Trick Bomb

This bomb gives a shocking surprise!

Conventionally, bombs are associated with Stuff Blowing Up, but then there are special ones with different effects.

Types include Smoke Bombs, Knock Out Bombs, Sticky Bombs, Stink Bombs, and Phlebotinum Bombs.

Some Real Life examples include flashbangs, stinger grenades, fireworks (explode into pretty), and the aforementioned smoke grenades.

Those who Throw Down the Bomblet may pack some of these in their arsenal. Compare and contrast with some Booby Traps. See also Grenade Tag and Trick Arrow.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach: Ganju Shiba manages to defeat Yumichika, a high ranked soul reaper using various bombs and fireworks.
• Btooom!: BIMs. Besides the garden variety Cracker & Remote BIMs, there are quite a variety of Trick Bombs:
  • Deadly Gas: Blazing Gas BIMs
  • Homing Projectile: Homing BIMs
  • Kill It with Fire: 1300°C Flammable Oil Splashing Flame BIMs
  • Sticky Bomb: Implosion BIMs
  • Time Bomb: Timer BIMs
  • Beehive Barrier: Shield BIMs (in the manga chapters beyond where the anime ended)
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Lan Fan and Fuu use a variety of trick bombs, including flash and tear.

Comic Books

• Batman and Robin use these.
  • Similarly, The Joker occasionally uses bombs that harmlessly distribute scraps of paper with "BOOM!" written on them. They are externally indistinguishable from his bombs that actually kill people.
• In the 1988-89 DC Comics Invasion! crossover, The Dominators develops and detonates a "gene bomb" which targets those with the "metahuman" gene (responsible for the emergence of Earthling superheroes) and causes them to lose control of their powers. While it was supposed to eventually prove lethal, the only death directly due to the bomb was a C-list member of a C-list team: Scott Fischer of the Doom Patrol.
  • The Invasion example (along with Invasion itself) was parodied in an issue of X-Men, with a Jean Bomb that destroyed relationships. Guess whom it resembled?
• Lobo used a "guilt grenade" against The Mask since it was the only way for Lobo to defeat an otherwise "cartoon-invulnerable" opponent.
• The Super Mario Bros.. comic had a story called "Duh Stoopid Bomb!" The bomb would temporarily turn anyone in the blast radius into an idiot.
  • They also had the Smart Bombs that were meant to counteract the effects of Duh Stoopid Bomb.

Film — Animation

• Honey Lemon from Big Hero 6 is equipped with a miniature chemical lab in her purse that lets her create a variety of these including glue bombs, smoke bombs, and even more conventional explosives.

Film — Live-Action

• In Die Hard, the elevator guard had a flashbang thrown at him for distraction.
• The Get Smart movie features The Nude Bomb that involves a bomb dissolving people's clothing.

• One of the non-lethal weapons in Mystery Men was a tornado in a can.

Literature

• Discworld: Scent bombs are used as a routine countermeasure now that it is generally known that the Ankh-Morpork city watch has a werewolf on staff.
• The hero of Hornet Flight gives the British the schematics of a new German radar system, allowing them to use trick chaff bombs to mess with the Germans, making them believe there is a tremendous wave of enemy airplanes coming to attack them.
• In The Machiavelli Interface, Emile Khadaji supplies a number of rebel groups with nonlethal weapons, including vomit- and diarrhea-inducing gas bombs.
• Matthew Reilly works: flashers and tear gas grenades are fairly reasonable, but he also uses liquid nitrogen grenades and anti-firearm grenades. That's right, a bomb that takes out firearms by filling the air with sticky confetti that gets into the parts of a gun and stops it firing a second time.
• The Stainless Steel Rat loves nonlethal gas bombs, including blackout-gas (temporary blindness), knockout gas, lachrymose and regurgitant (He once said of the latter "The IIER had made me throw up often enough and I wanted to return the favor".)
• In Starship Troopers, Johnny Rico uses a device that shouts "I'm a thirty second bomb! I'm a thirty second bomb! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! ..." in the Skinny language to clear out one of their command bunkers. The vocal countdown is designed to create mayhem, but this also counts as a subversion, because the bomb is an actual explosive, blowing up when it reaches the end of the countdown.
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe mentions grenades such as CryoBan (freezes stuff), "goop" (fast-setting glue, used to entangle rioters) Bothan stun spores (causes disorientation and nausea) and thermal detonators (create Spheres Of Destruction).

• Faun Reinaka of Tasakeru has a "boom belt" full of these. Some of the more unusual varieties include tar bombs, ribbon bombs, sonic bombs, compression bombs...
• Wax and Wayne: The Southern Scadrians have a secret method to make grenades that Allomancers can charge with their powers. This helps Marasi Take a Level in Badass in The Lost Metal — her power to create bubbles of slowed time is badly limited when it's centered on her, but the grenades can deploy it at range.

Live-Action TV

• The Goodies once visited a U.S. Airforce base, where they were shown a large variety of trick bombs, including tear gas, laughing gas, sleeping gas, and clown gas.
  "This is the worst one."
  "What does it do?"
  "It blows their heads off."
• There was a Propaganda Bomb in an early episode of M*A*S*H. A friendly fire bomb landed at the unit, and didn't explode. Hawkeye and his friends tried to disarm it but that just set it off, which is when they discovered it was only leaflets. The propaganda read:
  Give yourselves up. You can't win.
  — Douglas MacArthur.
• At the end of Rudy Coby: Coolest Magician on Earth, an audience member is instructed to push the Big Red Button that detonates the "Doomsday Device... of DEATH!", but it's just a cardboard bomb that releases confetti.
• Stargate SG-1: The Goa'uld have stun grenades, that give only a second or so of warning in the form of a whining noise before creating a massive flash that knocks everyone in a room unconscious. In Stargate Atlantis, the Wraith also used something similar.

Tabletop Games

• Champions: The Grenadier, a villain in Kingdom of Champions, carries a variety of grenades including standing explosive, armour-piercing, time bombs, smoke, and deafening blast.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The closest thing the game has to a standard grenade is alchemist's fire, a liquid stored in throwable bottles that ignites on exposure to oxygen. From there things get a little weird. Bottles of holy water can be thrown to do damage to undead, acid flasks... do acid damage, tanglefoot bags release an adhesive to slow opponents down, choking powder makes it hard to breathe, and thunderstones deafen the subject. The catchall term for these is "grenadelike weapons". Alchemist's fire and acid flasks are particularly useful in low-level parties for finishing off trolls, which will eventually regenerate from wounds inflicted by any other type of damage.
  • For higher-level parties willing to abuse the rules for fun and profit, the ever-lovely explosive runes spell persists until it is set off due to being intended as a trap. It is also explicitly stated to go off if a dispel check is failed while attempting to erase or dispel it. As a corollary, you can also intentionally fail checks. Certain enterprising parties have been known to scribe hundreds of these spells over the course of arbitrarily-long periods of downtime and bundle them up into rather unconventional paper grenades. To use, simply lob a bundle or book of them at enemies, and set them off with a single intentionally-botched dispel magic spell to deliver the equivalent damage in pure concussive force damage of all of these runes going off all at once. Do not try to sucker your DM with this, however: equally beleaguered DMs have been known to rule that this will set off the first explosive rune so affected, which then shreds the others without setting off the expected chain reaction.
• Mage: The Awakening: With Alchemy, a mage can create an explosive device that discharges a spell instead of a blast. Any Area of Effect spell works, so there can be bad-luck bombs, Time bombs, anti-gravity grenades, or almost anything else.
• Pathfinder
  • The Alchemist class in the 1st edition can eventually learn to use a whole bunch of these, including smoke bombs, stink bombs, poison gas bombs, frost bombs, two different varieties of incendiary bombs, and even holy bombs.
  • The 2nd edition bombs can now be used by anyone, however Bomber Alchemists are the best users of it since they are the only class that specially has proficiency with bombs^note Although technically any class with martial weapon proficiency also has the same benefit, since bombs are treated as martial weapons otherwise, can learn feats that augment bombs, not to mention their Perpetual Infusion ability allowing them to make free bombs on demand.
• Warhammer 40,000 has a number of special grenade types available to different species. These run from relatively "normal" grenades such as smoke and stun grenades right the way up really exotic things such as Stasis Grenades (which stop time in a small area) and Warp Grenades (which tear a hole in the fabric of reality and suck anything nearby into the Warp).

Video Games

• Flashbangs are normally used to disorient people but when Alan Wake uses them, they either One-Hit Kill the normal Taken and possessed objects, or deplete the stronger Taken's shadows to take 'em down.
• ANNO: Mutationem: One weapon that be created through crafting is the FM HE Grenade, a high-spec bomb formed from liquid nitrogen in specialized casing that immediately freeze opponents in ice after exploding.

• In most games in the Atelier Series, the protagonist is an alchemist whose primary form of attack (other than their Magic Staff) will usually be throwing bombs that you create via Item Crafting. These come in a variety of flavors, including but DEFINITELY not limited to: Ice Bombs and Lightning Bombs to supplement the fire-elemental normal bombs, Crafts (improvised explosives made by stuffing spiky chestnuts and gunpowder into a bag; Atelier Totori has a Fish Craft which showers enemies in seafood), Meteors (which cause strange exploding items to fall from the sky over multiple turns), thrown exploding barrels, and the Dimension Bomb (which apparently travels through a fourth spatial dimension to bypass enemy defenses).
• Binary Domain features a number of different types of grenades apart from standard frags, including sticky and remote-detonated varieties. Of special note are the chaff grenades; rather than confusing radar, they confuse enemies (all of whom are robots) into attacking each other.
• Bomberman in general came to love this trope as the series progressed. The original series had remote bombs that were detonated manually instead of on a fuse, rubber bombs that bounced around when kicked or thrown, and spiked "piercing bombs" that blew right through every block in their blast range. Later games added elemental wind, water, electric, ice, and light bombs, turning normal bombs into fire-elemental ones. Still other games have included bait bombs, pile bombs, barrier bombs, salt bombs (for killing slugs and nothing else), bombs which curved left, right, or towards enemies when thrown, poison bombs, radio-controlled bombs, speed bombs, power bombs, dangerous bombs (which act like small nukes), and many more.
• Borderlands: Certain grenade mods qualify. They can range from the mundane (cluster bombs, mines, Sticky Bomb), to the weird (ones which fly into the air and blast massive amounts of a given element on anything below, teleporting grenades) to the completely insane (grenades which release particles which smash into enemies then return to you to restore health).
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive introduced Decoy Grenades, which imitate the sound of random gunfire in order to distract enemies. They even show up on their Enemy-Detecting Radar.
• Deep Fear has this as one of the ways to restore the Oxygen Meter: John Mayor can throw an "air grenade" in order to quickly fill the room with breathable oxygen without having to visit a Save Point. One puzzle also requires Mayor to throw a "fire extinguisher capsule" in order to put out the flames blocking his progress.
• The dwarves of Deep Rock Galactic have some unusual grenades to help them combat the Glyphid swarms of Hoxxes IV.
  • The Driller has a High-Explosive Grenade, a Neurotoxin Grenade that releases a cloud of flammable poison gas that the dwarves are thankfully immune to, and the Spring-Loaded Ripper, a self-prepared buzzsaw capable of crawling up cave walls and across ceilings, tearing through anything - ally or enemy - in its path. He also has disposable collapsing axes that give off a small shockwave when they hit.
  • The Engineer can toss a L.U.R.E. hologram emitter that distracts enemies with the glowing image of a dancing dwarf, a Plasma Burster that unleashes four consecutive blasts of energy away from the point of impact, a Proximity Mine with multiple charges that don't all explode at once, or a grenade that explodes into a reprogrammed Shredder Storm that seeks out and dices enemies for a short period.
  • The Gunner starts with a Sticky Grenade, but can swap it out for an Incendiary Grenade, Cluster Grenade, or a Tactical Leadburster that embeds itself into the point of impact and sprays bullets everywhere around it.
  • The Scout's Inhibitor-Field Generator creates a sphere of energy that drastically slows all enemies moving through it, his Cryo Grenade temporarily freezes anything in its burst radius (with fatal results for flying enemies), or he can toss a Pheromone Canister that causes enemy creatures in the splash zone to go berserk and attack each other. He also has a boomerang that automatically chains between enemies in a large radius.
• Destiny has a wide range of unlockable grenades for each class. These include grenades that chain electricity between enemies in their blast radius, energy balls that explode into vortexes that damage any enemies that get near and grenades with homing shrapnel.
• Divinity: Original Sin II has craftable grenades to deliver all kinds of damage types and Status Effects in an Area of Effect. They range from simple water balloons to Love and Terror grenades, healing grenades, blessed ice grenades, earthquake grenades.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins the grenades simply did area damage, but a spell called the Walking Bomb turns NPC's into potential explosives that can also infect others.
  • The sequel-expansion pack-thing Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening added Dispel Grenades, which worked as a Power Nullifier against whatever active spells a mage had going.
  • Dragon Age II presents a wider variety, with bombs that slow, stun and damage, or even revive fallen party members. A few rogue-specific skills are named and defined as bombs, a few more a labeled with a bomb icon and exhibit the same grenade range and visual effects.
• Dungeons of Dredmor has a number of bomb weapons accessed through the Alchemy and Tinkering skill paths. Alchemists get Mosolov Cocktails, poison gas flasks, acid flasks, and brimstone flasks. Tinkers mostly get normal black powder bombs and grenades but can also craft concussion bombs and thermite (which leaves a patch of burning ground).
• Fortnite: The Boogie Bomb causes those caught up in its blast radius to start dancing on the spot for five seconds, or until they take damage.
• The Halo series has normal grenades used by space marines, while Covenant forces use sticky plasma grenades. Later games in the series include sticky shrapnel grenades, napalm grenades, grenades that project an aura that rapidly drains shields, and grenades that leave behind floating sparks that will explode if anyone walks into them.
• In Hogs of War, pigs promoted into the Medic class-line gain access to a Medicine Ball, which functions exactly like a grenade but releases pink healing gas instead of fiery explosive death. Espionage pigs also get a 'poison gas' grenade, which is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• In Kirby: Squeak Squad, after getting the Bomb Ability Scroll, the player can mix the Bomb Ability with Ice and Spark in the bubble inventory. These result in Ice Bomb, which freezes enemies, along with the Thunder Bomb, which explodes into sparks of electricity that move on the ground.
  • Kirby Star Allies brings these back and adds a couple more: Bluster Bomb, which produces bombs that generate gusts of wind and can be used as makeshift balloons, and Splash Bomb, which produces bombs that explode into blobs of water. Marx's Jester Ball also functions like a bomb and can be augmented with elements, some of which will let him use one of the moves he used in his original boss fight.
• Left 4 Dead has the pipe bomb, an explosive canister with a fire alarm attached to it that attracts Infected to it before exploding and killing them all. Left 4 Dead 2 adds the bile bomb, a canister filled with Boomer bile that can be tossed at infected to get all the untouched common infected to chase after and attack them.
• Mario Party 2: The Bowser Bomb explodes... and turns the tiny Baby Bowser into a full-sized Bowser.
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect, the grenades can be modified into incendiary grenades, concussion grenades, chemical grenades, flashbangs, and radioactive grenades. All grenades also use mass effect fields to hover, meaning they follow a vector trajectory and act like exploding weightless darts.
  • In Mass Effect 2, grenades were a much smaller part of gameplay, only available as DLC powers in the form of flashbang grenades and incendiary grenades.
  • Mass Effect 3 adds more Trick Bomb varieties; in addition to standard frag grenades, there are inferno grenades, biotic lift grenades, cluster grenades and sticky grenades. These are both powers and a limited resource, meaning any squad member can use them with no cooldown but they need to collect resupply caches to restock after a few uses. Also, unlike the last game, the only grenade launcher in the game (the M-37 Falcon) is classified as an assault rifle rather than a heavy weapon, meaning it can be armed with Incendiary Ammo, Warp Ammo, Disruptor Ammo, Cryo Ammo, and Armor Piercing Ammo. So, in addition to somehow using thermal clips as large projectile ammo, it can also launch grenades that electrocute people (disruptor) and grenades that snap-freeze targets (cryo).
• Mega Man has copied such weapons before. These have included the Crash Bomber, Drill Bomb, Napalm Bomb, Ballade Cracker, Bubble Bomb, Danger Wrap, Flash Bomb, Remote Mine, Black Hole Bomb, Commando Bomb, and the Mine Sweeper. His successor, Mega Man X, has likewise wielded trick bombs like the Magnet Mine, Parasitic Bomb, Bomb Bee, and the Squeeze Bomb.
• In The Persistence, you can unlock and upgrade a variety of grenades that create weird sci-fi effects like a swarm of robots or a black hole.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City: Pheromone Bombs attract zombies and B.O.W.S. to it.
  • Resident Evil 4 uses flashbangs in the same manner as Alan Wake above - any exposed Plagas parasites within a certain range of the flashbang's explosion die instantly.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations has "B.O.W Decoy" grenades, which are grenades that emit a sound that attracts monsters to it before it explodes (that sounds familiar), "Shock Grenades" that explode in powerful electrical blasts and "Pulse Grenades" that emit blasts of sound that stun enemies on land and kill them underwater.
  • Grenade launchers have had a wide variety of exotic ammunition types since the start of the series. These include acid, flame and freeze grenades.
• SCP: Secret Laboratory has two throwable SCP objects which can be found in the facility:
  • SCP-018 is an anomalous toy rubber ball which bounces with 200% efficiency. Upon being thrown, it will bounce around the room, dealing damage on contact and eventually gaining enough velocity to break windows and even doors. 80 seconds after being thrown, 018 will exit the facility by exploding through a wall, injuring anyone nearby.
  • SCP-2176 is a lightbulb which shatters when thrown (or 10 seconds after cracking from being dropped). Depending on circumstance, it will either blackout a room, turning off the lights and locking the doors shut, or it will prematurely end a blackout started by SCP-079, forcing the doors open. Any Tesla Gates in the room will also be temporarily disabled.
• Spiral Knights uses bombs as an entire class of weapon, giving us bombs that deploy a field of any of the Status Effects in the game, "vortex" bombs that collapse into a miniature black hole before exploding, a bomb that pretty much acts as a deployment point for a ring of damaging orbs, and shard bombs that act like a cluster bomb.
• Various Star Wars Expanded Universe games feature some pretty strange explosives. Knights of the Old Republic features several of the more esoteric variants above and beyond the basic fragmentation and stun grenades, including sonic grenades, plasma grenades, cryoban grenades, ion grenades, poison grenades, adhesive grenades, and thermal detonators. Notable for allowing the player to throw all of these at the same target for maximum tricks and fun.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl has Sticky Bombs, smoke bombs, and "smart bombs" (bombs that inexplicably explode slowly).
• Team Fortress Classic had several cool grenades, unique to the classes, as well as the standard frag grenades that almost every class got:
  • Heavy and Demoman: MIRV grenades. After it explodes, doing the damage of a standard frag, it disperses smaller grenades that proceed to detonate themselves for massive damage. Probably the strongest grenade in the game.
  • Soldier: Nail grenades. When thrown, it'll hover up and start shooting nails in all directions. Ideal for taking out sentries or holding a choke point.
  • Pyro: Napalm grenades. Similar to the MIRV grenade in principle, but instead of doing direct explosive damage (which only the initial explosion does), it scatters several small napalm fragments that light people on fire for damage over time. Useful for area denial and, in Fortress Forever, stacking multiple flame weapons for extra damage.
  • Medic: Concussion grenades. No damage, but they cause the enemy to be stunned for a few seconds and mess up their arm and interface for a few seconds more, but they're most useful for "conc-jumping", since they propel the user MASSIVE lengths (without bringing them so high that they get fall damage) when primed and held until detonation.
  • Spy: Gas grenades. They do a tiny bit of damage, but more importantly they actual cause the target to hallucinate, seeing explosions, grenades, and enemies that aren't there. Quite amusing, actually.
  • Scout: Caltrops. It doesn't explode, but when thrown it'll release a bunch of caltrops that slow down and damage whoever steps on them. Useful for stopping pursuers. He also has the distinction of not getting frag grenades; instead, he gets the same concussion grenades that the Medic does, mostly for conc-jumping.
  • Engineer: EMP grenades. Can potentially have the highest damage of all grenades in the game; throwing one causes whoever is hit by it to have all their ammo detonated at once, including shotgun shells and rockets. Damage spends on class; if thrown at a Scout, who only carries a few shotgun shells, it'll do next to no damage. If thrown at a Soldier, who carries a bucket load of shotgun shells for his Super Shotgun and a bunch of rockets for his Rocket Launcher, it'll be a One-Hit Kill.
  • The only one who don't get unique grenades is the Sniper, but like the other classes (except the Scout), he does get standard frag grenades.
• Team Fortress 2: The Demoman's grenades are a hybrid of timed and proximity, which somehow know when they hit a wall and when they hit a human or a turret. His sticky grenades are basically bombs with comically-large spikes, and are remote detonated.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron has grenades that heal.
• Tribes: Ascend has unique explosives for all of its nine classes. Perhaps the most notable is the Brute's Fractal Grenade, which levitates in the air for a few seconds after it hits the ground, firing powerful lasers that ricochet off walls in every direction.
  • Also of note is the Pathfinder's Impact Nitron grenade, which does some damage but is mostly used because it knocks enemies back and forces them to drop the flag if they're carrying it.
• Warframe: Vauban and Protea's combat styles revolve around trick grenades.
• The Witcher contains five different types of bombs, manufactured using alchemy just like potions and blade coatings. The only one that acts even remotely like a traditional explosive is Dragon's Dream (releases a cloud of flammable gas that Geralt can detonate with the Igni sign). The other four bombs produce poison, evoke fear, stun, and blind, respectively.
  • The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings adds a fragmentation bomb, an incendiary bomb, one that releases noxious gas, a light bomb (illuminates the area), and a psychoactive gas bomb.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown's expansion pack, Enemy Within, gives us flashbang, gas, and ghost grenades. Its sequel, XCOM 2, adds smoke, acid, EMP, and incendiary grenades to the armory.

Web Comics

• Latchkey Kingdom: In "Carol" Ash and Willa coordinate their attack, the former starting with a flashbang.
• The H-Bomb in Life With Lamarr is packed with Triple-H Hash which will cause all living things in the blast radius to become permanently stoned and anyone with 500 kilometres of the epicenter to get serious munchies.
• Tower of God: Ja Wangnan uses a variety of bombs (which look like pokéballs), including Shinsu Bombs, regular grenades and smoke-pepper bombs.

Web Original

• Critical Role: When the Mighty Nein steal a bag from the Tombtakers, they find that it's got several intuit charges inside — bombs that target the mind, exploding silently and dealing psychic damage. Lucien later exploits his own immunity to psychic damage by dumping about a dozen intuit charges onto the floor of the Aether Crux and sitting practically on top of them as they explode, killing the Somnovem but leaving him unharmed.
• The SCP Foundation has a "gay bomb", in conformance to the rumors about the real-life States working on one.
• Bakuda of Worm has this as her Tinker specialization. Her least lethal variants kill off bugs, freeze the target area in time, and induce pain so intense it permanently renders victims less sensitive to pain. Her most lethal variants convert any material to crystal, disassemble people without killing them, and generate temporary black holes.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender had smoke, slime, and stink bombs in addition to the usual exploding type. And some that explode and stink.
• Filmation's Ghostbusters had "Zombie Bombs," which could turn people nearby into zombies when detonated. Scarechrome tried to use one against the Ghostbusters, but he caught his peg-leg in a small hole on the deck. Its only use was to set up Prime Evil's immortal line, "Did anyone ever tell you that you drive like a zombie?"
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The "droid poppers" used by the clone troops are essentially EMP grenades.
• Static Shock: Richie made a shock bomb that Static could use if he ran out of juice, and a net bomb that shot a net out when it hit something. When he came into his own intelligence superpowers and became Gear, he came up with others, such as quick-cement bombs.
• Storm Hawks: In the second episode, Starling uses grenades that discharge electricity to knock out Cyclonian guards.

• The Pfish and Chip shorts on the What A Cartoon! Show had the title characters (mainly Chip) end up on the receiving end of several of these. "Short Pfuse" has a whole montage of ludicrous trick bombs, including a Muscle Bomb, Blues Bomb, Elvis Bomb, Fat Bomb, Ugly Bomb, Clown Bomb...

Real Life

• Airborne Leaflet Propaganda, often used during World War II.
• Bombs filled with chaff (metal strips used to confuse radar).
• Any nuclear missile can be turned into a trick bomb of massive proportions when detonating it high in the atmosphere. All nuclear explosions create an electromagnetic pulse, which can damage nearby electronic equipment, which usually isn't that much of a problem when compared to the detonation itself. But when it goes off high in the atmosphere, the earth's magnetic field amplifies the effect, and could knock out entire countries or continents with a massive EMP blast.
  • Likewise, most fears regarding nuclear terrorism aren't of terrorists acquiring a conventional nuclear device, so much as what is frequently called a "dirty bomb". Conventional explosives wired to a radioactive source, such as the plutonium core of a conventional nuclear explosive. The initial explosion is comparatively small, but the real danger lies in the highly radioactive material that gets spread around, like the fallout of a nuclear weapon without the city-destroying blast. It can affect miles of land and leave it radioactive for decades, depending on the yield.
  • This concept of a 'dirty' bomb has been taken to the natural conclusion of the hypothetical Cobalt Bomb, a nuclear weapon salted with cobalt that is designed to scatter tiny fragments of irradiated cobalt-60 everywhere when initiated, deliberately irradiating the entire region where it was set off (and, it was feared, the rest of the planet).
• Stun, Incendiary, and Smoke Grenades.
• Stinger Grenades, which scatter dozens of little rubber balls upon detonation to stun and possibly incapacitate anyone caught in its range.
• Tear gas grenades.
• Airsoft grenades are devices with a small explosive charge that shoots BBs around like the shrapnel of a real grenade. They can still be harmful if held, and throwing an Airsoft grenade back is considered both very dangerous and poor showing.
• Early fire extinguishers were more or less glass orbs shaped like grenades, filled with a fire-suppressing liquid. Since they were first produced in the pre-electric days, the most likely source of a fire was a stove or a fireplace, which they were intended to be thrown into like a grenade. By all accounts, they were quite unreliable (also rather toxic), and started to get replaced with compressed water and later compressed foam or gas fire extinguishers at around the end of the 19th century.
• The incendiary bombs, shells, and grenades used to impressive (and horrifying) effect during both World Wars. Different fillings were used for different effects. White phosphorous was used primarily against unprotected targets like enemy infantry, as it burns at a high temperature and sends tiny specks of flaming (and lethally toxic) white phosphorous. Thermite was more commonly used against protected enemy targets because it could melt through solid steel and produced a torrent of molten slag (in fact, shoving a thermite grenade down the barrel or into the breech was a preferred method of permanently disabling enemy artillery).
• The bat bomb, a hollow bomb casing intended to be dropped from a bomber that would open up and release over a thousand bats over a Japanese city. The bats were loaded with small napalm incendiary charges. The bats would then seek out shelter in Japanese homes, where they would rest until the timers on their napalm charges went off, causing a fire. Although it was started early in the war, by the time it could be put to use, the Americans developed a bomb that could destroy a city in one blast. The concept did prove itself to be effective, however, when several of the bats escaped, causing a fire that spread throughout Carlsbad air base◊ and delayed the project for some time. Rather ironically, they were the only victims of the napalm bats before the project was canceled.
• Infrared-emitting hot-smoke grenades, used to confuse the targeting of heat-seeking missiles.
• A graphite bomb disperses a large number of fine carbon filaments. These have the express purpose of causing transformers and electrical lines to short out and be ruined. The USA used them to disable most of Iraq's electricity network during the first Gulf War. (Since this in turn disables water treatment plants, graphite bombs can lead to significant civilian casualties from disease.)
• Glitter bombs — which, as the name implies, are packed full of sparkling glitter — have been used to both protest anti-LGBTQIA+ individuals and as tools to escape from would-be rapists and sexual assaulters, who are further humiliated by having their attempted crime literally covering their body (as any art teacher will tell you, glitter gets everywhere). Was also used at least once as an anti-"porch-pirate" weapon.

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