Kids come out of accidents unharmed when you're well-armed.
This character can stretch certain parts of their body outward great distances, though how far the parts can stretch varies from character to character. The body part in question is usually their arms, though stretchy legs and the like aren't unheard of. These limbs are incredibly useful for combat or even simple practicality, as it's like having a fully controllable whip with a claw or blunt object at the end. They could be "natural" limbs or artificial ones.
Related to but distinct from Rubber Man; while a rubber man is able to mold and shape their whole body without much care for physics, someone with extendable limbs is limited by the limbs they're able to stretch, and still abide by the physiology of their species. For example, a man made of rubber might flatten and enlarge his hands to flip someone like a pancake, while someone with extending arms can only stretch them to grab at or punch something.
Compare Prehensile Hair and Creepily Long Arms. If you are looking for the Toon Physics joke, see Elongating Arm Gag.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- This is a very common power among the awakened beings in Claymore. They can lengthen their limbs and use them in battle. Particularly prominent is the male awakened being in the mountains of Paburo, whose elongated fingers were real battle tentacles.
- Helen has the same power, and uses it to hit distant opponents with her sword in combat while she is still holding it in her hands.
- Digimon:
- The first movie of Digimon Adventure 02 (and by extension, Digimon: The Movie) has Wendigomon, who can extend his arms during his Cable Crusher attack, allowing him to send faraway Digimon flying with a punch. The attack also overlaps into Variable-Length Chain since his arms are segmented.
- In Digimon Fusion, after fusing with Orochimon, MadLeomon is able to use four of its heads as extendable limbs, allowing him to attack Shoutmon and Ballistamon at the same time. Lilithmon/Laylamon can also extend her arms to poison other Digimon by injecting them through her fingernails.
- In Digimon Ghost Game, Thetismon can extend her arm to absurd distances to deliver electrified punches or even grab and throw her opponents.
- In the Dragon Ball universe, Piccolo has the ability to stretch his arms out when he wants to grab someone at a distance. This may be an ability shared by the Namekian race, but Piccolo is the only one ever seen doing it.
- When Taikobo gets a paope artificial arm in Hoshin Engi, one of its many functions (alongside a water pistol and a rocket punch) is this, which allows him to reach the top of a tall, pillar-like tower using the extended arm to lift himself to the top.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood: The Zoom Punch is a Hamon technique William Zeppeli teaches to Jonathan Joestar that allows the user to elongate their arm by dislocating and stretching their joints. Hamon helps prevent the user from feeling pain from this.
- Naruto: The Animal Battle Aura manifested by jinchūriki in their Version 1 and Version 2 states can stretch and elongate their arms to act as tentacles.
- Pokémon Adventures: Bruno owns a special Hitmonlee that can stretch both its legs and arms to attack; normal Hitmonlee are only capable of the former.
- Invoked and subverted in Rurouni Kenshin by Hannya, the Oniwabanshu: his so called "Arm Jutsu" allows him to seemingly extend his arm the very istant he punches Ken, but the latter soon finds out that its merely an optical trick aided by Hannya's striped sleeves, which make the arms appear shorter and stouter when seen from the front.
Asian Animation
- In episode 47 of Happy Friends, a robot woman extends her arm to grab her kid's toy spaceship.
Fan Works
- In A Growing Affection, Shino's damaged leg is replaced with an insect colony. They mimic a human leg almost perfectly, but he teaches them to perform an extending kick.
- In the Sonic the Hedgehog Game Mod Bunnie Rabbot in Sonic the Hedgehog, Bunnie can extend her roboticized arm to attack enemies.
Films — Animated
- In The Thief and the Cobbler, the Witch magically extends her arms to pull down a hesitant character, who is much bigger than she is, for examination.
- In Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, the Nightmare King uses his extendable arms to chase Nemo down tunnels in his flying bed.
- The Wild Robot (2024): The robot Roz has extendable arms. Great for everything from launching grappling hooks to a big group hug.
Films — Live-Action
- In the Chinese kung-fu movie Master of the Flying Guillotine, one of the tournament's contenders is an Indian man with the power to extend his arms to an absurd length.
- One of the prominent villains from the Shaw Brothers wuxia fantasy movie Demon of the Lute has an extendable right arm, which makes him slightly harder to defeat than the other baddies until his arm gets ripped off. No blood, though, befitting the movie's slapstick nature.
- Buddha's Palm, a Shaw Brothers film, has the Foot Monster, whose primary powers includes extendable legs.
- The Hero Jack Deebs from Ralph Bakshi's Cool World discovers that he has suddenly developed cartoon powers, and extends his arms all the way to the top of a Las Vegas hotel. Jack is able to lift himself this way onto the hotel's roof in less than one minute.
- Played for horror in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). When Freddy first confronts Tina in the nightmare that ultimately leads to her death, as he walks toward her he stretches his arms out to the width of the alley they're in.
Literature
- Mr. Men: Little Miss Hug, who can stretch her arms to fit whoever she's hugging.
Live-Action TV
- The story told in one episode of My Special Book is about a girl named Miyo who loves to give people hugs. One night, she has a dream that her arms stretch wide enough that she hugs the entire world.
- Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: Connor's Super Mode grants him extendable limbs.
- Several Ultra Series monsters has extendable appendages, including Sadora from Return of Ultraman (though it doesn't show this trait until Ultraman Mebius onwards), Zomborg from Ultraman Dyna, Mogusion from Ultraman Blazar, and in an extreme case,Sealizar from Ultraman Tiga whose Extendable Neck can stretch to twice it's height!
Mythology & Religion
- Kappa are sometimes depicted as being able to stretch their arms, often with the odd variant that their arms are connected inside their body - i.e. extending one arm causes the other to retract.
- According to Midrash (an extensive body of Jewish myths, stories, and explanations of the Hebrew Bible, Pharaoh's daughter saved baby Moses from the river with the help of a miracle in which God stretched her arms in order to help her reach the child.
Sports
- The Rio 2016 Olympic mascot Vinicius is able to stretch his limbs to an unlimited amount; Birdo, the company behind the mascot's creation, said that this was representative of "Fortius" or the athletes' ability to climb higher in competition.
Video Games
- ARMS is an unconventional fighting game in which most of the playable characters have the "Gift of ARMS", that changed their arms into coilable strips of material that can stretch long distances, which they use to fight each other. The exceptions are Mechanica, a normal girl who pilots a Mini-Mecha with extendable arms, and Twintelle, whose "gift" instead affected her hair.
- Coryoon has a Giant Crab boss who comes with extendable pincers; it remains on the screen's bottom and spends the whole fight trying to pinch you from a distance.
- Dandy's World has Goob, whose most notable feature is his clawed hand-paws that are attached to arms made of wire or string. Because of this, he has the ability to stretch his arms in order to reach for anything, most notably other Toons as seen in his ability. His Twisted form uses this as part of his attack, pulling in Toons that he initiates chase with before actually attacking.
- Devil May Cry: In the fourth game, Nero can extend a spectral hand out of his Devil Bringer arm to grab distant enemies and either bring them closer to him or bring himself closer to them (depending on their size). It's changed to a Grappling-Hook Pistol in the fifth game as he lost his Devil Bringer at the start. In the end, when he regains access to his demonic powers, he also gains two spectral wing-arms that can extend to grab distant enemies the same way as his old arm.
- Heroes of the Storm: Both of Stukov's heroics involving stretching his arm to ridiculous degrees, with the first having him swipe in an area almost the size of the screen and the other letting him push an enemy away an unlimited distance until they hit a wall. In both cases, his arm pops off then instantly regrows to its slightly-bigger-than-average size when the ability ends.
- Marvel vs. Capcom: Sentinel's Rocket Punch move has it extend its forearm forward, aided by rocket boosters, to punch its opponent.
- Spring Man and Bounce Man from the Mega Man (Classic) series can extend their arms to attack.
- NextDoor
puts focus on a woman in black silently entering and leaving an apartment building, never even saying hello. When spying on her, she's shown fixing the screws on her arm. They can extend enough to probe through the hole being looked through, or even to enter the room through the second floor window.
- The remake of The Ninja Warriors Again introduces a new playable robot ninja, Yaksha, who's special ability involves stretching her arms long distances. Interestingly, it appears that she keeps said arms stored in her breasts when not extended, as evidenced by her chest shrinking whenever she extends her arms.
- Pokémon:
- According to its' Pokédex entry, Breloom's normally short arms stretch to preform blazing fast punches. Due to sprite limitations, this isn't shown in the games.
- Hitmonlee's legs can stretch to enhance the power and range of its kicks.
- Ristar: Extending your arms to grab enemies and objects is the game's primary gimmick.
- Rhythm Heaven: At the end of the Megamix game "Tangotronic 3000," when the titular dancing robot spins his partner away, he extends his arm with a long spring and pulls her back in for a finishing pose.
- Sonic Unleashed: To make up for his lack of speed, Sonic's Werehog form has the ability to stretch his arms out at great lengths to cover distances and grab foes he'd normally be able to run right through.
- Spyborgs has the Reaper enemies, robots with an extendable left hand ending either in claws or spiked balls, which they'll swing at you like a flail as an attack.
- Super Mario Bros.
- Super Mario RPG: Mallow's basic, unequipped attack has him stretch his arm out to punch opponents.
- Super Mario Odyssey: Uproots are onion-like enemies with telescoping vine legs. Mario can possess them with Cappy and use this ability to reach high places.
- Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy have one of the two titular characters, Roddy, who's cybernetically-enhanced arms allows him to punch enemies dozens of meters away from him. He'll use his extending arms as a default ranged attack; meanwhile his partner Cathy uses her Killer Yo-Yo instead.
- Witchkin: The clown Witchkin has Creepy Long Arms that can stretch out over great distances.
- No matter the adaptation, Bravoman he can stretch his limbs great distances with the help of his suit. In the comic and the web show, this often leads to him using his extendable limbs as a Mundane Utility.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive: In a swift application of her size-changing powers, Rhoda stretches her arm out to snag her shrunken girlfriend away from a suddenly-appearing immortal.
Western Animation
- Beena from The Bee-Bees has extendable legs that allow her to reach towering heights.
- Get Ace: In a couple episodes, Ned Krinkle uses gadgets called extendo-arms. Unfortunately for him, their length means he gets easily tangled in them.
- Inspector Gadget has extendable arms, legs, and an extendable neck.
- The Mr. Men Show: Mr. Tickle's arms in the original books were always long. In this adaption, they're of normal length, but he can extend them to tickle people from far away.
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: In one episode, Jenny displayed this exact trope along with the extendo finger twice. First time as a demonstration to her mother and the second time to stop a runaway Ferris wheel filled with people.
- Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: In one episode, Buddy demonstrated the ability to stretch his Rubber-Hose Limbs to something like three or four times their normal length and coil them around themselves for a gag.
- Team Umizoomi: Bot has the ability to extend his eyes to reach distant objects.
- Shockwave from Transformers: Animated has the ability to extend his arms to a limited degree in his Longarm disguise. Since he is a deep-cover spy, he probably chose this rather unimpressive skill to be his false identity's main ability to avoid standing out too much.
- TRON: Uprising: General Tesler arms can bend around structures, punch through walls and other programs, and even act as grappling hooks.
Real Life
- Cuttlefish each have two tentacles hidden behind their eight arms, but they can rapidly stretch them to grab prey.