Five Rounds Rapid: Difference between revisions
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It appears most good guys are [[Genre Blind]]. When [[Redshirt Army|military personnel]] or the [[Lemming Cops|police]] encounter the [[Monster of the Week]], they invariably attack it with small arms fire. Unfortunately, this never works. The monster is always [[Immune to Bullets]]. This gives our heroes an opportunity to save the day with some [[Applied Phlebotinum]].
An important part of this trope is that, in almost all cases, the good guys will only ever use small arms fire. Rockets, tanks, air support,
If the monster in question is absurdly slow moving, expect the soldiers to remember what their mommy told them about how you [[Do Not Run with a Gun]]. If, after they discover their guns are useless, the good guys still won't stop wasting ammo shooting the baddie, it's [[I Will Fight Some More Forever]].
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*** Justified in that they don't want to necessarily kill the Hulk, just incapacitate him (of course, [[Genre Blind|that's easier said than done]]) and their real objective is to incapacitate ''Banner'' before he can transform, with the heavy weapons as a plan B.
* ''[[Independence Day]]'' followed this trope on a larger scale. The U.S. fighters use (or rather, waste) their air-to-air missiles on the outermost perimeter of a ''miles wide'' alien mothership, so that they only have two missiles left when it exposes its [[For Massive Damage|weak point]]. If ''you'' can figure out why [[Hollywood Tactics|their strategy]] wouldn't work, then you've got what it takes to be a top general in the movies.
** The biggest mistake they made was using AAMs on the ship at all. There's no way in hell that an airbase would have that many AMRAAMS and Sidewinders and not have a stockpile of Mavericks and 2000
*** If you accept the film's premise that the alien's enormous spaceship is vulnerable to air-to-air missiles when gets ready to fire then it would be much easier to destroy them from the ground than from the air. Even a WWII era [[Fla K]] battery would probably do the trick.
** Much less why a supposedly secret base would have all those aircraft to begin with.
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* In the ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' novel ''[[Grey Knights]]'', Alaric becomes aware that bolter shells, armour-piercing and explosive as they are, aren't going to do much good against {{spoiler|the reanimated body of Saint Evisser.}} Before him, Grand Master Mandulis recognised that bolter shells also wouldn't do any good against the true body of Ghargatuloth.
* Played straight with the Dead in Garth Nix's [[The Abhorsen Trilogy|Old Kingdom books]]. When firearms even '''work''', they can only damage the bodies of the Dead; it takes Charter Magic to harm their spirits, and a necromancer (or Abhorsen)'s bells to send them back into Death.
* The words, albeit not the spirit, are quoted (almost certainly as a shout out) in the [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''Fallen Angels'' - faced with an enormous mob of {{spoiler|zombies}}, a squad of Dark Angels loads up their weapons, and beings doing a pattern of 'One step back,
* Averted in E.E. Cumming's series of novels titled ''The Vampire Earth''. While the reapers are immune to most small arms fire, heavier rounds push them around and fifty caliber bullets can actually pierce their cloaks. Unfortunately the series is set [[After the End]] so any weapons heavier than of bolt-action rifles ones are exceptionally rare.
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*** Brigadier later tried shooting it with the Robot's disintergrator, but the energy used enabled it to grow into a giant instead. At least the Brigadier is man enough to admit he made a mistake to the Doctor.
** Double subverted in the Ninth Doctor's final story "The Parting of the Ways", where Captain Jack Harkness gives a group of volunteers under his command "bastic" bullets he is convinced will "blow a Dalek wide open". However, he fails to take into account the Daleks' new bullet-dissipating forcefields, which render the rounds useless. Bitterly lampshaded when a minor character despairingly declares "They're not working!" moments before she gets Exterminated.
** In what may be a television first, a foe of the Tenth Doctor's attempts to lift off from London without enough power to activate her energy shield
*** In ''[[The Scarifyers]]: The Nazad Conspiracy'', an audio starring Nicholas Courtney, his character Inspector Lionheart utters the line "Sergeant, chap with fangs there, five rounds rapid!"
** And finally averted in the episode ''Battlefield'', where it is revealed UNIT has invested in specialised rounds for different alien threats, which work just fine. The new series {{spoiler|adds 'rad-steel' rounds for counteracting [[Applied Phlebotinum|anti-bullet fields]]. It's probably a subversion in the sense that said bullets are only deployed after normal bullets fail. On top of that, guess who gets to put the fatal Five Rounds into the [[Big Bad]]?}}.
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*** There's a logic to this. First of all, think about the scale of the Rangers' mecha. How long do you think the people of Random City A would put up with the Rangers if they called out a skyscraper-crushing giant robot to step on a human-sized monster like a grape? Secondly, if the villains saw that the Rangers were going to bust out the heavy artillery straight away, they'd feel compelled to escalate their own attacks...
* In the ''[[Lost]]'' episode "The Shape of Things to Come," at least one of the ex-military mercenaries fires at the monster, which is composed of thick black smoke. Naturally, it doesn't do much except get the guy killed.
* ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' had a recent episode that actually ''subverted'' the trope; a soldier with a personal shield held off an entire Marine squad doing the
** Though our hero did not die in truth, as the shield failed AFTER they had stopped firing. Fortunately then, reinforcements arrived.
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== Western Animation ==
* In ''Generator Rex'', Providence takes down EVOs by shooting at them with guns from takes and the regular providence grunts. It is implied several times that they are good at what they do. They seem limited when Rex usually has to come in and save everybody.
* Captain Fanzone's attempting approach to fighting Professor Sumdac's roach monster in the pilot episode of ''[[Transformers Animated]]''. When bullets don't work, he tries rockets. The monster just absorbs them. Luckily, they are soon saved by alien shipwreck
{{reflist}}
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