Cubert: Hey, Leela, help me apply these flame decals I got in my cereal. They'll make the ship go faster.
Leela: And what's your scientific basis for thinking that?
Cubert: I'm 12.
Leela: And what's your scientific basis for thinking that?
Cubert: I'm 12.
The common motif of adding artificial flames to things so they'll seem more badass. This is common in Real Life, especially pertaining to muscle cars (the idea being that the car is so fast, it literally burns as it goes), but there probably isn't a single thing on the planet that hasn't had fire painted on it at some point or another in an attempt to increase its cool factor. In fiction, the possibilities are broader, as detailed below. "Go faster stripes" are a similar phenomenon.
Not to be confused with the Incendiary Exponent, when something is actually on fire. Red Ones Go Faster may be considered a related trope, as the color red is closely associated with fire, and both tropes are about speed equating to heat.
See also Tron Lines, a Power Glows counterpart.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Yoko's famous flame-decal bra. Kamina also wears a red cape with an orange flame pattern.
- Flamedramon of Digimon Adventure 02 has flame patterns on his armor, which he can back up with the real thing. When in the Digital World, his partner Davis wears a jacket with a similar pattern.
- Fairy Tail: Erza's last resort pants.
- Transformers: Robots in Disguise: Both Side Burn and Hot Shot have flames painted on their armor.
- Transformers: Cybertron: Crumplezone, after his Mid-Season Upgrade. Doesn't help.
Fan Works
- Anyone: Dabi gives his "new" car a blue-flame paint job after he manages to steal it from the HPSC agent for a second time.
Films — Animated
Films — Live-Action
- In the film Deal of the Century, a car's "flame job" is a point of pride for the owner. In an argument with Ray Kasternak (Gregory Hines), the latter takes a flamethrower out of the trunk of his car and gives the former's car a literal flame job, torching it.
- Subverted in Gran Torino where Thao Vang Lor gets the titular car on the condition that he doesn't "paint any idiotic flames on it like some white trash hillbilly..."
- It's Greased Lightnin'!
- Played for Laughs in The In-Laws. Sheldon hid his Mercedes in a body detail shop to escape some assassins, and it came out with flames painted on it. Sheldon was not amused.
- The first five films of the Transformers Film Series directed by Michael Bay, Optimus Prime has red flames painted on his blue chassis, letting him keep the iconic red-chest-windows look.
- Garth's car in Wayne's World (the "Mirth Mobile") has flames painted behind the front wheels. Subverted, because it’s a 1976 AMC Pacer.
Literature
- Harry Wayne, one of Eddie Valiant's poker buddies in Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, is a mechanic who decorated his Chevy with two "flaming belches" he bought from a Toon dragon.
- Katniss of The Hunger Games. This is intentional from the get-go, as her design team gives her a fire theme and coins the catchphrase "Girl on Fire". The flame motif continues through the trilogy. Fandom
◊ loves◊ playing◊ this◊ up◊.
- An entire village of herons and egrets ends up with flame decal feathers in one of the Spellsinger novels after Jon Tom accidentally blows their feathers off and then tries to restore them by mixing lyrics about feathers into songs about custom-painting cars. Fortunately, the birds think that their new looks are pretty cool.
- Artemis Fowl's father considers getting such a paint job for his artificial leg. Just one more aspect of his personality Artemis was entirely unaware of, having always known his father as a stern and forbidding arch-criminal, but apparently the real man his mother fell in love with.
- Mickey Haller’s investigator Cisco rides a classic 1960’s Harley-Davidson panhead with flames painted on the gas tank. In The Crossing (2015), he gets forced into a crash, and has flames painted on his cane while he’s recovering from knee surgery.
Live Action TV
- Parodied with Dr. House's "bitchin'" cane.
- Eddie McLintock's Cool Car in Reno 911!
- MythBusters, with Tory welding a flame-shaped metal panel on the Pontiac Fiero they were using for the "Car Skip" myth:
Tory: You know what would make this car more awesome? Flames! 'Cuz everybody knows that cars with flames are more awesome!
- Alton's stand mixer in Good Eats has flames painted on it.
- One episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun had Dick and Mary get into an escalating prank war; Dick took advantage of the fact that he spoke Spanish and Mary didn't to tell her mechanic that she wanted a complete overhaul, including flame paintjob and horn that plays "La Cucaracha". We sadly don't get to see the results, just the look of abject horror on Mary's face when her car returns.
- Kamen Rider Fourze's Fire States has flame art on parts of his armor. There's also some on his schoolbag and shoes.
- Vyvyan's car on The Young Ones is an otherwise-commonplace Ford Anglia, but painted bright yellow with red flames.
Music
- Count how many rock musicians (especially drummers) decorate their instruments with this. This is even a part of the decoration options for drummers in Rock Band.
- Jeremy Popoff, lead guitarist of the band Lit famously had a pair of flame-decal shoes that sported white flames on a black background. He wore them in most of Lit's music videos, as well as during live performances. He even wore them when he married his long-time girlfriend in them, while his groomsmen wore color swapped versions of the same shoe (so instead they had black flames on a white background). As a result they became his Iconic items.
Pinball
- The red semi tractor in Truck Stop sports yellow and orange flames.
Tabletop Games
- In d20 Modern sourcebook Urban Arcana, one of the vehicular magic items is a flame paint job, which looks good and has the ability to incinerate everything close enough to the vehicle when activated.
- Warhammer 40,000's Orks are fond of this when it comes to painting their ramshackle vehicles, so much so that the Bad Moons' clan color scheme is black flames on a yellow background, while the speed-obsessed Evil Sunz prefer yellow flames on red (of course).
- BattleTech
- Clan Hell's Horses prefer painting their mechs and tanks (they being one of the few Clans who actually use a substantial number of conventional combat vehicles) in dark colors with flame highlights.
- An Ace Custom Caesar known as "Archangel◊" has flames painted along its legs in contrast to the eggshell-white primary coat and gold trim. This is specifically to evoke the 'Mech striding above the flames of Hell, as the 'Mech belongs to a unit called Avanti's Angels.
Theme Parks
- In the former Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast ride at Universal Studios Florida, the Mark I rocket vehicles had yellow flames painted on the sides.
Toys
- Tahu and Ackar of BIONICLE both wield swords shaped like flames (or just swords with flame designs in the case of Tahu's Nuva upgrade), and Ackar also sports a flame-design helmet.
- Transformers: The Generation 2 Laser Optimus Prime toy featured smoldering details on the front and a giant portrait of Prime wielding a flamethrower on the sides.
Video Games
- Bowser's monster truck in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, the "Koopa King", has some flames painted on the back. Add six tires with studded rims for the full-throttle badass effect. The "Flame Flyer", a heavyweight kart in Mario Kart Wii, is an even better example.
- The leopard jeans from No More Heroes are dark blue and have flames embroidered on the side. Their item description says this:
Everyone knows adding flames to something makes it cooler.
- Grim Fandango: any transportation upgraded by Glottis, including the Bone Wagon and the SS Lola.
- Many Pirate and Yaki fighters in the X-Universe games sport a paint job of red flames (ref. the Pirate Falcon Vanguard).
- Sora's Kingdom Hearts II outfit gets one of these on the sleeves and pantlegs when he's in Wisdom Form.
- Jin Kazama from Tekken is quite fond of this, his regular outfit always being a pair of black pants with either red and gold flames or white and gold flames embroidered on the right leg, the only exception being Tekken 4, in wich he sports a hoodie with gold flame decals on it.
- In Fallout 4, finding the right issue of Hot Rodder magazine in the post-apocalyptic Commonwealth will allow you to give your suits of Powered Armor a black-flames-on-red paint job, which provides a bonus to your Agility when worn. Alternate color schemes include white scallops on pink or a shark mouth.
- F-Zero: Samurai Goroh, with his appropriately-named Fire Stingray. Bonus points for the vehicle being pink as well
- A recurring paint job in MechWarrior is the flame-decal "Hot Rod" style, commonly seen on Always Chaotic Evil bandits and a number of player 'Mechs. The version used in 5 and Online defaults to black with red-orange flames, but not always◊.
- Flame vinyls have been a standard customization item in Need for Speed.
- Grand Theft Auto series:
- The Diablo Stallion in Grand Theft Auto III is a black muscle car with a flame paint job, driven by members of the Diablos gang.
- The Cuban Hemres in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City driven by the Cuban gang members is a hot rod with flames. The base color is black in Vice City, but in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories you see blue and white variants.
- In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, most of the available paintjobs on the lowrider mod shop have a flames theme.
- Available for a number of cars in Grand Theft Auto Online.
- Many of the paint liveries in Wreckfest are some manner of flame pattern.
Web Animation
- Mystery Skulls Animated: Lewis's prankster little sister Cayenne has flames on her black cowboy boots to go with her horned hairband for a devilish theme.
Webcomics
- Dresden Codak: In this strip, Kim fixes three cyborgs which need attention; she augments one's gyrostabiliser, restores another's eyes to full enhanced function — and paints cool flames on the third's wheels so it can go faster.
Web Original
- Neopets: You can paint your pets "Fire" with a paintbrush, which gives this effect. Petpets can also be painted this.
Western Animation
- In Futurama, Cubert claims that adding flame decals to the Planet Express ship will make it go faster. His reasoning?
Cubert: I'm twelve.
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: In "The Great Unwashed", the makeover Jenny gets for a party includes red and orange flames painted on her feet and pigtails.
- A recurring element of Alex's Unlimited Wardrobe in Totally Spies! is a black shirt with a fire motif in the middle.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In "Mac Daddy", Bloo wants to paint Mac's soapbox car in hot-rod flames, but Cheese wants bunnies instead. After much arguing, they compromise and paint flaming bunnies on the car.
Bloo: I don't even know you anymore.Mac: Shut up. At least the bunnies are on fire.
- In an episode of The Venture Brothers, Hank and Dean get H.E.L.P.eR a flame job.
- Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime from Transformers: Generation One.
- In the Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) cartoon, Fire Man has, appropriately enough, a flame pattern on his blasters.
- In an episode of Voltron Force, the Black Lion is given a Hot Paint Job complete with spinning rims (despite not having wheels), a kicking sound system and a pair of fuzzy dice. Its pilot is not amused at first, but he seems to grow to like it.
- The titular mech in Megas XLR has yellow flames on its arms and legs.
Real Life
- The oldest documented case of a car painted with a flame decal is a race car from 1938, but in general, the history isn't well documented and no one really know who started the trend.
- The Pontiac Firebird included a decal of the titular firebird on the hood in models made between 1973 and 1978.
- In Real Life, some people who are particularly obsessed with their cars add decals on them, and they almost always involve flames or some other flame-like design. But it could possibly be subverted; there are some cars that are so "uncool" that adding flames just makes it look corny. Kind of like multiplying one negative number.
