Earth-Shattering Kaboom/Playing With

Basic Trope: A planet or planet sized object is destroyed by literally blowing up.
 * Straight: Emperor Evulz fires his Wave Motion Gun into the Earth, causing the planet to explode into a million pieces.
 * Exaggerated: Emperor Evulz fires his Wave Motion Gun into the Sun, causing every planet in the solar system to explode.
 * Downplayed: Emperor Evulz fires his Wave Motion Gun into the Earth, causing the planet to split into two independent, fairly-habitable planets.
 * Justified:
 * The explosion is caused by two similarly sized planetary objects colliding with each other (this has actually happened before in the distant geological past).
 * The planet is Made of Explodium.
 * Inverted:
 * Emperor Evulz fires his Wave Motion Gun into the Earth, causing the planet to implode into a black hole.
 * Alternatively, a hero Commander Steve fires his terraforming gun into a large clump of debris which make it form into a planet.
 * Subverted:
 * The Wave Motion Gun blasts a large chunk out of the planet, but leaves the rest of it intact.
 * Alternatively, The planet isn't blown up but instead gets eaten.
 * Double Subverted: ...but the planet collapses afterwards into a fireball due to the damage it sustained.
 * Parodied: Emperor Evulz destroys Earth so that he can build an intergalactic highway in its place
 * Deconstructed: The debris from the planetary explosion end up destroying Emperor Evulz ships in the vicinity and damaging near by planets in his empire. Further more the empire is denied the valuable resources it would gain from capturing the planet instead. The power needed to blow up the planet makes the Wave Motion Gun horribly inefficient, and it turns out killing off the planets population through other less costly means (such as a Colony Drop) would have been much better.
 * Reconstructed: However it turns out that Earth Shattering Kabooms are great for rubble mining, and it's the only way to destroy the hostile alien races homeworld that's protected by a massive Beehive Barrier. As for Evulz men, well he has reserves.
 * Zig Zagged: The Wave Motion Gun destroys the Earth, only for the Earth to pull itself back together through gravity... so they blow it up AGAIN. And again. And again.
 * Averted: The Wave Motion Gun only destroys a small part of the planets surface.
 * Enforced: "We need to show how immoral and genocidal Evulz is. We also need to show stuff blowing up. Hey, let's have him blow up a planet and kill two birds with one stone."
 * Lampshaded: Evulz: "Blowing up an entire planet is easier than you might think"
 * Invoked: Evulz can capture or depopulate a planet by less drastic means, but he prefers to blow them up as it sends a strong psychological message to his enemies.
 * Defied: The Wave Motion Gun is destroyed before it can fire.
 * Discussed: "Oh no! Dr.Evulz destroyed the Earth! But wait,if the Earth is gone, where is he gonna live?"
 * Conversed: "Wait, what did he gain from destroying that planet?" "The writers thought more people would see it if the movie had a big explosion"

Back to Earthshattering Kaboom