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alt title(s): Convection Shmonvection; Convection Smonvection 
Nothing says fun like a battle inside an active volcano!
"Professor! Lava! Hot!" - Professor Farnsworth, Futurama
Lava, primal force, essence of destruction that leaves behind fertile land. Really, really hot.
As awesome as lava is, most TV writers and video game developers forget that last part. The hero is making his way through the Lethal Lava Land, but wait! There are floating rocks, he can make it across in a really dramatic way! Except, in the real world, the rising heat would have fried him already. ( And rocks do not float in lava.) Put your hand above a barbecue (or even a candle) and you have an idea of how hot that room, or cave, or Collapsing Lair should be. While it's possible for the outer layer of lava to cool, forming an insulating shell where the inner layer flows but people can get close to it relatively safely as long as they don't touch it, this is never seen in fiction where red-hot lava flows as free and exposed as ever.
Convection, the process by which a liquid or gas (like air) forms currents that very quickly spread heat from a hot thing to its environment, does not exist in TV land. Convection Schmonvection - as long as you don't touch the lava, you're okay. Has anyone ever used an oven, by any chance? No.
Note that as used in this trope, convection also includes heat radiation as well.
TV also ignores the other hazards of volcanoes and lava flows, such as toxic gases and blinding, choking ash.
Although lava is the primary offender, this also applies to any time convection is ignored for the sake of Rule Of Cool, such as when a character is standing above or near a large fire or any other extreme heat source. If you don't touch the raging inferno, boiling lake, or white-hot walls, you'll be fine.
For some reason, the reverse is demonstrated a bit more realistic; characters will feel cold in a cave or other area that's in perpetual winter, or frigid enough to have ice form on the walls. However, as long as they bundle up, the most they'll ever get is a longing for some hot cocoa and a warm fireplace.
Keep in mind this can be Art Major Physics just as much as You Fail Physics Forever.
See also: Lava Pit, Battle Amongst The Flames, Do Not Touch The Funnel Cloud, and Harmless Freezing. Toasted Buns is a related trope.
A complete but no more accurate inversion is Space Is Cold, where there is no convection, but TV acts as though there is.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In the Pokemon anime, Cinnabar Island's Gym is now located in a volcano. The characters comment on the heat inside, but Fire and Rock Types can withstand the intense temperature without actually having to fall in(with the exception of Magmar). This makes it especially awesome when the deciding rematch for the Volcano Badge takes place over a Lava Pit, with Charizard surviving a full dunk with nary a burn.
- Yellow's second battle against Lance in the Pokémon Special takes place in and around the crater of an active volcano. Despite being inches from the lava, Yellow is fine thanks to riding on the Substitute shaped like a surfboard that Pika makes.
- It gets leagues more ridiculous. Lance was able to survive Yellow's Pika making a lava cyclone (by surfing!) using a shield made of bubbles.
- The bubble shield is truth in television, it's called the liedenfrost(SP?) effect. granted it probably doesn't work the way lance does.
- Ronin Warriors twists this around so much. When the heroes are split up, Ryo is found in an active volcano. His power is fire based, so the lava makes his mystic armor stronger, but it gives off heat. When Anubis throws two unarmored characters into the volcano, Ryo dives after them but realizes that his armor's heat will kill them if he grabs them, but the fact they're in a volcano doesn't bothers him.
- In Naruto, the Katon (Fire Element) jutsus in the series are absolutely useless. Of course, they're always made out to be a big deal, but the absolute worst case in the series was when Asuma technically (If you've seen it, you know what I mean) took a high-level Fire jutsu face first against Hidan, and got away with mussed hair and a dusty cheek. Played to a hilarious degree during the Valley of the End fight between Naruto and Sasuke, when a fire jutsu from Sasuke leaves the rocks beneath Naruto literally glowing; Naruto isn't so much as singed, although he is somehow weakened.
- In the case of Asuma it is more the fault of the manga being in black and white. Its clearer in the anime that the "dusty cheek" is pinkish burned flesh that covers parts of his face and most of his right arm and hand. The damage is still less than one would expect though when it is supposed to be from such a large explosion of flames.
- The fight with Haku has an implication that the effectiveness of fire jutsu depends on how much chakra is used to create it. Makes some sense since the fire technically isn't naturally created.
- In another example, from the Naruto: Shippuden the Movie, the priestess Shion goes running to where some evil demon's body is sealed in a shrine located along a thin strip of rock. In a volcano. Barefoot. This also throws into question why one would put a shrine in a freak'n volcano.
- Also, during Sasuke and Naruto's battle on the roof of the hospital, Sasuke uses his signiture Fireball Jutsu, and as the flames clear... there's Naruto, powering up a Rasengan. Without a scratch or burn whatsoever. You just have to say WTF.
- Itachi's Amaterasu, which creates black fire said to be hot as the surface of the sun, should destroy everything in the area of its use, but you can get right next to it unless it touches you (then it needs to be sealed/brought down by its user or it keeps burning). In fact, Karin was actually set on fire by it very briefly when Sasuke set the fully transformed 8-Tails on fire and it hit her without suffering anything but a burnt cloak.
- Some fans think the statement about Amaterasu's heat is hyperbole. A more accurate statement given is that Amaterasu is an all-consuming flame that can't be easily extinguished.
- Unless the fire is black specifically BECAUSE the convection is being suppressed. If no light is escaping, no heat would either.
- There are also some who theorize that said character who was set on fire did get injured, but had some sort of Healing Factor that prevented any visible injury.
- The battle between Itachi and Sasuke gives an utterly bizarre subversion as someone is able to shoot multiple giant fireballs who's heat (along with that of Amaterasu) raises up to the sky and rapidly forms a thundercloud
 .
- Among Naruto fans, this trope (the apparent inability of fire techniques to do anything but spectacular collateral damage) is referred to as "Katon syndrome".
- Recently (though in a flashback) Nagato became the first person to actually be injured by fire as his legs were badly burned (possibly permantly) by a crapload of paper bombs.
- Actually, Orochimaru was injured when Sasuke set him on fire during their fight in the Forest of Death, but that isn't a big deal for Orochimaru. Much more recently, Danzo would have been killed by getting set on fire, but he was able to make it so it never happened.
- Finally, Danzo summoned an elephant like creature that snorts everything up with his slurf and allowed the damage of Sasuke's Fireball to be done internally, thus no need to actually show scorched skin and such. You better believe Sasuke took the opportunity to actually defeat something with his Katon with open arms.
- Hidan was blown to bits by several bombs going off in his face, but he doesn't appear to be so much as slightly singed. He's just... in pieces.
- The Mizukage can spit lava. It not burning her can just be taken as Required Secondary Powers, but it's hot enough to melt stone yet doesn't effect people standing right next to it.
- During Bleach's Fake Karakura Town arc, Yamamoto traps Aizen, Gin and Kaname inside a giant ball of fire. They just stand there looking pretty for a few chapters and when it's finally extinguished they don't appear any worse for wear.
- Speed Racer and another driver almost fall into an active volcano while racing, but they are able to climb up the side no problem. Another episode has a race inside a volcano. Speed drives the Mach 5 through lava. The tires don't even melt.
- In Mai-Otome Mashiro and Arika end up eaten by some sort of monster that has lava in its gut. Despite being in a close space with lava only inches away, they are fine.
- Makoto from Ghost Hound runs into a heavily burning house to save his mother, without wearing any protection whatsoever, thus doing something that even the firemen in their fireproof suits couldn't pull off. The fire also appears to be totally smoke free.
- Subverted in Mega Man NT Warrior. Cross Fusion MegaMan and ProtoMan are standing inside a volcano in one episode, and it doesn't affect them a bit. However, the second Lan drops his armor to load more battlechips, he starts dancing around like he's burned, and Chaud warns him to hurry up or he'll be cooked alive from the heat coming from the magma.
- Yu-Gi-Oh GX has Nightshroud force Jaden into a duel by kidnapping his friends and placing them in a life-or-death situation. This isn't unusual in a series where card games save the world, but it fits this trope because said life-or-death situation is suspending Jaden's friends in a force field inches above a lava pool in a volcano (with the English version characters making wisecracks like "Now I know what a grilled cheese feels like" all the while). Did I mention the duel actually takes place in said volcano? Toasty!
- One Piece had a filler arc where the Big Bad had eaten a Devil Fruit that allowed him to increase his body temperature to 10000 degrees Celcius, something that causes an underwater volcano to erupt underneath the ice archipelago they're on, which eventually culminates with Luffy and the big bad duking it out with magma surrounding them, with said villain literally standing in the lava without any effect. It could be handwaved that he is hotter than the magma, thus making it seem rather cool in comparison, but Luffy literally only has a block of ice seperating him from being melted, with only breaking a minor sweat.
- Not only that, but Luffy comes into direct contact with said Big Bad more than once during the fight and aside from a few superficial burns he's all right.
- Like that weren't enough, that contact never lasted very long, just long enough for Luffy to get in a hit, and he quickly learned that this was a bad idea. But at the end of the fight, he maintains contact for several seconds with the guy like a few inches away from him before finally pushing him away. He's injured sure, but it's just generic battle injuries. None the worse for wear from having been in close proximity and actually touching a guy that's 10K degrees.
- Now the manga's gotten in on the act with the revelation that Akainu is a magma Logia. He's duking it out with Whitebeard and while he is doing pretty well, he's not doing as well as he should given the fact that HE'S MADE OF FRIKKIN LAVA!
- Gatchaman episode 99. The team is trapped in a big shaft and manages to get out about a second before lava, that is following them and filling the entire shaft, reaches the top. Injury: none.
- Well, they are wearing super suits. Then again, considering most of their faces are still exposed you'd at least expect a lost eyebrow or two.
- Averted in Gundam Wing. It's shown several times that the title mech's BFG is so powerful that the heatwave generated by the particle beam can incinerate Mooks dozens of feet away from the beam itself.
- Lampshaded in Hayate the Combat Butler: Hayate and Koutetsu have a duel on a rock surrounded by lava while everyone else watches from the sidelines. Miki and Riza lampshade this trope just before Isumi's dress catches on fire, promptly ending the duel.
Comic Books
- The Fantastic Four's Human Torch can safely carry people and objects by extinguishing the flame on his hands. Being right next to the rest of his flaming body is apparently not a problem (though, admittedly, it would be much hotter above the Torch than next to him).
- It has been said that The Human Torch can control who/what he burns with his flame. It's not always followed, though.
- Subverted in one issue of X-Force, where Wolverine's daughter, X-23 was above a vat of molten metal, and falls. The next time we see her, all her hair has burned away and she has third-degree burns all over, though he clothes are still intact. Turns out she bounced off the side of the vat to the ground, but the brief exposure to the heat was still enough to harm her.
- Lampshaded in an issue of DC's Young Justice:
Empress: Mon, this place makes no sense. In an active lava field, the ground is so hot, you can get incinerated just by standing on it. How come we still got feet even?
Robin: You're complaining because it wasn't more difficult?!? Are you nuts?!
Film
- Again played as a game of ping pong in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith. The climactic fight between Obiwan and Anakin above a lake of molten lava. They spend most of the fight floating above the lava on platforms with no ill effect from the heat. Multiple Techno Babble and handwave explanations exist, but mostly people don't care because it is pretty awesome. But then the trope is averted when Anakin suffers horrible burns when not touching the lava later. These inconsistencies and the confusion surrounding them has kicked off more than a few ''flame'' wars.
- Having just watched the movie, it seems pretty clear that the various flying platforms, droids, and factory bits that have to go near the lava have some sort of forcefield protecting them; there's a faint, wavery blue effect under anything that protrudes over the lava, and when the effect vanishes the bit that's no longer protected promptly breaks off and falls in—with, granted, Obi-Wan and Anakin still on it, and they don't die, so there has to be some handwaving about them using the Force to protect themselves until they get flying platforms of their own to stand on. Clearly at the end of the fight Anakin's too depleted to start up or maintain whatever effect they were using.
- Further, while the Star Wars movies as a whole present an interesting thermodynamic problem with lightsabers (stated to be so efficient they don't actually release any heat until they touch liquid or solid matter)—energy blades so hot they can cut through military-armor-grade metal with only the slightest resistance—an entirely other problem came to light in Episode I. Qui-Gon Jinn stabbed his lightsaber into a blast-door and started cutting through it. This required more time than, say, cutting off a mechanical hand, and so his hands were less than six inches away from from metal used to make a blast door that was so hot chunks of it were flowing away on liquefied other bits of it. And yet he didn't burst into flames and run around screaming. Curious.
- This is actually more realistic than it sounds. Air is a poor conductor of heat, so when you cut through metal, most of the heat around the cut is transferred to the surrounding metal, not to the air. The air that heat is being transferred to would quickly rise, preventing the air around the cut from becoming too hot. Unlike a lava flow, which has volume on it's side, there simply isn't enough total heat around to be so dangerous unless you touch (even the non-glowing) metal. Qui-Gon would have still felt the heat, but it would have been bearable.
- On the other hand, lightsabers have been calculated to be about 2,000,000 degrees, which is pretty hot, and there would be no way to keep the heat restrained to the blade.... so, yeah.
- No way short of Applied Phlebotinum, which is explicitly called out (part of building a lightsaber is making sure all the heat is contained) and no more unlikely than the phlebotinum needed to even have a lightsaber in the first place. So whatever.
- Lampshaded in the novel as the nemodians locked behind the door desperately ask themselves that very question.
- If you watch, Qui-gon once pulls his lightsaber out of the door, and stabs it back in again— rather than simply switching it off, and then back on, to stab it in again; so perhaps it has a hand-guard of some sort, which he didn't want to de-activate since it was protecting him. Lightsabers can block/deflect energy, as well as project it, so this could be what he's doing here.
- On the other end of the spectrum, the (in more ways than one) disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, among other examples of terrible, terrible science featured a scene where a main character runs down a hallway where the temperature is dropping so fast that moisture in the air turns to ice on the walls in less than a second. Despite the fact that he's only wearing normal clothes and a coat, our hero seems to be in no danger as long as he doesn't let the rapidly forming ice catch him - the air a few feet in front of the death zone is only somewhat chilly (and moving slower than a running human). He also manages to hold back the cold entirely by entering a room with a fireplace and shutting the door, but that's a different issue.
- Amazingly, this is the least of the movie's problems; cold air is fairly harmless for short periods of time, but the movie earlier shows a man freezing to death within seconds of entering the super-cold air.
- Despite breaking almost as many scientific rules as The Day After Tomorrow, The Core actually averted this nicely. One crewman had to step outside safe area of the ship, never touched lava, and still burned to death.
- That may be notable as just about the only time the film paid any attention to the laws of physics... and there was still a good amount of utterly spurious nonsense talked about how that scene would work...
- Used in the movie version of The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of the King, in which two barefoot hobbits were able to walk on the rock of an erupting volcano, only a few feet from the flowing lava on either side. To be fair, the soles on Hobbit feet are about as leathery as shoes (and in theory the rock they were walking on hadn't had time to heat up yet—rock's a pretty bad conductor). Also slips up when Gollum and The One Ring fall into the Crack of Doom, neither show any signs of burning even when Gollum gets completely submerged.
- The last example is arguably not a slip-up. The DVD director's commentary says that he knew Gollum would have dissolved into ash on the way down, long before he hit the lava, but he chose not to do so, so that the audience could see the look on Gollum's face as he realises the Ring has betrayed him in his moment of triumph. Also, in showing that Gollum keeps the Ring out of the lava for as long as possible as he sinks shows that the it still holds great power over him, and he desires to protect it even then. Tragic.
- It's also reasonably possible that the Ring's life-prolonging power was able to defend its bearer against the heat for a short time, the same way it was able to defend him from aging for 500 years. It's THE RING. When literally inches away from being destroyed, it's going to be using everything it's got.
- Since we brought up Terminator 2, it should be mentioned that this trope was lightly averted during the final chase scene when Sarah Connor declares that it is "too hot" to approach the open pit of molten metal.
- A similar event in the Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man in which the villain holds a blowtorch mere inches away from a floor which is covered in gasoline. Never mind that the fumes coming from it would have surely caught fire instantly, as long as the naked flame doesn't touch the liquid itself it's fine.
- The Mythbusters have shown that, as long as you've not mistaken it for diesel, it's very difficult to ignite petrol/gasoline.
- With a match or sigaret. A blowtorch is a tad hotter.
- Dante's Peak has a scene where a truck drives over lava and the tires only melt a little. Other than that, though, it was a fairly well-researched movie.
- Unlike Volcano, where, after blocking the lava with concrete barriers, the fire fighters lean over the top of said barriers while laughing about the lava.
- A documentary about volcanoes which also reviewed the scientific accuracy of the above films. One geologist remarked that he and his colleagues would pay a lot of money to have one of those trucks that could drive on lava.
- The scene in the subway in Volcano is an utter howler; a man is able to move around in a train car so hot it's actually melting all around him, making it so hot all the "survivors" he's rescuing would have been incinerated. Then came the part where the stupid man stupidly jumps into lava, stupidly remaining conscious and throwing another grown adult clear of it, and then stupidly melting. And it was stupid, did we mention that? Especially the utterly ridiculous premise that people were actually using the subway in Los Angeles.
- The Incredibles has plenty of fun with lava. Mr. Incredible gets awfully close to it during his first fight with the Omnidroid, while the Omnidroid actually falls into the lava, and emerges unscathed, even though it's so hot it's glowing orange. Maybe heat resistance is another of Mr. Incredible's superpowers (he seemed just fine in the scene in the burning apartment); maybe the Omnidroid was made from heat-resistant Unobtainium. Either way, there's no excuse for non-superpowered Syndrome (and presumably Mirage) not being cooked alive by the secret passageway with walls made of flowing lava. Maybe they had force fields or something.
- That's very probable given that the lava was neatly divided in two like in a bad flashback to Moses and the Red Sea. Normally lava is far too ... chunky to divide like that. Remember: It may be molten stone, but it's still stone.
- Also, Mr. Incredible got inches from the lava of the secret passageway and seems no worse for wear once he dives out the other side.
- You could handwave it all by assuming that, given Syndrome's wealth and apparent disregard for carbon emissions, the room had blast-chiller-grade air conditioning constantly blowing on all the human-occupied regions of the room. But that would presumably solidify the surface of the lava enough to ruin the cool orangey ambience.
- Syndrome. Power: Mega-science. Built a droid that could take on Red Hulk in a fair fight, constructed his own evil island lair, dreamed up gloves that can create mobile, immobilising force fields at range. I suspect that if anyone could find a way to make safe magma, it would be him.
- The scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Willie (the woman) was raised and lowered in an iron cage. She was lowered so close to the molten rock that she should have burst into flames. Just in case the whole "beating heart" thing wasn't
stupid awesome enough...
- The poor sap who gets lowered before her does burst into flames.
- For a more realistic idea of what should have happened to her, see the description of the death by roasting in Silent Hill.
- The novelization goes into full detail of how excruciating the experience was for poor Willie. At one point it even explicitly says that her eyelashes singe and her dress starts smoking, and she eventually passes out from the high temperature.
- In Dragonball Evolution, Goku forms a series of stepping stones across a pit of lava, with corpses.
- The other characters had to walk around the edge of the area to meet back up with him. This could be due to the fact that, as mentioned in many other pages, Goku is a super-powered alien and survived something like this in the original anime more that once. Or it could be due to the fact that
this incarnation of Goku is incredibly dumb and completely missed the safer, cooler path around the pit.
- The destruction of the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin.
- Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D.
- The ending to Godzilla 1985 has the titular monster being trapped in a volcano. Not surprisingly, he's not affected at all by either the lava itself or any of the intense heat. Of course, he is Godzilla.
- In the movie Danger: Diabolik, most famous for being the subject of the final episode of MST3K, the titular character dons a protective suit near the end to keep him safe as he melts down a large bar of gold. He claims that in such a suit he could swim through the sun (though he doesn't say so, he presumably means he could survive the ordeal as well). While this itself is fairly stupid, one has to take notice that there is a noticeable gap between the bottom of the visor and his helmet, as if he didn't shut it properly. Although this does not appear to present a problem when he is later sprayed with molten gold and survives.
- The 2005 movie House Of Wax has the main characters escaping from said house as it melts and burns. Not bothered by the heat at all.
- In Spider-Man 2, Doctor Octopus builds what is effectively a miniature sun. Characters standing a few feet away show no signs of feeling the heat.
- Although the description of a fusion reactor in Spider-Man 2 is bad, it's still not as bad as in the movie The Saint where a fusion reaction is contained in a glass jar. Stars are powered by fusion reactions. Stars in general are not known for their utter lack of heat.
- It's supposed to be "Cold Fusion", and while that has it's own share of physics problems, it wouldn't be the heat
- The infamous Sci Fi Channel Original Movie Raptor Island features a scene where the female lead runs across a tree over a river of lava.
- It's also a good thing air doesn't conduct heat— at least in that movie, apparently, since that's the meaning of "convection." (Also there's heat-radiation).
- Mostly avoided in The Chronicle of Riddick. The surface of the planet Crematoria is shown to be molten on the day side due to the stupendous power of its sun. When the heroes are caught in the sunrise during their escape, the air is so hot that they shed their coats and are sweating heavily even when they seek shelter in the shade. A bit later, a character commits suicide by walking outside and after a few seconds spontaneously combusts from the heat.
- You call that avoided? I guess convection stops working in the shade.
- A planet with a substantial atomosphere would also spread the heat across the nightside. If the planet is molten on one side, an atmosphere would make sure it would be molten on the other side, too.
- In The Road to El Dorado, the main characters are chased across a cracking layer of volcanic rock by a large stone jaguar. Lava comes within inches of splattering on them. But it must not be very hot itself, because the stone critter pops right back out.
- In Brother Bear, Koda and Kenai traverse a field of heat (supposed to be lava...) This is impressive for two reasons: Kenai gets continuously hit by jets of steam (a la Princess Bride and the Swamp) and the nearby areas are covered in SNOW!
Literature
- Averted in The Bible, of course. When Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego were being cast into the fiery furnace, the flames were said to be so hot that the soldiers who threw them in were incinerated.
- Avoided in HG Wells's story "The Cone", in which a man is thrown from an overhead platform onto the red-hot cone above a blast furnace and dies a horrific death which is described in spectacularly gruesome detail. DO NOT, I beg you, read this story if you are the slightest bit squeamish.
- Conspicuously averted in KJ Parker's Pattern, second volume of the Scavenger Trilogy. The main character comes up with a way to divert the flow of lava from a volcano away from his home village; the author's note remarks that although it seems far-fetched, this was based on a method used to divert the lava flow from Mount Etna in 1669. The villagers participating have to wear multiple layers of protective clothing to get anywhere near the lava flow, and several of them get burned anyway.
- In the first Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, the giant Foamfollower carries Covenant across Hotash Slay, a river of lava. Foamfollower, being a giant, is immune to fire and so can withstand the heat of the lava; Covenant, however, should have been fried before Foamfollower even stepped into the river. There is some effort at Hand Waving this - it is implied that Covenant's ring is involved - but still, it's fairly ludicrous.
- Well, Covenant is torn between believing that the Land is real or the opposite. It could use some lampshading.
- Subverted in the Artemis Fowl series, where occasionally in the lower regions, flares from the mantle are used to transfer to the surface. When a main character ends up on the wrong side of the blast doors, it mentions that while the lava wouldn't spill into the tunnel, the wave of heat would bake her.
- In Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain novels, explicitly invoked and averted. Once Cain claims that a plasmabolt missed him by a millimeter. In a footnote, Amberley points out that he would have suffered flash burns that close, so he was wrong about the distance.
- In the Sword Of Truth series, this is subverted with Nicci punishing a general by tying him to a spit several feet over a fire pit, and letting him die from the radiating heat.
- Averted in Iain M. Banks's Look to Windward. Lava-rafting is a pastime on Masaq' Orbital and the tradition is that you use just barely enough technology to make it feasible (it's what people called a minimal-safety-factor sport). Banks explicitly notes that "once the eight Plates had been filled with air, it had become more of a hardship; radiated heat was joined by convected, and while people felt it was somehow more authentic to raft without breathing gear, having your lungs scorched was generally no more fun than it sounded."
"Ah! My Nose! My nose!"
- Also mentioned in an Iain M Banks novel when describing protective suits. 'It was said that the suits were tested by dropping them into a volcano and making sure they came out the other end. In fact the tests where rather more rigorous than that but it made for a nice story' (there needs to be a symbol for quotes which shows that you are quoting the gist, but have not got every word exactly right).
- The novel would be Excession.
- Averted in Animorphs:
Ax: <You do not have to worry about the lava, Cassie>
Cassie: "Thanks, Ax."
Ax: <If you fell, I believe you would be incinerated before you hit the actual magma.>
- The same joke is used again (or before?) in the ''Hork Bajir Chronicles", this time using the core of the planet as the source of the magma.
- Averted in the Warhammer 40000 Grey Knights novel Dark Adeptus, where a villain holds Alaric a distance above an active fusion reactor causing him to start toasting despite his armour and superhuman toughness.
Live Action TV
- Subverted on MacGyver. In the episode "Flame's End", the villain has locked him and a companion in a room at a nuclear power plant and he plans to flood it with the reactor's coolant water. Mac's companion points out that convection alone is going to kill them long before they have a chance to drown, scald, or be irradiated to death.
- Played straight on Doctor Who episode "The End of the World". Solar heat is shown to be a terribly lethal thing to let through, with special sun visors to block it out. But when the visors come down, the victims have plenty of time to scream and DUCK to avoid them (with mixed success, depending on the room and whether the Doctor is nearby). The walls seem to stand up to the energy reasonably well, too.
- Also played straight in "Fires of Pompeii", where the characters react to being inside a volcano in much the same way that one would react to being in a sauna.
- Although, the Pyroviles were using all the volcano's energy, presumably cooling it down a great deal. The Doctor even explains that Vesuvius isn't a volcano, because of the Pyroviles.
- In the Star Trek Voyager episode "Basics, part II", the "don't touch the lava" rule is very much in effect when, during an evacuation from a volcanic eruption, Chakotay rescues an alien girl who's somehow gotten herself stranded on a piece of rock.
- In an episode of the original Knight Rider, the car runs over a lava spillage not once, but twice. The tires are a little melted, but the Magical Impregnable Alloy protecting KITT is just a little dirty. You can see it here in all its... glory?
- Mythbusters once tested firewalking over charcoal. The build team found out that coal is actually a decent insulator; the top being much cooler than the undershide, and that the proper technique is a casual walk. This is because when running, more weight is concentrated on less area, causing a persons feet to dig into the coals; potentially causing severe burns.
Tabletop Games
- Averted in Dungeons And Dragons, where extreme heat or cold will damage you if you get too close to its source. Falling into it merely deals a great deal more damage.
- Not only that, but the game includes rules for related things like hypothermia, sunstroke, sandstorms and forest fires. Notable in that you can't outrun a forest fire, and smoke inhalation from a fire (or lava or volcanic vent) at first damages you, and then is quite capable of killing you. You don't even want to consider attempting to assault the red dragon's volcano lair without magical protections against the heat effects, or else the superheated air will kill off a party long before even seeing said dragon.
- Played straight however with certain spells. If a wizard casts a fireball spell and you are 20 feet away expect to take up to 10d6 damage, more than you'd get from sticking a foot in lava. If you are 20 feet and 1 inch away? You're fine. Possibly justified as being intentionally designed that way by whoever invented the spell, allowing you to roast enemies while not harming your allies. It is magic after all.
- In what has to be one of the weirdest things about gameplay, an "Unearthly Heated" environment (anything over 211 F) deals 3d10 fire damage a round. Physical contact with magma? 2d6. Granted, total immersion deals ten times as much damage as simple contact, but when was the last time a character survived being *dunked* in lava long enough to be considered totally immersed, with charting HP still relevant?
- The logic behind this is as follows: contact is defined as physically touching the lava with your arms or feet, while superheated air affects the whole surface of your body. Thus, the damage is much larger, since the area affected by burns is also much greater. Total immersion means when you jump or fall into a pool of lava.
- The latest edition's rules for falling into lava are simpler. You die.
- Averted and played straight in the various versions of GURPS. There is a spell, "Heat", that raises the temperature of an object or area by 20F per minute. Averted in the spell note that the heat radiates away normally, so "if you were in a jail, you might melt your way through the bars, but the radiated heat would probably broil you first"... then played straight in that G Ms are explicitly told not to turn the spell into a physics exercise.
Video Games
Countless video games have Lethal Lava Land levels that you don't lose health for just being in. For example:
- Averted in Star Fox 64. The sun/molten planet (the games are inconsistent on this) Solar's heat will damage your Arwing just by being in the area.
- Some Adventures levels contain lava, none of which is harmful to be near, but which causes damage for as long as Fox stands on it.
- In Super Mario 64, you can jump great distances, land in lava, and only lose three hit points.
- In fact, 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.
- Although fun fact, the very first Super Mario Bros game treats the lava exactly like red water, it's not the contact that kills you, it's falling through it down the bottomless pit that kills you.
- Now, it just makes Mario run around like an idiot for three seconds, grabbing his butt and screaming "AAAAHHH - hothothothot!" It's a toss-up as to which fate is worse.
- I would like to point out that Super Mario confronts many things worse than this, like being shot out of a cannon and using a hat to fly (and those are useful non harmful things!). Reality has no place in Super Mario.
- In Yoshi's Island, the first leg of "The Very Loooooooooong Cave" has flowing lava on the floor and icicles on the ceiling. Of course, said icicles are entirely stable until you get close to them.
- New Super Mario Bros Wii raises the bar with a level (8-4 I think) 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 Super Mario 3 as well, but here, even veterans are guaranteed to have Mario coming within pixels of the lava without getting too hot (if the lava does touch you, it's an instant kill).
- Mega Man X 5 has a particularly impressive volcano stage, with periodic floods of lava that kill you instantly (as lava traditionally does in Mega Man games). The only way to explore the lava zones is with a special Mini Mecha suit you can find halfway through. It's so close to avoiding the trope, but then you notice there's no helmet on the suit....
- In the same X5 level, lava flash-floods the entire screen, but jutting rocks create rectangular safe-zones. X and Zero and completely unaffected by the lava when they hide in these zones.
- Mega Man Zero generally has at least one per game, and even in Ice form Zero takes no damage when he's not standing right in the lava.
- Mega Man 2 features Heat Man's level, in which Mega blithely hops around a river of lava while taking no damage. Touching the lava is an instant kill, though.
- Let us note that Mega Man is a robot. Whether or not convective heat would actually hurt him is a subject we are not going to get into today.
- Mega Man 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.
- That doesn't necessarily mean the rest of him won't melt, unless he's 100% titanium.
- Also consider that 3,034 degrees is the point where he would be a liquid. At 2,200 degrees he would have lost most structural integrity and sure wouldn't want to be jumping around very much.
- 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.
- Many Sonic The Hedgehog 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 And 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 (at one point, the entire screen is engulfed in flames), yet Sonic 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.
- 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.
- Exception: The Metroid series, where you'll incur constant, significant damage from being in a hot area without the Varia armor upgrade. In the Prime series, your HUD will also warn you that your life-support system is in danger of failing due to overheating.
- Moving from environment to weaponry, the Plasma Beam in MP3: Corruption exhibits conduction effects as well. Shooting most things will cause them to heat visibly; hit a heat-sensitive target (ice, some metals) and the target melts, along with anything else heat-sensitive in proximity to the target.
- In the first Prime, if you fire your power beam rapidly, there will be visible distortion as hot air rises from the end of your gun. Neat.
- Fusion also applies the aversion to areas of extreme cold. Without the Varia suit mod, Samus takes the same damage in sub-zero areas (Sector 5, Subzero Containment) as she does in super-heated areas (Sector 3).
- Zero Mission, at first glance, seems to play it straight more often than not. Whereas in Super and Fusion, practically any room with lava in it is considered super-hot, numerous rooms in Norfair with 'lava' present allow you to run about without the Varia suit as long as you don't touch the 'lava'. A closer examination of these rooms reveals, however, that the 'lava' is in fact acid.
- In both Zero Mission and Super Metroid, having both the Varia suit mod and the Gravity suit mod allows Samus to move unharmed through lava. In Super Metroid (which first distinguished lava from acid, the first being solid orange, the latter watery bubbling yellow), acid is still impossible to enter without losing health rapidly, but Zero Mission has this combo grant immunity to lava and acid both. Of course, it also has the Varia suit grant the lava immunity and the Gravity suit doesn't work until near the end of the game, after the titual Zero Suit section has been played through.
- 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.
- It does not help that 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.
- Doom has levels that take place in Hell of all places, with entire levels made up of lava and radioactive waste. Which of course doesn't do damage unless you're in contact with it.
- Unless, of course, you are able to skit across the lava in under a second. If you do, no scorched feet for you!
- And even then, you are able to stand on top of the molten lava and radioactive waste with your health slowly bleeding away. Even when it hits zero, all you do is collapse into a small pile of ex-Marine on the top of the dangerous substance. Also note that the damage does not apply to the demons, or even the zombified humans. Hurrah for logic!
- Well, they're demons and they're from hell. One would hope they're used to it by this point.
- And zombies aren't really alive. One shouldn't have to worry about their health much post mortem.
- Worse than that, the Doom 2 level "Limbo", features vast expanses of crusted lava which don't even burn your feet when you have to cross them, even though that sort of lava does burn you in all the other levels.
- It should be noted that this is hell, which is supposed to be full of fire that burns but doesn't consume.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Of course, there are many examples in Final Fantasy.
- In the first Final Fantasy, not only could you only be hurt by standing in lava, you were only hurt when you moved, allowing you to stand in lava pools indefinitely. Not only that, but standing in lava actually prevented monsters from attacking, making it far safer to walk around in lava pools then standing on solid rock.
- Bah. Everyone knows that time doesn't pass in an 8 bit or even a 16 bit rpg when you are not moving, which explains the "don't get hurt if you don't move" mechanic perfectly. What isn't so well explained is how you can open up menus, use healing items, and STILL not get hurt until you start walking again.
- Because in an 8 bit rpg the menu is functionally a pause button.
- 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 recoloured "waterfalls" which hurt you as well). In the remake the lava does hurt you, but only for a tiny bit.
- Final Fantasy IV both averts and plays this straight. On the one hand, the airships can't fly over magma flows in the Underworld without reinforced mythril-plated hulls. On the other hand, dungeons that feature lava use the FF I damage mechanic - you don't take damage until you move. Worse, casting Float on your entire party avoids the lava damage entirely, and in combat scenes, your party is shown floating a few inches above the hot stuff. Convection Schmonvection, indeed.
- Same thing in Final Fantasy V, though a Geomancer class exists that allows even that damage to be ignored.
- Granted, the Geomancer is a class who's whole purpose is manipulating the elements with magic. Who's to say that that ability isn't part of the magic, as they cool it by freezing the air around them or something.
- 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.
- On a more subtle note: Sephiroth's hair didn't so as budge.
- 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!
- 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.
- It's actually superheated water (thus why it's clear and the Ice Breath freezes it), which is a little better. As for why a volcano is filled with flowing rivers of hot water. . . yeah, ya got me.
- Thermal springs. They're pretty common around volcanoes.
- 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.
- 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.
- This was used again in the War Chiefs expansion on the Valley Forge level.
- 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.
- A particularly odd use of this trope can be found in Tomb Raider: Aniversary. 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. You can also climb on red hot poles sticking out of the lava.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Not to mention, in the intro, two of the characters are battling each other on falling rocks INSIDE the freaking volcano.
- 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, none of it spills onto the ground.
- In Narbacular Drop, the spiritual ancestor to Portal, you can ride "lava turtles", with only one foot of... something... separating you from the actual lava.
- Used in Urban Chaos: Riot Responce. In the fire levels (where you have to go into a buliding thats 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 of course smoke is the more visible secondary effect of fires.
- Averted in 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 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 more ridiculous 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. In addition to convection, shouldn't the intense heat conduct through the metal and immolate any non-mages on contact?
- 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 pretty much the entire endgame of Prophecies (The final boss fight is in a volcano's caldera!), several Pv P 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.
- Taken to a ridiculous extreme in the Underworld stage of Ninja Gaiden II 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. My brain hurts...
- That's because he's a ninja. The same also applied to the previous game.
- 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.
- Escape from Monkey Island features a log flume on lava. Not that the game takes itself very seriously.
- The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, the titular Oblivion alternate dimension has lava that one is not harmed unless they swim in it, and even then, high level characters can last a long time. Then again, that could just as easily be boiling blood which would be hot, but not 'set you on fire and kill you instantly hot'.
- Lampshaded by one character who actually states that the realm is surprisingly cold for a place filled with lava.
- And considering the skeleton that is on fire that you see the first time you enter an Oblivion Gate, I'll willing to hedge my bets that its lava.
- In the first game of the series, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, swimming in lava required some serious fire protection. But levitating just above it was OK. And yes, lava there was definitely lava.
- In TES 3: Morrowind, there are pools of lava in and around the volcano which dominates the landscape. These only deal damage if you touch them, but even then not much; enchant a few items with constant healing effects, and you're perfectly safe to wade through lava to get wherever you want to go.
- The entire endgame of TES 3 takes place inside an actively erupting' volcano.
- In Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, there is a lava river running through the otherwise totally frozen over Cania. Oddly, it's averted the other way around; you do take cold damage in Cania unless you're near pretty much any fire except the lava river above.
- You're also in hell, so normal laws of physics may not apply.
- 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.
- Lava or the "molten metal" on board the Marathon ship only damages you if you directly touch it, but the green slime onboard the Pfhor ship damages you while you're jumping over it.
- The coolant liquid encountered in the sequels might be justified assuming that it's corrosive rather then super-hot.
- In Tales Of Hearts, where you not only 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.
- 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.
- 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 even then 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 before I forget, you can actually swim in lava without taking damage. All you need is a cape of ice. It's probably magic, but whatever.
- On a related note, 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.
- 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...
- Ratchet And Clank follows this trope. Particularly in Ratchet And 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.
- Quake and its sequels have plenty of lava which is completely safe... until you touch it. Then it's very lethal.
- Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia has you riding a Pokémon across pools of lava. This is made even worse by the Pokémon in question being Torkoal - basically a tortoise-shaped volcano.
- Justified in American McGee's Alice, as Wonderland is entirely inside the heroine's own mind.
- 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 an entire speech about his political views before dying while standing knee deep in lava.
- Taken to ridiculous extremes in the last two levels of the eleventh Touhou game, 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 is even more ridiculous, 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.
- That said, 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."
- As for the Utsuho battle, don't forget the danmaku rule: she has no right to kill the protagonist, therefore she's using a much weaker version of her full power. (Although this bring about another question, spellcard rules were introduced since Reimu's death would spell doom for Gensokyo, but that's what Utsuho whats to do anyways, why does she follow them?) If Utsuho was going all out, Reimu and Marisa would probably quickly have been reduced to piles of glowing green ashes on the floor.
- Donkey Kong Country 2 has at least one lava stage. Touching the lava kills you, the rest of the stage gives no problems.
- And even then, you only die if you submerse yourself completely. You're perfectly safe as long as part of your sprite is poking above the lava.
- Donkey Kong Country 3 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.
- Golden Sun has a Wall Banger in Golden Sun 2. While in Golden Sun 1, you could get heatstroke by walking through a particulary warm desert, you can walk through a volcano (Magma Rock) in GS 2 with nothing happening to you.
- To be fair, the antagonists were able to cross the desert in the first game because they negated the heat with their power over fire. Since you play as the group that traveled with them in the second game, it's feasible that Jenna learned that nifty trick from them.
- Resident Evil 5 is the Most. Guilty. Ever. 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.
- Let's clarify this here. You crash a stealth bomber into a pool of lava. And it just floats there. Then (then!) you get out of the plane, and have a casual gun battle on islands of rock floating in lava oh my god.
- 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 (basically 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.
- I apologise for my overuse of italics but goddamnit it hurts the brain.
- Addendum: while for the first part of the fight, Chris and Sheva are under their "wounded" stances (as if to simulate exhaustion from the heat and/or from the crash), they are back to their normal stances in the second phase. They also do not break a sweat whatsoever.
- Also noteworthy: the boulder that Chris tries to push away and eventually punches away should've burned his hands on first immediate contact.
- Then again, considering that Wesker survives standing waist-deep in the lava long enough for one last hurrah, and may not have died at all (assuming he did) if not for the two rockets he took to the face, even the "don't touch the liquid" part doesn't apply here. It apparently just really fails at being hot at all, especially since fire is the weapon of choice again Ouroboros in any other situation.
- Then again, its Wesker.
- Played painfully straight in 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. Possibly justified by the fact that 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.
- Star Wars Battlefront games are guilty of this. Mustafar is available in Battlefront II, though that can be handwaved by the above explaination. Then 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)...
- On ice levels stormtroopers and rebels get cold-weather gear. The game also only depicts hectic, short battles, with lots of, y'know, running and such. It's not likely that exposure to cold would kill them that quickly. Oh, and there's a one in four chance that a given combatant will be, you know, a robot.
- Both used and averted in the Star Wars RTS, Empire at War. There are a few planets which are volcanic (Sullust, Shola, Aeten II, Mustafar in the exapnsion) and planets which are covered in snow and ice (Hoth, Ilum). The only one that infantry take auto-damage on is Shola. Somehow, infantry and vehicles are immune to going over STREAMS OF LAVA (or entire rivers in the case of hover vehicles on Mustafar in the expansion). Then there's the cold on Hoth and Ilum, acid rain only affecting repulsorlift vehicles on Jabiim (repulsorlift vehicles don't work), and nobody taking damage from Tatooine heat or sandstorms...
- Ocarina of Time 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 Temple of Fire as an adult he has to wear a special magical tunic to protect himself from the heat, otherwise he'll eventually die. None of the later games, 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.
- An especially jarring example would have to be in Twilight Princess, where Link is perfectly fine running around in the Goron Mines. Heck, 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.
- Wind Waker 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. Not to mention the fact the 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.
- Quite possibly the most extreme example comes in 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.
- 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.
- Soul Calibur 3 has a stage where you fight on a rock floating on a lava flow. Nobody even breaks a sweat.
- Partially averted in 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 armour or have drunk the appropriate (magic??) potion. 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 armour. However, most enemies can just walk through the lava as if it's not there.
- Averted in Odin Sphere. 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.
- 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.
- Jedi Academy's penultimate level is 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.
- Averted somewhat in Ultima VII: 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 the infamously flawed 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 wall banger 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!
- Neatly averted in Dwarf Fortress due to its horrendously complicated temperature system, but there's still the little problem that ice is a magma-proof material.
- Technically, it's just that walls don't check temperature. Yet. Next update is probably going to fix that.
- It also plays it horribly straight given 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 basalt 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 instantly since the magma is now occupying the same square.
- Wii Sports Resort, where apparently being inside a volcano is perfectly safe, as long as there's guardrails.
- On the other hand, this area actually has wind coming up (ie, the hot air rising from the lava). And well, it might be safe for humans (they do stay relatively far away and the hot air mostly goes up (since there is no roof)). On the other hand, the arrows didn't seem to have caught on fire.
- 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.
- In The Godfather 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. For better or worse, 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.
- A slight aversion in classic Text Adventure 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.
- Quite a few Pokemon trainers have lava inside their gym, inside their room (in the case of the leagues), or are located near lava.
- Averted by Jak And Daxter. The Zoomer slowly heats up when flying over lava and running out of coolant can even result in the whole thing exploding. If Jak falls into a lava pool, he dies before he hits the lava.
- Averted in Pixeljunk Shooter. Hovering near lava heats your ship, and can cause it to overheat and crash if you linger too long.
Web Original
- Mounty Oum's machinima Dead Fantasy probably takes this to the most extreme. During the second half of part 2, the now 7 fighters end up on a rock raft floating down a river of lava. The raft is less than a foot thick, but does not melt or overheat. Similarly the girls suffer no problems from heat and toxic gas. Sounds pretty standard so far. Then Tifa gets knocked off of the raft. Tifa and Yuna's actions (Yuna shoots Tifa to knock her onto the rocky ledge rather than into the lava) implies that falling in the lava would be fatal, but Tifa then proceeds to RUN ACROSS the lava, suffering no more than ignited shoes used to deliver a fire kick. Even her shoes aren't actually damaged.
- Later, Rinoa freezes the lava. All of it.
- Used again with Tifa and Hitome's Battle Amongst The Flames. The whole church is on fire? No problem, it just makes an awesome backdrop to the fight.
- A particularly blatant example.
Western Animation
- Played straight and lampshaded in 2002 Disney's Tarzan&Jane. The titular heroes and Jane's father escape from inside an erupting volcano, by surfing the rising lava on a piece of rock. The lampshade is hung by one of the characters asking: "Should this even be possible?" to which another answers "Who cares, as long as it's working?". One of the most hilarious sequences in modern animation.
- Jackie Chan Adventures: Averted in one episode. The titular hero escapes an incoming wave of lava, but gets most of his clothes burnt off by the heat.
- Futurama: The entire crew are in a room full of lava and none complain about how hot it is. In fact, Fry almost jumps in without the heat obliterating him - so long as he doesn't actually touch it, he's fine.
- Transformers and lava... Don't go there. Just don't. Some of them have actually survived a dip in the lava itself, despite it being fatal to others. Officially? Not so much as a Lampshade Hanging on this. Attempts by fans to explain this are doomed from the start.
- Transformers Animated had Sari spraying enough boiling water in an enclosed room to kill some Space Barnacles, but wasn't scalded by the steam that filled the room or the water that would logically splashed her.
- Apparently, robots can't get scalded in Animated, thus why Sari was safe.
- Beast Wars in general seems inconsistent about lava. In the first episode of season 2, Terroraur and Scorponok died when the surge caused them to collide their hovering platforms and they fell into the lava. However, near the end of the series, Megatron falls into the lava after being betrayed by Quickstrike, but reappears later completely unharmed. Though, seeing as how Megatron had just absorbed the spark of G1 Megatron, he may have gained some extra durability, potentially justifying this trope. Then again, he hadn't morphed into his dragon form just yet by the time he hit the lava, so maybe it should have killed him.
- And in the season 1 episode, "Double Dinobot" a clone of Dinobot kicks a tree that Rattrap is on into a lava filled trench. The tree gets wedged high above the lava but burts into flames from the heat, as it rightfully should. However, Rattap floats around on a rock inches above the lava and suffers no ill effect from doing so.
- Conversely, the 2007 movie gets convection mostly right, but was criticized by fans who did not fully understand that while space is infinitely cold, the lack of convection in space means that a body in space will cool very, very slowly - much more slowly than a superheated body falling into the Arctic Ocean.
- Not only does "infinitely cold" not exist (there is a lowest possible temperature), but space is several degrees warmer than absolute zero. Specifically, it's about 3 Kelvin, or -270 degrees Celsius (0 Kelvin is absolute zero). Furthermore, unless there is evaporation going on, a body in space that is in view of the Sun tends to heat up unless it's already hotter than the Sun's surface, 6000K. And, of course, if it is not in view of the sun, it tends to cool down to that 3K I mentioned, but it happens very slowly because neither conduction nor convection are possible, only radiation, and things at "normal" temperatures tend to radiate very very slowly.
- In the second episode of the early Fleischer Superman animated series, a villain with his own foundry tries to make Lois Lane talk by slowly lowering her into a giant vat of molten iron. She shows no signs of distress, even when she falls and Superman has to grab her mere inches above the surface of the vat. (For reference, iron has a melting point of 1538 °C/2800 °F)
- Likewise, in "Volcano" Lois is right next to molten lava and is completely unaffected, even doing a hand-over-hand climb over a field of lava without being even singed.
- This is amended in later episodes, where Lois Lane is imperiled by fire, and passes out or is burned outright by the heat.
- In one episode of Totally Spies, the girls can't feel the heat coming from lava... But it is really ketchup, as they are being tested. But later on the actual lava comes on, and the team makes a hot air balloon out of a parachute.
- An episode of Batman The Animated Series involves Bruce Wayne battling a ninja rival on an erupting volcano. The climax of the fight comes when they are separated on the rocks and Wayne throws a rope for the ninja to catch, thinking that if he jumps while he pulls he could make it. The ninja kicks the rope away, but not before giving a look that both says "I don't want your help" and almost looks as though he is thinking "Please, don't be so stupid."
- The trope is treated as a game of ping pong in Avatar The Last Airbender. In "The Awakening," Aang stands on top of solid but still-glowing lava rock in bare feet without getting burned. Curiously there is a subversion in the same scene, as his wooden glider caught on fire by just being next to a lava stream that Aang had just stepped by. In a later episode, Aang, Sokka and Toph are running through tunnels within a dormant volcano with no problem running over the rock crust that has formed over a river of magma or soaring over an underground lake of the stuff. Strangely enough, in "The Avatar and the Firelord," a major character actually dies from the toxic gases released by an erupting volcano.
- It is possible that characters with Firebending talents are more resistant to heat and can defend against extreme heat better than others. Or even protect others from it, keep in mind that Aang is both an Airbender and a Firebender so he could maybe keep the tunnels cool enough for his Sokka and Toph? If you're a master in those elements all sorts of handwaving could be done to make it all make sense.
- This trope is used far more frequently in the series in any and all instances of Firebending, for as long as the Firebender and their opponents do not actually touch the plumes of flame shooting out of their hands and feet, they're fine (though their clothing has been singed a time or two). Rule Of Cool definitely applies here and most places with Elemental Powers though, as they are shooting plumes of flame out of their hands and feet.
- In "Sozin's Comet", the Gaang is riding in a stolen Air Ship while the other ships burn everything below. Toph, the blind girl, feels the heat radiating from below and comments: "That's a lot of fire, isn't it?". Later, Aang hides in a sphere of rock while the Big Bad pummels the sphere with fireblasts. A cut to Aang shows him visibly sweating inside.
- "The Boiling Rock" is just straight up schizophrenic: The titular place is a prison on an island in the middle of a boiling lake in the crater of a volcano. Though not as bad as a lava pit, it should be like a constant sauna in there since it was hot enough that a hot air balloon couldn't keep in the air, yet it doesn't seem to be a real problem. However there is conduction, as regular ships can't get across the lake without getting so hot as to burn the travels: they tried an insulated boat, and the prison uses a gondola on a high rope.
- Darkwing Duck, his daughter, and her best friend all end up in a volcano in one episode of his series. Gosalyn and Honker get within what seems to be a few FEET of the bubbling lava while stretching a balloon for a slingshot. Handwaved only slightly later on when Darkwing carries them across a lava stream; he cites an ability he picked up from somewhere to do that without burning his feet off. And then soaks them in the water.
- Subverted in the first episode of Ewoks. In that story, Morag has sparked a massive forest fire and dammed the river to hamper the Ewoks' attempt to fight it. Wicket suggest using Master Logray's big supply of fire foam and airdrop bags of it from their gliders. Chief Cherpa nixes that idea since the wild winds caused by the massive fire's convection currents would cause the gliders to crash into the flames. However, that complication is solved by the small winged whisties who volunteer to guide the gliders safely around the currents while still getting to the best areas to bomb.
- Aloha, Scooby Doo features a chase through the bad guy's lair which is inside a volcano. They run all around and across the lava and, as as always, are fine so long as they don't actually touch it.
- An episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 has the Koopalings trap the Mario Bros. in a cave that they then proceed to fill with lava. But Mario manages to chisel a way out through the wall so he and Luigi can climb out. Right before Mario climbs out, though, this trope is taken to the extreme by having the lava actually seem to already be up to Mario's waist before he jumps out.
- For that matter, in the first Super Mario cartoon series, one episode had them riding a lava boat. A lava boat! No explanations on how, it's just an ordinary boat that could somehow survive lava.
- Subverted in The Simpsons when they go to Japan and the family falls in the Lava on a game show. Turns out it was simply Orangeade, yet Homer continues to scream: "It burns!"
- "It is Orangina, our sponsor!"
- Homer continues to writhe in agony because, as George Takei mentions afterwards, Orangina is "loaded with wasabi" (and orange concentrate in your eyes would burn like hell anyway).
- Storm Hawks a volcano goes off, and our heroes try to escape the lava flow, but their bikes are melted. Fortunately, they find a safe spot just a few feet up off of the lava. No one seems to be suffering from the heat, although one of them does use it to cook hot dogs.
- In the episode "Exchange" of Kim Possible, not only are Ron and Yori trapped in a metal cage and lowered into a river of lava, the lava actually spills into the cage and sets Ron's shoe on fire by contact. Ron and Yori then survive by hanging onto the tops of the cage's bar while the entire lower half of the cage melts away until they are saved. Apparently metal has to be immersed in lava to actually heat up.
- Gargoyles - in a fight with Oberon, Goliath, Angela, and Gabriel are able to fly just a couple of metres above the lava in an active volcanic crater with no ill effects.
- Though the Gargoyles themselves are often shown to be made of much tougher stuff than most other living creatures, and they do turn to stone at night.
- Partially averted in an episode of Max Steel: Max and Kat are sent in to a volcano to collect a crystal, and are given heat-resistant kevlar suits, along with helmets and (possibly) an air supply. They're warned that they'd only have a couple of minutes, and do avoid the lava if possible...yet there's a layer of solid rock where they land, and handily-placed rocks in the lava leading to where the crystal is.
- The Musical Episode of Batman The Brave And The Bold has heroes and villains forced to dance toward a launching rocket's exhaust to distract Batman; they would be getting toasted pretty well before they reached the actual flames.
- Played dead straight in The Spectacular Spider Man. Not only does a whole warehouse full of lava seem to do no harm to Spidey, Green Goblin, or Tombstone, but Hammerhead is precariously dangled literally inches from a vat of the stuff without even the soles of his shoes melting.
- Hotwheels World Race. Scorchers cars are capable of crossing the lava. The protection is only at frontside (called lava plow) and wheels
Real Life
- Kids are familiar with this trope from a very early age. They will often pretend that the floor is "hot lava," the point of the game being to move around the room without touching the floor. This game is familiar enough to have been referenced on an early Grounded for Life and a vacation episode of The Simpsons as well as the nudist episode of Family Guy, and a mission in a Tony Hawk game, and this editor had seen it in real life years earlier.
- Subverted a bit by the Discovery Channel.
- In older aluminium plants, the metal is still poured partly by employees who work very close to 1300 - 1700 F aluminum - often as close as a foot or less distance between the worker and the aluminium. Dross is skimmed from the tops of crucibles and molds with hand-held metal skimmers. The workers wear heavy cotton gloves, double cotton sleeves and aluminized aprons to do this. While it is not the most comfortable job in the world, the protective gear does not singe or burn unless in direct contact with the metal, and there is no fire retardant on the cotton.
- Further, the most important bit of safety gear: a sort of awning over the tops of your boots. Molten Aluminum can run Down denim barely scorching it (ironically, its convection acts on the water vapor to act as a temporary force-field), but bad things happen if it gets in your boots and it can't flow anywhere else.
- Kind of brings a whole new layer of meaning to "flares", that does:)
- Played pretty darn straight by the experience of Heimaey, Iceland, in the Vestmannaeyjar islands. In 1973, a nearby mountain erupted, sending, literally, acres of lava towards the town - and, from the inhabitants' perspective, more importantly, the harbor. In a desperate attempt to save the harbor from being filled by lava, the inhabitants, the government of Iceland, and, eventually, even the U.S. Navy, started pouring water directly on the lava to try and solidify the leading edge, hopefully sending the remaining lava somewhere else. This took weeks, if not months, and for most of that time, not only were people walking directly on top of the lava, they were separated from actual liquid rock by, at times, nothing but ash, but they were running hoses along it, and even driving bulldozers around on top of it. The treads of the bulldozers blued from the heat over time, and the soles of boots tended to melt when people stood, but for a significant amount of time, people were not only running near lava, they were working on top of it for twenty-hour-a-day stretches. Icelanders are hardcore.
- Played straight in real life (?!) with this video, complete with lava.
- Averted IN SPACE! Seriously. Because there's no gravity there's no force across the density gradients produced by heat and therefore no natural convection. This is something that needs to be kept in mind when engineering for spaceborne applications: on one hand, you can put your hand an inch away from a heating element and be fine, but on the other hand, stuff cools off much less quickly.
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