Weaponized Exhaust: Difference between revisions

Most [[Jet Pack|jetpacks, rocket boots]], and [[Cool Starship|spaceships]] give off impressive plumes of fiery exhaust when they're moving. For the most part, this exhaust is just there to [[Rule of Perception|show that something's happening]]. But the exhaust of a rocket can also double as a [[Kill It With Fire|short-ranged weapon]], especially during a getaway. Characters with [[Jet Pack|jet boots]] can perform really effective [[Goomba Stomp|Goomba Stomps]], while starship pilots can [[Superweapon Surprise|cause enormous damage]] with their drive flames.

* In ''[[Gundam 0083]]'', Kou gives Gato a face-full of his Gundam's maneuvering thrusters when locked in close combat. This doesn't actually damage Gato's Gundam, but it does blind and distract him.

** The leader of [[La Résistance]] is killed in ''[[The 08th MS Team]]'' when a Zaku fires it's thrusters in an attempt to escape an ambush. The backwash takes out his entire house, too. And this was ''entirely by accident'' and happened mostly because a resistance member in that house fired an anti-tank rocket at it.

** ''[[Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (Anime)|Mobile Suit Victory Gundam]]'' gives us the Victory 2 Gundam, which carries a miniaturized Minovsky Craft System known as the Minovsky Drive System. Not only does this allow it to float in mid-air (unlike other mobile suits which have to use constant thrust to stay aloft), but the exhaust vents in the back expel charged Minovsky particles, the V2's "Wings of Light," which can expand up to one kilometer long. Fun fact: The Wings of Light [[Game Breaker|have the same properties as beam sabers and beam shields]].

* In ''[[Last Exile Fam the Silver Wing (Anime)|Last Exile Fam the Silver Wing]]'', the giant weapons employed by the ''Grand Exile'' are revealed to have been originally intended as engines.

* In the ''[[Firefly]]'' fic series ''[[Forward (Fanfic)|Forward]]'', there are several instances where the crew uses ''Serenity's'' engines as weapons. In "Business," they lured an Alliance gunboat close enough to fire the engines directly into the bridge section of the vessel, blinding its sensors and heating up the bridge canopy enough that Jayne is able to put an armor-piercing round through it. Later on, in "Adrift" Wash uses the exhaust from the ship's damaged engines to blind a Reaver pursuit craft, and in the "Fourth Interlude" River manages to exploit a flaw in an enemy ship's engines by channeling her ship's exhaust into its intakes, overheating it and causing it to shut down and sending the enemy ship into an uncontrolled spin.

* In ''[[Sleeping With the Girls]]'', in the second Tenchi arc, the SI remembers, almost too late, that standing near a spaceship about to take off is a bad idea. Cue an [[Oh Crap]] moment, followed by him running, screaming "KZINTI LESSON! KZINTI LESSON!" over and over. He almost makes it, and the backwash of the ship's takeoff knocks him off of his feet. Not the straightest example of the trope, but shows an understanding of it.

* The [[Cool Car|Batmobile's]] jet engine is used as a weapon in ''[[Batman Returns (Film)|Batman Returns]]'' to put the torch on the Fire Breather in the opening fight.

* In ''[[Alien (Film)|Alien]]'', Ripley uses the lifeboat's exhaust to finally fry the monster.

* In ''[[Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (Film)|Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull]]'', a bunch of [[Mooks]] are chasing Indy around [[Area 51|Hangar 51]]. He gets into some sort of G-force testing rocket, switches it on and fries the lot of them.

* Hugo Drax attempts to do this to [[James Bond (Film)|James Bond]] in ''[[Moonraker (Film)|Moonraker]]''.

* In ''[[RoboCop (Film)|Robocop]] 3'', the title character kills the villain by burning his legs with the exhaust of his [[Jet Pack]], leaving him helpless in the soon to explode building.

* In ''[[Face Off|Face/Off]]'', Agent Archer uses the thrust of a mounted jet engine to send <s>an obvious [[Stunt Double]] of</s> Caster Troy flying into a wall.

* In the Movie version of ''[[Iron Man (Film)|Iron Man]]'', Tony Stark quickly discovers he can weaponize the repulsor stabilization propulsors in his armor's hands, turning them into effective blasters.

* In ''[[The Rocketeer (Film)|The Rocketeer]]'', [[The Ace|Cliff]] surrenders the [[Jet Pack]] to [[Big Bad|Neville Sinclair]]... but not without removing the chewing gum that was sealing a fuel leak caused by a stray gunshot earlier in the movie. When Sinclair fires up the [[Jet Pack]] to escape, the rocket exhaust ignites the fuel from the leak and turns the device into a bomb.

* In ''[[The Phantom Menace (Film)|The Phantom Menace]]'', Anakin takes out a couple of battle droids that were standing next to his thrusters.

** In ''[[Revenge of the Sith (Film)|Revenge of the Sith]]'', R2-D2 destroys two Super Battle Droids by spewing oil on them, then igniting the oil with his rockets.

* In ''[[Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Film)|Transformers Revenge of the Fallen]]'', Optimus Prime gains a jetpack upgrade from {{spoiler|Jetfire's body after his [[Heroic Sacrifice]]}}; the exhaust can send Megatron through a stone wall.

* The [[Daniel Craig]] version of ''[[Casino Royale (Film)|Casino Royale]]'' features an accidental version during the airport chase scene. Miami Police Department squad cars are chasing fuel truck stolen by the bad guy, and chase it across a runway just as a 747 is coming in. The 747 pulls up and misses the fuel truck, but its engine backwash blows one of the police cars about a hundred feet through the air.

* In the early [[Terry Pratchett (Creator)|Terry Pratchett]] novel ''[[Strata (Literature)|Strata]]'', at one point Marco mentions they could use their ship's engine's fusion flame as a weapon (although this is never actually seen).

* Not exactly ''exhaust'', per se, but the [[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]] books have the gravity-control impeller wedge as main spaceship propulsion...which does Really Bad Things to any matter that intersects the field. Normally, this is safetied to a tee; when it isn't, as in when {{spoiler|Harkness turns on the impeller drive of one of ''Tepes''' pinnaces in the hanger}}...uh...just Bad Things, OK?

* In [[Arthur C. Clarke (Creator)]]'s ''Earthlight'', the particle beam weapons are directly derived from spacecraft ion drives, which are dangerous enough in their own right.

* In [[EE Doc Smith]]'s ''[[Lensman|Masters of the Vortex]]'', there's a chapter ''named'' for this -- "Driving Jets Are Weapons".

* The ''[[Battle Tech]]'' novel "Operation Excalibur" demonstrates this trope when the Gray Death Legion mercenary commander [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Grayson Death Carlyle]] creatively positions a hijacked Jumpship to point the exhaust end of its drive at one of the setting's extremely rare deep space recharging stations. It works as a shock and stalling tactic because such stations are considered inviolate, and it's an accepted rule of space to point that end of the ship away from anything you want to keep in one piece. The [[Oh Crap|moment of realization]] for all parties involved who didn't know about the plan beforehand is capped by an utterly priceless line:

* In the [[James Bond (Literature)|James Bond]] novel ''[[Moonraker (Literature)|Moonraker]]'', Drax attempts to dispose of Bond by placing him beneath the exhausts of the eponymous rocket. It was one of the few scenes from the novel to make it into the movie.

* In ''[[When Worlds Collide (Literature)|When Worlds Collide]]'', when a crazed army of survivors attacks the site where [[[The Ark]] the Arks]] are being built, things look bleak until one of the main characters starts up the almost-complete first Ark, sets the engine to "1 G", and floats over the attacking hordes in blowtorch mode.

* The [[Fun With Acronyms|Supersonic Low Altitude Missile]] (also known as "The Flying Crowbar", or more formally [http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html Project Pluto]) would have been an unmanned nuclear-armed cruise missile with an unshielded nuclear ramjet leaving a deadly trail of fallout in its wake. Part of the plan was to have the SLAM run a pattern over the target country after it had delivered its bombs, intentionally irradiating the land.

* In ''[[Battle Tech]]'', the ''massive'' [[Drop Ship|Dropships]] are capable of razing anything anywhere nearby in a nuclear hellstorm of fusion reactor exhaust when they begin to lift off the ground to head to orbit.

* [[D 20 Future]] mentions this in the descriptions for starship engines. Rules aren't given for it, since it's an unorthodox (and clever) tactic.

* James from ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (Webcomic)|The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', the leader of our good doctor's college Vigilante Club. [http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=9&issue=13 He invented jet boots and used them to kick people and set them on fire].

* Inverted in '''[[Schlock Mercenary (Webcomic)|Schlock Mercenary]]'', where handheld plasma guns also have a plasma rocket setting.

* In ''[[Basic Instructions (Webcomic)|Basic Instructions]]'', resident superhero Rocket Hat has been known to use his rockets [http://basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2010/10/14/how-to-react-to-something-amazing.html in this manner].

* In the ''[[Battlefield (Video Game)|Battlefield 2]]'' [[Game Mod|mod]] ''[[Project Reality]]'' you can kill players with the backblaster of rocket launchers. However, you are more likely going to kill a teammate than an enemy player, as very few players are going to stand still for you to cook them.

* The second boss in [[Wario Land (Video Game)|Wario Land]] Shake It used the exhaust flames of his race car as an attack against Wario if Wario came too close (in the second stage of the battle, he actually lowered his car to the ground to burn Wario with the flames if Wario tried to go past him).

* Several of [[Robot Buddy|R.O.B.]]'s attacks in ''[[Super Smash Bros]]. Brawl'' involve this. [[Star Fox (Video Game)|Fox, Falco, and Wolf's]] jetpacks can also damage other players.

* In ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles (Video Game)|Sonic The Hedgehog 3]]'' and ''[[Sonic 3 and Knuckles (Video Game)|Sonic And Knuckles]]'', all of the stage bosses that fly by means of rockets can injure Sonic with said rockets. Few of them do so intentionally, however.

* Space RTS [[Homeworld (Video Game)|Homeworld]] has an example of this trope in its Bomber strike craft. The [[All There in the Manual|game manual]] quips that the player race scientists realized that the most powerful directed energy system of the strike craft was their own fusion drive system. Hence they made a strike craft that can divert part of its drive thrust into very powerful plasma bombs.

* In ''[[Dead Space (Video Game)|Dead Space]]'' a certain boss creature that constantly regenerates can only be gotten permanently rid of by incinerating it with the exhaust jets of a shuttle.

* In ''[[Half-Life]]'', a tentacle monster is living inside one of Black Mesa's rocket test chambers. [[Kill It With Fire]] is the obvious solution.

* The airship levels in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3 (Video Game)|Super Mario Bros 3]]'' have flamethrowers on the outsides of ships that are probably meant to be thrusters.

* In ''[[X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter]]'' and its later games, flying too close to a capital ship's rear thrusters causes damage. If you chose a non-engine location as a staging point for a "safe" point-blank attack, it would use a weapon jamming beam.

* In ''[[Mad World]]'', a couple stages have jet engines that will instantly kill enemies when they are thrown into them. Now, that's all well and good in the zone that is a three-way [[Shout-Out]] to [[Star Wars]], [[Star Trek]] and [[Battlestar Galactica]], but a random fighter plane attached to a wall in the middle of the Casino zone is a bit much. What would XIII think?

* In ''[[Nightfire]]'', Bond kills off Kiko with the exhaust of a Space Shuttle owned by Phoenix.

* Inverted by skilled firebenders in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender (Animation)|Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', who are able to send jets of fire out their feet or hands, allowing flight.

* [[Batman the Brave And The Bold (Animation)|The Music Meister]] sends his thralls to their deaths by having them line-dance into a rocket engine's exhaust. Fortunately Batman intervenes.