Hyperspace Arsenal



"You don't have a backpack. What you have there is an invisible leather TARDIS."

- Gimli, DM of the Rings

Videogame characters, particularly in First-Person Shooters and Adventure Games, have a seemingly superhuman ability to carry incredible amounts of stuff at one time, usually an array of weapons along with a couple hundred pounds of ammunition for each one. It doesn't limit their ability to run and jump and crawl through small spaces at all. What's more, when you see them during cutscenes in first-person games and third-person games, you can't see where they've stowed these things, even when they're wearing clothes that are more or less form-fitting. It seems they've put them away in the same realm where Hyperspace Mallets are kept.

In practice, a Hyperspace Arsenal serves to reduce the more annoying aspects of inventory management, removing the need to constantly shuffle stuff in and out of your backpack. Some games may choose to restrict inventory for balance reasons: It might upset the difficulty curve if the protagonist can carry around an infinite amount of healing items. This can be more realistic as in Halo's rule of no more than two weapons at once or still kind of exaggerated, as in many Adventure Games' "you can only carry twelve items"-type ruling. The result, more often than not, is the more annoying variety of Inventory Management Puzzle (and often pretty absurd—Bazookas regularly take up as much space as gum wrappers.)

In fandom, this trope is often "justified" with the supposition that the Hyperspace Inventory is actually kept in the character's pants. (This however actually serves to answer exactly none of the objections to the trope.) Some less-than-serious works, such as Space Quest, Simon the Sorcerer or Monkey Island, take this very literally.

The reverse occurs in many text adventures, where (primarily for design reasons) the player character could only carry a specific number of items (often five) at any one same time. Regardless of how large these items are.

One odd effect of the Hyperspace Arsenal is that characters may struggle to support an item that they have "taken out" or "equipped," and they may not be able to wear something at all if they're not strong enough—yet presumably they're carrying this very item around all the time. Put another way, as long as you can't see it, it weighs nothing. (This could mean that the equipment is too heavy to be feasible in battle, though.)

Another odd effect, usually found in Adventure and Role-Playing games, is an inventory limit on a single kind of item. The classic example is being able to carry 99 healing Potions and 99 Antidotes, but not 198 Potions or even 100. Some games have even more stringent limits.

Compare Extended Disarming, which often happens when a character is asked to empty out their Hyperspace Arsenal. Compare also Variable-Length Chain, where chains and whips can "stretch" to attack a far target without being long when unused.

Contrast Walking Armory, where the character is actually shown carrying all of their weapons on their body.

For more general applications, see Hammerspace. For a specific item that does this, see Bag of Holding.

Sub-Pages

 * Hyperspace Arsenal/Video Games

Unsorted Examples
Which includes more Video Game examples


 * Heavily averted in 7.62mm High Caliber. The grid inventory system is divided between two quick-access pockets on your fatigues, belts (two of which include holsters), tactical vests, and backpacks, with the different carrying items divided into smaller pockets that can only accept items of a particular size or smaller. All of the belts, vests, and backpacks appear on the character model and backpacks even prevent soldiers from rolling while prone. On the other hand, the grid is very strict and doesn't allow for items to be rotated, which greatly limits what can be carried in certain pockets.
 * Like a good adventure game protagonist, Ashley of the Another Code series has no problem carrying around loads of random junk she finds. It does make for at least one odd instance in the second game when she goes to return a briefcase and pulls out from behind her back. Unless you can buy that she had a regular-sized briefcase in that little fanny pack of hers.
 * Blood II slightly averts this in a sense: weapons correspond to number keys in the order that you find them
 * Return to Castle Wolfenstein: By the end of this game if you collect everything you have a grand total of twelve guns, a rocket launcher, a flame thrower, a Tesla gun and two types of grenades plus all your ammunition
 * In The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall you can't pass a row of shrubbery while on a horse. So you get off the horse, jump over it, and get on again. At this point, Fridge Logic suggests horses are kept in the Hyperspace Arsenal too, thus making Tamriel horses infinitely more awesome than Earth horses. It's also possible to climb up a city walls from the outside, climb down on the inside, and get on your horse.
 * It goes even further by allowing you to carry a cart which has a ludicrous weight limit which you could take anywhere (including the wall climbing trick mentioned above) except inside dungeons.
 * But then how do you get the horse through the shrubbery? Ahh, I see. You mean the player can literally put the horse in their inventory.
 * From the pants pocket of Blank of the web comic The Fourth comes a rather bulky spray plunger, of all things.
 * The Specialists mod for Half-Life, based on The Matrix, allows you to carry an absurd amount of weapons, though they do reduce your walking speed and too much weight will prevent you from doing some stunts. Due to the proliferation of players bunny hopping around the map kicking people in the face at 200 miles per hour (Kicking or punching players will disarm them), the Hyperspace Arsenal provides a hilarious way to kill these bunny hoppers - they zip in, punch you - your gun goes flying, then you pull out four more guns and shoot them in the face.
 * Subverted in Hard Reset. You have two basic weapons-a ballistic weapon and an energy weapon-that can morph into different guns.
 * Just Cause 2 averts this with weapons; Rico can only carry three at a time, with a reasonable amount of ammo for each one. But he can summon up a parachute from his backpack, throw it away, and create another one an unlimited number of times.
 * Kingdom Hearts does this a lot. Almost every character is able to bring out their weapon out of nowhere at a moment's notice and then make it disappear again just as quickly. Granted, Sora and the other Keybearers can summon Keyblades via magic, likewise with the Organization and their weapons.
 * SWAT 4 averts this - your inventory is limited to one long gun, one pistol, about five magazines each, and various other small bits of equipment SWAT officers would be expected to take on missions, all of which are either one infinitely-usable item or five of one-time use items. SWAT 3 was a bit more blatant: while gas grenades and breaching charges were still heavily limited, you were carrying upwards of 12 magazines for both your guns (mix of hollow point and full metal jacket bullets, depending on whether hostiles are armored) plus an infinite number of handcuffs.


 * Battlestar Galactica Online: Even a tiny strikecraft can carry thousands of rounds of ammo, to say nothing of other pieces of equipment.
 * ARMA II and its Operation Arrowhead expansion have a form of this: most weapons that can load multiple types of magazines only have one actual model for those magazines. Hence, you can load a 100-round Beta C-mag into the XM8, only for it to magically look like a normal 30-round magazine.
 * Dark Souls, unlike Demon's Souls, allows you to carry as many items as you want, as long as you're willing to deal with scrolling through all of it. If that gets tedious but you don't want to throw items away permanently, you can also get a "bottomless box" to put your items into.
 * The Batman doll concept art from from Skinpop Studio (lower half of the list). It got sword, telescope, several books, guitar and mini-sofa, among other extras. It's shown to be hollow to contain all this, of course.