Bad with the Bone
Welcome to the Bone Club.
The use of bones as an Improvised Weapon. Similar to Grievous Harm with a Body, except that that involves using a whole body or at least a bodily limb that hasn't yet been reduced to bone.
Dem Bones may be involved. Skeletons in the Coat Closet is what happens when you wear bones as armor regularly. See Ballistic Bone for bones launched as Abnormal Ammo.
Examples of Bad with the Bone include:
Anime and Manga
- Kimimaro from Naruto was apparently the only member of his clan to fully activate their kekkai genkai, the Shikotsumyaku or "Dead Bone Pulse". Using it, he could manipulate his bones to act as armor against any attack or extract weapons formed of super-dense bone.
- And to move when illness rendered him paralyzed.
- Sango from Inuyasha. She and her village use the bones, skins, shells and other remains of youkai they killed to make them into weapons. Her giant boomerang is made from purified demon bones.
- In Digimon Adventure, Ogremon wields a bone as a club. Palette Swap Monster of the Week Fugamon does the same. (Another variation exists called Hyogamon, but he's got a big icicle instead.)
- Faust VIII from Shaman King uses skeletons as his spirit medium. If you get him REALLY angry, he'll sic a giant skeleton made of normal skeletons at you.
Comic Books
- Marrow from X-Men, whose power was to grow bones out of her body. Usually this meant outward jutting spines, claws, or knives - she wasn't too big on bludgeoning bones.
- Wolverine when he has his bone claws instead of his Adamantium claws counts, as well.
- Marrow inspired Spyke from X-Men Evolution, who in turn inspired the Spike from X Statix, who preferred shooting bone spikes out of his body. A version of Spike fought Wolverine in the third X-Men film and only fired long bone shafts out of his wrists.
- A character in Final Destination: Spring Break dies when she falls into a medical display skeleton, the unusually pointy ribs of which impale her.
- Refugees from the Labyrinth in the Hellraiser Summer Special craft the bones of one of their dead members into weapons to battle the Legions of Hell, since only something "of Hell" can harm something else "of Hell".
Film
- The first segment of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- Luke Skywalker grabs a bone to fight the Rancor in Return of the Jedi.
- In the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Sudden Death, a man was killed with a chicken bone.
- Abby stabs one of the villains in Hobo with a Shotgun with her exposed arm bone.
Literature
- In The Six Sacred Stones, Zoe is hunted through a maze by hyenas and fights them off using crocodile bones. She turns them into stabbing weapons by holding them against the wall of the maze while running.
- Väinämöinen from The Kalevala built his first kantele (a stringed musical instrument) out of the jaw bone of a giant fish he has slain. Not exactly a weapon, but seeing how he was a master of Magic Music, he used his kantele later to disable Louhi's guards to make a clean getaway with the Sampo.
- A character briefly incapacitates Freddy by smashing his head in with a bone in A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers.
- Secondary villain Norwood Thawn from Friday the 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat creates a dagger out of dead wife's bones, with the intent of using it against Jason.
Live Action TV
- Ransik, the Big Bad of Power Rangers Time Force, fights by pulling bones out of his body and transfiguring them into weapons. This appears to hurt. A lot.
- An episode of CSI had a man die when he was stabbed in the neck with a really pointy steak bone.
Mythology and Religion
- Samson, the original badass of The Bible, once wiped out a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, this making this Older Than Feudalism.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons. Adventure A4 In The Dungeons of The Slave Lords starts with the PCs in the title location, stripped of all weapons and equipment. If they search carefully they can find a human skull (usable as a thrown weapon) and a human thigh bone (usable as a club).
- The Dark Sun settings is a world that lacks (amongst other things) metals, and the majority of equipment are made of bone, carapace, etc. These are understandably inferior to the rare metal gears. Pre 4th Edition it was even more merciless, with those bone equipments have atrociously low durability.
- Pushing There Is No Such Thing as Notability to the limit, there was also an obscure Osteomancer prestige class which focused on exactly this subject.
- Archer skeletons from Ravenloft use bone arrows, which can grow into additional skeletal attackers if they miss their targets. Giant skeletons from the same setting (not skeletons of giants, but human ones enlarged before animation) use bone-tipped spears or scythes in combat.
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle has a number of primitive creatures that use bone weapons, most notably ghouls and savage orcs.
Video Games
- In Adventure Quest Worlds, your character can use bone based weapons like The Bone Sword and Bone Axe.
- Adventure Quest as well has a few bone-based weapons, like the Lumpy Skull Club or Dragonfang Scimitar.
- Dragon Fable has The Doom Weapons which look bone based
- The first "weapon" you get in Secret of Evermore is a large bone.
- Pokémon: Cubone and Marowak (pictured on the top of the page), which use bone attacks such as Bone Club, Bonemerang, and Bone Rush. All three used to be exclusive to them until Generation IV.
- And even in Generation IV and on, Bone Club and Bonemerang are still exclusive to the two; meanwhile, Lucario and Mandibuzz are the only other Pokémon with Bone Rush.
- To further this trope, the held item Thick Club (known as Thick Bone in Japanese versions), which has the icon of a bone, doubles the Attack stat of a Cubone or Marowak holding it. Marowak is especially notable in that its Attack stat can reach a maximum of 568, the highest Attack stat obtainable in the Pokémon games without the assistance of stat-enhancing moves, abilities, or berries.
- Halo: skulls can be used as melee weapons.
- In Phantom Brave, you can use both leg bones and skulls as weapons.
- In Medievil, your first weapon is your own arm.
- A number of weapons in World of Warcraft are leg bones. There are also several high quality weapons constructed of bone such as Bryntroll, in these cases losing any of the improvised aspect. Skulls are also a fairly frequent off-hand item spell casters hold to increase their abilities.
- Death Knights can create bone shields by surrounding themselves with a whirlwind of bones.
- This carries over from the earlier Diablo II, where there were wands, helmets, and shields made of bone plus socketable demon skulls. All particular favorites of the necromancer class.
- The Spiritual Successor Hellgate:London follows with Necromancer-inspired abilities to throw bones as javelins and skulls as fragmentation grenades. Some skeletal enemies shoot homing bone spikes and explode with bone shrapnel on death.
- In Adventure Island IV, Master Higgins begins the game with an infinite supply of bones he can throw at enemies.
- In Metal Slug 3, yetis usually don't harm the player, but if you get caught by their freezing breath which turns you into a snowman, and don't shake off the snow in time, they will crush you using giant bones as clubs.
- Some mountain trolls in RuneScape wield bones as a weapon.
- Villagers in the first |Age of Empires I would use bones to attack before the Bronze Age.
- Stalfos in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker normally wield giant maces, but if you disarm one it will... disarm itself in a more literal fashion and start beating you with that.
- In Monster Hunter, many of the early weapons are made out of bone. In fact, one of your earliest Great Swords/long Swords (depends on the version) is, literally, a giant bone.
- Terraria has bones as a late-game thrown weapon. Given what sorts of enemies drops the bones you can ultimately end up killing skeletons with parts of other skeletons.
- The Soul Calibur series has the "Meat on the Bone" as an unlockable joke weapon for Lizardman.
- In Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption, you can find a Femur and beat the ever loving shit out of vamps as Pissed off Christoph.
- Baldur's Gate has a magical club made from a a human femur. The man who made it amputated his own leg, and and used it as a weapon to avenge his family. Why is unclear, but the description notes that it's unclear whether the item was conventionally enchanted or if he was just so mad that it gained magical powers anyway.
- In Stinkoman 20 X 6, one enemy is an obese, robotic chicken that constantly spits bones out of its mouth.
- Crossbow bolts can be carved out of animal bone in Dwarf Fortress, which is about half-way between this trope and Ballistic Bone. They're not much use against large wild animals or any humanoid wearing the most rudimentary armour, barring a lucky hit, but they're a cheap and readily available source of practice ammunition.
- Persona 3: Koromaru can use a bone as a weapon.
- Luigi's Mansion: The "Mr. Bones" ghosts throw their bones as weapons.
- Ghostbusters the Video Game has the Fiends, small humanoid Animators, who use this as their ranged attack. Sometimes it's not always bones per se (cf. the Book Fiends), but the effect's the same.
Western Animation
- X-Men: Evolution: Spyke.
Real Life
- There's evidence that early humans carved, among stone, animal bones into weapons or tools. Knife handles carved from bone or ivory remain popular to this day.
- In many wilderness survival guides, a suitable animal bone can be used to craft an effective field-expedient edged weapon
- The traditional warclub of many Inuit tribes is the penis-bone of a walrus, which can be the size of a baseball bat.
- Some Australian Aboriginal tribes use the "pointing of the bone" to lay curses.
- In 1993, after Aboriginal Australian Rules Football player Nicky Winmar had been the target of racial abuse in a game against Collingwood, and their president Allan McAllister had made comments condoning their fans' behaviour, a witch-doctor laid a curse on the club in this manner.
- In an example of parallel cultural evolution, Navajos and Apaches also believe a witch can curse someone by pointing bones at them. Since fingers are made of bones, Giving Someone the Pointer Finger is really rude in their cultures; they point by pursing their lips toward the indicated object, instead.
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