Guns Of Fiction / Rockets, Missiles and Grenade Launchers

Guns of Fiction
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People say the RPG-7 is the most successful handheld anti-tank weapon in history, and I'm kind of afraid to disagree with those people when they're holding an RPG-7. This Russian-made weapon has been blowing shit up since 1961. It's used by the armies of 40 different countries and more than 9 million have been manufactured.

— Survival Guide, Far Cry 3

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AT4

So named for its 84mm caliber, the AT4 is a Swedish-made recoilless weapon, introduced in the 1980s. Designed on the same principles as the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, it is an unguided single-shot weapon, with the launcher discarded after firing. The weapon has been quite successful on the export market, having been adopted by the US military^note in fact, the US military adopted it before the Swedish military did, despite the latter starting testing of it first, with the Swedish later integrating all the changes the US made to their version, the Pansarskott m/86; the only difference between the two is that the m/86 has a folding foregrip and a number of other militaries, usually as a replacement or supplement for the older M72 LAW. The weapon has several different variants, each firing different types of ammunition, and can be fitted with optical sights, as shown in the image.

Like the LAW, the AT4 is also often portrayed in media as being reloadable, when it is not; the launcher is only designed to handle the stress of one firing. Some even portray it as a guided missile launcher.

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• One is used in Escape from L.A. to shoot down Plissken's helicopter.
• Appears in Ghost Recon, where it is mistakenly portrayed as reloadable (that or the soldiers armed with one have a Hyperspace Arsenal to fit so many of them across their back).
• The AT4 appears in Stargate SG-1 and its spin-off, where it is erroneously used to shoot down aircraft.
• An AT4 is famously used by Buffy to blow up the Judge, bypassing a rule that "no weapons forged" can defeat him.
• A heavily modified version appears in [PROTOTYPE], where it is portrayed as launching homing missiles.
• Appears in the Battlefield series starting with Bad Company 2, and returning for Battlefield 3 and 4. In BC2, it's again incorrectly shown as a guided weapon; it's properly dumbfire in the latter two, though in 3 it is only used in one very short sequence in single-player to blow up a building with a sniper in it.
• The Rocket Launcher in Half-Life 2 is a heavily modified AT4, portrayed as a laser-guided reloadable weapon.
• Heavily modified AT4s are seen in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen and its sequel.
• One is used by the Marines in Battle: Los Angeles to shoot down an alien drone. Based on the lock-on beep, the sound editors appear to have mistaken it for a guided weapon, though the actors and director correctly show the Marines leading their target before firing.
• The weapon was Dummied Out from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, fully-coded and working (with some even appearing on the backs of friendly Marines) but never actually given to the player without cheating. It formally appears in Modern Warfare 2, where it is incorrectly shown as both reloadable and capable of locking onto targets.
• The standard rocket launcher in Postal 2 is an AT4 with a fuel-charging meter in place of the usual scope. Like many of the other depictions above, charging it fully turns its projectiles into homing rockets. The Share the Pain multiplayer update introduced a retextured variant that lobbed hand grenades, which was later added to singleplayer with the "A Week in Paradise" Game Mod before updates following the game's rerelease on Steam removed it (replaced with the M79).
• Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica summons dozens of AT4s along with RPG-7s against Walpurgisnacht, in which the latter shrugs off all the explosions unscratched.
• The Fruit Bazooka in the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is based on the AT4.
• The Rocket Launcher from Just Cause 2 is the Swedish Pansarskott m/86 version, differing only in the use of a folding foregrip. Just Cause 2 isn't very big on reality when it gets in the way of blowing everything up, so its depiction is wildly incorrect, including holding three rockets in the tube at once from the beginning, enemies armed with it able to fire homing rockets, and the Final Boss getting one that fires at a semi-automatic rate.
• Appears as the ATM-4 in the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, the infinite rocket launcher unlocked for beating Leon's scenario with an S+ rank in the former and bought with 62400P in the shop in the latter after beating the game.
• An AT4 team is one of the Heavy Ordnance Corps available in Girls' Frontline. Compared to the earlier BGM-71 TOW, the AT 4 girls trade direct damage and shield-piercing power for utility, such as the accuracy of enemies caught in the blast radius and setting the affected ground on fire for damage over time.
• The regular version is obtained in Parasite Eve by defeating a boss in a Bonus Dungeon in Day 5. A customized version (dubbed "AT4-1") is also available in another Bonus Dungeon during New Game Plus.
• Appears in Insurgency as the Security team's rocket launcher usable by the demolitions class for 5 points. It returns in Insurgency: Sandstorm as the security demolition's 3 point disposable rocket launcher.
• In Wargame: Red Dragon, the AT4 is used by US Marines and Riflemen, British SAS, and Swedish Pansarskytte rifle teams.
• Bayonetta's Lt. Col. Kilgore are a set of AT4s modified with vertical grips on the top, gold decorations, and a red jewel on the back.
• The Burners have an AT4 or two at their disposal in Urban Chaos: Riot Response. They're depicted as being able to fire more than one payload, though the gang leader carrying it can be seeing discarding it. As such, Nick Mason cannot use it.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd stuffs an AT4 into his backpack in the Tomb Raider review.

Brügger & Thomet GL06

Designed in 2006 by Brügger & Thomet, the GL06 is a Swiss standalone break-action grenade launcher in the vein of the M79 and HK69A1 fielded by various law enforcement agencies and the Estonian Defence Forces.

B+T also produces the LL06, a yellow-framed variant intended for riot control. As it functions identically to its black-framed sister, it can safely use lethal ammunition and vice versa.

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• The LL06 appears in Brink! as the "Lobster".
• It's available as a secondary weapon in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier as the G106, able to use frag, smoke or EMP shells.
• Appears in Watch_Dogs, also as the G106.

Carl Gustav recoilless rifle

A man-portable, recoilless rifle that fires potent 84mm shells. It employs the Krupp firing system, which vents the propellant gas out the rear of the gun to eliminate recoil. The Carl Gustav M2 is distinguished by its high muzzle velocity, which gives its projectiles a lower, straighter trajectory and improves its accuracy compared to other rocket launchers.^note The last line isn't really correct: the Carl Gustav is a recoilless rifled gun, though there are some rocket-assisted rounds for it.

—Description, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

The Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle (a.k.a MAAWS, RAWS, Carl G, Carl Gustaf, Carl Johnson, Charlie G, the Goose, the Gustav, Charlie Gusto, Carl Gutsache) is a series of recoilless rifles, the first model developed in Sweden in 1946. The Carl Gustav is something of a living fossil. Most recoilless rifles are no longer in service, but the Carl G is still in service in over two dozen nations. Firing 84mm shells, the standout feature of the Carl Gustav is that it uses a rifled barrel to stabilize the shells it fires, as opposed to using fins on the projectiles themselves. This makes the Carl Gustav one of the most accurate and long-ranged unguided shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapons available today, with an effective range of 400 meters against moving targets and 700 against stationary ones. While the Gustav's effectiveness against modern heavy armor is limited, it has gained popularity as a "bunker buster", used to destroy fortified positions as well as light armored vehicles. It can also fire a wide variety of special munitions, from flechette canisters (essentially turning it into a giant shotgun) to smoke and flare rounds. This versatility has made it popular amongst Special Forces groups such as the Royal Marines and United States Army Rangers.

Several works have portrayed the Gustav as having guided munitions. While this is inaccurate for works set in the present (pre-2019/2020), for works set 20 Minutes into the Future, this becomes a lot more plausible due to the development of the Guided Carl-Gustaf Munition.

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• The Carl Gustav is used by Carlos to take down Psychlo flyers in the legendary box-office bomb Battlefield Earth. It is incorrectly shown as an anti-aircraft guided missile launcher, which is basically the exact opposite of what it is in real life.
• Towards the end of the 2005 version of The War of the Worlds, U.S Army soldiers can be seen destroying a weakened Tripod with a Carl Gustav.
• The Carl Gustav appears in Far Cry 2 as a second-tier anti-vehicle weapon. Like the Battlefield Earth depiction, this one is for some reason depicted as a laser-guided munition. I guess that's cool, or something. Another thing to note about the weapon is that it averts Missing Backblast, as the Gustav spits flame out the back every time you fire, which can burn you if you have your back to a wall or even starting a fire.
• Canaan's got one resting against a wall in a Middle Eastern hideout.
• U.S Anti-Tank soldiers are equipped with these in World in Conflict.
• Several games in the Battlefield series, including Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Bad Company and Bad Company 2. Interestingly, while in Bad Company 2 it is shown once again firing homing projectiles, it has no integral faculties for locking onto anything, and usually gets used as a dumb-fire weapon, as the Carl Gustav is in real life. The munition, however, can lock onto a signal tag launched from a special pistol (which few people use anyway since it takes up the sidearm slot in multiplayer and deprives them of a fall-back weapon). This "lock-on" munition can plausibly be explained/hand waved as a result of the game's 20 Minutes into the Future setting, which as above is turning into Truth in Television by the development of the Guided Carl-Gustaf Munition.
• In Patlabor: The Movie it is shown being used by JGSDF troops, likely the locally-made Howa 84.
• ARMA II has U.S Army units use these in the Operation Arrowhead expansion, as did its spiritual ancestor Operation Flashpoint.
• In Unto the Breach, the Gustav becomes the favored weapons for Shota, and he is rather proficient in its use for being Dumb Muscle. He carries and fires it like the other Keldara carry assault rifles.
• Metal Gear:
  • In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the Gustav is one of the more high damage rocket launchers in the game, and true to reality it is unguided, but more accurate than most rockets in the game. There are three variants: A standard high explosive version, a multi-purpose version with lower damage but a larger blast radius suitable for multiple opponents, and a Fulton recovery version, which allows the player to capture enemy soldiers from long range.
  • The Falkenberg Multi-Role Rocket Launcher from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is heavily based on the Carl Gustav. In the latter game, the weapon is upgradeable and can fit a blast shield when fully upgraded. While the Fulton version was not present originally, it was later patched in as a high level research project, but is heavily Nerfed from Peace Walker's version, only capable of fultoning out a single soldier with a direct hit, as opposed to being able to capture large groups of soldiers by landing a shot in the general vicinity.
• The FD-03 Gustav Karl from the Gundam series takes its name from this weapon.
• Dolph Lundgren makes good use of a Carl Gustav in Men of War.
• The Carl Gustav appears as the Rocket Launcher in Tomb Raider III, with a dark blue finish instead of the standard green. It is the most powerful weapon in the game, but ammo is rare for it, generally only being found in secrets, so the weapon is best reserved for bosses and the extremely tough enemies towards the end of the game.
• Earl Harbinger uses one in Monster Hunter Alpha to take out a pack of werewolves.
• The Carl Gustav appears in Insurgency: Sandstorm as the M3 MAAWS, the Security team's reloadable rocket launcher used by the demolitions class for 4 points.
• A common BLUFOR anti-tank weapon in Wargame: Red Dragon, used by fire support teams, rifle teams, and commandos. The only BLUFOR nation not to use them is Israel, whose support teams use Mark 19 grenade launchers or M47 Dragon antitank missiles instead.
• Jessie uses a Carl Gustav loaded with cherry petal blossoms to hold up a store in the Pokémon: The Original Series episode "The Squirtle Squad". Interestingly, this scene was actually kept in the 4Kids dub.
• This appears in Squad, with the M2 serving as the heavy anti-tank weapon of both the Canadians and Australians, while the M3 appears fills the same role for the US Army.

China Lake grenade launcher

No more than fifty of what is essentially a pump-action version of the M79 Grenade Launcher with a tube magazine are known to have been produced, and no more than six are known to still exist.

First produced in 1968, they were intended for Navy SEAL use, though some were used by Marine Force Recon and the Army 5th Special Forces Group. The weapon was lightweight (ten pounds maximum, due to extensive use of aluminum, only four more than a loaded M79) and reliable, though had some issues feeding some of the more oddly-shaped 40mm grenades available at the time, while being able to carry up to four grenades at once.

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Anime & Manga

• Fabiola Iglesias of Black Lagoon pulls one near the end of her shootout in the Yellow Flag, a move that prompts a very appropriate "...the FUCK is that?!" from Revy.
• Kosuna of Desert Punk uses one as her standard weapon, generally to give her mentor fire support. Like all the other weapons in the series it's supposed to be a reproduction, though one wonders how even a single one ended up in Japan and lasted long enough to be reverse-engineered.

Video Games

• Call of Duty: Black Ops features them as the top-tier launcher in multiplayer and they make an appearance in the single player missions "S.O.G." (where the player gets to go to town with one from the back of a Jeep, between launching TOW missiles at tanks) and "Crash Site" (where one is in a downed Soviet cargo plane for some reason).
• The Grenade Launcher of Fallout: New Vegas is this. The Holorifle from the Dead Money DLC is an interesting case, as it's actually a completely custom-made energy weapon that happens to use the China Lake's frame and barrel as housing for its sci-fi components.
• PAYDAY 2's version of the "Wolf Pack" DLC adds a China Lake, here called the "China Puff 40mm". Ironically, while the M79 is properly depicted as too heavy to carry alongside a full rifle (thus being a primary weapon), the China Lake, despite being a few pounds heavier, is a secondary weapon - which on top of its greater capacity gives it more utility than the other launchers. Then again, the same game also classes Rocket Launchers as purely secondary weapons.
• The MGL returns in PAYDAY 3 as an Overkill Weapon called the Marcom Mamba MGL - whilst it can't be equipped with incendiaries, its still capable of clearing out crowds of cops.
• Nathan Drake apparently picks one up in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (it's called such in-game) but only the forend has any resemblance to its namesake, the rest of the weapon being some bizarre mutant-gun based more on the Milkor MGL.
• Agents assigned as grenade support in Phantom Doctrine are seen to be using a China Lake to launch smoke, poison gas, or good old fashioned frag grenades.
• The China Lake earned its spot in Hotdogs Horseshoes And Hand Grenades in Update 84.

Davy Crockett nuclear rifle

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

—Robert J. Oppenheimer upon the first successful test of a nuclear device.

Just don't look directly at the blast.

Quite simply put the most powerful man portable ranged weapon ever conceived, the Davy Crockett is a recoilless rifle mounted on either a tripod or directly to a jeep. Unusually among recoilless rifles, the Davy Crockett's warhead sits on the muzzle of the gun and the weapon propels a large steel rod that the warhead sits upon.

Said warhead also happens to be a miniature nuclear bomb.

The Davy Crockett is famous for being the only infantry portable nuclear weapon ever deployed (but not fired), and one of the smallest nuclear weapons. It was designed by the United States specifically with use for stopping Soviet armor in West Germany, in the event that all-out open and total war broke out. With the Soviets' advances in armor technology, it wasn't known if NATO anti-tank weapons could pierce enemy tanks, so this contraption was designed to rectify the problem. Not only can it (obviously) crack several tanks at once, the radioactive fallout forces the surviving tanks to operate under hazmat conditions, which leaves them substantially less aware of their situation. 2100 units were made and deployed in Germany but several were recalled and moved to Vietnam during the war there. It was hoped that the presence of the launchers would make the Vietnamese reluctant to attack US military bases, but they only caused increased international pressure and were quickly recalled.

The Davy Crockett was formally deactivated in 1968, twelve years after production began and was never actually used in battle. Testing, however, revealed that the Davey Crockett had a rather major flaw, namely that radiation directly from the blast (blast shine) is still lethal to the user even at its maximum range.^note The problem was "solved" by having the users dig a foxhole directly by the weapon and jumping into it after firing. In fiction, however, expect the Davy Crockett or similar weapons to still be used to this very day. You can also expect its sub-kiloton warhead to be greatly exaggerated in magnitude if it goes off. It tends to show up more as a MacGuffin than it is used as conventional (pun intended) weapon, as firing off a nuke would dramatically shift the tone of most works. Given the fact it takes a two man team to carry and operate and can level multiple city blocks, if you see the Davy Crockett in a video game, you will at best get a chance to activate the weapon and not aim it at all.

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Video Games

• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater uses the Davy Crockett as a plot device that sets the game into motion. At the end of the prologue Virtuous Mission, the Ax-Crazy GRU Colonel Volgin receives a pair of Davy Crocketts from The Boss (who apparently defected from the United States to the Soviet Union). He then immediately uses it on the OKB-754 research facility by firing the 300 kilogram weapon with his bare hands inside a helicopter, creating an international incident and triggering Operation Snake Eater. The Boss herself later used the second Davy Crockett to destroy Groznyj Grad and Graniny Gorki, once again firing it by hand.
  • A (fictional) Soviet copy of the Davy Crockett also appeared in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops.
• There's one sitting around at the Citadel in Wasteland 2. Tampering with it sets off the nuke, wiping out the Citadel and the Desert Rangers.
• Early concept art shows that the Fat Man of the Fallout series was originally going to be a miniaturized Davy Crockett. However it ended up looking too much like an RPG-7 and the design was changed to the current pneumatic catapult. It's warhead is still inspired by the Davy Crockett though, both essentially being a tiny aerial bomb fired from ground based weapon.
• A Davy Crockett-like weapon^note identified as such, but with the appearance and portability of an RPG-7 appears in Garry's Mod. True to form, the blast is large enough to be likely to kill the firer as well as the intended target... and anyone who spawns in the area for several seconds afterwards, due to radiation effects.

FGM-148 Javelin

Developed in the 90s to replace the unpopular and obsolete M47 Dragon launcher, the Javelin is a crew-served soft-launch missile system, firing a 127mm tandem-charge anti-tank missile designed to defeat modern explosive reactive armour. The weapon consists of a disposable launch tube assembly (LTA) and a command launch unit (CLU) which contains the optics and guidance system; this is detached from the empty LTA after firing.^note Most video games, however, will instead have the entire assembly tossed away for the player to pull a new one out of the ether.

The missile is a fire-and-forget weapon which locks on to the thermal image of the target using imaging infrared: unlike the SACLOS Dragon which required the operator to remain in a seated position for up to 11.5 seconds holding the crosshair on the target, the Javelin team can relocate immediately upon firing. Like most ATGMs, Javelin uses a "soft launch" system where a small thruster which burns out before the missile has left the LTA throws the missile clear of the launcher, with the main engine only igniting once it's reached a safe distance. The Javelin's main booster is used for a steep climb, the missile then gliding to the target and steering itself with pop-out wings and fins. While it has two flight profiles, the initial climb is still present in the "direct" mode, it just makes an immediate diagonal flight towards the target rather than gliding over it and descending steeply: there is no way to fire a Javelin directly at a target. The missile is armed by inertial forces at around 65m from the launcher in direct-fire mode and 150m in top-attack mode, as a safety feature to protect the crew in case the main thruster fails to fire. Stated maximum range was 2km for Block 0 missiles and 2.5 for the current Block 1, though British testing has scored hits at around twice that range, up to 4.75km. Though mainly intended to destroy armored vehicles, it has seen increasing use against soft targets, such as unarmored vehicles and entrenched positions: this has led to the development of a multi-purpose warhead (MPWH) missile with an added steel fragmentation sleeve. The Javelin's relative portability (compared to other heavy weapons) and soft-launch capability have turned out to be surprisingly handy in urban fighting (though it still has a significant backblast danger area, it is not nearly as large as Dragon's), and even without a missile, its CLU can be repurposed as a thermal imager.

It has seen extensive use during the Russo-Ukrainian War, damaging and destroying large numbers of Russian armoured vehicles and earning itself the nickname of Saint Javelin.

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• Seen in three missions in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where it's stuck in top-attack mode. It's shown similarly in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, even when attacking helicopters where the launcher should be in direct fire mode.
  • There is a direct-fire mode Javelin in Call of Duty 4, in the level "All In". However, it's out of the way, to the point where it's very easy to miss (it's on a balcony above where you take out the two BMPs around the silos).
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots allows Snake to cart a Javelin around with him; it's shown as user-guided (SACLOS) rather than fire-and-forget, and like in Call of Duty Snake discards the entire launcher after every shot rather than detaching the launch tube from the CLU.
• The 2005 remake of The War of the Worlds features this weapon being used by US Army soldiers to bring down one of the alien tripods at the climax of the film when it's discovered its shields are malfunctioning.
• America's Army has the Javelin as a playable weapon, and allows it to be operated in top-attack or direct-attack modes.
• An unlockable launcher for the engineer class in Battlefield 3, though unlike its real life counterpart, it cannot attack aircraft unless they're painted by a laser, and its flight path is entirely dependent on whether the target is painted or not (non-painted means direct attack, laser means top attack even against aircraft).
  • The Javelin makes a return in Battlefield 4, only this time it is locked in top-down attack mode and requires constant locking onto the target unless they're painted by a laser.
• Presumably names the Allied Javelin Trooper in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, which may or may not be anachronistic (As though you could tell either way). The troopers themselves, however, do not act like it; their missile launchers have Bottomless Magazines and, when used in laser lock-on mode, can achieve a rate of fire that's positively automatic.
• Used by Frank Castle to blow up a Cartel drug factory.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Anatoli Knyazev uses a Javelin against the Batmobile during the chase scene at Gotham docks.

FIM-92 Stinger

A man-portable surface-to-air missile system, developed as the successor to the FIM-43. The launcher is disposable and good for only one shot. It is a very easy to use anti-air weapon. The missiles feature an improved guidance system with dual infrared and ultraviolet seekers. An enhanced seeker cooling system also shortens pre-launch lock-on time, which allows for quicker responses to unexpected engagements with the enemy.

—Description, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

A man-portable infrared surface-to-air missile system that entered service in the 1980s, the Stinger is in service with the United States and many other forces around the world. Although by no means the only MANPADS in service, is one of the best known. An air-launched version, the AIM-92 or Air-to-Air Stinger (ATAS), also exists for use by helicopters and Predator UAVs, and the M6 Linebacker, Humvee and AN/TWQ-1 Avenger vehicles are also able to launch Stingers.

The Stinger's largest role thus far has been its distribution to various irregular "allies" of the US during the Cold War. Its most notable use was in Afghanistan during the Soviet war, when the US provided the missiles to Mujahideen fighters to counter Soviet air power. The effectiveness of the Stinger over the course of the war is heavily disputed, with Western sources citing a high kill ratio and its introduction as a major turning point ^*The Stinger's threat did force Soviet aircraft to bomb from higher altitudes or operate at night, and they they began introducing lock-on warning and countermeasure systems to aircraft that didn't have them before like the Hind, while Russian sources dismiss these claims ^*Aircraft losses did not increase significantly after the missile's introduction, and the Soviets had already planned to withdraw by 1985, while the missile only arrived in 1986. Regardless, the Stinger's presence in the Soviet war in Afghanistan has secured it a place in popular culture.

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• Features in Licence to Kill and a key point of the plot, as well as the focus of a stunt involving an 18-wheeler going up on 9 wheels.
  • In GoldenEye, Q mentions that the BMW Z3 he's giving bond has Stinger missiles behind the headlamps. This wouldn't be possible in reality considering that the missiles are half the length of the car, and there is nowhere for the backblast to go.
• One is used to destroy a Goa'uld fighter in Stargate SG-1.
• The Stinger appears in both the original Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, where it is required to shoot down aircraft, and the only weapon effective against Metal Gears. It's also available in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, though due to the lack of bosses that require it in both games, it isn't particularly useful. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker allows the player to unlock one 12 years early as the XFIM92A.
  • Weapons expert and ally Nastasha Romanenko in MGS1 also tells you that her favorite weapon is the Stinger, her favorite novel is a thriller called Stinger, and her favorite cocktail is a stinger. She says she just really likes stingers.
• Doctor Who. In "Army of Ghosts" the British army blows up a Cyberman with one, even though it's an AA weapon.
• In the climax of the Desperate Escape chapter of Resident Evil 5, an enemy wields this weapon against the protagonists.
• Jack Ryan:
  • Stingers feature in The Cardinal of the Kremlin, with their use in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, and are mentioned as being better than the Strela shoulder-launched SAMs taken from the Soviets that gave the Archer his nickname ("Strela" means "arrow" in Russian).
  • Deconstructed in Tom Clancy's Executive Orders. Someone asks why this wasn't used to bring down the kamikaze who plowed into the Capitol; he's reminded that it probably would not have really mattered at that point in its flight plan, as the missile wasn't going to be able to do anything about the inertia the 747 had built up by that point.
• In Charlie Wilson's War, the main plot was about the titular character assisting the Afghan mujahideen by supplying them with Stinger missile launchers. These played a major role in shooting down the much hated Soviet Mi-24 Hind gunships.
• Towards the end of True Lies, terrorists fleeing in a van attempt to shoot down an attacking Marine Corps Harrier jet with a Stinger, but fail miserably, the backblast actually taking out one of their own guys.
• Gets used in Firebirds to shoot down a jet fighter strafing a downed helicopter.
• Common in the Call of Duty series, with the Modern Warfare games featuring it extensively as an anti-air weapon. Then comes Black Ops II, where the weapon is treated as both a free-fire, command-detonated, anti-armor weapon and a heat-seeking anti-air weapon which can't actually lock onto aircraft outside of the flashback missions, only one of which even features enemy aircraft.
• Appears frequently in the Battlefield series as a fire-and-forget anti-aircraft launcher. One notable moment in the single-player campaign of Battlefield 3 has the player, Sgt. Blackburn scrambling to acquire a fallen Stinger missile-launcher to destroy a Russian Su-39 Frogfoot harassing the surviving platoon.
• Used by Kiritsugu Emiya in Fate/Zero to shoot down a plane filled with zombies and magical wasps while his surrogate mother is still on-board.
• One Punisher story set in Afghanistan has badass ex-CIA agent, Kathryn O'Brien using this to shoot down a Russian Mil Mi-24 helicopter.
• The air-launched version of the Stinger is featured as an available special weapon for the AH-64 Apache in Ace Combat A Ssault Horizon.
• A common MANPADS option for BLUFOR forces in Wargame: Red Dragon, usually used by modern MANPADS teams. France (Mistral), ANZAC ^note  Australia + New Zealand (Rbs 70), Sweden (Rbs 90), Norway (Rbs 70 Mark 2), UK (Javelin) ^note  not to be confused with the FGM-148 Javelin mentioned here; this is a British-made hand-held SAM system and Canada (Javelin) do not have an option to use Stingers. It is also mounted as missiles on the German Flakpanzer Gepard A2 self-propelled AA gun, as anti-air missiles on helicopters (except French helicopters, who utilize Mistrals instead), and on the M1097 Avenger Humvee-mounted short-range air defense system.

Heckler & Koch HK69A1

Developed in the 1960s and originally conceived as a weapon that could be mounted under the barrel of the G3 Rifle, this standalone variant was created in 1979 and adopted by the German Army as well as many special forces units. Police use of this weapon is not uncommon, either. The later HK79, as originally intended, is designed to be underslung on the G3.

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• Appears in Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned and Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony. Given that 69 is an Arc Number in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, this specific grenade launcher may have been picked intentionally.
• The first weapon unlocked in the SWAT 4 expansion pack The Stetchkov Syndicate.
• One is used by Robert De Niro in Ronin (1998) to attack a convoy.
• Appears in Parasite Eve 2 as the "Grenade Pistol".
• One is used by Jamie Foxx in the Miami Vice film.
• Appears in Dino Crisis as the Grenade Gun, where it is the most powerful weapon in the game and can be loaded with either explosive or incendiary rounds, but only holds one shot at a time and is slow to reload without the upgrade for it. A infinite ammo version of the weapon can also be unlocked for New Game+.

Heckler & Koch XM25

Fires 25mm grenades that can explode mid-flight creating an airburst effect to eliminate targets behind cover. Aiming down the sights at a cover will lock in that distance, allowing the grenade to explode in the air 3 meters past the cover.

—Description, Battlefield 4

The XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, or CDTE, is a 25mm semi-automatic bullpup grenade launcher, designed by Heckler & Koch. It was spun-off from the ill-fated XM29 OICW as a standalone weapon.

The XM25 fires 25x40mm "smart" grenades, designed to track the distance it has traveled via the number of rotations it has made, then explode at a user-designated distance in midair at or near the targets (a tactic known as "airbursting"). The grenade has much longer range than the 40mm grenades fired by the M203 grenade launcher, while its airbursting properties allow it to more effectively target entrenched enemies (e.g. being set to detonate one meter past an enemy's cover, detonating in the air directly above them). The XM25 can be fitted with a thermal or optical sight, and is fed by a 5-round magazine. Less-lethal rounds are also available.

The XM25 was first field-tested in Afghanistan in 2010. The weapon performed well at its intended tasks, but by 2013, a number of complaints began popping up. The weapon, at 14 lbs, was heavy, and the large rounds reduced a soldier's ammo capacity, as well as forcing him to give up his rifle, reducing his combat capability. Worse, in 2013, one launcher exploded during a test, causing minor injuries, and resulted in the weapon being pulled from service with its funding eventually being cut. In 2017, the Army formally canceled its contract for the XM25, with the program itself terminated in July 2018.

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Films — Live-Action

• A mockup of the XM25 made from an L85A1 is used by Mars in The Expendables 3.
• Used briefly by Yelena in Black Widow. It's likely the same L85-based mockup.

Video Games

• The XM25 is a usable weapon in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where it is mainly used by FROGs. When fired normally, it is a standard impact-detonated grenade launcher, while deploying the scope activates its adjustable detonation distance.
• Appears in Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Play4Free, with its adjustable airburst system usable.
• The XM25 was introduced to PAYDAY 2 as part of the Gage Spec Ops Pack DLC, called the Arbiter in-game, where it has iron sights instead of a scope. It operates as a standard direct-fire grenade launcher without any sort of airbursting capabilities, and it also does about half the damage of the 40mm grenade launchers due to its smaller ammo, but that also gives it a greater reserve capacity (three full mags of 5 grenades each), and those grenades move much faster and have almost no arc. It also has a unique way to unlock it, requiring the player to find a box and its two keys in four separate heists.
• Appears as a usable weapon in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, portrayed differently between single- and multiplayer. In singleplayer it's treated as a bolt-action weapon, but automatically detonates whenever it flies within range of an enemy. In multiplayer it's depicted more properly, as a semi-automatic weapon with a manually-adjustable detonating distance (the grenade flying out one meter further than the dialed distance before detonating, for the purposes of airbursting just beyond cover and the like).
• The "Vulcanus-5" in Counter-Strike Online appears to be based on the XM25, albeit as a smart-bullet firing assault rifle.

Igla MANPADS family and derivatives

The 9K38 Igla ("needle", NATO reporting name SA-18 Grouse) is the Soviet counterpart to the FIM-92 Stinger, developed to replace the rather troublesome and (by this point) obsolete Strela MANPADS series. Development proved difficult, however, and as a result the program was split in two; a simplified version (with an IR seeker head based on the Strela-3) would enter service first while the full-capability missile was being finished.

The first variant 9K310 Igla-1, NATO reporting name SA-16 Gimlet was introduced into service in 1981, featuring terminal-maneuver capability (so the missile hits the fuselage instead of the jet nozzles), additional charge to set off remaining rocket fuel on impact, better resistance against countermeasures, reduced minimum firing range compared to the Strela-3, and optional IFF to stop the missile hitting friendly aircraft.
The full-version Igla MANPADS entered service in 1983, even better resistance against flares and jamming, a more sensitive seeker head, all-aspect capability, and slightly longer range.
Like its predecessor, Igla variants were supplied/sold to anyone willing to buy them. Notably, it was acquired by India (hence the trope Indians with Iglas), South Korea (Russia sold them SA-16s to pay off debts owed- other systems obtained this way include Metis-M ATGMs and T-80U MBTs), Finland, Iran, Peru, Vietnam, North Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Related to but distinct from the Igla is the Polish-made Grom ("Thunder") MANPADS, developed due to Poland not being able to update its MANPADS inventory after leaving the Soviet bloc in 1990, and thus the Soviets didn't allow them to licence production of the Igla to replace their aging Strela-2 and 2M missiles. Thankfully, in 1991, the USSR was torn apart into several nations, causing turmoil in Russia which were taken advantage of by Polish intelligence services and resulted in them obtaining plans for the SA-16 missile system in Leningrad. The first batch entered service in 1995 and still featured imported Russian components- near the end of the millenium, these were replaced by Polish-made components. The Grom was sold to Lithuania, Georgia (in turn some examples were captured by Russia in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War), and Indonesia. The current service MANPADS of the Polish Armed Forces, the Piorun ("Lightning"), is essentially a modernized Grom.

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• The 9K38 appears in Battlefield 2 as the SA-18 Igla (a weird example of using the original Russian name and NATO designation, something rarely seen with Eastern-bloc missiles of any kind anywhere else) and returns with the same name in Battlefield 4 where it is usable in Multiplayer. Strangely, the Igla operates closer to a SACLOS missile in-game, requiring the user to maintain lock until impact (when all IR-guided missiles in reality have been fire-and-forget and don't require people to do this); this is in part to balance it against the Stinger MANPADS, which has shorter range but proper fire-and-forget ability.
• Iglas (or their derivatives) are used by the later MANPADS teams of most REDFOR nations in Wargame: Red Dragon, with the Soviets getting the Igla-N variant (has a much larger warhead) as a prototype MANPADS infantry, with China using the QW-1 Vanguard (a domestic reverse-engineered variant of the 9K310 Igla-1 missile which incorporated some features from the Stinger), and Poland using the Grom. The only exception to this is Czechoslovakia, whose top-tier MANPADS team use Strela-3s instead.
• ARMA II features both the 9K38 and its predecessor, the 9K32 Strela, the former in use with the Russian Armed Forces while the latter is left for indigenous forces, including in a static mount with two side-by-side launchers.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II both feature the 9K38 modified with the more spherical battery coolant unit of the 9K34 Strela-3 as the "PILA", where it's treated as a reloadable weapon that can be dumb-fired or locked onto both ground and air vehicles.

Kampfpistole

A series of modified flare guns used by the Nazis with Gnarly Weapons. It was an attempt to create a small anti-tank weapon able to be used by pretty much any infantryman.

The initial design, the Walther Leuchtpistole, was in use as a flare gun all the way back to the 1920s. In 1942, however, the Wehrmacht issued an order to develop high-explosive ammunition for it. This was used alongside a new model of Leuchtpistole, known as the Leuchtpistole Z ("Z" being short for "Züge", meaning "grooves").

Eventually, a folding stock and indirect-fire sight, alongside a new anti-tank warhead, was designed. And thus the Sturmpistole, the most famous installment in the series, was born. Unfortunately, this idea was a complete failure as the rounds were too weak to be effective against even tankettes, and so it was put on the back burner in favour of the Panzerfaust. Needless to say, this has not stopped the Kampfpistole from appearing in quite a few media.

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Anime & Manga

• Appears in Strike Witches spin-off series Brave Witches, where it's used by many notable Karlsland witches such as Waltrud Krupinski and Gundula Rall, often in a fictional underbarrel configurations attached on their StG-44 assault rifles.

Video Games

• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain both feature the Kampfpistole. In the former, it is one of the worst weapons in the game, due to its ridiculously poor accuracy, but eventually, you unlock a stock for it. It's more useful in Outer Ops mode, where it turns Combat Unit soldiers into Glass Cannons, therefore making them effective against vehicles.
• Available as a stand-alone grenade/rocket launcher in Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, acting as a single-shot counterpart to the revolving underbarrel device you can attach to the 1960s-era assault rifle in The New Order. Contrary to reality, or the depiction above, it's incredibly accurate and powerful, but this comes at the cost of a very shallow ammo pool - six rockets, with an upgrade for killing a bunch of people with it increasing that by three - and so few pickups for it that said upgrade is a Bragging Rights Reward that requires grinding out those kills across multiple playthroughs. A semi-auto version with a drum magazine attached returns for The New Colossus, completely taking over the role filled by TNO's underbarrel launcher, with the rocket-propelled projectiles being an upgrade that can be toggled off if you need to bounce grenades around a corner.
• The Sturmpistole appears in Deadfall Adventures as the Panzer Wurfkorper, working like a single-shot HE grenade launcher. It is also anachronistic for the game's setting of 1938.
• Hotdogs Horseshoes And Hand Grenades has the Sturmpistole as of Update #52's 10th alpha.

M1 / M9 / M20 Bazooka

The M1 rocket launcher was developed in the US; while the basic idea of a rocket-powered recoilless infantry weapon had been around since World War 1, the weapon was not first issued until 1942. The name 'bazooka' came from how it resembled Bob Burns's 'bazooka' instrument in the 30s, and the name stuck so well that any biggish gun or rocket launcher risks being called a bazooka. The M9 version used an optic sight, reinforced tube and a more powerful rocket, while the M20 "Super Bazooka" (pictured above), introduced during the Korean War, used a much larger round with increased range. Soviet soldiers found it a very welcome change from obsolete anti-tank rifles when it was provided to them by Lend-Lease, and the Germans soon produced their own version, the Panzerschreck, which was of a larger 88mm calibre. The Bazooka was ultimately phased out during the Vietnam War, replaced by the M67 Recoilless Rifle and the M72 Light Anti-tank Weapon, a disposable rocket launcher.

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• More or less any WW2 movie or video game which contains tanks will also contain bazookas to fire at them.
• Used by Easy Company soldiers against German tanks, fortified positions, and roadblocks in Band of Brothers.
• Used by US Marines on Peleliu and Iwo Jima against Japanese tanks and dugouts in The Pacific.
• The M9 is used in Call Of Duty United Offensive, 3, and Call of Duty: World at War, while the M1 is used in Call of Duty: WWII and Call of Duty: Vanguard.
• You end up using (and taking fire from) Bazookas towards the end of the War segment in Conker's Bad Fur Day. It's in the multiplayer modes, too.
• Saving Private Ryan: One is used by Sgt. Horvath to destroy a lightly-armored Marder III Ausf. H tank destroyer during the climactic assault. He then fires it again at the frontal armor of a Tiger I tank, against which it does no good.
• Medal of Honor:
  • Medal of Honor (1999): The M9A1 variant is issued to Lt. Patterson during the final two levels, in part due to the Germans deploying Panzerschrecks against him. Much like its enemy-exclusive counterpart, the Bazooka is capable of performing a One-Hit Kill on any German infantryman unlucky enough to be caught in the rocket's explosion. Due to no German tanks appearing as enemies, this weapon is used exclusively in the Anti-Infantry role.
  • Medal of Honor: Allied Assault features the M1 variant. Lt. Powell gets to use one during the Sniper Town level, to destroy a gate in order to advance, as well as to knock out a Panzer IV later on. In the Breakthrough Expansion Pack, Sgt. Baker, after retrieving a cache of bazookas from a crashed glider, uses one against Italian tanks in the Gela part of the Sicily level.
  • Medal of Honor: Frontline: The M9A1 variant is found during the final level by Lt. Patterson as he breaks into the Gotha facility. The Germans had managed to capture one for analysis, and Patterson steals it and a nearby Browning Automatic Rifle as he continues his way deeper into the heavily defended German base.
• Army Men, being effectively a Lighter and Softer version of World War II and Vietnam, arms various soldiers on every side with these. Riff, The Lancer of the squad from Sarge's Heroes, specializes in it.
• Seen in Men of War, the M1A1 Bazooka is used by the US AT-infantry, Airborne troops and mounted on certain vehicles, as well as Soviet AT-infantry and Red Guardsmen (Truth in Television, as a large number of bazookas were given to the USSR at the time through the Lend-Lease Act).
• US Rangers from Company of Heroes will be equipped with two Bazookas per unit.
• Day of Infamy features an M1A1 Bazooka usable by the US Army Engineer class. Notably it has an option to equip White Phosphorous rockets for a less explosive, but area-denying alternative, for only one supply point.
• Shows up memorably in the Goldfinger novel: Felix Leiter wields one when he comes to Bond's rescue at the battle of Fort Knox, modified so he can hold it with his hook prosthetic. Bond later uses it to unsuccessfully try and stop Goldfinger's train from escaping.
• Used in Windtalkers against Japanese fortifications.
• Appears in the all three Brothers in Arms titles, used against German tanks, half-tracks, and fortifications. In the second game, it appears as a hidden weapon, while in the third game, they're used almost exclusively by a heavy-weapons team.
• In Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, Pitohui turns out to have been hoarding an M9-A1 in her inventory during the Test Play battle in Volume 6. The firepower proves to be crucial when going up against the NPC team's stockpile of RPG-7s. The narration even points out that the M9-A1's age does not at all mean it's weak.
• Hell Let Loose issues the M1A1 variant to the US anti-tank class, along with a primary weapon and 2 rockets. It's later made available for the Soviet Anti-Tank class as their final weapon unlock.
• M20 Super Bazookas are used by Danish, Yugoslavian and South Korean reservists in Wargame: Red Dragon.
• Guns, Gore & Cannoli: The Bazooka appears in the first game as a pickup weapon, and is commonly used by US Army soldiers. It is notably an anachronism, as it is set in the 1920s, a full 14 years before it's developed and enters US Army service.

M18 recoilless rifle

Based on the designs of captured German recoilless rifles, the M18 was introduced to the United States Army late in the Second World War. It loads a 57mm shell into the breech, where the specialized shells can serve in anti-infantry or anti-armor roles. It can be fired on the shoulder like any rocket launcher, or propped up on the M1917 Tripod. It first saw combat in March 1945 in the European front and later rifles were sent over to the Pacific alongside it's larger counterpart, the M20 Recoilless Rifle loading in the 75mm shell. Many American troops recounted the rifle being a handy weapon during the Battle of Okinawa where the High Explosive and White Phosphorus rounds were effective against the dug-in troops.

It was used in the Korean War against enemy machine gun nests; unfortunately, the M18 was found ineffective against T-34 tanks deployed by the PVA or the KPA. It also saw some service in the Vietnam War, despite being an obsolete weapon compared to the M72 LAW. The M18 was also adopted by the French and the Brazilians. Red China was able to create their own version, known as the Type 36 recoilless rifle, using designs captured in Nationalist factories during the Chinese Civil War. It was deliberately designed with the bore and shells being a millimeter wider. This small change allowed the Type 36 to fire captured 57mm shells, but the M18 cannot use the new 58mm shells. The Type 36 was also used by the Vietnamese and the Tanzanians.

When it shows up in fiction, it was often shown to be in service as early as the Normandy Landings, despite happening a year prior to its active service. Also expect it to be shown doing much more damage than the regular M1 and M9 Bazooka, the former of which is usually depicted as performing poorly against heavier German tanks.

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Video Games

• It shows up as an upgrade for the US Airborne Squads in Company of Heroes.
• Serves as the American's anti-tank weapon in Medal of Honor: Airborne, used in Operation Neptune to destroy a Tiger Tank. Upgrades through making kills with the weapon allow you to attach an adjustable scope and carry more ammunition.
• Appears in Battlefield 1943 as the anti-tank weapon for both American Marines and the Imperial Japanese Army.

M202 FLASH

A rocket launcher loaded with four rockets that can be fired one after another, allowing the user to deliver massive firepower in a hurry. On the down side, its weight and bulk make it quite awkward to handle. As such, it is probably best used to provide supporting fire from a distance.

—Description, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

A four-tube shoulder-fired incendiary rocket launcher, the M202 FLame Assault SHoulder weapon was designed to replace heavy and obsolete flamethrowers in the US inventory and was first produced in 1978, being based on an experimental napalm launcher trialed extensively during The Vietnam War. This suitcase-sized, 27-pound launcher is usually depicted in fiction as a regular rocket launcher rather than using the special thickened pyrophoric agent rounds it actually fires^note while conventional HEAT rockets were considered for the M202, they were never produced.

It's favored by videogames wanting to give the player a modern-era BFG, due to it looking like someone stripped a rocket pod off a helicopter and gave it a pistol grip and sight. Similar weapons are the more common Russian RPO series, which have only one barrel, but can also fire fuel-air and smoke warheads in addition to incendiary, and the Chinese FHJ-84, which has two barrels in an over-and-under configuration.

The M202 was first fielded in Vietnam in the 1970s; however, it was generally disliked by soldiers due to being bulky, heavy, and having various reliability problems with the rockets, including the tendency to self-ignite during loading of the weapon and to leak dangerous chemicals while in storage. As a result, most M202s were quickly retired from service in the '80s, their role generally being replaced by more modern and reliable thermobaric and incendiary rounds for rocket and grenade launchers, though the M202 has still seen some limited use with the US Military as recently as Afghanistan, and is also currently in service with the South Korean military.

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Films — Live-Action

• Most famously used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando, particularly during the comically over-the-top Storming the Castle finale.
• Carrie Fisher's prop rocket launcher in The Blues Brothers is obviously based on the M202.

Anime and Manga

• The "Big Box" rocket launcher of Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team is a futuristic six tube version of the FLASH scaled up for use by Humongous Mecha.

Video Games

• In ANNO: Mutationem, a variant called the Tunguska launcher is picked up in the Ship Level. It can shoot a total of three missiles at enemies upon locking on at its targets.
• Appears in the James Bond videogames The World Is Not Enough and NightFire as the "AT-420 Sentinel." Strangely, they have a guided option.
• The missile launcher in Far Cry is clearly based on the M202, and in the console games was replaced with an actual M202.
• Resident Evil: Its most notable video game appearance is probably in Resident Evil and its remake, where it is given to you at the very end of the game to kill the Tyrant with, and it is also usable in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, where it can be found in a keycard-locked locker in the Dead Factory with only 2 shots in it, though it is unusable in the remake, where it is used by Carlos to shoot at Nemesis in a cutscene. An infinite ammo version can also be unlocked in the original and Director's Cut versions of 1 (the remake replaces it with a fictional magazine-fed rocket launcher) by beating the game in under 3 hours and can be bought in Mercenaries mode in the third game for $4000. It also replaces the FIM-92-like rocket launcher in the Resident Evil 2 (Remake), with its description properly mentioning its incendiary rockets.
• The Helghast rocket launcher in the first Killzone was based on it, but had only three tubes rather than four. This is of very little comfort if you happen to be on the business end of them.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops features the M202 under the suitably intimidating name of "Grim Reaper" (though still referred to in dialogue as the M202). Given the game's timeline placement in the Vietnam War, it might be meant to represent the earlier XM191 prototype.
• Team Fortress 2 gives the Soldier a craftable rocket launcher called the Black Box based on the M202, which is the FLASH body with only a single barrel. As with all of his other launchers, it's muzzle-loaded and fits multiple rockets.
• Fallout 4: Upgrading a Rocket Launcher to four-shot ammo capacity ends up turning it into an M202.
• Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage has Jagi's level 3 Hyper Signature Move featuring an M202; Jagi pulls one out of the ground, fires a miniature nuke from it, and then rolls back with the blast wave, slapping the ground in maniacal glee.
• In Sengoku Basara 3, Magoichi Saika has one of these as the capstone of her Basara attack and as a Super Art. It's just better to not ask how she manages to have a quad-barrel rocket launcher in Sengoku-era Japan — it's far from the worst of the series' historical infractions.
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker: This can be researched and developed upon obtaining the correct documentation. Not as powerful as other launchers, but its four barrels allow for rapid fire.
• Added to PAYDAY 2 in the Scarface Heist DLC as the Commando 101. It has lower damage than the other rocket launcher in the game, the RPG-7, but is still the second most powerful weapon in the game and compensates by having four shots before requiring a reload, a built-in scope, and more ammo in reserve.
• Used by Brian Fury in his ending for Tekken 6, in conjunction with a Gatling gun.
• Used by the titular antagonist in Batman: Arkham Knight during Scarecrow's escape from Stag's Airship. A slight Lampshade Hanging appears in the GCPD Evidence Locker where Cash points out that whoever funded the Knight's Militia must have deep pockets based on how advanced their gear is.
• Ratchet & Clank (2002): The RYNO is a multi-missile launcher that deals severe damage to all enemies. Though a fictional weapon, it has clear M202 influence in its boxy design and multiple barrels (nine of them, in fact).
• Shadow the Hedgehog features an M202-like rocket launcher with eight barrels, a grey finish, a more advanced scope on the top and a laser sight. It can lock onto targets and fire homing rockets at them.
• Soldier of Fortune has it wielded by the appropriately named FLASH troopers. Unlike the real version, it can home in on targets and fire all four rockets at once as a secondary function.
• WinBack has a generic version as a disposable weapon, also used by the boss Gunt.
• Cataclysm: The weapon is accurately portrayed as an incendiary missile launcher, which makes it invaluable when dealing with the zombie hordes. It also appears as the mounted weapon on some of the Talon UGV variants.

M47 Dragon

A state-of-the-art, man-portable anti-tank missile that just recently entered service in the U.S. military. The launcher is disposable and good only for one shot. The M47 employs an optical, wired guidance system with excellent seeking capabilities. Its warhead is also among the most powerful in its class, capable of blowing almost any target to smithereens. If you think the enemy is going to be tough to take down, don't think twice about taking the M47 with you.

—Description, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

First introduced in 1975, the M47 Dragon was an American man-portable wire-guided anti-tank missile, designed mainly for use against armored vehicles and hardened structures. The launcher features a built-in bipod and removable optics, a utilizes a SACLOS (Semi-Automatic Command Line Of Sight) targeting system, which requires the user to keep the weapon pointed at the target.

The Dragon was not well-liked by anyone who used it for several reasons. Its range was relatively short (1000 meters, increased to 1500 meters with improved variants), and the missile's launch created a signature popping noise and kicked up a large amount of smoke, giving away their position, made worse by the fact that the guidance system forced the user to remain still for a long time. In addition, as a recoilless weapon, the lack of recoil, followed by the sudden loss of the 30-pound missile surprised many operators, who tended to flinch and lose control of the missile.

The weapon was eventually replaced by the FGM-148 Javelin, with the last Dragons retired in 2001, though the weapon is still in use with Morocco, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Thailand.

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Literature

• The infantry of Team Yankee are equipped with the Dragon in addition to LAW rockets for antitank use. In one memorable sequence, two privates, one normally a tank crewman, use the missile to take out a Soviet tank after the designated Dragon gunner is killed. In a nod to the issues described above, their first shot - the first either had ever fired - goes wild, forcing them to race against time to prepare a second missile before the tank crew can respond.

Video Games

• American anti-tank teams use the Dragon in Wargame: European Escalation.
• The "Rockwell BigBazooka Rocket Launcher" in Fallout and 2 is actually an M47 Dragon with the bipod removed.
• Appears in ARMA 2 as part of the Operation Arrowhead expansion. Befitting its age and obsolescence, it's used by local militants who were supplied with them by the US decades prior.
• Metal Gear:
  • The RC missile in Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is identified as an M47 Dragon in the manual.
  • The M47 can be developed and used in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, where it is portrayed as a fire-and-forget missile.

M72 LAW

A disposable rocket launcher developed to give infantry a means of attacking hard targets such as light armorred vehicles and bunkers. It is light and compact enough for a soldier to carry several at once without being slowed down. The LAW rocket packs quite a punch for such a small package; a single shot can take an entire pack of enemies in one fell swoop.

—Description of the M72A3, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

The M72 LAW (Light Anti-Armor Weapon) is a Vietnam-era development focused on cutting down launcher weight and size when compared to the WWII Bazooka while still allowing a soldier to carry enough firepower to knock out armored targets. It consists of a single unguided 66mm rocket enclosed in a collapsible launch tube. Once fired, a set of fins on the rocket deploy to stabilize it in flight, and it is fused to detonate on contact with the target. Like the Panzerfaust, the design is geared towards simplicity and cheap construction, with the tube doubling as the carrying case for the rocket itself and intended to be discarded after firing, though this soon became a little more complex (the front sight is supposed to be snapped off and handed to a radiation safety officer because the markings are radioluminescent paint, and orders were soon given to destroy spent tubes because the Vietcong liked filling them with explosives and using them as boobytraps). That doesn't stop some movies from making the mistake of treating it as reloadable like the earlier bazooka. As its effectiveness as an anti-armor weapon quickly decreased due to the rapid development of armor schemes for tanks and IFVs, testing got underway in The '80s to find a successor. The more powerful AT-4 effectively replaced the LAW as the US Army's disposable anti-armor weapon, but the relatively lightweight LAW found a new lease of life as a handy weapon for attacking structures and dug-in positions. A common sight in action movies as it gives the hero the ability to single-handedly deal some serious damage like blowing up vehicles and small structures. The relative ease of finding a spent launch tube on the collector’s market to use as a prop (in many states they have the same legal status as spent rounds of ammunition, and so require no special licenses) also helps.

• Cool Action: Unfolding the LAW before firing, which is sort of a Dramatic Gun Cock for it and may be enhanced by popping off the end cap, extending the tube with an amount of force more normally associated with trying to start a chainsaw, and / or the addition of an almighty SHUUUNK sound as it extends.

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• In Ronin (1998), one is employed to blow up a carload of mooks during the car Chase Scene.
• Chuck Norris uses one to deal with the Big Bad at the end of Invasion U.S.A. (1985).
• Rambo used this to destroy a helicopter in the second movie.
• Dirty Harry uses one to take out Bobby Maxwell in The Enforcer. Maxwell and his group steal a bunch of them from a military armoury. There's also a humorous scene where Harry has to pull Kate Moore away from the backblast during a demonstration.
• Paul Kersey takes out the Big Bad with one of these at the end of Death Wish 3. More remarkable than the Missing Backblast that allows him to fire it inside an apartment with his back to a wall is that he apparently obtained the weapon via mail order, something that has also never been possible to do with a rocket launcher in reality.
• "D-Fens" Foster fires one in Falling Down. Humorously enough, Foster has trouble preparing the launcher to fire and has to rely on a nearby youngster to show him how to open it up and unfold the sights.
• The most expensive weapon for the Demolition perk in Killing Floor is called the LAW (though the actual model is mostly based on the British LAW 80); killing the Patriarch with it nets you the achievement "The LAW That Broke The Camel's Back".
• Appears in Battlefield: Vietnam used by US / ARVN Anti-Tank troops.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops - Available in both single and multiplayer modes. Accurately used to take out NVA armor during the assault on Khe Sahn in single player, however, multiplayer mode makes the mistake of showing it as capable of locking onto aircraft. Probably an intentional decision, armored vehicles do not appear in multiplayer and leaving it without a vehicle destroying function would make it redundant since the dumb-fire RPG is already available for those who just want to use rocket launchers on a single person for kicks.
• Max Payne 3 features the LAW during a sequence where Max must destroy an armored truck.
• Jax in Mortal Kombat X utilizes this in his Heavy Weapons Variation.
• Used to take out a couple of North Korean tanks late in Red Phoenix. A little later on in the same battle, they provide critical fire support to take out a fortified position menacing the US's only supply and evacuation route into the city.
• It is actually the Staff of Destruction in The Familiar of Zero
• The Big Bad in True Lies uses this during the Florida Keys shootout in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Ahnold's character.
• The RPG-18, a Soviet equivalent, is available in 7.62 High Caliber and is correctly depicted as disposable.
• Available in Parasite Eve if you give Wayne 300 Junk and ask him to make you a rocket launcher.
• Snake makes use of one in an interactive cutscene when he first encounters the Chrysalis AI weapon in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. From there on, it's available for research and use by the player. The weapon is also usable in Guns of the Patriots.
• One of the many weapons that Frank Castle has in his arsenal.
• In the Jurassic Park novel, Robert Muldoon has the LAW, as well as a customized tranquilizer rocket launcher as his weapons of choice rather than the SPAS-12 in the film. He used the former to kill a raptor and blow the leg off another.
• A very common LAW option for infantry in Wargame: Red Dragon for BLUFOR forces. The only BLUFOR nations not to use them are France (LRAC F1), Germany (Panzerfaust series), and Sweden (AT4). In a rarity for REDFOR forces, Finland and Yugoslavia use M72 LAWs for their rifle teams

M79

The Special Purpose Individual Weapon projects of the 1950s and 1960s, an attempt to replace current rifles with flechette-based weapons, were overall a failure. However, one nugget of success came about: attempts to create an explosive weapon with more accuracy and destructive power than muzzle-mounted rifle grenades and more portability than mortars lead to the development of the superb 40x46mm grenade round. Springfield Armory later created the S-3 single-shot break-open launcher for the round, which was eventually refined into the S-5. Fitted with a new leaf sight to account for trajectories, the S-5 was officially adopted by the US armed forces as the M79, just in time for things to go south in Vietnam.

—Description, Let's Play of SWAT 3

The M79 is a break-action single-shot 40x46mm grenade launcher, most resembling a break-action shotgun with a giant barrel and upside-down stock (to make it easier to point and fire in an upward arc— this is not meant to be a close-quarters weapon). First deployed during the Vietnam War with the aim of providing increased firepower to dismounted infantry without resorting to more cumbersome rifle grenade launchers, it functioned mainly as a middle ground between hand-thrown or rifle grenades and full-on mortars (the 40mm grenade was developed expressly for that purpose during the SPIW program of the 50s). Nicknamed the "Thumper" or "Blooper" due to the distinctive report, the M79 was a popular weapon among troops, but its size and weight limited it to designated grenadiers. It was largely replaced with the M203 underbarrel launcher as the latter came into service, since the M203 allowed the user to also function as a rifleman, though the M79 still sees some use (such as explosive ordnance disposal) as its longer barrel than the M203 gives it a longer effective range as a result. The rather old-fashioned, no-nonsense look of the weapon means it's a popular choice as a personal BFG in both movies and videogames. A rare pump-action four-shot weapon based on the design also exists, known as the China Lake Launcher.

• Cool Action: Snapping the M79 closed by flicking the barrel upwards after inserting a new round. There's a high chance anyone doing this will go on to fire the weapon one-handed because the motion may accidentally cause the weapon to fire and possibly break their wrist. So in other words: Awesome, but Impractical.

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• Likely to be seen in any Vietnam War movie in the hands of a grenadier; in less realistic cases, it might be carried by a regular rifleman. In video games, it's very likely that the weight issue preventing its use alongside a rifle will be ignored entirely, even in games ostensibly using a Limited Loadout for realism purposes. Still, there were some grenadiers in Vietnam who actively carried an M16A1 as their preferred sidearm instead of a .45.
• One of the most iconic uses is in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, where Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator uses an M79 to hold off dozens of cops and finally defeat the shape-shifting T-1000. The arcade game based on the film requires you to grab one in order to beat the T-1000 and finish the last stage.
• A favorite in the Syphon Filter video game series, particularly for its effectiveness against enemies wearing body armour or if the player just wants to see some bad guys fly. Gabe used it one-handed in the first three games but it was switched to a two-handed weapon in The Omega Strain.
• A Scary Black Man uses one with uncanny accuracy on a name-calling VC infiltrator in Apocalypse Now.
• Former Symbol agent Wan uses one during his introductory scene in Gasaraki.
• In episode 3 of Black Lagoon Revy uses one of these to finish off Luak's ship as he tries to escape.
• One version of Frank Castle's tour of duty in Vietnam depicts one of of his squad mates using this weapon on some very unfortunate Viet Cong. The results were... predictable.
• Appears in Left 4 Dead 2 and is devastating against massed hordes of zombies. Balanced by the fact that it is one of the only weapons that cannot be reloaded from found ammunition stocks.
• Killing Floor features one meant to be used by the Demolition perk; a player that has leveled that perk high enough can even start a game or respawn with one for free. Then there's a Bling-Bling-BANG! DLC pack that, among others, introduces a gilded M79 with golden shells.
• Shows up in Far Cry 2, where it is incredibly useful because it provides much-needed long-range punch for use against vehicles, yet occupies the sidearm weapon category, and thus doesn't prevent the player from carrying more general-purpose assault rifles or shotguns. It shows up again in Far Cry 4, once again in the sidearm slot.
• It appears in Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil Survivor and Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, using real life explosive and incendiary rounds, and fake ones like acid and B.O.W gas rounds. In the Resident Evil 3: Nemesis novel, Jill uses one with 40mm buckshot rounds.
  • Those buckshot rounds exist in reality, in the form of the M576 grenade, essentially a 12-gauge shotshell with over twenty #4 buckshot pellets, as a way for grenadiers to clear thick brush and defend themselves at close range (grenades aren't very good for the latter purpose). Be sure to aim at the foot of the target.
• First featured in Battlefield: Vietnam in the Battlefield series, with a familiar tiger-striped camo scheme. It returns in Battlefield: Bad Company 2's Vietnam expansion with the same tiger-stripe camo as a gadget for the Assault class, and then again in Battlefield Hardline as part of the Syndicate Mechanic's default equipment.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 features the Thumper as a secondary weapon. Call of Duty: Black Ops instead features the China Lake, given its propensity toward exotic prototype weaponry. The Thumper would later return again in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
• Fallout: New Vegas features both versions, the single shot M79 called the "Grenade Rifle" and the four shot China Lake version dubbed the "Grenade Launcher." The Lonesome Road DLC adds several upgraded versions with patriotic names and color schemes, like the Great Bear Grenade Rifle (which has blue painted furniture and a white US Army star on the stock), while the Dead Money DLC's "Holorifle" is also based on the China Lake.
• Available as one of two grenade launchers in 7.62 High Caliber, allowing for more precise firing of grenades at longer ranges.
• It appears in PAYDAY: The Heist with the Wolf Pack DLC as the "GL40", where it can be fitted with a rangefinder. It reappears under the same name in PAYDAY 2 with the Gage Assault Pack DLC, where it can be modified with a sawed-off barrel and stock, and with the later BBQ Weapon Pack, loaded with incendiary grenades.
• Very handy in Alien Shooter Vengeance, where it appears as an early-game explosive weapon that will easily reduce whole swarms of the basic bug enemies into a fine red paste.
• The Thumper is Jax's choice of weapon in Mortal Kombat 11, as he utilizes this as one of his special moves (also named "Thumper") and the last hit during his Fatal Blow.
• Team Fortress 2's Grenade Launcher has the barrel, foregrip, and stock of an M79, but it's more of a revolver grenade launcher, noted below. The Loch-and-Load is an M79 modified to have two barrels in an over-under arrangement.
• An M79 can be found in Parasite Eve in the hospital's basement, and upgraded versions of it (designated with a "2", "3", etc.) throughout the game from there on.
• The M79 is the grenade launcher found in Metal Gear. Snake gets it by taking out the 4 mercs guarding it, then using it to demolish a gunship and an armored bulldozer respectively.
• Sergei Dragunov can use an M79 as an item move in Tekken Tag Tournament 2.
• One of the three standard weapons used by Tim O'Brien's platoon in The Things They Carried, with several members of the platoon carrying one when needed. Tim notes that the launcher itself is quite light, but the grenades are quite heavy. It's also the primary weapon of Ted Lavender, who also carries 34 grenades over the standard practice of 25 in his already heavy backpack.
• MASK de Smith's weapons in Killer7 are a pair of cut-down M79s. His need to reload after every single shot is one of his balancing measures at the start of the game, though as he collects newer wrestling masks throughout the game, he eventually reaches the point where he doesn't need to reload at all.
  • Some M79 users in real life did shorten the barrel and/or stock to reduce weight. The most drastic changes involved chopping off the entire stock except for a little nub and cutting the barrel just ahead of its hinge, so that it wasn't much longer than the grenade rounds.
• The M79 appears in The World Is Not Enough fitted with green synthetic furniture as the GL 40. The grenades fired usually explode upon impact with anything, but on alternate fire they explode after a 5-second delay.
• Appears in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam for US, Australian and South Vietnamese forces. In campaign mode, the US Army, USMC, and Australian Army get it from the start, while the ARVN don't get it until the mid-war point. Three different ammo types are available: conventional grenade rounds, smoke rounds to conceal an advance or obscure the vision of enemy positions, and buckshot rounds to give the grenadier an option besides their pistol for close-range self defense.
• Team V2HG in Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online make use of an M79 in Squad Jam 4 to lay siege to Teams LPFM and SHINC.
• In the late-game stages of Urban Chaos: Riot Response, the Burners start fielding the M79.
• Resistance members in Trunk's Bad Future in Dragon Ball Super are seen wielding these, most notably in the "Don't shoot, this man isn't Black!" scene.

Mark 19

Designed as a crew-served weapon to provide high firepower to infantry and light vehicles, this 73-pound blowback-operated 40mm grenade launcher first entered service during the Vietnam War where it was used on river patrol boats, and has been in use ever since. Capable of firing at around 350rpm, the weapon is accurate out to just under a mile against point targets, and can be mounted on a tripod; more commonly, however, it is mounted on ground vehicles or helicopters. The weapon's heavy weight is its principal shortcoming, and efforts are underway to replace it with a more sophisticated and modern weapon; the cancelled XM307 was one such attempt, while the Mark 47 Mod 0 is currently being evaluated as a possible candidate. The Mark 19 has been exported and copied extensively, and will likely remain in service in other countries for a long time to come.

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• A frequent sight in movies and videogames set during or after the Vietnam War; it's not so frequent to see it actually fired in a movie, however.
• Seen and used very frequently in Generation Kill, usually mounted on US Marine Force Recon's Humvees. Vehicle-1 of Bravo Platoon is mounted with one but frequently jams due to the lack of proper lubricant, much to the chagrin of it's gunner, Corporal Walt. During one ambush, Cpl Anthony "Manimal" Jacks uses one to great effect by to destroying the entire face of a building, saving the entire battalion from the attack.
• Seen in Jurassic Park III mounted on Marine Corps amphibious assault vehicles.
• Usable in the console-only Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. Appears in both Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 mounted on the AAV-7A1 AMTRAC. BF3: Aftermath DLC has one mounted on the back of the 'Phoenix' (a crudely fixed-up Humvee) while the Second Assault DLC of BF4 has a Mk. 19 mounted on the Desert Patrol Vehicle.
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare features the Mk 19 during the Shock and Awe mission.
• America's Army features the Mk 19 as one of the weapons on the CROWS turrets.
• Far Cry featured a curious depiction of the Mk 19 as a single-shot weapon with an automated rangefinding system. Far Cry 2 featured a more accurate depiction mounted on trucks and boats, but for balancing purposes the rate of fire was toned down to about one shot every 2 seconds.
• Phoenix Force. A Mk19 mounted on a Fast Attack Vehicle is used to decimate a small army in "Aswan Hellbox".
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a Mk19 is one of the weapons used against Superman by Batman during their Battle in the Rain. It doesn't hurt him and quickly gets destroyed by Clark's heat vision.
• The Mk 19 is used frequently by rebels in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
• Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades features a fictionalized man-portable version with chainsaw-type grips. This depiction features 16-round belt boxes as opposed to the real deal's 32 or 48-round boxes, as the larger boxes would make handling the gigantic weapon even more awkward in VR than it already is.

MBT LAW/NLAW

Smart Anti-Tank missile that automatically detects vehicles near the warhead and guide to the target. Easy to use but low damage from all angles of attack. Capable of locking on to laser designated targets.

—Description, Battlefield 4

A Swedish disposable anti-tank rocket launcher designed by Saab Bofors Dynamics for the British Next Generation Light Anti-Armour Weapon’s-programme and manufactured by Thales Air Defense in the UK, the Main Battle Tank and Light Anti-tank Weapon (MBT LAW), also known under it's British designation as the Next-Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW), was adopted by the Swedish military in 2005 as the Robot 57 (RB 57) and the British military in 2009, replacing the earlier LAW 80 and AT4 rocket launchers in service with them, as well as by Luxembourg, Switzerland, Finland, Malaysia and Indonesia. It features a 115 mm missile body with a 150 mm warhead, a built-in optical sight, a soft-launch system that allows it to be used by infantry within an enclosed space unlike many other rocket launchers, direct and top attack modes, and a guidance electronics system in the missile that uses PLOS (predicted line of sight) to fly autonomously to moving targets after the user tracks them for three seconds, making the necessary corrections according to the data acquired by the tracking, and resulting in it eventually hitting any target that has a constant velocity i.e. that does not suddenly speed up, brake, or turn during the flight of the missile.

By far it's most notable use, however, has been by Ukrainian forces in the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, where 2,000 units of them were supplied to the Ukrainians by the United Kingdom with an additional 1,615 delivered by the 9th of March, 2022, and over 4,000 of them being delivered by the 16th of March, 2022, with Luxembourg sending at least 100 additional MBT LAWs to them. The weapon has been favored by the Ukrainians for it's ease of use and high effectiveness against Russian vehicles, though its flatter trajectory allows the missile to be more easily intercepted mid-flight compared to the Javelin's top attack mode.

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• Appears as the starting launcher for the Engineer in Battlefield 4, where it is the weakest of the launchers, but the easiest to use, as the rocket has a self-guidance system that, if it's close enough to the target, will automatically attack the weakest point. It can also be fired in top attack mode at targets painted with the PLD or SOFLAM, dealing higher damage than the usual direct fire rocket.
• An early version of the MBT LAW appears in Crysis, where it is loaded with three rockets instead of only one like the real-life weapon though, the rockets are laser guided, the rear part of the launching tube is extended as part of the arming procedure, and it is used by both Korean soldiers and American Nanosuit teams, with them being able to reload the weapon while it is disposable for the player like the real-life one.
• Added to ARMA II in the British Armed Force pack for Operation Arrowhead. It later returns in ARMA III as the PCML, meaning Person-Carried Missile Launcher, and is the standard launcher for NATO troops, with the weapon being depicted as reloadable in-game.
• Appears in Squad as a usable rocket launcher for the British Army Anti-Tank class.

Mk 153 Mod 0 SMAW

Developed especially for the US Marine Corps to defeat light armor and enemy bunkers, the Mark 153 SMAW is capable of defeating both modern armor and emplacements. 83mm unguided rockets are loaded individually at the back of the launcher from disposable sealed 1 time use units at the rear.

— Description, Battlefield 3

Based on an earlier Israeli rocket launcher, the B-300, the Mk 153 Mod 0 SMAW (Shoulder Mounted Assault Weapon) is a reusable American rocket launcher that was developed in the early 80s by McDonnell Douglas for the USMC and is currently manufactured by Talley Defense Systems. The SMAW features dual grips, a manual safety, and a built-in spotting rifle which holds 6 rounds of 9x51mm tracer bullets with extra ammunition magazines clipped to each rocket container, though this functionality is rarely seen in media.

The SMAW can fire a wide variety of 83mm rockets, including High Explosive Dual Purpose, High Explosive Anti Armor, Follow-Through Grenade and Novel Explosive (Thermobaric) rounds, which allow it to be effective against vehicles, structures, and infantry alike.

A new version of the weapon, the Mod 2, is also now in development, which replaces the spotting rifle component with more advanced optics, including a detachable laser rangefinder in addition to the pad size being increased on the forward grip of the launcher and the addition of foldable backup iron sights. Interestingly, while the SMAW itself is an American weapon, the spotting rifle component and its ammunition were actually developed in the UK by Royal Ordnance.

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• Used by the Huge Goon in Kick-Ass and referred to as a bazooka. Its trigger/firing mechanism strangely looks like the frame of a MK23 mated to the lower receiver of an MP5 instead of a proper SMAW trigger mechanism.
• Pike uses a SMAW in The A-Team to blow a hole in the hull of the cargo ship in the final shootout.
• Appears in Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain as the only rocket launcher in the game, with a incorrect 5-round capacity. However, it is not unlockable, and can only be picked up and used in Belarus 2. Stone also uses one to distract a tank while the player destroys it after he is rescued in that level. It returns in Dark Mirror in Anti-Infantry and Anti-Tank variants, the later correctly holding only one round, and the Anti-Infantry variant being unlockable this time.
• Appears in Project Reality as the USMC's main heavy anti-tank weapon and is one of, if not, the only video game where the built-in spotting rifle is usable, in addition to the main launcher be able to use either HEDP or HEAA rounds.
• Appears in Battlefield 3 as the US Engineer's default rocket launcher, then returns in Battlefield 4 as the second-most powerful rocket launcher in the game with the flattest trajectory and as a Battle Pickup in Battlefield Hardline.
• Appears in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II as the default launcher. It is incorrectly depicted as a one-shot disposable rocket launcher instead of the reusable rocket launcher it actually is and with the ability to lock onto killstreaks.
• Inspector Quinn Erari shows up with one in Wizard Barristers: Benmashi Cecil in response to a wud terrorist situation, though Shizumu quickly talks her out of using it.
• Appears as the Rocket Launcher in Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.
• Allied Nations troops use them in Mercenaries 2: World In Flames, where it is called the Anti-Tank Launcher.
• One of the rocket launchers used by USMC forces in ARMA II, where it can be loaded with either HEDP or HEAA rounds.
• Appears as Valor's Rocket Propelled Grenade in MAG.
• The third Anti-Tank Weapon team in Girls' Frontline. Unusually for fiction, the spotting rifle component is actually modelled in-game; it is visibly used when the team sets up the weapon, and every missile is preceded by a ranging shot that decreases the targeted enemy's evasion.
• It's the USMC's heavy anti-tank weapon in Squad, complete with a functional spotting rifle.

Panzerfaust

The Panzerfaust (German for “Armored Fist”) is an anti-tank weapon, launching a small charge designed to penetrate an armored tank or vehicle. Due to the armor-piercing nature of the charge, it's not an effective anti-personnel device. Each Panzerfaust is only a single shot weapon, but one shot is often enough to reduce even the largest tanks to smoldering ruins within seconds.

—Description, Call of Duty

Literally “Tank Fist” in German, this was the anti-tank weapon of the German Army in WWII. It consisted of a small pre-loaded gun tube incorporating the trigger and a calibrated indirect fire sight, that fired a large shaped-charge explosive warhead specifically designed to penetrate tank armor. Operated by a single soldier, it was also the first such weapon designed to be disposable, the spent gun tube (which was made of low-grade steel) was simply thrown away after firing. It was easy to manufacture, simple to use, and, at only eleven pounds, very light compared to the damage it could cause- a solid hit from the Panzerfaust could destroy almost any Allied tank. The final mass-produced versions were nominally accurate to a hundred meters and could defeat up to eight inches of armor.

The overall simplicity also encouraged them to be issued to everyone and anyone from regular soldiers to the most poorly-trained conscripts, and its light weight and easy availability also meant it saw a lot of "utility" use, such as knocking holes in the walls of buildings in urban combat ("mouseholing") to allow movement between the two without having to go out onto the street and expose oneself to the enemy. As the conflict drew to a close, some civilian Volkssturm volunteer units were equipped with only this weapon and nothing else, in the hopes they could at least knock out some of the approaching Soviet armor ^note  this led to some German officers and generals to sarcastically comment that the spent tubes could then be used as clubs in hand-to-hand combat .

The distinct profile (somewhat resembling half of a giant cotton swab) makes it instantly recognizable and can be the defining "Oh, Crap!" moment when someone pops out of cover with one and takes aim.

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• Just about every WWII video game has this filling the "rocket launcher" slot for the Axis side, usually opposite the Allied Bazooka: often it will actually be depicted as a rocket launcher, complete with exhaust flame and smoke trail. In reality, the Panzerfaust was a recoilless gun triggered by a conventional percussion mechanism, using a small amount of black powder to lob a shaped charge bomb.
  • Brothers in Arms, as one of the primary German anti-tank weapons alongside the Pak 36 and later, the 88mm gun. In Hell's Highway, however, the weapon is replaced by the Panzerschreck.
  • Medal of Honor: Medal of Honor: Underground has this weapon used by Manon to take out German armored vehicles, namely Panzer IV medium tanks, Panzer II light tanks, and Sd Kfz 251 Half-tracks. During the final level in Paris, Waffen-SS troops begin wielding their own Panzerfausts against Manon in an attempt to kill her.
  • Call of Duty, at least in the first game; later ones had the heavier, much-less-extensively-used but more powerful and reloadable Panzerschreck take its place. It finally made a return in Call of Duty: Vanguard where it erroneously depicted as reloadable launcher.
  • Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It is incorrectly depicted as a rocket launcher, with the projectile trailing flame and smoke while in flight, and an electric ignition mechanism that audibly whines prior to firing.
  • Appears in Day of Infamy as a cheaper, disposable one shot launcher usable by the German Engineer class.
  • In Men of War, the Panzerfaust is carried by German Panzergrenadiers and the Fallschirmjäger, correctly as a one-shot disposable launcher, compared to the reloadable Panzershreck used by the AT troops.
  • Various German infantry from Volksgrenadiers to Knight's Cross Holders can fire a Panzerfaust as an ability in Company of Heroes.
  • Both the Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck appears in BloodRayne as one of the heavy weapons available to Rayne.
  • Sniper Elite V2, Sniper Elite 4, and Sniper Elite 5 feature the Panzerfaust in the hands of German troops, and is the only anti-tank weapon available for use against German and Soviet tanks and armored vehicles. In earlier games, it is erroneously portrayed as reloadable, whereas the final game accurately portrays it as a single-shot disposable weapon.
• The Principality of Zeon and their remnants (and their remnants' remnants) from the Gundam metaseries make use of giant robot-sized ones called the "Sturm Faust". From when the Zaku I and the Zudah were competing to be Zeon's first/main mobile suit, up to the conflict over Laplace's Box two decades later, the Zekes have it as a mainstay in their armouries.
• Appears by name in Heavy Gear 2, where they are mostly used for short-range (less than 100 meters) attacks against tanks or the heaver models of Gears. Comes in light, medium, and heavy varieties, in increasing order of cost and power. Good luck scoring a direct hit beyond that 100 meter range, though.
• Plenty show up in the hands of SS troops in Fury (2014).
• In Mailed Fist, British tank commander John Foley describes a night attack in Holland where German soldiers with Panzerfausts were hiding in a forest to each side of the road. His solution was to tell his three tanks to charge ahead at full speed with "all Besas blazing,"^note The Besa was the standard heavy MG fitted to the Churchill tank. the lead tank firing all its MG's to the left, the second tank to fire all its MG's to the right, and the third tank to "tackle whichever side appears to be giving most trouble". He noted that the civil servants would probably have tutted and described it as "uneconomic expenditure of ammunition", but stated, with satisfaction, none of his tanks were hit, and an awful lot of dead Germans were found in daylight, their Panzerfausts either unfired or having gone woefully wide. He described the trail of fire and sparks left by a Panzerfaust at night as "being as good as tracer" in telling his gunners where to return fire.

Panzerfaust 3

A futuristic-looking German reusable anti-tank rocket launcher made by Dynamit Nobel AG (Best known as the creators of dynamite/TNT), the Panzerfaust 3/Pzf 3 was developed in the 1980s to replace the aging Panzerfaust 44s and heavy Carl Gustavs that were in service with the Bundeswehr at the time, and entered mass production in the 1990's. It fires a 110mm rocket with several available warheads, including the DM12A1 hollow charge, DM22 tandem hollow charge (Known as the Panzerfaust-IT) or BASTEG bunker-buster (Known as the Bunkerfaust). It also possesses a built-in telescope sight, and is light enough to be carried and fired by one person. The Panzerfaust 3 also has a smaller backblast than most other rocket launchers thanks to its use of the recoilless countermass principle, with the rear of the tube being filled with plastic granulate, which allows it to be fired from enclosures with much less risk than other rocket launchers. A unique Dynarange computerized sight/fire control unit can also be attached to the Panzerfaust 3, which features a laser range finder and ballistic computer which presets the aiming reticule according to the type of round used and measured range to target and nearly doubles the range of the rockets. The Panzerfaust 3 has been adopted by at least 11 countries, including the German, Italian, Belgian, Japanese, and South Korean militaries, and has seen use in Afghanistan.

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• Appears in Project Reality as the standard rocket launcher of the Bundeswehr, with either DM12A1 rockets for anti-infantry use or DM22 rockets for anti-tank use.
• Appears in Homefront as the RPG Launcher, the standard rocket launcher for both sides in the game. It is incorrectly described as a disposable launcher in the multiplayer menu, and enemies are seen firing fictional guided anti-aircraft and EMP rockets in addition to the regular rockets that are available to both the enemies and player. It also comes in a fictional green proximity-detonated rocket variant with a extended tube and different scope in multiplayer.
• Appears in Binary Domain as Rachel's signature weapon, the HEMWL-3.8 Anti-Robot RPG Launcher. The trigger has been relocated to the stock of the gun, though it still retains the central grip of the weapon.
• The Panzerfaust-IT appears in Call of Duty: Ghosts as the standard rocket launcher in the game, called simply the Panzerfaust.
• Appears as Raven's Rocket-Propelled Grenade in MAG.
• JSGDF troops wield them in Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys.
• Used by one of Majima's henchmen in Lycoris Recoil when he tries to blow up the protagonists' car.
• Used by JSSDF troops in Neon Genesis Evangelion while infiltratin Nerv headquarters.
• Used by Amata Kihara in the anime adaptation of A Certain Magical Index to shoot at the Hound Dog van Accelerator and Index are escaping in during the Academy City Invasion arc, though Vento of the Front quickly blocks the rocket.
• Used by a soldier in Noir during the attack on the Soldats' village to shoot at the church tower in "Journey's End".
• Used in the Anime adaption of Gate by both the JSDF and Dark Elves to kill dragons with. However, the Dark Elves, not use to modern weaponry and forgetting Itami's warning about the backblast, also end up killing, maiming and stunning a number of each other with the backblasts.
• Appears in Insurgency: Sandstorm as the Insurgent's disposable launcher of choice. It costs 3 points and is usable only by the demolitions class.

Panzerschreck

The Raketenpanzerbüchse, more commonly known as the Panzerschreck, was developed by the Germans during WWII in 1943 after the capture and reverse-engineering of several M1 Bazookas and scaling them up to 88mm. The Panzerschreck was one of the most effective infantry anti-tank launchers in the war (The name "Panzerschreck" translating to "tank terror"), possessing longer effective range and better armor penetration than the allied M1/M9 Bazookas and PIATs, and its rocket was powerful enough to disable most Allied tanks with a single hit.

A major disadvantage was that in the original RPzB 43, the rocket, unlike the bazooka's, was still burning when it exited the tube: this would burn the operator's face or choke them with smoke unless he was wearing a gas mask and poncho. That issue was later solved with the addition of a blast shield at the cost of adding a bit more weight to the already-heavy weapon. Another drawback that couldn't be so easily solved was the massive backblast, firing one would almost invariably give away the firer's position and gave the weapon the nickname "Ofenrohr" (stove pipe) by German troops. Nonetheless, it remained an effective weapon to the end of the war, inflicting serious damage on Allied tanks, although it was noticeably less widespread than the Panzerfaust, which was simpler and easier to carry, use and manufacture.

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• Appears Call Of Duty United Offensive, Call of Duty 2, 3, Call of Duty: World at War, Call of Duty: WWII, and Call of Duty: Vanguard as the main rocket launcher for the Germans, though it does complement the Panzerfaust in United Offensive. It is the only rocket launcher in 2, and is the main rocket launcher in the Eastern Front campaign of World at War, though it is not available in multiplayer in that game, the M9 Bazooka being used instead.
• Appears in the Medal of Honor series as the main rocket launcher of the Germans, though is not usable until Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. In Medal of Honor: Airborne, the Panzerschreck, while not available as a starting weapon, can be upgraded to improve it's overall performance, namely the number of rockets that can be carried.
• When not using a Panzerfaust, German infantry can form Anti-Tank squads using these in Company of Heroes.
• Day of Infamy features this weapon usable by the Wehrmacht Engineer class as a more expensive but reloadable alternative the the Panzerfaust. It has the heat shield installed and a camo scheme tacked on by default.
• A few are seen in Saving Private Ryan, used against exposed infantry.
• Used by German anti-tank squads in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, where they can be picked up by the player.
• Colonel Silver uses a Panzerschreck to shoot down Goku on his Nimbus in Dragon Ball. It is incorrectly depicted as a MANPADS like the Stinger. General Blue also uses a Panzerschreck as his "I'll Shoot You" super in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3.
• The Old War variant of the Bazooka in Conker: Live & Reloaded, contrary to the name, is based on the Panzerschreck. It is the primary weapon of the Demolisher and has three ammo types: Standard, your average dumb-fire rocket; Fire And Forget, an anti-air round that allows for a faster reload; and Guided, which is acquired by collecting an upgrade orb and allows the user to manually guide the rocket after firing. It's worth noting that the weapon has some sort of optic behind the blast shield.
• Hell Let Loose: The Panzerschreck is available for the German Anti-Tank class, where it is part of their default weapon loadout, alongside a Karabiner 98 rifle, 2 grenades, and 88mm rockets.
• Squad 44: The Panzerschreck is one of two German Anti-Vehicle weapons available on maps set from 1944 onwards, the other being the Panzerfaust. Compared to it's disposable counterpart, the Panzerschreck fires more powerful rockets and can hit targets at longer range, on top of being able to reload.
• Guns, Gore & Cannoli: 2 makes this weapon available for Vinnie Cannoli once he returns to Thugtown, where it turns out that the Nazis have been operating right under the US Army's noses on US soil. Interestingly, while the launcher itself is the Panzerschreck, the rockets are notably those of the Panzerfaust, which are reloaded by placing the warhead at the front of the launcher. Has 9 reserve rockets, and a rather slow reload.
• A Humongous Mecha-scaled rocket launcher loosely based on the Panzerschreck appears in Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory as the main weapon of the Dom series Mobile Suits, replacing the bizarre, futuristic "Giant Bazooka" from the original Mobile Suit Gundam in keeping with the spinoff OAV series' more realistic aesthetics. Interestingly, this version deviates from its real world inspiration in one major respect, being one of the Gundam series' many magazine-fed rocket launchers rather than loading one at a time from the rear.

PIAT

The Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank, or PIAT, was designed by the British Army during WWII in 1942 and deployed in 1943 as an anti-tank weapon for the British Army, which at the time was dependent on grenades and anti-tank rifles to combat tanks. Contrary to popular belief, the PIAT was not a rocket launcher, but rather a mortar-like grenade launcher which used an enormous coil spring fired spigot to set off the propelling charge in the projectile. The PIAT had a claimed range of 109 yards against armor (actually more like 40) and a maximum range of 330 yards in low-arc indirect fire (troops in Italy were also known to use it for high-arc fire, aiming it like a mortar: this was not an intentional feature, and the range is thus not known but would be considerably greater).

The effective range gradually became less as German armor improved. It had the advantages of being cheap to produce, and a relatively small puff of smoke when the propelling charge detonated, making it harder to find the user when it was fired. Disadvantages included ridiculous weight (32 pounds), a fragile loading tray, muzzle-loading that required the loader to lean out over the weapon or the gunner to pull the weapon back into cover, poor accuracy (due to the heavy spigot moving from one end of the weapon to the other immediately before firing), heavy recoil, requiring excessive force to cock ^note  to the point that many found it impossible to cock the weapon solo, as well as very few able to do it behind cover, which is of vital importance when fighting a tank , the mechanism that was supposed to re-cock the gun on firing almost never working correctly ^note  Unless it was held really tight, the propellant would fail to blow the firing pin backwards enough to cock the weapon, and at this point the hapless shooter has to cock it by hand; not fun or safe even when nobody is trying to kill him , and unreliable ammunition (mostly duds that failed to either fire or detonate, but there was also an alarming tendency for the propelling charge to tear off the bomb's tail and fire it back at the gun crew), many of which were due to its necessarily rushed production.

Nevertheless, the PIAT saw widespread use, not only with British forces but also with the French and Polish resistances, the Free French army and even the Red Army, who received 100 as part of lend-lease aid. Six members of the Commonwealth forces were also awarded the Victoria Cross for knocking out tanks or disabling enemy artillery, though British soldiers ruefully stated that one deserved the Victoria Cross just for firing it. After World War 2, it was used by the Israeli Haganah during the Arab-Israeli War, and also saw use with Australia during the Korean War and the Indian Army during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

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• Appears in A Bridge Too Far against a Leopard 1 mocked up as a Panther. The PIAT team misses twice.
• Appears in the Company of Heroes series as the Anti-Tank weapon for the British Sappers.
• Appears in the Commandos series.
• Perrine uses the PIAT in the third Strike Witches: Operation Victory Arrow OVA, though the design notes refers to it as "Projector, Infantry, Armored-Thing".
• Appears in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault as the standard anti-tank launcher for the British.
• Day of Infamy has these in the hands of the Commonwealth Engineer class. Notably, it can carry more rounds (3 in total) than any other launcher in the game (2 total for Bazooka and Panzershreck, 1 for Panzerfaust), but has the shortest drop distance requiring some getting used to.
• Appears in Dino D-Day as one of Blithe-Crossley's weapons, and is the only launcher in the game.
• In his autobiography Quartered Safe Out Here, George MacDonald Fraser describes using the PIAT in action in Burma in 1945. Very few of these weapons made it to the Far East as Japanese tanks by then, being light and flimsy and rarely encountered, were seen more as a nuisance than a threat. MacDonald Fraser discovered a different use for them: he was part of a unit who ambushed Japanese soldiers trying to retreat across the Sittang river. He discovered they could be used productively in an anti-shipping role and used the PIAT to hit a large ship full of Japanese troops, holing it under the waterline several times and sinking the vessel. As the Sittang was full of opportunist crocodiles, he took the point of view that this added a discourtesy detail for the Japs escaping the sinking boat. ^note This was rediscovered by Royal Marines in the Falklands War in 1982, who were able to fire Carl Gustavs down into the waterline of an Argentinian warship that came too close to shore. The warship could not depress its weapons enough to return fire, and their ship was only prevented from sinking because the draught under its keel was too shallow - it ran aground and beached.
• Hell Let Loose: The PIAT is available to the British Anti-Tank class as their standard-issue anti-tank weapon on both the North African and European maps. Compared to the Bazooka and Panzerschreck, this weapon has a much faster reload rate, in exchange for a shorter projectile range.
• Squad 44: The PIAT is the standard anti-tank weapon for British forces on the maps set in the Netherlands.

Revolver-type grenade launchers

There are a large number of launchers that use a revolver-style cylinder magazine, dating back to the Manville Machine Projector, a 1930s tear gas launcher; this formed the basis of the later Hawk MM-1 developed in the 70s. Modern examples include the Russian RG-6 launcher, essentially a frame holding six separate GP30 launcher tubes, and the South African Milkor MGL-140 / M32, which is becoming an increasingly common sight in movies and games due to its tacticool appearance. Such launchers are very popular with police and anti-riot units due to their ability to fire a wide range of incapacitating rounds and sustained fire abilities, and 37mm launchers made by companies such as Enfield and DefTech are often seen in movies substituting for their more lethal cousins.

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• Riot launchers are likely to be seen in anything involving riot police or SWAT units.
• In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a SWAT unit equipped with MM-1 launchers loaded with tear gas storms the Cyberdyne building. Arnold Schwarzenegger later takes one of the launchers for himself (tear gas being completely ineffective against a Terminator), at one point firing it point-blank at a hapless officer.
• The Transformers Film Series feature a variety of revolver launchers used to fire the "special sabot rounds" which are the only thing that can harm the Decepticons. In reality, no such rounds actually exist for grenade launchers: sabot rounds are anti-tank munitions designed to be fired at very high velocities, whereas grenade launchers are designed explicitly to fire projectiles at low velocities.
• The RGB-6 (a Croatian clone of the Milkor MGL) shows in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty as a usable weapon. Raging Raven in Metal Gear Solid 4 uses an actual MGL, which Snake acquires after defeating her. Snake would use the RGB-6 for his Final Smash in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
• An RG-6 is available in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, called the "Bulldog 6" as part of the game's A.K.A.-47 tendencies. It's heavy, you can't sprint with it out, reloading time is molasses-slow, and it chews through grenade ammo like you wouldn't believe, but MAN is it fun to use. A variant converted to use Western 40mm grenades is also hidden in the game files.
• The 1980 movie of The Dogs of War had a number of "XM-18's" (actually Manville guns) used for the climatic attack.
• The Demoman in Team Fortress 2 uses one as his primary weapon, though it can hold only 4 shots even if the gun model clearly shows a 6-shot magazine.
• "You musn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling."
• The RG-6 is one of two grenade launchers in 7.62 High Caliber and the only multi-shot explosive weapon. The Blue Sun mod not only adds the Milkor MGL, but also the Manville 25mm grenade launchers from the above Dogs of War. The ammo is very rare (albeit lightweight) and the gun is just as rare and takes ages to reload, but nothing can put down explosives quite like it.
• The fictional "Volley Gun" in Bioshock Infinite is basically a Steampunk MGL, with a fancy gilded cylinder and wooden grips.
• Killing Floor features the M32 launcher for the Demolition perk, the only drawback is its long reload time compared to how fast it can be emptied.
• Far Cry 2 has a Milkor MGL available, though downgraded to a 4 round cylinder that's incorrectly pulled straight out of the gun and replaced like a magazine (the real gun simply pivots half the gun to the side and you load grenades from the rear like a big revolver....which is what it is). However, it's depicted with a very realistic range and velocity (unlike most video games, which show grenades as having a lower velocity than a pitched baseball). Coupled with a scope and high explosive rounds, the MGL ends up being capable of clearing out an entire checkpoint or a large swath of an enemy base with just a few shots. While one can be acquired early in a buddy mission, it's prevented from being a Disc-One Nuke by being in extremely poor condition (as all buddy mission weapons are), meaning that it likely won't last for many shots before breaking.
  • The RG-6 appears in Far Cry 6 as the MGL-6.
• A fictional design is available in GoldenEye 007, famously dual-wielded with a P90 submachine gun by Xenia Onatopp. The guns can, in turn, be taken from her corpse and used together as well.
• In RWBY, Nora Valkyrie carries a Grenade Launcher that turns into a War Hammer.
• A DefTech 37mm launcher is memorably (and hilariously) used in Hot Shots! Part Deux. It even causes its (splattered) victim to comment that it is "one hell of a gun."
• An MM-1 grenade launcher becomes available in the late-game segment of Parasite Eve 2 if you're on the True Ending path.
• Lara Croft in Tomb Raider III uses one, though for balancing purposes, she has to reload after every shot instead of being able to fire multiple grenades in rapid succession. The weapon returns in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and it comes with multiple ammo types. Tomb Raider: Legend also has the RG-6, which is used by heavy mercenaries in addition to Lara.
• A Milkor MGL turns up in PAYDAY 2, as the Piglet. Compared to the M79, it has far worse accuracy and an incredibly long reload, however its 6 round magazine gives it much greater ability to control crowds, particularly when paired with incendiary grenades.
• The M32 MGL appears in Battlefield 4 as a battle pickup found around some maps.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II features two, the Milkor MGL and the Hawk MM-1. The former appears as a killstreak reward, the "War Machine", the latter is given to Jonas Savimbi in the first flashback mission (where, if you pay attention to him when the shooting starts, you'll notice he can't get it to fire). Completing five challenges in the second flashback mission also unlocks both of them for the player's loadout; while the MGL is an alright weapon, the Hawk is an unbeatable terror, with four times the ammo capacity, a much faster reload, and rounds that aren't affected by gravity (making it less a grenade launcher and more a Bolter), with the only downside being that you're slowed down considerably while holding it. The Hawk also made a return in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
• The Hawk MM-1 is added to the original Ghost Recon with the Island Thunder expansion, as a new primary weapon for demo soldiers, including the returning specialist Klaus Henkel.
• Persona 5: One of Haru Okamura's equippable grenade launchers is a 6 shot "Multilateral MGL", based on the 40-mm Milkor MGL series used by the US army. The ARWEN 37 is also usable by her.
• The Milkor MGL shows up in the Syphon Filter series from The Omega Strain onwards. The Omega Strain also has a MGL converted into a non-lethal (Though it can still kill enemies with head or neck shots) beanbag shotgun called the Riot Shotgun.
• The ARWEN 37 is available in Resident Evil 0, 1 and 6, where it can be loaded with regular explosive, incendiary or fictional acid rounds. 5 also features the MGL-140, which can be loaded with explosive, flashbang and incendiary rounds in addition to even more fictional rounds like the aforementioned acid rounds, nitrogen rounds and electric rounds.
• Fukaziroh in Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online falls in love with the Milkor MGL-140 the moment she lays eyes on it, and promptly buys two of them for her primary weapons.
• A Milkor MGL appears as the "Lactic-40", Nader's signature weapon from Dirty Bomb. It only fires five rounds and each reload is cooldown based.
• The Milkor MGL appears in Saints Row: The Third as the "M2 Grenade Launcher" as part of the Explosive Combat DLC. The M2 is unusual for a DLC weapon, as it can be upgraded; each level increases its capacity (it holds 8 grenades in a six-round cylinder by default) and Level 2 makes the grenades sticky. Speaking of which, they have a two-second fuse and can be manually detonated with the grenade throw button.
• The Hogster, a revolving grenade launcher seemingly influenced by the M32, appears in Conker: Live & Reloaded. The Grunt acquires it after picking up an upgrade orb and it has three ammo types: Frag, which has a fuse; Impact, your standard contact-detonated grenade; and Release, which is manually detonated by pressing the fire button after a round has been fired.

RPG-7

The successor to the RPG-2, produced and deployed in large numbers as the primary anti-tank weapon for infantry in the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Needless to say, it is highly effective against personnel as well as tanks.

—Description, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Designed in the 1960s by the USSR, the RPG-7 is probably the most distinctive anti-tank rocket launcher aside from the classic Bazooka. Its construction, like most Soviet weaponry, is incredibly simple; it's basically a steel tube with wooden guards. This also makes it incredibly cheap. It was (and still is) fielded by over 40 countries, is popular with both military forces and guerrilla fighters alike, and has seen use in many conflicts across the globe.

The RPG-7 is also copied widely by multiple countries; China copied it in the form of the Norinco Type 69, which looks almost identical to the RPG-7 except for the second handle being on top. The United States also made their own copy of the RPG-7 (a rarity among Soviet weaponry), the Airtronic RPG-7/Mk.777, which features several improvements over the original RPG-7 like improved material construction, lighter weight, an adjustable shoulder stock, and built-in Picatinny rails. RPG, by the way, stands for Ruchnoy Protivotankovyy Granatomyot (hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher), though it is often backronymed as "rocket propelled grenade."

Similar to the AKM, the RPG-7's reputation is such that it is often overshadows the RPG-29 (the succeeding reusable anti-tank rocket launcher) and Soviet single-use launchers like the RPG-22 or RPG-26. As a result, you will likely not see these at all, even in works featuring the Russians with Rusting Rockets. In addition, this also applies to the warheads it fires; typically only the basic single-charge PG-7VL HEAT warhead (the one with the iconic cone-shaped front), even in situations where the tandem-charge PG-7VR HEAT warhead or the anti-personnel warheads (either the OG-7V fragmentation warhead or the TBG-7V thermobaric warhead) would be more appropriate.

Additionally, there is some confusion regarding the handles. The one with the trigger is in front and is supposed to be held with the right hand, but hand placement or even the grips may be reversed in some depictions. The cocking lever on the back of the front grip is seldom used when reloading the launcher.

• Cool Action: A rocket being loaded into the front of the tube, twisted to secure, and hefted onto a person's shoulder as they emerge from cover makes an ominous and recognizable start to an ambush.
• Cool Scope: Higher-fidelity depictions of the RPG-7 may also include the PGO-7V scope with a distinctive grid for fall-of-shot and windage as well as a PSO-style stadiametric rangefinder.
• Un-cool drawback: The RPG-7 is typically portrayed as horrifically inaccurate and therefore close-ranged: while it is close-ranged for an antitank weapon, this is still far longer than is usually shown. The inaccuracy is more to do with complexities of compensating for the RPG-7's extremely counter-intuitive behaviour in crosswinds: the projectile will turn into the wind rather than turning away from it as one might expect, and one needs to have a fairly accurate idea of how far away a target is to know how to lead it. According to a US Army TRADOC report from 1976, most well-trained gunners would misjudge range to the target by 15-20% on their first shot. The Soviets claimed an effective "point blank" range of 300m for the weapon, though US testing on a stationary, fully exposed M60 tank found that at this range the chance of scoring a hit with the first shot was less than 30% in a 7mph wind, though this rose to greater than 50% on the second shot.

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• If this weapon is not in the hands of Soviets/Russians or the Warsaw Pact countries, it typically is in the hands of Middle-Easterners and in Africa. Wherever the AK-47 is, the RPG-7 will be as well.
• Used when fighting Dirty Communists in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Despite the movie taking place in 1957, four years too early for the RPG-7. Presumably a stand-in for much the less famous RPG-2.
• The Joker uses one as part of the various The War on Terror metaphors in The Dark Knight.
• Hayden Tenno gets to use a weird version in darkSector, with one handle and what appears to be almost all of an RPG-2 joined upside-down to the front of the tube. It has an optic sight and fires guided missiles instead of unguided rockets.
• Doctor Who. Ace takes out a Dalek with one in Remembrance of the Daleks, though it's supposed to be some sort of fictional British anti-tank weapon.
• Water (1985). Two Cuban terrorists use one to interrupt a news conference by a British government mouthpiece.
• Marty McFly sees one in his rear-view mirror in Back to the Future, carried by the 'Libyans'. He figures that getting up to 90 would be the best way to evade it. He was off by 2 miles per hour, of course.
• Just one of the many heavy weapons used by Homura Akemi in Puella Magi Madoka Magica during the final battle against Walpurgisnacht.
• One of the weapons used in the Whateley Universe by the Syndicate minions in "Christmas Elves". Generator then uses one to bust Fey out of a trap impervious to Fey's magic.
• Just as in the actual incident, the RPG-7 was the weapon of choice for Somali militia to bring down the titular helicopters in Black Hawk Down.
• Available quite uncommonly in 7.62 High Caliber. Considering the lack of armored vehicles to destroy, it mostly provides a way to deliver explosives at longer range.
• The Soldier's Rocket Launcher in Team Fortress 2 is strongly based on the RPG-7.
• A strange use in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars — Nod militant rocket squads use a recognizable RPG-7 with two barrels◊ for... some reason. Fanon suggests that the second rocket isn't fired from that position, it's just an extra clipped there so the militant can quickly fire again without needing a loader.
• A staple of Grand Theft Auto games' Heavy Weapons slots. Unlike the trend, it's pinpoint accurate provided you can aim it correctly with the horrible box-shaped crosshair the game provides. It has to be aimed, too: try to fire it normally and the trigger will just click.
• Appears in PAYDAY 2 with the Overkill Pack DLC, as the HRL-7. It has absurdly high damage (enough so that even the Nigh-Invulnerable Bulldozer will die in one direct hit) and, in odd departure from its usual depictions, is accurate to within the variance of a laser sight. The high damage does come with its own drawbacks, however - namely, that explosives affect yourself and your teammates. With how damaging this weapon is, a single misplaced shot can take down your entire team. It also only has 4 rounds in total, which can only be replenished via ammo bags. Needless to say, using this weapon in small spaces - or around enemies which can force you to fire your weapon - is not a good idea.
• The RPG-7 appears in several Battlefield titles:
  • Appears as the standard launcher for the Viet Cong and NVA forces in Battlefield Vietnam.
  • Only appears in the Special Forces addon in Battlefield 2 used by the Insurgent and Rebel factions' Anti-Tank classes. Notably the only unguided handheld launcher available as everyone else uses wire-guided handheld launchers like the Eryx or the SRAW.
  • In Battlefield: Bad Company, it appears as the 'RPG-7 AT' and it's equipped with the PGO-7 scope. Despite being an unguided munition, it magically gains the ability to lock-on to targets tracked with the Tracer Dart, presumably to keep up with the Carl Gustav's similar performance. The RPG-7 returns in the Vietnam expansion with the standard ironsights.
  • Appears in Battlefield 3 onwards as the 'RPG-7V2'.
• Common in the Call of Duty games from 4 onward, and likely to blame for the modern conception that the weapon is horrifically, aggravatingly inaccurate - it's entirely possible to miss entirely even when you're five meters away from a tank you're supposed to destroy because the grenade will veer off in completely random directions past a couple feet. Black Ops II swaps it out for a similar launcher based on Airtronic's upgraded version, its accuracy from past iterations only slightly improved; it serves as the middle ground between the SMAW and the FHJ-18, unable to lock onto targets like the other two in favor of its ability to be dumb-fired like the SMAW while coming with one extra rocket like the FHJ. From its inception in 4 until the Season 3 updade in Modern Warfare II, the RPG-7's rocket lacks a propellant charge.
• Likewise common in the earlier Saints Row games, both in its standard form and as an upgraded, laser-guided "Annihilator RPG"; Saints Row: The Third swaps it out for the Airtronic variant and makes the laser-guidance system an upgrade.
• The weapon appears in a few Metal Gear games. It's notable in the first game for being both required to beat the game (as it is the only way to defeat the Arnold/Bloody Brad enemies that hold a Card Key and the only weapon that moves fast enough to hit Big Boss) and being potentially lost forever, making the game Unwinnable by Design.^note This is because one must be at the maximum rank to get it to appear. Moving up a rank is done by freeing a number of POWs, but killing even one will drop the player down a rank. And since there are just barely enough in the game to get the maximum rank by the point you need the weapon... It is also notably used in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater during the bike chase to defeat the Shagohod, as it is the only weapon that can damage it.
• In Insurgency, the RPG-7 is the standard rocket launcher for the Insurgent team, acting as a counterpart to the Security's AT4. Given the game's leanings to realism, the weapon is quite accurate and has the tendency to wipe out clustered groups of enemies very easily, but at the same time usage requires caution due to the close-quarters nature of the game's maps. It is balanced by costing a whopping 5 supply points, being very heavy^note To the point where carrying one would mean sacrificing important equipment like sidearms, ammo pouches and even armour and only comes with one loaded rocket.
  • It returns in the sequel Insurgency: Sandstorm as the Insurgents' reloadable launcher and costs 4 supply points.
• Present in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., being the epitome of Awesome, but Impractical: both the launcher and the rounds are bulky and really heavy, ammo is limited, reloading is slow as molasses, and since there are no vehicles in the Zone, only Pseudogiants and Chimeras warrant that much firepower. It can blow up a tight group of enemy stalkers all nice and crispy, but so can the much lighter and more plentiful grenades. If you manage to find one and a stockpile of rockets, they're best saved for special missions.
• Common in the Far Cry games starting from 2 as the basic RPG launcher - in that game it doesn't get the laser-guided munitions the Carl Gustav gets, but competes by virtue of not starting fires or destroying vehicles behind you when you fire it, and with a little luck can still be used at longer ranges like a mortar (real RPG-7 grenades self-destruct at a thousand yards, though insurgents have been known to disable that and lob them at further targets).
• Often seen in City Hunter whenever someone needs heavy firepower. Its most notable use is in the manga finale, where Ryo uses two captured RPG-7s to take down the Mooks holding Kaori hostage, with them terrified and completely unable to understand what Ryo is doing because they don't know he disabled the warheads first.
• Listed among the unofficial weapons used by Tim O'Brien's platoon in The Things They Carried, simply named the RPG and possibly taken from dead Viet Cong or captured stockpiles.
• Appears in Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 as the Rocket Launcher. It is the most powerful weapon in the games, capable of killing almost any enemy or boss in one hit, but only has one shot before being discarded (And in the case of Resident Evil 4, takes up a lot of space in your inventory). A special version with a red rocket is given to you in the final boss battle of 4 which can be sold for double the price of a regular one in a second playthrough if it is picked up and isn't used, a reloadable version with a night-vision scope can be used during the second battle with Wesker in 5, and a infinite ammo version can be bought in 4 during a second playthrough for a million Pesetas and unlocked in 5 by beating the game in under 5 hours.
• Anna Williams in Tekken 6 has her use an RPG-7 (oddly named "Bazooka") as her item move.
• Appears in GoldenEye (Wii) as the MJR-409.
• Seen briefly in Tropic Thunder when Tran, the leader of the Flaming Dragon drug cartel, uses it in an attempt to blow up the actors' escaping helicopter.
• Appears in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam as a terrifyingly accurate anti-air weapon, and the main launcher of the NVA and Viet Cong. Unlike most depictions, the backblast is modeled and kills anyone unlucky enough to be caught within 10 meters of it.
• Appears in Four Lions when Omar and Waj are attending the Jihadist training camp in the wilderness of Pakistan, and need some firepower to take out an American drone. The coolness factor is rather undermined by the fact that Waj, being the sort of fellow he is, holds it the wrong way round and fires the rocket backwards, destroying the entire camp and killing Osama Bin Laden (the movie was released about a year before he was actually killed).
• In Volume 6 of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, the NPC team in the Test Play battle suddenly uses almost half a dozen RPG-7s to stop Teams T-S, MMTM, and SHINC from breaking into the castle. It comes as a huge shock to all the players, as rocket launchers are widely considered to be overpowered in the game and aren't supposed to have been introduced yet.

Strela MANPADS series

First deployed in 1968, the Strela ("Arrow") series are Soviet-built hand-held anti-air missile launchers developed following experiences from the Korean War and facing a powerful, modern USAAF carrying non-nuclear payloads. While technically the Strela name is used by four air defense systems (all of them share the concept of firing low-altitude, short-range IR missiles), the most common association is the two MANPADS that are in the family: the 9K32 Strela-2 (NATO reporting name: SA-7 Grail), and the 9K34 Strela-3 (NATO reporting name: SA-14 Gremlin).

The Strela-2 was the first MANPADS in the series, benefitting from technical data of the FIM-43 Redeye which had recently became available- while by no means a simple reverse-engineered copy, the Strela was influenced by the Redeye. Unfortunately, due to the comparatively crude Soviet technical base, the missile was only deployed beginning in 1968, five years behind schedule.It was first used in combat in 1969 by the Egyptians against Israelian A-4H Skyhawks. Furthermore, it was also supplied to Vietnam (where, in the last part of the Vietnam War leading up to the Fall of Saigon, it proved so deadly to the Republic of Vietnam Air Force that they were forced to stay at higher altitudes to avoid the missile, resulting in a drastic decline on their ability to operate effectively due to their lack of precision munitions and/or countermeasures), other Soviet-aligned Middle East nations, Africa (in particular, they were nasty surprises to Portuguese G.91s in Portuguese Guinea during the latter's independence war from Portuguese rule), South America, and other Communist-aligned nations. It was licenced for production by Romania, North Korea, and Egypt, while China made an unlicenced copy, the HN-5, which they supplied to Pakistan.

Nevertheless, the original Strela-2 missile had many issues and performed poorly ^note  Egypt in a time period of 9 months from 1969-1970 fired 99 missiles at Israelian planes, and only 36 of those hit their targets; in particular, it could only target slow-moving, low-flying aircraft (and even then, it is rear-aspect only, which meant that the operator had to be behind his target to lock on to it), and the small warhead often failed to cause much damage to the aircraft that it did hit. This resulted in an improved version being ordered in 1968, the intermediate stop-gap Strela-2M (SA-7B, with the original missile having the SA-7A), and the ambitious 9K34 Strela-3 (NATO reporting name SA-14 Gremlin).

The Strela-2M being a relatively minor improvement (its improvements being a higher-thrust propellant, improved guidance to allow engaging faster helicopters and propeller-driven craft, increasing maximum speed of receding targets, and a simpler firing method) was accepted into service relatively quickly in 1970, only two years after the original missile had entered service. This variant was also licence-produced by many of the same nations that licence-produced the original, and China managed to get their hands on one sample via North Vietnam, eventually producing the improved HN-5A, though by this point relations between the two had broken down and the Vietnam War had recently ended, so the improved Chinese variant never saw action. Yugoslavia also licence-produced the improved variant and gave it a larger warhead for improved lethality.

The 9K34 Strela-3 (NATO reporting name SA-14 Gremlin) was introduced in 1974, using a new con-scan/FM-modulated IR seeker head which were significantly less likely to be fooled by flares than the older AM-modulated/spin-scan IR seeker heads on the Strela-2 and 2M. The Gremlin also has a larger warhead and a pressurized liquid nitrogen bottle to cool the seeker head, which expanded the sensitivity of the lead sulphide detector element and allowed the MANPADS to engage cooler targets over longer ranges and even allowed it limited all-aspect ability.All three MANPADS remain in use to this day in ongoing conflicts, with both government-aligned and rebel forces using them against aerial targets.

There are other Strela missile systems that share the same name with the MANPADS, though they have different NATO reporting names. The 9K31 Strela-1 (NATO reporting name: SA-9 Gaskin) was a system of two pairs of missiles mounted on the BRDM-2 amphibious armored scout car and the 9K35 Strela-10 (NATO reporting name: SA-13 Gopher), which mounts two pairs of missiles on an MT-LB amphibious tracked armored utility vehicle.

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• The Strela-3 variant appears in Call of Duty: Black Ops, alongside a fictional wire-guided variant called the "Valkyrie" rocket launcher. In the Wii version, only the Strela-3 proper appears while the Valkyrie does not due to RAM limitations; all other versions have both variants appear. Both are usable in multiplayer; the Valkyrie as a seven-kill killstreak while the Strela-3 is a purchasable weapon. The Valkyrie returns in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
• Wargame: Red Dragon: All three variants of the two Strela MANPADS appear as standard for earlier, cheaper REDFOR anti-air infantry, with China using the HN-5A and HN-5B (their unlicenced Strela-3 copy, which was obtained from Zaire who in turn captured them from Angolan government forces) and Yugoslavia using their own Strela 2M/A variant. Later MANPADS teams for REDFOR use the Igla and their variants/derivatives instead.
• The Strela is the "heat-seeking rocket launcher" of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It has all-aspect lock-on ability, strongly suggesting that this is the Strela-3 variant.

Type 89 "Knee Mortar"

The Type 89 Grenade Discharger, better known as the "Knee Mortar", was a Japanese grenade launcher or light mortar intended to fill the gap in effective range between larger conventional mortars and hand-thrown grenades. The Type 89 was first issued in 1929 and was used throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific Theater of WWII. Firing 50mm shells (in high-explosive, smoke, or incendiary rounds) or Type 91 hand grenades, it has an effective range of around 120 meters.

Deployed in large quantities, the weapon was, according to some sources, responsible for as much as 40% of Allied casualties in the Pacific, with troops quickly learning to hit the ground whenever they heard its signature "pop" report.

Like many Japanese weapons, production was discontinued after their surrender in 1945, although Indonesia managed to get their hands on some during the Indonesian National Revolution. Nationalist China and the Chinese Communists also captured large amounts of Type 89 mortars and pressed them into service ^note  Both armies frequently used mortars of all calibers to make up for their lack of support artillery , as well as making copies of it as the Type 27 mortar with cost-reducing features.

The correct way of using the mortar was to firmly plant it in some soft ground and support it with one hand. When on the march, Japanese soldiers would have the Type 89 strapped to their legs (giving the weapon the nickname "leg mortar"). When deployed, the Type 89 would stick up at a fixed 45 degree angle relative to the ground. Range of indirect fire could be varied by adjusting chamber space between an inserted grenade and the firing pin. Unlike other mortars, where the projectile hits the firing pin upon being dropped into the barrel and subsequently gets launched downrange, the Type 89 is fired by a lanyard, giving the user more control over timing of supporting fire. Even more unusual is that the weapon has a rifled barrel and will fire a variety of different projectiles, including standard hand grenades.

A misunderstanding caused by a literal translation of "leg mortar/knee mortar" out of Japanese, together with bad evaluation of captured weapons, saw lots of Australian soldiers think that the intended way of firing was to brace the curved baseplate against the thigh, as they were tempted to use Japanese weapons against their previous owners to compensate for the obvious lack of proper resupply from the rest of the British Empire. Anybody who tried firing it that way will find their femurs severely bruised if not fractured/broken by the heavy recoil, as a few Australian troops found out the hard way when they were evacuated out of the battlefield with that injury. Eventually, Allied troops were advised that the correct way of using a Type 89 was to brace the curved baseplate against soft ground or a tree-root.

American Marines noted, much to their jealousy and dismay, that the Type 89 grenade launcher was a far more efficient way to launch light-caliber explosive munitions downrange compared to their home-grown M2 light mortars, which required a dedicated team per mortar as opposed to a single grenadier per Type 89. After a failed attempt to adapt the M2 Mortar's tube into a commando mortar, the Americans began focusing on hand-held grenade launchers, culminating in the M79 and the under-barrel grenade launchers.

Anime

• Anti-Zeon troops from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team modified some Knee Mortars to be used as grappling guns.

Films — Live-Action

• A Japanese soldier had used this weapon in an ambush in Windtalkers.
• Shown briefly in Flags of Our Fathers when the main characters discover the bodies of recently deceased Japanese soldiers, one of whom was holding this weapon.
• Japanese soldiers in The Great Raid, you can also see this weapon being fired during the bridge battle.

Video Games

• The Light Mortar class of the Japanese in Rising Storm are issued with the Knee Mortar alongside an Arisaka Type 38. The player can use it for direct or indirect ambushes.

Underbarrel grenade launchers

"Say hello to my little friend!"

Tony Montana before firing his M203, Scarface (1983)

An M203 grenade launcher, fitted to an M16A1.

Underbarrel grenade launchers, as their name imply, are grenade launchers designed to be mounted directly to a gun. This allows the grenade launcher to be used at a moment's notice, while also reducing the extra weight a soldier would have to carry with a dedicated grenade launcher.

The most well-known underbarrel grenade launcher is the M203. Chambered to fire 40x46mm grenades, it was developed by AAI during the failed SALVO and SPIW trials which were aimed at developing a flechette-shooting gun; the rifles themselves were discarded, but the underbarrel launcher concept eventually found its way onto the M16, replacing the stand-alone M79 grenade launcher. Eventually, the M203A1 was developed for the M4 and M4A1 carbines. The M203 and M203A1 use the rifle's magazine as a grip, and the sliding handguard is used to both cock the weapon and access the breech. While designed for the AR-15 platform, conversion kits exist to fit it to many other rifles, or even turn it into a stand-alone weapon.

Other notable 40mm underbarrel grenade launchers include the XM148 (a competitor with the M203, which was passed over due to complexity and safety issues), the German AG36 (a side-loading launcher with a number of advantages over the M203, such as double-action operation, accommodation for a wider variety of ammunition, and an integral sight mounted on the side), the M320 (a modified version of the AG36, which has become increasingly common in media and can be used standalone, usually replacing the HK69A1 in that role), the Czech 805 BREN G1 and the Belgian FN EGLM (aka GL1 or FN40GL, depending on whether it's attached to an F2000 or a SCAR). The Soviets/Russians have their own grenade launchers, the GP25 (for the AK-74), GP30 (for the AK-100 series) and the GP34 (mounted on all existing Russian AK models); all variants of the GP-series are muzzle-loaded and use 40mm caseless grenades, which are not interchangeable with western 40mm grenades. Some of these launchers can have pistol grips and stocks attached to them, which turns them into dedicated grenade launchers; however, since this defeats the whole purpose of the underbarrel launcher, these are rarely seen in fiction. In reality, however, standalone launchers may be preferred to reduce the amount of weight carried on the front of the rifle.

As of 2015 the American Raytheon company has been working on the Pike, a precision-guided missile designed to be launched from the M320 and EGLM, one of the first actual cases of a 40mm round that is too long to use with the M203.

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• Common in any depiction of the US military, and popular as an accessory to weapons in videogames; in multiplayer games, it has long been referred to as the "noob tube" due to the tendency of new users to abuse it.
• 37mm flare guns that look similar to the M203 are a popular civilian-legal accessory for AR-15s, and these are usually the props used for M203 film and television appearances.
• Call of Duty starting from Call of Duty 4 features these as an attachment for most assault rifles. Typically, depending on the game the most common model is either the M203 or M320, while the AK and similar weapons like the Galil instead get a period-appropriate GP-series launcher; the difference is mostly in a faster time to switch between the rifle and launcher, but a slower reload, since until Modern Warfare Remastered the animators were insistent that a spent cartridge needed to be shaken out. It's a favorite weapon in multiplayer matches for offering quick firepower in the form of an all-but-guaranteed kill, but this also unfortunately leaves it with the reputation as one of the most frequently used weapons by new players/screaming micspamming kids, so it's also known as "the noob tube". After Ghosts switched out for an EGLM that's missing any sort of trigger, underbarrel grenade launchers disappeared for a while from the series before making their return in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), which once again primarily uses the M203 for most rifles, with the GP-25 exclusive to the AK and the EGLM on the SCAR.
• Scarface (1983) features one of the most iconic appearances of the weapon in fiction when Tony Montana uses one attached to his AR-15 during the finale to blow away a score of hitmen, uttering the (now iconic) quote at the top while doing so.^note Technically speaking, the launcher used in the film isn't an actual M203; it was a specially-built prop impersonating one, as there were no genuine M203s or alternatives available at the time. This prop M203 went on to be used in other films of The '80s, such as Predator and Heartbreak Ridge
• Frank Castle is commonly depicted using this weapon as an attachment for his signature Vietnam era M16A1 or his M4A1 carbine in more recent stories.
• Common in the Battlefield series ever since the move beyond WWII.
  • Vietnam allows US Special Forces to fit the experimental XM148 onto their XM177E2s.
  • Battlefield 2 features the proper M203 permanently mounted onto the USMC Assault's M16, while the PLA get the GP-25 on their Assault's AK-47 and the Middle Eastern Coalition gets the GP-30 on their AK-101. The Special Forces expansion adds more, with the AG36 mounted on the L85 and the EGLM on the SAS' F2000.
  • Battlefield: Bad Company features the M203 on the HK416, M16A4, and AUG, alongside the GP-30 on the AEK-971 and AN-94, the GL-1 on the F2000, and the prototype version of the M320 on the XM8. By default they load 40mm grenades, though ranking up with the Assault kit in the second game allows use of smoke grenades or buckshot shells.
  • Battlefield 3 simplifies things, featuring the M320 as an Assault kit gadget that can be used either standalone or mounted to most assault rifles if you have the Underbarrel Rail attached; if attached to a Russian weapon, it turns into the GP-30. Like in Bad Company 2 they start with regular explosive grenades, and can unlock smoke grenades or flechette shells. It returns in Battlefield 4 with the same characteristics, though with an actual notable use in the campaign where Recker, while hanging from the side of a car, shoots down a pursuing Hind gunship with a standalone M320, and the "Naval Strike" DLC adds a fictional type of three-shot shell based on the Metal Storm 3GL.
• Mack Bolan used one even before the weapon was widely known.
• The SIG GL 5040 (mislabeled as the M203) and GP-25 show up in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as add-ons for most of the Western and Russian assault rifles respectively; the games also feature the GL-1 and GP-30 as integrated weapons attached to the end-game F2000 and OTs-14. However, limited ammunition availability, the excess weight, and the rarity with which you face bunched-up enemies pushes them into borderline Awesome, but Impractical.
• A Demolition weapon in Killing Floor is an M4 assault rifle with an M203 attached beneath which gives them an edge to deal with smaller zeds with the rifle itself while scrakes and fleshpounds get the big boom underneath it. Killing Floor 2 eventually added an M16 with an M203 as the Tier 3 Demolitionist weapon (after downgrading the cost of the M79). Thanks to the new cross-perk system and changes to the existing tier system, commandos can make good use of the weapon to give themselves another explosive option besides their grenades, without having to break the bank like in the first game.
  • In the the "Halloween Horrors: Monster Masquerade Update" for Killing Floor 2 one of the weapons added was the "HMTech 501 Grenade Rifle". The 501 appears to be a heavily-modified SIG-Sauer SG 556 Classic, fitted with an underslung FN EGLM. Interestingly enough, the underslung grenade launcher has been modified to fire a caseless version of the Medic Perk's hand grenades, releasing gas that harms enemies and heals allies, instead of the usual ally-healing dart launchers most of the medic weapons have.
• The M16 unlocked after beating Black difficulty mode in Black has an M203 attached.
• Absolutely available in 7.62 High Calibre, though it negatively affects the balance of the gun it's attached to.
• Eldritch has one on her M16A4 in the Whateley Universe. Watch out for a superpowered mutant who carries around an M203.
• The M203 appears slung under the widest variety of weapons of any grenade launcher in Project Reality, mounted under the M16A1, M16A4, M4, C7A2, and Colt Model 653. Various other launchers also appear in smaller numbers, including the GP-25 (mounted on the AK-47, AKS-74, and AK-74M), LG-1 (the QBZ-95), HK79 (the G3A3), and AG36 (the G36, C7A1, and L85A2).
• Used in the Stargate-verse, usually as an underbarrel launcher (in which case it's normally actually a Cobray CM203 flare launcher standing in). In the SG-1 episode "The Fifth Man", however, Jack O'Neill fits one with a stock and pistol grip as a makeshift anti-aircraft weapon, downing a death glider with it.
• An M203 can be found in the Chinatown Sewers in Parasite Eve, with upgraded variants available from then on. It also returns as an attachment for the M4A1 rifle in Parasite Eve 2. Useful if you like to use grenades as it frees up an inventory slot instead of having to keep the Grenade Pistol (an HK69) handy.
• Warrant Officer Slivko uses an M16A1 fitted with an M203 (similar to the one pictured above) in Kong: Skull Island.
• Various appearances in the Metal Gear series.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty features three scenes where an M203 mounted under an M4 carbine is used. The first is during the prologue, when a Marine attempts to destroy (or at the very least damage) the hijacked Metal Gear RAY, but to no effect. The second instance occurs when a member of SEAL Team 10 fires a grenade at Fortune, only for her luck to render said grenade a dud. The third is during Snake's encounter with Solidus at the connecting bridge between the two halves of the Big Shell, with Snake using the M4 to fire a few rounds before switching to the M203.
  • Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes follows suit by equipping M203s onto the rifles of guards on the top floor of the nuclear warhead storage building, which they use with less-lethal rounds so as to prevent accidentally setting off any of the nuclear warheads stacked all around the room.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots allows for the player to finally use an underbarrel launcher of their own, with an early prototype of the M320 available to be attached to the M4 Custom and XM8 and a GP-30 available for the AK-102 and AN-94.
  • Peace Walker as well allows for the player to research versions of the M16 and Model 653 with an M203 and a version of the AK with the GP-25.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes features a "DGL-103" break-open launcher, vaguely based on the HK79, as an attachment for the AAS version of the AM-69 rifle. Phantom Pain proper features it in both a standalone version that can be upgraded with sights, a longer barrel, and eventually the ability to launch rocket-propelled grenades(!), as well as the prior underbarrel configuration available for a wider variety of rifles. The latter game also adds another launcher based on the GP-25, like the DGL-103 coming in both an underbarrel version, the "Fakel-46" which can take different ammo types, and a standalone "Fakel G-33" that can be upgraded into a ridiculous triple-barreled monster.
• PAYDAY 2 fits an M203 underneath the barrel of the HK417. It's essentially a downgraded version of the M79, carrying only three grenades with less power than the M79, though acting as an alternate mode for its parent rifle rather than having to sacrifice a more generalized primary weapon for it. As of Christmas 2017, a standalone version of the M320 is also usable as essentially a secondary version of the M79 - it can't be concealed as much, but it does get the options of gadgets and sights while dealing the same damage.
• Common in the ARMA series; as to be expected, it mainly consists of the M203 for NATO forces and the GP-25 or GP-30 for whoever they're opposing. ARMA III mixes it up, with NATO's MX series using the Metal Storm 3GL (including its advertised triple-grenade ability with the right ammo type), CSAT's Katiba getting the Madritsch ML40 (misidentified as the EGLM), and the F2000s and TAR-21s used by government troops and rebels of Altis and Stratis using the GL-1; later DLC adds the GP-25 for the AK-12 used by the Syndikat in Apex and later the Russian Spetsnaz in Contact, the former also adding the M320 for CTRG 15's HK416 and the QLG-10A for Viper's QBZ-95, and the latter adding the GPBO-40 for the Livonian army's MSBS.
• The Mk. 13 Mod 0 appears in Saints Row 2. Strangely, it's attached to the AR-50 Special (an XM 8, a weapon it was never designed to mount to). Saints Row: The Third features a grenade launcher on the K8 Krukov once it's fully upgraded, a very stubby sort of hybrid of the M203 and a GP-series launcher. Both use frag grenades from your inventory as ammo.
• Splinter Cell, for most of the series, features the GL-1 mounted underneath the F2000, from which most of Sam's wide variety of gadgets are launched from (including non-lethal ring airfoil rounds, sticky shockers, and various types of remote camera).
• Out of all the grenade-launching ARs in Girls' Frontline, precisely three of them have underbarrel grenade launchers actually present in their artworks: CZ 805 (with the CZ 805 G1), Zastava M21 (PBG-40, a licensed copy of the GP-25), and A-91 (integrated underbarrel launcher). K11 (see XM 29 OICW entry) has an above barrel launcher instead. HK416's MOD 3 upgrade also gives her a standalone M320 grenade launcher. Presumably the rest of them uses rifle grenades instead of dedicated launchers.
• Insurgency features the M203 and GP-25 grenade launchers usable by Security on the M16A4 and M4A1 and the Insurgents on the AKM and AK-74, respectively. They can load high-explosive or smoke shells depending on the class.
  • They return in the sequel Insurgency: Sandstorm on the same platforms with the same shells, alongside the AG36 on the G36K, VHS-BG on the VHS-2, and the Steyr GL-40 on the AUG. The M203 can also be mounted on the Insurgent's M16A2 and FAMAS and the GP-25 can be equipped with improvised buckshot shells.
• The Mk. 3 model of T-Zero's assault rifle in Urban Chaos: Riot Response is fitted with a strange side-mounted grenade launcher designed after the M203. The barrel moves forward after firing and ejects the spent shell. Nick Mason has three grenades in reserve for it.
• Squad features several of these for the various grenadier classes: The GP-25 appears mounted on an AK-74M, AKM and AK-74 for the Russian Ground Forces, Insurgents and Irregular Militia respectively. The M203A2 is available on the M4, M16A4 and C7A2 for the US Army, Marines and Canadian Army respectively once more. The L123A2 is present for the British Army's L85A2, the HK79 for the Middle Eastern Alliance's G3, and the SL40 for the Australian Defence Force's EF88.