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It's the [[Rule of Cool]]: the smooth assassin can make his hit, then melt into the night with nary a sound.
The idea of the
One common variant is for a character to squeeze a pillow between the gun and the victim to muffle the sound of the gunshot.
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Gunsmith Cats]]''
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* Averted in [[Highschool of the Dead]]. Hirano hands Saya an MP5, warning her that even with a suppressor, any shots will still be audible enought to be heard by [[Not Using the Z Word|them]].
* In ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' during a flashback to Revy's [[Dark and Troubled Past|childhood]] she's shown killing a man using a pillow to suppress the sound. Subverted in that we don't actually hear the sound so can't judge how well it worked.
== Comic Books ==
* In the [[Batman]] story ''[[The Long Halloween]]'', the main assassin uses the teats from baby bottles as one-shot silencers.
* In ''[[The Losers]]'', an evil character comments on how badly silencers throw off your aim.
* One story in ''[[The Punisher]]'' had a convict try to kill the temporarily-locked-up title character with a pistol muffled by jamming a glass bottle over the muzzle. Castle noted that it'd be good only for one shot -- and not much good even for that. Of course, everybody within easy earshot was also a convict, hoping for the Punisher's death, so it wasn't like anyone would yell for the guards....
▲== Fan Fiction ==
* In [[A Sad Story]], Uncle Vernon uses one on his ''shotgun''. [[Aluminium Christmas Trees|These actually exist]], but they serve only to reduce the report of the weapon just enough to eliminate the need for hearing protection; it's clearly audible and identifiable as a gunshot from at least a hundred yards away.
== Film ==
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* ''[[Soylent Green]]'' - Charlton Heston's character gets chased by some Mooks packing short-barreled revolvers fitted with silencers. It's handled surprisingly realistically; they emit a sort of dull, booming thump that's far from quiet, but which wouldn't be readily identifiable as gunfire at a distance.
* Pretty much averted in ''[[Mr. Brooks]]''.
* In ''[[The A-Team (film)|The
* Original 1962 ''[[The Manchurian Candidate (novel)|The Manchurian Candidate]]'': "Is that a silencer?" (Yes, and it's on a revolver.)
* In ''[[Inception]]'', Cobb's silenced pistol does indeed make the "fwip" sound, however {{spoiler|it did in fact only exist in the world of the dream so it can be assumed that Cobb simply used that to his advantage to make the silenced pistol actually be silenced}}. Also subverted in that when he uses it, he catches the bodies before they hit the ground as to not attract attention.
** He also catches the shell casings in midair, nicely accounting for the noise they'd ordinarily make when they hit the ground.
* The 1972 French comedy ''The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe'' featured several government spies with silenced guns that, when fired, emitted only a puff of smoke with no sound at all.
* In ''[[The Man With One Red Shoe]]'', two competing teams of agents use these in Drew's apartment.
== Literature ==
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* In the first ''Jumper'' sequel, Reflex, a silenced pistol shot was described as being similar to someone stepping on a dry twig.
* In ''The Chase'', a 19th century bank robber doesn't just silence a revolver- ''he silences it by wrapping a scarf around the muzzle''.
* The espionage novel by David Morrell, ''Brotherhood of the Rose'' has the protagonists using the ''Mossad homemade silencer'' designed to be constructed from innocuous materials like washers and glassfibers, assembled for the kill, then broken up and thrown away.
* Towards the end of ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'', the protagonists infiltrate the State Science Institute to rescue {{spoiler|John Galt.}} They are all equipped with guns which are silenced to the point of not making any sound at ''all'' when fired. Not even a single fwip. Then again, the protagonists are a community of "geniuses" that owns all sorts of physically impossible technology, including an entropy reversing motor.
* ''[[The Godfather|The Godfather II]]'' - A young Don Corleone commits his first murder with a revolver wrapped up in a towel to muffle the sound. The towel realistically ''catches fire'' due to the muzzle flash.
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* Averted quite consistently in [[Tom Clancy]]'s novels, which isn't surprising considering the amounts of [[Shown Their Work]] involved. John Kelly of ''Without Remorse'' home-builds a suppressor for his Colt .45, but that requires a full-blown Navy machine shop, several years' of special forces experience, and a caliber conversion kit for his Colt down to .22 caliber. He later does the same to a bolt-action .22 rifle after a few techniques for suppressing rifles' noises, too. Another scene from the same novel features a Navy chief building a suppressor for his assault carbine on the Boxwood Green mission: the gunfire could "only" be heard out to a hundred yards, as opposed to several hundred unsuppressed.
** Clancy is also at pains to point out that a silencer does not totally silence the guns, but makes the noise carry less far and, in the case of non-automatic weapons, means that anyone not in the know is more likely to mistake it for something else. Also, he points out that no silencer can stop the occasionally rather loud mechanical noise of the gun cycling, which, thanks to Hollywood, people don't mistake for harmless noise.
* One of the ''[[Encyclopedia Brown]]'' stories played this straight, although there wasn't any '''real''' shooting: a school play was being put on, a murder mystery, but the lead actor's parents wouldn't let him touch even a cap pistol. So to avoid [[Special Effects Failure]], they pretended the killer used a '''''really good''''' Hollywood Silencer, with no sound at all ... or flash, or smoke....
▲== Live Action TV ==
* An episode of ''[[Sanctuary]]'' averts the trope, showing suppressed pistols as making 'pop pop' noises. It goes even further, making the characters put their hands over their ears when shooting off a lock in an enclosed space with the same pistols.
* ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'': An episode had an improvised silencer made by taping an empty two liter of soda to the front of a pistol. No one in the building was able to hear the gun shots.
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** Another episode had a potato was used for two gunshots, and it ''worked.'' Not because it actually silenced the shot, but because the target is deaf.
** An episode of ''[[CSI New York]]'' had a ''teddy bear'' used as a silencer for a large Desert Eagle pistol.
* Inverted on ''[[Sledge Hammer!]]'', where the title character uses a ''loudener'' in one episode. As if his .44 Magnum wasn't loud enough already. Amusingly enough, devices that increase the loudness, or at least direct more of the sound back at the user, do exist; they're called "muzzle brakes," and their main purpose is to reduce recoil.
* Averted in ''[[Chuck]]''. Guns with silencers still make noise, and it's more of a realistic 'crack' than it is a 'thwip', and at one point was shown to be audible through a flight of stairs and a closed door. Played straight in other parts of ''Chuck'', most notably when Casey practices shooting pictures of bin Laden and Hitler with a silenced gun inside his own apartment.
* ''[[Get Smart]]''
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* Subverted in the season three finale of ''[[Breaking Bad]]'', where Mike uses a gun with a silencer to murder several cartel members selling meth on Gus's territory without permission. Only... the gun is ''far'' from silent.
** Though a lack of a gun blast is played straight, the casings hitting the wall/floor and the operation of the pistol are clearly heard.
* ''[[
* One episode of ''[[Columbo]]'' featured a silenced revolver.
* Averted in the second episode of ''Alcatraz''; Cobb uses a sniper rifle fitted with what appears to be a silencer, but it still makes a fairly loud noise when he fires it.
* In possibly one of the worst offenses ever, during the second season of ''[[Prison Break]]'', an assassin from The Company is sent after Lincoln Burrows and his family. The assassin breaks in and shoots one of Lincoln's father's bodyguards with a silenced pistol. No one could hear the gunshot (or the body hitting the floor), but apparently Lincoln's ears are so good that he could hear ''the shell hitting the floor'' from the other side of the (huge) house instead of the gunshot.
== Tabletop Games ==
* Called a cinematic silencer in ''[[GURPS]]: High-Tech''; they're three times as effective as the real versions.
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' has silencers, but notes that subsonic ammunition is necessary to make them really effective (else the sonic boom will alert someone).
* Played with, given that one of the options in some [[Warhammer
** [[Corrupt Church|THE EMPEROR'S BLESSING SILENCES THE BULLET AND CONFOUNDS THE ENEMY]].
== Theatre ==
* ''Within the Law'' by Bayard Veiller features a revolver that can fire absolutely noiselessly, using smokeless powder and a Maxim silencer. Probably the [[Trope Maker]] for silenced revolvers, though this one is explained to be a specially made weapon.
== Video Games ==
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** Note also that a single tap of the trigger is apparently inaudible too. They could ''only'' notice multiple gunshots; a single shot from any weapon (with the possible exception of the shotguns, which fired multiple projectiles per trigger pull) would count as totally stealthy no matter how loud the weapon itself, provided no enemy saw the shot impact.
* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' did this a bit differently. Guards would notice if you fired the gun, so long as you were close enough or fired it multiple times. "Close enough", however, generally means "same room". This got complicated in more open levels, where enemies would either be able to hear you from the other end of the map, or arbitrary sound cutoffs would stop enemies hearing you ten feet away in one direction but not thirty feet away in another.
* In ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' one weapon is a 'silenced' pistol. Using it in a crowded scene does not trigger a pedestrian panic (then again, pedestrians don't seem to panic when you're just lugging around an assault rifle in the open). You might even get away with a few shots. But when the target keels over dead, that's when the screaming begins.
* In ''[[Jagged Alliance|Jagged Alliance 2]]'', pistol silencers (changed to suppressors in the fan-made v1.13) will still attract attention from nearby guards, both near you and near the guard you shot. The real "silent" option is hurling a throwing knife at unaware guards' backs and necks, though even that can alert nearby guards if they see the body fall...though if they move away before the kill and return after, they won't notice a thing. Kinda weird, that. v1.13 also introduces a wealth of new "silent" weapons, mostly the subsonic variety like the AS-VAL assault rifle and VSSK Vychlop sniper rifle, as well as suppressors for assault and sniper rifles.
* The ''[[Metal Gear]]'' games get this almost right: Starting with ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', the suppressed weapons make a more realistic "puff" or "crack" sound (the silenced tranquilizer pistol makes more of a "fwip" noise because of its subsonic ammunition), and from ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'' onwards the suppressors wear out (apart from some weapons where the suppressors are a part of the gun itself) and can throw off your aim quite a bit - but you can still fire them inches away from a sentry's head and they won't hear a thing (except on harder difficulties in later games, and they will also hear bullets and darts ricocheting off nearby surfaces). This of course only applies to non-human opponents: Players in ''Metal Gear Online'' can hear suppressed gunshots just fine if they're alert enough.
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* ''[[Halo 3: ODST]]'' features the M7S and the M6C/SOCOM, a sound suppressed sub-machine gun and pistol (respectively). They do not sound realistic and Bungie attests that they simply followed the [[Rule of Cool]], seen in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRFfYoLm-QA this video]. While the actual gun noises are just [[The Coconut Effect]] the enemies reactions to the firing of a silenced weapon is realistic. Especially on legendary the enemies are still very likely to notice you even if you shoot with a silenced weapon.
** Funnily enough, the Behind-The-Scenes video released before ''ODST'' revealed they actually made the guns sound ''louder'' than usual.
* Played straight in ''[[Battlefield: Bad Company|Battlefield Bad Company 2]]''
* ''[[Medal of Honor]]'' plays realistic takes on this one on-and-off: the first game has the silencer reducing the sound to a rather realistic muffled bang, whereas Allied Assault has a hand-loaded silenced pistol where all the sound comes from the mechanism. Either way, shooting it will cause any nearby Nazis to notice.
* Ukrainian video game ''[[STALKER]]'' has the famous VSS ''Vintorez'' sniper rifle and AS ''Val'' assault rifle that use special subsonic cartridges and a highly effective integral
** ''[[Metro 2033]]'' also has the option to buy suppressed versions of standard weapons, and these behave more or less realistically. They don't outright give away the character's presence the way an unsuppressed weapon would, but nearby foes will notice the noise and start actively looking for the player if they were previously idle or patrolling.
* While the silenced pistol in ''[[Command & Conquer]]: Renegade'' has a Hollywood-style fwipping sound, it does not prevent enemies from noticing you, mostly due to [[The All-Seeing AI]]. Rather jarring, considering [[All There in the Manual|the gun is described as having specialized ammunition for stealth purposes]].
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* Some video games, likely due to [[Did Not Do the Research|not enough attention paid]], actually invert this - ''[[Half-Life (series)|Half-Life]]'' and ''[[Far Cry]]'', for instance, both feature an integrally suppressed MP5 which neither sounds like or is treated as though it is suppressed.
* ''[[Saints Row: The Third|Saints Row the Third]]'' includes suppressors as an upgrade for some of its weapons, which make it harder for unaware enemies to tell where you're shooting from. Likely in reference to ''Red Faction'' above (sharing the same developer), the suppressors actually make the weapons they attach to ''more'' accurate, without any explanation.
== Web Comics ==
* Averted in ''Marilith'', where the titular character explains to her apprentice that silencers are [[This Is Reality|not as effective as in television]].
== Web Original ==
* Played straight in the ''[[Madness Combat]]'' series, where all you can hear from a silenced gun is the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piBz1KKMsAQ clicking] of the mechanism.
* Used in [[
* Oddly both averted and played straight in [[Freddie Wong]]'s ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRTP2IZ2nOo Duct Hunt]''. The silenced gun makes a reasonably loud sound, [[The Guards Must Be Crazy|but the guards don't hear a thing.]]
** The video description jokes "This is a sneaking mission where I infiltrated a Deaf Person's Warehouse."
** Special focus is also given to ''removing'' a silencer so Freddie's gunshot will be heard in ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05jtR9fZAnQ Claymores]''.
== Western Animation ==
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'''Homer:''' Oh, I don't need one of those... yet. }}
* Inexplicably, ''[[Family Guy]]'' played this trope straight and then averted it in the same episode. A silenced pistol is so quiet that nobody even notices anything until blood starts spreading on Stephanie's dress. Later, {{spoiler|Diane Simmons}} is about to kill {{spoiler|Lois}}(with an unsilenced weapon), you hear a bang, {{spoiler|Diane}} drops dead, and {{spoiler|Stewie}} is seen with a smoking sniper rifle, which clearly has a silencer. Interestingly, the guns work [[Rule of Drama|exactly as they need to for each scene to work.]]
== Real Life ==
* This trope may have sent some people to prison since there have been cases of killers convicted by trace evidence of improvised silencers they wrongly assumed they
▲* This trope may have sent some people to prison since there have been cases of killers convicted by trace evidence of improvised silencers they wrongly assumed they needed -- possibly by exposure to too many movies. Real hitmen do not often use silencers.
* There are a couple of revolver designs that have a sealed cylinder. The most famous is the Nagant M1895 (see [http://world.guns.ru/handguns/double-action-revolvers/be/nagant-mle-195-e.html guns.ru] and [[wikipedia:Nagant M1895|Wikipedia]]). Note that you don't see many followers: this solution made the Nagant [[Awesome but Impractical]] with its slow reload and lack of [[Revolvers Are Just Better|traditional revolver advantages]] due to its complicated mechanism and relatively weak cartridge. Revolvers with this design, or similar, can be suppressed. Check it out [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvF4yurWSc0 here]. Note that most Hollywood-silenced revolvers are ''not'' these models, however.
** The other secret to the weapon's silence is that the bullets are subsonic, only going at ~.8 times the speed of sound. Therefore the bullets don't produce a sonic boom, which are quite noisy, when it leaves the barrel.
* There are special bullets that make about the same amount of noise as a BB gun, but are only available in 22 caliber. They're legal because few people would actually attempt to kill someone with a .
** There are also subsonic 9mm rounds that are significantly quieter than regular 9x19mm pistol rounds, especially when used in conjunction with a silencer. Most firearm rounds travel at very high velocity, breaking the sound barrier, and a silencer can't affect the sonic boom of a bullet that's already left the barrel. Subsonic rounds remove the "crack" of the bullet breaking the sounds barrier, leaving only the small explosion which, inherent to the process, occurs in the chamber of a weapon that is being fired... and ''that'', a silencer can, well, silence. Somewhat.
* If one was to summon the all-powerful [[Reds with Rockets]], this trope theoretically can be played straight in real life. The Soviet\Russian designers had developed both pistol and sniper rifle that are almost completely silent. They are just completely unavailable to anyone but strictly badass operators working for Russian government agencies.
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* Then there's the [[wikipedia:DeLisle carbine|DeLisle Carbine]] which had a barrel that was basically made up completely of the suppressor. It was so quiet that the action was louder than the shots.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX-99a1JCc4&NR=1&feature=fvwp The M32 MGL] almost makes the trope [[Truth in Television]]. Imagine a hollywood silenced gun. Now take away the "fwip" noise. Now imagine the gun firing 40mm grenades.
** It is so silent because it doesn't fire the grenades very fast for a weapon (
* Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, seems to have been a victim of this trope. In a [http://www.kk.org/streetuse/archives/weapons/ diary], he expressed disappointment that his homemade silencer reduced the noise of a pistol by about one third. If this is so, then his homemade silencer actually worked pretty well.
* The most important thing is not silencing the weapon to a ''fwip'', but changing the noise [[The Coconut Effect|to sound unlike a true gun would]]. On a silent sporting range, even the puny .22LR fired from a target rifle ([[Completely Missing the Point|whose action is almost 100% silent]], no clicks or clanking, unlike a hunting or military rifle) makes a loud crack when leaving the barrel, but in a noisy urban environment, cars and heavy trucks running around, people talking or shouting, TV sets adding to the noise, even a crack goes unnoticed as long as witnesses can attribute it to some accidental noise: a breaking window, dropping a heavy object, breaking a glass bottle etc.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Guns and Gunplay Tropes]]
[[Category:Hollywood Science]]
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[[Category:Guns Do Not Work That Way]]
[[Category:Sound FX Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Hollywood Silencer]]
[[Category:Tropes Examined by the Mythbusters]]
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