A character is adept or even a master with firearms, but how does the story communicate this to the viewer? One of the easiest ways is to have them pull off a trickshot involving a coin or coin-shaped object. Due to coins' (usually) small size and diameter, it becomes instantly impressive for a character to demonstrate their gun-handling skills in this manner. Do note that this trope is almost always performed with handguns, especially revolvers, since it's a little harder to believe someone could flick a coin into the air and then steady a rifle or other long gun quickly enough to hit it. This trope usually comes in two forms:
- The Improbable Aiming Skills version. In this fashion, a character will toss a coin and subsequently shoot it out of the air, usually as a tactic to impress or intimidate. Sometimes a character is introduced doing this so the audience instantly knows how good they are with guns. Oftentimes they will shoot a clean hole right through the center of the coin, no matter how small the coin is or what caliber of bullet they are firing. Needless to say, this is possible to do in real life, but nowhere near as nonchalantly as fiction would make you think, and it's also a lot harder to create a hole in the dead center of the coin, with edge shots or just splitting the coin in half being much more common. It is also occasionally performed with bows or crossbows, especially hand crossbows because of the aforementioned handgun association, although this also assumes that a bow or crossbow's ammunition would be capable of piercing the coin at all.
- The Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics version, in which a character will flick a coin into the air in order to ricochet a bullet off of it to precisely hit a target. This one relies much more heavily on Artistic License, since it assumes that the lightweight and freefalling coin is able to meaningfully influence a bullet's trajectory at all, that the coin then wouldn't nullify any of the bullet's stopping power, that the bullet manages to hit a flat surface of the coin at exactly the correct angle, etc. And that's not even putting into account that there's no guarantee in real life that pulling this off would actually hit what the shooter is intending to hit.
A Sub-Trope of Improbable Aiming Skills, Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics, and Artistic License - Firearms. Often employed by Trick Shot Gunslingers, either as a combat technique or just to make themselves look badass. May also be used by practitioners of Gun Fu. If a character attempts this maneuver but misses or hits something unintentional, that's Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. Compare with Coin Walk Flexing and/or other tricks done with coins, and Money Mauling for other examples of money used as weapons.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In Moriarty the Patriot, Moran shoots a coin in mid-air in order to ricochet the bullet toward his actual target. Never mind that that's not how anything works, it proves his incredible sniping in case anyone was still in doubt at that point, and seals his team work after a rocky start with Bond.
Comic Books
- The Avengers: The first issue of Mark Waid's run — the Silver Age Retraux half — has Hawkeye nailing four coins with arrows at the same time as a publicity stunt for the team's new lineup.
- Lucky Luke:
- In album Steaming Up the Mississippi, Luke must stop a ruthless hired gunslinger. Luke challenges him to show his skill, whereupon he tosses a coin and shoots it. Luke says he's not impressed. The gunslinger then tosses up four coins and shoots each one, which Luke says is just a waste of money. He then tosses a playing card and shoots right through it. Luke admits he has skill, but also reminds him that his six-shooter is now empty and Luke has the upper hand.
- In Le Pied-Tendre, a local cowboy tries to impress newcomer Waldo by shooting a coin in the center. Waldo promptly one-ups him by shooting the same coin from edge to edge, cutting it cleanly in half.
Film — Live-Action
- Ball of Fire has a variation on this - when Joe Lilac sends his Mooks to hold Bertram and his fellow professors hostage until Sugarpuss agrees to marry Joe, the professors try to distract one of them, Pastrami, by betting he can shoot a coin one of them is holding in his hand so he won't notice their plan to overpower him.
- Parodied in Support Your Local Sheriff. Jason McCullough demonstrates his Improbable Aiming Skills by tossing a washer into the air and shooting at it. It comes down untouched and he claims he shot the bullet through the hole in the washer. The Mayor is suspicious, so he puts a piece of tape over the washer's center and asks McCullough to do it again. When McCullough catches the washer after taking a second shot at it, there's a hole in the tape.
- The Sword of Swords has the introduction of Fang's archer squadron, where they shoot a bunch of bronze Chinese coins (the type with a square hole in its center) using their arrows atop a table into the air and then fires a second arrow each into the airborne coins pinning them in the ceiling via central hole. Incidentally this is the only time they demonstrated such skill with their arrows, in a later scene when they're sent to assassinate the hero Lin Jen-shiau, the squadron somehow still goes down in a two-minute Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Winchester '73 uses this as a way to settle a shooting contest between Lin McAdam and Dutch Henry Brown, his estranged brother. When both of them hit the targets at the same spot, the sheriff throws coins into the air for the two to shoot at.
Literature
- Artemis Fowl: At the end of The Arctic Incident, Holly Short tosses a fairy gold coin into the air, shoots a hole dead through its center, and gives it to Artemis as thanks, pointing out there's no way she could have made that shot if he hadn't used the Ritual to restore her trigger finger after it got cut off by a train car's door.
- Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?: One of the Crimson Vow's typical ways to establish their capabilities as a skilled Hunter team is to have Mavis toss a copper coin into the air and slice it into four pieces before it comes down.
- Hoka: In the first of this series of humorous science fiction stories by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, the Earthman Alexander Braithwaite Jones is eager to impress a group of Hokas, an alien species whose hat is latching on to fictional stories and role-playing them to the hilt. (The Hokas also have a remarkable resemblance to Earthly teddy bears.) This particular group of Hokas have imprinted on a series of Western movies some previous human explorers had unwisely shown them. Alex may not know how to ride a horse (let alone the reptiloid creatures the Hokas insist on calling "ponies") but he is "the best raythrower marksman in the Fleet" and he promptly offers to "plug it through the middle" if one of the Hokas will throw a coin in the air. Unfortunately for Alex, "raythrowers don't have recoil", and this last attempt at impressing the Hokas with his human superiority falls quit flat (as does Alex, who is literally knocked flat by the recoil of a black-powder six shooter).
Live-Action TV
- Jesper's introduction in Shadow and Bone's first episode has him ask a patron at the club if he is using legitimate coin. Jesper explains that genuine currency can take a bullet — and to prove that the patron is cheating them, he tosses one of the coins into the air and blows a hole clean through with his gun. This establishes Jesper as a quick draw with a quick eye.
- Sherlock: The third-season finale "His Last Vow" has Sherlock goading Mary into proving her shooting skills by nailing a 50p coin in mid-flip, confirming her Mysterious Past as a CIA agent.
Music
- David Sylvian's "The Boy With The Gun":
He shoots the coins into the air
And follows where the money lands
Video Games
- Final Fantasy VII Remake: One of Rufus' attacks in his boss fight involves throwing coins into the air, then firing his shotgun at them so the bullets ricochet off the coins and hit Cloud.
- The Sega Dreamcast port of House of the Dead 2 includes a few minigames, one of which is keeping a coin in the air for as long as possible by shooting it.
- Mortal Kombat: Erron Black is able to throw coins, then shoot them to ricochet the bullet towards his opponent. In Mortal Kombat X, this ability is restricted to his Gunslinger variant, while in Mortal Kombat 11, he does this as part of his Fatal Blow, throwing two coins in the air, then shooting them with his Guns Akimbo to redirect the bullet into his opponent's eyes.
- LISA the Painful: Buckets frequently employs these in his combat style, being The Gunslinger. Amazingly, he's capable of ricocheting multiple revolver shots off of the same coin in a split second, and some of his most powerful abilities have him emptying both of his guns doing this.
- Paladins: One of Saati's Abilities, "Ricochet", tosses a coin into the air that she can shoot with her Hand Cannon. Successfully hitting the coin causes the shot to home in nearby enemies; the initial hit targets the nearest enemy, while subsequent hits target the enemy with the lowest health in its range. Successfully shooting the coin four times in succession causes the coin to explode, damaging nearby enemies even more.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: Each class has a self-heal ability to quickly restore health outside of combat. For the Smuggler subclasses of Scoundrel and Gunslinger, it consists of them idly tossing a coin in the air and then shooting it with their currently equipped blaster pistol.
- Terraria Calamity: The Crackshot Colt and Midas Prime weapons are one big Shout-Out to ULTRAKILL — they have a secondary fire of tossing up to four coins into the air, which if shot will cause the bullet to ricochet off all the tossed coins and into the nearest enemy for increased damage with each coin.
- ULTRAKILL:
- V1's most iconic ability is the Alt Fire of their Marksman revolver, in which they toss a coin into the air and fire a bullet off of it, securing a guaranteed headshot on a nearby enemy and supplying the "+RICOSHOT" score bonus. Also, any hitscan weapon can ricochet off the coins, meaning it's possible to redirect a railcannon blast off of one, doing staggeringly high damage. Moreover, when a normal revolver's primary fire hits coins at certain timing windows, the bullet will actually split with both halves hitting different targets.
- The rematch against V2 in 4-4 has them copy the player. This means they also can do coin trick shots, being able to deal hefty damage. This is used to show how much they have learned since the previous boss battle, along with being a test for the player to see if they can outperform the boss by making them have to shoot the coins thrown in the air before V2 beats them to it. Also, while they can also shoot coins in the first boss battle and cause them to ricochet, they won't outright do so and can only be on accident, such as if the player just so happens to throw a coin right in front of V2 as they are shooting.
- Xenosaga: In one of his attacks Jr. throws a coin and ricochets a bullet off it in order to hit the enemy. There's also a stronger version in which he throws a handful of coins and shoots them, with bullets ricocheting off random coins and all striking the target from various angles.
- Your Only Move is HUSTLE features the Doubledown Game Mod. Doubledown is The Gambler, a Card Sharp wearing a fancy derby, who attacks with a mixture of thrown playing cards, flicked coins, and Good Old Fisticuffs. His special moves involves tossing coins and cards at the enemy, but if a coin and card connect, the card ricochets off the coin extremely quickly and redirect itself towards Doubledown's opponent, flying faster, hitting harder, and eventually becoming unblockable. Notably, Doubledown can do this in either order—card first, then coin, or coin first, then card. As long as the two meet, a powerful card ricochet will occur. The challenge is accomplishing this with very small, fast projectiles while you are in the middle of an over-the-top anime-style fighting game.
Web Animation
- If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device: When Kitten was playing a game of Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker against Tzeentch for Magnus' soul, Kitten uses Cup of Ace to flip a coin so whoever it lands for would have to draw two cards. Kitten shoots it to force Tzeentch to draw two cards, which would deck him out. It turns out to be a trap, as Tzeentch had an elaborate scheme to give him the winning move. Fortunately, Kitten counters the plan by just summoning a bunch of monsters that self-buff and throwing them at Tzeentch.
Web Original
- Try Hards: In "Making the Best Trickshot Ever!" Tom attempts to do a trickshot with one of his airsoft guns and some chocolate coins at first. Not only does he quickly realize how difficult to pull off it actually is, but that his airsoft guns are in a bad state of disrepair and keep misfiring, forcing him to try something else.
Western Animation
- In one episode of All Grown Up!, as Kimi tries to reconcile her Japanese heritage with her American upbringing, she has a series of Imagine Spots. In one of them, a cowboy version of herself flips a coin into the air and shoots it, only to find when it lands that it's a five-yen coin (which already has a hole in the middle
).
- In Tex Avery's Drag-a-long Droopy, the Wolf throws a nickel in the air and shoots it. It comes down with a perfect hole through its center. Then Droopy throws a nickel in the air and shoots it. Five pennies come down, each with a hole in the middle.
Real Life
- MythBusters tested whether this was actually feasible without special effects, and got a quick-draw/speed-shooting champion in to test it. They threw a bunch of coin-shaped slugs at him. He put bullets in them. Myth confirmed.
