Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Register
Advertisement
WikEd fancyquotesQuotesBug-silkHeadscratchersIcons-mini-icon extensionPlaying WithUseful NotesMagnifierAnalysisPhoto linkImage LinksHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconic
Imbox style This page needs some cleaning up to be presentable.

This needs to be turned into a category.

JustShoot
Cquote1
Cquote2


Villains (and occasionally darker Anti-Heroes) frequently find themselves in conundrums that could easily be solved by finding the right person and shooting them. But rare is the villain who actually takes this direct approach.

There may or may not be some in-story justification for this failure to take the direct approach. However, the Doylist explanations generally boils down to the fact, if he did just shoot him, then the story would be much shorter and would end with the bad guys winning.

Flavors include:

  • Bond Villain Stupidity: The villain has the opportunity to kill the good guy, but leaves them alive anyway, sometimes for no adequately explained reason.
  • Complexity Addiction: The villain does try to kill the hero, but employs some ridiculously elaborate (and thus easily-foiled) method, rather than just shooting them.
  • Evil Gloating: Even when the villain intends to kill the hero in a straightforward fashion, they still feel the need to gloat about it immediately beforehand, thus giving the hero time to escape or fight back.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: Someone in the story points out that the above three options are stupid and that a simpler, more direct solution exists (usually by using this line verbatim). The villain may or may not actually take their advice.

Compare Third-Act Stupidity, Contractual Genre Blindness. Contrast Dangerously Genre Savvy, Combat Pragmatist, and No-Nonsense Nemesis.

If you, the viewer, are wondering why someone won't just shoot someone else, Headscratchers is the place to ask.

Advertisement