Basic Trope: Nuclear weapons used indiscriminantly.
- Straight: General Jaeger orders the use of strategic nuclear weapons on enemy forces a lot.
- Exaggerated: General Jaeger orders a nuclear attack on a country just because they beat Jaeger's country at football.
- Downplayed: Low-yield warheads are dropped on viable military targets and a lot of thought are put into their useage.
- Justified:
- It's all-out nuclear war.
- In the future, armor will be so tough nukes are the only way to reliably break it.
- Inverted: Nukes are used so conservatively that there's really no need to build more than a handful.
- Subverted: It appears to be a large number of nuclear missiles launched, but they are just conventional HE rockets.
- Double Subverted:
- But that's what they want you to think.
- They accidentally hit a bomber carrying a nuclear weapon, causing a Broken Arrow incident.
- Parodied: General Jaeger sunbathes in the glow of a nuclear explosion.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Nuclear weapons are only used as a last resort.
- Enforced:
- The writer wants to show how desperate General Jaeger is and makes him deploy nukes.
- The writer wants a good backstory for an After the End world.
- Lampshaded: "How many nukes have we dropped the last hour? It's like we don't even care for the consequences!"
- Invoked: Nukes are designed to destroy and not spread fallout in anticipation for all-out nuclear war.
- Exploited: Bob convinces General Jaeger to blow up his hated neighbors' office complex with a nuke.
- Defied: The President apprehends General Jaeger and removes nukes
- Discussed: "General Jaeger sure likes to use nuclear weapons a lot."
- Conversed: "Why? WHY? WHY DO YOU USE SO MANY NUCLEAR WEAPONS?!"
- Implied:
- The war is heating up and General Jaeger is desperate to win. He calls the President and asks for the use of one last, powerful weapon...
- It's been 'winter' all over the world ever since General Jaeger's counter-strategy came to its conclusion.
- Deconstructed: General Jaeger's heavy use of nukes causes insane amounts of collateral damage and civilian casualties, and ruins the environment
, leading to him to be hated by all, discharged from the military, and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for life. - Reconstructed: Sure, their use had horrible consequences, but the Godzilla Threshold had been passed and it was the only way to defeat whatever the threat was. The world might now be After the End and a horrible place to live in, but had Jaeger not used nukes, then everyone in the world would have died.
- Played For Laughs: General Jaeger's first solution to any problem, from national emergencies to locking his keys in the car? Nuclear warfare.
- Played For Drama: Jaeger is being trigger happy with a line of missiles that are individually powerful enough to level cities, and can travel intercontinental distances very quickly. Nightmare Fuel and Paranoia Fuel crop up very quickly.
- Played For Horror: Jaeger, though psychopathically fixated on using nukes for whatever reason (or lack thereof), gets a wake-up call when a young child gains access to the arsenal, never mind the Fridge Logic or motivation whatsoever; even worse, the usage of a nuke goes off triggers The End of the World as We Know It with all the nastiness that entails.
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