Law of Inverse Recoil: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

Naturally, this makes [[Guns Akimbo]] with automatic weapons wholly impractical in real life (of course, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4nfZu8VqgQ impractical] never stopped anyone in pursuit of [[Awesome but Impractical|cool]]).

 

The other side of [[Blown Across the Room]]. See also [[Steel Ear Drums]] for another ignored part of guns being fired.

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* In the final chapter of ''[[Macross]] Plus'', when struggling against Sharon Apple and other threats, Myung has the common sense to arm herself with the submachine gun of a fallen guard (by itself, quite a rare occurrence) but wastes almost the entire magazine when she tries to use it in full-auto, being overcome by recoil and spraying bullets everywhere. She gets a few shots in the right direction, however...

* ''[[Blame]]'': In the manga, not only does Killy's [[Wave Motion Gun|graviton beam emitter pistol]] produce recoil, but on the first occasion when he [[Up to Eleven|turned it up to full power]] the recoil was enough to break his arm.

* In ''[[Gunslinger Girl]]'' all the weapons have realistic recoil, including handguns. The only reason that the girls can handle even large weapons, despite their own small size, is that they are [[Robot Girl|cybernetically enhanced]].

* ''[[Dragon Ball]]'': In Goku's first tournament, Jackie Chun is knocked out of the ring, he manges to get himself back to the ring with the recoil from a Kamehameha. Goku learns from this, and at the next tournament, pulls off a similar trick to defeat Tien while he's busy taunting him about how he can fly and block his Kamehameha. And at the tournament after that, he uses a Kamehameha out of his feet to propel himself.

* ''[[Negima]]'': Negi uses the recoil from a magic arrow to avoid a blast by {{spoiler|his father}} during their fight in the Mahora Budokai.

** Batou's anti-tank rifle ([[BFG|"Your standard issue big gun"]]) features a realistic recoil dampener (a device to temporarily store the kinetic energy and then slowly dissipate it, converting the sudden "kick" into more manageable "sliding" action).

** In the movie version, most characters are cyborgs, but a mook must brace himself before firing hypervelocity armour-piercing bullets from a submachine gun. Said armour-piercing bullets [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|effectively ruin the gun's accuracy]] ([[Explosive Overclocking|and the gun itself]]), leaving him open to summary beatdown shortly afterwards.

* ''[[Rocket Girls]]'' In episode 2, the protagonist, a lightly built teenage girl, is given a gun and told to practice firing on a shooting range. She doesn't expect the recoil and falls over backwards.

* The [[Humongous Mecha|Jagd Mirage]]'s main caliber, ''Twin Towers'' [[Wave Motion Gun|buster launchers]] in [[The Five Star Stories]] neatly avert the trope. ''Jagd'', a heavy artillery support MH, generally needed to properly deploy before firing, [[Multi-Armed and Dangerous|releasing numerous additional arms and legs]] to anchor itself in the ground, brace its own structure and deploy special shields to protect itself from the enormous recoil and backblast of its own guns. It was also mentioned that it was almost completely defenseless in the deployed mode, and thus was always accompanied by a squad of other mechas [[Awesome but Impractical|for protection]]. Due to its impractical nature, [[Super Prototype|only two]] were ever built.

* Played with in ''Teki wa Kaizoku''; the main character jerks his wrists whenever he fires his laser gun like it's recoiling even though laser weapons shouldn't, but immediately after we first see him fire it he's called on that and he admits that pretending his gun recoils is just a hobby of his. Sure enough, if you pay attention in future fight scenes he keeps doing it but nobody else does.

* In ''[[Desert Punk (manga)|Desert Punk]]'', Kanta's preteen sidekick Kosuna complains almost literally that her small pistol is not cool enough to match her self-persona. Kanta then takes her to an arms dealer, who first forces her to go dig holes for several hours before allowing her to try out an assault rifle. While she exhibits accuracy that astonishes Kanta and the arms dealer, she brings the gun back admitting that firing it is physically punishing for a girl her size and that she'd be completely ineffective in combat with it.

* The manga adaptation of James P. Hogan's novel ''The Two Faces of Tomorrow'' has a scene where a [[Space Marine]] floating outside the space station in a spacesuit fires a particle beam rifle. Small thrusters on his jetpack fire to counter the weapon's recoil.

 

* A sequence in the [[DC Comics]] [[Miniseries]] ''[[Green Lantern|Guy Gardner]] Reborn'', parodying [[Marvel Comics|Marvel]]'s [[The Punisher]], has the title character burst into a room with [[Guns Akimbo]], and rapidly lose control of them, injuring himself.

** A very young Tulip is carefully taught about guns; a powerful handgun sends her slamming back into a deep snowdrift.

* ''[[Sin City]]'' monologues sometimes refer to the sensation of recoil but it's minimal.

 

 

* Averted in ''[[Aeon Entelechy Evangelion]]'', where Shinji while piloting Unit-01 tries to use a High-Velocity Assault Rifle one handed (the other hand was busted) and fail. Being written by the physics student helps.

* In ''[[Big Trouble in Little China]]'', Jack attempts to fire a fully-automatic submachine gun, but ends up spraying bullets in every direction, [[I Meant to Do That|only taking out a bad guy by accident]].

* In ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: At World's End'', the midget member of Jack's crew charges out of a cellar wielding what looks to be a cannon over his arm. He shoots it and is blown right back into the cellar.

* ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]]'' has an absurdly tiny gun called the Noisy Cricket. When Agent J fires it, the recoil tosses him into a car several parking spots behind his firing position.

* In ''[[Toy Soldiers]]'' when teenaged preppy [[Wil Wheaton]] picks up a full-auto AK and ''tries'' to blast the villains with it; about two bullets go in the right direction, the rest of the magazine goes into the ceiling. And he obviously would like to make the gun stop but can't.

== Literature ==

 

** In ''Cell'' when one of the protagonists {{spoiler|is fatally injured by hit-and-run hooligans}}. Another character had picked up an AKS-47 assault rifle from a gun enthusiast's house, but when he fires 'Sir Speedy' it empties most of the bullets into the air.

* There's a non-fiction book in which it's pointed out that ''[[Rambo]]'' should have two spontaneously-dislocating shoulders due to the abuse they've taken from firing machine guns akimbo (he'd be deaf too, but that's [[Steel Ear Drums|another trope entirely]]). The fact that [[Rambo]] [[Did Not Do the Research|never used Guns Akimbo in any of the films]] doesn't detract from the author's point.

* In [[Poul Anderson]] and [[Gordon R. Dickson]]'s first [[Hoka]] story, ''The Sheriff of Canyon Gulch'', Alexander Jones gets in trouble when he assumes that his skill with a laser pistol will translate into skill with a six-shooter. He's never experienced recoil before.

* Pointedly averted in the book ''[[Patriot Games]]'' Jack Ryan gets his hands on one of the terrorist's submachine guns and fires on them. Before firing he remembers his military training and aims with his target in the upper right part of the sight to account for the recoil and make sure that subsequent rounds will still be on target.

 

== Live Action TV ==

== Tabletop Games ==

 

** And this is despite the fact that Bolter ammunition is explicitly stated in several places to be self propelled. Probably the charge needed to actually get the bolt out of the weapon would not be enough to break somebody's arm..

* ''[[GURPS]]'', in its relentless pursuit of accuracy, avoids this at every turn and even tries to establish realistic recoil of weapons that don't exist.

* The ''[[Traveller]]'' science-fiction RPG has man-portable energy weapons (the game's [[BFG]]) that can only be fired while wearing a suit of ''[[Powered Armor]]'' that automatically locks your body into one of several safe firing positions.

* Justified in ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]''; if a Mage has knowledge of the force arcanum, they can enchant a weapon to disperse the opposite reaction of the forces, completely removing any recoil from the gun.

** Averted in ''Halo 3: ODST'', where automatic and semi-automatic weapons have much more noticeable recoil. For example, rapidly pulling the trigger on a pistol will result in significant muzzle climb, while slowing the rate of fire down will result in much more fire control. This is justified in the story by the [[Player Character|player characters]] not being [[Hollywood Cyborg|augmented]] and [[Powered Armor|power armor]]-wearing [[Super Soldier|super soldiers]], but elite unaugmented soldiers.

* Avoided in the ''[[Call of Duty]]'' games. The rocket launchers have zero recoil, the cannon on the first game's tank will actually make you move back a couple feet and all guns have as realistic recoil as possible. A notable and severe exception is the M240B in [[Modern Warfare]] 2 - it's a 7.62mm heavy machine gun that weighs 27 pounds empty. The recoil is severe to the point that the ideal firing position is from a tripod, and if the gunner doesn't have enough time he makes do with the built-in bipod. In the game, however, it has the ''least'' recoil of all the machine guns and can be fired easily from the shoulder. The worst part is that they could have done that realistically by using the Mk. 48, a much lighter and smaller version that ''can'' be fired from the shoulder. It still has a heft kick, though.

** To the point that a major selling point for the [[Cool Gun|Locust SMG]] in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' is how insignificant the recoil is.

** Other weapons are described as made for more durable races, like the Claymore or Widow. The tooltips describe how the weapons were remanufactured specificly to avoid breaking the arm of a human weilder.

* The tank cannon in ''[[Grand Theft Auto]] 3'' causes the vehicle to roll backward slightly if it is stationary when you fire. It's possible, when driving forwards, to rotate the cannon and fire repeatedly behind you, using it as a makeshift booster and accelerating the tank to huge speeds.

** It is possible to use the tanks recoil to make the tank FLY, turn it around, start firing while driving, go up an incline while constantly firing.

* In ''[[Far Cry]] 2'' the PKM has so much recoil that you'd get better range with a shotgun.

* Explained with a hand wave in the ''[[Hitman]]'' series. Forty-Seven, being a peak-human clone, handles any sort of gun with ease, minus the recoil.

* ''[[S4 League]]'' has the Gauss Rifle, one of the more powerful automatic weapons. Firing it continuously causes your aim to move slightly upwards, making less effective at long range. However, it's subverted if you only fire one or two shots at a time, in which case your shots won't fire the wrong way, making the Gauss Rifle a mild case of [[Difficult but Awesome]].

* All guns in ''[[Spelunky]]'' push the player back a few pixels, which can easily drop one off the edge on the slippy ice surface.

 

== Web Comics ==

 

* In ''[[Girl Genius]]'', when three Jaegermonsters [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20030430 attempt to fire a ] [[Humongous Mecha|Clank]] [[BFG|gun]], which sound effects indicate is meant to act like a machinegun, the one holding the weapon from behind is realistically enough slammed into the wall behind him.

** Of course, Jagers being Jagers, the one who did the firing recovered in short order with nothing more than a broken nose ("Oooh! Lemme see!").

 

* Averted in ''[[New York Magician]]''; Michel mentions at least once that firing his Desert Eagle, despite his extensive training with it, has still made his wrist hurt.

 

== Western Animation ==

 

* ''[[The Boondocks]]'': In the first episode, "The Garden Party", Ed Wuncler III asks Riley (an 8-year old) to shoot him with his SPAS-12 combat shotgun to prove his bullet-proof armor works. Riley gladly obliges, and while the armor works, the force of the gun knocks Ed over and out a second-story window, and causes Riley to fall over and suffer an injured wrist.

** Bart does quite well because he isn't given an SMG, but a multiple grenade launcher, a weapon with limited recoil (though how he adjusted for the grenade arc is another matter, especially the shot that destroyed Skinner's car when it was a several hour car ride away. Additionally, Lisa was given an M16 pattern assault rifle, and a full sized one at that, thus her difficulty controlling an extremely unwieldy weapon for an eight year old Girl with, as shown in a later episode, the physique of a gymnast (small, with the weight of her head off-setting her balance point to her torso rather than her lower body, meaning a much higher center of gravity than most of the recruits, especially Bart who has always had a gut reminiscent of Homer's (though no way near as flanderised, ironically, excluding the episodes when he was rendered obese via snack foods.)

* In an episode of ''[[Transformers]] Heavy Metal War'', Wheeljack tries his new "shock blast cannon", a shoulder-mounted bazooka-like weapon, out on an incoming Megatron - only to knock himself to the floor with the quip, "That's a shock, alright..." Kind of a justification, as Wheeljack built the thing himself, and as a [[Mad Scientist]], it probably wouldn't be the first time he'd forgotten to take into account something as simple as recoil.

* The recoil from Yosemite Sam's six shooters is strong enough to make him airborn when firing downward.

 

== Real Life ==

** The recoil of Desert Eagle itself is actually depending on the cartridge: when using standard .357 Magnum, the recoil is light due to the [[BFG|sheer mass of the gun]]. But loading it with [[For Massive Damage|.50 AE or .44 Magnum/Cor-bon]] [[Artistic License Gun Safety|without proper training whatsoever]]...

* In basic rifle training it's not uncommon for a drill or other training cadre to demonstrate the M16's lack of recoil by firing it off their nuts. Yes, you can place the stock in your crotch and fire full auto downrange without injuring yourself.

** Civilian rifles designed for large cartridges (.308, .30-06, .45-70, 9.3x74) and the re-chambered by the factory in .223Rem (civilian version of the 5.56mm) or .243Win calibers may even dispense a recoil pad altogether and still not generate enough recoil to feel a distinctive kick, due to the gun's heavy weight dampening recoil.

** This can occasionally lead to situations where people with ''military training'' end up suffering some of the already mentioned injuries when they try to use a rifle that does produce a significant kick without specific instruction.

[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]

[[Category:Guns Do Not Work That Way]]