History Main / ImproperlyPlacedFirearms

** To be fair, Dame Harrington is in the SCA, and thus practices the use of such an antique weapon.

* Averted in ''Buffalo Soldiers'' in a nicely self-referential way. The plot revolves around how relatively easy it was to sell off large amounts of weapons stolen from US army bases in Germany. After the Cold War ended and US troops returned home, vast amounts of materiel were left behind. One member of the film crew owned 100 of the appropriate guns to lend the production. Where one character is given a particularly heavy gun to carry on exercises as a punishment, there was some difficulty in sourcing this gun.

* ''Remo Williams'' had the hero being tracked as he ran through the woods by what was actually the High Power Illuminator Radar. It is the distinctive 'Mickey Mouse ears' system. This is a radar meant to 'spotlight' a target for the MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile.

* Misidentification of pistol caliber in live action TV/movies. Hollywood pretty much standardizes around the 9mm blank, so many firearms identified as .40S&W or .45ACP will often have a 9mm "stand in." With something like a Glock, which comes in several different calibres and variants, it's barely even noticeable. Still, visually telling the difference between a 9mm and .45 barrel is very very tough, and made even more because we never look straight down them.
* Substitution of a common firearm variant for a rare one. Machine pistols such as the Beretta 93R or the Glock 18 generally aren't sold outside of government agencies even if the armsmaster has a Class III permit; the usual solution is to drop a full-auto sear into the semiauto variant. In fairness it's not particularly hard to dress a Beretta up as a 93R, and the only obvious difference between semi and full auto glocks is the ported barrel which you can only see from above, so most people aren't going to lose much sleep over doing this.(The Joker's Glock in ''TheDarkKnight'' is one notable example).

* The JamesBond movie ''{{Octopussy}}'' had a scene with Soviet border guards armed with Steyr [=AUG=]s.

* In ''[[IndianaJones Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'' the main weapon of the Nazi soldiers is the MP-40, despite the movie taking place in 1936. More jarring is the fact that at the end of the movie, Indiana Jones threatens the bad guys with an RPG-2, a Soviet rocket launcher that wasn't even designed until a few years after World War II.

** River Song has used the futuristic-looking COP derringer also seen in ''BattlestarGalactica'' - although River's has an integral blowtorch.

* In the ''{{Castle}}'' episode "The Fifth Bullet", Beckett discovers a “9mm pistol” in an amnesiac's apartment -- which is very obviously a .45 caliber Colt M1911.
** Uuuuunless it's a 9mm 1911 clone like the iconic Star Model B which stood in for the 1911 in many older war films (9mm blanks were much more reliable than .45s at the time) and which is probably most famous for being Samuel L. Jackson's "Mr. Nine Millimeter" in Pulp Fiction.

See also {{AKA 47}}, JustPlaneWrong and ArtisticLicenseShips.

* ''Remo Williams'' had the hero being tracked as he ran through the woods by what was actually the High Power Illuminator Radar. It is the distinctive 'Mickey Mouse ears' system. This is a radar meant to 'spotlight' a target for the missile and would be useless in that role (and quite hazardous to anybody within 75 meters of the front of it).

** While the production crew acquired plenty of period accurate Martini-Henry rifles, the production used up all of the available blank ''cartridges'' for the Martini-Henry's obsolete caliber. Thus, some extras wound up with anachronistic Lee-Enfield MkI bolt-action rifles instead.

* The ECOAS spec ops troops in MobileSuitGundamUnicorn use FN P90s, despite the series taking place several centuries into the future.

* Taken to an extreme in ''CallOfDutyBlackOps'' which features several anachronistic faults in regards to firearms shown in the game. The FN FAL in particular - commonly known as the "Right Arm of the Free World" for its use by many Western-aligned nations - is only used by Vietcong and Cubans in single player. Soviet special forces in '60s Kowloon also get the SPAS-12 shotgun – from ''Italy'' and introduced in ''1982''. Bizarrely, the KS-23 pump-action shotgun (which was at least Russian, although still not designed until the 1970s) makes an appearance during several other levels in Soviet hands.

* In ''{{Rambo}}'' movies, you will notice many.
** Russian helicopters fitted with western weapons (such as the FN MAG machine guns). The helicopter in the second movie was also a fake; a prop nose built onto a Western helicopter which apparently made it extremely difficult to fly.

** 'AK-74' and 'AKS-74' assault rifles that uses magazines for 7.62x39mm. To be exact,those guns are AKM, AKMSU, or some Chinese AK replica modified (such as adding the muzzle brake) to look like AK-74 and AKS-74 since Hollywood did not have access to those weapons at those times.

** M2 Browning heavy machine guns fitted with prop parts to look like Soviet heavy machine guns, with the exception of the parts of ''Rambo 3'' filmed in Israel.

* In ''[[IndianaJones Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'' the main weapon of the Nazi soldiers is the MP-40, despite the movie taking place in 1936. More jarring is the fact that at the end of the movie, Indiana Jones threatens the bad guys with an RPG-2, a Soviet rocket launcher, which wasn't even designed until a few years after World War II.
** The MP-40 was the MP-38 slightly redesigned to be cheaper to manufacture, and the two are visually nearly identical, but still falls 2 years too short. Of course, as the Germans were collecting para-normal technology, they obviously must have gotten a hold of a short duration time-machine.

* ''{{StargateSG-1}}'' both commits and averts this trope, often even in the same scene. From season 4 onwards, the team's [=MP5=] submachine guns (which ARE issued in the U.S. military) were replaced by the Belgian FN P90 personal defense weapon. The only American users of the P90 are the Secret Service and some U.S. law enforcement agencies. However, actual U.S. military weapons also appear in the show quite often: the Beretta M9 pistol, the [=M4A1=] carbine, the M16 assault rifle, and the M249 SAW to name a few. Another straight play of the trope occurs much later in the series; when Cameron Mitchell joins the team, the SGC starts using the H&K G36 and [=MP7=] PDW.
** The WordOfGod is the 9mm round fired by the [=MP5=] was simply not powerful enough to penetrate Jaffa armor reliably, resulting in a lot of ammunition expended for little purpose. SGC switched to the P90, along with assault rifles, specifically because the 5.7mm round has extremely good penetration against a variety of materials, making it more effective against Jaffa than the [=MP5=].

** What's funny to note about ''Modern Warfare 2'' is that ''only 2 of the weapons the Russians use make any sense.'' These are the RPG-7 and the Dragunov SVD- most of the others they use aren't even Russian, for example the Israeli TAR-21, the French FAMAS, or the Steyr AUG. The other ones that ARE Russian, such as the RPD and AK-47, have been replaced for military use already.

** This was why the US discouraged its soldiers from taking AK-47s in Vietnam. [[DrillSergeantNasty They are the preferred weapon of the enemy, which make a distinctive sound when fired.]] However, at the time US riflemen were equipped with an early model of the M16 which was notorious for design faults and a tendency to jam at inappropriate moments, no matter how well looked after. The AK-47, by contrast, was and in some circles still is famed for its durability and reliability, so it boiled down to a choice between being unable to shoot anyone or being shot at by everyone.

*** Similarly, there was at least one American unit in World War 2 that got itself trapped behind German lines and ran low on supplies. They ended up having to hunt venison using captured German rifles to avoid alerting enemies to their presence.

* During the introductory assault course in ''ModernWarfare 2'', the range master is seen brandishing a chrome-plated Desert Eagle and gives another one to the player character. Keep in mind these are US Army Rangers in Afghanistan: Desert Eagles are definitely ''not'' standard issue, and getting caught using an unapproved firearm can land you into ''serious'' trouble. Then again, the weapon boxes he opens before you run the Pit also contain a number of weapons that aren't standard-issue, and nobody ever complains if you drop one of your starting guns for one that someone had just been trying to kill you with (hell, Soap at one point in the second game directly asks if you "see anything you like" in the Gulag's armory), so the concept of unapproved firearms may not be even exist in the game's universe.

** What's funny to note about ''Modern Warfare 2'' is that ''only 2 of the weapons the Russians use make any sense.'' These are the RPG-7 and the Dragunov SVD- most of the others they use aren't even Russian, for example the Israeli TAR-21. The other ones that ARE Russian, such as the RPD and AK-47, have been replaced for military use already.

* Taken to an extreme in ''CallOfDutyBlackOps'' which features several anachronistic faults in regards to firearms shown in the game. The FN FAL in particular - commonly known as the "Right Arm of the Free World" for its use by many Western-aligned nations - is only used by Vietcong and Cubans in single player.

* The Russian army in ''[[BattlefieldSeries Battlefield: Bad Company 2]]'' uses two Russian assault rifles and a handgun alongside ''Chinese'' machine guns and sniper rifles and a ''Swedish'' RPG. What's even weirder is that the game features a wide assortment of much more sensible modern Russian firearms, but the majority of them are only usable in multiplayer.

* The box art for ''{{Wolfenstein 3D}}'' depicts Nazis using M16s, that [[ShurFineGuns fire while falling through air]] no less.

** An interesting inversion of this is desert eagles used by the Agents in TheMatrix series. They are famous for firing the HUGE and frankly unwieldy .50AE rounds, but they are in fact near certainly .357 magnum versions.

* [[TheyJustDidntCare Hilariously]] in the film version of ''Bulletproof Monk'', the Nazi villain's {{Mooks}} [[HypocriticalHumor use Uzis]]. [[Spoiler: the Uzi was created by an Israeli.]]

* The original ''CallOfDuty'' featured the [=M1A1=] carbine, which was correct as the American player character is a paratrooper. ''Call of Duty 2'' and ''World at War'', instead starring a Ranger and Marine Raider respectively, keep the [=M1A1=] name, while the actual model is the standard M1.

The practice of giving inappropriate firearms to characters or factions in a TV show or movie. They're inappropriate either because this group wouldn't have access to it (like Soviet soldiers wielding Uzis), or because the producers can't be arsed to make special props for their SciFi setting and just used a real gun. If they show up often enough, dialogue might point out [[AKA47 it's an entirely different gun]], since it has some TechnoBabble name. Sometimes, it'll be something completely silly like a repainted glue gun.

Named for what someone will exclaim when spotting the SciFi version, since it will almost always be a [[RareGuns Rare Gun]]. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since gun design is practical and the ergonomics are unlikely to change in the future; the production crew making its own design might end up giving you something like the horrible phasers of ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', which looked like [[strike:electric shavers]] miniaturized dustbusters, lacked sights, and were so unergonomic that, for the war arc of ''DeepSpaceNine'', which involved many gun battles, the production team were ''forced'' to make more practical designs; the SFX team had problems adding in energy beam effects in post-production because the actor couldn't ''[[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy aim them properly at targets ten feet away]]'' (in fairness, this was because the phaser models had been subject to ExecutiveMeddling by Gene Roddenberry at the start of ''Next Gen''`s run, emphasising the pacifistic nature of early ''Next Gen'' by making the weapons look as un-weapon-like as possible; early production notes published recently include plans for much more sensible pistol-shaped phasers).

Another reason this can happen (especially for things more expensive than guns) is that the "right" weapon may not be available, and an incorrect version easier to come by than it would be to make a replica. For example, Chinese AK clones commonly stand in for the real thing in American movies made during the Cold War. An extreme case would be armoured vehicles; there is only one WW2-vintage Tiger tank that still runs in the ''entire world'' and leasing a running mock-up from a private collection would be far more expensive than simply using some other tank and hoping the audience doesn't figure it out. This goes even more for ships; before modern CGI, movies were often forced to either use contemporary warships (even with a stratospheric budget, ''PearlHarbor'''s Japanese carrier set was built on the deck of a modern carrier, made obvious by the visible steam catapult runs) or unconvincing models.

** With the AK family and its close relatives this can get really screwy. To date there have been various AK-type weapons firing a truly massive list of different calibers, including 7.62x39mm, 5.45x39mm, 9x39mm, 5.56x45mm, 7.62x54mmR, 7.62x51mm, 9x18mm, 9x19mm, 7.62x25mm and even 12-gauge, 20-gauge, and .410 shotgun shells.
* Misidentification of pistol caliber in live action TV/movies. Hollywood pretty much standardizes around the 9mm blank, so many firearms identified as .40S&W or .45ACP will often have a 9mm "stand in." With something like a Glock, which comes in several different calibres and variants, it's barely even noticeable.
** In all honesty, its near impossible to tell with any pistol really. You can do the research and find that they don't make that pistol in that caliber, but visually telling the difference between a 9mm and .45 barrel is very very tough, and made even more because we never look straight down them.

* A lot of the guns shown in the ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'' manga are visual [[{{Expy}} expies]] of real life weapons. One of the most apparent is the submachinegun design of the Amestrian military, which is pretty much the German MP-40 from [=WW2=]. I guess if you're PuttingOnTheReich, it'd only make sense to use their guns.
** The first anime series, on the other hand, goes in a different direction, arming the State Military with mostly Vietnam-era American weapons; the standard rifle is the M14, and both the M21 sniper variant and the M60 machine gun show up at one point or another. Hawkeye's signature Browning M1910 is unchanged, though, and the MP-40s are replaced with Walther [=MPLs=] rather than any kind of American weapon.
** ''Brotherhood'' keeps the first series' [=MPLs=] and M14s, while leaving Riza's various guns and most non-Amestrian weapons as they were in the manga.

** Of course, firearm design in general is said to be totally different in the series' timeline (all firearms are apparently coilguns of some sort, for one thing), so it may be a moot point.
* The Pallet Gun from ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' is almost identical to the Steyr ACR, albeit with a different stock shape to account for the lack of a magazine.

** In ''GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'', the level of detail paid to weaponry borders on GunPorn (although they still don't get every detail right). See an exhaustive list [[http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_Stand_Alone_Complex here]].

** The [=M41A=] pulse-rifle is made from a Thompson SMG, its grenade launcher made from a Remington 870 shotgun inside the shell of a Franchi SPAS-12.
** The smartguns are each made from an MG-42 machine gun mated with a Steadicam camera harness and some pieces of a bicycle.
** The flamethrower built on a cut-up M16 receiver with an M203 handguard.
** The sentry guns are built around WW1 Maxim LMG 08/15 machine guns.

* The Stormtrooper rifles in ''StarWars'' were made from the British Sterling [=L2A3 SMG=]s with added scopes and radiator fins made from windshield wiper blades.
** The Rebel troopers' blaster pistols seen during the boarding of the ''Tantive IV'' and in the Battle of Hoth are also modified Sterling [=SMG=]s.
** Han Solo's gun, the Blastech DL-44, is a German [[CoolGuns Broomhandle Mauser]] with a scope and a fire extinguisher dispersion nozzle on the barrel.
** Elite Stormtrooper's DLT-19 heavy blasters are MG 34s and their T-21 light repeating blasters are Lewis guns, both with little to no modifications.
** In the Battle of Hoth, modified MG 42 show up on the Imperial side, while a few Rebel troops field modified ''Sturmgewehr'' 44s. They reappear on Endor, alongside modified AR-15 rifles.
** In the same sequence, the electrobinoculars used by Luke are a Simrad Optronics LP-7 laser rangefinder as used by the Norwegian Army. There's a reason for this; the Rebel soldiers were played by the Norwegian Army. The movie prop has a few parts of a Revell model kit of a V-8 engine added to it.
** The Jawas' blasters are modified Lee-Enfield rifles.
** In the book ''The Making of Star Wars'' GeorgeLucas says he used modified firearms for rayguns because he wanted them to ''look'' real (e.g. scratched and battered) rather than like plastic toys or props. In addition, using actual firearms firing blanks allowed ILM to accurately time where to insert the blaster bolts; also, the sound of the blank round firing was integrated into the sound of the blaster (the "peew" effect being achieved by smacking a taut steel cable with a hammer). Freeze-framing scenes will often show the blasters ejecting spent casings in scenes where they're actually being fired.
** Boba Fett's EE-3 carbine rifle is a Webley & Scott No.1 Mark 1 Flare Gun used by British paratroopers in WWII. That's right, Boba Fett uses a flare gun!
** The vehicles are all [[OffTheShelfFX decorated with model kit parts]] for detail. The Jawa Sandcrawler has the running gear of a Sherman hidden under plastic covers, and various jet engines, truck engine blocks, battleship components, bits of tanks and so on decorate the spaceships.

* The Asylum movie ''Mega Piranha'' has a group of frogmen using a special type of underwater assault rifle... [[SpecialEffectFailure which is clearly]] [[NoBudget a NERF gun painted black]]

* In the 1988 cop movie ''Red Heat'' ArnoldSchwarzenegger (playing a Russian 'Dirty Harry' type) totes the fictional 'Podbyrin 9.2 mm' pistol (actually a modified Desert Eagle). The weapon certainly looks different during the one scene we see it resting on a table with its P-38 style grips; unfortunately the rest of the time they're wrapped in Arnie's huge fist and so the Podbyrin just looks like a Desert Eagle with a slightly longer barrel.
** They had to go with an oversized handcannon for Arnie, anything else would look tiny in those huge mitts of his.
** [[http://www.imfdb.org/index.php?title=Red_Heat Here's some more info on the guns that appear in the movie, both fictional and real]].

** There was an earlier version of the MP-38/-40, the MP-36, which was superficially very similar although the magazine housing was slanted slightly forward. It's uncertain how many were actually made but there are only two believed to still exist, numbered 01 and 014.

** It's possible that the Makarov was supposed to represent the (rather more expensive) Walther PPK on which the Soviet design is loosely based.

* Some of the 'laser guns' in the first (low budget) ''[[TheTerminator Terminator]]'' movie are clearly contemporary auto weapons, such as the fifty-calibre machine gun in the car sequence.
* In ''{{District 9}}'', at least one [[EvilCorporation MNU]] EliteMook can be very briefly seen wielding a rifle that looks a bit like an AK-47 with a straight, slightly shorter magazine. It was probably a 7.62mm NATO-calibre [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMI_Galil IMI Galil]], which is slightly odd given that South Africa ''did'' make a copy of the Galil, but of the 5.56mm version that uses an AK-style magazine.
** Given that they're mercenaries working for a multinational corporation it's hardly unusual they'd have access to weapons from all over the world.
** Still mildly noteworthy in that it's the only weapon the mercenaries are seen to carry that isn't standard issue to the South African army or police, with the possible exception of that sniper rifle in the shots from the helicopter.
** The CR-21, the weird-shaped bullpup combat rifle which the MNU guys are seen to be issued by their armorer near the beginning of the movie, isn't standard-issue either, but at least they are indeed made in South Africa.
** The sniper rifle used by the MNU mercenary to [[spoiler:disable Wikus' mini-mech]] is a Denel NTW-20, which lot of people will recognize is as "the sniper rifle from {{Halo}}". Indeed, Halo's sniper rifle was based heavily on the NTW-20 with bits from a Barret M82.

* The film ''DemolitionMan'' features an energy weapon that is actually the futuristic-looking [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_G11 Heckler & Koch G-11 rifle]].
** That specific type of assault rifle actually shows up quite often in movies or TV shows set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture that need a "futuristic-looking" firearm. It's (unsurprisingly) mostly portrayed as some kind of energy weapon. Another 90s production that used it several times was ''SeaQuestDSV''.

* [[TheyJustDidntCare Hilariously]] in the film version of ''Bulletproof Monk'', the Nazi villain's {{Mooks}} [[HypocriticalHumor use Uzis]].
** For those of you who don't get the joke, the Uzi was created by an Israeli.

** In ''The Twin Dilemma'', Jacondan weapons seem to be repainted glue guns.

** In a case of "I Know That Gun''ship''", the [[IncrediblyLamePun aerial]] ambulance in ''Ariel'' is quite obviously modeled off the Soviet Mi-24 Hind, with its distinctive double canopy. The Alliance patrol/fighter craft appear to be based on [=F/A-18E/F=] Super Hornets.
* At first averted in the new ''BattlestarGalactica'''s first season, when most guns were either masked or obscure guns. However, in the following seasons, more recognizable guns were used, much to the ire of fans.
** In the first season, especially the humans on Kobol use H&K G36s and the futuristic-looking Beretta Cx4 Storm.
** At Zac Adama's funeral, the salute is performed with what appear to be British-made L85 automatic rifles, better known as the [=SA80=].
** There's also the COP .357 derringer, used by Zarek's men and other unofficial types. The same weapon was used in ''{{Bladerunner}}'' in the opening scene, so it's also a sci-fi ShoutOut.
** At one point Admiral Adama is going to an execution; the pistol he carries is clearly an H&K USP, complete with a [=SureFire=] laser sight attached under the barrel.
** From season 3 on the masked pistols were dropped and the Colonial Forces received FN Five-Sevens as standard sidearms. They have an underslung "Grenade Launcher" for the high praised explosive ammunition, but are basically just Five-Sevens.

** This is something of a near miss research-wise, as a few [=StG=]-44s persisted in service with the East German Border Guards and possibly a few other Soviet security forces as a stopgap whilst the AK-47 was being rolled out, but they were almost certainly long gone by the end of the 1950s.

** Also, in addition to their specially designed weapons the Genii use [[http://world.guns.ru/shotgun/sh09-e.htm Striker]] shotguns.

* In ''[[Series/RedDwarf Red Dwarf's]]'' eighth series, the resurrected crew of the titular ship appear to use Steyr [=AUG=]s as their standard service rifle. Canaries appear to be armed with modified [=MP5=]s.
** The canaries actually seem to be wielding some form of modified G3s, or variant thereof. The "magazines" are straight and more in line with a rifle caliber than a pistol one. Not to mention the amount of barrel forward of the foregrip.
** Nope. [[http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf#Heckler_.26_Koch_MP5 They were MP5s.]]

*** Well they do need a physical copy which they could make a model from. Many guns in-game are actually modeled off of airsoft guns - where else could you find an AK-47 with a polymer handguard, Picatinny rail, and Magpul stock? Other weapons which may not have an airsoft equivalent may have been sourced differently, whether from police stations, museums, or the actual steel. In any case, ''Modern Warfare 3'''s version of the G18 does include a selector switch (which isn't usable anyway).

* {{DOOM}} gives the hero a pistol that looks very much like a Beretta 92. And the shotgun? [[http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a332/Slik_Power/Picture001-1.jpg It's a digitized Tootsie Toy "Dakota" capgun.]]