When Hal Leggett, the owner, first played paintball there was no
"mercy rule".
He invented it... and used it on his indoor paintball field, "The Paintball Arena".
Since then, 14 years ago, it has become a universal phrase used in the Ontario Canada Recreational Paintball community and is expanding outwards.
How the phrase came about :
He played at an outdoor field where the ref explained that if you got to within 20 ft. of another player you were obliged to yell "surrender" to the player instead of shooting them. If they gave up, fine... but they had the option to spin and try to shoot you if you wanted... so it was always important to keep your finger on the trigger in case they didn't give up... you could shoot them if they didn't give up.
Hal thought this was dumb. Here he was,
being nice and yelling "surrender" and the opponent had the option to
shoot him. What it meant was, he could never be sure an idiot would give
up, and after a point-blank
( 4 ft range) shot at 280 fps... he never yelled surrender again. If he
encountered someone within 20 ft. he would back up to a safer range ... and
shoot them.
For Hal's indoor paintball field, he decided that point-blank shooting would absolutely NOT be allowed... but he couldn't use the "surrender" rule... because too many outdoor players would get confused. For a few weeks, he couldn't come up with an appropriate phrase to use.....
Then, one day, when he was watching an old movie he saw someone with a gun in their face begging for "mercy". That was it... that was the phrase he would use. It was catchy, easy to say, easy to scream and made sense. It's fast too... since it's automatic, you don't have to wait around, exposed, waiting to see if they take the call.
Of course, the victem should be the one begging for mercy... but, hey, it works. So within 10 ft. indoors or 20 ft outdoors, if you point your barrel at a target and yell "mercy" they MUST give up. No retaliation, no running away, no spinning and shooting.... they just have to give up. It saves them a welt, and saves the shooter a paintball.
So, if you are ever on a field and someone jumps out with their barrel pointed at you, screaming "MERCY !" ... you know where it came from.