No, it didn't. This trope is to make guns non-lethal for kids' shows. Firefly's thing was just making them seem more scifi.
What really kills me about this trope is how they don't think kids will make the association between, say, a ray gun or laser-blaster and Real Life firearms!
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That's not the point. The "association" is obvious, and "they" know it. The idea is that there's a difference between showing characters using realistic, potentially imitable firearms and showing them using lasers or some other such thing, similar to other depictions of violence.
This is the old discussion, from when the page was called "Where Did They Get Lasers?"
Silent Hunter: Minor historical footnote- NATO and Warsaw Pact weapons have different coloured tracer rounds (red for NATO, green for Warsaw Pact).
Bluetooth The Pirate: Yeah, but it's not often that tracers are even used apart from a belt-fed machine gun. But that is probably where, at least GI Joe anyway, got the idea.
Ununnilium: "Image at left" is gone.
Pepinson: Are we sure the guns in Gundam SEED are supposed to be lasers? I was always under the impression they were just handheld variations on the railguns used everywhere else in the series.
BT The P: The handguns used in the series are definitely ballistic, and many of them are slightly updated real designs. It's another example of "Japanese animators love mechanical accuracy". (Is that a trope? 'Cause it should be.) The technology of the show doesn't include any power sources small enough to make a magnetic handgun of any useful power and range. But, does it matter? The point is that in the airing on CN, very obvious edits were made to make the guns look less real, and laser visual and sound effects were added to people shooting at each other.
Pepinson: Huh. I never noticed that—but, if you say so...
Aozame: On an interesting note, Gundam does sometimes depict conventional weapons as beam weapons: Railguns (especially Freedom's), the GP 02's nuclear bazooka, the bazooka Char killed Kycilia with, the gun Kycilia killed Gihren with...
BT The P: the "Very Special Episode" of Gragoyles about the dangers of real firearms was the episode wherein Elisa was shot accidentally by Broadway, not the one with the arms dealers.
benteen: From the article: "Spoofed in an episode of the Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes cartoon, where at one point the villain complained, 'If this were prime-time, I could use real bullets!'" Isn't this actually a Lampshade Hanging vice a spoof?
Ununnilium: Indeed it is.
Planish: One thing about beam weapons is that they don't have to have a fixed number of rounds. As long as there is battery (or whatever) power, they can keep firing with a reload (if you want it that way) and without dragging around extra clips.
Another thing is that you can see a beam better than a bullet, and you can sustain it, so it could persist on the screen longer than a bullet being fired. Maybe some directors/editors prefer that. Just guessing.
Licky Lindsay: Was Thundarr's sunsword done to placate Media Watchdogs? I always assumed it was just an ersatz lightsaber.
Do Know Butchie Did some general alterations to the main write-up to make it more coherent and better reflect the examples, and removed most of the discussion on the One Piece hammer-gun—yes, it's hilarious, but it doesn't need what amounts to a paragraph on how 4Kids sucks. Also did some general changes throughout. Also removed examples dealing with swords and other non-guns—those have their own tropes.
Little Beast: I don't see how Artemis Fowl is an example. At all.
Shale: I pulled this from the Ray Gun supertrope, since it's no longer laser-specific - as you can tell from the page quotes and image, none of which involve lasers.
Edited by Camacan
Did Firefly have this? If I recall correctly, guns were still treated as guns, but made "charging up" noises even when they were obviously conventional weapons.
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