Poison Ring

Perfect for making arsenic pudding as well.

Many combat-oriented characters will have some concealed weapons on them. The Gun Nut will have holdout pistols, the Blade Enthusiast will build sheaths into all his clothes, and so on.

But how does a Master Poisoner keep his "supplies" on him? Often, it's with a Poison Ring — an elaborate ring with a Secret Compartment just big enough for a stash of high-powered poison.

Most often, a Poison Ring holds a pellet or some powder that can be dumped into the victim's dinner. A subset of these rings overlaps with Poisoned Weapons, and inject the toxin by some means. A Poison Ring could also be used for cases where the victim is to be drugged instead of killed.

While rings are the most commonly used poison holder, any item of personal adornment can go here.

No connection at all to Rings of Death. Compare Cyanide Pill, where the poison is intended as a means of suicide to avoid being taken alive.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Attack on Titan, Titan Shifters are humans who can transform into titans by drawing their own blood. The most common method is to bite down on their own hand, but one Shifter had a ring that hid a small needle inside so they could stab themselves to draw blood.
• Godchild,
  • Riff's estranged ex-fiancee Lucinda tries to poison Cain with one of these in Revenge by Proxy for Riff's supposed part in her lover's death.
  • Merryweather's mother commits suicide with poison pills hidden inside a bracelet.

Comic Books

• In Asterix in Switzerland, the corrupt Roman governor wears several of these rings on his fingers. To his annoyance the first two rings are empty, implying that the quaestor he's about to poison isn't the first to meet their demise this way. "I must remember to get refills."
• Batman: In "Where Were You on The Night Batman Was Killed?", The Joker's testimony involves him getting in a fight with Batman, and accidentally injecting him with a fatal dose of Joker venom when the poison ring he is wearing discharges during the struggle.
• In one Spider-Man story, the Scourge of the Underworld hits Spidey in the face with the back of his hand. First, it looks like it was just a slap, but seconds later Spider-Man starts to tumble and the Scourge reveals the poisoned needle on the ring he is wearing.
• Marvel Team-Up #92: Spidey and Hawkeye are taking on the second Mr. Fear. When Mr. Fear turns Spidey's own taunts against him, the webslinger foolishly lets the villain take his best shot. Mr. Fear does so, and his Poison Ring injects Spidey with a full dose of the Fear Formula.
• Dark Beast used a needle-tipped ring to murder one of Beast's old female friends with a bioweapon in one issue of X-Men after he'd kidnapped and replaced the real Beast. It was part of a scheme to kill off Beast's old friends for...reasons.

Comic Strips

• The title gag of a Spy vs. Spy cartoon(also animated for Mad TV) had the spies drinking tea together with comically-oversized rings. Only Black Spy's ring had poison, White Spy's ring had a tiny fan to blow the powder from Black Spy's ring into his own drink.

Films — Animated

• In Batman and Harley Quinn, Harley sucker-punches Nightwing with a poisoned ring that gives him a weakened version of Joker Venom (it just makes him laugh a little and lose consciousness for a short time since Harley has renounced being a villain).

Films — Live-Action

• Black Lizard: When jewel thief and criminal mastermind Black Lizard realizes the jig is up and there's no escape, she flips open her ring, dumps some poison in her mouth, and dies.
• In the 1920 film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hyde's girlfriend has one of these, which Hyde takes from her. Jekyll winds up taking the poison to avoid turning into Hyde forever.
• The Bully in How To Eat Fried Worms wears a ring that another kid claims is filled with a poison that causes a victim who is punched by him to develop an ulcer that will kill them years later so it won't look like they were poisoned, but it is probably just something that was made up to scare people.
• In Im Juli, a female seductress uses a Poison Ring to drug the hero.
• Phillipe, the Evil Twin impersonating Louis XIV in The Iron Mask, has one of these. He uses it to dump poison in his mother's wine goblet. He then does the Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo right in front of her.
• Johnny English: Johnny wears two hypodermic rings and mistakes his "muscle relaxant" ring with his "truth serum" ring. Hilarity Ensues.
• The Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven adds a scene of Sibylla sorrowfully using such a ring to slip poison into the drink she gives to her own son to peacefully euthanize him after it's discovered that he's contracted leprosy just like her recently deceased brother King Baldwin, and Sibylla didn't want him to suffer like his uncle did.
• An agent in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol uses one of these to poison a mark.

Literature

• Lara from The Bridge Kingdom Archives, being a well-trained assassin, has a "cleverly designed bracelet", which allows her to hide a vial of chosen poison—although she mostly uses narcotics to induce sleep.
• Part of the equipment Butler Parker often equipped his female associates with was a ring with a releasable spike, coated with sleeping poison.
• Discworld:
  • Assassins Guild teacher Lady T'Malia has both hands full of this sort of ring. Wise pupils watch her fingers, not her body.
  • In Making Money, Cosmo Lavish wears several rings that suggest this, but Moist doubts if someone who personally kills people would bother to advertise that much.
• In Hawksmaid, the Abbess uses a poisoner's ring to poison the Bishop of Ely's dessert. Matty and Friar Tuck conspire to prevent him from eating it.
• Eleanor in The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home hides poison in an earring to murder her husband.
• Lyra of His Dark Materials claimed that, during a Jordan College meeting, a delegate from the Izmir University attempted to poison her uncle Asriel's wine cup but that her uncle detected this attempt and managed to have the would-be poisoner drink his poisoned cup.
• In The Hunger Games, Glimmer's district token, a ring, is confiscated because the gem twisted out to reveal a poisoned spike.
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: In the opening op an IMF agent uses a ring to quickly inject a target with a paralytic before snagging his suitcase.
• No Time Like The Past: Poison Tongue Piercing, actually. K'Mara has a ruby tongue stud that's actually a miniature hypospray containing a deadly toxin; she uses it to kill a Red Shirt in a brawl.
• Safehold: Members of the "Fist of God" carry poison at all times so they can kill themselves if caught. Several female members hide their poison in a necklace or pendant, and at least one male agent carries his in a large ring.
• In the Tommy and Tuppence novel The Secret Adversary, Mr. Brown carries one of these and uses it when he gets caught since a genius like him is unwilling to submit to a trial for treason.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Poison was smuggled into a feast in a hairnet — changed to a necklace in the TV series. Subverted in that the wearer of said jewelry, Sansa Stark, knew nothing about the plot: Lord Petyr Baelish planned this surprise as Sansa's introduction into the world of intrigue.
• The Tamuli series. When Khalad needs to come up with a way to conceal Sparhawk's ring, he has a jeweler take a poison ring apart and mount the "lid" so it completely covers the ruby.
• In The Three Musketeers, Milady poisons Constance using one of these.
• Sam carried one in Villains by Necessity, but despite being a professional assassin, the only thing he used it for professionally was to store allergy medication during the pollen season.

Live-Action TV

• Played with and ultimately subverted in Agent Carter. Agent Dooley goes to Nuremberg to interrogate a German officer who is facing imminent execution by hanging. He pops open his watch to reveal that it is a fake watch that holds three cyanide tablets. He offers one to the German officer, who then talks. As he's leaving, Dooley pops the watch open again in the presence of a guard and offers the guard a breath mint.
• Breaking Bad features a non-jewelry example with Jesse Pinkman, who spends nearly the whole second half of season 4 carrying, hidden inside a cigarette (which he calls his "lucky cigarette"), the ricin capsule Walter White gave him for the purpose of poisoning Gus Fring. Jesse never manages to find the right moment to use it, and it eventually serves an entirely different purpose in Walt's plans.
• Parodied in Le cœur a ses raisons: Brad's "discreet tortoise ring" which contains a sleep-inducing poison is easily as big as his hand.
• Doctor Who: In "Boom Town", Margaret the Slitheen first attempts to kill the Doctor by pouring some poison out of a compartment in one of her rings into his drink when he isn't looking. He switches glasses as soon as he turns back around. She then attempts to use some of her species' natural poisons, and those fail as well.
• Get Smart
  • In "Our Man in Leotards", Max has a ring that injects "Immobilo", which causes instant paralysis.
  • Used for an Overly Long Gag in "Is This Trip Necessary". When Max and 99 arrest KAOS scientist Dr. Jarvis Pym, he threatens to commit suicide with a ring containing a pill of Sodium Calcium Chloride. Max however has a ring of his own containing the antidote.
    Max: Anti-Sodium Calcium Chloride. If you take that Sodium Calcium Chloride, I'll shove this down your throat...not the ring, the powder. And you'll be alive again.
    Dr. Pym: That's very clever of you, Mr. Smart...but I was prepared. Observe again... [opens secret compartment in another ring] Pro-Anti-Sodium Calcium Chloride. If you bring me back to life, I shall take this and then I shall be permanently disposed of.
    Max: Tem-por-rarily permanently disposed of. [opens secret compartment on yet another ring] You know what's in here?
    Dr. Pym: No.
    Max: Oh...that makes two of us. What's in here, 99?
    Agent 99: Anti-pro-anti-Sodium Calcium Chloride. If you take Sodium Calcium Chloride and Max brings you back to life with Anti-Sodium Calcium Chloride and you decide to destroy yourself again with Pro-Anti-Sodium Calcium Chloride, Max will bring you back to life again with Anti-Pro-Anti-Sodium Calcium Chloride.
    Dr. Pym: Well, that's easy enough for you to say. I've run out of rings!
    Max: Well I'm glad to hear that, it was my turn next.
• Stargate SG-1: In "Summit", Daniel uses a ring with a retractable needle coated in Reol toxin, which causes someone injected with it to hallucinate that the user is actually someone else they know. He uses it to impersonate Lord Yu's personal servant. In the later episode, "Company of Thieves," Cameron Mitchell uses a similar ring to pose as a reclusive Lucian Alliance underboss.
• Star Trek: Voyager: In "State of Flux", Maje Culluh commits a Sickbed Slaying on a Kazon rescued by the Voyager with a nerve toxin hidden in his ring before the Voyager's crew can stop him.
• Whodunnit? (UK): Used by the murderer in "A Piece of Cake". A spike on the ring injects a lethal dose of snake venom into the Victim of the Week when the murderer grasps his wrist.

Music

• Sophie Ellis-Bextor: In the music video for "Murder on the Dancefloor", Ellis- Bextor takes out three of her rival dancers by poisoning their drinks with poison hidden in her ring.

Tabletop Games

• The video that accompanies the Clue VCR Mystery Game (and forms part of the gameplay) includes a dinner scene where one of the characters uses one of these rings to poison the drinks.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The second edition splatbook The Complete Thief's Handbook ^note earlier editions of D&D had assassin as a subclass of thief included "Pin Rings", which could be used to inject poisons or knockout drugs.
  • One of many 3^rd Edition third-party supplements detailed an "Assassin" base class and several "tools of the trade." These tools included rings for stealthily delivering poisons by contact, ingestion, or inhalation.

Theatre

• In Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto, Cesare Borgia has only just begun to interrogate the traitor Draghignazzo when the latter takes advantage of a moment of confusion and takes poison from his ring to spare himself further torture. (Cesare himself doesn't poison anyone, of course).
• In Verdi's Il trovatore, Leonora, who is in love with Manrico, commits suicide by drinking poison from her ring to prevent the Count di Luna from having his way with her.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: Dahlia has a necklace containing poison that she used in poisoning Diego Armando's coffee during his interrogation of her.

Web Comics

• On The Order of the Stick, Therkla is poisoned by her master Daimyo Kubota using one of these, giving him time to Exit, Stage Left while the hero is distracted trying to save her. She dies.

Western Animation

• In the fourteenth episode of Il Était Une Fois... l'homme, set during The Renaissance, Renaissance Nabot uses this kind of ring to kill Renaissance Teigneux. Teigneux in turn stabs Nabot In the Back.

Real Life

• Lucrezia Borgia, of the infamous Borgia family, was said to have used one of these to poison her family's enemies. Later historians consider this to be propaganda invented by those same enemies.
• Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian defector who, after finding shelter in London, became a fierce critic of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. Then, in 1978, after feeling a stinging pain on his way to work, he fell mysteriously ill and died days later. An investigation and autopsy later confirmed that he was assassinated by order of the Bulgarian government, with aid from the KGB, by getting shot with a small pellet containing ricin, a powerful poison that kills with minute doses. Although the "gun" used to administer the pellet was never found, an account from Markov before he died had forensic researchers suspecting the weapon was an advanced shooting device hidden inside an umbrella (with the barrel shooting out of the umbrella's tip), of all places. A similar attack on another Bulgarian defector was recorded in Paris days earlier. This one also used a ricin pellet, but it failed. After surviving, the victim claimed that the suspect was not carrying an umbrella, which begs the question as to what exactly was the assassin's weapon disguised as. It was almost certainly though, an example of this trope.
• In 2018, a ring like this was found in the fortress of Caliacra, the former capital of a medieval Bulgarian feudal state.

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