Gotta look cool, gotta be cool.
The Smoking Barrel Blowout is when a (usually successful) gunshot goes off and the shooter blows away the smoke at the tip of the barrel afterward. May be parodied with gun-like objects, such as a Finger Gun, or with objects such as blowtorches. Especially common with The Gunslingers in Western movies, as modern ammunition is less smoky.
Note: in Real Life this is very stupid. At best, you're liable to get burnt powder in your eyes. At worst, you could end up killing yourself. Just because the gun went "bang" after all, doesn't mean the bullet came out. This goes double for semi-automatic or automatic firearms, because they can chamber rounds right after firing. If you prefer living, it's best to keep guns pointed well away from your body: particularly your face. Even if you don't particularly love living, keep in mind that "accidentally shot themself" is a phrase commonly found in the bios of Darwin Award
winners.
Compare Swipe Your Blade Off. Not to be confused with Exploding Barrels.
Examples:
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Advertising
- One Orkin commercial portrays the Orkin Man as a RoboCop-like Cyborg exterminator who takes out termites with a plasma cannon. The last shot of the commercial has him blowing smoke from the barrel of his spent Arm Cannon.
Animation
- Mechamato: In episode 2, after Deep uses MechaBot's Double Heat Blasters form to thaw out Pian and Amato, he blows steam away from MechaBot's barrel.
Anime & Manga
- SD Gundam Force: Captain Gundam mimic the move after shooting out all of Commander Sazabi's beam shooters. Interestingly, as a robot, he doesn't have actual breath.
- Black Lagoon: In Episode 3 "Ring Ding Ship Chase", Revy blew out the smoke of her M79 grenade launcher after stylishly blasting the last attacking pirate boat as it was retreating.
- Trigun: In the episode "Quick Draw", a gunman lights his cigar with gunfire then blows on both the cigar and the gun barrel.
- Cowboy Bebop: Spike does this after using his pistol in an episode.
- Delicious in Dungeon: Parodied in Chapter 40 when Marcille blows across the end of her Magic Staff after demolishing an especially troublesome monster with an explosive spell.
Comic Books
- The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones: In #12, Marion does this after performing a Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind to prevent Indy from getting a throwing knife in the back.
- Lucky Luke: The titular character of the comic book (as well as the trope page's picture) does this a lot.
- Street Fighter: "Street Fighter Legends: Chun-Li #2 (of 4)" Po Lin does this after besting Chun Li's time to complete a criminal combating scenario at the police firing range shown here [1]◊.
Films — Animation
- Fievel does it on An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. As a clever touch, the smoke looks like a cat about to shoot him.
- Basil does this in The Great Mouse Detective after firing a gun he obtained as part of his most recent case, at Mrs. Judson's pillows.
- In The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea film, Morgana does this with the trident after returning her minion to normal size.
- Cora from Ratchet & Clank does this after firing her Combuster pistols in a PR demonstration in front of a crowd in Alerro City.
- In Rango, Rattlesnake Jake does this with his gun after he makes his entrance by shooting at a sign until it was riddled with bullets.
Films — Live-Action
- Ace Ventura: Done by Ace Ventura in When Nature Calls with a skunk's ass after using it to spray two poachers with its trademark stink.
- Inverted in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels; after the protagonists successfully steal the stolen money and marijuana from their neighbors, they're seen using the shotguns they used for the job as "a novelty smoking device for tobacco use only" during a party montage, thus breathing in the smoke, rather than blow it out.
- Ash does this to his shotgun after shooting a demon that escaped from its holding pit in Army of Darkness.
- In Casper, Dr. Harvey does this to a vacuum cleaner after sucking up the Ghostly Trio.
- John McClane does this at the end of Die Hard when he caps Hans.
- Done with a tranquilizer gun in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
- Tank Girl: Jet Girl does this after she shoots Sergeant Small.
- The Mask: Done on a cartoon bike horn, after blowing out an obnoxious motorist's windows. All of them.
- Will Scarlet O'Hara from Robin Hood: Men in Tights blows off the smoke from the two daggers he had just used to obliterate an arrow fired by Robin straight at his heart. In an attempt to keep looking badass, he tries to holter/sheath his daggers, only to have his belt and pants to fall, causing Will to explain that he hasn't figured that part out yet.
- Done by the one-legged stripper in Planet Terror. Unusual in that the gun she blows on is an automatic rifle attached to her stump.
- Ricky does this in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 after the first kill in his Garbage Day massacre.
- In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, the fembots do this with their Torpedo Tits.
- Inverted in Deadpool (2016); after capping three mooks with one bullet, Deadpool snorts the smoke coming from his guns.
- In Innerspace, Igoe blows his Finger Gun out after shooting the lab scientist at the mall.
- In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Martha May Whovier does this with the cannon-like apparatus she uses to hang lights on her house.
- In Spaceballs, Princess Vespa blows her rifle after going Rambo gunning down all the Spaceball guards.
- In Hick, Luli does this after using her revolver.
- Zachariah: Zachariah shoots one of the cutout figures Belle Starr has in her room to show how quick he is on the draw, then blows on the gun barrel.
- Played with by Nightmare at Noon. Julia injects a man with tranquilizers, then blows on the syringe.
Literature
- Both used dramatically and parodied in Paprika.
Live-Action TV
- Done by Brass in one of the trope-heavy crime scenarios from Hodges' board game on CSI.
- Engine Sentai Go-onger/Power Rangers RPM: Done with Gunpherd/Wolf Cruiser when attached to Engine-O/High Octane Megazord.
- Star Trek: Voyager. In "Bride of Chaotica!", Harry Kim does this from his Ray Gun while playing the World of Ham holoprogram The Adventures of Captain Proton, even though there's no actual smoke.
- Ekaterina: Catherine does this after mocking a guy with her gun, as shown here◊.
Tabletop Games
- Perdita Ortega of Malifaux has an alternate sculpt where she does this.
Video Games
- Cuphead: One of the Game Over cards shows Djimmi the Great's puppet blowing smoke from the tip of his Finger Gun after he has beaten you.
"That beating was for free — no strings attached!"
- In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Dante blows away the smoke from his handgun Ivory's barrel after finishing off Nevan with a bullet to the gut. The full act is not directly shown because the camera changes angle, but Dante can be heard doing it off-screen.
- In the Fallout series, the cartoons that accompany stats and perks relating to critical hits often depict the Vault Boy doing this.
- The "Critical Chance" stat features the Vault Boy blowing out a single pistol. A pair of legs can be seen on the ground behind him, the rest of the dead body "off-camera".
- The perk "More Criticals" adds a second pistol along with a second pair of legs on the ground.
- The perk "Better Criticals" retains the second pistol but replaces the legs with a pile of bodies behind the Vault Boy.
- In Max Payne in Chapter 3 of Part 3, "The Deep Six" Two Killer Suits kill a mercenary with one of the Suits blowing the smoke of his pistol afterwards.
- Vent does this in a comic that was based off of the first Mega Man ZX Video Game.
- In Mortal Kombat X, Cassie Cage does this in her non-Fatality finish.
- Hit enough people with the secondary fire of the revolver in Postal 2: Paradise Lost and the Postal Dude will do this afterwards.
- Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: A rude coyote does this after shooting some targets in a range back in the old west. Why is he rude? Well he's rather chauvinistic towards Carmelita for starters.
- Sonic the Hedgehog does this with a magic lamp in Sonic and the Secret Rings after imprisoning Erazor Djinn within it; a flame on the end prompts him to raised it to his face and blow out out like a gun.
- In Sunset Overdrive, a form of the player created character blows out his revolver after shooting an OD.
- In Sunset Riders, Billy does it with his revolvers and holsters them if you don't fire for a few seconds, and also just before starting any boss fight.
- In Team Fortress 2, the Heavy does this with his Finger Gun taunt, and The Engineer has this as his Pistol and Wrangler taunts.
- In Tomb Raider, there's an official render of Lara blowing her smoking pistol.
- Unkilled Sam does this in a trailer.
Webcomics
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: Sigrun blows out the Finger Gun she used to kill the "sheep" that Reynir had brought into a rock-paper-scissors game between the two of them.
Web Videos
- JonTron makes this gesture with his finger after killing the Scissor Man with a slice of ham and shoving it into an empty holster.
- The Nostalgia Critic: Done by the Critic at the beginning of the opening credits starting with the new 2019 opening.
Western Animation
- Odd does a "Finger blowing" variant in Code Lyoko season finale "The Key" after helping getting rid of a Creeper in Sector 5.
- Meadow does this with her wand in Lite Sprites after a bit of impressive color-giving.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Twilight Sparkle, after a particularly intense bit of spellcasting, blows the smoke coming from her horn.
- Cedric does this in Sofia the First: Once Upon a Princess.
- In one episode of Defenders of the Earth, Flash somehow manages to do this with his Ray Gun, after destroying a bunch of Mecha-Mooks and commenting that "I should've been a cowboy."
- At the climax of an episode of The Real Ghostbusters, Venkman nabs the ghosts of the Earp Brothers and Doc Holiday, then does this with one of the ghost traps.
- Looney Tunes:
- Wild and Woolly Hare: Bugs Bunny ends a gunshot trick this way, with the bullet splitting Yosemite Sam's hat down the middle.
- Mexicali Shmoes: Slowpoke Rodriguez does this after using his gun (which is bigger than he is) to get away from Jose the cat.
- Rhapsody Rabbit: Bugs Bunny does this after shooting a rather disruptive audience member who wouldn't stop coughing at his piano concert.
- In Oggy and the Cockroaches, Oggy tends to blow his swatter after landing a successful hit on the cockroach, which makes sense in the context of the show because his swatter literally makes gun-cocking sounds when deployed.
- SpongeBob SquarePants does this in the premiere episode, only with a spatula after he saves Mr. Krabs and Squidward from hungry tourists with his expert fry cooking skills, likewise landing him the job at the Krusty Krab.
- In the episode "Karate Island", Sandy oddly blows out a hair dryer of all things with her helmet on after using it to dry out the lips of one of the kung fu bosses.
- Batman: The Animated Series: Harley Quinn does this in an episode.
- Xiaolin Showdown: in the episode "Night of the Sapphire Dragon", Dojo does this to of all things a bottle of hot sauce he drank from to use to breathe fire to defeat the Sapphire Dragon.
- The Pink Panther: A frustrated conductor does this after shooting a rather disruptive audience member who wouldn't stop coughing.
- Fairly OddParents: In "Channel Chasers" Timmy Turner blows out his remotes after using them to close a fairy cab so Cosmo and Wanda wouldn't be taken away.
- T.U.F.F. Puppy: In "The Wrong Stuff" after punching Jack Rabbit after he did a slow motion sequence Dudley blows the smoke off his fist.
Real Life
- Naval vessels used compressed air to blow the gunsmoke (or rather combustion gases) off the cannon barrels after firing them. Justified, since the combustion gases contain a lot of carbon monoxide and other toxic substances which could severely impair the turret crew.
- This does have a use. But only with blackpowder firearms, particularly rifles. The moisture condensing out of the shooter's breath softens blackpowder fouling, makes it easier to clean the gun, and makes repeat shots more consistent. It's still unsafe to do it from the muzzle end of the barrel, of course. Modern competition shooters often use a "blow tube" inserted from the chamber end to safely blow out the barrels of breech-loaders and cartridge guns.
