Tesla Cannon

The Tesla cannon is a shoulder-mounted, non-recoil energy weapon that fires powerful blasts of electricity. It is powered by electron charge packs. It is likely based on designs confiscated by the US Government after the death of Nikola Tesla.

Appearances
The was added to Fallout 3 in the Broken Steel add-on and appears in Fallout: New Vegas. It was going to appear in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2, which was canceled by Interplay.

Behind the scenes

 * The Tesla cannon was originally to be featured in the canceled Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2, bearing a striking resemblance to the weapon in Broken Steel. Described as a "high-powered mass-cannon throwing tessellated plasma forward in an orgy of death and destruction" in the FO:BOS2 design document, it was to be the so-called "uber-weapon" of player character Maxus. "Uber-weapons" were to be unique weapons for each PC which had to be assembled from 5 parts over the course of the game. One of the five parts for this weapon was a Tesla coil.
 * Nikola Tesla really did try to create a directed energy weapon but it would have been a particle beam weapon called a "Teleforce", something that would be immensely complicated to create (laser weapons would be simple by comparison) and is a type of weapon that is not even mentioned in Fallout 3 (possibly the entire series). Simply put, a particle weapon accelerates atoms or electrons at extremely high velocity (at relativistic speeds) to damage a target.