that he wields a one-handed warhammer. He's overall more a healer than a warrior, but he has the ability to occasionally grow to positively gigantic proportions when muscle is desperately needed. His hammer grows along with him. The fact that it grows along with him is justified in that Order of the Stick is based on Dungeons & Dragons rules, and all of the size-expansion spells make equipment grow too. And as of strip 1152, he has a smaller version of Thor's Mjölnir.
• Yuuki's main weapon in Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki is a hammer.
• Bo the Sheep and her Ramrod, from Bleedman's Sugar Bits.
• Just like the Hisoutensoku example above, Cirno uses a hammer made of ice with a MASSIVE head in Touhou Nekokayou. The minor meme described above is essentially her battlecry when using it.
• Tower of God: Kurdan, wields a really big hammer◊, as you should. Not only that, as a Cutter he can make the impact hit whatever coordinates he pleases, making him a missile launcher.
• Van Von Hunter uses a hammer as his primary weapon.
• Wayward Sons: Hurk's weapon of choice is a massive hammer coated with Vastedium, called "Olnir".

Web Original

• Banhammers:
  • Many moderators and GMs in numerous forums and mmorpgs tend to refer to their use of their authority to ban rulebreakers, cheaters, and trolls as "wielding their Banhammer." This tendency is widespread enough that a whole category of image macros depict offenders being struck by Banhammer-wielding moderators. In some instances, permanent bans are depicted as the Mods using a Permaban Crusher that is clearly modeled after the Goldion Crusher.
  • The Forum Administrator Reploid Productions of NationStates takes it further.
    ~Evil Forum Empress Rep Prod the Ninja Mod
    ~She who wields the Banhammer; master of the mighty moderation no-dachi Kiritateru Teikoku
  • 4chan City includes rare footage of banhammers being used in combat.
  • Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worth, shall possess the power of... BAN◊.
• Whateley Universe examples: the superpowered mutant Sledge wields a big sledgehammer, and as fits the trope, is a Scary Black Man. One of the students on the Vindicators training team, Donner, is a Swede who has trouble with English and wields a warhammer much like Thor's, right down to the Marvel Comics trick of hurling it (well, using his Energizer powers to move it through the air) and letting it pull him after. However, he's a clumsy oaf, and actually Drops the Hammer (on the floor) quite often.

Web Videos

• Martillo Smith from Aitor Molina Vs. is sometimes used to fight.
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog averts this; Captain Hammer, despite his namesake, doesn't have a hammer. The hammer is his penis.
• French youtuber Michael J. is almost always seen with a Thor's hammer prop, and it's part of the logo for his Fermez-là! review show. The hammer features prominently in a few sketches, like when he tested "Is the elevator worthy?"
• Hero House stars Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, so this is something of a given.
• Noob: La Croisée des Destins: The only weapon that can kill one of the game's major antagonists is a pair of massive battle hammers.
• Cole Quentin Hudson from season one of Survival of the Fittest used a sledgehammer. Unfortunately, it slowed him down enough that the one time he used it in combat, he got his arse handed to him.
• What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?: Nash is known to pick up a claw hammer whenever he has to defend himself all but once, where he picked up a fire extinguisher. He was awaiting fanmail. Fellow TGWTG reviewer ERod (The Blockbuster Buster) uses a very similar hammer, only with a green handle. Named 'Lucille'.
• Grog Strongjaw on Critical Role acquired a magical flaming warhammer early in the series. He later acquires a dwarven throwing hammer from a dragon's treasure hoard, which he can use to full effect because of his girdle of dwarvenkind.
• Mr. Gibbs: In "Duck Hunt Hide and Seek", Ledger grabs a hammer to kill Brock with, and tests it on an ordinary NPC Duck Hunt. He later abandons it after he drops it on an NPC Duck Hunt's head, killing it.

Western Animation

• Arcane: Aside from what his main will be later, Jayce's family is mentioned to have built tools such as hammers across generations. And during his presentation to Heimerdinger, Jayce takes a big swing at a Gemstone with a hammer to prove its stability. Jayce finally builds his signature Mercury Hammer in "Oil and Water" and tests it successfully in the field while attacking the Shimmer production plant.
• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Thor wields Mjölnir, naturally. Also, Beta Ray Bill gets his own, Stormbreaker, which is similar to Mjölnir.
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Judgment Day", the Knight Templar vigilante The Judge attacks Killer Croc with a gavel the size of a sledgehammer. Batman is able to get ahold of it later, and find out it's actually a trophy with the plaque removed, and with that information, find out that The Judge is actually a third personality of Harvey Dent.
• Celebrity Deathmatch: Liam and Noel Gallagher have their match ended when they both get their heads splattered by the hammer of, who else, but Gallagher.
• In one episode of Chowder, Gazpacho bans Mung Daal from his fruit stand, then confidently proclaims that he had to drop the banhammer on him.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: The Hat of Discipline, which is a large hat in the shape of a hammer. Rolf uses it to punish Edd for dressing up his pig in a tuxedo.
• Electric hammers are standard-issue weapons to the Quarrymen in Gargoyles.
• In Green Lantern: The Animated Series, the anthropomorphic pig-like Green Lantern Kilowog prefers to use a hammer construct for melee combat.
  Kilowog: I make hammers.
• In Steven Universe, the fusion gem Sardonyx (Garnet and Pearl), has this as her main weapon. It combines Garnet's gauntlets as the head and Pearl's Blade On A Stick as the handle.
• Ultra Magnus of Transformers: Animated wields a humongous hammer that can even call down lightning, which is called the Magnus Hammer in the show and "Stormbringer" on one of his toy's bios. (If he sounds a teensy bit like Thor, remember, The Transformers (Marvel) comic series was written by Marvel, so it's probably more recycling old ideas than anything else.)
  • Also, the Elite Guard homage The Avengers a great deal. Magnus is Thor, while Sentinel is Captain America and Blurr is Quicksilver. (Marvel Comics doesn't have any ninja beatniks, though, so Jazz doesn't seem to fit... but he is awesome, which is what matters.)
  • Word of God has stated that, even if he chooses to actually fight with a different weapon, the current Autobot leader needs to have the hammer in his possession to have the rank of Magnus, making it the Animated equivalent of the Matrix of Leadership. That's probably why Shockwave stole it after badly injuring Ultra Magnus, and when Ratchet gets it back he refuses to give it to Sentinel Prime (who was acting Magnus) because he didn't want him to get even more power.
  • And the fact that Optimus finally considers himself responsible enough to carry it into battle, and is holding it after he returns to Cybertron, may indicate that he is the next Magnus.
  • Sari later gets one to go with her transformation after using the allspark-powered key to upgrade herself.
• Transformers: Prime:
  • Breakdown has a hammer as his Shapeshifter Weapon. Given his lack of subtlety and love of violence, it's a good choice.
  • Of the thirteen original Transformers, Solus Prime wielded a hammer that could forge practically anything from raw materials. Only a Prime can activate its powers, but it's still a big slaggin' hammer that packs a wallop for anyone who can swing it. In homage to the above example, Ultra Magnus takes it into battle after it's been drained of its power.

Real Life

• A number of weapons resembling hammers have been used historically.
  • Warhammers◊ didn't look much different from your average carpenter's hammer - they just had longer handles. Placing a lot of the weight at the point of impact gave the weapon a lot of punch, breaking bones through armor that was intended to deflect the lesser impact of blades; hence why they were highly effective against plated armor. The real-world hammers often had a small flat face on one side of the head and a simple pick on the other. Strike with the flat face and you can quickly use your weapon again; strike with the pick and with any luck you'll penetrate your opponent's armor entirely, at the cost of possibly having to take a moment to yank the pick out again.
  • The horseman's pick also resembles a claw hammer, with an armor-piercing slanted point on the opposite side of the hammerhead. It was used primarily by Islamic cavalry and Polish hussars.
  • Mauls resemble sledgehammers. They were primarily an archer's weapon, serving double-duty in hammering down protective stakes before a battle and attacking any enemies that drew too close for comfort.
  • Bec de corbin, meaning "Crow's Beak". A pole weapon designed specifically for armor-piercing, which was a hammer with spiky instead of flat face on a 7 feet handle. Developed in Poland. They like this trope.
• The use of hammers in war is evident in the sport of polo, which was originally a war exercise for Persian cavalry.
• Tactical sledge hammers are sometimes used in close-quarters combat fire teams. The doorman will sometimes use it in place of a battering ram or shotgun when approaching a breaching scenario. Tactical sledge hammers come in handy in situations where explosives or shotgun shells would prove too destructive due to the presence of hostages or physical obstructions. It is not unheard of for SWAT members to find themselves using the hammer as a last-second weapon when the suspect is determined to be closer to the team than anticipated.
  • Firefighters also use hammers to break down barriers (like concrete) when axes aren't enough.
• The trademark weapon of real life Hells Angels is the ballpeen hammer, because as a tool (and one that a biker may legitimately use from time to time at that), possession doesn't carry the same legal repercussions as a knife or gun in most jurisdictions.
• In January 2018, a British SAS trooper went into an Afghan cave to hunt down a high-level Taliban target. Due to the cramped conditions, he took only a Glock 17 pistol and a claw hammer with him. The pistol jammed after killing three enemies and he had to resort to using the hammer to kill another three terrorists.
• Truckers will often carry hammers as a self-defense weapon and as a tool for checking tires or breaking off ice.
• The Ōtsuchi of ancient Japan was a type of large wooden hammer (whose name literally translates to "large hammer") with a comically large barrel-like head. However, it wasn't actually used as a weapon in combat but rather as a tool to break through wooden gates and barricades, which is why it was often used by firefighters.
• During the Russian invasion of Ukraine since early 2022, there have been videos of Russian deserters from the Wagner private military company (which is heavily engaged in the war) being executed with sledgehammers. The boss of said company and oligarch from Vladimir Putin's inner circle, Yevgeny Prigozhin, sent one such blood-stained hammer to The European Union after they requested to brand his company a "terrorist organization".

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Tony Stark: Uhh, yeah, no, bad call. He loves his h*OOF*