We lose more monsters that way.
"If I become an evil genius, I'll keep in mind not to replace my blood with nitroglycerin, hydrogen or any other flammable thing, I don't wanna die exploding like the bosses of Ninja Gaiden."
— Payasoplas, on Ninja Gaiden
Sometimes an enemy being defeated... explodes. Not metaphorically like in the Villainous Breakdown sense, but in a literal, physical explosion.
In the case of robots, this could be justified, as the defeat could cause them to short circuit and the spark to ignite their fuel, but it is not limited to robots. It happens with characters who are not specifically stated to be robots, and in some cases are implied to be organic in some way or another. One would expect that this trope would be combined with Action Bomb more often to weaponize their imminent demise, but the two tropes rarely seem to go hand-in-hand (although not completely absent either). This might be because forcing the heroes to relocate the enemy someplace safer where environment and bystanders wouldn't be harmed would get old fast if it applied to all enemy deaths, thus killing the tension and drama at climax of combat.
Having every enemy explode upon death was more common in the 3rd and 4th generation of console gaming, when it was mainly done to avoid drawing death animations. This is also an effect of being already dead.
This trope arguably saw its first inclusion in popular culture via Tokusatsu programs of the '60s and '70s, especially those of the Ultra Series and Kamen Rider series, where this is a particularly common way for a defeated Kaiju or Kaijin to meet their end.
See also Dead Man's Switch, Explosive Overclocking, Post-Defeat Explosion Chain, Load-Bearing Boss, and No Body Left Behind. Can be a reason there's Not Enough to Bury. Contrast Why Am I Ticking? for when a character is turned into a bomb (which may or may not result in their defeat). Subtrope of Made of Explodium. Not to be confused with Out with a Bang, which involves dying in a more... pleasurable way. Can overlap with Technicolor Death.
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Advertising
- Raid Insecticide Campaign: Commercials for Raid pesticides had cartoon roaches explode (cartoon star-and-smoke explosions in the old ones, CG smoke wisps in the new) after being sprayed, usually after screaming "RAAAAIIID?!"
Animation
- Both of the main villains in the BoBoiBoy films:
- BoBoiBoy splits into seven and knocks Bora Ra into his own black hole which then explodes.
- BoBoiBoy Supra blasts Retak'ka with Super Supra Blast, causing him to explode and his dead body to fly into space.
Anime & Manga
- Destroying a Heterodyne's Fractal Knot in Dai-Guard will either cause it to dissolve or explode.
- The Daichis - Earth's Defense Family: The mechanical aliens in the anime explodes after being defeated:
- In episode 5, when the Gaynoids ship was sliced in half from the Mighty Robo's Lightning Sword, it exploded.
- In episode 6, when the small Gaynoid robot was defeated by Dai destroying a portion of its body by charging in to it by using his sword. This would prevent the mini Gaynoids robot from being able to sustain itself caused it to exploded.
- In episode 7, when Dai used the Rhythm Saucer wave, the alien along with the Factory both exploded from being destroyed to pieces from the high setting sound of the aforementioned saucer wave.
- In episode 10, when the Robot Hachiko dog grabbed the robot bone with his mouth, it exploded along with having the Hachiko robot dog itself also exploding.
- The Akumas in D.Gray-Man always explode regardless of what weapon the exorcists use. Do you shoot Akuma with oversized guns? They explode. Do you kick them with magic boots? They explode. Do you bludgeon them? They explode. Do you suck all of the Akuma's blood out? They explode. Do you kick a bell at them like a soccer ball? They explode.
- Zigzagged throughout Digimon. There are moments where the enemy explodes due to certain attacks (i.e missiles, laser beams, etc), but other times, after being defeated, the enemy simply disintegrates into data.
- Dragon Ball Z: This happens a lot; Ki Attacks often obliterate targets they kill, but several times character explode after purely physical attacks. Even back in Dragon Ball, Demon King Piccolo exploded after Goku punched a hole through him.
- Fist of the North Star: This is the fate of any mook (and the odd villain) who gets killed with Hokuto Shinken, except with blood and guts (or just liquid light in the anime).
- In the climax of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Father has his whole chest explode after being punched through there by Edward Elric, releasing all the souls he absorbed.
- Gundam:
- It has an odd variation in nearly every series: ships will almost always completely explode if destroyed onscreen. But at the same time, scenes of past battles will always have the wrecked hulks of ships that didn't explode when they were sunk.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: While UC mobile suits often don't explode when defeated, in AC, they will explode upon defeat, no matter how little damage the suit apparently took. In one infamous early scene, a Leo mobile suit even exploded after a Buster Rifle shot missed it.
- In Higurashi: When They Cry, Kira's Ayakashisenshi-hen, Rika and Satoko make this happen to the Ritual Tool Devil Nail Ripper after hitting it with 07th Explosion. The resulting explosion sends Takano flying and makes her become A Twinkle in the Sky.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: In the final fight of Stardust Crusaders, as Jotaro and his Star Platinum lands the finishing blow onto DIO's The World, it instantly gets destroyed as DIO emits a Pre-Explosion Glow before most of his body and his head explode into obliteration.
- As seen above with Bugzzy, this happens to almost every Monster of the Week that appears in Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, even if they're an organic-looking monster who was beaten in a way that logically wouldn't cause them to explode, such as being thrown, hit with a frying pan or... hearing bad singing. However, this didn't happen to all of them.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion:
- When the Angel's cores are destroyed, they explode and leave a lake of red gunk: specifically, this happens to the 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 10th Angels; however, quite a few of the angels did not explode, including several that looked like they were going to from the way they were killed. One of the early Angels left behind a corpse when it was killed that over the next few episodes was shown being removed piece by piece because its size and structure made it impossible to remove it whole altogether. While this illustrates why this trope is useful in stories with giant monsters, one can imagine how littered with giant bodies the cities would be if shows like Power Rangers didn't do this, let alone why they didn't just use the giant robots to move the bodies.
- In Rebuild of Evangelion, defeating an Angel combines cross-shaped explosions with Ludicrous Gibs, creating a rainbow.
- In Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, every Ghost defeated by Panty and Stocking explodes, with a cut to a cheesy live-action model of the Ghost being blown up with pyrotechnics. This becomes plot-relevant in episode 8 when Panty and Stocking are on trial for murdering a ghost named Mr. Husband Petter. Their monkey defense attorney points out that the victim didn't explode as he would have if he had been killed by the Anarchy Sisters, and that the marks on the body give away the real murderer as Mrs. Petter. Also, in episode 13, Garterbelt and Corset explode the same way when killed, with Garterbelt even un-exploding when he is brought back to life, complete with a reversed Death Cry Echo.
- In The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World, monsters defeated by Red explode for no preceivable reason. This has actually proven to be an issue for his adventuring career as the explosions destroy the loot as well.
- Sailor Moon: Most Monsters of the Week end up this way, particularly in Series 1. Or crumbling to dust, but mostly after exploding in a flash of light.
- Every robot made by the Big Cheese in Samurai Pizza Cats, usually after a fight with Speedy Service delivering a Clean Cut with his MAAAAAGICAL GIN-SHU SWOOOORD.
- Parodied in Sgt. Frog, where Viper explodes for no real reason after being defeated by the Keroro Platoon.
- Shaman King (2001): After Yoh cuts both Zeke and the Spirit of Fire in half, both of them explode.
- SSSS.DYNɅZENON, with its tokusatsu roots, has every kaiju explode upon defeat. This is parodied in an episode where the kaiju's power is to make explosions, so to defeat it, they drag it into outer space where there's no air and thus nothing can explode. They then kill the kaiju, which of course explodes. In the voice drama taking place after the episode, they're left wondering how it did that.
- Radam monsters in Tekkaman Blade die in purple explosions.
- This is what happens to any enemy that is defeated in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Deconstructed in the second half of the show, where the Anti-Spiral mechs drop bombs when they are destroyed, causing even more damage when they are defeated.
- Robeasts in Voltron go boom after being sliced in half. Hell, nearly any Robeast killed by a Super Robot.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh!, any monster that gets hit by a powerful attack explodes. Sometimes, the monster simply shatters; other times, there's lots of accompanying smoke and fire. Later, they explode 95% of the time in all the spin-offs.
Comic Books
- Atomic Robo: The Biomega Kaiju explode spectacularly when killed. In fact, this is actually the only way to know they're dead; if they "die" but don't explode Power Rangers-style, they're not actually dead, just powering down to heal. This becomes a plot point later on when Majestic-12 try to take over protecting the world after forcing Tesladyne to shut down; due to their egotism, incompetence, and lack of knowledge about the supernatural, Majestic-12 assume the Biomegas to be dead whenever they stop moving after taking sufficient damage and just leave the bodies to rot. The Biomegas proceed to heal and reactivate, turning a string of easily-contained individual Kaiju attacks into a single massively destructive mass Kaiju attack.
- Kingdom Come:
"Oh my God! The Parasite has split Captain Atom open! He's split him ope—"
- Nextwave:
"They explode? My life has taken on new meaning."
Fan Works
- Application 29: The blue and orange viruses explode after being defeated by Henry and June in "The Antivirus Update". A part of the blue virus gets in Henry's eye and a part of the orange virus gets in June's mouth, but otherwise, nothing is left of them after exploding.
- Codex Equus: Due to normally living in the depths of the planet, the bodies of blaze bats are under extreme pressure. As such, when killed or sufficiently injured, they tend to violently explode.
- Pony POV Series: Loneliness explodes when she's defeated. Twice. The second blast destroying what's left of her. Possibly justified, since Trixie defeated her in her own mind, and is known to have a flair for the dramatic.
- The Power of the Equinox: While saving Scootaloo from the Will-o'-the-Wisp, Zecora throws at the fae salt and wrought iron shavings, causing it to explode in colorful flames.
- Vocaloid Story: In the series, Viruses are shown to explode on screen when killed.
Films — Animation
- At the end of Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, after Iago knocks his lamp into a lava pit and it melts away to nothing, Jafar goes through an intense death scene which ends with him combusting.
- How to Train Your Dragon: The Red Death is shot in the mouth by a plasma blast from Toothless, which ignites its own rather massive reserves of flammables. Combined with an uncontrolled descent face-first into the ground, physics turns it into a very big boom.
- Near the end of The Incredibles 1, the Omnidroid v.10 falls over after its defeat. It then spontaneously explodes into powder (the actual fireball is barely bigger than the robot itself).
- This is how the titular Monster House is destroyed. If you tried killing it any other way, the house would just reconstruct itself. So DJ literally had to throw a dynamite stick down its chimney, causing it to erupt into a gigantic fireball.
- In the Jetlag Productions version of The Nutcracker, after the Nutcracker stabs the seven headed Mouse King he staggers and holds his wound for a few seconds before he explodes, leaving nothing left but his seven crowns.
- In The Swan Princess, Rothbart explodes after he is killed when Derek shoots him in the heart with an arrow in his great animal form.
Films — Live-Action
- In Batman: The Movie, the Penguin rigs all his deadly sea beasts to do this by feeding them explosives.
- In Big Trouble in Little China, when Thunder finds Lo Pan dead, he is so enraged that his body swells up and he explodes. Sadly, a bit of a Special Effect Failure at the same time.
- The giant octopus in Bride of the Monster. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew did not fail to notice the humor.
Servo: That was one unstable octopus!
- Bright: Ward kills Leilah with a fire blast from the wand, causing her to burst into flames.
- In the Wes Craven film Cursed, when the werewolf who infected all the other major characters dies, he inexplicably explodes in a burst of greenish energy.
- Double Team: In perhaps one of the most awesome endings to an action film: The Bad Guy (played by Mickey Rourke) is left standing on an armed mine, with a Tiger, in the middle of a Colosseum. Just as the Tiger is about to claw him, he steps off, where the whole place explodes. Completing the total madness, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Rodman, and the actor who played Belloq outrun the ensuing fireball, hiding behind a Coke machine, while carrying a baby!
- Some of the Godzilla films have the enemy monster explode after the titular monster kills them. The early films don't do this, however. Most of the monsters don't so much "explode when they die" so much as "get hit with a breath blast so ferocious it rips them into flaming debris"... except Megaguirus. She gets set aflame with an atomic blast, falls out of the sky... and then her entire body explodes when it hits the ground.
- In Green Lantern, Parallax explodes repeatedly when Hal Jordan literally punches him into the Sun.
- In Hundreds of Beavers, Jean kicks a beaver into a fireplace and the beaver explodes.
- In Logan's Run, when the city-controlling computer crashes due to a Logic Bomb, it starts exploding and ends up destroying the entire city.
- The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy:
- Sauron explodes with the force of a tactical nuke after Isildur cuts the ring from his hand in the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring, flooring basically everyone across the battlefield with the shockwave.
- And again in The Return of the King when the Ring is destroyed, only much bigger since it ends up taking out his giant ominous tower of Barad-dûr and starts the very collapse of Mordor itself.
- In the final fight of Mercury Man, Areena explodes after Mercury Man nails her with a flaming flying knee.
- Mortal Kombat (1995): When Johnny Cage manages to vanquish Scorpion, the latter's head explodes, quickly followed by the rest of his body.
- The leech mutant explodes shortly after its defeat in The Return of Swamp Thing.
- Saviour of the Soul II: The Clown King explodes into a Ludicrous Gibs after being impaled through the midsection.
- In the climax of Stardust, Lamia explodes from a blinding flash of starlight.
- Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi: Emperor Palpatine apparently explodes on impact after being thrown down a reactor shaft at the climax of the film, likely due to him incontinently spraying lightning near complex machinery. Doesn't stop him from re-appearing in The Rise of Skywalker, but then again, the body we see him in at that time is that of a clone.
Gamebooks
- Fighting Fantasy: The deity in Space Assassin inexplicably blows up after its defeat. The problem is, the explosion doesn't happen immediately, and is delayed; you are given a chance to search his body, and if you choose that option, the body will suddenly go KABOOM right next to you taking away a large chunk of your life meter.
- Lone Wolf: In Castle Death, among the numerous weird creatures of Kazan-Oud, there is a hideous brain-like floating sphere
that tries to paralyze Lone Wolf psychically. Inflicting any wound to it, whether with an arrow or through cutting its attack tendril, results in a powerful, fiery explosion.
Literature
- The Black Magician Trilogy: When a magician dies, all their remaining magical energy discharges at once, destroying the body at minimum and up to a city block — which makes the existence of an old graveyard attached to the guild rather puzzling. It turns out that black magicians avoid this in their killings, as they usually drain their victims' magic and life.
- Common Clay: Ironslimes don't split on death like classic slimes; instead, when their outer membrane is breached, they burst, spraying a noxious acidic liquid that you really don't want in your eyes or nose. And that's just the small ones; larger ones are much more toxic.
- Draconians in the Dragonlance trilogy have different death effects. Baaz draconians turn to stone, Kapak turn into acid, and Bozak draconians explode. However, it's not the usual harmless Rule of Cool explosion, but a violent fiery explosion that's potentially lethal enough to finish off the opponent.
- Sauron in The Lord of the Rings when his Soul Jar the One Ring is destroyed.
- Before the Prequel Trilogy came out, Star Wars Legends almost universally had dead Jedi fade away while dead Dark Jedi or Sith exploded violently the way the Emperor did. Later it was retconned into a power they had as a kind of Taking You with Me thing. In The Hand of Thrawn duology, Mara Jade once makes this sardonic remark when she's in need of explosives.
Mara Jade: Too bad we don't have a Dark Jedi handy we could kill. Remember that big blast when C'baoth died?
- In "Ayla and the Mad Scientist" in the Whateley Universe, Team Kimba goes through some 'Dark Phoenix' holographic simulations, a couple of which use Tennyo as the Dark Phoenix character. Phase uses his powers to stop her, and Tennyo explodes. Since she has anti-matter in her blood when she exerts herself, this doesn't work out well. In the simulation, it destroys the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.
Live-Action TV
- Parodied in Danger 5, when a female Nazi agent is thrown out of an airplane and explodes for no apparent reason.
- Goosebumps (1995): A gooey version of this comes up in the TV adaptation of the book "How to Kill a Monster". Like in the book, the Swamp Monster dies from its allergy to humans. When Clark asks Gretchen if it's Killed Off for Real, he gets his answer when the monster's body explodes into green slime.
- Being the sister series to Super Sentai, it's no surprise that Kamen Rider makes heavy use of this trope.
- This is explained in early seasons as the Monster of the Week and Mooks being equipped with self-destruction mechanisms, to prevent leaving any evidence behind. However, little to no explanation is given for later productions. In their early days, SHOCKER's creations as well as their victims ended up dissolving instead of exploding. Possibly for budget reasons.
- Inverted in Kamen Rider BLACK, where the monsters implode instead. Eventually Black gets an upgraded kick that plays it straight.
- Kamen Rider Kuuga turns this trope into a plot point: each time that Kuuga advances in power, the explosions caused by his Rider Kick get exponentially bigger. His first major upgrade is enough to nuke a portion of the city when he does it unto a Grongi, necessitating luring monsters into an evacuated area before finishing them off. The second upgrade produces an explosive column so large that it nearly pierces the atmosphere. Ultimate Form Kuuga, the third upgrade, never uses his Rider Kick, and it's speculated that if he ever did so, it could destroy the world as we know it.
- In an earlier episode of Kuuga, Godai and Ichijou are genuinely surprised when that week's Grongi does not explode.
- Kamen Rider Kiva subverts this trope as the monsters are a race of vampires made from stained glass, called the Fangire. When they are defeated, they shatter into pieces instead of violently exploding.
- Kamen Rider 555 also subverts it. Monsters when they die instead break down into dust while burning blue flames.
- Kamen Rider Fourze has it as a minor plot point, where the monsters' explosions would do massive damage, which forced Fourze to drag them into outer space before hitting them with his Finishing Move. His Super Mode made this exponentially easier, since it can generate wormholes leading to low Earth orbit.
- Message from Space: Galactic Wars has all major enemies explode. One even tries to destroy a MacGuffin with his death explosion.
- Having the Monster of the Week eat the Finishing Move and go out with a fireball as the theme song plays is part and parcel of Metal Heroes.
- In Power Rangers, sometimes the background explodes just because awesomeness is Volatile. especially. And sometimes, the Rangers will turn and pose after the Finishing Move so the explosion behind them will look like one of these sequences.
- At least once, doing that didn't pay off: once in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, they blast, then turn and pose... and the monster wasn't dead, and blasted the Rangers in the back. Also, despite this trope, every series will have the heroes think a monster is dead without seeing the customary kaboom at least once. This counts as Genre Blindness bordering on Too Dumb to Live.
- Sometimes, even if the monster does go boom, there's no guarantee that it's finished yet. The Hatchasaurus from the first series was one example. The Cardiotron inside it was able to reassemble the pieces of it even after it was blown to bits, and the Rangers couldn't destroy it until they destroyed that first.
- Lampshaded by both Doubletone and Rhinosnorus in the Power Rangers Samurai episode "Party Monsters". Rhinosnorus even comments on how humiliating it was to be defeated by the rangers, especially Kevin, when they (he, of course) were literally doing backflips on him while opening fire on him.
- The Prisoner: When the eponymous computer in "The General" is posed an impossible question, instead of just shutting down and producing an error message like any normal computer, the General proceeds to redline its meter, produce copious smoke, and electrocute its creators.
- A suicide variation in the Spectreman series finale. Dr. Gori, defeated and cornered, jumps off a cliff and explodes mid-air.
- As one of the main pillars of the Tokusatsu genre, this was frequently seen in Super Sentai.
- The original series, Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, justifies this in that their finishing move, the football Gorenger Storm (later Gorenger Hurricane), is essentially an elaborate bomb.
- In Kagaku Sentai Dynaman, the explosions are their finishing moves, making it the Trope Codifier!
- Actually justified by Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger, where the bodies of the criminals are incinerated upon death to prevent cloning or reanimation of their corpse.
- Some Super Sentai series, like Goseiger and Zyuohger, subvert this; the monster apparently explodes, but likely isn't completely destroyed, since an intact corpse is left behind to revive into a giant.
- Gekisou Sentai Carranger has a pretty ridiculous example where a monster is fatally wounded in a car wreck, gets out of the car and then dramatically falls over and explodes. Given Carranger's nature this was likely Self-Parody.
- The Ultra Series regularly features this trope. Explosions vary from having the monster explode into hundreds of burning pieces, to simply falling over backwards and then detonating. A notable exception happens in the first episode of Ultraman Mebius, where the Dinozaur doesn't explode upon death, with the second episode showing the city having to dispose of the giant carcass.
- One of the ways Our Vampires Are Different in Ultraviolet is that they don't just harmlessly crumble into dust when you put a pointy wooden thing through their heart: they explode, violently. Weaponized when a character trapped in an Abandoned Warehouse with several vampires whose coffins are about to open, opens one early and kills the vampire inside, so the explosion in the confined coffin will blow open the door.
Pinballs
- In Twilight Zone, defeating The Power causes it to explode.
Tabletop Games
- Beyblade: Burst: The core gimmick is causing your opponent's Beyblade to fly apart when beaten.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Dragonlance: Both aurak and bozak draconians explode when they die.
- Also the case with the Fiend Folio's dark stalkers and dark creepers, Mystara's huptzeens, and others.
- Killing a balor for good in the Abyss results in a quite dangerous explosion. In later editions, this happens if you kill one anywhere.
- The fires that burn within some conflagration oozes are especially unstable, and cause the creatures to go up in fiery explosions when they're killed.
- When a chillfire destroyer — an elemental consisting of a raging inferno contained within a thin shell of ice — is brought down to zero health, it remains immobile for a round and then violently explodes.
- Death undoes the magic that binds the implanted weapons to a bladerager troll's flesh, causing its body to explode in a burst of jagged shrapnel.
- Energons, strange creatures made of energy, also cause an explosion of their type (acid, cold, electricity, fire, sonic, positive or negative energy) when killed. If a xag-ya and xeg-yi (made of positive and negative energy respectively) touch each other, it causes a more powerful explosion.
- Minions are a type of One-Hit-Point Wonder enemy that typically come in large packs as meat-shields or choke-point holders, or because a Killer DM realizes the party has only single-target attackers. The typical, reasonable reaction is to run up, smash them and move on. Occasionally (especially if "ash", "flame" or "plague" is somewhere in the name) they create a burst-attack when defeated, damaging the melee fighter that killed them, and any other buddies that are close... as well as other minions, that sometimes leads to insane chain reactions.
- The gas spore is variety of floating fungus full of unstable gas that explodes if it receives so much as a scratch. It doesn't help that, unless looking closely, the gas spore can be easily confused with a beholder — the kind of monster you pretty much attack on sight.
- Spelljammer, Lost Ships: Tinkerers are comical-looking spherical creatures with six eyes and four arms. They move around by expulsing gas, and if hit with a piercing weapon for too much damage, can explode violently from the gas they contain.
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition:
- The Planar Handbook includes the 5th-level death throes spell, which makes the caster explodes violently if he or she is killed. It ranks fairly high in the Useless Useful Spell category, since it destroys the body and thus makes resurrection more difficult. Although it can become a Game-Breaker if used intelligently, for example combined with the magic jar spell....
- From the Miniature Handbook, the righteous aura paladin spell converts its caster into explosive energy when he's killed, although the explosion only hurts Evil creatures and undead, and heals Good creatures.
- The Complete Scoundrel has the spell fatal flame, which causes a small fire explosion on a creature's death. It's much less powerful than death throes or righteous aura, but at least it can be cast directly on enemies.
- From Book of Vile Darkness, the unliving weapon spell makes an undead explode violently if it receive as much as a scratch, or after a set time. Used by necromancers to turn mere skeletons and zombies into dangerous "suicide bombers".
- Dungeon Master's Guide II includes in its magic items the Elixir of Reckoning, which fills the imbiber with dangerous energy. If killed within an hour of drinking the elixir, it causes a severe explosion. Commonly used by suicide troopers of evil warlords.
- Magic: The Gathering: A good number of red creatures deal damage to other creatures or players when they die, implied to be from a last-ditch self destruct.
- Villains & Vigilantes adventure Devil's Domain. When the Player Characters kill any of the Devil's demons, the demons explode in a cloud of noxious brown smoke.
- Warhammer 40,000: Many units in the game have a chance of exploding after being destroyed, with some factions having the option to force the unit to explode so as to deal maximum damage to the enemy. In the current 10th edition, this is represented by the Deadly Demise rule, which inflicts mortal wounds on any nearby units — friend or foe — when the unit is slain. Units that can explode include most vehicles, but also some infantry units such as the Eversor Assassin (due to their biologically altered bodies making their blood acidic and combustible on death). Some monsters, especially Tyranid ones, also have a Deadly Demise rule, but it is explained that they do not as much explode as make a final frenzied attack in their death throes, for the same effect.
- Warhammer Fantasy:
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle: Monstrous Arcanum: When a warpfire dragon dies, it explodes in a burst of destructive magical energy.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Creatures with the mutation "Blood Substitution" burst in a 6- to 60-foot-radius gout of their Alien Blood when killed. This can be much more dangerous than the original creature, since the "blood" might be anything from molten metal or acid to mud or live centipedes.
Theme Parks
- At Universal Studios:
- In The Eighth Voyage of Sindbad, Miseria falls down into a pit and explodes upon being set aflame by her own scepter.
- The finale of Poseidon's Fury has Lord Darkenon exploding upon getting struck by Poseidon's trident.
Webcomics
- In The Beast Legion, Gorgorath goes through this in Issue 4.
- El Goonish Shive: For some reason that's never really explained, all aberrations will explode upon dying.
- Angels in Kill Six Billion Demons are spirits of primordial fire from the Void Between the Worlds who require special armour as Containment Clothing to exist in the physical universe. Damaging the armour badly enough can force them back into the Void — but anyone inclined to try should really consider the "primordial fire" bit.
- Averted in L's Empire when Gaio refuses to explode, in order to deny his enemies a satisfying victory.
- Lampshaded with some sarcasm in this Magick Chicks strip.
Web Original
- Weaponized by the Doomsday Mages. A DM had an idea for a set of recurring villains, mages who were marked by a distinctive rune branded into the palm of their hand that marked their possession of the "doomsday spell", a nuclear-scale magical blast that would be triggered the instant they died. They would be the ultimate emissaries of evil, free to be absolute dicks to anyone they interacted with, secure in the knowledge that nobody could risk killing them. Needless to say, things went spectacularly Off the Rails when the DM first tried using them. The Horde of evil orcs was invading the nation of good to which all the players belonged, and had conquered a good chunk of the eastern provinces. They were besieging a major city, with the players in it, and sent one of these doomsday mages (with whom they had an alliance) to negotiate a surrender. What the DM hadn't expected was for the players to jump the doomsday mage, beat him into unconsciousness, and then use healing magic to stabilize him before he could die and set off the doomsday spell. They then used a flying mount one of the players had to fly the unconscious mage out over the orcish siege lines and drop him from 5,000 feet. The blast from his death gutted the orcish army, and the tide of the war instantly changed, the human forces driving back the orcs while the doomsday mages were hunted to be captured and used as bombs.
Websites
- The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids: In the story The Trial of a Dark Lord, Lord Nefarious unexpectedly explodes when he is hit by a Cupid Arrow (which normally result in Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul, not any physical damage). Characters eventually realize that this was a Yin-Yang Bomb-type of reaction due to Nefarious's magic being rooted in hatred.
Web Videos
- Lampshaded in Dragon Ball Abridged by TeamFourStar:
[Vegeta hits the ground, large explosion; later, he crawls out]
Vegeta: [gasping for air] Why did I explode? - In "Frozen Flame" by Mahu, the colonial army's drones fit this trope. Used as flying scouts at first, they slowly become the explosive vanguard of the colonial forces. Like kamikazes, they charge into the ranks of the enemy, exploding upon death with enough force to slay a dew dozen foes. Once the last drone has achieved its purpose, the army of Prince Arius or Mr. storm follow, ready to finish the weakened foe.
- This seems to be the case whenever a diary owner in Mirai Nikki The Abridged Series dies.
- Origins SMP: Upon death, players holding the Starborne origin explode with the force of a charged creeper. While visually appealing on the surface, this causes immense pain, as Sparklez notes, so he desperately tries his best to prevent it from happening to him. On the flip side, Smajor is more than willing to use the ability as leverage to get what he wants from others.
Western Animation
- Blaze and the Monster Machines: Once Blaze manages to get past Crusher's cheating device of the day, it explodes back into the junk that was used to create it.
- In Code Lyoko, all of XANA's digital monsters explode when killed, preceded by a short Epileptic Flashing Lights moment. The explosions never seem to damage the heroes, however, even when they're still close to the monster they've just defeated.
- The Powerpuff Girls:
- In the episode "The Rowdyruff Boys", after the girls kiss the titular boys, they hate it so much, it causes them to glow and explode into their ingredients. They were, however, later brought back by HIM, who made them immune to this, so it doesn't happen again.
- Also, several of the monsters the girls fought have exploded after the being beaten by them.
- Many of the villains in Regular Show tend to blow up upon being defeated, often in rather over-the-top ways. According to writer Ryan Pequin, Cartoon Network mandated that the show could kill anyone they wanted on the condition that they had to explode afterwards.
- It seems to be a law of physics in the world of Samurai Jack that every robotic enemy (which something like 95% of Jack's opponents are) explode dramatically after being destroyed. Gets Played for Laughs in one episode when Aku sends a series of bounty hunters after Jack; the last is a group of battle robots that all destroy each other after one of them trips, each explosion sending one robot's weapon flying into another one. Only one of them manages to actually reach Jack before blowing up, and all its destruction does is knock his hat off (which, to add insult to injury, was the closest thing to damage that any of the hunters managed to inflict). The Dominator is the one human to die this way due to his Powered Armor exploding, and Aku himself explodes repeatedly in the finale.
- Voltron: Legendary Defender: In grand Voltron tradition, Robeasts typically explode when defeated. As do enemy ships.
Real Life
- Often the result of aerial combat. Airplanes being the Fragile Speedster machines, when hit to critical components, tend to explode easily. Explode, though, in this case usually means catch fire. Although a large enough hit in the right place can have a plane in several little pieces. The former happens less in modern air combat due to the weapons involved, and although explosions are more common because of missiles, explosions that consume the whole plane are not, thanks to modern design.
- In naval combat, getting a hit in the gunpowder magazine. HMS Hood, HMS Invincible, HMS Queen Mary, HMS Indefatigable, SMS Pommern, etc. Battleships and heavy cruisers also had a nasty tendency to explode when they capsized, caused by the ship's shell magazines breaking loose while it was rolling over. One of the best-known examples would be the sinking of Yamato, creating a mushroom cloud◊ four miles high. USS Arizona and HMS Barham are also particularly noteworthy, as their demise was caught live on film.
- For tanks, armored personnel carriers, or other armored fighting vehicles, even a modest hit to the ammunition stores is highly likely to result in a catastrophic explosion. Some modern tanks have special blowout compartments that are isolated from the rest of the interior and make it possible for the crew to survive (and even in cases where the tank doesn't it isn't a sure thing), but the tank itself is still going to be heavily damaged if not completely unsalvageable.
