The good guys (the non-Red Shirt ones, at least — and sometimes even them, too) can stand in the middle of the firefight and never get hit, and can pick off any bad guy with even the most casually-aimed shot while the bad guys seem unable to hit the broad side of a barn.
This trope involves a degree of Truth in Television, in that by far most shots fired in firefights or combat are misses. Some sources report that in World War II, the average soldier needed to fire two hundred rounds for every hit scored on an enemy. note So the fictional bad guys don't necessarily actually suffer from unrealistic inaccuracy; rather, the heroes' fictional performance would probably count as Improbable Aiming Skills in real life. To make matters worse, though, most fictional bad guys exhibit lousy trigger discipline, always firing from the hip and in long bursts, even when firing at a lone target that sometimes isn't even shooting back, instead of looking down the sights and aiming.
Of course, the real reason for all this is the Anthropic Principle: If the mooks ever actually hit the main characters, the show would be over.
Bonus points if anyone says something to the effect of "whoever is the actual target of that shooter is the safest one here."
Obvious Sub-Trope of A-Team Firing, different in that on this one only the bad guys can't aim. Dodge the Bullet is the inverse of this. For the bladed weapon variation, see Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight. The flip side of Improbable Aiming Skills. The use of More Dakka can either overcome this, or make it even sillier. When the bullets don't just spray around the target, but consistently hit where the target was a moment ago, it's a case of Hero-Tracking Failure. See also Plot Armor for the reason the bad guys are such lousy shots. When the enemies vastly outnumber the heroes, their incompetence is a symptom of Conservation of Ninjutsu. Compare Powerful, but Inaccurate, when the inaccuracy is a property of the weapon rather than the wielder. See also Amusingly Awful Aim.
Named for the obvious Star Wars reference, in which setting the Mooks all seem to be visually impaired, though there is one explanation
for their seeming ineptitude and analysis of their accuracy
indicates they’re actually really good — but for the Trope Namer, see the Tabletop Games section below.
Sub-pages
Examples:
- Berserk:
- Even though it's arrows instead of bullets, none of the marauding bandits, mouthy soldiers, or terrifying hellspawn can ever seem to hit Guts even when there's hundreds of them and Guts is just casually strolling across the battlefield. In fact, most shots Guts just deflects
◊ off the flat of his blade which seems pretty reasonable as Guts's sword is huge and could provide cover but then as the series goes on and the villains get more skilled, some being super Indo-Arabian ninjas and others demon marksmen the excuse boils down to Guts's reflexes being that good.
- The only real time this was truly subverted is when Guts was protecting Casca and got hit three times, the third even going straight into his hand and sticking there, forcing Guts to swing one-handed. Casca showed much shock and gratitude at his human shielding.
- The Villains aren't left out of the loop either as none of the human armies (except for the really skilled ones) can ever hit the demon-like Apostles and when they do find their mark it normally doesn't do anything or just makes them angry. One truly galling example is Griffith after his evil resurrection is shot at with a hail of arrows... And they all miss their mark by a good yard — though to be fair to this guy, this scene is meant to show that even though he's Griffith again, he has retained all of his godlike supernatural power as Femto.
- Even though it's arrows instead of bullets, none of the marauding bandits, mouthy soldiers, or terrifying hellspawn can ever seem to hit Guts even when there's hundreds of them and Guts is just casually strolling across the battlefield. In fact, most shots Guts just deflects
- Black Lagoon plays this trope straight and often to a level that threatens one's Suspension of Disbelief. But, then again, its an action movie masquerading as an episodic anime, so it makes sense.
- In Space Pirate Captain Harlock episode #39, the Mazone invade the Arcadia. They are supposedly well-trained troops and are constantly firing. Arcadia personnel mow down hundreds of them with the number of friendly deaths being at most in the single digits, and except for a single named character (whose death is foretold in the episode title, who is the only one to get a dramatic death scene, and whose death is the only one that makes an impression on the crew), none of those other deaths are even confirmed.
- In Coppelion the antagonists do quite a bit of shooting. Usually fully automatic, often on still targets at rather short distances out in the open. Don't count on anyone hitting what they aim for.
- Happens fairly regularly in Cowboy Bebop... only to be dramatically subverted at the worst possible moment.
- Troopmon in Digimon Fusion and Digimon Adventure: (2020) tend to act as cannon-fodder Mooks and regardless of whether they fight with rifles or their built-in Finger Firearms, they never manage to hit anything even at very close range.
- Lampshaded in Excel♡Saga: Excel explains to the mooks firing at her that they'll never hit her because of this trope and doesn't even bother to move.
- At one point in FFVII: Last Order, Zack evades Shinra fire by backflipping rapidly. Combined with Hero-Tracking Failure, as the troops in question seem to be firing at his feet. (Compare to a similar scene in The Matrix Revolutions, and you'll see why this shouldn't have worked.)
- Amarao's men in the fifth episode of FLCL simply cannot hit Haruko, no matter how many of them there are. For context, at one point, a dozen or so men dogpile her and are apparently shooting at her while in this position, but still not a single shot hits her (but on the other hand Haruko also displays a superhuman ability to duck and weave through bullets and even slice them in half with a straight razor in midair.)
- In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), anyone who shoots at Scar will fail miserably, even Riza Hawkeye who is known for being a highly skilled sniper has only been able to graze him. However, he does put the lightning in Lightning Bruiser.
- The Industria soldiers from Future Boy Conan almost never hit anyone they shoot at, except on two occasions when Conan gets shot in the arm and later when one of them shoots Monsley in the back.
- Momo Kawashima of Girls und Panzer is a horrible shot, despite her enthusiasm. Perhaps the most notable example was when Turtle team got to point blank range with the St. Gloriana's team, and she managed to fire through the tiny gap between two tanks.
- Happens a lot in the various Gundam series, where if you are not an Ace Pilot you can't hit a space colony while standing on it.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team had a hilarious instance of the hero utterly failing at marksmanship: as Shiro Amada is sliding down a tower with his EZ-8 Gundam, he opens up on his enemy, Zeon ace Norris Packard, with every single machine gun the Gundam has on it... and misses spectacularly.
Norris: Well, that looked impressive.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny has Lunamaria Hawke, who is supposed to be an ace on par with the likes of Yzak Joule and Dearka Elsman from the first series... but never really accomplishes anything of note, mainly owing to her atrocious aim. This is explained as Luna having a very awful habit of twitching her wrist every time she takes a shot, upsetting her aim. In a lategame episode of the series, Luna has a chance to shoot down an undefended shuttle transporting Lord Djibril, leader of LOGOS, while she is in the seat of the Impulse Gundam (she had previously been piloting a ZAKU Gunner up until recently). She misses every shot, and Djibril gets away despite nobody protecting him. This has only ascended Luna's Memetic Loser status with the fanbase, even though there are fields in MS combat that she's generally better at. In fact, her Taking a Level in Badass in Freedom showed her leaning more on her skills in close combat, which is what helped her defeat Agnes Giebenrath in the movie's Final Battle.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans plays with this trope in the case of Iok Kujan. Despite the fact that his top-of-the-line Reginlaze is built from the ground up for sniping, Iok's ability to hit targets varies wildly from scene to scene. In his first battle, he successfully snipes the weapons out of an enemy's hands, then anticipates every single one of Mikazuki's potential dodges in advance... but ends up missing anyway, as Mikazuki figures this out at the same time, and just maintains a completely straight course while Iok is left furiously firing at the places he should be. Iok's next battle has him congratulating enemy Gildas on their superior dodging ability... except that neither mech was moving at all while he was shooting at them. This paints a general picture of a man with a great deal of technical competence, but far too little battlefield experience to express it fluently or consistently.
- Lampshaded by Zapper Zaku in SD Gundam Force episode 19, when Zako Soldiers fail to hit Bakunetsumaru with missiles, even though he is preoccupied having a standoff with Ashuramaru. The missiles just whiz by them without hitting anything.
Zapper: You missed, you idiots, and he's not even moving!
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team had a hilarious instance of the hero utterly failing at marksmanship: as Shiro Amada is sliding down a tower with his EZ-8 Gundam, he opens up on his enemy, Zeon ace Norris Packard, with every single machine gun the Gundam has on it... and misses spectacularly.
- Hellsing has the Major. He utterly fails to hit a target slowly walking at him until his very last bullet. As he dies, he chortles how happy he is to finally have hit his target. His own minions don't understand how he managed to get into the SS being such a horrible shot.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Hol Horse. Bonus points for managing to shoot like crap while having the ability to control the direction of his bullets!
- Rohan Kishibe can apparently invoke this by using his stand to write "I cannot attack Rohan Kishibe" onto someone. After he does it to Koichi, he still tries by throwing projectiles, but subconsciously aims away from him every time.
- Guido Mista's backstory where he first invokes his Stand. Three men shoot him but all of the bullets miss, even though he was at close range and virtually standing still, though only due to his Stand, which gives him the ability to redirect bullets. Mista then calmly picks up one of the men's revolvers, loads it, and shoots all three of the men in the face. To top things off, the judge does not believe that a man could pick up a revolver in the crossfire without getting hit and sentences him to prison.
- Happens all the time in Kimba the White Lion. The second episode has an exaggerated example where Kimba avoids the gunfire from a group of African Terrorists that is chasing the boat he is on by running towards them, ducking every now and again, and using the log that jammed the boat's wheel as a shield while removing the log.
- Lalatina Dustiness "Darkness" Ford from KonoSuba, manages to fall victim to this with a SWORD of all things on account of living in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse which requires people to get the relevant skill (i.e. the two-handed sword skill) to be able to use the weapon with any degree of accuracy. It's not Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight, because she doesn't often get disarmed, she just can't ever hit anything due to pouring all her XP into her defence stat and never picking up the two-handed sword skill. This results in her being Unskilled, but Strong, meaning that Darkness' sky-high strength is usually meaningless, so her only use to the main party is as a Stone Wall, partly because she's Made of Iron, and partly because she's Too Kinky to Torture.
- Lupin III: Any officer assigned to Zenigata to help stop Lupin must have gone to the marksmanship academy. Yes, Lupin is skilled, but he doesn't even have to try and dodge, he can just run in a straight line and they'll miss. (Zenigata himself, on the other hand, features Improbable Aiming Skills with thrown handcuffs.)
- Lycoris Recoil has the LilyBell agents. In Episode 12, Chisato calmly walks out into a hallway where about 10 of them are firing their assault rifles up at her at a range of less than 50 meters. They all miss horribly without her needing to make a single dodge.
- Any missile volley in Macross fired at a single target (and not for saturation effect) is practically guaranteed to miss, particularly if the missiles have homing capabilities which defy the laws of physics.
- In Macross 7, a military police officer fails to hit a stationary enemy soldier at a range of six feet with a handgun. Even worse, in a similar event later the officer only manages to wing his coat with a rifle.
- Macross Plus surpasses that: Myung is trapped in an elevator, and two security guards spray the inside of the elevator with automatic weapons... Not. Hitting. Her. Once.
- Naruto:
- From the second Naruto Shippuuden movie, the ninja of the Sky Country have gatling guns that fire kunai. Apparently they're a deadly force, but they just seem to land by peoples' feet more often than not. One of them almost hits Shizune's foot as it just barely misses Tsunade, but she just has to stand there. Then Sai fights several of them in the air and just stands atop his giant bird thinking to himself while a volley of kunai fly over his head. But then, perhaps this also involves the Conservation of Ninjutsu.
- The first Naruto film had similar devices, mounted on a train, mow down a crowd of Red Shirts charging down a hill yelling (It was an honor thing). Our heroes are all appropriately cowed.
- One Piece tries to avoid this trope by having the navy use swords more often than using guns. Whenever the marines use guns on the Straw Hats, it's only against the stronger members that can easily dodge the bullets or disarm the snipers. If fighting the weaker members, they normally are too close and will be attacked by them or reasonably too far away to hit them. Worst of all is if the poor saps attack Luffy, who often neglects to dodge the ammo and instead bounces it back.
- Played straight in its most glorious during the Donquixote Family flashback, when Gladius, Lao G and Señor Pink told Baby 5 about the history and tragedy of Flevance. The rival gang kept shooting guns and cannonballs throughtout most of the dialogue for several minutes, but they never hit any of the six pirates. Throughout the entire exposition, the pirates kept the entire conversation calm and casual and they walked slowly without caring about any of the bullets potentially hitting them. They didn't even make a conscious effort to dodge anything because the enemies kept missing them.
- In Rebuild World, Akira's aim sucks at the start of the story and he continually misses even at extremely close range unless he's shoving the barrel of his gun right against someone's face. Alpha continually gives him shooting drills on top of directly assisting his aim to remedy this. Much later in the series (after Akira has taken several levels in badass), he fights a battle against several platoons of soldiers with tanks and artillery backing them up. One of Akira's allies uses Hollywood Hacking to tamper with their targeting computers (all of their sensors and guns are tied together in a network) to make them each miss most of their shots, providing a justified example. Eventually the enemy catches on and turns off their targeting computers.
- Soul Eater: For a gang of supposedly skilled criminals, Alcapone's gang has colossally crappy accuracy considering the fact that they couldn't hit Black?Star and Tsubaki who were standing DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THEM ON A TABLE.
- Xabungle: This has the mooks wondering why they are even bothering to shoot at the protagonists.
- In The Unfinished Spelling Errors of Bolkien, Martin Pearson points out that in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring the Witch-king very carefully misses Frodo's heart when he stabs him.
- There's a joke comic about what happens when an Imperial Stormtrooper shoots at a Star Trek Red Shirt: the Stormtrooper misses every shot, but the Red Shirt dies anyway.
- Batman:
- In The Attack of the Annihilator, the titular villain's psychic blasts miss Batgirl while she is swinging away despite being a relatively slow-moving target hindered by Supergirl's dead weight.
- In the Escape from the Phantom Zone crossover, Xa-Du shoots one heat blast at Batgirl, who is just some few feet away, and he misses.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In Carl Barks's "The Custard Gun" (first published in 1955), Donald goes turkey hunting before Thanksgiving with a "humane" custard gun invented by Gyro Gearloose; the purpose is to blind the turkey with a pellet filled with custard, allowing the hunter to catch and hogtie it. Donald proves to be a hopelessly bad shot with the gun, but this is eventually justified by the gun itself being erratic and the pellets being the opposite of aerodynamic. In the conclusion, Donald returns from the hunt empty-handed, but serves his nephews turkey from the butcher shop, explaining that he bet Gyro that the latter couldn't hit the side of a barn with the custard gun, and won.
- Parodied in an old Heavy Metal magazine where the heroes of the story are escaping from an enemy castle and none of the archers are able to hit them. One of the archers becomes fed up, takes aim, and proceeds to kill all three of the heroes with the next three shots. His celebration is cut short when his commanding officer reprimands him for the deed, stating that they were all missing on purpose and that the story couldn't continue now that the protagonists were dead.
- Lucky Luke:
- In the story The Treasure of the Daltons, Lucky Luke and The Cavalry are assaulted from four sides by bad guys armed with gatling guns. They proceed to dump several rounds of ammo into the area until Lucky Luke disarms them with his Improbable Aiming Skills. The only casualties? The lieutenant's horsewhip and the trumpeter's trumpet. And the lieutenant even refused to take cover!
- Another story, The Rivals of Painful Gulch, features two feuding families who have been fighting for ages but never wiped out each other since they were all such bad shots. At one point, the town undertaker even pleads for the hero, if he cannot bring peace between the families, to at least teach them how to aim so they can finish each other off. At the beginning of that story, the mayor is showing Luke around town when they come to a place where one member of the feuding families was cornered by three members of the opposing family. They had been firing at their victim for 15 minutes, but not a single shot hit. The wall at the spot is riddled with bullet holes everywhere, except for the place where their target stood.
- In one of the short stories, a young man tries to impress his girlfriend by convincing her that he is at the same level as Wyatt Earp, let alone Luke himself. The problem is, he is such a terrible shot that every bullet he fires goes backwards, hitting whatever target he has behind him (prompting Luke to take cover because he is standing behind him). At the end, this saves his reputation, because the bullets going the wrong way kills off a bank robber — he had the bank behind his back. It earns him the promotion to sheriff.
- The MAD parody "Bat Boy and Rubin!", from back when it was a comic, lampshaded a since-forgotten subtrope of this, where the heroes charge straight at villains who miss them with every shot:
Rubin: Poor fools! Don't you know us comic book characters are always missed when we run at the guns?
- Actually, the police forces and the military in the Marvel and DC universes, as well as the government agencies, all seem to have attended this Academy. When you think of the number of times Doctor Octopus, Poison Ivy, the Green Goblin, etc. could have all been easily stopped by a police sniper doing what both had to be done and was legally justified and simply putting a round into a brain... Instead, you've got dozens of cops or soldiers emptying magazines and not hitting a damn thing. The exception is if they are firing at a bulletproof supervillain, in which case they will hit every shot just to prove that guns are ineffective and a superhero will need to save the day.
- Justified in Marvel 1602, when the Alternate Continuity's X-Men use telepathy to make the gunmen see their ship as being in a different place than it really is.
- "Marvel What-The" lampshades it (like 100 other comic tropes):
Wolverine Parody: How come they don't hit us?
Punisher Parody: We got Good Guy bullets! They got the Bad Guy bullets!- In the same series, the trope backfires for the hero:
Punisher Parody: Bet you can't hit the skull! note
Bad Guys: BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Punisher Parody: [is riddled with holes everywhere, EXCEPT at his skull emblem]
- In the same series, the trope backfires for the hero:
- normalman: AIMLESS, a mysterious paramilitary organization under the thumb of the nefarious Cephalopod... well, their name says it all, really. They're all really poor marksmen, but it doesn't exactly matter since their nemesis, Sgt. Fluffy, Agent of S.C.H.M.U.C.K., is completely invulnerable to bullets. Or... is he? No, no he's not. Too bad he didn't know that when the Cephalopod got fed up with the indirect approach and decided to take care of the guy himself.
- The Punisher: Frank can attribute much of his long career to this, given the number of times crooks have emptied magazines at him and missed every time. Well, almost every time. He's been wounded, although being Made of Iron meant he could stay in the fight and be pretty much healed up by the next issue. He's even commented on it, saying most of the people he runs up against have no training and it shows. There's the others who hold their guns Gangsta Style, which sacrifices accuracy for looking cool. Averted in one issue, when he went up against ex-soldiers who were working as muscle for a cartel. They sighted down their weapons, used suppressing fire effectively, and did flanking maneuvers instead of just clustering together. Frank knew he was in deep trouble and quickly retreated.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): This trope is humorously lampshaded by Jet the Hawk in Sonic Universe #34 when soldiers of the Battle Bird Armada are futilely shooting at the Babylon Rogues.
Jet: The usual Armada standard of marksmanship.
Armada soldier: Hey, all that target practice is paying off. I almost hit the big guy. - Amusingly enough, in the comic book crossover between SpyBoy and Young Justice, Robin actually asks Spy Boy's team if they indeed took the Stormtrooper Marksmanship course — never realizing that HE was also displaying Stormtrooper level of accuracy.
- In the Italian comic Sturmtruppen, the new snipers and the execution team play this trope for laughs, often bordering with Epic Fail (for example they miss the Jewish prisoner they were supposed to execute while he was standing right in front of the gun's muzzles and holding them still against his chest.)
- Star Wars Tales: Even the Emperor seems to have a low opinion of his own men's aiming skills, as illustrated in a non-canon parody of The People's Court in which he rebuts Han Solo's visual defense depicting Greedo shooting first and missing by asking, "What was he, a Stormtrooper?"
- Superman:
- In Strangers at the Heart's Core, the leader of a criminal trio known as The Visitors sneaks into Linda Danvers' office, shoots at her, and barely grazes her shoulder, even though she is standing less than ten meters away and too stunned to move.
- Supergirl (1984): Even though they are hanging from a cliff, hence they are easy targets, Selena's fire spell cannot hit Supergirl, and it only hits Zaltar's shoulder after two tries.
- Tintin: Anyone who tries to fire at the titular character will either miss or only graze him. If they graze him, they will only ever graze his skull, and he'll be unconscious/in hospital long enough for them to make a plot-relevant getaway.
- Transformers:
- Decepticon Targetmasters Misfire and Aimless. Misfire held the record for failure in the Decepticon Academy and only passed because they needed every last soldier. Aimless, his gun, doesn't exactly help matters because he doesn't even try (Misfire, by contrast, actually is trying, and trying very hard; he's just plain incompetent when it comes to hitting a target). Megatron actually sees potential in Misfire, however, saying that he's much more deadly than your average gunman because he's a danger to everything except his target. In any case, he's become a surprisingly useful soldier to officers who use his lack of ability in creative ways, such as directing him to shoot at something other than the actual target.
- Strafe of the Technobots is inherently inaccurate. His targeting computer is defective, it's impossible for him to aim well... but tries to cover it up by saying things like "I shoot everywhere because that's where the enemies are."
- The Unbelievable Gwenpool is revealed to have this as one of her new powers: because she's the star of her book, her assailants' shots all miss her. Her powers are granting her Plot Armor and allowing her to escape them.
- Wonder Woman (1987): Lampshaded by Hawkgirl when she takes down Harpi during "The Witch and the Warrior", as all of Harpi's shots are failing to hit anything or anyone of tactical importance.
Hey, Harpi, you ever actually hit your target with those blast powers of yours?
- Zatanna (2010): When the Witch Hunters attempt to shoot down Zatanna with machine guns, but they somehow end up missing every shot despite all that she's doing to dodge them is swinging on a rope.
- In one Twisted Toyfare Theatre issue, a bunch of troublemaking Stormtroopers of various types are forced to community service in a retirement home for the Empire's most honored veterans: The Clone Troopers.
Stormtrooper: Wow, so you guys actually used to, you know, hit things with your guns?
Clone Trooper: Oh, yeah. Jedi, droids, small children... One time I hit the broad side of a barn!
Stormtrooper: Wow.
- Ahsoka: A NZRE Star Wars Story: Lampshaded by Sabine in E1.
Sabine: Do you know how easily we could defeat your troopers?
- Lampshaded in Bone(s) to Pick
when Amycus Carrow fires a badly-aimed Killing Curse after Tonks taunts him about the death of his sister Alecto.
Tonks: It seems that we have a graduate of the Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. [blank look from Amycus] And that's a perfectly good waste of that muggle reference. - The Bugger Anthology: "Groundhogmanay of the Daleks" features Dalek Yurtle, a Dalek even other Daleks make fun of for being a terrible shot.
(flashback starts)
Dalek Cheese and Wine: You couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo!
Dalek Darius: If you fell over, you'd miss the floor!
Dalek Bill is How Much This Month?!: You don't aim good.
(flashback ends)
Dalek Yurtle: Well, that last one was a little rough, but I get where they're coming from. - Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: The guns in Brainstorm's lair have terrible aim. Possibly justified as Brainstorm's terrible programming.
- The Guides Series: In the first installment, Luke brings up "the wide-spread belief amongst the galaxy that Stormtroopers can't hit the broadside of a Hutt at twenty paces". Having found himself frustrated by the poor design of Stormtrooper armour, he deduces that this particular issue is caused by the poor wiring of the battle HUD in the helmets, and takes it upon himself to fix this problem in his redesign of the armour set. This, alongside the many other improvements made in the redesign, wins him both the loyalty of the Stormtroopers and a military commendation in the second installment.
Luke: Several catastrophic glitches and malfunctions of its predecessor have been ratified in the SUTA, rendering the battle HUD functionally operational at last. In other words, Stormtroopers now finally have access to this revolutionary concept called 'aiming'.
- In Hunters of Justice, Control Freak takes over a film studio and creates a squad of actual Stormtroopers to guard the perimeter. Cyborg wastes no time in lampshading their infamously bad aim. It turns out this was an Invoked Trope. Control Freak used Stormtroopers because they would scare away police and civilians without actually hurting anyone.
- My Immortal: Enoby shoots at Snape and Lupin "a gazillion times" and fails to cause them any actual harm beyond making them fall off their broomsticks and break their camera lens.
- The examples from The Night Unfurls involve arrows/bolts, not bullets.
- In chapter 6 of the original, goblin archers attempt to ambush Kyril's company by firing arrows from above, but they fail to hit anyone (or if they do, they don't hit anyone important enough for the narrative to show it). The reason is that their targets are shown taking cover, and that the goblins' arrows are simply inaccurate. Another moment is where Sanakan moves out of cover under Kyril's orders, and reaches the gates unharmed while the rest follow her advance, also unharmed.
- In the very same chapter, Kyril and his two apprentices find themselves ambushed by Beasley's guards within the fortress of Feoh. There are at least two archers taking potshots at the three from a scaffolding, but their arrows never hit. The closest they can get is an arrow that flies past Hugh's ear. Then again, the three hunters have Super-Reflexes and are not stationary targets.
- Subverted in Chapter 11 of the original, where Kyril is shown being hit by crossbow bolts. From how he has to use a Blood Vial to heal himself, it shows that he did take damage from them, averting Annoying Arrows entirely.
- In BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows, the Visorak only ever land a hit when the target's not expecting it, yet the heroes' blasts hit almost always. That's 'cause the Visorak can only shoot upwards, and being quadrupeds, have difficulty bending forward. Sidorak, the King of the Visorak, meanwhile misses his huge target to demonstrate what a nobody he is.
- Averted in Batman: Gotham Knight. At first, the shootouts look like the typical "Mooks open fire with automatic weapons, Batman dodges them all easily". However, later in the movie, it's explained that Batman actually does get hit with a few bullets whenever faced with automatic fire; it's just that his armored suit protects him as long as he's at long range.
- In Jonny Quest vs. the Cyber Insects, for genetically engineered super-bugs, the cyber insects sure can't aim well. They can't even hit each other properly. The Red Shirt Quest Station scientists are better shots!
- In the climax of SPY×FAMILY CODE: White the villain's mooks all fail to shoot Loid on the other side of the control room. Loid, despite demonstrating expert marksmanship at a carnival game earlier in the film, doesn't fare much better in his attempts to fire back.
- There was an urban legend that went something like this: In 1971, a marshal and a general in Uruguay decided to settle a conflict the old-fashioned way: with a gun duel. After standing back to back, they walked twelve steps, turned around, and started shooting. First once. Then twice. Nothing happened. They ended up firing 37 shots each without hitting each other before the duel stopped by itself due to the lack of ammo. The explanation the men gave? They forgot to put on their glasses, apparently.
Another variation of this story has an alternate ending: After seeing that all their shots missed, they decided to call off the duel and shake hands. As they were approaching each other, one of them let out a yelp — his foot had been burned by stepping on a mass of lead where their bullets had hit each other and fused together. - Andreas Hofer was sentenced to death for his rebellion against Napoleon, and legend has it that after the first salvo of the firing squad assigned to his execution barely wounded him, Hofer — an experienced sharpshooter — mocked them for it.
- This happens in Animorphs, whenever the Yeerks (human- and Hork-Bajir-Controllers) fire Dracon beams at the Animorphs, they will usually (but not always) miss. In book 29, Visser Three even yells "Would it be asking too much for one of you to actually hit something?!!" (although in that particular case, they were trying to shoot a bird in flight in a cavern).
- Dave Barry's Big Trouble: Two of the characters are ex-Soviet arms dealers who moved to Miami for both the great weather and the bonanza of demand for "things that went bang." Among their many customers are "professional drug cartel enforcers who needed guns that shot thousands of rounds per minute to compensate for the fact that their aim was terrible."
- Justified in the Biggles stories The Professor and Biggles Finds His Feet. Biggles explains that most anti-aircraft gunners never hit anything as they aim directly at where they see the plane, and by the time the shell reaches the target, it has moved on. To successfully hit an aircraft it's necessary to aim at the point ahead of it where it will be when the shell arrives.
- The Ciaphas Cain novel The Last Ditch lampshades Ork lack of marksmanship. The troop transport carrying the Valhallan 597th has arrived via crashlanding, and the battalion is bracing for an Ork attack in the wreckage.
Corporal Magot: Always knew the greenies couldn't hit the broad side of a starship, but I never expected to see it for myself.
- Subverted, however, in that they're firing on instinct. Once they close in they actually start doing damage.
- Whenever Orks or Chaos cultists appear in a Cain novel, Cain will snark about their poor aim at least once. He has a minor freakout in Cain's Last Stand when he realizes the Chaos invaders are actually aiming their shots.
- The Dark Tower: Mob henchman Tricks Postino is an excitable idiot who just plays action movie scenes in his head instead of paying attention to what's going on in front of him during a gunfight. So when he fills a room with sustained full auto from his M16 because it works in the movies, he fails to notice when he cuts one of his own allies in half, fails to hit any enemies, and instead begins spraying the ceiling.
I got him!
- In a Serge Storms novel, this happens for justifiable reasons in an incident that is largely irrelevant to the plot. A man who was denied a driver's license for failing a vision test walked into a DMV and emptied a pistol at the clerks, hitting nobody.
- In The Dreamside Road, The Liberty Corps rifle forces subvert this to a degree. They aren’t sharpshooters, by any means, but they would have successfully shot Orson Gregory half a dozen times, in the first arc alone, if it weren’t for his armored coat.
- Until the last book, the Death Eaters of the Harry Potter series were generally poor shots, although with wands rather than guns. Actually justified in Half-Blood Prince in which Harry's friends happened to have all taken a rare luck potion before the Death Eaters showed up, which is an example of One-Shot Revisionism. Since, unlike guns, wands can do more than just kill, there's a Harry Potter-specific corollary to this trope, which we shall define thusly: "the more deadly and/or permanent the curse is, the less likely it is to hit its target."
- The Lord of the Rings features this in The Two Towers. Orcs are incompetent soldiers but are known to be good shots with arrows throughout the literature; however, during the Battle of Helm's Deep, thousands of Uruk-hai rain down what are described as black clouds of arrows on the Rohirrim defenders... and very, very few even get injured, let alone killed.
- In Les Misérables, in an inverted version of this trope, the students, who are the good guys, fire massive volleys of shots at the National Guard, and don't manage to hit any of them.
- In Andre Norton's Ordeal in Otherwhere, Shann, only brushed by the weapon fire, comments to Charis on how badly they are shooting. Charis suggests that they might not be shooting to kill.
- Star Wars Legends:
- Very often subverted in the books, especially when the protagonist is on the same side or at least neutral towards the Empire. It is not completely uncommon to see the Stormtroopers really are the best of the best. The Timothy Zahn novels in particular tend to portray Stormtroopers (and other Imperial personnel) as highly competent professionals.
- Subverted and lampshaded in Legacy of the Force: Invincible. Jaina Solo and Boba Fett are defending Roche against an Imperial assault. The stormtroopers first shoot Boba's gun, causing him to raise his hand, then blow a hole through it. Jaina is thinking "these weren't her mother's stormtroopers."
- Imperial Commando:501st, the final book in the Karen Traviss Republic Commando Series explains why the Clone Troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic, and the Imperial Stormtroopers are on polar opposite ends of the spectrum where accuracy is concerned: the clones that served in the Clone Wars were solely sourced from Kamino, using a process that takes ten years to produce a fully matured clone. Shortly before the rise of the Empire, Palpatine ordered the creation of lower-quality clones sourced from various other sources including a facility on Coruscant’s moon, that would be ready in less than a year. These lower quality clones couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, but they would help fill the ranks. Curiously, at least one of these clones was assigned to the Imperial Commando Special Unit of the 501st legion, which was initially formed from the especially badass Clone Commandos and ARC Troopers who had survived the Clone War.
- In the book series The Last of the Jedi, a Sequel Series to the Jedi Apprentice and Jedi Quest set after Revenge of the Sith, it's mentioned that, ever since the Clone (now Storm) Troopers transitioned to "peace-keeping" instead of fighting an active war, they have been instructed to hold down the trigger while aiming instead of conserving ammo. After all, individual blaster shots are cheap, blasters have no kick to throw off your aim while you bring the weapon to bear, and blaster shots flying all over the place tend to panic your enemies (who are now generally trouble-makers and law-breakers instead of battle-hardened enemy soldiers).
- Jim Stafford’s "Cow Patti" has the eponymous heroine face off against her father's killer in a shootout. Each fires dozens of rounds (from revolvers!), killing 40 townspeople but not even wounding each other.
- Voltaire's "Expendable" from the album "BiTrektual" references this trope, along with Red Shirt. According to the song, Imperial recruiters were part of the rebellion and intentionally signed up the worst people.
- The Odyssey has the slaughter of the Suitors, who fail to put their numbers to good use due to bad aim. It's a justified case, because Athena, knowing the Suitors heavily outnumber Odysseus and his small company, but are also in the wrong, worsens the aim of the Suitors and improves the aim of Odysseus, leading to the Curb-Stomp Battle the climax is.
- Laser War depicts three color-coordinated armies shooting Ray Guns with Frickin' Laser Beams at each other... and no one scoring a single hit.
- Feng Shui's mooks typically have low combat AVs, meaning the only time they actually hit named characters is on a series of sixes, which doesn't happen too often. Mooks with better AVs are more dangerous.
- GURPS:
- The trope takes its name from a "Cinematic" rule in GURPS, where the first shot the bad guys take always misses.
- Further, in the Bunnies & Burrows supplement, where a gun is an incomprehensibly dangerous weapon that the equally incomprehensibly dangerous humans use from time to time, the PCs (all rabbits) are given some comfort by this rule, which states that the first shot fired by a gun always misses. It's also available as a Silly Combat Rule in any other campaign.
- This will also inevitably get played straight in a realistic campaign involving untrained shooters (such as civilians with stolen guns or insurgents): shooting an average gun without any points in the Guns skill means that you roll at DX-4. The average human score for any stat is 10, so an average human with zero training needs a whole lot of luck to hit the target in combat conditions. (This increases at point blank range or during a careful range session, of course.) Even for professional soldiers, range and vision penalties and various other factors (such as being under suppression fire at the time) can heavily reduce accuracy. In an ultra-realistic campaign where one or two bullets can take even a PC out of the game, making everyone a terrible shot is often the only way to keep everyone alive. Tactical Shooting explains that this is realistic: Most criminals, terrorists, conscripts and irregular fighters have little to no training or practice with their guns, their guns are probably poorly maintained and may have mismatched ammo, they might have uncorrected vision problems, and in short only really hit anything by dumb luck, even before you get into Stupid Crooks who shoot Gangsta Style.
- Hong Kong Action Theatre's Importance system is not very kind to those of Minor importance. With their typical stats, they can take out characters of no importance, Minor importance, and Moderate importance with some effort. But for anyone higher up on the Importance scale (such as many Player Characters), they're going to need a natural 20 in order to even hit them at all.
- Star Wars: Legion may feature Stormtroopers as the key unit of the Empire's armies, but it zigzags this trope a bit. On one hand, Stormtrooper attacks roll white dice, which makes them generally inaccurate especially when compared to the Rebel Trooper's black dice. On the other hand, the Stormtrooper's DLT-19 heavy weapon is a long-range rifle that rolls red dice, making it far more accurate than the Rebel's white dice rolling equivalent, the Z-6. In addition, Stormtroopers unlike Rebel Troopers have an attack surge to hits, and also possess the 'Precise' keyword which makes aim tokens more powerful. Both of these abilities combined gives them a little more accuracy than their white dice imply at a glance.
- In Tales from the Floating Vagabond, characters with the Rambo Effect shtick can't be hit with guns at all from Point Blank or Close range (which means anyone who wants to actually hit them with a ranged weapon will always have a penalty to the attack roll) and gives an 80% chance that enemies will try to shoot the character anyway.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Da Orks love their A-Team Firing, not considering aiming to be that important and so being universally hilariously bad shots - and even if they did aim, their guns are almost always cobbled-together scrap with better than even chances of not even being rifled (their basic troops have the lowest Ballistic Skill in the game by comparison, getting a mere two out of six chance to hit anything). They make up for this with a great deal of enthusiasm, more, more and more dakka, huge, noisy and ludicrously rapid-firing guns — and sheer numbers, reasoning that if you point enough dakka at something, some of it will stick.
- Averted by the setting's Red Shirts, the Imperial Guard. About half their shots will land (and like the Orks, they make many, many of them. Actual Stormtroopers (elites) match Space Marines in their good 2-hit-out-of-3-fired accuracy.
- The Devil's Disciple: George Bernard Shaw lampshaded the realistic side of the trope back in 1897:
Richard: I think you might have the decency to treat me as a prisoner of war and shoot me like a man instead of hanging me like a dog.
General Burgoyne [sympathetically]: Now there, Mr. Anderson, you talk like a civilian, if you will excuse my saying so. Have you any idea of the average marksmanship of the army of His Majesty King George the Third? If we make you up a firing party, what will happen? Half of them will miss you: the rest will make a mess of the business and leave you to the provo-marshal's pistol. Whereas we can hang you in a perfectly workmanlike and agreeable way. [Kindly] Let me persuade you to be hanged, Mr. Anderson?
- The Brazilian website Charges.com.br featured an animation providing theories on why the intruder who broke into the President of Brazil's Palace wasn't killed. One of the theories is that the guards are Stormtroopers. One of them even says Stormtroopers never hit their targets.
- Haloid, where it takes a mob of Covenant (including Banshees) to drop the SPARTAN-II armor's force field. Once.
- The popular flash series Madness Combat features Faceless Goons that couldn't hit a sleeping elephant with a sniper rifle. This is arguably done for black humor as it's obvious the series takes place in a Crapsack World. If you look closely at the beginning of Madness Depredation there's a Lampshade Hanging. One of the henchmen clumsily shoots himself. Still, a few mooks do get lucky and have managed to hit the protagonists... Not that it helps them.
- A running gag in Red vs. Blue is that Church simply can never, ever hit anything. In the first season, he merely has the (fairly common among some players) problem of being a lousy sniper (despite bogarting the sniper rifle constantly). Later it's Flanderized to the point that he empties an entire clip trying to shoot someone that he is kneeling in front of, less than two feet away, and then has to ask Washington to do it for him. Partially justified in that Church is the copy of a man who was rejected for military service and never received training. Plus he was using a body built by someone with questionable electrical, mechanical, and programming skills. But mainly just played for laughs.
- When the Red and Blue teams squared off in DEATH BATTLE!, Church was deemed to be the most incompetent member of either team — even in the animation, he fails to shoot Donut (who is literally just standing there, dancing) and does nothing of note.
- In Legendary frog's Code Veronica flash, Alfred Ashford is shooting at Claire with his sniper rifle but keeps missing, and when she's right in front of him he shoots at her several times point blank and misses every shot, including one time when he hits the wall behind him. In fact, the only time he hits his target is when he shoots at the ceiling to make a point and a piece of the ceiling falls down and hits him on the head.
- RWBY:
- Seen in Vol. 2 Chapter 11, where Torchwick and more than five or so mooks fail to shoot an escaping Ruby, with her somehow maneuvering through all of the rounds fired without a scratch and with her back turned. No wonder Torchwick got so upset.
- Any Atlas troops, human or robot, will never, ever, hit their targets. In Volume 7, they chase after Team JNR and Oscar trying to arrest them, and despite shooting in an enclosed hallway from a relatively close range, each and every shot misses.
- discussed several times in Terrible Writing Advice, both with [JP complaining about its prevalence and with MegaCorps CEO mentioning that he’d never seen a battle where neither side landed a single shot before his PMC fought the Evil Empires stormtroopers.
- Starscream is noted to have this trait in DEATH BATTLE!. It's a large part of why he lost to Rainbow Dash — Starscream has trouble hitting giant robots, so there's no way he's going to be able to land a hit on the much smaller and more agile pony.
- In X-Ray & Vav, X-Ray gains Eye Beams, but he can't hit the broad side of a barn, blowing up the entire city while trying to hit two robbers who were forced to move in slow motion. He eventually improves as the series progresses.
- 8-Bit Theater:
- Black Mage firing his Hadoken spell at a volcano and somehow... MISSING IT.
Thief: Not that I'm complaining about it, but HOW DO YOU MISS A VOLCANO?!
- Another instance is when that same person tried to attack his friends and kill them. Good news, it hit. Bad news:
"How can you not only manage to miss us, but also zap yourself?"
- Black Mage firing his Hadoken spell at a volcano and somehow... MISSING IT.
- Lampshaded and justified in Ball and Chain as being due to Vidoc mostly hiring stuntmen as his goons.
- Clown Corps: The Shadow Circus's mooks have absolutely atrocious aim. One of them mentions that he shoots with his eyes closed and hopes he'll hit something.
- Darths & Droids:
- The Clone Troopers (they're still called that instead of Stormtroopers in Episode IV) are under the impression Han is a tourist visiting the Peace Moon. They're perplexed that he's shooting them, but they'll only fire warning shots back
until they've clarified the situation.
- In another strip
, Obi-Wan remarks that the slaughter of the Jawas can't be due to the clone troopers, as the shots are too precise for their rubbish aim.
- Later
Obi-Wan claims suggests that the clones inherited a nervous twitch Jango Fett had when firing at living targets, hence why they're more effective against the droid armies than against the rebels. When
Han tries to use R2 as a Human Shield, the droid gets hit because he's not a living being, causing someone to remark that if Han had shielded R2 instead, neither would have got hit.
- The scene where Leia gets shot in the arm is played
as a clone trooper firing a warning shot and missing, ie. trying not to hit and hitting.
- The Clone Troopers (they're still called that instead of Stormtroopers in Episode IV) are under the impression Han is a tourist visiting the Peace Moon. They're perplexed that he's shooting them, but they'll only fire warning shots back
- The trope picture is from Doghouse Diaries. In Target Practice
, a guy at Bad Guy Training Headquarters is only allowed to pass his marksmanship exam when he can just barely miss a human-shaped target with every bullet in an assault rifle magazine, fired full-auto.
- The penguins in Fluble are apparently the worst shots in the world: they can't hit the protagonist with tommy guns from two feet away.
- Subverted in Full Frontal Nerdity when Lewis proposes
that the Stormtroopers were being supplied incredibly shoddy weapons. When they complained about the quality to the Emperor, the supplier's sales rep convinced him the clones were just trying to cover up their own ineptitude.
- Frighteningly enough, the title character of Furmentation not only sucks at firearms but with incredibly dangerous magical discharges as well. The head Professor of the Magic School is also responsible for hospitalizing students.
- In Girl Genius. Gil is left standing apparently unscathed after a hail of bullets
, but soldiers mostly blame bobbing of their Walking Tank. Subverted, as after Gil "Deals With It", it turned out that he actually was wearing body armor and still got injured.
- Justified (and a little lampshaded) in Goblins. Two of the protagonists are having an argument about who creeps through a pipe first, while under attack by crossbow-wielding guards, and stand completely unharmed. The guard who appears to be in charge asks, "What's the matter with you!? Can't you even hit one of them?" To which the shooting guard replies "At this angle, the pipe is giving them some cover, sir."
- The Aimless Renegade of Homestuck believes his marksmanship skills to be impeccable.
In practice, not so much...
Oddly fitting, considering his title.
- Although The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!'s MIB Agent Jerry is certainly trigger-happy, it has been established that he can't hit the side of a barn. Even the one time
he actually hits what he's aiming at, it produces the opposite result of what he wants.
- In Irregular Webcomic!, the true reason for the Stormtroopers' poor marksmanship is revealed
. The results are demonstrated earlier
, with characters casually carrying on a conversation while two Stormtroopers attempt to shoot them.
- Minions At Work: They've got guns to do it!
Another page explains
that the traditional villainous incentive can improve the situation only when the minimum skill level is already better than this.
- A group of smugglers with automatic weapons in Wapsi Square can't hit Monica
at all, even at rather close range. We later find out that there is a slightly more complicated reason than just bad aim.
- One strip
of Weregeek has a tabletop game where the dices are true to the fiction.
- Parodied in this video
showing how the events of A New Hope would have turned out if the Imperial Stormtroopers had gotten a decent eye-care plan.
- Exaggerated in the last episode of Season 4 of Chad Vader, when Jeremy and a Stormtrooper fail to shoot each other, even though they're standing about four feet apart.
Jeremy: These blasters are terrible!
- CinemaSins:
- Exaggerated in the Guardians of the Galaxy review: Jeremy claims that the guards at the Kylnnote are such terrible shots that even Stormtroopers are laughing at them for it.
- In the review of A New Hope, during the scene where Luke's home is found in ruins and made to look like the Sand People did it, Obi-Wan notes that the blast markings on the Sandcrawler are too accurate for them and that only Stormtroopers are that precise. The reviewer simply laughs for a few seconds before adding a sin.
- Lampshaded in a CollegeHumor video
. Stormtroopers are okay shots until they put on their helmets.
- Parodied in Cracked's 42 Sci-Fi Movies (If They Were Updated for Realism)
, which shows a Star Wars stormtrooper losing his job for missing a paper target.
- Angry Joe in Kickassia, which eventually got lampshaded by Linkara:
Linkara: Excellent job, Mr. Joe. Except for the fact that you missed.
- In LongBeachGriffy's skit Bad Guys in Movies have Terrible Aim
, the hero tries to jump for his gun from behind cover, misses, then realizes after several seconds that the villains aren't hitting him even though he's only six feet away. It gets even more ridiculous when he stands still and one of the shooters keeps firing in every direction except at him while shouting for him to stop moving so much.
- Played straight in the Nostalgia Critic's review of Catwoman (2004). A load of cat-women storm into his room and try to gun him down with guns concealed in their high-heels. Despite the action taking place in a relatively small room, none of the women manage to hit the Critic.
- Downplayed in The Pirates Covered in Fur. Most of Lyle's soldiers shoot erratically at the protagonists and hope for the best. Nevertheless, some of them end up catching a stray bullet.
- Resident Evil Abridged presents an egregious example by having Wesker fire a shot at Rebecca and miss, even though she was standing perfectly still — only five feet in front of him! She falls down and plays dead anyway.
- The enemy soldiers in Shock Troopers manage to miss every shot they take at the two protagonists... who have to run straight towards the bad guys and hit them at point blank range with a defibrillator to do any damage.
- The Sombreros from the Sombrero Hattist War blog are living embodiments of this, not only rarely hitting anything, but also managing to hit each other.
- This trope is bound to be brought up in Yuro's battleship guides.
- In the Odin video, even with improved accuracy, Yuro points out that the accuracy is as unreliable "...as an opinion made by someone with an anime avatar".
- In the video about Mikasa, Yuro compares the Mikasa's dispersion to a doughnut with the target in the middle; that is, the shells will hit anything BUT the target most of the time.
- This meme
.
A redshirt and a Stormtrooper get into a fight. The Stormtrooper misses every shot. The redshirt dies anyway.

