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By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Sci-fi is filled with awesome weapons of unimaginable destructive power and weapons that look cool. It’s also filled with weapons that make you think whoever came up with this is certifiably insane. How could someone come up with this? And why did they think it was a good idea?
Some of the weapons on this list were designed for mass destruction, others can destroy entire galaxies, and one only exists to deal with a specific Chinese waiter.
These are the 12 Most Insane Sci-Fi Weapons in order by how insane they are.
12. Proton Pack (Ghostbusters)
Chasing ghosts makes you sound crazy, but chasing them with a miniature nuclear accelerator on your back is what makes the Ghostbusters insane. The Proton Pack is incredibly cool and the charged particle beam it throws out looks amazing. There’s no denying that. The attempt by the Ghostbusters to explain how it works with real science is appreciated and yet, they’re running around New York City with an unlicensed nuclear accelerator.
The moment you hear Egon warn everyone not to cross the streams, you know that’s exactly what’s going to happen. It’s one of those moments where you have to turn off your brain, stop analyzing the science, and enjoy.
Over the years the Proton Pack has evolved, with the extreme Ghostbusters cartoon that no one watched introducing a weaker pistol version, and an amped-up pack capable of taking down meaner ghosts. Ghostbusters Afterlife showed how Egon rigged a system together to keep ghosts trapped inside a mountain, which, with a half life of 5,000 years for each proton pack, would have kept the world safe for thousands of years, if not for those meddling kids.
The Proton Pack is one of sci-fi’s coolest, most insane weapons even if it’s only good for one thing, capturing ghosts, it’s the second most cosplayed weapon on our list.
Honestly, I’d still wear one. Not for Halloween, just in general.
11. Lightsaber (Star Wars)
It’s the single most iconic weapon, not only in sci-fi history, but pop culture. The lightsaber has defined Star Wars since the instant it appeared on screen. Swords are cool. Laser Swords are cooler. Laser Swords that can deflect lasers are the coolest. Yet, this list isn’t coolest weapons, it’s most insane. So why is the Lightsaber on here?
Because you have to be a little crazy top bring a sword, even a lightsaber, to a gun fight. Order 66 proved not every Jedi could reflect every blaster shot. And let’s say your opponent has the high ground, well, that spells trouble. It is however, very effective at taking down younglings.
Anyone can use a lightsaber, but not everyone can use it well. Lightsabers also raise a whole lot of questions, for example, when dueling, why they do seem to aim directly at the other lightsaber? Why not throw it and pull it back with the force? What happens a lightsaber falls blade first on the ground? Rick and Morty answered that question, but could Luke have simply thrown his lightsaber at the Deathstar and you know, waited for it to travel through the entire structure, ripping it the whole way?
It’s fun to debate these type of dumb questions and honestly, lightsabers are still the coolest weapon in sci-fi. Every time there’s a new variant that appears, it’s awesome. The worst part of the lightsaber is how much Disney charges to build replicas.
10. The Glaive (Krull)
1983’s Krull is a very strange movie that’s part sci-fi, and part fantasy. To say its a cult classic today is doing it a disservice, it’s a classic. Cheesy and filled with over the top acting, but a classic. A large part of that has to do with the iconic Glaive. A five-pointed throwing star isn’t actually a glaive. A glaive is a long polearm weapon used in the Middle Ages. What Prince Colwyn is tossing around is a shuriken.
The point is that the glaive is awesome, but it’s also the type of a weapon a five year old comes up with when writing their first story. It can be tossed like a boomerang, deflects energy blasts, cuts through almost every substance known to man, and only needs one good hit to put down the Beast’s army of Slayers. There’s no logic behind it, no reason why it’s good at everything, except because that’s cool. And you know what? That’s good enough for me.
The Glaive is the perfect type of insane weapon for someone’s first foray into sci-fi. It’s why Krull has stood the test of time while other, allegedly better, sci-fi movies have fallen to the wayside. As a kid, I’d love to throw around the Glaive. As an adult who forgets why I went into teh kitchen, I’d also love to throw around the Glaive.
9. Identity Disc – Tron
It’s practical and lethal. Tron’s identity discs serve as memory storage units and lethal weapons capable of derezzing a program in a single hit. Whoever thought that chakrams would be the weapon of choice in the digital world deserves credit for creating an iconic sci-fi weapon. Normal people would think of guns, or maybe laser swords, not a chakram.
Different identity discs look and function differently, from Kevin’s in the first film allowing him to leave the grid, to Ares in the most recent movie incorporating a triangle design marking him as the Master Control Program for Dillenger’s version of the Grid.
None are as effective as the disc used by Sam Flynn in Tron: Legacy. His disc gave him the ability to be forgotten by Disney. How else can you explain the complete lack of a Tron: Legacy sequel? Ares doesn’t count.
Tron’s identity discs look cool, there’s a reason for everyone to carry one, and they could only ever in this one, very specific setting. That’s the mark of a great weapon and one that you have to be a little bit crazy to come up with in the first place.
8. Gristle Gun (eXistenz)
When the Master of Body Horror David Cronenberg decides to tackle sci-fi, the results are usually gruesome. Videodrome is a disgusting cult classic that includes a flesh gun, but the director out did himself with eXistenz, a stranger sci-fi thriller about a virtual reality game gone wrong.
Jude Law is Pikul, one of the testers investigating the stability of the game, eXistenz, when he and Geller, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh as yet more proof every movie benefits from having her in it, have to meet a contact in a Chinese restaurant. Pikul assembles a gun out of the inedible parts of the meal, and it’s as disgusting as it sounds.
The Gristle Gun is made out of bone and uses human as the bullets. It’s held together by skin, and though it only appears in this one scene, it became a favorite of prop makers because of the intricate, gory details.
eXistenz itself is a fun, low-budget sci-fi horror that became an immediate hit with film nerds. The Gristle Gun is one of the film’s highlights, but there’s layers to the story and an ending that will have you questioning everything you just watched.
7. The Flood (Halo)
I know what you’re thinking. The Flood aren’t a weapon, the Flood is a parasitic race that consumes everything in their path. First off, yes, secondly, gee Bungie, Tyranids much? And third, The Flood were unleashed by the Precursors to take revenge against the Forerunners. The Flood is an organic weapon designed for one purpose: destroy all sentient life in existence.
The Precursors didn’t develop, or develop into the Flood, until after they had already lost the war and been driven insane by devolving themselves into dust. Over the eons, that dust became the Flood and…listen, the Halo lore goes much harder than you’d ever think from playing the games and it’s impossible to describe without sounding insane to normal people.
The point is that the Flood is a fantastic villain and the exact type of bizarre alien lifeform that is enough of a threat to warrant the creation of the massive Halo rings in the first place. We were robbed from seeing the Flood in the live-action Halo series thanks to Paramount canceling the show after the incredible Season 2 tease. Maybe someday we’ll get to see the ultimate bio-organic weapon in action.
All I know is, I’m not running through The Library again.
6. Zat’nik’tel – Stargate SG-1
The Zat’nik’tel, or Zat Gun, raises a lot of questions. It’s a common sidearm used by the Goa’uld and their Jaffa servants and on the surface, it’s a standard energy weapon. Sci-fi is filled with those. What makes the Zat Gun insane is it’s three stages of contact. Get hit once, and the target is incapacitated, get hit again, and the target dies. Three times, they disintegrate.
Now this raises a lot of questions. How long between shots does it take? If you’re hit one week, and then hit again a week later, do you die? Is it an hour? Who knows? And who thought it was a good idea to write in a handheld instant death weapon that also disposes of corpses?
The Zat guns fade away over time as no one involved wanted to deal with the hassle of keeping track of hits. Michael Shank, Dr. Daniel Jackson on the series, once went off on the whole concept of Zat guns in at a convention in one of the greatest actor rants we’ve ever seen. And he’s not wrong. The Zat gun makes no sense.
For a universe filled with ancient civilizations, evil parasitic worms, and aliens who came to earth as Gods, there’s a lot of problems that are solved by a simple assault rifle. The Zat’nik’tel overcomplicated the simplicity of see enemy, shoot enemy. That and…it looks like a dildo.
Honorable Mention: Dual-Vector (Three-Body Problem)
We’re over halfway through the list, so I need to stop and discuss an honorable mention that didn’t quite make the list. The Dual-Vector foil from The Three-Body Problem novels. This is a mind-bending weapon that transforms 3D space into 2D space. Once fired, it keeps expanding. Infinitely. You can’t outrun it, but if you know it’s coming, you could have a head start upwards of tens of thousands of years. It’s one of the many things that makes The Three-Body Problem a masterpiece of modern sci-fi, but it’s only in the books, and not the Netflix series. So it’s ruled out on a technicality, but it’s so cool, and so insane, I had to acknowledge it anyways.
5. Point of View Gun (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
When it comes to insane sci-fi, few have been able to outdo satirist Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series is filled with unbelievable weapons ranging from the Ultimate Weapon (A cricket ball capable of joining all the stars in the universe together for a massive supernova) to killer robots defeated by depression when they added Marvin to their network.
The Point of View Gun wasn’t a creation of Douglas Adams, it was an original design for the 2005 film. When fired, the victim would see things from the perspective of the shooter. On the one hand, that sounds incredibly impractical, but on the other, that’s a devastating weapon capable of destabilizing entire civilizations without a single loss of life. Directly, anyways.
Imagine if the Point of View Gun found its way into the world of say, Babylon 5, and Delenn or Londo fires it at the other ambassadors. A Fremen on Dune fires the gun at Baron Harkonnen, or Paul, the true villain of the series. It doesn’t change someone’s mind, it’s not mind control, it simply shows them what the shooter is thinking and feeling. That sounds even more traumatic than mind control.
Out of all the weapons on this list, the Point of View Gun is the most destructive. In its own way. Listen, you’ve got to see this entry from my perspective to really understand.
4. ZORG ZF-1 (The Fifth Element)
It lacks the planet destroying power of other weapons on this list, and firing it won’t doom the entire galaxy, but the ZORG ZF-1 is an absolutely insane weapon. Used in The Fifth Element by Zorg, his personal weapon design is capable of firing 300 shots in a single burst, includes a rocket launcher, an arrow launcher, a net launcher, a flamethrower, and a blast capable of freezing people. It’s the swiss army knife of sci-fi weaponry.
Oh, and it has a replay function, which causes the first shot to act as a homing beacon, with every other shot zeroing in on the first one. With a burst capability of 300 energy blasts, do you really need to home in?
For the filming of The Fifth Element, the props team made a separate ZORG ZF-1 for each of the weapon functions. While the in-universe weapon can fold up for easy carrying or you know, smuggling, the real props didn’t have that function, instead, it’s a fake fiberglass replica.
Well, technically, all of them are fake as the ZORG ZF-1 doesn’t exist in real-life, and as tame as it seems compared to the other weapons on this list, imagine the impact only one of these would have on a modern battlefield.
The Fifth Element has always been a great movie, but the ZORG ZF-1 is only the tip of the iceberg with how crazy it gets. Here’s your reminder to go watch Bruce Willis’ sci-fi masterpiece for the 12th time.
3. The Genesis Device (Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan)
Star Trek is a little lacking in world-ending weapons compared to other universes, but it makes up for it with the nearly-perfect Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan introducing the Genesis Device. A device that creates life from lifelessness sounds great, until an insane madman realizes that it can also overwrite existing life. The device, housed inside a torpedo, reduced everything on the target planet into subatomic particles and then overwrote them, creating a freshly terraformed planet in a matter of hours. Or killing everything on the planet. One or the other.
None of the scientists developing the Genesis Device took this into account until Khan decided to turn it into a weapon. Ironically, because David Marcus included protomatter in the device’s core, the resulting planet, Genesis, tore itself apart.
The Genesis Device returned in Star Trek: Lower Decks except this time it was a Ferengi developed weapon. That means if it had gone off as it was supposed, it likely would have included a weekly subscription to keep the planet from blowing up. The Ferengi have yet to find a situation they can’t profit from, and honestly, planetary annihilation is a small price to pay for profit.
2. Lexx (Lexx)
If you’ve subscribed to Giant Freakin Robot on YouTube, and really, why not, you’ll receive notifications for all of our videos and help support an independent nerd website, then you’ve noticed we are huge fans of Lexx. The oddball raunchy and super sexy Canadian series takes the horniness of Farscape and dials it up to 11. It also features Lexx, the most powerful weapon in the two universes.
Bioengineered by His Divine Shadow, Lexx is capable of destroying entire planets with ease, which he demonstrates throughout the series. He also eats Holland. And looks like a….well….you know….that.
Lexx’s destructive capabilities are offset by the fact that the genetic key to assume command of him is tied to Stanley. The worst captain in sci-fi. Stanley would rather get laid than ravage the galaxy with the ultimate weapon. Which he does, in order to get laid. Listen, Lexx is a weird show but it’s also so weird it’s fun. I know I sound insane trying to describe it.
The worst part is that unlike other highly advanced spaceships, the Lexx does not have an advanced intelligence. It’s well, below average. He means well. Sometimes.
1. The Wormhole Weapon (Farscape)
Through the entire run of Farscape, the secret of wormhole technology lodged in the brain of John Crichton is sought after by everyone who knows about it. Scorpius makes it his life’s mission to retrieve this knowledge, and then, at the very end of the series, a wormhole weapon is activated and everyone who sees it realizes what a mistake it was to unleash something this powerful in the universe.
For a show with muppets and a main cast of mostly aliens, Farscape ended on a hauntingly poetic note. John Crichton set off the doomsday weapon to force the Peacekeepers and Scarrans to abandon their war. Turns out, holding all of existence hostage makes everyone decide to give peace a chance. Even Scorpius realizes in the moment what a mistake this was.
The first time Crichton unleashed a wormhole weapon it didn’t threaten the universe, all it did was turn a star into a cannon aimed directly at a Scarran battleship. Any weapon that uses part of a star as a bullet is insane to consider, but one that can wipe out all of existence is too insane to even think about actually using.
The Wormhole Weapon is also part of what makes Farscape one of the best sci-fi shows out there. After years of build up, they paid off and showed it in all of its glory.
