I agree that Abnormal Ammo should probably be the supertrope.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickYeah Abnormal Ammo should certainly be a supertrope and pages be made for or linked to the current page for the most common types.
Common ones that come to mind would be
- Incendiary Ammo
- Cryo Ammo
- Armor Piercing Ammo
- Shock Ammo
- Living Ammo, like Bee-Bee Gun, Cat-apult, Bullet Seed
- Recursive Ammo, a gun shoots a bullet that turns into a bunch of smaller bullets
- Silver Bullet, damn Werwolves
- and the special made up ammo for specific weaknesses ahh Depleted Phlebotinum Shells.
edited 25th Apr '15 7:38:20 AM by Memers
Tranquillizer Dart and Trick Arrow should also be listed.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
The former would probably be a subtrope to Sleep Ammo or made a redirect and have it expand a bit since tranq guns do exist in fiction IE Alpha Protocol had Tranq Ammo.
Ahh Trick Bullet exist too, that should be here.
edited 25th Apr '15 8:00:15 AM by Memers
I think darts are distinctive enough as their own type of sleeping ammo. Sure, a supertrope might be fine, but darts are a staple. And that page does cover most tranquillizer gun because 99.9% of the time, they use darts as their ammo.
edited 25th Apr '15 8:10:38 AM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickFirst pass on the rewrite:
When an awesome-looking weapon isn't possible, awesome ammunition is. Abnormal Ammo covers exotic substitutions of practical ammunition, as well as ammunition that works only for the Rule of Cool. Most people don't have a weapon that shoots glasses of milk, but in fiction, there's no shortage of strange weapons with unusual discharge. All bets are off if a catapult comes into play; even in Real Life, practical ammunition like boulders and gravel were frequently replaced by low-tech biological weapons (dead/diseased animals/people) or incendiary devices (Greek Fire).
This trope is Truth in Television in that just about everything has been used as a weapon at least once. What keeps abnormal ammo from becoming normal ammo is that real versions are most often Cool, but Inefficient or Awesome, but Impractical.
Compare Improbable Aiming Skills, where the ammunition does something unusual, but isn't made of anything unusual.
May overlap with Impossibly Cool Weapon (where the weapon is exotic, not the ammo).
Subtropes:
Description has been changed. I need a moderator to turn indexing on for the page, and then I believe this thread is finished.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The trope description of Abnormal Ammo meanders, utilizes Example as a Thesis, and seems to have multiple SubTropes, but they aren't listed clearly.
My proposal is three-pronged:
- Rewrite the definition of Abnormal Ammo to clearly refer to any projectile.
- Find ammo tropes that belong as subtropes to Abnormal Ammo, revising their description if needed.
- Add an index of subtropes above the example line.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.