Guns Of Fiction / Assault Rifles A to H

Guns of Fiction
Handguns (A-G, H-L, M-Z) | Revolvers | Machine Pistols | Submachine Guns (A-L, M-Z) | Rifles | Assault Rifles (A-H, I-Z) | Battle Rifles | Sniper Rifles | Shotguns | Machine Guns | Autocannons and Rotary Cannons | Flamethrowers | Rockets, Missiles and Grenade Launchers | Others

---

AK-47 and variants

"Kalashnikov. Submachine gun. Gas operated. Thirty rounds in 7.62 millimetre. Favourite with the KGB. They're going to do a saturation job after all. Perfect for range. We'll have to get him quick, or 272'll end up not just dead but strawberry jam."

— James Bond, Octopussy and The Living Daylights

The Soviet assault rifle.^note From top to bottom: AKS, AKM, Type-56

The AK (Avtomat Kalashnikova, meaning "Kalashnikov's Automatic"), or AK-47^note Though the weapon is commonly referred to as such, it should be noted that the name "АК-47" was almost never used by the Soviet military; there have been reports of the very early Soviet manuals where the rifle was indeed called AK-47, but the practice was apparently abandoned very quickly. The term came about based on the US practice of designating weapons based on their year of first appearance (in this case, 1947). Here, it is used to distinguish the first-pattern AKs from later versions and variants like the AKM, as it is commonly called, is probably the most common and well-known assault rifle. As its name implies, it was designed by Mikhail Timofeyovich Kalashnikov, a tank commander who was inspired to create an automatic rifle after being pulled off active duty thanks to a shoulder injury and overhearing complaints from other injured soldiers about their then-current weapons. The design of the rifle was finished in 1947 (under the working title "Miktim"—short for "Mikhail Timofeyovich") after competing with other prototype assault rifles. In 1949, it passed the military tests and was put into service with the official name "7.62-мм автомат Калашникова обр. 1949 года" (7.62-mm Kalashnikov's automatic mod. 1949), or just "АК" for short.

The AK fires 7.62x39mm rounds originally used by the late-war RPD and SKS. It is notable for its distinctive long gas tube, wooden furniture, and a curved 30-round magazine (often likened to the shape of a banana). Thanks to the large gas piston, chrome-lined barrel and chamber, and generous clearances between parts, it has an almost legendary reputation for reliability^note dry dirt will not jam the AK, but thick mud will do so. Thankfully, the AK is easy to field-strip and can be cleaned afterwards by throwing water on the mud-stained components. One of the most notable aspects of the weapon is that the controls were entirely right-handed^note The AK was designed for a very traditional manual-of-arms which calls for using the right hand to do just about everything, from racking the bolt to changing the magazine. This also prevents the possibility of unintentional discharge when reloading, because any soldier using his trigger hand to change the magazine while his off-hand holds the rifle by the fore-stock cannot accidentally yank the trigger when under stress. The AK-46 prototype had its safety catch and charging handle on the left-hand side and a fire selector on the right. The safety catch and left-handed charging handle inconveniently poked users in the ribs when slung like Western submachine guns, which explains why the controls were moved to the right-hand side.

In 1959 the modernized "AKM" (AK Modified) variant was introduced. The change was mostly in the production technology: the Soviet factories stamped the receiver components instead of milling them, which cheapened production, reduced the scrap rate, and made the weapon lighter.^note Stamped components were supposed to be used from the very beginning of the AK's life, but the Soviet metalworking industry simply wasn't ready to produce a high number of quality stamped parts in the immediate aftermath of World War II; high rejection rates for the parts forced a switch to milling them for just over a decade. Other improvements included a distinctive slanted muzzle brake, to redirect some of the muzzle flash upwards in an attempt to reduce recoil. The AKM quickly became the most common of all Soviet-produced AK rifles. The AK family of rifles are cheap, plentiful, fairly accurate (depending on the variant), practically immune to the harshest conditions, easily accessible and fire a powerful round, making them the ideal weapon for your common Mook. Being the weapon of the Communist Bloc during the Cold War and the service rifle for hundreds of modern and irregular armies around the world is just the cherry on top. Due to its presence in many revolutions and being a symbol of rebellion in general, the AK is often wielded by guerrillas, resistance fighters and rebel forces when not being used by Mooks. Interestingly, despite nigh-universally just being called the AK-47, most examples seen in fiction are actually the AKM. Folding stock variants of the AK family, especially the Type 56-1, are often the weapons of choice for countless Middle Eastern insurgent groups, as they can be easily concealed under the baggy civilian clothing commonly seen in the region.

The AK has been manufactured in many different countries and adopted by countless armies, and is also the basis for many other firearms, such as the Saiga-12 shotgun, the RPK machine gun, the PSL sniper rifle,^note Not the more famous Dragunov, however. the Finnish Rk 62, the Israeli Galil, and the modernized AK-12.

• Cool Action: Several, in fact.
  • One: The AK's magazine is loaded by locating the front lip of the magazine and then rocking it back into the magazine well (if you could call a rectangular hole at the bottom of the receiver such; the lack of proper magwell is a frequent complaint from Western shooters unused to the AK's layout). People who are unused to the "rock and lock" action sometimes make the mistake of trying to load an AK by slamming the magazine directly into the well. Video games often forget this, despite that it looks really cool; unfortunately, it also makes bullpup AK-action rifles rather difficult to actually load.
  • Two: A reloading method of knocking the empty magazine off with the new one, optionally followed by reaching below the weapon to rack the bolt handle with your left hand, though Hollywood producers and video game developers often add bizarre additional motions like swinging the rifle straight up.^note For the record, the intended technique is turning the rifle so the right side comes to the top, and pulling the charging handle with your left hand. Also, you'll want to release the handle at the rearward position to let the bolt move back into battery on its own - following the handle back is almost guaranteed to cause a misfeed. Nevertheless, it's become ubiquitous enough in media that half the Internet is convinced that this is how Russian special forces reload the weapon (aficionados call it the "YouTube Reload" because that's the only place where it actually is in common use by real people) and/or that any weapon with a mag release lever similar in placement to the AK's can do the same (it only works on the AK because of how shallow the magazine rides in the magazine well).
  • The proper Red Army right-handed reloading method might be slower to perform than anyone's left-handed tactical reload, but it is the simplest to learn and the safest so far as inexperienced soldiers are concerned.
  • The most awkward reloading method for the AK, the Iraqi Reload, is considered by Kalashnikov Concern to be the best method for mitigating potential snags from using rifles and magazines of differing build quality. The user drops the empty magazine and then holds the bolt open with his right hand, with the rifle's stock held firm against his right shoulder. The left hand then inserts a fresh magazine while the bolt is held open. After the new magazine is seated, the user lets the bolt slam home, chambering the first cartridge from the magazine. See this for yourself.
• Any video game, movie, or otherwise that features Soviet/Russian soldiers or settings will have some form of this gun, assuming the setting is after World War II. In movies, however, it will often be a Chinese copy, the Type 56, recognizable chiefly by the fully hooded front sight; a real AK has a partially open front sight. Most Vietnam War movies will have the Type 56 in the hands of NVA soldiers or Viet Cong. This is Truth in Television, as the Type 56 had become the standard service rifle of North Vietnam by the 1960s due to huge amounts of Chinese aid. As for works set during The Yugoslav Wars, the Zastava M70 will be seen being used by all sides, but particularly Serbian and Bosnian soldiers.
  • The ubiquity of the Type 56 in films, however, has also lead in part to consistent cases of Improperly Placed Firearms or a combination of A.K.A.-47 and Misidentified Weapons in other media. Mostly, the original AK will show up far beyond when the real things should have been put in storage and replaced with the AKM and later variants, but occasionally you'll also see video games where at least the modelers try to acknowledge there are other variants by modeling anything from the AK-74 to a modern AK-100-series rifle, but then call them the "AK-47" anyway.
• AK-47 is a Biopic of the AK's designer Mikhail Timofeyovich Kalashnikov and his long journey in entering the weapons development industry culminating in the eventual mass-production of his most successful product, the AK-47. Various prototypes of his rifle also make appearances throughout the movie as well.
• The Punisher likes him some AK due to its reliability and stopping power. "One click for semi. Two clicks for auto. Mikhail Kalishnakov was not a man to mess around."^note This is actually incorrect. Both the AK and AK-74 have the first position as auto, and the second as semi, owing to a Soviet doctrine of training soldiers to fire accurately in automatic; soldiers under stress will end up setting the rifle to semi rather than auto, thus preventing them from accidentally spraying the full magazine.
• The creators of Red Dawn used Maardi ARM rifles, the Egyptian variant of the AKM. These rifles were cleverly mocked up, to the point where they closely resembled the AKS-74, at the time the main weapon of USSR paratroopers but which were quite unavailable in the West at the time.
• Appears in version three of Survival of the Fittest, but without ammo. One character's given the gun, another gets the bullets. Danya's hope was that this would force the two to either fight or work together.
• The comic Hard Graft makes extensive use of the AK when kitting out both the good and bad guys.
• Seen memorably in Jackie Brown as part of Ordell Robbie's TV show, "Chicks Who Love Guns."
  AK-47: the very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.
• There was one used in the Firefly episode "Heart of Gold".
• Used by the female KGB sniper codenamed 'Trigger' in the James Bond short story "The Living Daylights". The weapon seems an unlikely choice for a sniping mission, but as the AK wasn't as well known then it probably seemed like a particularly 'cool gun' to Ian Fleming, with Bond admiring the rifle as he observes it through his scope. It turns out that the KGB are using it for its select-fire capability - if a single shot doesn't get their fleeing prisoner, a few bursts will. Having a fully automatic rifle also comes in handy when Trigger unleashes a storm of lead towards Bond's position, coming very close to killing Bond and his spotter and wrecking the room they're holed up in.
  • The AK or similar weapons frequently appear in the James Bond licensed games as well. In the original GoldenEye, the Type 56-1 appears as the "KF7 Soviet". A more proper folding-stock AKS-47 appears in The World Is Not Enough, under the similar "KA-57" designation; the AK in the follow-up Agent Under Fire features under the same name. An AKM appears in Everything or Nothing, incorrectly referred to as the earlier AK-47, firing faster but with a smaller magazine than the SG 552. Another AKM, once again called the AK-47, appears in GoldenEye (2010), being one of only three weapons in the game (the others being the Walther P99 and WA2000) to keep something approaching its real name.
• A video game with these and without regular Russian troops is the Grand Theft Auto III set of games; this tends to be a 'basic' assault rifle and is carried by FBI agents in Liberty City. In San Andreas, a Type 56, modeled about two-thirds larger than it should be, is the "basic" assault rifle; both CJ and Tenpenny note that other gangsters are starting to bring these to their fights instead of pistols, which is convenient when you expend a lot of your own 7.62x39 (which is also interchangeable with the later M4's 5.56) fighting them in the first place.
  • Also shows up as the basic "Assault Rifle" of Grand Theft Auto IV, this time in the form of the original pre-1959 weapon.
  • Grand Theft Auto V has the "Assault Rifle" which is based on the Type 56. Interestingly, the reload animation for the gun does none of the Cool Actions listed above. The magazine is loaded using the "rock and lock" action and the bolt handle is pulled by turning the rifle right side up, pulling the handle with the left hand, and not following it back.
• Resident Evil – Code: Veronica sees Umbrella guards carry these in force. Late in the game, Claire and Chris can get their hands on one without a butt stock. It's more powerful per bullet than the dual Ingrams, but fires quite a bit slower.
• Appears in Left 4 Dead 2, where it has an oddly slow cyclic rate of about 480 RPM. It's the slowest-firing and least accurate of the assault rifles, but owing to the round it chambers, it's also the most powerful; find a Laser Sight for it to correct the accuracy and only the hardiest and sneakiest of zombies will get anywhere near your team.
• The N-Tec 5 rifle in All Points Bulletin. Widely considered to be an overpowered "noob" gun.
• In Singularity, when you time-travel to 1955, the Red Army grunts have these. In the present day, in the altered timeline where the Soviet Union conquered the world in the 1960s, the standard rifle is clearly derived from the AK with Steampunk bling to show that it's an E99-enhanced weapon.
• The AK is seen in the hands of guerrillas in the "Goats, Jihad and Rock 'n Roll" arc of Black Lagoon.
• Harry Turtledove's most famous novel, The Guns of the South, centers on apartheid-supporting Afrikaners from the early 21st century trying to alter history by supplying the Confederate States with AKs.
• The Chinese Assault Rifle in Fallout 3 is apparently a heavily modified (with the hand guard and dust cover of an RPD) folding stock Type 56 chambered in 5.56mm NATO. Justified when you consider that the Chinese that had the weapon are forward agents operating inside the United States, where 5.56mm ammunition is prevalent. At any rate, due to the ubiquity of the NATO round, AK pattern rifles chambered in 5.56x45mm are big business in real life for Russian^* Izhmash and Chinese^* Norinco arms manufacturers.
  • The Type I AK-47 appears in the Nuka-World DLC for Fallout 4 as the "Handmade Rifle". It is the primary weapon of the Raiders within the eponymous Pre-War theme park and simultaneously acts as a sort of Suspiciously Similar Substitute to the Chinese Assault Rifle, which was cut from the base game, and as an Evil Counterpart to the base game's "Assault Rifle", complete with some of the same drawbacks (heavy weight, scarce ammo, high perk requirements for modding). The Light stock (which is actually the heaviest stock available to the Handmade Rifle) was taken from the Galil, the Marksman's stock and Sniper barrels make it resemble the PSL, and the Shovel stock was based on the infamous Shovel AK◊. Uniquely, there are four different models for the receiver; one without a dust cover, one with a crudely made dust cover, one with a standard dust cover, and one with a ribbed dust cover.
  • The weapon appears again in Fallout 76, although it's simply called the "Handmade" due to a bug. It is rechambered to the more common 5.56x45mm round, occasionally carried by the raiders and settlers of Appalachia and strangely lacks a front sight post by default (it only gets one if the Glow Sights are added). Its base weight was also reduced from an excessive 12.8 lbs to a more manageable 8. The Type 93 from 3 was planned to return as a variant of the Handmade Rifle, although the model was only used for the Communist Style paint job.
• Appears in Counter-Strike as the standard assault rifle of the Terrorist team.^note As trivia, the Global Offensive model is taken almost unmodified from Left 4 Dead 2 above. Generally regarded as somewhat inferior to the CTs' M4 due to a slightly lower rate of fire and no ability to be suppressed. Ironically and counter to stereotypes, its strength is the extreme accuracy and power of the first round fired (though followed by a fairly realistic wild muzzle rise), making it the choice weapon of players who prefer both one-shot kills and being able to follow up if they miss and/or avoiding the stigma around the AWP.
• Naturally, these show up in 7.62 High Calibre, in many variants. AKs become common among the rebels later in the game, eventually taking over from the World War II submachine guns and pump-action shotguns. The Blue Sun mod continues to add more, including semi-automatic civilian rifles and tacticooled guns with synthetic furniture and rails.
• Common in the Battlefield series, starting with Vietnam, which features both the Type 56 and an AKMS.
  • Battlefield 2 has the standard AK for the PLA's Assault and Medic kits, the former fitting a GP-25 grenade launcher.
  • Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam once again features the standard AK as one of the usable weapons, though without the option of a Grenade Launcher.
• Likewise common in the Call of Duty series ever since it moved out of World War II.
  • It's one of the two first assault rifles available once Create-a-Class opened up in the multiplayer of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but thanks to its well-rounded accuracy and power, and the faster switch time to its unique Grenade Launcher, it ended up being the single most-used assault rifle in the game - hence, most later games since have made it or its nearest equivalent one of the last weapons unlocked.
  • It returns in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, this time in a heavily-tacticool form with white synthetic furniture, an M4 stock adapter, and rails on the handguard and a scope mount. Modern Warfare 3 features a very similar version with black furniture, a slightly different stock and more rails on the handguard.
  • The AK with the original wooden furniture was added to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare right after the release of the "Reckoning" DLC.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) naturally features its return, this time extensively customizable, including the ability to modify it into several AK-74 variants.
  • A similarly-customizable AK-103 returns as the "Kastov 762" in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, the progenitor for an entire weapon family of AKs. Modification options allow turning it into a shorter-barreled AK-104 or giving it the original wooden furniture to make an AKM.
  • A fictionalized bolt-action AK rifle in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III appears as the "Longbow", fitted with long barrel and a 25-round magazine.
• In a rather eloquent bit of Description Porn, Yuri Orlov describes what makes the AK awesome for soldiers, generals and gun runners like himself.^note The opening sequence of the film shows the life of a 7.62 round (set to Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth"), starting with being stamped in a factory in some unknown nation... and ending lodged in the brain of a Child Soldier on another continent.
  Yuri Orlov: "Of all the weapons in the vast Soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947, more commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It's the world's most popular assault rifle, a weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple nine-pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood, it doesn't break, jam, or overheat. It will fire whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars."
• Shows up in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The player can use it, but it doesn't come with a suppressor like the XM16E1. It shows up again in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - the latter calling it the "RK-47". In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, it shows up as the "SVG-67".
• The AK appears in some form in every Far Cry game after the first as a Boring, but Practical weapon. In Far Cry 2, the original AK is often the most commonly used gun in the game thanks to its legendary reliability, and there's a few golden versions (which are oddly missing their stocks) which degrade even slower that are scattered across the maps in very-hard-to-find locations. Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4 both feature an AK-103 with wooden furniture in a similar role, though without a separate golden version (it is the most expensive paint option in 4, though) and, for some reason, no options for attachments in singleplayer despite the very obvious rail on top, although the latter game does add a Signature variant, the "Warrior", which includes an extended mag, suppressor, and red dot sight, available after hijacking 2 Royal Army cargo trucks. Far Cry 5 dumps the 103 in favor of an AKM, available in multiple forms (the original wooden-furniture one as the "AK-47", a ridiculously-tacticool "AK-M", and two Prestige variants, the "AK-MS Whitetailer" and "AK-MS Warrior") and, for once, being just as modifiable in singleplayer as they are in multi.
• The AK shows up frequently in Uncharted. Notably, the model used is the original pre-1959 AK as opposed to the more common AKM.
• The AK is one of the best weapons in Parasite Eve, but you have to give Wayne 300 Junk and let him decide what to make, so there's still a chance you might not get it.
• PAYDAY 2 features both the AKMS and the shortened AKMSU, respectively as the "AK.762" and the "Krinkov", the former as a primary weapon and the latter as a secondary (also making the mistake of referring to it as a submachine gun). Quite naturally, there is also a golden version of the former, with attendant lower Concealment rating; quite unnatural is that the game ignores the stereotype and gives them superb accuracy, actually able to beat out their equivalent AR-15 variants with little effort.
• Heartbreak Ridge has Gunnery Sergeant Highway use one to scare his own troops. He notes that it is the preferred weapon of their enemy and makes a distinctive sound when fired. This gets two Call Backs later on, once when Recon Platoon's Lieutenant joins them for an exercise and again when they're assaulting Grenada.
• The AK is quite naturally rather common in the Rainbow Six games, but the player doesn't get the chance to use one until Raven Shield. The Vegas games feature an odd mishmash of several variants that apparently loads 5.45mm magazines; the model is reused with almost no modifications for Splinter Cell: Conviction.
• Also common in the Ghost Recon series. Shows up in the first game as the most common enemy assault rifle, owing to the setting in the Caucasus, making a playable appearance with the Island Thunder expansion. The Advanced Warfighter duology also make use of it in the console versions, a standard version as an assault rifle and one with a 75-round RPK drum mag standing in as a machine gun. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier features an AKM with various updates as a pre-order bonus alongside the otherwise-nearly-identical AK-200 prototype (essentially an AK-103 with rails all over it). Wildlands also features an original AK, this time modified only by way of a side-mounted top rail, alongside two special variants belonging to the Santa Blanca cartel's chief medical officers, El Polito having "His AK47" (one fitted with AK-74 mags and the AKS-74's side-folding stock) and La Yuri having "Her AK47" (one with no stock, a pink-painted pistol grip, gas tube and 50-round drum mag, and the integrated wooden foregrip of the Romanian AIMS.
• A Libyan terrorist used the AKM to gun down Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Surprisingly, there is the rare instance of having an AK-pattern rifle jamming when the terrorist tries to shoot Marty. Of course, the real reason would be that if they shot Marty, then there would be no movie trilogy.^note Though there shouldn't have been one anyway, an AK-47 round would go right through any sort of soft body armor like Doc is shown wearing available in 1985 (or even in 2015), especially from that range. You're probably thinking "But wait, Doc Brown has a time machine, maybe it was futuristic body armor" and yeah, but even if you could stop the round from penetrating the kinetic energy of a half dozen 7.62 rounds hitting you in the chest would still likely be fatal, or at the very least cause serious injury (for starters he'd have many broken ribs). The only places Doc would be going are the morgue or the ICU, he certainly would not be up and walking minutes later.
• The AK-103-2 with wooden furniture shows up in Spec Ops: The Line, erroneously called an AK-47 and used by 33rd soldiers as well as the 'insurgents', or civilian militias. While less common than 5.56mm, ammo for the AK can be found all throughout the game, except during the final chapter. Curiously, the AK has an X-shaped muzzle flash that doesn't fit the rifle's flash hider at all (though it makes sense given Walker's increasingly confused state of mind).
• Appears in The Things They Carried as the "AK", and listed among the various unofficial or captured weapons used by O'Brien's platoon.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, General Amajagh's men are armed with either AKMS or AKMSU rifles.
• In Suicide Squad (2016), one of The Joker's henchmen (the one dressed as a panda) uses an AKM during an attack on Arkham Asylum. The Joker himself wields a gold-plated Type 56-1 when arriving to pick up Harley at Midway City.
• Tintin uses one to shoot down a low-flying fighter in The Red Sea Sharks, and Alcazar's guerrillas use them in Tintin and the Picaros.
• Insurgents use the Type 56-1 in the opening of The Mummy (2017).
• Tom Mason makes heavy use of AK variants in Falling Skies.
• AK-47 appears as a 3-star Tactical Doll in Girls' Frontline. Her design emphasizes the weapon's use by revolutionaries and guerrillas, rather than her Soviet heritage like other contemporary weapons. She still retains a taste for vodka, though, and she also has a Soviet hammer-and-sickle tattoo on her forearm^note Though if you look closely, you can see the hammer has been replaced by a handgun. She also doesn't even use the original AK in her normal costume; it's an AKM. Her Lord of War costume, besides being a shout out to the movie, references gangsta culture and even plates her weapon in gold.
  • The game also features Type 56-1 as a 4-star Tactical Doll. Being a Chinese copy, her design is intentionally made similar to AK-47, but with distinctive oriental elements, particularly with her being among the first to receive a Chinese-style dress as an alternate outfit alongside the QBZ-95 and -97 rifles and NZ 75 pistol.
• The primary assault rifle for the NVA and VC in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. Interestingly, players have the choice of picking between three variants for their loadout before entering a battle - the AKM, Type 56, or Type 56-1 - and each has minor differences from one another: the AKM has less recoil, weighs less, and has more open sights, while the two Type 56s have higher muzzle velocity and a slightly faster rate of fire. The full-stocked AKM and Type 56 also get bayonets for quickly stabbing close-in enemies, while the Type 56-1 instead allows its stock to be folded in, letting it handle better in extreme close quarters (you can get closer to walls or other scenery while still keeping the weapon pointed forward and thus able to just fire it on a close-in threat) in return for even stronger recoil and an inability to properly look down the sights (your character just brings it close to the center of the screen, at best aiming with the left side of the sight hood) until you fold it out again.
• SWAT 3 frequently arms bad guys with the Type 56 with a flashlight taped under the barrel. Official mods included with the Tactical Game of the Year edition add it to the player's arsenal (misidentified as the original AK), where it's one of the more versatile options as far as attachments go, with options of any combination of a red dot sight, suppressor, and/or RPK drum magazine.
• Available in Takedown: Red Sabre, in both the form of an AKM, which is surprisingly accurate but cannot be modified, and an AK-103 (as the "SA-47T") modified with an adjustable stock and railed handguard, fitted with a flashlight and vertical foregrip and able to take alternate sights, in return for the stereotypical poor accuracy.
• Strange Aeons features the AK-47 as its automatic weapon, both usable by the player and wielded by some of the mooks.
• Insurgency features the AKMS as the base assault rifle available for all Insurgent classes except Sniper, notably available for no supply points. Insurgency: Sandstorm uses a full-stock AKM for the Insurgents' Commander, Observer, Demolitions and Rifleman classes, now costing 3 supply points, which still puts it on the cheaper side as far as assault rifles go.
• Shadowrun has the AK-97 and AK-98, essentially futuristic versions of the -47 in the alternate universe the games take place in. Like their real-life counterpart, they are dirt-cheap and easily available from any weapons dealer. Their commonness makes them the most widely-used assault rifles in the world, and due to this they are rarely marked as illegal firearms to carry around when weapon permit rules come into play. The AK-98 differs from the -97 in that it has an integrated grenade launcher for general purpose use. The AK-97 even has a carbine variant which the game treats as an SMG rather than a rifle.
• The "AK47" in Killing Floor is a Romanian PM md. 90 cu țeavă scurtă, a variation with an original AK-like handguard mated to the Romanian-style folding wire stock and a shortened barrel with an AKS-74U-like combined front sight and gas block. It's something of a middle ground among the Commando's weapons, being one of its only options to not have a powered optic of some kind in return for one of the higher capacities (30 by default, up to 37 with the Commando's perk bonuses) and double the firepower of the starting Bullpup. Commandos at the highest level spawn with one, and it's also the only weapon in the game to get multiple DLC variants: the first "Golden Weapons Pack" adds a variant with gold plating on the metal parts and golden engravings in the wood, and the "Neon Weapon pack" gives one in all-black with bright red Tron Lines all over.
• Appears in Saints Row and Saints Row 2 as the "K6 Krukov", fielded by the gangs of Stilwater as a cheaper but weaker and less accurate alternative to the M4-based "AR-40 Xtnd". The SR2 model is strangely modified with a shorter stock. Dex refers to it as an "AK" in the final mission of the first game's Los Carnales arc.
• Squad offers a host of AK variants for its irregular factions. The AKM and AKMS both appear in various insurgent kits, with the former also being available in limited numbers to the Irregular Militia. For variety's sake, the Romanian PM md. 63 also appears as as an option for Insurgent Cell leaders, while the Hungarian AMD-65 is used by their Medics.
• The Cypress Hill song "A to the K" is obviously a reference, and the gun is mentioned constantly in Gangsta Rap songs, probably more than any other firearm.
• One of Allysin Kay's monikers is "AK-47". She even has a T-shirt featuring a little girl with the gun, and another featuring one of her catch-phrases ("Classy as Fuck") along with her aforementioned moniker styled after the rifle's magazine.
• The Zastava M85 appears in Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days as the "Vamazast". It is primarily used by Hsing's Gang and Glazer's Squad, and is the starting rifle in the multiplayer.
  • The Alliance Weapon Pack DLC adds the Kaliningrad 47, a custom AK with wood furniture, a strange purplish plating, and a slightly different magazine from the Kaliningrad 74.

AK-74 series

This rifle will be a handy thing to have around when body armor starts getting popular in Nevada.

—Description, Madness: Project Nexus

Succeeding the legend was never easy, but this rifle pulled it off.^note From top to bottom: AK-74, AK-74M, AKS-74U

In 1974, a new model of Kalashnikov was released. Chambered for a new and smaller caliber, 5.45x39mm, a grudging admission of the superiority of the NATO-style 5.56mm intermediate rounds over the originally favored 7.62mm rifle rounds found in the AK-47 and AKM, the AK-74 quickly replaced the former rifles as the standard-issue rifle of the Soviet Union, seeing its first major conflict in Afghanistan. It has been in service longer than the AK-47 or the AKM as the standard issue assault rifle and is still the primary weapon of the ground forces of former Soviet states, where it is fielded alongside the AKM, but still cannot seem to replace it in fiction, where the AK-47 and AKM are still seen as the standard Soviet and post-Soviet rifles.

The AK-74 is rather heavily based on the original 7.62x39mm AK - so much so that it's rumored the original AK-74 prototypes were actual AKMs simply given new barrels to fit 5.45mm rounds. Its primary differences are a new 90-degree gas block, a new muzzle brake to counteract recoil, and a straighter stock with grooves in it for easy identification and reduced weight. The 5.45x39mm round has superior range, weighs less, and flies straighter than the Soviet-original 7.62x39. Despite this, it keeps the Kalashnikov tradition of large clearances and rugged, cheap design, trading effectiveness for reliability. A compact version with an 8-inch barrel and folding stock, called the AKS-74U, was designed later in the decade along the same concept as American AR-15-derived carbines tested in Vietnam, and is meant for paratroopers, rear-echelon troops, and special forces; as it tends to be, this is the most famous variation of the AK-74, and if a show or game will acknowledge that AKs other than the 1947 original, the Type 56 or the AK-12 prototypes exist, nine times out of ten the 74U is as far as they go to attempt this. In 1994, Russia updated the AK-74, creating the AK-74M, which featured new black synthetic furniture, including a new fiberglass stock in the shape of the original solid stock, but able to fold to the side like the AKS-74's skeletal one. The AK-100 series of rifles designed for export are in turn based on the AK-74M, differing only in chambering (the AK-101, -102 and -108 are 5.56x45mm NATO, and the -103, -104 and rarer -109 are 7.62x39mm), barrel length (the AK-102 and -104 are short-barreled carbines, as is the 5.45mm AK-105 - there is no AK-106 because the AK-74M already fills the role of a full-length assault rifle in 5.45mm) and, for the AK-107, -108 and -109, use of the AEK-971's balanced action.

See also the PP-19 Bizon, and by extension the PP-19-01 Vityaz, which are 9x19mm submachine guns based on the AKS-74.

• Cool Action: Same as the AK-47 family above.
• Cool Accessory: Again, shared with earlier-model AKs, is the common practice of Russian soldiers of wrapping tourniquets around the stock for quick access. Especially with the airborne variants with the skeletonized stock that easily allows pressure dressings and gauze rolls to be retained inside by the wrapped tourniquet. With life-saving emergency medical items tied to the rifle, when the Russians say that a soldier's weapon is his life, they’re serious.
  • The AK-74 can usually be distinguished by an orange or plum polymer magazine typically referred to as bakelite (although it is not actually made out of bakelite), with a straighter curve than 7.62x39 AKs. Some works inspired by the Chechen Wars may also have the mags taped together "jungle style" using contrasting blue electrical tape.
• Cool Scope: The N variant of most AKs have a proprietary dovetail mount on the side of the receiver to attach optics like the Kobra or OKP-7 that are thus closely associated with Russian weapons, with the Kobra's three-line reticle being especially recognizable in first-person shooters.
• Serious Business: Do not call the AKS-74U a submachine gun in front of someone with a penchant for Gun Porn. It's largely a short-barreled and lighter rifle, much like the M4 is to the M16, making it a carbine. On the other hand, in some nations the term "submachine gun" is applied to any firearm designed for the role of an SMG, no matter what caliber it fires (for example, East Germany designated all of its AK-pattern rifles, even the full-length ones, as "maschinenpistole"). However, any short-barreled automatic gun chambered in rifle rounds is still classified as an "assault rifle" by technicality, or, if we were to go deeper, an "assault carbine"; thus, the AKS-74U actually fits the description of the latter.
• Metro 2033, being set in Russia, uses the AK-74M as one of the most common rifles, where it's far more commonly known for its nickname, "Kalash". It's a lot rarer than the crappy homemade Bastard carbines, though this can be explained in-universe as every AK being taken by more resourceful factions After the End. By the time Metro: Last Light takes place, it becomes more common. Prewar 5.45x39mm FMJ ammo is used as currency. Last Light, in Ranger mode, also has an AKS-74u, which has a higher rate of fire and quicker aim time, but lower accuracy and higher damage falloff. Metro Exodus makes the Kalash one of the most customizable platforms – you can put it together as a light and compact 74u with a suppressor, as a regular 74, or even as a RPK-like light machine gun with a heavy barrel and a big honking drum magazine. Strangely, in the original Metro 2033 the Kalash has a lower cyclic rate than the real weapon; this is corrected in further installments and in Redux.
• The Punisher MAX: The AK-74M variant shows up in the hands of Black Sea Marines during the Man Of Stone arc.
• The UC rifles in Alpha Protocol are modeled after the AK-105. You also get a golden one after defeating the first boss.
• 7.62 High Calibre features the AK-74 in line with its copious Gun Porn.
• The AK-74 appears as a usable weapon in The Division, misidentified as its predecessor as the "AK-47M".
• Hotel Moscow's Vysotoniki in Black Lagoon uses the AK-74 as their weapon of choice and Balalaika mentions it as part of a Badass Boast. Understandable, as they are former Soviet army personnel.
• King of Thorn: Russian soldiers are seen in action with AKS-74Us during the expedition to the origin of MEDUSA led by Vega.
• An AK-74^note probably meant to be an AKM, as it's stated to be firing the original 7.62mm round, but the barely curved magazine and the AK-74 muzzle brake makes one wonder about that appears in PAYDAY: The Heist where it is known simply as an "AK." It can be fitted with extended magazines and a reflex sight, and have its wooden furniture replaced with ported polymer. In PAYDAY 2, the AKS-74 returns as the "AK", this time as the first alternative primary weapon unlocked, and with a wide selection of mods (particularly with some of the DLC) making it the AK equivalent of the slightly-later M4A1 as a weapon that can be modified for any role the player wants.
• In Battlefield 2, the AK-101, the full-size 5.56mm export version of the -74M, serves as the primary weapon for the Assault and Medic kits for the Middle Eastern Coalition (both normal and Special Forces), Spetsnaz, and Rebel/Insurgent Forces; it's more or less the best of the faction-specific rifles in the base game, being as accurate as the USMC's M16A2 without sacrificing the power or full-auto fire rate of the PLA's AK. It's also modeled with two mags taped together jungle-style, which gives it a rather odd reload: rather than ever replacing the mags, the player character always simply pulls the mag out, flips it over, and loads in the other mag - a result that somehow simultaneously fully replenishes the weapon (even if you've already emptied two mags and both should be empty) and still counts as dropping the last one entirely and losing all the ammo left in it.
  • The AKS-74U shows up in the Battlefield: Bad Company side-series. It's used as a weapon specific to the Engineer kit, alongside other short-barrel carbines and the submachine guns, and as such is permanently fitted with a suppressor. The first game gave it synthetic furniture, while the second reskins it to the original wooden handguard.
  • The AK-74M is the basic rifle for the Russian Assault (and as such, the final unlock for their American counterpart) in Battlefield 3. The short AKS-74U serves the same role for Engineer, including being the Russian starting weapon and the final unlock for the American one.
  • Battlefield Hardline once again features the AKS-74U as an option for the Criminals' Operator class, fitted with a railed handguard and coming with a Laser Sight by default.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has both the AKS-74 and its carbine variant, the AKS-74U, as common, solid weapons that use readily available ammo throughout the three games, respectively renamed the "Akm-74/2" and "Akm-74/2U"; the 74u is the starting rifle in Call of Pripyat, while Shadow of Chernobyl has a unique AKS-74 belonging to Strelok that has an increased rate of fire. One oddity that is notable with the carbine variant is that it uses a banana-shaped magazine more associated with the AKM's larger 7.62x39mm round. This is probably due to licensing issues with the weapons; the AKS-74U's model here makes it more like the Yugoslavian-made Zastava Arms M92 carbine, except that it uses the triangular skeletonized side folding stock used by the AKS-74 instead of the M92's under folding metal stock.
• The basic Lasrian mook weapon in darkSector is an AKS-74U fitted with a suppressor, reflex sight and skeleton stock.
• As above, Team Rainbow starts stocking the AK-74M in Raven Shield; though, as seems typical for more modern shooters, by the time of Vegas they've completely abandoned it in favor of the original AK, only taking back the shortened AKS-74U in Vegas 2 probably because it was in Call of Duty 4, though unlike in COD, it is correctly classified as an assault rifle and modeled with 5.45mm magazines.
• Call of Duty
  • In Call of Duty 4, the Krinkov (actually based on an airsoft simulacrum) appears in it, misidentified both in name and role as the "AK74u submachine gun". The fact that it's not actually a submachine gun is at least highlighted in its attributes — it has the same damage, rate of fire, and range as the MP5, but it has higher penetration, aim sway and sight zoom, on par with the full-size AK. Remastered remodels it into a proper 74U.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II features the AK-105 with light tan furniture as the "Kastov 545", with mod options to turn it into an AK-74M or the night sight-capable AKS-74N. The AKS-74UN is also available as the "Kastov-74u". Notably, this is the first time in the franchise's history that the weapon is correctly categorized as an assault rifle.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops includes both a full-size AK primarily based on the AK-74 and the 74U proper, the latter once again misclassified as a submachine gun, but once again with several more assault rifle-like qualities, including being the only SMG that can take its own version of the Grenade Launcher. Both return for the flashback missions of Black Ops II, while an update also added the 74U to Black Ops III.
  • The Ukrainian Vepr bullpup conversion appears in Call of Duty: Ghosts, also misidentified as a submachine gun.
  • The regular AK in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) can be converted to 5.45mm to, together with different barrel and stock options, convert into several AK-74 variants, including the 74U and an East German MPi-AKS-74N.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War once again features the 74U, as typical classified as an SMG.
• The FY71 assault rifle featured in Crysis is essentially a modified AK-74M reverse-engineered by a decidedly European-sounding arms manufacturer called Bauer & Kopka (which is an unintended parody of the real Heckler & Koch arms company from Germany) in North Korea and is the standard weapon for the KPA for much of the first half of the game. Later, the KPA inexplicably relegates the rifle to smaller numbers in favor of the faster firing but weaker MPX8 submachine gun, which in itself is a near-knockoff product of the H&K MP7.
• In Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, it's the go-to "bad guy" assault rifle, first seen in Colombia and prevalent from then on. Though it lacks the versatility of the M4 with its underslung grenade launcher or the OICW's scope with up to 20x zoom and integrated night vision, it's as straightforward a gun as it gets, with next to no muzzle climb and surprisingly good accuracy in bursts of three shots or less. Interestingly, you can only find ones converted to 5.56mm, and if you choose to gear up with one for a mission, you can add a (next to useless) bayonet^note which is present in the worldmodel no matter what.
• In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the Gurlukovich mercs which take over the tanker in the prologue and then guard the core of Shell 1 at the Big Shell in the main game carry the AKs-74u, as opposed to the AN-94s used by the rest in the surrounding struts or Shell 2. Raiden must obtain one to complete his disguise so as to infiltrate the core and make contact with Ames, and can get a suppressor for it (in the very same warehouse on Very Easy, otherwise locked away until crossing over to Shell 2).
  • The generically-Middle Eastern rebels in the first act of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots use the AK-102 (a shorter carbine export version in 5.56mm) as their standard rifle; Snake himself ends up going through three of them in the first fifteen minutes, the first one jamming to complete uselessness during the opening, grabbing another one off a corpse and tossing it away after emptying it at a pursuing Gekko, then taking a third off a different corpse when things calm down and keeping it for the rest of the game. Its ammo is plentiful even after entering the later acts where enemies don't use weapons in its caliber, but it's ultimately an inferior choice to the M4 Custom from the fact that its only customization option is a Grenade Launcher that takes its own unique (and rare) ammo.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain stars the AK-74 as the "SVG-76".
• You know when a firefight will break out whenever James Bond gets a hold of an AK-74 in Goldeneye. Xenia Onnatopp and other Soviet/Russian troops have this rifle too.
  • Like the original AK, the -74 makes semi-frequent appearances in the games as well, such as the Quantum of Solace adaptation featuring the AKS-74U (renamed in reference to From Russia with Love) and Blood Stone featuring a full-size AK-74M with a holographic sight and a slightly-increased capacity of 32 rounds.
• A left-handed AK-74 appears in Rage (2011) as the "Settler Assault Rifle". For whatever reason, it has a short rail system and a second rear-sight, and makes an audible 'ting' noise when the last round of a magazine has been fired.
• Like most carbine versions of assault rifles in Girls' Frontline - or most other games to include this weapon, for that matter - the AK-74U is classified as a submachine gun. Despite her sharp tongue, she is good friends with fellow Soviet assault rifles AS Val and 9A-91, and also gets on well with HK416. Later story content eventually corrected her name to AKS-74U.
  • The game also features the StG-940, an East German AK-74 derivative chambered in 5.56x45mm NATO, as a 3-star Doll.
  • Kalina also picks up an AKS-74U during the events of Operation Singularity.
  • AK-74M made her proper debut as a 4-star AR in Fall 2021. She acts as a buffer for other AK rifles, including the distantly-related AK-Alfa.
• SWAT 3 features both the full-size AK-74 and an AKS-74U with a mod included with later releases. They all take the same attachments as the Type 56: suppressor, Kobra sight, and/or drum magazine.
• The AK-74M appears in Kane & Lynch: Dead Men and Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days as the "Kaliningrad 74". The multiplayer description in Dog Days claims it is Chinese Army surplus (odd, as the Chinese have never used the AK-74M or a locally produced copy in any capacity).

AK-12

The AK-12 is a modern assault rifle designed to replace the legendary AK-74 as the general issue weapon for the Russian army. The weapon introduces many improvements over its predecessors: better recoil control, suitable for various ammunition types, compatibility with several accessories, and better ergonomics.

—Description, ARMA III

From top to bottom: AK-200, AK-12 2013 prototype, AK-12 final model with nonstandard camouflage applied

The AK-12 was an attempt by Russian gun manufacturer Kalashnikov Concern (formerly IZHMASH) at updating and modernizing the classic AK design, potentially creating a replacement for the AK-74M currently in Russian service. Originally designed in 2010, premiering as the AK-200, which looked more like an AK-74 or an AK-100-series rifle with several accessory rails added, before becoming the more radical AK-12 design. The AK-12 utilizes the same rotating-bolt, long-stroke piston design of all AK-derived rifles. Despite this similarity, the AK-12 modified the classic Kalashnikov design in a number of ways. One of the major design features was its proposed modularity. In addition to integrated accessory rail mounts, the AK-12 was intended to be able to swap between the major Russian and NATO calibers with just a change in barrel, as well as take on the role of assault rifle, carbine (as the AK-12U), submachine gun (PPK-12), light automatic weapon (RPK-12), designated marksman rifle (SVK-12) and semi-automatic shotgun (AK-12/76) with these same barrel changes. Other modifications included more ergonomic furniture, an improved rear sight that's moved closer to the shooter's eye (though mounted on the top rail, so presumably a shooter used to the classic AK sights and its advantages could move them further forward) and an ambidextrous charging handle (originally with a secondary handle on the left side of the bolt and a smaller cutout in the receiver for it, later simply made reversible) and safety selector switch (modified into ambidextrous thumb-operated levers). Operation of earlier versions was possibly somewhat inspired by the AN-94, as the weapon could fire in three-round bursts at a thousand rounds per minute, or fully-automatic at the classic AK's usual 600.

Despite these improvements and changes, the AK-12 was initially passed over for adoption by the Russian Defense Ministry. The reasons were three-fold. First, after several trials, the AK-12 was found to have some serious faults or defects (though the exact issues were not stated specifically, with Defense Ministry officials citing it as "the developer's confidential information"). Second, IZHMASH at the time was in a rather poor financial state, which officials were concerned about. The third and final reason was the same one that has come up every prior time someone has tried to replace the AK-74 for the past thirty years: the Russian military already has plenty of AK-74 rifles and no need for a new rifle to replace them. Despite this, Kalashnikov Concern has stated they will offer the rifle for law enforcement use and will attempt to make another modernized AK.

In December 2014, however, it was announced that the Russian Army was adopting it after all, with operational trials beginning in March 2015 and completing testing in early 2017. The adopted AK-12 ended up being a slightly different rifle based on a newer "AK-400" model, which more closely mirrors some design features of the older AK models (such as the removal of the ambidextrous charging handle, and replacing the thumb-operated selector switch with a more standard AK selector given a projection to operate it with the firing hand without letting go of the pistol grip), upping the full-auto fire rate to about 650 and replacing the three-shot "hyperburst" with a more standard two-shot burst (albeit with a tendency to actually fire three shots, at least with the one Brandon Hererra got his hands on) at the same rate as full-auto. As of January 2018 the Russian military has formally adopted two variations of the production rifle, the new version of the AK-12 in 5.45x39mm and a newer AK-15 in 7.62x39mm; there are also plans to make a squad automatic weapon out of it as the RPK-16, similar to the relationship between the classic AK and RPK (complete with design of a new drum magazine that fits 96 rounds of 5.45mm, similar to models that were made but very rarely issued for the RPK-74), and variants in Western NATO cartridges for export, the AK-308 in 7.62x51mm and the AK-19 in 5.56x45mm. The Qatari military has also adopted the AK-12. According to Wikipedia, as of 2018 the "AK-200" has been split off into a separate series of export rifles as well, only including some of the AK-12 upgrades like the integrated rails and adjustable stock to act more as a direct upgrade to the previous AK-100 series, being heavier but simpler to use and cheaper than the more radically-different AK-12 design. So far there are confirmed to be full- and carbine-length versions in 5.45mm (AK-200 and -205), 5.56mm (AK-201 and -202), and 7.62x39mm (AK-203 and -204).

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, revealed multiple serious issues with the AK-12. Ukrainians have captured AK-12s with their fire selector switches yanked so far down they are almost aligned with the pistol grip- it is possible the previous users did this under fire, which damaged the internals. Previous AK models had a lever stop to prevent this, but it has strangely been omitted from the AK-12. The new railed free-floated handguard will not hold zero, making it effectively useless for lasers and thus poorly suited to shooting with night vision. The railed dust cover has also been found to have a wandering zero. The stock folds, but not flush against the receiver as in previous AK models, and is prone to snagging on something (like the inside of a BMP or BTR). The gas tube was also found to have been welded in place, which makes cleaning more difficult, and contains nearly-inaccessible nooks and crannies to gather fouling and rust, which is bad news for anyone serving in armed forces who still issue corrosive ammo (like the Russians). The loose furniture is especially inexplicable, as many companies like Zenitco in Russia and Magpul in the USA offer railed AK handguards and dust covers that lock up tightly and hold zero. It is possible that all of these issues explain why there are photos of Russian Spetsnaz operators that carry extensively-modified-and-customized AK-74Ms instead.

In fiction, the AK-12 has largely appeared in settings 20 Minutes into the Future, where fictional Russian Army soldiers are likely to use it while while the Bear goes on a rampage, or as just a shiny new "future AK" for futuristic baddies to use.

---

Video Games

• The 2013 prototype is the primary service rifle of the Russian military and the starting rifle of the Assault class in Battlefield 4, along with a whole family of weapons derived from it; a carbine (the planned AK-12U as the "AKU-12"), a light machine gun (RPK-12), a designated marksman's rifle (SVK-12 as the "SVD-12") and a semi-automatic shotgun (AK-12/76 as the "DBV-12"). Burst-fire is shown to fire at a faster rate than full-auto, but it's restricted to just 750 RPM rather than the real 1000 that version was capable of (it could do so in the beta, but it was reduced for balancing).
• Battlefield 2042 uses the 2018 production of the AK-12 as the "AK-24". Holding 30 rounds by default, it also offers different types of ammunition, such as a 20-round "High Power" ammo or a 50-round RPK-16-style drum magazine.
• It makes an appearance in the Gun Porn game Alliance of Valiant Arms as the AK-200. It comes with either a holographic sight or an ACOG scope, and is only available in the Korean version of the game.
• Heavily-customizable mockups of the earliest AK-200 prototype (basically an AK-103 with a skeleton stock and rails bolted on everywhere) make several appearances in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and the free-to-play Phantoms as a primary weapon of both the Russian Armed forces and Raven's Rock. The 2013 AK-12 prototype returns for Wildlands (rather oddly, considering it's set five years before Future Soldier, which was stuck with an earlier prototype), used by some goons and mid-level sicaros, with two custom versions available, the "Ritmo" with a red dot scope, grenade launcher and compensator unlocked after defeating DJ Perico, and the "GR Network" unlocked for connecting to the Ghost Recon Network and tagging the profiles of ten other players.
• The 2013 prototype shows up in Killing Floor 2 as the tier 3 weapon for the Commando, fitted with a red dot sight and vertical foregrip and able to fire in either full-auto or a three-round burst. The burst mode is correctly shown as firing noticeably faster than full auto, but it's also strangely animated in a manner similar to the AN-94, with the barrel visibly reciprocating with each shot. According to its Flavour Text, it ended up in Horzine's hands after they grabbed one from the cold dead hands of a Spetsnaz operator's corpse.
• In Call of Duty: Ghosts, the AK-12 prototype makes an appearance as the standard infantry rifle of The Federation and is commonly encountered in the single-player campaign.
  • It appears in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare as well, in the hands of both the Korean People's Army and the KVA terrorist group; it seems to have replaced the classic AK as the "bad guy gun" of choice in the distant future of 2054-61.
  • The "KN-44" in Call of Duty: Black Ops III also bears a noticeable resemblance to the AK-12 prototypes, though with some features more reminiscent of the original AK, such as the downward-sloping stock, lack of an ambidextrous charging handle, and completely ignoring the existing rail on the upper handguard in favor of attaching optics by a scope mount on the side of the receiver. Its in-game Flavour Text describes it as a future open-source weapon design, made possible by widespread 3D printing (and it as such is used by everyone, with basically every named character using one with their own set of attachments as their primary weapon), but it's still Russian in origin and apparently can come in both 7.62 and 5.45x39mm; it's not a stretch to imagine its designers were inspired by the classic AK. A successor appears in Black Ops IIII, the "KN-57", bearing even more resemblance to the AK-12 with features such as its straight adjustable stock and an extremely similar muzzle brake by default.
  • A version of the AK-47 sort-of mocked up into an AK-12 by giving it the actual AK-12's pistol grip alongside a railed handguard and collapsible stock is one of the standard rifles used by Russian soldiers in the campaign of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019).
• Survarium features this rifle as well, chambered in 6.5mm Grendel.
• Spetsnaz operator Fuze and later FSK operator Ace in Rainbow Six Siege can make use of the AK-12 prototype. Surprisingly, the reload animation involves neither knocking a old mag away with a new one nor ignoring the left-side charging handle.
• The production variation with a tan finish appears as the AK17 in PAYDAY 2, added with the Gage Russian Weapon pack. It's advertised as being extensively modifiable, but it actually gets the least amount of options among the AK weapons, because DLC packs don't work together and the vast majority of AK attachments in the game came from an earlier DLC; it stays competitive mainly by way of sharing the AKMS's high base damage (despite being modeled with 5.45mm mags) and accuracy, while also starting with higher stability and a slightly higher ammo capacity (35 rounds per mag, translating to 15 more rounds in total than the AKMS).
• The 2013 prototype variation appears in ARMA III with the Apex DLC, in 7.62x39mm and available both on its own and with a GP-30 grenade launcher as one of the primary weapons of the Syndikat criminal faction; like most of the other weapons added in the DLC that they use, it goes under its real name. Burst-fire is given a higher rate of fire, though it's strangely limited to the two-shot bursts from the final variation, rather than the three-round burst the real prototypes had. The later Contact DLC adds camouflaged variants and rounds out the family with the proposed carbine and machine gun variations for Russian Spetsnaz forces.
• A 5-star AR in Girls' Frontline and the leader of DEFY squad. She is depicted as an arrogant and callous woman, even to her partner, AN-94, though not without redeeming features on her own. To reflect the AK-12's status as the next evolution of the Kalashnikov platform, AK-12 herself features many pieces of advanced technology that aren't seen on other characters.
  • A later update adds AK-15 and RPK-16, the former of whom is the sole user of the 7.62x39mm cartridge in the squad, reflected by her bigger build and quiet but aggressive nature. RPK-16's role as a support specialist is reflected by her gear (she carries extra comms equipment and doesn't wear a mask), and possesses the then-unique ability to switch between Machine Gun and Assault Rifle modes.
• Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades added both the 2013 prototype and the production version in Update 94.

Beretta ARX160

"Italian assault rifle developed for the Future Soldier program with a modular design and high fire rate."

—Description, Battlefield 4

The world's most dangerous air-soft gun^note So named for its almost all plastic receiver

A cool-looking Italian 5.56x45mm assault rifle developed by Beretta in response to the Soldato Futuro (Future Soldier) program. In 2008, the rifle was launched separate from the Future Soldier ensemble, along with its proprietary 40mm grenade launcher, named the GLX160.

The ARX160 has a ton of features, the most notable of which is its modularity; it comes with ambidextrous magazine catches and safeties, as well as the ability to change which side the casings eject from. It also has a folding stock and a quick-change barrel (which can be replaced in seconds without the use of tools), to allow for quick caliber changes or to allow hot barrels to be replaced with cool ones, essentially allowing it to function as a light machine gun. Variants exist, such as the ARX100 for the American market, which is semi-auto only and has a 16" barrel to comply with the 1968 Gun Control Act, and the ARX200, a battle rifle version chambered for 7.62x51mm NATO. There is even a conversion kit to convert the rifle into 7.62x39mm, making it able to take standard AK/AKM magazines (similar conversions were planned for 5.45x39mm and 6.8mm Remington SPC, but these may have been cancelled).

Despite its relatively recent introduction, the rifle has already risen on its way to stardom, being used by multiple countries, including Bahrain, Egypt, Italy, Mexico and Kazakhstan. In the US Army Individual Carbine competition, it reached Phase II alongside competitors like the above FN FNAC and an Enhanced M4, but the contest was sadly cancelled before a winning weapon was chosen. It was also one of the finalists in the French Army tender to replace their aging and never-that-good-in-the-first-place FAMAS F1 rifles, though here it lost to the HK416. It's no different on the virtual world either; the ARX160's futuristic, easily-recognizable shape, alongside Beretta being quick to release three civilian legal semi-auto variants (the ARX100, ARX200, and ARX160LR, chambered in 5.56, .308, and .22LR respectively) at reasonable prices^note It's a lot easier to include a gun when you can get it at your local sporting goods store helps.

The ARX160 is frequently misspelled with a hyphen. Its official name, as stamped on the receiver, is ARX160.

• Available in Call of Duty: Ghosts with a different stock as simply the ARX-160 (incorrect hyphen included, of course). In singleplayer, it only shows up in the mission "Loki", where it's restricted to two-round bursts. Multiplayer fits it with an integrated Laser Sight and lets it fire in full auto, though for some reason the first three rounds of a burst have reduced recoil. It returns for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, this time as a three-round burst assault rifle with moderate damage, with the standard version coming in drab green by default, and the "Damnation" supply-drop variant adding the ARX100's longer barrel and a strange AK-like stock. It shows up once again in Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare, referred to as the "OSA" (named after the people using it in the Ghosts mission above), firing in full auto with a greater magazine capacity and an integrated grenade launcher.
• Battlefield 4 added this with the "Naval Strike" DLC, unlocked for the "Spare Time Sniper" challenge (3 assault rifle ribbons and 20 headshots with assault rifles). Strangely, the world model is shrunken compared to the first-person model, appearing positively tiny.
• Counter-Strike Online has it.
• Appears in the live-action TV series Nikita in Seasons 2 and 3.
• Appears as the standard rifle of The Agency in Hitman: Absolution, where it can be acquired and customized in Contracts mode.
• Appears as one of the Black Market assault rifles in Splinter Cell: Blacklist, where it is one of the best assault rifles in the game when fully upgraded due to its low recoil, great accuracy and damage and large 60 round magazine.
• One of the few completely-new weapons added to 007 Legends (as opposed to being recycled from GoldenEye Reloaded), referred to as the "Bennetti ARV".
• In Girls' Frontline, ARX-160 is a 3-star T-Doll initially obtainable only in the Operation Cube event. A later update makes her available through heavy construction.

Bushmaster/Remington ACR

Offering high accuracy with minimal recoil, the ACR is perfect for long-range encounters where target acquisition is key. Continuous fire won't throw off your aim, allowing for accurate suppression in the most extreme of situations.

—Combat Card Description, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Originally developed by Magpul Industries as the "Masada", the ACR (Adaptive Combat Rifle) is a American assault rifle that was originally planned to replace the M16 independent of government funding, with the fully-automatic military and law enforcement variants being manufactured by Remington and the civilian semi-automatic variants manufactured by Bushmaster. The ACR is basically an amalgamation of various modern rifle designs, including the short-stroke gas system of the AR-18, the upper receiver, folding adjustable stock and charging handle location/ambidexterity of the SCAR, an operating handle in a forward position like the G3, mostly-polymer construction like the G36, a quick-change barrel system like the AUG, and the trigger pack, barrel and fire control group of the M16. It also features an adjustable gas regulator, non-reciprocating and ambidextrous charging handle, ambidextrous bolt release, storage compartments in the stock and grip, and its caliber can be easily changed by replacing the bolt head, magazine and barrel. The ACR was made available to the civilian market in 2010, though was briefly recalled before being re-released due to a design flaw which caused the ACR to slamfire, causing multiple rounds to fire continuously when the trigger is pulled. It was also adopted by the Polish SWW, and was part of the Individual Carbine competition to replace the M4 with the US Military in 2010-2013, though the competition was cancelled before a winner was selected. While heavily marketed in titles like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as a futuristic, high-performance rifle, the Remington ACR failed to secure major military contracts and Bushmaster struggled to break into a market saturated with cheaper and better-supported AR-15s. The bankruptcy of Remington and Bushmaster's holding company Freedom Group subsequently put a halt to production in 2020, though Bushmaster, now under Franklin Arms, plans to restart production.

Despite its lack of success in the military and civilian markets, the basic design and features have been converged on by many subsequent service rifles, such as the Polish MSBS Grot, Czech BREN 2, and Japanese Type 20, which resemble the ACR at a first glance.

Anime & Manga

• In Jormungand: Perfect Order, Koko chooses the Magpul Masada, usually with an EOTech sight, as the standardized rifle for the whole HCLI crew after they spend the first season using a variety of weapons.

Films — Live Action

• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, at least one of Knyazev's henchmen uses an ACR-E in the warehouse fight against Batman.
• Various apes and humans use ACRs in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, most notably Blue Eyes.
• Used by Lennox and various NEST soldiers in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
• Used by Jack Harper in Oblivion (2013), where it is modified to look futuristic.

Video Games

• Appears in Alpha Protocol as the FR99, with upgraded variants known as the Executioner, Assassin and Retribution.
• The ACR is used by both American and Korean troops in Homefront, having a higher damage than the M4 but a bit more recoil.
• A futurized ACR with a underbarrel energy weapon is usable in Binary Domain as the SOWSAR-17.
• The ACR appears in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, most notably as Roach's default weapon in "Cliffhanger" with a silencer, reflex sight, heartbeat monitor and unique arctic camo, and a special black version with those attachments and doubled max ammo capacity (1,260 to the normal 630) in "Just Like Old Times", with regular ACRs also being used by Task Force 141 and Shadow Company. It is a popular weapon in multiplayer due to having the highest accuracy and lowest recoil of the assault rifles, though it also has a somewhat restricted rate of fire and low damage ratings to compensate for this. It returns in Modern Warfare 3 used by Frost in "Scorched Earth", this time chambered in 6.8mm Remington SPC, giving it higher damage than the Modern Warfare 2 version at the cost of an even slower rate of fire.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III features multiple variants. There's an assault rifle, a basic ACR in 5.56mm, able to also take .300 Blackout, as the "MCW"; a battle rifle version converted to .450 Bushmaster (fictionalized in-game as ".450 Huntsman"), available as the "Sidewinder"; and a marksman rifle version converted to .277 TVCM (likewise fictionalized as "6.8 Wraith") and fitted by default with a longer barrel and solid stock as the "MCW 6.8".
• Appears as the standard weapon of the Militia and Vermaak 88 in Infamous 2. Militia Snipers also use a long-barreled variant of the ACR with a scope and laser sight.
• Added to Battlefield 3 with the Close Quarters DLC as the "ACW-R", chambered in 6.5mm Grendel and exclusive to the Engineer, unlocked with the "Done Fixing" assignment (20 kills with rockets and 30 with the Engineer's carbines). It returns in Battlefield 4, this time chambered in 5.56x45mm NATO, as the second all-class carbine unlocked after the opening Ak 5C.
• Appears as the standard rifle of the Ghosts in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, usually being used by them in pre-mission cutscenes. It can be modified with a large variety of accessories, including a 75-round drum magazine, and the stock can be folded or replaced with a fixed stock. It's also available in Wildlands with much of the same modifications (also including a Future Soldier weapon camo with a DLC pack that lets you play as Future Soldier-era Kozak), while Magpul's similar but now-cancelled 7.62mm Massoud shows up in Breakpoint, renamed the "Silver Stake Tactical", with a later update adding a longer-barreled "Silver Stake" and the Operation Motherland DLC featuring the return of the 5.56 ACR.
• Usable in Watch_Dogs where it can be purchased from gun stores, and a unique variant of the ACR with urban camo, higher accuracy and a lower rate of fire known as the Biometric Assault Rifle is also available in the Signature Shot Pack.
• Available in The Division, where an upgraded version known as the Enhanced ACR-E is also usable.
• Added to MAG in the Escalation DLC as Valor's new assault rifle, under the name M31 CIR.
• The "MX 6.5mm" series of weapons used by NATO in ARMA III are somewhat based on a mixture of the ACR and the Robinson Armament XCR, though fitted with thinner magazines designed to take caseless 6.5x39mm bullets. It comes in a standard variation (with or without Metal Storm's 3GL grenade launcher), an MXC carbine with a shorter barrel, an MXSW support weapon with the folding stock of an LR 300, vertical foregrip, integral bipod and enlarged hundred-round magazines, and an MXM designated marksman weapon with a longer barrel and fixed Magpul PRS stock.
• The Girls' Frontline rendition of ACR identifies her as using the Bushmaster version, despite her character art clearly depicting the gun with a three-position fire selector (indicating the Remington version). This actually ties into her backstory: much like her namesake gun, ACR's development was handled by multiple companies before being bought by a PMC and converted into a paramilitary unit, which results in her having needlessly-complicated programming that is prone to automatically deleting non-mission-critical data.
• The Remington version of the rifle appears in Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades, though it is the 'Sport' variant, which is semi-automatic only.

CZ 805 BREN

The CZ 805 BREN is a modular weapon system manufactured in 5.56x45mm NATO and 7.62x39mm caliber variations. Designed as a personal weapon, it is suitable for any combat branch.

—Description, ARMA II

First introduced in 2010, the CZ 805 BREN (not be confused with the British Bren gun^note Though the names do both derive from both guns originally being designed in the Czech city of Brno) is a Czech-designed assault rifle, intended to replace the vz.58 that has served for almost five decades.

In 1977, the General Machine-Building Plant's R&D Center in Brno began a program to create a new rifle by the name Lada S. The design, which was chambered in 5.45x39mm, was intended to fill three roles: carbine (with a 7.2 inch barrel), rifle (15 inch barrel) and light support weapon (22.7 inch barrel). It took a lot from the AK-74, with differences in the receiver cover, sights, and fire selector switch. The weapons were built in 1985, tested in 1986 and approved for production in 1989. However, the combined effects of the the Cold War's end, the Czechoslovakian Communist Party's standdown following the non-violent Velvet Revolution, the eventual splitting of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and a general lack of Army funds delayed the weapon's production. Ceska Zbrojovska, who had by this point taken over development, shelved the design.

In the late 1990s, the Lada project was restarted when the Czech Republic was prospected to become a full member of NATO. Coincidentally, the gun had already been converted to fire the .223 Remington (civilian version of 5.56x45mm NATO) shortly before it got shelved. The restarted program rechambered the rifle to the NATO-standard 5.56x45mm, but retained the magazine well for AK-74 magazines. While the Bohemians With Bombers were interested in acquiring a new rifle, they didn't award any new contracts, so the Lada was then offered for export under the designation CZ 2000, without success.

The Lada was later redesignated as Project 805, with development continuing. CZ drew up new specifications in 2005, and Project 805 became Project XX, the CZ S805. Two types of guns were drawn; 'A' models chambered for intermediate rounds like the 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm, and 'B' models chambered in full-power rifle cartridges like the 7.62x51mm NATO and even .300 Winchester Magnum. Like the earlier Lada, the rifles had three barrel lengths for carbine, assault rifle and marksman rifle/light support weapon roles.

In November 2009, the Czech Army released another tender for a new service rifle. For the competition, the company reduced the modularity of their rifles, submitting four gun specs; one with a rifle-length barrel (the A1 with a 14-inch barrel) and one a carbine-length barrel (the A2 with a 10.9-inch barrel), both chambered in 5.56x45mm, as well as similarly-configured guns in 7.62x39mm. Later, they reduced the system to just chambering 5.56x45mm. When the tender was released, the CZ-805 and the FN SCAR-L won over 27 designs submitted. The CZ-805 narrowly won from an emphasis on local design, and the result was made public on 1 February 2010. FN chose not to contest the decision, and as a result the CZ-805 BREN was officially ordered on March 18 2010. In 2015, CZ released the BREN 2, with improved ergonomics, lighter weight, and variant chambered for 7.62x51mm. In addition to the Czech Army, the rifle also sees prominent adoption in Egypt, Hungary, Ukraine, and by the French GIGN.

As with most modern weapons, the BREN is designed to be modular. It possesses an adjustable stock, accessory rails, and an ambidextrous safety and fire selector, while its charging handle can be installed on either side of the gun. Its barrel can also be quickly changed to different lengths to allow it to perform different roles, or to switch calibers. The weapon is available in both 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm, and a BR variant in 7.62x51mm, with a 6.8x43mm Remington SPC version possibly forthcoming. The BREN can also attach the CZ 805 G1 underbarrel grenade launcher, which can be detached to be used as a standalone launcher.

The BREN is fed by 30-round magazines and is not compatible by itself with NATO STANAG magazines, but adapters can be installed that allow it to take STANAG and G36 magazines.

• The 805 BREN makes its first media appearance in Season 3 of Falling Skies, and continues to appear through the remaining seasons.
• The BREN appears in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, as part of the Arctic Strike DLC, where it is misnamed as the prototype S805 and acts as Bodark's "bad guy" equivalent to the F2000 given to the Ghosts in that DLC. It also appears in Ghost Recon Wildlands. A version with a custom paint job and a unique drum magazine, "El Comandante", can be obtained as a reward for defeating the UNIDAD commander in the Unidad Conspiracy Missions.
• A usable weapon in Alliance of Valiant Arms.
• The S805 prototype version appears as a usable weapon in Battlefield 4, in the campaign as the first weapon unlocked through scoring enough points in the Baku mission, and in multiplayer as the last assault rifle unlocked through assault rifle score.
• Appears as a common weapon in Call of Duty: Ghosts. The "HBRa3" from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare seems to also be based on the BREN, with elements from the Robinson Arms XCR as well.
  • Returns in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III with the 805A1 as the "MTZ-556" and BREN 2 BR as the "MTZ-762".
• Introduced in PAYDAY 2 as part of the Biker Heist Packs as the "CR 805B". The weapon is strangely classified as an SMG despite starting in its full-size form, and it comes with a fixed foregrip. Like a disproportionate amount of DLC weapons in the game its stats are based on the "Krinkov" submachine gun, meaning it has damage on-par with the higher-class assault rifles and good accuracy, but only carries two mags in reserve.
• Added in the Blue Sun Mod of 7.62 High Calibre, as a reward for killing roughly 200 enemies out of 500 in the new Evolution of Weapons campaign. It is packaged with three proprietary magazines, but can also take G36 magazines.
• Appears as a usable weapon in ARMA II, introduced in the Army of the Czech Republic DLC, with a variety of accessories available.
• In Girls' Frontline, she is a 3-star T-Doll and a rare drop from chapter 3-4. Notable as the first grenade-launching AR with an actual grenade launcher attached to her weapon.

CZ vz. 58

The Sa-58 is a 7.62mm assault rifle designed and manufactured in Czechoslovakia and accepted into service in the late 1950s as the 7.62mm samopal vzor 58 ("7.62mm submachine gun model 1958").

—Description, ARMA II

No, I am not an AK, and if I didn't look so similar you would know that.

After World War II, Czechoslovakia joined the assault rifle craze, and began developing their own. Their new rifle was initially chambered in 7.62×45mm, but after Czechoslovakia was absorbed into the Warsaw Pact, one of the Soviets' requirements was that all Pact countries standardize on the 7.62x39mm round, so the Czechs chambered their new weapon in the round. Work began in 1956, and in 1958, the 7,62 mm samopal vzor 58^note Samopal translates to "submachine gun", though the vz.58 would not be considered a submachine gun, or vz.58, entered service. The rifle served Czechoslovakia (and later, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) for many years, and was also widely exported. Its most prominent combat appearance was with the Biafran Army during the Nigerian Civil War, where it was widely issued as opposed to the ubiquitous AKM. It was eventually replaced in 2009 by the newer CZ 805 BREN, but large numbers of vz.58s still remain in service.

At a glance, the vz.58 looks extremely similar to the Kalashnikov. Beyond that, however, the weapons use completely different actions; the Kalashnikov uses a long-stroke rotating bolt, while the vz.58 uses a short-stroke bolt with a locking block similar to the P-38 pistol. The vz.58 is also much lighter than the AK and its variants and has a higher rate of fire (800 rpm vs the AK's ~600 rpm). No part of the vz.58, including the magazine, is interchangeable with the AK. Despite all the differences and possessing tighter tolerances than the AK, the vz.58 is just as hardy and reliable, with only one pressing issue; the higher rate of fire means that the handguard heats up very easily during fully automatic fire. This can be solved by simply wearing gloves, as well as installing a heat shield (preferably aluminum) and a foregrip if necessary.

The vz.58 was produced in solid and folding stock versions. Later updates introduced synthetic furniture and accessory rails. Various semi-automatic sporting versions of the rifle also exist.

• Cool Action: The vz.58 was one of the last major rifles to use stripper clips, in this case in tandem with a removable magazine (similar to the Canadian C1A1 variation of the FAL or the American M14), allowing for extra ammo to be carried without the extra weight of a detachable magazine so that soldiers could theoretically top off magazines without swapping them out of the weapon.
• The vz.58 appears in quite a few James Bond films, particularly in the 1970s and 80s:
  • In Octopussy, they are carried by Soviet soldiers and Khan's men. Bond later procures one himself, notably shooting it while sliding down a staircase.
  • Soviet troops are seen using it in A View to a Kill.
  • The vz.58 Compact variant is used by guards in the secret SPECTRE base in Spectre. Bond also procures one here, and uses it to shoot at the guards.
• The vz.58 erroneously shows up in the hands of Russian soldiers in The Peacemaker.
• The Vietcong sniper in Full Metal Jacket uses a vz.58.
• One is used by a terrorist in an episode of The Professionals.
• The vz.58 appears in Operation Flashpoint, where it is erroneously called the "Ak-47 CZ".
• It returns in ARMA II, introduced as part of the Operation Arrowhead expansion. Two variants are available; one with wooden furniture, and another with synthetic furniture and accessory rails.
• In Lord of War, a large number of vz.58s are seen in a Ukrainian arms depot, apparently impersonating AKs. According to Word of God, all 3,000 of the guns were real, rented from a real arms dealer.
• Appears as a usable weapon in Vietcong 2.
• Both the standard vz.58 and versions with tactical furniture appear frequently in the later seasons of Strike Back.
• Appears as a usable weapon in Red Crucible: Firestorm.
• Ghost Recon: Island Thunder gets one, commonly used by enemy militia forces and available as a possible Rifleman kit.

Enfield SA80/L85

This Bullpup assault rifle was designed in the 70s and has since been the standard for British armed forces. The rifle fires the 5.56 NATO round from its detachable mag with great accuracy which sacrificing a high rate of fire. With an incredible range, and excellent single shot accuracy this rifle is sure to provide those who prefer longer range combat with a treat, and a new best friend.

—Description, Battlefield Play4Free

"Going by this, you must have very clever soldiers" ^note  Said by Mikhail Kalashnikov to his British counterparts, upon being shown the SA80/L85. This was actually a Stealth Insult at the weapon's complexity and unreliability at the time.

The current service rifle of the Brits with Battleships, and also in use with Bolivian special military and police units and the Jamaican, Papua New Guinean, Sierra Leonean, Zimbabwean, Mozambican and Nepali militaries, the SA80 can trace its origins to the early 1950s. After World War II, Britain began developing its own assault rifle. This rifle, called the EM-2, was chambered in a unique .280 round (7x43mm), and featured a bullpup layout. After the US and NATO standardized on the 7.62x51mm round, however, the EM-2 was abandoned, as it could not be rechambered easily, leaving Britain to adopt the FN FAL (as the L1A1) instead.^note Winston Churchill also strongly favored the FAL even before the switch to a larger round was imposed.

In the late 1960s, Britain began development of a new rifle series to replace the L1A1. Based on the AR-18's action, the new rifle was initially chambered in a British-developed 4.85x49mm round, but when NATO standardized on the 5.56x45mm, the British converted their rifle to the new caliber. Adopted as the SA80 series (consisting of the L85A1 rifle and L86A1 light machine gun), the rifle entered service in 1985. With its bullpup layout, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the earlier EM-2, though it was functionally a completely different weapon.

When it first saw major service in the Gulf War in 1991, the SA80 gained a nasty reputation for being unreliable and fragile; the furniture would break, it malfunctioned whenever it wasn't kept absolutely pristine, the upper receiver would warp from prolonged use, the magazine release was designed in such a way that it was very easy to hit accidentally just by carrying the weapon, the mechanism managed to defy physics by flinging brass from the right-side ejection port into a right-handed shooter's face, and numerous other problems. This was said to be thanks in part to the fact that the original production run was the last project undertaken by the Royal Small Arms Factory, who had recently learned they were all going to be laid off, and totally had nothing to do with any kind of design flaws^note To quote one worker: "Having been shafted by BAe and our own management, we thought why the hell should we care if [the SA80] worked or not. All we wanted to do was see the last of the bloody things and leave." This probably did have a significant influence on at least one of the major flaws of the SA80, the failure to account for 5.56x45mm having a shorter overall length than 4.85x49mm when the new caliber was chosen, which caused feeding problems.. To make matters worse, RSAF Enfield had little experience with making stamped-metal firearms outside of the Sten gun, which was a significantly different weapon with looser tolerances, and when production moved to the Nottingham Small Arms Facility (now BAE Systems Land & Armaments), which was supposed to be higher quality due to using newer equipment and techniques, most of the workers there had little to no experience actually making firearms in general, leading to a lot of the components used there being made by subcontractors.^note RSAF Enfield produced 230 of necessary components in house. Nottingham only produced 20. Even worse, they tended to keep low stocks of pre-produced components onsite, so they often experienced delays whenever a shipment from a subcontractor either arrived late or did not meet standards.

A leaked Ministry of Defence report on the weapon's many, many problems caused a major scandal in the 1990s. As a result, most of the weapons were extensively^note As in: almost everything except the upper receiver itself was replaced remanufactured by Heckler & Koch, resulting in the improved L85A2, which beefed up the operating system and seems to have fixed most of the operating issues (and added the comma-shaped brass-deflecting charging handle, so it can be fired without risking an eye), though it remains heavy, user-unfriendly^note An unnecessarily-stiff selector switch located behind the magazine well, separate from the cross-bar safety, remains a point of utter hatred for soldiers who use the rifle., and unable to be adapted for left-handed shooting^note Ironically, the British Army taught soldiers to use their left hands to operate the important controls on their rifles once the L1A1 version of the FAL was adopted as their main service rifle. This made sense at the time, as the FAL's charging handle and safety were on the left-hand side. But when the British Army adopted the L85, the training for riflemen still required the right hand on the pistol grip while the left hand did all the work for a magazine change. This, combined with the L85's right-handed charging handle and controls, made changing magazines a very laborious and time-consuming process, leaving any soldier doing the process quite vulnerable to getting shot at close quarters while being literally unable to shoot back. American army veterans during the Iraq War mocked their British counterparts for losing joint training exercises simply because the Americans ambushed the British troops during their reloading periods. They not only picked a rifle that must be fired from the right shoulder, but also one completely unsuitable for their preferred Manual of Arms. Since then, the rifle has seen service wherever and whenever British forces are deployed. An A3 upgrade was issued in early 2018, which adds a new upper receiver and full-length rail system.

The weapon comes in several variants, including the standard L85 assault rifle, the L86 light machine gun, and the L22 carbine. Even in its improved form (which unfairly inherited a lot of the original model's well-deserved hate), it is still considered probably the worst of the Western bullpup rifle designs.

• Any media prominently featuring the British military will likely feature this weapon as well.
• Occasionally seen in Ultimate Force.
• The weapon appears in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series as the "IL 86". In reference to the gun's real-life issues, even by the series' already-poor standard for NATO weapons it is hideously unreliable, even when upgraded.
• Appears frequently in the Battlefield series starting from 2, which features both the A1 as an unlock for the Medic class in the base game and the A2 as the primary weapon of the EU Assault class in the Euro Force expansion. Battlefield 3 features the L85A2 for the Assault class (added with the Back to Karkand expansion, unlocked with the "Professional Russian" assignment for 100 assault rifle kills, 20 grenade launcher kills, and 5 wins in Team Deathmatch), presented as a low-recoil but also rather slow-firing assault rifle. It returns for Battlefield 4 with much the same characteristics with the China Rising expansion (now fitted with a railed handguard, unlocked with the "Open Fire" assignment for three assault rifle ribbons [five kills in a round each] and making one kill each with a pistol, underbarrel grenade launcher, and defibrillator in one round), and in Battlefield Hardline, originally a pre-order bonus but then added to everyone's arsenal for free alongside the release of the Robbery DLC.
• Both the L85 series and the original EM-2 appear in Upotte!!, where its history is explained. Elle is the personification of the L85, portrayed as a silent, meek girl with quite a few reliability issues, so much so that she is never able to fire her weapon in the series without something going wrong with it.
• The prototype version of the SA80, the XL64E5, anachronistically appears in Call of Duty: Black Ops as simply the "Enfield".
• The weapon series, like many other weapons, appears in 7.62 High Calibre.
• A common weapon in the Rainbow Six series ever since Rogue Spear, which featured the A1 with its SUSAT scope for longer-range shooting. It returns for Raven Shield and the console Black Arrow, still fitted with the SUSAT scope. Vegas 2 upgrades to the A2 as penultimate unlock for Marksman points, this time with a regular carry handle and ironsights by default, though the sights are modeled in a manner that makes them very difficult to use, and it also strangely only holds 25+1 bullets per magazine, though these are made up for it being incredibly accurate at range and hitting pretty hard as well (and being a treat to listen to, since it reuses the first Vegas' AK firing sound). It returns once more for Siege, still the A2 variant with a carry handle (including proper usable ironsights and a correct 30+1 capacity this time) and a railed foregrip, where the SAS Attacker operators can use it, and several White Masks in the singleplayer Situations and Terrorist Hunt make use of it as well.
• The XL64E5 prototype makes its only live-action appearance in a single episode of The Professionals from 1980^note The weapons, undergoing testing at the time, were loaned by the British military.
• The starting Commando weapon in Killing Floor is the L22A2 fitted with an EOTech holographic sight and given an increased 40-round capacity, referred to generically as the "Bullpup". For Killing Floor 2 the full-size L85A2 (though with the A1's charging handle) is used instead, this time as a second-tier weapon after the starting Colt 9mm SMG.
• Ghost Recon features the L85A1 as demo specialist Nigel Tunney's signature weapon and also available for regular demolition soldiers in multiplayer and instant-action, where it's mostly identical to the M4 in performance, but has a higher maximum zoom level thanks to its SUSAT scope. The A2 returns for the console versions of the Advanced Warfighter games, while Ghost Recon: Future Soldier switches to a heavily-modifiable L22A2, and Wildlands also features the L85A2 (found in La Santera's basement, and is one of the most accurate weapons in the game).
• When Frank Castle goes over to Afghanistan to deal with some troublesome Russians, he happens to come across a pair of British troops stationed there, who wield the standard issue L85A1 rifle.
• The L85A1 appears as a common 2-star AR in Girls' Frontline. She's a solid option in early game due to her damage-boosting skill compensating her low stats and, to match her weapon's native UK and faulty reputation, is a tea lover and a notable airhead.
• The L85A2 was added to PAYDAY 2 with the Clover Character Pack, where it is known as the "Queen's Wrath". It has good stability and damage, but costs a lot to both acquire and accessorize.
• The primary weapon of the British Army in Squad, naturally. The L85A2, variously mounted with either iron sights, the SUSAT optic, or the TA31-CH scope, and with or without a grip, is issued to most of the faction's kits. The L22A2 is also issued to vehicle crews, with the crewman leader getting a SUSAT on it.
• The L85A2 is a usable weapon for the Security Advisor in Insurgency: Sandstorm, costing 4 supply points, and has the SUSAT scope as a unique attachment.
• Ian McCollum shoots an A1 here. It works surprisingly well, only finally suffering a stovepipe jam at the very end of the video.

FAMAS

The F1 is a bullpup assault rifle, which means the gun is shorter in length, allowing for greater maneuverability, and it's from France, which means it only works when it feels like it. A local warlord hired a group of former Legionnaires to join his private army, and they brought along a dozen crates of F1s from their regiment’s arms depot.

—Survival Guide, Far Cry 3

Top: FAMAS F1, Bottom: FAMAS G2 with bayonet

The FAMAS ("Fusil Automatique de la Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Etienne," meaning "automatic rifle of the Saint-Etienne weapons factory") is a bullpup assault rifle and the main service weapon of the French military and Foreign Legion since 1978.^note The French military did receive a license from H&K to build HK33s and G3s, but many in the French military high command objected - France was always notoriously picky about adopting foreign firearms, often adopting defective/inferior weapons simply because they were French-designed. General Marcel Bigeard, also against the idea of adopting foreign weapons, visited the d'Armes de Saint-Etienne factory to ask them to develop a home-made 5.56x45mm assault rifle- the FAMAS F1. The gun's design is quite unusual, with a massive carrying handle spanning over half the length of the rifle, and an integral bipod. Unusually for a full-size rifle, it uses a lever-delayed blowback mechanism, and is capable of semi-auto, full-auto, and three-round burst fire modes, firing at a blistering rate of over 1000 rounds per minute. Also somewhat unusual for bullpups, especially one from The '70s, it is easily convertible for left-handed shooters; the stock includes two ejection ports, and the bolt has cutouts for the extractor on both sides, as well as most of the rest of the controls being fairly ambidextrous (top-mounted charging handle and the selectors easily reached with either hand), allowing fairly simple conversion for a lefty by simply moving the extractor to the other side of the bolt and flipping the cheek rest to cover the other ejection port. It was affectionately nicknamed "le Clairon" (the Bugle, due to its shape) by French troops during the '70s and '80s.

Unfortunately, the FAMAS F1 has become a solid case of Awesome, but Impractical in the decades since its adoption. It was designed after France had withdrawn from NATO's command structure, and as a result is incompatible with NATO standards; its lever-delayed blowback action is powerful enough to rip apart regular brass-cased 5.56x45mm ammunition, and so it only reliably cycles steel-cased ammunition^note Using brass-cased ammunition in the FAMAS is actually dangerous, with one report claiming 32 injuries to soldiers occurred during a single exercise and an average of 2 injuries per million rounds fired: this may not sound a lot, but 35 million rounds were fired in training in 2007, equating to 70 soldiers injured. Since the FAMAS is a bullpup and the action is right next to the shooter's face, there is also a nasty tendency for these to be facial injuries., and its 1:12 rifling twist rate will not properly stabilize anything other than 55gr 5.56x45mm rounds. On top of that, the F1's proprietary 25-round magazines were designed to be single-use... and then budget cutbacks forced the military to reuse the magazines anyway, causing them to wear down and jam frequently. Further woes followed in 2002, when the MAS factory closed down, leaving their stock of rifles over a decade old with some dating right back to 1979, and the production line for steel-cased FAMAS ammunition was one of the casualties of the reorganisation of GIAT into Nexter, forcing them to outsource production of new steel-cased ammunition to the United Arab Emirates, with less-than-stellar results. The FAMAS G2 was introduced in 1994 to bring the gun into proper compliance with NATO standards (it uses STANAG magazines and has a 1:9 rifling twist rate to work with both French steel-cased rounds and standard NATO ammo), and supposedly improve the reliability to boot... but due to yet more budget cutbacks, only the French Navy adopted it. When it wasn't called "le Clairon"^note French soldiers have since amended that nickname somewhat; instead of just referencing the rifle's shape, it also denotes that it is "good for making noise and not much else" it was instead the "range rifle" - that is, only usable when on the firing range.

The weapon was later integrated into France's FÉLIN^note (Fantassin à Équipement et Liaisons Intégrés, or Integrated Infantryman Equipment and Communications) future soldier system, modifying it with lower-profile sights and a rail between them, allowing it to accept various accessories, coming standard with a night- and thermal-vision-capable scope. Extremely similar but distinct from the FÉLIN variation is the Valorisé (upgraded), which includes almost all of those upgrades save the front vertical grip, which houses the controls for the FÉLIN's scope.

With the weapons reaching the ends of their service lives and no factories making replacements for shot-out barrels, the French government finally organized a bid call in 2013 to seek a potential replacement and chose the HK416 as the replacement in 2016, one of the few cases of the French military adopting a foreign weapon.

• The G1 variant is featured in Metal Gear Solid where almost everybody without a set weapon uses one at some point. Supposedly, the developers chose the weapon because it would be easier to recognize in the low-polygon Playstation graphics, and because it was relatively unknown outside of France at the time.
• Has been in every Rainbow Six game from Rogue Spear' "Black Thorn" expansion onwards. All three primary versions have shown up in some form, with Rogue Spear featuring the G1 (misidentified as the G2), Raven Shield and Lockdown using the G2, then Vegas and Siege going for the F1 (the latter calling it the "F2", handing it out to the GIGN's Attacker recruit and Twitch).
• Usable in Counter-Strike, buyable exclusively from the Counter-Terrorist side. Generally it's chosen when one wants an M4 but doesn't have quite enough money, and in turn it's like a slightly weaker M4 - slightly lower capacity, but a higher rate of fire and the ability to switch to burst mode. The series is notable for almost-entirely-correctly featuring pre-G2 variants, as the original and Source use the original F1, and Global Offensive the still-almost-unknown G1 (has the full-hand trigger guard of the G2, but still uses the original 25-round mags; in-game it's modeled with a STANAG mag, but still has the correct 25-round capacity).
• Used by the Mooks in the first 2-3 levels of Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain.
• The UN helicopter crews in Macross Zero can be seen carrying them.
• Can be seen amongst many other guns on a rack in Tomorrow Never Dies.
• French soldiers in Taxi 2.
• Mook weapon in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game shockingly didn't take advantage of the enormous fire rate of the weapon in real life and the gun only fires in three-round bursts in it. The same goes for the FR 5.56 in Modern Warfare (2019) and Modern Warfare III.
  • A prototype of the highly-anachronistic Valorisé variant shows up in prototype form as a weapon used by the allied SOG and CIA members in Call of Duty: Black Ops, and more bizarrely, by Soviet Spetsnaz in exactly one level (reverse-engineered?). This game, unlike Modern Warfare 2, did actually show off the gun's insane cyclic rate, and it as such became one of the most popular assault rifles in multiplayer.
  • Speaking of the Valorisé, it later shows up in Season 5 of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II under the name "FR Avancer". This time, it fully shows its full-auto fast-firing capabilities by default.
• Killzone's Helghast assault rifle is based somewhat on the FAMAS; in the first game, with the export sight and carrying handle of a G36, and in both with a SPAS-12 forend under the barrel.
• The standard issue rifle for Britannian soldiers is based heavily on the FAMAS, crossed with the top-loading magazines of the P90.
• The machine guns used by the Mistral Armslave in Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid are modelled after the FAMAS.
• Michelle and Jacques (before he got tossed back in time and gets an Oni whip instead) use this as their primary weapon in Onimusha 3: Demon Siege.
• A FELIN model with a rail appears in The Division. It was originally called by its original name, before an update changed it to the "Bullfrog", and made it extremely rare. Also appears in The Division 2, this time more correctly identified again as the "FAMAS 2010"
• Perfect Dark's "AR 34" bears a noticeable resemblance to the FAMAS, playing as the Carrington Institute's good gun to dataDyne's XM8-esque "Dragon" and "Superdragon". Like other games, it's nerfed to have a much slower firing rate than in real life. The "K7 Avenger" also bears some resemblance to the FAMAS, though to a much lesser extent, being closer to a generic bullpup weapon with a carry handle that just so happens to vaguely resemble the FAMAS'. Perfect Dark Zero meanwhile features the G1, almost entirely unmodified except for removing the magazine and sticking some LEDs on it as the "Plasma Rifle", with a slowly-recharging energy source and an Invisibility Cloak mode.
• Can be seen in the Weapons Locker extension for d20 Modern.
• Battlefield 2: Euro Force adds a FAMAS F1 with a 4x scope as the EU Medic's primary weapon, with an incorrect 30-round capacity. It also shows up in Project Reality as the French Army's primary weapon with the correct capacity and options of an Aimpoint or EOTech red dot sight, a SCROME J4 scope, and removable bayonet; the Grenadier class' version can also fire various grenades. Battlefield 3 with the Back to Karkand expansion allows players to unlock the Surbaissé (lowered) model, which removes the massive carry handle and replaces it with a low-profile rail similar to the FELIN, fitted with the G1 trigger guard; the same model returns for Battlefield 4 and the "Robbery" expansion for Battlefield Hardline.
• One of the best weapons in Far Cry 3 - it's great for stealth, being one of the three assault rifles than can be fitted with a silencer (and like all the modifiable assault rifles, has a two-attachment limit to match up your preferred sight alongside it). The game also takes account of the weapon's high rate of fire, but keeps it from becoming overpowered by limiting it to three-round-bursts. However, this also makes it extremely accurate, and is a good all-rounder that you can either sail through the game with or drop when you get the ACE. Surprisingly, the version used in the game is the original F1^note though modeled with incorrect STANAG magazines and as such given an incorrect 30-round capacity - justified because the rifle came to the island by a group of ex-Legionnaires who gave the warlord hiring them a dozen crates of the rifle from their regiment's arms depot. It returns in Far Cry 4 with the same model and characteristics as 3, save the ability to attach the slightly-magnified "Optical Sight" (though it can still take the reflex and red dot sights).
• Shows up in PAYDAY 2, as the "Clarion Rifle". By default it's the F1, though the "G2 Grip" attachment turns it into a G1, and it can also accept barrels from extremely rare and/or obscure civilian, close-quarters, or sniper variations.
• A "FA-MAS" is available in the 51st-60th floors of the Chrysler Building in Parasite Eve.
• Appears in Wasteland 2, where it's described ingame as not being affected by the apocalyse, but not having been much good to begin with.
• The F1 is a very rare weapon in Spec Ops: The Line. It appears mid-to-late game and is never picked up from enemies, only found lying on the floor in certain areas. It has a permanent ACOG sight attached to it and can be set to burst or full auto fire.
• Can be seen wielded by several guards in an episode of Code Lyoko.
• The starter weapon for Yusuke in Persona 5 is an airsoft replica FAMAS under the A.K.A.-47 name "Replica AR". Due to the combat action taking part in a Mental World, Your Mind Makes It Real and Yusuke's airsoft gun fires real bullets.
• The F1 variant appears as a 4-star AR in Girls' Frontline. Oddly enough, her illustration shows the bayonet mounted under the barrel instead of the proper way. The game nods to the weapon's high rate of fire by making her one of the fastest-firing ARs in the game, beat only by G11 and sharing second place with F2000.
• In Volume 4 of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, Clarence's sole teammate Sam uses a FAMAS as his weapon in Squad Jam 3.
• Shows up a few times in Ghost Recon:
  • Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 features the G2 variant in its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, fitted with an ACOG and optionally able to take an M203 grenade launcher.
  • Ghost Recon Wildlands also features one, stashed away in a hut in the mountains of the Inca Camina province. Though once again referred to as the "G2", it's actually the G1, retaining the original mag release and its standard magazines being the original straight design with a heavy incline at the bottom (although visibly shortened from the real mags, giving it a 20-round capacity by default). Surprisingly for a video game FAMAS, the game acknowledges that it does, in fact, have ironsights, as while the in-game model puts a rail on top of the carry handle, it's mounted in such a way that the sights can still be seen and used underneath it.

FN F2000

The staple assault rifle of Splinter Cells, the SC3000 offers strong, accurate gunfire with minimal recoil.

—Description, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

Tactical Tuna or Anton's Bane?

Yet another futuristic-looking bullpup, the F2000 has a lot in common aesthetically with the FN P90, and like the P90 is designed for ambidextrous use. The bottom-ejecting system of the P90 was considered unsuitable for the F2000's longer 5.56x45mm round, so instead an innovative forward-eject feature was designed, which instead of tossing spent casings to the side, pushes them into a tube along the right side of the rifle, where they remain until more casings push them far enough to fall out the front (instead of into the face of a left-handed shooter, as is typically the case with bullpups). Unfortunately, this left no room for an ambidextrous charging handle... though given that right-handed AK users have been able to deal with a changing handle on the "wrong side" for over 60 years, it's probably not that big a deal.

The standard model includes a proprietary (and quite cool-looking) optical sight, that doubles as a trajectory calculator for the GL1 grenade launcher that can be attached under the barrel. The F2000 Tactical (pictured to right) simply has a flat-top rail allowing optics of the user's choice to be mounted. The F2000 is used as a special forces weapon in its native Belgium and in most other countries that have adopted it, with Slovenia being the first to make it their entire army's standard-issue rifle (using a variant with a slightly raised sight rail to also act as a carry handle) and as of 2022 it has also been seen in the hands of Ukrainian armed forces. However, its high cost has led to limited adoption elsewhere.

• In A Certain Magical Index, the F2000 is a favored weapon of the Misaka clones.
• Duke and Ripcord use them in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
• Many can be seen in Gamer.
• Sylvester Stallone and Jet Li's characters in The Expendables use them.
• In Iron Man 2, an F2000 is one of the many guns integrated into War Machine's armor.
• Too many video games to count. Naturally, the GL1 grenade launcher is commonly attached to both the Standard and Tactical versions.
• The F2000 under the name "Mk 20" is the standard infantry rifle of the fictional Altis Armed Forces in ARMA 3, available with a full-length barrel or a shortened carbine one, the latter also the basis for a version with an EGLM. The player, one of the last American soldiers still in Altis as the US/NATO peacekeeping mission is being withdrawn, first encounters them when the AAF decide the departing Americans aren't leaving fast enough. Unfortunately, by 2035 both NATO and CSAT members have adopted a new 6.5mm round as the standard rifle cartridge, so their 5.56 ammo is not usable unless you take the rifle with it - and if you do, you'll quickly learn why everyone else has upgraded to 6.5mm.
• Sam Fisher's long gun of choice for most of the Splinter Cell series, possibly the first depiction of the weapon in any media. His is a highly customized version called an SC-20K M.A.W.S., capable of fitting several types of attachments including a less-than-lethal gadget launcher, under-barrel shotgun and a 20mm sniper cannon barrel and sight. The first two attachments are actually available for the real F2000; the 20mm cannon most certainly is not. The first two games used the base model with the integrated scope, while Chaos Theory switched to the Tactical with a red dot sight by default and a fictional adjustable stock. In Conviction it's given way for the SC3000, a similar weapon with a magazine inspired by the never-produced MR-C but with no under-barrel attachments available.
• In reference to the above, the F2000 appeared in the console version of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2, under the same name as in Splinter Cell, fitted with the same suppressor, grenade launcher, and even the adjustable stock. Like the SCAR, the Tactical version returns in Future Soldier as a Ghost assault rifle added with the "Arctic Strike" DLC, this time under its proper name as the "good gun" to contrast with the CZ 805 from the same DLC. Ghost Recon Wildlands also features it as of Special Operations 3, which fittingly included several weapons and equipment options returning from Future Soldier.
• In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a customized F2000 Tactical with an AK-like barrel, front sight and gas system is used by Maverick, Desperado, and World Marshal PMC troops. A codec call with Boris names this weapon as the MAK-200.
• Obviously in 7.62 High Caliber, with the usual large scope as an optional accessory.
• Appears in all three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games as a late-game, high end assault rifle with the grenade launcher integrated in it.
• Appears in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, with the highest recoil of all assault rifles, as well as the highest rate of fire. The singleplayer level set on an oil rig has a number of them modified with a thermal sight, in a Shout-Out to Splinter Cell's use of the weapon. It's also one of a handful of weapons to get a unique attachment model, with the red dot sight taking the form of the original F2000 scope.
  • It makes another, more bizarre, appearance in Call of Duty: Vanguard as the "BP50". Added in Season 5, it is the primary weapon of He "Seraph" Zhen-Zhen and is chambered in 7.62x39mm by default, with options for a rechamber to .30 Russian Short (an old term for 7.62x39mm), "5.6mm" (presumably the 5.6x39mm round), and 7.62x54mmR. The gun made a modernized comeback in a season 2 update of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.
• White-painted F2000s are the standard issue weapons of the Peacekeepers in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay.
• The F2000, along with the XM29, feature prominently in the third episode of Golgo 13 ("The Masterpiece Assault Rifle"). The guns were also fitted with a digital "super scope", whose maker hoped to prove their superiority by using them to kill the titular assassin.
• The F2000 was added to PAYDAY 2 as part of the Reservoir Dogs Heist update, called the "Union 5.56". It's a good all-rounder weapon; it has good concealment, a high rate of fire, and excellent accuracy.
• Battlefield:
  • The standard version with the GL1 appears as the SAS Assault's primary weapon in Battlefield 2: Special Forces, and with that expansion can also be unlocked to use with the class for other factions. Powerful and accurate, but kicks like a mule.
  • The Tactical variation returns for the Battlefield: Bad Company duology. For the first one it was part of the "Find All Five" initiative, requiring the player to be a "Battlefield Veteran" (i.e. confirm through a website you owned a previous Battlefield game) to unlock, while BC2 made it a regular unlock for the Assault class. It deals low damage this time to offset its higher rate of fire than the other assault rifles.
  • Once again in Battlefield 3 for the Assault class, this time not only missing the GL1 but not being able to take underbarrel launchers or shotguns due to the shape of its handguard (though the short rail does allow foregrips and bipods). Also appears frequently in singleplayer, appropriately given Pakistan uses the rifle in real life.
  • It returns once more in Battlefield 4 with the Second Assault DLC, unlocked with the "Express Train" assignment (one Assault Rifle ribbon, two Kill Assist ribbons, and ten kills within one round in the DLC's returning "Operation Metro" map), much the same as in the BF3 appearance other than that the original 1.6x sight is available as a default attachment.
  • Also available in Battlefield Hardline with the Robbery expansion, strangely available only to the Criminal's Operator class. It's fitted with the CQB variation's railed foregrip, and this time its unique scope is equipped by default if no other sights are used (otherwise it goes back to the Tactical's top rail).
• A 2-star T-Doll in Girls' Frontline, a very good AR for early portions of the game mostly through sheer rate of fire (only FAMAS matches her fire rate and, outside of RoF-boosting skills, only G11 fires faster). Outside of battle, she loves movies and TV.
• The F2000 appears with an odd carrying handle in the shape of the original scope in Hitman: Blood Money, found in a room in "Death on the Mississippi" and carried by the CIA Agent in a suitcase in "A Dance With the Devil".
• In Steins;Gate 0, the F2000 is shown as the standard-issue weapon of SERN's forces in the dystopian future of 2036.
• The FN HAR from Shadowrun resembles a futuristic version of the FN F2000 Tactical variant with a few key differences. The magazine cover is partially exposed, the ejection port is above the magazine cover, the weapon frame is slightly smaller and more sleek, which in turn makes the buttstock, receiver, barrel, carrying handle and its accompanying picatinny rail shorter, the trigger is slightly separate from the trigger guard, and its foregrip is more boxy. Here are two examples◊.^note The FN HAR is the number 4 gun in the image page of the second link. It is considered a popular choice for corp-sec units around the world as well as being a decent mid-tier AR for shadowrunners.

FN FNC

Once called "The free world's assault rifle", the FNC incorporates the best ideas and characteristics of the Galil, AK and FAL.

—Description, Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield

The Fabrique Nationale Carabine, or FN FNC, is a 5.56x45mm assault rifle designed by Fabrique Nationale in the late 1970s for NATO standardization trials, one of multiple attempts to create an assault rifle out of the FAL. The FNC was ultimately withdrawn from the trials due to reliability issues thanks to submitting early prototypes, but was issued in small quantities to the Belgian airborne infantry. Eventually, in 1989, the Belgian military officially adopted the FNC, finally replacing the venerable FN FAL.

Interestingly, the FNC uses a long-stroke action that resembles that of the AK family, but adapted for more advanced production. The FNC's flash hider also serves as a launcher for NATO 22mm rifle grenades. Accessories for the FNC include a spike bayonet or a lug adapter to mount the M7 blade bayonet, alongside a blank-firing adapter and a bipod. It is capable of single, three-round burst (absent on Swedish models), and full automatic fire.

Other notable users of the FNC include Sweden, who license produced it as the Ak 5 (with modifications for Arctic conditions), and Indonesia, who license-produced it as the Pindad SS1 and 2, respectively. Each has its own variants.

• A select-fire FNC-80 is used by Lieutenant Vincent Hanna during the bank heist shootout in Heat, where he fires it in semiauto to avoid harming civilians.
• Xander Cage uses an FNC fitted with a Beta C-mag in XXX State Of The Union, notably using it to fatally wound Yorgi.
• Appears as a usable weapon in Counter-Strike Online.
• The FNC appears as a customizable weapon in the Rainbow Six series, introduced in the Black Thorn expansion for Rogue Spear and returning for Raven Shield and then Vegas 2.
• The Ak 5 variant appears as a usable weapon in PAYDAY 2, one of the few weapons in the game to not get the A.K.A.-47 treatment. It gets a variety of unique attachments to turn it into other variants, including "Bertil" and "Caesar" stocks based on those of the Ak 5B and C variants. As a Shout-Out to Heat, it also gets a "Belgian Heat" handguard based on that of the original FNC, with a later free update also adding a shorter barrel to match the barrel length of the weapon in the film.
• The Ak 5c compact carbine version of the FNC is a usable weapon in Battlefield 4, acting as the first all-class Carbine unlocked for making points with the Engineer kit.
• The FNC is an unlockable weapon in Alliance of Valiant Arms.
• In Upotte!!, Funco appears as the personification of the FNC.
• The AM-MRS-4 from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain strongly resembles an FNC in its default configuration.
• One of the best performing 3-star AR in Girls' Frontline, owing to her excellent base stats and damage buffing skill. A later update adds Ak 5, the Swedish variant of the FNC.

FN SCAR-L

"The SCAR rifle system’s modularity allows for many different configurations. The Mk. 16 “SCAR-L” features a 14 inch barrel as well as a full 30 round magazine. Compared to its 20 round carbine counterpart, the heavier Mk. 17, the SCAR-L provides greater target acquisition at longer ranges due to the extended barrel length as well as more controlled fire due to manageable recoil."

—Description, Battlefield 3

Rifles may change, but Scars Are Forever.

The Fabrique Nationale Herstal Special Forces Combat Assault Rifle, shortened to the SCAR, is an assault and battle rifle designed by FNH USA, as an entry into a trial by the U.S. SOCOM to replace or supplement the aging M4 rifle in 2003. The focus of the SCAR rifle is in modularity, with initial offerings coming in a wide variety of calibers including 5.56x45mm, 7.62x51mm and 7.62x39mm ammunition. During trials and further development, the 7.62x39mm version was dropped, and the first two became the SCAR-L (Light) and the SCAR-H (Heavy) respectively. The SCAR proved to be the top performer of the competition, and was adopted in 2010 by SOCOM. US Special Forces, such as the US Army Rangers and a few special forces groups outside of the US field it.

As of late, it's been showing up in quite a few types of media, especially Video Games, due to its futuristic appearance and connection to Special Forces soldiers. The GL1 grenade launcher of the FN F2000 was modified to fit the SCAR, in the form of the the Mk 13 Mod 0 EGLM; the primary differences are that it is modified to have a swing-out chamber and an additional component which essentially extends the magazine well so, like on the bullpup F2000, the launcher's trigger is right next to the rifle's. The SCAR-L also served as the basis for weapons entered in several US military weapon competitions, the Heat Adaptive Modular Rifle^note a variant with extra components in the handguard which monitored the barrel's temperature and switched the weapon from closed-bolt to open-bolt operation as it heated from firing entered in both the USMC's Infantry Automatic Rifle (lost to the M27, a variant of the HK416) and the Army's Next Generation Squad Weapon program (lost to the MCX SPEAR), and the FN Advanced Carbine^note Basically a SCAR-L with the front sight attached to the top rail rather than the gas block, an added bayonet lug, and a non-reciprocating charging handle which was made into a standard feature of the rifle starting from 2021 entered in the Army's Individual Carbine competition (which was cancelled without selecting a winner). FN has since also released the SCAR-SC, a subcompact carbine with a barrel reduced to 7.5 inches, available both in select-fire form for military and law enforcement use, and as a semi-auto-only pistol as the SCAR 15P, which replaces the stock with a Picatinny rail and a quick-detach sling mount at the rear.

• Trivia: There are three generations of the weapon. Gen 1 models can be differentiated from later ones by the typical all-black finish (Gen 3 come in multiple finishes, but are typically variations of tan), a Minimi-style pistol grip (Gen 2 and 3 can use any pistol grip the AR-15 can), a different flash hider (Gen 1 and 2 use M16-style birdcage flash hiders, which are still used on modern civilian versions of the SCAR-L, while Gen 3 switches to the more distinctive three-pronged duckbill style with the SCAR-H one being noticeably longer), and a slightly different stock design (the Gen 1 version has a noticeable hump near where it attaches to the receiver, while the Gen 2 stock is much more angular and the Gen 3 stock has more smooth curves to it). For the longest time, most media, particularly video games, only showcased the Gen 1 models and not the Gen 3 ones, even as the weapon passed ten years of production and five of military service.

---

• Navy SEAL Team 9 uses the SCAR-L late in the plot of Jormungand when the HCLI team kidnaps a prisoner from Guantanamo Bay, resulting in one of the biggest shootouts of the series.
• G.I. Joe: Retaliation has the Joes use both versions of the weapon, with General Joe Colton making the most notable use of the SCAR-L.
• Arthur uses a SCAR-L to hold off combat projections in Inception until Eames dares to dream bigger.
• In Alive in Joburg, the short film that served as the basis of District 9, CGI Soldiers use SCAR-Ls to engage an attacking alien.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 uses the SCAR-L, replacing the -H version used in MW2 as a lower-damage but higher-capacity alternative that is, like in the previous game, the first alternative assault rifle unlocked after the default M4 and the burst-firing M16.
  • Black Ops II, alongside the SCAR-H under the AR category, includes a SCAR-L mocked up as the HAMR IAR, fitted with a 75-round drum magazine, as a light machine gun. The real HAMR's heat-adapting/closed-to-open-bolt ability is reproduced in game by having the first seven rounds of a burst firing at a high rate, before the eighth and beyond fire slightly slower to reduce the recoil.
  • Modern Warfare II includes a black SCAR-L as the TAQ-56, the first weapon in the "Tactique Verte" weapon platform through which a SCAR-H and SCAR 17S can also be unlocked. It is the standard rifle for the Shadow Company operators and used by the Los Vaqueros unit during the campaign.
• The Combat Rifle in Left 4 Dead 2 is a modified SCAR-16S, the semi-auto civilian version of the SCAR-L, treated as a military model (the in-game commentary mentions they were diverted from the Middle East and shipped back home to control the infection). It has the highest capacity and is the most accurate of the assault rifles, though it fires in three-round bursts, an operation expected of the M16, and it also has a much slower reload.
• It shows up several times in the Battlefield series, starting with Battlefield 2, and with the Battlefield: Bad Company spinoffs using the SCAR-L on its own, fitted with a suppressor as with all of the Engineer kit's carbines. As above, even up to Battlefield 3, it's universally the first-gen variant.
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter has both the SCAR L and H models, as does the sequel.
• In Army of Two: The 40th Day, the SCAR-L is one of the rifles used by the 40th Day Initiative, as well as Salem and Rios.
• The AR-21 and its variants in Alpha Protocol are all based on the SCAR.
• ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead features many variants of the SCAR-L and SCAR-H with numerous attachments.
• The Blue Sun mod for 7.62 High Caliber adds both variants of the SCAR in various barrel lengths for virtually any purpose.
• Contagion has a silenced one as an alternative to the M16, and similar to it, it comes with an integrated rail attachment for mounting scopes. Like most automatics, it's a Game-Breaker, given the high magazine capacity, generous ammo pickups, and full-auto capability.
• The SCAR-L is the rifle of choice for Janus mooks in GoldenEye (2010), called the "Kallos TT9". The Wii version's model has a few oddities, including the use of straight SCAR-H mags and the omnipresent use of a vertical foregrip, even with a grenade launcher attached (which the foregrip will dutifully clip through). The weapon appears with two different models in the Wii version, one with a beige lower receiver and one with a gray one (both have a black upper receiver), exclusive to the Outpost mission in the campaign; Reloaded has all of them appear with a gray finish, though the Wii version's beige-colored model also makes an unusable appearance in one of the weapon showcases of the Reloaded version of the Dubai level.
• It features prominently in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, where it's the main weapon used by both LexCorp security and Anatoli Knyazev's Private Military Contractors. The most notable user is Batman, who uses a modified one (with a Joker card taped to the stock) in the Bad Future seen in Bruce's "Knightmare".
• In The Division, both versions are available. The SCAR-L is treated normally as an assault rifle, retaining its normal rate of fire and with a decent ammo pool.
• SCAR-Ls with holographic sights, lasers modules and "jungle style" magazines are used by Nick Morton and Sergeant Vail as their primary weapons in the opening of The Mummy (2017).
• White-finished SCAR-L CQCs are used by Valentine's thugs in Kingsman: The Secret Service, with Eggsy taking one for the final shootout.
• The SCAR-L in Girls' Frontline is a veteran of World War III and leader of the legendary Daybreak Squad. Contrasting to SCAR-L, Aliana (her previous name) is a proud, incredibly skilled fighter, and a gifted leader. Despite their rivalry, the SCAR sisters have a Union Skill that only activates if they're both deployed together.

Heckler & Koch G11

This extremely light assault rifle is relatively quiet and has little recoil due to its lack of extractors or spent casings.

Description, Delta Force: Land Warrior

Behold: Kraut Space Magic

The Heckler & Koch G11 was an experimental West German rifle. The weapon is recognizable for its unconventional appearance and action, and is the most well-known weapon to utilize caseless ammunition. Its exotic and futuristic shape makes it a fairly popular addition to media, especially in near-future settings.

Development of the weapon began in 1968, when Germany began studying ways to increase hit probability. Their solution was a weapon that fired light, low-recoil rounds at an extremely fast rate. The G11 fires a caseless^note While the round looks like it has some sort of polymer case◊, the boxy brown piece that the bullet is contained in is actually the propellant 4.73x33mm round which, despite being fired at the same speed and power of regular 5.56s, did not tumble about or fragment as much upon hitting a target and did less damage as a result. It was designed to make up for this via an insanely fast (even faster than the AN-94) three-round burst mode that fires all three rounds at 2100 rpm, so fast that all three rounds would exit the barrel before the shooter had time to feel the recoil. So even if one of the tiny bullets wouldn't reliably put down a human target, it's a safe bet that three of them hitting near-simultaneously would. The caseless nature of the ammunition also allowed for more to be carried for the same weight; the G11 was fed by 45 or 50-round magazines, in which the rounds were oriented facing downward. The G11's unique rotating chamber spins the round 90 degrees to line it up with the barrel. Also unlike other weapons, the G11 had no iron sights, instead featuring an integrated optical sight.

The weapon was ready for deployment when the 1990s rolled around. 256 prototypes were made and the weapon was actually briefly adopted by the Bundeswehr, but the order for 300,000 rifles in the period from 1990-2002 was frozen, the rifle struck from the procurement list in 1992 and the entire program cancelled in 1993 due to the impossibility of adapting the G11 to fire standardized NATO ammunition. The main culprit for this was the end of the Cold War: reunifying with East Germany proved quite expensive given the dismal state of the East German economy, and the fall of the Soviet Union meant military spending was suddenly less important. Ultimately, the new unified German military adopted a much more conventional rifle, the G36.

The G11's firing mechanism was mindbogglingly intricate, and a possible origin to the somewhat common in-joke that, should you leave a German weaponsmith with a bunch of tools and materials and no supervision, you'd always get a rapid-firing cuckoo clock in the end.^note The people noted that the Germans frequently approach the problem of weapon design from the "engineering contest" angle, rather than the boring practicality of supply considerations. One also has to consider the gargantuan price tag such complexity demands; H&K engineers are said to have joked that the weapon cost so much that the West German government chose to rebuild the East German economy instead of adopt the G11 because it was the cheaper option of the two.

Also, despite the theoretical advantages, no caseless rifle (or weapon of any variety, for that matter) has since come close to being adopted. The biggest disadvantage of caseless rounds is the risk of "cook-off", a situation where the propellant ignites on its own due to the barrel overheating with extended firing — while this can potentially happen with any firearm, conventional metallic cartridges make it far less likely, since the heat has to be transmitted through the metal case before reaching the gunpowder and most of it is taken with that case as it's ejecting, requiring a rather large number of rounds fired in quick succession for it to be a realistic possibility (by which point it's just as likely for a part of the weapon itself to fail and render it incapable of firing); in a caseless firearm, however, the propellant is in direct contact with the weapon's metal parts, and there's nothing ejected to take away most of the heat. Also, burnt propellant leaves residue inside the gun. In a conventional weapon, the cartridge case catches most of it and keeps the chamber clean and functional, and, as with the heat of firing, takes it away when the spent case is ejected. No caseless weapon has ever addressed the problem of propellant residue fouling the gun's innards to hell and gone and producing frequent stoppages. Another recurring problem common to other caseless systems was the fragility of the ammunition itself, with the bullet and primer nesting in what is essentially a "cake" of propellant, as opposed to a nice and durable brass case. It didn't take much of a jolt^note a soldier could ruin the magazines he carried by diving into the prone position, as he'd do when coming under fire to crack the propellant block of 4.73mm caseless rounds, leaving crumbs of the stuff littering the rifle's insides (where it could potentially be ignited by the heat of prolonged firing; it wouldn't blow up the rifle, but it wasn't especially good for it either). Any round that suffered this problem ran the risk fo causing a stoppage due to there not being enough left to properly cycle the action, and some incidents were noted in which a round broke apart completely when fed, and the clockwork bolt/gear/feed block/Lazy Susan/thing was found to be difficult to clear when this happened.

H&K solved the cook-off issue by using a different propellant that needs a significant higher temperature to ignite, but it's unclear what the solution to fouling was (though HK swears they had one). Another issue was that such rapid fire put significant strain on the weapon's internal parts. The chamber (which on the G11 was separate from the barrel) was to be replaced after firing just 3,500 rounds, or 70 magazines' worth of ammo (whereas in most military rifles, 10,000 rounds is considered to be the bare minimum acceptable barrel life, while bolts and other components should last significantly longer).^note For the below-mentioned LMG version that seems like a particularly serious problem, since a machine gunner could well fire that many rounds in one particularly intense firefight. Presumably the chamber, like barrels on most modern machine guns, would need to be quickly replaceable in battle, which based on the standard rifle's design would involve opening up the gun and exposing all of those intricate internal workings to debris.

Less well known is that H&K intended to produce a "family" of weapons around the G11, with at least one prototype of the LMG11 light machine gun having been made (though it is entirely unclear how it actually functioned), while a machine pistol/PDW never even made it past having blueprints drawn, though it was the forerunner to the more successful MP7.

---

Anime & Manga

• Seen used by the JSSDF in End of Evangelion.
• Carried by PANDORA guards in Darker than Black.

Films — Live Action

• In Demolition Man, Simon Phoenix finds it in a museum (narrator voice says it is one of the last guns ever produced) and uses it. It's meant to be a stand-in for a future weapon, as it's referred to by a different name and shoots magnetically-accelerated bursts of plasma instead of bullets. Why a museum piece would be loaded is not explained; considering the movie takes place in a society where the only way the police have or need to get criminals to back down is warning them that they're doing a bad thing, nobody thought it would ever be a problem.

Literature

• In the Matthew Reilly novel Temple, a secret army of latter-day SS troopers somehow manages to get ahold of enough G11s to arm dozens of soldiers. It's noted (and later becomes a plot point) that this version of the gun actually requires a microprocessor to fire.
• A shipment of these is stolen by terrorists working for a Jim Jones-like cult in one of the Soldiers of Barrabas action novels by Jack Hild.

Tabletop Games

• Twilight: 2000 describes it as the standard German assault rifle, which was the plan at the time the game was originally written in 1984. Because of its caseless ammunition, it cannot be reloaded from spent brass, so while the weapon itself is quite common and cheap, the ammunition is rare and expensive.
• d20 Modern splatbook Arms Locker includes this gun as arguably the most effective assault rifle. It is always mastercrafted for +1 accuracy, has a 50-round magazine, and can burst-fire for double damage at half the usual penalty. This is in fact a fairly realistic depiction within the limits of tabletop gaming stats.
• Shows up in GURPS: High-Tech with a 45+1-round magazine and incredible reliability. It has a special highly accurate burst mode. Compared to other TL8 assault rifles its downsides include a high cost (approximately twice that of its various competitors) while being tied with the least damage per-shot, and having the worst full auto, half-damage range, and weight.
• Appears in Shadowrun as the H&K G12, where it is a mass produced weapon in the Alternate Universe of the world, as apparently the concept it was based on was successful in that particular universe.

Video Games

• In the text-based online RPG HoboWars one of the highest-damage weapons is the G11, which outclasses the M16 (which outclasses the AK-47... you get the drift).
• In Fallout 2, they are used by Enclave soldiers. They hurt a lot, even if you are wearing Powered Armor. You can obtain it in four different places through the game.
• In Abomination: The Nemesis Project, they are pretty common for a limited production weapon in a plague-infested city in the US.
• In Cold Winter Andrew Sterling will be able to obtain G11s in the Grey Wings' mountain fortress. It makes use of a side-mounted scope and is a very powerful three-shot burst assault rifle, in fact the strongest assault rifle in the whole game.
• It makes an appearance in the secon dand third installments of Syphon Filter, as the H11. With a 50-round magazine, a 2x scope, and high rate of fire, it's one of the best rifles in the game. This gun also appears in The Omega Strain (again renamed to "C11") and is again one of the best guns, not least because it ignores body armor.
• It shows up in Jagged Alliance 2, wielded by Mike the Mercenary (aka the overpriced merc from the first game). It has excellent armor-piercing characteristics, ignoring all armor except treated Spectra Fiber armor (the best in the game), but it only has two magazines, or less if Mike got off a lot of shots, an dthe in-game gun dealer only occasionally has any more to sell you. V 1.13 makes it a bit more available - the gun dealing website states they found an abandoned shipment in a warehouse (shh... don't tell anyone), but they're expensive and hte magazines are huge (they can't fit in regular vests - only SAW pouches and such). As with real life, the damage is only on par with a 5.56 round, but it has a great firing rate, tears through armor like it was wet paper, possesses great accuracy, and has a fifty-round magazine.
• One of the final variations appears in a single mission in Call of Duty: Black Ops, at a point in time where it was probably still on the drawing boards. Defecting scientist Daniel Clarke has three in his private armouries hidden around Kowloon, and wields one himself for most of the mission. Also available in multiplayer as the "classified" weapon of its category, requiring you to buy every other assault rifle first. Unlike most of the other weapons unlocked in this manner it's actually useful, considered to be the best assault rifle in the game due to its high ammo count (it doesn't get Extended Mags, but still holds more ammo per mag than most other assault rifles do with that attachment anyway), extremely fast fire rate within its three-shot bursts, and high damage, the latter two combining to make it practically a One-Hit Kill weapon.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War adds the G11 K2 in Season 3 as a tactical rifle called the "CARV.2", strangely configured as a standard bullpup rifle with the iron sights resembling the scope in shape and with 45-round magazines by default, with the magazines having ".437mmx33" written on them, though the weapon is chambered in the correct 4.73x33mm in Warzone.
• This one also shows up in Delta Force: Land Warrior, and is the epitome of Improperly Placed Firearms, as every terrorist in every mission set anywhere near the general mid-to east-Europe area has one, and every ammo locker has its unique ammo if you decide to take one with you. It's also shown as having no recoil, which even for a caseless weapon is simply not how it works. It's also an instant kill with a single bullet when you use it, but then again so is every other gun in the game.
• A very expensive and rare late-game rifle in 7.62 High Caliber. The gun, ammo, and magazines are all so rare and expensive that the gun ends up being Awesome, but Impractical.
• In Girls' Frontline, G11 is part of UMP45's 404 Squad and widely regarded as one of the best ARs in the game. This is largely due to her skill, which makes her shoot three bullets instead of one for its duration, representing the real-life weapon's absurd burst fire mode. Despite this, she is also incredibly lazy and narcoleptic. At one point she requests to take a nap in the middle of a firefight. It was eventually revealed that the reason for this is that she was originally a civilian A-Doll, and her processors have trouble handling the advanced fire-control core added to make her into a T-Doll. Fitting, considering that one of the problems the G11 had was that the rapid-fire put a lot of strain on the gun.
• Appears in Cruelty Squad as the "K&H X20". Unusually for depictions of this gun, it's one of the earliest and most practical weapons in the game. The combination of high magazine capacity, fast fire rate, good damage, manageable recoil, and integrated scope makes it incredibly versatile and good at all ranges.
• The G11 appears as a top-tier assault rifle in Chaser. You get to use it plenty in the first level, and after that it appears again much, much later.
• The G11 (specifically the lesser-known K1 version) was added to Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades as two separate versions in two separate updates. The standard version was added in Meatmass 2018, whereas the "Tacmod" (which is fitted with Picatinny rails on the forend and where the scope should be) was added in Update 90.
• Appears in Agent Under Fire as the Koffer and Stock D17. Its sole appearance in the campaign is in the final mission, "Evil Summit" as a mook weapon. In Multiplayer, it's available to use and is capped at two spare magazines and an initial 50 round magazine. It's often passed over for other guns in selection due to the game's tendency to skew accuracy in multiplayer, even when scoped.

Heckler & Koch G36

Available only to U.S. law enforcement and military customers, the class III G36K is a true modular weapon system in caliber 5.56x45mm NATO (.223 Remington). Equipped with a dual sighting system consisting of a 3.5x optical sight topped with electronic red dot sight, the HK G36K is an entry weapon with real knock down power.
...
Constructed almost entirely of carbon fiber reinforced polymer material, and using a simple, self-regulating gas system, the G36K is a lightweight weapon that delivers high performance. With a 750 round per minute cyclic rate, and equipped with the optional 100-round dual drum magazine, the G36K definitely hits the mark.

—Description, SWAT 3

Top: G36K with export handle/scope; Bottom: G36C with railed handle and holographic sight

This German assault rifle has turned up all over the place in fiction due to its rather futuristic appearance. It was developed as a replacement for the G3 battle rifle after the G11 project was scrapped and the G41, the obligatory STANAG-compatible G3 derivative in 5.56mm, was passed over for an absurdly-high price tag even for an H&K weapon, the G36 is used by numerous special police units and special forces units throughout the world. It was also the basis of the aborted XM8 assault rifle, which was essentially a G36 mechanism in a composite body. Its mechanism was also used in the MP7.

Chambered in 5.56x45mm, the G36 utilizes a short-stroke gas pistol action (based on the Armalite AR-18's), which has since been used in several of Heckler & Koch's other weapons. The family is not compatible with NATO STANAG magazines by default, though the magazine well can be removed and replaced with an adapter to load STANAG mags. Several sighting options are available: a dual-sighting system with a non-magnified red dot sight built in above the carry handle and a 3x magnified sight below that, aimed through a rectangular cutout in the front of the handle, a single 1.5x telescopic sight (intended for export), and an accessory rail-equipped carrying handle with attached iron sights (introduced with the C variant).

The family comes in four main variants, easily distinguishable by the number of vent holes in its handguard and barrel length. The standard G36 has a six-vent handguard with an 18.9-inch barrel, the K or "Kurz" variant has a 4-vent handguard and shorter 12.5-inch barrel, and the "C" or Compact has a two-vent handguard and 9-inch barrel, and is by far the most widely depicted variant in games and movies, owing to its compact size and distinct shape (it is roughly the same size as an MP5, and five inches shorter than the M4 with its stock unfolded). The MG36 was a rejected LMG variant with a heavier barrel (which was deemed to be unnecessary after trials), Beta C-Mag 100-round double-drum magazine and bipod handguard. The name MG36 is often applied incorrectly to the light support weapon version of the standard G36, which has the bipod handguard and Beta-C magazine, but not the heavy barrel. The original civilian versions, the SL8 semi-auto and R8 bolt-action, are also among the most famously nerfed real-life firearms, having a variety of cosmetic alterations that seem to intentionally make it less cool than the G36, and both are often mocked as being the "emasculated" versions of the G36 by firearm enthusiasts.^note Larry Correia once joked on his blog that H&K's opinion of civilian gun owners is "You suck and we hate you." The phrase quickly took on a life of its own, to the point that H&K have actually been trying to prove otherwise... somewhat.

As of November 2013, H&K has been attempting to create and sell the HK243, a civilian version of the G36 which is closer in form to the military weapon but unable to accept or exchange parts from the G36 that would make it illegal for civilian ownership; rumors also circulated about an HK293, which was meant for the US civilian market and designed to accept STANAG-compatible magazines, though nothing has come of that yet. There is also a similar-looking Mexican-designed rifle, the FX-05 Xiuhcoatl, whose suspiciously similar look made its designers the target of a lawsuit by Heckler & Koch, though it was dropped as soon as its inner workings were proved to be completely different and derived instead from the AK.

In 2012, reports began surfacing of the G36 overheating and losing accuracy from overheating by firing, say, faster than 30 rounds a minute, due to its predominantly plastic construction. After further reports, in 2015 the Bundeswehr announced that the rifle would be phased out, citing the unacceptable overheating of the G36 and its detrimental performance as a result. H&K, however, pointed out that the rifle's horrible performance during extensive shooting was technically owed to a lack of good wording in the military contract that the company had fulfilled: Nobody stated that the weapon had to perform well if mistreated and discharged in hot conditions, and that the G36 did meet all of the requirements for adoption that were actually set out. As of 2017, a replacement for the G36 has not been finalized, and though testing of several replacement firearms has begun (the FN SCAR, SIG MCX, Haenel Mk556, H&K HK433 and Rheinmetall RS556 are rumored candidates) nothing has come of it yet, with all companies involved in the tender other than H&K themselves and Haenel having dropped out as of early 2020; some analysts such as Ian McCollum have concluded that, at best, Germany is overreacting to the problem (thus setting more stringent requirements for a replacement that turned out to be impossible for an infantry weapon to meet). In September 2020, in a big blow to H&K, the Bundeswehr officially chose the Haenel Mk556 as the replacement. However, less than a month later, the order was withdrawn due to "patent infringement", and the selection process has found itself once again mired in a quandary.

• Doctor Who — used by Van Staaten's forces in "Dalek", UNIT generally since 2005 and the British Army on occasions.
• Primeval — Helen's mercenaries carry them.
• Four Brothers — used by the bad guys during the siege of the Mercer house. Evidently it didn't melt during its prolonged full-auto use because it's fucking cold in Detroit in December.
• The C variant with a unique red dot scope that doesn't show up in multiplayer is Gaz's weapon of choice in Modern Warfare, the first weapon you use in the game, and is also seen in the hands of some Ultranationalists, particularly in the Chernobyl mission a few years before it started production. It's also available in Modern Warfare 3, as both the typical G36C and a G36KV mocked up as the MG36, the former version most notably in the hands of a GIGN soldier in the campaign and seen somewhat often in multiplayer because one of the default classes lets you use it far earlier than normal.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops III includes the "M8A7", a fictional four-round burst rifle that looks to be noticeably based on the SL8 (rather ironically, given its predecessor, Black Ops II's M8A1, was based on the later XM8). Interestingly, it's noted as firing .300 AAC Blackout rather than the real thing's .223/5.56mm.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), as of its first DLC season, features the weapon again as the "Holger-26". Like its Modern Warfare 3 counterpart it's mocked up as an MG36 to classify it as an LMG, though the much wider variety of attachment options let you attach 30-round magazines to use it like an assault rifle, even able to attach a short barrel and handguard to make a barely modified G36C.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III features the return of the "Holger 26" alongside an assault rifle, the G36E as the "Holger 556", and a marksman rifle, the SL8 as the "DM56".
• Carried by the Mooks in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
• And the mooks in Equilibrium.
• Also the mooks in V for Vendetta, both elite fingermen as well as British army grunts.
• Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear features the G36K. Rainbow Six 3 switches to the KE, and with the Athena Sword expansion features the SL8 as a sniper rifle, while Lockdown switches to the more famous G36C, which returns for the Vegas (where one with an ACOG is Jung Park's weapon for when you tell the squad to go loud) alongside the MG36 light support weapon with the 2x export sight (modified with a rail over the top of it) and a Beta C-mag; in Vegas, the G36C with an ACOG is Jung Park's weapon when you give the team permission to fire at will. In Siege, the G36C returns in the base game as one of the weapons exclusive to the FBI SWAT attacking operator Ash.
• The full-size G36, renamed the "GP37", is the second-best 5.56 rifle in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. It's reliable, fast-firing, stable, has a good scope and is about as durable as an AK-74. This is offset by it being nearly impossible to get until mid-game if you don't know what you're doing, as it's expensive when it's offered for trade at all, and the only ones that have it early on are high-tier stalkers from Freedom, a faction that's too much of a headache to piss off for just one gun. Prying it from a Monolithian's dead hands is a better option, but come this point (the tail end of the game for all three installments), you can get the superior FN F2000 – almost the same gun stat-wise with an integrated grenade launcher at the cost of weight – just as easily, so the G36 is Overshadowed by Awesome.
• The rifles in the Doom movie are visually modified G36s, Sarge using a more heavily-modified G36 with an aftermarket sight while Reaper, Duke and Portman get less-dressed-up G36Ks with the original dual-sight setup.
  • In Version 3.0 of Project Brutality, the UAC-41 was redesigned to resemble the assault rifle from the Doom movie. Previously, it resembled a SCAR-H with a carry handle.
• J.D. and the team leader of the Umbrella response team use the G36K in Resident Evil (2002).
• In the James Bond movie Die Another Day, Moon's OICW rifle is actually a modified G36.
• The XM8 rifles used in XXX: State of the Union are modified G36 rifles; the most obvious sign of this is that they still have hinges for folding stocks visible.
• An SL8 was used in advertising materials for Perfect Dark, presumably standing in for one of the game's futuristic weapons.
  • Perfect Dark Zero's version of the "Superdragon", meanwhile, is heavily based on the G36K with a magazine-fed grenade launcher vaguely based on the AG36 - rather appropriately as the same weapon in the original game was more based on the the XM8 with an integrated, mag-fed XM29-like grenade launcher.
• The SL8 with a long-range scope appears in Resident Evil 4, as a semi-auto alternative to the .223-converted Springfield rifle.
• First Encounter Assault Recon has two iterations of G36-inspired rifles:
  • The Rakow G2A2 assault rifle, as standard for basically everybody with a gun that shows up during the game, is essentially a fully automatic SL8 fitted with an M14 rear sight, a compensator of some variety over the visible part of the barrel, and a tiny Beta-C magazine that holds 45 rounds.
  • The Perseus Mandate Expansion Pack adds the Vector Engineering Systems V7 Advanced Rifle, the standard assault rifle of the Nightcrawler mercenaries. The VES seems to be based off a G36C fitted with a red-tinted light amplifying scope and a 20 round STANAG magazine; when fired, the muzzle flash is blue. Compared to the G2A2, it deals more damage per shot, fires in two-round bursts minimum instead of three and the fire rate is lower and more controllable in longer bursts (despite the increased recoil), but the magazine holds 10 less rounds, it's even less accurate if you're not standing still while firing it, and ammo is only plentiful when you're fighting Nightcrawlers - you can't loot ammo out of crates and nobody else uses it.
• The STAR 556 rifle in All Points Bulletin is heavily based on the G36, primarily the C version but with the original carry handle and integrated optics, with alternate variants adding parts from other variants, like the "LCR" fitting the SL8's thumbhole stock.
• In Dead Fantasy Part V, the squad of special forces-esque soldiers at the end appear to be armed with G36 rifles fitted with silencers.
• This weapon (particularly the G36K version) is becoming increasingly common in the various Stargate series, strangely enough. It was even Cameron Mitchell's weapon.
• The Rittergruppen rifles in Alpha Protocol are modeled after the G36C.
• Yet another weapon in Black.
• Used (and referred to by name) by Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible III.
• Features in Combat Arms in 5 variants. The 3 variants based around the G36E are generally considered game-breakers due to the ridiculously high damage, easy to control (but still high) recoil, and accuracy better than many sniper rifles.
• Available in several variants in 7.62 High Caliber as an advanced assault rifle.
• Mirror's Edge has the G36C used by some SWAT teams.
• ARMA II has numerous G36 and XM8 variants as well as the MG36 light machine gun.
• Deimos in Madness Combat 9 dual-wields a pair of these.
• Army of Two allows the player to use a G36C; upgrades include a barrel and handguard about the length of the G36K's and an SL8 thumbhole stock.
• Appears in Grand Theft Auto V in the Business Update DLC as the "Special Carbine".
• Appears in Far Cry as a late-game weapon that proves to be a more versatile alternative to the M4 carbine. It also features the AG36 underbarrel grenade launcher (which the game oddly chooses to refer to the rifle by) for added mayhem; problem is, rifle grenades are hard to come by, so players use them sparingly.
• The G36K appears in PAYDAY 2, as the JP36, with elements of the G36C, in particular the railed carry handle. It gets many unique attachments to turn it into other variants as well, with the base game including a "Compact Foregrip" to make it a full-fledged G36C, a "Solid Stock" taking the form of the G36KV's telescoping stock, and the fixed thumbhole stock of the SL8 as the "Sniper Stock"; the later Gage Spec Ops DLC also added an "Original Sight" taking the form of the original raised carry handle with integrated optics and a "Long Foregrip" to give it the barrel length and foregrip of the full-size G36.
• While it's a sniper rifle and not an assault rifle, "The Classic" from Team Fortress 2 is based off of it, fitted with a long barrel but given a short handguard to leave much of said barrel exposed.
• Two mooks threaten Johnny English with this rifle in his daydream. He remarks "Ah, the Heckler and Koch G-36. Quite deadly in the right hands," before knocking them out and continuing his mission.
• The G36K shows up in Max Payne 3 under the name "G6 Commando" as the primary assault rifle of UFE.
• Appears in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, most notably used by Superman's troops and Batman himself in Bruce's "Knightmare" of a Bad Future where Kal-El has devastated the world.
• A G36C is used by one of The Joker's henchmen in Suicide Squad (2016), during an attack on Arkham Aslyum.
• One of the many weapons that appears in The Punisher MAX. Usually in the hands of the mooks that Frank goes up against.
• The vigilante in Dance of the Butterfly uses many guns. The G36C is one of regular use, often with subsonic ammunition, a suppressor, and laser light module.
• The G36C appears in GoldenEye (2010) as the "Anova DP3", while the semi-auto SL8 also appears as the much rarer "Talon HL 450" (replaced with the Mark 12 SPR in Reloaded).
• The C, KV, and regular G36 (with accessory rails) appear as usable weapons in The Division.
• The K is available in SWAT 3 for use by the player and their team, with an official mod included in later updates also adding the C. They're one of the more versatile weapon families in the game due to both versions including the built-in dual-sight and the ability to take a hundred-round Beta C-magazine, though the M4 still beats it for the ability to take a suppressor.
• G36 is a relatively rare 4-star AR in Girls' Frontline. A later update introduces G36C... as a 5-star SMG. The official reasoning is that having a rifle and its carbine version in the same category would be too confusing, despite the fact that M16, M4A1, and M4 SOPMOD II are all classified as ARs. Furthermore, G36C receives a Deflector Shield skill instead of a firepower increase like the rifle-caliber PDWs (such as Colt SCW and SR-3M). That said, G36 and G36C still treat each other like siblings, despite interacting very little in the story. A much later update also added other members of the family, MG36 as a 5-star MG and SL8 as a 5-star RF. SL8 is more distinct from the rest of the family owing to her weapon's noticeably different appearance, while MG36, like their respective weapons, is almost physically identical to G36, differing only in hairstyle and eye color.
• The prequel Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud reveals that G36's original name is Centaureissi — a corruption of "Sechsunddreissig" (German for thirty six). While the weapon is absent in her initial appearance (being a Warrior who fights with a vacuum cleaner), Reissi's alternate version, Divergent Wings, returns to wielding a G36.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd, of all people, stashes a G36C (among an improbable amount of other weapons) in his backpack near the start of his Tomb Raider Games episode.
• Both the G36K and G36C with a reflex sight attached are used by Displace mercenaries in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory as their standard assault rifle, the latter most notably by the thermal vision guards in Bathhouse. The G36C is also usable in Splinter Cell: Conviction and Splinter Cell: Blacklist by Sam, being part of the High Power Pack DLC in the latter.

Heckler & Koch HK33/HK53

The HK53A3 is considered a compact assault rifle. It is derived from the larger HK33, which in turn was derived from the G3 rifle. Its abbreviated length of 590mm with stock retracted makes it very good for CQC.

—Description, Battlefield 2

H&K realized that they had a success on their hands with the G3 rifle, and in the 1960s and 70s set about making a series of firearms based on it. The most famous among these is the MP5 submachine gun, but this also includes the MP5's big brother, the HK33. Using an identical roller-delayed blowback action downsized for the 5.56x45mm NATO round, the HK33 was designed from the start to be an assault rifle for export customers. The HK33, while not as successful as the MP5, never-the-less saw plenty of success in that role, spawning numerous variants including the compact HK53, semi-auto civilian HK93 and STANAG-compatable G41. Well over two dozen nations use the HK33 in all of its variants, including Brazil, Chile, Turkey (marketed and built under license there), Ireland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Mexico. In film, its beefy looks, sinister black finish and similarity to the MP5 and G3 make it frequently depicted as a Bad Gun and S.W.A.T weapon.

Spain made a conceptually similar gun called the CETME Model L, based on their own Model C rifles, the gun the G3 is derived from. While early versions of this CETME L looked a lot like the HK33, issued versions use a more distinctive hybrid plastic-sheet metal handguard (bearing more of a resemblance to FN's FNC), a different set of ironsights (including a button for locking the bolt open integrated into the raised rear sight assembly), and a brighter green color scheme. The guns are more cousins than brothers, with zero parts compatibility between one another - not even the magazines will interchange.

• NYPD ESU teams are shown using this rifle in the climactic raid in The Professional.
• A S.W.A.T Team member uses it in Blade, brutally murdering a steel door while trying to hit the titular dhampyr. Some vampires can also be seen using it.
• The HK53 can be seen in Battlefield 2, as the standard carbine for the EU's Special Forces kit with the "Euro Force" expansion, with an incorrectly-increased capacity of 40 rounds (mags of that capacity do exist for it, but it's modeled with the shorter 25-round mags). It returns in Battlefield Play4Free and Battlefield 3 (the latter with the "Back to Karkand" DLC) as the G53.
• The crazed Norwegian at the start of The Thing (1982) uses an HK93 to try and shoot at a dog, before turning it on the men of Outpost 31.
• Goi uses it as a sniper rifle in War (2007), using it to cover Jason Statham's character in a big shootout.
• In Four Brothers, a S.W.A.T sniper uses this to end the rampage of Detective Fowler.
• Used frequently in the German historical film Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, used by the leftist Red Army Faction characters in the film as well as German Police.
• G3 of Upotte!! has two sisters based on HK33 variants. One is 33, who even among G3's sisters bears a very close resemblance to G3 - to the point that she once takes G3's place for a day and almost nobody can tell the difference. The other is 53; due to the real weapon being an assault rifle with the proportions of the MP5, she's in the elementary classes with the SMGs but is about as tall as the middle-schooler assault rifles.
• In Rainbow Six Siege, the SAS recruit and attacker operator Thatcher can make use of the HK33A2, fitted with rail mounts above the receiver and below the handguard, renamed as the "AR33". Strangely, its capacity is reduced to 25+1 rounds, despite loading 30-round mags.
• Tony Montana has an HK93 in the same gun case he pulls the M16 from for his Last Stand in Scarface.
• Jagged Alliance 2 features both the shortened HK53 and the later full-sized G41. Back in Action replaces the G41 with the HK33, though it's still incorrectly referred to as the G41, and also renames the HK53 into the "MP53".
• The "MP5" in Blood Stone is actually a hybrid of that and the HK53, ejecting rifle casings and with magazines that are at the same width as the HK53's.
• The generically-named Assault Rifle in Turok: Rage Wars bears a heavy resemblance to the G41A2.
• The G41 appears as a five-star AR T-Doll in Girls' Frontline. This dog-like Doll has well-rounded stats and loves head-pats. Later updates added the similar CETME Model L and then the HK33 as three-star ARs, with similar but lower stats (Model L is even more balanced, while HK33 trades off G41's high HP for similarly-high evasion and slightly better accuracy); Model L is the type who's prone to putting off things she wants to do to help others, while HK33 is a more reserved doll who doesn't like people getting close to her.
• A full-auto-converted HK93 is available in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II as the "Lachmann-556", the assault rifle of the "Lachmann Meer" weapon platform. It's fitted by default with a barrel close to the HK53, and can be set up with a heavy barrel and clubfoot stock to resemble the HK13 machine gun.

Heckler & Koch HK416

The M416 was developed by a famous German weapons manufacturer as a more reliable version of the classic M16. The weapon is essentially a fusion of the M16 and the G36 Assault Rifles. The M416 is reliable and accurate, with a moderate recoil and rate of fire that makes for an effective all around weapon.

—Battlelog Description, Battlefield 3

"Commander, I am all you need."

First introduced in 2005, the Heckler & Koch HK416 is a German 5.56x45mm assault rifle. Specifically designed to challenge the venerable M16 and M4 (hence the 416 designation), it is based closely on the Colt AR-15, with various improvements made to prepare it for the modern age. Most notably, it uses Heckler & Koch's short-stroke gas piston system from the G36 (in turn based on the AR-18's action), rather than the AR-15's original direct impingement system. Compared to the direct impingement system, the short-stroke action leaves no powder residue in the receiver, making cleaning much easier and is also claimed to extend the weapon's service life. Other improvements include a free-floating, cold hammer-forged barrel, and a railed handguard with a folding front sight and a top rail that meets the rail above the receiver, rather than being separated as they tend to be on an AR-15.

The weapon has gained popularity with a number of law enforcement and special forces units in the US and beyond, often supplementing or replacing its older cousin, the M16/M4. France and Norway in particular have adopted it as their new primary service weapon.

The HK416, as used by the US Navy SEALs, is also notable for being the gun used to kill Osama bin Laden.

The base HK416 comes in several different variants, with different barrel lengths. It also has a battle rifle variant chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO, the HK417, and a sustained fire variant, the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, which is currently the standard light machine gun for the US Marine Corps. The weapon can be ordered either as a standalone weapon, or an upper-receiver replacement to upgrade older AR-15 variants. An American clone of the HK416, the Coharie Arms CA-415, also exists and is sometimes used as a stand-in for the HK416 in movies and television.

• John Connor uses an HK416 for the first half of Terminator Salvation.
• The Detachment 88 commandos in The Raid Redemption use the HK416 as their primary weapon^note All the weapons used in the film were airsoft replicas, with muzzle flashes and shell casings added using special effects.
• An HK416 with a 10-inch barrel is Doug McCray's primary weapon in The Town.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II eschews the usual M4 in favour of the HK416, referred to as the USMC's M27. It serves alongside the XM8 and SCAR as one of US forces' primary rifles, and can be fitted with the same array of crazy, futuristic accessories as the other assault rifles. For Black Ops III, the semi-fictional ICR-1 has taken its place (with the original model still present in the files, used solely to populate weapons crates in one mission). Ghosts features a more proper M27 in the LMG category, fitted with a hundred-round Beta-C magazine as well as a bipod and angled foregrip; this model is rather weathered, with the fire selector missing, plastic ties holding the handguard together, and part of the rear sight missing.
• Watch_Dogs has the HK416. It's a required purchase to complete a mission objective in the first act, and a unique variant with woodland camo and a higher rate of fire, the "Wildfire", can be unlocked for finding all six Missing Persons.
• The HK416 appears in Battlefield: Bad Company, as well as its sequel; in this case, it's renamed the "M416", apparently a pass at what its official designation would be if it were formally adopted by the US Army, which it seems to have been as it's your starting weapon in every mission of the first game. It returns for Battlefield 3, under the same name as the first unlock for the Assault class, alongside the M27 IAR variant with larger magazines as the first American weapon for Support (being the last unlock for the Russian Support, as such). Also available in Battlefield 4; in the campaign, Dunn uses it in the first mission, and you can unlock it for yourself by scoring enough points in the penultimate one, while in multiplayer it's once again an early unlock for the Assault class (the second unlockable rifle after the SCAR-H). It also returns for Battlefield Hardline, strangely restricted to the Criminal's Operator.
• In Skyfall, the mooks raiding the eponymous manor at the climax carry HK416s. Bond also procures one a short time later, and briefly uses it to shoot at an attacking helicopter.
• Merlin uses one in Kingsman: The Secret Service to defend himself when Valentine's thugs attack his jet.
• Serious Sam 3: BFE features the 416, named the M29 Infantry Assault Rifle, in the "basic automatic weapon" role. It features an EOTech holographic sight, a vertical foregrip, a flashlight that Sam never uses and an extended 40-round magazine, as well as a slightly-slower 600RPM cyclic rate of fire (mirroring rumors that the real M27 would fire at a slower rate than the base HK416). It's less spammable than the old Tommy Gun and twin Uzis due to a need to reload, but to compensate, its ammo pool is separate from the Minigun's and 100-round ammo boxes for it are very common, giving Sam even more dakka than usual. It also has considerable spread when hip-fired, but when sighted in, it's 100% accurate no matter the distance.
• As in real life, HK416s are carried by the US Navy Seals in Zero Dark Thirty.
• ARMA III's "Apex" expansion includes multiple variants of the HK416 under the name "SPAR-16".
• In PAYDAY 2, the ultra-compact HK416C (fitted with a vertical foregrip and 100-round drum mags) appears as the "Bootleg" with the Sydney Character Pack.
• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception features the HK416D with a fixed AK-like stock under the name "M9".
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 includes the HK416, named as the "M416", in the PC version.
• Rainbow Six Siege features the HK416C carbine, which is issued to the GSG-9 defender recruit and Jäger; it's one of only two assault rifles available to Defenders in the game, including the later-added K1A.
• Rick Flag uses a customized HK416 in Suicide Squad (2016).
• The HK416 appears as the 416 in Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the second unlockable assault rifle, but can be unlocked by default with DLC. It has been adopted as the standard assault rifle of the US Military in-game, and is used by Sam in the Airstrip, Briggs in the Transit Yard, US soldiers in the Detention Facility and Navy SEALs in the LNG Terminal.
• The HK416 appears as the HX AP-15 in Hitman: Absolution, used by penthouse guards in "Blackwater Park" and the Blackwater Tactical Team in "Countdown". It can be collected for use in Contracts mode, and is silenced by default in that mode.
• The HK416 appears as a DLC weapon in Tomb Raider (2013), under the same HX AP-15 name as Hitman: Absolution.
• The title character of John Wick makes frequent use of Coharie Arms' CA-415 clone; his is fitted with a shortened barrel, an EOTech holographic sight, and a vertical foregrip.
• HK416s see extensive use in the hands of the heroes in The Expendables 2 and 3.
• The HK416 is the main armament of the protagonists in not one, not two, but three military special forces dramas that all debuted around the same time in Fall 2017: The Brave, SEAL Team, and Valor.
• Reportedly the most common 5-star unit in Girls' Frontline. Part of the 404 squad led by UMP45. She is one of the few characters that actually acts like a proper soldier, and her excellent stats reflect this. She deeply resents the AR Team (M16 especially) and hates being called HKM4, a reference to the weapon's original advertising name. HK416 also retains the weapon in her appearance as Clukay in Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud.
• In World War Z, the HK416 is one of the Tier 3 weapons and is listed as the Assault Carbine (or HW416). It’s a fast-firing gun with a considerably large magazine size, potent damage and manageable recoil, and is one of the best guns in the game with it shredding through crowds of zombies like wet cardboard. Like the other guns, it can be upgraded with various attachments, including larger magazines, a longer barrel, a vertical foregrip, and lasers and reflex sights.
• In Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online Volume 6, during the Test Play battle, Pitohui uses an HK416C as her weapon. It is explicitly noted that she collapses the stock to its shortest length and holds the gun out in front of her using the carrying strap as a stabilizer, in essence using the firearm more like a short-barrelled rifle or AR pistol.

Heckler & Koch XM8

The carbine model of a weapon formerly developed to serve as the primary assault rifle of the U.S. Army. Based on the G36, the main assault rifle of the German Army. By swapping the barrel and stock, it can be converted into several different variations — a squad automatic weapon, a sniper rifle, and others. Uses 5.56x45mm ammo. Holds 30 rounds. The built-in dot sight allows for extremely accurate aiming.

—Description, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

H&K's second attempt to salvage the OICW program, the XM8 is a G36 mechanism in a plastic casing based on the bottom half of the original XM29 design. The weapon had some promise, but the Army ended up canceling the program in 2005, likely due to it being heavier than the current generation M4, the short life of its optics and reports of its handguard and parts of its upper receiver melting during sustained fire. The fact that it used proprietary accessory rails incompatible with the existing NATO-standard Picatinny rails didn't help either. Even if all the problems were solved (the melting issue and the optics' battery life were solved early in its design, and the last revision, the XM8 R, added a traditional Picatinny rail above the carry handle), it still was judged not to be a sufficient improvement over the M4 to be worth the added expense.

The XM8 had its glory days in the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, ironically immediately after the cancellation of its real-world project, where it seemed like it was everywhere in video games and occasionally movies set 20 Minutes into the Future.^note very likely used because of the futuristic plastic casing That said, there is some precedent for the XM8 appearing after the project's cancellation - H&K attempting to market the rifle globally after the US rejected it eventually lead to the Royal Malaysian Navy's PASKAL adopting it to replace some stocks of the M4 carbine in 2010.

The XM8 has several different variants: the standard version with a 12.5-inch barrel, a compact carbine variant with a 9-inch barrel, a marksman variant with a 20-inch barrel, and a light machine gun variant with a 20-inch barrel and a folding bipod.

---

Anime & Manga

• Lutz & R in Jormungand briefly test out an XM8 early in the series while they are sailing off the coast of East Africa. Probably in a nod to how rare it is, this is the only time the weapon appears in the series.
• Sousuke from Full Metal Panic! is shown wielding an XM8 in the first episode of the fourth anime season, Invisible Victory. Since the story is set in the late 1990s, it's not unreasonable to imagine that Mithril got their hands on at least one.
• Team T-S from Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online all use XM8s as their weapons, at least in the anime. In the light novel, only 2 out of 6 members of T-S use the XM8.

Films — Live-Action

• Used by the traitors in xXx: State of the Union; in fact, these are modified G36K rifles.
• Carried by Homeland Security officers in Children of Men; the prop was an airsoft gun for some reason fitted with the non-export sight of a G36.
• The first episode of Mortal Kombat: Legacy had this weapon in the hands of Black Dragon thugs. Possibly because of its unique appearance, the XM8 was depicted as a directed-energy weapon.

Video Games

• Call of Duty: Black Ops II features the XM8 for use, where it's a four-round burst rifle. In a rare aversion to the norm, it's actually called the "M8A1" in-game; apparently in the Black Ops 'verse, U.S. Forces adopted it as their main rifle and it even went through a revision^note given that it actually has rails instead of the PCAP holes, fires in four-round bursts, and has a slightly-larger magazine capacity to facilitate that, thus the name change.
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots had the US Army and Marines use it as a standard weapon. Then again, it is an alternate timeline. Then again again, it would be called the M8 if it had actually been adopted. Snake can find one in South America, and it's about on-par with the M4 Custom he receives in the Middle East, though with less customization (it can take the grenade launcher and has a built-in red dot sight); likewise, all of Rat Patrol under Meryl uses different variants of them (Jonathan gets a normal one with grenade launcher, Ed has a Sharpshooter and Akiba uses a Compact). In Metal Gear Ac!d, it's Snake's signature weapon on all official art, is very powerful, and causes random status effects (including making the enemy catch fire). In Metal Gear Ac!d 2, it's less powerful and in less art, but still causes random status effects.
• In the Crysis series, the main US assault rifle is the SCAR and its stripped-down urban combat variety the SCARAB. Despite the similar name, it's almost entirely based on the XM8 rather than a reference to the FN SCAR or the SOCOM SCAR project.
• Seen in Ghost Recon 2 has one of the main assault rifles used by the Ghosts. It returns in Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and its sequel.
• Appears in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, without the top-mounted scope, in the hands of one P.L.A.V. soldier, in an out-of-the-way area of the map, and is named (appropriately enough) Prototype Rifle. It's also one of the best assault rifles, making it a bonus for anyone that decides to explore Venezuela. And then it becomes the standard weapon for Allied soldiers.
• The Legionnaires of Battlefield: Bad Company use this weapon, just without the standard scope, going with iron sights. Also available as an unlock for the Assault class in multiplayer. It shows up again in Bad Company 2 as the new signature weapon for most of B-Company, save for Sweetwater, who uses an M60 machine gun instead. Multiplayer also features the LMG and Compact variants for the Medic and Engineer classes.
• Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 features the XM8 in all varieties.
• The House of the Dead: OVERKILL's assault rifle is modeled after this gun, despite the game being set in 1991.
• ARMA II features multiple variants of the XM8. Operation Arrowhead's "Private Military Company" DLC makes this the standard weapon system of the eponymous PMC, and when they return in ArmA III's "Western Sahara" creator DLC they use semi-fictional "XMS" rifles which are for all intents and purposes a bullpup conversion of the XM8.
• Appears in Saints Row 2 as an unlockable weapon, called the "AR-50 XMAC". Masako teams use it in cutscenes, but in regular gameplay they're downgraded to the M4. A special variant with a grenade launcher attached can also be unlocked.
• Shows up in UFO Aftershock as the most accurate bullet-based assault rifle (the AK-47 is more powerful, and the M4 is more of an all-rounder). Considering you can manufacture your own, the numbers limitation isn't an issue, but the AK-47 tends to be better due to sheer damage capability.
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, released in 2005 and set 20 Minutes into the Future in 2007, depicts an early-version XM8 as the standard-issue weapon of both Army National Guard troops in the New York map and, rather oddly, South Korean soldiers in the Seoul level.
  • In Double Agent, the XM8 is used by Moss's men in New York in the Xbox/Gamecube/Wii/PS2 version, and the SWAT team at the end of the PS3/PC/360 version with laser sights attached.
• Appears in Combat Arms as an NX Standard (bought with real money).
• The XM8 R appears in Rainbow Six: Vegas and Vegas 2, presumably having been adopted as the M8 in that series.
• The Patten PK470 Assault Rifle from FEAR 2: Project Origin is heavily based on the XM8, with some features taken from the M4 (the stock is the same collapsible type as fits on an AR-15 buffer tube, and the reload animation indicates a bolt-release paddle on the side) and the G36 (exposed gas piston). It also comes with an ACOG. Pre-release images showed two weapons from the same base, a "PK470" with rail-mounted ironsights and a "PK570A" with an ACOG; the released game ended up using the latter model with the former name attached, the former's model only showing up in the hands of plastic soldiers in a themed map from the multiplayer.
• The Dragon from Perfect Dark is an assault rifle based on the design of the XM8, as is the SuperDragon (which is same thing with an underslung, mag-fed grenade launcher possibly inspired by the one integrated on the XM29). Appropriately enough, it's described as being a newly-adopted rifle for the Army, and outside of shock troops in the laboratory of dataDyne, who made the weapon, the only other users are guards at Area 51 and military escorts in and around Air Force One. Possibly just as appropriate, a predecessor to the SuperDragon seen in Perfect Dark Zero is instead based on the G36K.
• A 4-star AR in Girls' Frontline. She is a cocky girl who tends to speak her thoughts freely, but with skills to match her big talk. G36 also considers her as one of her little sisters.
• A curious XM8/G36K hybrid with a thumbhole stock appears in Homefront's multiplayer as the XM10. Its description claims that it was part of a project that lost its funding in the (fictional) economic collapse of 2018, and that some prototypes found their way to the field.

HS Produkt VHS

This rifle came all the way from Eastern Europe to shoot some Peggies.

—Description, Far Cry 5

After The Yugoslav Wars came to an end, Croatia wished to bring their army up to NATO standards and replace their APS-95 assault rifles (a copy of the Israeli Galil) and the myriad of Soviet-era weaponry obtained during the Croatian War of Independence. HS Produkt, who already tried (and failed) to build several bullpup variants of the AKM, stepped up to the task and released the VHS (Višenamjenska Hrvatska Strojnica — "multifunctional Croatian machine gun") in 2007, in both standard (D) and short-barrel (K) variants.

Although its first variation bears a physical resemblance to the French FAMAS - so much so that there were plans very early in its design process to even use the same lever-delayed blowback operation - the VHS' insides are completely different, utilizing a short-stroke gas piston and a different disassembly system. While praised for being quite sturdy and able to use rifle grenades, the VHS' main problems are a lack of 3-round burst mode and poor ergonomics, mainly a lack of ambidextrous features and a weirdly-positioned fire selector (inside the trigger guard). In an interesting tidbit, while the prototype of the VHS was compatible with STANAG magazines (the ones used by the M16 and M4), the production version is instead compatible with German G36 mags due to the Croatian army purchasing some of them for evaluation (passing them in favor of their indigenous rifle), in order to not let the magazines go to waste, though with the magwell being easily replaceable to use other magazines. In 2013, HS Produkt released the new version of the VHS, the VHS-2. Fixing several of the issues of its older brother, the new variant can equip an underbarrel grenade launcher in addition to rifle grenades, as well as using a integrated 1.5x telescopic sight/carry handle combination or regular iron sights with Picatinny rails, and can be easily configured for right- and left-side ejection.^note All that's needed is partial disassembly to pull out the bolt, spin it and the cam pin the other way, then reassemble, making sure to remove a pin holding the unused ejection port closed and move it to the other side to pin the other port instead. Even without doing this, HS Produkt claims it can be extensively fired from the "wrong" shoulder thanks to a shelf built into the cheek rest just behind the ejection port, which (at least in theory) keeps ejected brass off of the shooter's face so long as they keep their cheek behind that shelf. The rifle is also unique in having an adjustable buttstock in a bullpup design, although the fact that it is a bullpup means this is mostly useless in practice since even at the shortest length it will adjust to the length of pull is already fairly long, comparable to guns like the G3's infamously and uncomfortably-long stock.

While successful outside of Croatia, with its main foreign users being the Albanian, Bosnian and Iraqi police and the Cameroonian and Togolese militaries and Romania also looking to produce it, one of the biggest claims to fame of the VHS-2 was to reach the final phase of the French Armed Forces' bid to replace the FAMAS, with a variant modified to accept FAMAS magazines known as the VHS-F2 competing with world-class guns such as the IWI Tavor (which would've been produced in France by local armorer Verney-Carron), FN SCAR-L, Sig MCX, Beretta ARX160 and the HK416 (which was the ultimate winner of the bid).

In January 2022, Springfield Armory announced it was importing the VHS-K2 variant into the United States firearms market as the Springfield Hellion. Other than the expected semi-auto-only trigger group, it differs from the military version primarily by coming standard with a STANAG magazine well to take AR-15 mags, since those are much more common among American civilian shooters than G36 mags, flip-up ironsights integrated into the top Picatinny rail, and the other rails on the handguard swapped out for M-LOK slots.

---

• The VHS-K2 makes its first major film appearance in Hobbs & Shaw, being used by many characters.
• The VHS-D2 appears in Far Cry 5 as the BP-2 with a hefty pricetag and a performance to match.
  • It reappears in Far Cry: New Dawn and Far Cry 6 as Rank 4 and Rank 2 weapon respectively.
• The VHS-D2 appears in PAYDAY 2 with the Dragan character pack as the Lions' Roar, whose solid performance is diminished by a lack of mod options.
• The older VHS-D appears in Cross Fire, with its most noticeable feature being the ability to bayonet opponents.
• The VHS-K2 appears in Survarium as an assault rifle for the Scavengers, unlocked at level 10. It is one of the stronger assault rifles in the game, with a fire rate of 850 RPM and generally decent stats in recoil control, spread and accuracy with fair reloads.
• Insurgency: Sandstorm features the VHS-D2 as an assault rifle for the Security faction, costing 5 supply points and being available for the Commander, Observer, Rifleman and Demolitions classes. It can be fitted with the VHS-BG grenade launcher with either smoke or HE shells. It has less velocity and penetration than the M4, despite its longer barrel, which is probably purely for gameplay purposes to balance out having a faster rate of fire.
• The VHS-D2 is a usable assault rifle in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, with its blueprint being found in Whitestone Farm in Fen Bog.
• The VHS-D2 appears in Warface as a Legendary assault rifle. It uses the integrated 3x scope by default, and can be fitted with a unique VHS-BG grenade launcher, incorrectly depicted as muzzle-loading.
• The VHS-K2 appears as the CAR K8 in Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2.
• Evan McCauley uses the VHS-K2 with an ACOG/RMR stacked optic during the mansion shootout in Infinite.
• The VHS-D2 shows up in Trepang2 as the standard assault rifle of the game, able to be modified with a Laser Sight, a suppressor, and/or replacing the full-length top rail with the integrated 1.5x optical sight/carry handle combo.
• In Encryption Straffe, it's prominently featured as the standard issue rifle of the Illyrican Rangers, a Private Military Contractors based in the Balkans.
• The VHS-K2, modified with a charging handle and top rail resembling the MSBS Grot B, was added to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II with Season 4 as the "Tempus Razorback".
• The Season 6 update of Battlefield 2042 adds the VHS-K2 as the "VHX D3".
• Red Room operatives in Black Widow (2021) carry VHS-K2s, replacing the slightly-anachronistic G36C used in flashbacks, with mixtures of the integrated ironsights or EOTechs.
• Original VHS-Ks are used by Black Swan operators in SAS: Rise of the Black Swan.
• Mercs on the ship in Morbius (2022) use the VHS-K2, fitted with stacked ACOG/RMR sights and flashlights on the underbarrel rails.

---