Human Pincushion

For some reason, Western acupuncture never worked out.

"Masochism is a valuable job skill."

— Victor Mancini, Choke

When characters, particularly tough guys and girls, get large amounts of projectiles or weapons stuck in their body. They continue on fighting with the blades and shafts eerily poking out of them at odd angles. Essentially, these become a new fashion accessory that testify to their exceptional prowess and stamina, and they do very little to actually slow down the lumbering war machine. In fact, the character in question may actually enjoy this situation. To take this even further, the impaled characters can pull the weapons out of their bodies and use them to fight back.

Alternatively, this trope can also be invoked through a character's particularly gruesome death, where the victim is pierced in a similar manner but does not quite fare as well as their seemingly-invincible counterpart. In this case, the odds and ends stuck in the victim's body underscore the brutal fate, along with adding unintentional Nausea Fuel for those with weak stomachs.

Either way, having a character with multiple objects sticking out of them adds a touch of dramatic tension, while highlighting that character's badass qualities, even if they die. Note, however, that for this trope to have been truly invoked, the work must feature a character with a sufficient amount of projectiles/weapons stuck in their body, typically at least 4 or 5. Otherwise, the atmosphere created isn't quite the same.

Compare Impaled with Extreme Prejudice for characters being viciously impaled by various implements, Annoying Arrows for projectiles being treated untruthfully in fiction, Only a Flesh Wound for wounds that do little to slow an attacker down, and Death by a Thousand Cuts for deaths involving a long repetition of small cuts or hits. A common example of Bows and Errors.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The subject of this very funny commercial.

Anime & Manga

• Ayakashi Triangle: When the Gogyosen force Garaku to take their attack to shield Shadow Mei, he ends up stabbed in the back by over a half-dozen swords. This destroys his main body, but Suzu accidentally restores him from his Heart Drive.
• Black Lagoon: Hansel and Gretel do this to one of Balalaika's men after kidnapping him. It is implied that they did this while he was alive, and continued after he died because they found amusement in his spinal reflex making him "twitch like a fish."
• Blood+: In the anime, during a battle with the Schiff, Hagi returns to Saya's hiding spot with weapons still piercing him. He later becomes a human, er, chiropteran pincushion as he is impaled and pinned to a tree with just about every one of the Schiff's weapons, eventually walking the spear still in the tree through himself to escape.
  • In the Blood+ Adagio manga, Hagi becomes a pincushion as multiple swords are driven into him to prove his immortality. Just because he's immortal, doesn't mean the poor guy can't feel pain.
• In Case Closed the Benkei example found under the Real Life section serves as a clue in one early case. Mainly that the victim died at a later time than previously thought, as the rigor mortis set in early from them having been playing an intense table tennis match and causing a buildup of lactic acid.
• Takes place thrice in the animated versions of the visual novel Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
  • In the original game's Animated Adaptation, "Junko Enoshima's" original "Impaled with Extreme Prejudice" death becomes this trope. The spears that go through her thighs look specially painful.
  • In the anime prequel Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School's Side Despair part, the OP shows Seiko "Ultimate Pharmacist" Kimura being stabbed all over◊ with syringes. It never happens, since she's stabbed in the chest◊ and placed in a Crucified Hero Shot instead.
  • It happens again in Side Despair's episode 10, when the real Chiaki Nanami is first stabbed through the chest and then impaled from the ground by many other lances, as the corollary to a huge Break the Cutie process.
• In The End of Evangelion, this is the Mass Production Eva's final insult to Asuka's already-gnawed corpse. Happens because she hasn't given up and is still trying to attack them.
• This happens three times to Teddy Bear Orion in Fate/Grand Carnival as a result of being a pervert to the girls of Chaldea, all of them at the hands of Artemis, who fills him full of arrows.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: iI Yuki's memorable battle with Ryoko, she is impaled by a large number of metal spikes, but doesn't seem concerned at all.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, this is usually what happens to victims of Polnareff's Stand, Silver Chariot, thanks to its high speed. He explicitly tells J. Geil he's about to turn him into one right before he gives him a Cruel and Unusual Death.
  Polnareff: I'll send you to Hell, sobbing all the way. But there's one thing I have to do first that I can't rely on the guardians of Hell to do for me... And that's... TO TURN YOU INTO A PINCUSHION!!!
• The cause of death for Ususama Wisdom King Mayuri from Legend of Heavenly Sphere Shurato. Bonus for him being both hit by arrows and by a single spear, the last one keeping him on his feet.
• Naruto:
  • Zabuza got a small army's worth of weapons deposited in his sides when he attacked Gatto for betraying him.
  • Earlier, Naruto himself was impaled by dozens of needles by Haku. What's notable about this is that, unlike when the same thing happened to him and Sasuke earlier in the fight, his regeneration was kicked into overdrive and LAUNCHED the needles right back out.
  • Sasuke got six of Killer Bee's seven swords stuck inside of him, though thanks to some Intimate Healing (and no apparent damage to vital organs) he lived.
• Monkey D. Luffy ended up looking like an actual pincushion in the sixth One Piece movie, Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island, thanks to a Rain of Arrows.
• In Revolutionary Girl Utena, Anthy was subjected to this at the hands of an angry mob for sealing Dios away long ago, and she still has to endure the pain of constantly being skewered by the Swords of Hate as a scapegoat for humanity's rage toward the Prince who lost his faith and then abandoned his people.
• In the Sailor Moon anime, this is how Nephrite dies. At least four huge pointy roots go through his torso, and when Naru tries to pull one out, she's hit with lightning.
• Shin Mazinger Zero: In chapter two, Sayaka Yumi died when her body was impaled by several dozens of iron rods.
• In the Trigun manga those fighting Elendira usually end up like this with many massive nails impaled through their torsos. This made her potentially one of the most powerful characters in the series. Livio is victim to this several times.
• Thors in Vinland Saga gets shot with about a dozen arrows. He then continues talking with the enemy leader and says goodbye to his men and his son, and only then falls over to die.
• In The Vision of Escaflowne, King Duke Freid rises from safe cover to shout defiance at the invading Zaibach army... only to get struck with dozens of bolts simultaneously, from nearly every conceivable angle. He dies immediately.

Art

• The page image above is the woodcut "Der verwundete Mann" (The Wounded Man) from page 21 of the book Feldbuch der Wundarzney (Field Book of Surgery, by Hans von Gersdorff and illustrated by Hans Wechtlin, printed 1517) shows a man who has several swords and knives sticking out of multiple places, three arrows lodge in others, a crossbow bolt in his leg, a spear in his foot and stomach, two spiked clubs sticking out, several pieces of shrapnel stuck in his already wounded leg, what appears to be a cannonball in his forearm and calf, a broken wrist, the head of a war-hammer sticking out of his upper arm, and what may be a pointy stick poking his foot. The illustration was meant to serve as a table of contents in illustrated form, detailing the various injuries whose treatment was described in the text.

Comic Books

• The Demon, as seen in this cover.
• '90s Marvel comic Nightstalkers had a villain called Shiv, whose gimmick was having various knives sticking out of his body. He started feeling pain from them when the magic that was powering him ran out.
• The protagonist of Wire Hangers has wire hangers all throughout his body, the result of being riddled with them when a bomb detonated while he was hiding in an empty closet with a canister of goo that could imbue people with a mild Healing Factor.
• After a brawl Solomon Grundy will often have arrows, swords, knives, etc, all sticking out of his undead corpse. This doesn't phase him given he's mostly made up of detritus from Slaughter Swamp and has an impressive Healing Factor.
• Wonder Woman (1987): Before Diana even arrived to help Artemis had filled the White Magician with arrows during their fight. The only time he even seemed to notice them was when he decided to use a pair of them to fatally stab Artemis.
• X-Men: The following characters exhibit this trope:
  • Wolverine invokes this every so often thanks to his Healing Factor. Ranges from things like arrows to multiple swords.◊
  • Marrow had this as her superpower; she could grow bones out of her body, usually as outward jutting spines or claws.
  • Spike from X-Force had the same abilities and tended to use them in a similar fashion.
• Mr Croup in the comic version of Neverwhere.

Comic Strips

• Chester Gould was fond of this in Dick Tracy:
  • Tracy chases crook Gargles inside a warehouse for glass windows. Trying to escape, Gargles knocks over a cart of glass before falling down a staircase. The glass shards follow him down to stab and cut Gargles to shreds.
  • Tracy is fighting Empty Williams inside a kids' tree house. The fight causes the whole tree to collapse with Empty pierced several times by branches.
  • TV Wiggles tries to shoot Tracy inside a factory. He ends up knocking over a huge container of sheet metal which lands on him and literally staples Wiggles to the floor.
• Hägar the Horrible: Hagar returns home looking like this sometimes (usually axes, spears, and arrows), showing that his last pillaging foray wasn't as successful as he'd hoped.

Fan Works

• The Night Unfurls: "Orc Pincushions" would be more like it. Hugh's debut with the Simon's Bowblade features him sitting on the edge of a well, surrounded by orc corpses riddled with arrows. Not a single orc managed to get within fifty paces of him before becoming a pincushion.
• Very much dramatic and Nightmare Fuel in the My Hero Academia fic Listen Closely, an Angel is Dying where poor Present Mic gets over 20 nails driven into his back by an insane Loony Fan who wants to make him into a ghastly angel art display. And the shots of adrenaline mean he was conscious for most of the hour it took. Yeesh.

Film — Animated

• Dracula on Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation gets hit with dozens of darts and arrows, venomous snakes, even an axe to the head, while protecting Ericka from a booby-trapped-riddled temple in Atlantis.
• The Thief and the Cobbler: The Almost Dead Guy who rides hundreds of miles to deliver news of One Eye's army... while pierced in the back by about a dozen arrows.

Film — Live-Action

• 300: In the Bittersweet Grand Finale, where the Persian army finally overwhelms the Spartans, many of the Spartans have arrows, swords, and other weapons stuck in their bodies.
• Battal Gazi have the titular hero killing one of the villains, Oba, by firing a dozen arrows from a single bow nailing Oba to a tree. For good measure, Battal Gazi then sets one last arrow on fire and shoots it into Oba's crotch to finish him off. An appropriate Karmic Death, since Oba is one of the villains who gang-raped Battal Gazi's sister earlier on.
• Hellraiser: What else do you expect from a character with a name like "Pinhead"?
• Hero (2002): The ending features this, though the result is only implied. Thankfully.
• The villain of the 2007 film The Promise Keeper is a wooden, Golem-like creature covered in nails.
• Return of the Living Dead 3: Julie Walker drives spikes into her own body after becoming a zombie, attempting to numb her bestial impulses with pain. By the end of the movie, she's got rail spikes through her arms, along with nails and glass shards sticking out of her head.
• In Savaged, Zoe shoots Creed with so many arrows that Trey describes him as being 'a human pincushion'.
• Saw:
  • In Saw II, Xavier's test in the Nerve Gas House involves him entering a pit of used needles to retrieve the key needed to get an antidote out of a safe. Xavier refuses to do the task himself and instead throws Amanda into the pit. As painful and gruesome as the pit is, Amanda completes the task, only for Xavier to accidentally drop the key down a hole when she gives it to him.
  • Saw IV has Rex, a Domestic Abuser, and his wife Morgan strapped back to back in a column, with both having spikes impaling their bodies as punishment for Rex's abuse and Morgan becoming complicit in allowing him to abuse their young daughter as well. While the spikes went through Rex's major arteries, they didn't penetrate Morgan's, and she has the task of pulling out the spikes which will kill him, but allow her to escape and seek help for her and their daughter. While Morgan pulled out most of the spikes, she lost consciousness at some point before Rigg comes to the scene and pulls the last spike from her, ultimately leading to Morgan's survival.
• Thir13en Ghosts: The Hammer, though the event of having the nails hammered into him isn't shown on-screen, only how it looks when the Main Characters are viewing the ghosts.
• Being pincushioned with arrows (by his own men) is how Washizu dies in Throne of Blood.
• In The Wolverine, Logan receives plenty of Annoying Arrows from the ninjas... which, being poisoned, knock him out.
• The 13th Warrior: one of the vikings gets about a half dozen spears (!) stuck in his chest and back before finally keeling over.
• Time Bandits: A bunch of medieval knights with crossbows fire a glut of Annoying Arrows at Ultimate Evil. In response, he whips his red cloak around himself and turns himself into a literal pincushion. When he bounces down, he fires the arrows back at his would-be killers.

Literature

• In The Ballad of the White Horse Eldred takes seven spears to the torso before he finally goes down, and that's only because the seventh spear was enchanted.
• Discworld: The first death of soon-to-be Zombie Reg Shoe during Night Watch Discworld, when the thwarted revolutionary is stuck with eight arrows but can still shout defiance at his attackers before dying. He soon recovers from this, and as a zombie proves it's impossible to kill him twice. In Jingo he confounds the Klatchians by blithely fighting on even after losing an arm, devising a new form of unarmed combat by using his severed limb as a club to hit people with. As a policeman, he concludes arrests with arrows sticking out of him, often while complaining about the holes in his armour and uniform that he will have to make good himself.
• Fire & Blood: Happens to Ser Criston Cole during the Dance of the Dragons, when he's surrounded by a superior enemy force. All attempts to talk his way out are rejected, and when he tries asking them to settle the matter with trial by champion, he's told they'll have no songs about how bravely he died, at which point Ser Pate of Longleaf signals to his archers to fill Cole full of holes.
• In one of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter novels, it's stated that Hannibal Lecter once mutilated one of his victims to turn him into an exact copy of "The Wounded Man" (see art section).
• Heimskringla: After the Birchlegs have lost the Battle of Re to King Magnus Erlingsson, one Birchleg survivor sneaks into the King Magnus' camp and makes an attempt at Magnus' life. He fails, "and then weapons were so thick around the Birchleg that he could hardly fall down."
• The Lord of the Rings: Boromir goes out in a fashion similar to Longinus of the Sienkiewicz Trilogy while buying the hobbits time to get out of there. (The movie only shows three arrows, while the novel details many more—however, it compensates by having the arrows being fired at near-point-blank range by The Dragon of the film.)
• Mistborn: The Metallic Art of Hemalurgy is based on this. It involves stabbing a Targeted Human Sacrifice with a metal spike, then impaling another being with the same spike. This anchors a piece of the sacrifice's soul to them, and will not kill the person given the spike. Hemalgury can be used to create various creatures or grant certain powers but exposes the (willing or otherwise) user to an increased risk of Mind Rape.
  • The aptly named "Ironeyes" (once the human known as Marsh) has upwards of twenty metal spikes permanently stabbed throughout his body. By the sequel trilogy, the people of Scadrial consider him to be the mythical embodiment of Death Itself.
• The vampires' preferred method of execution in The Saga of Darren Shan is to tie the person into a cage and drop them onto a pit of stakes over and over again until they die. This does happen to a major character. He gets resurrected and remembers it in excruciating detail.
• Sienkiewicz Trilogy: Both in the book and in the movie, Longinus dies from being shot with multiple arrows after the enemy corner him but dare not approach within the range of his sword.
• King Edmund "the Martyr" of East Anglia was supposedly killed by Viking invaders in this way in 869 AD, when his captors tied him to a tree and riddled him with arrows. Some 120 years later, his biographer Abbo of Fleury gives a particularly vivid description of the event:
  They shot then with missiles, as if to amuse themselves, until he was all covered with their missiles as with bristles of a hedgehog, just as Sebastian was.
• In the climax of the second The Witchlands book, Aeduen has over a dozen arrows stuck in him, including one going through his heart. Good thing he has a Healing Factor.

Live-Action TV

• American Gods features a version lacking from the book. In the book, the first Vikings to reach the shores of America use a man from a local Native American tribe who came to befriend them as a Human Sacrifice to Odin. In the series, presumably the gods of the Natives warned them about the danger these Vikings posed because the first time one of the Vikings tries to step off the beach their ship landed on he is shot by unseen archers until he is covered from head to toe with arrows. (Literally) The increasingly desperate Vikings pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here and will try anything to get a favorable wind from Odin just so they can leave the place.
• Andor: The Republic officer who shot the leader of Kassa's adultless tribe in the back is hit with a barrage of poisoned needle darts from the tribe's Blow Guns in response, taking a few more shots at the kids before the many darts in him finally take him out.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel - vampires die from a stake to the heart, but other methods of impalement don't kill them. Spike got quite a few arrows stuck in him while Buffy was fighting a vengeful Native American spirit. He later took the opportunity to run Angel through with a sword to get to a monster.
  Spike: Fuss, fuss. The thing was about to strike. It was on your back. What was I supposed to do?
  Angel: Ask me to turn around.
  Spike: Heat of battle. Wasn't time.
  Angel: You just like stabbing me.
  Spike: I - I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that you'd say that. I much prefer hitting you with blunt instruments.
• CSI had an episode with a victim where the cause of death was "gunshot wounds to everything".
• Game of Thrones: Tormund Giantsbane after the Battle of Castle Black.
• On the NBC series Hannibal, one of the Chesapeake Ripper's victims was made into a Human Pincushion with the implements arranged to match the page picture.
• Kamen Rider Outsiders: Tenjuro Banno gets subjected into a gruesome skewering courtesy of Kamen Rider Zein, who invokes Xross Saber's Finishing Move via Haouken Xross Saber, Zein launches the 10 Seikens at Banno like guided missiles as he helplessly tries to escape with his life, only to be impaled from top to bottom, destroying his robotic body as a result.
• Kingdom (2019): Mu-yeong is impaled and shot with several arrows by Lord Cho Hak-ju's men midway through the second season. He lives just long enough to tell Prince Chang about the Queen's gathering of pregnant women, including his wife.
• My Country: The New Age: Hwi dies after being shot repeatedly by Bang-won's archers.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 gives us a literal example when in one experiment Dr. Forrester dresses TV's Frank up as a giant pin cushion and shoved several giant pins into him.
• The Outpost: Tobin gets shot four times with arrows by an archer from the Prime Order (he's fine after just a day's bed rest).
• Princess Agents: Yan Xun is shot repeatedly in episode twenty-four. He snaps the arrows' shafts so they don't get in the way and continues trying to reach the box holding his father's head.
• The Rise of Phoenixes: The Crown Prince gets shot with dozens of arrows after his failed rebellion.

Mythology & Religion

• Saint Sebastian: Possibly the Ur-Example. His martyrdom consisted of being tied to a tree and pierced with multiple arrows. He survived this ordeal and was later flogged to death. (Or decapitated, according to other versions.) He became the patron saint of archers, which is highly ironic given his particular form of execution.
• Saint Philomena of Rome. According to the private revelations of Mother Maria Luisa di Gesù, this was one of the methods of execution Emperor Diocletian ordered when the previous ones (scourging and drowning with an anchor tied to her) did not work. The first time, she was riddled with arrows and was taken to the dungeon where she was supposed to die, but her wounds were miraculously healed. The second time, the arrows were not loosed. The third time, the arrows were placed in a furnace and then loosed at St. Philomena, but flew back into the archers and killed six of them; the survivors renounced their paganism and became Christian. Eventually, Diocletian ordered that St. Philomena be decapitated instead.

Tabletop Games

• In Pathfinder, the Purrodaemon is an evil spirit of War that usually appears with a dozen blades piercing its flesh. It can safely store a small armory in this manner and grant magical enchantments to a weapon impaling it.
• In Warhammer this tends to happen to Goblin Fanatics, extremely dangerous and totally crazy goblins with ludicrously large Epic Flails. The reason for this is that they cannot be attacked in close combat, and most units are not allowed to split their fire between two target units (and each Goblin Fanatic counts as a unit).

Video Games

• Asura of Asura's Wrath is first seen in the first trailer skewered by several spears. Doesn't stop him, though. He was later seen fighting against Wyzen as this via having multiple spears sticking in his back when he was first betrayed.
• Brütal Legend: The Tainted Coil's Punishing Party unit consists of several Dominatrices and the Slave. The Slave is a big demon with a truckload of arrows, swords, and other pointy objects stuck in his body. Punishing Party's basic attack is tearing out a projectile from the Slave's flesh and hurling it at the enemies. Fittingly, the Slave is called "Pin Boy" by the Dominatrices.
• In the Mission 1 cutscene of Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Dante is interrupted in eating a slice of pizza by a large group of scythe-wielding Hell demons warping in around him and turning him into an inhuman "scythecushion"... up until Dante grins, walks a few steps dragging the demons still holding onto their scythes, and proceeds to kill every single one of his attackers with the scythe blades that are still stuck in him!
• In Duodecim, the prequel to Dissidia Final Fantasy, this is part of Desperado Chaos's EX Burst, and the impaling...elements happen to be measured in stories. Distressingly, the impaling isn't even close to being the scariest or most horrifying part of that particular attack.
• Dungeon Siege: Particularly visible throughout the series and downright ridiculous in "winter" areas, where opponents tend to use large ice shards instead of arrows.
• In Dwarf Fortress, items can become impaled in a character. Mostly arrows shot from a bow/crossbow. This item will then be in your inventory. So, if after a battle, a character suddenly has a bunch of arrows added to their inventory but didn't pick any up then they have just become pincushions. It's worth noting that these arrows must be pulled out of the body before they can be used, causing bleeding. There have been quite a few adventurers who have died this way.
• Interesting variant in Eastern Exorcist; the skeleton archer enemies (and their boss equivalent, the Skeleton Yaksha) have dozens and dozens of arrows embedded on their bodies, and they'll pull those arrows out and load them into bows for firing at you. The Skeleton Yaksha notably pulls three to six arrows from it's torso before firing.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • In Oblivion, characters can be turned into human pincushions with literally dozens of arrows sticking out of them. If their health is high enough they can keep going. If this happens to the player character, some of those arrows show up in their Player Inventory and can be equipped and fired back.
  • Ditto in Skyrim. Thanks to Gameplay and Story Segregation, it's possible to hear a guard whine about how his adventuring career was cut short by an archery-related knee injury while you yourself have an arrow stuck in your face. Or, in case you've had a run-in with a mage, an ice shard the size of a small log shoved through your neck.
• The Haunted in The Evil Within are invariably bristling with glass shards, arrows, knives, and other stabbing implements, or full of holes from having been skewered repeatedly.
• Fate/stay night seems to love this trope:
  • Archer is seen to have died this way in a flashback.^note Although Ufotable's Unlimited Blade Works adaptation uses the version found in Fate/EXTRA instead, wherein he was executed by hanging. Then it happens in-game thanks to Gilgamesh, but this time he sticks around for a day after.
  • In the Unlimited Blade Works route, Berserker is on the receiving end of this thanks to Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon. This being Berserker, however, it takes a lot of punishment before he finally goes down.
  • In the Heaven's Feel route Shirou suffers a self-inflicted version after he receives Archer's arm as a transplant. Swords begin erupting from within his body due to its presence, slowly killing him while replacing any body parts too damaged to continue functioning with metal blades. In the final fight with Kirei, he only has to protect his head because a blow anywhere else on his body will shred the enemy's fist.
  • In the fighting games based on the visual novel, this is the common fate of anyone caught in the final Storm of Blades attack of Archer's Unlimited Blade Works.
• Happens quite often in "arrow run" levels of Happy Wheels. Here's an example.
• From League of Legends:
  • Kalista, the Spear of Vengeance, is a ghostly legionnaire who was killed in an act of betrayal by one of her comrades, and now acts as an arbiter of vengeance on traitors throughout the rest of Runeterra. Her visual and conceptual designs appear to have a sense of cosmic humor: she manifests with the spears that killed her still stuck in her body, and she uses the same spears to inflict the same fate on her victims.
  • Volibear, the Relentless Storm, is a bear-shaped demigod of the storms, a sort of an avatar representing fury and primal destruction. His violent personality has given him the title of being a War God, and one of his mythological incarnations depicts him as "The Thousand-Pierced Bear", an almost eldritch monstrosity with endless swords, spears, and other sharp weapons jammed into his back.
• In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, you can be turned into one by The Fear. If you use the medical screen to heal your wounds except for pulling out the arrows, Snake will spend the entire game with arrows sticking out of his body.
• Arrows in Minecraft will persist in your character for a whole minute after taking each shot. Fighting with a group of skeletons, pillagers, or ranged piglins will often leave you looking like a pincushion.
  • Similarly, being stung by a swarm of bees will result in the bees' stingers protruding out of you in much the same way. Given how honeybee stings work in real life, ending up like this is probably a more realistic - and survivable - outcome than having a double-digit number of arrows deep inside your flesh. (Especially if we ignore the fact that the stingers, and the bees they come from, are a bit larger than your usual garden variety.)
  • Averted with tridents. Which makes sense for normal tridents thrown by the player, since they bounce back out of the target and can be used again immediately. Less so for drowned zombies, since unlike you, they can lob an infinite number of them at their unsuspecting victim.
• Mount & Blade, extending to other throwing arms such as javelins and axes, as well. Anything that is both a projectile and has something that can be called a pointy end can and will lodge in both player characters and NPC troops, sharing models as they do. There's quite the upper bound on the number of arrows that can remain visibly lodged in an object,◊ though given how the game averts Annoying Arrows completely, few players will catch nearly as many in one battle without a shield or high-quality armor.
• The opening stage of New Legends have a cutscene where your scout reports of an impending invasion - while having dozens and dozens of arrows embedded all over him. He succumbs while passing the message.
• In Nioh 2, the youkai form of Shibata Katsuie has a massive number of swords and spears embedded in his back. Nothing that actually prevents him from being a Lightning Bruiser.
• In Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, this can easily happen to Stranger in if he gets hit with enough shots and doesn't shake them off.
• The Iron Maidens in Resident Evil 4 have bodies bristling with spines. Their basic attacks against Leon include extending their spines to impale him, either when they get close or after grabbing him.
• The cause of Asch's death/defeat (the ending waffled a little bit) in Tales of the Abyss. Buying time for the rest of the party he held off a force of replica knights as long as he could, eventually getting impaled with three swords. To cement his badassery though, he managed to pull one of them out of his torso and use it to kill a few knights before finally going down.
• Team Fortress 2: Arrows shot into a ragdoll will persist until they die and their bodies fade, so Heavy Weapons Guys in particular will be seen having multiple arrows protruding from their bodies (and shooting non-fatal arrows thusly earns a Huntsman-wielding Sniper an achievement).
• Touhou Project: According to Fanon, this is the common fate of anyone who severely pisses off Sakuya Izayoi, the knife-throwing, time-stopping Ninja Maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, with Hong Meiling being her most common victim.
• World of Warcraft: Enemy projectiles such as arrows and spears remain in the Player Character's body for a short amount of time after making a hit, so coming under attack from multiple ranged units can easily invoke this trope.

Webcomics

• In 8-Bit Theater, Black Mage fills his teammates with knives on a fairly regular basis - i.e., whenever they really piss him off. They're all fine in the end, though.
• Everything wearing one of the Queen's Rings in Homestuck gets one of these. They can easily remove them for use as a weapon, and nothing in canon suggests that the impaling actually hurts them.
• In Kill Six Billion Demons, the angel 2 Michael appears with his corporeal shell impaled by three spears, and has a lasting dislike of humans because of it. His spiritual true form in the Void Between the Worlds manifests the same injuries, suggesting that they've become part of his identity in some way.
• Looking for Group: One scene has Richard in a torture chamber with various sharp objects stuck through his body, telling the torturer there's some room near his thigh. Justified in that Richard is a supremely overpowered undead warlock, for who this is a pleasant experience.
• In Misfile this is used as a visual gag. Ash does a fantastic job of putting on a happy expression, but when Emily confesses she's going on a date with another guy... well, check out the last panel for his^note Don't be fooled by the body, Ash is a guy. It's a long story, but the short explanation is Gender Bender real feelings on the matter. There's only a few knives and one arrow, but you can also only see the top bit of his torso and his head, so you could look at this as either an implied example of the trope or a downplayed one.

Web Original

• The Amazing Digital Circus: In the teaser, not only is Pomni skewered with four knives, but she’s still alive and not a single drop of blood can be seen.
• Teen Girl Squad: In issue 1, The Ugly One gets riddled with arrows by a disembodied head.
  Arrow'd Guy: ARROWED!
  The Ugly One: Ow, my skin!

Western Animation

• Played for Laughs in The Amazing World of Gumball. When Darwin suddenly starts to sneeze, Gumball and Mr. Small try to cure him with acupuncture, but really overdo it, covering Darwin's entire body with needles. Darwin then sneezes and they fly onto Gumball and Mr. Small.

Real Life

• One of the things actual fakirs can supposedly do is skewer various appendages of their body without feeling pain or bleeding. For example...
• Musashibo Benkei, retainer of Minamoto Yoshitsune, died this way while pulling a You Shall Not Pass!. His body, riddled with arrows, was said to be still standing after his death.
• A common illusion in stage magic, usually involving a Disappearing Box.
• Blackbeard the pirate was supposedly stabbed over twenty times in his final battle and continued fighting on for several hours with the blades protruding from his body before finally succumbing to his wounds.
• According to tradition, St. Edmund of East Anglia (King Edmund the Martyr) was killed when the Vikings tied him to a tree and fired arrows into his body.
• Saint Sebastian, a member of the Praetorian Guard, was ordered tied to a tree and shot with arrows by Emperor Diocletian for being a Christian. Unlike Saint Edmund, Sebastian actually survived this, was cared for by Saint Irene of Rome, and then went to condemn Diocletian for his oppression. Sebastian was then beaten to death by Diocletian's guards.

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