Using the terms clip and magazine interchangeably was likely due to the reference in World War II movies when soldiers would say pass me a clip as they ran out of ammunition in the middle of a firefight. M1 Garand rifles, once standard issues for U.S. infantry units, featured an internal magazine that accepted en bloc clips. By the time the U.S. military switched to magazine-fed weapons, journalists and screenwriters had gotten used to the term clip. Additionally, journalists covering guerrilla warfare in Central America during the 1980s coined the term banana clip¹, referring to the curved, high-capacity magazines for AK-47 assault rifles. Apparently, calling these devices banana magazines did not have the same ring. Eventually, they were described as banana mags, but the common cultural slang was already established.