Concealment Equals Cover: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Concealment and cover are two totally different things. Yet Hollywood seems to get the two mixed up.

 

Also see [[Bulletproof Human Shield]], when bodies are used for cover, and [[Bombproof Appliance]] or [[Improbable Cover]], for when tissue-paper stops explosion.

 

{{examples}}

* Played with in a recent ad that has the police take cover behind their squad doors (as noted above, those are designed to stop bullets), only for them to run forward to take cover behind a CARDBOARD BOX. Of course, the stupidness of that action was the point of the ad.

 

* Justified in ''[[Black Lagoon]]''—the team's favorite drinking spot attracts dangerous weirdos from the whole neighbourhood, so the owner had his bar reinforced for use as cover.

** Also averted during the "Baile de la Muerte" arc, when the US Army unit "Grey Fox" slaughters the [[Mook|mercenaries]] hired to kill them by shooting through the walls and doors.

* [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[Hidan no Aria]],'' where Aria and Kinji take shelter from a storm of bullets inside a wooden vaulting box... which Aria quickly reveals to be bulletproof.

 

* Averted in issue #53 of [[Garth Ennis]]'s run on ''[[The Punisher]]''. The Punisher and Barracuda take cover behind their respective cars, but the artwork clearly shows the bullets easily punching through.

* ''Hitman''. Diving behind the bar in a dive would usually help as your opponent wouldn't quite know where to blast. However if he has X-Ray vision...

 

* Averted in ''[[The Terminator]]''. When the Terminator attacks the police station, he shoots a cop right through the wall, as a cop realizes standing in the doorway is not a good idea and ducks behind the wall.

* Averted in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyaAuRYNuS0 the shootout] from ''The International''. One of the guys gets shot through a dresser he was using for cover.

* Averted in ''[[The Jackal]]''. One of the Jackal's victims ducks behind a living room couch in order to buy enough time to reload their weapon. The Jackal simply fires a burst from his SMG directly through the couch, ending the fight.

 

* In ''Red Square'', a novel by Martin Cruz Smith (one of the sequels to ''[[Gorky Park]]''), a German police officer opens fire on a group of suspected assassins (working for [[The Mafiya]]) without ever seeing them. He simply unloads a submachine gun through the wall. And then proceeds to do so again, aiming lower [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|in case any of them decided to go prone.]] He doesn't report this, as his superiors might object to him just gunning down someone without warning or even seeing them.

* Averted in the ''[[Discworld]]'' novel [[Discworld/Men At Arms|Men At Arms]], when Vimes is attacked: The Gonne clearly shoots through walls, and Vimes has to outwit its wielder.

* Subverted in Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding. An enemy mook hides behind a large but empty wooden crate and is promptly shot dead.

 

* Averted in one episode of ''[[CSI]]''; a little girl is killed by a stray bullet from a drive-by, despite being inside her house ducking sensibly under the bed.

* In an episode of ''[[Bones]]'', a [[Genre Savvy]] bad guy is taking cover behind a heavy steel door, only to learn that the [[Hand Cannon]] that he had [[Chekhov's Gun|mocked Agent Booth for carrying]] was sufficiently powerful to penetrate through the door and hit him anyways.

* An episode of a TBS show called ''[[Worst Case Scenarios]]'' (based on the ''[[Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide]]'' and starring a guy named [[Dirty Jobs|Mike Rowe]]) featured a scene with a man taking cover behind a concrete pillar during a parking garage gunfight. We see a bullet hole burst through the pillar at head level, a few inches to one side of him.

 

* Averted with a legend from the Wild West. While staying at an inn, a gunfighter in Texas, kept awake by loud snoring in the room next door, fired his gun through the wall and killed the culprit in his sleep.

 

* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' has a variation - while fortifications made to absorb attacks provide an excellent 'cover save' protection from ranged attacks, things like really high grass can still provide a lesser one. The rules explicitly say the reason for that is how it would make the victim of a ranged attack harder to target. It gets stranger with other units - [[Human Shield|units in front of other units]] provide a small 'cover save' for the units behind them, since they are in the way which makes it harder to hit the ones behind, even if the ranged weapons in question should be capable of annihilating the units in the way and then strike the ones behind them (there are no other rules for it, so a successful cover save in this manner would have no chance of harming the units in front of the others. An unsuccessful one would just have the units behind be hit.)

** This (4+) cover save isn't small; it's as good as the save granted for holing up inside a building or hiding inside a treeline. [[Human Shield]] indeed! It's ''[[Handwaved]]'' with a "fouled aim" justification, and rarely [[Justified Trope|justified]] why the enemy [[Fridge Logic|simply didn't shoot anyway]].

* GURPS specifically notes that penalties from the target's cover are dependent on your weapon: A small pistol can only hit a driver's upper body (-4 to hit), but a machine gun or rifle can hit normally (at most a -1 to guess where the victim's vitals are)

 

* In a particularly ridiculous example, in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]: The Twin Snakes'', you are attacked by a boss piloting an M1 Abrams tank firing high explosive rounds. You can avoid damage by hiding ''behind a snowbank''.

* Avoided in ''John Woo Presents [[Stranglehold]]'', powerful weapons can - with repeat fire - tear through many walls and columns, including reinforced concrete in some cases. Means you can't hide behind that flimsy pillar forever...

* In ''[[Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures]]'', the Club Obi-Wan stage has a [[Crosshair Aware]] Indy taking cover behind tables and grand pianos.

* In ''[[Fallout 3]]'', it is prefectly permissable to take cover behind lamp posts or thin trees in order to block gunfire as long as you're standing directly opposite the opponent, even though you should be broader than the cover. Many enemies may even lose track of you if they can't make direct eye contact. It's far from uncommon for a supermutant with a minigun to run up and look for you behind a lamp post. (Although supermutants aren't known to be very bright, so it fits.) Also, due to the general lack of destroyable landscape objects, everything is bulletproof and only takes a few cosmetic bullet holes.

* Played entirely straight in all ''[[Might and Magic]]'' games. ''[[Might And Magic 8]]'' has the possibility of an explosive fireball being stopped by a tent. That's right, a (theoretically) flammable material stopping a ball of explosive flame. With no damage to anything inside.

 

* In ''[[A Miracle of Science]]'', Agent Prester gets in a gunfight with a mafioso in a cheap diner, and dives behind a turned-over table for cover. The wiseguy then proceeds to simply shoot through the table while making snide comments about how stupid it is to hide behind 'a flimsy fiberboard table'. Prester gets a bullet through the shoulder, but fortunately, he's [[Made of Iron]]...

* About to be averted in this comic on badspot.us in [http://badspot.us/img/Comic-Silencer.html 3, 2, 1...].

 

* One of ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s [http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_586_31-life-lessons-you-can-only-learn-from-video-games/ 31 Life Lessons You Can Only Learn From Video Games] is that "bullets can't pass through wood or cars."

 

* Justified in places where houses have interior walls as strong as the exterior ones, like large swaths of Europe.

* While light concealment may not stop bullets, it increases your chances of surviving since the person shooting can only fire where they think you are behind the cover. Also, lower caliber bullets can be blocked by less than what a larger caliber can go through. However, one should try to get behind the thickest piece of cover one can.