Only A Flesh Wound / Live-Action TV

Flesh wounds in live-action TV.

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• In one 7th Heaven episode, Eric is shot in the shoulder at fairly close range. Aside from complaining to the doctor that it "really hurts," Eric seems to suffer no adverse effects at all. His doctor puts a bandage on it gives him an arm sling, and then sends him home.
• Subverted in the short-lived series Ten Eight Officers On Duty: Deputy Amonte intentionally shoots a suspect in the leg and is immediately chewed out by his experienced partner Barnes — deadly force is in play once guns are drawn, and aiming anywhere other than center-mass with intent to kill is dangerously irresponsible.
• Used in 24—too many examples to list extensively, most recently Jack shooting Tony twice in the latest season finale in order to stop him, once in the leg to knock him down and then in the hand to keep him from picking up his gun.
  • A character in Season 3 is shot at close range in the back of the neck and not only lives, but is out of surgery, conscious, released from the hospital, and back at work a few hours later. That's Tony also.
  • For that matter, characters are regularly tortured or beaten within an inch of their life and somehow still manage to be fully functional, and that's on top of the fact that especially towards the end of the season, they're usually highly sleep-deprived. A good example is one instance where Jack Bauer himself was chained up and tortured, his heart stopped and then revived, and yet somehow still managed to concoct a plan to get out of everything, kill all the bad guys, and then escape to save the day.
• In The 100, Lincoln takes a bullet through his shoulder and seems pretty much okay afterwards; he's even fighting on the front lines of a battle a few days later.
• This trope is referenced in the 2001 The Bill (which has never suffered this trope, the one time where a wound is referred to as "a flesh wound" — in the 2005 Live Episode — the PC still has to go to hospital) episode "Gun Crazy". A character, who has just been shot in the leg by an AK-47 is being taken to hospital. DCI Meadows says to DS McAllister, "He says it's only a flesh wound. There's someone who's been watching too many dodgy videos." (Maybe he'd been watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)
• Better Call Saul subverts this in a scene where Nacho willingly takes a few shots to make a False Flag Operation look convincing. He takes one shot to the shoulder, which still has him staggering around in immense pain, and one shot to the side, which causes him to collapse. It's noted that, while the shots didn't kill him, he would probably have bled out if he didn't get medical attention ASAP, and even then, he still almost dies.
• Deconstructed in The Bletchley Circle. Midway through the second season, Jean is shot in the leg. The wound is stated to be a flesh wound... but Jean has permanent damage to her leg; when she is next seen, she needs a cane to walk.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: Buffy is impaled with a sword and shrugs it off, but at least she has Healing Factor to explain this. Giles on the other hand is stabbed in the side with a lance by one of the Knights of Byzantium. He appears near death during most of "Spiral," but is up and fighting the next day.
  • Angel in particular has been impaled frequently as a vampire; at one point Angel has a causal argument with Spike (with a sword stuck in his torso) over the fact the Spike “saved” Angel from a bug demon on his back by running it through without bothering to warn Angel.
  • Wesley is probably the foremost human example of this, as he gets shot in the gut and remains conscious for several hours before getting hospitalized. Wes at one point even has his throat slit and stays alive for ages before receiving help. Really getting stabbed and dying in the Final Battle seems like he should’ve walked it off compared to previous injuries.
• Burn Notice tends to play with this. If someone gets shot, they'll clearly be suffering pain and be incapacitated in some manner, and even episodes later they can still be suffering from the injuries. That said, rarely are their wounds fatal, if only because they received proper medical care.
  • In the season one finale, Mike manages to shoot the bad guy in the stomach with his own gun. He mentions that if the gun uses normal bullets, he might make it. If they're hollow points..."I wouldn't make any plans."
  • Earlier in the series, he manages to get an assassin with roughly the same type of wound. The killer manages to get out of his house and dies later.
  • A later episode has Agent Bly get shot in the shoulder during a bank robbery, and is played fairly realistically; Bly is shown to be in danger of bleeding to death, and though he manages to disable two of the bank robbers later, he uses his other arm. He has his arm in a sling at the end of the episode.
  • In the series pilot, Michael finally deals with an annoying drug pusher by ambushing him and shooting him in the leg. He hands him some bandages and says if he binds the wound and calls an ambulance immediately, he stands a good chance of survival. The pusher is writhing on the floor in pain and obviously is unable to do much of anything but comply. He's fine the next time we see him, a month or two later, where he runs headlong into this trope again from taking four shots from assault rifles through his upper body and surviving, though it's noted he would have died had Michael not been there to get him to the hospital and he's out of commission in that hospital for the rest of the episode.
  • Mike Batman Gambits The Dragon of one of the marks into shooting his boss. He gives more or less the same "get to a hospital speech". As he's leaving, he says quietly to the client that he was lying; the bad guy is going to die.
  • At one point during Season 3, Fiona's brother Sean takes at least two shots from a rifle in his upper body. He's reduced to unconsciousness when we see Sam and Madeline trying to staunch the bleeding and remove the bullets (having told them not to get him to the hospital since it would take too much time to save Fi). By the end of the episode he's conscious again, but still clearly in pain and struggling to even prop himself up on his elbows and several cushions. Fi herself gets clipped in the arm at the end of the episode and requires stitches, and even in the next episode it's still affecting her to an extent that she can't serve her usual role as muscle.
  • During one of the season 4 episodes Jesse is forced to shoot a guard who had Michael in a death grip and in the process it hits Michael in the shoulder. Michael realistically bleeds out within a few minutes and loses consciousness and later on takes several weeks to heal from the wound in a hospital. Even then, he's still suffering from it when he finally gets discharged.
• Spoofed on Chappelle's Show. One of the sketches was mock ESPN coverage of guys shooting dice in an alley, interrupted by gang members robbing them. When Dave's character talks back, the gangster shoots him in the leg. The "analysts" replay the shooting in slow motion with a football-style telestrator and comment "Smart play by the young man, shooting him below the waist, that is not attempted murder. This man knows the law."
• Criminal Minds:
  • Subverted when Hotch was stabbed repeatedly at the beginning or season 5 (as it happens, the very same episode Reid gets shot in the leg), but is back to work in the following episode (though not yet fully recovered). But this is Subverted all the way in season 9, when Hotch suddenly collapses and it turns out to be because those same old stab injuries have ruptured again.
  • In general, the characters attempt to disable armed suspects by shooting them in the arm or leg quite often (often, the armed person is mentally ill, an emotional non-criminal attempting to get revenge on a serial killer that killed a love one, or otherwise acting out of mistake rather than malice). However, all shootings are necessary and the show seems to actively avoid showing whether or not the person that got shot actually survived, so the writers may be aware of this trope.
• CSI:
  • Nick Stokes referred to a man with a GSW to the shoulder as having taken a "John Wayne shot," explaining that the Duke's shootouts often ended with this trope.
  • A straighter version in "Willows In The Wind." Catherine was shot in the side, but kept on going, just getting it cauterized with a curling iron. Doc did take a look at it later, and said she should be on some major antibiotics, but still...
• CSI: Miami:
  • A truly ludicrous example shows up in one episode, Ryan Wolfe is shot in the head with a nail gun. In the very next episode, stated to be some six weeks later, he is back at work with a shaved head and some minor memory problems.
  • Though averted in another episode. A woman is found floating in the ocean with a gunshot to the leg which killed her. Eventually they uncover that she was a Cuban refugee who was travelling with her brother but was sick and unable to make it all the way. Her brother shot her in the leg, assuming this trope, because if she needed medical attention she wouldn't be sent back. He hit the femoral artery and she was dead within minutes.
• CSI: NY:
  • In "Sangre por Sangre," righthanded Mac is shot in the left arm while trying to apprehend a gang leader. While clutching it and wincing in pain a few times, he continues hunting the guy down and shoots another gang member in the process.
• Doctor Who: In "Voyage of the Damned", Midshipman Frame gets shot in the stomach by Captain Hardaker. He does rather well for the rest of the episode, although he spends a good chunk of time painfully clutching the wound. (Mind you, he's a Human Alien and uses a first aid kit that's probably more advanced than what you'd find on Earth.)
• In Dollhouse, unimpairing gut shots seem to be a motif. Adelle DeWitt gets shot in the stomach and barely flinches. Later she is being stitched up by Dr. Claire Saunders. Agent Ballard gets shot in the stomach in an early Season 1 episode (though admittedly he quickly passes out and takes few episodes to heal fully), and in another, Boyd Langton walks several miles out of the woods after taking a hunting arrow all the way through his abdomen.
• Averted on Downton Abbey, Sir Anthony Strallan is shot through shoulder during World War I. Though he survives, he permanently loses use of that arm.
• The Dukes of Hazzard: In a roundabout way in the final episode of the series, "Opening Night At the Boar's Nest". The Malone brothers — angry that Boss Hogg's testimony had sent one of them, Floyd, to prison — kidnap Boss and, after demanding a $1 million ransom, threaten to kill Boss if any rescue attempts are detected. The trope kicks in when the Duke boys make their attempt: Floyd and Bubba are easily able to beat up Bo and Luke, after which Floyd fires a shotgun at Boss, who was using the distraction of the Malones' fight with the Duke boys to try to get away. Boss, who is tied to a chair, is knocked off the porch and for a second, appears to be unconscious, presumably to lead viewers to the conclusion that he had been seriously, if not fatally wounded. Alas, all is well: Bo and Luke tell Boss that he is not dead, much less even hurt: the bullet was lodged ... in Boss' wallet full of (no doubt phony) credit cards! While Boss is glad he didn't leave home without the credit cards, Floyd and Bubba now get to face kidnapping and attempted murder charges.
• Farscape: Chiana is shot by Durka in "Durka Returns", although slightly justified by her survival being a hasty rewrite so that she could be made a regular character instead of dying as originally intended.
• A complex example in The Finder. First, averted, as a rapper is shot in the leg and bleeds to death. Then subverted, as he had asked his brother to shoot him in the leg in order to gain street cred from a flesh wound. Later zig-zagged as it turns out a record exec had put the idea in his head with the intention of him dying.
• Firefly:
  • In the pilot episode, Kaylee is shot in the stomach and the same doctor emphasizes how critical treating her soon is. Somewhat justified, as she's shot roughly in the middle of her stomach, while Mal's wound is almost in his side, where there are significantly less vital organs to worry about. In addition, Kaylee isn't used to such injury, and quickly starts going into shock.
  • Also in the pilot, Mal is shot but it actually is just a flesh would as explained in the end when Simon offers to look at it and Mal says "it's just a graze."
  • In "The Train Job", during the fight scene, Mal has a knife thrown at him hard enough to stick into his shoulder, he then goes to pull it out and the episode closes with him whining while Simon stitches him up. You even see the scar in the movie during his Shirtless Scene.
  • Subverted in "Shindig" when Mal, rather than doing the whole tough-guy "flesh wound" act, stresses to Inara how he was stabbed and that it hurt.
  • Subverted. Book gets shot in the shoulder in "Safe" and is quite seriously wounded. As a result, Simon and River are left to fend for themselves most of the episode leading up to the famous Big Damn Heroes moment at the climax.
  • Played straight when Book volunteers to help rescue Mal in "War Stories". 'Preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?' 'Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.'
• Forever: A repeat offender.
  • In the pilot, Jo is hit in the shoulder. She's out of commission and wakes up in the hospital, but when we next see her she's got a little gauze visible taped to her chest and is otherwise fine, using that arm pretty normally and apparently back to full duty investigating another murder.
  • In "New York Kids" Henry is shot in the upper arm, likely through the lateral bicep, and within minutes he's caught up to Jo in her confrontation with the shooter. Aside from holding the spot with his other hand, he's quite coherent and active. He's seen later with his arm in a sling but otherwise seems fine, and he's using his hand pretty normally by the end of the episode. A bit more justified since he's had a lot of experience with painful injuries, since he's been immortal for 200 years.
  • Less egregious in "Diamonds Are Forever" when Hanson is shot in the upper arm. (Henry complains about it being described by the inexact term "flesh wound.") Hanson is in a lot of pain, not just at the time but later in the episode too, his face grey and sweaty, and his arm is in a sling for a good while. He's shown having difficulty with simple everyday tasks like putting on his coat (although still only for that episode).
• Forever Knight. Vampire Detective Nick Knight uses this trope (or Bulletproof Vest) to hide the fact that he's actually Immune to Bullets.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Arya gets shanked several times in the abdomen, yet only needs some bandaging by an amateur healer and apparently a few days of bed rest to be fit enough to perform feats of acrobatics, though her wounds reopen in the process.
  • Jon Snow recovers from three serious arrow wounds between "Mhysa" and "Two Swords" before wildlings who shot him can even make their next move. In "Watchers on the Wall," Jon also survives having his head smashed on an anvil hard enough to kill anyone not Made of Iron.
• Discussed in The Good Wife, while Kalinda is teaching Diane how to handle a gun. Diane asks if she can simply shoot to wound; Kalinda responds by telling her that a gun should only ever be fired at someone with the intent to kill—if she doesn't want to kill someone, she shouldn't pick up a gun at all.
• Surprisingly averted in the otherwise ridiculous Harper's Island when Booth accidentally shoots himself in the leg and dies within minutes.
• In the second season episode of Hawaii Five-O, entitled "All the King's Horses," an ambitious politician arranges for a crack shot assassin to shoot him with a rifle in the upper chest in a fake assassination plot to advance his credentials as a tough anti-crime candidate for a district attorney's job. Supposedly the bullet was aimed at a precise spot where there were no arteries, bones or internal organs to be damaged by its passage through the body, allowing the politician to be the apparent beneficiary of miraculous luck. However, the hydrostatic shock alone from a rifle bullet would be enough to cause a fatal injury, whether it struck anything other than "flesh and muscle" or not.
• Subverted in Heroes by Claire Good Thing You Can Heal Bennet, of all people. She gets shot in the shoulder during the eclipse, and it's initially treated as just a flesh wound. However, later on she dies due to the infection, since her immune system is completely undeveloped because of her power. When the eclipse is over, her healing kicks in, resurrecting her.
• Taken to extremes in an episode of Human Target where a Russian spy shoots her husband in the middle of the chest, "an inch from his heart", to make it look like she's trying to kill him without actually doing any damage. Chance repays the favor a few minutes later by doing the same to her. Both man & wife are shown to be fine in the last scene, although both have one arm in a sling.
• In the Dark: Max recovers very quickly from being stabbed multiple times in the abdomen (which could be fatal, realistically, or at least very debilitating).
• On In Plain Sight:
  • Marshall gets shot in the lung, and promptly falls down. He manages to get up long enough to drive the bad guys off, then collapses and is incapacitated for the rest of the episode. He wears a sling for the next few episodes.
  • In the Season 2 finale Mary is shot in the gut, arrives at the hospital without a heartbeat. She makes a full recovery, though admittedly after a bit of time has passed. One scene during her taking-it-easy period has Marshal cracking a joke about her hobbling after a bad guy who is rather morbidly obese.
• Kamen Rider Ex-Aid is a medical drama (besides other things), so it downplays the effects, but still leaves in enough to provide drama:
  • Taiga is badly injured in a fight towards the end of the main story. He passes out from shock soon afterwards, has a life saving operation and can't fight for about two episodes. Then he is as good as new.
  • The second part of the sequel movie trilogy Another Ending has Emu shot through the shoulder. This leaves him bed ridden for the second part and he is still incapable of fighting in the third part.
• Lost: Henry Gale gets shot through the shoulder. Granted, it was an arrow, not a bullet, but it did go all the way through. Michael shoots himself in the shoulder. Next episode he's leading a trek across the island. Sayid gets shot in the bicep in "Enter 77". Next episode he's leading a trek through the jungle. In "The Economist", he’s shot in the shoulder and a scar from the bullet wound (which was in same arm) is not visible. Except for the latter example, most of this can be handwaved by the mystical healing properties of the island.
• Merlin (2008):
  • 'In "The Last Dragonlord," Arthur is dealt a fairly vicious-looking blow from a rampaging dragon. After it is treated, it causes him very little obvious pain and leaves him able to eat, sleep, ride a horse for miles and attack a would-be-burglar. A day later, it turns out he didn’t change the bandage and so is struck with the faints, allowing Merlin to do some serious wizard plot-expo without being overheard.
• In the Mission: Impossible episode "Encounter," Casey (Lynda Day George) is shot in the shoulder by an assassin and says she's more surprised than hurt. She refuses any treatment, even a bandage, for the rest of the mission, and yet suffers no significant blood loss or mobility issues and only feels pain when her shoulder is touched.
• Mr. Robot: Both Elliot and Tyrell were shot in the stomach on separate occasions. But the difference is that while Elliot got hit roughly in the middle, that too in the navel area, where most vital organs would be there. While Tyrell got hit nearly in the side, where there is less organ damage to be worried about. Though Elliot is the one who survives his injury while Tyrell's fate is unknown.
• A variation of this appeared in an episode of My Name Is Earl, when Earl not only got stabbed in the leg by a foot-long knife without losing consciousness, but actually encouraged the girl who stabbed him to do so, claiming that he had been stabbed in the leg before. He did complain about the pain and had to go to the hospital afterwards, though.
• One case on New Tricks had a security guard helped some robbers rob the armored truck he was guarding and had them shoot him in the leg to throw suspicion off him. The leg wound healed fine but the bullet ricocheted and hit him in the back. He is paralyzed from the waist down until doctors are finally able to remove the bullet.
• On NUMB3RS, Agent Ian Edgerton seems to "shoot to wound" in most of the episodes he appears in. He is stated to be the third best sniper in the country, and he does tend to shoot at the hand or forearm rather than the shoulder...
• Played straight repeatedly on Person of Interest. John Reese is constantly shooting people in the thighs or extremities as a "non-lethal" takedown.
  • Averted in "Terra Incognita", where it's gradually revealed over the course of the episode that Reese is bleeding out after being shot by the Villain of the Week. He's only saved because someone else finds him in time.
• Psych Season 4, Ep 9 involves Shawn texting, using a crow bar to pry open a trunk, running through the woods, sitting around talking through the logistics of a robbery, scooting around on a garage dolly braced on his shoulder and holding onto the hood of a car in a high speed chase, all with a gun shot wound to the shoulder and a magically clean and blood free shirt. He makes it through the whole night and the next day without any medical attention other than a chamois and some duct tape.
• In the Sherlock episode "His Last Vow", Sherlock takes a gunshot wound to the sternum as opposed to the head due to the shooter wishing to invoke this, not wanting to get her newlywed husband accused of murdering his friend and a powerful news magnate (as well as the fact she was fond of Sherlock herself). Of course getting shot in the chest is a terrible place to be shot even with the trope in effect (since, you know, your body keeps its lungs and heart there), Sherlock apparently writing it off as the shooter's exceptional marksmanship being "surgery", but he lives in spite of it (albeit not in the best of condition).
• Early in The Shield, Vic was shot in the abdomen during one of his "extracurricular activities". He lived, but was shown to be recovering from his wounds for the next five or six episodes.
• Spoofed in Jeff Dunham's stand-up Spark Of Insanity. While trying to convince Achmed that he was really dead and just a bunch of bones, Achmed replied that it was "only a flesh wound."
• Stargate:
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • Downplayed in "Spirits" — at the start of the episode, O'Neill takes a metal arrow (size of a crossbow bolt) through the bicep. He falls down immediately, and is in significant pain for the rest of the scene (he has to be helped to sit upright, leaning on someone, and while he can talk, he is visibly woozy); a subsequent scene shows him lying in a bed in the infirmary, and he has to skip the mission that SG-1 was going to go on. (Later in the episode, however — either later the same day, or as little as a day later — he is up and walking around, with his arm in a sling, and he is able to participate in the action without much visible discomfort.
    • Daniel makes fun of his own injury as they are running away from enemy soldiers in "Into the Fire".
      Makepeace: How's the leg? Can you walk?
      Daniel: It's just a deep, bleeding gash, I'll be fine.
    • Done yet again in "Lockdown" — Jack shoots Daniel (who, unknown to all, is possessed by Anubis) in the shoulder to stop him from escaping through the Stargate, and he passes out almost immediately from the pain. In the next scene, he's still unconscious, and the doctor is reassuring the rest of SG-1 that "he's a lost a lot of blood, but his life is no longer in immediate danger," implying not only that the shoulder wound would have been fatal without treatment, but that there remains a possibility that complications can still do him in.
    • Played with in "Line in the Sand". Carter had been lying in a bed for most of the episode after having been shot with an Ori staff weapon. However, when Mitchell was trying to fix Arthur's Mantle to hide the entire village they were in, he got a minor shock. When she tells him what else to do, he tells her it was fine for her with her little flesh wound. However, this was more done to break the tension.
  • Stargate Atlantis:
    • In a season 1 episode, Rodney put on a device that creates an impenetrable personal shield, and he and Sheppard reveal that they tested it by Sheppard shooting Rodney. On the others' looks, Sheppard amends that to "in the leg".
    • In one episode, Kolya, a villain who was shot in a previous episode, unexpectedly shows up, and Sheppard is surprised that he is still alive. Kolya replies by invoking this trope — "did you actually think a single bullet to the shoulder would kill me? I always thought you were smarter than that..." Realistically, it was perfectly reasonable to expect a single bullet to the shoulder to kill him.
    • In season 3 Colonel Sheppard, under the influence of a wraith hallucination device, shoots Rodney in the left shoulder. He then leaves him there and goes into a cave with Teyla, with Rodney lying on the ground bleeding to death from what appears to be a fatal wound. Later, after shutting off the device, we see Carson tending to Rodney, but he's apparently fine, already coherent and complaining about being shot. From a wound that, from all accounts, missed his heart by about four inches. Seriously?
• Played straight in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Our Man Bashir", when Bashir shoots Garak:
  Bashir: You'll be fine. It's just a flesh wound.
  Garak: That was awfully close. What if you'd killed me?
  Bashir: What makes you think I wasn't trying?
  Garak: Doctor, I do believe there's hope for you yet.
• Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • Played straight in "North Star" — Archer takes a bullet to the shoulder and can still run and fight.
  • Subverted in "United" — the Andorian officer Talas is shot in the shoulder with a human phase rifle. At first, it seems to be a flesh wound and she is taken to Sickbay. It turns out that Andorians can get infected from phaser burns, and Talas dies.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Killing Game", Captain Janeway is shot in the thigh by a 1940s-era handgun and is still able to run/hobble-at-a-ludicrous-speed.
• Supernatural:
  • Played annoyingly straight in more than a few instances—for example, when the possessed sheriff's deputy shoots Dean in the shoulder in the episode where Agent Hendricks has finally caught and arrested the boys, they put pressure on the wound for a little bit (by themselves, with a towel. The cops ignore the fact that one of their prisoners has a life-threatening injury) and then he's fine to do battle with a vast horde of demons not an hour later. Yet, the show is otherwise pretty realistic about bruises, scarring, etc., but gunshot and knife wounds are often treated like minor injuries, only killing people when the plot needs them to.
  • In one episode, Bela shoots Sam in the shoulder to get Dean to give her something. When Dean freaks out (understandably) she says "I shot him in the shoulder. I know how to aim."
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:
  • Averted in, very consistently. For example, when a character is shot near the shoulder, the bullet perforates the lung. The treatment for the sucking wound is also shown realistically (tube in a jar of water into the lung). Also, an episode is devoted to the aftermath of Derek being shot in the gut. Finally, When Sarah takes a bullet in the leg, she instantly falls down, and passes out from blood loss within a couple of minutes.
  • Played straight with the Terminators themselves, who routinely get filled with lead and keep on going. Because, y'know... robots, and all. Terminators have no internal organs whatsoever, but they do have living flesh over a near-indestructible metal combat chassis. Bullets fired at them usually just stop when they hit the metal part and have to be pried out before the flesh can heal over the wound. Therefore, any injuries they suffer are just a flesh wound.
• Averted in a Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! parody infomercial for the "Tairy Greene Machine". At the start of it, Eric says his hands have been cut badly and has gauze applied. It somehow doesn't help, and the amount of gauze on his hands increases as the sketch continues — by the end, he ends up bleeding to death despite having boxing glove-sized mounds of gauze over his hands.
• Torchwood:
  • Gwen gets shot in the midriff in "Countrycide". Owen lampshades how easily he patched her up with "Could have been a lot worse. You've been bloody lucky, girl." She's up and about ten minutes later, albeit a bit limpy.
  • In "Captain Jack Harkness", Owen is attempting to open the Rift, so Ianto shoots him in the shoulder. Owen opens the Rift anyway, treats the wound himself and mocks Ianto's aim.
  • He gets shot again in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang", with about the same result.
  • Rhys takes a bullet in the shoulder in "Meat". While it initially looks like he's pretty bad off, Owen fixes him up pretty quickly and he's pretty much fine, except for having his arm in a sling, by the end of the episode.
  • Played with in "Fragments". Jack actually says "It's just a flesh wound", in reference to the giant hole in his stomach. Suffice to say, early Torchwood are not fooled.
• Due to all the Plot Armor and reckless gun usage in Trailer Park Boys, this happens quite a lot:
  • Ricky is shot in the leg by Mr. Lahey at one point and he has to wait for medical attention while the cops, Mr. Lahey, Randy and Julian all argue.
  • Ricky seems to be written for this trope. He's been shot multiple times, once with a homemade ARROW by Lahey, and at one point he was dead for 6 minutes.
    Ricky: So the fuck what if you were shot? I was DEAD you dummies. You should call a DUMBULANCE.
  • Ricky also survived being inside an exploding trailer once, even if he himself admitted that it was only because the full bathtub inside made him "fire retarded".
  • In the Countdown to Liquor Day movie, Randy is shot through the belly, but it's "only a fat wound".
  • Subverted late in Season 10 when Ricky is shot and ends up in the hospital showing minimal signs of life. Double subverted when he makes a full recovery after inhaling pot smoke.
• The trope was averted in the short lived Rescue show Trauma Center. In that series, of all the injuries that happen in the stories, gunshot wounds are always considered a major medical emergency and the paramedics and medical staff characters have to go full bore to save the patient's life.
• Averted in True Blood. Lafayette is shot in the leg trying to escape from Fangtasia. Later, after Sookie secures his release, he's seen at home, he can barely walk, and he's taking tons of prescription painkillers. Eric makes it explicit that his leg has become infected, and he'll lose it without the Eric's regenerating blood.
• Averted in The West Wing — when President Bartlet is shot, although his wound is relatively minor he's still immediately rushed to hospital and undergoes immediate surgery to determine the extent of the injury. The doctors even note how miraculous it seems that the bullet didn't strike any major organs or do any damage, and he still has to spend several days in hospital and longer to recuperate. Josh Lyman's injuries are more severe — he takes a bullet in the stomach — but a similar principle is present; it's touch and go whether he'll even survive the night, it takes hours of surgery to save his life, and the next episode deals with his gradual, months-long recovery.
  • Played utterly straight during the same episodes by Ron Butterfield, the head of the President's Secret Service detail. Despite getting shot in the hand and bleeding profusely he ignores the wound and insists on doing his job and getting the President to safety. Bartlet actually seems more concerned about the wound than Butterfield is, semi-jokingly telling the paramedics checking his own wound that they should also do something about Ron.
    Bartlett: This guy's got about seven broken bones in his hand by the way, if someone wants to give him an aspirin or something.
• Generally averted on The Wire. Just in Season 1 — Prez pistol whips a teenager in the projects, who we later learn lost his eye as a result. While robbing the Barksdale crew, Omar Little shoots Sterling in the knee. Sterling limps and uses a cane for subsequent episodes. Omar later shoots Wee-Bey in the leg, who also is seen limping and using a cane for several episodes.
  • Omar has something of a tendency to shoot for either the knee or ass if one of his targets resists during a holdup. This is done to avoid a potential murder charge while also showing his targets he means business.
    Levy: How many times have you been arrested as an adult, Mr. Little?
    Omar: Shit, I done lost count. Enough to know not to take it personal.
    Levy: [reading] Possession of a handgun, possessing a concealed weapon, assault by pointing, robbery with a deadly weapon. Possession of a handgun again. Followed by violation of parole on weapons charges, followed by one count of attempted murder and use of a handgun in committing a felony.
    Omar: That wasn't no attempt murder! I just shot the boy Mike-Mike in his hind parts, that all. Fixed it so he couldn't sit right.
    Levy: Why'd you shoot Mike-Mike in his, uh, hind parts?
    Omar: We had a disagreement. Mike-Mike thought he should keep the cocaine he was slinging, and the money he was making from slinging it. I thought otherwise.
• Multiple examples in The X-Files, both Played Straight and Played With.
  • In "Beyond the Sea", Mulder is shot in the femur and is hospitalized. He doesn't die, but the injury is treated very seriously, and Scully threatens to throw the switch and kill Luther Boggs (a psychic mass murderer who is suspected to collaborate with the perpetrator) herself if Mulder does die.
  • Scully (a medical doctor) shoots Mulder in the shoulder in "Anasazi" with no apparent long-term effect on him. It does temporarily put him out of commission, which is what she had in mind, since he was behaving irrationally at the time, however, the water supply to his apartment building had been contaminated with some psychoactive drugs. However, he was passed out for several days, when he got up, he was moving with great difficulty for the reminding time of the episode, and he spent the next episode "The Blessing Way" being healed in an Indian ritual.
  • In "The Pine Bluff Variant", Mulder's pinky finger is broken while he's undercover with a terrorist group. He initially passes out from the pain and Scully later treats it by putting a splint on it. In the next episode his fingers are taped together, thus showing a rare example of injury-related continuity for the show.
  • In another episode, Scully shoots someone in the shoulder, severing the nerve and paralyzing their arm.

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