Made Of Explodium / Video Games

Made of Explodium in Video Games.

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• If you ask for a villager to hunt a bird in Age of Empires 1 it will simply do a harmless explosion.
• Battlefield: Bad Company: Most walls and fences, any military vehicle, red barrels, any fuel tank, bright-red crates with explosive placards and more. Even doors, windows, small boxes and garbage bags will go up in a satisfying cloud of dust if struck with your knife. This is true of many games in the Battlefield series, where a vehicle that's been critically damaged - even if not by exposive weaponry - will spontaneously explode not once, but twice, both instances of which will damage or even kill anyone too close to the wreckage. This also happens to vehicles that are abandoned, leading to hilarity ensuing when someone runs for awesome helicopter or plane that's been sitting around for too long only for it to blow up in his face and kill him.
• Vehicles and buildings Battlezone (1998) explode several times, first a primary explosion then the chassis splits apart into it's component polygons (only in the original, 98 Redux removes this due to reworking the vehicle models and simply has nondescript fireballs) which fly through the the air on fire before those explode as well. Like MechWarrior 2, those exploding pieces can harm you as well but just by a minor amount. Needless to say in both games, the explosions and their sounds are satisfying when it's an enemy.
• At one point in Beyond Oasis (also known as The Story of Thor), Ali can guide Efreet to attack a small iceberg, which explodes when destroyed.
• A not-particularly-well-known game called Big Mutha Truckers includes a side mission where you must haul a tanker filled with a sensitive, volatile chemical from one location to another within a time limit, on threat of a massive explosion. The guy riding shotgun with you while you make the delivery literally calls the chemical "Explodium".
• The buildings in Blast Corps have a particular habit of turning into fireballs upon collision with the dumptruck, bulldozer, dune buggy, or from just trying to get out the vehicle while parked next to it.
• Many things in BloodRayne 2 explode when you hit them with a knife or throw a person at them
• Borderlands 2:
  • When guns manufactured by Tediore are reloaded, the user throws them forward and they explode dealing damage proportionate to how much ammo was left in the clip, after which the user has a new gun digistructed for them.
  • Anything involving Torgue: all Torgue guns fire miniaturized rockets and deal only explosive damage. Any manufacturer that produces assault rifles can also produce weapons using the Torgue assault rifle barrel, which overrides most of the distinctive features of that manufacturer and simply causes them to fire even more explosives such as grenades or spiral rockets. Torgue explosions are contagious.
• A rather unusual example of this occurs in Braid. If you go to the ridiculous lengths necessary to get all the secret stars, upon replaying level 1-1, you'll discover that the Princess is Made of Explodium. Granted this is probably supposed to represent something, but still.
• In the shooting gallery level in Call of Duty: World at War, shooting at the bridge of enemy merchant vessels will cause them to blow up just as spectacularily as the fuel tanks on the deck. In the tank level, shooting through the firing slits of bunkers several will cause them to blow up, though there is no evidence of anything explosive stashed inside.
• In Catacomb Kids, the blue mucus of ogos is suprisingly explosive when heated. Aptly named a "dangerous ball of mucus", is can be used as an improvised grenade, and is often the cause of Yet Another Stupid Death.
• Castlevania: The Adventure: The rolling eye enemies explode when they're killed. The explosion is potent enough to blow apart pieces of the bridge in Stage 2.
• City of Heroes:
  • There are the classical Exploding Barrels to start with, which are somewhat normal if not logical. Then there are exploding robots. Not too much of a problem there, although when the basic robots blow up while the ones armed with explosive missiles and powered by fusion reactors don't go boom, there's a bit of head scratching to go around. Then you run into mission objects like the Explosive Desk of Doom. It's even worse in Mayhem Missions, where villains are rewarded for destroying street-level objects, including newspaper stands, cars, trash cans, parking meters, SWAT vans, fire hydrants, and cardboard boxes. All of these explode, regardless of what particular power used to destroy them; freezing or slicing cardboard boxes cause the same pattern of scattered pieces as hitting them with a rocket. Most explode remarkably violently. This can lead to some interesting chain reactions, as the nuked police department car ignites a trio of other nearby cars, each of which blow up a few seconds later and destroying nearby cardboard and metal crates, all of which simultaneously explode a short time later.
  • There was a rather amusing bug introduced during July of 2009 where Rikti drones would re-explode for eternity after they were defeated. It was nicknamed the 4th of July Bug.
• In Command & Conquer Generals
  • there are some specific units designed to detonate as a means of attack, most of them in the GLA. Also in Zero Hour sub-faction leader General Juhziz of the GLA faction lives this trope as almost every one of his units and structures can be rigged to explode at any time.
  • Clicking "Surrender" in a skirmish battle in Tiberian Sun instead of "Quit" causes everything you have to blow up. Resulting in instant defeat, but atleast you go out with a bang. If playing LAN/Internet multiplayer, this applies to every game in the series; even the freeware OpenRA engine keeps this aspect intact.
• In the Crusader games, pretty much every bit of decoration can explode. The funny thing is, computers can still work even after being blow into pieces!
• Déjà Vu (1985) II: Giving a lit match to a bum will ignite the alcohol in his bloodstream, causing a huge-ass explosion that shatters all windows within a ten-block radius and causes you, him, and your friend Gabby to die.
• Deltarune: Chapter 2 makes a Running Gag out of things associated with Queen exploding for no reason, always accompanied by the same explosion sound and a badly-compressed GIF of an explosion. These include an arcade game she plays with Kris, her "extra-dangerous" drinking glass, the keys to the doors in her palace, and her car (which she orders everyone out of right before it explodes for no reason, just because she was worried it hadn't exploded yet).
• Deus Ex:
  • Any MIB, augmented agent, or robot will explode violently when killed, leaving behind gory gibs and/or metal chunks, so as to prevent anybody else from taking them apart and studying their augmentations. In the case of The Men in Black and augged agents, this is due to being intentionally implanted with explosives in order to destroy evidence. In the case of robots, high density batteries are really volatile.
  • In the sequel, only The Knights Templar powered armor suits explode, along with mechs if shot and destroyed (disabling them with EMP will avert that though). This can add some Fake Difficulty in some areas with cameras: gunfire won't set off the alarm, however, shooting the camera until it explodes with the force of a grenade will.
  • Also in the sequel, special agents working for the Illuminati dissolve into poison gas when killed, providing a hazard, but not necessarily an explosion.
• In Diablo II:
  • A Necromancer can make an enemy's corpse explode. This usually creates more corpses, leading to a chain reaction of exploding flesh. Somehow, the Assassin is able to mimic this with non-magical devices.
  • The exploding cow corpses in Tristram are due to built-up gases, but that doesn't quite explain how the damn things can nearly kill a character.
• Disgaea:
  • If you throw a Prinny, they explode. Any prinnys caught in the explosion also explode.
  • Starting from the third game, any humanoid who magichanges with a Prinny becomes equally explosive for the duration of the effect. As the weapon the Prinny changes into isn't visible while not attacking, one can easily forget that it's there and accidentally blow up the unit in question by throwing them. It also adds exploding barrels with the same explosive properties.
  • The fourth game adds monster fusion, which allows any kind of monster to also become explosive if a Prinny merges with them. They're too huge to be picked up and thrown, but can explode if they caught in an explosion from another source. The new Battlesuit class also has an ability that causes them to immediately selfdestruct if their HP drops below a certain threshold.
  • The fifth game has a "Prinny Squad" as one of the squads you can put units into. Everyone in the squad is treated like a Prinny, which includes them exploding if tossed. In other words, you can give the Explodium to anyone in your army. There's also a Mystery Room in the Item World that's jam-packed with Prinnies — as in every panel not occupied by Mil, the spawn point, or the two humans has a Prinny on it — and if you start a fight here you can easily win just by throwing any of the Prinnies to set off an explosion chain that would do Michael Bay proud, at the likely cost of not being able to use the unit you dispatched for the rest of the Item World expedition.
• In Doom 3, if you break any of the glass parts of the Hydrocon machine with a stray bullet, it will go up in a Level-Shattering Kaboom, killing everything in the area, including you. Unless you are in God Mode, in which case you can obtain the BFG early.
• In the Dragon Age series, the Abominations will explode upon killing them. They're the only enemies that do this, and there's no obvious explanation as to why. The game also features the Walking Bomb spell, which causes the targetted enemy to take a small amount of damage every couple of seconds. If the target is killed before the spell's duration ends, it explodes in a huge shower of blood that does massive damage to everything near it. There's also an upgraded version of the spell that has the possibility of inflicting other enemies who were caught in the blast radius, which may cause them to explode.
• In Duke Nukem 3D, walls with cracks in them. Any wall with a crack. Doesn't matter whether it's solid concrete, a metal plate or even cardboard. If it's got a crack and another explosion comes near, the wall (or is it the crack itself?) will explode with more explosions. Sometimes this also happens just by being near the wall. For some reason this also happens in other Build Engine games (Blood, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage).
• Almost every enemy in Dynamite Headdy dies with a rather high-pitched explosion. The bosses make huge explosions with lots of bouncing debris when you beat them. Collect enough of the debris, and you get a continue. Sure, why not?
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has a spell called "Enemies Explode." Sadly, it does not technically live up to its name. (It merely sets them on fire.)
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Flame Atronachs ^note  Basically Fire Demons/Elementals also seem to be made of Explodium. Strangely enough, earlier incarnations of this monster, appearing in previous installments of TES are not made of this trope.
• Eastern Exorcist has a Taoist priest boss who attacks you with exploding Paper Talismans. Possibly justified because it's magic.
• A gag in Escape from Monkey Island has a wooden catapult exploding in a huge fireball when it goes over a cliff.
• In Evil Genius, any object that catches fire will take damage continuously. After it takes enough damage, it explodes. This means any object in your base, even bunk beds and lockers, will explode and cause everything around them to catch on fire, leading to some humorous situations in, say, a room filled with bunk beds. True story. Even the fire extinguishers explode.
• The Flame Parasites from Evolva, who explode after death.
• Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, being a D&D-based game, features the aforementioned exploding "gas spores". And yes, at first glance, they can be mistaken for beholders. Especially the first one, that startlingly appears right as a door open.
• Fallout 3:
  • The 200-year-old decaying cars littering the landscape do not merely explode when hit by enough stray (or deliberate) fire. Oh no. They go up in a massive mushroom cloud that shakes the scenery, which not only destroys everything nearby but irradiates the area for a short while afterwords. Presumably, cars just before the apocalyptic war were nuclear-powered. Reading the game's back-story, you'll find that this is explained in the "alternate history" of the game world. Nuclear technology was much more common and advanced in the game world. Also, the Earth's petroleum resources were exhausted a decade before the Nuclear War. And finally, it can be assumed that sitting around for two centuries in an irradiated hellscape does no favors to the cars' safety measures.
  • The Bloody Mess perk makes most enemies like this, especially with a head shot. Sometimes a body shot will do the same thing, but with even more exploding than normal (normally all limbs just fall off). Although this effect on its own might be enough to take the perk, the additional 5% damage with all weapons doesn't hurt.
  • Not only does Fallout: New Vegas bring back the Bloody Mess perk and combustible nuclear cars, but its Old World Blues DLC introduces roboscorpions that explode with a bang upon killing them.
• Far Cry 2 has a variant that's less on explosions, but just as nonsensical. Just about anything you can think of reacts in some way if hit with the machete, shot, or just tapped wrong. Rather than causing an explosion, however, doing so will instead just cause a fire. Or, in the case of propane and other gas tanks, it will start flying around, setting anything it comes close to alight, then exploding and causing a fire. Or, more rarely, it will explode right where it is. And start a fire.
• Fighting Force 2 only requires Hawk Manson's fists to make things such as computers, soda machines, tanks, and even file cabinets burst into flames. Yeah...he's a man-and-a-half.
• Starting with Final Fantasy VIII, every single boss monster has their own special explosion animation, ranging from dissolving into pieces to outright giant explosions — all for no reason at all other than the fact that they've run out of HP.
• In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, you can pick up an enemy, put lightning on the enemy, and when you throw the lightninged enemy it will explode violently on impact.
• In F-Zero, any collision that eliminates your energy, no matter how slight, sets off a chain reaction in your vehicle which makes it explode into a charred wreck. Partly, this can be attributed to the fact that your ship travels at over a thousand kilometers per hour. Your energy powers your shields, so when you have no energy, you have no shields. Wrecking at that speed with no shields?
• Just about anything can be set ablaze in Garry's Mod. Burning wooden objects don't char, though; they take damage and blow up after a few seconds. And the splinters continue to burn for a short while longer.
• Geneforge:
  • The pyroroamers blow up when they die. And since they are so weak and usually travel in packs, it's easy to start a chain reaction.
  • Any power spiral is capable of "amazing pyrotechnics" if you so much as shut it down improperly. This is actually lampshaded in the fourth game.
• GoldenEye 007 takes this trope to the logical extreme: everything explodes if shot a few times. This includes model helicopters, television screens, computers, security cameras, wooden crates, and even chairs. Note that explosions tend to set off nasty chain reactions in this game: A few stray shots in a room filled with computers can kill everyone in the room. This makes the penultimate "official" level annoyingly difficult, as civilian personnel (whom you're not allowed to kill) operate the sensitive terminals you're assigned to destroy, meaning you have to scare them off lest they be killed in the ensuing explosions. It's speculated that since the game had no physics engine, the developers made almost every object explodable as a compromise.
• In Ghost Recon: Future Soldier's first level, you encounter some technicals with machine guns. When you kill the gunner - not even touching the vehicle proper, thus disqualifying this from Every Car Is a Pinto - the vehicle promptly explodes for no reason.
• Quite a few Grandia bosses, even those made of meat. Must have been something they ate.
• Virtually all vehicles in Grand Theft Auto will explode if they take enough damage, and a single bullet to the fuel cap will blow one up instantly. Even mobile staircases at airports will burst into flame if they are pushed over.
• In Grim Fandango, the solution to one puzzle depends on the fact that packing foam is highly combustible when it interacts with a certain kind of chemical fire extinguisher.
• If, in Guitar Hero 2, your band covers "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" (a Spinal Tap song) at the Battle of the Bands, as the song ends your drummer explodes in a puff of smoke.
• In any Gundam game, whenever a Mobile Suit or Mobile Armor has been shot enough, it blows up, even if you would normally only expect an arm to fall off or a leg to be severely damaged.
  • The Gundam Vs Series does play around with it a little, though. Certain attacks will cause the defeated machine to split in half at the waist before exploding, while others will destroy half of the machine while the other half goes through the standard explosion animation. In Extreme Vs., every machine falls apart to some degree before it explodes.
  • The Koei-developed Dynasty Warriors: Gundam first caused mobile suits to have limbs fly off upon their destruction and explode, ostensibly to save processing power via Everything Fades. The later games caused the death explosions to become dangerous to other enemies and damaging them, often leading to a chain-reaction of enemy Mecha-Mooks popping off in sequence and clearing a field. Reborn now only has mobile suit pieces fly off when overkilled, but now the torsos as well as the limbs all explode dramatically and harm enemies. A single exploding suit can spread enough exploding limbs to damage two dozen other mobile suits. Firing a charged shot into a packed crowd is basically summoning an explosion on command.
• In Half-Life, any dead person or monster will blow up when taking enough damage, leaving behind nothing but their intestines. Even their clothes turn into bloodsplatter and intestines.
  • Half-Life 2 features exploding barrels in almost every single one of its environments. The developers actually considered making one of the levels an exploding barrel factory to explain their abundance. There is in fact a room in the sewers filled entirely with explosive barrels and a steady stream of manhacks to blow up with them.
  • In Poke646, a Half-Life mod, some completely random things explode for absolutely no reason at all, not even being shot. Ladders, microwaves, and even masonry explode when you approach them. It kinda makes you wonder how stringent the building codes are in Nation City.
• Halo:
  • Halo: Combat Evolved averted this completely with all UNSC vehicles, but played it straight with Covenant vehicles. Games from Halo 2 onward have played it straight with all vehicles; heck, destroy a Covenant vehicle, and not only will it explode, but what's left of it will explode a second time.
  • You can do this to infantry too if the Grunt Birthday Party skull is active. In Halo 2, EVERY enemy explodes with the force of a Plasma Grenade when killed with a headshot. From Halo 3 onward, headshotting Grunts will cause an explosion of confetti to come out of their heads, accompanied by sound of children cheering YAY! In Halo: Reach, you can even equip it to your multiplayer character (headshots are not needed however).
  • Halo 3 also has the final fight with 343 Guilty Spark, which ends with him exploding 7 seconds after being fatally wounded.
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker: Admittedly, you are working with a strong heat gun designed to melt metallic beams when sustained, but it's still a little ridiculous how quickly a casual glancing brush against a fuel or coolant tank can set the whole thing off, set you on fire, and more importantly turn a whole chunk of the ship into worthless scrap. Damage to the pipes similarly causes a puncture that, in fuel's case, will ignite and travel through the rest of the pipe little by little. A little more ridiculously, hydroponics cabinets, meaning machinery made to grow plants, are also pretty damned explosive. Depressurization and oxygen is a dangerous mixture.
• In inFAMOUS, you can use your superpowers to make grenades made of electricity. As well as missiles. It's never explained how this works, but it's too awesome to worry about.
• Interpoint: Power Crystals, when their lattices are damaged, a.k.a any damage at all, makes them immediately release their large amounts of stored energy, in an explosive manner.
• In I of the Dragon, if a town's main building is reduced to zero HP, the town explodes — which won't harm you at all, but will slay any enemy nearby and even give you the EXP for their deaths! As a result, attacking the very towns you're supposed to protect can be one of the better ways to level up.
• One of the Red Eco upgrades in Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier lets you imbue opponents you hit with the glowing red stuff, making them explode if you punch them out. (This is especially fun if there are lots of enemies in the area and you use the time-slow power.)
• Bomb Corp from The Jackbox Party Pack 2 is a game where you have to defuse bombs, do filing, unlock keypads, make coffee and fix copiers. All of them have a habit of exploding if you make a mistake. Day 15 ups the ante by making sure that Meegan, who is an alien, doesn't explode while she's trying to give birth.
• Any motorized vehicle in Jaws Unleashed. Somehow, taking a bite out of a boat causes it to go *BOOM*.
• Just Cause 2: Nearly everything that is destructible, when destroyed, explodes violently, be it a car, a fuel tank or a crane. For dramatic effect, evacuated cars turn fender-benders into fireballs, and for a different kind of dramatic effect, flying or landing aircraft detonate themselves instantly if a wingtip touches a building.
• Every robotic enemy in Justice League Heroes: The Flash explodes with a large fireball when defeated. It is never explained why they are so volatile, or for that matter, how they can even survive as long as they do with the way they go off.
• Kerbal Space Program:
  • Every single rocket is a bomb waiting to go off. Justified that most of the pieces of your rocket are fuel tanks and engines, and all of the pieces are subject to your imperfect design and piloting whims. Except for the fact that a smokey explosion is completely uniform for any object under an impact. That aerodynamic nose cone will explode exactly the same as the recently-lit solid rocket booster.
  • The planet Eve offers an odd example. The liquid majority of the surface is identified as 'Explodium Seas'. While splashed down in it, rocket motors cannot be shut off.
• Parodied and downplayed in Kosodate Quiz More: My Angel. There's a choice when you bought a cheap CD player for the daughter which resulted in having her CD player exploded (but not destroyed) and the CD shoots out like a fire wheel.
• LEGO Star Wars:
  • If you can't blow something up by using a blaster or a lightsaber, you can by using the force on it. What's even more amusing is that the most common explosives are houseplants. Seriously.
  • There's also an extra that you can buy for droids that makes them self-destruct when you press the X button. It's the same power as a thermal detonator. Hilarity Ensues.
  • In the "Lair of Grievous" level of LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, the first time you fight General Grievous and work him down to one point of health, he pulls the grating on the ceiling down and climbs on it as he uses his feet to hold onto two of his lightsabers, then when he throws them at you they explode upon hitting the ground.
• In Lemmings and its sequels, some obstacles can be passed by turning lemmings into Bombers, who then explode after a five-second countdown. If you mess up a level, you can start over by hitting the Armageddon button and causing all lemmings in the level to explode. Oh no!
• When you kill an enemy in Little Samson, it tends to explode for some strange reason.
• LHX Attack Chopper, everything when shot was reduced to a smoking hole in the ground. This includes tanks, armoured personnel carriers, planes, choppers, buildings, soldiers, tress and camels.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin for Mass Destruction on the Playstation, but the game must have been coded by a few blokes from Free Radical as even BUSHES, TREES, ROSE GARDENS, PLAIN OLD STONES, AND CAVERN ENTRANCES (even those underwater) explode when dealt enough damage. Even crazier, everything in the game, EVERYTHING, can actually be blown up twice, except for caverns, doubling the score output. AND... EXPLOSIONS CAUSE SPLASH DAMAGE TO OTHER STRUCTURES! Finding the correctly positioned building in an enemy city and activating the Torus bomb usually results in a nigh-unstoppable chain.
• In Mass Effect, using cryo or snowblind ammunition on an opponent causes their corpse to ice over, and then, a few seconds later, it shatters with a rather un-shattery "boom!"
  • In the second game most mechs will explode when destroyed. The YMIR mech in particular is notable for the fact that if destroyed with a headshot its death explosion is massively increased.
  • As it turns out, once you get past their Made of Indestructium hull, the Element Zero drives of Mass Relays are effectively weapons of mass destruction. Destroying one can quite easily wipe out an entire solar system.
  • If the Overload power is used on an enemy that's carrying a flame thrower, it automatically explodes. Similarly, if the Warp power is used on an enemy protected by a Biotic Barrier and destroys said Barrier, the Barrier itself explodes.
• In the second Bonus Level in Medal of Honor: Underground, there are creepy white-faced guys in camo suits that are deadly effective with their machine guns. When killed, they shortly afterwards explode, causing damage or death to the player if he's too close. This only happens when they're shot, however - using a grenade or beating them to death with an empty gun does not result in them exploding.
• The online RPG Mechquest, do Mechs simply fall over when beaten? Oh no, they just have to explode instead! Every single one of them. They will sometimes explode for the most illogical of reasons, such as HURT FEELINGS. No joke.
• ''MechWarrior'’:
  • From 2 onwards, most enemies have a tendency to explode when destroyed, instead of perhaps just falling over or remaining upright but deactivated. In 2 and 3, any mobile or aggressive target usually ends up disappearing in a sizable explosion and polygonal bits when destroyed. This includes 'Mechs, tanks, aircraft, and even humans in Power Armor. Particularly egregious with Elementals, the the aforementioned power armored enemies. In MechWarrior 2 and even in MechWarrior 3, they explode into a fireball several times the size of the original armor suit, in spite of the fact that according to the games, they can't be carrying nearly enough in them to explode like that. 'Mechs on the whole seem suspiciously prone to exploding as opposed to anything else.
  • Destroying a 'Mech in MechWarrior 2 usually causes it to explode violently, sometimes remaining visibly intact only for the pieces violently fling themselves across the screen. The occasional 'Mech will remain on the field as an armored, intact hulk (which can be shot apart), usually as a result of a cockpit hit. Some 'Mechs played the explosion animation close to 10 times after being destroyed, and some would even do so long after the pieces had been blown across the map.
  • In MechWarrior 3, 'Mechs and vehicles explode when they were destroyed, with 'Mechs bursting into flames and flopping over when destroyed. The only exception was for a 'Mech killed with a leg hit—these would just fall over and crash on the ground, disabled and out of the fight. To make up for this lack of pyrotechnics, one could cause a fusion plant explosion by the simple expedient of overheating a 'Mech, yours or theirs. Obviously, anyone close enough to witness these were usually not happy about it.
  • In MechWarrior 4, some vehicles will simply turn into skeletal outlines of their former selves when destroyed, and aircraft usually cause a small explosion when shot down. Fairly reasonable, all things concerned. However, every defeated 'Mech violently flings itself to the ground and then goes critical with a blown reactor, no matter what kind of damage destroyed it—a shot through the torso, both legs blown off, or a cockpit hit. The end result is invariably a chunky 'Mech-shaped pile of burnt debris, looking every bit like a total loss. The tendency for every 'Mech to do this raises questions as to how your technicians manage to salvage equipment and weapons off these blown-up remnants...including entire intact, viable 'Mechs.
• The original Medal of Honor has the obligatory Exploding Barrels as well as exploding crates and other objects.
• Taken to absurd lengths with the caecilians in Megaman Sprite Game. They have a tendency to explode during battle and die. It isn't even a Defeat Equals Explosion or a Taking You with Me example. They just kill themselves!
• Metal Gear
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater features a somewhat bizarre variant: all of the boss characters, upon being defeated, will give their few last words before suddenly exploding violently. An explanation is provided that they all had bombs implanted in their bodies to prevent their remains from falling into the wrong hands should they be killed in action.
  • Also in Metal Gear Solid 3, when a barrel is shot, it's gonna go boom and alert everyone to Snake's presence AND set him on fire if he's too close to them. Although soldiers killed by exploding barrels don't add to the player's body count, making it sort of useful in Pacifist Runs.
  • The burning-away of the FROGS in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is even more nonsensical, and it happens to them all. Apparently, like everything else in the series, this is due to nanomachines.
  • Upon defeating a boss in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, they explode.
• The player, enemy soldiers, and aliens. This is the full list of everything that doesn't explode in Metal Slug.
• Just about everything in Metal Wolf Chaos. Hell, even concrete explodes when shot at.
• In Metroid Prime, one can only wonder how the Chozo managed to survive long enough to be killed by Phazon, considering that they made wall hangings of Cordite. As in, they made decorative objects out of gunpowder for modern-day artillery weapons. And yet they're supposed to be one of the smartest races in the universe. How they didn't spontaneously blow up in unclear, though.
  • The entire Metroid Prime Trilogy gives us Phazon, which in the first game does nothing, except look pretty and kill anything that touches it. In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, several stashes exists throughout the game, holding a large number of crates with Phazon, that blow up when shot enough. And it's not just a modest explosion either, if you shoot them with the Phazon Beam.
• Mighty Aphid: There are objects that look like a red metal barrel with gold rings wrapped around it in the game. Shooting them with cause them to explode.
• Minecraft:
  • The Creeper, a walking creature made of pure Explodium. Needless to say, they must chase you. SSSSSSSSS...
  • The TNT block, which, if struck or activated, will detonate. Which means it's a bad idea to build your house out of them.
  • Beds of all things explode if not used in the Overworld. It's because you can only sleep at night and there's no night in, say, The End. (It's actually to prevent the player from setting their spawn in such dangerous environments; dying to a bed explosion yields the chat message "<player> was killed by [Intentional Game Design].")
  • Added in the Nether Update, the Respawn Anchor, which allows the player to respawn in the Nether, explodes if charged and used anywhere other than the Nether.
• In Minecraft Dungeons, you are able to invoke this with the Exploding enchantment, which causes corpses of mobs to explode upon death and damage every enemy around them.
• Modern Warfare:
  • All of the more-or-less intact-looking cars in both games will explode when sufficiently damaged by being shot up or when grenaded/missiled.
  • In Modern Warfare 1, there's a cheat called "Bad Year", in which all enemies, when killed explode in a shower of tires. This is best served in a mission where you can kill a lot of enemies without suffering much return fire.
  • There's actually a reward for blowing up cars in the multiplayer games.
  • For Modern Warfare 2, there's actually an entire Spec Ops Mission dedicated to blowing up all of the cars on the bridge. You don't finish the level until all the vehicles have been destroyed.
• Raging Brachydios is basically covered in concentrated liquid Explodium.
• All three Mother games feature exploding enemies — mostly robots, but then you get to the trees. Yes, you read that correctly. Exploding trees. The worst offenders are the Territorial Oaks found in EarthBound's Peaceful Rest Valley, which appear remarkably similar to the other trees in the landscape (aside from the fact that they're, well, moving).
  • Of note, in Mother 3, the exploding robotic enemies that also heal other opponents (namely, the Atomic Power Robot and Nuclear Reactor Robot) can have their explosive devices disabled, thus subverting this trope. The trick is to strike them with a physical attack when their back is turned (whether you initiate the battle with a back attack, or you manually turn them around with a 'Made-You-Look' item or with Duster's Siren Beetle tool). Once that's done, you can focus on killing the medic first. Of course, this won't work on the trees.
• In Move or Die, every time a character dies, they explode into their color. During X-mas 2019, it would also include Ludicrous Gibs (presents) into the mix.
• In the Land of Dragons from Kingdom Hearts II, one of the NPCs randomly mentions that the tents in their encampment are filled with explosives. Which would explain why they explode when you hit them with a giant key. Well… maybe not.
• In Neverwinter Nights, if one sets the violence setting high, when you over-kill an enemy (i.e. your KB's either a crit or just that damn awesome) they will explode in a rain of guts and body parts.
• Pariah demons in Nexus Clash tend to explode early and often, whether as an Action Bomb, via Defeat Equals Explosion, or, as often as not, because the button to explode is easily clicked by accident. Given the nature of the series and thus the people playing Pariahs, they tend not to mind. Thanks to Good Bad Bugs, it's possible for a Pariah to explode, killing another Pariah, which triggers another explosion, which kills the first Pariah again, which triggers an explosion, etc.
• Ninja: Shadow of Darkness have the exploding plants on the beach, which blows up as soon as you're less than half a meter away from them. Unfortunately you'll need to cross areas filled with these in order to reach the end of the level - get busy running.
• Exaggerated in Paper Dolls, where your enemies includes sentient Chinese funeral effigies made of paper... and explodes when set alight! Possibly justified because of the effigies' supernatural nature, although there are other ghostly enemies who doesn't explode when killed.
• Two-for-one deal in Phantasy Star Universe; the MMO takes after many console {{RPGs}} in that non-boss enemies and monsters killed undergo Critical Existence Failure — literally. Creatures explode in a puff of green smoke (with a satisfying "thoomp") unless they're SEED-forms, which gives you grape-flavored demise. It's the robot Guard Machines that embody this trope, though; once killed, they go haywire and explode violently. Despite being about to experience critical existence failures, the robots are nice enough to spin their heads around and beep wildly before exploding; giving you time to get clear.
• The Pokémon Voltorb and its evolution, Electrode. Their Dex entries talk about how they explode with any provocation. A few others, like Claydol, Graveler, the Koffing line, Lickilicky and Boldore, also use Selfdestruct very easily.
• In Portal 2, GLaDOS reveals whoever is running the facility has to actively maintain it to keep it from exploding. For Science! Also, when you light turrets on fire with a laser, they burn and then explode. Also for science!
• ''Ratchet & Clank':
  • Almost anything can explode: Lamp posts? Rocks? Iinflatable dolls? Why not mushrooms and small critters? You name it, there is even an upgrade that lets you create a ground slam that causes all the breakable objects around you to explode!
  • Starting in the second game and in most titles thereafter, the Forced Transformation weapon can turn enemies into animals that explode once upgraded.
• Ride to Hell: Retribution
  • You beat up enemy motorcyclists from your motorcycle, the bike goes flying off to the side to explode.
  • When YOU run out of lives, you respawn, only to fly off to the right and explode!
• RimWorld gives us some obvious ones, Boomrats and Boomalopes, the former is a pest you really do not want to go berserk, and the later can be a source of fuel if domesticated, and goes up in a fiery nova when it dies or passes away. They're genetically-engineered orgamisms made to naturally generate chemfuel as a metabolyte, so their explosiveness was only natural; presumably, they've stuck around because no predator wants a bite of something that'll blow off their face and set them on fire.
• The little known laserdisc arcade game Road Blaster (known as "Road Avenger" on the U.S. Sega CD) has examples of this trope in the many (but not all) of the "miss" sequences which all involve the car. However, it could also just be the game's Rule of Cool.
• The GBA RPG Robopon 2 is a shining example of this trope: everything in this game explodes, from the boat that the hero uses in the prologue to the time machines that a mad scientist is forced to recreate over and over because, you guessed it, they keep exploding. One whole chapter of this game focuses around a construction company that blackmails people into paying protection fees - anyone who doesn't pay gets their house exploded. Let's not also forget that Robopon, the game's fighting robots, explode upon being defeated.
• In Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, pretty much everything will explode if shot. Of particular note are the Stormtroopers and civilians found in some levels- if you manage to shoot them, they explode with a burst of flame and a rather pathetic scream.
• In RollerCoaster Tycoon, whenever a vehicle crashes, it explodes. This even includes the water slide's rubber rafts.
• In Saints Row: The Third, there's a mission where you have to rescue a potential ally from a BDSM club with him pulling a pony cart that you and Pierce are riding. The Morningstar follow suit, but when you shoot the gimps pulling the carts, they explode like if you had destroyed any other vehicle.^note Word of God is they just used the same physics engine for cars as for the pony carts, and kept the explosions in because a good chunk of the development team thought it was funny.
• Saints Row IV gives you superpowers, one of which is basically a fire blast. With an upgrade any enemy killed by the fire blast will explode, possibly setting nearby NPCs/vehicles on fire. Add that to the fact vehicles explode when damaged enough anyway, battles can get interesting.
• Bosses in Secret of Evermore explode extensively when they die, no matter what they are. This includes bosses half-submurged in water, such as the giant squid and swamp snake. One of the bosses, Aegis, even explodes before the fight, then again after.
• Shaw's Nightmare has a weapon where you launch hen grenades that explode upon impact. Also the Flying Baby and Plopper in the second game when they die.
• In Shining Force; they get the standard dissolve in the battle sequence, and then on the map they'll spin around and explode. Possibly even more bizarre, since mostly what's causing this to happen is swords and axes, applied to (generally) flesh and blood creatures. And if you kill a boss, then all the mooks explode.
• The original (1998) Si N game also had furniture and electronics that explode violently (with visible shockwaves) when hit.
• SimCity:
  • Most power plants explode after 50 years, sometimes with fire. If it's a nuclear power plant, it will render a large swath of the land uninhabitable with fallout, and in SimCity 4, cause a literal nuclear explosion.
  • In the spinoff Streets of SimCity, any building will blow up if shot enough times.
• In The Sims 4, cheaper versions of appliances such as TVs and refrigerators can do this without warning.
• Every single boss in Skies of Arcadia goes up in a fiery explosion after you defeat it. For the ship battles, this makes some sense. But when it's a giant hollow Jello monster filled with poison with skulls floating around in it? Or what appears to be a gigantic evil toucan? They explode about as violently as the ships do.
• In Skunny: Save Our Pizzas, tridents and musical notes used by the enemies explode on impact.
• Sonic The Hedgehog:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006):
    • If a player attempts to ride a speedboat up a wooden incline. Upon hitting the water again, the speedboat promptly explodes, presumably from fall damage.
    • Even more baffling is the sequence where the player has to destroy a train while chasing it with a machine gun equipped motorcycle... and at least TWICE the motorcycle explodes for no apparent reason.
    • Cars will spontaneously explode in the event that they flip over and get stuck. Having the vehicle flip itself right-side-up instead would have made too much sense, and probably would have involved at least three loading screens.
  • In the Sonic Riders games, anything punched out of the way by a Power-type character will be flung into the distance and explode. This includes crates, boulders, canisters, stone columns, statues, plants, giant bowling pins, and police cars. In addition, in Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, large objects lifted into midair using Gravity Dive will explode after being used as stepping stones. This includes trucks, chunks of stone walls, metal panels, and even water bubbles.
• In the obscure survival horror game Space Griffon VF9 EVERY enemy explodes violently, even the little grey blob guys who look like they're made out of a cross between papier mache and play doh.
• Spelunky: When struck, fire frogs quiver for a couple of seconds and then explode.
• In the first Splinter Cell one of the missions requires you to destroy two transport trucks. To do that, you have to shoot or explode the gas pump near them, causing the whole thing to blow up into a pile or crumpled metal. Fortunately the unassembled nuke inside them is not made of Explodium.
• 'Splosion Man: A person thing 'splosion man practically made out of pure "splodium".
• StarCraft,
  • Most everything Terran except for people, unless you count their meaty corpses, too. For that matter, everything Zerg is a bag of blood and chitin, and everything Protoss is made of Magic Smoke.
  • If possible, played even straighter with the Zerg Scourge in the original, flying units that cost the same as a Zergling and exist for the sole purpose of crashing into enemy flying units, exploding on contact, and the Zerg Banelings in the sequel, which are like the Scourge but ground-based and so bloated with explodium that they roll into targets and explode on contact.
  • Infested Terrans. They're designed to run up to you and explode for roughly the same damage as a nuke. It's awesome.
• What Star Fox 64 tells you is that you lose a life if you choose to retry a level. What it doesn't tell you is that the ‘’life counter’’ explodes as it goes down by one.
  • Every single enemy explodes on death. Even the ones underwater.
  • Special mention goes to the final Vs. unlockable where you can play as the Star Fox members themselves on foot with laser cannons. Guess what happens when they die.
• In the old Mindcraft game Strike Squad (think X-com with very very early VGA graphics, despite them coming out around the same time) dying to anything, due to having a single death sprite for every NPC type, caused peoples' entire BODY to explode violently in pixelated gore, even say, being stabbed, or being shot by a pistol.
• Quite a few Mario objects explode for various reasons, such as robots and airships, but for some unknown reason, Kingfin (underwater shark skeleton) explodes into about three million pieces after being defeated in a rather overly dramatic way.
• Super Robot Wars:
  • Any disabled unit will explode, whether it's a robot, a monster, or even a person. They also tend to take the massive explosion at the end of an animation like a man, then bounce along the ground and blow up from the inside. It's particularly funny when something gets cut in half with a BFS, slides BACK TOGETHER, and then just blows up.
  • Later versions added Dynamic Kills for just this reason: killing enemies with certain attacks causes them to use different death animations, such as "not sliding back together when killed with a massive sword."
  • Super Robot Wars Z introduced custom death animations for each and every unit in the game. So Coralians crumble into dust, Invaders mutate uncontrollably and blow up in masses of blood and ichor, and Dimension Beasts collapse into miniature singularities.
• Supreme Commander has Armoured Command Units going down in a massive nuclear blast. Possibly justified by the fact they're the size of a ten-storey building and nuclear-powered in the first place. Energy is stored in the form of Antimatter. Metal or Mass is stored in the form of... well, matter. As you may know, when matter meets antimatter, there is an explosive reaction. Can you spell "containment breach"?
• In the classic SNES video game, Tales of Phantasia, to acess the mountains you must first break it with a pickaxe you bought from the nearby town and when you use the tool it causes the rock blocking your path to explode. Made of Explodium indeed.
• A June 2011 patch for Team Fortress 2 added doves for several of the maps. If you shoot them, hit them with a melee weapon, or even just brush against them, they explode.
• The Commanders from Total Annihilation take a beating, sure, but they still go BOOM. Violently. And in multiplayer, you'll more than likely be wiped clean off the map (stupid Game Ends setting).
• In Total Carnage, the goal is to capture the Big Bad for an execution by electric chair. If you succeed, you get the satisfaction of pumping him with 60000 gigawatts of electricity, at which point he explodes about a hundred times in many beautiful colours, leaving only a charred skeleton and a Title Drop by the game's voiceover.
• Total War: Shogun 2 has every castles in Japan apparently filled with gunpowder, given the tendency of gates and walls to blow up when destroyed, shooting units into the air.
• In Touhou Bunkachou ~ Shoot the Bullet:
  • Once Aya has taken the requisite number of successful pictures, the enemy character suddenly explodes for no obvious reason.
  • This trope goes down to the very roots of Touhou Project. In every single game (except the fighting spin-offs), the animation for defeating a boss results in them exploding. Yes, even if you didn't fire a single shot at them the entire time. Apparently, the character in question is so ashamed that she wasn't able to beat you that she felt like she needed to explode.
• Touhou Shinkirou ~ Hopeless Masquerade:
  • The loser explodes when the match is won by KO.
  • There is a shot type and several spellcards based on exploding frogs.

• The bicycles in Unturned explode when their HP reaches 0. That's because programming-wise, they're vehicles like the gas-powered ones, and Every Car Is a Pinto is in full effect.
• Any destroyed vehicle in Warhawk explodes in an impressive fireball. Even if it was from being beaten with a wrench. If left unattended long enough, vehicles will spontaneously explode and respawn.
• Wayne's World (SNES/Genesis): Any enemy that Wayne kills with his guitar are destroyed in a fiery explosion.
• World in Conflict: On the multiplayer map "Mauer", there's a bunch of walls (including part of the Berlin Wall) which impede the movement of your units. Destroying the walls will allow you to move between areas, and when you do so the wall segments explode. Somewhat justified in the case of the Berlin Wall segments since a campaign mission which takes place on the same map has the Soviets rigging the wall with explosives. However there's also a bunch of wooden fences which also go kaboom rather inexplicably.
• The Soviet and Chinese tanks in World of Tanks have poorly-protected ammo racks spread throughout the tank, making it easier to be one-shotted by a well-placed round, especially if the penetrating round is a high explosive shot.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Hehehe... Living Bomb. The mages can turn anybody into explodium.
  • Goblin engineers insist that if their machinery is not on the verge of exploding (or in the process of doing so) it's not working right. The use of highly volatile chemicals as structural components probably doesn't help. There are some fan jokes that goblins themselves are Made of Explodium.
• Everything in Worms explodes. EVERYTHING. Sheep, cows, birds, bananas, your (grand)mom, crates (especially ones with sheep in them), mail envelopes, a Priceless Ming Vase, and so on. Even Health crates explode; if someone's unwell worm doesn't quite reach one within its turn, blowing it up is a hilarious way to finish them off. And said worm, as all others, will proceed to also explode after pulling a Plunger Detonator and a few last words. And in certain games, the grave this process leaves will explode too if abused enough. Probably the only non-explosive thing is the terrain that gets cratered by all these blasts.
• In Xenosaga, mechanical enemies generally explode and disappear when killed. In the first two games, a shower of blood accompanied any human deaths.
• Apparently, in the X-Universe series, even your spacesuit is made of explodium, when your Oxygen Meter runs out after two hours in game time (or gets run over or shot, but that's not as funny).

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