Bulletproof Vest: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Artemus Gordon''': If I may make one last request...that she aim for my heart -- the heart that loved this country so much...

'''Loveless''': [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|...shoot him in the head.]]

 

They cost about $300. They can save your life. Few non-military/police heroes ever wear one, unless they are a major character and it is dramatically required that they get shot. Then [[Unspoken Plan Guarantee|we're not told about it in advance and they'll look dead for a few moments.]]

 

{{examples}}

* Rotton the Wizard probably one of the few people in ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' with the sense to wear one. Shouting out your presence when you have the jump on the enemy not so much.

* [[Gunsmith Cats|Bean Bandit's]] famous armoured jacket seems to be multiple layers of Kevlar wrapped in leather, possibly reinforced with metal. It nearly breaks one character's foot when she accidentally pushed it off a dresser. It'll stop just about anything short of a point-blank assault rifle.

* [[Desert Punk (manga)|Desert Punk]] uses quite a bit of armor.

* Kirei Kotomine in ''[[Fate/Zero]]'' is shown to have bullet-proof priest robes (they're reinforced with Kevlar), which shows just how [[Crazy Prepared]] he is for hunting enemy magi.

 

== Comic Books ==

* In Robert Kirkman's ''[[The Walking Dead]]'', there is a fairly realistic portrayal of a bullet proof vest in action. Glenn is shot with a shotgun at fairly close range while wearing a suit of riot gear (including the vest) and while he does survive, he is injured quite badly with broken ribs and possible internal bleeding.

* In one ''[[Mad Magazine]]'' "[[Spy vs. Spy]]" strip, the black spy welds together a thick metal vest and tests it against bullets, knives, etc; it's invulnerable. He confidently approaches the white spy, who is leaning on a bridge railing. The white spy tosses a large magnet off the bridge into the water below, dragging the vest and its wearer along.

 

== Film ==

*** Made more baffling by the fact that earlier in the same scene the bullets are shown shooting through the front plate of a bulldozer. The bullets are also demonstrated by being fired into a vest hung on a stand. The bullet easily passes through both the front and back sides of the hanging vest, thus proving the bullets could easily penetrate a double thickness of vest.

* In ''[[Kick-Ass (film)|Kick-Ass]]'', [[Training from Hell|the introductory scene for Big Daddy and Hit Girl]]. Later she mentions that she wears kevlar all the way down to her underwear.

* The film ''[[Missing in Action]]'' features an on-the-run [[Chuck Norris]] buying a large raft-like speedboat made from "the same stuff that [[Bullet Proof Vests]] are made of". The salesman demonstrates this by getting into his handy-dandy rotating turret machine gun and putting a few hundred rounds into it, not getting a scratch on it. In reality, some boats are made from such material, but are hardly bulletproof. [[Chuck Norris]] heroically steals the super-boat by [[Ballistic Discount|holding up the salesman with his own turret gun]] and forcing him to accept a nominal sum.

* Notably averted in ''[[Black Hawk Down]]'', when the US soldiers remove the reinforced steel plate from their kevlar body armor before the mission to lighten their load. Because past experience had led them to assume that they would not be fired upon, the soldiers chose to sacrifice protection for maneuverability. Ultimately they find themselves in a heavy fire-fight and suffer casualties that might have been prevented by the steel plating. Ultimately the real event helped create a restructuring of military policy that prohibits soldiers in combat zones from leaving behind their assigned equipment, though some still do.

* Subverted in ''[[Three Days of the Condor]]''. A CIA clerk who is a friend of the protagonist Turner is asked to help bring him in for debriefing and is issued a bulletproof vest "just in case". In reality the meeting is a set-up to kill Turner—when it goes wrong the wounded killer aims carefully and [[You Know Too Much|shoots the clerk in the throat]].

* In the remake of ''New [[Police Story]]'', Jackie Chan's character takes a gunshot point-blank to the chest while negotiating with a hostage taker, and is able to take the guy down immediately after. Subverted immediately after, in which it's indicated that he was [[Crazy Prepared|lucky he was wearing]] ''two'' bullet proof vests or the first wouldn't have protected him at that range.

 

== Literature ==

* The nightsilk garments of the ''Corean Chronicles'' series is impact resistant when worn in a skintight outfit, making a body stocking of this material effectively a set of bulletproof underwear. The material is very expensive though, so the reason the hero of the first trilogy can afford to wear it constantly is because his family manufactures it.

* ''[[Fate/Zero]]'' revealed that, in the [[Nasuverse]], Church Executioners wear bullet proof ''priest robes''.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* The ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' team suit up in Kevlar vests [[Once an Episode]].

* Subverted in ''Lost''. Ben shoots Charlotte and she is saved by her vest. Despite this, she is knocked unconscious, suffers extreme injuries from the impact and is in a lot of pain from getting hit with a bullet.

 

== Music ==

* A bulletproof vest is one of [[50 Cent]]'s signature pieces of clothing. Since he based his entire schtick on surviving 9 gunshot wounds, it made sense. Reportedly, the men that murdered Jam Master Jay were actually looking for him, and also supposedly the first runs of G-Unit clothing only came in XXL specifically so they could be worn over the top of the vest.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* The bullet proof vests available in ''[[GURPS]]'' do not inspire confidence, but they can make the difference between dead and dying.

* Flak vests (and flak helmets, jackets, pants, and suits in the expanded 2nd and 3rd editions) are the most widely available armor in the ''[[Mechwarrior]]'' tabletop role playing game and are actually reasonably useful against most of the common weapons a player character might face, such as slugthrower pistols and melee weapons. Once lasers and other exotic weapons come into play (particularly [[Kill It with Fire|flamers]] and [[Flechette Storm|heavy needlers]], basic flak armor generally falls by the wayside for something sturdier.

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''Goldeneye'', ''James Bond 007: Nightfire'', <s>''[[Perfect Dark]]''</s>, ''[[Time Splitters]]'', and ''[[Command & Conquer]]: Renegade'' you can pick up a bulletproof vest that essentially acts as a second health bar. Headshots still hurt, though.

** Perfect Dark uses an energy shield that has the same effect though, except that it does block head shots.

* ''[[Splinter Cell]]: Chaos Theory'' actually plays this quite realistically; if Sam triggers two or more alarms, guards will don body armor and helmets. While the armor is relatively effective against his rifle and renders his pistol practically useless except for headshots below the helmets' brims, his knife goes straight through their armor, and his nonlethal unarmed attacks, which aim for the base of the skull or nose, still knock enemies unconscious.

* Just like in real life, kevlar armors in ''[[Counter-Strike]]'' do little more than increasing your firefight life expectancy from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. Kevlar helmets, meanwhile, are only effective against pistols and ''maybe'' against 5.56&nbsp;mm rifles.

* In the ''[[X-COM]]'' games unarmoured soldiers will [[Redshirt Army|die with disgusting ease]]. Personal Armour and even Power Armour is available but by the time it's in use, most aliens are packing weapons which will still inflict lethal damage no matter how heavy the armour, and mobile nightmare objects the [[Demonic Spiders|Chryssalids]] ignore armour anyway.

** Primarily because the RNG is horrible/evil, and your soldiers can take up to ''200%'' of the listed damage shown in the UFOpaedia. On the other hand, they can also take ''0%'' of the listed damage, depending on what the RNG rolls. So your troopers can literally survive a point blank headshot without taking a single point of damage. Sometimes, the RNG only ever rolls 200s or 0s. This can lead to interesting situations where a soldier survives half a dozen heavy plasma shots only to get pinged to death by a plasma pistol shot the next turn.

* ''[[The Godfather (video game)|The Godfather]] 2'' has bulletproof vests as a reward for completing the diamond smuggling crime ring. They only reduce damage and don't guard the head or limbs.

* ''SWAT 4'' has you and your team wear light Kevlar vests and helmets by default, and the expansion pack allows you to use Heavy or even no armor in multiplayer. Suspects get armor too in some missions, but due to the game being big on realism, said body armors are only marginally effective in most situations.

 

== Webcomics ==

** Later on there's a [http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=061108 bit of discussion] about the difference between "bullet proof" and "knife proof" vests.

* Nearly all the soldiers, mercenaries, and guards in ''[[Cry Havoc]]'' wear body armor, most of it military grade plate armor. It also becomes a plot point when Freyja develops a 'formula' for armor that adapts to changes in its wearers physiology (an important issue for werewolves).

 

== Web Original ==

* In [[The Return (fanfic)|The Return]] Darkstar's [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampires|Brood]] are eventually convinced to replace their [[Stripperiffic]] [http://florestica.com/jtemple/art/return/ds02.jpg outfits] with more [http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y44/sunshinetemple/FanArt_not_on_site/Ranma_new-armor2.jpg sensible ones] with bullet proofing.

* Subverted in a ''[[Homestar Runner|Cheat Commandos]]'' toon, where Gunhaver shoots Flashfight playfully, falsely believing that the latter is wearing a bulletproof vest that they were playing around with at the beginning of the toon.

 

== Western Animation ==

* In ''[[American Dad]]'', Stan has to wear braces to prevent teeth grinding, making him sound like a geek. His coworkers plant a [["Kick Me" Prank|"Shoot Me"]] sign on him, and then shoot at him.

{{quote|'''Stan:''' Oh, ha ha! Very funny guys! You're lucky I'm wearing my vest!!}}

 

== Real Life ==

** The effectiveness of body armor is highly underestimated. As [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/7321647.stm this] article demonstrates, modern body armor can receive a full-contact grenade blast.

** Many army medics in Iraq reported that soldiers who survived an IED blast would often have shrapnel injuries on the limbs that would stop in a very neat line where their body armor started.

* A primitive version of such a vest is reputed to have been used by tax-gatherers. It consisted of a plank of wood hanging under the clothes on their back, and apparently it was not unknown for them to go about their business with arrows sticking out of it.

* People who make chainmail as a hobby can make good money not only by making costume-armor for Renaissance fairs but also selling mail vests to police officers looking for greater knife-protection than what their standard-issue body armor provides. However, according to research carried out by the British army in [[WW 1]], chainmail will actually make a gunshot worse. It's not strong enough to stop a bullet and will actually fragment, carrying more shrapnel into the body, as well as making it hard to reach the wound for treatment. Additionally, any stabs that do get through the chainmail will drive part of the mail into the wound, which can easily lead to infection. Also, while high quality chainmail coupled with effective padding is effectively knife proof, lower grade chain is not.

** Chainmail is also pretty heavy and cumbersome as it hangs from the shoulders. Thin steel panels are much lighter and provide comparable knife protection.

** In 2006, the US Army banned the use of privately purchased armor (making any deaths while wearing non-approved armor not eligible for certain death benefits), specifically the Dragon Skin, although some elite troops are known to hold on to their Dragon Skin after the ban, prefering it over the standard-issue Interceptor Body Armor.

*** The decision was likely also driven by a nasty collapse of accountability for body armor during the War in Iraq. The upsurge in privately-purchased body armor was driven by a breakdown in the supply of armor in the run-up to the war (the Army switched body armor types ''right'' before the war).

 

{{reflist}}