History Main / HandCannon

** [[UnEntendre We]] ''[[UnEntendre do]]'' [[UnEntendre know what you mean - a compensator diverts muzzle energy upwards, pushing the barrel downwards and "compensating" for the recoil.]]
* [[RuleOfCool Another fine example of a silly handgun is the Taurus Judge, a 5 shot revolver that shoots shotgun shells. Granted they are the smaller .410 smoothbore, but its still enough to end a personal dispute in your favor.]]
** Depressingly, the ballistic performance of most .410 shotgun shells in the Judge is mediocre at best, causing only superficial injury instead of poking holes clean through major blood-bearing organs. Also, the barrel is rifled, which spreads out a shotgun pattern rapidly, but provides forwards compatibility with the .45 Long Colt cartridge. The major function of this feature is that it makes the weapon legal to import into the United States. Were somebody to develop a buckshot round around a shotpistol (or indeed, any kind of decent .410 buckshot as birdshot causes painful, ugly, but rarely disabling wounds), this could be something to write home about. Until that point it's not actually as awesome as a .40 S&W autoloader with hollowpoints.
** There are no restrictions on importing .45 LC. In fact, it's a very common large caliber pistol round. The ability to chamber .410 shells is simply a marketing gimmick
** They've also made the slightly smaller [[http://www.taurususa.com/product-details.cfm?id=662&category=Revolver&toggle=tr&breadcrumbseries=41 "Public Defender"]] and most recently the even larger [[http://www.taurususa.com/product-details.cfm?id=701&category=Revolver&toggle=&breadcrumbseries= "Raging Judge"]]

* The [[http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg172-e.htm MBA Gyrojet]] was actually a 6-shot handheld rocket launcher. It fired 13mm rockets, but was also horribly inaccurate and had very poor reliability (it often misfired). Only a few were produced and used in the Vietnam War before the project was ended.

-->-- '''TeamFortress2''', on the [[http://www.teamfortress.com/sniper_vs_spy/day06_english.htm Spy's unlockable revolver]]

* David from ''[[BloodPlus Blood+ ]]'' carries a huge Smith & Wesson Model 500 revolver (the very one mentioned in the top page quote), which he can [[HammerSpace imperceptibly hide]] in the folds of his jacket. Somewhat justified, in that he spends most of his time shooting it at Chiropterans, large and powerful quasi-vampiric monsters. ([[ImmuneToBullets It never seemed to do much good, though]]).
** Something of a WallBanger considering David comes right out and says that guns are useless against the monsters in the second episode.

* Leslie Nielson briefly wields a ridiculously over-sized Magnum at the end of, "2001: A Space Travesty."

* Dead Space 2's reward for completing its hardest difficulty is a weapon known as the hand cannon, [[CrowningMomentOfFunny which is in actuality your character using a]] {{fingergun}} [[CrowningMomentOfFunny inside of a foam finger and going "bang, bang" or "pew, pew" when you "fire."]] This causes the enemies to [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome explode instantly.]]

** In ''MassEffect 2'' one of the pistol type weapons is the literal the Carnifex Hand Cannon. Also justification of pistol size is simple, given how most of the weapons expand from a storage mode. Most of the weapon is air and light weight nano composites.

* Hello? ''{{Kurohime}}'' anyone? And not just the main character's weapon but Zero's 4 pistols are pretty damn big too. As are well. . .pretty much every other gun in the series. Oh and did I mention that Kurohime's revolver can become a gatling revolver, a sniper rifle, a shotgun cannon, and a weird multi-barreled. . .thing. It's not a minigun because it's not automatic. It sort of reminds me of a rail rifle.

* ''CastleInTheSky'' has something akin to this, an the one-shot weapons that Dola's pirate gang uses seem to also be capable of loading stink bombs as well as the normal bullet/explosive rounds. Near the end, the BigBad actually calls the one Patsu carries a "cannon you can hardly lift"

* The vampire [[{{Dracula}} Alucard]] in ''{{Hellsing}}'': he carries an awesomely huge pistol (39 cm/16" long, 6kg unloaded) stylized after an old-fashioned Colt that can fire the mighty .454 Casull cartridge (which is ''literally'' only slightly smaller than a AA battery); in fact, this ammo gives the gun its common name, "The Casull". Later on he is given another, ''bigger'' pistol (though it's more like a huge block of metal with a trigger) called "The Jackal" (also 39 cm/16" long, 16kg unloaded, 13mm Mercury core rounds with [[AbnormalAmmo blessed Macedonian silver jackets]]), which he uses together with the first one [[GunsAkimbo akimbo-style]]. Both guns are ridiculously heavy for their size. For comparison, the US Army's standard-issue platoon machine gun, the [=M240B=], weighs in at 12kg. Neither are weapons any man could hope to wield, the former for its kickback and the latter for its insane weight, but "It was never meant for a man." The latter is also so heavy because [[spoiler:it has a bomb inside it]].
** In Hellsing's [[{{Anime/Hellsing}} anime]], the BigBad [[LooksLikeOrlok Incognito]] wields an Arms Cor 40 mm, which is a Grenade launcher; and the grenades contain [[AbnormalAmmo vampire-killing spines of death]] with, as Alucard puts it, [[HermeticMagic Sorcery from the Dark Continent]]. This gun is actually chained to his arm.[[BodyHorror He can also produce it from his arm at will, and reloads it by vomiting green slime into it]].

* The JohnRingo series ''IntoTheLookingGlass'', "Two-gun" (nicknamed for his use of [[GunsAkimbo two gun mojo]]) dual-wields a pair of cut-down ''.50cal sniper rifles''. Mind you, for the [[GunsAkimbo two gun mojo]] use in question, he only shoots one at a time, and it's done in PoweredArmor.

* Deputy Jo Lupo from ''{{Eureka}}'' loves {{Hand Cannon}}s, having an entire drop-down rack of them. When she administered the weapon familiarity test to the sheriff, he had to take it several times just to pass.

** Even Mal gets an honorable mention: his gun fires .303-calibur ''rifle rounds''.

* Stick-up artist and cat burglar Omar Little uses a Desert Eagle in HBO's ''TheWire'', mostly to break "bulletproof" glass.
** BNBG

** As does everyone in ''Another 48 Hrs.''

* In ''HarleyDavidsonAndTheMarlboroMan'', Harley pulls out a revolver he describes as a "Magnum .454 conversion", and Marlboro ridicules him for it.
-->'''Marlboro:''' "Man, why in the hell are you carrying a hand cannon like that?"
-->'''Harley:''' "Hey... I learned to shoot using one of these."
-->'''Marlboro:''' "Which might be why you shoot like shit. Harley, ''nobody'' learns to shoot using a gun that big."

* The Cougar Magnum in ''GoldenEye''(which can even shoot through walls), and its ''PerfectDark'' counterpart, the DY 357. Both sound like cannons, too.

* In ''TransformersGenerationOne'', Action Masters were Transformers who gave up the ability to transform in exchange for greater physical prowess and to be "more alive". Some felt the need to compensate further; Kick-Off, for instance, has a handgun with a barrel as long as his arm and as wide as his fist. Several other, like Krok, Rad, and Banzai-Tron, had partners who transformed into extensions of their guns, increasing their size and power dramatically. Kick-Off's own weapon can be enhanced by transforming his ''jetpack'' and attaching it, making it roughly the size of his entire body but still held in one hand. Meanwhile, Overrun normally pilots a helicopter, but it apt to tear off its primary weapon (which is freaking huge relative to his body; this is a very small helicopter, of course) and use it on foot.

* Every agent in ''TheMatrix'' spawns (literally) with a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum in their jacket pocket. (Some are even outfitted with BottomlessMagazines.)

** ''BlackLagoon'' also has plenty of other characters (most of them villains) with oversized weapons, including Yolanda, the old nun from the Church of Violence who fires a gold-plated .50 AE Desert Eagle one handed; Gretel, a small girl and one of a pair of truly CreepyTwins, who fires a BAR from the hip; and even a ''Terminator 2''-style minigun-wielder.

* "CastleInTheSky" has something akin to this, an the one-shot weapons that Dola's pirate gang uses seem to also be capable of loading stink bombs as well as the normal bullet/explosive rounds. Near the end, the BigBad actually calls the one Patsu carries a "cannon you can hardly lift"

** In fact, they've had them since the comics.

* ''HonorHarrington'' has her trademark weapon, a replica Colt M1911 chambered in .45ACP. While the 1911 is not quite a HandCannon in the 21st century, but when the story takes place (around two thousand years in the future), the standard firearm was a hand-held railgun that fired fast-moving darts. She only has the gun because she's an avid support of the Society of Creative Anachronisms [[hottip:*: which in RealLife is an organization that likes to recreate the Medieval and Renaissance-era lifestyle "The Way It Should Have Been"]]

In {{Anime}}, the character with the giant handgun is often in some way superhuman, in order to compensate for the weapon's weight and recoil.

* In Mike Mignola's ''{{Hellboy}}'' series, the title character packs the Samaritan; a hand-cannon which must be at least .60 caliber if not more. However, he is a superhumanly strong demon who fights supernatural menaces. Usually the gun isn't much use anyway, and Hellboy himself admits that he's a lousy shot with it. Which is why he uses DepletedPhlebotinumShells.

* ''S4League '' gives us [[RevolversAreJustBetter The Revolver]]. A giant handgun that uses ''shotgun 12-gauge ammo''.