In The Dark Knight Rises, we see Talia getting in a tumbler and ordering to kill everybody who comes in the way.

Here we see Foley shooting before this and after she ordered, we see

enter image description here

However, we don't see any bullet wounds nor any tears in his uniform. He was in front of the tumbler and shot.

Do firearms on tumbler have any special feature of firing very fine bullets? Or did this scene suffer some director's negligence? Is there any in or out of universe explanation for this scene?

  • If I recall right, there is plenty of shooting in those films, but not much damage nor blood is seen. I always thought that it was to make rating censors happier, or maybe the films themselves more "family friendly". – Vedran Šego Jul 23 '17 at 16:34
  • Hmm, if this was for family friendly and you can get a source for it, it can be a good answer. – A J Jul 23 '17 at 16:35
  • As I said, "I always thought" (but I never looked into it), hence a comment and not an answer. ;-) – Vedran Šego Jul 23 '17 at 16:37
  • what if he was hit by the tumbler and killed with internal bleeding , or he has just fell and not dead? – Vishwa Jul 24 '17 at 5:12

Two issues here, bullet holes and blood.

Bullet holes are easy. We do not even see the full body, small weapons bullets are small, and the dark blue coat would make finding holes in it difficult, unless it was against a light colored background.

And to explain the absence of blood stains, do you not need very fine bullets. In fact, if those are less lethal, wounds by smaller bullets could even be bloodier.

Anytime realism in movies1 touches the issue, it mentions how much gorier small weapons wounds are compared with real life.

For example, is someone is shot dead, the heart stops beating[citation needed] and blood stops circulating. If the wound ends in the upper part of the body it won't surge; if the wound it is in the back it will slowly drip and soak the body, but the weight of the body and the clothes will prevent it from spilling around until a lot of time has passed.

In this case we have an heroic death, so we can assume the wound is on the front. If we assume instant death (a direct shot to the heart, or that when wounded the man fell and fractured his neck/head), very little blood would have been spilled. If we factor all of the clothing that the character was wearing (remember, it was winter) and that what we see is a dark blue coat (which would make blood stains harder to see than if it was just a white shirt) I do not think it would be too inaccurate.

A couple of references:

Of course, some wounds can be very bloody, specially if they hit a major vessel and the victim is not dead. And wounds by explosives/heavy weapons are a completely different thing2.

1Yes, I am aware that we are talking about a Batman movie here.

2I am thinking the D-Day scene of Saving Private Ryan

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