Instant Death Bullet - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Instantly Fatal Bullets; Instant Death Bullets

In real life, being fatally shot almost always leaves the victim the option of 1-2 minutes of essentially normal activity before they finally fall unconscious. In fact, it is not uncommon for the victim to fail to realize they have been shot. Police trainers report that many officers are hurt or killed when their target fails to instantly fall down when shot, "like they do on television," but instead retaliates.

In fiction, of course, one to two minutes of fairly normal activity followed by death is almost never an outcome of being shot. The normal outcomes are, in rough order of frequency:

the Instant Death Bullet
it's Only A Flesh Wound
incapacitation from which the victim may or may not recover
severe impairment that is overcome with several gallons of Heroic Willpower.

Some of these subscribe to this trope more than others; the instantly incapacitating shot that then leads to a lingering dying speech isn't really a violation, since a stomach wound is even less likely to be instantaneously incapacitating than an arterial or brain wound, and yet it almost always causes the victim to fall over immediately.

The Railing Kill may be an attempt to avert this trope without leaving the hero exposed to last-minute gunfire.

Consider the Showdown At High Noon, or any other pistol duel. Screen renderings of these "quick draw" gun battles would be rendered relatively silly if a common outcome was that one combatant was fatally shot, and then took careful aim and fired back, fatally wounding the opponent. There's a reason there were never many experienced gunfighters; the Instant Death Bullet makes for a better story, though.

This trope is largely responsible for the tendency for mooks to come from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. After all, if any bullets that hit the hero are going to instantly kill or incapacitate him, then the story must ensure that the bullets don't hit him. Not that even with the exceptions listed, this is mostly with important characters. Mooks and Redshirts will almost always die instantly.

This can be Truth In Television, as given by various

statistical

websites.

Instant incapacitation can result from a nervous system injury, such as a brain or spinal cord injury, the physical destruction of one's leg bones, or from psychological collapse. However, reliably stopping an opponent (eg, not counting on him to faint from surprise) by hitting such relatively small targets is very difficult.

These are particularly likely for a Mercy Kill or I Cannot Self Terminate. Although in those situations the killer is particularly likely to have the chance to get off a quickly lethal attack, since he can usually position himself and chose his shot carefully.

Exceptions

Averted in The West Wing: it's about six or seven minutes before Bartlet realises he's been shot. Similarly, when Josh is shot in the same episode, he apparently has enough time to drag himself from the fence — where he was in the final sequence of the previous episode — to the wall where he is later found, still conscious (albeit in shock). All this is despite the wound being almost lethal.
When US President and ex-B-western actor Ronald Reagan was shot, ironically, he did not realize it for several minutes.
Averted in the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: it takes several seconds for the victim to realize what happened. Even more so in the Last Crusade, where Indy's dad is shot in the stomach and Indy has more or less 20 minutes to fool around solving the grail puzzles to rescue him.
- Oddly enough, the trope is very prominent at other moments. Perhaps the most famous of these is Indy's confrontation with the scary 7-foot swordsman. That guy falls over dead fast enough for Indy to run right by him. Since the guy didn't even try to dodge, though, it's possible that Indy just shot him in the head. Fatal hit or no, getting shot in the head is going to drop you like you've been kicked by a mule.
The movie Waking Life had a scene of a guy being fatally shot and still managing to pick up a gun and shoot his attacker before he died. It was in a dream sequence, but still.
Averted in Third Watch. Sully and Davis are caught in the crossfire between two rival gangs at a restaurant. It's only after the shooting stops that Davis realizes that he's been shot.
Justified in the movie Collateral as Vincent, the hitman, shoots people using a real life technique called the Mozambique Drill. This involes first a double tap, which is two successive shots to the center of mass to immobilize the target (one alone won't do it), allowing him the opportunity to put a third bullet in the brain without fear of dodging or retaliation. With his years of training, he can pull the whole thing off in about two seconds flat.
The ultimate real life example has to be the 1986 Miami FBI Shootout. One of the gunmen was hit by multiple armor-piercing bullets (called for because the gunmen were wearing body armor), at least three of them which would each have been fatal on its own, and stayed on his feet fighting, killing two agents and wounding others while, essentially, being a walking dead man.
Most of Reservoir Dogs is spent watching Mr. Orange slowly bleed to death from a gunshot wound to the gut. He's finally finished off by Mr. White after he confesses that he's a cop.
Perhaps an even more 'ultimate real life example' would be the duel between not-yet-U.S. President Andrew Jackson and Charles Dickinson (not the writer). Dickinson was known as one of the best shots in the land, and Jackson knew he wouldn't be able to out-shoot him in a quick draw match. When the duel came, Dickinson fired at Jackson, hitting him full in the chest, breaking two ribs and the bullet stopping only two inches from Jackson's heart. However, Jackson had not fired, and since dueling regulations required both duelers to stand perfectly still at their posts until both had fired, Jackson, despite his injury, had all the time in the world to kill Dickinson. Which he did.
- Of course, Andrew Jackson was essentially a Bad Ass in general. Thirteen duels under his belt (people said he "rattled like a bag of marbles" because of how often he had been hit in them), led outnumbered soldiers to victory over the British at New Orleans (his men inflicted around thirty times as many injuries as they received - never mind that the war was technically over at that point), at at the age of 68 beat a would-be assassin with his cane until he (Jackson, that is) was restrained by his aides.
In J K Parker's novel The Proof House, Bardas, the Anti Hero protagonist, lectures his men on the sword fighting equivalent of the Instant Death Bullet fallacy. He is very careful to promote attacks that cause shock, pain and disable an opponent over lethal injuries that leave them standing for critical minutes. For example, in a sword fight a puncturing a lung is a death sentence for your opponent, but does not stop them fighting back and possibly killing you before they go down.
In Tom Clancy's book Executive Orders, a Secret Service agent is defending the President's daughter against a kidnap attempt. He is hit several times by opposing gunfire, but still manages to take down three or four attackers before dying.
The film Saving Private Ryan is full of graphic examples of how slow and painful death by gunshot can be. Sgt. Horvath is shot multiple times in the legs and body, but still manages to lug around a bazooka and limp to cover before he does in fact expire. Capt. Miller also hangs on for a few minutes after being mortally wounded by a rifle bullet to the dead center of his torso. Caparzo slowly bleeds to death after being hit by a sniper, as does Wade after he's raked by machine gun fire. Jackson is the only one who dies quickly, because his sniper's perch is blown up by a tank.
Averted in an episode of CSI NY when a boy is shot by a stray bullet and expires sometime later after bicycling away from the scene. Double averted (???) as this is treated as a rare and unusual event.
In the novel-based movie The Golden Compass, a telling special effect reveals just how closely the movie follows this trope. Every human in the movie is accompanied by an animal-like physical embodiment of their soul, called a daemon. When the bullets start to fly, each of the RedShirts' daemons burst into pretty sparkles the very instant their human receives a bullet wound of any kind.
- It's worth noting that in the actual novel's sequel, The Subtle Knife, aeronaut Lee Scoresby and his daemon Hester must hold off the Muscovite Imperial Guard. Lee takes two shots to the skull and one shot to the torso, blasts the zeppelin, which promptly manages to explode, and then has enough time to curl up with Hester before dying.
Averted in Children Of Men Theo manages to escape the (besieged) building with Key, limp to the boat, row said boat out to the buoy and educate Kee in the ways of winding babies before finally losing consciousness. Julian, who gets shot in the neck, also takes some time to expire, though this is mostly concerned with choking and shaking. Only Luke dies instantly because, like in the Saving Private Ryan example, he gets shot by a tank.
While Preacher usually uses this straight, there are at least two subversions. In the first, a hulking cannibal takes a head shot, continues advancing and takes a second before dying. In the second, Herr Starr gets his head blown open. He has time to glance up and utter a final "shit" before expiring.
- Ha ! I see your Herr Starr and raise it an Adephi : the one whose unfortunate mission was to wake up the Saint of Killers. The fact that said Saint blows half of his head off with semi-magical one-shot-one-kill pistols doesn't interfere with his coherent speaking, and he only dies after more than three panels' worth of dialogue. Granted, he was an angelic Mook, not a human one, but still, utterly ridiculous in that regard.
  - This troper recalls that a friend of his, after reading the first issue of Preacher, asked, "so, does anyone actually die after being shot in the head in this setting?" Between that Adephi, Cassidy, and the guy Tulip shoots, it's a fair question (it's justified in each case, but still).
- Justified in any case involving the Saint of Killers. His guns are forged from the sword of the former Angel of Death. This makes any wound he deals with them, even harmless ones, lethal even to immortals.
- And, of course, the 'battle' between Herr Starr and Delilah...
Almost displayed, but soon subverted in Max And Paddys Road To Nowhere where Paddy is seemingly shot in the back by a mentally deranged friend of Max's, tumbling out of frame. However it is later shown that the gunshot was not fatal as he manages to sneak up and knock the assailant out with a traffic cone. It is later revealed he was shot right in the right buttock... Although this brings up whether being shot in such a place would really leave him able to walk around, never mind heave a traffic cone with enough force to knock someone out. This troper is no expert on the matter...
Real Life aversion: 50 Cent, homie.
Another real-life aversion: There is a leaked video (look it up if you want to see, I'm not going to link it) of an improperly searched suspect in police custody producing a .45 ACP pistol and shooting himself in the temple. Even with the headshot, he twitches and sags very gradually as his body gives up unwillingly.
Averted in Battlestar Galactica, "The Farm." The Caprica Resistance is fired on unexpectedly, and everyone scatters. Starbuck starts to flee too, until she looks down and realizes that she's belly-shot. Of course, it's not like they were going to have her fall down dead, either.
- And then in the second season episode "Sacrifice", Lee gets shot in the torso and manages to lay there almost dying for a good while while being rescued - during the process of which Billy gets shot, and even though he lasts a lot shorter than Lee, he still lingers for a while, too.
Averted in the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex episode "Vanished Medication," when Togusa is shot. Though badly injured enough that he ultimately requires a stay in an intensive care unit, he still manages to return fire, killing two of his assailants, then leap from a window and make his way to the street before passing out.
Averted in Witness. When John Book (Harrison Ford) is shot during a firefight, he does not realise until the fight ends and he is able to hear the sound of his dripping blood. He is able to remain active for what must be several hours before passing out from blood loss. Later on, when Danny Glover's character is shot at point blank range in the chest with a shotgun, he appears to take several moments to die.
Subverted in both the comic and film version of V For Vendetta, in that the title character is able to walk a considerable distance from the place he is shot before collapsing. The film could be accused of going overboard in the other direction, though, as he also manages to kill a half dozen soldiers and their leader after being hit with not one but several clips worth of bullets. Partially justified by having been the subject of lab experiments and armor, apparently from a medieval suit, but most of the justification was Rule Of Cool. It also helped that the soldiers were all aiming for his center of mass (i.e. his chest), which was where he was wearing that big honking metal plate, so he didn't actually suffer very many gunshot wounds at all. It was still enough that he bled to death, though.
- A Crowning Moment Of Awesome (one of many) for him in the comic:
  V: "There is nothing in this cloak but an idea. Ideas are bulletproof."
- From the movie:
  V: "Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof."
  - This is more of a showcasing of the fact that V was Made Of Iron. A metal chest plate is not going to protect you from a handgun magazine unloaded into your chest. And V wasn't just popping off a few shots after being hit. He rushed the men who shot him AND STABBED THEM ALL TO DEATH BEFORE THEY COULD RELOAD. They should have been hunting V with attack helicopters.
  - In a SUBWAY station?
  - Yes. Helicopters? Awesome. Subway helicopters? Underground awesome.
An exception to this trope that is a borderline Real Life example of the Rule of Cool is a Korean war veteran who was the sole survivor of a ground patrol. (Anyone who wishes to look up the source is directed to the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series.) The group came under fire and the soldier was wounded (with at least two wounds appearing to be in his chest) but he was able to make it back to base for medical treatment. Years later, after undergoing a routine medical checkup with modern medical sensor technology, the doctor examined the scar tissue around... and inside... the man's heart to confirm that the had, in fact, been shot through the heart. This troper calculates that the bullet passed through the 'four-corner' area, where the atria and ventricles all meet, but also predicts that "Tough Enough" by the Fabulous Thunderbirds should be played whenever this man enters a room.
In all editions of Battle Royale, Shogo takes at least one gunshot wound towards the end that only kills him a few hours later. The manga has numerous other aversions of this trope, at the very least the famous Made Of Plasticine artwork ensures that people only die from wounds that would actually kill them in real life.
Possibly a inversion of one of the Oldest Ones In The Book, as this is a modern extension of the Norse warriors that took drugs before entering combat (where we get the term berserker from, as the short capes made from bearskin they wore were called bear sark). These warriors were so hyped on their drugs, adrenaline, and natural endorphins that they literally had to be hacked apart to be stopped, taking multiple lethal wounds before finally expiring. (This is largely conjecture and speculation. The origin of the word is not certain, and it's not known if they used drugs.)
- Now, this troper's heard of the original assassins from the Middle-East (that's where the term originated) using hashish to numb their fear of death before engaging their target, allowing them to fight without holding back. Now, being sufficiently white and loony to say all this, I suspect that berserker warriors had less to do with drugs, and more to do with a liberal combination of mead, bloodlust, battleaxes, and OOOOOOODIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!
  - Sorry, but no. Hashish is a terrible combat drug - they would have been likely to get bad trips from the stress, and run away in panic. It's likely that they acted under a similar conviction as the modern day suicide bombers, and their rabid religious fervor was mistaken for being drugged up - they may have used the drug in their private rituals, however. As for the Berserkers, if they used drugs, they were probably mushroom-based, though effects quite such as described in the documents are hard to come by.
  - If I remember correctly, they're called Hashashins not because they were accused of taking drugs before a mission, but they were accused of using hashish in their initiation rites and in their off time to keep their members interested and addicted. Of course, if they ever even used hashish or if that was just part of a smear campaign against them and the middle east in general is up in the air.
The pilot of Firefly plays with this, when Kaylee gets shot in the stomach by Dobson but is saved by Simon. Also, it turns out that when Mal puts a bullet into Dobson's head at the end of the episode, it just costs him an eye, pisses him off, and gets him in a vengeful mood, which Mal and company find out about in the Firefly comic story "Those Left Behind," where he turns out to be the mastermind of a plot intended to get River back into the hands of the Hands of Blue. Mal makes sure to put several more into Dobson's head when he finally takes him down.
- See also the episode "Out of Gas", wherein a gutshot Mal goes for a good while after taking the wound, before blood loss causes him to pass out.
Averted in End of Evangelion: when Misato is shot by the military, she still manages to limp away, give Shinji an encouraging pep talk complete with a two-minute passionate Last Kiss, then stuff him into an elevator before collapsing.
Averted in Monster, repeatedly. After Grimmer gets shot in the shoulder, he manages to take out four men with his bare hands before ultimately bleeding to death.
- Tenma is also advised to always pull the trigger twice.
Unforgiven averts the HELL out of this trope in a disturbing scene where a victim of a fatal gunshot wound dies slowly while his partner cries out in desperate rage at the protagonists.
Most tabletop RPGs follow the trope. (See also Critical Existence Failure.) GURPS has a partial aversion, in that a character will usually be able to act for a while after dropping to zero or negative Hit Points. That's just for unconsciousness, though - actual death from a failed "death check" is usually still instantaneous, though depending on what optional rules are in use it may be possible to bleed to death.
In the game Earthbound, characters don't fall down from lethal damage immediately. It takes time for their health to tick down to zero, meaning that it is possible to save a lethally-wounded character by healing them or winning the encounter before their health hits zero. To make it match the trope even further, a few of the enemies do in fact use guns.
Averted in Scarface: Just before his end, Tony Montana is still standing - and shooting - despite his body mass being at least 10% bullet.
- Admittedly, he was high on his own supply of cocaine at the time.
Averted in Persona 3: Shinjiro Aragaki, despite being shot twice, not only remains conscious for at least a minute after being shot but is able to stand up and take a few steps before finally dying.
Averted in The Da Vinci Code, of all places, in which Sauniere is shot in the stomach and survives long enough to set up an elaborate string of clues meant to bring Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveau together so they can find the secret he gave his life to protect.
Averted several times on Lost Libby, in particular, takes a whole episode to die after being shot at the end of the previous episode.
- On the same note, early in the series, right after the crash, the marshal is slowly dying. Sawyer intends to put him out of his misery with a gunshot, but shoots him in the chest, missing the heart. And it was the last bullet, so as the marshal is dying even more miserably, Jack must find another way to finish him off. (It's not done onscreen, but this troper imagines he smothered him.)
Horribly averted in the amateur RPG Liberal Crime Squad: mortally wounded characters stay in the party, dying slowly in agony and decreasingly coherent terror.
In the Wolf's Rain OVA, the wolf Toboe manages to keep fighting for several minutes after being shot in the chest. He even bites Darcia in the arm and then spends a few moments hanging vertically by his jaws, which would be really funny if it weren't for the fact that the poor bastard's dying.
Aversion: The (usually hammy) film The Quick and the Dead has a (surprisingly) poignant slow and agonizing death, with (the often cardboard) Leonardo DiCaprio giving a (surprisingly) emotional performance as a gunfighter who knows (parenthetical aside) he's only got seconds to live.
Used not once, but thrice as a plot device in Full Metal Jacket in the sniper scene: one Marine gets shot clean through the torso and is seen in shock and agonizing for some time ("I can hang ! I can hang !"), and another is repeatedly shot to prove to the rest of his squad he's still alive and draw them into the firing line. Finally, after the sniper is finally found and ripped apart by close range burst fire, she still isn't quite dead and requires a mercy killing.
- The Marines this sniper has been trying to kill are understandably reluctant to deliver it.
  - Considering how tediously long the scene dragged on, Kubrick could at least have had mercy on the viewer..
  - This is Kubrick. We're lucky the scene didn't last an hour.
Another real life example in Lester Gillis, AKA Baby Face Nelson. The 5 foot 3 gangster managed to get shot seventeen times and still live long enough to kill the two FBI agents that shot him, and be driven miles away by his girlfriend and an associate before dying later that night.
Though Dungeons And Dragons does not have guns, it does avert this trope. In 3rd edition, a character at 0 HP is not dead, just unconscious. You have to get to -10 HP to die. In 4th, he must roll less than 10 on a 20-sided die three times (one roll each turn that he's still dying), although death from sheer damage can occur at -50% maximum hit points.
- Similarly, in a system that DOES have guns, Shadowrun gives players points of overflow damage in between unconsciousness and death. Particularly careful players can invoke the "Dead Man's Trigger" rule, expending luck (in the form of Edge or Karma Pool dice, depending on version) to pull off one last action before succumbing to their wounds.
- Also similarly, in 3rd edition D&D's cousin D20 Modern, at moderate or higher levels a gunshot probably won't kill you — most guns do 2d6 or 2d8 damage, and characters may have anything from a d6 to a d12 of HP per level, plus constitution bonuses — However, if a single shot rolls enough damage there is a chance (which grows smaller the tougher and higher level you are) that you will be instantly knocked to -1 HP and start bleeding out.
Averted in Survival Of The Fittest; short of a shot straight through the head or heart, even a fatally wounded character isn't going to instantly drop dead like someone turned an off switch. However, sometimes it goes too far. One particularly notable subversion was Seth Mattlock's Big Damn Heroes moment in v2. Seth shot his opponent in the back twice with his Walther P38, but they were able to turn around and shoot back at him, only being killed when Bryan Calvert kicks him off the roof and through a skylight. Seth himself is hit in the ribs and lungs, and instead of instantly being killed lies on the ground bleeding out, unable to breathe and in incredible agony until Bryan finishes him off at his request.
Pretty much completely averted in Code Geass. Anyone who did die instantly of a gunshot wound was either shot in the head/neck or riddled with lots of (sometimes high-caliber) bullets (and even that didn't stop one person from coming back the very next episode). While Shirley and Euphemia each died from a single bullet to the chest, their deaths were slow and presumably agonizing.
Averted in Väinö Linna's WWII novel The Unknown Soldier (which lacks a good English translation - oh well). The only characters who die instantly are hit either in the head or with much more than a single bullet. Characters carry dying comrades on stretchers and chat with/swear at them; scenes are set inside an under-equipped hospital tent, including a chaplain trying to comfort hysterical men who are morphined up to their gills; one battle scene devotes a paragraph to the ways people react to being mortally wounded. Someone occasionally gets a Final Speech, but those are incoherent and usually fit on one line. The effect is extremely jarring for those who are more familiar with the "Boom, you're dead" school of video gaming - in the absence of the original, look for other gritty anti-war novels about the World Wars.
- A particularly grim example is the death of borderline sociopath Lehto. He gets hit by a machine gun at short range while scouting ahead, but drops behind a cover lethally wounded and unable to move. He then spends some time shouting at the near by machine gun crew to aim lower or to throw a grenade, but they can't understand him. In the end he succeeds in grabbing his own rifle and proceeds to shoot himself.
Averted in The Running Man novel (The movie, not so much). Just about every character Richards sees die does so very painfully and not at all quickly, though this often gives them a few last moments to do something important. Such as Richards himself slamming a jumbo jet into the Games HQ after being gutshot, while his intestines hang out. And grinning. And giving Killian the finger. As the jet tears right into his office.
Averted in agonizing detail in the film Taxi Driver.
In Burn Notice, Michael shoots his would-be assassin in the torso, and the man manages to flee out of Michael's apartment and into an alley before bleeding to death.
- In the Season One finale, Mike shoots the Villain Of The Week in the gut-with his own gun-and then tells him how long he probably has to live. If they're regular bullets, he might have a chance. If they're hollow points..."I wouldn't make any plans."
  - In the season two finale, this trope is in full force. Fiona shoots Carla in the guts with a rifle and she immediately drops dead.
One memorable subversion of this trope is in Blood Diamond, when after Vandy and Archer rescue Vandy's son and recover the titular rock, they are confronted by Archer's employer, Coetzee, an Colonel in the South African military, who is only interested in the rock. In the ensuing firefight, Archer fells the Colonel and his men with headshots, and suffers a fatal wound in his armpit. But he takes it like a trooper, escorting Vandy and his son to the drop point so they can rendezvous with their helicopter out of there, and hopefully tell the world about blood diamonds. In a Crowning Moment Of Awesome, he covers them with a sniper rifle, and final dies at peace, staring at the beautiful plains of his homeland, and blowing advancing mercenaries' heads off with a high powered sniper rifle.
Averted to the point of being a Tear Jerker scene in Pat Garret and Billy the Kid.
Averted in The Rundown, where Hatcher was shot twice in the guts but managed to walk a fair bit before collapsing
Averted in Torchwood, where Toshiko has a few minutes of functional activity before dying.
Darker Than Black: November 11 goes back down the elevator and wanders a very good distance down the street before finally collapsing from his many bullet wounds.
In Gears Of War if one of your squadmates takes too many hits they collapse and linger for a while before dying, and you must revive them in time or the mission is failed.
- Also applies to locust baddies (sometimes) and in multiplayer... unless they get turned into bloody chunks first.
  - Army Of Two plays the same as the Gears of War example (although it's 2 guys, and not a squad). As the 2 characters need to be in cover and not being shot at to heal, there is often a need to drag the hurt man on the ground. Since neither character is invincible when doing this, events can occur where a character dies as he is dragging his friend to cover, whilst the already hurt character wither either dies or get captured after watching his friend get shot and killed trying to save him. Ouch.
In The Godfather Part III, Mary Corleone (infamously "played" by Sofia Coppola) is shot through the stomach and doesn't realize it. When she does, she just drops on her knees, says "Dad?" in a perfectly normal way, then dies. This is most likely accounted for less by realism and more by bad acting, ironically.
Averted for laughs in South Park episode Night of the Living Homeless, when the scientist (sorry, forgot his name) tries to commit suicide. After shooting himself in the head (specifically the cheek), he remains alive and is in incredible pain. He tries to shoot himself multiple times, but never actually dies. Judge for yourself if this is Squick or Crosses The Line Twice.
Averted in Dead Man. This is, in fact, the core of the film's plot: Johnny Depp's character is shot early on and spends the rest of the movie dying.
Vitally averted in Frederick Forsyth's The Afghan, where Mike Martin takes a bullet and "began to die", but still manages to blow up the terrorist freighter. In fact, the way Forsyth phrases it suggests a subtle Take That at this trope's prevalence. To wit:
The killer screamed and fired. The charging man took the bullet in the chest and began to die. But beyond pain and shock there is always willpower, just enough for another second of life.
Used in Black Lagoon a number of times, but this trope is playfully Lampshaded when Revy is in Tokyo with Rock on "business". While Rock is elsewhere, Revy meets a couple of kids playing with toy guns, and joins in out of boredom. When all of them instantly fall to the ground when hit by her toy bullets, she passionately points out that people instantly dying from gunshots only happens in Hollywood, and then demonstrates how to properly die by a gunshot wound. The kids then point out how "uncool" it looks.
- By the next battle scene, however, it's back to normal with both Instant Death Bullet and Blown Across The Room being in full effect.
More of an Instant Death Knife in Pay it Forward. The main character gets stabbed at the end of the story. Once. With a knife that was at most two inches long. The wound was on his left side near the bottom of his rib cage. Cue Slow Motion Fall and then cut to the ER doc telling the family he's dead. He definitely wasn't stabbed in the heart. He didn't have time to bleed to death, so how did he die?
- Just under your ribcage on the left hand side is the spleen. This organ has a lot of blood vessels going through it, so if it suffers any trauma you can bleed to death internally quite easily. It is, however, set well back in the abdominal cavity, so you may have trouble reaching it with a 2-inch knife...
Averted in Womens Murder Club when Cindy is shot in episode 12. She falls down, but is shown to be conscious for a minute or two before going to commercial. Although how she survived being shot in the center of the chest is the subject of much wallbanging amongst fans.
Averted realistically (not dropping you to the floor so a friend can "revive" you like other games) in the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Characters shot take direct damage, and can start bleeding and losing health slowly. A character can get hit, start bleeding, and still kill their opponent. The aversion happens because the character requires bandages to heal, meaning you can get shot once by a pistol, have 2% damage taken, kill the enemy but die up to 5 minutes later from a slow bleed because you didn't have any bandages left, can't get back to a base, and none of your frantic corpse looting managed to find any either. NPC's do not heal at all, meaning this is averted all around, if you gutshot someone and run away, they will die later.
- When modding the game to produce more "realistic" damage with the weapons, this troper was startled to realize that NP Cs frequently survived the shot only to drop fifteen to thirty seconds later. In the unmodified game the 9x39mm rifles, the Dragunovs and some of the high end 5.56mm rifles can produce this effect.
Averted in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, in which Romein Letouse manages to live a while after being shot with a high caliber pistol, and manages to give some information to Apollo and write something on the floor with his blood.
Averted in Call Of Duty: With the Last Stand/Second Chance perk equipped, mortally wounded players can stay alive for about 30 seconds, lying on the floor and wielding a pistol.
- This has been averted with the AI enemies since Call of Duty 2, in fact. At times they will sit up on their shoulder and fire their pistol at you and your allies before dying. In several games enemies are seen crawling and writhing until someone shoots them again and they drop.
This troper heard of an Iraq veteran who was shot several times (albeit mostly in the legs), shielded his squadmate when the bad guys dropped grenades on them and then refused to be evacuated until everyone else was taken care of.
- This troper's friend went to Iraq, as a Navy Medic. He was shot in the head on Christmas Day. It destroyed much of his mouth, removing alot of teeth and his jaw. However, he was quite lucid, and went downstairs (he was taking guard duty for someone else because it was christmas) And proceded to write down what they had to do in order to keep him from bleeding to death. He refused to be carried out on a stretcher, wanting to ensure his squad knew he was going to be ok. He walked to the helicoptor with his head held high. In addition to this, one of his squadmates was shot directly in the head, he suffered brain damage, but ultimately survived. He uses a cane to get around now, but is still quite active. Personally, it brings tears to this troper's eyes when he thinks about it.
- Demonstrated in an even more badass manner by Maj. Tammy Duckworth, an Army Blackhawk pilot. When an RPG round literally punched through the cockpit and exploded between her legs, she maintained consciousness and went through the motions to land her helicopter safely, unaware that both her legs had been blown off (along with her control pedals) and that her right arm was functionally useless. Her copilot, uninjured and with still working controls, brought the bird down safely, whereupon Major Duckworth would reach up to turn off the main rotor before finally passing out from losing 50% of the blood in her body. She is currently an Assistant Secretary in the Veterans Administration.
Averted very thoroughly in Hitman: Contracts — largely because it's the point of the whole game: Agent 47 gets shot in the stomach by a target that was expecting him, stumbles back to his apartment, and spends the rest of the game hallucinating past adventures until a surgeon shows up to help.
- Averted with the sequel, Blood Money: when enemies suffer a pistol shot to the torso, they react with pain, but generally keep shooting or running. However, a second or third direct hit will result in the enemy clutching their stomach and keeling over in convulsions. And sometimes, in isolated circumstances, the newspaper report that follows every mission will mention that one or two of your victims survived a supposedly fatal injury, and is in intensive care, likely to die.
In the Film Noir classic Double Indemnity, the narrator gets shot prior to the movie's start, and retells everything before dying. In other words, he slowly bleeds to death for the whole movie, not kicking it until the end. The movie's what? An hour? Ninety minutes? That's some perseverance!
Pineapple Express averted this with Red surviving for at least half the movie after being shot, mocking it by insisting he was going to die at any time.
Original rules of Magic: the Gathering averted that. Once you were at 0 life, you still had to the end of the phase to be magically healed (and not loss) or to retaliate and kill your opponent (and ensure a draw). Do both and you can even win the game. It was latter changed to the instant 0 life death in order to neuter some stupid combos.
Averted at the end of Fight Club when The Narrator shoots himself in the head to "kill" Tyler and survives at least until the end of the film.
- The bullet passes through his cheek rather than his head so it wasn't even really a "fatal" wound. Well, not for the Narrator at least.
Averted in The World Is Not Enough. Renard spends the entirety of the film with a bullet lodged in his brain that is slowly killing him.
Averted in Once Upon a Time in the West (albeit having been played straight many, many times), when Cheyenne is shot off-screen late in the film, acts perfectly normal throughout the climax, and in the second-to-last scene, falls off his horse and dies. (This scene was cut from the original American release, leaving the impression that he'd never been shot at all.)
Averted in Far Cry 2 with just about every enemy. It's not unlikely, quite common, in fact, for an enemy downed with a shot to the torso or limbs to fall to the ground, moaning and writhing, and sometimes get back up and attempt to escape while clutching at their wound before expiring, or even take a knee and fire back with their pistol. This troper swears he saw one enemy, after being shot, continue to run and fire his rifle for a few seconds before falling.
Averted in Grand Theft Auto IV. While enemies will generally drop when their health is depleted, after a short time they may begin to writhe and moan (call for help in the case of police), and sometimes will get to their feet and limp away.
Averted in GURPS under most circumstances. Only hits to vital organs or the brain are liable to kill someone instantly unless they're extremely fragile for some reason.
In The Sarah Connor Chronicles Derick dies instantly. Of course, he did a get a bullet in the brain.
Both used and averted in the film of Angels And Demons, where some of The Dragon's victims die instantly, but at least two others take another shot to die.
Averted in DARRYL, a Disney live-action movie about a robot who looks like a boy. A man driving a car is shot in the stomach, but manages to get the car and the boy to safety before succumbing to his wounds.
If a civilian is shot by a criminal in In Famous then they drop instantly. Cole takes a while to die, though since he's the only case of this it might just be a result of his powers. Justified when the player kills enemies, as he shoots lightning out of his hands and they generally spasm before they fall anyway.
Averted in the Hornblower: Retribution. One character is shot in the chest, manages to keep on fighting and doesn't really seem totally aware that he's been shot until Hornblower asks if that's his blood.

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