X-Ray Sparks: Difference between revisions

See also [[Harmless Electrocution]].

* Was once a (non-[[Discredited Trope|discredited]]) live-action trope, appearing in various monster movies of the black-and-white era, as well as "The Borderland", an episode of the original ''[[The Outer Limits]]''.

* One advertisement for Advertising/Orangina features [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9KopBHFepE a man-in-Orangina-bottle in a giant pinball machine], including X-Ray Sparks at one point.

* When Ash first meets Pikachu in ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', Pikachu shocks him for a good ten seconds and his skeleton is shown every other second. This later happens to Professor Oak a few seconds after the attack ends.

* ''[[One Piece]]''

* In ''[[Leonard Le Genie]]'', this happens almost every time Basile has to power up some new invention.

* Tends to happen to [[Wolverine]] whenever he's struck by a large amount of electricity. Like Storm's lightning.

* ''[[Baby Blues]]''. In one strip Hammie does it to his older sister with static electricity.

* In ''[[Monsters vs. Aliens]]'', briefly happens to Susan when Doctor Cockroach attempts to revert her to normal size.

* Occurs in ''[[Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs]]'' when Flint attaches a jumper cable to an electrical tower at the power station.

* The first ''[[Hot Shots]]'' movie actually does this to a live-action Charlie Sheen, although he is only visible through the frosted window of an office door.

* The film ''[[Home Alone]] 2'' features Marv (Daniel Stern) being shocked; an effects shot briefly replaced him with a [[Real Life]] skeleton puppet wearing the same hair, beard and clothes as him, before turning back to his regular fleshy self.

* Since 1988, the Dalek energy guns on ''[[Doctor Who]]'' make the victim's body briefly flash lime green while their bones glow bright white. According to dialogue, the victim dies as their internal structures are chaotically rearranged. Earlier it was just a circular area of film around the victim turned negative.

* Happens to [["Weird Al" Yankovic|Weird Al Yankovic]] in the animated video for "I'll Sue Ya", when he tries to use a hair dryer while standing under a still-running shower.

* ''[[Champions]]'' supplement ''Gadgets''. The illustration for the "Deathwind" Commando Suit shows the victim of its electrical charge attack displaying this syndrome.

* Happens in ''[[Little Big Adventure]]'' whenever someone is electrocuted.

* This was a feature of Pikachu's electrical attacks in the original (and ONLY in the original) ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' [[Earthbound|Ness]], [[Metroid|Samus]], and several items did the same thing in the original ''Super Smash Bros.'', but like Pikachu, they could only do so in the first game. This even provides something of a visual gag if Samus gets shocked, because instead of showing us her skeleton, we just see the human figure ''inside'' her power suit.

* [[Exploited Trope|Exploited]] in [http://www.explosm.net/comics/1802/ one strip of] ''[[Cyanide and Happiness]]'' in order to take an ''actual'' X-ray.

* Spoofed in ''[[Rusty and Co.|Rusty and Co]]'': who would have guessed that [http://rustyandco.com/comic/level-4-16/ Mimic has a jawbone]?

* Any number of ''[[Bugs Bunny]]'' and ''[[Tom and Jerry]]'' cartoons.

** Happens in one ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' cartoon, where Taz gets zapped up by a christmas tree's lightbulbs.

* In book 9 of the ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' series, ''The Cauldron of Fear'', it is shown [http://www.projectaon.org/en/xhtml/lw/09tcof/ill15.htm with this illustration] of a soldier trying to attack [[That One Boss|Zakhan Kimah]] while the latter is protected by the Orb of Death, the poor [[Red Shirt]] ending up disintegrated by the magical aura.

* Happens to Ursula at the end of ''[[The Little Mermaid]]'', as a result of King Triton's trident electrocuting her just moments after Prince Eric stabs her with a harpoon.

* Happens with Jafar's [[Family-Unfriendly Death|death scene]] in ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|The Return of Jafar]]''.

* In the 1953 adaptation of ''[[The War of the Worlds]]'' a soldier is hit by the Martians' [[Disintegrator Ray]]. There's a closeup shot of him as his body glows a bright green, with the skeleton showing through the glow, before the whole thing fades away and the unlucky victim vanishes into nothingness.

* During a battle in ''[[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World]]'', Crash and the Boys catch the business end of a [[Kill It with Fire|fireball]] launched by [[Bollywood|Matthew Patel]] and his backup singing Demon Hipster Chicks as he sings "[[Villain Song|Slick]]".

* In ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' books, someone hit with balefire has their colors "inverted" and just fades from view in the brilliant white light of the [[Death Ray]].

* Notoriously used in the [[Made for TV Movie]] ''[[The Day After]]'' to show those closest to Ground Zero being vaporized. Not only is this appropriate, it's actually [[Truth in Television|pretty close to accurate]]--or at least, close enough for TV's sake. In [[Real Life]] in a nuclear blast, for those closest to Ground Zero, their soft tissues would be vaporized a split-second before their hard tissues (bones) would be. Obviously, [[Take Our Word for It|no-one has lived to tell the tale]] of whether or not these twin processes happen fast enough for the eye to see, but both processes happen fast enough for the dead person's ''shadows'' to be literally burned into the ground.

** The effects themselves were realistic, but the special effects department's choice of photographs on which to create the effects made less sense. A few seconds earlier, Kansas City was a scene of panic and rioting; the people shown being vaporized are enjoying a day by the riverside, at weddings, in schools, in bars and coffee shops, etc. Some of the photos used in the vaporization scenes are actually stills from earlier in the movie.

* ''[[F.E.A.R.]]'' has the Particle Beam Gun, which vaporizes the flesh off its victims' skeletons.

* The taser weapon in the Sega Genesis game ''[[Jurassic Park]]: [[So Cool Its Awesome|Rampage Edition]]'' is insanely powerful, able to kill dinosaurs and people in a single shot. When you use it, you see the skeleton of whoever or whatever you use it on before they collapse into ashes.

* In ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'', this happens to victims of the "Disintegrate" spell, whether they resist and only take damage, or are killed and next turn to dust.

* In ''[[Looking for Group]]'', Richard applies on Cale a [http://www.lfgcomic.com/page/3 fried-to-a-crisp-by-fireball] variant.

* In ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'', Baxter Stockman was was placed in a disintegration chamber by Krang [[You Have Failed Me|after one failure too many.]] A fly entered the chamber with him, and after a brief X-Ray spark Stockman was transformed into a giant mutant fly. This instance provided plenty of Nightmare Fuel; Baxter Stockman was pleading frantically for his life before and after being thrown in, and his screaming skeleton during the X-Ray spark was truly horrifying.

* [[The Simpsons|"Extremely high voltage? Well, I don't need safety gloves 'cause I'm Homer Simp-"]] [[Killed Mid-Sentence|(he touches the wires and is electrocuted)]]