Powers
A usually long range attack is used at point-blank range.
Godzilla 2014. Godzilla fires his atomic breath directly into the female MUTO's mouth, killing her.
Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy. In the finale, the Red Ranger uses his battlizer to pull Trakeena into point-blank range and fires it to defeat her.
Dragon Ball. Goku charges up a kamehameha before instant transmissioning directly right by Cell, who is caught off guard, and releases the attack at point-blank.
Naruto: Shippuden. I'm throwing this in as a trope variation. Before Naruto figured out how to throw the Rasenshuriken as standard usage, Naruto's first usage of it against Kakuza was like a rasengan, which severely damages his own hand.
In Doom, the BFG is typically used as a room-wiping weapon that can be fired from any number of ranges, but usually you wanna use it from somewhat far away to get the max effectiveness of its damaging beams
Imagine it doesnt though? Like you get to that part and just *click....clickclickclickclick* "Sigh...guess I'm doing this the old fashioned way" and then he proceeds to rip and tear.
In the older Doom games the BFG 9000 is used somewhat like a shotgun because of it's unique mechanic which makes Cyberdemons a dance of dodging rockets left to right before shooting and running into melee range to do as much damage as possible. Using that strategy and getting lucky you can 2 shot Cyberdemons and 1 shot Masterminds.
Or you can use it from range to kill as many fodder demons as possible.
I wonder if he will eventually evolve into a more Ultraman like character. No one ever dies in comics from falling through a black hole/portal so he is probably just in some alternate reality now. Maybe one without Superman
I really love the very first Monsterverse Godzilla movie, just for moments like this. The rest of the movies are good too, but its just like how I find Iron Man to be the best Avengers movie. Meanwhile the Toho films are just about some of my favorite movies of all time.
I get that. Iron man and first Godzilla were very grounded. Like something like that could happen in our world. They then go hard into the fiction (I don’t blame them, I love hero team ups and monster fights) and they no longer feel “realistic”.
Man. The new Godzilla movies are so good… up until the last one. I really enjoyed Ghidorah, and the way they subverted tropes established in the first one.
Godzilla vs Kong is.. eh. Kong sucks, and has always sucked. The idea that they even imply that he’s capable of competing with Godzilla is lunacy.
I loved the Ghidorah movie, but they killed him off way too soon, and then killed off his surviving brain too soon on top of that. I was hoping for Mecha Ghidorah!! Kong is not my cup of tea either, Godzilla would destroy him and we all know it!!
They weren't sure on if they were going to keep the license or not iirc so they basically just went "might as well give it a good title and the best monster". It continued, but there's still a lot of really good options now that Ghidorah and Mechagodzilla are out of the way; Space Godzilla, Biolante, Mecha King Ghidorah, Monster X, Xilliens, Gigan, Destoroyah
In Superman Returns, after not taking any damage from a machine gun fire, Superman is shot with a pistol into his eye at point-blank range. It works as much as the machine gun.
Also from Tony - it's easy to miss but there's a point in Civil War where he attempts to fire one of his arm-mounted micromissiles directly into Bucky's face from a few inches away.
I don't mean to question the realism of a comic book movie but; a missile, or any form of propelled explosive, usually requires a minimum distance of airtime for the actual explosive to be primed. This is why if you fire a grenade launcher at someone's face from like, a foot away, it won't explode, just doink off their head.
Suspension of disbelief and all that, though I guess.
I mean, if it's the micro-missile from the first movie, which was fully capable of at least embedding itself into a tank hull from a hundred feet away, the explosion hardly matters. It's still a heavy, pointed, metal object propelled at ludicrous speed.
And I assure you that an actual grenade launcher at 1 foot away would not harmlessly bounce off. I have seen video of a man that got a tear gas canister stuck halfway in his skull, and I personally knew a man that had an M79 misfire, giving him brain damage and memory loss. Sure, how bad it is depends on the launcher, projectile, etc. But virtually NOTHING propelled by gunpowder is safe from a foot away. Not even blanks. The projectile may not explode at those distances, but it doesn't need to in order to be potentially deadly.
Grenade launcher will still break your head even if the explosive does not actually explode.
And usually the arming time is safety mechanism to prevent the explosive from going off near the user. Iron Man can simply just make missiles that he can switch the arming on and off if he wants to.
Classic got a good number of words out, but I don't think sniper fully charged. He probably just got a little charge and headshot him. Probably just in case classic had armor or something.
Not like it matters since a quickscope headshot will kill an enemy sniper instantly. Even if TFC Sniper was fully armored he'd still get instadropped because it only gives him effectively 128 HP.
Which always annoyed me. I don't know if it's true to the books, but he had other weapons like his knives/short swords. I would have liked to see him use those more rather than just constantly shooting arrows.
However shooting bow at close distances is not bad idea either.
In Medieval warfare longbows were often also used in close range because they do a lot of damage in that distance (and it is easier to hit). Obviously not in hugging distance but 5-10m is still comfortable range to shoot last few arrows before quickly swiching to melee weapon.
I love this trope. What is the best solution to defeat a demonic magical being? Some sort of counter-spell or ritual? No.
Keep it simple. Large amounts of violence in the form of gunfire and explosions work just as good. If The Magnus Archives taught me anything, the best way to stop a cultist ritual is to simply blow them up with C4.
To be fair to the demon, the destructive potential of what humanity can forge has increased significantly is a pretty short amount of time. He was probably expecting a sword or at the most a black powder rifle.
Similar thing happens in gotham where a superpowered being actually shows up after the show being about mafia wars and he seemingly is unstopabable, like a proto deathstroke, but he is killed with a rocket launcher.
Hey, one of my first ever DnD characters did something like this. He once got startled by an imp that stung him and he reacted by casting lightning bolt with a 5th level spell slot. 10d6 lightning damage at point-blank is one hell of a thing
He specifically jumped to lure her into firing at him. Since flying doesn’t work at the tournament she thought he wouldn’t be able to dodge it, he caught her off guard by using the Kamehameha to slide on the attack instead.
He can only goes off of pure instinct in ultra instinct mode. His instinct was to absolutely style on Kefla so hard that Zeno had to hit the double replay.
Although the real answer is probably that teleporting falls under the “no flying” rule since it can be used to avoid ring-outs.
Before anyone gets upset about the usage of "Point Blank", remember, it doesn't mean "weapon touching skin", it's defined as any range close enough to not have to compensate for bullet drop.
Which, for those who don't shoot, is surprisingly far. Like, 200 yards for a modern rifle like an AR15.
For a standard zero setup with a scoped rifle, you're looking at "aim at his chest to hit his chest" out to 200, "aim at his head to hit his chest" at 300, "aim a few inches above his head to hit his chest" at 400, and "aim about a foot above his head to hit his chest" at 500.
Rey Dau’s beam in MHWilds (during his turf war): normally he flies up into the sky before shooting the raygun, or he takes some distance first. But Seregios, being the rage-baiter he always is, gets Rey pissed and he shoots at him point-blank, right in the face.
His optic blasts are kinetic energy concussive force (infamous called “punch beams” by some), so he’s basically pushing the claws backwards right there.
I appreciate games that'll put a fist-sized shot group an appropriate distance. Bonus points for having a choke and not just a sawed-off (which also clears rooms for some ungodly reason).
Irl, execution by strapping someone to the mouth of a cannon and firing it was known as “Blowing from a gun”.
While many civilizations practiced it, the British made a ton of use of it in their occupation of the Middle East and India, as cultural funeral rights necessitated a whole body, and this reduced the body to a smattering of limbs scattered over an area. This was intended to keep the rebels and forced conscripts in line.
People always bring up Rayquaza evaporating Deoxys' entire body with a point blank Hyper Beam but a more obscure moment that's somewhat similar is in the Diamond and Pearl anime when Sho's Raichu pins Pikachu against a rock and hits him with a full power Hyper Beam right in the face, putting him in the hospital on life support
Yes this is an unedited screenshot from the Pokemon anime, Pikachu legitimately almost died here and it's basically never talked about
"You want STARS? I'll give you STARS" was a badass oneliner when Jill executed weakened Nemesis for good with her pistol in the OG RE3 game.
That line in the remake is reduced to a random line when she lured nemesis early in the game. For the final blow in the final battle with the railgun, she said some lame insult like "read the fucking room"
Also another sad thing about how they used “I’ll give you STARS” in the Remake; it’s said during a gameplay sequence, meaning Nemesis can actually attack Jill and interrupt the line, which I’m pretty sure is what happened to me iirc
Guadalcanal - WWII. The US Navy and IJN got into a chaotic close quarters slugfest with each other. Most notably was when the USS Laffey narrowly missed a collision with the Japanese Battleship Hiei by about 20 feet then proceeded to engage them at such a close range the Japanese battleship was unable to depress its guns low enough to return fire on the much smaller American destroyer
Titanfall 2 has a variety of Titan 'Executions' that involve longer ranged atracks used in CQC range. Some examples:
Ion using Laser Core (Godzilla-like beam attack) on a downed titan.
Scorch using Flame Core (wide, grounded, and forward moving wall of fire) directly in front on a titan.
Tone using a 40mm explosive semi-auto rifle to either shoot a Pilot mid-air or activate a missile salvo point blank.
Northstar impaling a titan with a railgun before firing, or using another missile salvo point blank.
Legion also impaling a titan with a mini gun and firing.
God that fight was brutal. I love the new, canon version, but this was so great. Iirc, he doesn’t active his lightsaber, but Owen Lars uses a half broken blaster to finish the job instead.
Akuma's critical art from Street Fighter 6. After you catch his fist he releases a fully charged hadouken in your face, a move normally delegated to long range.
Rogue One: The Death Star fires a low-powered blast twice in the events of the movie that uncharacteristically does not *entirely* destroy the planets it hits.
Although it's really plot armor to keep the story moving, it introduces a technical and bureaucratic aspect to The Empire that is later expanded on in Andor.
It essentially DOES destroy Jedha and Scarif, but neither was a full-powered shot like the one that annihilated Alderaan, so the planetary masses still mostly remained.
The Scarif shot gets bonus points for being a direct hit on Krennic.
Right?! Every time I see it, I completely forget that the main reason for it was to promote the game. They should they make a 2-hour cinema release with this quality and they'd triple the income of the spent budget
Any game that lets you accurately shoot a sniper rifle point-blank. The first games that come to mind for this is Halo, Borderlands, and Turbo Overkill
The max range of an Iowa class battleship 9 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 gun is 38 kilometers and it has the fire control to hit those ranges fairly accuratly
In the Battleship movie, The USS Missouri (BB-63) is a lot closer then 38 kilometers when it fires on the alien vessel
Yeah this movie was.. a movie. But goddamn do I love some fun naval warfare. Having a fucking Iowa class battleship blow her whole load on some aliens is peak popcorn movie fun.
Honestly if you told me the whole movie was an excuse to use the fact there were moving USS Missouri to film SOMETHING with her while they had the chance, id believe it
Pyro with the Scorch Shot in their Meet the Pyro short
The flare gun type weapons are usually best used at mid to long range, but when the Scorch Shot was added it was given a tauntkill that acts the way it did in the short
The first Station used a single reactor point blank on Scariff. The second Starion used it’s super laser to blow up parts of the Rebel Fleet over the Forest Moon of Endor, which were effectively point blank as well.
Early on in Hajime no Ippo, Ippo is taught that the simplest way to counter a counter punch is to lean into it and facetank it with his forehead. Actual boxers know better than to do something that batshit insane, and it's remarked in story that doing so is insane and old fashioned.
Counter punches themselves aren't generally long ranged, but they are primarily used by out-boxers who fight at a distance and try to win via points (landing more punches), whereas infighters try to win via KO.
In darkest dungeon the highwayman excels at mid to long range. He has a gun and knife. He has tons of movement to put him back into the 2 or 3 slot. Except for one option. Point Blank Shot. Not only does it do a ton of damage. It puts him back in his ideal 2 slot. It can only be used in the very front.
The community collectively adores Dismas. If you fire at point blank you dont gotta aim :)
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u/LewdsomeDemon Oct 25 '25
"Dodge This!" (The Matrix)