Unorthodox Reload



This is the fun aversion or supplement to the Bottomless Magazines trope. Sometimes the gunslinger has to have a cool (if not practical) way of reloading to show how Badass he is.

Usually the Unorthodox Reload involves a lot of unnecessary and complicated choreography. In others, it involves incredible, mostly impossible, feats of physics that if attempted in reality, would either not work, jam the firearm in question or result in grievous bodily harm.

Reloading a firearm is actually a deceptively complex procedure, and must be done carefully. If done improperly the gun may jam or malfunction. At worst you could hurt yourself.

See also Unorthodox Sheathing and Unorthodox Holstering.

Anime & Manga

 * Alucard from Hellsing uses his teeth to pull back the slide on his pistol and chamber a round (either one) after setting in a magazine. Unless you have jaws of steel, don't try this at home kids.
 * In the finale of TV series he also used telekinesis to pull a magazine from across the room. He didn't catch it - it went straight into the gun.
 * Yukimi from Nabari no Ou also does this once. It's justified, though, because and can't reload his gun any other way.
 * Tendou Rushuna from Grenadier stores extra bullets in her considerable cleavage - when she needs to reload, she somehow manages to eject the exact number of bullets from there and then scoops them out of the air with her revolver. While spinning! And she isn't the only character able to do that!
 * Rally Vincent in both the Manga and Anime of Gunsmith Cats has at least one scene in either version of the series in which she reloads her CZ-75 pistol by dropping a fresh magazine onto her foot (a necessity in the manga, with one broken arm as the result of an accident) and then kicking it up into the magazine well of the gun before popping the slide release to chamber a round.
 * In Appleseed Ex Machina, the cyborg Briareos stores spare magazines inside his cybernetic forearms making reloading his Guns Akimbo a trivial matter.
 * In one episode of Black Lagoon Revy reloads one of her pistols by loading a magazine into it using her teeth.
 * While still firing at her opponents with the other one. Now that is Badass.
 * Signum of Lyrical Nanoha casually flicks a Cartridge - basically something that resembles a bullet but is just storage for an extra burst of magic - into the chamber of her weapon in the second episode of the second season.
 * Guido Mista of Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure fame reloads his revolver by tilting his head down. The bullets come out of his hat. Oddly enough, he doesn't do this in the Playstation 2 game based on that part - he just reloads by hand.
 * Train Heartnet in Black Cat is probably the epitome of this, in that he throws bullets up into the air, cracks open his revolver, so that the handle flips back (its a custom weapon in this case, so at least that bit is somewhat feasible) then times a hand flick so it snaps back into position with the bullets grabbed in the revolver chambers.
 * Blush from The Western manga Et Cetera can fire his guns so fast that it seems it all came from a single gunshot. In fact, characters claim to hear only one gunshot even though as much as 12 shots can have been fired. Because he uses all of his ammo in an instant, he carries pre-loaded cylinders on his belt, and simply pops the empty ones off and "reloads" entire cylinders to use.
 * Swapping cylinders was a reasonably common way of reloading at some points in history, for those gunfighters who could afford spare cylinders. Particularly those who favored the Remington 1858 New Army. Clint Eastwood reloads that way in Pale Rider (using an aforementioned 1858, albeit one converted use cartridges). Probably the fastest way to reload a six-gun until the invention of the speedloader.
 * Used in one chapter of Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple, when the titular character's father Genji attempts to "rescue" his son, hauling away his son in one hand while blasting away at the masters of Ryouzanpaku with his shotgun Rotowski. When weapons master Shigure gives chase, she notes that Genji won't be able to reload his weapon singlehandedly. A single panel later, he does exactly that.
 * Jo's mechanical holsters in Bakuretsu Tenshi also double as magazine dispensers.
 * Mana Tatsumiya from Mahou Sensei Negima does a magic reload.
 * Subverted by Kanna, of Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto, who dual wields revolvers, and reloads using speedloaders.
 * Not a subversion because any reloading method that involves Guns Akimbo is automatically counted as an Unorthodox Reload.
 * In the first episode of Mazinkaiser SKL, Ryo throws two fresh magazines towards the enemy, where they stick into the ground . Then he reloads normally, charges the enemy while firing, and as soon as he's out of ammo he ejects the spent mags and dives to the ground, reloading using the mags he threw there earlier.

Film

 * In The Rundown, the character played by Dwayne Johnson flips two shotguns up-side down and backwards and then snaps them between his arms and torso to pump them in an instant.
 * Earlier in the movie, he inverts this by ejecting a magazine to make his target slip on the floor.
 * Bullet Proof Monk plays with this trope, using the unorthodoxy as a combat technique in and of itself. Chow-Yun Fat empties two pistols, ejects the magazines, and spins to kick the empty magazines at some Mooks.
 * Equilibrium deals with this by having the main character have mechanisms under his sleeves that loads his pistols with fresh magazines. This does not explain how exactly the mechanism works however, or how many magazines it holds. He also has sort of elaborate decoy magazines (mags with specially weighted bottoms that he tosses to the floor). When he needs to reload he brings his guns down on the mags.
 * Presumably the sleeve system works only once, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered with sliding the weighted magazines on the floor or getting the assault rifle for the final burst.
 * Ultraviolet takes this even further, instead of mechanical devices the main character has little wrist-mounted portals to pocket dimensions that feed bullets into her guns.
 * The T-800 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day would cock a lever-action shotgun by flipping it over his fingers while using the other hand to handle a motorcycle. You can tell they used two different props for that scene: one with a larger loop to flip and another with a regular sized loop to fire with. In real life, flip-cocking would snag the wielder's fingers and probably break them (this almost happened during filming), though it's obviously not a problem for a Hollywood Cyborg with a titanium steel endoskeleton.
 * John Wayne used this trick to cock a Winchester lever-action rifle in several of his Westerns, notably in his very first scene in Stagecoach (1939); in the climax of True Grit he combines this with Guns Akimbo on horseback. He actually had a Winchester custom made (with a larger loop and shorter barrel) to facilitate this.
 * Steve McQueen would frequently flip-cock his "Mare's Leg" (a shortened 1892 Winchester rifle) in the Western TV show Wanted Dead or Alive.
 * Chuck Conners used the flip-cock method for his rifle in The Rifleman.
 * It should be noted that the rifle had a custom, circular loop to facilitate the flip-cock.
 * In Bram Stokers Dracula (the movie with Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing and Gary Oldman as Dracula) Quincy P. Morris the Texican cowboy stereotype flip-cocks his rifle in much the same manner. One handed. While riding a horse. Then again, he IS from Texas!
 * Possibly in a Shout Out to this, Jill in Resident Evil 3 can obtain the Western Custom, which she reloads each shot in this manner. It actually makes her a Badass Normal.
 * Ditto for the Model 1887 Akimbo Shotguns in Modern Warfare 2. It appears the weapon is based on the John Wayne custom design. A single Model 1887 is cocked properly.
 * This video shows two different Unorthodox Reloads of the T2 style shotgun being performed with success (the difficulty and awkwardness is evident). Note that the gun shown does not have a large loop and in fact has no trigger guard. The half cycle spin method appears to be a more practice one-hand method. Also note that the person actually lets go of the gun entirely then catches it during the full cycle reload. The video also demonstrates full cycles with another model of shotgun that appears much less difficult to cycle in this manner.
 * Ramón Rojo in A Fistfulof Dollars casually does the half-cycle spin at the beginning of the final showdown.
 * Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 blasts the T-1000 with a SWAT-issue shotgun several times in succession, interjecting each shot with a forceful, one-armed pump. Granted, her shoulder was screwed up by this point thanks to the T-1000 cornering her earlier, so her off hand probably wouldn't be able to operate the pump well.
 * This very style is parodied in Hot Shots Part Deux: Ramada pumps and shoots her shotgun with one hand. When she pumps it for the third time, however, the gun rips off the grip and flies off-screen.
 * During the hospital shootout in Rush Hour 3 Zhang Jingchu picks up a magazine and somersaults over a mook to give the magazine to Jackie Chan who then jumps on and rides on a cart in order to load the magazine into Chris Tucker's gun.
 * In the film Tomb Raider, Lara Croft has magazines strapped to her thighs by their bases, allowing her to simply swing her guns down onto them, and a special backpack that lowers them behind her in pairs, allowing her to just jam the guns behind her back and presto, instant reloads.
 * Probably based on the fact that everything else important teleports into and out of her backpack in the games if she moves her hands near it.
 * In Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, a character can be glimpsed dropping a bullet down the barrel of his weapon. This was, however, a joke by the actor which slipped into the final cut.
 * Check out this over-the-top scene from the Swedish action-comedy Kopps, justified by the fact that it is a day-dream sequence.
 * Two characters do this in Pom Pom And Hot Hot, an unusually titled 1992 Hong Kong film. Shooter Yin, the boss of the two leads, does near magical reloads on two separate occasions. On the first, he empties a revolver of spent shells, than grabs six loose bullets and throws them all at once perfectly into the chambers. Later on, he has a gun magazine knocked out of his hand, so he flips his leg sideways and kicks it back up - straight into his pistol. A villain in the film manages to SPIT a bullet into the chamber of his revolver at another point in the film.
 * Expert marksman and Gun Fu practitioner Agent Zero from X-Men Origins: Wolverine solved the dilemma of reloading while dual wielding by kicking up two magazines into the air, then simultaneously feeding them into both of his pistols...IN SLOW MOTION.
 * With the action on his pistols still closed, too. Unless he left a round in each chamber before reloading, he shouldn't have been able to keep firing (given that he's supposed to be a firearms whiz, though, it's not unthinkable that he did do this).
 * In Zombieland, Tallahassee prepares an unorthodox technique when luring zombies to a kiosk for his last stand. He stands all his pistol magazines up on a counter, then reloads when necessary by slamming his pistols onto the counter.
 * In Kick-Ass, Hit Girl, while fighting in a corridor, throws two new magazines out in front of her, then, while running, and slides her pair of guns over the new magazines that are more-or-less hovering in the air and happen to have rotated perfectly to be pointed to lock into place.
 * In Hawk the Slayer, the character Ranulf loses a hand, rendering him unable to reload his crossbow in a normal fashion. He compensates by using a self-loading crossbow with an entire magazine of bolts. This isn't your garden variety (i.e. real world) repeating crossbow though, this is your terrible B-movie repeating crossbow - basically a submachinegun that fires arrows.
 * Once Upon a Texas Train has a scene where Cotton and his gang of Young Guns are standing in a line, waiting for the combined force of retired outlaws and Rangers to make an appearance. As the camera pans across them, each one flip cocks his Winchester in turn.
 * Played for Laughs and taken to the extreme in Top Secret when Chocolate Mousse front-loads an assault rifle. Yes, he pours gunpowder down the barrel.

Literature

 * Roland Deschain can (or at least could) reload one of his revolvers with one hand while firing with the other.
 * This is theoretically possible if you drop it into a hip holster that can hold a break-top revolver while it's open. If anyone's Badass enough to do that while under fire without dropping rounds everywhere, Roland probably is. We should assume this is maybe the most efficient way to reload a revolver, but takes maybe 20 years of obsession to be able to learn.
 * Subverted in Nation when Mau takes note that Cox must reload with two hands.
 * Prince Roger in John Ringo's "We Few" does a quick reload in a hyper-real MMFPS that fools his potential allies into thinking he used a cheat. Actually

Live Action TV

 * In "The Big Bang Job" episode of Leverage, Eliot secures the magazines of his twin pistols by pressing them against his hips and pulls back the slides by holding one pistol upside down over the other so he can hook the rear sights together and pulls the pistols in opposite directions. This example is made even more interesting by the fact that Eliot Doesn't Like Guns.

Tabletop Games

 * In Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, the "Two-fisted shooter" feat allows you to, among other things, reload a hand crossbow with one hand, solving the Guns Akimbo problem. Exactly how you do this is never explained, and left up to the player's imagination (perhaps using the rest of this page for inspiration).
 * It is technically possible to do this in 3rd edition as well, with two feats (rapid reload and quickdraw). According to a literal interpretation of the feats, you put one crossbow away, reload the other, put that away, take the first one out, reload it, and pull out the second crossbow. All in the time it takes to discuss combat tactics.

Video Games
"Durandal: I won't waste my time trying to explain the loading mechanism to you - your primitive mind could never grasp its complex nature."
 * Nero in Devil May Cry 4 has a similar revolver-reloading technique to Rushuna (above), substituting his gun hand for the cleavage because the other arm is immobile in a sling.
 * Lady was into this trope first. See?
 * Dante reloads his twin pistols by magically creating more bullets inside them. Pretty unorthodox.
 * The Security Officer in Marathon can not only equip and use two double-barreled shotguns at the same time, which is Bad Ass enough alone, but he flip-cocks them like in the examples above. The implausibility of this is lampshaded in the manual.


 * There are several popular theories among Marathon fans as to what this mechanism is. The best is that spinning the shotgun around its lever generates electricity, which is used to teleport shells into the chamber.
 * The protagonist in Advent Rising apparently reloads all guns by twirling them around Western-style... including rocket launchers.
 * In the Killzone games, virtually ALL of the Helghast weapons have an interesting or unusual reload animation (especially evident in Killzone 2) because the Helghast seem to prefer large cylindrical magazines over plain straight or curved magazines. For just one example, the magazine of the StA18 Pistol is identical that of the to a Russian-made PP-19 Bizon submachinegun, as is that of their SMG.
 * To their credit, the Helghan weapons hold significantly more ammunition than the equivalent Allied weapons. While the standard assault rifle holds 30 rounds, the Helghan assault rifle holds 75 (or 60 depending on the game). However, this is offset by the fact that the recoil for the Helghan weapons is cylindrical instead of straight up (that is, when you shoot, the bullets will eventually go around the target instead of above it), also helghan automatic weaponry is less accurate at longer ranges compared to their ISA counterparts.
 * That "cylindrical recoil" bit makes no sense whatsoever. Even if there is some mechanism either inside the gun or inside the magazine that applies torque, it&acute;s force would not create "cylindrical recoil". The real Bison and Calico SM Gs have cylindrical magazines, their recoil is not.
 * In the game Stranglehold the only time Inspector Tequila ever reloads is when he is about to unleash his barrage attack.
 * The Squad in Clive Barkers Jericho uses a Timey Wimey Ball to turn back time to a point when their weapons were already loaded.
 * The Half Life mod, The Specialists, made with an action movie flavor, features several different kinds of guns that can be taken akimbo. The more unusual reload animations include putting both guns into one hand to load new magazines simultaneously, or simply dropping the guns and pulling new ones out from off-screen.
 * The Half-Life 2 mod Wasteland, based off of post-apocalypse games (particularly Fallout), allowed mix-and-match pistols. The most memorable reload animation was that of the Colts akimbo: ejecting both magazines, and then sequentially tossing the guns up in the air to have a free hand for the new magazines.
 * Simlarly, the mod SMOD for Half-Life 2 brings in a Matrix feel. Including dual pistols and SMGs. They reload the same way, in which the character will spin the guns around their fingers and use centrifugal force to pull the spent mags out, and then ramming in new ones. Pretty damn badass.
 * In Max Payne 2 The Fall of Max Payne, both Max and Mona can reload their weapons when they're in Bullet Time by spreading their arms out and doing a quick 360-degree spin to eject the used magazine. This is the only way to quickly reload many slow-loading guns, such as the sawed-off shotgun (which normally takes a long time when you're slinging lead with bad guys).
 * In The Darkness, the Darkness Guns are reloaded by standing in shadow.
 * Also, you reload your dual pistols by simply tossing them away and drawing another pair. Unusually for a videogame, this does waste any ammo in them.
 * Also of note, in a late-game shootout, a retired mobster, who is missing his legs and 1 arm and thus can't fight, is still helping by loading guns for you. He chambers the first round using his teeth. It's impressive to see, honestly.
 * Everybody in Killer 7 uses some trick to reload absurdly fast: Con Smith (1:40) uses his feet to help him reload.
 * Except KAEDE. In fact, this is one of her two balancing measures (alongside Glass Cannon): she deals good damage and has a scope, letting her nail the enemy's weak spots from long range with consistency, but she reloads at a realistic pace - which in this game means it takes forever. It takes forever and a day if you reload while still aiming, as she fumbles the reload.
 * In Blood Rayne 2 the twin magic handguns used by the titular half-vampire, called the Carpathian Dragons, are powered by blood. They have spikes on the front, and are reloaded by stabbing someone. If they run dry, they feed on the firer's Life Meter.
 * Metal Gear Solid's Revolver Ocelot doesn't reload in that strange a way... except he talks about it in such a way that implies that he really loves to reload in the middle of a gunfight. In MGS3, when he first tries a revolver, he rambles on and on about how great it feels to slide the cartridge into the chamber and how he's "never felt a tension like this before". Creepy.
 * Some Truth In Thelevision. In the American civil war, soldiers would frantically reload their muzzle loader muskets at point blank range and even when clearing trenches, since trying to stab an enemy with the bayonet would also mean being in range of the bayonets of all his buddies.
 * Snake gets the weirdest reload in the series in Metal Gear Solid 4, where due to a glitch he mimes reloading the long barrel / scope Desert Eagle while holding an entire gun in his other hand instead of just a magazine.
 * Back to 3: Rather than reloading the M37 a shell at a time, Naked Snake pulls a cylinder full of shells from his hip, places one end into the shotgun, slides his hand up the length of it to load the shells into the gun, and then pumps it to remove the cylinder.
 * This is actually the technique most used for speedloading in shotgun competitions.
 * Resident Evil 4 features the Broken Butterfly revolver which Leon reloads in a pretty badass way. Since it's a break-open revolver, he flips down the barrel to break it open, unloads the spent bullets over his shoulder, throws three bullets into it (regardless of how many he actually has to reload) and flip-snaps it shut. What makes it awesome is that, even without a reload speed upgrade, that procedure takes about two seconds.
 * It returns in Resident Evil 5, and you can see that Chris is actually loading the bullets two at a time.
 * If the player attempts to reload the Chicago Typewriter (one of the three special weapons with infinite ammunition) while wearing the Mafia suit, Leon instead fiddles with his hat and sighs annoyedly.
 * The now-defunct MMORPG Tabula Rasa generally used fairly realistic reloading animations, but a few months before it was canceled they added dual pistols based on popular demand. They were reloaded by simply spinning them, Western style.
 * S 4 League is full of this. Just about every weapon is reloaded by doing something that looks cool, regardless of whether any new magaziness or ammo is even involved.
 * Then again it is Virtual Reality.
 * Gears of War has the Active Reload function, in which the player can reload their gun more quickly if a button is pressed at just the right moment, as well as gain a temporary increase in damage. If they miss however, the gun jams and reloading takes longer than usual. Note that the standard (long) reload is actually an orthodox reload, as the character goes through the motions of carefully inserting more ammunition. The active reload is the Unorthodoxy, where the character circumvents procedure for speed.
 * The flip-cock is also used when the action reload fails on the shotgun, and after unjamming the shell, thew character will flip the weapon around (for no reason) and ready it.
 * The Maian weapons in Perfect Dark all reload by putting an orb into them. Apparently the gun's side just sucks it into itself.
 * Even more amazingly, the Phoenix and Callisto NTG are reloaded with standard handgun and submachine gun bullets, respectively. Apparently Joanna crammed a magazine into the orb before sticking it in the gun offscreen.
 * Also, the Cyclone seems to be reloaded by scanning a magazine on the underside.
 * Many of the animations for reloading show Joanna to have inhuman abilites - for instance, she can reload a Falcon 2 (a standard semi-auto pistol) by dropping out the spent magazine, putting in a new one, and pulling the slide back - in less than one second. Not to mention whenever she goes Guns Akimbo, it takes her exactly as long to reload two guns as it does to reload one.
 * Truth In Television.
 * As a by-product of Halo star Master Chief's ability to go Guns Akimbo, he can reload either gun at any time with one hand, even while firing his other gun!
 * What's more impressive is that he can do that while climbing a ladder.
 * Lampshaded in Halo: Legends, where it is shown that SPARTANs store extra magaziness in compartments in the armor on their thighs, and they just slam the guns down on them to reload.
 * Which does not explain the climbing a ladder in half ton armor while using your hands to reload and or shoot.
 * In Goldeneye Rogue Agent, the player's character reloads Dual-wilded Jackal .357's by tossing the magazines into the air, and slamming them together between the pistols. It takes specific timing to get him to do this, however.
 * Unreal II the Awakening. The Drakk Laser Cannon. The ammo pods look like tiny mechanical octopi and load themselves into the weapon, inserting their tentacles into a number of holes on the surface of the gun.
 * Planet Side featured Ancient-Tech weaponry, which both plays straight and averts this trope. While the Maelstrom reloads by swapping out a small module near the front, the Spiker pistol reloads by swiveling the top of the gun once the side orbs are tapped, and the Radiator is reloaded by what looks like tickling the bottom.
 * Don't forget the Vanu and Terran rocket launchers; each one is about the size of your body, and you somehow manage to reload it when the magazines are on the back of the shoulder mounted launcher. Apparently, Vanu and Terran soldiers have rubber arms, else the rocket launcher would go through their head when reloading.
 * In Western Outlaw and Darkest of Days, you get equipped with a muzzle-loading revolver. Since muzzle-loading each individual round would take way too long for gameplay purposes, your character simply pulls out the cylinder and pops in a new one every time they reload.
 * Any time the Boss dual-wields pistols/SMGs in Saints Row, he (or she in the second one) just sort of flips them around without actually touching the mags or even any ammo. It's that kind of game. Reload animations in The Third all actually look like reload animations, but upgrades allow you to speed up how fast the animations play out and get back to the shooting quicker.
 * Everybody in Team Fortress 2 can be seen loading physical ammunition pulled from their Hyperspace Arsenal into their weapons and for the most part look like it can be pulled off in real life, at least from the player's perspective. However, there are many exceptions, and every class has at least one unorthodox reload animation, though some in the list are prusumably bugs.
 * The Scout reloads his pistol by dropping the magazine out, flipping it on his finger by the trigger, inserting a new mag in, and completing the spin. Also, he doesn't insert or eject anything from the Lugermorph when he reloads it, only pats the grip of the gun. He never actually reloads his scattergun, either, he only ejects the spent shells.
 * The Soldier jams four rockets at once into the front of his tube-shaped launcher's barrel. He doesn't load any rockets into any of his other rocket-using primary weapons when reloading.
 * When reloading the shotgun and Reserve Shooter, the Pyro doesn't insert any shells, appearing to flick the air underneath the gun.
 * The Demoman simply pulls the bolt on both stickybomb launchers back a few times, magically forming new bombs. Also, his pipe grenade launcher, which for game balance reasons, has a four round magazine. The in-game model quite clearly has six chambers. On top of that, the barrels never rotate in the loading animation--he's stuffing all those grenades into the same chamber, Soldier-style. The Loch-n-Load uses the same reload animation as the Grenade Launcher, so the Demoman doesn't actually slide the grenades into the barrel.
 * The Heavy pumps the entire shotgun when reloading the Family Business.
 * When the Engineer reloads the Pistol (same pistol as the Scout's), he jams a new one in backwards. As with the Scout, he merely pats the grip when reloading the Lugermorph
 * When reloading the syringe gun, Blutsauger, or Overdose the Medic doesn't insert new syringes; he just replaces the air cartridge in the back.
 * The Sniper's bolt-action rifle in-game just seems like it has a bottomless magazine, but "Meet the Sniper" shows it's a single-shot. He just reloads every single bullet by hand in the time it takes to normally operate a magazine-fed kind.
 * The Spy uses both hands to reload his pistol, which is fine... unless he has also activated the Invis Watch on his left wrist (which also appears on-screen), making him appear to have three hands. Additionally, when he reloads some of his revolvers, he doesn't put any bullets in the barrel, no do any bullets eject.
 * Although the "Gun Porn" first-person shooter "Black" doesn't exactly have unorthodox reloads, if its most detailed aspect is its guns, the 2nd-most detailed aspect are said guns reloads. Every single reload completely blurs the focus of anything past your gun and the hand that is hold it, essentially forcing you to pay attention to your normal, albeit slightly exaggerated, reloads.
 * The exception to "normal" comes from a couple of weapons that add an extra indulgence to the reload animation. Examples coming to mind are the speed-loading revolver, in which the player character spends a full second staring at the new clip before inserting it, or some submachine guns in which the player character tips the magazine's top towards him to see whether there are bullets inside. Even the H&K MP5 has the player character smacking the new mag against the side of the gun to line up the cartridges right before inserting it. These might be weird on their own, but as stated, the game blurs out everything on screen except for 2 feet in front of you, so that you can only make out the indulgent reloads.
 * There was a button in The Punisher video game for the Xbox that let you kill practically any normal Mook with a melee/point blank attack with whatever weapon you're currently holding. For one of the shotgun melee kills The Punisher hits the barrel of the shotgun to the guy's gut and uses the victim's own terrified grip on the forearm to help him load another shell with another jab forward, to eventually blast the poor guy in the stomach.
 * In Monday Night Combat, the Sniper reloads both his sniper rifle and his SMG behind his back.
 * When reloading(empty) dual M1911 pistols in Black Ops, the character will reload both guns by dropping the magazines, loading in new magazines (off-screen), and flipping the guns over to pull the slide back.
 * Reloading the FAL in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 shows your character removing the old magazine by smacking the release lever with a new one before inserting that (with the new mag clipping through the trigger guard on the way).
 * The MP5 in Killing Floor has a similar reload, with the bonus of an added HK Slap.
 * The ASP in Call of Duty Black Ops, as well as the P99 and G36C in Modern Warfare 3, get a similar reload: the character grabs the new magazine first, brings it up next to the old one, then in one quick motion removes the old one and tosses it away while inserting the new one.
 * The Lee-Enfield in Call of Duty: Finest Hour on Play Station 2 reloads via swapping out the magazine like the other British weapons. Needless to say, that's not how soldiers went about reloading the gun in real life (or any other Call of Duty games that feature the weapon, for that matter).
 * The MP7 in Red Steel has the same basic reload animation as the Mini-Uzi (replace the magazine, pull back the charging handle), except for this gun Scott decides to use his mind to pull the handle back (likely because the MP7's handle is in a different location than the Mini-Uzi's and they didn't want to put much effort in a different animation for it).
 * The Terminator in Terminator 3: The Redemption flip-cocks his shotgun after every shot as in Terminator 2. Even more unorthodox, the shotgun in question this time isn't lever-action.
 * Reloads in Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon range from orthodox to just plain weird. The Battle Armor reloads most weapons by making a weird sort of arm-pumping motion, for instance - though with the other hand taken up by the shield projector this is somewhat understandable. But no matter which Armor you use, they all make quite a racket when reloading.
 * Serious Sam's revolvers are loaded by shaking the cylinder loose and then shaking it back into place. Justified in that the revolvers have techno-magical ammunition replenishers.

Web Original

 * The Master Chief in Haloid kills a group of Elites with a shotgun, mixing fancy pumps of the shotgun with martial arts.
 * This particularly unorthodox reload has to be seen to be believed.