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Improvised Weapon: Difference between revisions
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* School - Eraser dust, erasers, pointers, AV carts, [[Throw the Book At Them|heavy textbooks]], [[Food Fight|cafeteria]] [[Edible Ammunition|food]], [[The Pen Is Mightier|writing implements]], [[Batter Up|wooden or aluminum bats (from the gym)]], [[Broomstick Quarterstaff|broom handle from the janitor's closet]], [[Instrument of Murder|instruments from the music classes and/or marching band]], desks (those things are a lot lighter then they look), [[Chairman of the Brawl|chairs]] (again, and like tables they are lighter than they look) [[Paper Master|note paper]] (there's always some form of blank white paper in a school), A computer, or any sort of sports equipment.
* Prison - Real knives are hard to get and quickly confisticated. So convicts improvise a LOT. All of the above is used, with the addition of broken glass, plastic bags, elastic bands, gum, toothbrushes, and many, many other things.
* Kitchen - [[Knife Nut|knives]] and [[Knife Outline|lots of 'em]], hot pots of coffee, [[Projectile Toast|toasters]] (whacking opponents with the toaster is an option), [[Frying Pan of Doom|frying pans]], [[Rolling Pin of Doom|rolling pins]], [[Edible Bludgeon|any large, solid mass of frozen food]] (which gives a whole new meaning to [[Lethal Chef]]); when applying to silverware specifically, it is [[Fork Fencing]], A fridge, the microwave, [[Deep
* The wilderness -- branches, fire, rocks, avalanches, [[Everything's Worse With Bears|bears]], [[Shamu Fu|sharks]], local wildlife, fishing poles and [[Hooks and Crooks|hooks]].
* Construction Sites -- [[Wrench Whack|wrenches]], [[Shovel Strike|shovels]], [[Drop the Hammer|hammers]], [[An Axe to Grind|hatchets]], [[Pipe Pain|pipes]], iron bars, wooden stick, [[Powerful Pick|pickaxes]], paint buckets, blowtorches, [[Aerosol Flamethrower|aerosol flamethrowers]], [[Crowbar Combatant|crowbars]], hacksaws, [[This Is a Drill|portable drills]], [[Chainsaw Good|power cutters]], [[Nail
* Farmland -- pitchforks, hoes, [[Shovel Strike|shovels]], rakes.
* If you're a [[Distressed Damsel]], always a vase. [[Alpha Protocol|Maybe a small statue]]. Or a high heeled shoe. Or a pen... ([[Red Eye (Film)|we're looking at you, McAdams]]).
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** And later she defeats them with a sword controller.
** She also used a newspaper and long light bulb against Kenichi for training
** Once she used her hairband because she didn't have a weapon on her [[Full
* ''[[One Piece]]'': [[Supreme Chef]] Sanji normally refuses to use knives in combat, despite being extremely skilled with them. He reasons that a chef's knives are tools for preparing food, not weapons. However, against one opponent that uses food as a weapon (which trips his [[Berserk Button]], he ''hates'' people who waste food) he does not face this restriction.
* ''[[Darker Than Black]]'': Hei doesn't use this trope excessively in season one, but come season two and he pulls out all the stops<ref>since he suddenly [[Brought Down to Badass|has to be a little more creative]]...</ref>. He explicitly explains the concept of using this in combat, then demonstrates it by distracting Suou with a few thrown nuts and bolts, followed swiftly by a snowball flung hard enough to floor her and leave a mark on her face that persisted for the rest of the day.
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* In ''Undercover Blues'', Jeff Blue uses his daughter's stroller to beat up two muggers.
* ''[[Blade Runner (Film)|Blade Runner]]'': Deckard is cornered in a bathroom with two broken fingers, no gun, and the villain Roy Batty has just walked in. His response? Wrest a lead pipe from the wall and beat Roy in the head with it. Roy's response? "Yes, that's the spirit!"
* In ''[[Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Film)|Transformers Revenge of the Fallen]]'', the big forest battle starts with Optimus wailing on Megatron with [[Telephone Polearm|a couple of nearby trees]].
* In the 2009 ''[[Star Trek (Film)|Star Trek]]'', Kirk uses his dropsuit helmet as a bludgeoning weapon when he loses his phaser on the Narada's drill.
* In ''[[Scream (Film)|Scream]]'' Sydney takes out one of the killers by dropping a television on his head.
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** She also gets her revenge on [[Dude, She's Like, in A Coma|the hospital orderly who pimped her out]] by putting his head in a door and slamming it.
* ''[[Ip Man]]'' may be a [[Martial Pacifist]], but if pushed has no qualms against using a feather duster, a long bamboo rod, wood pallets etc. to fight.
* In ''[[The Mist]]'', [[Never Mess With Granny|an elderly English teacher]] [[Boom! Headshot!|clocks a delusional religious fanatic in the face with a can of peas]], among many examples throughout the meat of the movie.
* In ''[[The Incredible Hulk (Film)|The Incredible Hulk]]'', the Hulk uses pieces of a broken statue to [[Improvised Armour|shield]] himself from the sonic cannons. He then uses the same pieces to [[Deadly Disc|take down]] one of the cannons and, later, a gunship. During the final fight, Hulk turns a police car into a pair of impromptu boxing gloves.
* In the [[Jean Claude Van Damme]] film ''Sudden Death'', he kills a man with a chicken bone ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wwa9ExLhSA death #2 here]).
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* On ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', vampires can be killed by driving any sharp piece of wood into their heart, and Buffy frequently exploits this. She has used (among other things) sticks, a wooden 2x4, a mop handle, a drumstick, a pool cue, and a ''#2 pencil''. Occasionally, she will instead decapitate a vampire with an improvised weapon, from a thrown cymbal in the pilot, to closing a car door on a vampire's neck in season 6.
** Willow also used the #2 pencil. With a little telekinetic magic.
** Buffy did it first, in Ep: 306 "Band Candy". Buffy and Giles are sitting in a graveyard, studying for Buffy's [[
{{quote| '''Buffy:''' Roll.<br />
'''Giles:''' What? ''(turns, sees vamp, and rolls away)''<br />
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* ''[[Firefly (TV)|Firefly]]'' ''loves'' this trope. Mal, Zoe, and Jayne make heavy use of improvised weapons, Wash manages to improvise [[Car Fu|the mule]] to knock out a Mook at one point, and Book uses a hose and a water pump to incapacitate multiple thugs. Mal also has a tendency to turn opponents' weapons against them, at one point choking an Alliance soldier with his own rifle's strap and the chains on his handcuffs to break a Reaver's neck. And don't even get started on [[Waif Fu|River.]]
* The short-lived TV series ''Spy Game'' has Lorne Cash doing this all the time, including a scene where he faced off against his teacher, and they were declaring what could be used in that fight. "Kick that garden hose away." "Get rid of the comb in your back pocket." "Take off your watch..."
* In the ''[[
** The most iconic ''Battlestar Galactica'' example has to be Adama beating Leoben to death with a flashlight in the Miniseries.
** Leoben also gets a pair of metal chopsticks in the neck from Kara after he locks her up in a mock apartment and deprives her of anything else he thinks can be used as a weapon (including steak knives).
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* ''[[Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|Order of the Stick]]'': [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0396.html So does Thog.]
** O-Chul {{spoiler|has also taken a bar from his cage and ''[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Smite Evil'd Redcloak's right eye out]]'', as well as offed Jirix and a demon-roach.}}
** In a possible [[Shout
** In the same arc, Belkar lists all the ways he can think of to kill someone with a "nonlethal" wooden sword. It's a disturbingly long and well-thought-out list.
** In the prequel ''Start of Darkness'' Xykon beats Fyron to death with an award statuette.
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** See also the Season 3 episode "The Pretender", where Ulrich, after [[Wrecked Weapon|losing his katana]] to a swarm of Frelions, still manages to destroy three of them and a Manta with a shard of virtual stone.
* Used in ''[[Batman Mask of the Phantasm]]'', when the Phantasm attacks the Joker, and he has two possible weapons to defend himself with: a kitchen knife, and a loaf of bologna. [[Rule of Funny|Guess what he chooses.]]
* In one episode of the 2003 ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 (Animation)|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'', the turtles are imprisoned and stripped of their weapons, and therefore have to resort to fighting with cleaning supplies. They manage to take down a whole squad of ''alien triceratops guards'' this way, with Raph, of all turtles, getting in a [[Shout
* Parodied in ''[[The Simpsons]]''. Bart is pinned down in a scuffle with Milhouse, and starts groping around behind him for something to use as a weapon. His hand passes over a brick, a broken bottle and possibly various other suitable objects, and settles instead on a Magic 8-Ball.
** Also, a recently-fired Chief Wiggum attempts to rob Homer at gunpoint, but it's revealed that the gun has no firing mechanism. He continues to threaten Homer anyway: "I can throw this pretty hard."
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* Pipe bombs. As their name suggests, made from a short length of metal or PVC pipe packed with explosive material. The Unabomber was famous for making ones with nails. One person killed himself with a pipe bomb stuffed with [http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/kogut.asp shredded playing cards.]
* Potato guns.
* [
** Prisoners occasionally show remarkable ingenuity when it comes to designing makeshift weapons. An episode of ''[[Myth Busters]]'' successfully demonstrated the potential of a crossbow made from rolled newspaper and an elastic waistband.
*** Prisoners have been known to shit and piss into a bucket and keep it in their cell for days or more, allowing it to fester and become truly disgusting. Just so they can throw it at the guards.
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* The British Army has achieved respectable results when called upon to perform crowd-control duty by issuing its soldiers with pickaxe handles. The practice apparently began when security was needed for the officer detailed to collect the garrison payroll from a bank, as rifles would tend to over-penetrate.
** On ''[[Deadliest Warrior]]'', the Green Berets were shown to use entrenchment tools. These were pre-sharpened, and they were trained in their effective use as weapons.
* [
** [[Robert Rankin]] has a scene in one of his novels where an SAS veteran folds a newspaper into a dagger and uses it to stab a hole in a bar counter. This was probably based on the Millwall Brick.
*** More likely the Chelsea Brick popularized by W.E. Farbairn while he was training the S.O.E.
** For more improvised weaponry, consider the first two sentences of the history article of that page:
{{quote| "In the late 1960s — in response to football hooliganism at matches in England — police began confiscating any objects that could be used as weapons. These items included steel combs, pens, ''beermats, Horse Brasses, Polo mints'', shoelaces and boots."}}
* 'Chechnyan Firecrackers'- otherwise known as home-made guns. If you have something explosive, materials and tools to work with and maybe even bits of actual guns, with the right know-how any enterprising rebel, terrorist, gang member or ordinary person can build a usable firearm of some sort, though safety is not a guarantee. As the nickname suggested, Chechnyan rebels are well-known for creating and using guides to build these. [[The Other Wiki]] has [
** Britain's heavy restrictions on firearms (handguns are illegal and the police make spot-checks to ensure owners haven't got careless about storing their weapons under lock and key) severely limit the black market supply of proper firearms, so the next best thing for your average would-be armed robber are crude derringers kludged together from starting pistols and replicas. Firing one is either an act of great courage, great foolhardiness or both.
* Leon Trotsky was eliminated with the use of an ice ax. To be fair, the assassin did bring that with him, it wasn't snatched up on the spur of the moment.
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* Home-made guns in the USA were called "zip guns" they were very unsafe, and as handguns have become more readily available they are mostly forgotten.
* There was a CCTV recording showing a hotel clerk successfully fought off robbers with a fire extinguisher when they think they have everyone under control.
* [
* Many of the classic weapons of martial arts were improvised, as their origins dated from a time when swords were forbidden to anyone outside the samurai class. The bo staff was a wooden pole used to carry buckets of water; the sai was a piece of metal that kept wagon carts attached to the wagons. Tonfa were handles taken from wells. Nunchaku were implements used to whip horses (or to ground up grains; history is a little unclear on this one).
* The self defence manual ''Street Ninja'', by one Dirk Skinner (if that's his real name I'll eat my hat) uses the term TOYS for Tools Of Your Surroundings to mean a bunch of sand or coins slung in an assailant's face, a bottle snatched from a bar, a key between your knuckles etc.
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* With knowledge in in human anatomy and physiology (particularly concerning arteries), any rigid pen or pencil can become a lethal weapon. It is for this reason that the pens issued in prisons are the bendable kind.
* Probably half of the hand weapons in any book of medieval military technology first started out as this trope, when farmers who didn't own any decent weapons adapted their agricultural implements as pole arms, nunchaku, caltrops, etc.
* Even honest-to-goodness guns can be used this way, if circumstances arise that prevent you from using them for their designed purpose (out of ammo, weapon malfunction, bad guy inside the effective range, etc.). Members of the armed forces are trained to use their firearms as melee weapons, including a fluid set of four melee attacks for use with a rifle <ref>These are called [
** And bayonets are an example of turning a rifle into an improvised weapon, in this case, you make it into a short spear by sticking a knife on the end.
*** A bayonet isn't an improvisation if the gun is designed to mount them.
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* [http://jkdtalk.com/showpost.php?p=12683&postcount=10 This poster] on the Jeet Kune Do Talk forum used ''[[Urine Trouble|his own piss]]'' as [[Squick|gross]] and [[Humiliation Conga|embarrassing]] but effective defense when he was attacked while using the urinal.
* The Dutch were infamous throughout their history for using their own country as a weapon. Because most of the populous west lies below sea level, more than one war has been won by breaching the right dike at the right time and flooding or cutting off enemy troops. Once, they even sailed their own fleet inland to liberate a besieged city.
** In a similar vein, the Russians have repeatedly used their merciless winters ([
** Inverted by king Karl X Gustav of Sweden in 1658, when he used an unusually cold winter to [
* [[Older Than Dirt]], unsurprisingly. The oldest unequivocal weapons known to archaeology are the Schöningen spears, approximately 400-375 millennia old. They were simply carved from wooden poles, and don't have any points hafted on them.
* [http://uk.news.yahoo.com/shopkeeper-fights-off-robber-with-a-mop.html This story] shows a machete-wielding masked thug attempt to raid a shop, and getting fended off by a [[Badass Grandpa|man in his fifties]] using a mop, who is joined shortly by his son with a hockey stick. This clip also shows an admirable amount of [[Combat Pragmatism]], as he manages to keep the door between him and the machete, rather than letting the thug get an advantage. A true [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] and a [[Crowning Moment of Funny]] double-whammy!
* The 1933 "Battle of Stockton", a clash between facist Blackshirts and pissed off locals, involved a great deal of improvised weaponry, ranging from sticks, pickaxe handles and stones, to at least one potato studded with razor blades. The latter actually managed to take one facist's eye out.
* During the [
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[[Category:Older Than Dirt]]
[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]
[[Category:Improvised Weapon]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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