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George: If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do? Capt. Blackadder: Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump two hundred feet in the air and scatter oneself over a large area. - Blackadder
Land mines. Hundreds of thousands of them buried and forgotten around the world. One of the most dangerous and easy to deploy weapons of war, they can effectively deny an area from use for any purpose until they're cleared. They were considered so dangerous in World War II that the Allies used special tanks equipped with massive rollers and chain whips to detonate them away from the tank's hull and clear a path through the field. The Soviets used penal battalions.
Almost nobody in television ever notices a minefield until, in the middle of a dramatic silence, somebody steps on one.
At this point, one of two things happens. If the poor fellow is an extra, a mook, or otherwise expendable, the mine will detonate immediately and kill the guy. This is often followed by the survivors getting down on their hands and knees and carefully making their way out, probing the ground ahead with sticks and knives (especially in war stories).
If it's a main character, however, or someone who is otherwise important to the plot, all that will happen is a little "click", and we will have a tense moment while the heroes try to figure out how to get the poor guy off of it without killing him. This usually involves finding a nice big rock to hold the button down while everybody runs for cover.
Many video games feature land mines with serious design problems, so it's quick and easy for a single main character to avoid or disarm them, unlike in real life. Such land mines might even feature flashing lights and beep a few seconds before they go off, which rather defeats the purpose of a land mine.
If the mine is a Bouncing Betty , the most effective thing to do is dive and duck immediately to receive minimum damage from the shrapnel, as it mainly spreads horizontally. In reality, Bouncing Betties and most other personnel mines will go off whether or not you release the button.
Also applies to all manner of similar explosive boobytraps involving pressure plates, trip wires and other triggering mechanisms. A recent variation is a 'claymore' or directional mine. American versions have 'FRONT - TOWARD ENEMY' printed on them. Rather than just blow up and hope someone's over it, these consist of a mounting plate, the explosive charge, and the soon-to-be shrapnel. The charge is set up so that the kaboom fans out in an arc in front of the mine, rather than a general kaboom. It is important that the right side is facing the enemy, thus the large label.
Note that land mines are now prohibited by an international treaty signed by many countries, not including the USA due to treaty obligations in South Korea and concerns over the DMZ there.
Subtrope of Kinetic Clicking, related to Dramatic Gun Cock.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Macross Zero demonstrates an odd if potentially realistic example. One character steps on a mine, only for career soldier Roy Fokker to notice just in time to tell her not to take another step. He then carefully digs away the dirt surrounding the mine and, over the course of several stressful minutes, disarms its detonator. He then proves himself to be a total jerk by pulling his companion into a kiss, to which she freaks out and demands how long the mine's been disarmed. "A while."
- Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu has a prime example of this. In the Hot Springs Episode, when Kurz and the guys are trying to get peeks of the naked girls, one of them steps on a landmine planted by Sousuke. Kurz immediately throws himself to the ground and unearths the mine, and picking up a big rock, tells the would-be victim to slowly shift his foot as he slides the rock on the mine. The procedure is almost finished... When our victim sneezes. Naturally, hilarity ensues as everyone is sent flying.
- Once upon a time, a boy named Kuro Hazama and his mother were walking on a beach. They found a mine, the boy approached it and his mom tries to stop him... then it went BOOM, seriously injuring both of them. Mrs. Hazama died in the hospital, her child survived and became the greatest surgeon in the world, Black Jack.
- Used humorously in Gintama where in an effort to capture a panty-thief, the Yorozuya and Shinsengumi team up, lay a trap in the form of a land mine field and promptly blow themselves the hell up.
- Hellsing plays this completely straight, with the Wild Geese surrounding Hellsing Manor with mines to fend off the charging Nazi vampires.
Film
- Lethal Weapon 2 has one such moment, only it's not a land mine but a toilet mine. One of the good guys sits on his toilet only to find out the seat's been wired to a bomb which will blow if he gets up. It does eventually blow, but thanks to the efforts of the bomb squad it only damages the room (and propels the toilet bowl against a nearby car), leaving the main characters unhurt.
- In the 1994 movie Blown Away, a co-worker of the lead protagonist character, Anthony Franklin (Forrest Whitaker) hears the click of the trigger for an explosive trap planted by Ryan Gaerity (Tommy Lee Jones) as he sits down. Franklin survives, courtesy of a phone call made by using his foot to dial 911 on the telephone that was just beyond his reach.
- The 2001 film No Man's Land had a particularly horrific example: a Serbian soldier moves the corpse of a Bosniak soldier on top of a landmine so that when the enemy collects the body, the mine will go off and the enemy killed or injured. It turns out that the enemy soldier is still alive, but unconscious. Eventually, UN forces are more or less browbeaten into coming to help, only to have the munitions expert learn what kind of explosive it is, and say that he can't disable it. The browbeating is done by the press, so when they see a person being rapidly stretchered away they are annoyed with the anticlimactic ending and leave, not bothering to take one last look at the site. We see the wounded soldier left alone on the bomb to either die of his wounds, starve to death, or get up off the bomb and die. This film was, incidentally, presented in part as a comedy. Bosnians don't mess around with jokes.
- The movie Behind Enemy Lines has this happen to a redshirt soldier accompanying the sniper. The sniper almost stepped on it, but then stepped past but didn't warn the man behind him. At the click and the soldiers request for help, he takes a look, tells him to remain still, then keeps walking. Theres a boom later.
- In Beyond Borders, Angelina Jolie steps on a mine in the climax of the film. She stands there, wondering what to do, but nobody can figure out a way to get her off. Resigning herself to her fate, she steps off, letting herself be blown to bits of flesh and burning expensive clothes.
- Tropic Thunder uses this trope in an unexpected and hilarious way. The director, wanting to get his actors in the "real deep shit" to optimize their performance, takes them into the dense jungles of southeast Asia planning to leave them there while filming with hidden cameras. After giving a rousing speech about making the greatest war movie ever, he starts to walk off to prepare to film, steps on a landmine with an audible *click*, looks down, and explodes into many pieces. Needless to say his pampered actors thought it was an act.
- When one of the actors examines the mine, he realizes it's a remnant of the First Indochina War and that the area "must be full of them". However, for some strange reason, no other mines blow up in the entire film.
- It may have been that they were only spread out in that clearing. Or just a one-off gag.
- The 1979 Australian Vietnam war film The Odd Angry Shot uses this trope too. The unfortunate soldier who ends up on the mine eventually can't take it any longer after about 8 hours or so, when several efforts and ideas to save him have failed, and he just steps off to his doom.
Live Action TV
- In the Doctor Who episode "Genesis of the Daleks", the Doctor steps on a partially-buried mine in the rubble of Skaro, and his companion Harry has to wedge rocks under the mine so that he can lift his foot off it without it going off.
- Exception: JAG, where Lt. Roberts steps on a mine in Afghanistan, and it goes "click". He and his companion attempt the "pile rocks on it" trick and he jumps away, but he doesn't get away fast enough and loses a leg to the explosion.
- In an early episode of M*A*S*H, Trapper — guided by shouted directions from map-reading Hawkeye, Radar and Henry — has to inch his way through a minefield to rescue a child who has wandered innocently into it. Their flawed guidance unfortunately leaves him stranded holding the child with (untripped) mines six inches from him on all sides, requiring a helicopter to pick them up and lift them directly out of the field (even though in real life, this would be inadvisable, as the down pressure from the helicopter may very well set off mines. The best way to get out of a minefield is the hard, slow way).
- A later one showed a farmer using his daughters to clear a minefield. It goes wrong, of course. Radar runs over to the stricken girl and carries her to safety, and then is reminded that he ran through an unmarked but recently verified minefield.
- A third episode featured a woman who, while thinking of the romance in her life, took a walk. Now to figure out who put a minefield next to a hospital.
- As mentioned now and again in the show, "M" stands for "Mobile." While there is only one set for the run of the series, it is implied to have moved several times. Now ask who put a hospital next to a minefield, or who goes for a midnight stroll in a war zone
- Averted in Lost when Danielle's boobytraps trigger immediately, but no one in the cast is seriously hurt by the resulting explosion.
- MacGyver once finds himself with a foot on a mine, and manages a daring escape, but, in jumping free, he's landed on another mine (which turns out to be a dud). There's also a slight variation in one episode where Mac finds himself having to prop up a rickety shelf that's holding several cases of unstable old dynamite. If he lets go, he'll go boom.
- And there was another episode where Murdoc was first introduced: Though the device wasn't explicitly called a mine, it worked on the Bouncing Betty principle. Mac sat down on his bed and that armed the bomb planted in it. Pete told him that it would only detonate when he got off the bed but the blast would be directed mainly upwards so if he jumped away fast enough he'd be safe. This is one of those serious Fridge Logic moments. If the bomb only explodes upwards and detonates only when you get off the bed... how is that supposed to kill you again?
- It would kill you because normally, your ass would still be lingering above the mattress for a brief second while you are standing up. The blast could very well incinerate your behind and leave you bleeding to death.
- Yet another one took place in a snowy cave in which all Mac had to do was dig the snow out from the side and shove a metal bar into conveniently sized holes to stop the "platform" from springing up.
- An episode of CSI Miami had the Victim Of The Week blown up on a beach covered with mines. This trope played out when one of the cast stood on a mine by accident. Slightly more realistically it was removed by burning the explosive away with thermite (this would work as most explosives are designed to burn unless they are set off by a smaller explosion).
- The Flash TV show used a similar device. A criminal had set up a pressure-sensitive plate as a trap; when Lt. Garfield stepped on it, a tape recording informed him he'd activated a bomb which would blow up in 60 seconds or when he stepped off, whichever came first. The Flash arrived just in time to take Garfield's place, then escape at super-speed once he was clear of the building.
- The Professionals. Bodie dials the first number of his phone and suddenly realises it's booby trapped. Fortunately he's got his radio to call Doyle for help, who disarms it with their usual exchange of banter (though somewhat more terse).
- Due South, episode "The Edge".
- Seen in an episode of The Pretender.
- A Cylon variant of the S-Bomb ("Bouncing Betty") appears in Battlestar Galactica. Not only it is done realistically in terms of the "click" but it also results with the death of a prominent secondary character, Elosha.
Newspaper Comics
- Wally in the comic Funky Winkerbean dealt with the issue of a landmine while in Afghanistan, and later appeared to deal with it again in Iraq until it was revealed to actually be a videogame. The videogame incident generated some controversy that later warranted an apology from the creator.
Real Life
- There have been several cases where this trope has caused people to think that they've stepped on a landmine (obviously all cases involved completly unrelated bits of scrap metal or no longer functional mines).
Tabletop Games
- Car Wars featured these, of course. In two main flavours, normal and 'Spear 1000', which primarily shot up rather than spread out. Both were primarily meant to take down the titular cars and similar; walking through a mine counter was perfectly safe. Splatbooks of course offerred antipersonnell mines, as well as the minesweeper mentioned above that can get mounted on a convenient tank.
- These were given their own sidebar in Cyberpunk 2020, referring to sneaky things you can do. Like wiring up one to an enemy's bed, or lining your escape route with claymore mines.
Video Games
- Minesweeper. What more need be said?
- Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes encounters a lot of these during the beach mission. Since he perpetually carries the Idiot Ball, this results in him stepping on several mines in-cutscene, resulting in the "click," then getting blown up. Luckily, he's strangely unharmed. The last one makes fun of this, as he sees the mine, steps over it with a chuckle... and steps on a buried one. "FUUUUUUUUUUUUU-" BOOM.
- Metroid Prime 3 used two different mines and both were in plain sight and were easy to shoot from a distance if you didn't rush into the room. One mine was a standard proximity mine that blew up if you got too close. The other mine type was similar to the bouncing betty one mentioned in the top of the page; if you got too close, the mine would jump up, fire a laser in 360 degrees, then explode.
- Metal Gear Solid had Claymore mines, special mines using fiber optic technology that would render itself invisible. They would explode if the player stepped into its field of "vision." Claymores can show up on the radar as yellow dots and cones if the player as a mine detector, but using a thermal visor would let you physically see the mines. Crawling over a Claymore would let you pick it up and add it to your inventory. Of course, they can be shot out as well.
- Call Of Duty 4 claymores do go click when you arm them, and when someone triggers them. Unfortunately for non-sniping players, it explodes right after.
- Earlier Call of Duty games enforced map boundaries with minefields; if you got a little too adventurous, you'd have less than a second after the "click" to jump back to safety.
- The mines in Fallout 3 "beep", instead of "click", giving the player just enough time to either try and disarm them, or get the heck off. Disarming mines does make them go "click" though.
- The longest mission in the game ("The Wasteland Suvival Guide") has a segment where you go to an entire town filled with landmines, and a man is shooting at you with a sniper rifle in an attempt to get you to kill yourself spectacularly. The entire area seems to be a meta-reference to Hideo Kojima games, coincidentally.
- I observed that the mines beep when you're about to step on them and explode the moment you touch them. at the beep, you can stop and backpedal with good reflex or slow movement, otherwise, boom
- Likewise, LAMs in Deus Ex beep before exploding, so the player has a chance to disarm them. They also blink bright red LED borders. When they start hiding the damn things behind your head as you reach the top of a ladder, this becomes more of an Oh Crap moment.
- Half Life 2 has mines that beep and flash if a target so much as gets near them, followed by a distinctive sound if the player gets close enough to trigger it. The player then has a whole second to jump out of the way as the mine is launched to eye level (similar to a Bouncing Betty) or grab it in midair.
- You're supposed to use the gravity gun to pull it out of the ground, then toss it into a convenient enemy or somewhere where it won't hurt you when it explodes.
- Valkyria Chronicles uses comic-book style onomatopoeia as part of its visual style, so the land mines not only click when you step on them, but the word "click" appears. The good news: They don't actually explode until you move off them, so if you heal yourself or have another unit disarm it first you could easily survive.
- Instantly making it vastly superior to Red Alert's method (see below), which is just step SPROING "Where the hell did my tanks/soldiers go?" At least VC has a counter, Red Alert requires Mine-Stompers (Which can get expensive to use $950 Heavy Tanks to clean out a Minefield).
- These turn up as surprises in Wasteland, a future RPG. You could avoid them with sufficient Perception skill from your leader. Or, if you're like I was, use them to try to earn Experience Points in that skill by marking the troops through them.
- These can end up being unfortunate surprises in Command And Conquer, starting in Red Alert. I hate losing pretty tanks to lousy hidden mines.
- It's a subversion in Command & Conquer, seeing as how your only warning is a SPROING! when the mine goes off (at which point, it is too late). Quite annoying, since the game has mine LAYERS, but not mine DETECTORS.
- Unhidden things to avoid in Front Line, a shoot-em-up from Taito back in the early 1980s. Of course, if you can get the enemy to wander into them, all the more fun.
- And something to avoid in both Smash TV and Total Carnage.
- Subverted in World Of Warcraft in multiple ways. The Engineering Profession allows the creation of bombs, bullets, and more relevant, mines, that go off almost instantly when an enemy is in range. Enemy mobs sometimes drops mines that take well over 5 seconds to arm, then will explode with massive damage, and in Wrath of the Lich King, there is an achievement tied with a minefield that you receive upon detonating 15 mines in a row without hitting the ground.
- Halo 3 - The mines are near-impossible to spot when driving or walking, unless proceeding at speeds too slow to avoid being easily shot by other players. when a mine is detonated, it explodes instantaneously. If spotted, it can be shot or grenaded to safely(?) detonate it.
- Resistance Fall Of Man Whoever decided to place a land mine that behaves like a bouncing betty directly next to one that behaves in a traditional manner is a maniacal genius of tactical warfare.
Western Animation
- Gags involving mine fields were very common on Looney Tunes. Usually it involved one character setting up the mines for another character but ending up in the middle of the field and having to slowly make his way back to safety. Since the mines were easily detectable under conspicuous mounds of dirt, the character manages to escape without a scratch... until he unwittingly steps on that one mine he hid too well.
- A Speedy Gonzales & Daffy Duck episode comes to mind. For some reason, Daffy lays a minefield with all the locations marked. Daffy loses the map, but Speedy winds up with it and offers to tell Daffy where the mines are. Daffy takes a step... <Boom!> "There's one!" <Boom> "There's another!" <Boom> "What do you mean you don't know where they are? You haven't missed one yet!"
- A example of this trope happens in the series Roughnecks: Starship Trooper Chronicles where one of the main characters (the cameraman that suppsedly is "documenting" the actions of the titular squad, runs into a minefield while trying to escape from the enemy. a *BIG* minefield. With accompaning Loud Click, and the reveal that lifting his foot would detonate not only the mine, but the enire minefield through the explosion of the first mine. (Yeah, I know - poor design if all the mines in the field could be set off by just one blowing). The squad has a robotic member that they are int he process of field-testing - the robot makes a Heroic Sacrifice after running out of ammo. He runs in, replaces our main character's foot with his own, and literally throws him clear of the minefield. The robot then waits for the enemy to get real close to him (the enemy naturally not setting off any of the mines on their way), then lifts his foot. Afterward, the troopers deliver a Aesop while ruminating on the sacrifice.
Other
- In his autobiography About Face David Hackworth tells of an incident in Korea when he accidentally triggered a mine, but didn't hear the click due to his shell-damaged hearing. Everyone except Hackworth dived for cover, then looked up in amazement to see their commanding officer miraclously unharmed. Hackworth added to his Bad Ass reputation by growling at them for not clearing the minefield properly, then striding off to find a place where he could quietly go into shock.
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