Beam-O-War



A very common trope in Anime and Speculative Fiction. One opponent sends out a beam of destructive energy intent on frying the other, and said other does the same. These two beams slam against each other in the middle, and begin "pushing" back and forth, essentially becoming an energy arm-wrestle. Either one consumes the other and goes on to greet the enemy, one opponent collapses from the effort involved, or else they both explode.

A slight variation of this trope will have one character creating a "shield", attempting to hold it up as long as they can, lest their opponent's beam of death destroy them.

This has little justification in real-life science. Lasers, for example, will simply pass through each other unimpeded, although their point of intersection may experience any constructive or destructive interference between the two beams depending on the characteristics (wavelength and phase) of the lasers involved. Of course, energy beams in fantasy and sci-fi are up for grabs in terms of how they react to one another.

Beam-o-War is also known as a "power struggle" in certain circles.

Compare Air Jousting, Blade Lock, and Pummel Duel (the Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs variation of this) for more physical examples.

Anime and Manga

 * Sailor Moon often fought the Big Bad this way. One battle that stands out was when she fought the Snow Queen in her second movie.
 * Nearly every major battle in Dragon Ball Z (The Trope Codifier, if not the outright Trope Maker) had at least one of these, the most iconic being Goku and Vegeta's first fight and the arc-ending, episode-long struggle between Gohan and Cell. The movies also feature it, and it's a mechanic in most of the videogames.
 * Goku vs Freeza: round one, Goku's Kamehameha vs Freeza himself, surrounded by a force-field. Freeza wins by breaking out of the struggle and ramming him. Round two, Freeza pulling a Backstab Backfire after being  and saved by donated energy. Goku snaps and finishes him off.
 * One happens in Gundam SEED Destiny when Kira and Shinn fire their primary beam cannons at one another.
 * Another such clash closes out the final battle of Gundam X. The big difference here:.
 * Zeta Gundam had a much weaker version in the final battle; since the beams fired didn't have constant energy output, they just flared and burst.
 * The final battle between Domon and Master Asia in G Gundam plays this straight with their dueling Sekiha Tenkyokens.
 * Mazinger Z: Sometimes Mazinger Z and a Mechanical Beast engaged in this, and usually Kouji used Mazinger's Breast Fire to couterattack their energy beams or waves. Some examples happened in episode 11 and episode 30.
 * The final battle in the first season of A Certain Scientific Railgun ends with one of these.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pegasus and Bakura have one between each of their millennium items using ancient Egyptian laser beams. The Abridged Series couldn't even think of anything to add, aside from Ominous Latin Chanting and a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer. The ancient Egyptian laser beams have become a recurring joke.
 * Spoofed in Excel Saga, during the final struggle between Pedro and That Man. During a Beam-O-War struggle, That Man one-ups Pedro by taking one of his shoes off and firing an energy beam from his foot.
 * In Neon Genesis Evangelion, there is a notable subversion in the battle with the Fifth Angel, Ramiel: both it and Shinji fire energy beams at each other, but the beams don't meet—behaving as you might expect from real-world physics, their energies warp each other when they get close and they both veer off wildly.
 * Similarly, in Mai-Otome, Natsuki and a gigantic laser battery fire beams at each other, and both are diverted away from their target—but the battery's shot still hits close enough to seriously damage the nearby MacGuffin.
 * In a subversive twist, the title character of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha wins a beam-battle against rival Fate, only to lose when the resulting lightshow blinds her to the latter's movements. A smokeless Smoke Shield, as it were. Later on, however, she does win both a "shield versus beam" match and a "beam versus shield" match, one right after the other.
 * The above subversion gets played around with several times later in the series. Fate attempts to use the same "use explosion from beam of war to hide movement" trick against Chrono in the A's manga only to fly right into a delayed Bind spell prepared by the more experienced Chrono. And in the penultimate episode of StrikerS, used the same trick on Nanoha, except Nanoha was prepared enough to raise a shield against the sneak attack. Unfortunately it still proved useless before her attacker's powered punches.
 * The trope is also played straight, such as the Beam-O-War with Dieci in StrikerS where Nanoha, who has been operating under a Power Limiter for the whole series, shows that she is not left handed after all (well, she actually is, but that's besides the point), and wins effortlessly.
 * A slight variation in Naruto, when Naruto and Sasuke fly at each other with hand-held forces of destruction, which they smash together. It created a lightshow more appropriately a "Ball O War."
 * Itachi and Sasuke then do this, but with breathing fire. Itachi wins by using Amaterasu which burns the other fire.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima - Negi's fight against Evangeline in the earlier chapters ends in one. (Well, technically it ends right after one occurs, the actual Beam O War really didn't decide anything.) 150 (or so) chapters down the line, the same happens between Negi and.
 * Played with in the Negi vs  battle. In most other shonen action manga, one would expect the battle to be won by overwhelming power and Heroic Resolve; here it's decided by Negi's superior battle experience. While 's spell was more powerful than the one Negi used, Negi's spell had a shorter incantation and covered about two-thirds of the distance between him and  before she was able to launch her attack, immediately putting her on the defensive and critically over-straining her artificial magical abilities.)
 * Negi subverts it again during the fight against . He tricks his opponent into unleashing an enormous Kamehame Hadoken by putting (supposedly) all of his remaining energy into producing a giant "Titan Slayer" lightning spear and appealing to the opponent's love for contests of strength. Rather than throwing his spear to cancel out the blast,
 * An interesting shield vs shield variation happens in Transformers Cybertron between, where their Battle Auras are extended as an attack and meet. This creates a spectacular lightshow, but is ultimately the warm-up and the battle is decided by Punch Parry instead.
 * Trigun had one in the final episode, when Knives tries to fire his angel arm at Vash, who responds with his own. While a chunk of perfectly good real estate is turned into a crater and the sky turns that distinctive post-apocalypse red color, the destruction is relatively limited and both Vash and Knives are unharmed, suggesting that their weapons largely nullified each other.
 * Pokémon had a few of them. Notably an Ice Beam/Night Shade collision at the Orange League final, which exploded in a Yin-Yang esque light ball and knocked out both Pokemon.
 * Or, for that matter, some kind of variation every single time two Pokemon attack at the same time in the new series. And they always make the exact same explosion.
 * Even if it's LEAVES AND WATER.
 * Seen in one Yakitate!! Japan opening between Azuma and the Kayser brothers, but never actually done in the anime, thankfully.
 * The Big O, between the Big O and Big Duo in episode 12.
 * Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, in its duel between Simon and Nia in the Lagann and, features a variant on this that can only be called a Drill-O-War. No beams involved, but every other factor was classic Power Struggle.
 * They also play it's straight, albeit in their typical fashion.
 * In Lagann-hen, another Drill-O-War happens, this time beyond their typical fashion. '
 * In other words,
 * Saint Seiya, the final battle between Aquarius Camus and Cygnus Hyouga. The latter even falls unconscious during it, having put his entire being into projecting the Aurora Execution attack at his master, who is moved to tears by his student's dedication. Hyouga still stands however, and is able to counter, disperse, and defeat Camus' own Aurora Execution by the sheer power of his will alone.
 * Happens in the first season of Slayers.
 * Occurs several times in Code Geass, all in the second season (at which point each side had acquired beams with which to war)..
 * Used in the fifth episode of Tenchi Muyo! during the fight between Ryo-Ohki/Ryu-Oh and the Souja.
 * During Ranma ½s duel between Ranma and Ryouga in which the former canceled out the latter's depression-fueled Shishi Hokodan with his own arrogance-powered Mouko Takabisha. But then Ryouga, depressed further by his attack being countered, delivered an even bigger Shishi Hokodan that popped Ranma's Mouko Takabisha like a soap bubble.
 * Tsuna and Xanxus of Katekyo Hitman Reborn in
 * So far Digimon Xros Wars has had this twice, once with Shoutmon X4 vs. DeathMeramon and another vs. AncientVolcanomon. The first time, Shoutmon X4 fired a drill from his shoulder at DeathMeramon's feet as a distraction. The second time, AncientVolcanomon fired another Big Bang Fire on top of the first for an extra push.
 * It also happened a few times in Medabots, most of them involving Metabee when he taps into the Medaforce.
 * Macross7 pulls it off in episode 27 between a Protodevlin and the Basara/Mylene duo. The twist? The latter use The Power of Rock as their beam - literally. The Crowning Music of Awesome just elevates this to off-the-scale HSQ.
 * Actually invoked at the end of Yu Yu Hakusho's Dark Tournament arc, when Toguro proposes he and Yusuke skip what would doubtless be a protracted battle, drop all their limiters and put everything into one blast, winner take all.
 * In Fate/stay night, Saber and  get involved in these using Excalibur and  At least, this is what it looks like. As it turns out,   This happens three times. Someone doesn't learn...
 * In Senki Zesshou Symphogear

Comic Books

 * Havok and Cyclops of X-Men can do this, but there's very little point. Since they're brothers with powers that operate similarly, they simply absorb and metabolize each other's blasts.
 * The second season finale of the animated series culminates in a Beam-O-War between Cyclops and Mister Sinister, with as the deciding factor.
 * Havok once engaged in a beam-o-war with his evil counterpart, the Living Pharaoh. It ended with Havok getting sealed in a case that shielded him from cosmic rays (thanks in part to a Spider-Man blunder), resulting in the Living Pharaoh taking all the cosmic rays for himself and transforming into the Living Monolith.
 * Cyclops tends to do this a lot. In a crossover with the Agents of Atlas he and M-11 got into a Beam-O-War. Since they both shoot beams out of their eye(s) Iceman called it a staring contest.
 * In the Agents' first ongoing, M-11 had a Beam-O-War with the more powerful M-21 - and lost, getting blown to kingdom come (it's okay, he got better).
 * In the original Squadron Supreme mini-series, Hyperion fought his duplicate this way, each using their atomic vision.
 * The battle was so intense that even though the evil Hyperion got hit with all the accumulated energy, the good Hyperion damaged his own invulnerable eyeballs to the point of blindness just from the exertion, and Hype is basically Superman.

Fan Fiction

 * There exists a comic crossover of Superman and Dragon Ball, where there is one of these between the former's heat vision and the latter's Kame Hame Ha. Except Supes wasn't really trying to push back the attack, he was piercing it to get close and punch Goku.
 * In the Tamers Forever Series there is a brief Beam Struggle between Armmagedemon's Ultimate Flare technique and Seraphimon/Magnadramon's Dual Force: Golden Absolution technique.

Film
"Lo Pan: You never could beat me Egg Shen."
 * Likewise, there was a Beam-O-War between Lo Pan and Egg Shen in Big Trouble in Little China. Amusingly, instead of having the beams just push each other, a pair of samurai form in the middle of it and fight each other.


 * Also, during this sequence, Lo Pan is making finger movements that make it look like he's playing a video game.
 * The movie X-Men: The Last Stand has Iceman and Pyro using beams of ice and fire, respectively.
 * Also subverted in that Iceman wins by abandoning the beam strategy and turning his powers internal instead and gives himself armor made of ice, allowing him to walk straight through the fire beam and take down Pyro with an old-fashioned headbutt.
 * In Godzilla films, beam fights are common among Kaiju that can fire energy beams. Particularly in the ones with Mecha-Godzilla, which tend to knock both monsters down.
 * Dark City flies off the rails at the very end, turning into a series of these after running an otherwise very atmospheric Ontological Mystery.
 * In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith a variation of this happens twice: Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi try to Force-push each other, holding each other off momentarily before they're both thrown in opposite directions. During the concurrent Yoda vs. Emperor fight, the Emperor tries shooting lightning at Yoda, who manages to grab it and push it back at Palpatine until the whole thing balls up and explodes, once again sending two combatants in opposite directions.
 * The Movie of The Magic Roundabout, of all things, has this, as Zebedee and his Evil Twin Zeebad fire beams of heat and cold at each other.
 * In the movie Howard the Duck, the climactic battle features one of these.
 * In the Film of the Book Stardust, a brief battle between the witches Ditchwater Sal and the far more powerful Lamia manifests as a Beam-O-War. Lamia's green flames overpower Sal's shadowy magic easily, and go on to disintegrate her head.
 * In the absolutely horrid 1992 low budget Fantastic Four movie, the Human Torch does a full-body 'flame on' for the first time near the end of the movie
 * In Iron Man 2, this happens twice between Iron Man and Rhodey. The first was an unexpected side-effect when they got in a fight; the second time it's used to . This version is a combination of Beam-O-War and Forbidden Chekhov's Gun.
 * Justified, or at least more justified than most on this page, in that the beams in question are thrust streams coming from their flight stabilizers. Unlike lasers, repulsor beams probably actually would "push" on each other violently.
 * In Dragonball Evolution, Goku and Piccolo get into one... for a few seconds. As Piccolo fires his Ki Blast at Goku, Goku fires his Kamehameha wave and flies up at the time giving him the advantage(somehow) and then... KABOOM!
 * The Phantom does this against a wielder of the Three Skulls, immediately after realizing what it means to have the power of the Fourth Skull.
 * The Harry Potter films use this in the battles between Dumbledore/Harry and Voldemort. It doesn't make any sense in all cases but the first.

Literature

 * The climactic scene in Harry Potter features a magical duel resolved in precisely this manner, due to a rare magical interaction between wands. When Harry "wins", Voldemort's wand is forced to start regurgitating spells he's cast in reverse order. When this reaches his (many) killing curses, it causes shades of his victims to appear, giving Harry moral support and scaring the hell out of him.
 * The Discworld novel Sourcery had two wizards sitting at either end of a long table, discussing the Sourcerer. Both of them want the other one dead, so while they chat, they're preparing nicely explosive spells and throw them at each other at the same time. The spells meet at the center of the table and explode, knocking both wizards away.
 * In Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels, there are duels between opposing Deryni in which the energies they fire at each other create half-domes of opposing colors that push against each other. This works a bit like arm-wrestling - the more powerful sorcerer's arc will eventually overtake the other's, incapacitating or killing him. (And yes, the combatants are all men - the setting is based on medieval Europe after all.)
 * The circle or dome is in fact a containment field erected for the safety of the onlookers. The only time we see control of the circle used as a direct conflict of wills in the duel between Kelson and the Festillic claimant who is a woman. There are plenty of high powered Deryni sorceresses around. Queen Jehana, a previously unknown and untrained Deryni takes on Charissa, the villainess in Deryni Rising. Another Deryni lady fights in defense of her king in 'the Bastard Prince' and Lady Richenda and Princess Morag use their powers in defense of their sons. One of the conventional rules of the Duel Arcane is ceding the first blow to a female opponent. Clearly women duel.
 * In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time Nynaeve's battle with the Forsaken Moghedien consists almost entirely of the two throwing the flows of the One Power at one another at half strength, using the other half to shield themselves from the other's attack. Interestingly the whole thing is invisible to Muggles (or men period) and its noted anyone walking in would have merely seen two women staring at one another. Several other fights have moments of this too.
 * The Wizard Duel in The Seven Towers by Patricia C. Wrede, with a subversion: after watching for a while, the protagonist realises that the wizards aren't trying to push each others' beams away, but drag them closer. It's explained afterward that if one wizard succeeds in reeling in the other's beam, he is then able to drain his opponent's power.
 * In Mercedes Lackey's Joust series, the bad guys use magic to concentrate sunlight into what is effectively a giant laser beam. (The official description is that they're focusing and concentrating sunlight at a specific place, but it appears to be a giant beam of white light.) Ancient Egyptian laser beams, indeed.
 * Note: It was built as an anti-invasion device a long time ago and eventually became a tool of oppression and one reason for the gigantic war that ends at the end of the third book. It also ended the war- because it blew up the city it was in, and that city happened to be a national capital housing most of the population, kinda like Mexico City.

Live Action TV

 * Trust The Corps: A practice telepath attack/defend training session looked like the tentacle + shield variant.
 * Heroes did this in the episode "Five Years Gone."
 * And a variant in "Brave New World", when Peter Petrelli copies Samuel Sullivan's Dishing Out Dirt power. Their fight involves shoving a shockwave back and forth.
 * In the Stargate SG-1 episode "The Quest Part 2", Daniel Jackson and Adria have one- Daniel has Merlin's consciousness inside him, and blocks Adria's energy beam attack with one of his own in order to buy the others time to leave through the gate. He loses after the others leave and is taken prisoner by Adria and the Ori.
 * In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (episode "The Reckoning") two ancient wormhole aliens who possessed the bodies of two major characters do battle with beams of light.
 * The various series/seasons of Super Sentai and Power Rangers have made liberal use of this. A few examples:
 * Seijuu Sentai Gingaman: the battle between the first Monster of the Week, Kolshizer, and Ginga Red's gingabeast, Ginga Lion, featured this kind of fight. The beams in this fight where Kolshizer's lasergun and Ginga Lion's fire breath.
 * Through Gingaman footage, this same battle was also featured in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, with the monster and the gingabeast being renamed as Radster and Lion Galactabeast respectively.
 * Mahou Sentai Magiranger: The Heavenly Saint Snowgel and the Hades God Drake engage in an elemental opposites version, pitting ice vs. fire.
 * Power Rangers in Space: episode 18, "True Blue to the Rescue"; Storm Blaster (one of the cars from Power Rangers Turbo) and the Monster of the Week, Lionizer, engage in a Beam-O-War with their lasers. They are evenly matched, untill Justin and TJ tip the scales by adding their own lasers to that of Storm Blaster.
 * Power Rangers Dino Thunder: Kira's sonic scream against a brainwashed Tori's water blast. It ended in a tie, and they just kept fighting.
 * Power Rangers Wild Force has the Rangers versus the resurrected Org Generals using their combined-weapons finishers in a beam-o-war.
 * Happened in the Smallville episode Escape between Clark's heat vision and Silver Banshee's sonic scream.
 * Happened in Sir Arthur Conan Doyles the Lost World between a Wicked Witch and her two repentant apprentices. The apprentices win when Malone interferes and knocks the witch's wand out of her hand.
 * The penultimate episode of Charmed features one of these with the Charmed Ones and their opponents both using The Hollow. Oddly, the Charmed Ones fire six beams while their opponents fire four, yet somehow the beams all still block each other.
 * On Xena: Warrior Princess, Callisto and Velasca do this with lightning bolts after both ascend to godhood.

Tabletop Games

 * GURPS: Powers calls this Power Parry and suggests that this only ought to apply for powers that have the same or opposite focus. However it points out that in genres where this is possible in the first place coolness should trump everything.
 * Magic: The Gathering:
 * Many examples in card art, including Double Negative, Mages' Contest, and Battle of Wits, among others.
 * In the tie-in novel The Brothers' War, a young Urza and Mishra have a Beam-O-War battle between the green magical laser beams of Mishra's Weakstone and the red magical laser beams of Urza's Mightstone. When their mentor Tocasia tries to break it up, the resulting explosion leads to her death.

Video Games

 * The game G-Darius actually features this as a gameplay mechanic. Every one of the game's freaky giant robot fish bosses (or "Huge Battleships", in traditional Darius parlance) is armed with a giant beam cannon; luckily, your ship is armed with its own beam cannon, and with good timing and a lot of button-mashing you can turn the Beam-O-War shouting match against the enemy and kill it in one hit.
 * The presence of autofire in PS 1 versions made these infinitely easier as it removes the button mashing aspect. However, later bosses display Dangerously Genre Savvy tendencies, that is, as soon as their Wave Motion Gun fails to yours, they throw WMG-absorbing bullets directly at you, followed by bajillion bullets.
 * Cyberdrive Zoids also uses this in gameplay - if two beam attacks of similar power collide, it turns into a first-to-100 button-mashing contest to decide whose attack actually hits. Even when the AI gets a headstart, you can usually beat it.
 * In Boktai whenever you're using the Pile Driver to destroy a vampire's coffin and kill it Deader Than Dead, the vampire will try to push back the solar energy beams with beams of dark matter. You can counteract this by shooting the beam generators with your solar gun to boost their power.
 * All ranged attacks in Little Fighter 2 can cancel each other out or obliterate weaker attacks. Only a few characters have a fast enough rate of fire for an extended Beam o' War, though.
 * The final battle in Feel the Magic: XY/XX consists of a Beam O' War conflict between
 * The masks play this straight in the final fight of Crash Bandicoot Warped.
 * In The Force Unleashed, if the player and an enemy both use lightning on each other simultaneously, one of these ensues. If the player can push the right buttons fast enough, his attack goes through; otherwise, the enemy's attack does.
 * This shows up twice in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, with Bowser's and Dark Bowser's flame breath attacks.
 * The final move of Sora and Riku's "Session" Reaction Command, "All's End," ends with the two drawing enemies into a Beam O' War between their two Keyblades in Kingdom Hearts II.
 * In Birth By Sleep Ven and the final boss do this several times, the objective being to win the confrontations and charge up a Finishing Move.
 * Shows up at the end of The Legend Of Spyro: Dawn Of The Dragon, with.
 * Happens in Mass Effect 2 between Samara and Morinth.
 * Used in the cinematics of Dead or Alive games: once in the opening to DOA Ultimate between Hayate and Raidou, then again in DOA Dimensions between Kasumi and Raidou.
 * Godzilla: Unleashed lets two monsters lock beams if they fire them at each other at the same time. The monsters send pulses of energy down the beams (with a flick of the Wiimote) to push the ball toward the opponent. Whoever loses takes the damage of both beams to the face, knocking the monster on its back. However, if the monsters are very close to each other and lock beams, it immediately explodes and sends both monsters flying.
 * Beams in Magicka can give this effect when fired against each other head-on. The stronger beam pushes the weaker beam back and sends the losing wizard flying if it reaches him. The strength of the beam is measured by how many elemental spheres are channeled. If beams with opposite elements meet, both get canceled in an explosion at the point of crossing.
 * In World of Warcraft Cataclysm, at the end of the Vashj'ir quest chain, Lady Naz'jar and Neptulon the Tidehunter duel with beams. In the end,
 * RefleX pulls a variant in the form of Shield-O-War against ZODIAC Virgo.
 * Do Don Pachi DaiFukkatsu has this as an important game mechanic: the enemies frequently fire large quantities of purple lasers which must be blocked by your own laser.
 * Do Don Pachi DaiFukkatsu has this as an important game mechanic: the enemies frequently fire large quantities of purple lasers which must be blocked by your own laser.

Web Comics

 * This Captain SNES strip features what is quite possibly the shortest Beam-O-War match in history.
 * Homestuck has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it Beam O War duel. Unusually for this trope, this was between a psychic's telekinetic outburst and a purely mechanical Wave Motion Gun instead of identical "styles" of power. Even odder, both parties survived despite being otherwise normal 13-year-old boys.
 * The characters involved, Sollux and Eridan have a second Beam-O-War duel. This time around,.

Web Original

 * The YouTube Poop Final Spaghetti II has a beam of war during the final battle when the King tries to deflect the power of the enclosed instruction book.
 * The climax of the final battle in Dimension Heroes book 1 features the Dimensional Guardians in a Beam-O-War with Dark Overlord Clonar.
 * The battle between The Nostalgia Critic and Doctor Insano near the end of Kickassia ended with this.
 * As did in Suburban Knights.
 * Played straight in Doraleous and Associates.

Western Animation
"Greystache: MUSTACHE POWER: ACTIVATE!!"
 * Old 60's-70's era Hanna-Barbera adventure shows, like Birdman, Space Ghost, and The Galaxy Trio used this frequently. It's a cheap way to show conflict onscreen, with many re-used frames.
 * Heavily parodied in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
 * Used in one episode of Kim Possible, the twist being that it's Ron Stoppable's father doing the blasting, inside a dome that harnesses mathematical processing power.
 * In the Beast Wars episode "Maximal, No More", Dinobot and Quickstrike clash beams in a sparring match (the former's being Eye Beams). Dinobot's beams are initially pushed back, but he wins by simply walking forward and closing the distance between them.
 * The earlier episode "Double Dinobot" has a similar fight between Megatron's pink-ish arm laser and Dinobot's green Eye Beams. They form a roiling pink-and-green ball that's shoved back and forth. It ends when a missile from Optimus Primal strikes the ball and sends both combatants flying.
 * And in the final episode,
 * Uncle and Dalong Wong's battles in Jackie Chan Adventures. They are chi wizards after all.
 * Happened in the first episode of Dave the Barbarian when Dave fought the Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy. Dave even commented on their beams being evenly matched, but Chuckles said it was just because his mystical item was set on low. Once he set it on full power, Dave lost instantly.
 * In Megas XLR episode paying homage to the whole Mecha-Godzilla idea (see below), Gorrath makes a Glorft version of Megas and the two robots have at it at the end of the episode. Gorrath lets loose eye lasers and Coop responds in kind with lasers from the headlights of his robot's car-head. They are evenly matched until Coop flips on his car's high beams.
 * Danny and Vlad did this with Ectoplasmic Rays in Danny Phantom, only for Danny to lose when his Opposite Gender Clone comes up from behind and knocks him unconscious with her own blast.
 * In the Simpsons episode parodying the death of Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books, the death in question occurs in a much more straightforward fashion than in the books with "Lord Greystache" facing the series' Big Bad in a beam-o-war. Unfortunately, he is forced to break off his attack in order to save the protagonist from a grisly death, rendering him defenseless. Homer invokes Fanon Discontinuity and makes up a new ending on the fly where the duel is resolved in a different manner...


 * The battle between Big Guy and his robot double in Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot involves this, it ends when Dwayne his operator fires Big Guy's hand into the double's cannon blowing him up.
 * Justice League has Superman and AMAZO matching heat vision. AMAZO cheats and uses Green Lantern powers to give himself an edge.
 * And on JLU, Red Tornado goes up against three Wind Dragon clones simultaneously, performing this trope with cyclones rather than beams. Red Tornado comes out on top, almost embarrassingly easily.
 * The various DCAU Green Lanterns also have a tendency to get involved in the 'shield' version, on either side.
 * In Teen Titans, Raven fights against Trigon in this way in "Nevermore".
 * In Doug, one of Doug's Quailman fantasies involves him fighting a mad scientist version of Roger Klotz who uses a hypnotizing "brain drain" ray. He counters it with his Quail Vision, and they are evenly matched until he turns on his "Quail High Beams" and wins.
 * That was actually two fantasies, and Quailman lost the one with the brain drain ray. The one where he won was when Dr. Klotzinstein had an ability called the "Eye of Klotz" which could turn people into rodeo clowns.
 * Not precisely the same, but an early Superman cartoon featured the Man of Steel literally punching the daylights out of a laser beam.
 * A later episode had a closer variation, with a magnetic beam and a comet having a physically improbable shoving match before the comet is finally sent back into space.
 * This later got a visual Shout-Out in Superman: The Animated Series, with Superman using the same laser-punching technique to defeat Brainiac when the latter first invaded Earth.
 * Superman: Doomsday. The battle between the two Supermen.
 * Superman and Ultraman when they battle in Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths.
 * Occurs between Ackar and Kiina testing their elemental powers in BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn.
 * Also between Takanuva and the heat-vision Rahkshi in one of the Stop Motion online shorts.
 * Occurs several times with fire blasts during 's Agni Kai during the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
 * Used symbolically in the fight between, where the beams spewed out of their bodies into the sky, with one's color's dominance in the light show showing how close he was to psychically dominating the other.
 * The shield variant also appears, with while.
 * Happens twice in "Fused", once between Ra'ad and the Ultimatrix's scanning beam, and once between Ra'ad and.
 * Adventure Time: Finn the Human has one of these in a fight with a wand-wielding evil piglet. Finn's beam is a stream of ice cream.
 * Done in the final episode of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic season two, between Princess Celestia and Queen Chrysalis.

Real Life

 * Water cannon duel.