Parrying Bullets

Star Wars: TCG - Soresu Training by AnthonyFoti

"Did... Did you just cut my bullet in two!?"

— Aimee Matchlock, Bravely Second

Parrying bullets is when a character uses a sword (or other melee weapon) to block gunshots. Characters capable of this are able to wield their blade with such speed and precision that they can swat bullets out of the air — in extreme cases, even emerging from automatic weapons fire completely unscathed. Sometimes this is portrayed as a feat of pure skill, though more often it's made possible by Super-Reflexes or Combat Clairvoyance. In any case, it's certainly an indication of Implausible Fencing Powers.

Generally the purview of the Master Swordsman, the ability to parry bullets is a good way to even the odds in Guns vs. Swords. Nor is it limited to regular bullets — it also applies to Ray Guns, Energy Balls, or anything else that deals death at velocities too high for normal human beings to defend against. In some cases, a special blade might be needed to withstand the rigors of this sort of use.

See also Dodge the Bullet and Bullet Catch. In extreme cases, this can be used to deflect incoming fire back at the shooter, becoming a sort of Attack Reflector — and if the attacker then deflects it back at the player in a video game, you have yourself a Tennis Boss. May involve a character deflecting bullets by spinning their weapon. For cases where someone deflects a bullet by firing at it, see Shoot the Bullet; when this is a normal gameplay mechanic rather than a Moment of Awesome, see Destructible Projectiles.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Afro Samurai: Evident in the first 5 minutes, and endemic throughout. Bullets are cleaved; memorably, the title character cleaves a bullet, and the shrapnel kills several of his opponents, leaving him unharmed. Upon seeing this, the man who tried to shoot Afro quite rightly says "What the...that's impossible!"
• In Baccano!, Chane Laforet deflects bullets with knives. Bullets fired from a pump-action rifle. In the novels, Chane's apparent Bullet Deflection was a fluke (pointed out in a monologue by Rachel who was observing the fight from behind Chane. (Ladd's perspective was obscured slightly by the smoke blowing back from the engine which a wind gust has pushed between them and he simply assumed she could deflect bullets and threw his gun away after the first first shot. The anime plays it up by adding extra shots, removing the fluke-nature, and removing Rachel from the scene (in the novel it's from Nice and Rachel's perspective), instead showing what one would guess is actually Ladd's recollection of the event (with his own embellishment).
• Berserk: Guts regularly deflects projectiles with his sword, either by swinging it so the wind blows them away, or just using his BFS as a shield.
• Black Lagoon
  • Ginji is fast enough to cut bullets in half with his sword, making him a more than equal match for any normal gunman. Revy, naturally, sees this as a challenge.
  • There's also Sawyer the Cleaner, who can deflect bullets with her chainsaw. Her deflections are more like Improbably Lucky Fencing Powers compared to Ginji's. In the same episode, an apparent mook also deflected bullets shot by freaking Revy and Eda at point-blank range with his chaingun.
• Karman in Blood+ blocked a revolver bullet with his spear.
• Dragon Ball Z: it's not uncommon for one fighter to react to an opponent's Ki Attacks by simply swatting them away with their hands.
• Fabricant 100: Hugo, one of the weakest in Mortsafe, can slap bullets away with his bare hand.
• Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children: Cloud's enhanced SOLDIER skills enable him to move and react fast enough to parry automatic gunfire from multiple directions at once. Seen when he fought Kadaj and his gang in the Forgotten City, and later while pursuing them on the highway.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: King Bradley is briefly shown doing this with his saber. Implied to only be possible for him due to his Ultimate Eye allowing him to perfectly predict each bullet's path while his Charles Atlas Superpower gives him fast enough reflexes to make use of that information.
• Van of GUN×SWORD is able to, among other things, block fully-automatic machine-gun fire by spinning his sword like a propeller, which also cuts the bullets apart!
• Shizu, in the Coliseum episodes of Kino's Journey, deflects bullets with his sword.
• Lupin III:
  • Goemon Ishikawa has this as one of his signature moves; he can not only block automatic fire, he can cut the bullets in half as well. And while many attributes his abilities to his invincible sword, it's shown that he can do the trick with any sword, it's just that a normal sword gets damaged by the bullets.
  • Lupin himself has done the trick. Being intelligent enough to know what's needed for it, he only did it the rare times he happened to be wielding Goemon's sword while he was being shot at (his usual response would be to dodge the hell away from the gunfire and take cover before firing back).
• In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray, Lowe is able to have the Astray Red Frame cut a bazooka shell from the Astray Gold Frame with the Red Frame's Gerbera Straight katana. This is thanks to the fact that his suit is co-piloted by his super computer 8. However, cutting it causes the shell halves to explode, rattling him.
  • Kira Yamato does this extensively during the final battle of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, only he's using his Freedom Gundam's Beam Sabers to deflect Beam Rifle shots... A feat no other Mobile Suit pilot has replicated before or since.
• In My-HiME, Shizuru is able to deflect Natsuki's bullets with her naginata element at the start of their battle. In an earlier episode, Miyu is able to cut Duran's shells in half.
• During the Mages vs Mars arc of Negima! Magister Negi Magi, one of the mages manages to slice one of Chao's teleporting bullets in half... only to learn at their expense that this doesn't prevent their teleportation effect from activating.
• Most of the accomplished swordsmen in One Piece are shown to be capable of this, no matter the difference between the sword and the projectile. Mihawk can deflect tiny bullets with his BFS just as easily as Tashigi can deflect cannonballs with her katana. They can also slice approaching projectiles of any size up to huge cannonballs cleanly in two, such that the two separated halves perfectly avoid whatever they were intending to damage.
• Stocking from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt has impressive sword skills with her katanas, enough so that she can easily deflect bullets so that they disarm an opponent off of a ricochet. This often takes a backseat to Panty's pistol skills, however.
• The eponymous creatures of Parasyte can deflect bullets with their extremely fast and durable Combat Tentacles. Migi points out they'd be helpless against something like a flamethrower, and the police get favorable results with shotguns.
• Rebuild World:
  • The Artificial Intelligence agent for hire Olivia uses a Lost Technology Laser Blade to redirect a Converging-Stream Weapon attack launched by several government Mini-Mecha.
  • In one battle, Akira uses his sword which uses the Abnormal Ammo of liquid metal formed into place by force-fields, to deflect tank rounds, and the force-field holding the metal is altered by his Virtual Sidekick Alpha to deflect Energy Weapon attacks from differently armed tanks as well.
• The third chapter of Rurouni Kenshin has some gangsters attack Kamiya Kasshin-ryu dojo with a wooden cannon (a black powder muzzle-loader with a barrel carved from oak, firing a clay cannonball). Kenshin chops the cannonball in half in mid-flight with the sharp edge of his reverse-blade sword and rather irritatedly tells the gangsters to beat it.
• In the first episode of the second Sakura Wars OVA, Sakura manages to deflect a full barrage from a machine gun with her sword.
• Demon Eyes Kyo from Samurai Deeper Kyo is shown to be fast enough to easily cut musket balls in mid-air and kill the gunmen in a single second.
• Samurai 7: The samurai can do this, among other Implausible Fencing Powers. Several times, shells are cleaved asunder and the most skilled of samurai are even able to deflect Wave Motion Guns.
• In StrikerS Sound Stage X series, the Mariage has no need for Deflector Shields since they can block a barrage of Magic Bullets with a single arm blade. This Sound Stage also had a scene that had Fragile Speedster Erio using Strada to deflect physical bullets fired by an Evil Poacher.
• Sword Art Online: In the game Gun Gale Online, the lightsaber is considered a Joke Weapon because of its extremely limited range compared to every other weapon (which are guns). Kirito decides to use it regardless because that's the kind of weapon he's used to, and leaves everyone in GGO gobsmacked when he starts using it to deflect bullets (Kirito admits that Star Wars was an inspiration), close the distance, and slice people up. Slightly more plausible in that bullets' paths in GGO are shown to everyone beforehand, so it is possible to predict a bullet to some extent (still requires incredible reflexes), but Kirito takes it a step further and predicts the bullet lines, by carefully watching his opponents' eyes to see where they will aim. The skills he learned blocking bullets in GGO translate back to ALfheim Online, where he is capable of cutting magic spells clean out of the air; although spells in ALO move slower than bullets in GGO, their hitboxes are practically microscopic, and nullifying them requires hitting them with a Sword Skill (which is a system-guided swing or series of swings, so he needs to be very familiar with an SS to know when to activate it and where to aim).
• Tearmoon Empire: Dion can cut down multiple arrows from forest elves, which keeps Mia alive after she goes I Shall Taunt You as part of a gambit to withdraw her troops.

Comic Books

• Wonder Woman can do this with her indestructible bracelets.
• In All-New Wolverine, Laura pulls this off with her claws, neatly slicing a bullet fired at her face in two. From point-blank range.
• In Grimm Fairy Tales: Genesis, Robyn Hood battles a swordswoman who keeps cutting her arrows out of the air.
• The Astro City hero El Hombre could knock bullets out of midair with his specialized magnetic bullwhip.
• Shang-Chi's villainous sibling Sister Hammer can do this when spinning her namesake weapon.
• In one The Mighty Thor comic, someone tried to shoot Balder with a pistol. He proceeded to not only deflect the bullet with his sword, but use the blade to guide it in the opposite direction and cause it to fly back at the shooter with enough force to create a small explosion on impact.
• In a Spider-Man comic, Spidey is up against Thunderball from the Wrecking Crew, and when the police open fire on him, he spins his ball-and-chain in a circle to deflect the bullets fired at him.
• Daredevil can sometimes do this with his reinforced billy club.

Fan Works

• Fate/Harem Antics:
  • Berserker/Raikou blocks Archer/Drake's bullets with her katana several times.
  • Gunner/Oda Nobunaga is also able to block Archer's bullets with her sword.
• The Red Dragon's Saber: Artoria blocks Freed's bullet with her invisible sword when he tries to shoot her at point-blank range.
• The Progenitor Chronicles (a Resident Evil fanfic): During the attack on Bear University, the MC, armed with a bow, shoots an arrow at a Tyrant and it just slaps it away (which isn’t entirely surprising). Later, he fires a gun at Illumina, who proceeds to do the exact same thing with the bullet.
  The MC: “Oh come on! I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen if I used a gun!”

Films — Live-Action

• Variant in Azumi, a film set in feudal Japan where the climax has Azumi cutting an arrow fired at her into half. The two half-arrows then hits two random mooks behind Azumi. This movie came out 6 years before X-Men Origins: Wolverine by the way.
• Haru is able to do it at the end of Beverly Hills Ninja, his ninja training finally coming to the surface, after spending most of the film making everyone ask What the Fu Are You Doing?. He uses a pair of swords to casually swat away an entire clip from a submachinegun.
• The DC Extended Universe version of Wonder Woman also uses her indestructible bracers to deflect bullets or even energy beams, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, Justice League and Wonder Woman 1984.
• Deconstructed in Deadpool 2. Cable empties his guns into Deadpool while he slashes at the bullets, and is perfectly fine afterwards. Of course, that last part is due to his ridiculously strong healing factor, not because he successfully deflected any of the bullets or anything.
  Wade: (looking at the numerous new holes in his body) Wooooo! Your bullets... they're really fast!
• Justified in Dune (2021). Duncan Idaho is able to use his sword to knock away a hunter-seeker burrowing its way through his personal Deflector Shields (which slows such projectiles but doesn't stop them).
• A more realistic (and era-appropriate) example than most happens in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, where Kili manages to deflect a few arrows fired at him by goblins with his sword. However he looks enormously surprised at actually pulling it off and quickly settles for grabbing a larger ladder to catch the arrows instead.
• Star Wars: Jedi can use their lightsabers to deflect incoming blaster shots back at their enemies. Justified in that they are explicitly using the Force to predict the shots before they are fired; ordinary people cannot manage it. And sufficient weight of fire can still overwhelm them, as demonstrated in Attack of the Clones and especially Revenge of the Sith. A lightsaber blade can only be in one place at a time, and even a Jedi has limits to how quickly they can swing it; one game even had a weapon that was designed with a tri-shot ability specifically to overwhelm a Jedi's defenses, by firing three bullets at the same time in a wide triangular pattern so that they could only deflect two. According to some sources that may or may not be canon, in a rare case for the franchise of old-fashioned projectile weapons conveying an advantage, lightsabers cannot deflect literal bullets: either they'll be cleanly cut in half and carry on (if they catch the "edge" of the beam), pass through it unaffected, or melt into searing hot slag that is still headed straight for your face at a high velocity.
• Babydoll in Sucker Punch. In an imaginary world which lives on Rule of Cool.
• In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Wade Wilson takes out an entire roomful of gun users with two swords while deflecting the hailstorm of fire, at first by basically spinning his blades really fast as opposed to any lightsaber-type ultraprecision. Then the ultraprecision comes in, and you have him cutting a bullet into two halves which go on to kill two shooters behind him.
• In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn performs an era-appropriate variation when he uses his sword to swat aside a knife flying towards his head. Impressively, there's no CGI involved in the stunt; Viggo Mortensen actually parried a knife thrown at him by the other actor.

Literature

• The Locked Tomb: In the second book, Matthias Nonius deflects bullets with his sword and knife without a blink. While they are in a Shared Dream, this happens before people realize they can bend the rules of the dream, and no one seems the least bit surprised (impressed, but not surprised). This might help explain why the Nine Houses consider guns primitive.
• In Ravenor Returned, Ravenor's agents encounter a hostile swordswoman who can do this. Nayl, after congratulating her for deflecting his first two shots, switches to full auto: she manages to block the first three bullets before the rest turn her into Swiss cheese.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: When Oliver and Nanao battle the Starter Villain, they at one point catch Nanao in the open with a fireball that Oliver doesn't have time to counterspell. To the surprise of them both, Nanao cuts the spell with her katana athame. Oliver theorizes that she instinctively synchronized her mana to the incoming spell's element, allowing her to disrupt it.
• A Shadowrun novel, Steel Rain, was named for its heroine's use of this version in its opening chapter. Against machine gun autofire, no less.
• Sienkiewicz Trilogy: Michał Wołodyjowski, the Master Swordsman of all Master Swordsmen, parries arrows.
• Retribution Falls. Grayther Crake creates a daemon-infused cutlass that he gives to Captain Darian Frey as the price of his passage. At one point a rival pirate captain shoots Frey at close range and leaves him for dead. To Frey's amazement, the cutlass instinctively blocked the bullets and isn't even scratched.
• Ia from Theirs Not to Reason Why parries not just bullets but lasers with her sword. Justified by her precognitive powers; she knows beforehand where the projectile is going to be, so she can put her sword in the way.
• Angels and demons in Wars of the Realm have impossibly fast reaction times, so they often dodge bullets or, if it's more convenient, parry them with their swords.
• The Custodes Super Soldiers in Watchers of the Throne can move their weapons fast enough to deflect bullets. It's more for flourish than effect - their armour is well able to withstand whatever the enemy throws at them - but as an intimidation technique, it works wonders.

Live-Action TV

• Arrow. Some villains confronted by Oliver Queen are badass enough to deflect his arrows with their own weapons. This includes a Spanish assassin he confronts in "Dead to Rights" (using knives) and Prometheus in Season 5 (using a shuriken).
• Used in Due South by a middle-aged woman wielding a cutlass. She could do this because she was a Marine.
• In Halo (2022), the Arbiter uses his Energy Sword to block the Master Chief's Magnum fire, a Mythology Gag to Thel 'Lodamee doing so in The Package.
• This type was busted by the MythBusters, though it must be noted that with the right circumstances they shattered one sword with another.
• Super Sentai/Power Rangers:
  • In general, Rangers are perfectly capable of deflecting blaster fire with swords.
  • Power Rangers Zeo: In his rematch against Silo during the Super Zeozords' debut battle, Tommy blocks the missiles Silo fires at him with his Zord's sword.
  • Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger / Power Rangers S.P.D.: Master Swordsman DekaMaster / Shadow Ranger can do this. In his debut fight, he uses a redirected enemy shot to free a hostage seconds from being blown up.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: In his final fight with Basco, Captain Marvelous does this while charging at him.
• Demonstrated by Sara in the Witchblade pilot and repeatedly after that, even against submachine guns on full auto on occasion. It's all the Witchblade's doing—without it Sara's just an ordinary police detective with a gun.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: In most editions, monks have the ability to deflect arrows and other nonmagical projectiles fired or thrown at them. Depending on the edition, they can eventually learn to reflect said projectiles right back at the attacker. And in 3.0 Edition, the Epic Level Handbook gives them the option to learn how to deflect any effect that requires a ranged attack roll, even spells (which can be combined with the reflection ability above).
• In one Paranoia mission, two NPCs use their mutant power of Ridiculously High Agility to block/deflect laser blasts with their force swords.
• Several Warhammer 40,000 spin-off games have this.
  • In Inquisitor, characters are able to take a talent called "Deflect Shot" which allows them to attempt and deflect any shots fired at them as long as they are armed with either a power weapon (a melee weapon surrounded by a matter-disrupting energy field) or a force weapon (which is psychically linked to its wielder). This is also demonstrated in the last book of the Eisenhorn trilogy.
  • In Dark Heresy, characters explicitly cannot parry bullets or lasers (but can parry other ranged attacks, like thrown knives). There is a Talent which allows characters to parry bullets (although at great difficulty), but laser (energy) attacks cannot be parried at all.
• GURPS Basic has "Parry Missile Weapons," which is the barely possible version of this; it only works with spears and other thrown weapons and ''possibly'' arrows. However, GURPS Martial Arts introduced ''Force Swordsmanship'', which in addition to other skills, lets its high-level devotees combine Parry Missile Weapons with the "chi" based power of Precognitive Parry to do everything described above — as long as you have your own "force sword", that is. Otherwise it's just a good way to get your blade shattered/melted/disintegrated before the bullet or beam hits you. Not to worry, though; Force-Swordsmanship can also teach you to build your own force sword! And yes, this is a literal case of Disney Owns This Trope.

Video Games

• Absented Age: Squarebound: Iris can learn a skill that allows her to deflect certain projectiles with well-timed slashes in ARPG mode. Since this is a party skill, this allows other playable characters to perform the same action.
• City of Heroes: The Broadsword, Katana, and Staff Fighting power sets all have abilities that will increase your defense against Lethal damage,^*and melee attacks reducing the chance that any attack that does Lethal damage will hit you. This includes bullets.^* And knives, thrown or swung, and certain kinds of grenades, amusingly enough.
• MechRunner: The XP-41 can parry enemy bullets in robot mode with a simple swipe of its sword.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid: Cyborg Ninja has demonstrated the ability to cleave bullets in midair. However, since he has also demonstrated the ability to hold up a gigantic mecha by the foot temporarily, this is a fairly minor manifestation of his power.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: Raiden and the Tengu mooks get the ability to deflect gunfire after about two minutes of practicing with a high-frequency blade against nothing, with no indication they've ever touched a sword before.
  • In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Raiden, now a Cyborg Ninja himself, can deflect bullets fired by enemies while sprinting. He can also slice missiles launched at him into pieces.
• The titular hero from The Legend of Tian-ding can parry bullets and rockets with his fists. It helps that firearms in the game tends to shoot Painfully Slow Projectile.
• In League of Legends, Fiora has a basic ability called Riposte. This ability allows her to parry every single ability in the game, including disabling effects. Since some of the characters in the game use bullets as their main source of damage, she can be considered part of the trope.
• In GUNZ Online, you can deflect enemy bullets with a sword; this is an Acceptable Break From Reality, because it makes bringing a sword to a gun fight possible and thus adds an extra dimension to the gameplay. Besides, the entire game is about moving around a Badass Longcoat; you can't get any cooler than that.
• You can deflect and even reflect projectiles with melee weapons in Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict. However, it's based on player input, not automatic—among other things, this makes it ineffective against high-rate-of-fire weapons.
• In Halo, it is possible to deflect rockets from Halo 3 onward, either with precise (read: lucky) explosions from grenades or other rockets, or with precise swings from the gravity hammer.
• In Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army, during part the final battle, Raidou can block cannon fire with just his katana held out in a defensive pose. If it wasn't just so badass, it would be ridiculous.
• In Rogue Galaxy, Seed. Every time Jaster and friends fight him, he will, sometimes, parry bullets with his sword doing a really fast circular move. And swords. And flamethrowers. And abilities like the Ilussion Sword. His sword becomes more of a shield. Also, when attacked with a melee attack, the character that provided the attack will be damaged.
• In Tekken 8, Yoshimitsu parries Bryan's machine gun bullets with his sword in their special intro.
• The Witcher
  • Subverted when the Professor comments that he's heard witchers can parry arrows in flight just before he shoots Leo, a witcher trainee, with a crossbow. Later played straight when Geralt blocks a crossbow bolt, causing the Professor to remark, "I guess it was true after all."
  • In The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings you can get this ability by spending two levels in the appropriate skill; you can even deflect arrows straight back at the enemy!
• Total War: Warhammer II has High Elf Swordmasters of Hoeth, who can do this with their two-handed swords due to being Old Master (by human standards, with elves being Long-Lived). This makes up for their lack of shields somewhat, but they cannot parry while engaged in melee. The ability helps them to be some of the best heavy infantry in the world (which is saying something).
• Total War: Warhammer III: Aekold Helbrass uses his Flying Weapon Windblade to cut down arrows.
• In Resident Evil 5, there's an achievement for using an army knife to cut a crossbow bolt out of the air.
• Beyond Sunset have you using your trusty katana to deflect shots back into enemies constantly. You are a badass Cyber Ninja who spends the entire game kicking robot ass, after all.
• Bladed Fury allows you to deflect projectile attacks when you equip the Cicada Wings and Crimson Mass at the same time.
• Hakumen from BlazBlue can stop most projectile attacks with a well-timed slash from his BFS. It gets even better in the sequel; any time he hits a projectile, a void is created, which will stop all projectiles that hit it. Most of this has to do with Ookami's anti-magic abilities though.
• Characters with Wired Reflexes in Shadowrun can block shots from anything not explosive as long as they are facing the shooter, though it doesn't work against machine guns very well.
• In E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, the Facere Mortis and Damocles swords can be used to deflect/absorb bullets - even if you're being shot at by a guy holding a Sulfatum.
• Just like in his anime and manga appearances, Goemon Ishikawa XIII pulls this off in Playstation 2's Lupin The3rd Treasure Of The Sorcerer King. Simply holding a button causes him to enter a weird sort of rapid slicing motion that allows him to deflect all incoming gunfire. Even though this trope is one of the well-known hallmarks of his character, this game is the only one to take advantage of his power.
• Samurai Western, being a game where you're a samurai in the Wild West, gives you this ability to counter bullets fired at your direction via katana. Though the opening cinematics have a Cutscene Power to the Max version where you parry a hundred bullets fired at you, almost effortlessly.
• Mitsurugi is seen deflecting a bullet with his sword in the intro of SoulCalibur II. This reflects his Character Development as he is now strong enough to not need Soul Edge to defeat any man wielding rifles.
• Hiryu will do this with laser blasts in Strider (2014), once his Cypher gets a new "Reflect" upgrade that lets him return shots back at enemies. Hiryu was also able to do this in the LCD game made by Tiger Electronics.
• Devil May Cry: Dante usually prefers to block enemy fire by shooting it, but Vergil can deflect bullets by spinning his katana. Vergil has also shown he can catch the bullets with his spinning katana, line them up in the ground and then fling them back with the tip of his sword with the same deadliness as if they had been shot from a gun...which then shows that Dante can cut them perfectly in half even with his oversized sword. Really, these twins don't even bat an eye at Implausible Fencing Powers.
• Mega Man X: One of Zero's upgrades is to let him deflect bullets with a swing of his Z-Saber. In Mega Man Zero this can also be done in the fourth game with the correct upgrade.
• In Hulk, one way to defeat tanks sent to kill the Hulk is to wait for it to fire a cannon shell at you and punch it straight back at the tank.
• The Super Robot Wars series has the skill "Sword Cut", which allows a mecha equipped with a melee weapon to cut missiles, grenades, and Attack Drones out of the air (it also lets you deflect enemy melee attacks). Making it even more implausible, some mecha like Daimos and members of the Mobile Fighter G Gundam cast don't use swords but their bare hands.
• Possible to do in Superhot in any level with a katana on it. It even nets the player an achievement "So it is possible!". MIND CONTROL DELETE takes it even further; in the player's hands, the katana reflects bullets, to poentially kill the shooter, and there's an upgrade that lets its reflect all bullets (e.g. an entire shotgun's spread) when one is struck.
• In Overwatch, Genji can deflect projectiles back at their users (or their allies) with his sword. It works against almost everything projectile based, but beam and 'spray' attacks are unaffected. He also can't deflect melee attacks, but getting hit by one while Deflect is active stops it damaging him (the only exception to this is his own Swift Strike).
• In Heroes of the Storm, Varian Wrynn has the Parry ability, which allows him to parry any basic attack and can even be upgraded to parry magic attacks. Even unupgraded, this allows Varian to parry things like Greymane's flintlock bullets, Tracer's lasers, and Sgt. Hammer's 180mm cannon.
  • Just like the Overwatch example above, Genji retains his Deflect skill, yet it functions differently from his home game. In this game, Genji can parry any incoming attacks directed at him, and it doesn't straight-up reflect projectiles like how it works in Overwatch, but taking damage while Deflect is active causes him to throw a kunai at his attacker.
• NanoBreaker allows you to deflect projectiles with your Laser Sword, and it's in fact the best way to deal with the tiny drone-like enemies which exclusively uses ranged attacks and dies in a single hit.
• All characters in Nuclear Throne can do this with most melee weapons. The weapons can reflect bullets and shotgun pellets, which will damage the enemy instead of the player afterward; grenades, which explode normally and deal damage to everyone; and destroy acid pellets, toxic gas, rockets, and plasma balls.
• In Enter the Gungeon, the Bullet can erase enemy projectiles with Blasphemy, the only true melee weapon in a game filled with guns (save for Casey). Huntsman, Fightsabre and a couple other weapons can also erase/reflect projectiles, though they otherwise act like ranged guns.
• The Stage 2 boss in Lethal Enforcers 1 can block bullets with his swords, but not always.
• Street Fighter V: In the climax battle in story mode cutscene, Birdie faces one of the Shadaloo Dolls, Fevrier, who shoots at him with her machine pistol. He manages to block them all with just his chains.
• In Street Fighter games she appears in, Rose can deflect projectiles thrown at her with her Soul Reflect move, i.e using her Soul-Powered scarf. She can choose to deflect it straight forward, or diagonally up to anticipate jumping opponents.
• In Street Fighter EX, Cracker Jack can literally bat or kick projectiles out of the way with his special moves.
• Street Fighter III's parry, which requires the player to press forward at the right time against an attack to completely negate all damage and be able to react faster than if you'd simply blocked it. This parry will even work on projectile attacks like the Hadoken.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3:
  • Taskmaster's Shield Master special move can let him deflect projectiles thrown at him with his sword, back at the attacker.
  • Sentinel can simply kick/punch incoming projectiles to stop them, and Vergil can do the same with his katana.
• Robo Recall has an unusually gun-centric variant in that the player can swat nearby enemy bullets in Bullet Time right back at them for a "Ping-Pong" bonus with any guns they are currently holding. It's more difficult than the Catch and Return technique that gives you a "Return to Sender" bonus, but doesn't require dropping your guns first and yields more points when done successfully.
• At one point in Sunrider Mask of Arcadius, Asaga saves her friend Chigara from a sniper by using her Ryder’s BFS to deflect a bullet traveling at one-point-five times the speed of light. Icari, who witnessed the whole thing, lampshades the impossibility of this feat. The act itself is an early hint that there’s more to Asaga than the plucky freelance Ryder pilot she makes herself out to be.
• Yakuza 0 has a skill for Majima's Slugger style that allows him to parry bullets with an aluminum bat he found in an alley.
• Zhin's Counter ability from Paladins not only counters bullets, but every other type of projectile as well, even projectile-based Ultimates. Countering a projectile causes him to send out a melee-range counterattack. However, he can only counter one projectile per use unless he has his Retaliation legendary card equipped.
• Both Cuphead and Mugman have the ability to turn the straws in their heads into hands and parry-slap any sort of projectile out of their way... as long as said projectile is colored pink.
• Taking the cake for "most ludicrous parried attack" and "broadest definition of parry," the Ronin in Titanfall 2 is capable of blocking nuclear explosions with its sword and surviving. Try it, if you're crazy enough. At full health, a Ronin can bring its sword up to block a Nuclear Ejection and get away, badly battered and probably covered in a fine carbonized film, but in one piece.
• The first mission of Killer is Dead pits you, a katana-wielding assassin, against a man with a prosthetic machine gun arm. The entire "boss" is utterly trivial because you automatically parry every bullet fired at you while the boss freaks out and tries to get away from you.
• Mask de Smith from killer7 ups the ante by headbutting a bullet out of mid-air without even damaging his luchadore mask.
• Travis from No More Heroes can parry bullets with his beam katana, but doing so eats away at its battery charge (especially if he's blocking an entire clip from a machine pistol). The only exception is Dr. Peace's charge attack, which is powerful enough to send him flying across the arena.
• Bunny Must Die features a Street Fighter III-style parry maneuver that works on literally anything that causes damage, from projectiles (of which there are many) to even landing in Spikes of Doom.
• NieR: Automata features destructible enemy projectiles. While most of the time you'll be parrying bullets with your own bullets, there's a chip that allows you to cut through them with your sword as well.
• Warframe: Any melee weapon can be used to deflect anything. This used to be taken to absurd degrees (a brief oversight made it possible to deflect suffocation). Then your Tenno blocks the bullets from multiple guns, each with fire rates in the dozens per second, with gauntlets. Your character is swatting hundreds of bullets out of the air with their hands.
• V1 from ULTRAKILL can parry enemy projectiles made of Hell energy rather than bullets with their own arm. Not only does parrying deflect projectiles back to enemies for massive damage, parrying heals V1 to max health. If parrying enemy projectiles aren't crazy enough, V1 can parry their own shotgun shells to make them faster, stronger, and completely accurate, turning their shotguns into 100% accurate rocket launchers.^note This was a bug that became an official feature called Projectile Boosting.
• The Stranger from Furi, who's armed with a lightning-infused katana, can parry a good chunk of the game's attacks, including a number of projectile types (beams being universally excluded). In fact, glowing purple bullets are a specific projectile type that is usually intended to be parried and deflected back at the Jailer who shot it. Some of said Jailers will proceed to parry it back, turning into a brief tennis game with the boss, although certain parry situations are unwinnable.^note  If the bullet is not intended to be parried normally, the "ball" will eventually go too fast and be too powerful to parry.
• In Phantasy Star Online 2, if you have some manner of guard-frame move, you can basically parry the vast majority of attacks aimed your way, including projectiles both physical and non-physical through the Just Guard mechanic. Thus you can get things like Hunters blocking gunfire with their partisans, Bravers deflecting missiles with their katanas, or Fighters punching energy attacks out of the air. You can even parry metaphysical attacks like a Cockatrice's stone-turning glare or a time-stop spell!
• While guns are a rare weapon Final Fantasy Tactics, the Knight reaction ability Weapon Guard gives a chance of blocking bullets just like any other physical attack, with every sword and knife having its own percentage chance of success. Dual Wielding increases the odds of success because each blade gets its own separate RNG roll, and some swords have exceptionally good parry chances. Guns also do not give any debuff to the target's parry chance to account for bullets being much faster (and thus harder to block) than a sword; they're treated exactly the same as all other physical attacks for the purpose of the Weapon Guard skill.
• Flash of the Blade have you swinging a Cool Sword called the Lightbringer, who can deflect arrows, flung boulders, energy bolts, magically-generated flying swords, and all kinds of projectile attacks the game throws at you.
• Ghostrunner: The Ghostrunner can deflect the energy bolts fired at him with his sword, and with the right upgrades, reflect them back at enemies.
• In Kingdom Hearts II, during battles with Sniper Nobodies, Port Royal's undead pirates, and Xigbar, Sora can use his Keyblade to deflect incoming fire.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic allows Force-using characters to parry a percentage of incoming blaster fire, and gives them Force powers that improve it for a short time. Unlike in other Star Wars media, the attack is not reflected.
• Sunset Riders: Cheif Scalpem, the sixth boss, is equipped with knifes that he can use to deflect bullets from the player(s).
• The third Patapon game has the spear/pike bearing class, Wooyari. Their Super Mode attack sees them repeatedly twirling their weapon extremely fast, creating a ring of fire around them that damages enemies while also blocking incoming arrows.
• One of the many minigames of the Rhythm Heaven series is Ninja Bodyguard, which has you play as a Ninja defending his lord from arrows being fired by a nearby rival clan. You accomplish this by standing directly in front of him and swinging your sword with the same rhythm in which the arrows are being shot. Hitting an input perfectly has the arrow being sliced in half and harmlessly falling to the ground. Getting a half-miss has them simply being deflected away. An Exaggerated example of this trope appears in the sequel minigame, Ninja's Descendant, in which you're instead wielding a wooden stick and using it to deflect/slice rocks.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss: In the Final Battle in "Exes and Oohs", Millie (who's running at about 200% capacity) deflects bullets not only by spinning a metal pole with a dildo on it, but also just by kicking one.
• Very common in RWBY, which has this happening as early as the Black Trailer, where Blake and Adam are both casually parrying bullets from enemy robots while closing in to attack them with their melee weapons. Because everyone possesses Aura, which lets well-trained fighters react with superhuman speed to incoming attacks and survive hits that would hurt or kill an ordinary human, it is relatively easy to dodge or evade incoming gunfire, forcing combatants to either get in close or use overwhelming amounts of firepower.

Webcomics

• Mag Isa: Eman uses his implausible fencing powers to deflect bullets.
• Ronin Galaxy: Somewhat averted, Cecil manages to block a bullet with his sword, but it's quickly explained that it's not exactly skill that's responsible.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: Auntie Maya 'Murder the Gods and Topple Their Thrones' deflects a bullet. After impact the bullet falls in half. She did this without drawing her sword.
  Meti's Sword Manual: A man who strikes without thought can cut God.
• Darths & Droids: Invoked by the players in the Star Wars-based Campaign Comic. Their Watsonian explanation is that their characters' Laser Blades must use containment fields that should also affect Ray Gun fire. Their Doylist argument is that the alternative is a Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies scenario. The GM concedes.

Web Original

• Finding out this was possible in Super Hot is what makes Vegeta declare it the game of the year in Renegade for Life.
  "Can I?" [cuts bullet midair] *gasp* Game of the year! 10/10! 10/10! Game of the year! Cut bullets in half!
• Parodied in RDCworld1's SWORDS IN ANIME, which has the protagonist able to do this to multiple pistols, an M4, and a rocket launcher. The villain is appropriately in panicked disbelief at the sight of this.

Western Animation

• In the Æon Flux short "War", the POV follows a succession of fighters, each one killing the previous one. When a gun-wielding Breen soldier seems ready to enact the Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark with a Monican swordsman, the swordsman deflects the bullet back at him. The swordsman then does the same to several other gunmen, but just as abruptly fails and is killed.
• The sword-wielding assassin Curaré from Batman Beyond does this.
• Blue Eye Samurai
  • Subverted when Fowler fires a musket at Mizu who blocks the bullet with her Cool Sword...which then breaks in half while the bullet is deflected into her shoulder.
  • Both Mizu and Taigen are skilled enough to cut arrows out of the air with their swords, but only one at a time. Against a Rain of Arrows, all they can do is run and hide under cover.
• In Code Lyoko, Ulrich is practically the equal to any Jedi Master at doing this, able to use his katana to deflect the energy weapons of XANA's mooks with relative ease.
• Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe: Renegades can deflect frickin' lasers with his swords. Half-justified in they're lasers, i.e. light, and he takes very good care of his weapon which includes polishing it to a mirror finish. Now for how he gets it in place in time...
• Samurai Jack is virtually invincible with his magic katana, occasionally deflecting all the bullets from several machine guns fired at him at once.

Real Life

• Isao Machii, featured in Stan Lee's Superhumans, cut a BB gun pellet fired at him traveling at over 200 miles per hour at a distance of 70 feet. See here. For context, though, a Glock 17 (an extremely common pistol) fires a 9mm bullet at about 820 miles per hour. That's four times as fast as the BB above, and would have impacted his body by about the time he had the sword halfway out of the scabbard.
• It is possible for a sharp blade to cut a bullet in half, if both the gun and the blade are at the right angle. If a sword in battle blocks a bullet on the edge by pure chance, the wielder will now have two bullet wounds instead. Laboratory conditions set to try this have shown it could be done on large slow bullets (such as from a pistol) while smaller high speed rounds (such as from rifles) will simply shatter even a sword made from high quality steel.
  • The blade need not even be especially sharp as a common butter knife can slice a bullet in half since lead is much softer than steel. The real trick is keeping the blade in place when the bullet hits it.
• Yadomejutsu (矢留術) is the name of the "Art of Arrow Cutting", taught in Maniwa Nen Ryu.

---