Wrecked Weapon

Man, Leo's going to be pissed— what? You kicked his ass? Never mind.

While the heroes get kicked around a lot, after a certain point we don't worry so much. But if you want to really show off how badass a new antagonist might be, not only should they beat the hero in a fight quickly, but they should hurt their pride. The easiest way to do that is smash up their signature weapon/accessory.

Although this is sometimes a cheap and inexplicable device to show off a new transformation, more often the hero is figuratively neutered and has to deal with the emotional aftermath. Even if he has a buddy who can fix it up, that won't be as important as him coming to grips with either his reasons for fighting or just learning not to be such a clod about it. If this is a videogame, it's by far the easiest way to REALLY piss off the player along with their virtual avatar.

Naturally, this is much more emotional for the character if they also have an Empathic Weapon and even worse if it's an Equippable Ally or other Living Weapon. If the weapon is an actual part of the character's body, it's a Fake Arm Disarm, which makes the crippling somewhat more literal.

For antagonists, such a moment can function similarly to a Hero Killer moment but without having to kill anyone important. A way to show that a villain is not the usual fare and will require something new to confront, the destruction of the hero's weapon signifies that the old ways are out. An Outside-Context Problem can often manifest like this when they first make their presence known, the hero trying to use their typical response but only to discover that they are ineffective, destroying their treasured weapon in the process. The answer to this is often a Next Tier Power-Up, either by the hero forcing themselves to learn that they were more than their weapon (and thus finding new strength/resolve from within) or simply finding the Sword of Plot Advancement and/or Infinity +1 Sword to make another stab at the villain.

In some cases, the breaking of a character's weapon can be a foreshadowing of that character's death (if it occurs shortly before), or symbolic of it (if it occurs during or shortly after). In this case, there may be some overlap with Tragic Keepsake if one of the character's friends keeps the weapon or a piece of it as a memento. If the weapon also has an association with a nation (for example, the royal sword of the king) then it can even signify the fall of the nation in question. If a villain's weapon breaks, it usually signifies that their reign has come to an end as a villain's weapon is usually a symbol of their power. Alternately, the breaking of a soldier's sword is normally a major part of an Insignia Rip-Off Ritual.

Although sometimes on rare occasions and if at all possible, the victim of this trope will continue to use the broken weapon or at least, pieces of it to fight — like, say, a blade of a sword being shattered, yet there's still enough metal left for it to be used as a knife, even a type of polearm (like say a spear) or even staff; being bisected in half, forcing the user to either dual-wield or use the blade part of the stick as a dagger, and that's barely scratching the surface.

The reasoning for the character still using this weapon can have a few symbolic meanings^*Like their weapons may be broken yet their spirits aren't as an example or they just simply have no other options. As it broke in the middle of the fight and they just have to work with what they have, it really depends on the context and situation. This also essentially makes them into an Improbable Weapon User, depending on what pieces of the broken weapon they choose to use or just how broken their weapon is.

May lead to Reforged Blade, Give Me a Sword, or even It Was a Gift. Can be used for an Intimidation Demonstration.

In a mundane "real world" series without magic or swords, the easiest way for a villain to do this is to trash the hero's ride.

Compare Breakable Weapons, where this is a gameplay mechanic instead of a plot event. Contrast Like Cannot Cut Like. A weapon with Detachable Blades can simply replace the blade and it becomes usable again. See Scarred Equipment (for weapons that are worn out) and Weapons Breaking Weapons.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Armed Girl's Machiavellism this happens repeatedly, especially in the Hokkai arc. While there's no long-term effect, as the characters are able to quickly replace their weapons, the moment one is broken leaves the user helpless in the current fight.
  • Subverted in the fight between Haruna and Rin, as when the shaft of Haruna's poleaxe is broken he simply pulls out his backsword... With which he has considerably less skill.
• Battle B-Daman used it to the point of frustration to replace the heroes' old marble-shooting chibi robots with new ones built around a new system.
  • By contrast, one of the villains earlier gets a Kick the Dog moment by destroying his own B-Daman just to show that he has a new one.
• The classic example from Berserk is Guts breaking Griffith's sword with one blow after deciding to leave the Hawks, which starts Griffith on the downward spiral that would ultimately lead to the Eclipse. He loses his own sword later during the battle with Wyald, leaving him without a good weapon for the Eclipse, before he gets his hands on the Dragonslayer proper.
• Multiple instances in Bleach. The fact that the swords can heal themselves makes this trope much more repeatable in the series, since no story time needs to be spent in getting the swords repaired.
  • Played straight at the beginning of the first major arc, when Rukia's brother and best friend turn up to take her back. The former ends up snapping Ichigo's unreleased Zanpakuto like a twig and piercing him in his "spiritual organs" (organs that produce spiritual energy), making him unable to create Reishi or restore his sword anymore.
  • Following that, Ichigo has to undergo Training from Hell to get his powers back. During the final stage of the aforementioned training, Ichigo has to rely on the broken remains of his Zanpakuto to fight Urahara, who uses his own Zanpakuto to effortlessly destroy what's left of Ichigo's until only the grip remains. Naturally, Ichigo becomes too afraid to keep fighting at this point, until the spirit of his Zanpakuto encourages Ichigo to call upon him for more power. In doing so, Ichigo learns the true name of his Zanpakuto, Zangetsu, and unlocks its Shikai state, not only restoring the blade but unleashing its true form and power.
  • Ichigo ends up destroying Renji's Zabimaru at the conclusion of their rematch. It takes a few days to restore itself while Renji recovers from his injuries.
  • After a rather hopeless battle, Kenpachi pierces Ichigo's chest through Zangetsu, which breaks it in two after Ichigo collapses. Zangetsu immediately restores itself after Ichigo gets up to continue fighting. Following the conclusion of their fight, Kenpachi's own Zanpakuto breaks in two.
  • As Sasakibe, Isane and Omaeda prepare their weapons to fight Ichigo, the latter interrupts them by effortlessly smashing Omaeda's Gegetsuburi to pieces while punching him in the gut, knocking him out instantly.
  • Renji has a Desperation Attack that can only be used when Zabimaru is broken, allowing him to attack the enemy with the individual pieces.
  • Ikkaku's Hozukimaru seems to get broken a lot. It's implied that the reason it's so fragile is because all of its power goes towards destructive force. When Edorad breaks it during their fight, Ikkaku decides to start fighting seriously and unleashes his own [[SuperMode Bankai, which ends up shattered to pieces after he kills Edorad. Much later Mayuri states that Akon was able to patch it up somehow, but that it was no longer as powerful as before.
  • The Hollow Metastacia has special tentacles that can instantly break a Zanpakuto once a day. Aaroniero ate Metastacia and gained this ability.
  • Rukia's Sode no Shirayuki ends up broken during her fight with Aaroniero, who skewers her and dangles her before him as he gloats. Rukia musters enough strength to use a technique she can only use when her sword is broken, which allows her to grow an ice blade straight through Aaroniero's head.
  • Tsukishima manages to break Senbonzakura in two while fighting Byakuya, who calmly picks up the broken blade and unleashes his Bankai. Tsukishima then lampshades how Byakuya seems to need the entire blade before he can use Bankai.
  • Used again much later when Haschwalth snaps Tensa Zangetsu. Then it's revealed that Reforged Blade is not an option for Zanpakuto in Bankai state. Ichigo has to work really hard to get a new Bankai.
  • In the final battle, Yhwach uses his powers to alter the future into one where Ichigo's Bankai breaks instantly. However, Tsukishima uses his powers to alter the past and repair it. Yhwach breaks Ichigo's Bankai again, but this time, it transforms into his original Shikai from before it was reforged and he kills Yhwach.
• A Chevalier showed off just how powerful he was by destroying Saya's signature sword in Blood+, just by yelling.
• In Bubblegum Crisis, Priss' motoslave armor is destroyed by Largo's Hyperboomers, one of them crushing its head underfoot, and her hardsuit absolutely trashed to the point that it falls apart around her. Under the original script, this would have been followed by Priss being killed due to the voice actor's contractual complications. However, Priss was saved by an 11th-hour fan-led campaign to save the character. In an ironic turnabout, when her new armor and motoslave conveniently show up in time to save her, the first thing the new motoslave does is crush the head of the Hyperboomer that destroyed its predecessor.
• City Hunter has the climatic duel between Ryo and Umibozu end this way when Ryo's last bullet destroys Umibozu's gun, effectively winning the duel for him even if Ryo now was without ammo.
• Happens twice in Claymore during Clare's mission in Rabona. The Yoma Clare was ordered to hunt down first destroys the sword of a Human soldier, Galk, and then also smashes Clare's own knives. This shows how Human weapons are ineffective against Yoma and only the Claymore swords that give the warriors like Clare their name are up to the task, especially because they're made of Thunderbolt Iron.
• Happens a lot in Code Geass.
  • Kallen's Radiant Wave Surger on her Guren is broken three times over the 2 seasons, once at the middle of the first, once about a quarter into the second, and finally in the last episode. The first time, Suzaku is nearly beaten, but lucks out as the Guren falls off a cliff and breaks the RWS upon landing. The second time, the trope is played straight, showing off the power of Suzaku's new mech against Kallen. She got a replacement within 2 minutes, then gave back nearly as good as she got. Finally, the arm is lost in her final battle with Suzaku, but at that point it was meaningless.
  • Kallen then does it to Suzaku in R2 episode 18, breaking every single one of his mech's weapons, and cutting off the mech's leg when Suzaku tries a last-ditch Hurricane Kick.
    • Earlier that same episode she does it to the Blood Knight Luciano, breaking each of his weapons one by one before delivering the Facepalm Of Doom as part of her Look What I Can Do Now! with the final version of the Guren.
  • Bismarck has this happen to him during his mech rematch with Suzaku. He's the strongest Knight in the world wielding a BFS larger than the mech he's riding on. The BFS is even named Excalibur. Cue Suzaku delivering a very clean cut of the sword from the tip to the hilt with an equally clean Diagonal Cut of the mech.
    • Then said broken weapon is reforged into two new swords, and Suzaku broke those, too.
• Tyki Mikk of D.Gray-Man demonstrates how powerful he is by destroying protagonist Allen Walker's Innocence single-handedly after we've seen that barely anything can even scratch it. This is particularly nasty because Allen's Innocence happens to be his left arm, and it's also been made very clear that (1) Allen can't be an Exorcist without an Innocence, and (2) forcing anyone to synchronize with Innocence that's not destined to be theirs is at best fatal. He gets better, and his Innocence is stronger for it.
  • The Millennium Earl's goal in early volumes is to destroy all the Innocence. It's still a secondary priority, as there were only 109 Innocences at first, they can't be replaced (although they can sometimes be repaired), and they're the only things that can hurt his Akuma.
  • Also, Kanda's and Lavi's weapons break in the Ark arc which prevents them from fighting in the lvl4 arc. Or that's what you thought.
• Overused in Digimon Data Squad. Even before Burst Mode is introduced, the Geo-Grey Sword gets trashed by nearly everyone Shine Greymon tries to hit with it, making it possibly the most useless auxiliary weapon in history.
• In Dragon Ball Z:
  • Trunks' sword chipped on contact with Android 18's arm. After this, he decides not to use it in combat anymore because it clearly won't do the job, and he stops carrying it with him.
  • This also happened later on with the Z sword, but that turned out to be Sealed Good in a Can, as the Elder Kai was sealed in it by Beerus.
• The Familiar of Zero: Saito Hiraga's talking sword Derflinger gets shattered (in the light novel by an assassin, in the anime by a dragon). Fortunately, it turns out that Derflinger's spirit only uses the sword as a vessel, and transfers to another sword, bringing all of its abilities to it.
• Fate/Prototype: Lancer's Master insists that he hide his spear and use a spear she made. The first time he fights Saber, Saber slices the makeshift spear in half.
• Fate/stay night:
  • In the 2006 anime/Fate Route, Shirou tries to attack Gilgamesh with the sword Caliburn, but Gilgamesh easily shatters it with his superior sword Merodach.
  • In Saber and Assassin's final duel, Assassin's nodachi gets slightly bent when he blocks Excalibur. This leads to his defeat because the damage created a blind spot in his otherwise undodgeable Tsubame Gaeshi technique, allowing Saber to dodge it and strike him down.
  • Servants can use this as an ultra-powerful attack by overloading their Noble Phantasm with mana so that they shatter on impact (called a Broken Phantasm), doing devastating damage. Archer, the Servant who does this in-game uses it without any setback at all, since he is a 'Faker' who duplicates any Noble Phantasms rather than 'owning' one, meaning that he can endlessly re-make Phantasms and break them as long as he has the mana for it. In fact, it's necessary because his fakes are naturally weaker than the real ones, so turning them Broken brings their power back up to the originals.
• Ed's prosthetic arm in Fullmetal Alchemist. Besides the fact that he tends to actually transform it into a weapon with alchemy all the time, he needs to clap his hands together to use alchemy in the first place (on a whim, anyway), making him completely helpless if it breaks or is severed (granted, you could say the same for his other, real arm, too...).
• In GaoGaiGar FINAL, GaoFighGar uses the Goldion Hammer against the Repli-Star GaoGaiGar, but the hammer and the Marg Hand is destroyed by the Hell and Heaven attack. Goldymarg, the robot that is the two pieces are part of, has its AI implanted into 3G's starships and is activated as the Goldion Crusher.
• Weapons get destroyed all the time in Gundam Build Fighters since the show is about model kits rather than actual Humongous Mecha. However, a character's Gunpla being wrecked usually serves the same purpose as this trope; for example, Fellini's Wing Gundam Fenice gets mauled by the Qubeley Papillon just before Sei and Reiji's match against Aila to demonstrate how fearsome the Embody System is, and in the next episode Maoh's Gundam X Maoh is irreparably destroyed in a free battle against Julian McKenzie's F91 Imagine to show that he's on the same level as the current Meijin, Tatsuya Yuuki.
• Gundam Build Divers explores this trope as the old game Gunpla Duel used the old Build Fighters style of fighting while the new Gunpla Battle Nexus Online eschews this as it is all online. Big Bad Tsukasa Shiba hates GBN because it doesn't use the old style, considers all players there not real Gunpla Battlers and considers his Gunpla Duel-honed skills superior to theirs. When he challenges Riku to a round of Gunpla Duel, both players are broken by the experience - Tsukasa loses to Riku, but Riku's left a sobbing mess because his Gunpla is destroyed.
• Gunslinger Girl. Triela's preferred long arm is a Winchester 1897 trench shotgun. After getting An Arm and a Leg blown off during the Final Battle she can't reload it with only one arm, so she ends up breaking her shotgun across the head of a terrorist, hitting him hard enough to cave in his helmet.
• High School D×D: In the backstory, King Arthur's sword Excalibur was broken in battle. The pieces were reforged into seven blades that grant a fraction of the original's power: Excalibur Destruction, Excalibur Mimic, Excalibur Rapidly, Excalibur Nightmare, Excalibur Transparency, Excalibur Blessing, and Excalibur Ruler. Xenovia collects the swords and fuses them into a sheath for her sword Durandal. She is later able to turn the sheathe into the true Excalibur.
• Inuyasha:
  • The sword Tetsusaiga suppresses the main character's demon blood, so breaking it leaves nothing to prevent him from going into a mindless, feral rage whenever his life is threatened. He eventually gets the sword reforged. Then it suddenly becomes insanely heavy and he can hardly use it. Once he masters using it again, he has a new attack, the Backlash Wave.
  • Sesshomaru's Tokijin is broken in battle with Moryomaru. Sesshomaru discarded the pieces as it wasn't worth repairing a blade that was clearly inadequate.
  • Later on, through a series of events, Sesshomaru's Tenseiga ends up getting shattered and discarded within a void leading to the underworld. It returns to him mere moments later completely restored, cementing it's status as a Clingy MacGuffin supreme.
  • Bankotsu's halberd Banryu ends up getting blasted to pieces along with Bankotsu himself thanks to Inuyasha's Backlash Wave. Interestingly, Bankotsu had been such trouble up to that point because as a human using a man-made weapon, he had no demonic aura to speak of. Then he made the mistake of upgrading the Banryu into a demon sword, thereby giving it an aura to reflect...
  • Several times in the course of the series, Sango's Hiraikotsu will get cut in half, chewed up, or otherwise rendered unfit for battle, forcing her to return to her demon-slaying village to repair it. While it's usually more of a downplayed example due to her being able to fix it herself without much fuss, the final time it happens in the series requires her to go on a spirit journey of sorts to quell the demon souls that reside within the Hiraikotsu due to them feeling betrayed by how the weapon got destroyed (Sango slathering it in corrosive poison slave and then feeding it to a bone-eating demon who had already taken several bites out of it.) After she and the demons come to an agreement, the Hiraikotsu is reforged for a final time and granted brand new powers that put it back on par with everyone else's weapons right when the Hiraikotsu was beginning to wane in effectiveness.
  • Kikyou and Kagome have both gone through several sacred bows over time, with one instance of Kikyou's bow being snapped being used to reveal that Naraku has removed his human heart, allowing him to bypass Kikyou's spiritual barriers and make an attempt on her life.
• In Kill la Kill, Satsuki's Bakuzan gets snapped in half during her rebellion against Ragyo. The Elite Four turn the shards into a separate sword and dagger, and eventually return them to Satsuki (only for them to be finally shattered in the last episode).
• Kirby: Right Back at Ya!:
  • The Demon Beast Kirisakin breaks Sword Kirby's sword, leaving him with no choice but to use Galaxia in order to defeat him.
  • Similarly, Sword Knight and Blade Knight's swords get broken upon contact with Masher 2.0's nearly impenetrable exterior.
• The Legend of Zelda (Akira Himekawa):
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (2005):
    • Ghanti breaks her scimitar trying to cut the Armos statue.
    • In a flashback, Link's father tries to stand against the newly empowered Agahnim, only to get his sword snapped in half.
  • This happens to Link in both volumes of the adaptation of the Oracle duology.
    • In Seasons, Link's sword breaks in his second fight with Onox, but the Triforce rebuilds it.
    • In Ages, Link steals a spear from one of Queen Ambi's guards when he escapes them, but it gets slashed apart in his duel with Raven.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016):
    • Zelda breaks her rapier when she surrenders to Zant's forces.
    • In the final fight between Link and Zant, Link's Master Sword cuts right through one of Zant's scimitars.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Nanoha and Fate's wands crack each other in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. In the second season (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's), both Nanoha and Fate have their weapons heavily damaged in separate duels against the new antagonists.
  • Fate had a version symbolic of her mental state near the end of the first season when she dropped her weapon in shock of finding out her true nature and, combined with the damage it had received from her battle against Nanoha, it shattered upon hitting the ground. It remained that way until she recovered from her Heroic BSoD and jump-started its self-repair function.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS:
    • Taken to a new level when Subaru does this to herself right after her Robotic Reveal by pushing her device past the breaking point after her Berserk Button is pressed.
    • Vita breaks Graf Eisen trying to break through the shielding on the Saint Cradle's engine. However, Eisen's tip lodges in the engine after her last attack, eventually shattering the engine.
    • Before this, Vita breaks Graf Eisen fighting against Zest.
  • In the FORCE manga Signum does this to Laevatein by trying to fight a new villain with heavy Anti-Magic powers and a body tough enough to provoke the mighty Belkan sword to crack like a cookie; obviously, things do not end well for our beloved Lady of War.
• Nova breaks Hikaru's sword in the second season of the Magic Knight Rayearth anime. This cuts off Hikaru's connection with her living Humongous Mecha and intensifies her Heroic BSoD.
• Mazinger Z's Rocket Punch is its most popular and most iconic weapon (being both the Trope Maker and Trope Namer). Whenever Mazinger-Z's fists were destroyed or shattered in one fight, you knew Kouji was going to be in trouble. Maybe the first time this happened was when Kouji was fighting Spartan K5 and the Mechanical Beast easily ran its trident through its fist before beating the crap out of Mazinger-Z. A very memorable instance also happened in the Mazinger-Z versus Great General of Darkness, when General Juuma caught his flying fist before eating it.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray, the Red Frame Astray's Gerbera Straight katana is destroyed by the Gold Frame Amatsu chopping its blade. Lowe spends a sidestory getting it reforged.
  • In a later story, Princess of the Sky, the absolutely massive 150 Meter Gerbera Straight Vol. 2 has its blade shattered. Instead of reforging that one, Lowe converts it into the Gerbera Straight Vol. 2 [Power], which converts the remaining hilt into a positron cannon and special equipment for the Red Frame Powered Red form.
• One Piece
  • Zoro has broken multiple swords on different occasions, three in the manga, at least four in the anime. In the manga, the two unnamed swords he had when he met Luffy are destroyed in his duel against Mihawk. Later Yubashiri, one of the swords that replaced those blades, would be destroyed in a big fight against the Marines at Enies Lobby.
  • The anime includes a filler flashback to when Zoro met Johnny and Yosaku. In it, Zoro returns to a swordsmith and says "Sorry, I've broken them again...". He gets into a fight, Johnny and Yosaku hand him their swords, he strikes down his opponent, and is astounded that the swords didn't break.
  • While training under a mentor during the timeskip, Zoro is taught that he should never allow a sword to be broken again, because he can use Haki to protect them. He's told that from then on any damage to his swords should be considered a mark of shame.
• In Pretty Sammy TV/Magical Project S, Pretty Sammy's baton shatters using an attack that saves the Earth. She gets a new one to continue her adventures.
• In the early chapters of Rave Master, a member of Demon Card hunting Shiba and the Rave stones fights against Haru and snaps his sword, "Ten Powers" (in some translations, "Ten Commandments"), the sword with ten forms, clean off at the hilt, prompting Haru to seek out a master blacksmith to reforge it better than ever. Later in the story, Haru fights Let of the Palace Guardians and Let breaks the sword in half with a punch. Rather than be distraught over this development, Haru grabs one part in each hand and unveils the weapon's fifth form, "Blue Crimson", which actually is two swords. When he shifts the sword back to its default form, it is undamaged. The sword is destroyed for good near the end after Musica forges an even better one for Haru since the sword's creator believes it is no longer needed in the world.
• Rebuild World:
  • Akira's augmented suit and bike are destroyed during his fight with the three Relic Thieves and the rest of his weapons are confiscated and taken apart by the government as evidence of the battle. Luckily for him, the government is willing to pay him 100 million aurum to keep him quiet about the whole thing, which lets him replace everything with even better equipment.
  • This pretty much happens Once a Season as far as the Web Novels of the series go. It gets to be enough of a problem that Akira starts being Crazy-Prepared, taking measures like getting six of the same rifle each with their own Deflector Shields, and after he takes up Sword and Gun fighting, he gets a sword with disposable liquid metal blades held in place by a force field.
• Happened once in Ronin Warriors. After gaining the Inferno Armor transformation, Ryo broke his original swords of Wildfire through the power of the armor. After reforging them, he had to quest into a volcano to find the new swords that went with the armor.
• Arguably averted when Louie's magic wand breaks in Rune Soldier Louie; the titular character is happier smacking enemies with a sword, or just punching them. His adventuring party forces him to fix the wand anyway.
• Rurouni Kenshin:
  • Kenshin slices Sanosuke's Zanbato in half. Afterwards, Sanosuke puts it away and fights with his fists for the rest of the series. During the Jinchu Arc, Sanosuke wields the Zanbato, now held together with metal staples, again, but it shatters after he uses it to knock away a cannonball.
  • Sanosuke breaks Jin-e's sword mid-strike by intercepting it with a statue. Unfazed, Jin-e stabs him in the arm with the broken end, then retreats. He has replacements.
  • Saito notes that he only likes to use katanas because all other swords are too brittle^note Katanas are notoriously brittle and break absurdly easily. His Cane Sword breaks after one use. Kenshin ends up slicing his katana in half. As a government agent, Saito quickly gets another one.
  • Kenshin and Sojiro break each other's swords in a duel. However while Kenshin is effectively disabled while seeking a new and stronger sword, and dealing with the mental stress of fighting without killing; Sojiro merely has to ask Shishio for a new sword, in addition to the fact that Sojiro has no qualms about killing.
• Sailor Moon and the Guardians had a bad habit of wrecking their gear in the early days.
  • In the manga, Sailor Moon loses her first tiara when it was used to bind Jadeite, who is incinerated by Sailor Mars' Fire Soul. She doesn't realize that it didn't come back until she transformed again later on and a new one suddenly appeared.
  • In both the manga and Sailor Moon Crystal, Sailor Moon overloads her first brooch destroying Queen Metalla. Queen Serenity gives her a new one. In the original anime, it was one of Ali and An's monsters that causes it, with Queen Serenity using the Silver Crystal to create the new one.
  • Also in the manga and Crystal, the other Sailor Guardians overload their wands to help Sailor Moon against the Dark Kingdom. They get new ones when the next arc starts.
  • In the anime, Sailor Mercury smashes her pocket computer over the head of one of the monsters that captured her before her death. It was whole once everything was said and done.
  • In the Sailor Moon R movie, Fiore clamps down hard on Usagi's brooch, crushing it slightly and causing her to lose her uniform. Usagi later blows up the Silver Crystal in stopping a Colony Drop. Both are fixed up at the end.
  • For a hat trick with this sort of thing, the manga and Crystal has Sailor Moon overload her second brooch and the Cutie Moon Rod stopping the Death Phantom. Neo-Queen Serenity gives her a new brooch and weapon. The anime instead has a new monster bite down on her brooch, draining it of its power.
• Saint Seiya
  • Happens dramatically to Andromeda Shun when Pisces Aphrodite destroys the Andromeda Cloth. Shun is left with no other choice than to unleash the Nebula Storm. This is a serious moment given its due gravitas, as the Cloth's Nebula Chain was Shun's iconic weapon and a companion at times.
  • The same thing happens with the Bronze Cloths, which are wrecked if not outright disintegrated at least once per arc, causing so much annoyance and/or despair for the protagonists. They get better. (And, unlike the broken Gold Cloths, the Bronzes get much, much better in the Grand Finale.)
• Sakura no Ichiban!: In chapter 2, Asami's wooden sword breaks while she was fighting Jack the Ripper, However, she manages to lunge at him and leave a mark with the broken sword before he decides to escape after a guard spots them.
• An anti-climactic battle in Samurai Champloo: In the last episode, when Jin and Mugen finally have the showdown promised when they began traveling together, they break each others' swords in half on the first pass, then collapse from previous injuries. Unusually, this does not cause either one to fly into a rage. Rather, it gives them an honorable exit from a promise both now recognize as silly and destructive.
• In Samurai Deeper Kyo, Sasuke's knockoff sword gets a crack in it when he meets the wielder of the real version. When he takes it to its maker to get repaired, he gets a new one.
• At least two instances in Trigun: Vash's boot knife gets destroyed in a fight with an assassin and the knife he lent to Wolfwood broke when he tried to use it on a robot.
  • Happens in the manga, in which Wolfwood's Punisher gets destroyed after a daring escape from the bad guy's giant Ark ship. Luckily, he met a quite crafty gunsmith just afterwards.
• Morte's sword ends up broken at the end of Sands of Destruction, though as the adaptations are extreme Alternate Continuities to the video game on which they're based, the circumstances and meaning to this are dramatically different. In the anime, Morte's sword is seen standing upright in the sand with the top broken off in the final episode. It's likely meant to represent that she's finally called off her war on the world and doesn't want to fight any more; she isn't seen with it again in the final scene, even though it's stated that the world is still a rather bitter, dangerous place for humans and carrying a weapon of some sort, even if only for self-defense, is probably still a good idea. In the manga, she shatters her sword against Vreveil's barrier in the penultimate chapter, but she proclaims that they'll beat him together. The next panel, Morte looks down and notices a sudden hole in her chest, as Vreveil shot her while she was talking. She spends the rest of the manga dead and doesn't get to participate in the final battle. She's resurrected at the very end, but it isn't shown if her mental breakdown has been corrected or not; the story ends before she even sits up straight.
• Jay in Star Wars: Visions: Tatooine Rhapsody is an order 66 survivor who had his lightsaber broken during his escape, before joining a band as lead singer. He has kept the pieces as a symbol of his trauma, but eventually repurposes it as a microphone, symbolizing that he is leaving the past behind and focusing on the future.
• Sword Art Online has Kirito do this several times. The first time it happens, he intends to break a sword dropped by a rare monster with one he intends to purchase and instead breaks the one he intends to purchase on his monster drop. The second time, it's revealed that most players don't even know SAO's gameplay engine can do that.
• This trope explains Hibiki's strange powerset in Symphogear. During the ZweiWing Tragedy, pieces of Kanade's armor, which is part of the relic Gungnir, pierces Hibiki, giving her access to the power years later. However, since the pieces were so small, Hibiki cannot access the usual spear weaponry using the relic grants. Thus, she ends up developing a fighting style around the energies she can create trying to summon it.
• Downplayed in Tenchi Muyo!. When Tenchi finds the sword his ancestor Yosho used to seal the demon away, he swings it around and accidentally smashes it into a rock, shattering the rusted blade. He keeps the broken hilt and hopes that his grandpa doesn't find out. As it turns out, the blade was a decoration and the actual laser-bladed sword still worked fine.
• Symbolically done in Tiger Mask with the title character's original Finishing Moves, including the "figuratively neutered" part and, symbolically, the Reforged Blade part represented by a new finisher:
  • When Great Zuma defeats the Ultra Tiger Drop, created to have his own personal finisher that does not resort to Tiger's Cave-style murderous attacks, Tiger Mask is left effectively helpless. While he ends winning thanks to Oki's plan, now the world knows how to counter his move, and when provoked or cornered he instinctively reverts to his training and old combat style until he comes up with the Fujiyama Tiger Breaker.
  • When Miracle 3 defeats the Fujiyama Tiger Breaker Tiger Mask takes it better, as only Miracle 3 has the combination of gymnast-level agility and immense strength necessary to do it... But the fight between the move and the counter completely exhausted Tiger Mask's legs, preventing him from kicking or even moving properly for the rest of the fight and leading to his defeat. This defeat at the hands of Tiger's Cave strongest assassin effectively cripples him in fear for his life, and he retires until he sees his disciple Teppei Oiwa filling in for him in the attempt to not end his legend and what it represents, leading to Tiger Mask reforging himself (by using the same exercises he had been subjected to at Tiger's Cave) and creating a brand new finisher, the Tiger V, in time for the rematch.
    • It had been attempted a number of times with the Fujiyama Tiger Breaker, but any attempt before Miracle 3 had failed or backfired horribly on the opponent due to Tiger Mask seeing it coming and coming up with variations to neutralize any counter. Also, this move was used again, because, as said above, only Miracle 3 could counter it.
  • Subverted when the Tiger V is countered during the Heel World Championship, as El Sicodelico succeeds only because Tiger Mask was injured and couldn't perform it properly. Then Double Subverted when Tiger Mask finds himself unable to fight back against his opponent's superior skill until Sicodelico purposefully uses an illegal move to provoke him into using fouls he wanted to study, at which point Sicodelico is quickly annihilated due to Tiger Mask's experience in fouls. The reforged part comes when El Sicodelico explains why he was even there: using fouls is actually legal in wrestling as long as it's stopped before three seconds, and he, unable to use them properly, wanted to study and learn them facing the foulest wrestlers in the world, inspiring Tiger Mask in doing just that and finally leave behind the nightmare of his past as a Tiger's Cave pupil.
• In Toriko, Komatsu's beloved knife is broken when he accidentally tries to cut through a Don Acorn. But by the end of the next arc, he has a new one that can create gashes in mountains from swinging it.
• In Vinland Saga, Thors' sword promptly snaps on Askeladd's armour halfway through their duel. It at first looks like an Oh, Crap! moment, until Thors proceeds to win the duel anyway.
• Fairly significant in the Violinist of Hameln, where the titular violinist appears helpless when said magical violin is destroyed; right up until the point where he crushes the foe's head with one hand in a demonic rage.
  • The manga takes the concept and runs with it, giving the other characters their chance to shine as they daydream about taking over the entire series. After all, if Hamel's violin is destroyed, what's the point of the manga being called Violinist of Hameln? Better make way for The Adventures of Flute or Tron Bone Z...
• Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon: In Episode 2, Towa attacks the demon Mistress Three-Eyes, but her sword breaks in half on contract, shocking her. In Episode 3, she is informed it broke because it was an ordinary weapon, but she is able to use her powers to make a Laser Blade sprout from the hilt.

Asian Animation

• In Catch! Teenieping, The Heartwing Stick gets broken from Romi overexerting her magic, leading to Dr. Monju giving her the Teenie Heart Shield as a replacement.

Comic Books

• It's not uncommon for Batman's poor Batmobile to get wrecked in some manner. Two notable moments were in Knightfall when Bats ends up setting off the Self-Destruct Mechanism that Jean-Paul Valley set up and Cataclysm, where the earthquake that ravages Gotham causes the Batmobile of the time to get crushed.
• A new enemy damaging Captain America's shield is generally a sign that this foe is to be taken very seriously indeed. For instance, Odin's brother the Serpent in Fear Itself breaks the shield into pieces as an indicator that he is ludicrously dangerous and powerful. Also, the pieces of the shield are seen lying around Cap during his Heroic BSoD in the Bad Future of Age of Ultron, which indicates that the world really has gone to hell in a handbasket.
• Subverted in the Champions comic book when Flare teams up with the Galloping Galooper, a non-powered hero who "fights with his great-grandfather's cavalry sword". His blade is broken in the fight, but when Flare consoles him over the loss of the heirloom he explains that his great-grandfather made swords, and he has dozens more at home.
  • The "figuratively neutered" part of the trope comes in from a different angle when she clobbers him in response to his ham-handed attempt to talk her into another sort of "consolation".
• In one storyline in the City of Heroes comic, Statesman suspends Manticore from the Freedom Phalanx and then breaks his bow for no reason other than to be a dick. The subversion is that while Manticore looks crushed, he goes home and gets another bow from an entire wall of them.
• Evil Star, with his Starband, was able to take away and destroy Hal Jordan's power ring twice and Hal was powerless to do anything to stop him from doing that.
• In issue 10 of Loki: Agent of Asgard Thor breaks Gram the Sword of Truth because he thinks Loki is not worthy to wield a hero's blade.
• The Mighty Thor:
  • Happens to Thor's hammer many times. What's interesting, mostly Mjölnir is broken because of magic, but the last time it happens, it is because Thor punches something too hard and powerful even for this weapon — his grandfather.
  • Thor's foe the Crusader is powered by faith. If his faith wavers, then his powers falter. Frequently this results in his sword being shattered, usually just before his defeat. He always reforges his sword when he regains his faith.
• The Punisher has traditionally had a nasty habit of breaking all of his coolest toys. Much like the T-car, the Battle Van is wrecked in almost all of its appearances.
• Spider-Man sometimes has the bad luck of his web-shooters being damaged in battle, if they don't run out of web fluid.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, Donatello gets his staff broken when the brothers arrive in the Amazon. Donny makes a second staff and it breaks when the brothers defend a village from a bunch of amoral loggers. As thanks for their help, he receives a third staff, which he keeps.
• Early in Wolverine's adamantium-less saga, Logan runs into his old rival Cyber, who fights the weakened X-Man. At the end of their battle, Cyber catches Logan and slams him into the floor, breaking one set of bone claws. Logan spends the next few issues (going into the Phalanax Convent storyline) regrowing his claws.
• Wonder Woman (1942):
  • In The Origin of Wonder Woman Hercules broke Hippolyte's sword with his club in their ancient battle. She won the fight anyway.
  • In the final issue Wonder Woman broke Ares' war axe and defeated him, driving him away from Paradise Island.

Fan Works

• In Bad Future Crusaders, Captain Rumble breaks Apple Bloom's pistol by merely stomping on it.
• Boldores and Boomsticks: During his last battle with Yang, Tapu Koko detonates all the ammunition in one half of Ember Celica, rendering it inoperable.
• This happens a lot in The Butcher Bird, often to Graded Swords. Tashigi loses Shigure at the end of her fight with Herman via the latter's Shatter technique.
• Digimon Codex: It is possible for Battle Gear to break during a Codex match if they take too much damage or are pushed too far beyond their limits. This ends up happening a lot, since offensive Battle Gear is often damaged from overuse or from enemy attacks, and players often make it a priority to find a way around more defensive Battle Gear.
• A Diplomatic Visit: In Chapter 7 of the sequel Diplomat at Large, Pharynx breaks a lightning-projecting horn off the Storm King's helmet.
• Everything Turns to Gold: During their battle in Chapter 25, Xornoth shatters Scott's sword when the latter tries to block a strike with it. Scott, out of desperation, attacks Xornoth with his bare hands, resulting in him touching Xornoth's skin, triggering his Midas Touch and slowly transforming Xornoth into a golden statue.
• Fates Collide:
  • Heracles crushes Nora Valkyrie's hammer Magnhild. She ends up replacing it with the Skewered Plasma Blade.
  • Archer slashes Astolfo's sword in half.
  • The blade of Ruby Rose's scythe Crescent Rose cracks apart when it crashes against Archer's shield Rho Aias. She repairs it later.
  • In their rematch, Pyrrha is able to destroy several of Gilgamesh's weapons.
  • Mordred shatters Yang Xiao Long's shotgun gauntlets, Ember Celica. They get repaired by the end.
  • Arthur Alter destroys Diarmuid's spears Gae Dearg and Gae Buidhe.
  • The Black Mud contaminates several of Gilgamesh's weapons, then his ultimate weapon Ea is destroyed when he uses it to shield Yang from an explosion.
• In Fates of Ice and Fire, Jamie Lannister blocks a wildfire explosion with his shield. The shield ignites and he's forced to discard it before the flames spread to his arm. The metal shield is vaporized within seconds.
• Qrow's Harbinger gets shattered by a Semblance-enhanced bullet from Adam in Fighting for the Future. However, between his experience and Beacon's resources, it only takes a few days for him to completely repair it.
• In Hazredous Interruptions, Ruby Rose's Crescent Rose gets outright destroyed by Briar Breeze, the Maiden of Summer. Ruby's response is to grab Fate's Bardiche.
• Hunters of Justice:
  • Crescent Rose is destroyed while fighting against Trigon. Later on, Ruby makes a new one.
  • Crocea Mors is broken in a later fight against Brother Blood. Likewise, Jaune replaces it.
• In Incarnation of Legends, Solaris' magic doesn't come with a Required Secondary Power that protects her weapon after it's been lit on fire. As a result, her spears tend to be left in pieces at best by the time she's done.
• Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: Ruby's Crescent Rose is destroyed by Darth Nihilus during their battle in Chapter 18. Nihilus uses his telekinesis to disarm Ruby of her scythe and then crushes it into a ball of scrap before her very eyes. He then uses the remains of Crescent Rose as an improvised cannonball to splatter Bolin's head. The sheer sadism of the act makes it obvious that Nihilus did this solely for the sake of traumatizing Ruby by destroying her most cherished possession and using the crushed remains to murder one of her fellow students.
• A very, very common inversion for the Actual Pacifist four in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, in that they take every opportunity to destroy the weapons, and sometimes the armor, of their opponents. If the weapons are unbreakable, then Paul hammers them deep into the ground. Which does not endear them to anyone.
• Lost to Dust:
  • Billy the Kid shoots Yang's left Ember Celica gauntlet and destroys it. When he is defeated, she takes his gun, Thunderer. Later, Quetzalcoatl shatters Thunderer.
  • Adam and Weiss destroy several of Christopher Columbus' weapons. Columbus hits Adam's rifle Blush hard enough to crack it and it explodes when it is fired. Weiss' sword Myrtenaster is eaten by a Grimm Kraken.
  • Raikou breaks several of Cinder and Raven's weapons and Raven breaks Chloe's bow, but it isn't much of a hindrance because they can all easily recreate them.
  • Quetzalcoatl generates heat to make all of Raven's weapons explode. Since Raven's sheath is what allows her to recreate her sword, she is permanently disarmed for the moment.
• A Moth to a Flame: When Anne goes Super Mode for the first time, she destroys Marcy's trademark wrist-mounted crossbow before she has a chance to fire it again.
• In My Huntsman Academia, Izuku wrecks the right gauntlet of his weapon, Emerald Gust, with his first use of One For All, warping the sturdy material so thoroughly that the only reason why he was able to get his hand out was that his fingers were thoroughly broken as well. He later gets them repaired and modified to have retractable finger guards to avoid a repeat incident.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell:
  • Once Wind Breaker gets the Manechurian Dragon — a gun — away from its owner, Rex breaks it in half. Later during the same fight, when facing Sharp Point, Night Blade's sword Determined Point breaks as well.
  • Both of Vix-Lei's hammers are destroyed in the battle with the Nightmare. Unlike the former examples, they're later restored by the Rainbow of Harmony.
• Izuku's Metal Bat in Pro Hero Metal Bat ends up destroyed by the Zero Pointer in the Yuei entrance exam. While a dramatic occurrence at the moment, its replacement was treated with no fanfare. It was always just something Izuku fished out of Dagobah beach's trash and liked.
• Queen of Shadows: During the Battle of Tobe, Ikazuki shatters the mystical naginata Houka against the ground after taking it off of its wielder Yasashi in their duel.
• Shadows over Meridian:
  • The rebels getting their weapons damaged by the Shadowkhan weapons of Phobos' loyalists does its work in making them realize how out of their depth they are against Queen Kage and her army.
  • After Jade's army turns the tide of the battle at Snowpoint and she brings an avalanche down on the Sky Hunters, Vera finds her bow trashed, symbolizing the truth Albel forces her to face; they've lost the battle that was supposed to end the siege of Snowpoint and must regroup.
  • When Vera – injured and consumed by vengeance to the point of having given up on her friends – finally reaches the Mogriffs' nest, her new bow is charred from the explosion she caused while fighting off Jade, and all she has left is one dagger. All she can do anymore is to hold Bladebeak hostage when she's surrounded by the Mogriffs and Phobos' soldiers before Jade arrives to restrain her. Things keep getting worse for her afterwards as her insane actions prove beyond a shadow of doubt that she's Her Own Worst Enemy.
• Super Power Beat Down episode "Spider-Man vs. Darth Maul": When Spider-Man finds out he can't light up the Sith's double-lightsaber to use it against its owner, he just breaks the weapon on his knee. Darth Maul retaliates by destroying Spidey's webshooters with the Force.
• This appears to be Saionji's fate in Undocumented Features. First, when Kaitlyn Hutchins attacks him with the Hyakken no Arashi, his blade breaks. Then after becoming her apprentice, he fights Lafarga, performs the Hyakken no Arashi himself, and his blade breaks after he's done. A while after that, he fights Sith Lord Psi Cop Roger Tremayne, and gets his sword cut in half by his lightsaber. Is it any wonder after this record that he claimed Tremayne's lightsaber for himself?
• Universe Falls: Dipper takes up sword-fighting training alongside Connie, and is gifted an "Ancient Sea Blade" by Pearl in "Keeping It Together". The sword ends up getting destroyed in "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons", but then Ford makes Dipper a replacement.
• Vow of Nudity: Haara's wooden spear is often destroyed or lost at some point in each story. Often she doesn't have time to craft another and is forced to steal a dropped weapon or fight bare-handed for the rest of the current adventure.

Films — Animation

• The Swan Princess: Derek has to fight Rothbart, who transforms into the Great Animal. During the fight, the Great Animal attacks Derek to the ground and breaks his sword.
• Disney's Hercules: During his battle with the Hydra, Hercules loses his sword. Continuing the fight, Hercules hurls a boulder at the Hydra, only for the beast to crush it into stones with her teeth and laughs at the hero.

Films — Live-Action

• During the final battle of Batman Begins, the film's antagonist Ra's al Ghul, wielding a sword-cane, makes derisive comments about Batman's predictable fighting style. Batman promptly turns the tables by catching the blade between the curved spikes on his vambraces, then pulls his arms apart, snapping the sword blade between them.
  Ra's al Ghul: Familiar! Don't you have anything new?!
  Batman: How about THIS?!
• In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Michelle Yeoh's character battles Zhang Ziyi's character, who wields Green Destiny. Yeoh is a superior swordswoman, but she must repeatedly draw a new weapon out of a rack every time Green Destiny hacks through the last one. During one lull, the camera lingers over the many dents and pits in a bronze bar she wields for a few moments.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Wonder Woman (2017), Ares blocks Diana's Godkiller sword with his hand and the blade crumbles to dust. He explains it is not the actual Godkiller, Diana herself is, as only a god can kill a god.
  • In Justice League (2017), Steppenwolf's axe gets frozen by Superman, setting up Wonder Woman to shatter it.
  • In Aquaman (2018), Orm breaks Arthur's trident during their Combat by Champion in the Ring of Fire. The rest of the movie involves Arthur finding the mythical Trident of Atlan which, as Mera points out, he was supposed to do before fighting Orm. However, Arthur does find the Trident of Atlan and uses it to completely shatter Orm's trident in the Final Battle.
  • In Zack Snyder's Justice League, Ares broke Darkseid's halberd in two with a battleaxe during the battle against invading forces from Apokolips in ancient times. Unlike in the original film, Superman freezes Steppenwolf's axe and shatters it himself.
• Excalibur is broken in the film of the same title when Arthur uses it for an unjust purpose — namely, killing Lancelot to satisfy his ego. When he realises the depth of his error, the knight is revived and his sword returned to him in one piece by the Lady of the Lake. This sequence was added so that Arthur could receive Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake as well as pull it from the stone earlier in the film.
• Highlander
  • In Highlander III: The Sorcerer, Connor's katana shatters due to him and Kane violating the "no fighting on holy ground" rule.
  • After Duncan in Highlander: The Source hurls his katana through The Guardian's neck, he snaps it in two and even impales Joe Dawson through the chest with what's left of it. Duncan then picks up a pair of butterfly swords for the rest of the film.
• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies has several examples:
  • Bard gets the Black Arrow (the one thing that can kill Smaug), heroic music swells...and then he sees that his bow is broken.
    Smaug: Now that IS a pity.
  • Tauriel attempts to stop Thranduril (her own king) from withdrawing from the battle and even draws her bow. He instantly slices it in half with his sword.
  • Thorin engages multiple Orcs, and eventually his sword is broken. He proceeds to use a broken sword to continue killing Orcs until he loses that too.
• In Kung Fu Hustle, Tailor's iron rings and Donut's spears are all destroyed by the Blind Musicians' Razor Wind.
• Live and Let Die. After James Bond is captured, Tee Hee reaches under Bond's coat with his Hook Hand and retrieves his Walther PPK, bends the barrel and slide and hands it back to Bond, then walks off laughing. Bond drops the now useless pistol into the rubbish bin.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • In Thor: Ragnarok, Hela effortlessly catches Thor's hammer Mjölnir and crushes it to dust, to Thor's utter shock.
    Thor: It's not possible!
    Hela: Darling, you have no idea what's possible.
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, after Thanos' forces curb-stomp the Asgardians off-screen, a critically injured Heimdall is seen with his sword Hofund shattered.
  • Avengers: Endgame:
    • Early in the final battle, Thanos takes several chunks out of Steve's shield, hacking away at it with his sword until there's basically half of it left. Steve gets it repaired or replaced later, before handing it over to Sam.
    • Midway through the battle, Wanda breaks Thanos' sword in half with her telekinesis, leaving him temporarily defenseless as she lifts him into the air and tries to rip him apart from the inside out as revenge for Vision's death. He gets it back later, though, and uses it to destroy the quantum tunnel in Luis's work van so that Captain Marvel can't fly the Infinity Gauntlet through it.
  • Thor: Love and Thunder: Jane Foster uses the repaired Mjölnir to shatter Gorr the God Butcher's Necrosword, but when he performs a Summon to Hand, the weapon starts to repair itself. Undaunted, Jane unleashes a lightning blast that reduces the Necrosword to dust, truly destroying it.
• An Officer and a Spy opens with the infamous public degradation of Alfred Dreyfus◊, with an officer stripping him of his military grade insignias and breaking his officer's sword.
• The titular hero from One-Armed Swordsman uses a broken half-sword belonging to his father, which snapped years ago when his father fought off multiple enemies to save his mentor before succumbing. It's his personal weapon that he continues wielding in the sequel, even when he's facing multiple enemies with better, complete weapons. The remake, The Blade (1995) have the hero using a similar, erm, snapped blade.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Davy Jones snaps Jack's sword a few inches from the hilt, and later bends Will's at right angles while it's sticking out of his chest. Doing so prevents Will from taking the sword back out of Jones' chest, leaving Will effectively weaponless. Jones is ultimately killed with the broken one.
• In The Punisher (2004), the bad guys send a Russian mercenary to beat up and kill Frank Castle. After taking quite a beating, Frank tries to grab his trusty revolver, only for the Russian to slam a 40-pound dumbbell on the nozzle. The look on Frank's face when he sees the bent barrel is priceless.
• In The Scorpion King, Balthazar and Mathayus' first sword clash shatters both their weapons. They just resort to fisticuffs.
• Star Wars:
  • The Phantom Menace: Darth Maul's double-bladed lightsaber is cut in half by a swift undercut from Obi-Wan, and Maul is forced to fight with the working half. In Star Wars: The Clone Wars Maul continues to use the bifurcated weapon, after his own bisection.
  • Attack of the Clones: Anakin's lightsaber is destroyed and he's unarmed until another Jedi gives him a new one. He also loses one saber while Dual Wielding against Dooku.
  • The Empire Strikes Back: Luke loses his father's lightsaber (as well as his hand) while fighting Darth Vader. Luckily, by Return of the Jedi he's built another one and has gotten an artificial hand to match. This isn't a completely straight example, as the lightsaber simply falls down a chasm rather than being destroyed (indeed, The Force Awakens has the weapon resurface after a matter of decades), but the symbolism is still intact because Luke lost his father's lightsaber for good at first.
  • The Force Awakens: At the end of the duel between Rey and Kylo Ren, she cuts off the top of his crossguard lightsaber.
  • The Last Jedi: Rey and Kylo Ren try to pull Anakin's lightsaber at the same time. After a telekinetic tug of war, the lightsaber splits in half.
• When the Last Sword Is Drawn:
  • After beheading a man who was ordered to commit hara-kiri but tried to run, Yoshimura falsely claims to have incurred a chip in his katana's blade in the process in order to extract more money from the Shinsengumi officers (ostensibly to replace the sword).
  • When Yoshimura returns home to Nambu badly wounded after his battle with the Imperial Army, his sword is bent in a zigzag shape, such that his lord gives him his own blade to replace it when he orders him to kill himself (as punishment for defying his lord's order not to leave the clan to join the Shinsengumi earlier in the film).

Gamebooks

• Lone Wolf:
  • There are many ways to break ordinary weapons in the series. In general, it's a really bad idea to attack powerful supernatural entities, like the Darklords or Demonlord Tagazin, with a non-magical weapon.
  • A few special weapons can also be damaged or outright destroyed if they encounter even more powerful magic:
    • In The Legacy of Vashna, Helshezag and the Dagger of Vashna will not survive to the end of the book if you bring them with you.
    • In Vampirium, your Kai Weapon is damaged after a failed attempt to destroy the Claw of Naar. In gameplay this means that its Combat Skill bonus is permanently reduced by either one or two points. Conveniently, this means that there is actual incentive to use the unique weapons that can be found in the previous book.
• Fighting Fantasy: Happens plenty of times. If you broke your sword, you'll likely suffer a SKILL penalty. Sometimes this can happen in the middle of a battle against enemies (see Knights of Doom, Night Dragon, Caverns of the Snow Witch) whose powerful exterior armor / shielding spells prove too much for your weapon to handle, and that would be quite annoying.
  • Island of the Lizard King has an example that borders on Schmuck Bait. When you come across a gigantic chunk of enchanted crystal in the middle of a forest, which is stated to be glowing with energy, the book actually offers you the option to whack off a chunk of said crystal using your sword. Choosing to do so will snap your weapon and make you lose SKILL points permanently.

Literature

• In The Amber Spyglass Will's subtle knife breaks because he thinks of his mother while he's using it, while at the same time it's assumed to be somehow Mrs. Coulter's fault (she certainly takes credit for breaking it) because he was distracted by her hotness even as she reminded him of his mother. The whole scene has slightly creepy Oedipal overtones.
• In some versions of Arthurian Legend, the Sword In The Stone gets broken when King Arthur is defeated in a duel with an enemy king. Merlin saves Arthur's life by magically knocking his opponent out cold and takes him to the Lady of the Lake who gives him Excalibur as a replacement. When they meet the other king again, he becomes Arthur's friend, making this a double case of Defeat Equals Friendship.
• In Book of the New Sun, Severian's iconic sword Terminus Est is smashed during his fight with the giant Baldanders.
• In Robert E. Howard's "The Phoenix on the Sword", Conan the Barbarian's sword is broken battling the assassins out for his blood, and he has to use a battleaxe to deal with the others. But when the Eldritch Abomination summoned by Thoth-Amon comes calling for the leader of the assassins, the broken sword proves to be the only thing that can kill it because of the phoenix mark that Epemitreus placed upon the weapon.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: A villainous version occurs in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Edmund uses his sword to break the White Witch's wand, thereby taking away her major advantage of being able to turn her opponents to stone (as well as earning some redemption for his own treachery earlier in the story). This levels the playing field somewhat, helping the heroes to hold off her forces until Aslan arrives to save the day.
• At the end of The Dark Tower, Susannah, having crossed over into another dimension to live out a normal life, discovers that one of Roland's revolvers has become completely unusable as a result. Roland abandons the other pistol in order to gain entry to the titular tower.
• In C.S. Goto's Dawn of War trilogy, Rhamah's Vairocanum. Made from part of a Wrecked Weapon that had been Forged by the Gods, and then broken again in the course of the trilogy. Blood Ravens perform funeral rites with the part that was all they had left of him. Later reformed.
• In the Discworld story Mort the titular character ends up in a duel with The Grim Reaper. He manages to chop off the shaft of Death's scythe, but Death simply grips the remaining part like a sword and keeps on coming.
• The Dresden Files:
  • In Changes, a vampire assassin destroys Harry's cherished car, the Blue Beetle, as well as his staff (which happened to be in the trunk). Even several books later, he's metaphysically hamstrung by the loss, since he hasn't had time to build a new staff, and is much less effective at controlled, long-distance magic as a result.
  • In Skin Game, Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith, is broken by Nicodemus when Murphy tries to use it in rage. Butters manages to reforge it... into a lightsaber. Thanks to his faith. In Star Wars.
• The Broken Sword from the Father Brown story of the same name turns out to have a sordid tale behind it.
• Forest Kingdom: In book 1 (Blue Moon Rising), while the protagonists are facing the Demon Prince, he snaps the sword Rockbreaker, one of the Infernal Devices, across his knee.
• Not once but twice in Grent's Fall: Abel Hopton's spear and Duke Abel Marnhull's sword.
• Harry Potter:
  • Early in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Ron Weasley gets his wand (a hand-me-down from his brother Charlie) damaged when he crashes the family's flying car into a Whomping Willow, leaving it prone to backfiring. This, however, comes in handy when Gilderoy Lockhart steals it so he can erase both Ron's and Harry's memories, and ends up wiping his own memory. He then gets a new wand for the rest of the series.
  • In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Dementors invading the Quidditch pitch make Harry lose consciousness and nearly fall to his death. When he wakes up, not only is he ashamed for losing, but he learns his broom was smashed to bits by the Whomping Willow.
  • The "Oh shit!" factor is quite high in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Harry's wand, the special powers of which had saved him twice over in battles against Voldemort, is blown in half and (almost) irreparably damaged during a fight. Fortunately, he uses the Elder Wand to repair it.
    • In the film, after Harry defeats Voldemort and gains possession of the Elder Wand, he snaps it in half so it can never be used again.
• The Eastern Emperor in the Heralds of Valdemar series sits on a throne made from the personal weapons of every monarch the Empire has conquered.
• The Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero: Jason's Imperial Gold javelin explodes during his fight with Enceladus while trying to save Piper's dad.
• In Brisingr, the falchion that Eragon uses after Murtagh takes Zar'roc, and before he forges Brisingr breaks after he accidentally swings it into a rock wall in the middle of a fight.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings:
  • Possibly subverted with Narsil, which wasn't broken by Sauron but by its wielder Elendil after he fell on it. Isildur then grabbed the hilt and used it to cut the Ring from Sauron's hand. Three thousand years later, it was reforged into the even-more-badass Andúril, the Flame of the West. The movie version has a moment where Boromir comments that even shattered, the blade is still sharp. Narsil is an example of a royal weapon foreshadowing the fate of its kingdom, and its re-forging symbolic of the Return of the King.
  • A bit more straight playing is when Gandalf meets Saruman after Orthanc is ruined. "Saruman, your staff is broken." Boom. In the movie version, this foreshadows Saruman's death.
  • During Gandalf's legendary You Shall Not Pass! in the mines of Moria, his staff shatters when he strikes the bridge, foreshadowing his fall and death and rebirth as Gandalf the White.
  • In the same scene as the above, Gandalf destroys the Balrog's sword with his own.
  • During Boromir's last stand, his sword is broken near the hilt and his horn is cleft in two. Unlike most other examples, this happened "offpage", and is mostly used to indicate how fierce the fighting was. Aragorn's lament also references Boromir's shield being cloven, though this was not stated when Aragorn first arrived at the battlesite.
  • When Theoden leads The Cavalry at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, first the horn he blows upon bursts apart from the force of the note, and then his spear breaks when he uses it to strike down the Southron chieftain. All of which foreshadows the great glory he will achieve in the battle, but that it will also claim his life.
  • Eowyn's shield is broken by a single strike of the Witch King's mace, which also breaks her arm. Her and Merry's swords also shatter or burn away to nothing after striking the Witch King, emphasizing the cost of killing such a creature.
• In the Redwall novel Mossflower, the sword of Martin the Warrior, used by the protagonists of most of the books, is broken early on. Since this is a prequel, however, the sword is reforged using Thunderbolt Iron into the iconic weapon.
• The Saga of the Volsungs: In Sigmund's last battle with King Lyngvi's forces, Sigmund comes up against a strange one-eyed man in a blue cloak and a wide-brimmed hat, wielding a spear. Sigmund strikes his sword at the man's spear, and the sword breaks in two. Subsequently the battle turns in favor of King Lyngvi, and Sigmund is killed. It is transparent that the one-eyed man was Odin.
• A variation occurs in A Song of Ice and Fire. Eddard Stark's signature greatsword Ice isn't broken in combat — you can't break Valyrian Steel — but the Lannisters use it to behead its owner, then melt it down and use the metal to make two new weapons.
• Star Wars Expanded Universe:
  • Ahsoka: The Sixth Brother's lightsaber is destroyed when Ahsoka uses the Force to reach for its kyber crystals, causing it to explode and kill him.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • The vehicular variation comes up in the X-Wing Series book Starfighters of Adumar. Much is made in the initial portion of the book about how superior the X-wing is compared to their local counterparts, the Blade-class fighter. When the Big Bad convinces the perator to turn on Wedge's pilots and exile them, their X-wings are impounded, and they are forced to fight several pitched battles using borrowed Blades instead — including a four-on-four combat against Imperial TIE Interceptors, which are on par with the X-wing and therefore have a huge advantage over their Blades. Once they manage to seize the hanger where the X-wings are stored, though, they return and lay a Curb-Stomp Battle on the enemy forces.
• Universal Monsters: During the final battle of book 6, when Detective Turner arrives back on the scene, Captain Bob asks him why he didn't just use his gun and shoot the monsters earlier before he ran off to rig the mansion to blow. Turner explains that he couldn't have — the Creature had grabbed it and broken it when he and Joe met the monster on their way in.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Eisenhorn:
    • Subverted in Malleus, the second book of the trilogy. Hero Gregor Eisenhorn's sword Barbarister shatters during his duel with Big Bad Quixos. Rather than being played for emasculation imagery, this actually allows Eisenhorn to win, as the sword shatters while Quixos was blocking a thrust, allowing the half remaining in Eisenhorn's hand to impale Quixos through the heart — had the blade not shattered, the blow would have been deflected and the duel continued.
    • Played straight earlier in the novel, when Eisenhorn loses his two previous weapons of choice during an encounter with recurring nemesis Cherubael. His power-sword explodes when he attempts to impale the aforementioned daemon with it, and he loses his bolt-pistol during a fall from a hover-bike shortly afterwards.
  • In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Necropolis, Gaunt's sword is ruined during a fight against a monster that bleeds and secretes acid. Even as he fights, he laments this; his mentor had given it to him, he carried it for years, in many battles, and its destruction was like losing history.
  • In Graham McNeill's Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, when Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus fight, Ferrus Manus breaks the sword he had given Fulgrim. This is when Fulgrim realizes that the break is irrevocable; he takes the warhammer he had given Ferrus Manus, leaves, and orders his Legion to open fire on the Iron Hands.
• Waltharius: Hagen intercepts a sword-blow of Walther aimed at Gunther with his helmet, and the helmet is so hard that the sword breaks in two. The battle eventually ends with a draw.

Live-Action TV

• When the Beast makes his appearance in Angel's "Apocalypse Nowish", he trounces our heroes in a Curb-Stomp Battle which includes crushing Gunn's signature axe made from a hubcap.
• Ash vs. Evil Dead: During his Final Battle with Ruby in the penultimate episode of the series, Ash loses his iconic chainsaw, as Ruby smashes it to pieces in order to spite him.
• Blackadder: In the episode "Born to be King" from the first series, Edmund challenges McAngus to a duel, who promptly uses his broadsword to smash Edmund's thin weapon.
• Doctor Who: The Doctor has had his sonic screwdriver (not a weapon, but still an Iconic Item) trashed several times.
  • The Fifth Doctor's sonic screwdriver was destroyed by a Terileptil in "The Visitation", and the Doctor doesn't get another till his Seventh incarnation (and his doesn't show up till his final appearance, in the TV Movie).
    The Fifth Doctor: I feel as though you've just killed an old friend.
  • The Tenth Doctor's sonic screwdriver is destroyed in "Smith and Jones" when he uses it on an X-Ray machine which fries it. The Doctor is distraught... for a few seconds, he then tosses it aside and by the end of the episode, he's built himself a new (identical, so not a merchandising move) one.
    Martha: But it was that woman, Miss Finnigan. It was working for her, just like a servant.
    The Doctor: [dejected] My sonic screwdriver...
    Martha: She was one of the patients, but...
    The Doctor: ... no, no, my sonic screwdriver!
    Martha: She had this straw, like some sort of vampire!
    The Doctor: I love my sonic screwdriver!
    Martha: [chastising tone] Doctor!
    [he throws the sonic screwdriver over his shoulder]
    The Doctor: Sorry.
  • It gets fried for a third time in the Eleventh Doctor's first episode, when he tries to signal the Atraxi ship. He is not pleased. The TARDIS makes him a new (much bigger) one.
  • And then again in the subsequent Christmas Special, where it gets eaten by a flying shark.
• At the end of Episode 5 of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, John Walker builds a new Captain America-style shield after losing the real one in his fight with Sam and Bucky. The thing barely lasts half the final episode before it ends up a dented and beat-up mess.
• Forged in Fire: As it's a bladesmithing competition, the smiths are under crazy conditions like "forge a knife using these old ball bearings and cables for steel", and the blades are put through tests like being pounded through sheet metal, expect someone's blade to do this every other episode. This is called a "catastrophic failure" and almost inevitably means you've lost the round (though stranger things have happened).
• Game of Thrones:
  • The fourth season opens with Lord Tywin Lannister watching (with just a touch of villainous smugness) as Ice, the Ancestral Weapon of House Stark, is melted down into two smaller swords for the use of his own family. At this stage in the war, House Lannister has apparently triumphed over all their enemies. Just to emphasize this point, Tywin throws the wolfskin scabbard (the wolf being the sigil of House Stark) into the fire.
  • The White Walkers' bodies and ice weapons are so cold that they shatter ordinary weapons on contact. Only weapons made of the nigh-indestructible Valyrian Steel are immune.
  • Euron Greyjoy kills Obara Sand by breaking her spear on her own body then impaling her with the broken halves.
• On Heroes, Hiro confronts Sylar and tells him that he must kill him. Sylar responds by daring Hiro to do it, then, when Hiro can't bring himself to do it, he cracks Hiro's sword in half using cold-based powers.
• Highlander:
  • Immortals occasionally have their swords broken during a fight. Normally this happens when they're losing badly, and they get killed immediately afterwards. In one episode, it happened to Richie when running away, and he later had to figure out how to get a replacement.
  • This was used to show Katanas Are Just Better in the flashback episode where Duncan gets his katana. Having just washed up on shore in old Japan, Duncan brandishes his sword, a naval cutlass, at Hideo Koto, a samurai who is wielding a katana. Koto thinks Duncan is threatening him, and responds with a slash of his katana that breaks Duncan's sword off just short of the hilt. The dumbfounded look that Duncan gives the now 2-inch-long blade is hilarious.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Ryuki: Played for laughs in the pilot episode. Shinji goes into battle before gaining a contract monster, and the flimsy-looking sword he gets as a default weapon breaks from an Offhand Backhand (technically a swipe from a Giant Spider's foreleg).
  • Kamen Rider Kiva: Early in the series, the Moth Fangire tries to block Kiva's Garulu Howling Slash finisher with her own sword. His sword breaks hers before shattering her body.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim: In the final battle between Kouta and Kaito, Kouta catches and breaks Kaito's weapon - his sword as Lord Baron, the Banaspear in the alternate future that's reflecting their current battle - and uses the broken piece to fatally stab Kaito.
• In Knight Rider, any time KITT gets captured, destroyed, or otherwise compromised such that he can no longer function as Michael Knight's Cool Car companion, it's treated as a case of this. It comes to a head in the TV movie Knight Rider 2000, when Michael agrees to return to FLAG, only to find that the organization's new Jerkass director had written off KITT as outdated junk and had him dismantled.
• The Mandalorian
  • The titular Mandalorian's Cool Starship, the Razor Crest, is destroyed in the second season. In personal weapon matters his signature disrupter rifle is destroyed with it. This forces him to rely much more on the help of his tenuous allies and the Mandalorian spear that survived the wreckage.
  • The third season finale sees the destruction of the Dark Saber by Moff Gideon. As the Dark Saber had long been a symbol of Mandalore tradition that was abused by Gideon for his own gain, its destruction signifies the end of many old ways but also the beginning of others.
• Power Rangers:
  • Due to Stock Footage, a lot of the Sentai examples go for their respective PR series. Most notably, Deker's story is different from Juzo's, so why his sword breaking is a huge plot point turns out to be very different when everything is revealed.
  • When past Black Ranger Adam Park returned in Power Rangers in Space, circumstances forced him to use his original Black Ranger morpher when he was attacked by the latest monster, with the damaged morpher proving dangerous as its fluctuating energy was hard on his body and also caused him to lose power during the fight and nearly die.
  • Power Rangers Wild Force: Partway through the series, Cole has his Cool Bike ruined protecting a child who turns out to be the human form of Animus, Lord of the Wild Zords. After the heroes learn that and pass a Secret Test of Character, Cole is rewarded with a new bike based on a different Wild Zord. It flies. It is definitely merchandising-based, but nobody much cares.
  • Power Rangers S.P.D.: In the finale, Emperor Gruum's Last Villain Stand ends pretty conclusively when Cruger breaks his spear in two.
  • Extremely common in Megazord battles with monsters. Usually it's the monster's weapon that breaks and the monster just shrugs it off and switches to a Plan B attack (that may or may not do more damage than their initial weapon). On rare occasions, such as in Power Rangers Zeo, the monster Main Drain breaks the Zeo Megazord's power sword and then drains all of its energy. Luckily, Billy designed a new zord that managed to beat the monster and be the hot new toy kids wanted.
  • In Power Rangers Ninja Steel, you know Drillion is no average foe when he manages to trash the Rangers' weaponry. In Ninninger, the situation is more serious: the Rangers' swords are the source of their power and not easily repaired. We get a reverse of the situation, where it's a bigger problem in Ninja Steel than in Ninninger, when Madame Odius' new mech lays waste to the entire fleet of Zords. This burns out the Ninja Power Stars that summon them, and in Ninja Steel, those things are part of a cosmic artifact, and repairing them is incredibly difficult, leaving the Rangers unable to summon their machines for quite some time.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's final season, the Dominion got a major power-up when the Breen joined their forces — a point driven home when they destroyed the Defiant, which had been the good guys' own power-up a few seasons earlier. Sisko was particularly attached to it, having had a hand in its construction.
  • In one of the episodes leading up to the finale, Worf challenges Chancellor Gowron over the latter's accused dishonorable and unwise strategy during the Dominion War to pursue a vendetta against a perceived rival in Martok. Gowron has Worf on the ropes, having wrecked his bat'leth. Worf still wins anyway, when he stabs two broken pointy bits into Gowron's flanks, killing him.
  • This happened the first time Worf and Gowron dueled in 'Apocalypse Rising.' Worf managed to cut Gowron's bat'leth in two down the middle with a knife.
  • And how Kang met his ending fighting The Albino by swinging away and driving his bat'leth right into a wall shattering it, leaving him defenseless.
• Super Sentai:
  • Hikari Sentai Maskman has the Shot Bomber, the team cannon BFG used for the small-size Finishing Move, trashed. This puts the team in dire straits indeed. It is eventually replaced with the Jet Cannon.
  • Since at least Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman, it's very common for the Combining Mecha's sword to be broken once a season. In those without organic creatures substituting for actual mecha, having a robot losing an arm might also qualify.
  • Seijuu Sentai Gingaman: In their final duel, the Red Ranger breaks Budoh's katana moments before finishing him off.
  • Mahou Sentai Magiranger: At the end of the first major arc, Kai breaks Wolzard's sword in a one-on-one fight before he and the rest of the team defeat Branken, the Disc-One Final Boss. Wolzard takes Branken's sword and spends a few episodes re-forging it into a replacement (which is perfectly identical to the first, so it's not for merchandising purposes).
  • Samurai Sentai Shinkenger: the sword that is actually made from the souls of his family gets damaged, so Juzo has to make do with one of the swords used by the Mooks for several episodes.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: In the finale, Akudos Gill gets his sword broken about halfway through his Rasputinian Death.
• One of the very first things seen in Ultraman Geed is Ultraman Zero getting his Ultimate Brace wrecked, to the point where he can barely maintain the Ultimate Aegis for one dimensional trip. As he accesses his Ultra Zero Lance/Defensor and form changes through said brace, this deprives Zero of most of his arsenal.

Podcasts

• The Adventure Zone: Balance: Taako voluntary breaks his iconic umbrella, snapping it over his knee to free Lup.

Roleplay

• During the battle of Remonton in the Godslayer arc in The Gamer's Alliance, an ice elemental shatters Ax's sword Dawn. The shattering of her magic weapon affects Ax emotionally and leads her to leave her allies for a while after the battle so that she can do some soul-searching and find a way to repair the sword.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Sunder feat tree in 3/3.5 Edition lets any GM pull this against the players. There's a certain Jerkass-ish aspect to using it, though, as combat encounters are scaled to assume a minimum value of gear — in other words, a fight appropriate for a 10th-level party is appropriate for that party with full gear worth at least 49,000 gold pieces each. And given the costs of a good magic weapon, having that villain break yours means you may have just seen a massive setback in your effectiveness.
  • Taken into account in the swordmage class or Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. A bound sword can be reformed from a single fragment with an hour of meditation.
• Can happen as a matter of course in tabletop RPGs whose rules allow for weapon breakage in regular combat as a result of a fumble, critical hit, or even a simple outcome of "attack meets parry"; RuneQuest and The Dark Eye for instance are examples of the last in particular. Of course, in these games it then doesn't make much sense to get overly attached to a given individual "signature" weapon that the rules all but guarantee will break eventually in the first place, thus subverting the trope from that direction.
• In the Hero System, this is one risk of taking powers or the like with the Focus limitation — you get a significant cost break (or may not have to pay points for it at all in the right setting), but you pay for it with the power not always being available because it's embodied in a physical item that can get stolen, lost, or, yes, destroyed. A plain Focus can eventually be replaced if this happens since the points invested in the power remain with the character; also giving the item the Independent limitation, however, makes it considerably cheaper point-wise once again, but means that when it is lost (and it will be — it wouldn't be a limitation if it never came up) the points invested go away with it, leaving the character whose player paid them weakened either until they can retrieve the item or else simply permanently.
• In Warhammer 40,000, the World Eater Primarch Angron went through several weapons in his lifetime. However, he defies the emotional connotations of the trope by discarding them without a second thought and simply getting new weapons. This is because of the gladiator traditions of his homeworld that treated broken weapons as bad luck. One of the World Eaters, Kharn, defied Angron's principles by retrieving one of the Primarch's discarded and broken twin chain axes, Gorechild, and had it repaired for his own use. Gorechild's twin Gorefather was eventually recovered by the World Eaters and is maintained as a prized relic that each Warband covets for themselves.

Theatre

• The Red Shadow in The Desert Song has this happen to him for refusing to fight an opponent.
• In The Ring of the Nibelung Wotan shatters Siegmund's sword with a blow from his spear. Siegmund's son Siegfried reforges the pieces into a new sword, and later breaks Wotan's spear with it, symbolizing the destruction of Wotan's authority.

Toys

• In BIONICLE, after Lewa tries to intimidate the Piraka Reidak with a tale of how the Toa had defeated the dreaded Rahkshi; Rediak grabs one of Lewa's Air Katana and snaps it over his knee. "Rahkshi? I pick my teeth with Rahkshi." The defeated Toa were then stripped of their weapons and imprisoned, further humiliated by being made slaves. After being rescued, a villager offered to make a new Air Katana.

Video Games

• Near the end of Aselia the Eternal - The Spirit of Eternity Sword, Desire is broken in a confrontation. Yuuto is left unable to fight. Until he gets Wisdom, anyway.
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey has the Spear of Leonidas which, when held by the Spartan king during the Battle of Thermopylae, was a proper spear that he fought with. After his death, it was destroyed and only the head was remaining which their grandchild, the Eagle Bearer, used to carve their way across the battlefields of Greece in either open combat or in stealth. It's also an Isu artifact that can be upgraded with each member of the Cult of Kosmos that are killed.
• Invoked in Batman: Arkham Knight, as the titular knight destroys the Batmobile, which had been a critical and constant part of the game. Subverted only a few scenes later, as it is revealed Alfred had a spare.
• Case 03: True Cannibal Boy: The nazar Marty received from Brucie is damaged in the fight with the Cannibal Boy of Mt. Candyhouse. Brucie admits the nazar was a cheap product that he bought from a street vendor in Turkey. While it was useful against Gla'aki's minions, it's not strong enough to defend against the Cannibal Boy.
• In Chrono Trigger, the breaking and reforging of the Masamune is a major plot point.
• In Conan Hyborian Age, the quest's goal is initially to explore a dungeon to find a sword crafted in a superior metal. Said sword being found broken in two (the part with the handle and the lower part of the blade is usable as a dagger), the last objective is to reforge it at Whiterun's Skyforge, either as a one-handed sword or a greatsword.
• Devil May Cry:
  • In Devil May Cry 5, Urizen shatters Dante's sword Rebellion with a punch. Dante keeps the hilt, and eventually is inspired to stab himself with the bit of blade left. This causes him to absorb the Sword of Sparda and the remains of Rebellion to form a new sword, the Devil Sword Dante - as well as unleash his Sin Devil Trigger.
  • The Visions of V prequel manga reveals that Yamato was shattered by none other than Mundus after defeating Vergil, who was trapped in the Demon World at the end of Devil May Cry 3. Agnus would eventually collect the fragments of Yamato and attempt to restore it over the years, to no avail. Yamato is ultimately restored in Devil May Cry 4 by Nero after it responds to his strong desire to protect Kyrie, granting him an incomplete Devil Trigger.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • In the Stormblood expansion, your first fight with the Big Bad of this storyline, Zenos, causes the katana he was using to shatter. It's ambiguous if it shattered because of your strength or Zenos' stupidly powerful strength
  • In the "End of an Era" video, we watch as Louisoux's attempt to recapture Bahamut fails and the resulting backlash shatters the mage's staff. Minfilia keeps the wrecked remains in the Scions' base.
  • The opening cinematic for Shadowbringers features the Warrior of Light/Darkness fighting a sin eater using weapons from every class they represented up to that point. The sin eater breaks each and every one of them before the Warrior becomes a Dark Knight.
  • Near the end of the 5.4 MSQ, Zenos discards his old signature weapon, the Ame-no-Habakiri katana, callously tossing it aside and snapping the blade underfoot as he decides to forge a new weapon for his eventual rematch with the Warrior of Light.
• In God of War II, Kratos snaps Perseus' sword and crushes his magic helmet, but Perseus keeps attacking with his shield and sling.
• God of War III:
  • Kratos' Blades Of Athena are eroded by the River Styx, so he replaces them with the Blades Of Exile. In the final battle, Zeus destroys all of Kratos' weapons.
  • And after he's done kicking Zeus's ass, the chains that were seared to his arms — bonding his various chain blades to his body and making him a weapon — simply drop off his arms, symbolizing the end of his violent ways.
• Granblue Fantasy: Relink: In the crew's first encounter with Id, he completely wrecks everyone in a Hopeless Boss Fight and shatters Gran/Djeeta's sword. After the heroes are done licking their wounds, Rolan outfits Gran/Djeeta with a new sword and armor.
• When Gordon Freeman's crowbar gets destroyed in Half-Life 2, you know it's time to get vengeance on Breen. Luckily enough, the process that destroys your trusty hardware also gives you the perfect weapon for the job.
  • Though considering how the Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator has apparently become Gordon's new weapon of choice, this could also possibly be considered a very rare inanimate version of Take Up My Sword.
  • Gordon's signature crowbar was never really one-of-a-kind anyway — he went through two in the first game alone - so he could have been very likely to obtain a new one in Episode 3 or Half-Life 3, assuming one of them ever comes out.
• Kingdom Hearts II: In the "Birth by Sleep" FMV, Ven's Keyblade shatters after Master Xehanort freezes him. This is one of the few details that got changed in the actual game.
• This happens to Riku's Way to the Dawn Keyblade in Kingdom Hearts III following a fight with a Demon Tower, and while it's later repaired by the Riku Replica, at that point Riku's swapped it with a different weapon.
• Knight Bewitched: Typhus the Younger and the Cult of Drakon stole Stray's family heirloom, the Daedalus, after they destroyed Nilheim. When the party defeats Typhus's zombified form, they recover the Daedalus, but the bow/harp hybrid is too damaged to use and has to be repaired by Ullo.
• Right after defeating the Final Boss of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, Rean's Zemurian tachi is broken into two as he finds out that the corrupted Divine Beast cannot be defeated by regular swords or the swords made with the most powerful material in Zemuria. It takes Millium sacrificing herself to become the sword that allows Rean to finish off the Nameless One.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • As The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the first game in the series to make Breakable Weapons a core mechanic, it shouldn't be a surprise that a Wrecked Weapon shows up. That weapon is the Master Sword; before the Great Calamity, Link was faced with unending hordes of Guardians, and the Blade of Evil's Bane took enough damage to the point where parts of it rusted and chipped from all the nonstop combat. While the blade looks good as new in the present day, its adherence to Breath of the Wild's Breakable Weapons system^*it can only be used for about forty swings, eighty around manifestations of Malice, before it runs out of energy with a ten-minute recharge period indicates that it still hadn't repaired itself completely.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity does not have breakable weapons, but Link's regular sword is broken while fighting off an ambush. Right next to the Master Sword, waiting in its pedestal.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Ganondorf immediately shows how powerful he is by almost killing Link with one blast of his dark magic and completely shattering the Master Sword's blade. Not only that, but he also breaks nearly every weapon across Hyrule, thereby giving an explanation why Link can't just reuse all the weapons from the last game, and making his Fuse ability vital for fighting enemies. While Zelda manages to repair the Master Sword, doing so required her to soak it in her holy power for tens of thousands of years as she takes The Slow Path back to the present by turning herself into an immortal dragon.
• Also in Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, when the Sinistrals destroy the Dual Blade.
• Zaeed of Mass Effect 2 has a broken rifle named Jessie that was the most reliable weapon he'd ever used until it finally jammed and would not fire anymore. Zaeed laments that he'd give anything for "one last mission with that shitty old rifle." If he's still alive at the end of Mass Effect 3 you can learn that he's custom-ordered all the parts required to repair his rifle, so he can take Jessie along for the last battle.
  • Shepard pulls a heroic variant on Kai Leng. If you take the Renegade interrupt after the final fight with him, Shepard will spin around and smash his sword to bits with a backhand, then draw an omniblade and gut Leng like a fish.
• When the Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater doesn't want to kill someone, she just beats the crap out of them. But first she simply takes away her opponent's gun and neatly breaks it up into its parts with her bare hands, and then hands back the pieces. If you try to shoot her in the final battle and she's close enough to you, she'll pull apart your gun and throw it aside, though you can pick up the individual pieces and get your gun back.
  • Also Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, who's so strong that he can shatter Raiden's HF Blade like it was nothing, after catching it in one hand.
    Nice knife! *CRACK*
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor has Acharn, the shattered sword formerly owned by Talion's son. Talion keeps it both as a memento of what motivates him and a secondary weapon, though he can have the blacksmith Wraith who accompanies him refine it into an actual knife.
• This can be a recurring event in Middle-earth: Shadow of War. When Talion loses to an Olog-Hai, said Olog can decide to break Talion's sword to further humiliate him, removing it from the player's inventory. Should Talion successfully take revenge on the Olog, his broken sword is automatically repaired and even upgraded.
• A meta example in Muramasa: The Demon Blade; it becomes annoying whenever an enemy wears out your sword, and it also forces you to switch weapons, which generally results in a screen-filling slash which could be construed as the characters really pissed off about losing their sword... until it heals.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2 much of the plot revolves around recovering shards of a silver sword used to fight the King of Shadows. Said sword exploded and embedded a silver shard in the player character. The fragments must be reformed to fight the second coming of the King of Shadows.
  • The plot of the Mask of the Betrayer expansion carries on from this exact same sword, which was also the key to Akachi the Betrayer's backdoor into the afterlife and a central tool of his war to bring down the Wall of the Faithless.
• Caliburn in Sonic and the Black Knight gets broken defending Sonic from Merlina's attacks. He gets repaired and receives an upgrade once Sonic receives his latest Super Mode, Excalibur Sonic, though.
• In the GBA game Summon Night: Swordcraft Story and its sequel you can win boss battles either by reducing the boss' health to 0 or by destroying their weapon (this is done by blocking the boss' attacks, reducing both yours and his weapon durability). The cool thing is: when you destroy a boss weapon, you gain the ability to craft it. Those weapons are much stronger than any other weapon the hero has at that moment.
  • Also, all the boss fights in the first game (besides the final boss, since it does not have that secondary win condition), can be made much easier by equipping your forging hammer, which is unbreakable, and simply blocking through the whole fight.
• In Super Robot Wars, this is a common reason for someone to get their Mid-Season Upgrade: since the machine needs to be completely rebuilt anyway, might as well make it stronger. Some examples that don't fall under this:
  • In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Gaiden, Sanger Zonvolt's trusty Zankantou is shattered on the mech of Shura Magnus. Magnus expected this to win the fight for him, until Sanger revealed that the DyGenGuar's original weapons (which were nonfunctional when it was first activated, hence the Zankantou), had been repaired. Magnus promptly eats a General Blaster to the face.
  • Shin Super Robot Wars: As the Voltes team sorties in Scenario 14 of Space Route, the aliens spring their trap: the Namazunga flies over to wreck their Ultramagnetic Generators. Voltes is in dire straights to say the very least, and the group loses touch with Voltes as they slow the transport down to try to allow an emergency landing. After a quick rescue by the others, Ken'ichi is the first to wake up, disoriented and in considerable pain from whatever the bad guys did. He frantically asks after his other pilots, who are still out cold, though Megumi wakes up in short order. The bad news is that the Ultramagnetic Generators of all the Volt machines are toast, and they can't even move, much less combine. Ken'ichi is heartbroken, seeing as how they just got good at combining and all. Nothing for it but returning to Japan!
• Tales of Berseria has an example revealed in a dramatic fashion: Rokurou's inferior Stormhowl is broken inside the sheathe, only a few inches are still attached to the handle. It's useless as a weapon (explaining why he couldn't fight with it earlier in the game) and he carries it for other reasons. And after the battle against the Final Boss, Velvet's wrist blade breaks against Artorius' sword though this doesn't slow her down in the slightest.
• In Thousand Arms, Meis' sword splits in half when he tries to show off in front of Sodina when she gets attacked by a group of thugs at the beginning of the game.
• The duel between Anduin Lothar and Orgrim Doomhammer Warcraft ended in the orc's favor when he shattered Lothar's Great Royal Sword with the Doomhammer. The Doomhammer went right through the sword and into Lothar's chest.
• Alicia's sword breaks dramatically in half in Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, at the climactic moment when Rufus is apparently killed, Lezard reveals himself as a villain, and kidnaps Odin. Oddly, the sword is mysteriously in one piece again in time for the next battle.
• In Warframe, after the events of the Second Dream questline, you get the Broken-War, a shattered version of the War used by the Shadow Stalker. Despite its state, it's actually one of the best one-handed weapons in the game and can be reforged into the full War if you get Shadow Stalker to drop the blueprints for it.

Web Animation

• DEATH BATTLE!:
  • At the end of "He-Man vs. Lion-O", He-Man shatters the Sword of Omens with a punch and then knocks Lion-O out. He was content to leave Lion-O alone, but the Eye of Thundera gem in the hilt of the Sword of Omens comes to life and blasts him with lasers, forcing He-Man to crush it to dust to defend himself. Since the Eye of Thundera is the source of life for all ThunderCats, its destruction kills Lion-O and every other member of his race.
  • This trope proved to be the great equalizer in the match between Ryu Hayabusa and Strider Hiryu. While the former is a Walking Armory, the latter has a weapon that could easily cut through almost everything, thus the former was quickly reduced to their main weapon.
  • This trope happens in the match between Guts and Nightmare. Guts manages to destroy Soul Edge thanks to the Dragonslayer's capability to cut on the Astral Plane, and since Soul Edge is the source of Nightmare, it also seals Guts' victory.
  • Used dramatically in "Weiss Schnee vs. Mitsuru Kujiro". Weiss is cut down in the middle of a last Death or Glory Attack against Artemisia when her Aura is depleted. The last shot of the fight is Weiss' Myrtenaster lying broken in two pieces on the stone floor.
  • The fight between Sasuke Uchiha and Hiei has both fighters breaking the other's sword. Hiei's is broken first thanks to taking a direct Chidori, but Hiei is able to compensate by creating the Sword of Darkness Flame in time for the finishing Single-Stroke Battle. After said single stroke, Sasuke's Kusanagi shatters into pieces, and Sasuke can only stare at it in confusion before he suffers the same fate.
  • At the end of "She-Ra vs. Wonder Woman", She-Ra shatter's Wonder Woman's normally indestructible vambraces, but since they are actually a Power Limiter, this backfires. Wonder Woman then draws her atom-slicing sword and slices She-Ra's Sword of Protection in half, followed by slicing She-Ra's head off.
  • In the battle between Shadow the Hedgehog and Ryūko Matoi, the climax of the fight has this happen to Ryūko's Scissor Blades. She then gets shot back down to earth by Super Shadow's Chaos Spears, and is completely vaporized seconds later by Chaos Blast.
  • Near the end of "DIO vs. Alucard", DIO grabs Alucard's hands as the vampire is pressing and firing his two handguns, the Casull and the Jackal, repeatedly into DIO's mouth and neck and uses his flash-freeze, freezing and shattering both the guns and Alucard's arms into pieces. This being Alucard, the loss of weapons barely slows him down as he reforms his arms into shadowy weapons, though DIO still pulls through with the win.
  • The climax of the fight between Tanjiro Kamoda and Jonathan Joestar sees Tanjiro shattering Jonathan's sword Luck & Pluck with a well-aimed Sunbreathing-enhanced swing of his own blade. However, as Jonathan merely improvised with swordplay while his true talent lies in hand-to-hand combat, it's just a setback he recovers from. While Jonathan in turn fails to destroy Tanjiro's own sword in disarming him, Tanjiro has no such fallback and thus is left open to a fatal counterattack of fists.
  • In the beginning of Thor vs. Vegeta, Vegeta uses a Hakai to disintegrate Thor's axe, Jarnbjorn, but since Thor still has his hammer, Mjolnir, which is much more durable and useful, he is unfazed. Thor ends up killing Vegeta with Mjolnir.
  • The climax of the fight between Sauron and the Lich King sees Sauron shattering Frostmourne with a mighty swing of his mace. With the sword's destruction, Arthas' power quickly plummets as the souls trapped within the blade begin to escape, and he has no chance to retaliate as Sauron proceeds to absorb all the souls (including Arthas' own) and takes the win.
  • The end of the fight between Guts and Dimitri sees the heavily-injured Guts using the Berserker Armor to survive Dimitri's attempted finishing blow and strike with Dragonslayer hard enough to slice through the shaft of the spear Areadhbar, sending Dimitri to the ground. Dimitri grabs the glaive's head and brings it up in a final effort to defend himself, but Guts expires in mid-swing from bleed-out before he can strike the final blow, giving Dimitri the win.
• RWBY:
  • A Volume 3 flashback reveals that, as soon as Cinder Fall acquires half of the power she seeks, she burns her own weapon to ash as a power play. It is an example of Cinder sacrificing parts of herself for more power; from that point on she uses her abilities to create Breakable Weapons as needed. The fragility of these weapons helps highlight the emptiness that lies behind her façade of power and strength.
  • During the Volume 3 finale, Pyrrha forces Cinder into a throat lock with her spear, Miló. To escape this, Cinder has to summon the Wyvern and super-heat the spear into shattering while Pyrrha's distracted by the charging Grimm. This symbolises the turning point of the fight. In straight combat, Pyrrha is a match for Cinder, but their fight after this becomes more magical, with Pyrrha's Semblance versus Cinder's magic. Magic outperforms even powerful Semblances, and so Pyrrha — like her weapon — is destroyed. In Volume 4, Jaune gets the remains of her weapons reforged into his shield and armour as part of his Tragic Keepsake.
  • A Volume 6 flashback reveals that Maria used to wield two kama known as Life and Death that could combine into a double-ended scythe. While she still retains one that acts as her walking cane, its partner was broken by Tock. On this day, she lost her will to fight as well as her eyesight and weapon; while she lived, the Grimm Reaper died. Maria only returns to the front lines as an elderly woman to become Ruby's mentor; while still an impressive fighter, she and her surviving kama are only a fraction of what they used to be.
  • In Volume 6, Blake's sword is cut in half by her opponent, leaving her with only the sheath to fight with. To her opponent, this symbolises that Blake has nothing, and is totally alone and abandoned. After destroying her sword, Adam quickly defeats her and demands to know what it's like to feel alone. However, Blake's feline hearing has detected Yang's approach, so she protects herself with her clone Semblance just long enough for Yang to arrive. Even with Yang's help, the fight only ends when Yang and Blake each grab one half of the broken sword and stab Adam from two different directions. This symbolises how Adam broke the both of them, but they still found a way to overcome that damage and come back stronger.
  • In the Volume 8 finale, Jaune and Cinder fight over the fate of the Winter Maiden, leading to Jaune's sword being destroyed as a symbol of how he's been forced to break his ideals and his heart in the process. It remains broken throughout Volume 9, and so does Jaune. Cinder fatally wounding the Winter Maiden causes her to ask Jaune to finish the deed so that she can choose a successor for the power and prevent it from going by default to Cinder. The sword breaks at the point where it is stained with the Maiden's blood.

Webcomics

• Angel Moxie: Parodied. When Riley tries to figure out how the wand works, she accidentally breaks it, but it instantly rebuilds itself. Also the Evil Minions have the bad habit of destroying Riley's laser guns, but she's good at building new ones. The trope is also used dead serious near the end of the comic when Yzin damages the wand beyond repair.
• Collar 6: If a crop is a weapon.
• In Cucumber Quest, the Splashmaster breaks Carrot's spear.
• Lizzie Cooper loses her first mop when her former boss Frank delivers a kick that breaks it (and her ribs). Later on, Lizzie breaks the scope of the deceased OmniMart Wayne McMasters when trying to drop it for Monday.
• Girl Genius:
  • Jorgi disarms an airship captain when he temporarily hijacks her ship and crushes her gun.
  • Terebithia disarms "The Queen of the Dawn" and snaps her delicate gun into pieces.
  • Voltaire melts Andronicus Valois's incredibly dangerous and powerful iconic sword and mace.
• Homestuck thoroughly subverts Katanas Are Just Better when Dave Strider gets curbstomped by Bro, wrecking his CHEAP PIECE OF SHIT sword in the process. Interestingly, due to the in-universe mechanics of weapon-wielding, this changes his STRIFE SPECIBUS to One-Half Bladekind, which only allows Dave to use ''broken'' swords to fight now.
  • Although Future Dave seems to have gotten around this by combining a broken sword with his time turntables to create CALEDSCRATCH, a broken sword that can be rewound back to when it was whole.
  • When Alpha Timeline Dave makes it to the point of retrieving the original Caledfwlch (i.e., Excalibur) from the stone, he deliberately breaks it in the process instead of pulling it out "like a hero".
  • It's worth noting that the Wrecked Weapons don't seem to decrease his effectiveness in combat so much as change the symbolism of his fights. The broken blade symbol relates to Dave's quest arc: coming to terms with not being The Hero like John and asserting himself as an individual instead of as a shadow of his older brother.
  • Ruined objects are a symbol of Time, which is Dave's aspect. A few of his swords also seem to have the ability to be shifted backwards in time, before they were broken.
  • Played straight when Kanaya nabs Eridan's science wand to debunk it before chainsawing its owner in half.
• Subverted in Juathuur, in which Rowasu's sword breaks after he kills his opponent.
• Happens to Benjamin Prester twice in A Miracle of Science. Once in a flashback, when he's a Mad Scientist with a plot to take over the moon, and honestly deserves to have it destroyed; the second time during the Challenge and Chase Scene stages of Dr. Haas' mad science infection.
  Prester: You shot my gun!
  Sumatera: Look, there's no need for us to be shooting at each other. I am certain there's a solution to this situation which doesn't involve any more gunfire...
  Prester: WHY ARE YOU BARGAINING WITH THE MAN WHO SHOT MY GUN!!
• The Order of the Stick:
  • When Xykon destroys Roy's sword, a family heirloom, Roy goes into an Unstoppable Rage and dispatches the lich with his bare hands... at least temporarily.
  • The trope is subverted earlier in strip #17: after failing a spot check and becoming surrounded, Belkar accidentally breaks Elan's Rapier with a well-placed "Damnit!" (mentioned earlier: "I could sunder that thing by speaking too loudly!"). A broken sword has much less effect on Elan than it does on Roy for several reasons: 1) Roy specializes in the use of his weapon, and Elan's is mostly for looking cool; 2) Elan wasn't very effective to begin with.
  • Much later, in #607, Crystal slices through Haley's bow, forcing her to resort to her other main weapon, her wits.
  • Elan tends to lose rapiers regularly; his +3 silver rapier is later sundered by his own father, General Tarquin.
  • And just a bit after that Crystal and Bozzok break their signature weapons when Crystal turns on him. This is probably so that their parts are unambiguously over and done with.
• In The Specialists, Hartmann finally fights back after being shot at, and breaks the guy's gun.
• Tower of God: Bam's cleaver breaks during the Ball Test, as well as Endorsi's flying shields during the Hide-and-Seek Game.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Mao's ribbon weapon in the form of a dagger is dissolved by a snake-centipede's poison, and Yokoka's ribbon weapon in the form of a sword gets slashed to pieces by Hurricane.

Web Videos

• Belkinus Necrohunt:
  • One of the trade-offs for how strong Enoch's firearms can be. They can end up breaking if Enoch rolls a Natural 1 on an attack with it. He would then need to make a roll to repair it.
  • One of the items that Grikyak was selling and then later gave to the party as thanks for their donations to him was a dead branch. It turned out that it used to be a powerful branch wand, but a necromancer's Blight spell drained out all of its life. Now, it is pretty much useless until a wizard can bring it back to life.
  • In Session 12, when Luna severed off one of Alter's hands, the sword (along with the arm) that the latter was carrying ended up disintegrating into a pile of molten goo.
  • In the Grand Finale, Luna ends up breaking Absolution as she deals the killing blow to Chandrelle, keeping the hilt to later use as the symbol of a guild she founds.
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Arguably, when Captain Hammer breaks his hand by holding an exploding gun in Dr. Horrible (his main weapons being his fists, though they aren't the hammer...)

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Puss in Boots has Puss in Boots adamantly refusing to give up in battle against the all-powerful Bloodwolf even though his attacks have no effect on him at all. It is only when Puss lands a clean hit that does nothing but shatter his rapier that Puss begins to pass into the Despair Event Horizon.
• This happens semi-regularly to Finn's swords in Adventure Time, usually for some plot significant reason.
  • The chipped, golden sword Finn uses in the first two seasons, Scarlet, is accidentally turned fourth-dimension in the episode "The Real You" and Finn uses it to destroy a black hole, and it's lost in the ensuing extra-dimensional explosion. He eventually replaces it with a root sword he recovers as dungeon loot in "Mystery Train".
  • Finn eventually replaces the root sword with a demon blood sword that once belonged to his adoptive dog father Joshua in "Dad's Dungeon". However, Finn's forced to destroy it when the demon whose blood it came from comes back in "Play-Date" and demands the return of his blood or else he'll kill Ice King and Abracadaniel. It's eventually replaced by a grass sword in "Blade of Grass" after Jake notices Finn is bummed out by the destruction of the family's demon sword.
  • After losing most of the grass sword in "Escape from the Citadel", Finn inexplicably obtains another replacement sword in "Is That You?" when he encounters an alternate version of himself, who explodes and turns into a sentient sword dubbed the Finn Sword. However, in "I Am a Sword", the sword is stolen by Bandit Princess, and in a fight to reclaim the Finn Sword, Finn accidentally pierces the crystal gem above the hilt with a newly regrown grass sword, cracking it and apparently "killing" the sword (although it's still useable). Eventually, in the episode "Reboot", the new grass sword merges with the Finn Sword to create a plant clone of Finn, and he permanently loses both weapons.
  • Finn is seen having gotten a new rapier-like sword by "Do No Harm", although it's eventually destroyed in "The Wild Hunt" when he uses it to slay a giant banana monster whose body was full of molten-hot fudge that melted the blade. In "Marcy & Hunson", Peppermint Butler gives Finn a replacement sword called the Night Sword, and this is the sword Finn keeps until the end of the series.
• In the first season finale for The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Loki shatters Captain America's shield using the Odinforce. Cap is later shown to have collected the pieces and it takes more than half a season for it to finally get fixed by Wakandan scientists, the only people who know how to deal with vibranium and its alloys. The shield is briefly replaced by a holographic version designed and built by Iron Man, although it turns out that Cap was in fact a Skrull during the entire time the holo-shield was used, and the real Cap much prefers the original.
• In an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, assassin-for-hire Bane makes his presence in Gotham known by smashing the Batmobile with his bare hands.
  Batman: He trashed my car, Alfred. Between a couple of guys, that's real personal.
  • The same episode introducing Bane also turns this trope into a Chekhov's Gun. During their battle, Batman tosses a Batarang at Bane, who catches it and crushes it. Batman ends up using the crushed weapon to damage Bane's Venom Feed, causing him to have a major overload of the drug.
  • In a later episode, the one-shot villain Lockup puts a boot (wheel clamp) on it.
• Midway through Dinobot's final battle in Beast Wars, his sword and fan-bladed shield are shattered, the first hint that this won't end like any other battle so far. To add insult to injury, said weapons were formed out of his beast-mode's tail, which would make it impossible for him to transform.
• In Code Lyoko, this happens a few times to Ulrich's katana, but being a virtual weapon it is intact on his next virtualization. Most notable is in "The Pretender", where Frelions blast the sword with their lasers, higher and higher, until it disintegrates. Ulrich still manages to destroy them barehanded or with a shard of stone. This also happened once to Yumi's fans in "Lab Rats", when she threw them to XANA-William... Who catches them and destroys them with his Super Smoke. This leaves her defenseless against him, and by the time Jérémie manages to reprogram the fans, XANA-William devirtualizes Yumi.
• The Dragon Prince: Callum has to destroy his Primal Stone, which had been the source of his spells at the time, in order to save Zym.
• The poor Ecto-1 gets wrecked by a weather-controlling ghost in an episode of Extreme Ghostbusters, prompting Mr. Fixit Roland to declare It's Personal, since he had spent all day cleaning and maintaining the thing.
• Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet: Spectrum writes off a lot of Rhinos and White Falcon interceptors, but on one occasion this trope kicks off the whole plot of an episode; Captain Blue accidentally trashed some guy's Harley while pursuing a Mysteron agent, and the guy retaliated by stealing the Spectrum Raid Bike that Captain Ochre had ridden to the scene. Colonel White was not pleased when he found out she'd forgotten to set the immobiliser.
• In the Merchandise-Driven '80s cartoon M.A.S.K., the heroes' transforming vehicles were occasionally damaged or shot up, but never really destroyed. But in one memorable episode, the Big Bad gets his hands on an experimental melting-ray and dissolves Hondo's truck, Firecracker, into a puddle of goo. He's naturally dejected at the loss, but at the end of the episode, he gets a brand new transforming '57 Chevy to replace it. By contrast, later seasons simply gave the characters a second vehicle with no real fanfare.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In the second part of the season 9 premiere, King Sombra destroys one of Equestria's powerful objects, the Elements of Harmony in order to get one over on the good guys.
• Happens with Iris's sword quite a lot in LoliRock. While it lasts for a while, it is always not long until it breaks or she loses it.
  • Also happened once with Mephisto, when Carissa destroys his shield before destroying his sword.
  • Auriana's ribbon is easily cut, but she is always able to use it later on.
• In the finale of Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, The Sorceror breaks the Ninja's sword in his duel with the protagonist, much to Randy's dismay.
• During ReBoot's second season finale, Megabyte crushes Glitch right before stranding Bob in the Web. This makes Glitch useless during season 3 until Bob fuses with it. And even then the damage to glitch is so bad that the fusion is causing both of them to slowly die.
• Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sees Raph, Leo, and Mikey's weapons get broken in a Curb-Stomp Battle at the start of the series (Donnie's bo staff is exempt, by virtue of being made of stronger material). Fortunately, by the end of the first episode, they've acquired new weapons, these ones with magic powers.
• Samurai Jack:
  • Jack knows a technique called "The Tremendous Horse-Cut" that destroys an opponent's weapon. He's only used it once, against The Scotsman - whose sword was also magical and thus resisted the attack. Played straight in Season 5 when Aku blasts the aged Scotsman with his Eye Beams, reducing him to ash and shattering his sword. Fortunately, the Celtic magic in the sword brings the Scotsman back as a ghost.
  • In Season 5, Jack's futuristic weapons and armor are all destroyed by the Daughters of Aku in the second episode. He also grabs a legendary axe in the mausoleum scene, and as legendary also means old, the axe breaks after a few hits.
• She-Ra: Princess of Power: In "The Stone in the Sword", the jewel in the hilt of Princess Adora's sword gets cracked by an attack, which depowered the sword and prevented her from transforming into She-Ra. She had to pass several tests to get it repaired.
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • All but one of the Inquisitors to appear have had their lightsabers destroyed during their defeats: The Grand Inquisitor gets his cut in two by a Dual Wielding Kanan, leading directly to the destruction of the ISD Sovereign. The Fifth Brother's is destroyed by Ahsoka just before he's killed by Maul. The Eighth Brother, finding himself outnumbered, tries to escape by flying away on his, only to fall to his death because Kanan had slashed the ring mechanism just before. Only the Seventh Sister averts this.
  • In "Twilight of the Apprentice", besides the Fifth and Eighth Brothers above, Ezra ends up facing Darth Vader, who easily destroys his gunsaber when they briefly cross blades. Ezra builds a new lightsaber using the kyber crystal and some of the parts from his old lightsaber during the Time Skip before Season 3.
  • "Twin Suns": Obi-Wan cuts Maul's lightsaber clean in half, along with his chest, when defeating him.
• Steven Universe:
  • "Reunited": Rose Quartz's trademark sword is shattered by Blue Diamond during the big fight with the Diamonds, as one final break to Rose's legacy.
  • In the movie, Steven breaks Spinel's rejuvenator over his knee to prove to her that he has no intention of using it on her again.
• What kicks off the first season of The Super Hero Squad Show as a battle between Iron Man and Dr. Doom causes the Infinity Blade to be shattered into "Infinity Fractals", which the heroes and villains race to retrieve so they can reforge the Infinity Sword.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003):
  • An extended sequence of everyone who serves the Shredder beating the holy hell out of Leonardo concludes with the Shredder snapping Leo's swords with his bare hands.
  • Similarly, Leo's swords get broken again, this time by one of the Gom-Tai, in a later episode.
  • Donatello's Bo Staff gets snapped in half on many occasions.
• In Teen Titans, Cyborg's car is destroyed in what seems like all of its appearances.
• In ThunderCats (1985), the Sword of Omens is first broken when Lion-O is tricked into using it to attack a fellow Thundercat; repairing it is said to be nearly impossible, and indeed proves to be nearly so. It took bribing a villain to reforge it, and they still had to escape him with the sword afterward. Much later, the sword is broken again in the introduction of new villain Tug-Mug, whose life on a moon with high gravity has given him tremendous strength. This occurrence slightly twists the trope, as the sword is promptly repaired by nearly-as-new hero Bengali, demonstrating his own impressive skills as a blacksmith, which means the heroes now have the means to make repairs regularly.
• Transformers: Prime:
  • At the end of the Five-Episode Pilot, Optimus has one of his arm-blades broken by Megatron in their first all-out fight.
  • Optimus gets one of his blades broken again, also by Megatron, in the lead-up to the first season finale. This time, it stays broken for the following six episodes, as he's too busy dealing with crises or having amnesia to get it fixed.
  • The Star Saber was destroyed by Megatron the episode after it was introduced. Given that in its introduction it sliced a mountain in half, this outcome was not especially surprising. It's reforged later but spends most of the following season out of the heroes' hands.
  • The fate of the Forge of Solus Prime, courtesy of Predaking. Unlike the other examples, it stays that way.
• Trollhunters features two examples during the series finale. First, Morgana shatters Daylight in order to spite Jim (though Merlin restores it after the battle's over). Then, in order to defeat Morgana for good, Claire tosses her through a portal into the Shadow Realm, then has Toby smash the Shadow Staff in order to permanently seal off said realm, trapping Morgana forever.
• Wakfu:
  • Evangelyne gets it particularly hard in episode 19 when her bow (along with her forearm) is broken — not by an enemy but by her Love Interest Sadlygrove, possessed by the demon Rubilax. It is later described as the worst affront one could do to a Crâ... although ultimately Eva seems to be more worried about Sadlygrove's fate.
  • Speaking of Rubilax, the sword he usually resides in gets broken (despite having been previously stated to be indestructible) by Adamai in the third season.
  • Goultard's primary weapon is a broken divine sword gifted to him by his father the God Iop at his birth. Since it's a divine blade, it still serves Goultard well despite its damaged state.

Real Life

• The breaking of a defeated opponent's sword was a common form of humiliation inflicted by their victor throughout history.
• Even in the modern era, many militaries issue officers with ceremonial swords as a symbol of their office and authority. Should they be put through an Insignia Rip-Off Ritual, this often includes snapping the sword (often with the blade scored or filed to make it easier).

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