Five Rounds Rapid: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

'''Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart''': Chap with wings, there. [[Trope Namer|Five rounds rapid.]]|''[[Doctor Who]]'', "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S8/E05 The Daemons|The Daemons]]"}}

 

** In the police's defense, sustained assault rifle fire ''did'' prove at least somewhat effective on Robocop in the first movie. Also, assault rifles would be about the heaviest thing you could reasonably expect to find in a ''police'' arsenal.

** In fact, when Robocop appears shortly after Robocop II starts going nuts, he's clearly fully aware that bullets aren't going to cut it; he's packing one of the Cobra anti-tank guns that OCP gave to Clarence's gang to use against ''him'' in the first movie. It doesn't work.

** Averted again in the original novel, written in the 1890s. The Martian tripods don't have energy shields, because no one had thought of those yet. Their [[Death Ray|heat rays]] and chemical weapons still let them slaughter armies and cities in Victorian Britain. However, one Martian war walker is brought down by British heavy artillery (and even then, ''that'' was a fluke), and the Royal Navy warship "Thunder Child" manages to take down two, one through the ever popular [[Ramming Always Works]] tactic. Of course, it's debatable whether this counts as an aversion, because the trope may not have been invented yet.

*** After each small human victory the martians change their tactics - after heavy artillery proves effective the martians start using Black Smoke. After the Thunder Child, they begin to experiment with Flying Machines.

 

== Literature ==

** This is actually a bit of playing with version. It's implied that if the squad had all managed to connect they probably would have killed the Marine, but he's a Marine and thus leaps directly over the two meter tall Cain at a speed the Guardsmen are unprepared for. Other instances of lasgun fire against Marines tend to play it straighter. It will be interesting to see how Cain's laspistol fairs in the upcoming ''Emperor's Finest'' when starring opposite bolters.

* [[John Ringo]] regularly averts, subverts, and otherwise plays heavily this trope in his books, which probably isn't surprising given that he writes a lot of military fiction, and served in the 82nd Airborne before becoming an author.

** The Sennites lay siege to a castle, and with some help from their witch leader, they take it and massacre almost all of the inhabitants.

** The Sennites then hold said castle against Loki's huge army composed of himself, legions of trolls, and Fenrir (a wolf the size of an elephant, and son of Loki). After Loki's army breaks down the front gate, Fenrir walks in - and is promptly made the victim of a hail of gunfire, putting him down. Loki's army retreats.

* 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, Five Rounds Rapid' until they run out of ammunition and are forced to go hand-to-hand.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The Necron small arms' special ability that lets them blow up the most heavily armored thing in existence if you get really lucky might count. Except for the fact that it would take an average of around 160 shots from a basic Warrior squad to actually blow up a fully-upgraded Land Raider Crusader, so either you have eighty Warriors in rapid-fire range of the thing, you keep up a sustained bombardment over multiple turns, or you get really, really lucky.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Guns and Gunplay Tropes]]