Armor Is Useless/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Wearing armour of any sort increases chances of being killed.

  • Straight: The Hero, Victor, goes into battle wearing only normal clothes. Both his supporting force and enemy Mooks are equipped with bulletproof vests. Guess who does and who does not get killed.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Justified:
    • Armour in question is horrendously bulky and inefficient, but was bought at a low price because that's all the military could afford.
    • The weapons that Victor uses are more powerful than what the armor can stop, or Victor is a top-notch shooter who aims for places other than the main body (such as the head).
    • All weapons are Armor-Piercing Attack, so an armored combatant fares no better than an unarmored one.
    • Victor has no access to comfortable armor and/or needs as much mobility as possible.
  • Inverted: Without the armour, Victor is rather squishy. But wearing a flak jacket, he can safely walk right into enemy fire.
  • Subverted: The mooks are wearing something past Class IV in armor ratings.
  • Double Subverted
    • ... but it's not in any way resistant to a good old stabbing.
    • Victor's packing armor-piercing rounds.
  • Parodied:
    • The armour is literally made of cardboard.
    • The armour is directly harmful to its wearer.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Because their armour is so weak, the army loses to its better-equipped enemies and they lose the war with high casualties. It goes down in history as the worst military defeat of the century.
    • Armour is useless because the manufacturer of bulletproof vests was bribed by Emperor Evulz.
  • Reconstructed: ...But his own troops' armor is just as rubbish.
  • Zig Zagged:
    • Armour that withstands powerful attacks inexplicably crumples under less powerful ones. Even with technical explanations, there's simply no way to realistically account for the inconsistency.
    • Armour is useless because the authors simply can't seem to make up their minds about it.
  • Averted: Armour isn't useless - but it's not impenetrable either.
  • Enforced: "This is an action movie, not real life. You know how boring it would be every time our hero has to unload a shitload of bullets onto one guy?"
  • Lampshaded: The Hero said: "Is that cardboard, or what?"
  • Invoked: Emperor Evulz realises this trope is in action and organizes a mass production of armour-piercing rounds for his Mooks to use.
  • Defied: The top quality weapon manufacturers are called in to make sure armour won't be useless.
  • Discussed: The Hero said to his Sidekick: "Don't worry about aiming for joints or silly crap like that, Evulz troops are cheaply outfitted, their powered-armor, while massive, has all the integrity of an egg carton."
  • Conversed: Two guys talk about storming the castle. One says: "Look, I watch TV, I know how it works. There'll be five hundred Mooks in there armoured to the hilt, fighting against us two with no armour whatsoever. We're bound to win."
  • Played For Laughs:
    • Everyone sees being ordered to wear armour as a punishment.
    • An armoured character falls over and every scrap of armour on him collapses into dust.
  • Played For Drama:
    • Hero's friends die tragically due to uselessness of their armour.
    • The massacre of armoured troops is compared with the grief of their families as they watch helplessly from afar.

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