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- "...But we have flamethrowers. And what this indicates to me, it means that at some point, some person said to himself: 'Gee, I'd sure like to set those people on fire over there, but I'm way too far away to get the job done. If only I had something to throw flame on them'."
Sometimes, you have an opponent, structure, device or other target which you just got to Kill It with Fire. If you have to do this multiple times, you would wish you have an actual weapon which can burn things for you instead of rigging something on the spot all the time.
You will need the Fire Breathing Weapon; a gun-like weapon which creates fire. Pull the trigger and a gout of fire will appear, covering your target in burning goodness. Most games use a form of directional Splash Damage to implement this.
Of course this is not limited to the flamethrowers alone: various (directional) bombs, traps, improvised weapons and even vehicle cannons can fall under this category. The common similarity between all the weapons here is they all use " Kill It with Fire" as their main form of causing damage, and they are all "point and burn" weapons.
Weapon of Choice for the Pyromaniac. Sometimes used for lighting cigarettes.
PS: If you use this weapon on your target, and it stands up uninjured yet on fire and quite pissed off... well, it's nice knowing you.
See also Flaming Sword, Aerosol Flamethrower, and Videogame Flamethrowers Suck. Compare Playing with Fire, for people who make fire themselves.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Black Lagoon: the character Claude "Torch" Weaver specializes in these.
- When things start to look bad for the Lemures in Baccano, their leader Goose arms himself with one.
- In Rurouni Kenshin, minor villain Hyottoko has a primitive flamethrower built in his body: basically, is a large bag of oil in his stomach, with the nozzle in his mouth and flint teeth, allowing him to breathe fire at will.
Comic Books
- DC Comics
- The villain Firefly
- The Flash has a villain called Heat Wave who has this as his gimmick. He's often teamed with/fights against Captain Cold.
Film
Literature
- Older Than Feudalism: In The Iliad, the hero Diomedes (the one who stabbed Ares) is described as having a fire-breathing shield.
- The grandaddies of 'em all: the Martians in Wells's The War of the Worlds had tripods armed with a deadly heat beam which could set almost anything on fire, and if not, melt it.
- In Mark S. Geston's novel Lords of the Starship, the book's entire Twist Ending is that the gigantic Starship of the title, which takes over a century to build, is not meant to fly at all - its rockets are actually humongous flamethrowers designed to incinerate millions of people.
- Rapier in The Five Greatest Warriors uses a flamethrower at one point to incinerate several men who were ambushing his allies.
- Most Secret by Nevil Shute is about a fishing boat during World War II that is fitted out with a large flamethrower in a plan to destroy the German escort vessels keeping an eye on the French fishing fleet. The Kill It with Fire trope is specifically lampshaded.
Live-Action TV
- Rito Revolto of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers has a flamethrower in his arsenal. He tried to destroy the Ninjazords with it, but it was punched off his arm by the Ninja Megazord.
- Forever Knight had a Villain of the Week who torched homeless people with a flame thrower. At least until Nick got through with him.
- Hunter used a similar plot, with the villain using the weapon to commit arson as well as burning the occasional Innocent Bystander. Naturally the song played during the teaser was "Burning Down the House".
- An episode of iCarly has Spencer shooting fire from a fire extinguisher.
Tabletop Games
- GURPS has a slew of them. Flamers and fusion guns from Ultra-Tech. Flamethrowers and aerosol flamethrowers in High-Tech. Low tech flamethrowers for clerics in Dungeon Fantasy. Heat rays in Spaceships. The fire lance from Fantasy. The cheirosiphon and eruptor style weapons from Low-Tech.
- The flamer is so ubiquitous in Warhammer 40000 that just about every race, even the super-advanced Eldar, use some variant of it. In game terms, flamethrower-type weapons are useful because they 1) use a long teardrop-shaped template to resolve hits, meaning a well-placed burst can hit over a dozen models, and 2) they ignore the effects of cover, making them useful for clearing foes from bunkers or ruins.
- The Skaven from the low fantasy counterpart have Warpfire throwers, basically Steampunk flamethrowers, though like most Skaven technology it's rather unreliable and prone to backfire.
- Dungeons & Dragons has, besides the obvious example of red dragons, the Tongue Stud of Firebreathing which allows the user to use a breath weapon attack 3 times a day.
- BattleTech has the Flamer, which runs gas near the mech's fusion reactor to heat it up, then vents the gas at an enemy's face.
- The first version of the Mechwarrior RPG for the game had a personal flammer pistol, which while having only a couple of 'shots', was noted as being highly intimidating, especially to other mechwarriors who already live with the possibility of being baked to death by their own mechs.
Toys
- The weapon of choice for Torch, one of the Dreadnoks from G.I. Joe.
Video Games
- The Brotherhood of Nod from Command & Conquer often has infantry armed with these, among other weapons included in their arsenals. It should be noted that the realism of fire-based weaponry in the series tends to vary from game to game.
- Nod's love affair with flamethrowers has, several times, extended to flamethrower tanks. In Tiberian Sun, this extended to the bizarrely improbable Subterranean Flame Tank. Over in Red Alert, the Soviets have been known to use flamethrower turrets for base defense.
- And Generals gives us the Chinese, who love (nuclear) fire just as much. "Dragon" Flamethrower Tanks, fire-shelling artillery, fire-bombing Mi Gs and various nuclear weapons are all present in the game.
- The Fire Rod from several Zelda games, including The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures.
- BattleTanx: the Flamethrower powerup and the Inferno tank
- Worms
- Ratchet & Clank
- Halo
- Gears of War
- Team Fortress Classic
- Team Fortress 2: The Pyro has a short-ranged flamethrower as their primary weapon. They can also use a Flare Gun.
- Dead Space
- Call of Duty: World At War
- Grand Theft Auto
- Flamethrowers are a Fallout series staple. The Broken Steel add-on to Fallout 3 adds the Heavy Incinerator, which rapid-fires gobs of napalm over long distances.
In terms of skills, they were categorized as Big Guns until New Vegas, which changed them to use the same Energy Weapons skill as the Frickin Laser Beams.
- Mass Effect 2 has one for Shepard in Zaeed's DLC.
- The Blood Pack mercenaries also sometimes deploy vorcha troopers with flamethrowers. Like most Blood Pack weapons, it's exceptionally deadly up close and exceptionally vulnerable from far away. In the multiplayer of Mass Effect 3, arm-mounted flamethrowers are the special weapons of Vorcha.
- Strife
- Fire Shark
- Obscure NES strategy RPG Just Breed has one that's also a Flaming Sword; every time you attack with it, it hits nearly half the battlefield with an absurdly massive area-effect cone of fire.
- Starcraft has the Firebats, armored soldiers with twin flamethrowers on their arms. Really, really great against the Zerg. Not so great against anybody else, though...
- Starcraft II gives us a vehicular update with the Hellion.
- Protoss Colossi, meanwhile, are known for their heat rays.
- Deus Ex and its sequel.
- The Naval Ops allows you to mount flamethrowers on your ship, and they are quite effective against the Habbakkuk boss, an aircraft carrier made of ice.
- One of the weapons Samus Aran from Metroid frequently has in her Arm Cannon is the Plasma Beam. In Metroid Prime and the Super Smash Bros. series, she also has an actual flamethrower.
- The Fire Flower in Super Smash Bros.
- Toy Soldiers: The Chemical Thrower of the first game could be upgraded into a flamethrower, and in Toy Soldiers: Cold War, it returned in the form of a Aerosol Flamethrower.
- Metal Slug flamethrowers belch a fairly short-ranged blast of flame that can torch multiple enemies. Especially handy against mummies, which require a lot of pistol rounds to take down.
- Skylight has flamethrowers, which can deal a lot of damage against anyone afflicted with the Douse status effect.
- The flamethrowers in Alien Hallway.
- X3 Terran Conflict introduces the Plasma Burst Generator, which is a flamethrower powered by a nuclear fusion reactor. A favored weapon of the Space Pirate faction, the weapon is a thorough gamebreaker in the hands of the player because of how its Splash Damage works
- The videogame version of BattleTech, the Mech Warrior series, has the Flamer appear in all versions. It heats up the enemy and can cause their mech to shut down.
- In Cold Fear you can get your hands on a flamethrower later in the game. It works pretty well against most enemies, thought the invisible specimens and the Brutes won't be staggered by it. Furthermore, it's pretty much useless outside, as the rain and the strong winds will render it useless.
- In the Mega Man franchise, there's the Fire Wave and Wave Burner. Both are short-range fire weapons that breathe fire that drains weapon energy when the fire button is held. It can also melt ice in both of the games they are in. However, the Wave Burner can be used underwater with it shooting waves instead of water.
Real Life
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