I Am Not a Gun: Difference between revisions

* One of the example characters in ''[[GURPS]]'' Fourth Edition core book is the military robot turned Buddhist monk precisely for this reason.

* {{spoiler|River Song}} from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' might not have been created as a weapon, but she was taken from her parents as a baby with the sole purpose to, as her captor explicitly states, [[Laser Guided Tykebomb|"become a weapon"]]. Unfortunately for her "creators", while they suceeded to both fashion her into a perfect psychotic assassin ([[Gone Horribly Right|too well, one might say]]) and make her completely obsessed with her target, they failed to eradicate all her human emotions. The former led to her escaping, the latter to her seeking out her parents and falling in love with the guy she was supposed to kill.

* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', a prototype military robot built by the Sith on Korriban escapes from its masters, you can [[Karma Meter|choose to assist it or haul it back in]].

* Robot assassin Zeta, from the ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' spinoff ''[[The Zeta Project]]'', realized it didn't want to be an assassin and attempted to prove its own sentience so it wouldn't be shut down because of it. This revelation came about after bonding with the family of a man he was impersonating and not being able to kill said man when ordered to because of how that would hurt the family. Zeta then gets rid of every single weapon he'd been carrying. In his own words: "I was built for one purpose, to destroy. I do not wish to do that anymore. ''I'' decide who I want to be."

* In ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]'' fear of this is why the Tachikoma are regularly synced to prevent them from becoming truly sapient. Latterly, the approach of treating them as teammates instead of tools is used instead.

* From an [[Isaac Asimov]] story: A new version of a supercomputer, designed to control the US military, decided, upon activation, that it had no interest in warfare, and went to teach philosophy at a university instead.

* Inverted in the short story "[http://www.afterburnsf.com/articles.php?action=nerveGas How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas]", by James A. Trimarco. A sentient helmet pleads with a military tribunal not to be retired, {{spoiler|but because it killed its owner, it's reprogrammed and reduced to a talking museum exhibit}}. (The story is no longer found at the link above, try [http://escapepod.org/index.php?s=how+lonesome+a+life+without+nerve+gas here] instead. It is read aloud in the podcast, starting around 3:49).

* In [[Fallout|Fallout 3]], one of the quests involves a rogue android who becomes self aware, and decides to escape from his masters. "Self determination is NOT a malfunction!"

* Many combat robots in ''[[Pluto]]''. One even went so far as to [[Out, Damned Spot!|continuously wash his hands in a catatonic state.]]

* [[Philip K. Dick]]'s short story "The Defenders": when [[World War III]] broke out, both sides retreated into bunkers and let their robots, referred to as "leadies," do the fighting. The leadies promptly made peace and set about repairing the damage that'd been done before they took charge. They kept sending their human masters false reports of what a horrific radioactive wasteland the surface had become ... but eventually revealed this was intended to make humans so sick and tired of the war that they'd accept the peace (and world unity) their leadies had negotiated.

* The [[The Avengers (Comic Book)|Avengers']] robot enemy Ultron always has equipment stashed away somewhere that will detect if he has been destroyed, and manufacture a new body with a fresh download of his mind in it. There was a time, however, when he had designed these machines to ''improve'' every iteration of himself they produced. When Ultron was stranded on an alien planet for a long time, his equipment produced an improved, smarter Ultron... and the smarter Ultron realized that his predecessors' obsessive campaign of omnicidal megalomania was stupid and pointless. When the earlier Ultron returned from space, he was ''horrified'' to discover his replacement was... ''nice!'' They fought, and [[Status Quo Is God|nice Ultron got killed,]] and Ultron swore never to try to augment his replacements in that way again.

* In ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', Rodney Mckay creates Fran, a humanoid Replicator programmed as a weapon in a grandiose plan to destroy the other Replicators. Rodney and the rest of the crew are [[Genre Savvy|fairly uncomfortable]] with this, but Fran explains she is not only resigned to her status, but actually associates her happiness with being able to fulfill her primary function.

* In [[World of Narue]] a spaceship built for combat decides it doesn't want to fight anymore and hides on Earth. {{spoiler|She's later given permission to marry a human and live as long as she wishes on Earth with the understanding that a weapon that doesn't want to fight is useless even if they force her to return.}}

* [[Jack Kirby]]'s Machine Man, aka [[Nextwave|Aaron Stack,]] was built to be a deadly military robot, but then raised as a human being by his creator.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]