Grenade Tag

It's technically not a backstab if she does it to his front, right?

Penelope: This is hardly the time for sticky fingers.
Herbert: It's not what he's taking out of the guard's pocket, my dear, but what he's putting in. Duck and cover!

— Fallout 3, "The Adventures of Herbert 'Daring' Dashwood"

A wily character is facing up against a Giant Mook who is confident he's going to beat their puny opponent. Our hero does a move in which he runs up to the baddie, flips over him, and then flips away. The baddie turns around confused as to why they've left him otherwise unharmed until he looks down and sees the three explosive Sticky Bombs left on his chest (and yes, they always see the bombs before they go off). Bombs go off, and the baddie either falls unconscious if they were knockout bombs or... well, let's just hope it's a PG rated show for the baddie's sake.

Alternatively, if the Guile Hero really is completely outclassed in hand-to-hand, they may exploit the opportunity to plant the bombs and then break away or goad the baddie into throwing them to safety. Compare Pineapple Surprise.

Usually a Sticky Bomb, though a normal bomb may be somehow fastened to the baddie where it can't be removed in time (like snarled in a cape). See also; Throw Down the Bomblet for characters who may make use of this. Compare Misguided Missile.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• The Third Hokage in Naruto does this when fighting Orochimaru to the resurrected First and Second Hokage. In this case, it's a literal grenade tag because ninja there use explosive Paper Talismans.
  • There are a lot of other examples from Naruto, namely due to the mentioned explosive Talismans.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency, this plays into Joseph's Establishing Character Fight against Straizo. After surprising the immortal vampire with a Tommy gun and distracting him with a mirror, he plants a grenade on Straizo's scarf. Straizo quickly removes it, but Joseph had also attached ten more grenades to his back, with their pins tied to the first grenade, which all get pulled at the same time.

Comic Books

• In Batgirl #20 (the Stephanie Brown series), Batgirl defeats the speedster Slipstream by sticking several explosive electrogoop batarangs to his back.
• Robin (1993): Tim manages to take out three members of the jury by slipping a non-lethal electrical device on one of their ankles as they try to dogpile him, and then setting it off when all three are nearly stacked on top of each other trying to kill him.

Film — Animated

• Bolt tried this in the Show Within a Show, but the Mook throws it up on the helichopper.
• Bomb Voyage planting the bomb on "Incredi-Boy" in The Incredibles.

Film — Live Action

• The Accountant (2016). Wolff fights his way through Braxton's mercenaries, but the last one is giving him a lot of trouble until Wolff pulls the pin on a grenade attached to the back of the mercenary's vest. Though the mercenary's body absorbs most of the explosion, it still injures Braxton enough that he has to put on a tourniquet.
• In Avengers: Infinity War, during the battle on Titan, Star-Lord uses runic platforms conjured by Doctor Strange to get overhead of the Mad Titan, planting an explosive device on his back. He apparently set it for just long enough to give Strange time to make a portal for him to escape through, as well as perform a favorite gesture of his at his girlfriend's dad. Of course, it being Thanos, it only serves to momentarily stun him.
• Batman does this to the Strongman during the Red Triangle battle in Batman Returns, using another Red Triangle mook's bomb.
• James Bond did this in Casino Royale (2006), using the bomb that Le Chiffre's man meant to blow up the tanker truck with.
• This is how Selene kills the Uber-Lycan in Underworld: Awakening. Bonus points for using his Healing Factor against him by punching a hole into his stomach and leaving the grenade in there.
• A variation is used in Red Dawn (1984) when Toni is mortally wounded by a Mi-24 gunship, she requests for a primed grenade to be put under her body so that any Soviet soldier that inspects her dead body will be taken out.
• The Predator. Casey Bracket is handcuffed to a chair and is about to be executed because She Knows Too Much. A Predator dog appears to provide a distraction and obligingly coughs up a grenade it swallowed earlier. Casey hits the guard with the chair and shoves the grenade down his assault vest, then dives over the railing to escape the blast... only for the chair to get caught on the railing.
• The Abbot shoves a grenade inside a cop's crash helmet before slamming the visor shut and pushing him out of the car in Dobermann.
• At the end of Birds of Prey (2020), Cassandra Cain kills Roman Sionis by using her pickpocketing skills to plant a hand grenade on him while he's holding her hostage.
• Elysium. Kruger has homing drones and explosive shuriken that attach to a person and detonate. He appears to enjoy the You Are Already Dead nature of them, so it's Laser-Guided Karma when he goes out the same way. In the Final Battle, Max attaches a grenade to him, but Kruger hooks a carabineer onto Max's exoskeleton. Max then breaks off that part and shoves Kruger over the railing whereupon he explodes.
• The Gray Man (2022). Lloyd Hansen captures Sierra Six and demands to know where the MacGuffin is. Six holds up a grenade pin and asks if this is it. As the grenade hits the floor between them, Hansen says in a rather admiring fashion, "Balls!" and they both get out of the room as fast as possible.
• Léon: The Professional: After being gunned down by Stansfield. Leon hands him a metal ring from "Matilda" with his dying breath. Stansfield then works it out it's from the clutch of grenades attached to Leon's chest.
  Stansfield: [Comprehension dawning on him.] Shit.
  

Literature

• At one point in the X-Wing Series, Wraith Squadron is pinned down dirtside by a Viper probe droid.^note For reference, that's the type that showed up in The Empire Strikes Back. Kell Tainer dives on top of it and bounces off. Then it explodes violently. Turns out he managed to plant a charge.
• In Skulduggery Pleasant, playing with fire, the spike bomb mentioned when Skullduggery retrieves his case from Finbar is used this way against the Grotesquery. Arguably a less-than-straight example, since Skullduggery is obviously holding the bomb beforehand, and the Grotesquery does not appear to react at all to the bomb. Until it goes off.
• Able Team sets up an ambush for a Salvadorean death squad. One of them sees he's triggered a grenade Booby Trap and runs for his life, not realising the grenade is bouncing after him because it's hooked on his clothing via a monofilament line and a fish hook.

Live-Action TV

• In the Doctor Who serial "The Ribos Operation", the Doctor sticks a bomb to the back of the villainous Graff Vynda-K when he embraces him before he heads into the labyrinth.
• Archer does this to a Xindi he's fighting in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Zero Hour".
• Shaw tosses a stun grenade inside a gas mask in Person of Interest
• Kamen Rider X villain Apollo Geist pulls off a version of this with a cybernetic twist - When the titular Rider accepts his offered handshake, Apollo Geist pulls away, leaving X holding the man's detached hand (and a bit of his arm) which of course immediately explodes.

Video Games

• Throughout the Fallout series, you can use the pickpocket skill to place a live explosive on someone. Doing this in Fallout 3 nets you the "Psychotic Prankster" achievement and increments your "Pants Exploded" stat. The Adventures of Herbert "Daring" Dashwood radio show also has the titular character's Hypercompetent Sidekick do this to some villains; Argyle calls it "the old Shady Sands Shuffle."
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, with a high-enough sneak skill, you can prank a prankster via this. There's also a unique Power Fist, Two-Step Goodbye, which has a very high critical hit chance but very low critical hit damage. However, if it kills on a critical, it plants a bomb on the enemy's corpse which explodes after a couple of seconds.
• Resident Evil 4 when Leon gets into CQC with Ada, she drops her sunglasses on the ground at Leon's feet. Then after a few seconds, the glasses explode.
• In Resident Evil remake for the Nintendo GameCube, if you're grabbed by a zombie you can use a defensive weapon. These include stun grenades, which can be shoved into the zombie's mouth and shot for an instant decapitation.
• A common tactic in the Gears of War series, though not quite as subtle as in most games — when you melee attack someone with a grenade, it sticks to them with a wet thnk, and detonates after a couple seconds. Starting in the second game, grenades can also be tagged onto the walls or floor to function as proximity mines.
• In Alpha Protocol, if Mike decides to kill Leland after agreeing to help him in the finale, he'll reveal that the evidence that he handed over to him was actually a mine. The look on Leland's face says it all.
• In Dead or Alive 4, Spartan Nicole-458 has a showy move where she lifts up her opponent with one hand, activates a Plasma Grenade in the other, slams it into her opponent's torso, then kicks them away before the grenade detonates.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl:
    • Snake can plant a pack of C4 directly on an opponent for his Down Special if he's standing close enough to them (Rather then dropping it on the ground), then blow it up at will. Amusingly, the C4 pack can also transfer itself to other players if the victim touches them (Snake himself included).
    • The gooey bomb (also introduced in this game) includes the transfer aspect, although the initial tagging is a throwing action.
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U: Mega Man/Rock from the Mega Man (Classic) series can do this with his Side Special, the Crash Bomber.
• Tracer, in both her Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm incarnations, is built around this trope. She does moderate damage with a gun, but her special abilities focus on rapid transportation, either flashing forward in a direction or using recall to jump backwards to wherever she had been a few seconds earlier. Her ultimate meanwhile is a sticky grenade. She is basically built around flashing right up to an opponent, planting a sticky grenade on them, then recalling back to a safe distance before her opponent explodes.

Web Comics

• Girl Genius sports a nonlethal example, wherein swordstress Zeetha falls for one. Admittedly, the payload was NOT the one that her opponent thought he was planting, but it ends off working out anyway.
• Awkward Zombie: Has a few characters literally playing tag with grenades in this strip.

Web Original

• Haloid. Samus and MC are grappling. Samus breaks off, turns into a ball, and flies away. As she does so she drops several mines at MC's feet, which explode and blast MC into the air.
• TFS at the Table, Wake slaps an explosive rune onto Gulfur's neck by pretending to give him a pat on the back, because Wake doesn't trust him not to ditch them at the first opportunity and leave them stranded.

Western Animation

• Batman in most animated versions does this about every episode.
• Robin in Teen Titans.
  • Slade covertly attached an explosive device onto a minion of Trigon during their fight in "The End Part 3."
• In the first episode of Transformers: Animated, Starscream bids Megatron good luck in his impending attack on the Autobots by patting him on the back, at the same time placing an explosive on it.
• Robin again in Young Justice. Honestly, this trope could practically be called The Other Batman Gambit.
• Nick Fury manages this The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes against the Grim Reaper. Bonus points for getting himself tossed off the Flying Car they were fighting on before detonation.

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