Weapon Stomp

"If only... I can reach my gun..."
"Yes, if only you could."

The concept: Two people are fighting. Either with swords or guns, doesn't matter. One person loses their weapon in the fight, and it goes skittering across the floor (usually toward the foreground). That person dives for it or crawls to get it, dramatically — but just as their hand reaches out to grab the handle/hilt, you see their opponent's foot come down upon the weapon (or on their reaching hand), ending the battle. If the stomper is particularly powerful, expect them to outright crush the weapon under their heel.

A sister trope of Gun Struggle, which often contains one of these.

A corollary trope would be where the character almost has a grasp of the weapon and is suddenly pulled back from it (or the weapon is kicked farther away). This usually results in another scramble for the weapon, often by both participants in the battle.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Cowboy Bebop: Near the end of the last episode, Spike and Vicious are fighting. Each knocks the weapon out of the other's hand. As the weapons go skittering across the floor, Vicious steps on Spike's gun, but Spike grabs Vicious' katana. After a brief standoff, Spike tosses the katana back to Vicious as Vicious kicks the gun back to Spike.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS used this in a nasty way with one of the characters' Power Fist. We didn't see the actual battle, but considering how the stomped weapon was lying in a pool of blood and how the hand of said character was hidden during the entire scene, it's easy to guess how the character was disarmed for this trope to happen.
• Monster:
  • In a hotel lobby where Inspector Lunge is trying to locate Roberto during the massacre in Ruhenheim, an accomplice attempts to get the jump on him by withdrawing a pistol he had concealed, but Lunge shoots him in the shoulder with his rifle before he can act, making him lose his grip on it and fall over. As he attempts to reach for it while incapacitated, Lunge promptly stomps on his wrist, wedges the rifle in between his teeth (leveling his fearful gaze at him) and calmly inquires as to where Roberto is.
  • Later in the same episode, Roberto uses the same technique on Lunge after kicking him around his hotel room and into the hallway.
• In My-Otome Zwei, Haruka stops on the gun of one of the busjackers after all of them are knocked down or out and their bomb is disabled before delivering a brief "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how they couldn't hope to win by taking hostages.
• In the Sailor Stars anime of Sailor Moon, Sailor Star Fighter falls holding the Sailor Star Yell while fighting Sailor Galaxia. When she attempts to raise it, Galaxia stomps on her hand, breaking the Sailor Star Yell with it.

Fan Works

• A Growing Affection: Naruto does this to Doraku's sword in chapter 11. Given it is an antique and a relic of a past Mizukage, the demon is very unhappy.

Film — Animation

• In Anastasia, Rasputin's Soul Jar rolls away and she catches it under her foot, stomping on it with an "And This Is for..." with each one.
• In Animal Farm (1954), Mr. Jones loses his gun after Boxer the horse knocks him down. As he goes to reach for it, Boxer steps on it.

Film — Live-Action

• 3:10 to Yuma (2007) had one of these; the stagecoach driver crawled for his shotgun but just as he got to it, Charlie Prince stepped on it.
• Boar: While fighting the boar, Bernie has his hunting knife knocked from his grip. He lunges for it, only to have the boar stomp its trotter down on it before he can reach it.

• A Cobra soldier does it to Scarlett's pistol in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters: King Ghidorah lovetaps the ORCA with his foot when Madison throws it at him.
• James Bond does this to Alec Trevelyan's AK-47 during the train scene in GoldenEye.
• In Live Free or Die Hard, McClane's daughter shoves a gun toward him, as he is unarmed and hiding behind a car, but just as the gun gets to the car, the villain Gabriel stomps on it.
• There's at least one film version of Hamlet where this happens during the duel between Hamlet and Laertes.
• During their final confrontation in Watchmen, Ozymandias steps on and breaks Nite Owl II's lasergun while the latter is down and reaches for it, being the only weapon that Ozymandias can't dodge or deflect.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • In The Fellowship of the Ring, King Elendil's sword is shattered when Sauron steps on it. In a subversion of the trope, Isildur uses the shattered blade to cut Sauron's fingers (and thus separated him from the ring).
  • Shelob also steps on the sword Sting to prevent Sam from grabbing it during their fight in The Return of the King.
• Inverted in Mystery Men: The Shoveler stomps on his own weapon (a shovel) in order to flip it up into his grasp.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest:
    • There's Elizabeth going for the rifle, only for Jack to stomp on it. He then kicked it up so he could be the one to fire it.
    • Norrington also did this with one of Davy Jones' mooks.
  • Also done in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides during Jack's attempted mutiny, which fails regardless.
• This was done very nastily (but not that the guy didn't deserve it), in Shutter Island. A soon-to-be-captured Nazi officer at the Dachau concentration camp tries to use suicide as an easy way out, but he bungles it and only blows his cheek off. An American soldier (the film's protagonist), finds the Nazi on the floor, unable to move and in terrible pain, reaching for his dropped gun to try again. The soldier looks from the Nazi on the floor to the camp's victims that he can see through the window of the office, and decides he's not feeling merciful. Instead he steps on the gun and slides it away with his foot, moving it only a short distance but well beyond the reach of the officer. The protagonist later recounts it took the officer another hour to die, as he lay there unable to finish himself off, and with none of the Americans inclined to give him a Mercy Kill.
• In Sherlock Holmes (2009), during the fight in the basement of the Parliament, Holmes lies on the floor and tries to reach for an ax, but the giant mook Dredger prevents this by stepping on his arm.
• The climax of Spider-Man has Spider-Man put through the wringer in his final battle with the Green Goblin. After getting thrown through the walls of an abandoned building, he shakily raises his arm to aim a web, only for the Goblin to pin his wrist down in this fashion.
  Green Goblin: You've spun your last web, Spider-Man.
• Not a weapon, but in the Super Mario Bros. (1993) movie, Lena steps on the Cosmic Keystone meteorite as Mario and Luigi try to retrieve it.
• In Terminator Genisys, during the Final Battle, when T-800 lies broken on the floor and reaches for the magnet, John comes and stomps on his body, preventing him from moving any closer.
• Time Bandits: The minotaur stomps on Agamemnon weapon during their fight, snapping it and disarming him.
• In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Logan gets his bone claws broken by Sabertooth this way at the end of their first battle.

Literature

• In Hannibal Rising, Hannibal gets into a fight with Grutas, who is scrambling toward a gun; he steps on the gun and slashes Grutas.
• X-Wing Series: In Starfighters of Adumar, Wes Janson disarms his opponent and breaks the blastsword by bringing the heel of his boot down on the right place. His opponent goes for his knife, but Wes kicks it out of his hand.

Live-Action TV

• In the Battlestar Galactica (2003) episode "Exodus, Part 1", Chief Tyrol and insurgents stop the Cylon massacre of unarmed civilians. A "Cavil" Cylon humanoid model is wounded in the firefight. At the end of the battle, he is laying on the ground with a gun near him. He goes to reach for it, and one of the human insurgents kicks it out of his reach.
• In Breaking Bad, this happens in "Ozymandias" where after Jack and his men shoot Hank multiple times in the leg and also shoot Gomez dead, Hank crawls to grab Gomez's gun to continue the fight even though Hank's outnumbered 6 to 1 and he knows it. Jack walks up and once Hank reaches the gun, Jack presses his foot on it.
  Jack: Whoa, simmer down there, sparky!
• Done in the Castle episode "Home is Where the Heart Stops". After the Killer of the Week makes a dive for his gun, Beckett steps on his gun (and his hand!) and levels her Glock at him.
  Beckett: Go ahead. I need the practice.
• In the Firefly episode "Shindig", Atherton Wing does this to Mal, and breaks Mal's sword off at the hilt. Luckily for Mal, their duel then devolves a bit. Sword fighting? Not his specialty. But brawling he knows.
• On the last episode of Justified, Raylan and Boon have a Quick Draw duel while Loretta watches, and both men drop, apparently hit, with Raylan flopping onto his back while Boon falls to his knees, then forward. Boon tries to get off a Last Breath Bullet on a motionless Raylan, to make sure Raylan is dead... and then Loretta steps on his wrist, preventing him from aiming properly. After a few more seconds Boon dies, then Loretta goes to check on Raylon, who turns out was only grazed by a headshot, leaving him knocked out for a bit and bleeding profusely, but alive.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers:
  • During his first solo fight with Jason, evil!Tommy stomped on Jason's hand right after Jason had managed to retrieve his morpher. Fortunately for Jason the others were able to teleport him out.
  • In another episode, Kimberly has her morpher kicked away in a fight with putties.
• The opening credits of The Saint showed people fighting in colored silhouette. One of the images shows a man reaching for a gun, only to have his hand stomped on.
• In the Supernatural episode "Devil May Care", a demon stomps on the wrist of Sam's hand holding his gun.

Video Games

• The corollary is shown in Bulletstorm, when Grayson is injured and crawls toward a PMC, which is kicked away by Sarrano.
• A strange example in Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium. A special encounter between Terry and Yamazaki has Yamazaki mockingly tossing a knife at Terry’s feet. Terry in response punches the knife, breaking it.
• Happens right at the start of Dragon Age II, followed by a move dependent on Hawke's class (Mage!Hawke blasting the offending Hurlock's head off is the coolest, though).
• Awesomely subverted in Kingdom Hearts II. As Sora battles Roxas, Sora's Keyblade is knocked out of his hand as Roxas impales Sora's Keyblade with one of his own. However, Sora teleports his sword back to his hand and ends up being the one to deliver the finishing attack.
• A variation in MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. Should your character die in battle, you will be greeted with a cutscene from your perspective on the ground, reaching out to a neurohelmet a few feet away, a device which would allow you to communicate for help and also return to piloting a 'Mech. Before you can reach it, an unknown party (presumably whoever your enemies were for that mission) stomps down on your wrist, pinning you down as a laser rifle is leveled at your face. Boom, Headshot!
• Modern Warfare:
  • Happens at the end of Modern Warfare 2 as you're trying to get Big Bad General Shepherd's gun to shoot him. He steps on the weapon right as you're about to grab it, then kicks you in the face.
  • In the final moments of Modern Warfare 3, Vladimir Makarov stomps on your hand as you reach for a dropped gun.
• Red Dead Redemption 2: In the final part of the fistfight with Micah Bell in the "Go with John" part of the final story mission, Arthur Morgan manages to kick one of Micah's revolvers from his holster and send it flying onto the ground further out of reach. The hard part is that he has to painfully crawl over toward the revolver while Micah is chasing after him. Once Arthur reaches out for the revolver in his attempt to shoot Micah with it, a foot belonging to Dutch van der Linde steps on the weapon with Arthur's hand still on it, thus ending the battle.
• Usable in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice as the "Mikiri Counter", which nullifies thrusting attacks and damages the enemy's Posture gauge.

Webcomics

• In anti-HEROES, Roza's sword gets kicked away in page 221 after Lana uses Grease to make her slip.

Web Videos

• The web film Ryan vs. Dorkman 2 ends with Dorkman losing his sword hand to Ryan's saber. He tries to summon the saber to him with the Force, but Ryan's foot comes down on it and he proceeds to slice off the working end of the weapon, rendering it useless, before stabbing him in the shoulder to torture him (as he's been well into Dark Side mode for the majority of the fight). Dorkman proceeds to grab Ryan's saber and throw it, slicing Ryan in half and ending the fight.

Western Animation

• Subverted in Avatar: The Last Airbender in the fight between Piandao and Sokka; Sokka gets a chance to stomp on Piandao's sword, but actually he uses a lever-like movement to free the sword.

• Family Guy:
  • In "The Hand that Rocks the Wheelchair", Good Stewie and Evil Stewie (It Makes Sense in Context) fight over a raygun. Good Stewie crawls to grab it, and reaches it just as Evil Stewie stomps on it.
  • In "Halloween on Spooner Street", Stewie threatens a group of bullies from a roof with a rocket launcher, but is knocked off the roof and drops the launcher. When he goes to reach for it, one of the bullies steps on it.
• In an episode of G.I. Joe, Scarlett and Lady Jaye were leading a small band of captive women in an escape from one of Cobra's fiendish plots. They made short work of the guards that confronted them (it helped that Dr. Mindbender had ordered the women not be harmed). When one fallen Evil Minion attempts to reach for a firearm, Lady Jaye not only steps on his wrist, but catches it in her three-inch heeled shoe.
• Star Wars: Clone Wars: In "Chapter 20", Ki-Adi-Mundi attempts to use the Force to pull his lightsaber to his hand. It starts to roll towards him, but General Grievous steps on it and picks it up. Fortunately, Ki-Adi-Mundi then pulls a lightsaber from Grievous' belt to his hand.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Cloak of Darkness", when treacherous Senate Commando Captain Argyus attempts to retrieve a blaster during a Gun Struggle, Commander Gree steps on it before punching him.
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • "The Honorable Ones": Zeb steps on Kallus' bo-rifle when the injured ISB agent attempts to crawl for it while Zeb was looking for supplies in the escape pod.
  • "Twilight of the Apprentice": The Eighth Brother is knocked down by a blast from a TIE fighter and loses his weapon; as he scrambles for it, the Jedi Kanan steps on it.
• In the Teen Titans episode "The Prophecy", an infernally-powered Slade wrecks most of the team while Raven is about other business. By the time we cut back, the team is clearly losing and that one birderang Robin is weakly reaching for is unlikely to make a difference, but the point is emphasized by Slade's boot coming down and smashing it.
• VeggieTales: in "Lord of the Beans" (their parody of The Lord of the Rings) after Scary Man is defeated, he reaches for his sword, only to find another one in his path.
  Larry: Not so fast, Scary Man!

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