Invulnerable Horses

"Wait there! I need to fetch more arrows!

Willow: Don't hit the horsies!
Buffy: We won't! (whispering to Giles) Aim for the horsies.

— Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Spiral"

In any combat situation with people riding horses on one side, and ranged weapons on the other, some of the bullets (arrows, etc.) are going to hit the horses. After all, real bullets don't have anyone's name on them, they're addressed "to whom it may concern", and a horse makes a mighty big target. It's pretty inevitable that some of those horses are going to get hit and fall down, probably further injuring themselves.

The problem is this is very hard to fake in live-action film and TV barring CGI or similar advanced effects. Training a horse to fall down on cue is hard and training a horse to fall down at a gallop is nigh-impossible. During the 1920s and 1930s, movies often did horse fall stunts with tripwires, with fatal results for many of the horses. Actually shooting a horse is, of course, cruel, expensive, wasteful, dangerous for the rider, and probably illegal, but is sometimes done where the law doesn't prohibit it.

Come to think of it, the "expensive" and "wasteful" parts make this a Justified Trope in some situations; trained horses have a pretty good resale value, and can also be used by your own side if you manage to capture one after killing the rider instead.

The result is that you can watch dozens of Westerns and never see a horse get shot, no matter how many riders are shot off of them. Because people tend to be sensitive to cruelty against horses, this trope also appears in non-live-action fiction.

In many RPGs video games, your horses are of no interest to enemies and often aren't even seen as creatures in the gameplay mechanics.

See also Automaton Horses, where horses are invulnerable to a lack of non-combat care (that would do a lot of harm a real horse). As this trope is very common, the examples on this page favor aversions.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• The Arms Peddler: Garami's cart is pulled by a zombie horse, which can take huge amounts of damage without stopping.
• Attack on Titan has an interesting case. The Titans, the primary antagonists of the series, solely target humans and ignore all other organisms. However, horses are the most likely to get injured or killed since Titans are so damn persistent when trying to capture and devour humans and a human's only chance of escaping a Titan is on horseback. In fact, horses used by the Survey Corps are specifically bred to outrun titans. The Female Titan charged up to a riding soldier and punted him and his horse, sending them flying football fields away.
• Berserk averts it: no one, not even horses, is safe from being killed horrifically,.
• Sword of the Stranger: No horse is safe, especially evident in one gloriously violent battle where a horse's legs are sliced off mid-run to bring down the rider.

Comic Books

• In "The Unmasking of Johnny Thunder", Johnny is trying to get at a villain. He's entrenched at the top of a hill, so Johnny can't easily shoot him or get near him without being shot. So, Johnny deliberately falls off his horse, leaving one foot in the stirrup, so that the horse can drag him to the top of the hill. Johnny is shielded by the horse and the fact that he's approaching the villain feet-first. It apparently never even occurs to the bad guy to shoot the horse.
• Tex Willer: Averted completely: shooting the horse is a common tactic in a chase (both for the chasing and the chased party), especially when one or both factions don't want to actually hurt the other, and the only times it doesn't happen is when the chaser wants to steal the horses.
• Zorn et Dirna: Averted, as the children's father, an anti-heroic Blood Knight, cuts an enemy rider's horse clean in half from front to back with a single horizontal strike from his cleaver-like polearm, with very graphical depiction of the poor beasts' innards pouring to the ground. The kicker? Since the story takes place In a World… where nobody can die unless their head is severed (and then again, a victim's soul will simply take refuge inside their killer's body), the horse survives it.

Films — Live-Action

• Braveheart:
  • Averted in a rare moment of historical realism;^note historical realism as far as what happens to horses in combat. The Battle of Stirling depicted in the movie, however, was very different from the historical Battle of Stirling Bridge. the horses get as much of a nasty shock as their riders when the Scots down (historically nonsensical) taunts and pick up very much more lethal stakes. The depiction was so graphic that the film-makers were actually investigated by authorities to see if any animal cruelty had occurred. (For the record, it hadn't, the horses were mechanical.)
  • Another example shows William Wallace with a bit of Combat Pragmatism. In the heat of the Battle of Stirling, Cheltham charges Wallace on a horse. Wallace taunts him as he does, then merely slashes Cheltham's horse across the face before decapitating him.
• Conan the Barbarian (1982): Averted, as several stunt horses take a tumble. This led to animal rights protests outside the theater until the director showed them how the shots were done.
• For a Few Dollars More: Averted. Colonel Mortimer's Establishing Character Moment has him shooting the horse of a wanted man who's fleeing him. When the man picks himself up and tries to shoot Mortimer, the latter calmly kills him with another well-aimed shot.
• Henry V: Averted. During the Battle of Agincourt, several horses (and their riders) are brought down in graphic fashion.
• The Last Samurai: This trope is especially noticeable at the climax. The samurai launch a final charge that is halfway between a Last Stand and a Desperation Attack, only to be cut down by a group of Gatling guns. The director essentially said of this scene "I want it to seem like they're running into a wall of bullets." However, while all the samurai are hit multiple times and every last one is killed, all the horses are unharmed, and not a single one gets hit by a bullet.

• The Lord of the Rings: Averted via CGI, although it's sometimes oddly done since, in several shots of the charge on Pelennor, you can clearly see that the rider and horse die simultaneously, from a single arrow, before falling to the ground.
• The Magnificent Seven (1960): Played with. Britt shoots a bandit off his horse at long range. After Chico compliments him, he demurs "I was aiming for the horse". In the big fight scenes, however, there are several instances of horses falling down from being shot, or being dragged down. They appear to be well-trained stunt animals.
• The Magnificent Seven (2016): Chisolm rides his horse through the glass door of a restaurant with it seemingly suffering no ill effects.
• At the beginning of Timecop when a time traveler kills five Confederate cavalrymen with sub-machine guns for their gold. All the horses remain intact fleeing the scene.
• True Grit: In both films, Rooster's horse is shot during the final shootout and subsequently collapses on him, trapping him underneath it.
• Viva Villa! made in 1934, is an example of an early film in which horses were tripped. Several horses died. The "inverted W" tripwire rig used in the action scenes is clearly visible in several shots.
• War Horse: A successful cavalry charge comes to an abrupt end when the fleeing German troops man their Maxim guns, whereupon riderless horses are shown streaming past the position. Of course that's not to say horses weren't shot, but to shoot the riders they'd have to pretty much shoot through the horse as well, given they were firing upward from ground level. This was probably done more for a nice symbolic shot more than anything else. It was also notably the only use of CGI in the movie (as it would've been unsafe and cruel to get the horses to ride past several machine guns). Elsewhere in the movie, we do see horses die, but this is due to exhaustion rather than in-battle (with one horse being executed off-screen when it is too tired to go on).

Literature

• All Quiet on the Western Front: Discussed as the soldiers hear horses dying on the battlefield and are more shocked about that than their dying human colleagues (they're used to humans dying in spades at that point).
• Bernard Cornwell commonly averts this, but an in-universe example (of sorts) occurs in 1356, in which the Sieur Roland, a champion of numerous tournaments, faces an opponent on the battlefield for the first time. His opponent is very surprised when Roland targets — and kills — his horse, instead of trying to knock him off it. Roland's comment: "This isn't a tournament."
• Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Averted, especially in Honor's Paradox. Death's-head finds attacking the opposing horses more productive than the riders; they scare more easily and provide bigger targets. Several die, almost all the others are wounded.
• Dark Agnes: Averted in a story where the protagonist aims for a cloaked rider but instead hits the horse completely by accident. Of course, it's only in this way that she learns of the conspiracy driving the plot of the story.
• The Dresden Files: Harry finds himself facing down the Knights of the Summer Court, mounted, charging him, and very angry. The Knights are all of a significantly higher caliber of magic than he, so he can't just blast them. He stops their charge by averting this trope and raising an invisible wall about two feet high. The fall doesn't kill the Knights, but it negates a huge advantage.
• The Hero and the Crown: Averted, as a valuable warhorse is gravely injured (it's said that he should have been mercy killed, but he was the king's and generally a Cool Horse, so the army takes an extra forever to get home so they can go at his pace). Said horse's eventual (very, very eventual!) rehabilitation is a major plot point.
• The Redemption of Althalus: Inverted when the protagonists defend a region against an army that's Born in the Saddle. Their fortifications and battle tactics specifically target the horses under the correct assumption that killing them would leave the warriors crippled, out of their element, and emotionally devastated by the loss of their beloved mounts.
• The Reynard Cycle: Averted in just about every major battle scene. To date, there's only a single named horse that has manages to live through more than one book in the series, outliving even its owner.
• Safehold: Averted pretty much any time cavalry faces the Imperial Charisian Army. Weber points out whenever that happens that horses are a much larger target than humans, which means they're going to soak up more bullets.
• A Song of Ice and Fire's battle scenes have numerous descriptions of people having horses cut from under them, and even attackers deliberately targeting them. Don't tell that to Sansa Stark, though, she's disillusioned enough as it is.
  • In fact, numerous characters ranging from amoral Blood Knight Jaime Lannister to Ser Duncan's grandfatherly mentor in the prequel stories advise against even naming the horses one rides into battle, so you don't get too attached to them when they inevitably die. None of them take their own advice, and they all treasure their horses.
  • Ser Balman Stokeworth is charged with arranging the death of Ser Bronn of the Blackwater. As Bronn is a recently-knighted mercenary, Ser Balman challenges him to a joust, assuming his greater experience with tourneys will enable an easy victory. Ruthless Combat Pragmatist that he is, Bronn sends his lance into Balman's horse, then finishes him off with a dagger as he lies crippled.
  • Similar to the example with Ser Balman and Bronn above, in The Hedge Knight Royal Brat Aerion Targaryen deliberately aims for his opponent's horse in a tourney. In this case, it has nothing to do with Combat Pragmatism and everything to do with Aerion being a vicious sadist who is practically impossible to punish for his misdeeds, being a Prince and all.
• 20 Years After: Averted when the musketeers frequently force their horse to rear up and take a bullet shot at them. At least one character has a horse land on his leg, but fortunately is not seriously injured. And then there's all the horses that die during a chase sequence, whether in combat or simply collapsing from exertion.
• Winnetou:
  • Played with. Hatatitla, Iltschi, and other named horses are never wounded or killed, while less important horses do get shot as a more acceptable alternative to shooting their owners. Justified in the Wild West, where a good horse is valuable in more ways than one, so shooting them is not a smart option.
  • A notable subversion occurs in the Orient cycle. Upon confronting a group of enemy Bedouins, Charlie tells his friends to "aim for the horses", in one of his attempts to avoid taking human lives. Then he notices how good the bandits' horses are: "I changed my mind. Shoot the bandits." (They end up shooting the Arab's spears in two and their guns out of their hands, because, let's face it, that's much more awe-inspiring.)
• Unicorn Western: Justified, as in this story, the hero rides a unicorn with magical healing powers, making it difficult to kill.

Live-Action TV

• Band of Brothers: Averted. Lt. Winters men ambush a German horse-drawn supply cart. The horses can be seen rearing and whinnying in fear as the bullets fly, and a wounded horse is shot after the ambush is over.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Referenced when horse-riding knights pursue the Scoobies. After a suggestion from Spike, Buffy assures Willow they won't hurt the horsies and then tells Giles to "aim for the horsies". We don't see any horses hurt though, although one is run off the road.
• Firefly:
  • Averted and discussed in "Heart of Gold". Before The Siege at the climax of the episode, Mal advises the whores to shoot the man, not the horse, because a live horse without a rider will be a distraction to the enemy, while a dead horse is cover. In the aftermath, you can see some dead horses on the ground.
  • Averted earlier in the series when a Villain of the Week tried to take cover behind her horse during a gunfight. Mal simply shot the horse and it fell right on top of her.
• Game of Thrones: Thoroughly averted. In a first season episode, we see The Mountain decapitate his own horse with a single swing of his sword for failing him during a joust. In the Battle of Winterfell in Season 6, Jon Snow is shot off his horse and other horses crash into each other during the ensuing melee.

Mythology

• The Iliad: Justified, as Achilles' two horses are actually immortal.
• Averted in Irish Mythology in the death of Cu Chulainn: the three spears of Lugaid mac Cu Roi have been prophesied to each kill a king and one of them mortally injures one of Cu Chulainn's chariot steeds, the Grey of Macha, the king of horses (the others being used to slay Cu Chulainn's charioteer Laeg mac Riangbra, the king of charioteers, and Cu Chullain himself, the king of champions).

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The game addresses the problem of high-level characters riding mounts with a fraction of their hit points by allowing players to make a ride check to negate any attack made to their mount.
• Iron Kingdoms: Averted by the "dragoon" unit type in Warmachine, which starts out as a cavalry unit. After it takes a certain amount of damage, it becomes a footsoldier (with the player actually replacing the "mounted" miniature with the "unmounted" miniature).
• Legend of the Five Rings averts this. People facing Utaku soldiers often advise each other, "Go for the horse; she can't fight without it." This does not mean it's good advice, however; Utaku are trained in normal swordfighting and archery, have two techniques ^note in the Way of the Unicorn sourcebook, at least that work whether they're mounted or not, and consider their horses blood relatives (meaning that a soldier who kills one will have to contend with its very angry rider, and possibly face social problems after the battle).
• Warhammer: Cavalry are always treated as a single model that share defenses: A mount has its own attack but only the rider can be hit, and if the rider is killed the steed is removed with them (in one case, the mount is sufficiently intelligent and attached to its owner that it drags his body away from the battle). Thus it's impossible in the rules to, for example, unhorse a knight and have him stick around and fight on foot. In fact, cavalry units automatically have better armour save than equivalent infantry, so horses even make their riders more invulnerable (Monstrous Cavalry uses the highest Wounds profile of the rider or the steed, meaning Pegasi and the like will make regular soldiers much more invulnerable). In some versions of the fluff, it's noted that a "killed" cavalryman may have simply lost his horse, dismissing a knight without his steed as ineffective. Averted with giant monsters, who are counted as individual from their rider: Either one can be killed before the other and leaves you with either a monsterless rider (who is probably about to face the same fate of their steed) or a riderless (and probably very angry) monster.
• Warhammer 40,000 uses the same rules as regular Warhammer (and also include a lot of sci-fi equivalents of horses, like motorbikes): Mounts can only be 'killed' if their riders are.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey:
  • Bayek's mounts are nigh-indestructible. They can ride through the desert for hours on end, be stabbed, slashed, shot, set on fire, and soon get back up again fresh as a daisy... except in Curse of the Pharaohs, where the Pharaohs can kill Bayek's steed (and even then, only for as long as they're around. Once the ghosts are gone, Bayek's able to summon it again).
  • Averted with other mounts, which can be killed. Horses can be cut down with relative ease, though their health is comparable to other animals of levels close to Bayek's. This is to prevent accidentally killing one with a glancing blow.
• Berserk and the Band of the Hawk: Averted for enemy horses, which can be killed, and played entirely straight for the player's own horse, which is impossible to harm.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II: Averted in the "Old Wounds" level. Friendly horses can and will die during the mission, and near the end of it Mason's horse is run over by a tank.
• Civilization VI: When cavalry units are defeated, the riders will fall over dead while their horses run away unharmed.
• Darkest Dungeon II: Over and above their immunity to rough terrain, piles of skulls, and burning books, the horses pulling the stagecoach are also never affected by combat. This includes the combats that you can induce by taking one too many points of damage to your wheels or hull plating, which are taking place while your heroes are trying to repair the stagecoach.
• Defender of the Crown: In the jousting match, subverting the trope by hitting the opponent's horse costs you the land you conquered.
• Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, where horses are just transportation when you are riding them, and just an immobile block when not ridden. In games featuring enemy cavalry, this trope tended to zigzag. Sometimes, such as in Dynasty Warriors 4, attacking the enemy horsemen would knock them off their horse, whereupon the player would have to continue to fight off the now dismounted cavalry who would never remount. The player could also take such riderless horses for themselves. Other times, as in Samurai Warriors 2, both horse and rider would fall over and die when their shared life bar ran out, but only striking the rider actually diminished the aforementioned life bar, probably for balance reasons.
• Averted in Elden Ring. Your steed, Torrent, has his own separate health bar and hitbox, and you can fall off if his posture gets broken or gets killed. Drinking a Flask of Crimson Tears also heals Torrent, and you can use one flask charge to revive Torrent. However, Torrent is immune to status effects, and can run across poisonous swamps and such with no problems.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Averted; horses can be fought and killed just like any other creature in Tamriel. They can even be killed whilst being ridden, and it's not uncommon to kill your horse while running down a too-steep incline if you aren't careful. The only (non modded) exception is Shadowmere, an invincible horse given to you for completing the Dark Brotherhood questline. Like every other invincible NPC in the game, she can still suffer a Non-Lethal K.O..
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Horses can be killed by the enemy, and a tough enough monster or opponent can kill it right out from under you. However, Shadowmere returns and is nigh-invulnerable (technically just having very rapid health regeneration). With the Dawnguard DLC, you can also summon an invulnerable undead horse named Arvak.
• Empire Earth: One English mission has William the Conqueror's horse get killed. He's replaced with a model on foot and needs to be sent to a hill so his men can see he hasn't been killed.
• Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life: Your horse is one of the few invulnerable animals. You don't need to feed it, you can ride it for hours, and it can't get sick or die. Averted in other Harvest Moon titles though.
• Kingdom Rush Vengeance averts this with the Cavalier enemies. They're horse-mounted Paladins with a surprisingly weak amount of health since Vez'nan's dark army units actually attack the horse. When the Cavalier loses all its HP, the horse dies and the much more durable Paladin dismounts.
• League of Legends: Inverted by Skaarl, the lizard mount of the homicidal Folk Hero Kled. Lore-wise, Skaarl is immortal and invulnerable, with even steel swords bouncing off of her. Gameplay-wise, Skaarl has a health bar separate from Kled's, and she runs away for a time when it is depleted. Since Skaarl is famously cowardly despite her invulnerability, presumably depleting her health bar doesn't involve actually harming her so much as it involves scaring her off.
• The Legend of Zelda: Epona is invulnerable to damage in most of her appearances, something that due to hit- and collision-detection bugs mean that Link himself is invincible in certain games as long as he's riding her.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Epona can take damage, but if hit too much she throws you off. Similarly, the ginormous boars used as rides by the Moblins can be damaged, but just collapse and get back to their feet after a while.
  • This is however notably averted in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where she (and every other horse) are just as killable as any other non-NPC in the game. Fortunately, the Horse God Malanya can revive them.
• Minecraft: Horses are no less mortal than any other mobs in the game. They can easily fall from too high places, stumble upon cacti, fall into lava or get in the way of exploding Creepers. Good thing they have Regenerating Health and above-average maximum health though.
• Mount & Blade: Played with. Horses can be knocked out, and if this happens there is also a chance they will be lamed. Being lamed temporarily lowers a horse's stats until it heals again (which can take weeks) but won't kill it unless it's already lame.
• Red Dead Redemption: Averted, as you will likely lose a good many horses to gunmen, large falls, or vicious wildlife. There's nothing to stop you from shooting enemies' horses out from under them, either; indeed, it's often easier without Deadeye or auto-aim to hit a pursuer's horse and leave him scrambling to run after you instead of trying to shoot him while both of you are moving. Heck, towards the end of II, Arthur Morgan's horse gets shot while he and John Marston are escaping from the Pinkertons on their trail.
• Shadow of the Colossus: Averted. A stomp from one of the Colossi sends both you and your horse flying and you take damage. The horse will limp for a while and then stay out of the way until called again. In the end, however, Agro falls into a ravine while throwing Wander to safety, but somehow survives the fall — outliving Wander, notably — and hobbles back to the central temple in the final cutscene.
• Sunset Riders: in the riding sections, the bullets just pass through the horses and only the riders can be hit. Except for stage boss "Dark Horse": a few bits of plating allow his horse to stop any bullets that hit it.
• Total War:
  • Averted in early titles. When a mounted unit goes down, the horse automatically goes down with them. However, mounted units also have a higher chance of "healing" casualties, representing the rider surviving the death of the mount and simply taking up another horse for the next battle.
  • Downplayed in the later games; horses usually die alongside their rider, but other times only the rider gets hit, and the horses run safely into the sunset... occasionally dragging the dead or dying cavalryman along with them. The opposite situation, where the horse dies and the rider survives, can only occur in a few of the games (namely Shogun 2), though it is possible in all of them for the individual horses of currently-dismounted cavalry to get spooked from the battle and run off, forcing their riders to probably hopelessly attempt to run after the rest of their unit if it mounts up again.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: Played with. You'll find plenty of horse corpses scattered around the world, and a lot of horses get killed in the introduction, but no living horse can actually be harmed by you or the enemies.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick: Vaarsuvius averts this to prevent a charging enemy from using his Mounted Combat Feats.
  Vaarsuvius: Thrice-cursed Spell Resistance! It's almost like the universe is trying to deliberately force some form of arbitrary equality between those of us who can reshape matter with our thoughts and those who cannot.
  General Chang: Zap the horse, then.
  Vaarsuvius: Why? It hardly seems to be doing that much-
  General Chang: So he can't use his mounted combat feats on us. Hurry!

Web Original

• Moonflowers: Averted when Alima Song's group is getting chased by The Wild Hunt, the FBI agents who help them out deliberately aim for the horses. It's noted that even if a bullet doesn't land, the horses still get spooked into accidentally trampling each other, and when Aine McCallum drives the group's car into the mob, she takes out almost thirty of them at once.

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