History Main / DeusExNukina

* ''VideoGame/AlienSwarm'' ends the official campaign with this trope. You and your friends fight your way to the heart of the facility and have your Technician prepare the enormous warhead. Moments afterward you're alerted that your dropship pilot is ready to evacuate you, you just need to clear the landing area. A count down timer starts and your uploaded BattleThemeMusic plays as you charge through the facility. If all goes well it results in a huge CrowningMomentOfAwesome.

* Played a wee bit more literally than usual in ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiI'' and in ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' - [[spoiler:''[[GodIsEvil God]]'' was the one to arrange the cluster of nukes to level Tokyo. He succeeds in destroying Tokyo along with the rest of the wolrd in ''IV'' in Blasted Tokyo, while Tokyo escapes unharmed due to the ceiling in the normal Tokyo, while Kenji prevented it in Infernal Tokyo.]]

->''"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."''

* A DiabolusExMachina example of this trope: in VideoGame/FarCry5, [[spoiler:if you choose to arrest Joseph, a nuke goes off and you end up stuck in a bunker with Joseph preparing to brainwash you. Effectively, this renders everything you did as pointless. Truly, a terrible excuse of an ending if ever there was one.]]

* A DiabolosExMachina example of this trope: in VideoGame/FarCry5, [[spoiler:if you choose to arrest Joseph, a nuke goes off and you end up stuck in a bunker with Joseph preparing to brainwash you. Truly, a terrible excuse of an ending if ever there was one.]]

* The climax of ''TheAvengers2012'' has a nuke launched at Manhattan while the Avengers attempt to stop (or at least slow down) Loki's invasion of Earth. To solve two problems at once, Iron Man diverts the missile away from the island and back through the portal that Loki's army is coming through.

* Funnily enough, the exact situation that began the Time of Judgement. A wraith named Xerxes Jones got hold of the relic of one of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and wondered what would happen if if he set it off at the mouth of Oblivion, taking the unstable bomb there in a boat. Unfortunately, it went off too early thanks to the shockwave caused by a blast from the ''other'' bomb being used on a hidden city of vampires in the Shadowlands. The result was the WorldWreckingWave that was the Sixth Great Maelstrom, a storm so powerful it not only destroyed the lands of the dead, but caused massive ripples in reality that set off the end of the TabletopGames/OldWorldOfDarkness.

* In ''Fanfic/Slipping BetweenWorlds'', by Creator/AAPessimal, Ankh-Morpork briefly considers using Leonard of Quirm's exploding metal bomb to decisively defeat a renewed threat fom the entity that ''was'' the Shopping Mall monster of ''Discworld/ReaperMan''. [[note]]Having picked ideas from the minds of stranded visitors from Earth, it has chosen to take the form of the [[Film/{{Alien}} Queen]] - another hive mind where one Queen creates workers and drones who are a ''lot'' more lethal than shopping trolleys[[/note]] An explosives-minded Assassin is keen to do this as she wants to see what a nuke can do if applied with Extreme Prejudice. Fortunately, an even deadlier weapon is used to despatch the queen - Susan Sto Helit.

[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/FantasticFour http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nuke_fantasticfour4.jpg]]]]

* Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheStand'''' has DeusExNukina delivered [[TheDogBitesBack by hand]] by [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds the Woobie]] and set off by a loose spell that turns into the [[DeusExMachina Hand of God]].

->''"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure."''

* ''Anime/CodeGeass'': Late in season 2, Suzaku is getting absolutely mangled by Kallen's new Guren SEITEN. Just before the final blow hits him, [[spoiler:Suzaku's [[CursedWithAwesome "Live!" Geass]] kicks in, causing him to deploy the [[FantasticNuke FLEIJA]] that he was until this point unwilling to use, and by extension kills off 30 million civilians.]] Whoops. This incident also brings up either FridgeLogic or FridgeHorror: [[spoiler:had Suzaku hit Kallen, the warhead would have killed him, too. This either means that it was a last-ditch shot, or he deliberately nuked a civilian population ''for a distraction''.]]

* In ''VideoGame/{Mercenaries2WorldInFlames'', the main character is eventually sent to capture the BigBad CorruptCorporateExecutive from his hidden bunker. However, after discovering that the bunker buster airstrike has little to no effect on the massive door, he has to go and convince either the Americans or the Chinese to give him a nuclear bomb in order to bust down the door.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Mercenaries}} 2: World in Flames'', the main character is eventually sent to capture the BigBad CorruptCorporateExecutive from his hidden bunker. However, after discovering that the bunker buster airstrike has little to no effect on the massive door, he has to go and convince either the Americans or the Chinese to give him a nuclear bomb in order to bust down the door.

* ''Fallout'':

* In ''Mercenaries 2: World in Flames'', the main character is eventually sent to capture the BigBad CorruptCorporateExecutive from his hidden bunker. However, after discovering that the bunker buster airstrike has little to no effect on the massive door, he has to go and convince either the Americans or the Chinese to give him a nuclear bomb in order to bust down the door.

* ''{{Starcraft}}'' has a sort of example, where the decommissioned science vessel ''Amerigo'' is demolished with a nuke. It counts, because the previous mission is about [[spoiler:Zergified Kerrigan]] infesting the whole ship. And what do the marines pack with their big bomb? [[RuleOfFunny Beers.]]

* Played straight, more or less, in ''LiteratureTheAtrocityArchive'' by Creator/CharlesStross. A warhead is carried through a portal by a special ops team into a parallel universe to take out an EldritchAbomination. Turns out that this was the [[spoiler:endgame of a big GambitRoulette by said abomination to provide it with enough energy to open a big portal to Earth and come through to eat our universe]]. One man has to [[spoiler:stay behind to cause a faulty detonation to stop an actual nuclear reaction, but gets severely irradiated]] in the process by the critical plutonium assembly.

* Played straight, more or less, in ''[[Literature/TheLaundrySeries The Atrocity Archives]]'' by Creator/CharlesStross. A warhead is carried through a portal by a special ops team into a parallel universe to take out an EldritchAbomination. Turns out that this was the [[spoiler:endgame of a big GambitRoulette by said abomination to provide it with enough energy to open a big portal to Earth and come through to eat our universe]]. One man has to [[spoiler:stay behind to cause a faulty detonation to stop an actual nuclear reaction, but gets severely irradiated]] in the process by the critical plutonium assembly.

* In ''Film/DeepImpact'', the nuke is delivered by a spaceship that flies ''into'' the larger of the two comet fragments, saving (most) of the population of Earth in the process.