Hooks and Crooks



"Hooks in you, hooks in me, hooks in the ceiling For that well hung feeling No big deal, no big sin, strung up on love I Got the hooks screwed in."

- Hooks In You by Iron Maiden

A Sub-Trope of Improvised Weapon, a hook is a curved or bent device for catching, holding, or pulling, while a crook is an implement having a bent or hooked form, such as a shepherd's staff. These can be great weapons with the addition of tripping and catching things. Included are canes and fishing hooks.

Often seen (in cartoons mostly) in situations where a comedian is doing so poorly on stage that a large wooden crook on a stick comes up from offstage and yanks him away: see Vaudeville Hook.

See also Hook Hand and Cane Fu.

Anime and Manga

 * One member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad in Berserk uses a long two-headed crook with spikes on the inside as his weapon.
 * One of the Captain Hook's pirates in Peter Pan no Bouken has a hook shaped sword.
 * Sir Crocodile sports a huge Hook Hand and at least one of Whitebeard's allies was armed with hooked sabers.
 * Giichi in Blade of the Immortal fights with a hook on a chain that grabs and breaks his enemies' swords.

Comic Books

 * Hook and chain is the Weapon of Choice of Lobo.

Film

 * I Know What You Did Last Summer: the serial killer uses a hook as a weapon. It later becomes a Hook Hand.
 * Plenty of the ghosts in John Carpenter's The Fog wield hooks.
 * Ventures to Impaled with Extreme Prejudice in Cobra and Universal Soldier: Regeneration where people are impaled on big industrial hooks.
 * Cenobites in Hellraiser attack their victims with hooks on chains.
 * Jacob Goodnight, the villain of See no Evil kills with hook on a chain..
 * One of the weapons of the titular villain in The Mutilator. One infamous scene has a victim getting it in her vagina.
 * The killer in Blood Hook uses an oversized fishing lure to catch the victims.
 * Main villain of Wrong Turn 3 Left for Dead arms himself with a meathook during final 1/3 of the film.
 * The killer in Sorority House Massacre II is armed with a hook.
 * Leatherface catches an escaping victim with a hook and drags her back to his family's house in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.
 * Two of the killers have them as their main weapon in Lovers Lane. The third has an actual Hook Hand.

Literature

 * In Night Watch, it is mentioned that the butchers on the rebel's side are particularly terrifying to the soldiers, as they wield a large amount of meat hooks, normal weapons being in little use. In Thud!, Vimes' butler Willikins suddenly reveals his Battle Butler side by carrying a few meat hooks with "worrying expertise".
 * The boatwoman in Jessica Salmonson's The Swordswoman uses a grappling hook as a weapon, both in melee and also dangling it from rooftops to catch necks.
 * This is how the victims in Village of the Vampire Cat are seemingly killed by claw attacks from a distance.

Live Action TV

 * Deadliest Warrior: the Somali Pirates use grappling hooks as their close range weapon.
 * And the Shaolin Monk's hook swords.

Real Life

 * Combining Eye Scream and this trope.

Tabletop RPG

 * In Dungeons and Dragons the "Gaff/Hook" as a typical Improvised Weapon in naval and quasi-naval settings got official weapon stats. Long before a crowbar or pry bar.
 * GURPS: Martial Arts has special rules for adding hooks to weapons along with a few things that already have integral hooks.
 * Tyranids use a biological version of this, aptly named flesh hooks. These weapons are typically housed in the rib cage or abdomen and are fired by intercostal muscle spasms. Nominally, flesh hooks are used for scaling sheer surfaces, but they can also be used to impale or snare unfortunate victims and drag them to their doom Scorpion-style.
 * Ogres in Pathfinder use "ogre hooks" as their signature weapon.

Theatre

 * There's a famous hookfight in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge.

Toys

 * Bionicle: Gali used two, Gahlok Va has a Hook Hand, and Makuta Chirox has Hook Blades.

Video Games

 * Sly Cooper's weapon of choice is a hook cane.
 * In Donkey Kong Country 2, the Krook enemy throws boomeranging hooks at you.
 * BioShock (series) has Spider Splicers that use hooks, and they even throw them at you.
 * Undead Abominations in Warcraft use cleavers and meat hooks as weapons.
 * Some of the skeleton pirates in The Ghost Ship level of Medievil fight with throwable hooks.
 * Mortal Kombat's Kabal fights with chinese hook swords.
 * As does Mavado. In canon, he almost killed Kabal to steal them, then Kabal returned the favor. Mavado also uses grappling hooks on bungie cords as a means of launching himself at opponents.
 * One of Rolento's super moves in Street Fighter Alpha 3 is hanging his opponent on a hook.
 * Hitman: Contracts has a mission with the Meat King's Party in a slaughterhouse, so a meat hook was both used in a cutscene and given as a weapon.
 * One of the early ideas for Resident Evil 4 featured a ghostly figure armed with a hook who chased Leon around.
 * The Butcher in Shank fights with a long hook-and-chain.

Web Original

 * Ruby has a mean left hook.
 * Sanford in Madness Combat uses a hook on a rope to vicious effect.

Western Animation

 * Jet's hook-swords in Avatar: The Last Airbender.