History Main / BulletholeDoor

* As the heroes try to escape from a pursuing helicopter in ''Film/{{Sahara}}'', they use an assault rifle to perforate an ancient rock wall so that their car can break through.

* In ''American Tabloid'' by JamesEllroy, one character uses a shotgun to remove a small safe from an internal wall. He wears ear protectors and goggles.

* In ''Anime/SoraNoWoto'', in order to escape a building, the girls use their huge SpiderTank cannon to blow an opening in its wall... taking down the whole building with it.

!Examples:

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* In ''Disney/LiloAndStitch'', Jumba uses a 'shoot-through-the-ceiling' variety, causing the large chunk of ceiling that Stitch was standing on to fall. He uses thrown ''dinner plates'' to make the holes.

* In ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'', the weasels open Eddie's door by shooting a hole around the lock.

* In ''Film/TheFifthElement'' Ruby Rhod gets an oval floor exit from Bruce Willis and the opportunity to ride the piece down one level.

* Wrestling/DwayneJohnson does the floor variant in ''Film/WalkingTall2004'', blasting several times with a shot gun, then kicking the floor out.

[[folder:Videogames]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

** Also he yells on the way down, because that's a long way to fall and he hadn't thought it through. Still able to shoot prefect circles into the floor while falling and screaming, though.

** She does it again with the bottom of a rapidly descending elevator in ''Awakening''. [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]], ''[[OhCrap it doesn't work.]]'' [[spoiler: The elevator lands on her, but the bullets made the floor weak enough (and she's ''tough enough'') that it doesn't particularly bother her]].

** ''Film/{{Dredd}}'' has a downplayed and justified example. Dredd blows a hole in a wall by firing at it. It's only a single shot, but he's using a [[StuffBlowingUp Hi-Ex]] round.

* In SandyMitchell's ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} novels, Jurgen's melta is often put to use to create these. Of course, since the melta was originally intended to penetrate tank armor, this makes a fair bit of sense.

* Not a method of escape, but of infiltration: In ''SonicX'', Tails creates a perforated circle in the side of Dr. Eggman's headquarters, which Sonic "punches out" with a spindash. ''Perf''ect!

* In ''SoraNoWoto'', in order to escape a building, the girls use their huge SpiderTank cannon to blow an opening in its wall... taking down the whole building with it.

* In the Film/JamesBond move ''Film/LicenceToKill'', Pam Bouvier (the BondGirl of the week) fires a shotgun at a wall and creates a perfectly round hole to escape through, rather than just pock-marking it with shot. Must be a mighty thin wall.

* In ''SnowCrash'', Hiro carves huge holes in the side of a well-armored aircraft carrier using a nuclear-powered, [[GatlingGood Gatling-style]], hypervelocity railgun. [[ICallItVera The weapon is named Reason]] because "[[{{Pun}} everyone listens to Reason]]."

* In the squad-level strategy ''SilentStorm'', with destructible environments, cinematic physics and big guns, blowing man-sized holes in the walls and floors is a viable way to maneuver. The risk of collapse is there, too. Additionally, this makes a submachine gun a far faster method to "open" a locked door than lockpicks (though the player IS [[WhatTheHellHero penalized for excessive collateral damage]]).

* Most of the ''{{X-COM}}'' series have allowed the player to blast his way through walls to get to the hostile aliens - particularly viable once you get access to powerful, alien weapons. You can even drill your way through a yards-thick wall with a powerful enough gun.

* In the game ''Battlefield: Bad Company'' it is possible to break walls down by shooting them, but this takes most of the player's ammo supply unless he uses explosives or a drill.
* This is the only way to open most doors in the ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' series, and you need need different weapons for different colored doors. However, the blast usually just deactivates the [[ColorCodedForYourConvenience color-coded force field]] and opens the door normally, rather than damaging it.

* Taken to the extreme by Purple Dragons of [[TMNT2003 2003s TMNT]] in ''TurtlesForever'', when they hit the wall enough time, so 2003's Leo can drop the wall on them and their boss, Hun, during the rescue of the [[TMNT1987 1980s TMNT]].

* DwayneJohnson does the floor variant in ''Film/WalkingTall'', blasting several times with a shot gun, then kicking the floor out.

* Wei in ''DarkerThanBlack'' uses [[BloodyMurder his power]] to breach walls as needed, and once cuts a "trapdoor" in the floor under himself. Also, one Contractor operative in ''Shikkoku no Hana''.

* VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}} shoots a heart-shaped one when she, Luke, and Cereza are trying to reach Isla del Sol after one of the security gates have been shut.

* Taken to extremes in ''RedFaction''. If it's not made of unbreakable metal (most things aren't), you can blow holes in it. Works for blowing a passage in a wall, but also for carving tunnels in rock and moving through entire areas of a level.

* ''{{BLACK}}'', if you wasted enough bullets. Which, of course, is the whole point of the game.
* A major ability in ''TheForceUnleashed''.

* Taken UpToEleven in the original novel of ''Film/{{Goldfinger}}'', where Ian Fleming has the villain planning to blast open the vault door of Fort Knox with a stolen tactical nuclear weapon! (In the movie they are [[AdaptationDistillation trying to destroy the gold]], instead of stealing it)

* In a magical variant from ''TheLongDarkTeaTimeOfTheSoul'', the Norse god Thor uses his flying hammer to bash through a floor to which he's been superglued by Odin's lackey. It smashes its way up and down through the floorboards until he can walk away unharmed, albeit with wooden splinters coating his limbs and back.

* In an episode of ''StargateAtlantis'', Larrin used an energy gun much like Ronon's (in fact, her people is where it came from) to melt a door through a wall in an Atlantean ship. She had to burn most of the gun's power supply to do it, though, and it took her a fair amount of time to pull off.

* In ''Film/TheLongKissGoodnight'', Charley Baltimore (Geena Davis) uses a submachine gun to shoot out a window to use to escape a bomb, then on the way down to the frozen lake below she uses it again ([[BottomlessMagazines without reloading, naturally]]) to weaken the ice enough that she and SamuelLJackson's character don't kill themselves by getting splattered all over the ice when they hit it. Not that falling three floors into the water is much more enjoyable, but that's another trope.

Unfortunately, as ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' has proven, it requires many, many bullets and a lot of time to do this. With a {{BFG}} like a [[GatlingGood Vulcan gun]] or large-caliber machine gun, it might be faster; but more likely than not, applying that much stress to the wall would simply collapse it. After all, you're basically trying to ''saw through the floor'' (or wall), a task guns weren't exactly designed for.

* In the game cortex command shooting at doors with weapons may break them granting entry to a base.

* In ''{{Robocop 3}}'' the main character, a cyborg weighing hundreds of kilograms and who has repeatedly proven himself able to smash through walls with no damage, wants to enter the room of a baddie. Instead of smashing right through the flimsy wooden door, he feels it necessary to waste many dozens of bullets (all [[BottomlessMagazines without reloading]]) in shooting out his silhouette in the door, through which he then enters the room.

* As the heroes try to escape from a pursuing helicopter in ''Sahara'', they use an assault rifle to perforate an ancient rock wall so that their car can break through.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* The 'Harvey Wall Banger' as invented by the British SAS is a high pressure air cannon that fires a plastic barrel of water at a wall, that will cause a hole large enough to walk through.
* The British Anti Structure Munition (A version of the Singapore/Israeli MATADOR) is a shoulder launched rocket that can either operate in anti structure blast mode (leveling a building) or in penetrating/mouse-holing mode to defeat light armoured vehicles and create "mouse-holes" in double thickness urban walls big enough for men to enter through.
* In the US Army's field manual on urban combat (or, as they call it, "Military Operations in Urban Terrain"), they suggest using the 25 mm autocannon on the M2 Bradley to make new doors for the troops to use. At least in an older version of this manual, it gives guidelines for creating loopholes (big enough to aim a weapon through, perhaps to stick an arm through, but not crawl out of) with rifle or machine-gun fire, and indicates this requires some 100–200 rounds. Creating a hole large enough for a person would probably require thousands.
[[/folder]]

!!Examples:

[[AC:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

** It was used as the example in {{Mythbusters}}. The movie used two 9 mm guns with one magazine each to escape; Mythbusters couldn't do it with over 350 9mm rounds fired by an [=MP5=] submachine gun, even after using a 12 gauge shotgun to weaken structural support timbers. (After two guys worked on it for half an hour, including a great deal of stomping on the weakened section of floor, they broke through.)

* In ''LiloAndStitch'', Jumba uses a 'shoot-through-the-ceiling' variety, causing the large chunk of ceiling that Stitch was standing on to fall. He uses thrown ''dinner plates'' to make the holes.

* In ''TheLongKissGoodnight'', Charley Baltimore (Geena Davis) uses a submachine gun to shoot out a window to use to escape a bomb, then on the way down to the frozen lake below she uses it again ([[BottomlessMagazines without reloading, naturally]]) to weaken the ice enough that she and SamuelLJackson's character don't kill themselves by getting splattered all over the ice when they hit it. Not that falling three floors into the water is much more enjoyable, but that's another trope.

* ''Film/Nemesis'' did the floor variety about a decade before ''Underworld'' did, and much more crazily, too, as Alex shoots his way through ''several'' floors at once, screaming as he plunges. It was probably one of Albert Pyun's most ambitious effect shots in his career.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* In SandyMitchell's ''CiaphasCain'' TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} novels, Jurgen's melta is often put to use to create these. Of course, since the melta was originally intended to penetrate tank armor, this makes a fair bit of sense.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

* ''{{CSINY}}'' featured a group of robbers breaking into the lab vault in this way. Done slightly more realistically than most of the examples on this page, involving a .50BMG sniper rifle (i.e. a {{BFG}}) and taking most of the episode.

[[AC:RealLife]]

[[AC:VideoGames]]

[[AC:{{Webcomics}}]]

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]

Unfortunately, as ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' has proven, it requires many, many bullets and a lot of time to do this. With a {{BFG}} like a [[GatlingGood Vulcan gun]] or large-caliber machine gun, it might be faster; but more likely than not, applying that much stress to the wall would simply collapse it.

* {{Bayonetta}} shoots a heart-shaped one when she, Luke, and Cereza are trying to reach Isla del Sol after one of the security gates have been shut.