History Main / OneHitPolykill

* In ''Recap/AsterixAndTheCauldron'', Obelix achieves a non-fatal, non-gun version of this; while Asterix fights with the crooked chief Whosemoralsarelastix one-on-one in a swordfight, Obelix manages to knock out most of the warriors in Whosemoralsarelastix's village with a single punch as they were all charging towards him in basically a straight line (the only villager still standing afterwards is the one at the very back of the queue).
* At the end of the ''ComicBook/{{Grendel}} Tales'' story "The Devil May Care", Dana, after having been forced to kill her own son in self-defence and seeing her city reduced to ruins by the fall-out of her affair with Hack, kisses him and shoots them both through the head with a single bullet.
* In a Bronze-Age ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'s Pal ComicBook/JimmyOlsen'' tale Supes tossed a rock through seven of Victor Volcanum's pseudo-men robots, taking them all out with one throw.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Bullet Points}}" the entire story hinges on the idea that the Marvel Universe is changed when [[ComicBook/CaptainAmerica Professor Erskine]] is shot by a Nazi spy [[PointOfDivergence 24 hours earlier than he was in the mainstream Marvel universe.]] This actually causes two direct changes though, as the Nazi spy not only gets Erskine, but a young army private guarding him named [[ComicBook/SpiderMan Ben Parker]]. It's arguable which one is more important.

* ''VideoGame/GHOSTSquad'' offers a "Double Down" bonus for hitting two enemies with a single shot. This is only possible with shotguns and weapons with piercing properties.

* A German sniper in North Africa, with a warped sense of humour, painfully surprised a British officer who had left his trench and walked downwind with a shovel and a roll of toilet paper. Although he could have killed his mark outright at any time, he chose to wait until the British colonel had dug a hole, dropped his shorts, and squatted. The German bullet passed through the fleshy part of both buttocks, leaving, as the target ruefully described later, ''One bullet. Four holes. We knew the Jerries were short of ammo, but that was taking it to extremes.''
** There is a serious side to this. Snipers are taught that if their presence makes it impossible for enemy soldiers to leave their protective foxholes to perform latrine functions, it has a massive demoralisation effect and lowers the will to fight - as it would do if you are forced to take a dump in your own foxhole. British snipers in the Falklands War knew this and made a point of targeting Argentinians caught in the open for necessary personal administration of this sort.

*** Military historian John Keegan once visited a museum with a collection of weapons and armor. He remarked to the curator, an expert in historic firearms, that through most of the Gunpowder Age, the most common debris cleaned out of battlefield wounds was the bones and teeth of the victim's fellow soldiers. "I constantly recall the look of disgust that passed over [his] face .... He had simply never considered what was the effect of the weapons about which he knew so much, as artifacts, on the bodies of the soldiers who used them."

* The assassins in ''Film/{{Death on the Nile|2022}}'' end up killed in a single shot.
* The idea is toyed with by the main character in ''Film/{{Freejack}}'', who only has one bullet left and knows he will be greeted by a squad of {{Mook}}s once his elevator gets to the lobby. Obviously, it is not likely that they would helpfully line up in front of an elevator they're supposed to surround.

** In ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'', Hawkeye has a trick arrow that fires submunitions to achieve this effect.

* In Creator/JohnRingo's ''Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata'', rounds fired from the rail guns used by the [[PoweredArmor ACS]], traveling not much slower than the speed of light, will rip through multiple [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Posleen]] before running out of kinetic energy.

* At one point in ''Series/{{The Office|US}}'', an irritated Michael claims if he had two bullets and was stuck with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Toby, he would shoot Toby twice. The other employees saying he went to far with the joke has him amend it so he shoots Toby and Hitler. After further complaints, Dwight claims that they could use one bullet to kill all three by lining them all up and shooting them though the throat.

* In ''Series/{{Spooks}}'', [[spoiler:Jo is grappling with a terrorist to stop him detonating a bomb; Ros (after Jo nods at her to take the shot) shoots the terrorist, killing them both.]]
* In a ''Franchise/{{Stargate|Verse}}'' crossover episode, the teams try to establish a wormhole between a gate in the Pegasus Galaxy to the Ori supergate in the Milky Way. This requires a massive power surge on the dialing end. Suddenly, a Wraith hive-ship appears and attacks the human battlecruiser. Realizing that the proximity of a black hole is interfering with the Wraith's transporter jamming system, the humans take their ship around the black hole. When the hive-ship is near the floating gate, they beam a nuke aboard, vaporizing the hive-ship. The surge establishes a wormhole to the supergate. Moments before, Teal'c in a Goa'uld scoutship has lured an Ori mothership over the supergate. The resulting "kawoosh" of the opening wormhole destroys the mothership. So, yeah, two ginormous warships in two different galaxies with a single nuke.

* In the ''VideoGame/BloonsTowerDefense'' series, many towers fire projectiles which can pierce through several targets. Although the level of penetration is justified, as most enemies are standard balloons, it's still weird when you consider that, say, a blue bloon contains a red bloon, but an upgraded Dart Monkey throwing a dart at a bunch of blue bloons will pop only the blue layer, and it'll require a second shot to take care of the red inside.
** Bloons TD makes a distinction between pierce and popping power: popping power is how many layers of one bloon a shot can pop through in one hit, and pierce is how many bloons a shot can pass through (this trope).
* [=Zer0=] of ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' has a skill called "[=B0re=]" which allows for this to happen by allowing bullets to pierce through enemies to hit ones behind them. When this occurs the bullet also gets a massive damage buff for each enemy it pierces, making this trope even easier to pull off. It is also amazingly useful at killing gigantic bosses since it's possible for the damage bonus to apply on them multiple times.

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' series:
** ''Call of Duty 4: VideoGame/ModernWarfare'' has this in spades, and players die from the effects of this trope all the time. The body of a fellow player will weaken bullets, but it won't stop them unless they have already lost a lot of momentum. For the more powerful firearms, such as the sniper rifles and the light machine guns, overpenetration is the norm.
** In ''Modern Warfare 2'', there are multiplayer challenges requiring the player to get two headshots with one bullet or two kills with one sniper shot.
*** Not to mention an [[CosmeticAward achievement for doing so]].

* In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianSun'', GDI railguns would penetrate through anything standing between the shooter and the target (read: FriendlyFireproof isn't in effect here), dealing equal damage along anything in that line. Because of the extremely high damage output invested in every shot, a railgun is quite lethal to fragile targets. Canny gamers would then set these weapons to force-fire ''behind'' the unit or structure they wanted to kill.
** Another weapon that polykills is the GDI [[MakeMeWannaShout sonic emitter]], first used by GDI Disruptor tanks from the same game. It's essentially a railgun with more sophisticated rules: the emitted sonic beam takes time to reach its target, hurts less to anything in between that's not an intended target, and hurts friends and foes alike, unless it's another Disruptor. In short, it's safe to cluster Disruptors among themselves, but not with other kinds of things. This reappears as the Shatterer (and upgraded ZOCOM-only version, the Zone Shatterer) in Kane's Wrath.

* In ''VideoGame/Crysis2'' you get an achievement for killing two enemies with one bullet.

* The Sniper Rifle in ''[[VideoGame/DeadTrigger Dead Trigger 2]]'', can fell two or more zombies in one shot as long as they walk in the line of fire. However, it's exclusive to the ''Sentinel''/''Defend'' missions. Moreover, the Benelli (misspelled as Beneli) 828U is also capable of doing this in open-field missions despite being a shotgun.

* ''VideoGame/DragonAge'':
** The Scattershot archer talent in the first game also allows this, provided the enemies are weak enough. An archer can clear a whole group of [[OneHitpointWonder Grunt]] type enemies with one shot--though a quirk of the mechanics means that that first shot has to targeted at something that will survive it, otherwise the spread effect doesn't happen.
** [[CastFromHitpoints The majority of blood magic seems based around crowd control.]] One of the most dangerous spells is one that does an [[OneHitKill ungodly large]] amount of damage, and ''spreads'' to other targets. Casting said spell on a crowd of {{Mook}}s usually results in a lot of dead mooks, and severely injured [[EliteMook Elite Mooks.]]
* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'': Varric describes himself doing this in one of his UnreliableNarrator moments. Any rogue (besides Isabela, who cannot equip bows) can also do this in-game with the upgraded Archer's Lance talent, which travels through enemies and one-shots all "weaker opponents" it comes in contact with.

* Though not actually a single shot in most cases, the turn-based nature of ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'' means that it's very rewarding to run right up close to a cluster or row of enemies with your [[GatlingGood minigun]] and [[LudicrousGibs tear their torsos to shreds in one attack]] (or, even more hilariously, go hand-to-hand in heavy armor amongst enemies so armed and [[ArtificialStupidity watch as they obliterate each other]].) Sadly, this also means that your "buddies" are often prone to hosing you down from behind if [[TemptingFate you give them automatics]].

* In ''VideoGame/SilentScope'', it's possible to hit two or even three targets at once if the {{Mook}}s are standing in front of each other.

[[folder:Web Original]]

-->1269. Even if the guy I based my character off was famous for doing it, I can’t kill eight guys with one bullet.
* In ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle's'' 136th episode ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'', after Church, [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy rather predictably]], misses all his shots on Donut, he throws his sniper rifle to the ground, allowing [[TeamKiller Caboose]] to pick it up and attempt to help Church despite his very vocal rebuttals, culminating in Caboose firing a round that, through multiple richochets, manages to kill Agent Texas, Donut, Tucker and Church himself, leaving Caboose and Sarge as the only ones left.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Bullet Points}}" the entire story hinges on the idea that the Marvel Universe is changed when [[ComicBook/CaptainAmerica Professor Erskine]] is shot by a Nazi spy [[ForWantOfANail 24 hours earlier than he was in the mainstream Marvel universe.]] This actually causes two direct changes though, as the Nazi spy not only gets Erskine, but a young army private guarding him named [[ComicBook/SpiderMan Ben Parker]]. It's arguable which one is more important.