Dramatic Gun Cock - Television Tropes & Idioms

Used by a hostage taker in the premiere of Big O, to get across exactly how imperative it is that Roger Smith hand the phone over to the hostage's father. It works.
Gene does this to Harry once in Outlaw Star.
It becomes the trademark sound for Yoko in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (Trademark sound, not her other trademark) as her rifle has a crazy electronic whine when she cocks it after firing off an either impossible shot, or a hail of blue bolts of death.

Close Anime and Manga

In Nightwing: Year One, Nightwing stops a group of carjackers, one of whom decides to be cool. He then mercilessly lampshades this by asking if the crook had seen that on TV, points out that he's just ejected a perfectly good round, and then continues to cock the gun until he's effectively disarmed. There's a reason they call him the Boy Wonder.

Close Comics

Used in the (rather short) movie Phone Booth with the twist of the gun (a sniper rifle) being a good deal away from the protagonist and the sound being delivered by telephone. He then goes on to discuss this trope, its apparent flaw, and its psychological justification. He also perpetrates the mistake of cocking his gun twice without firing a round in between (presumably ejecting a live round).
- Considering the intent was to scare the protagonist straight, ejecting a live round is entirely justifiable.
A fairly egregious example comes from the Stargate movie. During the scene where the commando team is investigating the temple, they cock their guns absolutely every time they hear a noise. Considering this is maybe a ten man team and there are maybe twenty gun-cocks per startling noise, this may be the result of a trigger-happy foley artist.
In Lethal Weapon 3 the Dramatic Gun Cock is used for interrogation. One of the good guys wants to know where a submachine gun is coming from, and to extract this information from a baddie he proceeds to cock said submachine gun and point it at his head. In the same movie, later on, the two main characters are about to start shooting up the baddies' main hideout. They get their weapons, ready themselves... only to hear a Dramatic Gun Cock from behind them. They start to raise their hands, but it turns out it's another good guy (a good girl, actually) who's come to help them and is just scaring them for fun.
Used at least twice in The Boondock Saints; the McManus brothers hold their pistols to the back of their victim's head, and recite their family prayer before firing, such that the prayer ends like this: "In nomine patris, et filii..." CLICK "...et spiritus sancti." BLAM.
- Kinda funny considering these are Beretta 92's. Considering they always do this after shooting a room full of baddies, they would need to decock the weapons before cocking them.
Taken to the extreme by Magneto in the X Men movie, when, after yanking all the cops' guns out of their hands and pointing them at their owners' heads, he cocks every one at once.
Sarah Connor does this several times in succession in Terminator 2, blasting the T-1000 with a SWAT-issue shotgun and interjecting each shot with a forceful, one-armed pump.
- Hell lets not forget the T-800 itself in the same film dramatically cocking his shotgun one-handed by swirling the gun 360 degrees around on his finger, by the firing guard.
  - To be fair, it wasn't a pump-action shotgun, but a lever-action, which still begs the question of why he couldn't just flick his wrist forward and then back, without having to do a full revolution.
  - This can't be done with any real-world gun (the shotgun in question was custom-altered for the movie), and the only purpose of doing so would be to allow the gun to be shot one-handed (likely breaking any human arm with the recoil), but damned if it wasn't awesome.
  - Of course, the wielder in that scene is no mere human...
- In the first film, Reese does one after sawing off the stock & barrel of his shotgun.
  - He pumps the shotgun three times: Once when he cuts the barrel off, once when he wakes up from his dream, and once in Tech Noir before he starts blasting. It would seem that he pointlessly ejected two good shells, or he was walking around with it empty and was, ahem, pumping it for fun.
The clack-clack seems to happen every time the villains brandish their assault weapons at Stallone and company in Cliffhanger (and countless other action movies as well).
In Scary Movie III on of the characters dramatically cocks... a shovel. A shell falls out.
Subverted in Snatch, where one of the robbers of a betting parlor wastes rounds in the gun doing so. And he doesn't even get to use it and has it stolen from him. And even worse, it's the only real gun they had.
The Rock.
Mason: "Your best? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen!"
Stan: "Carla was the prom queen..."
Mason: "Really?"
Stan *clock.* "Really."
In Tony Scott's deplorable Domino, a dramatic conversation between Ed (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edward Ramirez) results in Choco cocking his revolver not once, but TWICE, despite the tension level never dropping to a point where the gun is ever, well, un-cocked.
In Lola Rennt, it's dramatically releasing the safety (and thus technically another trope, but used more in this way) that signifies that the titular heroine means Serious Business. Twice.
Also parodied in Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, where Ash cocks a type of gun that can't be cocked (if this troper is to trust the knowledge of another viewer who knows more about guns).
In Sneakers, during Martin's escape near the end, one thug carries a shotgun which he grabs and pumps as soon as he gets it. But he never fires a round, and yet when he finally finds Martin, he pumps the shotgun at him again. Normally this wouldn't be very obvious if you weren't paying attention, but in this case, you can hear the loud CLUNK of the unfired shell hitting the floor.
The finale of American Gangster has Richie Roberts (Russel Crowe) do this every single time he runs into someone. This works out to racking a shotgun with 4+1 capacity seven times. Not only should there be unused shells lying everywhere, but the slide on shotguns generally locks forward if the hammer is cocked, so this shouldn't even be possible.
- Actually, there's a widget to unlatch it, so you can remove a chambered shell without blowing a 6" hole in your wall. It's usually on the left-hand side of the receiver near the trigger guard for most models of pump-action shotguns,.
The second Pirates of the Caribbean when Elizabeth threatens Cutler Beckett, she makes a point of pulling the hammer back on her pistol so that he'll know she means business.
- The first Pirates Of The Carribbean, toward the beginning, had Jack Sparrow cock his gun while threatening Will in the smithy. The badass effect was mitigated by his frustrated "Please move!" and then soundly destroyed when the smith conked him over the head from behind.
- Possibly justified in the the weapons of that era HAD to be cocked. Until Liz and Jack actively cocked those guns, Beckett and Will were not in any particular danger of actually being shot.
In the Chuck Norris action thriller Code of Silence, two thugs try to rob a bar. Only when the hear a chorus of gun cocks do they realize it's a bar where off-duty cops hang out.
The record for most Dramatic Gun Cocks executed by a single character, in a single scene, certainly belongs to The Mask, wherein the title character responds to the bad guy's show of force... with his own — at least 28 weapons pulled from behind his back.
Done with Energy Weapons in the climax of Ghostbusters. Having reached the Big Bad, the team confidently stride up to her seat of power and go through their proton packs' startup sequence slowly and methodically, which includes two versions of the gun cock: the simultaneous, distinctive whine of the particle throwers as they're powered on, and the mechanical extension of the wands at their business end.
Backfires on Buffalo Bill in Silenceofthe Lambs. When he's in the completely pitch black room with his night vision goggles, Agent Starling has no idea where he is, until he cocks his gun, at which point, she immediately aims and shoots him. Shoulda cocked it ahead of time.
James Bond gets one of these after fighting off Xenia in Golden Eye. '*click* Take me to Janus.' Possible since this was in a bathhouse or bathroom, where one may not always carry a ready to fire pistol.

Close Films

In The Curious Case of Sid Finch, the title character (a skilled human parrot, among other talents) tries to scare a burglar by imitating the sound of a taxicab. He later wishes he had thought to make the sound of a rifle bolt being drawn back.
Backfires pretty badly on the protagonist of Richard K. Morgan's Market Forces. Holding some thugs at bay with a shotgun, he pumps it in attempt to intimidate them... and the gun, having been previously damaged, conspicuously fails to chamber another round, thus rendering him visibly defenseless.
Lampshaded in one of the Track novels by Jerry Ahern (a gun writer and action-adventure novelist). Track's Action Girlfriend takes out her pistol, and Track thinks to himself that in the movies she'd pull back the slide dramatically. Of course she doesn't do this as a round is already chambered.

Close Literature

CSI Miami built a whole subplot out of this when someone pointed a gun at the back of Calleigh Duquesne's head and cocked it. She spent the rest of the episode listening to gun-cocks until she was able to successfully identify the type of weapon pointed at her.
One storyline on Miami Vice has Crockett suffering partial amnesia. He forgets he's really a cop and falls into his undercover persona of a facilitator of drug deals. While in this state he shoots his partner Tubbs, apparently killing him. Of course Tubbs turns out to have been wearing a Bulletproof Vest. After that Crockett's memory begins to return. Guilt-ridden, he makes his way to the police station. He walks into the squadroom and stops. His fellow officers, believing him to have turned rogue, draw and cock their weapons in succession. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
Used to excess in Firefly; in fact, Jayne seems to speak almost entirely in dramatic gun cocks.
- Mal also seems fond of doing it at times, either to make a point (such as in the "Big Damn Heroes" scene in "Safe") or as a way of saying "Cut the bullshit" if someone is trying to con him. It's particularly noticeable in his interactions with Saffron.
- Notably played for laughs when Wash cocks a tiny pistol rather dramatically in "War Stories."
- Speaking of "Jaynestown", anyone notice the DGC sound when "Stitch" Hessian points his shotgun at Mal's face? Seeing as Stitch doesn't pump the action (he's holding the shotgun one-handed) and that model doesn't have an exposed hammer, what exactly is creating the cocking sound?
  - Target lock? Weapon powering up? Futuristic saftey? Its futuretech, so you can probably make up your own answer.
  - Could be any one of those things. Many of the weapons in Firefly have, in place of a dramatic gun cock, a dramatic electrical whine (regardless of if the weapon appears to be purely conventionally mechanical or not.)
- The interrogation aspect is inverted in The Movie, where Mal is trying to talk down River as she has a pistol pointed at him, while looking away at a computer terminal. He tells her that he considers her a person, and not a weapon, and if she disagrees, she'd best shoot him now.... *hammer click* ....or they can keep talking.
Inverted in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where John has to quietly and carefully pump a shotgun while Cromartie is walking around his house. The not-so-dramatic noise nearly reveals to Cromartie where John is hiding.
Locke uses the gun cock to get Ben to reveal information in the Lost episode "Confirmed Dead". Kate uses it in "Not in Portland" to get Aldo to tell her Karl's whereabouts.
Obligatory Star Trek reference — in "A Piece of the Action", when a gangster sneaks up behind Kirk and Spock, Kirk is able to recognize the sound of a Thompson machine gun being cocked. Ah, Starfleet training, you can't beat it.
On Angel, when the titular character is about to shoot Faith point-blank with a shotgun, he delivers his little speech, then dramatically pumps the shotgun. Then he does it again. And again. Only once all of the shells have been ejected does Faith kick it away and resume fisticuffs.
From What It's Like Being Alone:
"What happened to my booze? Did I black out and join AA?" (Dramatic Gun Cock) "Better unjoin it."
Blatantly overused in Heroes, where you know someone is going to cock their gun only after pointing it at someone for ten seconds. The only exception is Noah Bennet.
While not a firearm, Stargate SG-1's version of the Dramatic Gun Cock would be the staff weapon's distinctive "Bzzzt" sound when it is armed, as well as showing arcs of energy along the tip of the weapon. The Goa'uld and their Jaffa love doing this to prisoners before executing them.
- In one episode when O'Neill threatens Kinsey, he did the Dramatic Gun Cock, and much to this troper's enjoyment(being a pistol owner) they actually got the sound of the slide being pulled back and released CORRECT. Ask any pistol owner; the standard Hollywood Foley effect used for chambering a round in a semi-automatic pistol is almost always WRONG.
- As with the staff weapons, the 'TEEE-UNG' sound of a zat being activated definitely qualifies
The famed Arctic Expidition on Top Gear had James May cock his shotgun as he looks out for polar bears while Jeremy Clarkson takes a dump. This is lampshaded when Clarkson calls out (while still on the "bumper dumper"): "James, are you showing off, or are you actually looking for bears over there? because I can't run"

Close Live Action TV

Role-playing example: In GURPS Discworld Also, the type of repeating crossbow used in the swashbuckling seaports of the Brown Islands makes a distinctive "ka-chunk" sound when a bolt is released from the magazine. "Some users regard this as an essential feature."
Spending a shot to do this with a shotgun (the "KA-CHINK!" rule) in Feng Shui gets you an extra damage point on your next attack with it.
Spycraft gives pump-action shotgun owners a bonus on their Intimidate skill at the start of combat. Guess where it comes from.

Close Tabletop Games

Except for the sniper rifles, every time you switch guns in Counter Strike, your character automatically cocks the gun as soon as you select one.
Overplayed in Metal Gear Solid 2. In an attempt to find the location of the C4 bombs along the complex, Raiden interrogates Fat Man. As Fat Man pushes a remote, Raiden cocks his gun and demands an explanation. He does this at least twice more.
Both justified and subverted in Metal Gear Solid 3. The first time Major Ocelot racks the slide on his pistol during the Virtuous Mission (before he kills a KGB team), no bullet comes out of the ejector port which gives the idea that Ocelot doesn't chamber a bullet until he's going to shoot someone (presumably so he can avoid shooting himself while spinning it). When he's about to shoot Naked Snake, Ocelot reloaded and tried to rack the slide before he fired, an uncommon Middle Eastern technique used to ensure there is an unjammed bullet in the chamber. Since he was obviously trying it for the first time, the gun stovepiped on him. Snake later chastised him for trying a technique he probably only heard of in the middle of close-quarters combat.
Perhaps evident in Metal Gear Solid 4. In both the vanilla game and Metal Gear Online, whenever Snake (or any other player) reloads a gun, they cock the gun to chamber a round. Okay, this is realistic. However, doing so ejects another round. So apparently every clip has one extra bullet just for dramatic purposes?
- This only happens if the gun is empty. Since quite a few guns also have another means to "ready" them after reloading aside from cocking, the cocking effectively is for dramatic purposes.
From the Team Fortress 2 "Meet the Team" video "Meet the Spy", the soldier dramatically cocks his shotgun, while claiming that the BLU spy was the RED spy all along.
- For the record, he cocked the gun right after shooting the spy, meaning that the act of cocking didn't waste a round.
At the end of the introductory highway stage in Mega Man X, the sound of Zero's blaster charging up replaces the click.

Close Video Games

Can also happen with Energy Weapons, such as Sergeant Schlock's Plasgun and its Ommminous Hummmm. "I like the soothing sounds I get from this one."

Close Web Comics

Parodied in this video.
Justified in Void Dogs, with Cicada's GSMR. The gun fires self-propelled rocket rounds so there's no reason for it to cock, but it has a button that makes ominous, attention-grabbing noises so she can do this and Click Hello.

Close Web Original

Parodied (isn't everything?) in an episode of The Simpsons, where a hunter says something dramatic, and pumps his shotgun, visibly expelling a shell. Cletus the Yokel tries to copy him, and then he and the hunter start bickering about whether his comment added anything, and they keep expelling shells at the end of each sentence!
Another Simpsons example; while threatening Homer and Krusty with a revolver, a Mob boss cocks his gun, scaring Homer. After some patter, he cocks the gun again, eliciting the exact same response. In the DVD commentary, the writers mention that they thought it was hilarious that a gun gets more frightening the further back you cock it.
Also in Spongebob Squarepants when Patrick catches him stealing his secret box.
"Get ready for the most uncomfortable pillow fight of your life! (cocks his pillow)

Close Western Animation

The reason the shotgun app exists.
Almost all military units, the world over, keep a round chambered at all times while in the field. The only exception are peace-keeping forces, because the sight and sound of an entire squad cocking their weapons is usually enough to scare any would-be troublemakers back into line without the force having to resort to violence.
It's been said that if you must keep a gun in the house, a pump-action shotgun is a good choice for a number of reasons. First, the small pellets are unlikely to go though walls and reduces the chance of friendly fire, and secondly, the sound of loading a round in the chamber is VERY distinctive and lets the intruder know what is pointing at them.
- According to legend, the law states that any action an intruder takes after hearing the homeowner pump their shotgun, other than surrender, may be legally considered assisted suicide. Or, less formally, when you hear somebody pump their shotgun, either you surrender or you get shot in self-defense.
On this troper's first day of firearms training with the RAF, it was EXPLICITLY drilled into him that the weapon should be made-safe in all situations that do not involve pointing at a live fire target. This meant near continuous rattling of cock-safetyoff-safetyon-clearchamber-easespring every time someone so much as touched a weapon. Even this level of gun safety paranoia was not enough to prevent the occasional accidental discharge by someone who thought they were holding a "safe" weapon...
- Squaddie friends tell the story of how they would be forever be half-cocking their "gats" and then dry-firing at each other; Helluva funny right up to the moment one of them blew his best mate's brains all over the tarmac...
- This type of training doesn't extend to US forces, or at least not Army ROTC cadets as this troper accidentally discharged an improperly cleared rifle at a virtual firing range. It was just compressed air, but I'm sure if it had been a live fire range I and the guy who had used the gun previously would have gotten kicked out.
Justified with vintage single-action revolvers and lever action rifles. There was nothing to prevent the firing pin from hitting the primer of a chambered cartridge if the weapon was dropped or the the hammer was bumped, so the normal carry state was hammer down on an empty chamber.
One officer at least claimed to do this in a real manhunt. He was wielding a shotgun that was already primed to fire, but the suspect was hiding somewhere. The officer worked the slide (and ejected a round) to persuade the suspect to give up. This was in one of those 'Dumbest Criminals' books, if memory serves.
Deputy Bud Staple credited the sound of a newly-arrived Army unit's simultaneous loading of their M-1's with intimidating the mob trying to keep James Meredith from registering at Ole Miss.

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