Family-Friendly Firearms: Difference between revisions
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[[File:WDTGL.jpg|link=One Piece|frame|Look out! He's gonna <s>kill</s> [[Never Say "Die"|get]] that guy with his <s>[[Implausible Deniability|gun]]</s> spring-loaded showerhead thingy!]]
{{quote|''"With [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] deleting dynamite gags from cartoons, do you find that your children are using explosives less frequently?"''
|'''Mark LoPresti'''}}
▲{{quote|''"With [[ABC]] deleting dynamite gags from cartoons, do you find that your children are using explosives less frequently?"''|'''Mark LoPresti'''}}
In an example of the [[nerf]]ing of violence, almost all firearms in animated cartoons made since the late 1970s or early 1980s, if they appear at all, will be radically different from real guns, either in form or in function. [[Ray Gun|Energy weapons]] are a popular choice.
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Goes hand in hand with [[The Lethal Connotation of Guns and Others]]. See also [[Abnormal Ammo]], [[Trick Arrow]], [[Inverse Law of Sharpness and Accuracy]]. Often given to a [[Badbutt]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* In the first few episodes of [[4Kids! Entertainment|4Kids!']] ''[[One Piece]]'' dub, guns would occasionally be replaced with a sillier-looking equivalent, the most notable seen in the picture above. Originally the standard flintlock pistol seen in the OP universe, it was heavily edited into something that looks more like a showerhead on a spring. (The weapon changed back to a gun in a long shot and a few other frames that 4Kids missed.) Simultaneously, other guns would be edited or recolored to look less realistic—Navy soldiers' rifles were changed to resemble super-soakers, for example—but would still explicitly shoot bullets.
** In one instance, a poison dart gun was changed to shoot poison ''suction cups''.
** In the flashback to Luffy and Shank's origin stories, Shanks is held up point blank with a gun to his temple and he casually points out that the man holding the gun is in danger of a backblast if his skull causes the bullet to shrapnel, just to show how badass he is. In the 4kids version the man is holding a popgun, although Shank's lines remain mostly unchanged. Shank's man shoots the would-be shooter dead and they didn't bother changing his gun, but left in a comment that it was full of blanks and that the other man simply fainted.
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** An interesting example: The Digimon Revolvermon is basically a giant revolver barrel with limbs and a cowboy hat. While the English dub changed his ''name'' to Deputymon, his appearance and attacks were not altered at all.
** Probably because, if they erased his gun, he would look more like a human than a Digimon.
* The [[Edited for Syndication|broadcast version]] of the dub of ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED]]'' actually has ballistic weapons visually edited to look like lasers. They missed a few shots. [[
** This was edited much less in Canada (''Gundam SEED'' aired at 9PM or later on Fridays) -- mainly editing out the over-graphic deaths had by some "extras" (such as from the radiation weapons—swelling and popping), and toning down a bit of the (somewhat-infamous) Kira/Flay encounter.
*** One [[Epileptic Trees|fan theory]] is that the gun edits were intentionally ludicrous: Bandai and CN both realized that the fans would see right through the edits, but it still had to be done, so they were made silly-looking to give viewers something to laugh at.
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* In ''[[Transformers Armada]],'' Demolishor's missiles were frequently shown to ''stay in place but fire missile-shaped lasers.'' Of course, it does provide an explanation for the usual "we can see he's only got four, so how come he's been blasting away all day and never runs out?" problem that some Transformers have. Most weapons fire appears to be lasers, but Cyclonus has more than once told an enemy to "eat lead".
* In the [[4Kids! Entertainment|4Kids]] broadcast of ''[[Dragonball Z Kai]]'', [[One-Scene Wonder|Farmer with shotgun]] becomes Farmer with... [[Frickin' Laser Beams|some kind of laser shotgun]]. Raditz still manages to [[Bullet Catch|catch the laser]] and [[Catch and Return|throw it back]] at the Farmer. [[Fridge Logic|Somehow]].
* Played literally in one episode of ''[[Full Metal Panic!
* In ''[[Fairy Tail]]'', one goon of the Naked Mummy Dark Guild is seen using a shotgun loaded with magic bullets. In the anime it was changed to a more toy-looking rifle.
* In ''[[Pokémon]]'', no Officer Jenny even carries a gun. They just have fire-spewing attack dogs tackle the bad guys, which is obviously much safer. Even when a [[Cowboy Cop|"wild"]] Jenny appears with only a talking bird as a Pokémon, she uses...[[Improbable Weapon User|well, pretty much bowling balls]]. The bad guys prefer to make their Pokémon do the fighting as well, [[Justified Trope|though that's a lot cheaper and easier than using a gun]]. The one episode that had a character with a gun got [[Missing Episode|banned]] [[No Export for You|almost worldwide]], even though no one was shot with it. However, giant mecha and battleships firing a barrage of missiles are apparently just fine, even though most Team Rocket robots fire [[Abnormal Ammo|nets, energy beams or glue]] considering they want to steal and not hurt Pokémon.
** Actually, one episode has a store full of people aim shotguns at Ash, thinking he's a robber, and another has an Officer Jenny aim a rifle at the twerps thinking they're poachers. Both of these episodes aired in America uncensored. Only the one where the Safari Zone warden actually fires his gun was banned, presumably because the gun appeared several times and couldn't have been edited out without completely butchering the episode. That, and it could have landed them with an anti-defamation lawsuit for portraying a trigger-happy park ranger.
* ''[[Asobi ni Iku yo!
==
* In [http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2005-08-04/ one part] of the syndicated comic strip ''[[Dilbert]]'', Dogbert gets a job as a hostage negotiator, telling the assailant to come out unarmed. He then orders a policeman to shoot him... with a ''donut that fires bullets''.▼
** According to one of Scott Adams' books, based on his blog: it was originally a gun, but this was changed to a blank panel with 3 "BAM!" sound effects due to [[Executive Meddling]]. It was subsequently changed to firing from a doughnut after he found out that he could get away with it.▼
* When Gladstone Publishing reprinted various ''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck|Uncle Scrooge]]'' stories that had first been published in Europe, they had to redraw some scenes involving firearms, leading to scenes of Uncle Scrooge apparently being threatened by having a finger waved under his beak.
* While not a direct use of this trope, it is subverted in one story of [[The Punisher]] 2099. The Punisher runs across a female copycat vigilante of him, who prefers to kill crooks using painful methods and weapons. The Punisher looks down on her for this, saying that he prefers clean kills and doesn't take pleasure in killing. She sneers at him because he uses lasers. According to her, lasers burn into flesh and boil the blood. The wound always go septic and the nerves rarely regrow. They may look nice in the "Holo-dramas", but they're just as nasty as what she uses.
== Films -- Animation ==
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* ''[[An American Tail|Fievel Goes West]]'' is a mixed example. While there are some revolvers, those only get aimed at inanimate objects or [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|aimed so badly]] they don't come close to hitting anyone. When the cats (and one dog) have their shoot-out, it's with slingshots that use bullet and ricochet sound effects.
* The [[Disney Animated Canon]] both uses and averts this trope. Played straight in ''[[Saludos Amigos]]'', ''The Three Cabelleros'' (Panchito's gun) and ''[[Pocahontas]]'' (plenty people get shot, but there's no carnage in sight), but averted painfully in ''[[Tarzan]]'', ''[[Atlantis: The Lost Empire]]'', ''[[Treasure Planet]]'' and ''[[Home on the Range]]''. Not to mention the amount of Disney movies in which non-advanced weaponry (swords, arrows, etc.) are used - to ''quite'' the effect.
== Films -- Live-Action ==
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The most fearless X-Man let out a horrendous, bloodcurdling scream and then he fell to the ground. The blast destroyed him and left behind only a smoking adamantium skeleton.
Wolverine was dead.]] }}
== Live-Action TV ==
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* A tv comedy pilot "Inside O.U.T." (a parody of ''[[Mission: Impossible]]''), made after the infamous year 1968, made a point to show the good guys' guns shot non-lethal tranquilizer bullets.
== Newspaper Comics ==
▲* In [http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2005-08-04/ one part] of the syndicated comic strip ''[[Dilbert]]'', Dogbert gets a job as a hostage negotiator, telling the assailant to come out unarmed. He then orders a policeman to shoot him... with a ''donut that fires bullets''.
▲** According to one of Scott Adams' books, based on his blog: it was originally a gun, but this was changed to a blank panel with 3 "BAM!" sound effects due to [[Executive Meddling]]. It was subsequently changed to firing from a doughnut after he found out that he could get away with it.
== Puppet Shows ==
* When the Gerry Anderson series ''Stingray'' was turned into a movie by mashing a few episodes together, the scenes where the various craft fired torpedoes at each other were changed so that laser beams were fired instead.
* Same creator, same principle, different series: when some episodes of ''[[Captain Scarlet]]'' were mashed together to create a movie, the missiles fired by the Mysteron saucers were turned into lasers, and shoddy-looking ones at that. It is possible that this was simply an attempt to make them more alien, but either way it failed at whatever it was trying to do.
== Video Games ==▼
* In ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Brawl'', it was specifically said that [[Metal Gear|Solid Snake]] could not use guns... but his rocket launcher, mortar, grenades, and land mines are all good. This may have also been for gameplay reason though, since a projectile that moves almost instantly (like Sheik's needles) that you could [[Spam Attack|fire almost constantly]] would be [[Game Breaker|really cheap]] (also, [[Stuff Blowing Up|explosions]] [[Rule of Cool|are more fun]] and [[Rule of Funny|more hilarious]]). Also, [[Star Fox (series)|Fox, Falco, Wolf]], and [[Metroid|Samus]] get to use energy weapons, but that's more a matter of [[Frickin' Laser Beams]] than this.▼
* Occurs within the ''[[Command & Conquer]]'' [[Novelization]] of ''Tiberium Wars''. Within the novel, the regular infantry of Nod (the bad guys) are armed with energy weapons. While Nod do have lasers within the game, its only limited to special forces, while the regular mooks get conventional weapons. The trope is almost invoked by one soldier "Where the hell'd they get-" after seeing the lasers. The change isn't because of censorship, but as a result of a continuity error.▼
** In the expansion to ''Tiberium Wars'', the Black Hand subfaction can upgrade their basic [[mook]]s to use lasers. That said, they are [[Elite Mooks]], since the Black Hand is apparently Nod's elite.▼
* Inverted (sort of) in ''[[Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan]]''. At first the cops use real guns to fight rampaging robots which don't do anything. Then they figure out their weakness and attack with water guns instead, which are [[Justified Trope|very effective]].▼
* [[Disney]] ended up doing that in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]] II''. In the first game, the only gun we had was in Deep Jungle ([[Tarzan]]'s world), which was Clayton's, and it wasn't censored. In the second game though, there were two occasions of guns in the Japanese version, and both of them were changed in the American release—the first were the old-fashioned muskets from Port Royal (''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' world), which were replaced by crossbows (though still sounding like muskets and having ''muzzle flashes''); the second was Xigbar's Special Attack in which he merged his two laser guns to create a sniper rifle, which was altered to... well, the same laser guns not merging.▼
** Actually both Will and Jack had flintlock pistols unedited, and even Barbossa too in the boss fight.▼
** There is a part in the ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' movie when Will puts a gun to his head and threatens to kill himself if his friends are not released (because the pirates can't end their curse without him). In ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', he leaps to the edge of the ship, just like the movie, and threatens his own life...while pointing the gun at the ground. You probably don't want to encourage children to point guns at their owns heads, but at the same time it was a bit jarring to anyone familiar with the movie.▼
** Oddly enough, when ''358/2 Days'' came out, they stopped doing that to Xigbar, whose Limit Break has him again merge his gun-arrows into a sniper rifle.▼
** They did not exactly "stop doing it", actually, as ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep|Birth by Sleep]]'' censored [[Significant Anagram|Braig]] combining his Arrowguns into a sniper rifle. This edit manages to be even ''more'' ridiculous than in Xigbar's case, as Braig's Arrowguns are pretty much stylized [[Automatic Crossbows|crossbows]] that [[Frickin' Laser Beams|shoot lasers]]. It probably goes without saying that the resulting sniper rifle looks less than realistic.▼
** Clayton's aforementioned rifle was not edited or censored in any shape or form in ''[[Tarzan]]''. It's as realistic as the guns in ''Pirates''... whereas Xigbar's gun-arrows are decidedly not. Children are probably going to see these movies before playing ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' (or at least, it would be more likely for their parents to allow them to see them), so this censoring really makes little sense.▼
** The series' iconic Keyblade was originally planned to be a [http://ds.ign.com/articles/100/1002401p1.html chainsaw-like weapon.] Disney obviously wasn't too happy about this idea.▼
* Nintendo's Famicom Light Gun originally featured a realistic revolver design in Japan. When it was converted into the [[Nintendo Entertainment System|NES]] Zapper overseas, it was given a "futuristic" redesign to comply with U.S. safety standards. Later versions of the Zapper even changed the color of the gun's coating from its original gray to orage due to revised standards. This also applies to all light gun peripherals that had been exported from Japan to the overseas market. Light guns such as Sega's Virtua Gun (renamed the Stunner overseas) and Namco's GunCon were originally sold in realistic-looking black coating in Japan but were repainted orange for the overseas market to distinguish them from real guns.▼
* Sort of an in-universe example: [[Commander Keen]] used rayguns in his first games, the Invasion of the Vorticons trilogy (and the opening story of Keen Dreams), then switched to a Neural Stunner for the rest of his games. This was likely due to how 1.) all the Vorticons Keen slaughtered were mind-controlled instead of evil and Keen didn't want to risk ending up responsible for the annihilation of an alien race again, and 2.) stunned enemies with stars circling their heads are more amusing to look at in a game that pioneered DOS as a gaming platform.▼
* The early ''[[Wolfenstein 3D]]'' clone ''[[Nitemare 3D]]'' had you start out with a plasma gun in a modern-day haunted house setting; however, you do later get a revolver. The point of the plasma gun is probably that its ammo is slow to reach the target, whereas [[Revolvers Are Just Better|the more ammo-rationed revolver]] [[Hit Scan|hits its target instantly]], making it a better choice for long-range targets and enemies that can shoot back.▼
* ''[[Chex Quest]]'': The opening movie makes it clear that conventional weapons can pass right through the slime-based phlegmoids, so the protagonist must use "zorching" weapons to return enemies back to their home dimension.▼
* Forgotten character Fang the Sniper from Sonic the Hedgehog was originally meant to have a [[Revolvers Are Just Better|revolver]] for a weapon. The revolver itself was never used in any games (despite some unused sprites of him holding it), but for his playable appearance in ''[[Sonic the Fighters]]'' he was given a cork-shooting popgun.▼
* [[Night Trap]]. "Weird Eddie", one of the Martin's neighbors, invented a laser gun in order to combat them and the augers. Interestingly, the SCAT team has real guns. (Though no one is shown being shot on-screen.)▼
== Toys ==
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** Legends Class (smallest size class for non-[[Transformers Armada|mini-cons]]. Car characters are about Hot Wheels size.) G1 Megs is even getting an orange cap. Apparently we're worried about squirrel cops shooting squirrel kids, because that's the scale we're dealing in.
* [[Playmobil]] sets include firearms when appropriate ([http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/07/the_17_least_appropriate_playmobil_sets_for_childr.php or not, as the case may be]) - there used to be a Police seaplane set that included not only sidearms for the police officers, but a sniper rifle too.
* The doll for Yukon Cornelius from ''[[Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer]]'' had his pistol removed although he never used in the movie itself.
▲== Video Games ==
▲* In ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Brawl'', it was specifically said that [[Metal Gear|Solid Snake]] could not use guns... but his rocket launcher, mortar, grenades, and land mines are all good. This may have also been for gameplay reason though, since a projectile that moves almost instantly (like Sheik's needles) that you could [[Spam Attack|fire almost constantly]] would be [[Game Breaker|really cheap]] (also, [[Stuff Blowing Up|explosions]] [[Rule of Cool|are more fun]] and [[Rule of Funny|more hilarious]]). Also, [[Star Fox (series)|Fox, Falco, Wolf]], and [[Metroid|Samus]] get to use energy weapons, but that's more a matter of [[Frickin' Laser Beams]] than this.
▲* Occurs within the ''[[Command & Conquer]]'' [[Novelization]] of ''Tiberium Wars''. Within the novel, the regular infantry of Nod (the bad guys) are armed with energy weapons. While Nod do have lasers within the game, its only limited to special forces, while the regular mooks get conventional weapons. The trope is almost invoked by one soldier "Where the hell'd they get-" after seeing the lasers. The change isn't because of censorship, but as a result of a continuity error.
▲** In the expansion to ''Tiberium Wars'', the Black Hand subfaction can upgrade their basic [[mook]]s to use lasers. That said, they are [[Elite Mooks]], since the Black Hand is apparently Nod's elite.
▲* Inverted (sort of) in ''[[Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan]]''. At first the cops use real guns to fight rampaging robots which don't do anything. Then they figure out their weakness and attack with water guns instead, which are [[Justified Trope|very effective]].
▲* [[Disney]] ended up doing that in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]] II''. In the first game, the only gun we had was in Deep Jungle ([[Tarzan]]'s world), which was Clayton's, and it wasn't censored. In the second game though, there were two occasions of guns in the Japanese version, and both of them were changed in the American release—the first were the old-fashioned muskets from Port Royal (''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' world), which were replaced by crossbows (though still sounding like muskets and having ''muzzle flashes''); the second was Xigbar's Special Attack in which he merged his two laser guns to create a sniper rifle, which was altered to... well, the same laser guns not merging.
▲** Actually both Will and Jack had flintlock pistols unedited, and even Barbossa too in the boss fight.
▲** There is a part in the ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'' movie when Will puts a gun to his head and threatens to kill himself if his friends are not released (because the pirates can't end their curse without him). In ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', he leaps to the edge of the ship, just like the movie, and threatens his own life...while pointing the gun at the ground. You probably don't want to encourage children to point guns at their owns heads, but at the same time it was a bit jarring to anyone familiar with the movie.
▲** Oddly enough, when ''358/2 Days'' came out, they stopped doing that to Xigbar, whose Limit Break has him again merge his gun-arrows into a sniper rifle.
▲** They did not exactly "stop doing it", actually, as ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep|Birth by Sleep]]'' censored [[Significant Anagram|Braig]] combining his Arrowguns into a sniper rifle. This edit manages to be even ''more'' ridiculous than in Xigbar's case, as Braig's Arrowguns are pretty much stylized [[Automatic Crossbows|crossbows]] that [[Frickin' Laser Beams|shoot lasers]]. It probably goes without saying that the resulting sniper rifle looks less than realistic.
▲** Clayton's aforementioned rifle was not edited or censored in any shape or form in ''[[Tarzan]]''. It's as realistic as the guns in ''Pirates''... whereas Xigbar's gun-arrows are decidedly not. Children are probably going to see these movies before playing ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' (or at least, it would be more likely for their parents to allow them to see them), so this censoring really makes little sense.
▲** The series' iconic Keyblade was originally planned to be a [https://web.archive.org/web/20120313032805/http://ds.ign.com/articles/100/1002401p1.html chainsaw-like weapon.] Disney obviously wasn't too happy about this idea.
▲* Nintendo's Famicom Light Gun originally featured a realistic revolver design in Japan. When it was converted into the [[Nintendo Entertainment System|NES]] Zapper overseas, it was given a "futuristic" redesign to comply with U.S. safety standards. Later versions of the Zapper even changed the color of the gun's coating from its original gray to orage due to revised standards. This also applies to all light gun peripherals that had been exported from Japan to the overseas market. Light guns such as Sega's Virtua Gun (renamed the Stunner overseas) and Namco's GunCon were originally sold in realistic-looking black coating in Japan but were repainted orange for the overseas market to distinguish them from real guns.
▲* Sort of an in-universe example: [[Commander Keen]] used rayguns in his first games, the Invasion of the Vorticons trilogy (and the opening story of Keen Dreams), then switched to a Neural Stunner for the rest of his games. This was likely due to how 1.) all the Vorticons Keen slaughtered were mind-controlled instead of evil and Keen didn't want to risk ending up responsible for the annihilation of an alien race again, and 2.) stunned enemies with stars circling their heads are more amusing to look at in a game that pioneered DOS as a gaming platform.
▲* The early ''[[Wolfenstein 3D]]'' clone ''[[Nitemare 3D]]'' had you start out with a plasma gun in a modern-day haunted house setting; however, you do later get a revolver. The point of the plasma gun is probably that its ammo is slow to reach the target, whereas [[Revolvers Are Just Better|the more ammo-rationed revolver]] [[Hit Scan|hits its target instantly]], making it a better choice for long-range targets and enemies that can shoot back.
▲* ''[[Chex Quest]]'': The opening movie makes it clear that conventional weapons can pass right through the slime-based phlegmoids, so the protagonist must use "zorching" weapons to return enemies back to their home dimension.
▲* Forgotten character Fang the Sniper from Sonic the Hedgehog was originally meant to have a [[Revolvers Are Just Better|revolver]] for a weapon. The revolver itself was never used in any games (despite some unused sprites of him holding it), but for his playable appearance in ''[[Sonic the Fighters]]'' he was given a cork-shooting popgun.
▲* ''[[Night Trap]]''. "Weird Eddie", one of the Martin's neighbors, invented a laser gun in order to combat them and the augers. Interestingly, the SCAT team has real guns. (Though no one is shown being shot on-screen.)
* The ''[[Minecraft]]'' server “Grand Theft Minecart” had to replace their guns with this in June of 2023 after Mojang threatened to block the server for violating their EULA, which states that servers must be “suitable for children and minors” as well as “not harming the [Minecraft] brand”
== Web Animation ==
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* Referenced in an episode of ''[[Bonus Stage (web animation)|Bonus Stage]]'': Phil is able to tell that Joel has been possessed when he holds up a bank with a gun in his left had because [[The Killer Was Left-Handed|Joel is right handed]]. Unfortunately, Matt Wilson accidentally drew the gun in Joel's right hand, so when he corrected it, the gun became a stupid looking, brightly colored gun.
** Also, in the episode where Joel censors the show "to fit the burgeoning five-to-seven-year-old market", the word "gun" is overdubbed with "blaster" (although it's still clearly a real gun).
== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[The Wotch]]'', the members of the [[Straw Feminist]] society D.O.L.L.Y. [http://www.thewotch.com/?epDate=2006-09-08 are armed with lasers and lightsabers in spite of this kind of thing having never appeared in the comic before.]
* Parodied by ''[[Wonderella]]'' in the comic [http://nonadventures.com/2011/03/05/censory-overload/ CENSORY Overload].
** The comics news feed mentions the inspiration for this:
{{quote|'''Justin Pierce''': My comics hero, Steve Purcell, once got a cartoon deal with FOX in the 90s. He quickly learned that censors didn't dislike violence so much as they disliked accessible violence - the sort of violence kids could easily mimic. Thus the more exaggerated it was, the safer you were. If your knife fight doesn't work, simply replace the knives with atomic bombs. It's a good rule to live by. }}
* ''[[Amazing Super Powers]]'' explored the limits of this in [http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/hc/12012008/ this hidden comic].
* ''[
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[G.I. Joe]]'', is probably the first example that comes to mind when thinking of this trope. While there initially existed assorted evidence that the guns weren't meant to be perceived as lasers—more-or-less realistic sound effects, boxes labelled “ammo” with visible bullets—the show eventually came to acknowledge the lasers for what they were, including details such as power settings and whatnot. This effect actually made the Joes' laser-specialist characters, Flash and Sci-Fi, utterly useless in the cartoon. That said, the lasers don't even seem to be that particularly effective, since in the incredibly rare occasion someone gets hit, they tend to get back up fairly quickly.
* The same trope was used almost exactly the same way in future cartoon incarnations, such as ''[[G.I. Joe Extreme]]'', the CGI movies and ''[[G.I. Joe:
* ''[[G.I. Joe:
* While guns weren't all that prominent in ''[[Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog]]'', when they ''did'' show up, they would inevitably be lasers—even in episodes involving time travel or references to the wild west. The only realistic firearms in the show appeared in a particular after-show [[And Knowing Is Half the Battle|Sonic Says]] segment, which warns about the dangers of real guns.
* The short-lived ''[[Mighty Orbots]]'' had an extreme example of this. In a cartoon about a futuristic [[Combining Mecha]] team battling [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|giant monsters]] and alien [[Mad Scientist|mad scientists]] led by an [[Energy Beings|evil energy computer]], ABC's [[Executive Meddling|Standards and Practices]] dictated that '''none''' of the weapons could bear any resemblance to gun-shaped objects. The end result? Battles waged with giant wedges and cones of light flashed from arms, legs, eyes, and whatever else was convenient. Writer Buzz Dixon noted that the show appeared ''more'' futuristic as a result.
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* ''[[Superman: The Animated Series|Superman the Animated Series]]'' and ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' both took an approach similar to ''[[Gargoyles]]''. Energy weapons were rarer, more expensive, and generally ''more'' threatening than ordinary guns, more so in the former than the future-set latter. Both shows suffered from inconsistencies, though; sometimes sound effects did not match the visual (both ways, not always biased towards beam weapons), sometimes the same weapon design would be recycled as both beam- and bullet-firing between episodes, and sometimes the ''exact same weapon'', carried by the same character, would do both over the course of an episode.
* The 1990's ''[[X-Men (animation)|X-Men]]'' animated series was a serious offender. Everything shoots "lasers". Machine guns shoot lasers. Tanks shoot big red beams that somehow arc and hit the ground like heavy artillery. Also typical for this trope, the series had the anti-mutant supremacist group stockpile what were clearly regular munitions, despite constantly using laser weapons onscreen. Even sewer-dwelling edge-people have lasers! The animated version of the battle between Storm and Callisto for leadership of the Morlocks was fought with what looked like double-bladed lightsabers (in the original comic book, it was a knife fight). The one arguable exception in the season 5 episode “Old Soldiers”, in which more realistic sounds are heard when a few rounds are let loose.
* Alongside ''[[X-Men (animation)|X-Men]]'', ''[[Spider-Man: The
* If projectile-based weaponry existed in the present-day ''[[X-Men:
* ''[[The Spectacular Spider-
* Special beams aside, ''[[Kim Possible]]'' would often have the police, secret agents, and other authorities be completely unarmed. The base defenders at [[Area 51]] have rifles, in one episode, but they never fire; their appearance might well be an oversight.
* An episode of the ''[[Attack of the Killer Tomatoes]]'' cartoon, "Invasion of the Tomato Snatchers", Professor Gangreen did a bit of [[Lampshade Hanging]], where at one point he complained, "If this were prime-time, I could use real bullets!"
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