Batarangs

Batarangs are a well-known weapon of Batman's arsenal. Most people probably just think of a boomerang that looks like a bat instead of looking further into its design. The shape of a bat works as a symbol for a weapon, so you know who's attacking when you get one of these thrown at you. Since you usually can't see Batman when he's attacking you, this instills fear in whoever sees the batarang thrown, because they know they're about to be attacked, but have no idea when or from where. However, I've sometimes wondered why batarangs are named after boomerangs, since they usually don't come back to Batman, just curve. Some don't eve curve, they're more like shuriken that are just thrown then stick into something or fall. After looking into boomerangs, I found that there are some that don't have to come back to you (I thought the reason mine never came back to me was because I just didn't throw them right...). So that explains most of the batarangs, but not the ones that are more like shuriken. So I suppose until they make a mixture of bat and shuriken as a word, batarang will have to do for the bat-shaped shuriken.