Giant Hands of Doom

Jazz hands, everybody!

"And here comes the giant fist!!"

— Patrick Star playing with a shrunken version of Squidward like an action figure, Spongebob Squarepants

A character, usually a video game boss, who fights primarily with giant hands. Due to the versatility of the human hand, this provides a large variety of attacks, not to mention the inexplicable bombs, missiles, etc. they'll inevitably drop. Sometimes, the hands will be accompanied by a giant head. Expect this to be the weak spot, especially the eyes. Bonus points if the hands have eyes on them, too. Expect a certain number of common attacks across games:

• The ever-popular punch.
• Grabbing your character and squeezing.
• Walking on two fingers.
• Slamming its palm into the ground or across the screen.
• Laser beams (especially popular if the head appears).
• Some form of Badass Fingersnap.
• Making a gun with its fingers and somehow firing a real projectile.
• Whatever the designer thought of by waving their hands around, basically.

Often done by way of Cognizant Limbs. Sometimes done with Floating Limbs. Compare Creepy Long Fingers. See also Giant Foot of Stomping (in some cases, a character may be capable of using both).

---

Examples:

Video Game Examples

Action-Adventure

• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Balore punches at you with his hands at first, then switches to a laser fired from his eye (which is his weakpoint). Dawn of Sorrow as well as Portrait of Ruin also feature him, but he's a little different and only alternates between his laser and hands.
• The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: The Golem isn't fought directly, for the most part, and the bulk of its body remains in the background most of the time it's seen. Rather, it slams its hands and fists on the ground and sweeps them across the screen to attack, and its hands must be attacked to stun the Golem and expose its crystal weak points.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The infamous Wallmasters, in multiple entries, might be the first examples from the company and are easily among the earliest, though they are not bosses, just mook bouncers.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Link battles Bongo Bongo standing on a giant drum, while the boss hangs from the ceiling of its room and using its detached, floating hands to beat down at Link and the drum alike.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games: Ramrock from Ages is a floating stone head and hands that animates when Link comes near. It fights by firing its fists at Link, later moves on to chasing after Link and trying to crush under its palms, then shifting gears to using Eye Beams, and finally turning its hands into miniature cannons.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Gohdan is a floating stone head flanked by a pair of floating stone hands. It attacks by trying to push Link into electric pits and clapping its hands on Link.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: Mazaal is a mechanical head-and-hands set that fights by bringing its fists down on Link and sweeping a hand across the arena to catch him.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: On each side of the Twilight Palace, Link must remove a Sol from one of Zant's Hands and carry it outside through several complicated rooms while continually being chased by the hand. If the hand succeeds in grabbing a Sol, it will carry it back to the last room and force Link to start all over again.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: The Gloom Spawn are amorphous conglomerations of arms with eyes in their palms that try to grab at Link when he enters their territory. Like everything else associated with Gloom, they cause Maximum HP Reduction when they hit you.
• Ōkami
  • The final form of Yami, the final boss is a giant hand attached to an orb. This is repeated in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, where Yami is again the final boss. Its grab super is downright lethal.
  • In the sunken ship area, there is a room where a giant seaweed monster lives. When you enter the room, two gigantic hands rise out of the water and attempt to crush Ammy and/or push her off into the waters below. Fortunately, the monster can be killed by draining the water from the room, and then rolling spiked cylinders across its face until it dies.
• Ōkamiden: Akuro in his monstrous form has two large, red-and-black hands it can use to cast powerful attacks during battle.
• StarTropics: Zoda's first form, fought at the beginning of the last stage, attacks with Giant Hands of Doom and then brings the head out for some fireball action, at which point you can use your blaster or your Super Nova on him, or just the blaster, because you start with only three hearts for this battle, and using the Yo-Yo against him is insane.
• Titan Souls: Both Gol-Iath and Gol-Set use their giant hands to attack the archer; the latter of the bosses needing to be dealt with by guiding the hands toward panels which when pressed, expose the boss's weak spot.
• The Wonderful 101 has many bosses designed by this template (circular area and a huge boss circling around it, punching you and throwing stuff), including one of the forms of final boss.

Beat 'em Up

• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game: The Super Fighting Robot attacks with detachable hands, which also happen to be the only parts you can damage. Meanwhile the rest of the body chills in the background, invincible but still attacking you with lasers, missiles, and a flamethrower.

Fighting Games

• Crossed Swords: In the second game, there's a power-up that literally drops a gigantic green fist from the heavens into the screen, flattening enemies that happens to be underneath.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Master Hand, and from Melee onward, Crazy Hand. Sometimes you have to fight them both at the same time.
    • Master Hand can do most of the attacks listed in the description. The only of those that Crazy Hand cannot do is walking on two fingers. Instead, he crawls on all five fingers, rather like a spider.
    • If Master Hand teams up with Crazy Hand, they can do even more attacks, such as smashing the player character in a giant clapping motion, crushing him/her between two fists, have one slap the ground while the other uses the Finger Gun, etc.
  • Isaac appears as an Assist Trophy and summons a giant hand to push your opponents off the stage.

First-Person Shooter

• Immortal Redneck: The first pyramid's final boss, Weryt, uses his hands to slap you, send airwaves, homing missiles and also to punch the floor. Under his head, there are several weak points the player needs to break.

Hack and Slash

• Devil May Cry:
  • Devil May Cry 4: Nero's Devil Bringer can summon a large spectral arm which he can use to attack bosses and enemies in a variety of ways.
  • Devil May Cry 5: In the final battle against Vergil, Nero unlocks the complete form of his Devil Trigger. This form includes spectral arm-like wings at his back called Bringer Claws.

MMORPGs

• Phantasy Star Online 2: Dark Falz Elder sics four of his hands on you (Which look like bizarre hydras; the two outermost fingers being legs, and the other three heads) for the first phase of his fight, remaining in the background to launch lasers and meteors at you while the hands attack directly with the sorts of moves you might expect. They occasionally mix things up by pairing off or summoning numerous additional hands onto the field to perform combination attacks.
• RuneScape has monsters called Wall Beasts that attack you through holes in the wall of a cave and the only part of their body that you see is a giant hand. In order to fight them you need to be wearing a spiked helmet to stop them from grabbing your head.
• World of Warcraft: Kologarn, a boss in the donjon Ulduar, is an entire giant golem, but most of his attacks come from his two hands (which are also directly killable). Also, yes, his eyes shoot laser beams.

Platform Games

• Donkey Kong:
  • Donkey Kong '94: After you seemingly beat Donkey Kong for the final time, it turns out that there's one more boss fight with the big ape left. After his fall from the tower in the previous level, Donkey Kong absorbs a ton of Super Mushrooms and grows into a giant gorilla in a battle where he uses his newfound giant fists to try and crush you. In order to beat him you need to hit his head with barrels six times instead of the usual three.
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns: Tiki Tong in his battle with the Kongs has two giant hands that need to be destroyed before destroying the main body.
• Eversion has creepy giant hands shooting out of the second Advancing Wall of Doom.
• Gravity Circuit: A machine that follows this boss template serves as a mini-boss in Trace's stage. Commander Circuit also consists of a giant head and two large hands, at least until the final phase where the boss loses the hands.
• Kirby Super Star: Wham Bam Rock and Wham Bam Jewel are a combination of this trope and Background Boss, where the boss's face watches you from the background while its hands try to slay Kirby.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man 3: The final boss sometimes takes a break from raining projectiles on you and tries to punch you. You can jump on the fist to reach his head and attack his weakpoint.
  • Mega Man 10: The Keeper minibosses in Strike Man's stage are giant hands that punch a ball and Mega Man in order to attempt to do damage.
  • Mega Man V: The game's incarnation of the Wily Machine has the player fighting both of its hands, individually, before fighting the Wily Machine itself. The arms are capable of slamming down on the ground to hit Mega Man or toss him into the air, and they can also shoot missiles. The second one can also grab Mega Man to ensure those missiles hit him.
  • Several Mega Man X and Zero games have the final boss transform into their giant form, then attack with massive hands, lasers, and hands shooting lasers.
• Pulseman: The final boss is another "Head and Hands" type boss who shoots energy balls from his hands, punches, and pounds the ground to summon minions.
• Shantae: The Golem Mine boss, complete with a giant head that has a weak point that you could reach by stepping on its giant hands.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles:
    • Lava Reef's miniboss is comprised of two threats, one of them being a giant hand that rises from the lava below and tries to crush Sonic.
    • In the first stage of the final boss fight, you must destroy all six of its Malicious Fingers.
  • Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island:
    • The boss of the Rusty Ruin Zone attacks solely by trying to crush Sonic with its conveniently platform-shaped paws.
    • One stage of the final boss features two disembodied hands that first try to crush him, then to run him over by racing across the arena.
  • Sonic Advance 2: The Egg Saucer is basically a giant wheel-like vehicle with the cockpit and weak point, a laser, and a huge hand. The hand hurts like hell, and if it hits you directly, you are likely to die instantly. Makes this That One Boss.
  • Sonic Advance 3: Hyper Eggrobo attacks with such hands, and you have to use them as platforms to hit the boss.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario 64: Eyerok is two hands made out of rock with large eyeballs on the palms. Unsurprisingly, these eyes are also a weak point.
  • Super Mario Galaxy has Bouldergeist, a big blockheaded ghost with giant destructible (but regenerating) hands of stone. He also shoots rocks that turn into exploding ghosts.
  • Super Mario Odyssey: Knucklotec is a floating stone head with two floating stone hands next to it. Mario needs assume control over them and make him punch himself in the face.
  • Wario Land 3: Rudy the Monster Clown, the final boss, stays in the background of the fight, and attacks with his fists that are kept in the foreground. The "grabbing and squeezing" attack is also the only way in the whole game to get a Game Over.
  • Wario World: Ironsider consists of a a broken minotaur statue and a pair of floating stone hands it controls. It can be defeated by throwing or pile-driving one of its hands into its head.
• Trophy 2021: The clown boss of the circus stage attacks by spitting energy from his mouth, and by pounding the stage with his fists (which you can use as platforms).
• Valis IV: The second stage boss is a floating head and pair of hands.

Puzzle Games

• Catherine: The first boss is the Fist of Grudge, a pair of Katherine's hands holding a giant fork.
• Grow RPG Sigma: Two of the entities needed to defeat the hero in the second level are giant hands. One is a purple hand spawned from two potions getting mixed up, and the other is a hand made of stormy clouds.
• Puyo Puyo: Jaan can enlarge her hands to help her fight enemies.

Racing Games

• Excitebots Trick Racing has a few track hazards consisting of a giant white-gloved hand. While they will try to crush you, if you manage to sneak past them, you can pick up five stars towards your total.

Roguelike

• The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth: The True Final Boss has two hands which have their own health, and can respawn once killed, though they don't do much besides protect Mega Satan's head and smash the ground, sending out shockwaves, and Mega Satan ditches them once he goes to his next phase. Hilariously, because the hands are treated as separate entities than the head, it's possible to charm one of the hands and have it smash his own head.

Role-Playing Games

• Chrono Trigger:
  • Queen Zeal's second form, though her head also fires spells. Hitting the hands provokes dangerous counterattacks, but you'll want to steal from each of them to get some valuable equipment.
  • Giga Gaia and Lavos's second form are also like this, though in their case the arms are visible, just not target-able.
• Deception: The player can use these as a type of trap. Typically, the either grab an invader to lock him in place for a while, or they bash him/her around to cause high amounts of damage.
• Dragon Quest VI: The final boss, Deathtamoor, "discards this worthless body" and becomes a giant demonic head and pair of hands in his last phase.
• Dungeons & Dragons: The Red Dragon arcade games is much like this. Tower of Doom's Flamewing attacks not only with the claws, but with fireballs, rockfalls, and his fire breath.
• Elden Ring has the Fingercreepers, which look like ten-fingered hands. They are the size of dogs at their smallest or car-sized at their biggest. They're also Lightning Bruisers, able to speed towards players and kill them quickly. They hide above players as well as below for stealth attacks.
• Final Fantasy Adventure: The final form of Julius is technically one of the "disembodied head and hands" variety, even though all he did was teleport and shoot fireballs. This was apparently a fan-favorite boss, however, as one of the most common complaints about the remake Sword of Mana is that this form wasn't present.
• Golden Sun: The disembodied Psynergy hands. While the old generation used them to move or lift objects, the new generation have weaponized them to crush boulders or slap stuff.
• Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: The mage Hockomonkey periodically disappears, leaving a multitude of its disembodied hands behind to swipe at you and throw parts of the environment, only reappearing once they've all been destroyed. This is especially annoying in the rematch, where the combined HP of them rivals that of the boss itself.
• Mario & Luigi:
  • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: Cackletta's Ghost consists of a torso flanked by two floating claws. You have to destroy the head and hands before the heart is revealed.
  • Mario & Luigi: Dream Team: Dreamy Bowser, the final boss, has this to a lesser extent. You only have to destroy the right hand to attack the head, but the left hand can grab one of the bros, forcing you to attack it to get him back. While the other final bosses of the series, the Elder Princess Shroob's second form and the Dark Star Core, fight similarly, only these two actually utilize this trope to a notable extent.
• Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes: Lord Bloodcrown fights this way; while he looks fairly humanoid on the world map, in battle, he grows to a gigantic size and gains two floating hands. They charge up and fire energy blasts while blocking attacks, giving him time to charge and fire a devastating laser.
• Miitopia: The Darkest Lord is a golden sun with two floating clawed hands, one of which carries a staff. They are actually strong enough to be fought separately as fully-fledged bosses!
• NieR: Defense System Geppetto, being an Expy of Gohdan, has two giant floating hands as his main weapons. They can not only smash you, but they also shoot Frickin' Laser Beams from their fingertips.
• Onmyoji: Ibaraki-dōji has a special attack in which he plants his severed right arm into the ground, making a huge hand appear from under an enemy and crush them. This skill deals a devastating amount of damage.
• Persona 3 and Persona 4 feature the "Hand" type Shadow, which is basically a walking, disembodied hand. Most of them are quite small, but some of the Metal Slime variants are huge.
• Pokémon:
  • Haunter has the shape of a head-and-hands boss, although its stronger evolution that's more likely to be used as a boss, Gengar, lacks these.
  • Pokémon Sword and Shield: Eternatus' Eternamax form, the Climax Boss, is a more straightforward example than Haunter, as this form is fought only as a boss and the only part of it in range of the battlefield is a giant hand that appears to have a thumb on both sides. However, the only typical hand boss action it does is swat its hand on the battlefield.

Sandbox Games

• Terraria: The boss Skeletron is depicted as a flying skull, with hands and arms. He has a version later in the game called Skeletron Prime, who, as well as attacking with his hands which are now equipped with a vice and a drill, will also shoot lasers and bombs from his other pair of arms.

Shoot 'em Up

• Crypt Killer: The disembodied Pharaoh statue boss, which is a floating Egyptian head with two disembodied arms that periodically tries punching at the player. It's actually one of the more normal-looking bosses in the entire game.
• Star Fox 64:
  • Andross uses these. Ever since his appearance in this particular game he is almost always depicted as a giant floating head and hands, with no explanation of how he got that way.
  • His nephew Andrew tries to ape his uncle's "head and hands" schtick in Assault by transforming his flagship into a giant head and hands. Falco notices the similarities and calls him "An Andross wannabe."
• TaleSpin (Capcom): The fourth level boss, the massive "invisible gentleman", defends itself with punches from its floating, white-gloved hands. The weak point? The bow tie, obviously.
• Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object has the boss battle with Ichirin and her cloud youkai familiar, Unzan. She attacks with giant fists danmaku, which also leave trails of smaller bullets. Ichirin herself is basically Unzan's hitbox.
• Turrican: One of the early level bosses from the Amiga classic' is a giant mechanical fist flying around trying to crush the player.

Tactical RPGs

• Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice: Several boss battles are against Mao's dad, or more specifically his hand. You see, Mao's father is so huge that even his fingers are several times the size of the average character. Somehow, the game treats destroying all his fingers as completely beating himself.

Third-Person Shooter

• Splatoon has DJ Octavio, who is damaged when you knock his mech's giant fists back at him by shooting them before they hit the ground.

Tower Defense

• The Battle Cats: Lasvoss, in keeping with his status as an Affectionate Parody of a final boss, has two giant floating hands with eyes in his first form. They aren't actually used to attack, though.

Non-Video Game Examples

Anime & Manga

• Black★Rock Shooter: STRength uses a pair of giant gauntlets as her weapons.
• Future Card Buddyfight: Gao's newly evolved Dragon Force "Style of Impact" includes a pair of big fists.
• My Hero Academia: Kendo's power is to make her hands grow. She gets a lot of use out of it.
• One Piece: Whenever Luffy uses Gear Three, his Giant Pistol attack involves blowing up his fist to a gigantic size for even more force and damage. After the Time Skip, he has learned how to infuse Armament Haki into his techniques, allowing for even more damage.
• Shadow Star: Humanity meets its end being slapped away to oblivion by gigantic hands coming out from the Earth itself.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: The heroes face loads and loads of Moon-sized, hand-(or foot-)shaped mechas. With faces.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: Girag has this trope as his deck's theme. All of his monsters are just hands/arms. His ace monsters are Number 106: Giant Hand and Number C106: Giant Red Hand. His deck is more defensive than offensive.
• SD Gundam Force: The General of the Dark Axis has a pair of giant, free-floating hands. Each digit has an energy cannon on the end, which he uses to shoot at people.

Comic Books

• Ms. Marvel (2014): Enlarging her fists to gigantic proportions is one of the most frequent applications of Kamalah's stretching powers.
• She-Hulk (2004): Southpaw can create an energy hand using the gauntlet on her left arm. Any harm done to the energy hand causes her own hand to feel pain as demonstrated when She-Hulk bent one of the energy hand's fingers.
• In The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot, Mr. Mxyzptlk and Batmite create a giant spectral hand to grab both Supergirl and Batgirl and drag them into another dimension.

Films — Animated

• Yellow Submarine: The Dragon to the Blue Meanies, The Dreadful Flying Glove. A large, sentient, blue, left glove.

Films — Live-Action

• Captain Sindbad: The final peril at the top of El Kerim's tower is a giant mechanical hand.
• Demon of the Lute: The titular demon is finally unleashed at the end of the film... and manifests itself as a red, transparent, ghostly giant hand with six fingers, and repeatedly tries to crush the heroes by grabbing at them. The only way to defeat said demon is by destroying the lute with a magic bow and a blessed arrow.
• The Thrilling Sword has the guardian of Lord Hsieh's fortress, a pair of shadowy, disembodied hands which sticks out of the wall to grab intruders.

Literature

• The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint has an entity called "Even Worse Hands." Picture a pair of giant, hairy, taloned, disembodied hands. Got it? These are Even Worse.
• Chasms of Malice has an incantation that summons a pair of giant, disembodied hands from out of nowhere to drag a horde og ghouls back into the depths of hell where they came from.
• Journey to the West: The Buddha taunts Sun Wukong that no matter how powerful Wukong is, he can never fly out of Buddha's grasp. Challenge accepted; Wukong immediately took a massive leap to miles and miles away until reaching the five pillars at the edge of heaven... only to find out those five pillars are Buddha's giant fingers.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: This is the motif of most of the spells created by The Archmage Bigby. The basic Bigby's Interposing Hand is a 5th-level spell which creates a 10ft-long hand that follows an enemy around and gets in the way of their attacks against you. Its upgrades Forceful Hand (6th) and Grasping Hand (7th) can push them away or grapple them respectively. Finally, Clenched Fist (8th) is a version of Forceful Hand which can also be controlled manually to make stunning punches, and Crushing Hand (9th) is an upgraded Grasping Hand which inflicts Damage Over Time while grappling. Sourcebooks have introduced lesser spells by Bigby which create smaller hands, including Helping Hand (carries items for you), Warding Hand (slows an enemy's movement), Disrupting Hand (interrupts an enemy when they try to cast spells), and the one-shot attack spells Slapping Hand, Striking Fist and Tripping Hand.
  • 5th Edition rolled all of the variants into one do-all spell as just "Bigby's Hand", then the Rime of the Frostmaiden adventure module introduced monster which was Bigby's Hand as a living sentient spell with no mage having to control it.

Web Animation

• DSBT InsaniT: The Rubber Hand Boss is a giant, floating, sentient...rubber glove.
• Dreamscape: Drake can restrain opponents with hands made of fire.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: Sanaa once ended up "running weapons to these student revolutionaries in Venice who were trying to take down the chancellor of Ca'Foscare and his semi-invisible hand." This semi-invisible hand appears to have been a giant floating mechanical hand.
• The Order of the Stick: Vaarsuvius uses off-brand variants of Bigby's Interposing Hand, including Bugsby's Flicking Finger, Expressive Single Digit and Cat-Retrieving Hand.

Web Original

• WhoIsThisGit has an entire video on final bosses that use this style of fighting, done for the 50th Boss Analysis video.

Western Animation

• The Legend of Vox Machina is based on the Dungeons and Dragons actual play streaming show Critical Role where the character Scanlan makes extensive use of the Bigby's Hand spell — a roughly 5ft tall semi-transparent purple hand he can use to fight; however as they don't have the license for that name it become's Scanlan's hand.

---