Yes, the Mandalorian actually carries a Bergmann Model of 1894 - blaster - pistol.
So, I've been actually planning to do a video on guns that Star Wars props are based on,
because virtually everything in especially the original three Star Wars movies,
they were all just like regular actual guns with stuff glued onto them.
Which is why like every time I have a video on anything vaguely related to the Sterling, it gets called an E-11 blaster rifle.
At any rate, I haven't gotten around to that yet, but my hand has been kind of forced
by the release of the first episode of The Mandalorian, a TV program about a Mandalorian bounty hunter.
And in this they make a fairly prominent use of a Bergmann Model of 1894 pistol as the basis for the title character's sidearm.
And it's a super cool gun. And so I've gotten a bunch of comments from people asking about it,
and so we're gonna go ahead and take a look at that right now.
Now right off the bat, the image that I have seen floating around the internet a bunch, is this one.
And what's funny to me is this image is actually not quite right,
because the top one, the Mandalorian's pistol there, has actually been mirrored.
So they're showing actually the left side of the prop gun there compared to the right side of a real gun.
And I think someone did it because that's the only really good still frame they were able to get,
and they wanted to mate it up side-by-side to a real pistol.
And by the way, that bottom pistol is a still image from my video on the Bergmann No.1, the Bergmann Model of 1894.
So ... I've tried to get a couple of still frames that are a little bit better at showing this.
One of the things that people point out about that original mirror image thing is like, "Oh, they put a drill bit on the side of the gun."
Well in actual fact the original Bergmann No.1s, or at least some of them, like this one from the Swiss trials, had a cleaning rod
stashed on the side of the gun with this interesting sort of jag pattern that makes it look rather like a drill bit.
Now the gun that I actually had hands on to do a video didn't have that cleaning rod on it,
but you can see it on the Swiss trials gun picture.
So, they've actually not done all that much.
This is kind of like Han Solo's blaster pistol in the original movies where it was a C96 Broomhandle without all that much done to it.
What they've actually done here is they've added a muzzle cone, thing, to make it look bigger at the muzzle.
They've added a new rear sight, and it looks like they put like some
... not Picatinny rail, but like serrations on the top of
the frame, sort of top of the slide. The Bergmann doesn't have a slide per se, so it's just kind of the top ... of the gun.
They put on a new rear sight to match the front sight, not a bad idea.
Interestingly they actually changed the hammer.
They made the hammer look a bit like the C96 Broomhandle hammers,
as opposed to the original sort of sharp pointed hammer that the Bergmann had.
There is this semi-circular grasping thing on the side of the Bergmann,
and that's to open up the loading port on the side of the gun.
They got rid of that, they actually replaced it with some sort of circular
disc, decorative thing.
... From the pictures I've been able to see, you can't really tell what it is. But they've kept sort of the circular motif,
but they got rid of the big thumb grasping bit that you use to open the gun.
And then they changed up the base of the grip of the gun.
So originally all the Bergmann No.1s had this bird's head grip with a lanyard ring on it, or lanyard loop on it.
Instead in the TV series, in the Mandalorian, they have kind of squared off the bottom of the grip.
And the thing that it looks most like to me is actually like the magazine floorplate off of an L-35 Lahti pistol.
So, one of the things that I think some people are going to be concerned about is,
"Oh great, now a bunch of New Wave Star Wars nerds are going to buy up all the Bergmann No.1s
and cut them up to make Mandalorian pistols."
Well, I can tell you with pretty much complete confidence that that's not going to happen.
There are extremely few Bergmann No.1s, or Bergmann 1894s, still around.
The one that I had in my video was serial number 14 and I doubt they made more than 20, if that many.
This was really a prototype model. There was the Bergmann No.2 in 1896 that really started serial production.
They look similar but not quite the same, and most substantially, they're a lot smaller.
So if you're going to give the Mandalorian a service sidearm sort of thing, you want a gun that's big enough to look impressive.
The Bergmann No.2 is a little pocket pistol that doesn't fit the role or the character.
So I think it's really cool that whoever was doing the weapon props for the Mandalorian picked this thing.
It's big enough to look appropriate to the part, I think it's a fantastic looking gun.
And as you can see, it really doesn't take much to turn a Bergmann No.1 into a pretty sweet looking Star Wars blaster pistol.
So, one of the things about the Star Wars universe, as I mentioned earlier on, is that virtually all
of the guns in it are in fact based on real actual firearms with bits glued onto them.
So at some point I will go ahead and do another video ...
... probably focusing on just the original first three movies to begin with, because there's a ton of stuff.
But just pointing out what they actually used, a lot of the original movies are World War Two guns.
So anyway that's coming but seeing a ton of people talking about the Mandalorian,
I thought it'd be fun to put up this little quickie on the Mandalorian's Bergmann blaster pistol.
Thanks for watching.