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Phallic Weapon
aka: Gun In My Pocket
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"No, she's absolutely right," said Zeb, patting the enormous pistol at his hip. "This is a penis substitute. After all, if I could kill at a range of thirty meters with my penis, I wouldn't need to carry this thing around, now would I?"
Guns, cannons, swords, daggers... they're all penises.
After all, most of them are vaguely phallic (any object longer than it is wide = phallic), they penetrate human flesh, and killing people is a sign of virility. In the case of guns, they even " ejaculate" bullets, while swords tend to have the reminiscent shape, with the long blade section and the thicker hilt guard in the bottom, and are usually held at around crotch height — and, in some cases, kill with a thrusting motion. So it's not much of a surprise that weapons in general are a very popular source of phallic symbolism, if not the most popular.
Sub Trope of Freud Was Right. See also BFG, BFS, Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?, Compensating for Something, Gun Porn. Compare/contrast with Torpedo Tits, which is somewhat of a Distaff Counterpart to this.
Examples:
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Anime
Art
- On Hieronymus Bosch 's "Hell" panel of "The Garden Of Earthly Delights" a long knife can be seen with two ears on the side.
- Inversion: H. R. Giger occasionally uses guns as a yonic metaphor. Google "Birth Machine" for an example.
Comics
- All over the place in The Silver Age of Comic Books. (Not that The Golden Age of Comic Books was completely tame: just look at the page picture!)
- Used hilariously for a supremely ridiculous villain in Doom Patrol, who was ridiculed all his life for having a small penis and thus built a giant cannon to attach to his crotch and called himself, what the hell, Codpiece
 . The horror comes in when said super villain is defeated by a transsexual heroine... who has the power to dissolve objects.
- Towards the end of Preacher, Herr Starr develops the disturbing (and hilarious) habit of holding his gun over his (penisless since a dog attack) crotch and repeating "Doom cock...Doom cock..."
- When Superman rescues Lana from Lex Luthor's mooks in an early Post Crisis comic, he faces down a Mook with a huge bazooka and asks "Overcompensating for something there, fella?"
- Spoofed in the movie posters for a 1985 Dykes To Watch Out For comic strip (famous for being the strip that popularized the The Bechdel Test).
- Tank Girl has loads and loads of this in its sight gags, both for the title character and for some of her more macho enemies.
Film
- Bonnie & Clyde has a very sexually charged scene where Bonnie checks out Clyde's gun.
- Batman (1989) has a Getting Crap Past the Radar example that pays off twice. First, The Joker shoots down Batman's plane with a ridiculously long gun pulled from the front of his baggy clown pants. Then, immediately afterward, he uses this gun to take the Girl Of The Film hostage, and keeps it pointed at her throughout the film's long and sexually charged climax.
- In From Dusk Till Dawn, the character Sex Machine has a "crotch gun," basically a codpiece with a gun on it.
- It also made an appearance in the Mariachi's guitar case full of guns in Desperado, with the Mariachi commenting that it saved his life once, but we never see him use it.
- One scene from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has a girl fellating a gun before being shot.
- Fight Club opens with Tyler's gun in the Narrator's mouth.
- Gay Perry from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang manages to kill a guy by literally shooting from the, er, hip.
- Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet) in Angel Heart is killed by gunshot. The shot in question comes from a gun stuffed into her nether regions. We thankfully don't get to see the murder, only the aftermath.
- The Man With The Golden Gun is one of the more obvious examples. Scaramanga's lover explains that he only makes love to her after he killed someone with his golden gun, and one scene involves him suggestively caressing her with it as she lies naked in bed.
- The opening credits to quite a few James Bond films involve the silhouettes of naked women and guns.
- Dr. Strangelove's final scene has this as well.
- Not just the final scene.
- Tank Girl has a moment loving on the gun of the tank she ganks from Water Power. To the tune of Shaft, no less.
- And later on, explicitly called out as she rides the cannon up to the window of a truck. 'Feeling a little inadequate?'
- In The Line Of Fire. When Agent Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) misses a jump and ends up dangling from a rooftop. Mitch Leary (John Malkovitch) pops up overhead, prompting Horrigan to take aim despite his failing grip. Leary teases Horrigan's pistol a bit before deciding that he'll take care of him later, and helps Horrigan to a nearby fire escape.
- That scene in Videodrome where James Woods grows a vagina and then starts masturbating it with a gun.
- Dirty Harry. "My, that's a big one."
- I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. Bad guy to partner:
Willie: How come their guns are so much bigger than ours?
Thug: It's a phallic thing.
- Orgazmo. Cock rocket. Need I say more?
- The poster for Dolemite has him holding a Hand Cannon at crotch height, as one of his ladies grips the barrel. It's also discharging as she's gripping it.
- Spaceballs: Dark Helmet's line: "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine. Let's see how well you handle it." He says this while he and Lone Starr are holding their pseudo-lightsabers at crotch level.
- In The Pirate Movie, the Pirate King is asked "Is that a knife in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?" It turns out it is a knife in his pocket, as he pulls it out and throws it into the wall beside the woman's head. However, he then demonstrates that he is also pleased to see her.
- In the first dream level of Inception, Mr. Eames produces a grenade launcher from his Hammerspace, blows away a group of projections and says "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." Persons who do not feel that this implies "I can also do this with my penis" are hereby commended on the cleanliness of their minds.
- Psycho features the infamous shower scene—the phallic-shaped knife, repeatedly stabbing Marion. Not to mention the killer having sublimated his sexual repression into murderous urges.
- Rear Window 's Jeff uses a telescopic lens (obviously longer than the binoculars he was previously using) to further his voyeurism and subsequent violation of his neighbor's privacy.
- In the Scream movies, the serial killer targets young women, simultaneously acting seductive towards them and trying to stab them with a knife.
- There is a clip from the Swedish movie Kopps where a police officer throws his gun into the air, opens his pants, catches the gun in the open fly, then buckles his belt over the gun. He then guns down two criminals using pelvic thrusts. Then takes out the third by hacky-sacking the gun and kicking it into mook's face.
- Death Wish. While at a gun range in Tuscon, Arizona, Paul Kersey mentions to his client Ames that he was a Conscientious Objector during the Korean War.
Kersey: Maybe it's true.
Ames: Maybe. But this is gun country.
- Alien. The filmmakers state that the rolled-up adult magazine that crew member Ash tries to suffocate Ripley with is meant to be a penis substitute, because as an android he doesn't have one himself.
- This is lampshaded endlessly in Shoot 'Em Up.
Live Action TV
- Discussed in 30 Rock:
Liz: What is it with men and guns?
Tracy: Well, I think I speak for the both of us when I say "because they're metal penises."
- Andromeda: Have you seen my forcelance?
- Used deliberately and disturbingly in Six Feet Under when a carjacker forces Dave to suck on his gun and threatens to shoot him with it before running away. In a show where Anyone Can Die, it seemed like he might pull the trigger.
- It's been speculated that this is why Xena prefers her chakram to the sword, since it's yonic rather than phallic.
- In the episode "The Gun" of M*A*S*H, Frank steals a gun. Margaret also gets an orgasm when Frank shows her the gun (she then doesn't know yet that Frank has stolen the gun).
- Played with in Burn Notice, where the girlfriend of the not-too-bright son of the villain of the week gets the hots for Michael.
Debbie: I ... want to see your gun.
Michael: Okay, that's not my gun. Not my gun.
- In Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the government implants an 'inhibitor chip' in vampire Spike that prevents him from biting anyone, a condition that's compared rather tongue-in-cheek to impotence. He's delighted when someone gives him as pistol as he can at least threaten people, but then finds the chip stops him from even aiming it. Spike's response is to demand a bigger gun.
- In Season 3 of Game of Thrones, Joffrey fires his crossbow from the hip, and the camera angle clearly implies this trope. This is after he has lovingly shown and described it to his fiance, and he has already shown that he gets turned on by violence and killing.
Literature
Music
- The Nine Inch Nails song "Big Man With A Gun."
- Deadlee's "Suck Mah Gun."
- "Gunz Yo" by Sage Francis.
- The Lulu Bond theme "The Man With The Golden Gun," in a hilariously unsubtle way.
- Cher in (this music video).
- Mitch Benn in the video for "Happy Birthday, War," as a parody of the Cher video.
- Kings of Metal by Manowar. The line "We got the biggest amps, man they blast." But the whole song, as well as Manowar image in general, are an example of this, or more suitably, Not compensating for anything thrope. As those thropes are close, in case of Manowar, they complete each other.
- The band Machine Gun Fellatio.
- The Ludo song Go-Getter Greg: "I'm a go-getter guy with a gun on my hip, I'm just searching for that someone to be firing it."
- The Toybox song 007 has "Bad girls scream when I show my gun!"
- "Steady Mobbing" by Lil Wayne "Uh, Man suck my clip. Swallow my bullets and don't you spit."
Video Games
- The box art for Duke Nukem Forever (featured above) shows a cocky Duke from a low angle, with his smoking gun over his crotch and a female hand grabbing his waist. Yeah... subtle.
- "Hey Vyse, my cannon is bigger than yours!" - Vigoro, Skies Of Arcadia (he showed up in a ship with a huge freaking cannon mounted on it).
- In Metal Gear Solid, Revolver Ocelot is the Anthropomorphic Personification of this trope. Just listen to his speeches about "slamming a bullet down a shaft" when reloading...
- A quote from Kreia about the lightsaber in KotOR II: "For the male, it seems to have inordinate importance. But we shall leave such male preoccupations for philosophers and cultural historians."
- In Dystopia, another heavy kills people with a white stream of ions◊.
- When visiting the Citadel for the first time in Mass Effect 1, the crew of the almost tiny Fragile Speedster Normandy is deeply impressed when passing The Battlestar Destiny Ascension, the biggest warship in the entire galaxy. Which leads pilot Joker to one of his usual moments of snarking:
Ashley: "Look at the size of that ship!"
Joker: "Well, size isn't everything."
Ashley: "Why so touchy Joker?"
Joker: "I'm just saying: You have to have firepower, too!"
- He gets to prove it too - He and the Normandy get to deliver the killing blow to Sovereign.
- A nice Renegade response from Female Shepard at Omega from Mass Effect 2:
Merc Recruiter: Well, aren't you sweet? You're in the wrong place, honey. Strippers' quarters are that way.
Shepard: [pulling out her gun] Show me yours, tough guy. I'll bet mine's bigger.
- The Penetrator melee weapon in Saints Row The Third. It's an over-sized dildo. The in-game description says it all:
The absurdity of a sex toy with the lethality of a baseball bat.
- This "Mecha Dress-up" flash game gives you an achievement for building a robot with a minigun between its legs; the achievement's description is "why would you put it there?!"
Webcomics
- Don't insinuate this to Vulcan Raven in The Last Days Of FOXHOUND.
Raven: I don't think we've been introduced. My name's Vulcan Raven. And this here's m'gun.
Ninja: So... small dick, huh?
Raven: Congratulations! Your death will be an extra 25% more painful.
Web Original
- Literalized in Its Always Time: Strawberry Banana (aka SB) (she's made of Jell-O. It Makes Sense in Context.) is a woman with a penis. A detachable penis. And when she detaches it, it turns into a sword.
- An over-the-top feminist review of Portal uses this in a ridiculously contrived analysis regarding the misogynist implications of shooter games. It then praised Portal for it's feminist aspects, that included the portals' semblance to a vagina.
- Lampshaded in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series: immediately after Joey dismisses Tea's remark on the overabundance of phallic imagery in a duel, Yami Yugi says, "Now watch as my mighty lance penetrates your moist cocoon!"
- Many Japanese netizens have mocked the Xianxingzhe (or Senkousha in Japanese), China's first bipedal humanoid robot, for (among other things) having protruding joints near its crotch. Many parody videos and games of the robot have interpreted the protrusion as a powerful Wave Motion Gun called the "Chinese Cannon".
Western Animation
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