Bling Bling Bang

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Humongous Mecha + 24K gold electroplating = Badass x 10

"An excellent gun, though the gold plating seems a bit over the top."

—ZPCI Sniper Rifle description, Sonny 2

So, you're a badass warrior and have some money to burn. What do you do?

Why, gold plate your gun of course! Or maybe add diamonds and all sorts of valuable crap just to show people you mean business. Or otherwise personalize your gun. Thankfully, most shows don't assume Viewers are Morons by stating that a weapon is solid gold, as this would not be a very good idea due to the metal's relative weakness. Gold has many useful properties, but hardness definitely isn't one of them.

This trope is usually used to show that either the guy is so good he can spend the money he earns killing people, or he likes to add a "personal touch" to his weaponry.

Or maybe that he's just lame.

This appears to be a growing trend within shooter games as of the late.

Compare Bling of War, Gold Makes Everything Shiny. See also Silver Bullet.

A Sub-Trope of Cool but Inefficient, Conspicuous Consumption.

This item is available in the Trope Co catalog.

Examples of Bling Bling Bang include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Five Star Stories by Mamoru Nagano takes this trope all the way. Pretty much everything used by the Schizo-Tech Knight in Shining Armor characters, from guns, to swords to Humongous Mecha (especially the mecha) are riddiculously elaborate works of art, displaying exquisitely detailed frescoes & reliefs & covered in jewels & precious metals, in an attempt to intimidate the enemy with an outrageous display of their nation's wealth & craftsmanship. The fact that the series' most recognizable mech, pictured above, is known as the Knight Of Gold (KOG to his friends) should tell you something right there.
  • The Gundam metaseries:
    • Mobile Suit Gundam's MSV include Dozle Zabi's Zaku II and M'Quve's Gouf, both of which are covered in gold filigree. The What If video game Gihren's Greed also introduces a Zabi Family Custom Big Zam, which is similarly adorned.
    • The most famous case is Zeta Gundam's Hyaku Shiki, a gold-plated mech designed by, who else but Mamoru Nagano. In this case, the gold is both practical (anti-beam coating) and symbolic (a thumb in the eye to the Titans, showing that the heroes can make new MS right under their noses).
      • Likewise the Delta Gundam (the Hyaku Shiki's original form), which remained unseen until 2011's Gundam Unicorn MSV line.
    • In G Gundam, the ultimate state of a Gundam's power is Hyper Mode, which is marked by the machine gaining a gold aura. This is almost definitely a Shout-Out to Dragonball Z and the Super Saiyans.
    • In Gundam Wing, when Treize rebels against the Romefeller Foundation, he's given an ornate pistol (which seems to be a case of Leave Behind a Pistol); he never actually fires it, but he does point it at Heero in a Mexican Standoff.
    • In Turn a Gundam, Harry Ord's SUMO is gold as well. Metallic colors seems to be the standard for the SUMO, since the base model is silver and the novels introduce a one-off metallic green model.
    • Gundam Seed: Blue Cosmos leader Muruta Azrael has a gold-plated pistol.
    • Gundam Seed Destiny': The Akatsuki, an Expy of the Hyaku Shiki; likewise, its gold armor is a special beam-reflecting mirror coating.
      • Gundam SEED Frame Astrays introduces an extreme version of this; Rudolf Wittgenstein's custom GOUF Ignited is covered with real gold, held on the armor by a special nano-treatment. This, unlike the Hyaku Shiki and Akatsuki, is purely for show.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam 00's Alvatore and its core MS, Alvaaron. Since its pilot also has a golden gun and wears a gold-colored pilot suit, this is more a case of egotism.
      • 00 also has the Suille Palace Guard Type Enact, customized with a brilliant white paint job with gold trim. They can't do jack against a giant beam of death from space.
  • Brave of Gold Goldran is an entire Combining Mecha team worth of bling.
  • Black Lagoon has one gold-plated example and two lesser ones. Yolanda from the Church of Violence has a gold-plated Desert Eagle as her weapon of choice, Revy has customized her twin Beretta 92Fs with pirate flag decals and refer to them as "cutlasses", and Mr. Chang (who is also one of Revy's idols) has dragon decals and the kanji "天帝" (pronounced "tentei" and meaning "god" or "heavenly king") on his twin Beretta 76s. There's also the big-ass golden custom Luger Hand Cannon that The Brute Fritz Stanford never got to use in the Nazi arc due to Revy spending his rant reloading her gun and then shooting him mid-sentence.
    • Revy's Cutlasses are probably the most extreme example listed here, as the slide and recoil spring guide are both extended one inch beyond the standard 92F dimensions, meaning that they were custom machined just for her.
  • Magnamon from Digimon Adventure 02. Quoth his Digimon Analyzer profile: "I am Magnamon, a golden armor Digimon that attacks with my Magna Blaster; and I look so good doing it too."
  • This trope becomes a plot point for a chapter in Lone Wolf and Cub. One character, a gunsmith, finds that the trope is in full effect among his peers, who all make high quality matchlock rifles with excessive decoration, and that they forget that guns are weapons of war and death and need to be developed to be more efficient. His response to this? A "multiple-fire rifle" - a multiple-barreled volley gun whose demonstration shames and terrifies the other gunmakers into trying to make better weapons.
  • Quite a few Knightmare Frames in Code Geass have lots of gold parts or trim, primarily those used by elites like the Knights of the Round and leaders like Zero and Cornelia.

Film

  • James Bond:
  • In Austin Powers: Goldmember, the eponymous villain carries a gold-plated Desert Eagle and his henchwomen carry gold-plated revolvers.
  • One of the warlord's sons in Lord of War had a gold-plated AK variant.[1]
  • Subverted in Three Amigos!. Ned has to outdraw the enemy (who is also, incidentally, his biggest fan) in a shootout. Like the other Amigos, he has a gun designed to be used in a movie, pearl handle and silver inlay. The Dragon comes up and removes it from his holster, replacing it with a regular gun. "You want to die with a man's gun. Not a sissy gun like this."
  • Face Off: Castor Troy, the Big Bad had two gold-plated Colt 1911s.
  • In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, L.J. has two gold-plated Desert Eagles.

L.J: "Motherfucker, please. My shit is custom."

  • In Team America: World Police, Kim Jong Il shoots one of his employees with a Nickel-plated Desert Eagle, it's referenced in the DVD commentary that they did this because they more-or-less hoped that Kim Jong Il secretly wishes he was an LA gangsta.
  • In 3000 Miles to Graceland Kevin Costner's "golden rule" is "fuck gold: whoever has the nickel-plated pistol makes the rules".
  • In Romeo + Juliet, The guns were a nickel and gold plated, with other decorations, including religious icongraphy. Let's not forget the Theme Naming used to make the dialogue work; the "Sword", "Rapier" and "Dagger" handguns and "Longsword" shotgun.
  • In Speed, the Big Bad has a chrome-plated MP5.
  • Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. Voldemort contemptuously snaps off the ornate silver handle of Lucius Malfoy's wand when he 'borrows' it to use against Harry Potter.
  • In Wanted, several characters have cosmetically modified guns. In this case however, the focus is more on ornate craftmanship than flashy materials.
  • At one point in Danger: Diabolik, Diabolik uses five emeralds as bullets. This is an Inverted Trope however: he doesn't do this to be ostentatious, but as part of a hastily-concocted scheme to smuggle these emeralds.
  • In Kill Bill we get many of these:
    • Bill has a shiny revolver with either an ivory or pearl grip. He also has a nice, white leather holster for it. You only see it for a few moments when he shoots a bowl of fruit after the Bride tries to get to the katana on the coffee table.
    • Hatori Hanzo usually makes an engraving on his swords such as a lion (the Bride's sword) or a birthday message (Budd's sword).
    • O-Ren's sword has an ornate shirasaya mounting, which makes it look like a decorated wooden stick when it is sheathed. In real life, this type of blade mounting was not intended for combat, since it has no guard or handle wrappings.
  • In Star Wars, some high-ranking Council members such as Mace Windu plate their lightsabers with electrum, which is a gold-like precious metal, as part of their perks. Darth Sidious, the Big Bad, also has an electrum saber of his own.
  • In Ladyhawke, Captain Navarre shows off his gem-encrusted zweihander. Each gem was placed by an ancestor who previously wielded the blade.
  • Egg Shen's Six Demon Bag in Big Trouble in Little China; he says it contains "Wind, fire, all that kind of thing!" but in layman's terms, it holds gems which explode like grenades when he throws them.
  • A throwaway line in Iron Man reveals that the armor is made from a (frankly bizarre) gold-titanium alloy. So the parts that look gold? Are gold.

Literature

  • In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Ultramarines novel The Killing Ground, the Grey Knights give Uriel and Pasanius ornate bolters etched with gold. Then, they had just subjected them to ordeals to investigate them for Chaos taint and found them untainted; this was the ceremony to acknowledge that.
  • In one of the old BattleTech novels featuring Camacho's Cabelleros, one of the mechwarriors, Vanity, painted her Warhammer mech gold. It reflected sunlight so well that she originally called it "Vanity's Mirror" but later rechristened it to "Golden Vanity" after it was pointed out that if the mech was her reflection then she had thunder thighs and weighed 85 tons.
  • A popular trope in A Song of Ice and Fire, where the lords of the Seven Kingdoms compete to out-bling each other in their arms and armor. Jaime Lannister is noted for fighting in armor that is gilded from head to toe. Loras Tyrell gives him a run for his money with a sapphire-encrusted suit of armor and a cape made of fresh woven roses.
  • In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Chessman of Mars, Gahan of Gathol carries a jeweled sword along with his other finery. Tara is so less than impressed that he has to work to overcome it.
  • The Shield of Achilles is perhaps the earliest example of this trope.
  • Played with extensively in the Deryni works.
    • In some cases, the blinged out weapons are Requisite Royal Regalia. The Haldane Sword has gold, jewels (rubies, because the family colour is red) and a relic encased in the hilt. At his investiture, Liam-Lajos is girded with a diamond-encrusted belt and takes up a gorgeous scimitar. "Its scabbard was inlaid with turquoise and lapis lazuli, and studded here and there with pearls and more precious stones: ruby and emerald and sapphire."
    • In keeping with his ready-for-anything wardrobe, Morgan favours plain-but-serviceable weapons in his early years, and he retains some of them, including his stiletto in its wrist-sheath. Later he is shown to have a scabbard set with cairngorms, and he disguises the gold of his sword grip with black leather when going to Dhassa incognito. There's a tension between the demands of his ducal status and more practical considerations.
  • Joachim Steuben from the Hammer's Slammers series has his personal pistol highly embellished: "the receiver ... had been gilded and carven by someone with a penchant for fleshy orchids. The stems and leaves had been filled with niello while the veins remained in a golden tracery. The petals themselves were formed from a breathtakingly purple alloy of copper and gold." Joachim can shoot a man in the head from a kilometer away, or kill three men at close range in two-fifths of a second, with this weapon.
  • In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel For the Emperor, Colonel Kasteen is carrying a gilt chain sword, engraved with the images of devotional scenes, a striking contrast to Cain's heavily used sword. Then, she's going to a banquet.
  • Conan the Barbarian
    • In The Hour of the Dragon, Conan is pleased when he finds that Zenobia did not give him this but a plain, practical blade, and thinks more highly of her.
    • In "Black Colossus" Shevatas has "a short, narrow, jewel-hilted sword". Although he handles it with great care, that's because he poisoned it himself.
  • The One That Got Away: In Chris Ryan's semi-autobiography, the Syrian ambassador had a gold-plated AK-47 mounted on his office wall.

Live-Action TV

  • Community: In "Modern Warfare", Senor Chang carries 2 gold-painted paintball guns (possibly in reference to Face/Off).
  • Sledge Hammer!: Inspector Hammer's .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver is customized with a white ivory handle and an etched drawing of a sledgehammer.
  • Parks and Recreation: The government of Venezuela gives Ron Swanson a gold revolver as a gift early in season 2. It has since found its way into the opening credits.
  • An episode of the Dicovery Channel series American Guns had Rick make a custom 1911 pistol for his wife for their anniversary; silver-plated finish, mother of pearl grips, custom engraved slide, and diamonds on the grips and sights.
    • A customer wanted to buy a gold-plated Desert Eagle, simply to "have something to drool on now and then".
  • In Danger 5, the evil Nazi plot in one episode is to re-arm the Wehrmacht with new golden sub-machine guns... made of gold that are superior to normal weapons, though they overheat if fired full-auto. General Rommel also wants to create a battalion of tanks made of gold. Hitler tells Rommel not to do that because it would be stupid, but he does it anyway.
  • In Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Phryne Fisher's Weapon of Choice is a gold-plated .38 snub-nose revolver.

Tabletop Games

  • In Warhammer 40,000, the warriors of the Imperium of Man often carry very ornate firearms. This is most pronounced with certain Space Marine Chapters and the Ordos of the Inquisition. The Games Workshop website has an article on custom painting Black Templar Marines to show their crusader honors, and one of the models has a gold-plated bolter. The finish is supposed to "reflect the Emperor's light," and is also anointed with "holy unguents."
    • And we can't forget the Chaos approach, which starts with screaming faces, arrows and spikes ... and ends with binding a Daemon into the weapon.
    • The Grey Knights customise their otherwise undecorated armour with various wards and prayers in gold and silver, among other things to show their faith such as purity seals, and a holy book in a case on their breast plate. Their armour is plain polished ceramite, but with all their Bling of War all over their wargear, they end up being one of the most highly decorated chapters.
    • Ork weapons tend to get more and more decorative. Lootas get decorative "teef", skulls, and Orky glyphs, on guns so large it would take two Guardsmen and a tripod for anyone else to field.
      • Justified by the fact that "Bling" does, in fact, make their guns more powerful, due to their subconscious psychic abilities.
    • Basically, any time you see something with "Master Crafted" or "Artificer" in the front of the name, it falls into this. Artificer Armor gets double-bonus points for the fact that it started out like normal quality armor, but over millenea of use it's been fixed, tweaked, enhanced, embroidered and modified so many times it's as much a work of art by the technology worshipping Tech Priests as it is war gear, often with gold plates bearing magnificent murals, benedictions and prayer runes engraved on a microscopic level, shining lights and/or open flames for... No clear reason... You'd think that all this would make someone nothing but a moving target, but if you've earned the right to even TOUCH the stuff - nevermind wear/wield it - having an entire battlefield focussing on you is pretty much standard.
      • Just an example of a decorative artificer weapon: Gilded Boltgun. Yup, even the magazine is gilded, and the handle has a big gemstone set as a "pommel", among other work. Mind you, this weapon is sized for a huge Space Marine in armor.
  • In the 3rd-edition Shadowrun supplement, Cannon Companion, there are rules for a custom finish on your guns. It is stated to be purely cosmetic. The companion illustration shows an Ork holding a semi-auto with a baby gator head screwed to the slide (so the muzzle is emerging from the mouth) and two magnum revolvers in his belt with "Meat" and "Potatoes" engraved on the grips, respectively. In the 4th Editon supplement Arsenal, you can get the "Custom Look" mod which improves imtimidation and reputation rolls, with the downside that people are more likely to remember what the gun looked like, and who was waving it around...
    • Worth mentioning if not completely in the law of the trope. In Fourth Edition during one of the conversation in-universe between Shadowrunners one of the Runners talks about saving a Corps kid that had a gun. The gun was a Saturday Night special .22 caliber pistol that had a cartoon character on the grip. The runner had a minor Heroic BSOD at the fact that the gun was next to worthless yet cost more then his gun.
  • Deadlands includes rules for doing this to guns. It is purely cosmetic and even notes that some modifications actually reduce your accuracy (such as silvering your gun because this reflects light into your eyes when you're trying to aim).
  • GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy has an artifact weapon called the Flashing Sunblade made entirely of silver and jewels.
    • There is also a rule on decorating regular weapons. This makes a weapon much costlier and gives a bonus to impress people.
  • Exalted gives us the Prayer Piece- an Orichalcum weapon that fires bullets carved with prayers to the Unconquered Sun. The bullets can be made of any soft metal. Naturally, everyone uses gold.

Theatre

  • Chicago begins with Roxie Hart shooting Fred Casely to death with a pearl-handled .32 revolver.

Video Games

  • Eddie Raja in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune has a golden handgun.
  • Army of Two,
    • You can "pimp" your gun with chrome and gold plating or diamonds in order to increase your ability to get your enemies' attention.
    • The Fortieth Day introduces the new diamond-encrusted grenades. That's right, your grenades can have a ring of large-carat diamonds permanently fused onto them for just $100,000. They're also gold plated.
  • In Black, after completing the game you can unlock silver versions of your weapons that cause more damage.
  • Subverted in Metal Gear Solid 3: Ocelot gets an engraved revolver and Naked Snake mocks him for this claiming it serves no tactical advantage. Ocelot later gets a regular revolver. Nicely contrasted with a gun that EVA gave Snake that actually had been modified for tactical purposes (a better line-sight, altered grip to make it easier to switch from knife to gun, etc.)
  • In John Woo Presents Stranglehold, the most powerful gun you can get is the Golden Pistol, a gold-plated Desert Eagle that can kill a mook with one shot and isn't half-bad against bosses either. And of course, you can use them Guns Akimbo just like your regular Berettas.
  • In most James Bond games, you can acquire a Golden Gun (as per the aforementioned film). This is usually hard to do, but the Golden Gun is a One-Hit Kill. Goldeneye 007 also gives you the Gold PP7, a special version of your regular gun that can one-shot bad guys just like the Golden Gun, and the Silver PP7, which does as much damage as the Cougar Magnum, as unlockable cheats.
  • Total Overdose has a special that grants a Golden Gun with 6 instantly lethal shots, in homage to James Bond. Each shot is tracked with a speeding camera closely following the bullets' trajectory to their target.
  • The final weapon in Killer7 is the Golden Gun, which is instant death to Heaven's Smiles. Curtis Blackburn's twin gold-inlaid pistols are quite nice, as well.
    • The Demon Gun eventually given to Dan also seems a bit qualified, looking fairly ornate and being a revolver that holds 13 rounds.
  • Donators to the dev team of the Half-Life mod Sven-Coop can get golden Uzi's, among other bonuses.
  • Tomb Raider: Anniversary had silver Uzis and a golden Shotgun as unlockable weapons, which were actually more useful than their regular counterparts. The silver Uzis held more ammo than the regular version and fired at a much faster rate while the golden Shotgun also held more bullets and fired faster, but also killed anything with just a single shot, bosses included!
  • Saints Row has gold and platinum weapons for completing the Hitman activities - a gold plated pistol, a platinum SMG, and a platinum shotgun. It culminates in a platinum rocket-propelled grenade. They generally have larger magazines and do more damage than their regular equivalents.
  • Gears of War 2: The Limited Edition comes with a gold Lancer. And if you showed up at the midnight launch, you got a gold Hammerburst, too.
    • Gears 3 has chrome plated guns and if you played the beta enough, a gold plated Retro Lancer.
  • City of Heroes: While there is no shiny plating effect, you can select just about any color you want on most weapons, whether it be a pistol, rifle, longbow, knife, sword, and axes. You can also choose the color of the beam on weapons with laser sights.
  • Call of Duty
    • In Call Of Duty 4, the player can earn different camo finishes for his weapons by racking up headshots in multiplayer. Starting with a realistic urban digital job, the second and third rank finishes are blue and red tiger stripe.
If all challenges for every weapon in a category are completed, the player earns a gold finish on one of the guns—AK-47 for the assault rifles, Mini-Uzi for the submachine guns, etc. All of these finishes are purely cosmetic, intended for multiplayer bragging rights. Upon reaching level 55, players are also rewarded with a gold-plated Desert Eagle.
    • Lampshaded in Modern Warfare 2: players can unlock a new perk called "Bling" which allows them to use two add-ons to their regular weapon. With enough kills with a Blinged weapon, you can also do the same for your secondary fiream.
    • Call of Duty Black Ops: you can buy a Gold camouflage pattern for any primary weapon for 50,000 COD points, but only if you've prestiged 15 times.
    • Call Of Duty: World At War : In Nazi Zombies mode, the "Pack-A-Punch" machine can be found on Der Riese. By activating it(a process that requires lots of money and opening plenty of doors, which attracts more zombies)the player can trade their current weapon for an upgraded version, one that's silver, has myriad engravings all over it, and is more powerful to boot.
  • Far Cry 2 has a few gold plated AK-47s hidden in remote shacks. The game's huge maps make them very easy to miss. In addition, they degrade even slower than the regular AK-47. Considering how long it takes to break a normal AK-47, it gives you a weapon that won't break or even jam for a large portion of the game.
  • Mass Effect mostly avoids this, but the shiny black and blood red Colossus series armor in the first game and your ability to give Shepard gold armor with the appearance customization system in the second certainly look somewhat impractically showy.
  • The first Ratchet and Clank game had more powerful Gold versions of each weapon. The second game onwards had a more practical Upgrade system.
  • Deerhunter: In some versions, killing ten bucks with the same type of weapon will unlock a gold skin for custom weapons of that type. (It's purely cosmetic, though.)
  • In Perfect Dark, a bad guy by the name of Trent Easton is never seen without his custom made DY-357 LX, a pimped out revolver boasting gold plating and a leopard-skin grip, and also kills in a single shot.
  • Team Fortress 2, the Spy's unlockable gun The Ambassador. To quote the official description: "With its rosewood grip and likeness of your enemy's mother (please send photo) engraved on the barrel" it definitely fits quite nicely in the Bling Bling Bang category.
    • The Ambassador has a golden trigger as well.
    • The Spy's other unlockable gun, E'tranger, has an engraved ivory grip and polished steel. The Enforcer, on the other hand, looks like a run of the mill revolver any thug can get a hold of (which ties into it's mafia theme). In addition all of the other Spy "weapons" apart from his sapper looks to be of high quality, especially the Eternal Reward and his various watches (which are usually gold).
    • The Heavy has the Brass Beast, an ornate brass minigun. It's by far the most beautiful of his guns, as the others were implied to be home made.
    • The Engineer got the Golden Wrench, made of pure australium. It can turn anything it kills into more australium. Similarly, the Saxy awards can be considered this as well, especially since they're actual awards.
  • The Amarr from EVE Online love the "gold plated" version of this trope - just about every Amarrian ship and station is covered in shiny golden armour.
  • Subverted in Dwarf Fortress -you can make weapons out of silver, resulting in something pretty, valuable and bloody awful as a weapon. In older versions, they were often used for training, as dwarfs sparring with silver weapons were much less likely to hurt each other.
    • In the current version, though, blunt weapon damage comes mostly from the weapon's mass, meaning silver warhammers are one of, if not THE MOST, effective weapons against armored humanoids. And in Dwarf Fortress, silver and gold tend to be abundant while not having much use...
    • Also played straight, since you can decorate weapons with lots of stuff, like gems, precious metals or the bones of your enemies. Artifacts (weapons or not) tend to be notoriously overkill in this regard.
  • Kanbei's unit's in the Advance Wars games aren't really covered in gold, but their high defense, high cost, and yellow coloring suggest that they are.
  • In the Grand Theft Auto IV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony, Yusef Amir adores tacky bling, which extends to owning a solid gold submachine gun. Either he's getting carried away with his boasting, and its really just gold-plated, or it's merely an instance of the Rule of Cool. A solid-gold SMG would be impractically heavy, and the firing chamber impractically soft. He later gives the player one such gun as a gift, claiming he's got three more. And he gold plates an attack helicopter that he had the player steal.
    • It could be made of gold rather than gold plated. In an earlier mission, Yusef hands a golden phone to Luis who visibly reacts to its unexpected weight.
  • The level 3 "Saturday Night Special" upgrade for the .38 snubnose revolver in The Godfather: The Game, as well as the level 3 "Python" upgrade for the Magnum, has gold plating and ivory handles.
  • With photoshop and some knowledge of where the game stores its texture files, you can do this in most PC games. Because STALKER is more fun with a nickel plated Deagle.
  • In Resident Evil, specifically Code: Veronica, Steve will trade you the plot-important Gold Lugers for a pair of submachine guns.
  • Dr. Peace's weapon in No More Heroes is a pair of gold plated revolvers.
    • Million Gunman in the sequel takes it further; he uses a pair of gold-plated C96 Mausers that actually shoot money.
  • In the PC version of Max Payne 2, the Desert Eagles are you average chrome .50AE model... but with gold controls and ivory/mother of pearl grips. Qualifies also as Rare Guns in a way, even though Mona has two, and they are carried by countless gangsters. In the X-Box version, they're a puke-ish olive drab, and the slides don't even move when fired.
  • Link's strongest sword in Link to The Past is a golden sword to compliment his silver arrows. Majoras Mask also includes the Gilded Sword, which is made by forging the Razor Sword with some gold powder.
  • In Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project, Duke has a gold-plated pistol called the Golden Eagle. You start the game with it and it's actually pretty effective. Most enemies can be killed with a few shots from it, making it Boring but Practical.
  • Shadow Complex: The reward for collecting all the gold bars is golden version of all the regular weapons. They don't do anything special though.
    • However, they become accessible in a room at the entrance of the base, making all weapons available at the very beginning on a New Game+.
  • Red Dead Redemption lets players earn gold-colored versions of some weapons in multiplayer, but these are just a Bragging Rights Reward. However, one store's Preorder Bonus was a pair of golden guns that increased your Fame simply by being used.
  • A weapon dropped by General Knoxx in the third DLC for Borderlands, Knoxx's Gold, fits this trope to a T. While the repeater pistol will occasionally be decent in its own right, the main draw of the drop is that it sells for a ridiculous amount of cash.
  • Weapons and armor in Might and Magic can be made of twenty different materials, and more bling generally means a higher bonus. A crystal weapon gets +1 damage, gold +8, and diamond +30. Unfortunately, if your diamond sword breaks, repairing it will cost an arm and a leg.
  • In Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Cesare and Baron de Valois have gold-plated pistols.
  • Alpha Protocol's bosses carry golden weapons, which you get if you kill them. Most obvious with Brayko, who shows off his gold-plated SMGs in the pre-fight cutscene.
  • Ghost Trick: Nearsighted Jeego's got a golden shotgun.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, unique weapons get a custom design. While lots of them look either rusty, dirty, or unfinished, some of them fit this trope. Lucky and Maria are two good examples.
    • As well, the player has the option to craft 12-gauge shotgun shells loaded with Legion Denarii. Amusingly, killing someone with said shell gives you a chance to recover either a denarius or a mangled denarius (worth half as much.)
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy (or more accurately its prequel), Laguna is a Multi Ranged Master with a Hyperspace Arsenal full of machine guns, sniper rifles, grenades, rocket launchers—if it shoots, he has one. The primary appearance change in his EX Mode? All those beautiful toys are now diamonds gold-plated.
  • Minecraft, after much hullabaloo from the fanbase, finally added in picks, swords and armor made from gold. Huzzah! Gold axes and swords do, in fact, swing sunuvabitchin fast and can plow through blocks at nearly diamond speed. To many folks' dismay, Notch was also aware that gold is a relatively soft metal. Thus, the durability of gold implements are in the toilet.
    • Golden armor may look pretty, but as Yahtzee found out, gold armor in terms of durability and longevity is barely better than leather armor.
  • In Deus Ex Human Revolution, the Motor City Bangers have gold plated cyberlimbs. One of their leaders even has tricked out facial augs, which another character describes as "tasteless".
  • In World of Warcraft, several Dungeon and Raid bosses in Battle for Azeroth use gold - either gold coins or fiery molten gold - as a weapon. The most remarkable is [Opulence]. A sort of golem created to guard a treasury, it is literally made of gold coins, using scalding hot molten gold to attack the heroes.
  • In any First-Person Shooter game that has a modding community behind it, you can bet your guns that someone will make a gold or silver texture for the guns in the game.
  • A preorder bonus for the remake of Syndicate gives you gold-plated guns in co-op.
  • Assassin's Creed II and it's sequels feature some rather extravagant designs for the Hidden Blades Ezio use, especially the bracers used for blocking opponents attacks. The Hookblade in Revelations is exceedingly complex in it's design to make the hook the shape of an eagle head, and the art designs for some of the hidden blade variations are even worse.

Web Comics

  • Bobwhite. From the climax of Marlene's film:

Emily: I know what you're thinking. But you can search for the rest of your life. You're not finding the money.
Frank: Oh? And why is that, sugarbeet?
[Emily pulls out a gun and fires a gold-plated, Gem-Encrusted bullet through Frank's chest.]
Emily: Because I spent it all... on the bullet that's going to kill you.
Frank: [lying on the floor, bleeding out] Damn... that's... a nice... bullet.
Emily: Only the best for you, Frank.

  • This page from Contemplating Reiko.
  • In Homestuck, Lord English wields a golden scepter that turns into a golden assault rifle.
  • In the world of Chasing the Sunset shiny ammunition is actually useful, to get rid of annoying pixies and their Sticky Fingers. Not that these are easy to hit, or can be killed permanenly for that matter, but they'll follow moving shinies, and then with any luck the pixies' short attention span will do the rest. First amazons used a polished silver arrow; in a side story wizards beset by pixies removed a few from the action for good by shooting glittering arrows enchanted to fly away as far as possible.

Western Animation

Real Life

  • Saddam Hussein had gold-plated AK-47s and SVDs among his possessions.
  • Gen. George Patton had an ivory-handled revolver. Just don't call them pearl-handled.
  • When Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield, he wanted to buy an ivory-handled gun over a plain one so it would make a more attractive museum piece, but he decided not to spend the extra money. The Smithsonian ended up losing the gun anyway.
  • Nickel plating was a standard feature on many antique revolvers, due to its high resistance to wear and corrosion. In modern times it has been supplanted by stainless steel.
  • A variant on this trope is a "Rooney" gun - one that's been encumbered with an excessive amount of gadgetry. For examples see "Rooney Guns" at The Gun Zone. This is also referred to as a "Tacti-Cool" setup.
  • In days past ceremonial firearms were very beautiful. In the days when all firearms were hand built and unique, they were subject to the same level of ornate craftsmanship as swords.
    • Jewel-encrusted Ottoman guns.
    • Intricately carved and decorated Japanese arquebuses fit for a shogun.
    • "Fowlers", long hand-built early sporting shotguns used for bird hunting by the European nobility.
    • Even today, Beretta operates a custom shop in Italy to make high-end artistic versions of their sporting arms for wealthy clientèle.
    • Many armed forces will frequently use prettied-up versions of weapons for ceremonial purposes; an example being US military honor guards & drill exhibition teams using Springfield and Garand rifles with the metal parts chromed, high gloss-polished stocks, and white slings.
    • This is often the case in any hand-crafted product. Intricate craftsmanship and decoration is visible proof that it was made by a master who put the utmost care and attention into the product. Or at least that's the theory.
  • While not all Ugly Guns develop as such for the purpose of customization, the most memorable of them tend to be.
  • If you read the Mexican news, you'll see how narcos are quite often arrested with gold and diamond-encrusted guns. Here is an example of such guns. A bust of the notorious Sinaloa gang in Costa Rica captured, among other things, gold-plated and diamond-studded AK-47s.
  • At one point, Elvis Presley presented Richard Nixon a gift --- a gold plated Colt 45 with gold plated bullets. Secret Service men gave it to Nixon --- Elvis did not present the gift directly.
  • Adolf Hitler kept a golden pistol in a hidden pocket of his vest.
  • Muammar Gaddafi was allegedly carrying a gold-plated Browning when he was captured and killed by rebels.
  • Large jewelery company Tiffany & Co has made several guns as jewelery in their history.
  • A less extreme example available to the average American (outside of New York city, something which the NYPD complains about[2]) is DuraCoat. Primarily for corrosion protection and camouflage, DuraCoat also offers several products for making guns stylish. These include DuraPeral, a post-treatment to give guns a pearlescent sheen (including fake gold plating) and several Bland-Name Product versions of trademarked fashion colors.
  1. ↑ It's a bit complicated.
  2. ↑ Prior to the ban the NYPD used DuraCoat for its primary purpose and says the criminal use the ban was enacted for never happened. DuraCoat mocked this ban by introducing 5 new colors named after the boroughs of New York.
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