Most favoritest of weapons?

[danzibr]

Probably been threads like this before but…

Pretty much what’s on the tin. Think of all the media you’ve taken in, all the baddonkey weapons. Either stuff that looks awesome like Ghoulslicer from WoW, or stuff with gnarly properties like Dragnipur from the Malazan series, or weapons used to achieve baddonkey feats like Dragonslayer from Berserk, or maybe you like for their personality, like Lilarcor from BGII (coincidentally those 4 are swords…).

For me, oof, that’s a tough one. In addition to the 4 above, I like Tenseiga from Inuyasha, Ash’s chainsaw hand from The Evil Dead, BFG from Doom is satisfying, the eponymous Heavenly Sword. Hard to say.

(I was originally going to put this in friendly banter and include historical weapons…)

[Rakaydos]

Knife missile, from Ian M Bank's culture series.

Basically Yondu's arrow from Guardians of the Galaxy 2, but internally controlled.

[Willie the Duck]

Probably been threads like this before but…

Pretty much what’s on the tin. Think of all the media you’ve taken in, all the baddonkey weapons.

Well, since you mention it, I always loved the Concrete Donkey from the Worms computer game. Just indiscriminately destroy half the board and hope you measured right and your opponent has more worms on it than you do. Similar to the MIRV from Scorched Earth (which clearly inspired Worms immensely).

[Eldan]

The Possible Sword from The Scar. The simplified version is that it uses possibility magic to make every possible attack and defence at once. It's described as looking like a flower blooming, or overlapping frames of a movie. The longer you fight without the magic running out, the more swords there are around you, because every strike you didn't make in turn could have resulted in a number of other possible strikes. Funnily enough, it's also more powerful in the hands of a competent swordsman rather than in the hands of a master swordsman, because the competent swordsman could have made mistakes, while the master would only have made the perfect strike.

[GloatingSwine]

The Lazy Gun, from Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks.

Absolutely will destroy anything* you point it at, you just don't know how.

Spoiler

Show

There had been eight Lazy Guns. A Lazy Gun was a little over half a meter in length, about thirty centimeters in width and twenty centimeters in height. Its front was made up of two stubby cylinders which protruded from the smooth, matte-silver main body. The cylinders ended in slightly bulged black-glass lenses. A couple of hand controls sitting on stalks, an eyesight curving up on an other extension, and a broad, adjustable metal strap all indicated that the weapons had been designed to be fired from the waist.
There were two controls, one on each hand grip; a zoom wheel and a trigger.

You looked through the sight, zoomed in until the target you had selected just filled your vision, then you pressed the trigger. The Lazy Gun did the rest instantaneously.

But you had no idea whatsoever exactly what was going to happen next.

If you had aimed at a person, a spear might suddenly materialize and pierce them through the chest, or some snake's spit fang might graze their neck, or a ship's anchor might appear falling above them, crushing them, or two enormous switch-electrodes would leap briefly into being on either side of the hapless target and vaporize him or her.

If you had aimed the gun at something larger, like a tank or a house, then it might implode, explode, collapse in a pile of dust, be struck by a section of a tidal wave or a lava flow, be turned inside out or just disappear entirely, with or without a bang.

Increasing scale seemed to rob a Lazy Gun of its eccentric poesy; turn it on a city or a mountain and it tended simply to drop an appropriately sized nuclear or thermonuclear fireball onto it. The only known exception had been when what was believed to have been a comet nucleus had destroyed a city-sized berg-barge on the water world of Trontsephori.

Rumor had it that some of the earlier Lazy Guns, at least, had shown what looked suspiciously like humor when they had been used; criminals saved from firing squads so that they could be the subjects of experiments had died under a hail of bullets, all hitting their hearts at the same time; an obsolete submarine had been straddled by depth charges; a mad king obsessed with metals had been smothered under a deluge of mercury.

The braver physicists--those who didn't try to deny the existence of Lazy Guns altogether--ventured that the weapons somehow accessed different dimensions; they monitored other continua and dipped into one to pluck out their chosen method of destruction and transfer it to this universe, where it carried out its destructive task then promptly disappeared, only its effects remaining. Or they created whatever they desired to create from the ground-state of quantum fluctuation that invested the fabric of space. Or they were time machines.

Any one of these possibilities was so mind-boggling in its implications and ramifications--provided that one could understand or ever harness the technology involved--that the fact a Lazy Gun was light but massy, and weighed exactly three times as much turned upside down as it did the right way up, was almost trivial by comparison.

* From a certain point of view. Someone once pointed one at the sun, when he pulled the trigger he winked out of existence.

Another strong contender in the exotic weapons theory field is the Presger weapon from the Imperial Radch trilogy. The shell will, when fired, travel in an exactly straight line until they hit something solid, then exactly 1.11m further no matter how much or what matter is in the way. No more, no less.

Spoiler

Show

Except when pointed at a Radch starship, which they will infallibly destroy with a single shot

[Eldan]

Presger gun is an excellent choice.

[Rater202]

I'm quite fond of the Keyblade, from the Kingdom Hearts series.

There are three kinds, those made of darkness, like the one used King Mickey, those made of Light like the one use By Sora, and those made from, or drawn out from, hearts like he ones used by the protagonists of the Prequel Smartphone games.

Sometimes they are forged and passed down in lines of succession, other times they spontaneously come into existence in the hands of a worthy wielder and other times a pre-existing magical weapon like Riku's Souleater or Axel's Eternal Flames will become a keyblade(in which case, it can still be summoned in its previous form. Axel initially had trouble summoning his Keyblade because he kept defaulting to his Chakrams.)

The Keyblade serves as a conduit for one's magical powers(and magical powers you develop because of the keyblade are your powers, you can use them without it) can open any lock—and the only limits seem to be your own personal dedication of "unlocking"—up to and including locking spells cast by Gods, can harm beings who are otherwise invincible... Like the cursed pirates from the first Pirates of the Caribbean Movie, who cannot feel nor die as long as the curse is in place and become walking corpses int the moonlight... Unless Sora's whacking them with his key when the moon exposes their bones.

They are the only weapon that can reliably destroy the heartless, because they are the only thing that can reliably purify them.

The Keyblade can even transform into other weapons.

---

I also like Necroswords, or Necroblades. Symbioswords.

Basically, a sword generated from a symbiote or a symbiote forged into a sword.

A shapeshifting blade with the power to kill and steal from the gods.

A timeline confirms that any symbiote or other creature of Living Abyss can serve as a conduit for and become a new All-Black, which has additional minion spawning and lifeforce stealing powers.

[Lord Raziere]

N-Ray guns from Outer Worlds. its fun irradiating people so that they emit a radiation that poisons other people as they run around and just it keeps spreading until all the enemies are dead.

warglaives of azzinoth/Amalur reckoning style faeblades style weapons that I don't think there is any particular name for. they're basically double swords but crescent shaped and wielded as two one handed weapons and while they're completely impractical (the crescent blades are always pointed inward TOWARDS the user which is a bad idea) they look so cool I just want to use them in any game I can.

wabbajack, for when you want to play roulette with what you fire at your enemies for hilarious results. may result in summoning a demon from time to time but that can just be solved by firing at the demon with the wabbajack, you see.

Shibuki from Naruto: its a sword, that makes things explode. it cuts AND blows things up! its stupid yet awesome and you can just cut a dude if you need to but also resort to bigger fire power when the going gets tough.

Frisbee shields: y'know the weapon the Captain america and sometimes Zagreus from Hades wields. block attacks, bash, throw for ranged capability is pretty good versatility all in one package. Put a circular saw on the edge and you got something deadly if you got the skill to use it.

in general I like tricky or odd weapons that offer more tactical uses, but sometimes just pure destruction is good if spectacular enough.

[Wintermoot]

Xena's Chackrum. The throwing hoop that she used as a missile weapon. It was awesome in the show and even better in the video game.

In the video game, when you threw it, you went into a first person chackrum view where you (as the chackrum) would hurl forward at an uncontrolable speed, but you could use left right to modify your tragectory. When you bounced off of things, it would alwasy try to start hurtling you back to your start point (xena) but you could manipulate that with your controls.

The entire game, for me, turned into a contest where I would enter the level. Throw my chackrum and try to clear the entire level with it on one throw, killing every enemy in the entire level, then casually walking through the ruin to the level end point. I got pretty good at it.

[Peelee]

Lightsaber. An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.

ETA: Honorable mention to the Point of View gun. Those of you who've seen the movie, you know why.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Crescent Rose, from RWBY. A scythe is an extremely impractical weapon due to the positioning of the blade... unless you mount it on a high impact sniper rifle with enough recoil to turn that inward-facing blade into a fast moving deadly weapon. Ruby also uses the recoil along with her weird super-speed to tactically position herself around the battlefield. The show isn't perfect by any means, but that weapon is pretty close!

I also really like the Brute Shot from the Halo franchise. Another gun-blade pairing, this time a grenade launcher with an alien slashing bayonet running the length of the bottom of the gun. Fun to use, will two-shot enemies in multiplayer if you do it right, and kicks incredible butt against the Flood.

From real-life, it's gotta be the rope dart. It seems like something straight out of an anime, but it's got precision, range, and style.

EDIT: Oh, and how could I forget Devil May Cry V's Cavaliere?! A motorcycle that can be split in half into two chainsaw-like weapons or just used to run your foes into the ground! The "gear" mechanic where you can start the next move earlier and for better damage the better your timing is is also pretty sweet; love that weapon.

[Peelee]

From real-life, it's gotta be the rope dart. It seems like something straight out of an anime, but it's got precision, range, and style.

The rope dart is amazing. It's hard to believe it can be as graceful as it is while still being incredibly accurate and devastating.

[Dargaron]

My "guilty pleasure" weapon is the Dark Elf ship from Thor: The Dark World. I just love the idea of a small-ish ship whose sole offensive capability is being really dense and crashing into things. It's like, it's gone so high tech with the material science that it's looped all the way back around to low-tech tactics.

[asda fasda]

Laser gunblade from Star Wars Rebels (I think season II), it was awesome

[TeChameleon]

Hah- one of my first thoughts was the Concrete Donkey from Worms as well. That was a fun weapon.

For goofy weapons, it's hard to beat the shark gun (Armed and Dangerous, Saints Row 3). Fire gun, spawn landsharks to eat your target.

And for just plain awesome? How about 'the most powerful weapon in the universe', a Green Lantern ring. Takes some training to do anything useful with it, but that's true of all weapons, and it's hard not to love a weapon that borders on being a plot device on your finger.

[Eldan]

In the same kind of direction as the shark gun, the insect swarm plasmid in bioshock. You gain the "genetic" power to shoot bee swarms from your hands.

[Metastachydium]

The Blades of Jerry and Simon, obviously.

[comicshorse]

The Glaive of course

https://krull.fandom.com/wiki/Glaive

[Imbalance]

ETA: Honorable mention to the Point of View gun. Thosw of you who've seen the movie, you know why.

Always one of my top picks.

The other, much more devastating (though arguably less demeaning) weapon to always deploy first and ask questions later is South Park 64's infamous cow-launcher. Built on the mechanics of Turok's cerebral bore, the weapon requires a lock-on to the target's skull. When fired, the bovine missile tracks to the target, but simply being shot with a bullet grossly understates the effect. The last thing a target sees is the inside of the south end of a northbound heifer.

[Penguinator]

I'm quite fond of the Keyblade, from the Kingdom Hearts series.

This was my immediate thought.

Lightsaber. An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.

ETA: Honorable mention to the Point of View gun. Thosw of you who've seen the movie, you know why.

The Point of View gun was my second thought. Although the lightsaber is lovely as well.

I'd like to mention the Bovine Bardiche from Diablo III because I find it hilarious. It summons four ghost cows with halberds to fight for you.

[Gnoman]

On a wholly different scale, I've always had a fondness for the bomb-pumped laser. The 1980s SDI concept (since used in science fiction, but not widely) of simply putting lasing rods near a detonating nuke to generate laser beams.

[Trafalgar]

My most favoritest of weapons? I don't know what its called but.....

[McGarnagle]

I've always been partial to the Wave Motion Gun from Star Blazers. At the personal weapon level, the lightsaber works for me.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Do Pokéballs count?

More traditionally, the Zat'nik'tel from Stargate. I like a weapon that I can use without worrying about killing anything I don’t want dead. Ally under mind control? Zat them. Bad guy has information you need? Zat and interrogate. Everyone is fighting a mirror image of themself? Zat both sides and sort it out later.

Sure, blowing up mountains is cool, but exactly how often do you need to blow up a mountain?

[PontificatusRex]

What, no love for Stormbringer? Who can resist a demon in the shape of a black blade that eats souls and destroys and/or saves universes on a regular basis?

The Black Sword is the Champion's Sword
The Word of the Sword is the Champion's Law

The Blade of the Sword has the Blood of the Sun
The Hilt of the Sword and the Hand are One.

I've always been partial to the Wave Motion Gun from Star Blazers.

Totally, just because it's such a fun name and they repeat it so much when turning it o

At the personal weapon level, the lightsaber works for me.

Younger geek me spent a not insignificant amount of time pondering how a Stormbringer vs lightsaber battle would work out.

[McGarnagle]

Poor floating continent...

That clip also reminds me, there would have been a lot more snickering/giggling during the WMG build-up had I been a few years older when first viewing Star Blazers.