http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LandMineGoesClick

Advertisement:

Land mines. Hundreds of thousands of them lie buried and forgotten around the world. One of the most dangerous and easy to deploy weapons of war, they can effectively deny an area from use for any purpose until they're cleared. They were considered so dangerous in World War II that the armies used special tanks equipped with massive rollers and chain whips to detonate them away from the tank's hull and clear a path through the field. Modern armies deploy everything from explosive counter-charges to remote-controlled robots to deal with the things.

Thus, it's no surprise that mines turn up a lot in fiction. With any luck, they will be announced. But there is a major difference.

In Real Life, you probably won't know somebody stepped on a mine until they blow up.

In fiction, however, the squad will hear a tiny "click" as someone steps on the first mine, and we will have a tense moment while their friends try to figure out how to get the poor guy off of it without killing him. This usually involves finding a nice big rock to hold the button down while everybody runs for cover.

Advertisement:

Another variant is to have a redshirt, a mook, or an otherwise expendable character step on one and have it detonate immediately, killing them. This is often followed by the survivors getting down on their hands and knees and carefully making their way out, probing the ground ahead with sticks and knives (especially in war stories). This is derived from Real Life military training on how to extract yourself from a minefield - except the part about using knives (or anything made of steel/iron): some of the larger (antitank) mines have magnetic-proximity triggers.

Very occasionally, you'll get both. It'll give an audible warning that it's been triggered, but that's no help to the victim — all he has time for is an Oh, Crap! reaction before he's pâté.

Many video games feature land mines with serious design problems, so it's quick and easy for a single main character to avoid or disarm them, unlike in real life. Such land mines might even feature flashing lights and beep a few seconds before they go off, which rather defeats the purposenote Sort of. Part of a Minefield's purpose is area denial, so if seeing the land mines makes you stay away or find a different path, they're still doing their job..

Advertisement:

In reality, most personnel mines will go off whether or not you release the button. Which makes sense, if you consider that a pressure-release trigger would be more complicated and more prone to failure. Also, the only benefit from a mine following this trope is that a group of soldiers are delayed trying to help their friend. If the landmine simply blows the poor guy's leg off, The Squad still has to tend to him, only now the explosion has tipped off any nearby defenders to intruders. That said, if the mine is a Bouncing Betty , the most effective thing to do is dive and duck immediately to receive minimum damage from the shrapnel, as it mainly spreads horizontally (at roughly crotch-height, so even if it doesnt cut you in half, you may end up wishing it did. Yikes).

Also applies to all manner of similar explosive boobytraps involving pressure plates, trip wires and other triggering mechanisms.

A recent variation is a 'claymore' or directional mine. Rather than just blow up and hope someone's over it, these consist of a mounting plate, the explosive charge, and the soon-to-be shrapnel. The charge is set up so that the explosion fans shrapnel out in an arc in front of the mine, similar to a shotgun blast, rather than a general disorganized kaboom. It is important that the right side is facing the enemy, thus American versions have a large 'FRONT - TOWARD ENEMY' label embossed on them. These are usually set off by either a tripwire or a wired remote-trigger (which really does go 'click') in the hands of someone a safe distance away from the mine - so chances are, surviving the blast still leaves you in a gunfight with whoever just decided to try and blow you up...

Note that certain kind of land mines are now prohibited by an international treaty signed by many countries, notably not including the USA, Russia, China or India.

Subtrope of Kinetic Clicking, related to Dramatic Gun Cock. The non-Redshirt who hears the click under them will do whatever they can to invoke Where's the Kaboom?. Almost never comes up when dealing with a Sea Mine.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

Comic Books

Batman: Death of Innocents: the Horror of Landmines was a "landmine awareness" and "humanitarian comic book" published by DC Comics in 1996. The purpose of publishing this particular Batman comic book was to teach the people of the United States regarding the dangers and consequences of landmines worldwide, left active in countries that had been under war.

Combat Zone: True Tales of GI's in Iraq, a Marvel Comics book about a squad of 82nd Airborne soldiers in the Iraq invasion of 2003, subverts the trope for drama. One of the soldiers starts jumping up and down on what he thinks is a hub cap of some kind. His sergeant promptly informs him its an anti-tank mine and that the only reason he didn't blow up is that their designed to only go off when a vehicle passes over one.

The Punisher seems to carry a few Claymore mines with him at all times. They come in handy. Woman: What does "Front Towards Enemy" mean?

9massive explosion that kills most of the sewer-dwelling cannibals that were chasing them]

Punisher: That's what it means.

In Sgt. Rock: Between Hell and a Hard Place, Ice Cream Soldier is patrolling with New Meat Rin Tin Tin when Tinny realizes he's stepped on a landmine. Ice tries to keep him calm and dig it out from under him, but ultimately he's forced to get to cover as the thing goes off, taking Tinny with it.

Comic Strips

Funky Winkerbean: Wally deals with the issue of a landmine while in Afghanistan and later appears to deal with it again in Iraq until it is revealed to actually be a videogame. The videogame incident generated some controversy that later warranted an apology from the creator. A second example in the comic has Wally step on a Bouncing Betty while trying to take a picture. While he initially yells at Khan to leave without him, Khan stays behind to try to disable the bomb but finds he can't because the fuse is on the bottom. He then tries another method, using a plank as a baseball bat to WHACK AWAY THE BOMB. It's a significant event for the two considering their original meeting years prior had Khan trying to kill Wally.



Films — Live-Action

Literature

In his autobiography About Face David Hackworth tells of an incident in Korea when he accidentally triggered a mine attached to a tripwire, but didn't hear it due to his shell-damaged hearing. Everyone except Hackworth dove for cover, then looked up in amazement to see their commanding officer miraculously unharmed. Hackworth added to his badass reputation by growling at them for not clearing the minefield properly, then striding off to find a place where he could quietly go into shock.

Alex Rider: In Snakehead, Alex steps on a land mine in an Australian SAS training area and hears it go click. A nearby soldier tells him that it is now armed and will go off if he moves his weight in any way. However, the mine also has a time delay fuse and will explode in 15 minutes even if he doesn't move. The soldier goes to get help. When he doesn't return, Alex eventually escapes by throwing himself down the slope of the hill away from the mine. The whole thing was a Secret Test of Character to see how Alex handled himself in stressful situations, and he was never in any real danger.

In both the book and documentary Blood from a Stone, author/adventurer Yaron Svoray recounts stepping on a mine while trying to locate a foxhole with a packet of diamonds buried inside. As with virtually all other real life examples of this trope, the mine was a dud.

Averted in the Dresden Files novel Blood Rites. Harry, Murphy and Kincaid are breaking into the lair of a scourge of Black Court vampires, and when they discover a landmine blocking their way, Harry suggests that they disarm it with the classic "nice big rock to hold the button down" trick. Kincaid, who unlike Harry is a professional weapons expert, comments that that's an excellent idea, assuming your enemies are using equipment from World War II.

In one of the The Executioner novels, Mack Bolan realises he's triggered a Booby Trap when he hears the safety lever fly off a hand grenade. He throws himself flat with his boots toward the blast area, and survives.

Star Wars Legends - Young Jedi Knights: Generally averted with the burrowing detonators and sonic punchers (motion-activated grenades) used during the civil war on Anobis (as portrayed in Return to Ord Mantell. Sometimes the soil the burrowing detonators are in can be seen moving moments before one goes off, but there's rarely any warning. Fortunately, Jedi can sense them wherever they're planted, and the Solo children and their friends make use of this to help clear out many fields and tunnels that have been seeded with these weapons. Flying low enough over a field with shields active also proves very effective for clearing out the burrowing detonators planted there.

Live-Action TV

Music

Mentioned on the lyrics of the song Marines of the German Heavy Metal band Sodom: ''You hear the mine clicking over your feet You know you have to go.''

Tabletop Games

BattleTech offers (advanced) rules covering a variety of mines with differing triggers and effects; whether or not entering a hex that contains mines will set them off can depend on unit type, movement mode used, and of course the ever-popular whim of the dice. The example playing the trope the straightest are probably "vibrabombs", which can only be set off by BattleMechs because their triggers are sensitive to the specific vibrations caused by their steps, and are even set to ignore 'Mechs lighter than a desired target weight, though this will cause 'Mechs that are heavier than the target weight to set them off prematurely, making their use highly situational.

Car Wars featured these in two main flavors, normal and 'Spear 1000', which primarily shot up rather than spread out. Both were primarily meant to take down the titular cars and similar; walking through a mine counter was perfectly safe. Splatbooks of course offered antipersonnel mines, as well as the minesweeper mentioned above that can get mounted on a convenient tank.

These were given their own sidebar in Cyberpunk 2020, referring to sneaky things you can do. Like wiring up one to an enemy's bed, or lining your escape route with claymore mines.

In Mage: The Awakening, mixing wards with other spells fill the magical role of "land mines". Since they DON'T actually go "click", a clever mage expecting more than one foe will set the condition for "when an enemy leaves the area" rather than "when an enemy enters the area" in order to try to peg the lot at once with the requisite magical nastiness. Since the people most capable of detecting those kinds of traps tend to not be the bruisers at the front of the battle-line, it's not uncommon for the technical mage to notice the ward only after it's been "primed", leading to the famous "hold down the button" situation. Which, since the idea is usually "slow enemies down while you run away" in Mage, is actually a better result than the spell going off from the trap-layer's perspective. Every minute dedicated to figuring out your spell and unraveling it is a minute you can spend jumping out a window and dashing madly for the car.

In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperial Guard loves using massive minefields, and various optional books allow most races to use minefields as defensive measures. They also love clearing them - by force marching Conscripts through them. The spin-off game Aeronautica Imperialis gives the Tau fields of aerial homing mines.



Video Games

Web Animation

ASDF Movie 5 first shows off... Mine Turtle! He's so cute and adorable as he says 'hello'. And he has a button on his shell.

Western Animation

Action Man (1995): One character steps on a pressure mine. To escape, he unties his boot and does an unnecessarily impressive backflip as the mine goes off.

A member of Easy Company steps on a landmine and hears it go click in The Teaser to the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "The Plague of the Prototypes". G.I. Robot saves him by Jumping on a Grenade.

Gags involving minefields were very common on Looney Tunes. Usually it involved one character setting up the mines for another character but ending up in the middle of the field and having to slowly make his way back to safety. Since the mines were easily detectable under conspicuous mounds of dirt, the character manages to escape without a scratch... until he unwittingly steps on that one mine he hid too well. A Speedy Gonzales & Daffy Duck episode comes to mind. For some reason, Daffy lays a minefield with all the locations marked. Daffy loses the map, but Speedy winds up with it and offers to tell Daffy where the mines are. Daffy takes a step... <Boom!> "There's one!" <Boom> "There's another!" <Boom> "What do you mean you don't know where they are? You haven't missed one yet!" And if it's a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon, Roadrunner runs through all the mines without setting them off, and when Coyote goes to check what's wrong, they all blow up in his face. He also has a habit of being tossed into ones unrelated to his current plan when his Acme Products inevitably backfire.

A example of this trope happens in the series Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles where one of the main characters (the cameraman that supposedly is "documenting" the actions of the titular squad) runs into a minefield while trying to escape from the enemy. A big minefield. With accompanying Loud Click, and the reveal that lifting his foot would detonate not only the mine, but the entire minefield through the explosion of the first mine. The squad has a robotic member that they are in the process of field-testing - the robot makes a Heroic Sacrifice after running out of ammo. He runs in, replaces our main character's foot with his own, and literally throws him clear of the minefield. The robot then waits for the enemy to get real close to him (the enemy naturally not setting off any of the mines on their way), then lifts his foot. Afterward, the troopers deliver a Aesop while ruminating on the sacrifice.

Real Life