The pistol is the player's default weapon, and fires bullets. Each player enters the game with a pistol, fifty bullets, and their fists, with the pistol selected as the active weapon. It uses the same ammunition as the chaingun. None of the monsters carry a pistol, though the Zombieman appears to be armed with a rifle that fires pistol bullets.

Trivia

• The images for the pistol in Doom were created from a toy replica of the Beretta 92FS, which was a water pistol that was painted black before being digitalized.
• Because neither players nor monsters can drop a pistol, it is the only weapon (apart from the fists) that does not have a "pickup" sprite. An icon for the pistol can be seen in the Doom Collector's Edition and Final Doom instruction manuals, but this graphic does not appear in the game (Can be picked up when dropped in GZDoom).
• The pistol’s hud sprites in the Atari Jaguar port of Wolfenstein 3D are based on Doom’s.
• The Doom 64 pistol has a new look. The gun is narrower, making it look more like a Desert Eagle. For all intents and purposes the player doesn't need to use the pistol in a combat setting, as a shotgun sits in the first room of MAP01: Staging Area not far from the starting area.
• In the Saturn port, the pistol fires much faster than in other ports.
• In the PlayStation and Saturn ports, it has a different firing sound.
• Interestingly, the pistol (along with the fist) is used left-handed, while the shotgun, chainsaw and every other weapons are wielded right-handed.
• As with most other firearms in the game, the pistol is never reloaded, theoretically making its clip capacity a whopping 200 bullets (400 with backpack).
• In the earlier versions of Brutal Doom, the pistol is replaced by a highly powerful assault rifle, the same used by Zombiemen and the player in early alphas of Doom.
• In Doom 1 and 2 iwad files there are 2 unused graphics for the pistol.
• When picked, console shows "Picked up pistol."