Chairman of the Brawl

Take a seat.

"Oh no! That antique breakaway chair has been in the family for years!"

—Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Danger!! Death Ray

In fiction, chairs make for great bludgeoning objects capable of knocking people unconscious in one strike; enter the Chairman of the Brawl, that one guy who can be counted on grabbing the nearest sitting implement and smashing it across his unfortunate victim's head. If the chair is made of wood, it also immediately splinters into countless pieces to show how devastating the blow is.^note These chairs are actually made of balsa, one of the softest woods available, and held together with toothpicks to break apart easier. Don't Try This at Home.

If there is a Bar Brawl going on, this is to be expected. Pretty much every single Western featuring a Bar Brawl, ever, has used this one, to the point of being a Dead Horse Trope.

A subtrope of Improvised Weapon and Wrestler in All of Us. Compare Batter Up! and Golf Clubbing. Not to be confused with Executive Suite Fight, although this trope could certainly show up there, too.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Chapter 1 of Spy X Family, Loid throws a can at a gunman's face, then finishes him off by hitting him with a chair.
• In Chapter 140 of GTO: The Early Years, the Yokohama Cavalry smash a wooden chair over Nakajo's head.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who: In The Marian Conspiracy, Evelyn fakes being ill to lure the warder inside their cell and the Doctor hits him over the head with a chair: all the while complaining because he had already told Evelyn that this was precisely not the plan they were going to go with.

Comic Books

• In Hex Wives #6, Bradley hits Aaron with a wheelchair as the Architects start to fall apart.
• The Plague of the Antibiotic Man: As battling an unknown alien, Superman breaks a ski-lift's chair in his head.
• Robin (1993): When Tim Drake discovers the hotel he's at is being overrun by Kobra operatives he tosses a chair in one of their faces before sliding under a lounger and flipping that up to whack another one with.
• The Ultimates (2015): During the events of Civil War 2, America decides Carol Danvers is going too far, and decides to take action, starting by bludgeoning her with one of the chairs in the Ultimate's meeting room.

Comic Strips

• Dick Tracy: Model's alcoholic father hits with a chair to prevent from turning in her criminal brother Larry.

Fanfiction

• A Darker Path: Bastard Son's power lets him turn minions into expert Improbable Weapon Users, and one of the weapons he chooses for going after Atropos is a folding chair. However, she proceeds to demonstrate that "Chairman" wasn't trained to use the pieces of a folding chair, right before she knocks him out with a bowling pin taken from another minion.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: From Dealing with the Blockade Ship, when Anise is being molested by Tserk:
  Anise felt something slimy wrap around her left ankle and suddenly found herself suspended upside down in the air, prompting alarmed cries from her sisters. She gulped. This could end badly. She suddenly wished that their outfits offered some more coverage than swimsuits. On the bright side, however, she could make out a few eyes in the centre of the mass from her elevated vantage point, and she still had her chair…
  “Much better. Now- OW!”
• Patterns of the Past: The first move Old Missie makes after she's untied from the chair she's bound to as a Defiant Captive is taking the chair and throwing it full-force at the Patternista, who barely misses it.
• This Bites!: Cross kickstarts the Bar Brawl in Skelter Bite by slamming a chair into Killer's face.
• In episode 16, Final Stand of Death, Celebrity Deathmatch FIC, Spur ( Emma Bunton) uses a chair to hit Zum's like a baseball bat, as the latter heads towards her.

Film — Animated

• During the first big fight between the clans in Brave, Young Macguffin is seen using a bench as a weapon.
• The Great Mouse Detective has some chairs being thrown and smashed in the Bar Brawl scene.
• In The LEGO Movie, Bad Cop takes down an army of Mecha-Mooks. With a chair. It's the culmination of a Running Gag involving him repeatedly throwing chairs whenever he's in a bad mood - said Mecha Mooks are not the first ones he's taken out this way. In the "Behind the Bricks" video released to promo the film's theatrical release, he's nearly ready to do it to President Business after the latter reveals he actually attempted to kill the other cast members.
• During the fight at the Zit in Osmosis Jones, a random germ tries to take out Drix by breaking a chair over his back. Drix doesn’t even notice, and the germ quickly backs away in fear.
• When Shrek is fighting against a LOT of knights, who are under orders to kill him to win a chance to rescue a princess, he ends up in a setup remarkably similar to a wrestling arena. Egged on by a bloodthirsty granny no less, he employs this trope on an unfortunate knight, much to the audience's delight.
  Granny: The chair! Give him the chair!

Film — Live-Action

• An obligatory trope in the Film Serials of the 1930's-50's, regardless of whether the chairs being used by or against outlaws in The Western, gangsters and mad scientists in the new Super Hero genre, or alien invaders and clunky killer robots in Science Fiction.
• In 13 Sins, Elliot repeatedly smashes a chair over Witter's brother's head in the hospital before he even realizes it's one of the challenges.
• Averted in The Alligator People. When Paul is fighting Manon to rescue his unconscious wife from being molested, he grabs a chair, but Manon quickly yanks it away from his hands, followed by him socking Paul to the jaw.
• In Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Dr. Evil shows up on Jerry Springer (see below) and initiates a fight, doing this during it.
• The Avengers introduces Black Widow tied to a chair and being 'interrogated' (as in, it's her doing the interrogating, not the other way around). At that point, when she's called to come in, she uses the chair she's tied to kick copious amounts of ass.
• The Bandit of Sherwood Forest: Lady Catherine stops the Sheriff of Nottingham from throwing his sword into Robert's back by tossing a chair at him.
• Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: Emerson smashes a chair on Randy's back to stop him from raping Pet.
• Bloody Reunion: During the fight in the basement, Myung-Ho tries to smash a chair onto Jung-Wa's head, but he manages to roll out of the way.
• During his fight with Bragg in the saloon in Canyon Passage, Logan smashes a chair over Bragg's head.
• The Casino: Chairs and stools are frequently used as weapons during the film's fight scenes, with plenty of these getting destroyed in the process.
• The Casino: The movie's protagonist uses plenty of Improvised Weapon in his fights, including stools and chairs. There's also the Casino's madam, who gets killed by a stool to the head by the main villain.
• In Circus of Horrors, Rossiter smashes a chair down on Ames during their fight in Nicole's tent.
• Clown Kill: After freeing herself from the chair Charlie Boy ties her down into, Jenny picks the chair up and hits him with it.
• Comin' Round the Mountain: Wilbert warns Devil Dan Winfield that Winfield will "get the chair" when he tries to kill Wilbert. Devil Dan dismisses this, stating that every judge on the local circuit is a Winfield, only to find out Wilbert meant it literally when Dan's hit with a chair by Matt.
• D-Day have Ivan fighting a henchman in a seedy motel. Said henchman swings a chair at Ivan, knocking him down, but after a while Ivan gets up and demolishes said chair with a punch.
• Deep in the Valley: On entering the examination room and finding Lester being tortured by Suzi, Carl grabs a folding chair and knocks her out with it. Later, Lance is about is about to hit Lester with what appears to be the same chair (parodying the lack of budget in porn films), Carl snatches it off him and knocks him out with it.
• Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. A minion working for Captain Seas has his gun knocked out of his hand, so he picks up a chair instead, only for one of the Fabulous Five to drive his fist through the chair bottom and into the mook's face.
• Dracula vs. Frankenstein: During the fight in Dr. Durea's Mad Scientist Laboratory, Groton smashes Mike with a Heavy wooden bench.
• The Escapist: When Lacey finally snaps, he grabs a chair and starts bashing Tony with it hard enough to snap the steel legs. Frank has to grab the chair off him to prevent him from killing Tony.
• Foxy Brown got her black belt in bar stool!
• Frankenstein Created Woman: During the fight in the cafe, Johann attempts to smash a chair over Hans's back.
• In God of Cookery, Stephen Chow brings out a wooden folding chair and uses it in the middle of a Cooking Duel to beat up his main rival. The Caustic Critic actually comments on his good form and even mentions the advantages of the folding chair as a weapon.
• In God's Gun, Jenny rather ineffectively hits Jess Clayton with a chair when the Clayton Gang take over the saloon.
• In Guys and Dolls, both Sky and Sarah use chairs as weapons during the brawl in the cafe in Havana.
• When Harry and Ron are playing Wizard's Chess in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Ron's queen takes one of Harry's pieces by smashing it in half with her throne.
  Hermione: That's totally barbaric!
  Ron: (grinning) That's Wizard's Chess!
• Holmes & Watson: After being thrown out of the Hexagon, Watson returns with a folding chair and bludgeons Brawn into unconsciousness.
• I Shot Jesse James: During the scene where John Kelley is involved in a Bar Brawl, one of the con men breaks a chair over his head. However, the chair just shatters and doesn't even faze Kelley.
• James Bond:
  • In The Living Daylights, Bond smashes a chair over the jailer as he is escaping from the Soviet airbase.
  • In GoldenEye, Bond kicks a fallen chair to knock General Ourumov's legs out from under him.
  • This is Bond's only protection against someone's Shamu Fu in the Bar Brawl of Licence to Kill. It is notable for failing to block the top of the swordfish.
• Johnny Reno: During the fight in the saloon, Yates attempts to smash a chair over Reno's head, but misses and hits the bar (and, amazingly, the chair does not shatter).
• King of Thieves: During the argument while divvying up the loot, Terry smashes an oak chair on the floor and uses it to threaten Basil.
• In Knife for the Ladies, Jarrod smashes a stool over Burns' head during their brawl in the jailhouse.
• Lady on a Train: After being locked in Margo's dressing room, Nikki escapes by throwing a chair through the two-Way mirror.
• Lost in a Harem: When the boys end up screwing up their act and hitting Mr. Ormulu with a flying bottle, he responds by picking up a chair and throwing it at them.
• Bounty hunters seeking The Master Gunfighter consult Jacques on where to find him. When one man offers threats instead of gold for the information, Jacques takes hold of his seat to stand up...then smashes it across the man's face, knocking him clear off the balcony. His friends are more reasonable after that.
• In Money Movers, Dino smashes a chair over Leo—who is already lying on the floor—during the fight in the counting room.
• Used in The Mummy (1999) when Brendan Fraser's character stops the cowardly Beni from running away. As he's striding toward Beni, he grabs a wicker chair without missing a beat and throws it at Beni's legs, tripping him.
• In The Mystery of the Hooded Horsemen, During the fight in the saloon, Blackie smashes a chair over Tex's head. Tex shrugs it off as if it is nothing.
• The cops get a wheelchair thrown at them in the climax of Mystery of the Wax Museum.
• Night School (1981): During the fight in the café, Carol attempts to hit the killer with chair. The killer shrugs it off.
• One Foot in Hell: When Dan is threatening the bartender in the saloon, he hefts a chair and waves it about threateningly.
• In Parker, Parker uses a stool to battle, knock down, pin and interrogate Hardwicke's brother.
  "...And you'll have the posthumous humiliation of having been killed by a chair."
• The Phenix City Story: When John Patterson gets in a fight with Clem Wilson at the Poppy Club, one of the other patrons comes at John with a chair.
• The Predator. Casey Bracket is handcuffed to a chair, so she uses it to hit the mercenary who's about to execute her, then shoves a live grenade down his vest and dives over a railing to escape the blast...and then the chair catches on the railing.
• In The Prince of Thieves, Robin and Will Scarlet hit several of Sir Fitz-Alwin's men over the head with stools when they storm the Head household.
• During the Gambling Brawl between Blazer and The Abilene Kid in the Blue Moon Saloon in Rimfire, Porky The Piano Player gets hit by a chair thrown by Blazer. He keeps playing for several minutes before gradually keeling over sideways.
• Eric throws a stool at Marian's ghost in ''The Screaming Skull'.
• Subverted in Sharky's Machine (1981). Sharky is attacked by Asian kung-fu hitmen, and does quite well until he picks up a folding deck chair and tries swinging it at them. The Improvised Weapon is too awkward and he misses his blows, giving them a chance to knock him out.
• Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend: When Devlin is chasing Clark up the stairs in the Emporium during the final fight, Clark throws several chairs at him in desperation.
• Spider-Man uses this in the well-known professional wrestling context, as "Bonesaw" lays out Peter Parker/Spider-Man with an aluminum folding chair during the cage wrestling scene.
• In Swashbuckler, Ned's opening move in the Bar Brawl in the brothel is to sweep a chair into one of the advancing soldiers. Later, during the assault on the fortress, several of the soldiers get bashed with a chair.
• The Terror of Tiny Town: During the fight in the cabin, Haines attempts to smash a chair down on Buck while he is lying on the floor. Buck manages to roll out of the way just in time.
• Top Secret!. While in a underwater Western bar (Don't Ask), the Big Bad breaks a chair over The Hero.
• Tragedy Girls: During the attack in Jordan's bedroom, Sadie mashes a chair over Lowell's head.
• In "Weird" Al Yankovic's movie, UHF, this happens quite a lot on the revamped Town Talk (as a parody of the Geraldo incident); the audience themselves wield some absurd weaponry, like a giant boulder.
• The Walking Dead (1936): On finding Ellman in his bedroom, Merritt grabs a chair and attempts to hit him with it.
• The Warriors. When the Lizzies try to seduce and then kill the Warriors they have to grab whatever's at hand, and a Lizzie gets a chair broken on her face in Slow Motion when she tries to shoot one of them.
• Where the Sidewalk Ends: After Mark receives his No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Scalise's goons, Scalise is ready to beat him to death with a stool, and is only stopped when one of his men convinces him that killing a cop will bring down too much heat on them.
• Taw smashes a chair over the head of one of the brawlers during the Bar Brawl in The War Wagon.
• Wonder Woman (2017): Etta Candy finishes the pub bruiser off by smashing a chair on him.
• In The World's End Andy (Nick Frost) ends up kicking a good deal of ass by dual-wielding two bar stools, each one mounted on his arm like a Power Fist.
• The Young Vagabond: The arguement in a classroom leads to punches being thrown, and the protagonist Su Qi-er promptly grabs a stool. He ends up using the stool in hitting his class teacher on the noggin' instead, who walked in at the wrong time. Oh, Crap! indeed...
• Played with in Young Master Jackie Chan stages an epic bench to bench combat with his fellow disciple.
• Zoltan, Hound of Dracula: When the vampiric dogs attempt to break in through the cabin window, Michael hits one with a chair and then wedges the chair in the window frame to block their entry.

Literature

• The Action Hero's Handbook has an entire chapter on how to take a hit from a chair.
• The Cinder Spires: In The Aeronaut's Windlass, the heroes Gwen, Benny, and Master Ferus having a heated discussion with a big burly merchant, whose rooms Gwen "stole" by paying the innkeeper an exuberant amount of money to claim these reserved rooms, when Ferus has a vision of a potential future. He quickly warns Benny and Gwen to arm themselves and slides the heavy wooden chair to the merchant, saying he will need it. Seconds later a monstrous beast breaks into the inn and the merchant uses the chair against the common enemy.
• Played upon frequently in Discworld, where brawls in the Broken Mended Broken Mended Drum are an organized sport, complete with a point system and named plays.
  • Also mentioned as why people who have not read the Marquis of Fantailler's book about The Noble Art of Fisticuffs tend to win against people who have.^note "The last words of a surprisingly large number of people were 'Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantailler—'"
• Dragaera: In the Khaavren Romances, Mica, Tazendra's lackey, wields a bar stool as his weapon of choice.
• The Dresden Files
  • Storm Front: Harry Dresden knocks out Morgan with one of the chairs at McAnally's. He lampshades the "splintering wood" part as the chair is a very solid one, and the barman actually has to check that the guy is alive afterwards.
    "In real life, the chair doesn't break when you slug somebody with it, the way it does in the movies. The person you hit is the one who breaks."
  • Thomas does this during Turn Coat to his intolerable cousin, Madeline. He breaks the chair, which is more impressive than it sounds, since the chairs are steel.
• One Dungeons & Dragons novel has a seasoned adventurer tell his inexperienced traveling companion to stay on their guard when they enter a bar, as the experienced member notices that it's an old, worn building with a lot of new furniture. He identifies this as a sign that the place experiences frequent Bar Brawls. Sure enough, one swiftly breaks out.
• James Bond
  • Bond uses a chair in From Russia with Love to defend himself from Rosa Klebb's poisoned knitting needles, and pins her to a wall with it. She is then captured by his fellow agents, but not before she manages to land a hit on him with a small blade on her shoe, which is also poisoned.
  • Captain of Largo's yacht in Thunderball became completely loyal to him after Largo smashed a chair over his head for not following his orders.
  • In The Spy Who Loved Me, Vivienne tries to slash Sluggsy with a knife, but he and Horror grab a chair each and overpower her. Things afterward look bad for her, but Bond's sudden arrival saves the day in the long run.
  • In For Special Services, Bond pushes Nena Blofeld into a Death Trap meant for him with a chair.
• John becomes this (adding to it with a Hurricane of Puns) in one of the big fights of John Dies at the End.
• Matador Series: Defied in The Man Who Never Missed. The chairs in Khadaji's bar are bolted to the floor to avoid this trope. In fact, he uses the ability to overcome the bolts as a hiring test for his bouncers. Heavyworlder Bork does it one-handed.
• After Dox uses the Chairman of the Brawl trope twice in Redemption Games (both times because he doesn't have a gun on him), John Rain quips that he should market a Chair-fung-do style.
• Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton has Doctor Watson of all people resorting to this when the titular master blackmailer goes too far.
  He [Charles] stepped forward, took up his coat, laid his hand on his revolver, and turned to the door. I picked up a chair, but Holmes shook his head and I laid it down again.
• Not at all comedic in the Sienkiewicz Trilogy, where a minor (but very large) character uses an 8 foot solid oak bench in a bar fight. It crosses into Telephone Polearm territory and largely contributes to the other side getting wiped out.
• The Thinking Machine: In "The Motor Boat", when the killer manages to get the better of Detective Mallory through use of some jujitsu tricks, Hatch ends the fight by the simple expedient of breaking a chair over the killer's head.
• Tortall Universe: In Trickster's Queen, when Imajane thinks Rubinyan is cheating on her, she throws a chair at him.
• Universal Monsters: During book 4, when he and Nina are attacked by a baboon and jackal (really the reanimated heads on a set of canopic jars), Levi Tovar grabs a lounge chair and throws it at the jackal. Nina later takes it up and uses it to fend off the jackal when it tries to attack her again, and then uses it against the baboon.
• Young Bond
  • In Blood Fever, armed thieves burst into home of Bond's cousin Victor while he and company are dining, and each person present reacts to the situation with their own way; Bond's reaction being that he grabs a chair and charges the assailants with it.
  • Bond and Kelly in Double or Die are found by Deighton and a Mook aboard the ship Empress, and think they won't put up much of a fight, being young teens. They are proven wrong when they are quickly subdued by the two who arm themselves with chairs.

Live-Action TV

• Adam Adamant Lives!: In "Death By Appointment Only", Adam uses a chair to fend off a villain who has stolen his Sword Cane.
• In American Horror Story: Murder House Vivien fights off attackers while tied to a chair in Home Invasion.
• Angel. A spell has made Angel all touchy-feely. Confronted by shotgun-toting Mafia boss Little Tony, instead of vamping out and attacking, Angel pulls out a chair and invites Tony to discuss his issues. Then Angel hits Tony across the face with it.
• Barbary Coast: In the pilot movie, Jeff Cable (in his disguise as 'Joe Hook') smashes a chair over the head of a croupier in order to start a Bar Brawl in the Golden Gate.
• 1960s Batman (1966) series episode "That Darn Catwoman". After Robin is placed under Catwoman's control, he breaks a chair over Batman's head while fighting him. Afterwards, Robin shatters what is left of the (prop) chair with his bare hands.
• Beakman's World: In the segment on Movie Stunts, a little movie plays where Phoebe gets to be the Chairwoman of the board by breaking a chair over the villain's back. Later, they explain that the chair was made of balsa and toothpicks so that it would break easily.
• The Book of Boba Fett has a Trandoshan using a chair on Black Krrsantan. He barely even registers the hit and the Trandoshan winds up finding out why it's not wise to piss off a Wookie.
• In Conan the Adventurer someone hits Conan in the back with a chair during a bar fight. Unlike most examples of this trope, it's not very effective.
• A variation in the last episode of Cowboy Bebop (2021): When Spike picks up a chair Vicious slices it up with his katana, so Spike uses one of the pieces as an improvised tonfa to fend him off.
• CSI: NY:
  • Downplayed in Lovato's first episode, "Where There's Smoke." As she arrives unannounced at the precinct, still dressed in her undercover get-up, the cops are trying to restrain a very large, very aggressive perp who breaks away from them and barrels in her direction. She calmly slides a metal chair into his path with her foot, tripping him so they can recapture him.
  • In "White Gold", Flack and Lovato attempt to arrest a suspect in a bar. The suspect knocks Flack down and then uses a bar stool to knock Lovato's gun out of her hand and knock her down. Flack puts a gun to his head before he can finish her off.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "City of Death", policeman Duggan grabs a chair with the intent of fighting off some guards and escaping, but the Doctor stops him: "For heaven's sake, that's a Louis Quinze!"
  • "Vincent and the Doctor": At one point, Vincent van Gogh fends off the Monster of the Week with his painting chair.
  • In "The Crimson Horror", Clara grabs a chair to smash up a Steampunk device the Villain of the Week is using to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
    Doctor: Hang on, hang on! I've got a sonic screwdriver!
    Clara: Yeah? I've got a chair. (jams the legs into the rotors of the infernal device)
    Doctor: Yeah... That worked.
• Extraordinary Attorney Woo: In a flashback to the day Young-woo and Geu-ra-mi met, Geu-ra-mi intervened when she saw Young-woo being bullied in class. She defended her by grabbing a chair, swinging it around a bit, and announcing she'd gladly throw it at someone's head if they messed with Young-woo any more.
• Fast Forward. A spoof of Kung Fu (1972) has a cowboy trying to break a chair during the requisite Bar Brawl, only he can't break it as he's moving the chair in Slow Motion; he then reverts to normal speed to build up enough force to break the chair.
• Firefly: Malcolm Reynolds on occasion persuades someone with a seat to the face, as in the opening bar fight during "Shindig".
• The Goodies. In "The Baddies", Graeme Garden is fighting his robot doppelganger outside a furniture store, so he buys a chair off the owner to hit the robot with (to no effect).
• How I Met Your Mother shows this sometimes happens when someone gets fired from Goliath National Bank. Including when Ted gets hired as an architect for an episode and is subsequently fired himself.
  Ted: I gave him a four-pronged counterargument that really brought him to his knees.
  Barney: so you hit him with a chair.
  Ted: Oh yeah!
• Inspector George Gently:
  • In "Gently Underground", Bacchus hits a suspect over the back with a chair when it appears that he's about to attack a floored Gently. It turns out to be a No-Sell, but luckily the suspect is just horrified that he hit a cop.
  • The Victim of the Week in "Gently Among Friends" is done in by a chair to the head, aided by some judicious kicking once he is down on the ground.
• Naturally tends to happen during fights on Jerry Springer; and over on its cousin The Steve Wilkos Show, Steve got so pissed off once he threw a chair into a wall so hard it stayed embedded in the wall.
• Madam Secretary: In one episode, Elizabeth wants to hire Kat for her staff, and is constantly reminded of a rumor that Kat threw a chair at somebody once. Towards the end of the episode, Elizabeth asks Kat about it directly, and Kat gladly clears it up. She didn't throw a chair... she threw a table. At a chair. Of the Armed Services Committee. Liz hires her anyway, especially once Kat clarifies that she did it in a moment of anger after finding out said chair had been bribed, and that she does genuinely regret losing her temper like that.
• Married... with Children: When Bud gets into his first nudie-bar brawl, Al is proud to see his son carry on the family tradition of sucker-bashing his opponent with a chair.
• Motive: In "The Score", a bar owner being strong-armed by a couple of mob types has a stool broken over his head.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "Scott of the Sahara". Lieutenant Scott faces off against a lion wielding a chair, who breaks it over Scott's back.
• Nikita: In "Pilot", Nikita uses a chair a shield to block the bullets fired y the bodyguard of her targets, and then to knock the man down.
• Novoland: Eagle Flag: Yu Ran breaks a chair over a pervert's head.
• The Professionals. An early version of the Title Sequence featured Bodie and Doyle running through an assault course which included someone charging out to hit Bodie with a chair!
• Psychopath Diary: Dong-sik briefly uses a chair as a weapon against In-woo.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "Backwards", during the reverse bar-brawl, Cat hits someone with a chair...in reverse.
• Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell: In one of the "Curiosity Cul-de-sac" sketches in 2018, Tosh Greenslade's detective finally has enough of Steven Hall's policeman's showbiz anecdotes and smashes a chair over his head as he starts yet another one in the police station.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Worf gets a chair to the head in the episode "A Fistful Of Datas". It doesn't even faze him.
• Strangers From Hell: Jong-woo briefly uses a chair as a weapon during his fight with Moon-jo.
• The Warehouse 13 episode "Queen for a Day" features a fight at the wedding rehearsal of Pete's ex-wife and her fiancée. After all the drama and the wedding, Pete admits he was impressed by the new husband's use of a chair in the fight, and the husband jokingly says that one of the ribbons on his chest is for "distinguished valor in combat with rental furniture".

Podcasts

• Chell from Sequinox goes out of her way to try and hit Sargas with a chair, even though it does far less damage than her actual Sequinox attacks. Then again, she does succeed in the hit.

Professional Wrestling

• Smacking people with aluminum folding chairs (when the referee isn't looking, of course) is a staple of professional wrestling, though in general it's considered to be a cheap move and thus used by Heel types. They're typically referred to by the announcers as being steel chairs to make getting hit by one seem more devastating.
  • WWE banned headshots with chairs shortly after Chris Benoit's murder-suicide in reaction to the countless concussion injuries caused by them.
  • Another use of the folding chairs is for a wrestler to place a fallen opponent's leg inside and jump on the chair to fold it flat, (kayfabe) breaking their ankle and thus giving the other wrestler a storyline excuse to be out of the ring for a while, either to recover from a real injury incurred elsewhere or to do something like star in a movie. The move is often known as the "Pillmanizer", after the late great Brian Pillman (although Pillman was famously the victim of it at the hands of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, not the perpetrator).
  • One thing to note is that despite being made from metal (steel or otherwise), folding chairs are generally: lightweight, thin, and designed to fold and unfold easily. The net result is that if used properly (as in, hitting with the broad side of the chair rather than any of the corners), the folding chairs have a lot more give than you might expect, making them safer to hit someone with than many solid objects might be. Which doesn't mean that getting smacked by a folding chair doesn't hurt, just that it doesn't hurt as much as it looks like it does. Again, if used properly; an improperly administered chair shot (accidental or otherwise) is an excellent way to give someone a terrible concussion or worse, as Stevie Richards and JBL demonstrate here.
• Subverted by the late Eddie Guerrero, who would bring chairs into the ring behind the ref's back, but instead of using it on his opponent, he would smack the mat with it, toss it to his opponent, and pull a Wounded Gazelle Gambit when the ref turned back around. This required Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught to be ignored, as the ref would disqualify the opponent despite not actually seeing the alleged chair shot. Though just as often, Eddie would use the distraction of the referee taking the chair away from his opponent to hit them with a low blow and pin them.
• La Parka, luchador extraordinaire, known during his WCW tenure as the Chairman of WCW. Simply put, he was associated with chairs in a way few wrestlers will ever be.
• Edge and Christian perfected the double chair head sandwich know as the Con-Chair-To.
  • After splitting from Edge, Christian began doing the one-man-Con-Chair-To, where he'd put one chair flat on the ring, put the opponent's head on it, and then hit him on the head with another chair.
• In a variation, Raven was known for his signature move of setting up a folding chair in the middle of the ring, and doing a drop toe-hold to smash his opponent's face into it.
• Rob Van Dam was famous for his use of chairs with two of his finishing moves: the Van Daminator was a spinning thrust kick to the face, typically after tossing a chair the opponent would inevitably catch right in front of their face; the Van Terminator consisted of sitting an opponent in the corner, placing a chair (or collapsible garbage can) in front of their chest and face, then climbing to an adjacent corner and performing a missile drop kick. Not that the added weaponry was necessary to make that impressive, as that's a good fifteen feet he jumps, plus the height difference, and physics alone makes it devastating.
• First step of Sabu's triple jump moonsault. Set up the chair, jump on it, jump to the top rope, moonsault off. If he can make all three stops.
  • He also has the Arabian Facebuster—a slingshot leg drop from the apron onto a downed opponent... with a chair under his leg as he jumps.
• FMW's first son Masato Tanaka is known f. or no-selling sick chair shots to the head. Western audiences can see demonstrations in his matches with Mike Awesome at ECW Heat Wave '98 and WWE One Night Only '05.
• Hardcore Legend Mick Foley had a long and, uh, "involved" relationship with chairs over the course of his long career. One of his signature moves was a dive off the ring apron to an opponent on the outside while holding a chair. One time he wrapped a chair in rags, set them on fire, then hit Terry Funk with it; after this came damn close to killing Funk he never tried it again. And then there was the infamous "I Quit" match against The Rock at the 1999 Royal Rumble, where he took eleven completely unprotected (as his hands were cuffed behind his back) and increasingly stiff chair shots directly to the head in one of the most genuinely horrifying displays of violence WWE ever allowed; Mick's wife and children were at ringside to watch the gruesome display and were reduced to traumatized tears. And one last (much less injurious) display they were involved in when both Mick and Terry were fighting Public Enemy in the ECW; Terry made the mistake of asking the notoriously aggressive ECW crowd for a chair to finish them off, and got the entire arena's worth of seating thrown into the ring.
• Shawn Spears took up the moniker of the 'Chairman', using the steel chair as his signature weapon after brutally assaulting Cody Rhodes with a chair as his first action in the company.

Video Games

• A blink-and-you-miss-it moment at the start of Batman: Arkham City while Bruce Wayne is being transferred into Arkham City, you can turn and see Black Mask defending himself with a chair against some TYGER guards to no avail.
• In Crusader Kings III, it is possible for an assassin to kill their target with an artifact their target owns... such as their own throne.
• Spend enough time in Dead Rising and you'll eventually find yourself having to grab a chair so you can bludgeon zombies with it, usually to conserve more useful and powerful weapons. Pick up a bench and you can shove an entire crowd into a tangled pile of moaning undead bodies. Dead Rising 2 and 3 provide the unique circumstance of allowing players to beat a person to death with a wheelchair.
• Death Road to Canada points out several times that picking up and tossing furniture at zombies is a good attack method, and it is: thrown objects, even light ones, deal very good damage and knockback. Just so happens that chairs are the lightest furniture to pick up and yeet around, even by survivors with low physical stats.
• In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Blackwall mentions this happening in the Bar Brawl that got him recruited into the Grey Wardens. When one of his opponents broke a chair over Blackwall's back, Blackwall just grabbed one of the chair's broken legs and used it as a bludgeon.
• In a Bar Brawl cutscene from Dragon Quest VIII, Yangus attempts to hurl a chair at a brawny troublemaker picking fights. Someone's still sitting in it.
• For reasons unknown, Liu Shan was given a bench as his weapon of choice in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires. While the series is full of Improbable Weapon Users, the bench is certainly one of the more surreal entries seen thus far.
• Final Fantasy VII Remake has Aerith cheerfully bringing down a chair towards one of Don Corneo's lackeys.
• Used oddly with the Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2. It lets you pick up anything that isn't nailed down or too heavy and lob it at the enemy at high speed. Among the items you can use are various items of furniture, including chairs and benches.
• Heroes of the Storm: There is a set of wrestling-themed alternate skins for some of the characters. Garrosh's skin swaps out his axe Gorehowl for a metal chair.
• The Veteran of Super Monday Night Combat uses a spike-covered stool as his melee weapon. His grapple consists of setting down the stool and bashing his victim into it a few times.
• Persona 4: Kanji Tatsumi uses a shield as his weapon of choice, but his default one is a folding chair. Said chair is also his weapon in Persona 4: Arena.
  • Persona 5 Royal has a surprise successor in the form of Makoto Nijima, who slams a folding chair onto whatever poor shadow is opposing her in her and Haru's Showtime.
• In Saints Row: The Third, after Phillipe Loren dies, his former Dragon Killbane decides to take over The Syndicate. When Matt Miller objects to this, pointing out that Kiki and Viola DeWynter should be the leaders instead, due to being Loren's second-in-commands, Killbane belts him with a chair. Impressively, Matt survives this, despite Killbane being powerful enough to snap necks with just two fingers.
• Lisianthus from SHUFFLE! often has to do this to her father in order to make him stop whatever inappropriate action he is doing at the current time.
• DLC character Beowulf of Skullgirls is a wrestler who wields a chair by the name of "The Hurting", a reference to his namesake's sword Hrunting. Yeah, that's right: his chair is so respected and famous that it has its own name.
• Referenced in the Choice of Games title SLAMMED!. Choosing to give an autograph to a kid results in you getting criticized for breaking kayfabe. Your character will archly respond with "Maybe I should have hit her with a chair."
• When she uses her V-Trigger II in Street Fighter V, Rainbow Mika calls in her tag team partner to clobber her opponent with a chair and then throw it at them.
• In the Super Smash Bros. series, Mr. Game and Watch uses a chair for his forward tilt attack, taken from the Lion game. His Limited Animation means he doesn't so much swing it as hold it out in front of himself like a shield, but it'll still send anyone who touches it flying.
• Troublemaker, a beat-em-up set inside a school, have you grabbing chairs and using them to pummel other bullies, in stages set inside classrooms. Heck, there's even a power-up called "Eat This Chair" where you can whip out a chair from out of nowhere and smack some bullies across their noggins.
• Used by the various protagonists of the Like a Dragon series. For example Kazuma Kiryu can swing an office chair, toss it, or smash it against the head of a loan shark so hard that he flips over and can't fight anymore. Taken to extremes with the "Essence of Improvisation" for the Action Star Job in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where the character uses a folding chair, a sofa, an office chair and a bench to attack his enemies Jackie Chan-style, stacking them up into a massive tower, climbs said tower and rests on the sofa as it falls down and crushes his foes.

Webcomics

• Furry Fight Chronicles has smacking opponents with a chair being a common Heel tactic.
  • Scalitor hits Donkizari with a chair to hurt her and gather Heat, negative reaction from the audience to cement herself as the strongest Heel Combagal.
  • Kalita hits Sleepy with a chair to the back to show that she's turned into a Heel Combagal.
• Such a fight happens in Girl Genius, during the regularly scheduled bar brawl at the Jager tavern. To keep things friendly, there's a "No weapons" policy, but:
  [Higgs hits a Jagermonster with a chair. Zeetha stares at him.]
  Higgs: ...what?
  Zeetha: You just said: "No weapons."
  Higgs: That wasn't a weapon, that was a chair.
  • Which leads to:
    Jagermonster: Ow!
    Zeetha: Ha! That's not a weapon, that's a chair!
    [...]
    Jagermonster: Aie!
    Zeetha: Tankard! Not a weapon!
    [...]
    Jagermonster: Urg!
    Zeetha: That's not a weapon! That's a table!
• Minmax from Goblins traded his ability to wink for Weapon Proficiency: Furniture. He fights with a table in that particular scene though.
• Insecticomics:
  • Used by the Predacons after they start a wrestling tournament. Silverbolt gets whacked on the head by Jetstorm, then starts thinking that he's Jetstorm, so Blackarachnia and Jetstorm are forced to hit him repeatedly in an attempt to get him back to normal.
  • After getting fed up while dealing with a teenager who only speaks in Leet Lingo, a Grammar Nazi finally tells her that if she doesn't start speaking correctly she'll be hit with a chair.
• The main protagonist in Great from Kiwis By Beat uses a bar stool like a lethal weapon. He used it once when drunk in self-defense and managed to take out tens of gang ridden streets with it.
• In Volume 5 of Mayonaka Densha, Hatsune uses a chair to fend off Constance's would be rapist.
• Threatened in one storyline of Scary Go Round, when Minion with an F in Evil Gibbous Moon gets sent to the Orkneys to help capture the Kraken^note (long story). A couple of the locals take quite a shine to her, but she takes exception when they bully her partner Desmond. The following comic opens with both boys bleeding from the face, Moon brandishing a chair, and Desmond nowhere to be seen.
  Moon: Any more o' you hicks want to ride the lightnin'?!
• The Sword Interval: Early in the first arc, David Shimizu breaks the arm of a man harassing him in a diner with a barstool.
• Unsounded: During his escape from The Red Berry Boys, Jivi is ambushed by Cutter. He escapes by smashing a wooden stool over the Imak's head and using a dropped knife to break his Slave Collar.

Western Animation

• In an episode of Archer, during the brawl at the end of the episode, Archer gets three chairs in a row smashed over his head.
  Archer: Goddammit! What the hell IS this, a chair factory???
• The Boondocks
  • Inverted: just throwing a chair is believed to be the actual cause of a brawl in the first place. It doesn't even need to hit anybody, simply throwing a chair into a crowd just spontaneously starts a riot.
  • Riley brandishes a footstool against Huey on one occasion.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Batman: The Animated Series - In the Riddler's first episodes, one of his mooks breaks a chair on Batman's back. He looks pretty pleased with himself...until Batman gets back up, now angry.
  • In the Justice League episode "Maid of Honor", Batman hits Vandal Savage in the face with an office chair.
    Batman: You're in my way. [slam]
• Gravity Falls
  • When Giffany takes over some animatronics in "Soos and the Real Girl", Soos' date Melody clobbers one with a chair before being overwhelmed.
  • Done again in "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons" when Grenda uses an armchair to beat the living crap out of an ogre who tried to distract them with a side-quest.
    Stan: There's no cops in the forest. We take this to our graves.
    Grenda: (winks solemnly)
• Looney Tunes: In The Case of the Stuttering Pig, after the villain mocks "the guy in the third row" all throughout the cartoon, he's thwarted by said guy throwing a chair at him.
• The Simpsons
  • In "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo, when the eponymous family took a vacation in Japan, Bart & Homer went to a sumo wrestling event; Homer ended up in the ring, Bart got the tag, and hit the sumo wrestler with a folding chair. The crowd booed them.
  • In "A Milhouse Divided", Luanne's new boyfriend Pyro, an American Gladiator, shows Bart that a chair can be broken on him with no adverse effects. In the next scene, Bart tries whacking Homer across the back with a wooden chair with no warning while the latter is bathing.
    Homer: (screams in pain) What the hell is wrong with you?!
    Bart: Geez, sor-ree. It's a pretty standard stunt, Homer.

Real Life

• Anyone who has been involved in a bar fight knows that one's trusty seat is a useful tool to kick some serious ass.
• There is actually a Chinese martial art based around using benches to fight your way out of taverns. Considering that 99% of all taverns/gambling den/restaurants at that time had big heavy pieces of sitting furniture readily available under... under hand, this is less of an out-from-under-the-ass-pull and more genre savviness. Check out the demonstrations here.
• The December 2011 Mall of America brawl involved quite a few thrown chairs.
• Poet Murō Saisei is known for an incident where he angrily swung a chair in the middle of a poets' conference to break up an argument that involved close friend Hagiwara Sakutarō.
• This once happened in a brawl in the Austro-Hungarian Reichsrat sometime around 1900 (an altogether too common occurrence) while Mark Twain was visiting:
  "One night, while the customary pandemonium was crashing and thundering along at its best, a fight broke out. It was a surging, struggling, shoulder-to-shoulder scramble. A great many blows were struck. Twice [Pan-German party leader and racist Georg, Ritter von] Schonerer lifted one of the heavy ministerial fauteuils—some say with one hand—and threatened members of the Majority with it, but it was wrenched away from him; a member hammered [German Radical party leader and racist Karl Hermann] Wolf over the head with the President's bell, and another member choked him; a professor was flung down and belabored with fists and choked; he held up an open penknife as a defense against the blows; it was snatched from him and flung to a distance; it hit a peaceful Christian Socialist who wasn't doing anything, and brought blood from his hand."
• Self-proclaimed King of the Youtube Walkthrough TheRadBrad has done this in ANY game whenever he finds something akin to a chair. He even has Professional Chair Thrower in his channel description.
  [Finds a chair during a game]
  The Rad Brad: FUCK YOU, CHAIR!... YEEEAAAHH...!
• Though details surrounding this altercation aren't clear, what is clear is that people are throwing and swinging a lot of folding chairs around...including one lady who ups the ante by throwing a folding table. She also catches a thrown chair with one hand.
• 2010 match between Greece and Sebia national basketball teams ended in brawl concluded with Nenad Krstic throwing the chair into Greek players. It eventually hit Giannis Bourousis and cost Krstic three-game suspension before the FIBA World Championship.
• A Turkish football match descended into rather bizarre violence when angry supporters of both teams stormed the field and attacked each other with plastic chairs after a red card was called. It got so bad that riot police were called in. In the meantime, two men took their chairs out to one of the goal nets, sat down, and pointed and laughed at the proceedings.
• Similarly and what has been described as "the most embarrassing moment in the history of Chilean tennis", the 2000 Davis Cup match between Argentina and Chile ended up with drunken fans pelting the field with plastic chairs, along with anything that wasn't nailed to the floor, injuring 3 people and getting the match cancelled.

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