r/whowouldwin • u/Historical_Ostrich • Aug 03 '25

Battle Which superheroes/villains would lose to a real world SWAT team if they were stripped of plot armor?

The SWAT team will employ real world tactics and resort to deadly force if necessary. Whoever they're facing off against has their standard gear and will resist to the best of their ability, but they don't get any of their standard plot armor.

405 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

376 comments sorted by

View all comments

150

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '25

Anyone who's a regular human and their primary weapon is a melee weapon. SWAT teams fight as a unit. You might be able to ambush one, but the guy behind him is gonna perforate you.

-36

u/Kgb725 Aug 04 '25

Cap and bucky worked an entire swat team

79

u/Key-Tie2214 Aug 04 '25

Due to plot armor. Neither of them can dodge bullets and everyone conveniently aims only for Cap's shield or misses entirely. That or they run up to melee distance for some reason.

SWAT would stay far away and just shoot them. Cap's shield won't protect his legs, and once his mobility is disabled, not much he can do. Bucky dies pretty much instantly because again, he can't dodge a fucking bullet, better yet a dozen from a trained specialist team.

15

u/Significant-Pace-521 Aug 04 '25

Caps shield hits once but it probably needs to obey the laws of physics so point

34

u/JacobhPb Aug 04 '25

Cap's shield ricocheting isn't plot armor, it's just a trait of the shield and an ability of Cap. Plot armor is that his enemies don't try one guy shooting high while the other shoots low so that he can't block both.

1

u/TreadingOnYourDreams 28d ago

Cap's shield ricocheting isn't plot armor

Cap's shield is absolutely plot armor unless you can provide proof of a shield behaving similarly.

5

u/JacobhPb 28d ago

Is Bruce Banner hulking out plot armor?

Just because it doesn't exist IRL doesn't make it plot armor, its an established part of the fiction that he can ricochet his shield like that.

3

u/htov74 Aug 04 '25

I wouldn't exactly say the ability for a literal superhuman to dodge bullets is plot armor.

4

u/Key-Tie2214 Aug 04 '25

Canonically, he can only bench around 1100 lbs and his running speed is at most 60 mph. Nothing about Captain America is enough to dodge something that is over 20x his running speed.

There is also nothing above his skin that can stop bullets.

His ability to dodge bullets is quite literally plot armor.

Its in the same vein of Flash getting tripped by ice despite running at near lightspeed. Its plot armor because otherwise it'd be boring.

5

u/htov74 Aug 04 '25

It's so crazy to me that in 2025 people are still using the 1,100 pound bench, 60 mph running speed, and Marvel Handbook statements for superheroes. You take these feats that happen ONE time, and ignore every other feat throughout his 70+ years of publication of dodging bullets, running faster than 60 mph, and literally kicking people into busses so hard that they dent and break the frames (minimum 87,000 pounds of force required for this btw). Like, I have no idea why you people think one showing in a specific stat outranks DECADES of other showings. Because if you really wanna get into an argument about CONSISTENCY of his feats, I will win that hands down. And consistency is what determines the level of strength for a character, not one or two feats that would either put them much higher or much lower than whatever level of consistency has been established over (and I can not stress this enough) tens of THOUSANDS of appearances over decades worth of comic books. Also you have no idea what plot armor is. Plot armor is a literary device that allows a character to survive or perform in ways they otherwise couldn't purely to advance the plot. All of the times Cap dodges bullets is not plot armor, because again he displays the ability to perform at this level CONSISTENTLY. Plot armor would be the fact that bad guys routinely shoot at his shield instead of his legs. Because that's not what would happen in real life. So please, go ahead and have this argument about what Cap and Bucky's CONSISTENT levels of strength are. And bring something more than one bench press feat and one sprinting feat from the 60s, which was a time of notoriously inconsistent writing in all fiction.

4

u/Key-Tie2214 Aug 04 '25

People use the bench and running speed because they are official stats that trump any and all fan-devised calculations.

They established the his limits, and then decided "This would be really cool, lets make him do it." That is plot. The fact that you think that somehow decades of writers making him outperform his limits because they want an interesting story makes it his base mark when in the DECADES of other showings and TENS OF THOUSANDS of comics showing such a wide varying of his strength would somehow get it through your thick skull. His strength is INCONSISTENT. It varies simply because the authors want a good story, which is why people will always use OFFICIAL CANONICAL FACTS over FAN-DERIVED CALCULATIONS.

You can throw a 1000 feats where he is super strong and I'll be able to throw a 1000 feats where he is a limp noodle. Its because, I can not stress this enough, his strength is INCONSISTENT because the authors want a FUN and COOL STORY.

I also do know what plot armor, because again, going by his canonical, offficial stats, he should not be able to survive a hail of bullets and dodge them, yet he does and survives, which is the literal definition, which you fucking say.

There are multiple scenarios where he gets defeated by normal humans who are masters of martial arts. If he were really as strong as you think, that wouldn't happen.

3

u/htov74 Aug 04 '25

They're actually not "official" stats. They're stats given by INDIVIDUAL feats of achievement, the same as literally shoulder pressing cars (which are on average over 4 times heavier than the 1,100 pounds he benched ONE time). Why is either more "official" than the other? It's not a fan calculation, it's literally what happened on panel.

They did not "establish his limits". Because Captain America's fest that you are referring to happened in a comic book that came out in the 90s. Literally over 50 years and 400 issues after his first ever appeareance. And you know some of the things he was doing in those comics that are heavier than benching 1,100 pounds and faster than running at 60 mph? Lifting cars over his shoulders, resisting motorcycles literally attempting to drive at full speed with restraints tied to his limbs and they didn't get torn off, ripping the arms off of robots that were just not damaged by rockets, literally outrunning bullets and missles, as well as catching up to speeding cars and humvees (both going at top speed which is well above 60 mph) and SO many more I could name. These are all things that happened before the bench press and sprint feats YOU are relying so heavily on. So no, they didn't "set his limits and then say this is cool let's make him do it". He had been doing these things WELL beforehand, and then some writers decided to portray him differently on an individual occasion. Your own opinion falls apart under your logic, and it tells me that you don't even know what you're talking about because you're trying to imply that these specific feats happened before he did anything more impressive. That is literally incorrect. It's so funny you try to insult me with the "thick skull" comment, but you're the one who's straight up incorrect. I told you, if you wanna argue consistency we can, all you've done is just say there's all these other showings. Yes, comics are inconsistent. Hence why you can't take one writer's depiction as gospel, you go by what is consistent among MULTIPLE showings. Like, the 1,100 bench and 60 mph speed was never officially announced or stated as what his limits are. It was one writer's interpretation of the character. So since you wanna talk about all these showings, why don't you do what I said and start oisting off feats of him not being able to dodge bullets or lift above 1,100 pounds? Like I said I'll list far more that shows what he CAN do, and whoever actually can list more (include issue numbers too while you're at it since you know everything) will have the mote consistent showings. Shouldn't be that hard since you said there are thousands of showings in your favor right?

You say you can give me 1,000 showings of him being a "limp noodle", so why are you just yapping about it instead of doing it? Go ahead, and again make sure to include issue numbers so it can be fact checked.

I find it so funny that you say there are multiple instances of him getting defeated by normal humans who are masters of martial arts. As if we haven't seen MANY examples of people beating others FAR above their weight class because they were better fighters. Also I'll let you in on a little secret: the "normal human" heros in Marvel are also incredibly strong and fast. Because it's FICTION. So again, PLEASE get into this comparison of feats with me so I can show you what's more consistent.

-6

u/Kgb725 Aug 04 '25

They funneled them all into a tiny apartment and attacked accordingly they had all the advantages thats not plot armor

19

u/_hellboy_xo Aug 04 '25

What stops a military unit from bombing Cap and killing him

Hell, even a random suicide bomber

10

u/Mathdino Aug 04 '25

You think a SWAT team is going to bomb Cap and Bucky?

1

u/WarlockEngineer Aug 04 '25

Well in the movie they were trying to capture Bucky alive and they didn't know Cap was there.

-5

u/Kgb725 Aug 04 '25

The story you know the fact he didnt face them

3

u/_hellboy_xo Aug 04 '25

If there wasn’t any plot armor Cap would die or at the very minimum get paralyzed by the serum

3

u/Magos_Kaiser Aug 04 '25

The story

So the plot… armored them?

1

u/Kgb725 Aug 04 '25

No because when would he face a modern military

2

u/_hellboy_xo Aug 04 '25

He faces alien militaries, which would be stronger than our own

1

u/Kgb725 Aug 05 '25

During the first invasion and Endgame both of which he had plenty of allies to cover for him

→ More replies (0)

1

u/LordMuffin1 Aug 06 '25

And survived due to plot armour.

4

u/Significant-Pace-521 Aug 04 '25

Wasn’t a trained swat team they didn’t have each other covered correct. Two men would have stayed at the rear just shot both them after the rest of the team was taken down.

1

u/Kgb725 Aug 04 '25

They had all points of entry covered and there were no snipers so where would they have shot them from ?

1

u/Significant-Pace-521 Aug 05 '25

They wouldn’t all enter the room one to two guys would cover the rest from the doorways.

1

u/Kgb725 Aug 05 '25

Most of them did not enter the room

1

u/zoro4661 ​ Aug 04 '25 edited 28d ago

Yes, but

  1. Cap and Bucky are not "regular humans" in the slightest, even the MCU versions

  2. That SEK team wasn't expecting (or trained) to fight two super soldiers with an indestructible arm and shield

  3. The SEK team was split up over an entire skyscraper

Very different from a SWAT unit vs a single normal human in a less disadvantageous position.