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Items on your wrist are easy to access, versatile, and just look awesome.
Can function as any number of useful tools, like a communicator, a firearm, a light, a scanner, a music player, a wristwatch, etc. Typically, this will appear in sci-fi shows as a device from which characters can access a wide variety of tools. Also, unlike a hand-held device, being wrist-mounted makes it "Hands Free", meaning it won't get lost, dropped or hinder the user by limiting the number of hands they might need in a given situation. Truly a remarkable device.
Compare: Comm Links (can be worn on the wrist), Gadget Watch (with other built-in special devices).
Examples of Super Wrist Gadget include:
Anime and Manga[]
- Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Discs.
- Several Magical Girls wear their Transformation Trinket on their wrist: Corrector Yui, Magical Star Magical Emi, Yes! Pretty Cure 5, Kämpfer, later seasons of Ojamajo Doremi, and the Frilly Upgrade powerup in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch.
- Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (AKA Battle of the Planets). G-Force had wrist band communications devices which also allowed them to change between their team uniforms and civilian clothing.
Comic Books[]
- Funky Koval used a gadget watch with a blaster on one occasion.
- When the scene was spoofed in Gorsky and Butch, there was no gadget involved - the watch was such a cheap replica that the villain fainted with disgust and fell over the railing.
Film[]
- Spy Kids
- Subverted in Toy Story, where Buzz thinks he has a wrist gadget, but as Woody points out, it's just a sticker.
- The main character of Cowboys and Aliens wears one, which turns out to be an Arm Cannon.
- The watch James Bond wears usually has some non-wrist watch functions.
- This is given a nod in the video game of GoldenEye, in which the watch is both used in-game as a gadget and is also the pause menu/user interface/mission briefing.
- The Predator had a cool wrist device that not only houses his wrist blades, but also a nuclear Self-Destruct Mechanism. The Aliens vs. Predator video games add even more gadgets to it, such as a compact first aid kit or hacking tool.
- In Sky High, Royal Pain has one that controls her suit (and the device that cuts off the antigravity of the school).
- The stun guns used in Pandorum. According to the Word of God this was so the character could use his hands for all the physical activity required.
Live Action TV[]
- A lot of Power Rangers and Super Sentai morphers.
- Gosei Sentai Dairanger and Power Rangers Zeo/Chouriki Sentai Ohranger use two-part changers with one component on each wrist. (The Dairanger changer was later incorporated into Power Rangers Lost Galaxy as the Magna Defender's morpher.)
- Doctor Who: Jack Harkness has one. It teleports and time travels.
Newspaper Comics[]
- Dick Tracy's wrist radio.
Video Games[]
- The Fallout series' PipBoy 3000 was introduced as a bulky, Zeerust tablet computer complete with vacuum tubes, but its incarnations in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are as smaller, wrist-mounted devices. The PipBoy's uses include but are not limited to data storage, inventory management, topographical mapping, assisted targeting, medical diagnostics, and radio receiver.
- Commander Keen's ComputerWrist
- The Omnitools from the Mass Effect series.
- That thing that Sonya Blade wears on her arm in Mortal Kombat can, at the very least, be used as a communicator, firearm and metal-cutter. One might speculate that it probably also works as a watch.
- The Poketch in Pokémon Diamond/Pearl might just as well be called an iPhone on the wrist, with all the various apps that can be installed on it. In addition to a clock, these apps include a device to check the status of your Pokemon, another to check the Pokemon you left in daycare, a history of Pokemon you recently caught, a markable map, a step counter, a sketch pad, a timer, a virtual coin flip, etc. If only there were real-life watches that could do all that...
- Geo Stelar's Transer in Mega Man Star Force. A combination Facebook and email account, that also contains an antiviral weapons array and an alien Energy Being that he fuses with to engage in thrilling heroics.
Western Animation[]
- Bob's Glitch from Re Boot, though it is strongly overlaps with Gadget Watch.
- Ben 10's Omnitrix.
- Parodied in Futurama: Leela has one, and she calls it "this thing on [her] wrist" which also has a built-in surgical laser for reattaching noses.
- Space Ghost had his Power Bands.
- The titular hero of Phantom 2040 has a pair.
- Partway through the fourth and final series Kim Possible gets a new Kimmunicator in the form of a watch. It even has a grappling line in it, somehow.
- Both of the Swat Kats wear the Glovatrix, a wrist-mounted item featuring multiple weapons and tools.
Real Life[]
- Steampunks seem to have a fascination for cool wrist-mounted gadgets, from guns to chronometers to computers.
- Cybergoths are fond of this too, though their tend to look less gadgety compared to Steampunks.
- Company Armstar produces an armoured gauntlet, marketed to body guards, that has a built in taser, video camera and flashlight. It now also has an armoured iphone dock.