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| 3 | %% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks! |
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| 10 | [[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/Squad51VsTheFlyingSaucers https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1d2623828a8efbe3ea6cf91029fc2942_1000.jpg]]]] |
| 11 | [[caption-width-right:350:"Mind the backblast!"]] |
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| 14 | ->''"A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive."'' |
| 15 | -->-- '''The Kzinti Lesson''', ''Creator/LarryNiven'' |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Most [[JetPack jetpacks, rocket boots]], and [[CoolStarship spaceships]] give off impressive plumes of fiery exhaust when they're moving. For the most part, this exhaust is just there to [[RuleOfPerception show that something's happening]]. But the exhaust of a rocket can also double as a [[KillItWithFire short-ranged weapon]], especially during a getaway. Characters with [[JetPack jet boots]] can perform really effective {{Goomba Stomp}}s, while starship pilots can [[SuperweaponSurprise cause enormous damage]] with their drive flames. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Also known as the '''[[Literature/KnownSpace Kzinti Lesson]]:''' the more efficient a reaction drive is, the better a weapon it makes. An inversion of the LawOfInverseRecoil, since the recoil in these cases is intentional. Also an inversion of RecoilBoost, which is an exhaustized weapon. A subtrope of SuperweaponSurprise. {{Fartillery}} is effectively the biological variant of this. See also BackpackCannon. For another way you can weaponize your engines, see RammingAlwaysWorks. If the opposite end of the engine is at issue, see TurbineBlender. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Contrast BananaInTheTailpipe. Compare with JettisonJetpackAttack. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | ---- |
| 24 | !!Examples: |
| 25 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 26 | |
| 27 | [[folder:Anime and Manga]] |
| 28 | * In ''Anime/ArmoredTrooperVotoms'', Fiana uses the engines of a crashed spaceship to help Chirico in battle during the Sunsa arc. Earlier than that, at the end of the Kummen war arc, three Melkian army [=ATs=] were vaporized by Chirico when he hit the engines on the escape shuttle under the Veela HQ (this one seemed to be unintentional on his part; those three mechs just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). |
| 29 | * ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'': |
| 30 | ** In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam0083StardustMemory'', Kou gives Gato a face-full of his Gundam's maneuvering thrusters when locked in close combat. This doesn't actually damage Gato's Gundam, but it does blind and distract him. Fourteen years later in-universe, Marida Cruz of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamUnicorn'' does the same against an [[EliteMook unusually skilled Stark Jegan]], disorienting it long enough for her to promptly [[CombatPragmatist follow up with a]] [[LaserBlade beam saber]] [[KickThemWhileTheyAreDown to the cockpit]]. |
| 31 | ** The leader of LaResistance is killed in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamThe08thMSTeam'' when a Zaku fires its thrusters in an attempt to escape an ambush. The backwash takes out his entire house, too. And this was ''entirely by accident'' and happened mostly because a resistance member in that house fired an anti-tank rocket at it. |
| 32 | ** ''Anime/MobileSuitVictoryGundam'' gives us the Victory 2 Gundam, which carries a miniaturized Minovsky Craft System (e.g., the engines used in spaceships) known as the Minovsky Drive System. Not only does this allow it to float in mid-air (unlike other mobile suits, which have to exert constant thrust to stay aloft), but the exhaust vents in the back expel charged Minovsky particles, the V2's "Wings of Light," which can expand up to one kilometer long. Fun fact: The Wings of Light [[GameBreaker have the same properties as beam sabers and beam shields]]. |
| 33 | ** In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'', one luckless Zaku was caught behind ''White Base'' as she was taking off and got vaporized by the engines. |
| 34 | ** At the end of the Guyana Highlands arc of ''Anime/MobileFighterGGundam'', Domon knocks over Master Asia's Master Gundam and then blowtorches it away as he takes off in Burning/God Gundam. |
| 35 | * In the ''Odd One Out'' short of ''Anime/HaloLegends,'' Mama (the AI of a crashed starship) uses the particle accelerators of her Slipspace Drive (i.e., the part that creates a NegativeSpaceWedgie of the right size and type to fly through) to kill the giant Brute SuperSoldier attacking the colony. |
| 36 | * In ''Anime/LastExileFamTheSilverWing'', the giant weapons employed by the ''Grand Exile'' are revealed to have been originally intended as engines. |
| 37 | * ''[[Anime/SuperDimensionCenturyOrguss Orguss 02]]'': Young HumongousMecha mechanic Lean has [[FallingIntoTheCockpit fallen into the cockpit]] and is barely holding his own against an enemy pilot. His solution: tackle the other Decimator mecha onto a nearby island, bend its [[SchizoTech machine gun barrels]] so it can't counterattack, point his Decimator's RocketBoots at the enemy's cockpit! |
| 38 | * In the first episode of ''Manga/OutlawStar'', Hilda activates her ship's sub-ether drive after pirate ships grapple it. They're all destroyed, though it seems to be more of a side benefit than her actual intent. |
| 39 | * While a trope entirely of its own, the WaveMotionGun from ''Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato'' is the ship's FasterThanLightTravel engine fired in reverse at an enemy instead of towards a destination. RuleOfCool hand waves why Yamato doesn't go into reverse warp speed while doing it... or obliterate whatever is behind it when the [[AllThereInTheManual Wave Motion Engine]] fires up to go into deep space. |
| 40 | * In one episode of ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross'', Hikaru uses the thrusters on the bottom of his battloid's foot to blast a Zentraedi away from him. |
| 41 | ** In one of the novels from the ''Anime/{{Robotech}}'' adaptation, a Zentraedi uses his battlepod's feet as blowtorches to fight off an [[Anime/GenesisClimberMospeada Invid]] scout. |
| 42 | * In ''Anime/DigimonUniverseAppMonsters'', Globemon does this during his rematch against [[EvilCounterpart Charismon]], destroying the latter's {{Attack Drone}}s by concentrating the glowing plasma his wings naturally give off into a directed blast. He's only able to do this due to being in [[SuperMode Overdrive]] at the time. |
| 43 | [[/folder]] |
| 44 | |
| 45 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 46 | * Comicbook/IronMan's first set of stealth armor was so packed with scanners and such that it had no active weaponry. Thus when faced with attack drones, he had to dig his fingers into the ground and blast with his [[JetPack jetboots]]. |
| 47 | ** The second time he used his stealth armor, Iron Man was fighting the Crimson Dynamo (Dmitri Bhukarin) and Titanium Man (the Gremlin) in Siberia during the ''Armor Wars'' storyline. Although the suit was upgraded to now permit a limited number of repulsor shots, he used them up in the battle and only succeeded in destroying the Dynamo's armor, and Titanium Man caught the weaponless Iron Man in a bear hug. Attempting to escape, Iron Man's jetboots were again weaponized, albeit unintentionally, when at full blast they set the Titanium Man's armor on fire, killing the Gremlin, much to Tony's dismay. |
| 48 | ** His hand repulsors were initially designed as maneuvering/stabilizing thrusters, the weapon applications were a lucky coincidence. PlayedForLaughs in [[Film/IronMan1 the movie]], where he tries to convince Pepper he's given up on making weapons to concentrate on peaceful applications of his technology... only to break something with a repulsor misfire a few seconds later. |
| 49 | ** At [[https://i.imgur.com/eIbl4n1.png one point]] his jet boots held back ComicBook/TheSentry, for a few seconds anyway. |
| 50 | * [[ComicBook/AntMan The Irredeemable Ant-Man]] did this accidentally to a former friend, burning half his face off in the process. |
| 51 | * In the ''ComicBook/SerenityThoseLeftBehind'', this is how the "[[TheMenInBlack Hands of Blue]]" die, being fried in Serenity's exhaust. |
| 52 | * In ''ComicBook/TraggAndTheSkyGods'' #2, Tragg uses the flames from Keera's JetPack to start a fire to repel a dinosaur stampede. |
| 53 | * ''ComicBook/MyLittlePonyTransformersFriendshipInDisguise'': Spike uses the Ark's rocket engines to one-shot ''[[CombiningMecha Devastator]]''. |
| 54 | * Seen in at least one ''ComicBook/XMen'' issue where Kitty Pryde, alone in the base underneath Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters over Christmas, is faced with a seemingly invincible monster that she finally defeats by luring it into the hangar of the team's Blackbird (a modified Lockheed SR-71) and incinerating it with the engines' exhaust. |
| 55 | [[/folder]] |
| 56 | |
| 57 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 58 | * In ''WebAnimation/ClearSkies 3'', the ''Clear Skies'' does this to [[spoiler:prevent Ghost escaping.]] |
| 59 | * The ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/EnemyOfMyEnemy'' invokes a partial use of this, crossing over with RammingAlwaysWorks when the ''Pride of Sanghelios'' performs an engines-first ram on the ''Implacable Duty'' in the opening chapters and the super-heated engines cause as much damage as the impact itself. |
| 60 | * In ''FanFic/AnEntryWithABang[=!=]'', the pirates attacking Chicago use the plumes of their Dropship to toast a lot of infantry. The Fusion Torch project aims to use Dropship reactors in this fashion. The weapons' nickname, "Shipkiller", should tell you everything you need to know. |
| 61 | * In the ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' fic series ''Fanfic/{{Forward}}'', there are several instances where the crew uses ''Serenity's'' engines as weapons. In "Business," they lured an Alliance gunboat close enough to fire the engines directly into the bridge section of the vessel, blinding its sensors and heating up the bridge canopy enough that Jayne is able to put an armor-piercing round through it. Later on, in "Adrift" Wash uses the exhaust from the ship's damaged engines to blind a Reaver pursuit craft, and in the "Fourth Interlude" River manages to exploit a flaw in an enemy ship's engines by channeling her ship's exhaust into its intakes, overheating it and causing it to shut down and sending the enemy ship into an uncontrolled spin. |
| 62 | * In ''Fanfic/{{Fractured|SovereignGFC}}'', a ''Franchise/MassEffect''[=/=]''Franchise/StarWars''[[spoiler:[=/=]''[=Borderlands=]'']] [[MassiveMultiplayerCrossover crossover]] some kind of "space raisin" is incinerated by the engines of ''Revenant Phoenix.'' In the sequel, ''Fanfic/{{Origins}}'', a Star Dreadnaught does this to another Star Dreadnaught that's shooting the first ship's engines. Given that the ship using its engines as a defense stretches ''[[MileLongShip thirty-five kilometers]]'' the Kzinti Lesson is on full display. An engine array that can move quadrillions of tons of mass is going to be good at destroying anything in its path (though they did [[NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont turn the engines' safety/damper off first]]). [[AvertedTrope For once]], there is [[NoOSHACompliance OSHA compliance]]! |
| 63 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' Fanfic ''Hands'' from Andrew Joshua Talon, the ''Enterprise'' uses its Orion Drive against the Changeling Mothership. |
| 64 | * In ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality'', Harry unintentionally torches an Auror with the blast of a rocket-enhanced broom. |
| 65 | * ''Fanfic/TheNextFrontier'' makes much of what an AlcubierreDrive can do when it's suddenly shut down (see the Real Life section below). The Kerbals were aware of the theoretical possibility but underestimated the scale of the problem until the first large-scale test run [[PlutoIsExpendable obliterated Eeloo.]] |
| 66 | * In ''Fanfic/ReimaginedEnterprise'', Satterthwaite, flying an unarmed shuttle surrounded by pirates, points out that no ship with a drive is unarmed. He namechecks Niven, although he can't remember what Niven called it because, as per ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'', [[CelebrityParadox Kzinti are real in this universe]]. |
| 67 | * ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager''. In Chapter V, a BurialInSpace is done by cremating the bodies in the torchship's exhaust flame. And in Chapter XII, ''Voyager'' turns on their drive while ''[[EatMe inside]]'' another vessel, punching a hole straight through the vulnerable interior hull. The aliens are more familiar with {{Reactionless Drive}}s than a RetroRocket, which is why they made the mistake of trying a MegaMawManeuver in the first place. |
| 68 | -->'''Paris:''' Let me show you what [[NoodleIncident I found out the hard way on Deimos]]. Every reaction drive makes an equal and opposite weapon! |
| 69 | * In ''[[Fanfic/ForeverAfterEarth Ship of the Line: Forever After Earth]]'', a fanfic that crosses ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' with several other works, [[spoiler:Buffy, Willow and Xander are turned into creatures from one of the author's original works]], their ship is propelled by superconductors channeling radiation along the surtace of the rounded hull. When [[spoiler:fighting the Ori]], this drive system provides a beautiful example of the Kzinti Lesson. |
| 70 | * In ''Fanfic/SleepingWithTheGirls'', in the second Tenchi arc, the SI remembers, almost too late, that standing near a spaceship about to take off is a bad idea. Cue an OhCrap moment, followed by him running away while screaming "KZINTI LESSON! KZINTI LESSON!" He almost makes it, and the backwash of the ship's takeoff merely knocks him off of his feet. Not the straightest example of the trope, but shows an understanding of it. |
| 71 | [[/folder]] |
| 72 | |
| 73 | [[folder:Films -- Animated]] |
| 74 | * ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch''. When Stitch boards Captain Gantu's ship to rescue Lilo, Gantu forces him off by turning his ship's thrusters so that both of them point directly at Stitch. Stitch is virtually indestructible, so he's not hurt: but the force is still enough to shove him off the ship. |
| 75 | ** It's a good thing it was: he was standing directly on the glass (or similar material) container that Lilo was trapped inside, so the flames were hitting it too. If Gantu had kept that up, the container walls would have rapidly heated up, and Lilo is ''not'' fireproof. |
| 76 | * Inverted in ''WesternAnimation/{{Up}}'', where the leaf-blower Carl had previously employed as a "weapon" of humiliation, blowing blasts of air in the faces of annoying neighbors, gets re-purposed as a means of propulsion by Russell, who's tied a bunch of balloons to himself and drifted away. |
| 77 | [[/folder]] |
| 78 | |
| 79 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 80 | * In ''Film/{{Alien}}'', Ripley uses the lifeboat's exhaust to finally blast the title monster into deep space. |
| 81 | * The [[CoolCar Batmobile's]] jet engine is used as a weapon in ''Film/BatmanReturns'' to put the torch on the Fire Breather in the opening fight. |
| 82 | * In ''Film/FaceOff'', Sean Archer uses the thrust of a mounted jet engine to send Castor Troy flying into a wall. |
| 83 | * In ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'', a bunch of {{mooks}} are chasing Indy around [[{{Area51}} Hangar 51]]. He gets into some sort of G-force testing rocket, switches it on and fries the lot of them. |
| 84 | * In ''Film/IronMan1'', Tony Stark quickly discovers he can weaponize the repulsor stabilizers in his armor's palms, turning them into effective blasters and making them his suit's primary weapons. |
| 85 | -->'''Tony''' (having just knocked himself off his feet with a repulsor's recoil):... I didn't expect that. |
| 86 | * ''Film/JamesBond'' |
| 87 | ** In the ColdOpen of ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'', a Space Shuttle is stolen in mid-air and its thrusters destroy the carrier aircraft. Later in the movie, the BigBad tries to dispose of Bond and the BondGirl by placing them in the exhaust chamber beneath another Shuttle that is about to take off. |
| 88 | ** In ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'', Bond traps the [[TheDragon Stamper]]'s foot on the missile gantry so he gets caught in the backblast as the missile launches. |
| 89 | ** ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'' features an accidental version during the airport chase scene. Miami Police Department squad cars are chasing a fuel truck stolen by a terrorist, and chase it across a runway just as a 747 is coming in. The 747 pulls up at the last moment and misses the fuel truck, but its engine backwash blows one of the police cars about a hundred feet through the air. |
| 90 | * ''Film/Life2017''. When the creature is trapped outside the International Space Station, the crew realise it will try getting back in via the engine manifolds, so activate the thrusters in an attempt to kill it. This not only fails, it also puts them in a decaying orbit and they're forced to use the rest of the fuel to correct this, so the creature gets in that way anyhow. |
| 91 | * In ''Film/MenInBlack3'' the elder version of the BigBad is destroyed by the wall of fire from Apollo 11's launch. |
| 92 | * ''Film/MoonZeroTwo''. Clementine pulls the thrust lever on the Moon 02 rocket, and the exhaust flame melts the spacehelmet of one of the villains and sends him flying off into space. |
| 93 | * At one point in ''Film/PacificRim'', [[HumongousMecha Gipsy Danger]] uses the exhaust from her nuclear vortex turbine as an impromptu ChestBlaster. |
| 94 | * Richard B. Riddick does this to the alien monsters as the survivors make their getaway at the end of ''Film/PitchBlack''. He didn't need to, but he felt he owed them a proper "goodbye" on the way out and deliberately lured them in by shutting off the exterior lighting so they'd approach. |
| 95 | * Leo in the ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes2001'' remake uses the crashed Oberon's main thruster to burn the ape army's first wave. |
| 96 | * In ''Film/RoboCop3'', the title character kills the villain by burning his legs with the exhaust of his JetPack, leaving him helpless in the soon to explode building. |
| 97 | * In ''Film/TheRocketeer'', [[TheAce Cliff]] surrenders the JetPack to [[BigBad Neville Sinclair]]... but not without removing the chewing gum that was sealing a fuel leak caused by a stray gunshot earlier in the movie. When Sinclair fires up the JetPack to escape, the rocket exhaust ignites the fuel from the leak and turns the device into a bomb. |
| 98 | * In the climatic battle of ''Film/{{Screamers}}'', a KillerRobot is incinerated by the pre-launch burn of an escape rocket. |
| 99 | * In ''Film/SkyCaptainAndTheWorldOfTomorrow'', the villain's [[TheArk ark rocket]] will carry all the animals it contains to a new world. The hero suggests they just let him go, but is informed that the exhaust will also [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt scorch Earth's atmosphere]] once it gets high enough. |
| 100 | * In the 1979 Disney comedy ''A Spaceman in King Arthur's Court'', Hermes knocks down Mordred's army by turning on the engines of his SpacePlane. They then try attacking from the sides, but he's able to hold them off using the vernier thrusters. |
| 101 | * ''Franchise/StarWars'': |
| 102 | ** ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'': |
| 103 | *** Anakin takes out a couple of battle droids that were standing next to his thrusters. |
| 104 | *** While not shown on screen, Anakin claims Sebulba once did this to him during a podrace. In this case, it's an illegal mod that vents exhaust out the side of the pods at other racers. |
| 105 | ** ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'': R2-D2 destroys two Super Battle Droids by spewing oil on them, then igniting the oil with his rockets. |
| 106 | ** ''Film/TheForceAwakens'': Kylo Ren's lightsaber was crudely made based on an ancient, more primitive design, and its kyber crystal is cracked. Thus, it requires crossguard-like stabilizer vents to redirect excess power from its crystal. The twin beams coming from the vents are just as dangerous as the main blade, which he proves in his duel with Finn when, as their swords are locked, he presses one of the beams into Finn's shoulder. As a side effect, he can't do a lot of the fancy twirling that other lightsaber users do without hitting himself with the beams, and thus he wields his lightsaber like a claymore, relying on hard, smashing attacks (which also fits the state of barely-contained rage he shows in his fights). |
| 107 | * In ''Film/TransformersRevengeOfTheFallen'', Optimus Prime gains a jetpack upgrade from [[spoiler:Jetfire's body after his HeroicSacrifice]]; the exhaust can send Megatron through a stone wall. |
| 108 | [[/folder]] |
| 109 | |
| 110 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 111 | * Attempted in the second book of Creator/BruceCoville's ''Literature/TheAIGang'' trilogy. The title characters have built a rocket and are preparing to launch it; however, two separate spies break into it for their own reasons. One is discovered by two of the kids, whom he knocks out, ties up and leaves to be incinerated by the rocket's exhaust. The other is discovered by a third member of the gang, who is knocked out and left inside the rocket; her efforts to signal for help lead to the launch being aborted by the rest of the gang, saving all three lives. |
| 112 | * Possibly the UrExample is the 1928 novella ''Armadeddon 2419'', a.k.a. the original ''ComicStrip/BuckRogers'' story. The repeller rays that keep the Han airships aloft are indeed their primary weapon system as well. |
| 113 | * The ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' novel "Operation Excalibur" demonstrates this trope when the Gray Death Legion mercenary commander [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Grayson Death Carlyle]] creatively positions a hijacked Jumpship to point the exhaust end of its drive at one of the setting's extremely rare deep space recharging stations. It works as a shock and stalling tactic because such stations are considered inviolate, and it's an accepted rule of space to point that end of the ship away from anything you want to keep in one piece. The [[OhCrap moment of realization]] for all parties involved who didn't know about the plan beforehand is capped by an utterly priceless line: |
| 114 | -->He had just turned her (Jumpship) Caliban into a half kilometer long particle projector cannon, the biggest damned PPC in the Inner Sphere. |
| 115 | ** Also used in the climax of the novel ''I Am Jade Falcon''. The aging Falcon Mechwarrior Joanna is trapped in a fallen ''Summoner,'' having lost a leg in battle and with her weapons nonfunctional. [[spoiler: She activates her one remaining offensive option, the jump jets in her 'Mech's remaining leg, which causes the flare from the jets to impale Khan Natasha Kerensky's [[AceCustom modified Dire Wolf]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "Widowmaker"]] through the cockpit, killing her and making Joanna a Jade Falcon legend.]] |
| 116 | * In ''Literature/CrestOfTheStars'', Lafiel kills Baron Febdash the Younger by venting antimatter propellant through the exhaust nozzles of her shuttle - curiously, the Baron's ship is not obliterated when the exhaust hits its hull, while the Baron succumbs to [[BloodFromTheMouth rapid radiation poisoning]]. |
| 117 | * ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' swamp dragons breathe fire as a weapon. But one has a digestive system that's organized so that he can flame ''backward'', as it were, and he essentially turns himself into a rocket. It's implied the swamp dragons as a species have weaponized their exhaust by evolutionary means, and it was originally never intended to come out the ''mouth'', since their small and weak wings aren't very effective as lifting surfaces but do make rather good ailerons. |
| 118 | * Donald E. Westlake's ''Literature/{{Dortmunder}}'': A low-tech version appears in ''Bank Shot''. A gang of criminals plot to steal an entire bank that is temporarily housed in a warehouse by surreptitiously attaching wheels to it, then later pulling it away with a truck. To deal with the guards that are stationed inside the trailer/bank they attach one end of a garden hose to the truck's exhaust pipe and put the other end in the trailer's air-vent. |
| 119 | * In the first ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' novel, the Emperor reports that his [[SuperSoldiers Sardukar]] only escaped with their lives after attacking a Fremen sietch by doing this (he was aghast, and rightly so, that his [[SuperSoldiers Super Extra Elite Finest Troops]] were outfought by [[SuperweaponSurprise a settlement of elders, women and children]]). |
| 120 | * In Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''Earthlight'', the particle beam weapons are directly derived from spacecraft ion drives, which are dangerous enough in their own right. |
| 121 | * In ''Literature/EarthUnaware'' the Formic mothership vents "gamma plasma" in all directions while decelerating from relativistic speed. The first time it's shown doing that, it [[spoiler:destroys a space station in the Kuiper Belt.]] It also uses this plasma as point defense. |
| 122 | * Creator/DavidWeber's ''Literature/EmpireFromTheAshes'': The gravitational "backwash" from the [[FasterThanLightTravel warp drive]] is used to [[StarKilling blow up a star]]. Fun times abound when your [[PlanetSpaceship planetoid-sized ships]] use artificial black holes as ''propulsion''. |
| 123 | * ''Literature/TheExpanse'': In ''Caliban's War'', the ''Rocinante'''s exhaust is used to destroy a protomolecule-monster. |
| 124 | * A frequent occurrence in the ''Literature/GreatShip'' universe: |
| 125 | ** Pamir was killed when a pissed off crewman on his [[OrionDrive bomb drive]] liner activated the drive while Pamir was repairing the pusher plate. [[HealingFactor He got better, though]] |
| 126 | ** In ''Aeon's Child'', a starship's fusion rocket is disassembled, brought inside the [[PlanetSpaceship Great Ship]], and reassembled to be used as a last-ditch weapon to purge a chamber of a hostile [[GeniusLoci Gaian]] entity. |
| 127 | ** Inadvertently used in ''Hatch'', where a massive starship launching from beneath the MeatMoss coating the Great Ship forces a scavenger to blast away all his fuel and jettison his cargo in an attempt to escape to save himself from being immolated by the fusion exhaust. |
| 128 | * In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', Sirius's flying motorbike is upgraded for Hagrid. Included in this is a burst of Dragon Breath out the exhaust. |
| 129 | * In Creator/PoulAnderson's ''Harvest of Stars'', there is a treaty banning weapons in space. When the main characters get into a space battle with the bad guys, it is essentially a game of cat and mouse, each trying to slash the other with their exhausts while avoiding getting slashed themselves. |
| 130 | * ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': |
| 131 | ** Not exactly ''exhaust'', per se, but the gravity-control impeller wedge is the usual spaceship propulsion... which does Really Bad Things to any matter that intersects the field. Normally, this is safetied to a tee; when it isn't, as in when [[spoiler:Harkness turns on the impeller drive of one of ''Tepes''' pinnaces in the hanger]] ...uh ...just Bad Things, OK? |
| 132 | ** In book 1, ''On Basilisk Station'', Honor cripples a Havenite courier ship that was ready to summon the invasion fleet by sideswiping it with HMS ''Fearless''[='=] impeller wedge. This completely blows out the Peeps' impeller nodes, leaving them dead in the water. |
| 133 | ** This is how countermissiles work too. They don't have warheads; they just hit the impeller wedge of enemy missiles with their own wedge, destroying both with the feedback on their drives. |
| 134 | ** The trope is also effectively PlayedWith given that these wedges with their horrifying capacity for destruction are primarily used as ''[[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe shields]]'' when they aren't used for propulsion, given that they effectively cover the ship completely from the top and bottom. This becomes very important in ''Mission of Honor'' when a group of ships have to use their wedges to try and protect the planets below from falling debris during an attack. [[spoiler:They only partially succeed. And the planets were [[WhamEpisode Manticore and Sphinx]].]] |
| 135 | * In ''Literature/HulloRussiaGoodbyeEngland'', Silk's crew does this to a Russian spy "trawler" in the Atlantic near Scotland which is eavesdropping on their comms. While they are strictly forbidden from sinking it, they fly over it at mast-top height then stand their Vulcan jet bomber plane on its tail to give it the benefit of the back-blast from the engines. The ship stays afloat, just about, but its sensitive and expensive electronic systems are shot to pieces. |
| 136 | * ''Literature/ImperialRadch'': In ''Literature/AncillaryJustice'', it's implied to be the warships' primary weapon system. |
| 137 | * ''Literature/InFuryBorn'' has an inversion. Ships use a singularity drive for slower-than-light travel, generating a black hole ahead of the ship that pulls it forwards. It also has the effect of soaking up incoming ordnance if you point the ship in the enemy's general direction. |
| 138 | * From Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/KnownSpace'': |
| 139 | ** The warlike Kzinti stumble upon a completely demilitarized humanity. They invade, only to find out that reaction drives and solar sail launching lasers are actually pretty good at blowing things up. Surprise! Humans call this "The Kzinti Lesson": "The more efficient a reaction drive, the more effective a weapon it makes." It came as a great shock to the Kzinti, because their telepathic spies kept telling them that human spaceships were unarmed. They were... technically. |
| 140 | ** The ship in ''Literature/{{Ringworld}}'' is named "Lying Bastard", or simply "the Liar", and half the reason is because it's ''completely'' unarmed... except for all the things that can be used as weapons. Louis Wu at one point thinks to himself that nearly every one of their tools can be used as a weapon, but there's no piece of equipment that Nessus can't point to and say "That is not a weapon. I brought it for (perfectly legitimate non-weapon use)." Like the digging tool, which also happens to be a ''dandy'' disintegrator ray. Or the high-powered and ''focusable'' flashlight-lasers. Or, most significantly, the presence of plasma thrusters for maneuvering purposes. |
| 141 | * Creator/EEDocSmith's ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'': In ''Masters of the Vortex'', there's a chapter ''named'' for this -- "Driving Jets Are Weapons". (For those who want to know the details: the ship dives headlong towards the enemy base, then flips over and decelerates at full blast. This maneuver kills both its velocity and the target's shields, followed by the target. Twice.) |
| 142 | * In Sergey Lukyanenko's ''Literature/LineOfDelirium'', the main characters are infiltrating/storming a military orbital platform. Upon receiving a coded signal, their ship, sitting in the hangar bay, uses it's gravity engine to "push out" the hangar bay doors and then activates the plasma engines to fry the combat droids guarding it. |
| 143 | * In ''Literature/LogansRun'', a gang of "Devilstick" [[RocketRide rocket bike]] riders circle around Logan and threaten him with their engines, which could "char a man down in the snap of a finger". |
| 144 | * Taken to absolutely humongous extremes in Mark Geston's novel ''Lords of the Starship'', in which a ''seven mile long'' rocket is built to carry humanity away from a war-ravaged Earth. But it's all a horrible trick: when the rocket is finally completed after more than a century a vast battle rages in its shadow between its millions of supporters and opponents. And then the ship slides down the slipway, and turns around until its engines are pointing towards the warring armies... just imagine how big and how hot a seven-mile long spaceship's rocket exhaust would be. It was all part of a plot by an ancient enemy to get revenge and take over the world. What's left of it. |
| 145 | * In Sergey Snegov's "The Men like Gods", the humanity ships' FTL drive works on the principle of transforming spacetime into matter and running it in ''reverse'' turns matter into space. They can literally drop enemy ships into stars by removing the intervening space or evade attacks by adding it faster than the enemy or gunfire can approach. It also finds itself useful when the need to create a planet out of nothing rears its head. |
| 146 | ** The Destroyants/Malignants, which have mastered gravity control to a great level, are also profound of this tactic, using gravity engines of their cruisers to generate destructive gravitational waves, which can then be used to attack enemy ships or turn a planet's surface into fine dust. |
| 147 | * In the Literature/JamesBond novel ''Literature/{{Moonraker}}'', Drax attempts to dispose of Bond by placing him beneath the exhausts of the eponymous rocket. It was one of the few scenes from the novel to make it into the movie. |
| 148 | * ''Literature/TheMurderbotDiaries''. In the first novel the villains have [[CutPhoneLines sabotaged the rocket that launches a distress beacon]], but Murderbot convinces them the others plan to set off the rocket manually. The villains rush out there to stop them, only to discover they've been tricked, but just as they open fire on Murderbot the rocket activates, so Murderbot has to quickly grab their hostage and jump off the nearest cliff. |
| 149 | * In Georgy Gurevich's ''Overtake Only'' the protagonists who've just stolen an old photonic rocket from a museum ([[ItMakesSenseInContext it's a long story]]) deal with the pursuers by pointing the reflector at them and starting the engine, evaporating in the process not only the pursuers, [[WhatTheHellHero but a good chunk of the space station]] to which the rocket was docked as well. |
| 150 | * In ''Return Match'' by Creator/PhilipKDick, an alien spacecraft is being used as an IllegalGamblingDen. If raided by the authorities, it takes off to [[FieryCoverUp destroy the evidence]]...including their own customers. |
| 151 | * In Creator/AlastairReynolds' ''Literature/RevelationSpace'', one of the [[LostTechnology hell-class weapons]] is possessed by a sentient, alien computer virus and attempts to destroy an inhabited planet; disaster is narrowly averted by hitting it with the exhaust from a Conjoiner Drive. |
| 152 | ** Also used in ''The Prefect'', where the Conjoiner engines of the lighthugger ''Accompaniment of Shadows'' are used to destroy the Ruskin-Sartorious habitat. |
| 153 | * Used as a particularly gruesome method of execution in ''Scarecrow'' by Creator/MatthewReilly, with the afterburner of a tied-down fighter jet. |
| 154 | * Possibly the first use of this trope in science fiction was in Creator/JohnWCampbell's 1930 story ''Solarite''. Seeing a giant monoplane attacking a defenceless city on Venus, the {{Science Hero}}es from Earth turn their rocket engines on it. |
| 155 | * In the ''Literature/StarCarrier'' series, Confederation fighters fly mainly with a singularity drive, generating a high mass zone ahead of the ship to pull them forward and accelerate them to about 99% of the speed of light. The drive also has the effect of sucking in any dust or debris ahead of it, which when released can do bad things to anything it hits. Loose drive singularities themselves (usually from the ship having been destroyed while the drive was turned on, although it was done intentionally once in the third book) are also seen punching holes straight through ships. |
| 156 | * {{Inverted|Trope}} in ''Literature/StarTrekFederation''. While fighting an Orion Syndicate ship at warp speed Kirk suddenly drops the ''Enterprise'' back to realspace, wiping out an incoming torpedo salvo against the shockwave produced by the collapsing warp field. |
| 157 | * ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': |
| 158 | ** Unintentionally used by a number of "hot-shot" pilots throughout the ''Literature/XWingSeries'', generally resulting in little scars on the hangar floor. Corran Horn also once used an airspeeder's exhaust to help vent an area of toxic gas. |
| 159 | ** The EU also has it that, while the exhaust of capital ships doesn't pose much of a threat to like-sized ships, it can fry unwary fighters. |
| 160 | ** The ''[[Literature/XWingSeries X-Wing: Rogue Squadron]]'' novel ''The Krytos Trap'' demonstrates that capital ship exhaust can also be used to devastating effect against buildings, as the Super Star Destroyer ''Lusankya'' demonstrated when lifting off from Coruscant and it's thrusters vaporized a large section of cityscape in the process, killing a uncounted number of people in the process.[[note]]The novel states that the deaths were estimated to be in the ''millions'', with Wedge believing that the ship with 250,000 crew members likely killed at least 10 times that many lifting off.[[/note]] |
| 161 | ** At one point in the Yuuzhan Vong/New Jedi Order series, Vong bioweapons are eating through a capital ship's hull. The fighter pilots then use their exhausts to burn them off without blasting at the ship. |
| 162 | ** The star system of [[spoiler: Corellia]] is actually artificially created with the planets all being giant spaceships with giant repulsors/engines that have been used as weapons. |
| 163 | *** Even more dangerous is Centrepoint Station, which brought the planets into the system in the first place using a "hyperspace repulsor" engine, and can make stars go supernova from light-years away via the same process. It's also indicated (though never demonstrated) that if somebody had Centerpoint ''and'' all five planetary repulsors under their control, they could network them together and draw power from the star itself, which would allow for such tricks as cutting off all access to hyperspace in the entire galaxy, as well as simpler things like increasing the range of the supernova generating beam. |
| 164 | ** Though TheEmpire's best known civilian massacre was the [[EarthShatteringKaboom destruction of Alderaan]], the EU documents multiple lesser massacres. In one instance, an Imperial Navy captain turned his cruiser's stern to a mass demonstration and fired his engines, incinerating the protestors. |
| 165 | *** The worse part? It had actually happened under the Republic, and the perpetrator's name was Wilhuff Tarkin. Yes, [[Film/ANewHope that]] Tarkin. |
| 166 | ** According to Han, hiding a ship behind an asteroid and superheating it with its exhaust to the point of combustion is a good smuggler's trick for destroying pursuers. After his explanation the ''Errant Venture'' demonstrates, destroying an entire asteroid field's worth of space rock as well as a harrassing enemy squadron. Han comments that, "It works pretty well with a Star Destroyer." |
| 167 | ** One technique that can be used in an asteroid field, called the "Solo Slide", involves shutting down the main engines and using the ship's repulsorlifts on the asteroids. This is energy-efficient, keeps the asteroids from hitting you, and can be used as a very effective weapon. |
| 168 | --->''Another of the flight suffered a similar fate before the remaining TIE pilots made visual contact with the ''Millennium Falcon'', which was zipping rings around them without, apparently, using its drives at all. Meanwhile, asteroids seemed to actively avoid it, leaping aside from its path--and ending up, with improbable frequency, on new trajectories which proved catastrophic to the [=TIEs=].'' |
| 169 | * In the early Creator/TerryPratchett novel ''Literature/{{Strata}}'', at one point Marco mentions they could use their ship's engine's fusion flame as a weapon (although this is never actually seen). Unsurprising given the book was strongly inspired by TropeNamer Larry Niven's ''Literature/{{Ringworld}}''. |
| 170 | * Heavily used throughout [[Creator/PaulNaughton Paul Naughton's]] series ''[[Literature/ValkyrieIntoTheHeavens VALKYRIE: Into the Heavens]]'', where most ships use an antimatter-matter drive system that uses charged pions for thrust. Considering that these ships have forward facing braking thrusters and maneuvering thrusters, it was only a matter of time until someone used them as a weapon. |
| 171 | ** The first occurrence of this trope happens even before the pilots are given their ships when one trainee uses this in a training exercise when his ships weapons were all but destroyed. The pilot he defeats calls it 'cheating'. |
| 172 | * In ''Voyage from Yesteryear'' by Creator/JamesPHogan, it's speculated that the spaceship used to carry the LibertariansInSpace to their new world (and is now orbiting as a makeshift SpaceStation) is a weapon HiddenInPlainSight. So the [[TheWarOfEarthlyAggression invasion force from Earth]] wait till it's on the far side of the planet before launching their attack. Turns out there's a SuperweaponSurprise hidden on a nearby moon instead. |
| 173 | * ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': As part of the climactic sequence of Creator/SandyMitchell's ''[[Literature/DarkHeresy Scourge the Heretic]]'', an Inquisition shuttle pilot uses his exhaust to blast the front wall off the bad guys' mansion. |
| 174 | * In the 1933 novel ''Literature/WhenWorldsCollide'' (you might know it better from the [[Film/WhenWorldsCollide 1951 movie]]), when a crazed army of survivors attacks the site where [[TheArk the Arks]] are being built, things look bleak until one of the main characters starts up the almost-complete first Ark, sets the engine to "1 G", and floats over the attacking hordes in blowtorch mode. |
| 175 | * Mack Maloney's ''Literature/{{Wingman}}'' series has an air pirate early on threaten to torture Hawk Hunter by strapping his face to the engine of his fighter and slowly turning up the power. While he never goes through with this threat, in a later book (''Freedom Express'') Hawk kills an escaping baddie by flying his Harrier over the jeep and cooking them until the obese lieutenant [[LudicrousGibs bursts]]. |
| 176 | [[/folder]] |
| 177 | |
| 178 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 179 | * The first season finale of ''Series/The100'' had the titular group use the thrusters of their crashed DropShip as a last-chance attack to fend off a full-blown Grounder attack. Not only did the deluge of flames [[TrashTheSet completely incinerated the rest of the camp]], but also killed three hundred Grounders... [[FromBadToWorse which escalated things for a while because some of the Grounder leaders insisted that such a massacre was not something that could be taken lying down.]] |
| 180 | * In one episode of ''Series/{{Airwolf}}'' where the eponymous helicopter was flying unarmed, its pilot Stringfellow Hawke cleverly used the chopper's afterburners to take out ground targets. |
| 181 | * In an ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' episode, the crew encounters an ancient Earth STL ship, which uses its massive fusion engine to rapidly accelerate to near-light speeds (it was built before humans learned about [[SubspaceOrHyperspace slipstream]]). In a pinch, this defenseless ship can use the same engine to incinerate enemy ships at the cost of precious fuel. |
| 182 | * In a ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode, a Raider threatened to use a hijacked ship's engines to burn his way out of the station's docking bays if Sinclair tried to stop him by closing the doors. Sinclair [[TakeAThirdOption Takes a Third Option]]: he lets him out, but locks down the jumpgate and orders Garibaldi to shoot out the ship's engines in his Starfury. [[spoiler:The Raider mothership arrives first and things escalate into a full-scale SpaceBattle.]] |
| 183 | * In ''Series/BattlestarGalacticaBloodAndChrome'', a young William Adama kills a Cylon Raider by purposely venting fuel and then igniting it with his Raptor's afterburner. |
| 184 | * ''Series/TheBookOfBobaFett'' |
| 185 | ** In "The Tribes of Tatooine", Boba helps his Tusken tribe attack a speeder train propelled by a large thruster on the roof. During the obligatory TraintopBattle, the thruster sends an unlucky Tusken flying when the droid conductor puts it to full blast, and gets a Pyke not long after when the conductor does it a second time. |
| 186 | ** When Boba is stealing back his spaceship ''Slave I'' from Bib Fortuna's palace, he guns the engines as much as he can while confined in the hangar to bowl over a bunch of attacking guards. |
| 187 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'' |
| 188 | ** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E1TheTimeWarrior "The Time Warrior"]], Linx blows up [[CollapsingLair Irongron's entire castle]] when his tiny one-man spacecraft takes off. He does make a token effort to warn Irongron to move his men elsewhere, but quickly loses patience with his 'primitive' ally when Irongron fails to understand the urgency. So it falls to the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith to evacuate everyone instead. |
| 189 | ** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace "The Ark In Space"]], Vira takes out a pair of Wirrn by briefly turning on the shuttle craft's engines. [[spoiler:And when the shuttle blasts off for real with the full Wirrn swarm aboard, Rogin is caught and killed.]] |
| 190 | ** The VillainOfTheWeek tries this in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E5WarriorsGate "Warriors Gate"]] and [[AttackBackfire destroys himself and his entire ship]]. |
| 191 | * ''Series/TheExpanse'': |
| 192 | ** When the titanic generation ship ''Nauvoo'' begins its first flight, after it lit the engine you can see how the construction structures of the drydock it was being constructed in begins to melt despite being a fair distance from the ship itself, demonstrating that creators [[ShownTheirWork had thought out]] implications of a massive ship having powerful engines. Avoiding this with the Saturn V and later the Space Shuttle is why NASA's launch structures have massive water sprayers built into them. The Shuttle saw the addition of more water sprayers to the launch pad to deaden reflected sound waves that could damage the shuttle. |
| 193 | ** As in the book, a protomolecule creature is killed this way after the crew tricks into keaping off the hull. |
| 194 | ** In season 6, an unarmed Belter ship resorts to "turn and burn" maneuvers to attack the ''Rocinante'', which is attempting to capture the vessel. Were the ''Rocinante'' not an armored warship, it might have worked. |
| 195 | * At the end of one episode of ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', Crichton deliberately uses the energy discharge from a brief activation of ''Moya's'' Starburst drive to ignite a trail of fuel leaking from a spaceship stolen by the VillainOfTheWeek, destroying it and killing the bad guy. |
| 196 | * ''Series/{{Firefly}}'': |
| 197 | ** In [[Recap/FireflyE01Serenity the pilot]], Wash uses Serenity's exhaust flame to ignite a planet's atmosphere as a way to disable/distract a Reaver ship after performing a "Crazy Ivan". |
| 198 | --->'''Zoe:''' Ain't no way they can come around in time to follow us now. |
| 199 | ** Mal ''also'' intended to use the exhaust (both the flames and more importantly the physical pressure) against Burgess' troops in "[[Recap/FireflyE13HeartOfGold Heart of Gold]]", but that plan never got off the ground. |
| 200 | * For certain values of "exhaust", the morphers in ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' are said to sometimes create explosions due to [[{{Technobabble}} energy runoff]]. When Flynn uses ReversePolarity with his morpher when it's been malfunctioning, he realizes that the most likely side effect is a larger-than-normal explosion... [[CombatPragmatist which he deliberately aims at the villains.]] |
| 201 | * A ''Series/Space1999'' episode, "Voyager's Return", concerned a probe whose drive system was lethal. |
| 202 | * A tactic sometimes used in ''Franchise/StarTrek'' is to vent a cloud of flammable gas (like warp plasma) in front of an enemy ship and ignite the cloud with a phaser blast, using the ensuing explosion to disable/destroy the enemy. |
| 203 | * Played with in ''Series/TopGearUK'' with a car (a Red Bull ''UsefulNotes/FormulaOne car'') shooting paintballs from its exhaust. It proved a highly effective weapon when one hit Clarkson [[GroinAttack quite painfully]]. In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAmSgieQ1f8&ab_channel=TopGear another episode]], a 1980s Nissan Pulsar, which was voted 'most boring car' by the audience, was burned up with a large jet turbine. |
| 204 | [[/folder]] |
| 205 | |
| 206 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 207 | * ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'': |
| 208 | ** The massive {{Dropship}}s are capable of razing anything anywhere nearby in a nuclear hellstorm of fusion reactor exhaust when they begin to lift off the ground to head to orbit. Being too close to a dropship that's taking off or landing is automatically fatal to ground units. |
| 209 | ** [[HumongousMecha BattleMech]] [[FireBreathingWeapon flamers]] are usually powered by exhaust from the mech's fusion reactor (contrary to some of the novels, neither flamers nor Jump Jets actually pull plasma straight from the reactor, which is a near-vacuum. Instead, they run air through vents that allow waste-heat from the reactor to superheat it). Vehicles and industrial mechs with combustion engines engines make do with napalm. |
| 210 | * ''TabletopGame/{{Champions}}'' supplement ''Champions 2'': The vehicle construction system allowed a vehicle's exhaust to do normal or even killing damage to anyone standing behind it. |
| 211 | * ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: Space'' lists the offensive potential of several engines. Because GURPS assumes that most engines will not have particularly coherent exhaust streams they're relatively weak compared to normal armaments. |
| 212 | ** The [[RuleOfCool nuclear jetpack]] blasts superheated radioactive exhaust at everyone below it. Why anyone would wear such a thing is a different issue. |
| 213 | *** A BBEG using it to escape the heroes? |
| 214 | * In Palladium's ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'' sourcebook "Mechanoids", Overlords and Oracles (evil, building sized robots with a bend for human extermination) are packed full of weapons, but still like the elegant process of flying a few meters over unprotected humans. Crispy bacon. |
| 215 | * In ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' every [[RetroRocket rocket ship]] has rules that let the pilot use the radium fueled exhaust as an effective weapon. This tactic is also favoured by the [[HoverBoard rocket boarding]] gangs of New York. |
| 216 | * SPI's classic boardgame ''[=StarForce=]'' uses a relative of this trope. In the game, "[=TeleShips=]" move [[FasterThanLightTravel FTL]] by teleportation. They fight by throwing random teleport windows at each other. |
| 217 | * TabletopGame/D20Future mentions this in the descriptions for starship engines. Rules aren't given for it, since it's an unorthodox (and clever) tactic. |
| 218 | [[/folder]] |
| 219 | |
| 220 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 221 | * The ending of ''VideoGame/AliensArmageddon'', this is how the kaiju-sized winged Alien Queen FinalBoss is eventually defeated; after absorbing plenty of grenade rounds, knocking the Queen backwards into the thrusters of an evacuation ship about to take off. The following cutscene sees the Queen incinerated for good. |
| 222 | * ''VideoGame/AstroBotRescueMission'': Astro can slow their descent by firing a laser from their legs, which damages enemies. |
| 223 | * ''VideoGame/BattleGaregga'' has the boss Black Heart, one of whose attacks is moving down to you and letting the afterburners flare up. |
| 224 | * ''VideoGame/Bioshock2'' has Rocket Spears as AbnormalAmmo for its Speargun weapon. The rocket plume acts like a flamethrower, lighting nearby enemies and oil spills on fire as the poor splicer shot with it flails around because they have a rocket sticking out of them. The spearhead itself does surprisingly little damage |
| 225 | * In ''VideoGame/BlastWorks: Build, Trade, Destroy'', certain enemies use exhaust which can destroy your ship and, when taken as your own, can save the moment as a very short range weapon. |
| 226 | * In ''VideoGame/TheBouncer'', [[TheDragon Mugetsu]] is killed by being dropped off the side of an airship, into its booster jets. |
| 227 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Broforce}}'', the Brocketeer's jetpack releases a burst of flame to either side of him when active, frying nearby mooks. This makes up for his terrible mobility on the ground and useless primary weapon. |
| 228 | * In most of the ''VideoGame/CapcomVs'' games that they appeared in, Iron Man, War Machine, and most of the other characters who were equipped with jet packs or rocket boots would have moves where they used the flames produced by said jet packs and rocket boots as part of an attack. |
| 229 | * This is a surprisingly effective way to kill someone if your clones lack better weaponry (and sometimes even when they do due to the wonky physics making them ineffective) in ''VideoGame/CortexCommand''. |
| 230 | ** It's also quite effective at killing enemy dropships when piloting a dropship yourself. Being that the ships are unarmed and with very weakly armored engines, the best course of action is to position your ship so one of its engines is exhausting on top of one of the engines of the enemy dropship, and hit the throttle. |
| 231 | ** One mod, now lost to time, featured an item which was effectively a hand-carried turbojet engine. 'Firing' it caused an exhaust plume about three times as long an average drone's height to spontaneously manifest; this reliably shredded anything in front of it for the few milliseconds they were there, and invariably sent the user moving in the opposite direction hard enough to occasionally shear off limbs. [[RecoilBoost Firing downward caused the user to rise vertically.]] Firing upward caused a ''crater''. |
| 232 | * In ''VideoGame/DeadSpace'' a certain boss creature that constantly regenerates can only be gotten permanently rid of by incinerating it with the exhaust jets of a shuttle. |
| 233 | * A perk in ''VideoGame/DeepRockGalactic'' gives your character hover boots. Their primary purpose is to prevent fall damage, but the exhaust also does damage to enemies underneath you. |
| 234 | * This is perfectly possible to do in ''VideoGame/DeltaVRingsOfSaturn'', both against space rocks and enemy ships. There is even a weapon called "Kzinti Lesson" which is essentially a nose-mounted plasma thruster. |
| 235 | * ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry3DantesAwakening'': In the opening cutscene of Mission 3, Lady kills some demons behind her on her motorbike by roasting them with the bike's exhaust backblast. |
| 236 | * In ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' units that learn to use guns gain the "Proximal Shot" ability which allows them to invoke this trope while using their firearm as an impromptu rocket engine. |
| 237 | * ''VideoGame/{{Downwell}}'': This is literally your primary form of attack, as you use gunboots to hover in the air while whatever you shot for the recoil to hover is used to kill stuff. |
| 238 | * Due to him not being able to fly, ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' games that include [[FakeUltimateHero Hercule/Mr. Satan]] as a playable character give him a Jetpack to fight in the air. Some games allow him to use it as a weapon as well. |
| 239 | * Of all games, ''VideoGame/{{Einhander}}'' has one for the ''player character''. By changing speed, your craft gives out a burst of exhaust, which along with the manipulator arm may be the deadliest weapons in the game. Because of this, it's possible to beat a level ''without firing a shot''. Elsewhere in the game, the booster rockets for the satellite can kill you if you fly behind them. |
| 240 | ** The Star Soldier series uses this variant as well. At times, a ring-shaped enemy ship will enclose you, and the fastest way to dispatch it is to mash the "speed change" button while firing. |
| 241 | * ''VideoGame/EightMan1991'' have a stage where you enter a hangar to board a military plane about to take off. In-between fighting mooks on ground level, you also risk getting incinerated by the plane's bottom exhaust which can damage your health. You can either dash past it or jump upwards and smash the exhaust to pieces. |
| 242 | * ''VideoGame/ExtremeG'' has the Flame Exhaust weapon, which provides a speed boost while also burning anything behind the racer that uses it. |
| 243 | * Thanks to the robust dynamic fire engine in the ''Franchise/FarCry'' games, you can use rocket launchers as makeshift flame-throwers to kill enemies who are trying to ambush you with the backblast if you don't want to blow yourself up with the warhead by shooting them directly. Of course, it's entirely possible to burn yourself to death by firing while crouched, or against a wall. |
| 244 | * ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' |
| 245 | ** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' The Motor Ball boss is a six-wheeled TransformingMecha that uses an attack called Twin Burner where it shoots fire from its exhaust ports while in its "Flamethrower" form. |
| 246 | ** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' has Sazh's [[SummonMagic Eidolon]], Brynhildr, do this in Gestalt Mode with her MĂşspell Flame. Since her elemental affinity is fire, it's more that appropriate. |
| 247 | ** This was the original purpose of Machinist's "Cooldown" ability, which would decrease the heat building up in the Gauss Barrel, and dealt higher damage if you had some heat built up beforehand. With the third expansion it was later reworked into "Heat Blast", which can only be used while your gun is overheated. |
| 248 | * You can use this in ''VideoGame/{{Gates of Zendocon}}'' on the Atari Lynx. |
| 249 | * In ''[[VideoGame/{{Darius}} G-Darius]]'', the boss "[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Death]] [[MeaningfulName Wings]]", a HumongousMecha [[FlyingSeafoodSpecial manta ray]] tries to torch the Silver-Hawks via exhaust from its manta ray "wings". |
| 250 | * In the first ''VideoGame/GigaWing'', the FinalBoss, a surreal MechanicalAbomination, ''fires a pair of them'' in the beginning of its 2nd phase. After receiving enough damage, the boss fires a single exhaust directly in the middle of the screen. |
| 251 | * One of ''VideoGame/{{Gradius}} Gaiden''[='=]s stage 9 midbosses, Boost Core, has harmless exhaust...but only on the first loop. From the second loop onwards, its exhaust is lethal to the Vic-Viper and its peers. |
| 252 | * Robo-Ky from ''VideoGame/GuiltyGear'' has a heat gauge, and a good deal of his moves make it climb. If he overheats he explodes and damages himself and gives his opponent an opening. To prevent this, one of what would be his normal moves (his forward heavy slash) makes him vent steam, which he must do regularly to keep the heat under control. Of course, the steam itself is more potent the more heat he builds up first, and venting when he's seconds away from overheating creates a gigantic plume that does respectable damage and sets his opponent on fire. |
| 253 | * Several Gundam games (''[[VideoGame/GundamVsSeries Gundam VS Gundam Next]]'' and ''Gundam Battle Assault'') have the [[SuperPrototype Zeong]] use its large jets located at its base as attacks, presumably to make up for it not having legs necessary for kicking. |
| 254 | * In ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'', a tentacle monster is living inside one of Black Mesa's rocket test chambers. KillItWithFire is the obvious solution. |
| 255 | * Space RTS ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' has an example of this trope in its Bomber strike craft. The [[AllThereInTheManual game manual]] quips that the player race scientists realized that the most powerful directed energy system of the strike craft was their own fusion drive system. Hence they made a strike craft that can divert part of its drive thrust into very powerful plasma bombs. |
| 256 | * In the Irem ShootEmUp ''VideoGame/ImageFight'', changing gears causes a tiny burst of exhaust that can do some damage in a pinch. Some players may never even have noticed. This ability later made it into ''VideoGame/RType Final'', made for the ships of the OF series (the first of which, the ''Daedalus'', is the ship from ''Image Fight''). |
| 257 | * In ''VideoGame/InjusticeGodsAmongUs'', ComicBook/{{Lobo}}'s super move involves him ramming his opponent with his Space Hog, making them fall behind and then burning them with the exhaust flames while giving them [[FlippingTheBird a sign of utmost respect]]. |
| 258 | * ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'': Possible. It most commonly occurs when separation rockets meant to push boosters clear after they separate instead blow up the main rocket with their exhaust. |
| 259 | * ''VideoGame/{{Killzone}}'': Though it doesn't come up in gameplay, ISA cruisers can use their nuclear-powered beam thrusters as weapons, too. |
| 260 | * ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}'': |
| 261 | ** The Jet ability has this when it's charging power, as well as when Kirby is attacking, at least in ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar''. In the DS remake, it also causes damage while using it to hover, which is a surprisingly effective method of disposing of bosses and enemies alike at times. |
| 262 | ** ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar'': In ''Revenge of Meta Knight'', crew of the ''Halberd'' try to fry Kirby with its exhaust as it takes off. It knocks him back, but he's otherwise unharmed. |
| 263 | * ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfSpyroANewBeginning'': The Conductor's train vents jets of steam and fire from its engine in an attempt to harm Spyro during his boss battle. |
| 264 | * ''VideoGame/LoversInADangerousSpacetime'': One can upgrade the ship's engines with various gems. Beam and Metal will often add various offensive capabilities to one's thrust such as depositing caltrops or, in a literal example, having the thrust itself burn enemies. |
| 265 | * ''VideoGame/MadWorld'': A couple stages have jet engines that will instantly kill enemies when they are thrown into them. Now, that's all well and good in the zone that is a three-way ShoutOut to Franchise/StarWars, Franchise/StarTrek and Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}, but a random fighter plane attached to a wall in the middle of the Casino zone is a bit much. What would XIII think? |
| 266 | * ''Franchise/MassEffect'' [[AllThereInTheManual has a codex entry]] noting that a [[CoolStarship dreadnought's]] exhaust can melt through practically anything (we never see it used, though). Any ship's thrusters can melt armor "like wax under a blowtorch". |
| 267 | ** The ''Normandy'' generates Mass Effect fields that it "falls" into, in order to mask its emissions when in stealth mode. Just ''imagine'' what multiple, sufficiently powerful directed Mass Effect fields could do under the right circumstances... [[http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Ships_and_Vehicles#Normandy_Shield_Upgrade:_Cyclonic_Barrier_Technology_.28CBT.29 oh, wait, that's suggested here]], albeit in the form of shields rather than engines. Still! |
| 268 | ** In the ''Arrival'' {{DLC}}, Shepard and Dr. Kenson escape from the Batarian prison, some guards arrive a bit late to stop them... and find themselves on the wrong end of their escape shuttle. |
| 269 | * ''Videogame/MechWarrior'': [[HumongousMecha BattleMechs]] can weaponize their fusion reactors by venting its exhaust through a [[FireBreathingWeapon Flamer]]. Flamers deal very little actual damage, but they [[OverHeating heat up anything they hit]], allowing you to cripple an enemy battlemechs combat ability or force them into an emergency shutdown. In ''[=MechWarrior=] Living Legends'', it's possible to make enemy battlemechs literally melt to death by heating them up past their reactor's critical temperature with flamers. |
| 270 | * ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'': The Harrier boss burns you with its exhaust as one of its attacks. |
| 271 | * ''VideoGame/MetalSlug'': One of the bosses in ''Metal Slug 2''/''X'', the "Keesi" (A military transport/bomber) will attempt to cook you with its afterburners. Another aircraft boss in ''Metal Slug 5'', "Shooting Ray" also has this attack. |
| 272 | * ''VideoGame/MondayNightCombat'': Tanks and Gunners can't move while they're deployed. But if an Assassin was foolish enough to try to get behind to slash them, a blast from their jump jets usually made them quickly reconsider. |
| 273 | * ''VideoGame/MrRobot'': At one point near the middle, there's a shuttle inside the starship Eidelon. While it doesn't have enough fuel to go anywhere, you are able to burn what it has left to destroy a bunch of enemy robots inside the hangar. |
| 274 | * ''VideoGame/{{Nightfire}}'': Bond kills off Kiko with the exhaust of a Space Shuttle owned by Phoenix. |
| 275 | * In ''Nova Drift'', the Firefly ship has thrusters that deals a large amount of damage over time to enemies touching it. The Deadly Wake upgrade lets your ship leave behind a trail that burns enemies. |
| 276 | * ''VideoGame/OneMustFall2097'': The Pyros robot is equipped with rocket boosters that double as flamethrowers. One particular special move has the Pyros use the boosters to reverse direction in midair, damaging any close-by opponent in the process. |
| 277 | * ''VideoGame/PerfectDarkZero'': The gunship attacks with its engine flames after it TurnsRed. |
| 278 | * ''VideoGame/{{Platform}}'' gives you jetpacks with deadly exhaust. Except the only thing you can kill with it is your partner. |
| 279 | * ''VideoGame/ProjectReality'', a ''VideoGame/Battlefield2'' mod, you can kill players with the backblast of rocket launchers. However, you are more likely going to kill a teammate than an enemy player, as very few players are going to stand still for you to cook them. |
| 280 | %%* ''VideoGame/RaySeries'': The third boss of ''Ray Force'' and the Twin black MIGS boss of ''VideoGame/AeroFighters''. |
| 281 | * ''VideoGame/RedOrchestra'': The mod ''Darkest Hour'' has the Panzerschreck and Bazooka shoulder-fired anti tank weapons, which have a lethal backblast behind them when fired, which can also bounce off of walls and kill the firer, making shooting from indoor environments nearly suicidal. Unfortunately they are also quickly loaded by a teammate standing behind the operator. |
| 282 | * In ''VideoGame/RingRunnerFlightOfTheSages'', ships travel the universe with an Anchor drive. This drive "anchors" the ship in space, allowing the universe to spin past it. The universe spins once every 52 hours, and the danger of colliding with something at a very large exponent of light speed is so real, ships can only do this on certain "rings" in the universe, which are completely clean of matter. At the ship level, there are several ship perks that weaponize heat buildup. Venting plasma in a damaging trail, launching an explosive heatsink canister, rerouting some of the exhaust to boost weapon performance, and of course, the mother of all weapons. [[spoiler: The Anchor Cannon, which stops the motion of the projectile relative to the universe, so the universe collides with it. It only works if the target is up-spin, but even a single atom can vaporize an entire battlefield!]] |
| 283 | * Irem loves this trope. Special mention goes to the first boss of ''VideoGame/RType Delta''; its attack pattern alternates between blasting a barrage of building-leveling weaponry at the player's ship and... retreating. The player has no choice but to give chase, and evade the two large flames from the boss' rocket engines. The engines can be damaged to give the player more room to maneuver. |
| 284 | * In the ''VideoGame/SiliconDreams'' InteractiveFiction trilogy, you play security agent on a SleeperStarship. In the first game, you stop a terrorist from blowing up the ship just before it arrives at the planet to colonize. Unfortunately, the damaged video makes it appear ''you'' were the saboteur. In the beginning of the second part, you have just escaped the crew and landed, and must immediately seek shelter when they try to fry you from space with the ship's engines. |
| 285 | * In Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces, this is a concern during the boss fight against Wolfram, a massive dirigible/flying fortress. Part of the fight involves stopping it's escape by disabling it's engines. To disable it's engines, you have to fly directly behind it and shoot down it's exhaust pipes. And since Wolfram is propelled by massive circumferential fans, you're fighting wake turbulence the whole time. |
| 286 | * In ''VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles'', all of the stage bosses that fly by means of rockets can injure Sonic with said rockets. Few of them do so intentionally, however. Of course, [[DevelopersForesight if you've got a Fire Shield, the burning exhaust won't harm you]]. |
| 287 | * ''Videogame/SpaceEngineers''' thrusters can make a decent ImprovisedWeapon against ships as the exhaust will burn through light armor, though the range at which they deal damage is short enough to essentially make them melee weapons. If you get stuck after [[RammingAlwaysWorks ramming a ship]], thrusters are an excellent way to unjam it, as strafing thrusters can burn away the bits and pieces of the torn-up enemy ship stuck on you. Amusingly, thruster damage wasn't initially in the game, so players using fanciful ships designs with concealed thrusters were reporting their ships literally slicing themselves in half when it was added to the game. |
| 288 | * The Inkjet in ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon 2}}'' is equipped with a long-range weapon, and that is your intended way to fight. However, the ink being propelled downwards to keep the wielder afloat can still damage opponents who get caught under it; should an opponent be splatted this way, they will be informed that they were "Splatted by Inkjet exhaust!" -- not merely "Splatted by Inkjet!" -- making it one of a few handful of weapons to have two possible "Splatted by" messages for the victim. |
| 289 | * ''VideoGame/Spyro2RiptosRage'' and ''VideoGame/SpyroYearOfTheDragon'' had flying saucers that did this, forcing players to take them head-on. |
| 290 | * ''VideoGame/Squad51VsTheFlyingSaucers'' has a powerful backburner installed behind your fighter, which works as a SmartBomb releasing a stream of flames from your exhaust incinerating alien ships behind you. It lasts for at least ten seconds, too, allowing you to take down waves of pursuing enemies in a short time. |
| 291 | * The Thraddash in ''VideoGame/StarControl II'' have afterburners on their ships which accelerate the ship and leave a fiery trail in their wake. This tends to deal more damage to enemy ships than the supposed main weapon. |
| 292 | * One ability that players can use in ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' is called [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Eject Warp Plasma]], which vents plasma from the ship's warp drive through special exhausts, creating a massive cloud behind the ship as it travels. Any hostile ship unfortunate to cross paths with this cloud will suffer a massive speed and maneuverability reduction, take plasma DamageOverTime direct to their hull, and revealed if they were using a cloaking device. As the damage ignores the standard-issue DeflectorShields it's highly effective against ships that rely on shields over hull for defense, and predictably it'll evaporate any smaller objects like mines or fighters. The effect can be ''further'' weaponized with the ''Vent Metreon-Laced Plasma'' trait, which reduces the trail duration but causes it to progressively explode behind the vessel, dealing extra damage in a small area of effect. Both tricks are based off maneuvers used in the various TV series and their movie spinoffs. |
| 293 | * ''VideoGame/StarWarsEpisodeIRacer'' has this as a unique feature of Sebulba's vehicle, just like in [[Film/ThePhantomMenace the movie]]. |
| 294 | * ''VideoGame/StarWarsSquadrons'': Getting too close to the exhaust of a large starship, such as a Star Destroyer or [=MC75=] Cruiser, will result in the player's ship being damaged and possibly destroyed. Downplayed in that smaller ships and fighters can't damage each other in this way. |
| 295 | * Floyd's LimitBreak in ''VideoGame/StreetsOfRage 4'' has him shoot a huge laser beam that obliterates all enemies in front of him. The exhaust from the weapon also hits enemies behind him. |
| 296 | * One of the weapons in ''VideoGame/SuperheroLeagueOfHoboken'' is a "Modified jet engine". |
| 297 | * The airship levels in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' have flamethrowers on the outsides of ships that are probably meant to be thrusters. |
| 298 | * In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine'', FLUDD's nozzles meant to propel Mario--the Hover Nozzle, the Rocket Nozzle, and the Turbo Nozzle--can still dissolve harmful goop and damage water-sensitive enemies if the water emitted from the device manages to hit them. Some bosses, such as [[AsteroidsMonster Phantamanta]] and [[UnderwaterBossBattle Eely-Mouth]], were designed to be fought using the Hover Nozzle's exhaust. |
| 299 | * Several of [[RobotBuddy R.O.B.'s]] attacks in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'' involve this. |
| 300 | * WordOfGod on ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'' states that the devs had considered this idea, but then threw it into the reject pile for detracting from the fun by having too much potential for {{Friendly Fire|proof}}. |
| 301 | * PTX-40A in ''VideoGame/TatsunokoVsCapcom'' uses its thrusters as attacks in some of its command normals. |
| 302 | * ''VideoGame/{{Vectorman}}'': The foot jets that allow him to DoubleJump also allow him to deal damage to his enemies via the GoombaStomp method. |
| 303 | * The [[LivingShip Jordas Golem]] in ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'' is an [[TheVirus Infested]] boss fought at the end of "The Jordas Precept" quest, as well as the only boss fought in space. It has a gigantic engine grafted to its back that it uses to fly around the arena, leaving behind a trail of poisonous gas as it does so. Unfortunately, said engine also happens to be its [[AttackItsWeakPoint only weakspot]], meaning you are forced to chase after it and avoid the gas if you want to do any damage. |
| 304 | * The second boss in ''VideoGame/WarioLand Shake It'' used the exhaust flames of his race car as an attack against Wario if Wario came too close (in the second stage of the battle, he actually lowered his car to the ground to burn Wario with the flames if Wario tried to go past him). |
| 305 | * In ''Videogame/XRebirth'', the massive engines on capital ships deal damage to anything nearby when they are firing, doubly so when they [[NitroBoost kick in their afterburners]] for intra-system travel. However, the damaging range is low enough that it is extremely rare for it to damage anything other than the player's ship which is trying to blow up said engine. Ore refineries on space stations vent away excess heat when operating, and civilian craft attempting to pass another craft on the FuturisticSuperhighway lanes near stations may unwittingly pass through it and explode. |
| 306 | * In ''VideoGame/XWing'' and its later sequels, flying too close to a capital ship's rear thrusters causes damage. If you chose a non-engine location as a staging point for a "safe" point-blank attack, it would use a weapon jamming beam. |
| 307 | * In ''XIIZEAL'', you can use your ship's jet exhaust to damage enemies, and it is one of two ways to build up and make use of the ScoreMultiplier alongside the side shot. |
| 308 | [[/folder]] |
| 309 | |
| 310 | [[folder:Web Comics]] |
| 311 | * James from ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'', the leader of our good doctor's college Vigilante Club. [[http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/13p9/ He invented jet boots and used them to kick people and set them on fire]]. |
| 312 | * In ''WebComic/BasicInstructions'', resident superhero Rocket Hat has been known to use his rockets [[http://basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2010/10/14/how-to-react-to-something-amazing.html in this manner]]. |
| 313 | * Space Pinch engines in ''Webcomic/DriveDaveKellett'' can be used to compress the spacetime containing... problems. Like rebel planets, for example... |
| 314 | * Inverted in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'', where handheld plasma guns also have a plasma rocket setting. |
| 315 | * An engineer in ''Webcomic/{{Vexxarr}}'' [[http://www.vexxarr.com/archive.php?seldate=080210 pointed out]] that since by definition hot plasma goes in the direction exactly ''opposite'' to the ship' acceleration, this also solves a fundamental philosophical dilemma -- "fight or flight". |
| 316 | ** Earlier humans studied captured Bleem ship and invented "zorp" weapon by reverse-engineering its engines. |
| 317 | [[/folder]] |
| 318 | |
| 319 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 320 | * Literature/ChakonaSpace: Neal Foster discusses this with his young engineering trainees after they encounter the ''Blowfish''. |
| 321 | * [[Roleplay/InsaneCafeSeries Insane Cafe 4]], [[SentientVehicle Rain]][[CoolPlane bow]] uses her jet wash (with full afterburners) to fry [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic a swarm of changelings]]. |
| 322 | [[/folder]] |
| 323 | |
| 324 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 325 | * Inverted by skilled firebenders in ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', who are able to send jets of fire out their feet or hands, allowing flight. |
| 326 | * In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'', TheMusicMeister sends his thralls to their deaths by having them line-dance into a rocket engine's exhaust. Fortunately Batman intervenes. |
| 327 | * In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', Terry has used his jet boots as weapon: |
| 328 | ** Once to propel a crate at someone. Notably, this is the only time he's actually used it against a living target. |
| 329 | ** Another time to knock an attacking Synthoid away. |
| 330 | ** And another time to send Ace (the Royal flush Gang's android, not the dog) flying into a laundry chute. |
| 331 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'', Batman does this in Mr. Freeze's first appearance. Freeze mocks Batman when his attempt to ram him with a remote-controlled Batmobile misses, [[ExactlyWhatIAimedAt only for Batman to kick on the afterburners and torch him into unconsciousness]]. |
| 332 | * ''WesternAnimation/BountyHamster'': In a more slapstick-y fashion, the episode "Gone Fishin" has the Literature/MobyDick-inspired giant sandworm biting into Marion's ship, only to get [[InflatingBodyGag inflated]] by the exhaust and propel away like a deflating balloon. |
| 333 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheDeep2015'': In "The Dark Orca", Kaiko uses the backwash from the Rover's impellors to blast away two of the Orca's crew who are closing on the incapacitated Ant. |
| 334 | * ''WesternAnimation/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy2015'': Rocket Raccoon is shown learning this lesson in his Origin Story. He steals a Ravenger ship and turns its ion thrusters on the mooks guarding him, citing a line from the information he had been forced to assimilate earlier. |
| 335 | -->'''Rocket Raccoon:''' The rocket is a means of propulsion AND a weapon! |
| 336 | * In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois Space'', a Cassiopeian soldier is burned to a crisp, but in an AmusingInjuries way, by the engines of the ship the protagonists use to escape. |
| 337 | * In an early episode of ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'', Coop ends up using the Megas' own exhaust to blot out the sun, draining the REGIS Mk-V of its power. |
| 338 | * ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheBadBatch'': When the Bad Batch try to sneak out of a crashed starship through the engine nozzle to avoid an Imperial strike team, [[spoiler:Crosshair]] orders the engine turned on in order to incinerate them. The Bad Batch, however, realize what's happening and use their explosives to sever the nozzle from the engine and roll away inside it. The now-unconfined engine proceeds to spew fire and hot air everywhere, [[HoistByHisOwnPetard burning most of the Imperials alive]]. |
| 339 | * ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'': In [[Recap/StarWarsRebelsS2E10APrincessOnLothal "A Princess on Lothal"]], a cruiser's engines are used to knock over an AT-AT walker. |
| 340 | * ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'': Prowl uses his jetpack to burn a Space Barnacle monster in "Nature Calls". |
| 341 | ** And if the series had continued, it looks like Decepticon Oil Slick uses this as well. Only instead of the propulsion force, he releases chemical weapons through his exhaust. |
| 342 | [[/folder]] |
| 343 | |
| 344 | [[folder:Real Life]] |
| 345 | * Aircraft carriers have hydraulically raised blast shields behind the launch catapults specifically to prevent the exhaust from barbecuing the ground crew or throwing anyone overboard. |
| 346 | ** Until recently, those blast shields had to be water cooled to keep them from melting. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_blast_deflector#Aircraft_carriers Now they use ceramic tiles]] similar to the space shuttles. |
| 347 | * ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' had a jumbo jet's engines overturn a taxi, a schoolbus, and a smaller aircraft. |
| 348 | ** They also set their own shop on fire testing a rocket engine ''indoors''. [[{{DontTryThisAtHome}} Don’t Try This at Home.]] |
| 349 | ** ''Series/{{Top Gear|UK}}'' did the same stunt at one point, using a saloon car and then a Citroen 2CV. |
| 350 | ** During the third try at the [=JATO=] Rocket Car, the [=MBs=] did a nice job of chewing up their ramp with the rocket exhaust. |
| 351 | * The [[FunWithAcronyms Supersonic Low Altitude Missile]] was a proposal for a nuclear-armed cruise missile with a nuclear ramjet for propulsion. Even though the exhaust itself wouldn't have been radioactive, the radiation produced by the unshielded propulsion reactor could have been dangerous to anyone that was near its flight path. Fortunately, it was obsoleted by the invention of the ICBM before it made it out of the initial design stage. |
| 352 | * Inverted with the [[OrionDrive Orion Project]], which would ''intentionally'' launch ''thermonuclear bombs'' out the back and catching the blast with a pusher plate on massive shock absorbers. Call it [[MundaneUtility Exhaustized]] [[RecoilBoost Weapons]]. Or not. |
| 353 | ** And then played straight with "Casaba-Howitzer", a hypothetical weapon that would use the "shaped charge" aspect of the Orion Drive to essentially turn it into a WaveMotionGun. |
| 354 | ** Further Played straight with Robert Zubrin's nuclear salt-water rocket. It mixes water with nuclear fuel salts, then feeds it through an engine that results in an exhaust that is basically a ''continuous'' fission explosion. It has the holy grail of rockets: High thrust ''and'' high efficiency. Just don't stand behind it. Or use it anywhere inside Earth's atmosphere. |
| 355 | ** The only space station ever to be really armed (an old Soviet station that had a machine gun on it) ran into problems with the reaction from the bullets pushing it out of its correct orbit. |
| 356 | * Thanks to Newton's laws, it's been argued that any kind of drive powerful enough to accelerate a large ship to appreciable speeds would make a phenomenal weapon against said ship's enemies. |
| 357 | ** Consider the following: to get the space shuttle into orbit, it takes about 10 terajoules of energy. That's enough to boil over 1000 tons of iron, all delivered in eight minutes. That's an average of 20 gigawatts of power. For comparison, when people talk about possible real-world directed energy weapons, they talk in tens of kilowatts. A laser is more directed and longer ranged, but even the relatively wimpy chemical rockets used to get into orbit deliver about two hundred thousand to two million times as much power. |
| 358 | ** If all the fuel in a Saturn V rocket were to burn at once, the resulting explosion would be about the size of the one that leveled Hiroshima in World War II. Space travel in the future is likely to be highly regulated, just because of the damage a single rogue pilot could do. |
| 359 | ** In a case of accidentally weaponized exhaust, the huge white clouds at a rocket launch during liftoff are not actually the rocket's exhaust. They are created from massive amounts of water poured on the launch pad during launch to absorb the enormous energy that would otherwise radiate out from the pad, destroying windows and even structures nearby. |
| 360 | * The earliest war rockets tended to work this way. When Tippoo Sultan used them against the British in the Indian wars of the late 18th century, rockets tended to do more damage if you dropped them in a confined space and they ricocheted off the walls burning people with their exhaust than if you used them the conventional way. This was partly because they were too inaccurate to be directly aimed at targets, but another thing that played into it was the fact that such rockets couldn't really carry an explosive payload either. |
| 361 | * Almost all rocket-propelled weapons have a hazardous zone behind them. Size of that zone varies with weapon, but it is a very bad idea to stand behind an MLRS (or a humble RPG operator) during launch. Operators of man-portable rocket-propelled weapons are told not to fire their weapons if they have a wall behind their back. Fiction writers tend to forget this, though, causing anybody who has actually encountered this phenomenon to note the MissingBackblast. |
| 362 | ** Averted by the German Armbrust and French/Canadian Eryx antitank launchers. The Armbrust exhausts a relatively gentle puff of plastic flakes while the exhaust gases are captured in the tube by sealing pistons. The Eryx has a tiny charge to kick the missile out of the tube, then the main rocket ignites at a safe distance. Both launchers can be used in enclosed spaces with no harm to the crew. |
| 363 | ** Also partially averted by the [=AT4-CS=], which uses a salt-water counter-mass to absorb much of the blast, and the [=RPG-7=], which uses a moderate-sized charge to eject the rocket (which then ignites at a safe distance). In both cases, there's ''some'' dangerous area behind the tube, but it's at most a few meters long. |
| 364 | * The General Dynamics F-111 was well known for dump-and-burn performances. Because the main fuel dump valve was located between the exhausts, opening it and bumping the afterburners would leave a spectacular trail of flame. This was a legitimate tactic for confusing heat-seeking missiles and an airshow specialty of the Royal Australian Air Force, even being performed at the 2000 Sydney Olympics closing ceremony. |
| 365 | * A theoretical physics version: The AlcubierreDrive [[http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-annihilating-effects-space.html would fry whatever you stopped at]]. Then again it'd make interstellar wars pretty easy... |
| 366 | * The ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyGDxglTVgA Big Wind]]'' is an old tank chassis fitted with surplus jet engines, built to fight oil well fires by ''blowing them out''. |
| 367 | * The Challenger disaster. Exhaust gasses started leaking through a defective field joint in the solid rocket boosters and proceeded to blowtorch through the hydrogen tank's outer skin like a hot knife through butter. |
| 368 | ** More generally, the shuttle system was inherently unsafe because you couldn't stop the [=SRBs=] once lit, and you couldn't separate the orbiter from the [=SRBs=] safely while they were burning because there was no way to avoid the orbiter flying into the blowtorch exhaust plumes.[[note]]It actually wasn't the explosion that destroyed the ''Challenger''; the explosion was actually well within the shuttle's design tolerances (the shuttles did need to be able to survive the heat of reentry after all) but force of the explosion along with the [=SRBs=] dislodging caused the shuttle to suddenly change its angle relative to its direction of travel and subjected it to extreme aerodynamic forces, similar to how your hand will be pushed backwards by the wind when you stick it out the window of a car. Since the shuttle was at the time travelling at ''eighteen thousand miles per hour,'' it was torn apart like a model plane in hurricane-force winds.[[/note]] |
| 369 | * An American soldier fighting in the Battle of the Bulge recounted how German tank crews dealt with soldiers in foxholes; oftentimes the crews would park their tank over the hole to prevent escape, then begin revving the tank's engine, using the carbon monoxide from the tank's exhaust to suffocate the soldier to death. However, this was considered the more humane way of killing; the alternative choice among more sadistic crews was locking one of the treads over the hole, then spinning the tank around, slowly and painfully grinding and crushing the poor soldier into a pulp. |
| 370 | * In the air this is so easy to do it can even be done by ''accident''. Pilots are specifically trained to take care when landing after larger aircraft because turbulence left behind in their wake can throw smaller craft out of control. A good example is seen [[http://flightclub.jalopnik.com/turbulence-from-a-blackhawk-helicopter-flips-a-small-pl-1683311528 here]], where a small plane flips over while trying to land almost a half a minute after a helicopter takes off. |
| 371 | ** Played out straight, tragically, with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587 AA Flight 587]] just two months after the 9/11 attacks. The aircraft encountered severe wake turbulence from taking off too soon behind a 747; between the roiling exhaust air and the pilot's attempt to fight it with rudder control, the entire tail and both engines snapped clean off the aircraft and sent all of it into Queens, killing 265 people. |
| 372 | [[/folder]] |
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