Basic Trope: A character is shielded from bullets by hiding behind someone else.
- Straight: Duke saves himself from the Big Bad's gunfire by grabbing and hiding behind a nearby mook.
- Exaggerated: Duke saves himself from a nuclear warhead by grabbing and hiding behind a nearby mook.
- Downplayed:
- Duke saves himself from shrapnel by grabbing and hiding behind a nearby mook.
- Alternatively, the mook takes one or two shots, but not as many as this trope may often use, and soon Duke has to drop him because he's dead weight, literally and figuratively.
- Justified:
- The mook is a humanoid robot Made of Iron, or wearing pretty good armor.
- The mook is an Iron Butt Monkey, he always stays alive because people still needs him to be laughed at.
- The mooks shooting at Duke only have small 9mm pistols, for which a human body is sufficient to stop or deflect.
- It is a very fat mook.
- The mook is wearing a bulletproof vest.
- The bullet lodges itself in one of the mook's bones.
- Inverted:
- Taking the Bullet
- Someone attempts to inflict Grievous Harm with a Body on Duke, but he shoots the body to pieces before he can be hit.
- Subverted:
- Duke grabs a nearby mook for protection when the Big Bad opens fire, but the shot penetrates the mook - and Duke along with it.
- Duke grabs the mook to absorb the gunfire, only for the Mook to elbow him in the face.
- Double Subverted:
- After Duke collapses, the Big Bad walks over... then gets sucker-punched when Duke jumps up and attacks.
- And yet he still gets shot, inadvertently shielding Duke from gunfire.
- Parodied: Duke, a broad-shouldered Action Hero, is saved by a rail-thin mook who absorbs the hundreds of bullets fired at them.
- Zig Zagged: Duke grabs the mook to absorb the gunfire but it passes right through him. As Duke collapses, Duke's friend grabs Duke and the mook, and proceeds to use the two of them to absorb gunfire successfully.
- Duke grabs a mook to absorb the gunfire but the bullets pass through - although still slowed down enough that his armor stops it. The one shot the body doesn't block pierces through his armor and mortally wounds him.
- Averted: Duke knows that this tactic won't work and doesn't use it.
- Enforced: "Duke's the Action Hero star of our six-movie franchise, he's supposed to do stuff like this!"
- Lampshaded: "Thank you for your squad of walking bulletproof shields."
- Invoked: Duke deliberately hides until a Mook is in arm's reach before attacking the Big Bad.
- Exploited:
- Charles knew Duke would get a Bulletproof Human Shield at the first opportunity, and plugs him with a sniper-round through the Mook.
- Duke uses his best friend Bob as a ballistic shield because Bob possesses Super-Toughness or a Power Armor but can't really dish out damage by himself while Duke is a Glass Cannon. The duo is still undefeated to this day.
- Defied:
- Discussed: Before they attack the enemy, Duke reminds his sidekick to grab a Mook for protection.
- Conversed: "It's amazing how bullets from automatic weapons conveniently stop after hitting the first target."
- Deconstructed: Duke's callous disregard for human life gets him in trouble with the law, or results in trouble with his comrades.
- Reconstructed: Given that both the Big Bad and the mook where attacking Duke, he had a right to defend himself by any means necessary.
- Implied: Every mook runs far away from Duke specifically when he is being shot at, even ones who would have cover from the incoming fire if they stayed where they were. A hint that he either used this plan too many times before or was falsely portrayed as doing such a thing by enemy propaganda.
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