Mix-and-Match Weapon

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Half-scythe, half-rifle, all awesome.

It's two, two, two weapons in one!

Sometimes, when you combine two weapons, you get something with a completely new set of properties - like combining a gun and a sword into a gun that shoots swords. Or you might get a more traditional Swiss Army Weapon - for instance, a gun that can turn into a sword. But the rest of the time, you get a Mix-and-Match Weapon - two weapons combined that retain the uses and elements of both. The classic example is a bayonet, which is nothing more than a knife strapped to a rifle, creating a weapon that can shoot or stab at will. Contrast Morph Weapon.

See also Whip Sword. Instant Chucks is a Sub-Trope. Often overlaps with Impossibly Cool Weapon.

Examples of Mix-and-Match Weapon include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Kämpfer, Shizuka wields two chain-linked daggers. The chain extends so she uses this primarily as a ranged weapon. Not only can she block bullets and cut fireballs in half, she can even maneuver her daggers around corners.
  • In Rurouni Kenshin, Kamatari has a giant Sinister Scythe, already an Awesome but Impractical weapon, which has a very heavy iron ball at the end of a very long chain. It's intended to act as a counterbalance to allow use of the absurdly large scythe, but of course it ends up being a weapon in its own right.
  • Elie of Groove Adventure Rave uses a pair of Gun-Tonfas.
  • In Hunter X Hunter, Kurapika uses Sword Chucks before learning Nen.
  • Zetman - In the Seinen manga and Tokusatsu Deconstruction, Alphaz had the Cell Delete, which is a sword combined with a gun.
  • In Digimon, Examon's weapon is a combination of a lance and a rifle. It's as awesome as it sounds.


Comic Books

Literature

  • In Slaughterhouse-Five, one soldier used a trench knife, which consists of brass knuckles with a knife sticking out of them. Also a Real Life weapon.
  • A weird dwarven halberd-hammer hybrid in Crataegus Sanguinea. Justified: after their victory elves forbade using spears, bows and swords, so dwarves made used these "poleaxes" and crossbows.

Live-Action TV

Tabletop Games

  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The Kroot Rifle, a heavy musket-like gun that features downward-pointing blades under both the barrel and the stock, for double-weapon hacking.
    • Custodian Spears, signature weapons of the Emperor's personal bodyguards. They are power glaive with a gun built into the head. Exactly what the weapon is depends on who's in charge of the canon at the time, but they tend to vary between bolters (fully automatic rocket-propelled grenade launchers) and miniaturised lascannons, although all artwork favours the former.
    • The Ork Tankhammer. It can be adequately summarized as a rocket on a stick.
    • Combi-weapons, essentially two weapons combined into one, with the user able to fire either separately, or together if it's two of the same gun. The Ork race, in particular, is fond of simply strapping two guns together with tape. Sadly, combi-weapons aren't quite as useful as some of the other examples here—combi-weapon generally is a bog-standard weapon plus one-shot special weapon.
    • Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay series have even more. There are weapons with integrated bayonets, including unusual variants - e.g. Persecutor combat shotgun made for the Arbitrators has retractable shock-prod. It also introduced new combined weapons: "Puritan-14" - ugly auto-pistol with integrated shotgun (single-shot, has range only by half longer than sawn-off and uses Hand Cannon two handed rule) made for Arbites and hit squads. "Spectre" - autogun (assault rifle using caseless rounds) with 3 selectable magazines (20 shots each, but hey, there are 3 of them) and integrated shotgun (this one has full shotgun range and holding 4 shells) - of course, it's as heavy as a proper combat shotgun (which can fire semi-auto bursts), more than twice as expensive and its rifle part has slightly worse range than run-of-the-mill autoguns. Chimera Pistol Sword - boarding sword merged with a somewhat stripped down pistol (one-shot version, since there's a blade where its magazine was). The Omnissian Rod - a religious staff that can be used as a fancy power axe or Phased Plasma Rifle. Fire Lance and Flame Hammer have torches heating up the business end that can be expended as single-shot flamer instead.
  • Dungeons & Dragons: The Dwarven Urgrosh, a spear on one end and axe on the other.
    • Dragonlance Kender weapons tend to provide several attack forms, tool or other utility function and a musical instrument (at least chime or bullroar). Hoopak: rod with a sling and spike at its ends acting as a shortspear, alpenstock, staff, sling staff and slingshot. Chapak: axe with prongs on the back side used as beaked prying bar or, again, slingshot arms, with haft hollowed to use as a blowgun or flute. Hachak: a poleaxe with a spike and hammer/beak on the other end, with shaft midsection detachable and hollowed to store a few darts. Battak: studded club with a spearhead at the end, useable as a sort-of-sling when the spike is removed from its slot. Bollik: bola/flail belt. Polpak: staff with a detachable short sword on the end, saw-toothed on one side. Sithak: shoulder-yoke that's weaponized by attaching blades at both ends and can be strung as a recurved bow shaft. Whippik: whip with a loop at the end making it ready to use as a dart launcher, noose or fishing pole.
    • In Forgotten Realms tapal is the traditional weapon of choice for Tritons, and occasionally used by others who learned from them. It's a crystalline piece curved almost into hook - with edge on the outside and sharpened ends, the main handle on the inside of the curving part and secondary close to the middle. It can be wielded much like a tonfa with the long blade fitting along the forearm and beyond almost to the shoulder (for close quarters, what's with all the tentacled and big-mouthed things down there), as a streamlined "wing" sticking out (for swim-by cuts) balanced by the short blade or reversed long blade forward and steadied with the second handle (for reach). Thus the short arm serves as a dagger, long arm as a saber or short spear. There are also two-handed greater tapals, L shaped with the shorter blade almost to the shoulder and second handle in the middle of longer (so it's handled more like a scythe [1]), but rare as versatility is the whole point of using a tapal, and for fighting larger opponents there's their other weapon of choice - old good trident with its superior reach.
  • Exalted has quite a few of these in canon, though many of them have only one attack mode anyway. The Daikalbar is a polearm with an ungodly mess of slashy and stabby bits on both sides, though it essentially has only one combat mode with them. The Chain Daiklave, meanwhile, is actually not a chainsaw (that's a chainklave); it's a short daiklave attached to a dire chain that can be used as a sword, a dire chain, or a sword on a chain.

Video Games

  • Gears of War - the Lancer, chainsaw-machine gun.
  • Final Fantasy
  • Every weapon in Painkiller has a drastically different second firing mode, which makes the seemingly modest five-weapon arsenal much more versatile (it's even possible to combine the primary and secondary firing modes with some weapons). To wit, in Painkiller you have a weedwhacker that fires laser beams, a machine gun that shoots rockets, a grenade launcher that shoots foot-long wooden poles, and of course, a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning.
  • Bayonetta introduces the Lt. Col. Kilgore. A pair of rocket launcher tonfas. And Sai-Fung. Called the 'gun-chucks' by fans.
  • Ragnarok Online: swordmace, though it's not too different from any other mace.
  • Yue Ying in Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires uses a weapon that combines a crossbow, knife, and gauntlet.
  • Motonari Mori of Samurai Warriors 3 has a similar crossbow/claws/gauntlet combo.
  • No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Margaret Moonlight has a pair of weapons called "Le Croissant du Ange" [sic], or The Crescent of Angels. One is pictured above. These are sniper rifles with stocks that are scythes.
    • Matt Helms has a fire axe/flamethrower. As a transforming weapon, Nathan Copeland has mechanical arms / boombox rocket launcher. Suda51 was so disappointed that he had to take Nathan out of the first No More Heroes that he was the first boss worked into the second.
  • Dead Rising 2 allows you to use the magic of Duct Tape to turn standard weapons, objects and doodads into zombie-slaying perfection.
  • Ninja Gaiden has Ryu's Kusari-gama, which in form is virtually identical to its real life counterpart. It consists of a small sickle, with a long chain connecting to a weight or spike attached at the hilt. Also, in a more literal interpretation of this trope, we have the Vigoorian Flail, a massive pair of sickles attached at each end by a chain, and wielded much like a set of nunchaku. When used to their fullest in combat, expect Ludicrous Gibs galore.
  • In Assassin's Creed II the hidden blade is upgraded to work not only as a hidden retractable blade for assassinations and general knifing people in a cool way, but also as a gun.
    • There is also a syringe blade that injects poison on contact.
  • Cervantes of Soul Calibur fame is known for dual wielding two swords with a pistol built into the hilt of the smaller blade.
  • RuneScape has the Ivandis Flail, a silver sickle on a chain attached to a long rod. It IS unwieldy and is meant to be - it was devised as a weapon against mind-reading vampyres, and, unlike all other silver weapons, works PRECISELY BECAUSE neither side knows where exactly the sickle will end up, thus not letting the vampyre perfectly dodge the strike every single time.
    • It also is a Mix-and-Match Weapon in a different, more straight sense. Silver sickles by themselves are used as a focus for casting a certain spell, one that causes select scenery objects to produce items. The rods themselves are used for a different spell, used to hold juvenile vampyres in place. The Ivandis Flail can do both.
  • As each weapon in Perfect Dark has a secondary fire mode, a few of them fit this trope, but probably the coolest is the Dragon, an assault rifle that just happens to have a proximity mine built in.
  • One of the weapons in the online RPG Adventure Quest is a Sawed-Off Gunblade, which looks like a flintlock pistol with two two-pronged blades attached on the bottom. The normal attack is slashing, while the rare special attack is a double-barrel shot. Both do fire damage.
  • The Half Life mod, Rocket Crowbar.
  • The Brutes of Halo have a penchant for sticking all manner of sharp objects on their weapons, since their phenomenal strength lets them deal as much damage in melee—if not more—as a shot from one of their guns. From smallest to largest: the mauler has a small crescent-shaped knife along the hand guard, the spiker SMG has a pair of hatchet blades, and the eponymous Brute shot is a grenade launcher whose underside is a fusion axe/scythe nearly the length of the gun.

Web Original

958. No matter how practical, I can't have shotgunchucks.
1012. Note to self: Lightsaberchucks...BAD IDEA

  • Chaos Fighters has quite a lot of them: sword lances (sometimes double ended), blade guns (which the blades attached onto the barrels, axe halberd, pole shield and blade wands.
  • Atop the Fourth Wall - Linkara is a big fan of swords (or axes) that can also be guns. Since quite a few Sixth Rangers wield them he gets to gush a lot. He does note, however, that what he likes are weapons that transform into other weapons; weapons that are two things at the same time [2] are silly.
  • Most of the combat-capable characters in RWBY (also created by Monty Oum) have some manner of multiform weapon, usually combining a ranged weaopon with a melee weapon, such as Ruby Rose's sniper rifle/scythe Crescent Rose or Cinder Fall's paired scimitars which mate together to become a bow.
    • Mr. Welch (above) would be extremely envious of RWBY's version of Son Goku, whose quarterstaff breaks apart into a pair of nunchucks—which are themselves each made up of a pair of flintlock-like pistols capable of semiautomatic fire.

Webcomics

Western Animation

  • Starling from Storm Hawks wields some form of lightsaber-chucks, although the cutting abilities are only used once, to escape from some manacles.

Real Life

  • Rifles with bayonets: blade-on-a-gun.
  • There were a lot of swords etc. with built-in pistols at one point. They almost all turned out to be horrifically inefficient—use it as a sword, and it's badly unbalanced, use it as a pistol and you've got this long, heavy weight throwing off your aim. Eventually they were made more or less obsolete by the introduction of the bayonet. There were also full-sized pistols with hatchet blades attached to the barrel, or in at least one case, the butt.
    • An odd inversion of this turned up in recent years, in the form of combat knives with a derringer concealed in the handle. Hopelessly inaccurate beyond a couple of yards but probably quite effective for catching your opponent unawares.
  • A fairly common trend for polearms - after all, once you have a big stick and one head, adding another incurs a relatively minor increase in weight, but may double functionality. Hence lots of weapons like bill-guisarme, bec de corbin, lucerne hammer, etc.
    • Halberds are spear-axes.
    • The gizong - a 6-foot wooden pole with a hook for dismounting cavalry, a 3-foot blade, and a smaller blade poking out to the side so you could swing it. It was outlawed by the Catholic Church for being too violent for war.
  • Early handguns were so difficult to reload that many came with ornate and heavy butts so that they could be reversed and used as a club after being fired.
  • Brass-knuckles with blades really exist and are called trench spikes. They were invented for the vicious, hand-to-hand close combat of World War I.
  • A morningstar combines the crushing power of the mace with the reach of the flail. They were also horrifically difficult to use and required the wearer to wear armored gauntlets to avoid breaking their arms when the ball bounced off the target.
  • Whip Swords, like the chain whip and Indian Urumi, though they usually lack the cutting power of a sword or the reach of a whip.
  • Many modern militaries issue assault rifles that can be modified by the addition of an underbarrel grenade launcher, shotgun, etc.
  • Shotgun/rifle hybrids, while uncommon, are built and used.
    • The TP-82 aka TOZ-82 - a gun developed specifically for survival kits. It featured 2 smoothbore 32 gauge barrels (shot and flare rounds) and a rifled 5.45x39mm barrel. The buttstock was a detachable sheathed machete. It was issued to Soviet and Russian cosmonauts (and some Air Forces pilots) from 1982 to 2006 - at which point the available ammunition ran out of expiry date and rather than restarting production, the weapon was replaced with a regular semi-automatic pistol.
  • The Objective Individual Combat Weapon project. 5.56mm assault rifle and 20mm grenade launcher sharing the same body, optics and targeting computer. It was deemed Awesome but Impractical, mostly due to weight.
    • The South Koreans have already created their own version, the K11, which entered service in 2010.
  • The US Marine Corps developed a powerful portable machine gun called the Stinger by salvaging a Browning M1919, adding the buttstock and trigger from a M1 Garand and the bipod from a Baretta Automatic Rifle.
  • The LeMat grapeshot revolver, from the US Civil War. Designed by a doctor from New Orleans, it's a 9-shot, .40 caliber revolver (which is More Dakka by revolver standards), with its cylinder rotating around a single 16-gauge shotgun barrel. The "business end" of the firing-hammer has a hinge, allowing it to be swung into the appropriate position for its two barrels. It was very popular with Confederate cavalrymen, and also proved moderately successful after the war, in France. The French version was redesigned for cartridge ammo rather than ball-and-shot.
  1. ↑ this makes somewhat more sense than Bat'leth in that it has two long cutting blades and is used underwater, where leverage matters more and speed less
  2. ↑ he cites gunblades as an example
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