History Main / PainfullySlowProjectile

* The very last phase of the boss fight against [[spoiler: George]], ergo the Raincoat Killer in the present day, in ''VideoGame/DeadlyPremonition'' requires you to not merely dodge the infinite axes he throws but to shoot it out of the air. It is almost impossible not to dodge or miss it given just how slow it goes through the air.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Wipeout}} 2097'', the [[EarthquakeMachine Quake Disruptor]] weapon creates a wave on the track that hits all opponents in front of you. At least that's what happens on slower race classes - on Phantom class, your own ship is about as fast as the wave, so instead of the expected destruction you get a large wall of tarmac in front of your nose that blocks your vision. The game mechanics were ported almost exactly to ''Wipeout 64''; one of the very few changes was a speed buff to the Quake wave.

* Exploitable in ''VideoGame/{{Skullgirls}}'' if you're using [[CrazyAwesome Peacock]]. One of her attacks is a bomb that slowly walks around the ground, which can be quickly used to support teammates by forcing the enemy to keep track of the bomb and the enemy fighter at the same time.

** Taken UpToEleven in ''VideoGame/Rockman4MinusInfinity'': the Minimum curse in Pharaoh Man's stage combines this with OneBulletAtATime. Needless to say, it gets ''really'' annoying.

* ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'': [[WhiteMagicianGirl Sylphiel's]] version of Flare Arrow comes out as this due to her inexperience with attack spells. It's also pathetically weak and [[EpicFail shaped like a carrot]].

* ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'': Spoofed (what else?) in one episode. The opponents, based on the Mooninites below, have to actually tell Yugi and Kaiba "Just give it a minute". Kaiba is so bored by this that he [[ScrewTheRulesIHavePlot screws the rules]] and tells Obelisk (the attack's target) to attack them both to win.

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'', the beams from Decayed Guardians or a Lynel's fire blasts can be avoided by just ''walking.'' Vah Medoh's turrets are pretty terrible, too, as well as inaccurate. You can avoid them by just canceling your glide, and sometimes the turret misses when you're ''[[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy standing still.]]''

* ''VideoGame/Rakion'':

* Reptile's energy ball in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat''. Its slow movement makes it easy to misjudge, and if opponents do get out the way, clever players can knock them right back into it.

* In VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild, the beams from Decayed Guardians or a Lynel's fire blasts can be avoided by just ''walking.'' Vah Medoh's turrets are pretty terrible, too, as well as inaccurate. You can avoid them by just canceling your glide, and sometimes the turret misses when you're ''[[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy standing still.]]''

* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' has "Walk for Your Lives" which is not technically a projectile; it's an explosion. It's caused when a time stasis prison malfunctions and explodes so that the explosion is under the time stasis and slowly expands. Resulting eventually in everyone panicking to escape but quickly realizing that they can leisurely walk away from it.
** Zim's plan to stop it was to undo the temporal flux, returning it to its normal speed, and thus the explosion would be over and done with instead of ''slowly'' threatening everyone. Of all people, it was [[CloudCuckooLander GIR]] who [[OnlySaneMan pointed out the flawed logic.]]

* In VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild, the beams from Decayed Guardians or a Lynel's fire blasts can be avoided by just ''walking.'' Vah Medoh's turrets are pretty terrible, too, as well as inaccurate. You can avoid them by just cancelling your glide, and sometimes the turret misses when you're ''[[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy standing still.]]''

* {{Fighting Game}}s in general tend to have relatively slow projectile attacks, as per the example set in ''VideoGame/StreetFighterII''. In that game in particular, you could make your fireballs even slower by using lighter attack buttons, to the point that some fighters could ''walk'' faster than their Jab fireballs, allowing them to be used to pressure their opponents by physically following the attack.

* A number of characters in'' VideoGame/SuperSmashBros for the 3DS/Wii U'' have custom variants of their projectiles that move more slowly than their standard versions, but often pack a bigger punch. Samus in particular has both her Dense Charged Shot and Relentless Missile, which sacrifice speed for power and/or better homing capibility.

** The Needler. Its projectiles are homing... but this is of little use since they are so freaking slow you can outrun them by walking backwards in the early games. From ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' onward their speed was increased enough to make the Needler usable and sometimes even quite powerful, but they're still quite sluggish compared to other weapons.

** Any and all plasma projectiles are pretty much this. High visibility and low velocity make them easy to dodge at any range beyond a couple dozen meters (unless you're being pelted with enough to resemble BulletHell). Notably, this is canon: in-game cinematics and other media (like the live-action shorts) consistently portray them as that slow. Bungie gave official stats that indicated plasma weapons have projectile velocities in the range of 100 to 125 meters per second, about the speed of a crossbow bolt. Meanwhile, the Fuel Rod Gun has an official muzzle velocity of 70 m/s, and the Needler's is only 52 m/s, not much faster than the average professional pitcher throws a baseball.

* In ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2,'' bullets travel instantaneously, even from across the map. Rockets, grenades, and arrows, however, will have a marked flight time, occasionally measurable in seconds. This is primarily a balancing issue, as the first two mentioned weapons have considerable splash damage (and the slow speed gives more fleet footed class time to evade). Pyros have the option to [[PlayingTennisWithTheBoss play tennis with enemies]] and reflect the aforementioned projectiles back at the people who fired them.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'', projectiles only really become dangerous when there are loads of them or they home. The Amazons in ''Diablo 2'' also have a spell that slows down any missile. The partial exception to this is the red lightning Diablo itself fires, which is very difficult to avoid completely. Unfortunately, the Amazon's arrows also qualify which is why she gets fancy multi-shot and machine gunning skills to compensate.

** Several boss fights such as Innocence use the BulletHell version, as well as having a number of enemies which simply fire slow moving projectiles that are rarely dangerous.

** Frostbolts are slow because they can be used as the target for a couple spells that can normally only be cast centered on the player; if they moved too fast they might get out of range before the player can utilize them. That said there's an easy way to boost their speed once the player's cast speed is good enough to avoid this being a problem.

* ''VideoGame/MechWarrior 2'' had this with [=PPCs=], whose slow moving balls of energy were trivially easy to dodge at any distance beyond spitting. This was especially jarring because the videogame - as [[TabletopGame/BattleTech the tabletop one from which it derived]] - tried to pass [=PPCs=] as long-range, which they were only good at if your target had the decency of sitting still. The tendency of PPC bolts to [[GameBreakingBug not actually fire]] didn't improve things any.

** ''VideoGame/MegaManXCorrupted'': This trope is ''invoked'' by Strike. He fires out very slow but somewhat large projectiles that can't be dashed under, which reduce the space for X or Zero to avoid his WeaponizedTeleportation attacks since they stay on the screen for a good bit of time.

** A noteworthy mention is the Bullet Bills, as well as other cannon balls. Not only can you outrun them easily (assuming you have space to run) but you can even jump on them.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Pickory}}'', it is possible to shoot downwards while in mid air and then fall onto your own bullet. Naturally, [[OneHitpointWonder this kills you]].

[[folder:Racing Game]]

[[folder:Real Time Strategy]]

* ''VideoGame/EmpireAtWar'' and its expansion. Although usually the targets are too slow to get out of the way, the proton torpedoes are, while devastating, painfully slow, so ships such as a Corellian Corvette with Power to Engines can simply outrun them. The concussion missiles are better, but can still be outrun.

** In the first game, one could easily see two groups of archers doing a little "dodge-dance" in between shooting each other.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' feature these. In ''[=FO3=]'', every bullet is a rather slow tracer (which actually seems to function as hitscan with the bullet itself only having a graphical effect). Missiles travel much slower than they ought to as well, though usually not enough to dodge unless they're fired over a very long range, with the same applying to New Vegas. The various Plasma weapons in ''[=FO3=]'' (and only some of them in Vegas) also suffer from very slow moving projectiles as their primary disadvantage, as it makes them difficult to use over long ranges and against moving targets outside of VATS. The New Vegas plasma rifle even has a weapon mod which makes its projectiles go faster.

** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' has retained the slow arrows and now they cut both ways as enemies are slightly CrosshairAware (unless you're hidden...but sometimes ''[[TheAllSeeingAI even then]]'') and will strafe to avoid your shots. Fortunately enemies are still completely unable to adjust for movement. Slow projectile spells also remain for the most part, though "Shock" spells are now instant.

* In ''Tiger Heli'', tanks fire slow moving shells that resemble quarters, which you can often dodge quickly, provided nothing is in your escape path. Your bullets, however, move as quickly as you can push the button.

** In ''VideoGame/Hitman2'', the newly-added briefcase items moved noticably slow when thrown, and due to how the game was programmed, it wasn't uncommon to see a briefcase ''curve around a corner'' to hit the target if they move out of the way while it was moving. A later patch made them faster, but turned it into an AscendedMeme with the ICA Executive Briefcase Mk II, which is ''even slower than before''.

* Don Kanonji from ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' has a [[KiManipulation spirit attack]] that launches a small and sluggish ball of light. Woe betide those that judge it by appearance, though; if it ''does'' hit, it packs quite a punch.
* ''Manga/ZatchBell'' features a demon who can summon massive and extremely powerful spheres of purple energy, which ''veeeeerrrrryyyy ssslllllooowwwwwlllllyyyy'' inched their way toward their target. He got around his obvious weakness by teaming up with another demon whose glue-based magic was good for immobilizing a target but not for dealing damage.
** His second spell is also this, albeit more useful. It moves slightly faster, but it homes in on the target and won't stop chasing it until it hits something.
* In a FillerArc of ''Manga/OnePiece'' the BigBad had the power to heat himself up and create balls of "heat", however, they were extremely slow, even when the villain tried to mimic Luffy's Gatling attack; the balls were as slow but they were many of them.
* ''Anime/SonicTheHedgehogTheMovie'' contains a LampshadeHanging: during the climactic battle, Eggman fires such a rocket, and it's shaped like a tortoise to boot. The other much faster rocket is shaped like a hare, and Eggman writes off the tortoise as a design failure. After the battle is over, Eggman [[UnspokenPlanGuarantee gloats that he could make a better Metal Sonic,]] [[ChekhovsGag only for the tortoise, slow as ever, to come and steal the data disc necessary to remake Metal Sonic and explode.]]

* In ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'', [[WhiteMagicianGirl Sylphiel's]] version of Flare Arrow comes out as this due to her inexperience with attack spells. It's also pathetically weak and [[EpicFail shaped like a carrot]].
* ''Manga/ACertainScientificRailgun'' had a minor, unnamed villain with an ability he called "Equal Speed". This causes anything he throws to ''never'' lose momentum until he stops concentrating on it, making it an UnblockableAttack. He demonstrates by throwing a marble at a steel door. The marble flies through the air very slowly, then plows through the door.

* In the film ''Film/{{Runaway}}'', the villain [[Music/{{KISS}} Gene Simmons]] has a pistol that shoots homing bullets. From the bullets [[ArrowCam point of view]] they travel only slightly faster than their running targets.
* ''Film/TheLastAirbender'' has the infamous "Pebble Dance", which involves ''seven'' Earthbenders going through a long and elaborate series of moves to levitate a rock roughly the size of a human head, which floats past the screen at two miles per hour.

* ''Series/BabylonFive'': [= PPGs =] are "phased plasma guns" that shoot relatively slow-moving blobs. This was done for dramatic reasons (so characters can dodge blasts of hot plasma) and also for in-universe reasons: [= PPGs =] are implied to be used mainly aboard spacecraft and space stations, due to concerns about regular kinetic weapons ripping a hole in the outer hull and killing everyone, including the shooter, by too-long exposure to vacuum (not to mention the [[RunningGag paperwork]] ). Supplementary material states that ground forces typically use projectile weapons because exposure to the vacuum of space is not a concern in an Earth-like planetary environment (though one could reasonably imagine that plasma weapons would be more useful to oxygen-breathers on a planet with an atmosphere they couldn't breathe, for similar reasons as why they are used in space).

* Spoofed in a ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' episode. The opponents, based on the Mooninites below, have to actually tell Yugi and Kaiba "Just give it a minute". Kaiba is so bored by this that he [[ScrewTheRulesIHavePlot screws the rules]] and tells Obelisk (the attack's target) to attack them both to win.
* Done with a fist in ''Machinima/RedVsBlue: Revelation''. The Meta is slowed down by his malfunctioning [[TimeStandsStill temporal distortion unit]] but keeps charging at Doc, who jokes about the Meta's attempt to very slowly kick his ass. Simmons notes that while the Meta is appearing to move slowly relative to them, he's still technically moving as fast as he was before, therefore his punch would have the same amount of force. Doc laughs... right up until the point the Meta ''taps'' him, which sends Doc flying into a wall.
* Spoofed in ''WebAnimation/TheFrolloShow'', where Jafar fires one that is excessively slow even by regular Painfully Slow Projectile standards, but it doesn't even seem to cross Frollo's mind to avoid it.
* Spoofed in the ''WebAnimation/DorklyOriginals'' ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTvx61Pgew8 Bowser Wants a Gun]], where Bowser chews out and kneecaps one of his henchmen for making such shoddily designed guns, pointing out how Mario was able to do get past all of them due to this.

* When [[TheStoner Raymond the Bear]] is made the baseball team's pitcher in ''WesternAnimation/TheClevelandShow''.
--> "It's as if ''the ball itself'' is stoned."
* WesternAnimation/BugsBunny's "perplexing" slowball in "WesternAnimation/BaseballBugs", which manages to singlehandedly strike out the side because no one can freaking hit it.
--> "One, two, threestrikesyou'reout! One, two, threestrikesyou'reout! One, two, threestrikesyou'reout!"
* On the WesternAnimation/WoodyWoodpecker cartoon "Misguided Missile", a villain is chased by a guide missile originally meant for Woody but is now, thanks to Woody's tampering, aimed at him. Said missile crawls through the air at a snail's pace, alerting its victim with its TerribleTicking.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SonicBoom'' episode "New Year's Retribution", Eggman fires a laser that, due to him slowing time for everyone and everything around him (including Sonic, [[SuperSpeed whose "slow motion" is everyone else's normal speed]]), travels slowly enough for Sonic to [[NonchalantDodge casually sidestep it]].

Of course, certain [[ProjectileSpell Projectile Spells]] that travel at this speed are not without their merits; a 10 foot wide energy sphere that travels ''very'' slowly can certainly be a nightmare to play around, as well as give its user control of the battlefield, especially if they can knock you back into it. It's fairly common for bosses in Light Gun games to use painfully slow projectile attacks as well, as they're meant to take many more rounds to kill than the typical mook, and thus you can't stop their attack with one bullet.

Related to VeryHighVelocityRounds. Compare ProjectileSpell and contrast HitScan. Commonly used in BulletHell games, in which the challenge is to dodge an ''absurd'' number of painfully slow projectiles. Not to be confused with OutrunTheFireball, though the explosions in that trope would have to be much slower than in real life too. ProjectilePlatforms usually require this trope.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' feature these. In ''[=FO3=]'', every bullet is a rather slow tracer (which actually seems to function as HitScan with the bullet itself only having a graphical effect). Missiles travel much slower than they ought to as well, though usually not enough to dodge unless they're fired over a very long range, with the same applying to New Vegas. The various Plasma weapons in ''[=FO3=]'' (and only some of them in Vegas) also suffer from very slow moving projectiles as their primary disadvantage, as it makes them difficult to use over long ranges and against moving targets outside of VATS. The New Vegas plasma rifle even has a weapon mod which makes its projectiles go faster.

** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' has retained the slow arrows and now they cut both ways as enemies are slightly CrosshairAware (unless you're hidden...but sometimes ''[[TheAllSeeingAI even then]]'') and will strafe to avoid your shots. Fortunately enemies are still completely unable to adjust for movement. Slow projectile spells also remain for the most part, though "Shock" spells are now instant, striking similarly to a HitScan attack.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''. The "light" weapons (on both sides) are hitscan, but rockets from the rocket launcher are fast, and bolts from the plasma gun are ''very'' fast, while imps' and cacodemons' fireballs move very slowly, and the hell knight's and baron of hell's fireballs are still slower than a rocket. This is compounded in that the player [[RoadRunnerPC moves very fast]], allowing him to keep pace with a fired rocket and outrun nearly every other projectile in the game.

** ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament'' had the alternate fire mode for the Shock Rifle fire a very slow explosive ball, which was trivial to dodge. It wasn't really intended to be used on its own, but could instead be detonated into a much larger explosion by shooting it with the hitscan-using primary fire mode.

* Some smaller [[GiantMook Unmanned Gear]] in ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'' shoot missiles so slow that you can ''outrun'' them or cut them in half using [[BulletTime Blade-Mode]].

* While ''VideoGame/SuperHot'' takes place mostly in BulletTime -- time only moves when the player does -- but the player still has to lead their shots by a significant amount to hit moving enemies, who lack the player's BulletTime abilities.

* Arrows and siege ammo in the first two VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires games could be dodged by any moving unit, at almost any distance, because no unit in either game is able to lead their shots without [[YouHaveResearchedBreathing research.]] In the first game, one could easily see two groups of archers doing a little "dodge-dance" in between shooting each other.

Related to VeryHighVelocityRounds. Compare ProjectileSpell and contrast HitScan. Commonly used in BulletHell games, in which the challenge is to dodge an ''absurd'' number of painfully slow projectiles. Not to be confused with OutrunTheFireball, though the explosions in that trope would have to be much slower than in real life too. ProjetilePlatforms usually require this trope.

Related to VeryHighVelocityRounds. Compare ProjectileSpell and contrast HitScan. Commonly used in BulletHell games, in which the challenge is to dodge an ''absurd'' number of painfully slow projectiles. Not to be confused with OutrunTheFireball, though the explosions in that trope would have to be much slower than in real life too.

* Don Kanonji from ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' has a [[KiAttacks spirit attack]] that launches a small and sluggish ball of light. Woe betide those that judge it by appearance, though; if it ''does'' hit, it packs quite a punch.