Shamu Fu

You'd need Jaws as a club to stop a space ape (and ward off disgruntled PETA members).

"You... you struck me with a bass!"

— Roger, American Dad! ("Frannie 911")

A Sub-Trope of Grievous Harm with a Body, where the body being used is that of a fish or fish-shaped animal, like a whale or seal. Named after the orca Shamu, famous for being exhibited in the San Diego SeaWorld park, and who died in 1971. Her fame led to the name being worn by several other SeaWorld orcas.

Why? Perhaps it's the vague club shape of the animal, since most uses of this involve swinging by the tail. However, the most likely reason is simply because it is so frikkin' awesome.

It should be noted that Artistic License – Biology really comes into play here. In fiction, not only do the creatures seem to not be affected by the force of the impact, they also don't seem to suffer much from being out of the water. And let's not even mention the fact that their spines can stand up to this abuse. Assuming the fish was alive in the first place, anyway; dead fish make equally effective clubs and can be readily purchased from fishmongers and seafood markets.

This action has received a word in English (unofficially): The verb "cornobble".

Note this is actually hitting something with a fish. If it's merely tossing the fish anywhere other than someone you intend to hurt, it doesn't count.

The only case where Everything's Even Worse With Sharks doesn't apply, it seems. Unless, of course, you're the one being cornobbled — on top of everything else, their skin is covered with tiny tooth-like "denticles" that give it a texture like sandpaper.

When the weaponized sealife in question is something like a swordfish, marlin, sawfish, narwhal or other animal gifted with a pointy horn or rostrum, and is specifically employed as a makeshift sword, see the Swordfish Sabre subtrope.

Compare Improbable Weapon User, Edible Bludgeon, Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot. Not to be confused with With This Herring.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• 20th Century Boys: A completely serious example: one member of the Friend cult responsible for spreading the second wave of The Plague around Japan pretends to be delivering salmon to get into someone's house, kill the girl inside, and erase the video she was sent that would prove he was there. When Kyoko tries to warn the girl over the phone, the man smacks the girl in the head with the salmon.

• Hayate the Combat Butler: During an ocean cruise the boat they are on starts to sink (it was basically a clone of the Titanic so it was hardly unexpected). Hayate ends up in the lower levels, injured and in danger of being eaten by a giant shark with poor Isumi trying to save him by waving a pathetically small stick. As soon as Nagi jumps in to help him he recalls there were two sharks. When Nagi's attacked by the other one, she has about a couple of seconds to be afraid before Hayate brains it with the first shark effortlessly, taking them both out in one hit.
• Lupin III vs. Detective Conan: While running from the police, Lupin swipes some fish from a market and uses them to fend off the officers.
• One Piece: In the Arlong arc, when the Straw Hats confront the eponymous Big Bad, one of the Co-Dragons calls Mohmoo, a Sea Monster that they made a pet, to deal with them without dirtying their hands. Luffy literally takes the bull by the horns and uses it to take out all of the Mooks, leaving only the three Co-Dragons and Arlong, before tossing him away. Poor Mohmoo…
• Psychic Squad: In one episode, after one practical joke too many, Minamoto gains Glowing Eyes of Doom, grabs a nearby alligator and proceeds to break out the Shamu Fu.

Comic Books

• Asterix frequently features "Assault with a Deadly Tuna", courtesy of the village's resident fishmonger. Although opinions may vary on whether it is getting slapped with them or simply their smell that poses the greater danger to your health... Either way, negative comments on the quality of the fishmonger's products always results in a big fight pretty much all men of the village partake in.
• Pictured above, Heroic Publishing's Flare (not to be confused with Black Canary) is hitting a gorilla with a shark...a gorilla in a spacesuit...while standing in a dinosaur's mouth...wearing high heels...being stared at by a robot... with UFOs and a nuclear explosion in the background.
• In Marvel Versus DC, Aquaman provided what is possibly an entirely literal example during his fight with Namor- Namor punched him into the middle of a Seaworld-esque park, and when Namor followed, Aquaman had a killer whale jump out of its tank and squash Namor.
• Usagi Yojimbo: The titular hero once beat up a couple of thugs with a very silly-looking octopus. It was included specifically because of Stan Sakai's exposure to the page picture via Scott Shaw!'s blog- one of the thugs getting fish-slapped was, in fact, a toon version of Shaw! (and yes, the exclamation point is part of his name).
• In Thimble Theater, Popeye is knocked overboard when his crew mutinies in the 8th Sea Arc. He climbs back aboard with a mackerel in hand, and proceeds to slap some toughs with it.
  Tough: I wouldn't mind gettin' shot or gettin' slammed with a hatch cover, but to get smacked down with a (Symbol Swearing) mackerel- UGH!!

Fan Works

• In Ashes of the Past, Misty tends to slap Brock with her Goldeen when he does his usual thing.
• In Faded Blue, Blue Pearl smacks Garnet with a fish during their fight.
• Doujin artist WancozoW depicts a sea lion throwing fish as a kunai-style weapon.
• Total Drama Legacy: The cannons used in "Water You Gonna Do?" shoot fish. Specifically, the Classic Cobras' cannon shoots "killer bass", and the Modern Mandrills' cannon shoots "floating salmon".

Films — Animation

• In Crayon Shin-chan: Pursuit of the Balls of Darkness, the Noharas are attacked by the Cataplines while shopping for Himawari's diapers and Rosa fights off the assailants with a gigantic fish, which he later returns to the supermarket. Misae and Shin are also very briefly seen pelting a Catapline goon with various items, seafood included.
• In Despicable Me, Gru's rival Vector seems to have an obsession with guns that shoot sea creatures, given his gushing over his "piranha gun" and his "squid launcher".
• In Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, Ninevites are notorious for slapping people with fishes. Also, their preferred method of execution is "The Slap Of No Return," which involves the victim being smashed with a gigantic metal fish.
• In Disney's Sleeping Beauty, Kings Stefan and Hubert get into an argument and the latter uses a swordfish as a sword while the former uses a plate as a shield. When the fish flops over, the two of them realize how ridiculous they're acting and laugh it off. Hubert even sticks the fish in his belt as if sheathing a sword.
  • One Disney short showed Mickey Mouse doing the same thing while fighting against Pete, who was using a scabbard.

Films — Live-Action

• Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar, true to its source, begins with a large fish fight within the Gaul village.
• Chris Farley in Beverly Hills Ninja dual-wields fish towards the end of the movie.
• Dogma: "Or you'll do what, exactly? Hit me with that fffffffish?"
• In Grumpy Old Men, Max tries to stab John with a fish after he finds out John slept with Ariel.
• Some random guy during a Bar Brawl in Licence to Kill tries to use a mounted swordfish to stab Bond, who attempts to block it with a chair, resulting in a broken chair but an otherwise unharmed Bond. See here.
• The Love Bug: In one scene of the sequel Herbie Rides Again, flight attendent Nicole Harris (neighbor of Herbie's current caretaker, "Grandma" Steinmetz) learns her dinner companion is the nephew of the man trying to evict Mrs. Steinmetz; in response, she hits him in the chest with a broiled lobster and sends him splashing into the waters of Fisherman's Wharf below.
• Me and My Gal: A random comedy scene has Joe the drunk slapping another drunk at the chowder house with a fish, followed by all the drunks arguing about what kind of fish it is. (Salmon? Bloater?)
• Discussed in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the Knights Who Until Recently Said Ni order Arthur to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring. He discovers their Weaksauce Weakness and bypasses them rather than attempt it.
• There is a scene in My Super Ex-Girlfriend with the shark being tossed into the guy's window.
• Buster Keaton is underwater in a diving suit in The Navigator, trying to free his boat's propeller from the mud of the bottom after the boat has run aground. A swordfish attacks. Buster grabs and subdues the swordfish. A second swordfish attacks. Buster then uses the "sword" of the first swordfish to fence with the second one.
• Played with, and exaggerated in Pacific Rim, where a Jaeger slaps a kaiju with a trawler.
• Tank Girl does it too.
• The Toxic Avenger Part II had Toxie use fish as weapons, including a swordfish as an actual sword and a literal hammerhead shark.

Literature

• In Animorphs #39, the team has the last-ditch plan to have Cassie morph into a whale in mid-air and fall onto a helicopter. It doesn't quite work, but fortunately, a Deus ex Machina gull shows up and gets sucked into the engine.
  • This is after a whale-tackle does work perfectly in the first Megamorphs to shove a space-beast from Saturn into the ocean, as water paralyzes the millions of micro-organisms that it's built from.
  • It also worked in #34, when she morphed osprey, flew high above a Yeerk pool, and then demorphed and remorphed her lower body into a whale while keeping her wings to remain airborne for as long as possible..
• In The Curse of M, Geezer fends off a few would-be government kidnappers by hurling salmon at them, and at one point using a salmon as a kind of cudgel. It actually works.
• Discworld:
  • In The Science of Discworld II, the mages are forced to move in time and change history when it turns out William Shakespeare was killed with a fish (halibut?) during some riots. The scene involves some confusion as to the weapon used:
    Ridcully: You mean a halberd.
    Other wizard: No, a pike. A fishmonger was involved.
  • Later in the book, the precautions they take during the play include leaving a fishmonger unconscious in an alley.
  • There is a throwaway reference in Reaper Man to a spree-killing by someone bearing the title of "The Notorious Herring Thrower". Granted, it wasn't specifically stated that throwing fish was how this person killed...
  • According to the City Watch Diary, there was once a laughable misunderstanding over the law that the Citizen's Militia should be armed with pikes.
  • In Snuff, Vimes tells Jethro that someone he was arresting once tried to kill him with a very large salmon.
  • Verity Pushpram, Discworld's Molly Malone expy, fends off unwanted suitor Nobby Nobbs by hitting him with fish. Nobby claims that she still has a soft spot for him because she never asks for the fish back.
  • In Going Postal, Professor Pelc's experimental device to determine which book a person wants from the library causes them to feel the sensation of being struck in the face with some kind of fish.
• In Sewer, Gas & Electric, Ninety-Nine Words clouts a polluting ship's crew members with a rubber trout.
• Carl Hiaasen's novel Skin Tight begins with the main character killing a would-be assassin with a stuffed and mounted marlin.

Live-Action TV

• In the CBBC office, presenter Iain Stirling hit fellow presenter, Hacker, (a puppet dog) on the back of the head with a fish, apparently knocking him out, people started requesting that Chris and Ben hit Hacker with the fish too... leading to new presenter Katie forcefully hitting Ben and Chris with the fish, this seemingly knocked them out.
• In the season one finale of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John gets a Salmon Cannon and proceeds to giddily launch salmon at different celebrities including former boss Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Tom Hanks, J. J. Abrams, R2-D2, Anderson Cooper, David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, and in the middle of The Young and the Restless, Grey's Anatomy and The Simpsons!
• Martial Law had a fight scene where Sammo used two fish as weapons.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus had the fish slapping dance sketch.
• Lew Zealand, one of the minor puppet-characters on The Muppet Show, threw fish as boomerangs, and was occasionally seen smacking another character with one.
• Murder, She Wrote once had the "accidental murderer" confess she killed the victim with a frozen swordfish when she confronted him in a restaurant's freezer. Give the fish still had it's head with swordlike nose it's not surprising (though HE was a Jerkass Victim who then tried to kill her, and she would have been allowed the "self defense" plea as a result.)
• In the Psych episode, "Nip and Suck It," Henry and Shawn had been competing in solving the case of a murdered girl. Shawn believed it to be the plastic surgeon the murdered girl saw recently, Dr. Joan Diamond (also an old flame of Henry) while Henry suspected a fellow doctor, Ted Lomax. Henry was having dinner with her when he discovered the planted syringe in her purse, making him suspicious. The doctor panicked and smacked him with his mounted pike. Turns out, neither were right. It was a girl who worked for Lomax before going to Joan; turns out she lost her husband (romantically) to the girl when they were targeting her for a divorce scam.
  • Lampshaded with some puns at Henry's expence:
  Shawn: So you took a good bass-whooping, Dad.
  Gus: You got your hali-butt kicked.
  Gus: He was beer-battered
  Shawn: Wait, he was s-mackerel-ed
• Shakespeare & Hathaway - Private Investigators: In "Too Cold for Hell", Frank, Billy the Brick and DS Keeler are locked in a refrigerated shipping container. When the crooks return, Billy throws a frozen fish in the face of one of them and escapes in the confusion.
• The Thin Blue Line had Sargeant Patricia Dorkins take a fresh halibut to her live-in boyfriend Inspector Raymond Fowler.
• In the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episode "Les Contemptibles", Robert and Jean-Pierre (Revolutionary France versions of Hercules and Iolaus) are being chased by guards through a marketplace, and at one point they knock out two of their pursuers by smacking them in the face with a pair of large fish.
  Jean-Pierre: Just for the halibut.
• Xena had a long-standing habit of using seafood as weaponry in mortal combat. She fought off several attackers in season one, who'd attacked her while fishing, and in season three, an episode climax featured Xena fighting off an army, just using the fish she'd spent the episode catching.

Magazines

• The cover of MAD #98 had a dolphin slapping Alfred E. Neuman in the face with a fish.

New Media

• The "slapping" feature in mIRC : "X slaps Y around a bit with a large trout"
• Likewise on That Other Wiki, where editors can be expected to be hit with a (virtual) trout when doing something really stupid, and a smaller fish is available for novice users who do something mildly stupid. Some of them even encourage it, requesting on their user page to please whack them with a trout if they do something stupid. *WHACK!*
• In This Very Wiki's forums, one of the generic "thump" messages is "This post was thumped by the Codfish in a Derby Hat"
• Destroy the Godmodder: In DTG2, leon's weapon of choice is a fish, to the point where he alchemized ridiculous numbers to use for fighting.
  • invoked in the tvtropes session when ichigo began dual wielding them.
  • The titular Holy Mackerel that leon used also made an appearance.
  • invoked by pillowmantis countless times.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons 5e sourcebook "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes" includes a poem "How the Fishskippers got their name", in which a halfling fisherman kills a troll by throwing a bream at his head.
• The Magic: The Gathering card Noggin Whack features a kithkin getting hid in the head with a fish tied to a rock.
• Homebrewer Kellus created the humorous Cetacean Knight prestige class which is all about a bond with sea creatures granting the ability to do this in a somewhat pragmatic way... including, eventually, the ability to lift whales to use them for this purpose. Stats for the sea-life involved are, naturally, provided and include snapper turtles, sea-stars, octopi and squid as well as fish and the titular cetaceans.

Theatre

• Spamalot features the "fisch schlapping" business in the "Finland" number.

Video Games

• 3D Dot Game Heroes has a giant fish among its large collection of bizarre swords.
• Armed and Dangerous brings us the Landshark Gun, a large gun which launches a shark that burrows through the ground and bursts out under the targeted enemy.
• Bug had the boss of Quaria, a giant octopus. In its first phase, it was a Background Boss that used its tentacles to grab dogfish (fish with the heads and collars of a dog) and throw them at Bug, who countered by using a tennis racket to swat the dogfish back into its head.
• Death in Castlevania 64 casts a spell that throws a giant demonic fish at you.
• In City of Villains, a high-level character may gain powers from Captain Mako that allows you to project spiritual sharks that pin enemies, hold them in place, knock them down and the like. It's so stupid it's awesome.
  • There is also a running gag on the official forums about Carp Melee, which originated when a poster misspelled a disparaging comment about melee power sets.
• Chaos Faction 2 has a trout as part of its large arsenal of weapons that any character can use, smacking enemies and forcing them to drop their own weapons.
• In Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course, one of Mortimer Freeze's attacks involves slamming the heroes with his giant Walloping Winter Whale.
• Goro from Dark Cloud and Max from Dark Chronicle can wield a Frozen Tuna as a Hammer-class weapon. One wonders what happens to it when it breaks (or, in the sequel's case, when it's repaired).
  • Well, when it "breaks", it thaws. When it's "repaired", it's refrozen.
• Dead Cells features the Maw Of The Deep as part of the Queen And The Sea DLC. It's a Survival-type weapon whose three-hit combo involves two swings with a live, wiggling shark and then throwing the shark at a foe, where it will latch on teeth-first. There's an achievement for tossing it back into a body of water where it'll presumably be happier than being used to beat up zombies.
• Dead Rising 2 has a swordfish available as a weapon. It's not especially good (although its alternate attack is a one hit kill... against a single zombie).
• Cat Kid units in Disgaea 3 attack by pulling a large fish from Hammerspace and slapping things with it.
• Many Snowmads in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze use fishes as their primary weapons: the Archies use fishes as arrows, the Fish Poker Pops attacks with pufferfishes on a stick, the Chum Chucker Charlies throw mackerels around and the Big Sphens blow icy butterfly fishes with their horn.
• There are several fishy swords in DragonFable, thanks entirely to the Rule of Funny.
• Because of the way the item system works in Dwarf Fortress, adventure mode makes it possible to use dead fish as weapon. A giant sperm whale is surprisingly effective, though it's so heavy that it slows you to a crawl.
  • You're able to edit the tags that determine what creatures and items are made of. You could make fish out of adamantine, or mark fish as valid items to make weapons out of.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, apkallus can attack players by casting Flying Sardine by regurgitating their last meal as a defense mechanism. Blue Mages can learn the attack by being hit with it. It has low attack power but serves as a spell interrupt skill.
• On Gaia Online, zOMG! has an attack ring that summons sharks to attack monsters.
• Genshin Impact:
  • The Luxurious Sea-Lord is a large fish used as a claymore.
  • The End of the Line is also a large fish used as a bow.
• In the console versions of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy game, Mogar (Billy's father, Harold, in his KISS-style rock star persona from the show's episode "Battle of the Bands") has, for one of his alternate outfits, his fishing gear from the episode "Lil' Porkchop", where his guitar is replaced with a swordfish.
• Heroes of the Storm has Murky, baby Murloc that wields a fish as a melee weapon. And if you upgrade his Octo-Grab heroic... and a shark, too!
• One weapon that can be obtained for Mei and Sakura to use in Honkai Impact 3rd is the One Salty Tuna, which is basically a tuna fish used as a katana. The description for it pretty much says it as it is:
  "Believe it or not, the Salty Tuna struck first. It then became something very stiff and hurtful."
• Kingdom of Loathing has a halibut as a (very good) weapon. Why? Well...
  • Also, every Turtle Tamer knows how to toss a familiar at an enemy. There are piscine familiars.
• In Kirby's Return to Dream Land, one of the gag weapons Kirby can randomly use with his Ultra Sword ability is a giant tuna.
• In League of Legends, Fizz the Tidal Trickster's ultimate special attack "Chum the Waters" involves throwing a fish at an opponent. This summons a massive shark to erupt from the ground and take a bite out of any enemy champion that gets hit by the fish. If the target is killed, they won't leave a corpse if they're small enough.
• LEGO Legends of Chima Online: One type of weapon is "A Large Trout". The description comments on the fish's bad smell and recommends using it to hit someone.
• The LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • In some levels, there are crates with fish you can throw.
  • The LEGO version of Norrington's Heroic Sacrifice scene has him whack Jones with a fish.
  • The Ancient Fisherman unlockable character has a fish as his weapon.
• Speaking of Frozen Tuna, you can wield one as a two-handed blunt weapon in MapleStory.
  • And then there's the Thunder Breaker class, which throws sharks made out of thunder at your foes in later levels.
• In Mega Man Powered Up, Roll's Cat Girl outfit uses a fish as a weapon.
• Mercenary Kings gives us the Fish Knife. No, it's not a knife that you cut fish with, it is a fish that is used as a knife.
• Thieves in Miitopia can buy a dagger that is a fish. And it is more effective than more serious-looking ones, like the silver dagger.
• In Miku Monogatari ~Yume to Taisetsu na Mono~, Tako Luka's attack has her tossing a (dead) tuna that rolls on the ground. It's also usable when holding onto a swinging rope or a glider, but it will make her fall.
• Monster Hunter:
  • There's a frozen Speartuna, classified as a Great Sword and wielded as such. It has crummy attack power (albeit with great Ice elemental damage,) so it and the other food-themed weapons (fork and knife set, frying pan, what have you) are just there for laughs.
  • Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) has the Sharq Attaq, which is a Lance that consists of a Sharq. Not a Sharq-themed spear. Not a spear shaped like a Sharq. An actual Sharq. The Sharq Attaq also comes with a shield... in the form of a "No Swimming" sign.
  • Monster Hunter: World introduces the Whetfish Sabers, which are a pair of Dual Blades made from, you guessed it, two whole Whetfish. They even have the Protective Polish skill inbuilt.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise has the Shieldraad, Morsel Bowfish and Springnight Shot weapons, which are a Charge Blade, bow, and a freaking gun that all take the shape of a whole fish.
• Persona 4 has two of these, both obtained from Old Man Daidara via quests. Yosuke gets Inaba Trout as daggers, while Kanji gets the Samegawa Guardian as a bludgeon.
• Fish are wieldable weapons in Phantom Brave. Like all items in the game, Item Crafting means this can result in an Infinity Plus One Fish.
• In Pokémon Sword and Shield, Cramorant invokes this with its ability, Gulp Missile, where, after using either of the moves Surf or Dive, it will get an Arrokuda (A Pokémon based on a barracuda) stuck in its mouth, which it will then fire at the opponent once it takes a hit. Though this is sometimes averted; If Cramorant's HP is below 50%, it will instead get, of all things, a Pikachu. Regardless of which Pokémon is used as ammo, though, it will deal 25% of the opponent's HP in damage. The difference comes in the secondary effects: If an Arrokuda is fired at the opponent, it will reduce their defense by one stage, whereas if it's a Pikachu, the opponent will be paralyzed if possible.
• Power Stone 2 has the Frozen Tuna, which is unlocked through Item Crafting.
• In Puzzle Pirates, you can use fish as a bludgeon in the Rumble game.
• In Rune Factory 3, Pia's default weapon is the Dekash - a weaponized giant Tuna. It's also craftable.
• Saints Row: The Third has Professor Genki's Mollusk Launcher, a gun that fires "singing, exploding, mind-controlling octopi. Yeah. Mind-control. We're serious." There's also the Shark-O-Matic, a blunderbuss-looking weapon with a funnel of fish entrails attached to the lock that covers the target in chum, followed shortly by an attack by the Steelport sewer shark.
• Joachim in Shadow Hearts: Covenant can also wield a frozen tuna as a weapon, just one in a series of increasingly improbable Improvised Weapons.
  • Frank from Shadow Hearts: From The New World has a habit of creating Improvised Weapons by sticking sword hilts onto.. anything, really. Including a Marlin.
• Shank 2 allows the titular hero (or his friend Corina) to use frozen fish as weapons, or, in a variation, flick a switch and send either a net full of fish or a great white shark careening into their foes.
• One popular mod for The Sims 2 turns the pillows into large fish when your sims start pillow fights.
  • In the console version, the default for Slap is to slap with a fish. Depending on the other person's personality and the extent of enmity, they'll either walk away or pull out an even bigger fish to slap the first one.
• Skies of Arcadia included a weapon for Vyse which replaced his cutlass and main gauche with two large fish. It did surprisingly good damage but had horrible accuracy. However, sword techs always landed...
• Skylanders: Terrafin (a shark-man) and Thumpback (a humanoid whale) both have "belly flop" body slam attacks, which probably qualify. Even discounting them, Chill the ice knight can summon a narwhal to charge her enemies.
  • Trumping all of them is Rip Tide who fights using a swordfish, a hammerhead shark, and a small whale as weapons.
• You can do this to enemies in Sleeping Dogs (2012). You even get an achievement for it!
• Nightmare from the Soulcalibur series wields a squid as a joke weapon in SC III, SC IV and SC V.
  • In Soul Calibur V, Patroklos' joke weapon is a salmon for a sword and a ray for a shield.
• The Scout from Team Fortress 2 has the Holy Mackerel, a chub mackerel wrapped in newspaper, complete with jigglebones and *SLAP* sound on impact, as a purely cosmetic variant of the stock bat. Instead, it displays as a kill notification the number of time a player gets slapped. If a player gets killed, FISH KILL! is displayed instead of the hit counter. The in-game description of the weapon?
  "Getting hit by a fish has got to be humiliating."
• Tekken: Starting from Tekken 7, Kuma's Rage Art has him bludgeon his enemy with a salmon.
• Terraria allows you to fish up various fish that you can employ as tools or weapons. This includes the Reaver Shark (pickaxe), Rockfish (hammer), Sawtooth Shark (Chainsaw), Purple Clubberfish (sword) and Swordfish (spear, ironically).
• In Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, there's one level where Nate fights some Mooks in a market. If you back Nate against the fish stalls, using the Punch button will result in him picking up a fish and hitting a mook with it. Doing this three times nets you the trophy "Gonna Need a Sturgeon."
  • The fish was later used as a melee item pick-up in Playstation All Stars Battle Royale. It's swung like a bat and launches opponents pretty far.
• Way of the Samurai 3 has the hidden companion Nya Nya, who wields a fish for her weapon. With the free DLC installed, the player can essentially craft a gigantic bluefin tuna and beat people to death with it, or Dual Wield two of them for double the fish-bludgeoning fun.
• Way of the Samurai 4 has a hidden weapon in the form of a fish, found just outside the sushi shop. This fish cannot be dismantled, meaning its parts can't be used to craft new weapons. It can, however, be upgraded to maximum damage and durability, should the player want to waste resources on it.
• We Who Are About to Die: One of the weapons often present in Luck of the Draw matches (Luck Based Missions where you enter the arena without weapons or shields and depend on the audience to toss in something useful) is an inexplicable trout named Trouttimus that you can pick up and swing as a club. As far as improvised weapons go it's surprisingly decent, but it's best used to beat someone with a real weapon to death and then stealing it.
• Kidd from the World Heroes games uses sharks as projectiles. Who needs shuriken or fireballs when you're throwing a shark at someone?
• World of Warcraft
  • The Rockhide Strongfish, a mace, the Dark Herring, a dagger, and the Stinkrot Smasher, another mace, are all fish used as weapons. There are also some fish caught with the fishing skill that can be held in the off-hand. They are entirely useless aside from looks and since you can't actually attack with them, they don't really count.
  • In Battle for Azeroth, the Freehold fighting pit champion is Trothak the Shark Puncher. Named not for punching sharks but because he has a live shark tied to each arm. Not only do these give his punches more bite, he can also chuck the shark at players who have to run or be gnawed on.
• In Weird Dreams you first fight a bee with an electric eel and then fight weird monsters and the Big Bad demon, with a flying fish you caught in a desert. World of Chaos sums up the setting pretty well.
• Yakuza 0 features a marlin as a weapon. Bizarrely it's actually a cannon that fires from its rostrum somehow, but it can also be used as a blunt melee weapon (and is one of the few with infinite durability).

Webcomics

• In Darths & Droids, one of the more bizarre ability of the Jedi Knights is the spell Summon Bigger Fish. A Running Gag, it causes a giant fish to fall out of the air on someone, squashing them. However, there is every reason to believe that this ability only exists in Jim's head. (The one occasion the DM had enough and allowed it to be cast wasn't a canon strip.)
• This is Lancer's focus in Learning with Manga! FGO: as she was a paleontologist in life, her main combat technique is smacking and stabbing her opponents with prehistoric reptiles (icthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, etc).
• Manly Guys Doing Manly Things:
  • This is how Jared the Pokémon trainer leveled up his Magikarp into a Gyarados.
  • The Commander's son, Sam, favors a shark as a weapon when fighting his sister. Granted, Sam is still a pre-schooler and the shark is a cuddly toy, but still...
• A red snapper is used this way in Not Quite Daily Comic.
• Seen here in Scandinavia and the World, with a fish that is Made of Explodium.

Web Original

• Number 165 on The Evil Shakespeare Overlord List is "At no time shall Romeo slap Tybalt with a fish. This is especially key during their confrontation in 3.1 [where Romeo kills Tybalt]."
• In RWBY, Weiss Schnee briefly wields a swordfish like her trademark rapier during a Food Fight.
• In an odd example, Tom Scott and Matt Gray hit one another with a salmon fillet, as part of an attempt to break as many strange laws as possible.
• Used in Zero Punctuation to describe the expressions of the cast of the various Ace Attorney games reacting to new developments or other shocking details. Elevates to an visual gag in The Stinger of his review of The Great Ace Attorney, wherein cast members exchange slaps with increasingly larger fish—Naruhodo Ryosuke pulls a sperm whale from Hammerspace to hit someone.

Western Animation

• In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "Trail Of The Missing Tails" after entering his insane cousin Dr. Warpnik's lair, Dr. Robotnik gets into a fight with him using fish as their main weapons, Warpnik's fish takes so much abuse it dons a helmet.
• American Dad!
  • Francine hit Roger with a fish in "Frannie 911", as per the page quote.
  • A flashback in "Office Spaceman" shows that Francine was taught to hate left-handed people by the nuns at her orphanage, who beat her with a fish when she deviated from them (it was usually a piece of beef, but it was a Friday).
• In Animaniacs, Yakko references this during a Major General Song:
  I'm very good at fancy dances; I can even pirouette./Then smack the villain with a fish; I know my cartoon etiquette.
• An the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Harlequinade", Robin uses two fish as nunchuks. In "The Laughing Fish" The Joker hits an accountant with a fish for interrupting him.
• In one episode of Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, Whiskers and Ed are about to engage in a duel but don't have any actual weapons and can't decide what they should fight with. They eventually settle on fish.
• Basil from Courage the Cowardly Dog uses a fish as his weapon of choice.
• The Critic: Jay gets a whale on his head while singing "Nothin's gonna stop me now!"
• Detentionaire: In one episode, Lee fights off the Serpent with a large trout, which has the added bonus of letting him exploit his opponent's Plot Allergy.
• The climax of the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Dueling Eds" involved Rolf and Eddy fighting with mackerel for weapons. Rolf dealt quite a smack-down to Eddy, who was too baffled to fight back.
• Happens in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy episode "Guess What's Coming To Dinner?", when Hoss Delgado and Eris are posing as Billy's parents:
  Eris: (indicates Hoss) This is Billy's dad, (indicates herself) I'm Billy's mom, (pulls out a trout) and this is a trout. (she proceeds to smack Goodvibes around the head with it)
  Principal Goodvibes: ...Why did you just hit me with a trout?
  Eris: Because the mackerel wasn't fresh.
• In Jackie Chan Adventures, When the Dark Hand were looking for the Tiger Talisman, and Dark Jackie totally owned them, he is confronted by Tohru, and finally downed by a tuna fish. Ironic, because Tohru hates fish.
  • In an earlier episode, Jade throws a swordfish at Tohru, who catches it and throws it at Jackie. Jackie narrowly avoids getting impaled.
• And there's the almost literal example in an episode of Justice League, where Aquaman demonstrates why talking to fish isn't so lame a power by dropping a killer whale on his enemies.
• In the Looney Tunes "Frigid Hare", Bugs in drag gets a big fish as a gift from a lust-stricken Eskimo, who puckers up for a kiss. Bugs smacks him with the fish, the Eskimo gets really excited, grabs Bugs, his disguise slips off, and after a seconds' pause, Bugs fish-smacks him again twice as hard!
• The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Huffin and Puffin" has Skipper fighting Hans the Puffin with fish. Dialogue in Hans' second appearance suggests "fish fighting" is always how they fight.
• Buford does this in a Phineas and Ferb special. On the receiving end? The Red Skull
  • And later The Hulk slaps The Red Skull with a fish
• In The Ren & Stimpy Show episode "I Was a Teenaged Stimpy" upon finding that Stimpy made himself a cocoon with his corn magazines, Ren starts beating it with a mounted swordfish.
• There's an episode of Robot Chicken where Alias becomes Whalias... and it leads to a rather logical conclusion.
• In the first episode of Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Star polishes off Ludo's minions with an aptly-named "Mega Narwhal Blast". Narwhals continue to be one of her go-to conjured projectiles through the rest of the series.
• There's a Tom and Jerry episode where Jerry uses a shark against Tom.
  • Another episode has Jerry beating Tom with a fish he was going to eat.

Real Life

• Two cases from this site:
  • A man hit his girlfriend with a dead Tuna after an argument.
  • A trawlerman broke someone's spine by beating them with a 20 lb Tuna.
• In Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Suetonius describes a time when Tiberius Caesar punished a fisherman who snuck onto the imperial private island retreat by having his guards scrub the poor fisherman's face with a fish he happened to be carrying—to the point where they scrubbed his eyeballs clean out of his head, then they tossed him off a cliff into the sea.
• Also there is the tradition in France of hitting people with (dead) fish on April Fool's Day. Though in that case the person you're supposed to hit is someone you like. You can probably blame the Romans for this one too.

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