Handguns: Difference between revisions

* The main crew of [[Cowboy Bebop|the Bebop]] usually use handguns. Possibly justified by the crew being too poor to afford anything else, and by ridiculously powerful weapons being a bad idea when you need to bring in your target alive to get paid, as well as both dangerous and conspicuous in the populated areas they often have to fight in.

* Teana's [[Weapon of Choice]] in ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]''. Helps that it's a [[Magitek]] handgun that fires [[Abnormal Ammo|magical bullets that pack a punch]] [[Roboteching|and whose trajectory she can control]].

* [[Gunsmith Cats|Rally Vincent]] almost always uses a pistol, but she does have bigger guns for she needs them.

** Another of [[Kenichi Sonoda]]'s manga, ''[[Cannon God Exaxxion]]'' has an interesting spin on this. The main hero only uses pistols, but since they're magnetic acceleration/chemical propellant hybrids built with alien supertech that require a supersuit so the force of the recoil doesn't kill the user, it's not like he needs anything else.

* For the house fight in the movie ''[[Mr. and Mrs. Smith]]'', John Smith went with a simple handgun while Jane Smith dual wielded a submachine gun and a shotgun. Other than her ability to shoot through walls, he was able to keep up with her although this was partially due to the confined quarters being more beneficial for the light weight of a handgun letting him shoot around corners.

* Chow Yun Fat's signature weapons before he came to Hollywood were a pair of Beretta 92Fs.

** He has a quote that deserves to be quoted. Having dismissed the M-16 as being so plastic that it feels like a BB gun, and stated his preference for his Colt, his superior officer remarks that maybe he should head by the Armoury and pick one up anyway. He responds; "Time comes I need one, Sir, there'll be plenty of 'em lying on the ground." The time duly comes, and he is sadly proved right.

* In the online MMORPG ''[[Tabula Rasa]]'', the player starts with a pistol and 1000 rounds of ammunition. Soon after, the player gets more powerful weapons (completing the Basic Trinity - shotgun, rifle, and pistol). The pistol of the three can generate the highest damage-per-second of the three, due to its rapid rate of fire. Not only that, it remains useful throughout the game. Surprisingly, the weapons in ''TR'' require reloading, require crouching in place (beading) to fire at their most accurate and do the most damage, and otherwise behave like their real-world counterparts. This, from a ''science fantasy'' MMO.

* Snake, from ''[[Metal Gear]]'', consistently "recovered" a variety of weapons, including assault rifles, light machine guns, and rocket launchers. However, in most cutscenes, he's shown using his (usually suppressed) handgun, usually in .45 caliber. Which makes sense, considering he's on a sneaking mission and would prefer a single silent shot over a wall of lead.

*** A scoped long-barrel Desert Eagle would be a terrible choice because scoped weapons (not to be confused with, say, red dot sights) are terrible for indoor work, and the Desert Eagle is a slow, heavy firearm with all the weight of an M4 for half the power. And "just about any weapon" is not superior to a pistol in the very tight, confined areas inside buildings. Any "long" weapon, like, say, a rifle (even the military's M4 Carbine has this problem, causing some Special Forces units to use even SHORTER 10" barrels on theirs) has significant problems in close-quarters. It is not unknown for military-issue sidearms to see actual combat use by military units in urban warfare situations in Iraq/Afghanistan currently because they have touble maneuvering their M4s indoors, while wearing full battle gear, midway through a stack of a dozen soldiers, without "muzzle sweeping" your squad. This is a huge reason for the popularity of submachine guns, like the MP5, especially in Special Forces units, who have to fight in close quarters more often than not. Also, most combat shotguns are typically carried as breaching/specialized weapons (such as nonlethal, anti-riot rounds, for use on civilians who pose a tactical risk but not a direct threat, or are otherwise not safe to engage lethally due to current ROE).

** In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'', Eva's [[Weapon of Choice]] is a Chinese copy of the Mauser C96. And just guess the weapon that [[Revolvers Are Just Better|Revolver]] [[Animal Motifs|Ocelot]] carries. ([[Comically Missing the Point|An ocelot?]])

* Justified in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' where Shepard will often use a pistol in the [[Cutscene|cutscenes]], in spite of carrying an assault rifle, a sniper rifle and ''and'' a shotgun. Pistols themselves are still very powerful, and perhaps more importantly, the pistol is the one weapon that ''all'' Shepard's available classes can use equally well, so it only makes sense that s/he would use it.

** Although this was most likely unintentional, the pistol is arguably the absolute best of the first game's weapons. Its boost talent (Marksman) is ''far'' more effective than the assault rifle equivalent (Overkill), while its very tight grouping and zoom ability makes it a better choice for mid-range sharpshooting than the actual sniper rifle (the magnification's much weaker, but the reticle doesn't wander like the real thing's).

** Pistols are divided into [[More Dakka|submachine guns]] and [[Hand Cannon|heavy pistols]] for the second and third games, where they become less [[Game Breaker|broken]] but far more fun with the addition of things like the [[Laser Sight|Phalanx]], the [[Sawn Off Shotgun|M-358]] [[Revolvers Are Just Better|Talon]], and the [[Sticky Bomb|Scorpion]].

* Subverted in ''[[Fate/Zero]]'', where the protagonist Kiritsugu Emiya and his assistant use Assault Rifles, compact Sniper Rifles, Submachine Guns and High-explosives to get the job done. In the one part where he uses a handgun, he uses a Thompson Contender, a handgun designed to fire rifle bullets that are about 3-4 times more powerful than even the Calibre .50Action Express used by the Desert Eagle.

* Very often played straight in video games, where, perhaps for game balance, pistols will be more accurate and more powerful than assault rifles, perhaps owing from the delusion that the volume of fire achieved by assault rifles and machine guns MUST mean that each of those bullets is weaker. Or perhaps its the other way around. The first ''[[Halo]]'' game is a particularly bad user of this trope, creating the infamous scoped pistol that kills in three headshots... compared to the entire magazine of ammo required from the 60 round 7.62 assault rifle (that caliber would technically designate it as a battle rifle) to achieve a similar kill... and at a much shorter range.

** Less so in "tactical shooters," where they tend to be more defensive/backup weapons. For example, drawing your pistol in ''[[Call of Duty]] 4'' is faster than reloading a primary weapon, but you get only the iron sights for aiming. (''Rainbow Six: Vegas 2'' allows a laser aiming module attachment.)

** Subverted in ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'', where semiautomatic pistols are starting weapons for cheap, low-level mercs and are at best early game, or speciality weapons if using accessories and/or specialized ammo; even then they're surpassed by machine pistols, which also benefit from these but are themselves surpassed by long guns which usually can also benefit from accessories and/or specialized ammo. (The ''v1.13'' mod as of the November 14th, 2008 build leaves pistols with only a lower Action Point cost to ready.)

* In ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'', all players start out with handguns (although the beginning of each round gives you a selection of other, more powerful guns). The trope is ''slightly'' averted since they're not as powerful as the other guns, but they have unlimited ammo, while the other guns do not.

* Averted in all of the ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games, where the handguns are often the weakest weapons available, with a shorter range than any weapon except the shotgun. Even the more powerful handguns, like the Colt Python in ''Vice City'' and the combat pistol in ''IV'', aren't wonder weapons, and are frequently outclassed by sub-machine guns and assault rifles.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy]]: [[Dirge of Cerberus]]'', Vincent's three-barreled handgun ("Cerberus") is a very nice weapon to have and is very customizable, even capable of being reconfigured into an assault or sniper rifle.

* In ''[[Rainbow Six]]'', pistols are very useful close range weapons because their reticule closes almost instantly regardless of the assault skill of the operative. This means you can fire an accurate shot faster than someone wielding an assault rifle or a submachine gun or a shotgun (though buckshot with a shotgun would probably hit the enemy anyway even if the reticule wasn't closed). Also operatives specializing in fields other than assault (especially snipers for some odd reason) have lower assault ratings (usually) and therefore aim slower with non-pistol guns. This does not apply from Raven Shield and onwards.

* ''[[Wasteland (video game)|Wasteland]]'', the RPG, also started your Desert Rangers with some sort of pistol. A character generation exploit would let you take a full inventory of them to the nearest gun shops and get at least rifles.

* Didn't many [[Light Gun]] games have your character start with, and mainly use, a pistol? Makes sense for the police-oriented ones like [[Time Crisis]], less so for Area51 (where you're military).

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