"The stars and stripes meets the hammer and sickle"
— ABC, "Between You and Me"
A Hyperspace Mallet for smashing. A Sinister Scythe for slashing. Put 'em together and what do you got?
Inspired by work from German philosopher Karl Marx, Communism evolved and became a very popular social, economic and political movement in the East, most famously Russia.note After the Revolution, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union raised their movement's flag across the country: a red flag with a gold hammer and sickle beneath a gold-bordered red star. The hammer and sickle were meant to represent the working class: the hammer representing the industrial worker, while the sickle represented the farmer, toiling in the fields, while the star represented the leading role of the Party.
In fiction, the hammer and sickle are a popular, Dual Wielding weapons-of-choice for your Token Minority Russian characters, be they Dirty Communists, Chummy Commies, Captain Patriotic or some other characters with Patriotic Fervor towards Glorious Mother Russia or the Communist philosophy. The hammer and sickle could be normal steel and wood, swung around with efficient weapon skillz, or it could be supercharged on Soviet Superscience.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Art
- Worker and Kolkhoz Woman: On this Soviet sculpture, the worker holds a hammer and the kolkhoz woman holds a sickle.
Comic Books
- Parodied in Alan Ford in volume 10 Formule: the Brusky agent sent from homeland carries a hammer and sickle in his hands and actually uses them to threaten Alan (by pulling the sickle around his neck and waving the hammer at him).
- The Boys features one of the U.S.S.R.'s official supers, a half-naked man code named Purge, wielding nothing but a hammer, a sickle, and a worrying grin.
- In ''The DCU, two of the members of Russian hero (to Russia, anyway) group the People's Heroes go by the names of Hammer and Sickle, wielding said weapons in combat. Following the fall of the Socvier Union, they become Former Regime Personnel, selling their services to the highest bidders.
- In the Marvel Universe, Vanguard (one of the Soviet Super Soldiers) carries a hammer and sickle as his weapons. As well as their conventional use as a bludgeoning and cutting weapons, he can also them as a focus to intensify his mutant powers.
- The Ultimates: Those are Perun's weapons. As you could have guessed, he's from Glorious Mother Russia. He had to drop the Sickle for the Ultimate Avengers, who were not interested in the Soviet imagery.
Film — Live Action
- In La Cité de la peur, the slasher Boris from the Stylistic Suck Show Within a Show "Red is Dead" (and his copycat outside of it) wield a hammer and sickle.
- In Dead Snow, Roy crosses a hammer and a sickle before proceeding to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to a Nazi Zombie. The zombie in question doesn't look happy about the turnabout.
- In The Gamers, one of the bandits is armed with these. She holds them like the old Soviet symbol, too, as a sight gag.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the episode "Anne", Buffy ends up wielding a hammer and a bladed weapon called a hunga-munga—which looks enough like a sickle to complete the Rule of Symbolism—while leading a revolt of human slave workers abducted to a cruel extra-dimensional demon factory.
Tabletop Games
- Golden Age Champions includes a trio of World War II era Soviet superheroes called the Bolshevik Boys: Red Hammer, Red Ice-Sickle and Red Streak. Red Hammer is a brick who wields a two-handed sledge hammer. Red Ice-Sickle has ice powers, but has a sickle on his costume to keep the 'hammer and sickle' theme.
- Pathfinder has both sickles and hammers statted out for weaponized use, and since sickles are considered "light" weapons, it is possible to wield them in the off hand, with a (war)hammer in the primary hand. Unfortunately, beyond making you look like a Chummy Commie, the hammer-and-sickle build is hardly of any practical combat use. Why?
Video Games
- Working for the Joker and the Penguin respectively in Batman: Arkham City, Mr. "Hammer" Abramovici, along with his formerly-conjoined twin Mr. "Sickle" Abramovici, each wield their respective namesake. An Arkham File reveals that they were once part of a Russian traveling circus until they killed the ringmaster and fled to join the Joker. However, an argument between the two caused them to literally split via surgery, and Hammer stayed with the Joker while Sickle joined the Penguin. At the end of the game, the two of them reconcile.
- In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, the Soviets can field a Hammer tank (anti-armor tank that can steal weapons from other tanks) and a Sickle (anti-infantry Spider Tank). The expansion adds the Reaper (anti-armor and -air) Spider Tank.
- In Dark Souls, you can invoke this trope by dual wielding any of the three Blacksmith Hammers with a Shotel. The Shotel itself can also be used for parrying when equipped on your left hand.
- In Dungeons of Dredmor, the Communist skill tree has a hammer and a sickle as its starting equipment, for obvious reasons.
- In the text adventure Shadows of Mordor, one pair of orcs are armed with a hammer and a sickle, respectively.
- The boss of the Russian-themed stage in Alien Hominid is a giant blimp-like machine that tries to kill you with a giant hammer and sickle.
Webcomics
- In Homestuck, John, the primary human character, wields a hammer, while Karkat, the primary troll character, wields a sickle. Their friend Dave eventually
points out the implications.
Western Animation
- In Dexter's Laboratory short segment Justice Friends, Comrade Red is the archnemesis of Major Glory and wields the hammer and sickle as his weapons.
- Ivan Steranko (who later go on to become Rocksteady) from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) is a Russian arms-dealer that wields a hammer and sickle, both made of solid gold.
- In El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, there is a Russian-born supervillain named Comrade Chaos that dual wields a hammer and sickle.
