Bottomless Magazines - Television Tropes & Idioms

Hellsing does this, as nearly every gun user, and one character who fights by throwing bayonets, is shown to have unlimited ammunition, or at least Super Speed combined with an implausibly large number of reloads. The creater jokingly states at one end-of-manga rant that Alucard's firearms are "cosmoguns" that hold an enormous amount of ammunition, while the bayonet-using Anderson is just "fourth dimensional."
- An exception to this is the "anti-tank rifle" used during the attack on Hellsing mansion. It holds only one shell and reloading takes a realistic amount of time. Then again it might very well be done purely for drama.
  - Then that's Double Subverted when they get a fully automatic verson....
Played straight with Vash's opponents in Trigun, who never seem to run out of ammunition. This becomes even more confusing/distressing with Elendira the Crimson Nails who seems to have an infinite number of giant nails hidden in her briefcase gun.
- And except for a hilarious subversion of a Mexican Standoff at the beginning (and despite complaining that bullets are hideously expensive), Vash never runs out of bullets, either.
- Another exception is the standoff with Knives at the end of the series, where both of them have only one bullet each and are playing Russian Roulette with the other person's gun in their eye.
Makina fires something like 500 rounds each from her dual machine guns before changing magazines.
Mobile Suits will only reload when it is least convenient to reload.
- Even then, it mostly just applies to Heavyarms.
  - Heavyarms has been shown to run out of ammo on multiple occasions, however. Most pointedly in its battle with Sandrock early in the series, as well as in Endless Waltz; its magazines aren't bottomless, but they're sure as hell high-capacity.
In Full Metal Panic!, Sōsuke is evidently not used to running out of bullets and having to reload. This is evidenced in an episode of Fumoffu, where he plays a First Person Shooter arcade game and gets flustered when he runs out of ammo. He proceeds to pull out his real gun, in order to continue shooting. Interestingly enough, he's developed a habit of, instead of reloading, pulling out another fully loaded weapon instead. It works for him though — he certainly manages to carry an unlimited amount of firearms on his person.
Grave in Gungrave reloads his gun ONCE in the entire series.
Elie's Guns Tonfa in Groove Adventure Rave are often used for full auto bullet-spraying. There are no visible magazines, intergral magazines for guns the size of tonfas shouldn't have that much capacity, and she is never shown reloading.

Made fun of in the card game Ninja Samurai on Giant Robot Island, where the flavor text on a gun reads: "There is no word in the Chinese language for 'reloading'."

In The DCU, The Modern Age version of Jonah Hex has guns that channel his own psychic energy, and the Modern Age Crimson Avenger has the original's guns, now magically attuned to her. In both cases the effect is the same, they never run out of ammo.
In the French Wild West comic Lucky Luke, the title character does this often. When asked "Do you ever reload?" in one Animated Adaptation, he replies "Yes, at the end of the episode."
- That one is a transcription of the original comic, where he replied, "Yes, between each album."
- Another lampshade comes in the animated series: when asked if he ever reload, he answers with his Catch Phrase "Yes I do, faster than my shadow", then the camera moves and show that the shadow is STILL reloading the bullets shot during the previous gunfight.
Handwaved in Preacher, wherein the Saint of Killers has a pair of Walker Colt revolvers that never run out of bullets because they were forged from the former Angel of Death's sword.
Played dead straight with the Holiday Killer in The Long Halloween. Either he/she had a .22 pistol able to fire fifty shots at once, or the Riddler was a good sport and stayed stock-still while Holiday put a bullet outline around him, not moving even while Holiday was reloading.

In the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast, during the "Gaston" scene (read: tavern scene), Gaston fires three shots into a keg, causing beer to spill out, in under a second. He used a muzzle-loaded black powder rifle. Even the fastest shooters (such as soldiers) can only get three shots off in a minute.
- But no-one shoots like Gaston.

Any movie with an AK-47. It has a magazine of 30, and empties in 3 seconds. Ever seen a film where that happens?
In The Mummy, during the riverboat battle, one American fires a total of twelve shots from a six-cylinder revolver.
- Have fun with some drinking games based on this one. In the same riverboat battle, Rick fires about fourteen times without reloading, whereas with exactly the same gun three years before he ran out after about three shots in each. During the camp battle he only fire six, so that's okay.
Similarly, in The Man Who Fell to Earth, a six-cylinder revolver is fired seventeen times in succession.
Occurs three times in Evil Dead: Army of Darkness. After being saved from the well with the deadite, Ash fires his double-barrel shotgun three times without reloading. The second time is just after that, when Ash is relaxing in the castle. He fires FOUR times from his double-barreled shotgun, without reloading. The third time was in the theatrical ending of the movie, where Ash fires at least two dozens rounds at the deadite in S-Mart from a lever action rifle.
- Also, his chainsaw seems to never run out of fuel. Or need any fuel, for that matter.
Max Payne, in which Max fires roughly thirty shots from an M9 during one shootout and is never seen reloading.
- In-game, however, everything reloads, complete with scattered empty magazines. In the sequel, an effect of getting deep into bullet-time is to make this even more badass.
Deep Rising (with the exception of a Karmic Death) has people firing automatic weapons at the monsters with never-ending bullets. At one point they even start shooting up an empty room. Just for the hell of it.
- Attempted justification: in the beginning they mentioned the magazine can hold 1000 rounds of ammo which would last quite a while but would be far bigger than shown in the movie (the guns do exist in reality but only have a maximum capacity of 50 rounds).
Shootout at the OK Corral. Doc Holliday fires three shots in a row... from a double-barreled shotgun.
Equilibrium deals with this by having the main character have a mechanism under his sleeves that loads his pistols with new magazines. This does not explain how exactly the mechanism works however, or how many magazines it holds. He also has sort of elaborate decoy magazines, magazines on round bottoms that he tosses to the floor, runs out and shoots down several guards before dropping to the floor and slotting the magazines into his gun.
- Careful counting of shots along the hallway scene in which both the sleeve reload and the weighted weeble clips are used reveals at least 30 rounds per clip are being fired all the way along. At best count, about 40 are fired before the first reload, possibly more.
In Commando, the ammunition belt on Arnold's machinegun actually gets longer every time they cut away and cut back.
- Parodied in Hot Shots, Part Deux during the rescue, when the action cuts away from Topper Harley firing a machine gun several times. Each time the camera cuts back to him, the pile of shell casings around him is higher and the belt is the same length.
In Snatch the trope is averted and later followed. Earlier, Bullet Tooth Tony runs out of bullets killing Boris the bullet dodger — he is unable to kill Tyrone; he pulls the trigger, the gun goes click, and he comments "You lucky bastard". In this sequence, he reloads at least once, and each magazine holds 7 shots. (The gun clearly has Desert Eagle .50 on the side). HOWEVER, later on, Cousin Avi gets the gun and fires 10 shots at a dog.
Grosse Pointe Blank has this in abundance. Oddly, his lack of ammo then becomes very important in his brief stand off with Grocer.
Appears during the hilarious chase scene in Raising Arizona: a cashier reloads his double-barreled shotgun after firing one shell at H.I., but then fires off five shells in a row without stopping.
John Woo movies. Almost every single one. The only time the guns ever seem to run out of ammunition is when it's somehow relevant to the plot.
- Woo has stated in interviews that showing a reload detracts from the action of a gunfight and he wonders why American film audiences are so obsessed with it. Correlates with the MST 3 K Mantra.
- Actually, this isn't entirely true. In the final battle in The Killer, you see one of the main characters toss a clip to the other so he can reload.
Played ludicrously straight in Underworld, in which a pair of automatic pistols can be used to make a person-sized hole in a floor, Looney Tunes-style, after firing off about a dozen rounds.
Lampshade Hanging and Parodied ruthlessly in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, where the protagonist chases down a thug with his Magnum, and keeps shooting. After a brief chase, the thug stops him and goes:
Willie: Now, you got a .45 revolver that holds six bullets! Now, I counted at least twenty shots and you never reloaded!
Slammer: That's right.
Almost averted in the '50s monster movie Attack of the Giant Leeches, where we do see a character reload. Almost, because before and after reloading, he manages to fire off five shots from a double-barreled shotgun.
The Matrix avoided this, but unfortunately The Matrix Revolutions succumbed to it during its Lobby Shootout scene (the ones with bad guys on the ceiling), in which no character ever reloads or throws away guns, and in the subway chase when The Trainman fires at least 11 rounds from his 6-shot revolver, without reloading (or being shown to, anyway).
- That's because the subway is a reality controlled by the trainman. I'm pretty sure one of the characters comments on his lack of reloads at some point.
The director's commentary for Planet Terror notes that even the actors were wondering about it. The director told them, "It's not that kind of movie."
In Saving Private Ryan, the American sniper fires more than five shots from his Springfield sniper rifle without reloading, exceeding the weapon's capacity.
Subverted (as are many, many other tropes) in the movie Last Action Hero. When they are in the movie, everybody's shooting left and right without ever pausing to reload. When they exit the movie to real life, Arnie realizes things work differently: cars don't blow up, and guns need reloading. In one of the final scenes, as the Big Bad is shooting his revolver randomly in Arnie's direction, he apparently runs out of ammo. Arnie pops out of his hiding place and pokes fun at the Big Bad forgetting to reload, only to discover he has faked running out and has one last bullet left... with which he's immediately shot.
Jack Slater: Did you make a movie mistake? You forgot to reload the damn gun.
Benedict: No, Jack. I just left one chamber empty.
In the first half of the final gun battle in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch and Sundance are shown reloading their guns every six shots... but then they go the entire rest of the fight without ever reloading.
Seymour's revolver in the film of the musical Little Shop of Horrors has at least 12 shots.
Pretty notable in Constantine. As IMDB puts it, "Angela fires her gun consecutively 30 times without reloading, but her Smith and Wesson Model 6906 holds a total of 13 rounds."
The I, Robot film was a big offender. Spooner never reloads any of the several pistols he uses throughout the movie, but even worse, he has a submachine gun that gets a lot of use toward the end. By 2035, apparently bullets are infinite.
In Hot Fuzz, the bartender fires 8 shots from his double-barreled shotgun before ducking to reload.
In The Fast and the Furious, the villain fires way more rounds than the submachine gun he's carrying can hold in a magazine during the final chase scene. Furthermore, he's doing so while riding a motorcycle, giving him no realistically-conceivable means of reloading.
- In a variation, toward the beginning of the film, the hero upshifts at least eight times in a car that only has five gears.
Die Hard: No one ever reloads, unless it's plot important. The Steyr Aug has a magazine of 30, and the bad guy fires constantly for minutes.
A minor version of this happens with the original Halloween II. In the first Halloween, Dr. Loomis shoots Michael Myers once with a six-cylinder revolver, then after Myers staggers back a few steps, Loomis takes aim and fires the other five bullets in his gun, causing Myers to fall off a balcony to the ground below. However, the scene where Michael is shot and falls off the balcony was re-shot for the second film, leading to two rather glaring continuity errors: the balcony looks completely different than the first film's, and Loomis shoots Myers with six bullets instead of five following that initial shot. Which mean that, instead of shooting him "six times", as Loomis claims, he actually shot him seven times.
In The Lord of the Rings, Legolas' quiver always has three arrows in it at any given time.
In Hellboy, the title character's revolver The Samaritan clearly holds and is loaded with four bullets, but when he shoots at Sammael in the museum he fires it six times before putting it back in his belt, then on the street twice more. When he reloads it with a tracking bullet a while later he doesn't remove any shell casings. He shoots it more than four times while fighting the tooth fairies in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army as well.
Occurs twice when Lana Ravine is firing her revolver in Fatal Instinct: when she's at the firing range and when she's shooting Max Shady.
Der Clown – Payday: Considering the amount of ammo the villains blow through their machine guns in the many shoot-outs without ever reloading, they would require to have chainguns and pull several feet of ammo after them. In fact, in this movie, clips are only ever inserted and never exchanged.
In the 1939 movie Stagecoach, during the final chase scene, nearly every male riding the stagecoach has a Winchester or revolver, and are shooting them as fast as possible, but none of them are shown reloading them (the Native Americans, on the other hand, sometimes have to reload theirs). Then suddenly, without warning, they're out of ammo and about to be overrun (before The Cavalry saves them).
In Undead, the police officer's revolver fires a rather obscene amount of rounds in the first gunfight.
- However the Merriam — the film's resident badass redneck, whose weapons have reasonable ammunition — just produces an infinite number of them from you don't want to know where.

In John Scalzi's Old Man's War series, the standard issue gun that each soldier is given (the MP-35) is powered by an ammo block of nanites that can create eight different types of ammunition. While the blocks don't last forever, they hold 100 times more ammo than a regular rifle.
- Despite this, ammo capacity's still a tiny, tiny bit of a plot point. The really, really nasty types of exploding ammo eat a lot more of the block than the standard bullets and shot, limiting their use (a bit).

Lampshaded in Mystery Science Theater 3000, "Escape 2000", when Crow remarks of the main character: "He must be playing in god mode with unlimited ammo."
Lampshade Hanging in Sledge Hammer where almost every episode had this trope. (Heck, every time we look at the chamber of Sledge's gun it's not loaded, but ten seconds later the revolver can fire ten rounds without him even touching a bullet.) In one episode during a shootout, Da Chief yells "Where the hell is he getting all this ammo?"
In an episode of Heroes, Ando and Hiro take cover as a stripper and a cop begin firing at each other. They fire countless times at each other, even though they both have "regular" guns, and the stripper even has a bullet left when they're done shooting. Commented on and mocked on the audio commentary for that episode.
In Darkplace, after remarking that he only has five shots left in his revolver, Daglass fires off nine shots in a row. Thorton Reed is also known for firing his shotgun repeatedly without reloading. It's deliberately So Bad Its Good, so it gets a pass.
On The Muppet Show, The Swedish Chef in one episode shoots three bagels with a blunderbuss, which as we all know, can only have ONE bullet at a time, and 5-10 minutes of reloading before shooting again. He shoots two bagels after the first WITHOUT reloading.

Handwaved quite literally in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The urbane Glass Walkers know a Gift that transports rounds directly from spare cartridges to the gun. The Garou temporarily skirts the inconvenience of reloading as long as he has mags on his person somewhere.
- Also, they can create magical one-shot items called Bottomless Magazines, which do just what you'd think they do for one scene.
Both played straight and averted in the Wild West/HP Lovecraft RPG Deadlands. Being a 6-shot-toting spaghetti western at heart, bullet count and hasty reloading is an important part of gameplay for most kinds of PCs. However, one of the most basic spells that a Gunslinger (a hybrid Mage/Shootist class) can learn consists in materializing bullets in a gun's cylinder, essentially never having to worry about it. I may be mistaken, but I believe a Mad Scientist character could also easily invent and build an infinite ammo gun, should he be so inclined. Mostly they design plans for Gatling Flamers, ~~nuclear~~ ghost rock bombs and flying steam trains though. A "better 6 shot" would be so... mundane.
- Either way, you have to spend at least one action to reload your gun, either by mundane (speed loader) or magical means.
The Feng Shui RPG, in all its cinematic glory, offers a gun skill that specifically replicates this trope. A character who purchases three shticks in Lightning Reload is allowed infinite ammo and never needs to reload no matter the circumstances.
In It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show, you're playing an actor in a B-movie. Any missile weapons you get have the same number of shots as your Fame score (basically your experience points). If your actor has 48 Fame points, then the derringer he's got up his sleeve has 48 shots.
In Mage: The Awakening, there is an actual magical item called a "bottomless magazine". It isn't actually literally bottomless. Instead it is enchanted to continuously teleport bullets from a specially set aside cache (containing hundreds of them) into the magazine.
The anime-inspired Big Eyes Small Mouth averts this normally, but also provides "Dramatic Ammunition" rules, wherein Bottomless Magazines apply until the GM deems it dramatically appropriate for the player to run out of ammo. Under these rules, the player can purchase the ability One Bullet Left, which gives them one more shot when the GM makes that declaration.
The "Infinite Ammunition" option in GURPS means the players always have extra bullets or arrows. It's also a perk in the Gun Fu splatbook.

In most first or third person shooter video games, the enemies will never have to reload their guns. See below for exceptions.
This is par for the course for any mounted gun emplacement in a video game. Think of the damage you could do if there was a way to unbolt one from its perch and carry it with you (which can be done in Halo 3, but unfortunately, they then revert to having limited ammo).
Most early First Person Shooters had Bottomless Magazines without unlimited ammo — you never, ever had to reload; as long as you had ammo, you could shoot.
- Some weapons did have a "reload" animation of sorts, however; Doom's shotgun had to be cocked, and Doom 2's double-barreled shotgun had to be manually reloaded each time.
Although most modern FPS games do require you to reload your guns, some feature unrealistically large magazines, allowing you to fire for a prolonged period of time before needing to reload. I.E. In Halo: Combat Evolved, the assault rifle loads 60 rounds of 7.62mm FMJ ammo, which would make the mag MUCH larger than it actually appears in-game. Also see the Xbox game Black, where the M4 Carbine had an unrealistically large mag size of 70 rounds (despite being a standard 30 round mag in appearance). Then again, it was admitted by one of the artists that visual style and aesthetics were prioritized over accurate depictions.
- However, the minute you give a friendly your gun, they suddenly have an untold amount of ammo for it, regardless of what they were carrying before. If you take it back after they've used it a bit, it'll have the same amount of ammo it had when you gave it to them. This is particularly useful with a rocket launcher. Wait until you have one, trade it off, and keep the rocket guy alive for more Stuff Blowing Up.
An enormous amount of real time strategy games use this trope, since managing ammo and a battlefield would be far too hectic.
Pretty much any and every Eastern RPG character who uses a bow, gun, or other ranged weapon will play this trope to the hilt.
Shown in both Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad by Id/Apogee games, but only with the pistol. In Triad, even the Dual Pistol setting works like this.
Up until IV, the Grand Theft Auto series used this with pump-action shotguns, presumably to compensate for the slow reload speed.
Played shamelessly in Hellgate London, where ANY firearms never run out of ammo. The ammo? Well, that's an attachment in this game.
Bullet Witch intentionally uses a variant of this trope. One of the powers the lead character possesses is to convert part of her constantly-regenerating supply of MP into bullets or shells for her gun. She can't fire forever without reloading, but she can reload forever.
The Boktai series has a protagonist whose main firearm is powered by sunlight. Give him some sunscreen and he can literally shoot all day.
Resident Evil: Code Veronica. The protagonist hands her sidekick empty twin Ingram MAC-10s. A cut-scene involves handing him a single magazine. He can keep blasting (in game and during cut-scenes) literally hundreds of bullets from both guns, up until a pivotal cut-scene takes place.
- Said pivotal cutscene involves Steve firing both MAC-10s until they run out of ammo at the same time — despite the fact that 15 seconds earlier, he shoots a wall with a long burst with only one gun. To top it off, he'll still fire in both cutscenes even if the player drains the guns of ammo during the playable Steve sequence.
- Likewise, once you clear the game and unlock the Survivors mini-game, you can fire Steve's twin MAC-10s for almost 30 continuous seconds before they run out, despite the fact that a MAC-10 empties a full magazine (32 rounds) in just under two seconds.
- Even more amusing are Steve's Gold Lugers. Claire actually finds them first, with no ammo in them. Then Steve takes them. Later on, Steve rescues Claire by going Guns Akimbo with the Gold Lugers, then trading them back to you - with no ammo. Not only that, but there's no ammo for them in the entire game — their use is strictly to place into a door so it unlocks.
- If you start Resident Evil 3: Nemesis on Easy Mode, you start with a fully loaded M4A1 and a single magazine — which contain 300 rounds, each. Combined, that gives you enough bullets to reach the second half of the game before they run out, provided that you use other weapons to kill Nemesis.
- Resident Evil 4 & 5 start the player off with reasonable, though a bit high, clip sizes. But the upgrade system plays this straight, eventually allowing your small handgun to hold 50+ Bullets per clip.
In the game John Woo Presents Stranglehold, although you don't have unlimited ammunition, you do still have Bottomless Magazines — as long as your gun has ammo, you can fire continuously without stopping to reload. In fact, the only time Tequila reloads is when he's gearing up to unleash a Barrage attack.
Lampshaded in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. A character complains that her guidebook on a hammer-throwing enemy tells you everything except where they get the infinite supply of hammers.
Devil May Cry absolutely loves this. If you couldn't pump out a constant stream of handgun bullets, it just wouldn't be the same. In fact, it loves this trope so much that it HandWaves it, saying that one of Dante's powers is to create ammunition inside his guns.
- It loves it so much because of an intentional decision Hideki Kamiya made for the original game; he has stated that he wanted to keep the action of the game as fast as possible, and forcing the character to stop and reload would only slow things down.
- Double subverted with DMC4's Nero, who needs to reload his revolver and spends a good few seconds in a cutscene pulling off a slo-mo Unorthodox Reload; it's then played straight in regular gameplay, as you can keep firing as long as you want, only when you stop will Nero flick his wrist, presumably reloading it at super human speeds.
- Lady is a peculiar case; although she is shown reloading her small arms regularly, she seems to carry more magazines that should be possible, while she is never seen reloading her "Kalina Ann" rocket launcher.
Metal Gear Solid 3 does play this straight but still lampshades it with the Patriot, a gun you obtain after beating the game once. When you call up your tech specialist over the radio, he asks how it never runs out of ammo or needs to be reloaded. Snake's answer: "Because the internal feed mechanism is shaped like an infinity symbol." It apparently explains the whole thing adequately.
- There's also the on-rails action against the Shagohod where you do get unlimited ammo of whatever weapon you had at the moment (as well as the RPG). The explanation is that the sidecar of the motorcycle that you're riding in has lots of ammunition in it...
  - Which gets more than a little ridiculous when you start using the RPG and quick reload (equipping and unequipping weaponry, a bit of bizarre MGS-logic).
Metal Gear Solid 2 too plays with this, sort off. In Snake's fight with Olga she regularly has to reload her USP, but never seems to run out of spare magazines... until you defeat her, of course.
- Also, late in the game, when Raiden and Snake help each other fight their way out of Arsenal Gear, Raiden asks Snake why he doesn't have to worry about ammo. Snake points at his headband and says "infinite ammo". Raiden accepts this explanation with no further discussion. Is that lampshading, or shining a giant neon spotlight on it?
  - Oddly enough, it's a reference to the good ending of the first game; the item received has that exact property.
  - It also serves to emphasize the fact that Raiden is having significant trouble separating reality from his VR training, along with the fact that he's probably hallucinating. In fact, the whole end of the game is bizarre mostly for this very reason. Trying figuring out what's really happening.
Metal Gear Solid 4 averts this with four exceptions: mounted weapon emplacements (the machine gun turrets have infinite ammo while the mortars are single-shot but each use causes a mortar shell to appear for loading), the two vehicular chase sequences (finite ammo but infinite magazines) and the Patriot (the only personal weapon with infinite ammo).
Tony Montana in Scarface: The World Is Yours gains infinite ammunition when he enters a Blind Rage mode, then abruptly returns to needing to watch his ammo usage once he goes back to normal. This also occurs in Army of Two's Overkill mode.
In Serious Sam, the attachment of a "Techno-Magical Ammunition Replenisher" allows for guns to have infinite reloads. Similarly, the usage of an advanced fuel cell HandWaves the unlimited run-time of the chainsaw.
In Metal Slug, the default pistol never runs out of bullets (because otherwise you'd be screwed). However, wait after firing a certain number (or more) of shots (9 for the male characters, who have automatics, and 6 for the revolver-packing girls), and your character will yank the magazine out and replace it. Not that they need to, but the animators just felt like paying attention to that detail.
Exquisitely Justified in Mass Effect, in which the basic principle of "force equals mass times velocity" is taken to its natural conclusion — while current weapons have around a dozen bullets the size of marbles propelled at trans-sonic speeds by exploding gunpowder, late 22nd century weapons have thousands of bullets the size of grains of sand propelled at relativistic speeds by superconducting magnets. It's not technically infinite ammo, but it can take days for gunfighters to run dry.
- There is a mechanic that serves a similar purpose to limited ammo magazines in the game, though; each gun has a limited number of shots it can fire before the weapon will overheat on you. Lay on the trigger too much and you'll have to wait a short time before you can fire again, analogous to a mag swap.
  - Unless you're using heat absorbers and/or snowblind ammo. Just hold down the trigger until the badguys stop making their dying-noises. Similarly, firing in short bursts even without those can prevent overheating.
  - Or you could just go to the other extreme and install kinetic rails and high explosive ammo in your sniper rifle. Insta-overheat, For Massive Damage.
In Syndicate Wars your agents have built-in micro-fusion reactors that create ammunition for their weapons. Where they're keeping those weapons, though, we don't ask.
Killer 7: MASK DE Smith's penultimate upgrade gives his grenade launchers Bottomless Magazines; previously, he had to reload after every shot.
- And even though every character has to reload (except for Kevin, who uses knives), they never run out of clips.
Played straight in both total ammunition and lack of reloading in Call of Duty 4 with mounted weapon emplacements even when they were just fixed-in-place versions of personal weapons, such as the M249 SAW or the RPD, that do have finite ammunition and reloads. The Mark 19 grenade machine gun (in the "Shock and Awe" mission) and the M134 Minigun (in the "Heat" mission) do have heat gauges though.
World at War does something similar with the flamethrower, which never runs out of fuel, but has a heat gauge that fills continuously while the trigger is held.
Dead Rising does this... but with good reason. You can't pick up new ammunition for your gun, instead you need more guns. And reloading in the middle of zombies coming at you? That would suck. Still doesn't excuse the survivors, who seem to have infinite ammunition, anyway... and are too stupid to use them properly.
This is (mostly) averted in F.E.A.R.: all the weapons have larger-than-usual ammo capacity, but this is justified by visually larger ammo magazines. For example, the assault rifle loads 45 rounds per mag, but uses a large drum magazine instead of a standard mag. HOWEVER, that doesn't explain how the minigun can hold 1000 rounds of ammo without any apparent external ammo belt or other ammo feed system. There's also a 20mm autocannon that holds 50 rounds of ammo, a mag size which would in reality be way too large and heavy for a human being to hold properly, let alone fire.
In Geist, you are a ghost that must possess other soldiers in order to fight. You have to reload, but you never run out spare magazines or ammo, ever. Since you frequently jump from body to body, and thusly wouldn't be able to keep track of ammo anyway for a significant amount of time, it was an Acceptable Breaks From Reality.
Tomb Raider is another classic example. In almost all of the games, Lara's basic pistols have infinite ammo and never has to reload. Her other guns, while having limited ammo, never needs a fresh magazine. The harpoon gun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and crossbow all need to be reloaded. Not to mention that all gunmen enemies Lara faces also have infinite ammo.
- In Legend, the infinite-ammo pistols have a set magazine size, but the slo-mo flip attack overrides this, allowing her to fire non-stop until she lands.
None of the projectile weapon wielders in Samurai Warriors needs to reload. In order from least to most ridiculous: Ina with her bow, Masamune with his pistols, Magoichi with his musket/rifle(/shotgun), Goemon with his backpack cannon, and Ieyasu with his cannon-spear.
In Fall To His Death/Fatal Descent, a character mentions that a book he is editing has 13 bangs with a 6-shots gun.
Granado Espada uses it too. Of course, it is done for class balance, but there is something funny about the musketeer class using the skill "Covering Fire", which shoots 20 rounds in full-automatic mode — from a front-loading matchlock rifle.
In Battlefield 1942, this is treated oddly. Guns have limited magazines, and soldiers carry no more than 3 grenades, but suitcase-sized boxes contain infinite amounts of ammo. Whether a weapon is used by Americans, Brits, Canadians, Soviets, Germans, or the Japanese, it can be reloaded from any ammo crate. Even worse: if, for example, an Allied soldier uses one of these crates to grenade spam, he will throw American grenades. If the player picks up a weapon from a dead Axis soldier, he will begin taking German grenades out of the same grenade crate and throwing them.
In the Jazz Jackrabbit games, your special weapons all have limited ammo, but the basic blaster you start out with has no limits (indicated, appropriately enough, by an Infinity sign in the ammo meter).
Pick the Assault Rifle powerset in City of Heroes and blast away. Even using Full Auto doesn't empty your clip. Of course, this gun is a SMGsniperrifleshotgungrenadelauncherflamethrowermachinegun that disappears when you're not using it. Same deal with Archery and Trick Archery.
The Metroid series uses this, but explains it by having Samus' suit have the ability to convert almost anything into ammunition and health.
- Samus's Arm Cannon in the Metroid Prime games always reloads (indicated by the fact that you can't fire another one for a second or so while the end of the cannon rotates) after firing a single missile... and aren't all of her BEAM weapons firing energy anyway?
In Left 4 Dead, your pistols will never run out of ammo, but you have to reload at the end of the clip. Other weapons can eventually run out of ammo, but there are strategically placed ammo piles lying around that you can use to reload any of the guns you find.
- Have you ever tried to carry 128 extra shotgun rounds?
  - The Pump/Chrome Shotgun now only carry around 56 rounds in the sequel instead of the absurd 128. However, the assault rifles and SMGs actually carry more ammo than they did before.
Unreal and Unreal 2 both feature models of the dispersion pistol. The first dispersion pistol become quite powerfull after a few upgrades but still takes seven and half minutes to fully recharge. The second is more of a "ohshitIverunoutofammo" type weapon.
Afterburner Climax, where missiles will automatically re-materialise on your plane after they have been fired, to say nothing of the Macross Missile Massacre "Climax Mode" Limit Break where you can lock onto and fire on more targets than the usual max missile capacity of your plane. By the end of the game you probably have launched more missiles than are available to a small country's air force. Your cannon also has unlimited rounds. Then again, you are a One Man Air Force going up against what feels like an entire air force.
The first Half-Life has the Hornet Gun/Hive hand that regrew ammo. Opposing Force had the Shockroach, which recharged itself, and the Barnacle, which apparently doesn't need ammo. Living infinite ammo weaponry, "lovely".
- Half-Life 2 and its Episodes have the fortuitous Infinite Ammunition Crates. Slightly believable for pistol and machine gun ammunition, for which they could reasonably contain a large amount, less so for crates of missiles that are also always placed near an enemy that can only be killed with explosives.
The sidequests in Prototype where you need to destroy stuff and kill folks using only a specific weapon or vehicle give you unlimited ammo for the duration of the sidequest. At other times, though, there is a finite stock of ammunition.
- Still, the basic machine gun has around 100 to 500 ammo (depends on upgrading gun handling knowledge) and the machine guns automatically become one hit kill weapons against basic human class enemies, but even they become useless later in the game.
Septerra Core handwaves this by explaining that the guns use a fancy piece of Applied Phlebotinum to synthesize ammo from energy harvested from the rotation of the planet's seven world shells.
In Borderlands, some guns are equipped with a regenerating ammo stat, and one particular gun, The Dove, combines this with having no reload animation. The Dove itself is a weak weapon, but if you have a save editor and copy its barrel stats to stronger weapons...
Averted before being played straight in The Godfather game: The Bragging Rights Reward for becoming Don of NYC gives unlimited ammo. You still have to reload, but unlike before you can now reload as much as you like without having to look for more ammo when you run low.
Ballistic missile launchers in Command and Conquer games, like the GLA Skud launchers in Generals, are basically a rocket on a truck, visible all the time. A new missile magically appears in the launcher after every shot. C&C's fliers typically have an ammo limit that requires a regular return to an airbase for reloads, but ground units are almost always unlimited.
- C Lore handwaves this; all weapons systems make their own ammo.
In Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War, every weapon can and will be fired continuously for as long as required without ever depleting its ammuntion. This is slightly more reasonable for Imperial Guard laser weaponry or Necron gauss weaponry, less so for the others. In Dawn of War 2 nearly every unit performs a brief reload animation after every dozen-or-so shots, averting one part of this trope, but that simply raises the question of where they get all those magazines.
The original Medal Of Honor for the Play Station lampshaded this trope. One of the unlockable bonus cheat modes was called 'American Movie Mode', which gave unlimited ammo. The trope was avoided if the cheat wasn't active, of course.

Spoofed in this strip of Strange Candy.
Guns in the Adventurers! webcomic don't have to be reloaded and never run out of ammo, because Adventurers! takes place in a Console RPG.

Parodied in Halo-based machinima Red Vs Blue. One episode ends with two characters hiding behind a rock, being fired on from a turret gun on the back of a jeep. One says "Well, we'll just wait here. That thing's gotta run out of bullets some time." Anyone who's played Halo knows better. The next episode opens with the line "Goddamn, doesn't that thing EVER run out of bullets?"
- Also parodied in There's Something About Halo 2. MC's firing his pistol at the Covenant, who respond: "Does he not need to stop, and reload?" "He must have a really big clip or something..." Cue MC running out of bullets, and a magazine several metres long dropping out.
Repeatedly parodied in Italian Spiderman, starting with a fifteen-round barrage from a six-shooter.
In Survival of the Fittest, a particularly blatant example occurred with Madison Conner, who had taken an MP5 with only one clip of ammo. She was specified to have "emptied the clip" (or other variations) at least three times with no mention of reloading whatsoever.
In the 12 oz mouse 3rd season webisode, mouse is in a gun fight that dramatically freezes long enough for him to think "I'll tell you what's cool right now and that is a gun that never runs out of ammo.

Justified in Fate/Stay Night since Archer doesn't really fire his arrows that often and even when he does, he is making them through magic. In the case of Gilgamesh, his Gate of Babylon can fire swords like arrows infinitely because he has just that many weapons in his vault and they reappear inside the vault after an unspecified period of time.
Not quite guns, but just as important: Duelists in Yu-Gi-Oh! never seem to run out of cards. A duel deck typically consists of 40 cards; during a duel, the players will draw 10, 20, or even 30 cards from their deck to place them in their hand — and yet, the deck never grows smaller (unless the plot requires it).
Kaiba: Now we must both chose three cards to form a new deck, and the rest of our deck goes to the graveyard.
Yugi: Our whole deck?!
Yugi has already used 31 cards at this point (what whole deck?), but that doesn't stop him from pulling out an all-but-complete deck to chose from. Handy. (And no, they didn't reuse the graveyards.)
- The only rule for deck size is a 40-card minimum. In real life, players will usually hover right around the minimum, because the more cards you have in your deck, the lower your odds of getting what you need at any given time. That of course doesn't apply to the anime characters, since they always draw exactly the cards the plot requires them to have.
  - Although there is that match in the movie where Kaiba has a trap card that makes Yugi send 10 randomly selected cards from his deck to his graveyard. The first time this is activated, Kaiba explicitly says "Now, say goodbye to 25% of your deck!" if he meant this literally and was not counting the... 7 cards that would have been drawn by Yugi at that point, then Yugi's deck should have 47 cards in it.
- There was one duel where Yugi/Atem exploited the special effect of Osiris and a regenerating slime monster of the opponent's deck to make him continuously draw until he had no cards left, in which case, his opponent loses.
Somewhat averted (while falling into Hyperspace Arsenal) in Naruto. Weapons can be stored into pocket dimensions in the form of scrolls, then released for later use, with Tenten's combat style revolving around storing immense amounts of weapons that way.
Rowan of Strata from Ronin Warriors. Justified in that hs armor magically generates an infinite supply of arrows.

The Savage Dragon villain Dung is equipped with hydraulic cannons that spray apartment-filling amounts of dung... teleported in from the local sewer systems. Thank God the Dragon has awesome healing abilities...

No guns or ammunition, but Wallace And Gromit fulfils this trope to a T in The Wrong Trousers's chase scene: Gromit pursues Feathers McGraw by rapid-fire laying of model train tracks from a box that never runs out. There's no justification other than Rule of Funny.
- Best of all, they're exactly the right shape — when Gromit is about to hit something on the floor, curved pieces come out to take his path around the obstacle and then back to his original course.

Susan in The Chronicles of Narnia has a Bottomless Quiver, but it's a magical one.

An actual bottomless quiver is available in 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Almost every Strategy Game ever. Except for spellcasters' mana or special weapons with an explicit "energy" pool, any ranged unit never runs out of ammunition, arrows or what-not. This most likely is one of the Acceptable Breaks From Reality; any reasonably experienced Strategy Game player can tell you that the need to micromanage units well is difficult enough without adding an extra layer of Hardcore in the form of having to maintain every unit's ammunition reserves.
In the last level of the Bible Adventures NES game "David & Goliath", where you actually go after Goliath instead of herding sheep, you have infinite stones to throw. A far cry from the five in the source text, but then, he wasn't climbing a mountain with soldiers coming out of caves to stop him, and you don't have a divine guidance system in the game.
Played straight nowadays for any Dynasty Warriors character who uses ranged weapons as part of their move set, although in earlier games arrows were only used in first-person mode and finite; you started stages with 20 and could find more (in quantities of 20) as item pickups.
The Punisher. Frank Castle can keep launching knives as long as the "Slaughter Mode" is running. Even in the prison level, where all he has on is a jean and a simply white shirt. Averted slightly elsewhere as he can empty the ammo clips of dropped weapons... unless the ammo is incompatible with the weapons he is carrying.
The remake of Ninja Gaiden has Ryu with unlimited normal shuriken created through "ninja magic", but limited stocks of the incendiary kind. His stock of arrows, whether standard, armour-piercing or explosive, was also finite. The enemy forces never ran out of projectiles, though, and not just the explicitly demonic enemies.
Handwaved humorously in Planescape Torment, where the four-armed, dual crossbow-wielding modron (creature of pure Law) named Nordom never runs out of basic crossbow bolts (though he has only a limited supply of magical or otherwise special bolts). Explained in that Nordom's crossbows are a pair of "gear spirits", denizens of the same plane Nordom is from, whose whole reason for being is to take on the form of various tools and be helpful. This means that, as crossbows, they can use their powers to generate their own ammo.
- Ignus from the same game has endless mini-fireballs for throwing at enemies. Explained by the fact that he has a gate to the elemental plane of fire opened through him as part of a cruel and unusual punishment for arsony.
Lampshaded slightly in Phoenix Wright when Phoenix wonders if Victor Kudo from Trials and Tribulations is using an Infinite Ammo code for his never-ending supply of seeds that keep getting thrown at him.
Raven from Tales of Vesperia never runs out of arrows. Heck, one can't even tell where the arrows come from in the first place...
The Classy Cat Burglar Zoya from Trine is equipped with a bow that follow this trope — she can fire as many arrows as she wants, with the drawback that she needs to ready her bow to get any range on them. However, she can also level up an ability that reduces her time needed to ready a shot, which combined with her Bottomless Quiver, makes her a Game Breaker in combat.
World of Warcraft plays with this trope by requiring careful balancing of ammo (both bullets and arrows) with your usual inventory. Of course, a recent dungeon introduces a weapon that doesn't need arrows because the dungeon is supposed to be Harder Than Hard.
Many roleplaying games in a fantasy setting will let your ranged weapon users do this. Marle of Chrono Trigger will never run out of bolts, Yuffie of Final Fantasy VII can chuck as many shuriken as she wants, and so on.
Gauntlet, in all its incarnations, succumbs to this.
In STALKER, it's never made clear exactly where Strelok gets all those bolts from.
Devil May Cry also has Nero's sword. (Yes, sword.) His sword can be "injected with a special fuel" to briefly power it up. This fuel never runs out and never needs to be refilled. Back to his gun, given that he can power-up his shots in exactly the same manner Dante can, maybe he really is capable of generating ammo. Then again, maybe it's best not to think too much about it.
Bully gives you infinite ammo for your slingshot and the secret Rubberband Ball. All other weapons have some ammo component to them.
In the Monster Hunter games for the PSP, the Bow weapon has unlimited arrows. Coatings to put on the arrows are finite, but the arrows themselves never run out. Also, the bowguns have unlimited ammunition of the most basic type. All other types are limited.

Maytag's throwing knives, from Flipside. Summoned from a dematerialized Bag of Holding, there are actually a finite amount — nearly two hundred.
Of all things, bread in Persona 3 FTW.

Speedy on Teen Titans: How many arrows can he fit in that quiver? In the Season 3 finale, he's firing them off nonstop three at a time but always with plenty to spare for the next scene.
- Similarly, Green Arrow from Justice League Unlimited seems to have a bottomless supply of arrows.
Mai from Avatar: The Last Airbender, whose robes are stocked with an endless hidden supply of metal arrows and shurikens that never run out, without impeding her movement at all.
- Possibly lampshaded (i.e. really subtly) in the Ember Island Players, where the "Mai" on stage draws a knife from her hair, throws it and immediately has a replacement waiting in her hair.
Samurai Jack has three superhuman archers that apparently never leave their tower that actually made it rain arrows for nearly a minute.
Batman's batarangs: he never runs out.

In volume 1 of the Read or Die manga, Yomiko whirls to face a henchman, only to find that she's out of paper — but he's out of bullets, too, and they both take a moment to reload before continuing.
Mostly averted in Trigun as we often see Vash reloading with speedloaders (a cylinder's worth of ammunition held ready for loading like a magazine). How he never seems to run out of these is another question, just like the "finite rounds in infinite magazines."
- Given that Meryl is able to hide fifty derringers under her cloak, Vash (being a good deal larger than she is) presumably has at least a few dozen speedloaders stashed under his clothes.
- In the manga we see where he keeps them: they're in those tubes on his coat. Plus we see him buy bullets.
- The first scene of the anime itself involves Vash nonchalantly surviving an incredible tavern-demolishing volley of gunfire; frequent cuts to the mooks delivering said volley show that they do stop to reload.
Both played straight and averted in Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. Some episodes have characters frequently reloading, while others show characters firing weapons for far longer than they should be able to (even if the weapons used caseless ammunition).
Subtly averted in the Cowboy Bebop movie; fighting Spike on a monorail, Vincent unloads a ridiculous amount of bullets from his gun before dramatically reloading. Close inspection will reveal, however, that his pistol is an Infinity made by Strayer-Voight, and the magazine actually holds nineteen rounds.
Grenadier. A fairly accurate bullet count is kept since the highlight of every episode is when Rushuna Tendo reloads her revolver. Fresh bullets are ejected from her considerable cleavage, then scooped out of the air with the cylinders. In this case it's her cleavage that's bottomless.
- Subverted once, when even her cleavage runs out of ammo and it's up to her companions to supply her with bullets.
- Lampshaded in the final fight scene when she and her rival have their bras cut, and a literal cascade of bullets spill out from each of them.
In one episode of Saiyuki Reload Gunlock, Goku, Gojyo and Hakkai attempt to keep track of how many shots Gato has fired, knowing that two six shooters means twelve shots (and twelve shots means they each get four, and everybody has to take their fair share), and try to attack him while he's reloading. The Gunslinger Sanzo sometimes follows the trope and sometimes averts it, but it's worth noting that he never has to buy ammo. Cigarettes, yes; ammo, no.
One Piece's first Non Serial Movie, in which the villain's henchmen carry an enormous box of flintlock pistols (which can only fire one shot each) for this reason.
Even though they're using magic bullets, no one in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ever uses more bullets in a single battle than their gun can hold without reloading in between. During the longer battles they even keep track of how many spare magazines they have.
In the Rurouni Kenshin manga, Takeda Kanryū, the opium and weapons dealer, is defeated when his Gatling gun runs out of ammo. In the anime, however, the gun becomes jammed.
Digimon Tamers averts this with Gargomon, who runs out of ammo twice. The first time, Henry uses a recharge card. The second time, Gargomon is defeated before he can reload.
- Happens again with Megagargomon, but he's so confident that it doesn't matter. To wit: "Who needs ammo when you're a whooping machine?

Subverted in 100 Bullets. Most of the plots revolve around a protagonist who is given a finite supply of untraceable bullets. Guess how many.

Terminator, with occasional loading shots. In fact, in T2, the number of shells Sarah loads into a particular gun turns out to be important several minutes later.
- Additionally, a few SWAT team members engage the Terminator with their backup pistols. Given that they'd been firing their MP5 submachine guns for a good thirty seconds straight before that, it's implied that they were out of magazines for them.
- Also, the T-800 uses exactly as many M79 grenades as he is shown to have on his ammo belt, using his very last one on the T-1000.
Used in Last Man Standing. We do see Bruce Willis using up mags and having to reload, and there is a scene which shows him loading numerous spare magazines from boxes of cartridges, but he seems to be able to fit an inordinate number of magazines in his pockets.
The Matrix avoids this, at least in the first movie's Lobby Scene... to some degree. The protagonists take cover until the mooks shooting at them begin to reload, then run out and dodge the bullets of other mooks, who are not out of ammo. Likewise, the protagonists use Throw Away Guns in their counterattacks.
- Demonstrated even more dramatically when Neo fights Smith in the subway. They charge each other, firing away and wrestling in slo-mo until they have their guns pointed at each other's head... but they are both out of ammo.
- This troper could never figure out why, in a COMPUTER universe where they could bend the laws of physics, they never seemed to figure out a cheat code for infinite ammo.
Avoided in Collateral: Vincent is shown reloading twice, and it actually becomes a plot point in the film's finale, putting the shot count from him at 36.
Subverted in Silver Streak; the protagonist quickly runs out of bullets in a shootout. His sidekick chastises him with "What do you think this is, a Western?"
- It's a reference to Gene Wilder's previous role as the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles.
Somewhat avoided in Shoot Em Up, as he continually switches weapons (taking fresh ones from any old dead mooks, of which he creates plenty). However, every gun does seem to have lots of bullets before needing to be replaced.
Avoided in the Dirty Harry sequel The Enforcer. Tyne Daly is rescuing the Mayor from kidnappers on Alcatraz, and in one scene, she changes out the bullets in her service revolver.
- The scene in Dirty Harry is probably inspired by the real-life Newhall Massacre where a California Highway Patrol officer did exactly what was described in the middle of a gunfight and got killed for it as he inserted the sixth cartridge into his revolver's cylinder and started to close it.
How could you not mention the original Dirty Harry:
Harry Callahan: I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself.
- And, no, he didn't lose track and his "magazine" is not bottomless.
Spoofed delightfully in Bottom Live 2:
Eddie: I know what you're thinking, Parrot. You're thinking how many shots did I fire back there in Act 2, Scene 1? And to tell you the truth in all the excitement of Rik forgetting his fucking lines, I've kind of forgotten myself. So, Parrot, do you feel lucky? Come on, make my day.
Parrot: You already fired six, you overweight bastard!
Eddie: That's right.
(Shoots the parrot six times)
Eddie: But I fucking reloaded!
Averted in the first Tomb Raider movie. How Lara reloads her guns is shown (if in an implausible, Hand Wave way), and mooks are repeatedly seen changing magazines.
- Curiously, in most games she has bottomless magazines. And at least one pair of pistols that just don't run out of ammo.
Averted in all three of the endings to the Clue film when the characters question the remaining ammunition in the Revolver.
Averted in the film version of V for Vendetta. V is cornered by Creedy and his men. V goads Creedy into shooting him, boasting that he can kill Creedy and all of his men before they can reload (which he promptly does).
- Well, just about. I think one or two mooks had a fresh magazine, but at that point they were useless, as V stuck 'em in the head with his knives before they could even ready their guns.
Averted in Serenity, where Jayne runs out of ammo for his submachinegun during the Reaver chase at the beginning. Later, during the final battle against the Reavers, the crew rapidly runs out of ammunition while killing wave after wave of enemies, to the point where Jayne comments that he's down to "three full mags, and my swingin' cod."
- The series used it too, sometimes. In "Heart of Gold", the villain's laser pistol runs out of energy while he's fleeing, and River waits for Niska's troops to start reloading before her three-shots-three-kills bit.
Averted HARD in The Way of the Gun.
Thoroughly averted in Punisher Warzone, where the Punisher is almost constantly reloading during his firefights — either conventionally or in the "New York" fashion.
Scrupulously and rigorously averted at the end of Italo-Spanish Mystery Science Theater 3000-bait spy film Danger!! Death Ray as superspy Bart Fargo constantly changes magazines for his Schmeisser during the confrontation with the Big Bad and his Mooks.
- In fact, the film is so rigorous about this it slows the action down considerably, which is part of why it was MST3K fodder.
The final showdown in the serial The Masked Marvel has the Big Bad and eponymous Masked Marvel shooting at each other while taking cover behind furniture. Ten shots in, the villain leaves cover and announces he's been counting bullets: The Masked Marvel has shot six times (so his gun is empty) but the villain has two shots left. The Masked Marvel similarly leaves cover, agrees with the villain, then shoots him. A lampshaded case of Bottomless Magazines? No, the Masked Marvel simply reloaded during the villain's "now I have won!" speech.
Averted once in Ultraviolet. The bad guys' helicopter-mounted gatling gun runs out of ammo and needs to be reloaded, giving the heroine a chance to drive/jump a motorbike through the heli, blowing it up in the process.
Averted with a vengeance in Live Free or Die Hard. Bruce Willis seems to spend over half of the first action scene repeatedly slamming new magazines into his automatic, to the point where you start wondering where he got all those from. (Of course, John McClane bringing five to ten extra clips to a run-of-the-mill arrest, just in case, is actually kind of in character.)
Averted in The Road Warrior, where it's revealed nearly halfway through that the Sawed Off Shotgun Max threatened the Gyro Captain with was unloaded, not to mention only one of the shells he finds at that point is usable (and even then it's low-quality).
Gyro Captain: Empty! All this time...! That's dishonest.
Averted thoroughly in Zulu Dawn, in which the British at Isandlwana have the Zulus pinned down with hideously effective gunfire and are holding their position well, but suddenly find themselves scrabbling for their last few rounds. Meanwhile, the quartermasters are handing it out to the drummer boys a packet (20 shots) at a time, as if they were at peacetime manoeuvres, to take to troops several hundred yards away. Historically accurate. The few survivors who got to Rorke's Drift before the fighting reached there tipped the troops at the Drift off as to what had happened, and all the ammo boxes were opened at once before the battle started. Things then went very differently.
Averted by, of all things, Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2. Ricky uses exactly six bullets from his revolver during his "Garbage Day" rampage, then when he goes to commit suicide, he discovers that the gun is empty.
Averted in the 1962 James Bond film Dr. No. Bond (Sean Connery) hides behind the door as an assassin fires several shots into blanked-covered pillows on the bed. Bond disarms the assassin and the two converse, but Bond "carelessly" allows the assassin to retrieve his dropped pistol — which clicks on an empty chamber. Bond doesn't even flinch and says "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six." before killing the assasin.
Averted (and lampshaded) in Tremors 2, when Burt Gummer drives up in his truck. "I ran out of ammo... that's never happened before."

Averted in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Warrior Woman, in which gladiators using slingshots are handicapped by being given a fixed number of stones (fourteen); the crowd chants the number of shots taken.
The ammo in the father's revolver is a constant concern in the Post-Apocalyptic novel The Road. He starts with only a few bullets and at one point gets so desperate that he fashions fake bullets out of spent casings so that he can bluff people.
Subverted in Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident when after learning about the goblins using supposedly-destroyed weapons adapted to human batteries, Foaly remarks that 'You'd only get six shots, but you give every goblin a pocket full of cells and that's a lot of shots.'
Louis L'Amour usually averted this in his Western novels, even pointing out that even in a loaded pistol, the chamber under the hammer was left empty (to prevent accidents since most pistols at the time did not have a safety), meaning one less bullet than modern audiences might expect.
- Almost all revolvers lack a safety. The issue with the revolvers in Lamour's novels is that when the hammer is down, it rests directly on the percussion cap (in early revolvers) or the primer (in cartridge-fed arms) and a sharp knock to the hammer can set it off. Not an issue in the heat of battle, since once you fired a shot, the hammer was "down" on a fired chamber anyway and thereby safe until you thumbed the hammer back (as you had to with many of these guns) to cock it and spin the cylinder for the next round. Modern double-action revolvers have a modified and much safer trigger mechanism, which removes the need for this practice, though exponents of Wild West re-enactment shoots still need to bear it in mind as their revolvers are faithful copies of the originals (with all that this implies).
- Subverted a couple of times with special twelve-shot Russian pistols.
Averted in Kerry Greenwood's Murder in Montparnasse when the Big Bad gets taken out after running out of bullets.
Phryne: Six shots. He has six shots in that gun. That was the third.
Lin: What are they going to do?
Phryne: I don't know, but as soon as he runs out of ammunition, I wouldn't be René for a thousand pounds.
(two more shots, then a third.)
[one of the guys hunting René]: Bugger!
Phryne: That's six.
Averted in H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising, when the male protagonist is impressed by his new, previously civilian adjutant taking their supply of ammunition into account (see page quote). They can't produce ammunition as fast as they've been expending it, and need to end the war before they run out.
Legolas is mentioned to be out of arrows at least twice in The Lord of the Rings. He often has to pick up orc arrows to refill his quiver.
Mentioned in Fatal Descent by Carter Dickson and John Rhode: One character is editing a book in which the protagonist carries a six-gun, but fires 13 times without reloading. Another character suggests giving him two guns and taking out a bang.
Averted in Les Miserables, in the barricade sequence; several plot points hinge on the need to conserve powder and bullets, not least the death of Gavroche, who's shot while out in front of the barricade scavenging ammo from fallen guardsmen.

Averted on the old Batman TV series, where the villains are shooting at Batman behind smoke; when the smoke clears, it's revealed that not only does Batman have a shield, he knows the villains are now out of bullets and can attack them.
Averted in Jake 2.0, where the protagonist caught in a predator/prey situation is able to beat an armed villain. After deliberately coming out of hiding, the man raises his gun to shoot Jake, only to realize that he's out, told that he should keep track, and is promptly knocked out with a lead pipe.
Averted in Jericho, wherein the people of the town are very conscious of their ammunition, and the heroes are continually requesting new magazines and fighting over the actual weapons themselves.
Averted in the Doctor Who episode "The Doctor Dances" when Capt. Jack's Sonic Blaster runs out of power; amusingly, a few moments before, he was making fun of the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver.
Stargate SG-1: The SG team members actually have to reload their guns now and again, and not just for the sake of dramatically running low. One episode that still stands out has a rogue NID agent escaping from a special forces team, using a machine pistol to lay down suppressive fire and shoot a lock out of a door. At least twice, after a couple of sustained bursts, he ejects his magazine and slaps a fresh one in.
Subverted once in Due South. Constable Fraser confidently approaches a criminal pointing a gun at him, telling him that he's out of ammo (the pistol is a 9-shot), while his partner and another cop argue over whether he is, or whether he still has a bullet or two left (one says he's heard 8, the other says only 7). Turns out Fraser was right and he had used all 9.
Averted in one episode of Viper, where robbers take hostages, one of them manages to seize a robber's gun — and the robbers start calculating whether it has any bullets left.

Averted painfully in World of Warcraft. Hunters, remember to restock your bullets/arrows before entering an instance. "Out of Ammo" is the only thing worse than "Out of Mana".
- Luckily a recent patch made ammo stack more than it had before, allowing either larger ammo pools or requiring far fewer inventory slots. Hunters everywhere rejoiced.
- Throwing weapons originally came in packs of 200, and were depleted by using them. Now, they use the durability system — each throw drains a point of durability (as opposed to other items, which tend to lose durability more smoothly, and slowly). The only practical difference is that now when you run out, the actual item sticks around, just unusable until you repair it — nice if you have a crafted or other special throwing weapon.
Averted totally in Clive Barker's Undying with the pistol and other real-world weapons, including shotguns and dynamite.
- Further partially averted with the Tibetan War Cannon, which has infinite power, but must be recharged.
Partially averted in Deep Space Nine: The Fallen with the smallest pistol, which has infinite power, but must be recharged.
- Blake Stone 3D also has a weapon like this.
Advance Wars gives ammo limits to the heavy weapons — most notably the main guns on artillery, AA guns, tanks, ships and mechanised infantry. Of course, towns and APCs have a seemingly bottomless supply of ammo to provide them.
In the Fighting Game Bushido Blade; during your fight with the Giant Space Flea From Nowhere Katze, he has a pistol and you have a sword. However, he only has six shots before he has to stop and reload. While he reloads, he's absolutely helpless and can be easily killed.
- This was repeated in the sequel, although one of your opponents carries a freaking machine gun and both of them are practically impossible to kill while reloading now.
In Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, not only you have to reload your guns as in real life, but you also have to memorize how much ammo you have left in your magazine, since there is no visible counter! And there's no crosshair, so you'll have to manually aim using the normal iron sight on the gun.
- Which is not necessarily an easy task, one might add, as broken bones are not only possible but probable.
Call of Duty is generally accurate as far as ammo goes, with guns having correctly sized magazines and spare ammo being available only from the dropped guns of deceased enemies. However, all fixed weapon emplacements have Bottomless Magazines.
In the Close Combat series of strategy games (not the first person shooter First to Fight) you command platoon- or company-size units of infantry and tanks which start each mission with an allotment of ammo and NO re-supply. If you shoot your machine gun dry trying to suppress the enemy positions, that's it. If your tank expends all its shells trying to blast the enemy out of buildings, that's it. Mortars, tanks, and machine guns have particularly serious problems with this. Running the enemy out of ammo is actually a valid tactic in some situations.
Carefully inverted in SWAT 4 where reloading is done realistically: you have a limited number of magazines, with real-life number of bullets. And each of your magazines keep the rest of their bullets if you reload prematurely, so you can just go back to a half-depleted magazine later on.
In the Total War series, missile soldiers and siege weapons have limited ammo that can only be refilled between battles.
Partial Exception: In the original Conflict for the NES and its sequel Super Conflict for the SNES, any units with "special weapons" had to re-supply those at a city (or airport for flying units). The standard weapons, which were all variations of machine guns, never needed to be reloaded.
In the Crusader games, waaaay back in 1995/96, you had to manage clips for the various projectile-based weapons.
Deus Ex avoids this. You and your enemies have to reload, and a limited amount of magazines, when they've spent all their ammo they'll usually start hitting you with melee weapons instead — and though Bots have bottomless magazines, they will run out of ammo if you wait long enough (usually long enough to kill you several times over). When the bots run out of ammo they'll say "Low Ammo" and attempt to run away.
DukeNukem 3D. The semi-auto pistol went through a reloading animation (with Duke ejecting the spent magazine and replacing it with a fresh one) every twelve shots. This 12-shots limit even held if you brought your ammunition up to maximum with the magazine half-empty.
Earth 2150 has limited ammo for all weapons. Energy weapons recharge over time, but units using grenades, bullets or rockets need to be resupplied by plane. Guard your supply center well.
- Ballistic weapons in Earth 2150 carry limited amounts of ammo and must be re-supplied from a supply depot. Fortunately, there are air units that will bring the ammo to units in the field.
- Every non-energy/chemical vehicle-mounted weapon in the sequel, Earth 2160, also have limited ammo. Fortunately, it's easier to supply that ammo. For the ED, an ammo supply can be built, which will automatically take care of supplying ammo via a projectile. For the UCS, it's a lot more annoying as ammo can only be supplied using an air unit that's highly susceptable to anti-air weapons and because ammo-limited vehicles are the staple units in their army.
In Fallout, all weapons have limited capacities and can only be fired a limited number of times (using action points) before you need to manually reload them (which also costs action points). If an NPC runs out of ammunition, he usually switches to a melee weapon and close the distance. An idling animation for pistols, on the other hand, has the character empty a magazine from the gun and load another one without that actually affecting the number of bullets in the gun at the moment.
- The final boss of the first Fallout — the Master — never had to reload the gatling guns connected to his chair. The boss of the second Fallout — Frank Horrigan — has to reload his weapon and did run out of ammunition eventually, whereupon he whipped out a really long knife.
- Additionally the spare ammo for a gun takes up room in your inventory. For pistols and rifles this is negligible but for heavier weapons (such as machine guns and rocket launchers) carrying enough ammo for a prolonged engagement can put a crimp in the amount of space in your inventory for loot.
- In Fallout 3, while you do have to reload regularly depending on weapon, your ammo weighs nothing, which means you can carry absurd amounts of ammunition around the world with you especially if you trade excessively with the outcasts who trade ammunition for other equipment. Amusingly enough, nuclear warheads count as ammunition for game purposes.
Averted in Final Fantasy IV. Several characters can use bows, but they're entirely worthless without also providing a steady supply of arrows. However the DS remake will not do this, as they wish to balance the characters and removed this restriction.
In the Fire Emblem series of games, all weapons have limited ammo, after which they break. Archers, swordsmen, axemen, spearmen and spellcasters all run out of ammo. The only ones who don't attack with their teeth/claws, which would be troublesome if they broke, to say the least.
- The weapon's "ammo" actually represents its durability. After using it all up, the weapon breaks. One has to wonder, however, why archers never need to carry arrows, they just pull infinite amounts out of the quivers. And why does a spell book break after having a spell in it cast 40 times? And why does a spell book only contain ONE spell anyways?!
  - We can assume that each bow comes with a quiver of a certain size. And if the magic is nearly Vancian or similar to certain RPGs, then the need to (very quickly) memorize the spell again can consume a copy from the book.
Variation in Killzone: Whenever the player reloads with the squad leader's default assault rifle, he always flips over two magazines taped to each other — the second time, he discards these magazines and bring up a new taped pair of magazines.
- Now becoming common for AK-47s and other weapons using box magazines. Many games play the trope straight by having the character simply flip over the magazine pair, with no indication that the other magazine is refilled or replaced. Based on accounts of real-life bearers who rig the magazines together for efficiency, but eventually have to dispose of both when empty.
Averted hard in Mafia. Reloading with the mag half full? Say goodbye to those rounds, they're gone for good.
Marathon. You can only carry magazines, not individual ammo. If you want to reload manually... you can't. The only way is to waste the rest of the magazine and wait for a new one to be loaded. Note that some weapons do have almost-instantaneous reload speeds (the fusion pistol), one has an Unorthodox Reload (even the manual teases the player on how the shotguns are supposed to reload themselves by flipping them over T2-style), and one just doesn't have ammo and has to be replaced when running out, usually at the worst time possible (the alien rifle). The enemies, however, have no such limits.
- Especially egregious with the Troopers on higher difficulties, who have a tendency to spam endless streams of grenades from the gun that the game explicitly states is much like your assault rifle, which can only hold 8 at a time. Oddly enough, they seem reluctant to use the assault rifle part of the assault rifle.
  - Because the assault rifle part is inaccurate as hell. They only use it when they're sure they will hit, which is at hug distance.
- Only carrying mags is referenced in game at one point. You are advised to "clear that clip" so you'll have a full one loaded when you head into the next wave of aliens.
Metal Gear Solid has Vulcan Raven lugging around a huge minigun... and an ammo drum that's almost as big as he is. And the guy's giant.
- On the other hand, the fight with Revolver Ocelot is very specific about giving him six shots, after which he has to reload.
Metal Gear Solid 3 averts this one in a cutscene. When Ocelot first uses a revolver against Snake in a gun battle, it eventually ends with the two in a standoff. Snake then lowers his gun and comments, grinning, "You don't have what it takes to kill me." Ocelot pulls the trigger several times, only to find that his revolver has run out of ammo.
- In the boss fight later, he uses a second revolver to get around this. The game also goes out of the way to show you how much ammo he has remaining, and shooting him while he's reloading is an important tactic.
- If you blow up a nearby ammo dump with high-explosives, the enemy will quickly run out of ammo and will have to resort to pistols, and eventually, knives.
Oni, which is very strict about ammunition limits. Though issue of different types of ammunition is solved (by having generic "ballistic cells" and "energy cells" for ballistic and energy weapons), ammunition is not only limited by the number of ammo cells available, but also by differentiating the number of shots each gun gets from a cell (a ballistic cell means 10 shots for a standard pistol, but two for the sniper rifle). This tends to make the game's hand-to-hand fighting the most reliable form of combat.
- And yes, the enemy has limited ammo. If you want to be able to scavenge it off of them, you have to attack them before they shoot it all at you.
Lucasarts' Outlaws. Each gun had to be reloaded, one painful bullet at a time.
- Same in the Deja Vu games. Guns were opened as any container to insert rounds. It's not a gunplay-heavy game, though.
In Painkiller, you have limited ammo, but you never reload.
In the Rainbow Six games (Rainbow Six, Rogue Spear) both you and the bad guys could run out of ammo. However, given the one-shot death nature of the game, this was unlikely to happen normally.
Subverted and averted in Rainbow Six Vegas and Rainbow Six Vegas 2. You only get unlimited ammo for your sidearm. You DO have to reload, but you'll never run out spare ammunition for it. Averted in the fact that you can see and hear your teammates and enemies reload, and averted with at least one mounted machine gun emplacement early on in the game which has finite ammo.
Super Robot Wars is very conscious about ammo. In fact, the Alt Eisen's Revolver Stake, which is shown to be shot six times every time it is used, is reloaded by a reloader afterwards. This actually explains the fact that it shoots so many times, and yet the attack can only be used six times.
- There are equipment, accessories, and abilities that allow ammunition-based weaponry to be used more. Kyosuke's Revolver Stake can be upped from six shots on a mission to nine or twelve by adding a Magazine, which is fair enough, or just by Kyosuke being badass.
Lampshaded in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, where one sidequest has you help out (or blow up) a Mandalorian whose blaster rifle had run out of juice. One conversation option is to mock him for leaving all his spare clips in his (lost) backpack, whereupon he angrily asks if you've ever had to reload in the middle of a fight. Since the game's magazines are bottomless, he has a point.
Mercenaries in Jagged Alliance require ammo, but if they've got spare ammo when their current magazine runs out, they reload by themselves.
Partial exception: Reavers in Starcraft must build their own ammo (it costs money) and have a maximum number of shots they can hold at once.
In Submarine Titans every sub has a limit on how many torpedoes it can carry (usually 20). Fortunately, if they run out, the unit in most cases needs only to stop fighting for a few seconds, while swimming a few meters toward the player's home base to replenish them.
Partial exception: most units in Supreme Commander have infinite energy or ammunition for their guns, but tactical missile launchers, strategic missile launchers, and strategic missile submarines all need to be ordered to construct missiles. Considering how short the lifespan of most units in the game is, it's unlikely an ammunition limit for normal units would matter.
- The spiritual predecessor Total Annihilation says that all non-nuclear-missile weapons in the game are actually energy weapons. This is quite noticeable with the long range artillery which take a big chunk of out of your energy reserves when fired.
Partial exception: Energy weapons in Total Annihilation require energy (a global resouce) to fire, and some weapons require the output of multiple fusion reactors to produce enough energy for continuous fire. Missiles and projectiles are unlimited, however.
Averted in the classic X-Com, where other than the laser weapons, all hand-held and all craft-mounted weapons have finite magazines, soldiers and craft have limited carrying space in which to cram replacement magazines, and you have to buy, build or scavenge replacement ammunition unless you want your entire organization to run out. As if that wasn't enough, you have to fund research to develop most of the weapons and equipment you'll be using.
Subverted in the opening of Xenosaga Episode 2, where while the mecha piloted by the characters is descending onto a planet and assaulted by mooks, the giant energy gun (capable of firing through five enemies at once) runs out of energy. Of course, it is then used to stab the last enemy, ejected, and replaced by a blade weapon and a machine gun that doesn't run out ammo. However when your weapons are teleported into place, ammo is too I guess.
One of the things I remember most about the Shoot Em Up Ikari Warriors is that all of your ammo — special grenades, tank rounds, and even normal bullets — is limited.
Averted in Blitzkrieg where transports, trucks and haulers must be used to resupply units, down to the last rifleman. Skilled players could cripple their enemies by destroying their supply vehicles, adding a strategic dimension.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has a multiplayer booster called "Keep Firing" that lets you fit more rounds in your standard-sized magazines.
Kingdom Hearts manages to avoid this with the Organization's gunner, Xigbar. While he has unlimited " "magazines"(seeing as his bullets/arrows seem to come from nothingness itself) he does have to reload. This is the characters biggest weakness in the multiplayer mode in 358/2 Days.
Semi-averted in the Heroes of Might and Magic series, in that archers generally have a limited number of shots (everything except the Medusa in the fourth iteration), unless they're acompanied by an Ammo Cart, which allows an infinite number of reloads.
Mostly averted in the Mega Man and Mega Man X games. Any acquired weapons or tools will run out of energy and need to be recharged before they can be fired again. The default Mega/X Buster plays the trope straight since it's connected to the user's power generator.
Kind of played straight, kind of averted in The Darkness. Jackie is given a gun for his birthday in the opening cutscene, but "ammo" for this weapon makes him pick up and use the guns of dead mooks instead. He will carry and go through dozens of these guns until you reach your last "clip", at which point he will revert to using his birthday present.
Company of Heroes is an exception to the no reloading clause, with individual rifleman doing so in addition to the various artillery/heavy weapons pieces.
Averted by Sakuya Izayoi from Touhou, who can actually run out of knives (at least, according to the Word Of God). She fixes this by simply recollecting them while Time Stands Still.

Averted hard in Darwin's Soldiers. The characters spend a fair amount of time reloading and several of their enemies have been killed because they ran out of ammo.

The Avalon Arc of Gargoyles. Elisa empties her handgun at the Big Bad, and for the rest of the adventure is handicapped by not having more ammo for it. Several times during the arc, she pulls her gun in reflex to a threat, only to remember she's out of shots.
Averted in Code Lyoko, in which early on, Odd is equipped with a certain amount of "Lazer Arrows", and once he's out, he's out until Jérémie restocks his arrows. Through Season 1, barely any episode went by whithout Odd running out of arrows at some point. Jérémie, however, is eventually able in Season 2 to upgrade Odd's virtual form, enabling his gloves to hold 10,000 arrows apiece.

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Examples

Modern weaponry

Other weaponry

Exceptions