Laser Blade

The lightsaber is the coolest weapon ever.
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

"You think what — I'm gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?"

— Luke Skywalker, Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi

The laser blade is a melee Energy Weapon, with a cutting edge made of Pure Energy, giving it Absurd Cutting Power. It also allows for an automatic Clean Cut the way a regular sword does not. Despite their Absurd Cutting Power, sword fights between two Laser Blade wielders are still possible thanks to the fact that Like Cannot Cut Like. Generally a type of Impossibly Cool Weapon, they require a lot of Willing Suspension of Disbelief, but are generally awesome enough to be worth it.

Laser blades exist purely because of the Rule of Cool. Power Glows, therefore a weapon made out of glow must be really powerful. In real life, making such fancy swords is Awesome, but Impractical when Frickin' Laser Beams decide war, but then again, laser blade duels are frickin' awesome, and that's enough justification to be showed on-screen. Another possible in-universe justification in that the duelists are somehow Immune to Bullets, whether thanks to Deflector Shields, The Force or any other such Applied Phlebotinum, thus forcing the revival of old-school sword martial arts with laser blades.

Note that, although the most prolific Trope Codifier is the lightsaber, you'll almost never see the word "lightsaber" outside of that particular franchise for understandable legal reasons. Thus, such blades are given any variety of slightly less, but still awesome monikers, such as "beam saber", "energy sword", "plasma knife" and, for the paronomasiacs, "laser blade."^note Because it sounds like "razor blade", get it? The energy blade concept tends to be Older Than They Think; Isaac Asimov used them as early as 1944, for "The Traders".

Note also that the word "laser" is frequently used for fictitious energy weapons of all types, even in settings where the beams are created by Applied Phlebotinum and don't share the real-world etymology of the word. Yes, despite having a perfectly fictional sounding, sci-fi/fantasy ring to it, the word "laser" is actually an acronym, standing for Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

Despite being a sword made of energy, it's surprisingly rare to see one that can shoot a Sword Beam.

Sometimes, especially in video games, a laser blade may be mounted on a fighter ship. This version is even more of an Impossibly Cool Weapon than the usual melee variety.

A Sub-Trope of Elemental Weapon, Laser Cutter, Cool Sword, Absurd Cutting Power, Energy Weapon, Hard Light, Impossibly Cool Weapon.

A Sister Trope to Flaming Sword, Hot Blade, Ray Gun.

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Example subpages

• Video Games

Other examples:

Advertising

• This Honda advert has a laser turkey carver.

Anime & Manga

• Aldnoah.Zero: Vlad utilizes a pair of plasma swords used by his Martian Kataphrakt, the Argyre. The plasma sword is wielded like a Hot Blade in that it can be used to disintegrate bullets shot at him, so he commonly uses it for Parrying Bullets. It can even be used to detonate explosive projectiles thrown at his machine.
  • Count Saazbaum also carries a plasma sword on his Dioscuria, but unlike Vlad's Argyre which wields its plasma swords, the Dioscuria carries it as a Blade Below the Shoulder.
• Bakugan Battle Brawlers: Prince Hydron’s mechanical Bakugan Droid has one it can access through the “Murasame Blade” ability, which can be upgraded through various fusion abilities.
  • The gauntlets that the humans and humanoids use to command their bakugan can also be turned into laser blades using a special card, though this ability is rarely used. The most memorable time this happens is during Dan's battle with Spectra Phantom, when the last dimension controller is destroyed, their partner bakugan gain the ability to fight without needing their partner to activate cards, so Spectra attacks Dan with a laser blade since he no longer needs to command his bakugan, and Dan does the same. It was an awesome battle.
• Bleach:
  • Pesche has Ultima. It's a sword whose blade is made of shining reishi giving it the appearance of a sword whose blade is made of light.
  • Subverted with Uryū. The Seele Schneider is a Quincy weapon with a sword's edge. It's made of spirit particles (reishi) and therefore looks like a laser sword and functions as a Vibro Weapon. Uryuu even compares it to a chainsaw. However, while the Seele Schneider can be used in melee combat, it's actually an arrow.
  • When Ulquiorra releases, he can create green laser lances (called Luz la Luna) out of his reishi, which are just as durable as his normal sword. When he uses his second form, the resulting lance (Lanza del Relámpago) can also serve as a Fantastic Nuke when thrown.
  • Starrk normally uses twin pistols in his released state, though when the going gets tough, he trades those out for a pair of blue laser swords.
• Father Remington of Chrono Crusade has a giant laser blade BFS that he deploys from a crucifix.
• Daicon III & IV:
  • In III, the main character whips out a bamboo ruler that transforms into a lightsaber-esque weapon near the climax.
  • IV has a short scene where the protagonist wields an actual lightsaber in a duel against Darth Vader himself.
• Mina Hazuki of Darker than Black can turn any object she touches into an energy weapon, be it bokken or wire or pebble.
• The Digimon franchise offers a few examples:
  • MagnaAngemon of Digimon Adventure has one extending from his wrist, named Excalibur. His evolved form Seraphimon can also form one in a similar manner.
  • Justimon's Critical Arm in Digimon Tamers.
  • Lobomon of Digimon Frontier dual-wields laser blades with his Licht Sieger technique. His later form, MagnaGarurumon, also wields a laser blade stored in its chest compartment.
  • Gallantmon X of Digimon X-Evolution, whose Victory Saber technique is a laser blade effectively measured in miles!
  • Susanoomon from Digimon Frontier takes the cake. What looks like a BFG creates a beam... that has a fixed length and becomes suspiciously sword shaped. It bisects the entire core of the Digital World along with the opponent. CELESTIAL BLADE!
  • In Digimon Adventure: (2020), WereGarurumon is able to upgrade to Sagittarius Mode, which gives him eight detachable mechanical wings that can become many other things including laser-blades.
  • In Digimon Universe: App Monsters, Globemon's Schwert Cutter emits bright blue ones from his wrists. When in Overdrive, he can extend them for thousands of feet.
• The Dragon Ball series has a very interesting variation of this trope. In that a handful of fighters, have techniques that allow them to concentrate their energy to create blades of pure ki energy around their hands.
  • Salza (from the Cooler movie), holds distinction for the very first appearance and use of this trope in the franchise, called the Salza Blade, that he used against Piccolo. Which would later on inspire various other types of ki energy blades through the series, although not in-universe.
  • Vegito has the Spirit Sword, that he used against Super Buu and Fused Zamasu, which true to it's name is even longer than most energy blades. Believe it or not he has an even longer variation of it, called Spirit Excalibur.
  • Goku Black and Zamasu from Dragon Ball Super love doing this due to being the same person. They continue to use it once they use Potara Fusion Even having a few types of it as well. The former eventually expands it to an energy scythe called the "Sickle of Sorrow", which carves open nasty-looking rifts in space even when it misses.
  • Later in the same arc, Future Trunks uses this technique to replace the broken half of his sword. Then Goku, Vegeta and the surviving humans channel their energy into him (like a spirit bomb), creating an ENORMOUS energy sword named The Sword of Hope, powerful enough to bisect the Merged Zamasu.
  • Kahseral of Universe 11's Pride Troopers has "Justice Saber", a technique in which he creates two energy blades on both of his hands.. Android 17 responds by ''catching'' one of them barehanded.
• Fire Force: Arthur Boyle's pyrokinetic abilities manifest as a type of Flaming Sword, with the flames heated to the point of becoming plasma which he can focus into a dense blade.
• The Five Star Stories uses its own version, known as a 'spadd': this is often paired with a regular sword, known as a 'speid'. Spadds and speids are used both by human-sized characters and by the giant robots they pilot.
  • The anime Five Star Stories is a Spiritual Successor-slash-Remake of, Heavy Metal L-Gaim, also has these, though they're called just "sabers", in both the human-sized and Heavy Metal-sized version.
• One arc of Gintama contains many Star Wars references (like a character named Obi One Kenofi and arms dealers who look like Yoda as a bankrobber), so naturally, it features beam swords.
• Aleida & Takane Shishidou in The Girl Who Leapt Through Space use weapons called Tachyon Swords in battle (usually with each other).
• In the Gundam meta series, laser blades, here commonly referred to as "beam sabers", are the common melee weapon used by heroes and villains both. Many series will start out with the heroes with a Super Prototype armed with a state-of-the-art beam saber with the villains gaining their own near the end of the series. Continuations afterwards usually have both sides stick with beam weaponry from that point on. As the series goes on, melee beam weaponry take various forms, practical and impractical, from the high powered beam shields to beam axes to helicopter rotors and even a beam flag.
  • Mobile Fighter G Gundam is of particular note for this trope as it featured the Shining Finger Sword, basically an oversized blade of beam energy designed as the Shining Gundam's Finishing Move after activating its Golden Super Mode.
  • Not all series deals with beam energy the same as the original. For instance, in Mobile Suit Gundam 00, early enemy Mobile Suits like the Union Flags used Sonic Blades, which were Vibroweapons that can also turn into Plasma Swords. The Gundam Exia and its successors 00 and 00 Qan-T had special weapons that were actually solid blades that could be infused with GN Particles to make them as powerful as standard beam sabers. The Qan-T is also notable for having a beam saber so large it could cut open a 3000km diameter alien ship (which is around same diameter of the moon)
  • Averted in Iron Blooded Orphans, where everyone uses physical weapons instead.
• The knights in Heroic Age have laser bayonets that can be turned on and off.
• Hoshin Engi: Kou Tenka's Paopei, "Bakuya no Hoken".
• A laser saber is Bakumaru's main weapon in Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger. Interestingly, he didn't start the series with it; it was a souvenir he took from the fractured Sci-Fi version of Momotarō.
• Jyu-Oh-Sei features a beam knife.
• Several characters in Lyrical Nanoha use variations of this.
  • Fate is the most prominent user. She starts with an energy scythe in the first season, and later gains access to various kinds of Laser Blades, from a BFS, to twin sabers, to a double-ended energy saber.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS introduces Teana, who can switch her pistols into a pair of energy daggers.
  • StrikerS also gives us the Combat Cyborg Deed and her Twin Blades, which are a pair of energy swords.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid has Victoria Dahlgrün, whose poleaxe could be split in two to reveal a hidden laser blade in its shaft.
• Ryuga's Ray Blade in Mahoromatic. It uses a beam from a starship to power it up.
• Mazinger Z: In the New Mazinger spin-off, almost all mechas use lasers and light blades. Mazinger itself is the only one mecha that uses a regular, metal — albeit most probably that metal is Unobtainium — blade. Subverted Trope because the mecha armors are laser-proof, and thus Mazinger's metal sword is more effective than the laser blades.
• A filler arc of Naruto featured the Raijin (Thunder God) Sword, which used to belong to Tobirama Senju. The blade is apparently made of pure electricity and can expand and retract much like a lightsaber.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has Evangeline emanating some sort of magic energy blade from her hand. She uses it once on the Headmaster (cutting his beard off so he won't interfere in the battle). Later, a weird psuedo-Eva created from a magic scroll and Negi's memories uses it to fight Negi.
  • Negi can also do this, at least when he's fighting a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
  • While deliberately used to invoke this trope, the spell "Ensis Exsequens" is almost the exact opposite of a conventional Laser Blade; rather than pumping energy into its delineated region, it supposedly drains and isolates energy so as to cause the surroundings of every particle in its effect to become colder relative to it... for every particle simultaneously, vaporizing the matter through sublimation. This incidentally produces intense cold in the blade's vicinity (fitting Eva's theme). It's noted that since this spell directly opposes the laws of thermodynamics (and logic), it's very difficult to cast; Negi's only learned an imperfect version of it.
• This is a specific ability granted to One Piece admiral Kizaru thanks to his light-based Devil Fruit powers.
• Phantom Quest Corp.: Ayaka's signature weapon is her Star Sword, which she summons by drawing her lipstick and invoking its release command. Upon which, the tube elongates into a sword hilt, while the lipstick itself becomes a light sabre. It even makes the exact same sound effect upon activation.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • This is what the Oshawott family's Signature Move Razor Shell attack looks like.
  • When Lucario uses Bone Rush (formerly one of the Signature Moves of Cubone and Marowak), it manifests out of thin air and glows rather like a lightsaber. And can be used in similar combat.
  • The Swords of Justice's former signature moves (Before it was also given to Aegislash) Sacred Sword and in the case of Keldeo, Secret Sword, look like this.
• In Psychic Squad, Tim uses his powers to make a Mecha that uses, among other weapons, a Beam-Pick-Axe and Beam-Shovel.
• Rebuild World:
  • These first show up briefly via Explosive Overclocking of Lost Technology blades that only last for a few seconds but have Absurd Cutting Power and are lengthy. Doing this destroys the original weapon.
  • Nelia eventually appears in a Mini-Mecha equipped with two appropriately sized energy blades.
  • An Artificial Intelligence Olivia that’s The Remnant of Precursors uses what is basically a lightsaber, which first shows up when she loans it to a lesser automaton that gets into a duel with Shiori. Olivia retrieves it and uses it for Parrying Bullets when a unit of Mini-Mecha launch a Converging-Stream Weapon attack against her.
• Sgt. Frog :
  • In a parody of Metal Heroes, Space Detective Kogoro uses a laser shinai.
  • Giroro is also seen using a beam sword during a Mobile Suit Gundam pastiche in episode 10.
• Shana of Shakugan no Shana during a computer game. On a related note, she's usually a Flaming Sword user.
• Amidamaru on Shaman King gets awfully lightsaber-ish.
  • Radim's Over Soul, Platinum Sword.
• Slayers:
  • Gourry's Ancestral Weapon, the Sword of Light, which at least has the advantage of being completely magical, allowing it to deflect, absorb, channel, amplify and emit incoming magical attacks. It's also capable of extending to nearly Sword Beam lengths. Lina used it to cast the Giga Slave in a desperate attempt to destroy Shabranigdo.
  • In Slayers Try, sister weapons to the Swords of Light, including a spear, bow, axe, and trident, all lasery. It also reveals them to be dormant monster demigods from Another Dimension. It is, however, possible for a mortal to create a lesser Laser Blade, as demonstrated by Pocota. All are activated by shouting the phrase "Light, come forth!"
  • Finally, there's Lina's "Ragna Blade" spell which creates a virtual blade capable of slicing through physical objects, and even reality itself into alternate dimensions. It's the only weapon or spell the monster race cannot avoid by ducking out of our reality, though it is actually more of a darksaber.
• Space Runaway Ideon: The titular Humongous Mecha has such weapon. The "Ideon Blade" is the absolute, indisputed heavyweight champion of this trope. It can cut one whole freaking planet in half, and it is speculated that its reach is potentially infinite.
• Sword Art Online has the Kagemitsu G4 in Gun Gale Online, and is classified as a "Photon Sword", though it's mentioned by Sinon that it doesn't stop GGO players from calling them names like "Light Swords", or Beam Sabres^note Nor does it stop Real Life fans of the series from flat out calling it those, or a Lightsaber. In the anime, it even sounds extremely similar to how a Lightsaber does when swung or powered up or down. This is actually lampshaded when Sinon finishes listing every possible alternate name for the thing except calling it a lightsaber, and follows up by saying "It has another name, but I can't remember it.". This was considered a Joke Weapon in series since by the time anyone got close enough to someone to use it, they'd be riddled with bullets. Then Kirito gets his hands on one and, thanks to skills honed in two other VRMMO games that emphasized sword fighting, turns it into a Lethal Joke Weapon, deflecting bullets like a Jedi. After he leaves GGO, the Kagemitsu explodes in popularity as players try (with limited success) to replicate his feats.
• All the various energy blades in Tenchi Muyo!, although many of these are semi-mystical in nature; the most powerful, the Light Hawk Sword, comes from Tenchi's own God powers. Tenchi's regular sword, named Sword Tenchi (long story), actually serves as a master key to Juraian ships; its combat abilities are just a bonus. It also has the handy ability to throw up a Force Field. Ryoko, Washu, and Kagato have to ability to create energy swords outright, Ryoko's and Washu's being simple orange constructs, and Kagato's being green and more ornate, like a bastard sword. Lightsaber-like sound effects are standard when such swords are activated.
  • In Tenchi Muyo! GXP, energy swords almost identical to Star Wars lightsabers were implied to be both Galaxy Police standard equipment and carried by space pirates. They even had similar color coding — the Galaxy Police used blue laserblades and space pirates used red.
  • In Tenchi Universe, the Big Bad Kagato has a dark version of Tenchi's sword. It looks more like a large bastard sword in energy form than Tenchi's more Katana like blade.
  • Subverted in Tenchi in Tokyo. Tenchi's sword here is made of Crystals
  • A few characters in the No Need for Tenchi/All-New Tenchi Muyo manga series swung around a few laser blades. The first villain sought to make a blade that was stronger than the Light Hawk Wing sword. Didn't work out for him. The last villain from No Need challenges Tenchi with two high-powered laser blades mounted on his hands. When he's forced to cut off a hand, the energy blade is so powerful in digs its way into the ground and causes his planet to go up.
• Umi No Triton featured a laser knife that was an heirloom of the Atlantis nobility. Yoshiyuki Tomino directed this in 1972 before Gundam and well before Star Wars.
• Voltron: Three words: Form Blazing Sword! Oddly enough, it was more or less solid. On the other hand, in the CGI-based Revival, "Stealth Voltron" is armed with an N.R.G. Sword.
• In World Conquest Zvezda Plot, members of the White Light organization fight using glowing white energy swords, which are capable of shooting Sword Beams.
• Cure Aqua of Yes! Pretty Cure 5, of all people, gets one of these from her first Mid-Season Upgrade. Apparently Karen's a trendsetter, because when it came time for upgrades in the next season, everyone got laser swords.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX had the "Elemental Sword" card, which depending on your point of view, was either thankfully or unfortunately used only twice.
• Kuwabara in YuYu Hakusho can summon an energy sword at will. It's not technically a laser sword since it's actually a manifestation of his spirit energy, but it functionally serves the same role.

Comic Books

• 2000 AD:
  • In Judge Dredd's universe, Hondo City (what was Japan) Judges in more recent years are issued with laser blades, replacing the traditional katanas from earlier stories. Other characters have used them as well. In fact, the first recorded incident of a "futsie" was when a man went berserk after his wife bought a laser carving knife and killed her with it.
  • Shakara: One of Shakara's most commonly used weapons is a glowing red laser blade attached to his arm, which he'll occasionally dual wield.
• After giving up the Ebony Blade, The Avengers member the Black Knight designed and constructed a laser sword, often called his photonic or neural sword. The sword resembles a lightsaber in both its appearance and its effects on non-living matter, but it functions differently when used against living beings. Its "laser" blade is actually a neural disruptor; when the Black Knight cuts someone with it, it delivers a massive jolt to the being's central nervous system. This jolt is usually enough to incapacitate someone within just a few hits. Alternately, Whitman can reverse the sword's energy stream so that it encases its hilt and by extension Whitman's fist in a high-energy field. Using the sword in this fashion enables Whitman to punch with some unspecified degree of enhanced strength.
• The knights in Camelot 3000 wielded energy swords used for slashing, not thrusting, but still called them "raypiers".
• In Matt Wagner's Grendel: War Child series, Grendel-Prime uses a red laser sword. A different character wields a similar weapon in the Grendel Tales story "Devil's Choices".
• Rex and Kane, the two Tyrannosaurus rexes in Jurassic Strike Force 5, frequently use their laser swords during major battles.
• Kamandi: In the first issue of the original series, Great Caesar has a "laser rod", which at one point is stolen by Kamandi.
• X-Men: Psylocke's psychic knife looks like this.
• Used by Prince Ethan and later on, Prince Bron in Scion.
• In Space Usagi "arcane" (ancient) katanas can be adapted to "surge", allowing them to cut through metal and electrify opponents.
• The Transformers: Robots in Disguise: Arcee regularly uses a pair of energy swords with blades that resemble lightning bolts. They stand out quite a bit since while many characters use swords in the setting, and a few even use swords that can charge their blades with energy, she's the only character whose sword blades are actually made of energy.
• Until The Transformers: Windblade, where such weapons are common among Transformers from the Lost Colony of Caminus. It's explained that the scarcity of energy on Caminus means that shooting it off is unacceptably wasteful; the Camiens developed energy blades as one of their conservation measures.
• Iron Man: War Machine typically has a laser blade built into his left gauntlet. Considering the trope this superhero usually follows, it's rarely used.
• Wonder Woman (1987): The Space Pirate Sakritt weilds an energy blade along with her gun. The blade is used more for intimidation than practicality but she's still adept at using it.

Fan Works

• Boldores and Boomsticks: Gary's Alakazam teaches Whisper Psycho Cut, which she then uses to imitate Weiss' swordplay. Unlike most depictions of the move both hold onto the generated blades annd use them for melee attacks.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Harry Dresden conjure one by accident in the final battle of the first book when a mixture of fire and force spell gets a little nudge, infusing the result with soulfire and leaving it as a burning silver energy blade protruding from his blasting rod. He thinks it's brilliant. Everyone else just takes it as proof that the world has gone mad.
  • He later gets a new vibranium blasting rod, and develops a spell to this effect. Because Dresden is a massive nerd, it even makes the noises.
  • It later turns out that Curtana, Harry's sword can do this after it gets reforged in the second book, being one of the many special features that Doctor Strange didn't bother mentioning until the Lady Knight fiddles with it in the third. This means that an already lethal and often Flaming Sword is now capable of effectively imitating a lightsabre. Just what you want when your latest crackpot scheme involves imitating Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• A Crown of Stars: The Rangers of Avalon Empire Army wield plasma-edged blades as part of their standard equipment.
• Detsniy Off Skiword seems fond of them, since two of his stories have used them so far. In Profesor Layton Vs Jack The Raper, we see Layton and The Grim Raper have a fight using these. In Kid Icarus Uprising 2, the 16th chapter has Cloud Angle get a lightsaber from Hades in order to fight atop the Satellite Of Terror.
• Dreaming of Sunshine features The Sword of the Thunder God. It's similarity to a lightsaber is lampshaded by the main character.
  I was a ninja. I knew there were jutsu and weapons of every description and ability and more. And yet, some things were so deeply ingrained, like the cultural belief that the coolest weapon in the world was made of light and went zshooshm.
• Fate Revelation Online: A patch adds Mystic Codes to the game, which is the Nasuverse word for enchanted tools. The first words out of Kirito's mouth are "Shirou. Let's build a lightsaber." This proves to be a surprisingly difficult prospect, and after months of work they can barely manage an Awesome, but Impractical single-use blade that shatters like glass on the first hit. They find a couple ways to cheat, but complain that having just a glowing sword doesn't really fit what they want.
• A Game of Cat and Cat: As in canon, Naoki has the power to create laser swords from thin air. He tries using it to cut a loaf of bread when he can't find a knife; it works and even toasts the bread beautifully, but it's so sharp that he cuts the table in half.
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: There's something called "The Most Ancient Blade" that only those of a Noble/Ancient House can use. It's a combination of spells with a long setup time, clearly designed for polite and flashy duels between nobles rather than something you should expect to use in actual combat. Hermione notes that, while it's clearly more awe-inspiring to people who haven't seen Star Wars, it's still pretty impressive that they managed to make lightsabers.
• Kyon has one in the prologue of Kyon: Big Damn Hero courtesy of a dead inter-dimensional robot out to kill them.
• Legacy Of the Rasengan :Naruto: Naruto's Kaze Kiwa no Jutsu combines this trope (blade-shaped chakra) with Razor Wind. Yes it is awesome. The length can be determined depending on how much chakra you pour in.
• The Life of the Legendaries has Palkia wield a lightsaber-esque sword. It is made from his psychic energy. In this continuity, Psycho Cut can manifest as this form as well.
• In Origins, lightsabers are extremely rare, but are often found in the hands of special agents from the Republic Intelligence Service. At one point, Kai Leng gets one and "The Lady" wields one along with her underlings. In Frontier lightsabers become far more common, if only because the Big Bad is mass-producing them for its troops.
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Sabrina taught several of her Kadabra to project Psycho Cut energy through their spoons to create this effect. Apparently she plagiarized this from a Pokémon Coordinator, though she insists she learned it legitimately.
• Sonic Boom: Beyond the Black Horizon: This is one of the functions of the Enerbeam; in fact, it's the first one that Sonic figures out how to use. The shape and length of the blade varies by user; Sonic's has a decent range whilst Knuckles's is more or less a punching dagger. Lyric dual-wields a set of more traditional beam sabres.
• In Son of the Sannin, Naruto designs a modified kunai capable of projecting a blade of pure chakra, similar to Asuma's trench knives. The initial model had a high rate of chakra consumption (something that doesn't really effect him personally but makes it impractical for just about everyone else), though Jiraiya helps him refine it over the Time Skip and they end up becoming part of the standard arsenel for members of ANBU.
• In the Australian Fan Film Star Wars Downunder, the Big Bad's stormtroopers have light-boomerangs.
• One of the five “Hitler Youth” in the New Zork chapter of With Strings Attached can generate a Laser Blade. The narrative promptly nicknames him Lightsaber Guy.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Yami Bakura and Yami Marik duel each other with Ancient Egyptian lightsabers (with "Through the Fire and Flames" by DragonForce playing in the background) before switching to a children's card game.

Film — Animated

• The leader of the Fearsome Hand of Four in Batman: Under the Red Hood dual-wields a pair of these.

Film — Live Action

• Long Jian-fei, the hero of the wuxia fantasy film, Buddha's Palm, wields a weapon called the Green Dragon Sword, an energy weapon that glows upon being drawn from its sheath, which is blatantly ripped off from Star Wars, right down to having the same iconic lightsaber hum lifted from the source material. Although there's a bit of a Hilarious in Hindsight here: the knockoff weapon here glows green instead of red or blue, and the movie itself is released on 1982, a year before green lightsabres made its debut in Return of the Jedi!
• In The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, Cass finds one which is a leftover from a previous, failed run of the adventure module, complete with an off-key music of a few notes from the Star Wars theme.
  Lodge: YOU CAN'T USE A LIGHTSABER! IT'S NOT EVEN THE RIGHT SYSTEM!
  Cass: I see no lightsabre. That would be a copyright infringement. I see a psionic spiritblade.
  • Which ends up biting Cass in the rear, when Lodge turns Cass's Rules Lawyer way back around on him, by having the villain the party is facing stop it with a simple Dispell Psionic or similar spell. After all, Cass did say it was a it was a psionic, magic weapon.
• In Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, Destoroyah's horn can sprout a laser blade powerful enough to injure Godzilla.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Trillian demonstrates the operation of a laser knife to Arthur, which toasts bread as it's being cut. It also makes the lightsaber sounds. And miraculously doesn't cut the plate. DVD Commentary points out the Fridge Logic that the other side of the toasted slice will still be cold.
• Hot Shots! Part Deux features a random Star Wars parody when President Benson and Saddam Hussein suddenly whip out lightsabers during their climactic duel.
• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: The characters' superhero identities Bluntman & Chronic use lightsabers. Bluntman's is called a "bluntsaber" and Chronic's is a double-bladed "bongsaber". Their archnemesis Cock-Knocker (played by Mark Hamill) uses a "cocksaber".
  Chaka Luther King: I think George Lucas is gonna sue somebody!
• The Return (1980) features an alien-tech bar of light that sometimes burns, sometimes cuts and cauterizes, and sometimes just acts like a normal knife.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Gideon Graves uses a laser sword made of pixels, which is called the Digitana in the script.
• Spaceballs features a laser sword fight between Lone Starr and Dark Helmet, and the laser blades get tangled at one point. "I hate it when my Schwartz gets twisted!"

• Star Wars is the Trope Codifier, and its laser-bladed lightsabers are the iconic weapons of the Jedi and the Sith. Lucas sometimes calls them "laser swords" in interviews and in fact uses this term in the original script; this carries to the prequel movies, where child Anakin explicitly calls a lightsaber a "laser sword" when he sees Qui-Gon for the first time and immediately recognizes the latter as a Jedi Knight.
  • A lightsaber is actually a plasma weapon, not a true laser (pure photons that project indefinitely). It is composed of a metal hilt that projects a three-foot colored beam of plasma restrained by a magnetic Containment Field, making it serve as a blade which can be switched on and off. The energy is provided by a "kyber crystal" stored in the hilt. Most Jedi blades are green or blue; other colors, such as purple, orange, yellow or white, are rare but appear on occasion. Sith lightsabers are always blood-red, because they corrupt their crystals with a Dark Side technique called "bleeding". They can cut through virtually any physical substance, even thick metal bulkheads, but because of their containment fields, can bounce off of each other to enable swordfights; a few materials, such as a handful of rare metals or the hides of certain monsters, also resist their blades. George Lucas intended them to make Jedi more like a classic Knight Errant or samurai.
  • It's commonly believed even in-universe that only Force-sensitives can wield lightsabers, but this isn't strictly true; transhumans and cyborgs like General Grievous can wield them just as well. However, Force-sensitive reflexes and a bit of precognition do greatly help in wielding them safely, without cutting off one's own bodyparts while making rapid complex motions.
  • Jedi are immune to bullets, but are vulnerable to blaster fire. But because lightsabers are close-range weapons that can be used to block and reflect them, they are supposed to be seen as defensive weapons, showing that Jedi use force only to protect themselves. This characterization is pretty much abandoned with the Sith of the Dark Side, who use lightsabers just as readily.
  • Several characters have their own takes on the lightsaber:
    • Darth Maul has a special hilt that can project a blade from either end, making it function like a Bo staff. Supplementary materials or looking closely at the hilt reveals it's just two regular sabers attached end-to-end.
    • Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress both use lightsabers with curved hilts in order to allow for more precise movements and flexibility during lightsaber combat in conjunction with the Makashi lightsaber form, which resembled traditional fencing (which Christopher Lee was a master of).
    • The Inquisitors use hilts that also project a blade from each end... and they spin, allowing for flight.
    • The Darksaber, introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, is an ancient Mandalorian lightsaber that, on top of having a unique black blade, is shaped more like an actual saber (flat, pointed blade, handguard, etc.).
    • Ezra Bridger built a lightsaber with a stun blaster incorporated in its hilt. Until Darth Vader destroyed it.
    • Kylo Ren has a lightsaber with two horizontal blades jutting from the hilt, like a crossguard. This design was a necessity due to Kylo Ren only having a cracked kyber crystal, the energy of which became unstable. He displays the ability to jab the crossguards into his foes in a Blade Lock.
    • In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey's Sith doppelganger uses a double-bladed lightsaber with a hilt that has a hinge in the middle, allowing the weapon to be more easily concealed. This is actually the third time a lightsaber of this type has been shown, the first being with Pong Krell's pair in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the second in an episode of Star Wars Rebels.
    • At the end of TRoS, Rey debuts a new yellow-bladed saber that she built from her old staff.
    • Ahsoka Tano wields two white-bladed sabers, one of which is a shorter shoto-style. The white blades come from formerly-corrupted kyber crystals that she took from a defeated Inquisitor and then purified.
    • Lightwhips are a variant where the blade is longer than usual and encased in a flexible energy shield, allowing it to be used as, well, a whip instead of a traditional blade. They're noted to be difficult to master properly, but useful in their own way — in part because, due to their rarity, few people truly know how to respond to their use in combat. They occur in both single- and multi-stranded versions.
  • Star Wars Legends material expands on the lightsabers' in-universe history. The earliest Force traditions used metal blades imbued with the power of the Force, which incidentally caused them to glow a variety of colors - and it's worth noting that they were mentioned as still being in rare use even into the time of the Clone Wars, and could take a hit from a lightsaber. True laser-bladed weapons came along later, after a brief early appearance in the form of the Rakatan "Forcesaber" which was quickly discarded because the only way it could be made to work was by constantly channelling the Dark Side. Later versions were derived by modifying projectile laser weapons, but only saw ceremonial use due to being impractical and difficult to make. The first combat lightsabers saw use during the ancient Jedi-Sith schism; this model, later known as the "protosaber", needed a constant energy intake to work and included a long cable connected to a power pack worn on the wielder's belt (this last bit is a Development Gag to how the lightsaber effect was done for the original movie). The Sith were the first to figure out how to make power cells small enough to incorporate entirely in the saber's hilt; the Jedi adopted this technology after the first Sith-Jedi war.
  • Early concept art for the original movies has lightsabers as a much more widespread and mundane weapon — some concept art shows squads of common stormtroopers wielding them.
• TRON: Legacy: Generated by the same Baton as Light Cycles, Light Katanas can be used by programs on the Grid, as demonstrated by Quorra during the fight scene in the End of Line club.
• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a 1983 Shaw Brothers parody of the Star Wars movies naturally has laser swords wielded by the Vader expy (ironically, said Vader clone wields a blue one). There's also laser nunchucks!
• One character in Bloodbath at the House of Death is decapitated with a laser sword by her doppelganger, reflecting the way she killed her mother in the past.

Gamebooks

• In Rebel Planet, an early Fighting Fantasy book, humans and Arcadian soldiers all uses Laser swords in combat, despite being in a sci-fi setting. Interestingly the laser sword is no better than a regular steel sword in other books. Additionally the laser sword prevents the hero from being able to do a martial art One-Hit Kill on enemies, the only advantage is that the laser sword prevents a skill penalty from being unarmed.

Literature

• Edmond Hamilton's Kaldar, Planet of Antares (1933) has the following description:"The sword seemed at first glance a simple long rapier of metal. But he found that when his grip tightened on the hilt it pressed a catch which released a terrific force stored in the hilt into the blade, making it shine with light. When anything was touched by this shining blade, he found, the force of the blade annihilated it instantly. He learned that the weapon was called a lightsword".
• The Complete Adventures of Lucky Starr:
  • David Starr, Space Ranger: The technology for force fields is sufficiently developed that knives and climbing equipment can have these traits incorporated in their design. They're considered highly dangerous, due to being able to generate invisible blades that cut through bone, metal, and even stone easily. Contender for Trope Maker, due to being published in 1952.
  • Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus: Bigman carries a knife whose blade is made from force fields, and disguised as a pocket watch. The six-inch blade is described to use a micropile for power, and the ability to cut through any material surface.
• Stephen King had the Wolves use these in the fifth The Dark Tower book.
• Digitesque: Those with the warrior gift can create laser constructs. Swords are common, but someone creates a pair of clubs at one point.
• The Dresden Files: In Skin Game, Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith, has its sword form destroyed, but the Power still resides within waiting for a person of strong Faith to take it up. When Butters finds it falling into his hands as he faces down two millennia-old villains, it is reforged into a blade of angelic light with a pulsing hum as it extends forth. Basically a lightsaber. What makes this even better is that the person wielding it is a Star Wars fan and the form the weapon took reflected that as well. And so, as it turns out, is the Archangel Uriel. He liked the music, apparently.
• An outtake at the back of Fancy Apartments has Carr playing with a lightsaber.
• In the 1982 novel The Fires of Paratime by L.E. Modesitt Jr., one character possesses an actual light saber; it's apparently the genuine article, having been acquired "from some obscure group of galactic-wide do-gooders" during a trip to the distant past.
• Foundation Series:
  • "The Traders": Gorov's mission on Askone is to be a black market salesman, selling Foundation-designed nucleics, such as knives with edges made from Deflector Shields. This is one of the oldest examples of the trope, as it first appeared in 1944.
    "...To put it simply, if I could sell a penknife with a force-field blade to a nobleman, it would be to his interest to force laws that would allow him to use it. Put that baldly, it sounds silly, but it is sound, psychologically. To make strategic sales, at strategic points, would be to create a pro-nucleics faction at court."
  • Prelude to Foundation: One of the two lackeys that tried to attack Seldon in the open-air park had a knife with a laser blade. Hummin and Seldon find this distasteful, since knives are still effective without the laser blade.
• Fritz Leiber's Gather Darkness (published in 1943), where the "rods of wrath" cause a lot of mayhem on bystanders when used in a duel:
  "Like two ancient swordsmen, then, the warlock and the deacon dueled together. Their weapons were two endless blades of violet incandescence, but their tactics were those of sabreurs — feint, cut, parry, swift riposte."
• Variable swords in Larry Niven's Known Space stories, which are simply stasis fields wrapped around monofilament wires. A notable subversion in that their power doesn't glow (the wires are nearly invisible, so it doesn't look like much of anything, and only the bright red ball on the end tells you where the sword point is), but they function a lot like energy swords.
• Lone Huntress features blades composed of charged fields rotating at near light speeds, creating a gyroscopic effect to provide the illusion of heft. Naturally, since the story is set in the future, ancient pop culture has given rise to common terminology among a population that never even heard of George Lucas. In a fun bit of exploration, it's shown that just as other weapons (such as lasers) have proven their usefulness in other fields, so too have lightsabers; they're more likely to be found attached to mining drones than as hand weapons.
• There's multiple brands of electrified and glowing sword in Lucifer's Star as the weapons are used in a thriving dueling culture as well as being beneficial for breaking down personal shields. Commentary is made about the fact they're not actually that useful in real combat unless you're a complete lunatic (which is used to describe the main protagonist who ends up using them as often as his fusion pistol).
• The Machineries of Empire: "Calendrical swords" draw power from the High Calendar to create blades of solid light. They're primarily used for competitive dueling, but Kel soldiers in formation can amplify their effect to create piercing or cutting forces far larger than the blades themselves.
• Another possible Ur-Example is E. T. A. Hoffmann's Master Flea, first published in 1822, which features a duel between two sorcerers using ray emitting pocket telescopes. There are no rays visible, and it's not quite clear whether these are Laser Blades or Ray Guns, but the physical strain and use of "feints, parries, thrusts, in short, all the tricks of the fencing-school" strongly implies the former.
• In John Meaney's Nulapeiron Sequence books (and the prequel, To Hold Infinity there may be found a device called a Lattice Blade. Apparently never used as a battlefield weapon, it is quite capable of slicing off a limb and being extended or contracted in size, yet remain pocketable when deactivated.
• M.C.A. Hogarth's Paradox series has holoswords, which project a Hard Light blade of variable length, width, and sharpness. They're primarily used for fencing, with an entire fighting style based around changing the blade settings in the middle of combat, but in Laisrathera Hirianthial uses one to great effectiveness in a series of duels.
• Robot Series' "Risk": Black's internal narration mentions a "force knife", implied to be a knife made from force fields, but used to more firmly establish the advanced technology of the setting.
• In Melisa Michaels' Skyrider series, when a belter picks a fight with Skyrider because she's trying to remain neutral in the Earth/Belt conflict, he ends up stabbing her with a "force blade".
• The Bloodswords of The Star of the Guardians act a lot like lightsabers, but they can be switched to Deflector Shields at a thought. They also amp up their user's Psychic Powers. However, they have a nasty trick to them: anyone not of Royal Blood who tries to use one gets cancer for their theft.
• In The Sun Eater, characters will sometimes use the rare and difficult to produce High Matter swords which gives the appearance of an energy blade but is really a force-field being used to shape amorphous exotic matter into a mono-molecular blade. In the 5th book, Ashes of Man one villain uses a plasma sword, which is a powerful weapon but it has issues such as heat-resistant ceramic armor being fairly protective against it and the sword generating an uncomfortable amount of heat to its wielder.
• Frankie from Super Minion has the power to project energy blades from his arms.
• The early Viriconium novel The Pastel City, another pre-Star Wars work, contains energy swords called baan. These have a thoughtful safety feature: the blade materializes around a solid core, which isn't necessary for the weapon to operate, but prevents the blade from activating accidentally while it's pointing into the user's body.
  • They also turn up in a couple of Harrison's later Viriconium stories, but in keeping with Harrison's deconstruction of SF and fantasy tropes turn out to be radioactive and have unpleasant effects on the wielder.
• Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn carries a pure energy power sword in the novels Xenos and Malleus, by Dan Abnett. He regards it as much less crude than newer models, which are basically swords with a power field around them. It still doesn't do him any good when he tries to cut an Eldritch Abomination with it.
• The Wheel of Time
  • Mocked when one of the Forsaken points out to the Dragon Reborn that his sword made entirely of fire is one the worst way to use his power that they can think of. Given that at one point the Dragon Reborn seriously considers snuffing out all of reality, they were probably right.
  • Either Moraine or Siuan did it as well using Air, to demonstrate how stupid doing it was. While she was going for a gender thing, it's still accurate: at least Rand knows how to use a sword, well enough to make it a practical way to express power, and isn't oathbound to never use such a weapon against non-Shadowspawn or to let somebody else use it.
• In Wolfling (1969) by Gordon R. Dickson the preferred weapon of High-Born (haughty, but highly advanced Human Aliens ruling an interstellar empire) are hand-sized "rods" that project an energy beam, length of which can be varied during fight. According to George Lucas an illustration of these "rods" back when Wolfling was serialized on Analog were a major inspiration for the lightsaber in Star Wars.

Live-Action TV

• The Shadows in Babylon 5 have a unique combat tactic where their large battleships send out an energy beam and slash other ships with it, instead of shooting them.
• Bibleman sports one of these, and the Star Wars influence is not subtle in the least.
• Defiance has charge-blades, typically the glowing blue blade is the size of a large scalpel (their original use), but at least once one was extended to shortsword length.
• An episode of Earth: Final Conflict features an assassin using dual laser blades to assassinate people, while framing others using dreams. Notable for being of human design, as Taelons aren't big on swordfighting. Additionally, the blade can "extend" from either end, depending on which button is pushed, which is how Liam kills the assassin.
• The intro to Even Stevens has Ren and Louis Stevens sitting in front of the TV, each with a remote control trying to change channel to what they want to watch. When they can't agree, they turn their remote controls into lightsabers and begin to battle one another in a display of sibling rivalry.
• The Goodies: In "Snow White 2", Tim and Graeme have a duel with lightsabers.
• In Lexx S02E01 Zev uses a light saber-like device, that looks more like a light saber with a handle of a chainsaw, to cut a dormant gigantic insect into tiny pieces. This device, like most of the devices in Lexx, is not named.
• Logan's Run: In "Turnabout", the people of Zidor use laser swords. The guard Gera gets into a laser swordfight with Francis.
• In The New Adventures of Robin Hood when Marian is kidnapped to be a demon god's bride, Robin shows up with an Unicorn horn that can changed into different energy weapons, one of which is a energy sword. This dissolves into a light saber duel when the lead worshipper, possessed by the god, reveals his own energy sword.
• In the Red Dwarf episode, The Inquisitor, Kryten uses a laser chainsaw to hack off the eponymous villain's hand to allow his past self and Lister to take the Inquisitor's time gauntlet. He is killed in the process, but thanks to Lister's later plan he gets better.
• This kind of weapon is a staple of Toku shows:
  • Kamen Rider BLACK RX had one of these, the Revolcane as one of his attacks. The Macekreed U.S. production referred to it as an "electro-saber" and had it shoot fireballs at the enemy instead of impaling them.
    • Kamen Rider 555's bike handlebar sword takes on this appearance; it has no cutting edge, as the damage comes from the energy in the blade.
  • Every Space Sheriff of Toei's Metal Heroes franchise has a sword that can turn into one of these, appropriately called the Laser Blade. Each show has a Leitmotif whenever they use the weapon.
  • A few Power Rangers and Super Sentai weapons resemble lightsabers. Red isn't evil; it just means its wielder is The Hero. Blades generally glow when doing a Finishing Move, but are not energized all the time and have a metal rod (not sharp; it's the energy that does the damage) that can be seen beneath them. This goes for the aforementioned Faiz Edge and Revolcane/Electro Saber.
  • In VR Troopers, JB's sword can take on a lightsaber glow, and even extend into a laser-lance, with which he does most of his finishing. Sorry, Darth Maul, you were beaten to the punch by quite a few years.
    • Indeed, since VRT was adopted from the Metal Heroes series, this was a given; Ryan got his own Laser Blade in Season 2 when they switched to Shaider footage. Beetleborgs, however, did not have any, oddly (though this was because the source series didn't have any either).
• Warehouse 13 has one of these in their Eureka crossover, wielded by Fargo. It's a laser cutter from Eureka that was "modified" with Benjamin Franklin's ring from the Warehouse. That turns it into an actual lightsaber that even makes the appropriate sounds when moved. Fargo, being a nerd, is in love with the improvised weapon.

Pinball

• All of the futuristic explorers in Atari's Middle Earth pinball are armed with either Laser Blades or Ray Guns. Makes sense, given that they're exploring a Lost World filled with giant dinosaurs and monster apes.
• Prominently featured in nearly all of the Star Wars pinballs, of course.

Roleplay

• Destroy the Godmodder: Actual lightsabers are frequently used, along with other energy blades. This tendency only increased after the introduction of the Alchemiter in Act 2.
• Embers in the Dusk has Plasma Foils, Dark Age weapons which come in infantry and Knight-Titan sizes. Advanced Power Armor also has optional Blade Below the Shoulder variants.

Tabletop Games

• In the less known RPG Ammo, laser swords are an excellent weapon with variable power settings. Sadly, the higher damage setting drains its energy reserve in a matter of seconds. Psi-blade are more powerful if held by fighters with high willpower, and less consuming.
• In the d20 Modern sourcebook D20 Future, one available weapon is the Beam Sword, a "small metal handle generating a solid beam of plasma contained by a gravity induced forcefield."
• Dragonstar has Sunswords, sacred plasma swords that use divine magic to channel the power of suns.
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • 1st edition had the Wand of Force; one of its powers was to create a 3-foot long luminescent shaft-shaped forcefield emanating from the wand itself that could be wielded as a + 5 longsword. Does This Remind You of Anything??
    • Later, Mordenkainen's sword spell did something very close to this.
  • And let's not forget brilliant energy weapons, which are often called "lightsabers" by the fandom. They're not quite the same, though: they simply ignore/pass through non-living matter without damaging it. This made them rather unpopular with players: they ignored a target's worn armor, but not magical effects like a wizard's defensive spells or natural armor like a dragon's scales, and they couldn't even harm undead or constructs at all. Combined with how expensive they were, most players chose to pass on them in favor of choosing just about any other weapon enchantment.
  • Don't forget the Soulknife, a character class that can make an energy sword out of pure will!
  • 5th Edition has the Sun Blade, a longsword hilt with a blade of pure light (that the wielder can cause to appear or disappear at will^note like a lightsaber), which deals radiant damage instead of slashing damage, does extra damage to the undead, and can be used as a torch.
• In Eclipse Phase a "plasma blade" looks vaguely like a blunt sword but has plasma nozzles along one edge.
• Exalted has beam weapons, made and most often used by the magitech Alechemicals.
  • One of the characters on the cover of Manual of Exalted Power: Alchemicals even uses a "beamklave". What do you think it looks like in the art depicting it?
    • This gets even shoutier when Soulsteel caste Alchemicals typically have black armour and red beamklaves. Just add Vader Breath.
• Forgotten Realms spell chromatic blade creates a glowing in erratic colors, needle-thin line of Hard Light. It can be blocked normally, but makes no sound, cuts as sword of sharpness and disrupts many "prismatic" spells.
• TSR's Gamma World featured Force Swords that were force-fields shaped into a blade and could cut through anything except another force field (alongside a wide gamut of high-tech melee weapons, including vibro and monofilament blades). Since the first release was in 1978, it's debatable how these weapons correlated with the introduction of Lightsabers in the original Star Wars.
• Greyhawk spell Jaran's prismatic blade essentially is Prismatic Sphere in the form of a sword wielded by the caster. Inability to use spells with somatic components while this thing is active is a small price for this grade of destruction.
• GURPS has forceswords, and the Ultratech supplement even has a Laser Spear that is "suitable for guards of the Galactic Emperor". (Ultratech also describes the basic forcesword as "elegant".)
• The Jedi-inspired Just Blade track for Sages in Legend System lets you create one with your mind as its first circle ability.
• Magic: The Gathering occasionally dabbles into this, particularly since White Magic is both fond of swords and light. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty harkens back to the more typical sci-fi ones given its Science Fantasy set, most notable Enormous Energy Blade. Notably, several have metallic main blades rimmed with Hard Light ones.
• Mekton has rules for not only a laser sword, but also a laser axe.
  • The add-on book Mekton Zeta Tech Manual allows for the construction of nearly any energy melee weapon you can imagine.
• Laser Knight from Monsterpocalypse
• The closest thing Myriad Song has to the traditional "lightsaber" is the Xenharmonic Blade, commonly carried by Remanence Aristocrats and Syndic Lost Technology. Laser torches can also be used as improvised weapons like many other power tools. Meanwhile Ghibli blades consist of a "hilt" resembling a small jet engine and project a "blade" of superheated air.
• Numenera has the artifact Disruptive Sword. This is simply a sword that generates a damaging energy field around it. And as energy swords go it's a grave disappointment. The only thing it does is give an extra point of damage. And worse yet, the sword can't turn off the field - it's always on. So the wielder will lose a sheath a week as the sword's field slowly breaks it down.
• Paranoia has force swords, explained as monofilament fiber inside a force field. Too bad they're only available at Blue clearance. This being Alpha Complex, the force field periodically fails, putting the wielder at risk of cutting himself as the fiber whips around loose.
• Rifts has Cyber Knights and Mind Melters wielding Psi Swords, which they can create with their minds. Also the Lightblade, a Magitek weapon. The laser-making company Wilks' also makes a laser knife and sword, but the latter has realability issues with its power supply.
• The Ray Sword from Rocket Age, essentially a lightsaber made up energy contained by the same kind of technology as RAY shielding.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse:
  • Gene-Bound Ion-Lancer and L'Epeiste, minions who work for Grand Warlord Voss and La Capitan respectively, each wield one. Ion-Lancer's grants him immunity to energy damage and damages the hero with the least HP, while L'Epeiste's lets him deal damage to the healthiest hero equal to the number of Equipments and ongoings the heroes have.
  • There's also K.N.Y.F.E whose main power is making laser blades from her fists.
• Shadowrun has the Centurion Laser Axe, although it's never made quite clear how the laser beam follows the arced blade... All the rules state is that it can lose its focus when hitting hard materials like heavy armor.
• Star Wars d20 naturally has lightsabers. They have the ability to ignore Damage Reduction plus Jedi characters do increased damage with lightsabers as they gain in level.
• Arc-field weapons as of the Mongoose versions of Traveller: conductive fibers that create a plane of energy. Only available on the most high-technology of worlds (and among the most expensive of melee weapons), with enough armor penetration and damage to cut through most starship hulls. Then there are psi blades, though despite being as or more expensive and higher-technology, do much less damage.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Power Weapons are a variety of conventional melee weapons (and some unconventional weapons) surrounded by a matter-disintegrating "power field" when activated, thus rendering them capable of tearing through most forms of armor. If the technical components are damaged or deactivated, they can be used as regular weapons.
  • Their counterpart, force weapons, are also conventional melee weapons (without unconventional weapons included) designed for use by psychics (or "psykers" in-universe). These weapons are powered by the psychic might of its user, punching through armor and dealing horrendous, lethal damage to anybody unfortunate to be on the business end of the weapon. These are nominally more powerful than most power weapons, they still confer the benefit of acting as regular melee weapons when deactivated, or in the hands of a non-psychic. In the RPGs, Force Swords always count as best quality mono-edge if not being used by a Psyker.
  • In one of the official army lists for a less-than-honest regiment, a wargear option is stolen archeotech. This is a piece of strange and esoteric machinery that has a random effect from playing pretty tunes to blasting plasma at enemies — one of the results is stated as being a beam of coherent light that can be wielded as a sword and ignores armour.
  • As mentioned above, the Inquisitor Eisenhorn novels mention that Eisenhorn possessed a power sword without a physical blade for a time (essentially just a hilt until activated), emphasising how rare and precious it is. Indeed, in most of The 'Verse, power weapons without a physical weapon to channel the power field around are almost unheard of.
  • The energy blade is statted in the Dark Heresy splatbook Inquisitor's Handbook. It's very Awesome, but Impractical, as using it creates bright light and loud noise, making stealth impossible since it's really a beam of plasma energy. It also runs on plasma weapon canisters and can only be sustained for about a minute per canister at the most.
  • The absolute top of the line are Nemesis Force Weapons, which are both Power weapons and Force weapons. They are absurdly rare outside of the Daemon hunting Grey Knights chapter.
• As befitting an Archetype referencing Star Wars in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, Kozmo Farmgirl, Kozmo Goodwitch and Kozmoll Wickedwitch use 'lightswords', which are lightsabers in all but name.
  • Now in the form of its own equip spell card, Kozmo Lightsword.

Visual Novels

• In Starship Promise, officers of the Galactic Liberation Front (aka The Empire) wield beam sabers, and can use them to deflect blaster fire. Captain Antares Fairchild has a red-bladed one, which he seems to prefer over firearms.

Web Animation

• Dreamscape: Dylan's Mechelly can extend red energy swords from her palms.
• Haloid. Samus has one that not only cuts things but acts as a tractor beam, blaster and stasis field generator.
• In Red vs. Blue, Tucker ends up with an energy sword that works only for him (much to Tex's dismay). It also briefly functions as a key.
  Caboose: Or maybe it's a key all the time, and when you stick it in people, it unlocks their death.
  • Another energy sword shows up on Chorus later in the series, which is bound to Doyle, then Felix after Doyle's death, and Locus after Felix's. It's also confirmed that the swords are alien artifacts that are, in fact, primarily intended to be keys.

Webcomics

• Darth Maul sells Zexion lightsabers in Ansem Retort. He claims to have a hundred of them in his car to sell to Star Wars geeks for organs.
  • Note that Zexion hasn't really used them since Season 1, unlike Darth Maul and Xemnas, who use them to this day.
• The multi-purpose "aser-blades" (not a typo) in the space arc of Arthur, King of Time and Space. Described in full in this strip, including comparision to a lightsaber (without actually saying "lightsaber").
• City of Somnus: Quite a lot of people in Majestan use wyrmwood weapons that only take on a magical edge when activated. Knull has crafted one with no physical blade whatsoever - activation makes a magical blade appear.
• In keeping with the general theme of the comic, Darths & Droids offers humorous alternate explanations for the use of laser swords (lightsabers from the movies, but never called that here). GM "just took a D&D equipment list and stuck techy words in front", Qui-gon and Obi-wan only have laser swords because they didn't start off with enough money to buy blasters, and the Jedi are able to block blaster fire because the players fast-talked the GM into letting them do so.
  
  Thanks to random dice rolls, Obi-Wan keeps accidentally cutting off hands when trying to disarm opponents with a laser sword. Cory never likes using one given how obviously unsafe they are, and he's playing Luke Skywalker. After getting his hand cut off and losing his original, he has no plans to use one again. Circumstances force his hand, however. Since laser swords are more common items and not given the mystique of the original lightsabers, Luke's second one is made by R2-D2 out of spare parts.
• Gunnerkrigg Court has Coyote's Tooth looking like this, at least in one of its forms when unsheathed. This thing doesn't hum — it laughs.

Web Original

• The Autarch gained a power to use Aerial Blades in the end of his Top 25 Boss Battles. They have been his "trademark power" ever since.
• Spencer uses a Star Wars type lightsaber in the lonelygirl15 episode "We Have A Plan".
• In the Whateley Universe, Tennyo can generate a "laser blade" made of anti-matter. How she makes anti-matter at will is a whole 'nother problem. Word of God says the devisors and gadgeteers can't make working lightsabers, even though they all try, sooner or later. It is later clarified that while you can't build a working gadget-only lightsaber, you can build one as a devise, but powering it for any length of time is nearly impossible; one Energizer solves this problem by powering hers with her own energy field.
• Stupid Mario Brothers uses them like in Super Smash Bros., but they are called Beam Swords.
  • which gets Lampshaded by Wario and Mario in Season 4
  Wario: So why do we fight with Li.... uhh I mean Beam Swords?
  Mario: I don't know. They use them in Super Smash Brothers.
• Michum's weapon of choice in The Pirates Covered in Fur is a green beam sword.

Western Animation

• Seen a couple of times on Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, mostly among space pirates and other low-level thugs.
• Amphibia: These start featuring from the Season 2 finale onwards. Andrias and Darcy both wield fiery, lightsaber-like laser blades, and Darcy also utilizes a laser Sinister Scythe in "All In".
• In an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang says that what he needs to complete his Scary Impractical Armor ensemble is a "wind sword."
  Katara: What's a wind sword?
  Aang: It's where I get a sword handle, and then I just swing this around and bend air out like a blade. (makes lightsaber noises)
• The Batman Beyond villain Payback use a laser whip that double as sword. It was used to make statues for a Youth Counseling Center before the villain repurposed it.
  • A scene inside a chop shop showed crooks slicing up stolen cars with a laser chainsaw.
• The first episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold has Batman storing one of these in his utility belt. Where did it come from? Why does he only use it once? Doesn't it violate his technical pacifism? Who cares? It's Batman with a lightsaber!
  • Not just once; in a later episode's cold open, he dual-wields it alongside a demon's sword.
• In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, the unified Forever Knights now wield them.
• In the pilot episode of the Bucky O'Hare cartoon, Deadeye Duck freaks out because he thinks the "hairless ape" intruder (actually human Willy) is packing a lightsaber (he actually says "lightsaber", too). Turns out it's just a generic flashlight.
• The "how is a laser stopping at an arbitrary distance" problem is conversed in Clerks: The Animated Series:
  Randal: The lightsabers in Star Wars. You turn it on, and it goes ye high. How does it know when to stop?
  Dante: The Force?
  Randal: That's your excuse for everything!
• Dead Space: Downfall has laser chainsaws; sadly, these do not appear in the game.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Being a Darth Vader Expy, Dark Laser's primary weapon is a lightsword. Timmy's usual method of fighting him is to turn Cosmo and Wanda into laserwands and go sword to sword with him.
• Final Space: Gary discovers in Season 3 that he can transform his robot arm into a sword, with two metal prongs and a blue energy prong between them for combative purposes. The zombified alternate Gary's that have robot arms too can do this, as demonstrated when one of them tries to knife Sheryl. The main Gary seemingly stops using his robot arm's blade mode after Invictus possesses it and uses it to kill Fox.
• Parodied in Futurama: police officers use lightsabers as non-lethal batons. They even have laser handcuffs. Apparently these so-called "lasers" in the Futurama-verse are actually some kind of luminous force-fields.
• Galtar and the Golden Lance: Galtar and his golden lance does the Darth Maul version.
• In Hoss Delgado's first appearance in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, he produces a green lightsaber from his Swiss-Army Weapon mechanical hand and Grim turns his scythe into a red one in response before ending the duel by severing the hand.
• In 1987, there was a U.S.-produced series called Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater, with Sanrio's eponymous character and her friends parodying fairy tales, and even popular movies. One episode featured a parody of Star Wars, complete with Tuxedo Sam (who played the Luke Skywalker character) and Catnip (who played the Darth Vader character) having a lightsaber fight (which also happens in the Title Sequence). The episode "Paws of the Round Table" had all the swords, including Excalibur, replaced with lightsabers.
• In the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Once and Future Thing" Part II, One of the Jokerz gang working for the time travelling villain Chronos, uses a double-bladed red lightsaber as a weapon. May count as a possible Actor Allusion when you consider the voice actor for The Joker in the prequel series.
• Kat wields one in the Kid vs. Kat episode "Play N'Ice".
• Kim Possible fights some Ninjas in The Movie who wield energy swords.
• The eponymous Giant Mecha in Megas XLR has an energy sword, activated by Coop hitting the Big Red Button Labelled "That cool energy sword thing".
• Duke L'Orange in Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series has one.
• She-Ra: Princess of Power featured energy blades in the hands of some secondary characters, meaning they weren't even close to most powerful thing around in that universe.
• Skysurfer One's primary weapon in Skysurfer Strike Force.
• The Solarian Swords from Star vs. the Forces of Evil, they not only hurt you but they also leave a magic scar that consumes the injured until they explode in a white flash of light.
• Storm Hawks: Laser blades powered by magic crystals are standard weapons throughout Atmos. When they're deactivated, they look like blunt metal blades, with the laser energy forming cutting edges when they're activated.
• In Super Dinosaur, the blades of Tricerachops' axe are made of Maxinite energy.
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!: "Star Koopa" spoofed these with "Lightplungers", as in lightsabers whose hilts looked like tiny plungers. The beams functioned more like batons as they do not cut anything. Instead, they electrocute whatever they hit.
• In Teamo Supremo, Laser Pirate's main weapon is his laser hook, which can morph into other weapons, such as a laser blade and a laser cannon.
• In Teen Titans (2003), there's an extremely fanboyish villain named Control Freak who, it turns out, is a decent fighter due to The Matrix-style programmed skill. His weapon of choice is a light-lance made of two sets of dual beams. (The colors are red, blue, green, and purple, the four colors of lightsabers in the Star Wars movies.)
• The Sun Sword from Thundarr the Barbarian.
• One episode of The Transformers has Optimus able to create an axe-version of this, which Megatron responds to with a flail-version.
• In Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy, Jetfire wields one that springs from his wrist, despite it not being an accessory that the action figure his character design is based on has.
• The eponymous hero of Ulysses 31 wields a "Raypier" which doubles as an energy pistol and a laser sword. For defence, he has an energy shield (think Captain America when his usual shield was stolen) which he wears on one wrist like a watch.
• Subverted by The Venture Bros. in "Tag Sale — You're It!". Dr. Venture throws a yard sale, and Henchmen #21 purchases a prototype laser sword that was rejected by the Army. #21 later attempts to take on Brock Samson with his new toy, with predictable consequences when it's demonstrated that the prototype is a glorified flashlight.
  Rusty: Kenner wasn't interested in a toy that cost over $2 mil in parts alone. And the Army told me they don't swordfight anymore.
  • Played With in "All This And Gargantua-2" when the Battle in the Center of the Mind between The Investors and Killinger is represented as a flashy lightsaber duel for the audience, one of them even wielding a saberstaff like Darth Maul, but from the perspective of the non-psychic Guild members watching it they were simply standing there menacingly.
• Wakfu: The Eliatropes Yugo and Qilby both respectively create weapons made of pure wakfu (sword, shield, Sinister Scythe) for combat during Season 2.
• Young Justice (2010): Whisper wields a pair of laser whips against Superboy and the Forever People in "Disordered".
• In Zorro: Generation Z everyone has laser swords, and a lot of people have laser whips. Since it otherwise seems to be The Present Day, it's not clear where they came from, but it wouldn't be Zorro without cool swordplay.

Real Life

• On his Sci-Fi Science television series, Dr. Michio Kaku explored the possibility of making a real-life lightsaber out of an extended plasma torch. Unfortunately, this required trillions of nanobatteries, theoretical superceramics, and enough electricity to power a small city. This may be viable in the long-term, but unlikely for the next few decades. Still prone to Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?, though: that level of technology could easily make powerful guns which are more practical anyways. The main practical application of this would be as an extremely effective chainsaw that could cut through virtually any material, though at extreme danger to the user, but it's not as if plasma cutters are exactly safe to begin with.
  • As an aside, the "nanobatteries" would have an energy density of 470 MJ/L. That's about 117 times the energy density of Jet fuel. Shoot the lightsaber. The resulting explosion would take out everything within a hundred feet.
• A thermal lance (some may recognize them from Fallout: New Vegas) is a real-world device that some liken to a lightsaber. It essentially burns iron rods to create an intense stream of heat out one end, like a gigantic blow torch but much hotter. Granted they are much bigger than a lightsaber hilt and would require two hands to wield, but the stream to project has all the cutting power: they are normally used to cut through solid concrete and steel girders.
• YouTube channel the Hacksmith built a working, retractable, plasma-based "protosaber" (in Star Wars lore an early lightsaber with an external power pack) that uses propane and special nozzles to create a thin blade of plasma that burns at 4000 degrees.

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