Hook Hand

Just be careful in the bathroom.

"This maniac is running wild and he has a scary look
And his right hand, where it ought to be, he has a razor-sharp hook!"

— Freaky Stories, Watch Out for The Hook

A character replaces their hand with a hook or similar object. Bonus points if a crocodile is somehow involved.

This is an example of Fashionable Asymmetry, subtrope of Artificial Limbs, and is one of the stereotypical attributes of pirates. In most fiction, someone who uses one of these is probably evil, although exceptions are possible. More generally, it serves as a Red Right Hand, though such uses may have reached a Dead Horse Trope level. Such an individual will invariably be Dressed to Plunder.

See also Hooks and Crooks. Seadog Peg Leg is a sister trope. Can overlap with Ironically Disabled Artist if a one-handed musician uses a hook to play an instrument.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In the Area 88 manga and OVA, Campbell has a hook hand. Surprisingly, it doesn't impact his ability to pilot aircraft.
• Zellogi, one of the minor Shinigami from Death Note, has a Hook Hand.
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam, keeping with its Space Pirate motif, introduces a weapon called the "hook shield" in The Steel 7; as its name implies it's a small shield with a literal Grappling-Hook Gun on the end.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam AGE has the pirate-themed Gundam AGE-2 Dark Hound, which has a pair of grappling "hooks" mounted on its backpack.
  • Doctor J from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing has two hook hands.
• One Piece:
  • Sir Crocodile; this itself is a reference to Captain Hook, who lost his hand to a crocodile. Crocodile himself seems to love the creatures, and how he lost his hand has yet to be explained. It is also bigger than his head and gold-plated. He can remove the gold sheath, which allows the hook to inject deadly scorpion venom on contact, and there's a hidden knife blade if that hook is broken.
  • Ax-Hand Morgan also is named for his ax hand. This version is made more distubing by the fact that the ax's handle was apparently implanted as well, running along his forearm and sticking out well past his elbow.

Audio Plays

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventure "Doctor Who and the Pirates", Evelyn initially claims that Red Jasper has two hooks for hands. When Sally points out he would not be able to fire a pistol, Evelyn admits she was embellishing, but it is not clear if Jasper has one hook or none.

Comic Books

• The DCU:
  • Aquaman loses his left hand (and most of the forearm about halfway to the elbow) to piranhas in Aquaman (1994) after the villain Charybdis steals his ability to control sea life. At first, he replaces it by simply tying a harpoon head to the stump; later, he's fitted with a more elegant hook that he can launch on command or swap out with a cybernetic hand. In the Justice League cartoon, he cut it off himself in order to save his infant son.
  • Arkham Asylum guard Aaron Cash in Arkham Asylum: Living Hell lost his hand in a scrape with inmate Killer Croc and was fitted with a pinching hook prosthesis. When Croc corners him during a riot, he says "tick tock" in reference to Captain Hook and the crocodile. Cash and Croc have since developed a severely adversarial relationship, as you can imagine. Naturally enough, Cash makes a few cameo appearances in the Batman: Arkham Asylum video game. Croc obligingly continues to fill in the other half of the motif with an almost obsessive "tick tock" chanting.
  • The Hook was one of the New Blood heroes introduced during the Bloodlines Crisis Crossover event in 1993. He's a hook-handed Vietnam vet who gained the power to cut through anything with his hook.
  • A hook-handed assassin killed circus acrobat Boston Brand, turning him into the ghostly hero Deadman.
  • The Outsiders: In Batman and the Outsiders, the Outsiders once fought a villain named Nunchuku, who instead of hands, had, well... what do you expect? He was arguably one of the less silly opponents The Outsiders faced.
  • Plastic Man once faced a villain called "the Trowel" who had lost a hand and had it replaced with a bricklayer's trowel.
  • In Red Robin, the member of the 7 Men of Death Tim decides to take for questioning has a missing hand replaced with a hook.
  • Robin (1993): Johnny Warren eventually replaced the hand he lost due to firing a warped and blocked gun with a hook. He has no concern about injuring himself with it as by that time he's possessed by an evil magical entity and can easily repair any new injuries.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): The Huntress villan named the Sea Lion has a hook hand and peg leg, to give him a pirate-like air.
  • Parodied in the first issue of Young Justice, in which Robin has a nightmare about his hand being eaten by cockroaches and being replaced by a batarang hook thing. Self-Deprecating Humor at work — Peter David wrote both Aquaman when the hook was first introduced and Young Justice. The other two characters' nightmares are Superboy's jacket becoming fiery wings (David's Supergirl) and Impulse ricocheting from one unbalanced personality to another, before snarling "Impulse FLASH!" (David's The Incredible Hulk).
• One of the villains in Hero Camp is the Hook, a former pro wrestler who lost his hand in an unfortunate but never-explained accident. His dislikes include the Chicago Cubs (he's from chi-town) and things that take two hands to do.
• Castenado from Just a Pilgrim has two hooks, to match his two peg legs and the two missing eyes covered by eyepatches and cement him as the ultimate pirate.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Ghost Rider: The new Vengeance, ex-cop Kowalski, lost his hand to a lunatic (the last heir to an ancient curse, naturally) who ate it to tide him over until he could finish him off for dinner. He would get a pincer hook thing, but after finally encountering Ghost Rider again in the desert, he became a Spirit of Vengeance and his hook became a more familiar (but angular) shape.
  • The Punisher villain Mr. Badwrench has a (you guessed it) wrench in place of a hand. Frank kills him with it.
  • Minor Shang-Chi malcontent Razorfist has a slight variation in that both his arms terminate in large blades. Unlike a normal hook, however, this leaves him totally incapable of manipulating anything at all of his own volition; his enemy Toxin theorizes that when Razorfist decided to be fitted with the blades he was subconsciously absolving himself of any real sort of responsibility while forcing others to tend to his needs.
• In Ms. Tree, Dan Green has a pincer hook in place of his left hand (which he lost to a bomb).
• Phil, the mentor figure in Pirate Club. He didn't actually lose his hand to a killer whale as he might tell you; he's been a garbage man for decades and accidentally got his hand caught in the mechanism. However, being an old guy with a hook for a hand causes him to be idolized by the Pirate Club.
• Sky Pirate Captain Plunder from Sonic the Comic has a hook in place of his left hand.
• To replace the forearm he lost in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) remake, Leatherface gets a hook hand (composed of a bone, belts, and a meat hook) in the comics set after the film.
• Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: Impactor has a harpoon in place of his right hand. He ends up shooting Overlord in the head with it, and in Sins of the Wreckers he uses it to kill an out-of-control Guzzle.
• In Violine, Muller gets a variation of these (hooked claws) after nearly being eaten by crocodiles.
• Lucien Machete in the Topps Comics Zorro series. He adapts his hook hand into a Swiss-Army Weapon.

Comic Strips

• Hsu Tanaka in Hsu and Chan lost a hand in a swordfight with his lifelong rival Akira Yamamoto, and subsequently had it replaced by a simple prosthetic claw that can bend solid steel.
• Gaspar, the evil dolphin hunter in the "Dossier on Pluto" arc from Modesty Blaise.
• In Nodwick, a ninja-pirate captain wields a nunchaku on his hook by putting the hook through the middle link of the chain.

Fan Works

• Maim de Maim's Perry Larkin is mentioned to have hooks for both hands. The narration lampshades this with a bit of Fridge Logic with how he could answer and use his phone.
• In Twisted Princess, Ariel has a fork in the place of one of her arms.

Films — Animation

• Tom Baltezor in Eight Crazy Nights has a hook for a left hand, with which he is prone to accidentally injuring himself.
  Davey Stone: I wonder if that guy ever wiped his ass with the wrong hand?
  Tom Baltezor: Yes.
• Captain Hook from Peter Pan. He plays incidental music on the piano with his hook as well as his good hand, while consoling a tearful Tinkerbell.
• The version of Captain Hook in the Shrek movies, who plays piano in a bar despite his Hook Hand.
• The thug with a hook for a hand in Tangled who dreams of becoming a concert pianist. His dream comes true in the end.
• In The Thief and the Cobbler, alongside the usual assortment of self-mutilation that was implied to happen to the Brigands, the brigand that warns Chief Roofless not only has a hook for a hand, but also a hook for a foot.

Films — Live-Action

• The (mostly good) tow truck driver in Adventures in Babysitting, right after Chris has told the kids a horror story about a killer with a hook.
• Manon in The Alligator People lost his left hand to an alligator, and now has a hook in its place. This loss pisses him off so much that he has developed an undying hatred for the things, and he periodically gets drunk and shoots at them with his revolver.
• The villain of the third Battal Gazi film, Sövalye Andrea, loses an arm to Battal Gazi early in the film. For the remainder of the movie, Sövalye sports a hook-hand, and in the final battle, Battal Gazi manages to kill Sövalye by forcing his hook into his own throat.
• Homer Parrish in The Best Years of Our Lives. He was played by real-life double amputee Harold Russell, a drill sergeant during the war who lost his hands in a training accident.
• Both anthology films Campfire Tales (1991) and Campfire Tales (1997) feature a version of the Urban Legend about an escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand.
• Candyman: Candyman's weapon of choice. His right hand was amputated in life and a hook placed in its stump, and he carries that into the afterlife.
• One baddie in Charade has a hook hand as a leftover from World War II. He even has a spare one in his suitcase.
• Calibos in Clash of the Titans (1981). After Perseus cuts off his left hand, it is replaced by a short trident.
• The Claw, the villain of Dick Tracy's Dilemma. He accidentally electrocutes himself when his hook jams in some wiring while trying to kill Tracy.
• In Evil Dead 2, after he has to cut off his own hand, Ash attaches a chainsaw to the stump.
• Moon from the martial arts fantasy Fox Legend. After a fox demon gnawed off her left hand, she had it replaced with a hook-like knife.
• Godzilla gives us Gigan, who has hooks in lieu of hands among his other Spikes of Villainy. In Final Wars, his hooks are now curved blades, and in the final battle he replaces the blades with dual-pronged chainsaws.
• In The Hobbit, the orc chief Azog loses his left hand in a fight with Thorin and has it replaced with a prosthetic consisting of a metal rod impaled through the stump and protruding through his elbow, with a twisted claw at the end.
• Despite the title, the killer in The Hook Of Woodland Heights has a barbecue fork in place of one of his hands.
• Sanford Scolex (a.k.a. Dr. Claw) from Inspector Gadget (1999) has a cybernetic claw in place of his left hand. Lampshaded, too: "It has a sort of postmodern Captain Hook feel to it... Too bad 'Hook' is taken, huh?" It carries over (with more simplified mechanisms) into Inspector Gadget 2.
• In I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, the killer has a hook for a hand. (In the previous movie, he kills with a gaff hook that he carries.)
• Old Howard of Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer has one, the legacy of his uncle biting off much of his hand.
• James Bond:
  • The title character of Dr. No lost his hands in a radiation accident and replaced them with metal manual prostheses. (In the original novel, it's because the Tongs cut off his hands for theft.)
  • Tee Hee Johnson, The Dragon to Big Bad Kananga in Live and Let Die, has a vicious-looking pincer in lieu of a right hand. He threatens to cut Bond's little finger with it during an interrogation. In fact, his whole arm is mechanical — he lost it to a caiman.
• In Jennifer's Body, J. K. Simmons plays a teacher with a hook-shaped pincer for a hand.
• Judge Dredd: One of the Angel Family, the cyborg known as Mean, has a hook at the end of his cybernetic arm.
• Knife for the Ladies: One of the townsfolk who joins Jarrod's posse to hunt down Ramon has a hook for hand. This is never commented upon.
• Leatherface's brother Tech (alternatively known as Tinker) from Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.
• In Long John Silver, Purity Pinker's servant Ironhand has a hook for a hand.
• Sported by one of the killers in Lovers Lane. The other two just have removable hooks that go over their hands.
• One of the Medjai in The Mummy (1999) attacking the barge has a hook, and threatens Evey with it.
• Douglas in Mosquito Squadron lost his left hand in combat, and has it replaced with a hook prosthetic. The first time he appears with it, he throws around pirate slang and jokes how his sister and the main character are "shark food".
• Peter Pan adaptations naturally feature Captain James Hook and his namesake hook hand.
  • Peter Pan (1924), with Ernest Torrence as Hook.
  • Hook (1991), with Dustin Hoffman as Hook. The hook is first seen being sharpened on a grinding wheel, then it's brought to the Captain on a silk cushion with much reverence by Smee (Bob Hoskins) with all the surrounding town full of pirates chanting Hook's name following Smee.
  • Peter Pan (2003), with Jason Isaacs playing the only Captain Hook who's actually shown as having an ugly scarred stump of his right arm, before we see him strapping on the heavy complicated leather harness that holds his hook in place.
  • Pan (2015) averts the trope, with its James Cook (Garrett Hedlund) still having both hands.
  • Wendy (2020) has perhaps the most crude-looking hook of all adaptations.
  • Peter Pan & Wendy (2023), with Jude Law as Hook.
• In Puppet Master, the puppet Blade has a tiny little hook for one hand. Befitting his name, the other hand is a little knife.
• A heroic example happens in Rolling Thunder, in which the main character (a former Vietnan POW) loses his hand and replaces it with a sharp set of hooks.
• Matthew, the Villain Protagonist of Scream Bloody Murder. Weirdly, despite Matthew's general Ax Crazyness, he only uses his pseudo-appendage to kill one person, not counting his suicide at the end.
• In Sherlock: Case of Evil, from the distinctive marks left on the victims' necks, Holmes is able to deduce that the West End Killer has a hook in place of his left hand. From the other facts he is able to deduce (such as the killer's height), he is able to identify the killer as Dr. Cruikshank.
• Cyrus in Smoke has lost his left arm in a car accident and wears an arm prosthesis with a snatch hook.
• One of the bad guys in Surf Nazis Must Die is hook-handed and goes by the name Hook.
• In Yellowbeard, Moon loses his left hand when Yellowbeard slams the lid of a treasure chest on it. He has it replaced with a hook.

Folklore

• One of the most famous Urban Legends features a Serial Killer with a hook for a hand who stalks couples at Make-Out Point.

Gamebooks

• In Book 5 of the Lone Wolf series, Shadows on the Sand, during the palace prison escape path, you can meet "Hammerfist the Armourer", a huge weaponsmith with a hand replaced by a warhammer for both fighting and metalworking.

Jokes

• One yarn involves a pirate with a peg leg, eyepatch, and hook hand recounting to a landlubber how he came to receive each of them. He tells of how he lost his leg to a shark and lost his hand in a skirmish with the Royal Navy, but lastly, he explains that the eyepatch came from a time when he glanced up at the crow's nest and a seagull crapped in his eye. That's not what did it, of course, but it happened to him on his first day with the hook.

Literature

• Truly's dad in Absolutely Truly has a hook for a hand on his first prosthetic arm. It tends to scare Pippa until her siblings convince her to compare it to Captain Hook's hook.
• The Areas of My Expertise: According to John Hodgman, most (well, at least 9) of the U.S. presidents, though George W. Bush has a chainsaw instead. He also claims that in the original Hollywood script for the 2008 election, John McCain would win, Sarah Palin would remove her rubber hand and reveal that she had a hook hand as well as an assault rifle for a leg, become the de facto president, and change the title of President to "The American Huntress". Admit it, that sounds pretty cool.
• Ashfall has this happen to Alex and Darla in a rare non-villainous, non-pirate example. The hook is actually what shakes her out of a deep depression.
• A relatively minor example in the Aubrey-Maturin series, wherein midshipman William Reade has a hook to replace the hand he lost in combat. Reade views it in good humor, at one point saying that he might have a disadvantage in passing for lieutenant as he was a tripod instead of a quadruped.
• Benny Rose, the Cannibal King: Benny Rose has a hook in place of his left hand, which he uses to slash at and kill his victims.
• The title character in Dr. Adder has a humane cow-killer for a right arm.
• The Executioner: French-Israeli commando Yakov Katzenelenbogen, the Old Soldier of Phoenix Force when it was first founded, has a prosthetic arm with a triple-hook hand after losing the original in the Sinai.
• In From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel The Purchase of the North Pole, veteran artilleryman, engineer and mathematician J.T. Maston has a hook (with fittings for a pen or a chalk) for the right hand and a guttapercha skullcap to cover a horrible scar in the head. His wounds are explained as the result of him designing a giant mortar during The American Civil War, which exploded at the first test shot, killing more than 300 men and disabling even more including him.
• In the James Bond novels, Felix Leiter has a hook for a hand in all of his appearances after Live and Let Die, in which he's mauled by a shark.
• Not quite a hook, but close: In Moby-Dick, Captain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby has lost an arm to the white whale and had it replaced with a harpoon.
• An unusual biological variant in The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution with the Northclaw, a raptor-like carnivorous dinosaur which, while possessing three clawed fingers on its left hand like a typical theropod's, sports a single massive hooked claw on its right, which it uses to disembowel prey.
• Fergus in the Outlander series. He's not a pirate, but a Loveable Rogue. Until he's not.
• Captain Hook from Peter Pan might be the Ur-Example. He's definitely a major reason for this trope's piratical associations.
• The Queen's Thief: Eugenides in The King of Attolia uses a hook as a replacement for his right hand. It seems mostly useful in battle, since the inner edge is described as knife-sharp.
• Marethyu from The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, whose hook represents The Grim Reaper's sickle.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events, Count Olaf's associate Fernald has two hooks for hands (and in fact is generally referred to by the narration as "the hook-handed man"). It is never told how he lost his hands, but since he works for a Pyromaniac (and has also few traits of it), he probably accidentally spilled gasoline to his hands and lit a match without wiping it off...
• In The Sharing Knife, Dag lost his hand years ago, but commissioned a device for his arm that can have any number of implements screwed into it, including a hook with some pincers, a spork, a fake hand for public appearences, and even a specially modified bow.
• White Rayla has one in The Witcher series, as the result of being tortured by elves, the same event that made her hair white with trauma. When she appears in the game, the torture is mentioned, but she bears no visible signs of it and has both her hands intact.

Live-Action TV

• As of season four, Drew from 30 Rock. Both hands. Poor, dumb bastard. So much for life in The Bubble being so awesome.
• Buster from Arrested Development gets one after a seal bites off his hand in Season 2, and again in Season 4, this time jewel-encrusted.
  "I'M A MONSTEEEEEER!"
• Barbary Coast: Master of Disguise Jeff Cable sports in his disguise as 'Joe Hook', a disreputable dock rat.
• One of the Master's vampires in Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has multiple blades where one of his hands used to be.
• Doctor Who:
  • Condo has one to replace the arm Solon has stolen from him in the serial "The Brain of Morbius".
  • Captain Pike from "The Smugglers", who has a pike head rather than a hook.
• Lampshaded in Game of Thrones when Queen Cersei gets a gold hand made to replace the one her brother Jaime had cut off. Jaime points out that a hook would be more practical.
• The Claw/The Craw from Get Smart ("Not the Craw! THE CRAW!") is a parody of Dr. No.
• Hawaii Five-O has an episode in which the villain of the week is a vengeful sniper with hooks for hands; he was played by J. J. Armes, who is listed in Real Life below. The remake of the series remade the episode, with Peter Weller playing the character, along with a stand-in for closeups.
• Xavier, a recurring immortal in Highlander, loses his hand in his first fight with Duncan, and replaces it with a set of hooks.
• The Commandant from Malcolm in the Middle. He later gets a hook hand on his other hand when Francis accidentally slices it off with a saber.
• Married... with Children: When Kelly auditions for Miss Weenie Tot, all the judges had hooks. She aced the audition by saying she thought guys with hooks for hands were cool.
• Played for laughs on an episode of M*A*S*H. While Frank was asleep, Hawkeye and Trapper put his arm in a cast with a retractor on the end as a hook.
• The first episode of TLC's Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed, hosted by Natasha Henstridge (now available here), examines the plausibility of the "Serial Killer with a hook for a hand who stalks couples at Make-Out Point" tale, among other myths.
• The Muppet Show: John Cleese has a lot of fun parodying this in a "Pigs in Space" skit in which he plays a Space Pirate with an entirely unnecessary hook hand which keeps getting hooked up on things or swopping from one hand to the other.
  Parrot: I told you to wear an eyepatch, leave the hook at home, but you wouldn't listen!
  Cleese: Shut your beak!
• In the "Captain Hook" episode of Police Story (1974), David Birney plays a police officer who loses his right hand to a bomb. Supposedly based on a real officer he does not want to retire but finds himself facing the rest of his career in a records office with other disabled officers. He is then given an undercover job, on the assumption that criminals would never suspect a one-handed man of being a narc. That ended when it turned out his cover was blown, because of the hook. It also gave him his nickname when he walked into a bar, a drug dealer yelled "It's Captain Hook!" and everybody ran. He fought to get back to regular duty, learning to drive and shoot with his off hand and was finally assigned to street duty again.
• The ghost story in the second season of Scaredy Camp involves a female counselor who was so astoundingly clumsy that she somehow managed to chop her own hand off while cooking and had it replaced with a hook. She felt so ashamed after the accident that she pushed her fiancé away, and it was the campers' task to reunite the two spirits.
• Leonard, the security guard with the Big Giant Afro, in Scrubs. He's also a killer Poker player. The hair actually manages to be more noticeable than the hook — now that's an accomplishment.
• The appropriately named "Hook Man" in the Supernatural episode of the same name. In life, he was a preacher who was executed for killing prostitutes with his hook, something he continued to do after his death.
• Whodunnit? (UK): "Which Eye Jack" features Blackbeard, a pirate who is forced into the role of detective after the eponymous Jack is murdered. Blackbeard embodies most of the pirate stereotypes, including a hook for a hand, as part of his Dressed to Plunder look.
• Witchblade: A killer who targets fashion models has a prosthetic hook in place of his right hand. This is because he once tried to wield the Witchblade, which desiccated his arm as punishment since it only accepts female bearers.
• Demetrios in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles has one when he meets Indiana Jones for a second time in 1916. How he got it is never explained.

Music

• A non-villainous example is Patrick Stump in Fall Out Boy's series of music videos, the Youngblood Chronicles. His left hand is chopped off early on, and in a later video, it's crudely replaced with a hook.

Roleplay

• Hobbes from v3 of Open Blue, who lost his hand while being tortured by the Inquisition.

Tabletop Games

• Chronicles of Darkness naturally has a place for the old Urban Legend slash horror story of the Hook-handed Killer. There are even at least two versions statted out; one of the minor ideas in the Urban Legends sourcebook is a maniac with some dash of supernatural power who embodies this, and there's also a True Fae version.
• Pathfinder treats hook hands as both prosthetics and melee weapons (they don't do much damage, though). Of note is the magical item called "Wizard Hook" from the pirate-themed adventure path Skull & Shackles: not only does it allow a one-handed wizard to perform spell-casting gestures without penalty, but it also gives them bonuses to touch attacks for spells that require them.
• Warhammer: The Dwarf pirate Long Drong lost his left hand to a Lurkerfish and replaced it with a large hook, which he has developed the habit of rubbing when in thought.

Theatre

• Captain Kadd from The Abduction of Figaro by P.D.Q. Bach is a stereotypical pirate in all ways, including this one.
• Done jokingly in A Very Potter Musical; after Snape cuts off his hand during Voldemort's rebirth, he replaces it with a hook.

Toys

• Gahlok Va, from BIONICLE, has a hook in place of its left hand. Gali's original form also has hook hands, but Word of God confirmed she has real hands, they are simply not featured on her toy. Prior to that revelation, most media depicted her hooks as being her true hands.
• Lord Sam Sinister from LEGO Adventurers, being a Classic Villain, naturally wears one on his left hand. Lesser known minifigures also have hooks, ranging from golden ones to transparent green/blue/red ones.

Video Games

• Battle Fantasia: Freed the pirate has a very large hook hand.
• Beard Blade has a pirate boss named Barnacle "Hook" Barley, who has hooks for both hands. Which he'll use to slice you up throughout the fight.
• Brain Dead 13: Fritz, the psychotic, diminutive minion who chases Lance throughout the game, has TWO hooks for hands.
• Crayola Treasure Adventure: The antagonist is a pirate shark with a hook for a right hand.
• Digimon World 3 has the pirate-themed Digimon Hookmon. It's kinda in the name.
• Dusty Raging Fist has a stage where you fight pirate versions of regular enemies, including crocodiles, bulls, rats, and others. Many of them which have hooks for hands to complete their "pirate" look.
• Epic Mickey: Mickey fights an animatronic Captain Hook, corrupted by one of the Mad Doctor's machines. You can destroy him, send him to the obligatory Crocodile, or rescue "Tinkerbell" to go get Pete Pan.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Foxy has his right hand replaced with a hook, in keeping with his pirate theme.
• Ittle Dew: Exaggerated with Itan Carver, all four of whose limbs end with artificial extremities (his right hand is a hook).
• Last Rites has skeletal zombie enemies whose left hands have been grafted with sharp hooks, which they'll use to slice you up.
• The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night: The Sky Pirate captain Skabb has one on his right arm, which he can launch and reel in through a built-in hookshot and which serves as his main weapon in the first phase of his boss battle.
• Luigi's Mansion 3 has Captain Fishook, a ghost pirate shark who has one of these in place of his right fin. It's also his main weapon during his battle.
• Monkey Island:
  • The Secret of Monkey Island: Meathook has both hands replaced by hooks. He paints in his spare time.
  • Tales of Monkey Island: Guybrush gets one after losing his left hand.
• Pirate101: Several characters have hook hands, as to be expected.
  • Boochbeard, the mascot of the game, has a hook left hand.
  • Your crewmate, Old Scratch, doesn't start with a hook hand but does get one. To enter a pact with the great spirit Sister Snake, the price she demands is his left hand. After making the bargain, Old Scratch puts a hook over the stump.
• Pirate Hunter, befitting the setting, has multiple hook-handed pirate mooks which they'll use to claw the hunter from up close.
• Pokémon Uranium: The Ghost Pirate 'mons Swabone and Skelerogue's right hands end in natural bony hooks. In their evolution Navighast, this turns into a built-in cutlass.
• Psychonauts: Dr. Loboto has one that's part hook and part pepper grinder. Your Paper-Thin Disguise as Loboto involves using a trophy as a hook.
• One NPC in Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is an utterly miserable guy with one of them. The punchline to his sordid story is the one time he had to go to the toilet.... You get to help him by delivering a prosthetic instead, because you need the hook to solve a puzzle. It's that kind of game.
• Star Fox Adventures: General Scales uses two of these in place of a left hand.
• Treasure Adventure Game: The main character has one, fitting in the nautical theme of the game. It acts both as a weapon and as a tool for hanging off certain parts of the scenery.
• Urban Rivals: Cyan from the Piranas pirate gang cut off her own hand solely to affix a hook to it for pirate cred.
• Warcraft: Kargath Bladefist cut off his own hand after reaching the station of grunt, and replaced it with a sickle. When Kargath became leader of the Shattered Hand clan, it became customary for warriors to replace one hand after being accepted as full warriors of the clan. The Burning Crusade saw the return of the clan and their continued self-mutilation as a result of their constant exposure to fel energy; now Kargath and many of his subordinates have replaced both fists with blades. Warlords of Draenor retcons the explanation for this tradition. The orcs who became the Shattered Hand were slaves of the ogres, with becoming a champion in their arena being the only hope for freedom. Kargath became a champion but discovered the "freedom" was being chained to a wall beneath the arena alongside the other champions. Kargath cut his chained hand off with a rock and bound a blade to the stump, with the other champions eagerly taking his lead.
• Wario: Two enemies, Captain Coin from Wario Land 4 and Captain Skull from Wario World, have a hook for at least one hand (the latter also has a cannon replacing the other hand).
• Witchkin: The clown Witchkin has a hook in place of each hand.

Web Animation

• Camp Camp has this trope in the Quartermaster. He also has numerous alternate attachments. After the events of the episode "Quartermaster Appreciation Day" the hook switched hands. In the episode "Campfire Tales" he claims that he used to have a hook for both hands, and stole his flesh hand from another soldier during a war. "The Fun-Raiser" shows that he is very attached to his hook, and woe betide anyone that takes it from him.
• Happy Tree Friends: Russell, being a pirate, has the typical traits of one, including a hook hand.
• Minilife TV: In "Clair's Surprise", the T. rex from Ian's Dream Sequence has a hook for a hand, most likely to convey how arbitrarily evil he is.
• Plan 3: The cursed pirate has a hook where his left hand would be. When he trips & dies, the instructions he wrote down for lifting the Chinese Food Curse get stuck on it.

Webcomics

• Bikke the pirate in 8-Bit Theater is under the distinct impression that a grim, rusted hook takes the place of one of his hands; this is pointedly not the case. He later gets one that fits over his hand, but it keeps falling off. Perhaps it's one of those cheap plastic ones that you get in those old pirate costumes they sold in plastic bags.
• Demon Fist: Naturally, the pirate captain, of the deadly grapple variety.
• While an actual Hook Hand has not been seen in El Goonish Shive, the official explanation for Abraham's attack involves a stalker with a hook for his left hand.
• Girl Genius: One of Sky Pirate Captain Hawkins' attachments for her prosthetic hand is a hook.
• Nazi science sneers at any example list which doesn't contain Colonel Haken from Irregular Webcomic!. There's also the Sea Dog in the Supers arc, a pirate-themed humanoid canine.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • The captain of Hinjo's boat, Captain Axe, has a small axe replacing his left hand.
  • Hook hands are useful for removing wine corks.
  • The High Priest of Tyr has a hook replacing his right hand. Fitting, as in Norse Mythology, Tyr lost his hand to Fenrir. This might be self-mutilation as part of the creed.
• Poison Ivy Gulch:
  • Found on an opponent in a makeshift boxing match here.
  • Also found on a pirate playing against Lotta in a poker game.
• In Rusty and Co., Cleave-Hand the gnoll has an axe head for right hand. Until Roxy tears it off, at least.
• Torg's blind date from early on in Sluggy Freelance. Mind you, that's just one of her... hum... less than ideal characteristics.

Web Videos

• LoadingReadyRun: The kidnapper from the "The Basement" series of videos has no hands. He replaced one with an axe; thus the character acquired the nickname Axe Hand.
• Monster Island Buddies has Gigan, naturally. Lampshaded by Titanosaurus when he asks Gigan how he scratches his balls with his hooks.
• "Saltbeard" from The Most Ever Company's "Pirate ASMR" video sports a truly breathtaking hook-hand (rendered, no doubt, via bleeding-edge special-effects software) that really must be seen to be believed (shows up around 4:30 in the above video).
• The Captain from University Ever After gets one after losing his hand when a building where he was partying collapsed.
• During Vampire Reviews' Pumpktoberfest series, in which Maven and Nella drink pumpkin spiced beer, Nella comes dressed as a pirate in one episode, holding a wire hanger in her right hand in lieu of a hook. Maven ends up grabbing it and throwing it on the floor.
  Nella: Yaarrrr, use yer imagination!

Western Animation

• Roostre in 12 oz. Mouse, whose hand was cut off as part of a conspiracy by Shark and the Square Businessman to keep him from interfering with their plans. For some reason having a simple hook for a hand has had no impact on his ability to play guitar.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: In "The Ember Island Players", the actor playing Jet has a pair of hook hands instead of Jet's hook swords.
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "You Scratch My Back", there's the Columbian enforcer turned smuggler Enrique El Gancho, a.k.a. "Ricky the Hook". (Unfortunately, he's more or less a secondary villain of the episode, with Catwoman being far more important to the plot.)
• In an episode of Beetlejuice, BJ and Lydia run into the pirate Jean LaFoot, who has both a peg-leg and a hook hand.
  Beetlejuice: How do you pick your nose with that thing?
  LaFoot: [deadpan] Very, very carefully.
• Bump in the Night: The episode "Journey to the Center of the Lungfish" features a pirate named Captain Jetlag, who true to form has a hook for a hand.
• Captain Stickybeard from Codename: Kids Next Door has a candy cane as a Hook Hand. He also has an eyepatch and a peg-leg; this guy pretty much has every pirate stereotype.
• Dragons: Riders of Berk has Gobber, who sometimes switches out the tools in his prosthetic hand for a hook, and Bucket and Mulch, who each have a hook replacing their right hands.
• The Hook Urban Legend is used as the basis for an episode of Freaky Stories (and a Musical Episode at that).
• Lefty from John Callahan's Quads! had both of his hands replaced by hooks.
• In the Johnny Bravo episode "Johnny Goes to Camp", Johnny begins telling a campfire story about a man with a hook for a head. The other campers (who are all nerds) call him out on the biological implausibility of such a thing.
• In the epilogue of The Owl House, Eda is shown to have replaced her destroyed right hand with a hook. This is implied to be a deliberate choice on her part, since while backgroud characters show that more realistic looking artificial limbs exist in the setting (and some released concept art even shows that there were plans to give her an actual hand), it would be perfectly in character for her to want to look like a pirate.
• One episode of Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero features Rippen inhabiting the body of a villain called Crossbow, who's named after the crossbow he's replaced his left forearm with.
• Peter Pan & the Pirates has the epitome of gentleman pirates, Captain Hook. This version is closer than most to the original Barrie novel and its sequels, devoting an episode to just how the hook came to be (Peter sliced his hand off with a sword in a fit of rage) and a couple showing what James Hook was like as a young man with two good hands (he was always a greedy cutthroat, though his elder brother was worse, and even death couldn't stop his reign of terror).
• Gripper from Rambo: The Force of Freedom has a big clamp in place of his right hand.
• Lillian wears this as part of her pirate costume in the Ready Jet Go! episode "That's One Gigantic Pumpkin, Jet Propulsion!".
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • Dr. Hutchison. The hook is extremely prominent, and she uses it to scratch something to announce herself, but she is generally a friendly warm person. However, this just accentuates her Stepford Smiler characteristics, and the viewer is constantly sure she's gonna start killing everyone. (In the episode "The Big Question," Filbert has an "engagement hook" for her. It's gold and studded with various jewels.) According to the creator, the hook was due to the fact that they were told by executives that they needed a female character with a good hook. They decided to take that a bit more literally than intended.
  • Hutchison's mother has hooks instead of hands, and Hutchison's daughter is born with a hook hand.
• The Simpsons: When Homer and Lenny get dangerous jobs in West Springfield, their coworkers have hook hands, hook feet, and in one case a hook head.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Patchy the Pirate has a hook hand to complete the typical pirate look.
  • Variant in the episode "Graveyard Shift", in which Squidward makes up a story about the ghost of the Hash-slinging slasher, a guy whose hand was replaced with a rusty spatula back when he was alive.
• Laser Pirate from Teamo Supremo combines this trope with Laser Blade.
• Those Scurvy Rascals: Shark Bait has one roughly as big as his head.
• Total Drama Island features an episode concerning the campers chased by "The Escaped Psycho Killer with a Chainsaw and a Hook" (always referred to by his full title).
• Lockdown in Transformers: Animated has a hook for one of his hands. Given how that entire arm doesn't match his paint job and his history of collecting "trophies" from his victims, it's strongly implied to have previously belonged to a mark of his. He also has a chainsaw on his other hand.

Real Life

• Relatively cheap and accessible artificial arms often consist of a double hook that can firmly clasp around objects. Interestingly, there are hook prosthesis that are rather more functional and practical in design than non-robotic realistic hand prosthesis, but a number of amputees prefer to take the plastic hand anyway because they "don't want to look like a pirate".
• The radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri had a hook for a hand after losing an eye and both hands in an explosion. It was replaced with a plastic spork when he was sentenced to life in prison in America for terrorism.
• Motivational speaker Jeff Steinberg, who was born without hands and is probably best known for this◊ album cover.
• Private investigator Jay J. Armes. who had both hands replaced with hooks. (He even had an action figure!)
• '60s garage rock group The Barbarians had a one-armed drummer, Victor "Moulty" Moulton, who sported one of these.
• Rock climber Aron Ralston had to self-amputate his arm after it was trapped under an enormous boulder (dramatized in the film One Hundred Twenty Seven Hours. He's since replaced it with a climbing axe◊, which looks a lot like a hook.
• The pirate Oruc Reis used some sort of metal prosthetic after he lost his left hand. This earned him the nickname "Silver-arm."

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