History Main / SlapOnTheWristNuke

* One of the {{Limit Break}}s available in ''EpicBattleFantasy 3'' is a Nuke that deals moderate damage to your enemies, a tiny bit to your party, and [[UniversalPoison poisons everyone.]] Often, the ''poison'' will outdamage the ''nuke'' within two turns.

** Kefka in ''FinalFantasyVI'' has a spell called Goner (Forsaken, in the [[UpdatedRerelease GBA version]]). When Kefka is casting it, the screen shakes, an image of Kefka's head is summoned to show his evil expression, and the spell itself has a pretty long casting time. The spell itself looks amazingly destructive, and it even has a magic power of 220 (to compare, Ultima, the most powerful spell you can get, has a magic power of 150). However, since the spell does not ignore defense, it'll only do about a thousand damage or less if your party is at a solid level. To worsen this, another one of Kefka's attacks, Heartless Angel (his opening play, in fact), simply has Kefka summon a few sparkles that turn into cutesy little angels, who all somehow bring all of your HP down to one. (NB: it's called Fallen One in the original U.S. release).
** Sephiroth's Supernova in ''FinalFantasyVII'' is by far the best-known offender, not the least because [[OverlyLongFightingAnimation the SFX gets tedious]]. Blowing up most of the solar system and engulfing most of the planet within the flames of a tortured sun does less damage to each individual character than getting poked with a knife by a Tonberry. It's based on a percentage of their current HP - there's no way it can possibly kill. The weirdest part? Sephiroth can attack by destroying the entire solar system and everything in it ''more than once''.
*** Which has lead to a a lot of WildMassGuessing that the final battle is a mental attack.

**** Then again the percentage damage is calculated on your TOTAL HP, not your current HP. So its still something that can kill you. And you do not ever want to get hit with Judgment Day..... ever.
**** In a cutscene right before this battle, Sin blows a gigantic fissure into the ocean and part of the continent in order to get a better shot at the airship. The characters never make mention of this fissure afterwards, or in ''X-2'', despite the fact that such environmental destruction should have made life very hard for millions of people. (Or at least, if ''FinalFantasyX'' actually had that many people in it.)

* Inverted in ''{{The Legend of Zelda}}: Majora's Mask'': Termina's tiny moon is treated as if it's big enough to destroy the entire world and if you let it touch the ground it actually causes an ''[[StuffBlowingUp explosion]]''.
** Termina's moon might be fairly small for a celestial body (about the size of Clock Town), but Termina itself is a fairly small world. I think that dropping a city-sized rock would cause [[{{Understatement}} significant damage to the surrounding area.]]

* Averted and played straight in ''MasterOfOrion'' and the sequels. When the Stellar Converter is used for planetary bombardment, it tears through the planet, leaving only an asteroid belt in its wake. However, when used in combat it lacks the EarthShatteringKaboom effect and simply wipes the planet clean of any and all buildings and inhabitants. Finally, certain ships can withstand multiple hits from the same weapon.

!!Non-VideoGame Examples

[[AC: {{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
* In ''{{Digimon}}'', Starmon's attack is called, and basically ''is'', a Meteor Shower... but is otherwise an average champion-level attack.
* ''SaintSeiya'' has the eponymous Saints use attacks of awesomely destructive power, especially the higher up on the SortingAlgorithmOfEvil one goes. However, several of these attacks come with names and animation like "Galaxian Explosion" (attacks with the force of an exploding galaxy) and "Lightning Plasma" (shoots 100 billion shots of plasma at an enemy). Yet for all this destructive power, the only destruction is of the local landscape and structures.
** Things peak with the Athena Exclamation, a technique that releases the power of a ''Big Bang''. Three Gold Saints must work together to perform the attack, and it IS a forbidden technique, but it's eventually used anyways. And then, not too long afterwards, ''two'' are used at the same time, ''against'' each other. If not for the actions of Shiryu, (or the four Bronzies [[AdaptationDecay if you're talking about the OVA]]) the series would have had a [[RocksFallEveryoneDies painfully quick ending.]]
* The JSSDF was forced to hand control over to NERV in ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'' when Sachiel treated an N2 mine as this. The "Non-Nuclear" mine has all the power of a state-of-the-art nuclear weapon... and all it managed was to make the Angel take a nap.

[[AC: ComicBooks]]
* Done with a literal nuke and the Saint of Killers in ''{{Preacher}}''.
* Nothing stops TheJuggernaut.
** [[GrievousHarmWithABody I'm gonna hit Charles so hard, that I'm gonna hit Charles]] ''[[OneHitKill with]]'' [[BeyondTheImpossible Charles]].

[[AC: Literature]]
* A quarter-gram of antimatter releases a medium-altitude areal photon burst of 45 Terajoules (11 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiloton kilotons]]) in both the book and movie versions of DanBrown's ''AngelsAndDemons'' doing little more than shaking things up a tad. Equal to the flash-burn caused by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man Fat Man]], such a burst would handily have blinded everyone in Rome outdoors at the time (especially the large crowd watching the burst) as well as set fire to any medium colored surfaces in line-of-sight.
* A column in ''SFX'' by DavidLangford remembered the dodgy science in a novel where the villain has a giant earth-shattering weapon "with an ammo belt of black holes. Things look bad when he turns it on the hero. Fortunately, it's a glancing blow..."

[[AC: WesternAnimation]]
* In ''TheSimpsons'', Sideshow Bob manages to set off a nuclear bomb inside Springfield's air force base - but all it does is feature a tiny explosion about a foot wide. He then notices that printed on the side of the bomb is the disclaimer "Best before Dec 1959".
--> '''Bob''' (to himself): There were plenty of brand-new bombs, but you had to go for that retro 50s charm!

[[AC: RealLife]]
* Some tactical and strategic nuclear warheads did far less damage per square foot than conventional explosives, they just covered LOTS of area. A nuclear weapon detonated on the ground will also do far less damage than a nuclear weapon detonated thousands of feet above ground.
* Compared to other nuclear arsenals, North Korea's nukes could qualify for this trope.

* Mocked by ''WeeblAndBob'' in their ''FinalFantasyVII'' [[http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/ff7/ parody]]: The 'super special attack' drops the moon onto the planet, dealing... 7 damage to a random encounter.

* In ''{{Adventurers}}!'' the mostly flashy magic attack shatters the entire planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and even ''[[BreakingTheFourthWall the game's CD]]''. The damage is fairly good but far less than what those events would entail.

* HeartsOfIron features nuclear weapons. To access them, one faction has to research enough technology to build a nuclear reactor to a high enough level to produce a bomb, and then one is automatically added to your stockpile once a certain amount of time passes (which decreases the more technology you invest into it). Nuclear weapons have the following effects: they destroy all enemy troops in a province; they cause an amount of dissent directly proportional to the target country depending on the population levels, industry, infrastructure, etc.; they completely deplete all improvement levels (infrastructure, industry, etc.) to 0% and make it so it takes years to repair. And that's it. There is no fallout, nuclear winter, global warming, or anything else. Troops that occupy a province that was just nuked suffer no ill effects. Furthermore, most provinces have such a low population that it's nuking them isn't effective enough to change anything. The best cities to nuke are state capitals and some high-population provinces in China, and that's it. While the no fallout may be excused when you consider this depicts early nuclear weapons in the WWII era, the technology tree allows you to advance and develop better nuclear weapons that existed in the ColdWar, but the basic effects stay the same. Nukes also do not affect diplomacy when one would think they really should. Finally, not only can the {{=AI=}} not handle nuclear weapons, there is no concept of 'deterrence': a country without nukes is just as likely to attack a country with nukes as without.

** [[GrievousHarmWithABody I'm gonna hit Charles so hard, that I'm gonna hit Charles]] ''[[OneHitKill with]]'' [[GrievousHarmWithABody Charles]].

Using a SummonMagic {{Mons}}ter that destroys the moon to rain fiery DeathFromAbove on enemies, or a WaveMotionGun fueled by consuming ''[[ApocalypseHow Galaxies]]'', and the nine hundred megaton ColonyDrop that won't scorch your lawn but ''will'' [[EverythingFades disintegrate]] that MoneySpider... only mildly damages the FinalBoss. Also, expect any stellicidal attacks or planet busting techniques to be polite enough to rebuild the destroyed real estate [[CutscenePowerToTheMax after the CGI is done.]].

* ''{{Battletanx}}: Global Assault'' features a tactical nuke weapon whose blast wave will generally cover the entire level. Most tanks will be wiped out by the blast, however, the game's ''MightyGlacier''--the Goliath-class tank--can literally stand right on top of the nuke as it goes off, and it will survive with about a quarter of its health left.
** Averted in spiritual sequel ''WarJetz'' as the nuke WILL vaporize everybody within range at power levels 2 and 3. Drop it, turn, and RUN. Even then you'll sustain about half damage to a third damage if you didn't drop it from high enough.

* Smoke's FinishingMove in ''MortalKombat3'' is made of this. He opens his chest and starts going MadBomber. Next shot is of Earth..which disappears with a loud BOOM. And then? Next fight.
* The Tactical Nuke in ''ModernWarfare 2'' applies. Getting a 25 killstreak in multiplayer with this equipped allows you to call in a nuclear warhead to end the match in your favor regardless of the current score. While it does kill every player on field regardless of team, ''the entire map remains intact and untouched''.
* Averted in ''[[MassEffect Mass Effect 2]]'', at the end boss where you can equip the [[spoiler:[[YouNukeEm M-920 Cain]]]] and, at fully-upgraded, take out [[spoiler:the human-reaver-foetus]] with two shots.
** Technically, though, the [[spoiler:Cain]] isn't a nuclear weapon. It just produces a powerful enough explosion to [[EverythingMakesAMushroom create a mushroom cloud]].

* Averted in ''{{Rise of Nations}}'', where they do more than decent damage (as in destroying all buildings and units in their range, and dropping cities to zero HP, leaving the user with just marching his troops in to take it over). The game also has a counter that goes down when anyone uses a nuke. Having it reach zero counts as global thermonuclear war - all sides lose. Also, if you go too reckless on the ColdWar scenario and let your threat meter reach [[DefconFive DEFCON 1]], the enemy side will launch MnogoNukes and it's [[NonstandardGameOver World War III Game over]].
** [[FridgeLogic The standard Armageddon loss doesn't make much sense]], however, if, through careful exploitation of a crappy AI and fast building times (available with some civilizations), ''you're the only one with nukes''. Evidently, nuking half the world serves only to make you [[DrunkOnTheDarkSide insane enough]] to nuke the other half too.
*** Nuking half the world makes and not realizing you started a [[KillEmAll nuclear winter]] makes you insane alright.
* Averted in ''TotalAnnihilation'' and its successor, ''Supreme Commander''. The nukes are impressively destructive, vaporizing [[strike:nearly]] anything they hit dead on and also frying a good deal of the area in the latter, but determining the scale is still tricky what with the giant robots and all. To compensate, they also have no limits on resource production or the number of buildable superweapons. This means that it is possible to overwhelm missile defense systems by launching enough nukes at a time.
** Of course, the Nukes are so damn expensive that by the time you've built multiple launchers and multiple nukes, the enemy will likely have spent those resources building an army that has already walked across your base(s) and crushed you. And if he hasn't done that, odds are you were probably winning the game even without the nukes.
** The Seraphim race has a special Nuke as a superweapon that is resistant to missile defense. They also have a large bomber that fires smaller, SlapOnTheWristNuke.
** As for the scale - T1 bots in ''SupremeCommander'' are 10-metres tall. So nukes have a blast radius of around ten kilometres. Not true strategic nukes, but still very powerful.
* Played straight in ''WorldInConflict,'' where multiplayer nukes are underpowered compared to their real counterparts, even if they do kill anything in the large blast radius barring MercyInvincibility and radiate the area. In the campaign, meanwhile, it is averted: Launching a single one is treated as toying with the fate of the planet. The chronologically next mission features bands of rabble in ruined or smoldering forests, with the last mission's location visible in the distance through the enormous cloud of black smoke as it's still on fire. Characters are horrified for the rest of the campaign.
* Some of the spells in DefenseOfTheAncients are like this - even though they might take away a significant number of HP, from the spell descriptions there ought to be no way the target can survive.

* ''FinalFantasy'' became rife with these as soon as the graphics got far enough along to show it.
** Kefka in ''FinalFantasyVI'' has a spell called Goner (Forsaken, in the [[UpdatedRerelease GBA version]]). When Kefka is casting it, the screen shakes, an image of Kefka's head is summoned to show his evil expression, and the spell itself has a pretty long casting time. The spell itself looks amazing yet destructive, and it even has a magic power of 220 (To compare, Ultima, the most powerful spell you can get, has a magic power of 150). However, since the spell does not ignore defense, it'll only do about a thousand damage or less if your party is at a solid level. To worsen this, another one of Kefka's attacks, Heartless Angel (his opening play, in fact), simply has Kefka summon a few sparkles that turn into cutesy little angels, who all somehow bring all of your HP down to one. (NB: it's called Fallen One in the original U.S. release).

*** Which has lead to a few [[WildMassGuessing WMG]] [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment guesses]] that the final battle is a mental attack.

*** It was always a little disappointing that summoning Bahamut ZERO against mooks on the ground floor of the Shinra office building (65 stories high) didn't have the [[IndependenceDay logical effect]].

** The third form of ''FinalFantasyVIII'''s final boss, [[spoiler: a fusion of Ultimecia and the "[[InformedAbility strongest GF]]", Griever]], has an attack called Great Attractor. It shows the boss pulling planets from across the solar system to collide with the players, and yet they survive! Supposedly it also does relatively little damage.
** Ark, from ''FinalFantasyIX,'' whose attack animation shows it creating a crater that appears to be at least a mile in diameter, deals damage approximately equal to Zidane's Ultima Weapon blade.

** Any of the Aeons' overdrives in ''FinalFantasyX,'' but especially Ifrit's. Being engulfed in a fireball, raised twenty feet in the air, hit with a chunk of floor and then dropped from a great height should by all rights be an instant kill, ''to anything'', rather than causing a moderately severe bruise.
*** Subverted by Sin, whose Giga Gravitation attack ''blows your entire ship away'' if it's unleashed, resulting in an immediate Game Over.
**** Blows your ship away? Try blows off half the planet!!
**** In the international version, one of Penance's attacks is "Tera Gravitron", which, logically, should be even stronger than Sin's Giga Gravitron. But, here, it only does ''percentage-based'' damage!. His other "ultimate" spell, Judgment Day, isn't much better either, since you can avoid it by summoning an aeon, unlike Sin's attack, which is an instant game over.
***** Then again the percentage damage is calculated on your TOTAL HP, not your current HP. So its still something that can kill you. And you do not ever want to get hit with Judgment Day..... ever.
**** In a cutscene right before this battle, Sin blows a gigantic fissure into the ocean and part of the continent in order to get a better shot at the airship. The characters never make mention of this fissure afterwards, or in X-2, despite the fact that such environmental destruction should have made life very hard for millions of people. (Or at least, if the ''FinalFantasyX'' world actually had that many people in it.)
*** All I know is that the first time I played it (even with a guide), I had no idea that Giga Gravaton was an automatic GameOver EVEN IF YOU HAVE AN AEON SUMMONED (which would normally make your party untouchable).
** ''FinalFantasyI'' has [=WarMECH=] and its ability "NUCLEAR". It seems like this ought to destroy the entire dungeon, but it doesn't, and the Light Warriors can survive it (if you've [[LevelGrinding grinded]] enough). (There's also the player-usable spell "NUKE", but it's only called this because of the four-character limit; it was originally called "Flare".)
*** Considering it's power is stated to work by ''teleporting in a piece of the sun'' [[ConvectionSchmonvection yet this doesn't immolate the entire area]], I'd still think that counts.

** Also subverted in the original ''{{Disgaea}}''. Don Joaqin’s Galactic Power summons a meteor [[spoiler:– which is pathetically weak, and is accompanied by a sound affect which sounds something like "plop"]].

*** Also keep in mind that you are attacking Lavos [[strike: 399 years before]] just after the [[ApocalypseHow Class-2]] attack it's spent ''several millenia'' preparing. Chances are he hasn't had time to fully recharge it yet.
*** That logic only works if you fight him after or before The Day Of Lavos. If you fight him on The Day of Lavos, the day in which the attack should have been unleashed, it becomes even more bizarre as he should have been able to use that same attack to erase you from existence.

* ''SuperRobotWars'' is the absolute king of this. Generally, the more powerful an attack is, the more over the top the animation. This gets especially crazy for final bosses, particularly [[http://youtube.com/watch?v=w9CM2MIpejU&feature=related this guy.]] Although those attacks all meant instant death for the target, keep in mind the final one did damage to exactly ONE individual. And not even more than your characters are capable of. This tends to get even more outrageous because of skills that will make attacks deal 1/4 damage to you, have the next one deal only '''10''' damage to you, no matter what it is, or even ''miss entirely!'' Yes, the attack that destroys countless planets just to try and kill one mech can be made to deal a measly 10 damage. Or even miss. There is nothing more satisfying in gaming then this.
* Averted in the ''{{Ultima}}'' series. The in-game magical equivalent to the nuke, the Armageddon spell, will kill ''everyone'' in all the games where it can be used. The only known creatures to survive a casting of the spell are the Avatar, Lord British and Batlin.
** In ''Ultima 7'', Black Gate also the Ferryman of Skara Brae survives. Well, technically he's already dead, but all other undead are vaporized. In ''Ultima 6'', extraplanar enemies like gremlins continue to appear after Armageddon.
** In ''Ultima 9'', [[spoiler: it's the only way to kill the ultimate BigBad, the Guardian.]]

** The spin-off ''{{Heroes of Might And Magic}}'' has the same spell, and the icon for the spell is even a mushroom cloud. Despite this, it's quite easy to get hit by it and only lose half your forces. (Oh, and it can't touch Dragons. Apparently dragon-scale is nuke-proof).

* One of the {{LimitBreak}}s available to you in ''EpicBattleFantasy'' 3 is a Nuke that deals moderate damage to your enemies, a tiny bit to your party, and [[UniversalPoison poisons everyone.]] Often, the ''poison'' will outdamage the ''nuke'' within two turns.

* Averted by the western AdventureGame/RPG ''QuestForGlory V''. Its ultimate attack spell ''Thermonuclear Blast'' disintegrates its target, levels the landscape for miles around, and makes it uninhabitable for decades. HaveANiceDeath. However, in the third game the big bad can cast it on ''you'' at close range, and will survive himself.
* A column in ''SFX'' by DavidLangford remembered the dodgy science in a novel where the villain has a giant earth-shattering weapon "with an ammo belt of black holes. Things look bad when he turns it on the hero. Fortunately, it's a glancing blow..."
* Mocked by the web animation ''WeeblAndBob'' in their ''FinalFantasyVII'' [[http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/ff7/ parody]]: The 'super special attack' drops the moon onto the planet, dealing... 7 damage to a random encounter.
* An odd example: the video game, ''Spider-Man 2'', had a spinning pile driver attack that Spidey could pull on thugs. He could do this from any height, including from the top of the ''Empire State Building'' (provided he swung up this high, first). It would seldom kill any thug one shot, no matter how high you were.

* Spoofed in ''Psychonauts'' during the Kochamara boss battle. Before Kochamara attacks he charges up and shouts the name of the attack, as if he's ready to unleash the fury of Hell itself. Of course, with names like ''Overly Intricate Combination'' and ''Hard To Avoid Area Attack'', you don't expect the end result to be very spectacular. And obviously, it isn't. Simply activating your shield saves you from any damage (which isn't a lot to begin with), not very dangerous.

* Averted in ''{{Civilization}}'' I through III. Nukes are consistently the ''only'' area effect weapons in the game. They can wipe out any unit, tile improvement, and city building in its radius, scatter fallout that can render tiles completely unusable, and knock down affected cities by several population points at a time (possibly destroying the city outright if the population is low enough)!
** However, Nukes in ''{{Civilization}} IV'' can heavily damage things and trash the landscape, but can't kill ''anything''. This doesn't stop your computer rivals from scorning your name should you use them yourself, however.

* ''Averted'' with the Planet Buster from ''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', which reduces its detonation zone into a screen-wide smoldering crater, and annihilates everything inside of it without fail. They also cause massive ecodamage, which can lead to rampant global warming and hordes of psychic alien worms trying to eat everyone. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Oops.]]
** Or be a means to an easy economic victory as you hunt the worms down and use them feed your energy credit empire

** Averted in SpiritualSuccessor ''MasterOfMagic'' with the high-level Chaos spell Call the Void, which takes the form of a gigantic mushroom cloud. It not only deals heavy damage to all units in the targeted city, but had a chance of destroying buildings ''and'' corrupts the land in a largish radius around the city, making the resources there unusable.
* '{{Empire}}'' and its derivatives likewise have nukes kill everything in their blast radius, but cities are merely depopulated instead of being destroyed (the ability to destroy cities would be a GameBreaker, since cities can not be built, only captured.
* In ''AdvanceWars'', [[BigBad Sturm's]] CO Power drops a meteor onto the field. This power can only drop a unit 5 hp, whether it's an infantry or a battleship, and it cannot kill a unit, only making it drop to 1.

*** Also, in the final mission of 2, you can fail and let a doomsday missile be launched, but due to the game's non-fatal KO's when losing, Sturm can drop the missile as many times as he wants and the world looks unscarred and the allied forces can just keep coming back.
* ''{{Pokemon}} Battle Revolution'' turns Seismic Toss into this. While the other games had a more modest animation for this, Seismic Toss shows the opponent's Pokemon ''being thrown into space'' and colliding back into the ground. Despite such an animation, it's not very strong (it's level-based, meaning the best you can do with it is 100 damage). I am not making this up! (See, you ''can'' say that phrase without using the Wiki Word.) [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6SxbINhhh4&feature=related Here's an example of it.]]
** In the main games, we have attacks like Earthquake and Surf, which are Exactly What It Says On The Tin and a tidal wave respectively, and are decent attacks, and can be used inside buildings and the like. Then we also have things like tearing through space or the wrath of God, in the same power range as the previous moves... or an explosive egg.
* Averted in Space Empires IV, where the ship weapon that makes a star go supernova does just that, and destroys the entire Solar System and everything in, leaving nothing but a burnt out star and a large amount of asteroids.

[[AC: {{Anime}}]]
* In ''{{Digimon}}'', Starmon's attack is called, and basically ''is'' a Meteor Shower... But is otherwise an average champion-level attack.
* ''SaintSeiya'' has the titular Saints use attacks of awesomely destructive power, especially the higher up on the SortingAlgorithmOfEvil you go. However, several of these attacks come with names and animation like "Galaxian Explosion" (attacks with the force of an exploding galaxy) and "Lightning Plasma" (shoots 100 billion shots of plasma at an enemy). Yet for all this destructive power, the only destruction is of the local landscape and structures.

* In the final battle of ''TengenToppaGurrenLagann'', the titular mech stands up against [[spoiler:a WaveMotionGun with the energy of a ''Big Bang'']]. They wouldn't have survived any longer, though, [[spoiler:until Lordgenome [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifices himself]] to ''convert the Big Bang into the Spiral energy'' that the heroes needed to even the odds]].
** If they were about to go down, how is it a SlapOnTheWristNuke? You know, since the eponymous mech is ''as tall as a galaxy is wide'', and would have to be sturdy enough to take that blast in the first place.

* Nothing stops the Juggernaut.
** ... bitch.
*** [[GrievousHarmWithABody I'm gonna hit Charles so hard, that I'm gonna hit Charles]] ''[[OneHitKill with]]'' [[GrievousHarmWithABody Charles]].

* A quarter-gram of antimatter releases a medium-altitude areal photon burst of 45 Terajoules (11 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiloton kilotons]]) in both the book and movie versions of [[DanBrown Dan Brown's]] ''AngelsAndDemons'' doing little more than shaking things up a tad. Equal to the flash-burn caused by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man Fat Man]], such a burst would handily have blinded everyone in Rome outdoors at the time (especially the large crowd watching the burst) as well as set fire to any medium colored surfaces in line-of-sight.

* In Advanced DungeonsAndDragons 3.5, there was a spell in an official SplatBook that basically ripped the target's entire circulatory system (other than its heart) out of its body (an a slightly higher level version that then used said veins and arteries to entangle nearby targets!) - and yet it did exactly half the target's hit points in damage. No more, no less. Funny, I'd think losing one entire means of carrying blood to the brain, not to mention the rest of the body, would do a bit more damage than THAT.

* In ''TheSimpsons'', Sideshow Bob manages to set off a nuclear bomb inside Springfield's air force base - but all it does is feature a tiny explosion about a foot wide. He then notices that printed on the side of the bomb is the disclaimer "Best before Dec 1959."
--> '''Bob''' (to himsef): There were plenty of brand-new bombs, but you had to go for that retro 50s charm!

* Averted in ''[[MassEffect Mass Effect 2]]'', at the end boss where you can equip the [[spoiler:[[YouNukeEm M-920 Cain]] ]] and, at fully-upgraded, take out [[spoiler:the human-reaver-foetus]] with two shots.

** Kefka in ''FinalFantasyVI'' has a spell called Goner (Forsaken, in the [[UpdatedRerelease GBA version]]). When Kefka is casting it, the screen shakes, an image of Kefka's head is summoned to show his evil expression, and the spell itself has a pretty long casting time. The spell itself looks amazing yet destructive, and it even has a magic power of 220 (To compare, Ultima, the most powerful spell you can get, has a magic power of 150). However, since the spell does not ignore defense, it'll only do about a thousand damage or less if your party is at a solid level. To worsen this, another one of Kefka's attacks, Heartless Angel (his opening play, in fact), simply has Kefka summon a few sparkles that turn into cutesy little angels, who all somehow bring all of your HP down to one.

*** Which has lead to a few WMG [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment guesses]] that the final battle is a mental attack.

* Averted in ''[[MassEffect Mass Effect 2]]'', at the end boss where you can equip the [[spoiler:[[YouNukeEm M920-Cain]] ]] and, at fully-upgraded, take out [[spoiler:the human-reaver-foetus]] with two shots.

* Played straight with the Allied nuclear strike in ''Warfront: Turning Point'''s [[StupidJetpackHitler alternate]] history [[WorldWarII WWII]]. Despite the nuke's magnificent visual effects, it is wide enough only to conflagrate a tight nest of buildings and leave a glowing slagpile. The ''earthquake bomb'', however, topples more, but does little to infantry.

** In "CommandAndConquer: Renegade," nukes (fired only by placing a beacon and waiting 30 seconds) had a pitifully, ridiculously small radius of effect. The damage it did at the center was incredible, killing almost any object in the game with that shot, but you could be literally standing 10 feet away from the nuke and not get a scratch. This gets a pass, partly for balance reasons (as it's the counterpart to [=GDI's ion cannon=]), and partly because the default setup allows for 'pedestal victories' where placing the nuke in the GDI barracks automatically wiped out the [=GDI=] base.

* Averted in [[MassEffect Mass Effect 2]], at the end boss where you can equip the [[spoiler: [[YouNukeEm M920-Cain]] ]] and, at fully-upgraded, take out [[spoiler: the human-reaver-foetus]] with two shots.

* Inverted in ''WorldOfWarcraft'', where spell impact effects scale according to the target's size. Nobody expects a Moonfire spell to do a large amount of damage to large target like a raid boss, but it ends up looking like a KillSat hit anyway.

* Although the nukes in ''{{Civilization}} I'' through ''III'' can really wreak havoc on enemy cities, they can ''never'' destroy them.
** Likewise in ''{{Civilization}} IV'', where they can heavily damage things and trash the landscape, but can't kill ''anything''.
*** In addition, the AI players know that nukes are terribly weak and are not deterred. And then if you actually use one, it essentially pisses off everyone in the world.

* ''Reversed'' with the Planet Buster from ''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', which reduces its detonation zone into a screen-wide smoldering crater, and annihilates everything inside of it without fail.
** They also cause massive ecodamage, which can lead to rampant global warming and hordes of psychic alien worms trying to eat everyone. Oops.
*** Or be a means to an easy economic victory as you hunt the worms down and use them feed your energy credit empire

* Although the nukes in ''{{Civilization}} I'' through ''III'' can really wreck havoc on enemy cities, they can ''never'' destroy them.