Bullet Dodges You

Bullets, stop right there. The One commands you!

Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
Morpheus: No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.

— The Matrix

Some characters can Dodge the Bullet; move so fast that not even a high-velocity round, or maybe not even a Very High Velocity Round can hit them. They just move out of the way.

These characters, as the trope name implies, are the opposite. They don't move out of the bullet's way—they literally don't need to. The bullet itself will avoid hitting them. There could be many reasons for this—from psychokinetic power all the way up to sheer dumb luck. The end result is the same regardless: Guns Are Worthless against them, and all they have to do is stand there.

The character is not Immune to Bullets. Normally the bullets never reach him, but if a bullet does reach him (for example, if attacked by surprise), he would be as vulnerable as anyone else. A character immune to bullets receives all the shots and stays completely unharmed by them.

This trope comes in two different flavours:

1. The character uses Mind over Matter to stop the bullets in their tracks. From there, they can release the bullets at any time, and they'll just clatter harmlessly to the ground. With the right powerset, the character can even send the bullets right back at their original shooters!
2. The bullet literally dodges the character; instead of stopping, it goes around him without even slowing.

This does not necessarily happen in Soviet Russia. Compare Plot Armor, which is the metafictional protection offered to main characters and sometimes can appear to serve this purpose (especially if Stormtroopers are involved). Also compare A-Team Firing, where bullets dodge everybody, no matter how many bullets/people there are. A sister trope to this is Bullet Catch and Parrying Bullets, where the characters stop the in-flight bullets physically. Also see Return to Shooter.

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Examples:

First Version:

Anime & Manga

• In the anime version of AKIRA, a tank fires on Tetsuo. The shell stops in front of him, floats in the air a moment and then explodes without harming him.
• Appears to happen whenever anyone shoots at Ciel in Black Butler - Sebastian just plucks the bullets right out of the air and politely hands them back to the assassin.
• In Elfen Lied, the Diclonius can block or deflect bullets depending on the caliber. Pistol rounds are simply blocked, but larger rifle rounds have to be deflected. The only gun that is known to have killed one was an assault rifle with armor piercing rounds at point blank range. People have tried to kill Lucy with both .50 BMG anti materiel rifles and Desert Eagles loaded with tungsten bullets, but without success.
• Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) series is a great example of a lucky bullet evader. Even though he's shown to generally be a very fast character, there are plenty of moments where he somehow doesn't get hit by multipile gunshots even when standing still.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Golden Wind: Sale's Kraft Work lets him stop a bullet in place, then taps the bullet with his own finger to add potential kinetic energy. Once enough is stored, Sale can release the bullet back towards who shot it.
  • Stone Ocean: Jolyne is able to use Stone Free to redirect projectiles at different directions.
• In the prequel manga to K, Mikoto Suoh, the Red King, uses a variation of this trope to incinerate incoming bullets. Reisi Munakata, the Blue King, also shows this ability; it probably comes with being a King as you are just too powerful that just activating your Aura results in such things. In the first episode of the second season, Reisi not only does this, he makes the bullets explode into sparkles.
• In One Piece, a few character have this capability, generally by way of using Devil Fruit powers.
  • Eustass Kidd has magnetic powers that allow him to freeze cannonballs in their tracks inches from his body, and repel them back to their senders for good measure.
  • Trafagar Law can use his spatial-displacement power to stop projectiles, swap them with objects in another location, and set them moving again.
• In Tokyo Shinobi Squad, Jin Narumi's ninpo art, the "Magnetic Field Technique", lets him stop bullets in midair with a wave of his hand and send them right back at their owners.

Card Games

• Mages from Mage: The Ascension and Mage: The Awakening can do this with the Forces arcanum/sphere, manipulating the velocities of bullets.

Comic Books

• The Flash: The Flash is so freakin' quick that he is not limited to Dodge the Bullet: he can grab the bullet in the air, as it goes in slow motion (as well as everything else) from his perspective.
• Static: Static tends to do this Magneto-style with just a wave of his hand, stopping walls of gunfire before they touch him with a wall of magnetism.
• Superboy (1994): While Kon's powers make it look like he's bulletproof he's really not, and when unconscious or not paying enough attention he's just as vulnerable to bullets and other damage as a normal human, what he's really doing is stopping the bullets with his tactile telekinesis as soon as they get within range, which becomes more apparent when he expands that range to include others near him. While he eventually did develop more traditional Kryptonian bullet immunity that was still years away at this point in his story.
• X-Men:
  • A 1980s story about a group of anti-mutant bigots who discover Xavier's secret and try to murder him culminates in dueling examples of this. After their plot is thwarted, one of the villains tries to shoot Rachel Summers, who uses her telekinesis to grab the bullet and redirect it at the shooter. Then the bullet freezes just in front of his head, having been caught by Magneto, who refuses to let Rachel become a murderer like himself. The bullet just hovers in front of the now-terrified assassin's face while they push against each other, until Magneto manages to talk Rachel down.
  • Longshot and Domino, of the X-Men, have "good luck" as their power. One use for it is that, when someone fires at them, they will have the "good luck" that the shots will miss.

Fan Works

• In Fate of the Clans Bullets are unable to hit Mikoto due to his aura. They either instantly melt if they get too close or he can launch them right back at the shooter. This doesn't apply to supernatural bullets, like Tenkei's.

Films — Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Magical Movie Night — "Mirror Magic": Not bullets, but Twilight Sparkle uses telekinesis to stop a rain of chocolate-covered almonds, Matrix-style. (And then Pinkie Pie eats them, Pac-Man-style.)

Films — Live-Action

• The Matrix, as the quote above suggests. Neo, when he finally becomes The One, is able to stop a hail of bullets by simply willing it, causing the bullets to stop dead in their tracks and fall to the ground. He can also block swords bare-handed, though he still bleeds a bit.
• Advanced Movers are able to do this in Push. The protagonist learns to do this with some practice, while Victor is a master at this, being able to hold off dozens of Triad Mooks firing on full auto. Fun fact: Victor is played by Neil Jackson, whose character of Khalek (see Live-Action TV) in Stargate SG-1 does the same thing.
• In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren demonstrates just how powerful a Force-wielder he is by freezing both a blaster bolt and the man who fired at the same time. The bolt stays suspended in mid-air, shivering and crackling, during Poe's brief capture and interrogation, all without so much as a second glance from Ren.
• Magneto does this in the X-Men movies and comics, using control of magnetism. In the first film, Magneto uses his powers to take all the guns from the police and aim them back at the cops. Xavier tries to force him to surrender. Magneto fires at one of the cops, and keeps the bullet in the air right against his face. As Xavier does not give up yet, Magneto cocks all the other guns and dares him, "Care to press your luck, Charles? I don't think I can stop them all!"

Literature

• In The Avatar Chronicles book Saga, one of the main characters can do this. It's Ghost.
• In Anthony Horowitz's Evil Star, protagonist Matt does this at the climax. Too bad it doesn't prevent the bad guys from releasing the Sealed Evil in a Can.
• At one point in The Will Be Done Praen stops two bullets in midair and sends one of them back to its owner, allowing the other to drop to the floor.

Live-Action TV

• In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Glenn Talbot demonstrates this ability after being infused with gravitonium and becoming a Gravity Master. Not only can he stop the bullets without even a gesture, he casually makes them orbit his body for a few seconds before throwing them back at his attackers.
• When Buffy the Vampire Slayer gets a temporary magical upgrade to fight Adam, she stops machine gun fire in mid-air and turns a rocket launched from an RPG-7 into a dove.
• There are several episodes of Charmed where either Prue or Paige use their telekinesis to deflect bullets, or Piper uses her freezing power to stop them in midair.
• Heroes: Matt Parkman fires a round of bullets at Sylar, who stops them with one hand. He then flicks them right back into Matt. Ouch.
• Khalek can stop bullets with a forcefield in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Prototype". A lot. Unfortunately (for him), it only works when he knows the bullets are coming, so Mitchell distracts him by shooting at him while Daniel comes at him through a door on the other side of the room.

Tabletop Games

• In the Warhammer 40000 roleplaying game Dark Heresy psykers can perform a power, which was clearly inspired by The Matrix: For one round of combat, a number of hits (depending on the willpower of the psyker) from projectiles are ignored, as they stop in their tracks and (once the power stops) fall to the ground. This has the problem that there are a lot of non-projectile weapons in the game; laser weapons are some of the most common weapons found in the setting.

Video Games

• In one cutscene during the finale of Bayonetta, one major villain stops Bayonetta's bullets by stopping time, then reverses the bullets' direction. Bayonetta manages to dodge them, though.
• The "Return to Sender" vigor in BioShock Infinite allows you to catch bullets and hurl them back at your enemies as a blast of kinetic energy.
• Gemini: Heroes Reborn, a game where your character has psychic powers, allows you to stop projectiles in your direction by raising a hand. Though it only works for a short period of time - you'll need to side-step the suspended projectiles and let them fly harmlessly past or suffer a hit.
• In one chapter of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Sissel and his companions have to force this trope to prevent someone from being murdered. They must exchange the bullet with another item. However, the kinetic energy is conserved, so while the bullet clatters harmlessly to the ground, Sissel must take care not to swap it with something just as deadly.

• Ubersoldier sees you as a Nazi Super-Soldier and part of the titular Ubersoldier project, where you have the ability to create a temporarily force-field around you that stops bullets (albeit draining your energy level).
• Neuro, a game where you have telekinesis and Mind over Matter powers, have your abilities manifesting to maximum in the final cutscene. Your traitorous Evil Mentor is on a helicopter, and tries firing twin missiles at you only for you to stop those missiles in mid-air, half a meter away from you. Before you send them flying back.
• In The World Ends with You, Joshua does this whenever Sho tries to shoot him, and the bullets end up falling to the ground harmlessly.

Web Comics

• In Angel Down, Bernard has the power to redirect bullets in mid air. This allows him not only to avoid projectiles, but also to completely reverse their trajectory.

Western Animation

• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In Season 7, when Bo-Katan tries to shoot him in the throne room, Maul uses the Force to make her blaster bolts curve off to the sides before Force-choking her.

Second Version:

Anime & Manga

• Tachibana Kanade (Angel/Tenshi) of Angel Beats! can do this with her Guard Skill, Distortion.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Accelerator is able to control vectors - one of the unconscious aspects of this ability being that of reversing any vector that works on him. As a result, he not only deflects bullets, he reflects them back into the barrel of the gun.
  • Another example from Index is Misaka Mikoto, whose control over electricity also allows her to manipulate magnetic fields and stop bullets cold. She uses this to great effect when fighting the Hound Dogs during the Academy City Invasion arc.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: In his backstory, Guido Mista is able to avoid multiple pistol shots from two assailants at the same time by just standing still and calmly loading his own weapon. It is left up to interpretation if this was thanks to his own Stand ability or the result of fate.
• In the finale of Madlax, after Margaret merges with her two other split-off parts, she gains the ability to telekinetically deflect the bullets Monday shoots at her.
• Happens in the Trigun anime (not manga) for Vash the Stampede and Legato Bluesummers. This is most noticeable when an entire gang blaze away at Vash with automatic rifles for several seconds… and just leave a perfect outline in the wall behind him. In that scene there's an implication that the mooks were under orders not to kill, and were firing just to pin him down. But later, there's an incident wherein Vash and Wolfwood casually walk toward a gang stronghold, with gang members continuously firing on them with various calibers of fire, and missing.
• Implied in UQ Holder!. Karin's form of immortality causes attacks that would normally harm her to miss, though not by much. While as of Chapter 16 this has only been applied to melee attacks it is assumed to work on things like bullets as well, resulting in this form of the trope being followed.
• In The Tomorrow War, the final book of the Wing Man series, Viktor and Hawk are revealed to be "angels", people who can travel between dimensions, not necessarily of their own will, and can influence events to the point of having supernatural abilities. Toward the end of the book, several soldiers try to shoot Viktor, and the bullets merely pass through him, as he's not allowed to die.

Comic Books

• In one issue of Gold Digger, Brianna shoots Pee Bees, little bullets with an AI to hurt only bad guys. She releases them willy nilly, causing one of the mages to try to deflect them, only to discover he didn't need to. However, as they are too small to house an advanced AI, they, for example, think someone stealing a kiss is bad.
• Judomaster: Sonia Sato can project an "aversion field" which prevents her from being hit by attacks specifically aimed at her. This does not include attacks that have no aim, such as random projectiles and explosions.
• In The Shadow Hero, this is the Green Turtle's only genuine superpower. After his father was murdered with a gun, Hank Chu asked the Turtle for the mystical boon that he would never be shot. As a result, bullets bend around him, and sometimes hit the shooter's allies.
• Transformers:
  • In The Transformers: All Hail Megatron, Soundwave uses his communications abilities to hack the Air Force's missile guidance systems so they all miss the Decepticons.
  • Victorion, being a Gravity Master, can deflect energy beams by creating gravity wells that cause the beams to bend around her and her allies.
  • In The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Brainstorm builds an "evasive bullet" to invoke this trope. The bullet will lock onto its intended target and actively avoid innocent bystanders. The project was shelved indefinitely due to a major snag in production. Brainstorm couldn't decide on the colour.

Fan Works

• In Fate of the Clans Cú Chulainn's Protection From Arrows skill has a slightly misleading name. It isn't just arrows it blocks but it can be that any projectile attack is knocked away before they even touch him. However, he has to block or dodge any projectiles that'll detonate on impact. He also needs to have made visual confirmation with the shooter for the skill to possibly block the attack since it's ranked B. After the first fight ends he tells Mikoto that if he hadn't glimpsed the Gray King right before the gun was fired he would have had to do something himself.

Films — Live-Action

• In a dream sequence in Ali G Indahouse, the title character is left with a Bullethole Outline, though it also outlines... something that's not really there.
• The Book of Eli has the titular character shot at numerous times without being hit. This may be mundane — in post-apocalyptic America ammunition is unreliable, and it's also scarce enough that people probably can't afford to practice shooting with it — or may be magic. Though when Carnegie shoots Eli point blank near the end, not only does the bullet hit him, the injury from it eventually leads to Eli's death.
• In The Fifth Element, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg demonstrates a gun that has avoiding friendly fire as one of its special features. Even if you aim directly at your own units, the bullets will just navigate around them.
• Another Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane example in Pulp Fiction sets Jules on the path to a Heel–Faith Turn ("That's exactly what I'm saying — God came down from Heaven and stopped the bullets"), though Vincent is derisive of this and convinced that it's a combination of coincidence and bad marksmanship.

Literature

• In the Jack West Jr. series by Matthew Reilly, some characters have Warblers, which generate electromagnetic interference, causing bullets to 'dodge' those in close proximity.
• Wax from the Wax and Wayne series can exert a constant generalised allomantic push that causes metal objects like bullets to weer off when they get too close to him. It's not entirely foolproof, but it does make him very hard to hit. It's noted that by the laws of allomancy as they are commonly understood, this should not be possible - an allomancer has to identify a piece of metal before they can push against it. The Ars Arcanum says that all twinborn (people with an allomantic power and a feruchemical power) gain an additional effect based on the "resonance" between the two powers, and it's implied that what Wax is doing is the resonance between his allomantic power to push on metals and his feruchemical power to alter his weight.
• Bink's talent in the Xanth books could be seen as the magical version: Any spell that would harm him, even Magician-caliber, is pushed aside by seeming coincidence and dumb luck. Unfortunately for him, his talent has a very precise definition of "harm", meaning that there are spells that can incapacitate, embarrass, or greatly inconvenience him. (In fact, his talent might consider expediting this a convenient means of protecting him from genuinely dangerous magic he'd likely run into unimpeded.) And of course, he has no such direct protection against non-magical methods of attack. It was implied more than once early on that determined opposition by Magician- or greater-level magic probably could eventually get through, but his talent also works both to avert Bink making true enemies of that caliber in the first place and actively seeks ways to indirectly end such a confrontation before it reaches its limits to directly protect him - even if this should mean "buying off" an opponent with whatever the fight was over.

Live-Action TV

• Andromeda: Conventional technology is the Electronic Countermeasure Generator (ECM), often woven into clothing. It deflects the smart bullets also used in that setting.
• In Season 2 of Continuum it's established that Kiera's futuristic suit, as well as being bulletproof, can project a sort of electromagnetic force field that deflects bullets away from her general vicinity. This allows both herself and Carlos to flee from a firefight unharmed, although the implausibility of all the bullets missing them doesn't go unnoticed.
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: When Bart gets shot, the shooter misses with every round in his chamber through a series of bizarre coincidences; Bart stumbles to the side at the right millisecond, bends down to scratch her shoe, so on. When Ken asks if she dodged the bullets, she just says "the bullets dodged me," and that she is a universal constant, like gravity. Then she reloads the gun, presses it to her forehead, and pulls the trigger to no effect. And just to underline the point, she fires a round off into the trees, then tries to shoot herself again, and repeats until the gun is empty.

Myths & Religion

• Older Than Print: While modern firearms hadn't been invented yet, the Norse god Baldur had this by virtue of all of creation having sworn not to harm him. The other gods regularly engaged in Comedic Sociopathy by shooting and throwing stuff at him, knowing it would turn aside. Then Loki found the one thing that hadn't taken the oath...
• In The Book of Mormon, Samuel the Lamanite preaches repentance to the Nephites and foretells Christ's birth. Many of the Nephites shoot arrows and throw rocks at Samuel, but divine power prevents anything from hitting him.

Tabletop Games

• Mages from the New World of Darkness can pull this off with the Fate arcanum, which can just amount to being incredibly lucky all the friggin' time. Likewise mages from the Old World of Darkness with the Entropy sphere.

Video Games

• The Energy Aura powerset in City of Villains allows its users to generate fields of energy around themselves to deflect incoming attacks.
• In Dishonored, Corvo Attano can stop the bullets in midair, move out of the way, and proceed to shoot the guards. Or, with the use of the Possession power, move the hapless shooter in front of his own bullet.
• In Enter the Matrix, bullets go out of their way not to hit Agents, most notably as you approach point-blank range because the bullets turn 90 degrees right out of the barrel!
• Fahrenheit: In his escape from the police, Lucas uses his Super-Reflexes to dodge shots fired at him while simultaneously taking down officers.
• Lancer from Fate/stay night has the skill Protection From Arrows, which causes most anything launched or thrown at him to be deflected. The only exceptions are powerful Noble Phantasms, projectiles that explode on impact, and weapons that simply have an extended attack, such as a knife attached to a ribbon with the thrower holding the ribbon. In those cases, he has to dodge himself or knock them away with his spear.
• In the original Half-Life, in the event you are somehow able to approach the G-Man and attempt to shoot him, you discover he has a shield around him that makes bullets redirect randomly around him, though they still go in the direction they were meant to. Most exemplified if you approach him and try to shoot point-blank at his chest, only to find a bullet-hole above his left shoulder.
• If you use a cheat in The Matrix: Path of Neo the bullets automatically deflect away from Neo.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has Fortune. Not only do bullets dodge her (with a visible streak in the air to show the changed trajectory), but any grenade that gets close to her turns into a dud. This causes her no end of angst, because it doesn't protect any of her allies. In the end sequence Revolver Ocelot reveals this is due to a magnetic deflection device (which she isn't aware of). However, she then apparently deflects a series of shots from Metal Gear Ray without it. After a boss fight with her, Raiden notably manipulates this so as to shoot Vamp (who usually can read someone's muscles so fast he avoids bullets) in the head by bouncing it off her field at him. It doesn't take, due to his regenerative powers, but it does leave a scar.
• Team Fortress 2 includes the unlockable Bonk Atomic Punch for the Scout class. When quaffed, the player takes no damage from attacks because he's so fast. In fact, when damage numbers are turned on, each "hit" registers as "Miss". It counts as this trope because the shots will miss even if the character is standing perfectly still. Although the Scout still takes knockback somehow.
• In Undertale, when you fight Toriel, getting to low health makes her Bullet Hell style attacks start to dodge you instead of the other way around. This isn't thanks to any ability of the player, but Toriel trying to scare off the human child without seriously endangering them—if you go out of your way to get hit and die, she'll be shocked that it happened.
  • Undertale's successor, Deltarune has a similar thing happen when Susie encounters Lancer after the latter betrayed her, Kris, and Ralsei. His attacks eventually start swerving away to avoid Susie should the player get hit enough.
• In Bioshock Infinite, every shots veers off-course when you attempt to shoot at the Lutece twins. Based on their dialogue, they shifted everyone to an alternate timeline where you missed your shot.

Web Comics

• In Homestuck, Clover's luck powers prevent him from getting shot.
  Clover: What's this? Hee hee! You think you can shoot Clover? He is so lucky the gun will probably jam or something predictable like that. Nice try, though!
• In Juathuur, Faevv unravels a "bullet" made of magically manipulated water.
• The eponymous protagonist of Mind Mistress has a Velocity Redirection Field built into her Powered Armor that does this to any fast-moving object that approaches her. Naturally, that includes bullets.

Real Life

• George Washington apparently had horses shot out from under him and his coat hit several times, but was never hit himself. This is either a case of mutant powers, divine intervention, or dumb luck. More than likely a mundane second example, as the old smoothbores were already inaccurate and firing accuracy drops quickly in a firefight.
• Andrew Jackson was the subject of the first Presidential assassination attempt in the US. The assassin pulled two guns and both of them misfired, despite being in good working order. Given that Jackson had been fighting in wars since he was 13, had survived multiple pistol duels and was all around a generally scary guy, people later joked that bullets were more afraid of Jackson than he was of them.

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