Deadly Disc

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Disks, saw blades, shields, manhole covers, and metal plates are effective weapons when thrown. Manhole covers are a favorite among supers in an urban setting, as the strength required to lift one and throw it like a frisbee would induce Fridge Logic if the thrower was a non-super. However, normals can still improvise with CDs , plates, vinyls, or even pizzas, which will be Played for Laughs.

This type of weapon is typically a Pinball Projectile or Precision-Guided Boomerang.

A close relative to Killer Yoyo and Rings of Death. See also Improvised Weapon, and Improbable Use of a Weapon. Has nothing to do with the Discworld, though it's usually pretty deadly (especially in Fourecks).

Examples of Deadly Disc include:

Anime and Manga

  • If we count energy disks, Krillin's Kienzan or Destructo Disk from Dragonball Z which acts like a sawblade that cuts through anything.
    • Frieza probably gave us the deadliest variant in fiction...not only does it cut through anything, but it CHASES AFTER YOU.

On second thought. Catch it. Catch it with your teeth.

    • In Dragon Ball GT, Syn Shenron throws a clock tower's clock at Goku. Goku catches it and throws it back... with enough force to slice a building in half.
  • Eternal Sailor Moon does this with a pizza. Though it's technically a Shout-Out to her first attack, Moon Frisbee/Moon Tiara Action.
  • In One Piece, Doctor Hogback's zombie maid Cindry despised dinner plates and used them as her preferred weapon because she enjoyed breaking them.
  • Series II of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman has Eagle Ken armed with a discus in place of his eagle shaped boomerang.

Comic Books

  • Trash can lids has been used, by Steve Rogers IIRC (he was out of costume and had to improvise).
    • Captain America's one-time sidekick Nomad used weighted throwing disks as weapons.
  • The Marvel superhero Ricochet, who has the superability to throw discs and have them hit whatever he wants.
  • There is a minor villain in the Marvel Universe called Discus. Guess what he hurls as weapons?
  • Ozymandias uses his plate as one during the climactic fight of Watchmen.
  • One of the New Universe characters had telekenetic control over one object and one object only... a hubcap.
  • Issue 174 of the DC Universe's Blackhawk had a villain who fired spinning saw blades from a flying Monowheel Mayhem device.

Film

  • Used twice in Toy Story 2. Buzz Lightyear throws discs at Emperor Zerg during the videogame opening sequence and the fight on top of the elevator.
  • Elasti-Girl in The Incredibles uses a manhole cover to take out the robot's laser. She doesn't have the super-strength to fling it normally (as evidenced by her effort to lift it), so she stretches her arm around a street lamp and sling-shots it at the robot.
  • Tron; in fact, one of the Atari 2600/Intellivision games based on the original movie was actually called Tron: Deadly Discs. Tron: Legacy switched to Rings of Death.
  • In Commando, Matrix kills two goons by throwing circular saw blades at them.
  • Darkman II: "This guy says the 'Phantom of the Opera' threw a manhole cover like a frisbee."
  • Records are used in Shaun of the Dead, to no real effect.
  • CDs in Three Ninjas, though mainly as a distraction.
  • Superman II: the supervillainess Ursa throws a manhole cover at Superman and knocks him into a car.
  • Marty does it in Back to The Future Part II (in Biff's office) and III. In the former, it's an ashtray with star-like blades sticking out. In the latter, it's an instance of creating a Stable Time Loop again, as the insinuation is that it's the original Frisby pie plate that inspired the phenomenon that led to the Frisbee.
  • In Wild Wild West, Dr. Loveless has a machine that fires high speed homing saw blades.
  • The Batmobile in Batman Returns fires high-speed discus-style discs that Batman uses in the opening fight to unseat Skull Riders.
  • Jet Li's Super Soldier character in Black Mask somehow manages to critically wound his former commanding officer by throwing a CD at his neck. Said CD manages to cut into the neck and is halfway in.
  • The Predators, starting with the one from Predator 2 onward, have been shown to use a disc which can slice clean through multiple targets and return to the wielder. In the Alien vs. Predator films, the disc was changed to a shuriken, though the games typically stick with the Predator 2 incarnation.
  • In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Scott chucks a cymbal from a drum set right at Matthew Patel's head.
  • Hancock: how Hancock disposes of Red and gains control of Red's detonator to bombs on hostages after Red calls Hancock an asshole. Hancock made it by flattening a metal pole lamp shade and pinching the edge to make it sharp.
  • In Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, while he didn't really mean to use it as a weapon, Judge Doom threw a vinyl record at one of the Weasels when he found out Roger Rabbit was hiding in the bar.
  • The possessed miners in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars use sharp metal discs as one of their weapons of choice. When properly thrown, a disc can easily decapitate a man (or woman).
  • A disc jockey in Hellraiser III Hell On Earth is turned into a compact disc-flinging cyborg-like monster.
  • Used in Twister, during the scene where the tornado hits the drive in theater. Jo, Bill and the team are mostly safe crouched down in the grease pit of a next door garage, but hubcaps go flying though the air and take a nice streak out of one guy's head. Partly his own fault for jumping up to grab a rogue hose flopping around.
  • The fundamental subject of 1990's movie I Come in Peace, where an alien with a flying killing disc gets on Earth and Dolph Lundgren gets to handle it.

Literature

  • In Discworld, this is one deadly form dwarf bread takes. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • Sharpened plates are used as weapons in Wolves Of The Calla, the fifth book in The Dark Tower series.
  • Engineer Sam Kelly in Born to Run, part of the The SERRAted Edge series by Mercedes Lackey, uses blunted sawblades to great effect, throwing them like a discus. It works in part because he's battling elves highly vulnerable to Cold Iron.

Live-Action TV

  • Smallville season 9 episode "Savior". A Kandorian woman from the future uses blue kryptonite to negate hers and Clark's powers and attacks him. During the fight she throws a circular saw blade at him at high speed.
  • In Xena: Warrior Princess, one of Xena's signature weapons is a razor-edged hoop called a chakram.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

  • Krishna has the ultimate badass version of this in Hindu Mythology. Even other gods are afraid of it.

Tabletop Games

  • Forgotten Realms has a first-level spell named 'Flamespin', creating a pinwheel of flame. Unattended, it only hangs where spawned and burns (useful to block a narrow passage), but the caster can pick it up and beat someone with it, throw it down a corridor, and so on.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has disc saws weaponized by various insurgents (mining equipment) and Ork walkers (purpose made).
    • Narthecium is a field medic tool which includes a buzzsaw or chainsaw (there are variants), more for emergency removal of armor than for amputations - standard issue for Space Marines, though a lesser version appears in well-supplied Guard regiments.
    • Spinoffs follow and expand it, perhaps predictably.
      • Dark Heresy has stats for Hunting Quoit (chakram) among the weapons of more primitive worlds.
      • Rogue Trader, with its unspoken obligation to outdo the other lines, introduced "Crimson Crown" - a thrown buzzsaw floating on a miniature suspensor (like in those servoskulls), and Power Discus - much the same, but as high-tech version it's lighter and instead of teeth uses circular power blade (i.e. augmented with disruptor field).
      • Deathwatch and Only War have rules for using Narthecium (see above) as an Improvised Weapon.

Toys

  • LEGO: the Throwbots / Slizers series featured robots that throw disks.
    • Bionicle, the successor of the before mentioned series and Roboriders, reuses the disk as weapons for Matoran. Later, Kanoka Disks were added, fired using a launcher.

Video Games

  • The aforementioned Atari 2600/Intellivision game Tron: Deadly Discs, plus its arcade counterpart Discs Of Tron.
  • The trademark Starsiege: Tribes weapon is the spinfusor-a handheld frisbee launcher. Glowing blue frisbees that EXPLODE. It's basically a Rocket Launcher in the list of Standard FPS Guns, with an actual Missile Launcher only used against vehicles and any infantry foolish enough to use their jetpacks enough to raise their heat signatures.
  • Dead Rising protagonist Frank West can make use of stacks of plates and CDs as weapons. They work about as well as you'd think too... Until you level Frank up.
  • Resistance 2: the Splicer's main fire mode launches circular saws that ricochets on walls and splices everything that gets in their way. And with the secondary mode, it can rev up the saw (which can double as a melee weapon during this phase) and when fired, it hits the enemy and splices it from within.
  • In the Half Life 2 level "We Don't Go To Ravenholm", you can pick up sawblades in the sawmill with the gravity gun and use them as deadly discs.
  • In Revolution X, your best weapons against the New Order Nation are CDs fired in rapid-fire fashion.
  • Dead Space brings you The Ripper, good for when you want to cut a 2x4 from across the room.
  • Lost Planet has the Disc Grenade, which has the added bonus of being a Sticky Bomb.
    • In Lost Planet 2, you also have the Shuriken, which does what the average Deadly Disc does in most games.
  • Destroy All Humans!: Features the Disc Launcher, which will catch a human on it, fly them into various solid objects to lower the health of the human, and rise into the sky towards the end of its run, exploding and dropping them from great heights.
  • Metal Man's weapon in Mega Man 2. Resurfaces in Mega Man Battle Network 3 as one of MetalMan.EXE's signature weapons.
  • Rinoa of Final Fantasy VIII has a few weapons that function as this, namely Rising Sun and Shooting Star.
  • The Engineer from Ghouls vs. Humans has the Blade Launcher, which shoots discs that rip through enemies and land on the ground, harming anyone who passes over them. They can also be simply dropped down to make a trap.
  • Several weapons throughout the Ratchet and Clank series involve launching circular saw blades at enemies. Many of which track. Or split into more blades upon contact.
  • The Disc Gun from Super Crate Box. It's also a Pinball Projectile. Be careful with it.
  • There are a lot of these in the Meat Boy games.
  • Dwarf Fortress allows the dwarves to forge large serrated discs, a type of weapon that can only be used in weapon traps. Up to ten discs at a time can be placed in a single trap, and due to the way weapon damage is calculated, they are one of the most deadliest - and messiest - conventional trap types in the game, and quite often result in flying limbs, heads and assorted Ludicrous Gibs with spray of blood all over. As the most capable of instant kills, it's also the most also prone to jamming, however.
  • The Castlevania Sorrow games have the Disc Armour, which uses a disc on a tether to attack you with. You can get this ability by obtaining the foe's soul. Symphony of the Night also features a variant as a Unique Enemy.
  • The Turok series has the Razor Wind weapon (nothing to do with the trope of the same name).

Web Animation

  • Rinoa's shield/boomerang/buzzsaw Silenced Tear in Dead Fantasy II.

Web Comics

Western Animation

  • Depthcharge of Beast Wars fires energy disks with the Fan Nickname of "Energy Pizzas".
  • Birdman episode "Train Trek". The villain fires the "Guided Disc" (a giant spinning circular saw blade) at Birdman.
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did this constantly in the 1987 cartoon with manhole covers. Considering manhole covers generally weight about 150 pounds (likely much more on high-traffic New York streets) and the turtles were generally speed fighters, one would think that they would favor an easier to utilize weapon to throw...

Real Life

  • The ancient weapon of the India - Rings of Death known as the Chakram. Perhaps most famously used by the Sikhs (not to mention Xena), it even forms part of the symbol of their religion. "Chakra" also means simply "wheel", which may point to the origin in an Improvised Weapon, such as throwing chariot's wheel or some reinforcing metal piece from it.
  • The Greeks had discus throwing as a classic warrior sport. Coincidentally, they used chariots, too.
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