Made Of Explodium - Television Tropes & Idioms

Oh dear God.

"I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode."

— Teal'c, Stargate SG 1, "200"

Stuff Blowing Up in violation of science and logic.

In the wonderful world of fiction, nothing ever just breaks. If it's even slightly mechanical or electronic, its destruction is loud and accompanied by Impressive Pyrotechnics. Apparently, circuit boards, moving parts, and Tokyo are the most volatile substances in the universe.

And that's just in serious works. In comedies, anything can blow up.

Objects that are particularly prone to exploding include:

Barrels (especially in Video Games)
Cars
Heads
Instrument panels
Sheep
Tokyo. It's been nicknamed 'Matchstick City' considering how often it goes up....

Related to You Have To Burn The Web.

Examples

Anime

Fullmetal Alchemist has State Alchemist Zolf J. Kimblee, who is capable of switching materials around inside of things so that they really are Made of Explodium. Buildings, machines or ~~even~~ especially people.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann gives it their usual treatment. While every mech that's beaten blows up, you can tell how important it is by how spectacular the explosions are. The ones found at the end of the arcs generally have them making three-pronged dust clouds and blowing up repeatedly. The Final Battle had the Big Bad blowing out about seven times, and in different colors each time.
- Apparently someone had the nerve to edit out said final explosion from the Sci-Fi airing of the dub. And they WILL PAY!
- The Mugann, in particular, are LITERALLY Made Of Explodium: They are designed so that when defeated, they convert to pure energy and blow up everything in sight, it's a feature, not a bug.
Samurai Seven: Not only do robots immediately explode when cut in half, the explosion begins at a point between the two halves, where there isn't actually any robot left. This troper and his friends theorize that they are built out of a material so volatile that its explosions travel through time.
- Perhaps you're seeing volitile gas igniting from the sparks of the sword's passage?
Pokemon has been doing this trope for attacks to blast Team Rocket off since the beginning of the show, and has been using it recently even when TR's not involved.
- How the hell does a stream of water explode from hitting a barrage of sharp leaves?
- In the games, this is actually two attacks (Self-Destruct and Explosion) and an ability (Aftermath), which cause Pokemon to explode in a way that somehow doesn't kill them.
Yugioh The Abridged Series has Pegasus' wife. Yeah.
- She really needs to stop doing that.
  - It was weird.
Pick a Gundam show, any Gundam show. If your mobile suit gets hit in the torso, it will explode in a spectacular manner. If a ship (spacefaring or seafaring) takes a certain critical amount of damage, it will explode in a spectacular manner. In addition, Gundamverse tanks appear to be Made of Explodium as well, since they regularly blow up when struck by the large caliber machine guns often wielded by mobile suits. This is rather puzzling when you think about it, since it's damnably hard to get a tank to explode in real life.
- The Leos of Gundam Wing are the worst by far; they seem to be painted with C4.
  - Somewhat averted in the OVA Endless Waltz when the Serpents don't explode, mainly because the main characters deemed this battle a "bloodless war."
- And just to show that someone (probably thousands of "someones") have far too much free time on their hands, this page on The Other Wiki relating to the Applied Phlebotinum specific to Gundam includes a discussion on exactly why Mobile Suits are Made Of Explodium
- Somewhat averted in Gundam00, where there are examples of mobile suits being destroyed without exploding, in some cases even when they're piloted by nameless grunts, but in general grunt suits/ships still tend to explode easily.
  - Only somewhat, as this troper distinctly remembers a point at which the titular gundam is fighting against an innovator piloted suit in an asteroid field. The 00 Gundam cuts an asteroid into quarters with its swords... causing the asteroid to explode. A chunk of rock. Probably made mostly of nickel and iron. Exploding when cut.
- Gundam08th MS Team takes an interesting approach to this trope. While it generally follows the exploding rule, many mecha are simply damaged to inoperation from machine gun fire about as often as they explode. However, during one scene, it's discovered a mobile suit is going to completely explode, starting from its reactor. Since mobile suits are operated by nuclear power, this is a very big deal, and it becomes a scramble to evacuate before the suit explodes. which makes one wonder why no one else ever makes a big deal about all the Zakus and Doms blowing up all over the place...
Neon Genesis Evangelion's Angels sometimes play with this. The third (which is the first encountered) encountered blows up in a cross-shaped explosion, the seventh and tenth form new lakes when they explode, and the sixteenth blows up the entire city when it dies. This is probably out of convienence, as it takes several episodes to clear out the body of one of the Angels that DOESN'T blow up.
- In the first movie of Rebuild, one of the Angels that left a corpse in the original also blows up. Considering that what they find in its body is a bit of a plot point, this troper wants to know how they're gonna get around that one.
In Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure, this is what the Stand Killer Queen does - its power turns objects and even people into explosives.
Any monster defeated by Voltron.
Cinque's Inherent Skill in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is the ability to turn any metal into explodium. She usually applies it to her knives.
- Also, the Relics in StrikerS. Being filled to the brim with magical energy, they explode spectacularly when they break. One of them was the cause of the airport fire at the start of the season.
Should I be disappointed that no one has mentioned Mister 5's "Bomb Boogie" from One Piece yet? Literally, a booger bomb........... ok maybe no one wanted to admit to it.
Evidently, Naruto's engineers are so brilliant that they have found a way to make paper tags explode. These "paper bombs" are used quite frequently throughout the series.
- Since the paper bombs have symboley bits on them it's probably a case of Hermetic Magic in their world of Functional Magic.
The various Knightmare Frames in Code Geass can be counted upon to violently explode even after the most minor of hits; a single, glancing strike from a sword or Slash Harken is often enough to do it. The few times when it doesn't happen actually come as quite a surprise. This is probably because of the Sakuradite they all use, which makes you wonder why they would use it in such lightly guarded machines.
For some strange reason, Negi's duplicates in Mahou Sensei Negima's Kyoto Arc doesn't just poof back to paper like normal when you kiss them. Instead, they explode.

Commercials

"Awesome barbecue! Awesome pool!"
A recent commercial for Sprite showed people running at one another. Upon contact, they explode in huge splashes of water.

Comic Books

An excerpt from Warren Ellis, on what his comic Nextwave is all about:
"It is people getting kicked, and then exploding. It is a pure comic book, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And afterwards, they will explode."
- And it lives up to that hype, too.
In one issue of ~~Frank Miller Adventures~~ All-Star Batman & Robin, ~~Frank Miller in a~~ Batman ~~costume~~ sets what looks like a standard, buy-it-in-a-store bottle of bleach on fire with a road flare from his belt. That's commercial bleach, which is almost entirely water. And he sets it on fire. He then throws it into a huge stack of similar bottles, causing a nice big explosion and gloating as it kills the small-time hoods that were stealing it. This was such a massive abuse of even comic book physics (and common sense - he kills the guys that are trying to steal something by destroying what they're trying to steal? Society is safe once more!) that even defenders of the title declared it a Wall Banger.
In Asterix in Corsica, a Corsican cheese explodes, destroying a ship. Asterix and his friends already jumped the ship (fortunately for them), but then the pirates came on board (unfortunately for them, as always).
The Human Bomb. Full stop.
- Likewise, Nitro.
- Likewise, Gambit.

Film

We can't have this page without mentioning the aptly named ass-blasters from Tremors 3. Not only do they light their own farts on fire to achieve enough thrust to glide after prey, they explode spectacularly if exposed to any sort of intense heat such as a can of unleaded gasoline ignited by one ass-blaster's own acid spit in Burt Gummer's basement. Burt Gummer being Burt Gummer, the gunpowder he keeps for his weapons goes up in flames soon after that, taking out his entire fortification.
In one James Bond movie a helicopter explodes the second it touches the lake it's falling into, vaporizing as though it were made of magnesium.
Dragon Wars contains a scene in which six helicopters explode spectacularly within minutes of each other.
Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars. If your reactor core gets shot by a starfighter's weaponry, your entire planet-destroying whatever instantly goes kablooey in spectacular fashion. Although considering how much energy the thing would have to generate to destroy a planet... Yeah.
- Averted in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace podrace scene, where George Lucas made a conscious decision to go for realism (such as it is) with the podracer crashes, mostly producing smoke and sparks and very little in the way of explosions as the racers all crash one-by-one.
Top Secret has a scene with an out of control jeep that finally slows down almost to a stop... but not quite. It gently taps the bumper of a Ford Pinto, and both vehicles immediately explode.
Batman Begins has an electric monorail crash. It explodes spectacularly, what with all the combustible material in a monorail and a microwave emitter.
Averted in Last Action Hero. Jack Slater fires his gun three times at a fleeing car, expecting it to explode. Three dents appear in the trunk, and the car drives away.
- Ah, but earlier, when he's still in the movies, every car explodes with one shot. One even explodes just from getting a man thrown through the windshield.
- This is to be expected, as Last Action Hero is a Deconstruction of action movies.
In UHF, during Weird Al Yankovic's Rambo-inspired Indulgent Fantasy Segue, a Korean soldier explodes in a massive fireball after getting shot with an arrow.
Weird Al also sings the title theme of the Leslie Nielsen film Spy Hard. The final note of the song is so ridiculously drawn-out that the song ends with Al's head exploding, rather gruesomely.
- And with that, you've already seen the best of the film.
In This Is Spinal Tap, the other members of Spinal Tap claim that their third drummer died by spontaneously combusting on-stage, during a show. The same fate befalls their current drummer, just before they strike it big in Japan.
- If, in Guitar Hero 2, your band covers "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" (a Spinal Tap song) at the Battle of the Bands, as the song ends your drummer explodes in a puff of smoke.
The So Bad Its Good Cutthroat Island had lots of stuff blowing up real good, especially the villain's ship at the end when the powder magazine igniting caused the entire ship to burst into flames and shrapnel. And this still didn't harm the treasure that everyone spent the movie fighting over...
- This could be Truth In Television though, since it was not unknown for ships that caught fire to explode spectacularly when the flames reach the powder magazine.
  - This is also why pirates favoured grapeshot.
Quite a few things in xXx appear to be made of explodium, but none more so than the state Senator's Corvette that Xander steals and drives off a bridge in the opening scene of the film. That durn thing looks like it blew even before it hits the ground.
In 80s cheesefest Hudson Hawk (a definitive Your Mileage May Vary movie), an ambulance goes off a ramp and explodes in mid-air.
In the movie Doomsday a car flies through a bus. Despite only hitting the glass windows, and not the engine, gas tanks, or anything else remotely combustible, the bus still manages to explode (the car, being driving by the heroes, is perfectly fine).
- This is made even worse that buses and other large vehicles are nearly always powered by Diesel, which is hard enough to light (not that gasoline is exactly easy) yet alone cause to explode. Then again, CNG and LPG and now Hydrogen are sometimes used as fuels, but still very rarely.
In Accepted, one of the students expresses an interest in learning to blow things up with his mind. In keeping with South Harmon's DIY curriculum, he is allowed to major in mental detonation and classes are engineered to help him do so; later in the movie the same student is seen focusing intently on a pineapple, but beyond this it seems forgotten-until the very end, in a credits gag. The dean of the college who opposed South Harmon's accreditation is walking towards his car when suddenly it goes up in a massive Hollywood fireball. He stares for a moment before we cut over to the same student, looking satisfied, and Justin Long, who is blown away by the speed (and success) with which he has accomplished his goal.
Double Subverted in Groundhog Day. Bill Murray's character drives a pickup truck over the edge of a quarry. It lands upside down, crushing its roof, but does not explode. Chris Elliot, looking over the edge, weakly suggests that "he might be okay." The truck then suddenly erupts in a massive fireball. To which Elliot concedes, "Ok, I guess not."
In Judge Dredd, after hatching one of Rico's incomplete clones, the entire cloning facility seems to suffer a catastrophic meltdown for no apparent reason.
- Although, really, the last four words of that sentence could be appended to a description of any aspect of the movie.
In Eagle Eye there is no such thing as a simple car crash. Everything just burns up or explodes.
Everyone who has seen the original Batman The Movie distinctly remembers this scene.
Speaking of exploding sharks, Jaws ended with Sheriff Brody stuffing an oxygen tank in the shark's mouth, then shooting it. The tank explodes, spectacularly reducing the shark to chum.
- Then in Jaws: The Revenge, the Spectacular Exploding Voodoo Shark gets impaled on the bowsprit of a research vessel and promptly explodes, and rather lamely at that.
In The Incredible Hulk a thrown forklift in a factory explodes quite spectacularly when it hits the... bottled soft drinks? Later on, two cars are seen at the end of an alley way lightly crashing into each other (a crash that would barely cause a fender bender in real life) and a large flame erupts between them almost instantly. Bizarrely averted however when the Hulk rips a police car in half and uses each half as a boxing glove
Justified in Runaway where the evil scientist wires his robots and gizmos with "densepacks", which explode if captured by the good guys.
In Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a plane from a plane theme ride somehow manages to explode when it crashes. Consensus amongst the tropers friends: it exploded because of the awesome.
Subverted (partially) in Duel. In the final scene David Mann (played by Dennis Weaver) drives his car up a dirt road leading to the edge of a cliff. As the truck approaches, he aims his car at it, before jamming his briefcase onto the accelerator and leaping clear just in time. The car itself catches fire when the truck hits it (rarther than exploding) and the truck driver, blinded by the smoke and flames, is unable to stop before reaching the cliff, and the truck plunges over the edge. Surprisingly, despite being a tanker, and having "flammable" written on the side, it doesn't actually explode.
Parodied in Van Helsing; a horse carriage falls into a gorge, and naturally explodes in a huge ball of fire.
- The carrage -does- have a rather large explosive device in it on a timer set to go off about half way down the gorge in this case.
A particularly hilarious example occurs in Arnold Schwarzenegger's So Bad Its Good TotalRecall. A golf cart bursts into flame after hitting a wall at maybe five miles an hour.
In the film Grizzly the killer bear is finally killed when the hero shoots it with a bazooka causing a massive explosion.
In the cult classic, Streets Of Fire, Cody blows a gang's motorcycles with a shotgun.
Among countless other ridiculous things about the movie Armageddon, the Mir space station explodes shortly after Bruce Willis's team docks there, for apparently no reason other than to get one of the wise-cracking Russian astronauts to escape onto Willis' ship, in order to provide comic relief for the rest of the movie.
In Deep Impact, an astronomer gets run off the road by a semi-truck, and his Jeep explodes in mid-air.
Nominally justified at the end of Speed, when a bus with a bomb on it runs into an airplane full of fuel. One gets the impression that the entire movie was a setup for that scene alone.
At the end of Bride of the Monster, an octopus explodes (apparently due to Mad Science) with stock footage of a nuclear blast. Yes, it's Ed Wood.
At the end of The Marine the Big Bad runs a semi cab through some small wooden buildings that explode in huge fireballs. While you can see some oxygen tanks in there they still explode on contact when they're designed to take some abuse before they go off in real life. Otherwise oxygen tanks spontaneously combusting would be the number one killer of the elderly.
Subverted in Terminator: Salvation; a character shoots a tanker truck, then is surprised when it doesn't explode.
- Later played straight when Marcus and Blair escape the Resistance base. They break the air vent, which mysteriously explodes upon contact with the ground.
  - THERE WAS A FREAKING MINEFIELD

Literature

In Dragonlance Tales, the characters are confronted by a door secured by a gnome-built time-lock (with lots of levers, mirrors and other bits - gnomes are inveterate tinkerers). One character goes to touch it, but another shouts, "Be careful! It might explode!" "Why? Do you think it's trapped?" "No! It was built by gnomes!"
Partly justified in Terry Goodkind's Sword Of Truth series: in one scene, a character blows up trees to kill portions of an enemy army. Granted, it's explained that it's really just superheating the sap, but still...
- Not so outlandish. One of the first rules of camping is to never set up your tent underneath a tree because a hot enough day can cause the expanding sap to more or less explode a tree branch off at any time. In the middle of an actual fire, exploding trees aren't so uncommon. If you're magically putting fire into the tree then...
Tom Clancy also lampshaded explodium cars in Debt Of Honor. In a crash involving two sedans and a semi, both sedans exploded in huge fireballs soon after the crash. This was an important plot point—the cars had faulty gas tanks—and one of the accident investigators remarked that real cars don't blow up when they crash, That Only Happens In Movies.
The small, doglike swamp dragons of Discworld are living, breathing explodium. The internal chemical factory required to breathe fire is incredibly unstable; when a swamp dragon hiccups, people dive for cover. As in the Pokemon example, this might seem a bad evolutionary decision, but Pratchett points out that there are very few predators prepared to eat explosive prey.
- In Guards! Guards!, exploding as a defense is called a good evolutionary move.
  ^{From the perspective of the whole species. Not from the perspective of the dragon landing in different chunks around the scenery.}
  ^*
In the opening of Discworld story Soul Music, a coach runs off the road and falls into a gorge. When it hits the ground, it doesn't just break, it "erupts into fragments.... Then the oil from the coach lamps ignites and there is a second explosion, out of which rolls—because there are certain conventions, even in tragedy—a burning wheel."
Songs performed by Fake Band Disaster Area in The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy are described as following "the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason."
- Also their actual music, which sounds best when listened to from bunkers at least 40 miles away from the stage. The band itself plays from a spaceship on the planet's orbit - or, preferrably, some other planet's. The music once terraformed a planet by causing its crust to flip over.

Live Action TV

Myth Busters trades in this trope on occasion. Admittedly the objects are not Made Of Explodium until Adam and Jamie (and retired FBI agent Frank Doyle) get to modify them a bit, but their end results would do Monty Python's "not being seen" sketch proud.
- In one episode, inspired by the ending of Jaws, they test to see whether an oxygen tank explodes upon being shot. It doesn't explode, but the gas spewing out of the bullet hole at high pressure would kill a shark just as well.
In Power Rangers, the monsters would frequently explode upon defeat.
- Recent seasons of Power Rangers have become increasingly prone to very random explosions. Operation Overdrive episode "Man of Mercury, Part 1" features an exploding folding table, after someone merely kicks it. The Operation Overdrive Pink Ranger's personal weapon can also cause explosions - despite being called the Drive Geyser and firing a blast of water. In the same episode as this, two villains cause a huge explosion by POINTING at each other. These are known among fans as "Kalishplosions" after current producer Bruce Kalish.
- However, sparks from things like cardboard boxes were common-ish before Kalish.
- The scene in "Forever Red", when all Red Power Rangers transform and pose in a wide-shot, everything behind them explodes for absolutely no reason. This is the Rule Of Cool taken to the extreme.
  - This particular situation, though, is something of a tradition. In any PR teamup, after the combined team poses, smoke clouds in the Rangers' colors erupt, followed by a massive explosion. An explosion's also optional for when an individual team goes through its posing routine.
- Lampshaded (among many other things) in Power Rangers RPM, in which Ziggy wonders why there's always an explosion behind them after they morph (turns out it's runoff energy from the morphing process), and later one of the Rangers actually uses this explosion to defeat several Mooks. These particular explosions have therefore been dubbed "Ziggysplosions" (since Kalish is no longer the producer).
One episode of The Muppet Show is a Western-themed sketch. Kid Fozzie, having discarded his pickles (which function as guns) and his carrot (knife), has an apple bomb which explodes in an impressive display of apple pyrotechnics.
According to the earlier episodes of Stargate SG 1, Naquadah is extremely volatile. Why, oh WHY would the Ancients build Stargates out of them?
- Because they need a high energy density fuel.
- And yet it takes a massively huge explosion to destroy one. A direct hit by a meteor didn't scratch one, hurled into a star, nothing, sucked toward a black hole, no problem. However, should it come into contact with pure ~~sodium~~ potassium ...
- Well, the one that was sent into a star, at least, had a force field around it. Also, there's a difference between the Naquadah that went into the Stargate itself and the "Weapons Grade Naquadah" that is usually seen in weaponry, and is presumably more volatile.
- Lampshaded in "200". According to Word of God important episodes are specifically designed to have the as many explosions per second as possible.
- Naquadria is highly volatile in its natural (which turns out to be inherently unnatural) state. Naquadah is relatively stable and indestructible until it's refined into weapons-grade form. And the Stargate does not consume the Naquadah it is made of as a power source; it gets its power from an external source. The composition of the gate is critical for the formation of a stable wormhole.
Star Trek was famous for using a minor version of this trope constantly. Whenever a ship gets hit, control panels on the bridge spray sparks everywhere.
- Often resulting in the death of Red Shirts.
- One Trek parody had them firing the highly-explosive control panels out the torpedo tubes when none of their other weapons made a dent in the enemy ship's Nigh Invulnerable Force Field.
Scrubs hangs a lampshade on this in the episode My Unicorn. As Murray's toy plane explodes, J.D. notes, "What an odd-sized explosion"
Hello, Top Gear. As James May put it after they somehow lit a car wash alight, "We managed to set fire to something that's basically made of water!"
For the invention exchange at the beginning of Mystery Science Theater 3000: Pod People, Joel invents a guitar chord that, when played, causes the guitar to explode. It makes for an awesome end to a rock concert.
In the sci-fi series UFO the alien Flying Saucers heat up and explode if they spend too much time in Earth's atmosphere.
Heck, Gerry Anderson shows did that all the time. Most notoriously Thunderbirds—The Movie of which featured a helicopter and a rocket that exploded when they hit the water. The second movie then went on to top that with an exploding missile base.
- Fireball XL 5 also featured at least one episode where the main base went up in smoke after XL 5 made a landing run just as another ship left the same runway.
- Space: 1999 featured the exploding planet Psychon. We're unlikely ever to see the proof for ourselves, as destroying an entire planet apparently is a bit harder than it looks on the telly. So it's a bit disappointing to see that an exploding planet looks like two Roman candles ignited at once.
Entire planets have also exploded at least four times on Doctor Who. One, at least, was still in the process of formation and had help from several thousand megatons of explosives. Two others were victims of malfunctioning Phlebotinum.
And speaking of exploding planets... take a bow, original recipe Battlestar Galactica.
Played with, like everything else, in Monty Python's Flying Circus: "Mrs Niggerbaiter's exploded!" "Good thing too." "She was my best friend!" "Oh mother, don't be so sentimental, things explode every day."
- "...This demonstrates the importance of not being seen."
In the Look Around You Season One module "Germs", the scientists grow a culture of germs collected from the wings of a Brown Lady moth. A small tree grows from this, and small "moth apples" are collected from this tree. Quoth the narrator: "They're smaller than crab apples—sweeter, too—but you should never eat them, because they are highly explosive."
Name any toku series. Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, other franchises. You name it, and everything goes boom when it dies. Hell, sometimes they go boom when they go down, even if they survive. One of the very few aversions is Kamen Rider Faiz, where the Orphnochs just crumbled to dust instead.

NewMedia

As a parody of the old Nintendo Power commercial, James "The Angry Video Game Nerd" Rolfe eats a Nintendo Power magazine, causing his head to explode - followed by the world and then the freakin' galaxy! Don't worry; it's all for comedy.
- His other works also have their fair share of explosions - specially after he started destroying the games after his ranting reviews.

Videogames

In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, you can pick up an enemy, put lightning on the enemy, and when you throw the lightninged enemy it will explode violently on impact. This is incredibly awesome.
In Doom 3, if you break any of the glass parts of the Hydrocon machine with a stray bullet, it will go up in a Level-Shattering Kaboom, killing everything in the area, including you. Unless you are in God Mode, in which case you can obtain the BFG early.
In Super Robot Wars, any disabled unit will explode, whether it's a robot, a monster, or even a person. They also tend to take the massive explosion at the end of an animation like a man, then bounce along the ground and blow up from the inside. It's particularly funny when something gets cut in half with a BFS, slides BACK TOGETHER, and then just blows up.
- Later versions added Dynamic Kills for just this reason: killing enemies with certain attacks causes them to use different death animations, such as "not sliding back together when killed with a massive sword."
- Likewise in Shining Force; they get the standard dissolve in the battle sequence, and then on the map they'll spin around and explode. Possibly even more bizarre, since mostly what's causing this to happen is swords and axes, applied to (generally) flesh and blood creatures. And if you kill a boss, then all the mooks explode. A Wizard Did It, I guess.
Several Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games have Foot Soldiers and other enemies explode, often a second or so after defeat.
Golden Eye 007 takes this trope to the logical extreme: Everything explodes if shot a few times. This includes model helicopters, television screens, computers, security cameras, wooden crates, and even chairs. Note that explosions tend to set off nasty chain reactions in this game: A few stray shots in a room filled with computers can kill everyone in the room. This makes the penultimate "official" level annoyingly difficult, as civilian personnel (whom you're not allowed to kill) operate the sensitive terminals you're assigned to destroy, meaning you have to scare them off lest they be killed in the ensuing explosions.
- This troper destroys every desk and computer other than the one Natalya has to commandeer during the Escort Mission where you have to protect her before letting her have at the console for this exact reason. Plus, it makes it harder to see what the bad guys on the floor are up to with a whole bunch of crap in your way.
- Unfortunately, the statues in Statue Park do not explode, but it would have been cathartic to watch Lenin's head explode.
- To clarify: if it's a non-geometry object that's not an enemy or made of glass, it explodes. Some things only explode under certain circumstances (plants require explosives, doors an Action Replay or Gameshark code] but anything that fits the category will blow up. Moreover, it will explode up to three times if you keep hitting it. The list above only skirts on the absurdity: blueprints and keycards will cheerfully explode if handled correctly.
- Although it's more logical, it's still really fun to plant a plastique on the giant nuclear warhead and then shoot it, creating a huge explosion that fills the screen. Yes, it kills you, too, but it's fun.
- If you have the invincibility cheat code, shooting the plastique in that level will cause the explosion to follow you everywhere, causing literally everything in the room to explode the instant Bond enters. This gives you mission failure, since it inevitably kills every scientist. But it's fun!
The original (1998) Si N game also had furniture and electronics that explode violently (with visible shockwaves) when hit.
Fighting Force 2 does the same thing, but it only requires Hawk Manson's fists to make things such as computers, soda machines, tanks, and even file cabinets. Yeah...he's a man-and-a-half.
And then there's Lego Star Wars, where if you can't blow something up by using a blaster or a lightsaber, you can by using the force on it. What's even more amusing is that the most common explosives are houseplants. Seriously.
- All of Traveller's Tales' LEGO games use this trope in overkill terms. If anything, the original LSW is almost sparing in the stuff that can be blown up with little more than a few punches.
- There's also and extra that you can buy for the Astromech Droids that makes them self-destruct when you press the X button. Hilarity ensues.
In Evil Genius, any object that catches fire will take damage continuously. After it takes enough damage, it explodes. This means any object in your base, even bunk beds and lockers, will explode and cause everything around them to catch on fire, leading to some humorous situations in, say, a room filled with bunk beds. True story.
- Even the "fire extinguishers" explode. I once had my entire base burn to the ground because of an exploding fire entinguisher.
Metal Gear Solid 3 features a somewhat bizarre variant: all of the boss characters, upon being defeated, will give their few last words before suddenly exploding violently. An explanation is provided that they all had bombs implanted in their bodies to prevent their remains from falling into the wrong hands should they be killed in action.
- This does not explain, however, the reasoning behind The Fear's explosion showering the entire area in hundreds upon hundreds of arrows, which appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Did he even carry a quiver?
  - The burning-away of the FROGS in MGS 4 is even more nonsensical, and it happens to them ALL. LOL NANOMACHINES
Similar reasons and effects for Deus Ex. Any MIB or augmented agent will explode violently leaving behind gory gibs, so as to prevent anybody else from taking them apart and studying their augmentations. Luckily, in the sequel they just dissolve into a cloud of poison gas instead.
- In the sequel, only Knights Templar powered armor suits explode, along with mechs is shot and destroyed (disabling them with EMP will avert that though). This can add some Fake Difficulty in some areas with cameras, gunfire won't set off the alarm, however shooting the camera until it explodes with the force of a grenade will.
In Mass Effect, using cryo or snowblind ammunition on an opponent causes their corpse to ice over, and then, a few seconds later, it shatters with a rather un-shattery "boom!"
Really, explosions are just a surprisingly kid-friendly way to get rid of enemies in a game. Most of the enemies from games like Legend Of Zelda explode cartoonishly when killed, Mario monsters tend to burst away in a puff of smoke, etc.
Some Pokemon are made of explodium and, particularly in the wild, exploding without a moment's notice. These Pokemon suffer no more than unconsciousness after going boom.
Ever wanted your own army of exploding troops? Exploding troops that happen to be penguins? Well, why didn't you say so before, dood?
All three Mother games feature exploding enemies - mostly robots, but then you get to the trees. Yes, you read that correctly. Exploding trees. (one even illustrates this page) The worst offenders are the Territorial Oaks found in Earthbound's Peaceful Rest Valley, which appear remarkably similar to the other trees in the landscape (aside from the fact that they're, well, moving.)
- And they really hurt badly, too. Always make sure to kill those last.
- There are such things as exploding trees, apparently.
  - That's why you NEVER stand anywhere near a eucalyptus tree in Australia in a storm - They go off like a bomb. This troper has even seen an older gum explode in a (Thankfuly somewhat distant) fireball, due to the flammable eucalyptus oil contained within.
- Any enemy that explodes in Earth Bound sucks except the smiling orbs (but those are still pretty bad). They all hurt when you fight them, so you can either kill them last and have them hurt your party, or kill them first and suffer the explosion. But this Troper thinks the worst offender is the robots that heal HP. So now you really have to decide which one to kill first.
Two-for-one deal in Phantasy Star Universe; the MMO takes after many console {{RPGs}} in that non-boss enemies and monsters killed undergo Critical Existence Failure - literally. Creatures explode in a puff of green smoke (with a satisfying "thoomp") unless they're SEED-forms, which gives you grape-flavored demise. It's the robot Guard Machines that embody this trope, though; once killed, they go haywire and explode violently. It's kinda like dealing with those Territorial Oaks mentioned above; exploding robots hurt in this game!
Just about everything in Metal Wolf Chaos. Hell, even concrete explodes when shot at.
Everything in Worms explodes. EVERYTHING. Sheep, cows, birds, your (grand)mom, crates (especially ones with sheep in them), and so on.
Most everything Terran in Star Craft, except for people, unless you count their meaty corpses, too. For that matter, everything Zerg is a bag of blood and chitin, and everything Protoss is made of Magic Smoke.
The GBA RPG Robopon 2 is a shining example of this trope: everything in this game explodes, from the boat that the hero uses in the prologue to the time machines that a mad scientist is forced to recreate over and over because, you guessed it, they keep exploding. One whole chapter of this game focuses around a construction company that blackmails people into paying protection fees - anyone who doesn't pay gets their house exploded. Let's not also forget that Robopon, the game's fighting robots, explode upon being defeated.
City Of Heroes has the classical Exploding Barrels to start with, which are somewhat normal if not logical. Then there are exploding robots. Not too much of a problem there, although when the basic robots blow up while the ones armed with explosive missiles and powered by fusion reactors don't go boom, there's a bit of head scratching to go around. Then you run into mission objects like the Explosive Desk Of Doom. It's even worse in Mayhem Missions, where villains are rewarded for destroying street-level objects, including newspaper stands, cars, trash cans, parking meters, SWAT vans, fire hydrants, and cardboard boxes. All of these explode, regardless of what particular power used to destroy them; freezing or slicing cardboard boxes cause the same pattern of scattered pieces as hitting them with a rocket. Most explode remarkably violently. This can lead to some interesting chain reactions, as the nuked police department car ignites a trio of other nearby cars, each of which blow up a few seconds later and destroying nearby cardboard and metal crates, all of which simultaneously explode a short time later.
The 2006 Sonic The Hedgehog game has several amusing examples of this; notably, at one point in the infamous Lets Play of the game, the player attempts to ride a speedboat up a wooden incline (the aerial speedboat is hardly a new gimmick in games, after all). Upon hitting the water again, the speedboat promptly explodes for no given reason. One could also argue that every last one of Robotnik's machines is Made Of Explodium, for obvious reasons.
- Even more baffling is the sequence where the player has to destroy a train while chasing it with a machine gun equipped motorcycle... and at least TWICE during said Lets Play the motorcycle explodes for no apparent reason.
Quite a few Mario objects explode for various reasons, such as robots and airships, but for some unknown reason, KINGFIN (underwater shark skeleton) explodes into about three million pieces after being defeated in a rather overly dramatic way.
In Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, pretty much everything will explode if shot. Of particular note are the Stormtroopers and civilians found in some levels- if you manage to shoot them, they explode with a burst of flame and a rather pathetic scream.
In Grim Fandango, the solution to one puzzle depends on the fact that packing foam is highly combustible. Packing foam used to ship people. (They're skeletons and thus don't breathe, but they'd still be more than a bit inconvenienced by catching fire or being blown up.)
- In an example of good game design, you find out about this early on, when a character working with some of the stuff and a machine has a mechanical problem and catches fire. If you haven't grabbed the fire extinguisher by now, you automatically run over and grab it; either way, he stops you and beats out the fire himself, because some of the contents of the fire extinguisher are what catalyze the explosion.
Starting with Final Fantasy VIII, every single boss monster has their own special explosion animation, ranging from dissolving into pieces to outright giant explosions - all for no reason at all other than the fact that they've run out of HP.
Pretty much any enemy (human or not) in the Contra series.
In Fallout 3, the 200-year-old decaying cars littering the landscape do not merely explode when hit by enough stray (or deliberate) fire. Oh no. They go up in a massive mushroom cloud that shakes the scenery, which not only destroys everything nearby but irradiates the area for a short while afterwords. Presumably, cars just before the apocalyptic war were nuclear-powered.
- All There In The Manual: They were.
- Try having a firefight in a crowded parking lot. Or not, because it'll last about 10 seconds until everyone is dead. One has to wonder what a car wreck on a crowded highway was like in Fallout world.
  - A certain area has a fort made of old cars piled upon one another. Raiders spawn there. The resulting gunfight can be more then lethal.
The Commanders from Total Annihilation take a beating, sure, but they still go BOOM. Violently. And in multiplayer, you'll more than likely be wiped clean off the map (stupid Game Ends setting).
- In multiplayer where the only victory comes as Total Annihiliation of the other side, yes, abusing this is a good backup in case you're gonna make a last ditch effort and just lost the Kbot facilities, meaning no more suicidal spiders. Simply load your commander onto a carryall and park it in the center of the enemy base.
The pyroroamers in Geneforge. They blow up when they die. And since they are so weak and usually travel in packs, it's easy to start a chain reaction.
- Also note that any power spiral is capable of "amazing pyrotechnics" if you so much as shut it down improperly. This is actually lampshaded in the fourth game.
Every vehicle in Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico has some cinema-realistic level of resistance to damage from collision. But leaping from that vehicle instantly transforms it into Explodium, a rolling missile that will impact with great balls of fire. Even if that vehicle is coasting along at a crawl and nudges into an obstruction with all the force of a kitten, it will go boom.
In the shooting gallery level in Call Of Duty World at War, shooting at the bridge of enemy merchant vessels will cause them to blow up just as spectacularily as the fuel tanks on the deck. In the tank level, shooting through the firing slits of bunkers several will cause them to blow up, though there is no evidence of anything explosive stashed inside.
- In a humorous nod (or is it?) to this trope, in Callof Duty 4, there's a cheat called "Bad Year", in which all enemies, when killed explode in a shower of tires. This is best served in a mission where you can kill a lot of enemies without suffering much return fire.
The online RPG Mechquest, do Mechs simply fall over when beaten? Oh no, they just have to explode instead! Every. Single. One of them.
- Almost every one. Some of the pirate mechs just kneel down. But hey, it's cool.
In Neverwinter Nights, if one sets the violence setting high, when you over-kill an enemy (i.e. your KB's either a crit or just that damn awesome) they will explode in a rain of guts and body parts.
In SEGA game The Story Of Thor, at one point you can get your fire spirit to attack a small iceberg. It hits it until the iceberg explodes.
Any destroyed vehicle in Warhawk explodes in an impressive fireball. Even if it was from being beaten with a wrench. If left unattended long enough, vehicles will spontaneously explode and respawn.
Almost every enemy in Dynamite Headdy dies with a rather high-pitched explosion. The bosses make huge explosions with lots of bouncing debris when you beat them. Collect enough of the debris, and you get a continue. Sure, why not?
Bosses in Secret of Evermore explode extensively when they die, no matter what they are. This includes bosses half-submurged in water, such as the giant squid and swamp snake. One of the bosses, Aegis, even explodes before the fight, then again after.
As a variation, in the survival horror game Shadowman for the N64 and PSX, everything explodes into bloody chunks, including rocks. How a gun that shoots spirit energy can damage a rock in the first place is a different mystery.
Virtually all vehicles in Grand Theft Auto will explode if they take enough damage, and a single bullet to the fuel cap will blow one up instantly. Even mobile staircases at airports will burst into flame if they are pushed over.
In In Famous, you can use your superpowers to make grenades made of electricity. As well as missiles. It's never explained how this works, but it's too awesome to worry about.

Web Animation

In Homestar Runner, The Cheat's head is made of Explodium. It frequently blows up, in response to just about anything - including Strong Mad standing near him and eating rocks. In one cartoon, they even use The Cheat in place of Fourth of July fireworks!

Webcomics

In Gunnerkrigg Court, inside Dr. Disaster's space battle simulator, the Enigmarons' Death Ray explodes when Antimony knocks it over. Of course, by this point it was already established that realism was the last thing on Dr. Disaster's mind when he designed the simulation.
In This Freefall strip, Florence knows there's no logical reason for a desk chair to explode, but she decides to play it safe anyway because it belong to Sam Starfall.
Spoofed in 8-Bit Theater: after blowing up icebergs with magic, Black Mage stabs another iceberg to get it out of the way...guess what happens? (BM even lampshades: "Why would it explode?!")
Adventurers! has the enemy named "Bombat" which explodes as soon as the heroes encounter it.
In Dominic Deegan, souls are Made Of Explodium.

Web Original

Cars and heads (the collars, so Justified) are included in Survival Of The Fittest. In the case of the exploding car, this causes an entire building to go up in a huge fireball too.

Western Animation

Family Guy: Meg gets in a drag race with an amish. When his carriage and horse go off a cliff, the carriage explodes. A second later, so does the horse.
In Aqua Teen Hunger Force, anything and everything explodes when thrown on the ground.
- Specifically when thrown by Shake.
- The Aqua Teen's television explodes in every episode.
Pretty much everything in The Simpsons is Made Of Explodium.
- Taken to ridiculous lengths when a car the Simpsons had recently bought in winter lost control on the ice. The Simpsons bailed out only to watch the car skid into the middle of a frozen lake, break through the ice and sink into the water, and then explode, raining fiery fragments down onto them.
  "Aww, I knew this would happen!" - Homer
- This troper's favorite was when the driver of a tanker truck had to swerve to avoid something, the truck slid, tumbled end over end, and finally exploded in a huge fireball. The side of the truck had MILK painted on it in huge letters.
- And don't forget Chief Wiggum (dressed as a beer stein) and a (The?) flying nun.
- Not quite an explosion, but after setting a cooked breakfast alight, Homer makes Mr Burns some cereal, and it too bursts into flames.
  - Similarly, this troper seems to recall such things as tipped over lawn chairs and tricycles bursting into flames for no apparent reason.
- There's also the episode with the monorail. Homer uses a giant letter M as an anchor and it tears Springfield oldest tree apart, sending it falling right on top of the log cabin where Jebediah Springfield was born, and it explodes.
- Hans Moleman's car is run off the road in one episode, and rolls down a hill towards a tree. The car stops several feet short of the tree. Before exploding.
- In another episode, Bart plays a prank on Homer by putting his can of beer in a paint shaker and putting it back into the refrigerator (as it is still shaking). When Homer opens the can, it detonates in a Springfield-sized mushroom cloud.
  Bart: April f- (An explosion of beer blasts out of the windows and chimney of the Simpsons' house and takes the shape of a mushroom cloud.)
  (Lou and Chief Wiggum stop the police car)
  Lou: That sounded like an explosion at the old Simpson place.
  Chief Wiggum: Forget it. That's two blocks away.
  Lou: Looks like there's beer coming out of the chimney.
  Chief Wiggum: I am procceding on foot. Call in a Code 8.
  Lou: [into radio] We need prezels. Repeat, prezels.
In one episode of Futurama, Doctor Zoidberg tries to re-coil a slinky after Bender has straightened it into a straight wire. It goes down two steps, falls over and then bursts into flame◊.
- In another episode, Zoidberg claims a giant conch shell on the bottom of the ocean as his home. Later in the episode they return to it to find it's burned down, leaving only a charred framework. "How could this happen?" Zoidberg laments, to which Hermes responds "That's a very good question." Then Bender discovers his still-burning cigar in the ruins, picking it up and taking a hearty puff. "That just raises further questions!" Hermes objects.
Robots in Gargoyles seem to suffer a violent catastrophic failure when defeated.
As do the robots that Samurai Jack destroys.
In this short from The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy a truck carrying a giant pillow blows up when shot with custard.
- Who could forget the cinema classic, Exploding Penguins 3: Total Annilation?
While Star Wars certainly has its share of explosions, in Star Wars: Clone Wars, all machines are somehow even more combustible. For example, the battle droids would just fall over or fall apart in the films; in the cartoon, they light up like Life Day fireworks.
On one episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants, Squidward explodes after falling down a cliff on his bicycle. And mind you, this is taking place underwater!
- Pretty much everything that falls or flies a great distance on that show will usually cause an explosion of sorts.
Obligatory Avatar The Last Airbender example: The minor third-season antagonist "Combustion Man" had the defined power that he could blow anything up with his mind. A well-aimed boomerang, however, gives him a taste right back.
The Rambo cartoon has Rambo racing to stop a pipe from burning away like a fuse and making the fuel tanker it's connected to explode. He brandishes his knife and tosses it, slicing the pipe off at the source. Crisis averted, it seems... but that's not good enough for Rambo. He runs over and throws the remains of the pipe up into the air where - you guessed it - it explodes.
- How do you cut a pipe with a knife?
  - You've never seen one of those infomercials advertising knives that can cut through pipe, concrete and ceramic tile, and still be sharp enough afterward to cut through a tomato without turning it into pulp?
  - Also, he wouldn't be military WITHOUT one.

Real Life

Eucalyptus Trees. They're filled with highly-flammable oil, and can literally EXPLODE in bushfires. So Yeah, in the Land Downunder, even the trees can kill you.
- Of course, if it's a tree that gets you, you've been lucky.
- Little know fact: Drop bears explode. Seriously, they've got very, very bad digestion; this is why they ambush you from trees, as anything at the same altitude as them would smell them.
Any form of organic dust will explode if mixed with enough air. Therefore mills of all kinds, especially the old-timey ones that use stones, are made of explodium.
- Submitted for your consideration - next time you put a spoonful of sugar on your cereal, remember this story. The resulting fire melted 3 silos full of sugar into sugar magma that didn't solidify for weeks.
Oil wells and coal mines may not explode, but they won't stop burning if set aflame. A certain coal mine has been on fire for over ten years.
Uranium and other radioactive materials may release deadly radiation or explode merely by having too much of it in the same place.
Sodium will explode if placed on water. Potassium and other elements in the same periodic table column are even more reactive (except cesium, which sinks in water so fast the explosion is contained by its weight).
There are entire families of chemicals that are so unstable they cannot be synthesized without blowing up the test apparatus. Or they blow up soon after they're synthesized. When the procedure recommends using teflon and stainless steel apparatus to minimise shrapnel - that's Explodium.
Imagine a factory that makes rocket fuel. Imagine the entire facility coated in highly unstable, incredibly dangerous powdered fuel due to lax safety protocols. Imagine this facility also stockpiling said rocket fuel from floor to ceiling. And then imagine somebody firing up a blowtorch in this same facility. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the PEPCON Disaster!