Meteor-Summoning Attack

Who needs an army to raid castles when you have a bunch of flaming, high-velocity rocks?

"O countless particles that wander the very heavens, rain down and glorify the land... Meteor Storm!"

— Rita Mordio, Tales of Vesperia

Meteors falling through the sky are seen as the epitome of raw power and destruction. Whether be it one big meteor or a bunch of little ones, no matter their size and scope, they're sure to give anyone a bad day, especially if they're weaponized and called forth to rain down oblivion on one's foes.

Meteor Summoning Attacks are, as the name says, attacks that summon meteors onto enemies. They usually come in the form of either abilities that characters can learn (often as spells or superpowers), usable items that get consumed on use or are tied to powerful artifacts like a Cosmic Keystone or a MacGuffin. Historically, spells used to summon meteors are seen as Stock RPG Spells and are amongst the most powerful and damaging abilities available. You can thank Dungeons & Dragons for setting that trend amongst tabletop RPGs and Final Fantasy for setting the trend amongst computer RPGs. When a villain or non-player character has an ability like this, it is generally a sign they are incredibly powerful.

The amount of collateral damage these meteors can cause varies depending on the moral alignment of the characters who use them. For the heroes, they very rarely cause any significant damage to their surroundings, often resulting in No Endor Holocaust scenarios where only the foe being targeted by the attack is harmed (this is typically Hand Waved to avoid instances of What the Hell, Hero?, Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, and Designated Hero). For the villains, however, their usage of the attack will almost always cause utter destruction of their surroundings to show that they mean business and may result in scenarios such as Doomed Hometown, Salt the Earth, and even World-Wrecking Wave at its most extreme. Generally, attacks involving a large number of smaller meteors tend to take the form of thorough carpet-bombings, while single-meteor strikes limit their destruction to a specific target. In games, this leads the first kind to usually serve as an Area of Effect type of attack, while single-meteor strikes will target a specific foe or location but are still likely to deal Splash Damage around it.

The meteors may be actual Flaming Meteors or energy-based/magical in nature. If it's the latter, expect Storm of Blades to ensue some of the time. Literal star-shaped objects such as shooting stars can also qualify.

Sub-trope of Colony Drop. Compare Rain of Arrows and Storm of Blades, which operate on similar concepts. See also Orbital Bombardment for when characters or factions attempt an all-out assault on their enemies from space using any weapons available, which may include meteors. If summoning meteors is an elemental attack, it will most often use fire, earth, light, or darkness. Ice is more rare and usually associated with comets, while wind is almost but not completely unheard of. If a setting has a separate "star" element, meteors are all but guaranteed to fall under it.

Important Note: To be an example, the meteors must be used as a deliberate attack against foes, either intentionally or unintentionally (for cases of reactionary, blind rage, or panic mode attacks). Plain-old "accidentally perturbed the trajectory" scenarios, natural disasters, and passive stage hazards in the case of video games where no character is responsible for, do not count.

Not to be confused with Summon Magic, which is about summoning living creatures and/or mythological entities to fight instead. Also not to be confused with Meteor Move, which is about hitting foes directly from the air to the ground.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: In an attempt to come up with something capable of killing Kenpachi, Gremmy Thoumeaux imagines a meteor falling upon the Seireitei. While virtually everyone else tries to run for cover, Kenpachi's response is to grow excited, release his Zanpakuto and cut the meteor down in one swing, much to Gremmy's disbelief.
  Kenpachi: I've never cut a meteor before. It's getting exciting, Nozarashi!
• A Certain Magical Index: The High Priest is able to seize control of the Arrowhead Comet and tries to destroy Academy City with it.
• Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody: First conversed, then played straight. Satou is introduced as a video game developer who adds an ability to summon a meteorite storm three times per character as an Anti-Frustration Feature following beta testers complaining about the difficulty curve. After he unexpectedly wakes up from a nap in the game world, he triggers the ability in a blind panic when he's attacked by Draconic Humanoids and accidentally wipes out their whole civilization.
• Digimon:
  • Digimon Adventure 02: In "The Good, the Bad and the Digi", Starmon's signature attack, "Meteor Shower" summons a swarm of falling rocks. It completely overwhelms the team and knocks them unconscious.
  • Digimon Data Squad: Insekimon/Meteormon's Cosmo Flash creates a vortex of energy above him that he uses to summon a hail of small meteors. Combined with his Super-Speed, it makes him a rather formidable fighter.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean: Viviano Westwood's Stand, Planet Waves, summons a meteor shower towards him. He himself is not harmed by the meteors as they instantly disintegrate if they get too close to him.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Jogo's Maximum Technique summons a flaming meteor before flinging it towards his target. While small compared to a real meteor, it's still destructive enough to level several buildings. The only reason it doesn't hit Sukuna is because Jogo did not use Domain Expansion to enforce a sure-hit, aware that Sukuna's Domain would've overwhelmed his own. To Jogo's credit, however, Sukuna admits that if it had hit him, even he would've suffered serious damage.
• My Hero Academia: During the Sports Festival Tournament Arc, Uraraka is battling against the incredibly powerful Bakugo. His explosions created broken chunks of the arena, which she then used as a trap, floating them up and then dropping them down at once as her final trump card in the match. Unfortunately, Bakugo counters this with a huge explosion that destroys all her projectiles at once.
• Naruto: Madara's Tengai Shinsei attack summons a huge meteor, which he can then direct to a specific impact location to cause devastation on a large scale. Notably, Madara himself considers this attack to be Awesome, but Impractical, since not even he can dodge or survive the impact shockwaves, at least until he becomes an undead Edo Tensei. Once he's revived in full and becomes the Ten-Tails' Jinchuuriki, he can create multiple meteors via Chibaku Tensei and thanks to his new Flight abilities avoid the resulting impact shockwaves. He even describes them as "slightly more solid and larger than raindrops".
• One Piece:
  • Fujitora, who ate a fruit that grants him the power to control gravity, has such control over his power that it allows him to summon meteorites from outer space to overwhelm his enemies.
  • During the Paramount War, Admiral Akainu uses his lava-based logia powers to launch what look like small balls of lava into the sky. This results in titanic fist-shaped balls of lava descending upon Whitebeard's fleet.
• One-Punch Man: In her first appearance in the anime, Tatsumaki kills a giant dinosaur-like monster by using her telekinesis to pull a meteor from space and send it falling down on him. It's interesting to note that this contradicted ONE's original idea for the scene, where she would simply squash him with a big rock that reminded him of a meteor.
• Overlord: In the Sealed Evil Tree CD Drama, Ainz kills Zy'tl Q'ae, a giant, evil Treant, by summoning a meteor while in stopped time. He even adds a few Drifting Master Mines to make it look like a Christmas Tree (or Christ-It-Hurts Tree), Meteor Fall being an improvised star as the finishing touch before time flows again. The poor thing was reduced to burning splinters before it even knew what hit it.
• Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life: During Arceus's rampage, it fires a golden orb into the sky several times calling down pink meteors to destroy Michina Town◊.
• Rave Master and Fairy Tail (both manga by Hiro Mashima) share a spell called Sema where the caster summons a single, giant meteor to strike the enemy in a massive explosion. While these meteors seem to come out of nowhere, the latter series features a souped up version of the spell called Deus Sema, which yanks a meteor from far out in space to collide with the face of the planet for a more widespread and devastating effect. Notably, each caster (Shakuma in Rave Master, Jellal and Irene in Fairy Tail) is considered to be The Archmage within their respective series, and the spell is one they don't use lightly.
• Shaman King: The original manga and the 2021 Anime have Hao Asakura as the freshly crowned Shaman King summon comets and meteors during the final confrontation.
• Slayers: During the second movie, the villain casts a spell to summon a meteor. Lina and Naga try to stop him, but are unable to. Then it gets subverted when instead of crashing into the ground and devastating the region, it streaks across the sky while he claps his hands together and says "Please let me win this fight. Please let me win this fight. Please let me... oh no! I wasn't able to say it three times!"
• The radioactive planet bombs used against Earth by the Gamilons in Star Blazers look like glowing red space rocks. Just as the overall look of the planet Gamilon seems to be based on Metaluna from This Island Earth, the meteor-based attack may also be an allusion to that film.
• Super Dragon Ball Heroes: The villain Hearts summons a giant meteor as his ultimate attack, which requires a combined effort from Gogeta, Hit, and Jiren to destroy. In the manga version, the meteor was larger than the Earth, and Gogeta stopped it by himself. In the video game it was based on, however, the move is much more common, and many different characters can use it.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering has a number of spells of this sort, which depict Flaming Meteors either alone or in swarms and are always Red (the color of brute force, natural disasters, and the fury of raw, untamed elements). In practice, they tend to either deal damage to a wide number of creatures at once, representing a hail of meteors scouring the battlefield (Comet Storm, Meteor Blast, Meteor Shower, Meteor Swarm, Volcanic Fallout), deal a tremendous amount of damage to a single creature (Shivan Meteor, Starfall), deal damage in exchange for destroying some of your own cards (Meteor Storm), or destroy one or multiple land cards (Molten Rain, Stone Rain). In the context of the game, due to the player taking the role of a planeswalker summoning the creatures or casting the spells represented by the cards, all of these are intended to represent active spells cast against one's foes.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Several cards have artworks that represent the player casting a meteor spell to attack their opponent's monsters. Examples include Meteor of Destruction, Red Reign and Meteorain.

Comic Books

• Fantastic Four: In an early issue, the reality-warping alien known as the Enfant Terrible did this to the team, among various other antics. He wasn't really trying to be antagonistic, but rather just curious about the world around him and experimenting with his powers. Fortunately, the heroes were able to dodge most of the rocks.
• Superman:
  • In story Let My People Grow!, Superman flies upwards and tosses at Brainiac a football stadium-sized meteor in order to trick him into using his Shrink Ray.
  • In The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot: The duel between Superman and a fake Supergirl revolves around them tossing meteors at each other.
  • The Legion of Super-Heroes!: In order to put off a forest fire, Cosmic Boy uses his magnetic power to pull a swarm of iron meteors down from space and fill a lake until it overflows and floods the forest. At the same time, he pulls down an old satellite to keep Superboy busy.
• Wonder Woman (2006): When Zeus attacks Kane-Milohai with lightning, the Polynesian god laughs it off and hits back with a hail of roughly basketball-sized meteors.

Fan Works

• Aurora (PonyholicsAnonymous): Towards the climax, Luna uses a variant of this derived from the setting's geocentric cosmology, where she allows the enemy army to occupy Canterlot before pulling several of Equestria's stars out of orbit, wiping out both the city and the army within it.
• Heroic Myth: Primo gets a spell called Stardust Fall that allows her to summon a large boulder the size of a house that she can drop onto her target.
• Rise of the Minisukas: Matarael's last-resort gambit involves leaping out of the atmosphere, grabbing onto a meteorite and throwing it at the Evangelions.
• Seventh Endmost Vision: Being that it's a fanfiction of Final Fantasy VII, there's the obvious plot-relevant one in Meteor, but there's also a smaller one in Comet, which Barret has at least one copy of. Meteor's POV establishes that Comet is, in fact, a chunk of her, using a smaller portion of her power.
• Scootertrix the Abridged: In episode 24, Princess Celestia (previously established to have control over the Sun) summons a meteor shower to drop on Sombra's zombie forces. And she turns the event into a meteor-watching party for her little ponies (and even makes a profit selling tickets!) without telling them the meteors' true purpose.
• Thirty Hs: Villain Protagonist Harry Potter uses his guitar to summon a giant meteor from space and kill everyone at Hogwarts, for no reason at all. Then he rides his meteor into space and kills Mercury with it.
• We Are All Pokémon Trainers: One of Chiyo's most powerful attacks is sending down star shaped Auric constructs at her enemies.

Film — Live-Action

• Avengers: Infinity War: When the heroes come close to removing Thanos' source of power, he retaliates by fracturing the surface of a nearby moon and teleporting the fragments to the planet's atmosphere as a hailstorm of meteors.
  Iron Man: You throw another moon at me, and I'm gonna lose it.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Big Bad Sofina uses the meteor swarm spell in the climactic battle, one of the most powerful spells in the namesake tabletop. Notably, she uses it to open the battle in an attempt to immediately wipe out the heroes before switching to weaker spells.
• Iron Sky has space zeppelins towing space rocks behind them to make them drop on The Earth.
• The Last Starfighter: In a seeming homage to This Island Earth,^note The big-headed make-up job on the Rylans is likewise a seeming homage to This Island Earth., the evil Ko-Dan also using hurled meteorites as weapons.
• Power Rangers (2017): During the prologue set in prehistoric times, a severely wounded Zordon has Alpha 5 direct a meteor shower to his vicinity in order to stop the traitorous Rita Repulsa from claiming the Zeo Crystal.
• The climax of This Island Earth sees the planet Metaluna under attack from its enemies, who are hurling meteorites at it as projectiles.

Live-Action Television

• Charmed (1998): A demon was killing leprechauns to steal good luck. They fought back by giving him so much bad luck that he was crushed by a meteor.
• Star Trek: Voyager: The crew was helping a colony threatened by a meteor shower evacuate. They eventually discovered that the meteors were fake. The meteor shower was an attack by aliens who use manufactured natural disasters as a way of forcing evacuations so they can annex new territory. It's less hazardous than open warfare.

Myths & Religion

• The Bible: Played with. The scripture describes a hail of fire and lightning that fell on Egypt, a punishment from God for refusing to free the enslaved Hebrew people.
  Yet you continue to exalt yourself over My people, and do not let them go! This time tomorrow I will rain down a very heavy hail, such as has not been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. Therefore, order your livestock and everything you have in the open brought under shelter; every man and beast that is found outside, not having been brought indoors, shall perish when the hail comes down upon them!'" [...] The LORD sent thunder and hail, and fire streamed down to the ground, as the LORD rained down hail upon the land of Egypt. The hail was very heavy—fire flashing in the midst of the hail—such as had not fallen on the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.

  —Exodus 9:17-19, 23-24
  • Some historians interpret this (and many of the various other plagues described in Exodus) as being the result of the massive volcanic eruption of Thera in the Mediterranean at the time. If that was the case, then this passage was not describing meteors, but volcanic ash and fallout (which is hardly any safer...)

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The top-level meteor swarm spell launches four small projectiles, which hit hard and then explode into fireballs. Depending on the edition, they strike from the caster's hand or fall from the sky.
  • Contrary to the trope description, daemonlords, fiends from the Dragonlance setting, can combine their ability to cast meteor swarm with their ability to summon various types of chaos wretches, by having their minions appear in the impact site of the spell attack.
  • The Druid/Cleric-only spell cometfall in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition conjures a huge ball of ice and rock and causes it to fall down on top of an opponent.
  • The aspect of Atropus can call a meteor shower down on its position by spending fifty hit points. It can also cast the meteor swarm spell up to three times a day.
  • Icewind Dale Rime Of The Frostmaiden has the Scroll of the Comet, an ancient magic scroll that drops a comet on a point you aim at (both you and the target point need to be outdoors). The comet blasts a crater fifty feet deep at the center and 500 feet across, dealing damage that's unparalleled by any other D&D spell to every creature in the blast radius.
• Fabula Ultima: The Comet spell, which can only be obtained by mastering the Entropist class, drops meteors on your enemies for massive Non-Elemental damage.
• Ironclaw had two spells in the Elementalism school:
  • Meteor Storm is a master-level Fire spell that essentially acts as an upgraded Fireball.
  • Comet Fall is part of Dunwasser Academy's secret Star Magic school, which requires a character to know at least one journeyman spell in each of the four classical elements, be in good standing with Dunwasser, and know the other Star Magic spell Starlight. It's also the most powerful spell in the game in terms of raw damage potential.
• Mummy: The Curse has the Secrets Stripped from Skies Utterance. While the first tier of the Utterance lets a mummy gain perfect awareness of a location, the second tier lets them strike a target with a single meteor, whereas the third tier can allow a mummy to summon a meteor storm that can decimate a small city.
• Warhammer: The most powerful spell in the Lore of Heavens, the Comet of Cassandora, drops a meteor onto the battlefield, devastating any unit caught underneath it... when it hits. Unlike most spells, the Comet of Cassandora doesn't resolve immediately, instead the meteor has a chance to land each turn, and grows stronger the longer it's falling. Depending on the tides of battle, this can lead to mages on both sides of the field desperately trying to dispel the Comet before it lands on their dueling generals, or wipes out the units contesting an objective.
• Warhammer 40,000: Orks usually lack the sophisticated orbital bombardment capacities of other factions, and so simply tow asteroids from orbit and drop them on a planet. Even worse are "roks," particularly huge space rocks that are hollowed out, fitted with engines and life support systems, filled with as many orks as can fit, and used as gigantic Drop Pods. If a rok holds together long enough to reach the planet, there's now a horde of mean green killing machines on the ground; if not, there's a colossal explosion, which is just as entertaining.

Video Games

• Advance Wars: The CO Sturm drops a meteor onto the biggest cluster of units that aren't his as his CO Power. It's powerful enough to render said units vulnerable enough to get destroyed by his troops.
• Age of Mythology has Meteor, the God Power of Thoth, which summons a rain of meteors to damage any and all enemies in their wake.
• Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk: Meteor Storm is Wilbell's Limit Break. It calls down multiple meteors from a portal, and if the attack is used as a Finishing Move (dealing enough damage to kill the last remaining enemy), it ends with one much bigger meteor crushing the foe.
• Azure Striker Gunvolt: Nova Tsukuyomi, in his final form, has the power to call down a massive meteor from space as his final Limit Break, Clamator Aethereus. Touching said meteor is an unavoidable One-Hit Kill, requiring the player to finish Nova off quickly before it consumes the battlefield.
• Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal has the "Comet" high-level ability for mages and sorcerers, which drops a comet on the battlefield for massive amounts of blunt and fire damage.
• Black & White 2: A God Is You, and you can learn to call down a brief meteor shower over a small area as a miracle. It's powerfully destructive but expensive to learn and has an extremely high Mana cost.
• BlazBlue features two characters who summon meteors as their Astral Finish.
  • The first is Mad Scientist Kokonoe, whose Astral has her flurry-punch her target and send them to a magnetic prison before summoning a meteor on their head, reducing the battlefield into molten landscape.
  • The second is her mother, Nine The Phantom, The Archmage who instead summons a demon to pin down her target before she calls down dozens of meteors on the poor sod. She carries over this Astral to BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle.
• Bravely Default has Meteor, a high-level spell belonging to the Time Mage job class, which deals four large amounts of non-elemental damage to random targets.
• Brigandine: The highest level Black-colored spell is called "Meteor Doom", which summons a bunch of meteors raining down an area, indiscriminately damaging enemies and allies alike for pretty massive damage for an area attack.
• Brütal Legend has Eddie do this as his ultimate attack. Subverted; as due to the Heavy Metal aesthetic it's not meteoric, but an airship. The effect is the same however.
• Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: One of Dracula's ultimate abilities is to drop a shower of meteors on the protagonist. Given Dracula's own gigantic form limiting your movement options, the only real escape is to activate a rock-absorbing spell.
• Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex has Air-Elemental-Powered Crunch summoning falling stars as one of his attacks, and Final Boss uses meteors as one of attacks as well (this time powered by Earth Elemental).
• Cuphead: The third phase of Sally Stageplay's battle sees Sally transforming into a giant cardboard cutout of herself in an Affectionate Parody of JRPGs. One of her attacks, "Meteor," summons a massive asteroid to hit Cuphead and Mugman... but, since the whole thing is taking place in a theater, the "asteroid" is just a cheaply-made prop being carried by stagehands.
• Dawn of War II: Retribution, The orks' ultimate attack is to drop a crapload of asteroids from orbit into the target area.
• Devil May Cry: In the third/final battle against the lava spider/scorpion Phantom, he utilizes an attack consisting of launching a meteor shower of fireballs from his back/stinger tail onto Dante. The attack is so powerful it makes Phantom pass out for a few seconds, leaving him vulnerable.
• Destroy All Humans! 2: One of the attacks Crypto acquires is the ability to have meteorites strike a target, and can be upgraded to have a small planetoid smash onto the target area.
• Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and Hacker's Memory have Meteor Fall, a fire-elemental attack that targets all enemies and calls down an enormous Flaming Meteor. It has three different Spell Levels, all of which have the same animation. As an inherited skill, each level can be learned by many different Digimon and then retained as they change Digivolutions.
• Disgaea has Laharl's ultimate, "Meteor Impact". It summons a meteor, which Laharl then rides to impact while letting out his Signature Laugh. The anime adaptation actually shows the meteor coming out of an Instant Runes portal.
• Dota 2: Meteor Hammer's active ability summons a flaming meteor that stuns and deals damage over time to enemy units and buildings.
  • One of Invoker's many abilities is a Chaos Meteor, which calls down a meteor that rolls in front of him, damaging and burning away enemies every time it touches them. Aghanim's Shard allows him to call down two more of these per cast.
• Dragon Ball Heroes: The God Meteor is an attack that, well... summons a giant meteor. It can be used by many different characters in the game, with many different variations and unique effects. In the anime adaptation, however, it was a technique only used by the villain Hearts, and made out to be a big deal as some kind of ultimate attack, rather than a common move.
• Dragon's Dogma has Bolide which summons meteors to rain down on a target. It also comes in high and grand variants that unleash more, stronger meteors as well.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Big Bad, Alduin, has a unique Dragon Shout which only he can perform. When he uses it, the sky turns darker, a vortex of clouds appears in the sky, and meteors start raining down. This attack first gets unleashed in Helgen at the beginning of the game, contributing to the village's destruction at the dragon's hands; and it also gets unleashed during your battles with him toward the end of the game.
• EverQuest II: The Wizard class gains the Ice Comet spell at level 50. At the start of the game, it was the most powerful spell they had access to, but still remains one of the stronger direct damage spells at higher levels with proper spell upgrades.
• EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance: Astro-Gather doesn't just wear a metero-shaped helmet, he also spawns a swarm of meteors over the course of his boss fight. The smaller ones are easy enough to blast through or dodge, but the larger ones are almost a guaranteed hit for unprepared or weakened players.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Kirschtaria Wodime, Crypter of the Greek Lostbelt, has this as his Limit Break attack. Called "Grand Order/Anima Animusphere", it has him aligning the stars into a colossal magic circuit and using the absurd magic boost to rip meteors from the sky and smash them into the player's party. During the Hopeless Boss Fight against him in Atlantis, this instantly ends the battle. Come his actual boss fight in Olympus, it 'only' wipes out an entire line of Servants.
  • Koyanskaya, as both her Beast IV:L form and her playable Foreigner-class self Koyanskaya of Dark, has a lot of meteor imagery for her Noble Phantasms, with the former "just" creating an AoE energy ball that explodes in mid-air reminiscent of a meteor air burst, and the later called "Tunguska Nine Drive" has her turning herself into a meteor that erupts in an air burst. That's because Koyanskaya is a nature spirit that was born from The Tunguska Event, specifically a combination of the spirits and prayers of all the animals that were killed in the meteor air burst along with being an embodiment of the raw power of the explosion itself.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Comet and Meteor frequently appear as one of the game's most powerful Black Magic (or sometimes Time Magic) spells, calling down a bombardment of falling space rocks to deal massive Non-Elemental damage that's usually second only to Flare, Mega Flare, and Ultima. In some games it is even sealed away in-story because it's too powerful. In Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VIII, and Final Fantasy Dimensions, Meteor, as well as the Comet2 spell in Final Fantasy VII, deals multiple hits, making it the ideal spell for killing a single target, especially when doublecasted.
  • Final Fantasy II: The Emperor's ultimate attack is Starfall, a precursor to the recurring Meteor spell.
  • Final Fantasy III: Meteor's appearance in this game is notable for being the spell's proper introduction to the franchise. It is the strongest multitarget spell available to the Magus job, but is overshadowed in that role by Bahamut for the Sage job. Aside from that one role, it is treated with no extra significance compared to other Level 8 magic.
  • Final Fantasy IV: Tellah uses Meteor on Golbez, driving the latter off at the cost of his own life. Notably, during his tenure in the party Tellah does not have enough MP to cast Meteor in regular gameplay. Meteor later becomes available to Rydia and, in versions where he sticks around long enough to reach a high enough level, Palom. Fusoya and Golbez also know it automatically. The game also ups the ante with the Twin Meteor spell, in which two casters work together to call down an even larger meteor storm for even greater devastation. Comet is a weaker version of the latter that the twins can cast. This was the first game in the series where Meteor was sealed away by ancient mages because it was too powerful for regular use.
  • Final Fantasy V: This game started the trend of classifying Meteor as Time Magic when it is a separate school from Black or White, and also introduced the mechanic of Meteor hitting one random enemy multiple times instead of hitting the entire field at once. It is part of a triad of forbidden "ultimate" spells alongside Holy and Flare that were sealed away when the world was split in two. Also of note is that this marks the first appearance of the weaker Comet spell as standard magic.
  • Final Fantasy VI: Strago's Quasar lore summons an entire accretion disk full of asteroids to bombard any enemies on the battlefield with defense-ignoring, unavoidable, Non-Elemental damage.
  • Final Fantasy VII: A summoned meteor (simply called "Meteor") by Sephiroth is central to the plot, indicated by its place on the game's title artwork. It is described as the "ultimate destruction magic" that the Cetra sealed away. Because of its role in the story, Meteor is replaced with Comet2 in gameplay.
    • Sephiroth's signature attack during the Final Boss battle, "Supernova", summons a meteor as well. Its target is not the player's party, however, but the sun, causing it to go supernova. Several planets are also destroyed along the meteor's trajectory.
    • There's also Cloud's Meteorain limit break, which hits random enemies in battle with a bunch of meteors.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Comet and Meteor are present as standard Black Magic spells, but there is also the ultimate Black Magic spell, Doomsday. Its animation shows multiple dark masses coalescing into a single giant meteorite that crashes into the battlefield and causes dark-elemental damage to both the enemy and the player's party.
  • Final Fantasy X: The traditional Comet and Meteor spells aren't in this game for use by an ordinary party member; King Behemoths use the latter as their Last Ditch Move. However, Yuna can summon Aeons, and one of her summons, Ifrit, has a special attack called Meteor Strike which acts as the weaker substitute. Braska's Final Aeon also has one of these during the second phase of his boss fight in the form of his overdrive, Ultimate Jecht Shot, in which he calls down a meteor, catches it in both hands, and slams it down onto the battlefield to cause a massive explosion.
  • Final Fantasy X-2: the Dark Knight dressphere has the ability Black Sky, which bombards enemies with black meteorites for ten randomly-aimed hits.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Comet and Meteor are available to the player, but not as standard spells; they are the special attacks of Exodus, an Esper, with Meteor being his Limit Break. Both are Randomized Damage Attacks. Some species of Chocobo can perform Choco-Comet, which drops small comets on all party members in range. Balthier also has one of these in the form of his strongest Quickening, Element of Treachery, which has him merge three illusions of himself into a meteor.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • On the enemy's side: Meteor, and similar attacks, are a recurring mechanic that appear in multiple fights, which take the form a bunch of smaller meteorites forming a circle and a massive one at the center, all of which slowly fall to the ground; if players don't destroy them in time, they will take massive damage or even just straight up suffer a Total Party Kill.
    • Behemoth and its King Behemoth variant have both Comet and Ecliptic Meteor. Comet actually leaves the rock on the battlefield, and hiding behind it is the only way to survive Ecliptic Meteor.
    • On the players' side: Starfall is the Level 2 Limit Break of all caster DPS Jobs, with its usual animation being a falling swarm of tiny meteors. Black Mage gets the Meteor as its Level 3 Limit Break, planting their cane on the ground and summoning a dark vortex in the sky, before Meteor falls from the vortex and hits the ground, causing a massive explosion.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Meteor is an Alchemist spell that deals heavy non-elemental damage to a small area despite the animation suggesting a larger impact. Illusionists can learn Stardust, which calls down a storm of meteors across the entire field. Sprite-type enemies can use Meteorite, which hits a single target with a meteorite for moderate damage.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2: In addition to the attacks from Tactics Advance, Exodus returns as a summon that uses his signature Meteor attack from XII, which now hits a single target for 999 damage. Because the name was taken, the Alchemist's Meteor spell was renamed to Protometeor.
• Fire Emblem: Meteor is a recurring spell present in several games; it's usually the most powerful type of fire magic available and has considerable range as well. This power is offset by the scrolls used to cast it being rarer than other spells and having less durability as well, limiting how much you can actually use it.
  • In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, the Battle of Belhalla finishes with a "fire rain" created via multiple simultaneous uses of the Meteor spell by the court magicians under the orders of the antagonist, resulting in Sigurd's death and the near-total annihilation of his army.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, it's tweaked so that in addition to dealing heavy damage to the target it also deals moderate damage to everyone adjacent to them.
• Genshin Impact:
  • Zhongli's Elemental Burst, "Planet Befall", calls down a giant Geo meteor on enemies. Any enemy hit directly by the meteor will be petrified for a short time to allow the player to get some damage in before the effect wears off.
  • When the Weekly Boss Azhdaha enters his Pyro infusion form, one of his attacks called "The King's Roar" summons a barrage of Pyro meteors onto the arena, with their impact spots highlighted with red runes to let the player know where they'll hit so they can avoid them.
• God of War (PS4): Kratos' ultimate Runic Attack that doesn't do Frost Damage is Meteor Slam. He slams his weapons against the ground and small meteors pummel every spot within a radius around Kratos for the next five or six seconds. Unlike most Runic Attacks, you can only create it with materials not found in the main game, meaning the player has to put special effort to unlock this powerful attack.
• Godus: The meteor power calls down a meteorite onto a target, wiping out anything in a small area and creating a visible crater in the process.
• Golden Sun:
  • The 4-Mars-djinn summon is Meteor, which brings a giant meteor crashing down on the enemy. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's summon sequence adds a constellation figure launching the meteor.
  • Sol Blade's unleash, Megiddo, is a massive rock from space that stomps the enemy. Notable in that it triples damage dealt, making it the hardest hitting attack physical in The Lost Age after Excalibur's Legend (if it hits three times — if it doesn't, Megiddo is better).
• Guild Wars 2: One combat option for an elementalist channeling fire is "Meteor Shower", which is just what it sounds like. Alternatively, an elementalist can channel water and use "Comet" to drop an ice comet on the target's head (and injure opponents standing near the main target).
• Guilty Gear: One of the rarer outcomes of Faust's "What Will Come Out?" special is a herd of meteors that fly down and hit nearly the entire screen.
• Grim Dawn:
  • The Arcanist class carries two: Trozan's Sky Shard drops what seem to be fragments of the sky itself (somehow) on a target, dealing massive cold and electric damage to whatever they land on, while capstone skill Devastation simply causes a massive meteor shower of Aetherial energies in the area, giving all enemies a thorough pummeling.
  • Various enemies have access to similarly meteoric attacks, coming in icy, fiery and aetheric flavors (including some that can cast the above spells). Nemesis Superboss Archmage Aleksander has a particularly infamous Aetheric meteorite that can turn even optimized max-level characters into a pile of green ash if their dodging isn't on point.
• The Heart Pumps Clay: Mara's Meteor Shower tome allows Mara to cast Meteor Shower in battle. It's only available after shifting to fire.
• Heroes of Might and Magic: Depending on the game, Meteor Shower is generally a high-level Earth spell that deals damage to all enemies in a large AoE. It's often going to be the best offensive spell for heroes specializing in Earth Magic.
• Heroes of the Storm:
  • Ragnaros can call down a meteor with his W ability, which continues rolling in the target direction to damage enemies. In Molten Core, he instead calls down a meteor shower that drops three meteors in a line.
  • Gul'dan's Rain of Destruction drops fel-infused meteors in a wide area for several seconds, which deal heavy damage to enemies they hit. Since the meteors fall at complete random, it's more useful for area denial than actual damage.
  • Deathwing has two talents that do this at level 7. One allow him to call down meteors in any location on the map while he's using Dragonflight, and the other causes meteors to rain from the sky around him after he lands on the ground. One of his level 20 talents gives him both of these effects.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts: Maleficent has an attack during her first boss fight in which she summons large magical meteors on Sora, Donald, Goofy, and the Beast. Interestingly, they come not from above but travel horizontally after emerging from a magic portal.
    Meteors of Heaven, unleash thy fury!
  • Kingdom Hearts II: In the Updated Re-release, Zexion's Absent Silhouette has a repeating mechanic in his battle where Sora needs to move quickly into a blue spotlight to avoid being bombarded with meteors.
  • Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: Zexion's Limit Break is Meteor Mirage, an attack that calls down dark meteors around himself, seemingly in reference to his Absent Silhouette battle. They get bigger and hit a wider area during his Final Limit.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: Terra can use Meteor as an extension of his earth powers. The easiest way for him to learn it is by melding two other earth-themed commands. He can also learn Meteor Crash, which has him strike the ground as fireballs rain down around him to deal fire damage. Both abilities are also available to Sora and Riku in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], though how they learn them is never explained.
  • Kingdom Hearts III: Donald Meteor is a Combination Attack between Sora and Donald that bombards enemies with small meteors.
  • Kingdom Hearts III: Re𝄌Mind: Armored Xehanort's Desperation Attack has the boss in question open portals to a dimension of eerily backlit clouds to summon several dark orbs that periodically rain meteors down on the battlefield in set patterns for the rest of the battle.
  • Summoning meteors is a recurring ability for Sephiroth. In Kingdom Hearts, he calls down several that circle around the battlefield before hurling a massive fireball at Sora. In Kingdom Hearts II, he has an attack where he tries to bombard Sora with meteors, following him as he moves.
• Kirby:
  • Kirby's Epic Yarn: The boss battle with Space Kracko has his main attack shooting comets from his eyes.
  • Kirby: Planet Robobot: During the first phase of the battle against Star Dream, it will open a portal that will spawn meteors on a collision course with the Halberd. The player can either dodge them or shoot and destroy the meteors so the resulting debris can be absorb to fuel the Halberd's Planet Buster weapon for use against Star Dream.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land: The Final Boss of the game, the Big Bad, Fecto Elfilis, kicks off the second phase of their boss battle with two of these in succession. First, they use "Space Debris", where they open a portal and send a series of Dedede-sized meteors through it to pelt the arena. Then, they finish with "Fermi Paradox Answer", which uses the same portal to call down a much, much larger meteor that nearly covers the entire boss arena. The name of the finisher implies that Elfilis began its invasion of the New World with the same attack, making it one hell of a Dynamic Entry.
• From League of Legends, Aurelion Sol's ultimate ability is "Falling Star", where he summons one of these onto the enemy for a burst of damage. On its own, it's a fairly average and typical Area of Effect damage spell, but things get scary thanks to Aurelion Sol's innate "Cosmic Creator" passive, which causes all his spells to become permanently buffed when dealing damage, making his late-game increasingly more powerful. For "Falling Star" in specific, it comes with an upgraded form called "The Skies Descend", which increases the area of impact and sends enemies flying and creates an enormous shockwave that spans half the entire map, making it one of the most obscenely powerful raw spells in the whole game.
• Meteor Storm from Legend of Grimrock II, which summons five fireballs that travel in horizontal line, unlike most of other examples. It is the most powerful spell and hardest one to learn too, requiring maxed out Fire Magic and three points in Air Magic as well.
• The Legend of Spyro:
  • The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning: The fire fury attack calls down a rain of explosive fireballs, while the earth fury creates a rain of boulders.
  • The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night: During the second half of his boss fight, Gaul will occasionally summon a rain of explosive magma bombs.
• Magic and Mayhem: The Meteor Shower spell bombards the area with meteorites, and is one of the few spells that deals out enough damage to destroy totems.
• Majesty: Wizards can learn the Meteor Storm spell from the library, which bombards all nearby enemies with flaming meteors for a short period of time.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Dormammu's Purification attack, if performed while he has exactly one Destruction charge and at least one Creation charge, produces a meteor shower directly in front of him.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man 8 has Astro Man's Astro Crush, calling down a storm of meteors while rendering Mega Man invincible during the animation.
  • Mega Man Battle Network:
    • The Meteor chips are available in the second game. They set a cane in front of MegaMan's panel, which in turn causes up to 18 meteors to rain down on the enemies' field at random.
    • The Meteors chip freezes time and makes 30 meteors fall in the enemies' area.
    • The Asteroid and Dark Meteor chips, which are exclusive to the fifth game, make meteors fall on top of enemies or their surrounding panels, with the added benefit of also cracking any panels that are hit.
• Might and Magic VI-VIII have Meteor Shower spell as a Master spell from Fire Magic school, which sprays area in front of the party with meteors. There is also Grandmaster Air Magic spell Starburst, which summons stars that are faster and more damaging, but with higher MP cost. They can be also dangerous to you if using them on enemies too close to you.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Crimson Fatalis, debuting in Monster Hunter G, can let out a roar to summon meteorites from the sky to attack hunters with.
  • Dire Miralis, debuting in 3 Ultimate, also summons meteorites to attack the players with and can also fire meteorites from its wing hole structures.
  • Monster Hunter: World: Final Fantasy XIV's Behemoth makes a guest appearance here, with the same attacks. But now Ecliptic Meteor kills you no matter where on the map you are.
• Mother: PK Starstorm is the magical variant, summoning magic-based meteors on enemies.
• Planescape: Torment: The Meteor Swarm Bombardment spell shoots a beam into the sky (even if you're underground) that smashes an asteroid into tiny fragments that it sends raining down across the screen. Fortunately, it doesn't harm you or anyone else in your party when you cast it, because it does a lot of damage to enemies.
• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: The Meteor Flower attacks by summoning meteors to land on zombie-occupied squares, these deal fire damage and leave behind lingering pools of lava that deal constant fire damage over time. Notably, using Plant Food on her will cause her to unleash a larger meteor shower that also scares away all Jurassic Marsh dinosaurs on the field.
• Pokémon:
  • One of the rarest, most powerful moves available to the rarest type is the Dragon-type move, Draco Meteor. It summons a barrage of meteors to devastate an opponent, dealing 140 damage before boosts from stats and same-type bonuses. No Pokémon can learn it naturally, it has to be taught by a special tutor found in the game-world, making it something of an Infinity +1 Sword.
  • Rayquaza also brings some meteors along while smashing down to earth with his Dragon Ascent move in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
  • One of the ways Dialga, Palkia, and Arceus attack you during their boss fights in Legends: Arceus is by summoning meteors from the sky. Since two of them are Dragon-type and the third can be any type, it makes sense that they could do this, since it resembles the aforementioned Draco Meteor.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: Terapagos' Secret Art, Tera Starstorm, has it fire energy stars from above on its foes.
• Puyo Puyo: Witch is well-known for this, having Meteor as her signature spell, even using it as a Limit Break in Madou Monogatari Saturn. She's even known as the "Comet Summoner" in the Compile era.
• Rage of the Gladiator: Lord Vensor begins every round by calling forth a meteor storm, which causes fireballs to rain down on the field at random and set one of the two lanes on fire, restricting the player's movement.
• Rocket Knight Adventures 2: One of King Gedol's attacks during the first phase of the final battle against him involves him raining many small meteors down from the sky.
• Rondo of Swords: Meteor Gate is a Fire-elemental spell that as its name suggests, summons a meteorite to cause heavy damage on a single enemy.
• RPG Maker 3 on the PlayStation 2 has a limited number of stock visual effects that can be assigned to spells or special attacks, the "Meteor" effect being one of the available options. It sends a single flaming meteor onto the target enemy, either as large as a person for single-target skills or as large as the enemy's side of the battlefield for multi-target skills.
• Shadow Hearts: From The New World: Shania's Tirawa fusion packs Solar Flare, a powerful attack that summons fireballs from the Sun that hit all enemies independently from their altitude and deal Non-Elemental damage.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth: If the player character picks the Jew class, they will be able to learn the ability Plagues of Egypt. One of the attacks of this ability is called Fiery Hail, which calls down small flaming meteors on enemies.
• Spore: There are three tools that do this, but they're terraforming tools instead of weapons. The Meteor Shower increases the temperature of a planet by pelting an area with small meteors that also deal a small amount of damage to anything they might hit. The Asteroid Call Button and Ice Comet pull down a single large meteor or comet respectively, dealing massive damage if dropped on a ship or colony in addition to causing changes to the planet's climate.
• Star Ocean: In the first three games, Meteor Swarm is the ultimate spell, found in a treasure chest in the final dungeon of the first game, and in a chest in the bonus dungeon in the second and third. Like its counterpart in the Tales series, it hits the entire battlefield with a swarm of meteors. In the third game, Sophia is implied to be using her unique Symbol of Connection to open the portal that the meteors fall through.
• Street Fighter III gives the Final Boss Gill a Limit Break that allows him to summon a hail of meteors, in his elements of fire and ice. In his reappearance in Street Fighter V he gains a V-Skill that summons a single meteor, which Omega Gill can beef up into the old Super Art.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: The Mario Bros. use two as special attacks:
    • Mighty Meteor summons a meteor that the Bros. hammer back and forth, slamming into enemies and eventually dropping an item.
    • Falling Star drops a huge star on the target, accompanied by smaller stars that were thrown at it.
  • Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel have Bowser summon meteors sometimes. In the former, they only appear in the final stretches of his levels when you're approaching him, and in the latter, they're much bigger and an integral part of his boss fights, sprouting out of the ground when he punches the planetoid you're on so that you can ground-pound them into his face.
  • Super Mario Maker and its sequel feature an offscreen Bowser on tracks that can be used to create this effect in due to the fireballs looking similar to meteors.
  • Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars: Late-game villains and the Optional Boss Culex have the attacks Meteor Swarm (which calls a swirling cloud of rainbow-colored stars across the screen) and Dark Star (which summons a gigantic five-pointed star that repeatedly bounces on one member of the party), both of which do massive damage. On the heroes' side, Mallow's final Special Attack in the game is Star Rain; much like Dark Star, it conjures up a massive star — this one the classic yellow of Invincibility Stars from earlier Mario games — to pummel bad guys.
• Super Smash Bros.: Ness and Lucas' shared Final Smash, PK Starstorm, calls down a hail of blazing asteroids that bombard the stage, dealing considerable damage to any fighter they hit.
• Sword of Mana: After going One-Winged Angel, the final boss's strongest attack is to fly into space, pull in matter to form an enormous meteor, and then hurl it down at the battlefield to cause a massive explosion for a very powerful Percent Damage Attack.
• Tales Series: A reoccurring magical arte is the aptly named "Meteor Storm", which results in several meteors to rain down on the current battle. As the battle takes place in real time, there is a chance for the targets to dodge the attack. Maxwell, Summon Spirit of Matter, is often associated with this spell when he appears.
• Terraria has the Meteor Staff, a magic weapon that causes meteors to fall on the target. There are also two swords, the Starfury and Star Wrath, that create falling star projectiles with every swing.
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE: Medeus's Dies Irae, only usable in his second phase, where he ascends to the skies before carpet bombing the party with a massive Almighty attack.
• Total War: Warhammer: Bombardment spells, such as Searing Doom, Piercing Bolts of Burning, Grand Soulfire, Slicing Shards and Eldritch Storm, take the form of barrages of fiery projectiles that pour down from the sky and deal damage to everything caught in their impact radiuses. The Comet of Cassandora is a variant that calls down a single powerful meteor.
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos:
  • Infernals are giant demons made of burning rocks, summoned by pulling one from the sky as a meteor, dealing damage and stunning the units it lands on.
  • Rain of Chaos summons multiple Infernals, though it's harder to hit precise targets (it can happen that the summoned Infernals get trapped on cliffs or behind terrain).
  • The Rain of Fire spell invokes this by having burning rocks fall on the target area, damaging friend and foe.
  • The Priestess of the Moon's ultimate spell causes stars to come crashing down on all enemy units in range for a long time.
• Falling Stars from Wizardry 8 from Divinity school that hits every enemy for some earth damage.
• Wynncraft: The Mage's Meteor spell summons a single meteor to flatten an opponent, and it can be upgraded to set the ground ablaze for a few seconds after the meteor hits, damaging all nearby mobs or summon lightning before the meteor lands.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon: The Fortuneteller's Essence of Divine Punishment, which summons a huge meteor from above to deal blunt damage.
• Zeus: Master of Olympus: The "Fireballs from Heaven" command causes fireballs to crash onto the target area, replacing just about anything under it with rubble that can then be cleared away, including enemies, monsters, gods, rocky terrain, and earthquake cracks (which normally can only be partly neutralized by building roads). The only exception is lava, which becomes walkable terrain but still can't be built upon.

Webcomics

• Bob and George: Present Alternate Mega Man and Bass jury-rig a meteor drop on Bob, by combining three powers at once: Crystal Man's clairvoyance to find it, Gravity Man's power to attract it, and Stone Man's power to aim it. The comic treats this as a Godzilla Threshold and all three of them acknowledge that this will kill everyone on the planet. So when Bob destroys it, his karma rises so much that he's dumped in Purgatory rather than Hell.
• Homestuck: Once the forces of Derse defeat those of Prospit and the Black King captures the White King's scepter, he uses its power to unleash the Reckoning, calling down the countless meteors of the Veil in a fiery bombardment intended to utterly destroy Skaia. The Reckoning is a fairly lengthy process, occurring over twenty-four hours as increasingly large meteors are drawn from their orbits, in order to give players time to defeat the Black King before Skaia is destroyed.
• The Order of the Stick: In keeping with his philosophy of "Force, in as great a concentration as you can muster", Xykon the Sorcerous Overlord knows the top-level meteor swarm spell, which launches four flaming projectiles from his hand with enough force to destroy a zombie dragon in one hit. When he hits his Rage Breaking Point, he almost casts the spell down an enemy's throat.

Web Videos

• Critical Role: The greatest magic-users are all notable for their ability to open wormholes to summon arcane meteors to devastate their opponents. The genius dragon Raishan begins her first real fight with this maneuver just to show off her power. The final battle goes further beyond, as the boss uses this ability three times.
• Gametoons Gaming: In Among Us Werewolf Boyfriend Mod, there is an attack called "Howl at the Moon", that causes the moon to literally crash down on wherever the impostor chooses. The impostor drops the moon on the 3 surviving crewmates, causing two of them to turn into werewolves.

Western Animation

• Futurama: Fry is struggling to write a good ending for his comic book. The ending he finally settles on has his character summon a meteor to crush the villain who is taking Leela hostage, allowing him to save her.
• Josie and the Pussycats: The main characters encounter the villain Doctor Strangemoon, whose Evil Plan is to launch a satellite that will attract fiery comets to Earth, raining havoc upon civilization. He launches the vehicle with three of those meddling kids (Alexander, Alexandra, and Melody) aboard. Fortunately, Alexandra pulls the capsule off course somehow, so the satellite never pulls a comet to Earth as intended.
• Loonatics Unleashed: The main characters square off against Optimatus, a villain who can teleport meteors to drop upon Acmetropolis. His first meteor did some damage but didn't destroy the place completely. In fact, it gave the Loonatics their superpowers. Optimatus launches a second, much bigger Planet Destroyer meteor that the Loonatics must destroy with explosive charges.

Real Life

• There were once military plans for a Kill Sat called Unit: Thor (named after the famous myth) which worked by droping steel poles from orbit, simulating this, but it got thankfully cancelled.
• There are many proposals to alter the trajectory of an asteroid in space, and even a successful test of the concept. While the intention behind these is obviously to deflect dangerous asteroids from hitting Earth, any of these techniques could also be used to redirect an asteroid onto a collision course with Earth or another object.

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