Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy - Television Tropes & Idioms

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.
Any officer assigned to Zenigata to help stop Lupin must have gone to the marksmanship academy. Yes, Lupin is skilled, but he doesn't even have to try and dodge, he can just run in a straight line and they'll miss.
Any missile volley in Macross fired at a single target (and not for saturation effect) is practically guaranteed to miss, particularly if the missiles have homing capabilities which defy the laws of physics.
From the second Naruto Shippuuden movie, the ninja of the Sky Country have gatling guns that fire kunai. Apparently they're a deadly force, but they just seem to land by peoples' feet more often than not. One of them almost hits Shizune's foot as it just barely misses Tsunade, but she just has to stand there. Then Sai fights several of them in the air and just stands atop his giant bird thinking to himself while a volley of kunai fly over his head. But then, perhaps this also involves the Inverse Ninja Law.

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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.
In one Twisted Toyfare Theater issue, a bunch of troublemaking Stormtroopers of various types are forced to community service in a retirement home for the Empire's most honored veterans: The Clone Troopers.
Stormtrooper: Wow, so you guys actually used to, you know, hit things with your guns?
Clone Trooper: Oh, yeah. Jedi, droids, small children... One time I hit the broad side of a barn!
Stormtrooper: Wow.
AIMLESS in normalman, a mysterious paramilitary organization under the thumb of the nefarious Cephalopod... well, their name says it all, really. They're all really poor marksmen, but it doesn't exactly matter since their nemesis, Sgt. Fluffy, Agent of S.C.H.M.U.C.K., is completely invulnerable to bullets.
- Or... is he? No, no he's not. Too bad he didn't know that when the Cephalopod got fed up with the indirect approach and decided to take care of the guy himself.
By a similar token, Decepticon Targetmasters Misfire and Aimless in Transformers. Misfire held the record for failure in the Decepticon Academy, and only passed because they needed every last soldier. Aimless, his gun, doesn't exactly help matters because he doesn't even try. Megatron actually sees potential in Misfire, however, saying that he's much more deadly than your average gunman because he's a danger to everything except his target. In any case, he's become a surprisingly useful soldier to officers who use his lack of ability in creative ways.
- Again, similarly, Strafe of the Technobots is inherently inaccurate. His targeting computer is literally defective, it's impossible for him to aim well... but tries to cover it up by saying things like "I shoot everywhere because that's where the enemies are."
In one Lucky Luke story, Lucky Luke and The Cavalry are assaulted from four sides by bad guys armed with gatling guns. They proceed to dump several rounds of ammo into the area until Lucky Luke disarms them with his Improbable Aiming Skills. The only casualties? The lieutenant's horse whip and the trumpeteer's trumpet. And the lieutenant even refused to take cover!
- Another Lucky Luke story, The Rivals of Painful Gulch, features two feuding families who's been fighting for ages, but never wiped out each others since they were all such bad shots. At one point, the town undertaker even pleads for the hero, if he cannot bring peace between the families, to at least teach them how to aim so it would be good for his business.
Averted in the Star Wars comics themselves, where the Stormtroopers themselves can FINALLY AIM, and even managed to kill a Sith lord, crazy, huh?

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The Trope Namer comes from the apparent inability of the Stormtroopers in Star Wars Episodes IV and VI to hit the heroes. (The explanation for the difference in skill between the clones troopers and the stormtroopers is, incidentally, under "Unitless Numbers" on the Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale page.)
- The inability to hit the heroes is actually one of the things that tips Leia off during the escape, when she points out that "they let us go" - which is confirmed when its revealed that Tarkin and Vader did let them go.
- 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 never hit anything important. As with the Stormtrooper, various related media have offered various Handwaves: they don't have "computer brains", were built on the cheap, etc.
- 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.
- This troper laughed while playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, when firing a storm trooper blaster rifle for the first time — they have a high firing rate and do plenty of damage, but shots spray in a random cone rather than going straight. No wonder the poor bastards could never hit anyone.
- R2-D2 Manages to wheel through several HUGE areas of laser fire with out ever getting hit over the course of the films.
The Nazis, Thuggee cult, and the Russians in the Indiana Jones films 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?
- Brutally and realistically averted in Saving Private Ryan, in which every last man on the team sent to rescue Ryan, except for one, is killed.
Parodied 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 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.
- Especially remarkable considering they're aiming at Big McLargehuge.
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.
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.
- Arnold is the Anti-Stormtrooper in that movie, as he hits goons he's not even aiming at!
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 missiles 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 Affectionate Parody 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.
- In a total inversion of this trope, when Arnold gives his wife a Mac 10 and tells her to use it in case of danger (or to cover him while he goes on his rampage, I forget). At some point she works up the courage to use the gun, only to have it slip down a flight of stairs and somehow get stuck on empty magazine mode. Bullets spray, hitting all the mooks but neither Arnold or her.
[[Shoot Em Up: "My God. 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.
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.
Justified in the film version of Iron Man: Obadiah Stane has difficulty hitting Tony Stark in the final battle because Tony had disabled the targeting computers.
The Ebert quote above references a particularly jarring moment in the most recent James Bond film, Quantum Of Solace. At one point, Bond's car and the bad guy's drive side-by-side for several seconds. The bad guy riddles Bond's car with bullets but never touches Bond. The cars separate. Bond retrieves his own machine gun. The other car comes back into view. Bond immediately puts three bullets into the bad guy, killing him instantly.
- Bond films in general are pretty infamous for this. Bond frequently walks alone into a massive group of enemies with AK A47s of some description, carrying nothing but his trusty Walther PPK, and caps every single one of them with precise single shots whilst they all blaze away and hit nothing but air...
The Remans in Star Trek: Nemesis are supposedly the fearsome shocktroops of the Romulan Star Empire, and yet an entire army of them pursue Picard and Data through their ship for several minutes without hitting either of them.
The battle robots in The Black Hole are frequently described in reviews as being bar none the worst shots of anything ever committed to celluloid. They don't even seem to be aiming at anything. This is made all the more jarring by a scene near the beginning where some unseen attacker blasts the gun out of one person's hands and effortlessly disables only the laser systems on the robot.
Played with in Pulp Fiction, where Vince and Jules are shot at at point-blank range and missed. Vincent calls it a freak occurence, Jules is convinced it is a miracle.
The Lord Of The Rings has this. In the book, it's not made clear how accurate orcs are with bows and arrows, yet in the movies it's apparent that you won't get hit unless you're heir to the line of Stewarts of Gondor.
- They're actualy shown to be quite competent marksmen in the books, both at shooting down fleeing enemies at Cirith Ungol and when a scout orc shoots an arrow into the eye of a warrior Uruk after an argument, killing him.
Used straight, and rather brutally, in Falling Down. A carful of thugs tries to kill the main character in a drive-by, spraying bullets everywhere and killing about half a dozen pedestrians before dying in a car crash themselves. The protagonist walks away without so much as a scratch. He didn't even duck.

Close Films

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.
- The new ones are hardly expert shots, thought to be fair its not like they were needed to nuke the colonies to extinction. The sentient Raiders suffer this pretty badly it would seem with one notable exception, which became well known even among the human fleet. Considering in almost every engagement the human pilots, flying 40 year old machines remember, are extremely outnumbered and have a very limited number of people they can call up, casualties are usually very light compared to what they should be were the Raiders any good. It's possible that despite death being "a learning experience" for the Raiders, they just did not learn anything so long as they had the ability to resurrect. The humanoid Cylons may have figured this out given later episodes of the first half of season 4 showed some had been training as colonial style pilots.
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. (Twice if you count the Season 2 finale where he is shot with a knockout dart.)
- Two words: flaming arrows.
In the pilot of BBC's Robin Hood, several guards miss shooting an escaping Robin and his group when they are galloping towards them!
- Well, firing at a charging opponent takes a -1 to hit...

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The Orks of Warhammer 40000 have this as their Hat, being universally hilariously bad shots (their basic troops have the lowest Ballistic Skill in the game, at a mere two out of ten). 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.
- You can never have enough dakka pointed at anything. You always need more.

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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!"
- We now have numbers.
In the Star Wars"" game, ""Knights of the Old Republic, this troper encountered a hilarious bug. When attacked by a giant rabid dog-thing it started, for some reason, to get no closer than 5 feet before running off, then running back, restricted by a invisible wall or something. Rather than slicing it up, I thought it would be more fun to shoot him. After missing a few times I decided to have dinner and forgot to pause the game. I totally forgot about the game after dinner. 4 hours later, I remember and come back. They're still shooting at it. And the main character is a Jedi, the one who is supposed to never miss, ever.
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?
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 VATS); 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/ITS FINGER-LIKE EXTENSION DOWN YOUR GUN'S BARREL. Want to hit that person right in front of you? don't use VATS.
- This troper has, on more than one occasion, fired a LASER GATLING GUN at an enemy for a few seconds and hit nothing. It seems to be programmed to draw circles around the enemy, rather than pierce holes in them.
In Space Quest IV the Sequel Police Cyborgs are lethally accurate most of the time, but still suffer occasions of Stormtrooper Syndrome when the plot calls for it.
The Krimzon Guard from Jak II had this trouble if you stood still. They tended to have better aim at moving targets, but that follows this trope closely anyway.
From the gameplay videos, this seems to be totally inverted in the upcoming Prototype. The antagonists are largely US armed forces troops, and the protagonist seems to have some kind of invisible bullet magnet nailed to his butt.
Brutally subverted in inFAMOUS, where this one would often be hit by multiple mooks wielding A Ks, at the exact same time, while in midair. Even though they're using assault rifles, they fire in single-shot, too. The mooks in the game have a tendancy to shoot at you from out of your range. which is fairly annoying, too.

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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.
Church from Red vs Blue was ~~top~~ bottom of his class at the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.
Haloid, Marty Oum's animated bitchfight between a lovely female SPARTAN-II and the infamous Samus Aran, has a opening sequence of some Earth Marines going the way of the dodo, then they lose all combat skills when the "Master Chick" comes along. Even after the initial fight between her and Samus is over, an entire MOB of Covenant (including Banshees) manage to drop the Mjolnir armor's force field. Once. That's IT. (This was lampshaded, by the way; a Grunt checking a shotgun out managed to shoot himself right in la cabeza.) Justified in the fact that both heroines were moving extremely fast or using shields, and most of the Covenant began to rush in to score melee hits.
GI Joe: Resolute had a particularly bizarre example in episode 6: Duke and Scarlett are walking down a corridor when they trip an alarm. Some COBRA troops come out of a door at the end of the hallway, and our heroes walk backwards to take cover behind some pillars while bullets miss them by feet. Of course, the second they make it there, the pillars start taking hits from the COBRA forces. Strangely, neither Duke nor Scarlett are able to hit the mooks either, despite sniping several outside minutes before, and the troops being backlit and standing in the open. Scarlett actually notes that she and Duke are pinned down.
This is played well in Legendary frog's Code Veronica flash when Alfred Ashford is shooting at Claire with his sniper rifle but keeps missing, and when she's right in front of him he shoots at her several times point blank and misses every shot, including one time when he hits the wall behind him. In fact, the only time he hits his target is when he shoots at the ceiling to make a point and a piece of the ceiling falls down and hits him on the head.

Close Web Animation

In Irregular Webcomic, the true reason for this is revealed here.
- The results are demonstrated here, with characters casually carrying on a conversation while two stormtroopers attempt to shoot them.
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.
This Weregeek strip.
Although The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob's MIB Agent Jerry is certainly triggerhappy, it has been established that he can't hit the side of a barn. Even the one time he actually hits what he's aiming at, it produces the opposite result of what he wants.
Minions At Work: They've got guns to do it!
The Adventures Of Doctor Mc Ninja: Subverted. Hard.

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LifesBlood Labs in LG15: the resistance, especially in chapter 12.

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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 Transformers 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.
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."
- Oh and that crazy rich white boy, who got shot point blank with a shotgun, but he was wearing a vest and wanted to get shot.
- Another great example of this trope is when Huey is explaining that the 3rd leading cause of death for black men (aside from pork chops and FEMA) are Nigga Moments. A scenario shows two otherwise intelligent black men become stupid and they 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 after they apologized to each other and said the whole thing was ridiculous.
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 The 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. The troopers in Star Wars The Clone Wars aren't slouches either, with Rex and Cody particularly distinguishing themselves.
Code Lyoko: XANA's monsters are really horrendous shots at times; they rarely hit the heroes with their Frickin Laser Beams... even sometimes at close range or when they are stationary targets.
- The heroes with ranged weapons tend to have very bad aim as well, though this is more within "realistic aiming skills". Yumi generally hits after her fans return, rather than after the throw. Odd seems to go between being great and missing everything (considering that his weapon doesn't have Infinite Ammo, this is a bad thing). Aelita can't fight until Season 3, and it turns out that her Energy Balls are the most powerful weapon, but she frequently misses too, especially when panicking.

Close Western Animation

Real guns are inaccurate. In a close-range, high-adrenaline situation, accuracy goes to pot and sharpshooters become stormtroopers. Soldiers (especially snipers) are trained to get a decent accuracy, but if a group is attacked by a similar group of a different size, clips will be emptied with maybe a 10% accuracy rate.
- 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.
- Actually, that's because the majority of bullets fired in any gunfight are suppression fire, intended to pin down and intimidate an opponent so that troops can maneuver into position to shoot them from a better location. Machineguns, in particular, are designed for this role. Properly trained soldiers who can deal with the stress of combat are extremely accurate shooters.
- Even highly trained and experienced soldiers can find themselves emulating Stormtroopers on occasion. On September 23, 1989, in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington, resident Bill Foulk, a US Army Ranger Staff Sergeant, was having a cookout with several of his friends (also Army Rangers) and their families. He and his party were attacked by local drug dealers in retaliation for Foulk's attempts to organize neighborhood watch and protection programs, which included videtaping of a nearby "crack house". In a gun battle lasting more than 10 minutes, over 300 rounds were reported to have been fired from semiautomatic pistols, rifles, and shotguns; without a single injury resulting on either side. Foulk's party was not prosecuted for their participation in the shooting, as city officials deemed it a clear case of self defense. Their commanding officer was less forgiving, however; and ordered them to spend several months of extended time on the firing range for failing to hit their targets.
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 — it's harder to hit a guy if you're trying to do so without killing.
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.
- 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 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.
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.
- Also, the sniper that killed him was using a Whitworth rifle, which was a lot more accurate than the standard infantry rifle of the time.
One of comedian Ron White's stock routines is the true story of a police force who had a shoot-out at point blank range only to miss every shot.
- "Nice shooting, Elmer Fudd."
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.
Truth In Television: most people(including a number of experienced cops) sincerely believe that More Dakka will instantly reduce targets to hamburger. Burning off too much ammo at once blows accuracy to hell. Inexperienced and/or overconfident law enforcement officers regularly empty their badge-granted leadspitters at unarmored targets at less than five meters, and don't put a scratch on them because they forget to aim. And police forces that rely on intimidation never really get enough weapons practice. Add all that up, then order the poor, doomed mooks to hunt down somebody with actual combat experience. Hilarity Ensues.
- Experienced soldiers and mercenaries... not so much.
Those notoriously-inaccurate flintlock muskets? When firing at wooden targets at typical combat ranges, about half of all shots fired hit. When firing at human targets, about one shot in a thousand.

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