This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
BT The P: To be fair, the P90 does look really futuristic. Plus, if it's a good design, what makes you think it's going anywhere soon? The army's been using the same .50 caliber heavy machine gun since just after WWI, and have no real motivation to update it, it's very effective.
Silent Hunter: Good point about the P90, but we are talking a very long period here.
Keith M: True, but assuming things therefore "must" be radically different is a trope on its own. If something is designed well enough it can last a very long time. The Browning M1911 is almost the stereotypical semiautomatic and is still in production 100 years after its origin. The Winchester 1897 shotgun is still in regular use. The Winchester 1894 30-30 rifle only stopped production in 2006, and will be in use for a long time to come. And it's not just the US Army using the .50 cal M2: it's the standard heavy machine gun for many countries. The AK-47 and it's variants and descendants, are being produced by the truckload all over the world with no sign of slowing down, and that's a 60 year old design.
Silent Hunter: Re Firefly, there actually seem to be multiple examples there. I'd have to watch the series to confirm that though.
Henry Hankovich: I think most of the weapons are intended to be as-is: the Kalashnikovs, et al, still being a cheap yet effective weapon for the purposes of the characters. (I.e., why invent a phaser when a 9mm pistol kills folk just fine?) Although they did seem to add a sci-fi "pew pew" sound effect to these "normal" firearms when cocked and fired...
Eran of Arcadia: Has anyone seen that photo of a neo-Nazi girl holding an Uzi? Seems appropriate here.
Pundabaya: Surely the Pulse Rifles and (arguably) Smart Guns from Aliens don't count? I don't think anyone saw a Pulse Rifle and screamed 'That's a tommygun!' Both the smart guns and the pulse rifles are very cool props, rather than the lazily shoved in weapons the trope suggests.
Henry Hankovich: Any sci-fi or unique-to-the-show prop gun, if it's intended to actually be used to fire blanks/squibs, will generally be built around a real gun. The cost of making an entirely new blank-firing prop would be stupidly expensive, compared to just taking an existing firearm and putting some cruft on it. The Pulse Rifles from Aliens are an example of this: the Thompson SMGs they're built on are almost completely covered up by prop cladding (although the SPAS-12 "grenade launcher" is still rather noticeable), and probably shouldn't be included in this list.
- It's pretty easy to spot the Thompson if you notice the exposed pivot plate, ejection port and charging handle, particularly the former.
Deadbeatloser22: "A non-gun example: in Doomsday, Rose makes a reference to her dad's Jeep, while the shot shows a Land Rover. This troper remembers because one of her friends is a Land Rover fanatic, who made her life hell for weeks afterwards with his complaints." Clearly no-one thought "Jeep" could be a generic term for a 4x4...
