http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy

Evil Overlord List , Rule #56 "My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any [troops] who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice."

Advertisement:

The good guys (the non-Red Shirt ones, at least  and sometimes even them, too) can stand in the middle of the firefight and never get hit, and can pick off any bad guy with even the most casually-aimed shot while the bad guys seem unable to hit the broad side of a barn.

This trope involves a degree of Truth in Television, in that by far most shots fired in firefights or combat are misses. Some sources report that in WWII, the average soldier needed to fire two hundred rounds for every hit scored on an enemy; numerous other examples are mentioned in the Real Life section of this page. So the fictional bad guys don't necessarily actually suffer from unrealistic inaccuracy; rather, the heroes' fictional performance would probably count as Improbable Aiming Skills in real life. To make matters worse, though, most fictional bad guys exhibit lousy trigger discipline, always firing from the hip and in long bursts, even when firing at a lone target that sometimes isn't even shooting back, instead of looking down the sights and aiming.

Advertisement:

Of course, the real reason for all this is the Anthropic Principle: if the mooks ever actually hit the main characters, the show would be over.

Bonus points if anyone says something to the effect of "whoever is the actual target of that shooter is the safest one here."

Obvious Sub-Trope of A-Team Firing. Dodge the Bullet is the inverse of this. For the bladed weapon variation, see Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight. The flip side of Improbable Aiming Skills. The use of More Dakka can either overcome this, or make it even sillier. When the bullets don't just spray around the target, but consistently hit where the target was a moment ago, it's a case of Hero-Tracking Failure. See also Plot Armor for the reason the bad guys are such lousy shots. When the enemies vastly outnumber the heroes, their incompetence is a symptom of Conservation of Ninjutsu. Compare Powerful, but Inaccurate, when the inaccuracy is a property of the weapon rather than the wielder.

Advertisement:

Named for the obvious Star Wars reference, in which setting the mooks all seem to be visually impaired, though there is one explanation for their seeming ineptitude  but for the Trope Namer, see the Tabletop Games section below.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

Comedy

Comic Books

Fan Works

My Immortal: Enoby shoots at Snape and Lupin "a gazillion times" and fails to cause them any actual harm beyond making them fall off their broomsticks and break their camera lens.

Calvin and Hobbes: The Series: The guns in Brainstorm's lair have terrible aim. Possibly justified as Brainstorm's terrible programming.

Films — Animated

Films — Live-Action

Folklore

There was an urban legend that went something like this: In 1971 a marshal and a general in Uruguay decided to settle a conflict the old fashioned way; with a gun duel. After standing back to back, they walked twelve steps, turned around, and started shooting. First once. Then twice. Nothing happened. They ended up firing 37 shots each without hitting each other before the duel stopped by itself due to the lack of ammo. The explanation the men gave? They forgot to put on their glasses, apparently.



Another variation of this story has an alternate ending: After seeing that all their shots missed, they decided to call off the duel and shake hands. As they were approaching each other, one of them let out a yelp — his foot had been burned by stepping on a mass of lead where their bullets had hit each other and fused together.

hitting each other before the duel stopped by itself due to the lack of ammo. The explanation the men gave? They forgot to put on their glasses, apparently. Another variation of this story has an alternate ending: After seeing that all their shots missed, they decided to call off the duel and shake hands. As they were approaching each other, one of them let out a yelp — his foot had been burned by stepping on a mass of lead where their bullets had hit each other and fused together. Andreas Hofer was sentenced to death for his rebellion against Napoleon, and legend has it that after the first salvo of the firing squad assigned to his execution barely wounded him, Hofer — an experienced sharpshooter — mocked them for it.

Jokes

There's a common joke told by both the Star Wars and Star Trek fandoms about this trope: "A Stormtrooper and a Red Shirt get into a firefight. The Stormtrooper misses every shot; the Red Shirt dies anyway."

Literature

Until the last book, the Death Eaters of the Harry Potter series were generally poor shots, although with wands rather than guns. Actually justified in Half-Blood Prince in which Harry's friends happened to have all taken a rare luck potion before the Death Eaters showed up, which is an example of One-Shot Revisionism. Since, unlike guns, wands can do more than just kill, there's a Harry Potter-specific corollary to this trope, which we shall define thusly: "the more deadly and/or permanent the curse is, the less likely it is to hit its target."

This happens in Animorphs, whenever the Yeerks (human- and Hork-Bajir-Controllers) fire Dracon beams at the Animorphs, they will usually (but not always) miss. In book 29, Visser Three even yells "Would it be asking too much for one of you to actually hit something?!!" (although in that particular case, they were trying to shoot a bird in flight in a cavern.

Star Wars Legends: Very often subverted in the books, especially when the protagonist is on the same side or at least neutral towards the Empire. It is not completely uncommon to see the Stormtroopers really are the best of the best. The Timothy Zahn novels in particular tend to portray Stormtroopers (and other Imperial personnel) as highly competent professionals. Subverted and lampshaded in Legacy of the Force: Invincible. Jaina Solo and Boba Fett are defending Roche against an Imperial assault. The stormtroopers first shoot Boba's gun, causing him to raise his hand, then blow a hole through it. Jaina is thinking "these weren't her mother's stormtroopers." Imperial Commando:501st, the final book in the Karen Traviss Republic Commando Series explains why the Clone Troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic, and the Imperial Stormtroopers are on polar opposite ends of the spectrum where accuracy is concerned: the clones that served in the Clone Wars were solely sourced from Kamino, using a process that takes ten years to produce a fully matured clone. Shortly before the rise of the Empire, Palpatine ordered the creation of lower quality clones sourced from various other sources including a facility on Coruscants moon, that would be ready in less than a year. These lower quality clones couldnt hit the broad side of a barn, but they would help fill the ranks. Curiously, at least one of these clones was assigned to the Imperial Commando Special Unit of the 501st legion, which was initially formed from the especially badass Clone Commandos and ARC Troopers who had survived the Clone War. In the book series The Last of the Jedi, a Sequel Series to the Jedi Apprentice and Jedi Quest set after Revenge of the Sith, it's mentioned that, ever since the Clone (now Storm) Troopers transitioned to "peace-keeping" instead of fighting an active war, they have been instructed to hold down the trigger while aiming instead of conserving ammo. After all, individual blaster shots are cheap, blasters have no kick to throw off your aim while you bring the weapon to bear, and blaster shots flying all over the place tend to panic your enemies (who are now generally trouble-makers and law-breakers instead of battle-hardened enemy soldiers).

The Lord of the Rings features this in The Two Towers. Orcs are incompetent soldiers but are known to be good shots with arrows throughout the literature; however, during the Battle of Helm's Deep, thousands of Uruk-hai rain down what are described as black clouds of arrows on the Rohirrim defenders... and very, very few even get injured, let alone killed.

In a Tim Dorsey novel, this happens for justifiable reasons in an incident that is largely irrelevant to the plot. A man who was denied a driver's license for failing a vision test walked into a DMV and emptied a pistol at the clerks, hitting nobody.

In Les Misérables, in an inverted version of this trope, the students, who are the good guys, fire massive volleys of shots at the National Guard, and don't manage to hit any of them.

In Andre Norton's Ordeal in Otherwhere, Shann, only brushed by the weapon fire, comments to Charis on how badly they are shooting. Charis suggests that they might not be shooting to kill.

Most of DERSO in The Leonard Regime.

The Ciaphas Cain novel The Last Ditch lampshades Ork lack of marksmanship. The troop transport carrying the Valhallan 597th has arrived via crashlanding, and the battalion is bracing for an Ork attack in the wreckage. Corporal Magot: Always knew the greenies couldn't hit the broad side of a starship, but I never expected to see it for myself. Subverted, however, in that they're firing on instinct. Once they close in they actually start doing damage. Whenever Orks or Chaos cultists appear in a Cain novel, Cain will snark about their poor aim at least once. He has a minor freakout in Cain's Last Stand when he realizes the Chaos invaders are actually aiming their shots. Justified in the Biggles stories The Professor and Biggles Finds His Feet. Biggles explains that most anti-aircraft gunners never hit anything as they aim directly at where they see the plane, and by the time the shell reaches the target, it has moved on. To successfully hit an aircraft it's necessary to aim at the point ahead of it where it will be when the shell arrives.

Live-Action TV

Music

Voltaire's "Expendable" from the album "BiTrektual" references this trope, along with Red Shirt. According to the song, Imperial recruiters were part of the rebellion and intentionally signed up the worst people.

Jim Staffords "Cow Patti" has the eponymous heroine face off against her father's killer in a shootout. Each fires dozens of rounds (from revolvers!), killing 40 townspeople but not even wounding each other.

Pinball

Laser War depicts three color-coordinated armies shooting Ray Guns with Frickin' Laser Beams at each other... and no one scoring a single hit.

Tabletop Games

Theatre

The Devil's Disciple: George Bernard Shaw lampshaded the realistic side of the trope back in 1897: Richard: I think you might have the decency to treat me as a prisoner of war, and shoot me like a man instead of hanging me like a dog.

General Burgoyne [sympathetically]: Now there, Mr. Anderson, you talk like a civilian, if you will excuse my saying so. Have you any idea of the average marksmanship of the army of His Majesty King George the Third? If we make you up a firing party, what will happen? Half of them will miss you: the rest will make a mess of the business and leave you to the provo-marshal's pistol. Whereas we can hang you in a perfectly workmanlike and agreeable way. [Kindly] Let me persuade you to be hanged, Mr. Anderson?

Video Games

Web Animation

Webcomics

Web Original

Western Animation

Real Life