Note: This thread was proposed by Adept and covers Rare Vehicles in addition to Rare Guns.

Brought up in the now-concluded discussion for Seldom-Seen Species, which saw the trope cut, with the concern that these two pages just a gun/vehicle-version of the "aversions of Small Reference Pools"-type tropes that's really not a trope.

Rare Guns has actually been been brought up in a previous TRS, but there was no wick check, and the discussion kind of meandered before it clocked out and was closed for inactivity. The issue cited in the OP was:

I believe the previous OP's concern was spot on, even if I couldn't really parse what they were actually suggesting in the first sentence.

The wick checks for both RareGuns and Rare Vehicles show that most of the entries simply say that the guns/vehicle in question is produced in limited numbers, uncommon or never actually made it past the blueprint/prototype (37.7% for Rare Guns and 59.6% for Rare Vehicles), but none of them really show that the real-life rarity of these products have any significance in the work they appear in (they don't appear to be treated differently than the "common" types of weapons/vehicles that are also featured in the work, or even that they are rare in the work's setting).

We do have examples where the guns/vehicles have a unique/cool appearance, but those seem sufficiently covered by Cool Guns and Cool Car, and the additional fact that it is rare IRL seems to be The Same, but More Specific (the description of Cool Guns even states that Rare Guns are basically Cool Guns + rare, and Rare Guns say that Cool Guns are basically a less-rare version of itself).

Other examples in the wick check where there's more context beyond "gun/vehicle, but rare" are also already covered by other tropes, e.g. Arbitrary Gun Power and Arbitrary Maximum Range for guns that have different abilities that they do in real life, Shotguns Are Just Better or Revolvers Are Just Better for when the game favours a particular type of gun over other types. Power Equals Rarity also exists for examples where the rare objects is treated as better than the non-rare counterparts.

Rare Vehicles have a slightly more diverse usage, but the one with most usage (vehicle won as a "rare" reward) all come from the same game (Forza), and even if the concept of a rare item/object/reward that is difficult to unlock/obtain is tropeworthy, there's no reason to keep it car-specific. There aren't enough examples of the other uses (which has about 2-3 wicks each) to spin new tropes from, though some of them might be yardable.

1. An Entry with a Bang!: Models such as the WA 2000 will be re-entering production.
2. Lupin III: Prison of the Past: Yatagarasu finds a Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver when he's scrounging around for weapons after losing the anti-materiel rifle. The revolver has only one cartridge loaded but that one shot is enough for Jigen to shoot a detonator out of Finnegan's hand. Near the end of the movie, Yatagarasu is shown playing around with the revolver, just before Zenigata tells him to put it back in the evidence bin.
3. Cool Guns: For cool guns that are also rarely found in real life, see Rare Guns.
4. Guns Akimbo: Madison Lee fires two golden Desert Eagle .50 Action Express both simultaneously and Woo Style (they are chambered in .50 Action Express as you can see in a lot of close-ups on the muzzles). Not that there was any recoil distracting her, by the way. Still not enough? There's a Mongolian earlier in the film dual-wielding belt-fed machine guns in full-auto mode.
5. The Raid: Uses a Beretta 93R in the car chase scene.
6. FalloutNewVegas.Tropes A To B: The "Grenade Launcher" (a different weapon) is a China Lake NATIC. The Holorifle from Dead Money also resembles a China Lake, though only visually - the internal components have been stripped and replaced with advanced Hard Light weaponry.
7. That Poor Cat: In The Mask when the eponymous character tosses away a Tommy gun he's just been firing.
8. City Hunter: In the anime, the duel between Ryo and Geruma, the best hitman of the Lodos Mafia. Geruma was armed with an .44 Auto Mag, a gun that, due to its form and weight, wasn't a good choice for a quick draw... And yet Geruma managed to outdraw Ryo.
9. Real Life: R. Lee Ermey test-fired a Type 92 in both Lock N'Load and Mail Call where he addresses the gun's really heavy weight, low rate of fire, and horrible tendency to jam if any mistakes were made by the gun crew.
10. Hawkeye: Enemies: The Silencer carries a German Luger hand pistol as his primary weapon.
11. Sword Art Online: How Death Gun managed to get his L115A3 suppressed sniper rifle, as opposed to Sinon, who was really lucky.
12. Fist of Legend: Fujita uses a Nambu Type 94 to execute the traitor.
13. Fate/Zero: Kiritsugu Emiya:Firing One-Handed: Uses his Calico M950 and Thompson Contender thus, despite the latter being modified to fire rifle bullets.
14. Commandos: Arbitrary Gun Power: All pistols, whether they be chambered in .45ACP, 9mm Parabellum or 8mm Nambu, kill in three shots. The Stg44 kills in two shots.
15. Revolvers Are Just Better: Dirty Harry is probably responsible for popularising Magnum-loaded revolvers as the Hand Cannon of choice; this has faded a little in recent years, with the first choice for movie hero personal artillery more likely to be a .50AE Desert Eagle, much to the annoyance of gun enthusiasts.
16. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade: Ranging from the C96 "Broomhandle" Mauser to the StG44 assault rifle. Trope-slashed with Cool Guns
17. John Doe: But he knows everything, every single scene of every single movie, the composition of bullets from all sorts of Rare Guns, the full history of Jack the Ripper, etc.
18. The Professional: The Spectre M4 is one of the guns in Leon's possession. The extended cut shows him cocking the gun, but not using it.
19. Phoenix Nights: Max's Broomhandle Mauser, which he uses to try and carry out a hit in the second series. Alas, he can't quite bring himself to do it.
20. Adam Sandler S 1 E 12 Im So Wasted: A cap gun was used by Joe's friend, which is proof that he did not kill himself.
21. Red Dawn (1984): Strelnikov carries a Finnish Jatimatic submachine gun.
22. Band of Brothers: A cheerful young man who dreams of obtaining a Luger to bring home as a souvenir.
23. Swiss-Army Weapon: Speaking of shotguns, the Pancor Jackhammer, besides also potentially being fully automatic, had a drum magazine that was supposed to be usable as an anti-personnel mine. Unfortunately, neither the Jackhammer nor its landmine-magazine worked very well, and ironically enough the weapon's own Crippling Overspecialization^note  Its gas-operated blow-forward autorevolver mechanism could only accept 2-3/4-inch standard 12-gauge shells. 3-inch magnum loads wouldn't fit. And even on the best of days, it was extremely finicky about which standard shells it would actually work with. That's not even scratching the surface of the Jackhammer's problems (and inability to actually get through a single magazine without jamming) killed any chance of working out the bugs.

1. Shotguns Are Just Better: The SPAS-12 in the Half-Life series counts. Its power is overall on par with the .357 Magnum, but with much more plentiful ammunition in return for needing to get closer to make it count.
2. Skyfall
   • Patrice carries a Glock 18 in the pre-titles sequence. What's notable about this is that it's loaded with a 100 round drum magazine.
   • In the climax, Bond carries his father's double rifle, an Anderson Wheeler in .500 Nitro Express.
3. I Come in Peace: The "alien guns" are actually Calico M-950s with an additional LED toggle display on the side (apparently showcasing various power levels-the higher one good at making Stuff Blowing Up and turning people into Ludicrous Gibs). Trope-slashed with Cool Guns

1. Flowers of War: One of the few pieces of media to actually depict Japanese soldiers using the relatively unknown Type 11 light machine gun, rather than the more iconic Type 96. Justified, as they were just introducing the new gun into the arsenal at the time the film is set in.
2. Ciaphas Cain: An in-universe example, in that twin-linked heavy bolters are not the standard turret armament on Chimera armoured transports, multilasers are. Downplayed, however, as forge worlds churn out billions of both, so not that rare. Also, the digital weapon Amberly uses is so rare in the Damocles region that nobody present even knows what it is until she uses it. Seems like a shoehorn. Just because it's not as common as some other weapons doesn't mean it's rare. Especially if billions of the items are regularly produced.
3. Hand Cannon: One of Sable's preferred weapons is a chrome .357 Magnum pepperbox. As a prototype that never made it into production, it also counts as an instance of Rare Guns.
4. Miami Vice: Crockett's 10mm Bren Ten pistol from the first two seasons, two of which were custom built (and rechambered in .45 ACP since there were no 10mm blanks in 1984) for the show. Despite the Bren Ten being an indisputable commercial failure, it still has a cult following largely due to its presence on the show, and the custom finish job used on the Bren Tens in the show (Mann had the slide of both guns given a hard chrome finish to make them more visible on camera during night-time scenes) has even come to be known as "Miami Vicing".
5. Gunsmith Cats: The series as a whole is fond of this trope, as is spiritual predecessor Riding Bean. Some examples:
   • In Riding Bean, an extremely rare Semmerling manually operated repeater is used.
   • In the anime, Radinov uses a rare British Welrod silenced pistol.
   • Rally's signature pistol is a first-generation CZ75, a rare pistol with near-mythical stature amongst gun otaku. She's so used to it that in one chapter tragedy ensues because she refuses to take a shot during a Hostage Situation that she would do unhesitatingly with the CZ because she was using an equally-rare Sig-Sauer instead.
   • Then there's Rally's personal gun collection, which is virtually a modern arms museum in itself.
6. Horatio Hornblower: The set of double barrelled, rifled, percussion pistols Lady Barbara gives Hornblower [...] were likely the only of their kind in Eastern Europe.
7. Monster Musume MON: Dual wields a pair of Street Sweeper shotguns in the manga. Not many were made, and are generally inferior to other modern semi-automatic shotguns. [1] [2] Plus partial complaining about the weapons' inferiority compared to other weapons.
8. Was: For a reason unknown as of yet, Lyle particularly treasures an original Czech Army CZ 75 model, much rarer (and of better quality) than the export version.
9. Tropes Q to Z: naturally a few examples, in a story full of all kinds of guns.
   • Ryuujou at one point wields the AWC G-2, an American semi-automatic sniper rifle, of which only less than a hundred were ever manufactured.
   • The German President-Chancellor, Retia Wedekind, carries a fifty-caliber Luger pistol as her sidearm.
   • Samidare and Suzukaze end up receiving actual Japanese Type-38 and Type-99 battle rifles, respectively, as they had apparently been brought to American after World War II as keepsakes from the war by returning American GI's who fought the Japanese in the Pacific theater and sat for some eighty years in private gun collections before being eventually given to the two destroyers.
   • Novgorod, a Russian ship girl dating back even before World War I, keeps an old Russian Nagant M-1895 that was standard-issue during her time as an active warship.
10. I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: In The Nagasaki Vector, the pilot of a Time Machine that accidentally traveled sideways into an alternate history is a trained and experienced pistoleer and the proud owner of a rare match-grade handgun.
11. Sudden Impact: Harry's backup gun is an AMP Auto Mag 180 (made by the designer himself from parts he had in his basement). AMP was bankrupt by the time the film was made, and very few Auto Mags were made during production.
12. Crossfire Trail: Rafe's '76 Centennial is one of the less-common varieties of the Winchester repeating rifle. Joe's Weapon Of Choice is an Evans Repeater because, "It's got 28 bullets, and I ain't a very good shot." But Dorn takes the cake with his scoped Remington-Keene bolt-action repeater, of which less than 5,000 were ever made.
13. Sharpe: He uses a Nock gun, a seven-barrelled musket developed in limited numbers by the Royal Navy.
14. Sons of Guns:
    • Almost once an episode, a customer shows up with a rare firearm that someone at the shop gets over-excited about. Most of these guns wind up repaired and fired, with interesting results. Some of the older pistols can get downright scary to shoot, because they're unpredictable as to whether or not they may simply explode in your hand.
    • Also inverted, as they've had several guns come across that, while sometimes still rare, are not as rare as thought or outright fakes; see the Coffee-Grinder rifle and the pair of Lugers.
    • Averted when an owner brings in a family heirloom shotgun that was partially destroyed in a fire. Despite Will stating it was a common mail-order shotgun with minimal value, the gun was fixed up and made to fire. Will notes that the value of a gun was outweighed by the family history of the gun itself, which was important to note.
15. Fate Zero: A WA2000^note only 176 were ever made, most of which are in private collectionswith thermal and night-vision scopes; none of the characters mention how these guns were smuggled into Japan, of all places. Might fit better in Improperly Placed Firearms.
16. Our Weapons Will Be Boxy in the Future
    • Call of Duty: Ghosts averts this with large ensemble of real life Cool Guns, although for this particular installment the developers resort to Rare Guns a lot.
    • The Walther WA 2000, a rare bullpup marksman rifle with a rectangular profile mixed with wood furnishing, a black polymer version also exists but finding an example of that is like asking for a falling star and a blue moon at the same time.
17. Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: Battlefield 1: Though base gunplay is mostly realistic, the depiction of its subject matter has been a subject of controversy due to relying much more on experimental and far less used (but mostly true-to-life) automatic weapons. In addition, there are very powerful Elite Class pickups, but are mostly within the range of expectations for a man with special equipment (and are still mostly inspired by real life). Hardcore exists as usual, and some servers also restrict weapons to restore historical accuracy. '''So basically
18. We Are Not the Wehrmacht: G11: This unusual gun was supposed to be the G3's successor and was the worlds' first assault rifle with caseless ammunition. While the technical issues were mostly solved, it was too expensive to procure after the unification, and less than a thousand were actually fielded. They are still mothballed in a few places; whether there is any ammunition for them is another question.
19. Battlefield 4:
    • In an example of rare guns being used for Shown Their Work, BF4 has multiple weapons that are based on the AK-12, but in completely different weapon classes. These include an LMG, a DMR, a carbine, and even a shotgun. These were all proposed alternate AK-12 variants which the AK-12 could become by switching out its modular components, including the barrel, rechambered in different calibers and used in different roles. The developers probably anticipated that Russia would fully adopt this family of weapons by 2021, but unfortunately, the AK-12 model (and its proposed variants) seen in the game was scrapped in 2016 and replaced with a newer production version, which ended up with entirely different (though still related) weapons taking over for the other roles; although the carbine and LMG versions still exist in some form as the AK-12K and RPK-16, it's unlikely we will see an AK-12-pattern DMR or shotgun in the future considering the DMR role has essentially been filled by the Chukavin semi-automatic rifle, while shotguns play such a limited role in a military setting that Russia's Saiga-12s probably won't be replaced any time soon.
    • The famously rare Mateba Unica 6 is a new revolver added in the Dragon's Teeth expansion. The weapon's real life production is known to be extremely limited but no actual numbers are known; what is known, however, is that the number of Matebas in North America is in the single digits.
    • Similarly, the MP-412 REX revolver is an extremely rare Russian prototype and it's unknown whether or not it saw any substantial production. Only one video showcasing the revolver exists online.
    • The extremely rare Magpul PDR prototype returns from Battlefield 3.
    • The Groza rifles featured in the game are also quite rare, as is the USAS-12 battle pickup.
20. Hot Fuzz: Tom Weaver decides to attack Angel with a blunderbuss, which is an early type of shotgun that was obsolete by the mid-19th century. A modern day shotgun probably would have been cheaper—and were, in fact, widely available in the evidence room at the time—but it probably wouldn't have been kosher for him to keep a modern weapon within arm's reach at the police station. Not said to be rare, but simply an obsolete model.

1. Video Games H-P: The New Conglomerate have a weapon called a Jackhammer^note (not the Real Life Pancor Jackhammer), a heavy triple-barrelled semi-automatic shotgun with a rapid-fire 3-shot burst mode. Get caught on the business end of this bad boy and you'll have to be scraped off the wall with a spatula.
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops III:
   • The Drakon is a Singaporean hybrid of the Dragunov and the WA2000, with a side-mounted magazine vaguely reminiscent of the FG 42.
   • The M8A7 is a descendant of Black Ops IIs M8A1, and they even share similar real-world bases (the A1 is a barely-modified XM8', the A7 is somewhat reminiscent of the SL8 - both weapons based on the G36).
3. Red Alert 3: Paradox: The Imperial "Type-1 Carbine" is basically a Kinetic Burst XM8 all the way down to being too complicated and being meant for every role an rifle-caliber weapon could possibly used in.
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops: Underbarrel flamethrowers. While the exact model seen is pure fiction, Finland has experimented with the M/44 — an underslung flamethrower for the Suomi KP/-31. It never went into full production; only 40 of them were made.

1. Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: One of the enemy ace squadrons you fight flies the F-15 S/MTD; this is in part justified in that they're actually infiltrators of your country's air force, and their counterparts in the enemy fly Su-35s.
2. Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War: Special notice goes to the version of the mission that pits Galm Team against Sorcerer Squadron, since the latter is a team of pilots, each with an F-15 S/MTD.
3. Automobiles: Every production Koenigsegg is a Swedish hypercar with an American muscle-styled V8 engine,
4. Video Games: Driver: San Francisco in addition to the usual Ruf business features the stupidly rare Aston Martin Cygnet, presumably to have a Japanese compact like the Toyota iQ it's based on (Toyota does not allow licensing its vehicles outside of games with closed tracks).
5. Ace Combat: Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: In 5, the 8492nd Squadron flies the F-15 S/MTD up until the final mission, where they fly Su-47s instead. Your squadron's official plane is the F-14A Tomcat.
6. Birds of Steel: The Heinkel 162 and the Messerschmitt 163 are the most obvious examples.
7. Close Combat: The Jagdtiger and King Tiger tanks definitely both count.
8. H.A.W.X.: Lightning Bruiser: The best planes (like the F-22 Raptor and the Su-47 Berkut) are like this.
9. Microsoft Flight Simulator: If you choose to tail the Challenger jet after the helicopter portion of "Tokyo Executive Transport" in X and match it's altitude to stay hidden, you'll encounter a Russian Ekranoplan briefly sailing/flying(?) in the same direction as said Challenger once you enter the foggy overcast area.
10. The Crew 2: Artistic License – Cars: Subverted with the Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic as well the Mazda Savanna RX-3 (introduced in Season 6 Episode 2: Dominion Frozen). Both are correctly depicted as Right-Hand Drive, though the RX-3 was also available in LHD form in United States.
11. Wangan Midnight: Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6RR (2021 (Japan), 2021 (International)) — current version in Japan, Australia and Asia Pacific, —Adds the Nissan GT-R50 by Italdesign, Bingo Challenge and four new BGM tracks. The overseas version has skipped to this version.
12. Interface: Cool Plane: Episode 21 features P-59 Airacomet jet fighters that shoot down Mischief.
13. Call of Duty: You had to escort an M12 self-propelled gun through the streets while fending off Germans with Panzerschrecks.
14. Sky Odyssey: Finding the parts to make the shinden /shinden-kai and getting all the other planes in the game.

1. Metallicar Syndrome: If your protagonists, Alice and Bob, are of the Anti-Hero variety, they will drive a rare and/or unique-looking vehicle in order to show how utterly badass they are.
2. Death Race 2000: The yellow car with the hinged roof that Frankenstein and Anne drive off in at the end of the film is a Sterling Nova, a very rare American kit car. Notable for its ridiculously cool looks and ridiculous design that does away with traditional doors.
3. Rockabilly Zombie Weekend: The production is LOADED with cool cars thanks to the rockabilly theme. The wedding in particular has hot rods, muscle cars, classic sports cars, and vintage 40s pickups. In particular is a black Mercury Marauder X-100◊ driven by Becky, of which less than 9000 were made.
4. Ace Combat: Just Plane Wrong: Averted for the most part, although it does indulge in Rare Vehicles quite a bit. Also subverted as some implausibly cool-looking superfighters have been successfully modelled as airworthy under the limitations of early 21st century flight technology.

1. Over the Garden Wall: One issue has a crew of soldiers who sail across grass plains in a giant upside-down hat. At the end the hat gets sunk by a giant washtub being piloted by Greg.
2. Unbeatable Banzuke: There are courses where competitors have to ride on unicycles, skateboards, a pogo stick and a giant rubber ball.

1. Macross Frontier Main Triangle: Cool Car: Her Ferrari California in Nyan Cli. Doubles as a Rare Car because it has a 6-speed manual.
2. Blood Stone: omerov has his own ekranoplan, a large, plane-like vehicle that uses the ground effect phenomenon to go superfast in calm waters. Thing is, those kinds of vehicles have had limited usage due to being Awesome, but Impractical and the ekranoplan that Pomerov's is based on, the Lun-class ekranoplan, is the only one of its kind and was retired from the Black Sea Fleet in the 90s.
3. Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Game-Breaker: Also in Drift, the Subaru Impreza 22B-STi (GC8) deserve a special mention due to its outstanding acceleration and handling (plus, the fact that it becomes available to purchase after unlocking Haruna) which can help the player to keep on their toes against other rivals until the endgame.

1. Bladder of Steel: One of the weekly events to win a Unicorn Car with a unique paintjob required players to do three hundred and sixty-five laps around the full Le Mans circuit.
2. Monty Haul: Forza Horizon 4's Fortune Island DLC features the Treasure Hunt, which earns you a total of 10 million credits and unlocks numerous exclusive vehicles.
3. Old Save Bonus: Forza Motorsport 4 will handsomely reward players with a Forza 3 game save in the form of extra credits, up to 8 free cars depending on the save level along with all the ultra-rare Unicorn Cars transferring, and an achievement.
4. Pre-Order Bonus: Preordering Forza Motorsport 4 would give you the Mazda RX-7 Spirit-R (A 'unicorn' car, which cannot be acquired through normal means) for use in Forza 3.
5. Video Games: VIP players also get some exclusive events to win rare 'Unicorn' cars, which are exclusive performance versions of some cars.
6. Forza: A special event to win a Unicorn car in Motorsport 4 had players join a multiplayer lobby on the Le Mans track in Le Mans Prototype cars, and then required them to do 360 laps. In an online race.
7. Gran Turismo: Not only can you own cars that had a limited run, you can even get specifically tuned variations and even privately commissioned one-offs like the 2008 Ferrari SP1.
8. War Thunder: Many of the premium and gift vehicles are these if they're not an Ace Custom, with some being literally unique prototypes. Notable examples include the Super Pershing and the Super Hellcat on the American tech tree and the A43 Black Prince for the British. The German E-100 super-heavy tank, whose sole prototype was only partially built in real life, will be the rarest vehicle of all in-game because it's a limited tournament prize.

1. Improperly Placed Firearms: The RAH-66 Comanche stealth helicopter, a design that was hyped for a number of years [...] but ultimately was not adopted and only had two prototypes.
2. Just Plane Wrong:
   • In the real world, the Su-47 Berkut is a tech demo, and only one exists.
   • The helicopters are the early Hind-A version with the polygonal canopy, instead of the iconic bubble canopy of the Hind-D and later models, making it an example of Rare Helicopters.
3. Video Games: Ace Combat: the whole series also indulges quite heavily in Rare Vehicles, arming entire air forces with hundreds of planes that were one-of-a-kind tech demonstrators or never-produced proposals in the real world.
4. Bob the Builder: Not a specific model, but still worth mentioning. Muck is based on a tracked dumper, an uncommon variation of a dump truck used more often in Europe than America. Considering that the series is British rather than America, this seems to be a given
5. Initial D
   • Subverted; the Sileighty is pretty common among drifters, but most of them, like Mako's, aren't genuine units, but were actually user-modified cars created from 180SXs with S13 Silvia front ends^note This was an attempt to reduce repair costs, since the 180SX and the S13 Silvia share the same chassis, but S13 front panels and lights are cheaper than the equivalent 180SX replacement parts.
   • His car is basically a limited edition version of the Lancer Evolution VI, named after Finnish rally champion Tommi Mäkinen.
6. KanColle Seven: Ironically, the Grumman F6F Hellcat qualifies as this despite Grumman producing 12,275 examples for the US Navy and Marine Corps ^note In comparison, the total number of all Type 0 Fighters models combined built together were tallied at around 10,934-11,291, as you could only import up to two early model Hellcats (F6F-3) from the quest while the rest had to be upgraded from Wildcats. There are two variants of Wildcats and Hellcats in-game for a four-stage upgrade, so upgrading a F4F-3 into F6F-5 would require you redo the 10-star improvement three times, costing massive amount of improvement material in the process.
   • The Night-Fighter Hellcats plays this even straighter, as you need a 10-star F6F-3 or F6F-5 to get their night version, which is lost upon upgrade. This is attributed to the APS-6 aircraft radar that were so delicate and complex that each unit had to be made by hand.
7. Pacific Foreign Navies: All of them qualify, as they are based on some of the lesser known "paper-ship" designs proposed back in 1941, as indicated by their "classes".
   • Hakuryuu's entire aircraft compliment counts, seeing as they were either prototypes, limited production models, or blueprint designs.
8. Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Their leader, Noboru Kawajiri AKA "God's Estuary" drives a Ford GT Concept (or "GT40" according to its chassis code), two years prior the beginning of the car's production. Only in the sense that the setting is dated before the car is produced, making it "rare IRL" because it's not supposed to have existed yet.
9. Wangan Midnight: In video games until Maximum Tune 5DX+, his Porsche 911 Turbo was replaced with rare, Palette Swaps such as the Gemballa 3.8 RS
10. War Thunder: The extremely obscure North Vietnamese Phòng không T-34 SPAA is present in the Chinese main tech tree.
11. Autocannons And Rotary Cannons: The game also has the Panzer IV-based Möbelwagen anti-aircraft Variant appear in Ste. Mere-Elgise (In reality only one prototype had the Flakvierling before the Germans replaced it with a single Flak 43).
12. Armor of God: Perhaps the only film appearance of the BMW Z1, of which only 8000 were made, none of which were exported.
13. Empire of the Sun: One of the IJA vehicles, a Nissan 4x4 used in a brief scene had to be custom-built from a Russian GAZ-69 because not one original example exists.
14. It Happened Here: Actual vehicles, uniforms and weapons from the era were used, all donated by various collectors.
15. Live Free or Die Hard: Just Plane Wrong: The F-35 scene. The real plane is equipped with a single cannon. Also counts as Rare Vehicles since the F-35 wasn't in production, let alone operational service, in 2007.
16. The Wraith: The Wraith's Interceptor Turbo is a Dodge M4S, a concept car never intended for production; only four were built.
17. Tomorrow Never Dies: The stealth boat is modelled after Sea Shadow, a prototype stealth boat made for the U.S. Navy in 1984.
18. Wonder Woman (2017): The German bomber used in the climax resembles a 1915 Siemens-Schuckert, which was only produced as a prototype.
19. Lupin III: Lupin III drives a Mercedes-Benz SSK throughout the series – less than forty were made, and most found nowadays are replicas using components from the original vehicles.
20. Autocannons and Rotary Cannons: The game also has the Panzer IV-based Möbelwagen anti-aircraft Variant appear in Ste. Mere-Elgise (In reality only one prototype had the Flakvierling before the Germans replaced it with a single Flak 43).

21. James Bond: Hero's Classic Car: Classic cars are frequently described as Bond's "only hobby". From Casino Royale to Moonraker Bond drives a 1930 battleship-grey Bentley 4.5 litre with an Amherst Villiers supercharger (only 55 of the "Blower Bentleys" were actually made, making it a Rare Vehicle too.)
22. Video Games: A Historical balanced mode was released, but was unpopular because it resulted in people only wanting to choose large durable vehicles such as the Tiger instead of the M18 Hellcat 76mm. Players tend to want prototype weapons that were rarely if ever used instead of common and real weapons.
23. Tropes O to Z: Kramer's 1973 Chevy Impala, one of only 1000 experimental models built with airbags (using Oldsmobile dashboards) and George's 1984 Chrysler Lebaron Town and Country convertible, one of only 500 made that year.
24. Bait Car: New Orleans' black Kia Borrego is a model hardly anyone actually bought, discontinued after just one year on the market (2008) due to poor sales. Being the only one like it in town probably counts as a fail for a bait car.
25. Best Motoring: Several very rare European exotics and Japanese cars have been tested .
    • McLaren F1 (64 road cars made) ^note made two appearances: one in the 12/94 issue, another in the 9/95 issue, when it competed in the 1995 Super Battle against the Ferrari F355 and the Veilside Supra. This one was chassis #012, owned by the importer of Tag Heuer watches in Japan. (it now sits locked up in a museum in Florida.) The final evolution of the racing version, the F1 GTR '97 "Longtail", was seen in the 7/97 issue being driven by Nakaya, who was participating in that year's Le Mans season.
26. Debt of Honor:
    • The F-22 Raptor and RAH-66 Comanche, which depending on how loosely one interprets the "around 1995" setting, may or may not have actually flown at the time of the novel.^note The F-22 first flew in 1997 and the Comanche in 1996. Somewhat justified, as both aircraft are explicitly depicted as prototype, "the only ones in existence" planes, though it's notable that the novel has more Comanches taking part in the mission to Japan (3) than were ever actually built (2).
    • On the Japanese side, the E-767s are depicted as being essentially as rare as they are in real life, though their detection capabilities are heavily exaggerated.
27. Tales of the Gold Monkey: A6M Zero fighters are pretty common for a fighter not even in prototype phase yet
28. Ace Combat: Many (real-world) flyable aircraft are either prototypes, technology demonstrators, or canceled projects that never made it into mass production.
29. Act of Aggression: About 90% of Cartel's vehicles and munitions either never entered mass production or didn't even make it off the drawing board. Justified in-story with the idea that those vehicles were never produced because Cartel wanted them for their secret armies.
30. Airforce Delta: Many proposed, prototype and proof-of-concept aircraft, along with several examples of Chinese variants of Russian aircraft that most other arcade flight sims ignore in favor of the Russian originals.
31. American Truck Simulator: While not quite 'rare', generic '57 Bel Air clones found driving around in traffic are absurdly common. In reality a person will probably only see similarly vintage cars at car clubs, yet here they are as common as any other car.
32. Armored Warfare: Much like World of Tanks, a number of vehicles that were either limited-production, prototypes, or blue print "Paper" designs.
33. Battlefield 1
    • All four of the armored cars in the game were not common vehicles during World War I. The British Rolls-Royce Armored Car (RNAS Armored Car in-game) was the most common one relative to the other three, with 120 produced. The next was the German Ehrhardt E-V/4 (EV4 Armored Car in-game), which only 53 were built. The Italian FIAT-Terni Tripoli (F.T Armored Car in-game) only had 14 vehicles built. The biggest example however, would be the Austro-Hungarian Romfell Armored Car - only 2 were built in real life.
    • There's a case of Rare Tanks too with the A7V. In "Through Mud and Blood", Black Bess' crew has to fight at least four A7V tanks. In reality, only about 20 were ever made so it's really astounding to see Black Bess account for the destruction of 1/5 of all of them.
      • They Shall Not Pass adds the Char 2C super-heavy tank, which wasn't built until 1921.
34. Battlestations: Pacific: Several in-game vehicles are qualified as this, most notably the "Super" Yamato-class battleship.
    • The Japanese actually have several aircraft and ships in their inventory that qualify as both this trope and Super Prototype.
35. Blazing Angels: The sequel includes several planes that were only prototypes and proposed designs that were never even produced.
36. Digital Combat Simulator: The Su-25T. While the basic air frame is fairly common, the 'T' model only had 3 prototypes and 8 production aircraft built. Ergo, if you see three flights of Su-25Ts on a server or in a mission, that will be more than were actually produced in the real world.
37. Driveclub: Most of them, or all of them. The game relies heavily on exotic sports cars and concept cars.
38. Flashpoint Campaigns: In Germany Reforged the Soviets will have entire formations of the new T-80U tank in 1989, in spite it only having seen limited issue to divisions in the western USSR.
39. IL-2 Sturmovik: The 1946 expansion added some speculative implementations of German and Soviet prototype aircraft, most notably the Heinkel Lerche (the aircraft that looks like a rocket/cigar surrounded by a shrouded turbofan).
40. L.A. Noire:
    • The Tucker 48, known ingame by its nickname of the Tucker Torpedo, can be unlocked. Only fifty were ever made and the car was infamous for its Troubled Production.
    • Another car that can be found is the Phantom Corsair, which in real life was a one-off prototype.
41. Mafia II
    • In real life, the Tucker 48 only had 50 examples ever produced. In-game, it is the basis for the Walker Rocket, which is surprisingly common on the streets of Empire Bay.
    • Just over 250 BMW 507s were produced in real life. In-game, you can occasionally find the ISW 508 in the wealthier parts of Empire Bay.
    • The Delizia Grandeamerica in Joe's Adventures is most likely based on the Ferrari 410 Superamerica, of which only 35 were produced.
42. Medal of Honor: Frontline: The Horten Ho 229, aka the HO-IX. Justified since it is a prototype.
43. Need for Speed:
    • Need for Speed II featured one-offs like the Ford GT90, Indigo and Mustang Mach III, Lamborghini/Italdesign Calà, BMW/Italdesign Nazca C2, and the super-rare Isdera Commendatore 112i.
    • Hot Pursuit 2 and Most Wanted (2012)'s Ultimate Speed Pack also features the McLaren F1 LM, of which only five were produced.^note Most Wanted (2012) in particular uses the XP 1 prototype as the car's model.
    • The main car in Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) is a BMW M3 GTR, essentially a BMW M3 E46 with a 500hp V8 engine (the stock M3 has a 333hp straight-six, the normal M3 wouldn't get a V8 until the following E92 generation) built for American Le Mans racing. To satisfy racing rules, only ten street-legal examples were ever built, priced at $218,000 each. Its one of the most expensive, powerful (reaching speeds of 219mph) and rare BMW cars built.
    • Carbon was released in 2006 and features the concept versions of the 2008 Dodge Challenger, 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, and the Audi Le Mans Quattro, which was the concept car for what later became the Audi R8;
    • The two cover cars for Hot Pursuit (2010) title are the Lamborghini Reventon (total production: 20 cars, plus one for display in the Lamborghini Museum.) and the Pagani Zonda Cinque (total production: five cars, all going to an exotic car showroom in Hong Kong. "Cinque" is the Italian term for the number five, hence the production number and name.).
    • Exaggerated in III: Hot Pursuit and High Stakes with the Lister Storm, available as free DLC for both games. The Storm was primarily meant to be a GT1 racing car due to its extremely high performance, but Lister had to produce street versions of the car to properly qualify. They only managed to produce four of these before the car's exorbitantly high production costs drove the company under. To this day, only three Storms survived intact (there is no information about the fate of the fourth Storm), meaning this car manages to one-up the aforementioned Pagani Zonda Cinque as the rarest car featured in the series.
    • The Ghost Games entries from 2015 reboot to Heat feature Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 2.8, which was a racing car built from the already-rare (but street-legal) 911 Carrera RS 2.7. Of course, it was a track-only racer when it was made in 1973, with 55 of them being built. Its successor, the RSR 3.0, was even rarer, with 52 units made between late 1973 and 1975, and appeared prior in World and Shift 2: Unleashed.
44. Project Gotham Racing:
    • The Caparo T1 in 4. The thing is a street-legal Formula One car, basically. Only 25 are churned out a year. As of 2012, only 16 have been sold.
    • Exaggerated with Toyota GT-One, first appeared in 3. A street-legal LMGTP road car whose only two street versions were built.
45. RUSE: The prototype bases are chock-full of Rare Vehicles. Among the units that can be produced are the Maus (1.5 built), T-95 Gun Motor Carriage (2 built), Super Pershing (2 converted from the regular Pershing), relatively unknown prototypes such as the O-I (of which maybe one prototype was built) and the FCM F1 (which never went past the wooden mockup stage), and vehicles that never participated in the actual war, such as the Skink (3 built, never saw combat), IS-3 (reached the front just in time for the German surrender) and ARL-44 (which only entered service in 1950).
46. RollerCoaster Tycoon:
    • The wooden Reverser Coaster is based on a unique design called the "Hooper Reverser" built in Salt Lake City in 1914 and long since demolished.
    • The Side Friction coaster was once a common design but into the 21st century only a handful are left standing.
    • Heartline coasters are very rare as well - only one company successfully produced them in the '90s, with less than a dozen made, most of which are of the same design ("Ultratwister"). Only a few remain in operation.
    • It is possible in RCT3 to create a looping water slide◊ similar to the dangerous, real-life one found in New Jersey's Action Park in the 1980s.
    • The Flying Saucers ride is based on a real Disneyland ride which operated from 1961 to 1966.
47. Seek and Destroy (2002): Tank Goodness: In spades. Many, many models of tanks ranging from World War II to the present day appear, including a number of experimental models.
48. Steel Division: Normandy 44: In keeping with Eugen tradition, you can expect to see all kinds of rare vehicles in the lineups. The game even includes the unused Sherman "Skink", a quad-20mm armed AA variant used by the Canadians; only 3 were ever produced (with 4 more turret kits unused) and they all saw use against entrenched infantry, not aircraft.
49. Steel Panthers: Goes as far as to include some vehicles which never actually saw service, such as the Nazi German Maus and Sturmtiger. Even for those that weren't quite as rare, you can again have more of a particularly rare vehicle in your core force than would ever have been available throughout the course of all of World War II thanks to the points-based purchasing system.
50. Test Drive Unlimited: Artistic License – Cars: One of the cars acquired through collecting wrecks in the second game is the Shelby Daytona. In total, you have to find ten Daytona wrecks which is three more than existed in real life.
51. Wargame: Red Dragon: Tons of the damn things, even if they never left the drawing board. North Korea can field the T-90S as mentioned above. America has access to the COMVAT, a Bradley variant with a modified main gun (and no ATGM launcher) that never made it out of the prototype stage. Canada has the Chimera, a monster of a tank destroyer that never left the concept stage due to mechanical issues with the weight of the vehicle versus the strength of its engine.
52. World of Tanks: Some tanks only existed in blueprints, other had a few prototypes made. More than two Maus or a single Panther II^note Only a single Panther II chassis was completed; it's in the Patton museum fitted with a turret from a different Panther. or E-100^note A partially-completed Tiger-Maus chassis was captured by the British, then scrapped.? That's more than ever actually existed.
53. World of Warplanes: A lot of flyable planes in the game either belong to the purely "paper projects", or existed only as a couple of prototypes.
54. World of Warships: Similar to World of Tanks, World of Warships has a number of ships to help fill out the tech trees that never made made it past either the blueprints, prototype, or cancelled further production while being made, so-called "Paper Designs".
55. Justice Society: World War II: One battle scene features a Sturmpanzer "Brummbär", a self-propelled howitzer built on a turretless Panzer IV chassis, of which only 300 were ever built in Real Life.
56. The Brave Engineer: The locomotives on the freight train appear to be based upon "Mastodon" and it's twenty-five copies. The 4-8-0 wheel arrangement in general was not very popular, with Southern Pacific and Norfolk & Western being the only American railways to have them in any significant numbers; fewer than one-thousand were built for American service, compared to tens-of-thousands of 2-8-0s or 2-8-2s.

1. Overt Operative: Members of the Black Organization in Case Closed are supposed to be so secretive almost no one knows the organization exists, yet they always wear black suits and/or Conspicuous Trenchcoats and one of its members drives a damn Porsche everywhere. Said Porsche is not a 911, which is cool but fairly common and well-recognized. It is an antique and rare Porsche 356, which is something so unique that no one can possibly miss, even if they are completely car-dumb.
2. Planes And Mercs: Stewart "Bonnie" Connolly flew a J 35 J Draken. The Musketeers were also gifted a vintage CF-101B Voodoo. Also, considering how the US military is scrapping the F-14 Tomcat to prevent Iran for getting spare parts, Swart Katte's F-14A Tomcat can also be considered rare in the context of the game world.

1. Thomas & Friends: ...there were some who took a liking to her for her kind, sensible and mature personality, along with representing a not very well known but beloved historical locomotive, while others found her to be rather basic...
2. Medal of Honor: Airborne: Surprisingly played straight, as only a total of four tanks are shown being fought against in both Neptune and Market-Garden, with an additional five seen being repaired and ready for delivery in Varsity.
3. Steel Battalion: In Campaign mode, Garpike units are extraordinarily rare and almost never encountered. Rough estimates based on serial numbers quoted by various players put the maximum number of Garpikes in circulation under 400. So, basically an enemy unit that's rarely encountered, but not acknowledged as rare in-universe.
4. Cash Cab: Toyota Sienna minivans aren't rare as such, even as NYC taxis, but the Ford Crown Victoria sedan is still by far the most common cab. So the game features other types of vehicles beyond the most common model. What's noteworthy about this?
5. KanColle: Cool Plane: Various foreign planes have since been introduced into the fray over the subsequent events as well, though they are usually falls into either the Junk Rare and Rare Vehicles territory.
6. This Is Why Im Broke: Let's see. There's a 3D-printed supercar, a capsule mini yacht, an underwater jetski, a luxury road tank, and the list just goes on...