In movies, after someone is shot they are in great pain or even crippled until someone pulls the bullet out. Once the bullet is plucked out and dramatically dropped into a bowl, the victim seems to be completely fine. Is the bullet being in the wound really the biggest problem? Is it preventing the wound from closing somehow?
In: Biology
It’s a matter of visual language. Once the audience sees the bullet removed and dropped in a container, then the person bandaged, they understand the person has been treated for the gunshot and the bullet isn’t inside them anymore, so if they look okay then they are okay.
Pro Tip: there’s often no reason at all to extract the bullet and often many reasons not to do so.
Why go digging around in your flesh, knowing I might damage more tissue or sever an artery? They do it in movies to advance the story, and not for medical reasons. It’s a convenient way to signal that the injuring force has been removed and the character is now fine.
President James Garfield was shot in 1881 and died several weeks later. It’s widely believed that what killed him was not the bullet, but rather his doctors’ insistence on locating and extracting it. They kept on probing his wounds with unsterilized fingers and instruments and he basically died of sepsis. He probably would have survived if they had just left well enough alone and let the wound heal around the bullet.
On a similar topic, it’s pretty stupid when a character say “the bullet went straight through” and then it’s even less of an issue
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