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 ==

* 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."

"Of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight ''everything'' [[When All You Have Is a Hammer|with fire]]."

* 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.}}

 

 

* 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.

* 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.

 

 

** 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"

** 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]].

** 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 ==

* 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 ==

* 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]]