# Redundant hero scene that never made sense to me **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 19, 2010, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244 "2010-07-19T17:25:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/41 "2010-07-20T01:05:03Z")
> [@Carnacki](#): > > He’d rather see his family dead, than live another day after that… I think he was just looking for a good excuse to get rid of that nagging bitch and those whiny brats ,…plus the bonus of the bad ass rep. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/42 "2010-07-20T01:23:43Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Does anybody remember which movie or TV show had the scene where the hero shoots through the hostage , in a spot where they won’t die, to kill the bad guy. > > Like, you realize their shoulder is lined up with the baddie’s heart so you just shoot them in the shoulder and the baddie in the heart. Problem solved. SWAT perhaps? IIRC, SWAT guy with itchy trigger finger shoots a hostage through the shoulder or something, kills the bad guy. Hostage lives, sues the PD and the cop is fired, and becomes the antagonist. I don’t think he was aiming at a nonvital spot necessarily. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/43 "2010-07-20T01:28:32Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > That the part that doesn’t make sense. Why would you expect this bad guy to let the hostage live, because that’s the tactic agreement? > Actually I’d enjoy that scene. The hero surrenders. The bad guy shoots him. As he lays mortally wounded the bad guy shoots the hostage. The heros last words are , "you fucker, we… had… a tacit… agreement, aaaaaarrr Yep, same thing goes with “hey, i got the drop on you now you have to drop your weapon.” Why not just dive to the side and open fire? There’s another unwritten rule that when someone has “gotten the drop on you” you should drop your weapon. Corny and stupid, yes…but there’s rules like this all over fiction. I just saw another one last night: the bad guy has a knife on the good guy’s throat. The good guy draws his revolver and has it under the bad guy’s chin in a popular form of “the standoff.” Both guys slowly back down from each other. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/44 "2010-07-20T01:29:39Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > SWAT perhaps? IIRC, SWAT guy with itchy trigger finger shoots a hostage through the shoulder or something, kills the bad guy. Hostage lives, sues the PD and the cop is fired, and becomes the antagonist. I don’t think he was aiming at a nonvital spot necessarily. Actually this is real. I saw one of those “most shocking police videos” shows, and the sniper managed to disarm the guy who was sitting in a chair with the gun between his legs from the back. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/45 "2010-07-20T02:20:10Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > That the part that doesn’t make sense. Why would you expect this bad guy to let the hostage live, because that’s the tactic agreement? > Actually I’d enjoy that scene. The hero surrenders. The bad guy shoots him. As he lays mortally wounded the bad guy shoots the hostage. The heros last words are , "you fucker, we… had… a tacit… agreement, aaaaaarrr Something like that happened in an episode of **Alien Nation**. I’ll spoiler it because it was so awesome. [spoiler]Matt Sikes, the main (human) character, was haunted because when he was a rookie he was in the classic “bad guy using an innocent woman as a human shield orders him to put down his gun or the hostage dies, and don’t even think about shooting me because if I even jerk, her brains are all over the floor” so rookie copy Sikes does so, and the bad guy laughs and shoots him, then shoots the hostage in the head and happily skips away. Sikes survived, but the woman died. In the episode, of course, he meets up with the hostage taker again, and the scene plays itself out again, this time with his alien partner as the hostage, and after the bad guy gives the same speech, Sikes starts to put down his gun, then pulls it back up and says “Maybeyouwon’tjerk” and shoots the guy in the forehead, dropping him jerk-lessly to the ground in a lifeless heap.[/spoiler] A classic moment of Fox television, I say. ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/46 "2010-07-20T02:32:36Z")
> [@JSexton](#): > > I saw that in a movie recently. > > Bad guy grabs a hostage: “Drop your gun or I’ll-” > Good guy shoots him and makes a a line about talking too much. > > Not sure what it was. A History Of Violence, maybe? Not quite the scene you describe, but something close enough from [The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060196/quotes?qt0424823) > [@cosmosdan](#): > > Does anybody remember which movie or TV show had the scene where the hero shoots through the hostage , in a spot where they won’t die, to kill the bad guy. > > Like, you realize their shoulder is lined up with the baddie’s heart so you just shoot them in the shoulder and the baddie in the heart. Problem solved. Live Free or Die Hard. McClane (Willis) _is_ the hostage, and he shoots through himself to kill Thomas Gabriel (Tim Olyphant). ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/47 "2010-07-20T02:37:32Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Does anybody remember which movie or TV show had the scene where the hero shoots through the hostage , in a spot where they won’t die, to kill the bad guy. > > Like, you realize their shoulder is lined up with the baddie’s heart so you just shoot them in the shoulder and the baddie in the heart. Problem solved. I believe it was in the movie SWAT (2003), Speed, and I also saw this in a recent film (possibly non-Hollywood) where the good guy shot himself through the shoulder but it hit the bad guy in the heart. I think this was also an episode of CSI where the attacker and the victim were fighting over the gun, the bullet went through the victim and killed the attacker. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Woodhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@Miss\_Woodhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Woodhouse)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/48 "2010-07-20T03:40:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Does anybody remember which movie or TV show had the scene where the hero shoots through the hostage , in a spot where they won’t die, to kill the bad guy. > > Like, you realize their shoulder is lined up with the baddie’s heart so you just shoot them in the shoulder and the baddie in the heart. Problem solved. They did that one on an episode of \*Chuck. \* Season 2 I believe. As for not negotiating in a Hostage situation, there’s a episode of _Firefly_ where Jayne does the not negotiating. It was great for it’s break from the standard form. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/49 "2010-07-20T06:16:57Z")
> [@Miss\_Woodhouse](#): > > They did that one on an episode of \*Chuck. \* Season 2 I believe. Subverted in the last season of _Spooks_ where they shoot the bad guy through the hostage, killing the hostage. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/50 "2010-07-20T07:06:17Z")
I always thought the risk with shooting the perp was that it might cause a muscle spasm and he’d accidentally pull the trigger. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/51 "2010-07-20T12:38:36Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I always thought the risk with shooting the perp was that it might cause a muscle spasm and he’d accidentally pull the trigger. That’s part of it. Or maybe you’re not a good enough shot to chance it. My point is one thing that seems really stupid is actually putting you gun down in hopes of saving the hostage. IMO your chances of saving the hostage go down drastically rather than up, if you do that. I’ve thought it was stupid since I was a kid and it annoys me when they stick it in the script. Holy crap writer, can’t you think of anything else? ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/52 "2010-07-20T12:42:04Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I always thought the risk with shooting the perp was that it might cause a muscle spasm and he’d accidentally pull the trigger. “Maybe you won’t jerk.” ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/53 "2010-07-20T12:43:07Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > SWAT perhaps? IIRC, SWAT guy with itchy trigger finger shoots a hostage through the shoulder or something, kills the bad guy. Hostage lives, sues the PD and the cop is fired, and becomes the antagonist. I don’t think he was aiming at a nonvital spot necessarily. It’s probably been done more than once but I do remember an episode of NCIS where a they had the bad guy cornered with hostage and they took the chance of shooting him and wound up wounding the hostage as well. Fortunately it was only a TV show so the hostage was grateful to be saved. In real life it would have been $$$$$$$ law suit!!! ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/54 "2010-07-20T12:49:58Z")
> [@chorpler](#): > > Something like that happened in an episode of **Alien Nation**. I’ll spoiler it because it was so awesome. > > [spoiler]Matt Sikes, the main (human) character, was haunted because when he was a rookie he was in the classic “bad guy using an innocent woman as a human shield orders him to put down his gun or the hostage dies, and don’t even think about shooting me because if I even jerk, her brains are all over the floor” so rookie copy Sikes does so, and the bad guy laughs and shoots him, then shoots the hostage in the head and happily skips away. Sikes survived, but the woman died. > > In the episode, of course, he meets up with the hostage taker again, and the scene plays itself out again, this time with his alien partner as the hostage, and after the bad guy gives the same speech, Sikes starts to put down his gun, then pulls it back up and says “Maybeyouwon’tjerk” and shoots the guy in the forehead, dropping him jerk-lessly to the ground in a lifeless heap.[/spoiler] > > A classic moment of Fox television, I say. Strange, almost the same scene was in an episode of _Miami Vice_. At the end of the episode Crockett has caught up with the bad guy who is holding a woman hostage with a gun to her head. He says that if he twitches, she’s dead. Crockett responds, “Maybe you won’t even twitch.” and shoots him through the forehead. (I even remember the episode, it was “The Glades”. Strange the the things your brain hangs on to. That’s probably the only episode of that show I remember.) ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/55 "2010-07-20T12:52:22Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Subverted in the last season of _Spooks_ where they shoot the bad guy through the hostage, killing the hostage. Did they? I remember this as accidentally shooting the agent through the bad guy. Must rewatch. I always wondered why, in these scenarios where the good guy is alone and just standing there, the bad guy doesn’t shoot _him_ from behind the hostage? He’s got a clear shot and a shield. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/56 "2010-07-20T13:16:35Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Did they? I remember this as accidentally shooting the agent through the bad guy. Must rewatch. You may be right - I’m thinking of Miranda Richardson getting shot in that underground bunker. Your way is an even better subversion, though. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/57 "2010-07-22T20:06:13Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Does anybody remember which movie or TV show had the scene where the hero shoots through the hostage , in a spot where they won’t die, to kill the bad guy. There are no spots IRL. I’ve seen two men die from shots to the leg. You’d be surprised how far from the entry wound bullet fragments in the body can travel. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2010, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/58 "2010-07-22T23:19:12Z")
Chinese police response, shoot the hostage-taker in the head. [Video here](http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2010/07/another-police-siege.html). Things heat up around the three minute mark and are resolved around 5:15. Okay so the guy’s got a knife rather than a gun but still. Oh and don’t miss the officer’s smiling interview immediately after… ---
**Author:** ![RogueRacer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7ab992/32.png) [@RogueRacer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RogueRacer)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2010, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/59 "2010-07-23T21:17:45Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Does anybody remember which movie or TV show had the scene where the hero shoots through the hostage , in a spot where they won’t die, to kill the bad guy. > > Like, you realize their shoulder is lined up with the baddie’s heart so you just shoot them in the shoulder and the baddie in the heart. Problem solved. In _48 Hours_, the bad guy, Ganz, has Hammond (Eddie Murphy) hostage, using him as a shield. Cates (Nick Nolte) shoots Ganz anyway with a very accurate shot, missing Hammond. In the sequel, _Another 48 Hours_ the same situation comes up with a different bad guy holding Hammond. This time Cates shoots through Hammond’s shoulder to shoot the bad guy. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2010, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244/60 "2010-07-24T00:09:44Z")
> [@RogueRacer](#): > > In _48 Hours_, the bad guy, Ganz, has Hammond (Eddie Murphy) hostage, using him as a shield. Cates (Nick Nolte) shoots Ganz anyway with a very accurate shot, missing Hammond. In the sequel, _Another 48 Hours_ the same situation comes up with a different bad guy holding Hammond. This time Cates shoots through Hammond’s shoulder to shoot the bad guy. I also just saw an episode of NCIS where the lady hostage had committed some serious crimes to save a little girl. She was facing life in prison and disgrace. Rather than let a very bad man use her to escape and almost certainly kill again she gives Gibbs the nod and he shoots through her three times to kill the bad guy and her as well. Surprised the hell outa me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/redundant-hero-scene-that-never-made-sense-to-me/547244.md?page=4)