Dramatic Gun Cock

"*(loud gun cock)* Now doesn't that just torque your jaws? I love that. You know like in the movies, just as the good guy is about to kill the bad guy, he cocks his gun. Now why didn't he have it cocked? Because that sound is scary. It's cool, isn't it?"
—The Caller, Phone Booth

The dramatic gun cock is employed when a character is up to some interrogation work while holding a gun to someone's head. The subject of the investigation is invited to divulge some critical information. The subject refuses or spouts an insult.

Here comes the dramatic gun cock. The interrogator pulls back the hammer of the revolver or automatic (or racks the slide if the automatic has no hammer), then resumes pointing the gun to the subject's head. Usually, this is enough to thoroughly spook the subject into full disclosure. Technically this can be done with the pump of a shotgun too, but is somehow less ass-bustingly terrifying.

In other situations, the dramatic gun cock serves to announce a character's presence, or (especially when taking place off-camera) to indicate that the tables have turned in some way. This is a Click. "Hello.", and often occurs in conjunction with a My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment.

Bonus points if the gun doesn't actually fire a projectile.

Even more bonus points if the armed character was holding a hostage, and could have been dispatched at any point up until then because they were threatening said hostage with an uncocked gun.

The sound effect is often added in by sound editors after filming. This can be especially noticeable when the character onscreen is using a gun that cannot be manually cocked. Examples include the Luger and the Glock.

The dramatic gun cock may be accompanied by a Pistol-Whipping.

If it seems odd that this happens so often in the movies, it helps to tell yourself the characters are actually members of a religion who believe repeatedly cocking your gun at someone will give them cancer.

Subtrope of Kinetic Clicking. Can sometimes lead to Guns Do Not Work That Way when a (semi)automatic gun that has already been shown to be actioned recently is cycled again for emphasis, without a round being ejected. Compare High Altitude Interrogation, which also relies on getting information through death threats.

Examples of Dramatic Gun Cock include:

Anime and Manga

  • Taken to the extreme in Gundam Wing, where the mere fact of rising a gun makes an audible, intimidating sound.
  • The Big O: Used by a hostage taker in the premiere, to get across exactly how imperative it is that Roger Smith hand the phone over to the hostage's father. It works.
  • Outlaw Star: Gene does this to Harry once.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: It becomes the trademark sound for Yoko as her rifle has a crazy electronic whine when she cocks it after firing off an either impossible shot, or a hail of blue bolts of death.
  • Gunslinger Girl. Cyborg girl Petra pointedly cocks her submachine gun when someone makes a snide comment about her handler Sandro, whom she is infatuated with. Afterwards Sandro warns her against drawing her firearm simply because she is angry.


Comic Books

  • In Nightwing: Year One, Nightwing stops a group of carjackers, one of whom decides to be cool. He then mercilessly lampshades this by asking if the crook had seen that on TV, points out that he's just ejected a perfectly good round, and then continues to cock the gun until he's effectively disarmed. There's a reason they call him the Boy Wonder.
  • SWORD: The conflict between dramatic necessity and the practicalities of technology is beautifully lampshaded in the X-Men spin-off.

Abigail Brand: "Okay, this is a ludicrously high-tech gun so it doesn't have anything which makes a handily intimidating noise. So imagine a cllllick at this point."

Green Hornet: I mean, I like drama as much as the next guy, obviously, but who the hell points an un-cocked gun at somebody?

  • In Secret Warriors, Nick Fury has just told his men that they are going after their former comrades-in-arms. Dum Dum objects: 'But Nick, what will you feel when you shoot a friend!?' Fury answers with a Dramatic Gun Cock and a single word: 'Recoil'.
  • In Preacher (Comic Book), Frankie gives a nice little demonstration of the Dramatic Gun Cock as he's gunning down Cassidy. The Lee-Enfield Mk.III, as Frankie so joyfully explains, is a favorite piece of his not only because it's very reliable and powerful, but also because the sound of the bolt action doing its thing puts the fear of God in ya real quick:

"Click clack... clack click."

Films

  • Used in Phone Booth with the twist of the gun (a sniper rifle) being a good deal away from the protagonist and the sound being delivered by telephone. He then goes on to discuss this trope, its apparent flaw, and its psychological justification. He also perpetrates the mistake of cocking his gun twice without firing a round in between (presumably ejecting a live round). Considering the intent was to scare the protagonist straight, ejecting a live round is entirely justifiable.
    • Also, considering his predilection for head games and melodramatics, he might just have been playing a recording of a gun cocking to increase the tension.
  • Stargate: A fairly Egregious example comes from the movie. During the scene where the commando team is investigating the temple, they cock their guns absolutely every time they hear a noise. Considering this is maybe a ten man team and there are maybe twenty gun-cocks per startling noise, this may be the result of a trigger-happy foley artist.
  • In Sudden Impact there's one of these in what seems like every scene/in which Dirty Harry brandishes his gun.
  • In Lethal Weapon 3 the Dramatic Gun Cock is used for interrogation. One of the good guys wants to know where a submachine gun is coming from, and to extract this information from a baddie he proceeds to cock said submachine gun and point it at his head. In the same movie, later on, the two main characters are about to start shooting up the baddies' main hideout. They get their weapons, ready themselves... only to hear a Dramatic Gun Cock from behind them. They start to raise their hands, but it turns out it's another good guy (well—good girl, anyway) who's come to help them and is just scaring them for fun.
  • Used in both The Boondock Saints films: the McManus brothers hold their pistols to the back of their victim's head, and recite their family prayer before firing, such that the prayer ends like this: "In nomine patris, et filii..." CLICK "...et spiritus sancti." BLAM.
  • Taken to the extreme by Magneto in the X-Men movie, when, after yanking all the cops' guns out of their hands and pointing them at their owners' heads, he cocks every one at once.
  • The Terminator franchise:
    • Sarah Connor does this several times in succession in Terminator 2, blasting the T-1000 with a SWAT-issue shotgun and interjecting each shot with a forceful, one-armed pump, but this is because the shotgun used is a Remington Model 870 pump-action shotgun and it has to be pumped for each shot. (The one-armed pump is also justified because Sarah got stabbed in her other arm by the T-1000 moments before.)
    • The T-800 itself in the same film dramatically cocking his shotgun, a Remington Model 1887, which is a lever action weapon, one-handed by swirling the gun 360 degrees around on his finger, by the firing guard. Doing so with a factory production gun would result in broken fingers, as the handguard is too narrow—the shotgun in question was custom-altered for the movie. He does this because it's cool, and to fire one-handed on the bike.
    • In the first film, Reese does one after sawing off the stock & barrel of his shotgun. He pumps the shotgun three times: Once when he cuts the barrel off, once when he wakes up from his dream, and once in Tech Noir before he starts blasting. It would seem that he pointlessly ejected two good shells, or he was walking around with it empty and was, ahem, pumping it for fun. Or he had the chamber empty for safety reasons. A good precaution if you have nightmares that make you rack the action of your shotgun.
    • There was another one in Tech Noir. Right before he attempts to shoot Sarah Connor, the Terminator cocks the pistol.
  • Cliffhanger: The clack-clack seems to happen every time the villains brandish their assault weapons at Stallone and company.
  • In Scary Movie III one of the characters dramatically cocks... a shovel. A shell falls out.
  • Subverted in Snatch, where one of the robbers of a betting parlor wastes rounds in the gun doing so. And he doesn't even get to use it and has it stolen from him. And even worse, it's the only real gun they had.
  • The Rock:

Mason: "Your best? Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen!"
Stan: "Carla was the prom queen..."
Mason: "Really?"
Stan *cock* "Really."

  • In Tony Scott's Domino, a dramatic conversation between Ed and Choco results in Choco cocking his revolver not once, but TWICE, despite the tension level never dropping to a point where the gun is ever, well, un-cocked.
  • In Lola Rennt, it's dramatically releasing the safety (and thus technically another trope, but used more in this way) that signifies that the titular heroine means Serious Business. Twice.
  • Also parodied in Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, where Ash cocks a type of gun that can't be cocked.
  • In Sneakers, during Martin's escape near the end, one thug carries a shotgun which he grabs and pumps as soon as he gets it. But he never fires a round, and yet when he finally finds Martin, he pumps the shotgun at him again. Normally this wouldn't be very obvious if you weren't paying attention, but in this case, you can hear the loud CLUNK of the unfired shell hitting the floor.
  • The finale of American Gangster has Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) do this every single time he runs into someone. This works out to racking a shotgun with 4+1 capacity seven times.
  • The second Pirates of the Caribbean when Elizabeth threatens Cutler Beckett, she makes a point of pulling the hammer back on her pistol so that he'll know she means business. The first film, toward the beginning, had Jack Sparrow cock his gun while threatening Will in the smithy. The badass effect was mitigated by his frustrated "Please move!" and then soundly destroyed when the smith conked him over the head from behind.
  • Code of Silence: In this Chuck Norris action thriller, two thugs try to rob a bar. Only when the hear a chorus of gun cocks do they realize it's a bar where off-duty cops hang out.
  • The Mask: The record for most Dramatic Gun Cocks executed by a single character, in a single scene, certainly belongs to The Mask, wherein the title character responds to the bad guy's show of force... with his own—at least 28 weapons pulled from behind his back.
  • Ghostbusters: Done with Energy Weapons in the climax. Having reached the Big Bad, the team confidently stride up to her seat of power and go through their proton packs' startup sequence slowly and methodically, which includes two versions of the gun cock: the simultaneous, distinctive whine of the particle throwers as they're powered on, and the mechanical extension of the wands at their business end.

"Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!"

  • Backfires on Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. When he's in the completely pitch black room with his night vision goggles, Agent Starling has no idea where he is, until he cocks his gun, at which point, she immediately aims and shoots him. Shoulda cocked it ahead of time, or simply pulled the trigger.
  • GoldenEye: James Bond gets one of these after fighting off Xenia. '*click* Take me to Janus.' Possible since this was in a bathhouse or bathroom, where one may not always carry a ready to fire pistol. This most likely (in universe) was done for emphasis by Bond, since the Walther PPK is a double-action semi-automatic, meaning that if a round is in the chamber, it is ready to fire just by pulling the trigger. The only reason to cock it is to ensure an accurate first shot and/or to intimidate the target, both justifiable reasons.
  • In A Fistful of Dynamite John Mallory issues one of these before blowing away his former friend-turned-informant Sean Nolan with a shotgun.
  • When Laurence Fishburne's character in Event Horizon acquires a revolver-style bolt gun, he produces not one, but four extremely satisfying gun cocking sounds: He inserts the drum, spins it, snaps the back of the gun shut and then cocks it with a sound more appropriate for a small cannon.
  • Done briefly in District 9, as one of Koobus' mercenaries is pointing out that they were ordered not to use live ammunition in bringing Wikus down after Koobus himself announces that's exactly what they're going to do. And how does our good Colonel respond? While staring blankly and apathetically at his visibly concerned subordinate, no less, with the pistol being held off-camera at the time. He was actually in the process of loading his pistol as the merc spoke, so it's a matter of timing, and on that note it's hardly noticeable.
  • Star Trek: Insurrection: Done to badass effect by Data: "Saddle up," (gun cock with a phaser rifle) "lock and load."
  • The Matrix : This trope appears in all three films in the series:
    • In the original, there's a moment of incompetence from the SWAT team when our heroes fall into the basement - the SWAT team runs into position and simultaneously cock their guns before opening fire. Seconds later, the SWAT team turns on their laser sights after Apoc throws a smoke grenade. (Oddly, when the first SWAT member realizes that the heroes are in the wetwall and summarily unloads a magazine into it, he does not do a dramatic gun cock.)
    • That said, the original also gets bonus points for Click. "Hello.":

Agent Brown: "Only human."
Trinity: *cocks pistol* "Dodge This."
[BLAM]

    • The Matrix Reloaded has Morpheus doing this for emphasis before the freeway chase starts.

Trinity: "You always told me to stay off the freeway."
Morpheus: "Yes, that's true."
Trinity: "You said it was suicide."
Morpheus: "Then let us hope..." loads magazine "...that I was wrong." cocks pistol

The Merovingian: "Are you really willing to die for this man?"
Trinity: *cocks pistol* "Believe it."

  • In Stagecoach, John Wayne pulls this off with a lever-action rifle.
  • Averted in the Michael Mann movie Heat, where the detectives pull back the slide just enough to verify there's a round in the chamber.
  • In the final scene of Natural Born Killers, a shotgun is pumped multiple times without ejecting a shell.
  • The Longest Day: A rare example of a Dramatic Gun Cock after the action: an American paratrooper fumbles around in the dark. He hears something rustling in the bushes, and uses a clicking device provided to GIs to identify friend from foe in the dark. He clicks once, then hears two clicks in return, indicating the reply of a friendly soldier. So then he stands up outside of cover - and gets shot in the gut. Cue a German soldier walking into the frame, working the action on a Mauser rifle: click clack, click clack...
  • In the Wild Wild West movie, when West realizes that the President is not who he appears to be, he points a gun to his head:

West: Who are you, mister?
Gordon: (in Grant's voice) What do you mean, who am I? I am the President of the United States.
West: Wrong answer. (shoots ceiling, points the gun back at Gordon) Who are you?
Gordon: I am the President of the -- (*click*; in normal voice) I'm Artemus Gordon.

  • Pulp Fiction features a dramatic shotgun cock once Butch breaks Marcellus out of the Mason-Dixon pawn shop.

Marcellus: CHACK-CHACK "Step aside, Butch."


Literature

  • In The Curious Case of Sid Finch, the title character (a skilled human parrot, among other talents) tries to scare a burglar by imitating the sound of a taxicab. He later wishes he had thought to make the sound of a rifle bolt being drawn back.
  • Backfires pretty badly on the protagonist of Richard K. Morgan's Market Forces. Holding some thugs at bay with a shotgun, he pumps it in attempt to intimidate them... and the gun, having been previously damaged, conspicuously fails to chamber another round, thus rendering him visibly defenseless.
  • Lampshaded in one of the Track novels by Jerry Ahern (a gun writer and action-adventure novelist). Track's Action Girlfriend takes out her pistol, and Track thinks to himself that in the movies she'd pull back the slide dramatically. Of course she doesn't do this as a round is already chambered.
  • Invoked and explored by Terry Pratchett in Nation, in which the dramatic cocking of a gun is referred to as "the two-pound noise." As the ship's cook explained "Because when a man hears that in the dark, he loses two pounds of... weight, quickly.
  • Parodied in The Last Continent, when Ponder Stibbons rolls up his sleeves at a dramatically appropriate moment, which is explicitly described as the magical equivalent of checking the action on a pump-barrel shotgun.
  • Backfires on the antagonist in Patricia Cornwell's Hornet's Nest, when he cocks his AR-15 twice, jamming the bolt open and preventing it from firing. This mistake costs him his life.
  • A character in Tim Powers' Expiration Date is taught to rack a pistol every time she draws it, partly to ensure that there's a round chambered and partly for the Dramatic Gun Cock. Every time she does this, she ejects a round onto the floor and has to retrieve it after the situation defuses.
  • Played with in Rudyard Kipling's "The Ballad of East and West," when Mohammed Khan warns the Colonel's son that in Kamal's territory, "ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen." The Colonel's son then proves how Badass he is by riding onward despite hearing unseen rifles cocked three times. This proves not to be a Harbinger of Asskicking, because Kamal chivalrously refrains from signaling his men to shoot.
  • In The Road by The father invokes this when a bandit/bloocult holds his son hostage. It's specifically stated he knows he doesn't need to, as his revolver is double action, but he tries to use it for intimidation.


Live Action TV

  • Jack Bauer did this on 24; as Lauren Proctor was getting ready to exit the room, Jack cocked his gun and told her he was more dangerous than he seemed because he'd killed two people since midnight last night.
  • CSI: Miami did this twice.
    • A whole subplot was built out of this when someone pointed a gun at the back of Calleigh Duquesne's head and cocked it. She spent the rest of the episode listening to gun-cocks until she was able to successfully identify the type of weapon pointed at her.
    • When Horatio Caine had an enemy literally under his foot, he cocked his gun while pointing it at his face and said "your move."
  • One storyline on Miami Vice has Crockett suffering partial amnesia. He forgets he's really a cop and falls into his undercover persona of a facilitator of drug deals. While in this state he shoots his partner Tubbs, apparently killing him. Of course Tubbs turns out to have been wearing a Bulletproof Vest. After that Crockett's memory begins to return. Guilt-ridden, he makes his way to the police station. He walks into the squadroom and stops. His fellow officers, believing him to have turned rogue, draw and cock their weapons in succession. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
  • Firefly:
    • Jayne seems to speak almost entirely in dramatic gun cocks.
    • Mal also seems fond of doing it at times, either to make a point (such as in the "Big Damn Heroes" scene in "Safe") or as a way of saying "Cut the bullshit" if someone is trying to con him. It's particularly noticeable in his interactions with Saffron.
    • Played for laughs when Wash cocks a tiny pistol rather dramatically in "War Stories."
    • In "Jaynestown": take notice of the sound when "Stitch" Hessian points his shotgun at Mal's face. Seeing as Stitch doesn't pump the action (he's holding the shotgun one-handed) and that model doesn't have an exposed hammer, what exactly is creating the cocking sound?
    • Many of the weapons in Firefly have, in place of a dramatic gun cock, a dramatic electrical whine (regardless of if the weapon appears to be purely conventionally mechanical or not.)
    • The interrogation aspect is inverted in The Movie, where Mal is trying to talk down River in Ax Crazy mode as she has a pistol pointed at his face.

Mal: I've staked my crew's life on the theory that you're a person, actual and whole, and if I'm wrong, you'd best shoot me now-- *click* or we could talk more...

  • Inverted in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where John has to quietly and carefully pump a shotgun while Cromartie is walking around his house. The not-so-dramatic noise nearly reveals to Cromartie where John is hiding.
    • Another time, Cameron is seen simply moving a Glock in a threatening manner, and you hear a loud "click". Note that she never moves her thumb, and even if she did, Glocks are hammerless guns, meaning there is nothing to cock, short of using your other hand to pull the slide back and chamber a new round, thereby either wasting a bullet, or showing that the gun was completely harmless before.
  • Locke uses the gun cock to get Ben to reveal information in the Lost episode "Confirmed Dead". Kate uses it in "Not in Portland" to get Aldo to tell her Karl's whereabouts.
  • In the original-series Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action", a gangster lets Kirk and Spock know they're being covered by cocking his weapon. Spock suggests they lower their weapons because he "just heard the sound of..." which Kirk finishes "...the sound of a machine gun bolt being pulled back."
  • On Angel, when the titular character is about to shoot Faith point-blank with a shotgun, he delivers his little speech, then dramatically pumps the shotgun. Then he does it again. And again. Only once all of the shells have been ejected does Faith kick it away and resume fisticuffs.
    • Yeah, just count how many times that shotgun was fired and then had shells ejected. Someone the production team wasn't keeping close count.
    • Also done with those pistol crossbows the Fang Gang carry, though it's not quite clear what they're supposed to be cocking.
  • From What It's Like Being Alone:

"What happened to my booze? Did I black out and join AA?" (Dramatic Gun Cock) "Better unjoin it."

  • Blatantly overused in Heroes, where you know someone is going to cock their gun only after pointing it at someone for ten seconds. The only exception is Noah Bennet.
  • While not a firearm, Stargate SG-1's version of the Dramatic Gun Cock would be the staff weapon's distinctive "Bzzzt" sound when it is armed, as well as showing arcs of energy along the tip of the weapon. The Goa'uld and their Jaffa love doing this to prisoners before executing them.
    • As with the staff weapons, the 'TEEE-UNG' sound of a zat being activated definitely qualifies.
    • And of course, the 'FWOOOAAAEEE' sound of Ronon's gun powering up in Stargate Atlantis. And, to a lesser extent, Teyla cocking her P90 upon realizing she can't buy more time when she was being forced to execute Sheppard by a not-quite-herself Weir.
  • On Top Gear's Polar Special, James May cocks his shotgun for the camera as he keeps watch while Jeremy Clarkson is enthroned on a portable toilet affixed to their truck's back bumper. Clarkson immediately calls out: "James, are you showing off, or are you actually looking for bears over there? Because I can't run"
  • In David Tennant's last episode as the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, he acts particularly indecisive and remarkably careless when deciding who to shoot... and seemingly re-cocks the gun every time he aims it at someone else. While he Doesn't Like Guns and might not know how they work, it's a revolver so that shouldn't even be possible.
    • It gets worse. If you look close, you can see the way he's holding the gun he has the trigger pulled all the way.
    • New-Who is severely overloaded with this trope. Pretty much every time anybody points a gun at anything, there is a Dramatic Gun Cock. If they turn and point at something else, there's another one. It would seem that firearms in the Whoniverse not only have to be manually cocked, but the slightest motion will cause them to uncock without firing and force them to be cocked again. Exceptions are sometimes made for ray guns and other non-standard firearms... although the number of energy weapons that have to be pumped like shotguns is really quite remarkable.
  • Seems like Fiona does this with a shotgun every other week on Burn Notice.
  • Averted by Guerrero on Human Target, who shoots a client in the back without any warning at all after selling him info about Chance's first case. Made up for in spades in one scene of another episode, where the entire roomful of armed and unfriendly men cock and re-cock their weapons at every awkward pause in the conversation.
  • Human PPGs in Babylon 5 have a very distinctive capacitor charging whine when powering up. Hearing it usually means that some ass is about to be kicked.
    • And much like in other examples, just about anything you do with a PPG makes it do its version of a Dramatic Gun Cock. In one episode, you hear the sound repeatedly just from Garibaldi removing and re-inserting the cap.
  • Much like Jayne, John Casey in Chuck is fond of cocking guns for emphasis. As is everyone else in the show.
    • Spoofed by Alexei Volkoff who admits it's useless, but loves the sound.
  • Used before half the commercial breaks in Sons of Guns when a member of the crew test fires a recently built or repaired gun.
  • Every time someone draws a weapon or points it at someone in Andromeda there's a "power up" sound, presumably the energy weapon equivalent of a gun cock. However, this doesn't seem to be the result of any action on the part of the person holding the gun. It appears that the guns themselves have a sense of drama and know when to make that sound.
  • Sherlock pulls one off, beautifully.

Moriarty: No one ever gets to me. And no one ever will.
Sherlock: (click) I did.

  • Any version of Law & Order will have the protagonist pull their weapon and cock it- what makes it odd is that they are all brandishing Glocks, which have no hammer to cock!
  • The television adaptations of the Sharpe books are a bit prone to this. Made even worse by their use of flintlock muskets, pistols and rifles; generally these make only a pronounced "click" when pulled back to half-cock (safe position from which the pan may be primed), followed by another when pulled to full-cock. Trying to get a flintlock to make the characteristic set of three closely-spaced, sharp clicks the series uses is... not easy.


Tabletop Games

  • In GURPS Discworld Also, the type of repeating crossbow used in the swashbuckling seaports of the Brown Islands makes a distinctive "ka-chunk" sound when a bolt is released from the magazine. "Some users regard this as an essential feature."
  • Spending a shot to do this with a shotgun (the "KA-CHINK!" rule) in Feng Shui gets you an extra damage point on your next attack with it.
  • Spycraft gives pump-action shotgun owners a bonus on their Intimidate skill at the start of combat. Guess where it comes from.
  • The World of Darkness actually gives you Intimidation bonuses for cocking a pump-action shotgun. Not so for any other type of gun, however, as they aren't nearly scary enough.


Video Games

  • In the final prologue mission in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Khaled Al-Asad gets quite a badass one right before executing the Arabic president Al-Fulani on national TV.

Al-Asad: (Into camera) This is how it begins...*Ka-Click, BLAM*

    • In Modern Warfare 2, switching to a weapon's under-barrel shotgun attachment is always preceded with a Dramatic Gun Cock, even if it already has a shell loaded. Only the player doing so can hear it, though. Also done by General Shepherd at you during a period of Controllable Helplessness.
  • Miranda Keyes gets a great one in Halo 3

Soldier: Ma'am, squad leaders are requesting a rally point. Where should they go?
Keyes: *Ka-Click* To war.

  • Averted in Halo: Reach. Only the first time you draw your weapon, be it a pistol, an assault rifle, or anything in between, does your character cock it. Every subsequent time, or until you drop the weapon and pick it up again, you'll simply heft it to its ready position; the most action you'll take is flipping the safety off if necessary.
  • Except for the sniper rifles, every time you switch guns in Counter-Strike, your character automatically cocks the gun as soon as you select one.
  • In "Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne", right before Vlad kills Alfred Woden, and he and Max both fall through the floor, Max finds a Desert Eagle and cocks it, even though it was being used moments ago .
  • Overplayed in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. In an attempt to find the location of the C4 bombs along the complex, Raiden interrogates Fat Man. As Fat Man pushes a remote, Raiden cocks his gun and demands an explanation. He does this at least twice more.
  • Both justified and subverted in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater:
    • The first time Major Ocelot racks the slide on his pistol during the Virtuous Mission (before he kills a KGB team), no bullet comes out of the ejector port which gives the idea that Ocelot doesn't chamber a bullet until he's going to shoot someone (presumably so he can avoid shooting himself while spinning it).
    • When he's about to shoot Naked Snake, Ocelot reloaded and tried to rack the slide before he fired, an uncommon Middle Eastern technique used to ensure there is an unjammed bullet in the chamber. Since he was obviously trying it for the first time, the gun stovepiped on him. Snake later chastised him for trying a technique he couldn't rely on himself to do.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, whenever Snake (or any other player) reloads a gun, he uses the technique demonstrated by Ocelot in MGS3, above, when he ejects the unspent round.
  • This is a game mechanic in Metal Gear Solid. Using the Run-And-Shoot technique, Snake will hold his gun ready to fire while moving around (it's very useful during the battle with Ocelot, amongst other times). However, if he turns around 180 degrees, he does a cinematic-style dramatic gun cock, causing him to stop in his tracks a little (preventing it from being a total Game Breaker).
  • From the Team Fortress 2 video "Meet the Spy", the soldier dramatically cocks his shotgun, while claiming that the BLU spy was the RED spy all along. For the record, he cocked the gun right after shooting the spy, meaning that the act of cocking didn't waste a round.
  • At the end of the introductory highway stage in Mega Man X, the sound of Zero's blaster charging up replaces the click.
  • The title screen clip for Shadow the Hedgehog. Not to mention the introductory Cutscene has Shadow cocking an assault rifle!
  • With the new Dual Pistols powerset in City of Heroes, you cock your guns whenever you draw them, or switch ammo.
  • You can cock your gun in battle in Mass Effect 2 whenever you want.
  • In Oddworld, Sligs are armed with shotgun looking devices that fire full-auto from Bottomless Magazines. That said, they have an animation which is three quick gun-cocks - thus, it appears that the only reason they have the bottom part of their weapon is so it can make cocking noises.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 uses this in its opening cutscene:

Coach: Barricade your homes...Avoid all contact with infected individuals...Wait for official instructions...*Laugh* Wait, my ass.
Eilis: Kill all sons-of-bitches. *Racks shotgun* That's my 'ficial instructions.

    • In gameplay, switching to the pistol(s) in the first game causes the character to pull back the hammer(s). In the sequel, switching to any pistol, SMG, assault rifle, or auto-shotgun causes the character to pull back the slide or charging handle on the weapon in question.
  • In Dungeon Fighter Online', the Gunner character class cocks his gun every 5 seconds when in town. There are usually at least ten of them.
  • In Dynasty Wariors 7, Guo Huai cocks his hand cannon before he is about to kill Xiahou Ba.


Web Comics


Web Original


Western Animation

  • The Simpsons
    • Parodies: a hunter says something dramatic, and pumps his shotgun, visibly expelling a shell. Cletus the Yokel tries to copy him, and then he and the hunter start bickering about whether his comment added anything, and they keep expelling shells at the end of each sentence!
    • While threatening Homer and Krusty with a revolver, a Mob boss cocks his gun, scaring Homer. After some patter, he cocks the gun again, eliciting the exact same response. In the DVD commentary, the writers mention that they thought it was hilarious that a gun gets more frightening the more often you cock it.
    • In "Magical History Tour," Lois and Clark are surrounded by aboriginals, they cock their guns in response, so the aboriginals respond by cocking their bow and arrows.
    • Upon learning the book to end zombie curse in in the library, Homer swing-cocks a shotgun in "Treehouse of Horror III".

Homer: To the book-depository!

  • South Park: parodied several times when the boys are playing Cop games. Stan makes a dramatic line and to double the drama pumps his shotgun... of course they don't actually have shotguns so Stan just pumps his imaginary one and makes the "Ch-ch" sound himself. And then there's the time Stan cocks a real gun...
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: When Patrick catches Spongebob stealing his secret box.

"Get ready for the most uncomfortable pillow fight of your life! (cocks his pillow)

  • After Bill, the fat neighbor on King of the Hill, failed to kill himself, Dale, Hank, and Boomhaur started a suicide watch. Dale's turn involves him sitting on a chair with a shotgun watching Bill all day.

Bill: "But I have to tinkle."
Dale: "Not on my watch." (cocks shotgun)


Real Life

  • The reason the shotgun app exists.
  • Almost all military units, the world over, keep a round chambered at all times while in the field. The only exception are peace-keeping forces, because the sight and sound of an entire squad cocking their weapons is usually enough to scare any would-be troublemakers back into line without the force having to resort to violence. Double-action handguns give you the best of both worlds. The Beretta 92FS handgun - the weapon of choice for John Woo and the US military—is usually carried with a round chambered but the hammer down, and you can either do a Dramatic Gun Cock with the hammer or just pull the trigger; the gun will work fine either way without wasting a bullet.
    • Handguns have three typical variations: Single-Action, Double-Action, and Double-Action Only.[2] Single-action requires the hammer be pulled down with each shot; simply pulling the trigger will not do anything useful as there's no mechanism for the trigger to pull the hammer down. Double-Action features a visible hammer, but, while it can be pulled back manually, it doesn't need to be: instead, pulling the trigger will set the hammer into place automatically. Double-action-only works the same as double-action, but doesn't have a visible hammer, so there's no dramatic gun cock option available. Older revolvers may have single-action triggers, but modern automatic handguns are almost invariably double-action or double-action-only.
  • It's been said that if you must keep a gun in the house, a pump-action shotgun is a good choice for a number of reasons. First, the small pellets are unlikely to go though walls and reduces the chance of friendly fire, and secondly, the sound of loading a round in the chamber is VERY distinctive and lets the intruder know what is pointing at them. Note: just because the home owner has a pump shotgun, doesn't mean that they have bird shot loaded (small pellets, around BB sized), they may have buck shot (larger sized pellets) or a deer slug (a huge hunk of lead) actual sizes of pellets Second note: Do not do this in real life: It incredibly dangerous to wait until you can see the intruder before loading a round in the chamber. If the intruder is armed you could end up dead before you can finish racking your gun. If you are in a situation where you need to be brandishing a gun both you and your weapon should be ready to shoot. An alternative is having a loaded and cocked gun, and giving an oral warning that you have a weapon.
  • A common practice with vintage single-action revolvers and lever action rifles. There was nothing to prevent the firing pin from hitting the primer of a chambered cartridge if the weapon was dropped or the the hammer was bumped, so the normal carry state was hammer down on an empty chamber.
  • One officer at least claimed to do this in a real manhunt. He was wielding a shotgun that was already primed to fire, but the suspect was hiding somewhere. The officer worked the slide (and ejected a round) to persuade the suspect to give up.
    • Another officer did this when a driver refused to turn his car around while approaching a bridge with a suicidal individual.
  • Deputy Bud Staple credited the sound of a newly-arrived Army unit's simultaneous loading of their M-1's with intimidating the mob trying to keep James Meredith from registering at Ole Miss.
  • Any spring powered "toy" gun almost always has to rely on cocking the "gun" between shots. Nerf guns, pellet guns, even some BB guns.
  1. ↑ A standard procedure on that weapon, to ensure that the weapon is not jammed before he tries to use it.
  2. ↑ There's also Single-And-Double-Action, but they're functionally the same as Double-Action, with the difference being that the first shot has to have the hammer pulled down, and each subsequent shot only requires a trigger pull
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