Impaled Palm

"The enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand."

— Drill Sergeant Zim, Starship Troopers

A character has something driven into the palm of his hand (or, occasionally, the back) and right out the other side. Usually a knife, but may be a bullet. Crucially, it is done deliberately and usually (if it's not a bullet), quite slowly.

This may be done for several reasons:

• To make us sympathise with him, while injuring him in a way that allows him to carry on operating mostly unhindered.
• To demonstrate his machismo when he simply withdraws the object and carries on^note which is a really bad idea, by the way, or in some cases carries on without even bothering with the first part.
• To demonstrate his extreme machismo when it was he who drove the object into his own palm in the first place.
• To cause intense pain and incapacitate that person's hand without causing irreversible damage.
• To imply some parallel with another guy who once suffered similar wounds.

Related to Fingore and Palm Bloodletting. May be caused by a Five-Finger Fillet. May result in Pinned to the Wall.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In season 3 of Aggretsuko, a crazed fan attempts to kill Retsuko with a razor while she's walking through the business district to be picked up from work. Haida, while protecting her, gets his hand stabbed, not noticing that he was injured until Inui points it out to him.
• During one fight in AIKI, Hou Mei blocks a dagger with her bare hand... which lets her counterattack freely now that the opponent's weapon is stuck through her palm.
• During the infamous "Hundred Man Killer" fight in Berserk, Guts catches a crossbow bolt in his palm to prevent it from hitting him in a more vital area. He kills the archer, breaks the bolt and continues to fight one-handed.
• Bleach:
  • Grimmjow stabs Ichigo through his hand, pinning it to the asphalt to prevent him getting away while Grimmjow (who only has one arm at this point) charges a cero. Rukia has a tough time pulling the sword out afterwards.
  • Once Szayel is effectively paralyzed, his extended hand is pierced through by Mayuri's sword, which slides through it and into his heart. This is seemingly done just to prolong his suffering, as Mayuri could have gone straight for the heart and knew even these seconds of injury would feel like years.
• In one episode of City Hunter, Ryo Saeba fires his gun through his own hand to slow the bullet so he can shoot the bad guy without harming an innocent bystander.
• In Dance in the Vampire Bund, the entrances to the temples in South America and under Mt. Fuji can only be unlocked by vampire blood...provided by twin blades skewering the hand of the vampire in question.
• D.Gray-Man:
  • Miranda Lotto gets her hands nailed to a clock by the sadistic Road Kamelot.
  • Later in the manga, Apochryphos pins Tyki Mikk to the wall by his hands, then grows nails out of his hands which impale Tyki's palms.
• In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Asakura stabs Kyon in the chest through his hands.
• In Dogs: Bullets & Carnage Badou got a sword stabbed through his hand and into his eye.
• In an episode of Durarara!!, Seiji stabs Shizuo through the hand with a pen. He concludes that he'd better buy some band-aids before pulling it out. Or superglue.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Roy Mustang is stabbed through his palm, damaging the design on his gloves, and impeding him from using his powers. He was also pinned in a Crucified Hero Shot and used as a human sacrifice, so it's probably deliberate symbolism.
  • Major General Armstrong shoves her sword through a hapless official while attacking the heads of Amestris's government.
• One of the many, many wounds inflicted on Saichi "Immortal" Sugimoto over the course of Golden Kamuy in this case, blocking a bayonet thrust with his bare hand.
• In the manga of His and Her Circumstances, Arima impales his own palm with his boxcutter after his massive heart-to-heart with Yukino in the school library finishes with him pretty much raping her. Luckily, his dad is a doctor and patches him up. But not before the still shell-shocked Arima tries to go to school while hiding his injury (read: wrapping his injury in a bandage and then keeping both hands in his pockets, which sends Yukino in a full Get A Hold Of Yourself Man mood.
• In Ichi the Killer, Kakihara likes to do this to people with his needles. At one point, he puts a needle through the clasped palms of his henchmen Jiro and Saburo as punishment for killing someone he wanted kept alive.
• At the climax of Kenshiro's battle with Shin in Fist of the North Star, Shin impales Kenshiro's hand with his razor-sharp fingers. Kenshiro responds by simply gripping Shin's own hand with the fingers on the one he impaled, then punches right through Shin's other hand, allowing him to use the Hokuto Cross Slash technique unimpeded.
• In Lord Marksman and Vanadis, when Zion tries to rape Titta, Tigre rescues her by firing an arrow through Zion's hand.
• Showcasing how mind-fucked all three characters involved are, the first team called Zero drives a nail into Soubi's palm in Loveless.
• In the Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force manga, Cypha of Hückebein activates her powerful React mode by plunging a dagger into her left palm (so that it enters her wrist — ouch). However, thanks to her crazy Healing Factor, she doesn't even wince.
• In Maiden Rose after Berkut puts his hand beneath Taki's chin mid-fight and mocks him, Taki hurls Berkut across the cabin and pins his hand to the ground with his sword.
• My Hero Academia: When a clone of Himiko Toga is about to stab Rock Lock, he reacts in just enough time for her to stick the knife through his palm, instead. However, the real Toga stabs him In the Back mere seconds later (which he just barely survives).
• The eponymous character of Naruto gets stabbed through the hand four different times:
  • At the beginning of the Zabuza arc, Naruto is poisoned by a cut on his hand. Rather than compromise the mission, he stabs himself to bleed out the poison.
  • He inflicts pain by stabbing himself to break out of an illusion.
  • Naruto lets himself get stabbed in the hand by Kabuto, to get close enough to hit him with the Rasengan.
  • During Naruto's fight with Pain, both hands are pierced with Pain's chakra rods, pinning them to the ground and also paralyzing him.
• One Piece:
  • In the Arlong Arc, Nami pretends to stab Usopp to give him the chance to escape from the villains. In order to make it look more believable, she stabs herself through the hand instead.
  • An Establishing Character Moment for Bellamy in the manga during the Jaya arc is when he plays a game of cards against a fellow pirate and loses. As the man reaches for his winnings, Bellamy stabs the man's hand before knocking him out of the second story window. The anime removes the stabbing, and Bellamy instead just grabs him by the hand.
  • Vice Admiral Momonga stabbed himself through the hand to block Boa Hancock's lust-inducing abilities from turning him into stone. She was impressed.
• In Princess Tutu at one point when Drosselmeyer takes control of Fakir and forces him to write the story of Ahiru's death, which would then come true, he stabs his own hand with a letter-opener to stop it from writing.
• In Rebuild of Evangelion, Shinji's hands are pierced by Sahaqiel's anthropomorphic thing. Later, he's seen wearing bandages on his hands. Given that it's Eva...
• In Rurouni Kenshin, Okina does this during his fight with Aoshi after he finds himself backed into a corner, and this wins him a free hit with his most powerful attack. It doesn't work though, as Aoshi immediately unleashes the most powerful attack of his own and slashes Okina down.
• In Sanctuary, Hojo Akira must prove his resolve to join the Yakuza. He does this by stabbing his own hand through and through with a knife, without hesitation. He sweats a little bit from the effort, and thinks 'it hurts so much I could cry.' But Hoja's expression does not change throughout the ordeal. His mentor, Mr. Tokai, notes later that no-one else has ever shown him the guts Hoja demonstrated.
• Happens to Kurogane in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- as part of his Deus Angst Machina back story.
• When Darcia returns to his ransacked mansion in Wolf's Rain, he finds one of his servants with her hands nailed to the door.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • When the Other Bakura challenges Yugi and friends to a Tabletop RPG where their souls are literally at stake and he's gleefully playing the role of Killer Game Master, the real Bakura manages to take back control of his hand and sabotage a roll that would have otherwise resulted in a Total Party Kill. Unfortunately for him, the Other Bakura prevents him from meddling further by impaling said hand on one of the game board's towers.
  • This nearly happens to Ushio in a Shadow Game against Yugi's Superpowered Evil Side in which the players have to stab stacks of money on their hands without hitting any flesh. Ushio realizes that he's about to stab full-force, which would send the knife through his hand, so he tries to Take a Third Option and stab Yugi. In doing so, however, he incurs Yugi's wrath.
• YuYu Hakusho,
  • Kurama throws a rose Tuxedo Mask-style through Karasu's hand. Karasu is completely unimpressed and pulls it out.
  • Also Hiei does this to himself. When he first talks to Shigure, he insisted Hiei won't make it through the surgery for the Jagan eye. In order to prove himself Hiei stabs his left palm with his sword and says he'll be able to handle it.

Arts

• In Michelangelo Buonarroti's The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, Peter has his hands nailed to a cross, with nary a drop of blood nor any sign of pain on the saint's face.

Comedy

• One of the many versions of Pick a Card tricks Penn & Teller did had a blindfolded Teller ready to stab a card on the table while Penn spreads them out and shuffles them around. Naturally, he stabs down before Penn's finished, driving the blade right through Penn's hand — and impaling the Three of Clubs on the blade.

Comic Books

• Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth has Batman impaling his hand on a piece of glass. The original script called for it to be merely scratched but the art depicted the glass going right through his hand. The reason is to come to his senses after the experience of being psychoanalyzed by the Joker. The model for McKean's art in that panel was Neil Gaiman with a pair of sunglasses.
• Barracuda: In an act of insane bravado and drunkenness, Raffy nails his own hand to a tavern table with a dagger while vowing to take on every man in the place in "Scars".
• In Batman, Ra's al Ghul came Back from the Dead after his body was destroyed. His first attempt was into the body of a martial artist action star, who had poisoned his own body to foil Ra's plans. Ra's took control of the body, but it was dying and numb of feeling. To demonstrate this, Ra's stabs his own hand, and continues to talk to his daughter Talia al Ghul while his eye is visible staring out the clean, bloodless hole in his palm.
• In Batwoman (Rebirth), Batwoman gets her right hand impaled by a sword.
• In Big Bang Comics #10, Shredder nails the assassin Headhunter to a table by driving a sai through her hand into a table.
• Bullseye gets a taste of his medicine and then some, when Daredevil pushes his hands into the path of a bullet. While fighting in a church. In another instance, The Punisher (who was going through a difficult period in his life and decided not to kill him) shot Bullseye in both hands in revenge for framing him for the murder of an innocent family.
• In ElfQuest, Shuna willingly subjects herself to this trope when Strongbow is falling to his death from a cliff. With nothing but bare stone for him to aim a cord-trailing arrow at, she extends her hand and allows him to shoot it through her palm, after which other elves can pull the archer to safety.
• The Unbelievable Gwenpool: Gwenpool's introduction◊ has her doing this with a pen to get herself a machine gun.
• In the Painkiller Jane/Vampirella crossover, Jane shows Vamp that she is tough enough to hang with vampires when she slams her hand through a letter spike then asks to shake on the new partnership with the spike still in her hand.
• Preacher: Bad guy drives a knife all the way through Tulip's hand into a car dashboard. Tulip eventually gathers the strength to pull it off by herself (excruciating pain included) in order to get free and save her boyfriend.
• In The Punisher MAX story arc "In the Beginning", Frank Castle is being attacked by an Ax-Crazy tank named Pittsy. Pittsy beats the Punisher's face into hamburger, then grabs a nastily large shard of broken glass and proceeds to stab him repeatedly with it. Castle resolves the situation by catching the glass in his palm...then snapping off the larger part of it, picking up Pittsy and throwing him out a window.
• In Robyn Hood: I Love NY #11, Robyn stabs Fuchs through the palm with a piece of splintered wood. This doesn't even slow Fuchs down, as he pulls a Lodged-Blade Recycling by pulling the shard out of his hand and slashing Robyn with it.
• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Whirl shoots an arrow through the captain's, Megatron's hand, to piss him off and goad him into a fight.
• Wolverine once put some sugar on his hand and described an old trick of killing a fly without scratching one's self while at a bar, then when the fly landed he demonstrated that he was nowhere near that subtle by pinning his hand to the table with his knife (killing the fly) and getting up to confront the man behind him. (To be sure, physical injuries are less of an issue for him than for most people.)
• XIII does this to himself : the pain keeps him from falling asleep on a sinking boat.

Fan Works

• A Darker Path: If you pull a gun after Atropos specifically warns you not to, then having your hand nailed to the table with her shears is getting off lightly. Which doesn't stop Troy from screaming. He does calm down slightly once he's able to stop jostling the wound, but he screams again when she yanks the shears out.
• A more comedic example of this trope happens to Eve in GG, Kronos, But I Have Foresight. The comedic part of it comes from the fact that she's actually not injured since it's a Celestial bronze sword stuck in her hand, and she's fully mortal; mortals cannot be hurt by Celestial bronze.
• Never Say Never has an example that overlaps with Surprisingly Realistic Outcome and badass endurance, Junko gets saved from Monokuma's trap by Naegi but her hand gets impaled by one of the spears, causing excruciating pain and serious blood loss. After she gets patched up, Junko, who is actually Mukuro Ikusaba in disguise, give a dying Sayaka some much needed First Aid after finding out she's been bleeding out the entire night. Right after that, she races to the Class Trial, sliding down a cable elevator to stop Leon from getting executed, she reopens her wound in the process but none the less she successfully stops the execution.
• Happens to young Obi Wan Kenobi during a torture session in the Star Wars fic Rebellion on Rindega.

Films — Live-Action

• 1BR: During her psychological torture, Sarah falls to the floor, unable to maintain her "stress position" anymore. Brian helps her keep them up by nailing them to the wall.
• Ripley 8 does this to herself in Alien: Resurrection to demonstrate her inhuman nature.
• The Archer: Lauren pins Bob's hand to the wall using an arrow. He later does the same thing to her on the car.
• Army of the Dead: Scott Ward plants his knife in the hand of an attacking Alpha zombie while fighting a bunch of them following the death of Maria Cruz.
• In The Beast with Five Fingers, Hilary nails the hand to a block of wood in the library, with a literal nail.
• The Italian film Black Jesus recreates the crucifixion by having the Patrice Lumumba-expy tortured by having his hands nailed to a table.
• The killer in the horror film A Blade In The Dark does this to one of his victims in the bathroom, pinning her hand to the counter with a knife before throwing a bag over her head to suffocate her and then finishing her off with a Slashed Throat.
• Roy Batty in Blade Runner keeps himself alive for a few crucial moments longer by driving a nail into his own palm.
• In Blood Harvest, Jill's stalker shoots Sarah in the back of the hand with an arrow, pinning her to a support in the barn.
• Blood Simple: Abby nails Visser's hand to a windowsill with a steak knife.
• In The Butterfly Effect, the main character does this to himself, to get stigmata-like scars on his hands as a little kid, as a part of a complex plan to get his religious present-day cellmate to believe him. (Time Travel is involved.)
• In the first fight scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cap stops a pirate from throwing an alarm switch by throwing a knife into his hand, pinning it to the wall.
• Chuck Noland in Cast Away does this to himself with a sharp piece of wood, which leads to the creation of Wilson.
• Cleanskin: When Paul knocks Ewan's gun from his hand and tries to escape, Ewan throws himself against the door—pinning Paul between the door and the jamb—and nails his hand to the wall with a knife.
• In Colombiana, the heroine is confronted, as a small girl, with the man who has just killed her parents. He asks her to hand over an object her father has given her for safe keeping, and holds out his hand across a table. She unclips a knife hidden under the table and pins his palm to the tabletop. Ouch.
• Used to great effect in The Crazies. The victim even manages to kill his attacker, while the knife is still impaling his hand.
• Eric Draven in The Crow first demonstrates his regenerating powers by getting shot through the middle of the palm of his hand.
• Daredevil (2003):
  • Elektra gets a sai through her palm while trying to pull a Catch and Return, after Bullseye did the same trick effortlessly. Pulling it out looks agonisingly painful.
  • There's a recreation of the comic scene above, when Daredevil realises a police sniper is about to fire on them, and pulls Bullseye's hands into the path of the bullet.
• Deadpool 2: Black Tom Cassidy welcomes Deadpool to the Ice Box by nailing his hand to a table with a knife. As Wade is wearing a power-nullifying collar, this is one wound which won't heal quickly.
• Death Ring: After Cross disrespects him during dinner, Vachs seemingly lets the insult go then, as Cross is reaching across the table, jams his fork down into Cross' hand. He then knocks Cross to the floor and kicks him to death.
• Dog Bite Dog has Yu's father who gets a pair of scissors shoved through his palm while trying to rape his own daughter in frustration. After receiving a well-deserved beating from Pang, who came to Yu's rescue, cue the police arriving, and as the father holds his hand up the scissors is still embedded in the palm.
• Divergent: At the climax, Tris pins Jeanine's hand to a screen with a throwing knife.
• Escape to Athena. Charlie is cautiously opening a door when the SS officer on the other side puts several bullets through it. Charlie is unharmed except for several splinters in his palm, which Charlie pulls out with his teeth (because he's carrying Guns Akimbo) while grimacing in pain.
• Happens to Spider during Elysium. It doesn't slow him down for long.
• In Eraser, the heroes take cover from a shuriken bomb under the door of a tipped-over refrigerator. Holding it above their heads, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character gets one right through the center of his palm and yanks it straight off.
• In Eyes of Laura Mars, one of Laura's visions shows the killer stabbing the victim's palm against the wall of an elevator.
• The White Lotus Chief in Fists of the White Lotus is invulnerable to all attacks, can absorb or reflect every hit thrown at him thanks to his immense internal concentration of qi, and have only one weak point... his palm. Man Ting-hung the hero finally defeats him by stabbing through both his palms after an intensely long fight scene.
• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter: Jimmy gets his hand impaled and pinned by a corkscrew before he gets a meat cleaver to his face.
• From Dusk Till Dawn: Richard Gekko gets a bullet through his palm. In one scene, he looks through it at his brother.
• The Funhouse Massacre: During Sheriff Kate's fight with Eileen "The Stitch-Faced Killer", the latter tries to stab the former with a knife, who blocks it with her hand, resulting in this.
• At the climax of his final battle with Iris in Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys, Gamera's hand is impaled and pinned against a wall by Iris's Spear Absorber. Gamera reacts by shooting his forearm off, growing another one composed entirely out of fire taken from a set of balls of fire Iris tried to attack him with, and uses that to kill Iris with the particularly cool-sounding Banishing Fist.
• When a sudden eye grows out of protagonist's palm in The Gate, he promptly stabs it with a shard of glass. Oh, and he's just a kid.
• The General: Martin Cahill believes one of his associates betrayed him, so he has someone nail his hands to a pool table.
• In Get Out (2017), Missy does this to Chris during the climax with a letter opener. He manages to turn it on her, with it still in his palm, and later uses it to stab Jeremy.
• Solozzo does this to Luca Brasi in the movie version of The Godfather to prevent him reaching for his gun while another henchman garrotes Brasi from behind. This is, of course, pure Rule of Scary: in the book Solozzo simply held Brasi's arm. There is a further practical purpose to the impalement; it caused Luca to scream in agony, and given that he's immediately garrotted afterward, he dies all the quicker for being unable to take a breath.
• In Godzilla vs. Biollante, one of Biollante's vines goes through Godzilla's left hand.
• Halloween Ends: Laurie Strode uses two knives to pin Michael Myers' hands to a kitchen counter. He still gets a hand free to try to strangle her.
• In The Handmaiden, Uncle Kouzuki drills a hole into one of Fujiwara's hands.
• In Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, Pinhead pulls two nails from his head and shoves them through the palms of his hands, deliberately mocking the resultant crucifixion imagery to freak out Joey.
• Dukhovich in The Hitman's Bodyguard stabs Assistant Director Foucher in the palm with a pen when the latter comes over trying to weasel out on the deal.
• Hooded Angels: During the final fight between Ellie and Wes, Ellie lunges at Wes with her stiletto. Wes, who is lying on the floor, holds up his hand to fend her off and the blade goes straight through his palm.
• Constable Angel in Hot Fuzz is stabbed in the palm by a Mall Santa^note  played by Peter Jackson. with some scissors.
• During a gunrunning deal gone wrong in In the Line of Duty III: Force of the Dragon, the villainess Michiko Genji stabs the hand of a rival gunrunner about to pull a pistol on her, through his palm.
• John Wick: Chapter 4 twice. First a long, focused one with Mr. Nobody's hand pinned to a solid object. Second, when Donny Yen punctures Wick's hand suddenly to slow him down just before the final duel.
• Dolph Lundgren's character in Johnny Mnemonic does this to Jane, specifically because he has a Christ complex.
• The Kunoichi: Ninja Girl: As Kanna is attempting to crawl away, Shimotsuki pins her hand to the ground with a shuriken.
• Mad Max: Fury Road. Max covers his eyes whenever he has a hallucination of his dead daughter. This instinctive reaction saves his life when a War Boy simultaneously shoots him with a crossbow, giving Max an Impaled Palm instead of an impaled head.
• The Mermaid have the titular character, in a daze after getting an urchin in her face, trying to stab the playboy tycoon she's assigned to assassinate. Unfortunately, in her disorientated state she ends up stabbing her left hand through the palm. And it's portrayed as hilarious.
• In Mermaid Down, Sandra shoots Dr. Beyer right through the palm in an effort to protect the mermaid.
• The eponymous protagonist of El Mariachi is shot through the hand by his lover's vengeful ex, preventing him from ever playing guitar again. El Mariachi responds by shooting the man through the chest.
• Mohawk: During the fight in the mission, Colonel Holt drives his dagger through Oak's palm; nailing her hand to a post.
• In New Jack City, Nino Brown infamously impales the hand of Kareem Akbar with a sword and attempts to strangle him with a chain due to the failure of Gee Money. This act even horrifies some of the most loyal members of CMB, who convince him to stop.
• In Nightmare at Noon, Charley, who has consumed a substance that turns people into mindless killers, stabs a waitress through the hand, pinning her to the counter.
• The heroine of the movie Nikita snaps and does this to a policeman with a pencil. She actually stabs it into the back of his hand, which paradoxically looks as though it would hurt more.
• Parker: During the fight with the hitman in the hotel, Parker blocks an attempt to stab him with his hand. The knife goes all the way through his hand and remains there for the remainder of the fight. He also uses this to his advantage, when he throws said assassin off the balcony.
• In the WWI movie Passchendaele, a Canadian soldier gets a bayonet to his palm while trying to deflect it from his face. He overpowers his German attacker and delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on him with the same injured fist whilst screaming obscenities.
• The Passion of the Christ: You'll never guess which scene.
• The title character of The Pawnbroker does this to himself at the end of the movie.
• Among the more disturbing images in Ingmar Bergman's Persona is a hand being nailed to something.
• In Razors: The Return of Jack the Ripper, the Ripper nails James's palm to floor with one of his knives, before killing him by driving his thumbs through his eyes.
• In Ready or Not, Grace gets shot through her left palm. She's then forced to hook the wound over a nail in the course of climbing out of a pit full of bodies.
• Alice suffers this in Resident Evil: Afterlife, due to a surprise knife attack by Bennett.
• In Return of the Living Dead 3, Julie shoves a shard of glass into her hand to drown out the pain of her Horror Hunger.
• In Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, Ricky gets stabbed in the hand and just nonchalantly rips the object out while staring at his aggressor.
• Will Scarlet (Christian Slater) in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves has his hand pierced through by Robin's arrow.
• In Rovdyr, Jorgen gets his right palm impaled on one of the hunters' barbwire snares, and has to painfully pull it free with his left hand.
• Scare Campaign: When Rohan rises suddenly from the back seat of the minivan, Emma reacts by driving a screwdriver through his hand: nailing it to the passenger seat.
• In an act of defiance, Marco jabs a fork through his hand at the dinner table in Snuff Movie.
• Starship Troopers: The main characters are in basic training, learning how to throw knives. One cadet asks Sergeant Zim why throwing knives is important in an age when pressing a button can unleash nuclear weapons with far more power. Zim orders him to lay his hand against a wall, and throws a knife through his palm, pinning it. He explains (while the cadet moans painfully in the background) that by disabling a hand, you can prevent that button from being pressed.
• Averted in Stigmata. Frankie's wounds are through her wrists, and she gleefully notes that they should be through her palms if she has stigmata. However, Father Kiernan notes that historic crucifixions were done through the wrist.
• During The Teaser to Timber Falls, the female captive has her hands nailed to the tables on either side of the bed. She is eventually able to pull one palm completely off the nail, and use that hand to free the other.
• In the film Total Eclipse, which is based on the dysfunctional relationship between poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, Rimbaud stabs Verlaine's palm with a knife. Verlaine later returns the favor with a bullet.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men: First Class: Erik Perp Sweats an ex-Nazi in Argentina by pinning his hand to a table with his own dagger...twice.
    Erik: [reading what's engraved on the blade] Blood and Honor. Which would you care to shed first?
    The "Pig Farmer": We were under orders!
    Erik: Blood, then.
  • In The Wolverine, Logan does this to a hunter that survived a bear attack, using the same arrow the hunter used on the bear which then caused it severe pain and suffering and forcing Logan to perform a Mercy Kill on it.
• Happens in a fight in Young Guns II, and Chavez y Chavez, Lou Diamond Phillips' character, gets stabbed in the hand with a knife. He then proceeds to knock the fuck out of the guy who stabbed him, one of the other young guns, and casually asks if the fight is over and offers the knife back. By pulling it out.

Literature

• In The Dark Half, Thad stabs himself through the hand with a pencil while possessed by the spirit of his own dead pseudonym.
• This appears twice in the Deryni series: in Deryni Rising and again in The Quest For Saint Camber, the core of the Haldane empowerment ritual requires the person being empowered (in the first case Prince Kelson Haldane, in the second case his uncle Nigel Haldane) to pick up the "Lion of Gwynedd", a huge brooch in the shape of the Haldane coat of arms, then open the clasp and drive the three-inch-long gold pin into and through his palm.
• Discworld:
  • In Feet of Clay, Carrot deliberately sticks his hand in the path of a villain's silver-tipped crossbow bolt to shield Angua, a werewolf for whom even a superficial wound would've been toxic.
  • In The Truth, when William's hand gets impaled by The Spike during the struggle with Mr. Pin. This backfires on Pin when William frantically smacks at his attacker, and "spikes" him in the neck!
• Even If We Break: During the fight with the killer, Liva drives a hunting knife through Ever's hand. The victim pulls the knife out without thinking, causing blood to pour out, and stanches the flow by pressing a piece of tunic into the wound.
• In the fourth The Dresden Files novel, Summer Knight, Harry is forced to drive a letter opener through the back of his own hand by Mab, who did it to prove that she has taken over his debt from Lea.
• In The Japanese Corpse, one of Janwillem van der Wetering's Amsterdam Cops novels, the Comissaris is taken prisoner by a Yakuza who tries to force him to commit Yubitsume. The Comissaris pretends to be clumsy until the yakuza reaches over to do it for him, upon which he spikes the guy's hand to the table with the knife.
• In Neverwhere, Vandemar does this to himself after being unimpressed by Croup's knife-throwing act (in which Croup didn't even hit one of his own fingers). Being a supernatural whatever-the-hell-he-is, he feels no pain and doesn't bleed.
• Night Chills by Dean Koontz. The Mad Scientist involved in a Mind-Control Conspiracy has a waitress stab a kitchen knife through her palm, purely as a Kick the Dog because she reminded him of his ex.
• Jack Shandy does this to himself, twice in On Stranger Tides as part of the voodoo magic needed to take Blackbeard down. He essentially wields a sword with a spike in the hilt that goes through his hand, because it needs to be touching his blood to cancel out the bad mojo that Blackbeard is using.
• A Practical Guide to Evil: The Black Knight forces Akua to stick a knife into her own hand and later twist it through his use of Compelling Voice in an attempt to provoke her into lashing out and revealing her true colors.
• Ravirn: The setting's version of magic requires this occasionally— spells are treated more like computer programs (after a change that allows magic to be controlled by computers), and logging into certain magically-based systems has the person stick an athame into their hand, with a cable plugged into the computer.
• Fighting creatures in the Redwall series suffer from this a lot, frequently instead of having a weapon go through more vital areas because the author wants to keep them around or make them suffer. A common variation is having their paws pinned to objects by arrows going clear through.
• In the classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the captain of a besieged city is hurling taunts along with his troops down at Sun Ce's army, leaning on a wooden beam with one hand and making rude gestures with the other. Recently recruited Taishi Ci turns to Sun Ce and says "Watch this" before taking his bow and firing a shot that pins the captain's hand to the beam from fifty yards away.
• In the Spy Fiction Running Blind by Desmond Bagley, the protagonist captures a man he suspects is The Mole, and shoots him through the palm to encourage him to talk. When he's later captured by the KGB, the mole enters the room, straightaway has the KGB put his hand against the wall and shoots him through the palm. This causes problems later when he has to work the bolt of a sniper rifle; he eventually passes out and his girlfriend has to take over.
• Grandma Mazur takes an icepick through the hand in the second book of the Stephanie Plum series. While she rallies, it's also one of the more vulnerable moments for the character, as it forces her to admit that she's not as tough as she claims to be.
• Carl Hiaasen's Skink No Surrender sees the antagonist T.C. accidentally stick himself clean through the palm with a venomous catfish spine. Soon after, he comes down with a severe infection and a fever.
• The Syrena Legacy: While Tyrden is interrogating Reed and Galen in Of Neptune, he shoots Reed through the palm to show what will happen if they lie.
• In Thinner, the main character is shot through the hand by a gypsy girl with a slingshot. The resultant hole is later drained into a pie in order to pass on his curse.
• In Ward, the "villain" Foil has this happen to her twice. Her superpowers allow her to cause any object she touches to break several laws of physics and penetrate clear through solid objects, ignore gravity and friction, and fuse with things they touch. She also has a superhuman sense of timing and aim that allows her to very effectively use this power with flying objects, like darts or crossbow bolts, or blades. So on the first occasion, she fires a gun through her own hand, in order to imbue the bullet with her power; she says this is the only way to effectively use her power on bullets as they move too fast for her to touch otherwise. The second time, she blocks the villain March's rapier with her hand. The space-warping heroine Vista had used her power to shorten the blade, so it didn't penetrate all the way through and only the surface of the palm experienced the effect of March's power, exploding outward.

Live-Action TV

• Angel
  • In "Provider" Holtz does this to a new recruit as a punishment, but also a test of her determination. When she refuses to remove the awl pinning her hand to the desk and leave, Holtz knows she has what it takes to join him in his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Angel also saved somebody from being killed by an arrow by catching it through his palm in "War Zone".
  • In "Double or Nothing" Angel is playing an Absurdly High-Stakes Game that if he loses will cost him his soul (which will turn him evil). He hands Cordy a wooden stake and says she knows what to do if that happens (an apparent Staking the Loved One trope). When Angel does lose the game, Cordy instead rams the stake through the Big Bad's palm, holding him in place so Angel can lop off his head. This doesn't actually kill the villain (a demon that can regrow his head), but Angel then asks, "Anyone else owe this guy money?" As the assembled onlookers take advantage of the opening to beat the demon into a fine paste, Angel and Cordy skedaddle.
• From The Borgias, Cesare stabs Giovanni Sforza through the hand with a dinner knife. Giovanni instinctively pulls back and... it's not pretty.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Mayor lets Angel throw a letter opener through his hand to demonstrate his newly-gained Healing Factor.
• In Capadocia, Yolanda starts teasing Marta (who was denied a conjugal visit with her girlfriend) about how the girlfriend, who had met Marta while both were imprisoned but was now free, had been with her only due Situational Sexuality and would later dump her for a guy. She gets a pair of scissors through her hand for being a smartass.
• Thomas from Downton Abbey got himself shipped home from the trenches of World War One by intentionally getting a German sniper to shoot him through the hand.
• Game of Thrones introduces Prince Oberyn Martell confronting a couple of House Lannister Mooks and impaling the palm of one of them after the soldier insults Oberyn's lover and throws a racist insult against the Prince.
• Gotham applies this on occasion, Fish Mooney and Alfred Pennyworth among its practitioners.
• On Heroes, Peter wins a nasty fight against Sylar by blocking the latter's powers, beating the living daylights out of him, and then pins him to a table by driving a nail gun through Sylar's palms and groin.
• In Homeland Quinn does this to Brody with a penknife while interrogating him, either through losing his temper or as a preplanned Rabid Cop act to give someone else the chance to play Good Cop.
• In Squid Game, Sang-woo drives a blade through the hand of Gi-hun during their brutal final battle.
• Iron Fist (2017). In the Season One climax, Harold Meachum tries to prevent Danny Rand forming an Iron Fist by shooting him through the hand. Fortunately Danny musters the Heroic Second Wind to regenerate his fist.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The gang throws darts at Dennis's hand as part of their bizarre, abusive homemade boardgame. One hits his palm dead center, and he doesn't flinch. Made even more impressive creepy when you find out he was sober.
• Krypton: Jayna Zod impales the hand of Lyta Zod to teach her the lesson that Sagittari never ask for mercy, and never give it.
• Luther. Luther is captured by an Evil Matriarch gangster who wants the location of a witness in protective custody. To make Luther know she means business, her grandson opens the conversation by hammering a nail through Luther's palm into a table. Not to be outdone, Luther pulls out the nail with his other hand when it's time to leave.
• In an episode of M*A*S*H, Colonel Blake gets a syringe through the palm courtesy of an uncooperative patient.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus - A housewife (Terry Jones) shows that tv viewers are indeed idiots by a few demonstrations, one of which involves nailing her own hand to the side of a van and getting dragged away.
• Happens to Ducky in NCIS. He's a little miffed as a doctor but since he specializes in forensics, he says he will be fine. He also dismisses it as "just a defensive wound" while the knife is still in his hand.
• Our Flag Means Death: In episode one, one of the British officers gets a knife through the hand courtesy of Jim after making one to many racist comments towards some of the other crew mates.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Revival", Luke uses his shapeshifting abilities to create the illusion of stigmata in front of the revival congregations.
• In Rizzoli & Isles as well as the first novel the tv show is based on, Hoyt uses scalpels to impale Det. Jane Rizzoli to the floor. She ends up with scars in both her palms and the back of her hands.
  • She later pays him back by shooting him in the hands, stating "now we match."
• Played for laughs in Scrubs: Dr. Cox' brother-in-law is introduced after he's nailed a piece of wood to his hand with a nail gun. He doesn't seem to care too much about it (because he's been shot full of painkillers). JD, however, immediately faints.
• Used very dramatically in The Shannara Chronicles by Eretria. Blood Magic is required to open a gateway to a Pocket Dimension where the McGuffin is hidden. Eretria places her hand on a spike, and her blood runs down into a pool. It actually draws so much blood that she faints (perhaps there is an anti-clotting agent on the spike?) She only survives because of Wil's healing magic.
• In the Smallville episode "Extinction", a budding Serial Killer attempts to murder Clark by sniping him with a Kryptonite bullet. Clark reacts fast enough to catch it, but being made of Kryptonite, it goes straight through his outstretched hand and into his shoulder. His Healing Factor kicks in after his parents remove it, and his palm and shoulder end up being no worse for wear.
• In Spartacus: War of the Damned Agron is crucified in this manner, rendering him unable to hold a sword after his rescue.
  • Notably, the series usually had nails driven through a victim's wrist, as was more practical for holding the body up. Agron, however, had promised to chop off Julius Caesar's head, so the latter made a point of ruining his sword hand.
• At the tail end of one Stargate SG-1 episode, Col. O'Neill interrupts Heru'ur's attempted Hand Blast by throwing a combat knife through said villain's hand.
• In the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Defiant One", Major Sheppard has to attack an especially persistent Wraith with a knife after they've run out of ammunition. Being able to regenerate, the Wraith just take advantage of being stabbed in the palm to disarm him.
• At least two clips on World's Dumbest... feature a magician facing at least two overturned plastic cups, one of which is hiding a sharp object, and trying to slap the cup that doesn't have grievous injury waiting beneath. Guess how well it goes.
• 7 Yüz: After describing the suffering her father and her family endured because of his actions, Nihal drives a pair of scissors into Mete's hand in a moment of rage and fury ("Büyük Günahlar").

Music Videos

• In the video for "Hit and Run," Lolo's character gives this to one of the men who raped and murdered her little sister, pinning his hand to a table. He pulls the knife out, but she shoots him dead before he can retaliate.

Myths & Religion

• In Christian theology, Jesus was nailed to the cross on which he was crucified with a nail through each hand, and a nail through both feet. Many artistic depictions of Jesus post-resurrection tend to show holes in the palms of his hands that still haven't been healed.
  • Which may be Word of Dante; there's scholarly and medical disagreement about nails through the hands or the wrists, though most of the faithful would not consider it terribly important. In Christian eschatology, Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection are what matter, not the exact placement of wounds.

Video Games

• Happens to Otso Berg with a throwing knife at the end of Assassin's Creed Syndicate. He simply pulls the knife out and carries on.
• In Blasphemous II, the boss Eviterno, First of the Penitents and leader of the Archconfraternity, has a silver spike stuck through his left hand.
• In a Shout-Out to Passchendaele, a French soldier is seen receiving a German bayonet to his palm during the opening cutscene of the Battlefield 1 War Story, "Storm of Steel".
• In BioShock Infinite Booker can get stabbed through the hand with a knife by an enemy acting like a tram ticket salesman, which you can avoid by realizing he's acting suspicious and shooting him first. If you let him stab Booker, Elizabeth's shoddy bandaging job with part of her dress will remain visible on Booker's hand for the rest of the game.
• In the Detroit: Become Human chapter Public Enemy, there's a deviant in the kitchen. However, there are three androids and Connor has to figure out which one is the deviant. If he successfully figures out who the deviant is, then the deviant rips out Connor's therium pump (essentially his heart), and then grabs a knife and stabs it into Connor's hand, pinning it to the counter.
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: After being defeated in an intense battle of Sibling Rivalry, Dante gets back up and attempts to attack his brother Vergil with his bare fist. Unfortunately, he's not fast enough as Vergil manages to stop his fist by impaling it on his katana. Luckily for Dante, he has regenerating demon powers, so he simply rips his hand out of the blade and it heals almost instantly.
• In Mortal Kombat 11, Baraka's Fatal Blow starts with him stabbing the opponent through the chest using his Blade Below the Shoulder; the target tries to block the attack but all this accomplishes is getting their hand pinned in place when Baraka snaps his arm-blade off.
• It's possible to do this in Red Dead Redemption with throwing knives and carefully aimed gunshots.
• In Resident Evil 4, Leon does this to one of the villains by throwing his knife. Leon gets it back, since one of said villain's bodyguards throws it back at him. This is a notable example because it's not done for any of the reasons listed above, being instead a Shut Up, Hannibal! showing that, for Leon, the time for bantering with Salazar is over.
• One of the first of many tortures inflicted upon Ethan Winters in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is his wife driving a screwdriver through his left hand, nailing it to a wall. He manages to pull it out moments before she comes back with a chainsaw.
• Rusty Lake Hotel: In Mr. Rabbit's room, Harvey needs to stab and pin down a disembodied hand in order to get its ring.
• The Dragonborn is victim to this in the Skyrim DLC Dawnguard. They're fine.
• Tales of Berseria: In his second fight with Shigure Rokurou throws away one of his daggers and impales his hand on Shigure's sword, to prevent him from blocking the fatal stab. It fails only because Shigure pulls the sword that Rokurou wears on his back, and blocks the attack with it. Rokurou can afford such tactic because he's a Daemon, and can shrug off such injuries.
• An uncommon HEAT action that appears in the Yakuza series.
  • If Kiryu or any other playable character is holding a knife and is fighting with a mook near a wall. They will proceed to throw the mook face-first into said wall and then stab their hand against it. This heat move is even available when holding the chinese dao for some reason.
  • This pops up a few times in Yakuza 0 both in usual gameplay combat if a knife is available to Kiryu or Majima and also in a Quick Time Event in the story. The QTEs happens with Majima where he fights Nishitani (a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for his future self). If he fails one of them, Nishitani can slam Majima against the wall and stab his hand. Majima can repay him in kind and also do this to any unfortunate mook if he unlocks his "Legend" style, which is the legendary Mad Dog of Shimano with his Demonfire Dagger.

Visual Novels

• This comes into play in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair as one of the many self-inflicted injuries involved in Nagito's attempt to camouflage his suicide-by-proxy.

Web Animation

• Camp Camp: David tries to toughen himself up so he can confiscate Nurf's knife. Nurf responds by stabbing him through the palm. David's second approach is to try and explain to Nurf how he comes across to people, which also fails because Nurf turns it right back around and stabs David through the other palm.

Webcomics

• Happens to Bob the Angry Flower repeatedly during the Foment storyline.
• Drow Tales: Ariel gets a knife through her hand, pinning her to a table. (The stabber then 'helps' her free herself by cutting her entire arm off at the shoulder.)
• In Dumbing of Age Amber did this to Sal in a fit of rage after being goaded to by her father. Sal wears gloves all the time to hide the scar.
• Girl Genius:
  • Von Pinn does this purposely to catch Bang's sword — and crushes the hilt despite the wound.
    Von Pinn: I live with pain. I use it. Cultivate it.
  • In the "Maxim Buys a Hat" side story, Old Man Death spikes Jäger Maxim's hand to the table with a carving knife. Maxim's only reaction is to lick the blood off the wound.
  • All Martellus von Blitzengaard gets from trying to strangle Bangladesh DuPree is an impaled palm.
• Happens to Grinner in Rusty and Co. twice; the first time Cube impales the gnoll's hand with Madeline's pitchfork and then proceeds to use the leverage to give Grinner a Metronomic Man Mashing. Later on when Grinner tries to retalitate with dynamite, a dagger thrown by Stabs pins the explosive to his hand, leading to his demise.
• Invoked twice in the same Sluggy Freelance strip to different characters.
• Tower of God: Hon Akraptor pierces Yeongsuk's wand hand while holding her mouth shut.
  "Shhhh! There are children listening!"
• Unsounded: These injuries have in-universe significance because, in the Anatomy of the Soul, the palms have "ports" that let spellwrights interact with the Background Magic Field. One wright who throws the full force of a waterfall at a town has his palms split open from the overload; being a bit of a Nightmare Fetishist, he keeps the gashes to see how they affect his spellwork.

Western Animation

• Beavis and Butt-Head:
  • "Wet Behind The Rears": Beavis gets speared through the hand by a javelin.
  • In one of the first episodes of the Uncancelled series, Beavis accidentally screws a screw into his hand when trying to screw it into the butt of one of Stewart's action figures. Then Butthead tries to unscrew it, but ends up screwing it into Beavis' OTHER hand. After the screw is removed (and Beavis overdoses on painkiller pills) he's mistaken by a cult for the reincarnation of their leader — and he's Cornholio, to boot!
• Futurama: Fry accidentally nails his hand to a sign. A "No Employee Accidents in X Days" sign.
• The Legend of Vox Machina: When Orthax tries to directly control Percy's body to get him to shoot his friends and sister, Percy tries to shoot himself in the head. When that fails, he blows a hole through the palm of his hand instead, damaging it so badly and causing him so much agony that he can no longer hold the gun.
• The Simpsons: In "Bye Bye Nerdie", Homer gets shot through his hands (among other places) when he carelessly hands Maggie a nailgun.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Jellyfishing", Patrick instructs Squidward to hold onto a jellyfish net even though his hand is in a cast. When it doesn't stay on, Patrick jams the handle through, and Squidward's reaction implies it penetrated more than the cast.
  Firmly grasp it!
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: "Mugato, Gumato": Mariner pins Rutherford's hand to the ground with half of her broken anbo staff after cutting loose. Shaxs just casually ignores it, since they still have the court for ten minutes.

Real Life

• Despite all known imagery of the Crucifix, likely averted in actual crucifixions. Driving the nails through the palms into the wood would achieve little, as the weight of the person would cause them to tear free. Therefore, the nails would be driven between the bones of the forearm near the wrist. Or people would be tied with rope around the wrists.
  • It's actually all more of a Lost in Translation problem. In Roman times, the hand was considered to extend from the fingertips to almost halfway up the elbow.
• Magician David Blaine does a stunt where he sticks an ice pick through his hand.
• In urban myth and some rather questionable (read: fake) "martial arts", an open palm is enough to stop a 9mm round, meaning a quick thinking (and lucky) person can suffer this instead of a fatal gunshot. In reality, the intrinsic muscles of the hand and the metacarpals are quite weak and fragile; given even .22 LR will pierce a human skull, a hit to the palm will produce a through-and-through wound. Anything that the palm could stop (like a BB gun) would also be stopped by the ribs or the dermis and subcutaneous tissue of the torso or the skull; if bullets really could be stopped by the palm, they wouldn't reach vital organs, forget about leaving exit wounds.
  • Magic acts pretend this happens during a bullet catch trick, which usually 1) involve using sleight of hand to get the real bullet out of the action and 2) are absurdly dangerous. Some small number of old-timey bullet catches involve intentionally missing the magician, and those were notoriously dangerous. Magicians have died doing bullet catches, some with their hands, and some with their teeth. In most cases, either somewhere the real bullet did not get removed from the action, a prop failed, or some smart-ass decided to mess with the trick and put the magician in danger by introducing another element into the trick rather than enjoying the show for what it was.

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