"Who leaves these weapons scattered around anyway?"
— Sam, Serious Sam
Ever been traipsing though a computer game and found an item that doesn't belong? Ammo, weapons and pickups that have no reason for being there other than to supply the player. It doesn't matter if you are in an enemy base or in a underground tomb that hasn't been disturbed for thousands of years; you will find ammo and weapons. Most of it is brand new and functional.
While this has become less common in recent years, it still turns up occasionally.
Super-Trope to Suspicious Video-Game Generosity, where the items are a hint that tough times are soon to come.
Related to Notice This.
Examples:
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These games, while often trying to be serious, will offer no explanation of what these things are doing there.
Action Adventure
- The Mummy, the PlayStation tie-in to the movie, gives you bullets, shotgun shells and machine-gun drums in the middle of an ancient Egyptian pyramid.
- All of the Tomb Raider games outside of Legend and Underworld use this; even in areas where humans have apparently not been for thousands of years you find contemporary ammo, weapons, and first aid kits. Every once in a while (though certainly not often) they'll justify it by having a skeleton, obviously killed by a trap or animal, with an item lying right next to it.
Adventure Game
- Discworld Noir: Discussed by Laredo Cronk.
Laredo: It means breaking into ancient buildings within which no man or woman has walked for thousands of years, apart from whoever it is who leaves all those medical kits, of course.
First Person Shooter
- The Borderlands series may have explanations for why the wildlife has a diet rich in modern weaponry (see the aversions below), but that doesn't explain why there's Goodies in the Toilets and almost every mailbox in the game is an ammo box. Even if people were having ammo mailed to them, wouldn't they have picked it up? And there's every indication that some of those toilets are actually used by the locals for the things toilets are normally used for, but they're stuffed with supplies anyway. (A common mid-grade loot box in Borderlands 2 is a porta-potty that gives off significant runoff and an unpleasant squishing noise when opened, and loot falls out.) The skags and stalkers certainly aren't using either of those things.
- Doom, due to its (intentional) aversion to realistic architecture, has no places where one might logically find weapons or medical supplies (i.e. no armories or medical facilities), thus you will freely find guns and first-aid kits: Some are tucked away on ledges, others are right next to (or even sitting directly in the middle of) pools of toxic waste.
- The game even has you finding health, weapons and armor in Hell.
- Probably the most egregious aspect of this has to be The Great Communicator, because it's really difficult to come up with any legitimate reason for why the hell there's a chainsaw on Mars. The third game at least had the courtesy to lampshade this in one of the email logs, and handwaves it by explaining that an order for jackhammers got mixed up on Earth.
- The original manual for Doom (back when buying shareware got you sent the game on floppies, along with a retail box and a manual) called it a combat chainsaw, so it was specifically designed to fight, and was there as a weapon rather than a tool.
- Doom (2016) notes that the chainsaw has no possible application in a mining facility on Mars, and deduces that it thus must be there as contraband someone deliberately intended as a weapon.
- Clive Barker's Undying: Pistol and shotgun ammo in a medieval monastery?
- Serious Sam: Where does all the ammo and weaponry come from? After all, the games do take place in ancient Egypt, ancient Mesoamerica, and alien planets, so finding things like Tommy Guns and boxes of rockets on pedestals is a wee bit nonsensical. A brief note suggests that they are transported in by the same time travel that Sam used. Despite the name, Serious Sam is really not meant to be taken that seriously. Rather obvious since you're running around ancient Egypt shooting headless aliens with giant uranium filled cannonballs.
- In Serious Sam 3: BFE, weapons are scattered around more realistically, but ammo crates for rockets and C4 in particular are still placed in areas where they would be very helpful, such as, say, just before a boss that can only be damaged by explosives.
- The post-apocalyptic environment of Fallout 3 contains a ridiculous amount of equipment and weaponry just lying around many decades after the war. Useful gear is practically ubiquitous, having somehow escaped looters, scroungers, and of course damage from very lengthy exposure to the elements. Contrast with the original Fallout games where most of the equipment to be found is either already in someone's possession, or stored away in undisturbed underground facilities.
- Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 and 2 have large crates which allow you to switch weapons and equipment. While some of them can be handwaved as enemy gear (which raises the question of why you never find any enemies in the same room as a weapon crate), some of them are in incredibly implausible locations, including areas where they couldn't have even fit the box through the doors.
- Deus Ex and its open-endedness suffered somewhat from this. Why would you find grenades or rebreathers in sewer pipes just as you would need them?
- In one scene in the prequel, there is a Praxis Kit next to a dead body. It's booby-trapped, and the mine will alert any enemies in the area. Some NPCs will also provide you with weapons... for a price. Although it was odd the number of down and outs you met with nothing but the tattered clothes they stood in, a half bottle of booze, and a high-end sniper scope for a special forces issue assault rifle.
- A couple of Marathon's Pfhor ship levels have hidden stashes of ammo. Maybe they claimed it from captured humans.
- Left 4 Dead generally avoids being a bad offender of the trope, but the sequel just has odd placements for items, due to how the AI Director is feeling. For example, if you explore the bathrooms in the finale of Dead Center, you can find pills, adrenaline shots, first aid kits, and fire/explosive ammo stuffed inside toilets and urinals.
- Not to mention the fact that so many katanas and cricket bats are scattered across the U.S. Deep South in the first place. Katanas Are Just Better, of course, but you'd think baseball bats would make more sense (they are in the game, but were only plentiful back when they were just a Preorder Bonus).
- Also, it's sometime possible to find 2 of the same weapon in the same spot (Such as 2 M16s placed right next to each other).
- Medal of Honor: Vanguard: While the presence of Bazookas lying around on the field is usually explained as being being part of a supply drop by allied planes, it does not explain why Bazookas and ammunition for them appear in the interior of a French Chateau and a German Factory, where the roof of the buildings would prevent them from landing inside.
- Batman Doom is no less strange about it than the original Doom. There's no particular reason why you can find, say, boxes full of batarangs or special anti-radiation batsuits inside random buildings in Gotham, including deep inside the lairs of criminal masterminds.
Platform Games
- Dr. Robotnik seems to love keeping rings around, even though they're the only thing keeping Sonic from being a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
- There are a lot of Fanwank for the existence of the rings, but that does ignore the fact that Robotnik never bothers to clean them up.
- Shadow the Hedgehog implies during the Egg Dealer boss fight that Dr. Eggman uses them as currency. When Shadow stops the slot reels on "Ring," the Doc cries out, "Noooo! My beautiful Rings!"
- In Castlevania, it seems rather easy to find holy water lying around, even in Dracula's castle.
- The crosses (and cross-shaped rosaries) are also curious. And then there's the pork chops hidden in the walls.
- Help me stuff this pot roast into these candles!
- An interview handwaved it by saying the candlebra the items are stored in are souls trapped by Dracula, by destroying it you free the soul which leaves a gift as thanks. Doesn't explain when they're hidden elsewhere however.
- In A Short Hike throughout the island there are coins, treasure chests, and buried treasure markers spread widely and often obscured by foliage or hidden around corners. In the snowy final area these treasures are much easier to see and are generous in number. Because 32% of the stamina upgrades are purchased with coins and because having a high enough stamina level acts as a soft skill-barrier on finishing the final area the developer may have wanted to make sure that any player who couldnât finish the final area would have enough coins to purchase more upgrades right away.
- The Mega Man (Classic) series has health pellets, weapon refills, one-ups and even E-tanks in Wily's castle. Doesn't Wily know these items help Mega Man?
- Metroid Fusion takes place on a research lab satellite, yet there are missiles and bombs hidden in the walls of otherwise empty rooms.
- All the Metroid games have a habit of this; no matter where the game is set, there are inevitably vast amounts of upgrades and items that can be found in often-arbitrary areas for no logical reason.
- Fred is an old Atari 8-bit game about a caveman travelling through the prehistoric wilderness. The British edition of the game notes in the manual that the protagonist may find tools "which have, by a strange fluke of nature, been placed in vases on the landscape for his easy access."
- Done with all the items, gear and power ups in the Super Mario Bros. series. Why are there ? blocks in the Big Bad's base? Clothing that just happens to fit people quite near where it'd be useful (in the RPGs)? Even the equivalents of Mordor have money and items lying around all over the place...
- At least Bowser wises up a bit in Super Mario 3D World. He doesn't remove the helpful powerups from his base, but he does decide to use some of them himself.
- Sly Cooper: Its main minor collectible/currency is just scattered everywhere. Lampshaded in a making-of video found in the third game:
If I ever become rich, I'm going to store all my money next to huge, moving machine parts.
And open fire pits.
Yes! Open fire pits right near my holding paper cash!
Role-Playing Games
- Baldur's Gate II: Wooden stakes to impale the heart of vampires? Of course you would expect to find them in temples rather than inside the vampire lair, not the opposite, right?
- The Elder Scrolls:
- You can find money almost everywhere, including in the lairs of creatures who have no use for it (goblins, Falmer, undead, Daedra...) In fact, all coinage is represented by Septims (the currency of the ruling Empire for the first four games in the series which has been in power for around five centuries) even in places explicitly sealed since before the reign of the Septim Dynasty. Morrowind provides a single exception in the form of Dwemer coins. However, these still aren't treated as currency. Instead, they are a particularly valuable form of antique Shop Fodder.
- Consumable potions and food, as well as ammunition like arrows and even unlikely items such as lockpicks can be found almost everywhere as well. Low on health and out of Healing Potions? Don't worry, that potion you found in a barrel in a ruin explicitly sealed since the 1st Era will still heal you just as much. Skyrim is perhaps the most outright blatant about this in the series so far. Morrowind again offers a mild exception in the form of "Spoiled" potions, which are weaker and damage an Attribute if consumed. These are still fairly rare and even normal potions with no negative effects can be found in the same areas.
- Diablo II, besides having equipment that Randomly Drops, has beneficial shrines and healing wells that can be found even in the Chaos Sanctuary, Diablo's lair.
- Hype: The Time Quest has crossbow bolts, herbs, potions, magics, chests, and exploding barrels stacked up everywhere!
- Mass Effect; one the worst examples being when you find perfectly functional modern (year 2183) equipment in a Soviet probe on the moon. (The All There in the Manual explanation is that these are the items your nanotech omnitool can build from scavanging the parts.) The sequel averts this with weapons and the like, but the planet that Ronald Taylor crash-landed on has thermal clips for your weapons, a new development within the previous two years, lying around despite being out of touch with the galaxy for a decade.
- You also have oddly convenient weapon-switch lockers strewn all through the second game, all of which have multiple copies of every single gun you have access to, including heavy weapons. Why does a hotel need a nuke launcher anyway?
- Heretic Station is a geth base which hasn't been used by organics in several hundred years, but there are still working medkits everywhere.
- And the collector ship has a collection of advanced human weaponry lying around in a pile. Considering the collectors only collect live samples and don't touch other races' equipment or technology, it boggles the mind how and why. Even more mind-bogging is why you can somehow only pick up one of them. Though, we do see that some of the abducted humans are carrying their guns.
- Lampshaded in the Citadel DLC, when Liara's drone companion wonders out loud why people keep leaving weapon modifications lying out in the open. Which happens a lot.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda manages to run all the way to the end field with this one, with Remnant sites equipped with ammo and health-kits after being left alone for four hundred years, which work with guns and species from another galaxy. Apparently the Remnant's builders really were Benevolent Precursors, anticipating that someone would need ammo to defend themselves from their attack drones like that.
- In Neverwinter Nights (Shadows of the Undrentide), 'so old it's useless' armor and weapons can be found, but otherwise the game is a worst offender.
- In the base game most containers have random treasure based on your level. So based on what level you are, you can find hundreds of gold pieces, a magical warhammer, and some gems in a rain barrel outside a whorehouse!
- Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder tend to specifically encourage this. Especially true in 4th edition, since items resell for only one fifth of their market value, its important that DM's make sure the items the players need are in the treasure caches the players find and monsters are factored based on players having those items. Pathfinder went the other route and beefed up the player classes so that magic items were less important.
- Many Roguelikes will have items randomly scattered around on the ground instead of (or in addition to) Inexplicable Treasure Chests.
- In Grim Dawn, magic items can be found anywhere, even if it defy any sense or logic. Probably the most puzzling of all are firearms found in ancient tombs that haven't opened for thousands of years and before they were invented in the first place.
Survival Horror
- For a place that's trying to torment you constantly, Silent Hill is awfully generous with ammo and health boosters lying strewn randomly through the empty streets. This is not to mention what sort of mental hospital or prison would leave guns or ammo lying around. A player can sometimes finish a playthrough of the game with ammo for all weapons clocking in at over 100, and more health drinks, medkits and tourniquets than you'll ever need.
- Lampshaded in Silent Hill 3, where the Shotgun is found wrapped up in a birthday present.
- Fatal Frame games can contend for the most egregious example of this trope. Basically, your heroines must survive their way through horde of ghosts, armed with an obscure camera that can spiritually bind ghosts in magical films. Rolls of magical films are everywhere in the games, even though the only one with the know-how to make them is the occult professor who also invented said camera. To make it worse, the majority of the games take places in houses/villages that are "devoured by darkness" so long ago that the camera hadn't even been invented.
- The protagonist of Condemned 2: Bloodshot must drink alcohol to keep his aim steady when firing guns. So when you see a bottle of booze laying around, it's a good sign that a firefight is imminent.
- Dead Space is kind enough to, generally speaking, only drop ammo for the weapons you have on you at the time. For this reason, combined with the high cost of upgrading weapons, it's generally recommended to only carry two or three guns at a time, rather than the maximum of four. Items in general are stored in containers or on the bodies of the dead necromorphs, who were likely trying to hoard supplies to stay alive, same as Isaac. However, there still manages to be some fairly inexplicable examples. For example, why is there a storage crate containing saw blades at an elementary school? (Check out the Aversions folder, as Dead Space manages to land in that category as well.)
- Camcorder batteries in Outlast are scattered everywhere in the asylum for no explained reason.
- Resident Evil 6 gives the player lots of boxes containing ammo refills, health and other supplies right before big boss fights, with said boxes having absolutely no reason for being where they are in the amounts they are.
Third Person Shooter
- Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy has 'psi-vials' all over the place that are used to replenish the players' psi-energy. Considering that very few people have psi powers, it a bit of a mystery as to why they would be there. This is especially blatant in boss fights, but otherwise disappears later in the game as the player finds another way to get psi-energy. Health and ammo are also inconsistently placed.
- In 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, you buy guns from an arms dealer by contacting him on pay phones strewn throughout the levels. This despite the fact that some of the levels are set in Napoleonic desert castles, or even in one memorable instance, inside a burning building.
G-Unit member: (In a burning hallway) "How the fuck is Amal supposed to deliver guns in here?"
50 Cent: "How the fuck should I know? Shut up, I'm making a call." - The Hitman series tries to avert this, with most weapons being held in armories and security rooms. However, Agency-issue equipment is often delivered to strange locations, sometimes in plain view of patrolling guards and always stored in "inconspicuous" open black crates. Absolution plays this trope painfully straight, with sniper rifles propped up near vantage points (exactly what is a Carcano rifle doing in the storeroom of a donut shop?) and bricks of C4 just laying around on top of crates etc.
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine: New weapons and upgrades are located in large, ornate reliquaries that open when the protagonist approaches. The story is set on an Industrial World that engages in Machine Worship, so these examples of priceless, rare tech are enshrined as objects of veneration — though it doesn't explain the contrived placement of the reliquaries themselves, which sit out in the open among ruined city streets or inside factory sewer networks.
In these games, a decent attempt is made at explaining why these things are lying around.
Action Adventure
- The videogame of Batman Begins is generally clever about where it puts its first aid kits. The ones in the Absurdly Spacious Sewer are in the parts that are clearly regularly used by sewer workers, the ones on the docks are in offices and lookout posts, and obviously, there are plenty in Arkham Asylum...
- The Zelda verse is given a canon explanation for it in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, wherein the gnome-like Minish race is described in an encyclopaedia as having a habit of hiding goods in bushes and rocks.
First Person Shooter
- The Video Game 7 Days to Die mostly subverts this trope, as guns and ammo are often found in gun safes, and specialized storage crates. Medical supplies are in medicine cabinets, food is in cabinets, and so on. Although the more recent updates make some buildings more 'dungeon' like in terms of loot layout.
- Done rather blatantly in Corridor 7: Alien Invasion. You're in an office building filled with hostile alien monsters, and will periodically find letterboxes built in walls with the words "AMMO", "HEALTH" or "ARMOR" marked into them. Checking the boxes will give you a pickup according to what's written on them.
- FEAR: Although booster injectors turn up in odd places, ammo, weapons and normal health packs are usually found in only enemy staging areas.
- That's not to say that there aren't the occasional inexplicable weapon (such as a sewer worker who apparently committed suicide with a 10mm nailgun), of course.
- Halo:
- When human weapons are found in hostile areas, the series usually has the design sense to put them into shipping crates near crashed escape pods, on the corpses of dead soldiers, or some other at least semi-plausible scenario.
- In some areas of Halo: Combat Evolved, you would find Marine corpses (and handy ammo stashes) where they couldn't possibly have reached. The novelization justifies at least some of this, by having 343 Guilty Spark show the Master Chief the corpse of the previous human he had teleported to the Library, who had died in combat against the Flood (though this was never even mentioned in the original game).
- Before very difficult sections, a friendly dropship will often supply vehicles and heavy weapons.
- Part of the reason why the series can avert this is because you're encouraged to use your enemies' weapons (with several levels requiring you to do so). That said, sometimes getting that Fuel Rod Cannon or Gravity Hammer that you'll need in the next area will require you to kill whoever's currently wielding them.
- Supplice is strangely generous with the ammo and supplies, despite being set in an outpost filled with monsters where you're the Sole Survivor. Best exemplified in the final stage - you're fighting a Zerg Rush of hundreds and hundreds of monsters emerging from a portal, one wave at a time, and how convenient that said stage is in a large warehouse with armories built in every wall for you to periodically retreat, resupply, and continue kicking ass.
- In Unreal, while there are exceptions, items are mostly justified by being in Skaarj-populated areas, being in places where doomed Humans have gone, or worshiped as some sort of holy artifacts by the Nali. The add on Return To Na Pali continues this with the addition of dropped from orbit ammo crates, unfortunately their aim is a bit off and they keep hitting the locals.
- BioShock
- BioShock generally had the biggest stashes of items in places where it would make sense, such as splicer hideouts or an important person's office. Occasionally things have been laid in your path as traps.
- Unfortunately the sequel dropped the ball with items all over the place, including ammo that only your character can use.
- BioShock Infinite has a problem in that while vigors are found in their appropriate places, ammo and weapons (as well as weapon ugrade machines) are far too common and found everywhere, not fitting the tight Religious Theocracy of Columbia.
- Fire Warrior usually accompanies ammo drops for your Tau weaponry with a slightly mangled corpse of a fellow Fire Warrior; the other weapons are nicked off a soldier you've just killed or found in workshops and the like.
- In Half-Life, most of the stuff is looted from fallen enemies, or lies around in places where you'd expect to find them - for example, a shotgun in a guard checkpoint.
- Half-Life's manual actually made a point of mentioning that items were placed logically compared to most other games at the time of its release.
- In Half-Life 2 and the Episodes, while a little bit of stuff is found lying around randomly, much of it is found in lockers, storage rooms and rooms that look like they've been converted into armories, on corpses, or in resistance supply caches marked by the lambda symbol. Most that isn't, or which falls into the last category, is also in distinctive supply crates. At one point you actually meet a resistance member who's going around planting the supply crates in strategic locations along the route out of the city.
- Unreal Tournament's a giant tournament. You can see vehicles, ammo, and weapons being teleported straight into the battle. And all of these places are bought and repurposed strictly for the tournament- whether it be two towers floating on an asteroid in space, or various No OSHA Compliance industrial sites (generally purposefully left as dangerous as possible for the sake of entertainment).
- In Borderlands, weapons, shields, and mods can drop from animals as well as human enemies. Items are also found in "skag piles." The local wildlife will eat virtually anything, even things that should be inedible. The late rgames go into more detail about the economy of Pandora, and that there is a steady supply of adventurers, outlaws, criminals, mercenaries, and other heavily-armed types traveling to the planet, and most of the weapons were either left behind or shipped in. By the time of Borderlands 3, the local gun dealer Marcus runs an entire interstellar arms market that sells convenient weapons in vending machines all across the galaxy.
- Far Cry
- Far Cry is pretty good about this, as all the weapons you find are either in armories, mercenary camps or other logical places, or directly from their late owners.
- Far Cry 2 (not a direct sequel to the first, but a Spiritual Successor) is even more consistent about it, since the vast majority of supplies are in guarded enemy camps; they are enemy supplies (the problem is that enemies can shoot forever and so don't need to use those supplies, but whatever). Also, everyone uses the same standard ammo types and guns because their direct suppliers all have the same supplier (the guy you've been hired to kill). Enemies don't drop ammo, either; they drop guns, and you can remove the ammo from them for your own use provided your guns use the same ammo type. Even though the AI never runs out of ammo, the quicker you kill enemies, the more ammo you get to loot from their guns, and the higher the chance that they'll have unused grenades on them.
- The weapons laying around in Left 4 Dead and its sequel are generally implied to be left behind by other people, who have either been killed, turned into zombies, or already left the area. Occasionally the area around will actually explain it even further, by showing a dead body nearby or setting up an area to look like it had been someone's hideout. Other items like first aid kits or pills can show up in common areas like closets or offices since one would expect such items to appear in those locations.
- The finales sometimes show this as well, having the area filled with guns, ammo, mounted machine guns, pipe bombs, molotovs, pills, and first aid kits as if a large group of people were making their last stand while waiting to be rescued.
- While typically the settings of Team Fortress 2 would have no real explanation for why ammo and health are lying around the levels—for instance, the typically egregious farms and Egyptian tombs—just about any gameplay oddity can be explained due to the espionage setting of the games. The RED and BLU bases only LOOK like farms and Egyptian tombs, and given the high amount of activity around them it's only natural that they would keep ammo and medkits around.
- It's considered even more reasonable when considering the backstory of a spiteful father, Zepheniah Mann, whose dying wish is for his two sons, Blutarch and Redmond, to endlessly fight for pointless barren land. The mysterious announcer carries on this dying wish by arranging both groups of mercenaries hired by the two sons to fight each other. Such a plot can explain the arena-like setting.
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. goes a long way towards averting this trope, with the only way to get most weapons and ammunition being either to trade for them, loot enemy corpses, or find hidden stashes left by other Stalkers. All of which makes the appearance of fresh suits of high quality armor lying around in plot-important areas all the more noticeable. Especially in the Chernobyl NPP, where you find an exosuit roughly once every 100 meters.
- Doom³ is much more logical than its predecessors. Much of the stuff you find is in storage areas or other logical locations with e-mail messages and audio logs saying why somebody has put it there.
- In the later Marathon games, weapons and ammo are usually teleported in to your location, not just laying around.
- PAYDAY 2 treats random medical supplies and ammo bags as "Dead Drops" or, if the heist allows for it, "Pre-planning". Both of these allow for, er, dead drops of the ammo bag and medic supplies done by an inside man that Bain or a Contact for the Dentist has to place.
- Deep Rock Galactic: There are no ammo drops in the caverns, since they're entirely unexplored and your enemies are all wildlife; the only way to restock is calling Supply Drops; those, however, can be "purchased" with a mineral called Nitra, which has common deposits all over the planet. There are also small veins of a mineral called Red Sugar around the planet, which thanks to the dwarves' biology is an effective painkiller and delicious, if addictive; thus, it acts as a quick and dirty health kit.
Platform Games
- In the PC game Jazz Jackrabbit, the explanation for all the ammo in each level was given not in the game but in a comic in the manual, in which one of Devan Shell's acquaintances tells Jazz to expect "a huge stockpile of weapons lying around" and to steal whatever he finds.
- In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the toads prepare for the mission by scattering power-ups throughout the land by shooting them out of a cannon.
- In Super Mario Bros., powerups be they mushrooms, flowers, or even the horsetails are Toads transformed by Bowser.
- Jables's Adventure gives a rather tongue-in-cheek justification.
Shop keeper: Don't worry, we're running a special promotion.
Jables: What's that?
Shop keeper: I hid weapons and items outside the town to drum up publicity.
Jables: Isn't that reckless?
Shop keeper: It's a game, kid. Don't be so serious.
Role-Playing Games
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Morrowind is fairly realistic in this regard. Creature Organ Drops, loot from dead NPCs, items you Plunder from locked chests and behind locked doors, to even the items you can buy in shops have generally justified reasons for being where they are. You can even steal pillows from beds and clothing from dressers if you choose.
- Oblivion:
- Oblivion generally follows suit with its predecessor, although the strict Level Scaling system can cause this to happen, such as finding humanoid armor in the lair of Goblins or Trolls who cannot even wear it. (It could be justified if you accept the idea that the creatures are hoarding it for some reason.) At high levels, you will also encounter bandits and highwaymen in high quality, expensive armors like Glass or even Daedric...though these same enemies may attempt to shake you down for a measly 100 Septims...
- The tutorial area has unique "Rough" Leather Armor and "Rusted" Iron Armor, which seems to have justifiably gotten into its current state by laying around in a sewer for quite some time.
- As a general rule, any game from Spiderweb Software (particularly Avernum) will rationalise its loot, while still finding ways to reward you for major victories. If the boss you just killed is a human bandit, help yourself to his cash. If the boss is a giant spider, odds are that somebody two towns back wanted spider fangs to make a potion.
- AdventureQuest explains Money Spiders by the introduction of a character named 'Robina the Hood' who steals from the rich and gives to the forest creatures.
- In Dragon Quest VIII, one of the first "books" you come across tells you that you're likely to find treasure chests lying randomly around, and encourages you to loot the contents. It adds cheerfully, "Who put them there? Who knows! Just think of them as gifts from the Goddess!"
- Dragon Quest VII's endgame allows you to put items into the opened chests so that they can be carried to New Game Plus upon recovering them. This at least handwaves better loots in the next playthough.
- Having treasure chests in Digimon World 3 made sense seeing as the entire game took place inside an MMORPG.
- In Final Fantasy XIII, the party comes across high-tech chests and internet shopping terminals in all manner of strange places, including littered about the wilderness of Gran Pulse where no humans live. However, as the player nears the end of the game, the terminals begin displaying not just store options, but messages directly to the party from the Big Bad, who placed all of these things carefully in order to encourage the characters in their intended mission.
Survival Horror
- Eternal Darkness mostly averts this trope - while the odd bunch of crossbow bolts may be found lying around, most characters have all their available gear from the start or loot it off newly-dead bodies. One insanity effect has the floor of the next area littered with dozens of boxes of shotgun shells. Finally, the Elephant Gun is located in a locked gun cabinet!
- In Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, the first time you get weapons, they're found in the gun-cabinet of a police station. Most of the time later on the weapons and ammo are found in reasonable places, save for the final BFG, which was originally supposed to have been found from an area behind a time portal, but didn't make it to the game due to time constraints, so you just find it lying around for no reason in a random cave deep in enemy territory.
- Dead Space and Dead Space 2 both play this straight (see above) and avert it. While neither setting is a military heavy setting, the weapons are almost all mining equipment. Even the more blatantly offensive uses can be justified as a bit of jury-rigging on Isaac's part (the 'grenade' function of the Force Gun and Flamethrower can be justified as just launching the ammo container at the enemy). The only clear weapon is the Pulse Rifle, but that makes sense as simply being the standard issue security / police weapon. Item pickups waver back and forth on this. Items are generally found in lockers, storage crates, and on the bodies of the necromorphs (who used to be people probably trying to defend themselves the same way you are). However, what is in these locations doesn't always make sense.
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent: Tinderboxes and lamp oil bottles are all over the castle. This makes sense considering the game takes place in 1839 and the only way to light the rooms is with candles and oil lanterns.
- Resident Evil plays the trope straight until the 4th game and later:
- In Resident Evil, which took place at a mansion, there's medical sprays and herbs everywhere, which makes sense since one can expect basic medical supplies and plants at a house. Bullets and guns are also found everywhere, though some of them can only be explained from your former teammates that tried to survive, with most others being bullets for handguns and shotguns which are both legal for civilians to own (not too unreasonable to find shotgun ammo in a home where a shotgun was kept) but also likely belonged to the research and security staff both of whom were armed according to Apocalyptic Logs. You do find a few behind elaborate puzzles (such as a revolver behind a tiger statue) or inside desk drawers, though it's lampshaded that the owner of the mansion was not only insane but also hired an esoteric artsy architect to design the place with tons of traps and weirdly hidden items.
- Resident Evil 2 has weapons and ammo scattered all over the police precinct, which is hand waved by explaining that Chief Irons slowly went insane after Umbrella ditched him when the G-Virus overtook the town, causing him to have the police officers spread the munitions around to confuse them while he slowly killed them one by one. Other areas outside the police stations have items near bodies or inside locked cabinets.
- Resident Evil 3: Nemesis has most of its munitions on the bodies of the dead or inside lockers.
- Unlike its predecessor, Outlast II places most of the batteries near flashlights. Bandages are also found on homes and camps in metal trays on easily-accessible places, conveniently easy to reach is somebody gets hurt.
Stealth Based Game
- Splinter Cell: Checking computers will give away the location of some medkits, along with an explanation of why it is there (i.e. someone has frequent bloody noses or a medical condition).
Third Person Shooter
- Max Payne: Most weapons are dropped by enemies, and as health is in the form of painkillers, you generally find them in bathroom cabinets.
Literature
- Discworld:
- In The Last Hero Cohen the Barbarian makes a reference to the mysteriously-well-placed caches of supplies, spare weapons, keys, and such inside the dungeons he and his Silver Horde have visited over the years; it is heavily implied that The Lady and some of the other Gods playing games with the lives of mortals have placed some of these prizes around to support them when they served as their pawns.
- In a Deleted Scene from Raising Steam, included in a book provided at the 2014 Discworld Convention, Moist meets a dwarf who had a job maintaining a dungeon complex for an eccentric nobleman who had been an Adventurer Archaeologist in his youth and wanted to keep the tradition alive. While the dwarf's job was mostly maintaining the torches and resetting the traps, he came up with the idea of leaving weapons and food lying around, to give the raiders more of a chance.
