Dodge the Bullet: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

A character who can stroll into the middle of a firefight and emerge unscathed. [[Guns Are Worthless]] against them. They aren't [[Immune to Bullets]], but they're so fast they might as well be. If you shoot at them from any farther than [[Dodge This|point blank range]], they'll jump out of the way, or use some impressively small object to deflect the bullet, [[Improbable Aiming Skills]] be damned.

 

Sometimes this skill is imparted by a background in [[Gun Fu]], [[Gun Kata]],<ref>dodging ''lines of fire'' before the shot</ref> [[Implausible Fencing Powers]], or [[Super Reflexes]]. Maybe the enemy was [[Point Defenseless]]? For maximum coolness, show off the dodging in [[Bullet Time]]. See also [[Could Have Been Messy]]. [[More Dakka]] may be employed to attempt to overcome this. Compare [[Bullet Catch]], which is even cooler, and [[Catch and Return]], which takes this to its logical extreme. Contrast [[Bullet Dodges You]]. When you upgrade from bullets to missiles, [[High-Speed Missile Dodge]] is the result.

 

* Overdosed in ''[[Black Lagoon]]''. This is what keeps [[Guile Hero|Rokuro]] [[Action Survivor|"Rock"]] [[Salaryman|Okajima]] alive when his [[Chain of Deals]] fails - his version is normal compared to his [[Sociopathic Hero|Pseudo-]][[Tsundere]] [[Action Girl]][[Ship Tease|friend]] [[Guns Akimbo|Revy]] (yeah, no [[Bullet Time]] for the little Rock).

* Vash from ''[[Trigun]]'' did this a couple of times. It was [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in the first instance where he explains that the enemy is 'just a bad shot'. He is one of the more amusing examples because of [[Obfuscating Stupidity|how he dodges the bullets]] in the first half of the anime. Eventually, we are shown that he is fast enough to change the paths of bullets in mid-air... by ''throwing rocks at them''.

* Similar to the page quote, the [[Big Bad]] of [[Parasyte]] isn't fast enough to dodge the actual bullets. He ''is'' fast enough, however, to be able to see where the police point their guns, and be able to move out of the way.

* Some of the more [[Badass]] fighters in ''[[Change 123]]'' can pull this off, [[Shown Their Work|with lots of effort spent explaining how it actually works]]. You don't have to dodge the bullet, you just have to make the guy with the gun miss.

 

== Comic Books ==

* When the [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]] aren't [[Spin to Deflect Stuff|spinning their weapons]], they're dodging bullets and lasers and so on.

* John Doe of ''[[Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja|Nth Man the Ultimate Ninja]]'', thanks to a lifetime of [[Ninja]] training. In the first issue of his comic, he dodges a bullet fired at him from point-blank range; later, he dodges a sniper's bullets while running uphill towards the gunman.

 

== Film ==

* Also Jet Li's character, Yulaw from ''[[The One (film)|The One]]'' has superhuman physical abilities and is once shown dodging a bullet.

* ''Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins'' features a man being trained to do this, complete with comments about which muscles to watch for twitching and why you shouldn't cheat by remembering how many bullets are meant to be in the gun.

* During the WWI sequence in ''[[Sucker Punch]]'', as Baby Doll is closing in on the German courier, she uses her katana to parry the bullets he fires at her.

** Some of the other girls tilt, twist, and leap out of the way of bullets.

* The engineereds in ''[[Duumvirate]]'' dodge single aimed bullets easily, but have a harder time with things such as poorly-aimed [[A Ks]] and shotguns.

* Grandpa Smedry of ''Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians'' and sequels presents an interesting twist, as part of his [[Blessed with Suck|Smedry]] [[Cursed with Awesome|Talent]]: {{spoiler|his Talent is being late; when somebody shoots a gun at him, he always arrives late for the bullets to hit him}}.

* In John D. MacDonald's ''The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything'', the hero activates his [[Time Stands Still|magic pocket watch]] just as his adversary pulls the trigger. Not only can he easily get out of the bullet's way, he uses a ruler and his knowledge of the gun's normal-speed muzzle velocity to calculate just ''how much'' the pocket watch is slowing down time.

 

* ''[[MacGyver]]'' does this at times. He dives between lines of bullets shot by a helicopter in the early season intros. He's blocked a crossbow bolt with a 2x2 board. Practically nobody who shoots at him can hit him—if they do, they graze him (and cause amnesia). It's played off as luck, though, rather than skill, and he has a healthy respect for people pointing guns at him.

* Ziva does this in an episode of ''[[NCIS]]'', though what actually happens is she hears the gun being cocked and reacts to that.

* Hicks from ''[[Alphas]]'' is able use his [[Super Reflexes]] to get out of the way of a bullet. He realizes that the shooter is about to fire and drops to the ground before the trigger is squeezed. He follows this up with a feat of acrobatics right out of a [[the Matrix]] which confuses the shooter and causes the second shot to miss as well.

* Parodied in ''[[The Office]]''. Michael Scott's amateur film features his character dodging bullets from point blank range using some awkward and poorly choreographed poses.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* The ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' has a Dodge skill that allows you do dodge bullets. The difficulty of the dodge depends on your available cover. If you've got good cover, it can be a 6, which is a standard difficulty. If there is no cover, you can still drop to the floor to avoid the bullets, which is difficulty 8, pretty challenging.

* ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' has a shield system that allows you to do it, combined with the dodging action, a few different ways depending on the type of magic. For instance, Space causes the area around you to warp so the bullet lightly deflects as you move out of the way, Death 'steals the energy' from the bullet, slowing it down, and Fate just makes you so improbably lucky you dodge out of the way by tripping over a dog or whatever.

 

== Theatre ==

* [[Older Than Steam]]: In Ben Jonson's 1598 play ''Every Man in His Humour'' a character claims to be able to teach another to deflect bullets with his sword. "Unless it be grapeshot, and spread."

 

== Video Games ==

** Grey Fox also has a form of this in his ability to deflect bullets with his sword, thanks to impossibly-fast reflexes.

** Fortune ''doesn't even dodge''. She just stands there and the bullets miss her. In other words, her power is to ''[[Invoked Trope|cause]]'' [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|Stormtrooper Marksmanship]]

** Gene from ''Portable Ops'' does this through actual [[Super Speed]].

** Also, the GRU soldiers during the Ocelot duel. Go ahead, [[Shotguns Are Just Better|try using the shotgun]]. Or [[Bottomless Magazines|the]] [[Impossibly Cool Weapon|Patriot]]. It won't get you anywhere.

* Non-[[Redshirt Army]] blaster units in ''[[Lego Adaptation Game|Lego Star Wars]]'' have ability to dodge enemies' beam shots while firing back at them.

* Several higher-level mooks and bosses will dodge your bullets in ''[[Red Steel|Red Steel II]]'' if you randomly fire at them. No such luck for you, though...

 

== Web Animation ==

* Happens all the time in ''[[Madness Combat]]''. The [[One-Man Army|main characters]] are rarely, if ever, hit, and even then, it's usually because an enemy has sneaked up on them.

 

* [[MAG-ISA]] -- [http://mag-isa.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/119718 Eman Cruz] did it during his gunfight with Kyle.

* From [[Scary Go Round]]: "[http://scarygoround.com/?date=20030404 Have you ever tried to jump in front of a bullet? They move pretty fast, you know, ''like a bullet does.'']"

* The RPG-centric comic ''[[Darths and Droids]]'' manages to both lampshade and subvert this quite brilliantly [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0009.html at the same time], while also teaching its readers some valuable roleplaying techniques to boot.

 

 

== Real Life ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Guns and Gunplay Tropes]]

[[Category:Fight Scene]]

[[Category:Tropes Examined by the Mythbusters]]