Rare Guns


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    Models and types of guns that saw little to no production in reality are more likely to show up in fiction. Sometimes, the number of appearances of a weapon on TV can outnumber its actual production run.

    This is mostly due to the fact that some models of gun can look incredibly cool or futuristic despite having real-life problems with their functionality or production that make them unpopular or dismal failures. Or it could be a case of a writer wanting to show they did their research by deliberately picking form over function without going completely into the realm of fiction. Of course, no one's supposed to care.

    Remember that this trope is not about rare guns that appear once or twice in a work of fiction, or are an available weapon in a game. It only applies to rare weapons that appear in much larger numbers than they should or did in the real world, or firearms that are prohibitively expensive, difficult to use, or otherwise impractical but yet appear in the hands of many characters. A common justification is that the wielder/orderer of these weapons has an astounding amount of money, is extremely skilled with it, or it has become increasingly successful.

    This trope is common in Anime, due to the obsession many writers have with technical and historical details.

    Each firearm is listed alphabetically.

    See also Rare Vehicles, Family-Friendly Firearms, Cool Guns and Improbable Use of a Weapon. Compare Selective Historical Armoury, where firearms that should be present are absent. See also the Internet Movie Firearms Database site for more. Forgotten Weapons occasionally manages to find one of these and take a look.

    Examples of Rare Guns include:

    AK-12

    The latest of many modernized AK-47 variants with Picatinny rails for mounting optics and other accessories. It was designed to be available in all the modern calibers: Current Russian standard 5.45x39mm, current NATO standard 5.56x45mm, former Soviet standard (and favorite of irregular forces) 7.62x39mm (this version was adopted as the AK-15), NATO standard long distance round 7.62x51mm, 12 Gauge (though this one doesn't seem to have survived the prototype phase) and a few others. It has gained popularity in video games for allowing more Gun Accessories compared to the currently standard AK-74 while having a futuristic but recognizable look. The only problem? The AK-12 wasn't adopted until the end of January of 2018 and the final version looks vastly different than the 2011 prototype that appears in video games. Civilian sales were considered early in development, but a 1998 trade agreement between the US and Russia and executive orders by Barack Obama had cut it off from the largest possible civilian firearms market. Most of the works that includes it have a near future setting but even though the Russian Federation adopted it they will have a massive stockpile of AK-74s that they won't be getting rid of in the foreseeable future making total replacement, at best, implausible outside of special forces. At least unlike the OICW (see below) the AK-12 actually got adopted.

    Video Games

    • Many a STALKER mod includes these. In them they tend to be potent mid-late game weapons thanks to taking common 5.45 ammo yet using the superior western optics options. Note the first and third games are set in 2012 (the near future when the first game was released) making their inclusion even more conspicuous.
    • Battlefield 4 includes several variants, including the RPK-12 that had never been shown publicly (if any physical copies existed at all) and differs from the RPK-16 eventually adopted by the Russian National Guard.
    • Used by some enemies in Time Crisis 5
    • Used by Russians in Call of Duty: Ghosts and Advanced Warfare.
    • Rainbow Six: Siege
    • Appears in Arma 3's Apex expansion. Use of the 2011 prototype in a 2016 product is odd enough, but it's in 7.62x39 and called the AK-12 (instead of AK-15 as a 7.62x39 variant should) and has the two shot burst functions of an AN-94.

    AN-94

    The AN-94 "Abakan" assault rifle was developed as a possible replacement for Russia's main service rifle, the AK-74. Its most notable feature is the "blowback shifted pulse" system, which postpones recoil until after the rounds have left the weapon. The AN-94 has an ultra-fast 1800 rpm two round burst mode. Russia eventually decided against replacing the AK-74 because the AN-94 is much more expensive, but it still sees limited use in the hands of special forces and the FSB (the successor to the KGB), mostly due to its complex mechanism compared to the AK family rifles. It's also one of the few weapons that Russia doesn't sell to foreign countries.

    Video Games

    • It's the main rifle of the Russian army in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
      • Often considered to be the "BFG" of the Assault class, for its high damage and accuracy
      • It shows up again in Battlefield 3, but this time, it's accurately used only by Russian Spetsnaz commandos in the campaign and the unique firing accurately depicted.
    • Combat ArmsKnown as the AN-94 and is an NX Standard weapon (means bought with real money)
    • STALKER, as the "Obokan".
    • The main gun of the standard Gurlukovich soldiers in Metal Gear Solid 2 (the core guards carry AK74Us, one of which Raiden has to get). Also showed up in Metal Gear Solid 4, but so did every other gun on the entire planet.
    • Jagged Alliance v1.13. One of the better Russian weapons available at Bobby Ray's, but still outclassed by Western weapons, and the 5.45 round has terrible stopping power in the most recent version.


    Auto-Mag

    The .44 Auto-Mag was the first semi-automatic pistol to use a cartridge as heavy as .44 Magnum. It went through several different manufacturers, and was never a real money-maker thanks to flawed production and business decisions—the fact that it was the only pistol on Earth that took its particular caliber of ammunition also did not help, since commercially-loaded ammunition was rare and the only other way to get the correct caliber was to modify cases for other ammunition (.308 or .30-06) and reload by hand.

    Anime and Manga

    • Mizuho Inada was issued one in the manga version of Battle Royale. She was so off in la-la land that she never got a chance to use it...and it fell into the hands of Kazuo Kiriyama.

    Film

    Literature

    • It's Mack Bolan's signature weapon "Big Thunder" in the early parts of The Executioner novel series, when he wanted a hand weapon with greater intimidation factor and range than his Beretta Brigadier. As a weapons expert, Bolan would have no problems handloading his rounds.
    • The Auto-Mag III with reloaded .30 shells was the weapon of choice for Hanse Fletcher in C.R. Jahn's Underground.

    Video Games

    • Jagged Alliance 2. Rescuing two tourists stranded in Arulco during the conflict will have the husband send you Auto-Mags (nicknamed Big Berthas, and designed to fire full-on rifle rounds). In v1.13, the unofficial patch, they're modded for .50 Beowulf rounds.
    • Featured in Grand Theft Auto IV second DLC, The Ballad Of Gay Tony. While at first it's more justified since you get it from a club manager, it starts popping up everywhere later.

    Web Comics


    CAWS

    CAWS was an entry in the U.S. Military's Close Assault Weapon System program, designed by Heckler & Koch and Winchester-Ollen. CAWS was an attempt to salvage the terminally screwed-up SPIW program (a flechette infantry weapon program which was cancelled after it was found the lightweight flechettes would deflect off leaves and even raindrops), with the idea being a shotgun-like weapon designed specifically for city combat at ranges not exceeding 100 yards. H&K's submission for this project was a bullpup selective-fire shotgun designed to fire proprietary 12-gauge tungsten buckshot or flechette rounds in semi-auto or 240rpm 3-round bursts. Features included a moving barrel (to help reduce recoil), ambidextrous layout and a full plastic shroud with an integral carrying handle.

    The usefulness of the CAWS program itself was called into question (specifically, what soldiers were supposed to do if they encountered someone more than a hundred yards away), and the project ultimately scrapped before any weapon involved was out of the prototype phase. The HK design has some major issues as an actual weapon; it was very large for what it did, required brass-cased rounds to avoid fouling the action with melted plastic, and only had a ten-round magazine. Interesting features: Bullpup shotgun. With burst fire.

    Literature

    • Major Revell used one in The Zone World War III action-adventure novels by James Rouch.

    Video Games

    • It was the US Army's shotgun in the alternate universe of Fallout 2, and is seen in the hands of many a survivor.
    • Jagged Alliance 2 featured this weapon, and, with some luck, allowed you to get two of them for free. It is also one of the most broken weapons in the game, seconding only to Rocket Rifle. In the unofficial patch, it's nerfed, due to new weight limitations making it harder to aim, but it still packs a punch.
    • It's possible to develop and use this gun in Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, and it's the best shotgun available.


    Calico LWS

    While the Calico Light Weapon Systems submachine guns and rifles have gained more currency since the end of the US Assault Weapons Ban, they remain far less common than they would seem from film and television. Because of their futuristic appearance, the M950 machine pistol series are especially popular in action films; they're typically a "bad guy" gun. Interesting as well for being a whole series of rare weapons, not just a single rare model (though no one model is particularly common). In real life, they're a little less practical than in film due to the inherent difficulty of determining how much ammunition is actually left in the 50 / 100-round magazine, the time-consuming process of reloading a helical magazine (there's a reason few firearms use them), and the expense of the magazines themselves; militaries typically prefer cheap and light magazines, so that soldiers can discard them when they're empty.

    • Interesting features: Futuristic looks. "Stop, or I will shoot forever!"

    M100:

    Film

    Western Animation

    M110:

    Video Games

    M900:

    Film

    M950:

    Film

    Video Games

    M960:

    Anime and Manga

    Film

    Video Games

    • Combat Arms

    China Lake Grenade Launcher

    No more than fifty of what is essentially a pump-action M79 Grenade Launcher with a tube magazine are known to have been produced, and no more than six are known to still exist. First produced in 1968, they were intended for Navy SEAL use, though some were used by Marine Force Recon and the Army 5th Special Forces Group.

    Anime and Manga

    • Fabiola Iglesias of Black Lagoon pulls one near the end of her shootout in the Yellow Flag, a move that prompts a "...the FUCK is that?!" from Revy.

    Video Games

    • Call of Duty: Black Ops features them as the top-tier launcher in multiplayer and they make an appearance in the single player missions "S.O.G." and "Crash Site".
    • The Grenade Launcher of Fallout: New Vegas is this.

    IMI / MR Desert Eagle

    This Hand Cannon is among the most powerful production semi-automatic pistols out there. Designed and marketed by Minnesota company Magnum Research and manufactured by Israel Military Industries, it comes in .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, and .50 Action-Express. Magnum Research also offers it in a wide variety of finishes, ranging from standard chrome to gold to titanium/gold tiger stripes, and a model with an elongated, 10-inch barrel. The Desert Eagle uses a rotating-bolt mechanism usually found on rifles, of course due to the oversized chambering. They weigh about four and a half pounds unloaded; for the weight of the pistol plus a couple of loaded magazines, you could carry an M4 carbine. Speaking of magazines, the large bullets naturally give it a fairly low capacity (7-9, depending on cambering), only holding half what most semi-automatics issued to police and military hold. The Eagle's bulky grip and excessive weight make it difficult to shoot and very impractical to carry, to say nothing of the massive reliability issues it faces. It is also one of the more expensive handguns on the market, going for about US$1500 for the base model. Throw in a carrying case, extra magazines, accessories and custom finish, and you're looking at upwards of three grand. Adding to that, the ammunition is incredibly expensive, with the cheapest stuff being a dollar per round.

    Despite all this, the Desert Eagle is the weapon of choice for media badasses across the spectrum, sometimes even being depicted as a standard issue military sidearm; quite a contrast to real life, where it's a niche weapon in the civilian market (often described as a "range toy") and has never attracted any serious interest from anyone else. In fan fiction, it's a good sign the wielder is a Mary Sue of some kind, much like a gratuitous Katanas Are Just Better.

    • Interesting features: Look how huge it is! Also, by now it became something of a meme - the stereotypical Hand Cannon.

    Anime and Manga

    • The Dirty Harry-esque main character of the manga Rose Hip Zero wields an Eagle one-handed. The size, recoil, and rarity of this gun are brought up in the manga, though, and his ability to fire the thing with one hand is noted as being quite a feat.
    • The elderly one-eyed Sister Yolanda of the Church of Violence from Black Lagoon uses a gold-plated one of these one-handed during the Bloodstained-Glass Windows shootout from the Greenback Jane arc. She uses it to blow up one of the bad guys' cars with one shot.
    • Ghost in the Shell usually keeps it very realistic regarding guns. So when in one episode of Stand Alone Complex a quiet helicopter pilot is obsessed with his fantasies of pulling a Taxi Driver, it fits his character perfectly that he owns a Desert Eagle, as the cops don't consider him a real threat and are sure that he'll never go through with it.
    • In the Soul Eater manga, Death the Kid's Super Mode has his handguns transforming into .44 caliber 'Death Eagles'.
      • In-keeping with his 'death' theme, it's actually '.42'.
    • In Haruhi Suzumiya episode 1, we find the local Moe Blob Mikuru wielding the 10-inch barrel version, akimbo. Made particularly egregious by the fact that, again, you see two of them, in the far-less-common 10-inch model.
      • She could barely lift them, a bit of Truth in Television as they are quite heavy.
      • They're Air Soft guns bought at a local electronics/toy shop. While the guns themselves may be rare, toy replicas of them are quite common.
    • In 'Witch Hunter' the main character, Tasha's strongest magic gun is a .44 Desert Eagle that has enough recoil to break his arm.
    • In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Homura initially uses a Desert Eagle as her primary sidearm.

    Comic Books

    • A particularly egregious offender is the Immortal Iron Fist one shot Orson Randal and The Green Mist of Death. This story takes place sometime around the 1920s. Not only before the Desert Eagle was even invented, but when semi-auto pistols were in their infancy. Worse, there are no shortage of cool, iconic handguns in this era that could have been used instead.

    Film

    • Shows up in RoboCop; normal ones are used, but there's also a special one with a large barrel extension. This was originally supposed to be Robocop's gun, but when the suit was finished it became clear the weapon looked like a toy in his hand and the even larger Auto-9 was built based on a Beretta 93.
    • Arnold Schwarzenegger uses them a lot. He's used them in Commando, Eraser and Last Action Hero, and used a weapon that was a very ironic combination of a Desert Eagle and Walther P38 in Red Heat.[1]
    • Standard-issue for Agents of The Matrix. They fire Desert Eagles one-handed, and the 7-round magazine capacity is increased to 12 or 13. Well, at least they don't have Bottomless Magazines, even though there's really no reason (other than stylish reloading) such things couldn't be programmed into the titular Lotus Eater Machine.
    • Bullet Tooth Tony and his "Desert Eagle point five-oh" in Snatch, of course.

    The fact that you have Replica written down the sides of your guns, (closeup of the word Replica along the barrel) and the fact that I have Desert Eagle Point Five-Oh written down the side of mine, (close up of Desert Eagle along the barrel) should precipitate your balls into shrinking, along with your presence. Now... fuck off.

    • In Frank Goddamn Miller's film version of Will Eisner's The Spirit, The Octopus not only goes Guns Akimbo with the Desert Eagle, but he later wields a double-barreled version of it.
    • In The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, the McManus twins trade in their silenced Beretta 92 pistols for some custom made Desert Eagles. And those silenced Berettas were acquired by trading in the Desert Eagles wielded by two Russian mob dudes who tried to murder them near the beginning of the original movie.
    • A few appear in the Charlie's Angels movies. Including one carved from a piece of soap by Bosley with his bare teeth.

    Literature

    Live-Action TV

    • Jayne has one that River wields in the Firefly episode "Out of Gas". ...Five hundred years in the future. River also gets her hands on assumedly the same one in the episode "Objects in Space" (which she mistakes for a branch).
    • Shows up in an episode of CSI, and one of the immediate conclusions by one of the cast members is that the shooter must've been Compensating for Something.
    • In the final season of The Shield, when Vic resigns from the LAPD he naturally has to turn in his service pistol, and from that point on uses his personal gun. As he says: ".357 Desert Eagle, cross-draw."
    • Used by Jon Sable in the 1980s TV series Sable.
    • In an episode of Law and Order SVU, Benson is talking to a slightly-unhinged stalker at a gun range, where the stalker girl is firing a chrome-finished .50AE Desert Eagle. Benson notes that the gun is "a little hardcore", and then further notes that the 14 round magazine the woman is using is against the law in New York City (and in physics).
    • Will shoots one brought in by a friend in Sons of Guns.

    Tabletop Games

    • Chambered with the .50 Action Express, the Desert Eagle is the most powerful and expensive semi-automatic pistol in GURPS: High-Tech, but is the hardest to use and has one of the smallest magazines.
    • It's perhaps the most powerful pistol on the gun list in Feng Shui, and has the highest capacity.

    Video Games

    • It appears as the most powerful pistol in many First Person Shooters and Third Person Shooters; it's very unlikely to appear with its real name, and often has enough accuracy and power to be used as an ersatz sniper rifle. In first person shooters especially, this is partly because the gun is blocky and angular, and thus easy to make in 3D. Appearances include:
      • Counter-Strike. For Valve's attempts at nerfing it, it's still the best handgun in the game. Means nothing against a skilled player with an M4, however.
      • Max Payne: At least Max holds the gun with both hands in the first game, as it really has a mean kick. In the second game, however, he dual-wields them with ease. It's also the preferred handgun for Mona Sax, and she can dual-wield them as well.
      • Call of Duty 4 multiplayer. Only two of them appear in single-player mode, and one is owned by the Big Bad.
        • Your reward for reaching the final rank in multiplayer, Commander (level 55), is a golden one.
      • Modern Warfare 2 has them as well, and it's also possible to find akimbo Desert Eagles.
      • Modern Warfare 3 also has them, and in the single-player campaign Yuri usually starts with one. Captain Price also takes up one as his new sidearm of choice after being disavowed from Task Force 141, replacing his old M1911.
      • CJ from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas can acquire the Desert Eagle when he reaches Las Venturas, though there's a free one lurking around the first city.
      • The gun also shows up (as the "Combat Pistol") in Grand Theft Auto IV. It's not as much of a Hand Cannon this time around—it's clearly based on the less-powerful .357 Magnum version, and takes three shots to take down an enemy. With the Ballad of Gay Tony DLC, it's also no longer the most powerful handgun.
      • Turns up in Far Cry as the "Falcon 357" and the console sequels as the "Jungle Falcon." In Far Cry 2 it's the "Eagle .50" and has "Deagle .50AE Pistol" engraved on the slide.
      • The .357 Magnum version is common in Jagged Alliance 2. The .44 Magnum and .50 Action Express versions are added in the unofficial v1.13 patch, and buying ammo for the gun from the arms-dealing website mocks you for carrying around such an impractical, heavy, and huge handgun instead of a rifle.
      • The "Heavy Pistol" in City of Heroes is based on this.
      • EA's James Bond video games use this jarringly; despite its ridiculously expensive nature, it's often the standard sidearm for Mooks in a few of the games. Even odder, said mooks use the "under 50 dollars on the black market" AK-47 as their primary weapon.
      • Usable in Soldier of Fortune as the "Silver Talon." Yields a messy result with headshots.
      • Appears in STALKER as the "Big Ben" firing 9x39mm SP or PAB rounds and the "Black Kite" firing .45 ACP. There is no Desert Eagle variant chambered for either caliber.
      • Basic pistol in Half-Life: Opposing Force, used by both "Otis" security guards and HECU Medics.
      • It's the second-most powerful handgun in Rainbow Six Vegas and Rainbow Six Vegas 2. The most powerful happens to be a revolver that isn't used for anything besides hunting really large game like elephants.
      • A variant turns up in Left 4 Dead 2 called the Desert Cobra[2]; it's powerful, but hilariously enormous and thus takes up a silly amount of screen real estate.
        • But worth it just to hear Nick say "Niiiice" as you pick it up.
        • Also notable in that it doesn't lose any accuracy if you're using it in the 'down' state, unlike the regular pistols. This combined with its power makes it perfect for picking off that Hunter/Smoker/Jockey/Charger that's beating down your friend even if you're incap'd.
        • Despite the eight-shot magazine, it is very useful in Realism Mode, as the only non-shotgun that can take down common infected with one hit, even with a glancing blow. In contrast, sniper rifles require two or three center-of-mass shots to bring down Realism rhino-hided commons.
    • In Just Cause 2, a slightly modified, nameless version is the most basic peashooter.
    • The heavy pistol in All Points Bulletin is clearly modeled after the Desert Eagle.
    • Meryl Silverburgh in the Metal Gear Solid series uses a Desert Eagle as her signature weapon. In the first game, Snake points out to her that she could have picked something more sensible from the armory, to which she defiantly replies that she used them since she was a little girl, affirming her role as a hot blooded youngster who wants to be a hero, as opposed to Snake being a remorseful veteran. By MGS4, she carries two, and is now a veteran Badass who's actually very good with the gun. (It's used prominently in the same cutscene when Johnny rescues her with a .50 BMG anti-materiel sniper rifle indoors.)
    • Contract J.A.C.K. has one of these.
    • Leon Scott Kennedy can pick up a .50 AE version of the gun and upgrade it to the long-barrel version near the end of the game.
    • Dead Frontier has one of these under the name "Desert Fox" as the second most powerful and difficult to use handgun.
    • Parodied and mocked in the video game adaptation of The Darkness. When you're in a Mafia safehouse, you can listen to a guy gleefully describing to one of his buddies a scene from an action movie he had just seen; in it, the hero uses two Deagles to shoot up a room full of mooks. The guy's friend says that that sounds like the stupidest movie ever.
    • Appears in several Fallout games as a fairly common early-game weapon that is not all that powerful.
    • Scarface the World Is Yours. Advertised as a one hit kill. Very effective.
    • Appears in Saints Row 2 as the "GDHC.[3] 50", holding as many bullets as the real-world .44 version and used solely by FBI agents. Once the player grabs one, s/he can naturally dual-wield them. The ".45 Shepherd" in Saints Row the Third also seems to be heavily based on the Desert Eagle.
    • All of the gangsters you face in the first levels of Splinter Cell: Conviction carry these as their standard sidearm. What's even weirder is that the PMC mooks you face later in the game tend to carry more believable pistols such as the USP45 or M9.
    • Appears as the "Hand Cannon" in Killing Floor, as an alternative to the standard 9mm pistol. In earlier versions of the game, Sharpshooters at the highest level spawned with two of them.
    • Combat Arms features 4 variants of the Desert Eagle, the standard Desert Eagle, Desert Eagle Black, Desert Eagle Special Edition (Similar to the standard except features a black slide and an engraving on the side), and the Desert Eagle Gold (A gold desert eagle with a two tone tiger stripe pattern).


    FG 42

    The Fallschirmjägergewehr 42 was a slightly bizarre German weapon designed for use by paratroopers, designed to be a very light machine gun firing the 7.92x57mm Mauser round used more successfully by the Kar 98 and MG42. The "intermediate" 7.92x33mm Kurz that would later be used in the StG44 (see below), an obviously more sensible choice, was already available, but Hermann Goering vetoed its use and insisted on the full-power 7.92x57mm. Two versions exist with a total production run of around 7,000 weapons; the early version had a distinctive 45-degree pistol grip supposedly to allow the weapon to be fired as the soldier descended on his parachute, and the late production version with a more sensible straight grip; both used a side-mounted box magazine. Neither was particularly spectacular in terms of performance: the light weight made the weapon's recoil extremely hard to control, and the mechanism proved so delicate that fully automatic fire could totally destroy the action. The action would later be the basis for the M60 machine gun.

    Despite this, it tends to be depicted in WWII video games as a supergun, able to fire accurately in single-shot while still being effective when firing bursts. The weapon was to be an universal gun, merging the capabilities of machine gun, machine pistol and precision rifle (it was to be fitted with a bipod, scope and a spike bayonet, a true IKEA Weaponry). The designers working on the project even came to joke that their superiors in High Command demand "eine eierlegende Wollmichsau" (dairy egg-laying pig).

    Video Games

    • Seen in all WWII Call of Duty games, typically with the ZF-4 scope and depicted as a hugely powerful selective-fire weapon accurate at long range; in the first game it's basically the game's BFG-equivalent.
    • All but replaces the MP40 as primary weapon as soon as it appears in Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
    • Seen in Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII.
    • Germans may choose it in Day of Defeat, but only in a paratroopers team.[4] The recoil is faithfully reproduced, that is makes it barely usable: the second bullet in a burst can hit anything only at point-blank. The scope variant is useful because you can't have normal binoculars in the game, but not for aiming. Otherwise inferior to BAR.
    • Wielded by Nazis in BloodRayne, but it's called the "Blitzgewehr32" here. Rayne can use it one-handed, and can even dual-wield two of them.


    G11

    The Heckler & Koch G11 was an experimental West German rifle most notable for using caseless ammunition. Its cost, complexity, and the end of the Cold War meant that it only had a very limited production run of around 1,000 units before being canceled. However, its exotic and futuristic shape makes it a fairly popular addition to media, especially in near-future settings. A particularly ironic fact is that most games have it as one of the most powerful guns available, when in reality the rifle was made during the "micro ammunition craze" and thus fired a relatively puny 4.73mm round, albeit fired at the same speed and power of regular 5.56s.

    Anime and Manga

    Film

    • In Demolition Man, Wesley Snipes' character finds it in a museum (narrator voice says it is one of the last guns ever produced) and uses it. Oddly enough, it shoots magnetically accelerated bursts of plasma instead of bullets.

    Literature

    • In the Matthew Reilly novel Temple, a secret army of latter-day SS troopers somehow manages to get a hold of enough G-11s to arm dozens of soldiers. It's noted that this version of the gun actually has a microprocessor to fire. This becomes a plot point.
    • A shipment of these is stolen by terrorists working for a Jim Jones-like cult in one of the Soldiers of Barrabas action novels by Jack Hild.

    Tabletop Games

    • Twilight 2000 describes it as the standard German assault rifle, but notes that, because its caseless ammunition cannot be reloaded from spent brass, ammunition has become extremely scarce. Thus the gun is quite common and cheap, but its ammunition is rare and expensive.
    • D20 Modern splatbook Arms Locker includes this gun as arguably the most effective assault rifle. It is always mastercrafted for +1 accuracy, has a 50-round magazine, and can burst fire for double damage at half the usual penalty.
    • Shows up in GURPS: High-Tech with a 45+1 round magazine and incredible reliability. It has a special highly accurate burst mode. Its main problem is low range and high cost.

    Video Games

    • In the text-based online RPG Hobowars one of the highest-damage weapons is the G11, which outclasses the M16 (which outclasses the AK-47... you get the drift). The G11 is only outclassed by three weapons (so far).
    • In Fallout 2, they are used by the Enclave soldiers. They hurt a lot, even if you are wearing Power Armor.
    • In Abomination the Nemesis Project, they are pretty common for a limited production weapon in a plague-infested city in the US.
    • In Cold Winter Andrew Sterling will be able to obtain G-11s in the Grey Wings' mountain fortress. It makes use of the side-mounted scope and is a very powerful three-shot burst assault rifle, in fact the strongest assault rifle in the whole game.
    • It makes an appearance in Syphon Filter 2, AKA-47'ed as H-11. With a 50 round magazine, a 2x scope, and high rate of fire, it's one of the best rifles in the game. Too bad you can only get it in the first level, and even then, only if you know where to look for it and get it at the very beginning (if you land in your parachute, you can't get it).
    • Appears in Omega Strain (renamed "C11") and is again one of the best guns, not least because it ignore body armor.
    • It shows up in Jagged Alliance 2, wielded by Mike the Mercenary (aka the over priced Merc from the first game). It has excellent armor piercing characteristics, ignoring all armor except treated Spectra Fiber armor (the best in the game), but it only has two magazines, or less if Mike got off a lot of shots, and the in-game gun dealer only occasionally has any more to sell you.
      • V 1.13 makes it a bit more available - the gun dealing website states they found an abandoned shipment in a warehouse (ssh... don't tell anyone), but they're expensive and the magazine rounds are huge (they can't fit in regular vests - only SAW pouches and such). As with real life, the damage is only on par with a 5.56 round and it can't take any foregrips or LAMs, but it shreds through armor like no one's business and has a great range.
    • Appears in a single mission in Call of Duty: Black Ops, at a point in time where it was probably still on the drawing boards. Defecting scientist Daniel Clarke has three in his private armouries hidden around Kowloon, and wields one himself for most of the mission.
      • Also available in multiplayer, if you have the experience and cash to buy every other assault rifle. Unlike most of the other weapons where you unlock them by buying everything else, the G11 is actually useful, considered to be the best assault rifle in the game due to its high ammo count (without Scavenger Pro), extremely fast fire rate, and high damage. The latter two facts combined make it practically a One-Hit Kill weapon.
    • This one also shows up in Delta Force: Land Warrior and every ammo locker in every terrorist base has ammo for it.


    Handheld Gatling Guns

    A common method of giving More Dakka to a soldier in a movie or videogame is to hand him a multi-barrel rotary gun, most commonly an M134 minigun in 7.62mm NATO. This is sheer Rule of Cool in action; while some games feature entire armed forces with gatlings as standard issue infantry weapons, no real army has ever seriously considered deploying such a weapon. They're a BFG that's simply too big to be useful; an M134 weighs in at 52-66 pounds on its own, and you can throw another 128 pounds on top of that for 1,500 rounds of ammo (roughly 30 seconds' worth), plus you'll need to throw the weight of a power source and the rest of the soldier's gear on top of that. Oh, and have fun with 300 pounds of peak recoil. Using such weapons outside of fixed or vehicle mountings is purely in the realm of fiction. The XM214 Microgun 6-Pak, weighing only 85 pounds WITH ammo, and firing the more managable 5.56 NATO round, might be considered a subversion of this trope, had it actually existed as an infantry weapon past the prototype stage.

    Film

    • Predator was effectively the Trope Maker for these weapons, featuring Jesse Ventura's character carrying "Old Painless", a customised M134 minigun with an M60 handguard mounted under the barrel. The weapon was firing blanks and had the rate of fire turned down from 3,000 RPM to 1,250 (apparently so the barrels would visibly turn rather than being a blur), and was still fired using an overhead crane in most shots. The actors carried 550 round ammunition cans, while the power source was a stack of truck batteries off-screen.
    • Two Terminator sequels also featured man-portable gatling guns; the weapon in Terminator 2 is actually exactly the same gun as was used in Predator, modified to use a chainsaw-like overhead grip. The depiction of the weapon is slightly more plausible, given that the Terminator has superhuman strength.
      • Humorously enough, Schwarzenegger was the only man on the set who could actually lift the minigun prop.
    • Superman Returns had a thug try to use one on Superman; seemingly as a parody of the Predator use, he hooked his up to an on-screen crane.
    • Action-oriented westerns such as The Outlaw Josey Wales and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, repeatedly feature Civil War-era gatling guns. Although these weapons did exist in that time period, more 1862 model guns have been featured in film than were ever actually fielded during the Civil War.

    Video Games

    • Trope Maker for videogames was Wolfenstein 3D, though Doom popularised the misuse of the term "chain gun" to describe them. Only shooters close to the "realism" end of the Fackler Scale of FPS Realism will tend to be able to resist handing the player a minigun, and most tend to slow down movement to make gatlings Awesome but Impractical.
    • Dark Sector featured the Lasrian "Elite Trooper Gun," a massive combination of pneumatic gatling gun and rocket launcher requiring a special suit of armour to even lift.
    • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and San Andreas feature the M134 as a special weapon. In a nod to realism, you move slowly while carrying it.
    • Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption both feature 1862 model guns. In real-life these weapons were supplied by a gravity-fed magazine, but the game provides the player unlimited ammunition and no magazine is depicted.
    • In Metal Gear Solid, Vulcan Raven takes this well past the point of utter ridiculousness by using his Charles Atlas Superpower of, um, "being really, really big" to carry a ~600 pounds-plus-ammo M61 Vulcan cannon.
    • In Resident Evil 4 and 5, a particular type of Giant Mook carries a portable minigun and ammo pack. Since 5's Chris is huge, he can carry one too as a New Game+ bonus - and for him, it's Awesome but Impractical.
    • Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood features Ray yanking a gatling gun off its stand and then going on a rampage. Its ammo is rather limited, however. And it can't be reloaded.
    • Just Cause 2 also allows the protagonist to dismount any mounted gatling gun he sees, and tote it around - but not run, jump or grapple while holding it, and not even move while firing it. On the plus side, the weapon can quickly destroy even targets that normally require explosives, and has infinite ammunition.
    • Somewhat justified by the JSF in EndWar; they are given out to support gunners in Anti-Tank units (about 1 in 4), and can handle the extra weight due to the Exo-skeleton armor used by all JSF troops.
    • Dead Frontier has the "GAU-19" which is described in the wiki as "Weighing in at a hefty 139 pounds and having a recoil force exceeding 500 pounds, the GAU-19 normally cannot be wielded by a man and is intended for use in helicopters, on ships and vehicles..."
    • Gatling guns are a Fallout series staple, usually in the hands of Super Mutants. Regular humans generally require Powered Armor to handle the weapon's weight and ammunition requirements.
    • Appears in Uncharted 2, almost exclusively wielded by the Giant Mooks Nate affectionately calls "Mutants". If he manages to kill one in a location that he can get to (not really possible until the end of the game), he can pick up the gun, which slows his movement speed, can't be aimed, and prevents him from using cover. The 200 round ammo belt and spin-up time on top of all that means it's Awesome but Impractical for anything other than static defense.

    Heckler & Koch Mark 23

    If you believe fiction, this is the gun for badass spies and special operatives; a big, blocky, serious-looking weapon, it's often seen on Tom Clancy covers being brandished by an "Operator." The Mark 23 was originally developed for US SOCOM special forces, and is basically a giant USP chambered in .45 with a heavier slide. Note that the SOCOM version has "USSOCOM" engraved on the slide, while a Mark 23 does not.

    While the Mark 23 isn't rare in the sense of low manufacture, it's another case, like the Desert Eagle, of being seen far more often than it should be. SOCOMs might have been procured for use, but the special forces operators hated them; they found the Mark 23 excessively large and heavy (a loaded Mark 23 with the full SOCOM kit weighs as much as an empty MP5 and is over a foot long) and the ergonomics terrible. Most SOCOM Mark 23s spent peaceful careers sitting in storage racks while more sensibly proportioned sidearms were used instead. Military production was just under 2,000 units total, while the civilian version was discontinued in July 2010.

    Film

    • The Navy SEALs led by Bruce Willis in Tears of the Sun carry the Mk. 23 (excluding Doc, who carries a P226 instead).

    Video Games

    • Solid Snake uses a Mk. 23 SOCOM pistol in the original Metal Gear Solid game, and a 9mm USP on the tanker (though he does give Raiden a Mk. 23 SOCOM during the Big Shell segment) in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The SOCOM can be found again in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in the same spot as in the original. In both the first and second game the weapon's size and weight is acknowledged, by Nastasha and Snake respectively, but both Hand Wave it, saying it "shouldn't be a problem for you."
      • Word of God says the reason they chose the SOCOM was because it was hard to handle and really big. Hard to handle makes Snake look cooler for being able to use it while still taking full advantage of its capabilities; really big makes it easier to render recognizably in the graphics of the PS1 (especially with the light attached, which makes it into basically a big black square. Six polys! Next!).
    • The Tom Clancy games Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon feature this with a suppressor and sometimes an extended magazine as an option.
    • Hayden Tenno in Dark Sector starts out with a Mark 23 (with "Mark 24 Cal 45 auto" on the slide), called the "Tekna 9mm".
    • In Soldier of Fortune 2, Mullins can equip two Mark 23s with the full SOCOM kit. The idle animation shows him twirling one around his finger; a stunningly bad idea with a 17-inch long weapon of any sort, more so with a 5-pound gun with a 4.8-pound single-action trigger pull.
    • Shows up in Delta Force: Land Warrior, with the (unusable) LAM and optional suppressor.


    Mateba 6 Unica Autorevolver

    A very rare semi-automatic revolver that uses the force of the previous shot to revolve the cylinder and cock the hammer; the Mateba is one of only a handful of attempts to create such a weapon. It's also notable for having the barrel at the 6-o-clock chamber as opposed to the 12-o-clock as most guns are, in an effort to reduce muzzle flip and felt recoil (a lifelong obsession of Emilio Ghisoni, the designer of the Mateba Autorevolver and several other unconventional revolvers). Was made by a single company in Italy, and discontinued after a few years; it turned out semi-auto revolvers are rare for a good reason, since they lack the inherent simplicity that is the chief advantage of using a revolver rather than a semi-auto in the first place. Production resumed in 2018, presumably to take advantage of their increased fame.

    • Interesting features: It's a revolver! It's a semi-auto! Unusual look that may be impressive depending on the angle.

    Anime and Manga

    • Trigun -- Vash the Stampede's gun visually resembles the Mateba, though it's otherwise a regular break-open, double-action revolver.
    • One of the episodes of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi has Sacci using one of these.
    • Togusa's weapon of choice in all of the Ghost in the Shell series. His Mateba isn't a real world production model, but a combination of two different Mateba variants. There's also a chance that his is actually a traditional DA revolver, as the Major comments on how he refuses to carry an automatic.
      • The Mateba Autorevolver's immediate predecessor was the Mateba 2006M, a visually very similar (and even rarer) revolver that's a conventional double-action revolver but has the same 6-o-clock barrel configuration. It's like that this, rather than the Unica 6 Autorevolver, is the kind that Togusa uses.
    • Ithaqua from Demonbane is patterned after the Mateba revolver, and seriously upscaled at that.

    Film

    • The main character in Gamer uses what appears to be a Mateba model 6 during a shootout while escaping from the alternate-reality game Society. The ammo limitation doesn't seem to affect him at all.
    • Wash has one in the movie Serenity, it is shown being held by River in the poster, but it is only seen used by Jayne and Zoe.
    • The remake of Total Recall—the protagonist's 'wife' is using one in the trailer.

    MP-412 REX

    A Russian top-break revolver designed in the early post-Soviet days, the REX was designed primarily for the export market (hence its name: "REX" stands for Revolver for EXport). However, it failed to find a market, presumably since there were already a ton of serviceable .357 Magnum revolvers out there (plus, an mid-90s agreement between the US and Russia that Russian handguns wouldn't be exported to the US cut off what would have been its primary market), and Russians themselves had little interest in them. Still, it has recently seen a fair amount of use in modern video games and such, due to its sleek, futuristic design. It also features a unique automatic extractor that ejects spent casings as soon as the cylinder is opened, but for some reason, this is very rarely seen in any kind of media.

    Video Games

    • Battlefield: Bad Company was probably one of the first games to prominently feature the REX; here, it was shown as the Middle-Eastern Coalition's standard handgun. It reappeared in Bad Company 2, but was made available to all factions. In both games, it's the most powerful pistol available, but also the slowest to fire and load.
      • It came back in Battlefield 3 as well, in spite of the generally more realistic selection of weapons in that game. Notably, this is probably the only game in which the automatic extractor is actually used.
    • Perhaps following on Battlefield's heels, Modern Warfare introduced it in its third installment. It's the starting weapon on some of the harder Survival Mode maps, and features an incredibly slow and over-wrought reloading animation to balance its power.
    • Counter-Strike Online has a weirdly dressed-up version called the "Skull-1", which is apparently chambered in .50 cal and used as some kind of dedicated anti-zombie ammo.
    • Red Steel features it as a pretty run-of-the-mill Hand Cannon.


    NS2000

    A futuristic-looking assault shotgun manufactured by the South African company NeoStead, The NS2000 is a 12-gauge pump-action with dual 6-round tubular magazines in a bullpup configuration. The bullpup action allows a longer barrel in a shorter overall package, and the dual magazine provides for loading two different types of ammo at once for multipurpose use - for example, buckshot and rubber baton rounds. Despite these interesting and useful features, the NS2000 has yet to be picked up in any large numbers. But it looks really cool, so it gets plenty of use in fiction. Unlike most pump-action shotguns, the rounds are cycled by a forward-back motion [5].

    • Interesting features: Bullpup shotgun, general "futuristic" look. Dual feed. Reverse pump action. Ejection downward, which can be an advantage for visuals as well as in use.

    Film

    • The DDS Police in Doomsday issue the NS2000.

    Video Games

    • First-person Le Parkour game Mirror's Edge - apparently a standard-issue weapon for the CFP SWAT. Then again, the game is set Twenty Minutes Into the Future, so the NS2000 may have become successful by then.
    • Featured in Battlefield: Bad Company for the multiplayer Demolition Class.
      • Bad Company 2 follows,with NS 2000 available for all kits and being one of the best shotguns in the game.
    • Shows up in UFO Aftermath as one of the best shotguns. However, by the time you get it, you probably have better projectile, laser and plasma weapons, and the very short range of the shotgun is a huge drawback when you start fighting Reticulans.
    • Jagged Alliance. Dr. Clifford Highball (no, that's actually his name) uses one in V 1.13, and it has a good range for a shotgun.
    • Appeared in Fallout Tactics, but without magazine selector and for some reason as full-auto.
    • Soldier of Fortune: Payback
    • Ghost Recon: Phantoms
    • Söldner: Secret Wars
    • Survarium


    OICW / XM29

    The Objective Individual Combat Weapon, the U.S. Army's name for the weapon development project and the weapon itself. Meant as an advanced tactical weapon, composed of a 5.56mm carbine mounted underneath a bullpup-feed 20mm grenade launcher (later 25mm), and equipped with a sophisticated computerized sight. This allowed the use of HEAB [High Explosive Air Burst] rounds which could have their fusing set by the user to explode without hitting the target or requiring a proximity fuse.

    The XM29 was H&K and Alliant Techsystems' entry in the project, and the one that got closest to a green-light. However, it became clear that the XM29 would never be brought within the project's weight and cost goals, so it was cancelled and the OICW program was split into two "increments;" in the first, the separate halves of the weapon would be developed as discrete weapon systems. The grenade launcher is still in the works, the US Army ordered several XM25 "Punisher" standalone grenade launchers for testing in late 2015[6], while the lower was based on the G36 rifle and was worked into the XM8 (see below). This was supposed to be followed up with a second increment where, technology allowing, the systems would be used as the basis for a new combined system like the XM29 would have been. It remains unclear if the current next-gen US rifle project is part of the increment 1 or if the whole OICW program has now been scrapped.

    While the OICW program was a failure, South Korea has put the similar K11 system into service, not as a standard rifle but as a limited-issue grenadier's weapon, which is probably what the US should have been thinking in terms of. This implies that having OIC Ws in a work set Twenty Minutes Into the Future might not be too unrealistic, as long as not everybody is carrying one.

    Film

    • In Die Another Day bad guy Colonel Moon pulls out a "new anti-tank gun" which is obviously supposed to be an OICW, depicted as firing depleted uranium shells; the prop was actually a converted G36 rifle.

    Video Games

    • Soldier of Fortune 2 - With a bit of Lampshade Hanging, as the issuing agent who gives Mullins the gun explains that it's still a prototype weapon. It's extremely unwieldy in this game due to forcing the player to use an awkward menu-driven interface in order to actually use the grenade launcher.
    • Far Cry also has it in its arsenal as a common gun in the later parts of the game. It's much more simplistic, with the grenade launcher reduced to a standard alt-fire Noob Tube.
    • OICWs are the weapons used by the generic foot soldiers in Metal Gear AC!D 2. As a result, they're probably the weakest weapons in the game.
    • The penultimate level in Eternal Darkness is about blowing up Eldritch Abominations with an OICW.
      • Said example is also a blatant Rule of Cool usage; that level is set in 1991.
    • Vatican assault troops in Cry Havoc carry modified OICWs.
    • Red Faction 2 gives the player a "Nanotech Individual Combat Weapon" clearly based on older OICW prototypes with a long lower barrel.
    • Jagged Alliance, to no one's surprise, uses this in V 1.13. Its bullpup configuration and short barrel means it has less range for its rifle and grenade components than, say, its Australian cousin, the AICW, but the grenade rounds still pack a punch. It's also got accuracy bonuses as long as an enemy is in range.
    • Ghost Recon allows you to arm soldiers in your squad with this gun, with or without a grenade launcher as well.
    • This weapon was originally intended to be used by the Combine in Half Life 2, and appears in many promotional screenshots for the game. It was only replaced by the completely fictional pulse rifle relatively late in development, and can be used in the leaked beta version of the game.
    • This was the main gun in Delta Force: Land Warrior under the name OICW Landwarrior.

    Pancor Jackhammer

    A 12-gauge automatic shotgun with a ten-round drum magazine. Can (theoretically) empty itself in less than four seconds. It also has the oddball feature of being able to remove its magazine and use it as an anti-personnel landmine with the addition of a detonator. Like the CAWS and the NS2000, it has a futuristic look due to a plastic shroud (which it only has because the only remaining Jackhammer is a shop room prototype.[7]) and bullpup format. Less than twenty prototypes were made; a mere two of these were full auto-capable and only one still exists. The real weapon had severe problems in semi and fullauto since it depended on the magazine grooves being manufactured to fairly tight tolerances, and the weapon would typically only be able to fire two or three shots before failing to cycle. The Jackhammer is oddly much more common than the production USAS-12 fully automatic shotgun[8] or the relatively easy to modify to full auto AK based Saiga and Vepr semi-automatic shotguns. Part of the Jackhammer's commonness is due to the fact that the initial owner of the only remaining Jackhammer was Movie Gun Services, who regularly rented it for use as a prop and for scanning.

    • Interesting features: Full-auto shotgun. Bullpup, and general "futuristic" look

    Film

    • Total Recall has several SWD/Cobray Street Sweeper shotguns dressed up to resemble Jackhammer prototype (at least, from above).

    Video Games

    Web Original

    • The Wastes
    • Harry Tsai was given one in V3 of Survival of the Fittest, while Ivan Kuznetsov received his own in V4 as a prize for Best Kill.

    There are more listed examples here (plus unlisted appearances) than the actual number of Jackhammers that were manufactured. Maybe there's some sort of gun-sharing pool in action.

    PP-19 Bizon

    A submachine gun produced by Russian state armory IZHMASH, the Bizon is essentially a modified AKS-74, chambered for one of three pistol cartridges and with a helical 45 (7.62x25mm) or 64 (9x18 and 9x19mm) round magazine which doubles as the handguard. It is still in production, but has seen only limited service with Russian security and law enforcement forces; like the Calico weapons (above), the main issue is that helical magazines are expensive to manufacture, and early Bizon versions also had issues with the magazine detaching from the gun while being used as a grip (using the magazine as a grip is rarely a good idea in any firearm, despite what every movie featuring an MP40 would have you believe). It is nonetheless seen in large numbers in a few video games. It is not to be confused with the similar PP-90M1, which also uses a helical magazine in the same configuration, but suffers from a host of amazingly stupid design decisions. The Bizon was designed by Victor Kalashnikov, whose father Mikhail famously designed the assault rifle it was based on.

    • Interesting features: Much like Calico, only more "cobbled together" look.

    Video Games

    • Carried by many Soviet soldiers in Freedom Fighters.
    • In the first Syphon Filter, (renamed BIZ-2) it is available in the last missions, which take place in an ex-Soviet military base/missile silo in Kazakhstan. It's pretty realistic in a sense that Bizons are featured there and only there.
    • The Bizon is available for purchase in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. It's not as accurate as other SMGs, nor as powerful as the P90, but makes up for it in terms of More Dakka.
    • The stock submachinegun of the Middle-Eastern Coalition Anti-Tank class in Battlefield 2.
    • A suppressed 9x18mm Bizon was used by Spetznaz soldiers in the first Operation Flashpoint and its expansion pack, Resistance. The gun is an anachronism since the first Bizon prototypes weren't made until 1993, and Flashpoint's campaigns take place in the 1980s.
    • The Helghast pistol and SMG in Killzone are both based on the Bizon; the SMG has the receiver of an Uzi.
    • Jagged Alliance 2 1.13, featuring several versions: one in Russian 9x19, and one in 9mm Parabellum. The latter is almost comparable to the P-90 in stats (has worse range but better damage and, obviously, ammo capacity).
    • Combat Arms has 5 Variants of the PP-19: The standard, the PP-19 CAMO (Has a blue-grey camo pattern), the PP-19 MOD (A PP-19 with a suppressor and a red-dot sight), the PP-19 MOD CAMO (A PP-19 MOD with a yellow-black camo pattern) and Scorpion's PP-19 MOD (A PP-19 MOD with a scorpion design involving a scorpion tail wrapping around the magazine and a black and red-tipped suppressor).
    • One of the specialists' loadouts in the first Ghost Recon includes the Bizon.


    Franchi SPAS-12

    The Franchi SPAS-12 (Sporting or Special Purpose Automatic Shotgun, depending on who you're trying to sell it to) is the movie-writer's and game-developer's favorite shotgun, mainly because it looks cool, with a brawny appearance similar to the M60. In real life, it's rather heavy for a combat weapon and is fairly complicated to use compared to other shotguns; notably, it will not let you chamber a round with the safety on (of which it had TWO), a fact which has caused some consternation among new owners, and was awkward to load for non-right-hand users. It was cancelled in the early 2000s. It was replaced by the SPAS-15, which feeds from a box magazine and looks somewhat like an M16 that got beat down with the ugly stick. The latter explains why unlike its predecessor, the SPAS-15 doesn't get seen very often in movies or video games, despite being an objectively superior weapon.

    While it's capable of both pump-action and semi-automatic fire (the latter preferable in combat, the former being intended for firing less-lethal ammo like bean bag and baton rounds, which have insufficient power to cycle the action), this is seldom depicted in movies since the action is incapable of cycling with blank ammunition. While video games obviously aren't subject to the blank-firing limitation, many of them depict the SPAS as pump-action only as well; presumably this is either because the developers got their idea of how it works from movies, or simply due to Rule of Cool.

    Anime and Manga

    Film

    • Used during the heist in 3000 Miles to Graceland.
    • Is featured prominently in The Hitcher.
    • Makes a memorable appearance in Jurassic Park, in the hands of Robert Muldoon and later Alan Grant.
    • Used in the lobby scene in The Matrix.
    • Vincent and Sol use a shortened version in Snatch (It's a fucking anti-aircraft gun!).
    • One is used by the Terminator to shoot up the police station in the first Terminator film.
    • The famous M-41A Pulse Rifle from Aliens and associated videogames was a shell containing a Thompson submachine gun as the rifle component and an underbarrel Remington 870 shotgun mounted inside a SPAS-12 protective shroud and including a cut-down fore-end.
    • Used in the 1986 Ozploitation film Fair Game for hunting pretty blonde females.
    • Wielded by Ryan Cawdor in the After the End film Deathlands Homeward Bound. Then again, the book series it's based on is full of Gun Porn and Rule of Cool, so we can forgive them.

    Live-Action TV

    • The title character carries one in the trunk of his car in Hunter.
    • An assassin uses one in Miami Vice to eliminate a target, firing in semiauto mode, in the episode "Calderon's Return".
    • One of the more popular choices to use against the Replicators in Stargate SG-1 (along with the USAS-12 and Armsel Striker; automatic shotguns are always preferred when facing the bugs).

    Video Games

    • Like practically everything else on this list, appears in the Jagged Alliance games. A decent shotgun.
    • Appears in all of the games in the Half Life series. Oddly, the games treat it as if it's a double-barreled shotgun, allowing you to "Fire both barrels" as a more powerful attack. The 'second barrel' is actually the tube magazine that holds the ammunition.
      • The mod Sven-Coop treats it correctly - Secondary Fire allows you fire in semi-auto at the cost of accuracy.
    • It's available in some form in all of the Hitman games, in which it's properly depicted as semi-automatic.
    • Available in all three STALKER games as the "SPSA-14." By contrast Saiga and Vepr AK pattern shotguns that would logically be far more common in a former Soviet bloc wasteland are completely absent outside of mods.
    • Available in Grand Theft Auto Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, in which it's shown to be capable of blowing up cars with ease.
    • Available in Left 4 Dead 2. As an inversion of the Half Life case, it's depicted exclusively as semi-automatic.
    • The Rittergruppen shotguns in Alpha Protocol are patterned after the SPAS 12, but a little shortened.
    • The JG840 shotgun in All Points Bulletin.
    • The weapon used by the shotgun-armed Gurlukovich soldiers in Metal Gear Solid 2.
    • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, where it's pump-action, and Black Ops, where it's semi-auto. In one singleplayer mission in Black Ops, it's equipped with incendiary shells. Infamously, in the multiplayer mode of Modern Warfare 2, it has an extremely glitchy range which fluctuates between normal shotgun range to submachinegun range, leading it to be widely hated by players.
      • It reappears in Modern Warfare 3, with a fixed range that is still very long, but the damage on it has been nerfed so it only kills in one hit within shotgun range.
    • Like with nearly every other weapon here it appears in Combat Arms and has 4 variants: standard and stock (with the folding stock being replaced with a fixed stock), or Gold and Stock Gold.
    • A shortened one appears in Perfect Dark Zero as the DEF-12 Shotgun. Its secondary mode fires two shells in quick succession.
    • Available in both Battlefield: Bad Company games; in the latter it can be loaded with 12-gauge slugs.


    STG 44

    The Sturmgewehr 44, also known as the MP43 and MP44, was a select-fire assault rifle developed by Nazi Germany near the end of World War II. The first assault rifle to be produced in significant numbers, the weapon was also first to be called such; "sturmgewehr" literally means "assault rifle". It was capable of fully automatic fire, had a thirty-round detachable box magazine and fired an intermediate cartridge—a round that was less powerful than the standard rifle round of the time, but still packed a bigger punch than the pistol rounds used in submachine guns—the 7.92x33mm Kurz ("Short"). The result was reduced recoil but excellent stopping power at medium to short range.

    While almost half a million were made, a number exceeding the other entries on this page put together, the majority were issued to units on the eastern front where few works not about Stalingrad are set. What was particularly rare was the proprietary ammo. At peak production of 7.92×33mm Kurz, a user could fire about 30 rounds a month. Even modern production 7.92×33mm Kurz remains rare, going for nearly a dollar a round (for comparison in 2017 on a good day the AK47's 7.62x39 goes for a bit more than 20 cents a round and NATO standard 5.56 goes for less than 30 cents) and selling out quickly.

    A common misconception is that it was the basis for the AK-pattern rifles, which is untrue; the mechanism of the AK isn't even remotely similar and the similarities of form are purely due to similarities of function. Despite the rifle's positive features, there were plenty of problems with it. It was difficult to fire while prone, heavy, unwieldy, and unreliable. Due to poor quality materials and rushed construction, the receiver was prone to distorting; simply dropping it on a hard floor or jostling the magazine too much could irreperably damage it. Indeed, British tests showed it was possible to render it totally unable to fire simply by propping it up and then pushing it over.

    Amazingly enough, there's actually some Truth in Television to seeing the StG44 in more modern works; there are some militias in Lebanon and Africa that still have them in their arsenals and it regularly shows up in stockpiles of weapons captured from various middle eastern forces (most of which are, sadly, destroyed).

    Anime and Manga

    Film

    • The Professionals. A pair of Bulgarian intelligence mooks are seen carrying these in a spy exchange.
    • Telly Savalas uses one during the uprising in the WW 2 action movie Escape to Athena (1979).
    • Appears in perhaps larger quantity than any other movie in Downfall. Truth in Television, the Nazis at first issued the weapon in a rather tentative manner, but as they started to run out of men to arm, they handed out the guns to everyone that looked capable of lifting it and/or didn't evacuate to the west fast enough.
    • In a manner similar to how a lot of Western movies would dress up Western weapons to look like Soviet weapons, the Soviets tended to do the same for their movies, or at least with whatever stock guns they had available. In a few Soviet-era films from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe, StG's were dressed up to look like M16 rifles.
    • Rebel Blastech rifles in Star Wars, most noticeably during the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back are dressed up StG's.

    Literature

    • The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter. The title character, a German sharpshooter in the last days of WW 2, spends some time developing a specialized version for the assassination he's been tasked with.

    Video Games

    • In Hidden & Dangerous, one mission set in occupied Norway in the winter of 1943, there are guards equipped with the StG44, which produced as early as 1942 probably wouldn't be issued to "normal" soldiers that early.
    • Used by both German soldiers and your character in Medal of Honor: Underground, Allied Assault, and Frontline.
    • The first Call of Duty features enemies equipped with this weapon in a level set in Stalingrad in November 1942. The sequel has soldiers in Normandy wielding it in June 1944.
      • In the first game, it also appears during the British campaign.
    • Call of Duty 4 features the StG44 as the top-tier assault rifle the player can unlock through online play. It's something of a booby prize. The weapon's autofire is difficult to control and inaccurate, and no attachments can be added to improve it (even though all real StG44 had mounts for a ZF41).
    • The main weapon for the German assault soldiers in Battlefield 1942.
    • Also the main gun for the Support class of Day of Defeat and Day of Defeat: Source.
    • Available from Bobby Ray's Guns and Things, though it's not worth it in the slightest (rare ammo, bad range and high complexity).
    • Appears in Commandos 3: Destination Berlin, even during the "Stalingrad" campaign (set before the invention of this weapon).

    Thompson Submachine Gun (Pre-World War II)

    While the "Tommy Gun" is a firearm recognizable by anyone who knows what side the bullets come out of and an iconic part prohibition era crime, the Thompson Submachine Gun was actually a massive failure: Its high cost (half a new car) and weight (over 10 pounds) ensured that by 1929, over 10 years after its invention in 1918, it had sold just 10,300 units and Auto-Ordnance was over 2 million in debt (in 1928 dollars). The few gangsters that owned Tommy Guns had stolen theirs from police and, then as today, the most popular firearms among criminals were small and concealable pistols. Despite this failure it looked and sounded quite impressive on the silver screen and a movie company could easily afford to buy one that could be reused in dozens of movies. The Thompson would lose its rare gun status in World War II and reach production of 2 million (plus an unknown number of Chinese copies), but this salvation would be short lived as many cheaper and lighter alternatives were developed during the war and the 1934 National Firearms Act effectively banned it from civilians ownership.

    Film

    Armsel Streetsweeper (and Striker/Protecta)

    The other shotgun with a drum magazine by default. Known largely for the hysteria born of the name given to the version sold in the US, the Armsel is one of the very few shotguns to be banned in the US by executive order (ordering the ATF to fail its application to be classified as sporting purpose). Despite said hysteria the Streetsweeper was a terrible gun, having an extremely complex and time consuming reloading process, and had plenty of sharp edges that made handling it unpleasant.

    Video Games


    Walker Colt

    Developed jointly between Samuel Colt and Captain Samuel Walker, the Walker Colt was intended to be a sidearm that was extremely powerful at close range and capable of killing horses as well as men. In fact, prior to the introduction of the .357 Magnum, it was the most powerful handgun in the world and had an effective range of around 100 yards. However, it had two major drawbacks. The first being that it was fucking huge and had to be holstered in the saddle. The other being that the barrels had a tendancy to rupture should proper care not be taken in maintaining the weapon. As a result, only around 1100 of them were ever made, though modern replicas are available.

    Comic Books

    • Colt Walker is the weapon of choice for the Saint of Killers in Preacher. As he gains the title he gets a new pair, which are forged from the sword of the previous saint in hellfire. The resulting weapons never miss, apparently never run out of ammunition, can shoot through anything (like, say, the armor of an M1 Abrams tank) and kill just about anything in the entire creation. Including God.

    Film

    • Josey Wales carries a pair of them (along with two more smaller pistols).
    • Mentioned in Unforgiven. Part of the real story of the death of "Two Gun" Corcoran mentions that he carried one of these weapons and it exploded on him, allowing English Bob to finish him off.

    Video Games

    • Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood gives one to Ray as one of his starting weapons.


    Walther WA 2000

    Designed from the ground up as a target rifle, this bullpup semi-auto is exceptionally rare. Estimates vary on how many were produced, but the number was only 170-250 in two versions with minor differences; this was largely due to extremely high costs killing demand. A WA 2000 in good condition is now easily worth $75,000 on the open market. Unfortunately, there aren't any even if you have this kind of money to spare; there are exactly fifteen WA 2000 rifles in the entire United States, with 11 owned by the American President of Walther and the rest owned by another collector. Very, very popular in movies and videogames, since it has a nice mix of the unconventional (bullpup layout) and the traditional (wood furniture). Due to its obscene rarity, many WA 2000 rifles seen in movies are actually Ironwood Designs SG2000 .22 rifles acting as stand-ins for the WA 2000.

    Anime and Manga

    • Henrietta uses one in the anime of Gunslinger Girl.
    • Also used by the stylish hitwoman of Geobreeders: Breakthrough.
    • Kurz Weber uses one against a Giant Mecha in Full Metal Panic!.
    • Rally Vincent from Gunsmith Cats uses one in one of the few scenes she uses something other than a pistol.
    • Emiya Kiritsugu from Fate/Zero uses one equipped with a dual-scope setup: night-vision, and thermal imaging
    • Major Motoko Kusanagi uses a very similar rifle in a WWIV flashback in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd gig. Since the series is set Twenty Minutes Into the Future and the rifle has some design changes and updates, it's likely that this is supposed to be a new model based on the vintage WA 2000.
      • The same rifle is later seen in Solid State Society, the made for TV movie of Stand Alone Complex, being used by the same guy who'd previously been shot with it.

    Film

    • Used as a shotgun to kill dogs in Equilibrium.
    • Used by Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights, equipped with a large night vision scope. With Walther's sponsorship of the franchise, it may be the only real WA2000 in film.
    • The Weyland-Yutani WY-102 sniper rifle in Aliens Versus Predator 2 is basically a dressed-up WA 2000 with a strange rotating cylinder replacing the action.

    Literature

    • Able Team. Carl Lyons finds a mercenary sniper team practising with this weapon to assassinate the President of Guatemala.
    • Dieter Weber, the Rainbow Team 2 Sniper, uses this in Rainbow Six. Memorable usages include shooting the submachine gun out of a terrorist's hands, allowing his partner to painfully send a bullet into his gut for killing a child.

    Video Games

    • Agent 47 uses this weapon as his primary sniper rifle in Hitman: Codename 47. It is also featured in the sequels and in The Movie. In Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, there is a custom version of this gun, used by ninja.
      • Notably, it is the single most expensive weapon in the game. And you can carry it in a briefcase. It's also not available until you reach Rotterdam, which is 3/4 of the way through the game (he uses a Remington 700 until then).
    • Appears in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in the hands of an entire force of Russian snipers. How they afford it is anyone's guess.
      • It's also an early-tier sniper rifle in multiplayer, superior to the Intervention because it's semi-auto and has a larger magazine.
      • Returns in Treyarch's game Call of Duty: Black Ops. Which is set in the sixties, before the weapon's invention.
    • Team sniper Dieter Weber uses this rifle in the sniping sections of the console versions of Rainbow Six: Lockdown and as far back in the games as Rogue Spear. This is also Weber's rifle of choice in the original book.
    • Used in Black, shown as a straight-pull bolt-action rifle, and therefore presumably broken.
    • Used in the Quantum of Solace video game and in GoldenEye Wii. Thanks to Walther's sponsorship of the James Bond license (which may explain their presence beyond looking cool), they are the only weapons to have their original name other than the P99 and PPK.
    • Now available from Bobby Ray's Guns and Things at the low, low price of $7940!!! Cash, major credit cards and conflict diamonds accepted!
    • Again, found in Combat Arms as the WA 2000 and the WA 2000 Classic (which has a wooden hand guard and stock).

    Webley-Fosberry Automatic Revolver

    A predecessor of the Mateba Autorevolver mentioned above, and rather more conventional in appearance; at a distance it's almost indistinguishable from a regular revolver. Designed in the 1890s, based on the then-standard issue sidearm of the British Army, and about five thousand were made between 1901 and 1915, in both .455 and .38ACP. The action sounds like pure Clock Punk, with the entire barrel and cylinder moving backwards in order to turn the cylinder; firing one has been described as "an interesting experience". It achieved some success as a target pistol but was never adopted as a service weapon, and the handful of officers who took privately purchased Webley-Fosberrys into combat (At the time British officers provided their own sidearm provided it was chambered in the standard round) generally regretted it; it was heavy, generated a lot more felt recoil than a regular Webley and had a very low tolerance for mud and dirt.

    Film

    • Used to kill Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon, both book and film versions. The film gets the calibre wrong, describing it as ".455, eight shots." In reality, and in the novel, the .38 version had eight chambers while the .455 version had the usual six.
    • Wielded by Sean Connery's character in Zardoz.

    Literature


    XM8

    H&K's second attempt to salvage the OICW program, the XM8 is a G36 mechanism in a plastic casing based on the bottom half of the original XM29 design. The weapon had some promise, but the Army ended up canceling the program in 2005, likely due to it being heavier than the current generation M4, the short life of its optics, reports of its handguard and parts of its upper receiver melting during sustained fire, and a lack of compatibility with existing RIS or RAS accessories. Even if all the problems were solved (the melting issue and the optics's battery life were solved early in its design), it still wouldn't have been a sufficient improvement over the M4 to be worthwhile. The XM8 appears everywhere in video games and occasionally movies set Twenty Minutes Into the Future[9] (or even in the present day), developers unruffled by a pesky real-world cancellation, despite its newer replacement, the HK 416, having already lost its Rare Guns status. That may have something to do with the fact that the XM8 has a sleek futuristic look while the HK 416 looks a lot like the M4.

    Film

    • Used by the traitors in XXX: State of the Union; in fact, these are modified G36K rifles.
    • Carried by Homeland Security officers in Children of Men; the prop was an airsoft gun for some reason fitted with the non-export sight of a G36.
    • The first episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy had this weapon in the hands of Black Dragon thugs. Possibly because of its unique appearance, the XM8 was depicted as a directed-energy weapon.

    Video Games

    • Promotional images of Call of Duty Black Ops 2 have someone holding what looks like an XM8.
    • Metal Gear Solid 4 had the US Army and Marines use it as a standard weapon. Then again, it is an alternate timeline. Then again again, it would be called the M8 if it had actually been adopted. In Ac!d, it was Snake's signature weapon on all official art, was very powerful, and caused random status effects (including making the enemy catch fire). In Ac!d2, it was less powerful and in less art, but still caused random status effects.
    • Crysis, and its standalone expansion Warhead both use adapted versions of this as the US rifle; it's called the SCAR, so presumably in the Crysis universe the XM8 won the SOCOM SCAR trials rather than FN's entry. Crysis 2 features a stripped-down version called the SCARAB, which resembles a SCAR-L more than the XM8, but also keeps the regular SCAR.
    • Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, and its sequel.
    • Appears in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, without the top-mounted scope, in the hands of one P.L.A.V. soldier, in an out-of-the-way area of the map, and is named (appropriately enough) Prototype Rifle. It's also one of the best weapons in the game, making it a bonus for anyone that decides to explore Venezuela.
    • The Legionnaires of Battlefield: Bad Company use this weapon, just without the standard scope, going with iron sights. Also available as an unlock for the Assault class in multiplayer.
      • It shows up again in Bad Company 2 as the new signature weapon for most of B-Company, save for Sweetwater, who uses an M60 machine gun instead. Multiplayer also features the LMG and Compact variants for the Medic and Engineer classes.
    • Jagged Alliance 2 1.13. features the XM8 in all varieties.
    • House of the Dead: OVERKILL's assault rifle is modeled after this gun.
    • Arm A II features multiple variants of the XM8. Operation Arrowhead's "Private Military Company" DLC makes this the standard weapon system of the titular PMC.
    • Appears in Saints Row 2 as an unlockable weapon. A special variant with a grenade launcher attached can also be unlocked.
    • Shows up in UFO Aftershock as the most accurate bullet-based assault rifle (the AK-47 is more powerful, and the M4 is more of an all-rounder). Considering you can manufacture your own, the numbers limitation isn't an issue, but the AK-47 tends to be better due to sheer damage capability.
    • Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, released in 2005 amd set Twenty Minutes Into the Future in 2007, depicts an early-version XM8 as the standard-issue weapon of Army National Guard troops in the New York map.
    • Appears in Combat Arms as an NX Standard (bought with real money).
    • Appears in Rainbow Six: Vegas and Vegas 2, presumably having been adopted as the M8 in that series. Featuring a railed carry handle, from a late-production model.


    The Double Rifle

    The weapon of choice for the Great White Hunter should be, of course, the double rifle - not a specific model of a double rifle since there is no model whatsoever, the rifles of the golden age of African Hunting were mostly tailored to their user like Savile Row suits. As wealthy Great White Hunters were much fewer than Hollywood would like us to think, the number of true large caliber double rifles is small, in the high hundreds for the entire colonial period and an area which spanned 3/4 of Africa. Some non-custom double rifles in smaller calibers also exist, but even they are rare because the demand was just never very high. The closest thing to a "common" double rifle are combination guns, which have one rifle and one shotgun barrel: typically .22 rifle and .410 bore shotgun barrels for taking small game as a survival weapon, as in the US Air Force M6 Aircrew Survival Weapon.

    1. ↑ The irony being that the Desert Eagle is an Israeli-made gun, while the P38 was at one time a Nazi Germany sidearm
    2. ↑ 1337 Weapon Industries .50 Desert Cobra, $1999.99 at Whittaker's Gun Store, Only 2000 Made
    3. ↑ Goddamn Hand Cannon
    4. ↑ And one Easter Egg in dod_charlie map
    5. ↑ so far, the only other mass produced shotgun that works like this - and more widespread at that - is Russian "Lynx", but other than magazine on top, it has a more common layout. Kel Tec KSG and UTAS Makina UTS-15 have the layout similar to NS2000 (bullpup with two magazines - in KSG below barrel, in UTS above), but classic pump action
    6. ↑ though H&K was hit with a lawsuit in early 2017 for failure as a subcontractor to produce these prototypes
    7. ↑ The temporary nature of these parts is obvious when the gun is disassembled)
    8. ↑ the rarity possibly influenced by the semi-automatic version, and only the semi-automatic version, being declared a "destructive device" and thus more trouble than it's worth to get a stand-in to scan
    9. ↑ very likely used because of the futuristic plastic casing
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