Exactly What I Aimed At

Caffeine'll kill ya.

[Optimus Prime shoots at Dreadwing and appears to miss]
Dreadwing: Your aim is poor.
[The glacier face behind Dreadwing begins to crack, as a result of the aforementioned shots]
Optimus Prime: That is a matter of perspective.
[The glacier face crumbles and an avalanche ensues, leaving Dreadwing buried]

— Transformers: Prime

The Gunslinger has an opponent in their sights, and fires a shot. But to the opponent's surprise, the shot missed. The opponent takes a moment and sneers at their inaccuracy...

"Ha! Ya missed!"

Then the gunslinger (sometimes with a confident chuckle) points out that they weren't aiming at the opponent, and hit exactly what they were really aiming for: A trick shot that sets off something else (often a chain reaction) that slips past the opponent's guard, and takes out the target in a different way. Bonus points if it's actually far more effective than a direct attack would have been.

This usually involves getting some part of the locale to collapse on the enemy, or cause a slightly delayed explosion. Occasionally, this may be pulled off by someone to capture or disable their foe rather than kill them. Either way, there's usually enough time to see the opponent's reaction as they notice what's actually going to happen.

This trope is so well-known that inverting it by successfully pulling the trick shot, then admitting that they were really aiming at the normal target, is a trope in and of itself: Accidental Aiming Skills.

See also Deadly Dodging, Boomerang Comeback, Pinball Projectile, Precision-Guided Boomerang, and Shoot the Rope. Also, it's bad juju to assume someone missed because they didn't hit you, specifically. Contrast Stab the Scorpion, where the shooter was never trying to hurt the apparent target at all, and may even have been protecting them. If the shooter aimed at his victim, but was expecting to miss in order to do a chain reaction, then it overlaps with Batman Gambit. For a similarly delayed reaction if the shot directly hits the victim, see You Are Already Dead.

The verbal version of this is Exactly What I Meant to Say, and is more likely to involve a Straight Man, rather than an opponent, friendly or otherwise, than this trope.

As always, YouTube has a helpful list of compilations.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Happens twice in the third Ichigo/Grimmjow fight in Bleach Grimmjow was aiming for Orihime both times knowing that Ichigo would protect her. Needless to say, it worked pretty well.
  • Also used in the Hitsugaya/Gin fight during the Soul Society Arc. Though Hitsugaya dodges Gin's sword, which can extend itself to stab from a distance, he discovers that the unconscious Hinamori is directly in the sword's path.
• In Digimon Frontier, during the Warriors' first battle with Grumblemon, Beetlemon strikes the cliff surface next to Grumblemon, who then mocks his lousy shot...right before he discovers that Beetlemon did it to cause an avalanche which knocked Grumblemon off the mountain. Unfortunately, this also exposes the mountain's fractal code, which Grumblemon was after.
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Galaxy Super-express has an epic one of these when Nobita and Doraemon are on a shooting range on the Planet of Cowboys. Ashton, one of the contestants, shows off his Improbable Aiming Skills by firing six shots at six targets, hitting five in the process which had the judge declaring it as "best score so far". Nobita then retaliates by firing six shots, and hitting only one can out of six targets. But then Nobita tells the judge to observe said can - there are six holes on it, and it contains six spent bullets from Nobita's gun.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Piccolo does this to Android 17 in Dragon Ball Z. He shoots either slow or badly aimed ki blasts which appear insignificant to 17, who dodges them all with little to no effort. Turns out it was a guided scattershot designed for Piccolo to control the energy blasts and ultimately converge them all onto his enemy at once.
  • Piccolo does this again in Dragon Ball Super during the Tournament of Power. It works on an enemy from Universe 10 really well. On a Namekian from Universe 6? Not so much.
• In Dr. STONE, Senku finally invents a gun during the Treasure Island arc, but the only person around with any kind of firearms training is former Dirty Cop Yo, which worries the rest of the Kingdom of Science. They set up some bottles for him to practice with, but his shots completely miss...at which point a highly venomous (and now quite dead) snake drops from the ceiling. The group praises Yo's incredible aim, but he thinks to himself that he really WAS aiming at the bottles, and he's going to have to get very good very quickly if he wants to maintain the group's goodwill.
• During the game between the Shinryuuji Dragons in Eyeshield 21, Agon tackled Monta near the sidelines, effectively using up the last few precious seconds left in the game. Despite that, Monta had yelled "Catch Max!" and Agon mocked him for how his dream is over. It's revealed that Monta actually grabbed the SIDELINE, forcing the clock to be set back and giving the team one more chance to pull ahead and win.
  • During the match between Ojou with Sena out due to an injury and Yukimitsu is called as a replacement. The White Knights send Shin to score a touchdown and no one can stop him. With three seconds left, Yukimitsu instead of trying to hold Shin back, pushes Shin into the endzone. It was revealed that Ojou's plan was to score right when time ran out, leaving Deimon no time to catch up. Yukimitsu realized this and saved Deimon by giving them one second they needed for a comeback. And they did. As Shin said, "Even though you're an enemy, that's... magnificent."
• Vato Falman pulls one of these in the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. Fighting against a seemingly invincible Sloth, he fires a standard pistol. As Edward tells him that it's useless, a large icicle falls on Sloth's head, making him dizzy and allowing the Elrics to take advantage. Guess Falman knew what he was doing.
• In Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!!, Tail Red charges up a massive energy blast and fires it upwards. Lizard Guildy relaxes and mocks her poor aim, then the blast comes down and hits him.
• A variation is used right near the end of GUN×SWORD, when Ray Lundgren fires his last shot at the Claw before he is killed. The Claw laughs, saying that he missed, but Ray was actually aiming for the Claw's machine, and the bullet delayed the execution of his plan long enough for Van to stop him. Even better: he actually was aiming for the Claw, because he knew the Claw would swat the bullet out of the way - Ray had calculated that the Claw would send the bullet flying into the machine. He set it up so the Claw would be stuck with the realization that he screwed up his own plan.
• Pulled twice in the manga by Kou Tenka from Hoshin Engi: first by throwing some of his dart-like Paopei behind Mareisei and have them bounce on his companions' Attack Reflector parasol and hitting Mareisei in the back. Later, when fighting Totenkun inside his Fukojin with his family, he and his brother seemingly waste time throwing a series of weapons at the pillar the villain was holding to, which actually were needed to nail a Fire-based Paopei to the column, which causes it to overheat and scalds Totenkun, making him suffer a karmic Disney Villain Death.
• In Hunter × Hunter, during Gon's second fight with Gido in the Heavens Arena arc, he seemingly aims his fishing line at Gido's prosthetic leg and misses by quite some distance. While Gido is busy mocking Gon, it is revealed that Gon's aim all along was to pull the floor tile from underneath Gido.
• In Inuyasha, the titular character pulls one of these off with a sword larger than he is. While fighting Hiten, the older of two Thunder Brothers, he flings his ginormous sword towards his opponent and misses. Hiten demands to know what sort of aim that was, and Inuyasha responds "Perfect!" At this point Hiten turns around to see that his younger brother, who was attempting to choke the life out of Kagome, has been perfectly skewered by Tetsusaiga without Kagome being struck.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure features this multiple times:
  • Stardust Crusaders: Kakyoin fires many Emerald Splashes at DIO. He deflects all emeralds but one and punches a hole in Kakyoin's midsection. Right before Kakyoin dies, he fires one last Splash and hits a clock. DIO believes he missed. Joseph, knowing Kakyoin, realizes he wanted to reveal the secret of Dio's Stand.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Josuke and Jotaro are fighting Bug-Eaten, a rat with a Stand that liquifies what it shoots. Jotaro (who can stop time and thus dodge more easily) goes out to draw its attention, leaving Josuke (whose Stand can heal others but not himself, reducing the risk to Jotaro) to shoot it by using his Stand to throw bullets. Josuke's first shot misses, hitting the rock that Bug-Eaten's hiding behind, and Jotaro is hit. Bug-Eaten then turns to aim at Josuke... and takes a bullet straight through the body. Josuke missed on purpose in order to get Bug-Eaten's attention— where it was initially, only its head was exposed; when it turned to aim at him, it had to reveal much more of its body, making itself an easier target and giving Josuke time to line up the shot.
  • Golden Wind: During the battle between Vinegar Doppio and Risotto Nero, Doppio throws a pair of scalpels at Risotto and misses, but he actually threw them to give Risotto's location away to the heroes (as they think Risotto threw them).
    • Earlier, there's Bucciarati attacking King Crimson. When he misses, he notes he was really aiming at a nearby pillar so he could use Sticky Fingers' powers to conjure a zipper up the side and ride it to safety.
  • Stone Ocean: Happens when Lang Rangler fires multiple nuts and bolts at Weather Report. It turns out he wasn't attempting to hit Weather, but rather the metal barrel that's within Jumpin' Jack Flash's zero-gravity zone. Since the vacuum has pressurized the air inside, the barrel bursts and is sent hurtling into Weather.
  • And that's not even mentioning Joseph's rope tricks from Battle Tendency. This series really loves this trope.
• Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: Larxene throws her knives at Sora, Donald, and Goofy, who dodge them and poke fun at her aim. Then the knives zap them with electricity from behind.
• In The Law of Ueki, the villain thinks a shot has missed and mocks the hero for not doing what he thought necessary, before the effect ends in the villain getting crushed beneath a tree. In another episode, an opponent believes he expertly dodged Ueki's attack, only to find that Ueki had struck his targets (his pockets) precisely.
• In the Mazinkaiser movie -belonging to the Mazinger Z series-, Tetsuya Tsurugi is fighting Angoras and Scarabeth, two commanders of the Mykene Empire army. Tetsuya throws Great Mazinger's Great Boomerang and right after shoots Great Typhoon. Both attacks miss, both commanders laugh and ask where he is aiming at... when Great Mazinger's boomerang slices them both from behind. As he is dying, Scarabeth -Mykene army's best tactician- realizes Tetsuya had missed his boomerang throw on purpose, and he shot Great Typhoon to change the boomerang's trajectory. So he caught them by surprise and killed both of them at once.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Milliardo Peacecraft fires Libra's main cannon, missing both the Gundam Pilots and The Federation's space headquarters. Then everyone realizes with horror that his target was Earth itself. Of course, this may be slightly spoiled for the viewer since the name of the episode is "Target: Earth".
• In My Hero Academia, Itsuka Kendo at one point uses her Big Fist quirk in this manner, 'missing' a swing at a villain with her normal-sized fist, and then enlarging it to land the hit.
• Naruto: In their first encounter with Zabuza Momochi, Sasuke and Naruto come up with quite the gambit. Sasuke throws a rather large shuriken at an immobile Zabuza, but it just goes under his legs as he jumps and dodges the throw. Suddenly, the shuriken transforms into Naruto, who throws a kunai knife right back at Zabuza's exposed back. Zabuza only realizes just in time and manages to yank his arm clear of the attack, thereby releasing Kakashi from a prison that had required that exact arm to keep up an impenetrable bubble of water. All of this, and they are only junior ninja at the time.
• One Piece:
  • During the arc Usopp was introduced in, Zoro, chasing after Jango, cuts down a tree branch. Jango thinks Zoro's attack missed, but he was really cutting the branch down so that Usopp could aim at Jango with a Gunpowder Star.
  • Usopp himself has done this several times. On Little Garden, he shoots at his captain and friend Luffy, seemingly by accident, but this burned off Luffy's shirt and thus the mind-controlling paint on him. On Thriller Bark, he shoots at Perona's body before Perona (who has the ability to leave her body as an intangible spirit) can return to it. He seemingly misses, but Perona is left unable to move as Usopp had shot a glue projectile. And when fighting Daruma, he misses several times, only to reveal that he had actually been shooting seeds of rapidly-growing plants to create a trap for Daruma.
• In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon manga called Ginji's Rescue Team, Ginji uses Flamethrower towards Moltres. This follows:
  Moltres: Approaching me with a useless attack and missing from such a close distance...you are a fool!
  Ginji: Nope. I hit the bull's-eye.
  • That meant he uses Flamethrower towards lava to raise it up, then Mudkip uses Water Gun to cool the lava down and harden it, resulting in Ginji and Mudkip using "Rock Slide" to defeat the legendary Pokemon.
• Ramen Fighter Miki: Miki, poster girl from a Ramen Restaurant, tries to deliver Ramen to the house of a Angry Guard Dog and a fight ensues.
  Miki: An attack of that level? Did you think I couldn’t dodge that?
  Megumi: That’s not it… his target isn’t Onimaru san. It’s the ramen.
  (Angry Guard Dog Toshiyuki eats the ramen while a surprised Miki falls ignominously))
  Miki: You bastard!
• In Sailor Moon Stars, the Alpha Bitch actress Noriko manages to dodge Sailor Iron Mouse's projectile attacks and even comically gloats about it. Then the attacks "return" and hit her square.
• Right before the Sanctuary arc from Saint Seiya begins, the Saints and Saori are attacked by Sagitta Ptolemy, who shoots at them with his cosmo arrows. Seiya easily kills him, but Ptolemy calmly says that he's had the last laugh since the arrows were an illlusion... save for one that has struck Saori straight up in the chest, heavily incapacitating the local Barrier Maiden until the very end of the arc itself.
• SD Gundam Force combines this with Throwing Your Sword Always Works. Talgeese is trying to force Zero down, so Zero throws his sword up, missing the evil Knight. "Hope you've got a strong back." The sword knocks away a large crystal hanging above them, causing it to fall and crush Talgeese.
• In Amu's final battle with Nikaidou in Shugo Chara!, she throws the Heart Rod in his direction, which flies out the window. Nikaidou sneers at her aim?just before the rod returns and smashes the machine on which his plans had relied.
• In Snow White with the Red Hair, the titular heroine throws a bottle at Mihaya after managing to get loose from the ropes around her wrists. He looks smug for a second as he can tell that there's no way it's going to hit him but he looses the grin quickly when the bottle hits the brazier above him showering him with broken glass, the flammable contents of the now broken bottle, and hot ash and flaming coals from the brazier.
• In episode 18 of Space Battleship Yamato 2199, the Yamato fires the Wave-Motion Gun through a massive enemy fleet without hitting a single ship, causing one commander to mock their aim. And then he follows the shot's trajectory down to the massive power plant on the planet they're all orbiting, which explodes and destroys a significant portion of the fleet.
• Happened in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann episode 2, soon after Kamina obtains full control of Gurren. Gurren throws Lagann like a baseball towards some Beastmen who taunted Kamina that he missed. A few seconds later and with good control steering by Simon, Lagann came back and destroyed the Beastmen from behind.
• In Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Gas Skunk breathes stink gas all over Team Bullet Train. Railspike blasts a bunch of mines at him, all missing, and Midnight Express chastises him for inaccuracy. Railspike points out his mines did in fact reach their target - they exploded in midair, and the flame from the blast ignited Gas Skunk's breath, hurting him.
• Trigun: Vash the stampede lives and breathes this trope — although he tends to make it look like Accidental Aiming Skills, and those who only know of his reputation think (incorrectly) that he's all Improbable Aiming Skills and Instant Death Bullet. Well, he does have utterly improbable aiming skills—choice is his use of thrown pebbles to knock bullets askew and render shots nonfatal at a quickdraw tournament, as well as opening the back of his revolver to throw the bullets out of it and concuss an opponent—he just doesn't use them for Instant Death Bullet. When he does flirt with the intention to shoot someone to death, his instinct seems to be to put the barrel of the gun against their head to prevent any mistakes. And yell.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Often a duelist will activate some trap/spell/monster card effect, only to have his opponent reply with something like "That won't work, my monster/trap/spell is immune to that effect". The duelist then replies along the lines of "I never said I was targeting that card" and reveals his true plan.
• YuYu Hakusho:
  • Happens when Hiei dodges Yusuke's Spirit Gun only to be hit from behind after the blast is reflected off a mirror.
  • During the Dark Tournament, Yusuke fights Bakken, a demon who creates a fog so he can stealth attack his opponent. Yusuke fires his Spirit Gun more than ninety degrees off the mark, where it hit the wall and exploded. The force of the explosion blows the fog away, and Yusuke, who is much stronger, easily pounds Bakken into mulch.
• This is used in one of the first battles of Zoids: New Century. Bit Cloud is only allowed a few shots from his weapon and due to low accuracy wastes them all firing at a cliff. Catch is, said cliff was where Gunsniper expert Naomi Fleugel was perched, out of melee range and content to pick off her opponents at range. Much later in the episode, this cliff collapses, dropping Naomi into melee range allowing Bit to land his Finishing Move winning him the battle. Do note that nobody is sure whether this is what he meant to happen or not. It's possible he just got lucky.

Asian Animation

• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Mighty Little Defenders episode 10, Weslie is fighting Worly and shoots some ice from his pistol that misses his opponent. Worly is quick to tell Weslie he missed, but Weslie clarifies he wasn't aiming at him - he aimed at the ground below him so that the ice could make him slip.

Card Games

• Variation: In the storyline of the Deadlands CCG Doomtown, the climactic battle sees Austin Stoker face down the manitou Knicknevin with the Holy Wheel Gun (modified by Mad Science to work especially well against monstrous creatures in general) - but he doesn't shoot Knicknevin, he shoots an undead Abraham Lincoln. With the same bullet that killed him the first time. This results in another manitou (who reanimated Lincoln intending to wreak its own havoc, but badly underestimated the man's willpower) gaining control for the first time in years, and promptly tearing Knicknevin to shreds for being a glory hound.
• This is exactly how Parse takes out Miss Information in Sentinels of the Multiverse, dumping her into a vat of her own weird transdimensional super-chemical with an arrow that flies past her head. Complete with the standard "You missed" "I don't miss" exchange.

Comic Books

• In Batman: No Man's Land, Batman is ordered at freeze-gunpoint by Mr. Freeze to toss his Batarang "to the side." Batman does so; as it is a Batarang, it flies off to the side, curves back, and hits Mr. Freeze.
• In Big Bang Comics #4, the Temptress points a ray gun at Venus who prepares to block it with her shell. However, Temptress actually fires it at the Liberty Bell behind Venus, which starts tolling and the noise knocks her into unconsciousness.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • In The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff, a Dalton goon mocks Scrooge when he seems to miss a shot, right before being hit by a banner loosened by Scrooge's bullet.
  • The Black Knight: Donald Duck tries to stop the Black Knight by loading the largest diamond in the world into a cannon. It does stop him momentarily as he assumed that he could just simply walk through the cannon in his dissolving armor, but he sabotages Donald's attempt by swinging his sword to stop the ignition. Donald thinks he actually missed the fuse, but he was really aiming for the back of the cannon to redirect the blast.
• In Bookhunter, Agent Bay is pursuing a book thief, riding a library cart, through a library. Bay throws a large book at the thief. The book misses the thief's head... and flies into the magnets at the entrance, triggering the library's security system.
• Captain America:
  • As Cap's shield works as a Precision-Guided Boomerang, he's naturally done this more than once.
  • He uses a variation on Spider-Man during Civil War (2006). Cap throws his shield, missing. Spidey webs it to a wall. Spidey turns to gloat, only for Cap to close the distance and punch him silly.
  • In a late '90s DC/Marvel crossover, Captain America is working his way up to fighting Batman, and runs into Bane. Cap does a standard shield attack, Bane dodges, and taunts Cap while grabbing him and setting him up for his standard backbreak attack. Of course the shield ricochets right back into Bane's head.◊
    Captain America: Now, no more back talk from you!
  • Bucky Barnes shortly after taking over as Cap following Civil War goes up against some AIM mooks with the Black Widow and throws the shield missing the 3 mooks in front of him and has it rebound away from him. The bad guys say something along the lines of "Captain America? Yeah right." only for Bucky to take advantage of their distraction to (nonlethally) shoot them. The shield? It knocks out a fourth mook that was creeping on the Widow.
• Daredevil: This is Bullseye's entire schtick. Anything he throws will hit his intended target, even if he throws it in the complete opposite direction. He doesn't even have any powers, he's just that absurdly good.
• The Dresden Files:
  • The comic Welcome to the Jungle has Harry going up against three Hecatean Hags trying to perform an Ascension ritual, and at one point during the big throwdown, he aims a spell at the wall behind one of them. When the Hag calls him out on the supposedly misaimed spell, Harry agrees... and the ceiling above the Hag collapses, crushing her.
  • Happens a second time when Harry tracks down the last hag, low on juice and stumbling. He lets loose one spell, and the Hag laughs at him for missing. He just threw open the lock on the cage of the very pissed-off gorilla whose zookeeper friend the Hag was holding hostage...
• The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones: In #9, Indy is chasing a paire of thieves who are absconding with a gold idol. He swings his bullwhip at them; seemingly missing them and wrapping the whip around a large statue standing by the door. However, he then uses the bullwhip to topple the statue on top of the thieves.
  Xomec: We are safe! he missed!
  Indy: I missed you, fella...
  yanks on whip, causing statue to fall on thieves
  Indy: ...I didn't miss what I was aiming for!
• Hawkeye uses this against a variety of foes including speedsters with his boomerang arrow. He expected it to work in JLA/Avengers on The Flash but unfortunately for him, Wally is used to dealing with such attacks because of Captain Boomerang.
• During Grant Morrison's run in JLA (1997), Green Arrow II/ Connor Hawke pulled this trope on a Key's robot mook. He supposedly missed an arrow shot, and the robot pointed out that Connor had run out of arrows. Then the robot is hit on the head by the arrow, which is referred to by Connor as a boomerang arrow.
• In Justice, Supergirl has been brainwashed and is holding several other characters prisoner, including Green Lantern John Stewart. Green Arrow loads an arrow with a green tip and fires while claiming it is kryptonite. Supergirl sidesteps it and mocks him, only for it to be revealed the green thing was John Stewart's Power Ring. Stewart retrieves the ring where it landed and debrainwashes Supergirl.
• In Justice League: Another Nail, after Mr. Miracle is killed by Desaad, his disembodied spirit makes his home in Big Barda's Mother Box. Later, after acquiring a Green Lantern power ring, Barda confronts Darkseid, but when she fires her power ring at him she misses by a country mile. Darkseid gloats that living on Earth has made her soft, until it's revealed that her first attack was really a GL construct of Mr. Miracle, who is now free to disrupt Darkseid's machinery, causing it to overload and ultimately destroy him.
  "A distraction. The first principle of any clever illusion...or a really sneaky attack. Barda didn't miss you, she was positioning me where I could do the most harm!"
• Kid Colt (2009): Colt Plays Possum after Bounty Hunter Sherman Wilks's initial rifle shot wings him, pretending it was fatal. Wilks' right-hand-man Kayne is taken in, as is Colt's ally Hawk. Wilks himself doesn't fall for it and, after Kayne realises Colt's alive, Wilks confirms that he was only ever aiming at the Kid's gun arm - which is exactly what he hit.
• Lucky Luke once does this as he's being held up at gunpoint. The gunman orders another hostage (a professional card cheat) to remove his gun. He does so, but slips Luke a tiny derringer. Luke shoots, the villain gloats that the famous Lucky Luke has missed his shot, fires... and then stares confused at the mangled wreck that was his gun. Luke then reveals he hit what he aimed for—the barrel of the revolver, jamming the bullet inside.
• In Red Robin when Cass comes to save Tim from some metahuman baddies who intend to rape and murder him she tosses a batarang that at first seems to have missed its target when it goes sailing past them, but she was freeing Tim from his restraints while their attention was on her.
• In Robyn Hood: The Hunt #6, Robyn fires an arrow in the arena that seemingly misses her opponent. However, it is then revealed that the arrow has smashed the reinforced glass window of the warden's box, which was her real target all along.
• Scooby-Doo! Team-Up: Huntress versus Penguin:
  The Penguin: The fabric of my bumbershoot is bulletproof! You can't penetrate it with a crossbow!
  Huntress: I wasn't trying to!
  (the arrow explodes)
• Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman: In "Generations" Cheetah gloats when Diana yanks Cheetah's spear out of her shoulder and appears to throw it at Cheetah's head and miss. Diana was aiming for the unsteady stonework behind Cheetah.
• Spider-Man:
  • Spidey likes to shoot his webbing past an opponent, wait until the bad guy gloats, and then yank on the webline—inevitably pulling something large and heavy into/on top of the baddie. (In one instance, he suggests that the taunter should see Batman Returns. Seriously.)
  • In one instance, Spidey hurls a trash can lid at an opponent who can turn intangible. The lid passes right through him and he turns solid again to taunt Spidey. Cue the lid bouncing off the alley walls and clonking him in the back of the head. Spidey even notes that, "You watch Captain America in action long enough, you pick up on a few things."
  • In Venom (Donny Cates), Dylan points a gun at The Maker, only to reveal that he was actually aiming at the glass containers containing the Knull-infested Hybrid symbiotes, freeing them and siccing them on The Maker.
• Stunt Dawgs: In the comic, Fungus fires a harpoon at a glacier, making the Stunt Dawgs think he missed. He then pulls the glacier on the Dawgs.
• Superman:
  • In Supergirl (2005): Day of the Dollmaker, Supergirl fights villain Dollmaker. He ducked when she shot her heat beams and mocked her aim. A second later he realized she wasn't aiming at him. She was releasing his hostage Cat Grant.
    Dollmaker: Ha! You missed me!
    Cat: She wasn't aiming for you, you little bastard.
  • In New 52 story arc Last Daughter of Krypton, when Simon Tycho tries to blackmail Kara, she shoots her heat vision at the floor. He mocks her aim... until he's warned that her eye beams blasted the space station's central core.
    Tycho: Ha! Nice shot! Might want to work on your aim, though.
    Assistant: Mr. Tycho! She wasn't firing at you! She was aiming for the central core!
    Tycho: But that's impossible! How could she possibly—?
    Kara: (thinking) I don't need to speak their language to know that I guessed right.
  • Superman was fighting a foe who seemed to be able to dodge every attack until Supes realized the villain was reading his nervous system and relying heavily on that edge, so he used this trope to attack indirectly.
  • In Krypton No More, Superman and Supergirl fight the J'ai, a planet-conquering alien force. During the battle, an enemy soldier's laser beam strikes a meteor and Superman thinks that he missed… until the meteor hits him from the back.
• In one issue of Teen Titans Go!, Raven gets into a fight with Blackfire. All of her attacks miss, which Blackfire smugly points out before hitting the ceiling above Raven with her own blast. Raven is quick to point out the hypocrisy...and is promptly buried by the collapsing ceiling.
  Blackfire: I never miss.
• Ultimate Marvel: Gambit pulls this on The Juggernaut. Nothing he can throw at Juggernaut can faze him (Gambit even powers him up at one point) until he shoots at the bottom of a construction site, causing a steel girder avalanche.
• Usagi Yojimbo:
  • In one scene, Usagi is annoyed at a band of ruffians causing a ruckus at the inn he's staying at. When the ruffians' leader refuses to back down, Usagi draws his sword and unleashes a series of strikes... and the leader is at first stunned, then realizes he's unharmed. He scoffs at Usagi's bad aim... until his gang point out the various flies, neatly bisected or trisected, lying on the ground. They back off very quickly.
  • Most likely based on a Chinese tale of a group of toughs in a restaurant who are about to challenge a supposedly legendary swordsman. In that version, he doesn't cut the flies...he picks them out of the air with his chopsticks. All of them, in a couple of seconds.
• X-Men: Cyclops has pulled this off from time to time as well, bouncing his optic blasts off reflective surfaces. The ability for him to calculate the logistics of this on the fly is more or less stated to be one of his Required Secondary Powers, which he often likes to take advantage of when playing pool.

Comic Strips

• In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin notices a snowball whizzing over his head. He turns around and sees Hobbes, and razzes him for being a lousy shot, only to get another snowball right in the face. Turns out Hobbes only threw the first snowball to get him to turn around.

Fan Works

• In Amazing Fantasy, Peter shoots a clearly telegraphed web that the Prowler easily dodges, only for him to tug on it to reveal that he'd been aiming at the bag of wet cement behind her, slamming her in the back.
• Another Way: Lung ducks under a bone projectile, internally critiquing the poor aim, and then looks around to see all his men enmeshed in a cage of bony struts that has sprung out of it.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  • Freeza tries and fails to invoke this trope against Goku, who's too much of an Idiot Hero to understand the concept, at least until the lava erupts from the ground beneath him.
    Goku: Ha! You missed!
    Freeza: Or did I?
    Goku: Yeah! You did!
    Freeza: No, I meant-
    Goku: See? Not a hole on me!
    Freeza: I wasn't trying to -
    Goku: You should really work on your aim.
    Freeza: ...you know what? I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to let this next part be a surprise.
    Goku: What part — WHOA, HOT LAVA!
  • Done again by Piccolo to Android 17, when 17 notices that Piccolo's shots aren't even coming close.
    17: Um, I stopped dodging. Seriously, are you even trying to hit me?
    Piccolo: No!
    17: The hell do you mean "no"!? [looks around, seeing hundreds of energy blasts surrounding him on all sides] Oh... oh... oooooh shit.
• In Enemy to Love, when Tousen has Grimmjaw and Ishida captured, Ishida manages to disarm him and swings a sword at him, which Tousen easily avoids and taunts him about. Grimmjaw taunts him right back, as Ishida was aiming for the ropes tying him down.
• Fate/Harem Antics: Hassan of Serenity lunges at Francis Drake, who sidesteps and says she missed. Serenity asks if she really missed, as her poisons erode the roof they are standing on and make it collapse.
• Fate/Long Night: When Nymeria Martell throws Chrohea Thaiye, Arturia side steps the spear, but it hits Nymeria's shield, which was behind Arturia, then bounces back to stab her in the arm.
• Fates Collide: In a fight between Weiss Schnee and Illya, Weiss throws her sword Myrtenaster, but Illya casually dodges it and mocks her. However, Weiss can control Myrtenaster even when she isn't holding it, so from its position on the ground, it creates ice that slowly travels along the ground until it reaches Illya from behind and freezes her feet in place.
• Mycraft, near the end of Lenz and Ciro's duel, Ciro assumes Lenz's accuracy has suffered due to exhaustion. However, Lenz is actually aiming for the head of Ciro's explosive arrows, intending to detonate them prematurely.
• Several examples in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines and its sidestories:
  • In the Steven Interlude, Steven Stone and Sawyer team up with a group of Draconids to take down the villainous Team Zenith. At one point, Sawyer sends a Bagon he befriended with a Headbutt attack which misses the Team Zenith admins altogether, and they gloat about it. That is, until they realize the Headbutt was aimed to cause a rock slide that falls on the Zenith grunts, giving the Draconids the chance to turn the tide.
  • In the Akala Island Adventures, Kahuna Olivia takes advantage of this using two of her Pokémon. First, her Midday Lycanroc unleashes a Rock Slide attack that misses the Team Skull grunts, but while they're busy mocking the Kahuna's poor aim, they fail to notice the Midnight Lycanroc receiving the attack and unleashing a Counter on them.
  • During the Mewtwo arc in the main story, Casey Snagem's Chesnaught uses a throwing Spiky Shield attack on Mewtwo, who teleports out of the way to dodge. The shield ricochets off a wall and hits him in the back. Granted, it doesn't actually hurt him, but it does catch him briefly off-guard.
• RWBY: Fate Disaster: Jaune Arc hurls his sword at the Argonauts, but they chuckle and sidestep it. Then Jason realizes he was aiming at the pile of Dust behind them, and the sword's impact detonates it.

Film — Animation

• Batman and Harley Quinn: Nightwing throws a trashcan lid at Harley, who ducks and mocks him. The lid bounces off the walls of the alley and hits her in the back of the head.
• In Batman: Assault on Arkham, Zsasz's brief appearance ends with Batman firing a grapple line at him and using it to pull a chunk of wall into the back of Zsasz's head.
  • It is also deconstructed, when Boomerang pulls this trick with one of his Boomerangs on the guards at Arkham, while he successfully takes out the guard he was trying to take out, he has time to radio for help, causing the squad significant problems for the rest of the film.
• Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders: While fighting the villains in zero gravity, Batman flings a batarang at them. The villains laugh as it whizzes past them harmlessly, but the batarang ricochets off a column and hits the switch to turn the gravity back on.
• Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget: When Rocky swings towards her, the villain steps aside and gives a loud, "Hah!", confident in having outwitted him...only to find her axe being yanked out of her hand with the rope.
• In Frozen (2013), Prince Hans redirects a treacherous henchman's crossbow shot aimed at Elsa towards the ceiling... and it breaks off a chandelier that falls on her, knocking her out. In hindsight, in the light of The Reveal, it seems that hitting the chandelier was intentional on his part: he wanted to make it look like an accident and, ideally, kill Elsa, giving the impression that he tried to save her and failed. A Freeze-Frame Bonus shows his eyes briefly looking upwards, at the chandelier, just before he rushes towards the henchman.
• As can largely be expected, Lucky Luke pulls off an extreme example in Go West!, where he shoots a wildly ricocheting shot while riding on a rollercoaster minecart that doesn't seem to hit anything, causing one of the Daltons to laugh at him and assume he missed. 5 minutes later, after a rapid series of events even Luke couldn't have predicted, he's being held at gunpoint by the same Dalton, whose gun is suddenly shattered into pieces by the very same shot flying out of the now-empty mine.
• In Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Peabody pulls this off by throwing a sword towards Robespierre and his henchmen. Robespierre calls it a miss, but Peabody actually aimed at a wooden board behind Robespierre's head. The wooden board breaks, setting off a tidal wave in the Paris sewers for Peabody to escape Robespierre.
  Robespierre: Ha! You missed!
  Peabody: I never miss.
• In Mulan, when the Huns attack the army in the mountains, Mulan prepares to fire the last rocket at Shan Yu...then changes the direction at the last second, sending it flying into a mountain in the distance. Her strike then sets off an avalanche that buries the Hun army.
  Mushu: (Riding the rocket) You missed! How could you miss?! He was three feet in front of you!
  *BOOM*
• Superman vs. the Elite:
  Manchester Black: Heat vision? You can barely stand, let alone fry my face!
  Superman: I'm not aiming at your face! (cue abnormality in Black's brain being destroyed)
• An interesting variant is in Toy Story. Buzz is flying (or falling, with style) towards Andy's moving truck, and flies over it. Woody yells that they missed the truck, and Buzz says they weren't aiming for the truck. They ditch their momentum and fall perfectly through the sunroof of Andy's mom's car into a box next to Andy, resulting in Andy's mom not questioning how they got there since she thought they were there all along.
• In Treasure Planet, while they're fighting the mutiny, Delbert shoots and hits a piece of equipment, causing it to fall and knock the bad guys out of the ship.
  Captain Amelia: Did you actually aim for that?
  Delbert: (regarding his gun with even more surprise and suspicion than she is) You know, actually, I did?

Film — Live-Action

• In The Alamo (2004), Inverted. Davy Crockett shoots a decorative tassel off of Santa Anna's shoulder from a great distance, even as Santa Anna dismisses his legendary feats to a starstruck soldier. As Santa Anna panics, Crockett turns to Juan Seguin next to him and faux-sheepishly comments "Wind kicked up."
• In Batman Returns, Batman launches a grapnel at a foe who has Selina Kyle at stungun-point. The clown taunts him for missing, just before Batman pulls the grapnel back, tearing out a chunk of the wall behind the two which smacks the clown in the head and instantly knocks him out.
• Bet Your Life: When Joseph is holding a knife at Sonny's throat, he warns Carmen that she can't shoot him without killing Sonny. She fires anyway, but the shot goes nowhere near Joseph. A few seconds later, there is an explosion that forces Joseph and Sonny apart and Joseph realises that Carmen had shot one of the fuel drums on the truck behind them.
• A variant from Blade (1998). Blade tosses his sword into a platform to try to and knock lose a serum he needs to fight Deacon Frost. The sword gets embedded in the stone without doing anything and Frost mocks him, only for the sword's anti-theft mechanism to kick in, destroy the platform, and send the serum flying into Blade's hand.
• Blooded: When Charlie is fleeing through the forest being chased by the RLA, his commentary notes that bullets kept hitting all around him, but none hit him. He realizes this could mean two things. Either whoever had the rifle was a poor shot, or they were a very good shot and they were herding him somewhere.
• Bumblebee: During the climax, Bumblebee fires a missile at Shatter, but seemingly misses. She's bemused... until she realizes that he wasn't aiming at her; he was aiming at the gate to the drydock they're fighting in. Cue the bay flooding and Shatter getting fatally crushed by a runaway barge.
• Captain America: Civil War includes this classic:
  Tony: Clearly retirement doesn't suit you. Get tired of playing golf?
  Clint: Well, I played 18, I shot 18. Just can't seem to miss.
  (fires arrow at Tony and misses)
  Tony: First time for everything.
  Clint: Made you look.
  (Wanda takes advantage of the distraction to drop roughly a dozen cars on Tony)
• Variant in The Court Jester: During the climactic swordfight, Basil Rathbone swipes at a candle in frustration, chopping it clean off its candlestick. Danny Kaye swipes at a row of candles, apparently missing; Rathbone looks smug for a moment before Kaye lightly blows at the candles, making them fall apart where he just sliced them.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • In The Dark Knight, when Batman misses the Joker's truck during the chase scene, one of his thugs mocks him, "He missed!" only to have the truck flipped over; the aim was to tripwire the truck.
• Dead Again in Tombstone: When Guerrero confronts Boomer during the final showdown, Boomer gloats that Guerrero's guns can't harm him:
  Boomer: You know those guns can't hurt me!
  Guerrero: They're not for you! (shoots the wagon full of dynamite)
• In Fierce Creatures, the zoo keepers put fake wounds on themselves to pretend their animals are rampaging. When their boss discovers their ruse, he starts shooting at them instead of the animals he was prepared to put down.
  Rollo Lee: The sights must be off on this rifle. All I keep hitting are coffee mugs!
• Ghost Ship: When Epps points the speargun at Jack Ferriman, he laughs and asks what she intends to do, kill him? She fires and he realises too late that she is actually aiming at the detonator to set off the C-4 she planted.
• In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Taserface sidesteps Yondu's arrow and laughs, just as the arrow hits and blows up a fuel tank.
• In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Rocket is in the midst of mutilating the High Evolutionary's face in response to the High Evolutionary murdering Lylla when he hears shouting in the distance. Moments later, three of the High Evolutionary's guards enter the room and open fire on him. Rocket swiftly grabs the High Evolutionary's gun and guns them all down without being hit. As he's gathering himself, he finds that they killed Teefs and Floor behind him, as the High Evolutionary had given the guards orders to kill the rest of Batch 89 and take Rocket alive.
• In Happy Gilmore, the titular character uses this on the 18th hole in the championship game.
• Uncle Douvee pulls off a brilliant one in Hard Target. He shoots an arrow that narrowly misses Fouchon's head. It looks like he was aiming at Fouchon but missed. However, the arrow goes on to shatter a jar of moonshine on the bench and the oil lamp behind it. The spilled moonshine ignites, causing the still to blow up. This lights the fuse of the dynamite Uncle Douvee has concealed all over his property, blowing the whole place up.
• James Bond:
  • In Moonraker, James Bond accompanies Hugo Drax on a quail hunt. One flies out at him and he fires, missing the quail. Drax says, "You missed, Mister Bond.", whereupon a thug who had been trying to kill him falls from a tree near where the quail flew out, and Bond answers "Did I?".
  • Similarly, in The World Is Not Enough, the dying Valentin Zukovsky chooses to shoot the cuffs holding Bond to a torture device rather than try to take a potshot at Elektra King. Fatally for the latter, this shot is mistaken for a subversion by her. She thinks he'd aimed at Bond and missed, taunting him that the ally must have really hated him. Bond and Valentin had previously been enemies. His shot proves exactly the opposite, however: since Zukovsky had been fatally wounded, if he had chosen to shoot Elektra instead, Bond would have been unable to escape the torture device.
  • A villainous variation in Skyfall: Bond is nearly catching up to Silva in an abandoned section of the London Underground, prompting the latter to detonate a bomb that collapses the roof of the tunnel... several meters behind Bond.
  Bond: I do hope that wasn't for me.
  Silva: [laughs] No... but that is.
  [a train falls through the hole in the roof, narrowly missing Bond]
• Jonah Hex (2010): The Big Bad is testing his rotary bombard cannon on an innocous town. The weapon fires a salvo of cannon balls, but they all land harmlessly in the middle of the street. When the townspeople emerge from their homes to gawk at the smouldering cannonballs, he then fires the detonator shell which explodes all the others and obliterates the town.
• Magnificent Warriors: After the Action Prologue, Ming made a run from the bandits while the leader, pissed at her killing a dozen of his men, chases after her. She then unveils the last weapon she kept for herself—a chain-mounted gatling gun which she use to fire a hundred round or so at the bandit leader. She missed every shot... and then the bridge the leader is on collapses, sending him falling into the water.
• Magnum Force. Inspector Callahan realizes that police are committing vigilante murders, so makes an Implied Death Threat during a pistol shooting competition by 'accidentally' shooting a police target in a Shooting Gallery, even though this means losing the competition for the first time in years. He then borrows the .357 Magnum of the winner (one of the vigilante officers) to try it out, missing another shot which he puts down to not being used to the lesser recoil. That night however Callahan sneaks out to the range and digs the bullet out of the wall for evidence.
• Operation: Dumbo Drop: On the river, H.A. nearly drops a marking shell on the boat he's riding in. The V.C. laugh...until they realize that their boat is moving right into the spot H.A. just marked.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl can be seen as a variant of this; when Jack finally shoots Barbossa with the bullet he saved for him, he has to shoot quickly to keep Barbossa from shooting Elizabeth. He hits, but Barbossa thinks he's still invincible because of the curse — only to discover that Will had ended the curse.
• The Princess Bride: Fezzik nearly crushes Wesley's head with a thrown rock, then declares that he missed on purpose in favor of a more "sportsmanlike" contest of strength.
• Red 2: The protagonists have a Knowledge Broker called The Frog under surveillance in a Paris cafe. Marvin Boggs can be seen in a room crouched over a laptop, while Frank Moses and the others enter the cafe. Unfortunately the Frog realises he's being watched, draws a mini-Uzi and fires it into the roof. At first this appears to be to keep everyones' heads down while he escapes, only for the ceiling to collapse and Marvin Boggs to come crashing through.
• In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Holmes and Watson are being attacked by Moriarty's mooks and pinned down by fire from a machine gun. When the gun jams thanks to some earlier sabotage by Holmes, Watson stands up and shoots one of the mooks, and retreats as the gunner clears the jam and resumes shooting. Holmes chastises Watson for not taking the chance to shoot the gunner; unbeknownst to him, the mook Watson just shot was carrying a primed grenade that has now fallen into a satchel full of similar looking grenades. Moments later, the primed grenade blows up the train carriage the mooks are standing in.
• In the 1985 film Silverado, as a posse is chasing the leads into some hills, several warning shots come from Danny Glover's character, who is hiding somewhere out of sight. As his shots ricochet off nearby rocks and cacti, a deputy says: "Let's go, he ain't hittin' nothin'". This prompts the sheriff, played brilliantly by John Cleese, to retort: "You idiot, he's hit everything he's aimed at".
  Deputy: Well, they ain't out of our jurisdiction 'til they reach the flattop.
  [Mal's next shot knocks the Sheriff's hat off.]
  Langston: Today, my jurisdiction ends here. Pick up my hat.
• In The Sorcerer's Apprentice, during the Final Battle, Dave fires a few spells at Morgana, which the Big Bad easily phases through. She mocks him for missing. However, Dave's true targets were the mop and the wires in the shed behind her. The objects come to life and set up the means for Dave to destroy the sorceress.
• In Spider-Man: Homecoming, when Spider-Man confronts Adrian Toomes in a warehouse, Toomes attacks him with his remote controlled wings. Spider-Man dodges the attacks, but each time, it destroys a support beam. When Spider-Man mocks Toomes for failing to hit him, Toomes says he wasn't trying to, then the ceiling collapses and buries Spider-Man under rubble.
• At the end of Tank Girl, the final round of ammo goes way over the head of the bullet-deflecting main villain to knock over a bucket of water and short out his 100%-electronic life. Oh, the irony... he was the head of Water & Power, and now he's lost power because his head is full of water.
• In the Thunderbirds movie, Alan shoots rocks from his rock-throwing gadget (!), seemingly at The Hood.
  The Hood: It's not me you're angry at!
  Alan: It's not you I'm aiming at. (shoots one last rock and hits the trapdoor release)
• In Underworld: Blood Wars, David throws a knife at Semira, who sidesteps it and mocks him. The knife hits a control panel that opens the automatic window and lets the sunlight in. However, Semira drank Selene's blood earlier and gained her immunity to sunlight. But then, while she's busy gloating about this, David closes the gap and impales her in the head, killing her.
• In the climax of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eddie aims an Extendo Boxing Glove at Judge Doom, who dodges out of the way. However, Eddie was actually aiming it at his Dipmobile, and the glove turns on a spigot that blasts pressurized Dip onto its creator.
• In Wild Wild West, Gordon gives his self-invented gun a lot of buildup before firing:
  Loveless: After all that, you missed?
  Gordon: Actually, I didn't.
  (Loveless looks down to see hydraulic fluid leaking from his robotic legs.)
• In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique fires a bullet through Magneto's neck but doesn't hit any major arteries. Magneto thinks she's lost her edge, but she insists that the shot would have hit something important if she was serious. She wasn't trying to kill him; she only wanted to stun him long enough to get his helmet off.

Literature

• Artemis Fowl:
  • A rare villain example in The Arctic Incident, the protagonists are surprised when enemy fire appears to miss them, until they realize there is now an avalanche bearing down on them. They had ducked under an ice sheet to avoid the enemy fire, so the goblins couldn't get a shot in. To solve this, they decided to just shoot the ice sheet. Although, considering how stupid they are, they might have been aiming at them.
  • Also used again in the next book, when Holly uses a dart to activate a fire extingusher, saving some goblin prisoners from being crushed by molten metal and robbing them of their fire magic. "It was a testament to the goblin's stupidity that he could be trapped in a melting vehicle in a lockdown with an LEP officer firing at him and still think he had the upper hand."
  • The Lost Colony. Artemis fires a stun gun at Leon Abbott, but the time distorting magic affecting Hybras causes the shot to vanish before it can reach its target. However, Artemis had calculated exactly how the time distortion would affect the shot, and it travels back in time, hits Abbott at an earlier point in the scene, and alters the course of events.
• In Blane Lee Pardoe's BattleTech novel Impetus of War, Loren Jaffray does this twice. The first time, he's fighting a Clan Smoke Jaguar mech that's larger and more powerful than the mech he's piloting, so he aims at the fuel tanks of the crashed dropship behind the Jaguar mech, causing a massive explosion that takes his opponent out. The second time, while masquerading as a Clan Smoke Jaguar mechwarrior, he does this during a duel with a Clan Nova Cat mechwarrior on the surface of a space station. When his first autocannon shot hits the station hull in front of the Clanner's 'mech, the Clan pilot berates him for poor accuracy. Jaffray then rams his 'mech into the Clanner's, revealing that he did, in fact, hit what he was aiming at - the myomer cable that tethered his enemy to the station, leaving the Clan 'mech helplessly floating away into space.
• Codex Alera: It is said Araris would think in curves compared to Aldrick's thinking in straight lines. For this reason, when they fought at Second Calderon, Araris seemed to miss Aldrick and hit only the stones on the wall they stood upon. Aldrick was able to knock Araris down to the ground and was in a killing position, only to realize Araris was aiming to cut the ground out from beneath the larger and heavier fighter.
• Dirk Pitt Adventures: In Arctic Drift, a wounded Pitt tosses a lantern toward Zak Clay. Zak laughs as it simply shatters at his feet, but the real target was the black powder spilled on the ship's deck. Both the powder and the original cask it came from ignite and the assassin is blasted apart.
• In the Discworld novel Wyrd Sisters, Granny Weatherwax pulls off an interesting variation with lightning and a bit of headology. Notable in that she delivers the obligatory "what I was aiming for" line when her opponent is in no condition to understand.
• Drassil: This is how Reaper and Arksinad defeat Vannael in the final book: the warrior stabs him in the back with Angurvadal. While the king believes Reaper failed to cancel his magic, Reaper’s true purpose was to touch Arksinad with the sword, releasing him from Vannael’s mind-possession spell and allowing him to counterattack with the Blood Rubi’s might.
• The Dresden Files: Done with a vampire's knife throw when Harry and Carlos are dueling vampires in White Night. Done immediately back when Ramirez blasts the floor in front of one of the vampires ... turning it to almost-frictionless dust.
• In Heretical Edge, when Fossor forces Joselyn to fight Sariel with the lives of her old teammates Roger and Seamus Dornan in the balance, Sariel manages to turn every missed or deflected attack into a building block in a spell meant to destroy Fossor's zombies in a way that will cause enough backlash on Fossor that Sariel can escape with the Dornans.
• The Heroes of Olympus: In The Lost Hero, Leo sends a bolt of fire over a Cyclops' head. She barely has time to be smug about it before it becomes clear what Leo was aiming at: a chain that was suspending an engine block directly over her head. Squish.
• At the climax of Jack Cloudie, Omar hurls a knife at the villain whom he's fighting in the drak stable. The villain mocks him for missing, only to find out the hard way that Omar'd been aiming for the rope holding the gate to the untrained draks' corral shut. The ferocious riding reptiles ignore Omar because he smells like a drak-rider, but don't hesitate to tear the villain to pieces.
• Delphie does this in the first Magic Ballerina book by throwing one of her ballet shoes at King Rat. King Rat, realizing how it went down in The Nutcracker, sees it coming and dodges, only for it to send an entire stack of boxes behind him falling down on him.
• Old Kingdom: In Abhorsen, three Greater Dead intent on attacking an apparently inexperienced necromancer are amused when the "necromancer" seems to misuse the bell Saraneth the Binder on the hordes of Lesser Dead around them, instead of any of them. Their amusement turns to annoyance when they have to deal with the Lesser Dead attacking them, distracting them enough that they don't notice the Abhorsen-in-Waiting Lirael using a Charter-spell to find out the name of the closest one, allowing her to banish Lathal the Abomination beyond the Ninth Gate. At this point, the other two swiftly retreat.
• Played for laughs in The Pushcart War. After the pushcart vendors use their pea shooters to take out the tires of the large trucks, they listen to a news report which details the outcome. The report includes a woman claiming to have been hit by one of the pea shooters. Maxie asks the group "Who missed?" Harry the Hot Dog says indignantly that he didn't miss, but the lady had insulted his hot dogs, and he couldn't resist.
• British agent Quiller is sent to counter-snipe an assassin out to kill a member of the British Royal family visiting Thailand. He fires in time, but the VIP's limo goes off the road and he's kidnapped by people posing as ambulance officers. Quiller realises too late that he's killed a ringer and the real assassin was in a different position, aiming at the driver.
• In Mike Lee's Warhammer Time Of Legends book Nagash The Sorcerer, Nagash himself pulls this in his fight against the Druchii sorceress, crushing her beneath a big statue.

Live-Action TV

• Angel:
  • In "Salvage", Faith hurls a construction hook at Angelus, who easily dodges the slow-moving, dangling object and snarks about Faith's bad aim, and is about to close in for the kill when the hook shatters a covered window, releasing brilliant shafts of sunlight that separate the two.
  • In "Somnambulist", Kate is facing down Angel (who she's just found out was a vampire, a fact she's not at all happy about) and his unsouled former companion Penn. She arranges to stab both of them with a giant plank that impales Angel in the stomach (leaving his Healing Factor to work, eventually) and Penn in the heart (dusting him instantly).
    Angel: You missed.
    Kate: No, I didn't.
• Arrow:
  • In the first episode, Oliver Queen shoots an arrow at Adam Hunt, missing him and embedding it in the wall behind his desk. Hunt says "You missed!" and Oliver responds "Really?" At the end of the episode, the viewer discovers that the Trick Arrow that is still stuck in the wall is allowing Oliver to remote-hack Hunt's computer.
  • Happens again in "The Undertaking". Dominic Alonzo is holding Felicity Smoak as a Human Shield. Oliver fires an arrow, but it hits the dart board next to him.
    Alonzo: (grins) I heard you never miss.
    The Hood: I don't. (arrow explodes, knocking Alonzo down)
    • Bonus points in that, if you look closely, he hit the bullseye dead-center with his arrow.
  • Another example in Season Two. John Diggle originally thought that his brother died by accident, when Deadshot tried to kill the man he was bodyguarding and shot him instead. Deadshot corrects him, saying that he doesn't miss. Diggle's brother was the target, and H.I.V.E. hired Deadshot to kill him.
  • Oliver repeats the trick in The Flash (2014) crossover, where Barry Allen is "whammied" by Roy G. Biv and starts attacking people. Oliver fires two arrows at Barry, which Barry easily dodges at superspeed and mocks Oliver for it. Of course, it turns out the arrows have explosives in them, and Oliver blows them a few feet behind Barry to knock him down. He then uses the opportunity to hide, while Barry gets up, so he can shoot Barry with a tranquilizer arrow.
• Inverted (maybe) in an episode of Babylon 5. While arresting a news reporter for trying to sneak camera equipment onto the station, Zack fires a shot over the reporter's shoulder, knocking the hovering camera out of the air. When one of his officers congratulates him on his aim, Zack replies (while looking the reporter dead in the eyes) "Now don't say that until you know where I was aiming."
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • "Band Candy": As a training exercise, Giles blindfolds Buffy, hands her a ball, and asks her to throw it at him. She throws it in the wrong direction, he starts to wax sarcastic, and the ball bounces back and hits him in the head.
    Giles: It's not that simple, is it— (ball bounces off his head) Ow.
  • There's also "The Harvest", in which this trope is inverted and subverted. Buffy picks up a cymbal stand to attack Luke, and the following dialogue occurs:
    Luke: You forget; metal can't hurt me.
    Buffy: There's something you forgot about, too: sunrise.
    (Buffy throws the cymbal stand at the window behind Luke, breaking it; Luke writhes in pain for a couple of seconds before realizing there isn't actually any sunlight)
    Buffy: (stakes Luke) It's in about nine hours, moron.
  • In the season 3 episode "Graduation Day Part 1", Faith decides to distract Buffy from the Big Bad's Evil Plan by shooting Angel with an arrow coated in slow-acting poison.
  Mook: Missed the heart.
  Faith: Meant to.
• In one episode of El Chapulín Colorado, el Chapulín used his Paralyzing Horn against a villain, but the bad guy had already shot. He mocked Chapulín for missing, but he reveals that he actually paralyzed the bullet, then deparalyzed it and it hit a nearby wall.
• Doctor Who: In "The Visitation", the Doctor is at one point required to shoot the lock out of a door with a single-shot musket. He fires, and misses, prompting the person he's trapped in the cell with to whine about how he's wasted their only shot and clearly missed the lock. The Doctor then smiles smugly and pushes the door open.
• In one episode of Farscape, Chiana confronts someone who'd murdered an old friend of hers. He claims she can't bring herself to shoot him because of their past together, but she shoots an acid-filled pustule on the wall that sprays all over him and leaves him to die.
• In one episode of Psych, Shawn shows off his shooting skills to a female cop; she thinks he's missed the target completely, until she gets a closer look and sees that every shot he fired hit exactly where hers had.
• This happens twice in Red Dwarf:
  • In "White Hole", Lister fires a shot to knock a planet into a white hole but misses... only to hit another planet, which collides with another planet, which plugs the hole. He then claims this was a "trick shot".
    • This also happens in the second novel. With disastrous consequences.
  • In "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", the Cat (playing The Gunslinger) stops a fleeing Kryten by firing a bullet in apparently the wrong direction. It ricochets off several objects, hitting a sign just as Kryten is passing under it. The sign collapses on top of him.
• Stargate Universe: In "Darkness", the out-of-fuel Destiny performs a slingshot maneuver around a gas giant to propel itself into the inner part of a solar system where habitable planets are located, giving the crew hope that they have somewhere to evacuate to. Unfortunately, their relief is short-lived when they notice that slingshot altered their course more than they had thought and they are now heading straight for the sun. In "Light", however, it's revealed that Destiny actually had intended to do this, as it refuels itself by diving into stars and scooping up stellar material.
• In Power Rangers Beast Morphers this is played twice over in one episode. Roxy fires at Zoey, who dodges, but then reveals that she wasn't aiming at the yellow ranger, but at the tube of highly explosive Morph-X in her bike. Zoey realizes this, pulls the tube out of the bike, and rolls it past Roxy, who teases Zoey for not hitting her. Zoey then points out what she was actually aiming for- the pile of Morph-X barrels stacked behind Roxy, which the villain had been in the middle of stealing.

Manhua

• Old Master Q have this as a recurring gag, in stories where the titular character inexplicably develops Improbable Aiming Skills. For instance, one strip have Master Q and his rival, Chiu on an archery range. Master Q looses three arrows, none of them scoring a bullseye, and Chiu mocks Master Q's archery skills... until he took a closer look and saw three mosquitoes pinned under each arrow.

Music

• Mark Chesnutt's song "Bubba Shot the Jukebox" has Bubba get arrested by the sherriff for firing a gun inside a bar.
  Reckless discharge of a gun, that's what the officers are claimin'.
  Bubba hollered out, "Reckless, Hell! I hit just where I was aimin'."

Video Games

• In Advance Wars: Dual Strike Jake or Hawke will do this to Von Bolt's chair.
• In Batman Returns (SNES), the player (as Batman) can repeat the feat mentioned above in Film. The grappling gun is all but useless in Act 1-2, but using it on the wall just past the clown holding Selina hostage, and pulling the chunk of masonry on him, will knock off a significant amount of his life bar.
• Descent, as well as the series's Spiritual Successor, Overload:
  • Deconstructed with the many missiles featuring Recursive Ammo, such as the Earthshaker Missile in Descent II, the Napalm Rocket in Descent 3, and the Devastator missile in Overload, and barring the specific examples listed below. The missiles' submunitions do more combined damage than a direct hit, thus encouraging the player to hit a nearby wall instead of their intended target, but they are also serviceable as direct-fire heavy weapons.
  • Exaggerated with the Smart Missile in Descent and Nova Missile in Overload—the damage from a direct hit is quite low, but if the missile hits a wall, it explodes into a shower of homing plasma blobs, which each do more damage than a direct missile hit. And they often home in on the same target. Due to it being a relatively common powerup spawn, the former is one of the most dangerous and heavily used missiles in multiplayer for this reason.
  • Invoked in Descent 3 with numerous explosive containers scattered throughout the levels. Some spew shrapnel, napalm blobs, or powerups; others just explode really violently. Fairly often, these are placed in close proximity to robots, encouraging the player to prioritise shooting the containers and blowing their contents up over attacking the robots; done correctly, this saves the player the energy, ammo, and time that they would otherwise spend engaging the robots in direct combat, or serves as a way for the player to replenish their ship's shields and energy in the middle of a fight.
• Devil May Cry 5: Nero shoots a traffic sign flying upward in the intro while he jumped out of the van, in spite of how it wasn't flying in a direction that would hit him and an Empulsa is about to jump onto him. Twenty slow-motion seconds later, the sign embeds into another Empulsa's head.
• Toward the end of Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015), Vaan throws one of his Pyroclasm fireballs at Kefka, who dodges it casually and mocks Vaan for his poor aim. Tidus then knocks the Pyroclasm back at Kefka with a well-timed Jecht Shot.
• In Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Freddy confronts a poker cheat named Aces in a saloon. When Aces pulls out a gun, Freddy upturns a table and hides behind it. The player is then given a targeting cursor, and everything you can hit with it results in a trick shot. Only one specific object ends up bouncing the bullet into a chandelier that falls on Aces, though.
• In Frozen Synapse, there will likely be a time when you breathe a sigh of relief as a rocket "misses" you, only to have your forces wiped out by the enemy unit(s) who were behind the wall that the rocket just destroyed.
• This is one of many ways you can dispatch your enemies in Hitman series. For example, shooting a chandelier to make it drop right on your target to score an unnoticed kill.
• In Hyrule Warriors, you must call upon the assistance of a Great Fairy to defeat the dragon Argorok. At first, the fairy sends several spiked chains flying at Argorok which wrap around him, but he breaks free. Then another spiked chain flies past Argorok and into the sky behind him... which drags the moon out of orbit and slams it into Argorok from behind.
• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, In the Final Boss fight, to land the final blow, Link must aim a light arrow away from Yuga. Since the room is circular, and both of them are merged into the wall, the arrow travels around the room and hits him in the weak point in his back, forcing him out of the wall to be finished off with the Master Sword.
• Mass Effect
  • In Mass Effect 2, during Mordin's loyalty mission, Shepard and Mordin are confronted with a clan speaker for a krogan clan who has Mordin's student. The speaker is taunting Shepard while standing over a gas pipe. A Renegade interrupt option allows Shepard to shoot the pipe, prompting the clan speaker to mock Shepard's poor aim. Until he looks down and sees the escaping gas... If you do not take this interrupt option, the krogan will continue his little rant for about a minute and a half, in which the interrupt trigger remains on screen the whole time, almost begging you to shut him up. What's even more hilarious is that his buddies will back away while he's taunting you that you missed. It seems that the trigger was not the only one begging you to shut him up.
  • Zaeed tries to pull a similar stunt off in his loyalty mission. It doesn't work as well this time, as he not only fails to anything more than injure his target (while ironically killing everyone else around him), but sets on fire the refinery full of people that he was hired to save, potentially killing all of them. Still gets a joke, though.
  Vido: What's the matter? Gone near-sighted, old friend?
  Zaeed: Burn, you son-of-a-bitch!
  • During Lair of the Shadow Broker, while fighting the Big Bad of the DLC, Liara fires a biotic attack at the Shadow Broker, which curves upwards, missing the supposed target. Instead, it hits the shield generator, filled with electrified plasma. The result ends in a disintegrated Shadow Broker.
  • In Mass Effect 3, during shore leave, Shepard and Garrus have a bottle-shooting match on the Presidium. Shepard can intentionally miss the shot, leading Garrus to triumphantly declare he's a better marksman than Shepard.
• Metal Gear Solid: This is arguably part of Revolver Ocelot's MO, being a "ricochet genius".
• This quite exactly happens in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal near the beginning. In Clank's Show Within a Show "Secret Agent Clank," Clank throws a tray directly above the bad guy who stormed in. The antagonist gloats about Clank's bad aim, then the chandelier directly above him crashes down on him and somehow electrocutes him.
• In Nancy Drew: Danger on Deception Island, you must throw a fire extinguisher into the water (and not at the villain, who will block it) so an orca will bonk it at the villain when he's not looking.
• Razing Storm: When you defeat the Spider Tank, those missiles it fires are not running on faulty aiming devices. Remember, you are standing on a suspended platform. A platform that is suspended over a great height... Long story short, shoot the missiles.
• There are several instances in Red Dead Redemption where the most effective way to despatch enemies is to aim not at them, but the crates of explosives right where several of them are holed up. There is one mission where this can cause them to get launched off a cliff into the river.
• In SaGa Frontier, the "Trickshot" gun skill, when used with only one gun. The character fires directly above the enemy, and shortly after, rocks cascade down.
• In the 2005 update of Sid Meier's Pirates!, the method by which the player defeats the named pirates in swordfights is the same — player throws his sword, enemy ducks and advances, player smirks, giant crate (whose rope the thrown sword just cut) swings in and knocks the enemy captain off the ship. Unless you've taken out half of the named pirates, in which case, they start ducking under the crate... which then swings back and knocks them off the ship anyway. And the last captain you defeat will actually jump up on the crate, and celebrate his acrobatic ability by swinging his sword over his head...cutting the rope on the crate and landing him in the drink.
• In Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, in the cutscene before the last boss fight in the second level, Isa shoots at Armon Ritter while he's monolouging. The shots go through him. After Isa shoots a charged shot, Armon points out "You missed." A second later, a giant machine falls on top of him. He was better by the boss fight, though.
• There are many moments in the Time Crisis series where you can shoot something explosive until it blows up, killing all enemies in the area and giving you a 5,000-point bonus in games that use points. There are some parts where you shoot something non-explosive instead:
  • In the first Time Crisis, the end of Stage 2 Area 1 has you shoot a support holding several beams together. Destroying the support causes the beams to fall down on the enemies...and you as well, if you don't hide when the game warns you.
  • In Time Crisis II, near the end of Stage 2 Area 1, there's a crane holding a platform with some enemies on it. Disconnecting the platform from the crane kills all of the enemies above and below it for a 10,000-point bonus.
• Virtua Cop 3 has a segment in stage 1 where a group of enemies approaches you from the floor below, and there's a big glass structure hanging from the ceiling. You then get a Quick Time Event where you shoot at several critical spots on the structure. Succeeding causes it to fall on the squad of enemies, wiping them all out.
• Warframe: In "The Profit" trailer, Zanuka dodges Banshee's thrown Glaive... which goes on to hit the control apparatus Alad V is wearing.
• Jin Uzuki gets one during his first cutscene fight with Margulis early on in Xenosaga II ... Just watch it.

Web Animation

• Meta Runner: During Belle and Theo's fight against the containment program in Transfer Student, Belle takes control and starts throwing a ton of coconuts directly into the sky.
  Theo: Uh... I think you missed.
  Belle: Oh... did I?
  (The coconuts start spinning around Theo, destroying any bots that get near.)
• During Volume 4 of RWBY episode "Tipping Point", Tyrian turns his back on Ruby and charges at Nora, so Ruby takes careful aim and fires. The shot streaks past Tyrian, just missing him as he twists to look behind in surprise, and hits Nora instead. Tyrian laughs at Ruby's poor aim, only to discover Ruby fired a lightning Dust round at Nora, whose Semblance strengthens her when charged with electricity.

Webcomics

• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, The Great Flying Shooting Juan's trick shot is a ridiculously over-the-top example. Juan asks a volunteer from the audience to Pick a Card, then promises to shoot the card in question when the volunteer tosses the entire deck into the air. But afterwards, the volunteer can't find his card... at which point he gets a phone call from the police:
  Volunteer: The man who robbed my house... they finally caught him because he was shot in the upper thigh. There was a Queen of Diamonds in his pocket.
• At least in Bob and George, Roll never misses.
  • Megaman defeats Guts Man by having Cut Man's weapon bounce off him and hit his rocks.
• Used in this comic of Captain SNES: The Game Masta, titled "Three Words You Never Say to a Samurai".
• In Cheshire Crossing, Alice does this to the Wicked Witch of the West. The witch dodges her vorpal blade... Which goes snicker-snack on her "faerie-powered battery" orb.
• Played straight in Dominic Deegan, except that no guns were used.
• In EarthBound: The Chosen Four, during the fight the Plague Rat of Doom, Jeff launches a shot from his bazooka that flews by the rat. Which immediately turns out to be a Cup of Lifenoodles Jeff fired towards Ness to revive him.
• Girl Genius
  • Lucrezia pulls this off with a thrown sword, provoking a derisive jeer from Anevka. But she hit what she was aiming at.
  • And later Zeetha with another thrown sword, which she was not trying to hit Zola with.
  • Tiktoffin chides Agatha for bringing a wrench to a knife fight, only for her to retort that it's harder to break things with a knife, i.e. the remote control mechanism for Castle Heterodyne on his arm.
  • And it's implied in the first panels of this strip. Agatha thinks she's dodging a weapon that fires immobilizing goop, but ends up landing in the goop that was just fired.
  • A variation in this strip: the undead Storm King No Sells an energy blast from the Master of Paris... and then the latter explains that it wasn't calibrated for him, but to destroy his weapons.
• Tempts Fate pulls this off with a magic pool of goo in one of the TF strips for Goblins. The villain was a skull that came to life when TF dropped it in the pool - since the pool will turn anything organic into a living monster or something - and TF threw two boards into the pool, thus conjuring two big golem-like things to attack the villain.
• Subverted in Kid Radd:
  Radd: You missed.
  Kobayashi: Heh heh. Did I?
  Radd: Yes. Badly.
  Kobayashi: DAMMIT! And I've been practicing, too!
• Subverted in The Last Days of FOXHOUND, when Liquid pilots a helicopter to fight the Cyborg Ninja. His attack is to press a button — a button whose function he has yet to determine. The button detaches the helicopter's main rotor, and the Ninja laughs and laughs... up until the rotor impales him.
• Subverted in Lint, when Xylic's attempt to hit the Dragon's weak spot resulted in his killing the dragon's goblin mariachi servant and causing an emotional breakdown (no kidding).
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Roy throwing his broken sword manages to cut Elan's, Haley's and V's hanging ropes, but it misses Belkar's, who complains... till he sees the executioner is hit.
    Belkar: Oh, nice one, Roy. Good job there!
    [the sword shard hits the executioner in the chest]
    Belkar: I take it back! You're the best! That was perfect!
    [the executioner falls dead, pulling the doortrap lever with him]
  • Haley, throwing her (or rather Crystal's) distinctive knife into a wanted poster instead of the guy holding it. Finding her knife in a bounty poster with Nale's face on it told Roy all he needed to know to find them.
  • Elan fires a ballista bolt into the ground next to his father, who jumps to the obvious conclusion. As Julio Scoundrél cuts the rope and gets pulled out of the fight to safety, he calls back, "I think that's half your problem, T — You always think everything that happens is about you!"
  • Double subverted in these two comics. Durkon throws his newly acquired hammer at the ceiling of the council chamber, allowing a shaft of sunlight to strike the Exarch... who steps out of the way. The hammer boomerangs back (as it was shown to do earlier), returning through the breach, striking the ceiling again, this time dropping a massive stone down, straight onto the conference table, which splits in two. At first the Exarch thinks that Durkon was trying to smash him with said rock, but it turns out that Durkon was aiming to smash the table — because according to the council meeting rules, the meeting can't allow votes to be cast without a table made from a single unbroken piece of wood, that is also large enough for everyone to sit at. By breaking the table, Durkon has suspended the vote taking place.
• In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Victory Fire, Gengar shoots a Focus Blast at group AWD, only for the "missed" beam to start an avalanche.
• Page 45 of Romantically Apocalyptic.
• Something*Positive does the a version of this with a carnival game here.
  • And this
• xkcd: Turnabout referring to reflectors left by Apollo on the Moon; they're still there and they still work!

Western Animation

• In one episode of Aladdin: The Series, Aladdin is cornered by Mozenrath who fires a magic blast that doesn't hit Aladdin, who calls him a lousy shot, but Mozenrath replies "Depends on where I was aiming". Sure enough, the blast was to activate the magical weapon that Aladdin had just uncovered.
• In American Dad!, this happens in a memorable episode when Francine is in a government building, searching for Stan's sperm sample, but all she can find are unmarked, unlabeled containers full of white fluid. Stan appears, and threatens to stop her, and she pulls out a handgun and fires four shots. Stan cringes, and smiles smugly when he thinks that she missed. When Stan points that out, Francine smiles in a way that would terrify any character, and says "Oh, I didn't miss." Stan realizes that he's standing in front of a container roughly two stories high, FILLED with white fluid. After Stan gets washed away, while Francine jumps onto a shelf to avoid it, it is revealed that the white fluid was simply milk, leading Francine to quip "That's not nearly as disgusting as I thought it was."
• American Dragon: Jake Long: When Huntsgirl had to capture Jake alive for the Equinox Hunt, she fired a beam from her Huntstaff. After Jake mocked her for 'missing' him, she pointed out she wasn't trying to hit him. Jake was then hit by falling debris.
• In Amphibia, the climactic battle between Sasha and Darcy ends with the former catching the latter off-guard and managing one last swing of her sword. Darcy panics for a moment, then laughs, thinking the blow missed. Only after the obligatory "Wanna bet?" do they realise that Sasha actually severed the cord for the helmet The Core was using the possess Marcy, cutting off its connection to her and freeing Marcy.
• Angel Wars: During his showdown with Discord, Paladin did not make the same mistake twice: instead of directly hurling his starblades at Discord, he hurled them at the engine pylons. Discord taunted Paladin, telling him that he'd missed, and Paladin shot back "No, I didn't!" Cue the starblades boomeranging back, striking the harmonious engine pylons, and playing music that obliterated Discord's armor.
• In an episode of Archer, Cyril, who appears to be incapable of keeping his eyes open while firing a gun, threatens the villain of the week. When the villain approaches anyway, he fires a volley of bullets...and then the camera pans to Archer's reaction: "Cyril...YOU SUCK AT EVERYTHING!" The villain, unharmed, starts to respond only to see that the McGuffin he was protecting is completely destroyed.
• Occurs by accident in the second episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Zuko easily dodges Sokka's boomerang and keeps handing Sokka's ass to him for a bit longer, until the boomerang comes back to nail him in the head.
• Batman Beyond: In "Eyewitness", while the framed Batman is being pursued by Barbara and a SWAT team, Batman pretends to surrender and then throws a Batarang at Barbara, who dodges it... only to discover that Batman had been aiming at Spellbinder, who was lurking invisible behind her, the whole time.
• An episode of Batman: The Animated Series featured Robin fighting a ninja on the roof of a building. The ninja makes a single leap and slash with his sword, prompting Robin to dodge. After the exchange, the ninja casually returns his sword to its sheath, which Robin looks at quizzically. Then the support beam for the water tower the ninja is standing by dramatically slides apart, prompting him to tap it lightly, sending the tower crashing down and sweeping Robin over the edge of the building in the resulting flood.
  • Averted the "Missed me" dialog: Mad Hatter had trapped Batman under a playing-card wall and was about to axe off Batman's head. Batman throws a batarang directly at Hatter, to which Hatter easily dodges. Rather than sneer, Hatter resumes his attack only to discover Batman's toy severs a line suspending a huge gargoyle statue. Paralysed with horror, Hatter is pinned beneath the statue's claw with Batman escaping in the nick of time. Yeah, just as he planned it.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold: From "The Super-Batman of Planet X":
  Rothul: Your aim is terrible!
  Batman: Is it, Rothul?
  [cue Oh, Crap! moment as the robot Rothul is standing on explodes]
• In an episode of Beast Wars, Megatron is holding Optimus Primal captive inside an alien spacecraft. Rattrap arrives to save the day and fires two shots in Megatron's direction. The shots miss Megs, who prepares to shoot Rattrap while sneering, "You should have made your shots count." Then, from right behind him, Optimus calmly replies, "Oh, they did," and proceeds to fight Megatron. Rattrap's "missed" shots actually hit, and cut through, the two cables that were holding Optimus.
  • Something similar happens in an earlier episode, when the Maximals are fighting the Predacons near a cliff face. Rhinox's aim is way off, and Cheetor calls him out on it. But a few seconds later, an avalanche of rocks, dislodged by Rhinox's carefully aimed fire, falls from the cliff and crushes the Predacons.
  Rhinox: There's more than one way to skin a cat... so to speak.
• Bugs Bunny: In "Wild and Woolly Hare", Bugs brags to Yosemite Sam that he can perform a complicated trick shot that will part Sam's hair right down the middle. After he fires, Sam says, "You missed!" and Bugs quips "Wait." A second later, Sam's hat splits apart, revealing a perfect part on his hair.
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command "Bunzel Fever", Buzz shoots his laser at Torque and misses. Torque chides "Missed!", Buzz replies "No I didn't" as a stack of boxes falls on top of Torque.
• Parodied in Chilly Beach, after Dale takes a shot at the net, he declares: "He shoots, he!...." and, after many ricochets, the puck inevitably just goes up into the sky, causing him to finish with "... just misses the cloud he was aiming for."
• In the Chowder episode "Schnitzel Quits", Chowder, Mung, and Truffles break into Ms. Endive's kitchen to steal back Schnitzel who was now working for her. When Endive comes in and sees them, she throws a cake she had been holding, which sails over their heads, to which Mung taunted "Ha, ya missed, Woman!". The cake then hits a panic button which activates the kitchen's security system, trapping them inside.
• Dragons: Riders of Berk: In "The Night and the Fury", Hiccup fires his grapple into a branch above Dagur the Deranged's head. When Dagur gloats that Hiccup missed, Hiccup replies "Did I?" and yanks the branch down on top of Dagur.
• In an episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy, the Eds were dueling against the Kanker Sisters using turkey basters as squirt guns. The Eds shoot at the Kankers (while missing every shot) until they run out of water. Then the Kankers only shoot at their feet. Eddy makes fun of their aim until the Eds realize that what they were shot with was some sort of sticky solution to hold them in place while the Kankers kiss them.
• In The Fairly OddParents! TV movie Abra-Catastrophe!, the climax is a duel between the now all-powerful Mr. Crocker and Timmy Turner's collection of gifts from magical beings. They are eventually sucked down to an atomic level, and Timmy fires one of Cupid's Arrows at Crocker. The arrow lands at the latter's feet, prompting Crocker to mock his aim. However, Timmy was actually aiming for the atom they were standing on, which Crocker realizes just before the arrow splits it apart and detonates it.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): In "The Huntsman", Baron Grod fires a ray gun at He-Man, who ducks and says he missed. Grod then reveals the ray was to remove beings from stasis, and it revived a creature that attacks He-Man from behind.
• In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Ghost takes a few shots at Iron Man, going straight over his head. Iron Man mocks him for this, until he points out that the wall is about to collapse on Black Widow, forcing Iron Man to rescue her instead of stopping Ghost.
• In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Flash and Substance", Flash goes through one of the Mirror Master's mirrors after Linda Park, which leaves them both lost in the mirror dimension. Batman shoots his flare gun past the Rogues and into another mirror, showing them which one is the exit.
  Mirror Master: Missed me!
  Batman: (stares at him)
  • Subverted in the Season 2 finale, where Batman does hit the Thanagarian soldiers with sonic batarangs, but they just seem to get harmlessly stuck in their armor.
  Soldier: "Your weapons are pitiful!"
  Batman: "Wait for it."
  [cue the eyes of a thousand bats appearing behind him and attacking the soldiers]
• In an episode of King of the Hill when Ladybird, Hank's bloodhound, is thought to be rabid, Bobby takes aim with a rifle and fires. Hank and Dale think he missed; Bobby says "I didn't miss," and points at the body of a raccoon he had earlier adopted as a pet and whom they thought gave Ladybird and Dale rabies.
  • Also in the episode "How to Fire a Rifle Without Trying" Hank buys Bobby his first gun because he discovers he has a newly discovered talent for skeet shooting when they try still target shooting Hank explains the rules about gun safety while Bobby quickly fires off all six shots at the target, Hank is disappointed that he didn't listen to him only to be shocked that all six of his shots hit the target dead center.
  • Subverted somewhat with Dale - who throws a knife into a mannequin beside his target, which was pretty badass from Dale, then threatens "Next time I'll aim for the mannequin and hit you!"
• LarryBoy: The Cartoon Adventures (a short-lived VeggieTales spin-off) loved this trope, using it in three of its four episodes.
  • In "Leggo My Ego", Larry-Boy attempts to apprehend the villain Mother Pearl by shooting one of his plunger ears at her, which misses her and ricochets off the walls multiple times, surrounding her with the plunger ear's cord. As Mother Pearl mocks him for his multiple misses, Larry-Boy pulls on the cord, causing it to tie up around her.
  • In "The Yodelnapper", during Larry-Boy's final fight with Greta Von Gruesome, Larry-Boy fires his plunger ear directly at Greta, who ducks out of the way. As she laughs at Larry-Boy's failed attempt, the plunger ear ricochets multiple times and latches onto Greta's giant bowl of smelt-flavored pudding. Larry-Boy pulls on the plunger ear's cord to dump the pudding on Greta, incapacitating her.
  • In "The Good, The Bad, And The Eggly", Greta Von Gruesome is once again a victim of this trope. As she tries to make her escape, Larry-Boy and fellow superhero Dark Crow work together to fire Larry-Boy's replacement plunger (as the two's regular superhero costumes were destroyed earlier in the episode), which hits the exit door. Greta mocks them for the missed shot, only for Larry-Boy and Dark Crow to pull on the string attached to the plunger, slamming the door against Greta and knocking her down.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's Grand Finale gives us the moment when Discord, holding a piece of anti-magic stone, goads Tirek into attacking him, the blast is deflected. The Legion of Doom mock Discord, saying he missed. Starlight Glimmer then reveals that the deflected blast destroyed the anti-mage stone that was sealing her powers.
  Cozy Glow: You missed!
  Starlight Glimmer: Did he, though?
• Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero: In "Larry Manor", Phyllis fires a blast that doesn't hit Phil and he mocks her for missing. It's then revealed she was aiming at a stalactite that falls on Phil.
• This is used in the Phineas and Ferb pilot (and the musical remake of the same episode). Perry's arms and legs are trapped, so he uses his tail to launch a screw at Dr. Doofenshmirtz, who mocks him when it misses. Perry does not react; he just watches as the screw bounces off the wall and ricochets into a lighting wire, which acts as a bowstring, firing the screw into Doofenshmirtz's foot. The evil scientist hops around in pain and hits the release button.
• The Powerpuff Girls (2016): In "Man Up 2: Still Man-ing", Manboy throws a wrench at Buttercup. She dodges it, but it hits and breaks a pipe that sprays her with steam and blinds her, letting him get a good hit in.
  Buttercup: Hah, missed! (gets hit with the steam) Aah, mist!
• ReBoot: In "Between A Raccoon & A Hard Place," Enzo is placed in a cartoony setting where he and the others must kill Rocky the Rabid Racoon. He reboots into Elmer Fudd. Everyone laughs at him, until he steals Fudd's signature line, "Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wacoons," and takes aim, firing one shot and setting up a chain reaction of impossible proportions that ends with a vulture being hit with a firework, thus turning into an Instant Roast, then falling on Rocky's head, which leads to him wandering into an oncoming train.
• In one episode of She-Ra: Princess of Power, Bow fires an arrow at Shadow Weaver, but it goes right past her. As Shadow Weaver taunts him, Bow responds with "I wasn't aiming for you", then we see his arrow triggers a containment force field Hordak was using to torture her earlier.
• SheZow: In "S.I.C.K. Day", Senor Yo-Yo flings his Killer Yo-Yo at SheZow's head, who dodges with a "Ha! Missed Me!" Yo-Yo then yanks on the string and the yoyo whizzes back and whacks her in the back of the head.
• In The Simpsons episode "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", Bart is in a military school where they teach him to handle a grenade launcher. He hits the first four targets, but the fifth shot goes spiralling over the horizon. When the instructor points out he missed, Bart smiles and says, "Did I?" Cut to Principal Skinner back in Springfield standing by the smoking crater that used to be his car.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Spidey does this (as described in the Comic Books section) Once per Episode, and it's almost his signature takedown.
  • Rhino also pulls a variant on Spidey himself in one episode.
  Spider-Man: "Missed me!"
  Rhino: "Wasn't aiming for you!"
  Spider-Man: "Really? I've fallen for the same trick I pulled on the Shocker!?"
• In SpongeBob SquarePants episode "SpongeBob's Frozen Faceoff", when SpongeBob and his friends encounter the Abominable Snow Mollusk, it fires its multiple tongues out, which hit the ground at the group's feet. When Sandy mocks the Mollusk for missing, Mr. Krabs informs her that it wasn't the attack. Turns out the Mollusk was scooping up snow into its mouth to fire snowballs at the group.
• Static Shock: In "Future Shock", Static gets sent to the future and ends up in a Let's You and Him Fight with Terry McGinnis. Terry throws a batarang. Static dodges it and calls him sloppy, but the batarang hits the ceiling and brings it down on him.
• Steven Universe:
  • Pearl does this in "Keeping It Together" when Peridot runs up a wall. Pearl throws her spear up and Peridot barely ducks, only to learn that she aimed at a deactivated injector, which promptly falls on her.
  • A variation occurs much earlier in "Coach Steven" at the end of Pearl's fight with Sugilite. After luring her to the edge of the beach cliff, Pearl throws her spear at her feet to knock her off. Like the second Justice League Unlimited example above, the attack seemingly does nothing as Sugilite lands harmlessly. Unfortunately for her, her Epic Flail came falling after.
    Sugilite: "Is that all you got? You think that's enough to bea—?" (conked on the head and poofed)
  • Later on during "Crack the Whip", Stevonnie throws their shield at Jasper who catches it...which was exactly what Stevonnie wanted, as it leaves Jasper wide open to an overhead slash with her sword.
• Zoe does it in Total Drama: Revenge of the Island. She fires an arrow at Chef which flies past him. Chef says "You missed!" and Zoe just grins. The arrow cuts a vine holding a boulder she had tied up earlier that swings into Chef.
• Transformers: Prime: In "Triangulation", Optimus Prime and Dreadwing duke it out in the arctic. Optimus fires a shot that flies clear of Dreadwing, citing the 'con to call his aim "poor". Optimus replies "That is a matter of perspective." as the cliff face behind Dreadwing collapses on him.
• Wakfu : When Evangelyne fights Remington, she shoots three times, the first two piercing his cape but he dodges the third, saying "Not bad. Too bad the third one missed." to which Evangelyne replies "Did it?" Remington looks back to see the arrow has hit a pillar that falls upon him, almost crushing him.
• Winx Club: In the second to last episode of Season 3, Bloom thinks of a plan to defeat Valtor, unleashing her fairy dust, presumably using it on him but with no effects, because Valtor is not a dark spell, and she gets attacked. But then it was revealed the fairy dust was being used on the Agador Box, which breaks the Spell of the Elements on it, allowing it to unlock and release the elemental magic back to Magix.
• One episode of WordGirl has Granny May do this by pulling a shelf full of groceries down. When she attempts this later in the episode, WordGirl simply steps aside.
• On the Young Justice (2010) episode "Home Front," Dick throws a batarang while retreating and it hits a piece of debris right next to Wally, who's been captured by the villains. It seems like he just missed the bad guys, but shortly thereafter we discover that the batarang has a built-in communicator, and Wally uses it to walk Robin through the steps of making the EMP device they need to regain control of the base.

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