In real-life, they're experimenting on the concept of a new type of Dragon Skin Armor. It's essentially plated, and still chainmial formula, but (don't quote me, but IIRC) it has a layer of thick play-dough like material which condenses and hardens whenever it's shot in one place. It's pretty nifty, because the designs, although preliminary, looked like something of the Karskin from Warhammer (except more 'shelled').
They showed a video of a downscaled version, in which the guys was wearing a standard cotton hat with this material. Shot it a couple of times, and while you could see the bullets stuck or leaving huge dents, it protected the watermelon from a fall on the rocks and several round of 9mm. Again, this material was just being used under a cotton hat.
I have no idea what its called, nor as to why I can't find any bloody resources on the net, but I recall watching a small documentary about it. They also showed the potential of a fiber-optic based suit that could refract light a la MGS, although no prototype, the claimed it could be atleast be used in the future for snipers.
So yeah, RL is pretty cool I would say...