The MAT-49 submachine gun appears in the 1970 movie Patton held by Moroccan troops in a 1943 North Africa scene, years before the weapon existed.

France adopted it in 1949 after postwar trials at Manufacture Nationale d’Armes de Tulle, with production starting in 1950. About 700,000 were made until 1979.

It served French forces in Indochina, Suez, and Algeria, and more than two dozen other countries, mostly former colonies, still employ it in limited numbers as of 2026. The gun has shown up in over 100 films yet remains little known outside France.