History Main / BottomlessMagazines

** {{Subverted| trope}} in the story "[[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/uiu-orientation UIU Orientation]]". The instructor shows the new recruits an anomalous Desert Eagle magazine which normally contains seven bullets, but this one contains eight... nine... ten... eleven... he passes it around, and the recruits each manage to pull out some more bullets. No, it's not infinite - it has a maximum capacity of 1,296 bullets. The previous owner found this out the hard way when he ran out of ammo in a gunfight.

* There's one ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' sketch, based on [[TheFarmerAndTheViper the fable about the scorpion and the frog]], where the frog pulls out a revolver and shoots at the scorpion twice when it tries to sting him. When a gerbil on the other side asks for his help again, [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial promising not to crawl into his anus]], the frog pulls the trigger six times – four shots and two clicks. Another sketch parodies The Tortoise and the Hare with a movie-western style gunfight. The hare has enough time to empty his guns before the tortoise even reaches his. Unfortunately, bullets don't bounce off hares.

** The original ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'' for the Platform/PlayStation lampshaded this trope. One of the unlockable bonus cheat modes was called 'American Movie Mode', which gave unlimited ammo (and had the enemy soldiers speak English instead of German).
** Zigzagged in ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonorVanguard'', The [=MG42=] has one when the player uses it but surprisingly, when the enemies use it they have to reload occasionally, allied soldiers will even tell the player when the enemy with the [=MG42=] is reloading.

*** In Snake's fight with Olga she regularly has to reload her USP, but never seems to run out of spare magazines... until you defeat her and take her USP for yourself, of course, at which point you will not find any ammo for it until you've gone far enough away that the game will remove her unconscious body from the arena.

*** The on-rails action against the [[spoiler:Shagohod]], where you do get unlimited ammo of whatever weapons you had at the moment. The explanation is that the sidecar of the motorcycle that you're riding in has lots of ammunition in it. Which gets more than a little ridiculous when you start using the RPG and quick reload (equipping and unequipping weaponry, a bit of bizarre MGS-logic).
*** The "Infinity" face-paint is this game's equivalent of the infinite ammo bandana. One camo pattern for Snake's uniform unlocked by beating the game once does the same for his battery-powered items.

* In ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'', the default pistol never runs out of bullets (because otherwise you'd be screwed). However, wait after firing a certain number (or more) of shots (9 for the male characters, who have automatics, and 6 for the revolver-packing girls), and your character will yank the magazine out and replace it. Not that they ''need'' to, but the animators just felt like paying attention to that detail.

** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in the final episode of the ''Anime/{{Hellsing}}'' anime when, during his fight with Incognito, Alucard runs out of ammo for The Jackal until Seras brings him a reload. Of course, he then goes on to fire 8 or so shots from a magazine that's explicitly stated to hold 6 rounds.

* Creator/JohnWoo movies. Almost every single one, with the exception of the ''Film/TheKiller1989'' -- in that movie's final battle you see one of the main characters toss a magazine to the other so he can reload. The only time the guns ''ever'' seem to run out of ammunition is when it's somehow relevant to the plot. Woo has stated in interviews that showing a reload detracts from the action of a gunfight and he wonders why American film audiences are so obsessed with it. Correlates with the MST3KMantra.

* In ''Film/ArmyOfDarkness'', Ash fires his double-barrel shotgun three and later four times in a row without reloading. He also fires at least two dozen rounds at the deadite in S-Mart from a lever action rifle at the end. Also, his chainsaw seems to never run out of fuel. Or need any fuel, for that matter. 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). Of course, the question still remains, [[HyperspaceArsenal where he's getting all those shell in the first place]].

* In Franchise/TheDCU, UsefulNotes/{{the Modern Age|of Comic Books}} version of ComicBook/JonahHex has guns that channel his own psychic energy, and the Modern Age 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 the original Xbox[=/=]UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 game ''VideoGame/{{Black}}'', after completing a level on multiple difficulties, you can unlock "Silver Weapons" which make the guns shinier, and invoke this trope. Which makes sense, when you start with a pistol or shotgun (Reloading Optional), but when you find a RPG mid-level, pick it up, and can turn anything breakable in the level broken, it turns it [[ExaggeratedTrope up to eleven]].

** The original ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'' for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation lampshaded this trope. One of the unlockable bonus cheat modes was called 'American Movie Mode', which gave unlimited ammo (and had the enemy soldiers speak English instead of German).

* In ''Film/RamboIII'' for the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis, Rambo's primary weapon is a machine gun that, unlike some of his secondary weapons, never runs out of ammunition.

* Purposely averted in all adaptations of the UsefulNotes/{{Intellivision}} game ''VideoGame/NightStalker''. In the Intellivision version you get six shots for each gun. In the Atari 2600 version ''Dark Cavern'' each gun gives you up to 10 shots, which you can accumulate throughout the game, up to 99 shots.

* They tried to avert it in ''Film/IndependenceDay'' with the fighter jets running out of missiles, but then they had the pilots "plough the road" with a seemingly endless supply of bullets from their Gatling cannons. One wonders why they used their precious supply of missiles to shoot down alien fighters when machine guns were just as effective. In real life, fighter jets carry enough rounds for less than ten seconds of continuous fire.

Can be partially explained by editing in some of the less unrealistic movies. If multiple shots of a gunfight flow well together, shot counts might be ignored, rather than breaking the flow by putting in a reload shot. Likewise, editing has temporal considerations, and if the camera cuts to a different angle while the shots are occurring, you may be seeing the same shots repeated from different perspectives, making the actual number of shots fired lower than what was perceived.

Even in video games where you ''do'' have to reload, typically shooters, [[OneBulletClips the game doesn't keep track of individual magazines]]. You can reload at any point without wasting bullets or having to move bullets from one magazine to another. When the game invokes UniversalAmmunition, the rules just get that much fuzzier. If you're unlucky, though, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard some people's magazines might be more bottomless than others]].

* There are a few areas mandatory to complete ''VideoGame/ThePersistence'' where you'll get a weapon with unlimited ammo. On Deck 2, you'll get a Valkyrie gun with unlimited needles and on Deck 3, you'll get a Gravihook you can use to throw enemies around forever. Both suddenly have finite ammo once you clear the story mission.
* ''Videogame/{{ULTRAKILL}}:'' None of the weapons you wield need reloading or even ammunition, so you don't need to worry about managing any resource that isn't your own health while slaughtering the denizens of Heaven and Hell. The Lore in the terminals does take the time to explain this: The weapons are hyperadvanced and either use microscopic accelerated ammo like the Pistol, are energy weapons like the Railcannon and Shotgun, or just straight-up generate matter from nowhere (including the plentiful bloodshed) like the Rocket Launcher and Nailgun. As to the gameplay explanation, the devs stated they didn't want players to worry about conserving ammo when they should be busy [[RuleOfCool styling all over their enemies]].

* The ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'' series has this for all weaponry, not just guns, and while you don't have bottomless magazines per se, you do functionally have an infinite number of refills. Your weapons are fueled by ink, and you play as a humanoid squid or octopus, which are creatures that naturally produce ink: do the math. Your ammo will slowly refill on its own, but you'll find that fully submerging yourself in your own (or a teammate's) puddle of ink gets the job done much quicker.

* ''Film/KomodoVsCobra'', an already remarkably bad movie with technical mistakes every few seconds, ''really'' goes to town with this. The .45 semi-auto pistols (which are misidentified by multiple characters as .38 revolvers, somehow) have apparently infinite ammo. There's one scene where a character fired one gun around 45 times, and another scene where he had one gun in each hand and fired at least 60 times total. Note that they never stocked up on ammo when they were at their base, nor did the movie ever show them re-loading between action scenes, let alone during them. Combining this with the two titular beasties somehow being ImmuneToBullets they might as well have called them the "[[GunsAreUseless loud flash-toys]]".

* In ''Film/TheVillain'', Arnie's character Hansum Stranger has a ''seven'' shot revolver which otherwise looks like an ordinary gun. When Cactus Jack, disguised as a preacher, fires six rounds, he then waves the gun around thinking that it's empty. Then, he pulls the trigger, spooking the horse hitched to the buckboard he's standing on. HilarityEnsues.

* The film version of ''Film/StarshipTroopers'' both plays this straight and subverts it. In the attack on Klendathu most of the MI's guns fire continuously without needing to reload, but in the battle in Whiskey Outpost later in the film they start running low on ammo. Keep in mind this is after around four minutes of almost continuous firing, long enough for the bugs to be able to start ''crawling up to the top of the outpost's walls on piles of their dead.''

* ''Warrior Kings'' from Microids is one of those rare RTS games that limits your ammo for troops, it does this as the game puts especially high importance on supply - your troops can even end up [[HPTo1 starving to one hit point]]. This trope is played with in that your missile troops have an ammo gauge that will eventually run out but if they're near a supply cart, then they have BottomlessMagazines.

** ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' features a "Never Ending" modifier for Legendary weapons that plays like the classic use of this, where your weapon still requires ammo, but as long as you have any on your person you can fire it all at once without ever having to swap for a fresh magazine. The [[GameBreaker/{{Fallout}} Never Ending Laser Musket]], on the other hand, behaves entirely different by being able to load as many Fusion Cells as you want and firing it all in one shot, more than enough to [[OneHitKill drop down a Deathclaw in one hit]].

* Creator/JohnWoo movies. Almost every single one, with the exception of the ''Film/TheKiller'' -- in that movie's final battle you see one of the main characters toss a magazine to the other so he can reload. The only time the guns ''ever'' seem to run out of ammunition is when it's somehow relevant to the plot. Woo has stated in interviews that showing a reload detracts from the action of a gunfight and he wonders why American film audiences are so obsessed with it. Correlates with the MST3KMantra.

-->'''Simmons:''' Ah, crap, I'm out. Give me some ammunition, Grif.
-->'''Grif:''' Me? I don't have any extra. I'm down to one bullet!

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfVoxMachina'', Percy uses a six-barreled pepperbox revolver which normally averts this trope, but in the first-season finale, he fires it so many times in a row that other characters actually make note of it. Justified because the pepperbox is actually an EvilWeapon channeling a demon, and it has chosen that moment to drop its disguise.

* Lampshaded in [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0904.html this]]''Webcomic/OrderOfTheStick'' comic. Roy can't figure out how Haley makes arrows appear. Haley is never shown wearing a quiver.

* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' this is lampshaded in [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0904.html this]] strip. Note that Haley is never seen with a quiver.