Wall of Weapons

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Charlton Heston: He liked knives, too.

Tank: All right, what do you need, besides a miracle?

Neo: Guns. Lots of guns.
—The Matrix

How do you show that someone is Crazy Prepared or just plain needs to be taken seriously? One simple and easy method is to show him with an enormous collection of weapons. This can range from a literal wall covered with weapons, to a pile of various weapons laid out on a table or floor, to a shot displaying an arsenal of guns and other weaponry on his person. Generally, any shot or scene displaying an enormous range of firepower, intended to show how well-armed or crazy a person or group is, fits under this trope. Note that there will rarely be any sign of sufficient quantities of ammo to load all of these marvelous toys.

Any properly equipped Super Multi-Purpose Room will have at least one of these in one of the secret compartments.

May be tied in with a Lock and Load Montage. Compare and contrast Hyperspace Arsenal and Extended Disarming. Usually seen in a Survivalist Stash as part of the supplies. Can overlap with Gun Porn.

Examples of Wall of Weapons include:


Anime and Manga

  • In one of the anime installments of Gunsmith Cats, Rally has one of these in her house. Burglars think they can help themselves. Rally's response when the alarm trips is... eager.
    • In the manga, it isn't so much a Wall of Weapons as it is a Closet of Weapons (Including the inside of both doors), but it's still there.
  • In Eden of the East, amnesiac Akira Takizawa is none too happy to discover that his temporary establishment in Washington DC has one of these.
  • Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino. Pinnochio has one from which he selects a couple of vz61 Skorpions for Franco and Franca.
  • Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica is already notable for using her Magical Girl Hyperspace Arsenal to carry around not only guns, but military ordnance. But then along comes the finale, when she finds herself facing Walpurgisnacht alone, and we get a look at just how much stuff she actually has. And that image is only a fraction of it.
  • A weird example can be found in Rosario + Vampire with Mizore's mother, who keeps a small weapons cache (including what appears to be an assault rifle) hidden behind a bookshelf which shocked the other characters when they saw it. She mentions she always wanted be a spy when she was little and took up gun collecting as a side hobby.
    • Later in the manga, recently-introduced character Fong-Fong of the Wong family apparently keeps assault rifles, handguns, and dynamite on the wall in the kitchen. Given that he's the heir of the biggest and baddest youkai gang in Hong Kong and the family house is like a castle, it makes a little more sense.

Comic Books

  • The Punisher.
  • Batman, although there obviously aren't any guns on the wall.
    • Taken to its logical conclusion when one issue showed him opening up his Wall of Weapons and having a Dalek "travel machine" in there... just in case.
    • Except for the All-Star Batman, who had machine guns in there...
      • Yes, well... AS Batman is a special case.
  • In the X-Men crossover event X-cutioner's Song, there's a scene where Cable enters one of his many safehouses to replenish his weaponry. On the wall are dozens of futuristic guns (which, given his origin, actually are from the future), many of them even larger than he is. Naturally, Cable grabs all of them. Yes, it was the 90s.

Film

  • Friday the 13 th - Jason acknowledges that variety is the spice of life in Part 7. As well as in the Universal Studios attraction, as seen here.
  • Lord of War has a small one of these inside Yuri's shipping container, right next to the multiple passports.
  • "Guns. Lots of guns." This one is more like a mall of weapons.
    • And again in Reloaded, when Neo and the Merovingian's hitmen start looting the wall of weapons in his castle during their fight.
  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yu Shu Lien is using a Wall of Weapons to try to defeat Jen Yu who wields the legendary sword Green Destiny.
  • Terminator 2 has Sarah Connor with an underground cache of weapons hidden in the desert. Not that we need convincing she's a Badass by this point in the film. John Connor mentions this as well--"One thing about my mom... she always plans ahead."
    • Terminator 3 has Sarah Connor with a weapon cache IN HER COFFIN (of course, SHE isn't in it.) Of course that probably moves into Crazy Prepared territory.
    • The Sarah Connor Chronicles also has Sarah keep concealed weapons scattered around the house, such as a shotgun hidden behind wallpaper, and a huge trunk of rifles and shotguns under everyone's respective beds.
      • And the furniture is lined with kevlar.
  • In Commando Arnie robs an army surplus store for the material for his Lock and Load Montage, as well as a hidden gun room with weapons covering the walls which include water-cooled machine guns and claymore mines.
  • Hot Fuzz plays with this: The evidence room for the police station is completely empty and the room containing the emergency response gear is covered with cobwebs. Later, after Angel raids a farmer's enormous Barn of Weapons, they're stored in the police station, until Angel returns for a Lock and Load Montage.
  • The Big Hit. Melvin has a wall of weapons he takes from towards the end of the film.
  • Underworld features a wall of anti-lycan weaponry for use by Deathdealers.
    • Blade also has an anti-vampire wall of weapons.
  • Men in Black has an impressive wall of impossible sci-fi superweapons in the form of Jeebs' Jewelery; naturally, seeing as Jeebs is a fence who deals in the black market, he keeps the display hidden behind a secret panel.
    • The sequel has another one stashed behind the wall of Agent Kay's old apartment. It comes in handy for the heroes when they are stuck outside of MIB headquarters.
  • In Pineapple Express, Red literally has weapons in the wall.
  • One of the Beverly Hills Cops uses this in the second film to show he's no longer as much of a dweeb as he is in the first. 'You can never have too much firepower.'
  • In Falling Down, the main character Will Foster falls into possession of a duffel bag brimming with automatic weapons, and is a menace for the rest of the movie.
  • Burt's basement in Tremors features a literal Wall of Weapons, which he and his wife use to devastating effect when a Graboid breaks through the wall opposite.
    • In the sequel, Burt's wall of weapons is shown again, and later, he rolls in a massive truck loaded with shotguns, machineguns and a huge anti-tank rifle, plus enough explosives to level a city block.
      • Try four city blocks! And he uses it. All of it.

Burt (Sitting against the side of his truck, surrounded by dead Shriekers and spent shells): I am completely out of ammo! *pauses for a moment* That's never happened to me before.

  • On the other hand, he then goes on to state that he was expecting weapons requiring penetration, not predicting the need for full-auto.
  • In The Crow, Top Dollar pulls his katana from a pleasantly mounted wall-cabinet full of wonderful toys.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Both Smiths have walls of weapons in their own house, hidden from each other.
  • Dawn of the Dead (1978). Part of outfitting their fancy apartment on the upper floor of the shopping mall includes installing a row of rifle racks on one wall.
  • In The Mummy Trilogy Rick is frequently shown to have numerous guns nearby at all times, in case he has to blow off some mummy's head.
    • This habit leads to this exchange in the second movie: "You want the shotgun?" "Actually, I prefer the Thompson."
    • In the first movie, during the boat voyage down the Nile, Rick startles Evy when he thunks down a heavy duffle bag right in front of her, then unrolls it to reveal that the duffle is stuffed with weapons.
  • Captain Englehorn in Peter Jackson's King Kong not only has a rack of rifles on the wall of his ship's cabin, but also keeps a stash of Thompson submachine guns under his bed.
  • Boondock Saints features a Basement Room of Weapons, up to and including a DShK heavy machinegun. Curiously, a pair of pimptastic Desert Eagles (and gold watches, a pager, and two moneyclips full of large denomination bills) is sufficient payment for a whole duffel bag of guns.
    • It looks like all they took were four suppressed Beretta 92s (and maybe a Franchi PA3), a knife and some rope, since we never see them use anything else.
    • Boondock Saints II has the McManus boys return to the same dealer and trade in their old 92s for two pairs of .357 magnum Desert Eagles, but by this point, the proprietor of the "shop" is a big fan of their work and offers the upgrade on the house.
  • For a Few Dollars More: Col. Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) has a rolled up blanket on his horse, which is unrolled early in the movie to reveal a large number of rifles and pistols.
  • Connor MacLeod has one, which serves as his Trophy Room too.
  • In Kick Ass Big Daddy and Hit Girl's safehouse has every wall covered in high-powered firearms.
  • In the first Wayne's World film, Wayne averts this trope after getting a present from psycho-hose-beast Stacey.

Stacey: "It's a gun rack!"
Wayne: "I don't even own ahh gun, let alone enough to necessitate an entire rack!"

Literature

  • Many examples in The Dresden Files: Harry's apartment/lab, Thomas' spare bedroom / gun lab, and the storage areas at Monoic Securities' headquarters.
  • In the Kitty Norville series, hired gun Cormac has an entire shed full of weapons specifically designed to kill werewolves and vampires.
  • Mara Jade Skywalker kept a Wall of Weapons on her personal starship back as an assassin, as shown in her eponymous comic mini-series. It's heavily implied in the Legacy of the Force series (grown into an Action Mom by this point) that she still keeps weapons and other such equipment hidden around her family's apartment in case there's a need to go Mama Bear, as there's a scene in Sacrifice where she's preparing such equipment, with Luke half-surprised that she managed to hide some of this stuff from him for all this time (although he probably just didn't bother to look out of respect for privacy).
  • The first secret anarchist hideout in G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday has weapons on every single wall—guns in the outer passageways, bombs in the central chamber.
  • The sci-fi novel Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. The brobdingnagian spaceship Nostalgia for Infinity has a warchive containing examples of over four million hand weapons—spanning twelve centuries of gunsmithing from blunderbuss to plasma rifle. And if that isn't sufficient, the warchive can sift its blueprints and custom-design and build a weapon for your exact needs in minutes. The only drawback is its simpering artificial persona, which causes the heroine to empty her gun into the warchive once she's got the weapons she wants.
  • In R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels, when Zaknafein is beginning his teaching of Drizzt and reveals a massive wall armory, telling him to take his pick and find out which ones he prefers.
  • Roarke in the In Death series has a very extensive collection of weapons from the medieval to the modern. In his case it's less an indication of being Crazy Prepared and more another way to demonstrate his membership in the Fiction 500, but he does demonstrate his proficiency with several of the firearms all the same.
  • Subverted in the Gordon R. Dickson novel Lost Dorsai (part of the Childe Cycle): the titular hero has wall of musical instruments displayed as if they were weapons which convinces the narrator that he truly has become a pacifist.
  • The cover art for "The Unbeholden" (a tie-in novel for the old World of Darkness) shows a major character standing in front of his Wall of Weapons. From the descriptions in the book, the cover artist shortchanged that character big time.
  • Duumvirate takes this trope and goes nuts. In the first book, it's just a room full of weapons. In the second book, they have weapons embedded in literally every wall in the house, as well as an underground Walmart of guns, flamethrowers, and lasers.

Narrator: The child-sized weapons were helpfully placed on the bottom shelf, so kids wouldn't have to climb to reach them.

  • The interior of the manor house from Old Tin Sorrows was decorated in this trope.
  • A highly overpowered disposable assault weapon forms a key part of the climax of William Gibson 's All Tomorrow's Parties. It's hidden inside a wall, which has been plastered over.

Live Action TV

  • Jayne Cobb of Firefly has a wall covered with weapons in his bunk.
    • In the season/series finale, the Crowning Moment of Funny comes when he's sleeping, hears what are obviously (to the viewer) fighting noises, sits halfway up, pulls down the cloth covering this wall, heroic music begins to swell... then pulls the cloth over himself as a blanket and goes back to sleep.
  • When Michael Vaughn goes to Jack Bristow for help in Alias, Bristow shows him his underground bunker, where every available surface is covered in guns and other assorted weapons.
  • In Supernatural all hunters have a hidden wall of weapons in their home, vehicle, or house of worship. Sam and Dean are the exception, having only a trunkfull of weapons.
  • Angel keeps a cabinet full of many different weapons, ranging from swords and crossbows to a sharpened baseball bat. In Season 5 he starts keeping what is probably an entirely different set on the wall of his office.
  • Buffy has one, too, in her training room at the Magic Box.
    • Principal Wood had one too, in his office at the new Sunnydale High.
      • In one episode, Wood lures a vampire Spike, who he swears revenge against since he killed his mother into a shed that has a solid four Walls Of...Crucifixes - to a vampire, it's like a wall of branding irons.
  • The Equalizer. Secret agent turned vigilante Robert McCall is shown to have one of these hidden behind a tool board in his apartment.
  • Torchwood Cardiff has assault rifles racked on the glass interior walls (including several above easy reach).
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The James Bond Parody Episode "Our Man Bashir" features a rack of rifles behind a rotating mirrorstand.
  • The Eureka sheriff's office has a column of weapons that comes down out of the ceiling. For the first few episodes Deputy Jo wouldn't let the new sheriff have access to the remote that controlled it, because he kept flunking the test about what all the weapons were, and what they could do. (In this case anything less than a perfect score was a failure.)
  • The Wild Wild West has one on board the Cool Train used by Agents West and Gordon.
  • Human Target has the apartment of the main character festooned with hidden weapons everywhere.
  • In NCIS: Los Angeles Hedy has seems to have a whole room of weaponry including a crossbow, several shuriken and a combat shotgun that's as big as she is.
  • Will's office in Sons of Guns has 3/4 of the walls covered with weapons. Also used as the background during the testimonials.
  • American Guns is filmed in a gun store, so this is to be expected.
    • Some of the customers Rich visits to purchase guns from have these in their homes on occasion as well.
  • In an episode of House, the Patient of the Week has an entire room of guns, hidden inside a false wall between his kitchen and his dining room, that his wife didn't even know about. Turns out he was extrememly paranoid about an impending apocalypse.

Video Games

  • The tutorial level in Call of Duty 4 opens up with a wall of weapons in a firing range in the SAS headquarters at Hereford.
    • Not that big a deal, since it's actually an armory. Most if not all armories for military and paramilitary groups look the same.
    • Later, in the "Charlie Don't Surf" mission, the player can enter a basement in a building held by Al-Asad's troops, where there is a table strewn with dozens of rifles, shotguns, grenades and pistols.
    • Modern Warfare 2 features a terrorist safehouse with multiple weapons caches. There's a Wall of Weapons proper in the basement, dropcloths full of weapons near the exits, support weapons and warhead launchers near the kitchen window, and sniper rifles next to picture windows. Mind you, it was meant as a safehouse and presumably a stronghold if besieged...
    • Soap and Roach break into an armory in a Russian Gulag which is more like an elevated island of weapons.
    • Also, several Spec Ops missions in Modern Warfare 2 have a dropcloth full of available weapons next to the player at the start of each mission.
    • Finally, in the bonus level Museum, every weapon in the game is arranged in several glass cases, along with several exclusives (such as the M1911, which is only usable here).
    • The opening cutscene for the Call of Duty Black Ops Zombies level "Five" has JFK slapping the wall near a presidential seal, causing the wall to swivel in place and reveal a wall full of small arms, a crossbow and at least one blade. Oddly enough, despite the participants clearly being shown with long guns, you start off with a 1911 when the cutscene is over.
  • In Resident Evil 4, the various Merchants will have walls and tables strewn with shockingly extensive arrays of firepower. Not to mention that whenever he's in an outdoor area, he'll stuff his entire inventory into his overcoat. Hell, by the end of the game, Leon's Attache Case qualifies.
    • In Code Veronica, there's a room in Alfred's mansion where the walls are covered in rifles and pistols. You'd think that Claire would be able to use the weapons to go on an anti-zombie rampage. No.
  • The Orks in Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War have a structure literally called a "Pile O' Gunz" where weapon upgrades are researched. It looks just like what it's called. This is less them being Crazy Prepared as them understanding of the need for More Dakka.
  • In Hitman 2 as you collect weapons from the level you slowly build up a wall of weapons in a shed. Oddly enough he knows exactly how many different types of weapons he'll find and have a space earmarked for it.
    • Reused in Blood Money, but taken to even more illogical extremes, with 47 having slots available for an Elephant Rifle, a Six Shooter and a nail gun. Possibly justified this time as the game takes place in a flashback and so he would have added the spaces as he got the weapons.
  • Similarly Far Cry 2 has an armory next to every gun shop in the game, where the player can always find an unlimited supply of weapons they bought from the dealer. Empty spaces for future guns are sort of justified, as the armory clearly belongs to the dealer, and he would know his own inventory.
  • Time Splitters: Future Perfect features a train compartment containing a cache of weapons mounted on the carriage wall. Upon entering it, Anya, the player's Voice with an Internet Connection remarks, "Wow, this is such a guys' room.
  • In The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, especially in the Tribunal expansion pack, a fun thing to do is get a large empty house make your own Wall of Weapons (more like floor and table of weapons) with all the unique weapons and armor that can be found in the dungeons. Might as well do something with all that junk.
    • People do this in Oblivion, and Fallout 3, too. There are even mods for all three games that make doing this easier.
      • It's needed in those last two games thanks to them using the Havoc physics engine. No I don't want my swords to drop realistically, I want them to line up in a row.
    • Skyrim lets you assemble your own wall of pointy, stabby, slashy, burny, shooty, and bludgeony in every house you own, thanks to plentiful weapon and shield racks, weapon cases, and armor stands. The Windhelm house takes the cake, though, as you have an entire large room dedicated to weapons and cases and stands you can use to show off all those artifacts you've acquired.
  • Left 4 Dead: The arrayed weapons and piles of ammo on tables in the safe rooms.
  • The gun store in Left 4 Dead 2.
  • Muramasa's shop in the Xbox remake of Ninja Gaiden has a few weapons mounted on the walls, none of which can be used.
  • Gilgamesh of Fate/stay night can use this to great effect. It helps that each and every one of those weapons is a potentially lethal Noble Phantasm that all the other heroes only have one of.
  • Firion in Dissidia Final Fantasy is the walking variation of this trope. He carries no less than eight weapons on his person constantly. Numerous characters ask if they ever get heavy (or, in Kefka's case, "Eew! Aren't you hot?").
  • Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box features this trope in one of its puzzles. However, the trope is subverted due to many of the swords on the wall being ornamental. In fact, all of them - the only real sword is the one held by the suit of armor next to the wall.
  • Diablo II has a wall of weapons - in Hell! They're arranged nicely over the fireplace in the Heaven-owned Pandemonium Fortress. Why your character can't pluck one of them off the wall is never asked, of course...
    • Becuase you'd be stealing from the forces of Heaven, maybe?
  • In the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies (Before They Changed It, Now It Sucks), Weaponsmiths had a tendency to advertise in their houses/shops by creating walls of guns (and swords).
  • In The Godfather game, the safehouses you purchase will contain a few of each gun type lying neatly around.
  • Runescape has a minor example. Kal'Ger the Warmonger, a demon and leader of all the demons in Bilrach's dungeons, has five weapons on the walls of his room. And he goes through all of them as you and your team, if any, work on defeating him. It isn't exactly a wall full of weapons, but due to their size and the room's small size, more probably wouldn't fit in.

Visual Novels

Web Comics

Deus: Who doesn't want a room with secret panels?

Western Animation

  • Professor Farnsworth in Futurama puts his own little spin on this trope—instead of weapons, he has a collection of doomsday devices readily available.
  • In the Family Guy episode "Lois Kills Stewie," after Stewie conquers the world, Peter and Lois search his room, finding a hidden lever that reveals a whole room full of weapons.
  • Clay Puppinton in Moral Orel has an entire hallway lined with weapons of all kinds.
  • Despite being Transforming Mecha with built-in weapons, the Maximals have such a wall in their ship for when they need a little something extra.
  • In Justice League Unlimited, the Fortress of Solitude has a hall of weapons. Sadly, as Wonder Woman discovered, anyone capable of getting past the owner isn't going to worry about a Death Ray or two.
  • The Fenton family in Danny Phantom. They have a vault of weapons.
  • Mermaidman and Barnacleboy have one, and its weapons are genuinely deadly (as deadly as it can get in a children's show, anyways). One wonders why the duo never use said weapons seeing how their own abilities are lacking due to age.
  • Most versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have the heroes keep one of these in their lair, usually in their training room, though in this case it's all martial arts weapons.

Real Life

  • Apparently, Inveraray Castle has more polearms and muskets than you'd want to shake a stick at.
  • It was common to find Governor's Palaces insanely well armed in Colonial America. This was to both show off the power and wealth of the British Empire (a rifle being a sizable portion of a normal person's yearly income) and to be used to defend the Governor and his family/staff in case of uprising. In Colonial Williamsburg, the Governor's Palace had more muskets, rifles, pistols, and melee weapons than the actual magazine (arsenal).
  • The first room you enter at Alnwick Castle has an incredibly array of polished metal in the form of antique pistols, swords, and assorted other weaponry arrayed in aesthetically pleasing patterns around the walls. All of the walls. Filling every square inch. (Even more impressive, however, is the library with walls made of books.)
  • The Great Hall at Edinburgh Castle is decorated with swords, pistols, a couple of little brass mortars and just about every kind of polearm you can think of.
  • And of course, Truth in Television for most military and police forces. Armories will often have them stored on racks on the walls, sometimes in locked cages for added security.
  • Leeds Armoury has the Hall of Steel.
  • Gun manufacturer Heckler & Koch maintains a ... special conference room (the Grey Room) at their Virginia HQ for the purpose of looking impressive. It's successful.
  • Duncan Mccollum, who wrote the book on Arisaka collection, has a collection of Arisakas displayed this way. It inspired his son's interest in firearms.
  • In Feudal Japan it was common for a Daimyo to have a rack for all his Samurai to check in their swords when they attended him. In this case it was a very practical thing as the Daimyo if he was paranoid would not want anyone armed except his picked bodyguards and if he was willing to tolerate it, he might not be willing to tolerate weapons and alcohol in the same feast-hall.
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