Bullet Seed

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Frequently seen in cartoons (static or animated), this is when a character spits a stream of small objects in such a way that the result looks like machine gun fire.

May tie in to Green Thumb since this is, of course, a plant based power.

A common form of Breath Weapon.

Compare and contrast Flechette Storm for a different spray of small projectiles.


Examples of Bullet Seed include:

Metaphorical Bullet Examples

Anime and Manga

  • Bleach: when Toshiro Hitsugaya and Momo are children, "Little Shiro" does this to Momo with watermelon seeds.
  • One Piece character Chu/Chew uses this with bursts of water.
  • Sailor Moon: Sailor Chibi Moon's (useless) Pink Sugar Heart Attack.
  • Digimon Savers: Lalamon's "Nuts Shoot" attack (dubbed as "Seed Blast").
  • In an anime-only episode of Ranma ½, Ranma and Genma get into a duel over watermelon slices where they start bouncing all over the place and strafing each other with torrents of spat watermelon seeds. They don't actually hurt each other with them, though, it's more of a contest to them.
    • And in the manga, the family is given a small plant meant to punish Oni by detecting their angry faces. At first, it spits out a small spray of seeds hard enough to sting. As it gets frustrated with the Saotomes and the Tendos, it moves on to destructive barrages of armor-piercing spitting.
  • In Slayers some Monsters can continuously spray lots of weak glowing bolts that resemble tracers from a bundle of machineguns. To a lesser degree, Scatter Brid spell that fires swarms of tiny ball lightnings.

Film

  • When Dumbo has his flying down, he strafes elephants who've mistreated him, spraying them with peanuts.
  • Winnie the Pooh does this with bees.
  • Hugo the gargoyle does this with rock shards in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
  • Unusual live-action instance: Weird Al Yankovic in UHF (during a parody of Rambo).
  • For a given value of "seed"... Shep the elephant shooting coconuts out of his trunk in George of the Jungle.

Tabletop RPG

  • Mongoose Publishing's Strontium Dog RPG. The mutant power Missiles allows a mutant to fill his mouth with objects and spit them at opponents to do damage. If the mutant uses seeds or gravel a minor amount of damage is done.

Video Games

  • The Bullet Seed move in Pokémon, from where the trope takes its name. It's a multi-attack, grass-type move that hits the opponent several times in a row using seeds. It was very weak in the games (though multiple hits makes it much more powerful when Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors gives you an advantage, and in Pokémon Black and White it became far more usable), but was actually usable in the anime when Ash's Treecko learned it (Ash helped tutor Treecko by chewing on watermelon and spitting out the seeds in a similar fashion). Also, it's a very useful move in the Mystery Dungeon games, where it's a ranged attack that can hit multiple enemies at once and base power doesn't exist.
    • It's also one of Ivysaur's moves in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and can rack up a considerable amount of damage if you can catch your opponents in it for a few seconds while they are in mid-jump.
    • Fun fact: Bullet Seed's original name in Japanese was "Seed Machine Gun".
  • Yoshi can spit seeds repeatedly in Yoshi's Island, after eating a watermelon.
  • The latter member of the Banjo-Kazooie pair can do this with a variety of eggs, as well as "lay" them to the rear and, in Banjo-Tooie, use a crosshairs and enter an FPS-style mode in select areas.
  • Chrono Cross has Neofio, with a move Pop Pop Pop
  • The entire premise of the game Plants vs. Zombies, although more specifically the Pea Shooter and its offshoots (the Snow Pea, the Repeater, the Threepeater, the Split Pea, and the Gatling Pea).

Western Animation

  • Anytime a cartoon character eats a watermelon, expect this trope to play out.
  • Tucker in My Life as a Teenage Robot, while eating/choking on a slice of watermelon.
  • Numbuh 4 in Codename: Kids Next Door, using chocolate balls.
  • Animaniacs, in which the ammunition was malted milk balls.
  • In one episode of Rugrats, Phil gained the ability to do this with spit, as "Spitball Boy".
  • Garfield does this frequently with such items as raisins or watermelon seeds.
  • Ratatouille: Remy's brother does this with grapes.
  • Frequently seen in old Disney cartoons, particularly with watermelon seeds.
  • In the Daffy Duck short Muscle Tussle Daffy faces a rival for his gal's affections. At one point his rival bites a chain, chews, and spits out a buch of nails. Not to be outdone Daffy bites a chain, chews, and spits out his teeth.
  • Tundro, a ten-legged, four-horned rhino on the Hanna-Barbera production, Herculoids, shoots molten balls out of one of his horns.
  • Bounty Hamster. Casey is unimpressed when Marion fires a stream of cucumbers at her attacker.
  • In one episode of Futurama an army of Lucy Liu robots spit out popcorn at Fry and company in this manner.
  • In The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Popcorn Panic," Rico does this with popcorn kernels to (literally) shoot out the lights.
  • In SpongeBob SquarePants when Patrick deflects the snowballs Spongebob fires at him using his uvula! (thing at the back of the mouth)
  • In Hero: 108 the Air Force eats a mouthful of grapes each time they want to be able to spit the seeds out like a machine gun as a weapon for dogfighting.
  • Henry and June use this with watermelon seeds in the pilot episode.
  • In the Batman the Brave And The Bold episode "Terror on Dinosaur Island!" Plastic Man does this with pieces of Grodd's loot when the need arises, which he hoped to keep for himself.
  • One of Popeye the Sailor's favorite techniques, usually involving nails, tacks, rivets, or other small metal objects.
  • In the animated Teen Titans, a child metahuman Extreme Omnivore named Teether can chew up and spit even metal with gunlike force.
    • Similarly, Gatling from World of Quest has this as his signature... well, pretty much only attack.
  • In Thundercats 2011 Lilliputian Plant People the Petalars employ bullet pollen due to their deminutive size, aiding their friends the Thundercats against Scarily Competent Tracker pursuers.

Real Bullet Examples

Film

  • The Mask villain Dorian Tyrell uses this to return the favor when he's shot repeatedly, killing his boss, Niko.
    • What's odd is that he turns handgun bullets into semi-automatic rifle rounds.
      • The mask is possessed by a trickster god, so its wearer can naturally make use of 'toon physics', where odd is normal (notice how the bullets come out of his boss' gun as complete cartridges, as always happened in the old cartoons).
  • In an action-movie-parody section of "Weird Al" Yankovic's UHF, Weird Al catches a bullet (including cartridge) in his teeth, chews it up, and spits it out a la this.
  • In Walt Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks, an animated suit of armor responds to being shot by a Nazi by spitting the bullets back at him out of its helmet.

Tabletop RPG

  • Mongoose Publishing's Strontium Dog RPG. The mutant power Missiles allows a mutant to fill his mouth with objects and spit them at opponents to do damage. If the mutant uses bullets, a serious amount of damage is done.

Western Animation

  • In two Looney Tunes short, Daffy Duck accidentally swallows some gun powder and buckshot, turning him into a living machine gun for desperate Porky Pig to use.
  • In Bully for Bugs, the bull Bugs Bunny is fighting accidentally swallows a gun (which gets stuck inside its tail) and finds that he can shoot bullets out of his horns. He goes after Bugs until he runs out of ammo, so he swallows a whole box of elephant gun shells (and exploding rounds, at that!), fires... and gets blowed up real good!
    • What was interesting is that El Toro fired the rifle by hitting the stock of it on the ground... after it somehow turned around inside him when he swallowed it so the muzzle faced his front. Ah, well, it's Looney Tunes.
  • In the Popeye short, Pop-Along Popeye, after eating his spinach, Popeye takes the ranch foreman's ammo belt, and runs it like a belt-fed machine gun as he shoots the bullets from his pipe. As the bullets shave bits of wood from a fence post, the shavings fly into a bottle to make a ship.