Murphy's Bullet

"What is it Wallace always says? It's not the bullet that has your name on it you have to worry about... it's all those other ones marked 'To whom it may concern.'"

— Greg Rucka, Queen and Country

Bullets are funny things. Sometimes a villain will shoot at the hero many, many times, but every time he aims, he misses. Yet, on the one time he doesn't aim, the bullet ricochets off the wall and hits the hero. Or one of the bullets that missed the hero hit someone close to him instead. With Murphy's Bullet, anything that can be hit, will be hit, even if it requires the bullet to go through walls and bounce off objects. As long as it causes the hero pain. Often, because True Art Is Angsty.

Most of the time, such a coincidence requires Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics (when projectiles are likelier to bounce off than to go in a straight trajectory) or Pinball Projectile (when the ricochet more than once) to be pulled out. A common cause is that the villain is trying for More Dakka. The perpetrator of a Hunting "Accident" might use this as an excuse.

Compare and contrast Bullet Holes and Revelations, which is a suspenseful moment of someone being injured in a fight, but the viewer not knowing who it was. Contrast Exactly What I Aimed At, where the bullets seemed to miss but didn't. Sub-Trope of Finagle's Law —the general tendency in media for things to go wrong for purely entertainment-oriented reasons. Compare Accidental Aiming Skills, when a character hits the target they weren't aiming for.

Related to Diabolus ex Machina, for those times when sudden, unanticipated tragedy strikes. Contrast Near Misses, when the drama comes from the heroes almost getting shot; and A-Team Firing, in which nobody gets hit by bullets, no matter how much gunfire is exchanged.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Knight Hunters: Ouka is killed by a stray bullet while she's being embraced by Omi, whom she has just told they are half-siblings. To add salt to injury, it happens as he is comforting her by telling her he's nonetheless happy to have found a family and that they'll be together forever.

Comic Books

• Queen and Country: Tara Chace manages to avoid all the bullets shot at her except for one ricochet, which hits her in the leg.
  Greg Rucka: What is it Wallace always says? It's not the bullet that has your name on it you have to worry about... it's all those other ones marked 'To whom it may concern.
• The Spirit: A poor-sighted savage constantly aims a knife at her husband but misses, and when she aims at the Spirit, hits her husband instead.
• Strangers in Paradise: Bambi's death is caused by a stray bullet.
• Yoko Tsuno: In "Devil's Organ", an old man goes ballistic trying to shoot a bat with a carbine and the bullet hits several corners before hitting Vic Video, Yoko's partner. Fortunately, Vic's head is merely grazed by the bullet (which missed him for mere millimeters), but Yoko almost goes into an Unstoppable Rage at that, grabbing the weapon and pointing at the maddened old man.

Fan Works

• Death Note: The Abridged Series (Team Dattebayo): "You missed?"

Films — Live-Action

• Caddyshack II: The movie has a Murphy's Golf Ball. One character has a slice so bad the ball goes the exact opposite direction he was aiming. So he turns around.
• Devotion (2022): Jesse Brown's F4U Corsair is not brought down by the MiG-15 fighter jet that he leads on a Canyon Chase, nor by Chinese antiaircraft fire, but by a random potshot from a nameless Chinese infantryman that punches a hole in his oil pan. He's injured in the crash and succumbs before he can be rescued.
• El Dorado: Cole Thornton's "a gun for a man who can't shoot" phrase refers to a sawed-off shotgun. Later, John Thornton is the only man in their band who was hit in the final fight. The doctor finds shotgun shrapnel in the wound and wants to know who would bring a gun like that to a fight like that.
• Flight of the Intruder: After Grafton and Morg use sophisticated electronic countermeasures to throw off radar-guided anti-aircraft, Morg is fatally wounded by a rifle bullet that got lucky and punched into the cockpit straight from below.
• Goldfinger: Tilly fires at Goldfinger but misses completely and hits the ground next to James Bond instead.
• Sleepwalkers: The film has a hilarious editing failure where a policeman is trying to shoot a woman but shoots the vase next to her and breaks it —and then he shoots and breaks the same vase again.

Literature

• Belisarius Series:
  • Ashot dies from a musket shot, which ricochets under his helmet and breaks his neck. The shot is fired by a Malwa soldier from beyond maximum effective range. The Malwa army is already fleeing, leaderless and panicking.
  • John of Rhodes and Wahsi suffered similar fates from a blind-fired siege gun and a knocked-over rocket, respectively.
• Blood Rites: A gun goes off in a struggle between Harry and a crazy porn star, hitting a random bystander in the hallway. Of course, this was the result of a very powerful and targeted bad luck curse as well.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: The Battle of the Seven Potters is riddled with stray spells because everyone is up in the air and therefore is hard to aim. The two spells that land have the most devastating outcomes. First, Hedwig (Harry's beloved owl companion) gets hit by a killing curse. Shortly after, Hagrid gets hit by a stunning spell. Unconscious, Hagrid can't drive the motorbike, so he and Harry start plummeting toward the ground.
• Johnny Maxwell Trilogy: Of all the places to hit...
• Pyramids: Pteppic decides to fail his Assassin's Guild final exam in style and deliberately aims his crossbow away from the target. The bolt ricochets off several objects before burying itself in the target. The examiner comments that he is not a fan of these new, flashy techniques but passes him as the end result was achieved.

Live-Action TV

• 1000 Ways to Die:
  • In "#178: Dead Fella", two hitmen try to kill a mafioso who has betrayed the group, but the reinforced glass from the car deflects all of the shots... and one of these shots kills the hitman who shot it.
  • In "#661: No Fun-Gus", a drunken redneck shoots into the air and kills an Innocent Bystander who was a mile away.
• Airwolf: Invoked in "Shadow of the Hawke". The Big Bad Dr. Moffett positions his helicopter to the exact spot where it'd be vulnerable to a Golden BB, counting that, because of Finagle's Law, it won't miss.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Seeing Red", Tara McClay is killed by a random bullet that was fired in the air by Warren. It occurs immediately after Willow has made things right with Tara, making this a very clear-cut case of The Rule Of Drama in action. Although Warren does manage to hit Buffy, his target, as well. For some fans, this tastes too much like a Diabolus ex Machina.^Explanation The bullet is shown to have shattered a window and there's no way, given Warren's height, Tara's height, and the height of the window from the ground, that a bullet could have traveled that path unless it was a Roger Rabbit bullet that took a sharp turn in midair. And an extra sharp turn after killing Tara in order to avoid also killing Willow who is standing directly in line but on the opposite side of her
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Rivals" has a nonlethal version. Bashir and O'Brien are playing a game of futuristic racquetball. The latter is established early in the episode as a spectacularly unlucky player due to the unrevealed Phlebotinum of the Week messing with probability. When the weird probability-altering device begins evening things out (reversing all the bad luck into good and vice versa), no matter where he or anyone else throws the ball it will always come back to his hand.
• Studio C:
  • "Shooting Booth": A ditzy girl shoots Matt in the same spot on his hand three times with a BB gun. Subverted, as it is strongly implied that she did it on purpose to get back at Matt for scamming her son.
  • Not a bullet, but the basic principle is applied with Scott Sterling. No matter what he does, the soccer ball will hit him in the face.
• Supernatural: In "Bad Day at Black Rock", Sam gets ahold of a rabbit's foot, a MacGuffin that gives you incredible luck as long as you hold it, but if you lose it, your luck gets progressively worse until it kills you. Sam has already lost it, and it is now in Dean's possession. Being Genre Savvy, the rival takes advantage of this trope, assured that any bullet she aims at Dean will instead hit Sam. It works.
• The West Wing: In "In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen, Part 1", a gang of white supremacists attempts to shoot Charlie because they dislike the fact he's dating the President's daughter. They miss him entirely but succeed in shooting the President and Josh. As you might expect, the Secret Service takes a dim view of this. Justified, however; the shooters were firing at the presidential motorcade from a high-rise building using handguns, which are notoriously unreliable at a distance if you're trying to hit a specific target.
• The Wire: In "Stray Rounds", two drug gangs squabble over territory. At first it seems laughable, like the gang version of a Wimp Fight, as the two sides obviously have little to no experience with guns, and most don't even come close to hitting each other due to the fact that they're often firing without properly aiming or even looking at their target. The mood changes quickly when a mother in a nearby building finds her nine-year-old son dead in his room from a stray bullet.

Music

• Thin Lizzy: Heavily implied in "Mexican Blood". All we know is that a cowboy's son is looking for trouble, the Mexican boy tries to gun him down, and when the smoke clears, the Mexican's girlfriend lies dead on the ground.
• Bob Marley and The Wailer: "Johnny Was" is about a boy shot down by a stray bullet. Covered by Stiff Little Fingers, with some lyrical changes to link the death of this Johnny to The Troubles.

Video Games

• Life Is Strange: When Chloe and Max are shooting targets at the junkyard, if Max tells Chloe to aim at the car bumper, the bullet will ricochet and hit Chloe in the stomach. Fortunately, Max can easily rewind to prevent what might have otherwise been a fatal injury.

Web Original

• The Fire Never Dies: An Austrian socialist opens fire on right-wing politician Ignaz Siegel while he is giving a speech to a crowd. Of his shots, one hits (and kills Siegel). Another hits a nearby building. The third hits one of the people in the crowd... a local painter named Adolf Hitler.

Real Life

• President Ronald Reagan was a real-life version of this trope. When John Hinckley shot at him, he missed with every shot —the bullet that actually hit Reagan ricocheted off the security glass of his presidential limo and struck him in the side. Until Reagan started coughing up blood while being rushed away in the limo, no one even knew he'd been shot.^note And that was what saved his life, as the limo diverted to the hospital. If they'd gone to the White House as originally planned, Reagan would have bled to death.
• The Napoleonic Wars:
  • This is the reason Napoleonic warfare was developed. If the soldiers didn't stand together to mass their fire (and bayonets), they'd have been sitting ducks for cavalry charges, since early muskets were so inaccurate they often missed at near point-blank range. Same thing for early rocket artillery.
  • "The soldier's musket, if it is not too badly calibrated, which is very often the case, can strike a man at a distance of 80 yards and even up to 100 yards. But a soldier has to be very unlucky even to be wounded at a distance of 150 yards, this on condition that his adversary aims well. As for firing on a man at a distance of 200 yards, you might as well aim at the moon hoping to strike it."
  • Gunsmiths of the time actually could make more precise weapons, but they were agonizingly slow to reload, as the tight fit of a bullet to bore would require a time-consuming inch-by-inch ramming of the bullet into place, along with precision workmanship being costly. Given the widespread use of poorly-trained mooks as soldiers, and the persistence of a standard battle formation originally developed in ancient Greece, it was more practical to use a cheap weapon whose bullet could be more quickly loaded, and to heck with accuracy.
• Modern warfare:
  • This situation is usually caused by soldiers using automatic weapons and being scared for their own lives, (1) they don't worry as much about aiming, and (2) the recoil from the previous round throws off their aim anyway.
  • This is also the reason why staying calm is paramount in videogames with realistic recoil, such as Counter-Strike or Battlefield 1942.
  • The actual strategic purpose of full-auto is basically to make a scary noise so the enemy will be too busy hiding to shoot back. Works well if you have an ammo truck following you, but for a small fireteam it's a good way to get stuck in enemy territory with empty guns.
• To pilots, this is known as the "Golden BB", a shot that should not have done anything but somehow managed to hit something vital. Pilots of the P-51 Mustang in World War II joked that their plane could be shot down by any sharp-eyed boy with a plinking gun, due to the liquid cooling system the engines used.
• Some really stupid people like to fire guns into the air during celebrations. When the bullets come down, they're still pretty dangerous if they happen to hit someone. Straight up, they hit terminal velocity and slow down as they fall. Any kind of an angle and the rifling spin are still in play.

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