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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Natalya Simonova:''' Do you destroy every vehicle you get into?
'''[[James Bond]]:''' Standard operating procedure.
|''[[GoldenEye (film)|GoldenEye]]''}}
{{quote|'''Drew:''' Things you can say to describe your boat, but not your girlfriend.
'''Ryan:''' [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|She's going down!]]
|''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]''}}
Used to describe structures that will be destroyed by the end of the movie, usually in [[Stuff Blowing Up|a massive explosion]], even if for no other reason than the [[Rule of Cool]]. Your town has a large windmill in the middle of a field? It's toast. It's likely to explode because of loose flour, or to get burned down by an [[Angry Mob]]. Same rule applies to bridges over chasms.
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The later in the film that the destruction occurs, the more spectacular it is likely to be. If the hero is chased over a [[Rope Bridge]] in the first half an hour of the movie, that bridge will get off pretty light; a couple of the planks will snap after the hero steps on them. If this bridge is involved in the big finale, however, expect every support and mooring on one side of the bridge to give way or snap in half. Slowly and dramatically. With the hero in the middle, and twenty [[Mooks]] heading toward him from either end. And that's if it's not set on fire. Or rigged to blow.
As there is [[No Ontological Inertia]], the castle, fortress, temple or other elaborate and impressive structure that houses the [[Big Bad]] will make an even more elaborate and impressive explosion after he has been dispatched by the heroes (see [[Load-Bearing Boss]] and [[Collapsing Lair]]). A clue that
Also applies to any and all enemy vehicles in a chase scene. Not only is [[Every Car Is a Pinto|Every Car A Pinto]], but so is every Motorbike, and Plane, and Speeder, and Battle Flyer apparently designed to travel through space.
Then there's [[Falling Chandelier of Doom|chandeliers]], which like rules, are made to be broken.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Film]] ==
* The windmill in ''[[Sleepy Hollow (Film)|Sleepy Hollow]]''.
* The windmill in ''[[Van Helsing]]''. Unusually, this windmill exploded spectacularly in the film's opening scene.
* ''The Seeker: [[The Dark Is Rising]]'', when a bunch of windmills fall victim to Will's hissy-fit.
* Pretty much any windmill in any action movie (an alternative name suggested for this trope was "Burn Windmill Burn"). Oddly enough, the more techy modern windmills that make up wind farms tend not to get burned down, although they're so new there probably isn't a trope for them yet.
** In ''[[Mission: Impossible (
** These tend to undergo [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA catastrophic failure].
*** As also seen in an episode of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]''.
* In ''[[Saved]]'' it is... unsurprising what fate befalls the giant cardboard statue of Jesus.
* The whole burning-windmill thing probably got its start with the climax of the original ''[[Frankenstein]]'' film.
** It's more [[Truth in Television]], actually. Most old windmills were made to grind grains to produce flour; flour is incredibly flammable, and generally when you add friction/heat to a flammable substance in a large building constructed primarily of wood and fitted with huge bits of oiled or waxed canvas...
* Marion's bar in ''[[
* Both Death Stars in ''[[Star Wars]]''.
** The ''Executor'' survives ''Empire'', but blows up in spectacular fashion in ''Jedi''.
* Pretty much any villain's base in a [[James Bond (
** As will any vehicle involved in any sort of chase scene. James' car may not blow up, but it's bound to get trashed.
*** One time, it actually got ''[[The World Is Not Enough
** Interestingly, the Daniel Craig movies thus far tend to be more realistic (i.e. fewer overall explosions). {{spoiler|[[
*** {{spoiler|Although the Venice building that sinks into the Adriatic compensates the lack of a [[Collapsing Lair]] in ''CR''.}}
* Axis Chemical in the original ''[[Batman (
* Any remotely recognizable building in a global disaster movie. ''[[
* As soon as [[V for Vendetta|V]] promises to blow up the houses of Parliament in the first act, the ending is a foregone conclusion. Nothing would satisfy but a massive explosion. Set to the 1812 Overture.
** In the book, Parliament's the first thing to go, followed by the Old Bailey, and, a year later, Downing Street.
* {{spoiler|The Eiffel Tower}} in ''[[G.I. Joe:
* As soon as I saw that road tanker in [[The Terminator]], I just KNEW it would end up exploding.
* The pagoda in almost every single Godzilla movie.
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* Any really expensive car that suddenly turns up in the middle of a chase scene, e.g., the yellow Ferrari Nick Cage's character commandeers in the chase scene in "The Rock" or the Lamborghini creamed in the hovercraft chase scene in "Rumble in the Bronx." Soon as you see that car, you know it's doomed; that's why it's in the movie: to get creamed.
* In-film example - ''[[The Party]]'' begins with a location shoot where actor Hrundi Bakshi ([[Peter Sellers]]) is inadvertently, and repeatedly, messing up shots. A large fortress set has been rigged to explode, but before they can set up to shoot it, Bakshi goes to lace up a sandal, and rests his foot on the detonator.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Barad-dûr in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. It's a mile high and powered by pure liquid evil, so its eventual epic collapse was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
** And the Tower of Tol-in-Gaurhoth in ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', which crumbles after Sauron is forced to flee it, though [[Magic Music|Luthien]] was the one who actually triggered the collapse.
* [[Discworld]]:
*
** Not that AM doesn't get torched. Heck, [[The Colour of Magic|the ''very first book'']] opened with the city in flames. Plus [[Guards! Guards!|the time the dragon took over.]] The fact that the populace knows how to stop a [[Crazy Prepared|city-wide fire]] (close the sea gates and flood it out) shows that it probably happens more often than plausible.
*** Define "plausible". And then look up the history of Tokyo back when it was named Edo.
*** ...more smother than flood, really. The contents of the Ankh have only a casual relationship with water (don't even ask about the ''fish'').
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*** Okay, if this exchange wasn't written by Pratchett, it should have been!
* The [[Falling Chandelier of Doom|chandelier]] in ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'' is a classic example of this, enough to be a trope on its own.
** [[Terry Pratchett]] plays with it oh so much in ''[[
* The titular structure in The Fall of the House of Usher by [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]] {{spoiler|collapses into the surrounding lake/swamp}} as the narrator flees, having learned that {{spoiler|Madeline was buried alive, and Rodrick knew she was alive at the time.}} It's a metaphor for Rodrick's mental state as well as the {{spoiler|end of the Usher family, hence the title.}}
* It's a castle that falls off its precarious perch instead of exploding, and it's when the [[Load-Bearing Boss|Red Bull]] is defeated instead of the king, but the crumbling is foreshadowed during the characters' visit to the nearby town in the book of ''[[The Last Unicorn (
* In ''[[Otherland]]'', the mile-high tower of J Corp, located conveniently in the Louisiana swamps. It goes out most spectacularly when {{spoiler|[[Death From Above|a satellite deorbits and crashes into it]]}}.
* [[Mistborn
* In the fifth season of ''[[
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Lost]]'' had an [[Elaborate Underground Base]] imploding (but still producing an enormous blast), and both a DHARMA station and a submarine blowing up (all three with John Locke's involvement, but the first wasn't intentional).
▲* In the fifth season of ''[[Twenty Four|24]]'', a plot was hatched involving the natural gas... factory. Thing. The [[Genre Savvy]] audience members immediately knew that this building was doomed to a swift and fiery death.
▲* ''[[Lost]]'' had an [[Elaborate Underground Base]] imploding (but still producing an enormous blast), and both a DHARMA station and a submarine blowing up (all three with John Locke's involvement, but the first wasn't intentional).
* The entire town of Sunnydale California on ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''.
** Don't forget Sunnydale High. Also Buffy often alludes to burning the gym down at her previous school, which went on her permanent record.
* On ''[[Top Gear]]'', any caravan or Morris Marina. Guaranteed.
** Subverted hard with the now memetic [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnWKz7Cthkk Toyota Hilux.] That truck makes Rasputin look like a pansy for dying so easy.
▲== Music And Music Videos ==
* The floating windmill island appearing in the [[Gorillaz]] videos for "Feel Good Inc" and "El Manana".
== [[Video Games]] ==
* More windmills! The beautiful centerpiece windmills of Bruhl didn't last past the initial invasion in ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]''.
* Every Skull Castle in the original ''[[Mega Man (
* Odds are that any place [[Half Life|Gordon Freeman]] sets foot is going to blow shortly after he's been there.
** The test chamber, teleporter, and all of Black Mesa in ''Half-Life'' and ''Opposing Force''.
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** City 17 in its entirety, at the end of ''[[Half Life]] 2: Episode 1''.
* Once a game in the [[Professor Layton]] series
* Anything marked with a red and white star in ''[[Just Cause (
* Planets visited by Samus in the side-scrolling ''[[Metroid]]'' series have a tendency to explode. By the end of the fourth game, ''all'' of the places she'd gone to had been taken out (discounting those from the 3D ''Prime'' series).
* Anything and everything that resembles a tower in ''[[Split Second]]''. That airport control tower? BOOM! That [
* In the history of war games no landing boat has ever made it to shore, they will be destroyed after which point the player will in a cut scene flail around helplessly for a few moments before remembering he can swim.
* [[Ratchet and Clank|Ratchet]] has a problem with destroying spaceships for no discernible reason. He's [[Ace Pilot|capable of handling them just fine in a dogfight]], and they don't seem to have mechanical malfunctions, but even [[Word of God|Insomniac themselves]] have admitted that ''they don't know'' why he crashed that first one. And considering half of the game's fun comes from [[Stuff Blowing Up]], it's not surprising he and his [[Robot Buddy]] Clank have left more than a few places in worse shape than they found them.
* ''[[Prototype (
* Most vehicles in the [[Mass Effect]] series that aren't the ''[[Cool Ship|Normandy]]'' ({{spoiler|and once even the ''Normandy''}}) tend to explode in a spectacular fashion. Of particular note are Sovereign in the first game and the [[Humongous Mecha|YMIR mechs]] and the Collector base in [[Mass Effect 2]].
* Practically every single Pelican dropship in the ''Halo'' series.
** In fact, there's only one level in the first game in which an aircraft does not crash. Of course, said level doesn't feature any aircraft.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Batman:
** If this troper isn't mistaken, the producers said in commentary that if they couldn't figure out how to end an episode, they'd blow up the villain's lair.
*** All but two (three maybe?) episodes of ''The New Batman Adventures'' ended with a large explosion, usually the villain's lair.
** ''[[Superman:
* The original ''[[My Little Pony]]'' cartoon does this a couple times. In the pilot special, Tirak's fortress basically evaporates at the end. In the four-part episode ''Return of Tambelon'', the eponymous city gets sucked into another dimension ''twice'' - once in the backstory, and again at the episode's climax.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Spectacle]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
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