Feature films and television is filled with tired worn-out tropes used to glide past problem spots in scripts and create false tension. There is one that I wish desperately to die, the improvised or fortunate bullet-stopper.

We’ve seen this for decades upon decades. A character is shot in the chest, almost certainly dead, only for it to be revealed later that something stopped the bullet. Bruce Wayne’s improved one with a silver tray in Tim Burton’s Batman, a lead token proved the essential protection in Deadpool 2, books are a commonly used device, though it can be forgiven in Sleepy Hollow as at least there was no modern ammunition was used.

Variations on this trope include impromptu shields, Arnold used bystanders to prevent himself from being riddled with sub-machine gun rounds in Total Recall and Steve Rogers used a convenient taxi door to stop rounds from a semi-automatic pistol in Captain American: The First Avenger.

In all these cases the filmmakers and writers have ignored that modern bullets posses ‘overpenetration.’ The rounds often, depending on the substance of the target, have more the energy to pierce metal and flesh with enough remaining to exit and continue on presenting danger to those beyond.

The sub-machine rounds in Total Recall would have torn through the poor bystander Quaid used as a shield and into Arnold’s character himself. No mere silver tray would stop even a small caliber round and Wayne would have been grievously injured.

I have learned to ignore this trope when it raises it ignorant head, but I will not continue its presence in my own work. Firearms are lethally dangerous even if you have a book in your breast pocket.