History Main / ArbitraryGunPower

* Surprisingly, given the cartoonish/sci-fi nature, averted to a large degree in the ''Endless War'' series of flash games. Though all people can endure far more damage than in real life (excluding future energy weapons, only explosive weapons and the AW Magnum will ''ever'' kill a healthy opponent in 1 shot), relative to the other guns, damage is appropriate. Guns are not balanced, large machine guns shoot quickly, yet are quite powerful, so there is little reason to choose other guns other than for sniping. And the MGs, rifles, etc. of each country will have different levels of effectiveness based on their RealLife counterpart. That said, despite people being capable of fighting after taking multiple large-caliber machine gun shots to their center mass, they will always go down in just one katana or scythe/fire-axe swings, though these weapons are really only feasible in about one mission apiece where there is sufficient cover or your mutant character is fast enough to get up close to the enemy before them spotting you and gunning you down.

* In ''CityOfHeroes'', the [[SwissArmyWeapon Assault Rifle]] and [[GunsAkimbo Dual Pistol]] powersets run on this trope. Not only can {{Badass Normal}}s and {{Squishy Wizard}}s sustain multiple gunshot wounds with no lasting damage, your own guns will barely even affect NPCs that are four or more levels above you. They are also no more powerful than any other [[GlassCannon Blaster]] powerset, including Sonic Screams, [[AnIcePerson Ice Blasts]], and [[TheArcher Archery]].

* Bleeding to death. If the bullet hits an artery, it's impossible to treat without medical attention. Shock will also settle in at some point causing further problems. And back in the day (before advanced medical technology), gangrene/infection were also likely to kill you without some severe treatment.

* Any RPG really. A magic sword does far more damage than a regular one and with the right items you can pretty much ignore regular swords, arrows, fireballs, ... Bows and crossbows shoot very fast compared to real life, almost at the same speed as a sword swing actually and do similar levels of damage. The setting rarely takes into account that a crossbow bolt will penetrate plate mail and a mace will break your limbs whether you have armor or not. It usually comes down to the higher level ones doing more damage.
** A nice example is ''{{Diablo}} 2'' where a nonmagical dagger can and will do more damage than a nonmagical two-handed battleaxe just because it's 'exceptional'.
** Also, a spell that starts off doing 2-5 damage and eventually does 2000-5000 damage and is otherwise exactly the same.

** That series an interesting example, because the divergence from reality is driven by the CoconutEffect, rather than for balancing purposes or arbitrarily. For example, a blast of shot from the aforementioned shotgun in the game [[http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/video-games/4255750 "will punch through walls and armor just fine, even though buckshot is known for its lack of penetration in the real world"]] to quote a Rainbow Six Vegas 2 game developer. Why? Because [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter "People associate shotguns with powerful, close-range weapons..."]] Same with the other guns, [[RealityIsUnrealistic what people ''think'' they can do trumps what they actually can do for the purposes of their abilities.]]
he gun performance is set up very realistic early in the game development, then the performance of the firearms are polished to make them more li driven by the coconut effect rather

** That series an interesting example, because the divergence from reality is driven by the CoconutEffect, rather than for balancing purposes or arbitrarily. For example, a blast of shot from the aforementioned shotgun [[http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/video-games/4255750 "will punch through walls and armor just fine, even though buckshot is known for its lack of penetration in the real world"]] to quote a Rainbow Six Vegas 2 game developer. Why? Because [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter "People associate shotguns with powerful, close-range weapons..."]] Same with the other guns, [[RealityIsUnrealistic what people ''think'' they can do trumps what they actually can do for the purposes of their abilities.]]

* Ditto the final scene of TheQuickAndTheDead. Sharon Stone shoots Gene Hackman so hard in the head, he is flung a good thirty feet backwards, flipping through the air.

* In [[D20Modern d20 Modern]], a Tec-9 fired semiautomatic was one of the most damaging pistols in the game. And, of course, due to CriticalExistenceFailure, mid-to-high-level PCs could absorb multiple rockets to the face, drop grenades at their own feet, and generally laugh off the consequences.

* Despite its attempts at realism (yet again), ''{{STALKER}}'' suffers greatly from this problem. Somehow the Warsaw Pact weapons that you get early on in the game are rather pathetic when you get your hands on a [=HKG36=]. In fact, most of the AK weapons in that game fail to down armored opponents unless you dump whole magazines in them.
** Headshots however are still lethal if the target is not wearing heavy helmet.

In RealLife, guns are deadly implements. A person will usually die from one of three things if he or she is shot at:

* Nervous system damage. Shots to the neck which miraculously don't destroy blood vessels or the windpipe coudl conceivably damage the spinal cord, which can easily paralyse the lung muscles causes asphyxiation.

** Not an example. Despite the Warsaw 5.45x39mm round having similar velocities, the actual ENERGY of even the best falls about 400 joules short of the NATO 5.56x45. It's also one of the few games to JUSTIFY its arbitrary weapon power for the sniper rifles, with the SVD and Vintorez being the only weapons with "full length" rifle rounds.

* Explicitly the case in "InNomine", which deliberately reduce the effectiveness of guns, because swords and powers are more genre appropriate.

* Explicitly the case in "{{IN Nomine}}", which deliberately reduce the effectiveness of guns, because swords and powers are more genre appropriate.

* Ditto the final scene of TheQuickAndTheDead. Sharon Stone shoots Gene Hackman so hard in the head, he is flung a good thirty feet backwards, flipping through the air.
** Then again, that ''was'' a SamRaimi film.
** Was that after she shot him with a bullet so big it made a one-inch hole in his body that you could literally see daylight through? Even though the position of the sun and the fluid nature of the human body would have made that impossible? That's probably the worst Wallbanger in the history of all film, and it offends me so much that I can't remember if it was just a bad movie or some kind of nightmare.
*** Yes, because unrealistic gun physics are [[GunsDoNotWorkThatWay so incredibly rare and unexpected]] that [[SarcasmMode no other cinematic misstep comes close.]]
*** This isn't just unrealistic gun physics. It's a cinematic atrocity that represents the worst wallbanger in the history of all film. It renders the entire movie unwatchable, and (like the troper above) I look back on it and wonder if I was having some kind of hallucination.
*** If that's the biggest atrocity you've seen in a film, then I take it you don't watch the SyFy channel a whole lot.

*** The needler did almost nothing unless you stuck enough rounds into someone to make a big blast, at which point it could kill practically anything, even the enormous berserk gorilla-like Brutes.
**** The SMG is ODST is rather odd. Despite only firing 5X23mm sub machine gun rounds, the weapon seems to drop Brute [[DeflectorShields Shields]] just as effectively as the much larger (and logically more powerful) 7.62X51mm rounds used by the Assault rifle.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_shock Hydrostatic shock]]. Lower velocity bullets, like those in pistols, have a tendency to transfer all their energy when in flesh. This creates shock waves throughout the body that may cause damage to other parts of the body. Even if you get shot in the chest or gut, the shock waves produced by the bullet's impact can travel into the brain and cause severe havoc. Even if this doesn't cause damage to vital organs, it can still cause devastating localized damage. Except the science behind this is still very new with little adoption in the firearm and medical industries because it may exist and be unreliable or it may exist but not do significant amounts of damage.

In RealLife, guns are deadly implements. A person will usually die from one of the three if he or she is shot at:

* Bleeding to death. If the bullet hits an artery, it's impossible to treat without medical attention. Shock will also settle in at some point causing further problems.

In entertainment media, however, the creators may arbitrarily assign any given gun more or less power than it should have, whether it is some calculable damage value (e.g., a pistol does 10 damage, a sniper rifle does 20, anything automatic does 2), or given a gun's recoil, that gun should be really powerful in a twisted sense of Newton's Third Law (the more kick back, the bigger the damage right?). Or perhaps the creator just wanted something dramatic. It may not make sense that a weeny pistol in real life is now a hand cannon, but [[RuleOfCool it does look cool]]. But it's still absurd that there are strange cases where guns just can't seem to kill as fast as they should.

This problem is extremely common with regard to shotguns, in which the target is routinely depicted as being blown backwards off their feet. Due to Newton's Third Law, any weapon capable of pushing a target backwards would also push the shooter backwards with equal force. In reality, this is a special effect created by pulling the actor backwards with a pneumatic harness. The {{Mythbusters}} attempted to duplicate this using a pig corpse, and only succeeded in moving the corpse a fraction of an inch.