Flesh wounds in real life.
- Possibly the most famous legend about this trope is that of Grigori Rasputin, a Russian mystic famous for being able to survive deadly wounds. According to the legend, after surviving an assassination involving a stabbing, Rasputin's killers then sent cake and wine containing poison to a recovering Rasputin in a further attempt to kill him. After poison failed to kill him, he was then found and shot in the back and left bleeding to death on the floor; however, when the assassins returned to the scene to collect a coat left behind, Rasputin attempted to strangle one of his assailants and was promptly shot in the back three more times, before Rasputin's killers attempted to pummel him to death when he survived the additional shots. After this then failed, Rasputin's killers eventually tied him in several sheets and threw him into the Neva river; Rasputin was found near the Neva several days later, wrapped in sheets he had managed to partially claw his way out of, dead from hypothermia. This is mostly exaggeration, but the tale is certainly this trope taken up to eleven.
- The autopsy report says he couldn't have survived the single gunshot to the head inflicted by the sole English conspirator (who had a gun with a caliber unique among the assailants). However, Rasputin would hardly be the only person reported to have survived for substantial periods according to eyewitnesses after injuries that a medical examiner insists would have been instantly fatal.
- Earlier, Rasputin survived being stabbed in the stomach by a crazed woman and fully recovered. In the early 20th century, before the discovery of antibiotics.
- Still earlier he supposedly was beaten to near death (or beaten and left for dead) for being involved in horse theft, possibly more than once. Unlike the stabbing, there are no police records to confirm the severity of those beatings.
- Many warrior cultures have existed throughout the ages, with numbers of tough men from Spartans to Samurai gracing this trope. However, honourable mention must be made for the Viking Berserker, a class of warrior repeatedly mentioned in historical accounts of friends and foes alike for never feeling pain and continuing to fight despite incurring mortal wounds. They were also extremely dangerous with such strong bloodlust that they could turn on their own men in battle, leading to eventual outlawing across the Norse world. Explanations from modern experts have ranged from them getting too drunk to reason or feel pain to adrenaline note to using psychoactive mushrooms to a bizarre form of functional and conscious epilepsy. Whatever the cause, the effect was clear — they treated everything as just a flesh wound. While this made these warriors very scary and capable of doing a lot of damage to the enemy, they also weren't generally expected to survive the battle (and usually didn't).
- Military history is full of accounts of men who died from apparently minor injuries, but there's also not a few who actually seem to embody the straight version of this trope. Lachhiman Gurung
reputedly killed 31 Japanese soldiers left-handed. Why left-handed? Because his right arm (and one eye) had just been completely destroyed by a grenade that went off in his hand before he could toss it back. He didn't let that stop him. Yogendra Singh Yadav killed seven Pakistani insurgents in close quarters and hand-to-hand combat after taking three bullets in the groin and shoulder along with heavy fire from rocket launchers during the Kargil War. According to Cracked, he is one of "5 Real-life soldiers who make Rambo look like a pussy". - The venerable Colt M1911 .45 was adopted by the US military because the Moro warriors of the Philippines were apparently shrugging off the smaller .38 Long Colt.
- As one historian put it, "You shoot a man with a .38, and he'll be bloody angry at you. You shoot him with a .45, and he'll be angry on his back." There is still some debate over the legitimacy of this argument; hit a man in the right place with a .38, and he'll go down the same as with a .45. Further in the debate is...
- .38 Long Colt was notoriously underpowered as a result of some quirks regarding the bullet diameter compared to the chamber throat. The bullet was supposed to expand in the throat and then be swaged down as it entered the barrel. However, expansion was uneven, resulting in very poor accuracy and terminal performance. Without accuracy, it became understandably more difficult to get good shot placement. See also Antonio Caspi's attempted prison escape for another example of .38 Long Colt failing to be an effective stopper.
- US Army procurement during the 1911 procurement trials was convinced that the reason that .38 Long was weaker than the older .45 was purely a matter of diameter when .45 Colt was also significantly faster than .38LC (a situation that was reversed with 9mm parabellum and .45 Auto). People have shrugged off fire from and people have died from single shots from all four of these calibers.
- As one historian put it, "You shoot a man with a .38, and he'll be bloody angry at you. You shoot him with a .45, and he'll be angry on his back." There is still some debate over the legitimacy of this argument; hit a man in the right place with a .38, and he'll go down the same as with a .45. Further in the debate is...
- US President Andrew Jackson acquired several bullets and even a bayonet tip in his body over the years. One of his secretaries jokingly wrote that he "rattled like a bag of marbles" when he walked.
- He once got into a duel over his wife's honor. He was so angry that he allowed the other man to fire first so that he could take his time with his shot and kill him for sure. The other man's bullet hit him in the lung. Unfazed, Jackson aimed carefully and killed the man.
- He is reputed to have once become so bored during a Cabinet meeting that he pulled out a knife and dug one of the slugs out, and later sent it back to the man who put it in him with a note to the effect of "I believe this is yours."
- Theodore Roosevelt was shot by an assassin right before giving a campaign speech. It would have killed him if not for the eyeglass case and folded-up speech in his jacket pocket, which slowed the bullet down enough for it to only become lodged in his lung instead of passing clean through. In one of the most famous of his many feats of badassery, he went ahead and gave the 90-minute long speech as planned, with the opening line, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." Later, Roosevelt reasoned that it was safer to tell his doctors not to remove the bullet due to the Meatgrinder Surgery of the era (perhaps recalling the fate of earlier President James Garfield). He survived.
- Another hero of The American Civil War, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, was shot on several occasions and was told he would die. His obituary was printed in the local paper, he received posthumous military promotions... and he lived. The bullet wounds had lasting effects — the worst, a bullet that traversed his pelvis from hip to hip, severely damaged his urinary system and caused him lifelong pain that eventually killed him, just shy of 50 years later at 86 years old — but it's generally accepted that you could not shoot this man and kill him.
- Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart. He served in the Boer War and both World Wars, and could not be put down. In WWI, he was shot in the face twice, lost his left hand and three fingers off the right to frostbite (which he bit off himself). He was shot through the skull and ankle at the Battle of the Somme, through the hip at the Battle of Passchendaele, through the leg at Cambrai, and through the ear at Arras. None of which slowed Wiart down. Try to imagine Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees if he was on the side of the Allies. And what did Wiart have to say about his horrific experiences? “Frankly I enjoyed the war”. Badass.
- At the 1811 Battle of Albuera, Lieutenant-Colonel William Inglis of the 57th Regiment was hit in the neck by a four-ounce grapeshot. Believing the wound would kill him soon, he propped himself up on an elbow and shouted to his troops: "Die hard, Fifty-Seventh! Die hard!" For the next century and a half, that regiment was nicknamed the Diehards. Inglis lived another twenty-four years.
- Washington police shot and killed a knife-wielding man outside the White House in the 1990s. One of the CNN anchors reporting the story asked the police spokesman "Why didn't they just shoot him in the shoulder?" Co-anchor Bernard Shaw, a retired Marine, looked properly disgusted at the question. The answer is that firearms are lethal weapons. There is no reliable way to consistently shoot someone non-lethally.
- Agents of the United States of America's Federal Bureau of Investigations are trained to shoot only to kill, never to warn or wound, because the FBI's viewpoint is that "The person who is not justified in killing is not justified in shooting at all."
- Interestingly, the guards at the Berlin Wall were ordered to shoot at the target's legs if possible (after giving a verbal warning and firing a warning shot). Civilian gun laws of Communist countries (and of modern 2000s Eastern Europe) say it explicitly, if firing the gun in self-defense or police action, the legs of the target have to be shot if possible. It has something to do with the need to interrogate the guy afterwards by very Communistic methods. In modern Eastern Europe, the laws regarding self-defense are a bit different. Shooting someone in the legs (even if they end up dying) makes it much easier to claim reasonable self-defense in court later on. Police tend to go for the legs, when possible, because of humanistic concerns — better to 'possibly' kill someone than to definitely kill someone. Important in countries where there is no death penalty. Besides, a knee-shot from a sniper rifle will incapacitate everyone.
- In a widely publicised case, in 1992 North Dakota teen John Thompson had both arms ripped off by a piece of farm equipment. He walked back to his house, dialed the phone with a pencil in his teeth, then stood in the bathtub so as to not bloody his mother's carpet. His arms were reattached that night. Again, one is more likely to survive a limb being torn off than a clean slice, due to the clamping effect this has on blood vessels.
- Louis Barthou, the French foreign minister who accompanied king Alexander of Yugoslavia at the time of the latter's assassination, was shot in the upper arm. Despite managing to run away from the scene and getting to a hospital, he still died of blood loss within less than an hour. Later forensic evidence showed that the fatal bullet was not fired by the assassin, but rather by one of the French gendarmes.
- The difficulty associated with discouraging or injuring human subjects in non-lethal or non-crippling ways is one of the primary motivations behind the development of less-lethal weapons (such as Tazers or riot guns), though these weapons are still capable of causing serious injury or death even when properly used (and especially so if used improperly).
- It is suggested that Neanderthals had a much higher pain threshold than Homo sapiens, and were able to shrug off broken limbs and carry on about their business (assuming the fracture wouldn't physically immobilise them). According to a coroner, the group of modern humans who have injuries most similar to Neanderthals are rodeo clowns.
- For those who've never seen one in action, rodeo clowns are part of the safety crew in many animal riding events, and are traditionally dressed and made up as a sort of cowboy clown cross. Standard job hazards include being gored by a bull, repeatedly jumped on by a bull, repeatedly trampled by a bull, kicked in various parts of the body by an enraged stallion, repeatedly stomped on by an enraged stallion, and fallen on by an enraged stallion. This is risked to prevent it from happening to the competitor who just fell off the animal in question. While police, firefighters, and soldiers are not normally put in jeopardy by their job every day, these guys have a very real chance of one or more of these things happening to them every working day.
- Phineas Gage. The "American Crowbar Case", in which Gage, setting charges for blasting rock during railroad construction, had a large iron bar (not actually a crowbar but a tamping rod) driven through his face, through his brain, and out the top of his head when the gunpowder went off prematurely. Not only did he live for 12 more years, but he was also functional, although apparently he had some personality changes due to brain damage.
- This guy walked out of a sandwich shop, got shot twice, and instead of going straight to the hospital, he decided to go home and eat his sandwich first. Bullets in the leg and groin? Psh! I've got a sandwich to eat, fool! Those must have been some great sandwiches.
- Some notable aversions:
- Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, commanding at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, foolishly led a charge against the Union army. He rode out of the shooting apparently unaware that a bullet had struck him in the back of the knee, nicking an artery that was bleeding profusely (he had suffered a minor wound earlier in his career that left him with some loss of sensation in that leg). No one knew that Johnston was wounded until he swayed in the saddle, at the point of passing out. His staff set Johnston down next to a tree, where he promptly bled to death. He was the highest-ranking officer to be killed in combat in the war.
- British naval hero Lord Nelson lost an arm, sight in one eye, and finally died, quite slowly and painfully, to a musket ball in the shoulder: it drove inwards and broke his spine. Even with modern treatment, none of his injuries would be treatable. He might have been able to survive his last fatal shot, but he would have never been able to walk again.
- NFL player Sean Taylor was murdered in his home in late 2007 by a would-be robber. Taylor was shot in the thigh, the bullet severing his femoral artery. He eventually died from severe blood loss.
- Monique Berkley convinced her lover to shoot her husband; to throw suspicion off, he also shot her in the shoulder at the same time. Media reports don't mention any adverse health consequences, although it didn't really help as the police weren't fooled.
- Selena. She was shot by Yolanda Saldívar through the shoulder area from behind. The shoulder area is part of the chest and has numerous vital structures. The bullet severed her subclavian artery perfectly, and led to her death via extremely rapid exsanguination. The thing is, doctors said that if the bullet had been one millimeter higher or lower the wound would have been less severe.
- If it is an actual flesh wound, then by definition it will not have hit anything of importance besides flesh and muscle. The only way that could happen is if it had just barely grazed you, or if it had (by some miracle) gone through your lower abdomen in the perfect spot to avoid any internal organs or bones. While both scenarios are possible, they aren't likely to happen often. But then, what tropes in movies are?
- Or, as mentioned in the Forrest Gump example, in the buttocks. As they contain no vital organs or major arteries, consisting entirely of flesh and muscle, it's one of the few places that would reliably be called a flesh wound.
- A man was shot in the stomach by a police officer but was still well enough to suppress the cop, murder him, and leave. He was later convicted.
- This video shows the suspect shrugging off a taser to the face, and he is still standing after he is fired upon four times.
- A man named Don Hamilton accidentally shot himself in the leg in a hunting accident, losing 60 percent of his blood. When he got into the hospital, doctors had declared him brain dead. His family refused to shut off life support, which was a good thing since Don woke up and had a full recovery. It was considered so miraculous and improbable, it was put into an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
- As shown in the movie 127 Hours, Aron Ralston had his arm pinned under a boulder in an accident and had to cut his own arm off and then start walking to save himself. He did it, and it doesn't take a lot to realize he had to take on this mindset when he did so.
- He first had to break his own forearm bones, then take an hour to cut through the flesh with what amounts to a dull pocket knife. It's amazing what you can do when you've realized you are, without a shadow of a doubt, going to die if you don't do it.
- During the 1886 Homestead Strike, anarchist Alexander Berkman stabbed and shot Henry Clay Frick. Not only did Frick survive; he insisted on staying at work for the rest of the day, impressing even the strikers and blunting their public support.
- Modern medical care makes arrow wounds much less lethal than they were a long time ago; the presence of the arrow itself greatly slows bleeding, so the main problem if the initial strike is survived is reaching adequate high-level medical care before anything else happens. Konstantine Myakush took a flesh wound in the upper neck (side to side, clean through) that missed (barely) all major blood vessels and his brain. Liu Cheong survived an arrow through an eye socket that penetrated to the back of his skull and somehow missed his brain.note Yasser Lopez survived being accidentally shot in the head with a spear gun because the spear missed all the major blood vessels. And the ultimate in flesh wounds, a boy who survived three days with an arrow in his heart before reaching medical care able to remove it safely, and made a full recovery.
- This Irishman fought a sword-wielding attacker before going to the hospital to have his severed hand reattached.
- Austrian Formula One driver Niki Lauda. In 1976 at the racetrack Nürburgring Lauda crashed and was trapped in his burning car for over a minute, suffering severe burns and damage to his lungs from inhaling toxic fumes. When he arrived at the hospital Last Rites were administered due to the severity of his injuries. After only 42 days, Lauda was back in his car, placing fourth in the Italian Grand Prix.
- Sadly averted with another driver, Ronnie Peterson, who crashed on the Monza track in 1978. Peterson suffered injuries to his legs and minor burns but his life was not thought to be in any danger (the situation seemed much graver for the other driver involved in the crash, Vittorio Brambilla). Brambilla suffered serious head injuries and was initially comatose but made a full recovery. Peterson, who suffered several fractures to his legs, developed a fat embolism during the night and passed away less than 24 hours after the crash.
- Sadly averted with another driver, Ronnie Peterson
- Roy Benavidez was awarded the Medal of Honor after saving a platoon of soldiers during the Vietnam War. The rescue took six hours, during which he was shot 7 times, stabbed at least twice, clubbed with the butt of a rifle, and took shrapnel from numerous explosions. And he just kept going through all of it, even carrying some of the soldiers he was rescuing to the evac chopper despite his numerous injuries. The doctors thought he was dead when they finally got him back to base until he spat in their faces while they were zipping him into a body bag.
- Among the 58 coroner reports released to the public following the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas are 57 examples of people being killed from bullets to the chest, back and head - and one who bled to death within 90 seconds after simply being shot in the knee, despite a bystander applying a military-caliber tourniquet.
- Lizards are known for doing this whenever their tails get bitten off, as well as shedding them to distract a potential predator. Why do they not mind? Because interestingly, when the tail grows back, it's just a solid replica of the original in meat and nothing else. No bones, no nerves, nothing, so there's nothing it actually needs in there.
- Los Angeles Watch merchant Lance Thomas managed to survive no less than 4 different gunfights with armed robbers in his store from 1989 to 1992, killing 5 and getting another 4 arrested. In the second incident, Thomas was shot 4 times by a .25 caliber pistol — three in the shoulder and one in the neck — but still managed to kill 2 members of the 5-man robbery team opposing him and force the other three to flee, where they were later arrested. In the third incident, Thomas was shot in the neck at point-blank range with a 9mm Glock but still managed to grab a gun and kill the attacker.
- In 1990, LAPD officer Stacy Lim was pulled into her driveway after driving home from work, only to find herself ambushed by a 15-year-old gang member looking to steal her vehicle. The gunman opened fire on Lim immediately, striking her with a .357 magnum round that cracked through her ribs, hitting her heart, diaphragm, liver, intestine, and spleen before exiting her back leaving a tennis-ball size exit wound. Amazingly, Lim responded by immediately returning fire with her service pistol, hitting the assailant in the shoulder and forcing him to flee. Even more astoundingly, Lim then pursued him. The robber turned back and fired the remaining 5 rounds from his revolver, but all of them missed, while Lim fired three more shots from her pistol, striking the boy with each round and killing him. Lim's heart stopped a total of three times that night, but each time medics and doctors managed to revive her. Less than a month later, Lim walked out of the hospital under her own power, and 8 months later, she resumed her law enforcement career, which lasted a total of 30 years before her retirement in 2018.
- Werner Herzog was shot in the stomach with an air rifle during an interview. He just brushed it off to continue the interview in a sound studio with no medical aid, because "It's not a significant bullet."
- Far left Walloon politician Raoul Hedebouw suffered a stab wound on the first of May 2017, but was only lightly injured. In fact, he barely seemed to notice and carried on with his speech later that day. See here (french page)
