Only A Flesh Wound - Television Tropes & Idioms

Ghost In The Shell Standalone Complex also plays it realistically with gunshot wounds, at least on non-cyborged individuals. In one episode, a soldier is shot in his upper-thigh by a sniper and bleeds to death on the ground while his squadmates are pinned down.
- Quite nicely, there is also an episode that plays with the concept in 2ndGiG. Togusa, while off duty, stumbles upon a violent domestic dispute. The attacker is a cyborg and, despite Togusa just wanting the guy to calm/stand down, requires multiple shots of small arms fire to immobilize. In the farce of a preliminary examination that follows, he is forced to justify the number of times he shot by the resilience of cyborgs and the lawyer from the other side tries to turn that argument against him as prejudice towards cyborgs.
- Cyborgs on the other hand often play this straight, such as Hideo Kuze in the 2nd Gig', who in an early episode get shot into Swiss cheese, with visible bullet holes even on his face, but thanks to his subdermal armour isn't even slowed down.
There are barely any fights in Bleach that don't involve a character getting cut through one or both shoulders (and eventually everywhere else). This is usually the first wound inflicted in the whole fight and the only explanation for this is that spirits don't suffer as much from wounds, being spirits and all.
- See also: Kenpachi Zaraki.
- The most egregious example is Ichigo surviving Ulquiorra blowing a hole the size of his fist into his chest, lying there and breathing with a torn trachea for at least fifteen minutes or so before Orihime and Grimmjow arrive. Ishida, despite fighting in his human body, seems to possess unbelievable hardiness as well, as he survives Szayel crushing his internal organs and still finds time to play comic relief for Mayuri (Renji observes how energetic he is despite his ah, condition). More recently, Ishida kept going against Ulquiorra, who had blown an even bigger hole in Ichigo's chest, in spite of having his hand blown off. It took Ichigo in psycho neo-Hollow mode to made Ishida fall over by stabbing him with his Zanpakuto. And Uryu still wouldn't shut up. Heroic Resolve, indeed.
A variant of the 'Intentionally Shooting To Wound' theme occured in Hellsing, when Knight Templar Alexander Anderson introduced himself by putting about a score of blessed bayonets through Seras Victoria's neck and torso while missing her heart to incapacitate her (and leave her in agony) while he entertained himself with Alucard. Heroic Willpower is invoked when she surprises Anderson by dragging herself away with her master's head.
- Note that Seras and Alucard are both vampires, Alucard in particular has no trouble healing himself after being chopped into dozens of pieces, decapitated etc.
- Also, even if he was just aiming to incapacitate, he has no particular reason to care if she does ~~die~~ get permanently destroyed, since his mission is to obliterate her eventually anyway.
Averted repeatedly in Monster. One character is shot in the shoulder and survives — but his arm is rendered useless for the rest of his life. Other characters bleed to death from a thigh wounds, stomach wounds, and shoulder wounds. For those that did survive, it was because a medical professional (usually Tenma) stopped the bleeding.
- On the other hand, Johan gets shot in the head twice and survives.
  - Surprizingly, this have some slight basis in reality. Human forehead is one of the strongest bones in the body, with thickness ranging from 2 to 5 cm (1-2"), and it can withstand a weaker handgun round without breaking. The resulting concussion, on the other hand... It's enough to say that crippling headaches for a rest of your life is the easiest result.
In the finale of Mobile Suit Gundam, Amuro is stabbed clean through the arm with a rapier. It doesn't seem to affect his piloting skills at all when he resurfaces in Zeta Gundam (although, to be fair, he is slightly superhuman & medical technology is presumably more advanced in the Universal Century).
- And Zeta is seven years after said stabbing.
In Gundam Wing , Heero Yuy gets shot, blown up, drowned, etc, and does not die. Ever.
Averted many times in Legend Of The Galactic Heroes: characters who get wounded in a limb either lose said limb or die, sometimes even after having received futuristic medical treatment. This is played in a very cruel way with Yang, who get shot in the thigh, and die of blood loss: The cruel part comes from the fact that the WHOLE episode of his death was made in a way that lead many viewers, including this troper, to believe he would still get out of this alive and keep playing a large role in the next season
- They play with it even further near the end of the show, blending it with The Determinator and I Can Fight to good effect. Oskar von Reuental is impaled through the chest with a massive sliver of glass, yet calmly pulls it out and tells his subordinate to stop shouting. Minutes later, it turns out the spike actually severed an artery between a lung and his heart, and even though the doctors can stop the bleeding he will die without surgery and will probably die regardless. He ignores his doctors and keeps going in order to manage a withdrawal from a disastrous battle with such steely composure it seems he won't die, and then waits almost a whole day for his friend to return with such steely composure it seems he'll be fine, until he dies less than an hour before his friend arrives.
Happens to Mao in Code Geass, who is shot multiple times and comes back perfectly fine (albeit bandaged up a little bit) the very next episode; it's rather badly Hand Waved by stating the police were not specifically ordered to shoot to kill.
- Used a second time with Cornelia, who was shot multiple times in the leg.
  - Much earlier in the series, C.C. pulls a gun on Lelouch and threatens to shoot to wound in order to keep him from walking into an obvious trap.
- Averted with Nunnally, though. She was crippled for life due to nerve damage to her legs from submachinegun fire. More like she was Geassed by the Emperor to think that her legs are immobile. But the nerve damage explanation takes you through the first and most of the second season.
In Elfen Lied, Nana loses all of her limbs while fighting Lucy, but she doesn't bleed to death even though it takes a while for her to get medical attention.
- A lot of other characters get gruesomely wounded as well with much of the same result.
Averted several times in Black Lagoon, but brutally so when creepy twin Hansel gets shot in the leg and in the wrist, blowing his hand off. He dies within minutes (or even seconds) from the immense blood loss.
- It should be noted that in spite of the series's attempts to keep to realism in regards to battle wounds, major characters tend to survive more grievous injuries. This may be justified, since those characters often note how lucky they were, or others remark that they must be superhuman (*cough*Roberta*cough*). In one example, Rock once points out that although one of Revy's injuries wasn't fatal, it was deep enough where it wouldn't clot, so she would need medical attention as soon as possible.
In Kodomo No Omocha, Hayama doesn't try to resist Komori's attempt to kill him by stabbing Hayama with a knife. Komori only stabs Hayama in the arm, prompting Hayama to remove the knife and give it back to him, telling him to do it properly. He then walks around for over two hours with a severed artery before passing out from blood loss. He still almost dies on the operating table and loses a good deal of mobility in said arm until the Distant Finale.
Gray from Gunsmith Cats. Apparently getting shot half a dozen times in the arm isn't that big of a deal for him. He just flexes them out, and bandages it up.
- At least if they're not precise shots to the wrist with a 10 gauge slug...
- The same applies to Bean Bandit.
Happens pretty often in One Piece. At one point, Sanji takes a couple of Mr. 2 Bon Clay's kicks, which put big holes in whatever they strike, and doesn't need any medical attention afterwards.
- Zoro is the king of this trope - in the Arlong arc, Word Of God is that he lost 5 liters of blood, which is pretty much all of it. Yet, a few stitches later, he's up and partying with the gang.
  - Of course this is the same Word Of God that states Zoro's heart allows him to speak with a sword in his mouth.
- Luffy manages to avoid this, but in a stranger matter. Being made of rubber, bullets simply bounce off of him with little push to Luffy himself. However I would love for someone to show me the balloon that can withstand a bullet.
  - I'd love to see someone show me tin foil that stops a bullet. Of course a half meter of solid tin on the other hand.... Seriously though an example of bulletproof rubber is on military tires and the new model highly interlinked rubber tank treads that are supplanting the steel treads.
- Also happens in more mundane forms like when Usopp was shot in the arm during his first appearance and it looked more like an animal bite than anything else.
Naruto frequently does this when applied to the likes of stab wounds, the most blatant being Neji surviving being impaled just because he prevented it from injuring any vital organs and Kiba surviving stabbing himself in the chest (though the main character at least has the excuse of a Healing Factor).
Averted in the Suzumiya Haruhi light novels, when Kyon gets stabbed in his leg with a knife and only barely escapes dying from blood loss.
- Played straight with Yuki Nagato, who gets impaled by six sharp poles. Her reaction? "I am fine."
  - Well to be fair, she's not human.
Rurouni Kenshin is fairly realistic with limb injuries even though the cast is normally Made Of Iron: In the Rajuuta arc, the first victim of his sword technique becomes almost permanently crippled (though he apparently recovers enough use of his arm in the Distant Finale to become an assistant dojo-master for Kaoru), and Kenshin himself doesn't react to being hit because he's doped up with painkillers; in the Kyoto arc, Saitou is injured in the legs and this reduces his efficacy, especially when Shishio attack him a second time in that area, and Kaoru breaks the knee of one member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad; by the time of the Enishi arc, Badass Normal Sano has to contend with the fact that using his ultimate technique shatters just about every bone in his hand.
- This troper disagrees with some of that. Kenshin often is riddled with multiple injuries, and although sometimes he does spit blood, he still manages to pull himself back up and fight (possilby an effect of Madeof Iron though, I concede). See the Jinchu/Revenge Arc when he goes to save Yahiko (although he does collapse after it).
Played straight and then averted in Death Note, Light gets shot five times by Matsuda after revealing that he is Kira, but manages to escape. He eventually collapses from blood loss and is killed by Ryuk.
Averted in Infinite Ryvius. A character is shot in the shoulder and only survives because he's given emergency surgery right away. Even then, he has to undergo months of physical therapy, and is never again able to raise his arm above his head.
The titler cyborg assasins in Gunslinger Girl are for all practical purposes Made Of Iron. During gunfights they tend to keep their arms up high to protect their eyes (the only weak spot). We've seen several of them shrug off multiple shots in the arms, Rico a shot in the neck and seen Triela stand up after taking a bullet in the gut. The mooks they fight go down pretty realisticaly.
- In Gunslinger Girl Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino, Guise is caught in a car bomb explosion and is quick to tell Henrietta that his wound is only a scratch. But then again, he'd noticed her finger tightening on the trigger of her handgun, so it was probably a good idea to do so.
Averted in Vagabond. Kanemaki Jisai receives a slash to the arm and remarks after the fight that he'll never be able to swing a sword properly again. Also, during the fight with Inshun, Musashi gets cut across the face and eventually passes out from the blood loss after a few minutes.
- Played straight: Musashi gets sliced up pretty good in his 70-man brawl, and yet is on the road to a full recovery.
Wounding to stop or incapacitate (temporarily) is Vash's main offensive tactic in Trigun. He may be justified in that he's incredibly old and an experienced crackshot, so he knows exactly where to hit... but once he hit a Mook in a non-vital area that still resulted in severe bleeding, and Vash was terrified at the extent of the damage. The most annoying example was in the final duel with Knives in the animated series, where Vash shot his opponent through both shoulders (closer to the chest than to the outsides,) and through both legs. Knives survived and didn't even bleed much, just needing a few bandages to cover his wounds. This, despite Vash's own scar-riddled body proving that Plants are just as fragile as humans.
- It is made explicit in the Manga that Knivez and Vash can heal themselves through their plant abilities. At one point Knivez mocks Vash for carrying scars from encounters with humans instead of healing himself..
Hit and miss in Mahou Sensei Negima. The really nasty wounds received are generally portrayed as such, but they're not very incapacitating once heroic resolve enters the equation. It's occasionally outright averted, however, such as when Fate spears Negi through the shoulder with a rock lance, and he instantly collapses into a bleeding pile. Then hits Fate with it and passes out again. The next 'three minutes' are a race against time to get Konoka's artifact out so he doesn't bleed to death while a semiconscious Negi holds himself together with what magic he can.
Cowboy Bebop's Spike often embodies this trope.
In Change 123, there is a scene where one kunoichi threatens to another by stabbing her in the chest with a scalpel. It's a surgically precise stab done so that the scalpel, while not doing any critical damage, goes so near the heart that it's on the very edge of stabbing it. Justified by the fact that the kunoichi who does the stabbing has a formal training in medicine.

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Y The Last Man: Yorick Brown tried to do this when confronted with an armed young Militia-woman in Arizona; he and she are facing each other, guns drawn, and they both fire. She manages to completely miss him, and he only wings her in the leg. At first he can not stop laughing, he is just so happy that neither of them is dead, until she begins to scream and bleed. He tries to patch the wound, but before he can even get it covered she is dead from blood loss. He does not take it well. Her death added to his already considerable emotional issues.
In the otherwise classic Popeye Wild West continuity "Skullyville", a gang of more than two dozen bandits are each shot in the shoulder and together dumped in a basement, the stated intent being to put them out of action without really hurting them.
The Joker was recently shot in the face at point-blank range. He's okay.
- Why so scleraous?
- There is documentation close to hand of a Real Life proof of this - someone shot in the face (in the mouth), who managed to get out of the desert and get help before either bleeding to death or drowning. His teeth have been repaired and all he has is a dimple-scar in one cheek. Sometimes it really is stranger than fiction.
Averted in one of the last Batman: No Mans Land comics. The Joker once paralysed Barbara Gordon (turning her into the Oracle), and has just shot and killed Commissioner Gordon's wife, and is facing down a furious Gordon with a gun. Commissioner Gordon shoots him in the knee.
- Joker: My knee! I may never walk again! I- Oh, I get it! Just like your daughter! (bursts into laughter)
- Though it being adverted is debatable seeing as the Joker was walking around without any problems in later appearances.
In one of the Serenity comic books, we discover that Agent Dobson managed to survive being shot in the eye by Mal, and had been rather obsessively plotting revenge ever since.
Sometimes subverted in Ultimate Spider-Man. When Peter was shot in the shoulder, while he does possess super strength and resiliance so it's not as bad as it should be, it's still treated as a very serious injury that may have been slowly killing him (he got better). But in a later story, Ox, who does not have any super powers, is shot in what seems to be his achilles tendon and is still able to walk. Holy smokes.

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This trope is named after the famous sketch of Arthur's confrontation with the Black Knight in Monty Python And The Holy Grail. Even after having his limbs consecutively severed by Arthur, the Black Knight downplays his obvious injuries and ~~continues~~ attempts to fight.
- It is likely, however, that Python stole it from The Goon Show, which they have freely confessed to being influenced by; the line appears in an episode of the show entitled The Giant Bombardon.
- It's older than that. In the Li'l Abner comic within a comic, police detective Fearless Fosdick would regularly come out of shootouts looking like Swiss cheese, and declare "It's only a flesh wound."
Awesomely inverted in Cellular, after Jessica Martin, a biology teacher, manages to rig up a phone line to make a call. Then one of the kidnappers stumbles upon the phone, and she slices him in the upper arm. As he looks at the wound, he asks "What did you do to me?" She informs him that she sliced open his brachial artery, and he'll be dead in less than a minute.
Cloverfield. After searching for Beth throughout most of the movie, they find her impaled through the shoulder with a an iron bar. Realistically, they assume she's dead as soon as they see her, but she's just passed out and comes to shortly after they arrive. They pick her up and force her off the bar, and she runs down more than thirty stories of stairs and boards a helicopter, and only needing to lean on her boyfriend for support.
- Which only made it all the more lopsided, considering the documentary and realistic nature of the film, and earlier Marlena was just bitten by a creature and it's treated as if it's a horrible injury. Granted, it did turn out to be fatal, but only because of some sort of venom. They were acting like the bite wound itself would be enough to kill her.
Daredevil. In the fight between Matt and Elektra, he ends up pinned to a wall by one of her sai. Minutes later, he's fighting an acrobatic battle with Bullseye, apparently little worse for the wear.
Averted heavily in the original Day of the Dead, Rhodes is shot in the right shoulder and unable to do anything with that side of his torso (especially when he tries to open a door with that arm). Then he's shot in the left leg and essentially gets crippled.
Spoofed in the movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid — when Rigby (Steve Martin) is shot in the shoulder, Juliet (Rachel Ward) sucks the bullet out, and then puts a band-aid over the hole. This happens three times, with Rigby getting shot in precisely the same spot each time.
The Die Hard franchise can't seem to decide how it feels about this trope, and will play it straight and avert it sometimes within the same movie. A gunshot to the leg is treated as horribly painful and keeping the character from being able to stand without leaning heavily on something, but blood loss also doesn't seem to be a problem for him. At the same time, when a character is shot in the shoulder, he hits the floor and can't move, and has to be dragged to his feet and held up by another character.
Averted in the classic noir flick Double Indemnity, which opens as the lead character has just been shot in the shoulder/upper arm area. While he doesn't pass out for an implied hour or so at least - long enough to narrate the rest of the film in flashback, anyway - he is shown staggering, bleeding and otherwise in steadily increasing distress from then on, even while seated. When he jumps up and tries to escape at the end of the movie (despite being told "You'll never make it!") he collapses almost immediately.
In Dresden the main character manages to escape the bombing of Dresden with serious injuries. As in, he digs himself out of rubble, runs like hell and climbs a 40-50ft set of iron rungs... with a gaping wound in his side, a crushed foot, and while seriously drugged. Oh, and he also takes a detour in order to climb to the top of a cathedral in order to view the destruction.
Taken to absurd heights in the 1994 film Gunmen where the running gag between the Strange Bedfellows will have one trying to convince the other on a course of action, the other refusing, and the first shooting him in the arm or leg and tossing him the first aid kit, then demanding he "try and keep up".
Done to the point of absurdity in the climax of Hot Fuzz, where nobody was killed by the massive gun battle the heroes embark on—except maybe for the guy who triggered the sea mine, but that was a case of Karmic Death. This in itself may be part of the film's blatant but loving parody.
In Last Action Hero, a character who's been realistically shot and is dying is relocated into the movie universe where, as Danny notes, "that'd just be a flesh wound" and not anything to worry about. The instant the victim swaps realities, a doctor scoffs at the flesh wound and he's healthy again.
In the climactic battle of The Patriot, Benjamin Martin shoots Colonel Tavington in the left shoulder and the audience is treated to a slow-motion spray of blood out of the wound. Tavington just shrugs it off and almost beats Martin in hand-to-hand combat.
- Worse, bullets back then were softer, so they were likely to break apart in the body. It would have torn his shoulder to ribbons from within.
In Pineapple Express, Red gets shot multiple times throughout the movie and barely manages to make it out of an exploding farm and yet is only slightly tired by the end. The other characters note the damage he's suffered so far and decide to drop him off at a hospital at the end.
Subverted in The Proposition: Charlie gets a spear through the shoulder ("How extraordinarily quaint!"), and spends several days in the care of a very talented healer before he can any more, and even then, he's crippled for the rest of the movie.
In Pulp Fiction, by the way Marsellus says what specific time period he's going to get on the ass of the guy that just raped him, you get the impression that the guy would live to face it. This despite the fact that he just shot him twice... in his leg and his crotch...with a SHOTGUN! Though he might have just been indulging in the concept.
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones cheerfully disregards a bullet in his arm that could hardly have avoided breaking the bone.
In 2008's Rambo, the title character is shot through the shoulder with a round from a large machine gun mounted on a nearby boat. He yells in pain, drops to the ground, then sees a truckload of soldiers coming towards him. He jumps back up, uses the machine gun he was mounting to shoot down trees and liquefy the soldiers, then continues mowing down more enemies. After the final confrontation, he simply frowns while holding his injured shoulder (which is really huge, thanks to Sylvester Stallone taking human growth hormone at the time of filming).
- It's worth mentioning that the bullet only grazed him from behind his gun's shield (a direct hit from a .50 BMG round would have liquefied his arm), but it still packed enough force to knock Rambo off his feet and hurt like a son of a bitch.
  - Liquify his arm? The .50 BMG is just a bigger bullet, not a magic bullet.
  - High-energy bullets not just pierce the flesh cleanly — they leave a wide channel of muscle, bone, connective tissue etc., completely pulverized by a shockwave. The higher is the bullet energy, the wider is this channel, and for .50 BMG the bullet have enough energy to simply tear a limb off.
- It's also worth mentioning that you have a much higher chance of living from a shoulder shot if the bullet is large caliber and fast moving. The greatest danger from a shoulder wound is a low cal .22 or .38 bouncing off the blade and into the body. Thats why the best hit men use low caliber weapons. Any caliber .44 and above will blow through the shoulder and leave you with just a hole. Also any rifle will do the same.
  - It should be recalled that this is the same character who, in Rambo III, had a chunk of debris imbedded in his abdomen after an explosion and (after pulling it out) cauterized the wound by dumping the propellant from a large bullet into it and setting it on fire. Given that he was climbing mountains the next day, nothing John Rambo does can surprise me.
Subverted in another Harrison Ford film, Regarding Henry. The title character is shot twice during a robbery, once in the shoulder and once in the head. It is later explained to him that the fact he was shot in the shoulder first probably saved his life by reducing the blood pressure in his head. The lower blood pressure then prevented him from bleeding to death before he could get to a hospital.
Averted in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Mr. Orange is gutshot during the heist and is almost completely incapacitated for the rest of the movie.
Averted in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow in which Mark gets shot in the leg during the restaurant shootout; he spends the rest of the movie with a prosthesis.
Return of the Jedi, of course. Throughout the entire trilogy we see armies of Mooks getting blown away from a single blaster bolt. Leia takes one smack in the arm and grits out "It's not bad". She then blasts two Stormtroopers.
Saving Private Ryan: during the infamous Omaha beach battle, featured a quick scene where a soldier with a missing arm discovers the severed limb on the ground, picks it up, and nonchalantly strolls off with it.
- Of course, given he had just lost his arm in the middle of an amphibious assault,he might just have been in shock.
- One of the soldiers is shot three times, once in the leg, once in the chest and once somewhere else in a single battle, just after the last wound he needs to be carried where he sits down and assures the captain he's o.k with 'I just got the wind knocked out of me' The next shot shows him sat there dead from the wounds.
  - All of these are fairly realistic. When an arm/leg is ripped off the muscles go into spasm sealing what would otherwise be nigh instantly fatal blood loss. You can have horrible injuries in which people are seemingly fine. Getting shot actually isn't that painful, most people describe it as a "burning" sensation. Its rarely the shot itself that kills, it's the secondary wounds.
  - You need to read some of the stories coming out of Iraq if you think this is impossible, this troper heard about a soldier who was shot over a dozen times, taken to a field hospital where a doc took one look at him and declared him DOA only to have the soldier cough up blood on him.
- This shot is also notable for being a Shout Out to Kurosawa's Ran, which had a virtually identical scene.
- Also the arm thing was due to shock; humans are a lot tougher then most people realise.
In the closing fight scene of Serenity, Mal gets a sword through the gut, then (after fighting for a moment with it still stuck there!) pulls it out again. And after that, he seems to suffer no ill effects.
- Aw, if Inigo could do it, why can't Mal?
- Possibly explained by Mal having some of his organs being surgerically moved to other parts of his body during the war. That was how he explained away the Operative's Pressure Point strike not paralyzing him.
In The Sixth Sense: Subverting this is essential to the movie's big twist, although it isn't obvious when it happens. When an action-movie star like Bruce Willis gets shot, you just a assume that it's just going to be a flesh wound... to the point where when it turns out he actually dies of it, it's a twist.
At first seemingly avoided in the film Speed. Jeff Daniels' character is shot in the leg near the beginning; he carries a cane and walks with a limp for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, he somehow manages to dress in SWAT gear and enter a house with a team later on (unfortunate because he and the SWAT team get blowed up real good by the villain's trap).
- To say nothing of the fact that Harry was in fact shot in the inner thigh, the location of the largest arteries in the human body. Prognosis is unconsciousness in thirty seconds, followed by death from blood loss in five minutes. Those arteries are almost impossible to control via tourniquet. Robert Heinlein 's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress got this right several decades before.
A particularly ridiculous example comes from Starship Troopers. Carmen, the hero's girlfriend, suffers an alien pincer attack which impales her directly through the ball-and-socket joint in her shoulder. Yet she has no trouble handling a weapon with the afflicted arm. And she suffers very little blood loss. And she's able to Outrun The Fireball at the end of the movie. And happily skip away from the final scene as if she had completely forgotten about the gaping wound in her shoulder.(Perhaps humans in the future have been genetically altered to be a lot tougher than they are now?...)
In Terminator 2, John Connor makes T-800 promise not to kill anyone anymore. The T-800 from that moment on only shoots people in the legs to cause incapacitating but non-fatal flesh wounds. Hand Waved by the T-800 later explaining that it has detailed files on human anatomy in its memory.
- Perfectly reasonable, really. It's a Terminator: an assassin robot. Given its typical mission, it really ought to be programmed with a complete list of everywhere it's possible to shoot a human and how likely it is to be fatal. That, and the ability to aim accurately enough to hit just the spot it intended. It's rather nice symbolism really: the skills and expertise programmed to make the Terminator a supremely effective killer also make it flawlessly humane when John's orders invert its mission objectives. Indeed, I personally consider the moment the Terminator completes its spectacular and totally devastating minigun attack on the entire police siege, then gazes out over the landscape of complete chaos and utter ruin as a popup message in its HUD indicates 'Human casualties: 0', to be that movie's Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
Subverted in Three Kings. Two of the good guys get shot, one in the gut and the other in the shoulder. The one with the gut wound survives, the other does not.
- Gut wounds (if they miss the large blood vessels there) are quite survivable if you can get access to modern antibiotics within a few days. Without antibiotics, gut wounds are invariably fatal — even worse than being shot in the head.
- To say that Three Kings subverts this trope is actually a bit of an understatement. Not only is it directly called out in the beginning of the movie, but the fatal effects of such a wound on one's organs are explained at length, with a very detailed visual aid. Of course that exact scenario (with the same level of visual detail) plays out when the wound is actually inflicted later. And just to clarify: The guy with the gut wound survives thanks to a mixture of on-the-spot and later treatment. The other guy was dead within the minute from septic poisoning.
An infamous inversion in The Transformers The Movie, in which Brawn dies after getting shot in the shoulder. It's arguably a realistic fatal wound, if not for the fact that Brawn in a Giant Robot, not a human and Transformers had been shown to survive far worse injuries before.
- Particularly irritating in that Brawn's trademark personality quirk is that he's *tough*, and that he had survived being blasted by Megatron at point-blank range in the series. TWICE!
- The Transformers wiki parodies this by having the article about shoulders suggest that Brawn and all the other Transformers injured in that manner had their sparks stored in their shoulders.
- If you view Brawn's death scene in frame by frame, you can see the blast actually hit his chest, the animation for the energy blast wasn't lined up properly.
  - Ironically, when Transformers Energon came around with its well-marked spark chambers, this was revealed to be true in many cases. Shockblast and his brother Sixshot came to mind.
Subverted in Witness. Harrison Ford's character is shot in a seemingly innocuous place (it is later shown that the bullet passed through at an angle that left a short passage) and is able to remain active for several hours before passing out from blood loss. He remains unconscious for several days, and even when he regains consciousness needs several more days to fully recover. The Amish later note their uncertainty as to whether he would have lived.
Arnie is notorious for this, and not just when he's a superhuman killing machine (but then when is he not?). In Predator he gets hit by a plasma bolt that previously gutted another marine and doesn't have a scratch (it hit Arnie's rifle, but then why didn't it go through?), then in Eraser he gets shot in the leg and second later he's running and jumping.
Saw. Most of the traps used are designed to keep the person alive but in great pain, but how anyone expects to live after having their eyes stabbed out or having claws leave their rib cage is something I'd want to know.
- While I don't particularly like any of the Saw movies, it you are capable of losing an eye and surviving, if we didn't why would there ever be eye patches? (Also, before you mention bloodloss of the missing eye,Open eyelid, stab eye, remove key, close eyelid) And the whole ribs being ripped out, that wasn't jigsaw's traps you see, they were never designed to be escaped
The finale of Ong-Bak sees Tony Jaa's character get shot in the shoulder with a pistol by the Big Bad at near point-blank range, but remains spry enough to vault off a piece of scenery and deliver dual-downward-knees to The Dragon hard enough to break through the piece of scaffolding they're standing on. Mind you, this is Tony Jaa we're talking about.
No mention of Boromir's death in Fellowship of the Ring? Granted, the wounds were eventually fatal, but he fights orcs for a good few minutes after being shot multiple times, and survives long enough afterward for Aragorn to kill his killer and then give a death speech.
- Might be justified that a arrow would would cause less bleeding than a bullet wound.
  - Perfectly justified by the fact that adrenalin can do miraculous things. There are reports in Real Life about people who were shot into Swiss cheese, yet kept fighting for several minutes before succumbing to blood loss. But that's the fact - you will die if wounded like that, but the death doesn't have to be instantaneous.
Final Fantasy VII Advent Children features Cloud getting stabbed in the shoulder by Sephiroth with no ill effects, and even worse, a few minutes later, Yazoo shoot's him in the back, with the bullet coming right out of his chest. He doesn't even get healed or anything...
- Advent Children Complete is even more guilty of this. After Cloud gets stabbed in the shoulder by Sephiroth, He gets thrown into the air, stabbed around 7 times (through the arms, shoulders, chest, one stab going THROUGH his knee and continuing into his shoulder). He then falls to the ground in a puddle of his own blood, pulls out Omnislash and is apparently fine except for being exhausted and having a few cuts ....Until Yazoo fires at him.
- He gets a HEADSHOT and doesn't really care about it. His glasses are gone though...
- The whole movie (and a sad amount of following FF titles) are such over the top disregard of any laws of nature that it can explained by the internal logic of the series' universe. Even if the said logic doesn't make too much sense even in it's own universe. Cloud is also the same as the SOLDIER, making him some sort of a mutated super soldier (compare to Zack who was still able to talk despite having no square inch on his chest without a bullet wound).
Averted in Black Hawk Down. A Private gets shot in the leg. Due to being unable to get him to a field hospital he dies in a very painful scene to watch. Also Truth In Television
Averted in Way of the Gun both main characters get shot in the legs at some point. It does far more then incapacitate them.
Averted in he movie Man on Fire. Creasy shoots a couple of corrupt cops in the legs. One lives long enough to shot Creasy then receives two to the chest.
In the film version of Forrest Gump, the titular character is lucky enough to be shot in the buttocks during the early part of the Vietnam War, ensuring that he'll be given medical leave for the rest of the fighting while still being able to make a full and relatively painless recovery.

Close Film

Dan Abnett supplies a nice quote on the topic in the Gaunt's Ghosts novel, His Last Command:
Ayatani Zweil: Flesh wound? Flesh wound? They're all flesh wounds! No one ever says "Ooh look! I've just been shot in the bones, but it missed my flesh completely!"
- Necrons do...
Dave Barry's Guide To Guys has this anecdote about the co-founder of the World Famous Lawn Rangers Precision Lawnmower Drill Team of Arcola, Illinois and his manly attitude toward serious personal injury:
But my immediate anecdote concerns Ranger co-founder co-founder Ted Shields, who was with some other Ranger on a fishing trip off the coast of Louisiana when he came down wrong on his ankle and broke it. Naturally he told everybody it was just a sprain. Guys always say it's "just a sprain," because this way they can avoid falling into the clutches of medical care. A guy could have one major limb lying on the ground a full ten feet from the rest of his body, and he'd claim it was "just a sprain." So, although Ted's ankle was painful and swelling rapidly and turning some nonstandard colors, Ted chose to remain on the boat and treat the injury himself.
Subverted in Jim Butcher's Fool Moon, when Dresden is shot in the shoulder. The werewolf notes that he was shot in the shoulder instead of the leg, and that the only advantage in this is that he can still run. He bleeds severely until finally passing out from blood loss. When he wakes and finds that the werewolf has dressed his wound, she notes that he was very lucky that the bullet passed right through muscle while missing both the bone and artery. The injury troubles him for the remainder of the book.
In the Tom Clancy novel Patriot Games, Jack Ryan is caught up in an assassination attempt on a member of the Royal Family. After successfully getting a pistol from one of the attackers he shoots the remaining baddie in the thigh. When the matter goes to trial, the defense barrister rakes him over the coals for not "not shooting gun out of his hand." Ryan responds that he had a hard enough time just hitting the guy, never mind hitting such as small target as the hand.
- This was right after that same barrister accused Ryan of trying to kill his client and missing. Ryan then points out that the barrister really should make up his mind: either he's such a bad shot that he hit the man in the ass while aiming for the heart, or he's such a good shot that he could have shot the gun out of the man's hand.
- Not to mention that Clancy both averts and lampshades this trope in the book: Ryan nearly dies of being shot in the shoulder during the attack, and takes several weeks in the hospital to recover and several more weeks with a cast before he can use it again. Later novels mention that he still has some reduced mobility in that shoulder. Also, during his stay in the hospital, he ponders how the heroes in fiction always seem to recover from a shoulder injury by the end of the show or novel or whatever.
Nelson DeMille's "Plum Island, wherein the antagonist is slashed through the abdomen, allowing his guts to spill out. This gives the protagonist enough time to pull some of the guts, place them on the antagonist's face and quip "Your guts." Later on we find out that the antagonist survived and is on trial. Nelson DeMille fails to understand things such as blood loss, infection (as this happens in a dark, underground, abandoned barrack near a disease research facility), the excruciating pain that would have caused the antagonist to pass out immediately.
In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. Watson's injury in Afghanistan is depicted accurately, as a contrast. He is slightly crippled for life, and is very weakened immediately afterward; the "bullet" he was hit with was probably a mixture of nails and other scrap metal, even a "minor" injury from which could easily result in an amputated limb or death from infection... His creator was actually a doctor, which likely helped. Of course, the fact that the wound randomly moves from his shoulder to his leg doesn't help any—continuity wasn't Conan Doyle's strong suit.
Averted in Ellis Peters' The Knocker on Death's Door. One character is shot through the shoulder in the final showdown with the murderer. He is rushed to hospital, and one of the surgeons spends most of the night getting the bullet "out of the wreckage of his left shoulder". He's expected to be in hospital (and later, physical therapy) for months afterward, but to make at least an 80 percent recovery eventually.
Brutally averted in Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.
Subverted in A World Gone Mad. After Griffin's partner is able to continue fighting normally for more than half an hour after being shot a couple times in the arm and once in the leg (with an assault rifle, mind you), Griffin walks up behind him and empties his pistol into the back of the guy's head as his failure to respond negatively to bullets suggests that he's not human. Then again, the author hedges his bets with regards to this trope since it's never clearly indicated whether Griffin was right, and one of the major plot points is that his Jack Bauer methods occasionally results in false positives.
Partially justified in some Ciaphas Cain books: most people don't bleed to death from a shot in a "non-lethal" area because the heat of the laser almost immediately cauterises the wound.
- Which is itself a kind of Didnt Do The Research. The kind of laser pulse that imperial issue lasgun would probably have doesn't cauterize anything, it's just too short for it. If enough energy pumped into a small place in a little time, there's just Stuff Blowing Up. Surgical lasers do cauterize wounds, but then they aren't single pulse, they're either continuous, or fire repeated pulses constantly.
A lot in Warrior Cats, mainly because their way of life essentially revolves around fighting, and everytime a fight breaks out, pretty much everyone ends up bleeding from at least one gash. It's pretty much justified because we assume they're used to it.
In the Star Wars X-Wing novel Isard's Revenge, Corran Horn is grazed by a blastershot from behind him. Though only a graze, it has enough force to ragdoll him to the floor and make his body seriously unhappy with the current state of affairs. Even as he berates himself for carelessness, he mentally insults the guy that had plenty of time to aim a proper shot at his back and very nearly missed him entirely.
Subverted heavily in David Benioff’s ‘’City of Thieves’’, in which a potentially humorous injury ends up causing the death of a major character. The handsome Russian soldier, Kolya, is shot in the buttocks by friendly fire. At first the situation seems mildly funny (“You know how much shit I’m going to get from my battalion? Shot in the ass by fucking amateurs straight off the assembly line!”), and Kolya tries to downplay the injury, but this seriousness sets in when it’s clear just how much blood he’s losing. As Kolya says, just before he dies: “It’s not quite the way I pictured it.”
Subverted in the novel "Tandia" by Bryce Courtenay. One of the protagonists, Pee Kay is shot in the shoulder and is able to put put the arm in a sling and stop the bleeding and seems to be okay. However when he tries to climb up a mountain side to escape the shooter, the wounds begin to bleed again profusely and the pain becomes so unbearable that he collapses and soon after dies from blood loss.
This trope shows up - of all places - in Georgette Heyer's classic regency romance "The Grand Sophy". Sophy's friend is worried that her cousin might challenge him to a duel, so Sophy shoots him in the arm, then bandages him up. It's noted it's only a flesh wound, and blood poisoning isn't even mentioned.

Close Literature

This trope is referenced in the 2001 The Bill (which has never suffered this trope, the one time where a wound is referred to as "a flesh wound"- in the 2005 Live Episode- the PC still has to go to hospital) episode "Gun Crazy". A character, who has just been shot in the leg by an AK-47 is being taken to hospital. DCI Meadows says to DS McAllister, "He says it's only a flesh wound. There's someone who's been watching too many dodgy videos." (Maybe he'd been watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)
Aversion in Band Of Brothers — one of the Easy Co. soldiers bleeds to death very quickly after he accidentally shoots himself in the thigh while fiddling with the Luger pistol of a German officer he had killed.
- There was another scene during the same period of time where someone is shot in the throat and lingers until after the rest of the Easy Co. soldiers are forced to retreat, leaving him to die.
- Also played straight in the D-Day episode. During the assault on the guns at Brecourt Manor, Private 'Popeye' Wynn gets a true flesh wound as he is shot in the ass, and has to make his own way back to HQ to receive treatment. He doesn't appear ~~again~~ standing up until the Arnhem drop, having been recovering in hospital during this time.
A variation of this appeared in an episode of My Name is Earl, when Earl not only got stabbed in the leg by a foot-long knife without losing consciousness, but actually encouraged the girl who stabbed him to do so, claiming that he had been stabbed in the leg before.
Subverted heavily in NCIS. In the middle of the first season, the coroner's assistant gets shot in the shoulder. It then becomes a race against time to keep him from bleeding to death. Although he survives due to the doctor's treatment, he has to leave his position to go into physical therapy. We finally see him again in the third season premiere, a year and a half later... and his arm and hand still jitter due to nerve damage.
Subverted in Firefly - Book gets shot in the shoulder in the episode Safe and is quite seriously wounded. As a result Simon and River are left to fend for themselves most of the episode leading up to the infamous Big Damn Heroes moment at the climax.
- Also subverted in the episode "Shindig", where Mal, rather than doing the whole tough-guy "flesh wound" act, stresses to Inara how he was stabbed and that it hurt.
- Averted in Out of Gas, where Mal gets shot in the stomach. He immediately collapsed, but stood up long enough to scare off the guys who shot him, collapsed again, and then dragged himself to the infirmary to inject himself with adrenaline just so he wouldn't pass out before fixing the ship. He is in agonizing pain throughout. He passes out ~~before fixing it~~ before sending back for the crew anyway, and wakes up some time later with just enough energy to mumble some thanks to the crew for coming back.
- In the pilot for Firefly, Kaylee is shot in the stomach and the same doctor emphasizes how critical treating her soon is. Somewhat justified, as she's shot roughly in the middle of her stomach, while Mal's wound is almost in his side, where there are significantly less vital organs to worry about. In addition, Kaylee isn't used to such injury, and quickly starts going into shock.
- In the pilot episode, Mal is shot but it actually is just a flesh would as explained in the end when Simon offers to look at it and Mal says "it's just a graze."
- In the episode Train Job during the fight scene Mal has a knife thrown at him hard enough to stick into his shoulder, he then goes to pull it out and ~~it isn't mentioned again~~ the episode closes with him whining while Simon stitches him up.
Scully (a medical doctor) shoots Mulder in the shoulder in one episode of The X Files, with no apparent long-term effect on him. It does temporarily put him out of commission, which is what she had in mind, since he was behaving irrationally (even by his standards) at the time (if this editor recalls correctly, the water supply to his apartment building had been contaminated with something psychoactive and he'd ingested it).
- In a much earlier episode of X-Files, however, Mulder is shot in the femur and is hospitalized. He doesn't die, of course, but the injury is treated very seriously, and Scully threatens to throw the switch and kill Luther Boggs herself if Mulder does die.
- In another episode Scully shoots someone in the shoulder, severing the nerve and paralyzing their arm.
Handily averted by the 2000s Battlestar Galactica on several occasions, most noticably with the fallout from Anders shooting Gaeta during the Demetriusmutiny arc, and the subsequent amputation of Gaeta's leg...itself resulting in Gaeta becoming embittered and ready to snap with just one more revelation.
Averted on Lost: Sawyer is shot in the shoulder in the last episode of season 1 and spends the first half of season 2 bleeding, in pain, and nearly dying from infection. After that he's OK, but then again, the island has healing powers.
- More often, Lost typifies the trope. For starters:
  - Henry Gale gets shot through the shoulder. Granted, it was an arrow, not a bullet, but it did go all the way through.
  - Michael shoots himself in the shoulder. Next episode he's leading a trek across the island.
  - Sayid gets shot in the bicep in "Enter 77". Next episode he's leading a trek through the jungle.
  - Sayid gets shot in the shoulder in "The Economist". A scar from the bullet wound from "Enter 77," which was in the same arm, is not visible.
- Another off-island aversion occurs in season 5 when Desmond is shot in the shoulder and nearly dies.
One episode of Stargate Atlantis had the line, "Did you really think a single shot to my shoulder would kill me?" Unless the speaker just looked human, it damn likely would, and he was lucky to be alive.
- It's possible, being a military man, he was wearing some kind of protection, though this is never referenced.
  - Also keep in mind that in reaction to being shot, he fell backwards through the Stargate, which happened to be connected to his base at the time. Presumably there was a medical team standing by and treated him immediately. Also notice that the next time we see him, he still has a noticeable scar which apparently still causes him pain.
Averted in The West Wing - when President Bartlet is shot, although his wound is relatively minor he's still immediately rushed to hospital and undergoes immediate surgery to determine the extent of the injury. The doctors even note how miraculous it seems that the bullet didn't strike any major organs or do any damage, and he still has to spend several days in hospital and longer to recuperate. Josh Lyman's injuries are more severe - he takes a bullet in the stomach - but a similar principle is present; it's touch and go whether he'll even survive the night, it takes hours of surgery to save his life, and the next episode details with his gradual, months-long recovery.
On Numb3rs, Agent Ian Edgerton seems to "shoot to wound" in most of the episodes he appears in. Of course, he is stated to be the third best sniper in the country, and he does tend to shoot at the hand or forearm rather than the shoulder...
Averted in Legend Of The Seeker. Richard gets a deep cut in the arm during a sword fight, and it's treated as a fairly serious wound, making him collapse, and needing immediate attention.
Very deliberately averted in The Sarah Connor Chronicles. When Sarah takes a bullet in the leg, she instantly falls down, and passes out from blood loss within a couple of minutes.
- This show does realistic gunshot wounds very consistently. For example, when a character is shot near the shoulder, the bullet perforates the lung. The treatment for the sucking wound is also shown realistically (tube in a jar of water into the lung). Also, an entire episode is devoted to the aftermath of Derek being shot in the gut.
  - Now if only someone could let Lena Headey know that you don't hold a handgun by the bottom of the handgrip...
  - Played straight with the Terminators themselves, who routinely get filled with lead and keep on going. Because, y'know... robots, and all.
Spoofed on The Dave Chappelle Show. One of the sketches was mock ESPN coverage of guys shooting dice in an alley, interrupted by gang members robbing them. When Dave's character talks back, the gangster shoots him in the leg. The "analysts" replay the shooting in slow motion with a football-style telestrator and comment "Smart play by the young man, shooting him below the waist to avoid the Attempted Murder charge."
Averted on Star Trek Enterprise. In the pilot, Archer is shot in the leg, and requires serious medical attention.
- Subverted in "United"—the Andorian officer Talas is shot in the shoulder with a human phase rifle. At first, it seems to be Only A Flesh Wound, and she is taken to Sickbay. It turns out that Andorians can get infected from phaser burns, and Talas dies.
In the Star Trek Voyager episode 'The Killing Game', Captain Janeway was shot in the thigh by a 1940's-era handgun and still able to run/hobble-at-a-ludicrous-speed.
Played annoyingly straight on Supernatural in more than a few instances—for example, when the possessed sheriff's deputy shoots Dean in the shoulder in the episode where Agent Hendricks has finally caught and arrested the boys, they put pressure on the wound for a little bit (by themselves, with a towel. The cops basically ignore the fact that one of their prisoners has a life-threatening injury) and then he's fine to do battle with a vast horde of demons not an hour later. The thing is, the show is otherwise pretty realistic about bruises, scarring, etc., but gunshot and knife wounds are often treated like minor injuries, depending on whether the plot needs them to be serious or not.
- In one episode, Bela shoots Sam in the shoulder to get Dean to give her something. When Dean freaks out (understandably) she says "I shot him in the shoulder. I know how to aim."
- It's even more annoying when you consider how unevenly it's applied; in a recent episode, Pamela was killed by a knife to the stomach, a wound that this troper is pretty sure both of the boys had suffered and survived over the course of the show. I love the show, but jeez, have a little consistency, will ya, Kripke?
Totally averted in Cold Case, where Lt. Jeffries is shot twice at the beginning of an episode, spends the entire episode until the end in a hospital, and as of two episodes later, is still using a cane to get around and is under doctor's orders to take it easy.
In a episode of Dollhouse, Adelle DeWitt gets shot in the stomach and barely flinches. Later she is being stitched up by Dr. Claire Saunders. Granted, it really does look like a graze but Adelle acts as if it's nothing. At least the doc does tell her that she should go to the hospital.
- Unimpairing gut shots seem to be a motif in this show. Agent Ballard gets shot in the stomach in an early Season 1 episode (though admittedly he quickly passes out and takes few episodes to heal fully), and in another, Boyd Langton walks several miles out of the woods after taking a hunting arrow all the way through his abdomen.
In the Burn Notice season one finale, Mike manages to shoot the bad guy in the stomach with his own gun. He mentions that if the gun uses normal bullets, he might make it. If they're hollow points..."I wouldn't make any plans."
- Earlier in the series, he manages to get an assassin with roughly the same type of wound. The killer manages to get out of his house and dies later.
- A later episode has Agent Bly get shot in the shoulder during a bank robbery, and is played fairly realistically; Bly is shown to be in danger of bleeding to death, and though he manages to disable two of the bank robbers later, he uses his other arm. He has his arm in a sling at the end of the episode.
In Plain Sight: Marshall gets shot in the lung, and promptly falls down. He manages to get up long enough to drive the bad guys off-in one of the shoe's more awesome scenes-then collapses and is incapacitated for the rest of the episode. He wears a sling for the next few episodes.
- And in the Season 2 finale Mary is shot in the gut, arrives at the hospital without a heartbeat, and as the episode closes, it's still not clear if she'll survive.
Used heavily in 24—too many examples to list extensively, most recently Jack shooting Tony twice in the latest season finale in order to stop him, once in the leg to knock him down and then in the hand to keep him from picking up his gun.
Mostly averted in Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel where, except for Giles' ability to be repeatedly knocked unconscious without ill effect, people who are severely injured will be hospitalized and frequently been shown recovering in later episodes. And justified in the case of vampires, where pretty much anything that doesn't kill them outright can reasonably recovered from. But present in the finale, where Buffy is impaled with a sword and shrugs it off, when similar wounds to Slayers earlier in the series have required medical attention.
- Although Cordelia seemed to bounce back pretty quickly from having a length of rebar shoved through her midsection.
  - Actually, it's averted there too: Cordelia is hospitalized and we don't actually get to know how much time she spent there, but we can tell it's been quite a long time by the way her schoolmates react to her return. The fact that we didn't see much of her in the hospital ON SCREEN doesn't automatically imply that she "bounced back pretty quickly". I understand someone could get the impression that she got away with it pretty easily, but maybe that's due to the evil, evil Dead Herring that follows her injury: the scene cuts to a funeral ceremony. Ends up it's not Cordelia's funeral... Buffy and Willow were just chatting while walking through a graveyard, like they often do.
Averted by the Babylon Five episode Grail, where the grail seeker is killed by a bullet to the shoulder, and the episode The Quality of Mercy, in which the killer must seek medical attention for his arm wound while he is on the run.
Early in The Shield, Vic was shot in the abdomen during one of his "extracurricular activities". He lived, but was shown to be recovering from his wounds for the next five or six episodes.
Subverted in the short-lived 10-8: Deputy Amonte intentionally shoots a suspect in the leg and is immediately chewed out by his experienced partner Barnes - deadly force is in play once guns are drawn, and aiming anywhere other than center-mass with intent to kill is dangerously irresponsible.
Spoofed in Jeff Dunhams stand-up Spark of Insanity. While trying to convince Achmed that he was really dead and just a bunch of bones, Achmed replied that it was "only a flesh wound."
In the Torchwood episode "Captain Jack Harkness", Owen is attempting to open the Rift, so Ianto shoots him in the shoulder. Owen opens the Rift anyway, treats the wound himself and mocks Ianto's aim.

Close Live Action TV

Trapped in the Closet, Part 7
He says "Son, we gotta get you to a hospital and take a look at that wound."
Twan says "No, I'm okay. It's just my shoulder. All I need is a bathroom."
Rocky Raccoon by The Beatles
He said Rocky you met your match
And Rocky said, Doc it's only a scratch
And I'll be better
I'll be better Doc, as soon as I am able

Close Music

Dark Heresy's (fairly absurd) Critical Damage tables avert this. It's about as easy to kill someone with a leg shot as one to the torso, and hitting anywhere can often cause blood loss (and resulting death...).
- Then again, this is Warhammer40000, where weapons that can blow people's heads off are casually referred to as "flashlights." Death by blood loss is about the best you can hope for. This troper would love to see them put in a damage table against the shrieker cannon, an eldar gun that fires shurikens coated with poison that makes your blood explode. Coolest. Death. Ever.
Also averted in Aces & Eights. There are damage charts detailing four possible damage types: Gunshot, Slashing, Piercing, and Bludgeoning, and effects of different levels of damage inflicted depending on the body part. Typically anything around 7 and higher results either in a broken bone, severe bleeding, or a permanent injury regardless of location.
Damage charts in The Riddle of Steel are quite brutal; even glancing blows have the ability to knock out the target, and lower levels of damage still have the ability of tearing a muscle or breaking a bone. All damage dealt also causes the recipient to lose dice in their dice pools, effectively weakening their combat proficiency and even further increasing the risk of injury or death.
GURPS has an optional "Only a Flesh Wound" rule to deliberately invoke this trope in less-gritty games.
Averted totally in FATAL. It's entirely possible to damage the uterus while avoiding everything else completely.

Close Tabletop Games

Subversion: In PSP game Pursuit Force, falling of a car you are trying to hijack (normally falling off due to being shot repeatedly) will often result in your commander telling you over the radio that "it's just a flesh wound!". Unfortunately, it never is and you always have to restart the mission.
World Of Warcraft has an ability that death knights complain about constantly because of its logic failure. Death Knight ghoul pets can use an ability to "gnaw a limb off the target". It does ridiculously small amounts of damage. One would think that if you got your arm chewed off by a zombie, you'd do a little more than be stunned for 3 seconds and only minimal damage.
It would probably be easier to list games that don't follow this trope, than do...except I can't think of any.
- Well, games that feature dismemberment. For example Grand Theft Auto 3, where it's possible (albeit difficult) to shoot off an enemy's arm or leg with a handgun, and really easy to do with a machine gun, (sometimes it's even the easiest way to go about it).
- Deserving a mention is the Halo series for actually justifying this trope: the Flood zombies are people whose bodies have been infected by the Flood parasite, to which pain has no meaning. It's possible to shoot off the appendages of Flood, but they'll just either attack you with their remaining limbs or grow tentacles.
- Drakan. Don't wanna deal with the scavenger? Hack its arm off and find somewhere to sit so it can't bite you while it's dying.
Assassins Creed invokes this trope when dealing with the main targets. After Altair delivers mortal damage to his targets, he then stabs them in the throat - whereupon every single target goes into a Hannibal Lecture. Granted, they do die within a couple of minutes, but exactly how can you give a (not even remotely rasping) speech immediately after being stabbed in the throat?
The Bushido Blade series for the Play Station One had a "body-damage" system: if you were slashed in the arm, it became useless and your attacks were less effective one-handed. In the first game, you could be crippled in the legs, but this was removed in the sequel since it was no fun spending half the game crawling around trying to wield a katana.
Call Of Duty 4 subverts this trope. During one scene in which the USMC and SAS are attempting to capture a young Russian man that is vital to their efforts to stop the game's antagonist, a standoff ensues. The commander orders the Russian man to put his weapon down, but the language barrier prevents him from understanding. Frustrated, the commander orders the player to disarm him, but not before Sergeant Griggs, a Marine support gunner, offers to shoot the Russian in the leg. That prompts a quick and sharp reply from the commander: "No, it's too dangerous!"
Conkers Bad Fur Day and Conker: Live and Reloaded, during the parody of the SPR Omaha battle above.
Averted in Delta Force. You can survive three bullet hits maximum, and there are no instant heals
The trope is averted in the game Deus Ex. Any damage done to the player is seen in a display showing damage readouts to the various parts of your body. If the player's legs are injured severely, they won't be able to move quickly, and if damaged badly enough will have to crawl along the ground instead. The lack of death from blood loss can be explained by the fact that the lead player is a nano-augmented superagent.
- But characters do leave blood trails after being shot. At any rate, the player takes localised damage but does not bleed to death, presumably because the nanites in JC's system are capable of stopping bleeding, although they need additional material in the form of ingested food, application of medkits, or specialized programming from the Regeneratio augment in order to properly reconstruct JC's damaged body.
- Also played straight in that shooting enemies in the arm often makes them drop their weapons and flee.
Die by the Sword, a 3rd person swordfighting game cheerfully plays this trope to its fullest with its detailed damage system that tracks the status of individual body segments while also retaining a traditional global HP bar. This makes it possible to lop off bits of characters without them immediately dying, to the point that you can end up with a Pythonesque, armless, one legged knight.
Dino Crisis has a damage system similar to Resident Evil 2, where the protagonist's mobility is impaired the more they are injured, ie broken ribs, limping. In addition, you can start losing blood and eventually bleed to death without treatment.
Dwarf Fortress subverts this. It has an absurdly detailed wound mechanism, so it's quite possible to bleed to death from a large wound, to pass out from pain, or to go into shock.
Fallout 3 follows Metal Gear Solid 3's example and has status effects for critical hits, but the characters do not die until Critical Existence Failure.
Averted in Far Cry 2. 4/5 of your health bar operates as usual, but if you get down to your last 1/5 of health, your health constantly decreases until you fix yourself up, usually by removing a bullet from some part of your body.
Averted in the Jagged Alliance games, where you can bleed to death from any unbandaged wound, become considerably less effective after even a minor injury due to stamina (and therefore action point) loss, and can be crippled by permanent stat decrease that remains even after the wound has healed. Healing also requires time and close medical attention - or a couple of weeks of bed rest.
Metal Gear Solid 2 allows you to shoot soldiers in the limbs to limit their movement/combat ability, but if you take out both arm or both legs, they die (instantly from arms, from blood loss from legs). Although since their life is based on an invisible life meter, repeatedly shooting them in one limb can also kill them.
- Metal Gear Solid 3 makes a big deal of it's injury system, but ultimately plays this trope fairly straight.
Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360 plays this one seriously. Enemies whose arms Ryu has chopped off will assault him with kicks, while those missing legs will crawl up and attempt to kill Ryu with a suicide explosion. There is nothing Narmful about getting suicide-bombed by someone with enough Determinator to keep going after losing his legs.
No More Heroes is well known for the killings of each boss. The first boss, Death Metal, gets his arms cut off while in mid-swing of his giant sword which would get stuck in the ceiling. Death Metal then has time to talk to Travis, but is later decapitated. Another example is Shinobu. Travis, unable to kill a girl at this point, simply cuts off her arm. An even better example would be Bad Girl's death. Travis completely pushed his light saber through her back and even twists it. Bad Girl turns around, whacks Travis across the head, and continues to pummel him while on the ground so hard that Travis actually gives up, luckily, Bad Girl dies seconds later on top of Travis.
- Also in No More Heroes, during the second-to-last boss battle, Jeane punches Travis through the heart. Travis doesn't die, or show any pain, and instead is able to land the finishing blows on Jeane.
During one of the court phases (either the first or second) of 'Rise from the Ashes' on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the prosecution deals what seems to be a crushing blow to the defense's case, after which Ema will quip, "It's merely a flesh wound!" Naturally, it gets better. Later during the same round and after another seemingly crippling point is made, she says it again, with Phoenix even saying, "You just said that!" Again, you pull through even though these points could probably have brought the case down.
- Around the end of the fourth case in the first game, it's revealed that Manfred Von Karma was shot in the shoulder some time ago, and was still able to shoot Gregory Edgeworth. He then just went ahead and let the wound heal over the bullet.
Silent Hill Homecoming plays this one so straight it'll make you go "Wait, what?" Alex has no trouble walking or running after Judge Halloway shoves a spinning power drill through his leg. It's Gameplay And Story Segregation at its finest, too, because he limps heavily during a later cutscene.
Subverted in the first two Soldier Of Fortune games, where severing an enemy's limb causes instant death, but in the third game, they can sometimes fight back after losing an arm or leg.
In Star Fox 64, the boss of Solar gets both of its arms shot off, and still keeps trying to kill you afterwards despite essentially being a giant flaming bug torso. Even more extreme is the boss of Titania, whose severed bits of arm will float up and reattach to the boss's body if you take too long to kill it after blasting all its extremities off.
Surt from Treasure Of The Rudras loses the lower half of his left arm at the start of Sion's Scenario and returns later with a claw replacing the severed arm.
Taken to extremes on Truce Crime. After levelling up your shooting skills, you gain good cop points by shooting criminals in the legs, thereby disabling them to be arrested safely. You gain bad cop points by taking lethal blows to the head or torso. This ability carries over to include the trope Every Car Is A Pinto.
- This troper noticed, however, that with the Hollow Point Bullet upgrade and with the best pair of pistols available, your shots start doing so much damage that you may end up killing them with shots to the legs anyway.
If it doesn't kill outright, getting hit in XCOM is certainly not just a flesh wound. It will greatly reduce the soldier's fighting abilities depending on where he was hit and he will eventually bleed to death. He won't be fully effective even after stopping the bleeding and will require a long rest in the infirmary upon returning to base.
It doesn't matter where you hit an enemy in Hitman: Blood Money—they still die. In fact, the only body part that receives damage differently is the head; headshots amplify the damage.
Averted in Ever17. We're used to injuries to the legs and arms not being very serious, so when Tsugumi gets stabbed in the leg by a falling pole you might not think it's that serious. However, it's noted that it ought to require months of hospitalization before she can walk again and she nearly dies of blood loss. Of course, the fact that Tsugumi is the one hit is kind of important.

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Order Of The Stick often has characters getting SNEAK ATTACK run through with swords and being pretty much okay to keep fighting. Or frozen into blocks of ice like the rogue guild's leader. Very dependent on having a name, of course. The characters in Order Of The Stick aren't supposed to represent real animal physiology of course; their health and wellbeing is based on the hitpoint system used in Dungeons And Dragons.
~~Averted~~ Forcibly played straight in The Adventures Of Dr Mc Ninja. Doc is shot multiple times, passes out, and nearly dies of blood loss. He avoids death by convincing the Grim Reaper that none of his wounds are fatal (and then immediately drags himself back to the clinic for stitches and a quick blood transfusion).
- There's more to it than that, but I don't want to ruin the moment.
  Doctor: They're... All... Just... FLESH WOUNDS!

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Achmed the dead terrorist insists on that.
Tying in with Made Of Iron, Survival Of The Fittest often has characters shrug off wounds which, in real life, would be either severely debilitating or outright fatal. Jacob Starr is a good example of this, as he was able to take injury after injury yet just keep on coming.
Terrence of KateModern gets shot in the shoulder in "Answers". The pain causes him to pass out almost instantly, but he's up and about, and apparently unimpaired, a couple of days later. He is a former Shadow, though.
And Shine Heaven Now subverts it; in spite of her bravado, the character is knocked down in the very next strip.
In the First season of "Redvs Blue", Sarge receives a bullet wound to the head, and is ressucitated with standard CPR. Later in the early Second season, Caboose's toe is shot off, and is rendered fine after being rubbed with some aloe-vera. In season 3, we come across a group of 'capture the flag' players, who get up after a trumpet is played, even after being shot point blank with a sniper rifle. Even later, it is practice for the Red team to shoot Private Grif before enacting any plans. Regardless, it seems no injury is sufficient to render someone in the series dead indefinitely.
- In most cases, this is just Rule Of Funny, although sometimes it's played a little more seriously. During Reconstruction, Caboose shoots Agent South Dakota. After a few minutes of battle, they approach her. She says she can't walk on her own, but appears to be perfectly capable of standing (though to be fair, that's partly due to the limitations of machinima).
Naruto The Abridged Series spoofs this in the first episode where Iruka-sensei gets stabbed by a gigantic shuriken:
Naruto: Iruka-sensei, are you sure you're okay? It's pretty deep in there...
Iruka: Don't worry, it's Only A Flesh Wound.

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Spoofed in Futurama: the Robot Mafia guns down a fellow robot in cold blood. The robot then gets up, and the Donbot tells him that's a warning. (Robots can't bleed to death, of course.)
Subverted in an episode of Static Shock where a single bullet to the Smart Guy's thigh sends him to the hospital in agony to teach the audience a lesson.
In The Boondocks during a shootout with some Islamic convenience store owners a police officer gets shot with a shotgun while Ed Wuncler III grieves for him he insists that he will survive because he's wearing a bullet proof vest only to get riddled with more bullets (he survives).
Averted in the Batman: Gotham Knight segment Field Test. A bullet gets deflected off of Batman's new forcefield and into a gang member. What does he do? He rushes the guy at top speed to the ER and upon getting there says he has a gunshot victim with severe bleeding from the left shoulder.
The Gargoyles episode "Deadly Force" is famous (infamous) for treating gunshot wounds in a mature and reasonable manner.
Spoofed on The Simpsons where Homer gets a job at the Kwik-E-Mart and Apu tells him that "in this job, you WILL get shot. Here's a tip: try to take it in the shoulder."
- Apu himself is a walking parody/example of this trope. He's been shot seemingly dozens of times over the course of his convinience store career yet has suffered no permanent effects or even scars. In one ep, he is shot yet again, and poetically muses, "Ah, the searing kiss of hot lead! How I've missed you! Wait...I think I'm dying." However, he does survive since the bullet ricochetted on another bullet that was lodged here since a previous robbery.
Averted in the Season Two finale of Moral Orel. While drunk, Clay accidently shoots his son Orel in the leg. He is able to stop the bleeding by taking off a piece of Orel's shirt and tying it to his leg. Afterwards, he has to wear a cast over his leg. In the series finale, the cast is finally removed, but Orel walks with a limp for the rest of his life.

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British naval hero Lord Nelson lost an arm, sight in one eye, and finally died, quite slowly and painfully, to a musket ball in the shoulder: it drove inwards and broke his spine. Even with modern treatment, none of his injuries would be treatable. He might have been able to survive his last fatal shot, but he would have never been able to walk again.
- To top it all off, he was chronically seasick. Not the healthiest of people.
In the spring of 1862, Albert Sidney Johnston, General, Army of the Confederate States of America, foolishly led a charge against Ulysses S. Grant's Union Army at the Battle of Shiloh. A bullet grazed the mounted general behind his right knee. Johnston and his staff ignored the presumably trivial wound until the general fell off his horse, fainting. They then discovered that the bullet had clipped a minor artery and the general's knee-high cavalry boot was filled with blood. He died a few minutes later, the highest-ranking military casualty of the war.
19th century politician Daniel O'Connell devoted most of his life to attaining equal rights and home rule for the Irish, with the intention of later campaigning for full Irish independence from Britain. He was incredibly strict about using only non-violent means. However, while at university, he at one point was roped into a pistol duel. He shot his opponent in the leg, intending to only inflict a wound; however, the opponent (whose shot completely missed) bled to death. O'Connell was said to have worn a black glove on his right hand for the rest of his life in mourning.
US President Andrew Jackson got into a duel over his wife's honor. The other man fired first, hitting him directly in the lung. Slowly, coldly, Andrew raised his pistol and killed the other duelist, winning the duel. It caused him constant pain for the rest of his life, though — the bullet could not be removed safely.
Military history is full of accounts of men who died from apparently minor injuries, but there's also not a few who actually seem to embody the straight version of this trope. This Troper has a longstanding soft spot for the story of Lachhiman Gurung, who reputedly killed 31 Japanese soldiers left handed. Why left handed? Because his right arm (and one eye) had just been completely destroyed by a grenade that went off in his hand. He didn't let that stop him.
The venerable Colt M1911 .45 was adopted by the USMC because the Moro warriors of the Philippines were apparently shrugging off the smaller .38 Long Colt. The 1911 had been in the use by the US Army since 1911. The larger caliber weapons were selected for their greater "stopping power".
United States President James Garfield. He was shot with a pistol, and the best medical minds came together to operate on him and extract the bullet (Alexander Graham Bell even tried to help find the bullet with a primitive metal detector). The massive wound left by the operations, coupled with infection, caused Garfield to die in agony, only for the autopsy to reveal that the bullet wouldn't even have come close to killing him.
- The metal detector worked just fine. They thought it didn't work because the President was lying on a metal-spring mattress.
Joseph Cialella shot a man in the arm after a fight in the cinema - unusually, he did essentially recover fully, and Cialella's lawyer is fighting an attempted murder charge by arguing that, as a marksman, if he'd wanted the man dead, he'd be dead, desperately trying to ignore the fact that, as a marksman, he should have known better.
- He should know better than to make that argument anyway. It's commonly believed among firearm enthusiasts that, if you tell a judge that you were aiming to wound, then you lose any claim of self defense, since having the presence of mind to make that sort of call automatically means that you weren't in fear of your life.
  - You're not entitled to defend your health, I take it.
  - Concealed Carry instructors will often tell their students that if they are involved in a lethal shooting, they should never say they were shooting to kill, but that they were shooting to stop the imminent threat.
Another Civil War hero, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was shot on several occasions and was told he would die. His obituary was printed in the local paper, he received posthumous military promotions...and he lived. The bullet wounds had lasting effects, but it's generally accepted that you could not shoot this man and kill him.
Just to show that even the professed experts can get it wrong, this troper has been to a few self-defense courses which advocated "taking the knife in a non-vital area" as a way of getting it away from the attacker. Admittedly, they afterwards advocated crushing the windpipe of the attacker which would hopefully end things soon, but still probably not the best of advice.
- This troper was taught not to intentionally take more than a superficial cut to the arm, which is generally what is meant when someone says "take a knife in a non-vital area". Of course, there's shallow arteries on the underside of your arm, but if your attacker hits those, you're probably doing it wrong.
At the 1811 Battle of Albuera, Lieutenant-Colonel William Inglis of the 57th Regiment was hit in the neck by a four-ounce grapeshot. Believing the wound would kill him soon, he propped himself up on an elbow and shouted to his troops: "Die hard, Fifty-Seventh! Die hard!" For the next century and a half that regiment was nicknamed the Diehards. Inglis lived another twenty-four years.
On October 13, 1912 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, John Schrank shot Theodore Roosevelt once with a revolver. The bullet passed through the folded fifty-page campaign speech and metal glasses case in his shirt pocket before stopping three inches inside his chest. Because he wasn't coughing blood, he determined that the bullet hadn't penetrated his chest cavity, so he refused medical attention until after he delivered the speech. Roosevelt opened his ninety-minute speech with "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." He carried the bullet for the rest of his life, because he remembered that the surgery could be more lethal due to President Garfield's example.
Washington police shot and killed a knife-wielding man outside the White House in the 1990s. One of the CNN anchors reporting the story asked the police spokesman "Why didn't they just shoot him in the shoulder?" Co-anchor Bernard Shaw, a former Marine, looked properly disgusted at the question.
- Any time police accidentally kill someone, there will be an ignorant person who asks that very question.
  - Any time the police discharge their firearms, they intend to kill someone. Shooting at a person without the intent to kill makes no sense. The idea of police "accidentally" killing someone implies that they missed their intended target.
- It is also known amongst police that even if they are hit in the arms or legs they are going through an adrenaline rush and would usually not even notice the wound and would still keep going injured or not without the pain it doesn't affect them as much as it would or should.
The FBI operates under the philosophy of always shooting to kill, not to warn or wound, because "The person who is not justified in killing is not justified in shooting at all."
In a widely publicised case, in 1992 North Dakota teen John Thompson had both arms ripped off by a piece of farm equipment. He walked back to his house, dialed the phone with a pencil in his teeth, then stood in the bathtub so as to not bloody his mother's carpet. His arms were reattached that night.
- And now he's running as a Democrat house representative.
NFL player Sean Taylor was murdered in his home in late 2007 by a would-be robber. Taylor was shot in the thigh, the bullet severing his femoral artery. He eventually died from severe blood loss.
The difficulty associated with discouraging or injuring human subjects in non-lethal or non-crippling ways is one of the primary motivations behind the development of less-than-lethal weapons, though many of these tools are capable of causing significant damage if used improperly.
- If used at all. Human vulnerability is HUGELY variable, and what one person just shrugs off could easily kill another. Tazers, for example, are fairly safe if an adult healthy man is hit, but if there's some old guy with a heart problem, not to mention a pacemaker, he has a rather high chance to kick the bucket.

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