Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is a fictional weapon from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There have been many homages to this weapon in geek culture; for example, similar hand grenades may be found in computer games such as Galahad and the Holy Grail and the Worms series.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is used in Monty Python and the Holy Grail to destroy a killer rabbit. The instructions for its use are in the Holy Book of Armaments. Particularly important is the counting to three after the pulling of the pin (complicated by King Arthur's mental block on counting).

Geek culture impact

The Worms series of computer games features a weapon called the holy hand grenade, which looks rather like the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch and is distinguished by the fact that - unlike the other types of grenade in the game, which have fuses that can be controlled by the player - it is always set to detonate as soon as it has come to rest on the ground at least three seconds after it has been thrown. It's notable that the weapon's explosion was accompanied by a chorus singing Hallelujah in the style of Handel's Messiah. Other computer games to include a Holy Hand Grenade include many MUDs as well as Duke Nukem Time to Kill, Quenzar's Caverns, Fallout 2, and, of course, the Monty Python and the Holy Grail computer game.

Apple Computer's System 7 (Macintosh) uses a system file to track file sharing information with an icon of the above-mentioned Killer Rabbit. The "creator code" (used to indicate file type on HFS file systems) was "hhgg", purportedly in homage to the Holy Hand Grenade. However, this actually stands for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since the system file was invisible to the normal user, this is classified as an Easter egg.

In roleplaying games, the third edition of the game Shadowrun renamed the generic grenade launcher from the previous two editions to the Ares Antioch Grenade Launcher.

In American television series culture, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there are several humorous references to Monty Python-esque "holy hand grenades", which were usually bottles of holy water lobbed at vampires. This, in turn, spawned the Buffy-themed trading card game where the Holy Hand Grenade is card number 14 in the 1999 series.