History Main / WeHaveToGetTheBulletOut

** Played straight in ''VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorney'', where a gangster was shot in the chest, miraculously survived and had an operation to remove the bullet, or else he'd die in six months. Justified by the bullet's location, extremely close to the aorta. (It also required the services of a world-class surgeon, for the same reason--the slightest mistake could result in the patient dying.)
** Averted in the first game: [[spoiler: Manfred von Karma]] had a bullet lodged in their shoulder for 15 years. It's incriminating evidence, but they didn't remove it because doing so safely would require a surgery, leaving a medical record.

* ''Literature/WatershipDown'': Kehaar helps remove the "little black stones" in [[spoiler:Hazel's]] flank after he's shot.

* Creator/RobertDeNiro has a bullet removed from his body in ''Film/{{Ronin}}'' while simultaneously instructing his buddies step-by-step on how to do the procedure. After the excruciating surgery, De Niro's character says "I think I'll pass out now" and does.

** UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt got shot but refused to have the bullet removed, and thus survived. There were several factors in his decision -- one being that he was [[TaughtByExperience aware of what happened to Garfield and McKinley]], one being that he was giving a speech when he was shot and the bullet [[PocketProtector was significantly slowed down by thick stack of notes and a glasses case in his pocket]], and one being that he was giving a speech and [[Awesome/TheodoreRoosevelt wanted to finish it]], declining medical attention until after he was done speaking. As they say, the bullet was [[MemeticBadass too afraid of Roosevelt to kill him]].

* In ''Film/ToHaveAndHaveNot'', a LivingMacGuffin gets shot in the should and the hero is called in to get the bullet out which he does.

** UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan proved to be an unusual case in that the doctors didn't really ''want'' to get the bullet out -- Reagan was an old man who couldn't handle the procedure very well -- but they were more afraid of the news media lambasting them for leaving a bullet inside the President. They probed for the bullet, which turned out to be a very good decision in hindsight, because the bullet was an ''explosive'' one that had failed to detonate, and this was one of the few situations when they really do Have to Get the Bullet Out.

* The geographical version of this trope is unexploded ordnance, usually left over from a past war. It's definitely ''better'' to remove it, but it might be too dangerous, too expensive, or otherwise too difficult to access. Especially in the third world, the only way to find certain old mines is for a poor civilian or farm animal [[LandMineGoesClick to unwittingly step on it]]. Europe has old mines and unexploded shells dating back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI littering its fields, but those had such shoddy quality control that farmers have had more than a century's experience in digging them up themselves, in tradition called the "Iron Harvest". In the States, some of it dates back to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. A few old battlefields remain fenced off entirely because of the prevalence of old mines, among the most prominent being the grounds of the Vimy Ridge War Memorial (still littered with craters from the shells that ''did'' explode). It even happens underwater, as in the famous case of a sunken World War II ship in the Thames Estuary with a cargo of explosives considered too dangerous to disturb. The trickiest versions are bombs discovered in urban areas (more common from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, given the prominence of aerial bombardment in that war), which can result in the evacuations of whole neighbourhoods; the town of Oranienburg north of Berlin was so heavily carpet-bombed that for decades, this kind of thing happened about a dozen times a year[[note]]although this was partly because it was in East Germany, and the East German government was too cheap to actually search properly for the damn things[[/note]].
** In some cases, it's actually considered safer to set the explosives off intentionally (surrounded by sandbags and with everybody evacuated) rather than try to remove the unstable munition and have it go off during transport.

In more fantastic scenarios, the bullet might be laced with harmful substances, made of radioactive material, set to detonate inside the target, or be such an AbnormalAmmo to be more threatening than the blood loss from subsequent removal. (Of course, such scenarios might also come with futuristic medical {{technobabble}} that makes it easier to remove the bullet and repair the damage it caused.) In more UrbanFantasy scenarios, one may need to get a bullet out due to it being {{curse}}d, or due to it being of a [[DepletedPhlebotinumShells material]] that acts as its victim's KryptoniteFactor, such as silver for a werewolf or cold iron for a fae, and is thus dangerous to leave in them. In this case, some variety of healing magic is usually used to repair the damage.

See also AnnoyingArrows when this trope is applied to other types of projectiles. Contrast HealItWithFire.

* In ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueDoom'', Superman is shot with a kryptonite bullet, creating an interesting problem: It must be removed because it's killing him on the inside, but he's just as tough as ever on the outside, making traditional surgical tools ineffective.

In more futuristic scenarios, the bullet might be laced with harmful substances, made of radioactive material, set to detonate inside the target, or be such an AbnormalAmmo to be more threatening than the blood loss from subsequent removal. (Of course, such scenarios might also come with futuristic medical {{technobabble}} that makes it easier to remove the bullet and repair the damage it caused.) In more UrbanFantasy scenarios, one may need to get a bullet out due to it being {{curse}}d, or due to it being of a [[DepletedPhlebotinumShells material]] that acts as its victim's KryptoniteFactor, such as silver for a werewolf or cold iron for a fae, and is thus dangerous to leave in them. In this case, some variety of healing magic is usually used to repair the damage.

See also AnnoyingArrows when this trope is applied to other types of projectiles. Contrast HealItWithFire. Sister trope to WeHaveToGetTheBulletOut.

See also AnnoyingArrows when this trope is applied to other types of projectiles. Contrast HealItWithFire.

* An episode of ''Series/NewAmsterdam'' has John help an old colleague who is dying of lead poisoning from a bullet that was never extracted.

Unfortunately, this is most often a [[WorstAid seriously bad idea]], as the very last thing you would want to do to help a shooting victim would be to pull the bullet out. Bullets are, once they stop moving, largely harmless, and trauma surgeons frequently leave them in place whilst repairing the damage inflicted by their ingress. Removing a bullet may harm the patient in several ways, but chiefly in that the bullet may be pressed against a damaged blood vessel, and removing it may cause severe bleeding.

Depending on the time period, however, this can be a JustifiedTrope; historically, a musket ball was made out of lead and would be toxic if left inside. Moreover, the ball would have been moving much more slowly than a modern bullet, as the bullet was a spherical ball, firearms used black powder (which explodes less energetically than the smokeless powder used in modern ammunition), and the seal between the bullet and the barrel of the gun was looser. Between the round shape and the slow speed, most bullets were liable to drag shreds of the victim's clothing into the wound (unlike modern weapons, whose bullets generally snap right through). The bullet would thus have been extracted as part of recovering the clothing fragments, since cloth in a wound were a good way for the wound to get infected -- especially historically, as since most soldiers (and civilians, for that matter) had just one set of clothes which they wore constantly without washing them.[[note]] A) because you'd wash your under-pants and under-shirt, if you had any, instead of the external clothes and B) because most dyes would dissolve in water and/or soap, which was bad news if you wanted to look good/were relying on the colour of your clothes to help other soldiers identify which country you were fighting for[[/note]] Plus, people often instinctively want to get rid of foreign metal objects causing pain. Similarly, today, bullets still usually contain lead, and studies released in the mid-2010s show that over the long term, bullets left in people's bodies do cause long-term lead poisoning. Consequently, the new medical advice is to remove bullets if doing so does not create much additional risk. There are also cases, particularly in war zones, where people get rockets and grenades fired into them that fail to detonate on impact, in which case they do need to get the projectile taken out asap.

* Averted in an unusual fashion in ''Film/IronMan''. Tony Stark ends up with his heart damaged by shrapnel, and instead of having the fragments removed, which would endanger his life, he gets an electromagnetic thingamajig implanted to keep the bits from killing him. However, in ''Film/IronMan3'', it's stated Tony probably ''should'' have it removed, he's just afraid of having the surgery, even if the long term consequences are worse. [[spoiler:He finally goes and does it at the end of the film.]]

* Inverted in ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough'', where leaving the bullet in results in superpowers. TheDragon, Renard, was [[TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain shot in the head]] by [=MI6=], the bullet didn't kill him, but it is slowly drifting towards his medulla oblongata which will eventually kill him. Unfortunately for Bond, this somehow causes him to [[ArtisticLicenseBiology feel no pain and become stronger]].

* In the final episode of Part 2 of ''WesternAnimation/{{Disenchantment}}'', [[spoiler:Princess Bean uses a knife to remove a bullet from her father, Zog, because she believes the risk of infection is just too dangerous, along with Dreamland's backwards methods of healthcare, such as letting freshly shampooed rats swarm around Zog in hopes a rat's natural attraction to filth and disease will draw the sickness out. Problem is, she's doing that after she's escaped from the dungeon while her brother, King Derek, was mulling over his vertict over Bean's attempted murder trial for accidentally shooting King Zog in the previous episode. Unfortunately, Derek steps into the room while Bean is still holding a bloody knife over a barely conscious Zog. Derek immediately announces "GUILTY!"]]

* The geographical version of this trope is unexploded ordnance, usually left over from a past war. It's definitely ''better'' to remove it, but it might be too dangerous, too expensive, or otherwise too difficult to access. Especially in the third world, the only way to find certain old mines is for a poor civilian or farm animal to unwittingly step on it. Europe has old mines dating back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI littering its fields, but those had such shoddy quality control that farmers have had more than a century's experience in digging them up themselves. In the States, some of it dates back to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. A few old battlefields remain fenced off entirely because of the prevalence of old mines, among the most prominent being the grounds of the Vimy Ridge War Memorial (still littered with craters from the shells that ''did'' explode). It even happens underwater, as in the famous case of a sunken World War II ship in the Thames River in London with a cargo of explosives considered too dangerous to disturb. The trickiest versions are bombs discovered in urban areas (more common from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, given the prominence of aerial bombardment in that war), which can result in the evacuations of whole neighbourhoods; the town of Oranienburg north of Berlin was so heavily carpet-bombed that for decades, this kind of thing happened about a dozen times a year[[note]]although this was partly because it was in East Germany, and the East German government was too cheap to actually search properly for the damn things[[/note]].

** UsefulNotes/JamesGarfield was probably killed by this line of thought. When he was shot, his doctors probed for the bullet with dirty instruments, and didn't even come close to finding it. Notably, Alexander Graham Bell [[https://www.historynet.com/alexander-graham-bell-james-garfield.htm used an experimental stethoscope called an induction balance device]] based on his telephone in an attempt to locate the bullet, which might have worked had the staff not laid him on a fancy new coil-spring mattress. Doctors feared the bullet had punctured his intestines, so they decided to administer food and whiskey [[AssShove rectally]], which led to Garfield having lost 100 pounds from starvation by the time he died. Garfield's assassin Charles Guiteau famously insisted that "the doctors killed Garfield; I just shot him," and (unsuccessfully) defended himself at trial with that argument.

** UsefulNotes/JamesGarfield was probably killed by this line of thought. When he was shot, his doctors probed for the bullet with dirty instruments, and didn't even come close to finding it[[note]]one account suggests that they had a fancy new X-ray machine to look for it, which might have worked had they not laid him on a fancy new coil-spring mattress[[/note]]. They feared the bullet had punctured his intestines, so they decided to administer food and whiskey [[AssShove rectally]], which led to Garfield having lost 100 pounds from starvation by the time he died. Garfield's assassin Charles Guiteau famously insisted that "the doctors killed Garfield; I just shot him," and (unsuccessfully) defended himself at trial with that argument.

* This features in the cases of several [[UsefulNotes/ThePresidents United States presidents]], who have sadly had a historical tendency to get shot at:

* The ''geographical'' version of this trope is unexploded ordnance, usually left over from a past war. It's definitely ''better'' to remove it, but it might be too dangerous, too expensive, or otherwise too difficult to access. Especially in the third world, the only way to find certain old mines is for a poor civilian or farm animal to unwittingly step on it. Europe has old mines dating back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI littering its fields, but those had such shoddy quality control that farmers have had more than a century's experience in digging them up themselves. In the States, some of it dates back to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. A few old battlefields remain fenced off entirely because of the prevalence of old mines, among the most prominent being the grounds of the Vimy Ridge War Memorial (still littered with craters from the shells that ''did'' explode). It even happens underwater, as in the famous case of a sunken World War II ship in the Thames River in London with a cargo of explosives considered too dangerous to disturb. The trickiest versions are bombs discovered in urban areas (more common from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, given the prominence of aerial bombardment in that war), which can result in the evacuations of whole neighbourhoods; the town of Oranienburg north of Berlin was so heavily carpet-bombed that for decades, this kind of thing happened about a dozen times a year[[note]]although this was partly because it was in East Germany, and the East German government was too cheap to actually search properly for the damn things[[/note]].

* After the first shootout of ''Film/TheKiller'', Ah Jong has some bullets taken out of him by Fung Sei at the church. It is ''painful as hell''.

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* James Carlos Blake "Wildwood boys" - justified by time setting (ACW) and characters being bushwackers.

* ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'': Military surgeons are often found cutting cannon or rifle shot out of dragons after battles, and the titular dragon voices his concern when he sees that another dragon healed over a piece of shot. {{Justified|Trope}} in that it causes a much higher risk of infection or abscess if the shot isn't removed, and these ''are'' lead bullets from muskets. Also, standard procedure is to cauterize the wound immediately after removing the shot.
* After meeting her, Black Tip helps Vickey from ''Literature/RunWild'' remove "pellets" from her leg after hunters shoot at her.

* Averted in ''Series/{{House}}'' when a police officer has fragments of a bullet lodged in his skull. The team desperately wants to do an MRI, and House shoots a corpse in the head to test if the metal bullet will interfere with an MRI. The bullet gets violently ripped out of the corpse's skull and breaks the MRI.
** While most materials commonly used in munitions aren't ferromagnetic, Foreman specifically states that the particular bullet used ''was''. More often than not, the actual type of bullet used isn't known, so they'd be gambling with his life. Also, House tends to play it fast and loose with MRI-related physics. While shifting, the bullet wouldn't likely have ripped out of the skull, but would slowly burn during the scanning process.
* In the first-season ''Series/HarpersIsland'' episode "Gasp," a physician directs his friend (and romantic rival) to remove a bullet from his shoulder. "You have to get the bullet out" he (incorrectly) insists.
* Played with in ''Series/HeroesReborn'', with Farah Nazan, Carlos, Micah and Jose when [[spoiler: Farah is shot. Carlos, Jose, and Micah take her to the hospital, and try to help her. Jose manages to dig the bullets out of her stomach, except since he phases his hand into her chest, then phases the bullets out, it doesn't have the same medical implications as the other methods of bullet removal.]]
* ''Series/Earth2'': [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in one episode when a character is shot with a high explosive bullet with a delayed fuse. The bullet needs to be removed from the victim before it can detonate, which will be lethal and [[LudicrousGibs messy]].
* ''Series/{{Firefly}}''
** Simon removes a bullet from Kaylee's stomach wound during the pilot, but as part of a much longer surgical procedure that isn't shown on-screen and (most likely) involved a lot more than just pulling the bullet out.
** Subverted in the final episode. Simon is shot in the leg, and doesn't have the bullet removed until the end of the episode, and with somewhat sophisticated imaging and removal tools to minimize damage.
** In "Safe" Zoe removes a bullet from Book's shoulder (Simon is too busy being kidnapped at the moment), but that isn't the end of it. Zoe is not a trained surgeon, so while she can remove the bullet and bandage and clean the wound, the damage inflicted by the bullet would still eventually kill Book unless he got professional medical help.
* In a season 2 episode of ''Series/{{Lost}}'', Sawyer digs a bullet out of his shoulder with his fingers. This one is [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in that a) this ''causes'' him more problems than it solves, including a nasty infection, and b) Sawyer isn't a doctor.
** Dealt with a little better in two later episodes, where after the bullet is removed the hole is cleaned and stitched.
** Which is surprising as in the pilot episode Jack explains that he won't remove a piece of shrapnel from a wounded man's abdomen because he expected a rescue party to show up soon and have him in a sterile environment when they do. As they are not rescued immediately, he removes it and tries to keep the resulting infection at bay with the rather weak antibiotics he can scrounge up. It doesn't work.
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''
** In "The I in Team," Spike is shot with a tracer, apparently deeply embedded, and it has to be removed quickly by the team. {{Justified|Trope}} because a tracer isn't a proper bullet and Spike is a vampire, without the same medical concerns as a human.
** In the episode "Villains," Willow magics out the bullet that hit Buffy, but it's OK because she witch-fus all of her wounds closed at the same time.

* ''Series/BandOfBrothers'': Bull Randleman has to have a Dutch farmer do this to him after he is wounded and stuck behind enemy lines. Technically not a bullet (it was shrapnel from an exploding British tank), but the concept remains the same.

* Deconstructed in one ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' episode, when a couple stumbles across a man trying to get into their car having mistaken it for his own due to intoxication and the effects of a knife in his groin. When he collapses they promptly call 911 (good), pull the knife out (bad), and stick the knife back ''in'' to try plugging the wound when he starts bleeding out (worse).
* ''Series/BurnNotice'' does this ''all'' the time. Whenever someone is shot on that show, it is always treated as a priority to get the bullet out, and it is also assumed that doing so will save the person, often all by itself. The finale to season six contained a notable example.
* In ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy'' season 1, a very unfortunate Irishman gets shot in the buttocks. Since he's a wanted criminal in most parts of the world, they cannot take him to the hospital, so they take him to the Sons' clubhouse and instantly start digging up the bullet with the help of pliers and whiskey. This goes just as well as you'd expect, and once they get the bullet out, he starts gushing blood all over the place.
* Justified in an episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}'', where the 4077th gets a patient that has a ''live grenade'' in him.
* In ''Series/{{Castle}}'', Castle becomes an impromptu bullet-remover [[spoiler:for his own father, because going to the hospital would compromise his mission]].
* Doctors on NY Med told a shooting victim's mother that they would leave the bullet in her son, as it had lodged itself in his calf and would do no further damage. The mother, believing in this trope, immediately put up a fuss.
* In ''Series/{{Underbelly}}'', Johnny Ibrahim's mates take him to a vet to have a bullet removed, as the corrupt police officers have declared that there are to be no shootings in King's Cross, and a hospital would have to report the shooting to the police. Then they take him to a hospital.
* Subverted in ''Series/BostonLegal''. A man is shot while robbing a convenience store, and a man who later appeared at a hospital with a bullet wound in the same area is arrested and the police try to get the bullet out to see if it's a match for the one in the store owner's gun. He successfully takes them to court to allow him to leave the bullet in. He is later given the card for an under the radar option to get the bullet out.
* In the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "Extinction", Clark Kent is shot with a kryptonite bullet, so his parents have to get it out before the kryptonite kills him. As soon as they get it out and take the bullet a safe distance away, his wound heals up.
* Averted in an episode of ''Series/KamenRiderOOO'', of all places. After debris falls over the MonsterOfTheWeek's [[VictimOfTheWeek host]] and a shard of glass pierces through her waist, Akira correctly warns Gotou not to pull it out, since it's probably plugging in several blood vessels, stopping them from bleeding out. Turns out he used to be part of a team of doctors who travelled around the world aiding those in need.
* Marvel's Netflix franchises:
** Defied in ''Series/{{Daredevil 2015}}''. After Vladimir gets shot by Wilson Fisk's corrupt cops, Matt Murdock is left receiving advice from Claire Temple on how to cauterize the wound. He assumes he needs to remove the bullet, but Claire bluntly informs him that having an untrained medic (and a ''blind'' one at that) rooting around will cause far more damage than just leaving the bullet in. Matt is forced to cauterize the wound with a road flare, which inadvertently draws a passing police officer to the scene and makes a mess in a whole different sense.
** Done twice by Claire in ''Series/LukeCage2016''. First, she does it on Rafael Scarfe after he gets shot by Cottonmouth. Later, she tries to do it on Luke after he gets shot by Diamondback with a Judas bullet, but with little success. She's forced to take Luke to the doctor who oversaw the original experiment that gave Luke his abilities to give Luke an acid bath.
** ''Series/ThePunisher2017'':
*** After the torture and execution of Ahmed Zubair, Frank Castle [[DestroyTheEvidence removes the bullet he just put in Zubair's head]], which greatly unsettles Gunner Henderson, the Marine who's helping him bury the body in an unmarked grave. This foreshadows that Gunner was the leaker who filmed the Zubair execution.
*** When Frank tracks down Gunner upon realizing he's the one who filmed the tape, he gets a arrow to the right shoulder from Gunner (not realising who Castle is). The wound gradually becomes infected with bacteria, so when Frank and David get back to New York, David has to bring Curtis Hoyle in to get the arrowhead out, which is a very painful experience. David has cleaned the wound as best he can, and been giving Frank the correct treatment of fluids and antibiotics, but the wound has become septic due to a foreign object (the arrow) being covered in bacteria.
*** Billy Russo gets shot in the right arm by a DHS agent as he's fleeing Micro's base. In the start of the next episode, he's extracting the bullet himself prior to killing a bunch of DHS agents sent to apprehend him at his apartment.
* ''Series/TheATeam''. In the episode "[[Recap/TheATeamS2E23CurtainCall Curtain Call]]", Murdock is shot and Hannibal takes the bullet out with a knife. Subverted, as Hannibal is not concerned about the bullet itself (he notes that bullets often sterilize themselves in the barrel) but about the pieces of cloth that it took with it. However, it is still portrayed as a dangerous operation.
* A [[JustifiedTrope justified]] example in the ''Series/{{Supergirl 2015}}'' episode "The Darkest Place": Mon-El has been shot with a basic lead bullet, but he's lethally allergic to lead, so the bullet has to be removed before it kills him.
* {{Subverted}} on ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' when Malcolm Reed is shot with a projectile gun on an alien planet and ends up with a bullet in his leg. Dr. Phlox administers basic first aid, but doesn't try removing the bullet until they're back on ''Enterprise''.
* ''Series/{{Lucifer 2016}}'': When Linda is coaching Maze over the phone on how to fix a gunshot wound, her first piece of advice is to check if the bullet is still in there (which Maze does by ''[[WorstAid sticking her hand into the wound]]''), and then says she needs to get the bullet out. In Linda's defense, [[NotThatKindOfDoctor she's a psychiatrist, not a medical doctor]].
* ''Series/TheOrville:'' In the episode "If The Stars Should Appear", Alara takes three bullets to the chest. Fortunately, 25th-century medical technology combined with Alara's naturally resilient Xelayan physiology allow Dr. Finn to quickly remove the bullets and seal the wounds, and Alara is soon back on her feet.
* ''Series/{{Quincy}}'': Quincy is shot in one episode by a murderer attempting to cover up his crime. They initially don't operate due to the danger of causing more damage, but then do remove the bullet due to a suspicion that the round is shifting in the wound and might cause a major hemorrhage. They turn out to be right, and it saves Quincy's life.
* ''Series/BlueBloods'': Averted when Linda is shot: the hospital leaves the bullet in because it lodged close to her spine, making removal dicey.
* ''Series/BlackMirror''. In "Metalhead", the protagonist is being hunted by an [[ImplacableMan implacable]] [[KillerRobot killer]] RobotDog, and has to cut out a piece of shrapnel containing a TrackingDevice using a [[SelfSurgery knife and pliers]]. [[spoiler:She's able to destroy the Dog, but [[TakingYouWithMe not before it detonates another shrapnel bomb]] peppering her body with similar trackers, one of them next to her carotid artery. Realising she can't cut them out without fatal injury, she uses the knife to commit suicide rather than wait for other Dogs to arrive.]]
* Averted in ''Series/TheTick2016'', a back alley doctor is shown trying to remove a bullet from a criminal when Dottie, an EMT and a med student, shows up and tells him to stop. She explains you just repair the damage as she stitches the wound closed.

[[folder:VideoGames]]

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'', Snake is able to dig out bullets, arrows and various other projectiles from his body with his knife. Doing this ingame will cause the wounds to heal faster, but leaving them over time will cause the wounds to naturally heal around them, leaving the projectile in the for remainder of the game.

* Possibly justified in ''Webcomic/FreakAngels'', as apparently the bullet remaining in the wound screws up their HealingFactor somehow or other, and in any case the two individuals we see getting shot are neither in the presence of TheMedic or especially well-equipped with brains.

* ''AudioPlay/WereAlive'' features this when [[spoiler: Saul is shot]] and the bullet is removed without proper tools, antiseptics, or [[spoiler: morphine]]. Plus the only one actually trained to perform the operation is [[spoiler: Saul himself]].

[[folder:WesternAnimation]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Simple Simpson", after Homer (as the Pie Man) gets shot in the arm, Lisa later finds him in the kitchen digging the bullet out of his arm with a butcher knife, while naming the things the knife is touching (including "vein", "NERVE!" and "bone").

* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}''. Sterling gets shot by border patrol and is taken to an unlicensed Mexican veterinarian. He removes the bullets and sets Archer up on an IV... only to tell him none of what he did helped at all and he needs to see a real doctor as quickly as possible.
* ''[[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Justice League Unlimited]]'', "To Another Shore": Devil Ray shoots a poison dart into Wonder Woman's shoulder, and Agent Farady pulls it out to prevent any more poison from seeping in. The dart has a barb, so he recommends she finds "a bullet to bite" - they're in a firefight, so there's plenty lying around.

[[folder:RealLife]]

[[folder:AnimeAndManga]]

* Averted with an arrowhead in ''ComicBook/{{Elfquest}}''. Cutter is shot by some humans, and (the tribe lacking a magical healer at the time) taken to the trolls for medical care. The troll elder who treats him warns that the arrowhead is caught under a rib, and that it will probably kill him to dig it out; she also assures him that "My eldest got on fine forever with a bear tooth stuck in his butt." The arrowhead stays where it is for hundreds of years (causing some chronic pain) until the tribe has a magical healer again.
* Played straight in ''ComicBook/CleanRoom'' when a high-ranking member of the Mueller organization is shot. Surgeons operate immediately but claim that some bullet fragments remain and will work their way into her heart within minutes.

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]

* ''FanFic/TheManWithNoName''; The Doctor gets shot by a mook and has Simon dig the bullet out of his shoulder. This is justified as Time Lord biology reacts much more severely to foreign objects inside the body, so leaving it in would be more dangerous than taking it out.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/MasterAndCommander: The Far Side of the World'', [[BadassBookworm Stephen Maturin]] operates ''on himself'' to extract a ball round. Subverted, in that Stephen is far more concerned about a piece of his shirt that the ball took with it and which he fears will infect the wound. We even get to see his assistant match the extracted shred to the hole in the shirt to make sure there are no bits left in the wound.
* Averted in an unusual fashion in ''Film/IronMan''. Tony Stark ends up with his heart damaged by shrapnel, and instead of having the fragments removed, which would endanger his life, he gets an electromagnetic thingamajig implanted to keep the bits from killing him. However, in ''Film/IronMan3'', it's stated Tony probably ''should'' have it removed, he's just afraid of having the surgery, even if the long term consequences are worse. [[spoiler:He finally goes and does it at the end of the film.]]
* In Creator/BillCosby's opus ''Film/LeonardPart6'', we're treated to an even more heroically pain-resistant hero: Leonard, having been shot, removes the bullets himself, his trusty manservant only standing by with surgical tools and a mirror. The bullet is then placed in a large and almost full jar of other bullets that have been extracted from him over the course of his spy career.
* Subverted in ''Film/TheGreenHornet'': Britt is shot in the shoulder as Green Hornet, but obviously can't go to the hospital lest he give away his SecretIdentity. So he tells [[spoiler:Lenore]] to dig the bullet out with a kitchen knife (while he bites down on a spatula), but even the heat from the sterilized knife causes him to wuss out. [[spoiler:They end up having Kato (in costume) drive up and "shoot" Britt at a public event, which lets him safely go to the hospital ''and'' makes it less likely that people will think he's the Hornet. However, this means that Reid has to spend a day or so with a bullet in his shoulder and not let anyone know about it. Yikes.]]

* Inverted in ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough'', where leaving the bullet in results in superpowers. TheDragon, Renard, was [[TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain shot in the head]] by [=MI6=], the bullet didn't kill him, but it is slowly drifting towards his medulla oblongata which will eventually kill him. Unfortunately for Bond, this somehow causes him to [[ArtisticLicenseBiology feel no pain and become stronger]].

* ''Film/TheMagicCrystal'' has a variant. A character fakes his death by being shot in the head by ''ice'' bullets. He regains consciousness after the ice melts. No, the movie doesn't really make sense.
* Justified in the ''Film/{{Runaway}}'' where the BigBad is armed with a HandCannon firing heat-seeking microshells. One of them ends up in a cop's arm but fails to explode, and the protagonist has to remove it for fear it will detonate before they get her to the hospital.
* Creator/RobertDeNiro has a bullet removed from his body in ''Film/{{Ronin}}'' while simultaneously instructing his buddies step-by-step on how to do the procedure. After the excruciating surgery, De Niro's character says "I think I'll pass out now" and does.
* In the ''Film/{{Bean}}'' movie, as usual for Mr. Bean, after a series of misunderstandings, he ends up in an emergency room in a doctor's outfit, at which point the other doctors and nurses expect him to retrieve a bullet from the police chief's body. As soon as he does (before and after some {{Squick}}), amazingly, the chief's flat lining vital signs ''immediately'' stabilize, at which point he regains consciousness, and is apparently going to be just fine afterward. Cue applause from doctors.

* Carolina digs a bullet out of the Mariachi's arm following the Tarasco Bar shootout from ''Film/{{Desperado}}''.
* Averted in ''Film/{{Speed}}'': early on Harry gets shot by the villain, and later mentions that the bullet is still inside him.
* Possibly averted in ''Film/XMenFirstClass''. After Charles is accidentally hit in the spine by a bullet deflected by Erik, Erik pulls the bullet out using his powers. It's entirely possible (even likely) that the act of pulling the bullet out is what makes Charles a paraplegic in the original trilogy.
* In ''Film/TheyMadeMeAFugitive'', Clem gets shot by a farmer and is left with a painful collection of buckshot across his shoulder. When he finds Sally, she takes out the pieces even if she's constantly getting faint from the sight of blood.
* {{Parodied}} in ''Film/TalladegaNightsTheBalladOfRickyBobby'' when the titular character stabs himself in the leg to prove that he's a paraplegic (even though he's really not; he only ''thinks'' he is)--and raises holy hell when it actually hurts. His idiot buddies then try to dig the knife out--[[EpicFail with another knife]].

* In ''Film/ToHaveAndHaveNot'', a LivingMacGuffin gets shot in the should and the hero is called in to get the bullet out which he does.
* Film/MajorPayne presents his LoveInterest Emily Walburn with a gift that comes from his heart--a bullet that he dug out of his left ventricle.
* In the ''Film/Underworld2003'' series, Lycans have to dig out silver bullets and other silver weapons before they get fatally poisoned. They have a HealingFactor, and powerful Lycans can push the bullets out just by tensing their muscles. Also, in ''Film/UnderworldBloodWars'', David gets shot with a bullet tipped with a [[ThisIsADrill spinning drill]], so Selene has to pull it out because it is traveling through and damaging his body faster than his HealingFactor can fix.
* Subverted in Micmacs a Tire-Larigot. During a gunfight, a bullet ricochets off the pavement and hits the protagonist in the head but does not kill him. At the hospital, the doctors decide it would be too dangerous to take it out, but the ammunition in it is still live and could go off at any time if he gets too upset. (It's a Creator/JeanPierreJeunet movie. Don't think about it too hard.)

* In ''Film/BringMeTheHeadOfTheMachineGunWoman'', Santiago captures the Machine Gun Woman after she is shot by one of the hitmen after the bounty on her head. She insists that that the bullet needs to come out and talks Santiago through the procedure for removing it. Made more difficult because it is done in the front seat of her jeep, using equipment she has in the car, and she is tied up because Santiago won't untie her in case she escapes.
* At the start of ''Film/{{Tumbleweed}}'', Jim saves Tigre's life by using a knife to dig a bullet out of Tigre's chest.
* ''Film/SevenWaysFromSundown'': Flood thinks Seven's bullet is probably going to kill him just before he passes out. Seven removes the bullet while Flood is unconscious so he can bring Flood back alive.
* ''Film/JesseJamesMeetsFrankensteinsDaughter'': Juanita says this almost word for word when she examines Hank's wound. As Jesse and Hank cannot go to regular doctor, she takes them to the Frankensteins.
* ''Film/{{Logan}}'': {{Justified|Trope}} when Laura sucks a bullet out of her arm -- she has a fast-acting HealingFactor, so bleeding isn't a concern and the bullet was in the way.

* In ''Film/TheAggressionScale'', Owen gets shot in the chest. The bullet is slowed by a PocketProtector but still lodges in his chest. He performs some SelfSurgery and digs the bullet out with a combat knife.
* Ryan uses a switchblade to extract a bullet from his torso at the end of the InMediasRes opening of ''Film/TenDeadMen''.
* ''Film/{{Blastfighter}}'': After Connie is shoot in the leg by the poachers, Tiger digs the bullet with his combat knife and hand sets her broken bones. Exactly why he thought it was necessary to do this on the spot, rather than waiting till they were out of immediate danger is never explained.

* In ''Film/HangmansKnot'', Egan is shot InTheBack by the {{Posse}} and badly wounded. After the troop and the hostages are holed up in the stage station, Molly, who used to be a nurse in the Union army, operates on him to extract the bullet: saying that she is doing so not because she wants to help the Confederates, but because she is a nurse and has no choice.

* In ''The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax'' by Creator/DorothyGilman, Literature/MrsPollifax (a [[LittleOldLadyInvestigates little old lady spy]]) and a fellow agent called Farrell are captured by the enemy. Farrell is shot in the shoulder during an attempt to throw himself off a cliff to avoid questioning, and as his condition worsens, much is made of how the bullet must be removed before it kills him. As soon as this is done (not by a doctor, in the rather unsanitary environment of a prison cell), Farrell's health begins to improve.

* Justified in the second book of the ''[[Literature/ApprenticeAdept Apprentice Adept]]'' series: Red has [[spoiler: shot Stile with a bullet that, in Proton, is a tracer for a bomb robot, and in Phaze is a basilisk amulet that will activate the second it gets to Phaze.]]
* Justified in ''Literature/TheMartian''. Mark Watney has been punctured by a length of antenna which, along with congealed blood, has mostly sealed his spacesuit against decompression. However when he regains consciousness, Watney has to remove the antenna to apply an emergency patch that will properly seal the spacesuit so he can make it back to the Habitat. [[Film/TheMartian In the movie]] he cuts off most of the antenna, but leaves the remainder in place until he makes it back to the Hab, then yanks out the rod and fishes inside himself with forceps for a nut that's been left in there. However as the nearest medical attention is millions of miles away, and he's got to engage in a lot of physical activity over the next few years, it's not as if he has any other choice.

* In ''Ramage'', the title character must find a doctor (in enemy-occupied Italy) to have a bullet removed from the beautiful Marchesa di Volterra, and trust the man not to give them away.
* ''Literature/TheSagaOfTheSwornBrothers'' (''Flateyjárbok'' version only): After the Battle of Stiklestad, a healing-woman tries to pull out the arrow-head from Thormod's chest with a pair of tongs, but fails because the wound is swollen and the arrow has barbs, and so Thormod does it himself. He pulls out some of the "nerves of his heart" with it, "some of which were red and others white, yellow and green". Looking at the arrowhead, Thormod remarks that King Olaf has fed him well because there's fat in his body ("The roots of this man's heart are white"); moments later, he keels over dead. The procedure is justified insofar as the only reason for it seems to be that Thormod wants to give one more proof of his hardiness, as the saga asserts that he already knows he will die.

* ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'': Military surgeons are often found cutting cannon shot out of dragons after battles, and the titular dragon voices his concern when he sees that another dragon healed over a piece of shot. {{Justified|Trope}} in that it causes a much higher risk of infection or abscess if the shot isn't removed.

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* ''Literature/WatershipDown'': Kehaar helps remove the "little black stones" in [[spoiler:Hazel's]] flank after he's shot

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]

* ''Film/DoctorStrange2016'': Steven Strange's EstablishingCharacterMoment is removing an round from the back of a gunshot victim's head without inflicting further damage. The victim had prematurely been declared brain-dead due to chemicals leaching from the bullet.

* Averted with an arrowhead in ''Franchise/{{Elfquest}}''. Cutter is shot by some humans, and (the tribe lacking a magical healer at the time) taken to the trolls for medical care. The troll elder who treats him warns that the arrowhead is caught under a rib, and that it will probably kill him to dig it out; she also assures him that "My eldest got on fine forever with a bear tooth stuck in his butt." The arrowhead stays where it is for hundreds of years (causing some chronic pain) until the tribe has a magical healer again.

[[quoteright:315:[[ComicBook/SupermanBatman https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kryptonite_bullet.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:315:A [[KryptoniteFactor Kryptonite]] bullet is one of the few circumstances when this is a JustifiedTrope]]

Depending on the time period, however, this can be a JustifiedTrope; historically, a musket ball was made out of lead and would be toxic if left inside. Moreover, the ball would have been moving much more slowly than a modern bullet, as the bullet was a spherical ball, firearms used black powder (which explodes less energetically than the smokeless powder used in modern ammunition), and the seal between the bullet and the barrel of the gun was looser. Between the round shape and the slow speed, most bullets were liable to drag shreds of the victim's clothing into the wound (unlike modern weapons, whose bullets generally snap right through). The bullet would thus have been extracted as part of recovering the clothing fragments, since cloth in a wound were a good way for the wound to get infected—especially historically, as since most soldiers (and civilians, for that matter) had just one set of clothes which they wore constantly without washing them.[[note]] A) because you'd wash your under-pants and under-shirt, if you had any, instead of the external clothes and B) because most dyes would dissolve in water and/or soap, which was bad news if you wanted to look good/were relying on the colour of your clothes to help other soldiers identify which country you were fighting for[[/note]] Plus, people often instinctively want to get rid of foreign metal objects causing pain. Similarly, today, bullets still usually contain lead, and studies released in the mid-2010s show that over the long term, bullets left in people's bodies do cause long-term lead poisoning. Consequently, the new medical advice is to remove bullets if doing so does not create much additional risk. There are also cases, particularly in war zones, where people get rockets and grenades fired into them that fail to detonate on impact, in which case they do need to get the projectile taken out asap.