Basic Trope: Mounting a blade on the business end of a gun.
- Straight: Sgt. Rockwell has a bayonet attached to his assault rifle.
- Exaggerated:
- Sgt. Rockwell's rifle has a chainsaw bayonet attached to it.
- Sgt. Rockwell's rifle has a ballistic bayonet attached to it.
- Sgt. Rockwell's weapon of choice is a Gunblade.
- Sgt. Rockwell’s gatling gun has a bayonet attached to it.
- Sgt. Rockwell's gatling gun has a bayonet on each barrel. It looks more like something you'd find in a kitchen than on a battlefield.
- Downplayed: Sgt. Rockwell is seen mounting a bayonet on his rifle before entering a building. After the fight, his rifle is again seen without it.
- Justified:
- Sgt. Rockwell's platoon is fighting in cramped urban conditions, making bayonets a good idea.
- Sgt. Rockwell fights in a historical setting where bayonet charges are a common part of warfare.
- Sgt. Rockwell's bayonet also doubles as a tool for various purposes, and has features such as an integrated wire-cutter in its sheath, and a fire-starter in its spine.
- Sgt. Rockwell is a veteran home-guardsman, who served in the regular army back when bayonet charges were a common part of warfare, and still believes in the Good Old Ways. The platoon commander tolerates this eccentricity for the sake of morale and because it can't do any harm.
- Sgt. Rockwell is part of the Zombie Response Unit. As much as he prefers to engage the Zeds at range, Murphy's Laws of Combat dictate that at some point, one of the Zeds will get in melee range. So he's prepared for when, not if, that happens.
- Inverted: Sgt. Rockwell's combat knife has a one-shot pistol built into it.
- Subverted: Rockwell draws his knife, but instead holds it in his off hand while it grips the gun, to make it easier to employ in an emergency.
- Double Subverted: Rockwell mounts the bayonet when he needs that hand free later.
- Parodied:
- Cpl. Rickaby tapes a can opener to the anti-tank rocket launcher he's in charge of.
- Sgt. Rockwell never realised his gun could fire, and only used his bayonet.
- Zig Zagged: Rockwell mounts his bayonet, kills an enemy with it, later unmounts it, and then is surprised at close range, where he uses his weapon's stock instead. After that his bayonet is mounted for the rest of the story, this encounter having made him rather paranoid.
- Averted:
- No bayonets are used by the main characters.
- It looks like a bayonet, but it's a bottle opener.
- Enforced: The writers want to establish Sgt. Rockwell as a man of great ballsiness and poor judgement.
- Lampshaded: "Soldiers, I know this sounds overconfident, but... FIX BAYONETS!"
- Invoked: Bayonet training is part of boot camp, as even if there are few times in which it's useful, it can be live-saving - as well as being a useful training tool to encourage aggressiveness and confidence.
- Exploited: The characters hear they're going into an urban area. To mark them as veterans, every single one of them immediately, in unison, mounts their bayonet. Or, if their weapon can't accept it, they duct tape their knife to the barrel.
- Defied:
- The knives given to soldiers are not mountable on guns, to discourage them from charging into the enemy line of fire.
- Instead of bayonet mounts, soldiers have underbarrel grenade launchers, flashlights, foregrips, or other such attachments that are more broadly useful.
- Discussed: "Now remember, soldiers: a bayonet charge only works if the enemy does not expect it. But when they don't, it tends to be pretty damn effective."
- Conversed: "Do you think any real soldier today would use a bayonet?" "Better to have it and not need it..."
- Deconstructed: Sgt. Rockwell fixes a bayonet to his rifle and tries to charge the enemy lines... and runs straight into a machine gun's line of fire.
- Reconstructed:
- Sgt. Rockwell waits until his enemies are occupied elsewhere, and gets his squad to charge them from the side or rear, suddenly and unexpectedly, with the support of other units on the flank. The enemy breaks and runs, not having expected such a sudden - or brazen - assault.
- Sgt. Rockwell is engaged in Urban Warfare, and thus his rifle doubles as an effective close quarter weapon in case someone tries to catch him by surprise at close range, he tries to catch someone else by surprise at close range, he runs out of ammo, or he needs to make a (relatively) silent kill to reach his objective undetected while the rest of the troops are making a diversion.
- Played For Laughs: Sgt. Rockwell's bayonet is bigger than the gun it's attached to.
- Played For Drama: Sgt. Rockwell is out of ammo, and so the bayonet is his only remaining weapon.
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