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Could Have Been Messy: Difference between revisions
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Know what's [[Rule of Cool|cool?]] [[Good Old Fisticuffs|Fist fights]], [[Gun Kata|shoot-em-ups]], [[Sword Fight|sword fights]], [[Elemental Powers|fireballs]] and [[Stuff Blowing Up|explosions!]]
Yep, any good cartoon, action movie, or tv series has to have at least one of the above, forget all that "[[True Art Is Incomprehensible]]" junk -- and any series with all of them will be bloodless beyond belief.
Especially if it's for kids/pre-teens, you just have to to make sure to stay on the [[Media Watchdog]]'s good side and not let anyone spill blood, [[Never Say "Die"|die]], or get mauled. Not a problem, really, our hero is already an expert at dodging, otherwise he'd be toast!
However, the more the hero gets [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|shot at]], [[Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight|sliced, and stabbed]] without getting anything worse than cut or singed hair, the louder that [[Fridge Logic|niggling little]] voice saying "Y'know, if he'd been half a second slower" gets. Then of course, you eventually start to wonder at the morality of the heroes for using clearly lethal attacks against opponents with playful and innocent abandon, simply because, or rather you assume because they ''know'' they'll dodge the attack.
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Taken to extremes, these shows often have to take a time out for a [[Very Special Episode]] to prove that, in fact, those [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|red lasers]], swords, or (censors forbid) ''guns'' are not in fact toys, and can kill people. Our heroes will learn a valuable lesson about not running with atomic powered scissors, and they'll use their weapons or powers with more restraint. [[Reset Button|Until tomorrow's episode.]]
The trope origins lie primarily within [[Comic Books]], whose fantastical nature easily allowed passage of such action-oriented, reality-bending situations. With the generally less restrictive Japanese broadcasting, the trope tends to be less apparent with anime/manga, which regularly features bloodletting and dying. Nevertheless, even here [[Could Have Been Messy]] is instinctively applied towards main protagonists or other characters that the writer simply doesn't want to let go of just yet.
[[Could Have Been Messy]] enables (or is enabled by) several other tropes:
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* [[Inverse Law of Sharpness and Accuracy]]
* [[Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality]]
* [[Minor Injury Overreaction]]
* [[Near Misses]]
* [[Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight]]
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** It comes back with during most battles with the [[Fan Nickname|Fatettes]] (not counting Tsukuyomi/Setsuna where it's kinda justified), where lethal force is regularly exchanged: [[Razor Wind]], explosive fire, etc. Even in the "final" battle against them, it's hard to remember Fate issued a no-kill order when one sees how [[Pyromaniac|Homura]] fights.
** Also averted in regard to {{spoiler|Robots and any other artificial construct that could survive being torn in half.}}
* This can become especially hard to swallow when an absurdly competent fighter uses lethal weapons but feels that [[Thou Shalt Not Kill]], like in ''[[Trigun]]''.
** Except for the fact that it's his "absurdly[-high] competen[cy at] fight[ing]" that ''allows'' him to avoid killing anybody {{spoiler|[[Heroic BSOD|until he gets broken]]}}.
*** Subverted when Merlyn and Millie walk in on his shirtless moment, revealing that even skill and luck doesn't save him every time. {{spoiler|Vash's chest is covered with old wounds and scar tissue from enemies that managed to wound him before he dealt with them nonlethally.}}
*** {{spoiler|"old wounds and scar tissue" nothing; part of his chest is ''held together with steel mesh bolted in place.'' If he wasn't an Alien, he would be ''dead''}}.
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*** Averted in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Uncaged edition) where Wolverines claws do exactly what you always wanted them to. Very, very messily.
** There's a truly preposterous example in ''[[Wolverine and the X-Men]]'' where, filled with rage at Sabretooth, he pops his claws ... and uses them to ''slice off a tree branch he can use as a club''!
* [[Captain America (comics)]]'s shield seems to have the same "selective edge" than the Batarangs mentioned above. That's very good for Cap, who values everybody's life. Justified in Black Knight ([[Legacy Character|Dane Withman]])'s case, whose sword REALLY has a selective edge due to magic.
* [[X-Men]] villain Avalanche can easily create earthquakes and turn buildings into rubble. However, it used to be explicit that his power didn't work in human flesh, explaining why people didn't become [[Made of Plasticine]] around him. More recently though, his powers have been indicated to work on people.
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** It's the same thing with ''[[Samurai Jack]]''. He only uses his sword to its full potential against robots and Aku, who seems to be [[Made of Evil|made of pure evil]] and therefore has no blood. Whenever he fights a living being (not often) he somehow finds a way to not actually cut them, if he even uses his sword at all.
** ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' does at least deconstruct the hell out of it: it ''is'' messy. Very, very messy. Honestly, the way robots come apart, oil spurts like blood and internal workings spill out akin to disembowelment. If it ''were'' living beings, it'd be [[Gorn]].
*** And that was the point. They weren't allowed to have actual blood, so they replace it with oil from robots.
* In ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'', bladed weapons and explosions are taken more seriously than, say, goofy laserfire, but none hit the mark unless the target is [[Made of Iron]] or the attack is ensured to somehow be nonlethal. Despite retaining the typical pacifistic heroes role, the Titans themselves rarely hold back during action sequences. Particularly glaring with Robin, who wielded explosive discs as a standard weapon; imagine a police officer substituting a hand grenade for his billy club.
* The ''[[Rambo]]'' cartoon series. [[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?|What do you mean, it's not for kids?]] Pssh. Let's just have wars where nobody dies. At least the main character is somewhat [[Technical Pacifist|consistent with his portrayal in the first movie]].
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