In Futurama, season 3, in the episode “War is the H-Word,” Fry joins the Earth Army to get the military discount, but war is declared against the Brain Balls. My fave weapon: Fry’s blaster rifle, which eventually runs out steam (so to speak), and, in order to be recharged, Fry has to turn this little crank which plays “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Link.
Yeah, gotta love those uber-cannons from anime that leave a swath of charred corpses and pure destruction. The Macross Cannon and Wave Motion Cannon have been mentioned, but let us not forget the Buster Rifles from Gundam Wing, the Satellite System from Gundam X, and the Hyper Mega Bazooka (or whatever it was called) from Zeta Gundam (although it wasn’t as devastating as the former two, AFAIK).
Also from the Gundam Universe(s), are the pscyommu and psycoframe systems that allow a pilot to control a mecha telepathically, or the Zero System which is, well, the zero system. Not weapons in the sense that they shoot stuff, but they make give people the skills to shoot stuff better.
And as heretical as the weirding modules from Dune might have been, they were a pretty neat idea, if a bit schizophrenic. From the books, there are the lazguns and the effect they had on shields. Love that Holzman effect.
And sandworms. They might not be technological, but it IS the Old Man of the Desert we’re talking about here.
The raygun in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow* had googobs of old school charm, and wins my vote.
Daniel
Ever read the book “Snow Crash”?
“I’m sure they’ll listen to Reason.”
Basically, a man-portable railgun that fits in a briefcase. I still don’t know why this book hasn’t been filmed (or have I just missed it)?
I never read this book and can’t even remember the author or title, but I once read a review of an SF book (published within the last 10 years, I think) about a group of American soldiers who fight by remote control – that is, they sit in an Army base in safe territory, hooked up to virtual-reality sets, radio-controlling these humanoid robots that are fighting in some Central American civil war. If one of the robots is destroyed, you just hook up the soldier with a fresh one. Now that’s a cool weapon! All the close-up precision work of live infantry troops, without putting their highly trained lives at risk! They can even get “killed” in action and learn from the experience! Of course, the enemy could take out a whole platoon at once with the right radio-jamming equipment, but you can’t have everything.
BG: That book is Forever Peace by Haldeman, a thematic (but not story) sequel to Forever War.
ElvisL1ves took the one I was going to nominate. Dark Star is a very underrated movie in a lot of ways, and the snarky bomb is fall-off-the-couch hilarious.
Because it’s not as clumsy or random as a blaster.
I thought that the “Rape Robots” in Flesh Giordon were amusing!!! 
The time-ship from the episode of Voyager where the villian was messing with the timeline in order to bring his family back into existance.
how about the Transmutatron used by Kro-Bar and Lattis in “The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra”, it can make aliens look like the stereotypical '50s couple, it can make mutants “more harmless” and can combine 4 forest animals into a slinky “cat-woman”, rowr!
admittedly the fact that it looks like a standard caulking gun is a bit of a drawback, but still…
This is the essence of it - to expand a little… these are Jedi. They pride themselves on finesse, non-violence wherever possible and (judging from their combat techniques) just looking damn cool at all times.
If you’re trying to use finesse and persuasion, you don’t actually want a ranged weapon: if a Jedi was sitting in a position far enough back to see an enemy soldier without them seeing him/her, the Jedi would simply go around them or use the Force to become invisible to them.
Additionally, there are fewer unintended consequences: if we accept, as all filmed SF seems to, that energy weapons have a group velocity very much less than <i>c</i>, the target can move between the time that you fire at him and the time that the energy impacts. Thus a very carefully aimed disarming shot can become a lethal shot. Bad Jedi! This doesn’t happen if you’re using a melee weapon, particularly if you use the Force.
And the most important point: it just looks damn cool! The silliest thing about light-sabers IMHO was <i>Knights of the Old Republic</i>'s revealation that everyone and their brother owned a melee weapon that could stand up to light-sabers. Necessary for game balance? Possibly. Still lame.
The Time-Space Separation Unit (or “Tisser”) from an obscure 80’s sci-fi novel, War of Ommission.
It looked like one of those Telxon ordering machines with three antennae sticking out the front end. You set the co-ordinates (X, Y, & Z) and hit the button and whatever you aimed at would disappear, not only from the real world but from everybody’s memory as well.
How about the Death Star? It blows up whole planets!
And IIRC, in the movie Runaway (starring Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons!) the villain has a gun that fires “personalized” bullets that will only go after their intended target, to the point of actually tracking them around corners.
My favorite video game weapon was in Heavy Barrel, when you collected all the pieces to assemble the mega-gun and you would hear the game announce “HEAVY BARREL!” and then you had about ten seconds to start blasting everything on screen away with a very wide-beam superblast. So much fun!
I read that. I loved the idea of using calories as currency while trying to rebuild civilization. (I’ll give you x amount of calories worth of food if you do Y amount of work)
My nominee is
The Death Star
Plus, can you imagine the close-combat advantage of having a sword-length weapon whose entire mass is concentrated in your hand, and whose (effectively ultra-sharp, indestrucible) blade weighs nothing?
Here’s another nomination for Marvin the Martian’s gun.
Also, Duck Dodger’s Disintegrator.
“When I say it disintegrates, it disintegrates.”
pulls trigger
“Well, what do you know, it disintegrated.”
Another point, on the lightsaber…Jedi seem to be able to use them to deflect energy weapon fire, even back towards whoever was shooting at them.
That, and they can be used for the only thing they let Wolverine use his claws for in cartoons…cutting through doors and walls.
And for lopping hands off.
Hey, no one’s mentioned the gun from The Fifth Element:
The thing about lightsabers is, they are much more an extension of the user than practically any other weapon. A Jedi with a lightsaber is whirling death, but some shmoe with a lightsaber will quickly slice himself into seared chunks of meat.
Maybe not, but if Luke Skywalker, armed only with a lightsaber, tried to go up against Bobba Fett or an Imperial stormtrooper, armed with a blaster, he would die before getting withing ten yards of his enemy – unless he used the Force to disarm him.
