Monumental Damage - Television Tropes & Idioms

Lrrr: Give us McNeal or we will lay waste to your cities with our anti-monument laser.

— Futurama, "When Aliens Attack"

"We saw tripods wading up the Thames, cutting through bridges as though they were paper. Waterloo bridge; Westminster bridge. One appeared above Big Ben."

"UUUULLAAA!"

— Jeff Wayne's The War Of The Worlds

"It looks like the storm is following an unusual pattern of hitting the world's most famous landmarks first, then spreading to the rest of the world."

— Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

So you're a marauding monster, invading alien, or anything that has a tendency to cause massive collateral damage. But you not going to destroy any random building, are you? No, where's the fun in that? You're going to behead the Statue of Liberty, or blow up the White House, or anything recognizable enough that by destroying it, you can show the world that you mean business.

If you plan on attacking all over the world make sure you target a wide range of easily identifiable landmarks throughout. Due to Small Reference Pools, no one will take you seriously unless you get the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal or the Westminster Clock Tower (Big Ben to anyone not British). Just killing people throughout the world won't cut it, we're afraid.

Avoid the Lincoln Memorial, though. No invading lifeform has ever attacked it. The stone must be cursed somehow. Occasionally inverted when an occupying power takes control of a landmark of some kind, forcing the defenders to destroy said landmark.

A consequence of The Eiffel Tower Effect. Frequently seen in disaster movies. Compare Monumental Battle and Rushmore Refacement. See Weaponized Landmark when the monument shoots back. See also damage that is monumental in the "very big" sense.

Examples

Anime and Manga

In a flashback to the depression era New York in Shakugan No Shana, both the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building get blown up by Margery Daw. However, no one noticed and it got better.
The Read Or Die OVA has Gennai Hiraga blowing up the White House, with a so-not-George Bush lookalike being dragged out just in time.
In one of the Macross movies, the main characters go for a date in a place called "monument park," a collection of world monuments almost identical to the Futurama example, below. It is promptly attacked by aliens.
From Cannon God Exaxxion:

"Humanity's gotta take one to the gut, here! Knock some sense into the damn peaceniks! And showing them ol' Mount Fuji going boom ought to do the trick!"

Fujiyama also takes damage from the final battle in Mazinkaiser vs. Ankoku Daishogun, first as collateral damage from Mazinkaiser's Rust Tornado, and again when the Daishogun rams Mazinkaiser with his Airborne Aircraft Carrier. During the end credits of the movie, the heroes can be seen fixing it afterwards.

Comic Books

In The Ultimates vol. 2, some super powered soldiers push over the Statue of Liberty. Later, some superheroes pull it back up again.
- Averted in the same story where Ultimate Cap and The Colonel duke it out along The Wall (the Vietnam War Memorial) and it is not damaged.
In the Captain Carrot And His Amazing Zoo Crew 2007 miniseries, the giant monster frog villain Frogzilla pulls up from its foundation the Statue of Ribbity (Earth-C's Statue of Liberty) and takes it with him into Gnu York (Earth-C's New York), thinking the statue was a real person (and trying to hit "her" up for a date).
Rare exception to the "Nothing harms Lincoln" rule: During the Amazons Attack miniseries, Hippolyta decapitates the memorial.
- Possibly referenced in the 2009 Wonder Woman DVD, where an angry Steve Trevor rushes to the defence of the memorial declaring "no messes with Lincoln!"

Film

One of the earliest examples of this is the Washington Monument being cut at the base by a flying saucer beam in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)— a nice piece of FX work by Ray Harryhausen.
Cloverfield. The Statue of Liberty's beheading was something Abrams got from a poster for Escape From New York... even though it's not in the actual Escape movie.
The Hongkong comic book movie A Man Called Hero dismembers the Statue of Liberty with flying Chinese swordsmen. Seriously.
Independence Day has the iconic shot of the White House being destroyed.
- You'd think the Pentagon would be a much better target since they're in Washington, especially since it's more likely to resist indirect damage.
The Day After Tomorrow had tornadoes homing in on LA lankmarks. They also famously made a popsicle out of the Statue of Liberty.
In Mars Attacks!, a saucer rolls a giant bowling ball and knocks over some of the statues on Easter Island.
- And cuts down the Washington Monument as a Shout Out to the aforementioned Harryhausen movie, plus keeps tilting it from one side to another so panicking civilians don't know which way to run...
Subverted in Resident Evil: Extinction, where the Statue of Liberty is buried in sand... along with the Sphinx and Eiffel Tower, since they're all Las Vegas casino structures.
- And arguably played straight with Las Vegas itself.
- The Las Vegas damage from Con Air pales in comparison, which is a pity because 1. it was filmed in the real Las Vegas, and 2. buildings marked for demolition in real life were destroyed for real in the movie.
- The most ballsy Vegas example would have to be Domino, which actually has a character sympathetic to Afghani rebels blow half the top off the Stratosphere Tower, which is a real 1,000+ foot observation needle. Then, The Hero falls down the elevator shaft in a cabin just like the ones used at the actual tower (though real ones don't have an speedometer on the floor counter). The whole scene was done with startling accuracy and the Stratosphere signed off on it's name/identity being used all over the darn thing, giving it that Too Soon quality.
Planet Of The Apes. They blew it up. Damn them all to hell!
In the Richie Rich movie, a lot of damage is done to Mount Richmore (if that counts as a monument) as The Dragon blasts at it with the sculpting laser at maximum power.
The titular group in Team America shows off its ability to cause massive collateral damage by destroying the Eiffel Tower and Louvre in France and the Sphinx in Egypt. There were probably some others landmarks destroyed that this troper doesn't remember. Mount Rushmore is also destroyed during the course of the film, though not by Team America.
The Tokyo Tower gets destroyed A LOT by Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera, Gyaos, and yes, even King Kong in various Japanese giant monster movies.
The Golden Gate Bridge comes tumbling down in Monsters Vs Aliens.
GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra depicts the Eiffel Tower being vaporized by Nanomachines.
Averted (barely) in the new Star Trek film: When Nero attacks Earth, he fires his drill beam into San Francisco Bay. When the drill is cut, it falls into the bay, just missing the Golden Gate Bridge.
- The bridge wasn't so lucky during the Breen attack on Earth in the DS 9 episode "The Changing Face of Evil"◊
In The Avengers, the bad guys damage two London landmarks:
- An off course balloon knocks Nelson statue off of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.
- Lightning from a weather control attack damages the clock faces of the Big Ben Clock Tower.
Played for laughs in Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, as giant food items start falling on various national monuments - pies on the faces on Mount Rushmore, a sandwich skewered on the Eiffel Tower, and so on. A weatherman even lampshades it by explicitly saying that the food storm is hitting monuments first.
2012 has shown many of these monuments being destroyed by the destruction. Inlcuding the fakes in Las Vegas.

Fan Fic

The Tranformers World's Worst fanfics have turned the destruction of the Lincoln Monument into a Running Gag. Two words: Abebird Files.

Literature

The second novel in The Bartimaeus Trilogy features a hilarious fight scene inside the British Museum where Bartimaeus, not knowing of its significance, uses the Rosetta Stone as a projectile weapon. Hilarity Ensues.
- In the third novel, Nelson's Column get sliced in half by Nathaniel trying out the Staff.
The Washington Memorial comes under massive fire from plasma and HVM rounds, in John Ringo's Posleen War Series, as a reaction to a human sniper using the monument as a firing point. The Lincoln Monument also is destroyed, though by human forces.

Live Action Television

The History Channel's Life After People speculated, among other things, how long certain man-made structures would last were people to suddenly disappear. Every episode had to have at least one famous monument destroyed by the ravages of time, with said destruction always featuring in promos.
The Golden Gate Bridge was pretty messed up in Star Trek Deep Space Nine when the Breen attacked Earth.

Real Life

Truth In Television: 9/11.
Also: the Giant Buddhas of Bamyan (Afghanistan), destoyed by the Taliban.
- Both In the same year!!

Video Games

Deus Ex starts with the NSF blowing the head off the Statue of Liberty in the backstory. They must've done it repeatedly after the end as by the sequel the statue is gone altogether and is replaced with a hologram.
- Maybe they just got tired of having a mutilated statue in New York Harbor, tore it down, and put the hologram up in its place.
If you won the first Command And Conquer game as Nod, you got to watch some Hollywood Hacking and then you got to choose which monument to destroy, among which were the White House and Eiffel Tower.
- In Red Alert 2, one of the Soviet missions involves turning the Eiffel Tower into a giant Tesla coil. Plus, you get to demolish the Pentagon and lots of other stuff. And in an unexpected inversion, the second to last mission of the Soviet campaign has you destroy the Kremlin.
  - The Soviets also destroy the Statue of Liberty at the start of the Allied campaign.
  - Red Alert 3 takes this to its most logical conclusion, combining it with Weaponized Landmark; the last mission for the Allies has you destroying Leningrad's Winter Palace, which turns into a massive shuttle launch facility. Nevermind Mount Rushmore's Eye Beams or Moai Head Man Cannon.
  - It also has the Soviets destroy the Statue of Liberty in their campaign only to build a statue of Lenin pointing ahead of him instead.
  - Red Alert has a cutscene of the Eiffel Tower getting nuked if you fail one mission as the Allies, and another cutscene of a Soviet air strike levelling the Parthenon.
- In Tiberium Wars, the Scrin mission in London has you destroy Big Ben and Parliament, precisely because they are significant to the humans.
Metal Gear Solid 2 was scripted to have Arsenal Gear relocate the Statue of Liberty as it crashed into New York. this was cut from the final game because of being Too Soon since 9/11. Its crash deposits you onto a different landmark (Federal Hall) for the final Boss Battle.
You can cause a lot of this in Destroy All Humans, especially in the final level of the first game. This is probably the only exception to the "Lincoln Memorial is invincible" rule.
Subverted in World In Conflict. The first mission takes place in downtown Seattle, so you might expect the Space Needle to go down. Nope. Instead, the Soviets destroy the Kingdome, a landmark that is 1) only recognizable to actual Seattlites, and 2) was demolished in 2000, seven years before the game was released (though it was around in 1989, when the game takes place).
- And inverted later on - the Soviets invade New York and seize, among other things, the Statue of Liberty. If you fail the mission, the Statue is destroyed by an American airstrike.
One of the main draws of Fallout 3 is running around the ruins of D.C. two hundred years after a nuclear war and seeing what's still around and what's been reduced to ruin. Interestingly, the Lincoln Memorial is one of the least damaged structures in the Capital Wasteland although Lincoln's head is missing. You can get a quest to help restore it, though.
- Although there is an error in the game. The Washington Monument does not have steel rebar support inside of it. Ironically, it seems that this is where Modern Warfare 2 gets its Washington Monument, as they do the exact same thing.
In Twisted Metal 2, the third level, fittingly titled "Monumental Disaster," is set in Paris, and you can blow up the Eiffel Tower with a well-placed remote bomb on the upper level. Not only does this look cool, it opens up the rooftops for combat — the top half of the tower tips over and forms a bridge to one of the roofs, while pieces of debris land elsewhere. You can also go in the Louvre and torch the Mona Lisa and a number of other priceless paintings.
- Apparently, this was so popular that the developers remade the level for Twisted Metal: Head-On.
During the introduction to War Of The Monsters, anti-UFO devices are seen being built at various landmarks. When they turn on, the UFOs crash, one of them crashing into the Eiffel Tower. The rest of the monuments remain virtually unharmed, though until alien radiation creates the titular monsters, who then rampage and destroy the landmarks anyway.
SimCity's UFO disasters. As the SC3K Unlimited manual states: "Aliens who have attacked SimNation seem strangely attracted to landmarks."

Western Animation

Futurama (of course) sends this up by having the alien invasion occur on Monument Beach, a collection of world monuments, complete with the White House being blown up by an alien saucer in a parody of Independence Day. The aliens then go on to destroy Fry's sandcastle with a tiny saucer to complete the parody.
Subtrope: The Sphinx's Nose (but not the rest of the sphinx) is destroyed in both the animated film Prince of Egypt and Disney's Aladdin.
- Also in Asterix and Cleopatra.
The third and fourth episodes of Exo Squad each had a montage showing the Neosapien invasion of Earth that featured Neo E-Frames blowing up a number of world-renowned structures, including the Golden Gate Bridge, the United States Capitol, the Taj Mahal, and the Sphinx.
In the Ruby-Spears Megaman cartoon, Megaman jumped in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln when Protoman turned his blaster on it.