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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.
It can be Truth In Television, as given by this statistical website. Instant incapacitation can result from damage to the nervous system, such as a brain or spinal cord injury, destruction of bodily extremities, or from psychological collapse. Also, anything involving the Chunky Salsa Rule can be considered an Instant Death Bullet.
However, it is rarely possible to aim at and hit relatively small areas of the human body with any degree of accuracy, especially when they're moving around or hiding behind obstacles. Police snipers are capable of dealing headshots if required, but doing so requires skill, opportunity, an extremely accurate rifle, and a lot of luck.
The only reliable way to hit a moving human target at all is to aim for the centre of the body. Getting shot causes severe tissue and nerve damage which will usually incapacitate quickly, but not immediately kill. Again, incapacitation is not always the case, as various factors ranging from the physiology of the person shot to the type of ammunition used can have varying results.
In fiction, one or two minutes of fairly normal activity followed by death is almost never an outcome of being shot for most characters. The normal outcomes are, in rough order of frequency:
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.
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.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Averted in Death Note, specifically in the last scene: Light gets shot in the wrist and starts yelling at Matsuda. He then proceeds to try to write down Near's name with his own blood...and gets shot multiple times until he falls to the ground. He then gets up and runs away while everyone is distracted, holding his wounds, only to finally be killed from having his own name written in Ryuk's death note.
- 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.
- 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.
- Both of them died from a massive loss of blood, a real danger of a gunshot.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- In the novels, Sousuke Sagara manages to retain the strength to get up from his blood puddle, hide, and return fire to his distracted enemy, staggering across the room and interrogating the man before he dies and Sousuke passes out. Pretty good for someone whose innards have been partly blown away courtesy of a rifle round to the stomach.
- In Dragon Ball - not exactly bullets, but the same idea applies - Goku, Vegeta and Trunks all manage to take an energy blast through the chest. Between the three, they cover the whole range of lethality: Trunks survives, Goku dies after several minutes, and Vegeta dies instantly (though he was close to dead already).
- Trunks died almost immediately, it was just Bowdlerized by the dub. Vegeta, on the other hand, stayed alive long enough to deliver a Final Speech to Goku, despite having his heart pierced.
Card Games
- 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 lose) 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.
Comic Books
- 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.
- 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...
- 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."
Film
- 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.
- Rule Of Funny: Dropping a fearsome adversary with one shot after all that buildup gets a huge laugh. If the man had screamed in pain, rolled about on the floor, commended his soul to Allah or sobbed for his mother it would have seemed tragic, not comic.
- Urban Legends: Final Cut, where two characters get shot in the chest(-ish area) and still manage to stumble around for a bit.
- In Christmas Horror film Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 Ricky gets shot by a cop several times at the end. Just knocked back and stunned a bit he quickly tries attacking again, only to be knocked through a glass door by a few more shots (thanks to mad science he gets better for the sequel).
- 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!
- 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.)
- Also kind of averted in the beginning, in which one of the gunmen shot by the Harmonica man manages to squeeze off one last shot before dying.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- 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 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 agonizing detail in the film Taxi Driver.
- 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.
- Averted to the point of being a Tear Jerker scene in Pat Garret and Billy the Kid.
- 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.
- Though the looks on the protagonists faces is even more telling.
- 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 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.
- 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 a fraction of a second.
- Also averted by Vincent himself. He gets shot in the head, but non-fatally (this is possible), gets up and chases Max and Annie onto a train. After the resulting shootout in the dark, he starts to reload, only to notice the bullet-hole in his chest. He sits down, briefly talks to Max, then dies.
- 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. Earlier, Mr. Brown manages to drive the crew away from the scene while being fatally headshot.
- Averted in The Brothers Bloom. At the end, after Stephen gets shot in the run down theater, he manages to get up and convincingly trick Bloom into thinking that it was all a big con and that he was just fine. He even pulls off the 'Greatest card trick in the world'. After Bloom leaves, Stephen (in obvious pain) has just enough strength to pull a chair onto the stage and sit down in it before passing on.
- 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.
- 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 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 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.
- 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.
- Heavily averted in the Hornblower: Retribution movie. Archie 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. He lives long enough to take sole blame for their captain's demise, saving Horatio's life in the process, then dies from his wounds before he could be hanged for mutiny.
- Also averted in Hornblower: The Even Chance. Two "quick draw" pistol duels are fought, both times both men are able to fire their shot. In the last duel, Simpson fires prematurely, wounding but not killing Hornblower, who's allowed to take a free shot at Simpson, but chooses to spare him.
- Also averted in Childs Play when Charles Lee Ray is shot in the leg and then the chest, yet still manages to both yell at the cop that shot him and stumble around long enough to find the Good Guy doll and perform his ritual.
- Averted in Regarding Henry, in which the titular character, finding himself face-to-face with a convenience store robber, is shot (with a small-caliber pistol) in the chest and remains standing, more confused than alarmed. He is then shot in the forehead, but remains standing for a few seconds before collapsing.
- Averted in Tears of the Sun as one fatally wounded soldier is able to run and fight for some time before he and his comrades realize it.
- Another sequence has a soldier taking a sniper bullet through the shoulder and falling down. After a few tense seconds, it's revealed that he dropped down to avoid getting hit by another bullet (he was in tall grass), and after getting patched up, he picks up his gun and continues fighting. He still dies, but takes a few more bullets to do so.
- Some historical or fantasy pieces feature Instant Death arrows.
- In the Lord Of The Rings movies, Legolas drops most minions instantly with a single arrow each, possibly justified by a talent for headshots. Boromir however, in his Crowning Moment Of Awesome, takes three arrows to the chest and manages to keep struggling after the first two. The third fells him for good, but he still lives long enough to see his nemesis defeated and pay honor to his king before expiring.
- Double Subverted by The Sixth Sense, as the ending reveals: it wasn't a flesh wound after all, and the main character had bled to death in his own house.
Literature
Live Action TV
- 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.
- In The Sarah Connor Chronicles Derek dies instantly. Of course, he did a get a bullet in the brain.
- 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."
- For personal protection hollow points are the norm so thats probably what he was carrying.
- 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.
- To be fair, that looks like a .300 caliber rifle, which does hit with a lot of force. And the victim doesn't necessarily drop dead instantly, just to the ground: she may be dead after a few minutes. We don't get to see. It's definitely a fatal shot, though.
- 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 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.)
- 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 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.
- 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. Played straight as this is treated as a rare and unusual event.
- 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...
- 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.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Tara gets shot by Warren, and dies within seconds. She barely got "Your shirt" out before she kicked the bucket.
- Happens often in 24, but one significant aversion was done during one of Kimberly's Trapped By Mountain Lions subplots. After a stalker comes into her home, she calls her dad for help and uses one of his guns to shoot the stalker and drop him. To her horror, her dad tells her to shoot the guy again to make sure he dies.
Tabletop Games
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The "Massive Damage" check is required whenever an enemy does damage equal to or greater than your constitution score (plus bonuses from the Improved Massive Damage Threshold feat, which increases it by +3 every time you take it). A character with a Con of 10 (average human) may get taken out by anything from a 9mm handgun or larger, which does 2d6 damage. A character with a Con of 18 can't be instantly killed by anything short of a .50 caliber bullet (which does 2d12 damage). Most higher level monsters, like dragons from D20 Urban Arcana, have multiple levels of the Improved MDT feat, which means you have to do 40+ damage in one round to trigger a Massive Damage check (and even then, they get a bunch of bonuses to save). This also means it's possible to hit someone with a low Con with a 2x4 and kill them instantly.
- 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.
- In Cyberpunk 2020 RPG there are several levels of being 'dead'. Character whose wounds exceeded 'critical' level starts getting wounds every round until stabilized. When entering each subsequent 'dead' wound level he must make endurance roll. Success means he has still some time before bleeding out, failure means death due to system shock.
Video Games
- In Relic Entertainment's Company of Heroes real-time strategy game, many casualties lie writhing on the ground for some time before expiring. If a medical building is nearby then medics can retrieve the dying soldiers, quickly returning them to the battle.
- 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 Call Of Juarez. Near the end, Reverend Ray is shot by Juarez. Other playable character, Billy Candle, beats the hell out of the villain. Seconds later, Juarez manages to get up and make an attempt at backstabbing Billy, while the latter hugs his girl, Molly. Then it turns out Ray wasn't killed with the shot and manages (via the player) to shoot Juarez before the fatal stab. Then he dies and manages to rest in peace.
- 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 NPCs 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.
- 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.
- Averted in F.E.A.R. and Project Origin, where the Replica troops and Armacham soldiers typically take multiple gunshots to bring down. They can usually withstand a half-dozen bullets before they finally go down, particularly with the submachineguns. Naturally, however, getting hit with a shotgun blast full-on in the chest at close range will drop them very quickly, usually dismembering them or blowing them in half in the process.
- 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.
- 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 either dies or get captured after watching his friend get shot and killed trying to save him. Ouch.
- Army Of Two also has the "dying" character's screen going white, as they "go into the light". The original concept for the game would've involved the mortally wounded character running away from the light, but that was dropped. Also, the mortally wounded character can provide cover fire while being dragged, though the closer he gets to death the harder it is to see approaching enemies.
- Horribly averted in the amateur RPG Liberal Crime Squad: mortally wounded characters stay in the party, dying slowly in agony and decreasingly coherent terror.
- If a civilian is shot by a criminal in inFamous 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 by the civilians: unless it's a head or chest (read: heart) shot, they'll fall instantly, but writhe on the ground. Cole can then heal them, or, if he's a Complete Monster, absorb their energy to replenish his battery cores. Which kills them.
- 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 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 Assassins Creed, after you finished going to town on a guard or civilian with either your long sword or short blade, the poor bugger will convulsed on the ground moaning and pleading for help. You can even choose to use your hidden blade after that to silence them for good. Played straight when you use your hidden blade or throwing knives though.
Western Animation
- 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.
Web Original
- 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.
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