Bulletproof Vest: Difference between revisions
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They cost about $600. 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.]]
In military combat, and occasionally SWAT action shows, the
In fiction, a bullet proof vest is capable of stopping anything up to (and sometimes even including) armour-piercing bullets. The shot might knock you down and leave you with a hole in your shirt, but you'll get up just fine. In games, vests almost universally either stop all damage or just reduce damage taken, and then are destroyed when they take enough damage(Actually ceramic plate armor protects against high caliber bullets by ablation, breaking apart to diffuse the kinetic energy. Needless to say its useless after a few rounds). Video game injuries are a matter of mathematical equation, whereas in real life there is a great deal of randomness involved and the usefulness of such armor lies in reducing injuries rather than eliminating them entirely.
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* ''Gomorrah'' (2008). Children applying to join a Camorra clan are made to wear a heavy bulletproof vest which is then shot, to test their courage.
* Played straight in ''[[District 9]]''. Wikus is hit while [[Storming the Castle|infiltrating MNU]]. After he kills the offending shooter (leading to a [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]), he looks at the bullets left in his vest.
* The final battle scene in ''[[Mr. and Mrs. Smith]]'' has both protagonists take multiple bursts from submachine guns and close-range rocket strikes and they suffer almost no ill effects whatsoever. These vests are borderline [[Pocket Protector
* In the beginning of ''[[Predator]] 2'', Danny Glover armors his car by hanging kevlar vests over the side windows.
* In ''The Evil That Men Do'' Charles Bronson shoots a CIA man with a shotgun, only for him to get up again. This time Bronson shoots him in the face.
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* ''[[Raw Deal]]''. A mafia hit squad decides to murder a rival mob boss by running their car off the road. When [[Arnold Schwarzenegger]] (playing an undercover cop posing as a [[Professional Killer]]) points out the limo is heavier than their vehicle, the leader replies: "Not if you shoot the driver." Cue an [[Oh Crap]] moment when the bullets are seen bouncing off window glass marked BULLET RESISTANT.
* in ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'', a soldier's helmet is grazed by a bullet, he takes it off to gape at the hole... and gets a second bullet in the forehead. To be fair, though, the second bullet would have killed him anyway, seeing as how WWII (and modern) helmets primarily protected against fragmentation.
* 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
* 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.
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* [[Able Team]] (the 1980's [[Heroes-R-Us]] spin-off of ''[[The Executioner]]'') wore kevlar vests with a steel trauma plate insert, which came in useful when Carl Lyons got shot at point-blank range with an [[AKA-47]] in Cairo, leading to quips that he'd been shot in the head, and the terrorists had better issue armor-piercing ammo when 'The Ironman' came around.
* In [[Sandy Mitchell]]'s [[Warhammer 40000]] [[Ciaphas Cain]] novel ''For The Emperor'', [[Anti-Magic|Gunner Ferik Jurgen]] proves that imperial guard armor is not as useless as some people say: His helmet allows him to survive ''a bolter<ref>miniature rocket-propelled grenade</ref> shot to the head'', though it's made clear that a second shot would have [[Your Head Asplode|killed]] him (the helmet is destroyed). Granted, it was stormtrooper Carapace armor, not standard-issue Flak armor.
* In the [[Adam Hall]] spy novel ''[[Quiller|Quiller's Run]]'' the protagonist runs into a problem when he wears an anti-knife vest to a confrontation with a villainess who, up till now, has used
** So, basically, she [[Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight|brought a gun to a knife-fight]], eh?
* In the Harry Turtledove [[Alternate History]] novel ''The Guns of the South'' a Confederate soldier is surprised when one of the time travellers survives a musket ball to the chest because of what he calls a 'flak jacket'.
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* Toward the end of one of the ''[[Retief]]'' books, Retief's immediate boss Magnan shows up because Retief had notified him of corruption among certain Terran officials. One of the criminals pulls a needler; Magnan demands his surrender, and the man instead shoots. Magnan glances down at the needles sticking out of his chest and sniffs, "I had a feeling this chest armor might be useful in dealing with a bounder of your stripe."
* In the Dick Francis book ''Wild Horses'' the protagonist attempts to protect himself from knife attacks by wearing a jockey's body armor (apparently plastic slabs in some kind of fabric vest) and later by having a doctor make him a removable body cast, complete with throat protection. He survives the attacks, but just barely.
* [[Honor Harrington]] has to wear specially reinforced clothing because her [[Bond Creature|Sphynxian Treecat]] tends to ride around on her shoulders, using his rather long and sharp claws to maintain his grip. The special fabric, while strong, ''won't'' stop a Pulser Dart, the standard ammo used in modern sidearms in that universe (At least, not in anything above the smallest calibers). However, for several of the earlier books, Pulsers are ''not'' [[Abnormal Ammo|common]] [[Cool Gun|weapons]] on the planet [[Space Amish|Grayson]], and the clothing turns out to be at least moderately ''bullet'' resistant when an assassin attempts to kill
** In addition, various more robust forms of armor are seen, ranging from the protective [[Latex Space Suit|skinsuits]] to [[Powered Armor]], and also including robust, low-tech "clamshell" torso armor.
* A few characters wear vests in [[Time Scout]]. It's a realistic portrayal in that only one character actually gets shot wearing them and when he does, it's with a handgun, and the force knocks him down and stuns him.
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* Knife variant: In the second season ''[[The Man from U.N.C.L.E.]]'' episode "Alexander the Greater Affair, Part II", the titular villain Alexander moves to complete his plot by stabbing the premier of an Asian country at a diplomatic reception, the first step in a coup attempt. The premier, knife sticking in his chest, falls off the dais onto a cart and cake as the U.N.C.L.E. agents rush into the room to apprehend Alexander. It is then that the premier rises from the cart, and reveals that, having been warned of the murder attempt, he was wearing body armor that saved him.
* Subverted in ''[[The Shield]]'', when Shane is shot through a door during a raid, while wearing a kevlar vest. He is knocked down by the impact, and sustains heavy bruising from the impact (it's noted in the show that the door slowed down the bullet, which prevented him from sustaining broken ribs on top of the bruising).
* In an early episode of ''[[Super Sentai|Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger]]'', Commander Doggie "Boss" Kruger is shot right as he returns home from an off-world Deka meeting by [[Monster of the Week]] Gigantes (AKA [[Hoji/Deka Blue|Deka Blue]]'s old friend Vino), immediately after Hoji realizes what Gigantes was up to. Fortunately, he was wearing a
* One episode in ''True Blue'' had two criminals rob a bank wearing full body armor, requiring the police forces to use a high-powered rifle to take down one of the criminals.
* The sequence in ''[[24]]'' where Jack was forced to shoot Nina. She had fortunately been given a bulletproof vest before hand. Tony Almeida's line asking why this had happened (when he saw the giving on CCTV) was one that many a fan would ask when she was revealed to be [[The Mole]]. She did receive some bad bruising from being shot, though, giving the writers a reason for her to examine herself and thus a [[Lingerie Scene]]. In addition, Jack was shot while wearing a vest in season four, where he and Secretary Of Defense James Heller are trapped behind a vehicle while terrorists are shooting at them. Once hit (in the shoulder), Jack exclaims that he's fine, and then keeps shooting.
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* Averted in Flashpoint: {{spoiler|Jules}} gets shot with by a sniper, and nearly dies. Averted again in the Season 3 finale, when {{spoiler|Ed}} is shot several times while wearing a vest and has to be hospitalized.
** Played straight in the same show, in the episode First in Line, Lou is shot by the subject, and the bullet does little more than make him sit out the rest of the episode.
* ''[[The X-Files]]''. Mulder is infiltrating a secret government lab when he's spotted by the [[The Men in Black|Gray-Haired Man]] who opens fire on him, but the bullets are stopped by a bullet-resistant glass door. However the Gray-Haired Man contines to fire, blasting a hole in the glass and them shooting through
** In "Young At Heart" Scully is shot by a criminal during a sting operation, but she's saved by a hidden vest.
* Mocked on ''[[Reno 911]]''. The ladies are all issued new vests in the form of Kevlar [[Of Corset Sexy|corsets]]. Pleased with the amount of attention they're getting, they just pin their badge to the vest itself and go out on patrol. They're loving it until, on a drunken dare, Junior shoots at Kimball and it goes right through the vest like butter.
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* The Imperial Guard of ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' come standard with flak jackets or higher-quality "carapace" armor. These work decently against lasweapons or autoguns, but are practically useless against a good bolter, let alone the more exotic weapons employed by alien species. However, it's important to note that this flak armour isn't some wussy vest and helmet... ''the whole uniform blocks bullets.''
** Did anyone mention that a bolter is fully automatic and fires .75 Caliber Self-Propelled Explosive Rounds?
** In the RPG ([[Dark Heresy]]), guardsman flak is actually one of the best armours that can be obtained regularly. Mesh armour is a little worse, but weighs around
** Players prefer to call them [[Fan Nickname|'T-shirts']], to match the lasgun's 'Flashlight'. That's Warhammer 40k for ya: stuff the Spetznaz would die for is considered bottom-rung...
** If you look at the stats in Dark Heresy, the weight of a full suit of Flak Armor (gauntlets, pauldrons, helmet, chest/back/abdomen, greaves, and boots) weigh notably less than the body armor used by the U.S. Army, while actually being more effective (Especially against shrapnel and blasts). So not only is it better, it covers more of the body while still being lighter and cheaper than current modern body armor. If the U.S. could produce Flak Armor like the Imperial Guard does, our casualty rates would drop dramatically. And yet despite this, it's still considered one of the weakest armors in 40k with its users fairly well-known for dying in droves. Grimdark indeed.
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* All the ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games have body armor that act as a second health bar. Depending on the game, it won't protect you from drowning, hunger, car explosions (while inside them) and high falls.
* ''[[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
** See [http://www.schuzak.jp/other/dmgchart.html this list] for all weapons stats.
* 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.
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* [[Resident Evil|Rebecca Chambers]] wears one which effectively stops a bullet, but is otherwise realistically useless against the monster slashing slaws. The fifth game plays with this by allowing different types of armor for gunshots and knife attacks.
* ''7.62 High Calibre'' has several types of armor and helmets available. The first one available, the M200 Concealable Vest, is stated as being suitable for stopping small caliber ammunition. Unfortunately, 50% of the bandits you're likely to run across are carrying sawed-off Mosin Nagants, which fire a (admittedly slower velocity) 7.62mm rifle round, meaning the vest is almost worthless. Later vests are slightly better at stopping higher caliber ammunition, and can include ceramic or titanium inserts for better protection (ceramic is stronger, but breaks after a few shots, while titanium is weaker, but more durable). There's also a game setting that can be toggled on so that vests actually provide full body protection. Otherwise, in addition to considering how heavy and protective a vest is, you also have to take into account just how much of your body that vest actually covers.
* In ''[[Alpha Protocol]]'', bulletproof vests are generic sources of [[Hit Point
* ''[[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.
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** 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.
** The latest trend in body armor? Ballistic shorts which provide coverage to the groin area. This being intended to address a [[Groin Attack|major problem]] for troops riding in vehicles that roll over landmines or IEDs. Various styles are being evaluated, including "[http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/ballistic-boxers-might-just-save-your-tail-1.122993 ballistic boxers]" to shorts made from more conventional body armor materials. [[Incredibly Lame Pun
* 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.
* Ned Kelly, outlaw and Australian [[Folk Hero]], is famous for his standoff with the police with him and his gang dressed in body armor made out of plow parts. Unfortunately for the gang, they didn't armor their legs and only Ned survived to sit trial.
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