Grievous Harm with a Body

The sound of One Man Whapping.

"This weapon's a man, man!"

—Phantom Brave

Now you can counter multiple twats at once. So now you can beat Attacker A into submission with Attacker B.

—Zero Punctuation review on Batman: Arkham City.

When All You Have Is a Hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. And when all you have is a group of enemies... Taking the Improvised Weapon trope to heart, hard-pressed combatants will use not just anything, but anybody around as weapons.

Two common variants exist. In the first, regular individuals may choose to use a body part as a club, the source of that body part depending heavily on the setting:

  • Neutral: Certain specific locations, like morgues or battlefields, will inevitably be littered with limbs, making it easy to locate one.
  • Enemy: Particularly vicious characters may choose to forcibly dismember opponents, then attack them with it in a fit of sadistic humor. Of course, it's easier if your opponents tend to fall apart spontaneously, like Zombies or Skeletons.
  • Self: If you're not particularly worried about the loss of your own body parts (hint: being a Humongous Mecha or a Hollywood Cyborg helps), you may, in a last-ditch situation, choose to use your own limb as a weapon.

Alternatively, characters gifted with Super Strength, or simply the Charles Atlas Superpower, may eschew the dismemberment completely and use an entire body as a weapon. This is also an alternative for mechs of the appropriate size in relation to the body being used. Of course, you'd have to be nuts (or really, really trusting) to let anyone do that to you, which is why most "weapons" are either dead or unconscious - or will be by the time you're done.

The Fastball Special is a Sub-Trope of this (being 1.) ranged, and 2.) voluntary), as is Shamu Fu. For the un-improvised version see Equippable Ally.

Has nothing to do with a certain general.

Examples of Grievous Harm with a Body include:

Anime and Manga

  • In episode 2 of Cells at Work!, White Blood Cell U-1146 breaks a limb off of a pathogen and stabs him with it.
  • Ushio and Tora had an interesting variation, where Tora swung Ushio at an enemy, at which point Ushio took the Beast Spear to them.
  • Arlequin in Karakuri Circus uses a puppet's left arm to stab people with.
  • In Rosario + Vampire, Tsukune picked up one Outcast monster by the skull and used him for a vicarious drop-kick against his friend.
  • In History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, one of the masters fought off an island full of heavily-equipped opposing forces by using them as giant shurikens. Arguably also a CMOA.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, Shiro Amada rips off his own Gundam's disabled arm and uses it as a club.
    • The eponymous Victory Gundam is made up of a Core Fighter and replaceable modules for the upper and lower body. La Résistance manufactures the modules in bulk, so throughout the series we see Usso firing off damaged modules as gigantic missiles and then calling for a replacement.
      • Gundam SEED Destiny homaged this in Shinn's battle with the Freedom Gundam; when the Impulse gets decapitated, he ejects the torso module at the Freedom, gets a replacement, and then shoots the damaged one with his beam rifle.
      • Likewise, the Bawoo from Gundam ZZ is a Transforming Mecha that splits into upper and lower halves, the lower being remote controlled. The official info says that the Neo Zeons looked into the idea of packing the leg module full of high explosives and using it as an enormous missile, but considered it too wasteful.
  • In Gunnm: Last Order, Alita allows one of her own arms to be cut off, specifically so she can use it as a weapon to increase her reach.
  • In End of Evangelion, Asuka throws one of the Mass-production Evas through a wall, then pulls it out and throws it into another. It doesn't work, so she punches through both of them.
  • Berserk contains an example in the first between the demon Zodd and the main characters, Guts and Griffith. Griffith, after Zodd transforms into his monstrous true form, chops Zodd's arm clean off with one slice (somehow). Zodd then promptly picks up his severed arm and slams it into Griffith, knocking him unconscious.
    • In Berserk: The Abridged Series, Guts, after seeing this, comments,

"Did you just beat him with your own arm? That is hardcore! Seriously, kill me right now, that is the coolest thing that I will ever see!"

  • In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Kamina once smacked some sense into Simon by having the Gurren throw one of its arms at the Lagann. It may or may not have already been completely detached by the savage beating it just took.
  • Kengamine Nagi from Deadman Wonderland recently ripped off his own arm and used it to attack Hibana with the Branch of Sin after she disabled him.
  • In To LOVE-Ru, while trapped in a haunted house and confronted with the prospect of Naughty Tentacles, an adrenaline and fear-fueled Haruna picks up Rito and tosses him into the monster.
    • Haruna's typical reaction to anything threatening is to pick up Rito and use him as a hammer. On one occasion, it creates a tornado.
  • In the third episode of Dai-Guard, the Dai-Guard mecha rips off one of its own forearms to use as an improvised Rocket Punch against the Monster of the Week. Widely considered a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • The Phoenix Emperor Saffron, Ranma's final enemy in Ranma ½, could regenerate from any injury by means of his own flame (being frozen solid prevented this, though.) Therefore, he had no trouble whatsoever ripping off his own wings, setting them ablaze, and hurling them at his enemies as deadly flaming boomerangs.
    • Two more conventional applications of the trope appear in the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics and Martial Arts Shogi challenges (the latter of which only occurs in the anime). In the first, Ranma makes use of the fact P-chan has been chained to his (currently her) wrist to turn him into an impromptu flail, as the rules of the match strictly prohibit bare hands and feet. In the second, Akane, at one point, grabs Ranma and spins around wildly, using him like a human flail to defeat a swarm of Faceless Goons.
    • During said Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics match, Kodachi counters an attack from Ranma by grabbing her own brother from the audience with her ribbon and flinging him at the table Ranma was tossing.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward regularly uses his brother Alphonse's head as a throwing weapon. Since Al is a soul bound into a massive suit of armor, he really doesn't need his head, but it irritates him nonetheless.
    • Ed also comically clangs Ling in the face with his broken off automail arm.
    • When Alphonse fights Pride and Kimblee he gets his (metal) hand cut off but then instantly grabs it and turns it into a sword
  • In Guyver, Akito as Gigantic Dark looses a leg when fighting a pair of Zoalords. Later on he remotely controls the severed limb to fly through the air and smack into one of his opponents before reattaching it.
  • Grabbing an ally and tossing him or her at an enemy is a favorite tactic of Hamel in Violinist of Hameln. "Tron Bomber!" "Oboe Launcher!" "Flute Missile!" Said ally usually screams bloody murder all the way.
  • The climax of the Baccano! Light Novels Drugs and Dominoes: After getting his arm blown off by a high gauge revolver point blank, Luck Gandor picks up his own shattered limb and tears Gustavo's throat apart with it's jagged, broken bones—After which he calmly reattaches the severed arm (good thing for that immortality, huh?), gives a pithy Bond One-Liner, checks to see if the resident Ingenue is alright...and then promptly passes out from the pain.
  • In Hayate Cross Blade, when Hayate is knocked out by a drug, Ayana uses her body as a 'human sword' in their duel against two other girls. She actually wins this way too. She uses this to defeat Ensuu as well.
  • Not strictly a weapon, but there is a Maid Guitar in the opening of Maria Holic.
  • In the Traintop Battle of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Subaru starts her attack by smashing the first Gadget Drone she comes across then chucking its damaged frame at a second Gadget Drone.
  • Done at last once in Bokurano.
  • In Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen, Zeus gets his arm cut off by Hades. When he sees Mazinger Z use a Rocket Punch later in the episode, he's so impressed that he picks up his own severed arm and throws it while shouting "ROCKETTO PAAAANCH!!"
  • Deneve in Claymore "blocks" extremely fast growing parasitic spikes with one arm. After seeing the first breath of her new attachments, she rips off her arm and impales the originator of said spikes' forehead with it. Not that that inconveniences either of them for more than a second. This chapter probably has the highest but per second count in the series.
  • In an early case of Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, two officers are arguing in the middle of an investigation. What does Neuro do to shut them up? Use Yako as a club and whack them both. Also used as one of his standard attacks in Jump Ultimate Stars.
  • In a recent chapter of Naruto, Madara got his arm infected by The Virus, so he breaks it off before it spreads, drops it on the ground, then kicks it at his other opponent (who dodged it since The Virus is spread by touch) which leaves him open so he could suck him into another dimension.
    • A while early, Pain pulled a weird one on Naruto: after he impaled Fukasaku, he throws his corpse at Naruto which distracted him long enough to pull him in and pin him down.
    • Thanks to the use of Shadow Clones, the title character has sometimes done this with himself.
    • Kinkaku likewise drop kicks his arm into Darui in response to him cutting it off, which, thanks to the artifact on his arm, made Darui's soul come out right before the arm reattaches because of the jutsu Kinkaku was brought back to life with.
    • When Killer Bee grabbed A with a tentacle to let Naruto get past him, A grabbed the tentacle and swung Bee into Naruto like an Epic Flail.
    • During the Jinchuuriki fight, Naruto takes this Up to Eleven, with Grievous Harm with a Kaiju.
  • Gintama has a whole storyline where the characters end up in a RPG and use the stock RPG NPCs (and/or their corpses) as weapons.
    • Even in non-virtual situations, the characters have no problems using each other as weapons. Show 'em Kagura.
  • During the Arlong Arc in One Piece, grabbed the seamonstercow Momoo and used it to clear out all the Mooks prior to engaging the Quirky Miniboss Squad.
    • And Zoro tried to use Sogeking as a sword. It Makes Sense in Context.
    • More recently, Van Der Dekken turned several human Mooks into homing projectiles to be used against Shirahoshi.
    • In the Ice Hunter Arc filler arc, Salchow uses his wife as a projectile (He throws her with her ice skates first).
  • Slayers has done this a few times. Once, Naga had done something called a 'Baker' strike by throwing a baker at a demon. Lina has thrown Naga, and Zelgadis thrown Lina, but neither of those cases were primarily for damage, more to distract the foe they'd just chucked the person at.
  • In one episode of Hare+Guu, Hare gets pressed into service as a projectile in an escalating game of dodgeball between Gupta and Guu. A relatively less violent cases of the trope, since Hare is both intact and conscious, but he is understandably dismayed.
  • In chapter 307 of Hunter X Hunter Gon gets his arm ripped off. He later takes it and stabs a headless Pitou through the torso with his own ripped off arm to pin him down.
  • In Dragon Ball Z, after Vegeta tries to attack Android #17, #18 grabs him by the leg from behind and slams him into Trunks.
  • When a Great White Shark attacks Nagi, Hayate the Combat Butler beats it senseless ... with another shark, which had been trying to devour him (and which is big enough that it could've swallowed him whole).
  • Perhaps not a straight example, but it counts: When environmental sources of throwable projectiles aren't available, Nana resorts to flinging her detachable prosthetic limbs.
  • Done by Briareos in the 2004 Appleseed film; he grabs an assassin-roid's arm, rips it off, and bashes her in the face with it.
  • The Patlabor movie has Oota running out of ammo fighting rogue Labors and briefly using the arm of one he ripped off to destroy some of the others.
  • Subverted spectacularly in Beelzebub when Oga attempts this with Arandron. Considering Oga's insane strength and Adrandon's build, you'd have though that this was a surefire combination...until his opponent simply punches him out of Oga's hands.
  • In Carnival Phantasm, Berserket quickly replaces his missing stone axe with Lancer. He manages to wield Lancer so effectively that the spearman in question literally becomes his Noble Phantasm, stat sheet and all.

Comic Books

Emma: You can't just throw people at all your problems, dear.

  • Invincible did one, while he tried to protect Wolf-Man, who was framed in murder, from being taken by superhero team Guardians Of The Globe - he just grabbed their leader's head and beat the rest of them with him, casually tossing him over the horizon when he was done.
  • The Punisher: "Looks like they sent two hitmen after me. It's a lot of work resisting the urge to beat the big one to death with the little one."
    • When fighting The Russian, Spider-Man tries to get involved, and gets effortlessly tossed aside for his troubles. Punisher uses the unconscious Spider-Man to help throw the Russian off the Empire State Building.

Spider-Man: [waking up] "...what happened?"
The Punisher: "We had a team-up. You were great."

  • In the Sam and Max Freelance Police comic On the Road, Sam grabs Max by the ankles and swings him at a biker, knocking him off his motorcycle. Max finds the experience refreshing.
  • In issue 3 of the Transformers comic mini-series "Headmasters", Fortress Maximus throws Skullcruncher (in beast mode) into Scorponok to throw off his aim.
    • Also, an issue of Transformers where Apeface has his arm ripped off while in gorilla mode. He proceeds to pummel everything in sight with it.
  • Deadpool once threw Alani aka Loa at a bunch of Back from the Dead zombie Acolytes. Grievous Harm with a Body is a lot more effective if said body has the power to dissolve matter on contact.
  • This technique is employed by Thorn Harvestar in the first volume of Bone, where she uses Fone Bone to head-butt an oncoming rat creature. Naturally, Fone is not amused by her actions.
  • In Darkwing Duck, F.O.W.L.'s giant mecha, The Walrus, freezes Steelbeak and Femme Appeal with a stasis beam. Then, for absolutely no discernible reason whatsoever, it grabs Femme and uses her as a sword to fight Darkwing... who then grabs Steelbeak and parries. Neither of the two F.O.W.L. agents was amused.
  • In one Lucky Luke book, when menaced by one large and one small prison guard, Joe Dalton threatens to beat the big one up with the little one.
  • A panel of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck shows him wielding a miner wielding a shovel.
  • Implied to have happened to Spider Jerusalem as he lays unconscious after a brain injury. Recalling the incident that put him under, Spider protests, "Bullshit. I've been hit harder than that. I've had people from Scotland thrown at me."
  • In the final battle of Ghost Rider: Road to Damnation, the archangel Ruth and the demon Hoss fight with a pair of still living soldiers.


Fan Works

  • In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Yuki invokes this trope in the first Curb Stomp Battle against Yakuza, when Yuki, Kyon and Tsuruya are outnumbered 3 to 1. Kyon learns from this, and invokes this trope when he engages in his Curb Stomp Battle, while outnumbered 12:1. In both cases, they kick/fling/punch their opponents hard enough that they collide with someone else.
  • In Poké Wars: The Exigence, Mewtwo rips off Registeel's arms and proceeds to beat the crap out of him with said torn off arms.
  • In The Last Spartan, The Master Chief uses a dead Geth Juggernaut's body to plow through other geth attacking him.
  • In chapter 25 of the Naruto fanfic Renegade, Sakura rips off girl's arm and literally beats part of her face in with it.
  • The narrator in Case of the Missing Technology uses Melanie C's dismembered left arm on Monty as a reflex, as he was about to after her.

Film

  • The movie adaptation of City Hunter has Ryo (Jackie Chan) pick up his partner (Chingmy Yau) and use her as a weapon. The gun in her leg holster does most of the work, though.
  • Jet Li picks Aaliyah up and uses her to fight off a female assailant in Romeo Must Die. You see, he Wouldn't Hit a Girl, so he manipulates her arms and legs to attack the bad girl.
  • Notoriously racist The Oldest Ones in the Book example that I should be ashamed of myself for knowing. In The Birth of a Nation one of the heroic(!) Ku-Kluxers clobbers several black guys with one of their friends. The way the man being swung as a club flops about indicates that Senator Stoneman isn't the only straw man in this film.
  • Another comedic example comes from Shaun of the Dead, in which during the climax David is pulled apart by invading zombies. His girlfriend, instead of lying back and crying, gets mad and uses his separated leg to fight her way through the zombie horde. Strangely enough, according to the DVD extras she survives! And eats the leg a bit.
  • In Jet Li's My Father Is A Hero (also known as Letter To Daddy), there's a scene where his character and his character's young son are surrounded on all sides by enemies. The young son is a martial arts champion in his own right and there's rope on hand, so Jet ties the rope around the kid's waist and proceeds to throw the kid at his enemies, whereupon the boy kicks at least half of them in the face running horizontally around their massed ranks.
  • Threatened in Surf Ninjas when one character utters the line "Don' make me beat you with the leg of mine that no longer works 'cause I'll do it!"
  • In Space Jam, one of the Monstars uses Tweety like a golf ball and uses Foghorn Leghorn as a club.
  • Referenced in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie after Will has been knocked out with an oar. "Leave him lie, unless you plan on using him to hit something!"
  • The fight in Shakespeare in Love between William Shakespeare's cast and Burbage's men in the Rose ends when Hugh Fennyman KO's Burbage with a human skull prop.
  • Played for laughs in Jason X when Jason is lured into a holographic simulation designed to provoke him. By the time we cut back to Jason and a pair of (virtual) bubble-headed sexually promiscuous drug-and-alcohol-abusing female campers, Jason has somehow forced them back into their sleeping bags and is furiously using one to bludgeon the other.
  • In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, when Optimus Prime is triple-teamed by Megatron, Starscream, and Grindor, he is seen at one point beating Starscream with his own severed arm before being killed by Megatron. Of course, being a robot, Starscream is able to retrieve his arm and reattach it afterward. After Megatron hit him with it a couple times too.
    • In the last battle, Optimus Prime (now combined with Jetfire) manages to make Megatron shoot himself in the face.
    • After Bumblebee kills Ravage... by peeling him... he uses what's left to smack Rampage in the face.
  • In A Bugs Life, Slim the walking stick bug is the sword in the circus bugs' Robin Hood routine (much to his displeasure).

Slim [flatly]: Swish swish. Twang twang.

  • The movie I Came in the Rain depicts a mobster shooting a homeless man's dog, then using the dead dog to beat the homeless man (possibly to death).
  • In Ironclad, based on the siege of Rochester Castle in 1214, one of the castle defenders hacks the arm off one of the attacking mooks. Another defender, lacking a weapon, picks up the stump and proceeds to beat another attacker to death with the wet end.
  • Similar to the Jet Li example above, in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Scott is unwilling to attack Roxanne (one of Ramona's evil ex's). Ramona first fights off Roxanne with a giant hammer, but is told that Scott must be the one to defeat her. So, Ramona jumps behind Scott and starts moving his arms and feet to land punches and kicks on Roxanne.
  • The Matrix Reloaded - After Neo breaks free from the Smiths' Dog Pile of Doom, he grabs one of them, swings him around and throws him at a bunch of other Smiths, scattering them like bowling pins.
  • The Toxic Avenger is prone to doing this, most notably in the first movie where he rips a thug's arm off (so effortlessly, in fact, that said thug requires several seconds of visual confirmation before noticing) and casually knocks him out of the fight with it.
  • In Night of the Demon, a man is whipped to death with his own entrails. By Bigfoot.
  • A strip bar bouncer is clobbered with his own ripped off arm in Jolly Roger: Massacre at Cutter's Cove.
  • A woman is beaten with her friend's severed head in Blood Cult.
  • Demolition Man: In one scene, Simon uses an innocent bystander not actually as a weapon, but as a smashing tool to break a museum glass box.

Bystander: What seems to be your boggle?
Phoenix: My boggle? Oh, brother. [beat] Hold on... how much do you weigh?
Bystander: Well... I happen to weigh exactly... * GRAB * WAAAUUGGHH *SMASH*


Literature

  • Older Than Feudalism: In The Bible (Book Judges), the captured Samson breaks his bonds and kills a thousand Phillistines using the first thing within reach: the jawbone of a donkey skeleton.
  • In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao's entourage was ambushed by their treacherous host. Trapped without his armour or weapons, Cao Cao's bodyguard, Dian Wei, grabbed a loose sword and slew the enemies until it broke... whereupon he picked up a couple of soldiers and used them as bludgeons.
  • Discworld example, Lords and Ladies:

"I saw Jason Ogg hit three elves with the first thing he could lay hands on."
"Another elf?"
"Right."

    • In Jingo, Reg Shoe gets his arm cut off while fighting Klatchians. Being a zombie, he's not much bothered by this and uses his severed arm as a club. And then he's puzzled when the enemy runs away screaming. Vimes muses they're not used to his form of unarmed combat.
      • Earlier in the same book, the troll Watch officer Sergeant Detritus casually hits a bunch of men with another man. After climbing on top of the pile he tells the rest of the crowd they must disperse or he is prepared to use force. The man who served as Detritus' weapon asks what he just used, and is told that that was just 'you helping the Watch'.
    • Used vicariously by Corporal Carrot in Men At Arms to avert a potential riot between a parade of trolls (marching in one direction) and a parade of dwarves (marching in the other direction). When Carrot perceives that the bickering of Lance-Constable Cuddy (a dwarf) and Lance-Constable Detritus (a troll) is doing nothing to ease tensions between the two groups of marchers, he orders, "Lance-Constable Detritus, salute!" Detritus salutes. His hand is full of Cuddy. They're both wearing helmets. Mutual unconsciousness ensues. With their incitement thus removed, Carrot (using his "krisma") berates the other trolls and dwarves for being silly chaps who ought to be ashamed of themselves for wanting to riot and cause mass bloodshed and destruction.
    • Lampshaded in Going Postal when Moist overhears a group of would-be bar brawlers carefully choreographing their upcoming melee.

"We have an Igor standing by, so if your arm gets taken off do pick it up and hit the other bugger with it, it gets a laugh and twenty points."

    • The clown martial art of "sloshi", as discussed in supplemental material like the Discworld Companion, provides training as an Improbable Weapon User for all kinds of unlikely armaments—buckets, ladders, balloons, pies—including (cooperative) fellow clowns.
    • The Nac Mac Feegle take their babies into battle for use if a weapon if need be.
    • Various members of the Silver Horde have resorted to this. One of them is well known for fighting 100 men, killing 99 of them with his bare hands, and the remaining 1 with his (that is to say, the remaining man) with his own hands.
  • In World War Z, one of the last interviewees mentions having a former pro wrestler in his squad whom he describes as a "Roidasaurus" who at least once picked up a zombie and used it as a club against other zombies.
  • Friday the 13th: Hate-Kill-Repeat has a part where Jason beats a girl to death with her boyfriend's severed head, while she's wrapped up in a tent. Later, another character is garroted with his own guts, though Jason apparently decides that this isn't killing the guy fast enough, so he proceeds to just rip his head off.
  • In one Animorphs book, Rachel (in bear morph) beats a Hork-Bajir with her own severed arm.
  • There was a Shel Silverstein poem (I looked for it, promise), in which a bunch of pen-drawn people were being chosen for football positions. Each was drawn burly and compact, with the exception of one tiny little player, who became the designated "ball".
  • In the Iron Man 2 novelisation, Tony beats on some Hammeroids with parts from other Hammeroids, noting that he wouldn't be able to do this with humans.
  • In Isaac Asimov's novel The Naked Sun, a robot's detachable arm is used as a murder weapon. The First Law did not kick in, because the robot did not know until too late what would happen as a result of carrying out its instructions (which were to await the next furious argument between the murder target and his wife, then detach its arm and hand it to her).
  • In Return of the King, the armies of Mordor use psychological warfare at the siege of Minas Tirith: they catapult the severed heads of their enemies, branded with Sauron's eye symbol, over the walls of the city.
  • A bizarre short story titled "Sen Yen Babbo and the Heavenly Host" involved a professional wrestler with a natural-looking cyborg arm. Part of his gimmick was that at a key point in a match, the adversary would rip the limb loose, with lots of simulated gore, and this guy would then come back from the "shock," seize his arm back with his other hand, and bludgeon his foe into defeat with the cyborg arm. Unfortunately, despite being promoted as a "Face," he was an Ax Crazy who beat a few of his opponents to death. And then Divine Justice came along, in the form of a not-especially-bright adversary who got mixed up and tore off the wrong arm, causing the psycho "Face" to collapse in shock.
  • Fyodor in Daughter Of The Drow caught one deepbat by the tail to clobber others from its pack with it.
  • In the novel Star Wars the Old Republic: Fatal Alliance, at one point, Satele Shan is caught in space without a suit, so she curls into a ball and uses The Force to protect herself while Shigar Konshi (who has a suit) pulls her into his ship. When he realizes that she's practically invulnerable in this state, he uses her as a battering ram against enemy droids.
  • In Changes, while tag-team dueling a pair of monsters, Harry uses wind magic to pick up a Red Court vampire and slam it forcibly into the shins of its co-duelist. As its battle partner is several yards tall, the unlucky vampire gets stomped into paste, and the giant creature slips in the resulting Ludicrous Gibs.
  • In one of Simon R. Green's Hawk and Fisher novels, a psychotic magical construct calling itself the Dark Man goes on a rampage, part of which involves it smacking Watch officers around with the human head it's carrying.
  • In The Vampire Earth, Ahn-Kha (giant ape-like grog) beats a Twisted Cross minion to death with the head of the Twisted Cross, the General. Unfortunately, immortality hasn't been good to the General and he starts falling apart after the second blow.
  • In The Oregon Files book Corsair, the protagonist finds himself facing a bad guy on top of a speeding box car. His solution? Tear off his own prosthetic leg, use it like a war mace to beat the man within an inch of his life, then finish him off with the leg's built in high-caliber pistol, sending the man sailing over the side and into a ravine.


Live Action TV

  • Hercules is fond of this in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Most often he grabs a bad guy (or even a damsel in distress occasionally), turns him/her sideways and holds him/her behind his back. Hercules then proceeds to use the person's feet and legs to kick/bludgeon bad guys repeatedly while said person is held helplessly behind him and unable to attack him. In the episode of Xena's first appearance, after he's done using the bad guy he sets him upright and punches him in the face as the bad guy was still wanting to hit Hercules after all that.
  • A fantasy sequence in Scrubs has Dr. Cox and Dr. Kelso pulling on Dr. Miller's arms, eventually ripping them off, and using them to beat each other.
  • When Chuck and Casey were tied back-to-back in two chairs, Casey just lifted Chuck up and swung him around to kick baddies in the face.
  • In Angel a flashback has Angelus complimenting Spike on beating the groom at a wedding they crashed to death with his own arm. A less direct example also had Angelus killing The Beast with a dagger made from its own bones, although he didn't have anything to do with creating it.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer often has this to justify a Villain Exit Stage Left—in short, to explain why Buffy doesn't pursue a vampire, it's because he threw the victim he was about to feed on into Buffy, knocking her down.
  • In Kamen Rider Decade's World of Den-O arc, Den-O/Momotaros' Final Attack Ride is Den-O's regular finisher, in which its sword blade detaches on an energy "chain" and is then swung around...except that the blade jabs into Yuusuke/Kuuga, who is at the moment in his Final Form Ride form (an insect-like machine). What results is Epic Flail with a living flail, and the zenith of Yuusuke's Butt Monkey treatment (literally) in the Den-O arc.
  • True Blood: When a Jerkass tries to put silver in his face, Eric Northman flips shit, rips off the guy's arm, and beats him with it. There is no Gory Discretion Shot.
  • One of the many commercial parodies on Saturday Night Live includes "Bug Off", which instead of actually killing cockroaches submits them to ridiculous torture including tweezers ripping their limbs off and beating them senseless.
  • iCarly: In "iHalloween", while the gang were broadcasting their web show in a supposed haunted house, things began to get freaky and they start to leave. Unfortunately, the door got locked. While trying to figure out a way to open the door, Carly suggests hitting it with something. Sam promptly proceeds to use Freddie.
  • During a case in Night Court, Dan (the prosecutor) describes the actions of the defendant in a bar fight as getting into an argument with someone "...and then attacked him with a blunt instrument. Specifically, the manager."


Professional Wrestling

  • Something of a staple. This comes in a few forms:
    • The ubiquitous splash, using yourself as a weapon by jumping off something high and landing on an opponent. Usually not done boot first, so avoids Goomba Stomp.
      • Usually.
    • Helping an ally splash, by providing a portable ringpost for them to climb. Often done when one member of a tag team is over the 2m height mark.
    • Whipping a partner to splash into a victim, often lying in a corner and waiting for impending doom. A real life variant of a Fastball Special.
    • The 'meeting of the minds', as it were: grab a head of each enemy, smash together.
    • And into the Mighty Glacier realm ... making an opponent smash down into a victim. Whether done by whipping one enemy into a corner and following with another, or by throwing or slamming one down on a prone victim.
  • In the build to Wrestlemania 23, the mind games between Batista and The Undertaker consisted mainly of them tossing opponents at each other.
  • In battle royals and the Royal Rumble, one way to eliminate two opponents at the same time is by throwing one into the other near the ropes so the momentum takes them both over the top.


Tabletop Games

  • The third edition of RuneQuest actually has rules for damage to a large creature used as a club by a larger creature, "Such as when a giant picks up an elephant and uses it to swat pesky adventurers."
  • Knowing fully well what their players are likely to try to do, several Tabletop Games include rules for using another person as an improvised weapon. Shadowrun is one of these.
    • One of the peculiarities of the HERO system is that bodies make decent projectiles: the penalties for unbalanced, unaerodynamic missiles are not so extreme to balance out the fact that a KO'd thrown by a high-strength character is actually capable of dealing more damage than, say, a thrown telephone pole.
    • Mutants and Masterminds follows suit. People don't make especially good projectiles or melee weapons, but it does do damage to both parties and, since the rules for improvised weapons only allow increased damage from improvised weapons if their toughness is greater than your strength, using a super-tough opponent as a club is one of the few ways to break caps.
  • The 1250 Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do In An RPG has a Running Gag where he's forbidden from having weapon proficiency in using various races as clubs.
  • In D&D 4th Edition, there is a magic item called Giant's Gloves. These improve your character's ability to grab an enemy, normally not very useful, but the Gloves add an extra bit of bite to this action - You can throw your grappled target at another enemy within a certain number of spaces, dealing a fair amount of damage to both of them and knocking at least one of them down.
    • 3.5 had some feats for large characters: Creature Club, to pick up little guys and hit other little guys with them, and Fling Enemy, to use your opponents as thrown weapons.
      • There's also Fling Ally, but that's typically used to get your allies somewhere safe or more useful rather than actually using them as weapons.
    • 4e monks have no less than 3 ability choices that can do this to your enemy, usually in the old "human bowling ball" form to knock down if not damage a group. Also, Warlords now have the ability to fling their allies around; combing this with a feat that allows you to make a basic attack after forced movement and the Warlord's normal array of forced-movement and "make someone else attack" abilities, lets one character instigate something in the range of a dozen attacks during a single turn.
  • Some of the Power Attacks in the Kaiju-themed miniatures game Monsterpocalypse involve knocking your opponent's monster and/or units around to do serious property damage, including Body Slam (which allows you to move an enemy monster into another space, including one occupied by one or more units or buildings) and Swat (which lets you knock an enemy unit into a building or monster).
  • BattleTech, naturally (?) enough, comes with melee combat rules that among other things allow BattleMechs to potentially use each other's detached limbs as improvised clubs. Assault 'Mechs can even pick up and swing light 'Mechs around as giant melee weapons.
    • In the RPG, there's a picture of an angry-looking man missing an arm, wielding a severed arm that looks like it just might have been his. And he's apparently attacking someone...
    • Even better, the recent advanced rulebook, Strategic Ops now even has options for Battlemechs picking up smaller units like tanks and protoMechs and throwing them at opponents.
  • The Infernal Exalted have a Charm called "World-Breaker Grip". Being used as a blunt instrument is just about the nicest possible fate for the victim.
    • Frankly, the whole of Infernal Monster Style is designed for pure body horror but the worst has to be the charm that allows you to rip bits off someone and use them as improvised weapons. Arms and legs are normal and expected but the charm also functions for internal organs too. The levels of Squick involved reach a peak when you realise that you can now beat a person to death with a foetus. Bonus points if it was in their uterus until about three ticks ago...
  • Quite a few Giant cards in Magic the Gathering, such as Brion Stoutarm and Bloodshot Cyclops, have the ability "Sacrifice a creature: [This Card] deals damage equal to the sacrificed creature's power to target creature or player". The Card Art and Flavor Text makes it obvious how they do this (i.e., by chucking the sacrificed creature).
    • The Yu-Gi-Oh card game has some, too, most prominently the Catapult Turtle, which was taken to hilarious extremes in the anime. The Amazon Archer works like that too, which would make it throwing allies at the enemy as if they were arrows. The Cannon Soldier seems to use them as fuel for the cannon, though.
    • Said giants are basically creaturized versions of Fling, the earliest example of this in the game.
  • The Dwarf Tossing card in Munchkin, in which a hapless party member who has been staying out of a combat is grabbed by the scruff of his neck and hurled at either a monster or another party member. The dwarf takes no penalties for this. Unlike whoever gets hit.
  • Warhammer Fantasy has the famous Giants, who, as part of their randomized moveset, can grab an opposing creature and either fling it into it's own unit or into a nearby unit. Needless to say the creature, and some of his comrades, do not survive this.


Video Games

  • The protagonists of River City Ransom can pick up and throw prone enemies, and, yes, even batter people with them.
    • You can also use your partner.
  • Super Mario Bros. 2 allows its protagonists to pick up enemies and throw them at others.
  • Planescape: Torment allows the use of body parts (your own or otherwise) as weapons.
  • In Medievil, it is possible for our skeletal hero, Sir Daniel, to use his arm as a weapon.
  • Any body slam in a beat-'em-up usually involves picking up an enemy, swinging him around several times (damaging surrounding enemies in the process), and then throwing him into another pack of foes, segueing into the Fastball Special.
  • In The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, the Stalfos enemies, without a club, literally rip off an arm and try to batter the hero with it.
  • In Team Fortress 2, The Scout got the spy's disembodied arm as a weapon.
    • While it is an unofficial mod to the game, this modification is notable as it takes a weapon for the Medic known as the Solemn Vow, a bust of Hippocrates, and changes its view model into that of the still-living severed head of the BLU spy from Meet the Medic. Medics may then proceed to beat someone over the head with another head.
  • In Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, the player can use their Elasto Blast ability to pick up items or enemies. They can then either throw them at other enemies, or throw them onto a mine cart that takes them back to the hub.
  • In Zone of the Enders, you can grab various objects and use them as a bludgeoning device, including your enemies.
    • Hell, even your allies. Gets especially hilarious in The War Sequence, since you can grab the Vic Viper and whack enemies with it. Thing is, the Vic doesn't get hurt by this, so you could go the entire battle like this.
  • Phantom Brave allows you to use any unit, active or KO'd, ally or enemy, as a weapon. You can even use whatever attacks they know, so if you pick up a Witch, for example, you can either smack somebody with her or cast her spells. Enemies will stomp you and do damage on their turn if you're holding them, though.
    • Disgaea does let you throw enemies into other enemies, but the result is generally one higher-level enemy. However, you can instantly destroy Geo Symbols by throwing enemies into them.
      • Not if you have some exploding Prinnies, dood!
      • More traditional examples of the trope would be the Season's Hesitance and Grudge Basher magichange attacks present in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice and the remake of Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, the former having a humanoid character improvise and use their Cockatrice partner as a blunt weapon after it turns out to be a much slower flier then expected, the latter having the humanoid smack their Bone Dragon assistant into the opposition after it helps them.
  • In Mortal Kombat 4 and beyond, Quan Chi has a Fatality in which he rips off an opponent's leg and beats him to death with it. And doesn't stop. Ever. The entire series also has multiple instances of using arms, ribs, and other parts as fatality tools, for example:
    • Sheeva, who already has four arms, rips off her opponents arms and beats them with it. She then poses with her top two arms behind her head, while she claps for herself using her opponent's arms.
  • In the Roguelike game Nethack, the cockatrice and chickatrice monsters cause instant petrification on direct contact, whether they are alive or dead, so a common tactic for a character with a pair of gloves is to pick up the corpse of a cockatrice while wearing gloves and use it to bash other monsters, which effectively insta-kills them unless they happen to be immune to petrification.
    • Oftentimes players with superstrong characters will skip the cockatrice entirely. It is terribly satisfying to beat six elves to death with the corpse of another elf.
  • Several video games with Ragdoll Physics will allow the player to use enemy corpses as throwing weapons:
  • Painkiller has an enemy demon with telekinetic powers that pick up corpses from the ground and hurls them at you.
  • Crysis lets you pick up live enemy soldiers and throw them at their comrades. You don't even need to use your nanosuit's strength mode to do this.
  • An interesting example from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Bloodmoon expansion: the Uderfrykte monster wields a severed leg. Once you've killed it, you can wield the leg, though it's technically just a pretty mediocre club.
  • In Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, you come across a crazy doctor who attacks you with a severed arm. After killing him, you can take the arm for your own weapon.
    • In the Tabletop RPG it was based on, the Vicissitude discipline allowed you to craft vicious weapons from bones, including your own.
  • Several enemies in Ninja Gaiden II will pick up the dead bodies of their fellow monsters and chuck them at you. Annoying, and exceedingly painful.
  • In the comedic Doom mod Zharkov Goes to the Store (requires ZDoom,) the alt-fire of your fist causes you to rip off your own arm and throw it at the enemy, upon which it instantly grows back. In fact, if you grab the "demonsphere" weapons powerup, you can throw multiple arms in succession!
  • In the Die Hard arcade game, it is possible to stun opponents briefly, enabling you to grab them by their legs, drag their unconscious bodies around, and beat the snot out of other opponents with them. Bonus points is that it deals damage to both the whapped and the one being used to do the whapping.
  • One of Umaro's attacks in Final Fantasy VI has him throwing his allies at the enemy.
  • Though it never actually happens, in The Curse of Monkey Island, LeChuck is said to threaten his crew with beatings...using their own legs. As his crew are almost entirely undead, this is not in fact a death threat.
  • In Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ for the DS, all the enemies are fairy tale characters turned into various monsters and zombies. This trope shows when Gretel (yes, that one) uses her brother's leg as a makeshift bat and to bludgeon the player characters.
  • In The Force Unleashed, it is entirely possible (and very enjoyable) to smash one Stormtrooper to death with the screaming body of another Stormtrooper (and then throw both bodies into space).
  • Kratos from God of War can throw enemies at one another rather easily. Additionally, one of his Action Commands has him rip off the enemy's arm and slam their weapon, still clutched in a death grip, into their face.
  • In Dead Rising, Frank can pull off multiple variations of this. He can lift an opponent over his head and throw them (knocking any enemy it hits down), irish whip an opponent into a crowd (knocking over any enemy that one runs into), or grab a downed zombie by the legs, and repeatedly spin 360 degrees (knocking down and possibly killing any zombie that comes close and dismantling the one being used as a weapon). He can even used severed human hands to jam into a zombie's mouth, rendering them unable to bite.
  • One of Bowser's weapons in Super Mario RPG allows him to pick up Mario and toss him at the enemy.
  • In Wario World, Wario's "Mad Moves" are all examples of this. In addition to being great for clearing out groups of enemies, sometimes you need the Mega Throw to hit switches or the Pile Driver to smash through trapdoors.
  • Chrono Cross has an automaton enemy that does this.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, one of King Dedede's special moves involves him chucking various Mooks at his opponent.
    • Many characters are able to damage other enemies while throwing an opponent they've grabbed, whether by hitting them with their throw animation (Mario's spinning throw is actually a decent way to clear off a crowd of enemies) or actually hitting them in the sky with the thrown opponent. The attacks, however, are brief, and not particularly damaging.
    • One of the Subspace Emissary enemies, the Bombed, has a bomb. For a head. Three guesses what he does with it.
  • You wouldn't believe the Hidden Skulls in Halo to be effective, one-shot-kill melee weapons, but, there you go.
    • In the "Oddball" multiplayer gametype (think keepaway, using the skull), players holding the skull can also oneshot people with the skull.
  • Asterix Mega Madness had a level in which you had to clear an encampment of soldiers and bring back their helmets as proof; as melee weapons would break after a while you could knock out enemies and swing them around like any other weapon.
  • In Sonic Unleashed, Sonic's Werehog form is usually doing this to enemies if he isn't hitting them with his bare claws. The flavor text for the Little and Red Rex enemies even suggests trying this.
    • And it's completely, utterly hilarious.
  • It only shows up once, and briefly at that, but Kazuya does this against several JACK-4 robots in the opening cinematic to Tekken 5. The robot he uses, he catches out of midair after Heihachi headbutts it into the ground and it bounces. . See for yourself.
  • Very possible in Adventurer mode in Dwarf Fortress, due to the way the damage system works. It's probably the only game where you can do grievous harm with a bodily fluid by chucking puddles of vomit at foes.
    • It's possible to chop off a man's arm in front of his wife, take the arm, throw it at him so hard he flies into his wife, sending her careening into their child, who hits a wall and turns into a pile of goo. For some horrors, replace 'arm' with the man's head. Or entrails.
      • Or you can just throw the entire rotting corpse of his child at him and kill him with it. It's entirely possible to kill a town by stockpiling bodies of dead animals and tossing them around at high speeds. If you're dedicated enough to hunt and kill two whales, you can put one in each hand (Don't ask how it works) and dual wield whales.
  • This is one means of attack in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time. Of course, these are robots you're attacking...
  • In Arcana Heart, Yoriko does not attack with staff, her staff attacks with 'her. As in it twirls around to smack enemies using Yoriko. The problems of having a trapped Demon King as your Empathic Weapon.
  • There's a club in Baldurs Gate II that is made from the leg of its creator. Apparently after his family was killed by zombies he cut if off and enchanted it. It deals extra damage to the undead, possibly less to do with the enchantment than because he was just that pissed.
    • Zombies sometimes tore off their own arm in an attempt to attack the party.
  • Gunstar Heroes features this - not just for the titular Heroes, but all the bad guys, too.
  • One of the many ways to kill someone in Psi Ops the Mindgate Conspiracy.
  • Kirby, anyone? In addition to being able to spit the enemies he inhales at other enemies, the Throw ability that appears in some games allows him to throw enemies with extra force, as well.
  • The WWE Day of Reckoning Professional Wrestling games for the Nintendo GameCube let you do this as well. Nothing like a Giant Swing to give you a metre or two of clear space all around.
  • In Decap Attack, one of Chuck's power-ups is a skull that he can throw at enemies.
  • In Lego Adaptation Game Star Wars II and The Complete Saga, if you enable Extra Toggle, you can be a Lego Skeleton on certain levels. Attacking with him causes him to pull off one of his arms and club an enemy.
  • As part of one of the Far Side routes in Tsukihime, Satsuki is chasing Shiki and having trouble catching him. So she kills some guy, beheads him and throws his corpse at Shiki. It's meant to be a distraction, but she notes that her aim has improved lately....
  • When characters are out of special energy in Ehrgeiz, their special attacks are instead replaced with a weak attack that somehow relates to the nature of their special attacks. Godhand's variety involves removing his prosthetic hand and bashing the enemy over the head with it.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon has the Hurl Orb, which lets you use the Fastball Special variation using any adjacent enemy. Their version of Strength and Fling also work this way as well.
    • Hell, their version of Roar and Whirlwind work like this, making them infinitely more useful than their main gameline counterparts.
    • Its version of Splash flops the user into a random adjacent square, making this trope with your own body possible when you've got enemies on several sides.
  • In Dawn of Mana, using the Whip to snag enemies and toss them into other enemies causes both to panic and drop stat-boosting tokens; at level three, you can use the whip to yank enemies about like a yo-yo, but unfortunately you can't lock onto anything while you're doing so.
  • Spelunky. Distressed Damsels can take a remarkable beating, and make surprisingly good throwing weapons.
  • Nero's Buster abilities in Devil May Cry 4 often involve picking up an enemy and flinging/slamming it around, damaging other enemies.
  • The mutilated body parts that can be found in Super Mutant gore bags can be used as ammo for the Rock-it-Launcher in Fallout 3.
  • Left 4 Dead 2's Charger zombie specializes in this; picking up one player and slamming into the others with him.
    • Although he doesn't do it in-game, the Tank does this in the opening movie for the first game where he grabs a zombie out of the horde and throws it at Francis.
  • Once Mercer grabs someone in Prototype he can either eat them or throw them. Taking down a helicopter by throwing screaming civilians at it might not be the most efficient way to take it down, but damn if it isn't fun. Later in the game, he can also acquire moves where he uses whoever he picks up to make an impact crater that can kill or seriously wound surrounding normals (and some damage to more powerful foes and tanks).
  • In Time Crisis 4, the Stage 2 boss, Jack Mathers, throws the players' ally, Captain Rush, at the players twice during the battle with him.
    • In Razing Storm, the second Raptor you encounter tosses one of your allies at you.
  • The House of the Dead III takes this to Nightmare Fuel levels: The Fool, the undead sloth boss of the DFI Institute and Genome Ward, periodically shakes the cage he's in, causing corpses to rain down upon you. You must shoot them away (at least the ones that are clearly headed towards you), as getting hit with a corpse takes off a life.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door uses this with one of the bosses (Lord Crump/Magnus Von Grapple 2.0). The robot uses the audience as machine gun ammunition against Mario.
  • In Lugaru, the player can use opponents (active, knocked out or corpses) as projectiles against an enemy (as well as kill the enemy if he is only knocked out). Difficult to aim and set up right, but does a lot of damage. Recommended by some players against groups of wolves.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, you can throw Omochao as a projectile against the enemy.
  • Banjo-Tooie: Banjo can acquire the optional "Breegull Bash" technique, which allows him to pull Kazooie out of his backpack by her neck and slam her into the ground, much to her dismay (and to his own enjoyment). Endless fun, and even surprisingly useful in low-intensity combat situations.
    • "Surprisingly useful" meaning that it's a one-hit kill on most run-of-the-mill Mooks. Unfortunately (for the player), it's too slow to use for much more than that.
  • Dynamite Headdy mixes this with Raymanian Limbs, as Headdy's primary attack is to throw his own head at enemies.
  • In the Casual Video Game Plants vs. Zombies, the Gargantuar carries one of three things for a club: a street sign, a telephone pole... or a normal zombie.
  • Drakan: Order of the Flame has Giant Wartoks, which pick up and hurl any large movable object they can find - usually boulders and explosive barrels - at Rynn, but they're so mindless and feral that their projectiles of choice also include normal sized (and living) Wartoks and Orcs (the latter two of course always end up getting killed upon impact; thus these guys actually fear those lumbering giants as if they're their enemies too).
  • In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Crystal Bearers, throwing items and enemies at other enemies is your main form of attack.
  • Part of the Enemy Mine mechanic of Crash Twinsanity involves Crash using Dr. Cortex by either tossing him at enemies or places where he'd be useful or even using his face as a snowboard.
  • One of Taokaka's attacks in BlazBlue is throwing fish at her enemy. Occasionally she throws a Kaka clan kitten instead.
  • In Sam & Max Hit The Road, Sam occasionally uses his three-foot rabbity-thing partner Max as either a tool or a blunt instrument.
  • Can be done hilariously via a glitch using Nene in Warriors Orochi. The glitch allows Nene to pick up multiple enemies and when she swings and launches her swords at the men attacking her, the enemies that are stuck to her get launched and swung around as well. Watch the madness here.
  • The entire game mechanic of Mischief Makers involves picking up, shaking, and throwing things, especially enemies.
  • The Titan injected Henchmen in Batman: Arkham Asylum will occasionally pick up defeated enemies and throw them if nothing else is available.
    • One can also disorient said enemies, and climb on top of them, basically using them as a bulldozer to demolish lesser mooks.
  • Overlord: Your minions will pick up zombie limbs as weapons.
  • In Ninety-Nine Nights, one of Vigk Vagk's moves involves picking up an enemy and wielding him as a flail.
  • In Rise To Honor, possibly as an homage to Romeo Must Die, there is a scene where can link up with your girlfriend and use her as a blunt weapon, throwing her into enemies to kick them and such.
  • BloodRayne 2 features a series of 'killing puzzles' where you use the bodies of enemies to break things, complete electrical circuits, and open doors. You can also knock enemies into other enemies to disable them.
  • Undead Knights requires you to do this to proceed. You have the ability to turn any of the enemies swarming you into zombies under your control, and are expected to throw them into booby traps, throw them onto enemies to stun them, smash them into the ground for massive damage, and so on.
  • Bionic Commando has this as a special ability for Rad Spencer, at least in the 2009 sequel. Using the grappling claw in his bionic arm, Spencer can pull enemies off their feet and sling them at each other, with predictably entertaining results. He can also pick up dead enemies and use them as weapons. This leads to scenarios such as beating a sniper to death with another sniper, picking up an enemy wielding a machine gun and smacking his squadmates around with him, or grappling a disabled Bio-Mech and dropping it on a grunt.
  • Scott Pilgrim lets you pick up a downed enemy and bash his friends with him, or throw him at them. Interestingly, throwing an enemy, whether he hits another enemy or the ground, hurts him, but using him as a club does not.
  • In Gears of War 3, Locust players have access to an execution where they rip off a downed enemy's arm and beat them to death with it.
  • In Stubbs the Zombie, the title character can pull the arms off of his enemies, and wield them. The victim will shortly die of blood loss, or you can beat them to death before they do, then turn the arm on their friends. There's also all the stuff Stubbs can do with his own decaying meat.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Sora has the Reaction Command "Wild Dance" where he snatches up a Water Form (basically a clone of Demyx made of water), and uses it to pummel the other Water Forms. There are similar reaction commands that are used throughout the game, but they each require a certain type of villain to be used as the "body". A few Limit techniques also qualify.
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, the mage class has a spell called Walking Bomb that infects damage over time. If a target dies under its influence, they explode, damaging nearby enemies. Another spell in the same category is Virulent Walking Bomb, which has a chance to infect anyone caught in the explosion with Walking Bomb. Squicktastic!
  • Whiplash handcuffs you to a rabbit and tells you to cut loose.
  • In Silent Scope 2, Cobra frequently throws live hostages at you.
  • Let's Go Jungle has the Giant Spider boss, who slams the floor to create a shockwave that tosses smaller (but still big) spiders at you.
  • Bug!! has the octopus boss, who grabs fish with his tentacles and throws them at you. Bug counters by taking a tennis racket and whacking them back at the octopus' head!
  • Cyborg Justice lets you rip opponent's parts off. You can then attach them to your own body and proceed to beat the enemy to death with their former components. Very amusing, in addition to being very useful. Mook with a chainsaw arm making your life difficult? Borrow it and use it to rearrange his face as payback!
  • Toyotomi Hideyoshi in Sengoku Basara uses his gigantic hand to grab an enemy and smack the other enemy around with it. With a special item, he can pick up allies to clobber the enemy with.
  • In the remake of Splatterhouse Rick can pick up severed limbs and heads to use as weapons. In the final chapter part of his Crowning Moment of Awesome involves ripping Dr West's arm and use it to club the Mad Scientist. Also, if an enemy cuts Rick's arm off, it slowly grows back, so he can then pick up his own severed limb and use it as a weapon - doing so for the first time gets you an achievement.
  • In World of Warcraft Cataclysm, some ogres in the Deadmines instance use their kobold miners as weapons.
  • Senel from Tales of Legendia can throw almost any knocked down enemy, and other enemies that happen to be around the point of impact will get damaged, as well.
  • In the Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology trilogy, enemies that have been knocked down can be thrown by a Fighter; a "light" enemy will be tossed and smacked a la a volleyball jump serve, a "medium" enemy will be grabbed and the Fighter will spin around a few times before releasing it, and a "heavy" enemy will be lifted and slammed to the ground. Any other enemies nearby CAN be damaged if struck by the hapless victim at any point of the throw.
    • Certain enemies such as the Sandworm cause the character to display a different animation than usual when throwing. In the case of the Sandworm (Weight: Heavy), instead of lifting and slamming it as per the typical "heavy" animation, the Fighter zips in and vanishes temporarily as he or she rapidly damages it thrice before zipping back out. Naturally, since it isn't technically being "thrown" per se, it can't be used to damage nearby enemies, thus averting this trope.
  • In BioForge the protagonist finds a severed arm and may use it to beat its violently insane owner to death.
  • In Psycho Waluigi you telekinetically throw around enemies all the time.
  • This is the most common method for dealing with groups of multiple enemies in Solatorobo.
  • In the Final Fight series you can throw enemies into each other. This is a good way of dealing with multiple foes since they don't obey Mook Chivalry.
  • In the Sega Genesis game Ren and Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention, Ren and Stimpy do this to each other!. Ren uses Stimpy as a jet pack, a hairball launcher, and a jackhammer while Stimpy uses Ren as a helicopter, a boomerang, and a shovel!
  • In Toribash, severed limbs can be controlled by the player, which opens up several interesting strategies. In fact, ripping off your own limbs is pretty much the only way to have a proyectile.
  • King Arthurs Gold let's you toss enemy (or ally...or your own) corpse at other enemies. It also makes good catapult ammo.
  • In Dark Souls there are enemies called Infested Ghouls, some of which attack you with corpses.

Web Comics

Dan: So you see, you can beat an alligator to death with another alligator but it's probably not worth the investment.

  • In this Girl Genius strip done by Lucrezia on Zeetha with Theo as the bludgeon. Later Vole hit Tarvek with Gil.
  • Done in this Goblins strip as a way for a lizardman to get around his conviction that you don't fight things you can't eat. After all, if it's one of the Mecha Mooks doing the actual impact, it's really that mook that's fighting his friends instead, right?
  • In Hellbound, at one point Mel throws a guy through another guy's chest.
  • In Schlock Mercenary Tagon swung Breya at a goon. With an added kick (literally).

Captain Murtaugh: Corporal Chisulo, a sack of politicians is not a weapon.
Chisulo: Really? I need to review my diplomatic immunity card.

  • Supernatural Martial Arts expert Greg of El Goonish Shive further defies the already strained laws of physics regarding Fire Summons by using the "hair" of one of them to pull this manoeuvre off in this strip.
  • In Dominic Deegan, fairly late in the Court of Karnak storyline, maybe November 2010, Karnak provokes Siegfried into striking at him and severing his chains, and then gets the chains wrapped around Siggy and uses him as a flail against the rest of the 'court.'
    • Some little while after this, he uses the same chains and the same move to throw exploding Bulgak into the middle of his enemies, so they can get hit with Redemption Spillover Damage, instead of him. In this case, obviously, it's less about the impact than the delivery-of-a-soul-hitting-nova.
    • How To Stop An Exploding Dead Orc.
  • Occasionally used in Bob and George. Since Ran can almost instantly respawn after death, leaving behind a corpse, he has been used in everything from explosive Fastball Specials to beating out fires with his own body. The phrase "Ran-bombs" has been thrown around on multiple occasions.
  • Electric Wonderland once had Aerynn use NJ as a bat to keep an angry mob at bay.
  • In Impure Blood, Roan tears off a Blade Below the Shoulder and uses it on the Cyborg himself.
  • Xkcd fandom reminds: excessive piercings give it damage bonus.
  • Weregeek presents: "Jingle grells, jingle grells..."
  • Dilbert has "CEO Delegates by tossing Catbert at Problems" Series.

Web Original

  • Occurs in the Dick Figures episode Kung Fu Winners. Once where Red tears off a ninja's leg to use in his fight against the rest of the ninja's. And the second time being in Red's fight with the big bad head of the restaurant/dojo where he uses Blue as a human shield against a table flung at him by said big bad before, in turn, flinging him at said big bad. The big bad promptly knocks Blue away leaving Blue the only one injured in that altercation.
  • Red vs. Blue quickly establishes how terrifying Tex is:

Church: Poor Jimmy was the last one to go. Tex walked up to him, pulled Jimmy's skull right out of his head, and beat him to death with it.
Tucker: Wait a second... how do you beat someone to death with their own skull? That doesn't seem physically possible.
Church: That's exactly what Jimmy kept screaming!
Jimmy: (in flashback, being beaten to death with his own skull) This doesn't seem physically possible!

Western Animation

  • In an episode of Family Guy, when a pillow fight between Peter, Joe, Quagmire, and Cleveland degenerated into a fistfight, Peter used Joe as a weapon against Quagmire and Cleveland.
    • And in a deleted scene of another episode, some school boys use Meg to beat up Chris.
    • One of the ways Peter tries to keep Brian away from him in "Brian Swings and Sings" is by throwing Stewie at him.
  • A Jackie Chan Adventures episode had a James Bond spoof where the super-spy Agent Tag was unconscious for the majority of the story, forcing Jackie to drag him around everywhere. One mook tried to intimidate Chan with his nunchuck skills, and Jackie replies by swinging around the dead weight Agent Tag like a nunchuck. It was quite comical.
  • In Teen Titans, Kole is a girl whose ability is to transform into immobile diamond. Her best pal Gnarrk is a thawed-out caveman. When they need to fight, Kole willingly becomes a super-hard club for him to swing.
  • In Transformers Animated, Optimus was able to defeat the body of Sentinel Prime controlled by a Headmaster unit by tearing the arm that held a shield arm off and beating it with it. When the Headmaster unit detached and Masterson tries to get away Optimus gets him by kicking Sentinel's decapitated head at him like a soccer ball. (We don't feel much sympathy for Sentinel, since he's a jerk.)
    • In "Transwarped" Spittor, well, spits an Autobot medic at her comrades, after grabbing her with his tongues and coating her in explosive slime.
    • In "Human Error, Part 1" a virtual Megatron gets his arm cut off by Prowl and Optimus proceeds to beat him with it. He does it again in part two when he uses his grappling hook to grab Laserbeak, throws him at Soundwave, forcibly transforms it into a guitar, then uses it to cut Soundwave in half.
  • In an episode of Futurama, Zoidberg cuts off Fry's arm in a fight to the death. Fry starts beating Zoidberg over the head with it.
  • Triplicate Girl on Legion of Super Heroes uses this move with her other selves, in a chain. Validus didn't stand a chance.
  • In The Venture Brothers, when Brock Samson's hands were wrapped in bandages and a pirate was doing an anal cavity search to find his boat key (Long Story), Brock clenched his ass, locking the pirate's arm in place, and swung him like a club to knock out him and his partner.
    • And in a fantasy scene by Hank and Dean, Brock rips off a golem's arm and punches him in the nads with it until the golem breaks.
    • The episode "Love Bheits" features Brock hurling Doctor Venture at Baron Underbheit's henchmen.
  • In South Park episodes "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe" and "Cancelled", Kyle knocks down Cartman with his little brother Ike.
    • In "Super Fun Time", Butter's swings Cartman into a gunman.
  • In King of the Hill, Cotton's story on how he lost his shins in World War II culminates with him beating Japanese soldiers to death with a chunk of his friend that had been previously mutilated by sharks (Long Story).
  • In Ben 10 Alien Force season 3 (Primus), Ben didn't exactly rip Vilgax's arm off and beat him to with it, he just grabbed a hold of his wrist and proceeded to hit him repeatedly with it while saying "Stop hitting yourself" every time he uses Vigax's fist to punch Vilgax in the face.
    • Kevin: "Heh-he, classic!"
  • In Korgoth of Barbaria, Korgoth tears off a mook's arm and beats him to death with it.
  • In Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show', Edd attempts to get Eddy's Brother to stop beating Eddy; in response, he hammers him into the ground with Eddy.
    • In "Little Ed Blue", Ed is in a very bad mood, so when Kevin and Eddy start pestering him he grabs Eddy, molds him into a baseball bat, and uses him to hit Kevin.
    • In another episode, Eddy tried to use Ed as a battering ram to knock down Rolf's front door, though Ed seemed blissfully unaware and unhurt.
    • In "O-Ed Eleven", Marie rams down a door with Marie.

Ed: <whack> Who's there? <whack> Who's there? <whack> Who's there?

  • In the Tuff Puppy episode "Doom-mates", Dudley uses Kitty as a stick to whack Keswick and the Chief whom he thought were the Chameleon.
  • Megas XLR loves this trope. In fact, the very first fight Coop fights is won by ripping the arm off a charging Mecha Mook and knocking it out with it. Hell, a later episode has Coop tear the scales of a worm alien to use it as a nunchuk.
  • In episode 5 of Young Justice, the background video when Batman is explaining the Amazo situation to the team shows the pointy-eared guy grabbing Superman by the cape and bludgeoning the rest of the League's response team with him. This is very cathartic, since Clark had been a big meanie-pants to Superboy again in the previous scene.
  • On Jimmy Two Shoes, a Shwartzentiger uses Lucius to try and beat a holographic duck.
  • In Phineas and Ferb, Buford does this during a surf contest.

Announcer: He's got him in a half nelson. Now a full nelson. Oh! And now he's actually beating him with Bobby Nelson!

  • Almost happened on The Simpsons when Homer was temporarily in charge of a navy fleet and accidentally shot the captain out while he was inspecting the torpedoes. The captain on the other ship tells his crew to return fire and when they then grab him, he clarifies that he meant with a torpedo.
    • In the Treehouse of Horror XV" segment "Four Beheadings and a Funeral", as Homer flees the opium den he throws people to slow his pursuers. Moe tells him to obey the sign, "No Tossing Addicts".
  • In Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes The Hulk uses The Everlovin', Blue-Eyed Thing as a club to defeat some Doombots!


Other

  • On his album On The Road, George Carlin had a bit where he talked about the perfect murder: Pick a guy up, and use him to kill another guy. Both die, and there's no murder weapon.
  • In the RPG parodying card game Munchkin (set Munchkin Bites), a non-item bonus "Dead Friend" can be played for +2. If in that game someone has already died, it can also be used as a weapon, is now a big item and takes two hands to use, and gives a +4 bonus.


Real Life

  • Truth in Television: John Johnson, aka Liver Eatin' Johnson after being captured, bit through his bonds, killed the man guarding him, cut off his leg, and used it to fight his way out of the camp.
  • The blanket octopus is immune to the sting of the Portuguese Man O'War, and they have been known to tear pieces off a colony and carry them around as its own weapon.
  • Boxer Crabs use the sea anemones growing on their claws as living weapons, albeit because the anemones are poisonous, not because they crack skulls.
  • During the Black Death epidemic, infected cadavers were catapulted over the enemy's walls.
  • This troper heard something on the news about a woman using a three-year-old as a weapon. Thankfully, nobody died.
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