Healing Shiv

"Ooh hoo hoo, ya gun shoots medicine! It's intimidatin'!"

—Scout, Team Fortress 2

Okay, so you're wounded in battle. No big deal, you can still fight, right? You've got your True Companions to support you. All four of your friends line up in front of you. There's your ally right now. He's drawing his weapon. Wait, why's he pointing it at you? Ow! That traitorous jerk! How could he Back Stab you when you trusted... hey, why do you feel better?

You've just encountered the Healing Shiv. It looks like a weapon, it's used like a weapon, but it's just not a weapon. It's actually a purely healing, defensive, or support implement that happens to be in exactly the shape of a sword, arrow, gun, whatever.

Occasionally, this comes from the target, not the weapon. A certain type of enemy might absorb a certain type of attack into its own HP. This mostly happens to elementally-inclined enemies who absorb their own specialty. The Healing Shiv could also become a normal (or better!) weapon if said target is undead.

Not to be confused with Recovery Attack.

Examples of Healing Shiv include:

Anime and Manga

• ChoRyuJin's Eraser Head from GaoGaiGar is the defensive version. It's a missile... that dissipates energy. Used repeatedly in Big Damn Heroes moments to negate would-be nasty explosions or techniques. Indeed, because of it, ChoRyuJin is pretty much the Big Damn Heroes guy in the series.
• Hellsing's Father Alexander Anderson uses the Nail of Helena - one of the Nails of Christ, a potent holy relic which upon contact with his heart (via a horrific scene when he stabs himself) regenerates his missing arm and gives him massive regeneration powers for as long as the nail remains there.
• Bleach has Hanataro's zanpakutou Hisagomaru. When it strikes a person, it absorbs their wounds and charges up, and when sufficiently charged, it turns into a tiny scalpel that inflicts damage equivalent to all the wounds it's absorbed at once.
  • Being the fan of Bleach fighting games as he is, Kubo Tite probably designed Hisagomaru specifically to make Hanatarou good Lethal Joke Character material. It's never used in the main storyline, mostly because Hanataro tends to misplace his sword.
  • In a filler episode, he nearly kills a Menos Grande in one shot. Not bad for a mere 7th seat in the squad that's supposed to be the worst at fighting.
  • In another filler, the sword's spirit demonstrates just how awesome it can be after healing Ikkaku's injuries from his fight with a rampant sword-fiend, then transforming into a BFG and taking out said sword-fiend in one shot.
• In Inuyasha, Sesshomaru's Tenseiga can revive the dead by cutting through the pallbearers of the afterlife that come to ferry away the souls of the dead. It has the ability to cut through any spirits that are not of this world which means, depending on how it's used, it can be used as a spirit-killing weapon or means of purifying souls of their sins. However, for physical beings, it simply doesn't work as a weapon at all. In the manga, it does temporarily gain the ability to attack normal enemies, but only until the attack is passed on to Inuyasha.
• In Tsukihime, Shiki has eyes that can kill anything, including concepts. He uses a fruit knife to cure himself of vampirism. He also uses this same knife to save a dying Kohaku, by killing her poisoned blood.
  • In the Alternate Universe movies, Kara no Kyoukai:, Shiki (not the same Shiki, mind you,) stabs away someone's appendicitis. She also saves her own life by killing her arm, and at one point allows herself to be possessed to stab the spirits IN her, without any apparent resulting injury.
• In Digimon Adventure, Angemon and Angewomon had to shoot Tai and Matt with special "Arrows of Truth/Hope and Light" to get the older kids' Digimon up to Mega level.
• In Gash Bell, Tia's Saifojio summons healing swords.
• When the pilot of Panda Z, Pan Talon, refuses to get his shots, Medicalbear pulls out a pair of needle guns. What follows is awesome.
• Jubei-chan's sword actually defeats the fallen spirits that she's fighting by not only freeing them from their obsessive hatred but resurrecting them from the dead.
  • It's a parody of Magical Girl shows where they purify or heal the Monster of the Week back to normal. Instead of a colorful wand that shoots hearts and sparkles, Jubei cuts people down with a katana.
• Unknowingly used by Raid in Mahoujin Guru Guru. An attempt to counteract his Blessed with Suck magic dances with a stylish spell backfired when the stylish spell turned out to recovery dark magic. A previous attempt also provided a spell that helped with aches and pains.
• Used in Fairy Tail by Gerard, a known traitor and villain, who hits Natsu, who doesn't know he was there, with a golden fire. Natsu at first thinks he was attacking, and tells him that he forgot that fire doesn't work on him. Then Gerard tells him that he DID remember, and was doing this to help him. Boy did it ever.
• In Rave Master, by the same author as Fairy Tail, a fortuneteller shows Musica a vision of Haru stabbing Elie. This does come to pass, but the sword Haru used was Rune Save, which can cut through things that normally can't be cut through, but conversely cannot cut through things that normally can be cut through, like humans. In this case, he used it to seal the power of Etherion without harming Elie. In other situations Haru uses Rune Save to protect himself from magical attacks.
• In Flame of Recca the eponymous Flame powered by Yanagi, contrary to all other instances in the series, heals everyone and kills the Big Bad.
• This combined with Home Run Hitter is the entire premise behind Dageki Joi Saori. A Doctor who knocks her patients into the next county, but boy do they feel great afterwards!
• In Dragonball Z, Goku fires a blast at Frieza after their battle with the purpose of actually giving Frieza some of his ki so Frieza can survive. Of course Frieza just uses it to backstab him and then gets blasted for real.

Comic Books

• When the New Mutants fought a giant demon bear, one of its attacks started to turn Magma into a demon. Magik saves her... by stabbing her in the heart with her Soulsword, whose only ability at first was to disrupt magic spells. Cannonball sees this and starts attacking her, thinking every doubt he had about Illyana's motives came true, but then gets a tongue-lashing by Magma who explains what really happened. But then again, Magma was one of the few people not creeped out by having a demon sorceress around.
• Among the powers of the eponymous blade in the Luna brothers' The Sword is that it heals the wounds of anyone in physical contact with it. It does not operate quickly enough, however, to not also be a (very) deadly weapon.

Film

• The B-Movie Roller Blade is named after butterfly knives that heal everything from a cut to decapitation. The user (a naked roller-skating nun) moves the knife in a cross shape over somebody. A psychedelic smiley face appears and the person is healed. Unfortunately the rules only allow them to be used once per person.
• In the remake of Clash of the Titans, the Djinn can wield blue fire which can heal seemingly any wound. At the very least, they use it to heal the poisoned demon bite on Perseus's arm.

Literature

• In Fred Saberhagen's Books of Swords series, the last of the Twelve Swords of Power is Woundhealer, Sword of Mercy. Heck, Woundhealer not only patches you up, but it is so powerful that someone shoved it into their body and jumped off a cliff... and lived. The sword healed them right up. In fact, a useful tactic was to stab yourself through the heart with it, leave the sword in, and fight with another weapon.
• The characters of Dragonlance first learn about the Blue Crystal Staff's healing powers after Tasselhoff smacks someone with it in a misguided attempt to put out a fire.
• The Heralds of Valdemar series (and other books set in that world) by Mercedes Lackey feature Need - a magic sword that, among other things, heals those holding it. You don't have to stab people with it (her?) for this to happen, but still. It mostly only works on women, too, due to certain quirks, which later get resolved in the Mage Winds trilogy.
  • In one notable example, a possessed character that the heroes want to rescue is stabbed to death with Need, then subsequently healed back to life by the sword after the villain flees the body.
• The Lost Years of Merlin contains a literary example in the form of a magical double-edged blade, one side of which pretty much means guaranteed death, while the other can heal any injury. Mind, this still requires actually being cut with the blade before it can work its magic. If memory serves, someone does this by accident at one point.
• James Clemens's Shadowfall has a nasty twist on this. The healing shiv in question is a torture device, as the skin constantly being regenerated and torn apart.
• The Bow of Belphanes in War of the Dreaming. Amusingly, in one instance Galen forgets that his bow is very much a non-offensive weapon, and shoots an enemy with it. The man leaps up, cured, and runs away.

Professional Wrestling

• When the Randy Savage/Hulk Hogan on-again, off-again friendship was on again in WCW, Savage once used his finisher (a top rope elbow drop) to get Hogan to Hulk Up in a tag match.

Tabletop Games

• Arrows of Cure Light Wounds, from Dungeons & Dragons. They come in Cure Medium and Serious Wounds varieties, too.
  • Tiny Arrows of Cure X Wounds do less damage and are cheaper; buy a few of them and you now have magical healing hypodermics. Jab yourself in the arm with a tiny arrow and you're good to go!
  • An issue of Dragon Magazine had a Pelor-blessed variant in the form of padded crossbow bolts, which function like an Arrow of Cure Light Wounds.
  • And before those were around, there was the Staff of Curing.
  • D20 Modern has a gunslinger that can create magical bullets, including Bullets of Cure Light Wounds.
  • One orc sourcebook lists the Club of Healing. A blow with it hurts as normal, an also causes magical healing. On average the healing is a very slightly greater amount, so healing an injured person involves giving them the beating of their lives.
  • All of the above weapons are doubly effective against zombies. This is actually built in to a certain sword designed to tell vampires apart from regular people. Whenever it hits, it restores some HP as well. Hit a normal person, and they're slightly wounded. Hit an undead, and he takes massive damage.
  • The Arcanis campaign setting for the D20 SRD has flintlock weaponry. There members of a prestige class called the Pistol Mage, can embue their bullets with magical energy to deliver their spells on top of the damage from the flintlock pistols. Despite the name of the class, it is perfectly valid for a cleric to enter this prestige class. Thus it is possible for a cleric to shoot someone with a heal spell. When attacking the undead, this would hit them For Massive Damage.
  • Technically speaking, the way the rules for Sneak Attack are written, a Rogue making a Use Magic Device check with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds will heal his target for full Sneak Attack—but only if they're not expecting it. Of course, no (sane) GM would allow this in practice.^[1]
  • In a kind of inversion, there's the classic Potion of Inflict Light Wounds. It's a vampire's answer to a healing potion.
  • The 3.5 supplement The Complete Arcane had alternate forms of potions, such as spell tiles, in which the consumable spell in inscribed into a suspension rune on a brittle chalk or porcelain chit. To release the spell and reap its benefits, just snap the chit, and the effect passes to the nearest viable target. Give these to a ninja or other thrown weapons expert and you have an instant ranged combat medic and undead killer. This unfortunately borders on Game Breaker status, though.
• The Pinnacle Archery Charm of the Sidereal Exalted is Many-Missiles Bow Technique, which allows you to use your arrows to heal people... or a variety of other things.

Video Games

• In Ragnarok Online, the card "Chepet" can be added to any weapon to heal anyone it attacks. They're not particularly reliable, though...
  • One playable character class in Ragnarok Online is the Gunslinger. Their skill animations are usually that of shooting at someone. So, when they use the skill First Aid to recover health, they are literally HEALING THEMSELVES WITH GUNS.
• The Medigun from Team Fortress 2, as demonstrated by Tycho above. It can even raise its target's HP past their maximum, which will slowly drain back down unless the Medic keeps a continual shot going.
  • With the Australian Christmas update, the Medic now has the Crusader's Crossbow. The same bolts from it can alternatively hurt enemies or heal teammates.
    • Monday Night Combat's Support Class has a similar weapon, though you left click only heals allies and secondary fire only drains health from enemies.
  • In a more indirect fashion, the Sniper's Jarate, the Scout's Mad Milk, and the Flamethrower's Airblast can be used offensively or defensively by extinguishing burning teammates.
  • In the original version of the Team Fortress mod for Quake, the Medic's healing item was a giant axe with a red light on it. He could change it to a poison weapon, which is the same giant axe with a green light on it.
    • Global Agenda's medic class is largely based on this principle, making him a bizarre mix between pyro ("poison medic") and a traditional medic. Has all kinds of healing guns, healing AOE effects, and some vampiric weapons.
    • Also, if you think the Engineer's wrench is overly versatile now, back in the days of Team Fortress Classic, when you had both a health and an armor count, Engineers could actually restore armor by wrenching teammates.
• The Cure Staff from some Final Fantasy games heals anyone you whack with it. Though it's not always clear if it's actually supposed to be hitting the ally or being held up next to them.
  • It does make a lovely *klok* sound when someone bashes their ally over the head with it in Final Fantasy Tactics. Remembering whether or not it heals with its more esoteric uses is apparently an impossible task, so from time and time again players have killed their own characters by throwing the Cure Staff at them.
    • On the other side of the issue, the Cure Staff turns some attacks into extremely powerful buffs. In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the Templar's Soul Sphere, an area MP drain, transforms into a free area MP restore.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, the Chemist class hurls healing items at the recipient. There is a hilarious picture of Ramza getting nailed in the face with a potion (Still in the glass flask, which shattered) and screaming in pain until it went into effect.
    • Similarly, in Final Fantasy Tactics A2, using the Ranger's Mirror Item skill and then selecting Knot of Rust will cause the unit to hurl pieces of rock to heal the target (because Mirror Item reverses the properties of the item).
  • Also from Final Fantasy Tactics: Holy elemental heals dragon Reis or someone wearing the Chameleon robe. Earth clothes absorb earth elemental attacks as well.
  • And there is the dreaded Curaga Magick Frenzy while Dual-Wielding Cure Staves combo. It involves casting Magick Frenzy which casts a spell and causes the user to attack everything in it afterwards. The combo usually heals all targeted characters completely.
  • A Moogle class (Flintlock) and Bangaa class (Cannoneer) in Final Fantasy Tactics A2 can fire healing shots or Ethershots.
  • Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV have the Mallet, which cures a party member of the Mini status. Which is, of course, taken off the Japanese story "Issunboshi," as the Lucky Mallet did the same thing to the titular character.
  • Final Fantasy VI also had the Cure Rod, but the programmers fouled up the targeting code; it defaults to enemies when attacked with (which is when it heals) and allies when thrown (which is when it damages).
  • Final Fantasy XII has a whole category of weapons- Measures- that either heal or cast buffs on whatever they hit. They also give a massive boost to Evasion and can be equipped with a Shield which gives ANOTHER massive boost to evasion. Give them to your dedicated Mage character and they'll be hard as hell to hit, and capable of instantly buffing you with a single attack rather then spending MP on the buff.
• Games with customizable or enchantable arms occasionally have "healing" as a possible enchantment. 95% of the time, it's an enchantment you want to avoid at all costs.
• The cursed Vampire's Revenge sword from Baldur's Gate. It deals damage as normal, but also heals its target a small amount of damage.
• Killzone 2 has the Medic Gun, which revives downed allies that are still moving (otherwise known as "mortally wounded"). Amusingly, though, it can also be used as a weapon to kill enemies in Multiplayer.
  • Resistance 2's Co-op also has a medigun, the Phoenix. Primary fire drains enemy health, secondary fire heals allies. Handwaved in that it's reverse engineered from alien tech and the scientists who built it don't actually have a clue how it works. And neither do the medics using it.
• In Soma Bringer, one of the Gunner class's abilities is a "trap" that gradually heals anyone standing on it.
• During The War Sequence of Medievil, you are given the power to shoot "Good Lightning" at your skeleton soldiers in order to cure them at the expense of your own health. The more that survive, the more health vials you get afterwards, replacing the spent health.
  • In the second game, you get the Good Lightning during the fight with Jack the Ripper, so that you can cure Kiya; if she dies you lose the fight. After that stage, the Good Lightning damages your enemies as per the regular Lightning; unlike the unrechargable Lightning, it won't run out of ammo as long as you have health.
• The Heal Cannon from Shadow the Hedgehog.
• In the game Allegiance, one could mount a gun on their ship that shoots healing bolts, which out-heals the DPS from almost every weapon in the game.
• In Hogs of War, pigs promoted along the Medic path can learn abilities like Medicine Dart, a healing sniper rifle round, and Medicine Ball, a healing grenade. And yes, it's a strategy game about pigs in WWI.
  • If you fire the healing dart straight up into the air it will come back down and heal you. Same goes for detonating the healing ball the second it leaves your hand.
• In City of Villains, users of the Thermal Radiation set can actually use their fire to heal allies - either as a weak area-of-effect heal called 'Warmth', which is semi-understandable... or with a powerful single-target heal called 'Cauterize', which sort of makes you wince to think about. In fact, about two thirds of the powers in the set are single-ally buffs.
  • This game actually has quite a lot of dangerous-sounding powersets that somehow include heals and buffs. Poison has "Alkaloid", Ice Armor has the self-buff "Hoarfrost", which increases Max HP for awhile, and Radiation Emission has "Mutation", which is a resurrection! There's more, too.
  • The most common criticism of Trick Arrow is the lack of a healing power. This is usually countered by mentioned how silly a "Healing Arrow" would be. To some Trick Archers, an arrow they can use on teammates who constantly demand healing from them would be very, very tempting to misuse.
    • Healing Arrow's a suppository, we swear!
    • Well, Manticore did mention an enema arrow in the comic...
    • This didn't stop a member of an all Defender clan from creating a Trick arrow/archery character named 'Healing Arrow' - and got double the invites.
• Makai Kingdom has Big Fraggin' Syringes that can be wielded by Medics and Healers (unsurprisingly). Their first attack is a straight-up healing move. Pies have the same effect.
  • As do the Robot Nurses in the Gotcha Force fighting games. The syringes can be injected into team mates to heal them or shoot lasers. Really.
  • And the Doctor and Nurse costumes in Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon, which can optionally heal, revive, or increase attack.
  • Similarly, Phantom Brave has as its Healing Shiv a loaf of French bread. Its basic heal is, of course, hitting the target with the loaf.
  • Phantom Brave also includes the Mystic class whose basic move is a healing punch, which also pushes the target back. This gives the mystic the comical ability to knock enemies out - of-bounds by healing them.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's expansion, Shivering Isles, has a museum of oddities that the player can contribute to. One of the items which can be contributed is the Dagger of Friendship, which does 10 points of damage, and also heals 10 points on strike.
  • Also, with the Elder Scrolls series' trademark weapon enchantment, there's nothing stopping you from making as many of your own Healing Shivs as you want. Other than, you know, practicality. . .
  • The weapon shop in the city of Anvil sells a weapon called the Truncheon of Submission: a club that damages a creature's Fatigue while restoring their health. You don't kill anything with it, you just... make them fall over.
• The evokers from Persona 3 are used on the wielder, but still strictly qualify, being apparent guns that are used to summon personae.
  • It also uses the "elemental healing" variation noted above if you use the wrong attack on certain enemies, or if you equip a Persona with an elemental "Drain" ability and the enemy hits you with that element.
• The Nurse in Nethack will heal you instead of inflicting damage if she attacks you while you aren't wearing armour or wielding a weapon.
• Jack Van Burace from the first Wild ARMs game has a technique called "Heal Sword", which is pretty self-explanatory. Unfortunately, he does not actually hit his allies with it. It was sadly absent from the Enhanced Remake.
• The Team Healer item in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It can also be used as a weapon, but its healing capabilities are much more effective.
  • Every once in a great while, it backfires, healing the opposing players instead. D'oh!
  • In an interesting twist that is probably a programming oversight, it is also the only thing that can harm an invincible character.
• Etrian Odyssey II has a Gunner class who can learn a skill called Medi-Shot, which can cure status effects.
• Engineers, Technicians, and Hotwires in CnC Renegade have Repair Guns - which are equally effective at healing personnel, vehicles, and buildings.
  • Before being patched, Repair Guns had an alternate fire that allowed them to attack those very same targets, albeit at very short range.
• Unreal Championship's mutator "Link Gun Medic" turns the Link Gun into a Heal Link Gun. Its functionality remains the same, with its primary fire shooting balls of plasma death and its secondary fire shooting a solid stream of plasma death. However, when the secondary fire is used on a teammate, it heals him/her. A group of people next to each other will repair much faster than if they are too far apart to trigger this effect.
  • In Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament III, if used on a team-controlled vehicle/building, it becomes a team-colored stream of plasma repairing. If turned on an ally, (including 2003 and vanilla Championship) it instead makes that teammate's link gun more powerful—for repairs or for damage.
  • In Unreal Tournament III, the Link Gun does nothing if the plasma stream is pointed at an ally. Rather, being near an ally when you both have Link Guns out will enhance both of them.
• In RPGs which feature Elemental Powers, there are often characters or pieces of equipment which can "absorb" one type of elemental damage—converting an elemental attack into healing. For instance, a character who can absorb the fire element will be healed by fire spells and flaming weapons.
  • Especially sick in two-on-two battles in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, where with the right partner, you can hurt both opponents and heal/power up your partner with the moves Surf (heals Pokémon with Water Absorb or Dry Skin abilities), Discharge (heals Pokémon with Volt Absorb and raises speed of those with Motor Drive), and Lava Plume (raises strength of Fire-type attacks for Pokémon with Flash Fire).
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2 had a sick game breaker combo. Mages start off with 0 MP to mitigate some of the awesome high level spells. But, you could equip the mage with something to absorb an element, give a bangaa a weapon of that element, and use the special ability 'Rend MP' to heal the mages' MP for free. Especially deadly when the mage is an illusionist, who's spells attack all enemies on the map.
    • You can equip your entire party with gear that absorbs a certain element, then use Scholar spells of that element to hit everyone on the field, healing your entire team and damaging the entire enemy team.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance didn't have the MP restriction or the scholar class, but you could still give your entire team holy absorption and then just spam the holy summon into melee fights...
  • Final Fantasy X had elemental creatures for most of its summons, all of whom had powerful attacks of their own element... meaning that, at the cost of a not-quite-negligible amount of MP, they could heal themselves for, typically, whatever their enemies were doing to them in damage. If your creature was taking more turns due to its speed than your opponent was, it was basically invincible until it ran out of Mana.
• In Warcraft III, Death Knight's death coil is a damaging spell that can also be used to heal undead units. It's an evil version of the paladin heal holy light, which can damage undead units. Also, in World of Warcraft
  • The Deathcoil returns in World of Warcraft with the Death Knight as playable class in the second expansion, with its secondary functionality intact. It's mainly used on the ghoul that serves the Death Knight as a pet, but DKs with the Lichborne ability can occasionally use it on themselves, unlike the WC3 version.
    • Still, using Death Coil on hostile undead harms them like any other enemy.
  • The Priest spell Penance can be used to either harm enemies or heal allies.
  • Paladins have Holy Shock with the same properties.
  • While healers or casters in general never use their weapons in any meaningful fashion, they get significant benefits from weapons made for casters. A few weapons can even cause their own healing effects on top of the spells they boost with extra spellpower and other stats.
• Wandering Hamster, one of the demonstration games for the Game Maker OHRRPGCE, has the Heal Hit technique, which looks exactly like Bob the Hamster's normal hammer attacks.

Smite thyself with all thy might,
And afterward you'll feel all right.
Smite thy friends and not thy foes
With every hit your HP grows.

• One of Killing Floor's character classes is the Field Medic. His primary weapon is an MP7 with a secondary medication-dart launcher that can heal teammates at range. Similarly, the healing syringes that everybody gets are sort of shaped like guns, though they need to be directly injected into teammates to heal them.
• Jeanne D'Arc had a move for archers that allowed them to heal units from a distance by shooting at them. One of a few reasons why the two archers in that game border on Game Breaker territory.
• Chrono Trigger's Robo employs Heal Beams and Heal Lasers as well as the "normal" (damaging) variety.
• The Medicomp healing device used by the Predator in the Alien vs. Predator games is something like this. As Predators have physiology that's too robust for a mere needle, the player Pred instead has to inject healing medicine into himself using a pair of jagged, blue-bladed knives. And he roars in pain when he does it.
  • This actually does go in line with what we see in the films; in the original, the Predator fixes a gunshot wound by poking around with jagged implements, and in the sequel, the Predator literally uses melted tiling as mortar to close up his battle wounds. Predator first aid sucks.
• Tanks in Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime have a wide variety of defensive ammunition available, from shields fired at enemy ammo to block it, to herbs which heal the tank when shot out of its cannons.
• Geyser in Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is used like this during The War Sequence. Using it on damaged soldiers somehow enables your NPC ally Vic Viper to heal them.
• Raven from Tales of Vesperia can shoot healing arrows. If you look closer, they actually look like syringes.
  • Who loves ya, baby?
• Engineers in Tribes get the Repair Gun, which can be used (at very close range) on turrets, equipment dispensers, or allies' body armor.
• Exteel has these in the form of rectifiers. Guns that shoot a steady stream of healing energy.
• In Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, one of the NPCs that you can fight in an optional mission has a skill that lets him heal people by shooting them with a gun. It's not even a special gun, just his regular one.
• Conker Live and Reloaded has its own medigun, for the Grunt, Themophile, and Long Ranger Class, witch looks like some sort of cannon with a bloody syringe on it, witch when fired heals the target and give the healer 1 CP(the XP in the game) per unit of life healed. This was in-fact one of the only ways to heal, as only the above classes have a Self healing ability.
• Roland the Soldier from Borderlands has a Medic skill tree, and one of his main skills there is to convert friendly fire damage to health. Which means that you'll be shooting your allies to heal them. Yeah...
• In Endless Frontier EXCEED, Suzuka gains a skill that lets her heal the entire party using Jyaki-GUN-Oh. Jyaki-GUN-Oh is a robot stuffed full of Gatling Guns.
• The Energon Repair Ray in Transformers: War for Cybertron is a big, moderately-powerful-looking cannon with pincers at the end, looking like the kind of medical instrument an alien would use in the old UFO stories. It fires a stream of Energon that heals any allies and damages (anti-heals) any enemies it hits. It's possible in a multiplayer firefight to spray-and-pray with a Repair Ray and both heal and anti-heal combatants at the same time. You're even awarded "From the Brink" XP bonuses for shooting a teammate who's low on teammates. The players who actually use the Scientist character class as a healer will make it their mission to spend an entire multiplayer match shooting at their teammates as much as possible.
  • It also has 'healing charges'/healing grenades. Which you throw at your buddies. Make sure they're marked healing ones though, not EMP or anything else. Your buddies won't like the other ones, and will be affected.
• Leslie from Arc Rise Fantasia has her Healing Bullet skill, in which she shoots you. And you heal.
• In MARDEK, one of Meraeador's tools is a Potion Spray that can spray healing potions...or debuff or Curse potions. It looks exactly like his flamethrower.
• In Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, you can develop a version of the EZ Gun which can fire Life or Psyche-restoring rounds.
• Magicka allows you to combine the Life element with pretty much everything except Arcane, which leads to all sorts of combinations: healing rocks, healing fire, healing landmines...
  • In an even straighter example, you can simply cast Life on your sword/axe/crossbow/gun and the next attack with it will heal instead of hurt. Except against Undead, of course.
• In the Disgaea series, the "Reverse Damage" Geo Effect turns any weapon into this. Just don't try to use actual healing magic under this effect.
• Call of Duty: World at War has "Death Cards" which, once found, can be toggled on and off to make cooperative campaign games more difficult. Except for the Painkiller card, which instead allows players to revive downed teammates by shooting them.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, all of the non-Force classes with healing abilities make use of this. Imperial Agents fire darts filled with kolto at people using the same dart-firing bracer they use to poison enemies while Troopers and Bounty Hunters can use Combat Support cylinder/cell to turn their basic attack into a healing beam when used on party members and have kolto explosives to boot - a kolto bomb for the Trooper and a kolto missile for the Bounty Hunter.
• In the MMO Global Agenda, the Medic uses what is literally a Healing Shiv as their melee weapon- the Life Stealer. However, it's only capable of healing yourself.
• Battlefield 2 has the defibrillator, which is normally used in multiplayer to revive allies that are down. However, you can score kills with it...

Web Comics

• The Healing Shiv from 8-Bit Theater, though it was a throwaway joke, is the Trope Namer. It worked well enough to bring Thief back from the brink of death. Sarda's version, on the other hand... See also, for an absolutely absurd use of this trope, healing potions.

Web Original

• Discussed in Cracked.com twice:
  • Item #4 in 5 Sci-Fi Medical Procedures We'll Have in Our Lifetime is an example of this that we will have soon.
  • On the other hand, it's one of the 7 Video Game Healing Methods Least Likely to Actually Work.

Real Life

• Adrenalin injections into the heart, like the in Pulp Fiction, really do exist. Emergency doctors do this extremely rarely, slowly, and with great caution, so the movie depiction is way off. But it still means saving someone's life by stabbing them in the heart.
• The Precordial Thump, which can be used to treat cardiac arrest without a defibrillator. It's a fancy name for punching the patient in the chest in a very specific way. If done right, and if it works, it restarts the pulse just like Fonzie hitting the jukebox. If done wrong, it makes things much worse, and the heart is still stopped. Do Not Try This At Home.
• A (prescription-only) EpiPen looks a lot like a writing pen, but is for treating severe allergic reactions. You use it by jamming it straight into your thigh — and don't waste time taking your pants off first. (If you need to use an EpiPen, you don't have time to take your pants off first.)
  • Atropine and Praxilidome injectors used by the military to counter the effects of nerve toxin also work much the same way, and for a similar reason: If the person with the symptoms can't give himself the antidote right away, he'll be incapacitated and could die very quickly.
• The Jet injector can look disturbingly like a handgun, although it is used like a syringe. The fact that it is pressed to the skin, not used as a projectile from a distance as would be expected from a real handgun, slightly diminishes the effect.
• More generally, anything involving a hypodermic needle. Many student nurses have to overcome an emotional hurdle when they give injections for the first time, because they're naturally reluctant to stab somebody with sharp metal.
• The closest example would be the scalpel, when used in a specific way, and with other surgical tools, each of which are also used in a specific way.
• Posology, the study of measuring out quantities, reflects the phrase, "Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents."
• This occasionally overlaps with Lightning Can Do Anything when a person is electrocuted and their health actually improves from it. One example was a woman with multiple sclerosis who was talking on a landline telephone during a thunderstorm and was electrocuted through the phone lines. Bizarrely, this actually cured her MS.

1. ↑ Sneak Attack always does the same type of damage that the attack is inflicting (piercing with a spear, bludgeoning with a club, etc.). It also applies to any spell that requires an attack roll (save-based spells aren't affected). The way 3.5 interprets Revive Kills Zombie is that healing is technically "positive energy damage," but anything that isn't Undead or Obviously Evil is healed by positive energy (as Undead are healed by negative energy damage). What this boils down to is that, if Sneak Attack applies to a hit from a heal spell and an attack roll was made, sneak attack heals more. But, again, only if the target doesn't know it. The weird thing, this can't be used For Massive Damage on Undead, because Undead are explicitly immune to Sneak Attack.