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  • Defictionalization:
    • For April Fools' Day 2022, Ian took a look at a working prop of the Type 93, AKA the Chinese Assault Rifle from Fallout 3, all while presenting the backstory of that series as if it is real history and even giving explanations for some of the weird things about the model, like the oversized RPD-style handguard (which was apparently meant to give a more effective grip when using a bayonet to fight in melee) and its 24-round capacity (which was a quirk resulting from hastily repurposing 7.62 Soviet magazines to hold 5.56 NATO).
    • He did the same thing for Christmas 2023 with a working prop of the M90 Close Assault Weapons System, AKA the shotgun from the original Halo trilogy, giving explanations for things like how the M45 shotgun from Halo: Reach onwards is more or less identical in form and function (which he suggests is because the M90 was a licensed copy of the M45), why the receiver is upside-down from traditional shotguns (it helps soldiers wearing bulky combat armor ensure they can properly load it), and even why the UNSC would still be using shotguns 500 years in the future (Covenant energy shielding is defeated more easily based on the mass of what hits it rather than the velocity, and the lead or tungsten balls it shoots deform when hitting the hull of a ship, making it scarily effective against Covenant boarders).
  • Dueling Works: In what seems to be a wild coincidence, Forgotten Weapons and the smaller firearms channel "Bloke on the Range" uploaded videos about the French AA52 machine gun within an hour of each other.
  • Follow the Leader: Forgotten Weapons and InRange TV have inspired other channels to follow their lead on a few things.
    • The InRange TV mud test was hugely popular (especially for how the first round of it upset a great deal of conventional wisdom about AR-15 and AK type rifles, particularly the notion that AKs handle all adverse conditions better than AR-15s) and has resulted in many other firearms channels doing their own, such as "AK Guy" Brandon Herrera attempting to redeem the AK from its defeat at the hands of the AR-15 in the mud test, only to get the exact same result of turning the AK into functionally a straight-pull bolt-action, Kentucky Ballistics performing a series of tests on a Desert Eagle that ended with it dismally failing a similar mud test to InRange's, and Garand Thumb performing tests on several rifles at once both with the guns covered with mud and frozen through.
    • A viewer submitted a question to Ian for one of his Q&As that took an interesting twist on the very common question of "It is [year] and you are a defense minister of a newly-independent country and you are tasked with acquiring new small arms, what do you pick?", with the twist being that "You are a traitor and your goal is to sabotage the newly-independent country's military with the worst weapons and logistical situation you think you can get past a panel of politicians". After he answered that question along with the spins he'd give each weapon to convince a civilian panel that these were actually a good idea, he also took a question of "The traitorous defense minister has been found out and executed. You are his replacement, a loyal officer, and you have been tasked with making the best use of these weapons, which we can't replace because the traitor spent all of our money". Since Ian felt the country needed a name, he borrowed the name of Elbonia, a fictional country from Dilbert known for its petty conflicts and dubious decision-making. After this, several other military history channels like Drachinifel (naval history) and the Chieftain (tank history) took up the "Elbonia challenge" as well, covering both questions within their own respective fields of expertise.
  • What Could Have Been: In February 2022, Headstamp Publishing announced their latest book, a memoir by a foreign volunteer who fought in Ukraine in 2014/15 in the Azov Battalion. Unfortunately, the author was found to frequently post far-right and neo-Nazi views. The surrounding controversy ultimately led to the book being canceled when the site used to run the funding campaign pulled out of the project, and Headstamp decided not to find another funding site.

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