The Best in Fictional Weaponry: The BFG 9000

*Originally published on 3/5/12



OK, quick admission here, I've never played Doom. Much like The Legend of Zelda, this is one of those iconic franchises that I have next to no familiarity with. As I've said, I'm not that big a gamer so a lot of this stuff just sort of went past my radar when I was a kid.

Nevertheless, it is a pop culture icon and it brought us the weapon that will be discussed now. With so many weapons available to you in the games, it might seem like a hard choice to make, but really, when it comes to the best weaponry, what else could it be? It has to be the one, the only, BFG 9000.

While the movie tried to tout the weapon as being called a "Bio Force Gun", fans (as well as the game manual) will tell you that it stands for "big f$#%ing gun".

Really, that's what it is. There's nothing more to it. It's right there in the title. It's a big f…reaking gun. It's quite elegant in its simplicity. It may not have the bells and whistles of other weapons, but it doesn't need them.

Sometimes, all you need is a really big gun to shoot stuff with, and as far as that is concerned, you can't ask for any better than this.

Even to this day, it stands as the most powerful weapon in the Doom franchise. The BFG is capable of firing giant balls of green plasma energy that kill any enemy in the vicinity with a single hit.

As if that wasn't testament enough to the greatness of the weapon, it has been quasi-incorporated into another game series outside of the Doom franchise. That's right, a similar gun, called the "BFG10K" has been featured in two entries in the Quake series.

If my word isn't enough to convince you of the gun's status as one of the best, there are several lists at sites like UGO and IGN that rank it in the top ten best video game weapons of all time. G4's X-Play even ranked it as the number 1 badass video game weapon.

I may not be a gamer, but I know an awesome weapon when I see it. The BFG is an awesome weapon.