Not related to
Tomato Surprise
The pin is pulled from a grenade on a
grenade belt, causing the wearer and anyone in the immediate vicinity to explode. It can be used to elaborately kill a tooled-up enemy or as a makeshift suicide belt. Expect it to be used on a nearly triumphant enemy leading to a cathartic
Oh Crap moment for the villain before he explodes. A subtrope of
Why Am I Ticking?
Examples:
Anime
Comic Books
- Happens to a mercenary in Danger Girl and the Army of Darkness when his possessed hand pulls out the pins of the grenades he is wearing on his vest.
- In the Six Guns mini-series, the Two-Gun Kid shots a flashbang off the vest of mercenary, causing it to detonate.
Film
Video Games
- Call of Duty: Black Ops: During "S.O.G.", an NVA soldier pounces on Alex Mason. After the player struggles for a bit, Mason pulls the pin on one of Charlie's grenades and pushes him away.
- In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines "Nines" Rodriguez saves the PC from Sabbat goons by threatening them with a grenade. Given Nines is at a power level to curb stomp the 3 young Sabbat easily, you seem to be the only reason he needs to use such a card.
- Invoked In Name Only in Marvel vs Capcom 3 by Deadpool as one of his special attacks. He tosses the grenade as he jumps away from the target yelling the trope name.
- A possible tactic in Velvet Assassin, although it's a Stealth-Based Game so it might be more trouble than it's worth.
- In the third Uncharted game this is possible to do when engaging in melee. Just make sure you get away in time.
- One of the ways to complete "I Put A Spell On You" for the Legion in Fallout: New Vegas is to pull the pin on Davey Crenshaw's grenade and later use his pranking nature to convince Colonel Hsu that he planted the bomb on the NCR monorail.
Real Life
- U.S. Senator Max Cleland ended up being a real life case of this when a grenade whose pin had fallen out shredded both his legs and one of his arms during the Vietnam War. It turned out that the grenade came from a squad mate who had straightened all of the pins on his grenades (a dangerous but common enough practice during the war), but had failed to secure them with duct tape.
