Basic Trope: A combat situation where everyone you see will be hostile to you and a major threat, making it an acceptable tactic to shoot everything that moves.
- Straight: The hero, Victor, is leading a crack team of soldiers in their attempt to escape a POW camp that Emperor Evulz stuck them into, and the team decides that "run and shoot" is an appropriate tactic in this scenario.
- Exaggerated: The entire war is fought against a force like zombies or killer robots, making "shoot everything that moves" the main tactic (and of course, leading to Friend or Foe? situations when the trope isn't in effect).
- Downplayed: Victor and his team are told to watch out in case any innocents happen to be in the room they're raiding, but it's extremely unlikely given the circumstances and they're probably safe to light the place up after a cursory examination.
- Justified:
- Victor and his team are going up against the State Sec, an organization where every member is a bloodthirsty fanatic and Everyone Is Armed, meaning that all of its members are hostile by default and a serious threat.
- After escaping the POW camp, Victor and his team are going to find themselves in a hostile environment full of dangerous monsters, that can't really be reasoned with and have to be fought against.
- Inverted: Victor and his team are Technical Pacifist Stealth Experts who were sent to sabotage an enemy munitions dump - destroying vehicles, weapons, supplies, and ammunition - and their tactic in this situation is to shoot everything that doesn't move.
- Subverted: Victor's team floats the idea of running and shooting indiscriminately as they escape, but they discard it to avoid accidentally harming other POWs and attracting too much attention to their escape.
- Double Subverted: Then, that same idea is used when the team needs a distraction.
- Parodied: Victor and his team use the "run and shoot" tactics during a training exercise. The commanding officers and the opposing team are not amused - especially when it works way better than it should.
- Zig-Zagged: The plan to go in guns blazing is initially shot down due to the presence of hostages. Once the hostages are secure however, this is the heroes' planned method of keeping them safe, as everyone else is hostile.
- Averted: No-one in the story ever "shoots everything that moves", even in situations when that would actually be a workable tactic.
- Enforced: "We need a big action scene where you don't need to be too concerned about the people getting shot."
- Lampshaded: "Attention, team. We are going to use a very secret and complicated battle plan to get out alive. I call it "shoot everything that moves"."
- Invoked: Victor hatches a plan to lure all hostiles away from the hostages, so they don't need to worry about collateral damage.
- Exploited: Evulz sets up enough of these situations played straight so that Victor and his team don't see a Disguised Hostage Gambit coming.
- Defied: Victor specifically instructs his team, Once per Episode, to ID their targets and check their fire any time they are handling weapons - as to avoid accidentally harming any potential Innocent Bystander or ally.
- Discussed: "Doesn't it feel good to cut loose every once in a while? No plans, no strategy, just go in, guns blazing, and light 'em up."
- Conversed: "They'd better hope they're right about everyone in that room being hostile."
- Implied: The group's main strategist lectures the others on the importance of caution and diligence on missions. One group member mentions a previous mission where this wasn't the case, vaguely alluding to a large room full of enemies and few options.
- Deconstructed:
- The heroes deduce that this is the only available course of action, only to accidentally shoot a civilian they missed who wasn't supposed to be there. The team has a shared My God, What Have I Done? moment and are left thoroughly traumatized.
- Victor and his team successfully fight against infantry and even tanks using this tactic - but they also attract the attention of every enemy sniper, drone operator, artillery observer, and helicopter pilot for kilometres around, and are either killed or pinned down by overwhelming fire in short order.
- Reconstructed:
- Horrible though the incident was, there really weren't any other options given the circumstances. The civilian in question, who was being held prisoner at the time, turns out later to have survived, and credits the team with their rescue, messy as it was.
- While Victor and his team draw the attention of all enemy firepower in a massive radius, it's not inadvertently; rather, it's part of a cunning plan to expose the enemy support for a devastating counter-attack.
- Played for Laughs: The tactic of "run and shoot" employed by the heroes ends up accomplishing exactly nothing beyond massive property damage.
- Played for Drama: The Martial Pacifist of the group protests this course of action, but in lieu of better options, is ultimately forced to kill for the first time.
- Played for Horror: Victor and his team stick to the tactic of "run and shoot" because they are fighting Voluntary Shapeshifting monstrosities that are capable of disguising themselves as any creature or object there is and lay in wait to ambush the heroes.
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