Basic Trope: One or more characters exercise restraint regarding how much ammunition is used to neutralize a threat.
- Straight: Officer Alice could have used six bullets to kill each of Evil Elliot's goons, but she only used three.
- Exaggerated: Alice, instead of using one million bullets, used one bullet.
- Downplayed: Alice used four bullets, instead of five.
- Justified:
- Alice needed to conserve her bullets due to limited supplies.
- Alice has impeccable aim.
- Alice is a Combat Pragmatist.
- Inverted:
- Alice, when killing Elliot, could have used three bullets. She used twelve.
- More Dakka.
- Subverted: Alice initially only uses three bullets to kill Elliot's goons, but shoots one another three times just to make sure he is really dead.
- Double Subverted: It turns out she wasn't shooting at the goon, but his vengeful girlfriend under the floorboards.
- Averted: Alice doesn't go out of her way to conserve ammunition.
- Lampshaded: "Remember, only shoot when I tell you, or if they shoot first; and don't waste ammunition."
- Invoked: Alice's superior officer makes her take a combat training course which teaches her how to dispatch armed suspects with as little ammunition as possible.
- Exploited:
- Alice deliberately packs too little ammunition so that she can use it as effectively as possible.
- Elliot's goons fire as much ammunition as possible to prevent Alice from getting a shot in.
- Defied:
- Alice decides that she needn't bother conserving ammunition, since she has more than enough.
- Elliot's goons draw as much fire from Alice as possible.
Back to Ammunition Conservation.
