Throw Down the Bomblet

Heheheheh. Boom.

"Explosive weapons are best used when dealing with crowds or in situations where precision is not a high priority."

— Fallout: New Vegas loading screen.

When it comes to Fiction, nearly every weapon can be found as a character’s weapon of choice. They can range from the wildly improbable or impractical to the mundane. Somewhere in between these lie those who use thrown explosives and incendiaries as a weapon of choice.

A person who wields grenades as a weapon of choice will frequently be portrayed as having poor impulse control. They may feel about explosions the same way a Pyromaniac feels about fire. As such, this trope frequently overlaps with Mad Bomber. They may also have a "fiery" or carefree personality. Oddly, there are a small number of grenadiers who are coldly logical and controlled in temperament, perhaps to contrast their fiery and out-of-control weapons, and are often seen remarking that someone less disiplined wouldn't last long using it. Usually, they favor Grenade Tag for the calculated subterfuge.

In reality, grenades and their ilk are dangerous, unpredictable weapons that are reserved for specific situations where they aren't likely to cause collateral damage. However, in fictionland, they can frequently be thrown at any enemy, regardless of range or surroundings, without fear of injury to oneself or one's allies.^note This tension may in fact explain both of the frequently seen personality types. Explosives are messy, dangerous weapons that require a great deal of care and precision to use effectively, and so impulsive bombers reflect on the mercurial nature of the explosives themselves, while calculating ones are more representative of actual demolitions experts.

This trope will usually only show up in settings that have sufficient technology for thrown explosives to exist, although this isn't always the case.

This trope always results in Stuff Blowing Up and may be PG Explosives. See Molotov Cocktail for one specific type of weapon this person might use. See also Hey, Catch! and Catch and Return. If the explosives come from superpowers instead of mundane objects, it's Having a Blast. Grenade Spam is the equivalent for video game mechanics.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Nice Hollystone of Baccano! is an explosives expert and keeps numerous grenades on her person. Or in her person. She really likes explosions.
• In Brave10, part of Benmaru's bag of tricks includes grenades enough for carpet bombing, despite being a poor abandoned child.
• Btooom! almost exclusively uses bombs.
• In the Coyote Ragtime Show, each of Madame Marciano's 12 SISTERs has a weapon. One of the smaller ones prefers very large hand grenades.
• The Bombmon from Digimon Fusion are cartoon bombs with whale-like features that act as a living version of this, being thrown to attack enemies by various characters in both the anime and the manga. It helps that they're completely unharmed by their own explosions.
• Lan Fan and Fu from Fullmetal Alchemist frequently use bombs in addition to hand-to-hand combat. While Fu uses various types of explosives such as flash bombs and tear gas bombs, Lan Fan almost exclusively uses grenades. Edward is able to confirm her identity after being caught in one of her explosions, (recognizing the previous destruction she had caused, which nearly killed him).
• Minene Uryu from Future Diary, completely in sync with her reputation as a terrorist.
• In the anime Gunsmith Cats, "Minnie" May Hopkins has a slight tendency to use home-made concussion grenades in inappropriate situations. However, she's every bit as skilled in their use as Rally is with handguns. A single one will just leave a couple of gang members stunned for a minute or so. She can use three to blow out a pursuing car's driveshaft. And when she's really pissed off, she'll set off a dozen of them at once, causing extensive damage to whatever building she's in (typically shown with a Discretion Shot of the outside of the building with all the windows breaking and billowing out smoke).
• Kindergarten Wars:
  • Hana fights by using grenades and sending them towards her opponents with her baseball bat. She can take down an helicopter using them.
  • Haruo uses fireworks that pack enough power to destroy a building.
• Isis in Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force battles through the use of various explosives and other chemicals. This allows her to go toe-to-toe with the villains who have been all but invincible against the previous heroes, as their Anti-Magic doesn't help against getting blown up.
• Two members of the Akatsuki in Naruto favored explosives. Deidara's body produced explosive clay (basically C-4) from mouths in the palms of both hands, and prior to joining the Akatsuki was a member of the "Explosion Corps". Konan was a little less focused, with her powers being centered around paper, but after Tobi stole Nagato's remains she deployed 600 billion explosive paper bombs against him which took a full 10 minutes to all detonate.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Homura Akemi fights exclusively with pipebombs in the first timeline. While very efficient, other Puella Magis complained about possible collateral damage. Homura answered by adding guns to her arsenal. Lots and lots of guns.
• In Ranma ½, Kodachi Kuno's personal trademark is her use of grenades and timebombs disguised as bouquets of black roses to dispense paralysis powder and sleeping powder.
• In Reborn! (2004) Gokudera is a bomber with the personality to match. Although for firey personality, he displays good control over his projectiles.
• In Rurouni Kenshin, Sanosuke's former resistance comrade Katsuhiro Tsukioka employs this tactic, with the aid of flint rings on his fingers to ignite the fuses as and when needed. Henya from the Juppongatana uses dynamite sticks to both sustain his high-flying style and attack his opponents.
• Jillas in Slayers, a gunslinger humanoid fox with a penchant for using any sort of explosive means.

Comic Books

• Bomb Queen: Bomb Queen fights with powered gauntlets that let her toss out miniature sticky bombs.
• Hunter's Hellcats: Juggler, The Squad's Demolitions Expert, would usually enter combat by hurling a volley of grenades at the enemy as he charged.
• Red Robin: Tim is decidedly unimpressed and annoyed when he runs into the grenade favoring Detonator, a member of the League of Assassins team the Seven Men of Death;
  "Who uses grenades in close-quarters combat? That guy, apparently."
• Sin City: There is a grenade-throwing IRA mercenary in the story Big Fat Kill. He mentions that while he prefers using grenades, he'll use his knife against Dwight since he killed his friends. At that point, It's Personal.
• Spider-Man: The Green Goblin and those who followed his designs all use pumpkin-shaped grenades as their weapon of choice. Though they will use explosives not shaped like pumpkins if necessary.
• SpyBoy: Bombshell's weapon.
• Tomahawk: Although they were not her only weapon, Miss Liberty would often enter combat by flinging fused powder horns from horseback to confuse and scatter the enemy.

Fan Works

• The Discworld of A.A. Pessimal expands on the Guild of Assassins and the training delivered to its members. Johanna Smith-Rhodes arrives in Ankh-Morpork, aged nineteen, and as a girl who has come to Guild attention for an exploit at Home in Howondaland. This involved deep penetration into the enemy country next door in order to deliver a rather large explosion to a warlord. After which she fights her way out and returns safely. Johanna becomes, after graduation, the Guild's go-to person for explosives, and pioneers the use of small, portable, and easily thrown bomblets. In short, she makes her own hand grenades. Scroll forward by a quarter-century and her middle daughter is a Guild student. Johanna has mellowed. But her daughter Famke sees the possibilities when her big sister's boyfriend teaches her how to bowl a cricket ball.
  "Hey, some of Mum's devices are designed to be thrown!"
  Bekki winced. Famke and hand grenades was exactly what the Disc needed.
• In Dreaming of Sunshine, Shikako's first weapon-of-choice happens to be explosive tags and notes. Her reliance on them eventually morphs into a Running Gag.
• The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Rex the Diamond Dog is skilled at creating and using explosive potions.
• Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: As in Ranma ½ canon, Kodachi Kuno uses black rose bouquets to conceal grenades full of sleeping/paralysis powders. After deciding she needs a more "serious" fighting style, she reinvents her arsenal, including creating miniaturized grenades in the shape of roses, and altering their potential array of contents.

Film—Live Action

• In The Tournament, Petrov announces his arrival in the church by scattering a spray of grenades across the floor. Lai Lai shoots the first one away from her and has to dodge the rest.

Literature

• In The Dark Tower, when we finally meet the Crimson King, he's a shrieking old man whose only remaining weapon is his score of sneetches.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen has Morath munitions which are primitive explosives contained in ceramic jars. Malazan armies use them with devastating results to the enemy. They are carried by sapper specialists who are usually elite soldiers. The regular troops consider sappers to be madmen for their willingness to carry and use the explosives.
• Universal Monsters: In the final battle of book 1, as an effort to weaken Dracula, Captain Bob throws a set of Communion wafers at him. They end up functioning like this, exploding on contact and stunning him.

Live Action TV

• Doctor Who:
  • The Seventh Doctor's companion Ace brought her own supply of homemade explosives (Nitro-9) on her travels and would toss canisters of it with gay abandon. The Doctor tended to discourage this... except when it was useful to him ("Hand me some of that Nitro-9 you're not carrying").
  • Strax, Madame Vastra's Sontaran butler, frequently suggests, requests, or sulks about not being allowed to use grenades. That, or acid.

Tabletop Games

• Grenedier, one of the villains from the Kingdom of Champions supplement.
• Games Workshop games:
  • In Blood Bowl, players with the Bombardier skill (such as the Goblin Bombardier, and the star players Bomber Dribblesnot and Boomer Eziasson) are armed with bombs that they can throw in the same way as making a pass. Use such weapons will get them automatically sent off by the referee at the end of the drive.
  • Level 2 Demolition Specialists in Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team 2018 are able to take the 'Grenadier' skill, making any grenade weapon they use more likely to hit their enemies, to represent their expertise with such explosives.
• In the Legend System, the Demo Man track for rogues favours the use of homemade incendiaries as a primary weapon. Of note, this requires a high Intelligence; sadly, Wisdom is only required if you mix it with the ninja-themed defensive track.
• Pathfinder's second edition has the Alchemist, who specializes in various brews, mutagens, and bombs, with the Bomber specialty fitting this trope.
  • Pathfinder supplement Spheres of Power features an Alchemy sphere that specializes in the creation of splash weapons, including literal grenades (as well as smaller cherry bombs).

Video Games

• In Battle Bugs Ant, Bee, and Pill Bug throw bombs. Robber Fly can use a bomb too, but only after stealing it from enemy bugs.
• Bioshock's Nitro Splicers only use tin can bombs or molotovs as weapons. Jack and Delta can catch their bomblets with Telekinesis and toss them back at the Splicers.
• Multiple characters in Bomberman, including the eponymous character, as one might guess from the title.
• Borderlands:
  • Roland the Soldier has a skill which allows him to regenerate his grenades as he kills more enemies with grenades, ensuring a constant supply of explosions. The variety of Trick Bomb upgrades available to grenades makes this a useful skill for people who can place explosives.
  • Conversely, Brick, the, uh, Brick of the game, simply gets skills and gear that upgrade the power of his grenades. Though his grenades won't regenerate like Roland's can, they can do much more damage.
• Borderlands 2:
  • Axton the Commando has the Grenadier skill, which increases the number of grenades he can carry. Grenadier class mods give boosts to grenade damage and put extra points into the Grenadier skill. A Grenadier-built Axton is thus, duh, very much encouraged to use grenades all the time. He also has Do or Die, which allows him to throw grenades in Fight for Your Life mode, and various skills that increase explosive damage.
  • Krieg the Psycho has a few skills of his own boost explosive damage and tosses sticks of dynamite in Fight for Your Life if he has the Light the Fuse skill selected.
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!:
  • One of Claptrap's unlockable Action Packages for his VaultHunter.EXE is "Torgue Fiesta", which causes him and his allies to randomly spew out grenades in front of him.
  • Jack's Body Double has various skills that improve his grenades, including a skill that gives him a free grenade throw whenever he kills four enemies (meaning that he can potentially have endless grenades as long as he kills at least four per toss) as well as being able to order his Digi-Jacks to toss grenades.
• Borderlands 3: Moze's Demolition Woman skill tree is all about grenades and splash damage: her grenades can Critical Hit, can Life Drain, have a chance to replenish ammo (including more grenades) on hitting, have a chance to double their blast radius, improve her Action Skill cooldown rate when hitting an enemy, and of course she can carry more grenades.
• Bounty of One:
  • The Parting Gift item allows a player to drop a timed explosive when they dash, blowing up an area of enemies after 3 seconds.
  • The Mole Men enemies attack by throwing dynamite that explodes an area after a short while, forcing the player to evacuate. This can get annoying as you cannot attack while moving.
  • The second Sheriff Crazy Denzel is a Mole Man who throws lots of grenades around as his only battle strategy. His attacks include throwing sets of 5-6 dynamite out at once or even tunneling underground and throwing out a trail of dynamite wherever he goes.
• Bug:
  • The first boss, a snail... which grows a helicopter out of its shell, flies, and starts dropping increasingly deadly bombs all over the arena.
  • The second world has literal army ants that shoot out grenades from their tails. At one point you have to fight a miniboss version of them that has a hard-to-avoid Grenade Spam attack.
• Suminagashi from Bushido Blade 2 uses three small bombs as his subweapon.
• Ray in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood can throw dynamite sticks (Thomas can't).
• Various bomb and grenade-related powers can be obtained in Freedom Force. Liberty Lad in particular specializes in them.
• In Chack N Pop, Chack'n (who happens to be a cutesy Waddling Head) attacks by tossing smoke bombs to either side.
• Code Name: S.T.E.A.M: Several examples.
  • Henry Fleming uses an eagle-shaped grenade during his special attack, Eagle Strike.
  • John Henry's primary weapon, the Bear Grenade, has a large area of effect that requires little precision.
  • Queequeg qualifies, as well, with his primary weapon, the Penguin Lobber. This unorthodox weapon launches a mechanical penguin, which waddles over to an enemy before exploding.
• Every game in the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series featured thermal detonator-throwing Gran as one class of enemy.
• Dark Souls: There are firebomb-throwing skeletons in Undead Burg, and they can be quite the Goddamned Bats. On the other hand, throwing firebombs like a maniac is a valid way to fight your way through this Nintendo Hard game, especially if you're weak to melee and don't have a spell to sling.
• In Strategy/RTS hybrid game Dawn of Titans from Natural Motion Games, the first Elite Mooks unit you get are the Grenadiers who are of the Unak people and require the Unak Citadel to create. Starting off at an impressive Level 6, a squad of Grenadiers has each member throw a bomb at the targeted enemy, often instantly killing lesser enemies in a single blast.
• In Dawn of War II: Retribution, the Ork Kommando hero, Spookums, is armed with a shotgun, but nearly all of his most powerful abilities involve explosives. He can throw Stikkbombs, smoke bombs, anti-tank Melta Bombs, and truck tyres...
• Dong Zhuo has become one of these by the time of Dynasty Warriors 7 DLC, which carried over into Dynasty Warriors Next, Warriors Orochi 3 and Dynasty Warriors 8. His standard moveset involves throwing a lot of bombs around, employing either an excessive amount of bomb spam or setting up timed traps with them. It is possible to give this weapon to almost any character by the time of Dynasty Warriors 8, so you can have an entire Mad Bomber cast if so desired.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, one can encounter the Powder Gangers, a gang of escaped convicts who favor dynamite and are not afraid to throw it around liberally and in large quantities. Then there's the Boomers, who go from merely favoring bombing everything that opposes them to building a sort of cult of explosives. And it is totally possible to create an explosives expert, throwing dynamite and grenades, then moving to grenade launchers and even a Fat Man (portable miniature nuke launcher), with the added benefit of being able to plant/disarm mines more effectively.
  • The Gun Runners Arsenal DLC includes the aptly-named "Mad Bomber" perk which unlocks more recipes for homemade explosives, culminating in the Fat Mine, a Fat Man mini-nuke retrofitted into a proximity mine. It has something for everyone though, even an explosives fanatic on a budget: The recipes include a bomb made out of a tin can and gunpowder pulled from bullets, and the cheapest grenade in the game made from three Micro-Fusion Cells (laser gun batteries).
• Thrown bombs as a character's basic attack appear a number of times in the Final Fantasy series, starting with one of the playable characters in Final Fantasy VII Before Crisis. Other habitual bomb-tossers include Ashe in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, anybody who chooses to acquire any of the licenses for the various hand-bomb class weapons in Final Fantasy XII, and the Dummied Out Nu'mou job of Transmuter from Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
• Final Fight: Rolento's critical phase will have him throwing grenades while skittering around on the elevator rail. When defeated, he'll use a few on himself.
• Goldeneye Rogue Agent: Though James Bond has been known to carry grenades in other games, Rogue Agent's main character always has five grenades as his default left-hand weapon.
• The Demolitionist mastery in Grim Dawn gets access to a variety of grenade skills, including flashbangs, a Molotov Cocktail, electrified caltrops, thermite mines, cluster bombs, and plain old concussion grenades.
• The Engineer profession in Guild Wars 2 can equip a backpack full of assorted types of grenades, throwing between two and six with every use.
• Halo popularized the concept of a dedicated grenade button in a First-Person Shooter.
• Characters specializing in the Throwing skill in Jagged Alliance 2 can be trained as one of these after they're given a proper supply of grenades. Very useful on night maps: grenades don't give away your position, for one, and the same skill applies to throwing knives, which can One-Hit Kill unaware enemies.
• The Knight class in King Arthur's Gold can carry up to three bombs, which explode in Bomberman fashion and destroy both blocks and enemy units. Interestingly, the thrower can be hit by the explosion (to facilitate bomb-jumping) but not other teammates.
• The Napalm Bomber from Game Boy's Kung Fu Master uses incendiary rounds as his gimmick.
• League of Legends has Ziggs, the Hexplosives Expert. He fits this trope to a T - he carries such a huge amount of bombs that, being a yordle, a member of a teensy furry race, he is more bomb than animal (by mass). He throws them as his basic attack and two of his abilities, one of which produces a whole cluster of them. His ability repertoire is closed by a remotely detonateable satchel charge and a Mega Inferno Bomb, which is powerful enough to produce a mushroom cloud.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: There are a few soldiers posted on Hyrule Castle's walls, who throw bombs down on Link.
  • In Hyrule Warriors, bombs are a subweapon that can be used by anyone. Several bombs are thrown by default to take out multiple enemies, although they're by far the most inaccurate out of all the subweapons and can't be aimed reliably.
• The Thief Assist Character from Magic Sword throws bombs at a high angle, making him somewhat effective against airborne threats.
• The N7 Demolisher Engineer is a Mass Effect 3 multiplayer character whose skills revolve around nothing but grenades. She can deploy homing grenades and arc grenades, and she's capable of setting up a supply pylon that regularly spawns more grenades to refill her (or her team's) ammo stock. The girl wears fully sealed Powered Armor and doesn't get much characterisation, but since she's N7 and therefore one of humanity's very best Special Forces operatives, it's safe to assume she leans more on the "cold and logical" side than treading Mad Bomber territory.
• In the Kirby series, there exists a pair of enemies known as the Poppy Bros. While Poppy Bros. Sr. always threw bombs at Kirby, it took quite while for Jr. to follow suit. Starting with Kirby Super Star, the Poppy Bros. Jr. mooks consistently attack by throwing bombs. Either way, swallowing them will provide Kirby with the Bomb ability.
• Metal Gear
  • Fatman from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a bomb expert in both setting and defusing bombs, though he only uses the former skill in his Boss Fight.
  • Black Arts Viper in Metal Gear: Ghost Babel is also an expert at setting up traps with bombs at incredible speed.
  • And predating both, good ole' Red Blaster in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, standing in the ceiling and chucking grenades at you.
  • All games also provide Snake with usable grenades and even a grenade launcher at times.
  • In Super Smash Bros., Snake has a variety of explosives at his disposal. Due to realistic bullets being too small to see in regular gameplay (and not exactly rating-friendly), Nintendo opted to have Snake use explosive weapons (which are rarer) in Brawl. He can use a mortar launcher, C4 packs, frag grenades, claymores, remote control missile launchers, an RPG and, for his Final Smash, a grenade launcher.
• Mega Man
  • From the Mega Man (Classic) series there are several Robot Masters, like Bomb Man (1), Crash Man (2), Napalm Man (5), Burst Man (7), Grenade Man (8), Commando Man (10), and Blast Man (11).
  • There are tons of different explosives that can be utilized in the Mega Man Battle Network series, including grenades, mines, time bombs, cartoon bombs, and more. Some e-Reader cards (Which were regrettably removed in the US versions) even allowed Mega Man to replace his standard charged shot with one of the aforementioned explosives.
• Mortal Kombat
  • Riot officer Kurtis Stryker, who can throw grenades at two different heights, and even in pairs.
  • Cyrax, who debuted alongside him, can throw delayed-explosive grenades at close or far range, which would send the character soaring through the sky.
  • The Joker in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe can use bombs in much the same way Cyrax does.
  • No-Face in Mortal Kombat: Special Forces uses both bombs and a flamethrower to fight.
  • Sonya Blade's "Demolition" variation in Mortal Kombat X focuses on using grenades.
• Orcs Must Die 2 features two of these. The Dwarven Guardians (who aid the player) and the Gnoll Grenadiers. The former will stand largely stationary and lob grenades a medium distance at approaching foes (switching to their hammers when in melee) while the latter will sprint around the map lobbing grenades at Guardians and the Player(s).
• Overwatch has one in the form of Junkrat, an explosives-obsessed outlaw from Australia. His abilities in-game include a homemade grenade launcher, a land mine that also launches those it explodes on far away, and an exploding car tire. He's not exactly the most normal person in the game.
  • To a lesser extent there's Tracer, whose ultimate ability is a sticky bomb that is a death sentence for almost any non-tanks it gets stuck onto.
• Paladins has Bomb King, a royally explosive robot whose bombs are actually his subjects. He can throw up to six Sticky Bombs and detonate them at will, throw a larger Grumpy Bomb that will explode on its own and stun anyone in its blast radius, and throw a Poppy Bomb that causes a strong knockback to any target in range, including himself. His ultimate, King Bomb, turns himself into a giant rolling bomb that stuns and deals heavy damage upon detonation.
• From Panzer Bandit, playable character Ein can throw bombs two-at-a-time or roll a single one towards his target. His Mirror Boss Tsuvai can only throw two bombs in a close mortar-like angle. Big Bad Dr. Farado has a Spider Tank whose best move is to vomit a dozen bombs into the enemy.
• Jin from Persona 3 uses grenades as his weapon of choice.
• The Dusk Lobber from Plants Vs Zombies 2 lobs exploding buds that deal Splash Damage, essentially miniature bombs. When powered by Moonflower, she will fire a spread of them into adjacent lanes to, causing big damage if the explosions overlap. Her Plant Food drops four larger explosives on four squares, each of them then explodes a 3x3 area for huge damage.
• Primal Carnage: One of the Pyromaniac's secondary items is hand grenades, and another is sticks of dynamite. They're tremendously strong, but you can only hold a few of them at a time and they have a fuse, so they need to be timed right.
• Grenades in Quake II can be optionally tossed on their own instead of with the grenade launcher.
• You can encounter a Mr. X-type Tyrant in Resident Evil: During the Storm in the streets of Raccoon City. The city streets are much easier to maneuver in due to Mr. X's slow walk, so he compensates by laying down claymores to limit your movements. Fortunately, you can lure him and other enemies into the mines to set them off if you're clever.
• All three playable characters from Resonance of Fate can equip the "Grenade Box", which allows them to throw grenades, elemental grenades, Molotov Cocktails, or even dog shit.
• Mollo from Rivals of Aether is a Workshop-original fighter whose fighting style revolves around tossing his bombs. Once he takes out a bomb with his neutral special, he can toss, drop, or even pick them up mid-attack with his other moves, and his game plan involves setting up and placing them to control the battlefield and rack up damage.
• Rockman 7 EP: The 3-Point Burst is an upgraded version of Danger Wrap as it fires three Danger Wraps at the same time.
• Rip Saber from Slam Masters II, who uses hand grenades against his fellow wrestler rivals.
• In Shovel Knight, the Explodatorium boss Plague Knight throws explosive potions of various types constantly as if they were grenades, in addition to spawning exploding vats and utilizing Villain Teleportation. His playable appearance in the expansion Plague of Shadows grants you access to the arsenal his boss fight uses and much more, except instead of teleporting, he can explode his potions beneath him for a boost in his jumps. His Mooks also throw explosives, but as Plague of Shadows reveals, they're only the basic black powder bombs Plague Knight starts the game with.
• The entire premise of the game Silent Bomber is that the player is equipped with an "E-Unit" which allows him to place or throw around bombs.
• Soulcalibur III has the Dagger Create-a-Character style use a small bomb in several of its moves. It is used officially by the Magnificent Bastard Chester from the Alternate Continuity mode Chronicles of the Sword.
• In Spud's Adventure, Gerrit Carrot's special weapon is a bomb that drops instantly and explodes in an outward range for about 3 seconds.
• Doctrine Dark from Street Fighter EX is themed around using bombs in several ways. And wire. Lots of wire. He shares his weapon choice with fellow mercenary Rolento from Final Fight and Street Fighter Alpha. Rolento though adds a tonfa and uses a very fast, acrobatic style. Ibuki gains this ability with her V-Trigger in V, ironically she is also associated with Rolento through her team with him in SFXT.
• There are various green fireworks crates throughout the Greenhorn Islands in The Stretchers. Have the ambulance drivers carry them over to boulders to destroy them, but make sure you pay attention to the time limit!
• One of the twin Smith Bros. in Sunset Riders is this, chucking bombs at you while the other does the same with candles to try to set you on fire.
• Everyone in Team Fortress Classic has some sort of grenade tailored to their class, and gameplay styles were generated from using them. In Team Fortress 2, only the Demoman lobs grenades around, and they never throw them. He's portrayed as a loud, foul tempered and mouthed Violent Glaswegian, but in his intro trailer he notes that he has to be competent and very careful in his work.
  What makes me a good Demoman? If I were a bad Demoman, I wouldn't be sittin' here, discussin' it with you now would I? One crossed wire, one wayward pinch of potassium chlorate, one errant twitch... and kablooie!
• In the Tenchu series, bombs are usually among the selectable items to carry into a mission. They pack a very mean punch but are usually not as effective due to the difficulty to handle and slight delay if it misses, not to mention the high risk of getting caught in the blast radius, which really hurts for poor Rikimaru/Ayame/etc. In terms of characters using bombs, Fatal Shadows has Hitoha, who uses incendiary bombs along with his fire gauntlets.
• In TimeSplitters Future Perfect, enemies can only carry one weapon at a time, and grenades are treated as a specific weapon (compared to TimeSplitters 2, which had some weapons with underslung launchers and various mines^note Which were essentially Sticky Bombs that came in timed, remote control and mine varieties. but otherwise lacked them, probably because explosions were always an instant kill). Meaning any equipped with grenades will only use grenades. This is lampshaded in story mode;
  Mook Officer: Grenadiers; Use your grenades!
• Twisted Metal has both the Ricochet (a big spherical black bomb that sends enemies flying when hit) and Remote (more straightforward remote-controlled bomb) pickups introduced in the second game.
• Alfred Schrödinger from Wild ARMs 3 uses explosives both in and out of battle.
• In World of Warcraft, the goblin race lives by the motto "When in doubt... blow it up. If at first you don't succeed: blow it up again". If you chose the engineer profession, you can opt for either Gnomish or Goblin specialization. The latter allows you to create powerful explosives that are bound to cause you some damage as well.
• The Worms series provides a wide variety of grenade-type weapons, from the basic pineapple grenade or Molotov Cocktail, to bomblet-scattering Cluster Bombs and Banana Bombs to the Holy Hand Grenade. It's quite possible to play exclusively with grenades.
• X-COM soldiers can specialize in grenades, but the game's limit on items that can be carried to the battlefield makes it rather impractical. Aliens make very powerful grenades and sometimes carry no other weapons.
  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown makes this more difficult to pull off, as you're initially limited to one grenade, though in the core game, you can equip two (same or different, doesn't matter) on a Support with Deep Pockets, and a Heavy with Grenadier gives them two uses of an equipped grenade and makes them a bit more powerful (by 1 point). However, the Enemy Within Expansion Pack added the "Tactical Rigging" Foundry upgrade, that gives the base game's Deep Pockets to everyone, and Deep Pockets was re-tooled to give items one extra use, which includes grenades. What's more, if you have the "Training Roulette" Second Wave option enabled, a soldier can get both Deep Pockets and Grenadier. That equals six grenades that, if Frag or Needle, can one-shot Thin Men in Classic difficulty or below, and if Alien, each hurt like a Heavy's regular launcher's rockets but don't need both action points to use and don't have a 10% chance to miss the targeted location^note though they suffer from a shorter launch range.
  • The Long War mod for Enemy Unknown has the Engineer class, descended from the Support. With proper upgrades, they can carry 9 grenades of any kind (3 per slot), 2 free smoke grenades, 3 free battle scanners, and throw all of them 70% further. Alternatively, they can trade 50% (additive) of the extra throwing distance for a rocket launcher or the homing Blaster Launcher, allowing them to pack even more explosives. And it's quite possible for missions to give ample cause to use up all of those.
  • Grenadiers in XCOM 2 can get the Salvo skill. This means that launching a grenade (or using whatever weapon's mounted on the heavy armor they're wearing) doesn't end the turn, so they can do it and then do something else, including sending another grenade down range.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: Larana carries pipe bombs with her on adventures which she uses as her primary weapon.
• Lackadaisy: Rocky's favorite problem-solving tool is molotov cocktails. This is showcased particularly prominently in the web animated short where he finds both a demolitions shed and an excavator and decides to ride said excavator whilst throwing explosives at his enemies whilst cackling like a loon.
• Sleepless Domain: Rue Bahia has the power to produce bottles of a green Magic Potion from inside her coat, which can have various different effects when used. Her primary style of fighting involves throwing potion bottles at her enemies that explode on contact. In contrast to most others with this ability, she's quite cool and collected in battle, and notes at one point that her dangerous and unpredictable powers reflect her (initial) preference to work alone.

Web Original

• Aldrivers, Devourer of Cos: Mahatma Gandhi, who has a huge stockpile of bombs (he claims it's enough to wipe out all the giraffes in California six million times over) that he can access anytime.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, there's a group of repeated antagonists (possibly qualifying as a Quirky Miniboss Squad) known as 'The Rough Rhinos'. Each of them has specialized in a different weapon - including The Faceless, the only one of them wearing a full helmet, who specializes in explosives - specifically, he throws dynamite sticks at anything that moves. On the hero's side, there's Chey, a member of Jeong Jeong's group who uses small grenade-like exploding balls.
• Batman Beyond gives us Mad Stan. His catchphrase (and approximately half his spoken dialog) is "BLOW IT ALL UP!" Yes, the bold and caps are necessary.
• Done repeatedly by the Obliteratrix in the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episode "Pawn of Shadows".
• This is Doyle's attack of choice in The Secret Saturdays.
• The Tick
  I'M THE EVIL MIDNIGHT BOMBER WHAT BOMBS AT MIDNIGHT! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Real Life

• Members of grenadier regiments of 18th-century European Warfare had to be the biggest, brawniest, and most disciplined of an army's troops. Usually tall farmboys, they had to have the strength and force of will to stay in a neat line and march, in-step, while carrying a bomb, a lot of gunpowder, and some form of fire to ignite it to within twenty yards of the enemy (the effective range of a musket being 80 yards). The survivors would then throw very temperamental lumps of gunpowder and iron the size of their own fists (or bigger) at them, and fire their muskets before charging, screaming wildly to channel their fear, into the probably-mostly-dead-and-dying enemy with their bayonets fixed to try and stab them to death. On the plus side, the fact grenadier units tended to have a higher turnover (mortality) rate than other units meant that most armies could afford to pay their grenadiers more than their other soldiers (dead men don't get paid), in addition to giving them extra-fancy uniforms and really nice hats. Please note that the above description applies to "real" grenadiers, that is those actually using bombs as weapons. The term evolved to include units of people chosen for size and strength even if they were not normally using grenades.

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