AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Why can't you just pick arrows back up? Tons of games do that.

Some games don't, strangely enough. Playing through XIII, you cannot pick up the arrows, or the throwing knives, once they've been used.

Eeeeww, those knives and arrows were touching the ground.
And you know what else touched the ground? The walls.
The walls are on the floor. Don't touch those things or anything they touch.

That makes... perfect sense. How did I never think of that before?

But then again, it is a waste of an otherwise perfectly good arrow/knife/other projectile that could be reused, so maybe video game protagonists should carry a can of Lysol or something.

In Bioshock 2 you can pick up used arrows, but, then again, the protagonist is wearing a full-body suit.

I haven't practiced archery, nor am I particularly well versed in physics, but I imagine what would usually happen after firing a stick of wood at the usual forces one would do so to kill a thing, it would end up rendered in an unusable condition if not outright destroyed. In fact, I'm more certain it'd be easier to retrieve and reuse successfully fired arrows.

Again, not someone who has experience with launching arrows at things, or someone with command over the arcane numbers governing how the universe works. So take that with a grain of salt.

Now we're helping someone do their physics homework!

It honestly depends on how the arrow lands and what it lands AGAINST. If it's embedded several inches in a wall, it's probably not going to be easily retrievable unless the wall was made of hay or drywall or something similarly soft and pliable. If it's embedded several inches into a living creature, it's designed to break off, so as to keep the wound open. (Hunting arrows are brutal things.)

If it bounces onto the ground or falls short or wedges into a tree, it should be easy enough to retrieve.

Of course, then you get the sport arrows with fiberglass shafts and no broad head, those won't break nearly as easily but they also need much better precision (and/or luck) to get them to be lethal, since you basically have to directly skewer an organ or major artery.

There's also aluminum and carbon-shafted arrows, but those are generally not going to be something you can find easily in a post-apocalyptic zombie hellscape. (Citation Needed)

I've got two edits.

Fun fact, arrows were designed to break upon missing so shitter archers would give up and go back to milking cows or goats or whatever it is they have. I base this upon absolutely nothing, but it's an entertaining thought.

Me playing fire emblem.

The actual reason they broke was because you did not want to let the enemy archers pick them up and fire them back. You can look at this scholarly article if you don't believe me.

Tiedrich, Katie. "Archers and Fake Facts." On The Reality of Games 8th ser. 12.42 (1996): 42-18. Web. 5 May 2016.

I apologize for Entei's shitty appearance.

The fact that Joel threw a quick ball well after he threw the first Ultra Ball is ripping me apart inside

Here's an edit with some dark humor:

Well, he didn't use his Master Ball so clearly he's not too bright.

I never get tried of long-neck Caesar edits.