Healing Shiv

Apply directly to the forehead.

"Ooh hoo hoo, ya gun shoots medicine! It's intimidatin'!"

— Scout, Team Fortress 2

It looks like a weapon, it's used like a weapon, but it's just not a weapon. It's actually a purely healing, defensive, or support implement that happens to be in exactly the shape of a sword, arrow, gun, whatever.

Occasionally, this comes from the target, not the weapon. A certain type of enemy might absorb a certain type of attack into its own HP. This mostly happens to elementally-inclined enemies who absorb their own specialty, so that a character who can absorb the fire element will be healed by fire spells and flaming weapons, etc. The Healing Shiv could also become a normal (or better!) weapon if said target is undead.

Occasionally, it's the ammo that possesses healing/supportive capabilities rather than the weapon; so it's possible to use a regular gun for this simply by loading them with said ammo.

Not to be confused with Recovery Attack. For regular shivs, see Sinister Shiv.

Compare and contrast Percussive Maintenance, where devices are fixed by attacking them through mundane means. Contrast Deadly Doctor, someone who uses medical skills and equipment to hurt people and Revive Kills Zombie.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Ayakashi Triangle: When Suzu takes a Cat Girl form, she purifies a corrupted Une by chomping into her neck and ripping out the impurity with her teeth.
• In Bleach, Hanataro Yamada's zanpakuto Hisagomaru is a katana that heals anybody it cuts instead of harming them. However, each time it heals somebody, a red gauge on the katana fills up. When Hanataro activates Shikai, Hisagomaru turns into a scalpel that can fire a beam proportionately powerful compared to how much the gauge was filled. Unfortunately, it only has one shot, and Hanataro is now left with a tiny scalpel as a weapon (it can cut people, but it's so small and weak) unless he changes it back and repeats the process.
• This combined with Home-Run Hitter is the entire premise behind Dageki Joi Saori. A Doctor who knocks her patients into the next county, but boy do they feel great afterwards!
• In Digimon Adventure, Angemon and Angewomon had to shoot Tai and Matt with special "Arrows of Truth/Hope and Light" to get the older kids' Digimon up to Mega level.
• In Dragon Ball Z, Goku fires a blast at Freeza after their battle with the purpose of actually giving Freeza some of his ki so Freeza can survive. Of course Freeza just uses it to backstab him and then gets blasted for real.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Used by Jellal, a known traitor and villain, when he hits Natsu with a golden fire. Natsu at first thinks he was attacking, and tells him that he forgot that fire doesn't work on him. Then Jellal tells him that he DID remember, and was doing this to help him defeat his current foe. Boy did it ever.
  • In a filler arc, Wendy combines her Sky Dragon's Roar with her healing magic to restore the memories of a foe who sacrificed them for a power boost and their inadverted returning during their battle was causing him pain. The result simultaneously restores his memories while also taking him down.
• In Fist of the North Star, the martial art of Hokuto Shinken is described as an assassin's art, created for the purpose of killing others from the inside out by exploiting the human body's pressure points. Those same pressure points, however, can also be used by Hokuto Shinken users to heal others. Kenshiro uses Hokuto Shinken to heal others on occasion, most notably to restore Rin's speech and Airi's eyesight. Kenshiro's older brother, Toki, uses Hokuto Shinken chiefly as a healing art in his occupation as a doctor.
• In Flame of Recca the eponymous Flame powered by Yanagi, contrary to all other instances in the series, heals everyone and kills the Big Bad.
• ChoRyuJin's Eraser Head from GaoGaiGar is the defensive version. It's a missile... that dissipates energy. Used repeatedly in Big Damn Heroes moments to negate would-be nasty explosions or techniques. Indeed, because of it, ChoRyuJin is pretty much the Big Damn Heroes guy in the series.
• In an Alternate Universe, The Garden of Sinners, a different Shiki with similar powers stabs away someone's appendicitis. She also saves her own life by killing her arm when it's possessed by a ghost, and at one point allows herself to be possessed to stab the spirits inside her, without any apparent resulting injury.
• Hellsing's Father Alexander Anderson uses the Nail of Helena - one of the Nails of Christ, a potent holy relic which upon contact with his heart (via a horrific scene when he stabs himself) regenerates his missing arm and gives him massive regeneration powers for as long as the nail remains there.
• Luna Heela in The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter has the skill "Heal Shot", which allows her to channel her healing powers through her guns.
• In Hunter × Hunter, once Knuckle's power has been activated, any punches he throws will instead bestow strength upon his target. This is because his power works like bank interest, except with strength, and Knuckle has to loan out some principle first.
• In Inuyasha, Sesshomaru's Tenseiga can revive the dead by cutting through the pallbearers of the afterlife that come to ferry away the souls of the dead. It has the ability to cut through any spirits that are not of this world, which means, depending on how it's used, it can be used as a spirit-killing weapon or means of purifying souls of their sins. However, for physical beings, it simply doesn't work as a weapon at all. In the manga and The Final Act, it does temporarily gain the ability to attack normal enemies, but only until the attack is passed on to Inuyasha. Additionally, the sword's life-restoring power can only be used once per person.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • In Phantom Blood, Will A. Zeppeli jammed his pinky finger into Jonathan Joestar's diaphragm after the latter's battle with Dio, transferring some of his Hamon to him to mend his broken arm and change his breathing so he, too, can use Hamon.
  • In Diamond is Unbreakable, Josuke Higashikata's stand Crazy Diamond is able to restore someone or something to what Josuke considers to be their original form by punching them, most often used to heal/repair the target.
• Jubei-chan's sword actually defeats the fallen spirits that she's fighting by not only freeing them from their obsessive hatred but resurrecting them from the dead. It's a parody of Magical Girl shows where they purify or heal the Monster of the Week back to normal. Instead of a colorful wand that shoots hearts and sparkles, Jubei cuts people down with a katana.
• In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, at the very end of his climactic fight against Kajima, Kenichi masters his ki and simultaneously learns a new version of his best technique, the Mubyoshi. In addition to being an absurdly strong punch, the new version also has the added benefit of restoring Kajima's ruined ki flow, which would have killed him otherwise. Kenichi quite literally punched the hell out of his opponent to save his life. Life-Saving Fist, indeed.
• Unknowingly used by Raid in Magical Circle Guru-Guru. An attempt to counteract his Blessed with Suck magic dances with a stylish spell backfired when the stylish spell turned out to recovery dark magic. A previous attempt also provided a spell that helped with aches and pains.
• Ataru of Megan To Dangan O Tsukatte Isekai O Buchinuku can make any sort of magical bullets he wants. He crafts 'Hyper Healing Bullets' to fix up critically ill and scarred girl he saves.
• In chapter 617 of Naruto, Hinata uses a well-placed application of Juuken - a style normally used to attack targets' internal systems - to re-set Naruto's dislocated shoulder.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Played for Laughs with Chizuru Naba's artifact. To start, it's a spring onion. A HUGE magical spring onion. Then it turns out it's a powerful healing item, but it also can give her temporal control over you. And then we see that yes, it's applied in the old fashioned way. The same one that Chizuru gleefully advocated for as a Running Gag. Hilarity Ensues.
• Panda Z: When Pan Talon refuses to get his shots, Medicalbear pulls out a pair of needle guns. What follows is awesome.
• In Rave Master, a fortuneteller shows Musica a vision of Haru stabbing Elie. This does come to pass, but the sword Haru used was Rune Save, which can cut through things that normally can't be cut through, but conversely cannot cut through things that normally can be cut through, like humans. In this case, he used it to seal the power of Etherion without harming Elie. In other situations Haru uses Rune Save to protect himself from magical attacks.
• Toriko has Revitalizing Kitchen Knives, special knives made from materials that stimulate cellular regeneration, allowing the user to heal whomever they cut. They can also be used on ingredients, allowing them to be eaten almost indefinitely. However, they are extremely difficult to use since the user must cut between the cells so as not to damage them in order for it to work and they've been outlawed due to them possibly upsetting the circulation of food in the Human World. Komatsu's Derous Knife has the properties of one of these knives.
• In Tsukihime, Shiki has eyes that can kill anything, including concepts.^note To elaborate: The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception allow him to see the eventual death/destruction of people or objects as lines on them. Tracing these lines causes them to fall part. Terrifingly, that also applies to things he can't even perceive himself. He uses a fruit knife to cure himself of vampirism, and later, to save a dying Kohaku by killing the poison in her blοod.
• Zatch Bell!: Tio/Tia's fifth spell, Saifojio, summons a large pink sword that heals and rejuvenates whomever it strikes. Her ultimate spell, Shin Saifojio, summons four interlinked swords that erase all damage and fatigue from those in their vicinity.

Comic Books

• Loki: Agent of Asgard: Gram the Sword of Truth "forces the truth" on anybody stabbed by it, so it can be the perfect antidote for Demonic Possession or if your problem lies in denial. The inflicted wounds still hurt like hell though (because "truth hurts"), so its also pretty useful as nonlethal weapon.
• When the New Mutants fought a giant demon bear, one of its attacks started to turn Magma into a demon. Magik saves her...by stabbing her in the heart with her Soulsword, whose only ability at first was to disrupt magic spells. Cannonball sees this and starts attacking her, thinking every doubt he had about Illyana's motives came true, but then gets a tongue-lashing by Magma who explains what really happened. But then again, Magma was one of the few people not creeped out by having a demon sorceress around.
• Among the powers of the eponymous blade in the Luna brothers' The Sword is that it heals the wounds of anyone in physical contact with it. It does not operate quickly enough, however, to not also be a (very) deadly weapon.
• Superman:
  • Way of the World: Subverted. Supergirl considers using the Amazons' healing ray to cure a cancer patient, but Wonder Woman warns that the Purple Ray can heal wounds, bruises... but not cancer.
    Wonder Woman: Amazon, alien, human— the ray can heal almost any wound for any of us in seconds.
  • The Condemned Legionnaires, The quarantine world's robo-medics use healing laser rays to try to cure their patients.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye features a 'sparkeater virus' which infects Cybertronians, overrunning the crew. First Aid happens across a cure in the form of a 'kinetic program code transfer,' IE hitting them really hard to purge the virus... with the side effect of knocking the patient/victim out cold. Brainstorm is instantly sold on this.
  Brainstorm: A kinetic program code?
  First Aid: It relies on motion — and force of impact — for delivery and effect.
  Brainstorm: Wait. You're saying we're gonna punch them back to health?
  First Aid: Essentially yes.
  Brainstorm: (to himself) I picked the wrong profession.

Films — Animation

• In Wreck-It Ralph, Felix's hammer heals or repairs anything it strikes. While it is pretty handy for injuries or broken stuff, it cannot be used as a weapon, as Felix learns when he tries to break through prison bars with it and only succeeds in making them stronger.
  Felix: WHY DO I FIX EVERYTHING I TOUCH?!

Films — Live-Action

• In the remake of Clash of the Titans, the Djinn can wield blue fire which can heal seemingly any wound. At the very least, they use it to heal the poisoned demon bite on Perseus's arm.
• In Exam, Black gets shot near the end of the film. Thanks to a regenerative material in the bullet, they're perfectly fine, maybe even a little better than before.
• The B-Movie Roller Blade is named after butterfly knives that heal everything from a cut to decapitation. The user (a naked roller-skating nun) moves the knife in a cross shape over somebody. A psychedelic smiley face appears and the person is healed. Unfortunately the rules only allow them to be used once per person.

Literature

• In Fred Saberhagen's Book of Swords series, the last of the Twelve Swords of Power is Woundhealer, Sword of Mercy. Heck, Woundhealer not only patches you up, but it is so powerful that someone shoved it into their body and jumped off a cliff... and lived. The sword healed them right up. In fact, a useful tactic was to stab yourself through the heart with it, leave the sword in, and fight with another weapon. Another character who had suffered the loss of an arm several years ago (the stump was fully healed over and everything) had said arm regenerate after being stabbed with Woundhealer.
• Chrysalis (RinoZ): The healing caste of ants are able to access mutations that turn their acid spray into regenerative fluid.
  They've literally got medic guns! The things that are possible in this world, I tell you.
• The characters of Dragonlance first learn about the Blue Crystal Staff's healing powers after Tasselhoff smacks someone with it in a misguided attempt to put out a fire.
• The Heralds of Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey feature Need - a magic sword that, among other things, heals those holding her. This is not accomplished by stabbing people with her, though, as she also functions perfectly well in the capacity of a regular sword. Prior to the Mage Winds trilogy, she mostly only works for women due to certain quirks which are resolved in Winds of Fate. In one notable example in Winds of Fury,, a possessed character that the heroes want to rescue is impaled with Need, then subsequently kept from dying by Need very carefully healing him a bit at a time as she's drawn from his body after the possessing villain has fled.
• The Lost Years of Merlin contains a literary example in the form of a magical double-edged blade, one side of which pretty much means guaranteed death, while the other can heal any injury. Mind, this still requires actually being cut with the blade before it can work its magic. If memory serves, someone does this by accident at one point.
• James Clemens's Shadowfall has a nasty twist on this. The healing shiv in question is a torture device, as the skin constantly being regenerated and torn apart.
• Olson from Super Minion can get this effect from any weapon. His power is Resurrective Immortality, so if he gets injured he needs a teammate to kill him so he can recover.
• Because the narrator of Time's Arrow experiences time backwards, violent assaults appear to him to be this. From his perspective, a guy with a stab wound walks backwards to another guy, who stabs him and then he doesn't have a stab wound anymore.
• The Bow of Belphanes in War of the Dreaming. Amusingly, in one instance Galen forgets that his bow is very much a non-offensive weapon, and shoots an enemy with it. The man leaps up, cured, and runs away.
• In The Divine Comedy, Virgil's speech is compared to the magical lance of Achilles, which could inflict a wound with a strike and heal the wound with a second strike. In applying this healing lance to Virgil, the severity of his criticism is emphasized while making it clear that the father-son relationship between Dante and Virgil suffered no lasting damage.
• The Mermaid's Sister: Shortly after Maren, Clara, and O'Neill set off on their journey to the sea, Scarff delivers them a magic dagger that heals wounds and can be used only once. After O'Neill is shot in the chest, he begs Clara to use the dagger on Maren, who is dying from being away from the ocean for too long, but she knows she won't be able to transport her to the shore without his help. Clara traces O'Neill's wound with the dagger, which heals the damage in seconds.

Live-Action TV

• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Drive: The Mad Doctor Shift Car grants the user a device resembling a stethoscope which provides the user the ability to provide excruciatingly painful healing to themselves or others. When Mad Doctor's used in Chase's Break Gunner, it becomes a brass knuckle that applies said painful healing to whoever the user punches.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid is built entirely of this trope. All of the Riders and all of their weapons are medical equipment for the treatment of Game Disease patients, it's just that treating this particular disease requires beating the tar out of video game characters spawned by the virus infecting the patient.
  • Kamen Rider Build: Build's final form, Build Genius, lets him purge Nebula Gas from the bodies of people he punches or kicks. Since Nebula Gas is both the Applied Phlebotinum and the Psycho Serum of the series depending on the circumstances, this can be used to either temporarily reduce an opponent's strength or to cure them of the insanity brought on by the gas.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One is forcibly upgraded with a powerup that's Made of Evil halfway through the show, and eventually gains control of it by crafting a sword that's made using the positive data of everyone he's helped on his journey so far. In addition to granting him control over the evil upgrade, the resulting sword has the power to turn hacked robots back to normal, something that was previously impossible.
• That Mitchell and Webb Look features the Laser-Fitted Armoured Scorpion of Death (created by Professor Death) whose tail-mounted machine gun fires "helpful bullets". This is not further explained, but they cause no injury when it shoots people with them.

Myths & Religion

• In Celtic Mythology, the Dagda's club kills whoever it strikes on the one side (as you'd expect), but can heal or revive if it's used to strike with the other side.

Podcasts

• Edith from Interstitial: Actual Play is able to use her gun to also give her teammates buffs by shooting at them with her specialized dart gun.

Professional Wrestling

• When the Randy Savage/Hulk Hogan on-again, off-again friendship was on again in WCW, Savage once used his finisher (a top rope elbow drop) to get Hogan to Hulk Up in a tag match.

Tabletop Games

• Arrows of Cure Light Wounds, from Dungeons & Dragons. They come in Cure Medium and Serious Wounds varieties, too.
  • Tiny Arrows of Cure X Wounds do less damage and are cheaper; buy a few of them and you now have magical healing hypodermics. Jab yourself in the arm with a tiny arrow and you're good to go!
  • An issue of Dragon Magazine had a Pelor-blessed variant in the form of padded crossbow bolts, which function like an Arrow of Cure Light Wounds.
  • And before those were around, there was the Staff of Curing.
  • d20 Modern has a gunslinger that can create magical bullets, including Bullets of Cure Light Wounds.
  • One orc sourcebook lists the Club of Healing. A blow with it hurts as normal, an also causes magical healing. On average the healing is a very slightly greater amount, so healing an injured person involves giving them the beating of their lives.
  • All of the above weapons are doubly effective against zombies. This is actually built in to a certain sword designed to tell vampires apart from regular people. Whenever it hits, it restores some HP as well. Hit a normal person, and they're slightly wounded. Hit an undead, and he takes massive damage.
  • The Arcanis campaign setting for the D20 SRD has flintlock weaponry. There members of a prestige class called the Pistol Mage, can embue their bullets with magical energy to deliver their spells on top of the damage from the flintlock pistols. Despite the name of the class, it is perfectly valid for a cleric to enter this prestige class. Thus it is possible for a cleric to shoot someone with a heal spell. When attacking the undead, this would hit them for massive damage.
  • Technically speaking, the way the rules for Sneak Attack are written, a Rogue making a Use Magic Device check with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds will heal his target for full Sneak Attack—but only if they're not expecting it. Of course, no (sane) GM would allow this in practice^note Sneak Attack always does the same type of damage that the attack is inflicting (piercing with a spear, bludgeoning with a club, etc.). It also applies to any spell that requires an attack roll (save-based spells aren't affected). The way 3.5 interprets Revive Kills Zombie is that healing is technically "positive energy damage," but anything that isn't Undead or Obviously Evil is healed by positive energy (as Undead are healed by negative energy damage). What this boils down to is that, if Sneak Attack applies to a hit from a heal spell and an attack roll was made, sneak attack heals more. But, again, only if the target doesn't know it. The weird thing, this can't be used to damage Undead, because Undead are explicitly immune to Sneak Attack..
  • In a kind of inversion, there's the classic Potion of Inflict Light Wounds. It's a vampire's answer to a healing potion.
  • The 3.5 supplement The Complete Arcane had alternate forms of potions, such as spell tiles, in which the consumable spell in inscribed into a suspension rune on a brittle chalk or porcelain chit. To release the spell and reap its benefits, just snap the chit, and the effect passes to the nearest viable target. Give these to a ninja or other thrown weapons expert and you have an instant ranged combat medic and undead killer.
• Exalted:
  • The Pinnacle Archery Charm of the Sidereal Exalted is Many-Missiles Bow Technique, which allows you to use your arrows to heal people... or a variety of other things. Really, all you need to know about Sidereals is that their best medical Charm is in Archery, while their actual Medicine tree is mainly dedicated to Turn Undead.
  • One particular Sidereal Martial Arts style (Citrine Poxes of Contagion) has a charm that restores health through a martial arts attack. So yes, they can literally kick people healthy. This is far from the weirdest thing SMA does.
• The Tabletop RPG based on Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk's Universe includes Khornetto's paladins (yes, his name is derived from Khorne's). Khornetto is the Chaos God of Violence and Blood Splattering, but the first miracle granted to low-level Khornetto's Paladins is a healing one : "Lay on Fists" enables you to punch a mate in the face to get him some HP back (he still suffers a charisma malus for a few days due to having his face messed).
• Third party Pathfinder supplement Spheres of Power has a literal Healing Shiv item. (Possibly named after this very trope page)

Video Games

• The Lightbringers' Weapon of Mass Destruction in 8-Bit Armies is a massive enchanted spear that deals Scratch Damage on impact but creates a swirling vortex that burns enemies while healing friendlies. This makes it a very situational weapon that can be used to either weaken enemies or quickly heal your army. It's duration of effect can be increased by building additional Sacred Spears.
• In Strange Lands, a mod for Age of Wonders, Automaton hero Annihilator has an automatic Arm Cannon. All of its action animations involve shooting said weapon at the target. If you give Annihilator an item that allows him to use Healing, it will heal the target by apparently pumping it full of lead.
• Medics in Alien Swarm can unlock a healing ray. Unlike most examples, it has limited ammo, but you are able to heal yourself with it.
• The Medicomp healing device used by the Predator in some of the Alien vs. Predator games is something like this. As Predators have physiology that's too robust for a mere needle, the player Pred instead has to inject healing medicine into himself using a pair of jagged, blue-bladed knives. And he roars in pain when he does it. This actually does go in line with what we see in the films; in the original, the Predator fixes a gunshot wound by poking around with jagged implements, and in the sequel, the Predator literally uses melted tiling as mortar to close up his battle wounds. Predator first aid sucks.
• In the game Allegiance (2000), one could mount a gun on their ship that shoots healing bolts, which out-heals the DPS from almost every weapon in the game.
• In the third Amateur Surgeon game, Officer Brutality's special ability is to beat injuries out the victims by whacking them with his Lawman Baton.
• Leslie from Arc Rise Fantasia has her Healing Bullet skill, in which she shoots you. And you heal.
• Avorion has the repair guns, which either repair hull, shields or both.
• The cursed Vampire's Revenge sword from Baldur's Gate. It deals damage as normal, but also causes damage to its wielder per hit and heals the target for the same amount. It doesn't stop you from smacking your allies with it however.
• Battlefield 2 has the defibrillator, which is normally used in multiplayer to revive allies that are down. However, you can score kills with it...
• Borderlands
  • Roland the Soldier has the Cauterize skill, and Maya the Siren has the equivalent Restoration. What they do is convert a percentage of all the damage you'd deal per shot to an enemy and turn it into healing points whenever you shoot an ally/teammate. It doesn't apply to the Damage Over Time of the elemental weapons, however; that one stays neutral (though the extra damage from the proc shot does apply). Also, be careful when using Splash Damage weapons to heal allies as Maya, as the entire area-of-effect damage is turned into healing, even for enemies.
  • Maya also has Res, a skill that turns her Phaselock power into an instant revive for an ally. Normally Phaselock traps the target in an energy bubble, typically in a position that seems quite painful.
  • Maya's Restoration ability overrides Krieg the Psycho's Fuel the Rampage, which makes him susceptible to friendly fire in exchange for his action ability cooling down much faster. He gains health when shot by a Siren with Restoration, but still reacts as if hurt — so when she shoots this guy, he's harmed and healed at the same time.
  • Athena of the Pre-Sequel can revive allies by tossing her shield at them.
  • In the Pre-Sequel, Claptrap gets a rare Vaulthunter.exe effect called Med Bot, which replaces his active weapon with a big red syringe... that fires an orange laser beam which heals allies (and also enemies, in a fine display of Claptrap's reliable unreliability). It's a Shout-Out to Team Fortress, but what's notable is that the effect displayed when healing an ally is black smoke rising off them and fiery sparks sizzling from the impact point. Whatever that beam is doing, it certainly thinks it's a laser.
  • Tales from the Borderlands has a scene where Fiona has to plunge a syringe into Vaughn's heart to administer the cure for his toxin induced paralysis.
• The healing arrows in BowMaster heal in the same way other arrows deal damage, meaning that shooting somebody in the head with one will increase its ability. The undead creatures are weak to healing as well.
• Brink! has the Lazarus Grenade, which acts as a revive syringe for incapacitated players within its blast radius.
• Call of Duty: World at War has "Death Cards" which, once found, can be toggled on and off to make cooperative campaign games more difficult. Except for the Painkiller card, which instead allows players to revive downed teammates by shooting them.
• In Caster, you heal infected trees by shooting them, and shooting regular trees makes them grow and drop a health item.
• Chrono Trigger's Robo employs Heal Beams and Heal Lasers as well as the "normal" (damaging) variety.
• In City of Villains, users of the Thermal Radiation set can actually use their fire to heal allies - either as a weak area-of-effect heal called 'Warmth', or with a powerful single-target heal called 'Cauterize'. In fact, about two thirds of the powers in the set are single-ally buffs. A lot of other dangerous-sounding powersets also happen to include heals and buffs. Poison has "Alkaloid", Ice Armor has the self-buff "Hoarfrost", which increases Max HP for awhile, and Radiation Emission has "Mutation", which is a resurrection! There's more, too. However, while Manticore did mention an enema arrow in the comic, the Trick Arrow set ultimately has no healing powers, much to the chagrin of their team-mates.
• Some weapons in Code Name: S.T.E.A.M heal instead of attacking. Tiger Lily has a Medi-Mortar by default, and the Medi-Carbine and Medi-Rifle can be used by anyone.
• Engineers, Technicians, and Hotwires in Command & Conquer: Renegade have Repair Guns - which are equally effective at healing personnel, vehicles, and buildings. Before being patched, Repair Guns also had an alternate fire that allowed them to attack those very same targets, albeit at very short range.
• Played with in Conan Exiles. There's a recipe for "Healing Arrows," which have a bundle of the healing stuff just behind the arrowheads. It bursts on impact into an aerosol cloud, healing players and converted thralls in range, but the arrow itself still does damage. Thus, the point isn't to shoot injured friends with them, but to shoot the thing your friends are fighting, damaging it, but healing them through the aerosol cloud.
• Conker Live and Reloaded has its own medigun, for the Grunt, Themophile, and Long Ranger Class, which looks like some sort of cannon with a bloody syringe on it. When fired, it heals the target and gives the healer 1CP (the in-game equivalent of XP) per unit of life healed. This was in fact one of the only ways to heal, as only the above classes have a Self healing ability.
• Conqueror's Blade features an archer unit called the Schutzdieners, who can either shoot damage-dealing arrows at enemies or healing arrows at allies.
  "Healing or harm - we can do both."
• In Crying Suns, the Repair Bot Injector is a battleship "weapon" that restores a large chunk of the targeted squadron's hit points and gives the squadron temporary health regeneration.
• The Eleum Loyce sword from Dark Souls II is one. Its strong attack can heal your allies and absorb health from your enemies.
• Downed Scavengers in Deathgarden can be revived by their allies through manual interaction, or with healing arrows.
• The Bio-Magnetic Gun, or BMG, in Defiance. It can either drain energy from enemies or heal the user and their allies.
• In Destiny 2, the Lumina exotic hand cannon's intrinsic perk, Noble Rounds, allows the wielder to collect 'Remnants' from defeated enemies, which can then be hip-fired at fellow Guardians, restoring their health.
• Dirty Bomb has Sparks' REVIVR gun, which can pick off enemies - or revive teammates - from afar.
• In the Disgaea series, the "Reverse Damage" Geo Effect turns any weapon into this. Just don't try to use actual healing magic under this effect.
• In Dota 2, Phoenix's Sun Ray ability deals damage to any enemy caught in it, and heals allies who think to walk towards the fiery laserbeam of doom. Similarly, Abaddon's Mist Coil and Undying's Soul Rip will heal allies or harm enemies, depending on who they hit, although its arguable if either of these are aesthetically offensive in nature. And speaking of Abaddon, his ultimate Borrowed Time has the effect of turning everything aimed at him into a heal. In other words, while it's active, any damage he would take is converted into healing.
• Tanks in Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime have a wide variety of defensive ammunition available, from shields fired at enemy ammo to block it, to herbs which heal the tank when shot out of its cannons.
• The Ambulamp class in Driftin.io fires healing orbs. It can either heal other players and hope they wouldn't try to attack it out of gratitude, or try to heal itself through firing the orb at a wall and trying to ensure it bounces back to them, which is quite difficult.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Throughout the series, given the series' trademark weapon enchantment system, there's nothing stopping you from making as many of your own Healing Shivs as you want. Other than, you know, practicality...
  • Morrowind offers a use for self-enchanted Healing Shivs. The game's skill system means that skills increase by successfully using that skill. For example, hitting an enemy a dozen times with a weak dagger will increase the Short Blade skill more than one-shotting that enemy with a Daedric dagger. Enchanting a weapon with a "heal on strike" enchantment that heals more than weapon damages will allow you to basically strike a foe for as long as you want, increasing that weapon skill.
  • Oblivion
    • The Shivering Isles expansion has a museum of oddities that the player can contribute to. One of the items which can be contributed is the Dagger of Friendship, which does 10 points of damage, and also heals 10 points on strike.
    • The weapon shop in the city of Anvil sells a weapon called the Truncheon of Submission: a club that damages a creature's Fatigue while restoring their health. You don't kill anything with it, you just... knock them out.
  • Online
    • The Restoration staff serves as a zigzagging example, while being able to inflict damage, but provides healing skills outside if Guild Skill lines or class skill lines.
    • Players can also play this trope straight with Mend Wounds from the Summerset Isles expansion, which is a toggle skill that converts player attacks into healing effects that target allies.
• In Elite Dangerous, lasers with the Concordant Sequence engineer upgrade will damage enemies, and restore ally shields.
• In Endless Frontier EXCEED, Suzuka gains a skill that lets her heal the entire party using Jyaki-GUN-Oh. Jyaki-GUN-Oh is a robot stuffed full of Gatling Guns.
• Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard has a Gunner class who can learn a skill called Medi-Shot, which can cure status effects.
• Two of the medics in Evolve use tools like this. Val uses a TF2-esque healing gun, while Caira uses healing grenades.
• Exteel has these in the form of rectifiers. Guns that shoot a steady stream of healing energy.
• Fallout 4:
  • The Dummied Out "Medic's" Legendary prefix makes weapons heal instead of hurt.
  • The Gamma Gun deals radiation damage, and will therefore heal ghouls since they are healed by radiation. Amusingly, it can come with the "Ghoul Slayer's" Legendary prefix, which makes the weapon do 50% more damage to ghouls, which in this weapon's case means it heals them 50% more.
• In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, the aptly-named Healing Staff is a weapon that heals whatever it hits.
• The Cure Staff from some Final Fantasy games heals anyone you whack with it. Though it's not always clear if it's actually supposed to be hitting the ally or being held up next to them.
  • It does make a lovely *klok* sound when someone bashes their ally over the head with it in Final Fantasy Tactics. Remembering whether or not it heals with its more esoteric uses is apparently an impossible task, so from time and time again players have killed their own characters by throwing the Cure Staff at them. On the other side of the issue, the Cure Staff turns some attacks into extremely powerful buffs. In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the Templar's Soul Sphere, an area MP drain, transforms into a free area MP restore. Moreover, you could give your entire team in Advance Holy absorption, and then just spam the Holy summon into melee fights...
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, Chemists literally hurl healing items at their intended recipients, the vast majority of which are essentially restorative liquids stored within elaborate glass flasks. There is a hilarious picture◊ of Ramza getting nailed in the face with a Potion (still in it's flask, mind you, which shattered) and screaming in pain until it went into effect. Aside from the usual suspects, Maiden's Kisses and Softs/Gold Needles also count - the former being the stone bust of a maiden, and the latter being an actual gold needle... with a pointy end.
    • Also from Final Fantasy Tactics: Holy-elemental attacks and spells heals Dragon!Reis or someone wearing the Chameleon Robe. Earth Clothes/Gaia Gear absorbs Earth-elemental attacks as well...
    • ... which thus results in a particularly under-handed and merciless Game-Breaker: A Holy that's cast via Math Skill/Arithmeticks is a Kill Sat that'll destroy your enemies while simultaneously healing your units who are wearing Chameleon Robes.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics A2, using the Ranger's Mirror Item skill and then selecting Knot of Rust will cause the unit to hurl pieces of rock to heal the target (because Mirror Item reverses the properties of the item). A Moogle class (Flintlock) and Bangaa class (Cannoneer) in can also fire healing shots or Ethershots.
    • Also, in that game, Mages start off with 0 MP to mitigate some of the awesome high level spells. But, you could equip the mage with something to absorb an element, give a Bangaa a weapon of that element, and use the special ability 'Rend MP' to heal the mages' MP for free. Especially deadly when the mage is an Illusionist, whose spells attacks all enemies on the map. You can also just equip your entire party with gear that absorbs a certain element, then use Scholar spells of that element to hit everyone on the field, healing your entire team and damaging the entire enemy team.
    • And there is the dreaded Curaga Magick Frenzy while Dual Wielding Cure Staves combo. It involves casting Magick Frenzy which casts a spell and causes the user to attack everything in it afterwards. The combo usually heals all targeted characters completely.
    • Both Tactics Advanced games also have the Elementalist spell "White Flame"; engulfing someone in fire in order to heal them.
    • Wearing the right gear in the Tactics Advance games will allow you to absorb damage from certain attacks (usually magick, but applies to weapons with elemental attributes as well). This means you can be near death, only to get hit by lightning, but then abruptly feel all better.
  • Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV have the Mallet, which cures a party member of the Mini status. Which is, of course, taken off the Japanese story "Issunboshi," as the Lucky Mallet did the same thing to the titular character.
  • The DS remake of Final Fantasy IV had a boss that inflicted 'Reverse' status on both sides of the battle. This caused anything that damages to heal, and anything that heals to damage. Not only were Elixers and Curagas the fastest way to defeat him, players could heal their party by having Cecil and Yang stab and punch the party back to optimal health. This was more effective than actual cures because at that point in the game, those two would be dealing quadruple digits of damage- especially to a squishy mage- for no MP cost.
  • Final Fantasy VI also had the Cure Rod, but the programmers fouled up the targeting code; it defaults to enemies when attacked with (which is when it heals) and allies when thrown (which is when it damages).
  • A potential tactic in Final Fantasy VIII. Junction any elemental spell, like Firaga, to Elemental Attack-J, then set an ally's Elemental Defense-J to Firaga as well, so that character will absorb the attack. Now characters can attack each other as they please without wasting Cure spells that may be junctioned. But it's not all that useful as in this game you don't *want* to heal your party to full, because being at low hp allows them to use their Limit Breaks, which are by far the most effective ways of dealing damage to enemies. And if you did want to keep your hp high for some reason, junctioning Drain to your Status Attack lets you restore health while simultaneously attacking the enemies, which is more efficient.
  • Final Fantasy IX has a typical Healing Rod, which turns the Summoner/White Mage into a constant healer at low amounts of HP, and the Healer Ability, which turns the weapon of anyone who have this activated into a Healing Shiv.
  • Final Fantasy X had elemental creatures for some of its summons, all of whom had powerful attacks of their own element... meaning that, at the cost of a not-quite-negligible amount of MP, they could heal themselves for, typically, whatever their enemies were doing to them in damage. If your creature was taking more turns due to its speed than your opponent was, it was basically invincible until it ran out of Mana.
  • Final Fantasy XII has a number of examples:
    • There's a whole category of weapons- Measures- that cast buffs on whatever they hit. They also give a massive boost to Evasion and can be equipped with a Shield which gives ANOTHER massive boost to evasion. Give them to your dedicated Mage character and they'll be hard as hell to hit, and capable of instantly buffing you with a single attack rather then spending MP on the buff.
    • In the same vein: is Vaan seriously confused and murdering all his friends? Fear not, for if you give him a healing rod, he will wail mercilessly wail upon his sworn allies, unbeknownst to him that he is actually inflicting regen on everyone.
    • You can also use Reverse like in the IV example above.
    • And as in most games, elemental absorption will cause elemental attacks to be this. It's even a potential strategy for one Superboss. High-level spells in this game, including healing spells, have long animations, so this strategy lets you heal faster and thus keep up with this boss' immense damage output.
• In Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, one of the NPCs that you can fight in an optional mission has a skill that lets him heal people by shooting them with a gun. It's not even a special gun, just his regular one.
• The Healing Burst bomb from FTL: Faster Than Light is a bomb weapon that can be fired into your ship or the enemy's (the latter heals only your boarders). Note that like all bomb weapons, it can be dodged.
• The Medic class in Global Agenda can constantly heal allies through the Bio-Feedback Beam and drop Healing Grenades to support them. However, the player can instead wield the "Heal and Forget" Nanite Gun, so that they can attack enemies with their poison-inflicting Agonizer sidearm immediately after the ally started regenerating health. There are even purely damage-oriented builds, which carry Poison Grenades, Poison Aura, wield a Euthanizer rifle, etc.
• The God Eater series has "fusion" bullets, which are handwaved as part of the game's Applied Phlebotinum Organic Technology which fuels your super-human powers. Certain AI teammates will use them automatically on you and each other when you're at low health, though the AI's survivability is good enough you probably won't need to fire them yourself outside of multiplayer.
• God of War Ragnarök: Thor uses Mjolnir as a defibrillator to revive Kratos after he nearly beats the latter to death during their first fight.
• The Robot Nurses in the Gotcha Force can inject syringes into team mates to heal them.
• In Granado Espada, socketing a weapon with any type of Pearl Rumin inverts its damage into healing.
• The Engineer in Guild Wars 2 can obtain a trait that lets them heal allies with bomb blasts.
• Gun Bros also features healing explosives. They are even available in grenade, stack of plastic explosive, and nuke sizes.
• One of Stukov's primary role in Heroes of the Storm is to heal his teammates with the Healing Pathogen ability, where he launches pus-filled tumors from his mutated arm that spreads and infects his teammates. The skill name itself is as much an oxymoron as 'Healing Shiv', since pathogens by definition causes diseases.
• In Hogs of War, pigs promoted along the Medic path can learn abilities like Medicine Dart, a healing sniper rifle round, and Medicine Ball, a healing grenade. And yes, it's a strategy game about pigs in WWI.
  • If you fire the healing dart straight up into the air it will come back down and heal you. Same goes for detonating the healing ball the second it leaves your hand.
• Icewind Dale 2 features Death's Bane, a sword that does no damage but that instead heals 1d4 damage per hit. The description indicates that whether this effect is as intended or is a result of incompetent enchantment is unknown.
• Jeanne d'Arc had a move for archers that allowed them to heal units from a distance by shooting at them. One of a few reasons why the two archers in that game border on Game-Breaker territory.
• One of Killing Floor's character classes is the Field Medic. His primary weapon is an MP7 with a secondary medication-dart launcher that can heal teammates at range. Similarly, the healing syringes that everybody gets are sort of shaped like guns, though they need to be directly injected into teammates to heal them. In a more traditional example, later updates and the sequel also give the Medic grenades that release a cloud of blue smoke, which heal teammates and poison enemies so long as they're within it.
• Killzone 2 has the Medic Gun, which revives downed allies that are still moving (otherwise known as "mortally wounded"). Amusingly, though, it can also be used as a weapon to kill enemies in Multiplayer.
• The various beetle Dream Eaters in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], while usually unleashing various sorts of destruction, are capable of firing healing shots at their allies using their horn cannon or Chest Blaster. It's likely to miss, however, due to its slow movement and arcing trajectory of the shot.
• In Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, combining the Ice power with Spark power turns Kirby into a refrigerator which spits out food to defeat enemies. Kirby can pick up the food that wasn't destroyed doing so to heal himself.
• The Alleviation Staff in Thelast.io creates a small heart-shaped zone which regenerates the health of the players inside it.
• In Last Scenario, elemental weapons or strikes can be used to "attack" an ally that heals through absorbing this element.
• In Loadout, a game where you can make custom weapons, you have the option to make machine guns, laser cannons, plasma rifles, and even rocket launchers or sniper rifles that all heal/buff your allies.
• In Lost Planet 2, all players have a secondary projectile that gives some of your thermal energy to another player... by shooting it at them. It's handy to warn them if you can before Hilarity Ensues. There's also the Injection Gun, which, depending on the type, either powers up or flat out heals any teammates in a small radius of the impact, including yourself. There are also the healing grenades.
• The Cyber Medic in Lost Saga fights with a giant medicine needle that can also be used to heal allies.
• Magicka
  • The game allows you to combine the Life element with pretty much everything except Arcane, which leads to all sorts of combinations: healing rocks, healing fire, healing landmines... in fact, a set of healing landmines deployed in a circle around your wizard is a very popular spell among the fanbase.
  • In an even straighter example, you can simply cast Life on your sword/axe/crossbow/gun and the next attack with it will heal instead of hurt. Except against Undead, of course.
• Makai Kingdom has Big Fraggin' Syringes that can be wielded by Medics and Healers (unsurprisingly). Their first attack is a straight-up healing move. Pies have the same effect.
• In MARDEK, one of Meraeador's tools is a Potion Spray that can spray healing potions...or debuff or Curse potions. It looks exactly like his flamethrower.
• MediEvil
  • During The War Sequence of MediEvil, you are given the power to shoot "Good Lightning" at your skeleton soldiers in order to cure them at the expense of your own health. The more that survive, the more health vials you get afterwards, replacing the spent health.
  • In MediEvil 2, you get the Good Lightning during the fight with Jack the Ripper, so that you can cure Kiya; if she dies you lose the fight. After that stage, the Good Lightning damages your enemies as per the regular Lightning; unlike the unrechargable Lightning, it won't run out of ammo as long as you have health.
• In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, you can develop versions of the EZ Gun and even certain sniper rifles that can fire Life or Psyche-restoring rounds.
• Minecraft's 1.9 update adds the ability to apply potions to arrows. Since the vast majority of potions in the game are beneficial, this trope is in full effect.
• The Support Class in Monday Night Combat wields the Heal/Hurt Gun, which either heals the player's allies (to the point of overhealing them), or drains health from the enemies in its alternate fire mode.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Bowguns in the series have healing shots among the many types of ammo available to them. The shot pierces targets, thus allowing it to heal multiple allies at once if they're lined up. It can also heal any monsters that get caught in the crossfire, but it's a minor setback when considering how massive the damage output of the players is compared to the amount restored.
  • The Majestic Scepter from Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate heals allies when you slam them with it.
• The Nurse in NetHack will heal you instead of inflicting damage if she attacks you while you aren't wearing armour or wielding a weapon. While it sounds like Guide Dang It!, trying to talk to her while she's attacking immediately has her tell you to "Put that weapon away before you hurt somebody!" and then "Please undress so I can examine you". Afterwards, the traditional "The X hits!" changes to "The nurse hits! (I hope you don't mind.)" In a traditional bit of NetHack's Developer's Foresight, the nurse will never damage you if you are playing as a Healer class, and will also say "Doc, I can't help you unless you cooperate." instead of her usual lines. If you are already at full health, she also has a chance of raising it permanently, and while it's only by a couple of HP, she can do it multiple times in a row, so players will gladly spend hundreds of turns just staying put and letting her heal, in what is known as "nurse dancing", since the pay-off is very much worth it. However, be careful to find some secluded corner first, since an effectively naked character will be far more vulnerable to any enemy that happens to wonder by. An ideal is usually to dig out a small dead-end shaft with a pick, so that you can only be approached from one direction, and the nurse's presence will block anyone else approaching until she eventually teleports away. Possessing the "lock" spell, or at least a wand of locking, will also allow you to place a door at the end of the shaft you just dug out (unless you are in the Gnomish Mines, where that doesn't work), one which you can freely lock and unlock yourself if you possess a key or a lockpick (which are easy to come by).
• Overwatch:
  • Ana Amari uses a Biotic Rifle - a sniper rifle that fires medical syringes. She heals her allies if she shoots them, but harms enemies whom she hits. She also has Biotic Grenades that boost healing for all allies it hits while also preventing enemies from healing.
  • Baptiste has a Biotic Launcher which has a primary mode that damages enemies and a secondary mode that fires arcing projectiles that heal teammates with area-of-effect.
• In Paladins Grohk and Pip normally use their lightning staff and potion launcher to hurt foes. However, with the right loadout, they can heal allies by shooting them with those same weapons. Corvus makes this trope literal since he uses an actual knife to heal allies and only damages enemies with it using a movement ability.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • The series in general also uses the "elemental healing" variation noted above if you use the wrong attack on certain enemies, or if you have an elemental "Drain" ability and the enemy hits you with that element. This also applies to physical "elements", meaning that you can hit some one with a sword and they would heal from it if they absorb Slash attacks.
  • The Evokers from Persona 3 are used on the wielder, but still strictly qualify, being apparent guns that are used to summon Personas.
• Phantom Brave:
  • Hitting the target with a loaf of French bread will heal them.
  • The Mystic class whose basic move is a healing punch, which also pushes the target back. This gives the mystic the comical ability to knock enemies out - of-bounds by healing them.
• Pokémon:
  • During the two-on-two battles in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, where with the right partner, you can hurt both opponents and heal/power up your partner with the moves Surf (heals Pokémon with Water Absorb or Dry Skin abilities), Discharge (heals Pokémon with Volt Absorb and raises speed of those with Motor Drive), and Lava Plume (raises strength of Fire-type attacks for Pokémon with Flash Fire).
  • The 5th generation introduced the Heal Pulse, a laser beam that heals half of the target's total HP.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon introduced Ribombee's signature attack, Pollen Puff, which damages enemies when targeting them and heals allies when targeting them.
  • While Delibird's signature move Present deals damage most of the time, about 20% of the time it will heal some of the target Pokemon's health instead.
• Primal Carnage: The Scientist's tranquilizer dart gun, the primary function of which is to slow and weaken dinosaurs by draining their stamina, and can even kill small dinosaurs via overdose, has a secondary function of being able to heal your teammates for a small amount of health, as well as giving them a temporary defence boost.
• Resistance 2's Co-op mode has the Phoenix. Primary fire drains enemy health, secondary fire heals allies. Handwaved in that it's reverse engineered from alien tech and the scientists who built it don't actually have a clue how it works. And neither do the medics using it.
• Ragnarok Online:
  • The card "Chepet" can be added to any weapon to heal anyone it attacks. They're not particularly reliable, though, as the chances of it happening is a paltry 5%.
  • One playable character class in Ragnarok Online is the Gunslinger. Their skill animations are usually that of shooting at someone. So, when they use the skill First Aid to recover health, they are literally HEALING THEMSELVES WITH GUNS.
  • The female Acolyte of semi-official spin-off Ragnarok Battle Offline slaps the Heal into the character if you do an extra input after doing the spell's initial command.
• The Physician in Rift shoots their allies with healing needle-tipped arrows.
• Robocraft features the Nano Disruptor, which heals allies but slowly damages enemies.
• The 'Resonance ability in RuneScape heals a small percentage of the next hit you take (in the next 6 seconds), provided you have a shield equipped, basically meaning that the next incoming attack is this. This comic demonstrates the principle nicely.
• In SD Gundam Capsule Fighter, many of the Repair-type MS don't show off another weapon when the Repair weapon is chosen, thus, it's assumed that their gun (be it a machine gun, a 180mm cannon, a beam rifle or the Rising Arrow) is the healing weapon.
• In The Secret World, fist weapons (think brass knuckles or claws) and assault rifles can supply healing abilities. Fist weapon heals mostly look like a person waving the claw around in various ways, while assault rifle heals mostly steal health from enemies, or with one skill, fire directly at an ally.
• The Heal Cannon from Shadow the Hedgehog does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Ema's Sol-bullets will heal allies in Sol Trigger.
• In Soma Bringer, one of the Gunner class's abilities is a "trap" that gradually heals anyone standing on it.
• In Soulbringer, once the player's seculorum becomes severely unbalanced (by casting spells of any particular element to the overwhelming exclusion of others), they become resistant to the element in question, then immune to it, and finally healed by it. Cast enough fire spells, and the main character can eventually bathe in magma to heal...though a simple water-based Poison Bolt becomes correspondingly deadly.
• In Star Conflict, the "Eclipse" Launcher for Engineering frigates repairs allied hulls upon hit.
• The Bacta Bomb from the 2015 Star Wars Battlefront may look and act like a standard grenade, but it releases the healing fluid Bacta, which is used by health recovery droids. It's meant to be thrown at the feet of the user and allies to restore heath and give a defense boost that prevents a One-Hit Kill from everything barring a lightsaber.
• In Starve.io, a Crab Spear will heal crabs, while damaging everything else. This is useful if you also possess a Crab Helmet, which makes all of the crabs into your allies and will often have them follow you.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, all of the non-Force classes with healing abilities make use of this. Imperial Agents fire darts filled with kolto at people using the same dart-firing bracer they use to poison enemies while Troopers and Bounty Hunters can use Combat Support cylinder/cell to turn their basic attack into a healing beam when used on party members and have kolto explosives to boot - a kolto bomb for the Trooper and a kolto missile for the Bounty Hunter.
• Phoenix in Super Hero Squad Online can heal her allies by setting them alight with green "Healing Flames".
• The Team Healer item in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It can also be used as a weapon, but its healing capabilities are much more effective.
  • Every once in a great while, it backfires, healing the opposing players instead. D'oh!
  • In an interesting twist that is probably a programming oversight, it is also the only thing that can harm an invincible character.
• Tales Series
  • Raven from Tales of Vesperia can shoot healing arrows. If you look closer, they actually look like syringes.
    • Who loves ya, baby?
  • Chelsea from Tales of Destiny Director's Cut has "Cupid's Arrow" arte. Unusually, it deals Scratch Damage and staggers the target, and only then heals them, so using it when your ally's mid-combo is a really bad idea.
  • The Doctor and Nurse costumes in Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon, which can optionally heal, revive, or increase attack.
• The Medigun and its variants from Team Fortress 2. It can even raise its target's HP past their maximum, which will slowly drain back down unless the Medic keeps a continual shot going.
  • In "Meet the Medic", however, the same technology from the medigun caused the Heavy's heart to explode. If it weren't for the upgrades and replacement hearts, the medigun could be used to induce violent heart attacks. This was the result of a test for the ubercharge effect, which is where the medic's medigun reaches its Limit Break effect. It was shown that the gun could keep the heavy constantly healed while undergoing a heart transplant, both conscious and under the knife of a questionable doctor, and heal the numerous broken bones of others in seconds well before the replacement hearts are given. Note that according to the Medic's profile, the healing effect of the gun is a side effect of whatever the hell it's actually supposed to do to the target.
  • With the Australian Christmas update, the Medic now has the Crusader's Crossbow. The same bolts from it can alternatively hurt enemies or heal teammates. Amusingly, the effect on your character model used to be the same as if hit by the not-healing arrows of a Huntsman, bleeding included. Now, there's still bleeding, but instead it's some (admittedly still painful-looking) syringes that get stuck. Or in some cases sharpened candy canes.
  • In a more indirect fashion, the Sniper's Jarate, the Scout's Mad Milk, and the Flamethrower's Airblast can be used offensively or defensively by extinguishing burning teammates.
  • In the original version of the Team Fortress mod for Quake, the Medic's healing item was a giant axe with a red light on it. He could change it to a poison weapon, which is the same giant axe with a green light on it.
  • Also, if you think the Engineer's wrench is overly versatile now, back in the days of Team Fortress Classic, when you had both a health and an armor count, Engineers could actually restore armor by whacking teammates with it.
• Terraria: The Nurse NPC attacks by tossing syringes at enemies. If any NPC on her horizontal level is injured and there are no hostiles nearby, she'll throw the same syringes at them to heal them.
• The Energon Repair Ray in Transformers: War for Cybertron is a big, moderately-powerful-looking cannon with pincers at the end, looking like the kind of medical instrument an alien would use in the old UFO stories. It fires a stream of Energon that heals any allies and damages (anti-heals) any enemies it hits. It's possible in a multiplayer firefight to spray-and-pray with a Repair Ray and both heal and anti-heal combatants at the same time. You're even awarded "From the Brink" XP bonuses for shooting a teammate who's low on health. The players who actually use the Scientist character class as a healer will make it their mission to spend an entire multiplayer match shooting at their teammates as much as possible.
  • It also has 'healing charges'/healing grenades. Which you throw at your buddies. Make sure they're marked healing ones though, not EMP or anything else. Your buddies won't like the other ones, and will be affected.
• Engineers in Tribes get the Repair Gun, which can be used (at very close range) on turrets, equipment dispensers, or allies' body armor.
• In Undertale, Vulkin mistakenly believes her lava attack can heal people.
  • Also, there are green attacks, which move like regular bullets but restore your HP when you make contact.
• Unreal Championship's mutator "Link Gun Medic" turns the Link Gun into a Heal Link Gun. Its functionality remains the same, with its primary fire shooting balls of plasma death and its secondary fire shooting a solid stream of plasma death. However, when the secondary fire is used on a teammate, it heals him/her. A group of people next to each other will repair much faster than if they are too far apart to trigger this effect.
  • In Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament III, if used on a team-controlled vehicle/building, it becomes a team-colored stream of plasma repairing. If turned on an ally, (including 2003 and vanilla Championship) it instead makes that teammate's link gun more powerful — for repairs or for damage. Or for linking up to another teammate, thereby making their link gun even more powerful. That said, too many people linked together can result in everyone's weapons overloading and killing everyone involved.
  • In Unreal Tournament III, the Link Gun does nothing if the plasma stream is pointed at an ally. Rather, being near an ally when you both have Link Guns out will enhance both of them.
• Wandering Hamster, one of the demonstration games for the Game Maker OHRRPGCE, has the Heal Hit technique, which looks exactly like Bob the Hamster's normal hammer attacks.
  Smite thyself with all thy might,
  And afterward you'll feel all right.
  Smite thy friends and not thy foes
  With every hit your HP grows.
• Warcraft
  • In War Craft III, Death Knight's death coil is a damaging spell that can also be used to heal undead units. It's an evil version of the paladin heal holy light, which can damage undead units.
  • The Deathcoil returns in World of Warcraft with the Death Knight as playable class in the second expansion, with its secondary functionality intact. It's mainly used on the ghoul that serves the Death Knight as a pet, but DKs with the Lichborne ability can occasionally use it on themselves, unlike the WC3 version.
    • The Priest spell Penance can be used to either harm enemies or heal allies. In fact, the specialization that uses this spell, Discipline, can be played in such a way that the damage they deal enemies can translate into healing for the party.
    • Paladins have Holy Shock with the same properties.
    • While healers or casters in general never use their weapons in any meaningful fashion, they get significant benefits from weapons made for casters. A few weapons can even cause their own healing effects on top of the spells they boost with extra spellpower and other stats.
    • Engineers can make a Pump-Action Bandage Gun.
  • The Breath Weapon of the red dragonflight, a group of dragons charged with protecting life, works like this. They can breathe fire that harms enemies and heals allies, even in the same attack.
• Jack Van Burace from the first Wild ARMs game has a technique called "Heal Sword", which is pretty self-explanatory. Unfortunately, he does not actually hit his allies with it. It was sadly absent from the Enhanced Remake.
• Spellslingers WildStar possess weapons that heal allies.
• In X3: Terran Conflict and Albion Prelude, your spacesuit is equipped with a repair laser. Mechanically it penetrates shields and does negative damage to the hull. Of course, the game still considers it a weapon, so NPC ships react to being hit by it as if they were actually being attacked, which may cause Hilarity to Ensue.
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, researching the Thin Men results in a new Foundry project: using the Thin Man poison, in small, very precise doses, to increase the potency of your medikits. Another Foundry upgrade for the Arc Thrower allows it to repair MEC Troopers, S.H.I.V. units and hacked Drones by zapping them, though the animation is of a controlled discharge with a cable instead of the violent electrolaser burst of a stun.
• The party's main healer in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Sharla, uses a rifle for all of her spells. Justified in that the gun can shoot either ordinary bullets or ether rounds, the latter being what she uses in her healing arts.
• Geyser in Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is used like this during The War Sequence. Using it on damaged soldiers somehow enables your NPC ally Vic Viper to heal them.

Visual Novels

• In Fate/stay night, the dagger Rule Breaker obliterates all magical effects on whoever it's stabbed into. Usually this is a bad thing, but if its victim is cursed, the dagger can serve as an incredibly helpful exorcismal tool. This is what happens in the Heaven's Feel route; Shirou stabs Sakura to save her from a spiritual infection previously thought incurable.

Webcomics

• 8-Bit Theater:
  • The Healing Shiv, though it was a throwaway joke, is the Trope Namer. It worked well enough to bring Thief back from the brink of death. Sarda's version, on the other hand...
  • In an absolutely absurd use of this trope, Red Mage was able to set up an Auto-Revive before a fall by a positioning a Healing Potion in glass bottle to fall and shatter on his limp body.
• In Blood Stain, Elliot's character in the in-universe MMORPG plays Healer to her Pale Knight friend. When her mana points run out, though, she can still physically whack her friend with her staff for a +1 increase to HP.
• In Sidekick Girl Val tries to invoke this with her 'Healing Spinal Punch' in a non-canon meetup with the comic's creators (one of whom has back issues). Needless to say, it doesn't work.
• In Skin Horse, the intelligent cobra children are on so much allergy medication, it's infused their venom glands, giving them healing fangs.
• Swords:
  • There's a Blade of Healing, that actually reverts people to how they were before getting wounded. Overuse will cause age regression.
  • There's also a sword used to vaccinate against swordpox.
• Tower of God
  • At the beginning of the Workshop Battle, Khun obtains the White Heavenly Mirror. While it acts as just a knife too, its real power is a utility one: if you stab someone through the heart, they are unharmed but contained within the weapon. This gets used to save or otherwise help the target at least as often as to imprison.
  • On the Hell Train, "Hoaqin's last clone" stabs Bam with her sword; it does no harm, but rather gives him a part of her power (though she probably could use the sword to harm too). Later, Bam learns that, in an extension of his Power Copying abilities, he can stab himself with other magical pointy things to gain their power as a temporary Super Mode.
• The Order of the Stick: Since the comic takes place in a parody setting of Dungeons & Dragons (loosely based on the 3.5 edition, at least originally), this comes up every now and then.
  • Undead creatures are animated by "negative energy", and thus are healed by spells like Inflict Light/Moderate/Serious Wounds. This is a bit of an issue for Evil clerics such as Redcloak, who has to prepare spells for both living and undead allies. Vampire Durkon deals with this too before his Evil All Along reveal.
  • As artificial constructs brought to "life" by lightning, flesh golems are not just immune to electricity, both regual and magical, it also heals them, and (if already at full health) makes them stronger and faster.

Web Original

• Bay 12 Sword Art Online RP: Bob Lovecraft's initial Sword Skill is literally named Healing Shiv. It does Exactly What It Says on the Tin; he stabs you, you heal at the cost of his own health.
• Discussed in Cracked twice:
  • According to this Cracked article, Item #4 on the list is an example of this that we will have soon.
  • On the other hand, it's one of the 7 Video Game Healing Methods Least Likely to Actually Work.
• In Red vs. Blue, Doc's medigun is (in-game) a Plasma Pistol. He's only seen firing it once, as an ad-hoc weapon in fact. However, he examines people by overcharging it, and despite its stated purpose, its still startling for a serial Halo player to hear the sound of imminent death from the medic.
  • Sarge once claimed that he has coated his shotgun shells with medicine for optimum delivery. Given that Grif was "sick" and Sarge is full of crap whenever there's comedic value... it's probably not going to make Grif better.
  • Tex once threw a crate full of (in the most implausible pairing imaginable) med kits and gas canisters. Making the whole thing a highly explosive, massive projectile of healing.
  Sarge "What happened? I feel defeated... yet inexplicably rejuvenated!"
  • This is also what it would take for Sarge to recognize the concept of irony:
  Sarge: I think it would be ironic if our guns fired not bullets, but a healing salve that cured all wounds!
• SF Debris makes a lot of recurring jokes about Star Trek and one of them is the "Medical Phaser," which is whenever we see a phaser being carried by a doctor or stored in a drawer in Sick Bay. And although it doesn't really "cure" people, setting the phaser on stun is often used as a backup plan to deal with people possessed by parasites or ghosts or other phenomena.

Western Animation

• Something similar showed up in an episode of Futurama. Fry pleads with the Professor not to shoot himself after he puts a gun to his head.
  "What? Don't shoot myself with this memory ray so I can remember what happened?"

Real Life

• Adrenalin injections into the heart, like in Pulp Fiction, really do exist. Emergency doctors do this extremely rarely, slowly, and with great caution, so the movie depiction is way off. But it still means saving someone's life by stabbing them in the heart.
• The Precordial Thump, which can be used to treat cardiac arrhythmia without a defibrillator. It's a fancy name for punching the patient in the chest in a very specific way. If done right, and if it works, it restarts the pulse just like Fonzie hitting the jukebox. If done wrong, it makes things much worse, and the heart is still stopped. Do Not Try This at Home.
  • This procedure is considered mostly obsolete, as external defibrillators become more and more common. Automatic external defibrillators which analyze a patient's heart rate to determine whether or not a patient requires defibrillation, guides the user through the process, and can be operated effectively even by people with very little medical training, are becoming available in most public places. Both the professional and the automated versions of the device operate on the same principle, however: Essentially resetting your heart by shooting it with electricity. A lot of electricity.
• A (prescription-only) EpiPen looks a lot like a writing pen, but is for treating severe allergic reactions. You use it by jamming it straight into your thigh— and don't waste time taking your pants off first.
  • Atropine and Praxilidome injectors used by the military to counter the effects of nerve toxin also work much the same way, and for a similar reason: If the person with the symptoms can't give himself the antidote right away, he'll be incapacitated and could die very quickly.
  • Glucagon rescue for acute diabetic hypoglycemia and emergency hydrocortisone injections for adrenal crisis work the same way.
• The Jet injector can look disturbingly like a handgun◊, although it is used like a syringe. The fact that it is pressed to the skin, not used as a projectile from a distance as would be expected from a real handgun, slightly diminishes the effect.
• More generally, anything involving a hypodermic needle. Many student nurses have to overcome an emotional hurdle when they give injections for the first time, because they're naturally reluctant to stab somebody with sharp metal.
  • The same goes for patients who have to learn to inject themselves. For some, the sense of wrongness is a bigger barrier than fear of pain. However, if you're giving yourself multiple injections every day (as people with insulin-dependent diabetes need to do) you tend to get used to it very quickly.
• The closest example would be the scalpel, when used in a specific way, and with other surgical tools, each of which are also used in a specific way.
• Pneumothorax is caused by air accumulating between the lung and the chest wall; making it impossible to breathe. Treatment is to puncture the chest wall with a tube up to 9 millimeters in diameter that contains a one-way valve, so that the air is forced out and can't re-enter.
• Posology, the study of measuring out quantities, reflects the phrase, "Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents."
• Various types of eye surgery involve cutting apart and shooting lasers at the inside of your eyeballs to make them work better.
• Until the late 19th century, most physicians believed that, since inflamed areas were red, it meant there was too much blood in them. This is how the practice of bloodletting began. It could be accomplished with a leech, but was all-too-often done with just a cut. It often only worsened the problems. However, it's actually making a comeback in modern medicine. Medicinal leeches are increasingly being used for everything from microsurgery to varicose vein treatment. And regular phlebotomies (a.k.a. bloodletting) is currently the medically accepted treatment for haemochromatosis and other types of iron overload.
• Trepanation (a.k.a. Drilling a hole into someone's skull) is still used today, except instead of letting demons out of the brain, it's aimed more at helping reduce damage due to the brain swelling from an injury.
• This is of course, also the basis of the Cricothyrotomy, where a hole is cut directly into someone's windpipe to allow them to breathe when their airways are blocked. Generally done only as a last resort, and typically only by trained medical professionals.
  • A hemothorax, bleeding into the pleural cavity, is rectified in a similar manner by cutting a hole into the cavity, stitching a rubber tube into the hole and letting the difference in air pressure force the blood into a bucket. Despite its crude nature, the procedure is safe enough to perform with minimal anesthetic, for better or worse.
• Botulinum toxin is the most acutely toxic substance known to man, and a prime candidate for use in biological weaponry. However in small doses it can be used to treat eye disorders and sweating though it's most well known for its use in cosmetic procedures: you might know it as Botox.
• Nitroglycerin is one of the most powerful explosives to ever exist. It also doubles as heart medication.
• The medical laser pistol was created in USSR in the 1980s but didn't catch on. It was based on 1984 laser pistols designed for space station personnel for blinding enemy satellites, effectively a very powerful laser pointer with a cartridge of single-shot lamps and batteries. Blinding and medical versions had different barrels. They could be used as coagulators (to stop bleeding) or to disinfect wounds. The 1990 design was made of plastic, with swappable barrels.
• Mocked by this picture◊, featuring a police medic and his "magic wellness stick".
• A medical technique known as Intraosseous infusion. It is designed for piercing bones and allowing for the flow of medication in times where IV is not able to be performed. Like in the midst of a battle or if a soldier has lost his or her arm. A technique for soldiers to learn IO is to pierce the sternum with a massive thick needle and yes it is as painful as it sounds.
• A medical harpoon was developed to treat heart valves with minimal invasive surgery by shooting the harpoon directly into the heart without cutting open the patient.
• Dart guns are sometimes used to medicate temperamental livestock or zoo animals without the veterinarians having to approach too closely.
• Cocaine is often used in small amounts in nasal surgery, by applying cocaine directly to the patient's nose. For example the U.S. where cocaine is a regulated substance, only one company is allowed to import coca leaves for cocaine production, Stepan Company with their medicinal cocaine producing plant in Maywood, New Jersey. As a byproduct the plant also produces coca flavoring for use in Coca-Cola.

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