Baa Bomb



""Sis boom bah!" (Carnac rips the envelope open and removes a card) "Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes.""

- Carnac the Magnificent, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

In Real Life, sheep generally do not explode in remarkable numbers. This does not stop video games and other media from featuring exploding sheep. It's so prevalent that The Other Wiki used to have an article about it. Of course, different species, barnyard or otherwise, have been shown to explode as well, but for some reason, writers and designers just like their exploding sheep.

Not to be confused with Bob-omb. See also Action Bomb.

Comic Books

 * Deadpool had an inflatable sheep gun at one point.

Film

 * Bad Taste by Peter Jackson features a gratuitous exploding sheep near the end. But given this was back in Jackson's gore and splatter fest days, you could just see it coming. Also things tend to explode when hit by an RPG.
 * The Star Wars prequels have a large-rumped animal called a "shaak" that is described by the production crew as the Naboo equivalent of a sheep. There are easter eggs of exploding shaaks in several action sequences.
 * British movie The Baker has a young boy who enjoys making explosives in his free time. He causes several sheep to explode with his homemade bombs; indeed, the first one to do that has its head propelled straight into the protagonist's, knocking him cold and starting the chain of events that makes up the plot.
 * In Godmonster Of Indian Flats the titular monster is a mutated sheep which grows larger throughout the movie, until it explodes in the climactic scene.
 * The New Zealand film Black Sheep ends with the protagonists blowing up the infected sheep as they realize that sheep flatulence has created a potentially explosive situation.
 * Four Lions features a memorable scene with an exploding sheep. It's not as funny as it sounds.
 * The film features the Credits Gag:
 * Variation: The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Literature

 * The 1999 science fiction Before and After by Matthew Thomas has exploding sheep as one of the signs of the imminent apocalypse. As the blurb on the back puts it, "This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a BAA-OOM!"
 * The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has a digression on the unfortunate interaction between sheep and minefields. The word "ovicide" is repeatedly used.

Live Action TV

 * On an episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, his character, the psychic Carnac the Magnificent, predicts "Sis boom bah!" as the answer to a card sealed in an envelope (one of his signature tricks). As seen above, the card refers to "the sound made when a sheep explodes". The resulting riotous laughter from Carson, his co-host Ed McMahon, and the audience, literally stopped the show cold for several minutes.
 * Monty Python's Flying Circus featured exploding animals, including sheep, in a few sketches. One sketch (and subsequent running gag) featured exploding kamikaze Scotsmen.

Music

 * One British rock band was named Exploding Sheep.

Tabletop Games

 * GURPS: Bio-Tech notes this as a potential side effect of using Pharm Animals to produce explosives.

Video Games

 * Blizzard Entertainment features this trope quite a bit:
 * If you click one time too many on sheep (or other non-hostile critters) in Warcraft games, they explode. The third game even had a mini-game where you had to dodge exploding sheep running at you.
 * Clicking makes critters explode in Starcraft as well, but no space sheep.
 * The ice setting has something that looks like a tauntaun, though. Close enough.
 * In World of Warcraft, people with engineering profession can make explosive mechanical sheep. Also, in the Undercity's Apothecarium, there is an underground section where with an area where people are held in cages, meant to be used as experiments of undeath. There is an Undead NPC who tests a "viscous fluid" upon one particular human male, which turns him into a rabbit, then a squirrel, and finally a sheep. Then, the NPC pokes the sheep repeatedly, and the sheep explodes.
 * And now we have the Explosive Decoy, a goddamned squirrel.
 * Worms has these, as well as exploding cows... and exploding grannies... and pigeons... bananas... donkeys... and that's only some of the ludicrous weaponry that explode by default, before you start using the editors.
 * Pictured above, the best is the French Sheep Strike: Basically, five flaming sheep fall out of the sky, explode as they hit the ground, but continue to bounce about the area exploding on contact with anything, spraying flames as they go. A truly magnificent sight, all to the tune of La Marseillaise.
 * Spyro the Dragon.
 * They didn't explode, as much as he incinerated them. For their magical stomach-butterflies which made Sparx have magic. Apparently.
 * Ratchet and Clank Going Commando had the Sheepinator weapon which turned enemies into sheep. Use it enough and it will upgrade to the Black Sheepinator, which makes the sheep walk up to other enemies and explode.
 * During one mission of Armed and Dangerous, a drunken explosives expert trying to defuse a bomb attached to a kidnapped prize sheep accidentally sets it off.
 * In a video game titled, appropriately, Sheep, many of the hazards will cause the sheep to explode.
 * In Sim Golf, turn the balls into exploding sheep by pressing CTRL and S and letting go, then typing BOMBSHEEP.
 * Gem Fighter Online has a cash-bought exocore transformation (dubbed "Sheep's Cry" in the US release) features an explosion technique. The explosion is a translucent red version of the sheep's outer image expanded out around the character. While it causes damage and knockback to enemies, the sheep itself is unaffected by it.
 * In Revenge of the Mutant Camels, one stage (called "Through Pastures Blue...") features sheep that spontaneously and gratuitously explode into lethal chunks of wool.
 * No One Lives Forever: the GDR research lab level holds (exploding) sheep and goat pens.
 * In Cannon Fodder, on later missions, sheep are booby-trapped with explosives.
 * The first Destroy All Humans! game gives us the Radioactive Exploding Zombie Cows.
 * Atlantica Online has many enemies that can explode at low health, dealing considerable damage. Sheep are among them.
 * Overlord: Raising Hell has exploding sheep in the Abyss realms.
 * Sheep Man in Mega Man 10, being a robot, explodes when Mega Man defeats him.

Web Comics

 * Web artist Fredrik K. T. Andersson (Not Safe for Work) had a great comic of his character Baalah (an apparent nudist and bisexual 'demon princess' complete with horns, tail, and red skin) launching sheep as fireworks by inserting chemicals into their bodily orifices.

Web Original

 * In an episode of Red vs. Blue, the Blue Team tries calming down a bomb named Andy with imagination therapy. One of the images presented was a flock of sheep, "but not the exploding kind."
 * Seed Animation Studios has a CGI in-house short, Freerange, with farm animals merrily killing each other. Prominently featured: a sheep suicide bomber.

Real Life

 * Livestock, including sheep, have been used as an expedient and ad-hoc way to clear minefields.
 * There's a tabletop game based on this practice called "Unexploded Cow". The goal of the game is basically to make its title a lie.
 * Not sheep, but toads have been known to explode after emitting an unearthly screech. The cause? Crows that have figured out how to rip out the toad's delicious liver in one quick movement. The toad, alive but hurt and understandably terrified, responds to the threat in the normal way, by inflating itself. Only it's got a hole in it now, so the viscera go flying.
 * Truth in Television and the reason behind a large number of cattle mutilations (sorry, those who believe in UFOs and cryptids.) When any large animal dies, the gases released during decomposition build up in the animals abdominal cavity, causing the animal to bloat up and eventually rupture.