Basic Trope: In fiction, people will attempt to run straight away from guns, even though they will summarily get shot.
- Straight: An assassin pulls a gun on his target. The target runs away. The assassin kills him from ten feet away rather than three.
- Exaggerated: The assassin was driving a tank. The target still thought he could run away.
- Downplayed: ???
- Justified:
- They're shooting at Zeno
. - The two are in a hallway too narrow for the target to use lateral motion, and the target figured he's too far to get close enough to disrupt him directly before the assassin pulls the trigger, so running away is his best option (at the very least, it gives the assassin a slightly smaller target).
- They're shooting at Zeno
- Inverted:
- A gunman chases down his target rather than shooting him.
- The gunman's target turns out to be Superman, and so does move faster than the bullets.
- Subverted: The target runs away, the assailant readies his gun... and it jams.
- The target ran into a selective force field covered area - the few feet he could get before the gunman could react would make him far safer than any mundane cover.
- Double Subverted: He pulls out another gun and shoots the target with that.
- Parodied: After the target goes behind cover, the bullets stop in midair and turn to follow him.
- Zig Zagged: The bullets turn to follow the target, until the assassin can't take it anymore and pistol whips the target.
- Averted: The target takes cover, runs in a zig-zag pattern, or runs toward the assailant.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "No, no, no; if you want to kill someone, what you do is, you pull the gun on the target and you wait until they inevitably try to run in a straight line for some reason."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: A cowardly target takes his final stand as his life is threatened at gunpoint.
- Discussed: "Don't run. You'll only die tired."
- Conversed: ???
Back to Slower than a Speeding Bullet
