GET OFF MY WORLD --

The Ultimate Nullifier

"....I just found out I can increase The Power of my PRIME by Five Times in 111 Seconds --

Office-automation? Revolutionary!
Accounting? No more Books --

I can Design Ships;

Run Power-Stations --

Oil, Gas... Where would
The Energy Industry be 

without PRIME..??!"

FANTASTIC 4: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER Clip - 

"Human Torch vs. The Silve...

Time's Champion : 

You've got enough weapons 

here to fight A War.

The Brig : 

That's the general idea.

Time's Champion : It'll be useless, Brigadier.

The Brig : Not this time, Doctor. Over here!

(A soldier brings a small ammunition box.)

The Brig : Open that box, will you?

(The Brigadier takes out a large bullet.)

The Brig : Armour-piercing, solid core, with a Teflon coating. Go through a Dalek.

Time's Champion : A non-stick bullet.

The Brig : UNIT's been very busy, Doctor. 

We've also got high-explosive rounds for Yeti's and 

very efficient armour-piercing rounds for robots. 

We've even got Gold-tipped bullets for You-Know-What.

Time's Champion : No silver?

The Brig : Silver bullets?

Time's Champion : Well, you never know....

The Brig : Quartermaster-Sergeant! Silver-bullets -- Have we any?

"That silver could have fed my entire tribe for a year."

— Tonto, Robot Chicken

The silver bullet is a common form of Depleted Phlebotinum Shells. It's often called for when supernatural creatures are around for whom silver is an Achilles' Heel.

Throughout mythology and subsequent fiction, silver has been a common ward against evil. Silver, especially if blessed, has been thought to ward off or harm certain supernatural beings (including vampires) since the Middle Ages. The use of silver bullets to kill werewolves has become popular only since it was invented by Curt Siodmak, the writer of The Wolf Man (1941).note However, in the 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore, someone does use a silver bullet on Bertrand Caillet (though it does not slay him, only landing in the leg). The iconography of the silver bullet being the only, instant solution to a problem have made it an English idiom for the perfect solution.

For the details on the practicality of making and using silver ammunition, see the Analysis sub-page.

A Sub-Trope of Silver Has Mystic Powers and Depleted Phlebotinum Shells. See also Weapon of X-Slaying for slightly more metaphorical silver bullets. Can also be considered an aversion of Fantasy Gun Control.

In The Astounding Wolf-Man, an assassin explains that even if the story about Silver Bullets wasn't true, silver bullets should at least hurt as much as regular ones. As it turns out, there are a few elements harmful to werewolves, but Silver is the most commonly known one.

Batman: The Golden Age Batman used silver bullets to slay the vampire/werewolf hybrids the Monk and Dala as they slumbered in their coffins.

Doctor Strange:

Silver Dagger not only wields his namesake knives as weapons but also commands a group of zealot commandos armed with automatic weapons loaded with silver bullets.

In Doctor Strange: The Oath, Strange nearly loses his own life to a silver bullet, fired from the very pistol with which Hitler committed suicide. The shooter is a Muggle, but he theorized (correctly) that the combination of the two is enough bad mojo to get through Strange's magical protections.

The protagonist of Fiends of the Eastern Front made a whole belt of silver bullets to combine this trope with More Dakka to take on Constanta and his minions.

An issue of Planetary has a The Lone Ranger Expy who uses silver bullets to kill criminals who want the silver mine he owns. In an interesting twist, it's revealed that he tipped every bullet with mercury, a byproduct of silver mining, so that even if a shot is non-fatal (which many of them are), the victim will still die of mercury poisoning.

Scare Tactics (DC Comics): The Ketchum clan of werewolves have a stash of silver bullets just for those occasions their prey is on the supernatural side, their kin included. Silver weaponry in any form works well against such creatures as corroborated in "Undead—And Loving It!" where a silver spear is the only thing that can imprison and kill an incredibly powerful vampire.

Shazam!: In The Marvel Family #71 "The Mystery of Ghost Island", the Marvels find an ore of silver and proceed to forge weapons (a sword, a shield and many bullets) to fight a herd of monsters plaguing the titular island. Remarkably, the silver weapons destroy all monsters, regarding their nature: vampires, werewolves, ghouls, witches...

In the Solomon Kane comic book story "The Silver Beast of Tonkertown" (not based on one of Robert E. Howard's original stories), Kane melts down an inn's silverware to create a silver pistol ball which he uses to slay a werewolf that is terrorising the town.

In a Two-Gun Kid special, Two-Gun uses a silver bullet he obtained from "Kid Clayton" (a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of The Lone Ranger) to kill a werewolf.

Subverted in a Wolverine annual that has Wolverine and Deadpool teamed up against a werewolf. After figuring out that adamantium doesn't work, Wolverine grabs Deadpool's swords and hacks away. That doesn't work either.

Wolverine: 'Pool, your swords?

Deadpool: What? Silver's expensive! Chrome looks just as good!

In World's Finest (1941) #214, the western-themed hero named the Vigilante uses a silver bullet to save Superman from a werewolf.

Averted, and mocked, in An American Werewolf in London: David, the eponymous werewolf, is advised by his undead victims to kill himself. When he asks, "Don't I need a silver bullet?", his dead best friend Jack replies, "Oh, be serious!"

In The Beast Must Die, Tom reveals to Pavel that her has had silver bullets made to hunt the werewolf. Exactly why he had the cases made of silver as well as the bullets is anyone's guess.

In the Blade Trilogy, Blade employs silver stakes as part of his vast vampire-killing arsenal. Downplayed slightly with his guns in that Blade himself mentions that the bullets aren't silver. He uses hollow point rounds filled with a mixture of silver nitrate and essence of garlic.

In The Breed (2001), vampires are sensitive to both silver and sunlight. Thus, cops expecting to deal with vampires carry not only silver bullets but also silver handcuffs and silver hand grenades.

In Brotherhood of the Wolf, Jean-François de Morangias uses a specially modified one-handed musket loaded with silver bullets as his signature weapon, for no apparent reason other than to show off. It's certainly not because he thinks the Beast of Gévaudan is a werewolf... And he really, really should have known better than to murder someone with them, especially after showing the victim's best friend the bullets a few days earlier.

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors: In "Werewolf", Dawson melts down a silver crucifix (which had itself had been made from the silver sword used to slay the werewolf 200 years earlier) and casts six silver bullets to slay the werewolf.

In Fright Night (2011), Amy tries using silver bullets against Jerry, who seems more amused than injured as he pulls the bullets out of his shoulder, chiding her: "Werewolves." She then throws a cupful of holy water in his face, responding in kind: "Vampires."

Hellboy (2004): Silver shavings are among the ingredients listed by Hellboy for the all-purpose paranormal monster-killing bullets he uses for the Samaritan revolver.

The Howling:

In The Howling (1981), silver bullets are the only kind that can permanently kill werewolves; regular bullets will incapacitate them, but they'll eventually recover. Chris gets his hands on a pre-made order of silver bullets and uses them to kill some members of the local werewolf colony and holds the others at gunpoint, forcing them into a barn he and Karen set alight to wipe them out though they don't get all of them. The werewolves initially don't take him seriously until they realise he does have genuine silver bullets.

The sequel Howling II: Stirba: Werewolf Bitch subverts the trope and reveals that while silver bullets work just fine against (relatively) young werewolves like the group in the first movie, with ancients like Stirba, they merely incapacitate the target for a while. The real metal of choice is titanium.

Juan of the Dead: While trying to figure out how to kill a reanimated neighbor, Lázaro suggests that they try shooting it with a silver bullet. Juan points out that they do not have a gun or any silver.

In The Legend of the Lone Ranger, the eponymous solitary range-rider uses silver bullets because they improve his aim.

In The Lone Ranger (2013), Tonto makes one for the Lone Ranger because he's superstitious (and insane) and believes the villain is a Wendigo. He probably isn't.

In Love at First Bite, Dr. Rosenberg tries to kill Dracula with silver bullets. Dracula then informs him that he's thinking of werewolves.

The Man with the Golden Gun has the eponymous villain equipped with a golden gun (assembled from ordinary-looking parts) which is then loaded with custom-caliber, gold bullets engraved with the name of their targets. Downplayed because the bullets have no supernatural powers — Scaramanga really is that good.

The Matrix Reloaded establishes that stories about werewolves, vampires, and UFOs are based on now-defunct programs trying to escape deletion. The Merovingian employs several of these programs as muscle.

Persephone: My husband saved them because they are notoriously difficult to terminate. How many people keep silver bullets in their gun? [BANG]

In The Monster Squad, one of the protagonists crafts silver bullets but neglects to bring a gun. Rudy, the oldest of the Squad, eventually has to use a gun from a fallen cop to deliver the fatal bullet to the Wolf Man. He most likely seats them into .38 cartridges with the intention of grabbing a dropped service revolver, as there are going to be plenty of those to go around once the cops show up. He belongs to a club formed around dealing with monsters, after all.

In My Best Friend is a Vampire, self-proclaimed vampire hunter Professor McCarthy tries to kill the centuries-old vampire Modoc with silver bullets; Modoc is completely unaffected by being shot, and informs the Professor that he's thinking of werewolves.

In Project: Metalbeast, silver bullets can kill werewolves, but this particular one happens to be cybernetically enhanced, so it requires a silver-tipped bazooka shell to kill it.

In Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunt, Antonio attempts to shoot Romasanta with a silver bullet, but Barbara spins and takes the bullet herself.

Silver Bullet is a 1985 film adaptation of Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf. It uses the bullet in same the way the book did. (see below)

Underworld: Vampires initially use traditional silver bullets against Lycans, but as the war escalates, they upgrade to bullets that release liquid silver nitrate into the bloodstream, killing them faster. In the prequel Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, they use swords and arrows either made or coated in silver. By the time of Underworld: Awakening, silver grenades and aerosol have been invented. In turn, the Lycans use some sort of UV tracer round against vampires that cooks them from the inside.

Silver is good against werewolves and vampires in Van Helsing, with silver bullets and stakes being employed against both.

Although Werewolf (1996) spends over 10 minutes going on and on about how the skeleton they discovered isn't of "your white man's movie monster werewolf" but a traditional Native American Skin Walker, when one of the characters turns into one, he's quickly killed with a silver bullet.

Crow: So... you've got Coors Light in your gun?

What kind of remake would The Wolfman (2010) be if it didn't have at least one silver bullet? Sir John Talbot has his Indian manservant keep a chest of silver shotgun shells in case he loses control of his lycanthropy. When his son steals a couple of shells and tries to shoot him, Sir John reveals that he removed the powder from the cartridges years ago. Unlike the original, the silver bullet is actually fired into a werewolf's body — though it's said that for this to work properly, the shooter has to be a loved one of the werewolf.

    Myths & Religion 

The Ur-Example is the from the hunting of the Beast of Gévaudan in 1760s France, a Real Life wolf (often regarded as a werewolf) that killed over a hundred people note  It was most likely not a single wolf who perpetrated the attacks, but a pack of them . While in reality it was probably poisoned, an Urban Legend circulated after its death that it was shot by a bullet melted from a silver chalice from a church. An Unbuilt Trope in that it was the holiness of the chalice that killed it, not the silver.

In Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania, the descendants of Judas are regarded as vampires that can only be killed with silver weaponry, because Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

After the myth of the Wendigo became Hijacked by Jesus and European vampire/werewolf folklore, the process of killing one became elaborated from a simple Kill It with Fire to an elaborate quasi-ritual that extensively utilises this trope. The method became driving a Wooden Stake or silver blade into its heart, cutting out and smashing its frozen heart, placing the pieces in a silver box, and burying the box in a churchyard. Then you had to dismember it with a silver-plated axe, salt the pieces and burn them and scatter the ashes to the wind.

In Swedish turn of the century folklore, silver bullets were said to be able kill a variety of creatures, except werewolves! This being a country with a long history of werewolf-lore. Given that Our Werewolves Are Different, they could mostly be killed by conventional means or turned back into a human by uttering their true name.

"Magic bullets" are common in Swedish folklore — among other things, they are used against shapeshifters, against people who have been made "hard against shot" by sorcery, and against the animals "owned" by beings like Skogsrået, a wood fairy. Lead taken from church windows is popular, but the most famous magic bullet of legend was the one who killed Charles XII; according to folklore (reality is of course different), he couldn't be shot with normal bullets, but the one that killed him was made from a button from his own coat.

During the 18th-century hunt for the Beast Of Gévaudan, Jean Chastel reportedly loaded his gun with silver bullets. However, in this case the bullets were not 'special' because they were made of silver, but because the silver was obtained from a blessed medallion of the Virgin Mary (the creature was thought to be demonic in nature).

Silver has a density of 10.5 grams per cubic centimeter. Lead has a density of 11.3 g/cm3. In the ballistics game, higher density means better performance, which is why bullets are still made out of lead, though price is certainly a factor as well. Uranium, it should be noted, has a density of 19 g/cm3, which is why anti-tank rounds are made of the stuff.

Book author's husband researches making silver bullets. It's not as straightforward as casting bullets from lead. Silver melts at 1761°F (versus 621°F for lead), this makes just melting it a problem for home-made bullets. And silver has a different coefficient of expansion, and the hardness difference means the bullet has to be crafted more precisely. And silver jewelry and coins are made with silver alloys that are harder still. The bottom line is that silver bullets aren't something even someone who home loads can make in a hurry, from materials at hand; they take planning and preparation. Lousy werewolves have thought of everything.

During the 17th Century, many people believed that only a silver bullet could kill a king.

Count Jan Potocki, a Polish Gentleman Adventurer and author of The Manuscript Found In Saragossa, allegedly killed himself with a silver bullet made from the knob of his mother's sugar bowl and blessed by the castle priest.

For over a century it was common in parts of Russia to use low purity silver as bullets (and more commonly shot for blunderbusses since the metal was not worth refining at the time and so abundant a byproduct that it was cheaper than lead. Unfortunately high-quality platinum ore has similar properties, so many of these were actually very pure platinum bullets.

Some American pioneers made their own powder and shot. The native lead ore contained silver. This may be the origin of the Lone Ranger's ammo. Or not.

Some bullion dealers offer silver cast in various ammunition sizes. Ranging from as small as a .45 ACP (which weighs 1 troy ounce) to as big as a 30 mm shell (which weighs 100 troy ounces). However, in contrast to the above examples, these bullets and shells are solid silver the whole way through, and while they can certainly be loaded into a firearm, they don't have any propellant and thus will not work as ammo.

This trope can be seen being crossed over with Bling-Bling-BANG!, then taken to its logical extreme by YouTuber CodysLab in this video, in which an ounce of gold is melted down, cast into a working bullet and fired! As gold is twice the density of lead and is significantly harder, the physics involved are noticeably different, but at close range, you could certainly do some damage with it.

Aluminum cased and jacketed ammunition certainly looks the part as the aluminum is usually polished to ease extraction. Some brands are marketed like this.

In dire straits and when ball ammunition ran out, old-time cannons could be loaded with any old bits of metal lying around, up to and including tableware. (Although presumably you'd rather fire off your pewter and steel forks and spoons before resorting to the silver ones.)