You Can See the Explosion from Orbit



Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There's an explosion, and it's big enough that it can be seen from orbit if there's anyone up there to look. Bonus Points if we do see it from orbit.

On the "sliding scale of blowed up real good", this is much larger than Impressive Pyrotechnics, but much smaller than an Earth-Shattering Kaboom. (Although by definition an Earth-Shattering Kaboom can easily be seen from orbit... if there's still an orbit to be in.)

This tends to show up more often in science fiction action series and movies, but it occasionally appears in fantasy works as well.

Compare and contrast with Colony Drop. Often an excuse to show that Space Is Noisy. Overlaps with The Tokyo Fireball, if that's caused by an explosion (as opposed to a natural disaster or a daikaiju battle). See also Distant Reaction Shot, which is what you have if you are in orbit when things go boom.

Anime and Manga

 * You can see the explosions from orbit in Super Dimension Fortress Macross when the main Zentradi fleet arrives.
 * Played for Laughs in the Hot Springs Episode of Rental Magica. (There's a chance this might be an Actor Allusion: the two characters involved were played by Mikako Takahashi and Kana Ueda.)
 * Vegeta's "Final Flash" from Dragon Ball Z, one of the most often homaged/parodied explosions visible from orbit.
 * "Serious Punch" from One-Punch Man.
 * The film Akira blows up Tokyo twice. The manga possibly does it a third time (though it hadn't even begun rebuilding from the second blast.)
 * In the back-story of Ghost in the Shell, Tokyo was destroyed by a nuclear blast during World War III. A replacement city, New Tokyo, was built near the ruins of the old one.

Film

 * Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has an example early on, when the Death Star test-fires its main cannon.
 * Aliens, during the flight off-planet at the end
 * The end of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Literature

 * While he was generally on the side of huge explosions being a bad thing, H. Beam Piper's Space Viking (one of the most Badass names in literature) featured three uses of the Bethe-cycle bomb, commonly known as the "hellburner." What does this do, you ask? This creates A MINIATURE SUN WHICH LASTS SEVERAL HOURS in the target area, destroying everything within about a thousand miles. Anyone pack the marshmallows? The craters are still smoking roughly two weeks later.
 * For many years, fans of Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar books suspected that two such explosions had to have happened at some time in the distant past of the setting, given two perfectly-round geographic features on the World Map provided in the books -- Lake Evendim and the Dhorisha Plains. It wasn't until the end of the Mage Wars trilogy that we find out this is exactly what happened when the strongholds of Urtho and Ma'ar both blew up almost simultaneously in the Cataclysm that ended the Mage Wars.  Although their actual size is not specified in any of the books, the smaller of the two, Lake Evendim, is easily a hundred miles across or more.

Live-Action TV

 * Lexx, when the Foreshadow nukes the Brunen G homeworld in the beginning (and as a replay in the musical episode).
 * Stargate Atlantis, episode "First Strike" (see the page image).

Video Games

 * In Crysis 3, taking too long with the Zero Effort Boss results in it firing a beam from space at Earth. Cue the technological version of a World-Wrecking Wave emanating from the epicenter, sweeping over Earth, and fade to black.

Web Comics

 * Being a parody of the Star Wars movies, Darths and Droids has the same explosions as those movies, including the one visible from orbit in Rogue One.

Real Life

 * Whenever a dinosaur-killer asteroid hits Earth, the resulting impact - which may as well be an explosion - can be seen from orbit.
 * Nuclear explosions of most magnitudes are visible from orbit, at least as a flash of light approximately as bright as the star Vega. But that's not nearly as dramatic as the other explosions listed on this page.