One thing about the Fallout series that some may not know about is how so many of its weapons are significantly distorted representations of real-life weapons. Sometimes it's not so bad, but other times these weapons almost seem like cartoony versions of the real thing. This can partially be attributed to the games taking place in an alternate timeline, one where retro-futuristic 1950s culture and technology reign supreme. Generally, this applies to most ballistic weapons, but there are a handful of energy weapons that also take their cues from real firearms.
This goes back to even the first Fallout title released in 1997. Back then it was merely an Isometric turn-based RPG rather than a 3D FPS. The weapons were more simplistic in design for sure, but their influences can easily be traced regardless of any graphical limitations. Here is a list of some Fallout weapons and their real-life counterparts.
Updated on February 11, 2023, by Gregory Louis Gomez: Fallout has been kicking for over twenty-five years now, and as such has no shortage of weapons for the player to find while traveling the wasted lands of the old world. As the series progressed, its ability to translate real-life weapons into its retro-futuristic post-apocalypse setting has only gotten better, with the most recent games in the franchise featuring nearly one-to-one copies of them. That said, it's still technically a sci-fi game, and an alternate-history one at that, so there are still plenty of weapons that had some interesting modifications to them to fit this style, to say the least. Bearing this in mind, we've added a few more Fallout guns that can also be found in real life to the list.
13 14mm Pistol / Hammerli 280 Pistol
The first Fallout game featured the 14mm Pistol as a mid-game weapon with reasonable damage and accuracy. It is based on the Hammerli 280 pistol, which is a .22 caliber target pistol that holds 6 rounds. Fans will note the similar magazine well and grip, though the game version uses a completely different caliber. Curiously, the 14mm pistol was beaten in damage by the .223 Pistol.
This is somewhat interesting considering that .223 is a rifle caliber, and firing it out of a pistol would surely result in a significant loss of wounding potential. 14mm on the other hand is a very potent real-world pistol cartridge. One would expect these damage values to be flipped.
12 Mauser C96 Pistol
One of the first successful semi-automatic handguns, the C96 makes its series debut in Fallout. It is simply named the Mauser M/96 9mm and is a unique weapon which means there is only one in the whole game. The player obtains it by looting the corpse of Gizmo, a dirty casino owner in Junktown.
The C96 also appears in Fallout 2 under the same name, though is much easier to obtain. In Fallout 3, the pistol returns once again but is renamed to the Chinese Pistol and is chambered for 10mm rather than the historically accurate 7.63 Mauser cartridge.
11 Tommy Gun / M1928 Thompson SMG
The famous M1928 Thompson Submachine gun appears as the Tommy Gun in Fallout 2. Aside from using the weapon's real-world namesake, it portrayed its most famous configuration. This of course consists of the 50-round drum magazine and Cutts compensator on the front end of the barrel.
The weapon is, unsurprisingly, wielded by mobsters in and around the New Reno area. The player can easily obtain it by killing these types of enemies or by simply buying one at a gun shop.
10 XL70E3 / Enfield XL60 Prototype
Though this bullpup assault rifle is named after the British XL70E3, it resembles the earlier XL60 series of rifles more strongly. The term "bullpup" refers to the action of the weapon being placed behind the trigger, giving it a distinct profile.
In Fallout 2, this rifle is chambered in 5mm while its real-life counterpart is chambered in 4.85mm, which is close enough. This weapon was also strictly a prototype and was never mass-produced for any military. In the Fallout world, this obviously cannot be the case as it is a rather ubiquitous weapon in the wasteland.
9 Assault Rifle / CETME-C Battle Rifle
Fallout 3 is Bethesda's first entry in the series. The shift to a fully 3D FPS/RPG type of game allowed the weapons to be much more detailed than before. The Assault Rifle is one such weapon that benefited from the higher level of detail.
Though its name is essentially generic, it is based on the Spanish CETME-C rifle. Players will note that this weapon also resembles the German G3 rifle, however, these are virtually the same rifle. The game's model uses the CETME's Classic wood furniture but the G3's iron sights. It is also chambered in 5.56 when in reality, both the Spanish and German rifles are chambered in 7.62x51 NATO.
8 Chinese Assault Rifle / Kalashnikov Rifles
The Chinese Assault Rifle in Fallout 3 is an interesting case because it's an amalgamation of a few different weapons. It is generally based on various Kalashnikov Rifles such as the AK47, but it also borrows parts from the RPD belt-fed machine gun and the VSS Vintorez (specifically the handguard and folding stock respectively). Having the Chinese Assault Rifle be a Kalashnikov-inspired rifle does make sense given that the Chinese actually copied the weapon in the form of Type 56.
It was the standard-issue rifle of the People's Liberation Army for almost 30 years. It is chambered in 7.62x39mm while the game's version is erroneously chambered in 5.56x45mm.
7 Gauss Rifle / Lahti L-39 Anti-Tank Rifle
One of the few energy weapons in the Fallout games to have a visible link to a real-world firearm is Gauss Rifle from Fallout 3 and New Vegas. This particular weapon shares many aspects with the Finnish L-39 20mm semi-automatic anti-tank rifle, including a nearly identical butt stock, cheek rest, receiver, and rotating charging handle.
Fallout's version takes the top feeding magazine and moves it to the right side of the receiver (rendering it nonfunctional in the process) and adds a bunch of sci-fi junk to make it seem more like a gauss cannon than a WW2-era anti-tank rifle. The Gauss Rifle is also fed with single microfusion cells rather than from a ten-round magazine of 20mm like the L-39 is. The real-life weapon bears the name of its creator, Aimo Lahti, and saw extensive use during the Winter War and WW2 (referred to as the Continuation War in Finland).
6 Service Rifle / AR15 Rifles
In Fallout: New Vegas the New California Republic troops are primarily armed with the Service Rifle, a weapon inspired by the AR15. It seems to primarily take inspiration from the M16a1 and A2 rifles, featuring a fixed carry handle and a triangular-shaped handguard like the A1 but sporting a heavy barrel and Brass deflector like the A2. The rifle also has wood furniture on it, unlike its real-world counterpart's polymer.
Distinct from the AR15's "T-shaped" charging handle, in-game rifles have a side-mounted charging handle similar to that of the AK47. Both are chambered for 5.56x45mm ammunition.
5 Light Machine gun / M60 + FN Minimi
The Light Machine gun is clearly a combination of two different weapons. The back half is based on the Minimi while the front end resembles an M60. What's interesting is these two weapons occupy a different class of ordnance.
The FN Minimi is a Light Machine Gun or "Squad Automatic Weapon" while the M60 is known as a General Purpose Machine Gun. The two guns are designed for different roles and even fire different calibers. New Vegas' LMG fires 5.56x45mm just like the Minimi but unlike the M60 which fires 7.62x51mm.
4 Radium Rifle / Volkssturmgewehr 1-5
Though the Radium Rifle in Fallout 4's Far Harbor DLC looks like a crude weapon with a bunch of junk thrown onto it, its crudeness is historically accurate. The rifle it's based on, the Volkssturmgewehr 1-5, is a so-called "last ditch" weapon created by the Germans during the final days of World War 2.
The goal was to arm the militia's home defense force with a weapon that could be produced as cheaply and quickly as possible. This explains its rather unflattering design. In the game, the rifle does radiation damage and is chambered in a .45 caliber. Its real-life counterpart, however, is chambered in 7.92x33mm and obviously does not do radiation damage.
3 Assault Rifle / M249 + Lewis Gun?
Perhaps the most perplexing gun in Fallout 4 (which is saying a lot considering that there are plasma and laser weapons lying around), the Assault Rifle more closely resembles multiple different kinds of machine guns.
It has a large barrel jacket like the Lewis Gun, though also features a nonsensical coolant line as if it's a water-cooled machine gun (the Lewis was air-cooled). The receiver also somewhat resembles an MG08/15 but has a handguard taken straight off of the m249 belt-fed LMG. It is a strange weapon to anyone who even remotely knows about firearms.
2 Black Powder Rifle / 1841 Mississippi Rifle
Coinciding with the historical significance of this weapon, the Black Powder Rifle is among the first black powder muzzle-loading weapons to appear in a Fallout title, whereas the actual 1841 Mississippi Percussion Rifle was the first weapon of its kind adopted by the American military. Prior to this the military primarily used flintlock weapons, which were less reliable in bad weather conditions, more mechanically complex, and harder to fire accurately in comparison to percussion lock rifles like the 1841 Mississippi Rifle.
It was chambered in .54 and .58 caliber (similar to the games' .50 caliber), and it would see service in both the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War years later, even though it had officially been replaced by the 1855 Springfield Rifle.
1 M79 Grenade Launcher
In a surprising turn of events, Fallout 76 features a practically flawless recreation of the famous M79 "Blooper" Grenade Launcher (one of its many nicknames for the sound it makes upon firing). The m79 in the game fires a 40mm projectile just like the real one does, though, unlike the Fallout version the m79 is capable of firing a wide range of projectile types that sadly don't exist in Fallout 76.
The Blooper entered service in the early 1960s and saw extensive use during the Vietnam War even after it was eventually replaced by the iconic M203 under barrel grenade launcher. More recently, however, the weapon saw limited use during Operation Iraqi Freedom clearing IEDs among other things.