Battle Discretion Shot: Difference between revisions

[[File:sandvichdiscretion .jpg|link=Team Fortress 2|frame|[[You Do NOT Want to Know|You ''don't'' want to know]] what's happening on the other side of that refrigerator door.]]

 

 

Or: [[A View to a Kill|A Non-View To A Kill]]

 

{{noreallife|Real Life does not have [[Discretion Shot]]s of any sort.}}

{{examples}}

* ''[[Tsukuyomi Moon Phase]]'', [[Offscreen Moment of Awesome|I'm looking at you]]. {{spoiler|The fight between Hazuki and Count Kinkel took place pretty much entirely off-screen. And it was dead serious.}}

* [[Played for Laughs|Used for humorous effect]] in ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' when Excel is killing {{spoiler|the creator of the original manga, Koshi Rikdo}}, [[Relax-O-Vision|random shots of flowers and butterflies are seen in place of the supposedly gory action]].

 

== Comic Books ==

* In ''[[52]]'', there's a beautiful example of this. Lex Luthor has been provoking Steel for months—at the moment, Steel's niece is his hostage—and has often crossed the [[Moral Event Horizon]] for reasons related to his "Everyman" project, which has culminated in Luthor gaining [[Flying Brick|Superman's powers]]. Steel's armor has been destroyed, which leads to several pages of [[No-Holds-Barred Beatdown]]—and Steel still gets back up, every single time. Fortunately, Natasha (The niece) [[Flaw Exploitation|uses Luthor's paranoia]] and her own ingenuity against him, ultimately shutting down Luthor's powers. Luthor has an [[Oh Crap]] moment, and then the next panel is a wide shot of the building, and the sounds of smackdown ''echoing'' across Metropolis. It is ''unspeakably'' [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|satisfying]]. The creator commentary included in the trade paperback reveals that, originally, we were ''supposed'' to actually see the end of the fight, but the writers realised that nothing they could draw could possibly look as amazing as what the readers' own minds would fill in.

* In ''[[Street Fighter (comics)|Street Fighter]]'', one issue ends with Ryu accepting a challenge from "the greatest Kushti wrestler in all of India." We don't see the fight, but one can only imagine how it ended.

 

* Part of the climax for ''[[Let the Right One In]]'': {{spoiler|Oskar is about to be drowned by the brother of the bully he beat up, his head held underwater. We only see it from under the pool, so we don't know what's happening at first, but it becomes apparent soon enough that Eli is killing the bullies when a ''severed head'' falls into the pool, followed swiftly by an arm.}}

* [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] in ''[[Spy Kids]]'': "Carmen, Juni, close your eyes! We don't want you to see this!"

* ''[[Fight Club]]'': The fight between the Narrator and Blondie. According to the [[DVD Commentary|director's commentary]], the original version was more directly graphic, but the censors boohooed it. The result that made it into the cinematic version fit this trope. The change, arguably, led to a scene more horrible because it used this trope.

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Redwall|Rackety Tam]]'' has a small group of robbers occupying a family of farming voles' home. Then, [[The Lancer]] (and [[The Big Guy]]) and the [[Lightning Bruiser]] come along and decide [[Trojan Prisoner|to infiltrate the home as "hostages"]]. In an offscreen battle inside the home, from the POV of the vole family who have evacuated their children outside to keep them away from the fighting, the two protagonists manage to kill all the three or four robbers. According to the sounds inside, they fight them with kitchen utensils and their own weapons. In the end, the last of the robbers trundles out, gargles violently and dies as well.

* The battle outside Riverrun in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' is told entirely from Catelyn Stark's perspective. She is somewhere close to the battle where she can hear it, but it was too dark for her to see.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'': the big battle between the FBI and {{spoiler|Cromartie}} at the end of Season 1 to the tune of Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around." {{spoiler|Cromartie slaughters everybody except Agent Ellison, but we only see things from underwater, as bodies come crashing down in the pool one by one.}} ''And a voice spoke and said, "Come and see," [[Department of Redundancy Department|and I saw]]. And behold, [[Incendiary Exponent|a flaming horse]], [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|and him that was on it was Awesome, and Sweet followed after him]].''

* Done repeatedly in ''[[Rome]]''. The series includes several major battles of the early Roman Empire, but only once actually showed huge groups of soldiers fighting each other. For example, Caesar's campaign against Magnus is represented with a few screaming soldiers and a Roman standard falling into a puddle. That's about five years of warfare, right there.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* One ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' strip had Calvin sledding down a particularly treacherous hill. Instead of seeing him crash, we see Hobbes standing at the top of the hill, watching and reacting.

 

== Video Games ==

* The ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' video ''Meet the Sandvich'' takes place entirely inside a refrigerator with the camera pointing at the eponymous Sandvich. The beauty is in the sounds of the battle - first the Heavy chows down on his sandvich with an almost-adorable "OM NOM NOM" noise, then come some sickening cracks and the Scout's screams of "MY BLOOD! HE PUNCHED OUT ''ALL'' MY BLOOD!" [[Hilarity Ensues|Hilarity ensued]].

** This this later becomes justified with a little bit of [[Fridge Brilliance]] (Or [[Fridge Horror|Horror]]) from Meet the Medic. {{spoiler|Meet the Sandvich was from perspective of the [[Oracular Head|Oracular Spy Head]] in the fridge}}

* Used a couple times in the ''[[Monkey Island]]'' series; once in the governor's mansion in ''[[The Secret of Monkey Island]]'' and then in Club 41 in the first episode of ''[[Tales of Monkey Island]]''. The latter is one of those "creators didn't have the resources" versions; in a game commentary they explain that showing the inside of Club 41 would have put them over the Wii's file size limit.

 

* In ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', Doc [[It Makes Sense in Context|is retrieving a missile from a robot alligator submarine]] when a park warden catches him. The next page of the comic simply contains the words: HE IS A NINJA and then cuts to Doc driving the warden's car to his destination.

* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'', [[Technical Pacifist|Grace plays a fighting game]] during her birthday party while Ellen watches. [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2005-06-02 At one point], Ellen is actually shocked by what she sees even though its stated to be only cartoon violence.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Lampshaded in the ''[[Animaniacs]] '' episode "Bully for Slappy." After being warned to tone down the level of violence in her cartoons by the US government, Slappy Squirrel spends the rest of the episode building a strange machine while Skippy deals with [[The Bully|a school bully]]. Once the machine is finished, Slappy feeds the bully AND a senator into the machine, explaining that this machine helps eliminate the viewing of violence on screen, by allowing all the violence to happen OFF screen.

* The Yakuza/Springfield Mafia fight in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' takes place mostly from the view of the Kitchen. Homer is then rather bummed out that he's missing out on all the good action.

*** (Little Guy crashes through the window) "Forgiveness, please!"

* Happens a lot in cartoons to get around the [[Moral Guardians]]. You'll see stars and planets shooting into frame from offscreen and you get to see the onlookers wincing reactions.

* Ironically, in the Rankin-Bass ''animated [[The Return of the King (animation)|The Return of the King]],'' even during epic battles, all violence is hidden: a human will fall out-of-frame to the left, and then an orc will enter the frame, and swing his axe in the direction of the (hidden) human.

* In the ''[[Hercules (1997 film)|Hercules]]'' series based on the animated movie, this tended to happen whenever Hades pissed off another of the Olympian gods, usually in the last scene of an episode. He'd try - vainly - to apologize to his angry contemporary, then the screen would shift to the main cast, watching - with horror, amusement, or a combination of both - a rather violent offscreen fight that was clearly one-sided against Hades.

* ''[[Freakazoid!]]'' went a step or two further with [[Relax-O-Vision]]. Can't have the kiddies see you beating up Ben Stein? [[Relax-O-Vision]]!

* A few big battles in the animated ''[[Asterix]]'' movies use the [[Big Ball of Violence]] to hide the brutality, filling the screen with dust and armour flying out (also odder things like false teeth and boxer shorts).

** In a more specific example, During ''Asterix in Britain'', when Obelix is imprisoned in the "Tower of Londinium", we see him leave his cell [[Open Says Me|in the fashion you'd expect]] of [[Does Not Know His Own Strength|Obelix]], then we cut to outside the Tower, hearing the sounds of Obelix knocking the guards about (and occasionally one flying out the window) as he goes down. Once he's down, however, Asterix goes in the front, thinking Obelix is still in there, and it happens again, only this time, going up. They both then realise where the other is, and it happens ''[[Rule of Three|again]]'' until they meet in the middle. The whole thing pretty much qualifies for a [[Crowning Moment of Funny|CMOF]].

{{quote|'''Pinkie Pie:''' ''(enters dragon cave in a silly outfit)'' Sharing a laugh is a surefire way to get someone on your side.

'''Pinkie Pie:''' ''(to dragon while offscreen)'' Hi!

''(cue sounds of offscreen beating)''

* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' episode "Power Lunch"; after the Girls are nearly done in by he super-powered Gangrene Gang, the villains lose their powers, and the Girls are - justifiably - angry. The final scene closes to the sounds of the Girls brutally giving them a pounding over the narrator's closing statements.

* Happens a lot in ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'', especially when one of the heroes beats up several adult enemies, something that is hard to show realistically. One good example is the end credits which occur right after the end of "Operation: F.L.U.S.H.", right after the team closes in on the Toilenator; the viewers see the Treehouse and hear a violent fight from within, until finally, there's a loud flushing noise and the badly bruised villain is dumped out a drainpipe.

* ''[[Transformers Rescue Bots]]'' features one of these when the titular Bots finally manage to confront the [[Evil Counterpart|MorBot]] in combat at the end of "The Reign of Morocco". It may double as a robotic form of [[Gory Discretion Shot]], as the resulting rain of robot parts implies that what they did was rather brutal.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:This Index Happened Offscreen]]

[[Category:Fight Scene]]

[[Category:Discretion Shot]]