WHILE THE WEAPONS DEPICTED in the now expansive Star Wars film series are entirely fictional, believe it or not, a good number of the blasters depicted in the movies and other media have been based on real-world firearms.
The original Star Wars, now known as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977), was made on a tight budget considering all the special effects work that had to be done, and it was mostly shot overseas. As a result, the prop department built an array of blasters and laser swords from what was available to them. At the time, that meant a lot of WWII-surplus firearms like Sterling SMGs.
Since the following movies, even though they had larger budgets, couldn’t change the aesthetics created in the original, the practice continued—although many later iterations of various blasters were pure props with no actual firearms underneath.
Even in the prequel trilogy, the sequel trilogy, and the Star Wars Stories series of films along with the Disney+ show _The Mandalorian—many of the space blasters are still modeled after real-world guns even though they’re built on airsoft guns or original molds.
Here are some of the blasters and other weapons from a galaxy far, far away and the terrestrial guns they are based on.
The Prequel Trilogy
The Original Trilogy
The Sequel Trilogy + Star Wars Stories
The Mandalorian
