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Family-Friendly Firearms: Difference between revisions
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* The dub of ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' slightly modifies the names and sound effect of Gargomon's attacks (essentially done with a Gatling gun in the original).
** Beelzemon, on the other hand, got to keep his realistic guns and CGI ''Matrix''-esque bullets, though there were still laser sound effects.
** The Japanese <s> military</s> Self Defense Forces shown were carrying real guns (apparently the Howa 89). Again, only the firing sounds were changed. Not to mention the police officers, who also get to draw their weapons.
** In ''[[Digimon Data Squad]]'', RizeGreymon's bullet sounds were changed to laser sounds, even though he was still shooting from a gun.
*** Oddly, the name of the attack was still "Trident Revolver".
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** [[Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger]] did finally largely pull an [[Author's Saving Throw]] on this. One murderer used a realistic revolver, which was specifically cited as "using old-fashioned bullets"; by implication, all the futuristic weapons use some sort of "charged up" [[Abnormal Ammo]]. It's still unclear whether they can shoot a "pure" beam, though.
* [[Kamen Rider Dragon Knight]] has the bullets from Torque's usual gun changed to lasers (green, the color of his suit), but his finisher (which has [[More Dakka]], [[Beam Spam]], and a [[Macross Missile Massacre]] ''at once!'' [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]], after all.) remains the same as it was in [[Kamen Rider Ryuki]].
** {{spoiler|Possibly justified by the fact the Riders' gear were made by [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]].}}
* ''[[Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future]]'' use laser guns, as do their primary enemies the Dread Troopers and Bio-Dreads. Several characters also use regular firearms, though [[Immune to Bullets|they don't do a thing against Bio-Dreads]].
* 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.
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== 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
** In the expansion to ''Tiberium Wars'', the Black Hand subfaction can upgrade their basic [[Mook|mooks]] 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]].
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* [[LEGO]] have a "no present-day weapons" rule -- so it's okay for Minifig swords and laser guns, but not Glocks or anything like that. Presumably [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|in about twenty minutes]] they will have to recall all the laser guns and allow muskets.
** This is why even ''[[Bionicle]]'', easily the most violent Lego franchise ever, is restricted to energy weapons and [[Abnormal Ammo]].
*** Bionicle went so far as to use the words Murder and Thieves for one of their lines, and made it very clear that [[Anyone Can Die]] in their post-Inika Story arcs (whereas in all other stories the characters would get comically blown to pieces, but survive nonetheless since they can just rebuild themselves). The closest they've ever gotten to a real weapon was the Cordak Missile Launchers, which functioned like a Gatling gun (but it only held 6 ammo rounds) and even then it was far too comically short to be taken seriously.
** However, there are pistols and tommyguns in the [[Batman]] and [[Indiana Jones]] sets, albeit still cartoony. And there's always third-party Brickarms to supply your minifigs with firearms.
** The Pirate Lego sets all included muskets and flintlock pistols. Not "present-day" per se, but still firearms.
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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.
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== 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: Sigma 6|G.I. Joe Sigma 6]]''.
* ''[[G.I. Joe: Renegades|G.I. Joe Renegades]]'' continues the tradition, but makes it clear the lasers are something new and exotic by M.A.R.S. Industries, and that they have just recently begun to replace bullet-based guns—one episode even features Flint remarking on the difference, warning his men to “watch the recoil! These are plasma-pulse rifles, not your daddy's M16's!” Flashbacks to the Joes' early days feature them carrying regular guns, but this is an exception, as nobody else actually appears to own a firearm: when Zartan and his gang threaten a small town in his intro issue, nobody, not even the town's sheriff, appears to consider using firearms, instead resorting to improvised weaponry when the Joes train the citizens to defend themselves.
* 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 Animated Series|Spider-Man the Animated Series]]'' (known for its particularly heavy censorship and restrictions) also excessively used laser weaponry. Many realistic guns were not allowed, and no firearms could shoot bullets, so instead they fired lasers complemented by "futuristic" sound effects. This often led to preposterous scenes in which ordinary policemen wielded bizarre, futuristic pistols, and the mere ''appearances'' of realistic-looking guns (as seen in "Tombstone" and "Day of the Chameleon") were pointed out as major exceptions. The most preposterous example ''has'' to be “Secrets of the Six” where, during a WWII flashback, [[Captain America (comics)]] is leads a crackdown on the Red Skull's Nazi infiltrators, which, upon being discovered, promptly pull out their standard issue ''1943 model laser guns'' to shoot those pesky heroes.
* If projectile-based weaponry existed in the present-day ''[[X-Men: Evolution|X-Men Evolution]]'', it was never used. Policemen would never draw their weapons. The army would either use non-lethal ordnance such as taser or tear gas, or escalate to laser rifles. Even civilians created their own improvised lasers when the need arose: in one episode, high-school graduate Duncan Matthews uses what is described as modified mining tools during his short lived anti-mutant terror campaign. One clear exception, mercifully, occurs during the World War II flashback sequence in “Project Rebirth”.
* ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man|The Spectacular Spider Man]]'' has cops and common criminals use guns which are meant to be realistic ones, but which are made to sound more like lasers. While a particular subset of DVD's was meant to make them sound like real guns (among other general changes, including additional footage, and the editing of the individual episodes of an arc into a pseudo-movie), only the first story arc got this treatment before the line was discontinued. Villains higher on the tech scale, incidentally, would occasionally use what were unambiguously meant to be lasers, or some other form of [[Abnormal Ammo]].
* 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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{{quote|'''Tara:''' A tomato!
'''Chad:''' Nah, a prune... now we're gonna hear from the ''Prune'' Board! }}
* Although ''[[Static Shock]]'' mostly plays the trope straight, exceptions were occasionally made for particularly serious episodes, such as the Pilot (where Virgil is almost goaded into murdering a tormentor), an episode dealing with school violence, and another dealing with his mother's death.
* Unlike its [[Bruce Timm]]-produced predecessor, ''[[The Batman]]'' played this trope straight. While it's unclear what kind of ammunition the weapons used by the GCPD and other criminals used—the more-graphic movie and the series proper are somewhat inconsistent in this regard—the guns themselves were very sci-fi looking, in a way that made them look way out of place in a world that tried to remain somewhat realistic.
** Averted in ''[[The Batman vs. Dracula]]'', though - at one point, Batman is pursued by a SWAT team whose guns are quite clearly firing bullets, even though they look rather sci-fi-ish.
* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' plays this trope straight, although the fact that the world established in the series appears to be different from our own in several key ways means their use is not as jarring as some other cases.
* ''[[Godzilla: The Series]]'', is actually an interesting example of lasers being acquired ''during'' the series. In early episodes, real guns (including M16s) are used. During the "Monster Wars" story arc, the invading aliens end up leaving some of their [[Energy Weapons]] on Earth when they retreat. Soon after that, lasers show up as military weapons, in all likelihood reverse-engineered from the alien ones—unfortunately, they prove to be as effective as the projectile weaponry.
* Everyone in the various ''[[Ben 10]]'' series uses lasers. While it make sense for characters who are connected to the numerous alien races that are a series mainstay, the fact that regular people--such as the security detail assigned to protect a to-be-released videogame--also use them without explanation can be rather off-putting, if you care about stuff like that.
* While the trope was initially in full effect (with some exceptions, such as a scene involving a wild west shoot-out) in the early episodes of ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003]]'', more realistic-looking guns started appearing as the series went on. The second season featured stylized guns which shot ambiguous-looking ammo which appeared to be designed for maximum plausible deniability, which evolved into more realistic automatic weaponry in the third season. It wasn't until the fourth season that handguns began appearing. While laser weapons did appear throughout the series (and far more frequently than "real" firearms), the producers attempted to justify them by showing that they were only accessible to the particularly well-funded; however, once an alien invasion left a large amount of advanced ordnance lying around, a black market was created, and street gangs began using them as well.
* The original ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987]]'' cartoon, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction. While initial seasons featured characters using what where meant to be “real” firearms (although the animation, as was typical for the show, was rather inconsistent in this regard, showing what looked like lasers at the same time lines like “eat hot lead” and “the bullets aren't stopping them!” were being said) by its final season you'd have security guards using some very sci-fi-looking lasers.
* While early episodes of ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' featured humans using normal guns, the fact that the writers take steps to justify the existence of energy weapons (via the use of a short montage where Chip and leading industrialists are shown "developing weapons for humanity to combat the Decepticon threat" or some such line), which then completely replace conventional weaponry, suggest that this trope may have been an issue.
* ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' seems to zigzag with this trope at times. On one hand, Agent Fowler's helicopter is armed with what looks like a pretty accurately-modeled M230 Chaingun, and when he fires it at Laserbeak in the third episode, it clearly makes gun-like sounds and even runs out of ammo. When it appeared again in episode 17, however, the same gun fired bullets with a laser sound effect. It's even weirder with MECH's various weapons; Silas' personal chopper clearly fires some kind of energised projectile, while his goons carry futuristic assault rifles that fire both laser-sounding bullets (which are animated like normal gunfire and make obvious ricochet noises against Breakdown and Bulkhead's armour) ''and'' blue, energy-like stun blasts from a secondary barrel. Meanwhile, ordinary US troops carry normal-looking M16s, but never fire them.
* ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' plays the trope straight. While the protagonists' weapons were designed to fight ghosts (who would naturally be immune to bullets) no other characters appear to carry firearms.
* ''[[Exo Squad]]'''s inconsistent animation meant that EVERYTHING fired lasers, no matter what it looked like or what it fired a second ago. That grapefruit thing on the right arm of the Neosapian mook armor was alternately a laser blaster, a missile, a club, or some kind of bomb depending on what the animators felt like doing. Scopes fired lasers, missile launchers fired lasers, odd pointy bits that don't really look anything like a weapon sometimes fired lasers. If it was on the arm of an e-frame, it shot a laser at some point. However, closeup shots of weapons sometimes show belts of linked ammunition.
* In ''[[Sam and Max Freelance Police (animation)|The Adventures of Sam and Max: Freelance Police]]'', the title characters never got to use their guns, but they did use all manner of [[Stuff Blowing Up|explosives]] and blunt instruments, and the occasional flamethrower. Even so, the roach terrorist at the end of "Bad Day On The Moon" uses a realistically-drawn AK, although it's never fired.
* The American ''[[Street Fighter (animation)|Street Fighter]]'' animated series has an episode featuring a Chinese drug cartel using laser guns. Also in the "[[Final Fight]]" episode, Belger uses a wheelchair equipped with missiles and lasers instead of his bowgun.
{{quote|"You know [[Does Not Like Guns|I hate guns]]. '''Guns are for wimps!'''"}}
* For some reason, the human [[Cowboy Cop]] reluctant ally of ''[[The Mighty Ducks (animation)|The Mighty Ducks]]'' also has a laser pistol. Then again, criminals in this series seem to be able to get their hands on rather exotic futuristic weapons, so we can [[Fan Wank|probably say it's]] [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]].
* This trope is part of the reason why the ''[[Rambo]]'' franchise was able to be turned into [[Rambo the Force of Freedom|a cartoon]], despite its trademark violence and Vietnam setting.
* Similarly, the original ''[[RoboCop]]'' animated series has villains using laser weapons instead of regular guns. May be justified by ''RoboCop'' being set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], but certainly unfaithful to the movies.
* In ''[[Zorro: Generation Z]]'', the mayor's [[Mooks]] have weapons that look an awful lot like ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' phasers, while Diego himself uses a weapon that is a combination laser, [[Laser Blade]] and laser whip. Some of the criminals have [[Laser Blade|Laser Blades]] as well. Perhaps it was meant to be set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], but there's no other evidence of this.
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* Parodied in ''[[South Park]]'', where George Lucas and Steven Spielberg set out to release remakes of ET and the [[Indiana Jones]] movies where all the guns have been digitally replaced with walkie-talkies.This is later taken a step further [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] when the boys are being held captive by real soldiers, all armed with machine gun sized walkie-talkies.
* Justified at great length in ''[[The Zeta Project]]''. Two things: one, bullets strong enough to damage Zeta will probably destroy him and the antagonists have orders to capture him in-tact, as he's a very expensive piece of equipment. Two - [[What the Hell, Hero?|and Agent Bennett goes off at great length on Agent West for this]] - real bullets will ricochet off of Zeta because his body is built specifically to deflect bullets, and therefore endangers innocent bystanders. Bennett, despite being a [[Jerkass]] most of the time, [[Even Evil Has Standards|enforces the no bullet firing guns rule based on this]]. The only time anyone uses a real gun is when Agent Lee goes up against a serial killer/mercenary who had tried to ''kill her'' earlier. The rest of the time, they used energy based weapons. Zeta adheres to [[Thou Shalt Not Kill]] so strictly that he refuses to even carry a gun.
* While ''[[Generator Rex]]'' generally has little problem with featuring conventional firearms, these are occasionally—and inexplicably—absent in episodes where their use would actually be effective against the threat of the week, making the show an example of the first listed version of the trope. The best example probably occurs in the second episode, which involves an outbreak of humanoid E.V.O.s who are individually rather weak; Providence is initially seen trying to contain the monsters using net guns and other non-lethal weaponry, and after this proves ineffective, White Knight gives the order to escalate, skipping automatic weaponry and heading straight into weapons of mass destruction.
* In ''[[Doug]]'s First Movie'', Mr. Bluff has hired the police who are armed with high powered assault rifles and orders them to shoot the monster once it's released from the giant Valentine box, at the last minute the kids switch the monster with Roger's robot and they fire upon it but for some reason they fire lasers.
* Averted in ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]''; when Granny reminisces about being a spy in Nazi occupied France, the German soldiers and planes are firing real guns with real bullets. They don't come close to hitting anyone of course.
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