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Unusual Weapon Mounting

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"YOU UTTER FOOL! Nazi science is the world's greatest!"
"Might I sugest agin, a skul-gun for my head. Yesterday in Batery Park, some scum we all know pushes smack for NSF gets jumpy and draws. I take 2 .22's, 1 in flesh, 1 in augs, befor I can get out that dam asalt gun. If I could kil just by thought, it would be beter. Is it my job to be a human target-practis backstop?"
Gunther Hermann's spelling-error filled email, Deus Ex

Sometimes simply holding a weapon just isn't cool enough. Some characters just have to have weapons in the most unexpected places, like on their shoulder, on their head, or even inside a limb. Maybe they just have so much dakka that they can't fit any more weapons in conventional places. Or maybe they're just weird.

They may be:

  • Arm Cannon: Ranged weapons mounted at the arm (whether on it or inside it)
  • Armed Legs: Reinforced legs or melee weapon mounted on the legs
  • Blade Below the Shoulder: Melee weapon (blade) mounted at the arm.
  • Butt Cannon: Ranged weapons fired from the butt. Usually Played for Laughs.
  • Chest Blaster: Ranged weapons mounted at the chest area.
  • Crotch Weapon: Either a melee weapon (usually a blade or a stake) or a gun attached to the crotch. Even better if they're both. Tend to be Played for Laughs.
  • Elbow Weapon: A variant of arm weapons above, these are attached to the elbow. Likely to make your hands free.
  • Finger Firearms: guns inside fingers, whether as a concealed weapon or just for More Dakka.
  • Hair Weapon: A rather rare one, where you can attach weapons (usually heavy, smashy ones) to your hair. Even if you don't have Prehensile Hair, your hair is a potentially good whip, just waiting for something attached to it.
  • Head Weapon: Weapons attached to the head, whether a cannon or a melee weapon (helping a lot with headbutting).
  • Hip Cannon: Gives a new meaning to "firing from the hip". Note: putting a sheathed blade at your hip is not at all unusual.
  • Leg Cannon: Ranged weapons mounted at the leg (whether at the thigh, the knee, lower leg, or the foot)
  • Mouth Cannon: Cannons put inside your mouth. Gives an impression of a Breath Weapon. How they work despite being inside a mouth is usually not addressed, though may be hand-waved with robotic characters. Compare Cutlass Between the Teeth.
  • Shell Cannon: Makes your high-defense creature a veritable tank.
  • Shoulder Cannon: Ranged weapons mounted at the shoulder.
  • Stomach Blaster: Ranged weapons mounted on the stomach area.
  • Tail Weapon: Despite what you may think, the tail is a limb too, so why not putting a weapon at it? Especially if they're prehensile enough, but it's not necessary. Note: some tail weapons are natural and thus not at all unusual.
  • Tentacle Weapon: What makes Combat Tentacles even more deadly is to attach weapons to it. Blades and other sharp things are popular, but ranged weapons aren't far behind.
  • Torpedo Tits: variant of Chest Blaster above, done for females. Usually Played for Laughs.
  • Wing Weapon: if you are a Winged Humanoid, or an actual winged creature, attaching weapons to your wings can be a help to your actual hands, or a necessary substitute if you don't have hands. Note: weapons attached to plane wings are not at all unusual. (Mecha wings are another story, however.)

Compare Natural Weapons for when they're already part of the wielder, Handy Feet for doing things with your feet (including wielding a weapon) when they normally would require your hands, and Backpack Cannon for weapons mounted in/from a backpack (i.e behind your back). See Phallic Weapon if the weapon's placement is suggestive.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • The title character of 009-1 has machine guns built into her breasts. One has to wonder how she reloads.
  • Astro Boy has machine guns in his butt. That's not just a crass joke tacked onto the 2009 CGI movie; it dates back to the original manga.
  • Black Lagoon: In "Roberta's Blood Trail", Roberta is captured by one of her former terrorist comrades. She pretends to be sexually excited and unbuttons her belt, only to gut-shoot him with a buckle gun. (Those kinds of things actually exist; one was made for a Nazi officer's uniform.)
  • In Brave10, Oukatsu has a kunai-like razor blade in her tongue.
  • Boomers in Bubblegum Crisis usually have a powerful laser lens assembly in their mouths. Many also have Chest Blasters, and at least one model of Superboomer had laser lenses pretty much all over its body.
  • Cyborg 009: Amongst the many weapons hidden in Albert Heinrich a.k.a. Cyborg 004's body are missiles he can launch from his knees.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • In the manga, minor character Paninya has a one-shot gun in one of her legs. The barrel comes out of her kneecap.
    • When Archer from the 2003 anime version comes back as a cyborg, he has a machine-gun in his mouth.
  • Full Metal Panic!'s third season opener had the bad guys using Arm Slaves whose standard-issue automatic rifle is supplemented by a crotch chaingun turret...
  • Gamaran: Kotaro's secret weapon, the Mitsuboshi (Orion's Belt), has three long weighted chains connected to an armlet with a sickle-blade attached to it. Partially subverted since he mostly uses the chains of the weapon to attack and restrain his opponents.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: One cyborg has a heavy machinegun in her elbow.
  • Ray from GUN×SWORD has a gun in the heel of his boot. However, he doesn't try to shoot people with it; he fires it by stomping into the ground, which summons his mecha Volcain.
  • Gundam:
    • Nearly every given Gundam will have a small pair of vulcan cannons mounted in its head as a backup weapon. At least one from G Gundam (the Tequila/Spike Gundam) has about ten.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Gundam Heavyarms had Gatlings and missile launchers almost everywhere BUT the crotch.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED:
      • The Freedom Gundam has two hip-mounted cannons, and two stored in its wings (the latter of which are sadly replaced by a Chest Blaster in its upgrade).
      • Strike Freedom's two wings turns into eight flying instruments of More Dakka; giving it two Beam rifles, two hip-mounted railguns, a chest cannon, and eight remote-controlled beam launchers. As well as the swords mounted on the hip-mounted railguns and the Vulcans in its head.
      • Also, the ever-popular Mouth Cannons, which spat freaking huge particle beams.
    • Gundam and all its incarnations are basically just trying to one up each other and see who can get the most Dakka on their suits. You have Mecha with Vulcan's in their feet, Guns for fingers, or hidden in their palms, oftentimes has some mounted on their wrists or forearm (Including swords/whips/etc), on the chest/collar/abdomen/hip/and yes...crotch. The back of the mech is literally the catch-all location to put any shiny gadget or huge gun you can think of, wings are especially popular. If that weren't enough, most mechs also carry some more guns/swords concealed inside the giant shield they're carrying (If the shield itself is not a weapon in its own right) or inside the mech itself! Added to that, sometimes they even carry Attack Drone(s)
    • Mobile Suit Gundam 00: There's also the chin/nose-mounted machinegun of the Anf (literally, nose in Arabic).
  • Stroheim from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency has a machine gun in his stomach after he is made a cyborg.
  • The Mazinger series:
    • Mazinger Z:
      • Mazinger-Z. Its optical sensors shot laser beams, its grid-covered mouth launched gusts of corrosive wind, its horns shot a double Freeze Ray, its chest shot heat waves, its fingers and belly shot missiles...
      • Then you have Aphrodite-A introduced the Torpedo Tits trope into Humongous Mecha shows...
      • Dr. Hell is infamous for fitting any sort of weapons on any place of the body of his Mechanical Beasts. Examples include Zaila (whose fingers fired missiles and whose horns were really drills), Brighton-J2 (those horns on its head? They are missiles), the ninja siblings Blazas S1 and S2 (missile launchers located on their shoulders and stomach), Solaris-S1 (its belt shoots a solar beam), Kajimofu-T7 (its palms shot beams and it had a missile launcher above its head), Gumbina-M5 (Combat Tentacles instead of eyes)...
    • Great Mazinger: Great Mazinger's crotch is a missile launcher. Venus-A had Torpedo Tits, Eye Beams, and Finger Firearms.
    • UFO Robo Grendizer: Grendizer's horns can unleash electrical discharges, its backhands shoot laser rays, blades are stored into its shoulders that can be merged to form a double-headed scythe...
    • New Mazinger: Mazinger had clusters of missiles stored on every place of its body. And every place means every place (including shoulders, chest, crotch...).
  • Tanaka-san from Negima! Magister Negi Magi has a clothes-destroying laser in his mouth. He's a robot (T-ANK-Alpha 3, "Tanaka-san").
  • One Piece:
    • The shark Fishman Hody Jones' technique Kirisame ("Slashing Shark") has him attaching a blade to his dorsal fin and then slashes around his enemy with it.
    • Franky, as a Cyborg, is made up of unusual weapon mountings. He can fire nails/flames from his mouth, has razor-sharp projectile sideburns, cannons in his shoulders, a machine gun that fires explosive pellets and a mortar shell firing system in his left forearm, a gun in his left hand that fires from his index finger, a wind cannon fired by connecting both hands, and even a wind propulsion system in his buttocks that allow him to launch himself like a rocket. Post-Time Skip, he has added rockets into his shoulders and a powerful laser beam into his hands.
  • The Hannibal military labors from Patlabor have a 20mm rotary cannon on their rather pronounced chins as their main armament.
  • The final spaceship of the Comet Empire in Space Battleship Yamato has turrets mounted atop turrets mounted atop other turrets.
  • The crotch gun appears in Super Dimension Fortress Macross: for some unexplained reason, the titular ship fires a spaceship-sized one in the battle against Bodolza.
  • Symphogear: Shirabe's gear specializes in buzz saws, most often attached to her armor-plated Girlish Pigtails.
  • Vash's Angel Arm from Trigun is literally his arm, morphing into a huge-ass cannon that blows a hole on the moon.
  • Ushio and Tora: The rogue Azafuse Guren was bestowed three Spirit Blades (Swords made specifically to slay monsters) by Hakumen no Mono. Despite being humanoid, he doesn't physically hold the swords in his hand, but has them reshaped in three double-ended katana blades (and blades only) embedded in his muzzle. They act like part of his body, so he doesn't cut himself when he talks or pokes his tongue out and can change length and angle to strike.

    Card Games 

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 
  • Thirty Hs opens with Dobby note  using a weapon called a "groinsaw" to kill an astronaut. Between the name and the fact that it is stated to "roar", it is presumably some sort of chainsaw attached to the weilder's crotch. It's that kind of story.
  • The Fallout: Equestria universe has "battle saddles": rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, and even rocket launchers and magical beam or bolt weapons (the FO:E equivalent of lasers and plasma) that rest on a pony's back like a saddle and are fired with a mouth trigger. Their ability to hit anything beyond several feet away is Hand Waved by the claim that they contain magical targeting talismans.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • The Diamond Age has skull guns. Guess where they're fired from.
  • In Sergey Lukyanenko's The Stars Are Cold Toys duology, the rat-like Alari have short and weak front appendages. As such, they go into battle with back-mounted guns. Then again, their role in the Conclave is that of space fighters, not ground combatants.
  • The Cobra warriors in Timothy Zahn's The Cobra Trilogy are armed with antipersonnel lasers in their little fingers (which double as arcthrowers and are eventually upgraded to also function as a stun weapon) and also have an anti-armour laser in their leg. It fires through the heel. They have to go through a fair amount of special training to use it effectively.
  • In Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers series, one character eventually turns out to have an arm weapon. A laser hidden inside one arm.
  • In Roger Zelazny's Isle of the Dead, the protagonist has a laser weapon surgically implanted in his middle finger which is triggered by...
  • NES Godzilla Creepypasta has "Not-Baragon", an enemy that looks like a bizarre bipedal elephant skeleton... who can attack with a machinegun that comes out of its crotch.

    Live-Action TV 

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Humongous Mecha of the BattleTech universe commonly mount missile launchers and other weapons on their shoulders. Head-mounted guns are rare, due to the majority of head space being taken up by the cockpit.
    • The Mackie, the very first Battlemech, has a cannon on its crotch
    • The Flea light mech has a chin-mounted flamer. Being a Chicken Walker, it can look rather... disquieting when viewed from a bad angle. Behold.
    • The Atlas has an Autocanon/20 mounted on the hip, and a 6-shot short-range missile launcher mounted on the leg.
    • The Hauptmann has a laser mounted in it's "mouth", positioned in such a way as to look like the 'mech is smoking a cigar. Even better, it's traversable (the mouth is its traverse slot, much like those in turretless tank destroyers), so it can roll its 'cigar' back and forth in its 'mouth' for maximum macho points.
    • Some mechs such as the Cataphract have lasers mounted on their backs, this is to discourage any attacker from attacking it from behind, and can be useful to deter pursuers when running away. Though it means the mech has fewer guns to fire forward.
  • The Perseus mounts a quartet of lasers on its thighs, while the Viking has a quartet of machine guns attached to its knees.
  • Shoulder-mounted weapons are occasionally seen in Warhammer 40,000. There is also at least one unit with helmet-mounted lasers and Commissar Yarrick has a laser weapon in his bionic eye.
    • Let's not forget the Titans, bipedal war machines standing between 30 and several hundred feet tall, which tend to put weapons everywhere they can fit. The Ork version, Gargants, do that too and also put weapons where they don't fit, like on top of OTHER weapons.
    • Also, there's the Tau Broadside Battlesuits, which can fire either their arm-mounted missile pods or their shoulder-mounted railguns... Or vice-versa on the mounting, if you get creative with a hobby knife.
    • And now you have Space Marine Centurions, who have arm-mounted primary weapons, and secondary weapons, usually Hurricane Bolters, mounted on the sides of the chestpiece of the huge and unwieldy armour they're wearing over their regular Power Armor. Which means they basically have armpit-mounted More Dakka.
    • Eldar Aspect Warriors put their weapons where it fits the theme of the aspect. Striking Scorpions have helmet-mounted guns that resemble an arachnid's mandibles, on a Swooping Hawk you can see leg-mounted downward-firing grenade launchers... so on and so forth.
    • Orks will just generally mount guns wherever one fits, most notably the Stompa's belly-gun and the armpit gun on the Deff Dredd.
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Brokk Grungsson apparently thought giving his Power Armor a gigantic ornamental mustache and mounting a gun on each side of it was a swell idea.
  • Munchkin has in one expansion the Shooty Hat, which is a hat with a miniature cannon on it.
  • Shadowrun has cyberhands or cyberarms that contain guns of different sorts. The game also featured cyberguns that can be mounted in the mouth or the eye. Though not strictly a weapon in and of itself, a targeting laser could also be mounted in the eye. There were also cybernetic weapon and equipment mounts that could be attached to your shoulder or back. Monofiliment whip users sometimes stored the weapon in their cyberarm and used the last joint on their artificial finger as the tip weight, not unlike Johnny Mnemonic

    Toys 
  • Machine Robo: Mugenbine. It's a continuation of the line known in the US as GoBots, except now, instead of transforming, the toys separate into their composite pieces—animal parts, drills, gun turrets, jet wings—to be combined as desired. It can get pretty ridiculous...
  • The Transformers: War for Cybertron toyline featured toys that had 5mm ports mounted all over their bodies to allow for maximum combination potential when it came to mounting weapons on the action figures: shoulders, forearms, legs, and in some cases even the feet were capable of being equipped.

    Video Games 
  • EXTRAPOWER: The Clay Kid line of robots fire their projectiles through a cannon in their mouths.
  • No More Heroes' Destroyman has a crotch-mounted laser, earpiece lasers, and of course, "machine gun jumblies"
  • Near the end of Disgaea 3 Mao threatens to convert Sapphire to fire missiles out of her boobs.
  • Bayonetta has guns in her stiletto heels, and she can mount other weapons there as well.
  • Bravely Second: The Charioteer class can learn "Triple Wield," which allows a character to wield a weapon on their head, and "Quad Wield" to equip a weapon in the body slot.
  • Mechwarrior 2 allowed you to customize and choose where to locate the weapons and equipment for your mech. Although the arms and left/right torso had the most space for this, nothing stopped you from putting guns on your mech's legs, head, or center torso. More canonically, many mechs have shoulder mounts or other unusual configurations.
    • Putting guns in the legs was actually recommended, on the grounds of them being more armored and less likely to draw fire from the AI.
      • Not to mention losing your 'Mechs legs more or less meant automatically failing the current mission, so losing the weapon was largely unconsequental. Exactly how you're supposed to be aiming your PPC (left leg) is a question best left unanswered, though...
      • Another viable strategy: using all the hardware space in your 'Mech's arms for ammo, since live ammo in the Mechwarrior games reacts ...badly... to incoming fire or overheating. Storing the ammo in the arms means an ammo explosion won't wreck your 'Mech's torso, the part containing all kinds of important stuff like the powerplant (which itselfs reacts explosively to damage...)
    • One especially memorable example is the Flea light mech, which bears a passing resemblance to an AT-ST walker. Its default armament configuration includes a flamethrower mounted in the "lower torso"... right between the upper leg joints. It looks... exactly how you'd expect it to look.
  • Gunther Hermann of Deus Ex wants a "skul-gun".
  • The Huckebein family of mecha in Super Robot Wars, being Gundam Expies, also have the same head guns.
  • CannonCrotch. Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • One type of enemy in God Hand is a Fat Bastard with a cannon on his back who has to prone to fire it.
  • Redneck Rampage had weapons you could pick up from alien strippers. Both a physical weapon, with the machine guns from the 'nipples', and a psychological weapon, a skinny male redneck wearing a purple chrome bra...
  • Mega Man & Bass has Ground Man, who has drills for shoulders (and treads for legs).
  • Armored Armadillo from Mega Man X has an energy cannon inside his head.
    • Rainy Turtloid of X6 can fire missiles out of his large shell. In a variant, aside from shooting projectiles, Crystal Snail of X2 also uses his shell as a jet booster.
    • Wheel Gator of X2 can fire buzzsaw wheels from his shoulders. Bubble Crab of the same game can project laser crab pincers from his shoulders. Tunnel Rhino of X3 has drills on his shoulders (that he can launch), and Frost Walrus of X4 similarly can fire freezing gas from his shoulders (and his removable tusks).
    • Launch Octopus also fires missiles from his tentacles (and shoulders). His brother Squid Adler from X5 fires electricity from his.
    • Sting Chameleon of the first game and Neon Tiger of X3 fire light shots from laser-emitters attached to their tails. Izzy Glow of X5, being a firefly, takes it further. In a variant, Cyber Peacock of X4 can create Hard Light blades from his peacock tail.
    • Snipe Anteator from X7 and Bamboo Pandamonium of X8 sport homing missile launcher and grenade lobber on their backs, respectively.
    • The intro boss Eregion from X4 can fire electric blasts from a cannon in its mouth. Sigma also gains a huge mouth cannon in his Wolf Sigma form in the first game, "Sigma Head" form in X5, and his One-Winged Angel in X6.
  • Pokémon: Blastoise has water cannons mounted in its shell.
  • Senran Kagura: Mirai summons weapons from under her dress, including an anti-material rifle which looks exactly like what you'd expect.
  • In Genji, Kuyo's only weapon is a sharp dagger attached to the tip of her long hair. She notably uses it like a stinger to attack the player during the Kamui phase.
  • The Sun at Night: Laika is an alien dog who wears a suit with a blaster on her back.
  • God of War II, the Fates Sentries and Guardians have curved, multi-jagged blades attached to their upper arms. Not that they help them much...
  • Though never actually shown on-screen, elcor warriors in the Mass Effect franchise are mentioned to carry heavy artillery into battle on their shoulders. Since elcor are built like gorilla-elephant hybrids with very limited dexterity in their massive arms (which they primarily use for walking), this is pretty much their only option when forced into battle. Target prioritization, aiming, reloading and ammo selection are handled by sophisticated VIs installed in the weapons, leaving plodding towards the enemy lines the only thing elcor warriors have to do and earning them the moniker of "living tanks".
  • Cruelty Squad has the Skullgun implant, which is literally a gun implanted in the wielder's skull. They have to scoop out a bit of brain matter to make it fit properly.
  • Rengoku: One of the more commonly seen weapons are a cannon in the chest or a giant pistol as the head.

    Webcomics 
  • Schlock Mercenary:
    • nano-transformed Army-Of-One Kevyn has a gun in-between the lobes of his brain.
    • More mundanely, Legs's gun is built into her helmet (since her species lacks hands).
  • In Mass Effect 3: Generations, Tali gains twin helmet lasers, just appearing there with no explanation. Given that her helmet is naturally quite thin and that Mass Effect weapons are known for generating a lot of heat, it’s a wonder her face doesn't get melted off.

    Western Animation 
  • In the Transformers franchise, pretty much every single plausible (and a few impractical) location on a Transformer's body has contained a weapon.
  • Also, Megas XLR has tons of guns everywhere, so there should be at least few in unusual locations.
  • The Scotsman in Samurai Jack has one leg replaced by a machine gun. He's pretty nifty with it and never loses his balance when shooting.
  • As was stated in the theme song, Secret Squirrel had a cannon built into his hat.
  • Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot: Big guy has arms that swing up and reveal a large number of weapons that stick out of his elbows/armpits.
  • Lampshaded by Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) when they were fighting against Destructor X who fired cannons from its kneecaps, followed by a shot from its nose cannon. Later, Destructor X revealed its massive Chest Blaster.

    Real Life 
  • Actual patent for a helmet gun.
  • The SEPECAT Jaguar ground-attack fighter-jet. While it has the standard ground-attack weapons loadout mountable on underwing hardpoints, it plays this trope straight in its air-to-air armament which consists of a pair of overwing hardpoints to which either AIM-9 Sidewinder or Matra R550 Magic heat-seeking short-range air-to-air missiles can be mounted.
  • The Vought F-8 Crusader made use of a Y-shaped pylon attached to the side of the fuselage to carry its own Sidewinder missiles.
  • In WW2, anti-tank gunners came up with what was thought to be an unusual but remarkably effectivenote  expedient. Why bother towing your anti-tank gun and taking valuable time to dismount, unhitch, traverse and load it (in the face of enemy fire). German, British, and Russian anti-tank gunners, independently of each other, chose to cut out the middleman and have their guns mounted directly on the back of what had previously been its prime mover (the lorry that towed it). Now all that was necessary was to turn the whole lorry to bring the gun to bear. Additional armour for crew protection could be mounted on the lorry. At first the guns were tied or chained down to the cargo-bed, but later refinements saw the weapon permanently welded into a fixed mounting. In the wide-open spaces of the Western Desert or Russia, the portée gun system became a desirable and effective part of mobile warfare. Britain found it extended the service life of the two-pounder, a weapon whose wheeled carriage was disappointingly fragile and could break beyond repair in Egypt and Libya. Portée guns went out of favour when the war moved into more settled semi-urban areas such as Italy and France.
  • Not to be outdone by mankind, nature gives us the fontanellar gun, a literal face gun that some species of termites have. They're basically real-life tiny snifits that shoot poisonous adhesives from their schnoz at predators.

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