Crafted from Animals

A knife made out of shark's teeth, because why not?

A piece of equipment created from bits and pieces of a large creature. This can include teeth, claws, bones in general, hides and coats, whole appendages, chitin from Big Creepy-Crawlies, organs, and generally anything that can be cut off and utilized. The reasons for doing this can vary: it can be a matter of convenience, because the body part in question has properties not easily replicated by other means, or just a means of showing off.

Possession of such things tends to be shorthand for "badass hunter", since Fridge Logic dictates that the character most likely had to kill the creature in question to get the requisite materials. Claws and teeth also tend to be Absurdly Sharp Blades, to emphasize the ferocity of the previous owners, or at least justify their continued usage in place of more "advanced" weapons.

The creation of such equipment has become prominent in video games, as well, particularly the RPG genre. If the player isn't capable of crafting the gear themselves, it's not uncommon to find an NPC who can do the job in their stead... of course, they need 20 Bear Asses for materials.

Truth in Television: before metalworking, bones were a common choice for tool materials, and hides provide a lot of mileage in terms of insulation and warmth.

Since bones are a common choice for this trope, there's a lot of overlap with Bad with the Bone, Ballistic Bone or Skeletons in the Coat Closet. The runner-up, fur, generally leads to Pelts of the Barbarian, Fur Bikini, and/or Nemean Skinning. If the body is used as a weapon without it being taken apart first, that's Grievous Harm with a Body. If used ornamentally, it can also overlap with Battle Trophy. If animal parts are used for healing instead, that's Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product. See also Item Crafting and Organ Drops.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Delicious in Dungeon:
  • Played for Laughs when the main characters notice that some giant frogs are unaffected by a thicket of poisonous vines, so they make the frogs' skins into bodysuits to pass through. An Imagine Spot speculates on whether they could sell frog-leather protective gear or whether the skins need to be fresh.
  • When Marcille's Magic Staff is damaged, she repairs it by weaving in strands of magical wood from the Dryads they fought.
• Hajime no Ippo: Having the fame of fighting a wild bear and not just surviving but also killing the animal with his fists, Mamoru Takamura usually appears with the skin and head of that bear as a cape of his previous fights, also showing the scar of the bear clawing in his chest.
• Innocent: It's revealed in chapter 87 that Jean-Louis Sanson made a necklace with Blanka's skull as the center-piece.
• Inuyasha's sword the Tetsuaiga was forged from the fang of his Youkai father and later reforged with his own fang when the sword is broken by the Oni Goshinki. His Aloof Older Brother Sesshomaru's Healing Shiv the Tenseiga is also made from the cast off of the Tetsuaiga while his Evil Weapon the Tokijin is made from the fangs of the very same oni. Similarly Sango's Battle Boomerang the Hiraikotsu is made from the bones of purified youkai.
• In Naruto the villainous and terminally ill leader of the Sound Five Kimimaro can pull the bones from his body to instantly shape harder-than-steel weapons.
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: In the prequel manga, Sekiro Side Story: Hanbei the Undying, the Hermit uses the pelts from the monkeys he's killed to dress himself up like one. He even wears an entire monkey head as a mask!

Comic Books

• Giantkiller: Jack's sword Kiba was crafted from a shed Kaiju tooth.

Fanfics

• Boldores And Boomsticks: Yang replaces the damaged armor plate of Ember Celica with a scale shed by her Hakamo-o Sabra. The new component is noted to channel her aura better than the steel one did.
• Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons: Blackjack fashions an improvised macuhuitl from the bones and teeth of a dragon skeleton she finds in a museum.
• Ice and Fire (Minecraft): Every monster drops parts that can be used to craft weapons and armor, such as lashing death worm-tongue gauntlets or troll-hide armor that reflects projectiles.
• RWBY: Remnants: Some of the characters wear clothing decorated with Grimm bones as a symbol of status or as trophies from hunts.
• The Swarm of War: Orks outfit themselves with armor and weapons made out of Zerg bones. The Ork leader is actually called Warboss Bugklaw.

Film — Animated

• How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: Hiccup and the others all wear armor made from their dragons' scales, allowing them to walk through fire. Being the heroes who live at peace with dragons, the scales are collected after having been moulted, rather than skinned off.
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs has Buck's knife, which was created from the tooth of Rudy, a gigantic dinosaur. Unlike several other instances of this trope, Rudy was no worse for wear for not having the tooth. This is Truth in Television, as dinosaurs typically went through many sets of teeth during their lifetimes.

Legends and Mythology

• Classical Mythology: Heracles famously slew the Nemean Lion and wore its rock-hard pelt as armor.

Literature

• The Bone Maker: Bone magic works best when it can imbue some attribute of the source animal into the finished product, like a talisman that grants its wearer a bear's strength or a construct that can scale cliffs like a mountain goat. And then there's the forbidden power of human bone...
• Conan the Barbarian: Being the barbarian he is, Conan usually wears animal skins and parts into his costume, including a fur loincloth and a necklace made of teeth.
• Discworld: The Nac Mac Feegle make plenty of gear from animal parts, but since they are wee people they make use of small animals; rabbit skulls are used as helmets, mouse leather is used for bagpipes etc.
• Dune: The Fremen's traditional crysknives are carved from Sandworm teeth.
• The Heroes of Olympus: After Annabeth loses her bronze dagger in Tartarus, she travels unarmed for a while until she receives a dagger made of drakon bone from Damasen. Damasen has a lot of material to spare because Tartarus is largely barren and the only resource is a resurrecting dragon that attacks him daily.
• The Kalevala: Väinämöinen builds his first kantele (a stringed musical instrument) out of the jawbone of a giant fish he slew.
• Last Flight: As the Blight continues, Amadis takes to wearing a bracelet made from ogre fangs.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: The ant-people warriors of the first book fight with swords and shields made from shell of some kind.
• Redwall: There are a few villains in the series with clothing, armor, or weapons made from parts of animals they've allegedly killed, such as Cluny the Scourge and his cloak made from bat wings, and Urgan Nagru and his wolf pelt and matching skull helmet. This is very disturbing considering that the series takes place in a World of Funny Animals.
• The Scholomance: Magical artificing sometimes uses pieces of supernatural monsters, some of which need to be extracted with special spells. It's mentioned that sirenspider parts make good musical instruments, but it's unclear to what extent they're specifically useful and to what extent it's the Wizarding School students needing to scavenge whatever supplies they can get.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Dragon body parts have traditionally had a long list of practical uses, and carving up a slain dragon's corpse for building materials and magical reagents is a long-standing part of the dragonslaying process.
    • In most editions, dragon hide is a standard material for armor and shields, and usually provides some form of elemental resistance.
    • The 3rd Edition Draconomicon includes a section describing items craftable from dragon body parts. Dragon bones can be used to make bows with very high tensile strength and range, while dragon claws and fangs can be made into weapons that inflict energy damage of the same type as the dragon's breath weapon.
    • Dragon Magazine #98 has "The Magic of Dragon Teeth", an article describes how dragon teeth can be made into magical devices that can summon "dragon men" when planted in the earth.
    • Dragon Magazine #332 has "Cutting up the Dragon", another article on this subject. A dragon's skeleton, hide and wings may be used to create a boat. This can be given a number of enchantments, such as flight or the ability to use the dragon's breath weapon once per day on its pilot's command. Dragon feet can also be hollowed out and fitted with grips to serve as clawed gauntlets for a creature of equivalent size, dragon skulls can be made into helmets that ward their wearer against paralysis and Forced Sleep, and dragon vocal cords can be incorporated into string instruments to give them magical effects.
    • A crystal blade, a weapon described in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, is formed from a dorsal spike taken from a crystal dragon, and retains enough of its former owner's magic to deal radiant damage to its targets.
  • 1st Edition Monster Manual: The large plates behind a bulette's head can be made into shields of up to plus three power by a skilled dwarven craftsman.
  • Module WG5 Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure: The whip possessed by the iron golem is made out of cockatrice feathers. It retains the cockatrice's ability to petrify any creature it hits.
  • Dark Sun: Because of the shortage of metal on Athas, bones are often made into weapons.
  • A cave fisher's sturdy exoskeleton can be used to make tools, armor, and jewelry.
  • Kruthik chitin, when properly treated, can be used to make strong and lightweight shields and armor.
  • Fifth Edition lizardfolk all have a skill that allows them to make weapons and shields out of body parts during an (hour-long) short rest. Given that a shield can sell for ten gold, this can be a very fast way for low level characters to earn a pile of money.
  • Prior to 3rd Edition, most magic items needed to have body parts from specific monsters as components for their construction. The Cloak of Displacement, for example, needed to be made from the hide of a Displacer Beast. A Ring of Fire Resistance generally needed something from a monster that was immune to fire like a salamander while a Ring of Regeneration needed the blood or body parts of a troll or other monster that could regenerate. Arrows of Slaying always required a bit of the same type of creature they were crafted to slay.
  • The crafting system in 5e's Xanathar's Guide to Everything requires the DM to compose a special quest to obtain exotic components for creating magic items, including monster parts.
• Pathfinder:
  • The munavri's distinctive ivory ships are crafted from the bones and teeth of the monsters of the Sightless Sea.
  • Some of the runelords' weapons of rule are crafted from creatures' mortal remains. Krune's animated spear has a dragon's fang for a blade, while Zutha made his scythe out of magically reinforced bones and sinews.
• Warhammer:
  • Dark Heresy: Talonblades are weapons crafted from the perpetually-sharp talons of an unknown alien species.
  • Warhammer Fantasy: The shaft of Duke Bohemond of of Bastonne's primary weapon, the Beast Mace of Bastonne, was carved from the femur of a dragon he slew himself.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Some Chaos weapons incorporate parts of magical beasts to convey related properties, such as a blade crafted from a Basilisk tail that can petrify creatures cut by it, or one quenched in minotaur blood to grant its bearer berserker rage.

Toys

• BIONICLE: Mata Nui's sword is made from a Vorox tail.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate: The exoskeletons of ankheg monsters can be made into armor, while in the sequel you can also turn the hides of different dragons into armor as well.
• Deep Rock Galactic offers the Dawn of the Dread cosmetic DLC, adding armor sets made from scavenged Glyphid chitin, if you're willing to risk friendly fire incidents.
• Dragon Age: Origins: There are several sets of armor that can be made from drake scales and dragon scales by Wade.
• Echo: Secrets of the Lost Cavern: For one of the earlier puzzles, Player Character Arok makes a spear sling out of an antler that he found in the cave the game starts out in.
• In Elden Ring, arrows and crossbow bolts can be crafted from animal bones, with or without fletchings.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Traditional Bosmer (Wood Elf) weaponry and clothing tends to be made at least in part from animals, due to the Green Pact preventing them from harvesting plants within Valenwood. (Leather armor, bone weapons, sinew bow strings, etc.)
  • Bonemold armor is made by gluing layers of bone with resin, serving as medium armor in Morrowind. In-universe legends hold that it was invented at the request of a Lord who needed armor that was light enough for his servants to wear while they fetched water in drought conditions, but heavy enough to protect them from groups of roving cannibals. Morrowind also has "Troll Bone" armor, which as the name implies, is basically the skull and ribcage of a troll fitted with cloth which allows them to be worn as a helmet and cuirass, respectively.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Skyrim: Parts from slain dragons can be used to craft some of the best armour in the game. Their bones can be made into heavy "Dragonplate" armor and their skin can be made into light "Dragonscale" armor, while the dragonbone warhammer, which has the highest base damage of any weapon available in the game, is essentially a dragon's femur with a long decorative handle.
• Elsword has a lot of weapons and occasionally armors made/taken from the bosses' body. The Secret Dungeon Optional Bosses in particular tend to either drop the special equipments themselves (rarely), or drop the materials you'd need to craft the equipment (more commonly).
• Killer Instinct: Chief Thunder returns from the first game with large feathers in his head and a necklace made of teeth, probably from wild animals like wolves, bears, etc. With his alternate costumes, he has helmets with heads of a bear, a wolf, a skull of an animal and even in one costume, his axes are sharped bones attached to a stone and a stick.
• Grounded: Most tools, weapons, and armors are made out of various bug and spider parts.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The Goron and Zora Tunics are partially crafted from Dodongo hide and fish gills respectively, according to the official guide, which are implied to give them their heat resistant and water-breathing qualities.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Bokoblins and Moblins, orc-like enemies whose technology tops out at a stone age level, use weapons that are simple wooden sticks at their base levels but are reinforced with bones and then fossils at higher tiers. These mostly consist of nonspecific spikes of sharpened bone used to make clubs, spears, shields and bows harder-hitting, more durable or just more menacing, but more clearly identifiable examples include the second-tier Moblin spear, which has an entire antelope skull tied to it to form its point, and the third-tier Moblin club, whose head is a vertebrae from some unknown giant beast tied down to its central stick.
• In Minecraft, animals frequently drop resources such as leather, wool, feathers or strings that can be crafted into gear like leather armour, bows (using spider strings) or arrows (fletched with chicken feathers).
• In Monster Hunter, you are a hunter tasked with killing monsters, using their body parts to build and upgrade armor and weapons, and use them to hunt even stronger monsters.
• In Outward, animal hides can be used to make rudimentary satchels and bedrolls, while scaled leather from lizards can make decent light armor. Moreover, teeth and spines from carnivorous animals can be strapped onto conventional iron weapons to make 'fang weapons' that cause bleeding wounds in foes.
• Pokémon: Skarmory's Pokédex entries mention that in the past people used to use their shed feathers as swords — Skarmory being a Steel-type, its feathers are naturally made out of metal and quite sharp.
• RuneScape: There are quite a lot of armor and weapons made from monsters:
  • Most ranged armor is crafted from the hides of animals such as dragons.
  • Some low level magic armors are also made from monster parts.
  • Noxious weapons are made from the body parts of a giant spider boss.
  • Drygore weapons are made from parts of the Kalphite King.
• Armor and weapons in the Toukiden series are mostly crafted from Oni drops, which range from horns and claws to more exotic items that defy common physics.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: Bone Shield:
  A shield crafted from animal bones.
• Warcraft III has the Frost Wyrm Skull Shield, a, well, shield made with a Frost Wyrm's skull. It's not that good though, only giving 2 points of armor and reducing spell damage.
• The Plains of Eidolon in Warframe are home to many unusual creatures with body parts the player can use in many of the blueprints acquired in Cetus. The descriptions for these resources also mention what the Ostron people use them for; for example, they make leather from yogwuns' stomach and the sinew from kuakas' spinal claws^note And did Master Teasonai tell you about a hunter who used kuakas themselves as makeshift shoes?, use bones of mawfish in tool production, boil the tralok eyes into an adhesive and harvest electroplax from charc eels for use as a catalyst in synthetics.
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, autopsying the insectoid Chryssalids unlocks Chitin Plating, an item made with four of their corpses and a tiny amount of alien alloys. Chitin Plating adds 4 Hit Points, the most of any HP-enhancing item and equal to the mid-tier Carapace Armor, and gives the user an inherent 50% Damage Reduction against melee attacks.

Webcomics

• In Gunnerkrigg Court, Coyote pulls out his own tooth and gifts it to Antimony. Being a magical tooth, it transforms into a blade so sharp that it can slice a shadow off the ground and constantly resonates with Coyote's laughter.

Web Video

• Danganronpa F: Shattered Hope: The cloth covering half of Grisp's upper body is a tiger pelt, and he has an animal tooth for a necklace.
• Kiwami Japan is known for making knives (among other things) out of strange materials, such as shark teeth... or an engagement ring made out of human nails.
• Sword Art Online Abridged: Kirito's new sword is forged from a material that can only be obtained from a high-level boss, and even then only if a high-level blacksmith is in the party. The material turns out to be crystallized dragon turds. Lizbeth is suitably squicked at handling it, but Kirito reminds her it's all virtual, and she's wearing (virtual) gloves anyway.

Western Animation

• In one Dinosaur Train episode, Valerie Velociraptor makes bracelets for Tiny and Shiny out of her own feathers.
• The Simpsons: In "The Squirt and the Whale", the townspeople use the dead, beached body of a whale to create a variety of products, including whalebone corsets.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Brunzetta's necklace is made of bones and she wears a skull for a belt.

Real Life

• The first clothing was made of materials such as animal hide, and in modern times people still wear clothing made from animals in the form of fur coats and leather.
• Shark teeth have been used in weapons, particularly in Polynesian culture. For cultures with no metallurgy they're some of the hardest and sharpest things around.

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