Burn Scars, Burning Powers

If you play with fire, you're liable to get burned.

Perhaps it's some weird sense of irony, but there are characters who are well-versed in using fire that happen to possess a burn-based scar somewhere on their body. It's usually on a place where the scar is visible, such as the face.

These types of scars tend to be permanent and usually have traumatic stories behind them, so expect them to be conflicted about their power or scar.

If the scars are self-inflicted, it may count as an aversion of Required Secondary Powers, since it may indicate they are not immune to their own fire. Compare Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga and Brotherhood anime, Riza Hawkeye is not able to use flame alchemy herself but had its method tattooed on her back by her father. At her own request, Roy Mustang burned her back to disfigure the tattoo with a huge scar so that no one else could ever learn its secrets.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Shoto Todoroki, someone who can use fire as part of their Quirk, carries a burn scar across his face thanks to his mother scalding his face with boiling water during a mental breakdown. However some theories suggest that, ironically enough, it isn't a typical burn scar, it might be a severe frost burn from his mother trying to use her ice quirk to heal him.
  • He isn't the only one, as Dabi is also shown to have an even worse scar to the point where staples are used to keep his face together and other parts of his body. His scars came about due to overexerting his Quirk.
  • Their father Enji aka Endeavor picks up one similar to Shoto’s. The boy doesn’t pass up the chance to point it out.
• One Piece:
  • Luffy gets an X-shaped burn scar on his chest after being hit by Admiral Akainu's magma punch. After the Time Skip, Luffy is able to generate fire when using his Gum-Gum Red Hawk attack.
  • Sabo, the adopted brother of Luffy and Ace, gained a burn scar around his left eye as a child after surviving an explosion. Over a decade later he gains the power to control fire using the Flame-Flame Fruit, which had previously been Ace's Devil Fruit before his death.
• Reborn! (2004): Xanxus' face is covered by a large burn scar that was inflicted by the Ninth Vongola Boss' Dying Will Flames when he tried to rebel. Normally only a small scar on his left cheek is visible, but the whole scar appears when Xanxus becomes enraged and uses his own Dying Will Flame, the Flame of Wrath.
• Rurouni Kenshin: Shishio Makoto, Big Bad of the Kyoto Arc, is covered from head to toe with burns after the Meiji government decided he had outlived his usefulness and tried to kill him and then burn his body, to the point that he must constantly be wrapped in bandages and has no sweat glands left. Fire plays a major part in his overall theme when fighting, in particular the fact that the serrated blade of his sword sparks and catches fire from human fats and oils left from previous victims (changed to being impregnated with gunpowder in the anime), giving opponents cut with the sword flash burns. However, his burns also mean he's completely unable to control his own body temperature, and he spontaneously combusts and burns to death after fighting Kenshin for too long.
• Tiger & Bunny: Lunatic, a vigilante who kills criminals with his fire powers, has a burn scar on his face that he hides with makeup in his civilian identity, judge Yuri Petrov. When he was a child, Yuri awakened his fire powers to protect his mother from his abusive father, former superhero Mr. Legend. Yuri set Legend on fire, and as he burned to death, Legend grabbed Yuri's face, leaving a hand-shaped burn scar.

Comic Books

• Flamer from The Boys has fire powers and a body covered in scars.
• X-Men: Occasionally done to the primary Playing with Fire villain mutant, Pyro.
  • Age of Apocalypse: In this universe, Pyro was experimented on by Beast and gained the ability to generate fire by himself. However, he wasn't immune to the flames he produced, resulting in extensive burn scarring.
  • Ultimate X-Men (2001): Pyro in this universe has several burn scars as a result of cauterization.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): It's electricity-based rather than fire-based powers, but otherwise this trope applies to Vivienne and San's first hybridized form, which is covered in keloid-like scars.

Film — Animation

• Tales from Earthsea: Therru has a large burn scar across the left side of her face she gained after her parents burned her. Near the end of the film, she becomes a dragon and uses her fire to kill Cob.

Film — Live-Action

• Shin Godzilla: Godzilla is a gigantic monster who's basically a living nuclear reactor and is able to fire a plasma beam from his mouth and also from his tail and back as well. Despite his immense size and power, however, Godzilla has an extremely sickly and cancerous look, not unlike the burns of people exposed to fire or radiation. He appears to be in constant pain, dripping blood and body parts everywhere, his charred skin covered in open wounds and glowing red keloid scars.

Literature

• Downplayed in later volumes of The Asterisk War. Julis is normally immune to her own flames, so Ayato is surprised when she starts turning up with burns after training with Fan Xinglou. No mention of permanent scars yet, though.
• Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files is a wizard who prefers fire magic and gains a handful of specific fire abilities over the course of the series (Hellfire and Soulfire), but he also burns his hand so badly at one point he cannot even use it.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Downplayed with Student Council President Alvin Godfrey. He specializes in casting fire spells with extreme power, but used to burn his own arms doing it until Clifton Morgan taught him how to control it properly.
• The Rise of Kyoshi: Kyoshi, being the Avatar, can control all four elements. That didn't stop her from getting badly burnt on her hands, leading to her constantly wearing gloves.
• Worm: Burnscar of the Slaughterhouse Nine is a pyrokinetic whose face is dotted with Cigarette Burns leading from her eyes to her jaw, which she's implied to have gotten before — or as — she triggered, as at the present time, she's Immune to Fire as part of her Required Secondary Powers.

Live-Action TV

• Arrowverse: Mick "Heat Wave" Rory is an arsonist and pyromaniac who specializes in the use of a flamethrower and has a number of self-inflicted burn scars. Additionally, during season 3 of Legends of Tomorrow, he acquires the Fire Totem and gains actual fire superpowers.
• CSI: NY: During the first two episodes of season 9, the team deals with an arsonist who has a nasty burn scar on his right hand courtesy of his abusive mother, who (ironically) was a nurse in a burn unit. She had also repeatedly punished him by making him sit in the basement, where he would stare at the fire in a wood-burning stove for hours at a time. These things contributed to him becoming a firebug.
• The Witcher (2019): Rience is a rogue mage who specializes in taboo fire magic. When he threatens Yennefer with a small flame in a tavern, she spits alcohol in it, turning it into a fireball that gives him a distinctive facial burn scar.

Tabletop Games

• In Nomine: Belial is the Demon Prince of Fire and has great control over fire. His skin is covered in burn scars.
• Pathfinder:
  • Oracles with the Blackened curse have shriveled and blackened forearms, as if they had plunged their arms into a bonfire. The curse inflicts a penalty on weapon attack rolls but adds several fire spells to the character's spell list.
  • Emberkin aasimars, descended from fire-connected outsiders called peri, can take the "Burnished Skin" race trait during character creation, which states they were severely scarred in a fire and grants a bonus on saves against illusions.

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Series: Firefly is a Pyromaniac armed with a flamethrower, and as you can tell once he wears a more skin-baring outfit in Arkham Knight, the majority of his body is covered in third-degree burn scars.
• The Firemen in BioShock Infinite are implied to be this. While you never see them outside of their suits, some of their voicelines indicate they're in extreme pain while unable to take the suits off. There's a good possibility that the suits they wear amplify the agony of the Devil's Kiss Vigor wracking their bodies while keeping them alive through it all until someone finally kills them in a hail of gunfire.
• Fate Series:
  • Karna, the son of the Sun God Surya, has a fairly interesting appearance, as among other peculiarities he appears to wear a black tightsuit that covers most of his body except the head, neck, and chest area. That... is not a tightsuit. That's his skin, which has turned entirely black from the flames inflicted on him by his father upon birth. It's one gigantic burn scar. And being the son of a sun god, Karna has so much literal fire power that he emits flames from his body at all times.
  • In her third Ascension, Kama obtains a Celestial Body with limbs that look cracked and eminate blue fire from the inside. That's a reference to "her" myth of origin, in which "she" was burned to ashes by Shiva for disrupting his meditation and then was spread across the universe. On other words, the third Ascension is Kama in the process of being burned alive. And yes, she makes liberal use of that fire in her attacks.
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: Ember, along with her father, was burned at the stake as a witch by Prelate Hulrun as a child, but she was rescued from her pyre by a compassionate knight. Her body is heavily burn-scarred and missing three fingers, and she can cast a number of fire spells that aren't normally on the Witch spell list. Mechanically, her subclass was developed by Owlcat Games as a hybrid of the Witch and Oracle classes: she has the Blackened curse from the latter class.
• Persona 2: King Leo, who has a Persona with fire skills and is a known serial arsonist, has a burn scar on the left side of his face which cost him his eye. Tatsuya did that with his own fire-based Persona ten years prior in response King Leo trying to kill him.

Visual Novels

• Dies Irae: Eleonore von Wittenburg received a nasty burn scar on the left side of her face in combat prior to the start of the story. And even though she has the means to heal it now she keeps them due to her superior finding it beautiful, the same superior who gave her her powers to call down hellfire upon her foes.

Web Animation

• RWBY: Cinder's Semblance is the power to superheat anything she touches, which she usually uses to transform sand or Dust into obsidian weapons. She is also scarred on the left side of her face, which she hides with her hair and a mask. When she becomes the Fall Maiden, she heavily favours the fire element. However, to steal the Maiden powers, she fused herself to a Grimm, which is vulnerable to the power of Ruby's silver eyes; when Ruby's powers activate at the end of Volume 3, Cinder is left with burns on the left side of her body. In addition to the damage this does to her face, she loses her left arm, which gets replaced by a Grimm arm that can also steal Maiden power.

Webcomics

• Team Fortress 2: The flamethrower wielding Pyro from Team Fortress Classic is seen unmasked, and she turns out to have a burn scar over one eye.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Zuko, a Fire Bender, gained a facial scar courtesy of his father, one that persists throughout his life in the Avatar story.
  • Azula strikes Aang with lightning while he's in the Avatar State, entering from his back and exiting through his left foot, leaving scars in both points for the rest of the series. As the Avatar, he eventually learns to control all elements, fire being the last one.
  • The silent assassin known only as Combustion Man has a nearly unique firebending ability to cause explosions with his mind. Unfortunately, the ability being so rare meant no one was around to teach him to control it, causing him to accidentally blow off his own right arm and right leg when it first manifested.
• Superjail!: Ash is a third-degree burn victim, scarred head to toe, who is shown to have pyrokinesis.

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