Where Did They Get Lasers - Television Tropes & Idioms

Look out! He's got a showerhead!

With ABC deleting dynamite gags from cartoons, do you find that your children are using explosives less frequently?
— Mark LoPresti

"Don't move a muscle, or we will shoot you with our invisible guns!"
— Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series

In an example of the nerfing of violence, almost all firearms in animated cartoons made since the late 1970s or early 1980s, if they appear at all, will be radically different from real guns, either in form or in function. Sometimes it's explained. Mostly it's not. The name of the trope comes from the fact that most of these use some form of energy principle.

Several reasons for this have been theorized:

Changes in American gun culture, akin to those that made things like smoking an increasingly rare phenomenon in American media.
Imitability. Shooting someone with a bullet is an imitable act which might result in negative publicity, but a kid can't find his Dad's laser rifle and zapfry his buddy. Yet.
Higher leeway on how much damage it deals and how it is portrayed. It is easy to accept an action hero getting blasted away by an energy beam and then jumping back to his feet, but if he got shot with a bullet, then we'd have to deal with the fact that he has a physical object lodged in his chest -or if the bullet were sufficiently powerful, that he has part of his chest lodged in a physical object behind him.

Note that this is usually limited to bullet-firing weapons. More destructive weapons like RPG's may still be seen in cartoons, despite (or perhaps because of) the increased difficulty in obtaining them. In rare cases, a cartoon will have large guns fire actual bullets, but still no realistic small arms.

This trope manifests in several ways:

When characters who would be expected to own guns — such as policemen — don't have them, or don't use them in cases which they would be expected to do so.
When most or all of the guns in a particular universe are energy-based or use abnormal ammo, regardless of the owner or the universe's particular technological level.
When a firearm looks and acts like a real firearm, even including parts which make sense for bullets but not for lasers, but whose ordnance still looks or sounds like lasers. Inversely, when an unrealistic-looking gun fires actual bullets.
When a cartoon which previously featured realistic guns is altered to make them less realistic, or eliminates them altogether.

This philosophy has sometimes extended to cartoons from previous decades or those imported from other countries. In general, most production houses have (under pressure from various Media Watchdogs who believed cartoon violence stimulated real violence) eliminated or altered anything and everything that looked like a real gun from their cartoons. Similarly, networks have gone back and Bowdlerized classic cartoons to remove firing guns and, in some cases, casual use of explosives. The reasoning behind these sometimes bizarre substitutions seems to be the belief that if it doesn't look like a real weapon, the poor child's psyche won't be warped and he won't have the desire to use a real weapon on someone else.

This trope is a fairly cyclical one, with guns going from "acceptable" to "not acceptable" and back again in the span of a handful of years, and sometimes within the same show. Whether or not it appears also depends greatly on a particular show's creator and how willing he or she is to fight for realism.

Beware, censors, if laser beam weaponry ever becomes a reality, you're kind of screwed.

A Sub Trope of Ray Gun.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

In the first few episodes of 4Kids' One Piece dub, guns would occasionally be replaced with a sillier-looking equivalent, the most notable seen in the picture above. Originally the standard flintlock pistol seen in the OP universe, it was heavily edited into something that looks more like a showerhead on a spring. (The weapon changed back to a gun in a long shot and a few other frames that 4Kids missed.) Simultaneously, other guns would be edited or recolored to look less realistic — Navy soldiers' rifles were changed to resemble super-soakers, for example — but would still explicitly shoot bullets.
The dub of Digimon Tamers slightly modifies the names and sound effect of Gargomon's attacks (essentially done with a Gatling gun in the original).
- Beelzemon, on the other hand, got to keep his realistic guns and CGI Matrix-esque bullets, though there were still laser sound effects.
- In Digimon Data Squad, RizeGreymon's bullet sounds were changed to laser sounds, even though he was still shooting from a gun.
  - Oddly, the name of the attack was still "Trident Revolver".
- Also in Digimon Data Squad, originally BomberNanimon, a giant bomb, attacked the amusement park. In the US it was changed to Citramon, a giant orange.
- An interesting example: The Digimon Revolvermon is basically a giant revolver barrel with limbs and a cowboy hat. While the English dub chaged his name to Deputymon, his appearance and attacks were not altered at all.
The broadcast version of the dub of Gundam SEED actually has ballistic weapons visually edited to look like lasers. They missed a few shots. Click here◊ to see examples. The editing got really inconsistent in the last two episodes, which were aired so late at night that Cartoon Network could get away with more than when the show was aired at 10 PM. And some of the "lasers" were ridiculous enough to undergo Memetic Mutation — search for "Disco Gun" for details.
- This was edited much less in Canada (Gundam SEED aired at 9PM or later on Fridays, from what this troper recalls) — mainly editing out the over-graphic deaths had by some "extras" (such as from the radiation weapons — swelling and popping), and (again, from vague memories) toning down a bit of the (somewhat-infamous) Kira/Flay encounter.
Both the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game and TV show have monsters that wield or resemble guns edited into lasers... in America!. The most notable example of this is the monster called "Barrel Dragon", which could be described as resembling several guns welded together in Japan. (Whether this counts as Truth In Television is arguable.) An exception is the "Ancient Gear Soldier" in Yu-Gi-Oh GX, which uses a submachine gun-arm - it can be argued this was just because editing it would have looked ridiculous.
- There's also the henchmen who had their guns removed and were considered threatening because they were pointing at someone. This was parodied several times in Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series, which was made with the edited footage, where the Mooks were clearly holding edited-out guns:
  Thug: Don't move a muscle or we'll shoot you with our invisible guns!
  (...)
  Tristan: Bakura! Don't be a hero! They've got invisible guns!
- A later episode included a goon holding Grandpa at gunpoint. The editors had apparently learned their lesson from the above example: the Mooks just weren't intimidating armed with only their fingers. They hadn't learned it well enough, however, as they replaced this guy's gun with... a slingshot.
- To be fair, you can do an awful lot of damage with the right kinds of sling and shot, respectively.
  - And since slingshots are much easier for a small child to obtain or make, arguably the censorship actually results in a MORE imitable act.
A painful example of this trope can be found in the Edited For Syndication Toonami dub of Outlaw Star, in which guns were edited to become lasers, but almost every scene showing Gene buying bullets stayed in the show.
Zatch Bell (a.k.a. Gash Bell) has bizarrely inconsistent censorship. In several episodes, automatic rifles are edited to fire lasers and feature large metal bulbs along the barrels. In others (namely, the episode "Danny Boy"), guns are not censored at all, even when they are fired at — and hit — Danny. However, in the very next episode, a pistol is edited to look like it's made of Green Rocks and fire glowing green bullets (clearly shown as such in Bullet Time) with laser sound effects, even though those particular bullets were blocked by a magical shield without hitting anyone. The only discernible reason for the inconsistency is that the latter gun was aimed at a girl.
Keroro Gunsou's weapon nut Giroro is especially noticeable in that his low-ordinance weapons (e.g., his trademark barrelless handgun) don't actually seem to use bullets, despite being treated as if they do.
In the anime version of the manga Reborn!, Reborn's gun is colored green and is actually a shape-shifted form of his pet lizard, and the special bullets it fires transform into energy before they can hit and power-up Tsuna (with the bleeding from the shots removed too). Similarly, Lambo's grenades are colored purple. Oddly enough, the other guns in the series remain untouched.
- Also, instead of shooting himself with his Ten-Year Bazooka, Lambo now leaps inside of it. Kind of odd...
An interesting reversal: in the English dub of the Dirty Pair OAVs (the 10-episode ones) the lasers have had their sounds changed to sound like guns (specifically Kei's blaster has a sound reminiscent of a Desert Eagle). This was due to there not being a voiceless track to dub over so a completely new sound effects track had to be made. They still fire laser blasts however.
In Mega Man NT Warrior they have laser guns, and the originally-sharp laser swords were blurred from the original...sometimes. Somewhat justified, as all combat takes place on the Internet with A.I.
Heck, an entire episode of Pokémon was banned outside of Japan because of one scene in which a gun was used to threaten someone. That's right, banned. Not edited, just straight out banned.
- Having watched the episode, I can say it wasn't because of just one scene — the episode is just filled with gun shooting, because it features the rather Trigger Happy Safari Zone warden. Even if it was edited to become lasers, the shots would still be overly violent for a Pokémon episode (and, mostly, for a 4Kids' episode). Besides, I think 4Kids just wasn't very good with digital painting that time.
- There was one instance you see a gun being held by someone in a Growlithe police force training exercise. Most likely because it wasn't actually used, it wasn't edited in American broadcast.
- In the episode where Ash catches his Squirtle, guns are shown uncensored.
Several cuts were made in the English dub of SonicX. For instance, several military troopers holding Sonic and his friends at gunpoint shot real bullets in the Japanese original, but were changed to lasers in the dub.
- This becomes even less believable when lasers that were previously guns are shown being shot around in a Space Station takeover during a flashback of an event which took place fifty years previously. Because of course, they had lasers in the nineteen-fifties.
  - A space station in the 1950s, on the other hand, is entirely believable....

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In the Star Wars spin-off film Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, the Ewoks fight goblinlike creatures that live in a Dark Ages castle, get dinosaur-looking aliens to pull their wooden wagons that use log-ends as wheels, and fight with laser pistols — despite the fact that the technical manuals clearly state that projectile weapons still are used in the Star Wars galaxy.
- To make things worse, Lucas at one point was supposed to be considering removing the "bullet holes" on dead stormtroopers' armors.
The 20th Anniversary Edition of E.T. the Extra-Terrestial famously substituted guns held by police with walkie-talkies. This was parodied mercilessly in the South Park episode "Free Hat", where all of Steven Spielberg's thugs carry walkie-talkies in such a manner that suggests they were "originally" carrying guns. They cock their walkie-talkies to threaten the boys ("Hold it! Don't make me use this walkie-talkie!"), and Spielberg himself at one point steals one and threatens to "shoot".
- Even moreso, the same episode has an edited version of Saving Private Ryan, featuring US soldiers being graphically killed by machine guns, while returning fire with walkie-talkies.
- Better still, in Australia, so much was "altered" in the 20th Anniversary Edition, that the studio was legally required to resubmit it for classification — where it was given a harsher rating of PG from it's original G, due to "supernatural themes". If they had simply released it without any changes, it would have retained its original G rating from 1982. So... yeah.
Averted in The Incredibles, where robbers and mooks alike use normal firearms, despite it being a Disney Pixar film.
- Pixar in general isn't afraid to avert this trope. The Big Bad in Up tries to shoot the heroes with an antique rifle.
- And a shotgun is (rather ineffectually) wielded in Ratatouille.
- Ratatouille also has a woman pointing a pistol at a man. They go off screen, the gun is fired into the air (almost hitting our rat friend), we move back to see what happened... and they're kissing. Ah, the French.
In All Dogs Go to Heaven, Carface's tommy gun is turned into a tommy gun...that fires red lasers. How they got advanced laser weaponry in 1939 is never explained. Oddly enough, they leave in the part where they violently gun down Charlie in front of the apple cart. (And a bunch of other things wrong with this movie.)

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In Super Smash Bros Brawl, it was specifically said that Solid Snake could not use guns... but his rocket launcher, mortar, grenades, and land mines are all good. This may have also been for gameplay reason though, since a projectile that moves almost instantly (like Sheik's needles) that you could fire almost constantly would be really cheap (also, explosions are more fun and more hilarious). Also, Fox, Falco, Wolf, and Samus get to use energy weapons, but that's more a matter of Frickin Laser Beams than this.
- Ironically the game still got a "Teen" rating in North America as opposed to the expected "E10".
Occurs within the Command and Conquer novelization of Tiberium Wars. Within the novel, the regular infantry of Nod (the bad guys) are armed with energy weapons. While Nod do have lasers within the game, its only limited to special forces, while the regular mooks get conventional weapons. The trope is almost invoked by one soldier "Where the hell'd they get-" after seeing the lasers. The change isn't because of censorship, but as a result of a continuity error.
- In the expansion to Tiberium Wars, the Black Hand subfaction can upgrade their basic mooks to use lasers. That said, they are Elite Mooks, since the Black Hand is apparently Nod's elite.
Inverted (sort of) in Osu Tatakae Ouendan. At first the cops use real guns to fight rampaging robots which don't do anything. Then they figure out their weakness and attack with water guns instead, which are very effective.
Disney ended up doing that in Kingdom Hearts II. In the first game, the only gun we had was in Deep Jungle (Tarzan's world), which was Clayton's, and it wasn't censored. In the second game though, there were two occasions of guns in the japanese version, and both of them were changed in the American release — the first were the old-fashioned muskets from Port Royal (Pirates of the Caribbean's world), which were replaced by crossbows (though still sounding like muskets); the second was Xigbar's Special Attack in which he merged his two laser guns to create a sniper rifle, which was altered to... well, the same laser guns not merging.
- Oddly enough, when 358/2 Days came out, they stopped doing that to Xigbar, whose Limit Break has him again merge his gun-arrows into a sniper rifle.

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GI Joe, number 1. (I'll get those Blue Lasers!) In fact, some of the early episodes of the series had the guns firing laser beams, but making more or less realistic automatic weapons fire sound effects. It didn't take long for the animators to replace them with Sci Fi laser beam sounds, though. This effect actually made the Joes' laser-specialist characters, Flash and Sci-Fi, utterly useless in the cartoon. By contrast, the comic book version wasn't limited by such censorship, and not only featured real ammunition, but several character deaths along the way (including one storyline in which several Joes were massacred by one insane Saw-Viper, something that would have never gotten past the Media Watchdogs).
- In another, Cobra managed to get the Joes' funding cut down to the point where they had to ration the bullets used for target practice, even showing the bullets themselves in a box.
- To make things worse, in one episode, a Joe specifically referred to his rifle (well, "weapon", anyway) as a "laser"... and an even later episode showed a Joe moving a slider control on the back of his weapon from a marked "Stun" setting to "Max". A search of episode scripts gives a number of other occasions where weapons (from both sides) are referred to as "lasers", specifically, in dialogue.
- And, naturally, this is coupled by other evidence, visual and otherwise, indicating that the various weapons AREN'T lasers. (Humbug. Let the fanWanking explain it.)
- This troper distinctly recalls hearing one reference in the entire series to "tracer ammo", apparently implying that what we've been seeing is supposed to be tracers. Doesn't look much like real footage of tracers, but hell it is only a cartoon.
  - The videogame Rainbow Six: Vegas references this with the code "GIJohnDoe" which changes the tracer bullets into blue and red laser beams. Guess which side fires which?
- The same trope was used almost exactly the same way in future cartoon incarnations, such as the CGI movies and G.I. Joe: Sigma Six.
- The Live Action Adaptation GI Joe the Rise of Cobra kinda uses it: while the Joes employ live ammo (including a Gatling glove for Powered Armor), the Cobras instead use Concussion Pistols that fire potent beams.
The short-lived Mighty Orbots had an extreme example of this. In a cartoon about a futuristic Combining Mecha team battling giant monsters and alien mad scientists led by an evil energy computer, ABC's Standards and Practices dictated that none of the weapons could bear any resemblance to gun-shaped objects. The end result? Battles waged with giant wedges and cones of light flashed from arms, legs, eyes, and whatever else was convenient. Writer Buzz Dixon noted that the show appeared more futuristic as a result.
Partially justified in Gargoyles, one of the few series which dealt with the matter semi-realistically: while the first few episodes portrayed "particle beam" weapons as being accessible only to the very rich (such as millionaire David Xanatos), everybody else carried and used real guns. However, in the episode "Deadly Force", mob boss Tony Dracon steals a shipment of these and sells several of them on the street. Thus, the writers establish that there are energy weapons available for villains to use if they know where to look. They specifically comment that the particle beam is invisible, the laser that you can see is just for targeting.
- Which actually gets it backwards, since a real laser would normally be invisible from the side (unless it's passing through mist or dust or is extremely intense), while a particle beam is more likely to ionize the atmosphere and make it glow like a lightning bolt does.
- In any case, this doesn't explain why every single bad guy out there, even muggers, use lasers instead of guns; surely they're not easier to obtain...
- Also notably, one of the protagonists has a real gun, which looks like a real firearm, and fires real bullets, and she actually uses it (and, at one point, is shot by it in the aforementioned Very Special Episode). It's because she's a police officer, naturally. She also gets shot with her own gun after Broadway (playing around with it) drops it, further pushing the point that guns aren't toys.
The old X-Men animated series was a serious offender. Everything shoots "lasers". Machine guns shoot lasers. Tanks shoot big red beams that somehow arc like heavy artillery. Also typical for this trope, the series had the anti-mutant supremacist group stockpile what were clearly regular munitions, despite constantly using laser weapons onscreen. Also typical; heroes and bad guys alike constantly get shot and get back up seconds and a pained grunt later.
- Even sewer-dwelling edge-people have lasers! The animated version of the battle between Storm and Callisto for leadership of the Morlocks was fought with what looked like double-bladed lightsabres. (In the original comic book, it was a knife fight.)
In X-Men Evolution, the weapons used by Cody and his friends are explained as being mining tools modified to fire at longer ranges. This doesn't explain, however, why the Army was using tasers and gas missiles. Mercifully, an episode set in World War II had more realistic guns.
Alongside X-Men, Spider-Man the Animated Series (known for its particularly heavy censorship and restrictions) also excessively used laser weaponry. Many realistic guns were not allowed, and no firearms could shoot bullets, so instead they fired lasers complemented by "futuristic" sound effects. This often led to preposterous scenes in which ordinary policemen wielded bizarre, futuristic pistols, and the mere appearances of realistic-looking guns (as seen in "Tombstone" and "Day of the Chameleon") were pointed out as major exceptions. (One brief, honest-to-goodness exception comes late in the series, in "Secrets of the Six".)
- Personally, given that this is a setting in which people can tamper with genetic material to induce superhuman powers (with or without physical expressions of that power), natural mutations can provide superpowers, and Power Armour and Giant Robots are viable weapons of war being produced by munitions companies (Iron Man, anyone?), this troper always felt that it makes sense for people to carry energy weapons.
The Spectacular Spider-Man, on the other hand, has cops and common criminals use guns which are meant to be realistic ones, but still sound more like lasers in the TV broadcast. The DVD, however, has them sounding more realistically.
- One particularly excellent example had thugs using guns that fired large steel balls with retractable spikes. However, considering the harshness of censorhsip from the 90s show, those guns are considerably more dangerous.
Kim Possible. All about the crazy special effect beams. The police, secret agents, and other authorities are often completely unarmed. The base defenders at Area 51 have rifles, in one episode, but they never fire; their appearance might well be an oversight.
- And on the same vein, American Dragon Jake Long. Apparently, Disney prefers to use melee weapons like swords, axes, and polearms as charged, ranged energy weapons in fights, instead of, you know, actual melee weapons, and even if by some chance, they use them as melee weapons, don't expect them to be any match for the heroes' convenient reflexes and agility.
An episode of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes cartoon did a Lampshade Hanging, where at one point the villain complained, "If this were prime-time, I could use real bullets!"
In one interesting aversion, Batman the Animated Series had bad guys almost always attack the hero with firearms, most notably Thompson submachineguns. Sure, marquee villains like Mr. Freeze and The Joker had gimmick guns that fired ice beams or laughing gas, but all the mooks had to make do with more mundane armaments. Use of the Thompson is almost a trope all by itself. This may have something to do with Batman's adamant hatred of guns, but it also added to the series' distinctive Noir flavour. Later DCAU shows such as Superman the Animated Series and Justice League got the same free pass.
- This went so far as to have things that were not originally intended as weapons (like a medical prototype laser or a sonic drilling device) be gun-shaped anyway, so enemies could easily attack Batman with it. You'd expect them to be designed with a little more industrial safety.
- Though they did give the guns in Superman a "futuristic" design (along with the cars, the trains, and the city in general). This may have been due to a different design ethos (the Gothic Batman vs. the Zeerust Superman), or because Intergang was selling arms to criminals provided to them by the technologically advanced Fourth World due to Darkseid's interest in destroying Superman, or both.
- On a related note, of the DCAU's peers, Teen Titans (whose placement in the DCAU has long been debated) and The Batman (not so much) are forbidden to use guns, although both saw exceptions in their respective TV movies. The Batman, to its credit, had its gun-deprived cops wielding not lasers, but decidedly more realistic tasers.
  - Technically, The Batman featured guns in a number of episodes, they were just made to look substantially different from regular guns and were only ever fired on a couple of occasions. On those occasions, however, they did appear to fire regular old bullets.
  - Teen Titans use of this trope adds to the atmosphere, complimenting the city police's Stormtrooper-esque uniform quite well.
In Godzilla: The Series, futuristic laser weapons were used by the army instead of guns. This is partly justified by the fact that regular guns won't really affect giant monsters, but the lasers don't seem to be helpful either.
- This is actually an interesting example of lasers being acquired during the series. In early episodes, real guns (including M16s) are used. During the "Monster Wars" story arc, the invading aliens end up leaving some of their Energy Weapons on Earth when they retreat. Soon after that, lasers show up as military weapons, in all likelihood reverse-engineered from the alien ones.
Averted in Darkwing Duck; sure, DW had his gas gun, but many of the villains used normal guns. Lucky for Darkwing, they went to the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. Darkwing Duck wasn't forced to Never Say Die either.
- Until Toon Disney got its hands on the show, that is. They even cut out a shot of Megavolt firing a lightning gun.
- In the dystopian future visted by Gosalyn, even the Darker And Edgier Darkwarrior Duck does't use bullets . . . but that's only because he converted his gas gun into a missile launcher.
Averted in the original 1960s version of Jonny Quest. It's most obvious in the famous episode, "The Robot Spy", where a military base throws apparently its entire arsenal at the robot from rifles to tanks, but nothing short of Dr. Quest's experimental para-power ray gun can bring it down. The twist is that although the gun destroys the robot, Dr. Quest is far from satisfied, as the gun was intended to cleanly immobilize machinery by draining its power, not simply work as an exotic artillery piece.
Ben 10 usually has this as a Justified Trope, being a sci-fi cartoon. That doesn't explain why mall security has lasers in one episode, though. (Or a helicopter that also shoots lasers, but that's another thing altogether.) Okay, so maybe it's not so justified. Maybe the shoplifters are just getting really out of hand?
Sometimes averted in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003). While the trope was initially in full effect (with the exception of a robot-mounted mini-gun) — as evidenced in an episode where Raphael faces an organized crime group armed with chains and bats instead of guns — more realistic-looking guns started appearing as the series wore on and 4Kids grew less restrictive. The second season featured stylized machine guns (and in one exceptional instance, a revolver), which evolved into more realistic ones in the third season; it wasn't until the fourth season that handguns began appearing. While laser weapons did appear throughout the series (and far more frequently than "real" firearms), their appearance was justified in that at first, only the particularly well-funded used them; however, once an alien invasion left a large amount of advanced ordnance lying around, a black market was created, and street gangs began using them as well.
Justified in Transformers Generation 1. The writers knew that they weren't going to get away with having humans use real guns, so Chip and leading industrialists are shown in a short montage "developing weapons for humanity to combat the Decepticon threat" or some such line. From that point forward, even private security guards had lasers.
- Early episodes has humans using normal guns... except that Transformers are Immune To Bullets. It doesn't end well for the humans.
- In Transformers Animated it's not quite clear whether the various police officers and drones are using lasers or regular guns (though Captain Fanzone was clearly shown using a rocket launcher once), and most of the human criminals are supervillains using more bizarre weapons like Trick Arrows and a rainbow-colored ray shot from the horn of a stuffed unicorn. (See, this is why we still need I Am Not Making This Up.) Of course, Animated is set in the 22nd Century, so it's not that out of place.
- In Transformers Armada, Demolishor's missiles were frequently shown to stay in place but fire missile-shaped lasers. Of course, it does provide an explanation for the usual "we can see he's only got four, so how come he's been blasting away all day and never runs out?" problem that some T Fs have. Most weapons fire appears to be lasers, but Cyclonus has more than once told an enemy to "eat lead."
Danny Phantom. Justified, since all weapons in question were designed to fight ghosts. Battle scenes show that ghosts can phase through solid things like rockets and grenades (and thus presumably bullets), but they don't even attempt to phase through ectoplasmic weapons.
Exo Squad half-hearted uses this: weapons create energy blasts and the standard laser sound. However, closeup shots of weapons sometimes show belts of linked ammunition.
- Might also have been lazy/poor animation. EVERYTHING fired lasers in Exo Squad, even if it just launched a missile a second ago. That grapefruit thing on the right arm of the Neosapian mook armor was alternately a laser blaster, a missile, a club, or some kind of bomb depending on what the animators felt like doing. Scopes fired lasers, missile launchers fired lasers, odd pointy bits that don't really look anything like a weapon sometimes fired lasers. If it was on the arm of an e-frame, it shot a laser at some point. Oddly, most of the back and leg mounted weapons hardly seemed to come into play, except ocasional use of Mash's shoulder missiles, and even then mainly only the ones that were springloaded onthe toy. I guess the ones on the wings are just decoration on the 'real' e-frame too...
Thundarr the Barbarian had his "sunsword", a mystic weapon of power, not remotely ripped off from any energy-bladed weapons you might find on Star Wars. Its properties were somewhat interesting. It could cut through brick walls, reduce solid steel to ribbons, and hack through forests with ease, but every single time he tried to use it on an animal-type-organism, it was immune, to his endless surprise! At best, it operated as a kind of club. More often, he just stood over the defeated villain and threatened him! The villain, apparently unaware the sunsword was useless against all animal tissues, usually surrendered.
In The Adventures of Sam and Max: Freelance Police, the title characters never got to use their guns, but they did use all manner of explosives and blunt instruments, and the occasional flamethrower.
The Street Fighter cartoon adaptation had a chinese drug cartel using laser guns. Also in the Final fight episode, the bad guy used a wheelchair with lasers.
- "You know I hate guns. Guns are for wimps!"
For some reason, the human Cowboy Cop reluctant ally of The Mighty Ducks also has a laser pistol. Then again, criminals in this series seem to be able to get their hands on rather exotic futuristic weapons, so we can probably say it's Twenty Minutes Into The Future.
Nobody remembers the Rambo cartoon show of the mid 80s? The Rambo movies were reviled at the time for being ultra violent and bloody, yet the cartoon gets made anyway and substituted laser guns — complete with "machine gun" sound effects.
Similarly, the original RoboCop animated series had villains using laser weapons instead of regular guns. May be justified by RoboCop being set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, but it certainly was unfaithful to the movies.
In Zorro: Generation Z, the mayor's Mooks have weapons that look an awful lot like Star Trek The Next Generation phasers, while Diego himself uses a weapon that is a combination laser, Laser Blade and laser whip. Some of the criminals have Laser Blades as well. This troper initially assumed it was meant to be set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, but there's no other evidence of this.
Averted in C.O.P.S. — despite being set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, both the C.O.P.S. and crooks use guns that shoot regular old bullets. The only one who has a laser weapon as standard-issue is Mace, who is the team's laser expert.
The Chaotic episode Chaotic Crisis kinds went the Rule Of Cool route on this one, with the human military using tanks with flamethrowers.
- A better example would be the lack of even a blunderbuss in Perim. Yes, it seems that the Tribes can churn out arsenal fulls of flamethrowers, hand-held water cannons, and Boom Sticks powered-by the classical element air, but lacks old-fashion automatic slugthrowers.
Not-quite-a-gun example: In the cartoons based on The Legend of Zelda, Link couldn't kill the enemies by stabbing them with his sword like in the games. Instead, he had to defeat them by shooting them with the Sword Beams — which are also in the games, but are only available at full health and thus aren't used as much as regular stabbing. In one episode, Link foolishly trades his sword for a fancier one which, he discovers at a critical moment, does not shoot laser beams. This renders him entirely defenseless despite the fact that the replacement is still a fully functional sword.
The Powerpuff Girls features an episode which shows policemen fire fully-functional, bullet-shooting pistols and machineguns which are, however, inexplicably coloured fire hydrant red. Whether they have the correct shape of real-world firearms is hard to judge, thanks to the show's... simplistic animation style.
- There was also a clip from the episode that debuts Princess Morbucks, where bank robbers shoot the girls with actual bullets. Fortunately, the girls are bullet-proof and unfazed, with Blossom wondering why they even try as bullets bounce off her.
- However one episode plays it straight, with a bank robber shooting at the girls with a laser pistol.
Half-averted in Code Lyoko. Though firearms are mostly absent from the series (Odd's "Lazer Arrows" and the monsters' Frickin Laser Beams not counting here), very realistic guns do show up twice. The first is held by a movie character in "End of Take", and shot (a burst of light) once at an alien. The next few are held by the soldiers guarding the nuclear transport truck in "Common Interest". Probably allowed because the guns were not held by or fired at kids or innocents — the guns that were actually real were not fired onscreen at all — and... well... this is Code Lyoko.