Boring but Practical/Literature

• In World War Z, once the nations of the world decide to go on the offensive after the Zombie Apocalypse, they get rid of their flashy tanks, jet fighters, machine guns, body armor and indeed most modern tactics. Instead, the average infantryman carries a highly-accurate, semi-automatic rifle that is designed for pulling off headshots quickly and consistently, they form up in lines and open fire. These old-school tactics kill zombies better than anything. Do Not ask how realistic this is.
  • Additionally, the melee weapon of choice in later chapters is the Lobotomizer, "Lobo" for short. It's described in-book as a cross between a shovel and a medieval battle axe. Dig a trench, bury a fallen comrade, decapitate a zombie.
• The French novel Malevil features the eponymous castle. Built by the invading English during the Hundred Years' War it was built solely for function and has little aesthetic value unlike its opposing neighbor, the French castle Les Rouzies.
• Discworld uses this trope to lampshade the trope where MacGuffins which are swords are most often shiny and cool looking (as described: shiny that lights up with a ting!) At the end of the book in which Carrot joins the Watch, Vimes ponders, perhaps the sword of the last king of Ankh-Morpork isn't shiny and lights up with a ting!. Perhaps the sword of the king is a boring old sword that was simply very, very, very sharp. Carrot has such a sword.
  • In the same vein, Cohen and the Silver Hoard (a group of octogenarian barbarian heroes) carry notably notched and beat-up swords that are STILL sharp enough to cut a die in half in mid-air. (At one point, Cohen internally reflects that a simple, plain non-magical sword in the hands of a truly brave man will cut through a magical sword like suet. He's looking at Carrot's sword while thinking this, which has previously been determined to not merely not be enchanted, but to have no magic in it AT ALL, which is quite a feat on the Discworld.)
• In The Dresden Files the "Eebs" work like this. When trying to kill an extremely powerful wizard they shoot at him with a silenced pistol from inside a car. When it fails they just drive away. They hire a local killer to attack him. They chuck a firebomb into his building while he sleeps. All things that don't take a scrap of supernatural power to achieve. They are also the Red Court's two most successful assassins. The reasons being that while these individual attempts don't have a particularly high success rate, they also expose them to barely any risk and take little effort, and sooner or later they get lucky.
• Parts of the Star Wars Expanded Universe have "slugthrower" weaponry - these are firearms, guns that fire bullets. This is a 'verse where blasters are fairly easy to come by. But Luke Skywalker trained with slugthrowers as a kid on Tatooine, and a character in Shatterpoint has this to say about them.

"Slugthrowers. I hate 'em. But they're easy to maintain. Day or two in the jungle and your blaster'll never fire again. A good slug rifle, keep 'em wiped and oiled, they last forever. The guerrillas have pretty good luck with them, even though they take a lot of practice — slugs are ballistic, y'know? You have to plot the trajectory in your head."

• • That and they're the perfect Jedi-killing weapon: a blaster bolt can be easily deflected back with a lightsaber, but if a Jedi intercepts a slugthrower round it will only melt it without deflecting or slowing it, resulting in the defending Jedi getting hit with a less letal but much more painful slug. And making him defenseless due the pain, if the bullet didn't kill him outright.
• There's a short story by Arthur C. Clarke called Superiority about a space empire that keeps inventing one incredible superweapon after another—until they get overrun by their enemies who directed their resources towards making huge numbers of plain, oldfashioned torpedoes while the other side was busy updating their ships.
• In 1632, Janos Drugeth's favorite sword is a fairly mundane thing but well-kept and sharp. As a counselor to the Emperor of Austria he can afford any sword he darn well pleases, but what he wants is one that will keep him alive in battle.