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Epic Flail

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Trevor Belmont: Beautiful...
Sypha Belnades: What on earth is that ugly thing?
Trevor Belmont: I don't believe they hid it. It's the Morning Star!
— Castlevania (2017)

Can't decide whether to Carry a Big Stick or dish out Chain Pain? Well, Take a Third Option: a large, heavy object on the end of a rope, chain, or cable. Two examples are the mace-and-chain and some varieties of morningstar. Flail/morningstar heads in fiction are usually the size of the wielder's head, if not larger, and realistically would be far too heavy for a normal person to wield in real life (picture swinging around a bowling ball like that, or an Olympic Hammer Throw event and you get the idea). It's also a relatively dangerous weapon, because one false move could wind up either getting you tangled up in the chain, or smashing yourself with the business end of it. Either way, it requires balls of steel to use.

Think of a wrecking ball or something similar, but any bludgeoning-implement-on-a-string probably counts, such as the infamous nunchaku beloved of martial artists and Ninja fans.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH! Pretty scary, huh?

For the one specific type of flail: For just the chain, see Chain Pain. Sock It to Them is the improvised version. Compare Spectacular Spinning, Killer Yo-Yo. Stereotypical flails almost always have a spike covered ball at the end, and it's popularity with brutal and/or crazed characters also makes it one of the most common (and popular) examples of Savage Spiked Weapons. If the spiky part is not a part of a weapon, then these are Spike Balls of Doom.

Not to be confused with Epic Fail, though there's a definite overlap if you've somehow smacked yourself in the head with it and maybe gotten the pointy bits embedded in your face. Also not that thing Kermit does when he's excited◊.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • The samurai Shichigoro in Afro Samurai: Resurrection wields a manriki, which he uses both for long-range strikes and to trap Afro's sword.
  • Used in Berserk against Guts by Samson, one of the higher ups of the Purple Rhino Knights. Depicted realistically in that it's about the size of a soft ball and the guy uses thick armor to compensate for not being able to defend with it but Guts just deflects all of the blows using his massive sword (he was shielding Casca) and beats the tar out of the him and earns the title 100 Man Slayer in the ensuing brawl.
  • Baldorias S. Fanghini, Number VIII of the Chronos Numbers in Black Cat not only uses a flail to pound his enemies to a pulp, but additionally attaches remote-controlled rockets to it to add to the epicness.
  • Bleach's Omaeda Marechiyo's Zanpakutou Gegetsuburi has this as its Shikai form. He also has a habit of using the ball as a makeshift shield for protection which, while useful, can end up backfiring on him.
  • In Change 123, a young kunoichi uses a very practical and disguised variation of a rope dart or a kusarigama - a keychain with heavy and sharp keys attached to the end of a retractable wire.
    • Later it gets shown that her mentor uses a similar, although more primitive, weapon: a stone wrapped inside a cloth strip.
  • Daitarn 3 has the Daitarn Hammer, which he tends to just throw at his opponents.
  • In Delicious in Dungeon, a single-panel flashback shows Falin swinging a flail while she chased after Laios who was charmed by a kelpie.
  • General Yeegar in D.Gray-Man used massive chains with spikes on the end as weapons.
  • Digimon Data Squad has MirageGaogamon's Burst Mode wielding a huge flail made out of energy as his weapon. Full Moon Meteor Impact!!
  • In Dog Days, Godwin's weapon of choice is an axe head attached to an iron chain.
  • Gamaran has the Gasanemanji Ryuu, formed by kusarigama users. Their secret weapons tends to be more flail-like. Oh, and they actually use said kusarigama in the right way. Sequel series Shura has Ise Ramon, leader of the Genkai Tenpei, who is armed with a meteor hammer, and his subordinate Sendo, who fights with a long, thresher-like flail.
  • Gundam:
    • The Gundam hammer optional weapon for the original Mobile Suit Gundam, although it was left out of the movie versions for allegedly being "too Super Robot-y". Has a space-use version in the Hyper Hammer — a more pointy and thruster-equipped version.
    • ∀ Gundam has a fight where Loran finds one, and uses it as a weapon. Due to its age it breaks apart at the end.
      • Later in the series (after more gear has been uncovered) Loran uses two of these at once to immobilize three opponents (using Turn A's engines, which appear to gradually upgrade their efficiency over time with the rest of the mecha, to pin the third).
      • In Super Robot Wars: Alpha Gaiden repeats this, but he keeps it as a primary weapon. However, it still breaks apart each time he uses it; he just apparently has a stock of up to eight of them at any given time.
      • The Gundam Vs Series makes it the Turn A's main weapon rather than its beam rifle, presumably in the name of Cast Speciation.
      • The Turn A's SP Attack in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 has it swinging two flails around in circles. It also uses the flails in a regular attack that's good for clearing crowds.
    • Bolt Gundam from G Gundam uses one as well. It's attached by a laser that he can use to hold an enemy and deliver a massive beatdown.
    • Makes another comeback in Gundam SEED with the Raider Gundam's "Mjolnir" spherical breaker. Its existence was given a few justifications, such as saying that the head is super-dense in order to get around the impact-resistant Phase Shift Armor, and the wire is beam-coated so it can be used as an impromptu shield.
    • The Gundam Double X from Gundam X was planned to use one, but when the series had its episode count cut by ten, this was dropped. Now the only place it can be found is with the model kit.
    • Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam sequel Skull Heart has the Amakusa, a mobile suit designed by the Jovian Empire that uses a brain-clone of Amuro Ray as its "pilot"; its shield is equipped with a hammer weapon that splits in half when not in use.
  • Haruka Armitage of My-Otome wields a large flail, in line with her...rather impulsive personality.
  • Hanzo from Naruto wields a traditional Kusarigama.
  • One Piece:
    • In a Story Arc, Franky is confronted with a Giant Spider. He already has a pair of nunchuku strapped to his back, but he decides that that just isn't badass enough and finds a giant marble column to break in half and affix to the ends of his nunchaku to make a humongous super-flail. And if that isn't awesome enough already, he gives the spider the most epic "Bitch, please" face ever before dispensing a serious smackdown.
    • Also, Garp, who has a flail the size of a battleship, and throws it around like it's nothing. What's unclear is exactly where he stores the thing, since it's too big to fit inside his own ship.
    • One of Whitebeard's Division Commanders is seen with a spiked one that seems to have eaten a Zoan DF of a breed of Dog.
    • At one point, Enel finds that being a rubber man, Luffy is immune to his lightning attack. So, Enel melted a huge chunk of GOLD on Luffy's right hand, forming a Giant Ball Made Out of Gold. Guess how Enel was beaten?
    • Charlotte Katakuri turned his arm into a Haki coated flail, with spikes, using his Mochi Mochi fruit powers. He slammed it into Luffy after rolling up into a donut to build momentum and then swung Luffy on the flail over his head before slamming him into the ground. The hit is devastating.
  • In Re:Zero, Rem's weapon of choice is a large ("about the same size as her body") mace with chain.
  • Shuten Doji/Anubis from Ronin Warriors mostly fights the heroes with a kusarigama with a bladed weight, which can burst through concrete and stone, as well as extend to bind people.
  • Saint Seiya:
    • The Andromeda Cloth is unique in that it has a weighted chain attached to each arm. One is tipped with an arrowhead-shaped dart, is meant for offense, and can track down its target to the ends of the cosmos (extending to a length of light years or retracting to a couple of feet as needed.) The other has a sphere (or an ornate ring in later arcs) at its end and is meant for defense.
    • The Libra Cloth also comes equipped with triple-section rods and nunchaku, two of each. And a minor enemy, the Silver Saint of Cerberus, wielded a vicious morningstar which could multiply into dozens of flails as well as extend and retract just like the Andromeda Chain.
  • The most epic flails of all time popped up in Transformers: Cybertron, in which Primus turns his own moons into a pair of flails to lay the smackdown on a planet-sized Starscream.
  • Deathsaurus in Transformers Victory has a morningstar as his weapon of choice.

    Comic Books 
  • JLA: Act of God: Supergirl, aka "Justice", uses a double mace with a flail on each side. It's a little awkward.
  • The Mighty Thor:
    • Wrecking Crew's member Thunderball used a literal wrecking ball on a chain as a weapon.
    • Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man, wields a ball and chain from his imprisonment. Whenever he changes his material make-up, the ball changes with him.
  • Shang-Chi villain Skull-Crusher uses a ball-and-chain weapon in each hand. His codename describes one of his favourite finishing moves.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The titular character in the martial arts movie, The Bare-footed Kid uses a flail as his standard weapon, in an extended final battle when he uses the flail to defeat an entire horde of sword-wielding mooks.
  • Braveheart: After losing his hand at the battle of Stirling, Campbell, Hamish's badass dad, wields a spiked flail during the battle at Falkirk, and ends up receiving a mortal wound while he's busy swinging it overhead. Later, Wallace rides into Mornay's bedchamber, uncoils a long-chained flail, and crushes the treacherous lord's head like a watermelon with one great swing.
  • In The Court Jester, our hero faces off against a knight who selects a mace and chain as his weapon.
  • One of the gladiators already in the arena during the first fight in Gladiator wields one. He swings it over his head in front of the closed door to frighten the new gladiators. He gets the first kill when the doors open, smashing the first in line in the face.
  • The Big Bad of the wuxia The Golden Lion uses a flail as his primary weapon to rough up the titular hero, and later kills a few redshirts using this weapon as well. It's notable that instead of the usual ball and chain, the flail's tip ends with a set of bronze claws that doubles as a grappling hook.
  • Headless Horseman: When the teens are attempting to escape through the woods, Headless attacks them from horseback wielding a morningstar. He knocks down Tiffany who falls on a Bear Trap and is decapitated.
  • The Dragon in Hellboy II: The Golden Army has a flail fist.
  • He Wan-yan, the main villain of Heroes of Sung uses a flail whose tip is a deadly bronze claw as his preferred weapon, using it to either claw through the flesh of his opponents or to grab and snatch objects from a distance.
  • In Ivanhoe, Bois Guilbert (George Sanders) chooses to wield a flail in the climax duel against the eponymous hero, who manages to turn it to his advantage.
  • Fallon from Jack the Giant Slayer wields a truly enormous specimen.
  • Go-Go Yubari in Kill Bill wields a mean ball-and-chain meteor hammer in her battle against the Bride.
  • Balian defends against a "normal" one of these in Kingdom of Heaven in an homage to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He wraps it around his sword, then stabs the guy in the face.
  • The Witch-King in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King used a truly huge flail to fight Éowyn at the Pelennor Fields. The special features point out how difficult it was to lift; in the scene where the Witch-King first lifts the weapon, there was actually a person lying on the ground underneath and pushing it up from below. It started off as a relatively normal-sized flail, but Peter Jackson kept telling WETA Workshop to "make it bigger." They finally made one that they were positive was going to be "too big". That's the one that made it on screen. Jackson himself thinks that it still could have been bigger.
    • The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: this is Azog the Defiler's weapon in his final showdown with Thorin. It looks more like a huge chunk of stone attached to a chain than a "regular" weapon. He learns the hard way that its a terrible weapon to use on a frozen river.
    • Although Peter Jackson kept calling it a "mace": the Witch King's weapon in the original trilogy is in fact a flail. It's flanged head is almost as big as Merry (roughly 3' tall): so it definitely qualifies as "epic". The Witch King manages to throw Theoden and his horse several feet in the air with it: paralleling the death of Gilgalad shown in the introduction (which was accomplished by Sauron using his actual mace of equally epic proportions). Justified in that the Witch King's body is magical and doesn't need to obey the laws of physics. Even the hollow prop was so heavy and unwieldy that it took two of the stuntmen to lift. There's a great video of Jackson himself trying and failing to lift the final prop.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • The Abomination wields a huge fence chain as a meteor hammer against The Incredible Hulk (2008), with concrete pillars being the weights. It proves to be effective in knocking Hulk around, but backfires when Hulk makes Abomination lose control and hit himself with it, then strangles him to near death with the same chain.
    • In Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Hulkbuster does this with an empty elevator against the Hulk. Hulk lost a tooth, but it didn't stop him.
  • Pacific Rim: Uprising features two examples, the first is Titan Redeemer and its enormous "Morning Star" and later Bracer Phoenix has the weapon and Redeemer's arm attached over its own destroyed one after the Drones attack and kill Redeemer's crew.
  • Clanker, one of Davy Jones' crewmen from Pirates of the Caribbean, dual-wields pieces of chain shot.
  • In The Ripper (1997), Prince Albert attempts to kill Inspector Hansen by attacking him with a morningstar.
  • In Shanghai Noon, Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) improvises one with a horseshoe and rope against a bunch of bounty hunters, though he wields it like a wushu rope dart.
  • Megatron in Transformers (2007) briefly uses one to smash apart his prison chamber in Hoover Dam, and later the rooftop pillar Sam Witwicky is clinging to. Barricade also appears to wield one in his fight against Bumblebee, one with spinning blades.
  • In X-Men: First Class, Erik tries to sink Shaw's ship with its own anchor.

    Gamebooks 
  • Deathtrap Dungeon: one of the first obstacles you can run into are a pair of Orcs swinging flails at you. If you're not careful they'll whip your sword out of your hand.
  • The Riddling Reaver, you can choose a flail, referred to as a Morning Star, as a weapon instead of a sword. It can potentially do more damage, but because of the chain it's harder to use and gives you a small SKILL malus in combat.
  • In the Wizards, Warriors and You series, among the Warrior's various armaments were a flail, morning star and later the Triple Flail - a custom flail with three chains and three heads. The Warrior had designed the triple flail after the success he had with the Impossibly Cool Weapon, the Triple Crossbow.

    Literature 
  • Battle Circle: In this Piers Anthony series, morning star is one of "traditional" weapons. It's considered the hardest to master and the most dangerous.
  • Bloodsounder's Arc: An aversion in this Jeff Salyard series is the slave soldier Captain Braylar Killcoin, who uses the accursed magic flail, Bloodsounder. Bloodsounder is a flail with two chains and heads (the spiked heads depicting the 'Deserter Gods' - ancient gods that had abandoned humanity over some perceived failure). Bloodsounder isn't especially devastating as magic weapons go and its spiked heads are actually smaller than average, its power is defensive. The wielder receives omens or visions of impending violence and doom, often saving the wielder's life with this early warning. However sometimes the visions can be confusing and are about people nearby, not the wielder. Additionally Bloodsounder forms a link to the wielder making it agonizing to be away from the flail. Worst of all, Bloodsounder absorbs bits of memories of its victims, with enough kills the wielder will eventually lose their identity.
  • Discworld
    • Thud!: a volunteer had a pair of nunchaku, in this universe called numknuts. Vimes tried swirling one of them, and promptly hit his elbow.
    • In Men at Arms, Nobby gets ahold of a huge flail (he got so excited at raiding an armoury he became a Walking Arsenal for a bit), and starts swinging it, and the narration muses that nobody was quite sure which was orbiting which, Nobby or the flail.
  • Gladiator: Several generic opponents use large flails, though they're only effective when used right at the start of the fight; as soon as the gladiators themselves get clear of the exit their swords win easily.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: As the inhabitants of Hogwarts prepare to meet Voldemort's siege, Professor McGonagall brings all the statues and suits of armor to life. Some of the latter are mentioned as wielding "spiked balls on chains."
  • Kushiel's Avatar: Tahmuras, The Dragon, wields one. He comes closest out of anyone in the entire six-book series to besting Joscelin.
  • The Malazan Book of the Fallen: Leoman is famous for wielding two flails with deadly effect.
  • No Deals, Mr. Bond: One of the four men put to hunt James Bond insists upon using a morning star. The three others use more conventional weapons.
  • Ranger's Apprentice: The Kings of Clonmel: Horace duels a large man wielding a mace-and-chain, to bolster his credentials as the "Sunrise Warrior". Halt observes that you have to be quite strong to properly use one, but unfortunately, Killeen is, giving him longer reach than Horace with a weapon that will basically ignore armour and shatter any body part it hits.
  • River of Teeth: Archie fights with a meteor hammer, a length of chain with a metal ball attached to one end, which she spins until it reaches a certain speed, then throws at her target.
  • The Sellswords: Athrogate Dual Wields a pair of magical flails (usually applying oil of impact, an explosive substance, as well).
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: The Monster Clown Shagwell wields a three-headed flail while hiding out in the Saltpans. Gallant Loras Tyrell is said to fight in a rage with a whirling flail during a siege.
  • Star Wars Legends: The ankkox from the novel Shatterpoint is a monstrous creature that is, essentially, a cross between a giant tortoise and a dinosaur. Like the real life ankylosaurs, it has a bony knob on the end of its long, flexible tail that serves as a mace. Unlike the ankylosaur, its tail mace strikes with sufficient force to shatter tank armor. The one used in the climax of the novel is billed as "[the Korunnai's] sole piece of mobile artillery" and fully lives up to that description.
  • Thousand Sons: The pyromancer Gaumata wields a morning star on a chain. Since it’s a force weapon, he can channel his psychic powers through the morning star and set whatever it strikes on fire.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Crisis on Earth-X: Sara Lance fights the Nazi invaders at Barry and Iris' wedding, using the censure hanging in the church to improvise a flail; good for spreading incense and kicking Nazi butt.
  • Deadliest Warrior: In the series 1 episode "Pirate vs Knight", army veteran David Coretti wields a morningstar for the latter team.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • As the wildling army battles to take the Wall, the defenders release The Scythe, an enormous anchor on a chain that swings along the Wall, knocking off huge chucks of ice and reducing climbers to Ludicrous Gibs.
    • Brienne wields a flail during her melee with Loras in "What Is Dead May Never Die."
    • Theon is unhorsed with one in "Walk of Punishment" and spends the next several seconds disoriented and struggling to breathe.
    • Benjen wields a flaming flail against the wights when he rescues Bran and Meera.
  • House of the Dragon: Criston Cole's unusual weapon of choice is a spiked flail, his mastery of which allows him to even defeat Daemon Targaryen when he's armed with Dark Sister, by locking the chain around the blade to trip him up. Note that the books consistently refer to this type of weapon as a "morningstar", when that actually refers to a spiked club, while any ball-on-a-chain weapon (whether spiked or not) is called a "flail".
  • Kamen Rider:
  • Merlin: Shows up in one of Arthur's duels, unsurprisingly, given the medieval setting.
  • The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg: Angus' weapon is the Terra Mace, a mace capable of shooting giant boulders and creating earthquakes.
  • Robot Combat League's Crash was intended to use its fists as actual fists. As they more often than not broke after punching the other bot too hard, it was soon discovered they could be swung around like flails and still remain rather deadly.
  • Robot Wars: In early series quite a few competitors tried to use weights dangling from chains as flail weapons, but they never did any damage at all. In the 3rd series of the reboot, a robot called Nuts 2 finally managed to evolve from a Joke Character to a Lethal Joke Character by spinning so fast that its chain flails could actually strike with enough force to cave in armour and smash components, and it ended up with joint 3rd place in the series, at one point even overcoming the unstoppable reigning champions, Carbide, when their flails disabled the drive chain for Carbide's spinning blade weapon!
  • Super Sentai: Shows up throughout the series and of course, its adaptation, Power Rangers:
    • The Tortoise Hammer, usable by the Senpuujin in Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger, is one. By extension, so is the Turtle Mace for the Storm Megazord in Power Rangers Ninja Storm.
    • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has Gokai Yellow's signature trick fitting this trope. Each ranger has a gun and sword all but Red tend to swap weapons around so that they're either going Guns Akimbo (Green and Pink) or Dual Wielding (Blue and Yellow). Yellow uses the grappling wires in the base of the swords to swing them around when she wants to take out large numbers of mooks, hence this trope.
    • Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger introduces one in the form of Bunpachy, a Pachycephalosaurus in a hard hat. The flail is attached to his tail at one end, and worn over said hard hat at the other. The same mech also appears in Power Rangers Dino Charge under the name Pachyzord.

    Music 

    Pinball 
  • All of the female warriors in Gottlieb's Gladiators use flails as weapons. The single male uses a double-headed axe instead.

    Podcasts 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Dementia D'Rose's signature weapon is a black ball'n'chain, which she tends to drape over her shoulder and rest on her ass (her legal signature weapon). She also tends to design her gear to make it look like she's carrying two on her top.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In BattleTech, flails and wrecking balls are both available for mechs (the latter tends to be mounted on Industrialmechs for demolishing buildings, but is capable of being employed as a weapon in a pinch). They're Cool, but Inefficient, even among melee weapons, which are not considered terribly practical to begin with. Among other things, if you miss badly enough with a flail or wrecking ball, you automatically end up smacking yourself with it.
  • The background materials for The Dark Eye feature the Thundercrack, which is a mix of a flail and a cat o' nine tails: A flail with nine balls. It is incredibly hard to control, and the inventor smashed his own skull in on the first tryout; accordingly, any suggestions how to turn this into a usable weapon for players contain heavy penalties.
  • Flails are usable weapons in Dungeons & Dragons, available in both one-handed and two-handed. You can also use a Dire Flail, which is basically a flail on either end of a long stick, just so long as you can avoid thinking too hard about how that's meant to work.
    • Some combination of this and a whip are generally how the Spiked Chain of 3.5 was depicted.
    • In 4th Edition, the Three-Headed-Flail (based on a real weapon) is possibly the best weapon in the game.
    • While possessing the same stats as its rival the Bastard Sword, and more accuracy than its more damaging axe and hammer counterparts. The Triple-Headed Flail suffers from lack of support in terms of feats and magic item options, which relegates it to those who want to stand out from the crowd.
      • Stat-wise, the triple-headed flail is essentially a stock flail with an additional +1 to hit...and an attached 'feat tax', because as a superior melee weapon it's not something most (if any) classes are going to be proficient with by default and so that proficiency must be bought the 'hard' way. If you don't know how to use any kind of flail and want to spend a feat on doing so, this one is arguably the one to spring for; but if you already have proficiency with martial melee weapons and thus regular flails as a class feature, whether the tradeoff is worth it becomes more debatable. (And of course, classes not proficient with the general martial melee weapon category will generally reap fewer benefits from investing feats in learning how to use more weapons because their focus in combat tends to be elsewhere in the first place.)
    • There's also the monster known as the Flail Snail, a giant snail with four mace-like growths in place of feelers.
    • This is the weapon of choice of the Hobgoblin Priests of Bargrivyek.
  • Games Workshop games:
    • Warhammer & Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
      • The Fanatics fielded by the Night Goblins, and their Moonclan Grot successors, wield massive flails that weigh several times the goblin holding it and without strength boosting madcap brew, they wouldn't even be able to lift it.
      • Some Skaven of Clan Pestilens wield a Plague Censer, a church censer-like flail with a plague-infected warpstone concoction burning in it. The fumes from this weapon will poison anyone nearby if they aren't killed by the monk swinging the thing at them.
    • Warhammer:
      • The flail is the traditional weapon of the crazed Flagellants of the Empire.
      • Flails are one of the favoured weapons of the Nurgle, Chaos God of pestilence and decay, and many of his mortal followers carry such weapons as a mark of their devotion.
    • Models with the 'Ball & Chain' Extraordinary Skill in Blood Bowl, such as the manic Goblin Fanatic players, carry massive flails so large and heavy that the centrifugal force causes them to move randomly across the pitch and automatically perform a block on any player in their path, enemy or otherwise.
    • In the 1st edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the two-handed flail is the most damaging normal weapon in the game. It hits harder than two-handed swords, two-handed axes and hammers. Back then the two-handed flail didn't have the tiring disadvantage making it a good choice for Pit Fighters and Troll Slayers.
    • Warhammer 40,000:
      • The arco-flaggelants of the Adeptus Ministorum have their arms replaced with arco-flails, barbed and electrified flails and scourges that they use with brutal fury against the enemies of the Ecclesiarchy. while in the latter, they're a standard armament of arco-flaggelants.
      • In early editions of the game, the Orks fielded Splatta Kannonsnote  that fired rocket-propelled flails at the enemy.
      • The Dark Angels Deathwing Knight Masters are equipped with flails of the Unforgiven, multiheaded, barbed flails that are capable of stripping both armour and flesh from the bodies of the Master's foes. In game these weapons increase the wielder's Strength characteristic and can cut through all but the thickest armour. Additionally, in the 8th Edition rules, the wounds caused by the flail are able to affect multiple models in the target unit as the Master attacks with great sweeping swings.
      • Ork transport vehicles can be equipped with Wreckin’ Balls, large spiked balls attached to a small crane jib. Originating from the Gaiden Game Gorkamorka, the Wreckin’ Ball is used by the vehicle’s passengers and crew can use to crush any enemy who comes too close.
      • The Stone Crusher breed of Tyranid Carnifex sometimes grow a large bio-flail in place of one of their claws. Consisting of hardened bone at the end of muscular tendrils, the Carnifex is able to use this bio-flail to crush multiple prey with a single sweeping attack. This is represented in the 8th Edition rules by the Stone Crusher gaining an Attack for every model in close proximity.
      • During the early editions of the Epic version of the game system, Battle Titans equipped for siege warfare would often be fitted with Wreckers. The Titan primarily used these massive, wrecking balls to demolish enemy held buildings and fortifications but it was equally effective when used to crush opposition units, automatically destroying one in each round of combat.
  • In GURPS the two handed flail is one of the most powerful weapons available. Its damage is exceeded only by the Chainsaw and Force Sword, parrying it is difficult and it doesn't take much strength to use.
  • In Iron Kingdoms several Warjacks weild massive flails that only they can carry, many are present in the Protectorate of Menoth.
  • Present in Role Master and it's cut down sibling Middle-Earth Role Playing. They are effective, with a bonus to attack rolls, but in keeping with the trope have a higher chance of fumbling. Doing so would cause you to automatically critically hit yourself as well as any other consequences from the fumble making them Awesome, but Impractical to use for the most part.

    Video Games 
  • The sixth boss of Adventure Island III has a large flail attached to his left pincer that spins around madly. If he swings it directly at Master Higgins, icicles fall from the ceiling.
  • Alundra has its titular character used a blunt flail as one of his standard weapons, later upgrading it to a big spiky one which he can spin around his head.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures: Fred Fucks deploys a pair of these when he first Turns Red, than a second longer-chained pair in his final phase.
  • Afshaal, the heroic captain from Arabian Magic is The Big Guy among the four heroes, and exclusively uses a spiked ball on a chain as his preferred weapon.
  • Baldur's Gate II features a magical flail you can reassemble. It's got three heads, with different elemental powers. It's very handy against trolls. Which is lucky, because the place you find it in is swarming with them. The weapon's name is the Flail of Ages. Its Head-Hunting subquest continues into the Expansion Pack, adding even more elemental powers.
  • In Battle Brothers, flails are a class of weapon that can be wielded. Their particular niche is that they are good at bypassing shields, but are effective against most enemies, and can also partially bypass armor. Lower-end flails tend to look more like wooden threshers, while higher-end and more lethal flails resemble the typical ball-and-chain form. Chains and whips are also technically considered flails in the game for the purposes of perks and proficiencies.
  • The Heavy Infantryman unit in Battle for Wesnoth replaces its mace with a flail when advancing to a level 2 Shock Trooper. Funnily enough, if it manages to advance to a level 3 Iron Mauler, it switches back to using a mace; there's no practical difference between the weapons other than the accompanying sound effect in battle (they're both impact melee weapons, both get the same number of attacks, and damage goes up with level either way), but it may make one stop and wonder a bit.
  • In Bayonetta 2, the reward for beating all chapters on 3rd Climax difficulty (the hardest standard difficulty) is a live, angry chain chomp she chains to her legs and uses as a flail. It's as deadly as it is absurd and unexpected.
  • Black Tiger featured a knight using a flail and shield. Besides being as big as Black Tiger himself, the flail is epic to the point that it shoots out three streams of knives. The flail has different possible heads, ranging from a double-bladed axe to a large fireball.
  • Bulletstorm has the Flailgun: it doesn't just fire explosives, it fires two remotely detonated, sticky bombs attached to each other with a chain. If they flail around while wrapping around a target or an obstacle, they can shear an enemy in half. Using an unfortunate target as a walking bomb or kicking him back into his friends sometimes gets the protagonist to say "epic flail".
  • Carmageddon II has a spiky ball and chain power up called the "Mutant Tail Thing". Usually more of a hinderance than a help, but skilled usage grants extra style bonuses.
  • Castlevania. The main characters' most prominent weapon is actually a whip, but some games allow it to upgrade it to sort of a whip-flail thing. You start with a whip, which becomes a flail, which becomes a morning star. Some games even take it up a notch by including a whip/flail that is either covered in flames or outright shoots fireballs.
  • The Maceman unit from Civilization IV carries one of these.
  • Dark Castle has one at the bottom of the Trouble area, used to knock out the guard who blocks the keys to escape the dungeon. Beyond Dark Castle and Return to Dark Castle allow you to take it with you.
  • Diablo II has Khalim's Flail. It is a quest item that you get to make into a relic/artifact by transmuting/fusing it with its previous owner's brain, eye and heart. The resulting weapon had three chains attached to its handle, with metallic spiked skulls for the hammers. All in a day's work.
  • The expansion of Diablo III, Reaper of Souls, features the Crusader, whose signature weapon is a one-handed or two-handed flail.
  • In Cryo Interactive's Dragon Lore: the Legend Begins, the hero Werner Von Wallernrod's mightiest weapon is a three-flail morningstar.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • A semi-recurring weapon in the series. It is usually classified as a type of whip for the purposes of the game, being able to hit groups of enemies at once.
    • In Dragon Quest V, the Hero can equip the Flail of Destruction, obtainable only in the Bonus Dungeon.
    • Flails are their own weapon type in Dragon Quest VIII.
  • Dyna Gear have a defense-based power-up which creates a shield made of three flails consisting of spiked balls attached to chains, which circles around you pulping enemies that gets in your way.
  • Dian Wei had his primary weapon changed from a really big axe to a really big morningstar in Dynasty Warriors 6 when most of the characters were redesigned. The sequel reverted it back to an axe but gave Dong Zhuo (Formerly a serrated broadsword) and Cao Ren (Formerly a buckler-blade thing) more modest ones. The subsequent follow-up took it away from both of them and gave it Gan Ning.
  • Eastern Exorcist has the Elk Demon boss, who uses a gigantic spiked ball on a heavy chain (larger than you!) to crush you into a pulp.
  • The Matron, a hench(wo)man for the titular Evil Genius, uses one of these as a primary weapon...and prosthetic hand.
  • A one-handed flail is the primary weapon of the Conqueror class in For Honor.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Selphie from Final Fantasy VIII uses a particularly long set of nunchaku for fighting, although her combat discipline mostly lies in Confusion Fu. Her use of this weapon marks their first appearance in the game since the very first game for US players, and the third overall (though only on the NES version). And like in the Soul Series, she is forced to use a tri-rod in the UK version.
    • Morning stars and flails are classified as a type of staff in Final Fantasy V. They're present so that the White Mage and Time Mage classes have a genuine method of attacking physically.
    • Morning stars and flails are present in Final Fantasy VI as weapons for Celes and Terra. Their main feature is that they're row-ignoring.
    • Final Fantasy Adventure: The Star is a studded ball and chain that swings around the player's head and then flies forward. It's not the strongest weapon, but its ability to hit adjacent enemies in multiple directions, and break walls without needing to spend pickaxes, make it very useful.
    • Reuben in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest makes use of a morning star as his sole weapon. As far as weapon weaknesses in the game are concerned, it's an axe equivalent.
  • Grenades in the Gears of War series are attached to a stick by a length of chain. Epic Flail indeed. Also, the Locust Mauler is a Giant Mook that carries a huge shield and uses a flail once it closes in.
  • The Blades of Chaos/Athena wielded by Kratos in God of War are essentially a bladed variation of the Epic Flail.
  • Grandia III: Ulf wields a realistic flail as his weapon. What makes it stand out is that he spins it constantly, stoping only when he uses his special attacks or if he's struck by an enemy.
  • Play enough Gundam Breaker and you will eventually pick up a few whip-type weapons, including a variety of Gundam hammers, being flails scaled up to Humongous Mecha size. Perhaps the most impressive variation is the Kämpfer's chain mines, a bunch of magnetic mines attached in a row to a handle via metal links. You swing several tons of demolition charges around to bludgeon enemies to death, with the added bonus of some extra explosive damage in the bargain.
  • The Wii Game Gundam SD: Scad Hammers takes advantage of the Wiimote controls and has the player controlling various Gundams armed with a ball and chain. Appearantly, Tem Ray has been smoking something and has disabled all the other weapons for the Gundam.
  • Axl Low from the Guilty Gear series uses a modified Kusari-Gama (see below), only with a scythe-blade on both ends. He still throws the blades out like the weighted end would have been, mind, so maybe they're heavy enough to act in the same way.
    • STRIVE introduces a new character named Goldlewis Dickinson who wields a coffin attached to a chain as if it were a massive wrecking ball. The coffin itself even has something inside of it to provide extra weight—a cryptid that Goldlewis insists is not an alien.
  • The Russian indie game Hammerfight is all about this, being a game that focuses entirely on centrifugal force. Aside from the selection of hammers, axes and swords, you have a large selection of flails and flail like weapons, such as the "colossus", a sawblade on a chain laced with spikes. That is, the chain itself has spikes coming off it. It should be pointed out that the head on each of these flail weapons is larger then a human being. Also, if you are so inclined and are skilled enough, you can use two at once.
  • Nariko's titular weapon in Heavenly Sword can morph into a variant of these for weak attacks.
  • Heavy Weapon's fourth boss, War Wrecker is a wrecking ball crane used for war. Getting hit by the wrecking ball is a One-Hit Kill regardless of shielding, but the boss is incredibly easy if you know how to avoid it. The rematch against it in level 13 is a different story- it can now extend its wrecking ball to toss up rocks from the ground, making it a lot harder to avoid damage this time round.
  • In The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Hulk has the ability to make Improvised Weapons out of various objects, including using a wrecking ball as a gigantic mace much like Thor's recurring enemy Absorbing Man.
  • Juice Galaxy has the Fail Flail. It was originally a flail that didn't even do damage; eventually, it got patched out.
  • Kingdom of Loathing:
    • The game has the ridiculously overelaborate ninja weapon, a 3-handed...weapon. It has an increased critical chance, but like all 3-handed weapons a huge multiplier to fumbles as well.
      "Well, it's definitely a weapon of some sort. It consists of four long blades, three wooden poles, six steel chains, and an assortment of spikes. You have absolutely no idea how to use it, but it looks totally badass."
    • On a more mundane note, there's also the Legendary Epic weapon for Turtle Tamers, the Chelonian morningstar. The KOL Wiki suggests it could be an 'epic flail'. Defeat your Nemesis and it becomes the Flail of the Seven Aspects. The game has other flails, too; depending on the dev team's mood, it may be a melee or ranged weapon.
  • In The King of Fighters, Korea Team regular Chang Koehan uses a ball and chain from his time as a prisoner as his weapon of choice.
  • The Flail Knight, one of the Meta-Knights from Kirby's Adventure and Kirby Super Star, wields one.
  • In League of Legends, Sejuani the Winter's Wrath wields a giant flail with a head apparently made out of a large chunk of ice wrapped with spiked metal bands. Her alternate skins change the head to a heavy piece of wood studded with massive, curved thorns, a rough lump of jagged crystal, a landmine, or a large poro-snack (presumably intended to double as a Motivation on a Stick for her mount in that skin, which is changed from a large boar to a giant poro).
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • Mordos Kull from Mace: The Dark Age uses one of these.
  • Flails (called Hammers) are weapons usable in Makai Kingdom. Given that one of the top attacks for the weapon is to slam it into the ground and swing the stage around, it's also a suitably Epic Flail. Also of note is Asagi, who has one of these as her subweapon. Did we mention that the head of the flail is as big as she is?
  • The X-Hunter Violen in Mega Man X2 uses this as his primary attack. In the rematch, there are disappearing blocks which can sometimes help block his attack, although the chain doesn't obey the same game physics and can pass through, so you need to exercise cautious judgement. Hilariously, his weakness in the rematch is Charged Bubble Splash (Not the Shoryuken, which can only be obtained two stages later.) Knight Man in Mega Man 6 also uses a mace, although to far less effectiveness in range and power.
  • The final boss of Metal Warriors wields one that is larger than the mecha you're using to fight him.
  • Minecraft Dungeons: A flail appears in the game as a unique variant of the mace, having the Chains enchantment applied to it by default. Notably, it's the only weapon in the game that has Jiggle Physics.
  • Moloch from Mortal Kombat is a gigantic oni with a chained metal ball wrapped around one of his arms.
  • In Nefarious, the Villain Protagonist Crow uses a giant wrecking ball attached to a hoverpod in the Insektia Kingdom.
  • In NetHack you can get punished with a ball and chain. Bummer, but you can pick up the ball and swing it around as a weapon because of Developer's Foresight. Aside from the ludicrous weight, it's actually a pretty good weapon. Also handy because you could pick up the ball and throw it. Which would then cause you to fly over several squares as the chain lost its slack and took you with it. It was one of the only ways to "jump" the sections of water.
  • The first boss in Neugear is an armored giant who swings a spiked ball on a chain larger than you. Said boss is appropriately named "Iron Ball Man" in-game.
  • Valen, a recruitable NPC in Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, uses a heavy flail as his weapon of choice.
  • Ninja Gaiden had both the nunchaku and the Vigoorian flail to satisfy swingers. It somewhats subverts the trope by being quite practical and lightweight. But it's still quite epic in the right hands. Ninja Gaiden 2 has the Kusari-gama. On one hand we have Epic Flail. On the other we have Sinister Scythe.
  • Nomolos: Storming the Catsle: Nomolos can collect a flail that he swings in a circle around himself to attack enemies.
  • Odin in Odin Sphere uses one of the "huge spiked ball" variety. And we mean huge- Odin himself is about 20 feet tall and his weapon, the Balor, is bigger than the entire bodies of any of the playable characters! It's explained in Updated Re Release that this was intentional on Odin's part; the larger and greater the Psypher, the more powerful it is in the long run. Forging it was a literal national undertaking for his country, and even the Fairies' resident Ultimate Blacksmith admitted he couldn't make a Psypher more powerful than it.
  • Sweetheart from OMORI uses a pink one with a spiky, pink heart at the end instead of the usual ball, making it look like something out of a Magical Girl series.
  • The Wired Lance in Phantasy Star Online 2 is an odd blade version of this, and has the longest range out of all the melee weapons. Most of its photon artes involve binding the enemy; one of the more amusing ones turning them into the Epic Flail by swinging them in circles to dish out some Grievous Harm with a Body.
  • Dhelmise, the Sea Creeper Pokémon introduced in Pokémon Sun and Moon, uses a nearly 12'10'' tall anchor attached to a Variable-Length Chain as a flail. The sheer power of it can One-Hit KO a Wailord.
  • In Punch-Out Wii, Aran Ryan packs an improvised flail made using a boxing glove and a rope when you rematch him in the Title Defense mode. He can also use it when he is knocked down, though it cannot knock Mac down.

  • Ratchet: Deadlocked has had the Scorpion/Leviathan Flail. It is, however, so heavy the head scrapes along the ground when he's carrying it. It may not be the most powerful weapon in his arsenal, but it's certainly one of the most fun. It has its own shockwave. and the spiky head of the upgraded version is attached to the handle with lightning.
  • The poorly designed and received Hack and Slash game Red Ninja: End of Honor has the protagonist waving around essentially a shuriken-on-a-string.
  • In Remnant Fromthe Ashes, there are two examples. There's the Wastelander Flail which is made from a Buri skull (this is a large and muscular race from a nuked planet) and the Butcher's Flail which is earned from an alternate kill of the Unclean One and can corrode enemies as a debuff.
  • In Resident Evil 4, the Los Illuminados cultists in the second act of the game can use flails as weapons. They have surprisingly long range and deal heavy damage to Leon, but have a second-long windup that is telegraphed by the rattling chain.
  • The opening video for Rock Band 2 features a microphone-flail. Power Metal indeed.
  • Rockin Kats has the Hammer Punch, which replaces the glove on Willy's boxing glove gun with a flail head, giving him added attack power while sacrificing his ability to grab things.
  • Rockman 7 EP: Like Violen, Spring Man wields one from his head. The Bikkuracoil ability obtained after beating him counts as well.
  • In RuneScape, there are two different flails. The Verac's Flail looks like any other flail (despite being able to occasionally hit through protection prayers), but the Ivandis Flail is on an enchanted staff made of silvthril (silver + mithril) and has a blessed silver sickle in place of a spiked ball. It's worth mentioning that the latter is used against the Vyrewatch, creatures that would otherwise be able to predict your exact movements and dodge your attacks. It's the flail's unpredictable nature that counters this.
  • Earthquake out of the Samurai Shodown series. With a justified reason why the blunt head at the end of the chain is as big as a normal person's head—so are his fists. Meanwhile, Basara has some..weird spinning bladed thingy on a chain that he can toss around, too.
  • In Sengoku Basara 3, Kuroda Kanbe has his wrists permanently cuffed to a huge iron ball, which he swings around as a weapon. As an added bonus, it's possible to hold the normal attack button and keep spinning around, essentially letting inertia take over (though he'll get dizzy after a while).
  • Naraku from Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson has a pair of iron balls tied around her ankles which she uses as flails. Where they appear to be about palm-sized at first, she can changed their size to be as big as she is.
  • The first boss of Sonic the Hedgehog is Dr. Robotnik flying a small hovercraft armed with a giant wrecking ball on the bottom.
  • The Archfiend known as the Dullahan in Soul Sacrifice wields one of these. The ball is his own severed head.
  • Spectrobes: Spikan and Spikanor have spike-covered balls on the ends of their tails that they swing around to attack.
  • The boss of Zoness in Star Fox 64 is a submarine/barge called the Sarumarine that fires a massive, spiked, spinning wrecking ball when he's facing torward you. Taking out the periscope he uses to aim while submerged makes him "fire anyway", which actually can make the attack more dangerous as you'll no longer know where it'll fire, doubly so in Expert mode where any physical impact will shear off one or both of your wings.
  • Our hero Mike from StarTropics starts his quest with a measly Yo-Yo, but upgrades to a flail called Shooting Star in chapter 3, and then ultimately the epic Super Nova in chapter 7.
  • Super Mario Galaxy has Bomb Boos, exploding ghosts that can be grabbed by their tongues and swung around like flails.
  • Bowser from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars can equip a spiked mace and a chain that he throws as one of his weapons. Also, he can equip Chomps, which work on a very similar basis.
  • Prior to Beta, this was Mega Man's down smash attack in the Super Smash Bros. fangame Super Smash Flash 2, based on the Knight Crush from Mega Man 6 (where it had no chain; just a free-flying mace head).
  • Super Robot Wars Alpha 3: Baran Doban has the Daifunsai (literal translation: Great Pulverization). It's a Super Robot-sized wrecking ball smashing you upside the face that is faster than the speed of sound!
    Ware koso wa~ Ware koso wa~ Baran Doban!
    • Sikalog of the Inspectors also favors a flail, albeit not quite as huge of one.
    • In Original Generation 2 Arado is given a Boost Hammer for one mission, as it was the best weapon to suit his fighting style the designer could come up with on short notice. If you perform well enough with it, you get to keep it.
    • Forte Gigas, the flail is as nearly as large as the sprite wielding it. And it's an Energy Flail to boot.
  • Terraria:
    • There are several large flail weapons in the game, the best of which can set enemies on fire or confuse them. The player can craft some of them, like the Meatball and the Dao of Pow. The game features four different flails, the Ball o' Hurt found in shadow orbs of The Corruption, the Blue Moon found in the locked chests of the dungeon, the Sunfury found in the shadow chests of the underworld, which can set enemies on fire, the Dao of Pao that's crafted in hardmode with a Ying-Yang theme and the ability to confuse enemies, and lastly, the Flower Pow which has a 16.67% chance to drop from Plantera, that launches petals torward enemies as long as the fire button is held and there are enemies near. If you hold down the mouse button and hold left and right at the right times, you can even get the flail "spinning" around your character.
    • While different mechanically from other flails in the game, the Solar Eruption is a giant flaming spear head on a chain. It does extremely high damage, goes through solid blocks, and can hit a target multiple times. It also causes explosions centered on any enemy it hits and inflicts Daybroken, which is a more powerful version of On Fire debuff that can't be put out by water and even spreads to other enemies.
    • The 1.4 "Journey's End" update reworked the flails again. Direct throws are incredibly powerful but you can also hold the attack button to swing it around your character and anything foolish enough to approach you takes a reduced amount of the damage the weapon deals normally. When the flail is thrown out, you can click and hold the attack button to let it drop to the ground, crushing anything beneath it and scratching anything else that touches it afterward.
    • There is also the Morning Star. It's technically a whip and more suited for Summoners, but it deals by far the most damage of whip-type weapons.
  • Tomba!'s weapon of choice. Later in the game it can be morphed with a grappling hook.
  • Suika Ibuka of the Touhou series. Those ball/pyramid/cube and chains attached to her aren't just for show, and she also uses her sake gourd as one.
  • The game Whiplash combines this with Chained Heat, with the two main characters being Spanx, a maniacal weasel and Redmond, a Nigh-Invulnerable rabbit chained together attempting to escape the Mega-Corp that have been using them for tests. Spanx swings Redmond around like a weapon and Redmond can occasionally go into an Unstoppable Rage where he wantonly smashes thing by himself.
  • Wild ARMs: Belselk/Berserk wields a massive flail that can one shot your characters or at least leave them with very low health, especially in Alter Code F.
  • Subverted in World of Warcraft. Not a single flail to be seen anywhere in the game, and the Morningstar weapon is just a spiked mace. This is probably due to the limitations of the graphics. Only in the Legion expansion, flails made a brief appearance as a Protection Warrior's artifact called Legionbreaker. It was a feature weapon in Diablo 2, where not much was more fun than seeing a Zealadin in action.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 

    Web Arts 
  • This picture. While the picture itself is not necessarily NSFW, others on the same site are (but none are about this trope). From the same site, this picture that shares its title with this trope.

    Western Animation 
  • Principal Waxelplax inThe Fairly OddParents! mentions that she keeps one under her desk in the episode "What's The Difference?". Later she proceeds to chase Chester and Mandie with it when they try to grab the doorknobs which have been replaced by jelly filled doughnuts.
    Waxelplax: GET AWAY FROM MY JELLY!!!
  • One of the the villains in Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors wields a large, green, plant-like flail.
  • Transformers has quite a few:
    • The Transformers:
      • Megatron used an energon flail in the second episode, which was never seen again but was made available with come reissues of the toy.
    • The Sharkticons (which despite the name looked like weird frog-piranha monsters than sharks) that could use their tails as flails in robot mode. An action figure was made under the name "Gnaw."
    • Transformers: Animated:
      • Bulkhead can turn his fist into a wrecking ball that he can also shoot as a projectile. This is awesome. Jazz has energy nunchucks; if you're wondering how they stay together, well, Rule of Cool. The Decepticon Oil Slick has a weapon that's basically two halves of a barrel connected by a long chain. The Dinobot Swoop also has a flail-in common with the weapons of the other Dinobots, it can burst into flames.
      • Bulkhead takes this trope further in "Three's a Crowd": his wrecking ball gets stuck on Mixmaster's hand, so he uses Mixmaster's entire body as a flail.
    • By using his grapplers to wield his ax, Optimus Prime can do this as well. (It also is partially made of energy and somehow manages to keep its un-connected solid portions in place. Like Jazz's energon nunchuks, it runs on Rule of Cool.)
  • Panthro of ThunderCats has his cat-themed nunchucks (spelled in various inconsistent ways). The twist was that, when thrust like a whip, the blue side fired projectiles and the red fired energy blasts.
  • The Tracker, of W.I.T.C.H. fame. (Well, he may not be well-known enough to call it fame, but it's awesome.)
  • The Simpsons. Homer chasing Bart down the sidewalk with a flail: "I'll mace you good!"
    • In the episode "Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes", one of the bounty hunters is a bear wielding raccoon-chucks.
    • Homer's weapon of choice for home defense, "The Defender", a cinder block swung about on the end of a chain
    • In "Homer the Smithers", Mr. Burns is accosted by a drunk (but friendly) Lenny while Smithers is away. When Smithers starts agonizing over it, Burns reassures him that "If things had turned ugly, I always had my mace" and gestures towards an actual mace mounted on the inside of his limo.
  • One of the mooks who got fused with their weapons in Quest for Camelot had Epic Flails for arms.
  • Heloise used one on an episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes, as her weapon of choice against a ghost.
  • Used in Voltron Force, when the yellow lion forms the head of Voltron.
  • Several times in The Venture Bros. music video of the Shallow Gravy song "Jacket". The lead singer, Dermott Fictel, has a set of microphone nunchucks; when he isn't singing, he's using them as nunchucks to badass effect.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), Ninja Tribunal acolyte Adam McKay uses a ball and chain as his original weapon of choice, before replacing it with a hammer.
  • Chronozoid carries this attached to a curved axe blade on Skysurfer Strike Force.
  • Young Justice
    • Aqualad occasionally makes hard water flails using his special weapons.
    • Sportsmaster, a villain with a sports gimmick uses an Olympic hammer like a flail in combat.
  • Kung Fu Panda. In "The Secret Museum of Kung Fu", the Furious Five get thrashed in their first encounter with the Lin Kuei, wolf assassins wielding huge iron weights on the end of chains.
  • The fusion gem Sugilite in Steven Universe wields a monster flail composed of Garnet's gauntlets on the end of Amethyst's whip.
  • Gravity Falls. In the episode "Boss Mabel", Dipper uses one to hunt the Gremloblin. Although he does have some trouble carrying it because it's twice his size, he somehow ends up capturing the beast.
  • In Castlevania (2017) during season 2 when Trevor and his crew return to the ruined Belmont estate, he discovers hidden away the Morning Star flail, an stronger version to his normal leather whip. The tip tends to make vampires explode upon contact. Even Dracula remembers the weapon when it is used against him.

    Real Life 
  • Agricultural flails make threshing more efficient by adding force to each blow through centrifugal force. They consist of a long staff with a hinged cylindrical head on the end. Peasant conscripts militarized them by attaching metal spikes. The 15th century Hussites took that to the extreme.
  • The "ball and chain" type flail seems to have been rarer in Europe than the agricultural flail, judging by its few depictions in art and almost complete lack of them in texts. Several historians have questioned whether they existed at all because of this scant documentation and the fact that many flails of this type in museums have turned out to be forgeries. Shafted weapons expert John Waldman has examined a few in private collections that he believed to be authentic, but even if they did exist, they were certainly rare. It probably had to do with their inherent impracticality and danger to the user.
  • A famous eastern weapon is the Kusari-Gama, a chain with a weight on one end, and a hand-held scythe on the other. Like the nunchaku, it was developed from a weaponized tool (that being the sickle itself). There is also the similar Kyoketsu-Shoei, which was a knife on the end of a long cord.
  • Mine flails are large cylinders attached to the front of tank-like vehicles note  and are used to clear mines by intentionally detonating them. Heavy chains of fist-sized metal balls are attached to the cylinder. As the cylinder spins, the chains whip around and strike the ground repeatedly, detonating any mines beneath the surface. Massive shields block the the rest of the vehicle from the blasts. This method of mine clearing was invented just before the Battle of El Alamein.
  • There are also poi, which are small weights attached to roughly arm-length strings, cords, or chains. They are then whirled around the body at highly improbable speed. Look here, here, and here for some examples.
  • There are weapons called Meteor Hammers which are long cords with weighted ends. Wrapping them around the body is used to generate speed, and power. Some performers use fire pots on the end for special effects, these are called Fire Meteors.
  • Certain Ankylosaurs had a bony club at the end of their tail, which could easily break an attacker's bones. Most predatory dinos would be in for a hard fight because of that, not to mention its natural armour.
  • Earlier Stegosaurs had spikes on their tails (unofficially called thagomizers). Some skeletons of allosaurs have been found with holes punched clean through bones from these spikes.
  • Thresher sharks use their tails as a giant flail to send shockwaves through the water, killing prey.
  • Giraffes use their heads like this when fighting against each other, with their necks as the chain. Those tiny horns they have aren't just for show. Just one example.
  • Flails are easy weapons to improvise, such as a bike chain and padlock or a belt with a large buckle on the end. Indonesian street gangs have come to use bicycle sprockets attached to belts for their rumbles, and the infamous Lyuber street gang from late 1980s Russia used circular saw blades on chains.
  • In the US, it is perfectly legal to have a bandana and a lock on your person, and even to carry them with the lock already tied off to the bandana. Some motorcycle clubs have thus favored this improvised flail as a hand weapon.
  • A blackjack, aka a billy club, slap jack, and many other names, consists of a lead weight attached to leather or other tough strips, with or without a handle. They've been used by law enforcement in the past and are illegal to own in many jurisdictions. Using them as a flail can cause more severe and often fatal injury. The less lethal acetate police batons of today were created to have a nasty alternative which is less likely to cause lethal injury.

 
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Video Example(s):

Midbus flail attack

Midbus spins around with a ball-and-chain before throwing it at Bowser.

Grenade flail

Garp's Iron Ball

Hogun's flail

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Midbus flail attack

Midbus spins around with a ball-and-chain before throwing it at Bowser.

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Example of:

Main / EpicFlail

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Midbus flail at...

Grenade flail

Garp's Iron Ball

Hogun's flail