We Have to Get the Bullet Out: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Master and Commander (Film)|Master and Commander]]: The Far Side of the World'', [[Badass Bookworm|Stephen Maturin]] operates ''on himself'' to extract a ball round. Justified in that he is after a piece of his shirt that he fears will infect the wound. We even get to see his assistant match the extracted fragment to the hole in the shirt.

* Averted in an unusual fashion in ''[[Iron Man (Film)|Iron Man]]''. Tony Stark ends up with his heart damaged by shrapnel, and instead of having the fragments removed, which would endanger his life, he gets an electromagnetic thingamajig implanted to keep the bits from killing him.

* Subverted in ''[[The Green Hornet (Film)|The Green Hornet]]'': Britt is shot in the shoulder as Green Hornet, but obviously can't go to the hospital lest he give away his [[Secret Identity]]. So he tells {{spoiler|Lenore}} to dig the bullet out with a kitchen knife (while he bites down on a spatula), but even the heat from the sterilized knife causes him to wuss out. {{spoiler|They end up having Kato (in costume) drive up and "shoot" Britt at a public event, which lets him safely go to the hospital ''and'' makes it less likely that people will think he's the Hornet.}}

* At the beginning of ''[[The Bourne Series (Film)|The Bourne Identity]]'' the fishing boat's medic digs two bullets out of the unconscious Jason Bourne's back.

* Inverted in ''[[The World Is Not Enough (Film)|The World Is Not Enough]]'', where leaving the bullet in results in superpowers. [[The Dragon]], Renard, was [['Tis Only a Bullet In The Brain|shot in the head]] by MI6, the bullet didn't kill him, but it is slowly drifting towards his medulla oblongata which will eventually kill him. Unfortunately for Bond, this somehow causes him to [[You Fail Biology Forever|feel no pain and become stronger]].

* Averted in ''[[House (TV)|House]]'' when a police officer has fragments of a bullet lodged in his skull. The team desperately wants to do an MRI, and House shoots a corpse to prove that an MRI's magnetism makes it impossible. The bullet gets violently ripped out of the corpses skull and breaks the MRI.

* Subverted in the final episode of ''[[Firefly (TV)|Firefly]]''. Simon is shot in the leg, and doesn't have the bullet removed until the end of the episode, and with somewhat sophisticated imaging and removal tools to minimize damage.

* ''[[The Listener (TV)|The Listener]]'': [[Zig Zagged]] in "Desperate Hours," in which Toby and Oz get kidnapped and forced to help a man who was shot. The kidnapper makes Toby perform surgery to remove the bullet, which he believes is the only way to save the man's life, despite the fact that Toby is a ''paramedic''. Toby gets them to call Olivia, an actual surgeon, who advises that the safest way to handle the bullet wound is just to stitch it up and leave the bullet in. Then Toby finds the bullet lodged against an artery; removing it could either be necessary to save him or make things fatally worse. They end up removing the bullet to find little damage in the artery, meaning he's in the clear. {{spoiler|He then goes into cardiac arrest and dies anyway.}}

* [[Band of Brothers (TV)|Bull Randleman]] has to have a Dutch farmer do this to him after he is wounded and stuck behind enemy lines. Technically not a bullet (it was shrapnel from an exploding British tank), but the concept remains the same.

* Played absolutely straight in ''[[Resident Evil 2]]''. Leon [[Taking the Bullet|Takes The Bullet]] for Ada. Ada then says that she has to remove the bullet. She does so, even though they are in a sewer (thus increasing the risk of infection), she has no apparent implements to do so, [[Zombie Apocalypse|there's a zombie virus loose]] and Leon's presumably covered in zombie fluids (increasing the chance, that should he die, he'll become a zombie), and [[Worst Aid|she bandages his wounds on the outside of his uniform.]]

* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3]]'', Snake is able to dig out bullets, arrows and various other projectiles from his body with his knife. Doing this ingame will cause the wounds to heal faster, but leaving them over time will cause the wounds to naturally heal around them, leaving the projectile in the for remainder of the game.

* In ''[[Cuanta Vida (Webcomic)|Cuanta Vida]]'', Scout is shot in the arm. He doesn't want to go to the Medic, so Pyro removes it for him. Possibly justified as Pyro (probably) isn't a doctor, and might not know any better.

* In ''[[Last Res 0 rt]]'', Scout Arael in her civilian wear removes a sniper's bullet from Jigsaw's chest -- of course, it may be justified not only because we don't know if it's some kind of futuristic bullet, but also in that [[Our Vampires Are Different|Jigsaw is a vampire]] -- so it's possible she was "staked" by the bullet, requiring its removal.

* Possibly justified in ''[[Freakangels]]'', as apparently the bullet remaining in the wound screws up their [[Healing Factor]] somehow or other, and in any case the two individuals we see getting shot are neither in the presence of [[The Medic]] or especially well-equipped with brains.

* In [[The Simpsons (Animation)|The Simpsons]] episode "Simple Simpson", after Homer (as the Pie Man) gets shot in the arm, Lisa later finds him in the kitchen digging the bullet out of his arm with a butcher knife, while naming the things the knife is touching (including "vein", "nerve" and "bone").