Rocket Jump

"SCREAMING EAGLES!!!"

"For the next three hundred years, people who needed to get to the second floor used the only method available to them: shooting a rocket launcher at their feet. Yes, it was ridiculous, crippling, and awful, but what are you going to do? Not go to the second floor? That’s where your bed is."

— Team Fortress 2, "The Gunboats"

A technique most commonly encountered in First-Person Shooter games, rocket jumping involves explosives (often rockets, obviously, but grenades or other explosives and items can be used in the same way) used to propel the player to normally unreachable places. Depending on the game, this might either be the only way to jump, or it has to be combined with timed jumps for full effect. Rarely is this practice implemented as a necessary skill in the game itself. When developers began realizing the potential of this trick, they thought to hide Easter Eggs and secrets with it. On the other hand, rocket jumping has also been used, with incredible effect, to completely humiliate structural efforts used by developers to streamline your gaming experience. Alternatively, a Rocket Jump can just function as a sudden burst of mobility, in order to swiftly engage or escape an enemy or evade an attack, or can be used to just propel oneself into the sky with less emphasis on a particular destination and more emphasis on invoking Death from Above while airborne.

In most cases, this technique will hurt the player, so he has to consider the sacrifice of health (including possible fall damage) versus the benefit of the jump.

With that in mind, rocket jumping is either considered as an exploit of a game engine processing physics and explicit numerical damage, or considered as an acceptable break from reality in video games that just emphasizes how tough your One-Man Army really is. The game has to take into account, among possible other considerations: movement across the 'z'-axis (3D) or Y-axis (2D), splash damage that produces a kickback effect on both the player character and enemies, that rockets do not kill in one hit as a specific function of being hit with a rocket, and that explosive damage is dealt rather liberally. At the very least, the game attempts and fails at properly applying or understanding impulse and momentum.

Similar to Explosion Propulsion. To avoid overlap, gameplay examples should go here, but if it only appears in cinematics the examples should go on to Explosion Propulsion.

Compare with Jumping on a Grenade. An Ascended Glitch.

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Examples:

Fighting Game

• Super Smash Bros. is probably the only fighting game series that has rocket jumping to a significant extent.
  • Samus has this with the down-special Bomb in Melee and Project M, in reference to her home series. So do Link, Young Link, and Toon Link (though the applications of the latter work differently).
  • Ivysaur's down-aerial was upgraded to be this as a recovery move in Project M.
  • In the fourth game, Palutena can use this as a custom special move.
  • Snake can use either his Grenades or C4s (neutral and down specials respectively) as a rocket jump to propel himself back to the stage. One must be careful when doing this, however, as unlike the above mentioned Samus and Link(s), Snake can actually end up killing himself due to the high power of his explosives in particular.
  • In Ultimate, Banjo and Kazooie can rocket jump using their down special, Rear Egg.

First-Person Shooter

• The titular weapon of Impaler launches you into the air when fired right below... while leaving behind a massive spike. You can cover quite the distance with each jump, but just don't let yourself go up vertically before coming down.
• Quake popularized the modern concept of aiming a rocket at your feet, jumping, and firing a rocket immediately after to gain a much higher altitude. It was initially discovered as a glitch, but was left in the game for one reason or another. Also a very important staple of Quake's sequels. It is used extensively here, especially after 3:20. A more unorthodox way to achieve the effect is to use a Spawn's death explosion for a similar boost.
• In Quake III: Arena, id managed to hit a very good ratio for the damage rockets inflict, knockback, and their speed in units per second. As such, rocket jumping became such an integral part of Quake 3 that an entire mod and subculture of the game was based around being able to conquer maps based on rocket jumping, plasma, strafing, and over bouncing technique. Exemplified in its height here.
• Deathmatch Classic, Valve's tribute to Quake which was released in 2001, has an RPG which you can rocket jump with.
• Tribes allowed players to shoot the Spinfusor (explosive blue frisbee launcher) at their feet for insane speed boosts and massive jumps; firing a spinfusor while jumping in the Classic mod for Tribes 2 allows you to jump well over a hundred meters into the air. In Ascend, pathfinder class has impact nitrons which can effectively used for extra boost due to their relatively low damage.
• Doom was one of the first FPSs to feature this, albeit as a horizontal push rather than vertical jump. This was particularly notable as Doom didn't have any actual jump button.
  • Episode 3 in the original Doom has an exit to a secret level that is supposed to be accessed with this method. An invulnerability powerup is provided to assist the player in doing so. However, it is also possible to strafe-run into the secret, though much more difficult.
  • Taken to its logical conclusion with the practice of "trickjumping", in which rocket damage is turned off for the purpose of setting up complicated and difficult jumps. Multiple examples can be found in this video, by the ambitiously-titled Infinite Trajectory team.
  • Doom source ports, such as ZDoom and Zandronum (which is a multiplayer adaptation of ZDoom), have added jumping and freelook, among other things. There are many mods specific for it to help train players.
• Unreal Tournament: While it is possible to do a literal rocket-jump, the method recommended by the game's tutorial is to use the Impact Hammer — a melee-only weapon that is a powerful pneumatic piston which inexplicably could cause splash damage (including a slight push) to the wielder if "fired" at a nearby surface (like, say, the ground). Unreal Tournament 2004 continued this with its replacement Shield Gun, even going so far as to let you cushion some of the damage from landing after a "shield jump" with its eponymous Secondary Fire.
• Several secrets in the Quake games, including a secret level in the second game, require rocket or grenade jumping to reach. Quake II has an area that can only be reached by rocketjumping. It contains several goodies, and would trigger the message "You crazy rocket jumpers!".
• An open-source game Xonotic has a laser gun designed for this. Minimal damage, but quite a lot of push. Rockets will get you even higher.
• In Team Fortress 2:
  • The Soldier and the Demoman can do this with rockets and stickybombs respectively. In theory, every class can do it, but only if an enemy shoots them (since there is no friendly fire). Of course, the technique was already present in the original. Both classes since received weapons specifically designed to be used to train this technique, as they deal no damage, and a sufficiently skilled player can cross the map in seconds. The Soldier was consciously designed to rocket jump. Meet the Soldier features a rocket jump, and one game update even gave rocket jumping Soldiers a neat visual effect (their shoes catch fire, which somehow jets downwards like rocket exhaust). Becoming the final winner of the "War!" update gave him the Gunboats: shoes that replace his secondary weapon and reduce damage from his own rockets by 60%. The Uber Update also gave the Soldier the Mantreads, which adds Goomba Stomp to his Rocket Jumps.
  • The Beggar's Bazooka has a less intended, but even more effective, version: The explosions caused by overloading the launcher are much stronger than a normal rocket, and set off right next to the Soldier even while airborne. The result is essentially an explosion-powered jetpack that lets him cross the map in seconds.
  • Pyros can launch themselves with the assistance of an explosive projectile belonging to the other team. It actually ends up requiring even more effort than a regular rocket jump, due to the tighter timing, greater need for coordination, and the generally increased chance of being messily reduced to bits of asbestos suit and rubber. So-called W+M2 Pyros are known for such stunts, among others. The Pyro later got a flare gun called The Detonator, which allows players to rocket jump with relative ease. Compared to rockets and stickies, the distance the Pyro can fling himself is extremely small. It's closer to the Scout's Double Jump than the Soldier's rocket jump. Applications are limited, but it can allow Pyros to access routes that were otherwise just barely out of reach.
  • The Demoman can also jump using his grenade launcher: although it's both trickier and less effective, it is the only option when using a loadout without stickybombs. The Iron Bomber's grenades can make this tactic more easy to do, since they have very little bounce and roll than the stock grenades. The Loose Cannon makes doing this more effective, working much like the Beggars Bazooka above in that you can have the explosion be right in front of you if you cook off the fuse for just long enough.
  • Since his update, the Engineer can manually fire his sentry's rockets to use them for rocket jumping. That way, he can reach places inaccessible for most classes (and place a teleporter exit on there). This is only one method of the "Sentry Jump", but the others are non-explosive and thus not this trope. Engineer has one additional trick up his sleeve. After the Jungle Inferno update, he can equip the Short Circuit and fire an explosive energy ball. Under highly specific circumstances^note fire the exploding energy ball down at the ground so the explosion happens under you, while jumping, while there is an enemy within the explosion's blast radius, while having more than 25% health the explosion will fling the Engineer into the air much like a rocket jump. This can disorient enemies for a second, or allow particularly wily Engineers to retreat via an unexpected route when cornered.
• Team Fortress Classic had it, too. Rocket-jumping was possible with the Soldier's rockets, the Demoman's pipebombs, or with any kind of grenade, although grenades dealt significantly more damage. Since you could only deal armor damage against team mates in non-friendly fire games, you could also assist your teammates by rocket jumping them, and it was a particularly favored tactic in games like Hunted, where it would let the President bypass several nasty sniping points. Particularly effective grenade jumps could be performed with the concussion grenade (basically a grenade with little actual damage but huge knockback) used by Scouts and Medics, as it had much greater knockback/lift and it dealt a completely minimal amount of damage, making the Medic one of the preferred flag-capturing units. Notably difficult maps, such as 2fort, made flashbang jumps the only way to fly.
  • At least one map (epicenter) was completely broken due to the aforementioned practice of "concussion jumping". The point of said map was to carry a flag to a point in your enemy's base, and the map reset once this was done, after which the flags were locked up for a minute. On most servers with sufficiently skilled players, the match quickly devolved into races between the team's opposing scouts/medics, as two well-placed concussion jumps would take you from just outside the building where your flag was to the capture point. Everything and everyone else was irrelevant. It's breakage like this that led to grenades being removed altogether from Team Fortress 2.
• Tower of Guns One of the few games to encourage mastering this skill. Every weapon and perk in the game has some way to be used for rocket jumping, eg: Major Moose + The Hand Cannon or Egon's Pride + Blue Grass. Most of the secrets, Such as reaching the Literal top of the Tower by escaping the Battlements, require Rocket jumping to reach them, assuming the player hasn't amassed an absurd number of the rare Double Jump upgrades through Sheer Luck.
• Halo:
  • It's possible to do this with grenades, but due to their power, this is usually done for fun, not for gameplay purposes. The ability to create chain reactions with grenades on the ground was especially entertaining when combined with the invincibility of vehicles in Halo: Combat Evolved.
  • Halo 2:
    • Games from 2 onward have a collection of hidden skulls that affect the games' mechanics. For example you can find a skull that allowed Master Chief to turn invisible for a short duration instead of having a wimpy flashlight. Another skull makes all headshots pop people like plasma grenades. In Halo 2 itself, one essential skull that allows you to even get the rest of these skulls is the one appropriately called Sputnik. This skull makes all knockback caused by explosions and melee attacks about 5 times as powerful. This also allows players to get the bigger-than-big BFG of the game to play around with. This of course is only available on the game's hardest difficulty. The effects don't save when the game is turned off, meaning that players who want to be blown high have to find Sputnik again each time they turn on their Xbox.
    • Several of the multiplayer levels allowed you to grenade jump up to an area that you normally couldn't get to. If you brought a fully loaded sniper rifle (and were playing against people who didn't know you could get up there or how to get you down), you could get quite a few kills before killing yourself or jumping down in order to reload.
    • "Relic" is a map situated on an island with a makeshift base in the centre consisting of an extremely tall Forerunner relic. Human prop-up-covers are placed on the map strategically. By pushing one (through melees) to the base of the relic, standing on the folded-down handle on the defenders' side of the cover (located on the ground to give the shield stability), and firing a handheld rocket launcher rocket directly into the shield, the explosive force that tilts the shield forward - and therefore the handle up to lift you off the ground - is enough to launch you high enough to get on top of the relic. Even more amusing is because of how high you really are, the horizon doesn't exist anymore - there is the end of the ocean polygons and the end of the skybox texture, separated by a thick black line. However, because of the massive blast damage the game gives you for rocket explosion proximity, one has to start the match so that player shield (health) capacity is increased three-fold (Overshield).
    • In the campaign, one grenade jump will allow the player to skip the entire first half of "Outskirts" as well as reach nearly all of the otherwise unreachable areas.
  • Halo 3 sometimes requires it to collect hidden bonus items. It should also be noted that this should only be done with frag grenades in these games. Plasma grenades, spike grenades, and rockets will kill you instantly if you try to pull this.
• Since this was the only way to jump in the earlier Marathon (aside from ramping off stairs,) it was required for many later levels. Marathon also allowed normal gunfire recoil to amplify existing jumps, known as gun-climbing.
  • This is what many players thought "frog blast the vent core" meant.
  • The flamethrower can do this on low gravity maps, since its kick is stronger than the reduced gravity. Simply point it down, hold the trigger, and presto! Improvised Jet Pack. Some physics model Game Mods would enhance this by giving the flamethrower negative recoil and increasing it several fold to give it more of a jetpack-like quality.
• In Half-Life 2: Episode 2, there is a point where you must do a grenade jump (protected by a metal plate, as Gordon is not that dumb) if you want that rocket launcher. Succeeding earns you an achievement - Gordon Propelled Rocket.
  • Grenade jumping also makes it possible to entirely bypass the bridge level in the chapter Freeman Pontifex, like so.
  • It's impossible to do this with the rocket launcher, though - you go up maybe three feet, and you lose about a third of your health.
• In Battlefield Vietnam, grenades sent players flying to when hit by one. One day it was discovered that friendly players were affected by this as well when friendly fire was off. The best results happened when a friendly player laid down on a grenade, which sent another player flying upwards. Combined with the ability to instantly deploy a parachute to avoid fall damage this tactic was used to fly over walls and on top of buildings. This was later patched by taking away all force to grenades, meaning that corpses and players stayed put when killed. In later Battlefield games this was fixed by making grenades damage all players.
  • This is known as C4 Jumping in Battlefield 2. With Friendly Fire off, players can dump all 5 C4 packs on the ground, stand a little in front, and blast away! The tallest buildings can be reached in a single bound. This can also be done with manned friendly vehicles, and with enough C4 players and proper timing, such a loaded vehicle can literally fly across the entire map, which could take ten minutes to cross on foot, in seconds.
  • In Battlefield 1942, someone once used a similar method to jump over a large windmill in a Jeep. In addition, artillery shells sent corpses flying - or, occasionally, living soldiers. They usually died on landing, but it was possible to parachute to safety if the player is fast enough.
  • This tradition is proudly carried on in Battlefield 3, as seen here.
• In Dark Forces you can lay down a mine, stand on top of it, and use the resulting explosion to access higher areas, or places you aren't supposed to see that exist for technical reasons.
• Painkiller disables rocket-jumping in the single-player mode, requiring the player to use other, more creative means to find the secrets. In multiplayer, on the other hand, the game has a dedicated button for rocketjumping.
• Daikatana took rocket jumping to the extremes. The game featured 4 episodes, each with its own unique set of weapons, and every weapon set had more than one weapon capable of rocket jumping (from traditional explosives like rocket launchers and C4, to a burst-firing shotgun with ridiculous recoil, a Ballista, magical staffs shooting meteors, and another shotgun with an underbarrel grenade launcher).
• Warsow, being designed as a faster-paced Quake has a Rocket Jump which can be done with a rocket launcher, instagib and a gun blade. In some modes, self-damage is removed.
• Assault Cube got more sane Rifle jump (using recoil). Grenade jumping kind-of-works too — provided there was enough armor to survive the damage — but leaves the performer both severely wounded and shell-shocked. The latter isn't removed by medi-kits.
• At some point, somebody realized that the Splash Damage from the Phoenix in Perfect Dark (which is fairly minor compared to other explosives) could be used to propel the player forward at greater than normal speeds.
• Dystopia allows you to Rocket Jump in meatspace as well as cyberspace. The latter is much more important in building up speed, and occasionally in getting past obstacles, though only on one map is it required to get past something.
• It is possible to Rocket Jump in BLOODCRUSHER II. Although some projectiles are more interesting than others...
• In Borderlands is it possible to throw the default, non-modded grenade down at your feet to give yourself a boost. In the Claptrap's Robot Revolution DLC for the first game, there's a chest near the entrance to the last area that could be only be reached via grenade-jump. A few hidden chests are hidden this way in latter games.
  • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! has an Easter Egg involving two grenade jumps to reach the top of two different buildings to grab poster boards so you can spell out the word 'Dick'.
• Rocket jumps in Serious Sam provide hardly any horizontal push when compared to games like Quake, so they are mostly used for vertical boosts over walls. The distance you receive depends on how much health you lose, not a damage total of health and armor lost. In short, this means that armor-less players will receive more distance than players with armor.
• Overwatch
  • Junkrat's Concussion Mine, which can be used to give him to propel him upwards. Unlike other examples, he doesn't take damage from this.
  • Conversed by Pharah, who has a rocket launcher but also has a jetpack, rendering this trope unnecessary for her. One of her voice lines is "Rocket Jump? That sounds dangerous."^note It is still entirely possible to rocket jump, albeit to very low heights, as Pharah, and can occasionally be seen when one is in trouble with their jetpack on cooldown. Usually it doesn't work and just results in death.
  • A Bastion with its Tank Mode ultimate ready can use its cannon shells to bound over walls and other obstacles, resulting in airborne robot tanks bombarding surprised enemies from above.
  • Zarya can use her weapon's alt-fire (which lobs an explosive charge instead of a continuous laser beam) to boost herself up slightly. It doesn't give her nearly the amount of lift that, say, Junkrat's mine does, but it does open up a couple new pathways for sneaky flanking attacks.
  • Soldier: 76 can use his helix rockets. Combining this with his sprint ability lets him get to places he previously couldn't, moreso than Zarya.
• In The Adventures of Square, You are able to do this with the Hellshell launcher. If you used it well, you can complete levels much faster. Notably, rocket jumping is actually required to enter some secret areas and the second secret level of Episode 2.
• Can be done in TitanFall 2 with properly-timed grenade. It's notable that this trick is usually used by players to gain speed, not height. It's a very useful tactic to use in order to shave off the time in the Pilot's Gauntlet. This also gets a Deconstructive Parody in Octane's backstory in Apex Legends ^note Which is set around 30 years after Titanfall 2, where he broke the world record in the gauntlet using grenade boost to soar past the finishing line...and lost both of his legs in the process. Not that that matters to him, of course: he then just guilt trip Lifeline into building him a pair of prosthetic legs, then proceed to enter the Apex Games because he think the old stunts aren't enough for him.
• It is possible to rocket jump with rockets in ULTRAKILL although this usually provides only modest vertical but more significant horizontal boost, albeit with no cost of health. More powerful explosive boosts are achieved by using explosive cores, malicious railcannon, overpumping a shotgun and most notably, shooting a core with a malicious railcannon.
• Pretty much every explosion in REAVER can be used to gain extra vertical boost at the cost of a bit of health.
• In Deep Rock Galactic, the RJ 250 Compound overclock for the Engineer's grenade launcher allows him to do this for both himself and his teammates.

Action-Adventure

• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past : The bomb-jumping used in the game (using a bomb to propel you horizontally, ignoring pits and other hazards), while not required, is useful in a couple stages—at the least, Dark World Level 3 to escape from a room, and in Ganon's Tower to access a faerie spring. A lot of romhacks of the game do require it, to the annoyance of No Damage Runners.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has a glitch involving quickly switching to the Hoverboots immediately after taking damage from a bomb.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: You can do a bomb jump by dropping a bomb and powering up one of your jumping techniques. If you time it just right, you can reach various ledges you weren't meant to walk on. Most of the time falling out of bounds though as the ground isn't completely solid up there.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: There are multiple ways to pull this off. The sanest version combines bombs with the Statis Rune, which stops an object's movement for a time but it gains momentum when it is hit. Bomb blasts also count, so Link can use bombs to give the Statised object momentum, climb onto the object, then fly away on the object as the Statis ends. The second requires that you just use a bomb rune to blow yourself up while above it, launching yourself away at the cost of a lot of health. The third requires that you fire a bomb arrow at your feet then quickly doing a shield surf to gain a bit more distance. The least sane of the lot, the "Wind Bomb"^note Also known as Bomb Impact Launch and "Boomy Zoomy", consists in using one bomb in midair to propel another midair bomb into you while in Bullet Time.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: You can use the Fuse ability to attach a Bomb Flower or explosive barrel to your shield, and attempting to shield surf will detonate the bomb, launching Link a significant distance upward with no health lost and very little damage to the shield.
  • The Legend of Zelda (1989) cartoon. link tosses a bomb ahead, and then jumps on it while holding his shield under him, similar to the Breath of the Wild shield technique .
• In Shadow of the Colossus, some creative players have used the exploding arrows to reach otherwise inaccessible parts of the world, similar to the Zelda examples.
• Not done with a rocket, but in Sonic Adventure, Amy Rose can use her hammer to jump further than she can normally.
• In the Special Edition of Devil May Cry 4, Lady's double jump is just her shooting Kalina Ann into the floor or ground while she's in the air.
• Monster Hunter Generations: Light Bowgun users have access to a special move called "Bullet Geyser" which is basically a rocket jump in all but name. The one difference is that unlike most incarnations of the trope, the hunter isn't damaged by the blast. The "Blast Dash" available to Gunlance users is similar, but tends to be used for hurling a hunter towards a monster in an attempt to mount it instead of blasting them backwards as the Bullet Geyser does.
• In Yoku's Island Express, the titular character cannot jump unassisted by a pinball paddle or some other force. However, it is possible to jump by capturing an exploding slug, rolling it into position, and using the blast to propel yourself skyward. It's actually required to get to some collectibles.

MMORPGs

• World of Warcraft:
  • Goblins can use the rockets on their tool belts to propel themselves forward, engineers also get shot straight up if their rocket boots (Normally a running speed increase) malfunction.
  • An explorer in Deepholm offers different quests on different days; one of those gives you temporary access to explosives that can be used to Rocket Jump. This technique is one of only three ways to reach the rare Jadeclaw hunter pet (the other two being to be a goblin or an engineer).
• Cannoneers in MapleStory have Cannon Jump, which has the added bonus of not damaging the character.
• Tristana of League of Legends has this as her 2nd spell in which she propels herself into the air and causes AoE damage where she lands, With no damage to herself, though its a risky move to use, often leaving her open to attack. Her Yordle counterpart, Ziggs, has a Satchel Charge that can be reactivated so he or any enemies can go flying. Only difference is that Ziggs will fly further and take no damage. A more recent update also added an explosive item in the jungle that can be activated to propel yourself and whoever is near the explosion through the air, with no damage to anyone.
• Engineers in Guild Wars 2 can do this when armed with a rifle. Not only does it not damage the player, it's used to Goomba Stomp whoever's beneath them when they land.

Platform Game

• Metroid has Samus' Bomb Jump, which is used in her Morph Ball form (thankfully, she's never hurt by her own bombs). In the first game, as well the original GameCube releases of Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, it was the only way to jump in that form. Other games give Samus the ability to jump normally in that form either naturally or via the "Spring Ball" power-up, but the bomb jump is still useful; because the bombs can be laid in midair and they don't obey gravity, you can jump into a bomb to get extra height.
  • Proper timing and bomb placement can even allow you to chain these explosions together into a triple bomb jump (Bomb-Trick) in the Prime series, and unlimited bomb jumps (Infinite Bomb Jump) in the 2D games. The only game in the series where this technique is impossible is Metroid Fusion, due to bombs taking longer to detonate in that entry.
  • Metroid Prime: Hunters includes a bona fide Rocket Jump in addition to her standard bomb jumps: if Samus fires a missile (or certain other weapons) at the ground, she takes damage and gets knocked into the air a bit. Once again, this is useful for Sequence Breaking and speed running. It doesn't work in any other Metroid Prime game, though (then again, most of the good tricks in those games don't work in Hunters either).
  • Metroid Dread introduces the Cross Bomb, which works just like the traditional Bomb Jump but sideways.
• In Jazz Jackrabbit 2 you can use the Rocket powerups to propel yourself along 2 walls if they are next to each other, as a kind of Wall Jump.
• One of the logbooks in action/strategy/platformer Iji describes an alien military game where one player wearing ridiculously heavy armor is thrown into the air by rockets and other explosive munitions; it even mentions juggling the player with rockets. This is a not-so-subtle hint to get hit by enemy attacks and use your own Splash Damage to fling yourself into otherwise inaccessible areas. To reach one secret area you must blow yourself up nine times (The very first thing you get upon reaching that area is a dialog from Iji: "THAT HURT!!"). In a less extreme application, you can use the recoil of the Nuke weapon to hurl yourself across gaps with too little headroom to jump over.
• Shovel Knight: Though boasting few of an average rocket jump's characteristics, Plague Knight's Bomb Burst is implied to be one of these. After charging up an explosion, he can let it go while still holding it to fling himself into the air. It doesn't hurt him, although given his mad scientist characterization that's to be expected.
• Technically possible to achieve in Spelunky, although since bombs generally do around 30 to 50 damage in a game where you're unlikely to ever have more than 10 health, you'd be better served just using a rope. Still, custom maps occasionally make use of this.
• "Flint jumps" are a traditional part of races and method to bypass obstacles in battles in Clonk. With timed explosives (and a lot of health) it's possible to do a (mostly horizontally-propelling) mid-air flint jump as well. There's also a fan-made scenario where players compete to see who can blow themselves the furthest.
• In Nefarious, Crow can bounce off of his own grenades to reach higher locations. Justified in that his Powered Armor absorbs the shock of the explosions.
• Gato Roboto allows riding the explosion of a rocket. It's required for the Achievement that consists in clearing one dungeon without the game's double-jump upgrade.

Role Playing Game

• One of the bomb parts in Custom Robo is made for this: It does no damage, has the highest possible recoil, and fires at your feet.
• In Dungeons of Dredmor, this is one of the skills granted to you by the Clockwork Knight skill. You take a bit of fire damage when taking off, but so do all the monsters around you, and you can also damage and stun any monster in the space in which you land.

Third-Person Shooter

• Fortnite Battle Royale has this in a completely different way than other games: instead of just propelling yourself in the air with a rocket's explosion players can actually ride a rpg as it flies in the air and shoot from above. Player can also abuse the physics to launch themselves forward after walking off the rocket for more forward momentum.
• PHIGHTING!: One of Rocket's main abilities is named Rocket Jump, and it can be paired with his Secondary attack to jump even higher.
• Like the Soldier from Team Fortress 2, the Foot Soldier zombie from Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare can rocket jump, but since the rocket launcher is strapped to his back, he uses it in a jetpack-like fashion.
• In Warframe, the Grineer-created Tonkor grenade launcher is designed for this. The gimmick kind of falls short, given how generous the game's movement system is normally; it's usually faster and easier to just use parkour instead of a grenade jump. However, the gimmick does end up giving it an edge over its Corpus cousin, the Penta: a well-modded weapon deals enough damage to down a Tenno in a heartbeat, so the Tonkor's self-damage was reduced to almost nothing, allowing the user to survive a grenade jump and making the weapon infinitely safer to wield than its counterparts.

Tower Defense

• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: The Prospector Zombie does this with a stack of TNT strapped to his leg. It launches him to the end of the yard, where he turns around and starts eating your plants from behind.

Wide Open Sandbox

• This is possible, but very tricky, in Minecraft. Unless it's an adventure map, you'd be better off just placing a couple blocks and making a stairway. However, using a splash potion of harming can double your jump height and is much safer than the previously suggested TNT.
• The "Rhino boost" in the Grand Theft Auto games (from III onwards) is a variation on this. When driving the Rhino tank, you can turn the turret around so that it is pointed behind you. The recoil created by firing the cannon provides you with a speed boost, which easily turns one of the slowest vehicles in the game into one of the fastest. Combine that with the fact that any vehicle that the Rhino so much as bumps into explodes, as well as the vehicle's astounding durability, and the Rhino practically becomes a Game-Breaker. San Andreas nerfed this ability, though it came back in the later Stories games.
  • Grand Theft Auto V references the concept of rocket jumping by having "Do not aim at pets or feet" etched onto the side of the Rocket Launcher.
• In Slime Rancher you can perform a double jump by jumping, shooting a slime downward, and then jumping off of the slime, to reach new areas.

Non-video game examples:

Anime and Manga

• Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.: Maple has a skill called Machine God which gives her a mech suit armed with lots of guns. She can fly into the air by shooting onto the ground. This move would hurt most other players without her high amount of defense.
• In Delicious in Dungeon, Laios sits on Senshi's indestructible pot while Marcille activates a detonation spell underneath it in order to get on the red dragon's head and stab its weak spot.
• In an episode of Digimon Tamers, Gargomon uses his cannons to do a rocket jump to the top of a skyscraper.
• Kallen in Code Geass uses her Guren's Radiant Wave to jump after the Lancelot on at least one occasion. The Lancelot itself seems to be able to use its slash harkens to vault itself into the air before it gets a flight module.
• A particularly interesting example is used in Mobile Suit Gundam 00, where Sumeragi, when the Ptolemaios is surrounded at sea, uses the force of several exploding torpedoes below the ship to propel it into the air, allowing it freedom to use the Gundams' Trans-Am to launch the Ptolemaios into space, effectively ROCKET JUMPING INTO ORBIT.
• One of the Juppongatana in Rurouni Kenshin used dynamite both as an offensive weapon and to boost him into the air, whereupon he used what amounted to a batsuit to glide.
• In the original Dragon Ball, Goku fired a Kamehameha Wave down at the ground to propel himself through the air during his fight with King Piccolo.
• The opening for the second season of the KonoSuba anime contains two examples. First, Darkness stacks an iron door on top of some explosive monsters and has the party stand on the door. Detonating the monsters launches the party into the sky. Seconds later, Megumin casts her explosion magic, and Aqua catches the backdraft in her raiment, slowing the party's descent.
• In an episode of My Hero Academia, Izuku uses mines from a minefield to propel himself to the leading position in a race, however, he uses a part of a fallen robot as a shield to protect himself from the blast.

Films — Live-Action

• In Tokyo Gore Police, Ruka gears up for battle by hauling a rocket launcher onto her shoulder, then plants it into the ground to leap up a skyscraper.
• Transformers contains one (performed by a robot).
• Cherry uses her Leg Cannon's grenade launcher to vault a concrete barrier in Planet Terror

Television

• Tested in a few different ways by the Mythbusters, including the 'use an explosion to propel a jumping human' and 'use an explosion to cushion a fall' variants. Understandably, neither method worked in the slightest.
• Used in an episode of The Librarians 2014, where a strange mix of quantum computing and magic has overlaid Real Life with a video game. Thus, video game tropes override the laws of physics. When the team needs to get across a chasm, Ezekiel suggests tossing grenades under the jumpers to propel them to the other side. When Baird (an ex-soldier) hears this, she screams "Grenades don't work that way!" Ezekiel counters that they do in video games. And yes, it works just fine. They don't even suffer any damage.

Newspaper Comics

• Mafalda does it with a siphon bottle that's used in making alcoholic beverages' she plays with it like she were a spacewoman, and so do her friends... Here◊'s a pic.

Tabletop Games

• GURPS has rules for this in the Gun Fu supplement.

Web Comics

• In Gone with the Blastwave, a couple of the notoriously Too Dumb to Live Greens attempted this◊. Emphasis on 'attempt.'
• In Level 30 Psychiatry The Soldier attempts this but he didn't the outcome to be that realistic.

Web Original

• Freddie Wong has a video literally called "Rocket Jump", where he recreates a Team Fortress 2-style rocket jump in order to bypass a mounted machine gun using VFX.
  • He has also since named his production company Rocket Jump, sorry if you were looking for that instead of the trope.
• In The Adventures of Riot Shield Man and Knife Man...Guy, Riot Shield Man performed a rocket jump in order to riot shield Justin Bieber's helicopter. His teammates then question why he didn't use the rocket launcher to shoot down the helicopter.

Western Animation

• Referenced in a Robot Chicken skit where one of Santa Claus's reindeers attempts to rescue a little boy from a well through tactical use of hand grenades. The reindeer loses his own legs in the process, and the little boy is rescued by actual EMT workers.
• The Secret Saturdays: In "Where Lies the Engulfer", Zak uses the blast from one of Doyle's grenades to propel himself through a skylight.
• Skipper does this in one episode of The Penguins of Madagascar allowing to vault over the villain.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, powerful firebenders are capable of this as an advanced technique. The heaviest use is in the fight on the cable car in "The Burning Rock".

Real Life

• The Orion Engine, a proposed starship drive that could be built with today's technology, which does this with nukes. The ship is protected by a large shield (the "pusher plate") and some enormous shock absorbers. The pusher plate is in turn protected from the heat by spraying oil onto it between shots. This would be a staggeringly powerful and efficient method of propulsion that could take a manned mission to Mars in a matter of days and theoretically hit a theoretical maximum speed of 5% of the speed of light, but it has one unfortunate drawback: The only way to launch such a vessel without letting off a number of nuclear warheads in our own biosphere, with all the environmental harm that entails, is to send the necessary materials and tools into orbit the old-fashioned way and assemble it in space.

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