Guns Akimbo



""Give a man a gun, he's Superman. Give him two, and he's God!""

- Superintendent Pang

One gun just not badass enough? Try two!

As far back as the westerns of the '50s, The Gunslinger has often strapped on two pistols. Double-fisted firing of handguns just plain looks cool. Especially when the shooter nails two different targets with one noisy, confusing volley. Slow-mo leaping and dodging with Bullet Time effects not required, but helpful. If the weapons of choice are fully automatic machine pistols, like Ingram SMGs or Micro-Uzis, bonus points.

This trope is a standard feature of The Western. Usually the two-gun fighter is just that much better than his opponents, that he can draw two guns in the time it takes them to draw one. In The Old West and The Cavalier Years, carrying two pistols was a practical result of long reload times on muzzle-loaders (although they were never used for suppressive fire like in the trope) as well as percussion revolvers and Single Action Revolvers that were loaded one cartridge at a time. As a matter of fact, real people in these times often wore entire bandoleers of a couple dozen Throw-Away Guns strapped to their body. After break action revolvers and speed-loaders came around, one gun could do all the work.

In police oriented shows, procedurals and action shows alike, this trope is largely a villain trait. The two-gun fighter is usually a destructive psycho with no regard for collateral damage, particularly Two Uzi Guy. Police characters generally use a proper technique, and fire one handgun with both hands. Also, accuracy of any kind is rather hard to achieve with two guns, and most times, you'll be lucky if you hit anything you're aiming for at all.

In Anime, as in much of Asian action cinema, especially Heroic Bloodshed movies, this trope is one of the primary elements of the art of Gun Fu, and the two-gun fighter in these media is often very skilled, able to pick off multiple targets with pinpoint accuracy and able to use his guns as melee weapons as well as other crazy things one would not normally be able to do with a gun. Sometimes the character has two special guns, with individual names and special properties, hearkening back to the samurai stories about named swords with special enchantments.

There are several ways to use Guns Akimbo:
 * Both guns are used for concentrated fire on one target at a time. The shooter either pulls one trigger and then the other in rapid fire succession (commonly called "Woo Style" for its use by characters in John Woo movies), or pulls both triggers at the same time on a single target. The first variant is most often used with pistols or other non-automatic weapons, while the second variant is usually employed if the shooter is using automatic weapons.
 * Both guns are used separately on different targets. The shooter either alternates fire between each one as the situation warrants (for example, mowing several guys down with the submachine gun in your main hand, and then putting down another guy with the Hand Cannon in your other hand), or uses them both simultaneously on separate targets. The first variant is most often used when a character has two different guns in hand (which, by the way, also occurs quite often in John Woo movies) or as a more "realistic" alternative to either of the first two options. The other generally requires Improbable Aiming Skills and/or training in Gun Kata. A variation of the second has the shooter awaiting a coordinated attack and aiming at the different spots he expects the two attackers to enter the room.
 * The user fires the gun in his right hand (for the sake of examples, let's just choose the right hand first) and only the one in his right hand until it runs empty. Then the user switches to the gun in his left hand and starts firing. This is the most 'practical' (and therefore least cool) way to use two guns, and is sometimes referred to as a "New York Reload."

God help you if you need to reload, but the wide availability of Bottomless Magazines and the habit of a lot of two-gun fighters to throw away their guns when they run out of bullets usually means it's not a problem. They may also go for an Unorthodox Reload, if they want to show off.

The logical conclusion is to make the wielder Multi-Armed and Dangerous.

Compare Dual-Wielding, Sword and Gun, and Firing One-Handed. A popular way of achieving More Dakka. See also Gun Kata and Gun Fu.

Anime and Manga

 * Kirika manages it once in Noir, although she only fires one at a time and only because she really didn't want to reload...
 * In an extreme example, in Dead Leaves, Retro (briefly) uses three guns at once.
 * And let's not forget Triple Six and his two BFG 's.
 * Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Normally, Motoko uses a single handgun or rifle, supported with both hands. However, in the episode "BARRAGE" in the first season, she utilizes a Seburo M-5 handgun in each hand. These are not quite as impractical to wield as they fire low recoil armor-piercing 5.7mm rounds reinforced by her cyborg body and firing software, but the fact that she was fighting an Armed Suit made the attempt almost completely ineffective. After getting her left arm blown off, she single-handedly uses an anti tank rifle to make the pilot inside regret that he ever messed with her.
 * Alucard in Hellsing does this with two humongous pistols, a .454 Casull and a 13mm "Jackal". He can get away with it due having immense strength and reflexes because of his vampiric nature.
 * In another example, this page from the manga. If one Harkonnen is overkill, what's two at the same time?
 * Done fairly often in Digimon. Revolvmon in 02 this western style, and it gets batter in the third movie,and later in tamers, when we're introduced to Gargomon, who does this with two machine Guns (Wich also act as his hands) later Beelzebumon pulls this off one time in bullet-time
 * Vash the Stampede in Trigun (A Cattle Punk setting), on some very rare occasions, uses two weapons at once.
 * In fact, since his left hand is a gun, and he carries his favored weapon in his right, he's basically dual wielding at all times, even if he doesn't usually use both at once.
 * And Knives once uses two world-ending beam cannons at once.
 * In the manga, one we get Wolfwood's best friend/nemesis Livio the Double Fang, who dual-wields paired guns that can shoot forward and backwards simultaneously.
 * Livio's alter-ego Razlo takes this trope even farther, having a cybernetic arm grafted to his back so that he can triple-wield three massive, six-foot steel cross Punishers.
 * Wolfwood also gets into this at least once with the pistols hidden inside his own Punisher.
 * In Black Lagoon, "Two Hands" Revy not only wields two pistols at once, she also performs such feats as gunning down groups of enemies 180 degrees apart and reloading one weapon with her teeth while keeping up fire with the other, acrobatic leaps while firing, and more. Somehow, it works.
 * Possibly because Revy rarely does it in the typical Hollywood style of just blasting away with both guns simultaneously and still somehow hitting everything. She typically fires one at one target, then fires another at another target. It's presented more as a function of her being ambidextrous than anything else.
 * It's commented on more than once that she is one of the deadliest members of the main cast, of which her skill with weaponry is a main part. She earned her aiming skills.
 * To make this even less realistic, she does this in one scene with rifles.
 * Rifles nothing, she's dual-wielded miniature grenade launchers without incident.
 * Also worth mentioning is Mr. Chang, basically the animated equivalent of Chow Yun-Fat.
 * It's implied that Mr. Chang is the one who taught Revy.
 * The other primary dual-wielder of the main cast is none other than Roberta, who dual-wields two Sistema (1911 variant from South America) pistols.
 * Teana Lanster of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha does this with a pair of pistols that can become a pair of energy daggers for Dual-Wielding.
 * Mana Tatsumiya in Mahou Sensei Negima often dual-wields Desert Eagles when fighting in close range. These may or may not be Airsoft replicas, however.
 * Yuuna also dual wields pistols at various points.
 * In Bleach,  wields two guns when he releases his Resurrección. They fire ceros.
 * Spike Spiegel of Cowboy Bebop fame occasionally uses two guns akimbo. Appropriately, in a possible subversion of the trope, every time he does this he is unable to kill his opponent fast enough to avoid being shot in return, save for one flashback sequence where we do not even see who he is shooting at.
 * Jo from Burst Angel can dual-wield a pair of Desert Eagles with pinpoint accuracy. Yes, she's just that badass.
 * Tres Iqus from Trinity Blood uses two guns at the same time in a style reminiscent of Gun Kata. Said guns are HandCannons and he's extremely good at using them (given that he's an android, this probably qualifies as a Justified Trope).
 * In the manga Kurohime, the loyal Sidekick Zero uses four guns, and combines this with improbably fast shooting and Improbable Aiming Skills to shoot the guns out of the hands of whatever Mooks happen to be around.
 * Used not so exactly in Gundam, where there are any number of Mobile Suits mounting multiple ranged weapons - yes, including the "normal" sized ones, not just the even more heavily armed siege types - and that's not to mention bits/funnels/DRAGOONs capable of moving independent of the host mecha. Probably one of the most iconic examples is the Freedom from Gundam Seed cleaning house with its twin plasma cannons and twin railguns. In certain cases, the difficulty of aiming may be Handwaved or Justified by advanced targeting systems and Newtype/Coordinator powers.
 * The Wing Zero can pull this off with it's twin buster rifles. Which can also combine together to form one massive buster rifle.
 * And the Endless Waltz Heavyarms pulls it off with two sets of twin-linked gatling guns.
 * Add also Gundam SEED C.E. 73 Stargazer: Blu Duel and Strike Noir both use a pair of "shorty" beam rifles. Meanwhile, Buster Verde carry two huge beam rifles that can be combine like Wing Zero's buster rifle mentioned above.
 * Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is fairly fond of this one. Both Gundam Dynames and Cherudim Gundam akimbo a pair of beam pistols. Gundam Arios has two double barreled beam rifles (and a pair of beam gatlings mounted in each arm). Not to be trumped, Gundam Virtue and Gundam Seravee are both capable of using two beam bazookas at once. Gundam Zabanya (which succeed Dynames and Cherudim) can not only akimbo two of its 10 Rifle Bits, but also break them down to Pistol Bits for the same purpose.
 * Justified by Briareos Hecatonchires of Appleseed. A heavily modified cyborg, Briareos is the only man to date that's proven able to handle his experimental Hecatonchires operating system that controls his cybernetics. Named for the legendary 100 armed giants of Greek myth, a Hecatonchires equipped cyborg could presumably operate an entire aircraft carrier by himself due to the incredibly advanced processing power it allows them. Briareos generally just settles for dual-wielding machine guns, or even quad-wielding when in his Landmate by holding two normal sized guns in his actual arms and two enormous rifles in the Landmate's.
 * In Gungrave, in both timelines, the main character Brandon Heat uses them (crossed) once he Took a Level in Badass through training with Bear Walken. Fellow hitman Bunji Kugashira and antagonist Brad Wong do as well (the latter using decorative gold and silver revolvers), and all are insanely good shots. When Brandon is resurrected as the deadman called Beyond the Grave, he still dual-wields a pair of even bigger handguns, the Cerberus.
 * The Lancelot from Code Geass was already a master at Dual-Wielding, but when it was upgraded into its Albion form, it started carrying around a rifle in each hand.
 * In Strike Witches, Gertrude carries two heavy machine guns into battle. Then gain, with her magic and Striker Unit, she's strong enough to do it, and her battle tactics seem to revolve around unleashing massive amounts of ammunition at close range to destroy targets.
 * In the Gunsmith Cats manga Rally Vincent manages to thoroughly debunk both Guns Akimbo and Gangsta Style techniques while moonlighting as a firearms instructor. Ironically, this actually gets her fired, since the shooting range owner makes his real money selling lots and lots of ammo.
 * Soul Eater's Death the Kid does this, holding both guns upside down and pulling the triggers with his pinkies.
 * Kid is so obsessed with being symmetrical at all times that he literally will not fire unless he is wielding both guns. He is psychologically incapable of not using Guns Akimbo.
 * Onizuka does this in Great Teacher Onizuka...but with a pair of light-guns while he's playing House of the Dead. He winds up getting a better score than anybody else thanks to this.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion did it with Giant Robots. Asuka starts off her showdown with the 14th Angel firing one rifle, but with a bunch of weapons stacked behind her (probably a 7 Samurai Shout-Out). As she runs out of ammo, she progresses through (giant) machine-guns akimbo to (multi-shot) bazokas-akimbo. Unfortunately for her, it's So Last Season.
 * Genkaku from Deadman Wonderland does this... with his double gatling-gun electric guitar.
 * Kevin McDougall, a member of the Sweeper Alliance in Black Cat, wields two pistols. Although he looks like the most timid and helpless of the group (especially when he was injured by Shiki), he is actually one of the more dangerous and useful sweepers during the attack on the Big Bad's base. Using two guns, he's able to subdue multiple Elite Mooks at once. Mind that these Elite "Mooks" are actually very hard to kill, much less subdue.
 * In a One Piece flashback, Genzo of desperately fires two pistols at Arlong in an attempt to save Bellemere's life, but Kuroobi blocks all his shots and slashes him with a sword.
 * Later in the manga (and chronologically since it's not a flashback) Nico uses her two-fleur to wield four pistols at once.
 * In the tenth film, during their Big Damn Heroes moment, all the Straw Hats (minus Nami) bring out BFG and use them against Big Bad Shiki's forces. This is the only time we ever see Luffy and Zoro even carry guns. Not to mention how those who hardly fight with weapons, such as Sanji, actually using a weapon.
 * In Shikabane Hime, Makina's weapon of choice is a pair of MAC-11 machine pistols.
 * Xanxus, once a Big Bad and now did a Heel Face Turn in Katekyo Hitman Reborn, implements a double gun wielding fighting still with two special guns that fire large bursts of his Flame of Rage. Oh, yes, he can really kill.
 * The issues with this get lampshaded in Chrome Shelled Regios when Sharnid gets a dual pistol version of his sniper rifle and comments that people who use two guns are either "extremely stupid, and just do it to look cool, or extremely skilled". He then claims to be in the former category.
 * Klaus is portrayed with two guns fairly frequently in the art and omake of Maiden Rose but always seems to drop back to just one in actual combat.
 * Madlax does this on occasion. The accuracy issue is irrelevant when you consider that her gun dancing style frequently has her shooting people with her eyes closed while facing in a different direction.
 * Mami in the third episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, with an entire arsenal of conjured flintlock rifles, which she wields Gun Kata style.
 * Scanty of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt wields two revolvers. She's not terribly accurate, but then, neither is Panty when shooting at her. Note that in order to do this, due to the nature of the wapons, she has to wear two pairs of panties at all times.

Comic Books

 * The eponymous Marquis, Vol de Gaulle, in Guy Davis' comic uses two gattling gun-like Baroque-carved pistols to fight the "Devils" that may-or-may-not be plaguing the city, which he uses either akimbo or in combination with his sword.
 * Dwight from the Sin City story The Big Fat Kill wields two .45s, as does Hartigan at one point in That Yellow Bastard (both featured in the movie, by the way). Also, another Sin City story, Family Values, includes a double-Uzi assassination.
 * At one point Dwight's .45s results in a Shout-Out to The Shadow.
 * In Silent Night Marv wields two .45s.
 * The Punisher uses this trope frequently.
 * Scud the Disposable Assassin came factory-equipped with a pair of full-auto machine pistols, and knew how to use them right.
 * Scud actually takes it up a notch in one issue, where he wields four guns at once. (Two in each hand, with his trigger fingers going through both guards.)
 * The Saint of Killers from Preacher (Comic Book) almost always used two Walker Colts together. After the job of The Grim Reaper was passed down to him, his new guns were forged from the old Angel of Death's sword, making them perfectly accurate.
 * And perfectly deadly - they could kill anyone, even entities who were technically immortal. If someone was already technically dead, they could survive, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch.
 * Garth Ennis has been quoted as saying it was a mistake to have the Saint shoot Cassidy early in the series; it was before he'd figured out what he was writing and there's really nothing and no one that can survive. It's not like those guys he kills later can be defined as biological lifeforms, and honestly, how would you explain that his guns can kill you-know-who but not a little undead vampire?
 * Hush, a Batman villain, uses two handguns. It's his style.
 * Two-Face, in keeping with his obsession with duality, is also known to use two guns.
 * The Battle for the Cowl event has multiple peope dressed up and claiming to be Batman. Jason Todd's "hat" is being the Batman who dual wields guns.
 * Kang the Conqueror uses a dual minigun that's light enough to fire with one hand, preventing the need to dual wield, but he sometimes holds an additional gun in his offhand, because he can.
 * Deadpool is frequently depicted using two guns. Of course, he also uses two katanas, two sais...I think maybe he really, really likes twos. (Then again, he can kill you with his bare hands, two too.) but how many hands does he have? TWO!
 * Makita, a character from The Red Star, occasionally duel wields pistols.
 * Typically characters in the X Wing Series will stick to one blaster at a time, though some will carry more than one around. Wedge is like this, but in Requiem for a Rogue he escapes and saves his rescue party while not only dual-wielding stolen pistols, but also crossing them.
 * The short Family Ties arc has Corran and Iella pull a Big Damn Heroes moment on three members of Rogue Squadron who were having some trouble with thugs. Corran, like Wedge, even crosses his arms while firing at two different targets. They're part of Corsec - think police - so this is probably all Rule of Cool. It's worth noting that just a page later Corran holsters one blaster to try and make a sniper shot with the other, and when making an attack on more thugs, where they aren't rescuing anyone being held down, no one dual-wields.
 * Deadshot, a member of the Secret Six and the Suicide Squad, fights using dual wrist-mounted machine guns.
 * Casanova, Zephyr Quinn and Crazy Awesome Big Bad Newman Xeno all do this in Matt Fraction's Casanova.
 * A frequent tactic of Jonah Hex.

Fan Works

 * Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami features Gratuitously British Watari doing this with a pair of "snipper" rifles. In an odd instance that is presumably a case of Rouge Angles of Satin, Dark "jumped out of a kimbo with guns".
 * Poke Wars features Dawn wielding twin .45 caliber pistols in Dawn of a New Era. In The Coalescence she wields twin pistols of an unspecified caliber. Justified because.
 * In Fallout Equestria Pink Eyes, there is a griffin mercenary named Henrietta who does this after she obtains her dead father's gun.

Film
""Ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?""
 * This trope is a staple of Heroic Bloodshed films, especially those made by John Woo.
 * John Woo's first use of Guns Akimbo happened during A Better Tomorrow, where Chow Yun-Fat's most memorable character, Mark Gor, blows away a restaurant full of bad guys to avenge the betrayal that got his friend Ho sent to prison.
 * Heroes Shed No Tears, which was made prior to A Better Tomorrow but was released soon after ABT's success, also featured this trope and laid the groundwork for his later Heroic Bloodshed movies.
 * The final showdown of A Better Tomorrow III, a prequel to the first two movies which was directed by Tsui Hark instead of John Woo, had Mark wielding two M-16s in Guns Akimbo mode.
 * While John Woo didn't direct The Replacement Killers, he did produce the movie, and Chow Yun-Fat was still the star. At one point during the movie, Chow Yun-Fat used at least six Berettas, discarding one pair when he was out of bullets and pulling out another pair to continue kicking ass. In the first Stranglehold trailer, this part of the movie was homaged by Woo himself with Tequila.
 * The Corruptor stands out as one of the few movies where Chow Yun-Fat doesn't rely on Guns Akimbo. The only time he wields two guns is because he already had his backup weapon drawn and only kills one guy this way. He even uses the same service weapon throughout the movie - and he reloads it!
 * Guns Akimbo has also shown up in just about every movie John Woo has made in the US, including Face Off, whose Big Bad Castor Troy even wielded a pair of golden .45s during the opening shootout of the movie.
 * Jake (portrayed by Kevin Costner) in Silverado is The Western's style painted in broad strokes. Lightning draws, blind trick shots, and two guns at the same time.
 * In almost any movie where he wields a weapon, Antonio Banderas will inevitably end up using one in each hand to dramatic effect. Even if it's two swords against two different opponents as in The Mask of Zorro.
 * This is especially true of his portrayal of the Mariachi in Desperado, who draws two Rugers from his sleeves in order to blow away an entire bar full of bad guys.
 * Even more so in the sequel, when he dual wields a sawed off shotgun and a sub-machine gun during a shootout!
 * The Blade series features this frequently. When Blade isn't killing vampires with his blades, he's usually dual wielding pistols or customized sub-machine guns. Whistler gets in on the act too when rescuing Blade, busting through a wall wielding a pair of MP5s and delivering a Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner. In part 2, aside from Blade, Scud is shown dual wielding a pair of Desert Eagles when investigating a noise outside his van, Nyssa wields a pair of machine pistols, and Reinhardt tops them both by wielding a pair of Berettas with huge blades built into them! In Blade Trinity, both Abigail Whistler and Hannibal King occasionally dual wield revolvers, Abby's being regular guns and King's being heavily customized versions.
 * Sylvester Stallone's character Barney Ross in The Expendables frequently wields a pair of Kimber .45's which he fires and reloads at rapid speeds.
 * One of the characters in The Usual Suspects shoots two different people at the same time, with one bullet each from two different guns.
 * Note that this is presented as a Crowning Moment of Awesome for a character who is, in any case, depicted as an unstoppably hardcore killing machine. It's the only time he uses two guns, and he pauses to take careful aim at the two effectively stationary targets before making the trick shot. The gunplay in The Usual Suspects is actually fairly realistic.
 * Keaton's initial double kill makes sense, as he keeps his hands in his pockets and pretends he has business going near the two men he shoots, aiming carefully the guns in his pockets and shooting through the fabric for a surprise attack.
 * Russell Crowe's character in The Quick and the Dead does something very similar. With Winchesters.
 * A fairly early example would be in Where Eagles Dare, when Schaffer guns down countless Nazis with an MP40 in each hand.
 * Appears a lot in Hot Fuzz. Then again, it's a comedy. For an example of how silly it gets, one character fires two pistols while riding down the street on a motability scooter. Slowly. Then there's the part where Nicholas Angel (briefly) dual-wields pens.

"Quartermain: Very American. Fire enough bullets and hope to hit the target."
 * Subverted in the 1990s version of The Untouchables, the senior member confronts a villain who framed him. The villain tries to resist with twin tommy guns. However, the idiot doesn't realize that given how heavy the gun type is, he can't even keep them level and so doesn't do much more than shoot up the floor in front of him with a lot of noise. For his part, the Untouchable simply shoots the villain with two carefully aimed pistol shots.
 * In the 1980s version, 'George Stone' has two guns on him at the train station when they separate. Stone notices Eliot has run out of ammunition, charges in, and passes Eliot one of his own pistols.
 * In True Grit, Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) takes the reins of his horse between his teeth so he can charge towards the enemy firing a pistol in one hand and a lever action rifle (fired and recocked one-handed). Completely stupid, but looks way cool.
 * Justified in the remake and book. He dual wields two revolvers on horseback, in the way the ex-Confederate Guerrilla was practiced. Also, he was trying to break the other side's group cohesion by being as badass as possible, and he did look way badass.
 * In Training Day Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) combines this with Gangsta Style.
 * Subverted in High Noon. Psycho villain Colby (Lee Van Cleef) rushes into the barn blazing wildly with two guns. The marshal picks him off neatly with one gun.
 * Lampshaded to hell and back in The Boondock Saints with the Il Duce gun battle. In the style of the aforementioned The Replacement Killers scene, Il Duce challenges all three saints with six handguns. When the cops come on the scene, the lead investigator naturally assumes six guns = six guys; another detective suggests one guy with six guns and the investigator considers that the most idiotic idea ever. Ironically, it's the only time that detective was correct.
 * There was also the scene in the "exotic dance" place, where they figure out that the rogue bullets were from one guy with two guns crossing over and firing each into the opposite wall (and shouting, "Wyatt fucking Earp!" at the same time).
 * And, of course, the Saints always have a gun in each hand whenever they attack. In the first film they each had a pair of suppressed Beretta 92's, trading them in for custom Desert Eagles in the sequel. Guns Akimbo is part of what makes them so Badass.
 * In the opening scene of XXX 2, this is the easy way to tell who is going to survive the attack on the Elaborate Underground Base... namely, the guy who's dual-wielding semi-automatic weapons while everybody else are toting rifles.
 * In Equilibrium, John Preston wields dual pistols and is quite literally untouchable by mooks. In an early scene, he jumps into a crossfire and stands calmly (then again, with emotions held under check he can't quite panic or anything) in one place while the opposition fires away with automatic weaponry and fails to hit him. The film attempts to explain this by inventing a fighting style known as Gun Kata, which teaches its practitioners to seek out locations in a fight where there is minimum probability of getting shot at and it's not "behind cover"). In a later fight, Preston reloads by a mechanism that inserts fresh magazines into the guns from his sleeves.
 * The movie The Transporter 2 features a psychotic, scantily-clad chick who dual-wields fully automatic handguns.
 * In both the book and film adaptation, Shane, the title gunfighter is a firm believer in carrying one gun as sufficient for his needs and proves it in how quickly he kills a sinister gunfighter who carries two.
 * Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones, although very briefly during his fight with Obi-Wan.
 * The Matrix stopped short of having the Agents dual-wield their Desert Eagles, but they might as well have, as they only ever fired the guns with one hand. This is practically impossible in reality, given the size, weight, and recoil of these guns, so it worked to show how strong they were.
 * Neo dual-wields pistols at several points in the first film, though again his being in the Matrix meant his strength was far higher than humans could normally have. In one sequence, he fires dual silenced 9mm pistols using subsonic ammunition; the relative lack of recoil would make this slightly more plausible than most other forms of Guns Akimbo. He even switches off which one he's aiming down at certain points.
 * And then there was Mouse, who dual-wielded automatic shotguns when cornered by the police/agents. It was his Crowning Moment of Awesome, but it sadly was also right before he was shot.
 * Trinity, Morpheus, and Seraph all dual-wield during the battle in the Club Hel coatroom.
 * Bruce Willis' character in Last Man Standing does this throughout the entire film, reloading in a very similar fashion to the AvP example below.
 * Arnold Schwarzenegger's Eraser climaxes with Kruger tearing an oncoming truck to pieces with two of the film's signature railguns firing on full auto. To give an idea of how absurd this is, the rifle-sized weapons (and their distinctive x-ray scopes) are only used in the rest of the film to snipe at targets right through walls.
 * In the Tomb Raider movie, Lara uses her signature dual pistols (see Video Games examples below), but has a neat reloading mechanism; when she ejects the mags, a rack in her backpack comes out with a new set of mags angled right so she can just sweep her arms behind her to load them.
 * In The Mummy 1999, it was common for the American characters to dual wield revolvers. However, this was only used in situations where there were an overwhelming number of enemies, negating the need for accuracy. When facing several riders bearing down on him, in fact, Rick O'Connell (the main character, played by Brendan Frasier) empties two revolvers at them...then drops them and draws two more. However, he never fires simultaneously (another possible advantage being that he can more easily cover a wider angle).
 * Guns Akimbo abound in the questionably-competent Hitman film of the game series, escalating from pistols up to a villain's usage of twin RPDs. This last one was completely good for nothing more than tearing the furniture a new one.
 * In this amateur film (appropriately, an entry to the Stranglehold Short Film contest), the hero pulls off Guns Akimbo with flintlocks. Lots and lots of flintlocks.
 * Ash Williams from the Evil Dead series usually has a Sawed-Off Shotgun in one hand and a chainsaw on the stump of his other arm.
 * The Ax Crazy, Redneck, Neo-Nazi Tremor brothers from Smokin Aces frequently use akimbo weapons. The most notable of these is when the biggest Tremor brother wields a chainsaw in one hand and a DAO-12 revolving shotgun in the other.
 * The movie Sin City features several characters dual-wielding various weapons; see the entry under Comics, below.
 * Taken to a ridiculous extreme in the 90's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo Di Caprio. Villain Tybalt (played by John Leguizamo) dramatically whips off his jackets and slowly pulls out two handguns with the Virgin Mary engraved on them, to shoot at Benvolio during the opening fight at a gas station.
 * James Bond, unique action hero that he is, almost never uses two guns simultaneously. The only examples is in the film Tomorrow Never Dies, where ends up dual wielding an SMG and his Walther P99 while running through Elliot Carver's base. It looks... a little silly.
 * Captain Picard's dual-wielding in Star Trek: Nemesis threatens to rival Bond's in terms of the silly factor.
 * In the first Terminator film shortly after delivering his famous "I'll be back." Catch Phrase, the cyborg then rams a car into the police station and then proceeds to massacre the officers with a shotgun and an assault rifle. Justified by the fact that he is a literal killing machine; Improbable Aiming Skills aren't so improbable with a literal grip of steel and a CPU brain.
 * In The Last of the Mohicans Hawkeye uses two flintlock Kentucky longrifles, and hits both targets!.
 * The Crow has two such instances of Guns Akimbo. The first has Eric Draven himself going both-guns-blazing against Top Dollar's entire gang at his boardroom in the movie's biggest shootout, and the second has Eric and Officer Albrecht battling it out against a two-gun-wielding Top Dollar and his Dragon at the church where Sarah was taken. Draven is an undead avenger played by the late Brandon Lee; Top Dollar...well, he's played by Michael Wincott.
 * In Tombstone, Doc Holliday confronts one of the cowboys (Mooks who wear red bandannas) and pulls a pistol on him. The man says that Holliday is so drunk (which he clearly is) he's probably seeing double. Holliday then pulls out a second pistol with the other hand, points both of them at the guy, and says, "I have two guns... one for each of ya."
 * And speaking of Wyatt fucking Earp, in the Costner version of Wyatt Earp, Earp's party is ambushed in a canyon by allies of the Clantons and Mc Lauries. One mook draws down on Wyatt with two pistols and begins firing them with a cocky grin on his face. Wyatt calmly walks over to his horse, grabs a shotgun, approaches the mook and blows him away at POINT BLANK RANGE. The look on the mook's face turns to abject horror as every one of his shots misses wide and Wyatt approaches with his boomstick. It's absolutely priceless.
 * In the film Grosse Pointe Blank, both hitmen (played by John Cusack and Dan Ackroyd) employ this technique.
 * In The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne does this near the end of the film, when he nails a mook and strips him of his weapon. It doesn't seem like he intends to use it, but  Justified in that he fires at a single target at point blank range, so aiming is not an issue.
 * Apparently, neither is a broken pinky.
 * It's been a while since I saw the movie so I'm not sure of the details, but there's a scene in Billy Bathgate where mobster Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman) is showing off the pistol skills of his bodyguards Lulu and Irving. Dutch asks Billy which of them is the best. Billy thinks it's Irving, because he aims with a single pistol and therefore is more accurate. But Dutch points out that's mostly useful for when you can set up a hit in advance. Lulu, who blazes away with two .45's, is more useful for circumstances when you need to throw out a lot of lead quickly (e.g. when you're being attacked).
 * Subverted in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Tom Sawyer, who's otherwise an excellent shot with his Winchester, often attempts to bring down enemies by unloading twin revolvers at them simultaneously. However, he never actually hits anything when he attempts this, and every time he tries it in front of Allen Quatermain, he is berated for "shooting like a bloody fool".


 * Turns up in a scene in the remake of Dawn of the Dead; the character possibly has an excuse, considering at least one of his legs is broken and he is being frantically dragged through a sewer just ahead of a pursuing swarm of zombies.
 * Marion from Undead not only uses this technique, but takes it Rule of Cool by at one point throwing the guns (he catches them again, so that doesn't really qualify for Throw-Away Guns) and using the nearest cop's trigger finger, and later doing it while hanging by his spurs from a doorway. Then again, Marion's an Improbable Weapon User.
 * Ghost Dog in The Way of the Samurai does the alternating-shots version, when infiltrating his boss' Jersey Mafia hideout.
 * Tropic Thunder Done with two full sized M-16s that were hidden under a cloak until it became clear that an attempt at infiltration had failed and it was time for More Dakka. Concludes with an Asskicking Pose AND a One-Liner. I'm a LEAD FARMER, motherf* cker!
 * That scene was probably more of a subversion of this trope, Lazarus doesn't actually hit anyone when he goes all Guns Akimbo.
 * Of course, the guns didn't have real bullets in them in the first place, only blanks. So it wasn't like he'd be able to hit anything even if he only used one gun.
 * In The Mechanic, Charles Bronson's character does this.
 * Cranked Up to Eleven in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Madison Lee fires two golden Desert Eagle .50 Action Express both simultaneously and Woo Style (they are chambered in .50 Action Express as you can see in a lot of close-ups on the muzzles). Not that there was any recoil distracting her, by the way. Still not enough? There's a Mongolian earlier in the film dual-wielding belt-fed machine guns in full-auto mode.
 * Will Smith in the film adaptation of I Robot takes this to the nth degree by pulling both pistols out of his jacket, aiming, firing, and utterly obliterating his target while RIDING A MOTORCYCLE.
 * Followed by him tucking and rolling as he lands, jumping up and shooting a second repeatedly. Shia La Beouf never looked so overcome by badass in his life.
 * In Predator when Dillon is getting ready to go try to avenge Mac's death, he is initially carrying a single sub-machine gun. Dutch tosses him a second one which he then wields akimbo.
 * In Suburban Commando, Shep Ramsey is infiltrating the Big Bad's ship while dual-wielding blasters. He fires them one after another, before switching to another weapon.
 * In the 3 Underworld films starring Kate Beckinsale, Selene is the only Death Dealer who uses dual automatic pistols in every gunfight. All others prefer assault rifles (not akimbo). Being a vampire, she doesn't care about recoil and is a pretty good shot with both guns. In one scene, she uses the guns on full auto to "draw" a circle under her and collapse the floor.
 * In the Resident Evil films, Alice wields almost everything akimbo. Over the course of the series, she wields semi-auto handguns, revolvers, sub-machine guns, and even sawed-off shotguns akimbo(she does have enhanced strength though). Even when forced into melee combat, she swaps over to Dual-Wielding fighting batons or kukri knives! A couple of other characters do this as well. In Resident Evil:Apocalypse, Carlos wields a pair of Desert Eagles, LJ wields a pair of gold-plated Desert Eagles, and Jill Valentine uses guns akimbo briefly as well. These are all trumped however by the monstrous Nemesis, who wields a chaingun and rocket launcher akimbo.
 * One of the robbers in Police Academy 6 wields two guns, although he only uses one at a time and is an amazing shot. In one scene, he is dual-wielding a pistol and an SMG.
 * The Maiden Heist begins with a Daydream Surprise with Christopher Walken dual-wielding pistols to stop a gang of nefarious art thieves.
 * True Lies has Arnold dual-wielding a pair of Uzis. It's quite awesome.
 * God Of Gamblers Return has a CMOA when akimbo Berettas are reloaded in mid-air! That's that way to subvert the reloading problem!
 * Jack la Roca, the protagonist from Route 666, is fond of this trope.
 * Chuck Norris famously wields a pair of Uzis in Invasion U.S.A..
 * Jillian Holtzmann takes out a mob of ghosts with a pair of handgun-styled proton projectors in the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters.

Literature
"DuQuesne: You know I am handy with a gun myself? Professional assassin Mook: You're faster than I am, and that's saying something. You're chain lightning. DuQuesne: Well, Seaton is at least that much faster than I am. (Description of just how fast follows.)"
 * Dick Seaton and Marc C. DuQuesne, mortal enemies at all other times, stand side-by-side with guns akimbo in The Skylark of Space, each with a pair of forty-fives loaded with extremely potent ammunition.
 * Lampshaded in the sequel by DuQuesne himself, when he describes to an underling how Seaton has been practising his Gun Fu for a very, very long time. Not just that, but:

...so he is probably firing alternately from both pistols, shifting his attention between the two.
 * In Stephen King's The Dark Tower, Roland Deschain fights with a gun in each hand. He is somehow able to juggle both guns and reload at the same time.
 * The impressive bit is not his ability to shoot both weapons, but to reload one singlehanded whilst firing the other dry. I suppose it COULD be possible if he broke the revolver, stuck it in his belt and loaded it one-handed whilst shooting. Reloading an automatic while shooting like Lara Croft or Gun Kata style suddenly seems boring by comparison.
 * It is perhaps telling that King never actually describes the process Roland goes through to reload one-handed the one time the issue comes up, in favor of saying that it is, to paraphrase, "extremely spooky to watch."
 * Pulled off by a few characters in The Dresden Files such as "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone and Lara Raith.
 * The Shadow's signature weapons were a pair of .45 automatics. This carried over to the various comic book versions and the 1994 film as well.
 * In the Into the Looking Glass science-fiction series, co-written by John Ringo and Travis Taylor, one Marine is very capable of wielding two handguns (and in Power Armor, two cut down .50 cal rifles) at the same time. However it is explicitly stated he only fires one at a time, reloading takes more time, and the character's skill at "two-gun mojo" is considered unique and extreme even among the other highly-skilled (and more experienced) soldiers.
 * In the Prince Roger series, co-written by David Weber and John Ringo, Rastar, Prince of Therdan, is a four armed alien who quadruple wields pistols. He is described as being almost unique in his ability to accurately shoot and track multiple targets, though. As the series progresses, he goes from using flintlocks to revovlers, to futuristic semiautomatic (and automatic?) pistols.
 * Discussed in 1632, during the Croats' attack on Grantville, Dan Frost is tempted to do this, but doesn't.
 * The Black Knight in Matthew Reilly's "Scarecrow" takes this to the extreme, using two matched Remington shotguns, though he does modify them to have pistol grips.
 * Mack Bolan uses a silenced Beretta during infiltration and a Hand Cannon for more noisy occasions, but sometimes uses both together when Storming the Castle.
 * Richard Joseph Camellion, the title character of the Death Merchant series by Joseph Rosenberger, habitually used two handguns. Originally, he used a pair of Smith & Wesson M19 "Highway Patrolman" .357 Magnum double-action revolvers with 4" barrels, which was reasonable. About a dozen books in, he decided that the .357s didn't have enough stopping power, and upgraded to a pair of 8" barreled .44 Auto Mags (!). Camellion had no difficulty firing these hand cannons simultaneously and accurately (in real life, they have more free recoil energy than most .30 caliber rifles), and on several occasions fired at and hit two separate adversaries at the same instant, much like Jake in the movie "Silverado", except without needing to "psych himself up" for it first. Camellion referred to this stunt as "mind-firing", indicating that (a) he was highly trained in small arms (in addition to other sorts of mayhem, hence his nom de guerre'), and (b) he had practiced this particular trick a lot.
 * John Thomas Rourke, the title character of The Survivalist series by Jerry Ahern, wears two compact Detonics CombatMaster .45 pistols in a custom double shoulder holster, created by famous holster-maker Lou Alessi.
 * In Shane, the villainous gun-for-hire Stark Wilson uses two pistols, but the titular character belittles that, saying that one pistol is all a person needs.
 * In the Honor Harrington novella From the Highlands, Jeremy X dual-wields pistols when engaging Scrags in the warrens of old Chicago.
 * In the novels of J. T. Edson, the amidexterous Dusty Fog would almost always draw both of his twin Colts at the same time; usually firing both at the same target.

Live-Action TV
"Mook: You said you didn't like guns. Eliot: I don't. [BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!] I never said I couldn't use 'em."
 * In the Doctor Who episode "The Parting of the Ways", Captain Jack wields two guns to fight off approaching Daleks. Sadly they run out of ammo so he gets out a pistol. Which also runs out of ammo.
 * Queen Elizabeth the Tenth (or "Liz X") is the Queen of Starship UK. Who dual-wields laser pistols. Wow. Basically she rules.
 * Stargate SG-1 once showed Daniel Jackson doing this with his Beretta M92F and an MP5. But for the ultimate extreme, Teal'c was once seen wielding two P-90s (although he only fired one at a time). In fact, other episodes feature Teal'c firing two Jaffa staffs, and even two MP7s simultaneously.
 * The Daniel Jackson example is something of a subversion as he is still in his "incompetent archaeologist" phase and does more damage to the walls. Justification: Teal'c is repeatedly shown to be stronger than almost any human could be; he also needed to be covering two hallways simultaneously.
 * Fabrique Nationale, the manufacturer of the P-90, produced an advertisement video that showed a man firing two P-90s at once on full automatic. This was intended only to demonstrate how the 5.7mm round (unique to the P-90 and Five-seveN pistol) generates very little recoil.
 * Cameron Mitchell also uses two guns while fighting zombies in the 200th episode. Justified in that this was an Imagine Spot, so practicality isn't exactly what he was going for.
 * The Stargate Atlantis episode "The Return Part II" has Teyla wielding not one but two ARG's ( Anti Replicator Guns) in the classic cross-armed casual shoot.
 * "Sateda" has Ronon mixing this with copious amounts of Gun Fu.
 * Several times in Stargate Atlantis Dr. McKay is shown using dual pistols. Granted he is shown to miss more than he is to hit.
 * A Wraith does this with two assault rifles. Somewhat averts most of the problems with the trope. Wraiths are much, much physically stronger than humans. He is completely inaccurate, doesn't fire enough shots for reloading to be an issue, and never fires or even raises both guns at the same time. Basically seems to invoke the trope to avoid the need to reload, which he would have if he only had one gun.
 * Battlestar Galactica. Starbuck wields dual pistols (and on Caprica, dual Scorpion SMG's) on several occasions; the problem with this technique aiming-wise is shown during a terrorist siege, when she accidentally shoots another main character.
 * A pretty good example of how incompetent the Battlestar's crew are at marine/ground ops. and crowd control - putting an extremely unstable fighter pilot in charge of a group of Marines.
 * Zoe from Firefly blasts off with dual pistols at one point during the rescue of Mal from Bad Boss Niska in "War Stories."
 * And Jayne in the same episode carries an assault rifle in his right hand and a pistol in his left.
 * Jayne also dual-wields two oversized assault rifles in the first issue of the Better Days comic.
 * In the penultimate episode of Alias.
 * The one time Homicide: Life on the Street featured someone firing two guns at once, it was a maniac shooting up several police officers in the third-season episode "The City That Bleeds".
 * In Twenty Four Jack Bauer uses dual pistols during his My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment in the season 1 finale.
 * In Smallville, Lex picks up two revolvers and is prepared to go Guns Akimbo on Green Arrow and Black Canary but Clark zips by to interfere before Lex can do something badass.
 * Justified use in The Sarah Connor Chronicles pilot, where an unnamed Terminator attacks John with dual MP-5s. Justified in the sense that its both a Terminator and a dream sequence.
 * In In Plain Sight, both the lead character and her partner pull out their backup weapon in order to drive off some assassins coming after the witness they're protecting. Played realistically: the only time anyone manages to hit anyone during that gunfight is using a single gun, and the two guns are used more for suppressive fire than to actually kill anyone.
 * In the Power Rangers Time Force and Wild Force teamup Jen, the Time Force Pink Ranger and leader of the team, uses two Chrono Blasters to shoot down the Putrids, and as such it is an example of Fan Service
 * Keeping in mind that the character is using Laser Pistols (opps, I mean Blasters) which have little-to-no recoil (at general fire power mind you) and comes from the future where humans have perfected DNA modification technology, it's not too far a stretch to make it a plausible situation.
 * Another example involving Jen comes in the episode where she goes on a little revenge kick, complete with slow-motion shots and a jumping split while firing in midair in the John Woo style.
 * Also with The Power Rangers SPD Red Ranger. the two pistols also form a rifle if needed.
 * In Angel, Wesley sometimes uses two guns in the fifth and final season, in the episode "Lineage". It only kind of works, but it was pretty Badass.
 * In the fifth season episode "Lineage," we get a This Is Reality incident when Wesley starts shooting his two guns at once, and Fred points out she'd rather have one of them.
 * In the first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise Captain Archer is seen brandishing a phase pistol in each hand during the fight in the snow, having taken one used by an injured crewmember he and the others were escorting to safety.
 * Bianca's Depraved Bisexual lover Natalie does this in the TV version of The Dresden Files.
 * In the first season Buffy episode "Angel", Darla wields two guns to attack Angel and Buffy.
 * Day Two of Torchwood: Children of Earth has Gwen jumping out of the back of an ambulance and firing with a gun in each hand.
 * Gwen also ends up firing two guns after Captain Jack teaches her how to shoot in the first series.
 * In an episode of NCIS, Ziva uses both her primary weapon and her backup akimbo to take out goons coming in from two separate doors. Then again, she is a Mossad-trained badass. And it's extra badass, because she first calls her boss and makes him listen while she does it.
 * She also blasts it out this way against a Russian mercenary at a convenience store in the Christmas Episode "Newborn King."
 * In The Magnificent Seven series JD Dunne - the youngest and least experienced of the group - uses two Colts simultaneously with much success.
 * In an episode of Psych Lassiter gets into a brief shootout with a robber and blazes away at him with a pair of pistols while the robber returns fire one handed, both of them failing to score a hit. Justified by the fact that Lassiter is Trigger Happy, Properly Paranoid, and Crazy Prepared so having a pair of guns on him during a birthday party seems perfectly normal for him.
 * In Deadliest Warrior, one of the Jesse James demonstrators does this with revolvers.
 * In The Good Guys, Pedro (the second best assassin in the world) is very good at trick shots so he can pull this off. Jack tries to do this but he ends up missing with every single shot at point blank range. Pedro shrugs and lampshades; "It's harder than it looks".
 * In the fourth season premire of Burn Notice, Michael does this with a pair of Mac-10 machine pistols to intimidate a trio of biker thugs who were terrorizing his client. Michael even points out how he has More Dakka compared to the pistol-wielding bikers.
 * Eliot in the Leverage episode "The Big Bang Job," in a gunfight that puts some entire action movies to shame with its over-the-top cinematics.

"Chalky: One more thing... (crosses arms under jacket, pulls out two enormous guns and turns around) How'd you know I drive a Packer?"
 * Chalky White does this awesomely on Boardwalk Empire when the guys accidentally reveal themselves.


 * In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, the Gokaigers often exchange their weapons in the middle of battle. This often leads to Gokai Green and Gokai Pink wielding a pair of Gokai Guns. Given they're aliens and their default fighting style is Dual-Wielding a sword and gun, this may be justified.
 * General Hospital's Jason Morgan has done this several times in his career, including during an honest-to-god Church Shootout.
 * Annie, Britta and Shirley in Community episode Modern Warfare. For some reason, none of the other guys do except for Senor Chang, in his role as The Dragon, who pulls out dual gold plated guns after his paintball machine gun runs out.

Tabletop Games
"Gordo: Two hands, two guns. It is as God intended it, no?"
 * In Deadlands dual-wielding guns, and even rifles, is possible, but offers severe penalties to hit. However, with proper Edges the player can neutralize such penalties, effectively doubling his/her firepower.
 * Warhammer 40,000's Sisters of Battle Seraphim are trained to dual-wield Bolt pistols. Battlesuited Tau warriors are able to dual fire with a suitable upgrade. And many Eldar Exarchs (such as those of the Dire Avengers or Warp Spiders) are able to dual-wield what would normally be two-handed guns for other Eldar.
 * Tyranid Spine Gaunts, what just might be the weakest things in the game, each dual wield diamond hard stake-firing pistols coated in neuro-toxin!
 * In the 40K spinoff game, Inquisitor, there is a special rule that can be given to characters called Gunslinger, which does actually enable them to fire two pistol weapons simultaneously. Unless they're ambidextrous, though, it does confer an aiming penalty to the gun being used in the character's off-hand.
 * Another spinoff, Dark Heresy (and its own spinoff, Rogue Trader), allows dual-wielding guns and melee weapons, and even a gun and a melee weapon with the right talents. You can also dual-wield rifles, just don't expect to hit very often.
 * Averted in Shadowrun - dual-wielding guns is possible, but offers such penalties to hit that it's just not worth it. Someone with godly skill might be still effective with such an arrangement, but not as much as just using one firearm at a time.
 * Feng Shui, in keeping with Hong Kong action movies, uses this trope fairly frequently. Gun-using characters can use a gun in each hand with no penalties at all, and can blast off on mooks with both guns blazing with little problem. But against named characters, the only way to increase damage when using two guns is to buy up the Both Guns Blazing gun schtick, which doubles the base damage but allows the victim to subtract twice his toughness against it.
 * Doing this is a very effective way to miss in GURPS. Cinematic characters can buy off the penalties while superhuman ones can buy Extra Attack.
 * Generally Schmuck Bait even then. Almost no two handguns can beat the damage of a single rifle.
 * At least as of fourth edition, everyone can buy Extra Attack.
 * Though Buying of the penalties (6 points) is cheaper than the Extra Attack (Pistols only) (20 points)
 * Every player character in Hong Kong Action Theatre can do this, along with other Guns and Gunplay Tropes, as a matter of style. HKAT's penchant for multiple attacks makes blasting somebody to hell with both guns blazing very, very possible.
 * Fudge Firefight II, one of the more critically acclaimed articles on the webzine, allows characters with the Double Barreled Badass knack to use two pistols as if they had an automatic weapon. This is among the most mundane knacks in the article.
 * Largely compliments of stuff like glass dancer, which makes you invulnerable and forces people to shoot at you anyways when you jump through a plate glass window guns blazing.
 * A recurring character in Exalted, the Nameless Solar, is never seen without twin plasma tongue repeaters.
 * One of the early spoilers for Shards of the Exalted Dream was a BFG known as a Godcannon. Its minimum strength requirement of 2 means that with a little bit of strength-boosting, you can dual-wield guns with 4-foot barrels and firing chambers the size of a torso
 * In Iron Kingdoms we have Allisteir Caine, a gun mage Warcaster that is well known among players for his amazing skill with two spellstorm pistols.
 * Also we have Master Holt, Taryn Di La Rovissi and Pistol Wraiths.
 * Deadlands: Doomtown: "Gordo" Andrade, and later an action card to let any dude pull it off.


 * The Japanese art for Don Zaloog shows him with a pair of pistols. For censorship reasons, these were changed to a pair of knives, but his fingers are still in trigger positions.

Video Games

 * Marathon is the first video game that allowed the player to use this trope. It's also one of the only ones to use it realistically; when using the pistol, the player must stop firing both guns to reload.
 * Marathon 2 features what may be the only thing cool enough to justify sacrificing the satisfying chunk-chunk-boom rhythm of pump-action shotguns in videogames. The marine cocks his sawed-off lever action by flipping them end over end, like Arnie does in Terminator 2, which was awesome to begin with. But when you find another one, you get the chance to dual-wield double-barreled shotguns! The issue of recoil management is likely handled by the fact that the character is implied to be a military-grade cyborg, while the issues of reloading twin shotguns (or even one) between shots (they don't have magazines) is handwaved in the manual by Durandal saying they have an exotic reloading mechanism he doesn't think you'd be able to understand. This is so much fun that it could pretty much justify Marathon all by itself.
 * Queen Cadavra from Bug!! takes this one Up to Eleven - she's a Giant Spider, so she takes out eight submachine guns and strafes the floor with them!
 * Advent Rising: Gideon Wyeth can and will dual-wield any and every obtainable weapon in the game... including rocket launchers.
 * The South Korean version of Alliance of Valiant Arms has two weapons that can be wielded in this fashion; namely the Steyr TMP and a blinged-out version of the Beretta 92FS pistol.
 * Unreal Tournament. Pick up a second Enforcer pistol, use both at once. Can actually be very effective, as while two Enforcers shoot slower than one Minigun, their bullets are more precise and deal more damage. At any significant distance a player with two enforcers is almost guaranteed to kill one with a minigun. This changes at short range, where the low precision of the minigun is no longer a disadvantage. Even better, use altfire to increase firing rate by using dual pistols Gangsta Style!
 * UT2k3/UT2k4's Enforcer replacement, the assault rifle with grenade launcher, can also be used akimbo. Though it lacks the accuracy advantage of the Enforcer.
 * However, their grenade launchers remain usable. Akimbo rifles AND semi-auto grenade launchers are the reason you don't want to drop your rifle into the skilled player's hands
 * Wolfenstein 3D and its sequel Spear of Destiny had enemies that wielded a weapon in each hand. In the case of the mutants, that meant three machine guns. In the case of the boss enemy Übermutant, this meant four knives, plus a chest-embedded chaingun. Several other bosses - including 'Hans' in the first episode - dual-wield chainguns... Hitler, of course, wields four miniguns at once. He's just that evil.
 * While the original Wolfenstein 3D didn't allow the player to do this, but RTCW adds dual semiautos.
 * Upgrade your skill with the standard pistol, one-handed SMGs, or the sawn-off shotgun, and you can two-fist them in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Except for the Desert Eagle pistol.
 * Dual pistols are also a weapon in Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars.
 * GoldenEye is fond of having both Bond and the bad guys use dual pistols and submachine guns. Xenia Onatopp uses an FN-P90 (called an RC-P90 in the game) and a grenade launcher, which you can also do once you defeat her. Jaws wields two M-16 rifles at the same time, which you can also do if you kill him. You can even use two grenade or rocket launchers at once, but you'll need to use cheat codes in order to do so.
 * Using the All weapons cheat gave the player access to two of every weapon, allowing the player to duel wield anything from PP 7 s to the aforementioned Rocket Launchers. Also, if a player change weapon fast enough, they could duel wield two different weapons at once.
 * That glitch was especially amusing when you used it to dual wield a Watch Laser and a regular gun. When you used the Watch Laser you saw both of Bond's hands operating it, meaning that the additional gun must have been held with a third arm...
 * Halo added dual-wielding to its second installment; you can even use two different guns, and fire them separately or in combination. Master Chief's left hand must be empty to pistol-whip, or use grenades.
 * Lampshaded in the manual, which provides a quote from a marine pointing out how only a "seven-foot-tall walking tank" like Master Chief could possibly dual-wield submachine guns and still hit anything.
 * This lead some folks to joke that Halo 3 would allow players to grow a third arm and triple-wield weapons. Or at least be able to use grenades.
 * Notably, in Halo 3: ODST, the ability to duel-wield two guns is removed. Why? You're playing an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper - a Badass, yes, but an ordinary human soldier nonetheless. Who can still rip off and carry turrets.
 * In a certain cutscene in Halo: Reach, Noble Six dual-wields an assault rifle and a pistol while aiming at different targets, on opposite sides of them. If only you could do that in game.
 * In the Devil May Cry series, Dante's signature ranged weapons are a pair of pistols named Ebony and Ivory. In fact, they have always been present in all his incarnations, whereas his main sword has not been so consistent. In the second game, Dante can wield Ebony and his shotgun together, but this has not appeared in subsequent games; whether this is because Non-Linear Sequel, where the second is the chronologically last, makes this a demonstration of Dante's sheer power, or because Capcom is practising Canon Discontinuity, is still up for debate.
 * Trish, Dante's partner, also wields signature twin pistols, named Luce and Ombra. The demon hunter Lady can wield two firearms at once too.
 * As for Nitro Family. You think two pistols or Uzis are for kids? Try two shotguns. Or two miniguns. Or, even better, two rocket launchers.
 * Max Payne, as a pastiche of John Woo-style action-films, uses paired weapons all the time.
 * This also employed the Rule of Cool in Max Payne 2, wherein the necessity for reloading during a player-controlled bullet time sequence was handled by Max simply spinning in a circle. Apparently the motion of a dramatic 360 with a flaring leather jacket can actually create filled magazines from air. This "technique" worked for everything from a pistol, to a shotgun, to an assault rifle, and worked the exact same way for dual-wielded weapons as well.
 * Tomb Raider: Lara Croft's signature weapon is a pair of akimbo pistols. In the first two titles she used to shoot them with remarkable timing, such that the two shots sounded just like one. In following titles of the series the two shots are slightly offset. She is also noted for automatically aiming both weapons independently in target rich environments.
 * Lara's rival, Pierre, dual wields magnum pistols against her.
 * Throughout the Hitman series, the player is given the option to dual wield the protagonist's signature 'Silverballer' handguns, but this is mostly a gimmick as it decreases accuracy, makes reloading awkward and is somewhat at odds with the games' stealthy nature.
 * The Punisher game takes this to ridiculous extremes, allowing the player to fire 2 M60s, among other things. However, the game is pretty realistic when it comes to reloading for when the Punisher is wielding a pair of big weapons (assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns, etc.), rather than try to reload both weapons at once he just tosses aside the second weapon.
 * In MDK2, Max the dog is a robotic pooch that looks like a cross between Snoopy and The Punisher, with four arms. He can fire any four weapons, including shotguns and Gatlings, at the same time.
 * In Blood, it is possible to find a "Guns Akimbo" bonus, which makes the protagonist wield two weapons (shotguns, napalm launchers etc) for a short time.
 * The sequel Blood 2 did away with the powerup, and just let you dual-wield pistols and submachineguns when you picked another one up. The game (probably unintentionally) subverted the trope, in that using them akimbo was rarely a good idea: the pistols would fire two rounds simultaneously losing secondary mode, but secondary mode with one pistol accomplished the same result while letting you save up ammo in primary if you didn't actually need increased firepower; and the submachineguns doubled the rate of fire but resulted in a highly inefficient spray of bullets in the casual direction of your foe, losing the slower but much more precise secondary mode. Given that the game gave you no way (other than constantly hitting the "drop weapon" key) to avoid dual wielding whenever you happened to pick up another gun of the same type, it was more practical to avoid said guns altogether.
 * Lunar Knights has the Ninja for this. Despite its low attack power, its rapid fire ability - upgraded to vulgar levels - makes it one of the best guns in the game.
 * Adding on to the above point, the final boss of Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Ugh-Zan III, dual-wields weapons and later adds two more for a total of FOUR, even though he is so much bigger than Sam it is ridiculous. Sam himself can use two Shofield .45 revolvers at the same time.
 * The Next Encounter lets you play with two Uzis instead of a tommygun. Isn't it cool?
 * InSAMnity! 2 takes it to Serial Escalation levels, making you hold two chainsaws, shotguns, six-barelled shotguns, miniguns, cannons everything. Although the question is... how do you look in BOTH sniper rifles?
 * In 007 James Bond 007: Nightfire, You can duel wield automatic pistols, however, this quadruples the reload time.
 * The second Soldier of Fortune game allows you to dual-wield handguns and submachineguns. You can even wield a handgun and a submachinegun together, although the SMG will be limited to semi-auto fire.
 * Axl has twin pistols in the Mega Man X games - at least in the cutscenes, official art, and whatnot. You don't control them independently in play. (Note the similarity to Zero's Dual-Wielding.) His first appearance does feature a boss weapon that you can dual wield (the model of the guns a shout out to the duel wielded pistols from Resident Evil: Code Veronica), and Mega Man X Command Mission also sees him using two of them.
 * Model A, his successor in Mega Man ZX Advent, used dual pistols only visible in official art and giga attack animations.
 * As well, Fefnir from the Zero series and Model F... Though they don't have guns. They have dual arm cannons. BIG arm cannons. And the latter can use the touch screen of the DS to direct the exact path of the shots. Sure, you can't fire both at the same time and they have to stand in place, but being able to cause mass destruction (Which you can't do with regular guns) makes up for it.
 * The Mega Man classic series has several who wield dual weapons, mostly the ones that wield explosives (Crashman, Napalmman). Mega Man himself has two Arm Cannons, but only uses one at a time. Mega Man X improves on him by (in later games) charging both Busters and firing them in succession.
 * In the Time Splitters series, certain weapons can be dual-wielded, but ONLY if they are taken from a fallen enemy that was dual-wielding them. For example, you can pick up dozens of Tommy guns, but these only act as ammo pickups until you kill an enemy with two Tommy guns, at which point you can dual-wield them to heart's content.
 * And in co-op play, both weapons are dropped as separate dual wield weapon pickups allowing each player to pick up one if they notice this and the weapons fall far enough from each other.
 * What guns you can duel-wield can come off as a bit strange, for instance, in the first game you can duel wield miniguns, and in the third game, you can duel wield shotguns. Never mind how you load two shotguns at once.
 * Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 was notable for overlapping with Dual-Wielding through Julie's ability to dual wield almost any combination of several different guns, swords and shields at the same time.
 * The Metal Gear series deserves a special mention for totally, totally avoiding this one, despite the fact that it's usually more than happy to use every other gunplay trope ever. Notably, there's a scene in MGS3 in which Ocelot presents his dual revolvers to Snake: "Twelve shots. This time, I've got twelve shots." He proceeds to use them both - but one at a time, cowboy-style.
 * Hideo Kojima went on-record in a game magazine, around the release of the first Metal Gear Solid, in a sidebar comparing Snake and Lara Croft; he said he dislikes the two-gun trope and that it stretches believability too far. Yes, this is from a series with a bi-sexual vampire, but it's part of Magic Realism.
 * Whether this counts as an aversion or subversion is debatable, but since the designers drew attention to it, it maybe a subversion...when the original Metal Gear Solid game was being hyped, the designers, probably because of the game's perspective and resultant comparisons to other Third-Person Shooter games like Tomb Raider, noted that Snake only carries one gun and he uses both hands—because that's how a real Badass does it. In one particular interview they were asked who would win, Lara or Snake, and they said, quite aside from training, that because he not only used just one gun but avoided Firing One-Handed, Snake would demolish her.
 * In one of the cutscenes during the showdown of Metal Gear Solid 4 Meryl and Johnny hold a door against waves of guards to win Snake some time. they are not only both holding a gun in each hand, but also put new magazines into each others gun to speed up reloading, making them shout Dual Guns Akimbo!
 * The Dual Vipers/Raptors in ''Ratchet: Deadlocked serve as his rapid-fire gun.
 * Wild ARMs 3 at least nodded to the implausibility of this by introducing a girl, Virginia, whose unique ability was that she was able to handle two ARMs (guns) at once. As a bit of a subversion, though, she wasn't a powerful physical bruiser character, instead being best suited to handling items and magic.
 * Dean, from Wild ARMs 5 also uses Guns Akimbo. Well, also Dual-Wielding. Or something. No attempt is made to rationalize this.
 * Thugs Masterminds in City Of Villains have this in spades: the Mastermind him/herself uses two pistols, as do the Punk henchmen, while Enforcer henchmen use two Uzis.
 * The aptly-named Gunslinger enemy in City of Heroes also uses two pistols (with ammunition that can burn or freeze), although they usually fire them one at a time.
 * Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors who purchase Going Rogue also have access to a Dual Pistols powerset. It shares it's most basic attacks with the Thug Mastermind (Though performed with John Woo style flair), but eventually goes into physics defying bullet insanity. Like the aforementioned Gunslingers, you can also swap to Incendiary, Cryogenic, and Chemical ammunition.
 * In Hellgate:London, anyone who can use firearms can use one-handed ones Guns Akimbo without training. Fire control is independent by default, and can be set to simultaneous fire - you can even combine them with a melee weapon, focus item, or shield - so you can do a variety of things with them - the various techniques opened by this are too diverse for this Wiki to go into.
 * Wild Dog takes this trope to a ridiculous extreme in the Time Crisis series. He can use a sidearm in his right hand, and his left arm is a machine gun. In Time Crisis 2, he uses them both to attack both players in rapid succession.
 * In Resistance: Fall of Man, it is possible to dual-wield a pair of Chimeran weapons called Reapers, which work like machine pistols. Due to the protagonist's enhanced abilities, he is actually able to track two separate targets with each individual weapon.
 * Even more absurd is Vermilion in the Battle Arena Toshinden games, who holds a Peacemaker handgun in his right hand, and a shotgun in his left.
 * The Real Personal Trooper Type-1 and it's derivatives in Super Robot Wars usually carry two Humongous Mecha-sized pistols. The ART-1 prototype also dual-wields chainsaw tonfas.
 * Ratsel's Aus Ausser  Aussenei Daitrombe also uses a pair of Super Robot-sized BFGs to great effect.
 * The Excellence Cosmodriver and Lightning frames in Super Robot Wars R/Original Generation Gaiden do too.
 * KOS-MOS in Xenosaga can dual-wield gatling cannons each nearly as large as she is. This is a bit more plausible when you consider that she is an android designed to be pretty much the most powerful combat system in the universe, but mostly, it's just OK by way of Rule of Cool.
 * Jr. from the same game uses dual pistols as his main weapons, but rarely shoots both at once unless it's a Limit Break, or against a large target.
 * Reiji and Xiaomu both Dual-wield in Namco X Capcom: Xiaomu with dual pistols, Reiji with a pistol and shotgun.
 * Both of them and KOS-MOS repeat their feats in Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier.
 * In the John Woo game Stranglehold, Inspector Tequila Yuen (from one of his most famous movies, Hard-Boiled) uses dual guns extensively, from Berettas to Desert Eagles to Heckler and Koch MP5K submachine guns. The only time Tequila reloads is when he's gearing up to unleash a Barrage attack; otherwise he just throws the guns away when he's out of bullets and pulls out another gun, like Chow Yun-Fat frequently does in John Woo movies.
 * A lot of bad guys in Stranglehold use Guns Akimbo as well, such as  at the Chicago History Museum and a good number of mooks during the later stages. This reaches its peak during the final showdown, which has Dapang, Wong's huge bodyguard, backing up his master with dual shotguns.
 * Shadow Warrior features the lead character, Lo Wang (yes, a ninja with a Chinese name...it's that kind of game), using Uzis Guns Akimbo.
 * It might be noted that Lo Wang, in his (inevitably) thick accent, says 'Be proud, Mistah Woo!' sometimes when picking up a second Uzi to use Guns Akimbo.
 * Diddy with his Peanut Popguns and Falco with his laser guns in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. They both use them to Leap and Fire in a Cutscene.
 * However, only Diddy can actually do this ingame. During his Final Smash, that is.
 * Moreover, the Diddy example predates Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It first appeared in Donkey Kong 64.
 * Tanya Adams. The hero and most powerful unit in Command & Conquer: Red Alert, and becoming even more powerful in Red Alert 2 with the ability to place explosives on tanks and ships, and shoot at soldiers without being manually commanded (and more hot with vocals and cinematics portrayed by Kari Wuhrer), she could kill enemy soldiers with two Colt M1911s fired "Woo style" long before they were in range with their assault weapons.
 * Makoto Sawatari of Eternal Fighter Zero uses a pair of guns to fire a huge barrage of bullets while suspended in mid-air for her "Ground Strafing" attack. This is possibly a reference to Dante of Devil May Cry, as her guns look just like Ebony and Ivory.
 * Con Smith from the game Killer7 is a blind assassin that uses dual Glock 18s, and reloads them with his feet.
 * Also of note is Mask de Smith, who dual-wields grenade launchers. Possibly justified in that he's a former masked wrestler who suplexes large wooden beams and can drag an 18-wheeler, but... not really.
 * In the Fate/stay night novel prequel Fate/Zero, Servant Berserker is armed with dual sub machine-guns during the Final Battle, complete with Mana-charged bullets.
 * Kiritsugu also goes akimbo with a Contender and a Calico sub-machine gun. It's done reasonably: the Calico is mainly for distraction, and he never uses the Contender until necessary.
 * Maximilian Roivas of Eternal Darkness can find a second flintlock pistol in his mansion to accompany the first one he starts with; of course, given that each gun chambers only one round which must be hand-loaded, double the firearms means double the time spent standing still to reload, which can prove rather fatal when a Horror bearing down on you.
 * Trent, the players character from Freelancer, does this during a non-interactive cutscene: While boarding a space station he is armed with two Frickin Lasers while his less Badass companions only get one.
 * Croix from La Pucelle Tactics wields two guns, one that does fire-elemental damage and one that does ice. He generally only uses both at once for powerful attacks, though.
 * The light gun arcade game Target: Terror Gold has a "Justice Mode" option that allows a player to use both of the game's light guns in akimbo mode with one credit.
 * Nethack features Dual-Wielding. Nethack's bastard cousin Slash'EM features firearms. Add the ability to enchant your own weapons, and you end up with some pretty interesting fantasy dungeon-crawling.
 * The player character of First Encounter Assault Recon has the ability to do this with two pistols, and it's mentioned that he was specially trained to do this because of his enhanced reflexes. They're best used when your character goes into Bullet Time.
 * Also noteworthy is that the Pointman often fires two or three shots in a row from each pistol, instead of the one-round tradeoff most users of this trope employ.
 * Handled slightly more realistically in The Suffering, which gives you the option of double-fisting the smaller guns for double the power, but with half the accuracy. This is Lampshaded in the manual, styled as a memo to the prison guards, warning them that even though it may look cool in Hong Kong action movies, its usually a pretty stupid thing to do in real life.
 * Similarly, in Knights of the Old Republic, you need a special skill to use two weapons or else not only will you not have any status bonuses, or even get negative stats on the off-hand weapon, but the main weapon will lose them as well.
 * Still, max that feat out on Carth, amp up the dex stat, and hand the fellow Cassus Fett's pistol in one hand and Bendak Starkiller's in the other. Consider the path clear of any Mooks while you apply lightsabers to the level boss.
 * Skies of Arcadia features Gilder, a party member who can duel-wield his pistols as part of a special attack.
 * In Evil Genius RTS (making fun of every possible "spy movie" trope), U.S. Super Agent dual-wields machine guns, easily mowing down entire squads of your mooks.
 * In Left 4 Dead you can pick up a second pistol and use both at the same time. There's even an achievement for using only pistols for an entire campaign called "Akimbo Assassin."
 * Funny note, in Spanish the achievement is called "Billy the Kid."
 * Pistols are the only weapons you can wield like this, as all melee weapons (even one-handed ones like the machete and baton) and the Magnum cannot. The latter is justified though, because it's a freaking Desert Eagle.
 * In the online, third person shooter S4 League, the Sub-Machine Gun weapon is only available in pairs, using the 'both triggers at the same time on one target' method.
 * Trestkon's dual pistols in The Nameless Mod. However the game takes place in cyberspace where the HUD and Crossheirs are explicitly visible.
 * Asagi, a recurring character in the Nippon Ichi games has two pistols that she wields Gun Kata style as her main weapons.
 * Thanks to the double Magichange feature in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, anybody is capable of dual-wielding guns. Guns that are actually monsters, and potentially as big as the character wielding them, no less.
 * IG-88 in Star Wars: Empire At War: Forces of Corruption uses both a blaster pistol and a blaster RIFLE at the same time.
 * House of the Dead: OVERKILL for the Wii includes this as an actual game mode. Just select the Dual Wield option, pick up a second Wii Remote and you're good to go.
 * Clear a level this way and you get a bunch of bonus images.
 * Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles has this too, but it's meant to let you play single-character chapters with two players.
 * York Neely, the male main character of Cross Edge, wields a pair of pistols, one larger than the other.
 * In Crysis, you can dual wield the pistol (though you are wearing a strength-enhancing Nanosuit). Crysis:Warhead takes this even further and lets you dual-wield two small SMGs (though even with the Nanosuit in Strength mode it's hard to hit anything more than 3 meters away.)
 * In Call of Juarez both playable characters, Billy and Reverend Ray, can dual wield colts and sawn-off shotguns. The Reverend has even a Concentration Mode, in which he enters Bullet Time and shoots from both revolvers he's got.
 * When Ray enters Concentration mode, two crosshairs, one for each pistol, appear on both sides of the screen and slowly make their way to the middle. On the way, you can click the left or right mouse button to shoot the corresponding gun at the target behind its crosshair. When both crosshairs meet, the Bullet Time ends, by which time a skilled player will already have massacred an entire line of foes in front of him.
 * The titular leading lady in Bayonetta can not only dual-wield, but QUAD-wield with her hands and attachment and firing mechanisms on her calves/heels, everything from bladed weapons to pistols to ROCKET LAUNCHERS, and apparently any combination thereof.
 * Xigbar from Kingdom Hearts II uses two guns akimbo, although he occasionally combines them to make a sniper rifle.
 * Braig does this in Birth By Sleep as well, though in both II and BBS, the Westernized version didn't get guns turning into the rifle.
 * A recent development in the Tales of series, Iria Animi (Tales of Innocence), Legretta the Quick (Tales of the Abyss) and and the Gunman class (Tales Of The World) wield twin pistols, Hisui Hearts (Tales of Hearts) uses arm-bow-cannons, Hubert Ozwell (Tales of Graces) uses a blade that can separate into a pair of handguns, and Kurtz (Tales of Graces) uses sworg-gun-... things.
 * Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 allows guns akimbo. Specifically, Akimbo is an 'attachment' for game purposes, allowing you to wield two of the same handgun, machine pistol or submachine gun. For game balance they can not use their sights, thus relegating such dual-wielded weapons to close quarters or suppressive fire, and you need the Bling perk's Pro version to use another attachment at the same time.
 * You can also dual-wield some shotguns. Anyways, aside from the obvious More Dakka involved, it really cuts down on your accuracy; whether or not it's Awesome but Impractical or just Crazy Awesome enough to work depends on an individual's skill.
 * Also featured in Call of Duty Black Ops. Any pistol, most SMGs and one type of shotgun can be used this way, though secondaries can no longer equip two attachments and the shotgun in question has no other available attachments anyway.
 * Rayne in the BloodRayne games does this, and almost nothing but this, at all times. The only exceptions are in the first game(a bolt-action rifle and a rocket launcher); at all other times, she's dual-wielding to her heart's content.
 * Final Fantasy X-2 - The Gunner job class gives the characters two guns (fired on the same target); Yuna gets to show this off in the opening cutscene.
 * The Japan-only Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII features this combat style for one of the playable Turks.
 * Sazh from Final Fantasy XIII uses this gun style.
 * Nohime (Lady Butterfly) uses her pistols this way in Sengoku Basara.
 * Date Masamune does this with old-fashioned powder-load pistols in Samurai Warriors (and in the crossover series Warriors Orochi). Fortunately for him, he never has to reload.
 * Several of Billy Lee Black's deathblows in Xenogears would feature this.
 * The absolutely horrible game Drake of the 99 Dragons combined the hero's dual pistols with auto-aim. The result was described by X-Play as looking like "a sub-homicidal semaphore session."
 * Guns Akimbo is the primary shooting style of Rubi Malone, the protagonist of Wet. When she is in the air or doing a slide, she can target two opponents with both her guns, locking on to an enemy with one gun and then using the second gun to blast other enemies. In addition, she can blast bad guys akimbo-style while running when in Rage Mode.
 * How do you know the Reaper will do you significant harm in Persona 3 and Persona 4? He dual-wields revolvers with four-foot-long barrels.
 * In Persona 2: Eternal Punishment Maya dual-wields guns.
 * Reconstructed in Dystopia. Early concepts of the dual pistols were ridiculously hard to aim, so the current version, called the Smartlock Pistols, allows the user to lock onto either a single target twice, or two targets.
 * The Munitions power framework in Champions Online has two versions of this for two of its powers. Gunslinger does it Old West style, firing two pistols in alternating faction. Two-Gun Mojo goes true movie akimbo style, firing both at the same time and even holding them out in the arms crossed forward pose.
 * You can dual-wield the standard pistol (Which is of course, a 9mm Beretta) in Killing Floor: you gain twice the ammo capacity and firing rate, but reloading takes longer and it's really hard to aim effectively. You can also get "two bloody great handfuls" of the Hand Cannon, an obvious Desert Eagle, as well as the .44 Magnum.
 * YEAH, ONE IN EACH HAND
 * Torn has two pistols in the Jak and Daxter series, and Keira gets two after her Adrenaline Makeover.
 * Natan's weapon of choice from Shadow Hearts: From The New World, since his fighting style is Gun Fu.
 * This is how Jack in MadWorld defeats the second boss, Juse the Dude (Video here): He punches Juse in the ass, then takes his guns, blows him away, and then fires them in rapid succession--despite them being only six shot revolvers—firing faster and faster till he blows all of Jude's skin off, leaving only a skeleton, looks away, and then BLOWS JUDE COMPLETELY TO PIECES WITH THE LAST SHOT. It's one the most awesome kills in video-game history. And then there's the deleted finisher for Jude, where Jack rams the guns up Judes ass, and then forces them deeper in, and then EXPLODES HIS ENTIRE LOWER HALF, SENDING HIS UPPER HALF INTO THE ATMOSPHERE, WHERE IT EXPLODES LIKE A FIREWORK''. Gorn Indeed.
 * The X-COM games play this fairly realistically. If you use pistols, you don't even lose accuracy (while with rifles and god forbid heavy weapons accuracy dies quickly). In turn based mode, you can only fire one at a time, so the only benefit to Guns Akimbo is in having another gun to fire before having to reload. In X-COM: Apocalypse, which added the realtime mode, however, you could fairly quickly make One-Man Army soldiers, dual wielding disruptor cannons and fully loaded on grenades and mines. While the cannons lost quite a bit of accuracy when dual wielded, their sheer firepower meant anything that stood in your path close enough was fried before they could even pull out their own weapons and anything too far to hit reliably you could outrun (while keeping motion mines in your wake). Very effective, especially in the later game and against other human corporations. Yeah, and you could easily dual wield self tracking rocket launchers. It should be noted though that both the rocket launchers and devastator cannons are recoilless and you only target one enemy at a time, which makes it much easier to pull this off. And yeah, a single soldier with decent strength and accuracy could mow down entire enemy squads and buildings.
 * Noel Vermillion of BlazBlue wields two guns, Arcus Diabolus Bolverk, although she'll occasionally pull out a single gun or rocket launcher from nowhere to pull off special moves.
 * In Just Cause 2, Rico can do this with any combination of the smaller weapons. This somehow includes revolver-mechanism Grenade Launchers, but hey, Rule of Cool. Yes, that means you can dual-wield grenade-launching revolvers. Or revolvers. Or a revolver and a grenade-launching revolver, and so on.
 * In Blockland, "Guns Akimbo" doesn't even have to be installed separately like many other weapons, it comes with the game, having better accuracy than the normal pistol.
 * Water Warfare lets you dual-wield both the standard starter pistol and the submachine gun. Doing so offers a rate of fire comparable to the next-fastest weapon (Pistol is like submachine gun, submachine becomes like machine gun), but with the power of the base weapon (faster rate of fire = weaker shots), and, in the pistol's case, the pistol's ridiculous reload rate.
 * Handled with all the camp of a swashbuckler film in the 2004 remake of Sid Meier's Pirates!.
 * Mexican action film pastiche and Robert Rodriguez tribute Total Overdose has unlockable dual firing modes for Berettas, Uzis, and sawed-off shotguns. One special attack in particular involves spinning with dual Uzis, shooting everything in 360 degrees.
 * The Xbox game Brute Force featured Tex, a gunner who had a user-activated Berserker skill. Not only is he stronger, faster, and tougher, but he also goes Guns Akimbo. And since he thinks pistols are for sissies, the two guns put to use are going to be big ones.
 * In True Crime: Streets of LA, Nick uses dual pistols as his default weapons and can duel wield weapons like shotguns and assault rifles in shootout missions. Marcus can also dual wield guns in True Crime: New York City.
 * Fear Effect uses this trope.
 * Though he has yet to actually appear in a game, Strife from Darksiders wields a mismatched pair of enormous pistols, in lieu of the bow that Conquest/Pestilence usually carries. War receives one of them, Mercy, a bit into the game.
 * The protagonist Max from Dark Cloud 2 wields a melee weapon (a wrench, a hammer, a golf club, or a frozen tuna) in his right hand, and a projectile weapon (a pistol, some variety of machine gun/gatling gun, or a ray gun) in his left.
 * In the .hack games, there is the advanced form of the character Haseo in which he dual-wields guns (illegal variation of the "Steam Gunner" class).
 * In Alpha Protocol submachine guns are always dual-wielded. Oddly enough, this doesn't apply to the pistol.
 * You can dual-wield both pistols and submachineguns in Resonance of Fate. However, since throwing grenades, using Abnormal Ammo or using healing items requires the character to have a special item in hand and it's not possible to switch equipment mid-battle, it's unwise to put two guns on everyone.
 * Borderlands 2 has Salvador, the 'Gunzerker', who specializes in dual-wielding any firearms of any kind. Dual-Wielding pistols or submachine guns is to be expected, but then you can graduate into dual-wielding Rocket Launchers!
 * In The Darkness you can only use SMGs and pistols by dual-wielding, and the Darkness Guns are a pair of mismatched pistols with similarly mismatched effects. Oddly enough, it actually handles dual-wielding comparatively realistically - it's difficult to hit anything with submachine guns except at very close range if you fire both at once, and when an SMG or pistol runs out of bullets, Jackie tosses it and pulls out another one. How he manages to carry 60 pistols and 30 SMGs without them being even slightly visible is another issue entirely.
 * The Area 51 First-Person Shooter lets you dual-wield assault rifles and shotguns. Oddly, despite ignoring the recoil issues this would present, it does acknowledge that reloading two weapons simultaneously is clumsy at best and impossible at worst - you can't reload while dual-wielding, and your character simply throws away the second weapon as dead weight when it's empty.
 * Red Faction II permits dual-wielding of pistols or either flavour of SMG after picking up a second weapon of the same type, and independent triggers permit for Woo-, simultaneous-, or New York Reload-style firing with all of their assorted pros and cons.
 * Counter-Strike has the Beretta 96G "Dual Elites". Being this an FPS firmly placed on the realistic end of the scale, they're inaccurate, underpowered, extremely slow to reload and their only advantage is being a semiautomatic weapon with 30 rounds—but you can't deny running around firing them is very fun!
 * E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy has the BK13 pistols. Fully automatic with 20 round magazines loaded with .45ACP rounds, the guns are Awesome Yet Practical because of how lightweight they are. If you're carrying a spare sword, you can also go Sword and Gun with the pistols.

Web Comics
"Thurl: Don't sweat it. I'll put down 'Very enthusiastic,' and 'Seen too many John Woo movies.' You're in."
 * In Schlock Mercenary, a four-armed alien states that the mercenaries should recruit him because with four arms, he can fire four guns at once. The recruiting officer points out that, with two eyes, he can only track one target at a time.

""Ack! What amazing peripheral vision!""
 * However in a later comic he is seen quad-wielding pistols to shoot at birds.
 * Played straight, however, with Sergeant Schlock who, since he is able to grow additional hands as required, will cheerfully dual or triple wield BFGs, then again, Schlock can also reorient his eyes, so this isn't so unrealistic, particularly while he had an extra pairs of eyes.
 * Parodied in Irregular Webcomic #35, by combining it with I Know Mortal Kombat.
 * Played somewhat realistically in Errant Story when Jon uses two weapons in a pinch, with opponents front and back. Both bullets are actually on their targets, but one is jumped over (you heard me right, opponent is later dealt with in hand-to-hand combat) and the other distracts the other opponent (he uses his neigh-unbreakable blade to deflect it) so Sarine can cut him almost in half. The success of the move amazes Jon to no end.
 * Lt. Dart fires two shotguns at once during the Sluggy Freelance story arc "KITTEN II." Not that it does him much good.
 * 8-Bit Theater, but with bows and arrows. And then pushed it to the extreme. Just see for yourself.
 * Cleo, eponymous heroine of Cleopatra In Spaaace! favours a matched pair of lazer (sic) pistols.
 * Kore in Goblins is a variant, fighting with 2 Automatic Crossbows.
 * Invoked by Bug here.


 * Lord Vincent Godfrey in World of Warcraft with two shotguns even enjoy cursing his own bullets. The success for killing him by a special way is even called 'Bullet time' as a reference to Matrix.
 * Homestuck's Jake English uses this thanks to his Weapon of Choice, twin M9 barettas, inherited from his grandmother.
 * Zokusho Comics character, Serge, uses a pair of guns as his main offensive strategy. When things get hairy he prefers his revolver Lucky 7, which fires magical bullets.

Web Original

 * Somewhat rare, but it occurs in Survival of the Fittest. Two examples come from v1, during the same gun battle. Peri Barclay wielded two revolvers, but this proved completely ineffective as he failed to hit anyone. Jacob Starr later did the same with his gun and one that an ally dropped, but he alternated fire between the two guns and it wasn't really to hit anyone as much as it was to force Peri and his ally Steven to keep their heads down, covering the other group's retreat.
 * Brendan Wallace wields akimbo when he's forced to try and hold off a group of terrorists sent by Danya to eliminate Liz Polanski. He doesn't fire them both at once, however, he barely even fires them at all. He runs. This happens a lot with him.
 * Moira Quicksilver in The Endless Night is a notorious bounty hunter who carries two matched pistols (lovingly called Righty and Lefty) to deadly effect.
 * The Crazy X-Box Lady resorts to using two guns at once, after miming a pair of maracas.
 * A somewhat popular Self-Imposed Challenge on Light Gun Games is to play both sides at once and dual-wield. Some games such as Target: Terror Gold even have a mode that allows you to use both guns with one credit.
 * The Elsa van Dorst's v5 incarnation from Open Blue isn't just a badass sniper anymore. Now she can fight with a rifle (or musket) in each hand.

Western Animation

 * Yosemite Sam of Looney Tunes is a more comedic example.
 * Being based in part off Yosemite Sam, same goes for the Rich Texan from The Simpsons.
 * There's a metric buttload of Transformers that do this, but you could probably guess that. Rhinox from Beast Wars is probably the one best known for doing so - with DUAL GATLING GUNS. From the same series, Ravage wields dual guns... and stores them on his hips, Russian crossdraw style. So did the G1 "Triggerbot" Dogfight... but he didn't draw them crossways; he drew them straight and then pulled the triggers with his pinkie fingers. (All the "Trigger" Transformers - whose gimmick was engines that, by pressing a spring-loaded trigger, became weapons when they transformed into robot mode—also used Guns Akimbo to some degree.) Even some versions of Optimus Prime can do it, most famously the Powermaster version.
 * Beast Wars Rampage did this on occasion, dual wielding a smaller gun with his Tri-Barreled Cannon (shrunk down slightly to match).
 * Captain Fordo from Star Wars: Clone Wars and Captain Rex from Star Wars: The Clone Wars prefer to use twin blaster pistols in battle.
 * Panchito has his two gun that he loves to shoot, but this being Disney, he isn't actually allowed to shoot at anyone, so aiming isn't usually a problem.
 * Shane Gooseman sometimes dual-wields blaster pistols, most prominently in the title animation.
 * Major Phil Stark in Invasion America invoked this trope a couple of times. Once while trying to find David on Maple Island (humorously used against a stray tree branch that David manipulated to distract him while he escaped), and again at the Glenport Galeria while trying to rescue him from Simon and Sonia.
 * In Voltron Force, Lance's Voltcoms can form twin pistols. When it's Lance's turn to form Voltron Red Center, his Blazing weapon is a pair of high-powered energy pistols.

Real Life

 * Next time you go to an arcade that offers 2-player shooting games, and the guns can be operated 1-handed (aka reload by shooting the bottom of the screen, not pump action), load quarters into both and see how easy it is to aim and track targets. Now imagine if both guns had actual recoil, let alone the noise.
 * A possible example of actual use of two guns firing at the same time is "Macedonian Shooting", practiced by Russian special forces. This evolved as a method of increasing rate of fire, more in order to force the enemy to take cover than to try to accurately hit them, and was generally practiced by NKVD officers issued a pair of revolvers. If you don't believe me see for yourself.
 * A group of U.S.Army Soldiers decided to demonstrate Guns Akimbo and its dual-inherited Rule of Cool and Awesome but Impractical qualities on a firing range, with one Soldier dual-wielding M-249 Squad Automatic Weapons. As they explicitly say in the video, this is very unsafe. Considering the recoil and sheer weight of those guns, the Soldier is a sheer Badass for even keeping his footing while he fired.
 * Note that he's forced to take a few steps back while firing. And he carefully braces himself beforehand.
 * Back in yon olden times when pistols were muzzle-loaded and took several minutes to reload, it was fairly common for cavalry troops and people fighting in close-quarters to carry multiple pistols. And since you only needed one hand to fire a pistol, it was quicker to hold a pistol in each hand. Nowadays this is called a New York Reload.
 * Many descriptions have the pirate Blackbeard doing this, as he carried a large number of pistols into battle. The purpose was not so much to kill anybody but to scare the defending crew into surrendering - as a successful pirate Blackbeard understood the importance of avoiding unnecessary bloodshed so he cultivated his reputation as a fearsome scourge of the seas.
 * Wild West Gunfighter "Wild Bill" Hickock is said to have wielded two 1853 'Navy' Colts at the same time using a distinctive "crossed wrist" stance. Details are lacking but he probably fired one gun at a time using the back of his other wrist as a support. It's likely he did this to avoid reloading these pre-cartridge 'cap and ball' revolvers because that takes 5–10 minutes per gun.
 * One technique that came out of the Old West (and is occasionally seen in Western novels) is the "Border Shift", where a shooter who has a pistol in each hand fires the main-hand gun until it runs dry, and then tosses each gun to the opposite hand, putting the still-loaded gun once again in the main hand. It's essentially a form of New York Reload, with the added fun of juggling loaded weapons. Needless to say, it's incredibly unsafe and extremely difficult to do smoothly.
 * It might be apropos to mention Morris "Two Gun" Cohen, an Anglo-Canadian Jewish mercenary who fought for Sun Yat-sen, founder of Nationalist China. As noted on the page, his nickname came from carrying two loaded weapons so he didn't need to immediately reload, while in combat, rather than because he used both simultaneously.
 * Mock Duck was known for an unusual method of self-defense that combined this trope with Blind Swordsman.
 * 19th century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly did this with two revolvers while he and his gang were wearing suits of improvised armor in their famous gunfight against police at the Glenrowan Inn. Apparently known as a rifleman before the shootout, he made the switch because pistols were the only thing he could raise up high enough into his greatly impaired field of vision in order to sight them. This didn't work as well as he hoped, losing the fight and getting arrested, bruised and most likely deafened from the occasional headshot clanging off his armor.
 * While he and his squad were under ambush in Iraq in 2005, Combat Medic Spc. Jason Mike held off insurgents by dual-wielding two machine guns, an M4 carbine and an M249 according to TOW.
 * This trope is made Older Than Radio by one youth in Eugène Delacroix's famous 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People (somewhat NSFW) picturing the July Revolution of the same year.
 * Depending on where you are, you may need to dual wield QSZ-92 semi-automatic pistols as part of the Chinese Liberation Army training. However, unless new info disproves this, it is safe to assume it is solely for the purpose of training one handed firing with both your dominant and non-dominant hand. And maybe training for "Macedonian Shooting" if a soldier is ever in need of suppressive fire and only has two pistols?

By the way, the word "akimbo" does NOT actually refer to Dual-Wielding guns. It means standing with your hands on your hips and elbows pointed outward. You can no more have anything but your arms akimbo than you can flip the bird with your ear.