I know the Sniper Rifle's real world counterpart has been discussed a bit in the past
(here and here) where people have shared their thoughts on what the Sniper Rifle is based on.
Some people thought it was a WA2000 or VSS Vintorez or (insert generic scoped rifle here). All of those are wrong in my opinion.
I came across a page on
Goldeneye Wikia for the Sniper Rifle which names the real world counterpart for the Sniper Rifle as the Russian
KSVK 12.7 which to me seems the most plausible answer.
Firstly you can see the fundamental shape is the same, it has the very long barrel with extended silencer (it's not a silencer in real life) and it has the large bullpup-style buttstock. Everything is in relatively the correct place. The differences are of course the bipod legs and the scope, but I'll come back to them later.
Secondly, it's Russian and was in development for the Russian military in the late 90's. So it's very plausible why it would be lying around in Dam and Surface.
Now, back to the differences.. as the rifle was definitely in development when Goldeneye was released, plausibly the Sniper Rifle could actually be a sort of prototype version of the KSVK, which would account for the slight differences in design (wood stock in areas where there is none, a different and much bulkier scope which is mounted off-center to the left, no bipod legs)
I'm not going to lie.. I think
the current sniper rifle model is completely wrong, the only genuine similarity it has with the original is the fact that the barrel is white. It's not a bullpup, and really it's very generic in design.
What do you guys think?