Infinite Flashlight

So it's the middle of the night, you're being chased by mangled oversized toddlers with knives through a Kafkaesque take on a dark and twisted elementary school, and you realize that in all the chaos you've completely forgotten to change the batteries in your flashlight. Sounds like a problem, right? Wrong! Your portable light source will never run out unless the plot dictates otherwise. Of course, many games don't take enough in-game time to complete for four D-cells of battery power to run out. But even if you can take weeks or even months to complete the main plot, the flashlight will never run out. Definitely an Acceptable Break from Reality.

The infinite flashlight shows up just as often in horror games with very poor lighting as it does in games in general where use of a light source is less involved in the game design, especially short indie games. This can be either as an acceptable break from reality, or for pragmatic reasons: it's easier to program a dynamic light source that just exists than it is to code in a dynamic light source governed by a counter that decreases over time at a rate to be determined by the programmer, and replenished by means that also have to be coded in.

Often overlaps with Nuclear Candle, where a tiny matchstick is all that is needed to fully illuminate an entire room. Hollywood Torches are more often than not infinite as well. Curiously, tactical gunlights will be infinite 99 times out of 100^note despite the fact that, in those, the battery is being pushed as hard as possible for maximum output, and as such they should drain completely in an hour or so. On faster-paced games like shooters on the classic end of the Fackler scale (especially older ones), these tend to also be a Hands-Free Handlamp. Guaranteed to see extensive use on a dimly-lit level, and moreso on a dimly-lit game.

Commonly, this variety has a dimmer output than its contrasting counterpart, the Ten-Second Flashlight, the usual result when developers try to avert this.

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Examples:

Action Game

• Dante from the first game of Devil May Cry collects a nugget of Luminite as a makeshift lantern. The light never fades, which is helpful in later levels after the sun has set or when you have to delve underground, and doesn't get in the way since Dante doesn't exactly hold it by hand.

Action Adventure

• If you throw a Flash Bomb in a dark cave in Blaster Master Zero, the entire cave will be illuminated for as long as you are in it.
• In Hollow Knight, you can light up really dark areas with a lantern holding tiny bioluminescent bugs which you never have to worry about dying or otherwise stopping providing light.
• The Last of Us features a never ending flashlight even though it's probably 20 years old. The game adds a completely arbitrary need to waggle the controller to charge it when the light begins to flicker, if only for the illusion of concern the battery might die.
• The Legend of Zelda
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has a lantern that consumes magic to light Ten-Second Flashlight torches, but always lights up the area in front of you just fine.
  • On Zelda II: The Adventure of Link once you get the Candle, all dark caves in the game are automatically lit, through and through. You don't even have to select it.
• Luigi's flashlight in Luigi's Mansion never runs out throughout the entire game. Admittedly, the game isn't supposed to take that much time, but you still use the flashlight a whole lot.
• The flashlight in Tomb Raider: Legend lasts a few seconds, while the flashlight in Underworld is indeed infinite.
• The Who Framed Roger Rabbit game for the NES... sort of. For some reason, you have to use a different flashlight in each cave, but those caves stay lit permanently. And all over.

Adventure Game

• The obscure 1984 computer game Below the Root (based on Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green-Sky Trilogy) has an underground area that is pitch-dark. It's possible to obtain honeylamps that provide light for a short time, but to fully explore the area and beat the game, it's highly recommended that you obtain an item called the spirit lamp, which provides light for as long as you hold the item.
• In Adventure (the text game from 1976) your first set of flashlight batteries will run out fairly quickly. After you replace them, the fresh batteries last forever.

• The flashlight in Maniac Mansion comes with old, corroded batteries, that inexplicably last forever – unless you are in the one room where the game actually requires you to have a light source to do something, and a Pixel Hunt in the dark won't cut it.^note If you try anyway, your character will state "Well, I tried, but since I can't see, I'm not sure I did it right." And they invariably didn't. In that case, the batteries will burn out instantaneously, forcing you to find fresh batteries somewhere, which last you the rest of the game.

• In Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake, Nancy Drew can use her flashlight as much as she likes in the one area it's necessary. But of course, when she finds another dark space, the batteries instantly die and she needs to head off for more. After that, the flashlight works perfectly for the rest of the game.
• The Radio Station: The flashlights you collect in the game are always on and shining brightly when you use them.

First Person Shooter

• Flashlights, torches, candles and Night-Vision Goggles in 7 Days to Die work indefinitely with no tending to necessary. The mining helmet is also infinite, and will work even if it's technically broken (hit points at 0 and offering no armor protection at all); same goes for any helmet with the helmet light mod installed.
• The Adventures of Massmouth has the Zippo Lighter "weapon"⁺ actually a replacement for the chainsaw, that makes clever use of the id Tech 1 engine's built-in Muzzle Flashlight code, used to light up the dark areas in the mine level. It can be used indefinitely, but you can't use your guns while holding it.
• In the first two Alien vs. Predator first person shooters, the Marines have shoulder lamps that only last several minutes, and their nightvision drains power way faster (although the power recharges over time, and rather quickly at that). Aliens and Predators, however, have no such limits thanks to the species' natural abilities and high-level technology respectively.
• BioShock
  • In Bioshock 2, your suit will automatically turn on in dark areas. Given that you're playing a not-quite-human thing that can change what color its body to express its mood, it's less of an "Infinite Flashlight" and more of "Making Yourself More Bright When You Need It".
  • In Bioshock Infinite the Police in the Soldiers Field Carry flashlights that won't go out after they're dead.
• In Contagion, one thing you don't have to worry about in the Zombie Apocalypse is battery changes. All flashlights (be them gunlights, the phone's flash or the pocket light) will run forever. The beam is also visible to other players, which can be good for allies with lightless weapons or a danger in a Player Versus Player setting.
• Cry of Fear ditches the traditional Half-Life flashlight for the light emitted from the player character's phone. It lasts until the battery goes dead for a plot event, forcing Simon to go through a section using flares that are not quite as permanent or portable as the phone until he can find a replacement battery. The optional Glock-mounted flashlight, the electric lanterns you find in the forest after a train crash robs you of your phone and all your other items and the conventional torch you find at the basement of the hospital all have likewise infinite batteries, Hand Waved in that they are implied to be LED-based and therefore very efficient. The night-vision gas mask you can unlock through "Doctor's Story" mode also applies as a straight example, with the added bonus of not taking up inventory space, and as such not being taken away with the rest of your inventory in the aforementioned train crash.
• Your basic headlamp in Deep Rock Galactic is powered indefinitely (presumably via your suit battery) but its range is pitiful and its light circle is anemic. By comparison, your throwing flares are much brighter and can light up larger areas, but fizzle out in a mere thirty seconds.
• Doom
  • The DarkDoomZ Game Mod is intended to make the game as dark as the player wishes. Additionally, it includes a flashlight^note based off of Steve's Flashlight Mod that you can customize in several ways, including the type of beam^list Incandescent has a dim, narrow and warm-tinted beam, good for atmosphere or if more powerful options cause lag; LED's beam is pure white with good reach and wide angle, but depending on the amount of linedefs the beam crosses, it can cause slowdowns; Halogen sits in the middle ground between these two, and Red Filter has the same beam properties as Halogen; however, the battery is always infinite.
  • Doom³'s flashlight has infinite battery; the in-game description handwaves it, saying that it has "a static transfer power supply, so battery replacement is unnecessary". It does get knocked out at one point in the game^where? Coolant Control Junction, an area at the end of Alpha Labs sector 2 by some annoying electromagnetic pulses (that are also the reason why there's absolutely zero light in the location), but it's a temporary thing and it only happens twice, both when you are not in immediate danger. The same goes for game mods that add flashlights as Gun Accessories. The BFG Edition Updated Re-release, on the other hand, swaps the handheld torch for a shoulder-mounted Ten-Second Flashlight.
• DUSK: The flashlight has unlimited runtime, although you constantly have to find new ones because they always break after long falls.
• Both flashlights (armor-mounted and handheld) in Empyrion: Galactic Survival are infinite.
• Far Cry features an angle-head torch (several, in fact, but you can only grab one). It's bright, throws a decent distance, and covers most of the screen when turned on, with the downside that it gives your position away. This is in contrast to the later "CryVision" goggles you can pick up, which let you view things in a funky infrared mode without giving yourself away, but have limited battery life in return.
• F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin uses a headlamp with an infinite battery that flickers specifically during supernatural scare sequences. The previous generation (the first game and its expansions) instead uses a Ten-Second Flashlight, which only flickers lightly when the Point Man and the Sergeant receive an "unknown origin" radio signal and, in the expansions, may be shut off entirely during paranormal setpieces. When either is over, the light goes back to working without issues.
• Half-Life
  • Black Mesa, the Fan Remake of the first game, removes the flashlight's power gauge entirely, allowing it to shine as much as you want. Which is good, as the mod is a lot darker than any of the official games, and the beam isn't particularly bright.
  • In Half-Life: Alyx, a key item early in the game is a flashlight that Alyx mounts on the back of her left Gravity Glove. It has infinite juice but only turns on automatically in dark areas, as explained by Russell.^* In reality, this is for performance reasons: if you use a "manual toggle" mod and turn the flashlight on in a level that doesn't normally use it, the game takes a noticeable hit to the framerate.
• The flashlights in Halo 2 & 3 are infinite, though this is handwaved as drawing power from your new suit's fusion core. 2's will however turn off on its own after a handful of seconds in areas with a light level any higher than "pitch black and underground", making it for all intents and purposes a ten-second flashlight that simply recharges fully and instantly upon running out.
• HROT: You start off with a flashlight, and batteries for it are never a concern.
• Left 4 Dead. You have the ability to turn it on and off to to sneak past the regular zombies and witches, both of which are less aggravated when they're not being blinded, which is a feasible tactic with the combo of Hollywood Darkness and Chiaroscuro that the game favors allowing for some fairly decent night vision^note though all bets are off in custom campaigns, which tend to be a lot darker, sometimes to "Who Forgot The Lights?" levels.
• In Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light, Artyom's headlamp and the night vision goggles share a power source, which can be charged with a universal charger. That is only really vital for the NV, though, which stops working altogether at zero power; the flashlight simply doesn't shine as brightly. But this doesn't mean that charging the power to use the flashlight is pointless; some enemies that live in the dark such as the plated nosalises and the spiderbugs will shrink back in a daze if confronted with a full-ish beam, which gives the player a few precious seconds to introduce their faces to a magazine of military-grade rounds or their bellies to a knife. If you have enough time and battery power, you can just keep the light on a dazed spiderbug and it'll burn up until it dies.

• Painkiller and its expansion Battle out of Hell both have infinite flashlights. In the first game it is literally a flashlight that emanates inexplicably from Daniel's chest (you never see the light itself, but it does flicker, make electrical noises and has a distortion in the center like a normal flashlight). in Battle out of Hell, the light has been replaced with a strange glowing yellow ball in the bottom left corner of the screen. Presumably, this is supposed to represent a lantern or candle instead of an electrical torch.
• In Bungie's Pathways into Darkness, your flashlight will last for a week, but you only have five days to complete your mission before the Sealed Evil in a Can awakens to destroy ordered reality on Earth. Although there is a set of nightvision goggles necessary to get past evil creepy-crawlies that are attracted to your flashlight.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
  • In the vanilla games, you can use the headlamp or whatever Night-Vision Goggles is in your suit at your leisure^* the low-tier NVG's flicker often, but it's just an indication of their bad quality. However, that doesn't make the headlamp very useful: when it's on, other stalkers can detect you faster from idle state and see you easily when alerted, and it isn't bright enough to navigate the Zone's great outdoors in the darker hours. The goggles outclass it fairly fast, especially the high-tier ones that don't blur the image and don't flicker.
  • The MISERY Mod for Call of Pripyat has the option of averting this with the battery drain option. Both the vanilla game's headlamp (that must be purchased from a trader and equipped, you don't start off with it) and the handheld flashlight you start off with in its place drain the batteries in them if the option is enabled, and they don't recharge, you have to buy new ones.
• Team Fortress Classic still has the flashlight from Half-Life in the code, but because the power gauge was removed it now shines indefinitely. If you're curious, you activate it by hitting the console key and typing: bind "impulse 100".
• The Searchlight in Unreal is not infinite, but its charge is so high^note 30 minutes real time that player is unlikely to run out of power for it since you get it so late in the base game⁺ more precisely, in the fifth-to-last level, and only the third-to-last is one where you have plausible use for it; if you take long enough to finish the game, it's likely you'll see its charge bar diminish a fair bit before the end. If somehow you manage to deplete it, a task that can happen in the expansion pack⁺ you get the Searchlight halfway through the plot, at the crashed UMS Prometheus, the game doesn't even have tailored a message specifically for it^note it says "Flashlight batteries have died." just like when the regular 60-second flashlight dies out. Another big difference from the regular example is that its beam is far brighter⁺ wider angle and higher color temperature, so it gives the impression of more power than the common flashlight.
• In Vietcong the player has a flashlight that never runs out of power; mainly useful for the mission segments when you must traverse through the tunnel systems of your enemies. However, some players never actually realized they had a flashlight during those missions since they'd never used it previously and ended up negotiating the tunnels in near complete darkness. A case of read the manual in those cases.

Platform Game

• In the Little Nightmares series, no matter if it's a lighter or a flashlight, the portable light sources of the player characters are all infinite. This is especially important in the sequel, where certain enemies cannot move while in the light, including Mono's flashlight.

Puzzle Game

• The headlamp in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker doesn't seem to need batteries: there's no battery gauge, and in fact it doesn't even have a visible power source. Very handy when you're faced down with Boos and Mud Troopers. You can also shut it down in levels where sneaking around is an objective.

Roguelike

• The Binding of Isaac: the Night Light is a passive upgrade, meaning its effects are permanent rather than reliant on charges. That said, its use as an actual light source is very limited^note only if you get the Curse of Darkness on a floor after finding the Night Light, as picking it up on a cursed floor undoes the Curse; its main utility is slowing down enemies and projectiles caught in the beam.
• In Candies 'n Curses, flashlights and lanterns of any kind will shine indefinitely. They even last through multiple playthroughs.
• In Death Road to Canada, flashlights have unlimited juice and remain working so long as they don't break from being used as melee weapons. The unique Tacticop Lite(TM) is unbreakable and can be swung about at will.
• In NetHack, lamps and candles are available as quite rare light sources. Normal ones burn out eventually, though lamps can be recharged with a potion of oil, but Magic Lamps last forever. Likewise, the Spell, Scroll, and Wand of Light create permanent fields of light.

Role Playing Game

• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has the Pilgrim's Lantern, found in the underground caves beneath Ebonheart, which will burn infinitely as long as you don't take it into water. This is in contrast to other light sources, which burn out after (fairly short) durations of use.
• The Pip-Boy wrist computer in Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4 can also be used as a lantern with an unlimited power supply, explained in-game by brightening up the screen to max. It's not explained how the light from a single screen shines in a full 360º angle, though. In 4, this also goes for the mining helmet headlamp, presumably because the Sole Survivor uses the Pip-Boy as the power source.
• In Final Fantasy Legend II there's a cave where it's too bright to see anything inside, aptly named Bright Cave. You need the TrueEye MAGI to see normally in the cave, but it never wears off, making the MAGI an Infinite... Flashdark?
• Mass Effect 3 gives the crew weapon-mounted flashlights, but it's plausible to presume they're run off whatever absurdly high-capacity battery is flinging minuscule slugs at absurd muzzle velocities all day out of the gun, and they're never on for very long anyway.
• In Neverwinter Nights, one torch is all you ever need (if you're even worried about illumination, as Hollywood Darkness is in effect even where there are no obvious light sources otherwise). Ironically, about the only light source in the game that will eventually die down again on its own is the Light spell, and that becomes obsolete by the time you find or make the first permanently glowing magic item at the latest.
• The Pokémon games have dark caves (depending on the gen you either see nothing of the layout at all or a very small area around the player) that can be completely lit up by the move Flash if a Pokémon in the party knows it. The effect doesn't go away until you leave the cave or use a ladder to a new room, at which point you need to reuse Flash. Ironically, this fits a dual meaning of "infinite", as in earlier games Flash's status as a Hidden Machine (HM) means it could not be unlearned once taught.
• Sword of Vermilion has a Ten Second Flash Light in the form of candles, but lanterns and the Luminos spell last until you leave the current dungeon.
• Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption has got not only an infinite flashlight, available in the Modern Days, but also an infinite torch, that you use throughout the Dark Ages, that lights up when you get it and stops burning as soon as you put it in your pack.

Survival Horror

• All Is Dust (2015): The lantern that Thomas Joad carries never seems to need re-lighting.
• Basingstoke: The flashlight you collect has an image to indicate when it's on and off, but it never shows if the battery's low or not.

• Blood Breed: You can turn your flashlight on and off at will, but it never needs new batteries.
• Bram The Toymaker: The Player Character holds a flashlight in their right hand throughout the game, which stays on and always shines brightly.
• CLOWN (2020): Your flashlight never seems to need new batteries.
• The Dead Space series plays it straight with the weapon lights on Isaac's guns. Notably, the Dead Space 2 version of the plasma cutter is actually a flashlight combined with a surgical tool. It keeps working with no breaks, no matter how long it stays on or how many enemies he beats to death with it.
• DON'T LOOK AWAY: The flashlight each of the survivors carry works for as long as the match goes, only flickering as a warning that one of the mannequins has entered a rage state.
• Eldervale: Ophelia finds a flashlight early in the game that never seems to need new batteries.
• Michael the firefighter has a large handheld floodlight with him during his chapter in Eternal Darkness. It does not dim or even flicker at all no matter how long it stays on, and not due to magick either^note enchanting the flashlight changes the beam color to that of whatever Ancient's rune you used, but that's purely for looks; all the game does to explain it is calling it "heavy duty" when you examine it.
• Fatal Frame series has two examples.
  • Each protagonist has a flashlight that works throughout their events. The one exception occurs in the second game, and even then the flashlight's temporary failure is used to indicate that there's something very wrong with the particular house the protagonist has entered rather than any runtime indications. Thankfully the devs took the possible shortcomings of that into account and made said house the most well-lit area of the game, so you won't miss having your own light source.
  • Then there's the Spirit Stone Flashlight, which either exorcises ghosts (when wielded by Kirishima in IV) or temporarily incapacitates them (as is the case for Ayane in V) and never seems to run out of power, either, though re-charging its power between shots is still necessary.

• Forewarned: The flashlights in the game never need new batteries. If they turn off, it's meant to be a clue to help identify the Mejai in the tomb.
• Livestream: Escape from Hotel Izanami: The girls' sources of light never seem to need recharging.
• Lunch Lady: The students' flashlights never seem to need any new batteries.
• The Night Way Home: Rina finds a flashlight on the subway restroom floor after regaining consciousness, and picks it up. Said flashlight never seems to need new batteries.
• The Maglite in No More Room In Hell, unlike the lighter, produces endless light. Also unlike the lighter, it lights up reliably in one click, doesn't go out while on the move, and can also be dual-wielded with a one-handed melee or ranged weapon with no drawbacks. The tradeoffs are that the beam is not very wide, it's not available by default and must be found, and it takes up about the same inventory space as a one-handed melee weapon; the Maglite itself serves as a melee weapon, but it's even worse than the fists. It's better for lighting on the move through a dark area and for spotting threats, while the lighter is more suited to scavenging the environment. Also, like in Contagion, the beam is visible to other players, so only one person has to have a Maglite out to light the way with, and since there's no Player Versus Player, it's purely beneficial.
• Onryo (2020): Your flashlight never seems to need new batteries.
• Penumbra
  • The flashlight is infinite in the third game, Requiem, although it's implied that this takes place in a surreal, out-of-body experience; in the previous games, it's an old, battery-hungry piece of junk.

• Phasmophobia: the three different flashlight varieties^note regular, "strong" with longer-ranged beam, and handheld UV for finding fingerprints and footprints when the ghost steps on a pile of salt all have unlimited juice. They go dim and flicker when the ghost is in Hunt mode, but never outright turn off unless clicked off intentionally; even when dropped on the ground they stay lit, so they can serve as stationary lighting for rooms you do not want to use the light switch on so as to not overload the circuit breaker. UV glowsticks glow indefinitely and being non-electronic, don't flicker during Hunts. The candle is a zig-zag case: when held by a player it has unlimited burn time, but once it's placed down, it only lasts a minute before burning out and becoming unusable.
• Resident Evil
  • In Resident Evil 7, Ethan has a hands-free flashlight that never drains, as does Mia. They only use it in extremely dark places, though, and you can't force-toggle it on.
  • Resident Evil 2 (Remake) gives both protagonists a flashlight with unlimited battery. As in the RE7 example, they only use it where it's dark... which happens to be more than half of the game.
• In Silence of the Sleep, Jacob carries a flashlight with him that'll never run out and is his only means of illuminating dark areas to interact with items, as well as to detect monsters sneaking up on him.

• The Skeleton: The flashlight neither has any sort of meter, nor does it show any indication of needing new batteries.
• Skinwalker Hunt: The Player Character has a flashlight that can be turned on and off, but never needs a change of batteries.
• Sleep Tight (2021): The Player Character's flashlight can remain on indefinitely, with no need to shut off. This is good, considering you need it to fend off the monsters you face each night.
• In Slender: The Arrival, your flashlight doesn't run out until the final level, where it dies.
• Slide in the Woods: After your third trip down the slide, everything is pitch black. Luckily you can find a flashlight with some battery life still in it... except said battery life never runs out no matter how much you lollygag.
• In SOMA, Simon Jarret spontaneously finds a flashlight during the first third of the game that never needs recharging. Turns out, later on, that it's simply grafted into the electronic components of the suit he's wearing as a body.
• Song of Horror outright tells you in a tutorial message that your light source — be it a flashlight, a lighter or a candle, depending on the character you pick — will never run out, so you're free to use it as much as you want or need.
• ThanksKilling Day: After the pilgrim killer attacks his family, the boy can find a flashlight that never runs out of power in his house. It was apparently left behind by a repair man.
• The flashlights the investigators use in White Noise Online never seem to run out of power.

Turn-Based Strategy

• X-COM: UFO Defense: Electro-flares are lightweight throwable light sources that'll work for the whole mission as long as they're not caught in an explosion or hit by a laser or plasma shot. They can be picked up and thrown again as needed to illuminate the map. The Mission-Pack Sequel, X-COM: Terror from the Deep, has an exact equivalent in the Glowsticks.

Visual Novels

• In Spirit Hunter: NG, Akira carries with him a flashlight that never runs out of battery, regardless of how many dark areas he uses it in. It's even noted in its description that it lasts for an unusually long amount of time.

Wide Open Sandbox

• In No Man's Sky, your exosuit and multitools can have multiple gadgets installed that must be recharged after prolonged usage. Your simple torch, however, has no such need.
• In Rodina, you have a torch that you can toggle whenever you want without worrying about depleting it. Your spaceship has a searchlight that similarly never depletes despite illuminating a much larger area.
• In Subsistence, you start with a glowstick that lasts indefinitely, but gives off very little light and the angry blue color is hard to see by. Much later on, you can craft a proper flashlight, but it can only be used when attached to a gun, and the batteries have limited life.
• In Unturned, personal light sources all last forever. In the first two builds, batteries did exist in the game, but only as a crafting material to make the handlamp, a variant of the regular flashlight with a wider and more cool-tinted beam that could in turn be crafted into a tactical light. In Unturned 3.0, the infinite battery applies also to headlamps and Night-Vision Goggles. Car headlights used to be a straight example until the battery system was implemented; leaving a vehicle with the lights (and/or sirens in certain vehicles) on will drain the battery, driving around will recharge it, and if it reaches 0% charge, it'll disappear altogether and you'll need to find a new one.

Other

• The Caregiver: Naomi can find a flashlight on the floor of Souichi's house. There's no bar indicating the flashlight's battery life and it doesn't dim as the game progresses.
• The Convenience Store: The Player Character's flashlight never seems to need new batteries.
• My Dear Sister: Alice Fellows starts the game with her flashlight in her right hand, and always has it on. It never seems to need new batteries.
• Night Delivery: The Player Character's flashlight seems to always be on, and never seems to indicate if it is ever running out of power.
• Okaeri: The flashlight the girl finds lasts indefinitely.

Non-Video Game examples:

Interactive Fiction

• In the Enchanter series, the Frotz spell available from the beginning turns any object into a permanent light source.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons has a few, thanks to magic.
  • Everburning Torches, which are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. They're so inexpensive, almost every adventuring party above level 1 has at least one packed.
  • The Continual Light spell turns any random handy item it's cast on into an infinite light source.

Real Life

• A truly infinite flashlight is obviously impossible. That said, modern day technology allows certain light sources to last a pretty damn long time, possibly even outlasting an emergency situation or extended power outage.
  • Mechanically rechargeable lights can vary. Faraday "shake" flashlights are very limited, but crank or dynamo models can stay lit for as long as you keep pumping the internal generator.
  • The advent of high-power LEDs as a substitute for incandescent bulbs was already a great step-up in battery life given the efficiency of the LED^note the Atactical/Wowtac A1, a budget torch from late 2016, can stay on in its Low mode of 10 lumens, which is about what one might expect of a typical movie or video game light, for just shy of six days, but they have another advantage: the minimum amperage threshold for an LED to provide useful light is much lower than a tungsten filament's, so they can be run at very low currents without problems, with extremely long runtimes as a result. The logical extreme of this is Firefly or Moonlight mode, a brightness level low enough for any nearby light fixture, even natural moonlight, to make it useless, but bright enough to see by with eyes well-adjusted to the dark. Even the comparatively small and gaunt AAA batteries can last almost a week^* in the case of the Thrunite Ti3, a pocket light from 2014 with a Firefly mode of only three hundredths of a lumen, while burlier lithium-ion ones that run voltages closer to the nominal 3 volts of standard flashlight LEDs^* case in point, most torches that feed off an 18650 cell, the standard battery for high-power tactical lights; it's even more pronounced with the newer 21700 cell format put out light for months. Thow a good quality LED drop-in⁺ a LED and driver board assembly, shaped to fit incandescent bulb slots in place of the bulb on an incandescent 3, 4 or 6D work light and forget about changing batteries regularly, especially if the drop-in is only moderately bright.
  • Power banks have very high battery capacity by design. The models with a small white LED can work as an emergency flashlight for a long time with a single charge.

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