So what you're saying is that because real-life examples exist, there's nothing to disbelieve, so those who want to suspend disbelief get annoyed?
Hong, I see you're one of the arguers from the "there are obscure examples of monks using shields in the real world, therefore, all the monks should use the shields in teh game and there is no flavour problems to ruin teh fun! Huzzah!" perspective people.
There are probably rare historical incidences of people going into medieval battle armed with a brick-in-a-sock, but that doesn't mean we need it in the PHB statted as a "Troglodyte Whack-Bonk" requiring an exotic weapon proficiency to use. Note that I only don't consider it welcome in the core books - setting specific weapons such as Dark Sun's wristrazors or Dragonlance's clabbard are fine in the context of their setting - just leave them out of the PHB.
Even if the odd real life example exists, in real combat, the weapon is probably inferior to a real axe and potentially harmful to the user, as are most of the double-weapons - otherwise "urgroshes" would probably have been in common use. "Urgroshes" are as popular as they are in the SCA because certain artifacts of the SCA combat simulation rules
make them effective. The medieval weaponsmiths were not fools, and such weapons seem a mockery of medieval weapon technology - which is what most of the D&D weapons are based on. (Notable exception: Some oriental martial arts weapons, but they were often not used by choice.)
You may say that spending an exotic weapon proficiency makes up the deficit in the weapon's inefficiency, but I'd rather they'd never made it into the core books at all, or were saved for hokey splatbooks, where they can be more easily ignored.
Yes, I do have greater verisimilitude problems with an orcish double-axe than I do with a wizard casting a fireball, or a flying dragon - because at least the latter are floating on genre assumption. There are grey boundaries too - I have no problem with claw bracers and spiked boots from the FRCS, nor do I have any problems with the Kyton flailing quite effectively with spiked chains - but orcish double-axes, urgroshes and non-Kyton wielded spiked chains deliver "what a stupid weapon" suspension of disbelief problems. Given discussions around the game table, I'm not the only one.
