Horn Attack

Use Your Head is good and all, but sometimes using blunt force is not effective. Instead, a sharp horn on the head can be more useful. Also included are horns that can shoot projectiles or beams.

Weaponized Headgear often have spikes to be used in this regard.

Subtrope of Natural Weapon. See also Rhino Rampage, A Load of Bull, and Horned Humanoid. Can result in being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.

Examples of Horn Attack include:

Advertising

• In a TV commercial for Mountain Dew, a GenXer goes up against a ram in a ramming contest over a bottle of Dew. The GenXer wins.

Anime and Manga

• In the third One Piece movie, the villain goes on One-Winged Angel after eating some magical golden horns and transform in a giant furry behemoth with large golden antlers. Not only he's strong enough to cause an earthquake when he headbutts the ground, but he can also heat them up. In the main series, Chopper's strongest form is the "Horn Point".
  • Also Magellan appears to be a Horned Humanoid, but the "horns" are actually detachable and he can wear them on his hands as weapons.
  • Subversion: Duval's pet Bison, Motobaro tries to ram Luffy as Duval gushes about how his "Heart-Crushing Horns" are unstoppable and capable of bringing down walls and dams.... then when the two impact, we clearly see that Motobaro's horns are far above Luffy. Chopper even lampshades this.
• In Tiger and Bunny, Rock Bison has a large pair of horns on his Powered Armor. Subverted in that when he tries to use them to stop a getaway car, the horns get stuck and the crooks get away.
• This is how Chirin actually kills the evil wolf at the end of Chirin no Suzu (he is now a sinister-looking ram).

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics supervillain The Rhino has a rhino suit he's permanently bonded with. His attacks generally involve running at you bent over with his horn poking out.

Film

• In Team America: World Police, the German representative for Kim Jong Il's play does this by accident to Kim Jong Il himself as the dictator falls on his helmet's giant spike and impales himself dead on it.
• The Reek in Attack of the Clones (the arena sequence).
• Subverted in Legend when Jack fights Darkness. Darkness charges Jack with his horns foremost as though he's planning on piercing him with them, but ends up with the horns touching a wall with Jack trapped between them.

Multiple Media

• Bionicle's Kane-Ra bull and the Mix and Match Critter Rahi Nui, which has the head of a Kane-Ra, usually use this strategy. The Rahi Nui, at its first appearance, was in fact defeated by letting it drive its horns into a rock wall with so much force, it couldn't pull itself out. Strangely, the actual Kane-Ra toy is an aversion, as it has a jaw-snapping attack, and the horns are just decoration.

Live Action TV

• Kamen Rider OOO: Sai (rhinoceros) medal allows him to attack with a horn on his head.
• On one episode of Supernatural, a man dies after a unicorn stabs him through the chest with its horn.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons and Dragons
  • The following 1st/2nd Edition monsters made attacks with their horns: arcanadaemon, babau demon, Baphomet (demon lord of minotaurs), chimera (goat head), criosphinx, giant beetle (rhinoceros, stag), giant goat, herd animal, Irish deer, ki-rin, margoyle, minotaur, narwhale, peryton, rhinoceros, satyr, stag, stegocentipede, stench kow, tarrasque, triceratops and unicorn
  • Hordlings were designed using a random generator. Some of them had horns they could use to attack with.
  • Figurines of Wondrous Power. The Goat of Travail could attack with its horns, and the Goat of Terror had removable horns. The owner could take the horns from its head and use them as weapons in combat.
  • In the Dark Sun setting, the cattle-like Carru would slash at opponents with their long horns. Male Syrga (pig-like quadrupeds) had horns which they could use to gore an opponent for extra damage.
  • 3rd Edition
    • In Sword and Sorcery's Creature Collection, the following creatures can make horn/antler attacks: Amalthean ram, crescent elk, emperor stag, hornsaw unicorn, muskhorn, orafaun, Slarecian gargoyle
• There's a Yu-Gi-Oh! Equip Spell Card called Horn of the Unicorn; presumably, Monsters equipped with it attack by goring their enemies.
• Gamma World: mutant animals could have the Horns mutation. In 1st Edition rakoxen had them. In 2nd Edition hoppers did too.

Video Games

• Pokémon: the moves "Horn Attack" (the Trope Namer), "Horn Drill", "Megahorn", and "Horn Leech".
• The unicorns in the various incarnations of the Heroes of Might and Magic.

Web Comics

• Nice shirt, gay-wad.

Western Animation

• Looney Tunes
  • Porky Pig short "Picador Porky" (1937). Porky faces off against a bull in a bullfight. The bull tries to gore Porky several times.
  • Bugs Bunny short "Bully for Bugs" (1952). After Bugs accidentally tunnels into a bullring, he gets into a fight with Toro the Bull. Toro repeatedly tries to skewer him on his horns during their battle. In one scene, Toro swallows a rifle and finds that he can shoot bullets from his horns.
• Thundro from The Herculoids not only has rhino-like horns along his snout, he also has a hollow horn on his forehead that shoots rocks.
• Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Eatle can shoot beams from his horn after consumption.

Real Life

• The sheer diversity of horned/antlered animals today and in Earth's past is a testament to the ostensible Truth in Television of this trope. However most examples from Nature tend to be subversions: horns are primarily for display of fitness. Only when contenders for mating rights/territory/food are evenly matched are they used aggressively, though most of the resulting scraps are akin to wrestling matches. Things have Gone Horribly Wrong though. This doesn't stop horns being used as offensive weapons among species, especially when prey defend themselves against predators, though unlike the fictional examples it isn't their main function.