Gun in My Pocket



""No, she's absolutely right," said Zeb, patting the enormous pistol at his hip. "This is a penis substitute. After all, if I could kill at a range of thirty meters with my penis, I wouldn't need to carry this thing around, now would I?""

- The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein

Guns, cannons, swords, daggers... they're all penises.

After all, most of them are vaguely phallic (any object longer than it is wide = phallic), they penetrate human flesh, and killing people is a sign of virility. In the case of guns, they even "ejaculate" bullets, while swords tend to have the reminiscent shape, with the long blade section and the thicker hilt guard in the bottom, and are usually held at around crotch height -- and, in some cases, kill with a thrusting motion. So it's not much of a surprise that weapons in general are a very popular source of phallic symbolism, if not the most popular.

Sub-Trope of Freud Was Right. See also Or Are You Just Happy to See Me, Compensating for Something.

Anime

 * Happens oh-so often in Gunsmith Cats. Unsurprising, given the two themes of the show are "guns" and "fanservice."
 * And from S-Cry-ed, who could forget: "It's thick, it's hard, and it's coming to get you!"
 * There is a piece of Lyrical Nanoha fan art that describes how "the harder you get beaten by Nanoha, the harder you get hooked on her (with some exceptions)." Sure enough, Fate seems unsatisfied with her #4 ranking (Vivio, their adoptive daughter, being #1), and pleads to Nanoha, "Pierce through me right now! With that fat pink thing of yours!"
 * Heero and his infamous Spandex Space. Guess what he usually pulls out of those shorts?
 * Yu Yu Hakusho example:  This is lampshaded in the dub:


 * Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro has a killer keep a ridiculously long revolver down the front of his pants. The guy is a huge parody of Eagleland attitudes, so he's not the most subtle person around.
 * In Gamaran there's Zenmaru's great katana, Sadanaga: he's extremely proud of its size and power, gets annoyed if anyone comments on it and he's a bit flustered by Shingo's Onidachi (a 4 meter long spear), stating that's even bigger than his sword....
 * In Bleach, Aporro Granz releases his Resurreccion form by...well...see for yourself.
 * Also, where Mayuri Kurotsuchi keeps (his? her?) sword.
 * In Black Cat, after smashing Train into the wall, Creed rants about how his disappointment and anger toward Train has caused his (imaginary) sword to grow enormous in strength and size. While holding a rose between his teeth, no less.
 * Naruto and Sasuke have a lot of Ho Yay between them. And Sasuke regularly attempts to kill Naruto by stabbing him with his sword.
 * Revolutionary Girl Utena: swords all over the place. Most notably, magic swords that you draw from your lover's heart.

Art

 * Inversion: H.R. Giger occasionally uses guns as a yonic metaphor. Google "Birth Machine" for an example.

Comics

 * All over the place in The Silver Age of Comic Books. (Not that The Golden Age of Comic Books was completely tame: just look at the page picture!)
 * Used hilariously for a supremely ridiculous villain in Doom Patrol, who was ridiculed all his life for having a small penis and thus built a giant cannon to attach to his crotch and called himself, what the hell, Codpiece. The Nightmare Fuel comes in when said super villain is defeated by a transsexual heroine... who has the power to dissolve objects.
 * Towards the end of Preacher, Herr Starr develops the disturbing (and hilarious) habit of holding his gun over his crotch and repeating "Doom cock...Doom cock..."
 * When Superman rescues Lana from Lex Luthor's Mooks in an early Post-Crisis comic, he faces down a Mook with a huge bazooka and asks "Overcompensating for something there, fella?"
 * Spoofed in the movie posters for a 1985 Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip (famous for being the strip that popularized the The Bechdel Test).

Film
"Willie: How come their guns are so much bigger than ours?
 * Bonnie & Clyde has a very sexually charged scene where Bonnie checks out Clyde's gun.
 * In From Dusk Till Dawn, the character Sex Machine has a "crotch gun," basically a codpiece with a gun on it.
 * It also made an appearance in the Mariachi's guitar case full of guns in Desperado, with the Mariachi commenting that it saved his life once, but we never see him use it.
 * One scene from Beyond the Valley of The Dolls has a girl fellating a gun before being shot.
 * Fight Club opens with Tyler's gun in the Narrator's mouth.
 * Gay Perry from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang manages to kill a guy by literally shooting from the, er, hip.
 * Lisa Bonet's character in Angel Heart
 * The Man With the Golden Gun
 * The opening credits to quite a few James Bond films involve the silhouettes of naked women and guns.
 * Dr. Strangelove's final scene has this as well.
 * Not just the final scene.
 * Tank Girl has a moment loving on the gun of the tank she ganks from Water Power. To the tune of Shaft, no less.
 * And later on, explicitly called out as she rides the cannon up to the window of a truck. 'Feeling a little inadequate?'
 * In the Line of Fire. When Agent Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) misses a jump and ends up dangling from a rooftop. Mitch Leary (John Malkovitch) pops up overhead, prompting Horrigan to take aim despite his failing grip. Leary teases Horrigan's pistol a bit before deciding that he'll take care of him later, and helps Horrigan to a nearby fire escape.
 * That scene in Videodrome where James Woods grows a vagina and then starts masturbating it with a gun.
 * Dirty Harry. "My, that's a big one."
 * I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. Bad guy to partner:

Thug: It's a phallic thing."


 * Orgazmo. Cock rocket. Need I say more?
 * Spaceballs: Dark Helmet's line: "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine. Let's see how well you handle it." Any questions?
 * In The Pirate Movie, the Pirate King is asked "Is that a knife in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?" It turns out it is a knife in his pocket, as he pulls it out and throws it into the wall beside the woman's head. However, he then demonstrates that he is also pleased to see her.
 * In the first dream level of Inception, Mr. Eames produces a grenade launcher from his Hammerspace, blows away a group of projections and says "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." Persons who do not feel that this implies "I can also do this with my penis" are hereby commended on the cleanliness of their minds.
 * Psycho features the infamous shower scene—the phallic-shaped knife, repeatedly stabbing Marion. Not to mention the killer having sublimated his sexual repression into murderous urges.
 * In the Scream movies, the serial killer targets young women, simultaneously acting seductive towards them and trying to stab them with a knife.

Live Action TV
"Liz: What is it with men and guns?
 * Discussed in Thirty Rock:

Tracy: Well, I think I speak for the both of us when I say "because they're metal penises.""

"Debbie: I ... want to see your gun.
 * Have you seen my forcelance?
 * Used deliberately and disturbingly in Six Feet Under when
 * It's been speculated that this is why Xena prefers her chakram to the sword, since it's yonic rather than phallic.
 * In the episode The Gun of M*A*S*H, Frank steals a gun. Margaret also gets an orgasm when Frank shows her the gun (she then doesn't know yet that Frank has stolen the gun).
 * Played with in Burn Notice, where the girlfriend of the not-too-bright son of the villain of the week gets the hots for Michael.

Michael: Okay, that's not my gun. Not my gun."

Literature

 * In the Dragaera series, several characters have Cargo Ship-level emotional involvement with their EmpathicWeapons (which are all swords or daggers), are described as stroking them compulsively, and in some cases, the narrator comments on how the weapon is much larger than the wielder.

Music

 * The Nine Inch Nails song "Big Man With A Gun."
 * Deadlee's "Suck Mah Gun."
 * "Gunz Yo" by Sage Francis.
 * The Lulu Bond theme "The Man With The Golden Gun," in a hilariously unsubtle way.
 * Cher in (this music video).
 * Mitch Benn in the video for "Happy Birthday, War," as a parody of the Cher video.
 * Kings of Metal by Manowar. The line "We got the biggest amps, man they blast." But the whole song, as well as Manowar image in general, are an example of this, or more suitably, Not compensating for anything thrope. As those thropes are close, in case of Manowar, they complete each other.
 * The band Machine Gun Fellatio.
 * The Ludo song Go-Getter Greg: "I'm a go-getter guy with a gun on my hip, I'm just searching for that someone to be firing it."

Video Games
"Ashley: "Look at the size of that ship!"
 * Probably a theory of many tropers about the popularity of the First-Person Shooter and Third-Person Shooter genres.
 * "Hey Vyse, my cannon is bigger than yours!" - Vigoro, Skies of Arcadia (he showed up in a ship with a huge freaking cannon mounted on it).
 * Revolver Ocelot is the Anthropomorphic Personification of this trope. Just listen to his speeches about "slamming a bullet down a shaft" when reloading...
 * Where does Depraved Bisexual Knife Nut Vamp keep his favorite blade? Exactly where you'd think.
 * A quote from Kreia about the lightsaber in KotOR II: "For the male, it seems to have inordinate importance. But we shall leave such male preoccupations for philosophers and cultural historians."
 * Another heavy kills people with a white stream of ions.
 * When visting the Citadel for the first time in Mass Effect, the crew of the almost tiny Fragile Speedster Normandy is deeply impressed when passing The Battlestar Destiny Accension, the biggest warship in the entire galaxy. Which leads pilot Joker to one of his usual moments of snarking:

Joker: "Well, size isn't everything."

Ashley: "Why so touchy Joker?"

Joker: "I'm just saying: You have to have firepower, too!""

"Merc Recruiter: Well, aren't you sweet? You're in the wrong place, honey. Strippers' quarters are that way.
 * He gets to prove it too -
 * A nice Renegade response from Female Shepard at Omega from Mass Effect 2:

Shepard: [pulling out her gun] Show me yours, tough guy. I'll bet mine's bigger."

Web Comics
"Raven: I don't think we've been introduced. My name's Vulcan Raven. And this here's m'gun.
 * Don't insinuate this to Vulcan Raven in The Last Days of Foxhound.

Ninja: So... small dick, huh?

Raven: Congratulations! Your death will be an extra 25% more painful."

Web Original

 * There is a clip from the Swedish movie Kopps where a police officer throws his gun into the air, opens his pants, catches the gun in the open fly, then buckles his belt over the gun. He then guns down two criminals using pelvic thrusts. Then takes out the third by hacky-sacking the gun and kicking it into mook's face.
 * An over-the-top feminist review of Portal uses this in a ridiculously contrived analysis regarding the misogynist implications of shooter games. It then praised Portal for it's feminist aspects, that included the portals' semblance to a vagina.
 * Literalized in Its Always Time: Strawberry Banana (aka SB) (she's made of Jell-O. It Makes Sense in Context.) is a woman with a penis. A detachable penis. And when she detaches it, it turns into a sword.

Western Animation

 * There was a Disney short made to drum up support for the troops during World War Two. One scene features a cannon being loaded, only to go limp after running out of ammo.