
Front cover detail, Sam & Max: Freelance Police special edition.
Sam owns a big gun which he seems to carry around everywhere he goes. The gun can be seen in almost every comic and appears as a usable item in every Telltale Sam & Max video game. With the exception of a brief appearance in the beginning of the episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang", it's never mentioned in the animated series (being replaced by such child-friendly weapons as bazookas and flamethrowers), making it explicitly absent only in Sam & Max Hit the Road, where it's left back at the dry cleaner's.
The name Big Kill was first used by Steve Purcell in one of the early drawings of Sam and Max. The gun wasn't directly referred to by this name until the third episode of The Devil's Playhouse: They Stole Max's Brain!, where it is listed as "Big Kill" in Sam's notebook.
The Big Kill closely resembles a Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver and is almost as long as Sam's arm. The Model 29 was one of the most powerful handguns in existence at the time of its introduction and has become a highly popular and well-recognized weapon by being the weapon of choice of "Dirty" Harry Callahan.
In the comics Sam is quite trigger-happy but a lousy shot, never actually hitting anyone. In the Telltale Sam & Max games this dynamic is reversed, with Sam being reluctant to even threaten people with the gun, but he can hit any object on the first try.
Trivia[]
- As part of a promotion for Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse between Valve Corporation and Telltale Games, the Big Kill was added to the game Team Fortress 2 along with the item Max's Severed Head. The gun was awarded to players who bought The Devil's Playhouse on either the Telltale Store or Steam before April 26th 2010.
- In Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, instead of being able to pull out the gun (with the visual of Sam pulling it out of his coat and holding it in his hand) and shoot at anything for potential unheard lines, the visual of Sam pulling it off is removed, and if trying to shoot non story related objects or NPCs, Sam will say: "That would be a waste of bullets." and "I don't need to shoot anybody, it's already enough they know i HAVE a gun."