Swiss-Army Gun

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Simply put, it's a gun that can do a whole bunch of stuff depending on the situation. Like a Swiss Army knife, with just a flip of the wrist it can be a rocket launcher, shotgun, machine gun, grenade launcher, or chainsaw rocket catapult. This gun seems to be whatever you need, when you need it, just as long as it's some kind of projectile weapon. Don't even begin to mention the obvious design flaws, because this weapon is powered by Rule of Cool, with a little bit of Hyperspace Arsenal thrown in.

Subtrope of Swiss-Army Weapon. Often also a BFG (hey, those extra guns are gonna take up space). Compare to Do-Anything Robot, for its even less realistic equivalent. The key difference between this trope and the Do-Anything Robot is that the Swiss Army Gun generally has some kind of limit or some set number of forms. Gun Accessories are a common method of creating such a weapon.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Daisuke's gun from Heat Guy J may count. The gun itself only has one particularly notable feature, a retractable hook at the bottom of the grip used for close combat. However, it can use a variety of ammo, including standard bullets, presumably a silver bullet, explosive Red Tab bullets, and electric Blue Tab bullets that stun those they hit.
• Sirica of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! wields a machine gun/sword/flamethrower, seemingly stolen from Nightmare Enterprises as it has its logo.
• The Buster Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is of a particularly interesting note because it features this except with two guns. Individually, both guns have a separate function. The gun on the right is a railgun while the gun on the left is a beam rifle. The two guns can be docked with one another by plugging the barrel of one into the butt end of the other, which will power up the gun in front. The railgun's powered up form is an anti-armor shotgun, while the beam rifle's is a high-energy, long-range beam sniper rifle.
  • A later model, the Verde Buster, mounts the cannons on the shoulders so that they can both be used. However, the docking arms used to mount those guns are given shotguns which have sword blades that unfold out of them.

Comic Books

• In Jon Sable, Freelance, Jon carried a large bore, multipurpose stainless steel revolver, that had a resemblance to an antique pepperbox revolver. The weapon could fire underwater, fire rifle shot, arrow/bolt type projectiles and a multitude of other loads, such as tear gas, explosive, and tranquilizer. This was a Real Life weapon designed for Navy SEALs that never went beyond prototype.
• Judge Dredd's Lawgiver, which has specific rounds for basically any given situation.
• Nightwing villain Torque was given a assault rifle supplied by Intergang that had various voice-activated functions. It could do laser blasts, explosive blasts, an optics flare for blinding people and a kinetic pulse-type feature that could push something away. When Torque goes overboard and the gun starts overheating, it gets another function: as a bomb.
• In a short story of The Punisher, Frank interrupted a weapons deal about a special handgun called "The Preacher". Its barrel was designed to fire any type of ammunition, and the butt could auto adjust to accept magazines of any size. Frank pockets the gun after killing off everyone else.
• Venom (2011): As Agent Venom, Flash Thompson was given the Multi-Gun, a modular firearm whose default appearance was an assault rifle but which could shift between various alternate modes.

Fan Works

• In the Mass Effect/Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series crossover Renegade, the Global Defense Initiative has developed "Shapeshifter" weapons using mass effect technology, which consist of infantry rifles that feature various heavy weapon add-ons. This is following GDI's standard design logic when applied to the lighter, collapsible weapons that can be created using mass effect technology; after all, if they can make their guns smaller and fold out into full-sized weapons, then they can fit multiple weapons into the same space and weight that a conventional gunpowder weapon possesses.

Film — Live Action

• In Beverly Hills Cop III, Serge's "Survival Boutique" sells the Annihilator 2000, a combination minigun, microwave oven, rocket launcher, portable TV, flamethrower, beverage cooler...
• In Blastfighter, Pete gives Tiger an untraceable high-tech shotgun. It has an interchangeable rifle barrel, can fire rifle grenades (including tear gas), and comes with a variety of ammo, including, high explosive, incendiary, and amour-piercing. Needless to say, all of its functions get a workout during Tiger's Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• 2012's Dredd features the Lawgiver, with its trademark voice-selectable ammunition. Known bullet types are: standard-which can be customized for rapid fire or silenced, stun rounds, Hot Shot, Incendiary (a long distance white phosphorous like scatter shot), Armor Piercing, and High Ex.
• Zorg on The Fifth Element has developed one, and gives a very helpful Q Speech on its features, in this quote:
  Voila, the ZF-1. It's light; handle's adjustable for easy carrying, good for righties and lefties; breaks down into four parts, undetectable by X-ray, ideal for quick discreet interventions. A word on firepower. Titanium recharger, 3000-round clip with bursts of 3 to 300, and with the Replay button (another Zorg invention) it's even easier. One shot... (shoots training dummy) ...and Replay sends every following shot to the same location. (demonstrates by spraying bullets at the Mangalore warriors; the bullets arc back to the training dummy) And to finish the job, all the Zorg oldies but goldies. Rocket launcher... arrow launcher (with exploding or poisonous gas heads), very practical... our famous net launcher... the always-efficient flamethrower, my favorite... and for the grand finale, the all-new 'Ice-cube System'. ^*The unmentioned last feature? self-destruct.
• Hero (1997), a Heroic Bloodshed movie set in the 1940s, have the mentor character using a bunch of single-shot Winchester rifles bundled together to fire multiple shots at mooks, all at the same time. And later on using a row of rifles tied to a plank to gun down a row of mooks.
• Invitation to Hell has the main character helping to develop a suit meant for an expedition to Venus, which comes with a retractable gun in its sleeve that shoots laser beams and can also act as a flamethrower.
• Judge Dredd: Dredd's Lawgiver:
  Judge Dredd: Lawgiver 2, 25 round sidearm with mission variable, voice programed ammunition,... Signal Flare!
  Gun: Flare. vrrrrr
  Judge Dredd: (shoots a blinding flare at the target wall) Yours if you graduate.
• Star Wars has several of these with their blasters.
  • In Film/Solo Tobias Beckett converted his blaster rifle into a blaster pistol before giving it to Han Solo. This pistol is revealed to be Han Solo's signature DL-44 heavy blaster pistol.
  • Rogue One, Jyn Erso "founded" an A-180 blaster pistol and Cassian Andor has a A280-CFE convertible heavy blaster pistol which both can turn from a pistol to a rifle. The Rogue One troopers used A-300 blaster rifle is a unique one that transforms from a blaster carbine to a rifle.

Literature

• The Alloy of Law features Vindication, designed to fire specialised rounds that are optimised against various types of magic-user.
• Jeffrey Thomas's novel Blue War, from the Punktown stories, had the Assault Engine, which were similar to the guns in Old Man's War. Assault Engines are a combination shotgun, carbine, grenade launcher and energy beam projector to deal with any threat in the jungles of an other dimensional Vietnam-expy.
• In 1980s post-apocalypse men's adventure series C.A.D.S, the titular C.A.D.S armour has 9mm machine guns, e-ball launchers and liquid plastic flamethrowers. The 2nd generation C.A.D.S armour changes the 9mm machine guns to cannons that can vary their calibres to shoot anything from small pistol rounds to mortar shells.
• The Memory Sword in The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett can become a wide variety of weapons, from swords to molecular strippers to projectile guns that make ice bullets by freezing atmospheric moisture.
• David Gunn's Death's Head series has protagonist Sven Tveskog's SIG-37, a Hand Cannon with a true A.I. that can select various ammo types for Sven, aid in targetting enemies and fire a built-in Plasma Cannon for harder targets. The SIG will also offer conversation, tactical advice and whatnot. It also freaked out when it was given a poor paint job.
• A Hero's War: Minmay's mark 2 magical guns have modes for fire-bolts, force-bolts, shield-penetrating bolts, bullets with magically increased momentum, grenade launching, and a bayonet. They can also spray pellets like a Sawn-Off Shotgun, but that's ultimately deemed to be unnecessary complexity and removed in later models.
• Colonel Fedmahn Kassad's FORCE-issue rifle in the Hyperion Cantos includes flechette grenades, laser beams, and several other weapons in one package.
  It was designed to do everything but cook the troops' food, and with its energy weapon component on its lowest setting, it could probably do that too.
• In Logan's Run, the Sandman guns had six attack methods: homer (a heat-seeking projectile), tangler (sticky net), nitro, vapor (ignites every pain nerve in the body), ripper, and needler. In the movie there were no such settings shown.
  • In the TV series, however, Logan mentions the guns have the settings stun, blast, and kill. While the TV and movie guns can run out of charge, they are not limited to the six shots.
  • Also in the book, the gun was a revolver that came loaded with exactly one bullet of each of these types, and Logan (being on the run) had no access to spares, averting Bottomless Magazines and making each shot both a Chekhov's Gun and Too Awesome to Use.
• The guns used by Jack Frontino, from John C. Wright's stories "Murder in Metachronopolis" and "The Plural of Helen of Troy". They include the "Unlimited Class Paradox Proctor Special" in the former story, and the "Police Special" in the latter. Although the Special seems to be the size of a normal pistol, it's just the the part that exists in our three dimensions—the actual components of the weapon occupy a small warehouse and are stored in higher dimensions. The Special has a wide array of functions, able to shoot a variety of things from laser rays to burning gasoline, and providing support abilities—such as force-fields to protect the shooter, or automatic aim.
• The rifle used by CDF troops in John Scalzi's Old Man's War. It can shoot bullets, grenades, flames, microwaves, rockets... Even better, one can customize to fire, say, a blast of flame followed by a grenade. The "ammunition" is a block of nano-machines which assemble into the correct type of ammunition upon firing.
• In The Fractal Prince, the warrior Mieli joins a mercenary army in protecting a steam train from "Wild Code", when the odds start getting bad - she reluctantly brings out her multi-purpose cannon. Against a storm of incoming Wild Code, she vaporizes that whole area with a Quark-Gluon plasma charge and when a ursinoid mercenary gets corrupted and attacks her, Mieli puts a large hole in her with the cannon's X-Ray laser.
• The Risen Empire had its military armed with variaguns. These guns could use a variety of ammo for its ballistic hardware and also had a built-in Ray Gun that could stun or kill depending on setting.
• In "The Soft Weapon", a 1967 story by Larry Niven, the titular weapon includes a wide variety of functions. It is also a Morph Weapon.
• The dial-a-gun or "dallygun" from Gordon R. Dickson's 1970 SF war novel Tactics of Mistake. It wasn't very practical for the harsh combat environment, as dirt could jam it and it required that lots of different ammunition and spare parts be available, but the protagonist used it once to great effect.
• Iain M. Banks's Use of Weapons: during his search for an FYT gun, Zakalwe stops suddenly and takes something from a shelf.
  "What a beauty!" He gripped the stunningly complicated weapon and twirled it. "What is this?" he breathed.
  "Micro Armaments Systems, Rifle," the drone narrated. "It's ... oh, look, Zakalwe; it has ten separate weapons systems, not including the semi-sentient guard facility, the reactive shield components, the IFF-set quick-reaction swing-packs or the AG unit, and before you ask, the controls are all on the wrong side because that's the left-hand bias version, and the balance - like the weight and the independently variable inertia - are all fully adjustable. It also takes about half a year's training just to learn how to use it safely, let alone competently, so you can't have one."
  "I don't want one," he said, stroking the weapon. "But what a device!"

Live-Action TV

• Battlestar Galactica. Pilots are equipped with standard sidearm with a large-calibre underbarrel attachment for explosive rounds that can make Centurions' heads explode. Presumably it also fires specialist loads like signal flares for downed pilots.
  • This may be based off vierlings like the Space Gun, a combination sawed-off rifle/double-barreled shotgun designed as a compact foraging tool, since different game animals are easier to hunt with shot or bullets.
• Blake's 7 featured some of these for the last season when they started going more overtly Cyberpunk. Quite how one makes a relatively small handgun fire Slow Lasers, unspecified less-lethals, "old-fashioned percussion bullets" and a bunch of other stuff they never get around to using just by swapping magazines was glossed over.
• Juukou B-Fighter (and it's American adaptation, Big Bad Beetleborgs) had the Input Magnum (in Beetleborgs, the Sonic Laser), a laser gun that, depending on the 3-digit code inputted on the bright blue keypad on one side, would fire different beams or effects. The sequel, B-Fighter Kabuto (or Beetleborgs Metallix) had the Input Card Gun (Data Laser in the US), where different Input Cards would be slid into the back for different effects.
• Level Up: Wyatt's Blast-A-Ton is gigantic Swiss army gun with lots of ammo and many types of ammo.
• Saturday Night Live had a fake commercial for a Swiss Army Gun, complete with giant ivory toothpick and corkscrew.
• Even at the most limited definition (things that could be the same basic effect to different degrees counts as one mode, and modes that could be used as weapons but aren't are discounted), Star Trek's phasers have at least two attack modes: shoot at things to make them stunned/killed/disintegrated^note disintegration is probably a separate function, but the stun/kill settings are implied more than once to be a matter of the strength of the attack more than any fundamental difference in what it does — high stuns can kill, and low kills can sometimes be survived even by mundane humans, and blow up.
  • Supplemental materials went into a bit more detail. The basic Type 2 hand phaser has sixteen power settings: Level 1 is basically a wireless taser, Level 3 will knock an adult human unconscious for about an hour, Level 7 is almost universally lethal and Level 8 is a Disintegrator Ray. The settings beyond that tend not to get used much, but Level 16 would probably put the frontal armour of a 21st century main battle tank to some trouble. They also have a seldom-used Spread Shot mode.
• In the Supernatural episode "All Hells Breaks Loose, Part Two" (S02, E22), the Colt, a gun which can kill most supernatural creatures, is also used as a key to unlock a crypt which is sealing a Hell Gate.

Tabletop Games

• If you like the idea of using Zorg brand weapon clusters in your OGL science fiction games, there is a blatant copy in the OGL supplement 1001 Science Fiction Weapons. You will need to be proficient in both energy and slugthrower weapons to use the General Weapon System Mark 183, which contains a shotgun, particle beam, laser, micromissiles, and grenade launcher in one single handy pod. The more advanced Mark 490 contains an X-ray laser, stun ray, plasma gun, armour-piercing force bolt, and an antimatter gun.
• BattleTech's Mauser 960 Assault System, the standard issue rifle of the Star League, was a laser rifle with an integrated grenade launcher, a vibro bayonet, and an enormous survival kit (flares, emergency nutrient pills, a radio, a spade, and a medical kit) built into the stock. Few exist in the modern age, most of which are in horrible shape save for a sizable stockpile of pristine ones in ComStar's vaults. Like the real life OICW, it was an enormously heavy design that rapidly fatigued its users; and the Clan retrofit is even heavier.
• In Paranoia, cone rifles and some other guns take multiple types of ammo (armor-piercing, hallucinogenic gas, etc.) with the same size shells, which are never ever mislabeled.
  • And some of those mislabeled cone shells definitely wouldn't have a chance of being tactical nuclear devices.
• You have to be superhumanly strong to use most of them, but Naruni: Wave 2 for Rifts contains a series of mercenary multi-rifles, which tend to combine three weapons in one, such as the Silverfire, which contains a gun which fires silver projectiles, a flamethrower, and a laser; and others that combine plasma cartridge, laser, plasma beam, grenade, micromissiles etc. together, usually in combinations of three. Some can even have a vibro-bayonet mounted, for extra cost.
  • The Daisho-10 made by the Oni in the Three Galaxies setting is a nonomachine-based weapon that transforms between a Sub-machine gun and a Vibro-sword. The company that produces it also has a version reserved for its own use that has a fully-functional third form of a camera or hand-held computer.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • You think the standard Space Marine is scary with his automatic-explosive-armor-piercing-round firing "Bolter", don't you? Say hello then to the Sternguard Veteran, who, prior to the game's eighth edition, carried guns that could switch between multiple specialized bolter ammunition types depending on the situation, be they incendiary-fireball-explosive, scalding-gas-explosive, supersonic-velocity, extra-armor-piercing or scariest of all, poisonous-acid-filled bolts.
  • And then the Deathwatch go one better, bringing bolts that disrupt the power of psionic entities (like Chaos Sorcerors) and bolts that create miniature gateways to hell to the table... amongst many others.
  • The tabletop game has rules for combi-weapons, basically a weapon with a different weapon attached and can be used once per game. When they debuted in the Slaves of Darkness supplement for Khorne and Slaanesh, a combi-weapon with two different guns was the bare minimum (a character could have a combi-weapon with many more guns than just two) and combi-weapons could be used as many times as you wish. The game's eighth edition restored their ability to fire multiple times, but added an accuracy penalty if both parts of the weapon are used at once.
  • Any and all Ork shootas can be used as melee weapons, some by having choppy bits, others by virtue of being over fifty pounds of pig-iron held together with spit and WAAAAGGGGHHHHH!.
  • Chaos Obliterators are former Mechanicus troops and priests who have been infected with a virus that literally turns their flesh into steel, and can create any weapon they want from their bodies.

Toys

• The Johnny Seven O.M.A. (One Man Army) gun from the 1960s. Grenade Launcher, Anti-tank rocket, and more.
• The Multi-Pistol 09 had multiple grenades and rockets, fired a couple of different types of plastic bullets, and even had a small derringer concealed in the grip.
• The Remco System 7 toy gun from the 1980s. Spinny-disk shooter, periscope, decoder, parachute launcher, ring key lock, secret compartment, and a lot of pure awesome.

Video Games

• Activision had the game Apocalypse starring Bruce Willis. Willis was scientist Trey Kincaid, a master with nanotechnology who used his technologies to develop a weapon that was a humble machine gun, but with the proper ammunition could become a laser, particle beam or various explosive weapons.
• In Battle Zone 1998, the astronaut's automatic plasma rifle can be shouldered to use an integrated cockpit-penetrating sniper rifle. In the sequel, the Pulse Rifle used by ISDF has the same functionality, with the addition of a telescoping barrel and a more ergonomic digital scope that pops up from the rear of the receiver. The sequel also has a 'Bazooka' alternate weapon, which can fire (relatively) rapid-fired rockets, or a massive high explosive blast.
• Throughout the BlazBlue series, Noel Vermillion's Nox Nyctores Bolverk has taken on the form of a pair of Hand Cannons, a minigun, a rocket launcher, a shotgun and a BFG that fires a massive laser beam at the opponent, to name a few.
• In City of Heroes, The eponymous weapon from the Assault Rifle powerset seems to do everything but dispense mixed drinks.
  • Specifically: semi-auto rifle, shotgun slug, shotgun buckshot, grenade launcher, beanbag, sniper rifle, flamethrower, fully automatic rifle and missile launcher.
• The SICW in Classified: The Sentinel Crisis is a transforming machine gun/sniper rifle/shotgun/grenade launcher/gatling gun/rocket launcher. It's supposed to be man-portable, although the person carrying it is wearing powered armor.
• The Playstation FPS Codename: Tenka (or "Lifeforce Tenka" overseas) featured the "Self-Generating Polymorphic Armoury" or SG-26, an assault-rifle-sized weapons system that could shoot standard lead, lasers, grenades, missiles and mines, some of them upgradeable with various sub-modes (like dual and chargeable laser beams, and automatic rifle fire).
• Contra: Shattered Soldier: The director of the game wanted a new direction, so instead of starting with the machine gun and then finding power-up weapons - Bill and Lucia are given a weapon that has multiple firing modes - machine gun, spread gun and flamethrower which in turn have alternate firing modes when charged - homing missile, flying mine and a powerful fireball.
• The Service Weapon in Control is less an actual gun and more gun-ness manifest, taking on the shape of any gun its user envisions with unlimited ammo. For Jesse, it can be a revolver, a shotgun, a submachine gun, a borderline sniper rifle, and a grenade launcher. According to the lore, it's closer to a Swiss-Army Weapon, theorized to have been fabled weapons like Excalibur and Mjolnir, but that never appears in the game.
• Pandora from Devil May Cry 4 is a demonic briefcase which is able to change its configuration and is apparently bottomless. It can be transformed into a gatling gun, an oversized three-bladed shuriken, at least two types of rocket launchers of various efficacy, a big laser cannon and a floating platform laden with rocket launchers. Overall, this briefcase has 666 forms, but we get to see only the ones described above and the last-resort one, PF666: Omen, which is activated by simply opening up its lid.
• In Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, King/Kaptain K.Rool arms himself with a blunderbuss that while looking rather plain and ordinary, is able to rapid-fire massive cannonballs along with various types of debilitating gases that hinder the Kongs' ability to dodge his attacks. He's also able to use it as a jet to propel himself around the arena at high speeds and as a vacuum to draw the Kongs close so he can club them with its stock. The last function ends up working against him as clogging it up with a cannonball will cause it to backfire explosively.
  • The king wields the same blunderbuss in his appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where it retains its multi-purpose nature, being able to fire cannonballs as well as vacuum up both enemy projectiles and opponents for use as ammunition.
• Every weapon in Doom Eternal has two alt-fire functions, which the Doomguy can choose between by swapping out the barrel of the gun. Some of them simply increase the firepower of the primary fire via increasing damage or firing speed, but others have entirely separate weapons included:
  • The Combat Shotgun includes an under-barrel grenade launcher.
  • The Heavy Cannon has a pair of retractable micro-missile batteries that fire small explosive missiles.
  • The Super Shotgun includes the "Meat Hook", a grappling hook that can stick into enemies and pull the Doomguy towards them, allowing him to fire point-blank in their face.
  • The Chaingun has an energy shield that not only blocks projectiles, but also can be upgraded to launch forward to bash into enemies.
• Gunman Chronicles is made of this trope. It has little more than 6 actual weapons, but each weapon has at least 4 submodes, that can even have their own sub-sobmodes: you can program a Rocket Launcher for firing homing or non homing missles, and sub-program said missiles to be high explosive, grapeshot, or attach to the surface as laserwire high explosive/grapeshot mines.
• Hard Reset has not one but two Swiss Army Guns. One of them acts as a chaingun/gatling assault rifle, a Short-Range Shotgun, a Grenade Launcher, a rocket/missile launcher and a minelayer. The other shoots bolts of energy, a stream of energy, zappy electrical field grenade things, a high-power pinpoint-accurate sniper mode with shots that penetrate walls, and explosive energy bolts that 'phase' through cover to find your target. Oh, and each mode has a Secondary Fire too.
• Iji's personal favorite nanoweapon, a Tasen Gen 2 Preloader, can form everything from a simple shotgun to a spray fire energy weapon to a giant laser to a repulsor to a nuke. Perhaps noteworthy in that the player must trick the Swiss Army Gun into being able to utilize many of the more unusual configurations.
• In Jak II: Renegade, the Morph Gun starts out as a Shotgun, but gets mods that not only increase its normal stats, but also turn it into a Single-Shot Rifle, a Machine Gun, and a BFG. The third game adds a Reflecting Laser, a Ground-Wave Generator, a Lightning Gun, an Anti-Gravity Generator, a Grenade Launcher, a Drone Launcher, a Homing Needle Gun, and a Pocket Nuke.
• Jazz Jackrabbit's long blue gun, the LFG-2000 Blaster, is designed to be compatible with most types of ammunition, conventional or otherwise. This includes plasma rounds, rubber bullets, freezing rounds, small homing missiles, large exploding rockets, flamethrower fuel, pepper spray, electric charges, even standard TNT.
• 10tons's Jydge features a character who's a mashup of Judge Dredd and RoboCop. So it's fitting that its gun, the Gavel Mk1 is the unholy offspring of a futuristic lever-action carbine, the FN SCAR and a steel sledgehammer. This makes it a gun that's awfully good at smashing skulls. The Gavel Mk1 has different firing modes that not only turns it to a shotgun or assault rifle, etc. with unlimited ammo (but still needs reloading), but also lets it fire lasers, plasma and ion bolts as well. The Gavel Mk1 can add a special weapon that lets it fire a limited number of rockets or spider drones and other things. It can also house up to 3 different mods giving the gun abilities such as recovering health from killing and giving your gun better rapid-fire. The only drawback to the Gavel is that it can only switch out its settings when not on a mission.
• '90s game Meat Puppet from Kronos Digital Entertainment, features Lotos Abstraction who carries the Trigger Mortis - a gun that can fire rockets, bullets, nerve gas, tranquilizer darts and flames.
• Mega Man (Classic)'s iconic Mega Buster changes into the weapon of any Robot Master he defeats. In any one game, the Buster can function as a rocket launcher, flamethrower, ice gun, grappling wire, boomerang thrower, needle gun, and time manipulation device...just to name a few.
• Samus's Arm Cannon from Metroid certainly qualifies. It has been, among other things, a rocket launcher, grappling hook, freeze beam, shotgun laser, heat ray, and a recharge plug. The list just keeps growing with more games.
• Your character in No Man's Sky only has a single Multi-Tool. Instead of acquiring new guns, you install modules into your Multi-Tool that weaponize it in different ways, such as a Boltcaster that turns it into an automatic gun, a Blaze Javelin that charges over a couple seconds and uses carbon as ammo, or a Plasma Spitter that functions as a grenade launcher. The Multi-Tool also accepts non-combat modules, such as the Mining Beam or the Terrain Manipulator, as well as non-offensive modules such as a force shield. You start with a small Multi-Tool with limited capacity for modules, and as you progress through the game, you can replace it with larger Multi-Tools that can accept more modules as well as more upgrades.
• In Overwatch, Widowmaker's rifle functions as a sniper rifle when using the scope or a machine gun when hip-firing.
• Parasite Eve featured a weapons customization feature that allowed you to take 'features' from other weapons and put them on whatever weapon you wanted. A New Game Plus weapon might be a pistol capable of firing exploding bullets in three round bursts with shotgun-like spread. The sequel featured a more realistic version of this, the M4A1, which can accept any number of modifications ranging from rather benign attachments such as a bayonet or a magazine attachment to double the ammo count per-magazine, to the really fantastic stuff like an underbarrel armor-piercing laser or high-power paralyzing taser.
• In Perfect Dark, nearly every weapon in the game has a secondary function, some of which are quite unique. Eg. the Laptop Gun (SMG and automatic sentry), Dragon (assault rifle and proximity mine), K7 Avenger (assault rifle and threat detector), RCP-120 (SMG and cloaking device), etc.
• Captain Deadbeard from Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 has a Short-Range Shotgun that shifts into a Sniper Rifle whenever his crosshair is zoomed in.
• Project Clean Earth has the robot Bernard cleansing the Earth of hostile mutants. His main weapon is a longarm that always starts with a pistol but with the right modules it can then add a rifle, minigun, shotgun, sniper rifle and flamethrower. He fires all these simultaneously though because differing rates of fire there might be different bullet streams coming out. Bernard needs all these guns on one weapon because he doesn’t have many weapon slots, with the other main slot being reserved for Bernard's Rocket Punch weapon.
• Redline: Gang Warfare 2066 features such a weapon wielded by the protagonist. Besides the standard assault rifle mode, it can also become a buzzsaw (with optional nitro upgrade that makes you fly around for a limited time), a rocket launcher, an EMP device (handy for those vehicles!), a shotgun, a grenade launcher, an alien goo shooter, a sniper rifle, and a hitscan plasma beam weapon.
  • Accolade's earlier TPS/FPS Eradicator also outfitted all three characters with Swiss Army Guns. In both games, to use the extra gun modes, you just collect the required ammo scattered throughout the levels-no need to collect prerequisite guns first!
• Saints Row IV: The "'Merica" gun. As its description says, it's "a dozen guns, a rocket launcher, and a flamethrower, all wrapped together behind one convenient trigger." Complete with patriotic music playing whenever it's held.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Republic Trooper class (no matter the Advanced Class choice) has this as a weapon. It can fire regular shots, an "explosive round", fire mortars, lay down a close AOE Ion Pulse, and can heal teammates.
• Star Wars: Republic Commando cuts down the amount of equipment the characters have to carry by making the primary weapon modular, capable of swapping between automatic, sniper and grenade modes depending on which quick-change barrel assembly is currently attached.
• TAGAP 4 features the AMM01, aka the Adaptive Multi-Munition Weapon System 01. It can analyze different types of ammo to learn how to use them; this includes firing metallic scrap in a shotgun-like blast. On top of that, it can also act as a pulse rifle with infinite ammo, and can be upgraded to add a cryogenic or electrical effect to any shot it fires.
• The canceled Tiberium FPS would have included a transforming weapon as part of its basic design. Wielded solely by the player, the "GD-10" served as a basic assault rifle, grenade launcher, missile launcher, and personal ion cannon.
• Vanquish has the BLADE-short for Battlefield Logic ADaptable Electronic-system, which scans weapons and uses the data to morph into said weapon. Of course, the hard drive only has enough data for three guns, which means to pick up a new weapon, the player must swap out the data of a currently-equipped gun.

Web Animation

• Parodied in Homestar Runner's Dangeresque movies. The titular Anti-Hero's weapon is the Nunchuk-Gun, which is basically a revolver with a pair of nunchuks taped to it.
• Most characters in RWBY sport weapons that are great examples of Swiss Army Guns.
  • And Velvet's weapon is a Hard Light version of any weapon she take a picture of. To fight a group of Mini-Mecha, she used in order: Ruby's sniper scythe, Weiss' revolver rapier, Yang's shotgun gauntlets, Blake's dual sword pistol, Coco's handbag minigun, Sun's nunchuk/staff pistol, Nora's grenade launcher warhammer and Penny's flying laser shooting swords

Western Animation

• Exaggerated in the Adventure Time episode "Varmints", where Princess Bubblegum uses a strange shotgun with a knob that adjusts between many bizarre firing modes: Slow Lasers, projectiles that turn things into flashlight batteries, force fields, and creating a second gun of the same kind that starts out fused at the barrel to the first one.
• Æon Flux has her FUG (Flux Universal Gun) which can use a line and grapnel, alternate between a sniper mode and full auto, and the FUG with a slight adjustment use nonstandard ammo like high-ex, drones, armor-piercing, incendiary and whatnot.
• In the Time Squad episode "Nutorious", Tuddrussel gets a laser gun with tons of features. The problem? He has no idea how to use the laser gun part of it.

Real Life

• The Israel Military Industries (IMI) Galil assault rifle has a folding stock and folding bipod, which are typical for modern military rifles. However, the folding bipod also can be used as a wire-cutter, and the "ribs" under the forearm that hold it up in the folded position are designed to be used as a bottle-opener. This latter function was because Israeli troops had the habit of using the feed lips of their rifle magazines to "pop the top" of soda bottles, which bent the feed lips and caused feed-jam malfunctions.
• Similarly, some military rifle bayonets (like the U.S. M9 bayonet for the M16A2 rifle) are designed to be used as wire cutters; a hole in the blade near the tip slips over a lug near the end of the bayonet's scabbard, and the end of the scabbard has a "notch" for the wire. The whole thing works like a pair of pliers.
• Various modern assault rifles, including the M16A4, the M4 carbine and the Beretta ARX-160, are designed to be field modifiable with a variety of attachments, using rails and hand-turnable screws to attach weapon mods to them, such as foregrips, grenade launchers, laser sights, flashlights, tasers, shotguns, red dot sights, and scopes... and that's just the stuff the military issues. There are third party mods for all sorts of things. Even better, the guns can be changed to fire a different cartridge with the push of a couple of pins and the replacement of the upper receiver and barrel, a trivial operation that can be completed in under a minute by an experienced user. If they could attach a Swiss army knife to the gun, they'd be set. (They can take bayonets, though. Almost there...)
• Although highly experimental/theoretical, both proposed liquid propellant and railgun designs could potentially vary the speed of their projectiles, by either changing the amount of propellant fed into the firing chamber, or the amount of charge used in its electromagnets, respectively. This could result in a gun that could effectively switch between being a submachinegun to being a sniper rifle with the flip of a switch- or switching from a low powered but quiet "stealth" mode to a high powered but noisy "magnum" mode.
• The XM8 is a weapon that could fill a number of roles (assault rifle, designated marksman rifle, light machine gun, grenade launcher, compact carbine), however, the US military, its original user deemed it too expensive and not enough of an improvement to justify a complete change, or even not as good as some guns dedicated to specific tasks (namely the light machinegun variant). The project was not a complete wash though, as the weapon and all its variants are now used by Malaysian special forces.
  • This is actually Older Than They Think, as the Steyr AUG and the Stoner 63 were designed with this kind of functionality. The Steyr can even be converted to an SMG.
• A Grenade Launcher like the venerable M79 can fire tear gas, smoke grenades, illumination rounds and even buckshot in addition to fragmentation grenades. There is even a 40mm canister round being developed that fires a small wireless camera that slowly comes down on a parachute, linked to a helmet-mounted Head's Up Display or tablet device to allow a soldier to observe a large area without a drone.
• Shotguns have an equally impressive variety of specialist ammunition; less-lethal ammunition like beanbags or rubber buckshot, a round that works like a one-use miniature taser, distress flares... There's even the Dragon's Breath round, which basically turns your shotgun into a mini-flamethrower.^note And probably ruins the barrel after a few rounds. And the FRAG-12 round, which fires a small high-explosive warhead.
• Similar to Grenade Launchers and Shotguns above, Revolvers are also sometimes put into this category because the cycling action that doesn't depend on recoil and "random access" of their cylinders can more easily accept situational specialized ammunition by loading individual rounds than a magazine or belt-fed automatic weapon would use.
• The Beretta ARX-160 is designed to be easily and rapidly customizable. It's grenade launcher can be quickly detached and replaced with a bipod and it's barrel can be swapped out in seconds. This allows it to conceivably go from an assault carbine to a light machine gun or a marksmen's rifle during a fire fight if someone had the need and parts.
• The XM29 OICW (Objective Infantry Combat Weapon) featured a 5.56 rifle platform with a 20mm airburst grenade launcher mounted on top as well as a revolutionary new scope with advanced electronics. And yes, it could take a bayonet. Ultimately the project was canned for a variety of reasons. Weight and cost were obvious factors but even the grenade launcher wasn't deadly enough to really warrant it being there in the first place.
  • Other countries have experienced with the same or similar concept as well, such as the Australian AICW (Advanced Individual Combat Weapon), the South Korean Daewoo K11 DAW (Dual-barrel Air-burst Weapon) and the Chinese QTS-11. However, most if not all of them fall victim to the same drawbacks as the XM29, namely weight and cost.
• The Crossfire MK-1 was a combination gun (both rifle and shotgun), expected to be universally handy weapon, suitable for any circumstance. It was introduced in 1988 as semi-auto .308/12ga weapon, but actual production guns became pump-action and 5.56mm/12ga. Turned out that they are too expensive, unreliable and very uncomfortable to use.
• In the mid-1800s, Jean Alexandre LeMat invented a gun that was a combination revolver and shotgun. Its revolving cylinder held nine rounds, while the cylinder's core doubled as a smoothbore barrel holding a single round of 20-gauge buckshot. A tiny lever on the hammer controlled which barrel fired when the trigger was pulled: if it was up, the top revolver chamber fired, and if it was down, the shotgun barrel fired. It wasn't very successful for several reasons, but it worked, and (as with many bizarre guns) you can still get replicas of it today.

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