Post-Defeat Explosion Chain

In older 2D Video Games, a common way of portraying the destruction of a large entity — typically, a mechanical boss — is to have multiple little explosions go off one-by-one all over its surface until it either disintegrates or fully explodes in a giant fireball.

The prevalence of this effect in earlier games is likely due to hardware limitations — realistic explosion effects are computationally intensive, requiring physics simulation and particle effects. By contrast, spawning a series of explosion sprites on a larger body is easy for older hardware to handle, while still conveying a satisfying feeling of destruction.

Often, the explosions are staggered in a sequence, which reduces the number of sprites needed on-screen at the same time, further reducing the hardware effort needed. The explosions typically are spawned at a constant rate as well, which gives a characteristically regular rhythm to the destruction.

The explosions generally occur at random positions on the entity's body, even if there is nothing at that location that seems like it should be able to explode. The explosions may not even match the mask of the structure very precisely, causing even seemingly empty air to erupt in flame.

Some games that use this effect attempt to inject more realism by having parts explode in a more logical fashion — for example, having the extremities disintegrate prior to the main body instead of the whole thing just randomly exploding all over. One example in real life where this trope does apply are building demolitions; these often appear similar to this trope, as individual explosives are rigged up on the support pillars to go off consecutively. However, this process often goes by a lot faster than it does in media.

Obviously, machines in Real Life don't tend to behave this way — if something blows up, it tends to do it all at once rather than in a sequential manner or randomly across the machine.

A common effect in 2D action games, particularly shoot 'em ups of the 1990s. Subtrope of Stuff Blowing Up, often with Made of Explodium, and Defeat Equals Explosion. See also Damage Is Fire. Not to be confused with Disaster Dominoes.

---

Video Game Examples

Action

• Bomberman:
  • In Bomberman 64, Artemis, Hades, Cerberus, and the Black Fortress 1 miniboss all die in explosion chains. In the true ending, Rainbow Palace falls onto Black Fortress, destroying both of them in an explosion chain that ends in the screen flashing white.
  • Power Bomberman:
    • One of the stages takes place atop the Armor Joe. Destroying all the engines in a section will cause it to detach with a quick succession of small explosions.
    • Blowing up the piñata will detonate it in a series of small explosions, with items shooting into the arena all throughout this.
    • Winning a round of Hyper Battle will make the player float in the air while the arena is destroyed with a rapid sequence of explosions before a final large blast blows the other combatants away.
• In Silent Bomber, foot soldiers. large enemies, and bosses all explode repeatedly when destroyed.

Action-Adventure

• Alundra: After defeat, bosses erupt all over with brilliant explosion, then give a death cry and fade into blue light.
• Cave Story: Some bosses, like Omega or Monster X, give out a few explosions here and there before vanishing in a white flash of screen-filling "+"-shaped explosion. Balrog explodes repeatedly but doesn't get physically destroyed.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Enemies and bosses resembling segmented worms, such as Sandworms, Lanmolas, and Moldorms, tend to go down in a series of small explosions, each destroying a segment until nothing's left. Most single-segment bosses will also get multiple explosions nonetheless, and some segmented bosses will get both (body parts destroyed by single explosions until the last one multi-explodes).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The Twinmold pair in Stone Tower Temple dies this way. When one of them has its HP depleted (their weaknesses are the head and the tail), it will fly erratically for a moment while agonizing, and then have its slender body explode piece by piece from the tail, only leaving the head intact and letting it fall down. The same thing happens to the other insect upon its defeat, and Link wins the battle as a result.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: After Link delivers the killing blow to Molgera, the giant Sand Worm guarding the Wind Temple, it flies into the air screeching; its body segments then turn to sand and promptly explode one after the other.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
    • Defeated Deku Likes rapidly burst apart in puffs of smoke, starting at the base of their stems and progressing towards their heads.
    • After being slain, Morpheel explodes body segment by body segment into clouds of Twilight particles.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The Moldorm has its back as a weak point, so when Link attacks it (by using the Mogma Mitts to scratch it) the backmost part of its body will rapidly explode piece by piece. By the time Link delivers the third hit, the explosion chain will occur more slowly and reach its head, finally killing it.
• SPISPOPD: Autozoids and Traffic have extensive explosion sequences when they are defeated.

Adventure

• Obsidian: If you decide to use the Crossover Switch to crash Ceres' systems, the AI's entire world self-destructs bit by bit, while the Conductor lets out a Big "NO!" before she too explodes in a white flash, ending with the Obsidian structure destroyed and you and Max returned to reality.

Beat 'em Ups

• Cyborg Justice has every inch of the Final Boss explode four times.
• Shatterhand: Major enemies, and some objects, are shaken by several small explosions before finally shattering.
• Every mechanical boss in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time explodes repeatedly upon defeat.

Fighting Games

• Gundam Wing: Endless Duel: Defeated fighters collapse while repeatedly exploding.

Hack & Slash

• In Bujingai, defeated enemies vanish in a bunch of purple explosions.
• Chaos Legion: Metallic enemies and most bosses die this way. After exploding repeatedly, bosses fade away.

Metroidvanias

• Axiom Verge: After defeat, bosses are covered with eight-bit explosions, and then massively explode into paint in slow-motion.
• Castle in the Darkness: Defeated bosses explode all over while spouting coins, then burst into a ring of sparkles.
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: The true ending has the castle explode repeatedly before imploding.
• Hollow Knight: When defeated, Infected bosses spasm and release a lengthy screen-wide burst of orange infection gas before dropping dead, while Warrior Dreams explode in a similar burst of Essence particles. Living, non-Infected bosses instead just flinch or stagger and then concede defeat; the exception here is Dung Defender, who has an explosion effect similar to Infected bosses' but composed of brown... gas... instead.
• Iji: Tor's Humongous Mecha first has various parts exploding, then what's left disappears with the same special effect it appeared with.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid Fusion: Bosses are consumed in explosions before pixellizing into their Core-X forms.
  • Super Metroid: Large normal enemies turn into a cloud of explosions upon defeat.
• Shantae: This is standard for bosses. Virtually anyone bigger than Shantae herself will go up like a string of firecrackers once defeated. They're also seemingly harmless; characters that have been thus defeated can show up later none the worse for wear, and Recurring Boss Squid Baron remarks that "you get used to it" after a few fights.

Platformers

• Adventure Island: Defeating bosses in games for NES (not counting the first one) causes them to vanish, leaving a stream of explosions erupting where they used to be.
• A bloody variant in The Curse of Issyos: Other bosses release a chain of blood splatters upon defeat, while both the Pre-Final Boss and Final Boss undergo the typical fiery explosion chain. After you defeat the Hydra boss, its heads explode and its body follows.
• Commander Keen:
  • The Mangling Machine at the end of the third game explodes from top to bottom in a series of explosions after being defeated.
  • Boobus Tuber, the boss of Keen Dreams, after being hit by 12 bombs explodes in a stream of explosions.
• Decap Attack: Bosses are destroyed by having multiple small red explosions cover their body after flashing a lot.
• Dr. Chaos: Dr. Chaos himself, the final boss, transforms back to normal after a series of explosions.
• Freedom Planet: Mechanical bosses, minibosses, and large enemies erupt into multiple fiery explosions after defeat. This also occurs in the game's sequel.
• Generic Man: Both Dora the Explorer and the Master of Evil set off a chain of explosions when defeated.
• Ghostbusters (1990): All of the minibosses and bosses, bar the Possessors in the Castle level disintegrate in a series of "ghost vanishes" flashes.
• In Hagane, both normal enemies and bosses vanish in a series of explosions upon defeat.
• The final boss of Harleys Humongous Adventure disappears in a chain of smoke puffs when Harley lands the final blow.
• In Infernax, defeated normal enemies bleed and then explode three times. Meanwhile, bosses explode repeatedly and then go through their death animations.
• I Wanna Be the Guy: On Mecha Birdo's death, it sinks down while hundreds of tiny explosions go off all over it; these also occur when its eyes are destroyed.
• The Japanese SNES version of James Pond II: Codename RoboCod, also known as Super James Pond, features the bosses flying into several pieces before exploding. (The other versions of the game, including the American and European SNES ports, simply have the bosses explode).
• The Legendary Starfy: Some bosses explode continuously while sinking below the screen upon defeat, such as Big Squiddy in 5 and Degil in 4.
• In Magical Pop N, normal enemies explode three times upon defeat, while bosses explode repeatedly.
• Both normal enemies and bosses in Master of Darkness die in a chain of explosions.
• Metal Storm: Defeated bosses turn into a whole screenful of eight-bit explosions.
• Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City: When each boss is defeated, it explodes segment by segment.
• Moon Crystal: Regardless of whether the boss is made of flesh or metal, it gives off a chain of explosions upon running out of hearts.
• Mc Donalds Treasureland Adventure: A Lighter and Softer version occurs — after Ronald lands the final hit on a boss, a series of large stars appear randomly all over the screen, growing and disappearing like the explosions in other examples.
• In Oniken, mechanical bosses explode repeatedly upon defeat.
• Both normal enemies and bosses in both Power Blade games explode multiple times when destroyed.
• Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master: Some of the bosses in the game, after being defeated, vanish after a sequence of little explosions. Examples include the first stage boss (a four-armed shogun), and the fourth stage boss (an aerial shooting machine that sinks in the water).
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Each battle against Dr. Eggman involves Sonic fighting him in one of his machines. When Sonic lands the final hit, the machine explodes before Dr. Eggman flies away in it.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2: This is what happens after Sonic defeats the Death Egg Robot, with the Death Egg exploding as Sonic flees from inside of it, with the many explosions occurring from just behind Sonic as he is running.
• In both Super Mario Galaxy games, most mechanical bosses explode repeatedly upon defeat. Kingfin from 1 explodes into pieces which then explode individually.
• In Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider, bosses and mechanical enemies blow up repeatedly upon defeat, but human enemies can instead be gibbed or knocked off the screen.
• Defeated bosses in Vice: Project Doom disappear and then a chain of blue explosions starts where the boss used to be.
• Wario Land II: The three Captain Syrup final bosses explode repeatedly before both Syrup and her machine fall off the screen.

Real-Time Strategy

• AirMech: The fortress goes down with multiple bangs and clouds of smoke when it's being damaged.
• Pikmin:
  • In the first game, after a Burrowing Snagret is defeated, its head explodes in a burst of feathers and the rest of its snakelike body is destroyed in a series of smaller explosions. The second game has it happen in reverse, with the body exploding in stages and leaving the head behind. The third game averts this, as defeated Sangrets simply fall down dead.
  • Pikmin 2: When Empress Bulblax is killed, her body explodes into nothingness body segment by body segment, beginning at her rear end, until only her penultimate section and head are left, which can then be carried to the ship.

Roguelikes

• The Binding of Isaac: Most bosses have a variant of this trope with blood instead of explosions. When their health is depleted, they have several small squirts appear all around them before dying in one big burst.
• FTL: Faster Than Light: Destroying a ship makes it give off a few explosions before falling apart.
• Nova Drift: When the player's Leviathan body or the alternate wave 100 boss, Glaucus, are eliminated, a chain reaction of explosions will begin. These explosions will begin with the head segment and propagate to the remaining body segments.

• Nuclear Throne: Every boss from Big Dog onward dies with one of these, which is potentially fatal to the player if they don't have the Boiling Veins mutation. Most of them do the standard "stay in place while blowing up" version, but Little Hunter is unique, as he launches out of control as his jetpack blows up.

Role-Playing Games

• Blue Dragon: After being defeated, the final boss sinks into lava while numerous explosions erupt across his body.
• Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure: Bosses lightly explode, then slowly dissolve into light.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • When you defeat Ansem in Kingdom Hearts, fiery explosions work their way up his World of Chaos form before he's consumed by a single massive explosion large enough to fill the entire screen.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, destroying the core during the Assault of the Dreadnought gummi ship course causes explosions to happen all around you as you escape. Before the course ends, the camera pans back to show the titular dreadnought exploding spectacularly behind you.
• Mass Effect 2: If you upgraded the Normandy's main gun, shooting the Collector cruiser causes it to be wracked by a series of fiery explosions before going up with a Planar Shockwave.
• In the Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force series, both normal enemies and bosses get wracked by a few explosions upon defeat, then disappear.
• At the end of Super Mario RPG, Smithy's final form gets wracked in the same star explosions that normal enemies die in, then disappears in a screen-filling explosion. The remake replaces the star explosions with fiery ones and adds a Pre-Explosion Glow before the screen-filling explosion.
• Most bosses in Sword of Mana give off a bunch of small explosions upon death, accompanied by a screen shake effect. The death animation ends with a bright, fiery light sweeping across the screen.

Run & Gun

• Most bosses in Alien Soldier explode repeatedly upon defeat. Some bosses add a larger explosion to the end.
• Azure Striker Gunvolt Series:
  • Most larger bosses in the mainline games explode in this fashion upon defeat, ending with a screen-wide fade to white. In 3, the returning bosses from previous games fought in Sunrise Palace 2 explode in a different explosion effect from the usual one.
  • In Mighty Gunvolt Burst, defeated bosses explode with a chain of rings and then vanish in a big white flash and a bunch of blue explosions.
• Blaster Master Zero: The first game uses the "boss is covered with explosions then turns into a big white flash" method, but the next two do add an actual big explosion to the end.
• Defeated bosses in Contra explode repeatedly. In Hard Corps, normal enemies also suffer this fate.
• Cuphead: Bosses are wracked by repeated explosions after being defeated, although they aren't physically destroyed.
• After you defeat Algeroth in the SNES version of Doom Troopers, his head explodes and his body follows in a chain of explosions.
• Most bosses in Gunstar Heroes explode repeatedly upon defeat.
• Jazz Jackrabbit: Defeated bosses have red chain of explosions accompanied by sparks.
• Defeated bosses in Kero Blaster get wracked in explosions before disappearing in an expanding ring of explosions.
• Mega Man:
  • Starting with the angler fish and Friender minibosses in Mega Man 2, most minibosses in Mega Man (Classic) explode repeatedly upon defeat. This also applies to most large non-Robot Master bosses starting from Mega Man 4.
  • After you defeat the Final Boss of Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge, the Wily Station explodes repeatedly and fades away.
  • Mega Man II: At the end of the game, you shoot down Dr. Wily's escape pod with a giant missile. Wily then explodes repeatedly and crash-lands on Earth in a massive skull-shaped explosion.
  • Upon defeat, Wily Castle bosses in Mega Man 7 undergo a chain of explosions that gradually speeds up while the screen fades to white. The Wily Capsule also suffers an explosion chain, then makes the same multi-way death explosion that Mega Man and Robot Masters do.
  • In Mega Man 8, defeated Robot Master bosses undergo an explosion chain followed by the same multi-way explosion Mega Man makes upon death.
  • Mega Man & Bass: King Tank explodes repeatedly without being physically destroyed, King Plane sinks off the screen while exploding, and both Jet King Robo and the Wily Machine vanish in a white flash after a chain of explosions.
  • Mega Man X: Defeated Mavericks suffer numerous small detonations before going up in a final screen-whitening blast. In the case of X1's final stage bosses, the final screen-whitening blast is much faster. X8 adds an actual big explosion to the end.
  • Mega Man Zero: When bosses are defeated, they give off numerous small explosions before a big one at the end. The only bosses that do not explode in this manner are the Baby Elves.
  • Defeated minibosses and bosses in Mega Man ZX are wracked by repeated explosions before dying in a big one. Prometheus, Pandora, and Advent's Mega Men do not explode, while Serpent only explodes when his final form is defeated, taking his head office with him.
  • In Skullman In: Scooby Doc 4: The Destroyer (Featuring Atsushi Onita), Redskull, Non-Human, Albatross, Killer Tank, Atsushi Onita, and Final Doc all blow up repeatedly when defeated.
• Mega Mari: Upon defeat, all bosses in the final stages go up in a sequence of explosion rings and fire particles while the screen fades to white. Large enemies also die in a chain of small explosions.
• In Rapid Reload, defeated bosses always explode repeatedly, ending with a screen-filling explosion, while normal enemies randomly choose between exploding once and exploding multiple times.
• Bosses in the final stages of Rosenkreuz Stilette explode repeatedly while the screen fades to white. Cross Wall and Deviled Egg also fall apart. Minibosses and some large enemies also explode repeatedly before disappearing.
• Turrican: Bosses are wracked by a chain of explosions upon destruction.

Shooters

• 8Bit Killer: As the Warbird gets destroyed, it emits a few explosions before it crashes offscreen.
• Apidya: All large enemies die in a flurry of fiery explosions, especially bosses.
• BIOMETAL: Larger enemies and bosses go down in a series of showy explosions.
• Battle Clash: A series of small, muffled explosions engulf every remaining limb and piece of an enemy ST upon defeat, leaving nothing behind. Metal Combat rewards every K.O. with a series of small explosions. The initial explosion causes the enemy ST to fall to pieces, leaving the remaining torso/core to bounce and stumble along the ground if it was moving when defeated. The ST's pieces get smaller rapid explosions followed by a final, larger explosion. However, sometimes you only see a portion of the flashier blast, because the game uses a first-person view and the enemy ST's torso just explodes from stumbling as you're still moving along. Every enemy ST explodes this way, even in stages with midair/underwater combat. The Final boss ramps up the pretty, pretty explosions by including several of them in succession with bright flashes.
• CAVE loves this trope.
  • The Donpachi series have their defeated bosses getting covered by a series of small explosions before exploding violently.
  • Ketsui has defeated bosses getting covered in small explosions, and the final explosion shakes the screen.
• Deadly Tide: Invoked in the final mission, where you are supposed to blow up the main reactor connected to the alien motherships surrounding it and thus start a chain reaction that'll blow them all up and save everyone.
• Doom II: The Final Boss on level 30 is the Icon of Sin, a huge portrait of Baphomet that's a Mook Maker, spawning random monsters from an aperture in its forehead. When defeated by launching rockets into that aperture, the Doom engine generates a series of rocket explosions all over the face of Baphomet before segueing to a text screen declaring the player victorious.
• Dragonforce: While normal enemies, the first three bosses, and the player ship explode once upon defeat, the Final Boss explodes repeatedly and then vanishes in a big white flash.
• Defeated enemies in Elemental Gearbolt explode repeatedly while collapsing.
• Defeated bosses in Elemental Master explode repeatedly while flashing, then disappear.
• Galaxian 3: Project Dragoon: If the Cannon Seed is damaged enough to get destroyed, it will start to explode with progressively larger explosions.
• Gradius: In IV, bosses with multiple parts explode piece by piece. In V, the boss' pieces fall apart while a shockwave surrounds its central body until it finally explodes.
• In Guxt, enough damage to the first two bosses' armored weak points causes said weak point to explode repeatedly, exposing their eye(s). Destroying all the eyes of each boss causes the entire boss to explode repeatedly. After being wracked in explosions, the True Final Boss explodes completely in a big white flash.
• Half-Life:
  • Each time a Gargantua is killed in the original Half-Life, its death is marked by a series of explosions.
  • Attack helicopters in the first game, Gunships in Half-Life 2, and the Hunter-Chopper in Episode Two will explode multiple times while hurtling towards the ground upon defeat, with the final explosion causing them to break into pieces.
• Ikaruga: Most of the bosses do this when killed, with parts of them breaking away and blowing up with smaller accompanying shockwaves just before their central part explodes violently.
• Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime: After being defeated, each boss briefly convulses as explosions rock their body before being turned back into an inert constellation.
• NightFire: The space platform in Equinox eventually starts exploding in the background after three of the missiles you put off course hit it, and is destroyed after being hit by one more missile.
• In Pico vs. Bear DX, Bary has a One-Winged Angel form called Mechabear. After you beat that form, he explodes repeatedly.
• Quake II: Each time a Supertank or Hornet (or, in the Mission-Pack Sequel Ground Zero, the Carrier) is defeated, they fall to the side, a bunch of small explosions take place, and then the bigger (and somehow non-lethal) explosion that reduces them to bits.
• Radiant Silvergun: Bosses spout fiery explosions and then implode into a tiny ball of light.
• Most bosses in Revolution X explode repeatedly upon defeat. This is justified because they're mechanical. The only one that isn't, the giant ant, falls off the screen instead.
• In Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages, destroying all weapons on large structures and spaceships makes them emit a chain of explosions and parts of their hulls turn to char as they "sink" into space for a while before blowing up.
• Turrets in Space Gun explode a few times when gunned down. Defeated bosses repeatedly explode into blood.
• Defeated bosses in Special Cybernetic Attack Team explode repeatedly and then fade away.
• The Tale of ALLTYNEX: All games in the trilogy have their bosses and large enemies mark their deaths with a series of small explosions until they make a massive one. A few of them are big enough to turn the entire screen white.
• Tyrian does this a lot. Sometimes the explosions continue after the enemy disappears.
• An enemy crewship in Warframe's Empyrean missions can be destroyed from the inside by damaging its reactor, which will cause both a fire inside the ship and eruption of explosions on its outer hull for about half a minute before one large explosion consumes the ship.
• Yoshi's Safari: Upon defeat, every boss in the game, except for Wendy O. Koopa, Magikoopa, and Chargin' Chuck, gets covered in explosions appearing randomly throughout their sprites. Reasonable enough for the remaining Koopalings and the Elite Mook Koopa Troopas, who all pilot mechs, but this even applies to non-machine bosses, such as Big Boo and Bowser himself.

Simulation Games

• Freelancer: The fate of anything the size of a gunboat or larger that is destroyed, whether in a cutscene or during gameplay. Amusingly, in a number of cutscenes where a capital ship is torpedoed, the explosions seem to happen all over the ship except where the torpedo hit. Fighters sometimes get a variation where flames erupt from much of the ship and it spins out of control for a second before exploding.
• FreeSpace: Everything bigger than a fighter. The bigger the ship, the more little explosions go off before the big boom that typically splits the whole ship in half.
• Star Wars Legends: In the X-Wing and Tie Fighter games, most space objects larger than a shuttlecraft will go down in a chain of explosions if you succeed in destroying them. In X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, when larger ships (anything from a corvette up) are defeated, explosions are shown across the surface of the ship as it keels over before a larger explosion occurs and it disappears.
• X: Capital ships and space stations suffer two or three secondary explosions, then one enormous flash that completely disintegrates ships and leaves a burned-out hulk behind in the case of most stations. Anything corvette-size or smaller explodes immediately in a small fireball, averting the trope. The explosions do no damage in the vanilla game, though various Game Mods such as Xtended add it. Capital ships in X: Rebirth will have dozens of explosions go through their hull, then a massive implosion followed by an explosion as the jumpdrive goes critical. Ships near the explosion take massive damage.

Third-Person Shooter

• In the Splatoon games' Salmon Run mode, one of the Boss Salmonids, the Steel Eel, is a long, winding segmented vehicle whose driver sits at its rear end, and when the driver is killed, the rest of the machine pops apart one-by-one, with the head blowing up last.

Tower Defense

• City Conquest: When the enemy destroys the capitol, it explodes and every other building in the city explodes afterwards.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Nintendo Wars: Any unit types that avert Actually Four Mooks due to their sheer size (e.g. battleships, bombers and Mega Tanks/War Tanks) tend to explode in such a manner when destroyed in battle.
• Super Robot Wars: Almost everyone explodes with several small explosions followed by a big one. Even living beings like the Radam beasts.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown: Sectopods explode four times when destroyed. With Enemy Within running, the last explosion deals considerable damage up to four tiles away.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Escape Velocity: Destroyed ships will suffer a series of secondary explosions at random intervals, the duration of said series dependent on the ship's DeathDelay stat. If said stat is more than sixty frames, the ship blows up in a huge explosion that damages anything in a radius dependent on the ship's mass.
• Grand Theft Auto V: A destroyed Kosatka explodes 5 times and disappears.

Non-Video Game examples

Anime and Manga

• Macross: Do You Remember Love?: At the end, once Hikaru blasts Bodolzaa to smithereens, the mobile fortress that housed Boldolzaa starts to suffer a chain reaction of explosions until the entire fortress goes up in one big fireball. However, Hikaru and the Macross are completely safe in the center of all this.
• End-of-arc mechs in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann blow up repeatedly upon defeat. When the Anti-Spiral dies this way, each explosion is a different color.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Whenever a powerful ace monster is destroyed, it usually explodes in this type of manner.

Fan Works

• The Weaver Option: The final destruction of Commorragh begins with cascading explosions as every portal connected to the main realm detonates, with the attached sub-realms then exploding along with their gates. Finally as the Will of Eternity explodes, the entirety of the Dark City is obliterated by planet-sized explosions.

Film — Live-Action

• Bride of Frankenstein: Pretorius' tower comes down in a series of explosions when the Monster pulls a certain lever.
• In the climax of The Creator (2023), Taylor plants a timed explosive onto NOMAD, causing it to explode repeatedly and fall to Earth.
• Green Lantern (2011): Hal Jordan punches Parallax into the sun, causing him to repeatedly explode.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: After Groot's bomb explodes in Planet Ego's core, the planet is wracked by numerous explosions before finally detonating.
• Logan's Run: Once Logan 5 realizes that the city's central computer has been lying to everyone about Carousel and Renewal and population control, he makes a daring escape. Logan 5 shoots at some consoles with his sidearm that elicit a shower of sparks. Minor explosions follow, first in the command building, then spreading throughout the city, until most of the place is rubble, in flames, or a shambles. Presumably, the survivors will embark on an Adam and Eve Plot to rebuild society, minus the crapshoot computers.
• Star Wars:
  • The Empire Strikes Back: Luke Skywalker manages to catch up to an Imperial AT-AT, and attach a magnetic grapple to its underside. Winching himself up next to the machine, Luke lightsabers away an access panel then throws in an explosive charge. After uncoupling himself and falling to the snow, Luke sees a series of explosions lighting up the walker's interior that culminate in the command head exploding. The AT-AT legs buckle and it topples over.
  • Return of the Jedi: The second Death Star is destroyed when the Rebels' attack on its main reactor initiates a chain reaction of explosions that quickly spread through the battlestation before culminating in a larger detonation that destroys it.
  • The Phantom Menace: After Anakin puts two proton torpedoes into one of the reactors, the Trade Federation ship explodes at random points all over its hull before splitting in half.
• War of the Worlds (2005): Ray sticks a grenade into a tripod. The tripod then explodes repeatedly and falls over.

Live-Action Television

• The first time Kamen Rider Kuuga uses the Mighty Rider Kick, he causes an explosion chain that ends in a nuclear explosion.
• Super Sentai/Power Rangers Monster of the Week types tend to spark a lot before dramatically falling and then going up in a huge ball of explodium.

Pinball

• Black Rose: When you sink a ship, it explodes several times before sinking for good.
• Medieval Madness: When you destroy a castle, a series of smaller explosions destroy several of the turrets first, then the rest of the castle goes up all at once in an enormous mushroom cloud.

---