Disintegrator Ray: Difference between revisions

 

== [[Film]] ==

** In the 1953 Hollywood movie adaptation, the "heat ray" truly could burn tanks to ashes, but for extra appeal, the war machines gained a second weapon, the green "skeleton beam" which "neutralized mesons," truly causing its victims to vanish in a glow of green light.

** The 2005 Spielberg adaptation included not only a scene with many fleeing civilians getting disintegrated, but also a scene afterwards where the protagonist realizes that he's covered in ''people'' dust.

* ''[[Mars Attacks!]]'' has the Martians armed with disintegrators that leave a brightly colored skeleton behind.

* The dirtship in ''[[The Core]]'' has an ultrasonic beam at the front that disintegrates everything in front of it so it can travel through to the center of the Earth.

* ''Earth Versus The Flying Saucers''. The beams emitted from the hands of the invader's armor suits and (sometimes) the devices in the bottom of the invaders' ships.

* ''[[The American Astronaut]]'': [[Mad Scientist|Professor Hess]] has a handgun that can turn people to ash if they forget his birthday.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** Inside the blast zone, the messy burnt bits are smaller and harder to notice.

** The "Heat Ray" was a death ray. The first true disintegrator appears in the 1898 ''Edison's Conquest of Mars''.

* In the ''[[Animorphs]]'' series, the Yeerks' Dracon beams were deliberately engineered to disintegrate living targets [[Kick the Dog|slowly and painfully]]. Other weapons did so more cleanly.

* The disruption-balls fired by "The Gun That Shot Too Straight", in Ralph Roberts' short story.

* A disintegrator ray is the weapon ultimately (and accidentally) created in the [[Arthur C. Clarke]] short story "Armaments Race" in ''[[Tales From The White Heart]]''.

* ''[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19174 The Man Who Rocked the Earth]'' by Arthur Train and Robert Wood.

** In the original series episode "The Apple", a ''lightning bolt'' acted as a Disintegrator Ray. Though {{spoiler|it was a super-computer-controlled active defensive system only pretending to be natural lightning.}}

** And in the original series episode "The Changeling", Nomad's beam weapon vaporized many a red-shirt without trace.

* Three shots of a Zat gun on ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' ''used'' to do this, but after the writers realized it was stupid, they quietly stopped using that function.

** A joke in a later episode implies that a ''fourth'' shot will reintegrate the target.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

*** Bad news from 3.x: ''Disintegrate'' [http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/disintegrate.htm hurts even on successful save]. Good news: it requires a ranged touch attack, and wizards rarely make good snipers. Good non-news: many Force effects are destroyed, but absorb the hit - most common being ''Wall of Force'', ''[[Otiluke's]] Resilient Sphere'' and ''[Bigby's] Interposing Hand'', all lower in level. First-level ''Shield'' is a Force effect too - in old editions it worked, in new it's ambiguous. Death spells are "Fortitude save or die" as well, but there's just too much effects and items made against them.

*** However, 5d6 at that level isn't much. And in 3.5 even on a failed save instead of one-hit-overkill it's 2d6/level - which is a lot, but not guaranteed to kill creatures worth this level of attention.

** Also appeared as one of beholders' [[Eye Beams]] (making an occasional smooth shaft or breach in the wall a hint, e.g. in ''Song Of The Saurials'' or ''The Summoning'').

** In the earlier editions of the game, this was one of the special purpose powers that could be chosen for an intelligent sword with a special purpose. This effect was delivered on ''any hit'' with the weapon (in addition to its normal damage) against those that the weapon was dedicated to slaying.

* ''[[GURPS]]'': Ultratech has the "Reality Disintegrator" and the more traditional "Nucleonic Disintegrator".

* ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'' includes the Disintegration power where a sufficiently damaging attack can entirely remove the target from existence, preventing regeneration. A single power feat allows the user to reverse the effect at will.

** The practical upshot of this being, not actual immediate disintegration of the target, but all Gauss-type weapons doing damage regardless of the target's normal resistance to weapon types. E.g. [[Death of a Thousand Cuts|an infantry Gauss flayer will damage a tank despite the tank's normal invulnerability to such small weapons]].

* The first set of ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' has the Disintegrate spell as one of the staples for red magic. Its damage is limited only by how much mana you have, allowing you to either nuke a big creature or simply obliterate your opponent.

* One of several uses ''[[Kim Possible]]'' villain Shego makes of her powers.

* ''[[Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century|Duck Dodgers in The Twenty Fourth And A Half Century]]'' parodies this trope more than once: First Daffy/Dodgers dares Marvin the Martian to shoot him with his disintegrating ray because Dodgers is "wearing his disintegration-proof vest." Marvin fires, and the vest is the [[Armor Is Useless|only thing not reduced to dust]]. Fortunately for Daffy, the cartoon also features a much rarer integration pistol. ''Then'', when Dodgers tries to retaliate:

'''Duck Dodgers:''' Heh, well what do you know, it... [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|disintegrated]]. }}

* The Ghost Dematerializer, preferred weapon of ''[[Filmation's Ghostbusters|Filmations Ghostbusters]]'', functions as one of these, but it only works on ghosts, temporarily sending them to another dimension.