Real Men Get Shot - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Bones heal, chicks dig scars, pain is temporary, glory is forever."

— Evel Knievel

Normally, getting hurt isn't a very glorious thing. After all, if you were really that cool nothing could touch you, right? Well, sometimes getting hurt is cool, and serves to prove just how Badass a character really is.

How someone deals with injury can give insight into the character, and show that their awesomeness incarnate is not just a facade. Executed well, this can also provide a dose of realism into an otherwise unbelievable character. Or, it can simply exist to show just how much punishment the character can take or is willing to take. May come paired with Major Injury Underreaction, but just as often the character is in quite apparent pain. Sometimes they try to brush it off, others they're actually incapacitated, but in every case they look awesome for it.

This is probably the reason for Macho Masochism. May result in Good Scars, Evil Scars, which, in turn, may hint back at this trope.

To qualify for this trope a character must actually be injured. Shrugging off damage physically may be Made of Iron or Nigh Invulnerability. Despite the name, this trope is not limited to males or bullet wounds.

Compare: I Can Still Fight

Examples:

Anime

Whenever Spike gets shot or falls from a great height in Cowboy Bebop, which is a lot.

Film

Every injury every sustained by John McClane. Ever.
Patrick Swayze's character from Road House.
Boromir in The Fellowship of the Ring. He gets shot in the chest three times... and keeps fighting until he dies.
Indiana Jones. The man is pretty regularly rode hard and put away wet, yet as the old commercials used to say, he takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

Literature

The Red Badge Of Courage gets its name from the idea that being shot is proof of manhood.

Live-Action TV

Jack Bauer, both injuries sustained during the course of a series, and coming back from having been kept captive and tortured for the years between two seasons.
Captain Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager. (To the Doctor: "I'll be coming back with severe burns."
Played with in Firefly. Captain Mal, who is unquestionaly a Badass, tends to power through pain to get a job done. However, after being rather viciously stabbed during a "Duel of Honour", he simply will not shut up about how he got cut, and how much it hurts.*
Jokingly though. He's just trying to milk it for all the sympathy it's worth

Inara: Are you in pain?
Mal: Absolutely. I got stabbed, you know! [points to bandage] Right here!

VideoGames

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake gets shot, beaten, thrown off a cliff, breaks bones, hell, there's an entire game mechanic revolving around removing foreign objects from your flesh and not bleeding to death. All it does is reaffirm just how tough as nails this guy is.
- How much damage you've taken changes one of Volgin's lines when Snake is captured. If you've done well, he comments on how Snake takes great care of his body. If you've taken a beating, he comments that a lesser man would be dead by now.
Certainly hinted at in Aliens Vs Predator 2 with General Rykov.
Red Dead Revolver and it's Spiritual Successor Red Dead Redemption has both protagonists' sporting several scars on one side of their face.

Web Original

In Red vs. Blue, episode 4 of season 9, North was riddled with bullets but is still able to climb out of a Pelican in flight and activate his dome shield to save the ship.

Real Life

During a 1912 campaign speech, Theodore Roosevelt was the victim of an assassination attempt; he was shot in the chest, and survived due to the bullet hitting the eyeglass case and folded speech in his breast pocket. Reaction? He wasn't spitting blood, so he stayed on the podium and finished his speech before going to the hospital. Badass.
- Finished? When he got shot, he hadn't even started. You know it's a Badass talking when he begins a 90 minute speech with:
  Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. 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.
The Purple Heart award is essentially a patriotic incarnation of this. It's generally not a medal anyone particularly wants to get.