Infernal Retaliation / Video Games

Video game characters can deliver an Infernal Retaliation from time to time!

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• AdventureQuest has the Razorclaws, wolves transformed by dark magic to act as assassins for their sorcerous masters. They are most vulnerable to fire, but if you are foolish enough to actually use fire on a Razorclaw, it will catch fire and perform a vicious attack on you for serious damage.
• Setting a molotov thrower aflame in Far Cry 3, either with your own incendiary weapons or by shooting theirs, usually results in having him chase after you on fire until he burns to death.
• Borderlands 2 has Krieg the Psycho as a player character version of this. His Hellborn skill tree is all about dealing fire damage and getting buffed when set on fire. He even has a chance to set himself on fire when using incendiary weapons.
• Alien: Isolation:
  • Using the flamethrower on the alien will at first cause it retreat to the nearest air vent when set on fire. If you happen to be between it and the nearest vent when you lit it aflame, you might just get run over by it in the process. On higher difficulties, using the flamethrower too much will cause it to run straight at you and ignore the fire entirely.
  • The Working Joes, being androids, don't even react to being set on fire outside of becoming hostile.
    Working Joe: Only wild animals fear fire.
• This significantly reduced the effectiveness of the flamethrower in the First-Person Shooter Aliens vs. Predator for the PC, as setting aliens on fire would simply result in them continuing to attack you while on fire, and since they're already extremely fast attackers, this usually meant you dying even more quickly than usual. This was adjusted in Aliens vs. Predator 2, where, since Aliens aren't so goddamn fast anymore, the flamethrower kills 'em real good before they can get to you. Worsened in the 2010 game. Not only does it fire kill the aliens too slowly, if they grab you while they're on fire, they have a tendency to explode.
• Fire in Besiege is one of the most effective forms of crowd control for groups of enemy soldiers, with the trade-off being that ignited enemies get a solid 10 or so seconds of attacking before dropping dead, all fire-type weapons being short-range, and your contraptions typically ignite easier than toilet paper soaked in gasoline. This can be averted with liberal use of armor plating, or getting the hell out of there after lighting them on fire.
• The Binding of Isaac
  • Hoppers, once lit ablaze, become "F. Hoppers", which have three times the HP and move faster. What's worse, setting them on fire isn't the player's fault; they get that way by jumping into fires that naturally spawn in the room. The only way to prevent it from happening is to kill, or douse the fires, before they can. And then there are the rooms where said fires are locked off behind rock walls...
  • Coal spiders are regular spider enemies that carry a lump of coal on their backs as armor. If they're hit with fire (which tends to be plentiful in the Mines and Ashpit where they're found), the get set ablaze, move faster, and their health increases.
• BioShock: The in-game advertisement for the Incinerate plasmid ends with "Warning: Fire spreads," and it's not just a joke — anything that is on fire can set other things on fire, due to a clever bit of programming that makes fire particles themselves double as ignition triggers. Even touching a burning corpse will hurt the player, although he is thankfully immune to persistent burning himself. Most mooks will get distracted and try to find water if lit ablaze, but beware if they run into oil slicks... especially if there happen to be Exploding Barrels nearby. Big Daddies, meanwhile, are undeterred by fire and will continue to attack until one of you goes down. A not-so-clever bit of programming makes it so that they will sometimes aggro in response to non-player-inflicted damage. Set a splicer on fire and then hypnotize him to attack a Big Daddy? That splicer may be the least of your concerns in a moment.
• Blood allows you to set zombies on fire, and when they erupt into a zombie torch, they hurt you with touch.
• While the Bomberman series more or less revolves around killing everything with fire based explosives, one of the possible skull item effects from Bomberman 64 and Bomberman 64: The Second Attack sets the person unfortunate enough to pick up the item on fire. While in this state, the burning bomber has about 30 seconds to kill everyone else with their burning body (can't use bombs since their body sets off any bombs he drops or touches) before the fire finally kills him.
• Blow Out have the larger mutant bug enemies who can survive incineration via flamethrower or incendiary grenades, only to continue chasing after you while burning up, where the flames can hurt you on contact.
• Fire burns the vampires bad in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002)... but not right away. They can still tag you for a nasty burn before dusting.
• Burn, Zombie, Burn. It's pretty much the whole title. Running around lighting zombies on fire makes them faster and deadlier. On the plus side, it increases your score multiplier.
• In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, one of Jill Valentine's special moves is a zombie summon. One possible summon is a flaming zombie. Instead of grabbing and holding an opponent in place like normal zombies, these explode.
• A possibility within the Nazi Zombies mode of Call of Duty: World at War. While flamethrowers will generally be a good weapon against the zombies for most of the game, it becomes more dangerous later on as they get more health. However, being careful and just running around, lighting zombies aflame and keeping your distance while they burn usually works.
• In Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin striking a zombie (or ghoul) with a fire attack causes them to become skeletons, even if the attack should've reduced their HP to zero.
• In the Fall from Heaven II mod for Civilization IV, which is set in a fantasy world, the bringers of Apocalypse, the Sheaim, have an axemen replacement called the Pyre Zombie, which is, well, Exactly What It Says on the Tin; A zombie inherently on fire. Of course, whenever one of them perish, all enemy units in the vicinity are damaged, which makes the "PZ" the perfect bane of any army that cannot perform ranged attacks or are somehow immune to fire. To be fair, though, it's one of the only early-game advantages of the Sheaim.
• Happens in one of Corpse Party's Wrong Ends when Yoshiki tries to fend off a sentient anatomical model by setting it alight with a Bunsen burner. The model collapses into a pile, then quickly gets back up and kills Yoshiki by embracing him while still on fire.
• In Cthulhu Saves the World, in "Cthulhu's Angels" bonus campaign, the boss Evil Bridge, when attacked with fire attacks (like Fireball spell), catches fire. When on fire, Evil Bridge's damage is increased by 50%, and the bonus stacks the more fire spells are used.
• The Immolation spell in Dark Souls II technically transforms you into this variation, considering you're Undead. It causes gradual damage to everyone that comes near you, but also saps your own HP. The Scorcher enemies in Brume Tower will also do this if hit with any fire damage, becoming faster and eventually turning into an Action Bomb.
• Shadows in Deadly Premonition become extremely fast if set on fire and run straight for York once ablaze. However, they die quickly from the fire, too.
• Dishonored 2: Using incendiary attacks on a Clockwork soldier is useless due to its mechanical nature. However, thanks to its wooden components, it will be set on fire, so now there is a giant robot on fire trying to kill you. Strangely enough, you do not seem to be damaged by the flaming frame of the Clockwork soldier.
• Doom³ features a zombie that is already on fire when it attacks you. Ordinary zombies, however, seem abnormally sensitive to fire.
• There is a certain point in Dragon Age: Origins where you have to protect a village from an oncoming zombie horde. You can find barrels of oil, and suggest to the head of the guard to light it on fire, weakening the initial wave. If Zeveran is in your team at this point, he'll wisely snark that it may create flaming undead, instead. Subverted in that, yes, fire does help against the zombies, with no serious repercussions. Although if you push back the waves, the stupid AI will inevitably kill themselves by walking into the burning oil.
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • Occurred in the Let's Play Boatmurdered with Sankis — whose power, if anything, became even more terrifying once he was aflame.
  • The fortress' method for dealing with the various goblins invaders, killer elephant herds, and crazed mandrills became "flood everything outside the mountain with lava". This eventually backfired fantastically when a puppy got caught in the lava outside and wouldn't stop burning. In itself this would have been fine, but one of the dwarves then decided to go and retrieve the puppy. That dwarf got lit on fire and went back into the fortress, not only igniting random things but also spreading smoke everywhere, which causes insanity. In the wake of this came Sankis's rampage mentioned above, which catalyzed a chain of events which eventually reduced the entire fortress into a desolate, smoking, miasma-filled ruin. Well, more of one than it already was, anyways....
  • In general, earlier versions of Dwarf Fortress had dwarves be generally non-plussed about picking up things on fire and being on fire themselves, which was highly amusing until you realized it made it nearly impossible to keep a fire under control.
  • Variant: Butchering a Fire Imp corpse occasionally sprays clouds of boiling fat everywhere, setting anything flammable in the room ablaze.
  • Bronze Colossi are not immune to lava, but their large size mean they melt slowly. If the one you just immersed in magma gets out too soon of the trap, it will integrate the heat into its attacks, multiplicating its danger.
• Territorial Oaks in EarthBound (1994) are a special kind of evil: Not only do they burst into flames automatically when you kill them through any means, but this deals instant damage in the hundreds, which you can only survive if you have enough HP left for the rolling health meter to stop before you leave the battle screen. Did we mention that your maximum HP at the point where you start to encounter them is likely to be in the ballpark of 150?
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, any mook set on fire will continue to attack (though thankfully they won't set you on fire) — in fact, you have to get a specific high-level perk to make enemies flee when they're at low health and on fire.
• Eternal Evil has the Implacable Man boss, Sefar, who can be set on fire. He'll just continue charging after you while set alight, and burn you on the spot.
• The boss of the Iifa Tree in Final Fantasy IX, the Soulcage isn't very tough, and given that it's both wood-based and undead, you wouldn't be wrong in surmising that it's weak to fire. Setting it ablaze will result in it catching fire and attacking with Fire Blades, a hard hitting party attack. The flaming status can be canceled by an ice-elemental attack. Of course, given that it's an undead monster in a Final Fantasy game, there's a certain shortcut...
• Gears of War gives us the Berserkers, 10' tall female Locust with nothing but murder and anger on their minds and an armoured hide resilient to bullets. Setting them on fire makes their hide vulnerable, however it also makes them even angrier, allowing them to charge and swing their fists at double speed.
• In Haunting Ground, following the final boss battle, Fiona manages to push Lorenzo into a pit of lava. For a moment, she thinks she's finally killed him, until he claws his way out, now a flaming skeleton with a Touch of Death.
• The Grand Theft Auto games let you have some fun with this. Touching fire lights you on fire, but it generally isn't enough to kill you if you have enough health, leaving you with the option to walk into people and set them on fire. Several of the games allow the player to become immune to fire-damage by completing the Fire Fighter minigame. Like the Saints Row example above, this makes using fire based weapons like the Flamethrower or Molotov Cocktails a much more viable option for causing mayhem without significant risk of burning oneself to death in the process.
• In Half-Life 2, while regular headcrab zombies will scream and hold their arms out in agony when on fire, fast zombies don't even notice, right up until the point where they fall down and die from it. The fire doesn't do any additional damage to you, though. Poison zombies also seem to be oblivious to the flames when set on fire. Incidentally, burning, legless Zombie Mooks dragging themselves along the ground towards you, while what's left of the Zombie Infectee screams in terrified agony through a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong...
• Halo: In Halo 3, using fire against the Flood can sometimes lead to this. Sticky grenades have a similar effect in all the games. Subverted completely with the Pure Form Flood, as they die near instantly from Firebomb grenades or the Flamethrower and it's even the recommended way to deal with them in the official Strategy Guide (the fact that most levels with high concentrations of them often gives you a Flamethrower or two in conspicuous spots should also be a hint).
• In Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, it can be tempting to try setting a Frostclaw on fire due to them being listed as having vulnerability to fire damge. Try it and they'll use their Frost abilities to immediately put the fire out, then come after you with claws that are now charged with Frost for extra damage.
• In the original Kingdom Hearts, it's possible to set Captain Hook's pants on fire if you light him up with a Fira spell. However, he could damage you by flying into you as he's bouncing around his ship to get the fire out.
• In Kingdom of Loathing, this happens when your nemesis goes One-Winged Angel by invoking a revenge demon immediately before falling into lava.
• Left 4 Dead:
  • Generally speaking, setting the zombies on fire is a very good idea... but the Hunter, although the flames will kill him eventually, gets a huge boost to his attack power while on fire. Said boost was later nerfed by a patch (and only applies if the survivors set them on fire directly with Molotovs, gas cans or incendiary ammo instead of the Hunter intentionally lighting himself with pre-existing flames in the map), but it's still present.
  • The Boomer doesn't directly react being set on fire, but because it gradually wears down his health, it turns him into a walking time bomb, able to explode in the vicinity of the survivors even if they avoid shooting him and try shoving him away.
  • The Witch doesn't like fire either: normally, she'll leave you alone if you're not the one who pissed her off, even if you're shooting her. Set her on fire, however, and you'll be her one target no matter what. Thankfully, a burning Witch is also slower than a regular one, and only has to be evaded for 15 seconds before she dies.
  • Finally, in Campaign mode for the first game, the Tank gains a tremendous speed boost when lit on fire in exchange for an exact countdown (not related to his health) until his death. In Versus multiplayer and on all modes of the sequel, however, it's treated as Damage Over Time, and each tic of damage breaks his gait, so fire ends up slowing him down.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Keese are generally invulnerable to straight-up fire attacks. This, in fact, usually sets them on fire, turning them into the far more dangerous Fire Keese.
    • In the Oracle of Seasons/Ages games, Fire Keese not only do more damage but can also fly above Link's sword's reach.
    • In an inversion, Keese hit by a cold- or ice-based weapon turn into Ice Keese, becoming shrouded in freezing mist rather than flames but otherwise acting much the same as Fire Keese do.
  • In the handheld games, setting a Gibdo on fire is a mixed bag, as the wrapping burns away to reveal a faster-moving, hopping Stalfos, who's harder to hit but takes far less damage to defeat. Probably worth it near the beginning of the game, when your dinky starting sword takes like 8 or 10 hits to defeat a Gibdo; perhaps not so much later.
  • Ask any player about what happens when they accidentally got too close to a Gibdos or ReDead in the 3D games after using a fire arrow but before the arrow finishes them off.
  • In Breath of the Wild, enemy weapons can catch fire and light you on fire. Fire attacks and explosions will allow opponents to burn you.
• The Ents in The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth are normally slow and tough, but when set aflame they become enraged, moving and attacking much more quickly, while taking damage over time from the fire. After a few moments of rampaging they'll try to find some water to douse the flames. Mûmakil also rampage when set alight, though there's no way to extinguish the fire and they'll eventually die.
• In Minecraft, flaming zombies will burn the player when attacking. Becomes even scarier when you realize that sunlight naturally lights them on fire.
• Could be good or bad in Ogre Battle 64, depending on who you did it to and your outlook. Setting a Zombie on fire would cause them to pull a terminator-like transformation into a Skeleton. Happened both to enemy Zombies and your own Zombies. Skeletons were generally better than Zombies, but it was a huge pain to create them.
• Ignus from Planescape: Torment is permanently on fire as a result of the collective hedge wizards in the Hive opening a portal to the elemental plane of fire inside his body and turning him into a living effigy as a way of punishing him for an act of mass arson. As a punishment, it failed miserably — it only made him happy.
• Pokémon:
  • The Abilities Guts and Flare Boost can grant the user a 50% boost to their Attack or Special Attack (respectively) while they're afflicted with the Burn status effect. Flare Boost is the more straight example as it only activates in response to the user being Burned, while Guts can also activate when it's Poisoned or Paralyzed. Notably, Guts also ignores the usual 50% Attack reduction from a Pokémon affected by Burn, meaning that it gets stronger instead of weaker when set on fire.
  • The Fire-type Starter Pokémon have the ability Blaze. In Generations III and IV, the move's power will be increased by 50% if the user has less than or equal to ⅓ of its maximum HP remaining. In Generation V-onward, instead of boosting Fire-type moves' power, Blaze now technically boosts the Pokémon's Attack or Special Attack by 50% during damage calculation if a Fire-type move is being used, resulting in effectively the same effect.
  • Pokémon with Flash Fire are not only immune to Fire type moves (including the status inducing Will-O-Wisp), it also fuels their Fire type attacks by 50%.
• In the expansion pack of Postal 2, Apocalypse Weekend, setting zombies on fire is about as effective as dousing them in lemon juice. Actually, it's even less effective, as the fire will do nothing (these zombies require their heads to be destroyed before they'll stop attacking), and unless you cut their legs off beforehand, they'll just run up to you and set you on fire too.
  • Setting people on fire who are already aggressive towards you will often result in them running blindly in your direction and setting you on fire as well before you can back away, due to the short throwing arc of your matches. The random pathing of a burning NPC makes it even harder to avoid getting caught on fire by a passing burning protestor.
• In Prince of Persia (2008), the main characters knock a giant warrior king off the edge of a tall tower, and he falls into a pool of black ooze. When the tower falls apart and the they land on a lower platform, the creature crawls from the ooze, scaling the wall by force. The title prince's response?
  Prince: Oh good, now he's on fire.
• In The Punisher, setting mooks aflame with the flamethrower isn't one hundred percent effective; they panic and run amok, sometimes into you. Ouch.
• Resident Evil 4:
  • The game has both the Incendiary Grenades, which avert the trope and merely cause painful burning, and a single unique Ganado nicknamed 'Oven Man' that escapes from an oven while on fire to menace the player. No one seems to be quite sure what he was doing in there.
  • Before fighting the Village Elder, Leon shoots an explosive barrel, setting him and the barn they're both locked inside on fire. This doesn't so much kill him as make him reveal his terrible true form.
• It works even worse for the player in Return to Castle Wolfenstein: While flame works well against the sword'n'shield zombies, it turns the unarmed ghost-skull ones into mean firebreathing mofos.
  • Their Wolfenstein successors, the Despoiled, are constantly engulfed in magical fire from the start. Naturally, it's not a good idea to get too close to them. And, they're quite immune to the flamethrower.
• A serious threat in Saints Row. Burning people can set other people on fire, and burning cars explode, scattering burning debris which can also set people on fire. The zombie homie you can summon is rather nonchalant about being lit ablaze. Potentially dangerous to you, certainly dangerous to your enemies.
• Saints Row 2 has a damn minigame focused around this. You're driving an ATV while on fire and your job is to light as many people on fire as you can. The player character is wearing a fireproof suit for the duration though (which can be unlocked for general use by completing all levels of the minigame). The third game allows the player to purchase immunity to fire as an upgrade, allowing quite a bit of fun with flame based weapons with little risk to the player.
  • While this trope applies to every Saints Row game since touching a flaming enemy will catch you on fire, it is especially notable in Saints Row: The Third with the Decker Specialists, women with high tech skates that allow them to move extremely fast. When a normal enemy is set on fire, they run around aimlessly, and the same thing applies with the specialists, only at super speed.
• In the original Syphon Filter, in stages where a lot is burning, there will be some mooks, on fire, running wildly to you! Since you'll die instantly if caught on fire, the best option (andv only, actually), is to put said mook out of his misery.
• Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World: The final battle. What is cooler than a badass Dual Wielding a sword and axe? A badass Dual Wielding a sword and axe who is on fire.
• In Team Fortress 2, the Soldier can pull this off in a certain sense. Two of his melee unlockables, the Equalizer and Escape Plan, respectively increase the user's melee damage and movement speed at lower health, meaning a Soldier whose health is being whittled away by afterburn can become more of a threat with these weapons equipped; this can help somewhat with the Soldier achievement "Semper Fry", which entails getting 20 kills whilst on fire.
• Done to hilarious effect in TimeSplitters. Hell, there is even a game-mode based around it! (Virus) One person starts on fire and must find and light everyone else on fire. Also, it burns away armor only first, then health. If you know where all the pickups are, in deathmatches you can continue to collect kills for a long while if you don't get hit too much, just by running into people and shooting them as they try and flee and find an extinguisher. Also everyone has hilarious screams while on fire, so you may as well do it anyway!
• Turbo Overkill grants you a double-barreled flamethrower which kills regular enemies instantly. However, the Giant Mook opponents will try leaping on you while alight - stay out of their reach or you'll be badly scorched.
• The Flamers in Unturned are zombies that are naturally on fire^note they can even be seen from far away at night due to the light produced by the embers around their bodies. They're no different from regular zombies in behavior or stats, except they explode in a massive fireball when they die that hurts a ton and turns any regular zombie^note crawlers, sprinters, flankers and spitters are unaffected within the blast radius into another Flamer. They're one of the main reasons for a player to collect and use ranged weaponry.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has the Grout's Mansion level, where you have to find a lost vampire primogen who was studying madness. And of course, he has a lot of human test subjects. When you arrive at the mansion, you will soon realize that all this madmen have somehow been able to free themselves and aren't exactly happy to see you. So, after you punched, shot and sliced your way through the mansion, you come across a vampire hunter, who sets the whole place on fire. And also, it seems like some of the test subjects have survived your fights in the mansion and now are on fire as well. And instead of running out of the mansion (they are insane after all) they decide to try killing you again. They are much more vulnerable now, it usually takes only two shots to kill them. However, considering that vampires are very vulnerable to fire, they can also take out you with two hits. It's helpful to have a machine gun when these guys approach you.
• Viva Caligula has two major gamebreakers: the flambeau, and Necromancy. Combine the two: Your own personal army of flaming skeletons! The fire doesn't bother the undead, but any living enemy they touch will burst into flames, steadily draining their health until they collapse, at which point you can add another skeleton to your army.