Impossibly Cool Weapon



""The double-ended laser sword. Now that is a seriously good way to cause major injuries to yourself. So you know anyone who dares to attempt to wield one of these suckers in battle is either incredibly good, or incredibly stupid. And if they were that stupid, they wouldn't be standing in front of you with all four limbs still attached.""

- Darths and Droids Episode 166

Basically, this is about any weapon that is done just for Rule of Cool, since it is either impossible, unlikely, or impractical in Real Life.

Usually made from two methods: the Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot method (take a bunch of cool weapons and mash them together), and the Up to Eleven method (crank up the weapon's abilities).

This often relies on Art Major Physics of course.

The difference with Improbable Weapon User is that these are based on actual weapons, not non-weapon things used as weapons. A Flaming Sword would count as an impossibly cool weapon. A cardboard tube would count as an improbable weapon.

A Sub-Trope of Rule of Cool.

A Sister Trope of Abnormal Ammo, Cool Sword, Improbable Weapon User, and Oddly-Shaped Sword.

Compare Cool Starship, Impossibly Cool Clothes, Scary Impractical Armor, and Weaponized Landmark.

Contrast Weapons Are Better tropes, which imply normal weapons are impossibly cool by themselves.

Specific Types:
 * Absurdly Sharp Blade
 * BFG (most examples of it, so let's save space by leaving them there)
 * BFS (most examples of it, so let's save space by leaving them there)
 * Flaming Sword
 * Freeze Ray
 * Fuuma Shuriken
 * Instant Chucks
 * Laser Blade
 * Lightning Gun
 * Macross Missile Massacre
 * Mix-and-Match Weapon (often, although not always)
 * More Dakka (any weapon capable of it)
 * Morph Weapon
 * Precision-Guided Boomerang
 * Ray Gun (especially before the invention of the laser)
 * Swiss Army Weapon
 * This Is a Drill
 * Whip Sword

Anime and Manga

 * Rave Master's Ten Commandments - a shape-shifting BFS with elemental powers.
 * Fairy Tail's Ten Commandments - a shape-shifting Blade on a Stick with elemental powers.
 * The Devices of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Some of them speak in Gratuitous English. Some of them speak in Gratuitous German. Most of them can switch from one kickass form to another. Most of them are Determinators in their own right, demanding Deadly Upgrades if they lose and even continuing to fight even after their owner loses consciousness. All of them are human-sized versions of Humongous Mecha weaponry that can, and do, take out Humongous Mecha.
 * An episode of SD Gundam Force features the Zakos showing off an "ultra space universe bazooka cannon gatling triple double wonderful drill super missile rocket machine gun gun gun". It ended up actually impossibly cool, because it completely fell apart upon trying to use it.
 * In Kamen Rider Spirits, Skull Rider uses a bizarre weapon that's a combination of brass knuckles & a shotgun. It has shells in it that go off when you punch something. No explanation is given for how he manages to keep them from blowing his own hands off.
 * Rin from Mnemosyne uses a similar weapon a couple of times.
 * In Deadman Wonderland, Genkaku's double gatling-gun electric guitar. One of the creators even said in his blog that he isn't sure if it would even be possible in real life.
 * GIGA!!!! DRILL!!!! BREAKER!!!! - a drill-based Finishing Move that just keeps getting bigger, much like the title mecha itself - and when said mecha is 10 million light-years tall, that's a pretty big fucking drill.
 * The goddamn rocket powered sledgehammer from Gunnm.
 * A villain from Samurai Champloo had a delightful kusarigama variant that seemed to violate several laws of physics. The scythe head shot off of the haft, propelled by springs, gunpowder or black magic and then retracted so quickly that the scythe somehow beheaded or bisected anyone in between it and the haft. It was powered by sheer madness.
 * Bui's weapon of choice
 * CRUSHER... CONNECTO! GOLDION... CRUSHER!
 * Alucard of Hellsing has two guns, the latter of which is this trope personified. Known as "The Jackal", it's 39 cm or 16" long, 16 kg (or 35 pounds), and fires holy bullets that are powerful enough to explode entire walls. A real gun like that would be too heavy for a human to lift, and the recoil would likely snap his or her arm; but Alucard is a vampire, so he has the strength for it.
 * There are several weapons that can be carried and used by a single human in that weight class, I admit all of them are two handed weapons like mediun MG's and multi-use anti-tank weapons (FN MAG can be fired while shouldered, it has a weight of 11.79 kg empty, the ammo adds 4–5 kg dependant on the belt lenght).
 * Seras's shoulder mounted anti-zeppelin BFG. The doctor prescribed some 30mm Harkonnen II goodness for those crazy Ghostapo mooks!
 * Bleach Pictured above is Ikkaku's Bankai, which turns his zanpakutou into that monstrosity of a weapon; all three blades give us one of the most creatively designed (and enormous) adaptations of a monk's spade seen in manga or anime.
 * Most captains' bankais are this. For examples, Soi Fon's bankai turns her weapon into a huge stinger missile with amazing attack power, and Byakuya's bankai manifests as a thousand blades that appear out of nowhere, which then dissolve and proceed to attack the target from all conceivable directions.
 * Killy from Blame has the Graviton Beam Emitter, which looks like a small gun...that has recoil of cannon and firepower of a DEATH STAR. Oh, and that's pretty much the only weapon he uses. Needless to say, destruction, to both the city he is travelling and his arm, ensues.
 * Vash's angel arm. Apparently a large break-open, six-shot, low-barrel revolver - and one of really rather underwhelming power when you consider the size - turns on command into a gigantic laser cannon with wings that can wipe entire cities off the face of the planet, or put a large crater in the moon, in a single shot. Runs on life.
 * Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt gives us the panty gun and the stocking sword.

Art

 * Three words: Rocket Propelled Chainsaw.

Comic Books

 * From this Superdickery.com page: It's a gun, Frank. A gun that shoots swords.

Film
"Wes: "So it's like a blaster you have to hit someone with. I have to have one." Tycho: "Don't give him a new kind of weapon! It would be like giving a lightsaber to a two-year-old!""
 * The lightsabers from Star Wars. Most frequent users, such as the Jedi and Sith orders, are basically gods. The fact that they're telepathic, telekinetic, precognitive, and generally enhanced is meant to justify their usage of a weapon that'll kill you if you bump into someone.
 * Asajj Ventress has been known to use paired lightsabers connected by a cable from time to time.
 * Light-chucks? Bad. Ass. but not as badass as flaming sword-chuks.
 * The Star Wars the Clone Wars episode "The Mandalore Plot" featured a villain with a lightsaber. Not just any lightsaber, one with a black blade and shaped like a Katanas Are Just Better.
 * There's also the double-bladed lightsaber, wielded by such characters as Darth Maul and Exar Kun. Especially interesting because its impossibly cool even compared to other lightsabers. It's hard to use, ridiculously dangerous, and not very useful. But, because no one ever uses it, no one knows how to defend against it, so it's actually a superior weapon. Crazy.
 * And what's even more impossibly cool than an impossibly cool weapon? A weapon that disables that weapon.
 * "Lightwhips" are introduced in the Star Wars Expanded Universe; despite the name, they're not lightsaber-whips, they're electrified whips that can withstand a lightsaber's blade.
 * In The Force Unleashed game, a boss uses lightsaber tonfa.
 * Also, the Death Star. Okay mass murder is not cool, but you know what I mean.
 * The X Wing Series introduces the blastsword, signature weapon of the Adumari. It's pretty much what it sounds like.


 * Chewbacca's "bowcaster," a cross between a laser gun and a crossbow. Or something like that. Looks really cool, and requires a bandoleer for some reason. It uses a magnetic field instead of a string to fire a metal slug at hypersonic speed like a Gauss Rifle, and adds ionized plasma gas for armor-piercing capability.
 * Krull has the Glaive, a telekinetic ninja star with retractable blades. The Real Life weapon of that name is a type of polearm.
 * The infamous Flying Guillotine. Drop the basket on someone's head, pull the chain, and it's Off with His Head!
 * Sorority Row has the villain using a lug wrench with innumerable blades jutting out of it.
 * The ZF-1 from The Fifth Element definitely qualifies, and doubles as a Swiss Army Gun.
 * The villain of Phantasm, the Tall Man, uses flying killer spheres to take out his enemies. They fly at you, stick into your head with twin blades that pop out, then they kill you by drilling into your brain, with the blood exiting through a hole in the back.
 * On that note, the Cerebral Bore, plus nearly half of the Turok series' other weapons. Remember the minimum of three barrels per rocket launcher? The landmines specifically designed to amputate at the shin? The electrified shotgun that can put the same bullets through a single target six times over? The rocket-propelled sledgehammer? The precision-guided boomerang chainsaw? That gun that desiccates enemies and leaves behind jerky? The sticky, radioactive flares that slowly microwave people?
 * Whatever the hell The Octopus was using at the end of Frank goddamn Miller's The Spirit.
 * Anything from James Bond, from his wristwatch/high-powered laser, to Oddjob's sharpened bowler hat which can be thrown like a disc and cut off heads.
 * Most of the built-in weapons used during the Casa Cristo Classic in Speed Racer.
 * The alien weaponry in District 9. One of the less impressive ones is a cannon that fires a burst of compressed air. Which can knock a guy through a wall. It gets better.
 * Also, pig gun. There aren't enough weapons that kill your opponent with a goddamn pig.
 * It seems fitting that the director who gave us the Iron Man movies made Cowboys and Aliens. The trailer shows Daniel Craig's character with an alien gauntlet attached to his wrist, and a holographic scope of sorts pops up; he aims it at an alien ship and takes it down. Then all the parts retract back into the gauntlet. The expression on the face of Harrison Ford's character is priceless. Especially since he is armed with only a six gun.
 * In Tron: Legacy, the discs are no longer neon Frisbees but awesome laser buzzsaw-chakrams that can be used in close-combat and can be thrown.
 * And are still really something like process ID codes. Evidently, this is what happens when a video game designer's running the system.

Literature

 * Detritus's "Piecemaker" crossbow in Discworld. The Piecemaker is more or less a ballista held by a troll, which when it fired its regular bolts incinerated them due to friction with the air from the speed, creating a giant fireball of shrapnel that decimated buildings. Later, Detritus adopted tying a crap-ton of normal crossbow bolts tied together with some string, which snapped a few feet off the crossbow, blotting out the sun (The smaller bolts still caught fire.)
 * Whenever Detritus pulls this out, everybody stands behind him. Everybody. Those who don't are Not Very Lucky.
 * "When mister safety-catch is not on, mister cross-bow is not your friend."
 * When first firing it at the testing range, it took out the target, the earth behind the target, the ground, and a passing bird that was directly above Detritus when he pulled the trigger.
 * Neal Asher's Gridlinked introduces us to Tenkian weapons, named after their designer. They're mostly low-tech thrown weapons, but with an AI embedded into them to aid in aiming and targeting.
 * Main villain minion John Stanton gets a throwing knife that can be called up into his hand with a flick of his wrist; the character he gets it from says the AI will keep it from slicing his fingers off as he does so.
 * The protagonist, Ian Cormac, has a shuriken that works on similar principles, but that can also expand up to 25 cm across. (About the size of your average table saw blade.)

Live-Action TV

 * D'argo's Qualta Blade is a sword that works as a pulse rifle. Two weapons for the price of one!
 * Xena: Warrior Princess has the chakram, a Precision-Guided Boomerang frisbee of death that can defeat entire armies. It actually existed, although it lacked the ability to cut through multiple people at the same time. Probably.
 * The Master's laser screwdriver from Doctor Who. The laser screwdriver is a deadlier form of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver and a weapon that shoots out a laser beam that kills instantly and can rapidly age victims whose DNA it possesses.
 * Prior to this, he always used a shrink ray called a Tissue Compression Eliminator. It didn't shrink you neatly, it compressed (that is, crushed) your tissues down to the size of a doll, so it was quite lethal, and left a teeny tiny corpse. Regrettably, the show never addressed the fact that the doll-corpses should have been very heavy... But, eh, so what? Rule of Cool.
 * House (yes, that House) has a cane that transforms into an axe and a shotgun. Okay, it was just in a dream of his, but it was still impossibly cool.

MMORPGs

 * Many of the swords in World of Warcraft. Either they're ridiculously huge, they look like they were designed by Kit Rae in collaboration with Fred Flintstone and a Taos jeweler, or both.
 * Truth in Television: It should be noted that Kit Rae's fantasy weapons are for display purposes only.

Multiple

 * Any variation of a shuriken that is larger than the user's own body, especially the "pinwheel" types with a cross-grip in the middle. This kind of shuriken tends to come back to the user, often striking several foes at once.
 * Any and all Humongous Mecha. Tanks: acceptable, Walking Tanks: Possible, although with limited applications. Humanoid Tanks the size of skyscrapers: Rule of Cool.
 * A sort of shovel-tipped longsword shows up in various places. It looks cool, but is totally useless as a real-world weapon: the broad point prevents stabbing attacks from doing much damage, and it throws off the balance, making slashing attacks difficult. Existed in real life, but as a very specific tool for execution, not a weapon of war or for fighting.
 * The greatswords in Fable
 * Vyse's Dream Cutlass in Skies of Arcadia
 * Some of the longswords in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
 * Odin's sword in Final Fantasy IX
 * In one of the Slayers novels, Lina and Gourry are attacked by a group of battle homunculi wielding executioner's swords. Presumably in a similar fashion to meat cleavers.

Music

 * Fans of The Protomen wield the most intimidating weapon of all time: The chamethrawer, a chainsaw with a flamethrower attached to it.

Tabletop Games

 * Most Warhammer 40,000 weapons fit this trope. The weakest weapon in the setting is a laser gun which can blow the arm clean off an unarmoured normal, and they just get bigger, and more awesome from there. For instance, the Ork gun which fires Snotlings THROUGH HELL into the target's brain. Chainsaw swords (and chainsaw fists). Demon-powered swords. Razor Floss cannons. Weaponised cutting torches which can shoot through tank armour. Molecule-thick shuriken shooters. Guns which fire needles of frozen poison. And so forth. And let's not forget that virtually all of the setting's weapons have versions which can be mounted to Humongous Mecha. And then, there's the Tyranids and their organic weapons systems...
 * The Valaes Tairn elves in Eberron favour a double-bladed scimitar. Despite the inherent impracticality of this weapon, the Valaes Tairn pull it off, possibly because they're Badass Elf Proud Warrior Race Guys who will kill you if you point this out.
 * Bauhaus Jungle Kommandos from War Zone Tabletop Wargame use Big Freakin' Gatling Good Shotguns with two sets of barrels. Whoever gets hit by THAT, is in a world of hurt.
 * From Dungeons & Dragons the double axe, the two-bladed sword, and especially the dire flail.
 * The artifact sword named Demonhealer from GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy doesn't have a blade so much as it has a hole in reality that happens to be in the shape of a blade.
 * Exalted has a fascinating variety of impossible yet awesome weapons. These range from the comparatively mundane (daiklaves, which are BFS's that would make Sephiroth jealous), to the slightly less plausible (the infinite jade chakram, which produces duplicates so you never have to actually throw it), to the straight-out absurd (gyroscopic chakrams, which are Captain America (comics)'s shield as designed by Ash Williams). Any and all of this can be justified with magic.

Toys

 * Bionicle has a ton of these, with most of their impossibly cool status deriving from a combination of size and ornateness. Some of the most notable ones are:
 * Tahu's magma swords. He had a Flaming Sword, but that got replaced by a pair of broadswords that double as a surfboard
 * Onua Nuva's quake breakers. They are effectively a pair of chainsaws that can cut through rock and double as rollerblades.
 * Nuju Metru's crystal spikes. Just look at 'em!

Video Games

 * Just about every weapon in the Ratchet and Clank universe is impossibly cool. The first ads for the games even showed how they just wouldn't work in real life.
 * Gunblades in Final Fantasy VIII are a cross between BFGs, BFSs, and Vibroweapons..
 * Final Fantasy XIII seems to be made of this trope, along with a reappearance of the aforementioned Gunblade, we're also introduced to Twin Guns Akimbo that combine into an Assault Rifle, a Giant Folding Battle Boomerang, a Double-Ended Spear that breaks apart into a Three-Segmented Nunchaku, and some sort of . . . Staff-Whip It Good Fishing Pole . . . thing.
 * Xenoblade has the Monado. An Awesome Yet Practical Cool Sword Laser Bladed BFS Of Combat Clairvoyance And Plot Advancement. Try to compete with THAT.
 * Never mind that it's basically.
 * Warcraft III has the same weapon as the Krull example above (with the same name) but increased to the size of a human torso. Throwing it (or launching it out of a massive slingshot) is apparently not a problem.
 * Even more confusingly, Illidan's Weapon of Choice, the Twin Blades of Azzinoth are also called glaives, even though they're more like two curved swords attached to the opposite sides of the same hilt. He took them from a demon he killed. The glaives in question had the option of detaching into the two blades, but Illidan just prefers to use them like that all the time.
 * The Lancer, a Chainsaw - Machine Gun hybrid. For buyers of the Limited Edition of Gears Of War 2, it comes in a solid gold variety.
 * In the Play Station 3 game Heavenly Sword, one of the playable characters, Kai, had a HUGE crossbow that fired like a Gatling gun. It also had unlimited ammo and had arrows that could actually be guided directly into an enemy's skull from a kilometer away.
 * The titular Heavenly Sword was also fairly cool, a pair of curvy ornate swords that could also be attached together into one big powerful two handed sword or strung out on chains and whipped around for God of War style long range attacks.
 * Monster Hunter is all about this trope. Serrated BFSs with teeth that fold into the blade when not being wielded, giant telescoping lances, and giant collapsible crossbows that worked more like BFGs were par for the course. The most impossibly cool weapons by far, though, were the gunhammer and gunlance. They were similar to the Gunblades of Final Fantasy VIII, but even more impossible. The gunlance was essentially an eight foot long lance with a revolver cylinder built into the handguard and a barrel running along the underside of the blade. It shot whatever you stabbed. The gunhammer got rid of the barrel altogether - it was nothing but a giant cylinder and hammer assembly on a stick. You hit things with it and they got shot (after being crushed of course). Both were awesome.
 * Gunlances were eventually expanded into their own weapon class, and now handle differently from lances. Now they can actually shoot at a distance (and don't use ammunition to boot!)and unleash wyvern's fire, an explosion that can break shields, knock over gargantuan beasts, and just about break the weapon itself in the process.
 * Power Stone 2 had the so called '3-way shotgun' and it's powered up version, the 5-way shotgun. Of course.
 * The Devil May Cry 'verse has many:
 * In Devil May Cry 3 you get Nevan, a frickin' electric guitar scythe that shoots out purple lightning and bats. And which used to be a massively hot succubus. And before that, Cerberus, a three-sectioned nunchaku made of ice.
 * Devil May Cry 4 has Pandora's Box, a demonic firearm manifesting as a Briefcase Blaster capable of morphing into a variety of heavy weapons. A crapload of forms and they're all awesome. Also Lucifer -- bright pink exploding Energy Weapon spears, anyone?
 * On the slightly more mundane (but still strange) front, we have the weapons of the Order: a sort of revved-up flame/vibro-sword for Alto Angelos (and Nero), and the equally insane rocket-powered lance wielded by the Bianco Angelo armor suits for jet-propelled lunges.
 * In addition to chainswords, .hack//G.U. has Azure Kite's weird triple-bladed swords. They look like they'd be heard to handle with just two arms, but hey.
 * Literally almost every weapon in Painkiller is based around this trope. To wit:
 * Your main melee melee/ranged weapon, the eponymous Painkiller, is essentially a horizontally held weed whacker that can be sent flying through enemy ranks, blades spinning.
 * Your standard garden-variety shotgun, which cannot only freeze your enemies, but packs enough of a punch to send them flying into the air.
 * A gun that shoots foot-long wooden stakes through the air at high speeds, pinning enemies to walls by their limbs.
 * A rocket launcher and minigun combined into the same weapon.
 * And lastly, a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. And shurikens which shoot lightning.
 * A tradition of the Infinity+1 Swords of the Fire Emblem franchise:
 * Fire Emblem 7 features Armads, Durandal, and Sol Katti (Armads being a gigantic thunder axe which causes tremors when it touches the ground, Durandal a gigantic sword of "sacred fire", and Sol Katti just a really long katana).
 * Fire Emblem 6 has Eckesachs, Zephiel's sword/trident, which he uses just as a sword, in addition to the aforementioned Durandal and Armads.
 * The Tellius canon features Ragnell and Alondite, a twin pair of holy BFSs once dual-wielded by a slim, petite Lady of War.
 * Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel: Fantasy Ball. Sole possible explanation for its existence: designed to weird the hell out of anyone in sight, thus compelling target to waive Agility bonus.
 * The same game has a weapon called the punch gun.
 * This one was a real thing, however. If not looking quite like that.
 * The Ballistic Fist from Fallout: New Vegas is a shotgun welded to the top of gauntlet, with a pressure pad as a trigger. It is also the most damaging unarmed weapon in the game.
 * Thanks to the Gun-Runner's Arsenal content pack, we now have the Ballistic Fist's big brother, named 'Two-Step Goodbye': killing shots implant a live grenade in the target.
 * Some craftable weapons from Fallout 3; namely, the Railway Rifle. It's a steam-powered cannon that launches railway spikes with such force that a kill instantly dismembers and pins the affected limb to the nearest hard surface behind the target. And as an extra, firing the weapon produces a train whistle.
 * And the Rock-It Launcher. Anything that can turn stuffed animals into insta-gibbing projectiles is automatically awesome.
 * The earlier games had the Super Sledgehammer. A giant sledgehammer with a rocket built into the head. Start it swinging and press the button and foosh! It was capable of knocking someone down and sliding them literally a full city block. Possibly inspired by Tankhammer from Warhammer 40,000.
 * The Evoker from Persona 3. It's basically a pistol. Except instead of using it to shoot people, you point it at your head and use it to summon the physical manifestation of your psyche.
 * Strangely, this shooting yourself in the head did not garner any controversy whatsoever. Well...
 * Most energy weapons in Virtual On. Homing beams, beam swords, homing beam swords, anti-ship cannons, heart shaped beams, circle beams, scythes—anything is possible.
 * Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare had a triple-barreled shotgun and a double-barreled revolver.
 * Resident Evil 5 also has a triple-barreled shotgun.
 * The Mercenaries minigame in Resident Evil 4 featured enemies that wielded double-bladed chainsaws. That were ON FIRE.
 * Bulletstorm does one better by giving you the Boneduster - a four-barreled shotgun. They also brought the Penetrator (a literal drill-gun) and the Flail-Gun (a gun that shoots two grenades chained together).
 * Many weapons in Team Fortress 2. The Soldier has a semiauto rocket launcher, the Heavy has a 150-kilogram minigun that can kill in a second, the Medic has a chaingun that shoots blood-sapping syringes and a bizarre mix of a saw, a short sword, and a hypodermic needle, the Spy has a Hand Cannon with the Scout's mom on it, the Scout has a shotgun with enough kick to send his target and him flying ten feet, the Engineer has his turrets, the Pyro has an axe covered in barbed wire that instakills people on fire and a flamethrower shaped like a dragon, the Demoman has a sticky bomb launcher with so much firepower, the programmers referred to them as "winbombs", and the Sniper has a jar of piss that causes people to lose the will to live.
 * Parodied in No More Heroes. Rank 1, Dark Star, wields a LIGHTSABER DRAGON..
 * And then in the sequel, one character uses a revolver that revolves revolver cylinders.
 * This apparently was actually made (though obviously not mass produced) back in the cap-and-ball era, since the only way to reload a percussion revolver quickly was swapping the whole cylinder (i.e. pre-loaded cylinders were the closest thing to cartridges), so people tried various ways to do so reliably.
 * It'd probably be easier to name characters in No More Heroes who don't use impossibly cool weapons. The final five-ranked assassins in the first game come at you with a portable brain-powered earthquake generator, a magic show, a Wave Motion Gun disguised as a shopping cart, the aforementioned lightsaber dragon, and...a wooden baseball bat. And the assassin who totes that last one is by far the deadliest of the bunch.
 * The sequel carries on the tradition, even moreso than the first game, with the aforementioned revolving revolver (wielded along with a triple-bladed buster sword,) a boom box/rocket launcher that transforms into a giant pair of robot arms, a flamethrower axe, a pair of sniper rifles/scythes, a double beam katana/recorder that shoots deadly bubbles, a pair of guns that shoot money, a giant football-themed robot, and a backpack covered in waldoes, most of them with lightsabers on the end. It even delivers on the lightsaber dragon from the first game somewhat with a beam naginata that summons giant laser dragons.
 * There's also the Peony, a beam katana that grows in length with the user's fighting spirit, until it's longer than Travis is tall.
 * God of War. Swords. On retractable chains! That CATCH FIRE when you fling them around! And Kratos dual-wields them.
 * Bayonetta has, well, nearly every damn weapon of the game. To list, normal handguns and shotguns, a demonic katana, a whip that's actually a snake demon, a pair of claws that can switch between fire and lightning modes, ice skates, rocket launcher tonfa, laser pistols, gun-chucks, a lightsaber, and rings which turn into every angelic weapon in the game.
 * Hayden's Glaive from Dark Sector, you can even use the Play Station 3 motion control to use it sometimes. (Though it's damn hard.)
 * Kaptain K Rool's blunderbuss in Donkey Kong Country 2. It can fire cannonballs, sure, but it can also... suck in objects, fire spiky mines, fire mines that bounce across the screen, fire mines that rotate and fly around, sometimes in pairs, fire barrels that rotate and fly around, be used as a sort of engine, fire gasses that freeze Kongs in place, reverse the controls and slow them down, and it even manages to turn K Rool invisible.
 * Parodied by many Kingdom of Loathing weapons, such as the Ridiculously Overelaborate Ninja Weapon and the Ridiculously Huge Sword.
 * The M-490 Blackstorm, a black-hole gun.
 * Temjin has a beam rifle that doubles as a beam sword.
 * The Javelin from Dead Space 2 is a pneumatic spear gun. As if shooting mutated corpses with spears wasn't already cool enough, its alternative fire mode causes the last spear you fired to emit an electrical storm. Powerful, and useful for mopping up many smaller, weaker necromorphs such as The Pack. Even more awesome than that, once you upgrade the Javelin sufficiently enough, its alt fire mode now causes the spear to EXPLODE after the electrical charge in it runs out.
 * Borderlands has a plethora of guns that, at best, simply should not work as well as they do and, at worst, violate the laws of physics. Some prime examples include a shotgun that fires rockets and several special weapons that replenish their own ammo supply from nothing.
 * Hellgate:London is full of these. Every weapon the Cabalists can use is one, notably ones that shoot bees or tentacles. The Hunters get more conventional firearms, but even they can play with a rifle that fires electrified spinning sawblades that explode.
 * Jet Force Gemini gives each of your characters their own tri-rocket launcher relatively early in the game.
 * Damn near everything in the Turok series is one of these. Among them are a gun that shoots land mines that shoot up and shoot out a ring of shrapnel at roughly knee-height, a gun that launches energy helices that carbonize foes and cause them to explode seconds later, and the cerebral bore, which fires an orb that embeds itself in your enemy's head. Then it starts digging. Then it blows up.
 * Many weapons in League of Legends, though Jarvan IV's lance takes the crown. It is a giant lance that can launch its head at a target point where it falls from the sky and deploys a banner of Demacia, raising the courage of his allies. It can also extend to about the range of a frickin' arrow in order to impale all enemies in front of him and break their armor. If this connects with his flag, it pulls him to the flag and flips the enemies in his path into the air.
 * An Up to Eleven example: the Farsight from Perfect Dark. One-Hit Kill, unlimited penetration and equipped with a scope that can see through walls and doors and automatically track people. You literally just have to sit back and pull the trigger.
 * The RCP-120, which has a magazine of 120 bullets, an insane firing rate and comes with its own cloaking device. Yes, you can also use it to become invisible.
 * The melee weapons in the Xbox/PS3 Ninja Gaiden games mostly avert this since they are inspired from real weapons in the first place (apart from one or two BFS). Except the Vigoorian Flail: a pair of chained sickles used like a nunchaku, that would be far too dangerous to use in Real Life. There is also the Plasma Saber Mk. II, a high frequency electrified sword (although gameplay-wise it's every bit identical to the True Dragon Sword). And of course, being a Ninja game, the projectile weapons are mostly this, from explosive kunai to Fuuma Shuriken, let alone a gatling spear gun and a portable canon.
 * The Dark Cannon.
 * The Blue Shell from the Mario Kart series (sometimes averted).
 * Neo Cortex's ray gun from the Crash Bandicoot series.
 * The titled protagonist of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger has different types of boomerangs.
 * Bently's Cool Chair from Sly Cooper 3.
 * Monster Girl Quest has the Angel Halo, an incredibly black sword that's created from 666 fallen angels and their figures are still on the blade in rather painful poses. Extremely eye-catching and evil looking. The only reason The Hero's using it is because it seals and reduces monsters' power upon defeat rather than killing them.
 * Most of the weapons from the Mega Man series. Hell, ALL OF THEM.
 * Acid Ace from Mega Man Star Force 3 wields a Ray Gun with a built in Laser Blade, which can also shoot a bunch of other attacks at you.

Web Comics

 * Sword-chucks, yo!
 * The chainsaw nunchucks of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja.
 * In "Tokyo Delta Jetlag D," the in-universe anime/manga series from Unwinder's Tall Comics, main character Jaded Lament uses the Katagun, a katana that shoots bullets in the shape of the blade. Check it out (and some entertaining lampshading of anime/manga tropes) here.
 * The 'black rose' a plasma flamethrower from SSDD that often explodes into a mass of plasma and radioactive shrapnel.
 * Inevitable in Homestuck with its volatile combination of Item Crafting and young protagonists; their weapons are often created by fusing together actual weapons with whatever random shit they find lying around, frequently leading to some awesomely ridiculous arsenals. Examples include the Wrinklefucker (a sledgehammer with spring-loaded electric irons attached to the head that can launch the user into the air), the Caledscratch (a broken BFS that has the ability to reverse its own timeline to a point when it was whole, and back again), the Thorns of Oglogoth (a pair of knitting needles that can harness the powers of the Horrorterrors), and the Pop-a-Matic Vrillyhoo (a combination of TWO Infinity+1 Swords).
 * There's also the concept of innocuous doubles (originating in Problem Sleuth); weapons that exist as other, more harmless objects until they're ready to be wielded. Keys become handguns, a sextant becomes a sniper rifle, a typewriter becomes a Chicago Typewriter, etc, and most prominently Kanaya's weapon of choice: a tube of lipstick that transforms into a chainsaw.
 * Problem Sleuth features Death's scythe, which can transform into anything. ANYTHING. Anti-tank rockets, F-16s, nuclear bombs, Manny Calavera's head, you name it.

Web Original

 * Check out this Cracked.com article for their picks of the most impossibly cool fictional weapons that would be retarded in real life.
 * And here you can find the Seven Most Awesomely Insane Guns People Actually Used.
 * Collumnist Robert Brockway has on two separate occasions, invented the Taserchucks (two tasers attached by a bungee cord) and the Octoshotsword (a shotgun made of swords that for some reason also has a bayonet).
 * Dubstep Guns
 * Pretty much almost every weapon that appears in RWBY.

Western Animation

 * Voltron's Blazing Sword, an indestructible blade the size of a good-size building, wielded by a giant tobot for hacking apart other giant robots. A solid object, but re-created out of Pure Energy every time it's needed. Despite the name, it is not a Flaming Sword.
 * The Arborians' ice arrows in Filmation's Flash Gordon (which turned out to be very handy for putting out a forest fire in one episode). Meanwhile, Ming himself was fond of using a Flaming Sword in combat.
 * The title weapon from Galtar and the Golden Lance, an enchanted weapon of prophecy that can only be wielded by a Chosen One, it can split into two smaller blades and shoots powerful energy zaps.
 * The Star Sword and the Power Sword from Blackstar, which would join to form the even more awesome Power Star if they weren't wielded by the hero and the villain respectively. Used for shooting energy beams more often than as actual swords.
 * The Sword of Plundarr from Thundercats. Two curved jagged blades, each attached to the opposite side of a little tiny handle. Mumm-ra mostly used it to create giant whirlwinds of fire. Naturally, it shrank down to the handle when he wasn't using it.
 * Muscle Man's sport's equipment from Regular Show.
 * The KND have a wide array of 2x4 Tech weapons built out of seemingly random objects (such as hair-dryers, or gumball machines) yet prove to be surprisingly effective. Though sometimes subverted as said weapons occasionally break or come out of the wielder's hand depending on who the KND Operative is fighting.
 * Most of the weapons on The Pirates of Dark Water look like they were designed by Kit Rae.

Real Life

 * Truth in Television: AR-15-mounted crossbows, which are probably best used for stealthy sentry kills. The fact that there's still space for an underslung grenade launcher makes it even cooler.
 * In real life, Shuriken (Ninja stars) are like this. They were rarely used to directly kill people, instead being used as a distraction which looked like it would kill you used by ninjas who were fleeing. Obviously people would get slowed down by trying to dodge these weapons which looked deadly, not knowing that the thrower probably couldn't even throw them with accuracy. Example: A ninja is trying to get inside a building with guard on the door. The ninja throws a shuriken at a group bushes/small trees, making a sound that the guard mistakes for someone running in the bushes, possibly a ninja! The guard goes to investigate, while ninja sneaks in. Sounds like a scenario from a stealth videogame.
 * Sometimes it's about distractions within distractions. A ninja might throw several shuriken at once, missing several times, scoring only a scratch with another with only one direct hit (which isn't even deadly itself). The missed shots and direct hit were simply to distract the target from the poisoned blade that barely nicked them, but will probably kill them in less than an hour.
 * And they become a little less impossibly cool (or more... YMMV) when you learn what the poison was. The most easy-to-obtain toxic material when you're out on an infiltration mission for days... they used their own faeces to poison the shurikens.
 * They were often referred to as the "invisible swordsman" due to those who got hit by it (usually from cover) thinking they got slashed by an unseen swordsman.
 * Japanese Officer'ssword/pistol Mix-and-Match Weapon: Katana with a Nambu taisho 14 8mm pistol as the hilt. It's quite literally "Impossibly" as the pistol made the sword useless and vice versa, not to mention Japanese pistol designs having placed so much emphasis on safety discipline on part of their users that by late WWII they had been more dangerous to their users than the enemy.