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Hurl It into the Sun

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"SCP-1543-01 is a catapult with an absurdly far length of range, designed in 16██ to meet a common need of that time: launching dangerous and potentially reality-altering objects into the sun. Despite the fact that this was often an unnecessary waste of resources and time, it was often decided as the best course of action."

Have something that you need to get rid of permanently? And it can't be destroyed by ordinary means? Throw it into the Sun (or any convenient nearby star; a black hole works, too). If you have Super-Strength, just give it a good toss or punch. Otherwise, you'll probably have to reprogram a space shuttle's coordinates, or possibly even set it to manual and make a Heroic Sacrifice yourself.

Realistically, the Shuttle — and any manned spacecraft built to date — has nowhere near the thrust needed. You'd have to cancel out about 90% of the orbital velocity of the Earth, which takes roughly twice as much Δv as would be required to throw whatever it is out of the solar system (while we're on the subject, Hurl It into the Interstellar Void would also be a pretty good way to dispose of something). In fact, if you had the necessary rocket engine, it would probably be easier, simpler, and cheaper to use it as a blowtorch. (Between those two extremes, you could drop it to Earth from orbit without a heat shield).

Counterintuitively, it would be more efficient in term of fuel consumption to accelerate away from the Sun (bonus point if you use a Spaceship Slingshot Stunt around Jupiter) to a higher orbit, which is a slower one, meaning you need less Δv to slow down your spacecraft and have it plummet into the sun. Of course this would take a lot of time since whatever you're trying to hurl into the sun has to travel its merry way into the vastness of the solar system before arriving at destination.

But those who advocate throwing things into the sun rarely know that, because they think Gravity Sucks. Furthermore, even if the object is tough enough to withstand the sun's power, it's likely that few enemies are tough enough to go after it. Also, Rule of Cool tends to apply.

A surefire way to ensure someone is Deader than Dead.

Compare Kill It with Fire.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • Dragon Ball Z:
  • This was the eventual fate of the Gundams in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. Then in Endless Waltz, it turned out they needed them again. Oops. Now Quatre has to go get them back. And then once they were finished, they were self-destructed and everybody got along and lived Happily Ever After.
  • Code Geass has this happen in the epilogue, some time after the Zero Requiem and the final conflicts of the story end, as the Sky Fortress Damocles is sent flying into space and into the sun, where it is destroyed.
  • May have happened to the destroyed Deucalion and by extension Alv in Kiddy Grade. An earlier statement from Dvergr that "I want to be with my girl until the end" was followed by her flying into the ship's ruined bridge to comfort Alv who was crying and calling out for her - then we saw the ship's pieces being framed by a very big Sun. Still, it's a much more preferable way to go out than being trapped in the ship's still operational mainframe for eternity.
  • Astro Boy: In the final episode of the original anime, Astro Boy manually aimed a rocket headed for Earth into the Sun, but sacrificed himself as a result.
  • Kirby: Right Back at Ya!:
    • Subverted in an episode where Kirby defeats the giant green caterpillar-like enemy Poppon this way with the Chef ability. He places the enemy in a huge frying pan and tosses it right at the sun. Only it doesn't fly into the sun—instead, it orbits around the sun, then comes right back to Dream Land as an exceedingly delicious fried dish.
    • The later episode "Power Ploy" plays it straight. After Kirby regains his strength, he grabs the snake monster, Red Viper, gets on his Warp Star, and instantly flies to the sun where he proceeds to throw the evil monster into it.
  • Attempted by the McDougall Brothers in Outlaw Star when ordered to destroy the titular spaceship.
  • In Brave Exkaiser, this is how Dino Geist dies. Ironically enough, he does this to himself to commit suicide rather than be captured and arrested by Exkaiser as one last act of spite.
  • Lupin III: In The Mystery of Mamo, upon revealing his true form as a Brain in a Jar, Mamo launches himself into space on a rocket to seek out the secret to immortality. However, just before blast off, Lupin attaches an explosive to the glass casing, shattering it once it reaches space and leaving him to drift listlessly on a collision course with the sun]].

    Asian Animation 
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: At the end of Joys of Seasons episode 73, the goats decide to take care of Wolffy this way, in a weird way - they use the magnets he tried to use to capture them and set them up so he gets sent flying into the sun.
    The sun: Let's be honest now, guys, am I really that bad?

    Comic Books 
  • The Sentry did this to his Enemy Without, the Void, and it's lampshaded to a point where he will never hear the end of it: "I don't throw everyone into the sun!" His protest does make sense: the Void wasn't the only thing he threw into the Sun, or at least, that wasn't the first time he threatened or offered to throw something into the Sun. This ultimately happens to The Sentry himself while in his mortal, Bob Reynolds form to kill him (temporarily) after the events of Siege.
  • The Justice League tends to use the sun as its own personal incinerator. Great for disposing of kryptonite.
    • In DC One Million, Superman puts himself there. Of course by then he's so powerful, he's perfectly fine with that (better than fine, in fact, since he's powered by sunlight).
    • In Justice, Superman has Captain Marvel throw him into the sun to kill the mind control probes that have infected his body.
    • In Infinite Crisis, Superboy-Prime got a nice closeup of the solar core of Rao- Krypton's own sun- courtesy of Kal-El and Golden Age Superman (although they mainly did this with the goal of using the red sunlight to drain Superboy-Prime's own powers rather than expecting the sun itself to kill him).
    • Subverted in The Brave and the Bold storyline The Book Of Destiny. Wonder Woman attempted to dispose of the Philosopher's Stone in the sun to keep it from the evil alchemist Megistus. But Megistus lived inside the sun. Smooth move, Wondy.
  • In Miracleman all the world's nuclear weapons get teleported into the sun.
  • Blackest Night: This was how Bizarro dealt with Black Lantern Solomon Grundy (who was effectively unkillable).
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • In the Republic series, this is how Anakin and Obi-Wan finally kill Durge.
    • Much later, in Star Wars: Legacy, Cade Skywalker sends Darth Krayt's body into Coruscant's sun to ensure that he doesn't come Back from the Dead again. He almost does it to himself, fearing that Krayt would try the old Sith trick of taking Cade's body as his own (indeed, he heard Krayt's voice taunting him and threatening this). He was saved by the Force Ghost of Luke Skywalker confirming that the voice in his head truly was just a voice in his head.
  • The Flash: The speedster hero ran to the sun to toss a statue that was rendering a foe (being fought by Batman) invulnerable into it, reckoning the solar core would provide enough energy to destroy said statue. He used some kind of enormous luge system to launch himself out of the atmosphere and then started bouncing off asteroids. If that sounds weird, we're talking about a guy who can sometimes travel in time by running really fast - that was one of the ways he'd already tried to destroy the statue.
  • The Martian Manhunter does this to his brother. In Brightest Day #21, he does the same thing to D'kay D'razz.
  • In What If? v2 #108, Silver Surfer was unable to overcome Carnage's possession. When he regains control for one minute, he suicides this way.
  • In the French comic Jules ou l'imparfait du futur, the good guys decide to launch a nuclear missile into the Sun, because they could only delay the launching one hour, not stopping it. In the end they can't launch it at all, and they must sacrifice the starship.
  • Subverted in Universal War One: the Big Bad sends a space station into the sun, not to destroy the station but to destroy the sun!
  • The Tick decides to dispose of a huge monolith by throwing it into the sun, because hey, that's what superheroes do. When it lands about forty feet away, he and Arthur decide that's good enough.
  • Adventure Time: In the first story arc, the Lich plans to destroy the planet (and all life thereon) by sucking it into a Bag of Holding and hurling the bag into the sun. He ends up getting tossed into the sun himself.
  • In PS238, the S.I.I.T.S.-9000 is designed to throw things into the sun.
  • In a short story of Superlópez, the titular hero gets rid of the energy-eating Monster of the Week this way. It backfires epically when said monster eats the Sun.
  • In The Simpsons one-off story "Hillbilly Abductshun", Cletus Spuckler steals Kang and Kodos' flying saucer, loudly exclaiming "I'm a-joyridin' this hubcap into the sun!"
  • Supergirl:
    • In Red Daughter of Krypton, Supergirl essentially did this to herself to try to get rid of a Red Lantern ring without it killing her. It worked.
    • In Supergirl (Rebirth), the Department of Extra-normal Operations launches Kara into the Sun as a last resort to help her get her powers back.
    • Variant in The Supergirl from Krypton (2004). Superman grabs Darkseid and flies into the Sun, but he doesn't intend to hurl Darkseid into it -the Lord of Apokolips would survive- but getting a power boost which allows him to fight Darkseid.
    • In Strangers at the Heart's Core, Supergirl gets rid of a car bomb by throwing it into space before it blows up.
    • Brainiac's Blitz: After forcing Brainiac to flee, Supergirl tosses his ship into the sun in order to disintegrate all his lethal weapons.
      Narrator: "Moments later, the Girl of Steel hurls the Saucer and its weapons straight into the Sun!"
      Supergirl: (thinking) Old Sol's tremendous heat will vaporize those death-devices! No one will ever uses them on Superman!
    • Supergirl (Wednesday Comics): An alien race decides to dump their weapons into the sun as a symbol of peace, after ending a civil war.
  • Superman:
    • Superman's rescue of a doomed sun-mapping voyage kicks off the plot of All-Star Superman and ends with Superman going into the sun to try and fix it, the implications being that this is how he ended up there in DC One Million.
    • Who Took the Super out of Superman?: After defeating Solarman, Superman disposes of his energy-absorbing power suit by throwing it into the sun.
    • Superman threw the Eradicator (a Kryptonian computer/weapon) into the sun. This annoyed it, and led to it creating its humanoid "Krypton Man" form.
    • As seen in The Phantom Zone mini-series, Krypton Science Council's method to get rid of anything dangerous (lawbreakers, Kru-El's forbidden weapons, the Phantom Zone Projector...) was to rocket it into space.
    • In The Plague of the Antibiotic Man, Superman gets rid of Jevik by picking up his unconscious body and throwing him back to his homeworld with a super-strong toss.
    • In "Luthor Unleashed", since he cannot easily destroy one of Luthor's satellite-weapons without endangering Metropolis, Superman get rids of it by kicking it into deep space where he can take it apart safely.
    • In The Leper from Krypton, Superman has been infected with an incurable and highly contagious alien infectious disease. Since he will die within hours and he does not want to risk infecting others, Superman opts for building a rocketship which will take him to Flammbron, the hottest sun in the universe, where his body wil burn away together with his germs.
    • "Brainiac Rebirth": Variant. Superman is being chased through the space by Brainiac's red-sun torpedo. He does not dare to destroy it, cannot outrun it and can barely dodge it, so Superman plunges into the nearest Sun, expecting (correctly) the torpedo to chase after him and melt into oblivion.
    • "Superman and Spider-Man": When Doctor Doom tries to use one piece of Kryptonite to weaken Superman, the Man of Steel wraps himself in lead to grab it safely, and tosses the lethal rock into the Sun.
    • In Year Two of the Injustice: Gods Among Us tie in series, Superman accepts Sinestro's yellow ring of fear and uses its power to grab Ganthet and Mogo and push them into the sun. In Year Five, Superman throws Parasite into the sun as well.
  • In Star Wars: Darth Vader, Vader kills Cylo for good by Jedi Mind Tricking Cylo's Space Whale and sending it flying into the nearest star.
  • In one Jessica Jones storyline, she thinks that the Purple Man is dead and asks Carol Danvers to toss his body into the sun. Sometime later, it seems that he was actually alive, making Carol fear she threw an innocent into the sun thanks to his mind control powers. It was later revealed that Carol threw no one into the sun, just that she was made to believe she did. She's very relieved to hear that.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): At the end of the Metal Virus Saga, Super Sonic and Super Silver combine their abilities and the Warp Topaz to suck up every last trace of the Metal Virus and send it through a warp portal into the sun to permanently dispose of it.
  • In Judge Dredd, after Hershey becomes the first Chief Judge to die of natural causes, it is ruled that her corpse can't be recycled lest it infect others. Instead, she is given a Viking-style funeral by launching her coffin into the sun.
  • A Twilight Zone anthology comic had the story "Shivering Stars" in which an astronaut by the name of Allan Kent goes crazy after a meteor swarm damages the ship, which results he and fellow astronaut Charlie losing so much oxygen that there isn't enough for both of them to return to Earth alive. Allan fears freezing to death in space and refuses to listen when Charlie suggests that they can solve this problem rationally, murdering him so that he can have the rest of the air for himself. During the fight, though, the ship's controls were damaged and now it's flying uncontrollably into the Sun. At least he won't freeze to death.
  • The Transformers (IDW): After Galvatron's plot involving the Dead Universe was stopped, Word of God is that the Autobots decided the superpowered but brainless Thunderwing was too dangerous to keep around (since Galvatron had used him as a remote-controlled weapon) and so the Autobots just unceremoniously chucked him into the nearest black hole.
  • The Brave and The Bold (Volume 3) #7: The plot sees Wonder Woman, Power Girl and Superman fighting the villain Dr Alchemy. Alchemy is defeated when his spirit is trapped in the Philosopher's Stone which Wonder Woman throws into the sun.

    Fan Works 
  • Dragon Ball Z Abridged's adaptation of Cooler's Revenge spotlights this with this line:
    Goku: "Sun, you grow my food... you kill my enemies. You're totally worth the skin cancer."
  • In Supergirl story Hellsister Trilogy, Kara Zor-El can't kill off Satan Girl through normal means. Her duplicate isn't affected by Kryptonite or depowered by a red sun, and Kara isn't a magic-user. After a furious battle which tests every ounce of her power and skill to its absolute limit, Supergirl throws her enemy into an anti-matter sun (after Satan Girl attempts to throw her).
    Supergirl grabbed Satan Girl by the legs, added her own momentum to the force of Satan Girl's super-throw, whirled them around several times like two partners on a trapeze bar, and flung her enemy down towards the thrusting fingers of the solar prominence.
    The worst part of it was seeing the grin of determination on Kara's bloodied face as she threw her.
    Satan Girl heard one last sending before she hit the plasma.
    <Hellsister,> said Supergirl, <go to Hell.>
    Kara pulled up, flying away at an angle, keeping herself beyond the event horizon of what was to come with the last shred of power she had. But she knew that she had to avoid the blast area. She trained her super-vision on the hurtling woman in black, even as she flew away.
    The villainess hit the anti-plasma.
    There was a look of confusion on Satan Girl's face as she exploded.
    Her positive-matter structure was instantly annihilated by an equivalent mass of anti-matter in the solar prominence. It flattened part of the plasma-storm a bit, made for a more spectacular sight, and disintegrated a small bit of antisolar matter.
    But that was all right. There was enough antimatter in the star to spare.
    It didn't take that much of it to kill a Satan Girl.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Doctor Who fanfic Mines of Dragon Mountain, Zeitgeist mentions a (possibly true) tale of a "Dark City of Tambelon" that once tried to enslave ponykind (apparently For the Evulz) to the Doctor, saying that they live on the sun now. When the Doctor asks if Celestia killed them all, Zeitgeist says no, they live on the sun now.
  • A running joke for Nobody Dies (it's even mentioned on its page) is that given the ludicrous amounts of damage Angels take before they die, final Angel Tabris will be killed by having the sun dropped on him. It's also a recurring joke for Terrifying Rei Meme Generator images.
  • Erico the Superbard's Mega Man X fanfics have his original characters making use of small, handheld teleport units to dispose of nukes and other hazardous material, by teleporting them close to the sun, where they'd be drawn in.
  • Mentioned in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, after Quirrell emphasizes that the highly powerful Dementors cannot be killed by any means, magical or otherwise.
    "Hm," Harry said. "Suppose you threw it into the Sun? Would it be destroyed?"
    "It seems unlikely, Mr. Potter," Professor Quirrell said dryly. "The Sun is very large, after all; I doubt the Dementor would have much effect on it. But it is not a test I would like to try, Mr. Potter, just in case.".
  • In Turnabout Storm, being banished to the Sun is shown as one of the possible punishments for murder in Equestria, the other one being banishment to the Moon. This comes out as a bit of a Disproportionate Retribution for Phoenix, giving him a good reason to bring his A-game on the trial.
  • In PH Wise's A new World In My View (a Buffy-DCU-Marvelverse crossover) the Sentry decides the best way to defeat a super villain is to plunge her into the heart of the sun. Unfortunately for the Sentry, said super villain is a Kryptonian, the absolute last kind of being you want to try this on, leading to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Friendship Is Magic: The Adventures of Spike: What Luna does with Celestia's casket. She says it feels appropriate.
  • In Not In Kansas, Kara suggests doing this with a piece of The Judge. Once it's complete she changes her mind (on the off chance he'd somehow corrupt the sun) and instead throws him into the black hole at the center of the galaxy.
  • In the Pony POV Series, Celestia is capable of rendering someone immortal and imprisoning them in the sun where they burn in the solar flames, but serves it as punishment for the absolute most evil criminals. Namely mass murderers, who are imprisoned there for an amount of time equal to the years of life they've robbed from others. She would have banished Fluttershy here had her plan as Nightmare Whisper killed every unborn child in Equestria, but thankfully that didn't happen. This is also Kabuto, the Changelings' Mad Scientist and a mass murderer, after the wedding, who will be there for a long time. Interestingly, the sun has its own biosphere of fire based life that prisoners are tasked with caring for while trapped there.
  • Escape from the Moon: In the sequel The Mare From the Moon, Celestia initially promises that she’ll do this to Spliced Genome if she proves herself a threat. Later though, she changes her mind when it’s pointed out that Spliced’s Resurrective Immortality, and her adapting to what killed her every time she dies, will eventually leave her immune to both the sun and to Celestia’s magic, something she decides is too big of a risk.
  • Harry Potter and the Mystic Force sees the threat of Ivan Ooze being ended when the Order of the Phoenix and Harry perform a massive joint charm to hurl Ivan towards the sun.
  • In The Last Son, this is Superman's solution whenever he encounters Kryptonite.
  • In Avenger of Steel, Stick, Clint, and Raven each independently suggest that Superman do this to deal with the seemingly immortal Solomon Grundy, but Clark states that he doesn't even know if he could do something like that and isn't sure if that would stop Grundy given his regenerative abilities. He does, however, eventually do this with the body of the dragon Ao Shun after killing him, to keep him from resurrecting.
  • The Arrowverse fic "An Interdimensional Meet" features the Flash and Supergirl assisting in Damien Darhk's attempted breakout at Iron Heights; after Kara destroys Darhk's idol with her heat vision, she takes the pieces and throws them into the sun to dispose of them for good.
  • In Rocketship Voyager it's not practical to do this for a Burial in Space when the sun could be billions of miles away, so corpses are fastened outside the hull where they can be cremated by the exhaust plume of the torchship.
  • In the Ultra Series inspired Ultra Theresa, in one chapter a fight with a kaiju ends with them flying into space, and the monster being fascinated by the sight of the sun. The heroine kicks it into the sun, thinking she's gotten rid of it for good. Since the kaiju was fire-based, though, it comes back in a later chapter in a much more powerful form.
  • With This Ring: Vandal Savage creates an alternate timeline in hopes that his alternate self will be in a better position, eg emperor of Earth. Instead, however, said self was thrown into the Sun by the Green Lantern at the time. Paul, recognizing that the Lantern would have had no AI support and thus would have had to fly there at sub-light speeds without losing focus, is impressed. Paul's own plans for dealing with Savage (after restoring the timeline) involve throwing him into a star in a different solar system, just to make it even more certain that he's not coming back.
  • Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch V6's final boss, Eclipse, a fusion of the Evil Robot, Sunstar and the entire Wily Star turned into a kaiju monstrosity, is challenged by the player character, Maestro, in the newest version of Gamma. After a Heroic Second Wind and delivering a Curb-Stomp Battle onto Eclipse, Maestro delivers a rocket thruster-fueled Megaton Punch that sends both Eclipse and Gamma all the way from Earth directly into the sun, though Maestro ejects before that happens. This finally kills the Evil Robot and destroys the Evil Energy for good. True to his name and powers, however, Sunstar survives being hurled into the sun, enabling him to take the now deactivated and stranded Maestro back to Earth, though he only holds out just long enough to do so before his body turns to ash and disintegrates from the strain, leaving only his forehead crystal behind. Though it should be noted that even before being hurled into the sun he had already been defeated by Maestro and his fusion reactor was on the verge of going critical before he was suddenly taken over by the Evil Robot, so who knows if Sunstar may have actually survived being hurled into the sun if he was at full strength.

    Film — Live-Action 

    Jokes 
  • As reported on Russian Humour:
    As a population control measure, the Chinese government has sent 100 million Chinese cosmonauts on a one-way expedition to the Sun. The expedition exceeded expectations, as a further 200 million Chinese ground-control staff forgot to let go of the slingshot at the right time and were hurled up along with the spacecraft.

    Literature 

By Author:

  • The eponymous character in the Ray Bradbury short story "Rocket Man" meets an unfortunate ending when his rocket ship malfunctions and flies into the Sun. Another Bradbury story, "The Golden Apples Of the Sun" involves a space mission to retrieve stellar matter from the Sun.
  • Iain M. Banks
    • This is a common, but by no means universal, post-death ritual for members of The Culture, although apparently they have their mortal remains Displaced (i.e. teleported) directly into the very heart of a nearby star.
    • In the short story "Cleaning Up", aliens are teleporting their junk into the sun, but a fault in their teleporter causes the junk to get teleported onto mid-20th Century Earth instead. Things don't end well.

By Work:

  • Animorphs prequel The Andalite Chronicles has Elfangor do this to a Yeerk he struck a bargain with. Faced with the option of either starving to death or entering deep hibernation to await rescue, the Yeerk agrees to be frozen. Elfangor takes the frozen Yeerk and throws it out the airlock, directly adjacent to a star.
  • Done in a roundabout way in the John Bellairs novel The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge: the heroes magically propel the beast's Soul Jar and a rivet from the bridge (with Anti-Magic properties) into space, and the beast itself follows them, with all three coming down on the Red Star, knocking it off course and into the sun.
  • Dune: In Legends of Dune, when it becomes clear that he'll be killed by Iblis Ginjo's Secret Police for knowing the truth about the Tleilaxu organ farms, Xavier Harkonnen chooses to pilot the shuttle with Ginjo onboard into the nearest star. Sadly, this Heroic Sacrifice is twisted by Ginjo's wife and Dragon into high treason. Xavier's best friend Vorian Atreides chooses to keep the truth hidden "for the good of the Jihad" and allow the Harkonnen name to be despised and Ginjo to be elevated to martyrdom.
  • The hominem community uses this method to dispose of an orbiting nuclear bomb in David Palmer's Emergence.
  • Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile ends with Trunky the Elephant doing this to the eponymous villain.
  • In the fourth book of the The Expanse series, Holden disposes of Detective Miller's protomolecule node by strapping it to a reconnaissance probe with a trajectory aimed towards the nearest star.
  • In "Giant Killer" by A. Bertram Chandler, it turns out that "The People" are rats which have gained near-human intelligence through mutation, "The Giants" are humans (though the latter at least is probably obvious to the alert reader), and the "caves" in which they live are the hull of a spaceship. When "The People" become a serious menace to "The Giants", and voiding the air of the ship doesn't kill all of them, the last surviving "Giant" sends the ship into a star.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  • In the Honor Harrington, they use this as a means of disposing of spent fission cores. As they have Casual Interstellar Travel, this is both easy and practical.
  • Defied in Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. The space drive of the day relies on dropping matter into 'Nodes' (microscopic black holes), which thus become heavier over time and eventually have to be replaced. The protagonist asks what happens to the resulting black holes — are they thrown into the Sun? The ship's engineer replies that that wouldn't work; they'd go straight through the Sun and out at the other side.
  • In Lilac Sphere by Kir Bulychev, the titular sphere containing The Virus is destroyed this way. A Wizard Did It, literally. Bonus points to the wizard for actually doing all the math and tossing the sphere not directly into the Sun, but in the right direction to negate orbital velocity, so it will invariably fall in.
  • The Lost Fleet: Anyone buried in space has their casket launched on a trajectory that will enable its cremation in the nearest star, partly for practical reasons as they'd be a hazard to navigation if allowed to drift in space, but also because "the living stars" are a major part of the setting's dominant religion: Cremation by star is a symbolic way of becoming one with the universe.
  • The Marching Morons ends with most of the earth's (by then rather dim) population migrating to Venus, lured by tales of idyllic countryside and delicious ham bushes. Needless to say, the rockets actually headed into the sun.
  • In Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime, people use stasis bubble generators that freeze anything inside a sphere for specified time. So it's usual way to get rid of your enemy that hides inside one by throwing him into the Sun (it won't damage the sphere or its contents, but when the time's up and sphere disappears he's going to be in real trouble). It's very hard to retrieve such a sphere, but it was done at least once.
  • In a Mass Effect Expanded Universe novel Ascension, an assassin programs a ship to fly into a sun, and thus destroy the evidence of the victim's murder.
  • Secret Histories: The Drood Ancient Order of Protectors disposes of its dead by teleporting their bodies into the sun. It serves the dual purpose of putting them beyond the reach of nefarious Necromancers and ensuring that their more strong-willed members don't clutter up Drood Manor with ghosts.
  • Inverted in Shadowmarch. In one version of the myth describing the gods fighting the Kronos expy, the gods have trouble harming him until the solar god grabs the Sun and hurls it in his father's face. That works.
  • In Star Trek: New Frontier, the crew of the Excalibur tricks an enemy ship into flying into a star.
    • In the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series, this is initially seen as a solution to the problem of the Dancing Star, a runaway spaceship. However, the Dancing Star is a very advanced ship designed to survive inside a sun. In fact, it dives into stars to refuel.
  • Star Wars Legends does this a few times:
    • Coruscant's garbage system, shown in Rogue Planet, involved a complicated system designed to pitch garbage containers into orbit for delivery into the sun.
    • The Sun Crusher, an indestructible supernova-causing superweapon which would qualify as a Spaceship Sue if such a trope existed, was captured, shiny and barely used, by the New Republic in Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy. After debating whether to drop it into a sun or a gas giant (the unstated but clear implication of the "a gas giant is good enough" argument being that some of the politicians in charge wanted there to be a possibility that they could recover it if they later deemed it necessary), they picked the gas giant. Later, when new uber-powerful Force Sensitive Kyp Durron got haunted and went evil, he fished it out using the Force and remarked that he wouldn't have had much more trouble if it had been in the sun. Later it's thrown into a black hole, this time for good.
    • In the New Jedi Order books, the Yuuzhan Vong fleet (emptied of crewmembers) is sent into Coruscant's sun after the Yuuzhan Vong surrender.
    • Tales of the Bounty Hunters: Tinian disposes of a nasty chemical warhead, set to heat-seeking, by firing it at the sun. (Chances are it wouldn't have the thrust to actually get there, but so long as it travels away from innocents, mission accomplished.)
      Several hundred degrees of heat wouldn't harm anything there.
  • The Disney era Star Wars Expanded Universe has Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin's first claim to infamy to be this, as revealed in Star Wars: Tarkin. After capturing the notorious pirate queen Q'anah and her Marauder crew, Tarkin imprisons them on one of the shipping containers they had been trying to hijack and set it on a slow course for a star, with broadcast equipment aboard the ship transmitting their agony and dying screams to anybody within range, including other pirates—and killing anyone who tried to rescue Q'anah, and broadcasting that. All of this was done as an example to the pirates of the Greater Seswenna on what awaits any who dares to continue their raids. Tarkin's tactic worked brilliantly, as piracy in the area decreased significantly after that ruthless show.
  • Anne McCaffrey does this in her Tower and the Hive series: all the telekinetic Talents in the galaxy temporarily combine into a Hive Mind and throw a giant alien war machine into Deneb. Needless to say, the next alien race that approached humanity did so very cautiously.
  • Urn Burial by Robert Westall: this is the method by which the Fethethil dispose of their own bodies upon death and also how Theloc disposes of the body of Postie because the harka he was infected with by the Wawaka is incurable.
  • Used to dispose of the eponymous device at the end of the early Isaac Asimov short story The Weapon Too Dreadful To Use.
  • In the Young Wizards series, Dairine actually chucks a black hole into the nearest sun.
  • At the end of Jean Johnson's Theirs Not to Reason Why series, whole planets and moon colonies are infected with a 100% fatal plague. Even though everything on those planets and moon colonies are dead, Ia has the Feyori shift their orbit enough to have them fall into their respective suns, to prevent future bad guys from gathering samples of the plague and threatening other planets with it.

    Live-Action TV 
  • When the aliens of 3rd Rock from the Sun experienced their first Earth holiday (Thanksgiving), Dick said it was like their own Big Giant Head Day except that "no one gets thrown into the sun".
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. shows this is apparently SHIELD's standard operating procedure for scary tech items. The launch facility for this is nicknamed "The Slingshot". Turns out all they sent into the sun was a lot of empty rockets; the items themselves were secretly deemed too valuable to destroy.
  • Battlestar Galactica: This is the final fate of the Galactica and the rest of the fleet.
  • Buck Rogers in the 25th Century had a second season episode where the Searcher's crew met some midgets looking for a particular star and Cryton, Buck's unctuous Robot Buddy, tells them that star is regularly used for waste disposal.
  • Doctor Who:
    • In "The Seeds of Death", the humans on board the moonbase send a signal to draw the invading Ice Warriors off course into the Sun.
    • The Doctor dumps an evil skull that wants to take over the world into a supernova to destroy it in "Image of the Fendahl".
    • "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood": Wife of Mine (a member of the Family of Blood) gets tricked by the Doctor into falling into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy, making it quite like this on a much larger scale. Of course, she didn't die. And he didn't intend for her to.
    • "Amy's Choice":
      Amy: Shall I run and get the manual?
      The Doctor: You can't. I threw it into a supernova.
      Amy: You threw the manual into a supernova? Why?
      The Doctor: Because I disagreed with it. Stop talking to me when I'm cross!
    • "Resolution": The villain, a Dalek recon scout, is finally disposed of by being hurled out of the TARDIS into a supernova after its armour is destroyed. Aaron, who was being controlled by it, is nearly sucked in too before Ryan rescues him.
  • This backfires in Earth II, a 1971 Pilot Episode for an unmade sci-fi series. A Chinese orbital nuke is disarmed and brought on board the titular Space Station. One character is alarmed at Earth II becoming a 'nuclear power', so she waits till the station's holding bay is pointing at the Sun and blows the hatch. Unfortunately given that the Earth is a lot closer, the nuke is caught by its gravity instead. After a Bomb Disposal drama IN SPACE!, the trope is then played straight (with a bit more thought given to trajectory).
  • Similarly, in Farscape, the first real glimpse we get of the destructive power of wormholes is when John opens one with one end in the middle of a star and the other in front of a Scarran ship, incinerating them instantly.
  • After his first afterlife is beset with several disasters at once in The Good Place, Michael becomes terrified that he'll be punished for failing to keep it in order. When he sees a small dog and can't find its owner, he assumes it's another glitch and immediately kicks it into the sun. The fact that this is a literal Kick the Dog moment foreshadows that he's Evil All Along.
  • In Kamen Rider Wizard, the Phoenix Phantom has the power to resurrect himself, immune to whatever killed him last, and even a Rider with eight forms is gonna run out of Finishing Moves eventually. Worse, he comes back faster each time, and nears total invincibility by the time of their final encounter. What's Wizard to do? Upon gaining a ninth form with the powers of the others put together, he Rider Kicks Phoenix right into the sun, where even if he does become immune to the intense heat and pressure, he'll never be able to break its gravity and return to Earth. Pretty harsh, but you can't say it wasn't necessary.
  • Lois & Clark: When Superman's clone asks the real Superman to destroy both him and the lock of hair from which he was cloned, Superman picks him and the Petri dish up and we see them flying toward the sun. We don't actually see anything being tossed into it, but it's implied.
    • In a variant in one episode, Superman's skin is contaminated with a mass of microscopic radioactive particles that forces him to be in radiation proof containment on Earth. Here, the solution is to fly towards the sun, not to enter it, but just to enter its gravitational field to allow it to pull all the particles at once.
      • Which is a really egregious example of Gravity Sucks, though of course Superman could have simply flown opposite the direction he was orbiting the sun, in order to cancel his angular momentum until only the sun's gravity was affecting him.
  • Power Rangers:
    • Power Rangers Zeo: Done by the villains to the Megazord early on. Fortunately, the genius Billy has just invented the Zeo Megazord's Battle Helmets, using the Zeo IV Battle Helmet to nullify gravity around it, and then the Zeo II Battle Helmet to rocket them away from the sun.
    • Power Rangers Dino Charge: How three of the core villains are ultimately beaten - after the team goes back in time sixty-five million years, to the day Sledge first came to Earth, the auxiliary Rangers and Heckyll infiltrated Sledge's ship, locked Wrench and Poisandra in cells, then used an electro-net to capture a giant Sledge himself and set the ship on an autopilot course right into the sun, taking the trio and all their captive monsters with it. Of the monsters who'd accompanied Sledge, only Fury is spared this fate, having been destroyed by a bomb while on Earth.
  • On Sliders the Sliders taught an alternate Earth how to build nuclear weapons to defend against a world-ending asteroid. The Conrad of that world is excited about the possibilities of their new atomic age, and when Arturo points out that having a nuclear reactor in every car would generate tons of nuclear waste, Conrad suggests launching the waste into the sun.
    • Arturo doesn't point out the logistical issues such a task would require (i.e. not nearly enough thrust to cancel out the orbital velocity) but instead brings up the possibility of the launch failing and contaminating the surrounding area with radioactive waste.
  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Operation: Annihilate!", a native tries launching himself into the sun to escape a Puppeteer Parasite plague. Although it works, it only allows him to live just long enough to celebrate being free. However, this provides a vital clue for the successful resolution of the crisis. It's interesting to note that the episode and the original script that was written in the "Star Trek Logs" books had two different reasons the sun worked: the episode had the parasites vulnerable to ultraviolet light; the script/book had the sun's intense magnetic fields pull the parasite out of the person (which was unfeasible to do to the infested planet, so they just annihilated the parasites' home planet).
  • Discussed in Star Trek: Voyager in regards to the Malon, whose hat is that they are always looking for a Landfill Beyond the Stars to dump radioactive antimatter waste. When asked why not dump it into a sun, the response is that doing so too often will cause the star to explode. In "Juggernaut", they have to repair a Malon freighter before it can explode and destroy everything in 3 light years, and have hurl it into the nearest star as Plan B.
  • In Torchwood, Captain Jack dumped an alien invader into the sun as well, while making the timeless The Goon Show joke about how they'd be fine, shouldn't be too hot there as it was night time. At least he used a teleportation device, not a spaceship.
  • Ultraman X: The title hero did this to the Big Bad Greeza at fifteen years prior to the series. Unfortunately, it resulted in a strange solar flare referred to as the Ultra Flare that resurrected kaiju all over Earth and also resulted in Daichi's parents disappearing in thin air. However, it later turns out Greeza survived.

    Music 

    Pinball 
  • In Doctor Who, The Master plans to invert this - he'll get the Sun to come close enough to Earth so as to kill all the Doctors.

    Puppet Shows 
  • The Thunderbirds episode Sun Probe inverted this: a ship sent to gather data about the Sun nearly crashes into it. This scenario has been repeated in at least one old text-only story and twice in the recent CGI relaunch, Thunderbirds Are Go.

    Roleplay 
  • Destroy the Godmodder has this used often. The godmodder is fond of throwing players that annoy him into the sun, player's are fond of throwing entities into the sun.
    • Played with when Aegis took the sun, and then threw it into the altar of powernote 

    Tabletop Games 
  • This is mentioned in Mummy: The Resurrection as one of the few ways to permanently destroy a Mummy.
  • In epic level games of Dungeons & Dragons this is a possible, though not exactly easy (or effective) way of dispatching enemies. The epic spell Nailed to the Sky puts the target into orbit, while a combination of the Charm Person spell (or variants, to turn a target into an ally), the Fling Ally feat (to turn an ally into a projectile weapon), and the Distant Shot feat (to fire a ranged weapon at anything you can see, such as... say... the sun) lets you jump-start the space program.
  • The Exalted charm Sky Breaker Throw explicitly has the ability to do this.

    Video Games 
  • Iris, the strongest summon in the Golden Sun games, attacks enemies by lifting them up and hurling them into the sun.
  • The most powerful unarmed attack in the first Disgaea involves tearing up a section of the ground and shoving it (and the enemies on it, of course) into the sun. The second and further games upgraded it to punching the target so hard that it turns into a black hole. Which then explodes.
    • The fifth game has the 'Flame God's Dawn' skill which has the user drag its victims right next to a sun and then proceeds to punch them into it. What about the user of the skill? Well, said user is a Dragon King, which are said to have "impervious skin".
  • Final Fantasy VIII ups the ante with the Eden summon by launching your enemies into a cannon and shooting them into the center of a galaxy - and then collapsing it (as in, the galaxy) around them.
  • In Unreal II: The Awakening, the protagonist eventually sends the central MacGuffin into a nearby star to ensure no-one can ever retrieve it again — it's proved to be basically indestructible thus far.
  • Prey (2006): when Tommy takes control of the Sphere he destroys it by piloting it into the Sun.
  • Super Robot Wars Original Generations and OG Gaiden. Leave it to our favorite robot nerd, Ryusei Date, to come up with the most awesome way possible to invoke this troupe, shoot the enemy into the sun with the HTB cannon. He named it "The Heaven and Earth One Shot Sure Kill Cannon" for a reason. The resulting Tronium/solar fusion explosion is so big, it sends a massive shock wave through the whole SOLAR SYSTEM. Then, if you actually killed the enemy, the SRX sits back and watches the fireworks at the end. Plus points if you do this to one of the end bosses 9 times in a row.
  • This is how Bayonetta disposes of the Final Boss. She punches Jubileus's soul into the Sun. From the outer reaches of the solar system.
  • This is the fate of an ancient Eldritch Abomination in Marathon. Better hope nobody goes and blows up the star in the following eons.
  • In The Crystal Key, the Arkonians had programmed one of the pieces of their titular key to connect to their system's sun, as a means to incinerate the trash collected from their colony planets by dumping it through portals linked to the sun. Later, when you find this piece, you have to use your portable portal to get rid of the psychic warlord Ozgar, done by sounding the ship's alarms and putting a hologram in front of the portal to trick him into entering.
  • At the end of Super Mario Galaxy, Bowser is literally flung into the Sun after being defeated by Mario (and before it explodes and causes the universe to collapse). He does survive later on, however...
  • A variation in Space Rangers: one of possible ways to get rid of Terron is telling him to go and absorb a star. He doesn't return...
  • Chuck Norris in M.U.G.E.N doesn't throw you into the sun. He drops the sun on you for a One-Hit Kill!
  • The above mentioned Astro Boy example is, of course, re-enacted as the final level of the beloved Game Boy Advance adaptation, Astro Boy: Omega Factor. In this version you actually have to fly into the sun, dodging chunks of the Final Boss, Asteroid Thicket-style to get a piece of scrap metal containing the AI of Astro's love interest into the sun so she can stop the pieces that have already fallen in from causing a chain reaction that'll destroy the solar system.
  • Halo 4 has Jul 'Mdama doing this to Requiem.
  • Bungie's seventh step on their plan for world domination is "Take over world. Shoot enemies into the sun with giant slingshot."
  • Celestus: One mission ask you to throw garbage into the nearest star, because it is "cheaper than recycling it".
  • You technically can pull this off in Kerbal Space Program, though it's just as difficult (relatively speaking) as it would be in real life, and attempting to do so in-game will give you a good understanding of how difficult it actually is. note 
  • Used as a Mundane Utility in the backstory of Vectorman to dispose of toxic sludge.
  • League of Legends provides an amusing inversion of this trope with the champion Aurelion Sol, the Star Forger. He's a Time Abyss dragon who makes stars and throws them as his main ability for attacking.
  • In Warframe, Grineer cyborg boss Vay Hek threatens to do this to Lotus in one of his scenery-devouring rants.
    ''—I will personally...THROW! Your beloved Lotus! ...INTO THE SUN!"
  • The Force Unleashed: PROXY destroys the spaceship Empirical by sending it on a collision course with a star.

    Webcomics 
  • In Killroy And Tina, this is Oberon's eventual fate; unfortunately, his super-powers enable him to come back with the full might of whatever kills him. Nice job breaking it, Brendon.
  • Dragon Tails had a storyline about super heroes, in which one of the characters has an unfortunate tendency to hurl things into the sun.
  • Bud from Wapsi Square disposes of the remains of the calendar machine this way in a deliberate, in universe homage to classic superheroes, It is rather noisy.
  • In Clan of the Cats, the only way to kill Dracula off for good by having a Christian impale him with a piece of the True Cross. Or you could stake him with a regular cross and portal his ashes into the sun.
  • Buck Godot is searching for the stolen Winslow, and suggests that the thief hid it in the garbage barges. When told that this would result in it being hurled into the sun, he responds: "Can you think of a better place to hide a truly indestructible object?"
  • Homestuck:
    • In Act 6 Intermission 1, Aradia wants to hold a funeral for the dead trolls, and she suggests that the ceremony should involve throwing their corpses into the nearby Green Sun. However, complications arise and the funeral doesn't happen.
    • In the alpha universe, Dave Strider made a massive fortune by manufacturing objects with 3-D jpeg artifacts. He made so much money that he could afford to dispose of his unsold waresnote  by rocketing them into the sun.
  • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: In "Hair of the DOG STAR," Wonderella fends off an alien invasion by offering the aliens vodka. They get so drunk that they decide, "We shall... defeat the sun!" Then they fly their entire fleet straight into it.
  • In Penny Arcade, this is Superman's solution to everything.
  • Ennui GO!: In Superman, Miss Mantis tries to use Alphasite against Omegaman. This trope is his response.
  • Cucumber Quest: Glitchmaster attempts to dispose of the heroes by throwing their ship at the sun. They escape with creative use of a useless power.

    Web Original 
  • SCP Foundation: The entry where this attempt is mentioned, SCP-1543-J is, for the most part, an extended parody of this trope that rarely seems to do much good. Apparently the higher-ups just liked to get rid of things by throwing it at the sun with a catapult because it was cool, no matter how counter-intuitive it would be (i.e., trying to get rid of a black hole by shooting it at the sun). After one incident (trying to get rid of a tree in this manner that was literally named "A tree that fed off energy and became stronger because of it, growing more and more branches that attack people"), the entire leading council of the Foundation was executed for gross stupidity and incompetence.
    • The Foundation also attempted to dispose of the unstoppable monster known as SCP-682 using this method. Twice. The first time it came back with wings, the second time it just made it angrier ...and on fire. Now dramatised in this animation.
    • A straight example would be Dr. Clef's method to dispose of SCP-316-D after lobotomizing him.
    • This is also how SCP-2578 (an apparent spaceship that kills tyrants from orbit) ended up disposing of SCP-1427 (a highly dangerous bronze stele that extinguishes rebellious thought in anyone nearby unless they're already susceptible to oppression) once it learned of the latter's existence and discovered sniping it in the usual manner wouldn't work. The incident was fairly disastrous and high in casualties, but it worked.
    • Any unauthorized life forms that enter SCP-100000-J's containment area are to be terminated through an absolutely overkill procedure that ends with the subject being launched into the sun and all members of the O5 Council angrily flipping off the sun.
    • In the Resurrection series of tales, Dr. Dan proposes doing this to SCP-096 (a humanoid that chases down and brutally kills anyone who its face or a picture or video thereof and cannot be deterred from doing so by any means), noting that this would actually have a fairly-good chance of terminating the otherwise-unstoppable monster. As it turns out, the Foundation never actually went through with this plan... at least not before Moon Champion did it for them.
  • The Zero Punctuation review of Assassin's Creed had, as a last line, "Give it a chance, but I can't blame you if you end up trying to fire it into the sun."
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd ends his review of Superman 64 by flying into space Superman style and hurling the cartridge into the sun.
  • According to internet meme, once per year Chuck Norris selects one lucky kid to be thrown into the sun.
    • In M.U.G.E.N, he does the reverse. He drops the sun on you!!!
  • DEATH BATTLE!:
    • In Thor vs Raiden, the loser's corpse ends up getting flung into the sun. It's Raiden's.
    • As their battle reached its end, Goku attempted to blast Superman into the sun with a Kamehameha. While he was able to do it, he realized too late that not only did Superman survive, he gains power from absorbing solar radiation and being within the sun further amplified his powers.
    • Kirby vs Majin Buu ended with Kirby spitting Kid Buu's blast back at him and blasting him into the sun, which was enough to eradicate every trace of him and prevent him from regenerating.
    • Segata Sanshiro knocks Chuck Norris into the sun. Being Chuck Norris, he comes out the other side completely unharmed. However, this causes the sun to collapse into a black hole.
    • Thanos flings a moon at Darkseid that ultimately sends him into the sun. Not one to leave things to chance, Thanos then uses the Infinity Gauntlet to turn the sun into a black hole for the finishing blow. Darkseid simply grows star-sized and climbs out of the event horizon before crushing the black hole to nothingness in his grip.
    • Sailor Galaxia flings Beerus into the sun. Being a god, he comes out the other side completely unharmed. He later returns the favor by blasting her towards the sun that had become a black hole before blasting her to pieces and having said pieces be sucked into it.
    • Goku Black vs Reverse-Flash ends with Reverse-Flash hurling Black's remains into the sun, which then explodes for good measure as the victor uses his time-warping abilities to escape. Boomstick lampshades the repeated usage of the trope after that.
      Boomstick: You know, we've sent enough people to that Sun, we really should have a timeshare.
    • Saitama vs Popeye had Popeye knocked into the sun from the force of giving Saitama a Human Hammer-Throw. Since Popeye uses Toon Physics, he simply jumps off the surface of the sun unharmed to launch himself back to Earth.
    • Martian Manhunter vs Silver Surfer had the Surfer hurl the Martian into a star. Though fire is normally a Martian's weakness, he manages to survive through sheer willpower, so they continue their battle inside the star.
  • This MinutePhysics video explains why doing this is actually harder than it's supposed to be. The video also explains some alternate solutions: either go to the outskirts of the Solar System (where the speed to shed is lower) or use gravitational assists to slow down and/or direct the thing into the Sun.
  • A recurring joke by TomServo3 in her series "Tom's Terrifying Tales From The Toaster". Usually suggested by Thomas and Alfred.
    "Let's throw him in the fire"
    "Nooo! Let's throw him in The Sun"

    Western Animation 
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "Three Men and a Comic Book", Bart shows Lisa a Radioactive Man comic in which he punches Dr. Crab into the sun, followed by RM saying "Hot enough for ya?"
    • In "Treehouse of Horror X", Homer and Bart stow away on a rocket that they think is taking humanity's best and brightest to another planet. It turns out they're actually on a rocket full of the dregs of humanity (including notorious celebrities such as Dr. Laura, Dan Quayle, Ross Perot, Courtney Love, Tom Arnold, Paulie Shore and Rosie O' Donnell), and have been launched towards the Sun. Once Bart and Homer realize their mistake, they open the airlock just to make the end come faster.
    • One episode also featured a comic book where a Captain Ersatz of the Hulk kicked a tidal wave into the Sun.
    • One episode of The Itchy & Scratchy Show has the titular duo pointing guns at each other that get larger and larger until they are half the size of the earth. The end result: Scratchy winds up being shot out of Itchy's gun, and into the sun.
  • Futurama:
    • When Fry arrives in the future in "Space Pilot 3000", Leela tells him that if he doesn't do his assigned job of delivery boy, he will be fired... out of a cannon, into the sun.
    • And, of course, this is the fate of the original big ball of garbage in "A Big Piece of Garbage".
    • In "The Farnsworth Parabox", Hermes is going to throw a box that is a portal to (and contains) an alternate universe into the sun.
      Farnsworth: Only the nuclear inferno of the sun has enough energy to ensure its total destruction!
      Bender: I could hit it with a shovel.
      Farnsworth: That's not good enough!
    • And another:
      Fry: Aww, can't we just hurl it into the sun and say we delivered it?
      Bender: That still sounds like too much work. Let's toss it out the airlock, and say we tossed it into the sun.
    • The Real World: The Sun
      Man on TV: [screams] I'm burning to death!
      Leela: [scoffs] You know how much an apartment that big would cost on the Sun?
    • In "Cold Warriors" this almost happens to all of New New York after an outbreak of a once extinct disease (the common cold), but only because they ran out of piranhas.
  • In Drawn Together, Captain Hero did this to his home planet. Subverted in another episode where he considers throwing guns into the sun but opts to flush them down a toilet instead.
  • In one episode of Rocko's Modern Life, Really Really Big Man tells a boy he's carrying that he'll throw a nuclear missile into the sun, then throws the boy by mistake.
  • Justice League:
    • Inverted in "Eclipsed" when the (possessed) Justice League tries to get rid of the sun by throwing a MacGuffin into it. After getting better, they throw another one to reverse the effects.
    • In "Wake the Dead", Hawkgirl makes a crack about AMAZO teleporting Solomon Grundy into the sun.
    • In "To Another Shore", Wonder Woman gives the frozen corpse of an ancient warrior the ultimate Viking Funeral by launching his longship into the Sun.
    • In "Destroyer", the Flash suggests this to Green Lantern when dealing with a giant, towering machine... then feels embarrassed for mentioning it, only to be told that it could work. Even though it "doesn't quite make escape velocity", it's still an awesome moment for both of them. This may have been an in-joke referencing a 2004 Usenet thread, where producer Dwayne McDuffie responded to a suggestion that the previous week's episode could have been resolved by tossing the menace into the sun: "Our version of Green Lantern can't, Power Rings are nowhere near as mighty as they are in the DCU. The Darkheart was simply too big and heavy. Although it does suggest a really interesting spin-off, where every week GL throws whoever is attacking into the sun."
  • X-Men: The Animated Series: Jean Grey, as the Phoenix, flies into the sun with the M'Kraan Crystal.
  • Invader Zim:
    • In the episode "Planet Jackers," Zim has to stop a pair of aliens who want to use Earth to fuel their planet's dying sun.
    • In another episode, the Tallest sent Zim's ship flying toward the sun. He gets better.
    • In still another episode, Zim was seen experimenting with shooting chickens into orbit with a planned trajectory that intercepted the sun.
  • In one episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), an artifact-powered spell is cast from a large tower to turn the world's population into snakemen. He-Man solves the crisis by lifting the entire tower and throwing it into the sun. At no other point in the series is he shown as REMOTELY that strong.
  • In Exo Squad, that's where the human undesirables are sent into by the Neosapiens.
  • In the South Park episode "Tom's Rhinoplasty", Wendy thinks the substitute teacher has been hitting on her boyfriend, Stan. In response, she somehow gets a bunch of Iraqis to arrest her under charges of being a fugitive then shoot her into the sun. What makes it even funnier was that the teacher was a lesbian with no interest in Stan.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Captain Planet once disposes of a huge amount of nuclear waste by throwing it into the sun. He does this semi-frequently, especially with any episode involving Duke Nukem.
  • In an episode of The Magic School Bus, they disposed of an asteroid about to hit their school this way. Even though it had plainly taken days for it to reach Earth, the asteroid went from Earth orbit to the Sun in seconds (this was lampshaded in the phone segment).
  • An episode of Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! has Dr. Phibes plot to throw a group of octuplets who are more beautiful than him into the sun using a rocket.
  • In The Batman, Superman throws a lead can (he thought was) containing Kryptonite into the sun.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show:
    • Stimpy flies into the sun in "I Was a Teenage Stimpy".
    • In "The Scotsman in Space", Commander Hoek and Cadet Stimpy are burned alive by the sun.
  • Superfriends:
    • In the première of The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians, the Superfriends gather all of Darkseid's Seeds of Doom on Earth and toss them into the sun.
    • Later in that same season, after Superman dies due to extreme kryptonite poisoning (there was a mountain of the stuff), the Justice League honor him by laying him to rest in the Sun. Problem was, Supes wasn't dead, he had merely forced himself into a Kryptonian trance to survive the radiation, so now they have to get him back before Darkseid conquers the Earth in his absence.
  • In the Superman: The Animated Series episode "New Kids in Town", Brainiac is seen falling into the sun after his attempted escape is thwarted by young Clark Kent, aided by Legion of Super-Heroes members Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, and Chameleon Boy.
  • In Earthworm Jim, Jim, Peter Puppy, and their next-door neighbor flew straight through the sun, surviving only by using SPF 1 Million.
  • The original The Transformers series has two examples:
    • After humanity is duped into thinking they're really the bad guys, the Autobots are forced to leave Earth and go back to Cybertron. But Megatron reprograms the ship to carry them into the sun instead. He must have forgotten Cosmos turned into a flying saucer, who saved them with a giant energy net.
    • The Quintessons revive Optimus Prime as a zombie to destroy the Transformers, but his original personality starts to resurface, and he launches himself to the sun in a spaceship to stop their plot (he didn't get there, though his eventual return was Cut Short).
  • An episode of Eek! The Cat had the Squishy Bearz take a ride to Jupiter in a rocket built by Professor Wiggly. Before lift-off, the Professor points to a comically large switch and warns them the switch must remain in the position marked "Jupiter" and not the other position, marked "Sun". One of the Squishy Bearz asks why he built the switch in the first place, and the Professor exclaims they're not sophisticated enough to understand. Hilarity Ensues.
  • This is how WordGirl destroys Mr. Big's Lexonite machine at the end of the episode "WordGirl Makes a Mistake."
  • The "Best Spaceship Ever" skit from Robot Chicken has a kid dream up of a happy spaceship to put his abusive father in and use it to drive said father into the sun.
  • One DC Nation short has Bizarro taking over Superman's duties. When Brainiac attacks, Bizarro thinks that Superman would hurl the villain into the sun. Since he's supposed to do the opposite, he decides that he'll hurl the sun into the villain. It, uh, doesn't quite work... Turns out it's kind of hard to grab the sun.
  • In Oscar's Orchestra, one episode beings In Medias Res ends with the heroes captured and shoved in a sun-bound rocket.
  • Golan the Insatiable once accidentally threw an old man into the sun when he only meant for the man to tackle a nearby pigeon.
  • In the Monsters vs. Aliens (2013) episode "Educational Television", Sqweep's portable alien TV becomes so infuriated by B.O.B.'s neverending torrent of stupidity that it attempts to do this to the planet.
  • A Running Gag in Atomic Puppet. It's AP's favourite way of disposing of the threat of an episode.
  • In the finale of Regular Show, Pops sacrifices himself by hurling himself and Anti-Pops into a star, ending their cycle of fighting and saving the entire universe.
  • In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius episode "Men at Work", Jimmy tricks the automated McSpanky's restaurant into flying to the sun. However, the lifeless corpse of McSpanky's survives, allowing it to become an alien spaceship.
  • Happens to Lord Boxman in OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes courtesy of Darrell. The sun farted him back to Earth a couple months later, with no lasting damage.
  • Future-Worm!:
    • In one short, Danny and Future-Worm go back in time to stop Danny from slipping on a banana peel and tie it to a rocket to launch it into the sun, but are stopped when they're told that this will cause the sun to explode.
    • Parodied by Robo-Carp Infinity claiming he has to fly himself and Mega Zombie Carp into the sun, then correcting himself by saying "er, I mean, the moon", in order to stop Mega Zombie Carp.
  • On Codename: Kids Next Door, Cree's initial ultimate goal in the second season is to release the clamps keeping the Kids Next Door's headquarters tethered to the moon, which will cause it to slowly drift into the sun. However, Numbuh 274, in an attempt to evade being decommissioned after it's discovered that he'll soon be turning 13 (the maximum age for the majority of Kids Next Door operatives), attempts it before her and is thwarted, so when Cree finally arrives and he tells her that he already failed, she decides that it's time for plan B.
  • On Frisky Dingo, Killface's Doomsday Device is stated to be able to do this to the Earth. When it's activated at the end of the first season, it instead propels the Earth away from the sun, thereby reversing Global Warming.
  • Craig McCracken's Whoopass Girls student film "A Sticky Situation" had the girls attacking the Amoeba Boys, only to get trapped in their cell structures. The girls fly up to the sun, which melts the Amoebas but curiously does nothing to the girls.
  • I Am Weasel: Weasel turns down a mission of being the first astronaut on the sun. So, naturally, I.R. Baboon volunteers.
  • We Bare Bears: In "Googs", the founder of the titular company tries to forcefully send Panda to the moon, and it turns out that Grizz and Ice Bear ended up on the ship as well. They try to steer it back to Earth but accidentally send it towards the sun instead, and Panda ends up staying behind on the ship when the escape pod only has room for two. It turns out the whole thing was just a VR simulation, but the bears are left traumatized by it.

    Real Life 
  • From Earth's orbit, it would take a delta-v (change in velocity, usually written as ∆v) of 26.3 km/sec to de-orbit into the Sun. To compare, that's 58% more ∆v than the 16.6 km/sec required to achieve a velocity that would exit the Solar System from Earth. It would also be a journey of a couple of months before it finally sees its fiery demise. The energy required to send something faster—and more directly—into our home star would be insane.
  • We are just about starting to get to the point where we actually can have a space probe reach the sun. As the leading scientist behind the project explains, this is an extremely difficult process mainly due to the need to slow down the orbital momentum this probe has from being launched from Earth and involves using both one of the most powerful launch vehicles available and the gravity of Venus to slow the probe down in a process of seven approaches to Venus over a period of six years.
    • The Parker Solar Probe was launched on Aug 12, 2018, and is planned to reach the sun in mid 2025. Once it's mission is finished, it is planned to dispose of the remains into the sunnote 
    • The Parker Solar Probe is helped by ESA's Solar Orbiter, launched in February 2020, that while will not approach as close to the Sun as the former — "just" a bit closer than Mercury — will study the Daystar with different instruments. Similarly to the Parker Solar Probe, it will need several fly-bys of Venus plus one of Earth to reach its destination. Its later fly-bys of Venus, however, are not designed to bring the Solar Orbiter any closer to the Sun, but rather increase the inclination of its orbit so it can see the Sun's polar regions more clearly.
  • One application of the Grand Tack Hypothesis posits that the reason why the solar system has no Super-Earths, a very common type of rocky planet in the Milky Way, is that Jupiter’s rampage through the inner solar system may have launched them and a number of other primordial planets into each other or into the Sun.
  • Some scientists are considering this as a viable means of getting rid of nuclear waste. The actual amount of radioactive waste is relatively small, and by using a mass driver can be easily accelerated up to 30 km/s. Point this in the opposite direction of Earth's orbital velocity, and the waste will just fall into the Sun (which is already incredibly radioactive). Alternatively, point it the other way, and it'll escape the Solar System. The problems include this being very expensive - sending stuff out of Earth's gravity well costs a lot of money even when it's just a few people and their life-support supplies, never mind thousands of tons of solid waste per year - and extremely risky. One small error, and it's raining plutonium in the opposite hemisphere.
    • It's been noted that once orbital elevator technology (which would make delivering cargo into space safe and relatively cheap) is perfected, using the sun (or for that matter, anywhere that's not Earth) as disposal area for nuclear waste really would be viable. Though we're also getting better at recycling nuclear waste so maybe it'll be unnecessary by the time we're actually capable of doing it.
  • May have been subverted by Kepler-70b and Kepler-70c, two (maybe three, assuming they existed at all which as of now seems unlikelynote )) Earth-sized extrasolar planets hot as Hell and back thought to orbit the hot B subdwarf star Kepler-70. Controversially, it's been hypothesized that these planets were engulfed by their star during its prior red giant phase, but actually survived this solar bath, to re-emerge when Kepler-70 shed its outer surface and became a subdwarf.
  • Scientists have theorized that this might happen to the Earth one day: when the sun becomes a red giant it'll lose enough mass for the Earth to move away and not simply be consumed, however the new orbit could decay and as a result plummet into our dying starnote .
  • The orbit of the exoplanet Kepler-1658b is currently decaying, and it is expected to fall into its star in about two and a half million years.
  • In 2020, astronomers observed a star suddenly flare with a brightness consistent with a planet the size of Jupiter falling into it. They inferred that something like this happens somewhere in the Milky Way about once a year.

Into the fiery orb with ye!

 
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Alternative Title(s): Throw It Into The Sun

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AVGN's Superman 64 Follow-Up

The Nerd originally reviewed Superman 64 back in 2008, where he found the game so bad he threw it into the sun. 11 years later, it comes back, and he has to examine the game even further in a follow-up review

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