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"The essence of drama is conflict. That's why they gave me this Taser."
Gun shy, but trigger happy? Get excited. Get delirious. Get all the pain compliance you need with this “non-lethal” weapon.

As we know all too well, Electricity Knocks You Out.

Concurrently, electricity has many uses; one of these manifold uses is a natural taser.

This trope refers to the tendency for electricity to serve as a stunning mechanism. If a person can summon/harness lightning or electricity, chances are someone hit with it with be stunned, with arcs flowing across their body. Water is basically a giant taser trap waiting to be sprung by the proper application of an electric shock. Additionally, victims of said tasing with often cry out spasmodically before falling in a heap, in order to properly convey the force of the incapacitating blast. Even when "ordinary" tasing doesn't behave like that in a given show, this effect often (inexplicably) appears when a taser is applied to the back of the neck.

This is very common in Video Games, where the paralysis Status Effect is frequently inflicted by electric attacks or visually represented by electric sparks.

Related to Shock and Awe, as most of the Electric weaponry related therein would carry this effect.

In SF literature after about 1955, you are much more likely to encounter a Sonic Stunner. Since then, Static Stun Guns have been primarily a visual-media trope.

A Static Stun Gun can be considered a type of stun gun, because both kinds of weapons have the ability to incapacitate. It's just that the former is explicitly mentioned to be lightning-driven while the latter can use something else besides electricity to do the same job.

This trope is not Truth in Television — if a live-action character is tased and loses consciousness, it's safe to assume that the "taser" is not a real taser at all and the actor is merely guessing what it's like to be tased.

See Lightning Gun for a more lethal way to use electricity, and Taser Tag Weakness for when a Static Stun Gun proves just as useful against superpowered individuals as it does against unpowered ones (i.e., very useful). See also Shock Stick for electrified weapons that take the form of a staff or baton, usually combining this effect with blunt trauma. Compare Instant Death Bullet, for when guns are depicted as a painless way to incapacitate someone. Sub-Trope of Electricity Knocks You Out.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Misaka Mikoto of A Certain Scientific Railgun uses her powers for this in one episode of the anime after cheerfully explaining that electric stun guns don't work on her.
  • Hei in Darker than Black uses his electricity power like this at times. In one case he actually pretended to have a taser, because he wasn't disguised at the time.
  • In Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid, Sousuke gives Kaname a taser weapon on her request, which she later uses to defend herself against an assassin.
  • One type of weapon Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex's Section 9 uses is something like a handshake joy buzzer, built like fingerless gloves. Of course, they're designed specifically for use against cyborgs.
  • When trying to wake up a sleeping Bean in Riding Bean, Rally tries to use a taser on his neck to wake him up. It doesn't work, so she just elicits to place a burning hot pan to his face; he wakes up no worse for wear.
  • ST☆R: Strike it Rich: Ichika uses a Taser to knock out Hina. Hana implies it was something Ichika confiscated from a delinquent, before stealing it for herself.
  • Tomodachi Game: The main characters are knoked out by tasers for what is probably hours when they are kidnapped for the titular game. When one of those tasers appears prominently in a later arc, the effect is somewhat handwaved by claiming they are a special model much more powerful than standard.
  • Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Kokone has a pistol loaded with "9mm electroshock rounds." They're non-lethal, but leave a scar.

    Comic Books 
  • Black Widow's wrist gauntlets fire electric shocks called the "Widow's Bite."
  • In Day of the Dollmaker, Catherine Grant uses a taser which she carries in her purse to disable one of Dollmaker's dollified slaves.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes: Lightning Lad often uses his Shock and Awe powers this way (as does his sister when she possesses electrical power as Lightning Lass).

    Fan Works 
  • The New Adventures of Invader Zim: When the members of SMOG abduct Gaz in Season 1 Episode 18, they do so by hitting her with a taser baton. While she isn't knocked out, she's left momentarily paralyzed and disoriented, long enough for them to restrain her. When she breaks free later and goes berserk in revenge, she takes the baton and uses it to beat people with.
  • The Secret Return of Alex Mack: This is Terawatt's usual nonlethal takedown method, until she tries out telekinetic Choke Holds and finds that they work very well (at least so long as the opponent isn't able to resist with their own telekinesis or Super-Toughness). She still pulls out the lightning bolts when fighting non-sapient monsters, but those are turned up to lethal levels.

    Film — Animation 
  • In Despicable Me 2, Lucy renders Gru unconscious with a taser gun disguised as lipstick.

    Film — Live Action 
  • Played for Laughs in 22 Jump Street when Captain Dickson uses one to tase Schmidt in the gonads as the retaliation for sleeping with his daughter.
  • In Black Rat, the killer uses an electric stun gun to knock out Kanako. When she wakes up, she is wired to a chair in the AV lab.
  • The Creeps: Dr. Berber has a collapsible taser that he uses to knock Anna unconscious so he can steal the Dracula manuscript and her.
  • The Glow Rods in Demolition Man at first do not necessarily appear to be electrical, but near the end of the film, John Spartan exploits the "water = taser trap" form of the trope.
  • The Enforcer: A taser is used during the kidnapping of the Mayor of San Francisco when he refuses to leave his limousine. As the weapon had just come onto the market when the movie was made in 1976, there's brief exposition among the villains on what it is.
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once: An FBI agent renders Chad unconscious with a taser.
  • Hitchhiker Massacre: The killer has a taser that he uses to knock his victims unconscious before he abducts them. It makes a flashing blue light when it's in use.
  • In Lazer Team, Zach is tased not once, but three times (inadvertently the third time), including being tased twice in a row in one scene. This is especially notable as his actor, Michael Jones, was later tased twice in a row during the Rooster Teeth Extra Life fundraising stream in which they were raising money for a children's hospital. What's more, he volunteered for this as part of a fundraising goal.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Black Widow has her Widow's Bite, which can discharge electric blasts to stun enemies. In Iron Man 2, she uses small discs to knockout some guards with an electric jolt. Avengers: Age of Ultron sees her add a pair of electroshock batons to her arsenal.
    • Ant-Man: Detective Paxton tases Scott, knocking him out so he can be put in the police car and taken back to jail.
  • The Other Guys: When Hoitz and Gamble are shocked with the tasers they both pass out.
  • In The Perfect Weapon, Detective Sanders knocks Tanaka out with a taser gun.
  • In the final scene of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, as Alice escapes from the laboratory she's cloned in, a guard tries restraining her with a ranged taser. Since Alice is a superhuman, she simply rips the taser embedded on her skin and throws it back at the guard, knocking him out.
  • In RoboCop (2014), one of the titular character's weapons is a NI-408 pistol (a.k.a. TSR-66). As Mattox says, "Each projectile releases up to 200,000 volts. It can stun, it can kill... and it's nasty shit." Murphy frequently uses it together with an M2 Battle Rifle, and is not above applying it as Electric Torture by shooting people who already surrendered if he feels the target deserves it.
    Murphy: Hey, doctor, what happens if I taze an exoskeleton with a little asshole inside?
  • In Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond's mobile phone includes, besides its signature ability to remote-control his Cool Car, a two-pronged electroshock weapon activated by pressing the Recall button. In a memorable case of this, Bond overcomes one of the villains by tricking him into zapping himself with it.

    Literature 
  • In Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts, Shouko does this to a non-complying Yuuji while at the theaters, after he objects to watching Apocalypse Now two times in a row, and later another film that lasts 7 hours, again two times in a row.
  • Agent Grant uses a cattle prod as a taser during a bank robbery in Curveball. He later mentions that he wouldn't have bothered with the cattle prod if he'd known that their helmets weren't padded, which meant that tapping them on the head was far more effective than he thought it would be.
  • Durarara!!: Akane attacks Shizuo with one after having been told the latter would kill her father and grandfather. The model she used was given to her by Nakura under Izaya's orders and was heavily modified in order to be a lethal weapon. Unsurprisingly, all it does is sting Shizuo a little.
  • In the 1941 story "Fire-Power", by Cyril M. Kornbluth (writing as "S.D. Gottesman"), there is one reference to "electric stunners". This has been cited as the first occurrence of Sonic Stunner, but was probably intended as a static stun gun.
  • Fun Jungle: The park security force uses them. In Panda-monium guard Kevin Wilks tries to stop a fleeing criminal with his taser gun but trips over a little kid as he's about to shoot and accidentally tasers an old lady instead (although the crook then trips over her and knocks himself out).
  • Robert A. Heinlein's classic 1949 story "Gulf" features a static stun gun called a "Markheim". This may well have been be the Trope Codifier; Heinlein's influence on later genre SF was enormous.
  • In Hammer's Slammers, "needle stunners" fire a needle that carries a static charge strong enough to make muscles seize up like a taser, except the range and ammo capacity are greater and it can penetrate heavy clothing or even light armor.
  • In The Handmaid's Tale, the Aunts wield cattle prods.
  • The hydrites from the German SF series Maddrax have shocking staffs. These look a lot like a telescopic baton, but are much thicker and can shoot lightning bolts. Because the hydrites are a pacifist and peaceable species, the shock sticks are usually set to merely anesthetize the attackers. However, they can also shoot deadly lightning with them.
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe explains the stun setting on a blaster as an electrical effect.
  • Tom Swift:
    • Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (1911) gave the taser its name: Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle.
    • The villain of Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane (1957) has a weapon that generates electromagnetic waves which shock the target into stunned submission.
  • Universal Monsters: Joe improvises one in book 5, jabbing the Gill Man with the broken-off end of a power cord that's still plugged into the wall to drive the creature off.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In the Batman (1966) episode "That Darn Catwoman", Catwoman's goons use electric cattle prods to stun Batman into unconsciousness.
  • In the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode "Hostage Situation", Jake knocks Charles out by shocking him in the back with a taser.
  • In an early episode of Burn Notice, Fiona zaps a Russian mobster with a taser gun. However, since the mobster is currently grappling with her, the zap renders both of them unconscious. Note that in real life, taser guns neither cause unconsciousness, nor pass their current by physical contact with another person.
  • Daredevil (2015): The Kitchen Irish members that corner Frank Castle at the carousel in "Penny and Dime" use tasers to subdue him.
  • Doctor Who: "Cold Blood" has a Taser. Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs when the person hit with it ends up dying from repeated shocks.
  • In Dollhouse, Ballard pretends to hand Topher some paperwork to sign, and when he is close enough stealthily tasers him in the chest, incapacitating him. This impresses a watching Alpha.
    Alpha: What the hell was that?! Some sort of joybuzzer stun-gun? You know officially I deplore violence, but that was totally worth the loss of karma points.
  • In Farscape, Captain Larraq carries a specialized stasis gun for capturing hosts of the intelligent virus he and his crew of commandos are chasing.
  • In Helix, Arctic Biosystems security techs have 600 kV stun batons, which knock humans out cold, but only serve to irritate Vectors.
  • In the Intelligence (2014) episode "Athens" Dr. Cassidy improvises an electrical stun bomb to temporarily incapacitate Jin Cong and one of his mooks.
  • In Leverage, Parker loves zapping people with various tasers and other stun guns. Her old mentor/father-figure has two nearly identical specialty canes, one extends a six-inch blade from the tip, the other acts as a taser. When a hacker makes some rude comments about Parker, the old man places his cane's tip against the guy's crotch and asks him if he'd like to find out which one he was using today (later, the same guy continues making rude comments, so he hits him in the neck with it and discovers it was the taser after all).
  • Lost's Others have weapons similar to tasers, with multiple settings.
  • In the Murdoch Mysteries season 8 finale, Murdoch demonstrates his new invention: a "weaponised capacitor", which is basically a steampunk taser. He does warn that it could possibly kill someone.
  • Person of Interest: Averted in "Cura Te Ipsum". Dr. Tillman is planning to kidnap and murder serial rapist Andrew Benton. She zaps him with a taser and he is almost immediately on the floor, but then Tillman follows this up by administering a drug via nasal spray that knocks Benton out long enough for her to restrain him in a wheelchair and wheel him to her van.
  • In one episode of Smallville, the villain of the week tries to murder Lana and her friend with a handgun that shoots a bolt of electricity, claiming it's painless and will immediately stop their hearts. Clark ends up speeding in and tanking it, accidentally ricocheting the energy back at the villain, which kills him instantly. He then speeds out so fast that it appears to Lana and her friend that the gun just explosively misfired.
  • The Goa'uld "Zat'Nik'Tel" weapons in Stargate SG-1 work like this; effectively scaled up versions of a Taser weapon. In one instance, one was even used as a substitute for electroshock therapy. It can also be used as a lethal weapon, since the charge is strong enough to kill most humanoids on a second shot.
  • Torchwood: In "Meat", Torchwood use tasers against people who they don't think are dangerous. It turns out these people have guns and Ianto ends up tasering someone in the forehead, saying "Pray you survive."
  • Veronica Mars: Veronica's signature weapon is a taser that she often used to incapacitate opponents, as being a petite teen sleuth, she's too young to carry a firearm and too small to directly take on most opponents.
  • The Tesla guns (designed, as one would expect in this series, by Nikola Tesla himself) in Warehouse 13 are exactly this.

    Professional Wrestling 

    Tabletop Games 
  • In BattleTech, the Battlemech taser is a stun gun on steroids. It uses a modified Gauss Rifle mechanism to fire two armor-piercing harpoons into enemy battlemechs, then pumps it with electricity to fry the mech's electronics, allowing it to be salvaged mostly intact. Sadly, it doesn't cause the violently twitching that a stungun causes against meatbags, as battlemech's artificial muscles are immune to it courtesy of their extreme electrical resistance. The weapon also has a small chance of feedback shocking the user, and will violently explode when damaged.
  • One Cyberpunk 2020 splatbook includes two variants. First, one that uses a moderate charge laser between the contacts to ionize the air, turning it into something similar to the GURPS electrolaser — and another that is the same thing, but built into a cyber arm.
  • The Dark Conspiracy supplement Darktek has the "E.T. Stun Gun". It fires a laser to ionize the air, then discharges an electric current that follows the ionization path.
  • Eclipse Phase has stunners, electrolasers that deal some damage and the "shock" status effect, shock batons, shock gloves, and eelware are melee weapons that do practically the same thing. Also, agonizers use microwaves to inflict incapacitating pain without damage (unless set to "roast"), and standard laser guns have a "stun" setting that uses a set of quick pulses to achieve a flashbang-like effect.
  • GURPS:
    • GURPS High-Tech has tasers/batons as well as taser guns — which are nearly useless against people wearing anything but normal clothing.
    • By GURPS Ultra-Tech, the tasers have been replaced with electrolasers. Incidentally, the latter cause stunning effects only in the early editions of the game, but in 4th edition, the laser element causes a modicum of burning damage. However, attacks with the Surge modifier always force characters to roll to avoid stun if enough damage is taken.
  • "The List of Character Survival Techniques" (v.1.5) recommends carrying a stun weapon such as tasers and knockout poison darts — sooner or later your teammate will catch Demonic Possession, Hate Plague or something. And considering it as a primary weapon, to reduce inevitable complications.
  • Star Frontiers has electrostunners (ranged stunning weapons).

    Video Games 
  • Armory & Machine has the Stun Baton skill, which zaps an enemy to deal high damage to their shields and also "stuns" them by interrupting their current move, causing it to fail.
  • Players can control Mumbo Jumbo as a playable character in Banjo-Tooie. His weapon, the Zap Stick, shoots a continuous stream of sparks that immobilize the victim and causes them to babble incoherently until they die. It is wonderful.
    DOW-BA-LA-DOW-BA-LA-DOW-BA-LA-DOW-BA-LA-DOW-BA-LA-DOW-BA-LA-AAAARRGHHH!!!
  • Battlefield Hardline: If you choose to be a cop, you have to use a taser to subdue criminals before you can arrest them.
  • The infamous "One-Two Punch" in BioShock involves first stunning an enemy with Electro Bolt and then whacking them upside the head with your wrench. Shooting a pool of water not only hits every Splicer in that pool, but kills them instead of merely stunning.
  • In Borderlands, electric elemental damage can stun enemies.
  • Eddie Riggs can stun the various animals in Brütal Legend, and then ride them, by calling down lightning with his guitar.
  • The Soviet Telsa Pistol used by commissars in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Paradox is one of these, useful to stopping deserters or for stunning enemy soldiers alike.
  • Custom Robo has the Stun, Ion and Thunderbolt guns, electrical weapons that stagger the opponent for an extended time if they hit.
  • Deus Ex Universe:
    • The stun baton in Deus Ex is electric and awesome. The first hit would stop a regular human in the ass. If the second his is applied to their buttocks then they would be knocked out. Sometimes it takes more than two hits if not applied to the behind.
    • One of the weapons available to Adam Jensen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a taser pistol which, surprisingly, must be reloaded after every shot. Luckily, that's enough to take down basically any one person he fights.
  • The first Endless Nightmare grants you a ranged taser as the only weapon you can have, which is painfully sluggish but works decently well against the undead. You'll need to recharge it after each shot, however. In the sequels you can use firearms freely, and the stun gun is written out of the games ever since.
  • Fallout: New Vegas crosses this with Carry a Big Stick in form of X-2 Antenna, which you wrench out from a radio dish as part of a Old World Blues DLC quest. It stays electrified after that and deals additional damage to robots and people in Powered Armor, has insane reach and causes knockback, but is rather heavy. It also has a special VATS move that deals quadruple damage (doubled by VATS, then doubled once more by special itself), making it the strongest non-explosive attack in the game.
  • Some mooks near the end of Fighting Force have an arm that can shock the player, knocking them down and taking some health.
  • The Thunder branch of spells in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles may inflict the "Stunned" status condition, preventing the victim from moving until it wears off.
  • In Find the Cure!, the infirmary is guarded by an electrical turret that incapacitates without killing.
  • The advanced edition of FTL: Faster Than Light introduces weapons that both ionize the targeted systems and stun anyone nearby.
  • In Girls' Frontline, SIG MCX's special attack has her pull out a Taser gun and shoot it at the nearest enemy, inflicting extra damage and debuffs.
  • Golden Sun represents stunning as two bolts of lightning alongside the afflicted character.
  • Inverted in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. The player can purchase a "Teaser", which shocks your target for as long as you hold the trigger. Realistic until you hold it long enough that the target bursts into flames, instantly giving you a one-star Wanted level.
  • In Hitman: Blood Money, using a taser will render the victim unconscious for the remainder of the mission.
  • Invisible, Inc.: Tasers are standard issue to your starting agents and normally knocks out enemies for three turns, while letting agents stand on knocked out enemies to extend the knockout duration. More powerful variants exist that are required for dealing with more powerful enemies.
  • Jade Empire's Storm Dragon style does this. It becomes a Game-Breaker for many fights, since harmonic combos with Storm Dragon usually gives you Focus drops. Focus powers your Bullet Time, so you can effectively stay unhittable and kill everything in a room in maybe 4 seconds of real-time.
  • Jonathan Kane: The Protector is an FPS where if the player is in control of Jonathan's Love Interest, Jennifer, they then get a ranged stun-gun as her sole weapon. It deals a One-Hit KO on all enemies, knocking mooks unconscious, but tends to be somewhat slower than bullets.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Kingdom Hearts has an odd example: the Thunder spell can paralyze the Trickmaster boss on contact, but the spell is typically obtained after defeating that boss if the worlds are traveled in the intended order.
    • Kingdom Hearts II also plays with this by having the cursed pirates from Port Royal similarly vulnerable to Thunder magic.
  • In Low G Man, the titular character carries the electro-magnetic disruptor pistol, an infinite-ammo weapon that can be used to stun enemies before taking them out with the armor-piercing spear. It actually becomes a Spread Shot on higher levels.
  • Mega Man:
    • Mega Man 3 features the Spark Shock as Spark Man's weapon, which allows Mega Man to paralyze enemies that aren't immune to it. Unfortunately, it's a Useless Useful Spell by virtue of preventing weapon switching until it wears off, and dealing no damage by itself. The Game Boy version gives it a significant Balance Buff by allowing the player to switch weapons while there's a paralyzed enemy on screen.
    • In Mega Man Battle Network, paralysis is an effect typically associated with the Elec type. This works in reverse, as well, as The Paralyzer Flash Man became Elec type in MMBN3.
  • Metroid:
    • Metroid Prime's electricity-based Wave Beam may disable the target if charged. Also, Samus' pistol in Super Smash Bros. Brawl fires a bolt of what is presumably electricity which stops foes in their tracks, complete with the coursing arcs.
    • Metroid: Zero Mission: Samus is shot down on her first attempt to escape Zebes; in the crash, she loses her armor and has to infiltrate the Space Pirate mothership armed with only a stun gun. The gun has a ridiculously long recharge time, and it only stuns enemies if fired with a full charge; otherwise it just ticks them off. Worse, enemies shot with a full charge only stay stunned for three seconds, after which they wake up and sound the alarm, assuming Samus isn't hidden when they do wake up (which, given the above, is rather difficult to actually manage). Samus herself lampshades the gun's many failings in monologue:
      "All I had for protection was my rather useless emergency pistol..."
  • In Noita, wet creatures struck with Lightning attacks will be temporarily stunned with the traditional white lightning running over their body.
  • Oni has the van de Graaf pistol, which fires a short-ranged arc of lightning does almost no damage but stuns an enemy for several seconds or until they are damaged. It's most useful for crowd control or allowing Konoko to get into position for a Backbreaker.
  • PAYDAY:
    • Taser units in PAYDAY: The Heist can stun you with their tasers, causing you to fire you gun uncontrollably. Unless another player kills the Taser or you happen to shoot him with your uncontrolled firing, you'll get incapacitated. The sequel keeps them the same but also adds a taser gun as a melee weapon that can stun any enemy except the Bulldozer.
    • Tasers return in PAYDAY 3, renamed Zappers due to "Taser" being trademarked by Axon and gaining the ability to drop shock mines which will briefly stun anyone caught in the blast.
  • People Playground: The Stunner gun launches an electric energy packet and it immobilizes humans. It's one of the few weapons that can neutralize people without killing, but overusing it might fry them alive and kill them as a result.
  • Most Pokémon's lightning attacks come with a paralysis side-effect. Don't count on that to have an advantage if you're not using Thunder Wave, though, but do expect paralysis to occur often on your team members. Even when the paralysis is not inflicted by an Electric-type attack (for example, Body Slam or Stun Spore), the effect is represented by electric sparks covering the victim.
  • Prey (2017): The RSV-77 Neuroelectric Disruptor, or simply the Disruptor, fires an arc of electricity at the target. Can be used to stun Typhon (though Voltaic Phantoms are immune), and when upgraded is surprisingly effective against Technopaths and corrupted Operators. It also of course will effectively knock out human targets, such as those under control of a Telepath.
  • Resident Evil:
    • In Resident Evil (Remake), Jill can acquire one of these as a defensive weapon. In The Umbrella Chronicles, it is her counter move, frying a zombie by tazing them in the stomach.
    • Weapons called "Stun Rods" appear in the hands of late-game mooks in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5. It's a bit of a misnomer, though: in 4 they do about the same amount of damage as being shot in the face with a Gatling Gun, and in 5 they instantly put you into Dying status. You can also buy a Stun Rod in 5 and use it yourself; it is extremely powerful and works wonders for crowd control and, best of all, it doesn't use any ammo.
  • In RWBY: Amity Arena, there are two characters who uses this trope - Nolan, whose Stun Rod is practically a Disk One Nuke as you get him early on, cost the least amount of Aura to deploy and can stop just about anything and anyone, and Neptune, who comes later on but has the added abilities of causing a stun just by being deployed and being able to shoot and stun his opponents.
  • Sipho: Judging from the zapping sound and lightning-like visuals it makes, the ability-disabling Sizzler zooid acts through some sort of electric charge.
  • Spider-Man (PS4): There's a scene in the DLC where Yuri Watanabe, formerly Spidey's Friend on the Force, is attempting to shoot Hammerhead to death, but Peter tries to prevent her from doing so. Yuri immobilizes Peter by shooting him with electric restraining cables obtained from Sable Incorporated, preventing him from stepping in long enough for her to shoot Hammerhead. This scene shows that, despite Yuri Jumping Off the Slippery Slope in her revenge against Hammerhead, she refuses to kill Spider-Man for opposing her.
  • The Shock Trap from Star Wars Battlefront (2015) is an electronic mine which immobilizes any enemy within range and kills them if they fail to struggle loose in five seconds. Both R2-D2 and Lando Calrissan can use these Traps as one of their abilities, though Lando's variant of the above is not only more powerful, but also disguises itself as a power-up. R2's is a more literal gun, shooting straight out of his body.
  • In Streets of Rage 4, some police officers carry single-use stun guns that shock and immobilize enemies. They can also be used on arcade machines to unlock hidden stages based on stages from previous games.
  • In Super Scribblenauts, shooting something with electricity gives them the "vegetative" adjective. This is extremely effective due to the fact that it can easily put down characters that are virtually invincible.
  • SWAT 4's array of less-lethal weaponry includes (with the expansion pack) two different tasers. One a standard black-and-yellow ranged taser, the other a more rounded-edges newer model, which can be used as both a ranged taser and a melee weapon (an up-close paralyzer). In terms of game mechanics, the tasers are used for non-complying suspects resisting arrest or for overly paniced civilians. (With the expansion pack, you can also avoid tasing non-compliant suspects or especially civilian NPCs, by using a slight punching melee attack to threaten them to comply.)
  • Syphon Filter has the air taser, an electroshock weapon that is notable for three major attributes — firstly, it has infinite ammo, which is quite handy in an FPS. Secondly, it has infinite range — if you can see it, you can shoot it with the air taser. Finally, while stunning opponents via electric shock, holding down the trigger too long results in the victim bursting into flames while screaming loudly and spasming wildly. Fans widely consider this 'side effect' to be gruesomely hilarious. Conversely, the hand taser available in the sequel is a standard contact-type stun weapon similar to a real-life electric stun gun. It doesn't have the same range, utility, or entertainment value as the air taser, and is therefore uninteresting to expound upon.
  • In Urban Chaos: Riot Response, if you taze someone for too long, they will burst into flames, killing them.
  • Void Bastards has the Zapper, a 3-shot tazer that does a small ammount of damage and stuns the target. It's very effective on robots and turrets. Its upgrades, Cattle Prod and Herd Zapper, stun for longer.
  • Warcraft III has Purge (hits target with lightning), which removes buffs but slows the target a great deal, as well as Storm Bolt, an electrically charged hammer that stuns the target. Used by name without involving electricity, Thunder Clap also slows enemies by slamming the ground.
  • Warframe: The Electric Status Effect stuns enemies for a few seconds while making them give off a Chain Lightning effect to other nearby enemies.
  • In the X games, the Ion Disruptor acts like an arcing lightning ray against ships, which does good shield damage but is effectively useless against the hull. Ion Disruptors are also the only way to capture Spaceflies - zap a spacefly with the disruptor as it zips past, and it will be stunned long enough for the spaceship to scoop it up with a spacefly collector. The spacefly can then be sold to the Split Dynasty to power their reactors or to the Space Pirates for pretty much the same purpose.
  • X-COM:
    • The Stun Rod's Terror From The Deep equivalent, the Thermal Taser, is incredibly useful for one reason: Lobstermen, which are nigh-invulnerable, take full damage from the Taser. Since the only other weapon that does full or more damage to Lobstermen is the equally short-ranged VibroBlade weapons, the Taser can be useful if you encounter Lobstermen before you've researched either the blades or the Thermal Shok Launcher.
    • X-COM: UFO Defense has stun rods, cattle prod-like tools used to stun aliens for capture. They can also stun your own soldiers when they get mind-controlled, or civilians to stop their tendency to run into enemy fire.
    • XCOM: Enemy Unknown has the Arc Thrower, a short-ranged electrolaser designed and invented as a research project after you research the alien invaders' xeno-biology. It works better the less health the target has, and once the stun procs, the alien will stay unconscious until the end of the mission. Later projects in the Foundry increase its effectiveness to make stuns easier, and give it an extra role in hacking alien Drones and repairing mechanical units*. It should be noted that each of these uses consume one charge of the Arc Thrower's very limited pool.
    • The Long War 2 mod for XCOM 2 brings the Arc Thrower back as a sidearm for some classes. While it no longer KO's enemies for the entire mission, it has a significantly better range than in Enemy Unknown and uses a short cooldown rather than limited charges. A number of soldier perks let the Arc Thrower deal direct damage, incapacitate robotic enemies, and daze targets even when missing a shot. The weapon and perks have also been reused by a number of other mods.
  • Yandere Simulator: Wielded by Kocho Shuyona. First shown in YandereDev's Let's Examine Persona series of videos, where he is seen in concept art wielding an X-26 Taser gun. Sure enough, when he was introduced into the game several months later, he has that taser gun on him and will use it on Ayano without hesitation.

    Visual Novels 
  • Higurashi: When They Cry's Shion Sonozaki has a habit of knocking people out with tasers, often by pushing it very hard into their neck. She has never given anyone more than a few hours of unconsciousness (at least, that's all she's done with the taser...).
  • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Manfred von Karma uses one of these on Phoenix and Maya to steal incriminating evidence from them. Maya somehow holds the static charge into the next day, and zaps Phoenix, Edgeworth, and Gumshoe in the courtroom lobby.

    Webcomics 
  • Thanks to using a robotic avatar to communicate with the world, Princess Anevka of Girl Genius can produce small bursts of electricity capable of stunning people. She can also use this to kill people, including her father.
  • The police in Kiwi Blitz use pistols loaded with stun bullets (apparently miniature tasers) because they were tired of being sued whenever someone died resisting arrest.
  • In The Lydian Option, the Tha'Latta carry long rods with tasers at the end to subdue unruly prisoners.
  • In True Magic, the guards wield collapsible metal batons that can stun people. Since it channels the nobility’s inherited magic, peasants can’t wield the batons, and receive a shock if they touch it.

    Western Animation 
  • In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Heart of Steel", Alfred thinks he must have dozed off after being shocked with a taser.
  • In The Legend of Korra, the Equalist shock glove is a Static Stun Gun in Power Palm form, designed to give the Equalists' nonbender forces an edge over enemies like the armored metalbending police. It becomes the weapon of Asami Sato, Team Avatar's token Badass Normal.
  • Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles: The Shock Stick is a melee staff weapon used by the Skinnies that delivers powerful amperages of electricity. They are capable of killing Bugs or disabling a Trooper's Power Armor. The Troopers later adopt this technology for their own use.
  • In Skysurfer Strike Force. Crazy Stunts' duel pistols can fire long cable at his enemies that will shock them if they touch it.
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "Monty Can't Buy Me Love", Mr. Burns uses a cattle prod on numerous people at the mall, including Ned Flanders.
      Burns: [to a passed-out Ned] That's a good lad.
    • Subverted in "Helter Shelter". Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley is sent in to boost the show's ratings, and zaps Homer with a taser. Homer cries out spasmodically but does not end up losing consciousness.
      Squiggy: The essence of drama is conflict. That's why they gave me this Taser.
    • Discussed in "Dangers on a Train". Marge skypes Ben and asks him if he's watching Upton Rectory. He says he can't because his wife is "watching a show about a man who repossesses zoo animals". She is then heard yelling "Come on, taser that flamingo!" followed by an electrical buzzing sound and a flamingo shrieking.
  • South Park:
    • Subverted in "Pre-School". Cartman tries to stop Trent Boyett with his mother's taser gun but misses and hits Miss Claridge, overcharging her wheelchair and causing her to spin out of control.
    • After being tased by the police in "Cartman's Incredible Gift", Tom Johansen falls to the floor, unconscious.
    • In "Credigree Weed St. Patrick's Day Special", Butters pinches a policeman for not wearing green and gets tased unconscious by another for "sexual assault".

Top

Engaged and Tased

Just when Mike and Pheobe decide to get engaged, they both are tased.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (5 votes)

Example of:

Main / StaticStunGun

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