Paint the Town Red

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Before.

After.

"C'mon, team. Let's go paint the undefended town a nice shade of 'BLAM'." —Elf, Schlock Mercenary

In the course of a Cruel and Unusual Death or even when it's just that Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting, things get messy. And the things that suffer most are the buildings (inside and out) in town that get covered in everyone's blood. It's usually also the sign of a particularly violent person walking around just doing what they do best. Someone may help the job along by leaving a Bloody Handprint. High-Pressure Blood could also do the trick, as well as a victim dealing with a gaping head wound. Particularly shown when a director takes creative liberties on death scenes.

If a hero comes running back home only to find his family and friends used this way, it may lead to a Heroic BSOD.

Usually goes well with Gorn with a side of Ludicrous Gibs for in-your-face action. Contrast Bloodless Carnage.

The Other Wiki tells us that the Trope Namer, but not an actual example of the trope, is Henry Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford's drunken entry into Melton Mowbray on April 6, 1837, in which he and his companions stole paint and literally painted Melton Mowbray's doors red after the tollkeeper asked them to pay the toll to enter the town. The tollkeeper and a constable were also painted red, but not killed.

Examples of Paint the Town Red include:

Anime and Manga

• Anywhere Ladd and Claire go in Baccano!!, this is pretty much standard.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, this is Scar's calling card. And it later becomes commonplace for Wrath/King Bradley.
• Zoro from One Piece revels in this trope.
• In Hellsing, this is Alucard's favorite activity. Seras invokes this trope once, literally smearing her opponent all over a wall.
• Commonplace in Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan, often played for laughs.
• In the Blood: The Last Vampire movie, Saya wasn't afraid of doing this, even in front of a nurse who didn't have the foggiest idea of what was going on.
• Often used to imply or enhance the amount of incredible violence that the Angels and EVAs are capable of in Neon Genesis Evangelion, most memorably when Gendo orders the autopilot to take over and destroy the EVA being piloted by Touji after an Angel hijacks it.
  • In the second Rebuild of Evangelion movie, Sahaquiel's death is changed so that the Angel explodes into a gigantic wave of blood, which then washes over Tokyo-3. One must wonder how long it took to clean all that up.
• This is the signature of the titular Ichi the Killer. The comic and film open with a crew cleaning up his mess.
• Happens quite frequently in Highschool of the Dead, thanks to the zombies.

Film

• In Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan is shown once using his powers to turn a bunch of thugs into chunky, red paint. Restaurant patrons weren't happy.
• Literal example in Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter. When the protagonist takes over the duties of sheriff, he has the town painted red and renamed Hell before the shooting starts.
• The first Gamers film had a rather spectacular example from the Ludicrous Gibs side of this trope, after Nimble decides to backstab Hunk. With a ballista.

Gamemaster: Well, that's 264 points of damage. You splatter Hunk all over the common room. The patrons shriek in horror and run out of the inn, occasionally slipping on blood and entrails. You're now alone in a room that looks like a vat of beef stroganoff exploded in it.

Literature

• Averted in many fights in The Dresden Files series thanks to the fact that creatures from the Nevernever have auto-cleanup on destruction.
• On a few occasions in the General series by David Drake, this occurs. A Discussed Trope - Raj notes that it's the first (or one of the few) times he's literally seen streets run red, and this is basically because an entire army got massacred on each occasion. (One of them was about forty thousand or so troops disembarking off their ships to discover that Raj's men are waiting in ambush - with rifles and field guns. They take casualties of something like 50% before they manage to surrender.)

Video Games

• Ninja Gaiden II (2008) makes you able to cover the places you go through with blood from your enemies.
• Dwarf Fortress. Especially in the latest version, where bathing is a bit broken so attempts by dwarves to wash all that blood and vomit from battles off results in a giant puddle of blood all over the floor (spread of contaminants makes simulation more resource-hungry, however, and as such was made optional)...
  • When you add weapon traps with 10x large serrated discs, a corridor can be spray-painted very quickly.
• Alien Shooter. At any given time, you will be deluged with dozens upon dozens of monsters, each of which leaves a big puddle of blood, limbs, and guts when it dies.
• Blood: Caleb actually says "I'm gonna paint the town red" at the beginning of one level. He stays true to his statement.
• Crimsonland
• In Skullgirls, the character Peacock mentions the trope by name in her battle introduction. However, this doesn't actually happen in-game.

Web Comics

• Discussed after a fashion in this Erma strip, but never actually happens.

Web Original

• Chakona Space: In a recent story set in Neal Foster's more distant past, he doesn't paint the town so much as the ceilings of a starship's bridge and sickbay.

Western Animation

• Brock Samson has performed this on occasion in The Venture Brothers.

Real Life

• A suicide bomber rushed a tank. This happened. The tank suffered no damage.
• A number of dead baby jokes go along these lines: How many dead babies does it take to paint a wall? Depends how hard you throw them.