Armed Legs

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
These are .22 caliber heels.
POWER FEET ARE FOR KICKING THOSE FUCKS IN THE BALLS!
—Angry Marine lore

Sub-Trope of Weapon of Choice. A character whose weapon is greaves or shoes. One of the less improbable weapon choices out there, but still odd. Like The Grand List of Console RPG Cliches says for vambraces, expect these characters to still buy their weapons in the weapon store, even if they logically should be in the armor store.

Related to Power Fist, except with boots instead of gloves; may overlap with Extremity Extremist. Close to, but not to be confused with, Murderous Thighs. See also Tricked-Out Shoes, Leg Cannon, Combat Stilettos and Shoe Slap.

Examples of Armed Legs include:

Advertising

  • An old comic book ad for AAU Shoes had their superhero spokesman the AAU Shuperstar battle a villain called Missle-Toe who fired missles from his toes. Check it out here.

Anime and Manga

  • Sanji in One Piece is an Extremity Extremist who uses only his feet in battle. The second One Piece movie saw Sanji's shoes stolen, and Sanji unable to fight properly as they provided added protection for his feet.
    • He justifies choosing this style as having his hands bruised or calloused from fights would affect his performance as a cook.
  • Daimos has a retractable spike on each foot to simultaneously kick and stab Robeasts with.
  • The pickpocket Paninya from Fullmetal Alchemist has rather unique automail legs, with a huge blade deployable from her right shin (complete with "snk" sound effect), and a 1.5" carbine housed in her left knee.
  • Infinite Justice from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny has beam emitters that generate a cutting edge from knee to ankle giving it a rather nasty kick. Its distant ancestor the Aegis had beam sabers on all four limbs since it could transform into a claw-like flight mode. The unrelated Chaos Gundam from Destiny has beam claws in its feet and knees, mainly used in its flight mode.
    • The 105 Slaughter Dagger from Gundam SEED CE 73 Stargazer has machineguns in its feet. This seems unusual until you see episode 2 and discover (the hard way) that they're anti-personnel guns.
    • After its first round of modifications the Blue Frame in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray has a pair of "Armor Schneider" blades that pop out of the unit's feet and heels.
    • The titular Crossbone Gundams have Anti MS knives concealed in the calves, with the blade able to pop out through the sole of each foot.
    • The winner has to be the Gundam Zabanya from the upcoming Gundam 00 a Wakening of The Trailblazer, with Micro missile launchers in its ankles.
      • But then, Zabaniya isn't a Mobile Suit. It's a remodeled Ball with a sniper rifle and 78 Missile Tubes instead of actual arms and legs. 20 Missile tubes in each leg, by the way.
        • And then we won't even mention the fact that its Head-Mounted Vulcans are actually miniature versions of the Ptolemaios 2's Repeating GN Missile Launchers. That's right. Zabaniya has missile tubes in the head.
    • Seravee. It has GN Bazooka II's where other Mobile Suits have kneecaps. Taking this trope literally, the Bazookas also mount "hidden hands" which can wield beam sabers.
      • Seraphim II is even worse. Its feet are Detachable GN Bazooka IV's.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing's Gundam Heavyarms and it's later forms? It had shin and thigh-mounted missile launchers.
    • The Gundam AGE-1 Titus has knee-mounted beam saber emitters, while the Spallow has knee-mounted needle guns.
    • From the original series, the Big Zam's clawed toes could fire off as missiles [the thing didn't have arms, though] and the Zaku grunts could have missile launchers equipped to their legs.
  • Lenalee with her Dark Boots in D.Gray-man.
  • Nove from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. She has a Power Fist as well, but tends to use her armored rollerblades more often.
  • Mazinger Z: Mazinger-Z had one rocket on each foot. They were intended to allow it swim, but Kouji also used them like weapons -usually blasting a Mechanical Beast's face to force it ro release Mazinger-Z). Several Mechanical Beasts also had weapons fitted on their legs (for example, Deviler X1 had a rocket launcher!).
    • Great Mazinger has two attacks based around this, the Knee Impulse Kick (a retractable knee spike) and the Backspin Kick (a cutting blade in the lower leg).
  • Speaking of rollerblades, pretty much everyone in Air Gear.
  • Vash of Trigun has a pair of blades hidden in his boots that seemingly spring forth from a hard step.
  • The Type 17 Raiden and Type 17I Shinden in Gasaraki have a pair of pneumatic spikes mounted in each leg, one firing downward through the calve and the other upwards through the knee, admittedly they're meant for making holes in concrete walls and floors but, they often see improvised use against other TA's, taking kneeing someone in the gut and curb stomping to new heights.
  • Straight Cougar from S-Cry-ed can manifest his Alter as a pair of rocket boots and use them to make "bullet" attacks similar to Kazuma's.
  • The Gurren-Lagann is capable of creating 3 Giga Drills on each knee-cap. As well as one on each leg to replace the lower legs.
    • It is also able to make perform a "Gurren-Lagann Impact!" as shown when they combine with Arc-Gurren... By transforming the lower half of Gurren-Lagann into a giant drill and actually Giga Drill Breaking the Arc-Gurren from up front. All their allies think Simon and Viral are against the Dai-Gurren-Dan.
    • Chouginga Gurren-Lagann (AKA Super-Galaxy Gurren-Lagann in English). It is capable of creating Chouginga Giga Drills whereever it wants to. And then it can create more drills on those drills. And more on the second layer of drills. And then to top it off, it can create small, drill-shaped laser cannons that can target the enemy not just anywhere, but also anywhen. Yes. The Time-Space continuum can go die in a fire when Chouginga Gurren-Lagann shows up.
    • The titular mech, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann (meaning Heaven-Piercing Gurren-Lagann). It has 30 Probability Fluctuation Missiles in each shin. That mean a total of 60 Missiles that can alter Probability itself. The same goes for the Tengen Toppa Dai-Gurren in the second movie.
  • In Buso Renkin the female lead has a very pragmatic reason for wearing a short skirt... when she summons her weapon, the Valkyrie Skirt it appears as scythe-bladed "spider legs" that are worn via metal bands at mid-thigh.
  • Fabiola Iglesias of Black Lagoon has heel blades in her shoes for one hell of a nasty surprise for any punks who try to mess with her.
  • In Bubblegum Crisis, Priss' Powered Armor has contact-triggered explosives on top of both its feet. And rockets on both ankles. Attack sequence; 1). Jump. 2). Kick. 3). Activate rockets for rocket assisted kick. 4). Explosives go off once Mecha Mook receives kick to head. 5). Get dustpan to sweep up remains of mook.
  • Gunsmith Cats has Bonnie from the early stories who got blown up by Minnie. She replaces her lost leg with a prosthesis outfitted with a shotgun. The 3 part OVA gives a Continuity Nod to this when one of the two exotic weapons Washington offers to Rally ends up as this (the other one is Grey's machette prosthesis from later stories).
  • Black★Rock Shooter gives us a few examples from its stable of characters. Most notable are Chariot [sports bionic-looking legwear that ends in a razor-toothed wheel on each leg], and the illustration-only Black Rock Shooter Beast, who has small energy buzzsaws on the toes of her shoes, and some kind of articulated scythe-limbs on the backs of her shins.

Comic Books

  • X-23, Wolverine's Opposite Gender Clone, has one of her blades placed in each of her feet, which she uses for lethal kick attacks. Her creators tried to lampshade this by saying that the females of Wolverine's species have them in the feet to defend their children.
    • They... he... what? Since when is Wolverine a separate species from the other X-Men?
      • One of the many plot points Marvel have decided to ignore over the years is that in the early days of the character he was treated as if he was a mutated wolverine not a human mutant. Yeah...
      • Honestly, without context that looks more like a joke than a serious explanation.
    • More currently Wolverine comes a race of humanoids that evolved from canines, overseen by the ancient Romulus. It is very slightly less dumb than him being a mutated wolverine.
    • There's also the fact that (usually) Marvel 'verse mutants tend to have powers that more-or-less run in the family, or at least have a "flavor" of it; the Summers family (Cyclops, Havoc, Vulcan) for instance tend to absorb one type of energy and blast out another. Logan's family almost always has three bony claws in the arms/hands or legs/feet, just with different combinations; Logan's son has two in his knuckles, one pop out from his wrist. Thank god that the Healing Factor also runs in the family...
  • Marvel villain Tarantula, who usually fought Spider-Man, had as his main weapon spikes protruding from the toes of his boots; these could be used simply for slashing or stabbing, or to poison/drug an adversary.
  • Stompa of the Female Furies wears anti-matter that she uses to crush her opponents and which can create tremors or earthquakes by stomping on the ground.
  • Marvel Villain Stilt Man wears a set of weaponized extendable metal stilts.

Film

Literature

  • In the Gentleman Bastard Sequence Sequence, Capa Barsavi's daughter Nazca, at the age of seven, demanded a pair of boots with iron spikes on the toes so she could enact the Little Girls Kick Shins trope more effectively.
  • Played very practically by Adora Belle Dearheart in Going Postal. She isn't an Action Girl, but as she calmly points out, being stepped on by stiletto heels is like "being stepped on by a very pointy elephant" due to the sheer amount of pressure concentrated in one heel point.
  • In the Elenium, queen Ehlana's bodyguard Mirtai has managed to embed daggers into her boots so that only the tips emerge, making them mostly inconspicuous unless she happens to kick someone... especially where she prefers to kick them.

Live-Action TV

  • Canadian comedy troupe The Frantics have their famous "Boot To The Head" sketches
  • The Get Smart episode "Ship of Spies" had a villainous sea captain with a gun concealed in his wooden leg. He had a spare leg that had a knife hidden in it.
  • GekiToujaWolf/The Wolf Pride Megazord
  • On Deadliest Warrior, the KGB came with a shoe knife as their close range weapon.
  • Kamen Rider has a few characters do this, given that the franchise's signature finisher is a kick attack. Examples include Kamen Rider Kiva's 'Wake Up Fever', and Kamen Rider OOO's Condor and Wani legs.
    • Special mention goes to newcomer Kamen Rider Fourze, who, due to his module system, has a choice of about ten attachments for each leg, many of them weapons such as a chainsaw, gatling gun or missile launcher. His finisher uses his favourite- a drill equipped to his left leg.
  • James West had a blade in one shoe in The Wild Wild West, which he primarily used to cut the ropes whenever he and Artemus were tied up together.

Stand Up Comedy

  • In Eddie Murphy's comedy act, he mentions his mother would use her shoe to discipline her children.

Toys

  • Toa Pohatu from Bionicle spent the first two years of the storyline just kicking stuff. His only "weapons" were steel extensions of his feet, similar to safety boots. He later got some claws to go with them, which could be joined together to form a pretty hard, spiky ball... which he then kicked into anything that needed a good kicking.
    • To be fair, his first appearance did involve him kicking a boulder that must have weighed a dozen tons like a soccer ball.
  • Black★Rock Shooter Beast's Figma accurately reproduces the leg-scythes and feet-buzzsaws mentioned above.

Tabletop Games

  • Boss Zagstruk from Warhammer 40,000 is a melee-oriented Ork with a Jet Pack. After his legs were torn off by a Space Marine dreadnought, he made sure his replacement "bioniks" were made from Power Klaws, letting him execute even more devastating diving attacks.
  • In Age of Aquarius Second Edition, a number of heavy footwear increases your character's kick damage and lets it deal lethal, not subdual wounds. These include combat boots, Russian army jackboots, safety boots, Grinders and Dr. Martens. The first edition lacks subdual damage mechanics and only has the army jackboots in the weapon table.
  • In "Exalted" , artifact weapons are not called by the same names as their mundane equivalents. Swords are called daiklaives, spears are called direlances. And then there is a type of artifact weapon called "God-Kicking Boots".

Video Games

  • Regal in Tales of Symphonia, owing to the fact that for most of the game, his hands are bound.
    • He continues to use his greaves in the sequel even after he removes his handcuffs, after vowing never again to use his hands as weapons of death.
    • He takes his vow literally, as he won't hesitate on using his feet to kill (including a cornered, defenseless man - who was beyond salvation, but still - along with Presea). Other characters occasionally call him on it, mostly for comedic effect.
  • Chie in Persona 4, despite the fact that most of her weapons are not metal, they are still bought from a metal smith.
  • Duster from Mother 3 fights with kicks and thus needs shoes.
    • Duster has a club foot (which is why he limps), so the extra-thick soles provide more shitkicking power.
    • Also played with in EarthBound after fighting the Kraken; the captain claims to have thrown his slippers at the monster as they fought.
  • Dante in Devil May Cry wields these with his Beowulf weapon. It returns in the form of Gilgamesh in Devil May Cry 4.
  • Vile from Mega Man X is a literal example of this trope, dropping bombs out of his knee joints.
  • In Arc the Lad II, if you equip the singer Shante with shoes as a weapon, she'll take her high heels off and beat the monsters/terrorists/etc over the head with them.
  • With Loads And Loads (And Loads...) Of Characters, it was only natural to have at least one entry from the Suikoden series fight with their feet. In this case, it's Wakaba, whose "Shin Guards" can actually be improved by a blacksmith as the game progresses; presumably, her Armed Legs add to her fierce, Chun-Li-style kicks.
  • One of Hinata's special moves in Rival Schools is kicking her shoes at the enemy from midair, complete with pretty rainbow trail effects. Exactly how she's able to repeat this up to 3 times in quick succession within a single jump is anyone's guess...
  • Kisala's secondary weapons in Rogue Galaxy are shoes as well.
  • Used interestingly in Bayonetta: the title character is capable of quadruple-wielding guns by virtue of strapping a pair to her heels. The result is a very literal example of Combat Stilettos.
    • Also by attaching other weapons to her feet, such as shotguns, ice skates, fire/electricity energy claws, and a pair of rocket-launching giant tonfas. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
    • How she pulls the trigger on the damn things, though, is anyone's guess.
  • Charge Man's weapon, the Charge Kick, from Mega Man 5.
    • More specifically, it weaponizes the slide.
  • Gale from Digital Devil Saga keeps a concealed blade in his shoe which extends when he kicks. He only ever uses it in cutscenes, as when he fights in human form he uses his assault rifle instead. When he fights in demon form on the other hand, he fights exclusively with the bony blade extending from his foot - since he has no arms.
    • He has arms in Demon Form (you can see them when the characters do their victory poses), it's just that his hands and arms have no such bony extensions, and, as such, his best method of attacking is stabbity-stab with his feet.
  • The Takewown class in Ragnarok Online uses kicks, but they don't use boots as weapons. Only their upgraded version can actually even equip a weapon (Books)
  • To some degree, M. Bison of Street Fighter II uses this. His metal greaves are one of his most distinct traits, and his kicks do tend to be muai thai style shin kicks that would seemingly employ them.
  • The Grieve Edge fighting style in Soul Calibur consists entirely of kicking with bladed feet.
  • Metal Fatigue Combots could roll out of the assembly bay packing light artillery, missiles pods, or lasers mounted on their legs. Armed Legs are the earliest leg research options available.
  • Aschen Brodel from Endless Frontier uses Rocket Fists and calf-mounted shotguns.
  • Jian Campbell from Lunar: Dragon Song.

Web Original

  • Melanie Malachite from RWBY. Her preferred weapon are a pair of spur-like blades on the backs of her armored boots, which she wields with an array of kicks.

Western Animation

Real Life

  • Real life example: Near the end of George W. Bush's term, an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at him, considered the ultimate insult in Arabian culture. Bush ducked, though. Makers of Political Cartoons were overjoyed, as the incident provided a handy visual metaphor for anything for the next few months. Bush's handling of it was great, though. "It was a size 10".
  • Steel-toed boots were created to prevent dropped objects from crushing workers' feet. Thugs soon discovered that they come in handy for kicking as well.
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