Do soldiers in wars actually throw empty mags like in video games?
So as veteran and whose specialty was firearms I feel like I can give an answer to this one.
At first I assumed this question was about “throwing” partially empty mags when you reload before the depleting your magazine. In real life, reloading mags (as in, putting individual bullets into a magazine before putting that mag into a gun) is something you’ll (hopefully) never be doing in the moment. You load all your mags in advance.
You’re trained to ideally leave one round in the chamber when you perform a mag change (this is often not how it works in real life, because it requires you to keep track of how many rounds you’ve fired, but it’s a good habit we try to foster in shooters).
Unlike real life, in a videogame when you exchange a partially expended mag for a fresh mag, whatever extra ammo was remaining in your current magazine when you reloaded is magically conserved in your bullet stockpile. Only the most hardcore/realistic games will make you lose the remaining rounds in your mag if you reload “prematurely”.
Magazines themselves, devoid of bullets, are extremely cheap (if you’re the military), but people are still expected to keep track of the things they’ve been issued. Losing an empty mag in a middle east firefight here or there might not be a big deal, but its a practice that is not encouraged. Losing track of a live rounds you’ve been issued is an even bigger deal, but if you’ve been involved in a firefight it’s easy to just say that you must have expended it.
tl;dr: No. Sometimes. Maybe.