Man on Fire (trope): Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''Make a man a fire, you keep him warm for a day. Set a man on fire, [[Half Truth|you keep him warm]] [[Black Humor|for the rest of his life.]]''|'''[[Terry Pratchett]]'''}}
The human body is unexpectedly flammable, resulting in characters, particularly [[Spear Carrier
Not to be confused with the [[Man on Fire|Denzel Washington film of the same name]], which ''doesn't'' feature a literal man on fire. Or with the [[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Human Torch]]. Or with ''Burning Man''. Or... you get the idea.
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* Anakin Skywalker, just before his final transformation into Darth Vader in ''[[Star Wars]]: Episode III: [[Revenge of the Sith]]''. Subverted in that, realistically, only his hair and clothes burn. We later see (in ''Return of the Jedi'') that his eyelashes are still there, but the make-up department's only human! (Though it did (subtly) get fixed in the DVD.)
* In the film ''[[Ong Bak]]'', Tony Jaa's character kicks a man in the face while his legs are on fire. He then puts them out in a barrel of water. (Note: Tony Jaa did his own stunts. ''[[Badass|Damn]]''.)
* In the film ''[[Hobgoblins]]'', one character is set on fire after diving onto a
* In one of the ''[[Scary Movie]]'' sequels (either three or four), a flaming man appears in the background walking a flaming dog.
* In ''[[Anchorman]]'', the rival news crews get involved in a violent street brawl and right in the middle a man on fire staggers through the scene. [[Rule of Funny|It's funny]].
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** Another scene depicts US soldiers piling out of a burning landing craft while on fire.
** Later, a German self propelled gun is hit by a Molotov cocktail, resulting in several men on fire wandering around.
* In ''[[Brazil (film)|Brazil]]'', a
* In ''[[Manhunter (film)|Manhunter]]'' and its remake, ''[[Red Dragon]]'', one of the serial killer's victims is set on fire and sent rolling down the street tied to a wheelchair.
* In ''[[Kingdom of Heaven]]'', Balian kills his priest half-brother after he takes his dead wife's necklace and cuts her head off due to her being a suicide. Balian then stabs the guy with a sword he's working on, pushing the guy into a fire. The man then gets off the forge and runs around screaming before finally dying after having set the smithy on fire.
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== Music Videos ==
* The clip for [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPT7q825gwI "California" by Wax], directed by Spike Jonze, consists almost ''entirely'' of a
* The [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] music video for "Smells Like Nirvana" has a burning man in the background of one of the shots.
* Christoph Schneider's character in the [[Rammstein]] video "Du Hast".
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* In the first episode of ''[[Blood (video game)|Blood]]'' (the horror [[First-Person Shooter]]), one of the first weapons you acquire is a flare gun whose ammo, after hitting an enemy, sets him ablaze, running and screaming while engulfed by the fire, when he's weakened enough. The sequel had the same weapon, but the enemies stay strangely calm as they fry to a crips (partially justified when they are zombies).
** There's also the spraycan-plus-lighter Caleb uses as a makeshift flamethrower.
* In the video game ''[[Total Carnage]]'', setting fire to certain objects (e.g. vehicles) will turn nearby [[Mooks]] into burning men, who charge at you with flaming fists. You're not so
* The video game ''[[Judge Dredd]]'': Dredd Versus Death has Incendinary ammunition for the very purpose of setting things on fire by shooting them. Unlike some of the other types of ammo (Bouncing Bullets?!), it is quite effective, though using it on most civilians is highly frowned upon.
** Hell, using incendiary rounds on ANYONE not a zombie is considered pure evil. I shot a couple of armed criminals trying to kill me with incendiary rounds, and was quickly determined to be a rogue judge and hunted down by the SJS.
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** In ''Cataclysm'' there is a quest in Mount Hyjal to extinguish burning Twilight Cultists who have failed their training test to defeat a fire elemental.
** Engineers can get the Transporter Malfunction debuff "YOU ARE ON FIRE!!!"
* ''[[Odium]]'' has lighting the monsters on fire (they burn and receive damage for three turns) as one of the most helpful and damaging combat maneouvers. You can begin doing it very quickly, since you find a flamethrower a few combats into the game. There are also [[Molotov Cocktail
* ''[[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World|Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game]]'' feature [[
* ''[[Purple]]'' features enemies who look like standard onion-head NPCs, except their head is on fire and they can attack and hurt you. Later, there's a (stronger) ''freezing'' head variation.
* ''[[Overlord]]'s'' red minions can do this to enemies, some of which have the courtesy to [[Kill It with Fire|die panicked shrieking deaths]]. Explosives thrown or planted by enemies can hit each other for similar effect.
* ''[[Dragon Age II]]'''s Ketojan, a Qunari Saarebas whom Hawke escorts out of Kirkwall, {{spoiler|uses his power to set himself on fire to kill himself rather than risk the possibility that he has been corrupted by demons, as is demanded by the Qun.}}
* One of the [[Mook
* In ''[[Banjo Tooie]]'', if you use your fire eggs or Dragon!Kazooie's fire breath on a mook, you can watch him run around ablaze until it stops or you kill him.
* It's something of a tradition for ''[[Fallout]]'' games to depict the average human being as kindling in waiting. Flamethrowers in the first and second games give a kill animation fondly referred to among fans as the Burning Bitch Dance, while the later installments by Bethesda have given the various desert-wandering protagonists plenty of ways to demonstrate how flammable people are.
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== Real Life ==
* Perhaps the most famous was [[wikipedia:
* Richard Pryor set himself on fire while freebasing and literally did run down the street while ablaze in 1980. In his next big special, he [[Take That Us|made jokes about it]].
* Has happened more than once in [[Formula One]] and other racing sports. Some fuel sprinkles here, then it catched heat, and BOOM. Jos Verstappen's case is the most recent, but Niki Lauda and ''specially'' [[Tear Jerker|poor Riccardo Paletti]] take the cake.
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* Actually happened in the Vietnam era in the USA. [[wikipedia:Norman Morrison|Norman Morrison]], a Quaker protester of the war, set himself on fire outside the Pentagon in 1965.
* Self-immolation also happened in protests against the Chinese government's suppression of Falun Gong.
* Several people committed a suicide by self-immolation as a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia: [[wikipedia:Ryszard Siwiec|Ryszard Siwiec]], [[wikipedia:Jan Palach|Jan Palach]], [[wikipedia:Jan
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