Sandbox / Only A Wick Check

Proper usage

• Anime.Occult Academy: "When the chupacabra bites Ami, its fangs probably would have hit some internal organs and did some serious damage, but it only knocks Ami out, apparently from some narcotic poison."
• Covered with Scars: "Whitebeard is covered with scars on every part of his body... except for his back. The only wounds on his back are from the times he was Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, since he was neither caught off-guard nor forced to retreat even once in his decades-long career. Of course, being Whitebeard (and thus being even more Made of Iron than the norm in One Piece), these were only flesh wounds." 'A One Piece example, for the record.
• Fanfic.Children Of Time: "Regularly averted. If a character is shot, he/she is screwed."
• Film.Shooter: " Averted. Bob is shot in the shoulder and leg during the frame-up. He escapes, but moves with a limp. He's uses a first-aid kit to stop his bleeding. Later he makes a makeshift IV and dressing for his wounds. He still requires medical care to properly treat them, and get the bullets out. In fact, his shoulder never fully heals and he switches to shooting left handed for the rest of the film."
• Film.Brooklyns Finest: "Even after Eddie shoots a man in the chest, he still has enough power to attack and nearly kill Eddie. Truth in Television though, as some suspects have shrugged off seemingly fatal gunshot wounds."
• Film.Mr Right: "A blatant one. Catching a shotgun shot with a hand?"
• Film.Red Tails: " A joint vehicular and human version when Lightning's plane goes head to head with an Me-262 jet fighter. Me-262 Schwalbes were armed with 4×30 mm MK 108 autocannons which fired exploding rounds; Lightning and his plane sustain several direct hits and should have been obliterated instantly. He's mortally wounded , dies and crashes soon after, however." Sounds downplayed or zig-zagged, but still counts.
• Film.The Lookout: "Subverted. Even though Spargo comments that the bullet he took from the robbery 'went right through', his health gets progressively worse until the climax."
• Film.Witchfinder General: "Stearne seems to forget that he was shot in the shoulder by the time the third act rolls around."
• Headscratchers.Star Trek 2009: "Ah, but real-world weapons in movies are still less effective." Yeah, it's a sinkhole, but still. The usage is accurate.
• Literature.Strength And Justice: "Gunshot wounds don't seem to make a difference to people going haywire. Justified that they don't feel pain while going haywire, although no explanation regarding the body's physical capabilities is included."
• Manhua.Goddess Creation System: "After Yixin snaps, she stabs Xiaxi in the upper chest/shoulder area with a poisoned dagger. The wound isn't that deep, but it's treated as though the stabbing itself is not that big of a deal."
• Film.Everly: "Played With. Everly get shot in the kidney and later in her shoulder with apparently no ill impact on her performance and she's even hit directly in her punctured side a few times without sustaining disabling pain or any serious blood loss. But when Taiko puts his finger into one of the wounds, she screams at the top of her lungs and winces in pain like mad. She also suffers tremendous, but relatively slow blood loss during the film and near-death experience by the end."
• YMMV.ABBA: "Music videos that featured a vehicle at fast speed, like "Money, Money, Money", "That's Me", and "Tiger" could fall under this when one thinks about Agnetha Fältskog getting involved in a bus crash in 1983, with a minor concussion considering the fact she was thrown out a window from the force of impact and lived." A Harsher in Hindsight example. I'm iffy on it since it's real life, and not narrative, but it seems to be used properly.
• Webcomic.Yokokas Quest: "Mao's right wrist gets bitten by a snake-centipede, though it's not clear how deep it pierced his flesh. He continues using that hand to throw fireballs and Kalliv without difficulty later in that same fight."
• RealMenWearPink.Professional Wrestling: "An earlier WCW storyline saw Perry Saturn (a bald, heavily tattooed wrestler), lose a Loser Wears a Dress match and subsequently start wearing black latex-looking skirts. If the story from Chris Jericho's autobiography can be believed, Saturn wanted this change in character. Several years later, he was shot twice saving a woman from two men attempting to rape her. And barely even noticed until the officer on scene pointed out the wounds. The bullet wounds were discovered in his neck."
• Recap.Agents Of SHIELDS 3 E 10 Maveth: "Ward reacts frighteningly calmly to getting shot in the shoulder by Coulson."
• Firefly: "Notably in "War Stories": Mal is able to fight Niska and one of his mooks even after being severely tortured and losing an ear, but while he deals with Niska easily, Niska's a villainous Non-Action Guy who borders on Sissy Villain, while after jumping the mook, Mal ends up getting tossed around fairly easily and eventually needs Zoe, Wash, and Jayne to help." Again, seems valid but Played With.
• Set Swords to "Stun": "Games in the Soulcalibur series. Soul Calibur 3 is an especially bad offender, considering that Sigfried uses an incredibly large sword, and is frequently seen to drive the pointy end directly into an opponent's skull, yet sometimes after a match, he remarks, "I avoided your vitals. You'll live."" Was on the fence since this doesn't have that much context regarding Only a Flesh Wound, but it implies the other characters do live.
• SortingAlgorithmOfMortality.Anime And Manga: One of the lower-ranked "health" categories, implying correct usage.
• VideoGame.Burnout Paradise: " Your car can crash, flip, have the roof crushed, dented, bruised and otherwise wrecked, but your car can still keep on revving. These are called Driveaways." Sure, it's about a car, but these sort of injuries are the car-equivalent to getting shot or stabbed.
• VideoGame.Castlevania Lords Of Shadow: "Possibly getting skewered by Carmilla and, much later, Satan, but this one's obligatory, doesn't seem to deter Gabriel in the slightest." While the "possibly" throws me off, this otherwise fits.
• VideoGame.Dark Souls: "Averted. While armor isn't generally region-specific (excepting the head), being shot with an arrow or bolt in the leg or arm does more damage than being shot in the torso."
• VideoGame.Hitman 2: "Averted, as no sniper shot dealt will be treated as a mere injury that can be walked off, even if you aim at a persons left foot, the wound will be fatal and will kill instantly. Curiously, the main games explosion rules still apply, so anyone at the edge of the blast radius of certain explosives will be knocked down or pacified, but not killed."
• Webcomic.Goblins: "K'seliss fighting with his teeth after his arms literally fell off."

Misuse/Most-likely Misuse

• Characters.All Star Heroes: "He has a huge hole in the middle of his stomach. However, he seems to be doing all right." Seems more like a gag than anything.
• Characters.Battle Bots Discovery Channel Season 1: "Had its signature arms bent by Witch Doctor. But the damage was more cosmetic than anything, and actually allowed the spinner to get in easier." It's a robot. I don't think this trope applies.
• Characters.GI Joe COBRA: "Took a grazing from Shockwave's Arm Cannon in volume 2 issue 4 that did give him serious burns to his back, but fared better than Xamot, who was disintegrated with a full-on blast." Potholed as "Only A Light Graze", for the record; this isn't the trope.
• Characters.Pokemon Ralphie: "Seems to believe that all wounds can be ignored indefinitely. As shown when he refused to take his badly injured Metapod for twenty years. Or take Todd to a hospital or Pokémon Center despite having a bleeding head wound." A negligent character ignoring injuries is not the same as a character who gets injured and is fine.
• Characters.The Legend Of Heroes Trails Of Cold Steel Crow Armbrust: "Except flesh is right at his chest, piercing his heart. It's a miracle he still managed to talk for a few minutes before he passes away." Literally the opposite of the trope.
• Series.The Sweeney: "Gunfire was seldom non-lethal and people who got hurt stayed hurt." Again, not the trope.
• VisualNovel.Sweet Fuse At Your Side: "Mitarashi repeatedly uses almost this exact phrase to describe any injury he receives over the course of the game, from an arrow to the shoulder onwards. Played with in that the other characters insist on taking such wounds more seriously than Mitarashi does, the shoulder wound reopens on several occasions, and by the end of his route, despite his efforts to ignore the pain, Mitarashi is pretty much a physical wreck running on pure determination." Second verse, same as the first. It's not "Played With" if it's just a character being dumb.
• MomentKiller.Anime And Manga: " Kagome has been kidnapped by a human-eating sage and set to "marinate" in a pool of sake, and Inu-Yasha tears out of his confinement to track her down. When he does, she's totally naked, so he blushes furiously, throws her his kimono, insists he's fine despite his numerous wounds and promptly collapses from blood loss." Must I repeat myself?
• PlayingWith.Concealment Equals Cover: " Alice still gets hit after she ducks, but it's revealed to be Only a Flesh Wound and she would be dead if the car door hadn't absorbed most of the impact." Implies Alice's injuries weren't actually severe In-Universe. Of course, it's a hypothetical.
• Series.In Plain Sight: Two examples and some natter; both examples are misuse in the "injury actually matters" way:
  • Subverted. Marshall gets shot, and gets back up to help Mary fight off their assailants. Then he collapses. A good portion of the rest of the episode is spent dealing with the wound - which punctured his lung(!) - and he spends a few episodes in a cast.
  • Point of fact: The bullet did not puncture his lung, only the pleural space (the empty space in the chest not taken up by organs and such). This led to a tension pneumothorax, in which air is pulled into the chest cavity, preventing the lungs from inflating. He explains all this when performing his water seal with a bottle trick.
  • Mary herself is shot in the season two finale, which turns out to be a life-threatening injury.
• TabletopGame.Nechronica: " It's almost impossible to die in the game. Kind of a given since you are playing as one of the living dead. As long as at least one of your doll's body parts survives the battle, they can be put back together again good as new (soft of)." Because this is about zombies or whatever, it seems misuse for the same reason as the robot one.
• Trick Arrow: " In "Green Arrow: Year One" (a "serious" retelling of the above), Ollie is trapped on a deserted island and his only arrows are improvised and decidedly pointy. He just uses them for Only a Flesh Wound shots." Sounds like a literal interpretation of the title.
• Manga.Shy: "When Spirits gets stabbed in the stomach by Sveta, she tries to play it down later to reassure Shy and claims that this is no big deal. Lady Black is having none of it." Again, this is the opposite of the trope.

Misc

• AmusingInjuries.Live Action Films: Used in a pothole in the Trope Namer quote. The actual scene is an example, though.
• Characters.Eiyuu Senki The World Conquest: "Her reaction to the wounds she sustained in the battle to return her to normal." Not sure what this one means.
• Clean Cut: "In the Dagorhir system of foam-padded swordfighting, any solid hit to a limb with a slashing weapon is considered to have cut it off. In this game, your limbs are essentially your hit points, and the only other damage that's tracked is damage to shields and armor; therefore there's no middle ground between Only a Flesh Wound and Deliberate Injury Gambit." What?
• Death Is Cheap has two A Song of Ice and Fire examples with wicks:
  • "George R. R. Martin frequently appears to kill people before revealing it was only a flesh wound. This is why, as of the fifth book, the vast majority of fans believe the letter claiming Stannis is dead is a lie and that Jon Snow will not actually die/stay dead after being repeatedly stabbed and falling unconscious." Without knowing the work well, IDK if this is proper usage or just the term being potholed.
  • "...Almost all of the Only a Flesh Wound reveals mentioned above came at the end of a POV character's own chapter." Again, not sure.
• Funny.Monty Python And The Holy Grail: Both wicks are, again, quote potholes. While the scene counts, the pothole is just a pothole.
• Literature.The Turkish Gambit: " Anwar dismisses Varvara's concern after he shoots Mitya, telling her that he only shot Mitya in the thigh. A bullet to the thigh will cause the victim to very rapidly bleed to death if it hits the femoral artery." Not sure if this is just a character getting it wrong, or if Mitya actually doesn't suffer from the thigh-shot in Universe, so putting it here.
• Recap.Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 04 E 10 Our Man Bashir: "Bashir's shot only wounds Garak, but doesn't kill him." Not enough information.
• Recap.The 39 Clues Into The Gauntlet: " Ian tells Isabel that he doesn't believe that she would shoot her own daughter, Natalie. She doesn't... by shooting Natalie in the foot." Just a pothole, we don't know what actually happened as a result.
• Series.Planet Earth Dynasties: "After Sienna's heals a bit, she doesn't seem in too much pain despite her open wound. She even almost kills a wildebeest on her own." Dunno if the post-healing factor makes this misuse or not.
• Music.The White Album: "Rocky in "Rocky Raccoon" is shot down.
  But Doc, it's only a scratch
  And I'll be better, I'll be better, as soon as I'm able."

Dunno if this is true in the song or not.

• VideoGame.Resident Evil 3 Nemesis: "A minor case with Nemesis. Has an added healing factor to make up for it." A Made of Iron example with not enough context.
• WebOriginal.Hotel Haven: "There were quite a few Monty Python and the Holy Grail references in there." Unrelated.