Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy - Television Tropes & Idioms

Star Wars Hit Probability Equation: The probability of a bad guy hitting his target is equal to the inverse of all bad guys present plus the cube of the number of good guys present (plus one) plus the number of Jedi present (plus one) to the 10th power.

Lister: Why don't we ever meet anyone nice?
Cat: Why don't we ever meet anyone who can shoot straight?
- Red Dwarf

"Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise."

-Obi-Wan Kenobi, laying it on a little thick...

When only the Bad Guys suffer from A Team Firing. The good guys (the non-Red Shirt ones, at least) can stand in the middle of the firefight and never get hit, and can pick off any bad guy with even the most casually-aimed shot.

Extra points if the bad guys first demonstrate impressive accuracy on a range. Eric Kriegler, from the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, springs to mind.

The trope is named for an actual (optional) rule in the GURPS tabletop roleplaying game, which in turn is based off of a common misconception of Stormtropper accuracy in Episodes IV and VI. (Get real marksmen and the complains will be directed to the hero's Improbable Aiming Skills, not Stormtrooper inaccuracy.)

To be fair, in many cases the combatants are forced to Quick Draw or even shoot from the hip, which would make hitting even a stationary target difficult for anyone, regardless of their marksmanship under normal circumstances.

Dodge The Bullet is the inverse of this. For the bladed weapon variation, see Never Bring A Knife To A Fist Fight. See also Where Did They Get Lasers. Opposite number to Improbable Aiming Skills. The use of More Dakka can either overcome this, or make it even sillier.

Examples:

Film

The source of this misconception comes from the apparent inability of the Stormtroopers in Star Wars Episodes IV and VI to hit the heroes. Explanations (besides the Character Shields + Heroic Improbable Aiming Skills vs Stormtrooper real-world-only levels of skill match-up) below:
- In IV, Vader's running a Xanatos Gambit defendant on them escaping.
  - To make things "worse," they're on the Death Star-somewhere you don't expect to be attacked, so you guard it with people you don't expect to see much action, not your best troops who are needed elsewhere-and they still herded the heroes effectively.
- In VI, despite what Palpatine says, that's not a legion, that's a platoon, outnumbered, fighting an enemy on familiar and prepared terrain, and who have the support of a Rebel commando team. I'd like to see you try better.
  - See also Apocalypse Endor, a one shot comic in which an ex-Stormtrooper recounts that Ewoks were basically tinier, furrier versions of the Vietcong.
Goofing on this trope, the Star Wars First Person Shooter games often feature the Stormtroopers’ blaster rifle as the least accurate weapon in the game. Some Lampshade Hanging in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast: troopers can be overheard talking about how difficult it is to see out of their helmets, how badly designed their rifles are to control recoil, etc. "I'd like to see you come down here and try to hit something while you're wearing this damn helmet so I can sit in an air conditioned office and tell you how stupid you are!"
- ...which is actually violated in-game, as the Stormtroopers are insanely deadly before you get Force powers. The early levels bypass Nintendo Hard and go straight into "you'll need years of therapy to recover from playing this." The Stormtroopers are pretty much what they're said to be when not facing Luke and company.
  - This Troper believes that this applies to the PC version only: in order to compensate for the decreased accuracy of a controller, the Xbox version adds an improved auto-aim for the player character and reduced accuracy for the Stormtroopers, especially from distance. At least until you place the difficulty on maximum setting. It should also be noted that although ranged weapons suffer slightly, lightsaber control can be more satisfying when using a controller.
- We now have numbers
The Star Wars prequel trilogy features "predecessors" to the stormtroopers, the battle droids: despite being robots designed for the single purpose of shooting people, they rarely hit anything important. Of course, that’s all OK since (as explained in related media) they don't have "computer brains", were built on the cheap, and so on. George Lucas, professional wizard-killer. (Of course, one would think that a droid with some basic knowledge of trigonometry would be at least as accurate as a typical human.)
- Lampshaded in Star Wars The Clone Wars by droids themselves:
  Droid 1: What a terrible shot!
  Droid 2: Ah well, it's my programming.
- The "advanced versions" Droidekas and Super Battle Droids, on the other hand, waste several Jedi on Attack of the Clones, though that may be because there are so many of them.
- One EU book, Dark Rendevous, had droids specifically built with weapons that were nearly impossible for a Jedi to block. It takes two fully grown Jedi to take down less than a dozen of 'em, and one of the two is nearly killed. The only reason they're not employed in battle is that they're too expensive.
The Russian Soldiers in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull never hit anything.
- The Nazis in the first three also have the trend to shoot badly, except for the shootout at Marion's bar in Raiders (which involved locally hired henchmen, not Nazis).
Pretty much any western from the 1950s and 1960s.
This trope is also very common in war movies, especially older ones. Isn't it astonishing, how the Germans and Japanese could have conquered so much of the world, when their soldiers and pilots couldn't hit a barn if they were standing inside it?
Parodied/subverted in the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, where Arthur, Trillian, Zaphod, and Marvin are surrounded by blaster-wielding Vogon soldiers. All of them take cover in Arthur's caravan except Marvin, who remarks, "I don't know what all the fuss is about. Vogons are the worst marksmen in the universe," and is immediately shot in the back of the head. This isn't a real accomplishment though, since this version of Marvin has a freaking huge head, and gets back up after a minute.
Ruthlessly mocked on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode Space Mutiny:
Crow: Here's a little free advice for the mutineers: Just stop and aim, you idiots!
Tom: Why is [the hero] so impossible to hit? How can they keep missing this slow, giant white thing?
Mike: Y'know, they shouldn't have set their phasers to miss.
Parodied (along with a lot of other Star Wars tropes) in the movie Spaceballs. During the "escape from prison" sequence, the only shot of the evil stormtroopers which hits true is one which just barely singes Princess Vespa's hair. This launches her into an Unstoppable Rage in which she guns down all of the enemy stormtroopers, Rambo-style. Also spoofed earlier in the movie when "Gunner's Mate First Class Phillip Asshole" is asked to fire across the nose of a princess Vespa's ship, and almost hits her. When told "I said across her nose, not up it!", it is revealed that the gunner is cross-eyed.
Equilibrium features a fair number of demonstrations of the Academy's graduates in action. In one particularly (in)famous scene, protagonist Preston literally stood still in the middle of a crossfire while his opposition opened up and failed to hit him anyway. This was explained away by virtue of the fictional "Gun Kata" martial art, which teaches its practitioners to seek locations with minimum (given the usage of this trope, making it zero would probably have been better) probability of getting fired at.
- The one time Preston remained still in the middle of a crossfire, it was in a completely dark room - and he was crouched down on the floor, letting everybody else shoot over his head and hit each other. All the other scenes, Preston is dodging insanely.
Parodied in UHF's Rambo homage, where George strolls towards an enemy soldier while the latter is desperately firing an assault rifle. Even after George stops with only a few feet between him and the goon... and proceeds to slowly ready his bow, the enemy still can't land any hits.
The film version of Judge Dredd justifies this to a certain extent in an early scene, with Dredd pointing out to the other Judges (who are hiding behind cover while Dredd is out in the open) that despite the large quantity of gunfire coming down around him, apparently they're well beyond the manufacturer-listed "lethal range" for the guns that are being used, and so Dredd doesn't see the need to hide.
In the Blaxploitation film Three The Hard Way, the three heroes, armed with single-shot cap pistols from a considerable distance, defeat a larger group of men, who are armed with fully automatic machine guns, killing all but one of them (whom they capture to interrogate), one of the heroes gets a small flesh wound, the others are totally untouched.
The end of the film Behind Enemy Lines, when Owen Wilson's character is fleeing through open ground IN THE BLEEPING SNOW but isn't hit once by the fire from dozens of Serbian paramilitary troops, mobile anti-aircraft batteries, snipers, and even a tank. Instead only one poor U.S. Red Shirt in a helicopter is hit by the salvo of destruction.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film Commando. He stands on the lawn picking off guys one by one while little squibs go off all around him. Also has him running on an open field while his enemies, maybe 30 meters behind him, shoot uselessly in his vague direction.
The entire U.S. military in the 1998 remake of Godzilla. Having lured out the title creature, an immense artillery barrage begins, firing at a target several stories tall. The small arms fire may have been ineffective, but several dozen missles all miss from as range of half a block to a hundred feet or so.
The Musketeers in Man in the Iron Mask. Justified in that they were literally shooting with their eyes closed, so that they wouldn't have to see the original Three Musketeers die.
The enemies in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie True Lies fit this trope perfectly. Even when using sub-machineguns at close range they cannot hit the hero (While the hero manages to take them out with a pistol.)
- At one point, the guards jump through the air, on skis, A Team Firing, and hit nothing. Meanwhile, Arnold's character is able to roll backwards through the snow and fire perfectly aimed shots before hitting the ground. To be fair, the entire movie borders on Affectionate Parody.
"Do we just suck, or is this guy really that good?"
Parodied nicely by Die Hard 2: Die Harder where there's a massive fire fight outside a church between good guys and bad guys where nobody gets hurt despite the enormous amount of gunpowder being discharged. The fact is they were all shooting with blanks, since they were all bad guys.
Averted in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. In the climactic battle, the heroes get shot numerous times but they're wearing full body armor.
In the DVD commentary of The Kingdom the director mentions that he asked a group of ex-special forces people watching a preview if it wasn't a bit too implausible that none of the good guys were getting hit by the terrorists in the final shootout. They assured him that such lousy accuracy was nothing unusual.

Live Action TV

The Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica - killer combat robots that almost wiped out the entire human race - couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with their toes up against the shingles.
In the short-lived TV show Police Squad, at one point Frank and an enemy are in a gunfight, unable to hit each other, but the camera zooms out and reveals they're hiding behind chairs 5 feet from each other.
- There's an even better one in the same series: Frank and a villain are shooting at each other on a street, each using a trash can for cover. The camera pulls back to reveal that they're hiding behind opposite sides of the same trash can; they're shooting at each other from handshaking range and missing.
One Monty Pythons Flying Circus skit had a bicycler eventually wind up in front of a firing squad. They give the order to fire, and everyone misses. They try a few more times, and everyone misses again. The officer tries to give advice about how to aim, but they still miss.
- The last time, the Russian soldiers just decide to bayonet the man, and he survives, although the audience doesn't know how, because the scene cuts to a title card labeled "Scene Missing" followed by the bicycler exclaiming "What an amazing escape!"
Firefly includes mooks that are both hilariously incompetent and amazingly adept shots. One particular standout moment is in the final shootout in the pilot, where Mal and Zoe are standing in the open, against a numerically superior enemy force and with no cover. When the gunfight starts up, Zoe gets hit dead center in the chest, but Mal only gets winged, even when he's standing only a dozen meters away and only walking slowly forward and sideways.
- On the other hand, Rance Burgess' collection of militia and goons can hit prostitutes firing back at them from a good twenty to thirty meters away, firing rifles one-handed, on the backs of moving horses.
The Jaffa in Stargate SG-1. Well, at least when they're evil. A Jaffa's aim gets much better after turning to the good side. Of course, they do have those bulky staff weapons, but good Jaffa seem to be pretty proficient with them.
- In the episode "The Warrior," O'Neill hangs a lampshade on this by describing the staff weapon as "a weapon of terror: it's made to intimidate the enemy." and compares it with the P-90, a submachine gun which he says is "a weapon of war: it's made to kill the enemy."
Massively inverted by Lost: it seems the more evil one is, the better a shot. The Others and season 4's mercenaries hit everything (except Sawyer, hit only once - by the former group - in the Season 1 finale.)

Western Animation

An episode of Family Guy ("And the wiener is...") pokes fun at this: in a shooting range, various extras are shooting targets specific to their character: a track referee shoots a starter pistol at a target on the ceiling, a blind man shoots at the side of a barn, and an Imperial Stormtrooper shoots at a cardboard cutout of Luke Skywalker - and misses with every shot.
- Another example happened when Peter retells Star Wars with the family as the main characters. When the group are fleeing the Death Star, no one is ever hit, even when Han (Peter) and Chewie (Brian) spend about 25 seconds standing at the doorway trying to get a couch through the door.
Most cartoon Mooks can't hit for crap either. Whenever Cobra and G.I. Joe faced off in battle, firearms proved completely worthless in shooting down anything smaller than a helicopter, and most ground engagements ended in a massive fistfight.
- With the notable exception of the Decepticons in the Transformers movie... prior to and after which they were horrible marksmen. As the Autobots in the movie continued to be horrible marksmen (with the possible exception of Optimus Prime), apparently the Autobots missed the memo that they were fighting for real this time.
  - Of course they did. Shockwave had the memo shipped to the other Autobot City. They ain't called Decepticons for nothin'.
  - Later TF series handle this somewhat differently. While shots hit often enough, Transformers are very hard to kill as, not only are they heavily armored robots, but the only sure way to put one down for good is to crack their Spark Chamber.
Most police officers in Superhero series. Surely some police officer would think of just shooting Joker as soon as he shows up and giggles. (Especially given that he's a known cop-killer and mass murderer.) Granted, killing him would kill the series but most of Batman's enemies are not bullet-proof. Theoretically, it would take just one person with a good shot. (Or an NRA member.) In an episode of Batman The Animated Series, Batman himself realizes that he's been very lucky in avoiding death, and wonders aloud if The Joker, Two-Face or "some punk" will get lucky someday.
- In fairness, this has now been subverted in DC continuity, when the immediate reaction of Gotham Central PD to an appearance of The Joker is to fill him with lead. Of course, he still survives, thanks to Joker Immunity.
Nobody on The Boondocks ever gets hit by bullets (unless their name is Gangstalicious).
- Very much lampshaded when a gang tries to execute Gangstalicious and shoots him up at point-blank range...only to still miss every shot prompting this exchange:
  "We missed?"
  "Damn...we suck, man."
- Another great example of this trope is when Riley is explaining that the leading cause of death for black men is Ni*** Moments. Two black thugs unload Uzis and pistols at each other from point-blank range and miss every shot, only to get instantly shot and killed by white policemen moments later.
This troper recalls an old Looney Tunes flick wherein Egghead was absolutely incapable of shooting Daffy Duck, in open cover, at point-blank range. Daffy then put a sign on Egghead that read "BLIND" and walked off sadly.
Tragically averted in the last episode of Superman The Animated Series: Superman (depowered) is escaping a military compound with a badly weakened Supergirl, soldiers spraying fire at them and predictably missing - when Supergirl is suddenly hit in the midsection, critically wounding her.
Averted in Batman: Gotham Knights; at first, the shootouts look like the typical "Mooks open fire with automatic weapons, Batman dodges them all easily". However, later in the movie it's explained that Batman actually does get hit with a few bullets whenever faced with automatic fire, it's just that his armored suit protects him as long as he's at long range.
Inverted in the Star Wars Clone Wars miniseries on Cartoon Network. The ARC Troopers featured in the early episodes were nearly unstoppable, even their leader, who dual wielded pistols, and was probably the most accurate of them all.

Webcomics

In Irregular Webcomic, the true reason for this is revealed here.
In Girly, this trope is parodied here.
Subverted in Girl Genius. Gil is left standing apparently unscathed after a war machine showers him with a hail of bullets ("Damnation! I hit him! I know I did!") After Gil delivers not one but two Crowning Moments of Awesome, we see that he actually was hit.

Anime and Manga

All of the enemies on Noir.
Bianchi from Katekyo Hitman Reborn can kill just about anyone easily with the "special ingredients" she uses in her cooking, but when she gets a gun in her hands, she can't hit for crap.
Lampshaded in Excel Saga: Excel explains to the mooks firing at her that they'll never hit her because of this trope, and doesn't even bother to move.

Video Games

Lady in Devil May Cry 3 is initially portrayed as a competent gunslinger capable of gunning down demons and incompetent players. After defeating her in a boss fight, however, the ensuing cutscene shows her missing her shots at Dante even as he walks closer and closer to her. Possibly justified if you cut her some slack for the massive loss of blood.
In World Of Warcraft, Sunblade Lookouts are placed in such a position in order to shoot down anyone attempting to make a bombing run along the Dead Scar of the Isle of Quel'danas. While they do respond to each threat with an impressive volley of flaming arrows, they simply couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if it painted a bullseye onto itself. Who said that elves are good archers?
- Oh, they hit you all right. You can see the burning arrows sticking out of you, even. You just don't take any damage, since you aren't in control of the flight.
The Vault-Tek Assisted Targeting System in Fallout 3 gives you a percentage chance (which is usually believable) to hit any specific limb of the enemy. of course, should you miss that limb, your shot will not only miss the enemy altogether but also conveniently miss EVERY OTHER NPC that might have been hit with that shot. two things make this worse: first, even if the enemy is SHOVING HIS HEAD INTO THE BARREL OF THE GUN, your character still has that 5% chance of missing (there is no guaranteed hit in VTATS). second, if you somehow (*cough*cheater*cough*) manage to have enough Action Points to have a long series of attacks, it still uses the exact probabilities given to you when you set up your shot sequence, even if the enemy has managed to GET OUT FROM BEHIND COVER, WALK RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, AND DONE EVERYTHING SHORT OF STICKING HIS/HER/IT'S FINGER-LIKE EXTENSION DOWN YOUR GUN'S BARREL. want to hit that person right in front of you? don't use VTATS.

Web Animation

The popular flash series Madness Combat features Faceless Goons that couldn't hit a sleeping elephant with a sniper rifle. This is arguably done for black humor as it's obvious the series takes place in a Crapsack World. If you look closely at the beginning of Madness Depredation there's a Lampshade Hanging. One of the henchmen clumsily shoots himself.
- In a recent chapter, a few henchmen have been able to hit Hank (the main character), but of course they can't kill him. Due to Hank's undead nature, any hit by a henchmen will be Only A Flesh Wound.
Church from Red vs Blue was ~~top~~ bottom of his class at the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.

Comic Books

Amusingly enough, in the comic book crossover between Spy Boy and Young Justice - Robin actually asks Spy Boy's team if they indeed took the Stormtrooper Marksmanship course - never realizing that HE was also displaying Stormtrooper level of accuracy.
This editor remembers a brilliant subversion and lampshading of this trope in an old Heavy Metal magazine where the heroes of the story are escaping from an enemy castle and none of the archers are able to hit them. One of the archers becomes fed up, takes aim, and proceeds to kill all three of the heroes with the next three shots. His celebration is cut short when his commanding officer reprimands him for the deed, stating that they were all missing on purpose and that the story couldn't continue now that the protagonists were dead.

Tabletop Games

The Orks of Warhammer 40000 have this as their Hat, being universally hilariously bad shots. They make up for this with a great deal of enthusiasm, more, more and more dakka, huge, noisy and ludicrously rapid-firing guns - and, of course, sheer numbers, reasoning that if you point enough dakka at something, some of it will stick.

Truth In Television

In a surprising example of Truth In Television, take the story of Mr. Thomas Martin McGouey, who left a suicide note in place for police to find, painted a target on himself, and stood in the center of a clearing with a drawn toy gun pointed at six police officers. After the resulting hail of twenty-eight bullets, Mr. McGouey found himself with a single minor wound to his shoulder, requiring only outpatient care.
This editor recalls seeing a CCTV video from a bank robbery in which the thief fired six rounds at point blank range at a kneeling police officer... and completely missed with all six.
A fascinating Real Life example is none other than George Washington. Despite a long, and mostly disastrous, military career, the Father of the U.S.A. never once suffered a bullet wound. During Braddock's retreat Washington had at least two horses shot from under him and later found bullet holes in his clothing but got nary a scratch. Not only that but double lines of firing soldiers managed to miss him entirely though he was sitting his horse big as life between them - and on at least TWO separate occasions! Eerie...
- This is about half lampshaded, half justified. An old story from the French & Indian Wars tells of a battle near Fort Duquense where over 1,000 soldiers from a 1,500 man British regiment were slaughtered, including almost all the officers at the front of their ranks, in a lopsided Indian victory. During the battle, the Chief ordered his marksmen to bring down Washington, said to be the last surviving officer on horseback. They fired seventeen bullets, though not one hit before the Chief called them back, remarking that "this man was not born to be killed by a bullet". In a letter to his brother, Washington remarked that he had two horses shot out from under him and four bullet holes in his jacket, but was completely unharmed.
  - Wait a minute, wait a minute...did you just use Lampshade Hanging in reference to a Real Life event? I guess you could claim that the Chief was "lampshading" the apparent error of ... um ... the universe ... but that would imply that the universe could make an "error".
  - The chief was Genre Savvy. Big deal.
- As this troper's dad said: "Does this mean all Stormtroopers are British?"
- Although he might be matched by the Duke of Wellington. In a long and mostly spectacularly successful military career, he had two horses taken out from under him at Assye in India (one shot, one bayoneted) in a battle that included a melee fight, escaped from a French patrol on a horseback battle in Spain, multiple times avoided French cavalry charges at Waterloo and ended the battle with most of his staff hit and wounded or killed but himself untouched, was hit by musket balls at the limits of their range so they didn't penetrate his clothing numerous times, and only had one wound, a minor minor hit to his leg received in France in 1814, in his entire career.
- Don't forget Wyatt Earp, who in his entire 30+ year career, never got hit once.
- You have to remember that the firearms of the period were comparable to the infamous E-11 in terms of accuracy.
This troper recalls an urban legend that went something like this: In 1971 a marshal and a general in Uruguay decided to settle a conflict the old fashioned way; with a gun duel. After standing back to back, they walked twelve steps, turned around, and started shooting. First once. Then twice. Nothing happened. They ended up firing 37 shots each without hitting each other before the duel stopped by itself due to the lack of ammo. The explanation the men gave? They forgot to put on their glasses, apparently.
Real-life aversion: during the American Civil War, during the Battle of Spotsylvania, in an era when weapons used by the majority of the troops were highly inaccurate (and mass-firing was used because that's the only way you could be sure of hitting something), Union General John Sedgwick, warned to stay under cover, famously uttered the last words "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." He was quite right. The Confederate sniper hit Sedgwick, not an elephant. And lo, the Sedgwick Speech received its name.
- To be fair to the poor guy, he was trying to do a troop-rallying sort of thing, which requires bravado, and the sniper was closer to him than the "they" he was referring to.
In Evan Wright's nonfiction book Generation Kill, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, elements of the United States Marine Corps' First Force Recon were running a gauntlet through in Iraqi town and took machinegun fire from multiple directions. Their Humvees were riddled with hundreds of bullet holes, but only one Marine was hit and wounded in the arm.
- Less astonishing if you've ever been in a USMC Humvee... but still amazing, to be sure.
The real-world A-Team firing can at least partly attributed to the widespread use of automatic weapons - the recoil from multiple cartridges tends to push the gun barrel upwards and toward the shoulder the buttstock rests against, resulting in an overall decrease in accuracy.

Immune To Bullets

« Guns And Gunplay Tropes »

Improbable Aiming Skills

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Toys