Wings look cool, which is why sometimes Power Gives You Wings. However, being cool doesn't necessarily make a set of wings practical, especially if they're not even necessary for flight. Bone wings, for example, aren't usually shaped in such a way for secondary features like Feather Flechettes or Razor Winds... that is, until you sharpen them to make the wings themselves a back-mounted secondary weapon that can used alongside regular hands.
This trope has several variants depending on how the wing or feathers (or equivalent) is edged: A sharpened tip functions as a rather brutal dagger or even a set of spikes if the feathers can be spread. If the whole outer edge is sharp, then it functions as an unusual sword. Larger wings made for gliding can be also edged on the leading side for the purpose of literally flying through one's enemies; this often comes up more in flying vessels and occasionally Jet Packs.
See also Master of the Levitating Blades (for floating weapons positioned like wings) and Helicopter Blender.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Digimon: Certain Digimon have blades for wings, such as SlashAngemon.
- From Trigun, one of Knives' powers is part of his body turning into feathers which are monomolecular blades (hence the name 'Knives').
- Mazinger Z has the Scramble Cutter, an attack in which he uses his Jet Scrambler's wings to slice into the enemy. Great Mazinger goes one step further with the Great Booster. Mazinkaiser takes it to the next step with the Kaiser Boomerang. Of course, that's probably cheating as it throws its Scrander.
- Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force has Raising Heart's stand-alone flight mode. The schematics shown in its "Force NEXT" article
◊ reveal that the wings it gains in this mode double as flight stabilizers and cutting weapons.
- In PandoraHearts, Demios'... wingish bone things cut people's heads right the heck off.
- Angels and a couple other extremely powerful characters in A Certain Magical Index possess massive wings used as their main form of attack.
- Kanoko Sanjo from the anime adaptation of TerraforMARS, whose razor-sharp titanium wings can cleave through Terraformars like a machete through balsa wood. Her flying into an entire swarm of Terraformars leaves dozens of them sliced into ribbons.
- Tokyo Ghoul: The ukaku type of kagune is composed of fleshy wings emerging from the shoulder blades that can harden at will and fire small, featherlike, razor sharp projectiles.
- Edward the Ripper, a background character in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, got his name from the time he cut a mobile suit (admittedly, a lightly-armored DINN) in half with is fighter's wing.
Comic Books
- Captain America: The Falcon with his Hard Light wings acts as this.
- The Transformers: Maximum Dinobots: Swoop's Pteranodon wings are shown to be incredibly sharp, and he slices a Jet to pieces with them.
- In Usagi Yojimbo, the Komori ninja are clan of ninja bats who typically line the outer edges of their wings with long blades to make for deadly attacks in flight.
- Wonder Woman Vol 2, Vol 3 & Vol 5: The more modern Silver Swans have been known to use their steel wings for slicing attacks.
- X-Men: When Archangel was converted into a Horseman (Death) by Apocalypse, he gained a pair of razor-sharp, metallic wings that could be used as slashing weapons, as well as firing Feather Flechettes.
Fan Works
- GLaDOS's pony form in Better Living Through Science and Ponies has wings that "were built somewhat like feathered wings, but the feathers were were replaced with large, bristling bits of razor sharp metal. Appendages that could undoubtedly provide flight but also be used to cut a certain dull orange pony to ribbons."
- Child of the Storm has Archangel, who, like his current comics counterpart, has these but retains his otherwise human appearance. He's utterly miserable about them, which isn't surprising, since they essentially mean he Can't Have Sex, Ever or even hold someone without risking chopping them to pieces.
- The Savage Skies series has Perlin Bluestreak, whose feathers were replaced with razor-sharp blades.
- In Winter War, Pagally's resurrection gives her deceptively soft-looking wings that are actually razor-edged, as shown when she uses them in battle against the Nemu clones.
- In several My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfics, such as some of the Winningverse stories and The Twilight Prince, pegasi use blades strapped to their wings called wingblades.
Films — Animation
- In How to Train Your Dragon, there's a passing mention of the "Timberjack" species, whose wings can slice right through trees.
Films — Live-Action
- Legion: The angel Gabriel has very sharp wings. He eviscerates a few people with them, and they're also bulletproof.
- Underworld (2003): Marcus uses his wings to impale targets, as well as fly.
- In Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, Megaguirus' wings can slice through buildings and damage Godzilla.
- In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Vulture's wings are capable of cutting through concrete, which he uses to bring a building down on Spider-Man later on in the film.
Literature
- Stormwings from the Tortall Universe are covered in steel/metal feathers that are extremely sharp.
Live-Action TV
- A first season episode of Fringe opens with a man getting attacked by a swarm of Razor Winged butterflies.
- Lucifer (2016): Rory, Lucifer and Chloe's Kid from the Future in Season 6, has angel wings where each feather is like spear head or a dagger capable of harming Celestial beings. In the Grand Finale the Big Bad plucks some from her wings to use as weapons against Lucifer.
Other Sites
- SCP Foundation, SCP-553 ("Crystalline Butterflies"). The wings of adult SCP-553 are 5 millimeters thick and taper to sharp edges. They can attack dangerous opponents by slicing them with their wings, inflicting a wound up to 1 centimeter deep.
Religion and Mythology
- The Sixth Labor of Hercules was to drive away the Stymphalian Birds, which were described as having feathers made of bronze and wings so sharp they could penetrate a man's shield and armor.
- The Aztec goddess Itzpapalotl had butterfly wings made out of obsidian blades.
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering has the Scars of Mirrodin card Bladed Pinions.
- Champions. In the adventure V.O.I.C.E. of Doom, the villain Goshawk can attack with the slicing feathers on his suit's wings.
- Dungeons & Dragons
- Dark Sun has a semi-sentient monster called "razorwing". It's a pteradon-like creature with sharp bone edges on its wings (span about 8'). Big inflexible wings are good only for gliding, and get bad maneuverability even then, but telekinetic flight power allows razorwings to rapidly accelerate from ambush. Though since they live in the Sea of Silt, the usual prey is a slow hydrogen jellyfish anyway.
- Forgotten Realms dragonmagic includes the Sharpwings spell. It makes wings cutting (wing buffet attack deals double claw damage while keeping its knockdown effect) without any visual changes.
- One variant of the crystal living statue, a common low-level monster in the Basic/Expert/etc edition of D&D, is equipped with metal wings that it uses to make slashing attacks.
- Games Workshop games:
- Warhammer 40,000:
- A popular species of Attack Animal trained by Drukhari Beastmasters are Razorwings. These carnivorous avian creatures have knife-like feathers and a flock of them can strip their prey to the bone in moments.
- Drukhari Reavers ride jetbikes that are equipped with razor-edged fins, among other weapons. While the fins are not necessary for flying, they do use them for very close fly-by attacks and, when used in the arenas of Commorragh, even have a points system based on using specific fins to cut specific arteries on their victims.
- Primarch Corvus Corax of the Raven Guard wore a jump pack with metallic wings. In-game these give him a bonus to his Hammer of Wrath attack.
- In the 1st and 2nd Editions of Necromunda, the wings fitted to a Yeld Spyrer suit were razor sharp, allowing the wearer to use them as deadly close combat weapons. As with all other Spyre equipment, Yeld wings were designed to grow deadlier as their wearer gained experience (granting them a bonus to their Strength characteristic), until they become near monomolecular weapons.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- One very early 3rd-party D&D supplement from the Role Aids line, all about undead, featured reanimated dragon skeletons called "death dragons". Their wings' membranes were replaced with sheets of ice, and they could (at the cost of grounding themselves temporarily) shake these ice-membranes until they shattered, launching deadly frozen shards at their enemies.
Video Games
- BlazBlue: The Murakumo units have "wings" made of blades that are used for their heavy attacks.
- Final Fantasy X-2: The Full Throttle dresssphere for Paine makes her look like she has wings made of swords.
- Honkai Impact 3rd: Angel-class Honkai beasts have wings sharp enough to slice through brick roads.
- Kirbys Return To Dreamland: Kirby's Wing ability us upgraded to have these, as his wings are now sharp enough to cut ropes, whereas they weren't in the aforementioned game.
- The Legend of Dragoon: Lenus has wings of Hard Light, and one of her attacks has her slashing a party member with her wings a couple times, and knocking them down with a kick.
- The Legend of Spyro: Cynder has a pair of claw-like blades on her wings, which serve as her primary melee weapons.
- Mega Man Battle Network: In the sixth game, Mega Man can throw the wings of his Tomahawk Beast form like boomerangs as a charged attack.
- Pokémon
- Skarmory. Its wing feathers have been used as blades since long ago, according to the Pokédex. Its on-and-off signature move Steel Wing translates this into an in-game attack.
- Empoleon counts as well, with metal guards on its wings that can be used this way.
- Giratina has three, sharp claws on both of its wings when in its Altered Form, while its Origin Form has two claws for each of its three pairs of wings.
- Mega Salamence fits into the gliding variant, being given the chilling nickname of The Blood-Soaked Crescent for how it can fly straight through things and slice them in two without stopping. Its Paradox counterpart Roaring Moon does not share this trait, however.
- Spider-Man: Web of Shadows has Vulture, who flies using a set of levitating swords that can hover independently or link to the backpack on his body. Even in the latter case, they still hover a few inches apart from one another, as shown here.◊
- StarCraft: When Kerrigan gets turned into the Queen of Blades she gains exoskeletal, bone-like wings which are all bladed and can move faster than the eye can follow. Her title isn't for nothing.
- Super Robot Wars Z 2 gives Shin Getter Robo the "Battle Wing" attack, which has its demonic Getter Wings slash out at an opponent.
- Tokyo Xanadu: Rion's Soul Device looks like a metal winged backpack, and she fights by hitting the enemy with its bladed wings, which is made easier by the wings making her float while in use. The first part of her Limit Break has her flying all over the place and slashing enemies with these wings.
- Under Night In-Birth: Vatista has blade wings, though ones more angelic in appearance.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: While they don't actually cut anything with them, the wings of Princess Celestia's pegasus guards do have Audible Sharpness. A later episode proves it is not just for show. Apparently, pegasi wind magic can generate a Razor Wind — a flyby from a member of Wonderbolts was capable of cutting through a dragon's scales when they Buzz him.
- The Venture Brothers: The Monarch's "Deaths Head Panoply", a Powered Armor suit that is completely inflexible and allows no limb movement whatsoever, is only capable of motion through the use of some deployable wings on the back. Said wings are sharp enough to decapitate henchmen who do not get out of the way fast enough when activating them.
Real Life
- Like many jets built after the Korean War, the F-104 Starfighter was designed to go as fast as the engines of the day could carry it. One of the design decisions made to increase speed was wings so thin and sharp, they came with protective covers so the ground crews would not be injured.
