History Main / Pyromaniac

* ''Anime/TheVisionOfEscaflowne'': Dilandau. The lovably sadistic PsychoForHire pilot of the flamethrower packing red Guymelef with the fun CatchPhrase of "Burn! Burn! Burn! [[EvilLaugh HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA]]!"

* ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'': Beavis. "[[CatchPhrase FIRE! FIRE!]]" At least until the MoralGuardians [[{{Bowdlerise}} took notice]]. Allegedly, a young boy burned down his house after watching ''Beavis and Butt-Head''... even though his house [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer didn't have cable]], meaning that they couldn't watch the show. In the [[UnCancelled revival]], Beavis is allowed to say "FIRE! FIRE!" again.

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty: World at War'' has Doctor Richtofen as a character from the ''VideoGame/NaziZombies'' DLC. Out of the group of four sociopath soldiers who make up the playable characters, Richtofen is the most unhinged. Whenever a nuke powerup is detonated he will shout "Watch, watch the BEAUTIFUL FIRE!!" very enthusiastically.

%%* ''LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero'': Menbil.

* Music/BlueOysterCult's ''Spy In The House Of The Night'' is about a pyromaniac who gets his kicks from being normal on the outside, but a secret arsonist by night. Tellingly it's also a ShoutOut to Music/TheDoors song ''The Spy In The House Of Love'' about a sexual voyeur.

[[caption-width-right:350:Arson, murder, and more arson.]]

* ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'': During most of her formative years, Farnese was one as taking part in [[BurnTheWitch burnings]] was the only source of relief that she had from her LonelyRichKid existence, which got mistaken for religious devotion by the Holy See. As an adult, she even derived sexual gratification from it, at one point even ''[[ADateWithRosiePalms masturbating]] to people being burned at the stake''. This side of her disturbed her greatly, even though she tried desperately to convince herself that she was not wrong. Eventually, she manages to get over it.

* Wiki/{{Killerbunnies}}: Corrine Andrews, as per her profile and dA description, and she is nearly covered with burn scars. She also started her first fire when she was five and has about one hundred cases of arson under her belt.

* ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}'':

* The ''Franchise/FarCry'' series from ''VideoGame/FarCry3'' onwards features an enemy type obsessively dedicated to burning the opposition with Molotov cocktails. Should they be set on fire via shooting the Molotovs on their chest [[InfernalRetaliation they'll charge blindly at the nearest target in an attempt to ignite them as well]]. Flamethrower enemies, likewise introduced in the third game, are also implied to take pleasure in starting fires and burning people to death.

* ''Film/TalesOfHalloween'': Alice in "The Weak and the Wicked" likes to burn things. When first encountered she about to burn the lost trick-or-treater with her cigar; she later douses the Stranger in high-proof alcohol and tries to light him up; and a flashback shows that, as a child, she killed the Stranger's parents by burning down their caravan with them inside.

* ''Literature/CircleOfMagic'': [[spoiler:Ben Ladradun]]. Originally he was just setting small, careful fires to impress on his city the need for a fire brigade, and later to test the fire fighters. Then he accidentally killed someone, and the thrill of it drove him to start burning populated buildings.

*** The [[SuccessionCrisis Dance of the Dragons]] was an exceptional display of the family breaking out the pretty, pretty flames at the least provocation across the board, no matter if they were [[AHouseDivided Black or Green]]. (Take-home lesson: MAD doesn't work when many of those with the nukes secretly, and deep-down, just ''really'' enjoy seeing them explode, and will unconsciously lean towards taking the opportunity to let loose when it comes up.)

* In ''The Zone'' series by James Rouch set in World War 3, Captain Revel comes across an inmate in a mental institution who was imprisoned for pyromania. The inmate says he never killed anyone; he just liked to watch the flames, but notes the irony that if he did kill people doing that now they'd make him a general.

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' had two of them in the two-part season 9 opener. They suspect a convicted arsonist/pyro is behind a fire which contained a booby trap that killed a firefighter; he insists [[NotMeThisTime he didn't do it]] (supported by the fact he only started fires which did property damage and went out of his way to avoid killing anyone) and offers to help. It turns out the real killer was an investigator who learned a lot from him from interviews and got obsessed with him (and maybe became a pyromaniac herself). However, at the end of the episode, he suffers a relapse in the next part...after being jailed for taking revenge on the people who hurt him as a kid, he is seen using his glasses as an improvised magnifying glass to start a fire in a paperback book in his cell.

*** Heck! One of Chaos's motos is "KILL! MAIM! [[ExactlywhatitsaysontheTin BURN]]!" Perticularly in Khorne's realm where anyone is not following this motto is a DirtyCoward or too weak to serve him and the literal realm he governs where fire and ash is as common as water.

* ''TabletopGame/HeavyGear'' canonically indicates that this as a legitimate problem for the Southern Milicia. Every time they try to recruit new ''Flammjager'' pilots, they end up with career pyromaniacs, thanks in no small part to the ''Flammjager'''s primary weapons being a wrist mounted flamethrower and a napalm rocket pack. ''Flammjagers'' are relatively slow, not especially tough, and attract an uncomfortable number of enemy shots... and their pilots ''still'' won't trade them for anything. The Northern Confederacy tried to institute better mental health screening on pilots for their similar ''Magma Jaguar,'' and they ''still'' fail to the tune of about one in four ''Magma Jaguar'' pilots being a touch too incendiary for anyone's comfort.

* ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic'': The Fantasy theme has Kyros, the fireball-happy wizard. It rapidly gets to the point where every other member of the party dives for cover when he begins casting a spell. He considers it an aiming problem when he ''only'' hits the things he's pointing the fireball at. Given that the Fantasy theme uses a houserule where XP can only be spent on things the players have practiced using, and all Kyros ever uses is his fireball, this trend is one that never reverses.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': Subverted. Quite a few of the more psychotic [[PlayingWithFire firebenders]] seem way too happy to burn things. However, it's later explained that firebending is fueled by rage [[spoiler:except for Aang, Zuko, and Iroh, who fuel it with energy and passion]] and those who enjoy it don't enjoy fire as much as they enjoy the result.

** Notorious California arsonist [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Leonard_Orr John Orr]] (the subject of the above-mentioned ''Point of Origin'') is not considered a true pyromaniac for this reason. Orr applied for positions with numerous police departments around Los Angeles County but was rejected by all of them. He eventually was hired by the Glendale Fire Department, and exhibited an apparent knack for fire cause investigation, eventually becoming the city's lead arson investigator. Though sometimes stumped, he frequently zeroed right in on the origins of arson fires, piecing together detailed descriptions of the arson devices and how they were used from barely any evidence. One such incident was a fire in a hardware store in 1984 that killed four people, including a two-year-old boy and his grandmother. Initially thought to have been an electrical fire, Orr took over the investigation, insisting that it was arson, and traced the fire to an (almost completely destroyed) improvised incendiary device planted on a shelf full of polyurethane varnish. Orr was arrested by the BATF in 1991, after a four-year investigation by them and the Los Angeles County and Bakersfield Fire Departments. It turns out that Orr's uncanny ability to locate and identify evidence of arson was because he was the arsonist, with BATF linking him to over 2,000 fires, including the hardware store. Orr is considered a sociopath and narcissist and was evidently motivated by a desire to prove that the police departments he previously applied for should have hired him.

* Lampshaded by Music/DefLeppard in ''Rock of Ages'' and of course ''Pyromania'', the album it's from. The cover art depicts a cross-hair pointing at a burning building, which strongly implies the viewpoint of a [[CoolGuns/RocketsMissilesAndGrenadeLaunchers rocket launcher]] that's just been fired.

-->-- '''[[MonsterClown Kefka Palazzo]]''', ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI''

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1319907858093295300

[[quoteright:275:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mania-pyro_1406.gif]]
[[caption-width-right:275:[[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Arson, Murder, and]] ''[[BaitAndSwitch more]]'' [[https://wordinfo.info/results/pyromaniacal arson!]]]]

** Boyd Cooper burned down his old workplace with molotov cocktails after being fired from his night guard job, with his memory vault of said incident showing him doing it with much excitement. [[spoiler:This aspect of his personality is then turned into a ManchurianAgent, known as "The Milkman", by the BigBad through hypnosis, who planned to later release and use it as a way to DestroyTheEvidence of his crimes.]]

** Boyd Cooper burned down his old workplace with molotov cocktails after being fired from his night guard job, with his memory vault of said incident showing him doing it with much excitement. [[spoiler:This aspect of his personality, deemed "The Milkman", is then locked up deep inside his mind by the BigBad, who planned to later release and use it as a way to DestroyTheEvidence of his crimes.]]

** Boyd Cooper burned down his old workplace with molotov cocktails after being fired from his night guard job, with his memory vault of this incident showing him doing it with much excitement. [[spoiler:This aspect of his personality, deemed "The Milkman", is then locked up deep inside his mind thanks by the BigBad, who planned to later use it as a way to DestroyTheEvidence of his crimes.]]

** Boyd Cooper burned down his old workplace with molotov cocktails after being fired from his night guard job. [[spoiler:This aspect of his personality, deemed "The Milkman", is then locked up deep inside his mind thanks by the BigBad, who planned to later use it as a way to DestroyTheEvidence of his crimes.]]