A-Team Firing/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The protagonists, no matter how much firepower or ammunition they have, are incapable of hitting targets.

  • Straight: Alice and Bob are Hired Guns attempting to shoot out Steve, the Big Bad of the episode, but can't seem to shoot him with their carbines.
  • Exaggerated: Bob and Alice have with them, an army of trained soldiers dual-wielding chainguns, as well as 15,000 tanks and jet fighters, as well as laser-firing satellites. All of them are fired at the same time, but when the smoke clears, it is revealed that the army has hit everywhere except for where Steve is standing.
  • Justified:
    • Bob and Alice's guns are highly inaccurate, even with a scope. Alternately, Steve may move fast enough so that Alice and Bob can't aim quick enough to fire.
    • Alternatively, Alice and Bob were given orders that Thou Shalt Not Kill.
  • Inverted: Alice and Bob have Improbable Aiming Skills. Alternately, Steve is a top-notch graduate from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, or possibly both.
  • Subverted: It looks like Alice and Bob are missing their targets, but they're actually aiming to cause a fire, avalanche or other disaster that will be far more deadly to them.
  • Double Subverted: ...But it turns out they missed the target they were actually aiming for, as well.
  • Parodied:
    • Everybody's accuracy is bad, and large amounts of bystanders and large objects end up severely wounded.
    • Nobody cares that they are under heavy fire, because nobody never gets shot in this world.
    • Everything but Steve is shot, and he walks by the ravished landscape completely unharmed.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Alice and Bob's sheer inaccuracy with the weapons results in them losing their titles.
    • Hitting everywhere but Steve results in severe collateral damage. Sued for Superheroics.
  • Reconstructed: ... Which leads them to travel to a school about firearms, using their poor marksmanship skills usefully, allowing them to show students the dangers of bad accuracy.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob and Alice's skills with guns vary.
  • Averted: Alice and Bob are competent with guns; rather than firing full auto and relying on Bottomless Magazines, they find cover, pick specific targets and aim carefully.
  • Enforced: The show's producers go The A-Team route; being aware that youths are among the watchers of it, the producers decide to have Alice and Bob purposefully miss Steve, setting up for a bigger clash later on in the episode. See Bloodless Carnage.
  • Lampshaded: "We never seem to hit our targets with these guns, do we Alice?"
  • Invoked: The man who hired Alice and Bob is The Mole, and gave them guns with dodgy sights and hair-triggers.
  • Defied: After a few misfired shots, Bob and Alice both attach scopes onto their carbines, allowing them to fire with more precision.
  • Discussed: "Why don't these guys just try and snipe him out? He wouldn't expect it, and they'd save ammo."
  • Conversed: "You ever notice how the good guys on television rarely hit their targets? Maybe guns aren't for them..."

Go back to A-Team Firing? Ha! You couldn't hit this link at point blank *BANG*

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