A character is being shot at. Multiple rounds are fired, but this is a reality where superpowers and high-tech shields exist and the bullets are stopped mid-flight, hovering in their place. The bad guys with the guns all watch as the rounds slowly turn in the mid-air and then...
WHAM!
All the expended rounds do a 180 and are fired on the foe who made the shot. The character (often the hero) has some superpower in the form of telekinesis that can stop the ammo before it even comes close, and then (usually) uses it against the opponents.
A subtrope of Attack Reflector.
Compare Bullet Catch, Catch and Return, Bullet Dodges You, Playing Tennis with the Boss.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- It's practically a Running Gag in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind that Guido Mista will always get hit by at least one of his own bullets during a fight. In his fight against Sale, the latter's Stand Kraft Work can stop an object's kinetic energy, which he uses to freeze a bullet in the air, tap it to charge it with momentum, then release the bullet back towards Mista. This get used against him by Mista's Sex Pistol, who get onto the bullet when he wasn't paying attention, then after Sale releases the bullet they kick it into another bullet already lodged in his skull, striking his brain and knocking him out.
- In the Hellsing anime, Incognito actually lets all of Alucard's Depleted Phlebotinum Shells hit him... and then laughs it off and blasts Alucard with the same bullets. Of course Alucard being Alucard, this doesn't stick for long either.
Comic Books
- Magneto does this a few times in X-Men.
- Nikolai Dante's Huntsman 5000 would turn the bullet around to kill anyone who was not programmed to use it.
Films — Live-Action
- A nice feature of the mech armor in District 9.
- The Matrix has a scene like this near the end, where Neo stops the Agents' bullets after resurrecting as The One, except that the bullets simply fall to the ground after being stopped rather than being reflected at the enemy. The Matrix: Path of Neo allows you to do the same exact thing, with the added ability to send the collected bullets right back at targets.
- In the TV movie, The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything, a man inherits a gold pocket watch that can stop time for everyone but the person holding it. Someone shoots at him and he manages to stop time with the bullet in the air; he then turns the bullet to face the shooter and shoves it hard enough that it will take off at full speed when he restarts. He then thinks better of this and shoves it again in a different direction; when he deactivates the watch, the bullet embeds itself harmlessly in the wall instead of hitting anyone.
- Barf does a variant of this in Spaceballs, with the laser blasts entering a tube and looping around to hit their shooters.
- Near the end of Rogue One, Darth Vader uses the Force to do this to a rebel Redshirt Army.
Literature
- In Honor's Knight, second book of the Paradox Trilogy, Devi shoots armor-piercing bullets at a lelgis. The lelgis catches them with a plasmex shield, turns them around, and flings them back at her.
Live-Action TV
Tabletop Games
- The Tabletop RPG Champions implements this with the power Missile Reflection (which is an advanced form of the power Missile Deflection). An even more advanced form exists, it allows the possessor to aim an incoming ranged attack at any other target.
- The 3.5 Dungeons & Dragons supplement the Expanded Psionics Handbook introduces a psionic feat call "Return Shot''.
- Epic level monks in 3.5 can take a feat that lets them hit magic spells so hard they turn around and hit the caster.
- There's also the (rather underwhelming) Peripety
epic spell.
Video Games
- The central mechanic of the arcade game Giga Wing.
- rRootage attempts to simulate this with GW Mode, but instead, catching a bullet fires a laser at the boss.
- Mars Matrix has a similar mechanic. Instead of immediately reflecting the bullets, your ship absorbs them and can be aimed by moving in the opposite direction of where you want to fire them.
- Also the most central mechanic in Siter Skain's RefleX.
- The 360 port of Mushihime Sama Futari has the Arrange Mode, which allows you to reflect bullets. Instead of hitting enemies, however, they rain showers of gems.
- The ability of the protagonist from the game Ubersoldier, which adds some variety to what is otherwise a bog-standard first-person shooter.
- One Vigor you can find late into BioShock Infinite allows you catch bullets and smoosh them into a ball of molten lead that you can then hurl back at an enemy shooter. This uses a lot of salts, though, so it isn't the most practical option you have.
- Iji's Resonance Reflector serves this purpose when bouncing the shots from mooks back at them, and is ultimately useful for playing tennis with the final boss.
- Overwatch hero Genji's reflect ability.
- Titanfall and its sequel have the Vortex Shield. What happens is your Titan sticks out its hand as a disk of energy grabs all physical projectiles (like bullets, rockets, etc.) and sends them back. In the sequel, this is especially effective against Legion.
- In Warframe this is an ability possessed by Mag, the magnetism warframe. The ability is called, oddly enough, Magnetize and can be held to have Mag catch all projectiles (whether metal or not) in a swirling vortex of magnetic energy in front of her, until you release it to send them flying out in front of her. She displays this ability to devastating effect in the game's opening cinematic.
Web Animation
- Jesus from Madness Combat uses this ability when he becomes the episode's main character.
Webcomics
- In 8-Bit Theater Sarda uses some very creative portals and teleportations to move an entire swarm of arrows, and the person that shot them at him, several hundred miles away in such a way that the shooter winds up on the receiving end of the arrow barrage he just fired. See?
Real Life
- On Sept 21, 1956, an American F-11 Tiger jet shot itself down during a test firing of its cannon in a shallow dive. The bullets slowed down enough that the plane managed to catch up with them.
