Basic Trope: A character uses a firearm as a bludgeon.
- Straight: Alice swings her pistol at Bob.
- Exaggerated: Throughout the whole story, Alice never fires a single shot, only ever using her gun as a bludgeon.
- Downplayed: Alice presses her pistol against Bob to push him away.
- Justified:
- The gun is empty, and Alice has no other weapons.
- Alice is trying to take down Bob non-lethally, and doesn't trust her skills not to accidentally kill him if she shoots.
- Inverted: Throwing Your Sword Always Works
- Subverted: Bob taunts Alice and she moves to swing her pistol, but holds back at the last second.
- Double Subverted: Bob then pushes his luck with another taunt and gets smacked for real.
- Parodied: Alice's gun transforms into a literal whip as she moves to strike Bob with it.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Characters only ever use their guns to shoot. Any time they need to fight up close, they use either their bare hands or dedicated melee weapons.
- No ranged weapons appear in the work.
- Enforced: The developers of a First-Person Shooter wanted to add an Emergency Weapon in case the player ran out of ammo, and opted to have the player bludgeon enemies with their gun rather than give them something like a knife.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice challenges Bob to a duel with empty pistols; the only way they can fight with them is by using them as bludgeons.
- Exploited: Short on bullets, Alice sneaks up on The Dragon, who she proceeds to knock out with a Tap on the Head of her gun, letting her conserve ammo for the confrontation with the Big Bad.
- Defied: After Bob taunts Alice, Carol stops her before she can swing her gun at him, telling her that if she loses her cool, she'll play right into his hands.
- Discussed: "And what if you run out of bullets?" "I've still got a club on my hand".
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: ???
- Deconstructed: The gun's internal parts get damaged on impact, so it fails to fire when Alice reloads it later.
- Reconstructed: Alice uses a sturdier gun that won't get damaged when used as a club.
- Played for Laughs: ???
- Played for Drama: Bob is taunting Alice over Dave's death, and her pistol whipping gets more vicious as she loses control of herself, showing how Bob is successfully breaking her.
Back to Pistol-Whipping.
