History Main / BottomlessMagazines

* In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'', some guns are equipped with a regenerating ammo stat, and one particular gun, The Dove, combines this with having no reload animation. This is lampshaded by the description for The Dove itself, which is: "Sometimes I forget to reload..."

* In ''WhereEaglesDare,'' Clint Eastwood's character fires an MP40 submachinegun minute after minute, never once reloading for a quarter of the movie. Since there are no convenient ammo trucks following him around, the ammo fairy must be helping out.

* In ''{{Carriers}}'', Chris Pine's character is seen to use his gun to shoot a Christian couple in a car an abnormally large amount of times without any sign of reloading. He also uses the gun multiple other times throughout the film, and given the scenario (post-apocalyptic disease-ridden society) it is unlikely he would have any other ammo than the bullets in the gun handy.

* Averted with EnergyWeapons no less in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' for at least one character who discovered that, although [[AwesomeButImpractical a hand laser looks pretty cool]], it starts giving the "low battery" warning after only three shots or so.
* Averted on the old ''Series/{{Batman}}'' TV series, where the villains are shooting at Batman behind smoke; when the smoke clears, it's revealed that not only does Batman have a shield, he knows the villains are now out of bullets and can attack them.
* Averted in ''Jake 2.0'', where the protagonist caught in a predator/prey situation is able to beat an armed villain. After deliberately coming out of hiding, the man raises his gun to shoot Jake, only to realize that he's out, told that he should keep track, and is promptly knocked out with a lead pipe.
* Averted in ''Series/{{Jericho}}'', wherein the people of the town are very conscious of their ammunition, and the heroes are continually requesting new magazines and fighting over the actual weapons themselves.

* Averted in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The Doctor Dances" when Capt. Jack's Sonic Blaster runs out of power; amusingly, a few moments before, he was making fun of the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'': The SG team members actually have to reload their guns now and again, and not just for the sake of dramatically running low. One episode that still stands out has a rogue NID agent escaping from a special forces team, using a machine pistol to lay down suppressive fire and shoot a lock out of a door. At least twice, after a couple of sustained bursts, he ejects his magazine and slaps a fresh one in.

* Averted for comic effect in the first season finale of ''House of Lies'', where the protagonist--even though he's using imaginary (and invisible) pistols in a breaking-the-fourth-wall fantasy--has to take a few seconds to reload once he's out.
* Averted [[spoiler:at least]] once in ''Due South''. Constable Fraser confidently approaches a criminal pointing a gun at him, telling him that he's out of ammo (the pistol is a 9-shot), while his partner and another cop argue over whether he is, or whether he still has a bullet or two left (one says he's heard 8 shots, the other says only 7). [[spoiler:Turns out Fraser was right and he had used all 9.]]
* Subverted multiple times in ''Series/GetSmart'':
** When Max and 99 are in a department store, Max suggests that he shoot out the lights for cover. He fires six shots, but there's still one light. He tries to shoot that one, but he's out of ammo. 99 then [[RuleOfFunny turns off the light switch]]. For the rest of the episode Max tries to bluff KAOS agents with his empty gun.
** When Max and his boss are in a gunfight with a KAOS agent, Max suddenly stands up and says that he's going on strike until his boss approves a better contract for him. His boss then sighs and signs the contract while Max and the KAOS agent [[PunchClockVillain discuss what sorts of benefits]] KAOS offers. When he signs the contract, the KAOS agent pulls the trigger on his gun, but nothing happens. Max then captures him and calmly says that he heard him fire six shots. When his boss says that he only heard five shots, Max takes the gun and tries to fire again - when it goes off and Max sheepishly says "Six."
* Averted in one episode of ''Viper'', where robbers take hostages, one of them manages to seize a robber's gun -- and the robbers start calculating whether it has any bullets left.
* Generally averted in ''TheRockfordFiles''. It is frequently important to the plot that Jim's gun fires only six shots, and he never has any extra ammunition.
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' seems to play this straight as pulse pistols have absurd numbers of shots. ...But one episode John runs out of ammo. Lampshading how unlikely it is to run out of shots with a 500 round battery, and then getting understandably irate when the pulse pistol he loots from an enemy ALSO runs out of energy after only a handful of shots.
* Averted in ''Series/{{Revolution}}'' since a major factor in the story is that ammunition for modern weapons is in very short supply. If characters gets hold of a loaded gun, it will usually only have a few bullets in it and they quickly have to go back to using bows and swords. In some instances the trope even gets inverted when weapons that should have a full magazine, run dry after 2-3 shots.

* Lampshaded in ''MysteryScienceTheater3000'', "Escape 2000", when Crow remarks of the main character: "He must be playing in GodMode with unlimited ammo."
* LampshadeHanging in ''SledgeHammer'' where almost every episode had this trope. (Heck, every time we look at the chamber of Sledge's gun it's not loaded, but ten seconds later the revolver can fire ten rounds without him even touching a bullet.) In one episode during a shootout, DaChief yells "Where the hell is he getting all this ammo?"
* In an episode of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', Ando and Hiro take cover as a stripper and a cop begin firing at each other. They fire countless times at each other, even though they both have "regular" guns, and the stripper even has a bullet left when they're done shooting. Commented on and mocked on the audio commentary for that episode.
* In ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace'', after remarking that he only has five shots left in his revolver, Dr. Rick Dagless, M.D. fires off nine shots in a row. Thorton Reed is also known for firing his shotgun repeatedly without reloading, often in a clearly different background. It's deliberately SoBadItsGood, so it gets a pass.
* On ''TheMuppetShow'', The Swedish Chef in one episode shoots three bagels with a blunderbuss, which as we all know, can only have ONE bullet at a time, and 5-10 minutes of reloading before shooting again. He shoots two bagels after the first WITHOUT reloading.
* The ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "Something Borrowed" is fairly bad about this. In one scene, Owen fires his pistol roughly two dozen times without pausing to reload. Could be hand-waved with alien tech...
* The StargateVerse often plays this straight, particularly noticeable when after firing a P90 for a few seconds, you can still see that the magazine is full thanks to its see-through properties. While reloading actually is necessary for Stargate characters, the fact that they're using prop guns (real P90s aren't easy to come by) means that the magazines always visibly "full".

*** Justified when one considers that the power source is being used to power a wormhole generator for travel to another galaxy.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Shore Leave". Sulu finds a six-shot revolver. He fires four shots from it while doing some target practice, then Kirk uses it later to fire 3 more shots at the knight.
* The Centurion robots from ''[[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined Battlestar Galactica]]'' have a slim build that must contain a power source and processing equipment, but still their [[ArmCannon Arm Cannons]] appear to contain infinite amount of ammo. At one point when they have managed to enter Galactica, one loses its legs offscreen, and simply keeps on wildly firing around, apparently closing that corridor from passage for the rest of the attack.
* In ''Combat!'' neither Pvt. Kirby's BAR nor Sgt Saunders' Thompson need a lot of reloading. In fact, the rest of the squad seldom need to reload their M1's.
* Hershel in season 2 of ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' fires eleven shots over the limit with his Remington 870 5-shot.
* Surprisingly averted in the season 3 finale of {{Leverage}}: despite the totally [[GunFu over the top]] nature of the rest of the gunfight, Eliot stops to reload several times, raids bodies for spare magazines, and does not significantly exceed the potential capacity of the guns he's using.

* Happens with two Bosses in ''VideoGame/FinalFight'' (Not a shooter, because almost no-one uses guns, so the above rule really doesn't apply). The third Boss, Edi.E, uses a handgun when brought down to about half of his health, and has unlimited ammunition. The final boss, Belger, uses a crosbow, and never runs out of quarrels.

* Exquisitely {{justified|Trope}} in ''MassEffect'', in which the basic principle of "force equals mass times velocity" is taken to its natural conclusion -- while current weapons have around a dozen bullets the size of marbles propelled at trans-sonic speeds by exploding gunpowder, late 22nd century weapons have ''thousands'' of bullets the size of ''grains of sand'' propelled at ''relativistic'' speeds by ''superconducting magnets''. It's not ''technically'' infinite ammo, but it can take ''days'' for gunfighters to run dry. This is a plot point in one of Wrex's stories--he mentions that he once fought an opposing bounty hunter for so long, they both ran out of ammo and had to scrounge up other guns.

* Most of the guns on ''SpaceStation13'' are energy weapons, but security officers' tasers and the energy guns and laser rifles carried in the armory only have a handful of shots before they need to be plugged into a recharger (same with the stun baton). Only the captain's personal laser (which is a possible target for traitors to steal) has unlimited ammo, but it needs time to recharge.

* Surprisingly averted in the season 3 finale of {{Leverage}}: despite the totally [[GunFu over the top]] nature of the rest of the gunfight, Eliot stops to reload several times, raids bodies for spare magazines, and does not significantly exceed the potential capacity of the guns he's using.

* Surprisingly averted in the season 3 finale of {{Leverage}}: despite the totally [[GunFu over the top]] nature of the rest of the gunfight, Eliot stops to reload several times, raids bodies for spare magazines, and does not significantly exceed the potential capacity of the guns he's using.

* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' has [[spoiler:Caliborn]] blazing away at [[spoiler:Gamzee's]] corpse with a machine gun for an indeterminate but lengthy amount of time, [[CrossesTheLineTwice accompanied by calming elevator music]]. He then makes sure to DoubleTap, still without reloading.

** Mann vs. Machine uses this as a gameplay mechanic. You are able to upgrade the clip size of each weapon, which seems ridiculous when your 9-shot shotgun still ejects only 2 shells to reload. Robots, on the other hands, have ''truly'' limitless ammo but regular-sized magazines. Frustratingly, the special Halloween mission has Pyro bots, whose weapon draws directly from its ammo supply without reloading, taking advantage of this to shooting fire ''at all times'' making playing as Spy much more difficult.

* In TheDCU, The ModernAge version of JonahHex has guns that channel his own psychic energy, and the ModernAge Crimson Avenger has the original's guns, now magically attuned to her. In both cases the effect is the same, they never run out of ammo.

* In final fantasy 7 dirige of cerberus you can equip your guns with an auto reload contraption so you can shoot until you really run out of ammos (very usefull when you sacrifice mag space for power or range)

*However when his shotgun fires both barrels, the camera switches away from Ash and a soft clicking sound is heard (which would still mean a very fast reload, especially for a man with only one hand).

Possibly one of the oldest, and most abused tropes when it comes to gunplay is the frequent ignorance of just how many shots the good guys/bad guys have fired from their guns without stopping for a reload. In RealLife, most revolvers hold between 5 to 8 shots depending on caliber while semiautomatic handguns have magazines that usually hold 10-15 shots. Pump-action, bolt-action, and lever-action longarms generally hold 5-8 rounds (but the magazine can easily be topped-off) and detachable-magazine semi-automatic or automatic rifles generally hold at least 20, if not 30 rounds. But keep a running count and you'll sometimes see a weapon go for much longer without hesitation.

* Averted in the ''DarkTower'' series. In the first few novels, Roland worries about how much ammo he has left, until he makes a pit stop and buys a few hundred bullets. Also, during every firefight, Roland and his friends must reload.

* Legolas is mentioned to be out of arrows at least twice in ''TheLordOfTheRings''. He often has to pick up orc arrows to refill his quiver.