Macross Missile Massacre - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Itano Circus

A tactic wherein a warcraft — often a Humongous Mecha — launches a massive salvo of missiles at a target, often more missiles than the craft should be able to hold. The missiles often follow artistic curving trajectories for no apparent reason, though strategically it may simply make them more difficult to dodge (or intercept, if there's any usable point defence). Occasionally, this is explained in Space Opera as the effect a ship's energy/force/gravity field has on the missiles.

These missiles usually robotech on their way to their target(s). Expect the target to try a Beehive Barrier to block the incoming ballistic barrage. A high speed missile dodge is usually an effective counter as well. A slightly more proactive solution is to launch your own missiles or, if you have the option of More Dakka, shooting them down. Trying to lead them away and crashing into an enemy is usually reserved for Ace Pilots.

Named after the Humongous Mecha in the Macross metaseries who fire swarms of missiles (specifically, 'micromissiles') that behave in precisely this way. It has also been called "Itano Circus"

, after Ichiro Itano, who pioneered the most common aesthetic look of the MMM; and "Scott Bernarding," after the main character of the Third Generation of Robotech. Bernard frequently performed the MMM, even though ammunition such as missiles was supposed to be scarce.

There are several actual weapons that fire a Macross Missile Massacre. In fact a whole lot of real-life weapon systems are either designed or can be adapted to use this tactic, and if nothing else you can just gather a whole bunch of one-shot launchers together Hamas or Hezbollah-style; see Real Life examples below.

A form of Spam Attack, There Is No Kill Like Overkill, and Impossibly Cool Weapon. See also the related video game genre, Bullet Hell.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Macross
Even in the Gundam Multiverse, the MMM is a viable tactic employed by the Dendrobium Orchis (One huge missle splits into at least 80 smaller ones), Heavyarms (Lots and lots of missle launchers), and Leopard (Expy of the above, same method).
- More specific:
  - Trowa Barton's Gundam Heavyarms from Gundam Wing. Despite an armament of 52 missiles + 36 homing missiles, instead of using them against multiple targets, he invariably launches all of them in a single barrage against a few targets.
  - Taken to another level by the Gundam Dendrobium of Gundam0083. Its basic "Stamen" form is a conventional RX-78 clone with no missiles at all. But when it docks with the "Orchis" mobile armor, it can launch a salvo of almost TWO THOUSAND missiles.
Parodied in Love Hina Again, where Kaolla Su uses missile launchers attached to her arms and legs to generate the effect. Subverted somewhat in the Love Hina Spring Movie, when the latest incarnation of Mecha Tama does not, in fact, have unlimited missiles. It runs out.
Used prominently in the Cowboy Bebop episode "Gateway Shuffle", in which a baddie fires a giant missile at the goodies, which then splits into four missiles. They destroy all but one and are about to blow up the last when it splits into thousands more missiles.
Not surprisingly, The Big O also carries a stupidly large number of missiles in its chest cavity. Unfortunately, while they are deployed nearly every episode, their total destructive power barely rivals that of a road flare.
The anime Zoids had various individuals who enjoyed this trope, most notably Leena Toros in the New Century Zero series. Her only attack in an entire episode typically consisted of one giant Macross Missile Massacre, usually launched while shouting "Wild Weasel Unit Total Assault!!"
- This was also the main attack method of the Panzer armour of the Liger Zero- which overheated the Zoid so much that the armour had to be ejected after using it. Fortunately, it's re-usable.
Project: A-Ko: B-Ko's "Akagiyama Missiles".
In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann the Missile Massacre is a favored "tactic" of Attenborough, who is prone to pushing the Fire button of the warships without warning, hence his nickname Beamspam McMuppet.
- It does become useful later on when the Missile Massacre simultaneously hits every point at every time in the universe, annihilating the entire enemy force throughout all times, until that point it never really does much.
- Simon did something similar to this a couple of times with projectile drills.
In Mahou Sensei Negima, the Sagitta Magica spell is a common attack spell that launches anywhere from one to a hundred and ninety-three homing elemental blasts at a target, making it a 4M(Macross Magic Missile Massacre). Chachamaru did this at the end of the first anime adaptation using a pactio power.
In early episodes of Space Runaway Ideon this appears to be the Ideon's only method of attack. In later episodes, when said missiles have (literal?) god-like power, this will easily devastate fleets.
Digimon: In the first, third, and fourth seasons, at least one character's highest digivolution is an insanely weapon-laden cyborg. Season three has the baddest: the Humongous Mecha-sized Saint Galgomon/Mega Gargomon has literally hundreds of missiles of all sizes that come from various hidden compartments all over his body. (However, this attack, while cool-looking, seldom finishes a fight. They just soften the bad guy up for the two hugely oversized (and oddly happy) shoulder missiles which are the finisher.)
A sequence in School Rumble had Harima racing to deliver his finished manga manuscript to the publisher while riding a giant curry dish as a sled. A truck carrying frozen tuna crashed - and fired its cargo at him, Macross Missile Massacre style.
The Nirvana from Vandread shoots lasers this way, with the bonus that they can circumvent friendly troops while streaking toward their target.
- Not only Nirvana, Rabat's pet Orangutan is also intelligent enough to pilot a robot. "Intelligent" meaning, getting strapped in and firing 3M's at anything that moves 'til it runs out of ammo. When she used it the last time, she got lucky since Nirvana's crews are actually more than ready to resupply her.
While not technically a complete Macross Missile Massacre, the ending battle in OVA 5 of the air combat series Sento Yousei Yukikaze resembles a pseudo 3M, as every surviving aircraft is remotely taken over by the Yukikaze AI and salvo fires all of their remaining missiles simultaneously. The result is several hundred to several thousand full-sized Air to Air missiles blanketing the horizon. Called a pseudo 3M because all those missiles really were needed and because all of the aircraft carried a finite and generally realistic number of missiles individually.
Kaoruko from Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge often does this with her Powered Armor, which has four missile launchers (two on her legs, two on her arms) that fire like this.
Spells from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, such as Axel Shooter and Plasma Lancer, invokes this image, only using balls or blades of energy. A straighter example can also be found in the Type-2 Gadget Drones of the third season, which launches salvoes of small missiles as one of its attacks.
- In Nanoha, if any character (particularly shown: Fate and Chrono) using an attack with "... Shift", you can expect massive missile rain.
- Reinforce (that now dead Reinforce, mind you) also using similar move, called Blood Dagger. Probably can be used by Hayate, too.
A variation, Mashiro Rima accomplishes this using six juggling pins, hitting a target as small as an (highly manoeuvrable) egg in Shugo Chara.
In Kirameki Project a giant fighting mecha called "The Perfect" fires a ridiculously large salvo of missiles at a magical girl, Nene.
In "Samurai Pizza Cats", Lucille has this occur when she's upset, and the projectiles are stored within her hair.
Crest Of The Stars and its sequels made their battleships purely missile platforms that take Macross Missile Massacre to the absolutely ridiculous extent (the majority of the mass of ships multiple kilometers long consists solely of thousand and thousands of missiles). The sheer weight of fire ONE battleship could deliver would put David Weber to shame. Of course, they were almost entirely Point Defenseless, but that's another matter.
In the Suzumiya Haruhi anime, Kyon does this with a bunch of fireworks from his bike, proving that even he is willing to do something stupidly dangerous for the sake of a Shout Out.
Eureka Seven features the Macross Missile Massacre prominently, in both missile and "homing laser" form. Unsurprisingly, it shares a mechanical designer with the Macross franchise.

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Film

Literature

Live Action TV

Happens during a major battle in Stargate SG-1. Jack uses an Ancient command chair to destroy Anubis' mothership with a veritable legion of Drone missiles, which compensates for being grossly unnecessary in volume with its sheer awesome.
- Though, to be fair, Anubis survives.
- The Ancient drone weapons were apparently designed specifically for this tactic, but in Stargate Atlantis the team never had enough to spare because of limited supplies. Apparently in the war against the Wraith, the Ancients themselves couldn't produce enough to deal with their onslaught.
- A more straight up example is when the Daedalus ambushes a pair of hive ships in the episode "No Man's Land" and the ship rapidly deploys it's entire battery of VLS launched nuclear missiles which promptly pointlessly fan out into a huge (admittedly cool looking) wave as they approach the enemy ship.
Kamen Rider has more than one example:
- Kamen Rider Ryuki: All Riders have a "Final Vent". Most of them are melee attacks that create perhaps a man-sized explosion at best. The Final Vent of Kamen Rider Zolda, on the other hand, is a barrage of dozens upon dozens of missiles resulting in a humongous explosion and frequently beating the shit out of several other Riders. It is appropriately named "End of Earth".
- Kamen Rider 555: The super-charged bike of Kamen Rider Kaixa has a mecha mode that can fire one of these.
Happens routinely on the new Battlestar Galactica. Cylon basestars are especially prone to firing gigantic salvos of missiles (with cool vapor trails) that home in on the Galactica. If Galactica is on top of its game, the missiles get shot down by Vipers and the battlestar's anti-aircraft guns. If not, expect some breakage.
- Racetrack's Raptor in the Grand Finale
- Two Cylon Raiders use one of these to kill the non-FTL capable civillian fleet in the miniseries. Granted, there were enough targets to justify the manoeuvre.
In Babylon 5, the Shadows' alleged planet killer fires 13,000 missiles at its intended target.
Star Trek Deep Space Nine, though it doesn't quite match the aesthetic, has Deep Space Nine launch 5000 photon torpedoes at an invading Klingon force.
- Specifically, in the episode "The Way of the Warrior", the titular station surprises an attacking Klingon fleet with a bevy of newly installed weapons, including rotating photon torpedo launchers that pretty much fill the intervening space with antimatter missiles.

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Table Top Games

Rifts has several mecha who can do this, being mounted with Mini Missile launchers that carry obscene loads of small missiles almost designed to be used in this way. Not unsurprising as Palladium Books also published an RPG based on the Robotech franchise that used the same system.
Both Eldar Dark Reaper Reaper Launchers and Space Marine Heavy Bolters are described in the Warhammer 40000 fluff as firing many miniature missiles and firing rocket-propelled rounds respectively, although scale-wise those are closely to More Dakka. The Tau get a Missile (Im)Barrage on their Skyray Missile Gunships. The Sisters of Battle have Exorcist artillery ~~tanks~~ organs that do this. Space Marines also have multiple missile tubes on their Whirlwinds, but not to as over-the-top extents as with Skyrays or Exorcists.
- By the way, those Exorcists? They're fired by Sisters who play the keys of the pipe organ that serves as the launcher for the rockets.
Cthulhu Tech, homage-storm that it is, features rocket-pods that use exactly this method as heavy weapons for their Humongous Mecha. The big winner is the Cherub-class Engel, a middling-sized support mech that can hit a target with up to a dozen rockets at once.
Dungeons And Dragons 3.5 has one Prestige Class, the Force Missile Mage, dedicated to turning the Magic Missile spell into this.
Battletech, for along time only used their missiles this way. The individual missiles themselves were rather weak though, and could only do damage in numbers or through a lucky hit. With the exception of artillery and warship-mounted missiles (which soon became extinct in the main setting), it was centuries before somebody revisited the concept of a powerful missile. Some mechs that are practically made of this trope. Gaze upon the Yeoman◊, ye mighty, and despair!
- Bah. the vehicular 'SRM Carrier' has 18 6-packs of short range missiles (thats 108 missiles per shot, thank you). One *will* sand all the armor of the biggest mech in the game. The tricky part is living to take the *second* shot.
  - This troper would argue that, given the paper thin armor and the fact that SR Ms are short range missiles after all, the tricky part is living long enough to get the first shot off.
  - This Troper wants to mention that some of the Mechs from Battletech, and the 3025 tech Manual were in fact from Macross, Dugram, and Orguss. From the MAD-3R Marauder ((Zentradi Officer Battle Pod or Gulag)) to the Land-Air Mechs ((Veritech fighter in Guardian or Gerwalk Mode)) and they lead to a copyright battle with Harmony Gold. The original 3025 tech manual now contains designs taken out, and the resulting missing 'Mechs and Aerospace fighters have become known as "The Unseen". The current company that manages Battletech has since redsigned the "The Unseen" and published new information on them.
In GURPS firing a sufficient number of projectiles at an enemy gives a free increase in accuracy because it's harder to get out of the way. Unfortunately the rules don't allow for a successful MMM (more than a fraction hitting) except on a critical success.
In the "Interstellar Wars" setting for Traveller, this is standard Vilani naval doctrine.

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Video Games

At least one type of weapon/plane/bombs in every "shoot 'em up" arcade game.
The giant mecha in Armored Core can be designed with massive missile supplies, in some cases firing dozens of light missiles at a time. Given the agility of some opposing mecha, and the cost of replacing missile stores, this isn't a popular option, but it certainly has a place.
- In the fourth installment, combining Macross Missile Massacres with hit-and-run tactics is arguably the safest, and cheapest, way of disposing of enemy mecha - at least, if you're not up against a skilled human opponent.
Bangai-Oh, a fairly obscure Dreamcast game, follows this trope to the letter. Your tiny Mecha can release up to 400 missiles at once, which all have the ability to home in on your target. If you haven't played this game, you should.
- In Bangai-O Spirits, Missile Massacres halve in number and double in size when they go over a hundred, so while the Bangai-O can't actually release 400 missiles, it can reach up to 100 quadruple size missiles. And it's still enough to lag the DS's graphical renderer (The game knows this, and will warn you about it in the tutorial). And it's still a bucket of fun.
The Battle Tech series has two main missile types: Short Range Missiles and Long Range Missiles. SRMs are shot, according to the launcher type, in salvos of two, four and six. LRMs, in contrast, are shot in salvos of five, ten, and rather more ridiculously fifteen and twenty. Super-heavy Mechs can be armed with as many launchers as their weight allows, one can mount, say, six LRM20s on a single mech. Shooting them all at once causes a barrage of 120 guided missiles that will overpower any anti-missile system and very probably destroy any Mech in one shot.
- That's assuming the missiles hit, of course, depending on how lucky you are with the dice. However, two more missile types do exist: Medium Range Missiles and Clan-only Advanced Tactical Missiles. ATMs come in launcher sizes of three, six, nine and twelve missiles, but MRMs are loaded in salvos of ten, twenty, thirty, or forty. Good luck hitting something with it, though - MRMs are naturally inaccurate.
  - Then there's XRMs, which are practically cruise missiles. As a sidenote, always turn off your night vision mode (even during night missions!) in Mechwarrior 4 before launching a missile volley. I've been blinded too many times by forgetting to turn it off before launching a barrage of MR Ms. 240 of them, in fact.
Pandora in Devil May Cry 4 has a flying missile platform mode capable of pulling this off. In the third game, Kalina Ann had the "Hysteric" move which launched cluster micro missiles.
Most missile systems available to the player in Project: Sylpheed work this way. The heaviest is capable of launching 60 missiles at once.
The Isaac's Greater Missile Storm spell is animated this way in Neverwinter Nights 2.
- The spell also exists in the expansions to Neverwinter Nights, where it's almost a Game Breaker for its absurd damage potential when the Maximize Spell feat is applied to it.
  - And if that wasn't bad enough; imagine a spellcaster throwing two Maximised IGM Ss out while Time Stop is in effect. Imagine what that would look like to the poor bastard/s on the other end!
The Project Snowblind rocket launcher has two firing modes. The primary one fires an unguided rocket, but the alternate firing mode splits this rocket into four independently targeting, homing minimissiles.
In Freespace 2, you can arm your fighter with 2 types of missile that fire off four (or 8 if you double fire) mini missiles. They also home in.
- Sadly, you can't load up completely on these and fire all of your ordnance racks at once, although you could (if you were good and fast) fire all of them in very quick succession.
In Wing Commander Prophecy and it's sequel, Wing Commander Secret Ops, the player on occasion has access to the Wasp interceptor. One of it's weapons is the Swarmer, a launcher that with each shot fires eight missiles that track your locked target - as long as you keep your target within your front view, otherwise the Swarmers will lose lock and fly off aimlessly. If you possess the piloting skills to keep your target in your view (often not possible without jettisoning the Wasp's booster), it's a one-shot kill. See also the Tracker, which is 4 Friend-or-Foe missiles connected to one common launch body that eventually splits off into its separate missiles.
- To a lesser degree than a full MMM, using the salvo function, one can dump all of one's missiles in a short time. This is a cheap way to kill "Flash" in the sim contest in Wing Commander III, if you don't want to take forever to kick the little twerp's ass. This method also works on potting Thrakhath after the Behemoth is destroyed in the Loki system, but in the Kilrathi Saga version of WC3, unlike the initial DOS release, the instant Thrakhath dies your carrier jumps out, even if there's still time left on the countdown. Of course, being The Dragon, Thrakhath returns at the end anyway, even if you do kill him and get to land.)
The military chopper fought in Half-Life 2 that can inexplicably spew out a gigantic swarm of several times its own vehicular mass in antipersonnel mines, and will do so repeatedly just to show you it can.
HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW!?
A rather early example can be found in the intro of the 1997 game, Pax Imperia. "You didn't have to use those Swarm Missiles, did you?"
The Rocket Pods upgrade for the Comanches in Command And Conquer: Generals lets them utterly saturate a small area with a storm of rockets, and is extremely effective at stopping tank rushes.
- And in Red Alert 3, we have the Rocket Angels, who do this whenever they're not using their paralysing whip.
- And also in Red Alert 3, we have Soviet Dreadnoughts that can utterly spam targets with missiles - really, really huge missiles (these are full battleships after all), but at the expense of the unit's health. Allied IF Vs and missile turrets can spam nearly as bad as a Rocket Angel, however, if you put a Javelin soldier in there, and the Soviet Twin Blade attacks targets simply by unloading a ton of rockets onto it.
Samus Aran of Metroid fame generally ends up with a veritable Hyperspace Arsenal of missiles. In Metroid Prime 2 she gains the ability to lock on and fire five of them simultaneously.
- Meta-Ridley in Metroid Prime has a multi-missile attack, in which he launches several missiles, complete with the curving trajectory.
At the beginning of Act 5 of Metal Gear Solid 4, Liquid's futuristic floating fortress Outer Haven launches one of these against the approaching USS Missouri. This results in a Crowning Momentof Awesome for the Missouri when she manages to shoot down nearly the entire swarm and destroy the launchers with WW 2-era flak cannons and naval guns..... And the couple of modern Phalanx CIWS she has, but it's still a Crowning Momentof Awesome
- During the final moments of the act immediately preceding this, you can pull off your own with the weapon systems provided by Metal Gear REX. Action Commands accessable during your incredibly awesome boss battle with RAY will even let you grind Liquid Ocelot into the dirt with a missile barrage if you catch him while he's downed.
In Unreal Tournament 2004 onward, there is the Cicada. It is an airborne vehicle that fires missiles in quick succession. The alt-fire lets you target a spot and load up to 24 missiles. Boom.
In Fable, the spell "Multi Shot" lets you do this with a bow and arrow. Keep in mind that the arrows will Robotech en-route to their target, so using this in an enclosed space will result in only one or two arrows hitting the target, while the walls around you will resemble a feathery pincushion.
The two expansion sets for Star Wars: TIE Fighter featured a new Imperial prototype fighter known as the Missile Boat, which was armed with four Missile Launchers capable of holding different types of missiles pending on the mission objectives, a Tractor Beam, Shields, a Hyper Drive and a SLAM System which doubled the Missile Boat's speed momentarily while draining laser energy (to compensate, the Missile Boat had only a single laser). Admittedly it was specifically designed to counter the threat of the renegade Admiral Zaarin's new TIE Defenders (two Advanced Concussion Missiles dual-fired will destroy a TIE Defender outright even with full shields), but the two launchers that usually held Advanced Concussion Missiles had 20 each. That's a maximum of 80 Advanced Concussion Missiles which you can fire with a few second cooldown, two after another, without limit until you run out of missiles...
In Warhawk, there is a weapon for the titular aircraft to use known as the Swarm Missile, which can lock on as many times as you want before firing, with the only limit being how many you have. Naturally, this can get extreme.
In Ace Combat 6 there's the special weapon of the CFA-44 Nosferatu called the ADMM which is a missile that launches a Macross Missile Massacre. Yes I said that right, a MISSILE that launches a Macross Missile Massacre. Unlike all the other "Multi-Tgt" missiles, each Macross Missile Massacre equals one expended missile (out of up to eighteen) and not however many targets you locked onto, usually up to four, or six with the new XMA6 air-to-air missile... it's even enough to (usually) negate the "inefficiency" flaw of air-to-ground missiles.
- Unfortunately that weapon is banned on Xbox Live, as even its long reload time (and the inability to fire a Macross Missile Massacre against one target) doesn't balance out this essential trait.
Warship Gunner 2 can have this depending on what missile systems you've installed on your warship, especially if you've mounted a Vertical Launch System (VLS) and the Aegis (allowing multiple simultaneous targets, up to nine at Level 3). Since anti-aircraft missiles (and their VLS version) are autofire-capable, you'll get this when you hold L2 for manual countermeasures — the AI will aim and fire all autofire-capable weapons — or use a certain system that applies that to all weapons.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age has the Daedalus summon, which has the immediate effect of summoning a Macross Missile Massacre and then the delayed effect of launching a single, much more devastating missile at the end of the turn after the summon is used.
In Sonic Adventure 2, the Tails/Eggman mechs can produce one of these in the second boss battle and in 2P battle mode. Eggman also has one of these on his "Egg Dealer" robot in Shadow The Hedgehog.
In Time Splitters: Future Perfect, the rocket launcher can be set to fire six rockets in rapid succession, in accordance with rule #37.
The Marza Dreadnaught's Missile Barrage in Sins Of A Solar Empire release absolutely massive amount of missiles. Just think of a large spaceship sitting duck, release missiles to hit every enemy ships in large radius for 60 seconds. It's as deadly as it sounds, if you don't get disabled, that is.
The First Person Shooter Rise Of The Triad had the Drunk Missile, which fired five missiles which flew in a wild pattern and tracked enemies. Firing "drunks" into a crowd of enemies resulted in a huge, gibletty mess.
The Skyray Missile Gunship of the Tau in Dawn Of War pretty much does the same as its counterpart in the ''tabletop game: Burning the Enemies of the Greater Good with a wave of missiles to the ground. Same for the Sisters of Battle Exorcist.
- This is how Ork Tank Bustaz work in Dawn Of War 2, they even come with a the ability "barrage" which lets them fire their roketz all at once in da air to rain death upon their foes.
The Terran Valkyrie of Starcraft: Brood War can fire up to 12 missiles simultaneously at different targets, with a fairly high firing rate. These are cheap air units that are intended to be used in large groups, so seeing a dozen valkyries throwing out over a thousand missiles in about ten seconds is not uncommon.
The Vulture gunship from the upcoming Halo Wars video game.
The ranged special attack of Ruru in Magical Battle Arena has her launching a barrage of homing drill missiles.
The RYNO (or "Rip You a New One") in Ratchet and Clank functions by spamming a hail of missiles at everything in shooting range.
- Later versions, such as the upgraded forms of the third game's RY 3 NO, hybridise this with Beam Spam into a spray of light/missile/whatever darts that disintegrate their opponents. Overkill? What's that?
The WWII MMO naval-simulation game Navyfield contains an interesting case, in that instead of missiles there are torpedoes. Quite a few Japanese ships in the game could be outfitted with a stupidly large number of torpedo launchers, which allows for massive 3M-type volleys of torpedoes (a practice the Navyfield community calls "torp-whoring"). Add to that the fact that the Japanese side uses the Long Lance torpedoes (which, historically, were the longest-range unguided torpedoes ever built, with a 20-mile range), plus the fact that said torps seem to explode with the force of a small atomic bomb, even when they self-destruct (and thereby sinking or severely damaging any ship that's too close by), and it's no wonder that torp-whoring is quite controversial among the Navyfield community.
The Mirak race in Star Trek: Starfleet Command have this trope as their hat. Out of all the races, their ships are the only one that can put out such an ungodly amount of missiles.
The titular Limit Break of Afterburner Climax allows the player's fighter to lock onto all visible targets and launch missiles at all of them. That number does go over ten often. Of course, the player ends up on the receiving end of this often too.
In Air Rivals, most missiles are usually fired two or four at a time. However, if using certain skills in conjunction with a certain weapon, it is possible to fire 42 missiles per salvo (which can be fired every few seconds or so). Using specialized weapons with increased rate-of-fire might achieve an even greater amount of missiles over time.
Cid Highwind from Final Fantasy VII can call a minor massacre from his airship as a Limit Break.
- The Al-Bhed leader Cid in Final Fantasy X takes his airship and releases a considerable amount of missiles upon the Al-Bhed Home, once it has been overrun by Fiends and enemy forces.
- The ~~blue magic~~ enemy skill Matra Magic also takes this form in Final Fantasy VII.
- While Matra Magic is also usable in Final Fantasy IX, a better example is the Ark summon: a large warship that descends from space, transforms into a Humongous Mecha, and releases a laser-targeted M3 before finishing off the whole mess with a Kill Sat.
In Contra III: The Alien Wars, a monumental number of missiles (and not small ones, either) is shot at one of Red Falcon's flying fortresses. The player has to destroy the forcefield protecting the fortress' core, leaping from missile to missile as they impact and detonate. And not jumping from foothold to foothold, either, but handhold to handhold, with a single hand (the other wields a weapon, of course.) Once the field is down, the player can allow the missiles to hit, although most of them will be destroyed by flares coming out of the core unless the player dissipates them first.
X3: Terran Conflict introduced the dedicated M7-M class missile frigates which replaced the gun turrets of a regular M7 with missile bays. Load up, hold the launch button, and watch gleefully as an almost uninterrupted stream of missiles pour into your chosen target. For an added bonus: load some of the multiple warhead missiles.
in World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King, Mages who spec deeply into Arcane can get a Talent called Missile Barrage, which, on proc, turns your next Arcane Missiles cast into this.
- A mission in Northrend has your character riding a gnomish helicopter defending a dig site from incoming gargoyles. There is a missile attack that is exactly this, including the randomly spiraling missile paths, smoke trails and More Dakka. Given the number of other ShoutOuts in World Of Warcraft it would be no surprise if this were a direct Shout Out to the original MMM.
Fraxy gives you the missile part, which fires 5 missiles before reloading at rank 100. What if someone added an event to loop the missile launching?
In City Of Heroes, the Macross Missile Massacre is often the first attack used by the Malta Group's Zeus Class Titan.
While ships in Eve Online can have multiple missile racks, where all missiles launched from a ship originate from the same spot, causing simultaneously launched missiles to travel in a neat, glowing ball'o'death.
Artix Entertainment's game Mechquest has MULTIPLE weapons that can pull off the Macross Missile Massacre. No Roboteching, mostly because the weapons are forward-locked. But launching about twelve missiles for several turns in a row does have its charm.
Duke Nukem 3D has the aptly-named Devastator weapon. It fires small missiles very fast. In fact, it's so effective that you can easily beat the third boss in the game in a few seconds with it.
In Galactic Civilisations II, the Missile weapon type turns into this rather fast. Culminating in Black Hole Eruptors.
Homeworld features the missile destroyer, which has 4 missile launchers and has a special feature that allows it fire (should this troper's memory serve him correctly) 72 missiles in about 5 seconds. It could single-handedly wipe out entire fleets of strike craft.
Homeworld II featured the torpedo frigate which would fire torpedos... That exploded into smaller swarms of missiles. Lacked the awesomnes of the missile destroyer as it was much smaller & cheaper.
Star Wars: Empire at War gives the Rebellion a corvette-sized ship, the Corellian Gunboat. Like other Corvette's, it only takes up 2 population, and its primary weapons are concussion missile launchers. Even without using the no-pop-in-battle mod, massed Gunboats can easily overwhelm and destroy an IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER with few (if any) losses. As well, there are also the Anti-fighter/space station Marauder-class Cruiser and Broadside-class Cruiser, who's special ability is to saturate an area with missiles for a (short but sweet) period of time. This Troper has yet to try massing them.
War Machine's Proton Canon super move in the Capcom Vs Whatever games is a barrage of missiles (the main difference between him and Iron Man is that the former's weapons are mostly ballistic while the latter's are energy-based).
Maxima in The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match plays this trope nice and straight with his newly altered MAX2/HSDM, wherein he blasts the opponent senseless with a barrage of missiles from his own body (He's a cyborg). You would think that would be enough to put the opponent away permanently, but oh no, Maxima wants to be sure of his opponent's demise and proceeds to fry them with a fricking huge laser beam from his own chest cavity.
Jehuty, the Humongous Mecha piloted by the protagonist in both Zone Of The Enders games, has a "Homing Laser", which targets as many as 40 on-screen targets (IIRC?) and launches beams Macross Missile Massacre style. It is more of a mix of MMM and Beam Spam, and it offers some serious eyecandy too boot.
In Sword of the Stars, missiles are one of the three weapons you are guaranteed to get at the start. They can be fit in any mount outside of smalls, and most combat-oriented cruiser or dreadnought fits can hold at least four (remember that a weapon position can represent between one to four mounts). Add in the fact that point-defense weapons (which can only fit in those small mounts) are murder on missiles, and the Triple M is about the only way to use missiles in this game.

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Soviet volley missile launchers, starting from BM-13-16 and BM-8-48 (132mm / 82mm, second is number of rails) Katyusha [1] with variant launchers (e.g. aircraft-mounted◊) and ammo (e.g. rockets spreading several thermite elements, making even more Impressive Pyrotechnics). Its descendants the 9K51 Grad [2] and the BM-30 Smerch — the first can fire 720 missiles at once when packed in a batallion of 18 launchers, while the second can fire a missile every 3 seconds or so. The historical Korean hwacha — which can be best described as a Schizo Tech Katyusha — also functioned in much the same way, a 15-16th century saturation artillery piece capable of firing up to 100 steel-tipped rockets or 200 singijeon (effectively fire arrows). Therefore although there are hints of a Chinese version, it's likely that this trope was invented in Korea.
- The American closest equivalent is the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System. Each MLRS vehicle can launch 12 277mm rockets within sixty seconds. Each rocket can contain up to 644 submunitions. Total throw is therefore 7,728 bombs launched in under a minute per vehicle. MLRS batteries are colloquially known as 'grid square erasers.'
  - The MLRS ain't called "Steel Rain" for nothing. It can also shoot guided missiles for extra precision.
The MMM was very much a planned tactic of Soviet Maritime Aviation in a World War Three scenario using a lot of Tu-16 and Tu-22M bombers along with missile subs like the "Echo". Since the Tu-16's reporting name is "Badger" and it carried Mnogo Nukes, the joke is obvious.... Sergey Gorshkov, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy from 1968 to 1985 called this "the battle of the first salvo".
Real-life example: at the current state of the art, the US Navy's 'Aegis' missile defense technology is essentially undefeatable except by a wave (or waves) of inbound threats larger than what the system is capable of handling(which it does by launching counter-missiles rapidly enough to simultaneously engage them all).
- The Navy antimissile people seem aware of this, as they have introduced point-defense Phalanx 20mm Gatling guns to the Aegis antimissile defenses. Designed to be able to take out a low-flying antiship missile before it hits the ship, this system can be overwhelmed as well (there's only a few guns per ship) - it's strictly a last resort weapon.
  - They're also in the very early stages of working on a version of this system that, instead of a rapid-fire autocannon, uses a laser beam: the Tactical High-Energy Laser(THEL). This would provide greater accuracy, and possibly be harder to swamp. In ten or twenty years, we may have a Truth In Television example of Beam Spam. A more compact mobile version, the M-THEL is also in development for the ground forces, designed to shoot down mortar and howitzer shells as well as missiles. The THEL prototype has already successfully been demonstrated in defense against mortar rounds.
- It is unclear whether the Russian Orlan/"Kirov" class can do the same. The nuclear-powered cruiser has a greater SAM capacity than most other vessels on the planet, with four different types carried.
The U.S Navy also uses a Macross Missile Massacre as the main offensive weapon for it's cruisers and destroyers: the Vertical Launching System (VLS). This badass launcher can pump out Tomahawks or SAMs at a ridiculous rate to attack ground targets, aircraft, or even space targets like satellites and ballistic missiles. The VLS-SM3 combo has been demonstrated as easily capable of killing an orbiting satellite.
- However, the plan for future ships like the Zumwalt-Class stealth destroyer see the VLS-Tomahawk land-attack combo being replaced by the 155mm howitzer-based Advanced Gun System, and later, by electromagnetic railguns. BFGs are more cost-effective than MMMs.
- There's also the Ohio-class SSGN submarine, which can carry up to 154 cruise missiles in it's VLS tubes.
A very large number of real-life weapon systems or tactics can be considered real-life versions of this, from multiple rocket launchers which can fire a large number of either "dumb" or "smart" munitions, to simply clustering a bunch of weapon launchers together or coordinating a large number of missile launches (works doubly best when paired with previous described weapon) or large bombers like the B-52 whose primary mission is to saturate a target area with missiles (back in the Cold War days, nuclear-tipped missiles. It's no exaggeration to say that a single B-52 with a full load of cruise missiles could effectively annihilate the Soviet Union by itself barring countermeasures or interception, and an equivalent Soviet bomber, the Tu-95 "Bear" for example, would likewise be capable of doing the same to the United States), let alone ballistic-missile launching submarines like the Soviet "Typhoon"-class (if you've ever seen The Hunt For Red October this is the real-life submarine the titular vessel is based on) which can carry 20 missiles with ten warheads each, or an American Ohio-class submarine converted to launch 156 land attack cruise missiles, also cluster-munition capable. A reason why the Macross Missile Massacre is such a popular trope, after all, is because it happens to be a very useful and devastating real-life tactic, especially when target destruction must be guaranteed, probability of missile evasion or interception is high, and when collateral damage isn't given an afterthought or when the missiles have sufficiently "smart" enough guidance to prevent such.
- A favorite tactic of the Soviets during WWII (especially when they didn't particularly care about who they hit) was to gather a bunch of "Katyusha", named after a song of the time, missile launchers into one place and let 'er rip into a nice concentration of enemy troops. So feared were these missile launchers that they were called "Stalin's Organ", also due to their distinctive sound. Later, the Soviets gave a bunch of Katyusha launchers to various Middle East nations, who used an identical tactic against the Israelis. To this day, Hamas and Hezbollah still find this an effective tactic against the Israelis, either with Katyushas or their own (literally) home-made rockets.
- When engaged in air-to-air combat, opposing aircraft will "ripple-fire" missiles at each other to increase the probability of a kill. This especially occurred in The Vietnam War, early missiles being unreliable. In effect, the Macross Missile Massacre is really just an exaggerated, Rule Of Cool-conforming version of this real life tactic.
- It might be accurate to say that militaries were forced to use this tactic before the invention of guided weapons. Without the ability to target a single location, the only way to hit the enemy most of the time was to blanket the area they're in with shells, rockets, or bombs. Although an artillery barrage isn't as visually spectacular as a true 3M due to the lack of flames or smoke trails, it was just as effective. Also, the image of a massive bomber emptying her bays over a target has become a symbol of air raids since WW2, despite the fact that stand-off weaponry is increasingly now becoming the norm.
Plainly Descriptive Metal Storm.
Officially, Gary Power's U-2 and accidentally a pursuing MiG-19 (piloted by Sergei Safronov) were shot down with a salvo of fourteen S-75 Dvina/SA-2 "Guideline" missiles. Other versions of the event are:
- A Su-9 caught the U-2 in her slipstream, breaking off the wings. The missiles hit the aforementioned MiG-19.
- A first three-missile salvo destroyed the U-2. Other batteries were unsure about the success and thirteen more missiles were fired, hitting the MiG-19.
The term MIRV stands for "Multiple independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle" and is used to describe short-range to ICBM class nuclear-tipped missiles that contain a single first stage with multiple warheads that will detach after launch, shortly before impact. (Reportedly the Trident II is capable of carrying at least 12 warheads per missile.) The contrails in Missile Command that would split up to hit multiple targets? This is the real life weapon on which they were based.