Everybody loves explosions. Trailers are packed full of them, and just about everything will explode, even things that really shouldn't. This is because, at least in the minds of the general population, Explosions = Fire, and fire is very exciting. The thing about Real Life explosions, though, is that they also have a tendency to create excessive amounts of gore.
Adventure shows tend to be catering to a PG/PG-13 style audience, and it's only possible to get a certain amount of stuff past S&P, so although the violence itself remains, all of the gore is removed. When explosives are involved (even when people are constantly being killed by them), the bodies of the recently deceased will be either completely unharmed or slightly bruised/have a bit of dirt on them. Bodies will frequently be thrown around by the force of the explosions, but they will otherwise be completely intact. On the opposite extreme, they may be entirely consumed by the explosion, leaving no trace behind.
Can sometimes be Truth in Television, as explosions can cause fatal internal damage by creating a huge difference in air pressure, without much external damage. Thermobaric (fuel-air explosive) weapons often kill this way, and other kinds of explosives can do it too. That doesn't make them any less nasty, though; pressure-wave damage on a human body can include Eye Scream, Ear Ache, and severe damage to internal organs, especially the throat and lungs. It's also horribly painful.
Subtrope of Bloodless Carnage. See Also: Non-Fatal Explosions, Ash Face. Contrast Ludicrous Gibs.
Examples:
- When explosive ki blasts in Dragon Ball kill people, they'll generally either be obliterated or fall over limp with very minor visible injuries. Yamcha's death is a clear example, as a Saibaman's point-blank explosion leaves him on the ground in the epicenter of a crater, but visibly just covered in dirt and a few scuffs.
- Megumin in KonoSuba primarily uses explosion, but those hit by them either are unharmed or vanish completely.
- How to Train Your Dragon 2: One of Toothless' plasma blasts kills Stoick, but does not visibly burn or scar his flesh.
- Dueling Movies Volcano and Dante's Peak both have one instance of showing realistic bad burns from their respective volcano disasters, but otherwise follows this trope to the letter.
- Happens all the time in Star Trek when all the C4-loaded panels explode, sending Red Shirts flying around the room. They may die, but the most visible injuries you may get is some burns plastered on their faces.
- Non-graphic killer explosions can pop up in plenty of Everyone 10+-rated games, making "E10+ Explosives" a fitting video game equivalent name for this trope.
- Borderlands:
- Borderlands 2 zig-zags between this trope and Ludicrous Gibs when it comes to explosive weaponry. With the occasional exception of Mini Mooks, blowing up most enemies while you're at an equal or lower level will simply cause them to fall over dead with no visible injuries, and aversions of this trope generally only happen when you're much more overleved in comparison. Then again, any kind of weaponry other than RPGs, explosive bullets, and grenades will likely cause Ludicrous Gibs at this point, too.
- Borderlands 3 — being a more Bloodier and Gorier entry, comparable to the first game — downplays this: gibbing enemies is commonplace, regardless of level difference.
- Players killed by explosions in Counter-Strike simply ragdoll (or fall over in CS 1.6, CSGO, and Condition Zero) without any visible injury or bloodstains.
- Characters killed by explosions, airstrike, rockets, or missiles in Call of Duty especially Modern Warfare also simply fall over or ragdoll without any visible injury or bloodstains. The Treyarch games (Call of Duty: World at War, Call of Duty: Black Ops series) plays this straight in multiplayer, but avert this partially and inconsistently, where sometimes you can see body parts fall over, sometimes they just disappear in a puff of explosive smoke, and sometimes they ragdoll.
- The Division, not only almost all gunfight outcomes are clean, but so does the result of being blown off by explosives, as well as how there is entire class of baddies with explosive gas tanks you can shoot, yet they still look clean afterwards.
- Most characters in Halo will just be sent flying when killed by explosives, regardless of how big it is or how close they are to the epicenter.
- SCP: Secret Laboratory: Players, human and SCP alike, will simply ragdoll if killed by an explosion.
- Grand Theft Auto. Averted in the prologue of Boomshine Saigon, where Phil graphically lost his arm thanks to an explosion he drunkenly made, but played straight everywhere else in the game series except Grand Theft Auto III.
- Zigzagged in Grand Theft Auto V. Though no dismemberment occurs, your player character gets many large, griveous-looking wounds all over his body when caught in an explosion, but every other NPC killed by one will still be tossed into the air without any visible injuries. The only notable aversion in the game occurs at the end of the mission Friend Request, where Jay Norris gets half his face blown off in a thick Pink Mist after answering a call from Michael while his phone is rigged with a bomb.
- Overwatch and Paladins also did this.
- This was actually cited as the reason Snake got a lot of explosive weapons but no simple guns in Super Smash Bros. Brawl; explosions are sillier.
- In Sonic Forces, an early scene has Infinite outright killing several Red Shirt Resistance members with a sweeping laser and a bunch of explosions. All you really see is them falling over and one of their laser guns dropping over to the Avatar, but the context and dialogue make it clear what just happened.
- Zig-zagged in Left 4 Dead. Explosions will dismember common infected and send them flying while special infected simply ragdoll if they die from an explosion.
- Steven Universe: Lars gets caught in the epicenter of an explosion that sends him flying into a stone pillar. Although he dies instantly, there is no blood or visible injury, just minor Clothing Damage. It is implied that a piece of shrapnel damaged his right eye, as said eye was covered by his hair and has a scar across it when Lars comes Back from the Dead.
