Riddled and Rattled

[M]ultiple bad guys with greasy ponytails simulate being shot by automatic weapons. Multiple blood squibs explode on their torsos as they dance the funky chicken, almost always in slow motion.

— VideoHound's Complete Guide to Cult Flicks and Trash Pics

Not everyone who's shot in fiction gets Blown Across the Room. In fact, sometimes the exact opposite occurs. Rather than a single bullet propelling the victim backwards, those poor schmucks who find themselves on the receiving end of a few dozen (or more) shots all at once often seem to stand in place, twitching and jerking helplessly as their bodies are filled with lead, only collapsing when the shooting stops. This often occurs even if there's so much shooting that parts of their body are visibly blasted into Pink Mist and full of rapidly-spreading holes.

This is, of course, nearly always a Multiple Gunshot Death, though sometimes in a subversion the same thing will seem to play out, only for the victim to be found alive after the collapse thanks to a bulletproof vest (and a convenient lack of headshots). For the victims who do die, it's an odd combination of both Made of Iron and Made of Plasticine — the former because they somehow stay upright the whole time, the latter because of the Ludicrous Gibs the audience can see exploding off of their bodies.

One reason for this is that bullet wounds are typically suggested by rigging the actor's body with fake blood packs that are popped by a very small timed charge. The audience has a better idea of what's happening to the character if the actor stays standing long enough to fully show the extent of the shooting, and it's often safer for the actor to avoid the blood pack exploding directly against another part of their body by staying upright.

While this is obviously a case of artistic license in settings involving machine guns, there is some justification in period settings where the victim is shot by a firing squad using conventional firearms, especially if they're kneeling, due to the victim's collapse in such a situation typically being less from the sudden rapid disintegration of their body and more due to the loss of blood pressure.

Due to its nature as a Death Trope, all spoilers were removed. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Black Lagoon. Discussed while Revy is hanging out with a group of children who are playing Cops and Robbers. Revy watches them dramatically feign death while recoiling from the toy bullets they're shooting each other with. She points out that this isn't how it works in real life, as you're more likely to simply collapse after being shot.
  Revy: You got it all wrong. The only place you see people die like that is in movies. In reality, you just suddenly lose all your strength. Do you understand? It's like everything below your knees disappears then you lose balance and go down headfirst. I'll show you what I mean. [points at a kid] You there. [falls over after being hit by the toy bullet]
  Boy: Lady, if that's what it's like to die, it kinda sucks.
  Revy: Hehehe. I'm sorry, but that's just how it's like to die. In real life, dying never looks that cool.

Films — Live-Action

• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery: Robin Swallows's first not-quite-death sees her riddled with bullets while Austin was using her as a human shield.
• The climax of Bonnie and Clyde. The title characters are seated in their car rather than standing but maintain their posture remarkably well despite being pelted with bullets. Probably the modern Trope Maker.
• The Godfather: Sonny Corleone is ambushed at a toll booth by a full hit squad. He manages to open the door and stagger out of his car while still being perforated. He doesn't get much further, as he's still being blasted by all sides before finally collapsing. Just for good measure, one of the goons kicks him in the head before walking away.
• Inglourious Basterds: At the ending when the basterds shoot Hitler and Goebbels. They both twitch for a few seconds, with their bodies getting shredded before falling.
• Ransom: In the final showdown, Dirty Cop Det. Jimmy Shaker is shot in the chest multiple times by the kidnapped boy's father and an FBI agent before collapsing on the ground and dying in a pool of blood.
• Sgt Murphy's death before his Forced Transformation into the titular RoboCop at the hands of Boddicker's gang is a particularly gory example that allows the audience a good view of parts of his body being severed by bullets. Despite this, he stays upright until it's finished.
• Scarface: At the film's climax, Tony Montana gets into a shootout with Sosa's hit squad, with them at ground level and Tony at the top of the staircase leading to his office. He gets shot a couple of times and eventually ends up standing in plain sight screaming and cursing at the gang members as he takes at least a half dozen hits in rapid succession, although at this point he's running on adrenaline, fury, and the massive dose of cocaine he took shortly before the hit squad arrived, so he's able to shrug off the pain. He's then shot in the back with a double-barrel shotgun at point-blank range by "the Skull", Sosa's chief enforcer, and falls dead into the fountain below the stairs.
  Go ahead! I take your fucking bullets! You think you kill me with bullets? I take your fucking bullets! Go ahead!
• Violent Night: The extraction team reveal themselves to be allied with the Big Bad by opening fire on Morgan with machine guns when he rushes out to meet them. He doesn't fall down until after the shooting stops.

Manhua

• My Beloved Mother: Milan, the titular robot Mama Bear uses herself as a shield for multiple rounds fired from a security turret so her (human) son Sinbell can flee and take cover. When the dust cleared, the turret is out of bullets, Milan is still standing, and she finally falls when Sinbell rushes out of cover to her side so she can perform her final Heroic Sacrifice saving Sinbell from a city-destroying nuke.

Live-Action TV

• CSI: NY: In "Exit Strategy", a young man who had been coerced by his partner-in-crime to kidnap a toddler from the scene of a robbery-homicide ended up raising her as his daughter while on the lam. Once he's tracked down during the episode's climax, a SWAT team, thinking he's reaching for a gun, opens fire on him and riddles him with bullets as Mac shouts in vain for them to hold their fire. From his standpoint, he alone could see the young man was actually reaching for his keys. The man falls to the ground and as he lays dying, his last words to the girl are that she can finally go home.
• Firefly: At the end of "War Stories", Wash, Zoe, and Jayne use Niska's Number Two for target practice. He takes a couple of dozen bullets of various calibers to center of mass, jerking and jiggling until he falls backwards over the railing and then gets bisected by a piece of industrial equipment he lands on.

Video Games

• Dawn of War: Many sync-kills (seen when a unit dies to melee damage) involve lots of rapid attacks, with the victim's corpse trembling and shuddering accordingly before falling down.
• Fallout: Since both Fallout and Fallout 2 use the same animation sprites, a common form of overkill with automatic weapons is to see the enemy twitching in place while getting filled with bullets in the chest before finally falling over dead. In the case of heavy weapons like the chainguns), the enemy's torso and head will be turned to Ludicrous Gibs as their body is ripped apart by the bullets, leaving only the legs and skeleton intact before they fall over.
• Mortal Kombat X: The Refugee Kamp's Stage Fatality has the winner uppercutting their opponent before Special Forces gun down the loser while they're held in mid-air from the barrage.
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron: Invoked by the Scrapmaker, a huge double barreled Gatling gun. While it takes a few seconds to spin the barrels before actually firing, an enemy caught in the hail of bullets will actually get pinned by the impact of the shots.
• Unreal Tournament:
  • Doable with the Twin Enforcer Pistols weapon. Models won't ragdoll until the player stops shooting them.
  • Whenever someone's fragged by a Minigun wielder, the death animation that plays has the fragged character twitching before falling to the floor, with the weapon they were holding being dropped before they fall.
• Wolfenstein 3-D. When you fire a machine gun or chaingun at a Nazi guard which can survive more than one hit, the guard will stand where they are and just jerk each time they're hit by a bullet, unable to fire back. In the help guide for the game, this is called making the guard do the "chaingun dance".

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Inga shoots Dhurke inside Amara's tomb, but Dhurke manages to keep himself standing and scare Inga away, staying alive long enough to ask Maya to channel him after he dies.

Web Animation

• Max Gilardi's animated short SANS.MP4 features Sans pulling out a machine gun and shooting Papyrus numerous times. Papyrus says, "Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness!" while jerking around and being riddled with bullet holes until he falls over.

Web Video

• Auralnauts Star Wars: Episode 3: Revenge of Middle Management loops the shot of Ki-Adi Mundi's death so that rather than being shot several times by the clones and falling over, it shows him continuously getting shot and flailing around while still standing upright for almost ten seconds straight.
• Epic Rap Battles of History: The ending of "Bonnie and Clyde vs. Romeo and Juliet" has the former pair lamenting the death of their rivals, before being riddled with bullets as they're completing their last verse. The screen cuts to black before they fall.

Western Animation

• Family Guy: In "There's Something About Paulie", Peter accidentally gets indebted to The Mafia, and has to take the titular Paulie to watch a movie to pay off the debt. As they exit the theater, Peter asks if it would be possible to undo the hit he accidentally put out on Lois. Just as Paulie pulls out his phone, a rival gang drives by and riddles him all the way down to the end of the block. Paulie even grabs a street lamp and twirls around a few times before finally falling over dead in the puddle at the curb.
  Peter: Aww geeze! You okay?
• Futurama: Parodied in "Bender Gets Made", when the Robot Mafia inflict this on a poor robot who can't afford his protection payments. Being a robot, having dozens of holes shot into him isn't enough to kill him, nor is that even the intention. While he topples over as soon as the shooting stops, he just gets straight back up again afterwards. To the Robot Mafia, that act was simply a warning.
• Robot Chicken: The "Little Iron Man" sketch features a young boy pretending to be Iron Man and wandering into the middle of a battle. The real Iron Man gets knocked away, so the rest of the Avengers think the boy is him. Giant Man tosses him into the air to distract the giant robot they're fighting, which results in the boy being suspended in the air as he gets filled with machine gun fire until it runs out of bullets, at which point the boy falls into the intake port and destroys the machine. Once Tony Stark returns to battle, everyone realizes what had just happened.
• The Simpsons:
  • Invoked in "Mr. Plow" when Bart is ambushed by the other Springfield Elementary School students, who're angry because Homer's snowplowing business means they have to go to school on what would otherwise be a snow day. In a parody of the The Godfather, he's pelted from all sides by snowballs and jerked around from the impact before finally collapsing.
  • Played for Laughs in "Love Springfieldian Style". The story of Bonnie and Clyde ends as it did, with Homer and Marge being riddled with bullets by the police. However, instead of just instantly dying, Bonnie and Clyde have a long drawn-out romantic conversation with each other, even getting the police chief to chime in with his thoughts, even giving his blessing for marriage, while the police just continue to pump them full of lead.
  • The McBain clip in "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" has Senator Mendoza's people react like this when McBain massacres them with a submachine gun. They actually freeze and twitch before the bullets start hitting, and continue doing so after the barrel has swept past them.

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