Grilling Pyrotechnics

Like father, like son.

There seems to be a tendency in any remotely comedic work of fiction for attempts to light a grill to end in a spectacular explosion. Just one spark, and it goes up in a beautiful pillar of flame. No matter how many safety precautions are taken — or how few — the only injury involved is a charred, blackened face (though if the poor sap manning the grill really screws up, they may also go flying, cause property damage, or both). Anything worse wouldn't be funny.

This is commonly caused by a character taking a Tim Taylor Technology approach to lighter fluid, but it could be a sign of more general ineptitude. Either way, it's rarely a one-time event and is generally elevated to an "annual ritual."

This can be Truth in Television, except for the Amusing Injuries. Two to three thousand people are admitted to hospitals every year due to failing to safely light a grill, and some of those incidents are fatal. Just so you know, the proper way to light a charcoal grill is to pour in a layer of charcoal, squirt in the lighter fluid, leave it alone for ten or fifteen minutes, and then light the charcoal. Better yet, use a starting cube (or some newspaper) and a chimney starter instead.

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Examples:

Advertising

• This is parodied in a Verizon commercial featuring Michael Bay. "Awesome barbecue!" [explodes in an impressive burst of pyrotechnics]
• A Geico commercial back in the '90s features a guy dousing his grill with copious amounts of lighter fluid. He finally goes to light it, and it cuts to several yards away, and we can still see the explosion off in the distance.

Comedy

• One Eddie Murphy routine features a story about one of his uncles combining charcoal, gasoline, and lighter fluid to start a backyard grill, with more-than-explosive results.
  "Now that's a fire!"

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • One strip features Calvin's attempt to convince his dad to invoke this trope by using gasoline instead of lighter fluid.
  • Another has him ask if Dad could toss the entire can of fluid into the grill and make a giant fireball. The last panel makes Dad's answer obvious:
    Calvin: "I have the most boring dad in the world."
• Crankshaft:
  • Crankshaft is known for his impressive grilling explosions. This was once lampshaded by having the city council help deal with budget problems by replacing their Fourth of July fireworks show with Crankshaft lighting his grill. A cause has been found: Homeland Security wants Cranky's "secret barbecue sauce" as it's apparently more powerful than most military-grade explosives.
  • In a more recent story arc, NASA would recieve signals from a nearby UFO that turned out to be... a sentient grill named Ch'Bril, launched into space by none other by Crankshaft himself, back in 2018. After being blasted through a wormhole and upgraded by aliens, it returned to seek out whom it believed to be its father by hitching a ride on Dimorphos, altering its path to be on a direct collision course with Earth within the next 1,000 years. Since NASA wasn't capable of sending a second DART ship to the asteroid in time, they resorted to the "down and dirty" launch attempt... In other words, having Crankshaft launch another grill into Dimorphos.
• Foxtrot:
  • Roger Fox's attempts to light the grill always result in the textbook pillar of fire, in large part due to his consistent overuse of lighter fluid. A common gag is that the Fox family watches fireworks for the Fourth of July in their backyard... created from Roger's attempts at a Fourth of July barbecue. In one example, the force of the blast causes the grill to start boring a hole into the earth. At least one strip also implies that Andy usually lets Jason play inside if Roger's doing barbecue because sending him outside for fresh air would be pointless when there isn't any fresh air when he's using the barbecue. The same strip and others also imply that Roger's grilling attempts usually are bad enough to have NASA or the EPA call him. Roger also doesn't like it when he cannot cook a thing on the grill after he, in his own words, nearly killed himself trying to light it. At one point, he's met with that exact dilemma due to Andy apparently forgetting to shop for burgers, hot dogs, and the like. The final panel has Jason being reluctant to eat his spaghetti with Roger being irate at his having spaghetti himself, implying that he was forced to grill spaghetti after he pitched a fit at Andy.
  • Peter also does it twice; the first time actually predates his father making it a Running Gag (the result of spraying lighter fluid on hot coals), and the second is deliberate for his Father's Day present in a manner of Breaking the Fourth Wall.

Fan Works

• In the Discworld, Howondalandian Assassin Doctor Johanna Smith-Rhodes hosts an Octeday-afternoon braai for staff and students from the Homeland. She entrusts the lighting of the barbecue grill to senior students in her Applied Exothermic Alchemy course. They never fail to get it up and running - safely - within seconds. More in the writings of A.A. Pessimal.

Films — Live-Action

• Final Destination 2: At the end, a teenage boy who narrowly survived a death earlier in the film suddenly dies for a final BOO scare when he messes up using a barbecue grill.

Jokes

• A skydiver jumps out of a plane, but his parachute doesn't work. While he's falling, he suddenly sees someone going up at the same speed, and asks, "Do you know anything about skydiving?" The guy going up responds, "No, but do you know anything about gas cookers?"

Literature

• Dave Barry's column "Independence Day," in describing the "traditional" American Fourth of July experience, claims that the loud explosions and pyrotechnic shows observed at nightfall are "caused by the fact that various dads, after consuming a number of traditionally fermented beverages, have given up on conventional charcoal-lighting products and escalated to gasoline." This spectacular experience, which culminates with a "traditional visit to the hospital emergency room," promotes appreciation of Francis Scott Key's words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," which are said to "commemorate the fledgling nation's first barbecue" and are quoted in the column as follows:
  And the grill parts' red glare,
  Flaming spiders in air;
  Someone call 911;
  There's burning scunge in Dad's hair.^note Scunge is defined previously in the column as a hard black food residue accumulated over many years that should not be removed since it holds the grill together. It makes up 23 percent of the traditional barbecue grill, which is also 58 percent rust and 15 percent spiders.

Live-Action TV

• Death in Paradise: At the end of "The Complex Murder", Dwayne and Humphrey are grilling prawns. Dwayne asks Humphrey to spray the prawns with water. Humphrey picks up the wrong bottle and sprays the grill with the paraffin they had used to light it, turning the grill into a bonfire.
• Home Improvement once featured an attempt to set the record for the shortest time to prepare a charcoal grill for cooking. Tim pulled it off in 3.2 seconds using jet fuel and liquid oxygen. The grill promptly took off like a rocket. It landed in a lake at the end of the episode.
• Monk: In "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs", Chet Walsh, a Condors fan, is preparing a charcoal grill for the tailgate party, and lights the match after adding in some lighter fluid, with predictable results. However, it is not his adding lighter fluid that caused it to explode, so much as the fact that limo driver Shawn Metzger has added gasoline to the grill, in an attempt to silence Walsh because he feared he may have witnessed Metzger killing backup quarterback David Gitelson and/or knew about Gitelson's out of order playbook due to being in close proximity to Gitelson when Gitelson was killed. This is also one of the few instances where it is not Played for Laughs.
• Rescue 911 has a segment where a kid pours gasoline onto an already smoldering grill with the expected results.

Video Games

• Hitman: Blood Money: In the mission "A New Life", one (noisy and inelegant) means of retrieving an objective necklace involves sabotaging the target's backyard grill so it will do this when the wearer tries to light it, then collecting the necklace off her corpse.
• Paper Mario: Color Splash: The Grill Thing card teleports the enemies onto a giant grill that combusts them in a massive flame outburst that covers almost the entire screen.
• Later Alligator: The goal of Two-Ton Tony's minigame is to avert this trope. The problem arises from the grill in question being a ridiculously over-the-top hulk of metal with about four or five things that could be going horribly wrong at any given moment (not to mention being so complex it has at least two alligators living inside of it to keep it running).

Web Comics

• Bob and George: The only thing Bob might love more than using his fire powers for evil is grilling. Fortunately for all involved, he keeps the flames relatively low for this trope.
• Johnny Wander: Dumping rubbing alcohol on it: not a good way to light your grill. John manages to set things on fire.
• Wapsi Square: Shelly invokes this as part of a plan to arrange a meeting with an attractive police officer who had been hitting on her earlier. At least she takes some safety precautions.

Web Original

• Darwin Awards: An "At Risk Survivor" award went to a pair of guys who started their barbecue grill, then realized they were short of charcoal. So they loaded their still smoldering grill onto the back of their pick-up to drive it round to a friend's place who had some charcoal. No prizes for guessing what happens when you air at high speed through smoldering coals. Their truck ended up going up in flames.
• Happy Tree Friends: In "Pop's Barbecue Smoochie", Pop attempts to light his grill, only for it to explode and go flying. When Pop regains himself, the grill lands right on his face, searing him alive with hot coals.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • In the "Treehouse Of Horror" segment "Hungry Are The Damned", Homer empties an entire can of lighter fluid on the grill, and then gets a second can and adds some more. The resulting fireball could be seen from miles away.
  • Subverted in "Lisa The Vegetarian", when Homer drenches the barbecue with an interminable amount of fluid, then shields his face to drop in the match. It peacefully ignites a serviceable glow.
• Voltron Force: Hunk designs a massively oversized and overpowered grill. The moment he turns it on, it shoots out a huge gout of flame that instantly vaporizes the meat he was trying to cook. It then proceeds to blast off through the roof and explode.

Real Life

• What do you get when you mix a bunch of engineers, liquid oxygen, and a barbecue grill? How to light a grill in two seconds!

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