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When an event of great celestial, magical or ultratech power occurs, it is often heralded by a beam of light — usually blue or white — that shoots straight up into the sky from ground zero, often evaporating whatever clouds are unfortunate enough to be in its path. Sometimes it starts out narrow and expands in diameter as it climbs.
In the case of more disastrous events, the Pillar of Light is just an extension of the Pre Explosion Glow; in other cases, it can be part of a truly cosmic Battle Aura. The rest of the time it is relatively benign, if exciting to watch.
It should be noted that a Pillar of Light usually travels upwards. A Pillar of Light that comes down, more often than not, is a Kill Sat, which tends to be far less benign. See also Sphere Of Destruction for the globular variant.
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- When Belldandy grants Keiichi's wish in Ah My Goddess, a beam of light blasts from her forehead up to heaven (coincidentally blowing a hole through all the intervening floors of the building they're in at the time).
- Generator Gawl
- Bastard!!
- Dragon Ball
- The Silent Moebius movie.
- The Escaflowne TV series uses this as the special effect for Hitomi's teleportation power — which, besides being central to the plot, came up pretty frequently.
- In Futari Wa Pretty Cure, the protagonists' Transformation Sequence is performed within a Pillar Of Light, and is one of the most pyrotechnically impressive transformation sequences known.
- A cross-shaped version is often seen as the results of Angel attacks in Neon Genesis Evangelion
- The Harmonium Organ in Mai-Otome.
- In The Big O, a pillar of light effectively triggers the end of the world... maybe.
- Gasaraki has an inversion — when Yushiro performs the ritual that is at the center of much of the Gowa family's attention, the pillar comes down out of the sky to him.
- Haibane Renmei has one for the Day of Flight.
- In Trigun, Vash The Stampede gets puppetmastered into firing his weapon at full power against an enemy. He manages to redirect the aim to the sky, and when the weapon fires a huge Pillar of Light rises up to the planet's moon and bores a large crater in it.
- The Spirit Bomb in Tokyo Mew Mew uses five pillars of light, colour-coded to each girl. Ichigo's, of course, is the biggest, and right in the middle.
- The Pokemon anime did this in the first episode: Pikachu's final attack on the Spearow caused a pillar of electrical light to appear.
- Near the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, the return of Hayate and her Wolkenritter was accompanied by one of these.
- This also happened in the very first episode of the original season of that series, when Nanoha first activated Raising Heart.
- In the anime version of Sailor Moon, Chibi-Usa frequently emits one of these from the moon mark on her forehead when she's frightened or upset due to the Silver Crystal being inside her body.
- In an episode of Beyblade, Ray beats his rival with a move which is accompanied by his beyblade emmitting a green beam of light that smashes through the roof of the arena, causing one of the Combat Commentators to quip "That's probably going to take down a couple of satellites!"
- Especially large scale magic in Mahou Sensei Negima tends to do stuff like this. Especially the time the bad guys used Konoka's latent magical powers to summon a giant demon.
- FALCON PUNCH!!! [1]
- In the anime NabarinoOu, a pillar of light accompanies the Shinrabansho's activation.
- Many of the events of the anime Boogiepop Phantom appear to be precipitated by a mysterious pillar of light that shot into the sky. As revealed in Boogiepop and Others, this was the result of Echoes' transmitting himself as information back to the higher plane he came from.
- In One Piece, the first hint of God Eneru's presence and power is a column of light that vaporizes people who make "blasphemous" statements. After Eneru actually appears on-screen, it is used as a particularly devastating attack.
- Digimon Adventure 1: After beating Malomyotismon and his demon crotch the heroes use one of these to return to the digital world.
- Bad stuff happens when this shows up in Sai Kano. Really bad stuff.
Fan Works
Films
- The "God" in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
- Leeloo in The Fifth Element, at the end where she releases the titular element.
- Minas Morgul produces one of these in the Return of the King movie.
- The book tells us that this particular pillar is produced in response to one from Barad-dûr. The exchange is essentially Sauron (at Barad-dûr) asking "Are you ready?" and the Witch-King at Minas Morgul replying "Yes!"
- In Iron Man, overloading the large Arc Reactor results in this.
- At the conclusion of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the Phantom Gaia, having been countered by the Spirit Wave, leaves Earth in the form of a pillar of light that stretches from the Leonid Crater and into outer space, taking its Phantoms with it.
- "I/O Towers" in Tron.
- In Ghostbusters, when the ecto containment unit explodes.
- In the Over the Hedge movie, the De-Pelter Turbo unleashes a Pillar of Light that obliterates a passing satellite, roasts marshmallows and pops popcorn a few feet away, and can be seen from outside the galaxy.
Live Action TV
- On Lost, the characters, having travelled back in time, see a pillar of light shoot up into the sky. Subverted in that it is later revealed by Locke that it was perfectly ordinary lightbulb light from the hatch, and he comments that at the time he thought the light was somehow significant, when in reality it was actually completely meaningless.
Tabletop Games
- In Exalted, there is a Solar-Circle Sorcery called Total Annihilation, which results in a pillar of light that is five miles high.
Video Games
- Copy X from the Mega Man Zero games uses a big blue pillar of light to heal himself, if the player's rank is high enough to warrant it.
- Frog earns one of these in Chrono Trigger (complete with Theme Music Power Up) by attuning himself to the Masamune blade, just before the party's assault on Magus's castle. Watch!
- Occurs in the opening animation of Jedah Dohma, the Big Bad of the third Darkstalkers game Vampire Saviour, except the pillar is made of blood instead of light. He appears from the top of the screen, slowly hovering down into place, before the pillar dissipates.
- Terry Bogard's Power Stream from The King Of Fighters is one of these, though it was probably inspired by Geese Howard's Raging Storm, which is a cage of light.
- One of the death animations from Scorched Earth.
- The American superweapon from Command and Conquer Generals fires one of these... which is then reflected off of the Kill Sat in orbit and back onto the battlefield, where it acts like a huge cutting laser.
- You forgot the Tiberium series and the GDI's Kill Sat Ion Cannon? Especially since it fits the "Pillar of Light" idea a bit more; Kane himself treats it like a beam of light from God himself. Honorable mention goes to Nod's Obelisk of Light, which is a pillar that shoots light. Very, very deadly light.
- One of the finishing moves of Squall's limit break in Final Fantasy VIII involves a Pillar of Light that's visible from orbit, which is impressive since it's generated by his gunblade.
- An optional boss uses this as one of its attacks. Granted, it doesn't go straight up but straight through the target, but since it's named "Light Pillar", this trope still applies.
- Metroid Prime: When Samus finally places all the artifacts, a beam of light shoots up from the central structure. What does it do? I don't know, Meta Ridley comes along and breaks it. Presumably, it would have done what the pulse afterward does, which is teleport Samus into the Impact Crater.
- In the sequel, restoring the energy to all four temples and gaining the Light Suit allows Samus to teleport between the temples by riding their Pillars of Light.
- You also use one to enter the final level.
- The World Ends with You: When Neku levels up.
- Also, Pillars of Light of varying magnitudes are Joshua's secondary attack method after a certain plot point. It's more this than Beam Spam, because they come out of the ground instead of from Joshua.
- Half-Life 2 Episode 2's superportal beam might count, other than that it is not in the straight line.
- In Halo 3, a giant Forerunner artifact left buried in Africa emits one of these when it's uncovered and activated.
- Nowel of Magical Battle Arena calls down four of these for her super move, which is then followed by four massive, highly-damaging explosions. If you see her preparing these, for goodness sake, run!
- In Magic and Mayhem: The Art of Magic, the "Judgement" spell appears as a column of light.
- Wodan Ymir's ultimate attack summons one of these...and uses it as a SWORD!
- In Mother3, the Seven Needles turn into beams of light when pulled.
- A textbook Pillar of Light can be seen in the third Thief game when Garrett activates the Final Glyph. The streets around it also briefly flood with light, creating an intricate symbol from the City itself.
- Several offensive Druid spells in World of Warcraft cause downward-traveling Pillars of Light. Most frequently seen (and also most awesome-looking, especially with the latest graphic change) is Moonfire.
- In the original Warcraft, this is a pretty common effect for spells. Off the top of my head, this happens during Hero level ups, resurrections, Holy Light, Mass Teleport, Raise Skeleton, and more.
- This happens twice in the God of War series; once when you kill Ares and then again when you kill Athena.
- In Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, following Fayt destroying the Vendeeni battleship, talking to NP Cs will have them wondering what that pillar of light was.
- The "Alpha Strike" in Iji is of the downward variety. And there are a lot of pillars (one from each of an entire space armada), since it is meant to raze the entire planet simultaneously.
- This is how the Tower Of Kagutsuchi appears in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne
- The Smiting Prayers elite skill Ray of Judgment in Guild Wars calls forth a pillar of glowing white light that heavily damages (and sets on fire) anyone foolish enough (or knocked-down enough) to remain within its radius.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- The title character of She-Ra, Princess of Power drew her power from a living Pillar Of Light.
- Avatar the Last Airbender: In the series premiere, Prince Zuko guesses that the random Pillar Of Light that suddenly appears in the South Pole signals something of great, powerful significance, like the return of the Avatar.
- In Code Lyoko, whenever a monster or hero falls into the Digital Sea, a white Pillar of Light rises from the spot into the sky of Lyoko (with the notable exception of William in Season 4, since a dive into the Digital Sea doesn't harm him).
- The signal in Beast Wars season one, "The Trigger, Part 2". Not a good thing, but a significant thing.
Real Life
- Highly magnetised neutron stars called pulsars do this in real life, producing electromagnetic radiation focused into two beams by the star's magnetic field.
- Black holes with accretion disks produce jets of matter like this as well.
- The Tribute in Light memorial to the September 11 attacks.
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