Extended Disarming

Apprently, school uniforms come with very big pockets.

Random Guard: Throw down your weapons!
Prince Teppic: What, all of them?
Random Guard: Yes!
Prince Teppic: That could take some time.

—Pyramids

A character is told to drop all his weapons, or is frisked. He lays down the shotgun, takes the pistol or pistols out of their holsters, and drops them onto the ground. Then the gun from the shoulder holster... the smaller concealed pistol... the extra magazines... the combat knife from his belt... the combat knife strapped to his leg... the switchblade... the tear gas... the butterfly knife... the grenades... the shuriken... the poleaxe... the bazooka...

Yes, in comedy it always ends with a bazooka, or an RPG, .50 cal machinegun, chainsaw, surface-to-air missile or something else large and improbable. This clearly comes from Hammerspace; if we see where it comes from, it's always pulled out of the inside of the pants. On rare occasions, it'll end with something tiny like a slingshot.

Quite often, the disarmed character will have one more small weapon they kept concealed on their person anyway, secure in the fact that with the large number they gave up already, nobody would even think that there was more.

In more serious situations it can go one of two ways.

  • Number one: a security guard has searched out each weapon (or had intelligence on it) and has been actively confiscating them. When he's done, the improbably armed fellow volunteers one more holdout, to the guard's shock.
  • Number two: a companion with a powerful sense of honor (Or a knowlegeable foe) gently 'reminds' the walking armory about that one extra piece he 'forgot' to surrender to their hosts. The dishonorable one gets a sour look, but the last weapon is surrendered anyway.

The baddies' look of horror grows more pronounced as a deadly little pile is built in front of them. We look on in amusement or incredulity. Occasionally, the Disarmer will give the disarmed a certain look, usually with a raised eyebrow. The supposedly disarmed will then give up the rest of his weapons, which is usually just as large a pile as the pile already on the ground.

If it's a relatively serious show, this is often used to boost a character's Badass quotient. If it's a comedy, it's often used to highlight someone's Hyperspace Arsenal. Though usually restricted to comedy or comic scenes, a character whose Extended Disarming reveals that they are a Knife Nut with a vast array of small, realistically-concealed weapons can make for a moment of squirming unease; particularly when they inevitably recover their former arsenal.

It doesn't necessarily have to include hammerspace or unlikely materials, either. Having a dozen and a half realistically concealed weapons on one's person, especially if they had up 'till then appeared to be unlikely to carry any weapons, certainly counts.

The reverse of the Lock and Load Montage. Can happen to the Walking Armory.

Examples of Extended Disarming include:

Advertising

  • Used in a commercial for Netflix (or a similar product) that plays this scene typically, highlighting how they're making movies more awesome again.
  • Sprint's Samsung Epic 4G ad—with a spoof movie called "Epic Renegade Cop" featuring a Turn in Your Badge moment—is a perfect example of this. Available here.


Anime and Manga

  • Kino's Journey, done completely straight with three guns and five knives. Kino pretty much distracted some slavers by the amount of weapons being removed and then still killed them with a remaining weapon. The remaining weapon being a fully-functional, small shotgun hidden inside of a fully-functional knife.
  • Full Metal Panic!: Sousuke is ordered to disarm during a hostage situation and produces enough weapons out of his school uniform to arm a small battalion, plus heavy weapons. Cue severe freaking out of said hostage takers, and a prompting of "Where the hell did you keep all that?!". He later pulls out a detonator.
    • Kaname has a similar reaction when she asks for her own non-lethal weapon in FMP: The Second Raid and Sousuke dumps a large pile on the table, ranging from stun guns to tear gas.
  • A version involving food showed up in an episode of Cowboy Bebop. Spike steals a hot dog from a lady carrying groceries, who lets him have it since he hid it in his mouth. He happily eats it and proceeds to empty his pockets of various snacks that he had stolen from her.
  • Re Cutey Honey: Natsuko has one during her Turn in Your Badge scene. After dumping a cubic meter of weapons on the table, as she's walking out we see her pull out a last pistol (strapped to her thigh) and blatently tucking it into her shoulder holster. The entire sequence takes about 30 seconds max.
  • In Ah! My Goddess, tiny Ninja Hikari has equally-tiny (and equally-ninja) Kodama remove all her weapons, resulting in a pile of weapons a good three inches high. (Given that the two of them are only about six inches tall, that's saying something!) In the end, it turns out to be a distraction, as Kodama gets the drop on her with a single knife she kept hidden.
  • Eyeshield 21: In a special Jump Festa 2004 episode, Hiruma enters an establishment with a completely reasonable no-weapons policy, wearing normal clothing. A couple scenes later, the counter is covered with all various types of guns from pistols to automatic rifles to an actual rocket launcher. Exhausted security guards wave him through, and his first action is to reach down his back collar and pull out his staple AK-47.
  • The Ranma ½ anime series tends to take Mousse's abilities as a Master of Hidden Weapons well past the logical conclusion. In one filler episode, Ranma, Ryoga, and Mousse have all gotten themselves chained to a steel ball about eight feet in diameter that is actually a bomb. Ranma and Ryoga are forced to go searching through Mousse's robes to find the key to the chains, and by the time they find it there's a six-foot pile of stuff on the ground.
  • Played with in Blade of the Immortal: Manji on occasion drops about a dozen weapons all at once just before a fight to intimidate his opponents and pick out whichever weapon seems most useful in the given situation.


Comic Books

  • Lobo: Bounty Hunting for Fun and Profit. "I always carry a big gun, a backup gun, a backup backup gun, some frag grenades, a big knife (the size of a cleaver), an' some smaller knives, a selection of garrotes an' knuckledusters, some more frag grenades, a hook an' chain... oh, and an exploding see-gar." (he takes his cigar out of his mouth just before it explodes)
  • Deadpool is famous for pulling out a convenient weapon out of seemingly nowhere. One time where he actually used this trope (returning a large amount of weapons to other characters), when asked how he carried all of it, he simply stated, "It involves a lot of lubricant."
  • In an Italian comic named Cattivik, the titular character is stopped at the airport's metal detector and removes first a metal rasp from his Hyperspace Arsenal and then other stuff including a small cannon, several large cannon-balls, an axe, a couple of scimitars and a spiked mace. After all this he reveals to have still one little trinket down there... and said trinket is a huge tank!


Fan Works

  • In Chapter 41 of the Naruto fanfiction, Chunin Exam Day (A.K.A. The Groundhog Exam), Anko has decided to change the second exam to one that requires some of the characters to be disarmed, one of which is Tenten. Dispersed throughout the chapter are scenes of her being disarmed until the proctors doing it give up.

"Forget it!" the lead of the trio called, already departing. "If she can carry THAT many weapons she's welcome to it!!"

  • Disarmament, a G.I. Joe fanfiction. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow agree to disarm to settle bets on which of them carries the most weaponry ... in exchange for 10% of the winnings.
  • In Top Dog, this is a staple of the Amazon Hidden Weapons art; Mu Tze does it looking for a shotgun and along the way manages to pull an autorickshaw out of his coat.
  • In Ascension, REI of all people does this trope as part of her author-induced Xenafication. She produces two customized revolvers, two Micro Uzis, over three dozen knives, a sword, four shurikens, two chakrams, a grenade launcher and all the assorted ammunition in the form of speedloaders, drum magazines and HE grenades. Above all that she possesses a .50cal tank rifle but doesn't usually carry it with her because it's impossible to conceal.


Film

  • The Barb Wire movie shows Pamela/Barb laboriously dropping an extensive number of machine guns, knives, and ammo. Of course it's all for naught as Police Chief Willis sneaks her a hand grenade.
  • Vampire in Brooklyn: when Max, masquerading as an Italian crook, raids an italian restaurant frequented by a number of gangster bosses, he calls for all weapons to be dropped. The resulting heap includes various blades, guns, brass knuckles, the traditional lead pipe, a bundle of dynamite sticks as well as what looks very much like a machete. Commented by Max with: "Hey, there's a lot of f* cking love in this room!"
  • Death Machine: Jack Dante, the resident psychopathic genius played by Brad Dourif is forced to disarm at one point. The resulting heap of firearms is topped with a large rubber chicken.
  • Police Academy: When Tackleberry and his paramour are getting undressed for bed, we see the removal of the outer garments, then (from offscreen) the removal of the weapons, and then one gun Tackleberry forgot about goes off prematurely. Ahem; it was an actual gun.
    • Given his paramour's personality, it's left up to the viewer to decide who forgot a gun. The last (camera) shot before the lights turn out has her removing a pistol from within her bra. Needless to say the film ends with their wedding.
  • The Mask: A police lieutenant orders the Mask's pockets to be emptied. We cut to another scene. Cut back, and they're still being emptied... of things like a Surface to Air Missile ("I have a permit for that.") and a picture of the lieutenant's wife in lingerie, with an invitation to call her on it.
  • Last Action Hero: Jack Slater does this at the beginning, holding back a grenade that actually has a push-knife in it.
  • In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and Gandalf are stopped before being given an audience in the hall of the Rohirrim. Aside from their primary weapons of a sword, an axe, and a bow, they have on them at least half a dozen each of secondary weapons such as small utility axes, daggers, combat knives, and so on. Gandalf only hands over his sword, and in the end gets to keep his staff, quite possibly the most dangerous weapon of them all and the thing Wormtongue wanted taken in the first place—because he played up the "weak old man" angle to fool the guards.
    • This Troper's take was that Hama, the red-haired doorward, knew exactly what he was doing. Watch his actions as Gandalf and company march towards the throne taking out assorted mooks on the way. See also the Literature entry for LOTR.
  • Happened to Chazz Palminteri's character in Oscar. The pile of weapons removed from his person was so large and varied (including a meathook, a morning star, and a ticking bundle of dynamite) that it drove Sylvester Stallone's character to say, "It's like disarming Germany."
  • Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome: Entering Bartertown, a guard tells Max: "Leave your weapons here, it's the law". A twenty-five second disarming sequence follows. The weapons check man is duly impressed. He keeps his fly-swatter though, which turns out to have a knife hidden in the handle.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: Elizabeth Swann undergoes an Extended Disarming. The scene starts with some degree of realism—sure, she was carrying a lot of guns, but that was standard practice in those days because you got only one shot out of each of them, and female clothing of that time period had lots of places to conceal things. Then she pulls out a a small cannon. The cannon's size coupled with her gestures while taking it out lend to some rather disturbing theories as to where exactly she was hiding it...
  • Miss Congeniality had Gracie, after walking awkwardly in a beauty pageant dress, finally lets out a defeated growl, pulling a series of pistols, spare magazines, and even a pair of handcuffs out of thigh holsters and hidden spots all over it. Her stunned aide exclaims, "What, no armoured car?" Gracie replies flippantly, "That would be in my other dress." (She then ups the ante by trying to hide donuts in the dress at the end of the same scene.)
  • Implied in Thank You for Smoking: when entering a government building, gun lobbyist (and enthusiast) Bobby Jay Bliss sets off the metal detector and surrenders first one gun, then another. As he's being gone over with a wand, he waves the others on. "You go ahead, this might take awhile."
  • In Sahara, the heroes find it advantageous to disarm. The first two drop their AKs, while the third drops his AK, the spare magazines, a brace of pistols and their magazines, and so on. The first two give the third a Look, and he responds with, "What?"
  • In the Line of Fire has a realistic example when two Secret Service Agents (Clint Eastwood and Rene Russo) are getting undressed for sex. We see them drop their guns, badges, handcuffs, extendable batons, radios, etc. When she suddenly has to leave, Eastwood says, "Dammit, now I have to put all that shit back on."
  • A variation in the first The Matrix: Neo, wearing his trademark black Badass Longcoat, enters the lobby of the government building with his partner Trinity and walks through a metal detector that goes off. The security guard starts the usual request to remove any metal objects he has on his person, keys, loose change... then Neo casually opens his coat to show the myriad of different guns he has strapped on him. The guard can only respond with "... Holy shit!" before getting flattened with a palm strike.
  • Nuns on the Run has a scene where Eric Idle's cohorts meet with some Japanese Yakuza types. The cohorts demand the Yakuza remove all their weapons, and so they collectively produce a small pile of knives, cleavers and machetes. One Brit motions with his gun and says something like "Come on, let's have the rest," whereafter they add about twice as many more blades.
  • In The Boys in Company C, the drill sergeant is berating the new inductees who are being drafted to serve in Vietnam. As he comes across one unassuming-looking civilian who is being told to turn over all unauthorized items -- "contraband" --, he picks on him and says, mockingly, "And what have you got?" In response, the man pulls out, and slams on the table, a huge switchblade. Suffice to say the sarge has considerably more respect for him after this.
  • The Joker in the The Dark Knight carries a surprising quantity of knives, blades, daggers and... vegetable peelers. A policeman is seen rooting through the pocket of the Joker's jacket removing all of them, seemingly unable to classify some of the more esoteric ones.
  • In the Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine, a clip from a metal detector manufacturer is shown arguing for the institution of a dress code in schools. To demonstrate how casual dress is dangerous, the sequence shows an adolescent boy pulling about half a dozen pistols out of his pockets and waistband, what looks like a MAC-11 submachine gun and its separate mag, and finally a shotgun that was in his pants. It's not clear how the kid could walk nonchalantly with a shotgun down the leg of his trousers.
  • Ultraviolet: The heroine is scanned by a security system, which begins to show two very long rows of guns. It tries to give a count before finally giving up and saying: "... Many." Notable in that these guns were not actually removed, so she quickly begins to put them to use.
  • Parodied in Brain Donors when Jacques is required to empty his pockets in the police station. As this is an Homage to Harpo Marx and his bottomless pockets, it's less a display of weaponry than an exercise in general surrealism, ending when Jacques pulls out a rubber foot, looks surprised, looks down at his (off-screen) feet, and promptly falls over.
  • The Big Easy: While entering the police station, one of the plainclothes officers who turns out to be the Big Bad is asked to remove all his weapons. Various pistols, a shotgun, a truncheon, and finally brass knuckles are removed. The officer in question remarks, "And if that don't work, I spit on 'em."
  • Brain Donors: Done in montage when the heroes have been arrested. During jail processing, Jacques empties the pockets of his pants and longcoat, revealing an ever-growing pile of odd items including a baby bottle, fire extinguisher, rubber alligator, bicycle pump, a feather duster, and what might be his own foot.


Literature

  • When Mat in The Wheel of Time series is asked to disarm before entering the holy city of Rhuidean, he begins pulling throwing knives from all over his outfit, finally removing one last knife he'd meant to keep from a boot with a sheepish look. Even the warlike Aiel are mildly impressed (since throwing knives can be hard to retrieve in the middle of a fight, this makes a bit more sense than when the trope is done with guns).
  • Honor Harrington has demonstrated both serious variants on this trope multiple times when meeting with people who are not enemies, but don't accept armed visitors.
    • Early on, her bodyguards are asked to surrender their weaponry aboard a friendly ship because they're technically civilians (at that point; a special exemption is later made for their case). She gently reminds their leader of his "forgotten" holdout pistol.
    • Later, visiting a foreign dignitary with a (well-founded) paranoia of assassins, she is thoroughly searched using high-tech sensors and surrenders each weapon as it is requested. When her hosts (they are not captives) are satisfied she is disarmed, she pops the ammunition cartridge out of the gun built into her prosthetic arm.
  • A variant occurs in the first Artemis Fowl book where Artemis details to an informant the multitude of weapons Butler is carrying.

Artemis: Let me fill you in on the weapons status. I am unarmed. But Butler here, my ... ah ... butler, has a Sig Sauer in his shoulder holster, two shrike throwing knives in his boots, a derringer two-shot up his sleeve, garrotte wire in his watch, and three stun grenades concealed in various pockets. Anything else, Butler?
Butler: The cosh, sir.
Artemis: Oh, yes. A good old ball-bearing cosh stuffed down his shirt.

  • Lampshaded in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice when Miles mentions that his bodyguard has been delayed at customs, doing one of these (involuntarily, and not for the first time as the Betans always have better scanners than Bothari would like).
    • The security customs officer knows Bothari by name.
    • This gets repeated with Elli Quinn in a later novel. Upon entering a Barrayarran Embassy, Miles tells her. "Turn in your weapons. All of them. I mean really all."
  • In Cryptonomicon, Bobby Shaftoe expresses amusement at the amount of weaponry a British SAS pilot feels the need to keep on his person, then goes back into the hold to get some rest, which is made uncomfortable by his own arsenal of guns, knives, and grenades.
  • In Shadow's Son, this is played straight when Megara disarms. Except for the razor-sharp steel claws she has as fingernails.
  • In Pyramids Teppic was depicted in Lock and Load Montage. Then much later dialog occurs:

Guard captain: Throw down all your weapons.
Teppic: What, all of them?
Guard captain: Yes. All of them.
Teppic: It might take some time.
Guard captain: And keep your hands where I can see them.
Teppic: We could be up against a real impasse here...

  • The disarming scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers occurs in the novel, as well, though for a different sort of comedy. In the book, Aragorn has already had Narsil reforged into Anduril (which did not happen until the third film), and refuses to give up his treasured heirloom and trusted weapon... until Gimli and Legolas point out that theirs will "keep it company".
  • A variant occurs near the end of the Hammer's Slammers story At Any Price, when a mercenary genuinely forgets to remove the small knife he keeps up one sleeve. He actually blushes when reminded that he hasn't disarmed completely.
  • In the Belisarius Series, a Malwa bodyguard spots that Belisarius forgot to hand over a tiny knife he uses to sharpen quill pens. They let him keep it after Belisarius comments he could probably "kill a chicken with it, after a desperate struggle," and the bodyguard says "the chicken would win." It doesn't get used as a weapon, but still comes in handy later.
  • Used in a Star Wars Expanded Universe book, Republic Commando Triple Zero, by a Mandalorian mercenary who removes dozens of weapons from his person while conversing with a Jedi General.
  • In Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters there are several tongue-in-cheek references to the protagonist's Love Interest being excessively armed.

The Secret Service guards gave us the works. An X-Ray went beep! and I surrendered my heater. Mary turned out to be a walking arsenal; the machine gave four beeps and a hicough, though you would have sworn she couldn't hide a tax receipt.

    • During a later strip-search he mentions that Mary "added considerably to the pile of hardware. I decided she just plain liked guns."
  • Tamora Pierce likes to do this with her Knife Nut characters, of whom there are many. The Provost's Dog books go one better with a protagonist who, after one glance and without looking back, can reel off a complete list of places on his body a new character has knives hidden, even remembering to add that there might be one in his belt buckle if it's a design she doesn't know.
  • In his book The Good Guys Wear Black, SO19 officer Steve Collins tells of how an officious security guard insisted they remove all metallic items from their possession before walking through a metal detector, even though he knew they were armed police officers. Unfortunately Steve's colleague had fitted himself out with a combat vest equipped with all kinds of gadgets and knives that he thought might be useful, leading to a real-life version of this trope, complete with disbelieving looks from Steve and the guard.
  • Weirdly enough, one of the Murderous Maths books does this:

"Boy, I must be getting feeble," he (Benni, an italian waiter, who's just collapsed) muttered to himself, unaware that as well as the (seven) coats he had been trying to carry enough hidden rifles, handguns, bullets, grenades and coshes to wipe out a star system.

Justified (possibly) in that the coats belong to gangsters.
  • Vlad Taltos from the Dragaera books carries a lot of knives, darts and similar equipment concealed on his person, and swaps all of them out periodically so they don't pick up enough of his aura to be traced back to him. The first time he does it he's a bit surprised himself just how much it is when it's all in one heap.


Live-Action TV

  • In the UPN sitcom Good News, a preacher challenges the gang that has walked into his church to give up their weapons, and it works. As he passes by each gangsta, they drop a gun into his collection plate. When the preacher gets to one member, he hands over a gun, then pulls him back to turn over another gun, then a sawed-off shotgun, and finally a hand grenade. When it's finally the leader's turn, he opens his coat, assembles a bazooka and drops it into the preacher's arms. The combined weight of the guns finally causes the preacher to fall to the floor.
  • On Get Smart, when Max and Siegfried meet each other to negotiate, they each agree to lay out their weapons. For every gun Max produces, Siegfried matches it. When Max pulls his switchblade knife, Siegfried says he doesn't have one, so Max pulls a second switchblade for him to toss in. This scene is repeated in one of the movies.
  • In the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Hive", Ronon Dex removes a succession of knives from about his person while the team is attempting to escape from a cell - prompting the question from his surprised team leader about how many knives he has on him. His answer: "How many do you need?" Minutes later, as the camera shows a proliferation of knives embedded into wall opposite their cell and Ronon pulling yet another out of his hair. Sheppard remarks, "You must have a hell of a time going through airports."
  • John Hart did this in the Torchwood episode "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang".
  • Boston Legal:
    • Denny Crane was asked if he could appeal to the gun lobby. He proceeded to whip out a gun from his jacket. That was funny. It got better when he pulled out successive guns, each more ridiculous than the last, and then he went into his suitcase and got more.
    • In another episode, he's being arrested and the officers pull no fewer than 8 guns off his body. This was above and beyond what he was carrying in an earlier incident not 5 minutes ago from the viewer's standpoint. He also had this propane thing that wasn't legal (but we don't get to see it)
  • Farscape: In one of the peace negotiation scenes, Aeryn is stopped by security and forced to give up her pulse pistol. They continue to frisk her in the background of the scene and end up with a pile about two feet square and knee high by the time she is let through.
  • The Middleman: The titular Middleman does this in the first episode, leaving Wendy Watson to hold a pile of things that were highly improbable to have been on his person; including a lightsaberesque device and a small crossbow. And the Badass point is driven home as he still emptied out the bar and got his man in moments.
  • A promo for Chuck has Sarah remove a ridiculous number of weapons from her body.
    • In Chuck vs. The Couch Lock, Casey, in addition to the assault rifle he's already carrying, is forced to remove a small arsenal of pistols from his person.
  • NCIS had a more realistic example in one of Ziva's first episodes.

Gibbs: You're coming along, strictly as an observer. Hand over all you weapons.
Ziva: Is that really necessay? (Gibb holds out his hand) Right. (gives him a gun)
Gibbs: And your backup.
Ziva: What backup?
Gibbs: Left leg.
Ziva: Oh. That one. (gives it to him)
Gibbs: And the knife concealed at your waist. (Ziva hands knife to Gibbs, who hands it back) You can keep this. I just wanted you to know that I know.[1]

  • Dureena arriving on Babylon 5 in the "A Call To Arms" Made for TV Movie.
  • In the TV adaptation of James Clavell's Shogun, John Rhys-Davies has come to murder the protagonist in his home, but the household staff insist on searching him despite his protests, removing one concealed weapon after the other even though Rhys-Davies keeps insisting he's just there for a friendly chat.
  • In one episode of The Sentinel, Jim and Blair go to meet with an evil rogue CIA op. When they meet he scans them for bugs, and forces them to remove all their tracking and listening devices one by one, including the super-secret ultra-advanced new development one that they had been assured was completely undetectable. In retrospect, Blair probably would have done better dropping a trail of bread crumbs.
  • The Office: Lampshaded by Michael in his improv class. He had the habit of simply walking into a scene and shooting everyone with an imaginary gun, much to the annoyance of pretty much everyone else present. The instructor eventually tells him to hand over all of his guns, and Michael proceeds to mime removing at least a half dozen firearms from varying places on his person.
    • Although he didn't carry the weapons on his body, this trope still applies after Dwight maces Roy and is forced to get rid of the weapons he's hidden around the office. Cue a long series of shots of him handing over shurikens from the filing cabinet, a sword from underneath his desk, and so on. This happens again when Dwight duels Andy.


Tabletop Games

  • Usually justified, since due to encumbrance penalties, players aren't in the habit of carrying weapons they don't think they'll need. A high-level character might toss four or more daggers in a single round, and a one-minute battle is ten rounds. Replace daggers with throwing axes, or one-shot pistols, or whatever, that's still 40+ weapons.
    • Even if you don't abuse the encumbrance rules, there are plenty of ways to hide obscene amounts of weaponry. A portable hole, for example, is a ten foot deep, six foot wide hole that can be folded up into the size of a handkerchief. (Aside from storage, it can also be used to make temporary holes in walls.) Then there's the Bag of Holding, the largest version of which is equivalent to a 10x10x10 foot room inside but will fit on your belt. Take how much shit the average college student has lying around in his dorm room, then take out anything that's there for his comfort (since there's no air in the bag) and allow him to fill that up too, and you have a good idea of exactly how useful those things can be.
      • There's also Heward's Handy Haversack, which has two small side pouches of holding alongside the main part of holding and automatically moves what you want to the top, which the Bag of Holding does not do, a handy situation if you have a bunch of things in it and need one or another specific weapon at a particular moment.
    • Unsurprisingly, there's a a build in 3rd edition that optimises this trope. Quick Draw lets you draw a weapon as a free action, Iaijutsu Focus lets you deal extra damage with the first attack you make as you draw a weapon, and Fleshgrinding weapons stick in the target and keep doing damage. Combine the three, and you can get a character who draws a weapon, embeds it in someone, draws another weapon, stabs them again... a total of 15 times in 6 seconds.
  • A prestige class from an Ambient d20 sourcebook features the ability to conceal a number of small-sized weapons equal to the character's dexterity modifier "in ways that would not be obvious to onlookers". The flavor text for the class has a women with this class saving another party member by throwing a number of knives at a monster trying to ambush him. While taking a bath in a lake in nothing but underwear. The rescued character at first wonders where she could have possibly hidden all those knives, but then decides he's just glad she did.
    • The Master Thrower prestige class more or less invokes this trope—just from the example picture from the book (seen here), which carries at least thirty small bladed weapons between what can be seen and what can be inferred from symmetry.


Video Games

  • Happens in Half-Life 2 when Gordon is disarmed by a machine, and the player's usually vast arsenal all pops out of his hammerspace and the player sees just how much they've actually been carrying around.
  • Fallout 2: One of the Optional Sexual Encounters leaves your items scattered over the floor. Unless you stored them all beforehand (by, say, giving them all to party members beforehand), you are going to spend some time picking them up (even large amounts of the same item—except, thankfully, money—have to be picked up one at a time).
    • If the player has used an inventory editor to make everything weightless, and is therefore carrying much more stuff than the programmers anticipated he ever could, this can crash the game.
  • In Hitman 2, Silent assassin, if you drop all weapons in an enclosed spot to, say, pass through a metal detector unnoticed, you'll drop: The two handed non-concealable weapon, a Beretta 9 mm, the same with a suppressor, a Tokarev (Russian handgun), a Desert Eagle, a .357 Python, 2 hardballers, the same with suppressors, a sawn-off shotgun, a machine pistol, a kitchen knife, a combat knife, and a scalpel. You can still keep: the .22 silenced handgun (probably made of titanium, since it doesn't trigger the bleeping), the fiber wire (for strangulation), and the chloroform. Made worse than other examples, since you have them in a tuxedo, and that's supposed to be a realistic stealth game!
  • A Crash Bandicoot ad had Crash being stopped at a metal detector, and unloading a ridiculous amount of weaponry. After seemingly finishing, the metal detector continued to beep. Crash turns around and walks away in disgust... revealing that he forgot to remove his jetpack.
  • In Dragon Age 2, if you decide to make Isabella your paramour (or just talk her into a quick roll in the hay) you don't get the normal, romantic build-up; the two of you bust through the door to Hawke's room mid-embrace, falling all over each other. You each pull away your base weapons; then some backup weapons (which are never used in-game); and then another knife; and something else, and then you FINALLY make it into position on the bed... At which point Hawke makes an uncomfortable face, and Isabella removes a blade from between her legs. Of course, at no time do either one of them remove any actual clothing.


Web Comics

  • Mentioned in DM of the Rings: "What you have there is an invisible leather TARDIS."
    • The above Lord of The Rings scene is parodied. Gandalf gets away with keeping his "walking stick" Gimli? "Walking stick. We dwarfs like them heavy. And with pointy bits on top." That goes through. Aragorn's sword? "Pointy metal walking stick." Legolas' bow and arrows? "Walking stick. And a quiver of little walking sticks."
  • A particular scene from The Wotch subverts this trope: agents spend a few panels uselessly combing the depths of a character's coat pockets, then just take the coat.
  • In the Megatokyo omake unMod, the alternate Yuki character takes the ammo clip from alternate-Largo's sniper rifle, he pulls out a pistol which she takes out of his hand, then a more exotic pistol, a shotgun, a submachine gun, an assault rifle, a bazooka, a chainsaw and at this point - her arms wrapped around a massive hoard of weapons - she gets annoyed and tells him to stop.
  • The rarely updating Pointless had 4 agents produce several pistols, knives, grenades, and a submachine gun and a pair of nunchucks at a checkpoint. Why nunchucks? "So I had an extra pocket, Big deal"
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Dracula's Moon Base teleporter automatically removes any "weapons, stakes, holy water, crosses, garlic, small yappy dogs, etc."

Dracula: "You must feel much lighter."

    • Much later...

McNinja: Thanks for deciding that smoke bombs aren't contraband! (cue Smoke Out)

box-bot: It's good for a box-bot to know that if they wanted to take over a small planet of cupboard-bots, that they are sufficiently armed to do so.

Western Animation

  • Darkwing Duck: Parodied when our cornered hero surrenders his trademark gas gun, then, under coaxing from the villain, a second weapon... then, to further insistence, he rapidly produces a pile of weapons as tall as himself. After tossing down things like a sword, a rocket launcher, and a chainsaw, he ends by carefully placing a rubber chicken on top of the pile. The villain calls him out on it:

Camille: I understand everything else, but why the rubber chicken?
Darkwing: Eh, it gets a laugh at parties.

  • In the Tex Avery cartoon Who Killed Who, a police detective investigating a murder demands that "the gun" used in the crime be placed on a table. He ends up with a pile of weapons that reach all the way to the ceiling.
  • Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. The Knife Nut member of the motley crew is stopped at the entrance to the party and told to disarm. Said disarming sequence takes so long his shipmates return before he's done, saying that they're leaving now. The Knife Nut can only express some grumbling disappointment before gathering his weapons in his arms and bringing up the rear. See here, cut to 3:50
  • In King of the Hill, paranoid neighbor Dale Gribble began stripping and removing his concealed weapons. Why isn't important here. At least ten guns and various other deadly items later, Dale is sobbing in his underwear. The pile is then shown having a nasty-looking knife added to it.
  • On an episode of Squidbillies Early is being disarmed by the sheriff and produces a pile of weapons the size of his house. This from a creature no more than a foot tall.
    • Among the arsenal are roughly 30 sawn off shotguns, several hunting knives, a razor brimmed hat, and a slingshot-style grenade launcher made of shotguns (yes, you read that right).

Web Original

  • Whateley has finally touched this, Ayla 7 ("Ayla and the Great Shoulder Angel Conspiracy"), chapter 5. Ayla has a utility belt with hammerspace arsenal, and was asked to show all his hold-outs. He put in a BIT too many in the simulation computer, and they wanted to verify he had them all. He did. Eventually, he was accused of having more weapons than Batman, and was only missing the bat-launcher, and the 500 feet of cable.
    • Jade, meanwhile, decided to play Mary Poppins, with her floor lamp (lit), flowered hat, and full-length mirror!
    • Ayla goes with Crimefighting with Cash, and bought that utility belt specifically for the 'bigger on the inside than the outside' feature.
  • The Tolkien Newsgroups E-text of Lord of the Rings has its own take on the disarming scene outside Edoras. The four heroes give up their weapons with no more than minor grumbles, even Gandalf's staff (as the guard points out, "You could take somebody's eye out with that thing"). They leave Arwen on the doorstep handing over her many, many weapons, and by the time they come out she's sitting atop a seven-foot pile of the things.
    • And Gandalf still manages to smuggle in a concealed mini-staff!
  • Played straight in Architect of Vonthako's mini-comic here.
  • Happens with Shadow at an airport Metal Detector Checkpoint in an episode of Sonic Uncut. This was before the black blur's self-titled game was made.


Real Life

  1. ↑ This is a good thing, because she uses this knife to save their lives a while later. Gibbs Rule #9: Never go anywhere without a knife.
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