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From this bag here why I can pull most anything imag'nable Like office desks and lava lights and Bert who is a cannibal.
Joe: Wait, where did all those fish come from?
Gomamon: I don't know, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Hammerspace is the notional place that things come from in animation when they are needed, and where they go back to when not.
The actual location of hammerspace is very hard to determine. There seems to be a great deal of it behind people's backs and on the opposite side ( from the camera, that is) of thin things like lampposts and slender trees. It also hides in people's coats, closets, Clown cars, large sacks, and occasionally down their pants.
Further research into the exact location of hammerspace awaits solution of a few more basic questions. Such as: "What happens when you turn a Bag of Holding inside out?" and "Why is the inside of the TARDIS only that much larger than its exterior?"
This is closely related to, but functionally distinct from Hammertime.
Santa Claus' sack and other such hammerspace-enclosing items fall under the category of Bag Of Holding.
In a slightly more realistic version, Hidden Supplies is when people grab the mallet from a designated secret spot, but you tend to wonder why they happen to have that secret spot.
It's also referred to as "hyperspace", but that term gets a little confused with the SF term related to Faster Than Light Travel (see Subspace Or Hyperspace). Just to confuse things further, "subspace" is a word used in Transformers fandom for Hammerspace. It is called "katanaspace" in Highlander fandom, "back pockets" in the cartoon roleplaying game Toon, and referred to simply as "Elsewhere" in the Fantasy Kitchen Sink roleplaying game Exalted. While the concept is Older Than Television, using the term "Hammerspace" to describe it appears to have originated in the once vast and prolific Ranma 1/2 Fan Fic community.
Other Sub Tropes:
Other Examples
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- In one of the Scott Pilgrim books, Ramona whips a huge hammer out of a relatively tiny purse. She explains this by saying it's a trans-dimensional purse.
- Marvel superhero-in-training Slapstick has this as an actual power.
- The Middle Man's title character seems to have pockets that lead to Hammerspace. He spends several moments removing increasingly improbable weapons from his pockets in the first episode.
- Flash's costume is hidden in his ring. They try to explain it away as some sort of advanced science, but it's all flash and no substance. Why doesn't he just run home and change?
- Try Batman, that guy's got everything in his utility belt!
- Combat Colin, star of his own backup strip in the UK Action Force and Transformers comics, was known for his Combat Trousers (apparently presented to him by an alien), the pockets of which enabled him to produce any number of cumbersome weapons, up to and including a nuclear warhead.
- A running gag in Peanuts is the incredible amount of space inside Snoopy's doghouse (although the reader only ever sees it from the outside). Reportedly, he can have huge parties in there. And, of course, he proudly displays his Van Gogh on one of the walls. There are at least two floors inside, as well — one strip depicts Snoopy listening to Linus and Charlie Brown negotiating a turn in a staircase while moving furniture.
- In The Mask, unlike the movie, while the wearer of the Mask can, if he/she/it decided to, pull an object from a pocket or inside their coat. Sometimes weapons can appear in the wearer's hand without them even realizing it. Sometimes they will actually kill people with a machine gun and then start wondering where it came from. Other times, it's explicitly shown that objects (weapons, usually) can in fact appear out of thin air in front of the person wearing the Mask. Even when objects are pulled out of pockets, most likely the object was not there before the wearer put their hands in there.
- Ultraviolet, where the main character has these funny little bracelet things that store her weapons. There's a great scene where, after Violet loads these things with enough weaponry to supply the entire US military, she is scanned by a weapons-check program and it gives up counting the weapons she's carrying.
Computer voice: Number of weapons found...many.
- The Matrix movies. While in the Matrix, Trinity is always dressed in skintight clothing with nowhere to hide a gun, but she can always pull out firearms when needed. But then again, they're inside the Matrix and as such have access to "magic."
- At the beginning of The Matrix, while escaping from the Agents. After falling down some stairs, she pulls two pistols literally out of nowhere.
- In The Matrix Reloaded, she pulls a pistol out of nothingness twice (to menace Persephone and while fighting the albino Rastafarian ghost identical twins), and draws two machine pistols out of hyperspace while fighting the Agent in the power control building.
- Near the climax of The Monkees film Head, the band is confronted by a posse led by Lord High 'N Low, who's been after them for various reasons throughout the movie. In the half-second cutaway between Davy's shots, while the Monkees' would-be executioners are cocking their rifles, Davy produces a loaded, packed, & primed cannon and wipes out the whole posse. Peter lampshades it less than 5 seconds later.
- As mentioned in the introduction, all the Immortals in Highlander have a personal Hammerspace where they keep their swords. It's not hard to believe that Immortals are issued pocket-sized interdimensional trap-doors upon waking up and discovering their immortality. Methos, in particular, managed to hide a particularly long broadsword (an "Ivanhoe" if you want to get picky) in his. And Silas didn't seem to wear coats at all, but managed to favor a battle-axe for his battles. He possibly kept it hidden in his sweater.
- Harpo Marx can and does keep anything and everything in his (admittedly large) clothes, including a complete silver tea set, fully fueled welding equipment, live animals and burning matches. This only counts as Hammerspace from a viewer standpoint, however, because Harpo Marx actually did produce these items from his custom-made coat. It was a gag he developed for use live on stage.
- Mary Poppins's bag, which is shown to store potted plants and lamps, making it a Bag Of Holding. One might say the same about Harpo Marx's coat, but that was played more for laughs: you wonder kind of clown carries a tea set around, less about how he does it. The way that Mary Poppins pulled tall items out of her bag, it's clear that the bag is larger inside than outside.
- In one scene of Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, a jeep pulls up by Jesus and a few atheists come out to beat up Jesus. As the scene goes on (and Jesus takes care of each successive wave of nonbelievers), more than thirty atheists end up coming out of that little jeep. Lampshaded when Jesus, on defeating the first wave, throws his hands in the air in an unmistakable "Are you joking?" gesture when the second comes into play.
- In Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, all the crewmembers of Sinbad's ship have to empty their pockets of weapons onto a table before going into the royal palace. Cue Rat the Lookout spending about twenty minutes depositing a huge pile of swords, pistols, knives, etc., on top of a table despite wearing nothing but a loincloth and a bandana.
Kale: Time to go, Rat. Pack it up.
Rat: *still pulling out swords* Aw, man...
- Any doubt that the Lovecraft adapatation The Unnamable is really more of an understated horror comedy is finally dispelled after the film's climax, when the smart guy reaches beneath his thin jacket with one hand and pulls out an oversized book of spells nearly as large as his torso.
- Anchorman: The four lead anchormen are walking through San Diego trying to find a suit store. However, that doesn't stop them from pulling iron knuckles, a club, and a HAND GRENADE amongst other things when they encounter a rival news team.
Ron: Brick, where'd you get a hand grenade?
Brick: I don't know
- The Goonies: Data looks pretty normal-sized through most of the movie, until a bad guy gets close and suddenly his jacket puffs out as he punches the guy in the face with a spring-loaded boxing glove on a mechanical arm. In the scenes where it is actually used you can tell that it would've been very noticeable had he been walking around the entire movie with that contraption under his jacket.
- A Running Gag in Versus is that the weasely yakuza seems to have an inexhaustible supply of pistols stuck into the back of his waistband. Whenever he loses a gun, he immediately pulls out another, larger one from the exact same spot.
- In The Mask, Jim Carey basically has an infinite amount of space inside his pockets and an unknown, probably infinite number of things in them (see the comics section).
- In the Bionicle movies, the Toa keep all their supplies, tools, etc. in hammerspace.
- A subtle but cool version in Raising Arizona. As he walks through Unpainted Arizona, a cigar appears in one hand, out of nowhere, and a match in his other, which he strikes on a piece of furniture, to light the cigar.
- Both played straight and subverted in Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, when Brent pulls a pair of giant ceremonial scissors from seemingly nowhere, but then stores them down the back of his pants after showing them off.
- Resident Evil: Extinction. How many zombie prisoners can you fit into a small shipping crate?
- In the Young Wizards series, "temporospatial claudications" leading to small pockets of "otherspace" are frequently used for storage by the wizard characters. In execution, it works exactly like hammerspace, except with more Techno Babble. Or possibly Magi Babble; it's often hard to tell the difference with that series...
- Invoked explicitly in Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy: Mages can "vanish" objects, presumably into their own personal Hammerspace, and call them back in when needed. The amount of Hammer Space you have directly correlates with how powerful you are.
- Canon in Animorphs, where it is known as Z-Space and is used to enable both morphing and interstellar travel.
- In M.A.R. Barker's Man of Gold, set in the world of Tekumel (which was originally created as an RPG) the hero, Harsan, learns to put things into another dimension, someplace he calls "around the corner", for safekeeping. There's one catch — if you leave something there very long, when you bring it back, it is cold enough to destroy flesh. If you put an item around the corner yourself, you can get it back by concentrating on it; or you can simply grope around and bring something back that someone else put there. But you won't know what it is until it materializes...
- In the Whateley Universe, there's a character codenamed Mobius who makes utility belts with pouches that are about ten times bigger in each direction than they are on the outside. Phase has one that looks like it couldn't hold a postage stamp. She carries everything up to a touch Taser and throwing knives in it.
- In Tom Holt's Grailblazers, a character has the hereditary ability to reach vaguely behind him, and always bring the hand back holding something weapon-like.
- Sycophants in the Leven Thumps series have an unlimited "void" where they stow useful stuff. Pretty annoying, it's very hard to visualize what's going on when your read "Clover fished around in his void."
- The Hammerspace nature of the Doctor's pockets is well-established.
- In the spin-off novel The Dying Days, after being pushed out of a plane in flight he survives by using the contents of his pockets to improvise a parachute.
- At a crucial moment "The Runaway Bride", the Doctor produces a remote control to stop the robots that are attacking them. "Guess what I've got, Donna? Pockets!" he says, and when Donna says that the remote control wouldn't fit, he adds, "They're bigger on the inside." So is the TARDIS, of course.
- A regular feature of the classic series was the Doctor being captured and hauled before some malevolent middle-management Mook, who would inevitably order him to "Turn out your pockets." One of the novels even refers to them being a "pocket dimension". Groan...
- See the Ass Pull entry about Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who, which proves that sometimes "where the hell did that come from?" is better left unanswered.
- The Canadian comedy series The Red Green Show used Hammerspace in the Adventures with Bill sequences where Bill would often pull impossibly large items out of his overalls. Some examples include oars and a ten-foot ladder.
- Baggin' Saggin' Barry has basically whatever you need at any given time in his oversized pants, up to & including Abraham Lincoln.
- On a 12th season episode of the British automobile Magazine Show Top Gear, presenter Jeremy Clarkson seems to pull a hammer out of nowhere in order to demonstrate how sturdy the body of a Soviet-built Lada is.
- An episode of WWE saw Triple H, known for carrying around a sledgehammer to clobber his foes with, facing off with another character holding a sledgehammer. The other character suggested they both drop their weapons and just go at it like men. Triple H agreed, both men ditched the hammers they were carrying, and then, after stepping into the ring and removing his jacket, HHH pulled another full-sized sledgehammer out from behind his back and proceeded to chase his opponent away. Now, yes, obviously in real life, the second hammer was concealed behind his back the entire time, held by a special rig, but the fact that someone managed to (in kayfabe) use Hammerspace on a live television program was impressive.
- Stephen Colbert's C-shaped desk is only ever shown from the front, which allows a ridiculous amount of junk to be pulled out of hidden cupboards as the plot calls for it. Notable items include a phone, a fax machine, his gun Sweetness, the Big Red Button, a pitchfork, a suitcase, John Oliver, at least two skulls, a variety of Prescott Pharmaceuticals products, Rahm Emanuel's severed finger, a secret prison (now closed), a Foot Locker, a Starbucks, and another Starbucks. This in turn has given substantial credibility to the theory that Colbert is a Time Lord.
- In the 2008 presidential primaries season, Mr Colbert interviewed a candidate who pulled an amazing amount of stuff out of his suit, including a full teacup.
- Freshman sidekick Jerry Steiner on Parker Lewis Cant Lose had a trench coat with this property. Also, everything stored within was held in place by velcro.
- During the battle royale in the "Yakuza vs. Mafia" episode of Deadliest Warrior, a yakuza thug pulls two large sai from behind his back at two different points during the combat. It's not completely clear if this was intentionally silly.
- Constantly happening in Blakes Seven due to the tight-leather outfits of the heroes. In one episode Dayna uses a small robot bomb on wheels, despite not teleporting down with any form of bag or container to hold it.
- In Skins, this is the only place Emily can possibly be hiding the Distraction Cake. In order to defuse an awkward situation at a party, she says "Hey, look what I made!" - and produces, from seemingly nowhere, a two-foot wide chocolate gateau.
- Lampshaded in a NBC promo
 for Chuck where Sarah pulls out hidden weapons.
- Power Rangers does this sometimes. Rangers are eternally calling the name of a weapon, and then the scene will them change to them raising it as if they had it all along. Explicit teleportation of weapons happens just often enough to make it the logical explanation. And then there are the occasional cases where a character goes gets an item, is then not seen with the item, but does the "jump-cut to them raising it to use" trick. Apparently, you have to procure an item in real space to be able to retrieve it from your personal hammerspace.
- In one episode of Bones, Brennan — dressed up as wonderwoman for a mandatory costume party — suddenly has her (big) gun drawn while she and Booth enter a building where a hostage is being tortured. Booth's response is "Where'd you even find a place to hide that?" to her apparent use of Hammer Space.
Music
- Toon is already mentioned above, with its 'Back Pocket'
- Dungeons And Dragons has the Portable Hole and the Bag Of Holding. Along with Hewer's Handy Haversack, a Backpack version of the Bag Of Holding
- Old "Deeppockets" spell allows this trick for a day or so, using one's garb. All these things are safe only until someone tries to stuff them into each other, though.
- Teenagers From Outer Space being an Animesque comedy game, has Hypedimensonal Hammers, Hyperspace Handbags, interdimensional car trunks, Popcorn Grenades (a softball sized device that creates a mountain a mile high of popcorn), and other bigger inside-than-out storage ideas.
- As mentioned above, Exalted has an extradimensional space known as "Elsewhere." There are several Charms that allow the Exalted to store their armor or weapons in Elsewhere and recall them at a moment's notice. A comic in one sourcebook has a mad inventor invent a device that will take him to Elsewhere, so that he can steal everyone's unguarded valuables... only to find out when he gets there that he can't move.
- The roleplaying game Tales From the Floating Vagabond has the Trenchcoat Schtick, which operates in the same way for small and medium items, but only if someone says something along the lines of "Oh, if only we had [insert name of small- or medium-sized item here]!"
- Warhammer 40000 even manages to make this trope horrible with the Obliterators. Chaos Marines (most likely former Techmarines) are infected with a virus from the Warp, which already has Really Bad Idea written all over it. As a result they are not only permanently fused to their armour and weapons, but can spontaneously spawn any weapon they desire and an infinite ammunition supply for the weapon, including-but-not-limited-to the ammunition-devouring Assault Cannon and the massive Lascannon. The entire experience is noted as being exceptionally painful.
- Many third person games do this — Grand Theft Auto, Zelda, etc. Just about any game in which the character has an extensive inventory.
- Link from the Zelda games has gotten quite a lot of debate going about just where he puts all those swords, bigger swords, bows and arrows, slingshots, pointy sticks, nuts, boomerangs, bombs, chickens, extra clothes, fairies, instruments, fishing poles, masks, metal boots, and most importantly to this topic, hammers. In his hat maybe?
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Almost Every The Legend Of Zelda game arsenal includes a "heavy"-type weapon... usually a hammer. Except for in "Twilight Princess," when he carries a ridiculously enormous ball and chain which slows him down considerably while he's carrying it in his arms, but somehow has no effect once he's put it back into hammerspace. He also gets a pair of heavy iron boots, which allow him to walk on the bottom of the water.
- Hand Waved in Twilight Princess by Midna storing them magically. If she can pick up a giant slab of rock and store it for later use, she can store a ball and chain, and heavy boots.
- From Ocarina of Time onward, his typical animation for pulling something from the inventory is reaching behind him. If he's wearing a shield, it looks like he's reaching underneath it, but once his shield is gone, he simply reaches behind him and the object appears in his hand.
- He can produce bombs bigger than his head by simply raising his hands in the air; in the N64 games, he either never even bothered to reach back and grab one, or it was done so fast you didn't even notice. He can hold, unencumbered, up to 50 of those things... somewhere.
- Apparently he keeps them in very limited extra-dimentional "bomb bags," which only bombs can fit into and which activate and teleport their contents into his hands whenever he raises them above his head. You don't want to be standing next to this guy in a crowd doing "the wave!"
- And this isn't restricted to Link. In Majora's Mask, the Mask Salesman pulls an entire pipe organ out of thin air to teach you the Song of Healing.
- Several fighters in the Super Smash Bros series use this. Peach in particular has a parasol, a tennis racket, a frying pan, a golf club, teacups, and *TOAD*, that all come out of nowhere.
- In Kingdom Of Loathing certain adventures involve the character "using an item he didn't know he had; and no longer has after" to either solve a problem or ward off an attack.
- The message you get when you summon a Boba Fettucini in combat: "pew pew pew!" <name> shouts excitedly, drawing a laser pistol from some spiritual dimension of necessity. "kill kill kill! pew pew pew!".
- In Halo: CE and its sequel Halo 2, whenever the player has two weapons, only one weapon will appear on the character (in this case in his hands) while the other weapon does not seem to be anywhere on the player, as the player's armor does not seem to have any visible pockets or straps for weapons. In Halo 3, both weapons appear on the player, one in the player's hands and the other either on his back or on his thigh. This can be used to the enemy's advantage as it makes you easily identifiable as a bigger threat if you carry a big weapon (for example, ironically, the Gravity Hammer).
- The first three generations of Pokémon games originally gave the main characters backpacks that hold a finite amount of items, with excess items having to be deposited in the main character's PC storage box (which itself may qualify). Diamond and Pearl abandoned this by giving the heroes backpacks with infinite storage space, even though their backpacks don't look any bigger than the ones previous characters had. Though all of them can somehow hold things as large as bicycles.
- First-gen PC had a fifty-stack limit. It is possible, although very difficult, to reach this.
- The bicycle thing is Hand Waved in later games by describing the the bikes in question as being collapsible. (Of course, even if this were the case, one would be hard-pressed to fit anything else into a pack of that size once the bike was in there.)
- In the games, items are found in Poké Balls. Some people take this as an explanation for the Bag's large storage space and how item storage works.
- The Sonic The Hedgehog series uses this often, most notably for Amy's hammer. The emeralds appear to be a subversion, as they are quite obviously absorbed within the character's body as are gold rings; other items with these tendancies may have simular properties or be sent away with chaos control.
- In Sonic Unleashed, Exposition Fairy Chip is able to produce endless amounts of chocolate, each bar bigger than he is, out of thin air. Furthermore, he offers one to everyone he meets.
- Zone of the Enders Handwaves this trope by means of suggesting that 'metatron', a principle material in the series, can expand, contract, and generates pockets of spacetime called Vector Traps more or less at the user's will.
- The unique element abilities of many, many Chrono Cross characters thrive on this trope.
- In Maniac Mansion 2: Day of the Tentacle, when Doctor Fred walks out of one door, then minutes later after Bernard solves a puzzle appears out of a different door when the only way to get from one door to the other is to pass through the room Bernard has been in the whole time, he asks "How did you get over there?" without receiving a response. This was a sort of Lampshade Hanging on how older adventure games often wouldn't keep track of where NP Cs were continuously, but have them just appear in response to events and not be able to be found otherwise.
- Similarly, the player characters in Day of the Tentacle show off their dimensional pockets on numerous occasions. Particularly Bernard, who pulls a crowbar out of his pants pocket a few times, and even stores away a considerable length of hanging rope by giving it a yank and holding his pocket open while the entire thing just falls in.
- The Space Quest series of adventure games has various jokes about all the inventory being carried around. One particular favourite example is near the beginning of Space Quest 3 when the in-game text reads "You take the 40 foot ladder and put it in your pocket. Ouch."
- Grand Theft Auto - In San Andreas , when CJ and Ryder go out to steal ammunition from various sources, CJ notes that the truck they're driving appeared from nowhere and the fact that it wasn't on Ryder's 'curb when it showed up. Ryder tells him to chill. He says his homies brought it over during the previous scene and that CJ didn't notice because Ryder's homies are like ninjas.
- Used in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, when talking to a fisherman whose pipe was constantly being shifted from his mouth to his hand while he gestured. At one point of the conversation, he ends up with a pipe in both mouth and hand, and one of the possible lines at this point is "Hey, where did that second pipe come from?" If chosen, the fisherman quickly reverts to his default sprite, looks around shiftily, and replies "What pipe?"
- All point'n'click adventure games had this to an extent or another, because of the technical limitations of the medium preventing these games from having the hundreds of thousands of sprites necessary to represent your character holding any combination of inventory items you can have. So it's usually treated humorously instead.
- In Simon The Sorcerer, Simon puts everything he picks up in his pointy hat, including a ladder.
- A particularly humorous Lampshade is hung in Space Quest VI: The Spinal Frontier, when Roger attempts to pick up an optional (and useless) 2x4 piece of wood. The Lemony Narrator bets that you can't fit it in your pants, then goes on to theorize that they are truly bottomless after you prove him wrong.
- Also lampshaded in Space Quest III: "You take the ladder and jam it in your pocket. Ouch!"
- Space Quest V also makes mention about how all the items you carry do nothing to aid the unimpressive bulge in your pants.
- In the Discworld games, where Rincewind can only carry two items whereas the Luggage (being a bag of holding) can carry an unlimited amount.
- Most games where you can put away your weapon have this. Also, sometimes the weapon is longer than the character.
- A specific example of this is in Silent Hill 2, where James can at one point pick up a massive "Great Knife" which is about as large as he is tall. He can only barely move while dragging the giant thing behind him, and actually swinging it is a painfully long process - put it away in your inventory, though, and he can run around happily as normal.
- Let's not forget the Resident Evil games. Two words: rocket launchers.
- Used in Zork Grand Inquisitor, when in the middle of the eventure, AFGNCAAP pulls out a huge vacuum cleaner. Dungeon Master Dalboz remarks "Just where were you keeping that?"
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, this, and the use of hammerspace in general, is lampshaded when Goombella wonders where enemies like Hammer Bros and Lakitus keep their endless supply of projectiles.
- In a truly fantastic Phoenix Wright scene, Matt Engarde manages to pull a glass of cognac from Hammerspace while in prison just for the purposes of swirling it evilly.
- Less awesome but still notable is Maxamillion Galactica's ability to throw a bunch of cards from his apparently bare hand. While this is reasonable given that he's a magician, after the sixth or seventh time you wonder exactly how he got all of them up his sleeve.
- The Bound Weapon spells in The Elder Scrolls basically boil down to pulling an Infinity Plus One Sword from Hammerspace.
- Planescape Torment:
- The Nameless One, is a hulking brute of a man; he has twenty inventory slots that can fit sledgehammers, human skulls, books, and other sundry items. He manages to lug around his massive arsenal of knives, Eldritch Tomes, spare arms and so on despite wearing nothing more than a loincloth and animal-bone belt.
- Morte, a supporting character, has the same twenty slots as the Nameless One has. He's a floating human skull. Hammerspace is the only reasonable excuse.
- The scantily clad Annah, not-quite-so-scantily clad Fall-From-Grace, and the Modron Nordom (living cube on stilts for the heathen masses), not to mention Ignus who is on FIRE, yet still manages to store scrolls.
- In zOMG, the Kokeshi Dolls are small animated toys that wander around Zen Gardens, apparently unarmed. But if you make one of them angry they proceed to pull an giant bladed fan from nowhere, then they throw it at you. Then they pull another one out of thin air and repeat the process.
- When threatened the pimps (dressed like pimps) from True Crime takes out a small gun, and the hookers (dressed like hookers) takes out large rifles...
- The Keyblade from Kingdom Hearts, as one of its inherent abilities, can truly be summoned out of thin air (or out of someone else's hands) whenever its wielder needs it. According to Word Of God, later installments even added an effect for each time Sora drew his keyblade from Hammerspace. Other weapons in the series like Riku's Soul Eater, which technically IS a keyblade, also seem to operate on this principle.
- The Pandora Directive, like most adventure games, ignores this most of the time, with items you click on going into inventory magically. At one point you do this with a 15-foot bamboo pole and are carrying it around in some unknown manner. However, parts of the game are full motion video, and the designers decided to have a little bit of fun, so when you need to use the pole, you are treated to the video of Tex Murphy absurdly pulling a 15-foot pole out from under his trenchcoat and then using it.
- Resident Evil 2. Mobile hammerspace. Excess inventory is stored in various identical crates around the game world. No attempt is made to explain how putting an item in a box in a cop office allows it to show up in the sewage substation office. The "stash" in Diablo II functions in much the same way. In the case of multiplayer mode, this results in two or more characters accessing different inventories from the same box.
- Found in Resident Evil 4, for any weapon wielding zombie. If you shoot their weapon out of their hand, they will pull out another one, no matter how many times you do it. Interesting case with Leon's attache case. The case actually has limited space and has to be upgraded to carry more stuff. However, the case is never visible during gameplay (and you still run into a rocket launcher along the way).
- Justified (or hand-waved) in a scene in Tales Of The Abyss wherein Jade pulls his spear out of nowhere to ward off a surprise attack. Luke asks him where the spear came from, and he replies that he uses magic to keep it in his arm.
- Not exactly "magic." In the Abyss world, it's basic science. Jade uses the "contamination effect" to separate the spear into fonons (the basic elements of the universe) and merge them with the fonons of his arm. When he needs the spear, he just does the opposite.
- The Tales Series's Recurring Arte Pow Hammer appears this way if used as a physical attack.
- Chat, Seles, and Karol have bags of hammerspace.
- Yukari Yakumo, from the Touhou series, possesses/has access to a literal Hammerspace in the form of the her "gaps", tears in reality which she uses to travel and store/transport any item she desires, most notably several grave stones, enemy projectiles, traffic signs, and a train.
- While Sakuya Izayoi is far less proficient, she uses her ability to mess with space-time to manifest her own Hammerspace pocket in which to store her ludicrous amount of knives, also using her power to stop time to retrieve them. (Some fans have stated that it's the same knife, being in multiple places at the same time.)
- Suika Ibuki's treasured magical gourd, which never gets empty of sake. It's sometimes speculated what would happen if someone ever managed to set fire to its inside.
- Even Tomb Raider falls under this. OK, so Lara can hold her signature pistols in her hip holsters and she carries her two handed weapon by attaching it to her backpack, but whenever you switch out weapons, like the Uzis or the Shotgun, the weapons occupying the space before it just magically vanish to make room for the new weapons drawn. Of course one could argue that her backpack carries everything, but it seems silly how Lara can stuff 6+ guns with extra bullets, medi-packs, and flares in that tiny backpack.
- In the game Battle for Wesnoth Hammerspace is invoked frequently, and this is indeed acknowledged by the developers.
- In The Pink Panther: Passport to Peril, a number of things can be carried by the Panther in pockets that he just opens in his skin, and that can hold everything from a bag of chips to a fishing rod, a katana, a cup of coffee (still hot) and a live, termite-stuffed anteater.
- Mega Man protagonists can hold and pull out a suspicious number of tanks and other miscellaneous items considering they're all in spandex, with no pockets to speak of.
- Much like the Kingdom Hearts example above, everyone in Dissidia: Final Fantasy can produce their weapon of choice from thin air at any time, complete with a flash of light when it appears. This gets a little ridiculous when you play as Bartz, who constantly summons and dismisses the other characters' weapons as he fights. The sole exception seems to be Firion, who is explicitly shown to be carrying his sword, axe, bow, daggers, etc. on his person at all times.
- Lampshaded in the second Ratchet & Clank. The commentator for arena battles occasionally questions where Ratchet is carrying his weapons.
- This trope can be found in Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm. Ino Yamanaka's ultimate attack includes her taking out poisoned bouquets from behind her. Where she gets them is questionable, she doesn't have back pockets.
- Lampshaded by Valve on one of their fake websites for Team Fortress 2 which offers, among other ridiculious services: "Lower total loadout weight by providing your staff with Hammerspace™ Technology (patent pending) to keep supplies and tactical items out of the way, yet still within reach."
- Taokaka from Blaz Blue can store multiple items within the sleeves of her coat, including (but not limited to) her trademark metal blades, a bowling ball, fish bones, a different set of serrated blades, apple cores, baseballs, books, a Kaka clan child (the throwing of which earns you a Trophy/Achievment) and dinner set among other things.
- The referee during the speed slice event in Wii Sports Resort. He pulls a bunch of random items out of nowhere (and all of them are huge) for you to slice, such as bread, sushi, candles, screens, bamboo, watermelons, oranges, diamonds, cakes, eggs, and even the electronic timers used for power cruise event.
- Jess from Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis has a handbag, frequently Lampshaded, from which she can pull anything, of any size, of any dimensions, at any given time. Including other characters. And yet, I bet she still can't find a tampon when she needs one.
- The Hammer Brothers from the Super Mario Bros series.
- In City Of Heroes, literally every weapon, whether on a hero or villian, is stored in hammerspace. The animation of pulling it out involves the character reaching behind his back and the weapon materializing out of thin air.
- In Left 4 Dead The Tank is capable of pulling a sizable chunk of concrete out of the ground, regardless of where he he is (on a metal walkway for example).
- Some of the Mortal Kombat characters have weapons that they don't always carry, including Shao Kahn's hammer and Kitana's fans, as well as every fighter in most of the 3D games.
- In Fallout 3, the Pip-Boy must come with some sort of pre-war super storage compartment because the thousands of bullets, half a dozen outfits, sack of drugs, The Terrible Shotgun and all those holotapes must be on the Lone Wanderer's person somewhere.
- World Of Warcraft gives characters lots of bags to store stuff in, but the question of how, physically, a person would lug around entire sets of armor, dozens of weapons, hundreds of potions, etc., remains unanswered. An attempt at justifying this was actually made for pets and mounts, whose inventory items are supposedly devices used to summon them rather than the creatures themselves; otherwise you'd be carrying around a half dozen horses (or kodos!) in your pack in addition to all those weapons. Also interesting is the graphical display of weapons, which do actually appear on the character's back or belt, but when swapped (say, for a wand or ranged weapon) vanish back into hammerspace.
- In Left 4 Dead2 players can now replace pistols with melee weapons such as bats and swords and even chainsaws. The downside is off course you lose your pistol sidearms. Yet if you get incapacitated you somehow manage to whip out a pistol to blast the infected with whilst on the floor.
Web Original
- From Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, after Gadget luckily has a glass cutter to free the trapped heroes that she gets from Hammerspace:
Monty: Do you always carry a glass cutter around with ya?
Gadget: No, only when I wanna cut glass.
- Considering Dora The Explorer is formatted in a style reminiscent to a point-and-click adventure computer game, the fact that Backpack is able to carry more than it can logically hold]] is a possible Homage to this trope. Its Spin Off, Go, Diego Go! also does this with its own inventory character.
- Used in The Road To El Dorado after scantily clad Chel presents Tulio with his own loaded dice:
Tulio: How did you get those?
Miguel: Where was she keeping them?
- Spongebob Squarepants:
- In episode "Fear of a Krabby Patty," a frantic, delusional Spongebob gives Plankton just enough time to squeak out, "Hey where'd you get that piano?" Just before, well, you know.
- Plankton did one of these himself in a much earlier episode, "Walking Small", offering Spongebob a golden spatula in an attempt to get a Krabby Patty from him. "I've been keeping it in my...secret compartment. SHING! Sparkle-sparkle."
- Danny Phantom:
- No matter how many times Tucker's PDA gets destroyed during the plot, he always has another one ready next time. In the third episode, Sam asks him, "How many of those things do you have?"
- Then there is the Fenton Thermos. Sure, sometimes Sam or Tucker will arrive on the scene just as Danny decides he needs one, and the animators may feel adventurous enough to show him carrying it on his back, but on most occasions this thing comes out of nowhere. It is unclear how many Fenton Thermoses the Fenton family actually owns. Considering the Fentons have a weapons vault, I think it's fair to assume that they have mass produced the Fenton Thermos. They are Crazy Prepared for ghosts, after all.
- Avatar The Last Airbender:
- To complete his Sherlock Holmes routine in the Clear My Name episode, Sokka pulls a bubble pipe out of Hammerspace. Katara asks him, "Where did you get that?" A pretty valid question, as the show's sense of realism normally doesn't allow for cartoonish things of that nature.
- Toph did something similar in "Bitter Work", pulling Aang's staff out from behind her back. A staff that's notably taller than her.
- Not to mention Mai, who is able to produce a staggering amount of throwing knives from the inside of her sleeves.
- Sam & Max:
Sam: Hey, where do you keep that gun?
Max: None of your damn business, Sam.
- Wreck-Gar in Transformers Animated has his trash bin, that functions as both Hammerspace and a "Pit of No Return". He can take many useful (and even more useless) items from it, and things that are put in it seem to just disappear. Swindle's chest compartment does the same thing, except it canonically links to a hammerspace.
- In Transformers parlance, hammerspace is known as subspace and is used for a number of things, including weapons storage and a place to shunt mass when transforming into something tiny (for instance, when Megatron becomes a gun). And yes, this is also where Prime's trailer goes. And long before being largely canonised as subspace, this mysterious dimension was actually known to many fans as "Trailerland".
- Some continuities from different writers (mostly the comics) have been attempted to justify it with actual talk of mass shifting technology, but in the end it is just A Wizard Did It. The Transformers films did everything it could to avoid this, with appropriate vehicle modes to accomodate robot modes (with debate about Frenzy's head turning into a cell phone). In fact the All Spark as being capable of this was presented as a very unique and special thing it can do.
- In Count Duckula, Nanny was able to produce any item from inside her sling.
- Felix The Cat and his bag of tricks.
- Subverted in Disney/Pixar's Up when Carl Fredricksen seems to pull his cane with the four tennis balls out of thin air when he first gets out of bed. It's innocuous, but the cane is right there between the bed and the nightstand. While Carl is stretching, he is blocking the view of it.
- Duckman: When Cornfed reminds Duckman that everyone in town is working only a half-day (due to a civil defence drill that our antihero didn't hear about), Duckman says, "Ohhh, it's one of those days," and throws on — pulled out of nowhere and in a fraction of a second — an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jew's black hat, coat, and sidelocks. (Cornfed's response, just for the record: "Duckman, this isn't one of those days where you have to pretend you're Jewish.")
- Do clown cars count? After you see the seventh clown climb from a Volkswagen Beetle, it gets ridiculous.
- Abu the monkey from Aladdin has hammerspace inside his vest; he can hold any amount of stolen money, jewelry, fruit and even the genie's lamp inside it.
- During the second season of X-Men the Animated Series, after having lost his ultimate telepathic powers, Professor Xavier is able to produce weapons instantaneously in order to save Magneto, including a boomerang, and a spear!
- Batman The Brave And The Bold: The Joker pulled a bazooka out of his pants.
- Notable in Sinbad when the crew is asked to disarm and one of them begins to pile a disproportionately large number of weapons on the table.
- Done countless times in Ed Edd N Eddy, with examples being Kevin pulling out a bike from his pants in "See No Ed", Rolf pulling out a giant hammer out to hammer Double-D into the ground in "Momma's Little Ed" and in "A Fistfull of Ed" with Eddy pulling out hotdogs and eating them (the kids even start asking themselves where Eddy got all those hotdogs in the first place).
- The Penguins Of Madagascar, the Nickelodeon television show. The quiet one of the foursome has stomachspace. Semi-normal when he barfs up a playing card, but very disturbing when he barfs up a stick of dynamite.
- Curly's Funny Afro in The Harlem Globe Trotters.
- Marge Simpson's hair appears to contain hammerspace, as she has retrieved various items from it. On one occasion whilst swaying from side to side doing exercises, each change in direction dropped a larger item out of her hair.
- Krusty's small car can also transport several clowns, each wearing oversize footwear.
- Phineas And Ferb, "The Chronicles of Meap", lampshades it when Candace calls out adorable alien Meap on "where he keeps all those pictures" he uses to communicate.
- Referenced on Animaniacs during a Pirates of Penzance spoof (full text under "I Am the Very Model of a Cartoon Individual").
- Lampshaded in an episode of Timon and Pumbaa, where the title characters fall off a cliff and pull increasingly ludicrously large items— pianos, elephants, cruise ships— from behind their backs ("You never know what might happen to be just behind our backs!") while Rummage Failing for a parachute.
- The characters in Shirt Tales were capable of pulling random items out from under their shirts until something useful popped up.
- Courage The Cowardly Dog revels in this. At least five times in a single episode, characters will pull oversized items (giant mallets, giant masks, even loose change the size of frisbees) out of their pockets or from behind their backs. In fact, pretty much every cartoon Jon Dilworth has made does this.
- The characters in the Men In Black Animated Adaptation series sometimes pulled some ridiculously large weapons from under their suit-coats. This troper remembers one episode in which one of the MIB not only drew a large weapon for himself, but then pulled out another to toss to an unarmed comrade (but does not remember which characters were involved).
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