Basic Trope: A character who cannot be harmed by gunfire.
- Straight: Bullets fired at the monster are shrugged off.
- Exaggerated: The monster shrugs off not only bullets, but also grenades, artillery shells, and tactical nuclear weapons. It takes using an Unobtanium-powered cannon to actually kill it, and even then, the monster gets a few more seconds of life left before it finally expires.
- Downplayed:
- Only special bullets are effective against them.
- Small arms our characters have at hand don't have enough stopping power. Military anti-materiel rifle on the other hand...
- The monster may not be outright immune to bullets, but when it needs a whole magazine to kill one, 30 rounds might as well as be 30,000 in a tense close quarters fight where it can tear a man in half like wet tissue.
- Justified:
- The monster is incorporeal, so of course guns can't hurt it.
- Alternatively, it has a million hit points.
- Or: It's a huge monster with thick skin. The bullets barely penetrate, and, even if they did, the scale is just so massive that a normal-sized bullet can't do any real damage.
- They're just that tough.
- The monster's entire body is composed of water, so bullets will just go through it to no effect.
- The monster is protected with body armor and/or Deflector Shields that stop bullets.
- The monster radiates/is made out of extreme heat, to the point where bullets melt en route or on impact, essentially turning any rifle into a lead squirt gun.
- The monster is simply wearing a bullet-proof vest.
- Inverted:
- Projectile guns harm the monster, while more futuristic weapons such as lasers and particle beams do not.
- Assailing the monster in melee or bigger weapons does not work. Small arms, though? Just peachy.
- Subverted:
- All the research the heroes can do suggests that guns are useless, but that turns out to be misinformation put out by the Omniscient Council of Vagueness to make the monsters seem more scary.
- The bullets actually tickle, and with enough firepower, the army is able to tickle the monster into submission.
- The Hero and The Lancer are not able to destroy it. However The Big Guy comes in backed by a bunch of Giant Mooks, all wielding BFGs. The Monster drops quickly.
- They had bullet proof vests on.
- Double Subverted:
- Turns out the Omniscient Council of Vagueness goofed— the monsters really are Immune to Bullets.
- Unfortunately, tickling the monster into submission requires more firepower than can actually be amassed and coordinated.
- This is because the force of the BFG bullets landing manages to push the Monster into an environmental hazard.
- Parodied:
- Just because the monster can't be killed by gunfire, doesn't make the bullets hurt any less.
- Alternately, the monster is exclusively immune to bullets.
- Bob brags about how toy bullets can't harm him.
- Zig Zagged: Whether or not bullets work changes with each Monster of the Week.
- Averted: The monster can be harmed by gunfire.
- Enforced:
- "The Moral Guardians won't let us use anything that looks like a real gun on a kids' show, so we'll make all our villains immune to gunfire as an excuse for giving our heroes lasers."
- ** It would be incredibly boring and Anti-Climatic if the hero/villain could just shoot whatever/whoever is causing them problems.
- Lampshaded: The hero unloads his pistol into the monster to no effect, shrugs, and says, "Why do I even bother?"
- Invoked:
- The Mad Scientist realizes that his enemies' first reaction will be to shoot the monster he's creating, so he makes it Immune to Bullets.
- Alternately, gun companies make their guns less powerful so as to make the bullets penetrate shallower or not at all.
- Exploited:
- A company that makes laser weapons, markets them to the army by saying "The monsters may be bullet proof, but this is not a bullet".
- Seeing as bullets don't work, the group relies upon adhesive foam and tazers to get the job done.
- The monsters don't bother dodging because of their immunity, which leaves open to other kind of offensives.
- Defied:
- "This is the most powerful gun in the world. Nothing is immune to this baby."
- Alternately, a scientist makes his monster possible to kill with bullets because a killing machine was not his intention (or because he's worried about his killing machine turning on him).
- Discussed: "You know how the monsters in all those disaster movies are always immune to bullets? That's not entirely inaccurate..."
- Conversed: "Geez, why do those guys in disaster movies always shoot at the giant monster? It never works!"
- Implied: The monster swallows a BFG-wielding soldier whole, and is not immediately blown apart from the inside afterwards.
- Deconstructed:
- The uselessness of bullets leads to an increasing reliance on heavy weaponry by the monster hunters, which in turn breeds monsters who are even tougher, creating an escalating cycle of violence and lots of collateral damage.
- Bulletproof enemies eventually lead to bullet-firing weapons being phased out, in favor of laser weaponry. When a laser-proof enemy appears, it defeats the protagonists without much effort while they desperately struggle to hurt it with their ineffective beams, and they have no bullet-firing weaponry to deal with it because it got phased out.
- Casualties and quitting among law enforcement officers and soldiers skyrocket because their weapons are useless against the monsters, leading to even more depression and fear.
- Reconstructed:
- The monster is only one of several antagonists, the rest of whom are not bulletproof, making that monster a special threat.
- Another option is that the monster gets stronger, but the heroes are adaptable and intelligent, leading to a Lensman Arms Race.
- Played For Drama: This week's victim of horrible mauling attempts to defend himself from the monster, only to be confronted with a No-Sell and Unflinching Walk.
- Played For Laughs: Someone tries to shoot the monster, who responds with a look that just says "Seriously?" before retaliating.
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