Convection Schmonvection / Video Games

Realistically, their fur should be on fire.

Convection, Schmonvection in Video Games.

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• Firmly averted in ADOM; not only will being in the Tower of Eternal Flames slowly roast your character to death (unless he's very fire resistant) and destroy his equipment, it will also boost his speed if he's of the reptilian Drakeling race. (Similarly, hanging around the game's only ice level will cause slow death by freezing unless you have cold resistance.)
• Adventure (also known as Colossal Cave): heat isn't an issue, but trying to walk across a (magical) bridge across the shaft of a volcano causes the PC to die from the toxic gases unless wearing the mithril ring.
• In Adventures of Lolo, there are plenty of rooms with lava and the hero is just fine. For the most part, it functions exactly like water, with one major exception; bridges built over lava will burn down, either on a set timer or after walking over it a certain number of times.
• Affordable Space Adventures makes heat management a mechanic. If the Small Craft overheats, it will explode and being in excessively hot areas will speed this process up. Additionally, it takes a while for heat emissions to drop down after cutting off sources of heat, so if one is hoping to get past something that will kill the Small Craft if it detects heat, simply cutting off the gas engine immediately prior won't be good enough.
• In Age of Empires III, there is a level that takes place in the Andes Mountains where your units constantly lose hitpoints if they remain out in the cold except in certain areas away from the cold winds.
• In the PC version of Alien vs. Predator, as the Predator you have an area in a factory with molten metal. Not only can you stand near the fiery pits without taking damage, but when using heat vision, the area is only partially highlighted, whereas it should completely blind the sensors. Happens again in the 2010 game, in which the player-controlled Predator and the Alien Abomination are fighting in a magma chamber. Then again, we've seen Aliens survive having molten lead poured on them and Predators are superhumanly tough. The Marine also sees this area, but is roughly a hundred feet up in a mostly separated chamber.
• In Alundra, not only can you walk around in Torla Mountain just fine, but once you get the Charm Boots, you can actually walk on lava. Could be justified if they're magic boots...
• Justified in American McGee's Alice, as Wonderland is entirely inside the heroine's own mind.
• ANNO: Mutationem: At The Consortium's underground facility, Ann briefly fights her way through a room overflown with lava while atop of metal crates carrying mooks. Despite being in close proximity of the rising magma, Ann makes it though entirely safe.
• Apex Legends has the map World's Edge, featuring giant fissures of exposed lava. It's actually Zigzagged: lava that players can realistically climb to safety from plays this straight, while lava that isn't that (such as the massive fissure splitting Fragment in two) damages them if they're above it, and also blows them away with the rising air.
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla: In the "Dawn of Ragnarok" DLC, the Muspels have left trails of lava everywhere they go. Odin's perfectly fine so long as they don't step on it, at which point they will burst into flames... which can then be extinguished by rolling. That the DLC is partially a severely scrambled memory might leave some wiggle room.
• Averted in The Bard's Tale: depending on your actions, either one of Chosen Ones goes to a chest on a stone island in a middle of room full of lava, and promptly catches on fire just by being there; or, the Bard explains him that this would happen if he goes there.
• In Batman: Arkham City, Batman infiltrates an active steel mill via a smokestack, and has to navigate around molten steel with no real ill-effect, save for falling into it. However, hot steam from busted pipes can hinder your progress later on.
• Battle for Wesnoth:
  • Lava hexes are usually just there for aesthetics and don't harm units standing beside or flying above them, although there are scenarios that allow the lava to spread, killing those who stand in the new lava hex. This one has the Hand Wave of scale: as the community adage goes, Hexes Are Possibly Miles Across, so it's hard to know exactly how close a unit actually is.
  • One scenario in Under the Burning Suns downplay this a bit when the elves fights through a room filled with lava. Units in the room take two points of damage every turn they're in the room and twenty five points of damage if they end their turn on a lava hex (which is obviously tamer than the real-life consequences).
• Battlezone: Lava pools on Io and Rend are harmless unless someone goes above them. Once that happens, all vehicles in the game take damage for as long as there's lava below them. Even Hover Tanks which aren't actually touching the lava suffer from the heat. Though the lava damage on Io brings up an entirely different issue, because convection requires a medium, and Io has next to no atmosphere. This is actually used in one campaign mission of the second game. The objective the player is tasked to recover lies in a valley that's just across the lava lake near the player's base. However, said objective also takes damage while being tugged over the lake and the tug carrying it isn't fast enough to cross the lake before the objective is cooked alive by the heat, requiring the player to take the overland route that incidentally happens to go right next to a heavily fortified enemy base.
• The Binding of Isaac: Repentance: Isaac cannot be harmed by the magma of the Mines floor at all, despite being completely naked. The rooms with the burning rocks should be super heated, but he can stand right next to the pits or even be right over them with flight. Using the Flush! item, which floods a given room, cools it to rock, but otherwise Isaac does not interact with it. The magma or boiling hot blood in the Beast's arena can harm Isaac, but only if he flies right down in to it. Otherwise he spends the whole battle in a molten cavern without suffering any harm from the heat. The Beast's fight is a side-scroller rather than top-down like most of the game, allowing the player to descend in to the magma.
• BioShock contains a short puzzle where you have to redirect lava flow to boil away a few feet of water. The lava is flowing through glass pipes, and when released just disappears along with the water... conveniently.
• Black the Fall: A couple of parts of the game have the worker on platforms suspended over a huge river of molten metal. Despite his proximity to it, thw worker never even seems to sweat.
• The final worlds in both Blinx games feature lots of lava and/or molten metal, and as long as you don't fall directly into it, you're fine.
• Downplayed in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: Kain may walk around lava-filled areas so long as he stays on the ground, while stepping in the lava causes massive damage. However, he also takes severe damage if he tries to jump over small lava streams in wolf form or walk over lava in mist form, presumably from the rising heat. As Kain is a vampire, he may simply have a much higher tolerance for climates normally deadly to humans.
• Boktai juggles this so bad it is annoying. Touching magical stationary fireballs, will-'o-wisps or certain cubes will launch you back flying, usually burning or frozen (slowed down). But there are stages where you are dangerously close to lava and nothing happens! You take damage and gets knocked back if you touch lava, also getting burned for a couple of seconds, but you won't instantly die. Now, if you ever walk too close to a ledge you can fall off into the water, you will instantly die. Averted in the second game, in a part where you need to traverse a desert in search of tablets to open the passage into a tomb. You need to stay hydrated or else you'll gradually lose health and die. In the first game, an overheat would make your Gun Del Sol malfunction, making it hard to progress. In the second one, however, Django/Sabata suffers from heat stroke if YOU stay too long in the sun.
• Averted in this volcanic level of Bomberman Hero, where the player steadily loses health due to the heat of the lava below and must heal by entering "cooling rooms" conveniently placed inside the volcano.
• Subverted in Breath of Fire IV in the beginning. The forest Fou Lu is walking through is set on fire, and he seemingly has no problem with it, which would make sense considering his claims of A God Am I. Only for him to come out the other side and be unable to take on an ambush due to how much he was weakened by the fire, especially due to his strong affinity for water. Then he gets knocked out in one hit. In a later scene he wakes up covered in bandages and is unable to walk before collapsing, with his new caretaker telling him to take it easy because he's seen men die from burns as bad as that.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002) not only has Buffy casually crossing a stone bridge over lava with just a casual comment about the heat, but there's also a level fought in an active foundry with molten metal all around the place. Lampshaded in some dialogue, though.
  Buffy: What's that Giles always says? 'Stay away from fiery, molten metal. It's really hot and will kill you dead.'
• Arachnia in Bug! (1995). Bug can be perfectly fine even when he is on a rock floating on a sea of lava. But once he touches the lava...
• Call of Duty:
  • Zig-zagged in the second Call of Duty: Black Ops II map pack, with Magma. There is a fast, raging lava river going down the middle of the map, which you can stand near with no problem. Stand near the recently cooled rocks and you will take damage however.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops III likewise zigzags this in one instance during the campaign, combined with the game's use of the Chunky Salsa Rule in regards to the weakness of cybernetically-augmented humans like the player character. Goh Xiulan tries to beat the player over the head with a flaming wooden plank, where the fire is apparently just an afterthought to match everything else in the mission being on fire and does even less to the player than walking into an ambient fire would do in normal gameplay. Goh is then killed by simply grabbing her head and holding it close to an open flame, melting the flesh after only a few seconds.
• Castle Of Pixel Skulls: There's plenty of exposed lava pits in the game. The skeleton can get close to them, and will remain fine so long as he doesn't fall in.
• Averted in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Merely standing near lava is enough to hurt your character.
• The Player Character is able to walk unharmed in areas with walls made out of lava in Catacomb Abyss, and of flames in Catacomb Armageddon and Catacomb Apocalypse.
• In Chrono Cross: the party is able to climb Mount Pyre's ledges and rock bridges within a few feet of flowing lava without succumbing to the poisonous gases or incinerating air, but if you step into the lava for any portion of time you immediately begin losing hit points.
• In Clonk, lava is only dangerous when you swim in it. You can stand in it, as long as it doesn't go higher than your clonk's knee, there'll be no harm done.
• In Colobot, there is at least one planet with lava in it, yet you have no problem flying directly over said lava as long as you don't touch it (although your jetpack does overheat extremely fast when you do that).
• Croma Heroes subverts this: attempting to approach the volcano as soon as it's unlocked will have the party stop before even reaching it, since a river of boiling water makes the air too hot to cross. Played straight once you do have access to the volcano, but by then you're carrying around a gem which creates a barrier of magical cold. However, you can still explore the volcano and the parts of it which are flooded with lava even after a subsequent quest has you break said gem.
• Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex: The level "Crash and Burn" takes place on a volcanic island, with Crash occasionally having to platform across a river of lava. There's clearly visible convection, but Crash is unaffected. On the other hand, if any part of him touches the lava, his whole body instantly turns to ashes and disintegrates.
• Delta Tao's Dark Castle remake replaced the log platforms floating in water with log platforms floating in lava, essentially replacing Super Drowning Skills with this trope.
• Dark Souls is... weird about this. Simply being in or near a lava-filled area isn't enough, but you can still get burned by getting too close to it. Stepping in the lava is, obviously, a great way to die. However, fire and explosion attacks can damage you even if you aren't directly touching them. A high fire resistance shield can all but negate this. Like a few other damage sources in this game, it seems to be a bit of Hitbox Dissonance. The game doesn't explicitly Hand Wave this issue, but it could be a result of the player character's unique condition. There's also a ring you can obtain that grants near-immunity to lava damage, allowing you to walk through it taking only small amounts of harm. The Iron Keep in Dark Souls II and the Smouldering Lake in Dark Souls III do away with that though. Throughout the areas there are treasures in pools of lava, which require the player to amass extremely high fire defense in order to survive getting to them. They will likely still die in the process, but death isn't exactly a showstopper to an Undead.
• Double-subverted in the first Dead to Rights: In Chapter 7, Jack Slate has to make his way up to the top of a hotel that's being set on fire from the ground-up, and for the first few floors, you need to extinguish local flames and move up as fast as possible before the temperature becomes too hot to breathe in. After a certain point, however, this mechanic disappears entirely, even as you fight Antorcha on the roof, who's equipped with a flamethrower.
• Densetsu no Stafy 3: Starfy and friends are perfectly fine when going inside a volcano, only being hurt if they directly touch the lava inside.
• In Devil May Cry, the souls of the dead envelop most of the area in Mundus' core in flame, and only by standing on large rocks can you protect yourself. Luckily for you, the flames don't actually radiate heat; you're fine as long as you're touching ground.
• Devil Survivor has the boss fight against Jezebel: in order to fight or even approach her, the heroes have to cross a scorching lava pit...while it's understandable that demons and heroes who cracked the proper skills to resist or absorb the Fire element don't get damaged or get healed, it still fails common sense that they can walk on the lava by merely getting some damage each turn. The fact that it's a Battle in the Center of the Mind probably has something to do with this.
• The final two areas of Diablo IIs act 4 are set in a Fire and Brimstone Hell. The area aptly titled the River of Fire is composed of stone platforms sitting in a lake of lava with small stone bridges linking the platforms, yet there is no gameplay effect for this. Then again, at this point in the game your character may have enough fire resistance to make Diablo's fire-based attacks a mild inconvenience. Taking it up to eleven in the sequel, a castle (which doesn't have the magical property of, you know, actually being Hell) manages something similar with molten metal and metal grates you walk on less than a foot above it.
• In Digital Devil Saga 2, the final dungeon is the sun. Admittedly you're dead already, after a fashion, but still... It doesn't help that the sun is apparently a purple labyrinth populated by scores of monsters, the souls of the dead, and God.
• Part of one of the later stages of Dino Crisis 2 takes place inside an active volcano that Dylan can run around in (while wearing body armor, no less) with no problems despite coming perilously close to the lava flows.
• Disgaea is a frequent offender of this trope, with many of the games' casts heading to areas featuring flowing lava and explicitly cold areas (Disgaea 1 has Joutenheim, which is described as a land so cold blood can freeze solid, and Disgaea 4's main hub is situated above an active lava flow), and suffering no ill effects. Granted, most of the principal cast are demons and angels, but when normal humans begin traipsing around in these areas with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.... Disgaea 5 attempts to avert it with Icic-Hell and Scorching Flame, having the majority of their maps lower units' resistance to Ice and Fire respectively, but as these are Netherworld Effects, the player can overwrite them by summoning their own Netherworld into the battle.
• Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga has wooden planks laying what appears to be mere inches from the lava and your character merrily walks and jumps across them. As long as he doesn't touch the lava he is fine. Falling in the lava causes massive damage per second, but it is possible (albeit very hard) to survive if you had an active healing effect and immediately jumped out.
• Donkey Kong Country
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest has several lava stages. Touching the lava kills you, the rest of the stage gives no problems. And even then, you only die if you submerse yourself completely (the lava is just your bog standard Bottomless Pit). You're perfectly safe as long as part of your sprite is poking above the lava.
  • Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! also has stages inside a factory, where the player must travel across vats of molten metal. Unlike the above example, landing on them hurts you.
  • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: Happens in 6-8 Meltdown Mayhem where the ice doesn't even melt despite being just a few feet above molten lava. The ice only melts if it comes into direct contact with the lava.
• Don't Look Back plays the trope straight when the protagonist passes through the lava rooms on their Orphean Rescue journey.
• Normally averted in Don't Starve, as standing next to a fire will slowly raise your temperature, and being away from them will slowly bring you to ambient temperature. But the Shipwrecked DLC uses and exaggerates it: every world has a single Lava Pot Volcano which you can freely climb onto, to find a small island atop the magma featuring big lizards, some plants, a man trapped inside a gold cage, and an altar you can sacrifice items to to delay eruptions. What happens if you're inside the volcano as it erupts? The temperature rises sharply and not much else happens.
• Doom is all over the place with this trope. Part of the issue is the way the game handles floor types: what the floor is made of and whether or not it damages you (and by how much) are stored separately for each section of floor, meaning some levels have lava that doesn't harm you at all, others where some other variety of liquid (typically blood) harms you just the same as lava, and others still where lava in one location won't harm you, but past some arbitrary section of the pool will suddenly damage you. Even for levels that have regular damaging lava, the lava only damages you if you wade in it for more than a full second. And when you add on the ability to jump introduced in several source ports such as ZDoom, you can even wade through the lava far longer than normal with minimized damage by splashing up and down in it. This is par for the course in Hell, which is supposed to be full of fire that burns but doesn't consume. However, for levels that take place on Phobos or Earth, there's no excuse.
• The Dragon Age series gives us the dwarven school of landscaping, that uses molten rock where humans would use water features.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest II: In the Undersea Cave, lava pools don't hurt your party unless they are standing right on it. And even so, the heroes can cast Safe Passage to walk over lava without getting burned or choked to death.
  • In Dragon Quest III, the Hero party can walk next to lava pools without getting harmed while navigating around the Orochi's Cave.
  • In Dragon Quest XI, After the End, much of the landscape of the world is covered with burning patches, yet the game doesn't even so much as ding you for getting close to them, or in some cases even running right over them. Also, the Mount Huji portion involves you going inside a volcano, with no particular effects whatsoever on the party. They don't even seem to get hot.
• Subverted in Dragonsphere: A room in the wizard's tower features a metal floor above a pool of lava; the lava must be dealt with before entering the room or the player will die simply from the ambient heat.
• In Duke Nukem 3D, Duke only takes damage from lava when he's touching it, and he can walk over it just fine with nothing more than a pair of protective boots.
• Played mostly straight in the Dungeon Keeper games:
  • In the first one, you can build wooden bridges over lava and they'll last forever, and your creatures can cross them with no ill effects. Flying or levitating creatures can fly right over lava with no problems, and creatures that happen to get knocked into lava won't die instantly, though they will take damage and die fairly quickly if they can't get out of the lava in time (except for the ones that are immune, like Demon Spawns and Hellhounds).
  • The second game at least makes an attempt to subvert the trope in that there are two types of bridges: wood and stone. Wooden bridges will burn away shortly after being built over lava, while stone will last forever, and again, creatures can cross these bridges just fine.
• In Dungeon Siege II, about half the final boss fight takes place with two thirds of the room covered in lava. And in this one, even standing in the lava isn't that big a deal.
• Dust: An Elysian Tail: In the gameplay, lava only does damage when you're in it, and there's also a cutscene where someone's extremely close to some lava with no ill effects.
• Very much present in Dwarf Fortress, despite its complicated temperature system. Until somewhat recently, an long-standing bug caused ice to be considered a magma-proof material.
  • Specifically, while tiles containing magma are heated to 2032°F, tiles adjacent to magma only reach 107°F; thus, any thing not made of magma-proof material will not melt as long as magma does not exist in the same square as it. Take for example a granite door (which is not magma proof) which will never melt when exposed to magma until the door is opened. Once the door is opened it will melt rather quickly since the magma is now occupying the same square.
  • Inverted with a bug in one version that caused a dwarf's body fat to melt if he was wet in a warm area. True to form, it didn't take the community long to design traps that used this effect to horribly mutilate invaders; by setting up the shortest route into the fortress to go through an area where invaders had to wade through chest-deep water, and telling the dwarves not to use the shortcut, then routing that shortcut to go through a passage warmed by lava to 132°F (hotter than fatty tissue's melting point of 110°F, and why it's now only 107°F as above)... Anything entering the heated hallway while covered in water dies a horrible death.
  • This reaches its truly hilarious conclusion when you discover that magma's heat properties only apply when it's in a tile. Magma in a container, like a magma-proof mine cart, has no temperature effect. This has lead to players using magma-proof mine carts to transport said magma to the upper levels of their fortress by assigning dwarves to carry the magma-filled carts to where they are needed. Naturally, the dwarves take no damage despite carrying something that should by all rights have set them alight as they tried to pick it up.
• EarthBound Series: In EarthBound and Mother 3, the main party traverse through a Lethal Lava Land without any sort of damage to their HP.
• In The East New World, solid lava is harmless to step on in the Scorched Purgatory. The lava pits can deal damage, but won't instantly kill you, and if you have the magical Ice Stone, you can freely get inside lava, which you have to do in some parts.
• In Elden Ring, the fumes from lava are no issue, and from the numerous hazards you will face, lava is the least dangerous, doing very little damage.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • In Arena, it is possible to swim in lava, though this requires some serious fire protection. Levitating above the lava, however, has no ill effects.
  • Morrowind plays it similarly (you can't swim in it, but that's because the game treats it as a solid surface, not a liquid). Lava will deal continuous damage to you if you jump in it, but not by all that much. Once again, standing right next to it or hovering just above it have no ill effects. The game's setting is a volcanic island, so there are naturally plenty of Mordor-like Lava Pits and flows around. The final sequence of the main quest takes place in the ancient Dwemer ruins at the center of the island, which serve as the Volcano Lair of the Big Bad. Thankfully, the final confrontation takes place well above the lava below.
  • In Oblivion, you make frequent trips into the "Deadlands", the Daedric plane of the Big Bad, the Daedric Prince Mehrunes Dagon. It is the epitome of a Fire and Brimstone Hell, with lava aplenty. Just like previous games, however, the lava doesn't harm you unless you swim directly in it. Again, it also doesn't do very much damage. Further, according to mortals who have visited, it has an "unearthly chill" about it despite appearances. Granted, it is never actually referred to as lava, so it may well be boiling blood or something similar.
  • In Skyrim's Dawnguard DLC, this is finally averted to a degree. The DLC adds a quest chain that eventually leads the Dragonborn to the mythical Aetherium Forge, half of which is flooded with lava. Standing near it is harmless, swimming in it predictably deals massive amounts of fire damage, but hovering over it (possible with the Vampire Lord form or certain items) will also kill any character without very high fire resistance in short order. The dungeon's Final Boss, a unique Dwemer Centurion, emerges from this lava sea, something that's actually justified by the thing being the only one of its kind to be immune to fire damage; it's even visually distinct for a short time because it looks like its metal shell is glowing with heat.
  • Every game in the series to date plays this straight with the cold. In all, you can strip down to the default underwear (and strip completely naked in Daggerfall) then run around in cold, snowy areas (including the middle of a blizzard) or take as swim along frozen-over coastlines without issue. Nords at least have a slight justification by having innate magical protections against the cold, but other races do not.
• Escape from Monkey Island features a log flume on lava. Not that the game takes itself very seriously. The Curse of Monkey Island also has a roller coaster that dips into lava. When the riders plunge into it, they come out as undead skeletons. The cart is still fine, though, as well as their clothes. You must also make the volcano on Blood Island erupt to start a barbecue with a lava flow underneath it.
• Eternal Champions has a stage set on a rock outcropping near an erupting volcano and lava flow.
• In Eternal Sonata, the Wah Lava Cave is a cavern filled with lava that your party ventures through with no ill effects other than admitting to being rather hot when they first enter it. Granted, almost the entire game from the very beginning is said to be the dream of famous composer Frederic Chopin...
• Etrian Odyssey:
  • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City: The third stratum, Molten Caves, where only the puddles of lava in some floor tiles inflict damage, leaving the very hot atmosphere and the lava rivers harmless.
  • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: A notable aversion, considering the previous game played it straight with its volcanic third stratum. In Golden Lair, several of the Boiling Lizard's scales are scattered, which are hot enough to not only keep the whole area warm (including the water), but also inflict field damage to the player's character party upon proximity. The heat provided by the largest scales not only has a wider range, but can also prevent the party from approaching at all unless they do so from a specific direction.
  • Etrian Odyssey Nexus: The hot scales of the Boiling Lizard in Golden Lair put the whole stratum into a high temperature (to the point that cooling them will freeze the moats of water located within), yet approaching them doesn't harm the characters in any way. This is a major change from how the scales acted in the fourth game, as they averted the trope there.
• Happens in Fairune, albeit inconsistently enforced. While both Hope Girl and the Ancient Codex have no issue standing next to free flowing magma, Red Fairy, while still not immediately bursting to flames, does feel pain from and move to escape the unbearable heat of the volcanic cave she was imprisoned in once rescued.
• The lava cave from Fantasy Life has a secret forge in a small room and a boss arena on ground that is barely visible above the lava surface.
• There are many examples in Final Fantasy.
  • Final Fantasy III doesn't prevent random encounters, but the damage for walking through it is minor enough that it doesn't matter. Particularly jarring in the remake, which shows you wading through the stuff. In the original, lava is just palette swap of water. It doesn't even hurt you when you get in (though "lavafalls" will, as they're recolored "waterfalls" which hurt you as well). In the remake the lava does hurt you, but only for a tiny bit. But different from the first one, it actually hurts you over time instead of just when you walk.
  • Final Fantasy IV: The airships can't fly over magma flows in the Underworld without reinforced mythril-plated hulls. However, this doesn't stop the characters from walking literally inches from magma seas and lakes without taking any damage at all. Even granting that the game maps are not drawn to exact scale, standing one frame away from a sea of magma should have ended the adventure right then and there.
  • In Final Fantasy V, a Geomancer class exists that allows even that damage to be ignored. Granted, the Geomancer is a class whose whole purpose is manipulating the elements with magic. Only directly standing on lava hurts, so hovering over it with Float is harmless.
  • And in Final Fantasy VI, while falling into lava pits sends the party back to the entrance of the room, it doesn't cause a single point of damage.
  • One of Final Fantasy VII's most famous scenes relies on this. Cloud is able to run around and into burning houses, and stay in the middle of the smoldering town square with little trouble. Also, given how dense the fire is and the percentage of the material burned that is wood, Sephiroth's famous exit should have been nothing but a screen full of smoke and ash.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has one of the more glaring uses of this trope well within the first half hour of gameplay. Squall and Quistis journey to the Fire Cavern, a vast underground cave with a narrow rocky path mere centimetres above a sea of churning magma as far as the eye can see. Despite this, the pair can fight their way to and defeat a low-level GF without breaking a sweat!
  • Final Fantasy XIV has a few dungeons with lava active and standing in the lava will constantly damage you until you get out of it. Standing next to said lava is perfectly fine. There's even a dungeon where it takes place inside a volcano and it's appropriately named Hell's Lid. One part of it even has you surrounded on all sides by walls of molten rock and the only threat is the mobs in the area.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: A movement ability learned from Geomancers allows one to traverse otherwise impassable lava; however, the only stage in which lava is featured is on top of an active volcano and other than the lava tiles, everyone can still fight a battle there without taking continuous damage.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2, characters can jump over single squares of lava safely. In the latter game, fairies and Gria units can also fly over any number of lava tiles without harm or even being lifted higher up by thermals.
• Several Fire Emblem games feature a downplayed example; some maps feature fire traps that actually will hurt your units... though only for 10 HP, making it easy for higher-leveled units to just shrug off. Zigzagged with Fire Emblem: Awakening. One mid-game level takes place inside an active volcano, and neither your nor the enemy units take any kind of gradual heat damage. Additionally, parts of the path will start sinking a few turns in, and the only penalty for soldiers falling into molten lava is losing a few HP. However, the DLC, Five-Anna Firefight, averts this as your units (and the five Annas) gradually lose HP every turn because the very atmosphere is ablazed.
• Firefall: This would be justified by the extremely-advanced, Applied Phlebotinum powered battlesuit, if not for the fact that some characters have entire holes in their armor. Interestingly, this trope also applies to deep water — you can walk in puddles, but the battleframe shorts out and becomes an eight-ton cinderblock when waist-deep or worse. You take about as much damage from lava as you do from water, and your jump jets still work when submerged in either, just not that well.
• Freedom Planet 2: Averted: aside from the obvious rule that touching lava hurts you, even being near lava sets off a meter that, when it reaches the maximum, causes a rapid Damage Over Time effect. Even being near lava doesn't have to trigger it, as Magma Starscape's interior area has the same damage effect. The only ways to negate the effect is to either hide behind a wall, move away from the lava (unless you're in the aforementioned Magma Starscape's interior area), or carry a Fire Orb.
• Averted in FTL: Faster Than Light, where simply being in a room where fire is present will harm anyone who isn't a Rockman or a drone, regardless of whether they standing directly on a fire sprite.
• Taken to its obvious extreme in Futurama: The Game. The crew lands on the sun and they're just fine... as long as they don't touch the lava "floor". Futurama runs on Rule of Funny so this is to be expected.
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint has an active volcano on Golem Island, an isolated part of the Aurora archipelago in the northeast. Lava flows make traversal difficult in part of the map, but you can get as close as you want to them without any ill effect. Touching the lava is lethal, naturally.
• Gift: Gift will be killed by lava only if he falls into it, and even then, he drowns in it.
• Glean: You can get close to pockets of lava, but that won't hurt you. That said, the temperature does rise as you go deeper and it's higher on volcanic planets, so that can cause damage if you lack cooling.
• Justified in God Eater. On your first mission in some old subway tunnels that have been inundated with lava, one of your fellow rookies comments on the heat. A veteran explains that the chamber is actually hot enough to cook a human alive, but the Oracle Cells that God Eaters are infused with protects them from extreme environments. Nobody's game to try actually running across the lava lakes, but the Aragami, which are composed of 100% Oracle Cells, have no such compunctions.
• In The Godfather: The Game, one of the Execution Styles involves tossing an enemy gangster into a large oven and cooking him alive. You can stand right next to the oven, hold the gangster right next to it... but as long as you don't actually toss him in, he won't take damage. Neither will you. You can actually see smoke wafting out, as well as hear a whooshing sound if you stand right next, suggesting that it really should be quite hot.
• God of War: Ghost of Sparta has this in the Thera Volcano near Atlantis and other similar Lethal Lava Land based levels: Kratos can walk near small "magmafalls" (Which are like waterfalls but made of magma) without even scorching a little. Brought to higher levels with Scylla (who had a strain of magma poured on her and didn't burned) or later King Midas, who is toss into a magmafall and instead of bursting into ashes he simply scream like it's hot water and then turn the whole thing into solid, cold gold. Why said gold didn't melt because of the surrounding lava remains unclear....
• Golden Sun:
  • While in Golden Sun, you could get heatstroke by walking through a particularly warm desert, you can walk through a volcano (Magma Rock) in Golden Sun: The Lost Age with nothing happening to you.
  • That desert wasn't just hot though, it was very clearly stated to be EVIL.
  • Also in The Lost Age, the lower levels of Taopo Swamp take you into a volcanic cave, where you solve puzzles by stemming the lava flow with an ice block.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's Burning Island Cave revisits the concept of volcanic dungeons. It's lousy with thermals, so at least it acknowledges that convection is a thing...
• Grounded tends to go back and forth on this. While you stand near the burning coals in the BBQ Spill, you'll accumulate Sizzle which will damage you if it reaches too high, and will only stop if you move away. But you can break the coals with your hammer and put them in your backpack (and in various containers) without any trouble at all.
• In Grow Island, there is a volcano where a monster will emerge from and pour lava out of its head-tentacle, the lava will go trough a forest and not a single tree will be harmed. In fact, the forest it pass through is necessary to prevent the lava from going too far.
• Treated somewhat schizophrenically in Guild Wars. Lava isn't that huge a deal, and running in it will only cause you to take burning damage. This is true for the endgame of Prophecies (The final boss fight is in a volcano's caldera!), several PvP arenas, and much of the endgame of Eye of the North. The Desolation in Nightfall however consists of many, many sulfurous flats that are fatal within seconds to step on.
• Haiku, the Robot averts this in the Incinerator Burner area; before getting the Heat Treatment upgrade, Haiku will gradually take damage there due to the extreme heat. Even with the upgrade, their heat gauge will always be at maximum while in that area, which leaves them unable to dash, and direct contact with fire still results in death.
• In Half-Life series, radioactive material doesn't effect Gordon unless he stands in it. The fact that he's wearing a suit explicitly made to be used in radioactive environments helps.
• HarmoKnight: Not only do Tempo and his bird companion suffer no ill effects from flying dangerously close to the surface of a lava sea, they manage to fly in the vicinity of an explosive volcanic eruption, with droplets of lava visibly spraying everywhere, without even getting singed.
• In Harvest Moon: Animal Parade has this at the very bottom floor of Garmon Mines. You're completely surrounded by lava, standing on a small bit of land, and nothing bad seems to happen.
• A Hat in Time has the level Heating Up Mafia Town where Mustache Girl opened up the large faucets in Mafia Town that control the local volcano, turning Mafia Town into a Lethal Lava Land. Unless Hat Kid actually touches the lava, she's perfectly fine. The people trapped in the lava seem to be inconvenienced at most, even when they are up to their waist in the stuff. It is averted with the Death Wish version, Beat the Heat, where Hat Kid will heat up over time to the point where she'll start taking damage. She cools off by jumping into the pool or one of the water buckets scattered across the level.
• Haven (2020) hangs a lampshade on this trope when the protagonists approach the pool of Rust lava that stands between them and the Flow Bridge, and Yu comments that "even one meter above it, the temperature must be a thousand billion degrees". However, the convective heat doesn't seem to affect them as they cross it, though one of them gets burned and disfigured while shielding the other from an explosion.
• Heart of Darkness. Andy, a little kid with no protective gear whatsoever, is perfectly fine climbing a few feet above a lake of boiling lava, but bursts into flames the instant he is so much as scraped by a jet of lava; the only thing that remains is a single shoe which soon falls into the lava and burns up as well. The game takes place in a world where the laws of physics don't work the same way, what with shadows spontaneously coming to life and a floating island that has its own gravity.
• Heretic. Episode 2, Level 4 is "The Ice Grotto". On this level, there are stretches of ice, right next to lava pits. Obviously, D'Sparil did it.
• The Astrolabe in Hype: The Time Quest stands a merely a few inches above a pool of lava, which is contained within wooden structures. A metallic grid allows the characters to move above the lava pool without any single adverse effect. The iron floor isn't even red hot!
• Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine has a section where you have to venture inside an active volcano. Indy can get ridiculously close to the lava and show no sign of discomfort. However, the death animation if you fall in the lava is actually pretty realistic: Indy doesn't just burn up; his whole body violently explodes.
• Jak and Daxter:
  • Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. The Zoomer (which protects its riders with a Heat Shield) slowly heats up when flying over hot rock, heats up much faster when flying over open lava, and running out of coolant can even result in the whole thing exploding. The foot-based Lethal Lava Land levels play it straight; Jak runs atop tall rock platforms over lava pits with no ill effects, but if Jak falls into a lava pool he dies before he hits the lava. There is also a snow on a peak right above volcanic crater filled with lava, which by all means should melt.
  • In Jak II and 3, you can use the Jet Board to float over some harmful substances like Dark Eco, but not lava. You'll burn up if you try.
  • Jak X: Combat Racing. At least in one instance, you can drive your car through the lava and your vehicle won't take any damage despite catching fire and all.
• Jed's Brutal Bonus Level, naturally set inside a Lethal Lava Land.
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy's penultimate level is set on a planet half-covered in lava. At first, the game primarily averts the trope: most of the action takes place high above the lava if not inside buildings, Jaden comments on the heat the first time you're required to cross a bridge close to the lava, and the bridge itself requires heat-shields on the sides. Then, ten minutes later, Jaden is jumping across the lava on rocks only jutting half a foot out of it and grabbing weapons held by Powered Armor-wearing stormtroopers that had been wading in the lava, without complaint — you can even directly grab dropped weapons from the lava by Force-pulling them without any ill effect to yourself.
• In Jet Force Gemini, molten steel or lava deal no damage as long as you're not explicitly standing on them, and if you're playing as Juno even that won't injure you.
• Throughout Jumper series, Ogmo repeatedly comes in extremely close contact with electricity and freely levitating fireballs, but only ever gets hurt (and how) on direct contact with their sprites.
• Jurassic Park for the Sega Genesis and Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues for the SNES both feature levels set inside a huge volcano, with pits of lava you must jump over. As long as you don't touch the lava, you can run around just inches from it and be perfectly fine.
• Subverted in Jurassic Park: The Game though, when you enter the Geothermal Electric Plant and can see lava far beneath them. Gerry Harding actually remarks that the only reason they're safe is because the catwalk is very far away from the magma.
  Gerry: I'm glad that lava flow is so far below us. Any closer, and the heat would be unbearable.
• Justified in Kid Icarus: Uprising. Palutena uses her power of cooling to keep Pit from burning to death in the Phoenix Mountain, though Pit still complains about being sweaty. Touching the lava still hurts Pit, but he might not get burned from it. The idol for the Phoenix Mountain outright states that the climate is so hot that humans can't survive there.
• Kingdom of Loathing: The Nemesis Quest ends with a battle inside a volcano, complete with stepping stones across the lava. And if you screw up the "jump on moving stepping stones" minigame, you're allowed to start over — by swimming through the lava.
• One of the worlds in King's Quest: Mask of Eternity has lava strewn all about the place willy nilly. The player character can stand within a few centimeters of the start of a lava pool or traverse platforms mere inches above it with nary a point of damage. Come into contact with the lava and he dramatically burns to death. Made even sillier by the game's technical limitations, with which Connor can take a running leap over a pool of lava, accidentally land in just the very edge of the pool, stumble forward a few steps completely unharmed as he does at the end of every running leap, and then dramatically burn to death.
• Many Kirby games feature lava-themed stages and levels, and in the platformers, you can land on lava and only lose one or a few more HP. In Kirby Air Ride, you can walk on lava however you like and not take any damage. Molten rock may simply not be hot enough as in Kirby's Dream Land 2 he will eventually start to take damage from re-entry if the fight with Dark Matter takes too long.
• Kuri Kinton: At one point in the game, the Player Character battles enemies through an area with exposed lava around him. Yet he seems perfectly fine despite that.
• La-Mulana features lava in places, most notably in the Inferno Cavern, which, as you can guess, is full of molten lava. You don't take damage unless you swim in it, and it only damages you gradually. It's quite possible to escape if you're close enough to dry land. Curiously, immersing yourself in lava doesn't damage any of your possessions, although you can't access your computer/inventory without a "heat-proof case." And you can actually swim in lava without taking damage. All you need is a cape of ice. It's probably magic, but whatever. The ice cape even works if you lack the Power-Up necessary to swim in water without taking damage. This may be considered Sequence Breaking, but it gives you something to think about. The remake justifies this in that Lemeza can swim, but the water is slightly poisoned, which the Scalesphere protects him from.
• Somewhat bizarre in La Tale, not only will lava not hurt you unless you touch it, but you can sit in it and regain HP faster than the lava takes it away.
• The Legend of Kyrandia, Book One: Fables and Fiends has a puzzle in which there is a massive lava flow going under a bridge. Seemingly played only for drama, when your character begins to cross the bridge he catches fire and burns up painfully. To get through you need to find a scroll of freezing to turn the lava into ice. Played straight in Book Two: The Hand of Fate. Not only is Zanthia just fine walking around Volcania, she can even stand directly on the lava (though only for a second).
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Every dungeon located on Death Mountain in the first quest has lava in place of water. Not only is Link unaffected by it, but he can also cross narrow flows of it with a wooden Stepladder. It gets better: the lava is completely invisible in the dark.
  • Ocarina of Time:
    • The game both averts and plays this trope straight. While Link seems immune to the heat waving off of the lava pools and rivers in the Dodongo Caverns as a kid, when he goes into the Fire Temple as an adult, he has to wear a special tunic to protect himself from the heat, otherwise he'll overheat and die. None of the later games until Breath of the Wild, however, seem to reference this and Link goes into many more fire dungeons without harm.
    • Close examination reveals that the "lava" in some rooms of Dodongo's Cavern appears to be just really hot rocks. The room with the gigantic lava flow covering two stories is a straight example, though.
    • Using the Bolero of Fire, young Link can transport straight to Death Mountain's crater (and plant a seed to access a Piece of Heart). There is a timer on arrival that ticks down until Link leaves (another song is required, as he lacks the tools needed to escape on his own), and he will die of heatstroke if the clock runs out (aforementioned tunic is too big for him).
  • In Twilight Princess, Link is perfectly fine running around in the Goron Mines. Even if you make him leap into the lava, he'll only come out about two hearts less for the wear. If you wear the Zora Tunic though — which is specifically stated to be weak against fire, Link'll still be fine running around unless you leap into the lava.
  • The Wind Waker:
    • The game has an especially odd example of this, with Fire Mountain. Sure you use the Ice Arrows to freeze the main spurt of lava, but it's still gotta be pretty damn hot inside. The Hero's Clothes are stated to look "too warm for the weather" earlier in the game, and yet they don't make Link overheat.
    • Also in the Dragon Roost Cavern level, tossing a pot of water into a lava pit temporarily creates a floating bit of solid, perfectly-fine-to-walk on ground, which you can even ride up lava plumes on. However, the terrific animation for falling into a lava pit makes up for it all.
    • This gets downright absurd in one late-game dungeon where you must swing by grappling hook over a big open lava pit. At the nadir of your swing you are mere inches from the lava, and the game even applies distortion to the camera to underline just how hot the air is.
  • Spirit Tracks has plenty of the molten stuff to go around, and Link isn't affected unless he lands in it, where he loses half a heart from terminal fall respawning. With the exception of the Wrecker Phantoms, Link can ride on top of Zelda over these molten masses and neither of them will be hurt. The extra-heavy armor that Wrecker Phantoms use must be made of Goron iron...
  • Eldin Volcano in Skyward Sword has a patch in it that will set Link on fire if he tries to go through it with his standard clothes. Because a key piece for the Earth Shrine is through it, Fi suggests you run to minimize heat-related damage. There is also a passage that leads deeper — Link requires special protection for this particular route, and Fi will force you to turn back if you try to go through (be thankful the key piece is NOT that way).
  • One level of Hyrule Warriors takes place in the Gerudo Desert, where the playable characters will take constant damage from the desert heat unless they take refuge in an area with shade (like buildings or caves) or if they are in an oasis keep. This is, however, the only part of the game where this happens and all other missions taking place in the Gerudo Desert map lack this mechanic.
  • Breath of the Wild does its best to avert this trope, though it still has some quirks.
    • The peaks of the mountains in the Gerudo region, the peaks of Mount Lanayru and Mount Hylia, and the tundral Hebra region require Link to wear thermal protection or chug a chillproof elixir, and the ice water in parts of those regions ignores all that and hurts Link anyway if he is caught swimming in it.
    • The Gerudo Desert requires Link to wear special equipment or chug heat-resistant potions in order to not die of heatstroke during the day. You're given a minor set which provides some protection when all worn at once, but its main purpose is to enable Link to enter the city.
    • The higher altitudes of Death Mountain are so hot that the air will set you on fire. You need a fireproof elixir or Goron-made armor to survive, though the game doesn't care what combination of armor you use so long as you have enough fire protection (i.e. you could use just the helmet and chest armor leaving Link's feet exposed without problems, as shown in this comic). Even with both of them, getting too close to the lava pools can still set you on fire, and wooden weapons will catch fire within seconds of the heat. Additionally, bomb arrows will explode instantly from the heat.
    • Additionally, fire protection and heat protection are considered two separate properties^*You can prove this by mixing fire-protecting and heat-protecting ingredients. You'll get Dubious Food as a result.: both Gerudo armor sets will burn like anything else on Death Mountain, and Flamebreaker armor does nothing against ambient desert heat.
    • Food cooks differently whether dropped in a pot (fried) or dropped next to an open fire (baked). Death Mountain automatically bakes anything exposed to the air, whether it be a drop from a defeated monster or food you happen to drop.
• Lemmings one-upped this trope: the fiery levels in the original not only had lava that was no danger to the little green-haired Too Dumb to Live critters as long as they didn't actually touch it, it also had a trap that continually sprayed fire and fried them — if they landed in the middle of it. The edges (especially the forward edge) were perfectly safe. And the masonry levels had something greenish as the liquid that looked suspiciously like the cliché depiction of acid — but without dangerous vapors. Then again, it's not exactly as if the lemmings were ''safe'' because of these omissions...
• The Lion King has a Lethal Lava Land level where Simba rides a floating rock through a lava river while jumping obstacles and ducking under hanging things.
• In The Lord of the Rings Online, one Big Bad has a lava moat round his throne, on the top floor of his dark tower. Players have to cross a metal grill to reach him.
• In Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, there's Soma Temple, a temple way out in the ocean filled with lava. Actually jumping down into it sends you back to the platform you jumped off, and leaves you with minor damage. Unless you have the appropriate skill, which negates damage from falling from high places. Even into lava.
• Mt. Aso in Lunarosse is an active volcano, so naturally, you have do a fetch quest in there, running around lava and fighting fire monsters. This, like many other elements in the game, can be handwaved by the world running off of Corlia's roleplay fantasies. She was probably so used to this trope being played straight, she subconsciously threw it in.
• Magical Starsign features a "Fire Planet" which, due to its proximity to the sun, can't even be approached by your spaceship without a special magical cooling system, or your ship will melt and you'll be fried. But once you do manage to get there, the heat is suddenly a non-issue, and you can walk outside your ship on the planet's surface with barely a complaint from your party members.
• Lava or the "molten metal" on board the Marathon ship only damages you if you directly touch it, but the green slime on board the Pfhor ship damages you while you're jumping over it.
• The Mario Party series has had a number of minigames that have the players inside volcanoes or on platforms surrounded by a sea of lava, which is never a problem so long as they don't touch the stuff. The fifth party even had a minigame at the surface of the freaking sun. Mario Party 7 goes beyond minigames with Bowser's Enchanted Inferno, in which the entire board is in Lethal Lava Land.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect features this on the lava planet Therum — walk right next to the lava, you're fine. Drive next to the lava, you're fine. Dip one centimeter of your back left wheel into the lava for a split second and — the vehicle and all its inhabitants freeze, and it's explained that the heavily armored and shielded vehicle and its inhabitants spontaneously combusts. Characters do comment on the heat, but even then it's not within hazardous levels.
  • Mass Effect 2 pulls a similar stunt with one of the planets in the "Firewalker" DLC, where you can sit the Hammerhead next to lava forever with no ill effects. Enter the lava and you're dead.
  • Actually averted with flamethrower-style attacks in Mass Effect 3; the damaging hitboxes of the attacks are somewhat larger than the actual flame graphics.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda has a mission on a volcanic moon, where as with Therum provided you don't set foot in the lava for too long, you're A-OK.
• Two of the levels in the edutainment platformer Math Rescue not only have lava pits everywhere, they also have lava STAIRS that you can walk on.
• The Matrix: Path of Neo has this, you can jump over lava pits in one level and you won't ever die unless you actually fall in, or pop back up on the platform if you're not on your last bit of health.
• Max Payne 1 and 2 each have a level involving a Big Damn Fire Exit, and the fire only kills Max on direct contact. There's also the issue of smoke and toxic gases that is ignored. Max Payne 1 also has Max jumping across pits full of molten metal \ lava - he's perfectly fine as long his feet don't stray from the solid metal chunks, but he will instantly burst into flames if he actually touches any red pixels.
• Averted in the MechWarrior PC games. While lava won't cause damage unless you actually touch it, the heat of being near it makes the cooling systems that 'Mechs use damn near useless. The 'Mechs are even tough enough to be able to withstand walking through lava for a short time without permanent damage. Heat also carries throughout the entire 'Mech regardless. This is because heat is caused partly by the weapon itself and more so by the increased output of the fusion reactor, a small spike for ballistic reload mechanisms and a more massive one for charging laser/PPC capacitors.
• Mega Man:
  • There are several examples from the games. They can be partially handwaved by the fact that Rock, X, and Zero are all robots; Rock is described as being made of titanium, which has a melting point of 3,034 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond lava's temperature which peaks at about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. The problem is that falling into the lava is still an instant kill.
  • ROM hack Rockman 4 Minus ∞ plays this straight in Pharaoh Man's level and averts it in part of Dust Man's: you get a temperature gauge, and you take damage when it fills up completely.
  • There's a really glaring example in Mega Man X5. Burn Dinorex (a.k.a. Mattrex) has an impressive volcano stage, with periodic floods of lava and then a whole under-lava zone. You can only explore this zone with a heat-shielded suit of Ride Armor. It's so close to avoiding the trope, but then you notice that the suit of Ride Armor has no protective dome to cover the cockpit....
  • Mega Man X2 might seem like it plays this straight almost to the point of subversion, but it actually averts it the most. As mentioned above, titanium's melting point is well above the temperature of lava. X has to scale the inside of a volcano and at one point has to get away from rising lava. The convection would not effect him. Falling into lava does, but again, only slightly, and he can use his Mercy Invincibility to walk across and get back to a non-lava surface. He only dies if the lava crushes him against a wall. Both of this avert Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid. It seems he gets hurt more by the pressure of the eruption then by the lava itself being hot, and can even walk across the lava in a later segment and only taking slight damage every few moments. Then it suddenly becomes instant death in later games.
  • In Mega Man Zero 4, this trope is actually averted. Artificial Sun has a stage hazard where, as long as the weather is clear, causes a nearby device designed to emit heat like the sun and scorch the land around it. If you stand in the hot sunlight, a percentage meter will begin quickly filling at a rapid pace, and should it fill entirely, you'll start taking repetitive damage until you leave the sunlight and cool down.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid: At one point, you walk in a room with a lava or molten metal pool, a large one at it, and there are even hot vapor pipes. But walk close to the ledge and you'll be pulled by some mysterious magnetic force into the lava. Also, cue a Codec call during the Game Over from this.
  • In Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, fire and electrified floors just knocks you back. Then you reach the Power Plant, where supposedly the rain water flooded the basement and pools of water will shock you. And what else is in the basement? A power generator. So, touching electrified water should fry a human alive and still... Just causes you some damage and knocks you back.
• Metroid:
  • The series completely averts this from the third game onward. Despite having Powered Armor, starting in Super Metroid, Samus will incur constant, significant damage from being in a hot area without the Varia Suit upgrade. In the Metroid Prime Trilogy, your HUD will also warn you that your life-support system is in danger of failing due to overheating. Even with the Varia Suit, you can't enter magma without taking damage, with the molten rock also slowing your movement; for direct contact, you'll need yet another upgrade in the Gravity Suit (which negates external pressure to allow free movement in all liquids).
  • Metroid Fusion also applies the aversion to areas of extreme cold, as thanks to the Metroid DNA infusion, Samus inherited not only their weakness to the Ice Beam, but an extreme intolerance to low temperatures period. Without the Varia Suit, Samus now takes the same damage in sub-zero areas as she does in super-heated areas. This carries over to the next chronological entry in the series, Metroid Dread, but in that game, the Varia Suit doesn't protect her from low temperatures. Instead, the Gravity Suit provides that protection through insulation features (which is also used to explain how it protects her from lava). The X parasites, which Samus was given the Metroid serum to counteract, are aware of this weakness, and at one point in Fusion, alter themselves by supercooling themselves in the frigid Sector 5 (ARC) before moving to the less frigid Sector 6 (NOC) to attack her. In Dread, after the X escape quarantine from Elun and infect every other organic creature on ZDR, they try to freeze the entire planet over by sabotaging a geothermal reactor in Cataris just to kill her (unaware that Samus had just gotten the Gravity Suit by that point).
  • Samus's weaponry in the Prime games regularly exhibit conduction effects. On the cosmetic end, firing your power beam rapidly causes a visible "heat haze" distortion as hot air rises from the end of your cannon. On the combat end, extremely hot projectiles such as the Sun Burst combination weapon in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes or the Plasma Beam in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption will cause most nearby targets to catch on fire or melt.
• Might and Magic, at least 3D games:
  • In VI-VIII lava is simply acts as a floor dealing damage to you while you're standing on it, making it no deadlier than deep water. At least Water Walking does not work on lava. However, in VIII there is a Levitate spell that Vampires can learn, and that negates damage from lava altogether even if you're in a middle of a lava lake which by all means should incinerate your party before even getting nearby and actually did incinerate some buildings in a village that weren't right next to it to it when it first appeared.
  • In X there is a segment in Elemental Forge where you can walk on lava crust just fine, and the fact you can run around in a burning city without any ill effects probably counts, too.
• The Karkaton region in Miitopia is a volcano, and the Miis have no trouble walking within its crater, even when merely a few inches from the lava.
• Minecraft: Played with:
  • On the one hand, lava will melt any nearby snow or ice blocks and set nearby flammable blocks on fire — among other things, this means that lava lakes found on the surface will almost invariably start forest fires if they formed next to trees. This was originally averted until Alpha Update 1.0.15, as lava couldn’t previously light nearby flammable blocks on fire. This had interesting results when people loaded their saves and had their wooden houses with lava fountains burnt down.
  • On the other hand, players and mobs will only take damage from physically touching the lava — they can stand around right next to a flowing stream of molten rock and take no damage whatsoever, but will instantly catch on fire the moment they touch the lava. Even more flagrantly, players can scoop the stuff up in an ordinary iron bucket and carry it around with them with no penalties or ill effects whatsoever.
• Monster Hunter:
  • In most areas of the Volcano level — anywhere where you can actually see lava or smoke — your character will take gradual damage unless you have protective armor, have consumed the appropriate potion or meat, or have the Heat Cancel skill activated. Also, you can't fall into lava, but if you stand right next to it you'll take damage anyway, potion or not, unless you have just the right combination of (even more) protective armor. However, most enemies can just walk through the lava as if it's not there. The enemies that can move through lava are usually dragons, but then there are Felynes — ordinary, walking cats! One such culinary gift in the games is Felyne Firewalker, which cancels the damage from lava proximity, and since the chef is a Felyne himself, that makes explaining things a lot easier. And one job requires you to carry a Powderstone back to camp; as long as you're holding it, Cool Drink or no, you will burn.
  • On the other end of the thermal scale, there's the Tundra and similar areas, where you have to take a Hot Drink periodically or wear equipment with the Cold Resist skill, to avoid having your Stamina depleted at a phenomenal rate. Given how much running, rolling, and blocking you have to do, be sure to stay warm.
  • In Monster Hunter: World, Fatalis' super fire breath attack is shown to be hot enough to melt through several inches of solid iron in about ten seconds. The hunters survive unharmed by hiding behind iron barriers (which are melted down by the time the attack ends). Fire that hot would cook them alive even if it didn't directly hit them, no matter the protection they wore; just being in the general area would doom them.
• In Mortal Kombat 9, one of the stages is The Netherrealm where the kombatants duke it out on top of a thin strip of stone (noticeably cracked in some parts) on a river of lava, with no ill effects to the fighters. Unless you do a stage fatality in which the winner dunks the loser's face into the lava. The loser is able to rise for a moment, revealing their face is now a (white) skull and lava pours out of the eye sockets... before the winner pushes them back inside. And during the whole process, the only thing that got burned was the face.
• Lovely scene in Myst III: Exile. Not only can you stand comfortably on a platform inches above a room filled with lava, but after the lava drains away, the floor and all surfaces are instantly cool enough to touch. It is justified within the Myst series in that the worlds visited are alternate realities where the normal rules of science aren't always perfectly in line with our own. A lot of bizarre forces (i.e. anti-gravity) and other mechanisms are controlled by instant on-off switches, and this state of affairs isn't helped by the Chicken and the Egg nature of Linking Books being "written" by someone creating what they want to visit, but apparently also just connecting to a world in the multiverse that happens to randomly have the things written.
• Averted to a degree in NetHack; you can stand next to a lava stream without damage, but if you try to use your water-walking boots to cross it, both the boots and your character need to be magically fireproofed. And even then, anything else flammable that you are carrying can still burn. It also used to be more strict about convection when it came to Gehennom (hell) — if you entered without a source of fire resistance you would be instantly killed by the heat. This was later removed as it was considered cruel even by NetHack's standards.
• In Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, there is a lava river running through the otherwise frozen over Cania. Oddly, it's averted the other way around; you do take cold damage in Cania unless you're near any fire except the lava river above. You're also in hell, so normal laws of physics may not apply. In fact, there's a minor dialogue that suggests the impossibility of the lava river is a subtle kind of torture, for the sort of intelligent creature who would be aware how impossible it is by the laws of physics in the Material Plane.
• Moving through Lava or the Lake of Fire in Nexus War deals loads of damage, but the damage is only applied once when entering the terrain — you don't keep getting burned for staying there.
• The Underworld stage of Ninja Gaiden II (2008) for the Xbox 360. The usual rules of the trope are applied, made even sillier by the fact that you're running around on molten rock in socks. But you can fall into deep lava-which very slowly damages you-and SWIM IN IT LIKE IT'S WATER.
• The final level of Ninja: Shadow of Darkness is appropriately set in a Fire and Brimstone Hell. You can travel on rivers of lava on small floating platforms, jump over lava waterfalls, walk and fight demons next to lava pools, and you won't suffer any damages. You only get hurt if you touch the lava.
• Lampshade Hanging in the computer game No One Lives Forever 2, where the player overhears a conversation between two of the villain's hench-scientists discussing the "synthetic lava" one has invented, and which fills large parts of the cave you are in. The temperature of "only 300 degrees" makes it much more manageable.
• Averted in Odin Sphere, at least in the original game. There is no lava in the volcanic level, but your characters will gradually lose health if they don't consume a "Cooler" potion beforehand. Similarly, on the ice mountain, your HP will gradually decrease if you don't drink a "Warmer" potion. The Updated Re Release removes this, with Cooler and Warmer potions instead being used as a means to prevent and reduce damage from status attacks Burn and Freezing caused by enemies rather than the stage itself.
• Averted in a realistic manner in Oxygen Not Included. The game accurately simulates heat transfer via convection. This leads to various effects, and heat management is an essential part of the game.
  • Most obviously demnstrated by the magma at the bottom of the map. Typically it's seperated from the rest of the map by the amazingly isolating abyssalite, but sometimes, there will be a small gap in the layer, filled with other rocks. Now, the magma below will not typically melt the rock (the magma is actually just barely hot enough to stay liquid, at ~1450°C, and most of the rock in the area is simply already-solidified magma), but the rock will conduct the magma's heat. And even though rock isn't exactly a great heat conductor, even a tiny gap will quickly heat the area around it to scalding temperatures.
  • You can't have a whole bunch of machinery generating heat as a side effect and not expect your surroundings to slowly warm up, and if the space is small enough, it will slowly succumb to entropic heat generation. This aspect has a tendency to slowly sneak up on players not actively monitoring the heat inside their base, and has caused the downfall of many a beginner's colony. You'll thus need to deal with this somehow, either by
    • cooling your base with cold water from elsewhere (downside: you'll eventually run out)
    • using thermo aquatuners to transfer the heat to other materials and either vent them into space (downside: permanently losing whatever you vented) or "deleting" it in steam generators (downside: hard to set up).
    • The Anti-Entropy Thermo-Nullifier seems perfect for this job, as it's only purpose is to violate entropy and delete heat, but is actually not suitable, as it is Lost Technology you can't build or duplicate, only find; cannot be moved; and only deletes very small amounts of heat at any rate.
  • You'll need to account for heat if you want to keep your farming under control, as plants require specific temperature ranges to grow, different for each plant.
• Taken to its logical extreme in Perfect World: Apart from inside a select few instanced dungeons, player characters can stand directly on top of flowing lava and take absolutely no damage. Present in the cold regions as well, in that even in the most stripperiffic armor and fashion, no PC suffers from being out in the cold, even submerged under frigid water where this trope overlaps with Super Not-Drowning Skills.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean Online, the player can stand right next to flowing lava on the island of Padres Del Fuego and they won't express any discomfort at all.
• Averted in Pixeljunk Shooter. Hovering near lava heats your ship, and can cause it to overheat and crash if you linger too long.
• Zig-Zagged in Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time by the Lava Guava. Despite containing lava (and creating a lava pool on eruption), it doesn't burn up plants around it. However, in the Frostbite Caves, the Lava Guava (and lava pool) is one of the few plants with a warming effect on all adjacent plants.
• Quite a few Pokémon Gym Leaders and Elite Four members have lava inside their gym, inside their room (in the case of the leagues), or are located near lava.
  • While not strictly a lava hazard, Magcargo's Pokédex entry lists its body temperature as being twice as hot as the surface of the sun. Just let this guy explain the further implications of this, especially in regard to ultraviolet radiation. A Pokémon Trainer standing near a Magcargo gets 35 million times more UV radiation than an average lifeform would get from the sun.
  • Camerupt fits into this as well, as does the aformentioned Torkoal. Averted with Centiskorch, who, as the Radiator Pokémon, weaponizes the air around it by heating it up to intense temperatures. Its Gigantamax form is so large and hot that it can create firestorms.
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl/Platinum has Stark Mountain, which has this trope all over the place — the character is walking all around lava pools. The Legendary Heatran is also found here. The remakes add the Grand Underground and you can walk around lava pits looking for fire-types in the fire cave areas.
  • Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire has a lava pool area with one of the Team Magma grunts just making a comment about his ear burning.
  • Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 plays with this a little. Reversal Mountain is a volcano that you have to explore, but it is only an active one in the White version. In the Black version, it is an extinct volcano. Regardless, you can also find Heatran here, but only by gaining a special item that you can only obtain after finishing the main storyline.
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus has a battle with the Noble Arcanine boss in the middle a lava lake. You can also summon ride Pokémon later on and ride around the burning mountain with no one suffering any damage.
  • Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia has you riding a Pokémon across pools of lava. The Pokémon in question is Torkoal — a tortoise-shaped volcano. Most Pokémon with such attributes like Magcargo tend to have the ability to regulate the intensity of their body temperatures, as stated by the in-game Pokédex. Ponyta and Rapidash can regulate the heat of their flames as to not hurt those they trust enough to let them ride on them. (Ash was able to ride a Ponyta in a race in one episode of the anime, and it evolved into a Rapidash halfway through.) Wouldn't want to burn or melt the environment or the humans around you, especially not your own trainer, right?
  • Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness has it in the Cipher lair on Citidark Isle. Part of the place is oozing with lava and you have to push metal crates into the pits to block the lava so you can get the chests and proceed to the next area. You do get a "it's too hot to approach" if you try to approach the chest before dropping the crate, and the ceiling peon complains that he got hot waiting for you but that's it. No way the ground would really be cool enough to walk on that fast. The crates might survive a while, but they'd soon be red-hot and possibly molten.
  • Downplayed in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series. While you can stand near lava with no ill effects, any Pokémon that tries to fly over it will be inflicted with the Burn status effect if they aren't a Fire-type.
  • Pokémon Snap and its sequel New Pokémon Snap both have courses that go through lava areas. Once, there’s a line about your vehicle being reenforced against the heat, but those windows must be some pretty special glass. The metal doesn’t melt either.
• In the SNES port of Prince of Persia, you drop from the tower a hundred feet or so into a volcanic cavern and grab onto a ledge (see Not the Fall That Kills You…). As in most games, you don't feel the heat unless you touch the lava.
• Purple features lava pits that, par for the course of platform games, are lethal only on direct contact. Whatever heat they generate also apparently vanishes very quickly, judging by one section of the World 4 fortress where you get over one such lava pit by jumping on platforms that rapidly dip into lava and back.
• Quake and its sequels have plenty of lava which is completely safe... until you touch it. Then it's very lethal.
• Ratchet & Clank follows this trope:
  • Ratchet & Clank (2002) has Lethal Lava Land Single-Biome Planet Gaspar. It has fuel pods for battle ships on platforms few feet above neverending ocean of lava that miraculously don't explode. But one swing with wrench is enough to blow them up (and the battle ships with them).
  • There is a particularly jarring sequence in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, where if Ratchet grabs an edge just above lava, he'll hang there in lava up to his knees and take no damage.
• In Ravensword: Shadowlands, the titular Shadowlands feature lava that, predictably, only hurts you if you touch it. In a similar vein, an abandoned temple encountered earlier has a room filled with deadly acid that you need to get across by creating a bridge out of stone blocks.
• Common in the Rayman series.
  • In the first game, the fight with Mr. Skops. You can be hanging off a ledge with your feet dangling inches above the lava and not die.
  • There are entire levels in Rayman 2: The Great Escape and Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc that feature tons of lava and overall scorched settings... the only hint that there's heat rising at all is that in Rayman Revolution you're allowed to keep your flying power indefinitely as long as you're over lava, in which the rising heat could help you stay airborne.
  • Rayman 2 also takes this to new extremes in that giant plums are perfectly fine to swim in lava, and you can use them to get across it. The plums will only burn in yellow lava, which is naturally hotter than normal, but normal red lava is perfectly fine.
• Resident Evil:
  • Averted in the prototype of Resident Evil 2. The Research Facility was planned to be set on fire, and you would need a special vest to protect you from the heat.
  • Resident Evil 4 has two examples:
    • The Lava Room, a single long walkway on top of pillars which are in a lake of lava inside a cave. There are two elaborately carved dragon's head turrets which spew mooks, plus one turret that spews actual fire. By all rights, Leon and the mooks should have been burnt to a crisp. There's also a giant transport in the room prior, consisting of two gigantic gears on tracks, attached by a single axle with a platform on top, once again over a boiling lake of lava.
    • The boss-room where you fight the two El Gigante later in the game. This has a floor which consists of nothing but a metal grate with steaming lava underneath it. It's a wonder Leon can breathe in there, let alone kill two giant badass Cave Troll things single-handedly.
  • Resident Evil 5. The final battle takes place on a lava flow. Not on the lip of a volcano or a catwalk several dozen feet above lava or even on top of a levitation barge skimming a dozen feet above lava. On the actual lava flow. You crash a stealth bomber into a pool of lava. And it just floats there. Then you get out of the plane, and have a casual gun battle on islands of rock floating in lava. You might need an HDTV to see it, but if you look closely it is also raining molten lava all over the place during the entire fight. Granted, it's unrealistic lava rain (just normal rain but red, no ash or anything), but still it's red hot and hitting normal humans with exposed skin but they don't seem to mind at all.
• Averted in RimWorld. Heat from fires pose a direct and potentially lethal threat to pawns. While outdoors the danger is minimal as the heat disperses very quickly, an indoor fire, especially if the room is made of wood, can raise the nearby temperature to a maximum of 1000°C which can incapacitate pawns within seconds and even ignite the clothes on their back. This can even be weaponized if you manage trap enemies in an area with an active fire, the heat travels so enemies that aren't even close to the fire will eventually start to collapse.
• Rodina lets you get as close as 30 thousand kilometres above the surface of the star Zorica before your HUD starts warning you about solar radiation and even closer before said radiation starts actually chipping away your ship's integrity.
• Downplayed/Zig-Zagged in Rune Factory 4. Most rooms in the Delirium Lava Ruins are safe to stand in apart from the monsters. However, there are some rooms where you (and some enemies, apart from the Ignis which are healed) constantly take damage, indicated by a red fog. However, you only take 5 damage periodically, which is annoying but easily manageable and far from deadly.
• RuneScape: Lampshaded by a dwarf in the Lava Flow Mine:
  Lava Flow Miner Dwarf: Logically, convection should make the air in this chamber hotter than an oven, and we'd all roast alive. But for some reason that doesn't happen!
• Twice (well, sort of twice) during Season 2 of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, the duo wind up stranded on a small rock outcropping surrounded by lava. As you learn when you revisit the scene later, though, it's Hell, and physics may not apply.
• In Steven Universe: Save The Light, lava is dangerous only when party members fall into it, even Garnet, who is lavaproof in the original show, unless she's wearing the Fireproof Badge or feeling the immunity effects from Feelawesome Tea or the Immunity Badge.
• Shin Megami Tensei V zig-zags this in the first portion of Chiyoda. Surt has erected a fire barrier that puts out enough heat to incinerate any of Bethel's forces that stray too close to it before even reaching the fire, requiring the Nahobino to get an amulet that wards off the flames before he can proceed... but despite this, the two Powers that stand guard by the barrier are perfectly fine standing there despite their comrades much further away not being able to take the heat.
• At the end of the first Simon the Sorcerer game, Simon's and Sordid's showdown takes place on a ledge next to a crater of boiling lava, which causes them no apparent discomfort.
• The Simpsons Game, during Happy Fun Fun Video Game World. Not only do you travel mere inches from lava, but you must freeze fire themed enemies in blocks of ice and then drop said ice into the lava to form bridges. These blocks of ice never melt once placed.
• Sly Cooper:
  • The final level of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus had Sly hopping from object to object so close to lava that his fur should have caught on fire.
  • In Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Sly can use samurai armor (which are normally made from metal and leather) to block fire balls. Also, they didn't have shields, but that's a different trope... He can also roll across a lava floor on an iron ball and chain without burning his feet.
• In the final area of Singular Stone, even with the lava slowly flows down from the volcano, you character is unaffected by the heat.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Many games feature some variety of Lethal Lava Land, some of them near or in active volcanoes. The heat is never an issue, and you only get injured if you touch the lava. Sonic the Hedgehog had Marble Zone. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 had Hilltop Zone and Metropolis Zone. Sonic 3 & Knuckles had Lava Reef Zone, where the second boss battle happens while the player is standing on a small rock in a huge pool of lava. One level of Sonic Adventure has the player piloting a robot around inside a volcano and not being affected by the heat at all, although given who built it, it probably wouldn't be beyond Robotnik to account for heat.
  • Two non-lava examples from Sonic 3: In Angel Island Zone, the jungle burns down around Sonic, Tails and Knuckles (at one point, the entire screen is engulfed in flames), yet the character doesn't seem bothered at all. Near the end of Launch Base Zone, Sonic is very close to the rockets on the bottom of the Death Egg when it launches; again he's unhurt. Also in Sonic 3, the fire shield is an item that grants the player this as an ability, taken to an extreme — no fire/lava/magma in the game hurts if you have it, but it goes away if you touch water. Naturally, this makes many bosses (which have flames of some sort protecting the underside, and a couple of which use fireballs to attack), as well as Lava Reef much easier.
  • Sonic Unleashed takes it to a very silly level as the entirety of the endgame takes place within the planet's mantle with absolutely no indication that such heat has any impact on the characters or structures at all.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) also ventures over here with the Flame Core stage, which is about as guilty as Resident Evil 5's interpretation of the trope (you have to hopscotch across cooled molten rock, floating down the lava falls; no one seems affected by any of it).
  • In Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Sonic and pals will ride boats on lakes of lava, and won't even mind submerging their entire boat for a few seconds.
  • Sonic Rush Adventure, the final level takes place deep underground. Sonic and Blaze have the excuse they spend the majority of the level in their Super Modes flying over lava, but Marine, Tails, and the two in their regular forms are just fine as long as they don't fall directly into the lava.
• Soul Calibur 3 has the stage Sacred Mt. Fuji -- Lava Bed. Characters fight on a decorative rock floating on a lava flow, so hot that the air is visibly wavy. The description for the stage says it is hot enough to instantly vaporize the cold water that occasionally trickles through. The name for the stage's music is even "Through Molten Caves". It is implied via the extent of decoration that Yoshimitsu even made this the base of his clan of human ninja and marauders, who are entirely human except for Yoshimitsu's wooden arm. Nobody battling, even those in full armor, breaks a sweat. The worst danger is that a character can lose a round by the standard Ring Out that would be caused by a cliff, river, or small pool of water, emitting their death cry. If it isn't the final round, they just get back up and continue the fight.
• Averted in Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon, where you need to equip the Thermoweave Underwear to protect yourself from the intense heat on the Lethal Lava Land planet Ortega. And if you figure out a simple Easter Egg in Space Quest IV, you can revisit Ortega in your time machine... and die the moment you get out. No thermal underwear to save you in this game.
• Justified in Starcraft. The levels on the planet Char are full of lava that has no effect on any units. The Terrans are all wearing Powered Armor (we know it can survive hard vacuum easily), the Protoss have shields, and the Zerg have Adaptive Ability.
• Starbound:
  • Zig-Zagged. The player character will not burn to death by just exploring the molten core of a planet^noteThough they will still burn in lava, even though they will flare up anywhere on a volcanic or lava planet without proper environmental protection. Justified as the core has necessary materials to leave the starter planet and advance the main quest.
  • Taken up to eleven in cold planets, where the player will freeze up without proper environmental protection no matter where they are, including the molten core of the planet. If they remove their environmental protection pack, wait long enough to start losing health, and then walk in lava, they will boil to death while they are also succumbing to hypothermia.
• Stardew Valley: The Volcano Dungeon on Ginger Island has multiple lava pools that the farmer can stand next to without suffering any negative effects, and the top of the lava can be temporarily cooled enough to use as a bridge with the watering can.
• Star Fox:
  • Star Fox 64 averts this. The sun/molten planet (the games are inconsistent on this) Solar's heat will damage your Arwing just by being in the area. This brings up an inconsistency of its own, as a star's surface is actually cooler than the corona (the "atmosphere" of it) and it should be getting hotter as you go up rather than down.
  • Star Fox Adventures: Some levels contain lava, none of which is harmful to be near, but which causes damage for as long as Fox stands on it.
• Star Trek Judgment Rites: A non-lava example. In one episode, the Landing Party must reactivate some antennae powered by geothermal energy. To do this, McCoy suggests firing the Enterprise's phasers in the bedrock to heat it up. This is done while the part stands perhaps 20 feet away from the beam's impact point.
• Zig-zagged in Star Trek Online. In some areas like Nukara Prime and the volcanic caves on New Romulus, you need a protective suit or you'll immediately burn to death. Yet in other places you're perfectly safe in your regular uniform as long as you don't actually fall into the lava.
• Mustafar is available in Star Wars: Battlefront II, there's Hoth (ice planet), Rhen Var (snow and ice, including an ice cave in one level in Battlefront I), Tatooine (hot, and with periodic sandstorms), etc. On ice levels stormtroopers and rebels get cold-weather gear. The game also only depicts hectic, short battles, with lots of running and such. It's not likely that exposure to cold would kill them that quickly, and there's a one in four chance that a given combatant will be a robot.
• In Star Wars: Galaxies, as long as you are on Mustafar's solid ground, you are safe from lava. However, flying over lava (even in completely enclosed vehicle) will cause damage.
• Both used and averted in the Star Wars RTS, Empire at War. There are a few planets which are volcanic (Sullust, Shola, Aeten II, and Mustafar in the expansion) and planets which are covered in snow and ice (Hoth, Ilum, Alzoc III, and Polus). The only one that infantry take auto-damage on is Shola. Somehow, infantry and vehicles are capable of going over partially-cooled lava (even when some of it is right on a river of lava in Mustafar's case in the expansion; however, said expansion also introduced semi-cooled lava as terrain that can damage infantry over time). Then there's the cold on the ice planets (the worst snowstorms do is reduce vehicle sight range in the Fog of War), acid rain only affecting repulsorlift vehicles on Jabiim (repulsorlift vehicles don't work), and nobody taking damage from heat or sandstorms (the latter reducing missile accuracy at worst) on desert planets such as Tatooine and Ryloth...
• Street Fighter:
  • Street Fighter III: New Generation has lava actively churning in the background in the final stage, just feet away from the battle. Nobody takes damage, not even the barefoot characters, and none of it spills onto the ground.
  • Street Fighter IV has a battle backdrop that involves a giant, active volcano that has turned the sky red. Even at the distance the characters are at from the eruption, they still would have suffocated from the heat, smoke, and ashes. In the intro, two of the characters are battling each other on falling rocks INSIDE the freaking volcano.

• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Nintendo has used this trope in nearly every Mario game since his early days on the NES. At the very least, it used to kill you instantly. More often than not, there are going to be monsters who live in the stuff, although these monsters are made partially of lava or fire themselves; the Czar Dragon from Super Mario RPG and the recurring Blargg family of enemies are probably the most notable examples.
  • Super Mario Bros.: Lava is treated exactly like red water — it's not the contact that kills you, it's falling through it down the bottomless pit that kills you. One part of the final level of the game features Cheep Cheeps jumping in and out of lava. There's an underwater section as well (and there's no indication that this water is any hotter than usual despite being in a castle with lava), but it only has Bloopers.
  • In Super Mario World, lava only kills you when you sink to a specific depth (just under the height of one block). If you are big, the lava kills you when it reaches Mario's waist. If you are small, it kills you if it reaches his nose. Anything shallower, and he isn't hurt at all. This is most noticeable in Vanilla Dome 1, Lemmy's Castle, and Chocolate Secret. All three of these levels have both lava and sinking platforms, though they only rise up again in Lemmy's Castle.
  • Super Mario 64:
    • You can jump great distances, land in lava, and only lose three hit points. You can also grab onto and climb metal poles and gratings that are partially submerged in lava, and/or have just emerged from lava, without taking damage.
    • There's also a hilarious glitch that can be performed inside the volcano; by attempting to continually move towards the lavafall, Mario can get his fire-damage animation and use it to jump higher and higher. In other words, he is dying upwards.
  • In Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, the first leg of "The Very Loooooooooong Cave" has flowing lava on the floor and icicles on the ceiling. Said icicles are stable until you get close to them.
  • New Super Mario Bros. Wii features a level that has a pool of lava below you coming in waves, and a pool of lava above you also coming in waves. The upside-down lava was in a Super Mario Bros. 3 castle as well, but here, even veterans are guaranteed to have Mario and his friends coming within pixels of the lava without getting too hot (if the lava does touch you, it's an instant kill).
  • Super Mario Sunshine goes all out with this. Corona Mountain brings back a mechanic that was seen earlier in the game in which Mario has to steer a boat by spraying water opposite the direction he wants to go. Here's the thing, though: Corona Mountain is a volcano, and not only is the convection not a problem for Mario, but if you run low on water, don't worry. There are fountains in the lava that are about a foot high. Just high enough for the water to avoid evaporating instantaneously. The trope is played with in other parts of the game — if Mario is wearing his hat, it's in full effect. If he isn't, he will quickly succumb to the tropical heat. Unlike Super Mario 64, Mario regains his hat whenever he exits a level; so it's impossible for him to enter Corona Mountain without it.
  • The Melty Molten Galaxy level in Super Mario Galaxy takes this to an extreme: the platform you're on will turn red-hot as it sinks into the lava, but Mario won't take any damage. Apparently, not even conduction of heat through metal is a problem. The gameplay area is right smack in-between a couple of huge lava planets, which are close enough to be linked together here and there.
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2 features instances like the parts where it puts lava and ice right next to each other, the part where ice shards or meteors can temporarily turn lava into ice and vice versa. Or the part where you can roll snowballs over lava to make a path of snow for Mario and Luigi to walk on.
  • The lava themed areas in Super Mario Odyssey are uncomfortably hot, if Mario's Idle Animation is anything to go by, but there are still no adverse affects from standing near what seems to be literal boiling Kool-Aid.
• Tales Series:
  • In Tales of Hearts, not only you enter the volcano, you are repeatedly required to grapple yourself directly over lava flows.
  • Subverted in Tales of the Abyss. It's possible to be hurt by lava flows inside Mt. Zaleho, either by waiting for the path to clear of lava or by using the Team Pet's ability to fly, despite that the party is smack-dab in the middle of an active volcano. However, the heat will take its toll on the characters in the skits, to the point where the party will accuse your spellcaster of owning air-conditioned clothes and promptly attempt to strip him.
  • Averted in Tales of Phantasia, where in the Tower of Odin, heat will rise into rooms with cracked floors (the tower is on a volcano), damaging any party member without a specific Ice Charm that protects them from the heat. If the player is low on health, and without protection, and forgets to heal up the heroes will die without even being in a battle.
  • As well s in Tales of Eternia, where the water spirit Undine protects you from the heat of Efreet's volcano. The game actually tracks Undine's health throughout the dungeon.
• Terraria:
  • The game has pools of natural magma show up after a certain depth in the map, which only harms the player^note without an Obsidian Skin Potion or a Lava Charm/Lava Waders on direct contact. The Underground Jungle reaches this depth, so it is common to find small magma lakes surrounded by jungle greenery. It is possible to scoop some in a bucket, place it on a bed of snow or ice, and see that the lava has no effect on it at all. Yet it turns to obsidian when it makes contact with water.
  • Living Fire Blocks are essentially blocks made out of fire that can be held in a player's hand and freely placed, having no effect on them or their surroundings at all.
  • Zigzagged if you bring water all the way down to the Underworld: it will evaporate once it gets that far, implying it's just too hot down there for liquid water to exist.
• In the Thief games lava is harmless as long as you tiptoe around it, but coming into even the slightest contact with it will kill Garrett instantly. This is taken to an even bigger extreme in the Thief Gold mission "The Mage Towers" where the interior of the Fire Tower is built almost entirely out of metal and there's a huge lava pool sitting right smack in the middle.
• Tomb Raider:
  • A particularly odd use of this trope can be found in Anniversary. The final levels of the game have pools of lava, but you are fine if you don't touch it, despite the HEAT THAT CAN BE SEEN RADIATING THROUGHOUT THE ROOM. At points, it's even hard to see, due to heat distortion, and you still take no damage even within inches of it. You can also climb on red hot poles sticking out of the lava. When you fall into the lava Lara sinks.
  • The original Tomb Raider I even had Lara come into contact with lava trails and molten rocks and not get hurt by it, especially in the Unfinished Business levels where she can stand on several such blocks. Falling into the lava just makes her burst into flames and fall over; she sometimes stands up before falling over. Then there's Natla, who actually falls into a lake of lava on screen and comes out no worse for wear.
  • One room in Atlantis in the first game allows Lara to grab and hang on to a block of lava and shimmy around or pull a handstand (she dies once she pulls up). Evidently the developers never considered that a player would try to grab onto a lava "block" instead of just falling on it.
• Some games in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series allow players to make custom parks with lava pits in the open. Like water, they do not harm skaters unless directly touched.
• Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism. In the fifth level, you fly amidst the fires of Hell, which are portrayed as an endless sea of towering flames that seem to be just below you the entire time. Naturally, being right above them doesn't burn or affect either of the playable characters at all. The final level goes further, as the heroines fly through the corona of a second sun created by the game's final boss. Said final boss plans to use her power over nuclear fusion to melt the entire Earth away, yet when you fight her, you can get mere millimeters from the miniature suns and nuclear explosions she produces without even getting singed. The trope is also lampshaded in the same game: in the composer's notes for the track to the sixth level, ZUN talks about how lava levels are pretty common in shooters, and then states, "I guess it's normal for shrine maidens to fly above lava. Crows also." Also, at least with Yukari as her partner, Reimu does mention that the heat down there is nearly unbearable. It's pretty obvious that only her magic keeps her from being roasted alive instantly.
• Ultima:
  • Averted in Ultima VII Part II: Serpent Isle where attempting to travel through the Furnace caverns without the Chill spell causes your party members to complain about the intense heat and lose health every few seconds.
  • In Ultima VIII: Pagan orange lava was solid but would burn you every moment of contact, and yellow lava was instant death. Nonetheless, you could walk around in volcanic caverns without any ill effects, as long as you didn't touch the lava itself. The entire Sorcerer's Enclave was built inside one such cavern, and a quest involved using the Endure Heat spell to jump from patches of floating orange lava to reach the chest at the end. It was actually possible to navigate across orange lava prior to getting this spell by throwing objects down onto it to stand on.
  • This was also played straight in Ultima IX: Ascension where lava is little more than orange colored water that very slowly drains health on contact. You can even swim in the pools, though this makes a tad more sense if you use a white potion or the Infernal Armor spell. The biggest case is the town of Valoria, which makes you wonder if the townspeople's brains weren't already baked when the Guardian's column showed up. Hacki's Ultima Page describes it best:
    ...Valoria, where even the greatest coward doesn’t mind living in a volcano, and its corresponding dungeon Destard in Ultima IX. What can you say about it? On the positive side, you are finally presented with a quest that requires you to travel around several places in Britannia. On the other hand, Valoria is simply hilarious. Jhelom was destroyed by a volcano outburst, OK. So what are we gonna do? Right, we rebuild the town inside of the volcano! Bravo!
  • In the first Ultima Underworld lava becomes no problem once you get boots made out of the skin of a dragon. The platemail-clad rest of your body is perfectly comfortable standing ankle-deep in lava.
• In Ultimate Chicken Horse, lava doesn't hurt the players unless it's touched directly. One level is even inside of a volcano, with lava geysers that raise and lower stone platforms. Said stone platforms are perfectly safe to stand on. You can also have lava on any stage with the right options. Its sole effect is to kill players who take too long to reach the goal.
• Both played straight and averted multiple times in Undertale. The extreme climates of Snowdin and Hotland have no effect on the player, even when "turning up the thermostat" to appease one monster. However, Hotland's heat is integral to resolving the encounters with Undyne and Royal Guards 01 and 02.
• Used in Urban Chaos: Riot Response. In the fire levels (where you have to go into a building that's on fire. The enemies are called Burners for a reason) you don't take damage from the heat. You cough a lot in the smoke rooms unless you have your BREATHER (Caps are proper) on but smoke is the more visible secondary effect of fires.
• Venture Kid: In the volcano level, Andy can ride rocks across lakes of lava with no problems whatsoever. He doesn't even seem to tan from the proximity to lava/magma.
• Vessel plays this completely straight. You can even run through lava splashes if you are fast enough. Though lava doesn't seem that hot in this game, as water cools it down pretty easily.
• Warcraft III's lava is just another water color, while the lava terrain can be walked on with no ill effect. The more thoughtful map designers avert this, though.
• Wii Sports Resort, where apparently being inside a volcano is perfectly safe, as long as there're guardrails.
• There's a particularly jarring example in Wild ARMs XF. One character jumps into the lava to hold up a portion of collapsing bridge while the other character clammers to safety. He has time to given a speech about his political views before dying while standing knee deep in lava.
• In Will Rock, many levels (like the Hepheasteum and the Underworld of Tartarus) will bring you close to the fiery, orange magma. However, as long as you don't step in it, you're sound and safe. There's, however, a red haze on the screen if you're really close to magma, suggestic heat. Then again, since Will is possessed by the Titan Prometheus, this may protect him from fire.
• World's End Club: At the Oita Area, the group briefly travels through a lava cave with erupting magma with almost no harm inflicted upon any of the members.
• In World of Warcraft the Dwarven city of Ironforge is centered on a huge forge area with massive amounts of lava/molten metal on both sides of the crafting area. Even if you fall in, you have to be almost level 1 to worry about death.
  • Lava takes a set percentage of your health, you can swim around in it for about 40 seconds before it kills you, regardless of your level.
    • Lava taking a percentage of your health is a new thing. New as in, this was changed in patch 6.0 (the pre-patch for Warlords of Draenor). Prior to this patch, lava did indeed do a set amount of damage (depending on type, lava in higher level areas would damage more than in lower level areas). The result of this was that high level players could swim in lava in places like Molten Core and suffer negligable damage. 6.0 changed it all.
    • The path to Molten Core and Blackrock Depths involves a lengthy walk down giant chains suspending a rock tomb over a large lava pit. Its cool the first time, but most players opt to jump into the soft lava as a shortcut.
  • There is also the lava ground texture that you can walk on with no ill effects. Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes even have some "lava falls" that you can stand under with no worries. Shadowmoon Valley's lava has the added benefit of being green and evil.
  • For the opposite, there are the snow levels, which don't require any special gear. Not such a big deal in Northrend where the gear is themed appropriately, but low level characters in Dun Morogh will be wandering around in the snow wearing nothing but skimpy level one rags.
  • The above is also valid for characters wearing mail and plate in Winterspring, which as the name suggests is a cold zone. Where your female night elf warrior wears a Stripperific metal armor that doesn't seem to be very well padded where the skin touches the metal. Frisky.
  • The king of fire and fire elementals, Ragnaros, a being MADE of lava. Who can be melee attacked by people standing a foot away with metal weapons and only hurts them if he directly attacks them or uses a special attack. Although in earlier patches the melee weapons would be damaged by hitting Rags and would eventually break. One of those things that makes sense but is so annoying in-game that they drop it.
  • In the Molten Front, there are lots of pools of lava, but they don't follow the percentage-based damage model. A level 85 (max level at the time of writing) character takes so little damage from standing in them, that it's often to your advantage to fight lava worms in the pools, to avoid the giants that are also walking around.
• Wrath Of Earth (for MS-DOS): Averted. You're in a protective, armored suit that has built in shielding, but it will take damage from temperature extremes. If the temperature gauge indicates you're in an area of extreme cold or heat (freezers, standing next to lava or radioactive pools of waste), you'll slowly take damage. Accidentally walk directly into a pool of lava or radioactive waste though and you'll nearly instantly be killed from full shields and health (less than half a second). You do run into rather a lot of friendly humans who aren't wearing any kind of protection equipment though, and there's numerous environmental hazards such as exposed lava flows or bridges over lava pools or toxic waste that presumably would be extremely dangerous to cross for someone without protective equipment, unless the bridges themselves had powered shielding built-in. However, there's buildings that have large caches of protective suits and equipment on the walls, so presumably they're available for use and it's just none of the other people you run into (who are usually hiding indoors) are wearing them at the moment.
• ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal: Amy can walk right next to lava without any ill effects, but only if she has a Fire Elemental Card and a Fire fairy equipped, whose magic protects her from the heat.

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