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| - In real life, bullets are little lumps of lead that fly through the air at great speed and generally put holes in whatever they hit. On TV bullets are made from Applied Phlebotinum and rarely penetrate objects like couches or overturned dinner tables, unless the plot dictates otherwise. TV bullets have several other remarkable characteristics. Alternatively, a machine gun will riddle a person with bullets, but his surroundings will remain unscathed, suggesting the bullets somehow curved in the air to hit only him, possibly to curb property damage. Good bullets.
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| abstract
| - In real life, bullets are little lumps of lead that fly through the air at great speed and generally put holes in whatever they hit. On TV bullets are made from Applied Phlebotinum and rarely penetrate objects like couches or overturned dinner tables, unless the plot dictates otherwise. TV bullets have several other remarkable characteristics. While having a gun shot out of your hand in real life would render it inoperable (both the hand and the gun), in a movie you will be able to pick it back up and keep firing. There's little chance of the bullet bouncing off the gun and ruining the gunman's day. A bullet is the business end of a cartridge, whose other components include a brass case filled with gunpowder, and a primer. When the gun fires, the bullet exits this happy arrangement, leaving the brass case behind, which now must be ejected to make room for another cartridge, either automatically in gas-operated firearms or manually in bolt-action or pump-action weapons. Most American movies manage to get this part right, and in mystery stories brass cases may furnish important clues for the detective if the killer leaves them behind. But some films show the entire cartridge, brass case and all, flying through the air toward the target! This gaffe is understandably more common in films from countries where private gun ownership is rare, e.g. China and India. When someone is shot in the head in a movie, the bullet will vanish on exiting their skull, leaving the wall behind them perfectly undamaged -- though in sore need of a good wipe down. Also, the bullet will leave a bloody but small hole in the victim's head, as opposed to causing a large portion of their cranium to explode. Alternatively, a machine gun will riddle a person with bullets, but his surroundings will remain unscathed, suggesting the bullets somehow curved in the air to hit only him, possibly to curb property damage. Good bullets. Can be occasionally justified if the guns used are police guns, which are normally loaded with hollow point rounds to prevent over-penetration. These are fairly common with civilians as well, for the same reason, they also tend to add stopping power, so you could really assume anyone is using these unless it's military (for whom using hollowpoints would in most cases be a war crime)or it's been shown otherwise. Other times the reverse is true -- the entire landscape will be shot to pieces, including areas that a bullet could only hit by traveling through the target, but the person being shot at is left untouched. Bad bullets. For the inversion of this trope, where hitting targets depends on the shooter rather than the weapon:
* Good shooters
* Improbable Aiming Skills
* Accidental Aiming Skills
* Bad shooters
* Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy
* A-Team Firing Compare Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics, Blasting It Out of Their Hands, Pretty Little Headshots, and Bulletproof Human Shield. For actual magical bullets, see Depleted Phlebotinum Shells. Not to be confused with the product infomercials of the same name, The Magic Bullet. When bullets fail to penetrate through things that really shouldn't stop them -- such as drywall, car doors, and in many cases, people, that's Concealment Equals Cover. Examples of Bullets Do Not Work That Way include:
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