IKEA Weaponry

Now if only I knew the Swedish word for scope. Or barrel. Or customer helpline.^note "Kikarsikte", "pipa", "kundtjänst".

IKEA Weaponry is all about weapons which are usually left in kit-form until they are needed. Sniper Rifles are the best known version of these weapons thanks to the Lock-and-Load Montage that is often featured in some movies, but other types of weapons have shown up in shows as well. This is called a "takedown rifle" in real life, and, near as records can reflect, most of them are used by hunters who travel frequently rather than assassins. (As far as we know...)

It takes a special kind of weapon to be broken down like this, and it doesn't usually work the way Hollywood depicts it onscreen. A scoped rifle that is expected to hit anything must be test fired, adjusted, and tested again, a process called "zeroing". In order to work right after assembly, the scope needs to be either permanently fitted to the main body of the weapon, or fitted to a special mount that can be separated and rejoined precisely without interrupting the adjustments. The break-away barrel connection must likewise be gas-tight and accurate enough to put the muzzle back in the same exact place after assembly. The precision machining required is always hand work, mass-production need not apply, but there are specialist gunsmiths that can deliver. This is becoming less true with the advent of finer machining and improved "quick detach barrels"; see the Bushmaster ACR for an example.

This weapon is going to compromise some accuracy and power over a non-takedown weapon of the same type, but assassinations-by-scoped-rifle as seen in the movies are almost always over relatively short range, like a roof overlooking a street, on a highly-visible stationary target: an easy shot for a decent shooter, even if the sight is off by an inch or so.

Most traditional break-action (boxlock and sidelock) rifles and shotguns of the last 100 years or so are made to be easily assembled and disassembled in 3 parts in a few seconds typically by pulling a single latch in the forend (some have a spring catch in their forearm, e.g. Winchester Model 37 so that it simply pulls off) and their sights or scopes are solidly fixed to the barrel and not the receiver, so the zero is not interfered with, so they fit the spirit of the trope by design.

Bifurcated Weapon differs from IKEA Weaponry in that bifurcated weapons are already weapons in their own right even before they are put together. Same goes for Combo Rifle.

A Sub-Trope is the Scaramanga Special, where the parts needed to put the weapon together are disguised as different objects which may very well function as said object, eg: a pen, a pillbox or even a belt buckle.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with IKEA Erotica. We hope...

See also Briefcase Blaster, Retractable Weapon, Gun Accessories.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Priss in Bubblegum Crisis has a Hand Cannon that can break down into three parts.
• Golgo 13 is often shown assembling his weapon of choice, a custom M16 rifle. Other snipers shown in the series also have such weapons. Several stories have a more involved assembly process; for example, he once bypassed a Mafia lockdown on Sicily by having doves fly in the parts — except for the barrel, which he has made on site from a church fountain's nozzle pipe. The story takes time to show Golgo zeroing in the gun after it's built.
• The MS-18E Kampfer from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket is the result of applying this trope to an entire Humongous Mecha, the parts shipped in individually and then assembled in an unused warehouse.
• In Gunsmith Cats, Rally Vincent's first gun, given to her by her father, was an AR-7, a small .22LR rifle that can be disassembled and the components stored inside the buttstock. She keeps this in the trunk of her car and still uses it from time to time.
• Parodied in an episode of Magical Princess Minky Momo that had Minky pretend to be a spy. When the Big Bad of the episode places a tank in the path of the train she's in, the Guy of the Week (also a spy) pulls out a man-portable rocket launcher... and gets so caught up on the instructions to assemble the damn thing that by the time he finally manages to put it together, Minky has solved the problem herself.
• Yoko Littner's rifle in the first Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann movie can be disassembled down to two submachine guns, or even simply broken apart.

Comic Books

• Parodied in Alan Ford, most notably in the volume Centimetropolitan Piano Concert, where one of the two assassins tries, without much luck, to assemble such a gun while his colleague enjoys a sandwich. Unfortunately for them, the concert is so bad everyone, including their targets, has left by the time they've successfully assembled the rifle. To cup it all, they forget the weapon and are later caught when they come back to retrieve it.
• Iron Man: For years, Tony Stark has made Iron Man armors that collapse and store inside his briefcase. Then Extremis let him store most of the undersheath in the hollow parts of his bone where the marrow is normally found, calling on the rest of the suit when in need. The next step was an armor based on fibrous 'liquid' armor, inspired by the armor of the time-travelling Iron Lad, which stored inside Tony's body entirely but could deploy incredibly rapidly, almost organically growing in the blink of an eye.
• In Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness, the third volume of Scott Pilgrim, Todd Ingram assembles an assault rifle out of household items to shoot the titular protagonist at Honest Ed's. He ends up unable to use it, though.
  Subtitle: "Rifle assembled from household items."
• Mercilessly parodied in the Italian Mickey Mouse story Topokolossal: a self-declared problem solver arrives to take care of a killer robot and starts assembling one of these, but gets it wrong and assembles an Eiffel Tower model made of guns. A second attempt, made after checking the instructions, produces a dinosaur skeleton. Finally, the third attempt produces a BFG... exactly three panels after the robot's battery was exhausted.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien: Resurrection has a character smuggling a disassembled shotgun onboard a spaceship, disguised as parts of his high-tech wheelchair.
• The protagonist of The American is given the job of building such a weapon for a female Professional Killer, who wants a silenced automatic rifle that can fit in a small space. He modifies a Ruger Mini-14 and even prepares the briefcase that carries it in stripped-down form. Played realistically as we see every bit of precision required to make sure the weapon he's building operates exactly like it should.
• Bullitt has two assassins making good use of a takedown-model Winchester 1897 pump shotgun. Many, if not a majority, of Winchester firearms pre-WWII were made in takedown form, breaking in two where the barrel meets the receiver. Also seeing as it's a shotgun fired at point-blank, accuracy was not their main concern.
• In Clegg, when Suzy the Slag assassinates Sir Adrian, she assembles a Mauser M712 Schnellfeuer with shoulder stock, sniper scope and silencer from her briefcase.
• Cobra: As the cult members are shown moving towards the town where he's protecting a witness, Cobra (Sylvester Stallone) assembles his Laser Sight-equipped Jati submachine gun, which he carries stripped down in a suitcase.
• In The Day of the Jackal, the eponymous hitman uses a sniper rifle for his attempt to assassinate President De Gaulle. It's half-way between this trope and a Scaramanga Special; To get past the police cordon, he disguises himself as an amputee war veteran, with the rifle mostly disguised as a crutch, but with a few other pieces hidden on his body. Also notable for putting some serious work into illustrating the technical problems involved; the weapon is custom-made, and the Jackal takes the time to zero the weapon's sights long before he positions himself to take the shot.
• Karl from Die Hard has this going with his Steyr AUG. He kept it in a duffel then constructed it in the elevator. Which is fair enough, given that the Steyr AUG is modular, where one receiver can be converted from a submachinegun to an assault rifle to a light support weapon by just switching the barrel assembly (and, for the SMG version, the bolt and magazine shroud), which means it's quick and easy to take the barrel and foregrip off to take up less space.
• Dirty Harry: Scorpio's rifle, which he keeps dissembled in a briefcase until he's about to make a shot.
• District 9 During the township shootout, two contractor troops (gunner and a-gunner) are shown finishing assembly of a massive anti-material rifle which then gets used a couple times before being messily dealt with. Truth in Television here. That's a Mechem NTW-20, a.k.a. the Denel NTW-20 (Mechem is a division of Denel). It fires a 20mm light cannon round and the barrel is removed for transport because of how absurdly huge the thing is.
• In Executive Decision, the terrorists smuggle guns onto the plane in parts, some of which are hidden onboard beforehand.
• In The Fifth Element, the ZF-1 (also a Swiss-Army Weapon) is described as being able to do this so it can pass undetected through X-ray scans.
• In the live action Golgo 13 Assignment: Kowloon movie, the title character puts together an M16 in this manner. Granted, he puts it together wrong (an M16 barrel can't be screwed into the receiver without tools, for one).
• In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Tuco cobbles together his own custom pistol from various revolver parts at a general store, which he then proceeds to rob.
• In Highlander, the sword that the Kurgan uses in modern times is assembled from a kit through a Lock and Load / Kata montage. There exists a "Fantasy Weapons Scrutinized" video by Skallagrim that looks at this exact weapon in some detail and among other criticisms pokes some fun at the idea of a blade consisting of two separate pieces that are just casually stuck together actually holding up to any sort of use.
• The assassin in In the Line of Fire brings the gun for his presidential-killing attempt in pieces. To bypass security, the gun is also made of plastic, and the bullets were hidden inside a rabbit's-foot keychain.
• James Bond:
  • From Russia with Love: Bond's briefcase kit includes a .22 calibre AR-7 survival rifle. This rifle is quite real and works exactly as shown: the barrel, magazines, and receiver are stored inside the rifle stock, and they must be removed and assembled before the rifle can be used. Bond uses it twice: to kill Krilencu and to injure a SPECTRE helicopter copilot.
  • The AR-7 is visible in Bond's glovebox in the opening scene of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
  • In Goldfinger, Tillie Masterson uses the same rifle, or one of the same model, in her attempt to assassinate Auric Goldfinger.
  • You Only Live Twice: An attack gyrocopter codenamed "Little Nellie" is brought over to Bond in kit-form.
  • The Man with the Golden Gun: The Scaramanga Special, the eponymous Golden Gun, disguised as various innocuous objects before it's assembled, presumably so Professional Killer Scaramanga can smuggle it past guards or customs officers.
  • Bond gets his own Scaramanga Special in Licence to Kill. Provided by Q, of course.
  • The Spy Who Loved Me: A little broken-down jetski is assembled from a duffel bag.
• Johnny Dangerously: Subverted in this Michael Keaton comedy. The machine gun assembled from parts given by various felons on the walk down death row (and one part from the priest, in a hollowed out Bible) doesn't actually work, and when the eponymous character throws it at a guard for a distraction, it falls apart when the guard reactively catches it.
• In the film adaptation of Lost in Space, Major Don West's laser pistol features butt-stock and barrel attachments that turn it into a full-sized rifle with two barrels and amplifies its stopping power, allowing him to blast space spiders that shrugged off the pistol blasts into slimy bits.
• In The Long Kiss Goodnight, one of the amnesiac Samantha's first steps toward remembering her past is finding and reassembling the Sniper Rifle hidden in her old suitcase.
• The 1962 adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate is possibly the Trope Codifier, coming out just a year before From Russia with Love.
• Used frequently in Mission: Impossible; usually with a Hard-Work Montage/ Lock-and-Load Montage showing Barney or one of the others assembling the required equipment.
  • A problem of this trope is shown in Mission: Impossible III — what if you need the weapon in a hurry? When his Vulnerable Convoy comes under attack, Ethan has to retrieve a suitcase containing a G36 assault rifle from a crashed vehicle, and assemble it while a missile-armed Predator drone is closing in on them.
• The Naked Face (1984) opens with a black-gloved assassin placing such a rifle in his suitcase, then assembling it to shoot Roger Moore's character as he's laying flowers on a grave. He takes so long to assemble and load the rifle, a convoy of slow-moving hearses drives between the killer and his target, enabling the latter to escape death.
• Parodied in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, when Nordberg assembles a howitzer from a kit. Further, each "intermediate stage" is a weapon in its own right, possibly making it a Combo Rifle. Not that it matters.
• Nikita (or La Femme Nikita, not to be confused with the series), the protagonist is told where to find the components of her weapon hidden in the bathroom, in order to assemble it and kill a target who will soon pass in sight of the bathroom window. The scope issue may be understandable as it is a Steyr AUG. In the American remake (The Assassin, or Point of No Return) this is less understandable, as she is using an Anschutz 22LR rifle (it gets worse - it's shown to fire in the same manner as a self-loading rifle, though it is obviously a bolt-action...?)
• In Once Upon a Spy, Tannehill and Chenault are chasing the mooks who have just kidnapped Dr. Webster and his daughter. Flicking a switch Tannehill reveals a hidden, disassembled gun that she tells Non-Action Guy Chenault to put it together and Pop the Tires. As Chenault struggles to assemble the gun, Tannehill gets frustrated and tells him "Take the Wheel!" and leans across in front of him to do it herself. Taken completely by surprise, Chenault struggles to keep control of the car (especially as Tannehill's very shapely ass is pressed into his face), and the car swerves wildly across the road.
• Operation Daybreak. One of the Czech assassins assembles his Sten gun under a coat held in his lap, while waiting for the car carrying Reinhard Heydrich. This was Truth in Television for the Sten gun and one of the reasons why it was so useful for Resistance networks in occupied Europe (the scene also shows one of the Sten's notorious disadvantages — it's tendency to jam at inopportune moments).
• Outland. The two hitmen sent to kill the protagonist arrive with other miners on the weekly supply shuttle. They stay behind until the others have passed through the airlock, then each man assembles a shotgun, with electronic infra-red sight, from his kitbag. Note that those weren't pump-action shotguns. While Sean Connery had one for the poster, the ones in the movie were all gas-operated semiautos. Seeing as how the movie was made in Europe where pumps aren't as popular, it's not surprising.
• A Perfect Getaway: Nick uses a take-down recurve bow (a KAP T-Rex painted flat black) and arrow to hunt and kill a goat.
• Phantom of the Paradise homages the The Manchurian Candidate scene.
• Police Academy: Appears in one or two of the movies. What appears to be a sniper rifle eventually becomes something like a machine gun nest or an anti-aircraft turret.
• The Professional: Leon assembles his training rifle for Mathilda's first sniper lesson.
• Parodied in Robin Hood: Men in Tights when a medieval mafia hitman assembles a crossbow from a kit.
• In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Colonel West assembles a sniper disrupter out of one of these. Note that the hole he cut in the window isn't big enough to look through the scope. This scene is played as a direct Homage to the ending sequence of the 1962 adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, which is the possible Trope Codifier.
• The Suicide Squad: Bloodsport's suit is a Walking Armory with pieces that can be dissembled and combined to form just about any sort of gun, sword, knife, flamethrower, or whatever he needs to kill people.
• The Tuxedo had a sequence where Jackie Chan's character must assemble a rifle used to plant a bug at long distance. Arguably justifies the 'use right away' scope due to the nature of his high tech tuxedo. Also the fact that the scope itself seems to be high-tech as well, since it appears to have something like an auto-targeting system (which ironically causes him to mess up the shot horribly).
• Parodied in Versus: one of the villains assembles a three-part scabbard from a suitcase, then draws an intact katana from it.
• In XIII: The Conspiracy, the first scene where Steve Rowand prepares to assassinate Sally Sheridan. This is a sniper rifle example.
• In Young Doctors in Love the assassin walks into a hospital with a briefcase, hides, dresses like a patient and assembles a rifle disguised as a crutch. Then he walks to the victim's room to shoot him point-blank.^note  Unfortunately for him, while he gloats nurses mistake him for a patient, who shouldn't leave the bed, and sedate him. He spends the rest of the film trying to survive the treatment procedures.

Literature

• In Consider Phlebas, the Culture agent ends up with a memoryform Hand Cannon that conveniently folds up and can be hidden in a tooth cavity.
• The assassin in The Day of the Jackal transports his sniper rifle in pieces, first in a tube in his car and later in a crutch as part of his disguise. The Jackal goes to the trouble of "zero-ing" his sights when he first gets the gun: a practice unheard of in most Hollywood works.
• One sequence in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz has the Wizard, being choked by a plant-magician's spell, take various implements out of his coat. Just before he passes out, he screws them into a sword and cuts the magician in half, breaking the spell.
• In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Demontage, an assassin has a set of wine glasses that can be separated out and reconstructed into two daggers, a set of lockpicks and a gun. In keeping with the book's Tuxedo and Martini pastiche, he's the man with the crystal pistol.
• In Gorky Park, Investigator Arkady Renko finds a gun disguised as various innocent-looking objects packed in a visiting American's baggage. Of course, he never would have thought to try piecing random objects together into a gun if it weren't for the fact that the American chose such an odd selection to pack.
• Rudyard Kipling's Screw-Guns commemorates the RML 2.5" 'screw-gun', a howitzer that breaks down into five mule-portable loads.
• Older Than Television: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even wrote one into a Sherlock Holmes story. In "The Adventure of the Empty House" (1903), the villain totes a high power air rifle which, except for the barrel, breaks down into parts that can be carried in his coat pockets. The barrel was disguised as a walking cane.

Live-Action TV

• In the Babylon 5 episode "Midnight on the Firing Line", Londo Mollari builds a gun out of disguised parts hidden in various places in his quarters. Word of God says that the only way Londo could have gotten those components on the station without Security spotting them is that they were sent in diplomatic pouches.
• Parodied in The Benny Hill Show, during a sketch set in WWII. Benny plays a sniper tasked to shoot Hitler. However, as he's testing the sights, he spots a fraulein in skimpy dress by a window. He keeps ogling while distractedly putting together his sniper riffle, which ends up in a twisted, useless shape.
• Blake's 7: One of these was created for the final season, though in practice it was only shown fully assembled.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Earshot", Jonathan assembles his rifle in the school clock tower while looking down on the milling students in the school quad.
• Lampshaded in an episode of CSI ("Spark of Life") when a man assembles a gun-like contraption and looks through a scope at a nearby house. He subsequently "aims" higher, gazing at the stars through his IKEA telescope.
• Dollhouse: In "Stage Fright", the Loony Fan assembles a sniper rifle from parts hidden inside and on his crutches. A clear reference to The Day of the Jackal.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Two seasons have invoked this trope by giving such weapons to officers of ZECT in Kamen Rider Kabuto and the Blue Sky organisation in Kamen Rider Kiva. Crosses into Scaramanga Special as the weapons all come in a handy compact size.
  • Kamen Rider Den-O's primary weapon is one of these, and with four different formations for the four modes.
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was one of the earliest users of this trope, and definitely a strong influence on its popularity. It got so bad that the CIA actually paid a visit to the show's producers to a) find out where they got their information and b) find guns that could be assembled that quickly and still be in any way effective. The truth was that they just cut down the gun assembly scenes, making them take about 15 seconds rather than the 5~10 minutes it really took them.
• Mighty Jack also had its agents using pistols that could be converted into rifles with attachments. When the Compilation Movie was shown on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Crow's frustrated with a long scene of a Mighty Jack agent assembling an extended barrel.
  Crow: What is that, a pool cue or a silencer?... Put that part on, that makes it loud again... Oh, and that attachment for the hard-to-reach assassinations! (How many silencers does he need?)
• Person of Interest:
  • Used for a Bait-and-Switch in "Root Cause". A man appears to be assembling a rifle on the catwalk above where a politician is making a speech. Reese tackles him, only for the real sniper to fire, killing the politician. He was actually assembling a confetti-firing device.
  • But played straight in "The Day the World Went Away", when a Samaritan agent assembles a DRD Tactical CDR-15 rifle from his backpack, a weapon specifically designed to be carried that way and quickly put together when required.
• The Professionals:
  • An M1 carbine that could be broken down into three pieces (barrel, receiver/forestock and buttstock) along with a silencer and scope was used by hitmen in "Blood Sports", "Hijack" and "Kickback". The exact same prop was also used in several episodes of Bergerac.
  • In "Blackout", CI5 discovers that a team of assassins have purchased three briefcases along with umbrellas and bowler hats, so they can enter a financial office disguised as accountants. Turns out they have the components of an anti-tank launcher in them—though we only see it fully assembled, probably as it's a MILAN launcher and tripod that would never have fit in three briefcases! (The scriptwriter was likely thinking of the AT-3 Sagger, which had gained fame in the recent Yom Kipper War and was conveyed in large fibreglass suitcases that also served as a launching platform.)
  • In "Kickback", Bodie carries an AR-10 rifle (a 7.62mm predecessor to the AR-15) disassembled under his coat for a (faked) assassination, while a colleague assembles his silenced M1 carbine in the back of a Land Rover.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Heart of Glory", two Klingons who are captured and imprisoned aboard the Enterprise, turned out to have the necessary bits to construct a disruptor stashed about their persons.
• In the Torchwood episode "Something Borrowed", Jack and Ianto assemble a BFG from two suitcases in the back of their SUV when the shapeshifting alien proves Immune to Bullets from their handguns.
• The Kyu The Weapon from Uchu Sentai Kyuranger comes in three parts, that each of its members assemble as they see fit, from close combat to long range weapons.
• In one sketch by The Whitest Kids U' Know, a CEO is in his office, hiding from a sniper in a competitor's building. He then grabs his briefcase, opens it, and assembles his own sniper rifle. Hilarity Ensues.
• Wonder Woman (1975): In "Time Bomb", a sniper puts together his rifle to shoot at Diana Prince and Adam Clement. Wonder Woman completes the construction of the gun by bending the barrel around his neck.
• The X-Files:
  • Cancer Man assembles a sniper rifle to shoot Frohike in "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man".
  • Two Syndicate hit men (one tasked with eliminating Max Fenig, the other sent after Mulder) in the two-parter "Tempus Fugit"/"Max" smuggle a disassembled semi-automatic pistol aboard passenger aircraft. The weapon is made of mostly plastic and ceramic parts.

Tabletop Games

• In Battletech, the somewhat questionable company Quickcell offers an unassembled "Flat pack" option for an entire Condor Hover Tank that can be put together by the customer after delivery. The tank works just fine when properly assembled(especially for a Quickcell product), but the customer is often left with a small pile of various parts of no known use.
• The "Collapsible" universal Weapon Gadget in d20 Future gives this property to any weapon it's applied to for a nominal fee. In its "collapsed" state, a knowledge check is required to recognize a weapon.
• Heavy Gear features the Deployable Pack Gun, a type of folding gun that goes from a flat, roughly 2x1x0.25 meter rectangular box carried on a Gear's hip to a full-sized, Mini-Mecha-scale autoloading rifle, albeit a very square, boxy, purely functional one. It's the functional equivalent of the light autocannon, one of the most common Gear weapons in the game. Some Deployable Pack Guns are also Throw-Away Guns, as they lack field-reloadable magazines (lending them the name Disposable Pack Gun). The game reflects the shortcomings of its focus on convenience by assigning the Pack Gun a small aim penalty.
• The Morrow Project. The Stoner weapon system is a kit consisting of one receiver and several different types of barrels, feed mechanisms and stocks. They can be assembled into any one of a number of Stoner weapons: Stoner M23, Stoner M207, Stoner Mk 23 and Stoner M22.
• The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game has a magic sword known as Castlerake. It's typically broken into several parts, as when it's put together, it can breach any fortification in roughly three minutes. Nobody wants that kind of power in anyone else's reach for too long.
• Shadowrun
  • In second and third edition, this started with a futuristic version of a sniper rifle that could be broken down. It continued on to a version of Steyr's AUG rifle (which leaned a little towards Game-Breaker), entirely transportable in a briefcase. Later weapons were said to even look like innocuous articles before being assembled into a not very innocuous rifle or revolver.
  • In at least one version in the Street Samurai Catalog, a collection of additional weaponry, the attachable components also gave various options from pistol to machine gun to sniper rifle depending on how you assembled it.
  • There's also the breakdown mods. While not a modular weapon like the AUG rifle, it allows a large weapon to be disassembled and either concealed in a container (like a briefcase), or a smaller weapon to be broken down and its components could be hidden away or worn like jewelry. There's also an analogous mod for drones and vehicles.
• Traveller
  • Paranoia Press's supplement SORAG. The Smallarms System is a package of interchangeable parts that can be used put together to create a submachine gun, an assault rifle, a carbine or a light machine gun. It has several accessories as well, including a folding stock, a shoulder stock, electronic sights and a silencer. It is stored in a fitted attache case.
  • The New Era supplement Smash and Grab. The Coalition Multipurpose Weapon System can be reconfigured into a carbine, rifle, SAW (squad automatic weapon) or machine gun by adding the appropriate stock, ammunition feed system and barrel. It has a variety of accessories available, such as a flash suppressor, muzzle brake and grenade adapter.

Toys

• G.I. Joe had a few examples as well. One such was the action figure for Bullhorn, who came with a rifle that could be separated into three pieces and stored in his backpack.
• Nerf Brand
  • Nerf has the Recon CS-6, which can be used dissembled, but is quite a sight when the shoulder stock, barrel and light are attached (if not more Awesome, but Impractical accessories).
  • Most of the Nerf N-Strike line have this sort of feature, to the point of interchangeable parts.
  • The Nerf Modulus line carries the basis of customising your own blaster and has various interchangeable attachments, from red dot sight and tactical flashlight, to Grip Blaster and Stock Blaster—as long as the blaster has tactical rail slots, you can put whatever you want onto your own blasters.
• Some Transformers have weapons that break down into parts to store as parts of their transformed modes. For example, a Japanese-release-only version of one Optimus Prime figure allows you to remove two fuel tanks, transform them, and combine them into a rifle weapon that fits over his right hand in robot mode.

Video Games

• In Batman: Arkham Asylum, obtaining the Batclaw involves a brief cutscene where Batman adds the attachment to his grapnel. Later on, there is a more involved cutscene where Batman assembles the Ultra Batclaw upgrade using parts from a supply container.
• Tediore guns in Borderlands 2 are a futuristic version of this trope; the player doesn't take them out so much as 3d print them on the spot. This combines with Throw-Away Guns, as after each magazine is empty, you throw it away and it explodes like a grenade. For a bonus, the more ammo left in the magazine, the more damage from the explosion, at the cost of losing that ammo.
• Call of Duty:
  • In Call of Duty: Zombies, you can build a few weapons such as the Sliquifier and the Elemental Staffs in Origins by acquiring several pieces across the map.
  • A case of this shows up in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, as the final scene is a pair of airline passengers assembling pistols from parts stashed in several places — firing pin in the buckle of their seatbelts, barrel hidden inside a flashlight, extractor as a pendant worn on the neck, pulling out 3D-printed plastic slides and frames from their coats, then finding a loaded magazine taped under the lid to the salads they ordered.
• An important plot point in the fifth trial of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. While the class tries to confirm Kokichi's claim that he and Kaito shot each other wish crossbows, Kiibo states he caught Himiko carrying a suspicious package to the Exisal hangar where Kaito was being held, leading everyone to realize is was one of Maki's disassembled crossbows. However, Himiko is able to prove her innocence by explaining she had passed the package through a window to Kaito, citing the fact that unlike him, Himiko never learned how to build a crossbow, making Kaito the only candidate.
• Dead Space 3 has weapons assembled out of Frames, Cores, Tips, and Gun Accessories. A fair few of these are actually industrial equipment, in keeping with the series tradition of a wide variety of weaponized tools and one or two actual firearms.
• The old pseudo-3D space sim Galactic Invasion has this as its premise: you and a rival are racing against each other to assemble one of three weapons that will annihilate your opponent's solar system. Said weapons come in the form of color-coded pieces that you find by blowing up space stations.
• One of the touch screen Minigames in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is screwing together a break-down sniper rifle.
• Heavy Barrel: The title weapon could be seen as this; you'd gather pieces and see them collect at the top of the screen. Once you get the last one... 'HEAVY BARREL!!' BFG time.
• Similar to the example from Heavy Barrel, Heavy Weapon also has you collect four parts to craft the Megalaser, a One-Hit Kill weapon that lasts for around 30 seconds.
• In Hexen, the fourth and final weapons of each class (the fighter's Quietus, the Cleric's Wraithverge, and the Mage's Bloodscourge) must be assembled from three parts strewn throughout the game before they can be used. Luckily, they're in plain sight.
• Hitman: One of Agent 47's trademark weapons is a Walther WA2000, which he keeps unassembled in a briefcase most of the time. In Hitman: Blood Money, you can purchase upgrades such as lightweight parts, a shortened barrel, and/or a silencer, with each of these having an effect on the time it takes to assemble it. In the first game, his "briefcase sniper rifle" is a Blaser R93, as seen in the Hong Kong sniper mission.
• Some information you find in C-Sec during the Cerberus Coup in Mass Effect 3 reveals that Cerberus agents smuggled some of their weapons onto the station this way.
• In Midnight Resistance you collect red keys on your way to upgrade to better weapons with more ammo.
• The Bowguns of Monster Hunter Tri weren't crafted as full weapons, unlike in the other games of the series. Instead, Bowguns were comprised of barrels, stocks, and frames, which players crafted individually. Then the gunner would make up the Bowgun by choosing which stock, frame, and barrel to take, each part providing its own affinities and magazine sizes for different ammo types.
  • While it's purely cosmetic, many weapons also fold or break down when being stowed, just so they'll fit on the hunter's back. Lances and some insect glaives telescope into themselves, gunlances and heavy bowguns are stored with the breech open (i.e. folded in half), switch axes reconfigure to be as small as possible, and bows fold in half.
• Most weapons in Mushroom Men are this or Bifurcated Weapon. You collect parts, and some can be weapons in their own right, but almost all of them can be pieced together into more powerful weapons.
• In Player Unknowns Battlegrounds, the various firearms the player can find can be fitted with all sorts of detachable accessories, such as scopes, suppressors, extended magazines, and grips.
• Sly Spy has you collecting five parts of the "Golden Gun" (get it?).
• The DC-17 carried by the clone commandos in Star Wars: Republic Commando have removable parts that allow it to function as a blaster, sniper rifle and an anti-armor weapon. The novels end up adding riot control and breach modules to the weapon as well.
• Strife: Each of the five individual parts of the Sigil work perfectly fine as a weapon on its own, but it grows stronger by stacking those effects as you get more pieces. Unfortunately, it's also Cast from Hit Points, and the drain becomes greater the more pieces you have - fortunately, there's only five or six enemies in the entire game you actually have to use the Sigil on.
• Warframe has this with about 45% of all weaponry available, from basic knives to futuristic guns, be it for yourself, your archwing, or your own brittle human form, once discovered. Literally. The other 55% of them falls on Item Crafting^note You purchase the schematics and your ship's automated Foundry builds one from base materials., but they can be considered the watered down, mass-produced versions. For the actual Super Prototype punch, you have to either hunt down both the blueprints and each individual piece (blade, head, hilt, handle, barrel, stock, receiver etc.) or research for their parts on your Gaming Clan's labs.

Web Animation

• Madness Combat: Jesus has to disassemble his sniper rifle to store it on his person, since thanks to the art style it's longer than he is tall. One notable scene has him reassembling it mid-fight to deal with a Giant Mook that can't be taken down by anything else.

Webcomics

• Parson's sword in Erfworld is given to him in three pieces for him to assemble.
• David in Parallel Dementia uses one as his weapons of choice that's a "souvenir" from his time in the army.

Western Animation

• In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Task Force X", Deadshot infiltrates the Watchtower carrying a disassembled ceramic gun whose pieces were packaged in candy wrappers.
• In The Simpsons episode Homer Loves Flanders, Ned is having a nightmare of going on a killing spree from a clock tower in the vein of Charles Whitman, and assembles his rifle from a briefcase.

Real Life

• Truth in Television. The AR-18 rifle was popular with the Irish Republican Army because it could be broken down for concealment purposes without disturbing the zero. Most Hollywood IKEA weapons however tend not to have their sights attached to the weapon, ruling them impractical for sniping use in real life.
  • The way that most movies do it would destroy the zero. Picatinny rails are good at keeping a more consistent zero after disassembly and reassembly, but side rail mounts are by far the best at holding zero.
• The M16/AR-15 style of rifle breaks in two by pulling a pin and a bolt, with the barrel, upper receiver, iron sights and optics remaining together. Though not as compact as some other examples, a trained operator can rejoin the upper and lower receivers and prep the weapon for firing in under a minute.
  • This is taken to the logical conclusion with the TAC2 discreet carry rifle, that means that a 16" barreled (longer than a standard M4) AR-15 with sight and a couple of magazines can be carried inside a briefcase, and be assembled and ready to fire in less than 10 seconds.
  • Add to the fact that only lower receiver (the part with the trigger assembly) counts as the gun, means that it also can be changed out easily for different barrel lengths and ammunition. In fact a 10" barrel (known legally as a short barreled rifle) AR-15 can easily be fit in a messenger bag with a couple of 30rd mags of ammo.
• Marketed towards the outdoorsman, the AR-7 survival rifle not only breaks down, but the stock doubles as a case that floats in water. A modified version which did away with the storage case stock in favour of a wireframe skeleton stock was used by the Israeli military as an aircrew survival weapon.
• The Kel-Tec SU-16 is a comparable weapon, but with a hinged stock that enables it to fold up compactly enough to fit in a modest-sized duffel bag. The SUB-2000 pistol-caliber carbine folds up a bit more compactly, being hinged right between the main receiver and the barrel/forearm to fold into just about half its full length. Possibly the only rifles in existence that might get you indicted for carrying a concealed weapon.
• Any break-action (boxlock or sidelock) rifle or shotgun, single-, two-, three- and even four-barreled.
• Pretty much every man-portable heavy weapon ever devised before shoulder-launched rockets. Machine guns can often be broken down into barrel, firing chamber/stock/trigger assembly and bipod or tripod, while mortars will break down into barrel, bipod, and baseplate. The practice used to extend up as far as light artillery pieces that were often referred to as "pack howitzers" and broke down into four or five parts which a man could carry. A few heavier weapons could also be broken down into multiple parts, not to make them easily carried, but so you could actually fit them on the truck or airplane.
• Not a gun, but certainly a weapon, recurve bows (or longbows, or compound bows) can be manufactured so as to either fold or break down into two or three pieces. A typical recurve bow will have 2 limbs which slot into a central riser, then the bow is strung. Accessories such as a stabilizer (or more than one in various configurations) or a quiver can then be attached to the riser (if desired). Most 3 piece takedowns require a hex key or have over-sized heads on the bolts which require time-consuming tightening. The Fred Bear Custom Kodiak Takedown◊ by Bear Archery is notable for not needing tools or bolts, instead using latches — Fred Bear could assemble and string his Takedown bow in roughly 60 seconds. Compound bows on the other hand normally cannot be taken apart (or assembled) without a bow press, with only two models, the Bear Borsalino and Martin Pack Rat take-down compound◊ being designed for portability.
  • Primal Gear Unlimited's folding longbow can be seen in action here. Survival Archery Systems has also gotten in on this market.
• Relatedly so, the Stoner 63 weapon system by Cadillac Gage was a real-life example of this. With a common receiver, a carbine, rifle, light machine gun, or vehicle-mounted machine gun could be assembled using different barrels, ammo feeds and trigger mechanisms.
• The Soviet/Russian VSS Vintorez suppressed Sniper Rifle is designed like the classic "assassin's gun in a suitcase". The receiver, suppressor, scope, stock, and magazine can all be separated and fitted into a special padded carrying case not unlike a businessman's briefcase. The range is short by sniping standards -- 300-400 meters — due to the accentuated bullet drop of its heavy subsonic 9x39mm ammunition, which is less of a problem than a layman might think since it's meant for Urban Warfare operations where shooting distances rarely exceed a city block or two.
• Not as dramatic as most examples here, but the traditional Japanese sword construction is this to some extent. Although the blade and tang are one solid piece, the hilt, grip, and tsuba (guard) can all be easily disassembled simply by removing a single retaining pin located in the grip. When carrying of the sword was banned during the Meiji Restoration, the Samurai removed the distinctive, and valuable, furniture (grip, guard, hilt, scabbard) and disguised the sword inside a plain walking stick. The sword could be drawn and used as normal; so they didn't bother reassembling it for dueling, although it was reassembled for display.
• Possibly the best example: The Intimidator. A 40-pound, 125-piece metal puzzle that assembles into a muzzle-loading .45 caliber pistol with laser sights, and a cleaning kit included in the initial puzzle.
• An interesting illustration of this idea is the military field gun competition. A field gun is taken apart into its component pieces, carried over a series of obstacles, then reassembled. Well-trained military teams can manage this in 85 seconds - but it takes 21 men to get the job done.
• The Steyr AUG has a barrel that is remarkably easy to remove, requiring nothing more than holding a lever and twisting the barrel a few degrees. Since it's a bullpup, this makes the main body of the rifle very short compared to traditional rifles.
• Completely subverted by military sniper rifles. For instance British army sniper rifles have the individual pieces selected from the "parent weapon" production line, and carefully built in the factory to ensure maximum accuracy.
• Most modern machine guns come with interchangeable barrels that can be quickly swapped out in battle. This is so when a barrel overheats from sustained fire, a shooter can simply change barrels without having to wait for the current one to cool down.
• One of the selling points of the Blaser R93 Tactical is that it can be taken apart and carried in an easier to transport, compact manner and reassembled in less than thirty seconds. This makes it rather popular with both police agencies and fiction writers. However, it can't fit in an unassuming briefcase.
• The Hotchkiss Universal SMG folds in about 18 places to become really compact, and with some practice you can unfold it and be ready to shoot in 5 seconds. Unfortunately, it was also an ergonomic disaster and extremely difficult to maintain, and Hotchkiss only manufactured it from 1949 - 1952.
• Beretta's U22 Neos .22 Long Rifle semi-automatic pistol is available with an optional carbine kit, consisting of a shoulder stock and 16.25" barrel.
• The suppressed Welrod pistol from World War II was a downplayed example - to aid in concealment, the weapon didn't have a dedicated pistol grip that the magazine fit into, but rather the magazine itself, with a rubber covering over the bottom half and the release lever attached to it and acting similar to a grip safety, functioned as the grip.
• In 2012, Ruger released a takedown version of its super-popular 10/22 rimfire rifle. Push up on a lever and give it a good twist, and the barrel comes apart from the receiver, making it easy to fit in a backpack. New purchases even come with a bag with separate pockets to put the part into.
  • In December 2017, Ruger followed suit by releasing the PC Carbine, a revival of their earlier PC9/PC4 pistol-caliber carbine line (which had gone out of production in 2006). The PC Carbine uses the same takedown mechanism◊ as the 10/22 example above.
  • Ruger would also release an integrally-silenced replacement barrel for the Takedown, that attaches and detaches just the same as the standard barrel. It's really surprising it hasn't shown up in film yet.

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