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Bulletproof Vest
(aka: Flak Jacket)

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Bulletproof Vest (trope)
It's not enough to stop shrapnelnote  — notice the bloodstain — but it's better than nothing.

Artemus Gordon: If I may make one last request? That she aim for my heart... the heart that loved this country so much.
Loveless: Shoot him in the head.
Gordon: Damn!

Until recently, the bulletproof vest had been relegated to the dustbin of history, as firearms became sufficiently powerful to surpass then-available material science. With the rise of synthetic fibers like ballistic nylon and fiberglass, then the introduction of kevlar armor, ballistic body armor has become an increasing staple of action films and police dramas.

In fiction, a generic kevlar vest will easily handle any threat less than antitank missile or antimateriel rifle, but will always knock over the wearer in the process. Additionally, the wearer is contractually obligated to complain about their ribs. It might also protect against knives, ice picks, and other similar weapons or they might punch straight through. In games, vests either stop all damage or reduce it, but are often destroyed when they take enough damage (see Body Armor as Hit Points). All armor is usually treated as a generic resource, meaning the difference between a complete tactical vest and police concealed bulletproof might just be how many points they give you. Melee weapons or special ammo usually functions as an Armor-Piercing Attack that circumvents its protection.

Finally, the wearer will always appear dead, be emotionalized or at least fussed over, and then sit up to open their shirt, revealing the vest (usually with bullets showing on it). The armor must also then be immediately discarded, regardless of if the danger's over or not.

In Real Life, there are many caveats and a decent amount of randomness. Pistols and revolvers can be stopped by kevlar or other soft armor, but buckshot's known to cause significant blunt trauma injury. In the case of melee weapons, slash threats are likely covered even by soft armor, but stab threats are known to punch through kevlar vests where bullets don't.

Rifle protection on the other hand demands hard armor, which in turn will remove blunt injury from the equation for all but the most violent of edge cases. Sometimes. Cases vary, and there's many stories of soldiers being hit once and suffering internal injuries, alongside stories of soldiers being hit several times up close and not realizing it until someone points it out to them.

When bullets are stopped by dubiously bulletproof tiny objects made indestructible via sentimentality, that's a Pocket Protector. Bulletproof Human Shield is the trope when bullets are stopped by an unwilling Mook or bystander. If a vest is worn by a Badass in a Nice Suit, or if the Nice Suit is also bulletproof, it will overlap with Waistcoat of Style. When the vests don't provide any protection, that's Armor Is Useless.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In all three editions of Battle Royale (book, film and manga), the bulletproof vest acts as one of the strongest items in the event, saving the lives of the people who carry it numerous times. In the manga this is treated reasonably well, in that when hit with a shotgun (at long range) it hurts quite a bit, the wearer obviously bleeding through the ruined vest. One scene earlier on when the vest takes a close-range shot with a .45 caliber revolver with no effect is a little less defensible. It should be noted .45 isn't the, uh, most high-velocity hit, but, still...
  • Rotton the Wizard is probably one of the few people in Black Lagoon with the sense to wear one. Shouting out your presence when you have the jump on the enemy, not so much.
  • The government-sponsored Devil Hunters in Chainsaw Man wear business suits which are actually bulletproof and able to reduce slashing damage. That said, against most devils this just means an attack will leave a Devil Hunter seriously injured rather than instantly dead.
  • Hei's coat in Darker than Black is bulletproof.
  • Desert Punk: The primary function of the full-body desert suits most characters wear are to protect from the weather, but they provide decent protection from bullets and fragmentation as well. One mook's vest let him take about a half dozen rounds from Kosuna's handgun at very close range and Kanta's helmet on two separate occasions protected him from sniper rifle fire. Basically, every part of the suits are stated to be made of some kind of Aramid (a classification of strong, heat-resistance material that Kevlar belongs to), even the hats.
  • Ura the armor cat in El-Hazard: The Magnificent World is a living version of this. He's the cutest flak jacket you'll ever wear!
  • In Future Diary, Keigo Kurusu wears one. It doesn't do much good since Yuno fires at his head.
  • In the anime of Golgo 13, a Mafia boss thinks he's protected from the master assassin by his bulletproof glass, which he even tests by firing at it with a pistol. Duke empties his M-16 rifle into the glass, cracking it so the final bullet can pass through the hole unimpeded and kill his target. This scene is basically a rehash of one from Golgo 13: The Professional, Golgo 13's first appearance in anime. In The Professional, Golgo 13 also shot clean through the windows of another building that was between him and his target (he couldn't shoot directly from that building because the feds were staking it out).
  • Gunslinger Girl: Sandro and his cyborg Petra find themselves attacked by a car armored with the same Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer used to ensure the cyborgs are Made of Iron. Petra uses a slingshot firing a metal ball to star the windshield enough obscure their vision and make the car crash.
  • Gunsmith Cats: Bean Bandit's moose leather jacket is an Nigh-Invulnerable monstrosity filled with ceramic plates and chain mail. It's demonstrated to protect Bean from a barrage of assault rifle fire and multiple shotgun slugs. Downside? Only an utter monster like Bean can wear something so absurdly heavy; when Misty nudges it off a dresser, it breaks her foot. On top of that, Bean wears a headband of the same construction. It deflects a 9mm contact shot.
  • Heat Guy J: Daisuke attacks the Mafia group's headquarters, Company Vita. Long story short, he ends up giving a “The Reason You Suck” Speech to Clair, which involved mentioning Clair's abusive father. This earns Daisuke three bullets, but he was wearing a bulletproof vest. It still knocked him back, and he commented, "That's going to leave a mark."
  • Played with in Monster Musume, where Zombina unzips her jacket to show that she wasn't wearing a vest.
  • In Pokémon Adventures, what appears to be a wetsuit that Blake wears underneath his clothing is actually some kind of armor that allowed him to survive Genesect's Technoblast head on.

    Fan Fiction 
  • The Borderline Caper has a straight example of this trope. Main character shot and we're not told she has a bulletproof vest for a short while? Check. Knocked down with one hole in her shirt for each bullet? Check. Reality compliant: with no plates, it only stopped handgun bullets. Mistaken for dead (almost touching off a Roaring Rampage of Revenge if not for The Cavalry arriving), emotionalized over and then sits up? Two out of three (having her head in her love interest's lap is a good excuse to not sit up). Part shirt to reveal vest? Check. The scene ends before she can remove the vest, but she is shown without the vest in the next scene.
  • In Boys do Tankary?, while the boys are going to rescue Anglerfish Team, from Ami Chouno, who has inexplicably become evil, Ami shoots Ian in the chest, but his comrades then capture Ami. As Ian's girlfriend Hana cries over him, Vincent starts laughing and Ian gets up, before revealing that they wear bulletproof vests all the time.
  • Here Comes the New Boss: Elpis sews steel plates into a vest for Grue, since he's a close-range fighter. He's initially concerned by the weight, but after wearing it he decides he can adjust to it. It later stops two pistol bullets from Perdition, likely saving his life; he gets nothing worse than hairline fractures and some bruising without internal bleeding.
  • In The Return (Sunshine Temple), Darkstar's Brood are eventually convinced to replace their Stripperiffic outfits with more sensible ones with bulletproofing.
  • Security! (Worm): Michael wears a stab vest as part of his security guard job, which protects him from all sorts of attacks, from Shadow Stalker's crossbow bolt, to a swipe from Lung, with a hand grown larger than his head, that launches him metres through the air, to getting punched while breaking up a fight between Empire 88 and ABB in the school — albeit with the ceramic plates being increasingly broken down, and not always escaping unscathed. But he survives.
  • In the last few chapters of There's No One Like You, Luz is giving testimony to convict Odalia Blight of grooming her daughter Amity. Odalia, having undergone a Villainous Breakdown, smuggles a gun into the courtroom and shoots Luz. However, Luz gets up quickly and is revealed to have been wearing a Kevlar vest at the urging of Odalia's other daughter, Amelia. It's treated realistically in that Luz is still seriously hurt by the gunshot, and requires months of physical therapy.

    Music 
  • A bulletproof vest is one of 50 Cent's signature pieces of clothing. Since he based his entire schtick on surviving 9 gunshot wounds, it made sense. Reportedly, the men who murdered Jam-Master Jay were actually looking for him, and also supposedly, the first runs of G-Unit clothing only came in XXL specifically so they could be worn over the top of the vest.

    Roleplay 
  • Subverted for the most part in Survival of the Fittest; while bulletproof vests appear rather often they tend to be treated very realistically, and indeed, in many instances have been no use at all — the foe of the vest's owner just aims for the head for the most part or the vest just has no effect. However, this is also played straight in the case of Shannon McLocke, who takes a close range shotgun blast to the chest and gets up with barely a scratch. Bobby Jacks also takes a carbine round to the chest and gets up relatively unharmed a minute or two later in v3, but the carbine used weak enough ammunition for this to be justified.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Cyberpunk 2020 describes bulletproof vests along with bulletproof trousers and kevlar helmets as mandated protection for soldiers (and usually cops). They are portrayed quite realistically being very good against shrapnel as well as against small and medium-calibre weapons fire, but just slowing down assault rifle bullets. Heavier armor types are available but are marginally better, and of course armor-piercing bullets make short work of all types of armor.
  • The bulletproof vests available in GURPS do not inspire confidence, but they can make the difference between dead and dying.
  • In Hc Svnt Dracones, a bulletproof vest has hit points equal to a physically weak character, but covers very little and is easily bypassed by aiming single shots. However, there are also far heavier armors.
  • In the MechWarrior tabletop role-playing game, flak vests (and flak helmets, jackets, pants, and suits in the expanded 2nd and 3rd editions) are the most widely available armor and are actually reasonably useful against most of the common weapons a player character might face, such as slugthrower pistols and melee weapons. Once lasers and other exotic weapons come into play (particularly flamers and heavy needlers, basic flak armor generally falls by the wayside for something sturdier.
  • The second edition of Recon had a somewhat confusing discussion of body armor. In a description of a soldier getting ready for a mission, he chooses not to take body armor, it being "useless dead weight". However, he does volunteer to carry the squad's machinegun ammo belts, because they provide good protection from bullets. (The rules didn't actually rate ammo belts as protection.)
  • Expatriette from Sentinels of the Multiverse can wear one (it's called a Flak Jacket in game). It has the effect of completely nullifying any attack that does three or more points of damage before being discarded. This includes everything from mundane gunfire to a 9999 damage energy blast from the setting's universe-destroying Big Bad.
    "I swear boss, we got her this time!"
    An enforcer, Justice Comics #634
  • Body armor in Shadowrun just gives you a better chance of shrugging off injury, rather than actually preventing damage per se. Unless one has a ridiculously high Body attribute (easily gained by, say, being a Troll), just one layer of ballistic armor won't cut it against anything above light pistol fire. But that's civilian- and security-grade armour. Military-grade armor makes one totally immune to anything of too low a penetrating power, but still does not save one against being shot with an Assault Cannon set to full-auto.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, flak jackets are standard equipment for basic Imperial Guard units. They're nicknamed "T-shirts" because they're so flimsy in comparison to the much heavier armors available in the game.
    • In Dark Heresy, guardsman flak is actually one of the best armours that can be obtained regularly. Mesh armour is a little worse, but weighs around 2kg for a full-body suit (and is ridiculously hard to get without the right connections), carapace armour is heavier and a little stronger (and about equally hard to get) and Powered Armour finally means nothing short of anti-vehicle/anti-materiel even can touch you — if you can get your hands on a set and are not too distraught about the civilian capacitors only lasting for between one and five hours of operation... Still, against normal weapons (autoguns and lasguns), flak armour works pretty well.
    • Imperial Guard flak armour shines through in Only War. In fact, it's even better this time round, because you can acquire it right from the get-go if you choose/create the right regiment for your characters, and upgrading the armour to Good Craftsmanship is relatively inexpensive — even Best Craftmanship is somewhat reasonable. This is countered by the fact that should your regiment not specify full Imperial Flak on creation, then they start with just the vest and helmet, leaving your arms and legs vulnerable.
    • Flak Armor has been stated to be impervious to bullets from stubbers, resistant to autogun fire, and might save you from a lasblast, if it's a glancing hit. Considering that Imperial Autoguns fire 8.25x56mmnote  bullets with muzzle velocity slightly lower than the average 7.62x51, it's actually arguably better than modern armor. Of course, there's also the theory of the entire uniform being to that standard of stubber immunity, which would mean that the entire uniform is made up of ballistic textiles capable of shrugging off bullets from modern rifles, and that the hard portions are quite possibly able to take a hit from a HMG at some angles. Something to think about.

    Visual Novels 

    Web Animation 
  • Homestar Runner: Subverted in a Cheat Commandos toon when Gunhaver shoots Flashfight playfully, falsely believing that the latter is wearing a bulletproof vest that they were playing around with at the beginning of the toon.

    Webcomics 
  • Nearly all the soldiers, mercenaries, and guards in Cry 'Havoc' wear body armor, most of it military grade plate armor. It also becomes a plot point when Freyja develops a 'formula' for armor that adapts to changes in its wearers physiology (an important issue for werewolves).
  • Black Monday Blues, the "Cleaner" from Dead Winter, wears one underneath his shirt which is somehow strong enough to save his life from a point-blank shotgun blast courtesy of Ron, leaving Monday dazed and bruised yet still kept on trucking on because he's just that badass. Alongside Monday, some of the soldiers from the Army/National Guard wear these as well, one of them protecting the soldier from Monday's Mauser C96.
  • Girl Genius: Bang is furious when she realizes that Martellus' shirt is somehow armored. Which helps explain how he survived getting shot point blank in the chest with a giant clank gun a few pages earlier.
  • In Grrl Power, Maxima lets Sydney know on no uncertain terms that they have bullet-resistant armor, not bullet-proof armor. A powerful enough bullet will penetrate her armor, no matter how tough it is. Sydney takes this lesson to heart. She does get a vest that contains non-newtonian fluids that will solidify when under pressure, which saves her life from a piece of shrapnel.
  • Riff from Sluggy Freelance wears one during the "Dangerous Days" arc. Since he took the blast from a shotgun, however, it still hurts like hell. Later on there's a bit of discussion about the difference between "bulletproof" and "knife proof" vests.

    Western Animation 
  • In the American Dad! episode "All About Steve", Stan has to wear braces to prevent teeth grinding, making him sound like a geek. His coworkers plant a "Shoot Me" sign on him, and then shoot at him.
    Stan: Oh, ha-ha! Very funny, guys! You're lucky I'm wearing my vest!
  • Archer:
    • Cyril wears one regularly, so Archer occasionally shoots him to shut him up. At one point, Pam reveals that she's wearing one of Cyril's used vests. This confuses Archer, since the fibers break upon being used. She admits that it hurts a lot.
    • In a flashback in "Movie Star", Krieger tests armour on a new intern, Chet. It doesn't go so well for Chet.
      Krieger: Now, normally I don't let an intern do this on his first day, but... [cut to Chet slumped over, dead, with multiple bullet wounds] Chet? Buddy? How's it hanging?
    • In "El Secuestro", Cheryl is given a vest to keep her safe from kidnappers. When the kidnappers storm the building Archer reminds her she's wearing it to stop her screaming... only for her to immediately get shot in the bicep as it's still a vest that leaves her arms exposed.
  • Futurama:
    • In Bender's Big Score, the lead nudist scammer wears a platinum doom-proof vest. So that's what the purple thing he was wearing was. Afterwards he regrets he hadn't been wearing doom-proof pants too.
    • "Law and Oracle" has an odd moment when Fry becomes a cop and tries to foil Bender stealing the Maltese Liquor. Pickles, the robot who predicted the robbery, notes that it was a trap — then Bender gets shot by Fry accidentally when his shot ricochets off the safe, and Pickles shoots Fry. However, it's really a sting to catch Pickles — Fry reveals that he's wearing a bulletproof vest, while Bender opens the door on his torso to show his bulletproof vest with a bullet lodged in it on a clothes hanger.
  • Looney Tunes:
  • Parodied in the Robot Chicken skit "X-Academy" — one of the graduates shoots himself in the head after Xavier's introduction of the bulletproof uniforms, after which Xavier says "Of course, they can only protect the parts of you that are covered."
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "The Monkey Suit", Homer is shown being allowed to wear one of these and repeatedly shoot himself for the fun of it at a weapons exhibit at the local museum.
    • In another episode, Chief Wiggum gets shot while trying to wrestle a gun away from a criminal. He laughs, saying, "That's what bulletproof vests are for!" — and then realizes that he left his vest in the car.

Alternative Title(s): Flak Jacket

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Little Angel

Smitty got saved by her ballistic vest after being shot at close range.

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