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Stray Shots Strike Nothing
- 400 statements
- 76 feature instances
- 1 referencing feature instances
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This Trope is under discussion at the Trope Repair Shop. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })In fiction, a bullet is a very simple thing. A bullet is a device that has some percentage chance of causing damage to a specific target. This chance can be reduced by interposing solid objects — like cars, or walls, or random bad guys — between the shooter and the target, but otherwise a bullet either hits the target or misses entirely. And "misses entirely" means no longer exists. Unlike actual supersonic pieces of metal, a fictional bullet doesn't hit whatever lies along its trajectory in the mile or more that it can travel while retaining lethal power — it just vanishes, as if every target had something behind it to catch stray rounds (what recreational shooters refer to as a "backstop"). Even if hundreds of bullets are fired during a fight scene, there will be no casualties we don't see on screen. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })This applies to far more than just bullets — Macross Missile Massacres and Frickin' Laser Beams are equally vulnerable. And, of course, it applies to more contexts than simple gunfights — first, that which is Fired In The Air A Lot must come down, and second, except when by pure coincidence they intersect some larger celestial body, missed shots fired during a Space Battle could keep travelling with the same energy for millennia. This trope tends to go hand-in-hand with Arbitrary Maximum Range for that very reason. Another consequence of the Rule of Perception. See also Bullets Do Not Work That Way and Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. One of the many factors contributing to cases of Artistic License – Gun Safety and Reckless Gun Usage — there is a very good reason why one of the most important rules of gun safety in real life is "Know your target, and what is beyond." Contrast with Precision Crash, where stray shots in space are practically guaranteed to strike something important. Also contrast with Spectator Casualty, where they actually hit something. Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_3'); })Because this trope is so common, only lampshades and aversions shall be listed. |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_1463a028 | type |
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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Averted in the episode "Damaged". The episode starts with a couple talking outside a video store, when the guy is suddenly shot and killed. The store was being robbed, and the guy had the bad luck of being hit by a stray bullet fired by the robber. When it turns out the whole robbery was planned as part of an elaborate (and horrifying) conspiracy, Cabot makes a point to add his murder to the list of charges. Even if his death was a genuine accident, it was part of criminal conspiracy and thus murder. The episode "Ballerina" starts with two men getting into an argument. Just when it looks like we're about to see the crime-of-the-week happen, one of them is killed by a bullet fired next in the apartment next to them. |
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Law & Order: Special Victims Unit | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_1a64c756 | type |
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Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny has an aversion that hit Shinn Asuka hard. His family was killed in the Battle of Orb, by a stray shot from one of Kira's duels with the pre-Extended. It isn't clear whether it was Kira or his opponent who fired the shot, but during the battle itself Kira never realized this had happened. | |
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Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_20336460 | type |
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Averted in Jagged Alliance and its sequels, where stray shots most certainly can and often do strike friendlies, civilians, explosive scenery objects... | |
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Jagged Alliance (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_225c51e0 | type |
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The Naked Gun 33 1/3 has this exchange when villain Rocco Dillon takes a theater of people hostage: | |
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The Naked Gun | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_247422c7 | type |
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In the Honor Harrington books, particularly given how much energy is dedicated to anti-missile ECM, the various Space Navies are quite conscious of the danger of misses striking the wrong target. The tactics in a number of battles are shaped by the need to be sure that a missile fired at a defending fleet doesn't accidentally hit a planet. To avert the "racing on for millennia" part of this trope, it is mentioned that missiles usually auto-destruct after a programmed time if they miss their target so they don't ruin somebody's day down the road. And when it does hit the planet — it is five million dead, including most of the protagonist's extended family, and that was not as much from an actual stray shot, but rather from just general debris it generated. | |
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Honor Harrington | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_27777760 | type |
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Averted in Eureka. A blast of radiation from the artifact kills Kim, and residual radiation infects and slowly kills a few more people. Carter even compares it to a stray bullet, saying a woman was killed by a stray bullet on a raid he once went on. | |
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Eureka | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_3727d772 | type |
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In The Days of Reckoning Are Upon Us, when Peggy Carter shoots at the vibranium shield, one of the ricochets hits a nearby technician in the shoulder. | |
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The Daysof Reckoning Are Upon Us (Fanfic) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_393c45e5 | type |
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Welcome Back, Frank story arc of The Punisher has three vigilantes team up to remove crime from the streets. One is a priest who goes nuts after hearing one too many confessions/bragging sessions, another is a Rich Bastard who shoots pot dealers near his upper-class neighborhood, and the third breaks into a Corrupt Corporate Executive meeting, ranting about their plans to close jobs to preserve their salaries, then opens fire. When Frank runs into them, he calls out the first two because of their twisted visions of justice, and the third because he unknowingly shot an innocent cleaning lady during his rampage. | |
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WelcomeBackFrank | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_3aa3c416 | type |
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In Death Is Forever, The Girl of the Week dies when a henchman, blinded by the flashbang trap that James Bond built into a lightbulb, fires two shots at a random direction with his pistol. | |
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Death Is Forever | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_3d22c14b | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_3d22c14b | comment |
Mobile Suit Gundam 00 pulls an aversion in an early episode where the news reporters shows images of buildings hit by both stray gunfire and mobile suit wrecks from a battle earlier that day. They also mention that there were casualties due to this as well. | |
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Mobile Suit Gundam 00 | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_4146c2bc | type |
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Discussed and averted in Golden Boy. In the opening scene of the pilot, the protagonist cop and his partner get into a gun fight with some robbers. Despite the tense situation, the cops are very careful with their shots and only one bullet misses its target. When he is later accused of being reckless during the shootout, the protagonist freely admits that having the gun fight out on the street was a bad idea but the robbers gave them little choice when they opened fire first. He then reveals that after got out of the hospital, he personally went back to the crime scene and spent hours tracking down that single stray bullet. He was greatly relieved when he discovered that it was lodged in a wall and did not hit any bystanders. | |
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GoldenBoy | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_4442abe6 | type |
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In the Batman: Gotham Knight episode "Field Test", Batman tests out a device that redirects bullets; but when a mobster gets hit by a deflected bullet, Batman realizes that ricocheted bullets are still dangerous, and doesn't use the deflector again. | |
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Batman: Gotham Knight | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_4442abe6 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_46009ec4 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_46009ec4 | comment |
In Mulholland Dr., a hitman's efforts to make a hit look like suicide are complicated when the gun misfires and hits a woman in the next room over. | |
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Mulholland Dr. | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_47607004 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_47607004 | comment |
In one episode of The Closer, a man fires a warning shot at a couple of gang members who are trying to steal his car at a gas station. The bullet flies two blocks and kills a kid. The gang members are charged with Felony Murder, since they instigated the crime that led to the kid's death, and the actual shooter, while not charged with anything, is appropriately horrified when he finds out what happened. | |
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The Closer | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_4a8a8f85 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_4a8a8f85 | comment |
The trope is fully averted In World of Warships, most often with torpedoes. These have very long range, and will travel in a straight line until they hit something or run out of fuel. When fired carelessly, any nearby friendlies who aren't cautious can (and often do) run into them, whether before or after they miss the intended target. It's possible with gun shells as well, occasionally with other enemy ships in the target area, but most often when a friendly ship sails close in front of the shooter, who is "scoped in" and doesn't notice that the line of fire to the target is not clear. | |
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World of Warships (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_4b05e333 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_4b05e333 | comment |
As the opening move in the attack on Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards in Red Fire, Red Planet, the IKS mupwI' drops a ten ton block of uranium out of a cargo bay while moving at 25,000 kilometers per second.note 750.7 megatons of kinetic energy, give or take. It hits its target dead center, but at least part of the weapon keeps going and hits the planet Mars behind the target. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_4ce5263e | type |
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In the remake, Enemy Unknown, stray shots from laser or plasma weapons have a penchant for wearing down most cover.note High cover is reduced to low cover, and low cover gets destroyed completely. On the other hand, it's jarring (and hilarious) that a miss deals zero damage to anything living the actual shots hit, be it a friendly, an enemy who wasn't being aimed at, or even the target itselfnote striking a perfect headshot on a technical miss is a surprisingly common incident. | |
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XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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In The Mexican, the man from whom Jerry picks up the eponymous gun is killed by a falling bullet from people Firing in the Air a Lot elsewhere in the town. | |
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The Mexican | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_502cbd09 | type |
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Luke Cage (2016): When Luke crashes Domingo's boxing gym to take back guns he acquired from Cottonmouth, a couple of Domingo's men try emptying their guns into him while Luke just stands stock still. Their bullets are seen bouncing off him and into everything else, including a couple henchmen who weren't already taken out by Luke while he was marching in. | |
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Luke Cage (2016) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_533ce71b | type |
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Soviet Womble averts this during an episode of "Random Arma 3 Bullshittery". During a mission, Cyanide lays down air support onto an area with a fighter jet, with Soviet and the rest of the squad laying down suppressing machine gun fire in the same general direction. By sheer bad luck, a single stray bullet manages to snipe Cyanide out the cockpit as he swoops in and causes him to crash. | |
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Soviet Womble (Web Video) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_54399b8 | type |
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Averted in Warhammer: Dark Omen: Every arrow, crossbow bolt or cannon ball is a bona fide physical object with its own trajectory, and it can hit anything behind the target as well as the target itself. | |
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Warhammer: Dark Omen / Videogame | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_5cbcd309 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_5cbcd309 | comment |
Missed shots in Deadnaut cause gradual damage against the derelict ship you're on, and once the ship has reached zero hull integrity, you lose your entire squad. | |
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Deadnaut (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. British spy Jim Prideaux realises he's been Lured into a Trap starts walking way from his contact. A Hungarian counter-intelligence agent panics, rushes into the street and fires a warning shot...right into the head of a woman breast-feeding a baby. | |
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_63230cb | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_63230cb | comment |
In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, after Perfect Cell fires a Kamehameha powerful enough to leave the atmosphere, The Stinger features Krillin wondering if it ever hit anything. The scene then cuts to a planet five seconds before its destruction. | |
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Dragon Ball Z Abridged (Web Video) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_662f2c71 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_662f2c71 | comment |
Averted in Pirates Vikings and Knights. All Projectiles can ricochet and still hit someone, though pulling it off deliberately is near impossible. | |
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Pirates Vikings and Knights (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_68b8bdfe | type |
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In the original games (UFO and TFTD), there's an invisible backstop at the edges of the map, but otherwise any shot fired will be traced across the map until it hits something — be that a wall, an alien, a civilian, or an X-COM operative — regardless of what it was aimed at. | |
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X-COM: UFO Defense (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_6ac55ec7 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_6ac55ec7 | comment |
Dungeons & Dragons: 3rd edition has a variant rule suggested in one of the books, offering tables and rules to determine the outcome of range attacks which miss. The sidebar advises the Dungeon Master to ignore this suggestion, since it involves a tremendous amount of calculation and rolling to be done for every ranged attack, which would bog the game down, and be no fun for players uninterested in a simulation-style game. The entire exercise is offered as an example of the dangers inherent to house rules: It might be what you and your group really want, or it might make the game less fun for everyone involved. Earlier editions had this as a standard, however: firing into melee and missing the original target would instead hit someone next to them. Although Edition 3.5 doesn't have such a rule, unless you have the appropriate feat you do take a penalty to ranged attacks against an opponent engaged in melee with a friendly character, to avoid the risk of hitting your ally. |
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In Sin City: Family Values, the Roaring Rampage of Revenge is to avenge a woman killed by stray bullets from a hitman taking potshots at a stray dog. | |
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Sin City (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_6de6294e | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_6de6294e | comment |
Subverted in Bad Days. After Wonder Woman deflects bullets with her bracelets, the bullets ricochet into the wall she's next to and nearly hit several policemen, as well as breaking one's coffee cup. | |
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Bad Days (Web Animation) | hasFeature |
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The Cotton Club gives us gangster Vincent "Mad Dog" Dwyer, who got his nickname after his cohorts machine-gunned several innocent bystanders along with their target. | |
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The Cotton Club | hasFeature |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_71a07a47 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_71a07a47 | comment |
Paper Girls: When Mac tries to wrestle her father's gun away from her suicidal stepmother it goes off and the bullet strikes Erin in the stomach. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_7668653a | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_7668653a | comment |
The Gunnery Chief in Mass Effect 2 delivers the quoted epic rant against careless firing of the mass accelerator for this very reason. As right as he is about this here on Earth, in space, he is wrong; the odds of hitting anything important before the heat death of the universe by firing wildly are insanely low. Sadly, the people in charge of making space combat cutscenes did not listen to the Gunnery Chief, leading to some rather ugly inferences for planet Earth after the massive space battle in Mass Effect 3. BioWare had to step in to specifically clarify than in a conflict between cutscenes and Codex, the Codex wins, meaning that the anti-Reaper forces involved in the battle did not actually fight as if this trope was in effect. |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_786a5a97 | comment |
Chicago P.D. Is very good at showing the dangers of the stray gunfire, and the detectives will often make a point to escort civilians out of the shooting area. In the episode "Reform". A bullet fired by Halstead hits and kills a little girl. Naturally, there's a lot of fallout from a white officer killing an African-American child. He's saved from consequences due to (1.) it was an off the books daycare center, so he could not have known she was there; and (2) it is ultimately proven that his bullet hit a criminal first, and then just kept going and hit her. He followed procedure to the letter. The same episode also has a different civilian being hit by a shot fired by one of the criminals. In another episode, Burgess walks into the house next door to the one the team is raiding, gathers all the women inside together, and has them lay down on the floor. Good thing too, a burst of automatic weapon fire from the criminals sprays the connecting wall and goes straight through. If the ladies weren't on the ground, they would have all been killed. |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
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Pulp Fiction: in addition to the trope namer for I Just Shot Marvin in the Face, it's also subverted when a disoriented Marcellus fires his pistol into the crowd surrounding Butch's wrecked car and hits a bystander who goes down and screams for the rest of the scene. | |
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In Ghost Story, a handful of kids open fire on Karin Murphy's home while there's a meeting of the Better Future Society, a group of supernaturally inclined people (and not-quite-people) who've banded together to fight supernatural threats in Harry Dresden's absence. When Harry (who follows the kids and learns they're being abused and manipulated) tries to soften Murphy's wrath by pointing out the kids were spraying and praying and were unlikely to hit anyone, Murphy points out that not only did Abby, one of the BFS members, get hit in the gut and may not survive, but a stray bullet hit her neighbor and he bled out before anyone could find him. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_7f2f55ad | comment |
The Punisher MAX: Frank nearly shoots himself when he thinks he's done this after finding a little girl's corpse in a drug factory. The gun's in his mouth when he sees the girl's ghost show him a bullet, he digs up the body and realizes it wasn't one of his bullets. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_7f2f55ad | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_7f5bc680 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_7f5bc680 | comment |
Partially averted in the 2D Fallout titles. Accidentally hitting a friendly character is a common Critical Miss, and any weapon fired in bursts has a chance to hit characters close to the line of fire. In Fallout Tactics, this can create the odd sight of the player character emerging unscathed from machine gun fire while squadmates to left and right are reduced to Ludicrous Gibs. | |
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Frequently averted in the Gundam series: Those set in the Universal Century timeline, at least, tend to note that beam-firing weapons are a bad idea when fighting inside of a colony. While space colony hulls are sufficiently thick enough to withstand high-grade missiles, beams are noted in-universe to keep going no matter what they hit, and beams fired inside a colony will puncture the hull and suck out the atmosphere. Mobile suits going up will cause even bigger holes and exacerbate the problem, so fighting in colonies at all is a rare prospect (it only happens twice in the original series, and the issues are ignored in the latter case only because the colony had been abandoned at some point before the war). This also applies to Colony Drops. At the beginning of the war, Zeon attempted to de-orbit a space colony onto The Federation's underground headquarters in Brazil. A huge fleet action by The Federation successfully deflected the drop; unfortunately, the wreck of the colony landed in a populated area on the other side of the world in Australia, killing millions and causing catastrophic environmental damage that could take centuries to recover from. Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny has an aversion that hit Shinn Asuka hard. His family was killed in the Battle of Orb, by a stray shot from one of Kira's duels with the pre-Extended. It isn't clear whether it was Kira or his opponent who fired the shot, but during the battle itself Kira never realized this had happened. Mobile Suit Gundam 00 pulls an aversion in an early episode where the news reporters shows images of buildings hit by both stray gunfire and mobile suit wrecks from a battle earlier that day. They also mention that there were casualties due to this as well. |
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During the Credomar arc of Schlock Mercenary, Elf is a guest on a TV show when two cops burst onto the set and try to arrest her, guns drawn. She calmly asks the filming crew to turn on the lights, so "Credomar's finest" can see what they're using as a backstop... namely the live audience. This is deconstructed in numerous other spots: for example, at one point in Haven Hive, Schlock fires his plasma cannon almost straight up (before Para's robot decommissions it for everyone's good). The odds that it hit anything important are... somewhat good. |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_8bed22e | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_8bed22e | comment |
Averted in an episode of No Ordinary Family. Jim deflects a bullet a criminal fires at him, and it winds up hitting a child in the next room. While he initially goes into a Heroic BSoD, it's later revealed that being hospitalized for the bullet allowed the child's doctors to catch and treat a much more serious disease. This manages to snap him out of it, and he is more careful in the future. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_8f54aaac | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_8f54aaac | comment |
In Stupid Devil Dog the spells fired by a pair of nobles miss Saito but hit several homes in the area and kill at least one man. | |
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Stupid Devil Dog / Fan Fic | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_8f54aaac | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_90c73dda | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_90c73dda | comment |
In Animorphs The Encounter, a Hork Bajir shoots at Tobias with his Dracon Beam. The shot misses, keeps going, and eventually hits and damages the critical "truck ship" resupplying behind Tobias. The Hork Bajir is subsequently executed by Visser Three for his incompetence, in a manner too horrifying for Tobias to describe. In The Forgotten, the Animorphs and Yeerks are stranded in the rain forest. Some Hork Bajir start shooting every monkey they see, until Visser Three suddenly attacks them pointing out a stray shot could hit their ship; or they could have killed him since he had also morphed a local animal. |
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Animorphs | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_90c73dda | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_90e2f673 | comment |
The BattleTech advanced rulebook Tactical Operations unsurprisingly includes some rules on how to handle missed attacks more "realistically" (optional, like everything else in it) and like D&D above cautions against overusing them because they can easily slow down the game. There's also a minor aversion even in the standard rules — buildings used for cover can take damage from attacks that technically "miss" the covered target and may even end up eventually destroyed by it. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_97135500 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
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In Doc Sidhe, at the summoning circle in Central Park, Harris Greene intentionally shoots at the ground rather than at the oncoming goons because any misses would be raining down on the museum. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_989298d3 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
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Missed shots in World of Tanks usually just hit the ground or other obstacles near the target, but stray rounds occasionally strike an unlucky vehicle behind the intended target. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_989298d3 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_9948df42 | type |
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Averted in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, of all places. Mai shoots several times at Gohan, who, being the superpowered warrior he is, deflects the bullets effortlessly. However, one of said bullets then goes on to hit Videl in the leg. Fortunately, Dende is on hand to immediately heal her, but Gohan is chewed out for showing off and not disarming Mai immediately. (Worth noting that nobody thought the gun was real until it was fired.) | |
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Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_9948df42 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_994a18ad | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_994a18ad | comment |
In Snatch., when Avi is trying to shoot the dog with the diamond in him, he ends up accidentally killing Bullet-Tooth Tony. | |
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Snatch. | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_994a18ad | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_994af351 | type |
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Averted in case 1-4 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. A bullet accidentally fired through the door of an elevator struck a person on the other side of the doors. The gun had been thrown by a young Miles Edgeworth in an attempt to break up a fight. He thought the accidental discharge of the gun had killed his father, but this was not the case—the gun had been fired through the door of the elevator he, his father Gregory, and bailiff Yanni Yogi had been stuck in. The person struck by the bullet was Manfred von Karma...who, moments later, was still present when the door opened, showing the three people inside unconscious from either hypoxianote Lack of oxygen, hypercapnianote Carbon dioxide poisoning, or a combination of the two. Seeing an opportunity for revenge against Miles's father, who had managed to prove misconduct by von Karma earlier that day, Manfred seized the gun that Miles had thrown and shot Gregory Edgeworth. The bullet remained in von Karma's arm for fifteen years. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_994af351 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_998cbda3 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_998cbda3 | comment |
Daredevil (2015): Subverted with Frank Castle's attack on the hospital. It's a miracle that no collateral victims are hit when he's introduced shooting at Karen and a fleeing Grotto with a shotgun in a crowded corridor, since he's firing spray shot and not being conservative with his ammunition. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_9d8c87d8 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_9d8c87d8 | comment |
During the finale of Weekend at Bernie's, the hitman (who, admittedly, has lost most of his marbles at this point) fires two wild shots at the trio as they try to get away, their escape attempt thwarted by a locked sliding door. Since the hitman's shots weren't aimed, came from a handgun of decent power, and would've hit either sliding doors or back deck windows, there should've been a couple dandy new exits available for immediate egress. | |
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In the first Queen and Country story, Tara Chace is ambushed by two goons with guns while unarmed. She rushes one, makes it within hand-to-hand range before he can hit her, and takes him down. After which she discovers that one of his shots hit the other one. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_aafda2ed | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_b11e29d2 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_b11e29d2 | comment |
In Outlaw Star, this is why guns (but not Casters, for some reason) are banned on board most space stations - it only takes one stray shot punching a hole in the hull to asphyxiate the entire area. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_b11e29d2 | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_b3454ebd | comment |
In the Starsky & Hutch episode "Blindfold," Starsky accidentally shoots a young woman who runs into his line of fire during a shootout, temporarily blinding her. | |
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Starsky & Hutch | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_b3454ebd | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ba91d77c | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ba91d77c | comment |
Ronin features a car chase through a picturesque French town with the protagonists and antagonists emptying magazine after magazine from their automatic weapons at each other. Dozens of innocent bystanders are left bleeding on the sidewalk. | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ba91d77c | featureApplicability |
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Rōnin | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ba91d77c | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_bcadd7cb | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_bcadd7cb | comment |
Warhammer 40,000: Averted (though with a melee weapon) with Kharn the Betrayer. Such is his devotion to Khorne (of "Khorne cares not from where the blood flows, as long as it flows" fame) that if he misses in close combat against an enemy he automatically hits the ally next to him. Averted, sort of, with Orks, who simply don't care whether or not they hit something, it only means they need More Dakka. Blast Weapons in general avert this. The template will never just "disappear", but rather can land on a patch of land that has no models. This means that firing them into clusters of enemies is usually the best way to use them; you will never get a full squad unless you are extremely lucky, but you are almost guaranteed to hit something when the enemy is spread out. The same goes for Warhammer Cannons; they explicitly embed themselves into the ground after their final "bounce" distance is determined, and if that position happens to be on top of something, it's going to end very badly for said something. The only exception to both is if the template's hole lands off of the table (even if the rest of the template would still hit something). This is the only time where it will simply "vanish". |
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Blast Weapons in general avert this. The template will never just "disappear", but rather can land on a patch of land that has no models. This means that firing them into clusters of enemies is usually the best way to use them; you will never get a full squad unless you are extremely lucky, but you are almost guaranteed to hit something when the enemy is spread out. The same goes for Warhammer Cannons; they explicitly embed themselves into the ground after their final "bounce" distance is determined, and if that position happens to be on top of something, it's going to end very badly for said something. The only exception to both is if the template's hole lands off of the table (even if the rest of the template would still hit something). This is the only time where it will simply "vanish". | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c0da5437 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c0da5437 | comment |
The Punisher himself generally invokes this trope by taking on gangsters and other criminals on their own territory — with his training he doesn't miss often, but if he does accidentally hit someone else, well, they deserved it anyway. | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c0da5437 | featureApplicability |
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The Punisher (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c0da5437 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c403b4a3 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c403b4a3 | comment |
Averted in Ground Control. In higher difficulties stray and missed shots can and will harm your own units if you don't check if the line of fire and you can use the blind fire option to hit unspotted enemy units or buildings, in fact it isn't uncommon to enter a prolonged slugfest and see a large building blowing up before you noticed it was there in the campaign. | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c94b0000 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c94b0000 | comment |
A tragic aversion in an epsiode of NYPD Blue: A bodega owner who has been robbed several times buys a handgun to protect himself. The next time he is robbed, he fires at - and misses - the fleeing robbers. Since he didn't have a permit for the gun, and shooting at the fleeing perps wasn't justifiable self-defence, the investigating detectives advise him to say that he had picked up the robber's discarded gun. Next day, a man is found dead in an apartment facing the bodega, hit by the stray bullet. The owner now faces felony charges and the detectives have to take back their advice to avoid perjuring both him and themselves. | |
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NYPD Blue | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_c94b0000 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ca08598f | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ca08598f | comment |
The Wire: At one point, two drug gangs get into a (laughably bad) shootout. There don't appear to be any casualties... until an Innocent Bystander mom tries to get her kids ready for school after the shooting ceases and finds her 9 year old son caught a stray. For this, the Western District conduct some major crackdowns as a show of force, and Homicide's attempt to get Bodie on charges after he botches his attempt to ditch the guns fails spectacularly. In season 4, there's another inversion that severely affects the outcome of the mayoral race. Tommy Carcetti tries to beat the incumbent Clarence Royce by promising to lower crime and focusing on the issue of how no witnesses will come forward to testify against criminals because Baltimore's witness protection fails them. This seems to be confirmed when a state's witness in an important case is killed in the weeks leading up to the primary. The investigation becomes a political hot potato as the brass are pressured by the candidates to stall it until after the primaries to avoid pissing off the people who control the police department's budget. After the primary is over and Carcetti has won, it turns out that the witness was killed by a stray bullet. A guy several blocks away was shooting at bottles, and the witness had tremendously bad luck. The irony is not lost on anyone. |
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The Wire | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ca08598f | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cac1f772 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cac1f772 | comment |
There was an episode of CSI where a man was shooting at a makeshift handgun target and talked his girlfriend into having a go. She fired over the target and accidentally killed a woman on the beach several blocks away. Sadly, it was probably inspired by countless cases where people have carelessly fired off guns in celebration have killed innocent bystanders. | |
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CSI | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cac1f772 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cb306709 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cb306709 | comment |
In Grrl Power, Max gives Sydney a lengthy lecture on the superpower variant of this trope: If you fire a blast of something destructive at a foe and miss, it's going to hit whatever's behind them, so make sure it's something (or someone) that can weather the hit, and not an innocent bystander or an orphanage or something. | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cb306709 | featureApplicability |
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Grrl Power (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cb306709 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cbe3e313 | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cbe3e313 | comment |
In True Lies, when Harry attempts to shoot down a terrorist helicopter using his "borrowed" Harrier's cannon and misses, the rounds are seen hitting the water - and then taking a chunk out of an office building... | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cbe3e313 | featureApplicability |
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True Lies | hasFeature |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cbe3e313 | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ccffdd1f | type |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing | |
Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_ccffdd1f | comment |
Averted in Dominions. Arrows (and other projectiles) will aim at a specific square, even if it's not exactly the one intended. So if they're aimed at a single enemy from far enough away, they have a good chance of landing in an empty square (and, naturally, hitting nothing), but if they're aimed at a squad of fifty soldiers, the "stray" shot may easily target a square with different soldiers (and, quite possibly, hit one). Of course, if you're aiming at melee soldiers, in both cases there's the chance you'll hit one of your units... | |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cd8b8ee2 | type |
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing / int_cd8b8ee2 | comment |
In Superwomen of Eva: Emerald Fury, Shinji's struck by a tranq dart that bounced off She-Hulk's skin. | |
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SOEEmeraldFury | hasFeature |
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A Walk Among the Tombstones. Scudder's badass credentials are shown in the opening shoot-out in which he defeats several criminals in a gunfight, while drunk. However later on in the movie, it's revealed that a stray shot from said gunfight hit a 7-year old girl in the eye. Worse, Scudder was decorated for bravery. | |
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XCOM 2 avoids instances of "technical misses hitting target", by having misses that occur at ranges at which it'd be physically impossible to miss (eg. point-blank/barrel-stuffing range) cause the unit that missed to fire their shot in a direction that's not at the enemy, which can either be at the target's feet, or more than 90-degrees off to the side!. However, stray shots can still hit, degrade, or even destroy pieces of cover, and can even hit and destroy destructible objects. | |
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Played with in The Order of the Stick, when Belkar kills an assassin who was preparing to fire a poisoned arrow at Hinjo. As he does so, the arrow gets shot in a random direction. The next comic shows the arrow fly, narrowly missing several main characters before hitting Vaarsuvius... who had cast "Protection from Arrows" earlier in the arc, so the arrow bounces off the magical barrier and harmlessly hits the ground. | |
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Referenced in a possible random event in Stellaris, where a science vessel can be struck by stray mass driver rounds fired from another galaxy billions of years ago. Actual combat in this game plays the trope straight though - any shot that doesn't hit its intended target will simply not hit anything. | |
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This is how Willow's girlfriend Tara dies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer +- hit by a stray bullet meant for Buffy. | |
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X-COM: In the original games (UFO and TFTD), there's an invisible backstop at the edges of the map, but otherwise any shot fired will be traced across the map until it hits something — be that a wall, an alien, a civilian, or an X-COM operative — regardless of what it was aimed at. In the remake, Enemy Unknown, stray shots from laser or plasma weapons have a penchant for wearing down most cover.note High cover is reduced to low cover, and low cover gets destroyed completely. On the other hand, it's jarring (and hilarious) that a miss deals zero damage to anything living the actual shots hit, be it a friendly, an enemy who wasn't being aimed at, or even the target itselfnote striking a perfect headshot on a technical miss is a surprisingly common incident. XCOM 2 avoids instances of "technical misses hitting target", by having misses that occur at ranges at which it'd be physically impossible to miss (eg. point-blank/barrel-stuffing range) cause the unit that missed to fire their shot in a direction that's not at the enemy, which can either be at the target's feet, or more than 90-degrees off to the side!. However, stray shots can still hit, degrade, or even destroy pieces of cover, and can even hit and destroy destructible objects. |
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Those set in the Universal Century timeline, at least, tend to note that beam-firing weapons are a bad idea when fighting inside of a colony. While space colony hulls are sufficiently thick enough to withstand high-grade missiles, beams are noted in-universe to keep going no matter what they hit, and beams fired inside a colony will puncture the hull and suck out the atmosphere. Mobile suits going up will cause even bigger holes and exacerbate the problem, so fighting in colonies at all is a rare prospect (it only happens twice in the original series, and the issues are ignored in the latter case only because the colony had been abandoned at some point before the war). This also applies to Colony Drops. At the beginning of the war, Zeon attempted to de-orbit a space colony onto The Federation's underground headquarters in Brazil. A huge fleet action by The Federation successfully deflected the drop; unfortunately, the wreck of the colony landed in a populated area on the other side of the world in Australia, killing millions and causing catastrophic environmental damage that could take centuries to recover from. |
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Averted in Aldnoah.Zero Episode 15. We open with Slaine seemingly firing his Kataphrakt's weapons into nothing while in space. It takes until the end of the episode that those shots return because he had fired them in such a way that they would be pulled into low Earth orbit and he was using the time delay of their return trajectory (approximately 6 hours) to plan out a trap for the upcoming space battle. | |
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This is why PPGs (pulse plasma guns) are used aboard Babylon 5. A bullet that misses or goes through its target has the potential to either ricochet and hit someone else or puncture the hull. A PPG blast is stopped by the first solid object it encounters. Additionally, at low power, they can be used as Stun Guns of sorts. Planetside, regular guns are still common. | |
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Gibbon, one of Voldemort's Death Eaters, is accidentally killed by a stray spell from another Death Eater during a pitched battle. | |
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In A Dragon in Shining Armour when Examon fires into a cloud of smoke in an attempt to hit a BlackMetalGarurumon. He misses and hits the guy's brother, an Anubismon, instead. | |
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
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Stray Shots Strike Nothing |
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