Kill It With Fire - Television Tropes & Idioms

Hercules used fire to cauterize the Hydra's stumps before it could grow new heads. Or to be precise: Hercules smashed the heads with his club, his nephew Iolaos cauterized them.
- This technically didn't KILL the Hydra, since one of its heads was immortal. He just buried it under a rock afterward.
Many of the admittedly extremely varied world folklore about vampires feature either an aversion to fire, or immolating the vampire's remains as the final step in destroying it for good.
In Norse mythology the Ragnarok ends with the fire giant Surtr killing everything. With fire. Well, except for Ygdrasil and those beings hiding under its roots. But otherwise — the entirety of creation, all of the nine worlds, killed. With fire.
- It's gonna be awesome!

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End of Evangelion's English dub: HIT EM AGAIN!
In Parasyte, the titular aliens are almost completely defenseless against fire.
- Ditto with acids. Due to said aliens Bizarre Alien Biology, anything that humans shouldn't get on their skin can be turned into a somewhat effective weapon.
In Rumiko Takahashi's Mermaid Saga, there are three ways to kill immortals: decapitation, a very particular poison, and burning them down to ashes.
Subverted in Mushishi. When a village and their resident mushishi finally decide to burn a parasitic plant mushi, but after doing so discover that the mushi intentionally takes over like kudzu in order to be burned so the mushi can enter its adult form.
Roy Mustang is basically the walking example of this trope in Fullmetal Alchemist. Witness what he does to the homunculi Lust and Envy.
- As well as Pride in the first anime version.
In Berserk, when Guts is attacked by several small demons, he kills them by leaping into a nearby fire. Guts is like that.
- Well, they can't catch you if you're on fire.
As per Burn The Witch, Evangeline's hunters in Mahou Sensei Negima during the middle-ages have attempted to kill her this way (fire over ice, right???). It didn't work.
Claude Torchweaver, A.K.A. The Crazy Flamethrower Mormon, from Black Lagoon's "Greenback Jane" arc.
One of the weaknesses of the aliens in Tekkon Kinkreet.
In King Of Thorn, some particularly tough octopus-like monsters prove vulnerable to good old-fashioned incineration.

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After discovering there's only a single righteous resident at the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (it was Lot, the nephew of Abraham), God did exactly what this trope says — a rain of hellfire and brimstone reduced both cities to ashes.
- He did something different in Egypt, where He used burning hail — in other words, ice that is on fire.
There is Hell of course if you want your gratuitous fire usage. While Hell became more associated with fire after Dante wrote "The Divine Comedy" there are a few associations between fire and Hell in The Bible itself.

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In Magic The Gathering, this is the classic endgame strategy of mono-red: when the opponent builds an army and all other colors' offenses would stall, the red mage points a spell at the opponent's face and torches him to death directly.
- Mid-game, it's also helpful to wipe out an opponent's creatures with cards like Incinerate, Fireball, and Inferno.
- Then there's the character of Jaya Ballard, who's pretty much this trope incarnate. She's appeared on the flavor texts of over a dozen red spells, including Incinerate and Inferno, and her own card pays homage to these spells.
  "Some people have said there's no subtlety to destruction. You know what? They're dead."
  "Of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire."
"Burn" techniques are a good way of reducing your opponent's LP to cinders in Yu-Gi-Oh. You should be able to guess which Attribute has all of the best burners (hint: it's red and has the Kanji for fire on it).

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The Martian Manhunter generally has powers on par with Superman, plus a few extra—but he's not fireproof.
- DC seems to keep going back and forth on whether this is a physical vulnerability or a psychological problem, however.
In Mike Mignola's Hellboy and B.P.R.D. comics, it seems like every encounter with the Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror underlings of the Ogdru Jahad ends with pyrokinetic Liz Sherman burning the Thing(s) to cinders. Subverted in the most recent case, as it's been revealed that burning Katha Hem to dust didn't quite put him to rest.
- Technically you can never destroy an Ogdru Jahad completely, their spirit will always survive and wait to get a new body. Even the Greater Spirits/Angels who were supposed to look after the Earth couldn't really beat them.
- One has to wonder what would happen if Liz were to die.

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An aging JFK (a black man in a wheelchair) and Elvis (Bruce Campbell, natch) used fire to vanquish the mummy in Bubba Ho Tep.
In The Thing, the smallest part of the alien life form is capable of mutation and assimilation, so the only sure way to destroy it completely is with fire. But even then, it's not even particularly flammable. Fire is the only way to do it, but it's still not a very good way.
- However, this was partially subverted in The Thing From Another World. Fire could kill the alien, but since it burned slowly and did not feel pain it could easily escape and douse itself, setting fire to anything it touched along the way.
Both applied and subverted in Return Of The Living Dead: because the zombies in that movie can't be brought down with simple headshots, the only way to destroy the first one is to incinerate it... but that just causes more problems, because the ashes get into the clouds and the next good rain soaks the land with Trioxin, which carries the virus on. Cue the Zombie Apocalypse! Electricity is shown to do the job later.
Subverted in Evolution; the military plots to destroy the largest sample of the alien entity with tons upon tons of napalm. However, as the scientists find out right as the plan is about to be carried out, fire makes the thing reproduce even faster; a small sample in a petri dish exposed to the flame of a lit match is enough to make it overtake one wall of the room they were in. Instead, the day is saved with ~~dandruff shampoo~~ Head & Shoulders.
The xenomorphs in the Alien films have an aversion to fire. Furthermore, flamethrowers prove to be the best weapons against them in close quarters since it largely avoids spilling the creature's blood, which is dangerously corrosive.
Ash: Most animals retreat from fire, yes?
Subverted in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. The giant dinosaur could be killed with fire, or with most other things, but fire would carry its diseased particles all over the world and we'd all die anyway.
Played with at the beginning of Shrek: One member of the angry mob waves a torch in Shrek's face, hoping to scare him. Shrek snuffs the flame out with his fingers.
The last resort of The Rock, should The So Called Coward and the Gentleman Thief fail to recover the weaponized phlebotinum, involves the Air Force drenching the island in thermite.
In Gremlins 2, Gizmo kills the spider gremlin with a flaming arrow made from a pencil and a bottle of white-out corrective fluid.
In Godzilla vs Hedorah, hippies partying on a mountain try attacking Hedorah by throwing torches. It obviously doesn't work and the ones that aren't the main human characters die very quickly.
- Also, in Godzilla vs Destoroyah, when the military realized that fire is Super Effective against Destoroyah's aggregate forms, they use heat weapons from thereon.
In Dawn Of The Dead, they burn a group of zombies behind a fence trying to get through by pouring petrol over them. Later they use gas canisters to knock over and kill zombies to get through the masses.
- On the DVD extras however, one character says that molotov cocktails don't do anything but make them smell like burnt meat... and make him hungry.
In Live And Let Die, James Bond kills a snake with a makeshift flamethrower, and in Licence To Kill, he sets a villain on fire using a lighter (though said villain was covered in gasoline, so it's plausible).
The giant radioactive ants in the classic monster movie Them! (1954) are hunted through the Los Angeles storm drains by the protagonists armed with flamethrowers.
Office Space. Either averted or played straight, depending on how much of an unholy abomination you consider the office building to be.
In Outbreak, this is the government response to a local outbreak of a deadly virus.
The 1931 version of Frankenstein ends with the Monster being trapped in a burning windmill, and (presumably) killed. Of course, as we find out The Bride of Frankenstein, it didn't quite do the trick...
In Westworld, Richard Benjamin's character attempts to do this to the Gunslinger robot. Doesn't quite work, though.
In Outlander, the Moorwens were driven to the brink of extinction by the firebombing of their homeworld. Kainan replicates this in ancient Norway, by luring the solitary Moorwen into a pit filled with whale oil and lighting it on fire. It only succeeds in singeing and ticking off the creature.
- Not just firebombed, it looked like they carpet nuked the place, Kill it With Nuclear Fire?
In Child's Play, the protagonists burn devil doll Chucky to a crisp. It only makes him angrier and freakier-looking.
Subverted in Terminator, when destroying the titular indestructible death-robot's gasoline truck seems to work for a little bit, but his creepy-ass metal endoskeleton just gets up again after a few seconds, despite the fact that ALL ITS SKIN JUST GOT BURNED OFF.

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In John Hodgman's second book, More Information Than You Require, he says of rats: "You must kill them all. Do it with fire."
- He says pretty much the same thing about infestations of Scottie Dogs and... tides.
The Monster Plant Beasties from The Day Of The Triffids are especially vulnerable to flamethrowers, as they can't tell where the flame is coming from and panic, sometimes setting their allies on fire as well. Too bad there's a fuel shortage due to that Cosy Catastrophe...
- It's not so much a case of panicking as even noticing: flamethrowers are more effective than guns because Triffids don't appear to have any vital organs. (Following the same principle, shotguns work better than handguns or rifles.)
Harry Potter and Dumbledore use it to drive off the Inferi at the end of The Half-Blood Prince. And in Deathly Hallows, Fiendfyre turns out to be one of the few ways to destroy Horcruxes.
- Notable for the brilliant exchange between Harry and Dumbledore that went something like...
  Dumbledore: However, like many creatures that dwell in cold and darkness, they fear light and warmth, which we shall therefore call to our aid should the need arise.
  Harry: *bewildered expression*
  Dumbledore: Fire, Harry.
  Harry: Oh... right...
  - Don't forget the first time fire was necessary—way back in The Philosopher's Stone (Sorcerer's Stone if you're American), when it was used to escape the Devil's Snare.
  - The Devil's Snare is a plant, though. Every plant on Earth can be destroyed with fire.
  - LIES! Most plants in Australia include intense bushfires as ''part of their reproductive cycle'', including most eucalyptus plants and several varieties of flower. Many are also likely to spew toxic fumes when they burn.
JRR Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings—in the first fight against the Ringwraiths, swords prove ineffective, so Aragorn grabs a flaming piece of wood form the fire and drives them back. Works remarkably well considering they are the immortal indestructible specters of long dead kings, capable of killing with even a slight blow and causing even squads of veteran soldiers to run in fear. It's hinted, though, that the Ringwraiths are in a weaker state during their initial attack on the Shire.
- Somewhat justified as they are at the point described as being stronger in the dark, and that they need the cloaks to have form and to affect the world. Cloaks can burn and fire is bright light.
- Also, in the modern movie adaptation, fire is the orcs' most useful weapon against the Ent attack. Which is a pretty good idea, as Ents are trees. When Isengard is flooded, you can see a burning Ent rush forward and dunk itself to douse the flames.
  - In the books, the dwarves' need for firewood (for their forges) was one reason Ents didn't like dwarves very much. There is a bit in The Two Towers where a tree bends down to get some warmth from a fire, but in general, the trees don't like it.
In Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters trilogy, the animals are afraid of human technology, including, but not limited to, fire.
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, werewolves can only be killed by either silver or fire. Likewise, zombies, vampires and mummies are noted to be very flammable.
- Also, from Small Gods: "Give a man a fire and he will be warm for one night. Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life."
In The Hobbit, fire proves effective in driving off wargs, but much less so when some goblins arrive, who simply use it against the dwarves.
The Zombie Survival Guide notes that fire is the only way to safely dispose of a Solanium-infected corpse. It's not that effective as a weapon, because the zombies don't feel pain and won't notice they're on fire, but all traces of the infection will be wiped out once the fire brings them down.
- And in World War Z, the Army develops an incendiary bullet, nicknamed the "Cherry Pie", designed to burn up a Zombie's brain without causing collateral damage.
In The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, vampires are highly vulnerable to flame, to the point where matches will make some flinch.
In A Song Of Ice And Fire, the undead wights are nearly indestructible except to fire. The only body part of a wight in the series not destroyed by fire remained animate until it rotted away.
As in Mythology above, the vampires in numerous works of gothic literature—including Carmilla, Varney The Vampire and, of course, Dracula must be destroyed with fire after they're staked and decapitated. The fact that Dracula's body is not burned when he's killed in the original novel is often cited as a reason for latter-day authors to bring him Back From The Dead. Again.
A subversion: in HP Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a repeated theme and instruction is to refrain from killing the necromancer villain with fire, as he can be resurrected from the ashes. Instead, the protagonist is instructed to dissolve the body in acid.
The vampires in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight can be permanently destroyed by using fire and not much else.
At the end of the Jurassic Park book, there isn't any of that "Let the dinos live in peace on the island" stuff from the movie. The Costa Rican Air Force levels the island with napalm.
- Understandable, because in the book, if I read it right, Compsagnathus were somehow finding their way onto the mainland and were attacking people.
- And somehow Ian Malcolm survives the napalm attack to be in 'The Lost World.'
In Brian Caswell's The View From Ararat, the only known ways to destroy the inorganic super-plague threatening life on planet Deucalion are extreme heat, and an enzyme conveniently found in all native Deucalion plants and animals, half a galaxy away from where the disease first surfaced.
The finale of Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, The Naked God, has a straight example—the Orgathe are immune to most weapons but very vulnerable to heat.
A major villain in the Fingerprints series starts out as a Knife Nut. When it becomes clear that a single knife is insufficient to carry out her Roaring Rampage Of Revenge, she figures fire will work better. It does.
The War Against The Chtorr. Flamethrowers are the best means of dealing with the Chtorran gastropedes (and various other forms of Chtorran ecology), and are preferred by the antagonist over cold-gas and flechette rifles. This is because their unique alien physiology makes the gastropedes very difficult to kill.
In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000 novel The Brothers Of The Snake, when Khiron killed a fellow Space Marine, he claimed he had been possessed by a daemon and that, since he had not used fire, it had escaped. Fortunately, Priad remembers this when he figures out who it escaped to.
In Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, when Shere Khan incites the Pack against Mowgli, Mowgli uses "the Red Flower" against them.
In Poul Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions, they discover the troll can be killed only with fire. (This is the source for D&D.)
In Graham Mc Neill's Warhammer 40000 Ultramarines novel Dead Sky Black Sun, the Living Shadows in the Eye of Terror can be killed only with fire. Even that is not very effective; while the Space Marines can survive, the two Imperial Guardsmen with them are nearly killed by the heat they need, even with the Marines trying to shield them.
In Anne Mc Caffrey's Dragonriders Of Pern series, fire spewed by male and green dragons (and flamethrowers wielded by queenriders and ground crews) are the primary means of fighting Threadfall.
Beatty in Fahrenheit 451. "If you have a problem, don't face it, burn it". Indeed.
Occurs several times in Stephen King's books, especially in dealing with Hell Hotels: The Shining (with bonus wasp's nest-destroying Flash Back) and 1408 although the "it" to be killed with fire in that case included the narrator, Driven To Suicide by the Room Full Of Crazy
Subverted in John W Campbell's "Who Goes There?" where the scientists in Antarctica use high voltage electricity to kill telepathic, body-morphing aliens. This makes a lot more sense than the flamethrowers used in the remake movie (John Carpenter's "The Thing") because it takes a while to kill something with fire, electricity can zap every cell in an organism instantly—hard to adapt to, eh? For another good reason to use electrons, see the end of the movie, where the entire base is charred rubble and the survivors are shelterless in ANTARCTICA.
Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy where Marlon is immolated by Dexterity's glowing touch
In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath, fire is the best way to kill the shapeshifting, vampiric Changers, which are hard to kill but whose blood is very flammable. It's also the best way to kill the zombielike Haunts.
In the Night World series, fire is the only thing that can kill any creature, be it witch, human, werewolf, shapeshifter, or vampire. One character does freak out when another speaks nonchalantly about burning a werewolf to death (including the phrase "one of the traditional methods"), so it appears to be a less-used tactic... now.
A tanker truck, a fire truck, and an intentionally damaged bridge that the Posleen have to cross provides much fun for the humans defending Fredricksburg, at one point in Gust Front.
Subverted in The Road Virus Goes North, a short story by Stephen King. A horror writer buys the last surviving painting of a troubled artist who burned all his other works and then committed suicide. When he realises the painting is cursed he tries to get rid of it, but the painting keeps returning intact. Eventually he burns the picture, because that's what works in the books, right? Unfortunately it turns out that the artist didn't burn all his paintings except this one, he burned all his paintings including this one.
Sun Tzu devotes an entire chapter of The Art Of War to the use of fire against an enemy.

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In Supernatural, "salt and burn the body" is the standard solution to malevolent spirits and such. If the body's already been cremated, the boys need to find an alternate solution. Sometimes this means finding the little bit of the body that wasn't burned and setting fire to it.
- Also, in the episode "Metamorphosis", this is the only way to kill of a Rugaru.
In one episode of Star Trek Enterprise, an alien race is seen using flamethrowers on people who have been infected by a disease that effectively turns them into another alien species.
At the end of "Planet of Fire", the Doctor tried this on the Master. He got better. In the new series episode "Journey's End", the Daleks try this on Captain Jack. He got better, too.
- As the Daleks attack Earth in "The Parting of the Ways", their Emperor orders, "Purify the Earth with fire."
One of the ways to kill vampires in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Not unique to the show, of course, but deserves a mention.
Dawn: If you touch my sister, hurt her in any way... you're going to wake up on fire.

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Dungeons And Dragons has this for trolls (although acid works just as well). Based off the Hercules example, it's necessary to cauterize the hydra's stumps so new heads don't grow. (Save for fire breathing hydras. They need ice.)
- Fire is also extremely useful against most undead, who are often immune to a wide variety of attack modes.
- In general, when Wizards start to cast Fireball is the point where they being to outshine the fighters in combat, and most of the high level, high damage spells tend to be fire.
- Slight subversion in that Fire resistance/immunity is one of the more common to encounter in D&D. Sonic resistance is almost non existent, as are spells that deal Sonic damage, because a killing sound isn't nearly as bad ass as Fire.
  - Fortunately there is a solution to Fire Resistance: EVEN MORE FIRE!
  - Alternatively, and much more effective solution: the Energy Substitution metamagic feat. Now you can Kill It With Ice/Acid/Electricity/Sound, depending on which element you choose. Some elemental-themed prestige classes make extensive use of this as well.
  - Further alternative: Searing Spell metamagic feat. Now your fire is hot enough to burn creatures immune to fire. Killing a Fire Elemental with fire? THAT is DnD magic at its finest.
  - As another alternative in 3.5, The Fiendish Codex 2 introduced us to the Diabolic Cleric domain spell Hellfire (level 4), which, despite the name, didn't cause fire damage. Better yet, it wasn't subject to saving throws or damage reduction. Better STILL, it had a ten-foot blast radius. Once you got level 7 spells, you got Hellfire STORM, which did 1d8 per caster level (as opposed to per 2 levels) and had DOUBLE the radius. Capable, if you were level 10, of doing max 80 damage to Red Dragons, no save, no resistance. Toasty.
  - How About This perfect example of a fandom having too much time on their hands?
  - Find a Wheat Elemental that nearly kills your entire party? Open a portal to the elemental plane of wheat and LIGHT THE ENTIRE PLANE OF EXISTENCE ON FIRE. That is all.
  - Apocalypse from the Sky is a ninth-level spell from the Book of Vile Darkness. It isn't too damaging for a ninth-level spell (10d6 to all in the radius, which is available seven levels previously), but it has a radius of ten miles per caster level. The weakest person who can cast this spell would be destroying small countries and almost everything in them, and all of it would be through FIRE.
  - And we can't overlook the psionic version: the Pyrokineticist. Always chaotic, rarely good, invariably fire-heavy.
- 4th edition gives us the Irresistible Flame feat. Basically, an epic-tier infernal warlock or pyromancer can simply burn straight through fire resistance. Not as useful as the previous edition's Searing Spell, but still fun.
Fire deals aggravated damage (much harder to heal) to pretty much every creature in the old World Of Darkness. In the new one, fire just deals lethal damage (painful, but not "OW MY VERY BEING IS RENDED" like with aggravated) to mortals and those not vulnerable to it. Vampires and Prometheans receive aggravated damage from it, however (Vampires because they're dessicated corpses held together and made lively by magic, and Prometheans because the "Divine Fire" that gives them life overloads when exposed to fire).
- In the old World of Darkness, the vampires of the Setite clan were especially weak to fire, taking double damage from it (still aggravated, of course). In the new one, their Spiritual Successor, the Mekhet clan, has inherited the weakness.
- The Vampire: The Masquerade / Mage: The Ascension crossover supplement "Time of Thin Blood" saw the Technocracy respond to the rising of the Ravnos antediluvian in Bangladesh by declaring Code Ragnarok... and then beating the shit out of the ancient vampire by setting him on fire with orbital mirrors after nuking him from orbit with nukes enhanced by Awakened Science. Up to that point, everything else that various supernatural groups (i.e. Garou werewolves, Asian vampires) had thrown at Ravnos had been pretty much ineffective. So, yes, on that day, the much-maligned Technocracy saved the world. Take That, mages.
- A side note on aggravated damage, for a bit of flavor on just how bad it is. A vampire can heal lethal damage (swords, etc) at the rate of one Vitae per point. This isn't bad: most vampires can just abduct some random passer-by, drain him dry, and be peachy. It takes three days and only slightly less blood than the average person contains to heal a single point of aggravated damage.
This is official government policy towards all threats in Warhammer 40000's Imperium of Man. Aliens? Reduce them to ashes. Mutants? Burn away their impurities. Nonbelievers? "Light your way in the darkness with the pyres of burning heretics." Chaos cults popping up everywhere? Kill the planet. With fire. The Imperial Church Militant's troops, the Sisters of Battle, specialize in this in-game, with a significant percentage of their troops being armoured women carrying huge flamethrowers. Sisters of Battle Seraphim can even dual-wield flame throwers.
- Of course, the other races are pretty prone to this—almost every race has some sort of flamethrower equivalent, such as Ork "Burnaboyz", who combine flamethrower and armour-cutting blowtorch in one device. They generally tend to be constantly working on deconstruction, lest they get bored and make other Boyz "do the burny dance."
- See also the Cult of the Red Redemption, in Necromunda. While the Sisters of Battle manage a healthy 0.2-0.8:1 flamethrower-to-soldier ratio in their various squads, virtually all Redemptionists carry a flamethrower, flamethrower pistol, underslung single-shot flamethrower on their rifle, or all of the above.
- Hell, the Imperium's military as a whole gives us flamethrower pistols, full-sized flamethrowers, vehicle-mounted flamethrowers, even Humongous Mecha-sized flamethrowers. Not to mention plasma guns and the meltagun, which is basically an anti-tank microwave.
- The Salamanders chapter specializes in fire based weaponry to the point where they get special rules that make them more effective. The Salamanders list is widely agreed to be one of the most lethal army lists in the recent codex.
- Not to mention the only way for most factions inside it to permanently get rid of Orks is to burn the corpses. Of course, you can turn them into a corpse using it, but you still have to make sure afterwards to prevent the Orks from rising up again from the spores they drop when they die.
- Love Can Bloom summed up why the Imperium loves fire:
  Inquisitor Madek: "Man has a love for fire. Napalm, white phosphorus, promethium, oil, gasoline, meltas, plasmas, firestorms, incendiaries, firepower, fireline, flamethrower, fireteam, firefighter, the flames of war, fire, fire, fire. What else could be said to have benefited as much from man as fire? What other element has been defended, nursed, tutored, fed, and loved more than fire? Our cities, our books, our people, our enemies, our friends, our dead, our living, our greatest works and most heinous feats; all of them, fed to the ever hungry flames, and there it is. Years of brilliant minds worked on that one. For warfare, for country, for humanity? No. We wanted to see what fire, raw unchained flame, could do."
Warhammer also has an aspect, as shown by a quote from a respected inquisitor:
The question is not how to separate the innocent from the guilty. The question is how many I can burn.
- Confronted by ~~Ents Treants~~ Treemen? Fireball. Being attacked by mummies? Burning Gaze. Taking on pretty much anything else? Conflagration of Doom. There's one lore of magic that is based entirely around killing it with fire, plus the various versions of the Lore of Tzeentch (which MUTATES it with fire).
- There's an entire category for Breath weapons, and a special rule for Flaming Attacks. They are often combined. Case in point, dragons, and the Salamanders of Lustria, who are basically living dinosaur flamethrowers.
- And then there's the Dwarf and Skaven entries... the Dwarf Flame Cannon and the Skaven Warpfire Thrower. Skaven being Skaven, it's rare for the Warpfire Thrower to be used consistently on the enemy.
Among the many religious or mystical denominations in Fading Suns, the Templar Avesti are the most prone to a Kill It With Fire approach. Their church's symbols is a holy flame. Avestite inquisitors and zealot monks wear fire-retardant robes with breathing masks and carry flame throwers when they do battle with mutated monstrosities.
Mostly subverted in the BattleTech boardgame, at least with regard to BattleMechs. Most forms of fire do no damage to them at all, instead raising their heat level a bit (which can still be a problem if you're running hot already, but isn't usually a catastrophe otherwise). Flamethrowers are an exception, but even they do only piddly amounts of damage and, if installed on a 'Mech, tend to heat it up more quickly than the target. That said, heat-causing weapons and fire in general are rather more of a threat to non-'Mech units, especially infantry, and under the now-obsolete previous rules inferno missiles in particular (basically rocket-propelled napalm) were basically tank-killers requiring a successful save-or-die roll each turn for multiple turns if even one missile hit. They have been somewhat defanged in the current ruleset, but on the upside they are now official special-purpose short-range missile ammo instead of the "use only if the optional fire rules are in force and only if your opponent agrees they're okay" extra-special case they used to be.
The devout menites of the Protectorate of Menoth from Warmachine LOVE to kill things with fire. Many of their warjacks, warcasters, and other warriors have fire based attacks and abilities.
In Ars Magica this trope pretty much sums up Flambeau's magical philosophy (at least prior to 5th edition).
In GURPS: Magic you can create "Essential Flame" which will actually burn water elementals. A pyromaniac mage actually has a lot of fun options, besides the ever popular "Explosive Fireball" there is "Burning Death" which incinerates target from the inside out even if they're magically protected from fire.

Close Tabletop Games

Mantorok and Xel'lototh zombies in Eternal Darkness can easily be killed by fire.
- Michael Edwards also attempted to use explosives to put out the oil fires in the penultimate chapter.
ReDeads in The Legend Of Zelda games.
- The third quote on the quotes page.◊
  - That's just good advice in general.
The zombies in the Resident Evil games are vulnerable to fire.
- In the remake of the first Resident Evil, you have to burn the bodies of zombies you kill (or blow their heads off), or they'll get up again, stronger.
- A particular monster in Resident Evil 5 plays this absolutely straight. The only way to kill it? Incinerate it in the conveniently placed furnace. Bonus points for the window that lets you watch as the creature is immolated.
  - Not entirely true. You can kill it without the use of fire. It's just very, very difficult...
  - Not with a rocket launcher, it isn't...though an explosion is kind of like fire, I suppose.
Undead enemies in Final Fantasy games are weak against fire. Some zombies are weak against other kinds of magic, too.
- Also, anything ice based is pretty obviously weak to fire.
- Also, Flare is usually one of the strongest spells. While it's technically non-elemental, it sure looks like fire. (Also called Nuke in some games, which doesn't really clear the matter up much.)
Fire is one of the only things that will permanently kill Dry Bones in the Paper Mario series. Curiously fireballs have little effect on Dry Bones in other games of the Super Mario Bros franchise.
In fact, a long-term fan of RPGs (or possibly video games in general) will often find Kill It With Fire to be the first thing they think of when confronted with a zombie or similarly undead enemy.
Grass-, Ice-, Bug-, & Steel-type Pokemon take double damage from fire, and the unfortunate Snover and Paras lines take Quad Damage, as do the Steel Bugs Scizor and Forrettress and two of the three forms of Wormadam. Parasect manages to take Quint Damage with its ability Dry Skin. Scizor and Forretress have Fire as their only weakness, but it's a Quad Damage weakness.
- It also helps that some of the most popular Pokémon are fire types. They usually have high attack and special attack stats, plus most fire type attacks do a lot of damage.
- This troper really loves Fire Blasting every single enemy he encounters, and makes it a staple move of all his Pokemon he carries around in the game.
One of the more useful Plasmids in Bio Shock is "Incinerate!" which, with a snap of the fingers, sets people on fire. The random screaming from the affected splicers who've been set ablaze ranges from Nightmare Fuel to Bloody Hilarious.
- Because if mutilated, gene addled psychopaths rushing at you with hooks to mangle you wasn't Nightmare Fuel enough, let's turn them into FLAMING MUTANTS WAILING IN AGONY AND ATTEMPTING TO DISEMBOWEL YOU. Much less frightening.
- Not to mention that sometimes being on fire doesn't always make them stop. Sometimes you need to wait for them to burn out.
Half Life 2 features a few situations where nearby gas tanks can be turned on and the vapors ignited as a convenient zombie solution. Used to spectacular effect in Ravenholm.
- In Half Life 2 Episode One you can use highway flares to light up dark areas, or to light up dark zombies.
  - In one particular situation, you're rather quickly out of flashlight power and flares, so lighting up some zombies is a rather convenient way to get some light.
- And then, because after all there is a human puppet being controlled by that headcrab, they scream. And scream. And scream. Just... just shoot him already.
  - Then again, this troper found the agonized screams of those Combine jerks (yes, they will catch fire as well) oddly satisfying... What?
In Shadow Of The Colossus, the colossus Celosia can be held at bay by the hero holding a lit torch, despite the fact that the colossus dwells in a temple with four much larger fires with no sign that it fears them at all.
- The fires are on pedestals, safely out of the way, as far as Celosia is concerned. The real question is who keeps the fires lit?
- This fact with the torch is vital to your defeat of Celosia: if you approach it while using the torch it'll back away from you, and this can be used to actually drive it off a ledge. The impact from hitting the ground below breaks the armour on Celosia's back, exposing the vital point. The trick now is getting onto its back while it's trying to charge you...
Mrf ''Mrf Mrflr Mrf" Mhr mrply mrnd Pmur mrf mr mrfflef mrf-murk mrfng mrskrmrf muur mrmrhmr mruphn mr mr mrt mrfng MRFMRRMR!
The Metal Gear series has two main instances of the trope; in Metal Gear 2 the only way to kill the Final Boss is to immolate him with a lighter and a can of hairspray, and in Metal Gear Solid 3 one of the bosses is a flamethrower-wielding jetpack-equipped pyromaniac cosmonaut (which still makes more sense than the guy COVERED IN BEES!) who wants to kill everything with fire, and quickly immediately sets the battlefield (and the player) ablaze.
Mass Effect lets you adapt your weapons with Incendiary Rounds and the upgraded Inferno Rounds for bringing searing pain to your enemies.
- High Explosive Rounds not only set their targets (now corpses) on fire, but also do the same thing to nearby enemies in the blast radius, which is about four meters—and sends them flying. While on fire.
The flamethrower in the Marathon games is an example—it's extremely effective against mainly organic enemies... less so vs mechanical targets.
Pretty much everything in Alone In The Dark.
- In the original Alone in the Dark, just the final boss.
In much of the Legacy Of Kain series, fire is one of four reliable ways to finish off vampires (the other three being sunlight, water, and impalement, although some are resistant to sunlight or water).
After defeating the demon Melzas in battle, Alundra finally kills him by destroying his body with fire.
The best way to kill Zombies in the X-Com series are with Incendiary/Phosphorous rounds, since these will automatically kill the Chryssalids/Tentaculats inside them.
Both played straight and subverted in Deus Ex: The flamethrower and incendiary phosphor rockets will incapacitate normal humans and the supertough MIBs (the latter of which can take a sniper rifle headshot and keep on fighting) with even the slightest graze, turning them into human torches that run around screaming wildly. It is also extremely painful for yourself if you don't happen to have the appropriate anti-Fire implant boosted to maximum, have a fire extinguisher you can use, or have a nearby lake to jump into. However, it has no effect at all on the MJ 12 Commando cyborgs, who need to be taken down by conventional bullets, explosives or melee weapons, and is useless against robots as well.
In Metroid Prime you can kill it with plasma with the Plasma beam, and adapt the beam into a veritable flamethrower as well (sapping away your missiles in the process). Seeing your Space Pirate foes blacken and singe away into dust makes up for the ammunition drain.
World Of Warcraft has an encounter based upon the Wizard Of Oz. The Straw man hits fairly hard, and has a crippling weakness to fire, though not in the For Massive Damage sense. When a fire spell is cast on him, he has a high probability of simply running around in fear, unable to attack any of the raid. Many groups will have a caster dedicate themselves to spamming Fire spells on him.
- Brutally subverted in early raids since pretty much everything was immune to fire.
The Clockwork robots in City Of Heroes have a surprising weakness to fire. This is because they are not real robots, but are instead animated telekinetically by the Clockwork King, who has a phobia towards fire.
- Nearly every Archetype has Fire powersets to choose from, and all have the common theme of being all damage, all the time. Most enemies are fairly weak to fire for that matter. Ask any Fire/Fire Blaster...
  - With the sole exception of the Thermal Radiation powerset, which is a case of Heal It With Fire.
In the Back Story of Planescape Torment, a group of wizards try to do this to Ignus by making him into a living conduit to the Elemental Plane of Fire. It didn't work. It made him happy! Ignus also plays this trope out against his enemies- all of his default spells (which are unique to him) are fire-based, and his default attack is throwing miniature fireballs at his opponents. A Wizard Nameless One can also allow Ignus to subject him to a Death Of A Thousand Cuts version of this to gain some of Ignus's spells, by allowing Ignus to burn first a finger, then a hand, then an eye, then the Nameless One's intestines, to charred meat and ash. Except for the last one (you get a spare set if you allow the crazy dissectionist Marta to cut your guts open to see if there's anything of value inside of you), all of these are done to you while the parts you sacrifice are still attached to you.
Halo 3 brings you unlimited fun with the flamethrower and flame grenades. The latter tend to be so powerful they kill most enemies on contact and burn through the heaviest Brute armor and Flood forms in seconds.
In Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, the player encounters a shoggoth at one point. At first, the player attempts to dispatch it with electricity. But this doesn't work out so well. How do you kill it? Easy. Start a gas leak, leave the room, turn the power back on (there are live wires exposed in the room the shoggoth is in), and let the horrible monster be burned to a crisp by the ensuing explosion. You even get to walk through its charred, smoking, gooey remains!
Insect creatures tend to be weak against fire in RPGs. Hornet Man's weak point is Magma Bazooka.
Fire Emblem. Eliwood's most powerful sword has the element of fire, one of the better anima tomes (the best in this Troper's eyes) is called Elfire, and mages first start using fire as their weapons. This game is just loaded with this trope. Let's not forget the Fire Emblem's namesake item in every game tending to be a powerful seal for evil Gods.
Several baddies in T'ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger are able to be quickly dispatched by fire, including — bizarrely enough —stone mantis statues.
Dead Space has a flamethrower. In a subversion, however, it's more useful for discouraging necromorphs from getting close, rather than killing them; it takes a prohibitive amount of ammunition to actually kill one with a flamethrower — they're resistant to most forms of damage except being dismembered, and when's the last time you saw a fire take someone's arm off?
- Played straight in the case of the Hunter, which is proven to be nigh invulnerable to all of your weapons, is only killed when it gets hit by the engine fire from the Ishimura's executive-use shuttles.
The Flaming Arrows upgrade in Age Of Empires makes arrows much more effective against buildings and ships. The first two games in the series also featured ships with flamethrowers. Age Of Mythology of course also has some fire-based myth creatures such as the Norse Fire Giant or the Egyptian Phoenix. One of the Norse god powers is Flaming Weapons, as well.
All three Fallout games have incendiary weapons: the traditional flamethrower (flamer), Molotov Cocktails (in the first two games), Nuka-Cola Grenade (basically a radioactive molotov cocktail with even more explosive results)... and all of those weapons set their foes on fire with a critical hit (or with any hit using a Flamer) before turning the corpses into piles of ash. Heck, the third game even has flame-spitting giant ANTS. The games just LOVE this trope.
- And let us not forget the Shishkebab!
- In Fallout 3, if the gamer wants Kick The Dog, they can kill a certain character rather painfully with fire, rather than trying to talk him out of his deathwish or putting him down mercifully.
- The second and third game have player perks that specifically make fire weapons do more damage.
- The Fallout 3 DLC Broken Steel adds the Heavy Incinerator, which lobs fireballs at your enemies.
Gears Of War 2 gives you access to a flamethrower, which is one of the nastier close-range weapons you can use, doubly so because of its effectiveness at getting around enemy cover. It also does a ridiculous amount of sustained damage, making it great to use to hose big, slow enemies like Boomers, Maulers, and Reavers.
Call Of Duty: World At War allows you to use a flamethrower to set enemy troops on fire. Unlike the flamer in United Offensive, this one has unlimited ammo (although has an "overheating" gauge), which means indiscriminate burning death to any hapless enemy soldier.
The main way of defeating the mind worms in Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri before they give you traumatic psychic hallucinations to render you helpless so they can eat your brain.
- After building the Temple of Planet late in the game, you get this quote from Academician Prokhor Zakharov from "the Lab Three aftermath"
  Let the Gaians preach their silly religion, but one way or the other I shall see this compound burned, seared, and sterilized until every hiding place is found and until every last Mind Worm egg, every last slimy one, has been cooked to a smoking husk. That species shall be exterminated, I tell you! Exterminated!
Spyro The Dragon. If you can't kill it with fire, you have to charge into it.
Flame-based weaponry is the hallmark of the Brotherhood of Nod in Command And Conquer, especially when it comes to the Black Hand, though certain GDI air strikes use napalm as well.
- The Chinese faction from Generals have a similar love for fire. They've got flamethrowers, incendiary artillery shells, incendiary bombs, incendiary air-launched missiles, and if that doesn't solve the problem, it's time to switch to nuclear fire.
Dynasty Warriors loves this. It's almost as if the strategists are limited to either using fire to burn things down, or ambushes to surprise the enemy.
- In the Shu campaign, Zhuge Liang's debut battle consisted of him setting traps in a forest. The first one to be triggered was... yes, it involved setting the enemy on fire!
- In the Battle of Chi Bi/Red Cliffs, Cao Cao's enormous fleet outnumbering the Wu and Shu forces by something like ten to one was defeated by Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu hatching an intricate plot to burn his ships, then strike back.
- The fire spam gets ridiculous when you get to the Nanman Campaign and meet the armoured soldiers who seem to be invincible to your troops. A few minutes later, you can't help but laugh at Meng Huo's troops wearing wooden armour as Zhuge Liang uses fire yet again to win that particular battle. Worse, this battle happens after Chi Bi where the Shu strategist showed the whole of China without any doubt how good he was at using fire to burn things that belonged to the enemy!
The Burninator flamethrower in Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines is so powerful against every other thing in the game it makes the player feel kinda dirty for using it. One specific example is a sniper boss whose main power is the ability to teleport away and lay down a couple hits before you can get close. The flamethrower disrupts this ability and saps his health even faster than some mooks. Every enemy in the game — except for the Sheriff — is a pushover when you bring FIRE into the picture.
- See the World Of Darkness entry in Tabletop Games for reasons why this is the case (same rules set).
The Bubble Bobble games have fire-filled bubbles which are strong enough to kill enemies but weak enough to stun the protagonists. Just, well, touching anything of a higher firepower (enemy fireballs) will incinerate the protagonists.
In Left 4 Dead, Tanks are much easier to kill once aflame.
- Subverted, though: lighting a Hunter on fire makes him do more damage when he knocks you down and mauls you.
The flamethrower in Return To Castle Wolfenstein.
In the shark-punching ultra-manly arcade game First Funky Fighter, a bonus item on stages 1 and 3 will, when hit, cause a firestorm that destroys every enemy on the screen.
Several Mega Man Robot Masters, including the obvious (Fireman, Heat, Flame, Burner, & Magma), and the somewhat less so (Pharaoh, Turbo, Sword), though not Napalmman. When Megaman wants to Kill It With Fire, using it against the ice-wielding guys is a bad move (Except in Mega Man 6, and in Mega Man 8, where it does the same damage as a charged Mega Buster). Oddly enough, you'll use fire against the guys trying to cut you to bits (Ringman, Slashman) or slinging explosives around (Bombman, Burstman, Pirateman).
In Far Cry 2, a First Person Shooter set in modern Africa, fire is realistically implemented: many things can cause one to start (gas tanks, fuel barrels, flamethrowers, Molotovs, flare guns, the backblast from rocket launchers, and basically any sort of explosion) and depending on your surroundings, it can spread, fast. Aside from obvious uses like setting people on fire, enemies also react accordingly, and will back away and avoid fires, making them good distractions, allowing you to flank them, sneak into their base, or escape. Seeing an entire outpost up in flames, spreading across the grass, up trees, and into the jungle as far as the eye can see, is a sight to behold.
In Starcraft, this is how the Confederacy dealt with its rebels, and how the Protoss dealt with Zerg-infected planets.
- Thanks to the Firebat, it's also how the Terrans deal with Zerglings, Zealots, other Firebats...
The flamethrower is one of the most effective weapons in Syndicate, especially early in the game. It also causes the victim to thrash about in pain and set everything he touches on fire... Hilarity Ensues.
During Samurai Shodown II's heyday, This Troper and some fellow players started contemplating just how many characters in that game can, in some way shape or form, torch you. There's 17 total, and I counted 11 (plus the support character) that can leave you in flames. Toasty!
Dwarf Fortress has four main methods:
- Should you be lucky enough to have magma, submerging goblin sieges in it. See also Project Fuck the World of Boatmurdered, a magma Wave Motion Gun.
- The "Booze Bomb" trap relies upon leaving a fire imp or other volcano denizen in a cage surrounded by barrels of alcohol. When goblins get close, pull a lever to open the cage and transform the booze stockpile into a steadily expanding fireball.
- Capture and tame a dragon before it can taste dwarf blood and you have a hellbeast capable of breathing flame (although surprisingly, it isn't immune to fire, meaning particularly stupid dragons tend to incinerate themselves).
- Wizards are currently a work in progress. Occasionally they can show up in normal games due to a spectacular bug. They hurl fireballs. One video demonstrated what happens when wizards get involved — one hurls a fireball at a roach, and Hilarity Ensues.
- "Kill it with magma" has become a common refrain on the Dwarf Fortress forums.
  - Including, in one case, as a solution to a burning dwarf: if he's melted, he's not on fire anymore.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has several undead (including vampires) as well as trolls and high elves with a vulnerability to fire. But as the locals will frequently tell you, "a sword works just as well".
Space Colony has flamethrowers to deal with fast growing plant life and insect infestations.
You are forced to euthanize your faithful Companion Cube in Portal by throwing it into an Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator. Later on, you do the same to GLaDOS, in an act of sweet revenge (seeing as nothing else works and the game's second incinerator is conveniently located in the same room).
- "I'm not even angry, I'm being so sincere right now. Even though you broke my heart and killed me. And tore me to pieces, and threw every piece into a fire. As they burned it hurt because I WAS SO HAPPY FOR YOU!"
Defense Grid: The Awakening has Inferno and Meteor towers, and since they do area of effect damage, they're great against Swarmers.
In the Contra series, the usefulness of the flamethrower depends on how it works in that particular game. First two games, it kind of sucks, but the third game, it's fucking awesome.
Can kill almost anything in Scribblenauts.
In the very first level of Sonic The Hedgehog 3, Dr. Robotnik tries to dispose of a pesky blue Hedgehog—responsible for thwarting his plans for world domination, twice—by napalming Angel Island and setting the entire jungle on fire. Needless to say, it doesn't work.
Incendiary Rounds in Mass Effect are one of the most destructive types of ammo available.
In Grand Theft Auto 3, the flamethrower is surprisingly effective at toasting tanks.

Close Video Games

In a opposite-of-lethal-intent example of the use of fire, Dr. McNinja's father Dan McNinja here.
However, Get Medieval played it straight (along with Rule Of Cool) in this strip.
Belkar (of Order Of The Stick infamy) attempted it here.
- Pretty much anyone with a pure arcane caster class has done this; Xykon causing Roy to fall to his death with Meteor Swarm, V. hurling a Fireball at the chimaera quite early on...
In Tales Of The Questor, the ratlike Wights swell and explode when exposed to a candle flame... later on, Quentyn uses magically amplified torchflame to kill a swarm of Redcaps (with messy, gory, tick-poppy type results.)
Hold on, what's this in my pocket? Oh, that's right, it's a Meteor Swarm.
Fwoosh.
In Sluggy Freelance this is the only way Oasis is able to beat Bun-Bun.
- Bun-Bun also tried this strategy himself at one point. It didn't work quite as well.
Stickfodder: "''Let the fires of hell purge you clean!''"
How the hell is Kyros from Irregular Webcomic not on here? His obsessiveness to "sort out" any problems he faces by casting a huge fireball, killing everything in his path (usually including himself) is a Running Gag.
No Rest For The Wicked There is a reason why fire is the traditional method of dealing with your kind.

Close Webcomics

Avatar The Last Airbender: Fire Lord Ozai decides this trope is an appropriate response to a recalcitrant Earth Kingdom. Why bother with normal methods of subjugation when you can just set the entire continent on fire?.
- Maybe because that offsets any possible benefit you can get from subjugating the coontinent in the first place? Also, any plan that has the potential to blot out the Sun with ash should be reconsidered, especially if you live in a preindustrial age of sustenance farming. A single volcanic erruption of the correct magnitude can (and at one point in the middle ages did) darken the sky of a continent for more than a year. Burning a continent, who knows how long that would take to clear up?
  - Perhaps because the character is voiced by Mark Hamill. And he is named the Firelord.
Scrotus threatens to show Korgoth Of Barbaria a new spectrum of pain, and Korgoth responds by tearing a substantial amount of Scrotus's skin off, dousing him with strong alcohol, and lighting him on fire.
The other page quote comes from a Halloween episode of The Simpsons, where Maggie suddenly loses her legs and grows tentacles. They take her to Dr. Hibbert, who prescribes "fire, and lots of it".
Star Wars The Clone Wars. Season Two Trailer. Geonosians charging? Break out the flamethrowers.

Close Western Animation

From John Dies At The End:
Amy said, "So, you’re making a flame-thrower?"
"Amy, we gotta be prepared. We don’t know what we’ll find in that place, but for all we know it could be the devil himself."
"David, what possible good is that thing gonna do?"
"Oh, no, you didn’t hear me. I said it’s a flame-thrower." Girls.
BURNINATING THE COUNTRYSIDE! BURNINATING THE PEASANTS! BURNINATING ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!!!!!!
An epic Cake Wreck.
Protectors Of The Plot Continuum call going Axe Crazy "flamethrower crazy" after an Agent who snapped and rampaged with a flamethrower, seeking to kill Mister Rogers. This is also because Agents who go "flamethrower" tend to try to kill the Flowers, and fire is the easiest way to do so due to their physiology. Burning Sues is also a popular method of either killing them or getting rid of the body.
The recommended◊ approach to 'em Trolls.
Have a Scarab problem? Lure it to a fuel refinery, set a few well-placed charges, and torch the bastard. Just don't be surprised if the resulting fire goes out of control and consumes a sector of the very city that you were trying to stop the Scarab from destroying.

Close Web Original

This is the reason armies have used flamethrowers as weapons. As the late George Carlin explained it:
And what this indicates to me, it means that at some point, some person said to himself, "Gee, I sure would 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 that would throw flame on them."
- Interestingly enough, the flamethrower stopped being used around the time of The Vietnam War, at least by the United States. There were two reasons given: first and foremost, the flamethrower requires an absolutely massive tank for fuel, which slows the soldier prohibitively. Second, the flamethrower isn't really all that useful a weapon; short range and limited fuel keep it from being used at the most useful times. The reason the flamethrower was used for as long as it was (WW 1/2 to Vietnam) is because it is a profoundly powerful psychological weapon. Nothing demoralizes an enemy squad as much as seeing your best friend set on fire!
  - Don't forget the wielder was actually running away with several litres of an extremely flammable liquid strapped to his back.
  - Unless you get a flamethrower tank, which had its share of combat during WW 2.
  - Flamethrowers also were more useful during trench warefare as your targets were so nice to line up in a small space. Which made the fuel issue a bit less problematic.
- Also because its rather large area of effect (for a handheld weapon) makes it ideal for taking out things like bunkers. Not very useful in more open combat, like in Vietnam, and utterly worthless in combat near civilians, like in Iraq, but in more entrenched situations it can still be quite useful.
- Don't forget that the US uses a different kind of fire weapon now — the incinerary grenade.
- Despite this, flamethrowers are entirely legal to own in most of America.
- This troper wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't come back into mainstream. Automatic shotgun + dragon's breath = short range flame thrower.
  - Not a good idea. As The Other Wiki says, it's not powerful enough to drive the "automatic" part of the automatic shotgun, and would still be shooting flames while you eject it. On the other hand, a gatling shotgun driven by a motor would work, and be utterly awesome.
  - This troper was thinking of using battery operated mechanisms. If you're not diverting power from the explosive gases you'd also get more oomph out of regular bullets the same way. But you'd need a very reliable battery for that and we don't have those yet. And I will raise your dragon's breath gatling gun by mounting two of mini guns on those new Powered Armor and making them belt fed! Basically a fire bat.
- For a more impersonal delivery system, there's incendiary bombs, like those used fairly heavily on Japanese cities during World War II, by the USAAF. The June 10, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo caused more deaths than the immediate effects of either of the atomic bombs dropped in that conflict.
  - And then there's the bizarre tale of Operation X-ray...
- Can't forget The Blitz in Britain. Over a million incendiaries were dropped in the first phase.
Greek fire, an ancient chemical concoction used in naval warfare that burst into flames upon contact with air. The secret of its formula was so well-kept that it is lost today. Or Is It...
- The Greek Fire was so useful back in the Medieval period that many historians agree it was one of the main reasons the Byzantine empire lasted for so long.
It is actually a common practice among those who fight forest fires to start a number of monitored brush fires while also cutting down trees. The rationale? Fastest way to get rid of fuel and helps to stop/control the spread of a forest fire by starving it.
- That's pretty much the way nature does it (minus the "monitored" part). In fact, certain types of cone-bearing trees need fire to open the cones. Many of the worst fires were that bad because environmental groups Did Not Do The Research and sued to stop/prohibit thinning. Area grows into a tangle of underbrush and deadfall, lightning strikes, huge zone of flamey badness ensues.
  - The Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia in February 2009 were partially caused by this.

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