Kill It with Fire: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Prometheus did not just give humanity the light of reason, progress, technology, and the power to rival [[God]] when he handed us fire, but the means to dispatch just about any monster imaginable. Considering how [[Greek Mythology]] is a [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]], that was a ''good thing.'' The symbolism behind this has to do with fire's associations with purification and [[Light Is Good]], and partly because it represents humanity's dominion over the natural world. More literally a burning stick was humankind's first effective defense against nocturnal predators.

Not to be confused with [[Frying Pan of Doom|Kill It With Fryer]], or [[Badass Preacher|Kill It With Friar]].

 

{{examples}}

== Ancient Mythology ==

* Heracles used fire to cauterize the Hydra's stumps before it could grow new heads. Or to be precise: Heracles smashed the heads with his club, his nephew Iolaos cauterized them.

* In ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', this is the classic endgame strategy of mono-red: when the opponent builds an army and all other colors' offenses would stall, the red mage points a spell at the opponent's face and torches him to death directly.

** Mid-game, it's also helpful to wipe out an opponent's creatures with cards like Incinerate, Fireball, and Inferno.

{{quote|"Some people have said there's no subtlety to destruction. You know what? They're dead."

"Yes, I think 'toast' is an appropriate description." }}

** Chandra Nalar seems to be the new Jaya Ballard.

* Averted in ''[[Ponies Make War]]''. {{spoiler|During their rematch in the latter half, Celestia attempts to incinerate Terra, but Titan intervenes and prevents it.}}

** {{spoiler|Averted ''again'' during the second battle of Ponyville; Twilight tries to kill Terra with a concentrated beam of molten iron, but it runs out before she can finish her off.}}

 

 

'''Burt Wilson''': We don't even ''want'' the ashes!

''[Ernie smiles and leans over the metal grate]''

'''Ernie Kaltenbrunner''': Dust to dust. }}

* Subverted in ''[[Evolution (film)|Evolution]]''; the military plots to destroy the largest sample of the alien entity with tons upon tons of napalm. However, as the scientists find out right as the plan is about to be carried out, fire makes the thing reproduce ''even faster''; a small sample in a petri dish exposed to the flame of a lit match is enough to make it overtake one wall of the room they were in. Instead, the day is saved with <s>[[It Makes Sense in Context|dandruff shampoo]]</s> [[Product Placement|Head & Shoulders]].

** He says the same thing about infestations of Scottie Dogs and... [[Shooting Superman|tides]].

** Fire works well for most household pests. But for [[Artificial Human|replicants]], you've just got to bite the bullet and hire a [[Blade Runner]].

** It's not so much a case of panicking as ''even noticing'': flamethrowers are more effective than guns because Triffids don't appear to have any vital organs. (Following the same principle, shotguns work better than handguns or rifles.)

* [[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]] and Dumbledore use it to drive off the [[Everything's Deader with Zombies|Inferi]] at the end of ''The Half-Blood Prince.'' And in ''Deathly Hallows'', Fiendfyre turns out to be one of the few ways to destroy Horcruxes.

** Notable for the brilliant exchange between Harry and Dumbledore that went something like...

'''Harry:''' Oh... right... }}

* [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''—in the first fight against the Ringwraiths, swords prove ineffective, so Aragorn grabs a flaming piece of wood form the fire and drives them back. Works remarkably well considering they are the immortal indestructible specters of long dead kings, capable of killing with even a slight blow and causing even squads of veteran soldiers to run in fear. It's hinted, though, that the Ringwraiths are in a weaker state during their initial attack on the Shire.

* In Scott Westerfeld's ''[[Midnighters]]'' trilogy, the animals are afraid of human technology, including, but not limited to, fire.

* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld]]'', werewolves can only be killed by either silver or fire. Likewise, zombies, vampires and mummies are noted to be very flammable.

* In ''[[The Hobbit]]'', fire proves effective in driving off wargs, but much less so when some goblins arrive, who simply use it against the dwarves.

* ''[[The Zombie Survival Guide]]'' notes that fire is the only way to safely dispose of a Solanium-infected corpse. It's not that effective as a weapon, because the zombies don't feel pain and won't notice they're on fire, but all traces of the infection will be wiped out once the fire brings them down.

** It's stated that Mad King Aerys was a big fan of this trope.

{{quote|''[[Pyromaniac|Burn them all...]]''}}

* A subversion: in [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s ''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'', a repeated theme and instruction is to ''refrain'' from killing the necromancer villain with fire, as he can be resurrected from the ashes. Instead, the protagonist is instructed to dissolve the body in acid.

* The vampires in [[Stephenie Meyer]]'s ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' can be permanently destroyed by using fire and not much else.

* A major villain in the ''[[Fingerprints]]'' series starts out as a [[Knife Nut]]. When it becomes clear that a single knife is insufficient to carry out her [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]], she figures fire will work better. {{spoiler|It does.}}

* ''[[The War Against the Chtorr]]''. Flamethrowers are the best means of dealing with the [[More Teeth Than the Osmond Family|Chtorran gastropedes]] (and various other forms of [[Horde of Alien Locusts|Chtorran ecology]]), and are preferred by the antagonist over [[Kill It with Ice|cold-gas]] and [[Flechette Storm|flechette rifles]]. This is because their unique alien physiology makes the gastropedes [[Immune to Bullets|very difficult to kill]].

* In [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s ''[[The Jungle Book (novel)|The Jungle Book]]'', when Shere Khan incites the Pack against Mowgli, Mowgli uses "the Red Flower" against them.

* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[Three Hearts and Three Lions]]'', they discover the troll can be killed only with fire. (This is the source for D&D.)

* In [[Anne McCaffrey]]'s ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'' series, fire spewed by male and green dragons (and flamethrowers wielded by queenriders and ground crews) are the primary means of fighting Threadfall.

* {{spoiler|Beatty}} in ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]''. "If you have a problem, don't face it, burn it". [[Karmic Death|Indeed]]. The [[Crapsack World|world]] in ''Fahrenheit 451'' subscribes to this ideology against books and literature.

* In [[H. G. Wells]]'s short story "The Cone" an angry steel worker decides to kill his boss by throwing him off of an overhead catwalk onto the red-hot vent cone on top of a blast furnace. His victim starts burning immediately, and then [[It Gets Worse]] when the vent opens releasing scalding gases. Total [[Squick]].

* The only reliable way to kill the undead in ''[[The Witch Watch]]''. That and just cutting their heads off and living it powerless and underground whilst still being conscious.

 

 

* [[Ice Cube]]'s "We Had To Tear This Motherfucker Up" is about the L.A. riots. Including the rash of arsons. It's from the point of view of a rioter.

* [[Amon Amarth]] has numerous songs about the fires and fire god of Ragnarok. "Gods of War Arise" describes vikings burning own a sleeping village.

* [[The Prodigy]] seem to like this trope a lot. Songs include "Fire", "Firestarter", "Fuel My Fire", "Spitfire", "The Heat the Energy" and "World's on Fire". In the same let's-burn-the-world vein you could probably also include songs like "Molotov Bitch" and "Hotride".

* In [[Rammstein]]'s "Rosenrot" video, {{spoiler|Till}}'s character is burned at the stake.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** And yes, you can [[Order of the Stick|Just keep loping off heads and causing new ones to grow until the thing cannot move due to low blood pressure]], but its a VERY bad idea to actually do so since it takes a while to pull off (assuming you do not have a bunch of hasted gnomes with chainsaws) and every second that you take to take off a head is a second that the OTHER heads are trying to kill you.

** Fire is also extremely useful against most undead, who are often immune to a wide variety of attack modes.

** In general, when wizards start to cast Fireball is the point where they being to outshine the fighters in combat, and most of the high level, high damage spells tend to be fire.

*** Apocalypse from the Sky is a ninth-level spell from the Book of Vile Darkness. It isn't too damaging for a ninth-level spell (10d6 to all in the radius, which is available seven levels previously), but it has a radius of ''ten miles per caster level.'' The weakest person who can cast this spell would be destroying small countries and almost everything in them, and all of it would be through FIRE.

*** The psionic version: the Pyrokineticist. Always chaotic, rarely good, invariably fire-heavy. They are so fire-happy that a prestige class prerequisite is "must have set fire to a structure of any size simply to watch it burn"

** A vampire can heal lethal damage (swords, etc) at the rate of one Vitae per point. This isn't bad: most vampires can just abduct some random passer-by, drain him dry, and be peachy. It takes three days and only slightly less blood than the average person ''contains'' to heal a ''single point'' of aggravated damage.

* ''[[Exalted]]'' has the flame piece and firewand, and their First Age brethren like the plasma tongue repeater. The Righteous Devil and Golden Exhalation martial arts styles let you do things like triple their usually limited range or do bonus damage. Fear the Exalt who masters both of these styles and is able to use a Charm to produce ammunition - especially since the martial arts skills required to reach the higher levels of those charm trees mean that they can still kick your arse if you disarm them.

** The other races are pretty prone to this--almost every race has some sort of flamethrower equivalent, such as Ork "Burnaboyz", who combine flamethrower and armour-cutting blowtorch in one device. They generally tend to be constantly working on deconstruction, lest they get bored and make other Boyz "do the burny dance."

** See also the Cult of the Red Redemption, in ''[[Necromunda]]''. While the Sisters of Battle manage a healthy 0.2-0.8:1 flamethrower-to-soldier ratio in their various squads, virtually all Redemptionists carry a flamethrower, flamethrower pistol, underslung single-shot flamethrower on their rifle, or all of the above. Even their giant chainswords have a flamer built onto them.

** The Imperium's military as a whole gives us flamethrower pistols, full-sized flamethrowers, vehicle-mounted flamethrowers, even [[Humongous Mecha]]-sized flamethrowers, plasma guns, and the meltagun, which is an anti-tank ''microwave''.

** The only way for most factions inside it to permanently get rid of Orks is to burn the corpses. You can turn them into a corpse using it, but you still have to make sure afterwards to prevent the Orks from rising up again from the spores they drop when they die.

** ''Love Can Bloom'' summed up why the Imperium loves fire:

** Logically, you would expect [[Goddamned Bats|Keese]] in [[Ocarina of Time]] to be this. You would be wrong. Don't block them with your Deku shield.

* The zombies in the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' games are vulnerable to fire.

** A particular monster in ''[[Resident Evil 5]]'' plays this absolutely straight. The only way to kill it? Incinerate it in the conveniently placed furnace. Bonus points for the window that lets you watch as the creature is immolated.

*** Although, you actually can kill this boss with your normal ammo and you gain a special treasure for doing it, but on your first playthrough you are not likely to have enough ammo, and you won't have any really strong weapon, so you can't really do it at first play, so burn away!

* In ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]'', the colossus Celosia can be held at bay by the hero holding a lit torch, despite the fact that the colossus dwells in a temple with four much larger fires (safely on pedestals) with no sign that it fears them at all.

** This fact with the torch is vital to your defeat of Celosia: {{spoiler|if you approach it while using the torch it'll back away from you, and this can be used to actually drive it off a ledge. The impact from hitting the ground below breaks the armour on Celosia's back, exposing the vital point.}} The trick now is getting onto its back while it's trying to charge you...

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' lets you adapt your weapons with Incendiary Rounds and the upgraded Inferno Rounds for bringing searing pain to your enemies.

** High Explosive Rounds not only set their targets (now corpses) on fire, but also do the same thing ''to nearby enemies in the blast radius'', which is about four meters—and sends them flying. [[Department of Redundancy Department|While on fire]].

* Annie in ''[[League of Legends]]'' has three different ways of killing it with fire, first she can throw a fire ball, second she can breathe fire, and third she can order her teddy bear to attack you (it turns into a gigantic monster that is on fire)

** Brand follows this trope to a T, [[Up to Eleven|more so than even Annie]]. In addition, new champ Rumble has a flamethrower attached to his mech, plus a barrage of incendiary missiles. A few other champions have a fire-based skill. Everyone (once you gain a couple levels, anyway) has access to the spell [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Ignite]], as well.

** In the original ''Alone in the Dark'', just the final boss.

* In much of the ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' series, fire is one of four reliable ways to finish off vampires (the other three being sunlight, water, and impalement, although some are resistant to sunlight or water).

** Subverted in early raids since everything was ''immune'' to fire.

** ''[[Memetic Mutation|BY FIRE BE PURGED!]]''

* In ''[[City of Heroes]]'', nearly every [[An Adventurer Is You|Archetype]] has Fire powersets to choose from, and all have the common theme of being all damage, all the time. Most enemies are fairly weak to fire for that matter. Ask any Fire/Fire [[Glass Cannon|Blaster]]...

** With the sole exception of the Thermal Radiation powerset, which is a case of [[Heal It with Fire]].

** ''[[Mega Man Star Force]]'' has a number of fire-based opponents, plus the Saurian tribe in ''2'', and a fair number of attacks. The "Heat Grenade" deserves special merit, since not only does it blast apart the three back rows with significant damage, but it also destroys any special scenery on those squares, such as grass.

* In ''[[Far Cry]] 2'', a [[First-Person Shooter]] set in modern Africa, fire is realistically implemented: many things can cause one to start (gas tanks, fuel barrels, flamethrowers, Molotovs, flare guns, the backblast from rocket launchers, and any sort of explosion) and depending on your surroundings, it can spread, ''fast''. Aside from obvious uses like setting people on fire, enemies also react accordingly, and will back away and avoid fires, making them good distractions, allowing you to flank them, sneak into their base, or escape. Seeing an outpost up in flames, spreading across the grass, up trees, and into the jungle as far as the eye can see, is a sight to behold.

** Thanks to the Firebat, it's also how the Terrans deal with Zerglings, Zealots, other Firebats...

** The sequel adds to the Terrans' arsenal the Hellion, a speedy four-wheeled craft with a flame thrower.

* ''[[Tyrian]]''- [[Two Words: Obvious Trope]]: [[Disc One Nuke|Plasma]] [[Game Breaker|Storm]].

* ''[[Fire Shark]]'' has the red flamethrower weapon. At max level, it shot out '''6''' streams of very damaging fire, two of which fired out forward and the other four swept the sides and back of your plane, [[Game Breaker|easily massacring every mook in sight]]. There's a reason why the game is called FIRE Shark...

* [[Touhou Project|Utsuho Reiuji]] wanted to kill [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink|Gensokyo]] with fire. [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|All of it]]. {{spoiler|She gets better}}.

** The "fire" in this case? '''nuclear. fusion.''' In the form of miniature '''stars'''.

** Another pirate-designed weapon is the frigate-scale Incendiary Bomb Launcher, which does burn damage when it hits.

* There's always a chance the randomly-generated weapon you just picked up in ''[[Borderlands]]'' will add fire damage, which does increased damage to fleshy (unarmored, unshielded) enemies and adds damage over time when it hits. There's also fire barrels that explode into a burst of flame when shot.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* Belkar (of ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'') attempted it [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0270.html here].

{{quote|'''Belkar:''' It's as true today as when I started adventuring: when in doubt, set something on fire.}}

* In ''[[Tales of the Questor]]'', the ratlike Wights swell and explode when exposed to a candle flame... later on, Quentyn uses magically amplified torchflame to kill a swarm of Redcaps (with messy, gory, tick-poppy type results.)

* Richard in ''[[Looking for Group]]''.

** Bun-Bun also tried this strategy himself at one point. [http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=990324 It didn't work quite as well.]

* Kyros from [[Irregular Webcomic]]. His obsessiveness to "sort out" any problems he faces by casting a huge fireball, killing everything in his path (usually including himself) is a [[Running Gag]].

* [http://pokemonx.comicgenesis.com/d/20090605.html This] ''[[Pokémon-X]]'' strip.

* ''[[Cry Havoc]]'' seems to like this trope. Faustus is burned alive, giving him an arm that is possessed... or something. and then the Vatican drops a fuel air bomb on him

* Axel's method of choice in ''[[Ansem Retort]]''. Zexion almost quoted the trope name verbatim when Axel decided to kill everyone that didn't tell him where Larxene was quickly enough.

* In ''[[Roza]]'', she sets the stables on fire using her [[Power Glows|magical]] [[The Power of Blood|blood]].

* In ''[[Endstone]]'', [http://endstone.net/2009/10/12/issue-2-webpage-17/ used on Herrek to get his attention before taunting], with [http://endstone.net/2009/10/15/issue-2-webpage-18/ death to come after].

 

== Web Original ==

** He notes in his "Mightily Murdered Power Rangers" review how this phrase has become [[The Artifact]] and tells the comic not to tempt him to change that.

* [[Dragon Ball Abridged|Bulma's]] reaction to seeing Zarbon in his transformed state in [[Dragon Ball Abridged|DBZA]]

* Suggested as an alternative to submitting to [[Wimpification]] during [http://snakesonasora.livejournal.com/2619.html#cutid1 this sporking] of the infamous ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' fanfic, "[[Naga Eyes]]."

{{quote|'''Sora:''' Plan A: Getting the hell out of this nightmare and pretending it never happened.

* The last line of the avalable chapter of [http://nothotbutspicy.com/para/50fa3/ the epic tale of Site Kilo-29]: [[Awesome but Practical|"Flamethrower."]] [[Catch Phrase|He said. "Fuck Yeah."]] (don't worry, it's finished) {{spoiler|and he survives!}}

* Yang's reaction to anything that pushes her [[Berserk Button]] in ''[[RWBY]]''.

 

== Western Animation ==

== Real Life ==

* The [http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/coconutcrab.asp Coconut Crab] is the largest land-dwelling arthropod. It can only be killed with a flamethrower. [[Squick|And it's edible.]]

* The Raufoss Mk 211 bullet. A specialised round developed for use with .50 BMG caliber sniper rifles, its designed to peirce through armour, explode, and then set the target on fire. Its considered a war crime to deliberately use it on a person but for anti-material (as this troper remembers from Army training, things like belt-buckles, glasses, ammo pouches, ect. count as "anti-material" targets) and anti-vehicles its perfectly fine to use.

* For a more impersonal delivery system, there's incendiary bombs, like those used fairly heavily on Japanese cities during [[World War II]], by the USAAF. The June 10, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo caused more deaths than the immediate effects of either of the atomic bombs dropped in that conflict.

** There's also [[wikipedia:The Blitz|The Blitz]] in Britain. Over a million incendiaries were dropped in the first phase. Then the Brits used the same tactic against Germany. The destruction of Hamburg and Dresden are the closest thing Germans have to a Hiroshima-trauma. The bombing of Dresden exceeded the property destruction wrought on Hiroshima. Recent accounting though has shown the death rate to have been much lower.

* Today's flamethrowers are more along the lines of missile launchers that use incendiary ammunition. And then you have the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ane4jB35Hs MLRS version.] A typical example is the Russian RPO Shmel ("Bumblebee"). This is a tube looking like an ordinary bazooka. Inside is a single-shot rocket filled with napalm, or worse, a fuel-air warhead. A rarer variant, RPO Rys ("Lynx"), is the same, but but you can carry extra rockets and reload it.

* What did Sun Tzu & the Vikings both have in common? The love of fire.

* If something won't burn with regular fire, there's always [[wikipedia:Chlorine trifluoride|Chlorine Trifluoride]]. This stuff is so horribly reactive that it can ''light ashes on fire''.

* Contrary to popular belief, witches weren't burned in England (or the Colonies, which mostly followed English practice). In Continental Europe, witchcraft was tried as heresy, for which the penalty was burning: but the pragmatic English tried witches for whatever they were supposed to have done with their magic, from murder down to theft and destruction of property, and sentenced them accordingly. So while there were hangings for witchcraft, there were also many cases of convicted witches getting a fine or just a stern warning. Also contrary to popular belief, this was also the practice in Europe at large. The Spanish Inquisition, for example, was quick to pronounce 'Witchcraft' as 'Insanity' and refused to even consider charges of it. However, many local courts in Spain brought people up on charges of various counts of witchcraft on their own volition, though hanging was again only reserved for the most serious of cases. [[Rule of Three|Yet another contrariety]] to public belief, witches weren't persecuted in Western Europe before the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church denied the existence of witchcraft and was quick to condemn those accusing others of the practise.

* During much of English history, there were only two crimes punishable by burning: heresy and treason. The latter was punished in different ways depending on the offender's status and gender: nobles of either gender were beheaded; common men were hung, drawn and quartered; and common women were burned at the stake. Treason came in two flavors: High Treason (treason against the state, including most of what we normally think of as treason, plus sundries such as counterfeiting the King's seal or cuckolding the King's heir) and Petty Treason (murder of someone with lawful authority over you, most commonly murder of a man by his wife).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:This Index Is On Fire]]

[[Category:Pothole Magnet]]

[[Category:Trope Names From Memes]]

[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]

[[Category:Heat Index]]