History Main / JumpingOnAGrenade

Compare with PineappleSurprise (for when a character is blown up by their own grenade), RocketJump (when a videogame character creates an explosion to jump higher), TakingTheBullet, and TuckAndCover. See also EatTheBomb for an even more extreme (and less realistic) approach to personally neutralizing an explosive. Contrast ExplosiveStupidity, where the subject unintentionally blows themselves up.

[[folder:Manwha]]

* [[BlackHumor Hilariously inverted]] in the case of the attempted assassin Abdullah Asieri, who packed his own rectum with an estimated one pound of explosives in an attempt to kill Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef. The "smothering" effect that this trope employs was present and correct; the Prince was only slightly injured, while the assassin died. The Prince was quoted as saying [[http://www.haaretz.com/news/saudi-prince-wounded-by-suicide-bomber-vows-to-fight-al-qaida-1.282875 "he surprised me by blowing himself up"]], which is surely something of an understatement. Much humour has of course been derived from the fact that you can't say assassin without saying [[http://nypost.com/2009/09/30/qaeda-assassin/ ass]].

* ''Series/{{Community}}'': "For a Few Paintballs More" has a PaintballEpisode variation. The remaining Greendale students are holed up in a classroom. In comes a robotic drone carrying a beeping paint bomb from the enemy. Magnitude heroically jumps on top of it and takes the hit when it explodes, eking out half his CatchPhrase before passing out.

* In one of Leo Kessler(Charles Grayling)'s pot-boilers about Waffen-SS Assault Battalion ''Wotan'', the brutal nature of SS combat training is lampshaded when the mandatory crazy Nazi officer leads a lesson in grenade skills. The fanatical Nazi conversationally explains to his men that the fact the top of the German helmet is flat, as is also the base of the standard potato-masher grenade, fortuitously allows for a training exercise that will separate the men from the boys. He pulls the fuse on a hand grenade then balances it on the top of his helmet and steels himself. He staggers a little from the resultant explosion but is unharmed.

* ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnlineAlternativeGunGaleOnline'': In the light novel version of the cabin battle, Pitohui throws an inactive grand grenade to bait out the team, and they fall for it, with one of their members instinctively jumping on the grenade and leaving himself wide open.

* While not exactly "jumping" on the grenade, but with a similar principle, there's a secret in ''VideoGame/QuakeI'' (namely, in E4M4, "The Palace of Hate") where there is a sideways teleporter that cannot be reached by jumping, but there's a hole underneath. You are supposed to fire a grenade on that hole and then stand over it. The blast will propel you toward the teleporter and thus you can reach the secret. The game gently provides you with [[NighInvulnerability a Pentagram of Protection]] so you don't accidentally kill yourself while trying.

* ''Series/{{Monk}}'' puts a grenade inside a refrigerator in the episode "Mr Monk and the Election", and of course, [[SuperOCD being Monk]], opens the door again to put it in straight.

In reality, this is zig-zagged, like everything else in war. Officially, the ''proper'' course of action when a grenade lands near is to get as far away as possible before detonation, followed by jumping on it, then by grabbing it and throwing it away as a final resort. Fortified positions, from concrete bunkers to hand dug foxholes, generally have depressions so that grenades that get thrown in can be kicked aside into the depressions and ignored while they detonate safely. On the other hand, the enemy may have cooked it[[note]]held onto the grenade after the pin was pulled and the 3-5 second fuse started burning, to make a shorter time between toss and explosion. It should be noted that this is considered, almost without exception, as a Very Bad Idea and forbidden by most armed forces, as grenade fuses are not reliable, and you're just as likely to have it [[HoistByHisOwnPetard blow up in your hand]] as you are to successfully throw it[[/note]] before throwing it in the first place, giving anyone nearby little chance to react.

* The Punk Hazard arc in ''Manga/OnePiece'' has a variation, in that it doesn't feature an actual grenade. [[spoiler:In order to prevent the other giant children from eating more of the drugged candy that [[MadScientist Caesar Clown]] has been feeding them, Mocha swallows the entire batch she was carrying at once; to Chopper's horror, as it is a very dangerous drug. This brings her to the brink of death, but snaps the other kids back to their senses. Fortunately, Chopper was able to stabilize her condition and save her.]]

* In ''Adventure Comics #424'', [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Linda Danvers]] is having a date with an ex-crook she's trying to get information out of, when a gangster suddenly tosses a grenade in the restaurant to silence his former partner. Linda instantly jumps on the grenade and takes the explosion. Good thing she's invulnerable.

* Geiger does this ''ComicBook/FearItself: Youth In Revolt'' #2, catching a grenade thrown by Crossbones and using her body to shield her team mates from the blast. Being super tough, she survives the experience, but it is enough to hospitalise her.

* In ''Fanfic/MassEffectEndOfDays'', an AI piloted robot does that during a slave rescue operation. The AI managed to upload into another body... something the quarian slaves present aren't too happy to hear.

* In ''Fanfic/TiberiumWars'' when Lieutenant Cristos, a Nod Commando, ambushes Colt's fireteam, she disables one of the soldiers while he's securing the front of a building, and shoots out his arms and legs and breaks his jaw, then leaves him on top of an explosive charge. When Colt finds him, he tries to pick the soldier up, only to for the trooper to spasm and throw himself back on the explosive before it can go off.
* Subverted in ''Literature/{{Ward}}'' fanfiction ''Fanfic/{{Warp}}'' when Antares spots a man leaving a backpack bomb in a restaurant. Her first instinct is flying off with the bomb and letting her force-field tank the explosion, but she's worried about the blast affecting everything else, so she resorts to evacuate the place in a rapid, orderly fashion.

* In ''Film/CaptainAmericaCivilWar'' Cap does the more sensible thing of slamming his [[{{Unobtainium}} vibranium]] shield on top of a flash-bang (in fairness, he didnt have the shield during the similiar scene in the 1st film). Given vibranium is nigh-indestructible and known for absorbing energy it works.
* Done in ''Film/ChildsPlay3'' where one of the nebbish cadets realizes that someone's replaced their training munitions with live ones and sacrifices himself to protect his squad, jumping on a grenade thrown by Chucky who was aiming for Andy..

* The BigBad of ''Film/{{Crank}}'' [[HumanShield uses his bodyguard to do this]]. The bodyguard didn't notice the grenade and thanks his boss before he dies, because he assumed the boss knocked him down to save him from being shot.

* Occurs in ''Film/{{Hobgoblins}}'' as part of a soldier's action-carnage-glory hallucination caused by the eponymous critters. Because the movie's of ''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]]'' quality, the frag grenade somehow sets him on fire and lets him stagger around for a bit before collapsing... and at the end he [[UnexplainedRecovery miraculously recovers]] with nothing but a few bandages and some crutches to show for his ordeal.

* The Serbian film ''Film/NoMansLand'' had something similar occur - a person presumed dead was set up with a bouncing mine underneath them. Then they woke up and, well....
* Parodied in Creator/MelBrooks ''Film/SilentMovie'', with a very shaken-up soda can instead of a grenade. It didn't do much damage to the man besides the can bursting and just hurting, not killing him, but it was treated like he had died.

* In the fourth ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' book, Holly Short arrived at the hotel Artemis and [[BattleButler Butler]] were staying in during a heist, only to find out that the bio-bomb that she had been trying to stop has already detonated (Unknown to her, Butler had the sense to grab Artemis and fling them out the window before the bio-bomb hit) After briefly crossing the DespairEventHorizon, Holly notices another bio-bomb and a transmission from BigBad [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Opal Koboi]]. After the transmission, Holly does this using her helmet, which understandably is destroyed, but buys her enough time to start [[OutrunTheFireball outflying the blue-rinse]].
* ''Literature/ClockworkCentury'': In ''Dreadnought'', Fenwick is killed when he jumps on a concussion bomb the Confederate raiders manage to throw on to the train.

* At the end of the novel ''Supreme Commander'' by Nikolai Gudanets (inspired by ''[[{{VideoGame/XCOM}} X-COM]]''), the task force has discovered the location of the alien base on Earth. An abandoned submarine pen in the Arctic, built by the Nazis. They are warned that some aliens are capable of mind-controlling humans, and their armor includes an additional indicator on the HUD, showing a mind control in progress nearby. A squad of four enters a pool area, where the [[BigBad main antagonist]] is swimming. He mind-controls one of the soldiers and has him throw a grenade in-between his squad. Realizing this, one of the squad members (and a secondary character and possible LoveInterest of the protagonist) falls on the grenade. Her own armor protects the squad from damage, but she dies instantly. The alien manages to escape by swimming through an underwater tunnel into the ocean, where he's promptly eaten by a shark.
* Lampshaded and subverted in one of the short stories in ''Literature/TheThingsTheyCarried'', entitled "How to Write a True War Story". The author first tells the straight version, and then a version in which everyone nearby dies from the blast anyway and the would be hero dies with a pithy remark about this being typical of his life. Among other troperific examples of stories from combat, the author concludes that one need only ask whether it matters if the events really happened to know if a war story is "True".
* In one of Leo Kessler(Charles Grayling)'s pot-boilers about Waffen-SS Assault Battalion ''Wotan'', the brutal nature of SS combat training is lampshaded when the mandatory crazy Nazi officer leads a lesson in grenade skills. The fanatical Nazi conversationally explains to his men that the fact the top of the German helmet is flat, as is also the base of the standard potato-masher grenade, fortuitously allows for a training exercise that will separate the men from the boys. He pulls the fuse on a hand-grenade then balances it on the top of his helmet and steels himself. He staggers a little from the resultant explosion, but is unharmed.

* ''Series/TheCarolBurnettShow'' had a sketch where Tim Conway plays a soldier who saved his unit by swallowing a live hand grenade. He survived, but now has no internal organs.
* ''Series/{{Community}}'': "For a Few Paintballs More" has a PaintballEpisode variation. The remaining Greendale students are holed up in a classroom. In comes a robotic drone carrying a beeping paint bomb from the enemy. Magnitude heroically jumps on top of it and takes the hit when it explodes, ekeing out half his CatchPhrase before passing out.
* In an episode of ''Series/{{CSI}}'', a bomb tech jumps on top of a bomb that is about to explode. The cops were trapped in a confined space and the bomb might have killed them all. He realized too late that the bomb was booby trapped and he really did not have the time to get away. Through his HeroicSacrifice, the bomb tech manages to save the other three people at the cost of his own life.

* In season 2 of ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'', Sam jumped on a grenade to protect a customs agent. Luckily for him it was just a flashbang.

** For the record, that grenade had a ''forty-five second fuse''. And this episode was used by Series/MythBusters to bust the TV myth that a refrigerator can contain a grenade blast.

* In ''Series/RedDwarf'', Rimmer jumps on a polymorph who has turned into a grenade. He was NighInvulnerable [[HardLight at that point]] (though he didn't quite know that), though, not to mention NotHimself -- in one of the books, it's noted that Rimmer is normally the [[DirtyCoward sort of person]] who would throw someone else onto the grenade in order to save himself.

** Ogryn (Ogre IN SPACE) Nork Deddogg saved his commander in this fashion, by jumping on a live grenade (and the enemy grenadier holding it) before it went off. His bulk completely contained the explosion, and being MadeOfIron he only gave passing curiosity to his wound (indeed, Deddogg is one of the few characters in the game to manage to die of ''old age'').

* This and, occasionally, [[FeedItABomb eating a grenade]], are frequently solutions in the puzzles of ''VideoGame/McPixel.'' Only about 50% of the time are they ''successful'' solutions. A specific example would be an level in a foxhole. You steal a soldier's helmet then yell at him until he grabs the bomb and runs away with it.

* While not exactly "jumping" on the grenade, but with a similar principle, there's a secret in ''VideoGame/QuakeI'' (namely, in E4M4, "The Palace of Hate") where there is a sideways teleporter that cannot be reached by jumping, but there's a hole underneath. You are supposed to fire a grenade on that hole and then stand over it. The blast will propel you towards the teleporter and thus you can reach the secret. The game gently provides you with [[NighInvulnerability a Pentagram of Protection]] so you don't accidentally kill yourself while trying.

** Sergeant Schlock accidentally saves his entire team from a flying plasma grenade by ''eating'' it. He loses the majority of his body mass, but thanks to some judicious time-travel, he gets better.
** However [[https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-02-07 it's noted that this trope will not work]] using anti-matter grenades. In this case the ActionGirlfriend (who is wearing PoweredArmor) throws her unprotected boyfriend far enough away that he's protected from the blast (her own armor protects her, though it's useless afterwards).

-->"For saving the lives of Canadian infantrymen during the Battle of Lye Mun on Hong Kong Island in December 1941. On three documented occasions, Gander, the Newfoundland mascot of the Royal Rifles of Canada, engaged the enemy as his regiment joined the Winnipeg Grenadiers, members of Battalion Headquarters "C" Force and other Commonwealth troops in their courageous defense of the island. Twice Gander's attacks halted the enemy's advance and protected groups of wounded soldiers. In a final act of bravery, the war dog was killed in action gathering a grenade. Without Gander's intervention, many more lives would have been lost in the assault."

* An utterly cinematic example: Russian police staked out a known dangerous criminal in his apartment for two days and ended up chasing him to a bus stop. The guy took his own girlfriend (and a mother of his child) hostage, and entered the crowd holding a live grenade in one hand and a pistol in the other. Three-man SOBR (SWAT) team almost apprehended him (one of them would clutch the grenade's spade to stop it from priming), but the guy opened fire and was cut down instantly with four hits. SOBR captain Okhrimenko, a 28 y.o. Chechen war veteran, heard the primer click and just plunged onto the damn thing, shielding around 50 civilians from the blast. Even the girlfriend survived. Another Russian officer, an infantry major and batallion commander Solntzev (nicknamed Sun), shielded his troops from the explosion when a rookie's grenade hit the trench parapet during training exercise, shoving the thrower out of the way and jumping towards the grenade.

* A subversion occurred to former Georgia Democratic Senator Max Cleland when he was serving as a company commander in the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar. One of his soldiers had loosely fastened a grenade to his belt, and when it fell off, Captain Cleland bent down to pick it up. Unfortunately, the grenade’s pin was pulled while it fell off, making it live. The resulting explosion left Cleland a wheelchair bound triple amputee.

* In ''Film/Fury2014'', Gordo, the tank's driver, smothers his own grenade with his body after he drops it after being shot.

* In ''Film/{{Fury}}'', Gordo, the tank's driver, smothers his own grenade with his body after he drops it after being shot.

Compare with PineappleSurprise (for when a character is blown up by their own grenade), RocketJump (when a videogame character creates an explosion to jump higher), TakingTheBullet, and TuckAndCover. Contrast ExplosiveStupidity, where the subject unintentionally blows themselves up.

[[folder:Film]]

* When

** Twenty-two Marines received the Medal of Honor for their actions in the Battle for Iwo Jima. Six of the citations include "smothered grenade with his body to save his comrades" or similar words. Only one of the six survived: Pfc Jacklyn Lucas, age seventeen, who lied about his age to get into the Corps. Even more amazing is that Lucas smothered ''two'' Japanese grenades ''at the same time''. MadeOfIron indeed!

** Navy SEAL, Master-at-Arms Second Class Michael A Monsoor; received the Medal of Honor posthumously for doing this in Iraq in 2006 to save the lives of 3 fellow [=SEALs=] and 3 Iraqi soldiers.

** Jack Lucas did this twice at seventeen because he lied about his age to fight in World War 2. He survived and earned the Medal of Honor, the youngest Marine to earn it.

* Done in an episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}''. Sgt. Rizzo has a dummy grenade that he is using to play practical jokes on people. He is astounded when Maj. Winchester throws himself on top of the grenade to save Rizzo's life. It turns out Winchester knew the grenade was a dummy and wanted to turn the tables on Rizzo.

* In ''Film/CaptainAmericaCivilWar'' Cap does the more sensible thing of slamming his [[{{Unobtainium}} vibranium]] shield on top of a flash-bang. Given vibranium is nigh-indestructible and known for absorbing energy it works.

* Parodied in an episode of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' where Professor Bobo throws not himself, but someone else (Observer[=/=]Brain Guy) on a grenade to protect Pearl. Fortunately for Brain Guy, his people have evolved beyond bodies, so he's not even hurt.
** There is an earlier episode where Joel and the 'bots test the Between-Meal Mortar, only to have the Twinkie they launched ricochet back. Joel jumps onto it, but everything gets covered in filling anyway.