Annoying Arrows/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Arrows are treated as simply an annoyance, instead of causing potentially life-threatening injuries like they would in real life.

  • Straight: Steve gets hit by an arrow. He pulls it out and continues fighting.
  • Exaggerated: Steve is hit by a barrage of arrows from a group of enemy archers. He pulls each one out, and doesn't even seem to be bleeding.
  • Downplayed: Steve is shown to be in pain from being hit by arrows, but still just pulls them out and continues fighting, not being in life-threatening danger.
  • Justified:
    • Steve is wearing heavy armor, which the arrows are unable to penetrate.
    • Steve isn't human; he's an android, demon, alien, or some other type of creature that can shrug off such attacks with ease.
  • Inverted:
    • Steve is seemingly unfazed by sword wounds, but when he gets hit by an arrow he collapses at once.
    • Alternatively: An arrow barely grazes Steve's shoulder. He loses use of that arm permanently.
    • Steve is immune to all weapons the enemy uses, except arrows. The Big Bad knows this, and takes advantage of it.
  • Subverted: The arrow hits Steve, and he seems only slightly bothered by it, but then the pain kicks in and he collapses.
  • Double Subverted: ...After he collapses, though, one of Steve's comrades removes the arrow, and Steve quickly leaps up and resumes fighting.
  • Parodied: Steve charges towards the enemy archers with his sword and ends up nearly covered in arrows. He complains about how it's going to take forever to pull them all out of his skin, what a waste of time.
  • Deconstructed: It turns out that the enemy's arrows are nearly painless because they were tipped with a poison that numbs the area of the injury and causes the wounds to often swell closed and bleed only a minimal amount. Shortly after the battle, however, people start dying.
  • Reconstructed: ...until an antidote is discovered, and when administered, people can charge into battle treating arrows as simply annoying again.
  • Zig Zagged: Steve's character gets hit in the chest with an arrow, and just pulls it out. His comrade gets hit in the shoulder with a nearly identical arrow and collapses at once, except that was actually from shock because he wasn't expecting that, but oh wait now he's bleeding badly from his arrow wound... Nope, Just a Flesh Wound, don't worry.
  • Averted: Arrows are treated as deadly, or at least extremely painful.
  • Enforced: "There are tons of enemy archers! If the arrows did wound people severely, the battle would be one-sided, and we need the battle to take up the whole episode!"
  • Lampshaded: "Oh dear, an arrow wound. These never even hurt."
  • Invoked: The archers are there to seem weak and thus distract the enemy into moving in for the kill. They use small, dull arrowheads to avoid doing too much damage and seeming like a threat.
  • Defied: The archers make sure that their arrowheads are especially sharp, and tip them with a highly potent toxin so that they'll do damage even if quickly pulled out.
  • Discussed: "No, we shouldn't send in the archers! Nobody ever dies of arrow wounds here anyway, they just pull them out. It's pointless."
  • Conversed: "Oh, come on. That arrow wound totally should've at least pierced Steve's lung! Why are the arrows always made so pathetic in these shows?"

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