Bullet Dancing

A baddie fires a gun at a goodie's feet. They hop about a bit as the bullets hit. No goodie has yet been hit in the foot.

Given the number of parodies and subversions listed below, this is obviously a Dead Horse Trope nowadays.

Examples of Bullet Dancing include:

Anime and Manga

• In Black Lagoon anime, the local triad leader Mr.Chang had to do some unusual poses to dodge the full-automatic barrage of Browning Automatic Rifle by Gretel. She evens compliments on his "dancing".
• In Soul Eater BlackStar and Tsubaki end up doing this when the latter decides to confront a roomful of mobsters armed with tommy guns.
  • Black Star and Soul do the same during their fight with Kid.
• Rare good guy doing this to bad guy example in Martian Successor Nadesico- the crew gets into a conflict with sinister Earth government officials. Izumi gets a kick out of doing this to The Men in Black.
• At one point in Eyeshield 21 Hiruma does this to his teammates while they're doing footwork training. "Do the dance from hell!"

Comic Books

• A favourite pastime of most Lucky Luke villains, not to mention Lucky Luke himself.

Film

• Pick a Western, any Western.
  • It was even done in the first movie western, The Great Train Robbery (1903).
  • Pale Rider. The corrupt marshalls led by Stockburn force one of the pan miners to do this, until he reaches for his own gun and they can 'legally' shoot him.
• Subversion: In the gangster flick Goodfellas, Tommy actually shoots the bartender, Spider in the foot as he's doing the Bullet Dance.
• Similarly, the conclusion of Spike Lee's film Bamboozled, where the gangsta rapper Mau-Maus force Manray to tapdance one last time before shooting him. Spike Lee uses footage from the scene in "Bugs Bunny Rides Again" to contrast with the tragedy of the scene.
• In Back To The Future Part III, Mad Dog Tannen fires a gun at Marty's feet while ordering him to "dance". Spoofed as Marty turns it into a full-fledged moonwalk, jumping on a loose board to launch a spittoon for a finale.
• An alternate version can be seen in Hero, when the Imperial archers attack a calligraphy school, unleashing wave after wave of arrows. Nameless and Flying Snow stand in front of the school, brushing aside as many arrows as they can with martial arts moves that closely resemble dancing.
• In Inspector Gadget, our favorite bumbling cyborg is face to face with his evil robotic double on the Roberto Clemente Bridge. When asked if he knows how to dance, Gadget mentions taking lessons not too long ago in what quickly becomes a Noodle Incident as Robo-Gadget fires at his feet.

Live Action TV

• Tongue-in-cheek variation: In the second episode of the 2006 series of Robin Hood, Robin and his friends are robbed by bandits, then turn the tables; after tying the bandits up, Robin gets them dancing by shooting arrows at their feet.
• The never-getting-hit part was subverted in Band of Brothers, where Lt. Winters got hurt in the shin by a ricochet shot from the floor and had to have the shrapnel removed.
• Parodied on an Australian sketch comedy program where a gunslinger makes an old prospector bullet dance, only for it to be revealed as an audition for So You Think You Can Dance?.
• The Red Dwarf episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse" has the leader of the gunmen get Kryten to dance this way.

Music

• In one of Stan Roger's songs, an Albertan rancher makes some cattle rustlers do the bullet dance. In this case, it's the hero doing it to the bad guys.

Theatre

• In the Act One finale of Girl Crazy, when Danny tries to restrain Molly from running off to Mexico with a Romantic False Lead, she calls him a dancing man and starts firing at his feet.

Video Games

• Video game parody: In Devil May Cry 3, Dante, the hero, attempts to shoot the villainous Jester in the feet; Jester breaks into the Charleston as he dodges the bullets.
• In Skies of Arcadia, one of Gilder's S-Moves has him do exactly that to his enemies.

Gilder: C'mon... Dance for me.

• Used by cowboy robot gunslingers in Champions Online.

Web Animation

• Lampshaded in a sing-song voice and subsequently subverted in the 'Spanish Class' episode of Stickman Exodus.

Western Animation

• One of the most famous subversions was in the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Bugs Bunny Rides Again", where Yosemite Sam fires at Bugs' feet and orders him to "Dance!"—and Bugs breaks into a full-bore softshoe routine complete with straw hat and cane. Bugs then yells "Take it, Sam!" and the confused Sam does—straight into an open mine shaft.
• Variation: In an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, a man swings his dual dao swords at Uncle Iroh's feet, prompting him to dance and avoid the blades. Upon closer inspection you can see he just slashes in front of his feet, so it really wouldn't hurt him if he didn't move (but then he wouldn't get paid for dancing).
• Parodied on The Simpsons episode "Burns' Heir", in a flashback where Mr. Burns recalls performing this trick with a single shot pistol - firing, manually loading a bullet and powder into the muzzle, cocking the hammer, and firing again while the victim dances obligingly.
• In the Dilbert animated series Dogbert abuses his diplomatic immunity by commanding a group of Elbonians to dance while firing at their feet. Dogbert then tosses them bandanas and orders them to riverdance.
• Parodied in Kim Possible, in the episode where Ron is obsessed with the boy band "Oh Boyz". He gets out of a cage and dodges heat seeking lasers by—you guessed it-- dancing.
• Sindbad, played by Bluto, does this to a captured Olive Oyl in Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor using a peashooter.
• Bruce Wayne in a rather embarassing scene from his three-part DCAU teamup with Superman in "World's Finest."

Other

• Done in the Firesign Theater skit "Temporarily Humboldt County", someone fires a gun (presumably) at a native American Indian's feet.

'Let's see the war dance, yeah *bang* dance dance'.