Multiple Gunshot Death - TV Tropes
- ️Thu Sep 18 2014
"Double tap! Triple tap! Just keep tapping!"
The gory result of properly-aimed More Dakka.
When someone or something needs to be killed Deader than Dead, and their death needs to be particularly brutal (or in some cases, well-deserved), sometimes this problem will be solved by a handful of attackers emptying their guns into the target — in some cases involving larger guns, they may even be shot to pieces.
This trope is usually about quantity, not quality, so in the event that only one person is around to do the job, expect to see them wielding handguns or a machine gun. However, shotguns and the like are often used for dramatic effect.
Expect the victim to flail and twitch dramatically (or hilariously) with each new wound. The amount of blood shown is directly dependent on the work's rating or amount of Narm needed. Sometimes, the shooter would continue firing at the corpse to Make Sure He's Dead.
Sister Trope to Double Tap and No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, and a Sub-Trope of There Is No Kill Like Overkill. Compare and contrast with Human Pincushion, which involves arrows and other stabbing weapons, Rasputinian Death, which often involves multiple fatal factors, Double Tap, when a more measured (and well-aimed) version of this is performed (or recommended), Shooting Superman, when this is a No-Sell, and Five Rounds Rapid, which is when Superman does require something a bit bigger than bullets to injure, but the shooters never use anything more powerful than concentrated small arms fire.
A character Made of Iron who ends up dying has high odds of it being a particularly prolonged case of this, and probably earning a Dying Moment of Awesome as they keep fighting with a growing number of holes.
Can be the result of a Gangland Drive-By.
Alpha Strike is when a military unit does this to a single target as opposed to a person.
This is a Death Trope, so expect unmarked spoilers!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Akiba Maid War, Manami is killed off this way when Ugaki, her boss, and several other head maids shoot her multiple times due to her horrific treatment of them, along with disrupting the status quo of the maid cafe groups with her tendency for violence.
- The wounded anti-government terrorist who tried to escort Takashi from the government at the beginning of AKIRA is viciously swiss-cheesed by the militaristic riot police, taking so much concentrated fire that bloody chunks of flesh can even be seen flying off his corpse. If the previous scenes weren't enough to clinch that this is not for kids, this definitely is.
- Bokurano
- Tanaka takes multiple bullets in the chest while in a gunfight with the men who'd killed Diet Member Komoda. She dies of her wounds not long afterward.
- Koyemshi gets shot multiple times by Yoko Machi. Being a robot, the first few shots damage his machinery, but only the last one finishes him off.
- A Red Shirt AD Police trooper gets torn to pieces by a rampaging Boomer's auto-cannon in the Bubblegum Crisis OVA episode "Burn Up".
- Code Geass: Chances are, if you're facing a Knightmare Frame on foot, this is your fate. But there are two subversions of this trope...
- Lelouch subjects Mao to this after managing to save C.C. from his twisted clutches. He survives one more episode after getting shot about a hundred times by a police squad and a Knightpolice Frame thanks to the wonders of modern Britannian medicine.
- Princess Cornelia, turning on her brother Schneizel, gets shot in the back several dozen times by an automatic turret commanded by said brother. How she survived this is not even elaborated on, though supplementary materials explain that she was beamed away by Nonette Enneagram to find medical help.
- Death Note: Matt's death: several of Takada's bodyguards unload unto him right after he tells them that it's in their best interest to keep him alive. One bodyguard says later that he was clearly stalling for time.
- This is how Light Yagami would have died if Ryuk hadn't written his name in his notebook to bring the whole tragic affair to a close. Matsuda snaps after Light finally reveals himself as Kira, and when Matsuda shoots Light's pen out his hand to stop him from quickly writing down Near's name, Light tries to use Matsuda's admiration for Light's dead father to goad him into killing everyone else in the room so his death wasn't in vain. Matsuda doesn't fall for it and shoots Light four more times when he tries to write Near's name in his own blood. Ryuk wouldn't have even had the opportunity to write Light's name if the rest of the squad hadn't grabbed Matsuda to keep him from putting his last bullet between Light's eyes. He fires, but the shot misses by mere inches.
- Attempted by Mustang and Havoc in Fullmetal Alchemist at the beginning of their confrontation with Lust. Her reaction is "It'll take more than that to get me on my knees." Mustang responds appropriately.
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The death of the second season's Big Bad Kazudo Goda is performed by The Major and Batou unloading two Squad Automatic Weapons onto him at point-blank range until he's falling to pieces and his head explodes. With most of the capable fighting in the franchise being cyborgs or using some type of armor, such methods are often used to make damn sure they're dead.
- This is par for the course in Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, where the standard-issue weapon for the Kerberos police unit is the MG42. The best example in the film is Henmi's death near the end, when Fuse blasts him to pieces, even when it's clear the former died in the first four or five shots.
- Gundam:
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED:
- Muruta Azrael, in full Villainous Breakdown mode, attempts to subject Natarle Badgiruel to this after his final attempt to destroy the Archangel with the Dominion's Lohengrin Cannon is foiled by a Heroic Sacrifice from Mu La Flaga. Thankfully, the Archangel fires its Lohengrin before Azrael can torture Natarle any further, vaporizing both Azrael and Natarle.
- Patrick Zala is killed this way when Ray Yuki — the subordinate that he casually shot for trying to dissuade him from firing the GENESIS Kill Sat on Earth — pulls his gun and empties his pistol's entire clip into the old bastard with his last breath.
- Stargazer shows a Gundam version of this, where Shams Couza and his Verde Buster Face Death with Dignity against a squad of DSSD Astrays, which blow him and his Gundam to smithereens with a barrage of laser shots.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans:
- Orga ends up killed by a half-dozen assault rifle rounds to his chest, courtesy of Nobliss Gordon's henchmen. Before he dies, he's still able to return fire to scare his assailants off, walk a short distance, and give a defiant Final Speech encouraging his subordinates.
- Nobliss Gordon himself is killed in the epilogue by four handgun rounds fired through a bathroom stall.
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED:
- Sherlock unloads his entire revolver into Milverton's back in Moriarty the Patriot.
- Mother Keeper, this is sadly the fate of poor Lint, after he stabs Graham, Graham shoots him multiple times.
- One Piece: Blackbeard's pirates shoot Whitebeard simultaneous to finally kill him, which gave him a total of 562 gunshot wounds. The other parts of his death are getting sharp wounds 267 times, getting hit by cannonballs 46 times, a few laser shots, getting frozen mid-battle, and having half his face melted off, on top on being ill and old. It's heavily implied that if all of this had been done to Whitebeard in his prime some 30 years ago, it wouldn't have been enough to kill him.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt has an episode that chronicles the origin of Garterbelt, where he started out as a cocaine kingpin. Rival dealers and his own flunkies burst into his office one day, firing a torrent of bullets at him. Though not explicitly shown, it's implied from his half-disintegrated chair that Garterbelt fared no better.
- The Rose of Versailles: Oscar is shot dead by a dozen muskets.
Comedy
- In "The Last Gasp of the Blasted Bugler"
Gunga Din gets hit by dozens, if not hundreds of bullets while blowing a bugle warning.
Comic Books
- Lobo: This happens to Lobo when he and a rival bounty hunter trade shots from their oversized machine guns. By the end of the fight, Lobo is reduced to almost a skeleton with more shells in him than flesh, before keeling over.
- MAD: The head of a firing squad tells one particularly despicable criminal that he's so hated, that he'll be buried where he falls. He then explains that since the family of everyone the criminal wronged will be shooting him (the panel shows out to see an entire crowd of people training their guns on him), that he'll be too full of lead to be buried anywhere else.
- The Punisher: In The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank, one member of the Carnival of Killers out to get Frank Castle is a Young Gun wanna-be gunslinger who is agile enough to dodge a bullet fired at him by a policeman when he's introduced. Frank, ever the Combat Pragmatist, brings an Uzi to a pistol duel and riddles the gunslinger full of lead, including putting one or more bullets right through his skull.
- Sin City: In "The Big Fat Kill", the kill of the title is the climactic showdown when Dwight and the Old Town girls take out the Wallenquist gang members by raining down a hail of bullets on them from every hooker with a gun until even a Made of Iron monster such as Manute has to succumb.
- Superman: This is often attempted by criminals on Superman.
Comic Strips
- The mobster villains in Dick Tracy often ended up riddled (with neat round bloodless holes) by tommy gun fire. Although tame by modern standards, it was sometimes criticized as overly violent for a comic strip.
- Naturally, this effect was spoofed in the "Fearless Fosdick" comic-within-the-comic of Li'l Abner.
Fan Works
- Danganronpa: Memento Mori: Chapter 2's execution ends with the condemned Yura being riddled with bullets from a minigun.
- Danganronpa: Paradise Lost: Yashiro's Vigilante Execution of Akihiro at the end of Chapter 3 involves the former gunning down the latter with several shots from a flare gun.
- In Echoes of Eternity, Rei goes on a rampage and repeatedly shoots a scientist who was abusing Maria when he catches him in the act. It's so violent that it's difficult to identify the scientist. Much of the blood ends up splattered on Maria, traumatizing her.
- This is the staple of the Serial Killer Metal Sonic in Frenzy. He leaves the victims bullet-ridden. The story starts out with Amy's mysterious murder, which is one of the most brutal Central City had seen in a while.
- In The Soulmate Timeline this is how Mami handles a Serial Killer magical girl: binding her in ribbons and blasting her with a hundred of her magical guns until she is dead. If that seems a bit extreme, it should be noted it was partially righteous fury (said Serial Killer was trying to kill her and Homura's Soulmate Madoka to kill all three of them which was only stopped by Sayaka and Soulmates are a rule are very concerned when their loved ones' wellbeings are in danger) and sheer pragmatism (she had to absolutely make sure she wouldn't miss since her equilibrium was otherwise shot from blowing out her own eardrums to keep from hearing the Awful Truth about Witches, so she couldn't rely on her usual aim).
- In the April Fools' Day omake of Where Talent Goes to Die, this is the fate of Kaori Miura. By the time it's over, the victim is reduced to "liquified remains".
Films — Animation
- All Dogs Go to Heaven: Carface tries to kill Charlie with a drive-by shooting and using a laser machine gun. Unfortunately for Carface, recently-resurrected Charlie can only die (again) if the clock that showcases his life stops... which is something Charlie didn't knew either, until he got back up from being shot.
- The "Den" segment of the animated film Heavy Metal has the muscular hero overpower Aard's bodyguards and seize an automatic rifle. Den then demands Aard return Katherine to him: "Bring me the girl, or die." Aard blithely chooses death, so Den fires a burst of six shots into him. Aard merely giggles, and completely heals the bullet holes in his chest in seconds.
Films — Live-Action
- About two dozen Chitauri do this to the Hulk near the end of The Avengers, nailing him with countless lasers. It makes him mad, but it's the first thing in the film aside from Thor that actually slows him down.
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, this fate befalls Quicksilver, who dies protecting Hawkeye and a little kid from bullets from the Quinjet that Ultron controlled.
- In Back to the Future, the terrorists shoot Doc dozens of times (probably because they were using machine guns.)
- Balibo: Roger is executed by being shot with a sub-machine gin, riddling him with bullets.
- Beverly Hills Cop uses this trope in the Storming the Castle scene; after Jenny frees herself from Maitland and dives for cover, Axel and Bogomil take the opportunity to very loudly fire every bullet they have into him.
- Bonnie and Clyde: The titular Outlaw Couple buys it this way at the hands of a police ambush; the two are shot more than 100 times each as the shootout lasts 25 seconds. Even an apple Clyde was eating (when the shootout began) appears to be blown apart as he tries to make his escape.
- Various remakes are similar to the 1967 original — number of shots, the bodies violently flailing about, etc. — except that both remain inside the car; the original had Bonnie seated inside the car but falling partially out when she went limp, while Clyde was gunned down while trying to escape and falls in front of the car.
- Brothers in Arms: When Linc charges out of the bank, he is riddled by what seems to be hundreds of bullets by the mob surrounding the bank. He sill manages to fire a Last Breath Bullet that kills Driscoll.
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Although we don't get to see it on-screen, the original Bolivian Army Ending implies that Butch and Sundance were gunned down by three or four squads of Bolivian Army riflemen.
- Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle: When Ray Carter informs Madison that the Angels are off their case and calls her “partner”, Madison shoots him multiple times from the observatory dome, much to Alex’s and Natalie’s shocks.
- On Collateral, we see the beginning of Vincent's Villainous Breakdown during the club attack scene, where he empties about half a pistol magazine into his target before reloading and giving him a Coup de Grâce with the Mozambique Drill (which he had been using with efficiency throughout the film so far).
- True to its comic strip origins (see above), the 1990 Warren Beatty adaptation of Dick Tracy featured plenty of scenes with copious firepower, culminating in the finale when Big Boy's crew of mobsters attempt to break out of being cornered in a nightclub only to be exterminated by withering police Thompson gun fire.
- We see Tracy alone fire 97 rounds from a 50-round drum magazine.
- In Dillinger (1973), another movie about the Dillinger gang, this is how Homer Van Meter is killed; he gets into a shootout with locals of a small town, then asks for a doctor after being hit. The locals approach, then back up one step, before unloading on him with so much fire that his body becomes obscured by the gunsmoke and dust being kicked up by bullet impacts.
- Escape from New York: The President gets even with the Duke of New York terrorizing him for the last couple of days by emptying an M-16 into him and screaming the Badass Boast the Duke forced him to say at gunpoint as an Ironic Echo.
President: (just fired a long rifle burst on the Duke, dropping him on top of a car, chuckles) You are the Duke of New York! You're the Duke! (rifle burst) You're the Duke! (rifle burst) But, you ain't number one!
- The village shootout from The Expendables 2 have Barney and his team taking down all enemies until one last, lonely mook ends up in a clearing, in time for Barney, Toll Road, Caesar, Jensen and Maggie to empty all their bullets on said mook. If the bullets doesn't kill him, the metal poisoning probably will.
Barney: "Rest in pieces!"
- A Dirty Cop ends up machine-gunned to pieces (alongside his patrol car) by other dirty cops on the Clint Eastwood film The Gauntlet. It's not the only example of liberal application of More Dakka during the film.
- The Godfather:
- Sonny Corleone, after being Lured into a Trap by his brother-in-law hurting his sister, is viciously tommygunned to death by Barzini's soldiers in a tollbooth, as pictured above.
- This is also the fate of one of the rival crime bosses when Michael is consolidating his power; two hitmen kick open his bedroom door and and spray him with bullets, as well as the unfortunate woman sharing his bed.
- In The Great Escape, the Gestapo cements their position as the film's Hate Sink by ordering all of the fifty Allied soldiers they managed to capture after the mass breakout at Stalag Luft 3 to be executed by taking them away to an open field and cut down with an MG-42note .
- The climax of The Guillotines, when the Imperial Army's riflemen squadron starts firing upon the village. Musen, a skilled warrior on her own right, charges at the rifle squadron armed only with her trusty sword, and was predictably pumped with lead for her troubles.
- The Highwaymen culminates with the same multiple-gun death of Bonnie and Clyde, albeit from the perspective of the policemen who put together the ambush.
- Home Alone: A Running Gag throughout the first two movies of the series is Kevin watching gangster films ("Angels with Filthy Souls" and "Angels with Even Filthier Souls"), both of which have a gangster called Johnny that kills someone (another gangster that is asking him for money in the first one, a two-timing girlfriend on the second one) by shooting them with a Tommy Gun for a minute straight (the girlfriend gets it worse — Johnny shoots her, then gives her a Bond One-Liner, then shoots her again, says a second Bond One-Liner, and shoots off one last round, probably having emptied the Tommy Gun's entire ammo drum on her). Kevin makes use of these scenes to scare someone later in the film.
- After Major Mitchell from Independence Day realizes that the glass separating his group from the alien psychically attacking the President is not bulletproof, all available personnel with a sidearm line up to fire on the alien, followed by Mitchell delivering a Double Tap Coup de Grâce.
- A point-blank use of this trope is how Adolf Hitler dies in Inglorious Basterds.
- Iron Man has an offscreen example with Yinsen, who runs through the caves firing wildly to buy Tony time to get his suit booted up, only to run into about twenty Ten Rings soldiers pointing machine guns at him. The next time we see him, he's gravely injured.
- In Key Largo, Frank has to shoot Rocco, who is attempting all the while with his last strength to raise his gun and shoot Frank, three times before he finally stays down.
- The means of death of every single version of King Kong that has died on-screen so far. The 1976 version bears special mention because Kong gets mercilessly shredded by the miniguns of multiple helicopter gunships for three whole minutes, giving one of the rooftops of the World Trade Center a massive coat of red.
- On Last Man Standing, a group of soldiers of the Doyle gang is double-crossed by their hired Mexican police goons and machine-gunned without mercy within their car for a whole minute. John Smith finds the massacre gruesome to watch.
John Smith: It was a massacre. Couldn't say I was real sorry... but it was a rough way to check out.
- Also how the Doyle shooters kill any members of the Strozzi gang that didn't burned to death when Slim's Roadhouse was set on fire — Giorgio getting the worst on-screen example.
- The first gangster Smith kills is shot seven to nine times with his Guns Akimbo and Blown Across the Room onto the street outside.
- The Mask:
- Subverted with Tyrell. While he's wearing the Mask, he's shot repeatedly, only to calmly suck in his gut and fire the bullets out of his mouth.
- A second, comedic example: After Stanley becomes the Mask again, Tyrell's goons open fire on him and he dives behind a bar for cover from the storm of bullets. After they stop firing, he pops out, says, "Did you miss me?", and takes a drink of water. The water sprays out several holes in his body, Looney Tunes-style, and The Mask quips, "I guess not!"
- Happens to Mad Dog Coll at the end of Mobsters, with two tommy guns wielded akimbo at point-blank range by Charlie Luciano.
- The Naked Gun: Subverted for laughs in the opening of the first film. All the gangsters on the boat unload their guns on Nordberg, but not only does he fail to die from it, he subsequently suffers a torrent of abuse so prolongued that even the gangsters look a bit stunned at it.
- The Party: The first scene of the film is the filming of an In-Universe remake of Gunga Din, and Hrundi V. Bakshi (as Din) is supposed to die this way. He completely ruins the shot when, even after every single extra with a gun is shooting at him and knocking him down out of sheer annoyance, he still refuses to stay down and stop playing.
- The Phantom of the Opera (1998): The Phantom takes about six gunshots, among other injuries, before succumbing.
- Public Enemies: The deaths of many of the gangsters, more true to the textbook definition of this Trope being the one of Pretty Boy Floyd (who is shot by Purvis until he falls and stops shooting-most tellingly, in Real Life he was shot repeatedly by two agents and he managed to injure them fatally with his own dying gunfire) and in a slightly more subdued example, the death of Dillinger himself.
- RoboCop (1987):
- This is how Officer Alex J. Murphy meets his end at the hands of the Boddicker gang before being rebuilt as RoboCop.
- A Red Shirt executive gets thoroughly annihilated in this fashion by the three onboard auto-cannons of the ED-209 in the same film.
- Scarface (1983): Tony Montana takes dozens of bullets during the final confrontation with Sosa's men, thanks to the cocaine he snorted earlier dulling his sense of pain. It takes a point-blank shotgun blast from behind to finally put him down.
- Sleepers. John and Tommy encounter Nokes, one of the men that molested them in reform school. Unfortunately for him they're now adult gangsters who shoot Nokes multiple times in the arms and legs before the Coup de Grâce. However in the book this is inverted, with Nokes killed immediately by a Boom, Headshot! and the further shots just being the 'signature' of their gangland hits.
- The same execution was also depicted in the beginning of Some Like It Hot.
- A particularly ridiculous example in Spiral (2021): Near the end of the movie, Marcus Banks is held in a trap with a single shotgun affixed to his arm. So what is the SWAT Team's response when the trip is finally triggered, forcing him to take aim at them? They absolutely unload all of their guns on him in overzealous self-defense.
- When Order 66 is issued in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Ki-Adi-Mundi and Aayla Secura go down after taking multiple blaster hits from the Clone Troopers.
- The brutal execution scene in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), here
.
- Miles Dyson of Terminator 2: Judgment Day is absolutely riddled with police fire while he is accompanying the Connors and the T-800 to Cyberdyne with the intent to blow it up. He holds on just long enough to buy them time to escape and force the cops to pull back by holding a weight over the explosives' detonator.
- Training Day: Alonzo meets his end this way when the Russian mob comes to kill him; they first riddle his car with dozens of bullets, then when he staggers out wounded but still alive send dozens more directly into his body.
- In the opening scene of Tropic Thunder, Tugg Speedman (playing Sgt. Four-Leaf Tayback) gets shot over and over again while he runs for the helicopter.
- Double Subverted at the end of V for Vendetta, when V stands and takes a salvo from Creedy and his men to prove that You Cannot Kill An Idea before slaughtering them all. Once they are dead he is revealed to have worn a metal plate that is riddled with bullet holes and shortly thereafter dies.
- Valentine: The Cupid killer is finally taken out with seven pistol shots at close range. Or so it seems.
- We're No Angels: In the remake, The warden, the sheriff, and several deputies empty their guns into Bobby's chest during the climax.
- The Wild Bunch: At Agua Verde, after Mapache executes their friend Angel right in front of them, Pike's gang responds by gunning down the general on the spot, alongside with his German military advisors. A bloody gunfight ensues between Pike's gang and the Agua Verde garrison, made even more destructive by the Gatling gun emplacement inside the compound that the outlaws use to cut down Mapache's men. They are eventually overwhelmed by sheer numbers and gunned dead by the soldiers.
- The main villain's Number Two at the end of Wonder Seven. Trying to hold one of the good guys (on a wheelchair) hostage, he gets a knife flung into his forehead by the hero... and then six of the seven, accompanied by Michelle Yeoh's character, forms a circle around him and empties seven pistols into his body from all directions.
- Zoolander 2: One of the first scenes of the movie involves Justin Bieber getting shot repeatedly with an Uzi in a fashion that resembles one of The Godfather films (and yet he survives long enough to post the video he was recording before getting shot on You Tube).
Literature
- The Alloy of Law: When the Starter Villain Miles "Hundredlives" Dagouter is executed, it takes the firing squad multiple volleys to overload his Healing Factor, all while he screams apocalyptic threats at the audience. The display disturbs everyone present.
Live-Action TV
- 1000 Ways to Die: A criminal prepares to rob a jewelry store, but ends up walking into the gun store next door due to his pantyhose mask restricting his vision. When he tries to hold up the store, the staff and customers draw their guns and fill him with bullets.
- One parody of this trope can be found in an early fifth-season episode of The Big Bang Theory, when Sheldon "sacrifices" himself for his friends in a game of paintball, with the result being a ludicrously slowed-down shot of multiple paintballs striking him in the chest, each impact echoing.
- Blake's 7: The Bolivian Army Ending of the series has many characters shot repeatedly, the most graphic of them all being that of Roj Blake himself. Gareth Edwards wanted Blake to end up Deader than Dead in order to get out of playing him again (after a long while of him being Put on a Bus), and the special effects crew coordinated with him to deliver the most blood-splatteringly brutal shooting scene that the censors would let them get away with.
- Also parodied in the second season finale of Community. During the paintball war against City College, Troy runs down a hallway, turns a corner, pauses, and says "I had a dream it would end this way." We then see an entire unit of City College stormtroopers who splatter Troy with paintballs.
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation featured a Victim of the Week on the episode "Take My Life, Please" that had been shot so many times and with so many different calibers that it was actually possible to see through him. Turned out that he had in life bombed an abortion clinic (with plenty of collateral damage to both objects and people) and had gone off the grid to avoid retaliation, and who had sneaked into an outdoors shooting range unknowingly to sleep for the night. Although the shooters were guilty of trying to hide the evidence, nobody was really sorry for the man.
- Happens again when a bomber (played by Justin Bieber) gets shot so many times that the viewer can be sure he is dead. It doubles as Rule of Funny to see him get shot like that, though.
- This scene became so popular that extended versions of it
went memetic.
- This scene became so popular that extended versions of it
- Happens again when a bomber (played by Justin Bieber) gets shot so many times that the viewer can be sure he is dead. It doubles as Rule of Funny to see him get shot like that, though.
- The Firefly episode "War Stories." Jayne, Wash, and Zoë watch Mal struggle with his torturer, but after he assures them that this is not something he has to do himself, the three respond by, as the script puts it, "filling the Torturer with as many holes as standards and practices will allow."
- In the Heat of the Night: In the Season 2 finale "Missing," a police officer is sent undercover to Sparta to investigate the deaths of several civil rights leaders by a white supremacist group. The officer, Tom Dugan (played by Joe Don Baker, who temporarily replaced series star Carroll O'Connor during the latter's absence) is lured to a secluded area on a false tip that he will find the main suspect there. The last vision of life Dugan sees is two men in pig masks, who proceed to shoot the officer more than 20 times before the scene abruptly ends; it is strongly implied he is shot dozens of more times after the cut-to-black.
- At the end of Season 13 of NCIS, Trent Kort meets his end this way, courtesy of the entirety of Team Gibbs, for his role in the death of Ziva.
- A Saturday Night Live sketch on the episode where Jeremy Renner guest-hosted (involving a three-way Mexican Standoff that went on for way too long (as in several days)) one of the stand-offers calls it quits at the ending of the sketch, only to get shot repeatedly by the other two. And a few more times as they leave, for good measure.
- Also Played for Laughs in their popular "Dear Sister" digital short that spoofed the second season finale of The O.C.. In the short, the eponymous (and unnamed) sister played by Kristen Wiig ends up being shot seventeen times by characters played by Andy Samberg, Bill Hader (who plays her brother, Keith) and Shia LaBeouf, all set to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek".
- In the Supernatural Season 2 finale, Sam kills Jake by shooting him... a lot.
- Westworld: During one of the iterations of the Sweetwater tavern robbery by Hector's gang, his associate Armistice dies of multiple gunshot wounds when the Constabularies corner her. She still takes out one of them right before out of spite.
- Lee Sizemore gets gunned down this way in the last episode of Season 2.
Pinballs
Video Games
- ClayFighter 63⅓: One of T-Hoppy's Claytalities involves him morphing his enemy into a copy of himself, and getting into an argument culminating in him gunning them down with several shots from a machine gun.
- Near the end of Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko encounters Darko Brevic, his former squadmate from the Yugoslav army who betrayed his squad for money. If the player chooses to execute Darko, Niko will shoot him twelve times-once for every squadmate that died due to Darko's betrayal.
- At the end of Hunt Down the Freeman, Mitchell chases down Adam, and stops him by shooting him in the leg with a revolver. Mitchell then fires four more shots into the target's abdomen before finishing him off with a headshot.
- Exaggerated in MadWorld; the boss of the second stage is finished off by being shot so many times that there's nothing but a skeleton left afterwards.
- Mass Effect 2: When Shepard encounters Elnora during Samara's recruitment mission, if you take the interrupt, she tries to pull a gun, at which point the entire party guns her down, repeatedly.
- Mortal Kombat X: Erron Black's Six-Shooter Fatality fires an entire magazine into his opponent, leaving gaping wounds in their torso and head.
- Late in Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, the male narrator shows up to reclaim his position as narrator from his female replacement (don't ask), and wields a toy gun. He then guns her down, with gunshots appearing all over the screen (often nowhere near the woman's body), taking her down with a burst of gunfire, then continuing to fire at her as she lays on the ground.
- John Marston, the protagonist of Red Dead Redemption dies this way. After ushering his family to safety, he slowly opens the doors of the barn he's hiding in to face no less than twenty U.S. Marshals. John, fully aware of his fate, has the option of dragging a few of them to hell with him. Regardless, John is riddled with bullets, and it's about as pretty as you'd expect.
- In gameplay, dueling requires you to aim a shot for every bullet in your magazine, which will naturally result in this trope for your opponent. Agent Ross dies this way in the epilogue, courtesy of Jack.
- An unintentional case happens in the B scenario in Resident Evil 2 where where a police officer is cornered by zombies before he can get to the rescue helicopter. The cop fires his machine gun at the zombies before they lunge and start gnawing at him. As the cop goes down, his machine gun is still firing as it tilts upwards, which somehow manages to hit the helicopter pilot multiple times and make him lose control of the helicopter, causing it to crash on top of the group as it explodes into flames. You can even see the multiple gunshot wounds appear one after the other on the pilot while his body twitches.
- RoboCop: Rogue City: When Wendell Antonowsky's final attempt to persuade Robocop to side with him fails, he grabs a gun from an inactive UED, and is prompty filled with bullets by Robocop. If that didn't kill him, the the subsequent several-story fall certainly did.
- Played for laughs in the Bounty Hunter class chain in Star Wars: The Old Republic. On Tattooine, the hunter's target is a conman named Tyresius Lokai who, at the end of the chain, reveals that he has an Expendable Clone body so he can fake his own dead. The hunter can "execute" the clone body with a single shot to the head, or, if they're feeling particularly cheesed off at the long chase Tyresius put them through, they can just empty their blaster(s) into the clone at point-blank range. If nothing, it shows Tyresius that you are not putting up with his crap any longer.
Hunter: We'll tell everyone that Tyresius Lokai went out in a blaze of glory!
[BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!]
Tyresius: Oh my stars… - Played for Drama in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: After Bode feigns surrender and tries to shoot Cal (only to find his blaster is out of charge), Cal was originally meant to kill him with a single gunshot. However his actor Cameron Monaghan opted to have him fire multiple times to emphasize that Bode had crossed a line even deeper than his original betrayal.
- Yakuza 2; Just as Takashima is about to execute Kaoru, Ryuji recovers his pistol and puts nearly two dozen bullets into the other man before finishing him off with a headshot.
Web Comics
- In Homestuck, Diamonds Droog disposes of Felt member Fin via More Dakka. Fin subsequently dies of blood loss a few moments later.
Western Animation
- Parodied in an episode of The Fairly Oddparents where Timmy, Cosmo and Wanda jacked themselves into a video game; Timmy managed to dodge the thrown carrot from the rabbit foes, while all those carrots hit Cosmo; he then yells "Hey look at me! I'm a cheese!" while he's being literally riddled with holes (it just means it's game over for him).
- Family Guy has the mob execution of Big Fat Paulie via a drive-by shooting, done in typical Family Guy style.
- Futurama:
- The Robot Mafia riddle a robot with laser blasts for not making his loan payments in the episode "Bender Gets Made". Subverted, as the robot then gets up and thanks the Donbot for being so merciful.
- The first part of "Into The Wild Green Yonder" ends with Bender and the Robot Don's wife (with whom Bender has been having affair) being forced to dig shallow graves for themselves before being riddled with bullets for a ridiculously long time. As with the "Bender Gets Made" example, it's subverted, as both Bender and Fanny are perfectly fine afterwards.
- A common gag in Looney Tunes, where a character is repeatedly shot or run through with multiple sharp objects, resulting in either visible (bloodless) holes or springing a leak whenever they drink.
- In the series finale of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Marcie is executed by Mecha-Mooks in a hail of machine gun fire, but not before the camera cuts away to show the gang reacting to the sound of gunshots in the distance.
- The Simpsons:
- "Saturdays Of Thunder": At a video store, Homer –- wanting to rent a video to watch with the kids, in an effort to become a better father -– watches the movie McBain on the overhead video monitors. The scene playing at the time is the title character enjoying a drink with his one-time mentor, Special Agent Dexter Skoey. In an attempt to ambush McBain, Skoey happens to be in the line of gunfire and is shot more than a dozen times by one of Senator Mendoza's mooks. As Skoey lies bleeding to death and gasping last words, the mook makes a clean getaway and McBain swears revenge.
- "You Only Move Twice": Homer, an employee at a nuclear plant that is actually the front for a worldwide terrorist organization named Globex, run by a man named Hank Scorpio, is asked to tackle a "loafer" at the plant, which Homer does. Homer does not know that the man he took down was James Bont, who was trying to infiltrate and stop Scorpio from a plot to take over the United States by extreme force. Homer walks back to his work station, not seeing Globex guards surround Bont and unload their submachine guns point blank. It can be implied that Bont was blown to bits.
- "All's Fair In Oven War": The toll booth scene from The Godfather, complete with James Caan reprising his role, is parodied. This time, Cletus and a bunch of Cletus variants gun down Caan ... upset because he was dating Brandine. "That's it! Next time, I fly!" moans Caan as he gasps for his last breath.
- In South Park's "The Pandemic Special" both an unnamed boy (who actually reappears just fine in later episodes) and Kenny get gunned down by police in this manner.
Real Life
- Firing squads invoked this. Sometimes. In some jurisdictions, it was more common to load most of the squad's rifles with blanks or dummy cartridges, and only leaving one randomly selected rifle with the live round that would kill the condemned. It's thought this is done to diffuse the responsibility among the shooters — if you can't tell who exactly fired the bullet, none of them need to feel directly guilty for killing them. But, since a trained marksman can tell the difference between firing a blank and an actual round from how it feels, this might not be valid.
- The summary execution of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker by law enforcement agents; their bullet-riddled car is still on display in Las Vegas. The reason why the trap was done was because the couple was such a clear example of The Dreaded that the police didn't want them to have a chance of doing a Last Stand.
- This is how Frank Stilwell was killed by Wyatt Earp and his posse when they found him and Ike Clanton waiting for them when Earp was trying to send his badly wounded brother to California. Wyatt gave Stilwell both barrels of his shotgun while the rest of the posse shot him at least once each, with the coroner stating he had been shot by at least 5 different guns.
- Dr. Carl Weiss, the assassin of Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, was shot 62 times by Long's bodyguards after he shot Long. The bullet holes from where he was shot still remain in the Louisiana Capital building in Baton Rouge.
- After killing a Florida deputy and a police dog and wounding another deputy, fugitive Angilo Freeland was killed by 68 shots from police officers. When questioned why the suspect had been shot 68 times (out of 166 bullets fired), Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd reportedly replied "That's all the bullets we had."
- Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, a notorious gangster, was shot full of holes with a Thompson submachine gun while he was making a call from a phone booth in a drug store.
- Al Brady (considered at the time Public Enemy Number One) and accomplice Carl Schaeffer were killed during an FBI ambush while they were trying to acquire black market weapons for their crimes on Oct. 12, 1937 in Bangor, Maine
. The event was classified as the most violent gun battle in the history of Maine and ended with both criminals receiving concentrated machine gunfire.
- The so-called Mozambique Drill
(two shots to the chest, one to the head) was actually developed by accident by Rhodesian mercenary Mike Rousseau during the War of Independence in Mozambique when two pistol shots to the torso failed to bring down an enemy guerrilla. He finished the job with a headshot. His friend Jeff Cooper refined it into an actual technique.
- Marshal Guillaume Brune was killed like this (possibly because the first shooter missed him at point-blank range), along with lots of stabbing, to the point that his remains were unrecognisable when he was fished out of the Rhone. The (Royalist) authorities initially filed it away as a suicide.
- Most police forces have a doctrine that says that if shooting a suspect is necessary, don't stop firing until the target ceases to be a threat. Depending on the circumstances behind a shootout (such as ceasing to be a threat being determined by the suspect falling down, and something in the environment is propping the suspect up), this trope can often end up happening as a result. Especially when a shooting involves multiple officers.
- Perhaps the most extreme case in history (if we allow the stretching of definition) would be the 'death' of the battleship Bismarck. After one-shotting HMS Hood, Bismarck parted from the surviving Prince of Wales having taken a number of hits and moderate damage. 6 days later, the battleship was finally caught by a Royal Navy battle group that included the carrier Ark Royal, which launched two Swordfish
torpedo bomber biplanes. While the first couldn’t locate its target, the second did, firing two torpedoes which hit and jammed the Bismarck’s rudder. Unable to turn, it headed straight for the main portion of the group, led by battleships King George V and Rodney, who closed in while pounding broadside after broadside into the already crippled Bismarck. All counts indicate well over 100 battleship main battery shells (each weighing most of a tonne) hit the Bismarck in that battle, plus many more secondary battery and heavy cruiser shells, plus two torpedoes.