Death From Above: Difference between revisions

[[File:death-from-above sonic 5560.gif|link=Sonic 3 and Knuckles|frame|[[Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me|Luckily, Sonic's Fire Shield will protect him.]]<ref>Tails is in for a fun time, though.</ref>]]

 

 

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.

* 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!)

* 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.)

* Appropriately enough, ''[[Call of Duty]] 4: [[Modern Warfare]]'' has a level called ''Death From Above'' in which you provide close air support from an AC-130U gunship. For the uneducated, the AC-130U has a left-side-mounted 25mm [[Gatling Good|GAU-12 Equalizer]], one 40&nbsp;mm L/60 Bofors cannon and one 105&nbsp;mm M102 howitzer. The Bofors was usually used as an AA gun, and the M102 is usually used in an indirect-fire artillery role. Using it as a direct-fire weapon from the side of a large cargo plane was something of a stroke of genius. Check [[The Other Wiki]] for [[wikipedia:Lockheed AC-130|more.]]

** ''[[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.

* ''[[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 ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Death in All Directions]]

[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Index in The Sky]]

[[Category:Falling, Dropping, and Plummeting]]