Meteor Move



You know you're in trouble when you're fighting an opponent that can hit you hard enough to send you flying into the sky. Some characters won't stop there; next the hero (or villain) in question immediately flies above you in time to intercept you like the human pinball you have become, then strikes you with such force that you are sent flying toward the ground hundreds of feet below, and crashing into the earth like a meteorite.

There are three ways this can be done:

Type A is to simply fly/jump/FlashStep up and spike the airborne opponent.

Type B is to catch the foe in mid air and then crash both him and the attacker into the ground below. This has the advantage of being more powerful, but only if you're completely Made of Iron. Spinning Piledriver is a subtrope.

Type C is a brutal extension of Type A (and sometimes B) where the attacker, rather than letting his opponent hit the ground, flies once more after him and strikes him as he falls.

Because this attack (especially Type B) implies that the attacker is far stronger than the attacked, it's usually a villain that does the attacking. When it's the hero attacking, it's usually a Curb Stomp Battle. While you're at it, bring out the Wrestler in All of Us by including a powerbomb or the like.

Anime & Manga

 * A staple of Dragonball Z. A spectacular example would be when Cell regenerates from Vegeta's last desperate attempt at vaporising him, kicks him into the sky like a pinball and then pounds him into the earth like a rag doll. A definitive example of a Type A Meteor Move.
 * Vegeta himself loves this trope, using a classic Type A -- more specifically, pretty much exactly as it's described in the first paragraph of this page -- in pretty much any of his battles with lots of airtime.
 * In fact, the Trope Namer is the guidebook of the Dragonball Z Super Nintendo game Super Butouden 2, where it's every character's ultimate move.
 * Don't forget Gotenks using it against Buu; somewhat altered, as Gotenks first uses a rather odd attack to bind Buu into a sphere that looks rather like a volleyball, then explicitly mimes volleyball moves.
 * A variant of Type B occurs in the first Zarbon/Vegeta fight and the Piccolo/Frieza fight. Zarbon and Piccolo both let go, letting their respective opponents' momentum send them the rest of the way down.
 * This is the basis of one of Tien's most famous attacks, where he uses his opponent as a volleyball. Predates Gotenks' version by almost two decades in fiction.
 * Sent up in Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return! Gotenks explicitly uses Tenshinhan-san's volleyball attack.
 * Goku does a BRUTAL Type C (with not one, but two hits mid-air) on Burter in what is probably the best Curb Stomp Battle of the Freeza Saga. Him being one of the Ginyu, who were on the verge of effortlessly killing off all the other good characters and Vegeta just a moment ago, makes it all the more impressive.
 * Tambourine pulls this on Goku the first time they meet.
 * In Mai-Otome 0 Sifr, Rena Sayers, the ultimate Otome, uses a Type B Meteor Move to defeat Super-Battle Android M9, as she crashes with her from orbit into the planet below.
 * Ryougi Shiki of Kara no Kyoukai pulls off a magnificent variation of Type B when she plummets after the falling Big Bad out of a ten stories tall building with a katana, catches him in mid air and lands sword first into him. Even though this was enough to slay the villain in question, the impact was enough to break the sword in question and knock Shiki unconscious.
 * And even then she was only saved by the Big Bad's Mobile Bounded Field (kind of like a shield) taking most of the landing impact (it's slightly implied he activated it on purpose).
 * This has also become a staple of action sequences in Mahou Sensei Negima; Takahata Sensei in particular seems to be fond of this as a finishing move.
 * Negi Springfield gets this move pulled on him by  during the Mahoura tournament.
 * Negi's the victim of a Type B variant early on in a Battle in The Center of The Mind against a partial recording of Evangeline. Her staying with him to drive her fist through his heart in the impact signifies the shift in mood away from the by now commonplace sight of Eva spending a couple of hours beating Negi up.
 * Negi himself managed to pull Type A off in the Magic World arc against then capped it off by dive-bombing right on top of him..
 * Later in the fight
 * And of course, in between these,
 * In Naruto, Rock Lee has his "Primary Lotus" attack, which involves kicking the opponent into the sky, jumping alongside him and wrapping his bandages around the foe, adding spin and an assurance that they land headfirst. Sasuke subsequently copies this with his "Lion's Barrage", an attack that substitutes several kicks for the bandage-spinning, and Naruto then copies that for his "Uzumaki Barrage", a variant that uses shadow clones to begin pummeling the foe into the sky and following up.
 * Upon releasing the Fourth Gate in his fight against Gaara, Lee kicks this trope up to approximately 13 by using all three types. He kicks Gaara into the air, jumps behind him and kicks him towards the ground, and then jumps in front of him and hits him back into the air, commencing the game of pinball. Things get rather uncomfortable for Gaara thereafter.
 * Although Gaara is actually only mildly hurt by the entire process because of his sand armor. And pulls himself together very quickly after the fight concludes.
 * Type A was used quite often by in her battle against Subaru near the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, delivering heavy blows that would send the latter flying then jumping or  after her before she could fall.
 * Shaman King gives a nice display of Type A in the fight with Bailong. (And probably a few other examples scattered throughout the series.)
 * Luffy got hit by one of these by Rob Lucci. Understandable since the enemy in question knows "Geppou".
 * Ash's Charizard from Pokémon does a Type B whenever it uses its Signature Move Seismic Toss, though it also becomes a victim of Type B on at least two occasions.
 * It is interesting to note that a similar animation started appearing in the 3rd generation video games to explicitly imply a Type B style drop. The background animates as if the two 'mons are flying upward, pauses, then rapidly descending, complete with ground shatter on the foe.
 * Lucemon enjoyed using Type B in his Chaos Mode, dispatching both EmperorGreymon and MagnaGarurumon (one after the other) with a lightning-fast series of punches, followed by a mighty kick into the sky, a leap to the victims, grabbing them and piledriving them headfirst into the ground while standing on their arms. The first time with EmperorGreymon Lucemon cracked the moon with the impact; the second time with MagnaGarurumon he shattered the moon to pieces.
 * The un-morphed kids at the time, on the other hand, were just a little bruised.

Film

 * Hugo Weaving demonstrates this move for the first time in western live action cinema as Agent Smith on Keanu Reeves in The Matrix: Revolutions, wherein Smith performs a Type C, grievously wounding Neo enough to defeat him in the fistfight that followed.
 * Tai Lung, the awesome Big Bad of Kung Fu Panda, shows just how much of a Badass he truly is with this trope.

Live Action TV

 * Clark Kent performs Type B on Doomsday in the Smallville season 8 finale.
 * That was more of a tackle actually.

Real Life

 * This awesome picture shows two woodpeckers fighting over a nest hole. One of them has grabbed the other's tongue in its claws and beak and is in the process of slamming its opponent into the ground. Birds are hardcore, man.

Video Games

 * The Dragonball Z Budokai games love to use this in multiple ways. Many of the "Launcher" attacks (the ones where players have to guess which button the other is going to press in order to either continue the cinematic assault or end it early) utilize Type A, but a few move into a painful variant of Type C (of note is when the defending character is kicked into the air, punched back down to the ground, then the attacker follows him there and delivers a vicious kick to the gut right before the defender hits the ground). There's also a few opportunities to use a horizontal variant, in which the attacker bounces his opponent back and forth through the air like a tennis ball, teleporting back and forth to play both sides, only stopping when the player screws up the timing or he runs out of Ki.
 * Behold. A type C followed by a force fed Kamehame Hadoken. The series is just full of variations and combinations of this trope.
 * Type A is one of the most useful techniques in the Super Smash Bros. series: On most levels, doing this when you're not over the stage is an immediate KO off the bottom. Such techniques are called "Meteor Smashes" if they can be canceled, or "Spikes" if they can't be canceled.
 * Type C can be used in Super Smash Bros. Brawl by Ganondorf, among others.
 * Type B is one of Bowser's Smash moves in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
 * Ganondorf's too.
 * Ike's Final Smash actually counts as all three. He hits you to the top center of the screen, follows you up, hits you about 20 more times, and smashes you (and him, but he's Nigh Invulnerable at the time) into the ground. It hurts like hell.
 * Kirby's Final Cutter is this, and is actually toned down for Super Smash Bros to a Type A. In Kirby Super Star, he slashes several time with the cutter blade first before sending foes flying into the air and dragging them down with the blade, performing a full Type C. In both cases, he finishes with a shockwave.
 * The most satisfying of Galen Starkiller's (many) moves in The Force Unleashed is a variation of Type B in which he slashes his opponent multiple times into the air with his lightsaber, grabs him by the throat and then crashes into the ground below, usually sending a resounding shockwave that ripples outward, sending the usually-present crowd of hapless Stormtrooper screaming into the air, setting up for yet-another combo.
 * Mayor Mike Haggar from Final Fight and Zangief from Street Fighter both the spinning piledriver: grab your enemy, jump 20 feet in the air and land on the ground, their head first. Haggar has a Super Move where he throws his opponent and catches them on the way down. Zangief's Super Move involves consecutive spinning piledrivers. According to the manual, the two are official rivals, trying to make fancier piledrivers.
 * Hugo from Street Fighter III has a move where he throws his opponent off a wall, jumps after them, and breaks their back over his as he lands. Alex's Super Move involves multiple power bombs.
 * M. Bison's Nightmare Booster in Street Fighter IV involves him pushing the opponent into the air with a psycho crusher, using a type A spike on the opponent mid-air, and then stomping on the downed opponent (type C) as they hit the ground for good measure.
 * Are we forgetting Cracker Jack from EX 2 Plus(where level 3 moves are all Meteor moves, complete with victory icon of the same)? He punts you into the sky, then smacks you with a baseball bat, which, depending on how "accurate" you were with the button press, sends you to the moon, which then bounces you back to earth like the pinball you've become.
 * From the same game as Cracker Jack, Darun Meister. His G.O.D(Gamble of Darun) Meteor move involves him pummeling/pretzel-ling you, followed by launching you into the sky, where he somehow manages to pull off a figure-4 leglock(!), and finishing with a brainbuster(like a vertical suplex, but the opponent is perpendicular to the ground on impact, while he lands comfortably on his back), that leaves the opponent standing on their head for a second before they finally crumple. Note that this move ALWAYS does 100% damage, but only if your opponent doesn't manage to break free during the second to fourth steps of the move(50% chance each time, as they must either match you with a punch if you used punch for the command, or kick if you used the same), AND you manage to pull off all of the steps flawlessly. Just to be clear, the move is performed as 360+PPP>360 P/K(opponent can break free by matching the button, no joystick input needed)>360 P/K(as above)>360 P/K>(last chance to break free)>(now the screen just tells you ???) U(hold)DU. Or just watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQa1iNEtVHM
 * Hanzo Hattori and Galford from Samurai Shodown also have a "grab your opponent, leap up and slam his head into the ground" move. Unusual because, at least in the first game, the Mighty Glacier types didn't have any throws or grabs outside the basic ones, but these two lightweight Ninja did. And could leap into the air with all but the biggest one of them.
 * Tizoc, the masked wrestler from Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, uses the Type B attack during his Big Fall Griffon finishing move.
 * The "Air Superiority" attack from City of Heroes is a type A version, a two-handed overhead smash that can turn off an enemy's ability to fly.
 * In Little Fighter 2 Davis' Leap Attack is a low-powered type C. You can also do a Type A by following up a Dragon Punch with a Leap Attack.
 * Ruru of Magical Battle Arena uses this for her melee special, using Flash Steps to pin ball her target around the air with her drill.
 * Ryu Hayabusa can do the Izuna Drop in both Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive. In DOA he uppercuts the target with his bare hands before Flash Stepping or teleporting up and grabbing for the drop, while in NG he rises with his target after a rising slash and hits it three times before grabbing. NG also has other moves of this sort, like the Blade of Nirrti which is like the Izuna Drop except Ryu somersault-slashes the target down instead of grabbing and spinning.
 * Yugo from Bloody Roar gives a nasty combo of B+C and more. Specifically, he kicks and claws his opponent while flying up, then rapidly bites the opponent while falling down, and then twists his bite to tear off more flesh after the impact before finally jumping off the opponent and morphs back to human.
 * One of Konoha's supers in Arcana Heart has her and her doppelgangers smacking her opponent higher and higher into the air before they all converge to smash her opponent hard into the ground.
 * of No More Heroes has one of the most spectacular ones.
 * It should come as little surprise that this is a One-Hit Kill.
 * Several special techniques in Disgaea fit this trope. There's too many to count that fit into the type A variety, and a few type B ones (Generally possessed by the Mothman monster and axe wielders).
 * The Hulk uses a literal Meteor Move in the Versus fighting series.
 * In said series anyone can do it.
 * To clarify: just about everyone has a meteor move. The one refered to as 'literal' involves the Hulk doing a type C on you. With a meteor.
 * Iron Tager has several, all Type B. The two most powerful (including an instant kill where he carries an enemy into orbit before smashing them into the ground) are shown here
 * Makoto Nanaya has two and Tsubaki Yayoi has one (technically four, but it's the same move with different button inputs), both of them Type A. Taokaka has at least one of each type, with a positively deadly Type C being one of them. Valkenhayn has a mix of Type A and Type C, but only when in his Wolf form.
 * Technically, almost every character has at least a Type A, but only in certain combos.
 * The Devil May Cry games allow you to smack enemies into the air and also considers enemy bodies as targets for wall-jumping. Hilarity ensues. For some reason this is far more satisfying to do in the first game, possibly because the game's combo reward system doesn't expect you to torment enemies like this.
 * In Super Robot Wars W, the Original Generation mecha (the Valhawk) uses a Meteor Move as part of its Limit Break, sending the enemy skywards with the Beam Shot Launcher, slashing at it in mid-air with its Ray Blade, then dropkicking the enemy back to earth (or whatever passes for it ... even in space) before catching up and tackling it along the ground. And even then there's more. Totally awesome, and very, very satisfying against some enemies.
 * Super Robot Wars Alpha's DaiRaiOh has two of these.
 * The aptly named Rising Meteo Inferno launches the target with a kick, catches them, launches them again, then flies after and delivers a Type A meteor via a Rider Kick.
 * Jinrai has DaiRaiOh engulfed in a giant firebird aura, kicking the opponent, then jumping up and performing a Type B meteor dropkick that turns into a pillar of flame.
 * This is the initial finish of a combination move in Sonic Battle. It works as Type B.
 * Alex Mercer can do Type A by the middle of his game. He can also (if you're good enough, and have invested in the right skills) throw someone, karate kick them in mid-air, and ride them to the ground.
 * One of his Meteor Moves is a powerbomb that is repeatable on the rebound. Yes: infinite, rolling powerbombs.
 * In Red Steel 2, after the player unlocks "The Eagle" he can send his opponents flying into the air, at which point he has the option of flying up there and obliterating them however he sees fit. (This Troper's favorite technique is the shotgun.)
 * In the video game for the Spider Man 2 movie, Spidey can do a Type A after webbing up a crook and flinging them into the air. He can also do a Type C by grabbing the foe, jumping into the air, and performing a piledriver all the way back to the ground. Especially cruel players can perform this move off the top of the Empire State Building.
 * And to make it better, you can spin the control stick during the move to make it a Zangief-style spinning piledriver.
 * Aerial Slam in Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep is a variation of type a - the player hits their enemy into the air, flash-steps up to them and hits them even higher, then flash-steps to above them and knocks them down.
 * In Nie R, Kaine and Nier attempt to do a cutscene-style Finishing Move on Gretel by having the former kick the Shade dozens of feet into the air, while Nier leaps overhead and smashes it back down with his BFS. Unfortunately, not even this is enough to put Gretel out of its misery.
 * Final Fantasy XIII has a commando's smite ability, which finishes off a juggled opponent if their stagger meter is almost done draining as they attack, almost always guaranteeing an attack that hits the damage cap. An enemy actually uses one of these too, which leads to the ridiculous imagery of a giant plant monster doing a backflip jump before spiking you to the ground.
 * The final battle of Castlevania Lords of Shadow does this in the final battle against, Gabriel and his enemy suddenly cause an Unexpected Genre Change and causes the final fight to go DBZ on you with the action command sequence, success or failure determins who gets spiked, with losing being a One-Hit Kill.
 * Augus from Asura's Wrath does one of the most insane one of these ever. He uses an extendable blade to fling Asura off the moon and ram into the earth at Relativistic speeds, Slams Asura into the ground, and the blade slices through him, and the entire planet, and it keeps going.
 * In the Tekken games your most obvious way of doing this is to play as Baek Doo San or Hwoarang, launch your opponent high in the air with the Dragon Punch-like Snake Rocket move and catch them on the way down with the Hunting Hawk move, which involves a combination of a side kick, a roundhouse kick and an axe kick in a single jump. Yes, these are games with quasi-realistic 3D physics.
 * In Dwarf Fortress, maxing out your hammerer skill and agility stat means you hit hard enough to send your foes flying horizontally through the air, and possibly run fast enough to intercept their flying bodies and meteor slam them into the ground.
 * Some renditions of the recurring Tiger Blade arte in the Tales Series have the target get lifted into the air along with the user for the initial jumping slash, then spiked into the ground by the aerial followup.

Web Animation

 * As an homage to Dragonball Z, Super Mario Bros Z does this quite a bit. Usually, Mecha Sonic is the one doing the spiking, as he's generally a villainous Badass.
 * Both Mario and Mecha Sonic has performed a Type C: Mario against Axem Ranger Red, where he first slammed Red into the ground, then kicked him into the air and blasted him with a Kamehame Hadoken-styled fireball; and Mecha Sonic also against Axem Ranger Red, where after a particular brutal trashing  of the other Axem Rangers, he finished Red by punching him towards the ground, catching him without us seeing him move, and then kicked him into the sky where he got vaporized by a Kamehame Hadoken. Alvin Earthworm appears to have a thing for this kind of move.
 * It should be noted that Mecha Sonic caught him with his fist.
 * Similar to the above, the Sonic the Hedgehog fanimation Nazo Unleashed by Chakra-X also uses this frequently.

Western Animation

 * Superman gives Darkseid a taste of Meteor Move Type A in the final episode of Justice League Unlimited.
 * Superman isn't the only one. General Eiling, after having given himself super strength and monstrous appearance through an injected serum, does Type A to S.T.R.I.P.E in the episode Patriot Act in Justice League Unlimited.
 * The Flash ends up doing an earth-bound equivalent.
 * And he uses Type B to end the fight in the Superman Doomsday movie.
 * Superman does this a lot. Back in Superman the Animated Series, he did a Type A to Lobo, which sent the Main Man flying through the LexCorp building, straight through Lex's office. Later in the same episode he does it again.
 * Jackie Chan Adventures: After Daolon Wong turns him into one of his magicked minions, Hak Foo does this while yelling "Meteor brings mass extinction!"
 * Insecticon of Transformers Prime pulls a uniquely vicious variation of this move on Megatron: It kicks the Decepticon leader into the air, flies after him and bloodily rips a chunk of his shoulder off with its mandibles in mid air, then strikes it's victim once more and rains a hail of laser fire after him as he crashes into the cave-floor like a rag-doll.