Infernal Retaliation - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Well... now we know why Batman sent Orion..."

Established wisdom for modern zombie hunters: The only thing worse than a horde of zombies is a horde of flaming zombies.
— The Zombie Survival Guide

What do you do when confronted with a monster, inhuman evil, or something annoying in general? And it's proving Immune To Bullets? Kill It With Fire!

Except, sometimes it backfires. (No pun intended.)

The evil twin of Man On Fire, Incendiary Exponent, and Out Of The Inferno, this is where you set whatever is trying to kill you on fire...and they continue to try and kill you. While on fire. And unlike some tropes, everything is NOT better with fire.

Sometimes it's just a delayed reaction and the fire WILL prove fatal, but that's probably little comfort considering it may prove fatal to YOU first. Might also apply to Nuke Em if the target is big. Eldritch Abomination: Bad. Eldritch Abomination that gets nuked, and stands back up pissed off and radioactive? Very bad.

Examples

Anime

In Inuyasha, Jaken uses his staff to try to burn one of another villain's attacking pieces. Bad idea.
Partial example: in Naruto, Sasuke sets the 8-Tails on fire with Amaterasu, which makes it flail around and hit his teammate Karin, setting her on fire (luckily, he found a way to put her out).

Comics

Hellboy: Blood and Iron. Pyrokinetic Liz heats up metal Hecate; she gets BIGGER and makes things very uncomfortable for Hellboy, who she's holding. Oops.
Fables, in The March Of The Wooden Soldiers arc. The Adversary sends enchanted wooden soldiers to attack Fabletown, and the residents decide to fight wood with fire...the problem, as someone only gets to point out AFTER they've done it, is that hard wood burns, if at all, then very, very slowly, and... yeah, the evil puppets are made of, oops! Hard wood! And so now they're dealing with inhuman, nigh-unstoppable killer puppets that are on fire. And setting Fabletown on fire. Should have done the research, people.
- Well, they kinda were. Prince Charming called in that guns were useless against them, except for arming their enemies, so they probably expected the whole thing to be quite experimental.
In one JLA issue, Orion is set on fire while fighting a White Martian. Since fire happens to be a weakness of Martians, he just goes with it. (Pictured above.)
- Later, some of Batman's emergency counter-JLA plans are stolen and used by Ra's al Ghul. The plan for the Martian Manhunter uses nanites to set him on fire — permanently. Martians have a lot of stamina, so this doesn't kill J'onn right away, but it hurts like hell. The League manages to stabilize J'onn, but not before he burns down an entire forest in his blind agony. And in case you weren't already convinced Superfriends was a dirty, dirty lie, Aquaman gets to be the one who figures out a way around this: let J'onn wear an Atlantean suit that keeps him immersed in water constantly.
One Deadpool story shows him and Siryn fighting Juggernaut. After trying to stop him with meat cleavers fails, Deadpool dumps a vat of molten steel onto him. He and Siryn then end up fleeing from a burning Juggernaut.

Film

Happens in the 2008 horror film Mirrors. Makes some sense as the "villain" Anna is possessed by some sort of otherworldly evil force and hence probably isn't bound by normal human limits.
Jason in Freddy vs Jason is set on fire. It doesn't keep him from killing anyone. To top it off, spraying beer eventually puts him out before it can do any real damage. Doubly ironic as it was being dosed in more highly concentrated alcohol that set him on fire in the first place.
- For those of you who are wondering: no. Low-proof alcohol does not catch fire on its own (thank you, John Dies At The End, in which several characters are stuck in a van full of alcohol and decide to make Molotov cocktails; they have to sort through the booze to find something usable).
  - That's even the origin of the term "proof." Originally proof wasn't a number, it simply referred to proving the whiskey was high quality. What proved it was good enough? When you could mix it in equal parts with gunpowder and still burn the mixture.
- Also, carbonated drinks don't burn well either.
  - Probably because there are no "standard-issue" carbonated drinks with high alcohol content.
The General, ie the master spider, of the film Arachnophobia gets tossed into some flaming debris at the end...and comes running back out and takes one last go at the protagonist, who needs to shoot it with a nail gun to put it down permanently.
Mutant beast Kothoga/Mbwun in the movie version of The Relic is set on fire: he just chases the Final Girl around some more. It takes a follow up explosion and its shockwave to pulp him and do him in for good.
In the movie Evolution, attempts to Kill It With Fire result in a supermassive bacterium.
- Does that strictly count? I know it was caused by fire, but it's not actually on fire.
The clerk at the beginning of From Dusk Till Dawn.
Several incarnations of The Thing keep causing trouble even after catching fire.
In Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, Godzilla spends much of the movie in a state of nuclear meltdown, glowing red and generally causing trouble for everyone, especially Destoroyah. There's also a threat that when he finally does meltdown, the fallout will effectively bring about The End Of The World As We Know It. Luckily, the adolescent Godzilla-like creature is there to absorb all the radiation.
Ghostbusters. Burning the Marshmallow Man wasn't 100 percent effective. Burning him a lot more was.
When the infected are set on fire in 28 Days Later it just seems to make them angrier.
- Molotov cocktails are seen used as effective weapon against them in the very first fight scene of the movie. Biologically they're just ordinary humans who don't feel pain, so they keep coming for a few moments, but the fire quickly takes them out.
In Ong Bak, during a fight at a gas station, Tony Jaa's character gets his pants soaked in gasoline from the knee down, before dodging behind some barrels, which are promptly blown up by gunfire. After a few seconds, Tony comes leaping out of the inferno and kicks a couple of guys with his flaming legs.
Halloween 2 ends with Michael being blown up in a room full of ether. Cue a massive mountain of man walking through a hospital hallway on fire. It doesn't actually make him more dangerous (he's weakened due to being on fuck fire), but he's still going, the scamp.
In The Mummy, an attempt to set a determined Medjai on fire has seemingly no effect. Said Medjai, robes aflame, appears almost blissfully unaware of the fact as he tries to take the key artifact from Johnathon.

Gamebooks

Happens after a fashion in the Lone Wolf book Wolf's Bane. Early on in the story, Lone Wolf is trapped in an otherworldly plant stem. Your options include cutting your way out, shouting your way out, and using magic. The problem comes with the last option, since the player isn't told which spell Lone Wolf will use. He ends up casting his lightning hand spell, which does effectively open the stem up, but it also causes the apparently flammable sap in the stem to ignite and burn furiously. You take damage from the resulting inferno if you're not immune to fire.

Literature

In Stone of Tears, the second book of the Sword Of Truth series, Zedd, Chase, and Chase's daughter encounter a beast from the Underworld. The little girl uses a magic wand to set it on fire... and the beast start laughing and presses the attack. It's eventually defeated (but not killed) when Zedd encases it in a block of ice and order guards to chop it to bits.
The third book in A Songof Ice And Fire has the example of Beric Dondarrion taking on Sandor "the Hound" Clegane with a flaming sword. Despite the fact that Sandor is terrified of fire due to childhood trauma, it doesn't work. Beric dies, although it doesn't stick.

Tabletop Games

This trope is (or was, several editions ago) worked into the rules for Warhammer 40000: The monstrous Tyranids were damaged as normal by fire attacks, but could continue moving and attacking.
- This troper remembers a part of the fluff which told of a story in which some imperials eliminated some Tyranids using a virus. cue the 'nids returning a week later spitting said virus
- In previous editions, using ANY heat weapons (flamers, melta-guns, plasma weapons, and so on) did nothing to the Eldar Avatar... because he is a molten iron incarnation of the Eldar god of war. This has since been nerfed: he is now only immune to flamers and meltas.
- The Necrons, being ancient alien souls sealed inside advanced necrodermis bodies, aren't much bothered by fire, either.
In one tabletop RPG based on HP Lovecraft's writings, there are rules for nuking Cthulhu. He comes back 24 hours later and is now radioactive.
- ... and PISSED.
Golems in several editions of Dungeons And Dragons are often strengthened by some magical attacks. For example, flesh golems are hasted by electrical attacks, and iron golems are healed by fire attacks.

Video Games

Ignus from Planescape: Torment is permanently on fire as a result of the collective hedge wizards in the Hive opening a portal to the elemental plane of fire inside his body and turning him into a living effigy as a way of punishing him for an act of mass arson. As a punishment, it failed miserably — it only made him happy.
In Resident Evil 4, before fighting the Village Elder, Leon shoots an explosive barrel, setting him and the barn their both locked inside on fire. This doesn't so much kill him as make him reveal his terrible true form.
In Halo 3, using fire against the Flood can sometimes lead to this.
The Keese from The Legend Of Zelda are generally invulnerable to straight-up fire attacks. This, in fact, usually sets THEM on fire, turning them into the far more dangerous Fire Keese.
- In the Oracle of Seasons/Ages games Fire Keese not only did more damage but also could fly above Link's sword's reach.
- In the handheld games, setting a Gibdo on fire is a mixed bag, as the wrapping burns away to reveal a faster-moving, hopping Stalfos, who's harder to hit but takes far less damage to defeat. Probably worth it near the beginning of the game, when your dinky starting sword takes like 8 or 10 hits to defeat a Gibdo; perhaps not so much later.
- Ask any player about what happens when they accidentally got too close to a Gibdos or ReDead in the 3D games after using a fire arrow but before the arrow finished them off.
The boss of the Iifa Tree in Final Fantasy IX isn't very tough, unless you somehow assume that a wood-based creature is weak to fire, in which case you're in for a world of flaming hurt.
- Life magic, on the other hand...
Occurred in the Dwarf Fortress Lets Play Boatmurdered with Sankis- whose power, if anything, became even more terrifying once he was aflame.
- Not to mention the fact that the fortress' method for dealing with the various goblins invaders, killer elephant herds, and crazed mandrills became "flood everything outside the mountain with lava". This eventually backfired fantastically when a puppy got caught in the lava outside and wouldn't stop burning. In itself this would have been fine, but one of the dwarves then decided to go and retrieve the puppy. That dwarf got lit on fire and went back into the fortress, not only igniting random things but also spreading smoke everywhere, which causes insanity. In the wake of this came Sankis' rampage mentioned above, which catalyzed a chain of events which eventually reduced the entire fortress into a desolate, smoking, miasma-filled ruin. Well, more of one than it already was, anyways....
- In general, earlier versions of Dwarf Fortress had dwarves be generally non-plussed about picking up things on fire and being on fire themselves, which was highly amusing until you realized it made it nearly impossible to keep a fire under control.
Could be good or bad in Ogre Battle 64, depending on who you did it to and your outlook. Setting a Zombie on fire would cause them to pull a terminator-like transformation into a Skeleton. Happened both to enemy Zombies and your own Zombies. If this troper recalls correctly, Skeletons were generally better than Zombies, but it was a huge pain to create them.
This significantly reduced the effectiveness of the flamethrower in the First Person Shooter Aliens Vs Predator for the PC, as setting aliens on fire would simply result in them continuing to attack you WHILE ON FIRE, and since they're already extremely fast attackers, this usually meant you dying even more quickly than usual. This was adjusted in Aliens Vs Predator 2, where, since Aliens aren't so goddamn fast anymore, the flamethrower kills 'em real good before they can get to you.
Big Daddies of Bioshock have been known to continue trying to drill you while in flames (they will try for water when they can).
- Bioshock in general in fact, but most splicers tend to run out of health too quickly for it to be really noticable.
In the newest Prince Of Persia game (as of Dec. 2008), the main characters knock a giant warrior king off the edge of a tall tower, and he falls into a pool of black ooze. When the tower falls apart and the they land on a lower platform, the creature crawls from the ooze, scaling the wall by force. The titular prince's response?
Prince: Oh good, now he's on fire.
In The Punisher, setting mooks aflame with the flamethrower isn't one hundred percent effective; they panic and run amok, sometimes into you. Ouch.
Fire burns the vampires bad in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But not right away. They can still tag you for a nasty burn before dusting.
In the original Syphon Filter game, in stages where a lot is burning, there will be some mooks, on fire, running ~~wildly~~ to you! Since you'll take massive damage when caught on fire, the best option (and only, actually), is to put said mook out of his misery.
In Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin striking a zombie (or ghoul) with a fire attack causes them to become skeletons, even if the attack should've reduced their HP to zero.
Generally speaking, setting the zombies in Left 4 Dead on fire is a very good idea. But the Hunters, although the flames will kill them eventually, get a huge boost to their attack power while they're burning.
- Said boost was later nerfed by a patch, but is still present.
- Lighting the tank on fire will eventully kill him but untill then he will gain a small speed boost
Done to hilarious effect in Timesplitters. Hell, there's even a game-mode based around it! (Virus) One person starts on fire and must find and light everyone else on fire. Also, it burns away ARMOR only first, then health. If you know where all the pickups are, in deathmatches you can continue to collect kills for a long while if you don't get hit too much, just by running into people and shooting them as they try and flee and find an extinguisher. Also everyone has hilarious screams while on fire, so you may as well do it anyway!
The ents in The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth are normally slow and tough, but when set aflame they become enraged, moving and attacking much more quickly, while taking damage over time from the fire.
While the Bomberman series more or less revolves around killing everything with fire based explosives, one of the possible skull item effects from Bomberman 64 and Bomberman 64: The Second Attack sets the person unfortunate enough to pick up the item on fire. While in this state, the burning bomber has about 30 seconds to kill everyone else with their burning body (can't use bombs since their body sets off any bombs he drops or touches) before the fire finally kills him.
How the hell did we not mention Tales Of Symphonia Dawn Of The New World's final battle yet? What is cooler than a Bad Ass Dual Wielding a sword and axe? A Bad Ass Dual Wielding a sword and axe who is on fire. Oh, and don't forget his battle theme. Or the fact that his Mystic Arte tells you that "The pain will only last an instant" despite the fact that he is sending enough hellfire to drown an entire planet your way.
Flaming zombies in Doom 3.
In Team Fortress 2 the soldier achievement Semper Fry requires you to kill opponents while on fire.
Saints Row 2 has a damn minigame focused around this. You're driving an ATV while on fire and your job is to light as many people on fire as you can.
The Grand Theft Auto games let you have some fun with this. Touching fire lights you on fire, but it generally isn't enough to kill you if you have enough health, leaving you with the option to walk into people and set them on fire.

Web Comics

Girl Genius: "Great. Now the crowd is trapped by the stalagmites while the flaming monster advances."
In Eight Bit Theater, Red Mage attempts, and fails, to invoke this trope.
- "Fire BREATHING [dragon], Black Mage, not fire EATING."

Web Original

A nuke was one of the methods proposed by the SCP Foundation to kill the so-far-indestructable SCP-682. It was turned down mainly because the brass was worried about what SCP-682 could become if it survived, as it generates a defense mechanism against whatever is used on it.

Western Animation

In Beast Wars, Megatron, while in a temporarily weakened state due to an imminant Power Makeover, gets thrown into a pool of lava. The result? He emerges in dragon form.
In the Family Guy episode "Lois Kills Stewie", when Lois assumes Stewie is dead after being caught in an explosion. He's not.

Real Life

Truth In Television. No, really: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6257292.stm

Examples with Zombies

In General

As established in the page quote, doing this to zombies is a dice roll. While they may lack the brains to put themselves out, and the thinking is they'd bump into each other and set each other on fire, setting off a chain reaction of sort is fine, it tends to backfire as they can also run into you, or the building you're hiding out in, or any surrounding buildings, in which case you'll set everything around you on fire. Also, zombies aren't scared by fire and don't feel pain, so it wouldn't be as scary as it would for a normal human. The odds are you'll make things worse. Nice going.

Card Games

Nothing ruins your day like a blazing zombie.

Films

Demonstrated in the recent remake of Dawn Of The Dead: The DVD has an extra about a guy holed up in a gunshop who tries molotov cocktails on the zombie horde from his roof. All he gets is lots of walking, charred zombies (people don't really burn that well, being largely water and all) who all smell like smoky bacon (he's running low on food).
Notable exception to this rule are the zombies from the original Night of the Living Dead. They did fear fire and setting one ablaze would cause it to run off in a panic.

Literature

It is noted both in World War Zand The Zombie Survival Guide that flaming zombies have caused added havok (and increased property damage) on more than one occasion.
- David Suzuki is crying somewhere.

Tabletop Games

In Mage: the Awakening however, its necessary to assign a weakness to a zombie (otherwise you have to devote a success to making it so they can only be destroyed by essentially being reduced to a fine paste) which can include fire.

Video Games

It works even worse for the player in Return to Castle Wolfenstein: While flame works well against the sword'n'shield zombies, it turns the unarmed ghost-skull ones into mean firebreathing mofos.
- Their Wolfenstein successors, the Despoiled, are constantly engulfed in magical fire from the start. Naturally, it's not a good idea to get too close to them. And, they're quite immune to the flamethrower.
In Half-Life, while regular headcrab zombies will scream and hold their arms out in agony when on fire, fast zombies in Half-Life 2 don't even notice, right up until the point where they fall down and die from it. The fire doesn't do any additional damage to you, as far as I can tell, though. Poison zombies also seem to be oblivious to the flames when set on fire.
- Incidentally, burning, legless Zombie Mooks dragging themselves along the ground towards you, while what's left of the Zombie Infectee screams in terrified agony through a Face Full Of Alien Wing Wong... definition of Nightmare Fuel Unleaded.
A possibility within the Nacht der Untoten (Night of the Undead) 'Nazi Zombie' mode of Call Of Duty: World at War. While flamethrowers will generally be a good weapon against the zombies for most of the game, it becomes more dangerous later on as they get more health. However, being careful and just running around, lighting zombies aflame and keeping your distance while they burn usually works.
In Left 4 Dead, a burning hunter effectively deals double damage once set on fire. Boomers become walking time bombs that you won't have time to push away before they explode. A smart smoker can stand just on the other side of the flames and pull you across through it.
- Inverted with the other infected. Tanks last a maximum of 40 seconds before they burn to death. The common infected don't last long at all once set ablaze.
  - Latest patch causes this for the Tank - although he'll still only last 40 seconds, in Campaign mode his running speed doubles when set on fire. Eep.
Doom 3 features a zombie (nicknamed Burnie)that is already on fire when it attacks you, however ordinary zombies seem abnormally sensitive to fire.
Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines has the Grout's Mansion level, where you have to find a lost vampire primogen who was studying madness. And of course, he has a lot of human test subjects. When you arrive at the mansion, you will soon realize that all this madmen have somehow been able to free themselves and aren't exactly happy to see you. So, after you punched, shot and sliced your way through the mansion, you come across a vampire hunter, who sets the whole place on fire. And also, it seems like some of the test subjects have survived your fights in the mansion and now are on fire as well. And instead of running out of the mansion (they are insane after all) they decide to try killing you again. They are much more vulnerable now, it usually takes only two shots to kill them. However, considering that vampires are very vulnerable to fire, they can also take out you with two hits. It's helpful to have a machine gun when these guys approach you.
- Really? The way I remember it (although it has been a while), the fire kills them pretty quickly, so you just have to give 'em a knock-back punch and watch 'em burn. You might not even need the punch part.
  - Nope. This troper checked it with obfuscate power, which allows player to be invisible for indefinite amount of time (until player moves or something bumps into them). They are spawned burning and are immune to their own fire (and possibly environmental fire). The worst part of it is that it's impossible to feed on them - they can be only killed. Hilarity Ensues when a bug in game's engine causes their voices to be replaced with standard "Hold it!" and "Stop right there!"
A serious threat in Saints Row. Burning people can set other people on fire, and burning cars explode, scattering burning debris which can also set people on fire.
No mention of Burn, Zombie, Burn? Its pretty much the whole title. Running around lighting zombies on fire makes them faster and deadlier. On the plus side, it increases your score multiplier.
Resident Evil 4 has both the Incendiary Grenades, which avert the trope and merely cause painful burning, and a single unique Ganado nicknamed 'Oven Man' that escapes from an oven while on fire to menace the player. No one seems to be quite sure what he was doing in there.
- Burning to death most likely.

Myth and Legend

In one traditional Cree story, two children are being chased by the severed head of their mother, and they start a wildfire behind them to stop her. However, she rolls straight through the fire, and then they're being chased by the flaming severed head of their mother. (Fortunately, shortly afterwards she goes through a river and the fire gets put out, but by then she's a skull.)
- I'd kind of like to hear the first half of that story now.