Tomahawk

"Retrievable throwing hatchet that causes instant death on impact."

- In-game description

The Tomahawk is a weapon in Call of Duty: Black Ops, occupying the Lethal Grenade slot.

Campaign
The Tomahawk is only seen in the first part of the level "Rebirth," where Alex Mason, at the advice of Reznov, picks it up uses it to stealthily kill a worker. He then uses it to kill a patrolling guard before discarding it and taking the guard's AK74U. Unlike in multiplayer, it is a melee-only weapon, similar to the SOG Knife.

Multiplayer
The Tomahawk is available for unlock at level 4 and costs. It is similar to Modern Warfare 2's Throwing Knife, instantly killing any player it hits. Unlike the Throwing Knife, however, the Tomahawk always bounces off walls and floors when thrown, making ricochet kills, or "bank shots," a more likely possibility.

It is one of the three weapons used in Sticks and Stones. It has a special effect; if a player hits someone with the Tomahawk, it resets the victim's score to zero, known as bankrupting, and will award the thrower with 10 points.

Trivia

 * The "Bank Shot" medal is awarded to players who kill by bouncing a Tomahawk off of one or more surfaces and into an enemy.
 * No extra XP is awarded for scoring a headshot with the Tomahawk.
 * On each side of the head of the Tomahawk, the words "M. Striker" are visibly engraved. This is a lot harder to see on the Wii version of the game, due to a less detailed model.
 * It is possible to take down a killstreak, such as an Attack Helicopter, with a Tomahawk.
 * Readying the Tomahawk (holding down RB on the Xbox 360, and R2 on the PS3) while climbing a ladder allows the player to engage a target at the top of the ladder where they would normally be helpless. It is possible to do this with all lethal grenades.
 * The Op 40 and the Tropas lightweight model has an unusable Tomahawk sheathed in their uniforms. It uses a different, green model than the one that appears in game.
 * When throwing back a Fragmentation Grenade, and one has a Tomahawk as their Lethal Grenade, you can hear the whooshing of the Tomahawk while the grenade is thrown back, and strangely, it turns into a Fragmentation Grenade in your inventory. However, it is just the icon swapped out and is still a Tomahawk.
 * If a player who is using the zipline is killed by a Tomahawk, the corpse will fall down, but the Tomahawk will follow the zipline. Also the player who was killed will spawn with the Tomahawk still stuck in him.
 * In Nuketown, when a Tomahawk is thrown at the windscreen wipers of the bus, the Tomahawk will start to spin forwards.
 * On the Wii, if the player throws a Tomahawk at their teammate, the Tomahawk will float up in the air and disappear.
 * It is possible for a Tomahawk to bounce off one enemy and hit another causing a double kill as shown here.
 * They can bounce off weapons when they are being dropped after a player is killed.
 * Tomahawks can be destroyed by explosions, and when this occurs, the announcer will announce that the player's equipment has been destroyed.
 * It appears much smaller in multiplayer than in campaign.