Shoe Slap

Shooing someone away doesn't work like that.

"That really hurt! I'm gonna have a lump there, you idiot! Who throws a shoe? Honestly! You fight like a woman!"

— Austin Powers

The shoe is another one of those perfect improvised weapons. Not as Armed Legs, but holding the shoe in hand and whacking stuff with it. It's more likely done if an insect needs to be killed. Alternatively, it can even be thrown.

Obviously this is Truth in Television, throwing shoes happen to be a common occurrence in some cultures and countries, with some seeing it as an act of disrespect; in Spanish and Latin American households, la chancla is their equivalent of the belt. Also in general, the soles and the overall construction of footwear can make them quite sturdy. Although their effectiveness is mostly based to what type of shoe and the materials they are made out of. The size also matters depending on whether they can be wielded effectively or work better for being thrown. Boots are a great example of the latter, while slippers/sandals/flip-flops on the other hand are great for the former and latter.

The trope can sometimes cross over with Wearing It All Wrong if someone exploits this trope by shoving their hands into footwear that fits, and then using them to 'kick' people in the face with their fists.

Sub-Trope of Clothing Combat, see also Combat Stilettos.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Hiyori in Bleach uses her sandal to slap people.
• When battling Giga, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo exhausts all of his attacks, none of which seem to work against Giga. Don Patch then recommends he use the "Fist of the Wap Wap with the Bottom of the Slipper Attack", which involves hitting your opponent with a slipper. Much to Beauty's surprise, it works.
• In the manga adaptation of Doraemon: Nobita and the Steel Troops, the final battle ends with Doraemon and gang being captured alive by the hostile robot army of Mechatopia, with their most powerful ally, Zanda Claus, getting defeated. Gian however continues being Defiant to the End by kicking his shoe at a nearby robot mook while cursing at them, which predictably does nothing in his favour.
• Akira from Eden of the East vows to give the Manipulative Bastard Mr Outside a good slap with a slipper. He finally achieves this goal in the second film.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Izumi Curtis does this to several characters, including Greed, who's functionally immortal and indestructible.
• How Jolyne Cujoh manages to defeat Viviano Westwood in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean. Using Stone Free, Jolyne snatches Westwood's boot, stuffs it with a brick, and uses it to block the oncoming meteor summoned by Planet Waves. She does get hurt by it; however, the force of the meteor propels the boot forward into Westwood's face, causing him to be stunned long enough for Jolyne to incapacitate him with a headbutt.
• Ryotsu in Kochikame launches his sandals out of his feet to take out enemies at a distance.
• One Piece:
  • Nami throws her boot at Brook not long after meeting him and getting disgusted at his lecherous attitude toward women's panties. Hitting on Robin is what cues the boot.
  • Earlier, in the filler Goat Island arc, Nami chucks her sandal at Chopper when he almost lets slip to Zenny that he is dying of old age.
• In the Slayers OVA, Lina hits Naga with a bunny slipper when she doesn't feel like setting her on fire.
• In the first episode of Symphogear AXS, Chris throws one of her shoes at Hibiki after the latter fails to hear over the noise of a helicopter.
• Hiyoko Isshuu of Tentomushi no Uta: often throws her sandals at people when she's pissed off.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Leon's Cinderella monster attacks by flinging her glass slippers, which shatter painfully against the opponent or his or her monsters. The slippers then reappear on her feet, ready for another go.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Noboru Gongenzaka occasionally uses his metal geta as melee weapons.
• In an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, the school goes overboard with enforcing rules. At one point, Kotori and two other girls have enough and pelt the rule enforcers with their shoes. In another episode, Rio throws her shoe at Shark when he talks in the middle of a play.
• In YuYu Hakusho, Yusuke kicks off his shoe into Sensui's face.

Comic Books

• Batman: When Bruce Wayne's girlfriend Linda Page was kidnapped by gangsters who needed a nurse, she aided in her own rescue by clouting one of the crooks over the head with her shoe when Batman and Robin came crashing in.
• Sin City has an assassin named Blue Eyes who once threw a stiletto into a man's eye socket and killed him. But who throws a shoe? Honestly!

Fairytales

• In The Nutcracker, Maria distracts the Mouse King from killing the titular Nutcracker by throwing her shoe.

Fan Works

• Cheating Death: Those That Lived: Played for Black Comedy. Pasture beats half the tributes in her arena to death using her shoes as blunt instruments in honour of her family tradition.

Film — Animated

• Attempted by Ken in Bee Movie when he exploits the Wearing It All Wrong trope by putting his hands inside Winter boots and trying to squash Barry with them.
• Boogie have the titular character fighting one of his enemies, Blackburn, in a motel. His client, Marcia, tries making a run only to drop one of her high heels, which allows Boogie to snatch her dropped heel and use it to gouge out Blackburn's left eye. The same heel returns in the final scene as a Brick Joke with Marcia using it to whack the main villain to death.
• Brother Bear: When Kenai's freaking out after discovering that he's been changed into a bear, Tanana tries to calm him down, to no avail; she finally gets him to shut up by throwing her boot at him.
• Coco features quite a bit of this.
  • Miguel's Abuelita Elena uses la chancla as a fearsome weapon towards any musicians who get too close to her family's workshop.
  • Abuelita Elena also uses her chancla to scare Dante away, while telling Miguel that giving that dog a name is a signal that he wants to own it.
  • Mamá Imelda uses her boot to pummel the computer of a hapless afterlife immigration agent after she's told she can't visit the land of the living because her picture is not on the ofrenda, something she refuses to believe.
  • Imelda later uses her boot to slap Ernesto de la Cruz twice: the first time is for killing Hector, and the second time for trying to kill Miguel.
• Coraline gets mad at Wybie at one point and throws the heeled boots Other Mother made for her at him while chasing after him in the rain. (In the DVD Commentary, the filmmakers note that this would have very different connotations in the Middle East.)
• Mulan throws her shoe at Khan (her horse) when he laughs at her first attempts at acting like a man. At the climax, she does it to Shan-Yu to draw attention away from Shang.
• Ralph Breaks the Internet: Cinderella breaks one of her glass slippers to use as a Sinister Shiv.
• In Shrek the Third, Cinderella actually uses her glass slippers as weapons.
• In Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf, as part of their plan to keep Shaggy from being well-rested for the Monster Road Race, the Hunch Bunch dress up as cats, go out on a fence, and start caterwauling. They are immediately hit by shoes thrown the Frankenstein Monster, who grumbles, "Doggone kitty-cats!"

Film — Live-Action

• Random Task in the first Austin Powers throws his shoe, parodying Oddjob in Goldfinger with his hat.
  Austin: Who throws a shoe? Honestly!
• Melissa has most of her head cut off by a thrown ice skate in the Black Christmas (2006) remake.
• Boy Eats Girl: Alpha Bitch Cheryl does a particularly impressive version when first she uses one of her high-heeled shoes to stab a zombie chasing her through the eye, and then yanks the shoe out, puts it back on, and keeps running.
• Bruiser: When Henry is stalking Janine and she hides under the boardroom table, she takes off one of her high-heeled shoes to use as a weapon. She never gets a chance to use it, however.
• Dance of the Dead: An angry Lindsay uses one of her high-heels to stab a zombie after he rips her prom dress.
• In Exam, the women use their high heel shoes to smash the strip lighting and extract the red glass.
• Executioners from Shaolin: During the final battle, the hero tries turning the battle around... by pulling off shoes from his enemies, and then throwing those shoes back.
• Funny Man: The Funny Man kills one of his victims by stabbing him in the eye with a high-heeled shoe.
• The Hunt (2020): On the plane, Athena kills Randy by driving her stiletto heel through his eye.
• Renate in Iron Sky stabs Klaus with her high heel near the end of the film.
• The landlady from Kung Fu Hustle uses her slipper.
• The Last Jedi: While escaping from jail, DJ hits a couple of police officers with his boots, which he has slung over his shoulders.
• Sartana in Machete dual-wields stiletto-heeled shoes at one point.
• A character is garrotted with the laces of a pair of bowling shoes in Gutterballs.
• Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries slaps Josh Bryant with her flip-flop for kissing her.
• Shaolin Soccer: During the training scene mid-movie, Team Rebellion realize their skills are no match for Team Shaolin, they decide to fling their shoes — at least a dozen pairs — towards the Shaolin goalie. The goalie instead plucks all their shoes from the air, and sends it together with the soccer ball back into their faces.
• Special Female Force: One of the heroines takes down a gangster pursuing in a motorcycle by doing a spinning kick in the air, sending the shoe flying off and hitting him in the head, knocking him out. She then immediately regrets it because it was a very expensive shoe.
• During the climax of the first The Twins Effect movie, one of the twins performs a flying kick at vampire Duke Dekotes, and realizing she couldn't reach him in time, instead opts to kick her shoe into his face. It works.
• When the zombies storm the club in Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, Harley is reduced to whacking them over the head with her shoes; eventually burying a stiletto heel in the head of one of them (who gets credited as 'Shoe Head Zombie').

Literature

• In the series of children's books Jeremy James, Jeremy James tries to kill a thoroughly dangerous wasp by hitting it with his slipper, but ends up smashing mummy's precious vase instead.
• J.P. Beaumont: In Taking the Fifth, the Body of the Week bears several wounds—none of them fatal—inflicted by a bloodstained stiletto-heeled shoe found at the crime scene.
• The Toymaker's Apprentice: When Stefan and the mouse king are fighting each other in Marie's family's house, Marie throws one of her slippers at the mouse king. The slipper hits him and kills one of the king's heads, Charlemagne.

Live-Action TV

• Rejected in Doctor Who episode "The Poison Sky". Initially, Donna (Catherine Tate) was supposed to KO a Sontaran with a shoe. Problem? In her words: 'But because I'll only wear trainers, they didn't want it to be a trainer. Or thought probably a trainer would be too soft.'
  • Ultimately played straight on The Sarah Jane Adventures when Maria Jackson's mother Chrissie attacks a Sontaran threatening her daughter with a bright red stiletto.
  • In "The God Complex" Rory complains of Amy having hit him with a shoe for insulting the Doctor. Worse, she had to bend down and unlace it first!
• In the first episode of The IT Crowd, Roy yells at a woman who called for assistance. At the end of the episode, she comes down to the IT cave and beats him with her shoe.
• In The Jacksons: An American Dream, one scene depicts a young Michael Jackson defiantly tossing one of his shoes at his father after being told to pick it up and put it away, and then running away to hide under his bed to escape his father's wrath. According to both Michael himself and his brothers at various points, this happened at least a few times in real life, as Michael often caused trouble with his father.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Akiko Narumi in Kamen Rider Double uses a green slipper to Dope Slap Shotaro at least Once an Episode.
  • In Kamen Rider OOO, Gamel sees an angry wife throw her shoes at her deadbeat husband and finds it hilarious. So he creates a Monster of the Week with the power to telekinetically hit people with shoes. And trash cans. And other people. And desks. And cars...
• Midsomer Murders: In "Dressed to Kill", Lois Springfield, the first Victim of the Week, is rendered insensible by a blow from a pink sequined size 9 stiletto before being constricted to death by a corset.
• My World… and Welcome to It: In "A Friend of the Earth," the wife of John's new neighbor Paul Morton throws a boot out the window when she hears caterwauling felines attracted by the sound of John's rusty gate. Her aim must be very bad, because it ends up breaking the window in Lydia's room.
• The New Avengers: In "Trap", Gambit improvises a bolas out of his tie and a pair of shoes.
• In the first episode of the deservedly short-lived dramatic series The Playboy Club, one of the new Playboy Bunnies is fending off the unwanted attentions of a mobster. During the struggle, they both fall to the floor. She kicks him in the head, and her high heel (the dress code specified three inches) penetrates his temple and goes into his brain, killing him.
• Sister Boniface Mysteries: In "Crimes and Miss Demeanours", the Victim of the Week is killed when she is struck with a stiletto-heeled shoe and the heel penetrates her medulla oblongata.
• Stranger Things: Eleven tries to Turn the Other Cheek to Angela's bullying of her, but when the latter takes a cheap pot-shot at her stepfather Hopper's (supposed) death, she decides to stop playing peacekeeper and brutally smashes Angela's nose in with a roller skate.
• Supernatural: The Wicked Witch of the West is brought down by a high heeled shoe to the face by Charlie, complete with the bad pun "Heel!" just before impact.

Manhua

• The titular character of Old Master Q once beats up a karateka challenging him by way of shoe-fu.

Newspaper Comics

• Dick Tracy: In the "Mr. Bribery" arc, Ugly Christine kills one of her abductors by hitting him over the head with her shoe: burying the stiletto heel deep in his skull.
• In Garfield, if the eponymous character isn't getting hit by Produce Pelting during his late-night fence performing, then he'll probably get hit by a thrown shoe.
• Modesty Blaise: In "The Killing Distance", Willie takes down an assassin who is fleeing on a motorcycle by throwing his boot at him and knocking him off his bike.

Radio

• The Frantics' "Last Will and Temperament" sketch consists mainly of boots to the head.

Professional Wrestling

• A loaded boot was the signature weapon of The white-masked Grappler.
• James J Dillon used to regularly give one of his shoes to a member of The Four Horsemen to use as a weapon on their opponents.
• Back in the old days, any wrestler who wore cowboy boots in the ring might take one off to hit an opponent with it.
• Theodore "Teddy" Long often used his penny loafers as weapons.
• Vickie Guerrero tried throwing her shoe at Trish Stratus, but she ducked. Then she tried to club her with her other shoe, but Trish kicked her down, then grabbed the shoe and used it to spank Vickie's butt.
• At Royal Rumble 2014, Kofi Kingston pulled off Jack Swagger's shoe and hit him in the head with it.
• Layla once threw a shoe that nailed CM Punk in the face.
• On August 7, 2023, Rhea Ripley threw her shoe and it hit Candice LeRae in the face.

Stand-Up Comedy

• In Delirious, Eddie Murphy talks about his mother's shoe-throwing ability (including using a high heel like a boomerang).

Video Games

• Shante from the Arc the Lad series can equip shoes and fights with them by taking them off and beating monsters over the head with them.
• In one of the lores from Diablo III, Abd al-Hazir mentions the time when his tent was ransacked by some quill fiends that he had to beat off with a shoe.
• Fire Emblem Heroes: Festive Cecilia uses gift-filled boot as a throwing weapon.
• Discussed in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas when CJ finds out the desperate scarcity of weaponry in Grove street.
  CJ: Well what you going to do if the Ballas roll through, throw shoes at them?
• The Kamen Rider Double example makes it into the Ganbaride trading card arcade game, but shot up full of AWESOME.
• One of B Jenet's super moves in Garou: Mark of the Wolves and The King of Fighters (XI and XV) revolves around this trope.
• In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, the battles with Kamek have him transform all of the stickers you use to battle into sandals, forcing you to fight him like this.
• Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: After defeating Wario, he throws a show and flees the throne room.
• In the "Soccer" game on the Wii Fit, you have to hit the soccer balls but dodge obstacles like flying shoes.
• In World of Warcraft, players infiltrate the Dragonmaw Orcs in Shadowmoon disguised as an Orc Overseer, and one of the duties Overseers have is to discipline disobedient peons. This is done with "Booterang", a boot that flies through the air, hits a worthless peon, and returns to the thrower.
  ARRRGH! BOOTERANG!

Web Animation

• In Blood Sun Vendetta, Spicy Man in Episode 2 gets smacked by his mother's shoe after calling Jose being spicy to the cops.

Webcomics

• Big Break (2019): In the crossover with Bible Black, Yazmin infiltrates Reika's witch coven to save Joseph from the clutches. Just when the ritual was beginning, Yazmin makes her presence known by throwing one of her flip-flops at Reika's face.
• Little Nuns: Star Nun carries around slippers labeled "Love" for when the younger nuns really misbehave.
• Magical Boy: The comic is about a trans man who has inherited his mother's Magical Girl Warrior abilities and responsibilities. At first he is shoved into a very girly magical outfit which includes heels, he promptly falls over in them after his first transformation and instead takes them off and throws them at the enemy.
• Pupster: When Wacky and Kevin show up at the surprise of Pupster and Danny, the puppies start to scream in fear then someone throws a shoe out through a window to hit Pupster in the fifteenth page of Pup, Pup, And Away.
• Unsounded: When Quigley gets pissed and slaps Matty he ends up with a slipper tossed in his chest courtesy of Jivi, who yells at him to leave Matty alone; "it's not his fault [Quigley] screwed up".

Western Animation

• Carmen Sandiego: When Chase Devineaux chastises Carmen Sandiego for failing to disappear stealthily into the fog due to her formal high heels, the sound falls silent and he asks her what she is doing. She responds by throwing one of her shoes into his face with pinpoint accuracy.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Rolf does this twice, and one of which with multiple shoes.
• In the Looney Tunes "Notes to You" and its remake "Back Alley Oproar", a cat (Sylvester in the later version) is singing in an alley keeping someone (Porky in the original, Elmer in the remake) from getting sleep, who throws shoes (among other things) at the cat.
• Jorel's Brother: Granny Gigi can throw her pink flip-flops and get them back in her hand by themselves, like a boomerang (it's actually part of her own martial art, the Gi-Gitsu). She usually uses this on her son-in-law Edson whenever he says or does something stupid.
• The Owl House: In "Yesterday's Lie", Camila manages to subdue the conspiracy theorist who's captured Vee, the shapeshifter who's been impersonating her daughter Luz, with a slipper she happened to have in her purse.
• In The Simpsons episode "Itchy and Scratchy Land" Marge points out that violence isn't so funny what it happens to you. Bart says that it's funny watching it happen to someone else, which Lisa demonstrates by tossing her shoe at Bart. Marge does find it funny, before sending Lisa to her room.
  • In Season 29's "King Leer", Moe Szyslak is frustrated when his father Morty calls him at his bar. Homer and Marge go at a safe distance and discover Moe and his father duking it out with loafers. Moe then tells Homer and Marge of his past, when Moe, his brother Marv and sister Minnie worked in commercials for their dad's Mattress King dealership, where his siblings resorted to putting bedbugs in their competitors' mattresses, with the Szyslaks' rivals putting bedbugs into Mattress King's products.
• American Maid from The Tick uses her stiletto heels as throwing weapons.
• Total Drama:
  • In "No Pain, No Game", the girls are seething from envy that the guys won the previous challenge and got to enjoy a cruise. It is not amended by Owen's kind offer of chocolate-coated cherry blossoms from aboard either and rather than accept it, Leshawna takes off her sandal and throws it at the plate. To Owen's despair, the cherry blossoms get knocked into the water.
  • In an attempt to make Duncan regret cheating on her, Courtney tries to flirt with Tyler in "The Ex-Files" despite the fact that he already is with Lindsay and loyal to her. While Tyler is performing some hanging leg lifts, Courtney throws a few compliments his way. However, one of Tyler's shoes slips off and accidentally but fittingly hits Courtney in the face.
  • In the exclusive clip for "Aftermath IV: Hawaiian Style", Courtney boasts that she deserves to be in the finale because she's better than Cody and Heather and her singing is superior. To demonstrate, she sings a few lines disparaging Duncan and Gwen, who are sunbathing right next to her. Deeply irritated, Duncan grabs a sandal and throws it in her face, which knocks her over.
  • In "Hurl and Go Seek", Dave's shoe gets thrown around a lot. Firstly, Dave goes mad when Sky definitively rejects him and throws his shoe at her after a long scream of frustration. Because she's already quite a distance away by then, he doesn't hit her but by chance he does hit Max in the back of his head. Angered, Max throws the shoe back in the direction it came from. He does not hit Dave, but he does hit Sugar in the face with it. Sugar is more amused than anything because she believes that flying attack shoes are just a new thing and wants a pair for herself. Dave, who had climbed into a tree, witnesses the hit and calls out for Sugar to return his shoe to him. Because in the current challenge Sugar is the hunter, it's in her interest to get Dave down from the tree. She promises she'll toss the shoe over gently to make him drop his guard and instead throws it hard enough into Dave's face to knock him out of the tree. Not only does Dave make a harsh fall, he gets hit a second time when the shoe drops on his head after bouncing off of him.
• Rosa Casagrande of The Casagrandes is prone to using la chancla as a means of disciplining misbehavior among her familia.

Real Life

• Legend has it that this happened with Nikita Khrushchev and his shoe-banging in the UN meeting in 1960.
• At a press conference in Iraq, someone threw both his shoes at George W. Bush, who dodged both of them and the thrower was promptly arrested. Throwing a shoe at someone is considered a grievous insult in the Muslim world (not that it's a compliment elsewhere, but...). The guy was himself the victim of a shoe slap a year later in Paris, by another journalist who accused him of supporting dictatorship in Iraq. His reaction?
  "He stole my technique."
  • Someone even made a monument to the event shaped like his shoe.
  • Bush, for his part, quickly recovered and declared, "I've seen into this man's sole."
• The Other Wiki has this entry on the phenomenon, and several examples.
• In Mexico, la chancla ("the sandal") is commonly used by mothers or grandmothers to hit misbehaving children, usually by throwing the sandal at them with pinpoint accuracy. Eventually, this became a very common practice for the Chicano community in the U.S., and subject to many jokes and memes by adult Latinos. Not even Halloween´s Michael Myers can avoid the power of the mighty chancla when trying to enter a house with his shoes filled with mud as shown in this comedy video
  • As a result, Mexican and Mexican-American audiences absolutely howled when they first saw la chancla being used in Coco (see under Films — Animated above).
• Shoes are pretty useful for squishing bugs crawling over walls without dirtying your hands.

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