Weapon for Intimidation: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

[[Ornamental Weapon|Not everyone who carries a weapon actually uses it]]. Sometimes it's best to have something to make you look intimidating, be it a large staff or a gun. It might actually be completely useless (such as an unloaded gun or even a toy gun). Other times it's just not needed all that much, but when you need it, it'll get the job done.

 

Subtrope of [[Useless Accessory]]. The [[Sword of Damocles]] is an upscaled version of this trope; a weapon so fearsome it brings nations or worlds to their knees in fear of it. If you don't even have a fake weapon, but wish to achieve the same effect, that's a [[Brandishment Bluff]].

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

 

** And then he does it yet again with what's left of the soap gun in the following installment.

 

== Film ==

* ''[[Fight Club]]'' has a scene where Tyler Durden takes a store clerk out the back of the store and holds a gun to the back of his head, scaring the wits out of him and forcing him to go and follow his old dreams of being a veterinarian. At the end of the scene, the protagonist (who was with them) opens the chamber of the gun and sees there are no bullets inside.

* In ''[[The Gumball Rally]]'', hot-blooded Franco pulls a gun from a paper bag and threatens another driver with it. It turns out it's a squirt gun, and the whole thing was a gag.

 

== Literature ==

* [[Chekhov's Gun|Dally's revolver]] in ''[[The Outsiders]]''. It's not actually loaded, and he states that he uses it to scare people and that's all. This comes back to bite him when {{spoiler|he raises the unloaded gun at the police after Johnny dies to get a [[Suicide by Cop]].}}

** And then of course, there's [[BFG|Detritus's crossbow, the Piecemaker]], which is generally used as a threat, as opposed to actually being fired.

* In ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|Shards of Honor]]'', Aral Vorkosigan says that this is the reason he prefers nerve disruptors or plasma arcs to stunners—he's seen people carrying stunners get ganged up on and killed, but nobody would have tried that if there was a risk of getting killed (or [[Fate Worse Than Death|worse; remember Ensign Dubauer]]). Roughly thirty-two years later, Aral's son Miles gets told that this is why a rescue party (or a tactical strike-force committing a jailbreak; perspective's a bitch) was equipped with something stronger. He says that he recognizes the argument, but points out that the problem is, what if you actually have to ''fire'' the stronger weapons?

* Early in [[Gordon R. Dickson]]'s ''The Outposter'', Ulla Showell thinks that having a small gun strapped to her wrist under her sleeve is being sufficiently armed. She doesn't want to listen to the regulations that say she has to wear a more visible gun, as part of '''rubbing in''' to the unwilling "colonists" that they '''must''' obey.

 

* The Jaffa staff weapon in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' is explicitly described as this: their primary purpose is to intimidate the low-tech slave populations and fight equally armed warriors of rival Goa'uld. In the hands of a trained Jaffa warrior, as Teal'c repeatedly demonstrates, staffs are lethal weapons both ranged and melee. Colonel O'Neill [[Lampshade Hanging|calls them out as weapons of terror and intimidation]] when demonstrating the efficiency of the team's P90 to a group of rebel Jaffa.

* In an episode of ''[[Red Dwarf]],'' the crew are creeping aboard a badly-damaged simulant ship, heavily armed with bazookoids, and feeling ''somewhat'' confident. Then Lister admits that the superstructure of the ship is so unstable that even a loud noise could cause a shipquake, so the bazookoids are for psychological use only. Cue [[Death Glare]] from the Cat.

* On one episode of ''[[Frasier]]'', Niles needs to get Maris a gun for protection. After not being able to procure one, he buys a ''starter's pistol'' since having any kind of gun would make her feel safe.

* In ''[[Have Gun — Will Travel]]'', Paladin will often use his gun as a deterrent, either simply pulling it out or shooting an object to scare his enemy into backing down.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** Similarly, fluff-wise anyway, the Titans from [[Warhammer 40,000]] were not only designed to be humungous, walking weapons platforms, their mere presence was often enough to rout entire opposing armies. The largest ones, the Imperator class, are so big that someone jokingly "fielded" one in a tabletop game by making a cardboard costume and standing on the table over the roughly 1" models and kicking them all over. That said, Imperators have enough firepower to level cities ''as collateral damage'', and even the smaller Warhounds and their ilk will trash a decently sized force. The intimidation comes from knowing that the fourty-to-two-hundred-foot death machines are every bit as deadly as they look.

* ''[[GURPS]] Goblins'' actually provides game mechanics for this by giving every weapon a Menace attribute. A weapon's Menace is not necessarily tied to its effectiveness; a schoolmaster's cane may not be a very strong weapon, but it has a high Menace due to the [[Sadist Teacher|painful]] [[Boarding School of Horrors|memories]] seeing one can call up.

 

== Video Games ==

* Sam in [[Sam and Max Freelance Police]] The Devil's Playhouse, when you try to use the gun on anything you are not supposed to, Sam states that "I don't need to shoot anybody, it's enough they know I have a gun."

* [[I Am Alive]] has your gun be used in this way as you start with no bullets and what bullets you do find are few and far between.

 

== Web Comics ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]