Basic Trope: A pistol does an unrealistic amount of damage, usually more per shot than a rifle.
- Straight: In an FPS, the starting handgun can kill a mook in either three or two body shots, while it takes four or five rounds from an assault rifle.
- Exaggerated: The player runs purely with the 9mm pistol; not bothering to use even the BFG since it's damage is so pitiful by comparison.
- Downplayed:
- The assault rifle is superior to the handgun, but the handgun does much higher critical damage.
- An assault rifle and handgun do the same damage per bullet, despite the rifle being obviously higher-caliber.
- The pistol does more damage than the assault rifle but only at near point blank range. It is explicitly revealed that the pistol uses three times the propellant of the assault rifle and burns it quickly.
- Justified:
- The enemies are demons; the assault rifle is just an ordinary soldier's gun, while the revolver is a demon slayer's specialty weapon that uses Depleted Phlebotinum Rounds.
- The starting handgun uses small dum-dum rounds, which deal more damage than the assault rifle.
- The assault rounds were chosen for accuracy and high ammo capacity per magazine while having a low weight. This helps with laying down suppressive fire and three round bursts at the same location wears through the body armor better. Pistols meanwhile were intended for close quarters and went with fewer heavy duty rounds.
- Inverted: The starting handgun is so unrealistically weak that fists make a better back-up weapon.
- Subverted:
- A handgun does more damage than an assault rifle... because the handgun is a futuristic weapon that fires powerful laser beams while the assault rifle is a 20th Century antique that uses 5.56 rounds.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: The revolver does more damage than the sniper rifle... since it uses .500 S&W Magnum rounds, which have higher kinetic energy than the .223 Remington rounds the sniper rifle is chambered in.
- Double Subverted:
- ...until you get the Silver Gun, a pistol that's never matched by any rifle round-for-round.
- Then you get the 2mm Kolibri, which somehow manages to do way more damage per shot than the .500 S&W Magnum Revolver.
- Parodied:
- Anything hit by even a single pistol round is turned into Chunky Salsa and the recoil from it is powerful enough to send the player a few meters back.
- The smaller the gun, the stronger the shot.
- Zig-Zagged: There are several handgun types. They range from being small and covert, to being intended as tank killers, to firing flareguns and tracker darts.
- It is a Scavenger World. Ironically the pistols were made by cutting down rifles. Meanwhile the assault rifles were clearly originally pistols with overly long barrel extensions and refitted to have a stock.
- Averted: Every weapon does realistic damage.
- Enforced: Competitive Balance, or there's a pistol-packing "gunslinger" class that runs on Rule of Cool.
- Lampshaded: Upon getting the first kill with it, the PC comments "Dear lord, that is powerful!"
- Invoked: An NPC gives you the revolver, saying it could be more useful against a Heavily Armored Mook than a typical rifle.
- Exploited: Speedrunners forgo using any other weapon because the pistol is a Game-Breaker in the hands of someone capable of landing headshots every shot.
- Defied: Every pistol is deliberately made weaker than rifles, even while fully upgraded.
- Discussed: "Light. Easy to handle. Effective. The Handgun is the ideal weapon for both defensive and offensive close quarter man-to-man combat fighting."
- Conversed: "When you're in a close spot or fighting in close quarters, sometimes a handgun works better than a rifle.''
- Implied: The only two things you find in a locked room is a pistol and a dead guy suffering from Torso with a View.
- Deconstructed: The combination of high stopping power and inaccuracy of pistols, combined results in high levels of overpenetation and collateral damage, especially in urban areas.
- Played for Laughs: New ammo and design techniques came out for pistols which increased their power dramatically. Assault rifle designers refuse to adopt them for reasons.
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