Bling-Bling-BANG!

The Nun with the Golden Gun.

"An excellent gun, though the gold plating seems a bit over the top."

— ZPCI Sniper Rifle description, Sonny 2

So, you're a badass warrior and have some money to burn. What do you do?

Why, gold plate your weapon of course! Or maybe add diamonds and all sorts of valuable crap just to show people you mean business. Maybe you personalize your gun somehow, either pimping out the stats or carving your name into it. Thankfully, most shows don't assume Viewers Are Morons by stating that a weapon is solid gold, as this would not be a very good idea due to the metal's relative softness^note the bullet, on the other hand, often is solid gold, and this is practical: Gold is heavier than lead, which many ordinary bullets are made of, and can be alloyed to make a hardened jacket. Silver weapons are seldom featured under this trope, since they're generally reserved for fighting supernatural creatures, plus the cultural view that silver is "second best". This trope is used to show that either the guy is so good that they make enough cash killing people to buy all this bling, or they like to add a "personal touch" to their weaponry.

Or maybe they're just lame.

In shooting games, expect a tricked-out weapon to be a special unlock, with or without increased power. A common variant is an excessive amount of Gun Accessories.

Compare Bling of War, Gold Makes Everything Shiny, Money Mauling and Gold-Colored Superiority. May result from Elemental Crafting. Related to Gemstone Assault. Often overlaps with Elaborate Equals Effective.

A Sub-Trope of Cool, but Inefficient, Conspicuous Consumption, and Made O' Gold.

This item is available in the Trope Co. catalog.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Parodied in the Nando's commercial "Last Dictator Standing", where Muammar Gaddafi uses a gold-plated squirt gun in a water fight with Robert Mugabe.

Anime and Manga

• Black Lagoon has one gold-plated example and two lesser ones. Yolanda from the Ripoff Church has a gold-plated Desert Eagle as her weapon of choice (pictured above), Revy has customized her twin Beretta 92Fs with pirate flag decals and refer to them as "cutlasses", and Mr. Chang (who is also one of Revy's idols) has dragon decals and the kanji "天帝" (pronounced "tentei" and meaning "god" or "heavenly king") on his twin Beretta 76s. There's also the big-ass golden custom Luger Hand Cannon that The Brute Fritz Stanford never got to use in the Nazi arc due to Revy spending his rant reloading her gun and then shooting him mid-sentence.
  • Revy's Cutlasses are probably the most extreme example listed here, as the slide and recoil spring guide are both extended one inch beyond the standard 92F dimensions, meaning that they were custom machined just for her.
• The Brave of Gold Goldran is a Combining Mecha team worth of bling.
• Quite a few Knightmare Frames in Code Geass have lots of gold parts or trim, primarily those used by elites like the Knights of the Round and leaders like Zero and Cornelia.
• Oarai Academy's novice tank teams isn't big on camouflage and paint their tanks pink and golden and red for their first practice match in Girls und Panzer.
• Magnamon from Digimon Adventure 02. Quoth his Digimon Analyzer profile: "I am Magnamon, a golden armor Digimon that attacks with my Magna Blaster; and I look so good doing it too."
  • The third Digimon movie has both Terriermon and Veemon Golden Armor Digivolve, turning them into Rapidmon (Golden Armor) and Magnamon.
  • OmegaShoutmon and ZekeGreymon Digimon Fusion, and by extension Shoutmon DX and X7 also do this.
  • Magnamon, ZekeGreymon, and all iterations of Shoutmon (DX, X7 and Omega) utilize Gold Digizoid armor, which provides impressive offensive and defensive powers without sacrificing speed.
  • All the Royal Knights, actually qualify. Or at least the majority. Omegamon X and Dukemon X both have golden weapons and shields, with silver armor, Alphamon has black armor with golden sections and a huge golden double-edged, double-bladed sword that doubles as a boomerang (somehow), UlforceVeedramon has Blue Digizoid armor for protection, that weighs absolutely nothing. Magnamon, well, see above.
    • Dukemon X actually has three kinds of Digizoid armor: Blue, Red and Gold.
    • In Digimon X Evolution, both WarGreymon X and MetalGarurumon X have some pretty shiny armor, and MetalGarurumon X sure does pack quite some firepower. His arsenal consists of several missiles, that he can apparently create more of at-will, and a freaking gatling gun arm cannon. He probably has the most Dakka of any Digimon ever created, as little as it may sound like.
• The Five Star Stories by Mamoru Nagano takes this trope all the way. Everything used by the Schizo Tech Knight in Shining Armor characters, from guns, to swords to Humongous Mecha (especially the mecha) are ridiculously elaborate works of art, displaying exquisitely detailed frescoes & reliefs & covered in jewels & precious metals, in an attempt to intimidate the enemy with an outrageous display of their nation's wealth & craftsmanship. The fact that the series' most recognizable mech is known as the Knight of Gold (KOG to his friends) should tell you something right there.
• Gaiking, Vulking and Raiking can be considered with golden parts in the body and the horns , include Gaiking The Great.
• The Gundam metaseries:
  • Mobile Suit Gundam's MSV include Dozle Zabi's Zaku II and M'Quve's Gouf, both of which are covered in gold filigree. The What If? video game Gihren's Greed also introduces a Zabi Family Custom Big Zam, which is similarly adorned.
  • The most famous case is Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam's Hyaku Shiki, a gold-plated mech designed by, who else but Mamoru Nagano. In this case, the gold is both practical (anti-beam coating) and symbolic (a thumb in the eye to the Titans, showing that the heroes can make new MS right under their noses).
    • Likewise the Delta Gundam (the Hyaku Shiki's original form), which remained unseen until 2011's Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn MSV line.
  • In the Crossbone Gundam: Ghost manga we see a certain Zanscare Empire Andrastea class battleship. Every mobile suit on board is completely golden. It's never explained if it's gold plating, golden paint or beam coating, but considering that all the officers on board wear powdered wigs ...
  • In Mobile Fighter G Gundam, the ultimate state of a Gundam's power is Hyper Mode, which is marked by the machine gaining a gold aura. This is almost definitely a Shout-Out to Dragon Ball Z and the Super Saiyans.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, when Treize rebels against the Romefeller Foundation, he's given an ornate pistol (which seems to be a case of Leave Behind a Pistol); he never actually fires it, but he does point it at Heero in a Mexican Standoff.
  • In ∀ Gundam, Harry Ord's SUMO is gold as well. Metallic colors seems to be the standard for the SUMO, since the base model is silver and the novels introduce a one-off metallic green model.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Blue Cosmos leader Muruta Azrael has a gold-plated pistol.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny': The Akatsuki; likewise, its gold armor is a special beam-reflecting mirror coating.
    • Gundam SEED Frame Astrays introduces an extreme version of this; Rudolf Wittgenstein's custom GOUF Ignited is covered with real gold, held on the armor by a special nano-treatment. This, unlike the Hyaku Shiki and Akatsuki, is purely for show.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00's Alvatore and its core MS, Alvaaron. Since its pilot also has a golden gun and wears a gold-colored pilot suit, this is more a case of egotism.
    • 00 also has the Suille Palace Guard Type Enact, customized with a brilliant white paint job with gold trim. They can't do jack against a giant beam of death from space.
• Kaneo Takarada's Custom DTR◊ in Kill la Kill is gold-plated.
• This trope becomes a plot point for a chapter in Lone Wolf and Cub. One character, a gunsmith, finds that the trope is in full effect among his peers, who all make high quality matchlock rifles with excessive decoration, and that they forget that guns are weapons of war and death and need to be developed to be more efficient. His response to this? A "multiple-fire rifle" - a multiple-barreled volley gun whose demonstration shames and terrifies the other gunmakers into trying to make better weapons.
• In Space Battleship Yamato, the antagonist, Dessler, has what appears to be a gold-plated pistol, and the firing mechanism for his own Wave-Motion Gun also follows this trope.
• Goldenba in the Yatterman Animation Movie but without ANY weapon, only with rockets to traveler into Toy Kingdom.... oops!

Comic Books

• Deadpool has this little gem:
  Deadpool: Hey, y'know what money can buy? A solid gold gun. That shoots diamond bullets. I call it "The Compensator". Whatta ya think?
  • Another fun one during a team-up with Wolverine against some werewolves. Wolverine grabs one of Deadpool's katana and uses it to skewer a werewolf, which starts laughing...
  Wolverine: 'Pool, your swords?
  Deadpool: Hey, silver's expensive! Chrome looks just as good!
• Subverted in an issue of ElfQuest during the "Siege of Blue Mountain" arc: the golden knife Dewshine acquires in one scene is a kitchen utensil she only picks up for lack of anything better, even musing on the poor suitability of the metal for a weapon.
• The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones: In the "Trail of the Golden Guns" arc (#26-27), Indy is hired to retrieve a pair of gold-plated revolvers presented as a gift from the Czar of Russia to Buffalo Bill Cody, and recently stolen by a Russian nobleman.
• The "Ace of Killers" arc of Hitman (1993) featured a silver-inlaid and diamond-studded rifle known as the Ace of Winchesters. Various parties tried to get their hands on it, some because of its monetary value, some because it was able to kill demons. So long as it's loaded, that is ...
• Deconstructed in the Uncle Scrooge comic A Letter from Home. Donald saves his aunt and uncle from the gun-wielding villain by chucking the Philosopher's Stone at him. The Stone turns the gun to gold right before it fires. The gun promptly explodes. Because gold is too soft a metal to be used for purposes like firing a bullet.
• Deconstructed in U.S.Avengers when the villain Gold Skull appears sporting gold Powered Armor. He boasts that its made out of solid gold, which Toni Ho/Iron Patriot cannot believe. Like with the Uncle Scrooge example, she ends up tearing apart the armor while stating how soft gold really is.

Fan Works

• With This Ring: Paul covers a rifle with gold plating, making it "the blingest weapon I've ever held." Justified because the gold came from one of Eris' apples of discord, a focus of Chaos magic, thus turning the gun into a powerful weapon against Order magic.
• Vow of Nudity: The apparition of King Victor fights using a ceremonial mace as a weapon.

Film — Animation

• The titular character from Killer Bean Forever shoots golden bullets. His guns also have some parts which are golden.

Films — Live-Action

• In 3000 Miles to Graceland Kevin Costner's "golden rule" is "fuck gold: whoever has the nickel-plated pistol makes the rules".
• In Austin Powers in Goldmember, the eponymous villain carries a gold-plated Desert Eagle and his henchwomen carry gold-plated revolvers.
• The Butcher: The titular protagonist, a Retired Badass Hitman with a Heart, uses gold-plated Berettas as his preferred weapon. Naturally in the final shootout he uses them Guns Akimbo.
• Call Of Heroes have it's main villain, Cao Shao-lun, who wields a gold-plated pistol and frequently using it to threaten unarmed civilains. One of his first scenes have him shooting an elderly cook for putting beef in his noodles, as he hates beef.
• In Chappie, Hippo has a gold plated Kalashnikov, Ninja has a bright yellow M4, and Yolandi has a pink Uzi.
• At one point in Danger: Diabolik, Diabolik uses five emeralds as bullets. This is an Inverted Trope however: he doesn't do this to be ostentatious, but as part of a hastily-concocted scheme to smuggle these emeralds.
• In Darkman, Durant's henchman (and possible lover) Rick carries a .25 automatic that is silvered with filigree work all over it.
• End of Watch: Officers Taylor and Zavala confiscate a few chrome plated, custom engraved handguns from cartel members, as well as a gold plated assault rifle which Zavala refers to as "Liberace's AK."
• Face/Off: Castor Troy, the Big Bad had two gold-plated Colt 1911s.
• In The Gentlemen, Matthew gives Mickey a good will gift: a derringer that has been gold-plated so it looks like a paperweight. Mickey gives to his wife Ros for her office, where it later becomes a literal Chekhov's Gun.
• In Grim Prairie Tales, The Gunslinger Martin carries a nickel-plated Colt Peacemaker with ivory grips. There is a long loving shot of Martin cleaning and reassembling the revolver before his Showdown at High Noon.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Voldemort contemptuously snaps off the ornate silver handle of Lucius Malfoy's wand when he 'borrows' it to use against Harry Potter.
• James Bond
  • The eponymous Goldfinger has a gold-plated revolver in the Fort Knox raid and climax.
  • The Man with the Golden Gun. Justified because it was the point to hide the nature of the weapon. In the book, it was a simple gold-plated revolver and not the DIY piece seen in the film.
• In Kill Bill we get many of these:
  • Bill has a shiny revolver with either an ivory or pearl grip. He also has a nice, white leather holster for it. You only see it for a few moments when he shoots a bowl of fruit after the Bride tries to get to the katana on the coffee table.
  • Hatori Hanzo usually makes an engraving on his swords such as a lion (the Bride's sword) or a birthday message (Budd's sword).
  • O-Ren's sword has an ornate shirasaya mounting, which makes it look like a decorated wooden stick when it is sheathed. In real life, this type of blade mounting was not intended for combat, since it has no guard or handle wrappings.
• In Ladyhawke, Captain Navarre shows off his gem-encrusted zweihander. Each gem was placed by an ancestor who previously wielded the blade.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Dorian Gray owns a gold-plated Luger.
• One of the warlord's sons in Lord of War had a heavily-customized, gold-plated AK variant.
• In Machete Kills, El Camaleón wields a golden gun.
• In Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, Phryne wields a gilded and filigreed revolver with mother-of-pearl grips.
• In Predators, Cuchillo had a nickle-plated Colt M1911A1 with pearl grips as his sidearm.
• In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, L.J. has two gold-plated Desert Eagles.
  L.J: "Motherfucker, please. My shit is custom."
• In Speed, the Big Bad has a chrome-plated MP5.
• In Star Wars, some high-ranking Council members such as Mace Windu plate their lightsabers with electrum, which is a gold-like precious metal, as part of their perks. Darth Sidious, the Big Bad, also has an electrum saber of his own.
• In Suicide Squad (2016), both The Joker and Harley Quinn use customised pistols that include gold plating, gold engraving and faux ivory decoration, with the Joker also wielding a similarly decorated rifle.
• In Team America: World Police, Kim Jong-il shoots one of his employees with a Nickel-plated Desert Eagle, it's referenced in the DVD commentary that they did this because they more-or-less hoped that Kim Jong-il secretly wishes he was an LA gangsta.
• Subverted in ¡Three Amigos!. Ned has to outdraw the enemy (who is also, incidentally, his biggest fan) in a shootout. Like the other Amigos, he has a gun designed to be used in a movie, pearl handle and silver inlay. The Dragon comes up and removes it from his holster, replacing it with a regular gun that is almost too heavy for him to lift. "You want to die with a man's gun. Not a sissy gun like this." Ned proceeds to win the shootout.
• Ma from Three Against the World uses a gold-plated Magnum as his preferred firearm.
• In Urban Legends: Final Cut, the security guard Reese is a fan of old Blaxploitation films and carries a custom pistol with gold accents on it to match Pam Grier's in Coffy. This actually comes in handy during the climax when Reese's gun gets dropped amidst a bunch of prop guns. Amy recognizes the gold trim and uses it to pick out the real gun and shoot the villain with it.
• In Wanted, several characters have cosmetically modified guns. In this case however, the focus is more on ornate craftsmanship than flashy materials.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, R.K. Maroon owns a gold plated Colt 1903 Pocket Hammerless, which Eddie takes and temporarily uses.
• In William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, the guns were all nickel- and gold- plated, with other decorations, including religious iconography. Plus the Theme Naming used to make the original dialogue work; the "Sword", "Rapier" and "Dagger" handguns and "Longsword" shotgun.

Literature

• Isaac Asimov's "Light Verse": Because Lardner was showing off a jeweled dagger from Cambodia when she heard the news, she used it to kill the man who removed the flaw in her robot that allowed him to create the beautiful light-sculptures that people came to see.
• In one of the old BattleTech novels featuring Camacho's Cabelleros, one of their Mechwarriors, known as Vanity, had her Battlemaster 'Mech anodized in gold—basically, she had all fifteen-odd tons of armor on the 'Mech electrochemically plated. It reflected sunlight so well that she originally called it "Vanity's Mirror" but later rechristened it to "Golden Vanity" after it was pointed out that if the 'Mech really was her reflection then she had thunder thighs, a huge ass, and weighed 85 tons.
• Blood Meridian: A member of Glanton's gang loots an antique, highly ornamental shotgun and simply intends to use it as a regular firearm. He orders a local gunsmith to saw off the barrel, and the gunsmith refuses to destroy such a priceless work of art. He only relents under pain of death.
• In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novel For the Emperor, Colonel Kasteen is carrying a gilt chain sword, engraved with the images of devotional scenes, a striking contrast to Cain's heavily used sword. Then again, she's going to a banquet.
• In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Chessman of Mars, Gahan of Gathol carries a jeweled sword along with his other finery. Tara is so less than impressed that he has to work to overcome it.
• Conan the Barbarian:
  • In The Hour of the Dragon, Conan is pleased when he finds that Zenobia did not give him this but a plain, practical blade, and thinks more highly of her.
  • In "Black Colossus" Shevatas has "a short, narrow, jewel-hilted sword". Although he handles it with great care, that's because he poisoned it himself.
• Jaqueline's pearl-handled pistol is described as "luxury item" in Death on the Nile,
• Played with extensively in the Deryni works.
  • In some cases, the blinged out weapons are Requisite Royal Regalia. The Haldane Sword has gold, jewels (rubies, because the family colour is red) and a relic encased in the hilt. At his investiture, Liam-Lajos is girded with a diamond-encrusted belt and takes up a gorgeous scimitar. "Its scabbard was inlaid with turquoise and lapis lazuli, and studded here and there with pearls and more precious stones: ruby and emerald and sapphire."
  • In keeping with his ready-for-anything wardrobe, Morgan favours plain-but-serviceable weapons in his early years, and he retains some of them, including his stiletto in its wrist-sheath. Later he is shown to have a scabbard set with cairngorms, and he disguises the gold of his sword grip with black leather when going to Dhassa incognito. There's a tension between the demands of his ducal status and more practical considerations.
• All Guns in The Half-Made World are ornate and beautifully crafted, which helps distinguish them from regular, non-demonic guns.
• Hammer's Slammers:
  • Powergun barrels and the armor on the titular mercenaries' tanks are made out of solid iridium, the second densest known metal and also very lustrous and very rare on Earth, though asteroid mining significantly reduced the price. Of particular note is Joachim Steuben's highly embellished personal pistol: "the receiver ... had been gilded and carven by someone with a penchant for fleshy orchids. The stems and leaves had been filled with niello while the veins remained in a golden tracery. The petals themselves were formed from a breathtakingly purple alloy of copper and gold." Joachim can shoot a man in the head from a kilometer away, or kill three men at close range in two-fifths of a second, with this weapon.
  • Railguns have diamond barrels, required to withstand the hellish conditions created inside the barrel when firing.
• In Rick Riordan's The Heroes of Olympus book The Mark of Athena, Chrysaor is quite annoyed that he's not the most famous hero, because he was the first to have a golden sword. Imperial Gold weapons are the standard of Camp Jupiter.
• Ossie from Jingo, apparently believing that using fancy ammo will magically improve his shot, fires an arrow with a plated tip and peacock-feather fletching at the Klatchian Prince.
• Scaramanga's firearm in the The Man with the Golden Gun is a gold plated .45 revolver. He also has golden derringer hidden on him.
• My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister: The Valkyrie Karen fights with a spear and shield made out of solid gold. It's noted that the high density of gold means that these tools strike with a lot of momentum, but the softness of gold isn't brought up at all.
• The One That Got Away: In Chris Ryan's semi-autobiography, the Syrian ambassador had a gold-plated AK47 mounted on his office wall.
• The Shield of Achilles is perhaps the earliest example of this trope.
• A popular trope in A Song of Ice and Fire, where the lords of the Seven Kingdoms compete to out-bling each other in their arms and armor. Jaime Lannister is noted for fighting in armor that is gilded from head to toe. Loras Tyrell gives him a run for his money with a sapphire-encrusted suit of armor and a cape made of fresh woven roses. Rheagar Targaryen famously died by a warhammer blow to his armour, which loosened the many rubies that made up his sigil. Since the battle was fought at a ford, it is now known as the ruby ford and people are still searching for the washed away rubies there.
• In the Vorkosigan Saga, some Vor Lords made use of solid gold bullets in their muzzle-loading weapons, during Barrayar's period of isolation. Mark sees some in a display case, including one with a card saying it was recovered from the brain of its target. He muses that at close range, they must have hit like bricks, but at long range, they likely missed.
• In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Ultramarines novel The Killing Ground, the Grey Knights give Uriel and Pasanius ornate bolters etched with gold. Then, they had just subjected them to ordeals to investigate them for Chaos taint and found them untainted; this was the ceremony to acknowledge that.
• At one point in The Wheel of Time, Rand Al'Thor is presented with a sword with a hilt encrusted with so many jewels it was impossible to hold. He keeps the sword but insists on having a new hilt made, and he gives the jewels back to the person who gave him the sword.
• Karl May's Apache hero Winnetou wields a double rifle richly ornated with silver studs.

Live-Action TV

• American Guns:
  • One episode has Rick make a custom 1911 pistol for his wife for their anniversary; silver-plated finish, mother of pearl grips, custom engraved slide, and diamonds on the grips and sights.
  • A customer wanted to buy a gold-plated Desert Eagle, simply to "have something to drool on now and then".
• Babylon 5 has the Centauri, consistent with their love for Bling of War. Their infantry weapons are relatively subdued, merely silver-plated guns with fancy looks and enough firepower to kill a Shadow, but their warships are rather blingy and decorated in purple and gold. And carry enough firepower to kill anything not built by the Minbari or the First Ones.
  • True to their fondness for Decadence Centauri have hypodermic assassination needles which are treated as lovingly as humans treat swords.
• Banshee: A blind crime lord from Philadelphia carries a gold Desert Eagle. The gun does not do him much good since the man, well, can't see.
• In The Batman (1966) episode "Penguin's Disastrous End", Penguin and his gang have broken into a vault full of gold bullion. To make their escape, they lock themselves in and build a tank out of the gold. Even the shells are made of gold, which he laments when Aunt Hilda plays with the cannon.
• Community: In "Modern Warfare", Senor Chang carries 2 gold-painted paintball guns (possibly in reference to Face/Off).
• In Danger 5, the evil Nazi plot in one episode is to re-arm the Wehrmacht with new golden sub-machine guns... made of gold that are superior to normal weapons, though they overheat if fired full-auto. General Rommel also wants to create a battalion of tanks made of gold. Hitler tells Rommel not to do that because it would be stupid, but he builds one anyway that gets blown up by a British destroyer that mistakes the gleaming tank for a searchlight.
• In the Firefly episode "Heart of Gold" Nandi has a collection of really fancy pistols decked out in gold, pearl, ivory and such.
• In Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Phryne carries a signature gold-plated revolver to complement her stylish outfits when she needs to go Kicking Ass in All Her Finery.
• In Once Upon a Time, King Midas gives James a golden sword when he's sent off to slay a dragon. The sword actually was originally intended for show, with some knights on hand to slay the dragon, but because the knights get attacked unexpectedly, James has to use the golden sword himself. Against all the laws of physics, it works.
• Parks and Recreation: The government of Venezuela gives Ron Swanson a gold revolver as a gift early in season 2. It found its way into the opening credits.
• Sledge Hammer!: Inspector Hammer's .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver is customized with a white ivory handle and an etched drawing of a sledgehammer.
• Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman's tiara was, much like the rest of her outfit, both a very feminine piece of jewelry and a very functional weapon. Her use of it reached its zenith in "The Queen and the Thief" when she disarmed Ambassador Orrick by throwing it across a room while hanging upside down above a poison gas deathtrap. And caught it on the boomerang return.
• Bird's nickel plated Makarov in The Wire is a more downstated example, but becomes relevant to the plot, because Bird likes showing it off to people, and keeps onto it despite it being encriminating evidence against him.

Music

• "Daddy's Got a Big Bad Gun" by Prom Queen is about a father who blows his family fortune on a "big shiny gun", leaving his wife unable to support their infant son.
• Rumahoy's Captain Yarrface carries a blingy double-barrelled sidearm which even fires gems for projectiles.

Tabletop Games

• In BattleTech, Sun-Tzu Liao "fought" in an Emperor battlemech that had been completely electroplated in burnished gold. He never actually piloted it in any real combat, only deploying after the battlefield had been secured or using one of his elite bodyguards to pilot it in order to give the illusion that he was fighting.
• In d20 Modern, there is a rule stating that you can increase the purchase DC (i.e. cost) of an item by 1 in order to get luxury features on it. It is clearly stated that it carries no benefits apart from knowing you have bought the very best. So any character who has the money can buy a gold plated gun.
• Deadlands includes rules for doing this to guns. It is purely cosmetic and notes that some modifications actually reduce your accuracy (such as silvering your gun because this reflects light into your eyes when you're trying to aim).
• In the post apocalyptic game Degenesis, the Neolybians are an organization of fantastically rich hypercapitslitic merchants who basically finance Africa - that is, everything that happens in Africa, by themselves. One piece of equipment every self respecting Neolybians must carry is the Neolybian Hunting Rifle... But of course, since the Neolybians themselves are by and large not exactly the most fighty of bunches (they'd rather buy the ground from under you while they sit on their gold plated throne snorting diamond dust off a dead elephant) their guns are much more show pieces than weapons. Common features include exotic fur, exotic feathers, gold, silver, platinum, diamond, ivory, and priceless artifacts of a bygone age nobody knows what to otherwise do with. They are not bad rifles, mind you (the very best of the best gunsmiths in Africa are paid very generously to make them), but they can't hold a candle to more practical weapons and would've been a lot more useful in a hypothetical fight if they weren't so hysterically blingy.
• Exalted gives us the Prayer Piece- an orichalcum weapon that fires bullets carved with prayers to the Unconquered Sun. The bullets can be made of any soft metal. Naturally, everyone uses gold.
  • Artifact weapons in general, especially jade alloys and orichalcum, are also this trope. Jade is used as money in many places, so jade alloy weapons are partially made out of money, and orichalcum looks like gold, except shinier and possessed of an inner fire, so orichalcum weapons go beyond gold-plated and are purely made out of a purer form of gold.
• GURPS:
  • A rule included in a couple of supplements enables characters to own decorated weapons. This makes a weapon much costlier — and gives a bonus to impress people.
  • GURPS Dungeon Fantasy has an artifact weapon called the Flashing Sunblade made entirely of silver and jewels.
• In Pathfinder one of the weapons known as the Seven Swords of Sin is Chellan, the Sword of Greed, which is made of solid gold. While its magical enhancements make it as strong and durable as adamantium, it's still so heavy that characters without a high strength score have a hard time wielding it effectively.
• In the 3rd-edition Shadowrun supplement, Cannon Companion, there are rules for a custom finish on your guns. It is stated to be purely cosmetic. The companion illustration shows an Ork holding a semi-auto with a baby gator head screwed to the slide (so the muzzle is emerging from the mouth) and two magnum revolvers in his belt with "Meat" and "Potatoes" engraved on the grips, respectively. In the 4th Editon supplement Arsenal, you can get the "Custom Look" mod which improves intimidation and reputation rolls, with the downside that people are more likely to remember what the gun looked like, and who was waving it around...
  • Worth mentioning if not completely in the law of the trope. In Fourth Edition during one of the conversation in-universe between Shadowrunners one of the Runners talks about saving a Corps kid that had a gun. The gun was a Saturday Night special .22 caliber pistol that had a cartoon character on the grip. The runner had a minor Heroic BSoD at the fact that the gun was next to worthless yet cost more than his gun.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Imperium of Man. The obsession with Bling of War is most pronounced with certain Space Marine Chapters and the Ordos of the Inquisition. The Games Workshop website has an article on custom painting Black Templar Marines to show their crusader honors, and one of the models has a gold-plated bolter. The finish is supposed to "reflect the Emperor's light," and is also anointed with "holy unguents."
  • The Chaos approach, which starts with screaming faces, arrows and spikes ... and ends with binding a Daemon into the weapon.
    • In between, it can hit on using your enemies' corpses as decoration.
  • The Grey Knights customise their otherwise undecorated armour with various wards and prayers in gold and silver, among other things to show their faith such as purity seals, and a holy book in a case on their breast plate. Their armour is plain polished ceramite, but with all their Bling of War all over their wargear, they end up being one of the most highly decorated chapters.
  • Ork weapons tend to get more and more decorative. Lootas get decorative "teef", skulls, and Orky glyphs, on guns so large it would take two Guardsmen and a tripod for anyone else to field. Flash Gitz are even worse, their name being British for "smarmy wealth-flaunting asshole" who have some of the biggest, flashiest, most destructive weapons around. Justified because "Bling" does, in fact, make their guns more powerful, due to their subconscious psychic abilities.
  • Any time you see something with "Master Crafted" or "Artificer" in the front of the name, it falls into this. Artificer Armor gets double-bonus points for the fact that it started out like normal quality armor, but over millennia of use it's been fixed, tweaked, enhanced, embroidered and modified so many times it's as much a work of art by the technology worshipping Tech Priests as it is war gear, often with gold plates bearing magnificent murals, benedictions and prayer runes engraved on a microscopic level, shining lights and/or open flames for... No clear reason... You'd think that all this would make someone nothing but a moving target, but if you've earned the right to even TOUCH the stuff - never mind wear/wield it - having a battlefield focusing on you is standard.

Theatre

• Chicago begins with Roxie Hart shooting Fred Casely to death with a pearl-handled .32 revolver.
• In Kiss the Boys Good-bye by Clare Boothe, among Cindy Lou Bethany's personal effects is a pearl-handled revolver. She wields it as the modern equivalent of a Chastity Dagger, though she knows she's a terrible shot.

Video Games

• Kanbei's unit's in the Advance Wars games aren't really covered in gold, but their high defense, high cost, and yellow coloring suggest that they are.
• Age of Mythology has human units getting better-looking equipment as they are upgraded. When upgraded to champion level, they are clad in golden armor. This is specially funny with the norse ulfsarks, as the only armor they wear are wolf skins.
• Alpha Protocol's bosses carry golden weapons, which you get if you kill them. Most obvious with Brayko, who shows off his gold-plated SMGs in the pre-fight cutscene.
• Army of Two
  • You can "pimp" your guns, which covers them in gold/chrome plating and diamonds. Their gaudiness increases your ability to Draw Aggro.
  • The 40th Day introduces the new diamond-encrusted grenades. That's right, your grenades can have a ring of large-carat diamonds permanently fused onto them for just $100,000. They're also gold plated.
• Ashes: Afterglow: Winning a Racing Minigame earns Scav a golden crowbar as a prize for first place. It has no benefits whatsoever and only serves to look cool — the main draw for getting it is that the prize's room counts as a secret.
• Assassin's Creed
  • Assassin's Creed II and its sequels feature some rather extravagant designs for the Hidden Blades that Ezio uses, especially the bracers used for blocking opponents attacks.
  • In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Cesare and Baron de Valois have gold-plated pistols.
  • The Hookblade in Revelations is exceedingly complex in its design to make the hook the shape of an eagle head, and the art designs for some of the hidden blade variations are even worse.
• The developers of BallisticNG offered a special set of golden liveries for the game's ships for those that donated at least $5 towards their Patreon prior to its closure and the game shifting from F2P to commercial later in its development. The v1.2.2 update later gave players that missed the opportunity to get the golden liveries to purchase them through the Bling Pack DLC, along with platinum (as well as iridescent and psychedelic) liveries for $2 and granted to the developer's past Patreon donors free of charge.
• From the Bayonetta series, almost all of the titular character's weapons are quite ornate in some way, every one of them being a one-of-a-kind masterpiece from the 'artiste', Fallen Angel weaponsmith, Rodin. Although, at least for her ranged weapons, the large gemstones at the base of the gun are stated to have a purpose, they are the magical conduit that gives the guns their Bottomless Magazines so they never run out of ammo.
• The Early Bird DLC for BioShock Infinite turns the Pistol and Machine Gun gold, along with free damage upgrades for both. The Columbia's Finest DLC gives the Shotgun and Sniper rifle gold detailing, along with a similar boost to their damage levels. In the Burial at Sea DLC all of the weapons (save the Radar Range) come with shiny, Art Deco finishes as standard.
• In BLACK, after completing the game you can unlock silver versions of your weapons. The only difference is the infinite reserve ammunition.
• The Borderlands series:
  • The first Borderlands has a pistol dropped by General Knoxx in the third DLC, Knoxx's Gold. While the repeater pistol will occasionally be decent in its own right^note its unique golden material has the unstated benefit of boosting elemental effects by a fair bit, the main draw is that it sells for a ridiculous amount of cash.
  Bling!
  • Borderlands 2:
    • Rarer/more powerful versions of weapons will, in general, be fancier and more ornate than drabber common ones. In particular, common Vladof weapons are made of dingy metal and cheap wood, while rare ones have bright, often gold finishes, parodying the stereotypical party leader who lives in the exact excess he claims to fight against. Likewise, Tediore's common guns seem made out of cheap PVC, while purple quality ones have a very shiny and detailed carbon fiber look to them.
    • The Gemstone weapons, which, as the name implies, seem to be made out of precious jewels, like diamond or aquamarine, are the rough equivalent of Purple rarity weapons^note except for E-tech pistols, that can spawn as Gemstones due to a glitch.
  • Borderlands 3 continues this, most notably with the Wild West aesthetic of Jakobs. Higher level Jakobs guns may have gold trim on wood or pearl bodies. Atlas, Hyperion, and Maliwan all have different flavors of futuristic designs, and respectively they can be described as "space vehicle", "corporate", and "energy-based". Dahl and Vladof have militaristic designs, with Vladof guns looking mass-produced and rifles particularly having a Kalashnikov-esque scheme. Torgue has a distinct bulky "hot-rod" aesthetic. Even the COV get some bling with neon lights on "apunkalyptic" style guns.
• Call of Duty
  • In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the player can earn different camo finishes for his weapons by racking up headshots in multiplayer. Starting with a realistic urban digital job, the second and third rank finishes are blue and red tiger stripe.
    
    If all challenges for every weapon in a category are completed, the player earns a gold finish on one of the guns — AK-47 for the assault rifles, Mini-Uzi for the submachine guns, M1014 for the shotguns, Dragunov for the sniper rifles, and M60E4 for the machine guns. All of these finishes are purely cosmetic, intended for multiplayer bragging rights. Upon reaching level 55, players are also rewarded with a gold-plated Desert Eagle.
  • Though the golden camos aren't in Modern Warfare 2, the concept is still namedropped: players can unlock a new perk called "Bling" which allows them to use two attachments on their primary weapon. With enough kills with a Blinged weapon, you can also do the same for your secondary.
  • In Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombies, the "Pack-A-Punch" machine can be found on Der Riese. By activating it (a process that requires lots of money and opening plenty of doors, which attracts more zombies) the player can trade their current weapon for an upgraded version, one that's silver, has myriad engravings all over it, and is more powerful to boot.
  • Black Ops' Multiplayer mode allows you to buy a Gold camouflage pattern for any primary weapon for 50,000 COD points, but only if you've prestiged 15 times. The game's Zombies mode continues applying this to Pack-a-Punched weapons.
  • Modern Warfare 3 has gun camo patterns unlocked in the same manner as attachments (that is, via the new weapon level system), again starting with realistic digital, woodland, and desert patterns, and again ending with gold-plating if the player manages to reach the highest level possible.
  • And Black Ops II turns it up even more. The gold camo is back as a reward for unlocking every other camo pattern with a gun (nine just for making specific numbers of headshots with regular guns and kills in general with special weapons, then five for completing specific challenges with them after that), and if you get a gold camo on every gun in a certain class, it unlocks a Diamond camo for those guns which is basically the gold camo with diamonds added.
    • A Weapon Camo DLC Pack introduces the "Weaponized 115" camo, covering the gun in Nazi Zombies' Element 115.
• City of Heroes: While there is no shiny plating effect, you can select any color you want on most weapons, whether it be a pistol, rifle, longbow, knife, sword, and axes. You can also choose the color of the beam on weapons with a Laser Sight.
• Cyberpunk 2077: Jacke Welles' signature weapon is a pair of golden-plated pistols called "La Chingona Dorada" that V can obtain for themselves at Jackie's ofrenda. Denny's weapon of choice is a gold-plated baseball bat. Downplayed in Kerry Eurodyne's case: his iconic revolver, "Archangel", is far from the flashiest gun in the game, but its dark wood grips and heavily engraved metal parts make it a good contender for the most elegant. Its description states:
  "A piece of art that should never waste away in a display case".
  • The Arasaka Senkoh LX is another good fit for this trope, a compact and elegant submachine gun that's as much an accessory as it is a weapon - the megacorporation literally teamed up with a luxury clothing brand, Jinguji, to make it, and you can buy it at their Downtown store.
• Dead Rising or Dead Rising 2 literally has a leaf blower you can combine with jewelry to blow out gems at high speed, giving you the most bling for your bang and vice-versa.
• Dead Trigger 2 features golden versions of the AK 74, Peacemaker, SCAR and even Butterfly Swords among its premium weapons. By far, the only golden weapons that can be obtained through blueprint drops from Special Zombies are the Desert Eagle (which is gold by default) and the Golden Jackhammer at Gunsmith Levels 7 and 10, respectively.
• Higgs from Death Stranding's signature weapon is an assault rifle decorated with chiralium, a type of golden crystals that started to appear on Earth after the worlds of the living and the dead started to blend together. The player can unlock the schematics for it if they complete all the pizza delivery side quests.
• Deer Hunter: In some versions, killing ten bucks with the same type of weapon will unlock a gold skin for custom weapons of that type. (It's purely cosmetic, though.)
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution:
  • One of Detroit's street gangs, the Motor City Bangers, all have gold plated cyberlimbs. One of their leaders even has tricked out facial augs, which another character describes as "tasteless".
  • Pieter Burke, the boss of the DLC expansion The Missing Link, has a custom gold-plated revolver◊ which comes with a "full suite" of modifications^* Actually not: it only has slightly higher-than-normal base stats and, despite appearing to have the Explosive Rounds mod, it's only been fitted with a Laser Sight. It's actually worse than a regular revolver because its stats are all fixed and can't be upgraded any further.. You can swipe it from his office safe long before you actually have to fight him, in which case "poor" Burke will have to make due with a bog-standard machine pistol for his boss fight.
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: Dvali mobster Otar Botkoveli has his own silver-plated revolver with an ornate rosewood grip, which has also been fitted with a high-powered scope and chambered exclusively for Armor Piercing bullets. It's considerably more tasteful than Burke's revolver, and considerably more useful too.
• In Dissidia Final Fantasy (or more accurately its prequel), Laguna is a Multi-Ranged Master with a Hyperspace Arsenal full of machine guns, sniper rifles, grenades, rocket launchers—if it shoots, he has one. The primary appearance change in his EX Mode? All those beautiful toys are now gold-plated.
• Don't Starve lets you create some golden tools. They are better than the usual tools, but when analyzed, most characters tend to comment on how a tool made of gold should actually be a lot weaker.
• Duke Nukem:
  • In Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, beating the weapon challenge level after picking up a challenge item in the regular game upgrades Duke's Desert Eagle into the "Golden Eagle".
  • The Golden Eagle is also in Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project. You start the game with it and it's actually pretty effective. Most enemies can be killed with a few shots from it, making it Boring, but Practical.
  • In Duke Nukem Forever, Duke has a custom, gold plated M1911 instead. It's the first gun you pick up, and you get an achievement for carrying it with you for the whole game.
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • You can make edged weapons out of silver, resulting in something pretty, valuable and bloody awful as a weapon. In older versions before the addition of proper wooden training weapons, silver was often used for this purpose.
  • On the other hand, blunt weapon damage comes mostly from the weapon's mass, meaning silver warhammers are one of the more effective weapons in the game (while adamantine hammers are a Joke Weapon). And in Dwarf Fortress, silver and gold tend to be abundant while not having much use...
  • The decoration system lets you decorate just about any item (including weapons) with just about any material, like gems, precious metals or the bones of your enemies. Artifacts, weapons or not, tend to be notoriously overkill in this regard.
  • There's also the option of intentionally derailing minecarts full of gold bars, grapeshotting invaders with them. Gold being as heavy as it is, it works wonders.
• The Horatio faction in Endless Space have as their drawback The Price of Beauty, which raises the cost of their ships by 20%. This trope is why; they can't fathom fighting in anything but the most beautiful spacecraft.
• Enter the Gungeon has the AU Gun (AU being the elemental compound for gold), a clear shout out to the James Bond example. It does loads of damage but has low ammo.
• The Amarr from EVE Online love the "gold plated" version of this trope - every Amarrian ship and station is covered in shiny golden armour.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, unique weapons get a custom design. While lots of them look either rusty, dirty, or unfinished, some of them fit this trope. Lucky and Maria are two good examples. Also, the player has the option to craft 12-gauge shotgun shells loaded with Caesar's Legion Denarii. Amusingly, killing someone with said shell gives you a chance to recover either a denarius or a mangled denarius (worth half as much.)
• Unique and legendary weapons in Fallout 4 generally look identical to their basic counterparts, but the game still comes up with one exception: the Silver Submachine Gun, a fan-made replica of the personal weapon of pulp superhero The Silver Shroud. Its metal parts are not exactly silver but much more shiny than the standard steel parts (obviously an amateur modification by fanboy Kent Connolly, going by the tiny bits of old finish still visible on the gun), and it sports higher-quality wooden components, but is functionally identical to any regular submachine gun in terms of stats and upgrade options. The Operators gang in the Nuka-World DLC carries AK-pattern rifles with a much snazzier, high-polished chrome finish on most of the gun, along with a nice cherry stain on the wood furniture.
• Far Cry 2 has a few gold plated AK-47s hidden in remote shacks. The game's huge maps make them very easy to miss. In addition, they degrade even slower than the regular AK-47. Considering how long it takes to break a normal AK-47, it gives you a weapon that won't break or even jam for a large portion of the game. The problem is that there are only 8 of them with 4 in each in both Northern Leboa-Sako and Southern Bowa-Seko that are, again, stashed away in shacks.
• Final Fantasy VII Remake: President Shinra threatens Barret Wallace with a golden gun.
• Gears of War 2: The Limited Edition comes with a gold Lancer. And if you showed up at the midnight launch, you got a gold Hammerburst, too.
  • Gears of War 3 has both Gold and Chrome plated skins for all of the starting guns. However the Gold Retro Lancer could only be unlocked by playing the beta, and the Chrome Sawed-Off Shotgun could only be unlocked by having any achievement from Gears 1 on the PC. There is also the Liquid Metal skin for all starting guns, which comes with purchase of the Season Pass.
• Ghost Trick: Nearsighted Jeego has a golden shotgun.
• The level 3 "Saturday Night Special" upgrade for the .38 snubnose revolver in The Godfather: The Game, as well as the level 3 "Python" upgrade for the Magnum, has gold plating and ivory handles.
• The Grand Theft Auto series:
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Yusuf Amir adores tacky bling, which extends to owning a solid gold submachine gun. Either he's getting carried away with his boasting and its really just gold-plated (or constructed from titanium gold), or it's an instance of the Rule of Cool. A solid-gold SMG would be impractically heavy, and the firing chamber impractically soft. He later gives Luis Lopez one such gun as a gift, claiming he's got three more. And he adds gold plating to an attack helicopter that he had him steal.
  • It could be made of gold rather than gold plated. In an earlier mission, Yusef hands a golden phone to Luis who visibly reacts to its unexpected weight.
  • Grand Theft Auto V also has these, particularly in the multiplayer mode Grand Theft Auto Online.
    • To start with, there are the Gold and Platinum weapon tints that, well, tint any given gun with a gold or platinum finish. These are unlockable to purchase in-game as players rank up.
    • Starting with the "Ill-Gotten Gains" update, several guns have gained unique and more auspicious tints, including encrusted gems (usually diamonds), pearl finishes, etched wooden grips, and engravings of various kinds — each costing at least three times as much as the Gold and Platinum tints. Notably, the above example from IV returns as the "Yusuf Amir Luxury Finish".
    • The "Executives and Other Criminals" update include a "VIP" tint exclusive to the Heavy Revolver and Switchblade introduced in the update, covering and accenting them with gold engravings, respectively - available only for players with a GTA$ count exceeding 10 million.
    • The "Doomsday Heist" update adds the Double-Action Revolver, a vintage Wild West revolver with gold plating and ivory grips that is unlocked through a scavenger hunt, and is second only to the Heavy Revolver as the most powerful handgun in the game, even if it can't be upgraded. Notably, it comes with a challenge where scoring fifty headshots earns the player $250,000 in-game, and unlocks the weapon for use in Red Dead Redemption 2.
• Donators to the dev team of the Half-Life mod Sven Co-op can get golden Uzis that do additional damage, among other bonuses.
• Halo:
  • Halo 4 introduced weapon skins to the franchise, and with the Champions Bundle's Steel Skin Pack, added steampunk-inspired skins that covered and accented all of the Loadout weapons in gold.
  • In Halo 5: Guardians, two of its major updates added the Gold Standard and Aurum weapon skins, accenting the UNSC Loadout weapons with gold in varying ways. These are attainable through purchasing REQ packs with the game's in-game currency, REQ Points, or real-life money. Its Ultra-Rare and Legendary rarities, respectively, will however have players racking up their playtime a lot with neither kind of skin in sight, depending on their luck.
• In A Hat in Time, the finale of the Nyakuza Metro DLC has some parts where the Empress attacks Hat Kid with a golden bazooka that shoots diamond-tipped rockets.
• Hearthstone provides players with Golden versions of the regular cards, complete with a gold border on the playing field and shinier animations than their regular counterparts. You can also unlock golden versions of the playable heroes, and having a deck completely made of golden cards causes you to get a golden version of the Coin when going second.
• Hitman:
  • Agent 47 has his own custom Silverballers: silver-colored AMT Hardballers with custom wood and leathet grips. Special mention should go to the Krugermeier 2-2: a silenced gun completely covered in gold and ornaments (including the silencer).
  • Hitman: Contracts has gold-plated Desert Eagles available. There's even a pair of them available, but they take a fairly extensive search.
• In most James Bond games, you can acquire a Golden Gun (as per the aforementioned film). This is usually hard to do, but the Golden Gun is a One-Hit Kill. GoldenEye 007 also lets you unlock a Gold PP7, a special version of your regular gun that can one-shot bad guys just like the Golden Gun, but with the PP7's faster rate, as well as the Silver PP7, which does as much damage as the Cougar Magnum but again with the PP7's faster rate.
• Killer7: The final weapon in the game is the Golden Gun, which is instant death to Heaven's Smiles. Curtis Blackburn's twin gold-inlaid pistols are quite nice, as well.
• Killing Floor has two DLC packs for gilded weapons as well including a golden chainsaw, M79 "Blooper" and even a golden flamethrower.
• The Big Bad of Kirby: Planet Robobot, President Haltmann, pilots an "Executive Suit" mech made of solid gold.
• L.A. Noire: The murder weapon in the very first case is a revolver with nickel plating and a pearl grip.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III has Azure Siegfried Dual Wielding golden guns.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Link's strongest sword in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is a golden sword to compliment his silver arrows. The final Master Sword upgrade in its sequel The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds also has a golden blade.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask also includes the Gilded Sword, which is made by forging the Razor Sword with some gold powder.
  • The golden cannon you can get with an upgraded ship in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks also gives you a golden cannon, and like in the previous game it adds to your ride's health, but it's still pretty pricey.
  • The Royal weaponry in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are noted by their description to be as powerful as they are ornate, decorated with what looks to be golden filigree.
• Mass Effect mostly avoids this, but the shiny black and blood red Colossus series armor in the first game and your ability to give Shepard gold armor with the appearance customization system in the second certainly look somewhat impractically showy.
• In the PC version of Max Payne 2, the Desert Eagles are you average chrome .50AE model... but with gold controls and ivory/mother of pearl grips. In the X-Box version, they're a puke-ish olive drab, and the slides don't even move when fired.
• In Max Payne 3 you can turn your weapons into golden guns by collecting their respective parts scattered around the levels. Collecting them all grants you the "License to Kill" achievement. In addition to looking cool, they gain a boost to damage and magazine capacity.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: Subverted. Ocelot gets an engraved revolver and Naked Snake mocks him for this, pointing out that the engraving serves no tactical advantage whatsoever. Ocelot later gets a regular revolver. Nicely contrasted with a gun that EVA gave Snake that actually had been modified for tactical purposes (a better line-sight, altered grip to make it easier to switch from knife to gun, etc.)
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: When Ocelot tells a new recruit that he was going to make them "forget everything Hollywood ever taught" them, he repeats what Snake told him about engravings.
• Weapons and armor in Might and Magic can be made of twenty different materials, and more bling generally means a higher bonus. A crystal weapon gets +1 damage, gold +8, and diamond +30. Unfortunately, if your diamond sword breaks, repairing it will cost an arm and a leg.
• Mighty No. 9 offered a special Golden Beck costume for those that pledged at least $60 to its Kickstarter, which turns Beck's entire body, as well as his face, into gold.
• Minecraft, after much hullabaloo from the fanbase, finally added in picks, swords and armor made from gold. Huzzah! Gold axes and swords do, in fact, swing sunuvabitchin fast and can plow through blocks at nearly diamond speed. To many folks' dismay, Notch was also aware that gold is a relatively soft metal. Thus, the durability of gold implements are in the toilet. Diamond weapons themselves are also a pretty good example, except they're much more durable.
• Reiji Arisu from Namco × Capcom and Project × Zone has a golden revolver called Gold.
• No More Heroes: Dr. Peace's weapon is a pair of gold plated revolvers.
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Million Gunman, the Rank 9 assassin, uses a pair of gold-plated C96 Mausers that actually shoot money.
• Nuclear Throne has golden variations of several weapons. They're a bit better than their normal counterparts (most have a faster rate of fire, but some others have a different bonus), and if a character is holding one when they go through a portal, the player can choose it to replace that character's starter weapon on subsequent runs.
• Overwatch: Getting enough points in competitive seasons allow you to buy golden weapons for your heroes, which include the likes of Reaper's shotguns, McCree's revolver, Widowmaker's sniper rifle and Genji's shuriken and katana.
• PAYDAY 2 has the Golden AK.762 assault rifle. It's almost completely identical to the standard AK.762 stat-wise (it has a lower concealment value, but is otherwise the same), and is also more expensive.
• In Perfect Dark, a bad guy by the name of Trent Easton is never seen without his custom made DY-357 LX, a pimped out revolver boasting gold plating and a leopard-skin grip, and also kills in a single shot. This is given an In-Universe justification as not only does the DY-357 LX have tuned-up muzzle velocity for extra penetrating power, the bullets are specially designed to shatter into shrapnel in the body after impact.
• PlanetSide 2 has gold-plated weaponry and armor as Revenue-Enhancing Devices. Golden weapons have no stat differences from the standard guns but they can be used to complete Weapon Directives, and the armor is completely cosmetic. The rare Platinum plated weapons, which are only available through promotion programs, are the easiest to get the pure black camouflage (by get 1160 kills on 5 limited edition weapons), though they are otherwise identical.
• Player Unknowns Battle Grounds features a lot of special skins available simply to apply to weapons you loot, which are entirely cosmetic. These range from Choco Taco's special markings, through all manner of custom paint jobs, including special holiday themes, 80s cyberpunk themes and symbols of pride such as Lumi's old rainbow scheme, to, yes, gold-plated schemes with wooden furniture.
• The first Ratchet & Clank game had more powerful gold versions of each weapon. The second game onwards had a more practical upgrade system.
• Red Dead Redemption lets players earn gold-colored versions of some weapons in multiplayer, but these are just a Bragging Rights Reward. However, one store's Pre-Order Bonus was a pair of golden guns that increased your Fame simply by being used.
• Red Dead Redemption 2: Most guns, as well as your knife, can be customized to your liking at any gunshop. You can change the metals of individual parts, change the wood varnish and grain, get engravings (in which the inlay metal can also be changed) on the metals and carvings on the wood, swap grip materials for pistols, and add leather wraps, which can also have their color changed. You want a black body Schofield revolver with an ebony ironwood grip and gold Art Neueve style engravings? How about a gold C96 with a pearl grip and silver baroque style engravings? A blackened steel knife with gold skulls engraved on the blade? Cough up the money and any of these can be yours.
• In Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, Steve will trade you the plot-important Gold Lugers for a pair of submachine guns. They're not usable by Claire in the main game as weapons (they're empty and presumably chambered in .30 Luger instead of 9mm), but Steve wields the Lugers in the battle mode, and can put them to good use by pulling off manual headshots with careful aiming.
• Rimworld allows you to craft specific types of weapons out of gold or silver, although this is highly Awesome, but Impractical as other resources tend to both be more effective for weaponry and/or much easier to acquire. If your craftsman has a high enough skill they can also create weapons of masterwork quality, which not only have a higher damage output but are engraved with miniature artworks (some more serious than others).
• Saints Row has gold and platinum weapons for completing the Hitman activities - a gold plated pistol, a platinum SMG, and a platinum shotgun. It culminates in a platinum rocket-propelled grenade. They generally have larger magazines and do more damage than their regular equivalents.
  • In Saints Row IV, the gold skins are just a cosmetic option with no mechanical effect, but to make up for it, with the right challenges complete you can gold-plate firearms made by invading aliens. If covering a black hole gun with gold plating strikes you as overkill, SRIV is not the game for you.
  • Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell has a set of weapons themed around the Seven Deadly Sins. Representing Greed is the Diamond Sting, a gold, diamond-covered SMG that can only be acquired by buying it for an obscenely high amount of money, shoots diamonds as ammo, and causes enemies to explode into showers of money when killed with it.
• Salt and Sanctuary: The Axe of Splendor is an axe made of solid gold sold by a cult of gold-obsessed hedonists known as the House of Splendor. Its description notes it to be about as effective in combat as one would expect from an axe made of solid gold, though in actual gameplay it's one of the best one-handed weapons in the game.
• The Secret World has golden skins for both Main and Auxilliary weapons. The only source of main ones is "Golden weekends", and their name contain some sort of reference to greed, vanity or showing-off. Auxiliary ones are bought from vendor for 1 billion of in-game currency - sum, that even super-hardcore players should make some effort to accumulate. Both serve as Bragging Rights Reward, lacking any special effects.
  • There is also Yakuza gangster Daimon Kyota in Tokyo area. At one point he makes his Big Damn Heroes entry among other Tokyo Non Player Characters, dual wielding golden pistols.
• Shadow Complex: The reward for collecting all the gold bars is golden version of all the regular weapons. They don't do anything special though.
  • However, they become accessible in a room at the entrance of the base, making all weapons available at the very beginning on a New Game Plus.
• Shadow of the Wool Ball: The most powerful weapon in the game is the Golden Shotgun, complete with golden ammunition.
• In Skylanders, Trigger Happy wields a pair of golden guns that fire golden bullets or a golden beam of energy.
• In Sleeping Dogs (2012), Winston Chu carries around a gold-plated Desert Eagle. Later on, when Winston is killed at his own wedding, Wei uses it to threaten a messenger from a rival gang and starts the mission carrying it. After beating the game, there will be one at each of Wei's apartments that he can use at any time.
• Sniper Elite 4: Completing all of the challenges with a particular weapon unlocks its Mastery skin, where all of the weapon's normal metal parts are replaced with gold.
• Splatoon has the .52 Gal Deco and the .96 Gal Deco, which are basically regular .52 Gals and .96 Gals (slow but hard-hitting shooters) that have been covered with sequins. The description of these weapons in the first game outright say that they looks ridiculous and people might laugh at you for using them... until you break out the Seekers and Inkstrike for the former and release the Kraken with the latter.
• StarCraft: The Protoss have two color schemes for their armor: gold-plated (High Templar), and silver-plated (Dark Templar). This also extends to their buildings. All of their armor and architecture is crafted with ornate curves, glowing crystals, and Tron Lines. As a result, it's effectively impossible to play as Protoss and not invoke this trope. In-story, the main Protoss fleet is even referred to as the Golden Armada.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Dread Forged weapons obtained from tokens found in the Dread Fortress and Dread Palace have a shiny gold finish, giving them this appearance.
• In Stranglehold, the most powerful gun you can get is the Golden Pistol, a gold-plated Desert Eagle that can kill a mook with one shot and isn't half-bad against bosses either. You can use them Guns Akimbo just like your regular Berettas.
• A pre-order bonus for the remake of Syndicate gives you gold-plated guns in co-op.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The Spy's Ambassador, an unlockable revolver. To quote the official description: "With its rosewood grip and likeness of your enemy's mother (please send photo) engraved on the barrel" it definitely fits quite nicely in the Bling-Bling-BANG! category, moreso since it has a golden trigger as well.
  • Another Spy unlockable gun, L'Etranger, has an engraved ivory grip and polished steel. The Enforcer has a pearl grip. In addition all of the other Spy "weapons" apart from his sapper and Spy-cicle look to be of high quality, especially the Your Eternal Reward and his various watches (which are usually gold).
  • The Heavy has the Brass Beast, an ornate brass minigun. It's by far the most beautiful of his guns, as the others were implied to be home made.
  • The Engineer got the Golden Wrench, made of pure australium. It can turn anything it kills into more australium.
  • Similarly, the Saxxy awards and Golden Frying Pans can be considered this as well, since they're actual awards.
  • The Two Cities update introduced Australium weapons, which are reskins of regular weapons with most of the metal bits replaced with very shiny gold.
• Terraria also features gold and silver weapons (and since 1.2, platinum and tungsten) but thanks to the game's more fantasy orientation, they're much more useful.
  • The Coin Gun is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The better the coin value (platinum > gold > silver > copper), the higher the damage inflicted.
  • Another example would be the golden bullets, which makes the enemies you kill with them drop more money.
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary had silver uzis and a golden shotgun as unlockable weapons, which were actually more useful than their regular counterparts. The silver uzis held more ammo than the regular version and fired at a much faster rate while the golden shotgun also held more bullets and fired faster, but also killed anything with just a single shot, bosses included!
• Total Overdose has a special that grants a Golden Gun with 6 instantly lethal shots, in homage to James Bond. Each shot is tracked with a speeding camera closely following the bullets' trajectory to their target.
• Eddie Raja in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune has a golden handgun.
• In Warframe, golden fittings are a sign of Orokin technology.
  • Prime Weapons, and in a sense Prime Warframes definitely qualify.
  • Downplayed, but regular Tenno guns qualify as well with their well-made wooden furniture. Almost like you're shooting enemies with a hand-crafted work of art.
• In World of Tanks you see many tanks with no camouflage at all. You often will see tanks with reasonable camouflage. You will sometimes tanks with garish reward camouflages. And then, you may very well come across the rare and infamous Type 59 Gold Camo Version, a tank for which the word "ostentatious" can only begin to scratch the surface as a description. Not only is it gold, it is embellished with raised deco patterns and dragon motifs sculpted onto its barrel, turret, and hull. It is by far the most expensive tier 8 tank ever offered in World of Tanks, coming in at an eye-watering 25,000 gold, or about $100.00 USD. Some players have joked that getting the tank involves melting down all that gold and reforging it into the Type 59 itself.
  • The Chinese server of rival game War Thunder directly copied this by implementing their own gold Type 59. Which is even more impractical, since the relatively more realistic War Thunder doesn't have a concealment mechanic and thus tanks are "spotted" by the enemy players simply seeing them on the screen. Thus the gold Type 59 is simply a Type 59 that can't be hidden very well.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has Yaldabaoth: AKA Gold Face, a golden Mecha piloted by one of the villains Egil. One image of it here◊.
• Yoshitaka Mine of Yakuza 3 has a gold-plated gun (a SIG P230, which is not a cheap gun to begin with) to go along with the rest of his conspicuous consumption.

Webcomics

• Bobwhite. From the climax of Marlene's film:
  Emily: I know what you're thinking. But you can search for the rest of your life. You're not finding the money.
  Frank: Oh? And why is that, sugarbeet?
  [Emily pulls out a gun and fires a gold-plated, Gem-Encrusted bullet through Frank's chest.]
  Emily: Because I spent it all... on the bullet that's going to kill you.
  Frank: [lying on the floor, bleeding out] Damn... that's... a nice... bullet.
  Emily: Only the best for you, Frank.
• This page from Contemplating Reiko.
• In Homestuck, Lord English wields a golden scepter that turns into a golden assault rifle.
  • Jake has two golden pistols when we see him post-entry.
• In Plume, Dom totes around a golden - or gold-plated - gun.

Web Original

• In El Chigüire Bipolar, when Maduro enters Globovisión with a machine gun and ends the channel once and for all, he does it with a golden machine gun.
• Curveball features Doctor AEvil, who uses a gold-plated Mini-Mecha to rob banks. He also likes to put his minions in shiny gold stormtrooper armor, complete with golden laser cannons.
• Oedipus in my Inventory has a joke advertisement for a Collector's Edition, which promises among other things that the knife in your inventory will be golden.

Western Animation

• On Adventure Time, Finn and Jake's Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant has golden shotguns for tusks.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Lucius has a golden tank.
• On Johnny Test, this is Bling-Bling Boy's entire theme.

Real Life

• Achieving this trope in real life is nowhere near as expensive as it looks, or as the sort of person who would actually do it for real would like you to believe. Electroplating the exterior surfaces (minus the handgrips) of a typical handgun only takes a relatively small amount of gold, to the point where it only costs perhaps $100 extra to apply versus a more modest chrome or black-enamel finish. This may or may not be reflected in what providers actually charge for it.
  • Engraving a gun (with or without precious metal inlays) is when it gets really expensive, especially if it's an elaborate job done by a skilled artist rather than just machine-engraved. While not as common now as it was up through the mid-20th century, this remains a way for wealthy gun enthusiasts to show off their passion for both firepower and bling.
• Saddam Hussein had gold-plated AK-47s and even gold-plated SVD sniper rifles among his possessions.
• Among the exhibits on display at the Drug Enforcement Agency's museum in Arlington, Virginia, are a gold plated Beretta 92F pistol with a diamond-encrusted grip and a matching gilded silencer that was formerly owned by El Chapo Guzman, and an AK-47 with gold highlights, including a gold-plated drum magazine for good measure!
• Gen. George Patton had a silver-plated, ivory-handled revolver. Just don't call them pearl-handled.
• As a general, Napoléon Bonaparte had (relatively) modest weapons, and once he became emperor he rarely took up arms himself. But, in order to blend in with the European royalty and thereby set them at ease, he took up hunting even though he was a terrible shot and disliked the activity. As part of the charade, he accepted the gifts of some profoundly ornate guns for those hunts. But what he really delighted in was old-fashioned bling in the form of clothes, jewelery, and ornate versions of functional buildings.
• When Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield, he wanted to buy an ivory-handled gun over a plain one so it would make a more attractive museum piece, but he decided not to spend the extra money. The Smithsonian ended up losing the gun anyway.
• Nickel plating was a standard feature on many antique revolvers, due to its high resistance to wear and corrosion. In modern times it has been supplanted by stainless steel.
• A variant on this trope is a "Rooney" gun - one that's been encumbered with an excessive amount of gadgetry. For examples see "Rooney Guns" at The Gun Zone. This is also referred to as a "Tacti-Cool" setup.
• In days past ceremonial firearms were very beautiful. In the days when all firearms were hand built and unique, they were subject to the same level of ornate craftsmanship as swords.
  • Jewel-encrusted Ottoman guns.
  • Intricately carved and decorated Japanese arquebuses fit for a shogun.
  • Duelling pistols themselves tend to be marvels of craftsmanship, as their fittings can be carved with intricate details and may or may not have gold added. Even more impressive is the fact that they are always made as an identical pair.
  • There's some very fancy 19th-century American guns incorporating gems and gold at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  • "Fowlers", long hand-built early sporting shotguns used for bird hunting by the European nobility.
  • Even today, Beretta operates a custom shop in Italy to make high-end artistic versions of their sporting arms for wealthy clientèle.
  • Basically any company making a high-end hunting firearms (Beretta, Heym, Holland & Holland etc.) makes a intricately detailed pieces on special order. They usually include extensive, detailed engravings, gold and silver inlays and rare wood furniture, often inlaid with ivory or mother of pearl.
• During the Wild West age, Native American warriors and a sizable number of white adventurers used to decorate their utilitarian, day to day guns with brass ornaments. This is actually why you will sometimes hear the Winchester Repeater referred to as "the yellow boy", as it was the sobriquet used by Native Americans to describe the rifle when it was constructed primarily out of brass.
• While not all Ugly Guns develop as such for the purpose of customization, the most memorable of them tend to be.
• If you read the Mexican news, you'll see how narcos are quite often arrested with gold and diamond-encrusted guns. Here is an example of such guns. A bust of the notorious Sinaloa gang in Costa Rica captured, among other things, gold-plated and diamond-studded AK-47s.
• At one point, Elvis Presley presented Richard Nixon a gift — a gold plated Colt 45 with gold plated bullets. Secret Service men gave it to Nixon — Elvis was not allowed to present the gift directly.
• Adolf Hitler kept a golden pistol◊ in a hidden pocket of his vest. Hermann Göring also had one.
• Muammar Gaddafi was allegedly carrying a gold-plated Browning Hi-Power◊ when he was captured and killed by rebels. Who may or may not have killed him with his own gun. A golden AK-47 and a golden Dragunov had been discovered earlier when his secret compounds were raided.
• Chechnya's president and one of the richest men in Russia, Ramzan Kadyrov, had this◊ photo of him taken during a press conference.
• This AR-10 type rifle is literally embossed in a titanium frame. And it costs a whopping $100,000. When you literally construct a gun made out of titanium materials, you know it's going to be one hell of an expensive kill-toy.
• The swords of the Anglo-Saxons are some of the most famous in this regard, with gold or bronze hilt fittings, inlay of precious metals, elaborate engraving, and garnet cloisonné.
• The Sword of Goujian is no slouch in this regard. It is an intricately-made sword that is chiefly made of copper and tin, with elaborate rhombus patterns on both sides of the blade, and comes with blue crystal and turquoise decorating the guard. It also has an inscription engraved on the face of the blade in the old Bird-Worm script that specifically lists King Gou Jian of Yue as its owner. Amazingly enough, even though most other swords of its time would have been corroded into oblivion (it was made prior to the Qin Dynasty), it is still razor-sharp.
• The Māori mere is a flat, bladed, teardrop-shaped piece of precious stone, usually "greenstone" (probably Nephrite jade) that is about the size of a forearm, but is still capable of cracking skulls. This is justified, as short of diamond, jade is the hardest natural material on Earth. That being said, because jade is a precious material, and because it is often a family heirloom, the mere and its wooden cousin the patu are often decorated with intricate carvings.
• "Tiffany guns" (not neccessarily made by Tiffany and Co.) is occasionally used to denote firearms which have been heavily decorated to the point of madness, but are still fully operational firearms. You'd have to wonder who would actually fire one, though. There is a colour associated with the name, which is recently being used as a simpler form of weapon decoration; however it also denotes things like this, currently in the collection of the Royal Armouries in the Tower of London. They◊ get◊ worse◊.
• Titanium nitride (TiN) finish gives gun parts a rich golden color, which many plating services can apply as a high-polish sheen for an upcharge. The results look as fancy as real gold plating (for instance, Castor Troy's eye-catching twin golden .45s from Face/Off are plated with TiN, not real gold), but are much more durable, more resistant to scratches and wear, and far less expensive.
• The Process of Damascening in gunsmithing is a the process of inlaying gold sheeth or wire into an unfinished firearm, resulting in beautifully decorated ceremonial firearms that are both fully functional while still being beautiful works of art. Popularized by spanish royal gunsmith Eusebio Zuloaga and his son Plácido in the 19th century, damascened firearms became very popular as state gifts for prominent military figures around the world.

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