Pinned to the Wall

"You've seen the last of us."

"Too bad that didn't kill me."

— Squidward Tentacles, SpongeBob SquarePants, "Band Geeks"

A character gets stuck to the wall, ground, or ceiling by a sharp, pointy object. Either the character is impaled (possibly With Extreme Prejudice) or their clothes are. Clothing Damage may result from the latter, whether the character attempts to get free, falls due to gravity, etc.

The reasons for this are:

• Target needs to be killed or incapacitated to keep from moving.
• Target needs to be saved from falling.

A Master Archer will use a nonlethal variant to incapacitate their opponents as a display of Improbable Aiming Skills. Shadow Pin is an Exaggerated version (popular with Ninja) where the attacker can pull this off without even touching their target. In modern shooter games, this is often an attribute of the crossbow-type weapons: if an enemy is standing next to a wall when they're killed with these weapons, their body remains pinned to it.

Arrows and throwing knives are the weapons most commonly used for this, but swords, spears, or even horns can also work.

Sister Trope to Pinned to the Ground where one person physically pins another to the ground. See also Knife Outline and Cape Snag. Not to be confused with Wall Bang Her, Wall Pin of Love, or Neck Lift. Giving Them the Strip may occur.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach:
  • When Aizen fakes his death he makes an illusion so that he appears to be impaled on the side of a tower with his own zanpakuto.
  • Loly is left hanging up a tower, pinned by an arrow shot by Uryu.
  • As seen above, this happens once to Sui Feng during her battle with Ggio Vega, who pins her with launched teeth of his Hollow mask. Quite a feat considering how fast she is, though her opponent happened to be a speedster himself. She herself pulled it off with Kido against him earlier in the fight, though Vega escapes by blasting the building behind him with a Cero and his restraints come loose from the wrecked wall.
  • Hisagi briefly pins Findorr to a building with Kido, but when he goes in for the kill Findorr lifts his claw and fires a water blast to distract him while he pulls himself free.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Pride leaves Roy skewered to the wall by his shoulder while he goes off to talk to his young son. When in a fit of rage he starts to strangle the child, Roy can't unpin himself in time to save him.
  • In the climax of the manga and Brotherhood anime, Ed is impaled by some rebar through his left forearm against a chunk of concrete.
• Towards the end of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex's second season, Kuze defeats Batou by driving a large metal pipe through his leg and into the concrete (they're both full-body cyborgs, so this isn't fatal; it just holds him in place). The former claims Batou's combat knife as a trophy before leaving.
• In Hellsing, Alucard impales Rip van Winkle with her musket and pins her to the wall right before eating her.
• In one episode of the Infinite Stratos anime, Ichika ends up on the receiving end of this when Laura starts throwing darts.
• In the backstory of Inuyasha, Kikyo skewers Inuyasha with a magic arrow, pinning him to a tree until Kagome comes along 50 years later and frees him. It comes up quite frequently in flashbacks, recaps, and echoes.
• Happens to Rundelhaus in episode 12 when his group encounters some skeleton archers in Log Horizon.
• Naruto:
  • Kakashi manages to do this with himself and Sakura by hanging from a scroll using a kunai he threw to avoid falling into lava. He does this with Obito as well, though he had to pin him by his hand.
  • In the sequel series Boruto, Sarada pins Metal Lee to a wall with a flurry of shurikens.
• Pluto: Brau-1589, who broke the Laws of Robotics, is kept in a solitary prison held against the wall by a spear, which is mentioned to be the only thing that's keeping his decrepit body alive.
• In Rurouni Kenshin's Jinchuu arc, Kaoru Kamiya◊ is found dead like this, with Enishi's BFS impaling her through the chest and pinning her to the wall of the Kamiya dojo. Subverted: that one was a fake doll, and Kaoru has been kidnapped by Enishi instead.
• A lethal case occurs in SPY×FAMILY's Great Cruise Adventure arc, also animated into S2E06: An assassin attempting to give a Room Disservice to Olka gets killed by Yor, who threw one of her trademark daggers from the other side of the door, and pinned the assassin to the wall through his skull.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V:
  • In Yuto's introduction, he uses his spell card Phantom Death Spear on Sawatari. The initial shot makes it look like the spear went through his chest, but the following one shows that he pinned Sawatari on the wall of the warehouse by his jacket. This is noted as an anomaly In-Universe because holograms are not supposed to have mass outside of Action Duels.
  • Yusho uses an illegal trap card that manifests as a set of swords of glowing like to pin a Berserk Yuya on top of a tall pillar. The card in question was made illegal specifically because it can physically pin people down; Yusho is always carrying around a copy just in case.
• In Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun, Iruma uses his archery skills to pin Sheeda's clothes to a wall during the Heartbreaker competition, but she just rips herself free immediately. Resulting in major Clothing Damage, much to the embarrassment of both Iruma and (once she realizes it) Sheeda.
• In Wolf's Rain, Darcia's servant Neige is impaled through her hands to a door when Jagara assassinates Hamona.

Comic Books

• All-Star Comics: In issue #37, the Gambler incapacitates the Atom by nailing his cape to the wall with his throwing knives.
• Asterix: A very impressive shot in Asterix and the Chieftain's Daughter: Binjwatchflix pins Adrenalin to a tree by shooting an arrow right in-between her torc and her neck.
• Halloween: Nightdance: The last comic reveals that Michael Myers had done this to the wife of the deuteragonist, Ryan, who finds her body pinned to the wall of Michael's hideout.
• Jon Sable, Freelance: In issue #4, Jon leaves one of the mercenaries who killed his family nailed to a tree with a knife through his hands above a colony of army ants and leaves him to suffer a Death of a Thousand Cuts as the ants start to swarm up his body.
• The Savage Dragon: This was lampshaded and averted in one issue. An ally of the Dragon's, known as Star, uses bladed stars to stab some criminals along their arms to disarm them. When they complain, he admits he can't do this trick.
• The Spirit: In issue #120, A villainess wants to go Hunting the Most Dangerous Game with the title character, but he refuses. She uses a bow and arrows to pin him to a door by his clothes so he can't get away. See it here◊.
• Superman:
  • Steel does this to one of the gang members using the Toastmasters, pinning him with rivets fired from his arm blaster in The Death of Superman. He tries to get information out of the gang member, only for him to be soon killed by the White Rabbit.
  • Last Daughter of Krypton: After defeating Supergirl, Reign pins her barely-conscious adversary to a half-crumbled wall by her cape with her sword's broken blade, and then she challenges Supergirl to get away before the floating city they are standing on falls apart.
• Wonder Woman Vol. 1: When Huntress faces off against the mob boss the Undertaker in his crematorium her first attack is to toss two throwing knives that strike the shoulders of his suit jacket and pin him to the door.
• X-Men: During the X-Tinction Agenda saga demonic-robot Cameron Hodge often fired spikes into his opponent's shoulders pinning them to walls to take them out of the fight.

Fan Works

• Epiphany: After an ill-advised comment about wanting to see what Aerith and Sephiroth's offspring would be like, Hojo finds himself staked to the side of the specimen containment cell with the Masamune run through his torso.
• In Ghosts of the Past, sequel of Child of the Storm, Gambit gets pinned to a wall by the Blob a.k.a. Dudley Dursley. To add insult to injury, the Blob used half of Gambit's own staff.
• A Growing Affection: After the demon Doraku boasts that Naruto cannot kill him, Naruto pins him to a cave wall with a stalactite through the chest. And then buries him under tons of rock for good measure.
• This ends up happening to XR in Revenge of the Energy Vampire. Well, pinned to an exam table. With bolts drilled through his arms.
• Highlander character Methos gets this in Seeing it Through with railroad spikes through his limbs and chest, along with being blinded by a hot poker. He was being held by a sadistic immortal he escaped from once before during the 1800s and the guy was not happy about it. He was also trying to terrify his other captives.
• One More Trigger: Flechette stops Oni Lee from teleporting away, by firing a needle through his foot into the concrete with a chain attached. Before he can make any progress in pulling it out, she rides the chain right up to him and knocks him out.
• In the Sword Art Online AU fanfic, Souls Art Online, players that have gone completely Hollow are pinned to the walls using Sinon's spears to avoid hurting themselves or others further since their humanity could be restored later on.
• In Thousand Shinji, when Shinji finds out what SEELE has done to his and his family's mothers, he nails a SEELE minion to the wall with whatever he could telekinetically lift and hurl.
• In a Kung Fu Panda fanfic The Vow, Lord Shen does this to other people several times.
  • He traps Haun by pinning him to the ground from the mongoose's pants.
  • He stops Lord Juan's escape attempt by pinning him to the wall through the pheasant's wing. While Shen removes the knife, he pins Juan to the ground from the other wing before killing him slowly and painfully.
  • Shen also starts his duel against Lady Lianne by pinning her to a desk from her left sleeve without harming her.
• How Xephos is killed in Yognapped. After a grueling Sword Fight, he's run through with his own katana and pinned to the wall of the airship... which then crashes, drowning him in boiling water.
• Boldores And Boomsticks: Ruby uses her version of Razor Leaf to pin a Team Skull grunt to the wall after he tries to keep Team RWBY from entering Po Town.

Film — Animated

• The Aristocats: Edgar traps O'Malley against a wall with a pitchfork during the climax.
• This happens to Cloud in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children near the end of the Final Battle, at the point when he's running out of strength; he collapses by a wall and his opponent pins him there with a sword. In the extended version, it's replaced by an even rougher impalement in mid-air.
• How the huntress Danielle introduces herself during her Big Damn Heroes in The Flight of Dragons.
• Frozen: Queen Elsa does this to one of Duke Wesselton's guards with her ice powers when they charge her ice castle trying to kill her.
• Ratatouille: Colette pins Linguini's sleeve to the table with not one, not two, but three knives as she rants about how hard she had to work to get where she is in the restaurant business.

Film — Live-Action

• In The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad throws his scimitar when the evil wizard is about to drag the Princess through a door and escape with her as hostage. The blade staples the villain's sleeve to the door, which immobilizes the man just long enough for the Princess to slip away.
• The Predators from Alien vs. Predator announce their arrival to the mercenaries by stealthily killing all of them, one of which gets nailed to a wall by a Predator spear.
• Aquaman (2018) has this happening between Aquaman and Black Manta's team of pirates, with Aquaman skewering one of them — Black Manta's father — through the shoulder, into a control panel using a flung pipe.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Batman does this to a Mook. By stabbing the man through the shoulder with his own knife. Ouch.
• The second film of the Battal Gazi series, Savuulun Battal Gazi Geliyor, have Battal Gazi killing at least two of his enemies in this manner. Firstly Oba the archer, who gets skewered by a dozen arrows fired off a bow into a tree, and later on as Battal Gazi fights Chen Yu he flings Chen Yu into a spike in a wall.
• In The Burning, Cropsy uses his shears to nail Alfred to the wall of the old mine to act as bait for Todd.
• The main character's friend in Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering is pinned to a wall with syringes, which let her go just before a flying sickle buries itself in her skull.
• In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the White Witch sticks a sword through Peter's chain mail sleeve, pinning him to the ground so she can kill him.
• John Matrix's last (out of 100+) onscreen kill from Commando, where he takes down The Dragon, Bennet, with a huge pipe that goes through Bennet's torso and into a boiler, essentially turning Bennet into a human tea-kettle. And it's capped by one of Matrix's many Bond One-Liners:
  John: Let off some steam, Bennet.
• The climax of the wuxia The Crimson Charm has an Elite Mook getting a trident to the guts, and subsequently shoved into a wall. He remains on that spot for the entire duration of the climax, even after all the main villains are killed.
• The Dead Pool have Harry Callahan using a Harpoon Gun to skewer the main villain into a wall.
• Finger of Doom ends with the main villainess, a human-turned-vampire hybrid, getting killed when she's nailed to a wall by the hero's flung sword. Said sword pierces her heart as well, in a manner similar to staking an actual vampire.
• Freddy vs. Jason: In his opening dream, Jason chases a girl through the forest and pins her to a tree with his machete.
• In Ghost Town (1988), Devlin nails Smithy to the wall of his forge with a red hot length of sharpened iron.
• In Gladiator, during the first fight in the Roman Coliseum, Hagen lifts his opponent and impales him on the spikes at the top of the arena walls.
• The Action Prologue of Hellboy (2004) sees Kroenen, the otherwise unstoppable Nazi steampunk assassin, finally taken down by a grenade explosion at point-blank that sends him flying across the area. Followed by a flying metal spike that skewers him into a pillar, a position he remains in for the rest of the opening scene.
• Hong Kong Godfather ends its excessively bloody and violent climax with Wei, the hero, throwing his machete into Big Bad, Lan the traitor, knocking Lan backwards several feet and skewering him into a plaster wall.
• In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Dorian Gray is run through with a sword so firmly he ends up pinned to the wall and unable to pull the sword out. Due to his near Complete Immortality, this doesn't do anything more than annoy him. Until Mina shows him his painting, that is.
• Mortal Kombat (2021): Liu Kang throws a bucket of water through SubZero's ice shield turning the water into an ice spike and impaling him against the far wall.
• Mohawk: During the fight in the mission, Colonel Holt drives his dagger through Oak's palm; nailing her hand to a post.
• The Jidaigeki film Ninja Wars has Sonny Chiba skewering a guy to a wall via spear. The victim somehow doesn't die immediately, remaining conscious long enough to have a lengthy conversation while embedded on the spear, and when the scene cuts he's still alive (whether he died or not isn't confirmed in the movie).
• In Jumanji, Alan manages to pin Van Pelt to a pillar with a thrown sword, also throwing off Van Pelt's aim so that he can escape. Van Pelt simply snaps the blade and continues the hunt.
• In Octopussy, an evil knife thrower pins James Bond by his clothes to a wall and prepares to throw the final knife at Bond's heart. Bond being Bond, this does not end well for the knife thrower.
• In Outpost, one of the undead Nazis hits Cotter hard enough in the chest with a Powerful Pick to leave him nailed to the wall of the bunker.
• In Pig Hunt, Ben impales the gasmask redneck on his own lance and leaves pinned to the wall of the cabin.
• Predator has Dutch dealing with a random mook who attempts to sneak up on him, by flinging his machete with enough force to impale the mook into a nearby wall. Followed by the following line by Dutch:
  "Stick around."
• In Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Robin at one point pins a guard to a tree with six arrows, fired all at once. The image of him drawing them all together is on the cover.
• Robowar clumsily attempts to recreate the Predator impaling scene with Reb Brown in place of Arnold, but it's clear that the screenwriters^note Claudio Fragasso and Rosella Drudi, of Troll 2 fame didn't actually get the pun.
  Don't move.
• In The Shadow, the (invisible) hero is pounding the tar out of some Mongol Warriors in a lab. One of them grabs a flashlight, scans the room, and finds him. A few well-placed crossbow bolts stick the Shadow to the wall... until the fully three-dimensional Shadow emerges from out of his own shadow, Guns Akimbo.
• In The Shadow of Chikara, Teach gets nailed to a tree trunk by a black arrow through his throat.
• In Shotgun (1955), Reb gets nailed to a tree trunk by an Apache arrow through his chest.
• In Sorority Row, Jessica dies standing up; pinned to the wall by the weaponized lug wrench impaled through her mouth.
• Happens in Starship Troopers.
  Ace Levy: Sir, I don't understand. Who needs a knife in a nuke fight anyway? All you gotta do is push a button, sir.
  Career Sergeant Zim: Cease fire. Put your hand on that wall, trooper. PUT YOUR HAND ON THAT WALL!
  (Zim throws a knife and hits Ace's hand, pinning it to the wall)
  Zim: The enemy can not push a button... if you disable his hand. Medic!
• In Swashbuckler, Cudjo pins a pickpocket's sleeve to a post with a thrown dagger.
• In ¡Three Amigos!, Dusty Bottoms flings a Bowie knife at one of the German agents as he tries to draw his gun, pinning his sleeve to a post.
• The old Jackie Chan martial arts film To Kill With Intrigue has Chan taking out three would-be assassins attacking him in a tavern. While he kills two in a straightforward duel, the third gets the Coup de Grâce by having Chan throw him through the tavern's ceiling and, as he rolls down the roof, Chan then throws his sword out of the window, nailing the third guy into a nearby tree.
• In Varsity Blood, Heather is Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by a pitchfork and left pinned to the wall with her feet off the ground.
• The final showdown in Venom: Let There Be Carnage has Carnage using his organic spikes to skewer Venom into a wall, in order to hold Venom and Eddie in place as Carnage attempts to devour Anne as Venom and Eddie are Forced to Watch.

Literature

• Ben Snow: In "Ghost Town", the first of the Ten Little Murder Victims is Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by a harpoon that leaves him pinned to the wall.
• Believe it or not, The Bible.
  • Judges 4:21: "But Jael wife of Heber took a tent-peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground —he was lying fast asleep from weariness—and he died."
  • In 1 Samuel 18, King Saul tries unsuccessfully to "smite David even to the wall" with a javelin.
• Deathtrap Dungeon have two barbarians partaking in the Dungeon's Trial, the first who unfortunately ends up triggering a trap resulting in him getting nailed to a blade-loaded floorboard like a butterfly specimen.
• In The Dresden Files: Turn Coat, the vampire Thomas pins his cousin Madeline to a table with a pair of chopsticks through her wrists, because she was threatening his lover. While she's immobilized, said lover brushes Madeline with her hair — which, since the vampires are Allergic to Love, gives Madeline horrible burns.
• In the web serial novel Fishbowl, Falcon telekinetically throws a metal table frame at Sarah and pins her to the wall during their altercation in Naomi's apartment.
• In the Joe Pickett novel Winterkill, the first murder victim is nailed to a tree by several broad-headed hunting arrows.
• Nick Velvet: In "The Theft of the Blue-Ribbon Bass", Nick finds Razor Fitch — a bow fisherman Nick had employed to help him in his latest theft — nailed to the wall of his loft with an arrow from one of his own bows.
• Parker: The Seventh opens with Parker arriving back at the apartment he is using as a hideout to find the girl he was sharing it with stabbed with a sword that has gone through her and the headboard of the bed to pin her to the wall.
• Sherlock Holmes: In "The Adventure of Black Peter", the eponymous Black Peter is found pinned to the wall of an outhouse by a harpoon.
• Simon Ark: In "The Vicar of Hell", the Victim of the Week is found nailed to the wall of his flat with an arrow through the palm of each hand, and a third one buried in his chest.
• In The Thirty-Nine Steps, When Richard Hannay discovers the dead spy whose murder he is later framed for, he finds that the knife has been stuck through his chest so deeply his body is pinned to the floor.
• Young Sherlock Holmes: In Death Cloud, Baron Maupertuis pins Sherlock to the wall during their sword fight when he thrusts his sword through the shoulder of Sherlock's jacket and into the wall behind him.

Live-Action TV

• In the first episode of Chuck, Sarah pins an NSA agent with a knife through the sleeve of his suit while she's dancing with Chuck.
• CSI: NY:
  • A billionaire and a model who were making out outside a party in "Stuck on You" are found pinned to a wall by an arrow from a crossbow. The woman is dead and the man is critically injured. The team is left to figure out which one was the target.
  • One of the victims in "Hung Out to Dry" is nailed to a tree through his eye sockets...with railroad ties. Mac then finds the man's eyeballs in his front pants pocket.
• Father Brown: In "The Lair of the Libertines," the killer prevents Father Brown from leaving the hotel grounds by using a crossbow bolt to pin his cassock to a target.
• Fort Boyard: Willy Rovelli gets pinned to a cell door once or twice by his cook uniform's sleeve, from the Arrowgram shot by Rouge.
• A memorably bloody scene in Kamen Rider Kuuga has the title hero suddenly hit by one of the lances the Monster of the Week uses to kill its victims. He's shot right through his left shoulder and spends a few painful seconds pinned to a pillar structure, suspended in the air, trying to pull the lance out.
• Midsomer Murders:
  • The first Victim of the Week in "Blood Wedding" is pinned to the wall with an antique sword.
  • The second Victim of the Week in "Last Man Out" is nailed to a tree with a cricket stump.
  • In "The Death of the Small Coppers", Mahesh Sidana, the first Victim of the Week, is pinned to wall mural of a butterfly and then run through with an industrial drill.
• Rome: During Pullo's (attempted) execution in the arena he throws one of his opponents against a spike covered pillar sticking him to it.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • An alien device once pinned Jack O'Neill to the wall of the SGC through his shoulder.
  • Another time, Baal pinned Jack to a wall with Artificial Gravity and tossed knives (or acid, depending on how he felt like torturing Jack to death that day) at his chest.

Roleplay

• In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Harriet's telekinetic spear runs right through Devin's abdomen and pins him against the wall in a bloody and fatal manner.
• We Are All Pokémon Trainers: Ayame gets pinned to a wall by Revy during their fight.

Tabletop Games

• In 7th Sea, the Capuntina fighting school teaches knife throwing to Vodacce noblewomen, explicitly giving them a school technique for pinning.
• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: 3.5 has the "Ranged Pin" feat that allows you to make a grapple attempt with a ranged weapon. The flavor text describes it as pinning the target's clothes to the ground or wall.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: Amok, a supernatural being of destruction is first encountered within Hinterland being held in place against a wall by The Dypheus' Breath. Later, at The Consortium's underground facility, Ann defeats The Varanus by deeply lodging a blade through its skull and into the ground, leaving it trapped as it tries to break free.
• In The Darkness II, you can pick up poles and throw them to pin enemies to walls. There is an achievement for doing that to two guys at once.
• You can do this to a zombie standing close to a wall with a harpoon gun in Dead Island: Riptide.
• Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3 allow you to pin enemies to walls with the Javelin Gun, metal bars, and severed blade arms.
• The Flare in Descent is a ship-mounted tool used for illuminating dark mines. It's Cherry Tapping at best against robots or other ships but those arm-sized chunks of superheated metal live up to this trope when fired at a human in Descent 3.
• In Dragon Age II, this is how the Hawke siblings first meet Varric: he uses his crossbow to pin a young pickpocket to a wall, stopping him from making off with their meagre savings.
• In Evolve, this is the purpose of Glacial Behemoth's Ice Spear ability. Hitting a hunter hurls them backwards and freezes them to any surface they hit, setting them up for more damaging attacks.
• In Fallout 4, the Railway Rifle can do this to NPC's or their severed body parts.
• In the First Encounter Assault Recon series, if you kill an enemy with a nailgun near a wall, he will get pinned to it.
• In Half-Life 2, killing an enemy with the crossbow will sometimes leave them pinned to a wall behind them, even though the projectile itself is no longer visible and cannot be recovered.
• League of Legends: Vayne has an ability called "Condemn", where she shoots the target with a huge crossbow bolt that knocks them back. If the enemy collides with terrain, they are also impaled, which deals bonus damage and stuns them for 1.5 seconds.
• In The Legend of Dragoon, Kongol in his second boss battle had a special attack where he'd create a wall behind one of your party members and throw his metallic gauntlet (two sharp claws on each side) to stick them to said wall by their neck, where he'd then proceed to wail on them for a few seconds before punching them through the wall he just created. You can see it in action here.
• In Marathon 2: Durandal, the Security Officer does this to a Pfhor in one of Terminal images.
• Happens during Grey Fox's death scene at the end of Metal Gear Solid.
• Tridents and lightning bolts in Mr. Shifty will do this to enemies.
• In No One Lives Forever 2, if you kill an enemy next to a wall with a crossbow bolt, he will remain pinned to it. If you then search his body, you can almost always recover the bolt, and the body will slump onto the ground.
• Painkiller has the Stake Launcher, which pins baddies to walls with entire trees. It's not very useful, however, due to its painfully long reload time and the plentiful foes you face.

after you.

• The Valkyrie gun from The Persistence fires a massive dart powerful enough to lift human-sized enemies off their feet, across a room, and impale throw them and into whatever wall they hit.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil 2 lets you pin crows to the wall if you shoot them with the crossbow.
  • In Resident Evil 4, Garradors can pin Leon to a wall with their Wolverine Claws for a One-Hit Kill. If they miss, though, they themselves get temporarily stuck to the wall, leaving their weak point exposed.
  • Early in Resident Evil 7 Ethan gets pinned to the wall by a screwdriver stabbed through the hand. He doesn't need to suffer the Impaled Palm for long though, as he almost immediately gets that hand cut clean off with a chainsaw.
• The Hedgehog Grenade in Resistance is noted for its ability to impale victims multiple times to the point of sticking them to walls at its maximum kill-range.
• In Return of the Obra Dinn, more than one crew member ended up this way after being spiked by a crab rider.
• In Scrapland, Doorkeepers are built directly into the walls next to the doors they guard. This is to ensure they never leave their posts.
• Team Fortress 2: the Sniper's Huntsman can pin enemies to the wall. There is even an achievement called "William Tell Overkill" for pinning a Heavy's head to the wall. The Medic's Crusader's Crossbow is also capable of pinning enemies to the wall.
• It's possible to do this to your opponents using arrows in TowerFall.
• Warframe: the Puncture damage type can sometimes cause this to enemies.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: In Episode 4, Striker pins Millie with her axe to her neck against a rock to incapacitate her.
• RWBY: Jaune has this happened to him twice, both by Pyrrha's spear. Both are also nonlethal; she only hits his hood.
• This animated pic shows an anthropomorphic mantis girl impaled through the wings and chest as part of a purification ritual.

Web Comics

• In El Goonish Shive, Ellen and Nanase are slapped against a wall by the Omega Goo. Its slime makes them stick to the wall and immobilizes them. The impaling part is averted for the pinning but the Goo does try to kill them by impalement immediately afterward.
• Girl Genius: A variant when Zeetha is sparring with Bang: she pins the Pirate Girl with one of her own knives to the floor not through a sleeve but through her long braided tail. Right in the path of a massive pendulum.
• Used in "Shock and Awwwwww", a strip of The Order of the Stick. To stop him from falling, Haley pins Roy to the wall of an earthquake-created chasm by shooting an arrow into his groin. Roy's probably happy he was dead for that.
• Rusty and Co.: Stabs Doogan combines this with Impaled Palm to pin Card Shark the Derro to the floor.
  Card Shark: Ma'am, I believe pinning your opponent through the sleeve is more traditional.
  Stabs: Do you have any idea what kind of day I'm having!?
• In Serpamia Flare, Kylie gets pinned to the wall by one of Sho's sais in Chapter Three. He pins her dominant arm (the one wielding her Cool Sword) to the wall by piercing his sai through it, digging into the wall itself, and then attempts to finish her off while she cannot slice him.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe: Let's just say that, Healing Factor or no, Bloodwolf picked the wrong day to attack Generator and Shroud. However, while those railroad spikes through his arms and abdomen might have been agonizing, it was nothing compared to the pain when Jade used a Mithril ring to burn the words "I attack small girls" into his chest.

Western Animation

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Dr. Weird's assistant Steve twice gets impaled and pinned to a wall by Weird's animated corn.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: This is Mai's primary combat tactic, due to the fact she's a specialist in throwing daggers in what is ostensibly a kid's show. Rather than hit the squishy humans, she usually pins their clothes to whatever is behind her victim (or the attack gets blocked altogether).
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Hawkeye once did this to Black Widow. He wrapped her up in a bolo rope as she was flying through the air, then shot an arrow that hung her from a wall by it upside down.
• Batman: Assault on Arkham: Deadshot uses a pair of knives (that the Joker had just stabbed him with) to pin the Joker to the fuselage of the helicopter.
• The Cuphead Show!: Cuphead and Mugman get pinned to the kitchen wall in "Rats All, Folks!" by a number of kitchen utensils launched by Werner Werman. Unable to move, Werner then threatens to light up dynamites on their heads to convince Elder Kettle to give up the cottage.
• In the Dexter's Laboratory episode "D & DD", the opening scene takes place in the world of "Monsters and Mazes", and sees an adventuring party's archer stop attacking goblins against the trees with some clearly carefully-placed arrows.
• SheZow: In "Glamageddon'', Tara uses her Nails of Annihilation to pin SheZow's cape to the wall of the arena where they are fighting.
• In The Simpsons version of The Odyssey, when Odysseus comes home he finds a bunch of suitors for his wife's hand and throws a spear through all of them, pinning them all to the wall.
• South Park: In "Tom's Rhinoplasty", Miss Ellen fights with terrorists and tosses a sword aside, pinning Kenny to the wall.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Band Geeks", Squidward tries to lead his band in a scale, divided by instrument group. The percussion members blow on their sticks until they shoot them from their mouths and pin Squid to the wall by his shirt.
  Squidward: Too bad that didn't kill me.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): In a flashback we see Shredder stab a knife through human-Splinter's jacket pinning him to the wall without his knowledge in order to keep him from bowing and embarrass him in front of their master. Splinter pulls the knife out in front of everyone and they mistake him for a murder attempt.
• In "The Incredible Mr. Brisby" episode of The Venture Bros.. Brock saves Doc Venture while he's falling, by shooting at the cuff of his pants to pin it to the wall with a rivet-gun. Although unfortunately for Brock, the last shot he did, without even looking at the Doc. Instead accidentally riveted his wrist to the wall, leaving him delirious and bleeding, until Brock gets him.
• Young Justice (2010): Blue Beetle uses a staple gun to incapacitate enemies. The Scarab argues for the more violent version by firing the staples through bone.

Real Life

• The SL-1 nuclear reactor accident, occurred on January 3, 1961. A U.S. Army reactor operator was supposed to withdraw a control rod 4 inches while his supervisor, who was standing on top of the reactor, watched. For reasons unknown, the operator withdrew the rod 26 inches. The reactor went prompt critical and instantly exploded. The reactor operator was found dead; a trainee who had been observing the operation was found unconscious and died soon after. The supervisor wasn't found for over an hour after response personnel entered the reactor compartment, not until someone looked up and saw him pinned to the ceiling: he had been skewered by a shield plug ejected from the exploding reactor.

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