Shoot the Rope: Difference between revisions

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Well, you know what they say. [[Just for Pun|No noose is good noose.]]

A comedic subversion of this has the arrow not quite split the rope all the way, leaving the victim dangling (and strangling) until his rescuers can finish the job. If the victim struggles to breathe in the process, you have a case of either [[Did Not Do the Research|not doing the research]], an incompetent or an exceptionally cruel hangman.

A comedic subversion of this has the arrow not quite split the rope all the way, leaving the victim dangling (and strangling) until his rescuers can finish the job. If the victim struggles to breathe in the process, you have a case of either [[Did Not Do the Research|not doing the research]], or an incompetent or exceptionally cruel hangman.

You see, people may have only figured out how to do hanging consistently correctly in the nineteenth century, but then they started to do it the scientific way. Normal, "long drop" hanging kills by '''breaking the neck''' when done ''correctly'' -- that is, in a Robin Hood story the slowly strangling victim is not so implausible, because they haven't yet figured how much rope to use, and this often resulted in "short drop" hanging, where the body's energy is not enough to break the neck, and the rope just slowly strangle the victim.

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* Realistically averted in the 2010 ''[[True Grit]]'', where the heroes opt to climb a tree and cut the rope on a man hanged high.

* [[The A-Team (film)|Hannibal Smith]] goes against the [[A-Team Firing|norm]] by cutting through Face's noose in the film with three or four bullets in rapid succession.

* Inverted in ''[[~~Film/~~House|House]]'', in which a flying skeletal monster steals Roger's shotgun as he's dangling from a rope, then fires it (after a Gun Twirl, no less!) to break the rope and send him plummeting ''into'' danger. Unlike most examples here, it's plausible that the line would break, as a shotgun can damage a whole section of the rope rather than just one small spot.

* Inverted in ''[[House (film)|House]]'', in which a flying skeletal monster steals Roger's shotgun as he's dangling from a rope, then fires it (after a Gun Twirl, no less!) to break the rope and send him plummeting ''into'' danger. Unlike most examples here, it's plausible that the line would break, as a shotgun can damage a whole section of the rope rather than just one small spot.

* ''[[Cat Ballou]]'' gets rescued in this manner in the the eponymous movie.