Series / Sons of Guns

"The earth can shake

the sky falls down

the mountains all

fall to the ground

but I will fear

none of these things

oh, shelter me lord

underneath your wings"

— "Shelter Me", theme song

A Reality Show on Discovery Channel, Sons of Guns followed Red Jacket Firearms of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A combination firearms shop and custom firearms manufacturer, they were particularly known for AK-47 and Saiga (AK-style shotgun)-type weapons, and an M-16 pattern semi-auto rifle called the Katana.

The show was cancelled on August 27th, 2014 after airing five seasons due to child molestation charges brought up against Red Jacket owner Will Hayden. In April 2017, a Louisiana court convicted him on two counts of aggravated rape and one count of forcible rape; he was given two concurrent life sentences without parole, plus 40 years to run consecutively with them. Three months later, he pleaded no contest to two other rape charges and was given a third life sentence plus 10 years, all to run concurrently with his previous sentences.

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This show provides examples of:

• All for Nothing: The SOCOM buyer backs out at the last minute, despite Kris going to Vince and paying the inflated price Vince asked for the barrels that were missing to redeem himself of the mistake he made.
• Alliterative Name: Retired Marine, World War II Veteran, and Congressional Medal Of Honor recipient Woody Williams.
• Ammunition Backpack: Featured on the one man PKM package.
• Anti-Air:
  • The quad MG42 rig was devised as a more affordable alternative to the WW2-era quad .50 BMG anti-aircraft rig. They demonstrated it by shooting down model airplanes.
  • The crew rigged several anti-aircraft guns to simulate firing at several aircraft for a 4th of July show at the USS Kidd in Baton Rouge, LA.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety - Averted with members of the Red Jacket team constantly stressing in opening bumpers (and occasional in-episode commentary) that what they do is dangerous, despite the show making gunsmithing and the eventual results look cool. Also averted when various mechanical malfunctions happen, with jammed cartridges and "stovepipe"◊ fires. They make sure the gun is safe to diagnose before trying to figure out what happened.
  • Will had to literately reel in a new hire into basic gun safety after several incidents with Flem and a machine gun. The fact that he had to reteach someone who works with guns about gun safety disgusted him.
• Badass Teacher: Joe's main job is a high school teacher; Red Jacket is his SECOND job. Up until season 3 where the demands of working both jobs became too great and he had to resign his teaching career to dedicate his time to Red Jacket.
• Bait-and-Switch: A contest is held to determine who will get to fire the flamethrower. The winner is the shooter who gets 1 of their 5 rounds closest to the center of the target. The guys use pistols. Steph fires 3 rounds with her shotgun and puts several little holes closer to the center of the target than the guys. See also: Rock Paper Scissors, below.
  Kris: I've been bamboozled!
• Bang, Bang, BANG: Averted; the crew always make sure to use eye and ear protection when firing weapons, the exception being with suppressed weapons where the sound of the weapon is reduced to levels that won't cause hearing damage (though eye protection is still worn).
  Will: You better eye and ear up people, because this little short puppy is going to be loud.
• Bayonet Ya: One of the requirements for the zombie guns in the season 3 finale was that they be able to engage in melee combat once their ammo was exhausted. Both weapons were fitted with bayonets, one of them consisting of two spikes permanently mounted to the barrel (standard in real life for any shotgun designed for door breaching). Also, if you look closely at the Masterkey shotgun, the muzzle brake was filed into sharp points for use in close-quarters combat.
• The Big Guy: Officer Mike, who commissions Red Jacket to convert his 1919 to a shoulder mounted weapon. For the record, the 1919 is a massive machine gun that is typically resting on a tripod. Lampshaded even.
  Kris: Is he a big guy?
  Will: He looks like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger got together, and got mean.
• BFG:
  • The show could almost be retitled "BFG, the reality TV Series."
  • More specifically, one episode featured a Finnish 20mm Lahti Anti-tank Rifle. A gun that weighs a hundred and nine pounds!
  • The Lahti was later trumped by the Bofors: a forty-millimeter automatic cannon. The thing is towed on a trailer and the trigger is a foot pedal!
  Will: You have got fully automatic artillery!
  • They've worked with a few other 20mm guns (a Solothurn antitank rifle, which the Lahti above is a derivative of, as well as the Oerlikon anti-air autocannon and a couple of its derivatives), but nothing so far beats the second-to-last episode of Season 5, when they restored and fired a 152mm Russian D-20 howitzer.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: A mild version results from applying a layer of chrome and some dragon tattoo paint art to an M1919 machine gun. See Doing It For The Art below.
  • Also one of the derringers Steph was shown when coming up with her garter holster was rather fancy compared to the others.
  • Will won an Auction for a matching pair of blinged-out Colt Alamo Commemorative revolvers which he gave to Kris and Steph as wedding gifts in season 2.
  • The custom BAR Jesse James had the crew make for him had the wood furniture (the stock, handguard, and pistol grip) replaced with aluminum that was custom-engraved just for him.
• Bring My Brown Pants:
  • When Will tests the modified M11 that can only fire blanks inside the shop.
  Kris: I'm out of the shop! I'll be back in 30 minutes! After I get some clean shorts! YOU BASTARD!
  • The intended purpose of the Katyusha.
• Bullet Time: This is a show about a firearms manufacturer/modifier. It would be sacrilege not to do this.
• Camera Abuse: The behind the scenes episode in season 3 showed that the heat generated from the flame cannon was so intense that it MELTED one of the cameras, and nearly took the cameraman with it!
• Clip Show:
  • Sons of Guns: Guns of Glory on Thanksgiving 2011 recapped the crew's favorite projects.
  • Not a regular episode, meant as a teaser into the third season; also, filmed before the finale of season 2, so it gives nothing away towards Kris' decision.
  • A season 3 episode went behind the scenes with the Red Jacket crew answering viewer questions and showing scenes from previous episodes.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Will let loose with this when the original design of the Gatling shotgun blew up.
  • He dropped another one when talking about Vince after some poor schmuck made the mistake of mentioning him while talking to Will.
• Cool Bike: Will's Harley Davidson motorcycle.
• Cool Boat: The USS Kidd, a US Navy destroyer that fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima (surviving several enemy air raids and even a kamikaze attack) and was memorialized as a museum ship.
• Cool Car: Several:
  • The "War Wagon," Will's modified Ford Bronco with a railing for mounting machine guns.
  • The shop has also acquired a military surplus "Deuce-and-a-half" transport truck.
  • Joe drives a baby-blue Ford Mustang, and later a heavily-modded Ford F-150 Raptor.
  • The "Light Recon" pickup with railing.
  • Charlie's 1986 BMW
• Cool Mask: The crew occasionally wear bandannas in a way that covers their nose & mouth, such as when Kris and Vince had their "duel".
• Cool Shades: Every member of the Red Jacket crew has sported these at one time or another, as have several of their clients.
• Cool Sword: A hybrid machete/katana, meant to combine the swinging strength and coolness factor of a katana, with the raw chopping power of the machete. It is very cool.
• Crazy-Prepared: The Red Jacket flashlight gun. It looks like a little black briefcase with a flashlight built in. It folds out into a modified M11. And it has a hidden compartment with emergency wilderness survival supplies included.
  • In a recent episode, Will described Ted Nugent as "semi prepared" after he had pulled out a Glock, two spare magazines, and a PPK. Will then showed Ted a full-auto Glock 18
• Crossover: With American Chopper, and later MythBusters.
  • Will made an appearance on another Discovery Channel documentary: How We Invented: Guns.
  • Also the collaboration with Rich Wyatt from American Guns mentioned below.
• Death from Above: One episode had the Red Jacket crew find a way to door-mount a MAG 58 machine gun on a helicopter. The episode ends with them raining lead on some junked cars.
  • Also the Soviet 82mm mortar. Incoming!
• Death of a Child: In the first episode of season 3, a child dies in Joe's arms following a shooting on Halloween in New Orleans.
• Don't Try This at Home:
  • A fun snippet that's different every time begins every episode with a short spot with one or more of the crew warning about the dangers of what they do, both mechanically and legally. Will and the crew are professional gunsmiths, and a good portion of what they do in the shop (particularly full-auto conversions and suppressors) is legal only by licensed professionals. Some of the repair work on guns can get pretty dicey at times as well.
  • As well as the development and use of various explosives (Joe is often said to have come up with a new "mixture")
  • After having a drag race between Will's Harley and a Porsche Cayenne on a private road near the shop, Will looks to the camera and tells the viewers that unless they happen to own the street they're racing on, not to do it at home.
• Downer Ending: Season 4 ended with things looking pretty bleak for Red Jacket; the company in significant debt due to the SOCOM order falling through, Vince trying to poach employees and contracts from Red Jacket, Flem, Kris, and Stephanie going on to start their own businesses, and Joe seemingly packing up his stuff.
• Dueling Shows: With another Discovery Channel series, American Guns (up until American Guns was cancelled in December 2012).
  • Will got together with Rich Wyatt from that show to co-host a documentary on the top 10 shootouts in history which aired following the season 2.5 premier.
• Dumb Blonde: A girl hired on by Steph to help her with the front-end work; she couldn't hardly do anything right, and was fired the same day she was hired.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Often done when test-firing a recently repaired weapon, right before cutting to a commercial.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Jordanian Special Forces soldiers were shown when Will and Joe visited the country.
• Every Car Is a Pinto:
  • The show frequently ends with junked cars being used as targets, said cars often being rigged to explode when fired upon.
  • Joe is very enthusiastic about this part of his job.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
  Will: That is why you spend $1,500 on a grenade launcher. So that you can launch grenades!
• Extended Disarming: Ted Nugent stopped by and displayed the fact that he was carrying at least 3 handguns. No knives were seen, but...
• Eye Catch: Season 3 starts doing this. Mostly of shots of wanton acts of destruction from previous episodes.
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  Steph: Why exactly did you get this? (a $1500 grenade launcher)
  Will: The sheer inability to continue life without it.
• Foreshadowing: An unintended example; when Vince took over construction of the desert AR from Kris, the camera focused in on Vince putting the wrong buffer in the gun, causing it to malfunction later on.
• Full-Boar Action: One episode has the boys coming up with a gun powerful enough to take down feral hogs.
• Gatling Good: The Gatling shotgun.
• Genius Bonus: When Will visits one of his friends who is a military buff, the friend's house turns out to be pink. Will's friend becomes defensive and claims that it is camouflage. Desert Pink is an actual camouflage pattern famously used by the LRDG and SAS convoys fighting in the Sahara in World War II.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Averted; eye protection is mandatory whenever a weapon is fired.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Used when the alligator "Kill Stick" is demonstrated on a live gator by the professional hunters who sell their hides. The actual headshot to the back of the gator's neck is blurred on screen.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Vince is very visibly jealous of Will picking Kris to lead the desert AR project.
  • Escalated to a full-on Screw This, I'm Outta Here with Vince packing up all his stuff and abandoning the shop.
• Grenade Launcher:
  • When designing the Master Key (See Shoot Out the Lock below), Will had Joe find a guy with a M203-equipped assault rifle. Unfortunately, it didn't help at all. Will shot it and bought it anyways for $1,500. As Will stated when Stephanie confronted him on his reason for buying it, "the sheer inability to continue life without it."
  • Will and the crew go all-out to convert a full-auto-only grenade launcher into a SUPPRESSED select-fire grenade launcher with increased accuracy. They blow up a building and a car with it.
  • The crew rig up a Sheriff's patrol boat with smoke grenade launchers, as well as the aforementioned suppressed grenade launcher.
  • In season 3, episode 1, Joe leads the team in outfitting a British Ferret armored vehicle with quite a few grenade launchers intended for riot suppression.
  • The season 3 finale has Will strap a grenade launcher on a custom anti-zombie M16.
• Girls with Guns: Steph, as well as the women who come in to look at her line of ladies' rifles.
• Gun Stripping:
  • Happens a lot, not much details shown on screen though. They are gunsmiths, after all.
  • Not counting Will, as he didn't participate, Vince is the shop's fastest stripper, winning $100 for doing it the fastest while also blindfolded.
  • Vince shows Kris how to break down an old German Luger, which disassembles quite easily.
• Hand Cannon: The .50AE Desert Eagle one customer brought in. Kris actually built a stock onto it so the customer could handle the recoil of that monster.
• Hand Guns: It's a gun show.
• Happy Dance: Steph and Kris each do a tiny happy dance when Will finally agrees to fire the flamethrower that they have been restoring.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: A retired Army General who came to observe the demonstration of the desert AR requested that he not be filmed and remained in an SUV with tinted windows during the episode.
  • A client who purchased a 40mm Bofors cannon had his face blurred out at his request.
• Heroic BSoD: Joe seems to go through one after witnessing a violent shooting while attending a Halloween party in New Orleans in the third season.
• Hollywood Silencer: Completely inverted. The suppressors simply bring down the noise level of the firearm to where you don't need ear protection. See Useful Notes On Silencers for a good explanation. The show has some good scenes on how they actually work and sound.
• Important Haircut: As a condition of joining the Red Jacket crew, Will made Flem cut off his pony tail.
• Initiation Ceremony: See Secret Test of Character. Also, when Flem starting working at Red Jacket, Will made him cut off his pony tail.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • The World War II flamethrower.
  • Later taken up to eleven with a custom-made flamethrower the size of a tank cannon.
• Knuckle Tattoos: "Live Free" is tatted across Vince's knuckles.
• Manchild:
  • These guys are gun nuts, it was bound to happen. In particular, the time when Will splurged on a grenade launcher comes to mind.
  • But mostly, it's Kris.
  Kris: I love my job!
• Meaningful Name: Will keeps the origin of the Red Jacket name a secret until Season 3, when he reveals that it's a translation of the name he chose for himself in the Choctaw language. He is of Choctaw descent on his mother's side.
  • Also Hilarious in Hindsight, since when explaining this, he says 'I am Red Jacket.' One of the first episode intros starts along the lines of "I'm Will Hayden. I am Red Jacket. This is my place."
• More Dakka:
  • The show has several examples, epitomized by the "Triamese." The "Siamese," two fire-linked M-16s wasn't enough for Will. The crew puts together the "Triamese," THREE fire-linked M-16s. More Dakka indeed.
  • A customer wants to put together a quad-.50cal for demonstrations at air shows. Because this would cost $60,000 + ~$4-$5 per bullet, they instead build and mount four MG-42s, which costs only about $8,000 and $0.30 per bullet. Still gets the job done, despite various mechanical difficulties.
  • Another customer asked for the shop to restore a Japanese WWII fighter autocannon. Will declined the project due to the age of the gun, as it could have blown up when fired. Unbeknownst to him, Joe decided to start working on it behind Will's back, though Will eventually found out about it. The crew took it out to fire without Will's permission, which Will didn't take too kindly to. He managed to stop them from firing it just in time. To make up for the customer not being able to fire the autocannon, Will told the boys to grab every gun they could carry out of the shop (unsurprisingly, Steph grabbed a gun and came along with them) and they all proceeded to shoot the ever-loving shit out of the Japanese Zero mockup that they were going to use as a target for the autocannon. It was glorious.
• Mr. Exposition: Will, Joe, Flem, or Charlie often plays this when laying out the details of the main build to the rest of the crew.
• Never My Fault: Tom who seems to posess an almost uncanny inability to take responsibility for his own behavior. Especially when he ends up fired.
• No Fourth Wall: As often as the Red Jacket crew interact directly with the camera crew, with members of the production staff appearing on-camera in some episodes, the concept of a fourth wall seems to be practically nonexistent.
• One of the Boys: Steph. She knows more about guns than most of the customers, is a better shot than most of the other employees, and refuses to use handguns because "they're a way up to a real gun".
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • When Will is vehemently against actually firing the flamethrower they fixed, Steph has this reaction. As it turns out, Will is deathly afraid of fire.
  • Also Will and the threat of wild dogs. He has his reasons.
• Perma-Stubble: Will sports this more often than not.
• Pet the Dog: While no one at Red Jacket is particularly mean, it was really sweet when Will had them build a shotgun mount on an ATV for a retired Marine who had his right arm paralyzed, and then gave it to him for free.
• Pink Product Ploy: Steph takes off in this direction with an easy shooting, lightweight rifle wearing a coat of white paint. Then, over her father's objections, plays it laser straight and promises to offer it in pink.
• Pistol Whip: In addition to the bayonet of his anti-zombie M16 in the season 3 finale, Will also smashed the hell out of several "zombie" targets with the butt of the rifle.
• Product Placement: A lot of the custom guns they build use Magpul accessories. Hornady's Zombie Ammo pops up every now and then as well.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Will does this when talking to Joe about Joe purchasing a new building to house Red Jacket in without Will's knowledge.
  Joe: I mean, we're committed...
  Will: We. Ain't committed. To shit.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: How Steph convinces Will to fire the flamethrower.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: The custom guns are frequently prone to malfunctions during the design and construction phase; the worst being the gatling shotgun and desert AR.
• Retired Badass: Woody Williams, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, had his flamethrower restored and lit up a mock bunker...at the age of 87. Having won the medal for using flamethrowers several times at Iwo Jima, Woody strapped a flamethrower on for the show and lit up the bunker like he knew what he was doing.
  • Several WW2 veterans including Woody got together to fire a restored anti-tank cannon in one episode.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Epitomized by the Lefaucheux; an incredibly rare French double-barreled revolver that held twenty rounds.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: When the crew had a dispute about who got to shoot the flamethrower, they go to the shooting range and have a best-of-5 shoot-off, "Red Jacket Style." Whoever is the most accurate, wins. See also: Bait and Switch, above.
• Rules Lawyer: This is bound to happen anytime firearms and firearms rules, regulations and laws are even mentioned.
  • Every so often, a client comes in with an idea or firearm that is dubious in its legality, and Will has to come up with a way to make it work legally, or come up with an alternate solution that IS legal.
  • Example: when an archery champion comes in looking for an arrow-gun (an above-water harpoon, essentially), he also asks if they could make some exploding arrowheads. They can (and most certainly did), but he could only fire them under Red Jacket's supervision and couldn't actually buy or take the exploding arrows with him.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • Will has a sort of hazing ritual for new or potential employees. He makes them do terribly demeaning grunt work like cleaning out the toilets or picking up the dog kennel, because he says that the surest way to tell someones work ethic is to see how well they do a bad job.
    • Unknown if Flem had to do any of this, as he was the only person who came in with welding experience and actually brought guns he had made to the interview; he was shown going pretty straight from interview to some basic welding, no poop in-between.
  • What Will ends up doing to Kris when Kris wants to start dating Steph. Kris had to decide which he wanted more, to work at Red Jacket or ask Steph out. He was willing to give up what he loved to go after Steph. Will admits that he didn't know if he wanted it clear to Kris or to himself, but Kris passed.
• Semper Fi: This is almost never brought up, but Will is a retired Marine. Will is also very supportive of military projects which may wind up being used in the field, and military members often appear on the show.
• Shoot Out the Lock: Will, at the prompting of SWAT Team Consultant/Mercenary Marco, decided that simply having a guy using a shotgun to shoot out a lock then switching to a rifle took too long. So he took an M16 and mounted a shotgun on it. He called it a Master Key, because it can open any lock. It's not really an original idea, but having a semi-automatic shotgun mounted below hasn't been done before. The only existing examples were either pump or pull-bolt action.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Steph often qualifies, often seen behind a .50 Barrett. One episode had a girl with a .50AE Desert Eagle.
  • Which, because of editing, caused some minor controversy with fans, many of whom didn't believe that Steph actually fired a Desert Eagle. She put to bed that she did and has fired one, on the fan Q&A special.
  • Exaggerated when Steph got to shoot a Solothurn; a 20-millimeter semi-automatic anti-tank gun roughly as big as she was!
• Small Name, Big Ego: Tom in Season 4 It ends up costing him his job in the end.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: In one episode in season three, a certain rock & roll legend's name was blocked out by guitar riffs and the mouth of whoever spoke it being blurred out.
• Southern-Fried Genius: The guys and gal at Red Jacket know their stuff.
• Special Guest: Several throughout the series;
  • Mikey, Paul, Jr., and Rachael from American Chopper drop by to shoot some guns.
  • Ted Nugent was bound to wind up on the show. He was given Red Jacket's prototype 1911 pistol as a gift.
  • New Orleans Saints kicker Garrett Hartley, who is friends with Vince, comes to Red Jacket for several upgrades to his gun collection. Later on, Vince and Garrett had a contest where Garrett would attempt a field goal and Vince had to shoot the ball before the kick reach the uprights. Vince lost the contest 5-1, and thus all of the work on Garrett's guns was on the house.
  • Professional exhibition shooter Tom Knapp visited the shop in the 3rd season; he holds the record for shooting the most clay disks ('pigeons' as they're known in skeet shooting) out of the air and performing various other feats with shotguns. He commissioned the Red Jacket crew to build him a blunderbuss for another trick shot he had planned.
    • Though he didn't specifically ask for a blunderbuss, simply something that would allow him to break the record for most pigeons shot from a single fire gun. Even he was surprised when they showed him his new gun.
  • Jessie James visited the shop in season three, and worked with the crew to build a custom Browning Automatic Rifle. A preview of Jesse's own Discovery Channel series was played during a commercial break as well, and he appeared a couple episodes later to take depivery of the gun after it returned from an engraver.
  • One season three episode had the crew procure a revolver owned by Elvis Presley for Joe Perry from Aerosmith, and in another episode restored a naval cannon for him.
  • Kari and Tory from MythBusters showed up when the crew attempted to prove it was possible to blow up a propane tank with a single round.
  • Will and Joe got to meet King Abdullah II of Jordan when they traveled to the country in one episode.
• Spent Shells Shower: Quite frequently, especially when the crew is firing automatic guns.
• Stay in the Kitchen:
  • Averted. Steph mans the front of the shop, and many times ends up surprising the hell out of most of the customers about how much more she knows about guns than they do.
  • Often the boys at the back of the shop are doing something that requires Steph's attention in addressing testosterone-fueled idiocy, to the point where she'd probably wishes for just one day where she can stay in the front office.
• Stock Footage: The show often uses this when showing weapons in action on the battlefield, often with Will giving a brief rundown of the history of said weapon.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Possibly the biggest reality TV explosions this side of MythBusters.
  • As Charlie notes in the MythBusters Crossover episode:
  "When all else fails, Joe has an explosives license and he likes to use it."
• Tanks, but No Tanks: One episode had the Red Jacket crew get their hands on a WW2-vintage M36 tank destroyer; many of the cast members frequently calling it a "tank".
• Team Pet: Although not often seen, the Red Jacket crew have a pit bull terrier named Grover kept in the garage. A prospective new hire's willingness to clean up after him is usually a deciding factor as to whether or not they get a job there.
• Techno Babble: Joe goes into this a bit when explaining to Kris how to operate the CNC machine (a machine that precision-cuts parts out of blocks of metal). Most of it goes completely over Kris' head.
  • Joe, again, starts to go off explaining all the cool functions of a handheld night/heat vision scope to their clients, before Will interrupts and says to save it for later, when they're not blowing stuff up.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: Goes through this in one episode when they're looking for new help for the shop. Will loves to give the interviewees menial tasks to see how they'll react, including cleaning up the dog doo in the backyard and fixing the toilet.
• Those Two Guys: Some of the odd projects, like a gun that shoots a knife, wind up in the hands of Joe and Charlie, who go off on their own to work on something.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Vince became increasingly hard to work with in Season 3. To the point of packing up his stuff and walking out on the shop.
  • To be fair, it's hard to blame him - At the time, he was a managing partner of Red Jacket, the sole holder of their FFL(the licence that allowed them to operate) due to Stephanie and Will both losing their FFL for negligence, and he was the Head Gunsmith in the shop, but despite all of this, Will was regularly berating and humiliating him on the show, he got no extra pay, and Kris - Steph's at-the-time boyfriend and future husband - was clearly being groomed to take over the shop and Vince's managing partnership, despite not being a qualified(or at the time, even competent) gunsmith.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The show's easiest flaw to spot, the editing of the opening trailer ("On this episode of Sons of Guns...") and the commercial breaks give away way too much as to what is going to happen. It becomes much less "What's going to happen next?" or "Did they make it?!" and more "Huh... okay, so how did that happen?"
  • Towards the end of the third season's opener episode on its original airing, a preview of the next episode was aired during a commercial break showing Kris getting excited over the prospect of working on the USS Kidd destroyer-class ship. It kind of ruined the suspense of whether or not Kris would really be leaving Red Jacket to be with Steph by the end of the episode, practically making Kris' fate with his job a foregone conclusion.
  • The second season finale dealt with all the desert-AR troubles and Vince's jealousy and spite coming to a head. Also, serious questions arose as to whether the team was going to have a functional weapon to show (with the stakes being raised with an increased time frame and a retired military general coming to see the product). Then, even before the opening credits roll, we see shots of them shooting the gun and blowing stuff up, as well as Vince's empty bench.
• Trauma Button: Will's PTSD related to flamethrowers, triggered when the team restores a flamethrower and builds a napalm cannon.
• Wall of Weapons:
  • Will's office has 3/4 of the walls covered with guns. It's also the background used for the crew's individual testimonials.
  • And the last 1/4 is only missing guns because that wall is mostly a window.
• Warriors of Desert Winds: One episode had Will and Joe travel to Jordan, the Jordanian military making several appearances.
• Weaponized Car:
  • Mounting the .50-Caliber Machine gun on top of the War Wagon.
  • Outfitting a sheriff's patrol boat with a mounted machine gun and belt-fed grenade launcher.
  • Just bolt in a pedestal mount and add a __________ to the Deuce-and-a-half. Fun times for all!
  • A season 2 episode had Red Jacket outfit a Chevy Suburban with a remotely-operated machine gun turret on the roof.
  • One season 3 episode had the crew rig up several weapon systems on a Porsche Cayenne, which had already been modified to be bulletproof before the Red Jacket boys got ahold of it.
• Weapons Understudies: A customer wants to put together a quad-.50cal for demonstrations at air shows. Because this would cost $60,000 + ~$4-$5 per bullet, they instead build and mount four MG-42s, which costs only about $8,000 and $0.30 per bullet. (Flem notices the irony of using the enemy's weapon as a stand-in; cut to a Confession Cam scene where he apologizes to his WWII veteran grandfather.)
• Why Did It Have To Be Fire?: When Will was three years old, the house he was asleep in burnt to the ground. Understandably, he is deathly afraid of fire.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Will and Joe worked with Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide and competed to see who could build a gun that could protect someone in such a situation, and tested them with a mob of mocked-up zombie targets. Will's gun even had an EOTech sight with a biohazard symbol instead of the normal reticule.

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