Video Game / Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades (often abbreviated H3VR) is a Virtual Reality gun range simulator developed for multiple VR headsets (Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality) by developer RUST LTD. It's currently in early access and can be purchased on Steam here. As of this writing, the game is at Early Access Update #105.

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This game provides examples of:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Anton simplifies some mechanics for weapons or in general as players who don't have as much knowledge about firearms might not understand several nuances and think the game is bugged.
  • Weapons will never jam, break, or fail to cycle outside of specific circumstances (like low-pressure 12 gauge shells being fired in a semi-automatic shotgun, giving the SPAS-12's dual-mode ability a purpose). Even weapons used in a way that is notorious for causing jams, such loading the M249 with box magazines via the emergency STANAG magazine well, will work without fail.
  • ArmaLite-pattern rifles do not require the forward assist if you ride the slide forward instead of letting it slam into battery. The original M4A1 could do this but it required some tricky scripting and it confused new players.
  • Just like in Escape from Tarkov, the TOZ-106 bolt-action shotgun can be fired even with the stock in the folded position. On the actual weapon, retracting the stock blocks the trigger from being squeezed.
  • The M1 Bazooka and Panzerschreck do not require the additional step after loading the rocket to wire up the ignition in order to fire it.
  • The M134 is treated as man-portable (based on an airsoft replica) even though the electrically-driven barrels require a significant power source such as from a vehicle that it would be mounted on. In this case, it's more for Rule of Cool.
  • Anton isn't above adding ridiculous or fictional weapons like the Kolibri 9001, Triple Regret, Whizzbanger, Scalpel-LE, etc.
  • Near misses from enemy bullets have a Hollywood "zwoosh!" noise as Anton considers supersonic cracks to be too harsh on the ears.
  • The Triple Action Thunder is depicted with an auto-cocking hammer/striker in order to simplify the reload process, whereas the real-life weapon requires a lever to be pulled, either before or after loading in a new .50 BMG round, to re-cock the weapon before firing.
  • As the only functional prototypes of the Pancor Jackhammer literally required the weapon to be partially disassembled to be reloaded, Anton opted for his rendition to only require the drum to be ripped out and replaced during a reload.
  • The M18A1 Claymore uses a short range laser tripwire probably because having to manually set up tripwires would be tedious, especially with enemies approaching and having them command detonated wouldn't make them unique compared to the M112 Demolition Charge.
  • Attachments like reflex sights, optics, or lasers are always perfectly lined up with the weapon when attached (scopes still may require adjustment to account for point-of-impact shifts). Meanwhile, muzzle devices are universal and will scale to the weapon in question when attached.
• Aerosol Flamethrower: Update 88 added a potato cannon that uses canned hairspray as propellant. Any open flame will ignite the stream, making a powerful short-range flamethrower. However, be careful not to expose the can itself to flames. Anton wasn't sure if he should've even added this as a feature as he nearly hurt himself when he was 17 doing this in real life and does not want people to try this themselves.
• A.K.A.-47: Downplayed. Many weapons are called by their real names but without the manufacturer. Various labels and engravings on the weapons may be removed or changed to avoid copyright issues though certain weapons are called by different names as well either due to oversight, name shortening, or avoidance measures such as the Remington Model 11 being called the Auto-5 in-game and the H&K FABARM Martial Pro Forces is shortened to the Marshall Ultrashort.
• Alien Blood: Sosigs, inside their casing, are filled with a "mustard-like lubricant" and will die if they bleed out.
• Alliterative Name: The characters in the scrapped Rise of the Rotwieners scene as well as the themed characters in Take & Hold with the exception of Welldone Freemeat and Flaccid Steak. Modded T&H characters typically follow this naming scheme as well.
• All-or-Nothing Reloads: Due to the way reloading is performed physically, this is averted.
• Anti-Frustration Features
  • The ability to "sling lock" most weapons to your quickbelt slots so you don't have to worry about accidentally dropping your weapon in the middle of heated combat.
  • If you're not very dexterous at reloading, you can enable non-physical reloading which allows magazines and ammo to clip through weapons for easier loading, especially helpful for weapons like the P90. The alternate magazine pose option offsets the held magazine to the side of your controller so you can reload weapons like handguns without the worry of banging your controllers against each other.
  • Hand Smoothing and Sniping Assist, which makes it easier to take long distance shots without the need for a bipod or a surface to brace your weapon against.
  • The Winter Wasteland scene has a "Just Gimme Gifts" difficulty that makes the player invulnerable incase you don't want to fight just to see the advent calendar gifts added in Meatmas 2020.
  • Update #100 adds the option for "Tactical Retention Reloading", allowing you to hold two stick magazines with one hand as well as grab magazines from weapons if your hand is holding one already. This lets you reload without dropping a mag or having to store the old mag in a quickbelt slot before loading the new mag.
  • Alongside the above update, weapons loaded via loose rounds will now have you only grab the required amount to top off the magazine rather than the entire stack of palmed ammunition, spawnlocked or not, and the last two shotgun rounds in your hand will be loaded in quick succession. The insertion sound will also be noticeably deeper once the magazine is full.
  • Break-action shotguns will load both/all barrels simultaneously.
• Apocalyptic Log: Meatmas 2020 adds a new scene for the advent calendar in which you traverse a vast wasteland to find the vaults containing each day's new weapon and also find and listen to audio logs to know how it came to be. It details Santa's Sanity Slippage along with the elves unionizing and going on strike before they were put down, replaced by junkbots which put out interference, causing the defensive drone network to revert to a kill-anything-on-sight stance. There are also logs of an "Emergency Santa Containment" force that was sent in after the fact but were wiped out when trying to engage the Regenerative Drone.
• April Fools' Day: For every April Fools day, a bunch of silly items have been added to the game:
  • 2016 saw the addition of tippy toys, which are moo box toys that play assorted sound effects when rotated. Funny, but useless, at least until Meat Fortress added sentry guns and dispensers that are placed via tippy toys.
  • 2018 added the "Degle", a Desert Eagle made out of cardboard, and the M1911A1 Oversized, a massive pistol the size of one's torso.
  • 2019 featured the Triple Regret, a three-bullet revolver that took the massive .50 BMG ammunition, and the Whizzbanger, a "minimalistic" gun that consists of nothing but a frame to hold a single bullet and a pin that has to be manually hit in order to prime said bullet.
  • 2020 has the hairspray can, which can be used as a flamethrower, a makeshift explosive, or as propellant for the other weapon, a potato cannon.
  • 2021 re-added The OG, formerly known as the Cartoon 8 Gauge for how badly proportioned it is.
  • 2022 put in the Uzi Nano, an adaption of the Uzi Mini and Uzi Micro with an even tinier profile, and the Baby's First Boomstick, a cross between a toddler's color pop-up toy and a shotgun that accepts its shells through the toy's pop-up compartments.
  • 2023 brought about the MP5 Shadow, a pump-action submachine gun from Shadow the Hedgehog, and the Rail Tater, a Rail Gun made from what is not a can of Pringles' potato chips that launches tungsten-saboted potato chips.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. Sosigs can wear armor which stops projectiles until they break while elite, Guns Akimbo bots have special armor that takes a lot more punishment. This is played more realistically for the Sosig agents with the newer ballistic system that can wear helmets, kevlar and armor plates that stop bullets and calibers up to a certain point depending on what they're wearing. They can, however, be stunned from enough blunt force which leaves them vulnerable to, say, a Neck Snap.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: AP rounds, natch. The more pointed rounds also have the ability to pierce Kevlar by default such as 5.56x45 and 7.62x51 NATO. Ralph Wiener in Return of the Rotwieners makes note that while AP rounds are good for armored foes, they over-penetrate without dealing as much damage as JHP (Jacketed Hollow-Point) and FMJ rounds against bare meat.
  • Other ammo types have less conventional AP rounds such as the 12-gauge flechette shells that can penetrate through Kevlar compared to regular buckshot or even slugs while 40mm grenade launchers can chamber the fictitious x214 "Steelbreaker" round which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Artificial Brilliance: The Sosig agents compared to the previous wienerbots, for various reasons.
  • Anton designed them to use cover based on level geometry, they can become suppressed from incoming fire and explosions, and they not only react to and investigate gunshots and explosions, but even so much as dropping objects like magazines or working a weapon's actions can alert them to your presence.
  • In open environments, Sosigs in a patrolling squad seem to space themselves out when engaging an enemy, making it harder to take them out with a single explosive.
  • If they spot you before you dive behind cover, they'll take potshots at where they last saw you to discourage peeking back out at them and they'll shoot where they last saw you before breaking line-of-sight with smoke.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • That said, the Sosigs can be oblivious in other instances. While they do get attracted to the sound of gunshots within 100 meters, beyond that it takes a good several unsuppressed shots before they realize they should be investigating the sound of gunshots and bullets whizzing by them.
  • Explosions immediately get their attention but they investigate by going directly toward the source of said sound, which can let you obliterate groups with a follow-up shot. Said explosions also takes priority over investigating the weapon that launched said projectile.
• Attack Its Weakpoint:
  • The Funguys in "Return of the Rotwieners" are extremely fragile but they can only be damaged via the glowing warts on their body, this makes shotguns an excellent choice alongside accuracy by volume of fire.
  • Junkbots in the Meatmas Wasteland can be taken down via the radio receiver on the back of their head. You can even shoot through their "face" to hit the weakpoint with enough penetration. The various drones in the same scene have a form of weakpoint excluding the Stealth Drone.
• Bang, Bang, BANG: Played straight until an update that overhauled the sound system. Weapon and explosion sounds were very Hollywood sounding until Early Access Update 52 and take into account the environment they're fired in. Rounds like the 4.6x30mm fired by the MP7A1 are a lot more snappy while subsonic rounds like the .45 ACP have more of a thud. Explosions now scale by distance with a delay as the shockwave reaches you.
  • Update 82 adds the "loudener" which makes any weapon it's attached to louder and bassier, bringing it back into this trope.
  • A neat attention to detail is that the shortened and chopped length variants of most weapons are often louder with a much more pronounced muzzle flash such as the shortened Kimber 8400 Tactical or the HK51 (an aftermarket G3 with an MP5 form factor), the nickname of which is the "Angry Gun" because of its absurd muzzle flash and report.
  • The Pancor Jackhammer has this in play due to its "video game-y" implementation.
• Bayonet Ya: Alpha 1 of Update 76 adds the first iteration of hilted, integral and socket bayonets. This presented a big programming challenge for Anton that was solved by making every compatible gun a melee weapon, just one with blunt Scratch Damage so that any attached bayonets could do damage.
• BFG: The M134 minigun. If you wanna go retro, you can even find and man the Gatling Gun in certain maps, hand-crank and all (there's a reason the aforementioned M134 is considered a minigun). The M107A1 counts for obvious reasons.
  • The Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Magnum isn't as large as the above M107A1 but it chambers .338 Lapua which is the largest cartridge in the game that doesn't tread into anti-material territory.
  • The Browning M2 "Tombstone", a Chainsaw-Grip BFG with American paintjob and loaded via the titular tombstone-shaped box containing the belt of .50 BMG rounds. It'll punch right through even the thickest Sosig armor and reduce them to a Yellow Mist.
  • The Arizona Range and Sampler Platter includes an oversized M1911A1 pistol, complete with added grips to hold it and operate the slide, a huge bipod, and a rail to affix a sight on the left side of the gun. Even the sound effects for firing and reloading this weapon sound like they were recorded from an artillery cannon.
  • From of the Meatmas 2018 Update, just like the oversized M1911A1, one of the guns added is an oversized Kolibri 9001. While not as big as the oversized M1911A1, it is still about 10 times the size of the original Kolibri, which is actually much smaller than even a .22 caliber pistol.
  • The Soviet KS-23 riot shotgun, added on Day 7 of the Meatmas 2018 Advent Calender. It's easily the BFG of the Shotgun category, discounting the currently removed Cartoon 8 Gauge shotgun, with its 23x75mmR shell, the barrel of which was adapted from scrapped 23mm anti-air cannon barrels due to manufacturing faults but could withstand the pressure of a shotgun. Its slug equivalent is the "Barricade" shell that can destroy engine blocks.
  • The Cheyenne Tactical M-200 Intervention, added on Day 22 of Meatmas 2018, is a bolt-action anti-material rifle. The bolt is so heavy that you can't use the bolt-sweep technique via clicking right on the trackpad/stick, you have to grab onto it to cycle the weapon.
  • April Fools 2019 adds the PGM Hécate II as a bolt-action, .50 BMG rifle. Like the above weapon, you have to fully grab the bolt rather than sweeping it.
  • The Meatmas 2020 update introduced the Denel NTW-20 anti-materiel rifle, chambered in 20x82mm. For the sake of comparison, the .50 BMG cartridge used in most of the game's big guns is "only" 12.7mm in diameter.
  • Update #92 reintroduced "The OG", the original "Cartoon 8 Gauge" shotgun Anton modeled by himself with no scale of reference, resulting in it chambering 3 Gauge shotgun shells that kick the player backwards, similar to the "Moonshot" ammo added for the Scout's Scattergun.
  • The "Big Boomer", a shotgun for all classes in Meat Fortress has even longer shells and it also fires both barrels simultaneously.
  • The gift drop of Meatmas 2021 brings in the Mk19 belt-fed grenade launcher, in typical sosig-portable configuration like the M2 Tombstone.
• Bifurcated Weapon: Alpha 2 of Update 76 adds the long awaited M203 grenade launcher, one for the M16A1 and M4A1 Classic and another with picatinny compatability.
  • Alpha 3 brings in the GP-25 Russian equivalent, complete with 40mm caseless grenades.
  • While Anton initially didn't want to add the Masterkey due to the nature of coding an attachable weapon with a magazine, in Alpha 4 he and Stefan instead modeled the fictitious Carkey and Housekey single-shot underbarrel shotguns. Later, he'd go back on this decision, adding a picatinny version of the M870 and KWG-1.
  • Among the Half-Life 2 weapons introduced in Update #87 include a modified Heckler & Koch MP7 with an integrated grenade launcher and a jury-rigged parody of the AR2 Pulse Rifle with a subweapon that launches ricocheting disintegrator lemons.
  • True to it's real counterpart, a version of the Zip 22 can be attached on a picatinny rail, letting you attach both version together.
• Big, Bulky Bomb: Relatively speaking, some grenades are rather massive compared to the likes of the modern M67 or Cold War M26, such as the fictional "M219 Greaseweasel" that's just larger than a softball (or the softball-shaped T-13 Beano) and, with the grenade rework, is appropriately hard to throw far. There's also the "Cyber Grenade", a futuristic grenade that vaguely resembles the cylinder-shaped grenades used in Half-Life 2, complete with blinking red light and chirping though that one, despite the size, can be thrown as far as the smaller 'nades.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: A Sosig's weapon can be shot out of... Whatever it is they use to hold their weapons.
• Blinded by the Light: The XM84 stun grenade, complete with two-pin safety. Interestingly enough, the game does not white out the screen or simulate tinnitus as the loud bang it produces along with the brightness of the flash can disorient a player, particularly with the Vive's brightness.
  • The Zvezda or "Star" 23x75mmR shells loaded by the KS-23, intended for suppressing prison riots.
  • The suppression Turburget variant in "Return of the Rotwieners" that guard the Pacification squad strongholds shoot flash-bang rounds (presumably the same 23x75mmR shells mentioned above).
  • Stun grenade behavior was changed as an experiment in Alpha 2 of Update 72. Stun grenades and the like will now lower the game volume and partially white out your vision to hamper the player a bit more.
  • Update 86 introduced "Salud" flashbang ammunition for the Meat Fortress Spy's revolvers. It has a much shorter stun duration and smaller radius than other flashbang weapons, but is great as a backup.
  • Myra's Spicy Pie in "Return of the Rotwieners" makes Rotwieners "all fancy" and causes them to be blinded by the effects.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: There's an alternate variant of the M1911A1 that's plated in gold with black polymer grips, and a gold-plated Beretta 950BS Jetfire with mother-of-pearl hand grips, the latter of which has a matching golden magazine.
• Border Patrol: Before it was completed, "Return of the Rotwieners" had a giant, red X saying "STOP" to prevent access to unfinished areas of the game. Going past this would kill you instantly and using an invincibility wiener would spam you with freedomfetti and vomiting noises until you left or the effect wore off and you died.
• Bottomless Magazines: Normally averted; you can enable infinite reserve by clicking the trackpad/stick on ammo stored in a slot to spawn lock it. Both the Getting Started and Spray & Pray category of sequences in the M.E.A.T.S. level enable infinite magazine ammo.
  • The infinite ammo wiener that can be found or crafted also enables infinite ammo for anything that isn't break-action or single-shot.
  • The Engineer's Dispenser can be set to dispense ammo which translates into infinite ammo. The side effect of this addition is allowing players to experiment with infinite ammo in practically any scene with an item spawner.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Intermediate cartridges and just about any semi or fully automatic rifle that chambers it. A burst is enough to down most Sosigs and standard FMJ can rip through kevlar.
  • On that subject, any assault rifle or carbine with both mag release and bolt release controls on the touch pad/stick which allows for quick reloads compared to weapons like AK-pattern rifles.
• Breakable Weapons: Averted, as with the above mentioned Acceptable Breaks from Reality, all weapons with a few exceptions will work without any sort of failure to prevent people from thinking the game was bugged. Some of the exceptions include...
  • The muzzle-loaded flintlock can either be improperly loaded, such as the ball being loaded before the powder or insufficient powder to fire it from the barrel or it can be overloaded with powder, resulting in the flintlock exploding, leaving just part of the handle, the trigger guard, the cock and part of the flash pan remaining.
  • The LAPD 2019 can overheat its barrel, resulting in a permanent loss in accuracy even after cooling down.
  • The Orion Flare Gun will rupture if you fire a high-pressure 12-gauge shell from it. The fictitious, steel High-Pressure variant won't break, however.
  • Weapons carried by zosigs in Return of the Rotwieners will break after just one or two attacks when you're using them to encourage you to find a proper melee weapon.
• Bullet Sparks: Averted. Most of the time, tracers and incendiary rounds spark upon impact due to the round itself shattering. Specific surfaces may spark when shot as well, such as the target plates in the Friendly 45 Range.
• Charged Attack
  • The LAPD 2019 has a brief charge up period when set to fire in "Rail Assisted Mode", you can still fire a normal shot without interrupting the charging process.
  • Both the Sticky Launcher and Long Shot can charge up to increase muzzle velocity by holding the trigger. The Long Shot in particular charges up in about half-a-second in exchange for the semi-automatic fire of the Sticky Launcher.
• Circling Birdies: Circling horseshoes are used to denote when a sosig is stunned rather than dead on the ground.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Completely averted with the Alpha of Early Access Update 59. The new ballistics system takes into account bullet caliber, type, material, thickness, angle, and velocity along with the fact bullets are affected after passing through a material. This can be seen in action in the Proving Grounds arena where a sufficient weapon can penetrate the wooden panels and the Sosigs won't hesitate to shoot through them to get at you or enemy Sosigs.
  • Played straight with the temporary pieces of cover in the reworked Take & Hold; however they will break very quickly under fire.
• Concussion Frags: Averted, especially as of Update 98, many grenades spray shrapnel in varying amounts, defensive grenades typically release a lot of fragments while offensive ones release less or are just purely concussive (so as not to injure the soldiers that are pushing forward). Some like the modern M67 spray so much shrapnel that Anton coded a system where it would only spray narrow cones of shrapnel at any target visible to the explosion as simulating 2000+ fragments would make any computer have a fit.
• Crate Expectations
  • Take & Hold has metal crates in the supply points that can be broken open to reveal an extra Override Token and occasionally a health pickup.
  • Return of the Rotwieners has cardboard boxes that are scattered about and can contain extra magazines or the equivalent for whatever weapon your carrying, weapon accessories, grenades, or just random junk props like a high-heel.
• Crossover: With Team Fortress 2 in the form of the Meat Fortress update. As of Update 86, it features all stock weapons and gimmicks in the original game, but it also has several features of its own:
  • Alternate ammunition types.
  • The ability to slide the Spy's Electro Sappers along the ground, as in the "Meet the Spy" trailer.
  • Class-specific grenades (starting with a smoke grenade for the Spy), which were considered for Team Fortress 2 but scrapped early on.
  • Completely new weapons, such as a semi-automatic battle rifle called the "All-Rounder", and a compact revolver for the Spy called "Le Petite Liaison". The alternate weapons for the classes are also different in that rather than arbitrary stat changes of the original game, these weapons are designed to be longer or shorter ranged than their counterparts. I.E. the Sniper's Snag Sanger omits the scope for an integrated magazine for shorter ranges while the Demoman's Long Shot trades semi-automatic fire for a Laser Sight, increased muzzle velocity and a faster charge.
  • Update #87 is themed around Half-Life 2 which coincided with the release of another game during the same week. The update added several themed weapons like a USP Match in 9mm, an MP7 with both the unique reflex sight and underslung GP-25 grenade launcher, a scrap-built crossbow that fires charred hot dog bolts, a jury-rigged AR3 based on the famous conversation in Episode 2 and even the "S.P.A.A.M." that's functionally identical to the S.L.A.M. from Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. Capping it off is a "Welldone Freemeat" character for Take & Hold, complete with unique Sosig agents.
  • Update #90 brings in the blaster pistol from Compound, a game Anton enjoys.
  • Update #105 Experimental Build 3 adds the Mammonth from Prodeus. Notable in that Anton Hand co-designed the weapon and the developers shared the assets to him so he could port it to this game.
• Dead Man's Trigger Finger: A downplayed version of this can happen with sosigs when they're completely suppressed. They can go into a panic fire state where they clutch the trigger and fire wildly.
• Death Is Cheap: At least for the Sosigs. Anton confirmed that the remains of slain Sosigs are simply ground up to create new ones with the same memories, hence why their death quips are more annoyed sounding rather than dejected.
• Disc-One Nuke: Return of the Rotwieners had this at first, it was easy to complete the quest to set the giant beartraps and be rewarded with bolt-action rifles for subsequent runs but the last of which could be the Arctic Warfare Magnum. A patch changed this by making the third reward box, typically a Kimber 8400 Advanced Tactical or its short-barrel variant, the fourth possibility alongside the SV-98 While the AWM was moved to a quest reward in the gun store in Downtown Wienerton.
• Divided States of America: The game takes place in an ambiguous future date, messages in the 2020 Winter Wasteland mention Canada being annexed into the United States as "Northest Dakota" while an ad for the strike anywhere matches makes mentions of military conflicts in "the province formerly known as Quebec, Catalonia, New Texas, the South Georgian and South Sandwich Islands, and the New Jersey Wastes."
• Do Not Run with a Gun: The Armswinger locomotion option winds up bringing this into play in a realistic manner as you have to be moving your controllers, making accuracy suffer on the move. This can be Subverted if you enable "base speed" which will move you in the direction of the controller regardless of hand movement.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: A required step to chamber the majority of the weapons, all faithful to their real sounds like the Single-Action Army's four-click hammer or the chunky sound of the M107A1 and XM500. Cocking the hammer on double-action revolvers isn't necessary but it does provide a much lighter trigger pull.
• Emergency Weapon: Hand guns in general avert Punch-Packing Pistol but their smaller size makes them easy to draw and maneuver in close-quarters. Pocket pistols, just like in Real Life, are purely meant as a last-resort option but their small size means you can tuck them in a tiny quickbelt slot that you otherwise weren't using.
• Enemy Chatter: The sosigs have all sorts of quirky lines when idle, fighting, taking damage and even when dismembered. The Meat Fortress Sosigs have class appropriate banter. Meanwhile, the Uncivil Erection officers and Oberwurst soldiers have many idle lines hanging blatant lampshades of the tropes in their respective games (i.e, CP officers being armed with Match USPs, manually racking the SPAS-12, Exploding Barrels and ammo crates scattered about, etc.)
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: Certain scenes give you a radar on your offhand along with a health readout.
  • In Take & Hold, it will always direct you to supply and hold points and by default it will only display enemies once you've achieved line-of-sight and will always show enemies during a hold phase, you can set it to be omnipresent to forfeit a score multiplier or you can turn off enemy detection entirely for a bigger score multiplier.
  • In the Meatmas 2020 Wasteland, the tablet has both an active signal scope that displays bearing, nearby bots/drones and the nearest SCOM tower along with the Level-Map Display.
• Every Bullet is a Tracer: Averted, most weapons need you to use the ammo panel to spawn tracer rounds. Support machine guns have tracers spaced throughout the belt or magazine (or sometimes have tracers for all rounds in their magazines), allowing you to fire accurately without sighting in, complete with several tracers in quick succession to let you know you've reached the end of the belt.
  • Some weapons will also spawn with tracers by default such as the Bodyguard 38.
  • A game option also allows you to enable performance-expensive bullet trails, giving each bullet a color-coded trail corresponding to the ammunition type fired.
  • All of the Team Fortress 2 weapons, sans the Syringe Gun, fire bright yellow projectiles which emulate the way bullets are rendered in the Source Engine.
  • All Sosiguns fire these, even shotguns.
• Everything Fades: Spent casings and shells can be configured to despawn on a delay or simply remain until you clean the scene manually while Sosigs, Junkbots, and the earlier Wienerbots will despawn by exploding into a pile of Ludicrous Gibs. Unspent rounds, magazines, clips, speed loaders, and dropped weapons will remain until the player manually cleans the scene via their wrist menu. Impact decals, when enabled, have an upper limit before old ones are removed.
• Exploding Barrels: Present in some scenes such as the Warehouse Range and Sampler Platter that can catch fire or detonate outright. Wurstworld and the Sampler Platter feature wood crates of TNT that are easily set off.
• Extreme Omnivore: The player in "Return of the Rotwieners". Throughout the game, you will consume various types of meat cores, exotic plants and especially banger ingredients which include bangsnaps, egg timers, radios and entire aluminum buckets among other objects. You do this to store them for later and you bring them up by vomiting them.
• Eye Beams: The "Cyclops" powerup sausage causes you to shoot a laser from your eyes until it wears off. The inverted effect, "Biclops", makes two beams fire about 45 degrees from each other.
• Firing One-Handed: All but one weapon can be fired with one hand, however the game simulates much more intense recoil and muzzle flip. Holding the front or attached fore-grip of a weapon reduces this effect. Handguns can be stabilized by holding your other controller near your firing hand to simulate a weaver-grip.
  • The General Electric M134 is the only weapon that cannot be fired one-handed to prevent you from dual-wielding two of them. Attempting to do so will cause the weapon to fly out of the player's hand after the first shot. This is more for performance reasons than realism as a single M134 fires at a blistering 2,700 RPM and every single bullet fired is individually simulated. As you can imagine, having the game calculate each and every bullet when firing two of them would either slow the game to a crawl or outright crash.
• Freeze Ray: One of the alternate ammo types for the Soldier's Rocket Launcher in "Meat Fortress" is the "Rocket Pop", which causes Sosigs in the blast radius to be chilled, slowing down their movement, voice, and even their reaction time and making them more resistant to cutting damage but more vulnerable to blunt damage.
• Freud Was Right: In a game with long, flopping pieces of meat, it comes up a lot if not outright invoked on Anton's part. Some of the new idle Sosig lines in Update 102 lampshade this.
• Frying Pan of Doom: A rusted, cast-iron frying pan can be found in "Return of the Rotwieners". It winds up as a Lethal Joke Weapon due to its wide surface area and blunt damage.
• Gatling Good: The minigun again, alongside the Dr. Richard J. Gatling gun in certain scenes, complete with hand-crank. A portable version of the Gatling Gun exists as the "Hand-Crank Frank".
  • The Meat Fortress update adds Sasha to the lineup.
• Gameplay Grading: The end of "Return of the Rotwieners" has you graded on how you did in regards to trap usage, item crafting, quest completion, melee usage and gun usage.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Among Update #99's many climbing-related gadgets is a grappling hook gun that can be used for both conventional line launching and for swinging around like a 3D Maneuver Gear. Also included is a "plunger launcher" that fires suction-tipped darts that can be used as handholds.
• Gun Accessories: Standard attachments such as scopes and laser sights are included alongside more nonstandard accessories such as American flags. Those accessories can be tweaked as well such as the zero distance on a holographic sight. They're not just for guns, either; the chainsaw has an accessory rail on it.
• Guns Akimbo: Totally possible with pistols and submachine guns and even shotguns and full-size rifles! However, what are normally two-handed weapons will "recoil" far more when held with only one hand and automatic weapons fired in this way will be almost totally inaccurate with a few exceptions like the AA-12. It also does not help that, without laser sights, you can not see where you are aiming the weapons anyway.
• Gun Kata: Why do you think the game has a Grammaton Cleric? Under the Spray & Pray category in the M.E.A.T.S scene, you can go through a Gun Kata course designed to train you in this and Spray & Pray gives you Bottomless Magazines so have fun!
• Gun Porn: IN FREAKING VR! Free-form attachments, iconic guns, rare guns, guns with faithful workings to their real counterparts, and a whole armory of them!
• Gun Twirling: Is indeed possible by holding down the circular pad/clicking in the stick on any revolver and flipping one's hand. Even the full length MTs 225 shotgun and MGL grenade launcher can do this due to using the same revolver code. This twirling is also what allows you to flip-cock lever-action weapons by swinging your arm in a backward or forward circle.
• Hand Cannon: The .44 Magnum and Desert Eagle certainly qualify, another contender is a shortened MTs 225, and the Remington Tac-14.
  • Early Access Update 58 adds the .50 AE Desert Eagle by fan request, bringing it up a notch.
  • As if the above wasn't enough, Alpha 7 of Early Access Update 59 adds the Smith & Wesson 500 revolver for some virtual wrist-breaking fun.
  • Alpha 8 of Early Access Update 59 adds a Snub Nosed version of the Smith & Wesson 500 dubbed the "Smith & Wesson 500 Jr".
  • April Fools 2019 adds a revolver based on this image◊ called the "Triple Regret", a three shot .50 BMG revolver.
  • Update 79 brings in the B-600, a revolver that looks like an Elite Strongarm and chambers massive, sci-fi bullets. One of which is a Sticky Bomb flechette that can stick itself into a sosig and explodes on a delay.
  • Update #91 introduced the "Sound Check", a Team Fortress 2-styled M1911A1 chambered in the fictional ".52 AMP" ("Automatic Meaty Pistol") round. While the bullet's exact dimensions are never stated, it's presumably even larger than the Desert Eagle's .50 AE.
  • Update #95 introduced another .50 BMG handgun: the fictional "IPSICK 2011", a 1911-style "race gun" inexplicably converted to a single-shot break-action pistol. Unlike the other hand cannons, it has surprisingly gentle recoil thanks to a comically long chain of compensators and muzzle brakes.
  • The Triple Action Thunder is another .50 BMG handgun but the best part is that this was a real weapon, albeit one that never found a manufacturer and is rarer than the possibility of Multiplayer for this game.
• High-Pressure Blood: Sosigs can spill a notable amount of their mustard-like lubricant from wounds until they either expire or their intestine-like outer casing self-seals the wound. Riddling them with .22 LR rounds or 12 gauge flechettes can create a short-lived fountain before they bite it.
• Holiday Mode: Every year around December has featured a form of "Meatmas" with every even year being an advent calendar with a new weapon added every day and every odd year being a jab at video game microtransactions along with a gift drop on Meatmas Day in both instances. The only aversion to the tradition was 2021 due to the stress Anton was under at the time but it still contained a gift drop on the 25th.
• Hollywood Hacking: What the current Take & Hold is presented as where you acquire override tokens to spend on equipment and the hold points have "encryption" (read: targets) that must be neutralized to complete a hold.
• Hollywood Silencer: Averted. The default sound a silencer makes in the game is proportionally as loud as it would be in real life, thanks to the developer being a gun enthusiast and being particularly annoyed at this trope. Suppressed Team Fortress 2 weapons are played straight and will have Hollywood-style firing sounds, befitting the artstyle.
  • This leads to a rather painful instance of realism in "Return of the Rotwieners" or other scenes with hostile enemies, especially the Zosigs. The volume is proportionate to the cartridge being fired, meaning that subsonic munitions and/or weapons like the VSS Vintorez or MP5SD are much quieter at the cost of effective range.
  • The only weapons that are almost completely silent are specialist weapons like the DeLisle (a conversion of a Lee Enfield that takes 1911 magazines with a large integral suppressor), the Welrod Mk. IIA (a handgun that uses a series of rubber wipes to seal gasses and is meant for point-blank assassination), and the OTs-38 (a revolver whose cartridges contain a piston that propels the round and self-seals the casing).
  • Another aversion is that these will not work on most revolvers with exceptions like the Nagant M1895 due to the unique gas seal mechanism. Suppressing it winds up making it quiet to the point you can hear the hammer striking the pin. The BFR revolver introduced in Update 77 Alpha 1 can also be suppressed due to its tiny cylinder gap.
• Homemade Flamethrower: The Junkyard Flamethrower was added along with the system that allows Sosigs (and, later, you) to catch on fire. Among the components include half of a soda can where the fire exits and the fuel is a canister of nail polish remover. There's also an adjustment knob to let you fire a wide, short gout of fire or narrow it down to a longer range stream. The current trope image from Team Fortress 2 is also available as a Meat Fortress weapon.
  • Alongside all that there's also the aformentioned potato cannon detailed in Aerosol Flamethrower above.
• Infinite Flashlight: All of the portable light sources never run out, be it a handheld flashlight, various Picatinny lights, or even an MP5 foregrip with a light.
• Interface Spoiler: Avoided with the Team Fortress 2 weapons. To avoid their appearance being spoiled by dataminers before they were ready to be revealed, Anton made all the weapons in the first phase of the Meat Fortress update use existing, real-world calibres. Fictional calibers and ammunition would not be introduced until after the reveal and just before they were added in for public use.
• Item Crafting: "Return of the Rotwieners" gives you several methods of crafting using various objects that you can store by eating them. Dustin Wiener lets you grind up two plants and a meatcore to create power up sausages with the meatcore determining duration and intensity while the plant combination determines the type of effect. Myra Wiener lets you bake pies that affects enemies in an area. Shelly Wiener's banger workshop allows you to create improvised explosives with a lot of cartoon logic involved with various detonation mechanisms and different container sizes as a trade-off between throwing distance and payload.
• Joke Item: Many of them to keep within the non-serious and comical theme with the game. Fireworks, tippy toys, the titular hot dogs and horseshoes, and quite a few other silly items that have no combat application.
• Joke Weapon: Some weapons are just plain unwieldy to use and were added to the game just for comical value.
  • The "Degle .50" added for April Fools 2018 is a cardboard replica of a .50 AE Desert Eagle and shoots pieces of cardboard with Anton providing sound effects from his mouth. The normal "bullets" don't travel more than five feet, but the other ammo types like MEGA!!1! bring it into Lethal Joke Weapon territory.
  • April Fools 2019 ups this with the "Whizzbanger", a weapon based on a 4chan meme: a simple holder with a bracket that holds a .50 BMG round. It doesn't even have a trigger; to fire it, you have to hit a literal pin mounted behind the cartridge. While the game provides a "tactical hammer" for this purpose, virtually any force applied to the pin will fire the bullet.
  • April Fools 2020 added a potato cannon with a "realistic" manual-of-arms. The absurdity comes from its inclusion of Picatinny rails for accessories, along with the ability to accept muzzle attachments (though you have to remove them when reloading).
  • October 2020 was kicked off with a themed update of "cursed" ^note bizarre and impractical, not literally bewitched guns, like a stamped-metal prototype of the famous 1911 and a fictional Sten submachine gun chambered in .308 Winchester called the "STENOF". The latter has such powerful recoil that, when aiming down the sights and firing, the model can clip through the player's head.
  • Anton has a notable distaste for garish, highly-customized competition "race guns", and has added two weapons to parody them. The "IPSICK 2011" resembles a brightly-colored M1911 with a hilariously long daisy chain of compensators and muzzle brakes and a "YOLOgraphic sight", but is actually a break-action single-shot firing a .50 BMG round. One-upping this is the "USPSAECIAL", which resembles an AR-15, but fires an absolutely ridiculous 20x82mm anti-materiel round.
• Killer Robot: Certain game modes have you fighting a variety of robots, such as a walking mechanical hot dog and a military-style robot named Clunk (sadly removed as of late) along with Manhack-esque slicers, followed by Meathacks based directly on the afformentioned Manhacks.
  • The Winter Wasteland map is filled with these, first in the form of junkbots that are literally made out of garbage and then the various drones based on the encryption types in Take & Hold.
• Kill It with Fire: The public release of Update 59 introduced the ability to set Sosigs on fire, the classic Molotov Cocktail, and allowing incendiary ammo to perform their purpose. Update 60 added a junkyard flamethrower as a test weapon in the Proving Grounds with an adjustment lever to avert Video Game Flamethrowers Suck by allowing it to shoot at longer ranges. Update 62 turned the tables by allowing you to catch fire alongside the introduction of Pacification squads that can use incendiary ammo.
  • Turns out that the junkyard flamethrower was a test for the Meat Fortress update with the addition of Pyro's Flamethrower which gives all the grilling fun of the previous one with the addition of the Sosig-punting, projectile reflecting airblast.
• Ladder Physics: Subverted, you need both hands if you want to climb normally with smooth locomotion, in which you will obey gravity, but this also leads to an amusing quirk that lets you launch yourself from ladders if you release while swinging your controller. If you want to use a weapon, you'll need to be Firing One-Handed. This is Downplayed if you use any of the teleportation movement modes, you will freeze midair which allows you to turn around and use a full size weapon from where you are though at that point you can just teleport past the ladder.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": A few player and non-player variants.
  • Players can use an M18A1 Claymore that's laser detonated or stick a S.P.A.A.M. to the wall when the laser cover is flipped up.
  • In "Return of the Rotwieners", players can craft bangers that are proximity detonated if a fish finder is used as a detonation mechanism.
  • "Meat Grinder" and "Take & Hold: Containment" has laser tripwire mines in the hallways that pulse on and off in a pattern but could also be shot at to detonate them.
  • The Meatmas Wasteland has both Static Drones that react to sound (if you can hear them, you're generally in their hearing range with an unsuppressed weapon). Stealth Drones, encountered in the canyons, simply chase you once you get close enough but are set off if they collide with anything.
• Laser Sight: There's a handful of picatinny laser sights to chose from that come in red, green and even purple. Certain weapons like the S&W Bodyguard 38 revolver, oversized Kolibri and the Sniper Rifle have built-in lasers that turn on when you're holding the grip. Thanks to the attachment system, you can create ridiculous patterns of lasers on your weapon if you so desire.
  • Sosiguns with laser sights use Hollywood-esque straight beams for the sake of Crosshair Aware, especially when faced with Pacification Squads in Rotwieners.
• Law of Inverse Recoil: Yet another aversion on the long list of this game sticking to realistic firearm handling, the recoil simulated for weapons is dependent on the cartridge or firing mechanism along with how much you're stabilizing it meaning that handguns can range from barely a flinch in the cases of .22 Long Rifle rounds to turning your (thankfully virtual) hand nearly vertical when firing the Smith & Wesson 500. Grenade launchers and rocket launchers are also averted, you might not notice in the midst of the rocket launching with a thud and exploding at the target a split second later but the RPG-7 launcher barely moves when you fire it. Grenade launchers also barely flinch when firing normal 40mm grenades but the higher pressure special rounds like the MP-APERS buckshot shells produce more recoil and have a much more violent sound than the distinctive "bloop".
• Level-Map Display: The tablet in the Meatmas Wasteland has a map of the scene that's filled in by getting close to SCOM towers and will also detect nearby advent calendar bunkers that haven't been opened yet.
• Limited Loadout: In the form of a diegetic "quickbelt" on your virtual chest, items can be stored here depending on the size of it and you always have two large shoulder slots meant for full-length rifles and support weaponry. You can choose a quickbelt style in the options panel ranging from the default "Tactical", to a "Pack Rat" that gives you a lot of slots for small items, to a "NewTacticalTest" that gives sleeve-shaped slots for magazines and pocket pistols.
  • A prototype backpack was added in Early Access Update #57 with a special slot just behind your neck for it. It can hold more magazines, a couple of small items and a medium-sized weapon. This rear slot can also hold the scutum added along with the 2018 Meatmas Cappocollesseum.
• Luck-Based Mission: The whole idea behind Ricky Dicky Random in Take & Hold. It's entirely possible to get an extremely powerful and/or effective weapon from the starting gun case. Other times, you may get saddled with weapons chambered in underpowered cartridges or ones that are clumsy to reload. Same with rolling for accessories and grenades.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: A simple riot shield was added fairly early in the game's development until a later update added an improved shield with a viewing window, Meatmas 2018 gives us a scutum and a later update the same month introduced a heater with a hand grenade design on the front.
  • Wienerbots and Sosigs can be equipped with simplistic riot shields as well, forcing you to break them or shoot through the viewing window.
• Ludicrous Gibs: If desired, Sosigs can explode into meaty physics-affected chunks like the older Weienerbot models.
• Macro Zone: The Meatmas Snowglobe is meant to take place in, well, a snowglobe. The 2022 season reworked the scene entirely and added other objects on the desk outside the globe to emphasize on this aspect.
• Magnet Hands: You can never lose grip of any object you're carrying unless it was either a minigun fired one-handed, a stunned Sosig that regains their senses as you're carrying them, firing an overloaded musket or flintlock, or holding onto an M224 Mortar when it's fired. This is especially true with the control scheme on Vive where you squeeze the trigger once to pick up most weapons and then squeeze the grip buttons to drop them which, compared to other VR controllers, are not the easiest to keep held down.
• Magnetic Weapons
  • There's an ammo type called "10mm DSM" which stands for "Discarding Sabot Magnetic", used by the LAPD 2019 as well as two secret weapons, the Thompson Mk2 and Cyber Handgun.
  • The aforementioned LAPD 2019 can activate a "Railgun Assisted" mode once a battery is inserted, greatly increasing the velocity and force of rounds fired from it at the expense of Overheating the heatsink.
  • The Moses Brothers Self-Defense Engine Frontier Model B is a gauss gun.
• Misidentified Weapons: Category-based example; Some guns are classified into wrong categories from what they actually are. For example, the MP5K gets classified as machine pistol even though it's actually a submachine gun that's a subcompact version of standard MP5.
• Mooks: In the form of upright hot dogs called "Sosigs". The Take & Hold scene also has older "Wienerbot" models as an option. Both types are armed with simplified, movie prop-like variants of assorted Standard FPS Guns called "Sosiguns".
• Missile Lock-On: Day 20 of Meatmas 2018 adds the ManPADS launched FIM-92 Stinger. After inserting the battery/coolant unit, clicking the pad/stick on the firing hand activates tracking which is signified by a screechy noise which becomes a clear tone after acquiring a lock on a valid target (snowflakes in the Meatmas Snowglobe, the flying steaks in the Sampler Platter, Meatal Gear, etc.). Clicking the pad/stick on the hand holding onto the front retains the lock so you can elevate the launcher and fire the missile.
• Neck Snap: The new Sosig agents allow you to break their necks or other limbs by grabbing and bending them far enough.
• Night of the Living Mooks: "Return of the Rotwieners" is a huge Survival Sandbox scene pitting the player against Rotwiener zombies and heavily armed Pacification Squads.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Averted, as the game also averts Hitscan bullets. Your bullets indeed drop based on the type of rounds you fire and you can easily see this in action in the Sniper Range as subsonic rounds require much more compensation versus supersonic rounds. Even the rocket-propelled explosives arc and require you to aim up a little bit to ensure they hit distant targets (try it on the abandoned mine in the Arizona Range).
• Noisy Guns: All of the weapons have very distinct action sounds and can vary depending on what's being done. You can even tell when bolt-hold-open weapons fire their last round with a subtle lack of the bolt or slide slamming back forward. With the manual-action weapons (pump, bolt and lever), the sound is slightly different if you cycle the weapon without a round to chamber.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Heard in "Return of the Rotwieners" when you enter the room where the Illemonati are preparing their ritual.
• One Bullet Clips: Continuing this game's trend of averting weapon tropes, ammo in a magazine is retained when ejected and you keep an extra round in the chamber if the weapon is closed-bolt. If you play using limited quickbelt ammunition, either you discard the magazine and lose the rounds in it or you have to consolidate them between magazines manually.
  • "Return of the Rotwieners" on Classic and Hardcore turns this into a unique gameplay aspect by disabling spawn locking. While ammunition is unlimited and always available at any reload-o-matic with tan ones giving access to special rounds, weapons will only have a limited amount of magazines, clips and speed-loaders, enforcing you to save them and consolidate ammo between them rather than just tossing them away. Arcade mode, introduced in Update 77, does away with this, allowing you to spawnlock magazines with the item spawner now standard as of Update 78.
  • The reworked Take & Hold allows you to use limited ammo, only allowing you to reload magazines at a specific panel as well as spawn loose rounds, speed loaders and clips for free. Another type of panel lets you duplicate magazines or upgrade them to higher capacities for Override Tokens.
  • Belt-fed machine guns also avert this compared to most other games as you can see the last of the belt leave the box. You can even detach the empty box and replace it so you're ready to load the new belt in once you fire the rest of the current one.
• One-Handed Shotgun Pump: You can do this by holding the trigger with the controller that is grabbing the hand guard of the shotgun, while the other hand is free and not grabbing the pistol grip.
• One-Hit Polykill: The new ballistics system makes it easier, though unpredictable, to take down targets behind cover or multiple targets if they're lined up and your round has enough power.
  • A more realistic outcome is added in the scene in Meatmas 2018, the Cappocolosseum, which has the Assault & Pepper and Battle Petite modes where there are innocent elf sosigs that penalize your score if you harm them. Poor trigger discipline, especially with armor penetrating rounds, can result in a One-Hit Polykill via the bullet going through your target and over-penetrating into a civilian elf behind them.
  • The Mammonth, true to its source game, can plow through multiple Sosigs with a lined up shot.
• Overheating: Visually, the M134's barrels will start to glow red and smoke after firing for an extended period of time which nullifies the whole point of a multi-barrel weapon. Sasha also starts to smoke after firing for long enough. Functionally, the LAPD 2019's heat sink will overheat as you fire it in its railgun-assisted mode, requiring you to replace the thermal clip or risk the barrel itself overheating and deforming which results in a permanent loss in accuracy.
  • The blaster pistol has a recharging power cell with the caveat of overheating if fired continuously for too long.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Rotwieners, at least in their Sosig iteration. Aside from obviously being hot dogs, they're the result of a Sosig's cognitive ability degrading without stimulation and the addition of a Meat C.O.R.E. turns them into the different Rotwieners you see throughout Return of the Rotwieners.
• Painfully Slow Projectile:
  • Once again averted with the RPG, which fires at a relatively realistic velocity — which is to say, almost faster than can be seen, and far faster than most other "realistic" games.
  • The Sosigs fire these as well, regardless of weapon. The Take & Hold mode (Legacy, Containment and Rework) can have them be changed to realistic velocities.
  • Sosiguns zig-zag this depending on what they are, they can range from painfully slow to realistically fast.
  • The FIM-92 Stinger is anything but slow. Once you fire it and the motor kicks in, it hauls hot dog buns to whatever target you locked onto within less than a few seconds depending on how far it is.
  • The Remote Missile Launcher, true to the game it's inspired by, is incredibly slow when the missile is initially fired until you pull the trigger on the control stick.
  • Lampshaded by idle Oberwurst soldiers, exclaiming that their truck could outrun the laser guided RPG from the respective game.
• Pillow Silencer: Meatmas 2017 introduced a "sweaterpressor" that consists of a bundled up ugly sweater along with another that takes the form of a party cracker that releases confetti upon the first shot and continues to suppress shots afterward. Update 82 in Meatmas 2019 adds a bottle suppressor with duct tape wrapped around it to hide the muzzle flash and an oil filter suppressor.
• Pistol-Whipping: Completely possible as you can use any gun to whack, club, and bludgeon physics objects, fragile objects like clay pots and beer bottles, and even enemy Sosigs. Alpha 7 of Update 59 has added impact sound effects for the weapons to make pistol whipping and butt striking more engaging. Update 76 introduces bayonets which required all weapons to be given melee weapon properties in order for attached bayonets to do damage, the consequence is allowing pistol whips and butt strikes to do meaningful damage in a sticky situation.
• Playable Menu: As is the norm for Virtual Reality games. This one starts you on a platform inside of a giant chamber with the game's titular items being hoisted up and down, and allows you to select any of the scenes along with the game version, update notes, and an options panel. One to three of the most prominent scenes, depending on the versions, are shown in the center of the scene selection.
• Player-Guided Missile: Update #99 added a remote-control missile launcher based on the Nikita from Metal Gear Solid.
• Portal Network: Dr. Roarnart Wiener tasks you with getting his translocator network functioning in "Return of the Rotwieners", there's also a smaller system of teleporters to quickly take you around the Honey Hamlet.
• Power-Up Food: The powerup sausages, introduced in the scrapped Rise of the Rotwieners, which grant different effects based on their color and label. You can craft them in Return of the Rotwieners based on what two herbs you use to determine the effect and the type of Meat Core will determine the intensity and duration of it with a couple core types even causing the effect to be inverted (I.E. "Regeneration" will become "Bleed Out").
• Punch-Packing Pistol: Averted, many handguns, even the Desert Eagles, do not have the power to punch through even kevlar nor do they chamber dedicated armor-piercing rounds outside of the respective +P API .45 ACP and 9mm rounds. Sub-machine guns also fall under this aversion due to chambering handgun grade calibers. The only weapon that plays this straight is the FN Five-SeveN where it can chamber dedicated AP rounds while other weapons in the pistol category like the FiteLite Raider (a heavily shortened ArmaLite pattern rifle) only count by technicality.
• Quad Damage
  • The "Bullet Boost" powerup sausage significantly improves firepower for a period after eating it.
  • The "Muscle Meat" powerup not only improves melee damage but also your throwing velocity.
• Random Transportation: The "Where'd I Go?" and "Here I Go" power up sausages in "Return of the Rotwieners" transports you to a random location in the scene.
• Reckless Gun Usage: It's completely up to the player to either play it straight or completely avert it. There's nothing stopping you from holstering a loaded, chambered and live weapon, but there's also nothing stopping you following procedure and building good habits such as keeping your finger off the trigger until ready, only pointing at things you are completely certain about shooting, not performing an Unorthodox Reload, utilizing safety switches, etc. Though it could be argued that the VR environment allows you to disregard safety without consequence.
• Recoil Boost: The "Moonshot" ammo added for the Scout's Meat Fortress arsenal kicks you back, much like the Force-A-Nature of the original game. "The OG", originally the "Cartoon 8 Gauge", now kicks the player considerable distance away due to the fact that the actual size of the shells is 3 Gauge. The "Big Boomer", an All-Class Meat Fortress shotgun loads 3 gauge shells that are even longer but don't kick the player back as much.
• Reference Overdosed: H3VR has numerous iconic weapons, including Deckard's gun, Malcom's gun, a S&W Model 29 in .44 Magnum, a Grammaton Cleric, a Walther PPK, Robocop's Auto-9, a shortened Winchester 1887 (with an enlarged cocking loop), a Seburo Compact-eXploder, a TOZ-106 bolt-action shotgun, a crowbar, a monkey wrench, a Hunter's Machete, a freaking pencil, an M60E3 machine gun...
  • One of the available shooting ranges is based on popular gun-centric Youtuber Hickok45's backyard range.
  • One of the explosives with a fuse is a pair of bananas.
  • The "boss" of the 2018 Meatmas event's Cappocolosseum scene, "Meatal Gear", is a Metal Gear REX piloted by the "Gronch". Not only does Meatal Gear use REX's weapons (a laser cannon, machine guns, and rocket barrages; its "railgun" is nonfunctional), the battle follows the same sequence: first destroy the radome to open Meatal Gear's cockpit, then shoot the Gronch while the cockpit is open.
  • Take & Hold: Containment is a big old love letter to both Half-Life and the SCP Foundation. The "Welldone Freemeat" Take & Hold character introduced in Update #87 likewise parodies Half-Life 2, with Sosig variants of that game's enemies and weapons.
  • A particularly subtle one: the "Tomacuzi"'s serial number is 8675309.
  • Update #99 introduced "Flaccid Snake", a Take & Hold character based on Metal Gear Solid, complete with Sosig equivalents of the game's bosses and a Nikita launcher analogue. Coincidentally, the Northest Dakota map also released in the update resembles Shadow Moses Island.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: In the completed version of Return of the Rotwieners, decapitating or destroying a Rotwiener's head will count as a kill. However their heads flop around as they run, making the torso a more reliable target. Alternatively, a Rotwiener can be killed by letting it bleed out, making .22LR rounds and especially hollow point rounds effective. Downplayed with The Hung, encountered in Old Wienerton, as they're highly resistant to head damage but weak in the torso.
  • Early versions averted this; zombie sosigs were more than capable of functioning without a head.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: From old fixed-cylinder and single-action to modern drop-cylinder and double-action. Also not limited to pistols, as we have the MTs 225 shotgun and MGL Grenade Launcher.
  • The Meat Fortress update gives us both the Spy's revolver and the Demoman's grenade launcher.
  • Update 79 is almost entirely about revolvers, touching up a few of the existing ones and adding many new models, ranging from the famous Raging Bull to the Lady's Companion .22 Pepperbox, the second oldest Real Life gun in the game after the flintlock pistol added in Update 81.
• Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns: Averted, all but two weapons are primarily right-handed in operation discounting ambidextrous examples like the FN P90. The Smith & Wesson M&P R8 revolver drops the cylinder to its right while the Colt M4A1 can be used in a "left-hook" configuration.
• Rocket Jump: The Meat Fortress update and scene enables you to both rocket jump and sticky jump as well. You can only blast jump with the smooth locomotion options (armswinger, 2-axis and twin-stick) and you can change if this harms you or not when done.
• Running Gag: In "Return of the Rotwieners," Myra's meat pie recipes constantly have notes of her saying that they need more salt until the recipe for Salty Pie in which she writes "...Maybe too much salt!".
• Russian Roulette: It's possible to play this by loading a single round into one of the revolvers and spinning the cylinder. Shooting yourself will kill you in most scenes but Death Is a Slap on the Wrist.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: Of course of the double-barreled variety, a shortened Winchester 1887, and a MTs 225, which is basically a revolver that shoots shotgun shells with its barrel and stock shortened. Another one is the extremely short-barreled version from Killing Them Softly that is so short that the shells it's loaded with are longer than its barrels.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Myra's Salty Pie in "Return of the Rotwieners" causes Rotwieners to attack each other. This also works on the friendly NPCs so be careful.
• Shell-Shock Silence: A new mechanic with the 5th Anniversary update, nearby explosions along with firing rocket launchers will muffle the audio while extremely close and visible ones will produce a vignette effect, wobble your vision and cause your virtual ears to ring. To reduce the chances of actual disorientation, the effects are very brief, can be toggled individually and are disabled by default.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Even though shotguns have much longer effective ranges than most games, shotguns chambering buckshot are more effective at closer ranges and point-blank blasts are more than enough to reduce an unarmored Sosig to sausage crumbles, making the shortened and sawn-off shotguns dominate in CQC. The KS-23 exemplifies this as the "Shrapnel-25" buckshot has a ridiculously wide spread, hence the "25" which means its effective range in meters.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Quite a lot of them too. Many of them avert Short-Range Shotgun outside of the heavily chopped or wide-choke barrels and are effective at all but the most extreme ranges. The various 12-gauge shells also give a lot of flexibility from slugs for precision, "Triple-Hit" for a bigger punch, flechette rounds to pierce kevlar or "SWAG-12" FA and HE shells among others.
  • Despite all this, shotguns are Downplayed in close-range effectiveness compared to most games, one being that standard buckshot shells are ineffective against basic body armor (although the concussive force can still daze Sosigs), and while tube-fed shotguns are easy to top off thanks to being able to palm ammo, the physicality of reloads means that it can be tricky to reload in the middle of combat, especially if the chamber is empty.
  • The MTs 225 provides the hybrid combination of Shotguns Are Just Better and Revolvers Are Just Better. Yes, a shotgun revolver.
  • The AA-12, a fully automatic, open-bolt, magazine fed shotgun with a gas piston and spring to absorb about 90% of the recoil, allowing you to empty an entire drum in one go without losing a significant amount of accuracy. You can even fire this one-handed and keep it relatively on target. Finally, it's able to fire low-pressure rounds without failing to cycle compared to other shotguns.
  • The KS-23, a Soviet designed riot shotgun that loads 23x75mmR shells which range from "Siren-7" CS gas shells, Zvezda flash bang shells, Shrapnel-25 buckshot, and anti-material "Barricade" rounds capable of destroying the engine block of a vehicle.
  • The fictional Scalpel-LE introduced on Day 23 of Meatmas 2018 takes this further with additional rails and a butt-plate to create a tacticool piece of kit or an abomination of meatkind. For a fictional weapon, Patrick Sutton did a remarkable job on the details, such as the ArmaLite style dust cover, the ammo counter on the magazines and even a latch on the left side of the shotgun that prevents the magazine from indexing backwards.
  • Introduced in "Return of the Rotwieners" is the "Four Letter Word", a four-barrel break-action shotgun with a Secondary Fire switch that lets you fire all four barrels simultaneously.
  • Meatmas Day 2019 gifts us the China Lake Grenade Launcher which is tube-fed and pump-action. You can convert it into a BFG shotgun by loading the MP-APERS shells.
  • Update #90 adds six new shotguns, including two unique weapons that required new scripting, those being the dual-magazine KSG and the Six12 bullpup revolver shotgun with a detachable cylinder. The rest of July was also focused on shotguns, ending with the addition of the C.A.W.S and Jackhammer, which Anton took some artistic liberties such as implementing a detachable cylinder for the Jackhammer and having the C.A.W.S perform to the specifications H&K intended.
  • The 2020 Meatmas Update introduced the fictional "MP-203" shotgun, chambered in the same belted 12-gauge ammunition as the C.A.W.S. It uses a 24-round helical magazine as opposed to the C.A.W.S.' 10-round magazines, and is the only shotgun in the game with a burst fire option.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Baby's First Boomstick and Rail Tater are based on Kommander Karl and his joke videos that "reload" real world objects as if they were weapons in a first-person shooter.
  • The MP5 Shadow is a reference to Shadow the Hedgehog, specifically the intro animation in which he does a Dramatic Gun Cock with an MP5.
• Shown Their Work: And how! Barring Acceptable Breaks from Reality, the level of detail in the inner workings of every single real weapon is fully simulated within the game. It would be easier to list the details Anton missed. Even then, Anton still acknowledges details if they aren't represented due to technical limitations. For example, the Mateba Model-6 Unica's blowback system initially wasn't animated simply because current gen HMDs don't have a high enough refresh rate to even witness the action; it was later slowed down to show off its mechanics.
• Silliness Switch: April Fools 2019 adds the ability to turn the sosigs into clown sosigs with the appropriate nose and release freedomfetti when shot, struck, dismembered or otherwise.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: Heard whenever combat picks up in Downtown Wienerton in "Return of the Rotwieners". Joe Kataldo created this by running a "Jellifish" guitar pick-brush over the springs of a "Blackfly" instrument and had the idea to have the sound be akin to a zombie or Rotwiener dragging an axe along the ground.
• Smoke Out: Various items emit opaque orbs of smoke (an intentional design choice so it wouldn't affect performance and so the smoke can be affected in a physical manner such as being cleared by explosions or billowing out of confined spaces). Update 112 tweaked the smoke behavior so that it more reliably breaks line of sight and Sosigs passing through smoke will be given the blind Status Effect much like witnessing the flash of a stun grenade as well as having the smoke linger around longer.
  • There's also teargas available from 40mm grenades, 23mm shells, and the Mk. V CN Gas grenade which not only causes the blind status to last considerably longer on Sosigs exposed to it but also leaving them suppressed as well.
• Sniper Pistol: Utterly averted as not only does the game avert both Punch-Packing Pistol and No "Arc" in "Archery" but you'd be lucky to keep a handgun of any kind stabilized even with a weaver-grip. Even if you converted a handgun into a pistol-carbine with a bipod, Update 94 added mechanical inaccuracy; meaning that both the shorter barrel length and less precise rifling makes it impossible to zero an attached optic.
• Sniper Scope Sway: Present but, again, in a realistic manner. Even with three-point stabilization with the virtual stock, the crosshairs on optics will be noticeably shaky but there are ways to steady yourself both in game, such as bipods, and in real life, such as holding your breath, and crouching or going prone. In-fact, Anton even recommends getting a physical table to set your arms down on if you need additional stabilization. Update 100 added two toggle options for stabilization; general hand smoothing and "sniping assist", the latter of which can either be always on or activated by holding the trigger with your forward hand on a two-handed weapon.
• Sound Defect: The "Degle" from the April Fool's 2018 update does not use actual firearm sounds, but are instead all created by Anton making approximate sounds with his mouth.
• Spent Shells Shower: Every spent casing and shell is physically simulated with the sole exception of the M134 and Sasha due to the absurd RPM. You can control the time it takes for casings and shells to disappear.
• Sticks to the Back: and your hips and chest as well. Anything that can fit in a quickbelt slot will stay there until you bring it back out again and most weapons even enable you to "harness" them to the slot where they'll return if you release your grip on them. The lack of holsters and slings are fine, since there's no physical body to sling them to anyway.
• Sticky Bomb: The LAPD 2019 blaster can chamber a proximity mine round that detonates upon any nearby motion. Meat Fortress adds, what else but, the Sticky Bomb launcher. The finished version of "Return of the Rotwieners" lets you craft sticky bangers by using a picatinny rail (because attachments "stick" to picatinny rails). The B-600 can be chambered to fire a glowing flechette which sticks into sosigs and explodes after a delay.
• Sword and Gun: It's entirely possible to use a Harries technique to stabilize a handgun while your off-hand controller, holding whatever knife or sword, is close enough to your other controller.
• Take That!: Anton Hand really doesn't like the FN F2000 bullpup assault rifle due to the fact that he got his beard caught in it and it sprayed hot brass in his face when he used it during a research trip, and has said on several occasions that he wouldn't add it to the game. It made a surprise appearance in the "Meatmas 2019 Holiday Announcement" video...as fuel for the Gronch's fireplace. Just to drive the point home, the Gronch pulls one from a trash can labeled "Meatmas Bullpup Storage Device". Anton said that he added the F2000's model just for that gag, then deleted it.
  • The 2019 iteration of Meatmas, much like 2017, also takes the chance to make fun of the Revenue-Enhancing Devices that two specific games make heavy use of in that you can buy and sell "gun hats" on the "SMEME Marketplace", some of the rarer ones go for ludicrous prices. You only win crates every time you finish a game in the Cappocolosseum so how do you earn more G-Bucks for keys, hats and more crates? Why work less than minimum wage for the Gronch, of course!
  • Anton also has a disdain for IPSC "race guns" with heavily milled slides, flared magazine wells, red-dot sights, etc. Hence why the cursed gun update for October 2020 includes the "IPSICK 2011", a breech-loading race gun in .50 BMG with a daisy-chain of muzzle brakes, garish metal finishes, and a "YOLO" red dot sight.
• Take That, Audience!: Anton isn't above taking the occasionally playful jab at the community. Alpha 3 of Update 85 added the "HISTORISCH INAKKURATE RIESEN MUNITIONSGURTEL BOX FÜR JÄMMERLICHE WIENER"^Translation"Historically Inaccurate Giant Ammunition Belt Box For Miserable Weiners" due to repeated requests for an extended option of feeding the MG42 beyond the 50-round assault drum. The other option would've been a loose 200-round belt that, for Unity, would not sit well with the physics engine.
• Time Stands Still: Myra's Tart Pie in "Return of the Rotwieners" causes enemies caught in the area of effect to freeze in place.
• Teleporter Accident: One of the reasons the Engineer's Teleporter wasn't initially available in Meat Fortress is due to the fact that while players using them works just fine, Sosigs using them had a tendency to violently disassemble at the end point due to having to teleport the four joints of a Sosig simultaneously. Some people insist on it being added anyway because it sounds hilarious. The rework to Sosig pathing as of Update 102 has fixed this as Sosigs are now able to teleport seamlessly between two locations.
• Throw-Away Guns: Early Access Update 65 introduced this idea for Sosiguns where you can spawnlock them but this is being phased out for the idea of them being able to be harnessed to your quickbelt and reloaded by shaking them.
  • The FIM-92 Stinger is also treated this way due to the fact that reloading involves replacing the launch tube assembly, something that isn't done out in the field. The M72 LAW is the most straight example, as it was designed to be disposed after use.
• Trick Bullet: Ammo types like hollow-point, armor-piercing, and tracers are readily available, while other weapons have options that toe the line between Awesome, but Impractical and downright silly. For example, Grenade Launchers and shotguns have "Freedomfetti" shells that shoot red, white, and blue confetti, make a party horn noise, and set targets immediately in front of the shooter on fire. Meat Fortress weapons take this even further; for example, the Spy's revolvers can fire "Salud" flashbang bullets, "Riposte" EMP bullets that temporarily short out Engineer sentries, and "Debuff" bullets that can dispel Medic Ubercharges and other Status Buffs.
• Unorthodox Reload: Possible moreso than pretty much any other work of fiction that actually conforms to the laws of physics. Popular methods include tossing magazines into their air and catching them in the gun as well as more "normal" methods like flip-cocking the lever-actions and pumping shotguns with one hand.
  • Though not unorthodox, the game does simulate some common reloads for the respective weapons like the "AK Reload" (Where the new mag is used to hit the magazine release) on AK-pattern weapons or weapons with a similar paddle-release, and the "HK Slap" (Where the bolt is locked back while changing magazines and is slapped down to charge the weapon) on the MP5, G3, and weapons with a similar bolt handle
  • A Youtuber named "jeditobiwan" has created a series dedicated to this trope being exercised in the game called Dumb H3VR Reloads.
  • The Team Fortress 2 weapons of the Meat Fortress update actually avert the overly unusual reload animations as Anton took some artistic liberties to have them make as much sense as their designs would allow. The only weapon Anton couldn't bring himself to change was the Soldier's four shot rocket launcher to allow the same ease of Rocket Jumping and aerial bombardment.
    • The Scattergun, for example, instead has an integral magazine of six shells and racking the lever loads a shell into each barrel which grants two shots. The Sticky Launcher, along with the addition of its sticky indicator, uses a stripper clip of sticky shells with the bombs in a "deflated" state that are loaded into the drum magazine, much like the M1941 Johnson. Even the Spy's revolver had to be changed to make mechanical sense as almost none of the parts lined up in a manner that would make sense (or be safe for that matter).
  • Sosiguns are reloaded by shaking them, to keep with the theme of them being plastic, toy-like guns.
• Variable Mix: Thanks to FMOD and Joe Kataldo, "Return of the Rotwieners" has music that plays for each respective area and picks up when engaged in combat with enemies. Each area track also has an assortment of stings that the system chooses to play at random, resulting in a much more varied soundtrack as you traverse the scene. Joe explains more in this video.
• Verbal Tic: Anton's tendency to say "wonderful", be it after the sound test at the beginning of every devlog video, or just after showing off a new weapon or other gameplay mechanic. Expect "beautiful" to occasionally be used instead.
  • He even added a tippy toy in-game that makes the sound of his Verbal Tic, "Wonderful!".
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: How you get access to the meat cores and plants you've... "stored" in Return of the Rotwieners, by bringing your controllers close to your HMD and thrusting them forward. Compared to Job Simulator, the sound effect is more grotesque. Now you can use a small radial menu on your off-hand to select which items you want to bring up without the need to do the thrusting motion.
• Warp Whistle: The "Hometown" power up sausage in "Return of the Rotwieners" instantly takes you back to the Honey Hamlet when eaten. Conversely, the "Somewhere?" sausage will teleport you to the Pacification Squad bridge that guards the end of the scene.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: Entering Bunker 24 in the Meatmas Wasteland gives you a message from Greg Stephenson at Beefwater LLC. about a recall of the junkbots, saying that they put out wireless interference and mentions that the worst thing that could happen is if some sort of defensive drone network would revert to a kill-everyone-on-sight mode from it, then asks who would do such a thing, which is exactly what happened at the North Pole.
• Winter Warfare: "Northest Dakota", the setting of the Meatmas 2020 scene and a Take & Hold map, is a massive snowy area littered with derelict armored vehicles, abandoned camps, and communication towers. It's designed for long-range combat, with plenty of hills and cliffs to use as sniper positions.
• Wreaking Havok: Some of the scenes give you physics active targets to shoot such as the Exploding Barrels and crates in the Warehouse, the various targets in the Friendly 45 or the massive abundance of breakable objects in the Breaching Prototype. A device similar to Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun is also available.
• You Always Hear the Bullet: Averted with the new sound system. In the very few instances where enemies can shoot at you from a long enough distance, such as armed Sosigs in "Return of the Rotwieners", you'll see and hear the tracer zipping right by (or hitting) you before you hear the weapon it was fired from.