Just wait 'till you see what the little bombs split up into.
"Oh God. Even the bullets shoot bullets."
There's Abnormal Ammo for those cases when your weapons fire something unusual. But what if your weapon fires stuff... that also shoots projectiles of its own? That would be cool, right?
Recursive Ammo is what happens when ammunition for a certain weapon uses another level of weapons to do the dirty work. In Real Life, the secondary ordnance is called "sub-munitions". This does not include things such as fragmentation grenades, Attack Drones, or missiles with multiple thrusters that break away. Various forms of Real Life versions of these weapons will show up anytime someone decides to look up modern weapons.
Bullet Hell games in general tend to make use of this trope, as interesting patterns and changes of direction of bullets is their bread and butter.
Can be one of the three different types of Spread Shot and frequently a way to instigate Splash Damage. Sub-Trope of Abnormal Ammo and Matryoshka Object. See also Improvised Scattershot when this happens through external forces.
Example subpages:
Other Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Code Geass has a unique Humongous Mecha in episode 8 called the Raikō that uses a massive railgun that fires shells that split into several dozen pellets, each "pellet" being roughly the size of a tennis ball.
- Earlier on, there was a one-off Knightmare weapon called a chaos mine which is thrown like a grenade but at the top of its trajectory, it opens up and releases a sustained barrage of pellets on the target from above. Euphemia almost gets killed by one but as it turns out, chaos mines are ineffective against the Lancelot's Blaze Luminous.
- Combattler V BIGGU BURASUTO! DIBAIDAAAA!!!
- In the Cowboy Bebop episode "Gateway Shuffle", a group of insane ecoterrorists launches a large bomb containing a mutagenic virus toward a moon. As our heroes near it, it opens and releases three missiles. Two are destroyed by Spike, and just as Faye's about to destroy the third, it splits further into a thousand tiny rockets. The moon is only saved when the authorities close the hyper-space gateway they were all in before any missiles get through.
- In Dragon Ball, Krillin uses a Ki Manipulation variation of this where he throws an energy ball into the air which then breaks apart raining death on all those below.
- Full Metal Panic! pulled this off in The Second Raid season premier: when the Arbalest is retrieved by the Tuatha De Danaan, the sub fires several cluster missiles onto the tanks lining the riverside. The entire army gets wiped out in seconds.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Ali al-Saachez's custom Enact has a rifle attachment that launches a micromissile-launching missile.
- Then there's the mobile armor in Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer, which has GN Fangs that themselves launch smaller GN Fangs.
- These are, in turn, based on the "Mother Funnels" carried on the back of the Gaymark from Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ.
- Then there's the mobile armor in Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer, which has GN Fangs that themselves launch smaller GN Fangs.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team has a similar weapon fielded on Zakus as anti-infantry measures. When a bunch of guerrillas charge at a downed Zaku, the pilot fires three of these into the air. Two are shot down by small arms fire but the third explodes into a brutal rain of shrapnel that shreds the entire guerrilla force in a second.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory has several that are mounted on the GP03 Dendrobium in the form of missiles that shoot other missiles.
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- The Zeon Xemel mobile suit that bombarded the base in the first episode also fires cluster munitions.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED had various battleships and such that fired missiles into the air, which would then fire a rainfall of shrapnel to cover the enemies. It's been one of the most successful tactics for heroes and villains alike.
- Rebuild World: Missile barrages tend to have this.
- Lattis in his flying Powered Armor bombards Akira with recursive rockets, which his Virtual Sidekick Alpha deflects by using the liquid metal Abnormal Ammo Akira's high tech sword uses to form a barrier around him and his Cool Bike.
- During The Siege of Akira's Home Base in the slums, the attacking MegaCorp uses thirty mobile artillery platforms that fire rockets that split to form a smoke screen that has the dual functions of jamming sensors and slowing down projectiles to make it less likely the nearby city will intervene in the conflict.
- Evac's missiles in Transformers: Cybertron, opening up to release a zillion smaller missiles.
Comic Books
- As described in listicles as one of his more ridiculous ones, Green Arrow has an SOS Trick Arrow that fires nine arrows in sequence. Three short one, three long ones and three more short ones.
- During Judge Dredd's "Apocalypse War" arc, Sov regular nukes consist of a large missile that breaks up and launches multiple nuclear warheads (a MIRV), scattering them across the Big Meg.
- Transformers comic, Blustreak uses a missile like this as one of his signature weapons.
Film
- The Avengers (2012): A miniaturised version of the Jericho (from Iron Man) is shown as part of Tony's suit's arsenal, used to take out multiple Chitauri.
- Hawkeye also uses an arrow which embeds itself in one of the Chitauri and then releases a spray of projectiles into several others.
- Day Watch, there is an aluminum foil ball attached to a rubber band. If thrown, it unfolds in midair and splits into three identical, but faster and harder, balls, which also split, etc. It devastates Moscow in one strike.
- Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. The Action Duo leave one of their anachronistic rifles with a Kid Sidekick they've picked up on the way, and he uses it to shoot at the Big Bad as she's zooming by. Cue Bullet Time shot of the bullet unraveling in mid-flight to spray pellets in a make-shift Anti-Air projectile that shoots down her Flying Broomstick.
- Iron Man: The Jericho missile at the beginning splits up and proceeds to simply level a small mountain.
- In the fantasy film Na Cha the Great, one of Na Cha's weapons is a throwing knife that splits into a dozen smaller knives in mid-air after being flung.
- Spawn (1997) starts with Al performing an assassination with one of these.
- Star Trek (2009) The missiles of the Narada which break open and deploy warheads.
- Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith has missiles that release Pistoeka sabotage droids to tear apart starfighters they land on.
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit:
- Eddie Valiant has a Toon revolver (given to him by Yosemite Sam) that fires Toon bullets - each one a different western stock character, each one then taking on their target with their own weaponry. Although they're pretty much the opposite of smart ammunition, demonstrated when a bunch of them hare off in the wrong direction.
Eddie: Dum-dums.- Of particular note is the bullet that worked right when it shattered the liquor bottle. It whipped out an axe (or tomahawk) to shatter the bottle.
Literature
- Fyodor Berezin's novel Ash features orbital defense railguns that automatically target incoming missiles. Then we find out that there are even larger railguns that launch those smaller railguns. On the other side, many of the missiles launched from the planet are multi-stage MIRVs, releasing thousands of warheads and even more decoys. Some of the missiles are cluster bombs where each bomblet is a tiny nuke that uses californium (which has a smaller critical mass than plutonium).
- In The Bear and the Dragon, United States F-16s deploy 192 J-SOW (nicknamed "Smart Pig") missiles against a Chinese force of about 1000 armored targets, mostly tanks. Once close enough to their targets, the J-SOW missiles each deploy 20 smaller guided munitions with anti-armor capabilities that quickly destroy enough of the enemy vehicles to render the Chinese force irrelevant.note
- In The Begum's Millions, one of the munitions developed by Prof. Schultze was a shell packed with a hundred of small cannons which, in turn, fired incendiary bombs after release.
- Crest of the Stars has antimatter mines that, when shot at by point defenses, split into even more mines. These mines disguise themselves as the debris of the destroyed mine, and then jump any Abh spaceship that strays too close. The United Mankind develop a new type of mine (other sci-fi series would probably call them torpedoes), which can divide into four independent mines to overwhelm point defense guns or lie in wait in debris fields until a ship passes by. They're dealt with by deploying More Dakka.
- Dale Brown books since Fatal Terrain include the submunition-laden Wolverine cruise missiles. In addition, various UCAVs, although meant to resupply from a mothership and go for more attack runs, mount warheads of their own just in case.
- Many artillery shells used in Hammer's Slammers. Such as anti-personnel "firecracker" rounds that scatter a bunch of small bomblets over an area. Or the anti-tank shells, which detonate above the target and impale it on a jet of molten metal.
- Honor Harrington features missiles that shoot several dozen laser beams in a shotgun-like spread, powered by a small nuclear warhead. This is based loosely on a Real Life concept; see below. Loosely speaking, the series contains spaceships that launch pods which then launch multistage missiles that are capable of spraying lasers everywhere.
- In The Night's Dawn Trilogy, starships launch "combat wasps", which in turn launch "submunitions".
- In the Northworld series, mention is made of shield penetrating bullets that hit a shield then fire another shot at the same now weakened spot, up to twice. note This is probably also inspired by a Real Life weapon, the explosively formed penetrator.
- In the Uplift series, some of the more advanced Galactic missles have multiple layers to them. In Startide Rising, the Soro fire missiles at a Synthian scout. He fires anti-missile missiles at them, and the missiles shoot them down with Beam Spam!
- In Worldwar, cluster bombs are one of the modern-era weapons unleashed on World War II-era Earth by the Race. It takes a while for the contemporary soldiers to get used to them and several are crippled by bomblets blowing off one of their feet. Fortunately for humanity, they're also one of the weapons the Race only has a very limited supply of.
Live-Action TV
- Himitsu Sentai Gorenger: In one episode the Gorengers face a Monster of the Week that can shield itself from the Gorenger Storm by turning into a rock. They counter this by developing a parent-child version of the Gorenger Storm. After being launched at the enemy, it drops a smaller version of itself on the ground. The enemy easily blocks the first ball but then charges at the Gorangers and dies from stepping on the second one. Something similar happens in a later episode when they are facing a shark monster who blocks the Goranger Hurricane before it hits him, but then it opens up and fires a smaller rocket right down the monster's throat. The Black Cross Army's Battlers, large bat-shaped flying vehicles, are able to fire missiles that release a swarm of flying mines.
- Stargate Atlantis introduced the Horizon which is a starship deployed MIRV (explained below).
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech:
- Thunder LRMs are essentially missile-deployed minefields, which even come in a variety of distinct types. FASCAM (see the Real Life section below) and cluster rounds for proper artillery weapons also exist.
- Also, the MaximumTech Sourcebook introduced several types of specialized autocannon ammunition, one of which was a sub-munition round, which broke up after firing, like the special ammunition for the LB-X series of autocannons (Which were more like shotguns than autocannons.)
- In this tale of a Dungeons & Dragons game, the party's ranger obtained a quiver with a strange enchantment, unofficially nicknamed the "Storm Quiver" by the players. You could put a theoretically infinite number of arrows into it, but only ever take one out. When that one arrow is fired, it splits into two mid-flight, then the two split into four, and so on, until you have the number of arrows that were put into it, leaving the quiver empty. The ranger only ever used it when absolutely necessary, sticking to a normal quiver most of the time to conserve ammo. Eventually, Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards kicked in, and the ranger was forced to pivot into melee since the party's mages had rendered him obsolete as a ranged damage-dealer, and both quivers were forgotten about. Until the party had to defend a city from an invading orc horde. While the rest of the party goes about putting up defenses and training civilians to fight, the ranger climbs to the top of a hill where he can see the coming horde, and takes out his bow and the Storm Quiver. Turns out he hadn't forgotten about it after all, and had been putting every arrow he bought or looted from slain enemies into it ever since he stopped using archery, which was quite a long time ago, so he had built up a lot of arrows. He draws the one arrow from the Storm Quiver, takes aim at the center of the horde, and fires. After he succeeds the attack roll (with a crit even!), the DM gets up, grabs the stack of paper he was using to plan the orc invasion, and chucks it in the trash before describing how over 50% of the entire horde was wiped out in one shot by so many arrows that they were crushed to death by the weight rather than being pierced. The DM aso ruled that firing such a massive number of arrows at once had burned out the enchantment on the Storm Quiver so that the ranger would never be able to pull any bullshit like that again.
- GURPS: Ultra-Tech has Smart Explosively Forged Projectiles that fly over the target before using the explosive force of the warhead to create a flaming armor piercing spike.
- Mekton Zeta, in the Tactical Display, encourages faking this by purchasing a Remote and packing it with as many missiles as you can afford. Because a Macross Missile Massacre is the only way to effectively use missiles, you may as well fire off as many as possible in one round.
- Star Fleet Battles drones (missiles) include multi-warhead capacity, such as Starfish drones and swordfish drones which fire a phaser at the target.
- Transhuman Space has military spacecraft launching "Autonomous Kill Vehicles" (AKVs), which are basically robot fighters with guns installed — except that they also capable of ramming if the situation justifies it, bringing them into this category.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Astra Militarum weapons:
- The Manticore Multiple Rocket Launcher has, as its most common armament, a rack of 4 (and only 4) Storm Eagle rockets. A Manticore may only fire one Storm Eagle per turn, and each Storm Eagle breaks into a barrage of 1-3 mini-rockets once the main Storm Eagle reaches the apex of its trajectory. Due to their temperamental nature, Manticores are sometimes distrusted by commanders, but having that kind of potential in firepower makes up for it.
- The stormshard mortars fitted to Wyvern Suppression Tanks fire shells designed to explode above enemy infantry, showing its victims with countless razor-sharp, aquila-shaped flechettes that scythe through flesh and bone with ease.
- One Whirlwind missile in some editions of the game is a missile that deploys mines when it goes off.
- Ordinatus Golgotha, from the 2nd Edition of the Epic scale version of the Warhammer 40'000' game system, is armed with six enormous Hellfire Missiles, each of which is fitted with multiple warheads that separate before impact so that the war machine can devastate a large section of the battlefield with a single shot. It was built specifically to deal with a gigantic Ork horde, at which it excelled, and since then it's been one of the most used Ordinatus weapons, as anything that can blanket a giant horde in explosions never gets old for the Imperium.
- Astra Militarum weapons:
Webcomics
- Manly Guys Doing Manly Things: This episode features an action figure whose gun shoots little guns. The little guns "might shoot deep fried beer cans or somethin'."
Web Original
- Mr. Welch tried this once, only to get blocked by the GM:
2076. If I'm commissioned to build an artillery gun, they don't mean a gun that fires howitzers.
Western Animation
- In the original "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century" short, Marvin the Martian's "Ultimatum Responder" gun fires a bullet that fires another bullet right in Daffy Duck's face.
- Ricochet Rabbit and Droop-a-Long Coyote: Ricochet had several trick bullets, one of which would stop in front of the bad guy, pop open, and pull out its own gun to shoot.
- The Simpsons: In one episode, Nelson was drawing a robot with guns for arms fighting a plane made out of guns that shoots guns.
I even tried making bullets that shoot bullets that shoot bullets that shoot bullets that shoot bullets, but that turned into way too many bullets and went out of control.
— Matt Roszak, Bullet Heaven's developer, finding a limit to this trope.
