Licking the Blade



"I need to shave my tongue."

- Weiss Kreuz Outtakes

"Hate to say, but that's hardly hygienic. You have no idea how many creatures that sword has cut through."

- Hiei, Yu Yu Hakusho

A common characteristic of blade-wielding evildoers is their tendency to lick their weapons, whether clean or bloodied, as if their weapon was a cherry-flavored popsicle of non-diabetic death. Often the sharp edge, no less.

Generally considered a giveaway that this character is a Psycho for Hire, a Combat Sadomasochist, or otherwise sufficiently off his rocker to do anything. Especially creepy when paired with Evil Tastes Good flavored Hemo Eroticism. Conversely, can be major Fetish Fuel.

Some character feel a deep attachment to their weapon, almost as if it's a person. There's nothing wrong with that.

The one doing the licking isn't necessarily evil or rather, more accurately, isn't always a story's antagonist. An Anti-Hero or Villain Protagonist can be seen doing this, especially if they're engaging their Super-Powered Evil Side. Usually to showcase the fact they've either gone off the deep end or are very close to it, and that it is scary. Often major Fetish Fuel, especially if the licker is attractive.

See also Finger-Lickin' Evil, You Taste Delicious. A character who does this often may have Blood Lust. See also Lecherous Licking.

Anime & Manga

 * Yashamaru of Basilisk very suggestively licked the Razor Floss he was using to pin his opponent before flexing his fingers and causing the entire rock to explode.
 * Saitou Hajime in Rurouni Kenshin does this at least once.
 * Seras Victoria licks a sword she's holding, while she and it are covered in blood, in the Title Sequence of the TV series version of Hellsing; however, she's trying to stop herself from doing so. This is probably a depiction of her fear of losing what's left of her humanity.
 * Yura of the Hair, an early Inuyasha opponent, did this at every opportunity.
 * Rider in Fate/stay night.
 * Hidan from Naruto does this as a ritual. He gets the opponent's blood on his scythe and licks the blood, which basically makes all the injuries that happen to Hidan go to his opponent.
 * Orochimaru licks a kunai at one point, before his fight with Sarutobi.
 * Like master like student, Anko licked a kunai she had just cut Naruto with before the Forest of Death stage of the chunin exams. Blood included.
 * And in a filler episode Benten licked a kunai before threatening Hotaru with it.
 * In Yu Yu Hakusho, when an opponent licks Hiei's stolen katana, Hiei remarks that it can't be sanitary because not even he can remember how many people he's killed with it.
 * Two instances in the original Weiss Kreuz, or rather once instance Lampshaded in the DVD outtakes. Early on in the series, a Mook licks his hand ax before throwing it at a picture of his target. In the dub outtakes, the same scene is shown with the character's voice actor making the above line.
 * Several other characters in the series do it as well, most notably Farfarello of Schwarz.
 * A minor Mook does this in Berserk - and promptly cuts his tongue when the hero shoves him out of his way.
 * Not a blade, but Bakura of Yu-Gi-Oh!
 * Buggy from One Piece does this in the opening credits of the anime.
 * As does Big Knife Sarquis from the Jaya Island arc.
 * Zoro does it a couple of times, most notably during the Thriller Bark Arc against Oz (and he looks AWESOME in the process)
 * Guitar, the swordsman general of the Mazoku in Violinist of Hameln does this from time to time.
 * Tsukiyomi from Mahou Sensei Negima does this before her fight against her sempai Setsuna. She does so while refering to Setsuna as "delicious" and asking for satisfaction, all the while drooling in a woozy state of carnal bloodlust.
 * Later on in another battle against Setsuna, she pulls this again, in an arguably creepier way.
 * Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Strikers has Due, one of the combat cyborgs, who does this after assassinating  Somewhat squicky though, since they are just  Still pretty damn creepy.
 * Creed from Black Cat does this a few times.
 * Mion Sonozaki  from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (Watanagashi-hen)does this with a nail. She then prepares to hammer the nail, and several others, into Keiichi's finger joints. The girl is a bit batshit insane in this particular arc.
 * King Gor does this during the final battle of Shin Getter Robo vs Neo Getter Robo. Did I mention it was his blood on a Getter Tomahawk he had just pulled from his shoulder?
 * In Change 123, after Hibiki fends away a potential rapist with a single kick, there is a scene where he plans a revenge while recovering from the injuries. In one panel, his maniacal gaze is shown reflected in the blade of his katana as he licks it.
 * Multiple monsters of the week do this on Inuyasha.
 * Amaha from the Witchblade anime loves this, as part of her overall Orgasmic Combat persona while using her Superpowered Axe Crazy side. Masane does this too
 * Sarah from the American comics does this once in a while as well.
 * Happens twice in the second episode of Slayers, after the cursed knife turns a shop-keeper homicidal.
 * Almost every single scene with Mooks in Fist of the North Star has at least one of them licking a weapon. The pic shown is that of Spade, who licks Kenshiro's blood off his claw after scoring a hit on him. It's the only major hit the bad guy scores on him before being rendered already dead.
 * Ladd Russo from Baccano did this while fighting Chane on top of the Flying Pussyfoot.
 * Manji in Blade of the Immortal at one point licks a knife he's taken off someone he suspected of planning to kill him to check if it was poisoned.

Comicbooks

 * Heroes For Hire' Tarantula licks her blades after one battle.
 * Storm from X-Men did this once after drawing first blood. Her opponent is a mutant who could produce knives out of bone, with one being the blade Storm used. So she was liking her opponent's blood from a bone knife, made out of the body of her enemy.
 * The Ultimate Marvel version of Red Skull does this after cutting off his own face.
 * Batman villain Mr. Zsasz has been known to cut his tongue (along with every other part of his body) to mark a kill.
 * The Atom villain Dwarf Star AKA Sylbert Rundine really likes to do this.
 * Bearclaw on the cover of Elf Quest: Wolfrider. He is more of an anti-hero than his son in the chronologically-later stories.
 * In Batman R.I.P., The Joker does this

Fan Art

 * In the Ask Pinkamina Diane Pie Tumblr, this is Lampshaded; after expressing her contempt for the act, Pinkie attempts to lick the blade, but cuts her tongue in the process.

Film

 * Ash's possessed girlfriend does this after attacking him with a knife in the original Evil Dead. Thanks to the solid white contacts the actress wore, the scene looks more goofy than scary as she fumbles her lips around the blade that she can't even see.
 * The bad guy at the start of the best fight scene of all time in Undefeatable.
 * Lurtz does this during his fight with Aragorn at the end of the film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Aragorn stabs him in the leg with his elven dagger, Lurtz pulls it out, licks his own blood off of it and then throws it back at Aragorn, who deflects it with his sword. It's awesome.
 * Especially since Aragorn was only supposed to dodge the dagger and Viggo Mortensen blocked it on accident.
 * Parodied in Tim Burton's film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. After killing a large bug with a machete, Willy Wonka tastes the juices left on the blade. He's looking for new flavors of candy.
 * Billy Tallent from Hard Core Logo does this during a drug trip. It's... disturbing, in a squiggly-feelings kind of way.
 * A supremely creepy example occurs in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stokers Dracula when the titular vampire cleans a straight razor after his guest accidentally cuts himself shaving. Dracula laps up the blood in a move that reads like a desperate junkie.
 * Mengele in Surf Nazis Must Die does this after killing an opponent in a Knife Fight.

Literature

 * Lijah Cuu from the Gaunts Ghosts series.
 * Worse, one of the passages where he does this it implies that the blood is from.
 * In the Discworld novel Jingo the (evil)head of a Klatchian(Faux-Arabic)army has been told the opposing Ankh-Morporkian forces are confidant of success despite being outnumbered and untrained as they believe the Klatchians will run as soon as they taste some cold steel. He then licks a sword handed to him and declares he isn't the least bit apprehensive. And if that is as cold as steel gets.
 * Non-villain example from Redwall; when Dippler swears an oath to kill the slayer of his leader, he licks the blade of his rapier; "I'll hunt him down, and when I do this blade'll be wet with something else."
 * There used to be a fanfic in which an Original Character villain somehow managed to cut his own entire tongue out while doing this. Since the tongue is rooted pretty deeply in the mouth and one generally doesn't lick with enough pressure for a licked blade to slice all the way through the muscle, it's unclear exactly how he managed this.
 * The Lady Queen Maeve of the Winter Court in Summer Knight is described as almost lazily licking blood from her sword in the midst of a gigantic turf war between the faerie Courts.
 * In novelized accounts, Strahd von Zarovich does this to the bloodied dagger with which he murdered his brother Sergei. Justified in this case (even though he's not Ax Crazy) because this murder initiated Strahd's own transformation into D&D's most infamous vampire.
 * Drizzt Do'Urden does this at one point, believe it or not - he just tried to eat mutton off his dagger in the middle of battle for some reason. For what it's worth, it would not be surprising at all if the chapter involving this, "Biggrin's House", were run as an actual D&D session to determine how it went, so the OOC of the mutton thing may be excused.
 * In Lord of the Rings, there is a place in the last book where one orc murders another (with multiple knife stabs), and licks the blade clean.
 * In Warhammer 40000, Priests of Khorne are mentioned as "idly" licking blood from their blades in the Grey Knights novel Hammer of Daemons.

Live-Action TV

 * In Firefly, Jayne annoys other crew members by doing this. During one episode, Jayne spits on the blade of his combat knife (and yes, it has a name) as he's sharpening it before licking off the spit. The others are...somewhat disconcerted.
 * Callisto from Xena: Warrior Princess licks a dagger at one point.

Magazines

 * There was a cover for an art magazine with a female Ranger from a Standard Fantasy Setting looking at a men's mag (actually a scroll) in shock as she did this as the first "page" girlie pic.

Music

 * One of the girls from the music video for Queens of the Stone Age's "3's and 7's" is seen licking a knife blade in one shot.
 * This is on full display on the cover art of Head Control System's album "Murder Nature".
 * The line "She drinks the blood from a jagged edge" from the Jimi Hendrix song Dolly Dagger.

Tabletop Games

 * Konrad Von Carstein of the Warhammer universe is known for pausing mid-battle to do this. His model even depicts him doing a variation. To his defense, he's a vampire.
 * Another model that's depicting doing this is Forgeworld's Great Unclean One.
 * The eponymous creature on the Magic card Necrite.
 * In the 3.0 edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, one of the NPCs statted out in the book is a CN mercenary troll with a cursed sword (minor curse- leaks blood constantly) He has the habit of licking it.

Theatre

 * The man playing Hamlet in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged does this to his knife after stabbing Polonius. In slow motion.
 * It should be noted that this is not called for in the script, which is a fluctuating thing anyway considering it changes depending upon audience interaction, location, and random ad-libs. Since this is the very nature of the show, it's understandable.

Videogames

 * In Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, Yaksini, who wields to swords, will lick them as part of her default animation.
 * While it's not a sword (but figuratively an axe!), one of I-no's opening poses in Guilty Gear XX involves licking her guitar.
 * Vico, the psycho-axe(sword)-crazy-maniac in A Dance With Rogues, does this in the mines in the second chapter. Some of the player's dialogue options immediately afterwards are just ridiculous.
 * Vega/Balrog from the Street Fighter series is usually doing this during his win quotes.
 * He actually removed his mask to do this in the first anime movie. Thus exposing himself to Chun-Li's kicks...
 * In the RPG Vandal Hearts, a type of enemies you meet relatively early in the game (actually ordinary soldiers who have been exposed to Sealed Evil in a Can) will lick their blades before every attack - making them significantly creepier.
 * Haunting Ground: The Ax Crazy homunculus maid Daniella does this to her weapon (either a long shard of glass or a fire poker, depending on the player's actions) in a rather disturbing manner in the cutscene before her boss fight.
 * Metal Gear Solid 2, Bisexual, possibly-vampire knife freak Vamp does this in his introduction cutscene.
 * Played almost to the point of self-parody in MGS4, in which Vamp licks his knives at an average of twice per cutscene appearance. At one point, he still has Raiden's (white-colored) blood on them, making for an extremely Ho Yay moment.
 * Birdie in the Street Fighter Alpha games likes to lick his chain.
 * Cutman tells his brothers that Rockman EXE did this at him, in an effort to paint Rock as the villain. It's Played for Laughs, since the Cutman brothers occupy a notch slightly below Team Rocket in terms of threat level.
 * Kartikeya in Wild Arms 5.
 * Tetsuo Tamashiro from Ryu ga Gotoku 3 does this right before challenging Kazuma to a battle.
 * In Skyward Sword, Ghirahim will do this after attacking you in your second fight against him.
 * Scyther does this to his scythes occasionally in Pok'emon Stadium

Webcomics

 * Miscellaneous Error takes this trope to its logical conclusion.

Web Originals

 * The There Will Be Brawl version of Ice Climber's Nana does this with her bloody hammer in episode 7.
 * The Gaming Pixie does this at the end of her review of Eversion.
 * The Angry Joe Show has licking watermelon juice off of a katana.