Florida Man embeds giant blade in major city.
Maps in media can only go so long before someone sticks their dagger in them. Maybe they're marking a location, trying to be intimidating, or are just frustrated because the map keeps rolling up. It's not limited to political maps either. Treasure, cities and roads, physical feature and many other types of maps are all victim to stabbing. Note that while daggers are usually used, a character may also use whatever is near and sharp as long as it gets their point across.
Nowadays, there's usually no consequences to stabbing a map other than bending or dulling the blade and possibly getting yelled at. However, before print was invented and maps were hand drawn on parchment, they were extremely expensive. A character may or may not know how much money they wasted putting a hole in a map. Potentially, there's the cost of a good table or wall too, and the character may find themselves having to pay back the cost of said items.
Tends to happen among more warlike or savage-type factions. May overlap with Decision Darts if a character blindly stabs a map to choose their next destination. Compare "X" Marks the Spot, for when something important is marked on the map in a less dramatic fashion and Stab the Picture, when a character stabs a picture of someone to symbolize their hate for that person. See also Connect the Deaths, where someone puts multiple pins in a map in order to pinpoint a specific location.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Asterix: The first panel of every album has a map of Gaul with a Roman Standard pinned in the middle, clearly representing Rome's dominance in the region.
- The Transformers (Marvel): After the fight against Unicron shatters the Decepticons and Autobots, they briefly try working together before the more aggressive Decepticons get sick of it and elect Bludgeon as their new leader. He decides that they're going to go off and invade a planet, choosing which one by blindly stabbing a map with his sword.
Fan Works
- Halkegenia Online: After Operation Dunkirk is explained to Morgiana, she does this to the map of Albion as her way of expressing approval of the plan.
- The Mountain and the Wolf: While looking for the Wolf's hiding place on a map of Westeros based on several deductions (it has to be near water, likely well-fortified, isolated yet not too far from King's Landing or Dragonstone), Arya suddenly stabs Harrenhal. She's later proven to be right.
Films — Animation
- Babar the Movie: While Rataxes and his army go over their plan to invade Elephantland, he sticks a dagger on a map of the jungle precisely where the kingdom is.
- The Great Mouse Detective: After deducing that Fidget's list came from a pub at a place where the sewer connects to the waterfront, Basil takes out a map of London and sticks a dart at the only spot that matches the description.
- Home on the Range: While talking about the areas he's acquired, Slim uses a branding iron to mark them.
- How to Train Your Dragon: Stoick the Vast stabs a dagger into where he thinks the dragon's nest should be on a map while talking about going on an expedition to find the aforementioned dragon's nest.
- Pocahontas: Governor Ratcliffe stabs a map of the New World with his sword just before starting his first musical number ("Mine, mine, mine").
- In The Rescuers Down Under, McLeach has Cody tied in front of a large map and tries to intimidate him into revealing the location of the eagle Marahute by calling out locations and then throwing knives at them on the map, narrowly missing Cody.
Films — Live-Action
- In Eragon at the very end of the film King Galbatorix slices a map of his kingdom in half in rage. This reveals his dragon Shruikan.
- There is a more destructive variation in a trailer of Hook. A magnifying glass wanders over a beautifully drawn map of Never Never Land, showing the credits. When the glass reaches the drawing of a tree signaling where the Lost Boys live, it becomes clear that it's Captain Hook who is holding it, because he uses the magnifying glass to hatefully burn a hole on that spot. You can watch the trailer here.
- J-Men Forever. The Chief says that superhero The Caped Madman is currently on a peacekeeping mission in "one of the hottest trouble spots on the map today!" He then stabs the map with his cigar to show this hot spot, which obligingly bursts into flame.
- A very heartbreaking version of this happens on Mask (1985). Rocky has a lifelong dream of making a motorcycle trip through Europe with his best friend Ben, and places tacks on a map marking all the places he wants to visit. After Ben tells him he gave up and is moving to live with his parents, Rocky removes all the tacks. In the next morning, Rusty (Rock's mother) finds out he died from his disease. She first destroys the kitchen in a fit of grief-stricken rage; then, calming down a little, she says quietly "Now you can go wherever you want, baby" and puts the tacks back.
- In The Mask of Zorro, Alejandro stabs a map in order to steal it.
- In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Will stabs a map in front of Norrington, to show how determined he is to rescue Elizabeth.
- Wolves: Combined with Improbable Aiming Skills when Wild Joe tells Cade where to find the town of Lupine Ridge by throwing a dart at a map across the room.
Literature
- When Cid's sister is kidnapped in The Eminence in Shadow he throws a dagger at the map to indicate where she is being held just to look cool. Depending on the version, he either missed or hit a spot at random. By dumb luck, his sister really is being held at that location.
- You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger by Roger Hall. The author attends a briefing where there's a magnificent map of German-occupied France covering a wall. Unfortunately it's protected by a sheet of celluloid, and a colonel sends the whole lot up in smoke when he uses his lit cigar as a map pointer.
Live-Action TV
- Power Rangers Operation Overdrive: In "Heart of Blue", the Rangers put together three scrolls which form Neptune's sword. The sword flies towards a map on the wall, stabbing into St. Lucia in the Caribbean, which is apparently where the Rangers have to go to next to find one of the jewels they are looking for.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a double-edged sword furniture item that appears as a sword stabbed into the ground. It can be customized so that it's also piercing a treasure map.
- In Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Eivor stabs the map with a dagger every time they pledge to a new territory.
- The opening cinematic of Command & Conquer: Red Alert ends with a short sword suddenly impaling itself in the heart of Germany on a map of Europe, the Soviet hammer and sickle prominent on the end of the hilt as red splotches break out and spread across the continent. The clip can also be seen if the player loses many of the campaign scenarios as the Allies.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition:
- When the Inquisition is planning a grand assault on the Elder One's forces in the Arbor Wilds, they send messages to the allies they have gathered throughout the course of the game to this point. This is followed by a montage of many of these allies receiving the summons and reacting. One group collects around a table covered in papers and maps; they then draw daggers and stab the map for no clear reason.
- Later, in the Trespasser DLC, the Inquisitor meets with their advisors to discuss how to deal with Solas and his elven spies. During this conversation, the Inquisitor takes a knife and stabs it into a map of Thedas, indicating the Tevinter region as a possible next location. It doubles as a threat since the city the Inquisitor stabs is named "Solas".
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Daggers are frequently found stuck to map tables. These can be looted into your inventory.
- Europa Universalis IV: A sword-in-the-map icon is a stock image used for a number of "conquer X region" missions.
- Legend starts off each level with a cutscene of your character stabbing the level's map.
- The campaign screen for Stronghold features a dagger scrolling over a map, with the dagger stopping at the location for the current mission.
- Mysterious Thief Liao Tian-Ding (2004 Taiwanese flash game) have the titular Gentleman Thief chucking his knife at a map, on the town or district the next level takes place in, prior to the stage's beginning. Oddly enough, when the game was remade in 2021 (as The Legend of Tian-ding) the map-stabbing parts were omitted.
- World of Warcraft:
- All across Azeroth maps have blades pierced in them with one of the most notable being the scouting map in the rouge order hall.
- This is Played With in one cinematic were Garrosh Hellscream rather than plunge a weapon into a map uses his foot to smash a model of an alliance ship into the map while ordering the horde to take Pandaria.
Web Original
- Parodied in this comic, given a voiceover by ProZD. There's also a Machinima version with the characters from Team Fortress 2. The other pirates are annoyed with the first one for ruining their only map.
Web Videos
Western Animation
- A variation shows up in the The Simpsons episode "The Italian Bob", in which Sideshow Bob tells the family that he decided to choose the next place to live by spinning a globe and stabbing it with a dagger. When numerous random attempts resulted in the knife landing in Orlando, Florida; Shelbyville; North Korea, and Bartovia, he more carefully spins and stabs the globe so that the dagger lands in Tuscany, Italy.
