Why Am I Ticking / Video Games

• Right in the second mission of 007 Racing; upon arriving in New York, James Bond receives a voice message from some anonymous caller that his car has been rigged with a Time Bomb, and there are twelve other bombs planted all over Manhattan. Cue an intense Timed Mission where Bond speeds all around the streets of Manhattan to collect twelve detonators, and then jettison his car into the Hudson River so that all the bombs can detonate safely without hurting anyone.
• In Alpha Protocol, Mike can kill Leland this way. The victim's reaction is priceless.
• In the third act of Amateur Surgeon, Junkyard Guts, who had been previously treated in the first act, asks for Alan Probe's help again specifically because he was ticking. Turns out the "sandwich" given to him by "an attractive stranger" that "tasted like metal" was a timed bomb, which you have to defuse in the eventual surgery.
• The M-60 firecrackers in Army Men II, which are taped to soldiers, making them wander around with a lit fuse on their backs and a bomb as big as them. They show up in three ways: various soldiers (green and others) have them on one level, forcing you to shoot them before they get close; as a usable item which you can put on enemies, disarming them and making them wander around, hopefully killing enemies or at least eventually themselves; and in one of the Have a Nice Death endings, where a firecracker is taped to Sarge, and he can't get it off before exploding.
• In BloodRayne: Betrayal, Rayne can infect enemies by biting them, making them turn green before detonating them. It's capable of infecting other enemies, thus causing chain reactions.
• In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 Crazy Ivan units can cause a case of this to any unit or building they touch, whether it's the enemy, neutral or your own. (Those poor, poor mind-controlled cows!)
• In Cyberia, you play the role of an elite agent sent to a secret research-facility in the arctic, to recover the 'Cyberia Weapon' - apparently, a form of advanced Nanotech. As you progress through the facility, it becomes clear that the barely-controlled nanotech killed most of the workers (and it can kill you too, if you're not really, really careful). At the end, however, you finally reach the Cyberia Weapon, a floating, semisentient, silvery nanotech entity, and report back to your boss: "I found the weapon!" "That thing isn't the weapon. You are." At that point, you've got 'bout 5 seconds before your head explodes, destroying the Cyberia Weapon along with your gray matter. Though it's never spelled out, one can assume that the agency decided that the Cyberia Weapon couldn't be controlled, and that it would be safer to destroy it - along with any inconvenient witnesses. Fortunately, the Cyberia Weapon proposes a Third Option - by merging with you, he can defuse the bomb, and you can both survive - albeit not as individual entities.
• In Dawn of War 2, the Sorcerer hero in the Last Stand game mode has a spell that will make an enemy explode with considerable force if slain during its duration.
  • In Chaos Rising, a fully corrupted Cyrus can attach a bomb to his own troops and send them at the enemy.
• In Deus Ex the Cyborg Agents Gunther Hermann and Anna Navarre both have "Killphrases" that cause their Augmentations to self-destruct when uttered, blowing them into a shower of meat-bits. JC and Paul are also fitted with nanotech "Killswitches" - very slow "Killswitches".
  • Somewhat justified, since they're not cyborgs with prosethic, augmented bodyparts like Gunther and Navarre, but fully biological humans (genetically-engineered ones, but still) with a special strain of nanomachines that operate from their bloodstream, modifying their body on the fly like building flashlights from behind their retina. Destroying something tailor-made like that takes a while, of course, but it's still mostly an Informed Flaw, the bouts of pain that come with the killswitch happens mostly with Paul to illustrate his Worf Effect, and it's not a really good lampshade all things considered.
  • It should be noted, however, that they're not literally ticking. While their killswitch is very real and as lethal as the name implies, it's going from "scientific superpowered nanomachines" to the Gray Death virus that is killing civilians left and right. Discovering this is an important part of the plot, but it also comes to the fact that, while they'll not turn into crimsom wall paint like their former colleagues do, they'll get eaten from the inside by their very own power source!
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: Hell Wraths are passive Action Bombs at first, and by default, they'll only detonate themselves when you're in close proximity, or if the fight has dragged long enough. However, you can force them to detonate prematurely by shooting at them, as indicated by their explosive sacks glowing orange the more you shoot them. The brighter the glow, the sooner they're about to explode.
• Devil May Cry 5: The Overture Devil Breaker's Break Age move involves Nero jamming his hand into the target's body and then detaching it, turning it into a time bomb that explodes after a few seconds. He can also detonate it manually by shooting at the target with his Blue Rose.
• Disgaea's Prinnies are only explosive when thrown.
• Mages in Dragon Age have a spell called Walking Bomb that causes enemies to explode messily when they run out of hit points, hopefully doing some damage to their comrades. And an advanced version that spreads the spell to any enemies caught in the blast radius of the original victim. It's like a gory Fourth of July. In Dragon Age: Origins the spell dealt damage based on your spellcasting ability and could be pumped up to absurdly high levels, but in Dragon Age II it was changed to only deal a percentage of the target's maximum hitpoints, so it couldn't be used on mooks to inflict insane damage on nearby bosses anymore.
• The Bomb Crag in Dragon Quest has Sacrifice, which kills your party, and the caster. Fortunately, it almost never casts Sacrifice.
• Dungeon Crawl features the Inner Flame spell, which allows you to enchant an enemy to explode violently into clouds of fire when they die. Just try not to stand right next to them when you kill them.
  • As of version .13 Scrolls of Immolation inflict this on every enemy in visual range. This can often lead to glorious chain reactions. Additionally, Inner Flame will not turn mindless allies (such as skeletons and zombies) hostile. Have fun, necromancers!
• Larcen's Cinekill in Eternal Champions has the Dark Champion hold up a bundle of dynamite, and then make it vanish. Larcen scans the room, but the Dark Champion waves a taunting finger. Suddenly, Larcen feels at his stomach, his eyes go wide...
• In Diablo-esque Eternium, if you're a Bounty Hunter and has certain specific magic items, you'll be able to plant a powerful, stealthy time bomb on the enemies. The bombs will go off either if enough time passes or if someone infested with a bomb is killed.
• Fallout: New Vegas features an energy weapon based perk that causes any enemy killed with energy weapons to emit a small radius of high damage (capable of starting chain reactions if it kills another enemy, since it is also an energy attack). Capable of turning a group of weak enemies into a rather large explosion.
  • The Gun Runners' Arsenal DLC has the Two-Step Goodbye, a Ballistic Fist that causes corpses to explode if it manages to kill with a crit.
  • In the same vein, the player character has had the option to place explosives in people's inventories and have them go off a few moments later since the first game.
  • In the Dead Money DLC, this trope applies to you if you wander too close to a malfunctioning speaker or radio.
• A recurring class of enemies in the Final Fantasy series are literal bombs. When they are near death, they explode, doing a lot of damage to the party. Most games with Blue Mages allow this skill to be learned, allowing the player to become one as well.
• Final Fantasy XIV has a boss that can plant a bomb on a random player in each alliance. Strangely, not only does the bomb explode multiple times, but it doesn't even hurt the player. The bomb's explosions does hurt anyone else near the affected player and knocks them back quite a ways.
  • The concept is revisited during the Eden raids with Gaia (as the Voidwalker) where she'll use time-delayed versions of her dark magic spells, visually and audiably indicated by a ticking clock that will set off after some time. It's later revealed that she has actual control over time.
  • The Machinist gives this capability to the player with the Wildfire ability. When applied it counts down from 10 seconds and can be made stronger by using weaponskills on the target while it's up. When the time runs out it blows doing damage though it can be detonated early if need be.
• Minor example in the Gears of War series. Once you take a Meat Shield, one of the ways to finally execute your captive is to stick your grenade into the victim and shove, hopefully sending him exploding into his buddies. It's only a minor example for taking less than 3 seconds from tagging to detonation, if only for game balance.
• Goose Goose Duck: One of the Duck roles is Demolitionist, who can only kill by placing bombs on other players that explode after a delay. The bombed player is unaware of their situation until the timer is at 15 seconds left, at which point they're alerted and have that much time to put the bomb on someone else or they explode. Upon exploding, all that's left of the player is their smoking feet, which can not be reported as a normal dead body can.
• Grand Theft Auto series:
  • The demo version of Grand Theft Auto 2 has a six-minute time limit. The explanation? Your character's belly is full of explosives. Better make the most of it. Once time runs out, you actually gain bonus points for the destruction caused by you exploding.
  • Grand Theft Auto III: There is a mission titled Kingdom Come where Claude has to kill suicide bombers, that chase him and if close enough detonate themselves.
• The Time Bomb command in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] places a timer on everything within a small radius, causing them to detonate in a fiery fashion once it finishes counting down. The damage isn't terribly impressive unless the victims are clustered together, though.
• League of Legends Zilean's Time Bomb skill works like this, though not of the messy kind, due to the game's Teen rating.
  • Tristana's Explosive Charge ability plants a bomb on the target that explodes after 4 seconds.
• Mega Man (Classic) zigzags this with Proto Man (Blues in Japan). Proto Man was given his free will due to a nuclear reactor core. Dr. Wily ended up sabotaging this core to make it dangerously unstable, which will make Proto Man explode if it's set off by some sort of blunt force. Dr. Light figured that the best solution would be to swap out his core at the cost of removing his free will, but because he wanted to remain his own person, Proto Man fled from Light's custody, becoming a self-serving Anti-Hero. However, what zigzags this is that throughout the series, we never once see Proto Man explode from his unstable reactor core, even when he gets sliced in half by King in Mega Man & Bass.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid Revolver Ocelot puts a bomb in Solid Snake's items that are to be retrieved by the torture machine as soon as the player escapes from the cell. The player then must select the bomb from the items inventory and press the button to discard it. If the player doesn't do this in time they are killed by it.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes has a more brutal example, in which Big Boss rescues a prisoner only to find out that the whole rescue was a set-up—the prisoner has a bomb surgically implanted in them to blow Big Boss up. Fortunately, they manage to get the bomb out. Unfortunately, Paz had another bomb in her. She jumps out of the helicopter to prevent it from killing Big Boss, but it's too late. The bomb catches both him and the helicopter, resulting in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Along with implied rape on the recovered audio tapes, one can without a doubt conclude that this is one of the darkest installments of the series yet.
  • This can also be set up in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. TNT is normally used to destroy food storage and armory sheds, and even the Hind parked at the Bolshaya Past base. With the Infinity Face Paint, however, you can afford to experiment. TNT can be set almost anywhere to create distractions and chain reactions. This includes attaching TNT on guards' backs. You have to sneak up on them, but they'll never notice they've been rigged. Cue as many explosive shenanigans as you want.
• Monster Hunter:
  • The Blastblight status effect in the Monster Hunter series covers the victim in blast powder that eventually detonates in a painful explosion. Rolling around will remove it, but your AI partners aren't able to do this and thus can become a threat to your well-being. In Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, the game where Blastblight debuted, it was called Slimeblight, as the only monster that used it at the time was Brachydios, which uses an exploding slime mold to inflict the element, unlike other monsters which use a red substance.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise: Magnamalo and Apex Mizutsune can inflict Hellfireblight, which is similar to Blastblight, but can also be removed by wiredashing, which leaves a hellfire flame behind. If a monster hits it, it does a small amount of damage and is a guaranteed knock down if it is the first time the monster has been hit with a hellfire explosion.
• This is Cyrax's fatality in Mortal Kombat 3. Smoke's, too, in a different way: Instead of a suicide bomb, he turns his opponent in a (for five more seconds) living bomb.
• One thing of note of the Nonary Game in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is the players has each swallowed a small bomb while they're sleeping, which will kill them under certain conditions. Early on, one of the players (The Ninth Man) suffers this fate. You don't get to see the bomb going off, but you do get to see the aftermath. However, for most of the others, this trope is averted. Only the Ninth Man, Guy X and possibly Ace had bombs in them in the first place.
• The villainous plot of No One Lives Forever: a chemical that reacts with the biochemistry of living organisms (humans included) to create a powerful explosive.
• In PlanetSide 2, a bug caused C4 explosives to be sticky to anything, allowing players to strap C4 to each other. Much joy was to be had by tossing a C4 brick onto the head of an enemy MAX Powered Armor as he's walking back into a spawnroom full of his allies. Particularly devious players would strap C4 onto a friend in Infiltrator armor before having him run into a group of enemies. Sadly removed in a patch, which limited C4 to sticking to vehicles and level geometry.
• [PROTOTYPE 2] gives us the new power Bio Bomb, where you stab someone, infect them with an unusually...volatile variant of the virus, and walk away nonchalantly before the poor bastard explodes into tentacles. Example here.
• In the beginning of Sam & Max Hit the Road, Sam and Max beat up a mad scientist only to find out he's a robot. They take his severed head (which turns out to be a "damned ugly time bomb") with them. After the opening credits, they arrive at their office, eventually leading to this exchange:
  Max: Sam, either termites are burrowing into my skull, or one of us is ticking.
  Sam: Whoops. Oh yeah... (pulls out the head) Max, where should I put this so it doesn't hurt anyone we know or care about?
  Max: Out the window, Sam. There's nothing but strangers out there.
  (Sam chucks the head. BOOM.)
  Sam: I hope there was nobody on that bus.
  Max: Nobody we know, at least.
• Serious Sam There are suicide bombers that run at the player yelling despite being headless.
• In the fighting gameShadow Fight 2, one status effect that can be inflicted on you and your enemies is "Time Bomb" which puts a time bomb on the victim that can't be removed and it'll inflict a ton of damage once it goes off.
• In the SNES Shadowrun game, main character Jake heads to a seedy street doc in an attempt to get his datajack working. The street doc is working and suddenly utters "Oops". To quote Jake: "What do you mean oops? What happened? And what's that ticking sound?" Turns out that Jake has a cortex bomb in his head, and has thirty hours to find another doctor who can defuse it before his body ends at the neck. The doctor gives him a refund, however.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has "Bomb" as a status effect. If a character with Bomb takes another hit before the effect is removed, they explode, killing them instantly and dealing high damage to the rest of the party. No, you don't get to use it.
• In Star Trek Online there's the space intelligence ability Torpedo: Transport Warhead which causes your next torpedo launch to be transported to the target, bypassing shields and having a chance to knock one subsystem offline along with other effects depending on the torpedo fired. This torpedo is put on a fuse with the length depending on the torpedo fired. The visual for this fuse is a countdown timer above the ship it was fired at.
• In Super Scribblenauts you can do this to anything, be it object, animal or human by putting giving it the "Explosive" adjective or something similar.
• Throwing a Gooey Bomb in Super Smash Bros. Brawl will turn enemies into time bombs, although if you're not careful they can walk up to you and fob it off Hot Potato-style.
• In Tales of Vesperia, the bosses Schwann and Alexei have an attack that causes a bunch of energy to form around the target. Said energy explodes after a few seconds, doing considerable damage to the target.
• A certain Team Fortress 2 server mod has a "roll the dice" function, and some of the options are: Low gravity, god mode, burning, invisibility, instant death, instant kill shots for 15 seconds and time bomb. The response to getting time bomb is usually along the lines of "GODAMMITSONOFBITCH". It even include a loud ticking sound and a loud explosion. And "'blank' is a time bomb" shows up on everyone's screen when the poor bastard rolls the time bomb.
  • In the game proper, the Bombinomicon will occasionally give players bombs for heads and tell them to blow up its owner.
    Hey, you got a head, great! Now it's a bomb-head.
• A modification for Unreal Tournament called "Unreal 4 Ever" has the aptly-named Fleshbomb Rifle: any living entity struck by one of its darts starts glowing red and emitting a high-pitched sound. After a few seconds the unfortunate target goes kaboom with Redeemer-scale force, and any enemies caught in the blast are credited to whoever fired the weapon.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: The closest the player gets to fighting Prince LaCroix is when, on your way up the Venture Tower, he possesses a random guard, rigs him with Astrolite, and does his damnedest to hold you off until the countdown reaches zero. The guard is question has enough willpower to realize what's happening and beg for help, but he's doomed either way.
• One of the ways to use your hacking skills in Watch_Dogs is to hack the explosives of guards. Sometimes they manage to stop it. Otherwise...
• Wild ARMs 3 makes this a STATUS EFFECT.
• World of Warcraft loves this trope, to the point where "You are the bomb" has become a Memetic Mutation.
  • Many bosses (and some mooks) turn players into bombs, forcing them to run away from their party members or blow them up; the most infamous of these is Baron Geddon's Living Bomb ability in Molten Core, the first 40-man raid dungeon in the game, and the inspiration for the above Fauxtivational Poster. For a nastier variant, some bomb-type attacks render their target immobile, forcing everyone else to run away.
    • If a tank takes too many stacks of Festergut's debuff, which is applied to melee attacks, he or she will explode and instantly die, typically causing a wipe. Steelbreaker has a similar ability if he is killed last (generally considered the hardest way to defeat the Assembly of Iron), but it is applied in one hit and takes longer for the victim to explode, basically serving as a soft enrage.
  • High Astromancer Solarian has what is probably the other most well-known example in her Wrath of the Astromancer ability, which also makes a player explode after a few seconds. This time, the blast actually sends anyone it hits high into the air, where they will easily die from fall damage even at full health.
  • Halion also has two particularly nasty versions. In one mode he places Mark of Combustion on players, which deals significant damage over time but can be removed easily. When it's removed, it creates an explosion and burns the ground in an area dependent on how long the person afflicted. In his other mode, he casts Mark of Consumption, which operates similarly but instead of exploding sucks people to the center of its damage area.
  • Occu'thar summons eyes attached on each player. After 10 sec, it fully bores into the host and detonates, inflicting 24375 to 25625 Shadow damage on all players. The tanks need to stay on the boss, as the raid can typically afford to take the damage from their eyes and the boss has a Breath Weapon, but if anyone else fails to kill their eye in time by AOE, the raid will wipe.
  • The Warlock class has a spell called Seed of Corruption, which deals a decent amount of damage to its target—until the spell runs out, or the target dies, at which point it explodes and hits everyone in the vicinity. Placing these on all available opponents has at times given warlocks some of the highest damage output in the game under the right circumstances. In Wrath of the Lich King, Mages received a spell called Living Bomb with much the same effect.
  • Valiona, during her ground phase, puts a debuff on players that explodes when dispelled. The twist here is that players have to stack on the afflicted player and dispel the debuff so that the damage can be split between them.
  • Imperator Mar'gok in Warlords of Dreanor's Highmaul raid regularly turned the current tank into a living bomb, necessitating a Tank Swap. Depending when during the fight it occurred different Tank Swap tactics had to be utilized. In 1 phase the current tank simply had to run away as the new tank taunted. In another the affected tank was randomly teleported into the rest of the raid, necessitating an even quicker response in running away. Later the affected tank began to be rooted in place, meaning they had to both know it was coming and start running in advance and the new tank had to pull the boss (and melee) away from the bomb.
  • Player characters finally got in on the action with Living Bomb, a mage spell that does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

---