Basic Trope: A character attempts to use a gun only to discover it's not loaded.
- Straight: Alice holds Bob at gunpoint and attempts to shoot him, only to hear a click.
- Exaggerated: Alice holds Bob at gunpoint with a medium machine gun, which is quite obviously missing the two-hundred round belt it would normally be loaded with.
- Downplayed: Alice points a single barreled break-action shot gun at Bob. She had loaded it earlier, but someone else unloaded it when she wasn't around, and the weight of a single cartridge is too negligible to notice.
- Justified:
- In the heat of battle, Alice lost track of how many bullets she'd fired.
- Bob already disarmed the gun.
- Alice took it from the north wing mantle, what did she expect?.
- Inverted:
- Alice pretends her gun is not loaded, only for it to discharge.
- Alice finds an enchanted gun. Even when completely unloaded and verified it will always fire a round from nowhere when the trigger is pulled.
- Subverted:
- Double Subverted:
- However, her backup pistol is empty as well.
- So Bob hands her some bullets so she will give him a less painful death. But the bullet turns out to be a dud, and the split-second "what the heck?" reaction from Alice is enough for Bob to rush her.
- Parodied: Alice picks up the trigger assembly of a partially disassembled gun, points it at Bob, and pulls the trigger. Bob fails to respond, as he cannot even begin to comprehend Alice's stupidity.
- Zig Zagged: Alice points a gun at Bob, but it doesn't have a magazine. She pulls the trigger, and it turns out there was a round in the chamber. Bob panics at the flash, only to realize it was a blank. Upon closer inspection, however, he sees that he's bleeding, the wound caused by the blank's wadding.
- Averted: Alice doesn't run out of bullets at a crucial time.
- Enforced: Bob has Joker Immunity, but needed to lose the battle for the plot to advance. So Alice wins the battle, but is unable to kill Bob.
- Lampshaded: "I can't believe you ran out of bullets. Don't you know to keep track of your shots?"
- Invoked:
- Bob tricks Alice into using up her remaining bullets.
- Bob carries an unloaded gun, knowing that he might be disarmed.
- Exploited: Seeing that there's no magazine in Alice's gun, Bob closes the distance and stabs her without fear of being shot.
- Defied: Alice checks her gun to see if it's still loaded before pointing it at Bob.
- Discussed: "You realize you're out of bullets, right?" "You wish." Click!
- Conversed: "If I were in a gun battle, I wouldn't run out of bullets at a crucial time. I can keep track of my shots."
Back to It Works Better with Bullets
