Danny: Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?
Nicholas: No.
Danny: Have you ever fired one gun whilst jumping through the air?
Nicholas: No.
Nicholas: No.
Danny: Have you ever fired one gun whilst jumping through the air?
Nicholas: No.
— Hot Fuzz
Quite simply, a slow-motion shot of a person throwing themselves to one side, firing as they go, often with two guns. Bonus points if they are submachine guns or machine pistols blazing on full automatic. In real life, firing while jumping not only significantly reduces accuracy, but is a serious waste of energy. And that's if you don't hurt your shoulder when you land. In the media, it either looks impressive or looks overdone.
Do not try this at home, as you or other people may get hurt.
See also Unnecessary Combat Roll and Do Not Run with a Gun.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Black Lagoon.
- Gunsmith Cats.
- Gunslinger Girl. Justified in that girls' cybernetic enhancements allow them to do this without losing accuracy or hurting themselves.
- Transformers: Cybertron: Optimus Prime does this on a few occasions, and it looks pretty damn cool.
Comic Books
- Taskmaster does this in his mini-series.
- Which is allowable, given the nature of his super-powers.
- Now if only he had some doves and a slow-mo button.
- Dwight does it a lot in Sin City. Miho has also done it, with a bow and arrow.
- Red Robin: Pru is in love with this "tactic", at one point leaping out of a helicopter firing an Uzi with each hand.
- Wonder Woman (1987): Artemis looses an arrow while jumping from a building, and later does so while making a leaping dodge in a fight. She hits exactly what she was aiming at on both occasions.
Film
- Hot Fuzz:
- Danny spends the first half of the film constantly nagging Nicholas about how many action movie tropes he's performed in his career as a big-city copper (answer: none). Ironically, either Danny or Nicholas end up performing every trope Danny asks about except firing one gun whilst jumping through the air, unless that counts as a subset of firing two guns whilst jumping through the air.
- At a preview screening, Nick Frost—who played Danny—actually offers some insight why in some circumstances, even assuming Improbable Aiming Skills, it might not be a good idea to do so.
Questioner: What was it like to fire two guns whilst jumping through the air?
Nick: The thing is—I don't know if any of you bitches have ever fired a nine before—but even with blanks, the casings come out hot as you like, and they land on the mat they set out to cushion the fall. And then you land on it. And then the casings roll in towards you...
- Steven Seagal does this quite a bit. The Soup parodied it by taking a clip from one of his recent movies (where he does this and then slides while shooting) and doctoring it so he appears to be sliding for yards on end, firing all the while.
- William H. Macy, of all people, pulls one of these at the end of Cellular.
- A slight variation, the cover of Kevin Smiths DVD An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder shows him leaping to the side in what would be the usual two guns jump except instead of guns he has microphones. This might be a parody of the cover to The Transporter which had the image played straight.
- Played with (like most other gunplay tropes) in Shoot 'Em Up, where Smith uses a puddle of oil on the floor to extend the dive into a slide the entire length of the warehouse he's in.
- The concept is lampshaded in The Boondock Saints after the McManus brothers have cleared a room full of Russian mobsters:
Murphy: There's always that one guy who dives from behind a couch or somethin'.Connor: Aye, and ya gotta shoot him like ten fuckin' times, too.
- Better than most examples, Detective Spooner in I, Robot was forced to do this to save himself; he was surrounded on three sides by enemies descending on the narrow platform he stood on.
- Like all Guns and Gunplay Tropes in existence, Shoot 'Em Up (also known as Guns: The Movie) has this several times. Smith once even plays this trope while firing two pistols into opposite directions.
- Star Trek Into Darkness. Harrison shoots a Klingon soldier in the middle of a large leap, just one of the indications in that battle of him being a Super-Soldier.
Literature
- In The Last Command, Han Solo does this—but as a distraction. With two stormtroopers at the end of a narrow corridor, and him around a corner, Han dives across it, ending up around the opposite corner, and while the stormtroopers focus on him, Chewie pokes out and takes them down.
Live Action TV
- Arrow shows you don't need a gun to do this. In the pilot episode, Oliver Queen kills Adam Hunt's bodyguard with a flechette dart to the chest while leaping backwards over a desk to avoid his gunfire.
- The moment when Ultimate Force jumped the shark.
- Not only does Power Rangers use this trope virtually every episode, but it is usually accompanied by physics-defying leaps to boot. Power Rangers: Dino Thunder's Ethan particularly loved shooting directly at the screen while in midair.
- During the police-themed Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger (and Power Rangers S.P.D.), the Megazord could do it. It was also Unnecessary Combat Roll-capable.
- And, like their other abilities, this has been inherited by Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger and the Gokai-Oh, even when they're not directly using the Dekarangers power
- The gunner form of the Getter Robo-esque Timeranger Robo/Time Force Megazord also does this.
- It did not, however, come up much in the Mighty Morphin era, due to the blasters seeing relatively little use even in the Zyuranger footage compared to martial arts and their Power Weapons.
- During the police-themed Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger (and Power Rangers S.P.D.), the Megazord could do it. It was also Unnecessary Combat Roll-capable.
- Logan does this in one of Dark Angel's series finales.
- Gwen in Torchwood: Children of Earth.
- Wesley does this in Joss Whedon's Angel after taking a level. It was then shown in the Title Sequence.
- MythBusters briefly tested this while testing Wanted myths. Tory (the tester) actually hit his target, but he landed on a mat, and they emphasized that it would be very unlikely to pull off successfully in real life (although it is a good way to catch your opponent off-guard, if you dive through a doorway).
- Zoe, mistress of superfluous combat maneuvers pulls this off in the cold open to an episode of Firefly.
- Abed's introduction in Community episode Modern Warfare, badass.
- Also done by Chang, albeit with paintball guns.
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder introduced the Gunslinger character class, who can learn this ability as a feat called "Leaping Shot."
- BattleTech's signature BattleMechs incorporate a Brain/Computer Interface specifically to enable pilots to balance the mech or throw it off-balance to dodge fire, though a 20+ ton battlemech is now flying sideways towards the ground with often tragic results. More mundanely, a mech can fire its weapons in the same round it uses its jump jets to move, but it takes a considerable penalty to accuracy in order to do so.
Video Games
- In the Max Payne games, this move is known as a "Shootdodge." (And it's trademarked.) Doing it automatically engages Bullet Time to give you time to aim, and, in the first and third games, makes you absolutely unkillable until the slow-motion ends (your pain meter can max out but can't kill you).
- Total Overdose has lots of names for it, depending on whether it's leaping forward, leaping backward, spinning 90/180/360 degrees, backflipping off a wall or walking sideways up it, leaping from a vehicle. There's even a separate name for using a grenade launcher while doing it.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion allows you to use your weapon while jumping if you have sufficient skill in Acrobatics. Notably, this includes drawing and firing your bow.
- Diddy Kong in Super Smash Bros. Brawl With guns made out of wood, that shoot peanuts.
- Falco too, but with 2 laser guns.
- This is the primary defensive technique in the action shooter MMO Gunz, so much so that most players are seen leaping like loons instead of running normally, unless they've got their swords out.
- This is the main purpose of the Stunt key in the Half-Life Game Mod Action Half-Life.
- This is one of the main tactics of gun fighting in WET. Special mention go to some of Rubi's other moves; shooting while sliding along the ground, and shooting while sliding upside-down down a ladder. All while Dual Wielding and shooting at multiple targets.
- In Resonance of Fate, one of the two primary methods of attacking is jumping 50 feet in the air and emptying multiple clips into your enemies before you land.
- In the original Command & Conquer: Renegade trailer, Havok did this constantly. He dove into doorways, dove over a stream of fire, and, and one point, shot at some bad guys behind him by leaping straight up into the air and firing as he turned. The actual game? Not so much. To get an idea of how strange the "jump and fire" maneuver looks, think of what a Battlefield gamer calls "bunny-hopping." Jump, turn, fire.
- Wanted: Weapons Of Fate had the player be able to do this. You have the option to go into Bullet Time, then jump out of cover, shooting.
- This can be done in Warframe, but has no real purpose, making it Cool, but Inefficient. Eventually, an update made the players moves slower in the air (while simultaneously making you harder to hit... somehow), making it a viable tactic to leap high above the battlefield and slowly float down in plain view of all of your enemies, scoring headshots all the way.
- Also present in Sleeping Dogs (2012), though Wei isn't leaping so much as vaulting over cover.
- The Matrix: Path of Neo introduced this in a training level and it works even better when used with Focus during the later levels.
- True Crime: Streets of LA gives you something similar to the Max Payne bulletdodge. In that you jump, it engages bullet time, you fire guns akimbo, and kill every last mother fucker in the room.
- As it is basically John Woo Movies: The Game, Stranglehold employs this trope and loves it dearly. Inspector Tequila can leap up and go sliding across a counter, emptying his pistols the entire time.
- In Double Action: Boogaloo this is all but mandatory to get "style points" which players earn for every successful hit against an enemy player. It doesn't matter if you bunny hop off the ground, jump against a wall, or even jump off the nearest guy's face as long as you do this and hit it'll count.
- El Paso, Elsewhere: Being a Spiritual Successor to Max Payne, James Savage goes into slowmo as he leaps in a direction, being able to dodge attacks and shoot while doing so.
Web Video
- One of the soldier protagonists of Shock Troopers leaps from behind his defibrillator-wielding co-combatant to shoot out one of the enemy mooks... moments before another mook who has been hit by the defibrillator gets Blown Across the Room into the guy who just got shot.
Webcomics
- In this
Sluggy Freelance strip, Nash Straw actually grabs two machine guns and fires them at Oasis, all in a single leap.
Western Animation
- The Transformers: The Movie: Optimus Prime leaps high up in the air while transforming and opens fire (mid-air at that) with his Ion Blaster against several Decepticons, hitting every single one he's aiming at. All while Stan Bush's "The Touch" is blaring in the background.
