Trigger Happy

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Border Guard: Recreational shooting? There's over a million rounds in there!

Yuri Orlov, arms dealer: I'm trigger happy.

Some people really, really like guns. Maybe they're Compensating for Something. Maybe they see all problems as solvable with More Dakka. Maybe they just prefer to shoot first and ask questions later.

Mr. (or Ms.) Trigger Happy tends to have some (or all) of the following traits:

See also the whole family of people who have a little too much fun murdering people, i.e., Ax Crazy, Chainsaw Good, Gatling Good, Knife Nut... Of course, even a mellow and sane person can sometimes find himself in a situation where the only thing to do is Shoot Everything That Moves. But if you're Trigger Happy, you'll enjoy it more.

Compare/Contrast Orgasmic Combat and Combat Sadomasochist.

Not to be confused with Trigger Happy TV.

Examples of Trigger Happy include:

Anime and Manga

  • Revy from Black Lagoon is the Sociopathic Hero version of this trope. When she goes into "Whitman Fever," though...
  • Gauron from Full Metal Panic!. He actually had to be restrained from shooting a pilot (who was the only one who even knew how to operate the plane everyone was on), all because he just likes shooting and killing so much.
    • Sousuke is also very Trigger Happy, but in the more non-lethal way. He just really seems to like shooting and blowing things up. In the Full Metal Panic!! Overload manga, this is taken to an extreme, where it might very well have been the lethal way, but is played for laughs. In fact, it's so bad that in one of the stories, he's actually shown having withdrawal symptoms because he hadn't shot a gun that day (due to promising Chidori he wouldn't bring his guns or shoot anyone). He Lampshades it by thinking that he shouldn't feel this way, since it would make him a Gun Maniac. To put it in his thoughts: "The recoil and muzzle flash when I fire, the lingering smell of gunpowder... experiencing these on the battlefield truly makes me feel alive!" Indeed, in the Overload manga, he's actually more of a Trigger Happy maniac than Gauron (yes, he officially achieved the impossible there).
    • Sousuke meets his match when he encounters the mad policewoman in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, who gets into a shootout with Sousuke in his Bonta-kun costume. In a later episode where she hears the gun-toting Bonta-kun is on the loose again, her fellow police officers have to physically restrain her from going berserk with Guns Akimbo FN-P90's.
  • Robert from Guu. He's even shooting it off in the opening.
  • Reborn from Katekyo Hitman Reborn, who, as Tsuna notes, looks ridiculously happy at the thought of being able to shoot people. Of course, the person he ends up shooting is always Tsuna.
  • Train Heartnet from Black Cat is this, somewhat. His gun has a name, "Hades", and he's shown to get a bit restless when he hasn't shot anything for a while. Although, being a Technical Pacifist, he's forced to not kill people with it, that doesn't prevent him from shooting things out of their hands or simply wounding them.
    • Technical Pacifist? You sure about that? I'm pretty sure he at least killed the first few people he fought, and probably plenty more.
  • Leena from Zoids: New Century Zero.
  • Most notable in Digimon: Gargomon, a trigger happy Rambo bunny (Dog actually, but who cares?) with gatling guns for hands.
  • Of course, we can't forget Alucard, from Hellsing. He carries two impossibly heavy guns, Jackel and his Casull Joshua. And the ever popular image of him resting his vampire canines on the barrel of the gun.
  • Genkaku from Deadman Wonderland. Wielding a double-machine gun-electric guitar, he really really loves to use it. He expresses great disappointment when Mouzuri restrains him from shooting Ganta. Not to mention that he even has an affectionate name for it, calling it "Flying V." He generally treats it with a lot more compassion and love than any human he encounters in the series, and the only time he's shown crying is when it's broken by Shiro. He keeps a grudge towards Shiro because of it, and is shown saying he'll hold a funeral service for it (something he'd never do for a human).
  • In Gantz, a lot of Gantzers (pretty much all side characters, since none of the protagonists are shown to be that sadistic) are Trigger Happy.
  • Maya Jingu from the Burn Up anime franchise, especially her Warrior/Excess incarnation.
  • K from Gravitation, anyone?
  • Giroro of Keroro Gunsou is hardly ever seen without his gun. When not firing it, he's either wearing it, polishing it, or messing around with a different weapon.
  • Elie from Rave Master.
  • Hiruma from Eyeshield 21.
  • Almost everyone in Gunsmith Cats.
  • Mana and Sayo from Mahou Sensei Negima.
  • Attenborough from Gurren Lagann LOVES firing the Dai-Gurren's cannons for the smallest reason. And when the Chouginga Dai-Gurren is about to hit every point of the universe simultaneously with a fuckton of guns, his facial expression is one of pure bliss.
  • Arnage of Huckebein from Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force. In the chapter that introduced her Divider, instead of dodging the 25 million energy beams headed her way like she was ordered to, she decided to shoot them all down since that was more her style.
  • Kaito Wanijima from Air Gear has a gun as his weapon of choice. He uses it a LOT.
  • Hibari Ginza from Speed Grapher seems to have a permanently itchy trigger finger. When she's not shooting someone(Self Defense!) she threatening to shoot someone. Even if that someone is a fellow cop.
  • Ladd Russo from Baccano!, who gets excited at the sound of gunfire. Mind you, he also likes knives, Good Old Fisticuffs, tire irons, lead pipes, knuckledusters, rubber chickens with a pulley in the middle, or just about anything that helps in killing people, but he seems to have a special fondness for guns.
  • Officer Volvo Saigo in Kochikame is very trigger happy with his weapons at the slightest disturbance around him causing threat to Ryotsu and the others.

Comics

  • Deadeye Duck from Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars.
  • Sin City characters are over this trope. Marv certainly laughs when he kills his enemies and calls his gun Gladys. The Cool Car love is there as well. Dwight and the Old Town girls are also quite fond of mowing down enemies as seen in the climax of Big Fat Kill.
  • Pig's militaristic Guard Duck from Pearls Before Swine. He constantly believes that everyone besides Pig and his friends are the enemy and his first solution to problems is to shoot like crazy.
  • Brianna from Gold Digger. One author's note commented, "Yes, all of Brianna's weapons have first names... Got a prob' wit dat?"

Film

Nelson: * while hanging out the door of a moving vehicle* Han' me dat choppah!
Delmar: Say, what line o' work ya in, George?
Nelson: * firing the Thompson at the cops* Ha ha ha ha! Come and get me, coppers! You flatfooted, lame-brained, soft-ass sonsabitches!

  • Jim West in Wild Wild West, as lampshaded by President Grant: "Shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more and then when everybody's dead try to ask a question or two!"
  • Ironhide in the Transformers live-action films is extremely trigger happy. In the first film, he recommends that they kill Sam's parents simply to expedite Sam's search for the MacGuffin. In the first video game, it's implied he blew up a planet, though he insists it would have blown up anyway.
  • Dear Wendy: Happens gradually over the space of the film. The protagonist actually hates guns at first.

Live Action TV

  • Jayne on Firefly. There aren't many scenes where he isn't carrying some sort of weapon.
    • He's shown to be Crazy Prepared as far as weapons go. His whole room is filled to the brim with them and in the Big Damn Movie, the one time he wants to bring grenades but gets overruled by Mal, the team ends up needing them.

Jayne: [as the crew is being pursued by Reavers] Boy, sure would be nice if we had some GRENADES, don't you think?!
And then later on: Mal: "Please tell me you brought them this time"

  • Detective Hammer from Sledge Hammer!. He does target practice inside his apartment, he talks to his gun, and his reaction to a sniper on top of a building is to bring the entire building down with a rocket launcher. That's just in the pilot episode.
  • Aeryn Sun on Farscape spends a lot of time shooting people with evident pleasure. Even while giving birth.
  • Chuck: John Casey loves guns.
  • In what might be the only nonlethal variation, Parker on Leverage is trigger happy with various Stun Guns and tasers.
  • Flashpoint: A wanna-be SRU member doesn't pass the exam when he's a little to eager to shoot a perp, or possibly a guy who happens to be in the wrong place in the wrong time.
  • Deadliest Catch: The Hillstrands mark special occasions with automatic rifle fire (plus fireworks and flare guns).
  • Carlton Lassiter on Psych is the butt of many wisecracks from everyone in the SBPD for being this (especially when shooting inanimate objects that he mistook for an attacker).

Music

I filled that kitty-cat so full of lead
We'll have to use him for a pencil instead

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Web Comics

  • Craze from Building 12.
  • Freckle of Lack a daisy fame is this- though he generally only becomes so when he has a gun in hand.
  • Vaarsuvius of The Order of the Stick would be this if s/he had a gun. As it is, s/he just uses spell spam.

Web Original

  • The Nostalgia Critic. This comes back to bite him in the ass during Kickassia; Insano calls out for Santa Christ, Santa Christ's theme starts, Critic panics and shoots our Lord and Saviour dead.
    • Also from Kickassia, we have Angry Joe, who shoots the cameraman when a reporter mentions that he has been called "gun-crazy."

Western Animation

  • Disney, oddly enough, Loves This Trope:
    • Scrooge McDuck's New Old Flame Glittering Goldie on DuckTales (1987).
    • EVE in WALL-E, of course.
    • Trigger from Disney's Robin Hood.
      • It doesn't help that Trigger's crossbow "Old Betsy" is notoriously unreliable and goes off at the slightest provocation.
  • Heinrich "Herr Trigger" Triggermensch, one of the three assassins sent after Brock Samson during the Season Three Finale of The Venture Brothers, is one of these, complete with licking is gun-barrel in sexual ecstasy during his fight scene.
  • Minor Decepticon Triggerhappy in Transformers Generation 1 lives up to his name. Apparently while goofing around at the military academy he accidentally vaporized his entire squad of trainees and his instructor. This earned him an immediate graduation and field promotion. However, some theorize that his crazed affection for heavy automatic weaponry isn't due to pride at this defining moment, but because he happened to bump his head pretty bad in said accident.
  • The Simpsons - Homer Simpson became this for one episode, where he buys a gun to protect the family following a series of riots in Springfield. However, he quickly becomes ludicrously irresponsible with the gun (using it to change the channel and open a beer, among other feats), which drives Marge and the kids away. He goes to the local NRA for support, but they're just as appalled by him as Marge was and kick him out of the organization. The whole episode serves to deliver An Aesop about responsible gun usage.
  • Futurama - Mom's Friendly Killbots will automatically shoot anyone who mentions anything even vaguely resembling gun terminology (like getting "Howitzer" out of "how it serve"), along with shooting anything that moves.
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