Dodge the Bullet: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|'''Dr. McNinja''': The problem with your gun is [[Gun Kata|you have to point it where you want to send the bullets]], and ''I can see that''.<br />

'''Frans Rayner''': The bullets are supposed to be faster than you and you know that! |''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]''}}

Considering the speed at which bullets and some other projectiles travel (most guns fire at the speed of sound or faster, so by the time you hear the shot, it will have either hit you or missed you), [[Super Reflexes|these kind of reflexes]] are blatantly unrealistic, the domain of superhumans and [[Super Speed|Super Speedsters]]sters. Writers who want a [[Badass Normal]] to dodge bullets will maintain a modicum of realism by saying the character is simply predicting where the gunman is going to fire and making sure they're not there when the trigger is pulled. Of course, if the bullets are [[Painfully-Slow Projectile|Painfully Slow Projectiles]], dodging them is a lot easier.

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.

== Anime &and Manga ==

* In the ''[[Sengoku Basara]]'' anime Uesugi Kenshin takes on a woman holding a [[Gatling Good|gatling gun]]. Not only that, he runs headlong into the volley of bullets in order to get to her. And dodges ''every single one''. [[Something About a Rose|In a cloud of rose petals!]] Given that the series in nominally set in the [[Feudal Japan|Sengoku period]], how Kenshin managed to dodge the gatling gun is perhaps a less important question than [[Anachronism Stew|what it was doing there in the first place]]. <ref>The answer to both questions is [[Rule of Cool]].</ref>

* Belldandy from ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]'' seems to be able to avoid harm, without trying, even in cases where everyone else gets injured, once she walked through a hail of rubber bands without getting hit once, and was completely unaffected by a massive lighting strike that destroyed the temple and left everyone else in a blackened heap. Well, y'know -- goddessknow—goddess.

* Claire Stanfield from ''[[Baccano!]]'' can do this. But then, he's [[Charles Atlas Superpower|the sort of guy]] who can {{spoiler|reasonably be mistaken for an [[Urban Legend]]}}.

* 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.

* [[Captain America (comics)]] can do this pretty well, although he prefers blocking them with his [[Immune to Bullets]] shield. Since the shield isn't that big, it still takes amazing reflexes for it to protect him as well as it does.

* ''[[Sin City]]'' plays around with this. Miho and Wallace generally dance around gunfire. Dwight avoids it most of the time but has been pinned down by enemy fire more than once with nowhere to go. Marv avoids gunfire more often than not but is known to get clipped every now and then ([[Made of Iron|not that it stops him]]). Hartigan was clipped in every gun battle he was invovled in, although considering he was an old man suffering from a heart condition, this is quite impressive.

* ''[[Star Wars]]'': Jedi knights dodge and deflect [[Frickin' Laser Beams]] ([[Catch and Return|often straight back at the shooter]]) so often that one wonders why individual [[Mook|mooksmook]]s even ''try'' to shoot them (as we find out in the prequel trilogy, the Jedi aren't ''all'' as good as the main characters, particularly against an army. Moreover, individual lightsaber styles or "forms" may or may not emphasize deflection and defense). [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in that the weapon's laser beams move slower than normal bullets, which means that light energy is somehow moving slower than the speed of sound, let alone light, and the Jedi use their limited precognition to anticipate attacks and defend against them before they even happen. This can be defeated with lots and lots of guns, and lots and lots of firing, in a rapid succession. aka: [[More Dakka]]. In one of their very first scenes, C3PO and R2-D2 strolled right through the middle of a firefight without getting so much as scorched.

* Lampshaded in ''[[UHF (film)|UHF]]''. George fantasizes about raiding a heavily guarded prison camp to rescue Stanley. At one point, George stands inches away from a soldier firing a gun at him, but he keeps missing. Later in the fantasy, George catches a bullet in his teeth, chews it, and then fires the pieces out of his mouth back at the shooter like a machine gun.

* In the ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' novel ''[[Grey Knights]]'', {{spoiler|Ligeia's death cultists}} dodge almost all the firepower thrown at them.

* In the ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]] [[Blood Angels]]'' novel ''Deus Sanguinius'', the daemon Malfallax dodges the rounds fired at him by the Space Marines. As a princeling of Tzeentch, Chaos god of fate, he has an ability that allows him to see where the rounds go and move appropriately; when the body part enabling this is damaged, he fares considerably worse at avoiding.

* In [[Discworld]], in ''[[Discworld/Men At Arms|Men Atat Arms]]'', Sergeant Colon enters the Tower of Art, having just heard somebody, and reasons, seeing nobody in the tower, that they are behind him. He dives right as the Gonne is fired. Afterwards he swears that he felt the shot pass over him. Discworld is based on Steampunk era technology, and the Gonne would not be as fast-firing as modern guns. Also, Sergeant Colon can spout a lot of shit sometimes.

* [[Averted]] and busted by the ''[[Myth BustersMythBusters]]''. While it is theoretically possible to dodge a .338 Lapua round in as close as 500 yards, it is not practical nor likely to happen with military grade rounds in a combat scenario. You can't see the muzzle flash from that far away, and the bullet will reach you before the sound of the shot.

* [[Hero System]] has "Combat Luck" -- Armor—Armor defined as "it just missed me, good thing I dodged" instead of the usual "it bounced off my skin/bulletproof vest/powered armor".

* ''[[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.

** After Raiden [[Took a Level Inin Badass]], he learned to deflect bullets with his sword as well. With the Scene expansion for Metal Gear Online, players lucky enough to use Raiden can do the same by holding his sword at the ready. [[Game Breaker|It deflects all bullets incoming from the front]].

* The player character can do this in [[Mercenaries|Mercenaries 2: World In Flames]], but without the help of superpowers, or even [[Badass Normal|Badass Normality]]ity; the bullets are ''just that freakin' slow''.