http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer

Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science (1966), , The Psychology of Science (1966), Trope Namer "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."

Advertisement:

A character has a limited offensive repertoire, but the writer wants to make him look clever anyway, so he faces him off against something which requires a little bit of strategy. Unfortunately, this strategy ends up being "Just do what you always do, but slightly better." It's not that our hero is uninventive. He may be an outright MacGyver, but he just doesn't have much to work with.

Most often, this offensive capability ends up being "punch the other guy really hard", and the "solution" to the current dilemma is "punch the other guy really hard in the face."

Sometimes, this is a little more elaborate, and the hero has to do something totally different. Then he gets to fall back on his usual strategy. "Cast 'dispel invulnerability' on him. Then punch the other guy really hard. In the face."

Advertisement:

Occasionally it happens because of complacency; the character does have other abilities/methods to do the job, but they have used "the hammer" so much to be really effective with it, and thus those other methods are largely redundant for them (save for special occasions). Especially true for a given character's Signature Move and especially Finishing Move, or worse, it's part of the work's premise. See Complacent Gaming Syndrome for cases of video game players about this.

A justification can be that there are many ways to arrive at what looks like the same conclusion. For example, all of General Patton's strategies were elaborate ways to shoot stuff with tanks, and all successful modern infantry tactics end the same way: "and then we shoot them/call in the artillery."

This generally happens due to the Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality; the more a character specializes in combat, the smaller the characters' repertoire. If the character is so attached to his 'hammer' that he cannot adapt to, say, a screwdriver, see Crippling Overspecialization.

Advertisement:

Damage-Sponge Boss can be a justification for this trope.

The All-Solving Hammer is when this becomes a Running Gag. Can sometimes be related to What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway? (and Heart Is an Awesome Power if used creatively) and Death of a Thousand Cuts. See also Plot Tailored to the Party, Smash Mook. Your Answer to Everything may be said about this, and it might be a New Ability Addiction if it's because they just got it. Contrast Every Device Is a Swiss-Army Knife, Swiss Army Weapon and Swiss-Army Superpower when something does have enough functions to tackle a (plausibly) wide range of problems. Can overlap with Quality over Quantity in the sense that skill with one tool beats skills with other tools.

This can often be the calling card of a Invincible Hero, since the lack of challenges which force them to change or upgrade their approach in much any way can eventually make them repetitive in action.

Not related to characters who use hammers as their (primary) weapon unless they use nothing but this hammer at every opportunity.

Also known as the Law of the Instrument, or the "Golden Hammer".

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

Comic Books

Fan Works

Films — Animation

WALLE: EVE's problem solving tree is something like "Blast it with my arm cannon. Does it still need to be blasted more? Repeat as necessary." M-O, the obsessive cleaning bot, lives in a very black and white [Clean/Foreign Contaminant] world. Even in battle, he rushes towards the enemies just to... deliver a maintenance job.

Wreck-It Ralph: Fix-It Felix Jr. literally has a hammer as his only weapon. Unfortunately, it's a magic hammer and its only function is fixing stuff. When he tries to break out of King Candy's "Fungeon" , hitting the bars with his hammer only causes them to grow stronger. Felix: Why do I fix everything I touch? Wreck-It-Ralph is incredible when it comes to wrecking things... but finds out when he's game-hopping that he's not so good at anything else. Ralph: I told you; I don't make things. I break things.



Films — Live-Action

Jokes

An electrician, a chemist, and an IT technician get on a car, but the engine doesn't start. "There must be a problem with the spark plugs", says the electrician. "No, it's the gasoline that has the wrong octane rating", replies the chemist. "What if we got off the car and on again?", says the IT tech. Extra points for this being a joke that came true. In the 1990's the idea of a car working like this was both ridiculous and funny, today most warning lights really are caused by errors that go away from restarting. Rudimentary computer knowledge has become a pretty useful hammer.

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Myths & Religion

Pro Wrestling

Several wrestlers can win any match with their Finishing Move. When Batista claimed the STFU (a submission move) was completely useless in a Last Man Standing Match, John Cena proceeded to lock him in it until he passed out, then counted to ten, proving him wrong.

Many of the less athletic pros out there fall under this, The Great Khali being among the top offenders. He has literally three "moves": overhead chop, choke-bomb, head-vice. The last two are finishing moves, and anything that doesn't involve swinging his arm over his head is either just running into someone, pushing them in various ways, and falling on them in various ways while the commentators desperately try to call it a leg/elbow drop. Big Show threw a lampshade on this at a house show, responding to chants of "You can't wres-tle!" with "I don't have to!"

The Young Bucks have a decent repertoire of moves. However, they are notorious for spamming the superkick over and over again until their opponents finally go down.

Nicole Savoy cited this as the reason she lost to LuFisto in their first SHIMMER encounter, promising she'd show more versatility at Volume 80. LuFisto clearly wasn't expecting it, as her strategy was out-suplexing the suplex queen.

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Web Animation

Web Comics

Web Original

Web Videos

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Captain Hammer hits things. Sometimes he throws things. But usually he hits things. The one time he tries to mix it up and shoot things, it goes really bad.

I Am Not Infected has "The usual plan:" Push Charlie at the zombies and run. They only use it twice or so though. And Charlie survives both. They even say it's more like what they use in absence of a plan more than anything. However, on one occasion they used it rather than simply shoot the zombies.

In Boatmurdered once Operation Fuck The World (which when activated floods everything on the map outside the fortress with lava) was complete, it became their response to everything. Initially designed to provide a permanent solution to the elephant problem, it was eventually used against goblin invaders, a bronze colossus, an inoffensive merchant caravan come to trade with them, and a flood. The last of these was disastrous, creating an enormous cloud of steam that enveloped the fortress and scalded many dwarves to death.

In Atop the Fourth Wall's crossover review of Southland Tales, Linkara claims the safety of the universe is threatened by the film, and tells the assembled they must review it. Nash: Why is our default response to everything to automatically review it?

Hat Films heavily rely on the fact that there is three of them, and tend to do a lot of their game problem solving with this in mind. While this can lead to very effective strategies, such as their use of Zerg Rush in 'Crown Conquest' and their group coordination in games like Halo 4, this can also sometimes become a case of Crippling Overspecialization, like in the case where the Cobble Generator in their early episodes of Skyblock, an easily one-manned device for the average Minecraft player, suddenly requires all three of their attentions (one person to pick, one person to dip, and one person on ice duty) to properly maintain.

Western Animation

Real Life