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"This is the kind of gun they used to put planes on. It wasn't a case of 'Oh, we got this jet fighter, it kinda needs something besides missiles and bombs and shit, let's strap this thing on'. NO. It was a case of a guy making a gun SO awesome, that he just stepped back, and said, "This shit needs to fly'. And everyone else is like, 'You cant make a gun fly!'. And the first guy is all like, 'Fuck you, yes I can. I will strap a plane to this gun.' And everyone's like, 'You mean strap the gun to a plane?' And the first guy is like, 'No, man. I am strapping the plane to the gun. The plane is an accessory.' And then everyone's minds were blown. Like, there was some serious mind blowing going on there. Ears were bleeding. Synapses just went an committed suicide because it was so awesome."
Ever since Richard Gatling's 1861 invention, the rapid-firing rotary gun has had a special place among BFGs. Having something of the magic of the chainsaw about them, there is an undeniable attraction to a gun which can produce high enough rates of fire to cleanly trim hedges, cut down trees, or, in the case of the GAU-8 Avenger (a weapon for which the above quote ACTUALLY HAPPENED), cut tanks in half. Just imagine what they do to Human flesh.
As a rule, rotary guns are extremely heavy due to their multiple barrel units, require either external power sources or a complex gas-operation mechanism, and need huge ammunition supplies. Although capable of sustained fire, in real life they are generally only fired in short bursts, as firing exhausts their ammunition extremely quickly.
Despite numerous inaccurate descriptions, "chain guns" are not rotary guns: they are simply guns with a specific type of firing mechanism, and in real life only have one barrel. Also of note is that early revolvers, repeater guns and even light cannon ("organ guns") often had multiple barrels, sometimes rotating. This is something else again: each barrel is loaded individually and fired separately, and these are less rotary guns than an old and highly inefficient form of revolver.
Gatling guns have enduring popularity as rapid-fire guns in fiction, particularly film and games. Rates of fire so high they can only be described as "bullet spam" are quite useful in Real Life, as well. It should be noted that the reasons for this type of barrel system is more to KEEP the barrels cool, than to make them LOOK cool, thus why they can fire such ridiculous amounts of ammo without exploding.
It should be noted, however, that most videogames heavily downplay the rate of fire. This used to be for technical reasons - back when computers weren't terribly fast, calculating trajectory, damage and effects for fifty or so bullets per second would slow the framerate down to a crawl - and good luck sending all that information through a 56k link during a multiplayer game. Nowadays the technical reason is no longer important, as computers and broadband links are powerful enough to effortlessly process the needed information, but the rate of fire is usually kept down anyway for gameplay reasons: if you had a gun that could shred in half any enemy with just a half-second of sustained fire you'd have very little reason to use anything else, and balance would go to hell. There are a very few exceptions, but in general whenever you pick up a rotary gun expect to ask yourself "so, why exactly does this thing have more than one barrel?" every time you squeeze the trigger.
It should be noted that Gatling proliferation in reality isn't really dependent on Rule Of Cool so much as functionality. For example linear-action and revolver-style autocannons tend to have annoying issues with barrel wear at the high rates of fire required for things like shooting down missiles. In Real Life, Gatling guns are really useful when either the firer, the target, or both are moving at several hundred miles per hour relative to each other. The more rounds you can pump towards the target in the short amount of time you have to aim the better. For stationary/slow moving targets and firers, it's just a waste of ammo. A very fun, very impressive looking waste of ammo.
A popular form of the BFG in fiction, and both a fictional and real-world way of achieving More Dakka via Everything's Better With Spinning. See also Bang Bang BANG.
Examples
Anime
- A man with a Gatling gun killed several powerful villains (in fact, practically every villain besides himself) early on in Rurouni Kenshin. It was actually a very primitive design, was operated manually, and jammed after one of the villains stuck a metal bit in the ammo bandoleer.
- Only in the anime. In the manga, the only reason the guy didn't shoot Kenshin with it was because he used up all his ammo killing the other guys.
- Since the series takes place in the 19th Century, a hand-cranked Gatling gun was cutting edge at the time.
- The scene also handily depicted why such weapons were illegal in Japan at the time. No matter how badass a samurai is, he can't survive a gatling gun to the chest.
- For a while, a Vulcan cannon was the primary "weapon" (hard to explain) of Bungo Takano's "shadow dragon" Hainekuwele in Narutaru.
- Gundam has been known to use these from time to time:
- Gargomon in Digimon Tamers had a Gatling gun on both arms, making him dangerous to the humans as well as the Digimon early on - he was a bit drunk with the Champion level power.
- Zoids had the Hibilt Vulcan cannon, a massive six-barreled beam Gatling weapon. Oddly enough, the anime would often inconsitently depict it as a projectile wepaon instead. There are too many Zoids that can equip it to list here, but we will mention Karl Shuvaltz in Chaotic Century, who was known for having all his Ace Custom units being armed with one.
- Guu has a gattling gun arm.
- In episode 21 of Zettai Karen Children when Oboro Kashiwagi the otherwise ordinary secretary lays eyes on a life sized doll of herself created by The Mole Takashi Kugutsu NOT for himself; he was blackmailed into doing it by Kaoru, her response is to whip out a minigun out of NOWHERE and shoot it to dust. Any Ork Warboss would be proud to have her on the team.
- Appleseed has large tanks that have stupidly large six-barreled rotary cannons in place of the main gun. And the monstrous mobile gun platforms have four of the same... each.
- Chao's robot army in Mahou Sensei Negima used these against Mahora's mage army. They were loaded with bullets that could send the victim into a future in which they'd already lost without any possible defense aside from dodging as a functional One Hit Kill.
- Novic from Priest carries around a gatling gun. He doesn't seem to have any trouble firing it from the hip.
Comic Books
- Rocket Racoon's preferred weapon in the recent Anihillation: Conquest miniseries and new Guardians of the Galaxy ongoing is a gatling gun bigger than he is. Opinions are divided on whether to call it proof of super-procyonid strength on Rocket's part or chalk it up to Rule Of Cool.
Film
- Terminator 2. And it was reported that Schwarzenegger was the only man in the set strong enough to carry it on his own.
- Terminator Salvation. The main enemy grunts, the T-600s have Gatling guns strapped to their arms.
- The Matrix features a helicopter-mounted minigun.
- Predator features that famous minigun 'Old Painless' wielded by former Navy SEAL, former Pro Wrestler and (then-future) Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and may very well effectively be the Trope Maker. It should be noted, however, that the actors firing that thing had to be braced just offscreen, lest the recoil knock them on their ass. And that was just firing blanks. They also had to connect it to an external power source offscreen, by a wire that went down his pants.
- Jesse himself has stated that while the gun was suspended from an offscreen crane in early takes, later he actually managed to fire it without. According to him: 'You just had to grit your teeth and hold on. It's like firing a chainsaw. Why the fuck would anyone want to use something like that?'
- Predator's minigun is actually the very same model that was later used for the aforementioned Terminator II.
- A criminal uses one in Superman Returns, to no effect.
- The Big Bad's suit in the Iron Man film has, in addition to a rocket launcher, a huge wrist-mounted Gatling gun.
- The War Machine armor of comics' fame also sports a Gatling gun
- In the epilogue of Grindhouse: Planet Terror, Cherry Darling has replaced her rifle-leg with a minigun.
- Let's not forget the motorbike-mounted chaingun in the Machete trailer.
- All robots seem to have rotary guns in the Transformers movie. Including ones made from mobile phones.
- And the one made from a soda machine! It fires Mountain Dew cans with lethal velocity from a rotary grenade launcher-style weapon. (And the entry on the Ensemble Darkhorse seems befuddled at how "Dispensor" became so popular.)
- 3:10 To Yuma (the remake) features a hand-cranked Gatling gun.
- For the record: the original Gatling gun always was hand-cranked; there was no other feasible rapid-fire technology available until Hiram Maxim invented the first true machine gun in 1884.
- One of the more awesome scenes in Black Hawk Down involved one of the titular Black Hawks obliterating a group of Somali soldiers with RPG launchers using one of the the mounted miniguns on the side of the chopper.
- In The Last Samurai, the Japanese government purchases a battery of Civil War-era Gatling Guns from the United States. These weapons quickly and efficiently wipe out the remnants of the Samurai during their final Desperation Attack.
- The Wild Bunch, anyone?
- During a car scene in Last Action Hero a door on a van suddenly opens, and a goon steps out with a mounted short-barreled minigun and proceeds to fire it at Arnie's car. Which, of course, remains untouched, but the premise of the movie means this actually makes sense.
- At the start of Tremors 3, Burt Gummer demonstrates the proper way to deal a rampaging pack of Shriekers: a pair of anti-aircraft guns mounted on the back of a truck.
- And his milquetoast ancestor in Tremors 4 gets his first taste of proper Gummerhood at the end of that movie, when he receives a Gatling Gun. He turns the handle, it starts firing, and he starts giggling... he turns the handle faster and faster, firing off more and more rounds, and his shrieks of laughter reach a maniacal pitch...
- The first car chase in Batman Forever: The Batmobile is chased by a pair of '50 Buick Roadmasters, each with two miniguns mounted on the hood. Not that they ever reach real Gatling fire rates, let alone do any halfway realistic damage to anything.
- The War Wagon (1967) western starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, who plan to rob an armoured stagecoach with a turret-mounted Gatling gun owned by a villainous land baron.
- The 1983 movie Blue Thunder features a modified Aérospatiale SA-341G Gazelle helicopter with a 20mm Gatling cannon mounted in a turret attached to the nose. This cannon has such a high rate of fire that, during the movie, it is used to saw a police cruiser in half to facilitate the escape of one of the supporting cast. In a few seconds. To have the plot make some vague sense, the turret gets disabled during the Final Boss Fight, as is the chopper itself at the end of the movie, being Too Dangerous To Exist.
- In Django, a Gatling gun turned out to be what Django kept in his coffin.
- That's not a Gatling gun, there are no rotating barrels.
- Guess what's bolted to the port side of that black truck in Tango And Cash. Right, a 20mm Gatling.
- Wiseguy. Hitman Roger Loccoco has a car with a gatling gun firing from the trunk, and twin machine-guns between the headlights.
- In the Clint Eastwood vehicle The Outlaw Josey Wales the Redlegs used a Gatling mounted on the back of a wagon to kill all the bushwhackers that had just surrendered to them and turned their own guns in
Live Action TV
- MythBusters used a Gatling gun as the last stage of the "shooting fish in a barrel" analogy. First, they tried more mundane guns, like a handgun and a shotgun (aside: they missed with the shotgun; the shockwave of the blast alone killed the fish). For the last stage, they busted out an army issue minigun and unleashed it on the barrel; by the time it was over, the barrel was in a million pieces and there was more lead in the fish than fish.
Literature
- The "Reason" of Snow Crash ("I told you they'd listen to Reason") is a ridiculously powerful needlegun-type rail gun in the style of a Gatling gun that fires small fragments of depleted uranium. To drive the point home, at a certain point in the story the main character gets in a fight with two Phalanx CIWS carrier-mounted 20mm vulcan guns. Reason wins.
- To give an idea of the power of this gun. The hero of the book uses it to shoot his way into an aircraft carrier. Well, more accurately THROUGH it. Remember, everyone listens to Reason.
- In the novelization of "Rambo: First Blood Part II", one of these guns shows up on a helicopter. Every fourth bullet is a tracer bullet, leaving a column of fire from the weapon's mouth, leading to the weapon's nickname: "The Dragon".
- Not just Rule Of Cool, mind you. Aircraft guns use tracers to allow the gunner to easily track targets at night.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 loves these, from the "assault cannon" on Space Marine Terminators and Dreadnoughts, the Tau's Energy Weapon Burst Cannon, through the tank-shredding Vulcan Mega Bolter and Gatling Blaster, and right up to the Imperator Titan's Hellstorm cannon (a Gatling Energy Weapon the size of a skyscraper.)
- In case you were wondering about that caption, DAKKA DAKKA is the onomatopoeic sound effect commonly used in Warhammer 40000 comics and graphic novels for rapid-firing weapons. In fact, for Dawn Of War, the Orks' ranged weapons upgrades are labelled "More Dakka" and "Even More Dakka".
- This coming from the original tabletop upgrade, Kustom Job: More Dakka. "Dakka" is actually a normal (and very good) word in the Ork language.
- Battletech commonly depicts many machineguns and Autocannons as rotary-style guns, and recently introduced the separate Rotary Autocannon as its own class of weapon.
- Many mecha and vehicles in Rifts are adopting rotary railguns as antipersonel weapons.
- Shadowrun has, in addition to its more ordinary miniguns, a vehicle mounted weapon called the "Victory Rotary Assault Cannon", which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin: a rotary gun that fires artillery rounds.
- The evil rat-like Skaven in Warhammer Fantasy Battle, ever on the cutting edge of technological development, have... wait for it... ratling guns.
Videogames
Webcomics
- In Sluggy Freelance Riff invents an anti-vampire gatling gun that fires 100 wooden stakes per second. Falls into Awesome But Impractical territory since it only holds 100 stakes and takes two days to reload.
- The Humongous Mecha Dr. Silas Merlot of Girl Genius used in Castle Heterodyne and attempted to kill Agatha with comes equipped with double gatling guns as its primary weapon.
Western Animation
- Rhinox of Transformers: Beast Wars had one for each hand, and they're often called "The Chainguns of Doom".
- The Swat Kats' jet, the Turbokat, included among its many weapons a Gatling gun that fired balls of cement. One has to wonder how much the ammunition for that weapon must weigh.
- Both of the Clone Wars cartoons feature the Z6 rotary blaster cannon, a standard-issue laser gatling gun for the Clone Troopers. It's as awesome as it sounds.
- Ed Edd N Eddy once had a gatling water gun made of
turkey basters Canadian squirt guns. Edd got a little overexcited using it...
Edd: Oh yes, I feel it! I feel the adrenaline, Eddy-baby!!!
Eddy Double-Dee! Relax, would ya? It's a toy, from Canada.
RealLife
- Richard Gatling invented the Gatling Gun in 1861, in time for occasional use in the American Civil War. It was a hand-cranked device on a small carriage, firing a rifle cartridge (models varied between six and ten barrels). Having the firepower of an infantry company controlled by a single artillery crew, it was one of the first machine guns.
- Fun Fact: Gatling was actually a committed pacifist, who hoped that with such a devastating weapon on the battlefield, nobody would dare go to war, and would solve all their problems through diplomacy instead. It didn't work.
- He was also motivated by the fact that the majority of war casualties at the time were from disease — a weapon that ended the war quickly would therefore be more merciful.
- In 1890, a Gatling was mated with a motor for the first time. This gave such promising results that Gatling himself patented a version with 10 barrels and a built-in electric motor in 1893. It fired 50 rounds per second, a rate that would go unsurpassed for 60 years. Interestingly enough, while it worked, it was probably a case of Before Its Time.
- Another Fun Fact: The USAF had developed a replacement for the .50, but the action worked so fast that there was often two rounds in the barrel, simultaneously (bad for accuracy and barrel life), so it never went into service. Someone remembered the gatling gun, but not the motor driven one. They borrowed a hand cranked one from a museum, replaced the crank with an electric motor, and ground out 100 rounds a second for short bursts. Therefore, technically, it was not surpassed in rate of fire (see Ian V. Hogg's Air Defence).
- The rotary gun experienced renewed popularity in the second half of the 20th century as anti-aircraft weapons. Where firing windows are measured in fractions of seconds, higher rates of fire are a massive advantage. The 20mm M61 Vulcan, developed in 1959, is still in use to this day on US fighter aircraft.
- "Miniguns" (so called because they are miniaturized version of the Vulcan, otherwise this name is as complete of a misnomer as you can get), multiple-barrelled guns firing rifle-sized rounds, are used by helicopters and some vehicles as a more rapid-firing alternative to conventional machine guns. The huge ammunition stores required, power feeds and simple weight of the gun mean that hand-held miniguns seen in fiction are somewhat ridiculous.
- However, man-portable multi-barreled guns do exist, such as the XM214
 Microgun. It was not supposed to be fired while hand-held, though.
- Of particular note is the GAU-8 Avenger, a gun so enormous◊ that the A-10 Thunderbolt II (AKA "Tank-Killer" or "Warthog") was built around it. It fires seventy 30mm rounds per second, each capable of penetrating 69mm of armor at 500m. The gun can expend its entire magazine of 1,200 rounds in 17 seconds, and at maximum fire rate, the recoil force is roughly equal to half the total engine thrust of the plane, which occasionally results in the plane stalling.
- "Close-in weapon systems" such as the American Phalanx CIWS and the Russian AK-630 (now replaced by the Kashtan which has guns and missiles), a type of defensive weapon mainly used on warships, have ludicrous rates of fire even by Gatling standards. Designed to shred incoming missiles in a hail of bullets, they are employed by most navies as a last-ditch defensive system.
- GSh-6-30, despite cool performance, turned out to be much more limited than its top-Dakka 23-mm predecessor, because recoil is too strong for most purposes. This gun wasn't made specifically as anti-tank, so it's much smaller than GAU-8 Avenger and doesn't need the aircraft to be built around it, but proves you cannot strap 30-mm gatling on a plane "just so": vibrations from bursts longer than 30-40 rounds are strong enough to shake the plane apart (see Explosive Overclocking). While average force of recoil sends light storm-boat or air cushion vehicle away, spinning. As its use on full power requires at least really good shock absorbers and proper barrel cooling, its variants are used mostly in air defence (ship CIWS, see above).
- Airsoft understands this trope fully.
- When President Obama was going on his procession to his inauguration, he had better protection than you probably realize; he was tailed by an Secret Service SUV with a ''popout gatling gun turret! Just check this baby out!
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