Literally Shattered Lives



Someone gets frozen or Taken for Granite, and is then smashed into itty-bitty pieces. A great way to make sure that someone is Deader Than Dead and to make Harmless Freezing not so harmless. In gaming, this falls under the Chunky Salsa Rule and guarantees instant death, although this could destroy their equipment as well.

However, it can occasionally be counteracted by the victim Pulling Themselves Together or restoring themselves From a Single Cell.

Anime and Manga

 * The fate of Dire from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure after attempting his Thunder Cross Split Attack on Dio. Dio saps Dire's body heat, turning him to ice, and shatters him.
 * Genai Hiraga from Read or Die
 * The Taken for Granite variant happens in Mahou Sensei Negima in a nightmare sequence.
 * In the same series, Evangeline's "Cosmic Catastrophe" / "End of the World" spell, which she used to flash-freeze a massive Demon God in absolute zero temperatures before shattering it with a snap of her fingers. Though subverted in that this actually wasn't fatal for the demon, and it still had to be sealed.
 * Though the person themselves survived, due to a slow-moving petrification spell, this happens to someone's LEGS in a flashback. This trope happens distrubingly often, as you can tell.
 * Statue version: Piccolo from Dragonball Z, after being turned into a statue by Dabura's spit, Trunks accidentally knocked him over and shatter him. Luckily, he was able to regenerate.
 * Variation: The Heart Breaker/Soul Breaker combination Finishing Move in Godannar uses a chemical to turn a Mimetic Beast's body brittle, then the Soul Breaker smashes it into dust.
 * Darker than Black: guys frozen by November 11
 * Witchblade: Cloneblade wielders upon final Phlebotinum Breakdown don't freeze, but they crystallize and fall to pieces.
 * Hayate's Misteltein spell in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha does the "petrify then shatter" version, though since her target can come back From a Single Cell, it didn't slow it down much.
 * Most foes that fall to Hyoga's Diamond Dust or Aurora Execution in Saint Seiya, especially if they're just Mooks. He doesn't even have to strike them afterwards—they shatter instants after being frozen solid.
 * Additionally, the Gold Saint Camus once imprisoned Hyoga in an indestructible block of ice that would never melt, preserving his student forever. When the other Bronze Saints arrived, and discovered that the sword of the Libra Cloth could release him, they fretted over the huge probability of accidentally breaking Hyoga at the same time as the ice.
 * The Medusa-like villain of the Violinist of Hameln movie does this to Raiel after she's fed up with Hamel using his own petrified teammates as ammo. When she's defeated, and her victims start turning back to normal, Hamel and Flute scramble in a panic to reassemble Raiel.
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist anime remake FMA: Brotherhood, the first episode features Freezing Alchemist Isaac McDougal, a Well-Intentioned Extremist from the Ishvalan Extermination (who isn't?) doing this to a prison guard.
 * The final enemy of Ranma ½, the Phoenix King Saffron, was hit head-on by a revised and augmented version of the Hiryuu Shouten Ha that froze him solid and shattered him to bits. Although he came back, the damage was so extensive he was forced to regenerate as an egg.
 * In One Piece, Admiral Aokiji almost shattered Nico Robin after freezing her, but was stopped in time by the rest of the Straw Hats. Aokiji, incidentally, gets inflicted with this trope on a regular basis, since his body is made of ice. He can always reform, though.
 * Repeated when Boa Hancock orders the petrified Kuja Amazons who saved Luffy's life to be shattered;.
 * In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Xanxus' box weapon does this in its powered up "liger" form.
 * threatened to do this to the members of Fairy Tail Evergreen had Taken for Granite.
 * Also,, after being released from an ice prison. Notably, this happened even though the ice was melted, as it turns out he was long dead from the freezing.
 * In Crystal Blaze, women affected by the humanoid weapons turn into glass statues, which then fade away into lots of tiny particles. Failed humanoid weapons who lose control of their powers also turn into glass statues, but don't fade away and just shatter instead.
 * In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, the Taken for Granite version is also implied to what happens to.
 * The fate of Chiropterans in Blood Plus after being exposed to the rival queens blood. Parts of the shattered remnants of  and   are carried by Saya and Kai respectively.
 * In the third Naruto movie the Big Bad tended to do this to most of the enemies he petrified, possibly because the petrification was temporary otherwise.
 * On Yu Yu Hakusho, this is how Seiryuu kills Byakko.
 * In Kinnikuman, Planetman from the Six Devil Knights attempts to do this to a frozen Suguru, though he breaks free at the last moment and strikes him away.
 * In Kinnikuman Nisei, Terry the Kid defeats Rex King by freezing him (his actual weakness), then shattering his T-Rex-shaped arm (which also housed his brain) with his trademark technique "Calf Branding".
 * In Pygmalio, people petrified by Medusa shatter immediately.
 * In Guilty Crown we have the Apocalypse Virus that causes a person's body to slowly crystallize. It progresses in stages, like a cancer, and the further along a person is the more of their body is crystallized. When they reach the final stages their whole body eventually crystallizes and shatters. Also,
 * In Fafner in the Azure, this is what happens to individuals assimilated by the Festum, as their bodies crystallize and then shatter. In the Right of Left OVA,

Card Games

 * Magic: The Gathering: This is implied to be the fate of the poor creatures that get Frozen Solid.
 * Same goes for Crystallization.

Comic Books

 * In the X-Men "Mutant Massacre" storyline, a mutant made of glass or crystal meets his end when he comes across the vicious Marauders.
 * Linda Park accidentally does this in The Flash while investigating a crime with a future Flash. She sees the villianess Golden Glider out of the corner of her eye while inside a dark building and instinctively throws a desk lamp at her before realizing that GG's been frozen.
 * "The woman they dipped in liquid nitrogen, then shattered like a wineglass," from Elementals.
 * DC Comics villains Mr. Freeze and Captain Cold like doing this. More recently, Superboy Prime killed Sun Boy by freezing his head and shattering it.
 * In the first issue of Gotham Central, detective Charlie Fields gets frozen by Mr Freeze, gets knocked over, and this happens.
 * There's an example in Planetary; see here. (At least, I hope that's the right link location; this computer has a weird blocking scheme.)
 * If the image doesn't make sense, what happened is Elijah Snow freezes Dracula, then kicks him in the crotch, shattering it. Sherlock Holmes mentions that it'll grow back anyway. (Yeah, Planetary's weird like that.)
 * That's pretty much Elijah Snow's standard attack, when he wants someone to go bye-bye.
 * Plastic Man was done this way in the Justice League comic book, courtesy of a superhuman who petrified him and shattered him to pieces in pre-sunk Atlantis (which, subsequently, sunk). On his return he'd taken a level in badass due to floating along the ocean floor for thousands of years with nothing to do but think.
 * Nigh-unbeatable Wolverine villain the Gorgon was killed like this, with Wolverine using his claws to reflect the Gorgon's own petrifying gaze back to him, then smashing him once he's turned to stone.
 * In the original appearance of the Absorbing Man in an early Thor comic, Thor tricks him into absorbing the properties of a glass window, and shatters him. He pulls himself back together, though.
 * Emma Frost was shot with a diamond bullet while she was in her diamond form. She shattered in a million pieces. She got better.
 * The Grey Gargoyle is a B-list Marvel bad guy, but his powers are definitely A-list: he can turn anything he touches to stone, including his own body (which he can still move normally afterwards, making him Nigh Invulnerable—oh, and he can fly). The effects wear off in an hour, but that's not much good to you if he breaks you first. If the Gargoyle were a bit smarter, he'd be a major threat, and as it is he still has his moments—there was a classic cliffhanger where he petrified Iron Man and tossed him from a building.
 * It Got Worse in Fear Itself.

Film

 * In the newer Narnia film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the White Witch can turn opponents to stone with her crystal staff, and starts to use it as a weapon during the battle against Aslan's army; there is one case where she turns a gryphon to stone in midair, whereupon it falls to the ground and shatters. On-screen. In a family film.
 * Simon Phoenix, the villain in Demolition Man. He gets frozen with liquid nitrogen, then his head kicked off by the hero, shattering on the second bounce for good measure.
 * The T-1000 near the end of Terminator 2, but he quickly rectified that.
 * Dr. Doom tries to do this to Mr. Fantastic in the Fantastic Four movie.
 * In Hot Shots Part Deux, "Saddam Hussein" and his little dog both undergo Smashed Human Popsicle. They not only get better, but end up melting and reforming together ala the T-1000, leaving Saddam with canine features and a little pink bow in his hair.
 * The opening scene of Star Trek: Nemesis has the thalaron weapon turning the entire Romulan senate into stone, which then shatters.
 * There was also a TV movie called Fatal Error starring Janine Turner and Antonio Sabato, the plot of which was a computer virus which became a biological virus and infected people through their cable boxes, causing them to petrify and shatter.
 * Friday the 13th (film) had Jason put a woman's face into liquid nitrogen, freeze it, and then smash her face onto the table.
 * An early draft for The Day After Tomorrow involved the pilot who is frozen in the Scotland scene to walk out of the helicopter for a few feet, freeze and be chopped into pieces by the helicopter blades.
 * Alien: Resurrection. Happens to a redshirt when an escaped alien figures out the connection between the blasts of liquid nitrogen that were used to control it earlier, and the Big Red Button in front of its slime-dripping jaws.
 * At the end of Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, Destoroyah is killed by being frozen alive, causing him to crash to the ground and shatter into a billion tiny pieces.
 * Time Cop: One of the mooks gets blasted with liquid nitro, whereupon Claude Van Damme kicks and shatters his arm to pieces, and he falls off a ledge to his death.
 * Mindhunters (2004). In the first trap set by the Serial Killer, Christian Slater's feet get blasted with liquid nitrogen; his ankles then shatter and he falls to the ground and crumbles.
 * In The Hazing the villain turns one of the characters into a mannequin. When her friends stumble into her on a dark stairway landing, they push her out of the way and down the stairs, shattering her into pieces.
 * In Dragonheart: A New Beginning, Drake kills Griffin by breathing ice on him instead of fire. Griffin falls to the ground and shatters. Unfortunately, one of the pieces.
 * Medusa does this to her victims in Clash of the Titans.
 * In Tron: Legacy the programs who are derezzed break into glass-like fragments, which then turn into sand.
 * Played for laughs with the Nazi East German soldier in Top Secret.
 * The Frost Giants from the Thor live action film
 * in the film version of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.
 * In the first Wishmaster, the Djinn fuses a security guard to a glass door, then shatters it.
 * This happens in the underrated 1954 science fiction movie Gog. A compromised computer AI locks two scientists in a giant freezer room that freezes them solid within minutes. They shatter upon falling over. (Although the shattering occurs off-camera, it's still a pretty gruesome death for a movie made in this era.)

Literature
"Twoflower: Will they be able to be turned back? Rincewind: No, probably not. I'm afraid they dropped poor old Wert, anyway. Five hundred feet onto cobbles. Twoflower: Will you be able to do anything about that? Rincewind: Make a nice rockery."
 * A Star Trek tie-in novel called Final Frontier has a scene where a character runs down a corridor and ducks into a shuttlecraft bay,
 * This happens in the novel Court Duel by Sherwood Smith. The Big Bad is trying to make a point to the protagonists, so he turns everyone at court into statues and smashes someone we haven't really heard from so far, just to up the dramatic tension. Might be more along the lines of Taken for Granite, but it still fits with the shatter-y theme.
 * Happens to one of the Unseen University's senior wizards at the end of The Light Fantastic.


 * Invoked as a threat in Percy Jackson and The Olympians when Medusa says something like, "You see why I cannot spare Annabeth. She is my enemy's daughter. I will crush her statue to dust."
 * In the Ravenloft novel Scholar of Decay, the protagonist fears this will happen to, so protects it with numerous wards and traps. These protections.

Live Action TV

 * Happens in the Saturday Night Live skit, Space Station Broadcast.
 * In Season 3 of Heroes, this happened to an over-intrusive reporter, as well as.
 * Yet another Heroes season 3 example: At the end, Tracy.
 * Happened in the Smallville episode 'Forever'. The Freak of the Week attempted to turn Clark to wax, and in the process, reversed his powers on himself. Moments later, he fell from a stairway.
 * A version of this trope is hinted at in the first season episode "Cool". The Villain of the Week is a high school jock who has been turned into a sort of heat vampire by meteorite fragments. He sucks the heat away from a girl and we are shown her freezing. He then lets her body fall to the floor, out of frame, and we hear a sound like shattering glass.
 * A variation on Pushing Daisies: the titular bodies in the episode "Corpsicle" are all already quite dead, but Ned briefly alive-agains (alives-again?) a few of them. When one of the bodies falls off its gurney and shatters into several large chunks on the pavement, Ned says "I'm not touching that."
 * On Life Crewes accidentally shattered a murder victim who had been frozen.
 * It happened in, of all places, the Adam West Batman, naturally, by way of Mister Freeze. One of Alfred's fellow butlers went down. One of a bare handful of examples of death on that show.
 * Similar thingy: in an Angel episode, a guy gets infected with a parasite that sucks all the moisture out of him. End result: shattered guy.
 * Recent Bones episode "The Science in the Physicist".
 * Notable for deconstructing this a bit; the corpse was flash frozen in liquid nitrogen, but shattered by . The actual results of simply dropping it are demonstrated when Angela is hit in the head by a bouncing turkey.
 * In the X-Files episode "Roland", a scientist is murdered when his head is immersed in liquid nitrogen and then dropped on the floor.
 * The "Eegah!" episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 begins with Tom Servo trying to freeze Crow to absolute zero. When Joel tries to get Crow out of the freezing chamber, he accidentally shatters Crow.
 * A not quite fatal variant appears in the old show V - a plant releases liquid nitrogen, and as the workers are rushing to escape, one worker (whose hand had been frozen) stumbles, and shatters it against a railing. This was when Robert Englund, as the friendly alien, showed THEY could easily survive temperatures at the level of liquid nitrogen unharmed.
 * This is how the Screeling, an otherwise-Nigh Invulnerable creature from the underworld, is killed in the second season premiere of Legend of the Seeker.
 * Busted by MythBusters; flesh and blood don't shatter like that.
 * In an episode of Bewitched Samantha's Father turns Darren into a statue and smashes him. Reluctantly he later puts him back together.
 * In Wizards of Waverly Place
 * In the series finale of Farscape, John and Aeryn get hit by a weapon which crystallizes them, then shatters them into thousands of tiny balls. They got better in the follow-up movie.
 * In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "By Any Other Name", the enemy aliens turn two crew members into styrofoam polyhedrons and then crush one to show their power.
 * In Kamen Rider Kiva, people who have had their Life Energy drained by Fangire become translucent and fragile like glass, though we only ever see one person actually shatter. Of course, those people are dead one way or another...
 * Also happens (in extremely similar fashion) to Ryu Terui's family in Kamen Rider Double thanks to Death by Origin Story, though they were frozen instead.
 * In an episode of Eureka, a scientist is found flash-frozen in a spa. Someone accidentally touches him, and he falls to the ground with predictable results.
 * In a Blood Ties episode, Medusa seduces and petrifies young men. When Vicki takes the statue of her latest victim, she sends a Mook to destroy the evidence, which he does by smashing the poor kid into pieces. After Medusa is dead, her victims get better, except for the smashed one.
 * In The Outer Limits revival episode "The Heist", an alien (which may have acted as the A/C for a crashed alien spacecraft) attempts to eliminate all heat sources in its vicinity. We get to see it freeze a female soldier so that she looks like an ice sculpture, and then a drop of water from an overhanging icicle is enough to get the "sculpture" to fall to pieces.
 * In season 2 of Warehouse 13, a woman was stabbed with a knife that turned its victims to glass. The murderer pushed her over and she shattered.
 * Bizarrely discussed in The Daily Show, when a correspondent mentions the weather being so cold that his genitals are frozen and can easily be snapped off "like a graham cracker".
 * In Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, this is how  dies. The viewer is set up for "just another Disney Death" with the character suffering some Harmless Freezing, and then   actually finishes the job with a shattering blast that's almost chilling to watch.

Newspaper Comics

 * This installment of Little Nemo In Slumberland where Nemo, Flip and Impie eat too much ice cream and then freeze. Impie is the first victim, who falls off his stool and shatters. Flip is next; when as someone tries to carry his frozen, paralyzed body away with a pair of ice tongs, he slips out and shatters into pieces. Then the frozen Nemo is brought back home, where he's placed in front of an oven to thaw him out, only his entire body begins to melt away as he screams for help. Definitely also an example of Nightmare Fuel.

Tabletop Games

 * Forgotten Realms has rare "[Duhlark's] Glasstrike" spell, which turns someone or something into glass. While mundane materials (like a victim's equipment) suffer the same fate, magical items are untouched. For extra "fun", transmuter has an option to leave the victim aware of what's going on. While shattering is implied as the target's fate (otherwise more widespread petrification would do) it isn't necessary, the statue may be even turned into solid glassteel.
 * At least one medusa in a Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 adventure had a habit of decapitating her petrified victims, then setting their heads back in place so that anyone casting stone to flesh would get a nasty surprise.
 * Amother medusa from the 2E Complete Book of Villains petrified a thief for breaking into her "art studio", then broke off one of his hands and gave it to his accomplice, promising to sell him the rest of the statue if he brings back a sufficient ransom.
 * In Magic: The Gathering, this is the flavor of the card Frozen Solid: the creature is immobilized, and any additional damage will cause it to shatter.
 * In the novels, the villain Lord Konda was dispatched this way. Since he was immortal, he was still alive despite being in pieces.
 * Warhammer40000's Dark Eldar have a vehicle-launched missile that, when triggered, uses two stages like a fuel-air bomb: the first freezes a small area, and everybody in it; the second is a traditional explosive blast to shatter them to bits. This is one of the few examples from the setting that doesn't crank the trope to eleven, although it is an unusual weapon, even for a sci-fi setting, and it does demonstrate the Dark Eldar's penchant for exotic and spitefully cruel technology.
 * The Dark Eldar also have access to a piece of arcane wargear called the Shattershard, a piece of a destroyed transdimentional portal that has been turned into a deadly weapon. The user catched the target's reflection on the mirrored surface of the Shard, then breaks it, causing the target's body to shatter in a similar manner. In game terms it immidiately removes from play any target that fails a toughness test with no saves of any kind allowed, even if they would be immune to normal instant kill weapons.
 * In the Game MSHRPG supplement Ultimate Powers Book, there is a power that allows for this. The notes on the power state that if a living thing is transformed and shattered, the change becomes permanent. The author states directly that this choice was made to avoid with the hamburger that would otherwise result.

Toys

 * Happens to  in an alternate universe Bionicle story after he is frozen solid by Kopaka and smashed by Onua. The Rahkshi Panrahk's power can also be used to do this, even without the "freezing" step.

Video Games
"Kano: So then he freezes this guy, right? And then he explodes! I could see his guts and everything! Almost lost my lunch."
 * Mortal Kombat's Sub-Zero, in keeping with the violent nature of the series, has several fatalities that have him doing this to an opponent.
 * Also, the film has Sub-Zero demonstrate this on a mook to show the heroes the seriousness of the situation. The mook tries a flying kick, only for Sub-Zero to freeze him in mid-air, causing him to smash on landing.

"Roger Wilco: Frosta la keister, baby!"
 * The funny thing is that it started in the SNES version, as in the bowdlerized one.
 * One more from Mortal Kombat: in Armageddon, there is a point in the Konquest mode in which you grab a weapon that you use to freeze several Mooks, and then crush them.
 * In the Play Station 3 version of Mortal Kombat 9, for one of his Fatalities, Kratos flashes the Head of Medusa at the opponent, turning them to stone and punches them into pieces.
 * Duke Nukem 3D: The freeze-ray gun shoots a stream that steadily drains your opponent's health. When they reach 1HP, they freeze solid. Any sort of damage causes them to shatter, and Duke automatically kicks them when he gets close. However, leaving them alone causes them to unfreeze after a few seconds.
 * In BioShock (series), the player can use the freeze plasmid on a splicer, making it freeze in place If the player attacks the splicer enough before it thaws, it shatters into a million pieces. Easy way to dispatch enemies, but if the player does this, he doesn't get any phat loot from the splicer's corpse (since there isn't one). The same rule applies in BioShock (series) 2's multiplayer, as with a shattered body, you can't photograph the missing corpse for research bonus.
 * In Star Ocean, being frozen would lock you in place and if you were lightly stricken, you'd die instantly.
 * Using Ice Beam followed by a missile does this in Metroid Prime games. In the 2D Metroid games, the only way to kill Metroids is to freeze them with the Ice Beam, then fire several missiles at them.
 * In Echoes, the Dark Beam ensnares its victim in dark matter, which serves the same purpose as freezing them - one missile and that's that. It makes wiping Rezbits that much easier, and even works on Dark Pirate Commandoes.
 * In Corruption, you get Ice Missiles instead. Freeze something with those first, and a potent energy weapon should wipe them out. These include, but are not limited to, the Plasma and Nova Beams when fully charged as well as Reptilicus chakrams. You need to wholly freeze the target for this to work, though - chilling isn't adequate.
 * The Baldur's Gate series applies this to victims of more traditional petrification.
 * And if you kill someone with cold based spell, like Cone of Cold, there's a chance that you will change him into solid statue made of frost which will shatter after few seconds.
 * Breath of Fire II has, but then Ryu's Eleventh-Hour Superpower turns the situation into a Battle Royale With Cheese.
 * In Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army, the petrification status means that, while damage is reduced numerically, every physical blow against a petrified target means they have a chance (based on their Luck stat) of being shattered. Somehow, for Raidou, this still only makes him "faint from his injuries", albeit not for long.
 * Devil Survivor uses the same petrification system (just replace "a chance based on Luck stat" with "if the attacker gets a critical hit"), but they're also guaranteed an instant-KO from Force-damage. Always a 'fun' problem to deal with...
 * Devil Survivor 2 also keeps this, but adds in some deaths from toppling over as ice sculptures (thankfully, these only happen in cutscenes).
 * While shattering is not so much "freeze then crush with blunt instrument" as "freeze then kill normally" In Diablo II, it is one of the more effective way of dealing with things that are liable to be resurrected or used somehow by something nearby.
 * In some Final Fantasy titles, being turned to stone and then struck will cause the character to shatter and they cannot be revived until after the battle.
 * Also, in Final Fantasy IX, being frozen and struck causes instant death, but the character doesn't shatter and can be revived in-battle.
 * In Final Fantasy X, if you're turned to stone underwater, you shatter instantly. On a side note, if a character is shattered, you can't switch in new party members in that spot and must do the remainder of the fight shorthanded.
 * Characters equipped with petrification weaponry will not just instantly shatter enemies they petrify, but will do the same number on any allies they hit... even out of water. Lesson here: don't equip characters with petrification weapons if you know you'll be fighting an enemy with confusion spells.
 * In Final Fantasy XI, there are the legendary Crystal Warriors—literally, warriors made of crystal. One mission requires your party to defeat all five of them in turn to progress, after which you see a short cutscene in which they each shatter into shards. There's also an alternate quest which allows a larger alliance to take on all five of them at once. There is an extra reward for this quest: your choice of one of five earrings. Close inspection of the icon for these items reveals that you are actually wearing a shard (an ear, in fact) of one of the Crystal Warriors as jewelry! An even later quest allows you to gain a matching earring (or at least another earring with the same icon) by defeating a pair of previously defeated bosses in a rematch.
 * In Yoshi's Island Yoshi can do this to enemies he's frozen with an Ice Melon.
 * Sonic the Hedgehog does this at the end of the battle vs. Chaos 6 in Sonic Adventure. It got better.
 * Cirno in Touhou likes freezing frogs and watching them thaw out. Some of them survive, but one out of three shatters.
 * Happens in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, with the Allies' freezing weapons.
 * The "Glass" status in Wild ARMs 3 is another of those status effects that makes a character susceptible to death on the next attack. As the name implies, the shatterable material they're turned to is glass.
 * Another Taken for Granite Example: In God of War, Kratos can be shattered if he's attacked before he can break out.
 * Kratos can also petrify enemies and then shatter them himself. If he petrifies a flying enemy, it'll fall and shatter on its own. Both of these kills give experience bonuses.
 * The Frost Shards weapon from Hexen allows a Mage to do this to an enemy.
 * The Legend of Zelda: In A Link to The Past, frozen enemies were already dead, but shattering them often yielded a Mana Meter recharge. In The Wind Waker, freezing was temporary and enemies could be finished by breaking them.
 * In Dragon Age, if a frozen or petrified enemy takes a critical hit, they shatter.
 * Dragon Age II took the fun out of that by requiring team coordination that would be better focused on simply killing them.
 * In Painkiller, the shotgun's Secondary Fire allows you to freeze enemies, upon which you can shatter them. Some of the Goddamned Bats are best dealt with this way.
 * In Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, attacking with the Dagger of Time allows the Prince to trade one unit of sand for freezing the victim in place so he can shatter them with his sword, instead of having to knock it down and collect its sands.
 * Mass Effect has cryo ammunition, which freezes your enemies. You have the option to melee them, causing them to shatter in hundreds of pieces.
 * Mordin in Mass Effect 2 has the Cryo Blast skill, which is basically the same thing with fewer bullets. Additionally, using Throw or Pull (or other similar biotics) will instantly shatter a frozen enemy. Or you could explode them the old-fashioned way: shooting them.
 * Mass Effect 3 continues to follow this proud tradition.
 * Presumably, this is what happens when you use Earthquake near a petrified enemy in Yggdra Union.
 * A gimmick of frost mages in World of Warcraft: the critical strike chance of all their spells is drastically increased when attacking a target which has been frozen in place.
 * A sludge boss from Ahn'Qiraj requires to be frozen via frost spells and shattered to be defeated. He shatters into smaller sludges that must be killed.
 * Another boss in Ulduar summons invulnerable golems that must be lured over fire until they melt, then taken into water where they become brittle. They still don't take normal damage, but a single hit of sufficient strength will shatter them.
 * Jazz Jackrabbit 2 had an obligatory ice weapon that turned enemies into the predictable block of ice. You can then shatter them by butt-stomping them, hitting them with Spaz's slide-kick, or shooting them with one of your other weapons.
 * Hitting Devon Shell's final boss form with a single ice shot dropped his HP to 0. Subverted because instead of being shattered while frozen as per the trope, Devon just thaws out after a couple seconds, reverts back to his regular form, and falls on his ass.
 * In The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night,  Spyro kills Gaul by turning him to stone and shattering him.
 * Previous Spyro the Dragon games also used this. Ice Breath didn't kill enemies; any enemy immobilized by Ice Breath had to be charged into for the kill.
 * Heroes of Might and Magic III: Happens to an unnamed Archmage in the intro cinematic after being turned into stone by a Medusa
 * In Space Quest V, Roger has to free his Love Interest Beatrice to keep her from becoming a mutant. Other than Cryonics Failure, attempting to pick up her frozen body results in her breaking into hundreds of ice cubes and a Nonstandard Game Over.
 * In Space Quest 6, this is the way to defeat the endodroid and bring him back to the endodroid runner. The endodroid then defrosts à la T-1000 and destroys the club. If Roger lingers before handing in the endodroid cubes, it will thaw in Roger's pants and kill him.


 * The fire extinguisher in Dead Rising freezes zombies and shatters upon touching or attacking them.
 * This also happens to  in Dead Rising 2: Off The Record after being frozen by his own nitrogen bombs and being pushed over by Frank.
 * In Run Saber, the main weapon of female playable character Sheena is the Ice Saber, and its death animation shows enemies freezing and instantly shattering into nothing.
 * Averted in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, where you can freeze enemies in ice blocks and then smash them, but only the ice actually shatters. The enemy stays intact and just falls offscreen in the usual fashion.
 * In Exit Fate, the Freeze magic turns the victim into a One-Hit-Point Wonder; if they take any damage at all, they're immediately knocked out.
 * The freeze spell in Pandemonium allowed you to jump on a frozen enemy, shattering them.
 * Shadow Frost spells in Luminous Arc 2 have a small chance to freeze their target, at which point a single standard attack will always hit and always deal exactly enough damage to kill them, implying this trope in an SRPG without the graphics for it.
 * This happens rather heartbreakingly to in Winter Shard's True ending.
 * In Dark Souls, players who are cursed while playing online leave behind their petrified statues in other players' worlds. You can also smash these. It's a lot of fun.

Webcomics

 * In this page of The Wotch, Ms West's pet Phoenix Arizona is found petrified and shattered. But Anne was prepared for this, due to being threatened with it in an earlier Story Arc.
 * In Crossworlds, when Lilly has been captured by slavers, Karl sees her about to smash one Kalif has frozen, and does it himself before she can.
 * The goblin-eating gargoyles in Goblin Hollow.
 * A slightly more complicated version appears in Eight Bit Theater. The Fire Fiend Kary proves too powerful for regular ice magic, so Red Mage trapped her in an alternate Universe (in the form of a Bag of Holding) and cast Ice 9, a spell powerful enough to freeze an entire Universe. His plan was to keep her there until the Light Warriors were strong enough to defeat her, but White Mage smashed the bag with her hammer

Web Original

 * Implied to be the fate of at the end of Volume 5 of RWBY, after getting frozen solid and knocked into an abyss.

Western Animation

 * On The Critic, Jay once accidentally shattered someone in a cryogenics lab.
 * In Gargoyles, when the titular creatures turn to stone by day, they can be killed by anyone so inclined to destroy a motionless stone statue. During the "City of Stone" arc, Demona cast a spell on Manhattan that turns people to stone by night, specifically so that she can go out and enjoy shattering them to pieces.
 * In Teen Titans, Robin tried this on Madame Rouge. It barely slowed her down.
 * Another variation: When Rex Shard turns Warden Meece to crystal in the Swat Kats episode "Chaos in Crystal", he falls over and shatters.
 * A variation of this happens in the cartoon Transformers Movie: Galvatron fires a single shot at Starscream, who then seems to crystallise and then collapses into millions of itty bitty pieces. Nothing even close to this ever happened in its regular series at the time.
 * In the first episode of the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon, Dr. Wily threatens Dr. Light that he would use Ice Man to freeze Dr. Light, then have Cut Man slice up his frozen body. They demonstrated with a chemistry table.
 * In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) this is the final fate of . While it also occurs to his partner, in his case.
 * Occurs to  in the X-Men: Evolution episode "Impact".
 * Unless this happened twice, it was
 * Happens to Carl in the "The Clowning" episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force ... after he spends 70 years as a coat rack.
 * In South Park, one of Kenny's many deaths is caused by this.
 * Crystar met his end this way on Robot Chicken.
 * Happens to Shendu at the end of Season 1 of Jackie Chan Adventures as a result of him being blown up after being turned back into a statue by the heroes. The next two seasons however, are actually about him trying to be resurrected by the villains for this reason.
 * Happens to  in the film Gnomeo and Juliet after being accidentally thrown against a wall by Gnomeo. He is eventually repaired at the end of the film, however.
 * Happens to at the end of Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire as a result of him being stabbed by a sharpened fragment of the Atlantean Crystal, causing him to crystallize and be smashed to pieces after being sliced by his blimp's propellers.
 * In Adventure Time, this is  fate at the end of season 2.
 * In Jonny Quest vs. the Cyber Insects, Dr. Zin freezes one of his henchmen, whereupon he collapses and shatters offscreen.
 * Happens to Hamton in Tiny Toon Adventures in "The Just-us League of Supertoons" after getting turned to stone by Fifi's stink and falling over.
 * In the 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series, Skeletor's minions are turned to stone by one of the Snakemen and one of them is shattered in passing. When Skeletor frees himself after King Hiss' power over Snake Mountain is broken, he promptly restores his minions. As he passes the shattered one, he repairs and restores him with a wave of his hand.
 * Wolverine and the X-Men: The ultimate fate of.
 * In the French Slapstick and part Gross-Out Show Oggy and the Cockroaches, this happens to Jack after getting covered in cement. Oggy has to put him back together, and then it's just a matter of Jack "shaking off" the cement layer.