Healing Shiv/Playing With

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Basic Trope: A weapon that heals the target rather than harming it.

  • Straight: Hiro's teammate Morgana has a staff called the Love-Me Tinder, which heals anyone she smacks it with.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Justified:
    • The knives are blessed by a goddess of war and victory.
    • Or the Healing Shiv was enchanted by an evil wizard to cause as much pain as possible, but the spell went wrong, causing it to have the opposite effect, which fits with its unsuitability as a standard weapon.
    • Or, ditto, and leaving this person alive causes more pain in the long run.
    • It's not a flamethrower, it's a special spray of healing nanomachines.
    • It's a normal flamethrower, but the particular character she's using it on is healed by fire.
  • Inverted: Revive Kills Zombie
  • Subverted: The "healing staff" turns out to be an ordinary staff one can channel healing magic through. Simply hitting someone with it hurts them...
  • Double Subverted: ...but that's just because healing magic is a bit painful.
  • Parodied: The healing shiv, though extremely effective, is a jet-black, spiky, gigantic axe, and its wielder is intent upon healing even complete strangers with it.
  • Deconstructed: The weapons still hurts just as bad and it is commonly used by Lord Mephisto for Cold-Blooded Torture.
  • Reconstructed: However Hiro is enough of a badass that he regularly stabs himself with a healing knife to keep on fighting.
  • Zig Zagged: Morgana's knives do damage to enemies, but heal most of her allies, allowing her to fling them at will without worrying about hurting any of her friends... except for Marina, who is naturally weak against fire, which trumps the healing enchantment on the blades. Similarly, monsters who can absorb fire damage are also healed by the blades, so the player has to keep that in mind and make sure not to use it under those circumstances.
  • Averted: There are no healing weapons.
  • Enforced: The game designers were too lazy to make an extra animation for healing.
  • Lampshaded: "Whoever designed this thing doesn't really understand the purpose of weapons..."
  • Invoked:
  • Defied:
    • "Quick, pull out your Knives of Healing and stab me!" "That is the single most stupid thing you have ever said to me."
    • "Can I have some medical equipment that doesn't make me look like an axe murderer?"
  • Discussed: "Why does that sword heal people?" "There was a label mix up on the rune-book."
  • Conversed: "Wouldn't it be awesome if we made Morgana's knives heal people instead of hurt them?"
  • Played For Laughs: Chase is terrified of Morgana's knives and doesn't want to be hit by them, even though they'd just heal his wounds. Cue Morgana chasing her wounded comrade all over the battlefield trying to "help" him.
  • Played For Drama: Morgana tests her brand-new weapon by attacking General Wolf with it, inadvertently healing him.



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