Death From Above: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Whether it's (un)holy smiting, meteor showers, nuclear weapons, bricks from bi-planes, ordinary ordnance, or good old napalm, there's lots of ways to rain Death From Above on those below. There's something about Death raining down from the sky that is almost biblical, it's fear and awe inspiring because there is ''nothing'' the target can do to avoid this airborne doom but "duck and cover". It is at once a powerful and impersonal way to threaten or actually kill someone, hence a great way to establish a [[Sliding Scale of Villain Threat|villain's power and threat as being on a planetary scale]]; on the flip side it also makes the airborne cavalry come to save the hero look angelic and omnipotent in comparison to the efforts of the heroes. Listed below are a few ways to rain this holy judgment:

* [[Kill It with Fire|Napalm]], for the smell of it in the morning.

* [[Nuke'Em]], when mutually assured destruction is no big deal.

* [[Rain of Arrows]], for the medieval version of carpet bombing. Add in some [[Arrows on Fire]] for extra fun.

* [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]], for the basic [[Game Master]]'s tool (not coincidentally).

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* Dio Brando's famous steamroller attack, featured near the end of ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure]]'' Part 3.

* In ''[[Mazinger Z]]'', Jenova M9 was a [[Robeast]] could shoot an enemy down [[Improbable Aiming Skills|several miles away]]. It tried to shoot [[The Hero|Kouji Kabuto]] down from the atmosphere, where neither him nor Mazinger-Z could reach it.

** And in the sequel, ''[[Great Mazinger]]'', [[The Dragon|Great Marshall of Hell]] fabricated a massive lens of ice orbited around Earth and worked like a [[Kill Sat]] by focusing sunrays in one single point and blasting it with a massive, hot-melting heat ray. It appeared only in one of the manga continuities, though.

* Hiigari must stop the [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] version in ''[[Psycho Staff]]''.

* Hostile aliens destroy Earth's bases through showers of meteors in ''[[Space Carrier Blue Noah]]''.

* The ''Pokemon'' move "Draco Meteor" embodies this trope.

* The ''Digimon'' [[Starmon/Super Starmon|Super Starmon]] have the "Meteor Shower/Squall" attack.

 

== Comic Books ==

* The skyfurnaces in Christian Gossett's ''The Red Star'', mile-long, heavily armored airships armed with Warkasters (military sorceresses). Each kaster is suspended in a special chamber that allows her to project herself temporarily as a concentrated beam of heat. The effect is pretty terrifying.

* [[The Cavalry]] version of [[Big Damn Heroes]] coming from above can be seen in ''[[Kingdom Come]]'', in which it is dubbed a "Force from on high." Also subverted, as the superheroes involved do not kill anybody.

 

== Film ==

** In the battle at the end, {{spoiler|Jake and his Toruk lead the Na'vi flyers in a diving ambush on the RDA's gunships. Their bows, shown to lack the power to penetrate the gunship canopies when fired up from the ground, are much more effective with the force of a diving Ikran behind them.}}

* Invoked in a grand display of helicopters and napalm bombing during ''[[Apocalypse Now]]''. For perspective, Lt. [[Colonel Kilgore]] of the [[The Cavalry|Air Cavalry division]] is somewhat reluctant to assist Captain Williard in his mission but when he hears that there is a good beach nearby occupied by the enemy that would just so happen to go Williard's way he decides to lead his men into battle in a formation of helicopters. As the helicopters close in on the Vietcong he plays "[[Ride of the Valkyries]]" to intimidate them and then they rain fiery death down upon them and as the helicopters land to let the men down onto the ground one of the helicopters humorously has "Death From Above" stamped on its nose. The battle goes well enough but Kilgore gets frustrated, that the enemy are being so persistent as he would just like to go ahead and surf the beach already, and decides to call in a massive napalm strike to end the battle. When all is said and done Kilgore temporarily forgets about the surfing and in the ecstasy of the moment notes how much he loves to watch explosions like that famously saying, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning (...) It smells like victory."

 

== Literature ==

* Zeus's Master Lightning Bolt in the ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'' series is a prime example of this trope.

* Three or more times in ''[[Animorphs]]'' they have a plan that involved having one of them (usually Cassie) fly as high as possible, then turn into a whale over water. Proof that Nice doesn't mean Weak, because she (like all of them) has to turn human in between.

* In the Darkwar Trilogy of the ''[[Riftwar Cycle]]'', an epic-level demon is going through a portal connecting from the Dasati dimension to the {{spoiler|world of Kelewan}}. Pug's answer? Evacuate the world and drop the moon on top of the portal.

* Similarly, ''Shatterpoint'' had DOKAWs, De-Orbiting Kinetic Anti-emplacement Weapons, described as 200-ton metal rods with thrusters on them. They were lethal, if somewhat less than accurate.

* In the fourth book of the ''[[Posleen War Series|Legacy of the Aldenata]]'' series by [[John Ringo]], the heroes, and the entire population of earth, are totally screwed, until {{spoiler|the fleet unexpectedly returns and uses kinetic bombardment to destroy every important target on the ground.}}

* The Western Galactic Empire of Robert Zubrin's ''[[The Holy Land]]'' uses Psioray bombardment. Capable of wide-area bombardment, accurate to within one-tenth of a percent of the range fired, can be tuned to only affect specific groups of beings (even more specifically than species), and reduces the targets to less than an inch in height, while leaving, for instance, local birds, lizards, and predatory insects the same size. {{spoiler|Poor Peru. Poor Iowa.}}

* ''The Ganymede Takeover'' (by [[Philip K. Dick]] and Robert Nelson) has The Shaft, a miniature psychotropic autonomic dart fired from a satellite, used to kill (on an individual basis) a vast number of key technicians and leaders during the alien invasion.

* ''Sky Masters'' by [[Dale Brown]], a Chinese destroyer was about to nuke the city of Davao, the Americans neutralized it by dropping a satellite right on top of it.

 

* In the pilot episode of ''[[Dead Like Me]]'', a toilet seat drops onto the main character ''from orbit'', killing her instantly.

** Likewise in the opening of the TV spy movie ''Blue Ice'', [[Michael Caine]] is attending the funeral of a friend killed by a chunk of ice that fell off an aircraft.

* The usual outcome of the [[Lexx]] visiting a planet.

** Toward the beginning of season 3 when liberating New Caprica, Adama decides to attack by jumping the Galactica into the atmosphere and launching its fighters and shuttles from there, jumping back out just before hitting the dirt.

* ''[[Sons of Guns]]'' had an episode where the crew rigged a machine gun to be door-mounted on a helicopter. The episode ended with them shooting it at a junked car on the ground, [[Every Car Is a Pinto|which exploded when it was hit]].

* ''[[Robot Wars (TV series)|Robot Wars]]'' had the drop zone, where an immobilized robot would be placed on a spot on the arena floor and something would be dropped from the ceiling (including a television, an oven, bowling balls, and one of the [[Video Games]] dropped a grand piano!)

* The storms featured in ''[[Storm Chasers]]'' frequently drop tornadoes, lightning, and hail big enough to smash an unprotected human skull on anyone unlucky enough to be in their path.

** Also almost the fate of Earth, at the end of Clarke's presidency of the Earth Alliance.

** Later on, the Narn, with the help of the Drazi, proceed to Centauri Prime to return the favor, though they at least restrain themselves to only using conventional heavy weapons (causing untold thousands of deaths, as opposed to the Centauri's attack on Narn being essentially a WMD attack severe enough that even the Vorlons gave them a "[[What the Hell, Hero?]]" response.

* The [[CCG]] ''[[Net Runner]]'' has a powerful card named ''Death From Above''.

** With a telling bit of flavor text: "They drop rocks; I commandeer battlesats." Needless to say, there's ''also'' a card with the meaningful name ''I Got A Rock'' that will under the right circumstances hit the Runner with enough 'meat damage' to flatline him or her about [[No Kill Like Overkill|three times over]]...

** They even have multiple ways to perform Exterminatus, from virus-bombing (which destroys all unprotected organic material on a planet) to cyclonic torpedoes (which shatter the planet's crust)

** There's a frequently devised tactic relying on summoning and creation spells. Create a large rock five feet above your target's head and they die easily enough, or summon a horse over them, or whatever.

*** As of at least 3.0 Edition, if not earlier, the rules for such spells explicitly do not allow this, as they specify that summoned creatures/items have to appear on the ground. However, there are still a few ways to accomplish something similar- the Earthquake spell can cause a cave in if cast in an underground cavern, while enemies can be buried alive by using Transmute Rock To Mud or [[It Got Worse|Transmute Rock To Lava]] on a cave's ceiling.

** There is a Tiger Claw technique in the ''Tome of Battle'' named Death From Above. You jump over your enemy, attack [[For Massive Damage]], and then dismount anywhere next to the enemy.

* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] Fantasy'' gave us the spells ''Comet of Casandora'', ''Forked Lightning'' and ''Uranon's Thunderbolt''. Pretty much [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]].

* ''[[Act of War]]'', being a [[Real Time Strategy]] game set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], brings loads and loads of opportunities to unleash death upon your enemies from above, bonus points since the mechanics and visuals have a sense of realism which is reinforced with [[Real Life]] units like B-2 and the Tu-160 bombers, just to give two examples, oh, and if you want the game has no population limits for building them or [[Weapon of Mass Destruction|Tactical Weapons]].

* Of note here are the A.I. characters from ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'', one of whom described a plan to destroy the power station of the Pfhor on the planet Lh'owon as, effectively, "Step one: drop an asteroid on the roof of the (underground) power plant. Step two: drop the [[Badass]] protagonist down the hole." This is about 25% of the way through ''Marathon 2: Durandal'', and similar plans occur elsewhere in Bungie games (The [[Halo|Master Chief]] in a drop pod is more dangerous than a warship)

*** It's worse. That's Durandal once he's STABLE.

* The [[Big Bad]] proves herself able in ''[[Drakengard]]'' when she launches [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM14PBS3GDc fireballs that explode with the force of a nuclear blast] against the recently victorious army of the protagonist.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'', the esper Exodus' ultimate attack drops a [[Armageddon|meteor the size of Texas]] on your enemy's head.

** Its a reoccurring theme in almost all of the big summons in [[Final Fantasy]]. Examples are almost all of Bahamut's summonings, one of which involves him firing a [[Earthshattering Kaboom|Moon Killer]] which blasts through the moon to reach its target. Other notable ones are Eden from ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' and Ark from ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'', which combines [[Kill Sat]] with [[Cool Airship]]. It is as [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|cool as it sounds]].

* In the later ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'' games, jumping into a group of enemies from a high enough elevation (usually on horseback) results in an 'Ambush' situation, where the enemies are temporarily terrified (causing them to attack rarely, while also reducing their defense.)

** You can also call in airstrikes and gunships during missions like ''Safehouse'' and ''Heat'', or during multiplayer if you can kill enough people without dying yourself.

*** The Care Package or the Emergency Airdrop (4 Care Packages in one go) however may randomly contain any of those killstreak rewards, meaning you can get Death from Above [[Department of Redundancy Department|in your Death from Above]]. [[Memetic Mutation/Other Internet|Yo Dawg.]]

** ''[[Call of Duty: Black Ops|Call of Duty Black Ops]]'' adds such killstreaks as calling in a Huey and firing a minigun mounted at its side door, ''or'' call in an Apache or Hind gunship ''with you at the controls''.

* ''[[Worms]]'' has plenty of powerful airstrike Superweapons. Mail Strikes, MB Bombs, Mike's Carpet Bombs, French Sheep Strikes, Concrete Donkeys, and Armageddon all rain death on opposing worms. OK, that last one, as you might expect from the name, rains death on [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies|everyone]], but the point stands.

* In ''[[Dawn of War]]'', the Space Marines special unit - Assault Marines has this phrase as a battlecry. The same faction also uses drop pods in a planetary assault. The commander unit can call in an Orbital Bombardment as well.

** In ''[[Dawn of War]] 2'', the Assault Marines actually do damage in the single-player by dropping down - in the multiplayer, they knock infantry down.

** [[Kill Sat]] - Judgement and Catastrophe; arguably also the unleashed attack of the Phaeton's Blade, sending [[Frickin' Laser Beams]] down on the target.

** Meteor - [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|the Meteor summon]], and a more localized version in the [[Infinity+1 Sword|Sol Blade]]'s "Megiddo" unleash.

*** Or alternatively, the [[Big Bad|Doom Dragon's]] attack, Cruel Ruin, which appears to shoot a chain of exploding beams, each destroying massive areas of land. Also, the Daedalus summon, which brings out a giant ancient-looking robot that shoots several small missiles that hit immediately and a final, huge one, which three turns later, hits [[For Massive Damage|for a large explosion]].

** [[Rain of Arrows]] - Atalanta.

* One of the most dangerous scenarios in ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield 2142]]'' is a fully-loaded Air Transport. Though less menacing than planetside drops (since there are at most two transports available per side), there is more than enough destruction aboard in the form of two vehicle-mounted cannons for infantry, engineers with anti-vehicle weapons and mines, as well as two engineers designated as mid-flight repairmen (who can easily repair most damage). Only a concerted attack by the enemy (or an extremely lucky kamikaze transport pilot) can hope to stop the assault.

** ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield 2]]'s'' "cartillery". Air-dropped ground vehicles crush the shit out of anything it lands on. Also done supply crates.

** And Yoshi's Yoshi Bomb, Kirby's Stone and Cutter, Ike's Aether and Dedede's Super Dedede Jump as well.

* In ''[[Metroid Prime]] 3'', Samus can call in an air strike from her [[Cool Ship]] once she has acquired the correct [[Power-Up]] and is in an open area. This kills most ordinary [[Mooks]] and is needed to destroy certain objects her suit weaponry cannot destroy.

** The Screw Attack usually functions this way.

* ''[[Meteos]]'' revolves around this; every populated planet and non-planet in the universe is being bombarded by multicolored meteors that, if left by themselves, will make the planet ''[[Earthshattering Kaboom|explode.]]''

* An Umgah representative in ''[[Star Control]] 2'' mentions doing this [[For the Evulz|for the lulz]]: "It so much easier to make good jokes without boring old Ur-Quan slave laws! We wanting to pull a real good one on those stupid nosers from Draconis for long time but since they battle thralls too, we not allowed do even small pranks on them like, say... dropping planetoid in their ocean. Big waves! Big waves! Har! Har! Har!"

*** 'Fraid not, the sequel nerfed the Mothership. Only the [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|''Purifier'']] can do that now, but it [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|blows up entire communities]].

** If you could get the resources together to build them, nothing was more awesome than tooling around with a squadron of battlecruisers (except possibly tooling around with a squadron of carriers).

* ''[[Syndicate|Syndicate Wars]]'' has a weapon called Satellite Rain, which is a fictional version of Project Thor mentioned in the [[Real Life]] section.

* ''[[EVE Online]]'' [[Fan Vid]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathFromAbove?action=editv=yXWf-l71MY4#t=1m25s Day of Darkness II] features Gallente [[Attack Drone|Sentry Drones]] performing an orbital bombardment. Also, Admiral Tovil-Toba performs a [[Colony Drop]] with his multi-kilometer spaceship.

* ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'''s Alex Mercer does this repeatedly, except he does it with his own body. So it's kind of [[It's Raining Men|It's Raining a Man]] and [[Goomba Stomp]]. Not that he cannot also hijack aircraft with an unusually large supply of ammunition and use them.

* ''[[Disgaea]]'': [[Disgaea: Hour of Darkness/Characters|Laharl]]'s ultimate attack,Meteor Impact [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|is exactly what it sounds like]]

* The [[Badass Normal|Bounty Hunter]] class in ''[[Star Wars: The Old Republic]]'' gets an ability called Death From Above, which involves carpeting a small area with missiles.

* [[Mass Effect]]: Near the climax of [[Mass Effect 1|the first game]], [[Ace Pilot]] Joker drops the [[Awesome Personnel Carrier|Mako APC]] almost on top of Saren, from the [[Cool Starship|Normandy]].

** ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'': The overhauled Normandy SR-2 provides air support on occasion, like when it does a [[Gunship Rescue]] for [[Player Character|Commander Shepard]] and [[Four-Star Badass|Admiral]] [[Reasonable Authority Figure|Anderson]] from the [[Alien Invasion|invasion of]] [[All Your Base Are Belong to Us|Earth]], at the beginning of the game.

** Also in the third game, this trope is how Shepard kills a Reaper (destroyer-class) on Rannoch: by using a targeting laser to smite it with the combined firepower of [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|the entire Quarian fleet]].

{{quote|Falling from above! Death from above!

We should never be!

* Air Strike mode in ''[[Split Second]]'' has you racing down the track while a helicopter rains down missiles on you. In the airport race, one [[Stuff Blowing Up|Power Play]] drops an airplane on your opponents - and it's not just a small plane dropping from a crane. ''[[Up to Eleven|A jumbo jet crash lands on the runway]]''.

* In the DBZ Games (Raging Blast at least) Base Super Buu has a move that could be called this. He stands still, one hand in the air, and fires Ki blasts straight up. He's only vulnerable for a few split seconds before the ki blasts come back down, stunning you and knocking you to the ground.

** This was also how {{spoiler|the Battle of Barhera}} finished in FE 4. Death by {{spoiler|a "fire rain" via meteors, courtesy of the [[Magnificent Bastard]] who has just killed your leader.}} [[Nightmare Fuel|Aaaaaahhhhh!!!]]

* ''[[Dune II]]''. The Harkonnen can launch a Death Hand missile from their palace(s). It can devastate an enemy complex.

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'' introduced a combat technique called the Finishing Blow, a [[One-Hit Kill]] that involves Link jumping very high in the air and coming down to [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice|impale the foe]] on his sword. The same technique reappears in ''[[Skyward Sword]]''. In both games, {{spoiler|it is used to finish the final boss}}.

* [[Kid Icarus: Uprising]]:{{spoiler|Viridi}} is fond of using Reset Bombs (designed reset the Earth to its natural state) as meteors to [[Kill All Humans|kill the humans]] or {{spoiler|strike down the Aurum}}.

 

== Webcomics ==

* The cry "Death From Above!" occasionally appears in the webcomic ''[[Dominic Deegan]]: Oracle For Hire''. Dominic's cat, Spark, uses it as his catchphrase when dropping ''himself'' onto the head of a (usually much larger) enemy. The same series subverts the entire idea during one story arc, as a villain notes how the city he's threatening was designed to defend against aerial bombardment... then calls up an attack from ''beneath the earth''.

* Inverted in [http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20090809 this strip] of ''[[Least I Could Do]]'', wherein young [[Jerkass|Rayne]] has been waiting somewhere (on the ceiling?) for his mom to wake up so he can give her a hug.

* An odd version in ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'', where Vaarsuvius is saved from a death knight by the severed head of a zombie dragon falling on it. Also the eternal fate of the [[The Chew Toy|Flumphs]], although they always survive it.

* Nothing fits this trope quite like the U.S. Air Force. The four best examples:

** The AC-130 "Spectre" Gunship - A conversion of a C-130 cargo plane that replaces the cargo with a 25mm Gatling Gun, a 40mm automatic cannon, and a 105mm howitzer field artillery piece. All can be (and often are) equipped with explosive rounds and the Air Force is considering increasing the caliber of all weapons now that they have ways to compensate for the recoil.

** The A-10 "Thunderbolt" attack aircraft (A.K.A. the "Warthog") - Basically a flying tank capable of holding a dozen bombs and flying in very low, but its main feature is a 30mm gatling gun that fires 65 depleted uranium slugs EVERY SECOND. The plane had to be specially designed with a low stall speed and two very powerful engines just to keep it from dropping out of the sky every time the pilot pulled the trigger.

** GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast "MOAB" bomb - The largest conventional explosive device known to man (unless you ask the Russians, who have yet to prove otherwise), this bomb has to be dropped from a cargo plane because it's too big to be dropped by a B-52.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Death in All Directions]]

[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Index in The Sky]]