Artistic License – Gun Safety in video games.
- Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits, averted. Tatjana attacks with a gun, but you see her pointing it down and away from her feet whenever she's not firing it or has it holstered. She does hold it up whenever she uses it to perform special attacks and probably has safety on anyways, since she doesn't immediately hold it up and fire. Not to mention, the enemies who attack with guns primarily have them pointed at you and if they use guns for a special attack are shown loading them.
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Lampshaded: When the player points a gun at any member of his squad, the player character diverts the gun away from them. Again, in all other situations, you're free to point weapons and fire at them when you so choose.
- Battlefield Heroes: the National Army Soldier class characters inspecting their submachine guns should they be using it when you do not perform any abilities, move, or move the crosshair for a bit. By looking into the barrel. In the middle of a battle. While ammunition is loaded into it. Since if you fire while they are doing this and they will go back into a normal firing stance and fire, it can be assumed there is no safety on (or there possibly isn't one — Battlefield Heroes' setting is a silly World War II one). This can also happen should you be in, but not driving, a moving vehicle, which is even more dangerous. But since the game is based around the Rule of Fun, it can be assumed it was used for a joke, as such an action is clearly dangerous and stupid. Not to mention scratching your ear with a pistol!
- Bayonetta is extremely bad at gun safety. She fires four pistols wildly and indiscriminately in small, enclosed spaces, twirls her guns during punch combos, has two guns on her legs that apparently fire themselves, adjusts her glasses with the business end of a pistol, and even fires her guns within inches of the ears of her human allies. Everything she does is so reckless, one would think she would kill herself with potential misfire. Of course, she's an Umbra Witch, and she mostly fights in Purgatorio, where she can't be seen, heard, or felt (except by Cereza) in the human plane of reality.
- In BioShock, the main character reloads his Webley .455 by putting rounds in, then putting the cylinder back in place by flicking his wrist. This may look cool, but there is a very high chance it will misalign the cylinder.
- BioShock Infinite and the Burial at Sea episodes have the protagonist duo, Booker and Elizabeth, keep their fingers on the triggers of either the Pistol or Hand Cannon weapons even when either standing idle or being outside of combat. Doing this could lead to a potential misfire. They'll also hold both weapons upwards when not firing, rather than at the ground in case the weapons go off unintentionally.
- Blue Force: you can shoot yourself in the face if you clean your gun and fail to make sure it's unloaded first.
- Similarly, Borderlands does this with Revolvers. A flick to open the breach or flip out the cylinder, a flick to close it back. Note that trying to flick a breach-break revolver closed is asking for disaster, assuming the gun will fire if poorly latched.
- Every single pistol in Borderlands 2 is twirled while being put away, increasing the chance of a negligent discharge.
- Call of Duty
- Call of Duty 2: Big Red One averted: When one private points his rifle at someone, the CO yells at him.
- Modern Warfare 2 Sometimes averted: When reloading every gun in the game (most obviously on the FAMAS) the player character takes their finger out of the trigger to avoid discharging the weapon. However most all other gun safety rules get tossed out the window, simply looking at a friend requires you to point your loaded gun directly at them with your finger on the trigger, although the game will not allow you to fire in single player, and on occasions when there's nothing but friendlies to point it at your character lowers the gun or puts it away until you're back in the battle. Multiplayer? Fire away! So long as it's not Hardcore mode you won't even tickle them (you probably will draw the other team to them, though).
- Lucca of Chrono Trigger has moments that are either this or Reckless Gun Usage.note When she builds her Infinity +1 Gun, which concentrates eons worth of solar power into each shot, the first thing she does is point it all around the room, miming firing, including directly at her observing friends.
- She also grossly violates gun safety as her default heroic stance animation involves her drawing her firearm and apparently readying it. While this makes sense when the party is rushing into combat, she also does it as a generic "I'm about to be heroic" pose when Going Through the Motions.
- In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, a live action cut scene shows elite Soviet commando Natasha standing beside her premier. Her finger is firmly on the trigger of her sizable sniper rifle. While it is pointed away from anyone visible in the room, a weapon of such penetration could easily take out someone a building away.
- Conduit 2. Weapons range from pistols to beam cannons and bio-mass alien weaponry. During idle animations, Ford will inspect his weapon...with one of the "living" Drudge weapons, he actually sticks his finger near the barrel as if to poke it, and the weapon snaps at him.
- Deadpool has its titular character splayed on a chair in his apartment holding two pistols, occasionally scratching his groin with a gun's barrel. Justified due to both Deadpool's super healing powers and general insanity.
- One chapter in Detroit: Become Human can end in a Mexican-standoff type situation with Gavin aiming his gun at Connor, only for Hank to then point his gun at Gavin. Gavin's recklessness is Justified as he would (and potentially can) happily kill Connor, but Hank should know better than to aim a gun at a coworker, especially considering that he's a decorated officer.
- Lampshaded in Deus Ex, where you can pick up and read gun safety leaflets. Averted otherwise, as JC always holsters any weapons when initiating dialog. Even if he's caught flat-footed by someone he may rather keep his gun on. In certain areas, some civilians will panic if you have your gun out when you attempt to talk to them, forcing you to holster your weapon beforehand. In other areas, though, the trope is played straight unless you initiate dialog with other characters.
- Played painfully straight with its prequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. One of the enemy idle animations is the Mook in question scraping something off the sole of his shoe with the barrel of his gun. While this makes sense for the thug mooks you encounter, who would realistically probably only have "gun training" from action movies, this is jarring for trained para-military types.
- Adam on the other hand tends to be better about this. For one (unwillingly) HEAVILY augmented man who could pretty much dual-wield without consequence, Adam handles a gun like you should (handling a rifle with two hands, holding a pistol firmly with one hand on the grip while the other braces it) and when switching to/pulling out a pistol he pulls the slide to check for a chambered bullet before firing. Justified in that he's ex-SWAT.
- Played painfully straight with its prequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. One of the enemy idle animations is the Mook in question scraping something off the sole of his shoe with the barrel of his gun. While this makes sense for the thug mooks you encounter, who would realistically probably only have "gun training" from action movies, this is jarring for trained para-military types.
- Disco Elysium: Played straight and conversed if you try to shoot down the Hanged Man. Kim will try to do it after some convincing, despite the fact that behind the body are populated apartment buildings. If you try to convince him to try again, he'll point out how dangerous it is to use a firearm in that way, but will allow you to give it a shot as well.
- The Elder Scrolls
- Starting with Morrowind, the series puts several measures in place to downplay or avert this trope with weapons. For instance, talking to someone with your weapon drawn will cause their disposition to drop.
- Oblivion:
- Oblivion is the first game in the series to include weapon scabbards. However, several weapons appear to be simply stuck through your belt rather than put into a scabbard for safety. (This one is still present in Skyrim.)
- Crossing over with FPS-style Artificial Stupidity, the Battle of Bruma sequence has dozens of NPC soldiers running around. On lower difficultly settings, the greatest danger to them is a careless Player Character.
- Skyrim:
- When wielding a bow in Skyrim, you hold the trigger down to nock an arrow and draw the bowstring, then release it to fire. Aiming a drawn bow with a nocked arrow at someone averts this trope, as it tends to prompt nervous comments like "You're not actually going to shoot, right?"
- Approaching a guard with your weapon/magic drawn will provoke a rebuke: "Guard might get nervous, a man approaches with his weapon drawn", "Watch the magic!", or something similar.
- Empire: Total War: features the use of a Gentleman agent which can steal technology or duel other gentlemen of rival factions. If ordered to duel another gentleman a cinematic scene plays which shows many different outcomes. One of these outcomes has the two duelists march a few paces, turn, but not fire. Hilariously, one of them looks down the barrel of the gun which promptly discharges in his face. He loses the duel by the way.
- Fallout series:
- Many characters will refuse to talk to you or will even try and kill you if you refuse to put your weapon away in their presence. It's also perfectly possible for your trigger-happy teammates to accidentally blow you to pieces in combat, especially if they're using burst weapons. This was epidemic in the first Fallout, most of your total deaths would be from a friendly AI getting a burst crit 'through' you onto a nearby mob. Fallout 2 permitted you to more carefully micromanage your teammates' combat settings, with an option that only determined the use of burst-fire and included the options "be absolutely certain you won't hit me" and "never use". It's possible they sell the gun and throw in the ammo for free. Flimsy, but the Fallout universe isn't exactly the one most rooted in reason.
- A welcome aversion is seen in Fallout: New Vegas: The weapon animations exhibit proper trigger discipline, keeping the finger resting on the trigger guard when not aiming down sights or firing. Also, the Boomer tribe are a community of Mad Bombers but follow major weapon safety to the letter. Presumably because a misfire anywhere near a weapons/ammo cache would be very bad indeed.
- In the New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts, Joshua Graham looks down the barrels of his pistols as he inspects them, but not before ejecting the magazine and pulling back the slide.
- Subverted, as this is perfectly acceptable if you've just dropped the magazine and checked the slide for a chambered round, which is part of said animation.
- NPC's in New Vegas will also make remarks whenever you aim a loaded gun with them, telling you what you are doing isn't smart or acting horrified/incredulous. Except for children, who will say things like "Cool, I can see the bullet!" Not that you can harm them, anyway.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy XIV zigzags this with the gun-wielding Machinists. On the one hand, their movement animations and "idle" stance have them pointing the gun towards the ground and keeping their finger off the trigger. On the other, they engage in all sorts of flashy trick shots (including one that has them fire a shot into the air, coming down on their target a moment later), and their "Battle Stance" emote has them tossing their gun in the air.
- Final Fantasy Tactics: When showing off his gun in a cutscene, Mustadio very clearly points it at Ramza. And if the player acquires a robot weapon of mass destruction, Ramza orders it to beat Mustadio up, only to frantically demand someone bring a Phoenix Down when the robot blasted Mustadio to the floor, though this would be a case of Ramza not knowing just how lethal the damn thing is.
- Galaxy Angel: During your first meeting with Forte Stollen, she is seen demonstrating her skills with a revolver in the Elle Ciel shooting range. After, presumably, firing every bullet in the chamber she turns around and playfully aims the gun at Tact's face, who naturally reacts with fear. It's quite jarring, seeing as she is, otherwise, responsible with the handling of firearms.
- In Gears of War 3, the loading screen and cover has Marcus resting his hands on the muzzle of his lancer rifle.
- GoldenEye: The guards have an animation in which they would wave a hand as if to shoo away a fly, and then threaten the offending insect with their assault rifles. Even worse, they do the same thing while the cheat code that gives them all rocket launchers is active. Similar nonsense can happen with James Bond as well, as various tweaks to the game can affect which gun shows up in level-ending cutscenes. Putting a bazooka down his pants is entirely possible.
- Granado Espada's Lionel Von Hanen, an elite officer who is supposed to be a master of military science, wields a rifle and a pistol simultaneously — one for each hand — as his signature shooting stance.
- Grand Theft Auto
- Grand Theft Auto IV: Niko is pretty careless for an ex-soldier. Leave him standing around holding a pistol, and he'll eventually scratch the back of his head with it with his finger on the trigger.
- Which is about as stupid as the briefing scene from the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City mission "Supply and Demand" where Ricardo Diaz scratches his nuts with a pistol, complete with finger on trigger. In previous scene, the intro to "The Fastest Boat," he waves a shotgun around, and accidentally points it in the PC's face. It doesn't go off, though Tommy does seem rather concerned.
- In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Ammu-Nation mascot Derek the Dodo gives bad gun safety advice to kids by telling them to look down the barrel and pull the trigger to check if a gun is loaded.
- In GTA IV, you can even do this through a Good Bad Bug. Walk into a bar with a gun in your hand with a friend, and come out drunk with a loaded weapon you can fire. Humorously enough, firing your weapon randomly while shitfaced will not only risk shooting yourself or your drinking buddy, but also bring down a swarm of civilian NPC's to beat a lesson on gun safety into you.
- Halo: Reach: Humorously, a supposedly hardened and professional Army trooper in this advertising clip points his automatic weapon at his fellow soldier's groin! Here at 0:50.
- Heavy Rain: If Ethan gets arrested and Jayden intervenes while Blake is vigorously interrogating him, Blake will pull out his gun and point it at Jayden with his finger on the trigger. Which just further drives the point home that Blake is more than a bit reckless, to say the least.
- Henry Stickmin:
- This is subverted in one event in Stealing the Diamond, where Henry attempts to use a gun from a display case to shoot two museum guards, only for the gun to not be loaded, as it is a museum display.
- In Fleeing the Complex, one event allows Henry and Ellie to use two different weapons to deal with the guards. Choosing Sniper Rifle and Crossbow has Henry leap into the air and perform a No-Scope 360... shooting Ellie as he lands.
- House Flipper's Apocalypse Flipper DLC added placeable guns as a decorative item. The model shows them as being stored with a magazine in the well, and there are no lockboxes, cases, or gun safes either. For bonus points, there's also a placeable hunting knife, which doesn't come with a sheathe.
- Kissed by the Baddest Bidder: Soryu repeatedly and casually points his pistol at friends and allies when they annoy him, in flagrant disregard of one of the cardinal rules of firearm safety - specifically, "never aim a gun at anything you don't intend to kill."
- League of Legends: Zig-Zagged.
- Caitlyn is shown with her rifle held over her shoulder. Presumably, whenever she does this it's not loaded or she has the safety on. However, she takes a rifle and holds it in one hand while using one of her special attacks. In real life, this is asking for a sprained or broken wrist.
- Miss Fortune uses Guns Akimbo, but whenever she runs, she quickly holsters them.
- Tristana likewise always keeps her BFG pointed away from her. You can have them pointed at their allies albeit unintentionally.
- Gangplank however has a pistol in hand and has it perpetually pointed up unless he brings it down to fire or use Parrrley. He does this to signal his ship to fire on a target location with his ult, and ironically even used to shoot his own men.
- Jinx handles her variety of high-powered ordinance with frightening recklessness. Of course, she's bugfuck nuts, so it's appropriate.
- Jhin, who is stated to be a gunsmith, often displays poor gun safety by twirling his gun Whisper, specially when the fourth shot is loaded, where he does it continuously until he either fires or reloads. Deconstructed in his joke animation, where he attempts to twirl his gun but drops it, causing several accidental discharges towards himself.
- Mass Effect
- While characters usually put their guns away during cutscenes, some don't, which can lead to situations like a security guard waving a sniper rifle at you one-handed while he's telling you what a good job you did.
- Shepard themself often waves their weapon around in a way that would be outrageously irresponsible for a military or law enforcement agent of any kind. The Renegade option for Conrad alone may seem awesome, but if Shepard weren't above the law, they would be facing a courtmartial faster than you can say "Immensely profitable trilogy". It gets worse in the next game, where you can simply shoot him in the foot.
- Even a Paragon option where you allow Conrad to take your picture will cause Shepard to pose by triumphantly aiming their gun directly at a nearby crowd.
- In the first game's "Bring Down the Sky" DLC, a panicky civilian fires his pistol at Shepard without pausing to verify whether or not this is actually the batarian slaver he thinks they are. The round hits Shepard squarely in the chest — fortunately to no effect, thanks to the kinetic barriers on Shepard's armor.
- In the Citadel in Mass Effect 2, Shepard can overhear this conversation where the gunnery chief chews out a couple of recruits for unsafe gun handling practices (they've essentially forgotten the "know what's behind your target" rule). The "gun" they're firing is the main cannon of a dreadnought, whose projectiles hit with the kinetic energy of a nuke, so hitting the wrong target can have... consequences. Particularly because as a weapon fired into a no atmosphere, low gravity space, what's "behind" the target is defined as "Literally everything in the potentially infinite realm of space in any conceivable cone of fire in the direction of the intended target.note
- The actual gun safety required in universe may be a little more lax than in real life, considering that all of the weapons require advanced inbuilt computers and a power cell in order to function, and there furthermore is no "ammo," only a chunk of metal that gets cut to make bullets. The guns are still dangerous, but flipping the safety off makes it a lot safer than a real life firearm with the safety on. A real life firearm can fire with the safety on due to mechanical error; a mass effect firearm can only fire with the safety on if you hotwire it or something equally implausible.
- The second game did slightly better than the first, in that you could no longer draw weapons outside of combat areas. In the first, you were quite free to pull out your assault rifles and shoot up any part of the Citadel you like—including the high-security center of galactic government!—without anyone so much as batting an eye. You just can't actually harm any civilians by shooting them.
- Interestingly averted somewhat at one point—when you first meet Garrus, he takes down a thug holding a doctor hostage with a single shot. Shepard can either congratulate him on the shot or berate him for taking the very dangerous risk of shooting at someone when there's an innocent victim only a few inches away. (Mass effect weapons have built-in targeting computers and likely "smart" ammunition as well, plus Garrus' visor also helps his aim. Still, it's a very serious risk.)
- A lot of the NPC's, especially those belonging to merc or criminal gangs have poor gun safety. Possibly justified in that they are criminals and unlikely to follow good practice. Another particularly egregious example is of Jonn Whitson, who wants to sign up for the mission to kill Archangel, who takes his piece out and starts waving it around. Justified, given that he obviously has no combat experience. Shepard immediately disarms him if you take the prompt.
- It's worth noting that if Shepard has their gun out and you angle to aim at NPCs or teammates (at least in the sequels), Shepard will actually shift their grip to point their weapon up and away. Teammates will also do this if they end up pointing their weapons at Shepard.
- Taken a step further in Mass Effect 3, where you no longer have the option to holster your gun, meaning that if Shepard has to talk with an NPC during an action sequence, they'll do so while pointing their weapon at the face of the person they're talking to.
- Mega Man and his successors are an interesting case. Their Arm Cannons turn back into a hand when not firing. That's good. However, when a Charged Attack is readied, there's no way to abort it except by firing. That's...a bad design choice. Granted, the games have Everything Trying to Kill You, but in reality, it would be a major safety hazard.
- Metal Gear:
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater averted: where Naked Snake, in all of his cutscenes, place his finger outside the trigger guard. You don't want to accidentally shoot blindly when you are on a sneaking mission. It appears that Solid "Old" Snake does this in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots as well. During an early cutscene, you can see Snake turn on his rifle's safety before putting it down to inspect another gun, which he does sensibly — immediately removing the magazine, pulling the slide multiple times to ensure it's unloaded, even pointing it straight at a wall when testing the trigger pull.
- Ocelot plays it straight, juggling and spinning the Single Action Army with all six chambers loaded. The gun is so notorious for accidental hammer drops that most gunfighters would only load it with five rounds. The only mistake he ever makes with the guns is dropping one while trying to twirl it with his off hand in Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.
- MGS4 has an odd inversion of the trope, in fact; during the beginning of the third chapter where Snake is searching for a resistance cell that has possession of Big Boss's body, he gets stopped by some guards and is told to come with them. He refuses and pushes away the first guard that tries to grab him and drag him through, and they aim their rifles at him, obviously about to shoot... except if you look closely, though, NONE of the soldiers' fingers are on their triggers. Justified, however, in that they're expecting Snake to show up, but the fact that he's entered with a hostile gesture makes them initially unsure of his identity.
- Old Snake also uses the battlefield rule of guns in an early cutscene where he picks up a rifle near a dead soldier — namely, "never trust an abandoned weapon." He very, very, VERY carefully checks under the rifle with his knife for booby traps before claiming it as his own, and then immediately pointing it at the corpse it belonged to just in case.
- As a general rule, Old Snake is very careful with his weaponry in cutscenes and in most gameplay. Other examples include: his handling of a weapon after a failure to fire - he clears the chamber, checks the magazine and makes sure to keep it pointed away in case it's a hangfire. When the weapon fails to operate again, he sets the safety and sets the gun down.
- Snake calls out "Johnny Sasaki, AKA Akiba on his lack of combat experience, noting that even though he shows every intention of shooting Snake right then and there, he hasn't even taken the safety off on his rifle. However, that trope is artistic license; as it notes, the safety on most firearms can be removed in a heartbeat. Johnny apparently never learned this, despite having managed to get a special forces assignment and actually being a ten-year vet as he claims, as he cranes his head to double-check instead of just instinctively flicking it off with his thumb, allowing himself to be disarmed. How he got the posting, we'll never know; Snake lampshades this by outright asking him as he's lying on the ground, "how the hell'd you survive ten years?"
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty also averted this, up to averting the "gun pointed entry" trope by having armed personnel enter rooms with their guns at a lower angle, searching the room with their eyes. A "Making Of" featurette on Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 has military advisor Motosada Mori demonstrate the original cliche to the development and motion capture team who would undergo a mock-combat situation to provide realistic animation for the enemy soldiers. After showing off how the old cliche worked, Mori advised the team not to do that.
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain averts it during the hospital escape also. Ishmael takes an AM-D114 pistol from a dead XOF trooper and does a quick brass check before using it against The Man On Fire. When he kills a XOF trooper later and loots his pistol to give to Snake, he removes the magazine and ejects the round from the chamber before handing it over. This is one of many clues as to his true identity.
- Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light has Artyom being a horrendously dangerous person to be around, as he has a tendency to play with his guns (which are bolted together from metal pipes and furniture, and firing 20+ year old surplus ammo) when idle. He will toss the fully loaded Bastard submachinegun into the air until he knocks himself in the head with it and play with the selector switch til it breaks off, play with the detonators on his fully loaded grenade launcher, and shove his fingers into the charging cable on the Volt driver.
- NetherRealm Studios. Good grief, Netherrealm Studios.
- Mortal Kombat.
- Stryker fires his weapon into the air and then twirls it before holstering it in one of his victory poses. And this guy is actually a police officer.
- Cassie and Erron Black are just as bad in X (Erron’s The Gunslinger so his twirling his guns around is somewhat expected, while Cassie tends to ignore the third rule of gun safety and she is in the military).
- Cassie’s even worse in 11, twirling guns in her intros as she loads them.
- Injustice: Gods Among Us
- More or less averted with Deathstroke and Deadshot, who are only shown loading, holstering, and aiming their guns in their intros, and they tend to use lethal methods at all times. Played straight with Deadshot’s Super Move and victory outro.
- Also played straight with Red Hood in Injustice 2, who twirls his guns and fires them into the air.
- Mortal Kombat.
- Averted completely in the Operation Flashpoint and ARMA series by Bohemia Interactive. Characters move their fingers out of the trigger guard on a weapon when they lower it. For primary weapons, at least; there's no way to lower a pistol or ordnance launcher without putting them away until ARMA 3.
- The Oregon Trail: You can be randomly killed by an accidental gunshot while hunting. Even a gun sheath/holster won't protect you from this.
- In the sequels, you can even be killed randomly by an unintentional discharge from someone cleaning their weapon.
- Averted in Overwatch with the highlight intros. Intros that have a character holding but not using their weapon will have their finger off the trigger and the gun will be pointed away from any hypothetical people. The only exception is Cassidy, who plays this trope straight in all his highlight intros. Aside from the highlight intros, this trope is played completely straight, including several Gun Twirling emotes and allowing you to shoot at allied players (though they won't take damage).
- In Parasite Eve, senior police officer Daniel takes out his gun and uses it to break into a gun shop in SoHo. The issue is that his younger partner Aya is standing right there in front of the door, and she even flinches from the shot. Maeda, a Japanese scientist accompanying them at the time, asks Daniel if he's even really a cop.
- Persona 3: Takaya likes to use his jeans (or at least his belt) as a makeshift holster for his revolver. How he hasn't managed to blow his crotch or foot off yet is a miracle.◊ Even then this is better than most versions of Pants-Positive Safety since the barrel is pointed AWAY from his body, but still not nearly as safe as a holster.
- Police Quest 2: The Vengeance: You can be deafened if you don't put on sound-dampening earmuffs. It's stated in-game that the guns are NOT a toy and you have to follow safety procedures with guns. The Police Quest series is all about following correct police procedure. If you click your gun on a suspect, you'll shoot them and get a Game Over where you're chewed out for being trigger-happy. The proper procedure is to use the gun on yourself (to equip it) and then talk to the suspect, which will make your character order them to stand down. Additionally, when putting a suspect in a cell, you are required to leave your gun in a bin by the door. If you fail to do so, the suspect will grab your gun while you're uncuffing him and shoot you.
- The second game also makes a point of gun maintenance: just because you have a weapon doesn't mean it's working 100% all the time. You have to take it to the range, fire it a few times, and figure out whether or not the sights are aligned properly. If you don't, then when you need to fire your gun, you will miss.
- In Project × Zone, you could potentially pair up to 5 people who have nothing but guns on their arsenal and all of them fire at the enemy but the worst has to be Erica Fontaine who trips on her feet, manages to somehow catch her gun and start spraying on the unlucky enemy with her back turned facing away.
- Red Dead Redemption: You get the FN Model 1903 (called High Power Pistol in the game) when Ross presents it barrel-front to John's stomach. He wants him dead anyway, and he's an asshole.
- There’s a scene in its prequel in which Dutch points a gun at the back of Arthur’s head and says “Stick ‘em up , cowboy!” He’s joking, but his finger is on the trigger. This happens a bit before Dutch truly goes crazy, but it could be a sign of his brewing Sanity Slippage and not an oversight.
- Red Steel 2 averted, the sword and gun Wii game. The Kusagari kid justifiably keeps his finger on the trigger due to the absence of any civilians and the immense presence of bandits, ninja, and other enemies. He keeps his hand over his revolver to keep it steady, has his finger off the trigger when reloading while pointing it down (same with the shotgun, rifle, and machinegun) and to be honest, the only fancy thing he does with his gun is twirl it when he holsters it.
- Resident Evil: Early games have this in droves, though the most recent examples (Degeneration and Resident Evil 5) have an almost obsessive focus on gun safety in the cutscenes. In-game, however, the characters do run with their guns down and safe, until you hold the button which readies them.
- Speaking of Chris, his appearance in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has him being relatively safe with his guns (for a fighting game). His default stance is a gun-pointed-up pose, he starts battles by checking the weapon and chambering a round, meaning it's not ready to fire until then, and there's the audible sound of the safety being taken off as he brings it up to the ready position.
- Scarface: The World Is Yours. Unlike most sandbox games the player cannot massacre innocent civilians for the giggles. Tony's entire character revolves around not hurting anyone who never gave him trouble. The gun simply will not fire if the player pulls any silliness. This occasionally becomes problematic if you are auto-aiming at an enemy and a civilian wanders in front of you.
- Senran Kagura: Ryouna, a highly trained shinobi who routinely fends off hundreds of lesser ninjas, fights with a pair of guns that she fires with her pinky fingers on the trigger. Potentially justified by her extreme masochism, but it's still far from the proper way to handle firearms.
- Silent Hill:
- An unintentionally funny scene in the first game, in which police officer Cybil Bennett confirms that the hero she's just met, a professional writer, has never handled a gun in his life, and so proceeds to hand him her spare gun for protection. The entirety of her instructions are "Know what you're shooting, and don't go blasting me by mistake." (Foreshadowing!) A little justified in that they're in a Survival Horror environment (and used as a game mechanic, as, due to Harry's inexperience, the player can't accurately aim at long range), though you have to wonder why, as a police officer sworn to protect and serve, she didn't just accompany Harry instead of giving him a gun and sending him on his merry way.
- Later on, there's an even more hilarious scene at the local hospital. Harry comes upon Dr. Kaufmann, in an examination room, sitting down in shock next to a corpse of a monster he just shot. Harry carefully comes to introduce himself, and Kaufmann responds by immediately pointing the gun at Harry's face. He pleads with an appropriate, "Don't shoot! I'm a human!" Kaufmann digests this information for a second, and accidentally shoots anyway (missing, but still). He then says a casual-as-if-nothing-had-happened, "Thank God. Another human being."
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Most characters will tell you to holster your weapon and won't talk with you if you don't obey. Some characters may even attack.
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Several of your party members can be armed with blasters. These same party members have scripted hand gestures that they make while talking. They make these gestures regardless of what weapons they are holding. This can be especially unnerving when Carth Onasi is snapping at you about how he isn't sure he can fully trust you... while waving a heavy blaster pistol in each hand. The same gestures frequently cause melee fighters to impale themselves or others to make a point. At least Jedi will be waving around inactive lightsabers...
- Team Fortress 2: The Scout reloads his pistol by flipping it around while removing the spent magazine, then flipping it back while slipping a new mag in. He does this by pivoting it around his trigger finger (which is still in the trigger guard, thus he should be pulling the trigger accidentally by virtue of him not supporting the entire rest of the gun's weight) and points it directly at himself when it's flipped around. Plus the common practice of shooting your teammates to check if they're really disguised Spies. In the Scout's case, though, it's a part of his character to be a cocky show-off. Doing dangerous stuff just because it makes him look cool is what he lives for.
- In Until Dawn, Chris is given a Sadistic Choice of either shooting his Love Interest Ashley or himself point-blank with a pistol, with the person who is not shot getting released from a Death Trap. Unbeknownst to Chris, the gun is loaded with blanks. If either shooting option is taken, Chris or Ashley walks away from the incident unscathed. This despite the fact that shooting a blank round from point-blank or contact range would still easily do enough damage to be fatal, especially since Chris puts the barrel of the gun to his neck.
- Subverted in Vanquish. If Sam aims his gun at an allied NPC, he will yell something along the lines of "Get out of the way", and the NPC will duck out of his aim.
- There's a surprisingly high regard for gun safety in Telltale's The Walking Dead series, but there is a noticeable error in A New Frontier. Clementine has inadvertently loaded her pistol with bad rounds, which only cause the primer to fire with a small 'crack' and no working of the action. She proves this point a short time later by pointing the gun at the guy who (knowingly) traded the bad rounds to her and pulling the trigger again, causing another misfire and another 'crack'. Not even a minute later she tries to reinforce her point, but this time the gun actually fires, killing the guy. Since Clem isn't shown clearing the gun's action herself, the second bullet should have still just been sitting in the chamber, with nothing happening when she pulled the trigger a third time.
- Potentially much worse can happen in reality, since a round where only the primer fires (known as a "squib load") can often push the bullet just far enough to lodge in the barrel; if another round is fired behind it, it can result in the destruction of the gun and severe injury to the shooter. Clem also makes the error of not anticipating a hangfire, a possible outcome after such a primer malfunction.
- A distressing number of firearms in Warframe have trigger guards that are either so big you could squeeze your hand through them or simply nonexistent. Not to mention the idle animations for individual warframes, showing them twirling guns, dancing while holding a rifle or doing similar irresponsible things with firearms.
- When a World of Warcraft character has a gun drawn and is idle (either because the player manually had them draw their weapon, or they just finished battle), they hold it level with the ground, pointing forward, by gripping the heel and trigger.
- In XCOM 2, while characters will react by raising their arms and ducking slightly when gunfire goes off nearby and will pre-emptively duck if they are between the shooter and the target, but it still seems especially unsafe to fire a shotgun or giant automatic cannon over the head of a friendly. Laid-Back soldiers on the Avenger also hold their gun one-handed and rest it on their shoulder, regardless of the size of power of said gun.
- War of the Chosen adds a new variety of dangerous ways to hold a weapon in the form of the photobooth, but this is partially justified by being player controlled anyway, and outside of the usual potential of the randomization options, most of the safety issues would be player-made.
- In XCOM: Enemy Unknown Assault troopers do the One-Handed Shotgun Pump, and Snipers aim by balancing the front of the rifle on their elbow instead of holding it. Even if they are flying 30 feet above the ground and the gun they're using has a lot of complicated moving parts when it firesnote .
- A massive plot point in Yakuza 4 is how the guns Saejima used for the Ueno hit were loaded with rubber bullets, which were supposed to be a non-lethal means of riot control that can knock someone out cold. Thing is, rubber bullets can still be lethal if shot at close range or at the head, which Saejima does since he carries out the hit in a cramped ramen shop.
