Deflector Shields

Shields at 20% and holding!

Cat: Why don't we raise the defensive shields?
Kryten: A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two minor flaws. One, we don't have any defensive shields. And two, we don't have any defensive shields. Now I realize that technically speaking that's only one flaw, but I thought that it was such a big one that it was worth mentioning twice.
—Red Dwarf

Also called "Force Fields", these are invisible (or, if the budget allows it, barely-visible) energy barriers placed around objects to protect them from harm.

Most common around space ships, but also seen around bases and—very occasionally -- individual people.

How much protection they offer is usually proportional to their power. This also makes for yet another reason you are boned if the energy runs out. They may also be subject to Phlebotinum Overload if they get hit by too many Energy Weapons.

An energy barrier can zap or repel anyone who touches it, or can simply behave like an impenetrable wall. It's often represented in the form of a Beehive Barrier or another Hard Light construct. In practice, this is somewhat less scientifically feasible than Energy Weapons, but not by much, at least in the way it is usually depicted—a strong electromagnetic field really can be used to deflect particle beam weapons or railgun/coilgun slugs. A better example is the Earth's magnetic field which safeguards us from charged particles in the solar wind. NASA and ESA are actually researching how to reproduce the effect on future interplanetary spaceships, to protect Mars travellers from cosmic radiation.

Unfortunately, the alternative is not much better; though many writers choose to omit energy fields these days, they neglect that, without some kind of continuously regenerating barrier, a ship traveling at relativistic speeds (say, more than half the speed of light) isn't going to get very far before micrometeors and particulate matter punch holes through its armor, however thick it is. There are feasible alternatives though—self-repairing armour seems to be a common feature of bioships, or, since the ship only needs to be well-protected at the front, a fountain can be used while the ship is accelerating—most of the voyage may be spent accelerating at .01g, and then when you arrive you just need a way to decelerate quickly while your armour lasts.

Note: one possibility is to put a beryllium shield in front. Beryllium has a high melting point and a VERY high specific heat capacity. It takes well over 2/3 its mass in TNT just to go from near absolute zero to the melting point. That should be enough for the small constant impacts. For the bigger ones, a layering of dust particles a hundred kilometers or so in front can be used to eliminate large objects.

Note that if a shield deflects not just rays but massive objects, Newton's third law kicks in, as it requires the force stopping the projectile to be equally applied to the shield—and if it has negligible mass, this means directly to the shield generator, bypassing armor and everything. So if the shield is not very thick and/or does not distribute load over a very large area, its not a missile-stopper: any massive object moving at a modest (on an orbital scale) speed will pass through the shield if their interaction is limited to the safe level or crush the shield emitters and then pass through if it isn't. So bonus points if the shield either mostly disintegrates incoming projectiles so that armor deals only with dust (i.e. acts as a rechargeable sort of Whipple Shield) or it's not a main defense against missiles and that pesky iron-nickel gravel, or both. Usually in these cases Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better. Unless, of course, the shield is Handwaved to stop kinetic energy as well.

Other issues involve a shield's interaction with the same effects passing from inside^[1] and lower-grade effects.^[2]

Shields may be handled as a single egg-shell or as several independent barriers covering different areas of the ship. The latter encourages certain maneuvers, such as making sure your shielded side is always facing the enemy.

Shields are popular in fiction because it allows the Cool Ship to participate in battles without the inconvenience of having to spend the rest of the episode making repairs to physical armour and systems. In older or lower-budget movies and TV, they also eliminate the need to show battle damage on the ship; e.g. having your Ensign call out "Shields down to twenty percent!" can be a lot cheaper than showing a gash blasted in your ship's armor. The downside is that creators often have to resort to Explosive Instrumentation to provide combat casualties on a shielded ship. In somewhat-harder science fiction, shields are useful to overcome the seemingly overwhelming attacker's advantage—cities on planets can't dodge, so if there isn't some way to defend against space-launched missiles and kinetic projectiles, wars are going to be short and boring.

In Video Games, deflector shields have a special use. They are effectively a way to justify regenerating hit points, but only for a part of a unit's health. Shields get to regenerate, but if there is something beneath them, like armor, the armor doesn't regenerate. Also, for many games where a target can take Subsystem Damage, that won't start until you penetrate the Deflector Shields.

Note that, despite the name, Deflector Shields don't really need to deflect enemy attacks, in the sense that the attack will bounce off and possibly hit somebody else. It's more common for the attack to simply stop at the shield's edge, meaning that the attack has technically been diffused or absorbed. (The term "deflector" comes from the proposed use of similar, weaker technology to deflect tiny incident particles of dust and debris while a spacecraft is flying at orbital speeds or faster. And ya gotta admit, "deflector shield" and "energy shield" sound cooler than "absorption shield".)

Important note: in all but the softest science fiction settings, using a personal shield that keeps everything out will keep air out, suffocating you. Remember: "The slow blade penetrates the shield." Unless you're really lazy about calibrating the thing, then any Badass Who Dares? to challenge you will simply respond, "I was thinking about it." and just throw a knife through your hand.

Compare and contrast Containment Field and Reinforce Field. See also Some Kind of Force Field.

Examples of Deflector Shields include:

Large-Scale Shields

Anime & Manga

The sole reason The Big O is still standing is due to Big O's impossibly sturdy arm plating which, over the course of the series, repels lasers, punches, swords, missiles, machine guns, and giant drills. The entire city gasps when his enemy, Big Bad Alex Rosewater's robot, turns out to have a personal force field; the viewer is subsequently treated to a good five minute montage of Big O punching away uselessly from a variety of television sets.
Super Dimension Fortress Macross: The Macross gained a force field early in its mission. Atypically, for most of its journey, the field could not cover the entire ship, so crewmembers had to move three small shields around the ship to intercept enemy fire. Later, an "omnidirectional barrier" was invented, which overloaded when hit by too much fire, destroying an unnamed large city in Ontario. Macross also uses focused pinpoint barriers to penetrate said shields, as a justification for space melee combat by kilometer tall Humongous Mecha punching each other.
- Of particular note is that when the Omnidirectional Barrier overloads, the energy goes outwards, leaving the Macross itself unharmed at the center. This is terrible when hovering above a city full of civilians, but pretty darned useful when hovering inside the command base of a 4 million ship enemy battle fleet.
The title spaceship in Martian Successor Nadesico has deflector shields that are specialized for fending off the lizards' gravity-weapon attacks. The Jovians used them too, however.
GaoGaiGar has the "Protect Shade," which not just blocks a beam weapon, but actually bends it into a pentagram before flinging it back at the attacker.
Gundam has several types. The most common one is the I-Field, which only protects against beam weapons, as all it does is make a cushion of particles that stops anything with less mass than the particles. They also made specialized versions to keep ships aloft in the air. Later, they developed the Beam Barrier/Beam Shield, which is basically a really wide Laser Blade that could be used against physical attacks as well.
- The Mercurius Mobile Suit and Virgo Mobile Dolls from Gundam Wing had Planet Defensors, Attack Drones that generate a forcefield capable of blocking most ranged weapons. Their only weaknesses seem to be lasers and melee attacks, but this is usually offset by the Virgos' powerful beam cannons, their working in teams, and the rarity of weaponized lasers in the setting.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, the Destiny, Strike Freedom, and Legend Gundams feature arm-mounted beam shield generators.
  - Earlier, with Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray, the Hyperion and Dreadnought Gundams have powerful barriers. The Hyperion could only use his for 5 minutes before his battery drained. Once its pilot gained the means to use infinite power, he ran with it.
- The Gundams from Gundam00 also field beam shield technology but in a subversion. Their GN fields were based on the particle density with a field that holds the particles in place. The GN field's strength is based entirely on how densely packed the particles are to deflect the oncoming projectile. The effect of it is largely made to dissipate and deflect beam attacks but a sufficiently powerful attack can either force its way through or completely overwhelm the field itself. However there are specifically WEAPONS that were made to counter GN fields so while it protected against mostly everything, GN blades can still pierce through with minimum effort.
  - A bit subverted in that the field itself was later made to be weaponized as demonstrated by the Seravee. It allows the Seravee to store Particles externally and fire them without having to internally process the blast because the field can now contain the particles.
Sonic X has Perfect Chaos create a spherical shield of water around itself when Eggman attacks in the Egg Carrier II that effortlessly stops the missile salvo he launched. The shield proves useless against Super Sonic, though.
The energy shields in Kurau Phantom Memory are specifically tailored for deflecting and containing Rynax-energy. They don't usually form much of an obstacle for the protagonist though.
This is done in several different ways in Pokémon. Mr. Mime can create invisible barriers. The attacks Protect and Detect do the same thing in the games. In the Pokémon Special manga, Sabrina's Pokemon can make invisible forcefields, encircling the entirety of Saffron City at one point.
- In Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys, Deoxys creates a force field around LaRousse City to keep Rayquaza out. As well as blocking physical objects and energy blasts, the force field blocks any air movement from outside the city, which is bad for our heroes as all systems in LaRousse city, including the doors and the security robots, run on wind power.
  - Deoxys's barrier shield doesn't work as Rayquaza uses Hyper Beam to enter La Rousse city.
Code Geass has two different versions, one for each of the major military factions. The MSV maser shields used by Britannia appear on the Lancelot as beam shields a'la Gundam before developing into full-on Deflector Shields and being applied to some Ace Customs and larger devices such as the Cool Airship Avalon (and eventually the Kill Sat Damocles near series' end). The Black Knights develop the Guren Mk-II's radiant wave attack system into a shield called the Radiant Barrier and install it in their commander mecha and battleships in the second season. Worth special mention is the Shinkirou, protagonist Lelouch's Ace Custom machine: its Absolute Protection Territory uses an array of MSV maser shields that require on-the-fly coordination by the pilot, meaning that only someone incredibly intelligent can use it to its full potential (that being the strongest shield system in the Geass-verse).
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the angels are protected by "AT Fields". They turn out to have quite a bit more relevance to the plot than your run-of-the-mill plot device.
The alien invaders and the title robot in Cannon God Exaxxion use force fields that are an offshoot of their Artificial Gravity tech. They have rendered most types of weapons obsolete, with the exception of BFGs & melee weapons wielded by extremely strong combatants, the idea being that the only way to penetrate such a barrier is to focus more energy on a single point than the system can produce. Explosives don't work, as their energy is spread too thin & lasers are right out due to gravitational lensing.
In the second part of Magic Knight Rayearth, Clef casts a titanic magical barrier around the Palace of Cephiro, which drains even the Master Mage nearly unto death. It's even worse for him when the invading NSX fires its twin Laguna Cannons into it.
- The NSX itself has its own, technological force field. However, the ship still sustains damage when the giant San Yun smashes its fists into the barrier.
One of the manifestations of the Lighthawk Wings in Tenchi Muyo! is as a defensive shield for a ship. This is provided either by the tree providing the ship's power, or very special individuals.
The Vandread Jura's main power was its Beehive Barrier and could even protect an entire planet. The super Vandread used it as a personal shield as well.
Sailor Saturn's "Silence Wall" attack is an example.
Super Atragon: The undersea-battleship Ra has one of these that stops even gigantic enemy cup-shaped things from crushing it.
In Martian Successor Nadesico, there's the Distortion Field, which is powerful enough to deflect beam attacks head on. The only thing that is seen penetrating the barriers are special blades sharp enough to pierce it and a special lance that is actually powerful enough to pry it open!
Saki and Mai/Cure Bloom and Cure Egret of Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star can create barriers - going so far as to create ones big enough to protect their fellow Cures.
- Komachi/Cure Mint of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 can also do this and ends up weaponizing it when she gets a "Mid-Season Upgrade" in Yes! Pretty Cure 5.

Fan Fic

Calvin's box-plane in Calvin and Hobbes The Series has one of these.

Films -- Animation

In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, the titular city has guardian golems which project an impenetrable protective shield over the city. This is why it sank mostly-intact into an air pocket rather than being trashed completely (though the outermost areas were out of luck, having been established after the shield system and were thus beyond its border). It was also called into service to protect the city from a volcanic eruption, and showed the ability to harden and crumble the magma that covered it.

Films -- Live-Action

Star Wars, where, unhelpfully, ground-based shields can be bypassed by landing outside their protective radius and slowly walking under them. Ship shields, while capable of stopping physical impacts, work in sections, so a shield loss in one area means that the other areas are still protected. While this appears useful, it's also unhelpful when your bridge shield goes down and an A-wing manages to slip through your defensive fire and smash through your front window, and before anybody can react, your ship then smashes into a giant armored battlestation, killing your massive Super Star Destroyer in an exceedingly embarrassing manner.
- Just theoretically, you know. Not thinking of any specific event here...
- If an A-wing fighter managed to find an opening in your shields, all that would be required to deal with the threat would be to intensify forward firepower in a timely fashion.
  - Said battlestation's deflector shield was quite operational when the rebel fleet arrived, and vaporized any unlucky ship who collided with it.
- Ground-based shields, in Star Wars, serve to prevent your force from having the living bejeesus vaporized out of them by orbital bombardment. That forces the enemy into a land engagement which you usually have a better chance of winning—the scenario that took place in The Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars canon has two kinds of shields -- "energy" shields (a.k.a. ray shields) to repel energy blasts, and "particle" shields to repel physical objects. Shields consume a massive amount of energy, though, so if you're shielding something the size of a planet, you generally can only have one. This makes perfect sense in canon, but a systematic failure to explain it at any point in the movies left entire audiences going "What the hell?" when droids casually strolled through the shield that had just repelled tank fire in The Phantom Menace. The confusion, and the length of the above explanation, also explain why so many writers prefer to just make their shields magical barriers that just work.
  - Actually, even without the explanation it would make sense, after all, you wouldn't want to burn your shield out trying to repel the ground now would you? Well except on the rare occasions when you want to get off the ground but the engines are burnt out.
    - this is pretty much the only weakness of droideka (the short, roundish droids with the blue shield bubbles) - they take tons of fire to get through the shields, but knock one over, say with the Force, and boom, they waste all their energy trying to block the ground or a wall.
  - The design of Coruscant's shields were two layers of energy/particle shields composed of hexagonal sections. At any given time both layers would have some number of open hexagons so the constant space traffic could continue while leaving the planet absurdly well protected. The efficacy of this system fluctuates Depending on the Writer.
  - Star Wars shields compare to the Holtzman shield.
- Also of note is that shields in Star Wars just seem to, well, suck. In the original trilogy fighters, even ones that were heavily armored and shielded like the Y-Wing, would explode with one hit from any attack. The battle between the Imperial fleet and the Rebel fleet in Return of the Jedi had ships showing damage from every salvo. The only ship whose shields DID work (even when it was the only system that seemed to be working) was the Millennium Falcon's.
  - This is debatable, and most likely a function of the limits of the FX. All through the battles, particularly in Episode IV, you can see flashes all around the fighters when they are under fire, possibly indicating shots that had been blocked by shields. There's also at least three fighters in the original Death Star battle that take more than one hit to destroy. Red Leader takes one off-screen, takes another in the engine when the scene cuts back to him, and then is only destroyed by crashing into the Death Star. Wedge is hit and has to pull out. Luke takes a hit that blows up R2, but leaves his X-Wing intact.
The invading alien armada from Independence Day have energy shields so potent they can shrug off nuclear weapons without a scratch. Humanity ultimately wins out when a ridiculous plot device (in a movie crammed to the hilt with them) gives the heroes a way to deactivate them.
- A bit of Fridge Logic: The shields failed to activate when Steve Hille's release its parachute and it collide on one of their fighters.
In the 1984 Dune movie, the entire complex at Arrakeen is protected by a single enormous wall-shaped Shield. Gotta wonder how vulnerable that made the complex to lasgun fire.
- This is addressed in the book: The resulting explosion would be too hard to tell apart from a nuclear one, which is forbidden.
  - Somewhere, a physicist is crying.
- Well blowing up the fortress would also mean blowing up Arrakeen itself, and there are not that many Spice-harvesting bases on Arrakis. Talk about destroying valuable assets. Another issue is, what does the shield wall do with high-flying ornithopters ?
  - Going by the events of the movie, fail.
Subverted in Star Wreck: In the Pirkining; the "P-Fleet" ships have shields, but for some reason, they're completely useless in the "Babcom 5" universe.
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part Two. OK, it's a magical defense, but it looks like a shield and acts like a shield, especially when thousands of Death Eaters start firing indirect-fire curses at Hogwarts.
Most film versions of War of the Worlds have the alien tripods protected by energy shields, an update to the story that is necessary to protect them from modern weaponry.

Literature

Frank Herbert's Dune had both personal and ship-sized force fields that were good against fast-moving objects, but could be penetrated by slow-moving ones, could be brought down with a sufficient overload, and which exploded violently if struck by a laser (and so did the laser, so it wasn't a useful offensive effect unless the shooter was suicidal or used an automated gun).
- An interesting effect of the lasgun/shield interaction in Dune is that the explosive power is random, a weak lasgun and shield may produce a giant explosion while a strong lasgun and shield may only destroy themselves.
  - Used to great tactical advantage in the later books, where unmanned shield projectors were placed on the battlefield as booby traps.
- Anyway the whole point of having the shields work that way was so that we could still have swordfights in a laser-gun-technology society. Hence the special fighting style where thin blades are slowed just before contact.
  - It doesn't really make sense even then. People using personal shields are still vulnerable to momentum and Newton's Third Law, meaning that sufficiently powerful artillery rounds could toss them around like rag dolls (killing them in the process).
The Mote in God's Eye has one called the Langston Field, but Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle go into minute detail about how it works in a story collected in N-space. This includes them claiming that they came up with how that technology worked and then wrote the story around those limitations.
- Gets around the above-mentioned Newtonian problem by draining energy from anything incoming. Energy beams are weakened, and projectiles lose kinetic energy and slow down. (Note that this makes the Field a zone around the ship rather than a thin bubble or wall.) The Field absorbs the drained energy, then gradually radiates it outward as heat—unless it absorbs too much energy, in which case it collapses, radiating all the stored energy inward and outward at once, destroying the shielded ship.
Appears in Neal Asher's Polity novels, where they are called "Hard Fields". Unlike most representations of Force Fields, hard fields do not protect against physical force without cost, but instead transfer all the force to the shield generator- hopefully located well away from whatever the field is protecting.
Perry Rhodan has featured a large variety of protective energy fields over the course of the series, quite a few of which were never really explained in detail, but the three 'classic' types used on Galactic ships for centuries are:
- your basic garden-variety 'conventional' shield, which effectively acts as an invisible wall—the safest type to use if you're worried about civilians walking right into it;
- 'high-energy' shields which differ from the above by, aside from having more stopping power, also extending into the fifth dimension, thereby preventing inconvenient teleporters or fusion bombs delivered by the ubiquitous transform cannons from simply popping into existence right inside your ship;
- and the paratron shield, which effectively displaces everything hitting it into hyperspace. Since hyperspace in this setting isn't a place where unprotected objects can exist for long, this generally means that such things either end up in a random alternate universe with usually no way back (if they're lucky) or cease to be altogether.
- As a final point, the series also features literal 'deflector fields'...which actually aren't this trope at all, but rather Cloaking Devices working for the most part in the visible spectrum (they get their name from the way they 'deflect' light around who- or whatever wants to remain invisible). They're seen most often on the personal scale, but can in principle be used to hide larger objects as well; it's just not normally worth the bother because somebody actively looking for those will likely not rely on optical sensors alone anyway and the energy of the field itself is quite detectable.
Also from the mind of Larry Niven: his Known Space series features a "stasis field"—though not technically a "deflector", since it was a field in which no time passes—that can be used for everything from creating a knife (his "variable-sword" is a monofilament cord encased in a stasis field) -- to shielding a ship or spacesuit (see World of Ptavvs). Larry Niven himself once stated that it got to the point where he had to find reasons NOT to use a stasis field as a solution for everything.
In David Weber's Honor Harrington series, the "shields" (referred to as "walls" and "bands" in the novels) actually have a logical basis, given the way they are described to work. The ships have gravity drives; the effect of the drives manifests itself on the "top" and the "bottom" of the ships (called "bands" to differentiate them from the other "walls") -- where the effect is impenetrable. All ships above pinnace size also have "sidewalls"—also areas of focused gravity, though not as strong as the top or bottom walls. A strong enough energy blast can penetrate the sidewalls, though with distortion and a lessening of power—the bows and sterns of the ships are unshielded. Or at least were, until the protagonist's star nation develops "bow-walls". Tactics involves using enough missiles to get past the defenses of the opposing ships and letting loose with nuclear-bomb-pumped lasers. This is all a complicated rationale to have Napoleonic style fleet battles In Space.
- There are also particle shields, which are just what they sound like: energy fields to deflect particles when traveling at relativistic speeds. Civilian grade particle shielding can protect a ship up to .6c, while military grade shielding protects up to .8c. These are generated by the drive systems, so missiles that go ballistic when their drives are out (they either burn out or idle for a while to extend range) can be destroyed by debris and dust if left to coast for too long.
Force fields exist in the Eric Nylund novel A Game of Universe, but they don't seem to be widely used: they've got something better. This is a Magitek universe, so starships have "protective circles": Geometric Magic instead of shields. They still work the same, with the protective circle being drained by attacks and having to be recharged (somehow) over time.
In the Tomorrow War (rather "hard" 'verse) by Alexander Zorich, shields are useful against rays, but not kinetic weapons, which of course makes latter just better. Attempts to strap shields on a aerospace fighter the first time was one of the first book's plot lines, mainly on account of trying to make it work in an atmosphere—apparently, it was "solid" enough to mess up aerodynamics, but not enough to be used as a Hard Light element.
The Bolos series gives the title supertanks 'Battlescreens'. Being military sci-fi, their effects are quite important and are gone into at length: they stop physical impacts cold, destroying the projectiles, but can only weaken energy weapons, drawing off some of the beam power to top up the Bolo's own energy reserves. Various minor details suggest they are actually extremely powerful magnetic fields.
Shields in David Weber's Empire From the Ashes trilogy can block things traveling in hyperspace (like hypermissiles), but hyperspace consists of multiple "bands" that the overall shield strength (a huge energy drain) must be distributed among. Imperial shields consist of one or two solid layers that encompass the ship; if a layer pops, though, the entire ship becomes completely vulnerable. The Achuultani use a number of interlocking and overlapping discs, trading overall strength for redundancy.
Joe Haldeman's The Forever War has the "Stasis field." Only problem is that nothing inside can go faster than 16.3 m/s, rendering most projectile weapons useless, and any living thing not wearing special armor dies instantly when inside of it. Which means that inside of the field, it's a Sword Fight.
- See also the double-layer spacedust repelling field the ships use to enable them to move at relativistic speeds without having to worry about running into much.
If memory serves, the "Heart of Gold" out of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books had a shield at least one inch thick. A Vogon attack with a dozen 30-megahurt cannon just pounds away at it, presumably trying to get through via brute force.
Verner Vinge's Across Realtime books involve a technology akin to Larry Niven's stasis field, called a bobble, which creates a spherical area of stopped time. While the bobble is active, anything inside it is completely unaffected by anything that may happen in the outside universe. The consequences of this technology are essentially the plot of the novels.
In the Wild Cards series The Amazing Bubbles absorbs energy and stores it in her body as fat. She can then release it through bubbles at extremely high velocities. This power makes her Nigh Invulnerable, even to the extent of absorbing a nuclear blast, though she ends up comatose and massively overweight for a long time as a result.
In Dragonriders of Pern at least big colony ships has shields elastic and -- large—enough to bounce away objects at typical meteor speed without turning them to fine dust. However, they have destructive mode as well, just set in deflection mode as more resource saving and obviously safer for shuttles.
Spacecraft in E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman universe were protected by "Battle Screens" that glowed with higher and higher colors of blackbody radiation as they absorbed energy, turning black when they were at last overcome. There were personal shields too. Like the shields in Dune, their resistance increased in proportion to the velocity of the impinging object, which was why Valerian space axes were so common (at the end of Galactic Patrol, Kinnison overcame the Big Bad's shields by using a machine gun that fired heavy, relatively low-speed bullets).
- In fact it was the Big Bad's own machine gun, which had been upset from its tripod and was spewing bullets all over the room, but Kinnison's armour was proof against it and the Big Bad's was not.
- An important point of difference from TV shows such as Star Trek is that Lensman universe ships usually have at least two layers of shields, PLUS a further layer more or less integral with the outer skin of the ship ("wall-shield"), which is tougher than the others. There is also a separate meteorite screen, which is basically a globular tractor beam with polarity reversed, but its usefulness against deliberate attack is essentially zero.
Necroscope: never being ones to think small, Russia attempts to blanket the entire (then) Soviet Union with one of these. Sadly all it does is create an inter-dimensional superhighway to the source world of Vampirism. Oops!
The Isaac Asimov short story "Breeds There a Man...?" features a somewhat more realistic take on it - the shield reflects light instead of being transparent.
In Robert Westall's Urn Burial, both alien races encountered have deflector shields of differing levels of advancement. One race's are of the barely-visible kind and the others create a mirror effect.
In The Chronicles of Professor Jack Baling, a personal one is used at the end of the first episode to defend against Jack’s death ray. It’s “about the size of a fold-up highway map and the color of Windex.”

Live-Action TV

Star Trek has lots of shields and force fields. On Star Trek: Enterprise, we even get to watch these get invented. Enterprise (NX-01) herself did not have shields (except in a Flash Forward), but appears to have had some kind of "navigational deflector" to avoid being pierced by space dust. According to Treknobabble, the solidity of holograms in the Trek Verse is the result of their being surrounded by a highly specialized force field. The abundance of Tim Taylor Technology coupled with the availability of force fields has led some to theorize that, in fact, all Federation technology is held together by tiny force fields.
- NX-01 Enterprise instead had "polarized hull plating" which, though it was routinely charged before a battle, proved almost useless against advanced energy weapons. One wonders just how flimsy their hull would be without its hull plating polarized.
- And as to the speculation, it's arguably supported by canon. Watch Star Trek: Nemesis some day if you dare). Enterprise with shields up? A sizable chunk of Romulan ship just bounces off it. Enterprise with shields down? A few heavy blasts from the main beam weapons of a gigantic Reman supership smash the front windshield.
- The navigational deflector has been a canonical part of Trek since Star Trek: The Original Series, and explains why the ship isn't flayed apart when going exponentially faster than light. It was just never properly mentioned until a certain famous episode in The Next Generation, but ever since then, it stopped being a deflector and became a general-purpose power emitter. You can use it to blast things, hold open or close rips in time, jump-start somebody else's ship, or hell, maybe punch open wormholes for all we know. Voyager briefly goes to low warp with the navigational deflector offline in the episode 'Year Of Hell' and takes damage as a result.
- The novel Federation features a wonderful interplay of cloaking, shields, antimatter containment fields, and Captain Picard that results in Picard taking out a Romulan ship by flying the Enterprise through it, sustaining almost no damage, and watching as the Romulans suddenly stop being there.
- Almost every ship also has a structural integrity field, which holds the ships's structure together, necessitated by the size of some of the larger ships and also to minimise structural stress from acceleration and damage. This, however, qualifies not as a Deflector Shield but as a Reinforce Field.
- There's also an additional field on top of that called an inertial damper - which essentially prevents the crew from turning into blood splotches on wall upon rapid acceleration and deceleration. whenever the Star Trek Shake is employed, this is because the inertial dampening systems are capable of compensating for the ship's movements, but not always for the massive excess energy imparted by weapons fire or impacts.
Blakes Seven called this a "force wall".
Farscape: Energy barriers are rare in the Farscape 'verse, but they do exist. Our heroes salvage one in "PK Tech Girl", though it breaks the very next time they use it.
- There are also the personal force shields they find in that freedom fighter base—they activate only when hit by blaster fire, but then will protect the wearer from pretty much anything, up to and including lava. Unfortunately, apart from one use in the next episode, the few that our heroes manage to salvage are never used again after "I Shrink Therefore I Am," presumably because Axicor had them destroyed the moment he discovered them.
Stargate SG-1: Most spacefaring races have defensive shields for large ships, and these vary greatly in quality from race to race. The Ancients had a force field around an entire city, though it took a honking lot of power. Also, Goa'uld ships use force fields instead of glass for windows. Note that there is also a distinction drawn in one episode between forcefields that work like those on Star Trek (repel everything indiscriminately) and those that work like those on Dune (let slow-moving objects through); both exist in the Stargate universe. One thing about Goa'uld forcefields (that was pretty much always portrayed with continuity) is that they are one-way. Thus, they stop all attacks coming from the outside, but don't impede firing from the inside or launching smaller ships, with no need to open dangerous holes in the shield.
Averted in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica Reimagined where there are no energy shields, just cold hard steel. Which somehow can survive multiple direct contact hits from nuclear weapons. Whatever a Battlestar is made of, it ain't steel.
Babylon 5: The aliens from Thirdspace have those. They had them on ships and on the gate. To go through the gate from one side, the protagonists concentrated fire on the other side.
- While it wasn't stated onscreen, background materials reveal that among the younger races, only the Abbai have deflector shields. Abbai technology isn't really anything special in most regards, but their entire military mindset is based on defense rather than offense, so they're ahead of the curve in this regard.
In the Doctor Who serial The Invasion of Time, the planet Gallifrey was shown to have a large force field protecting it from being attacked.

Video Games

An unlockable ship subsystem in Star Ruler, though not available right from the start. Shields have the advantage of being far, far lighter than conventional ship armor, and will regenerate, whereas only one armor type can regenerate on its own. However, the shields need huge amounts of power to run, and as they run out of shield "health", damage can bypass the shields and hit the ship directly - which could destroy the shield generator, or kill the entire crew.
Independence War ships have a given number of Linear Displacement Array (LDA) shields that can each track one target within a limited direction (the usual arrangement is one shield on top and one on the bottom; the rear is uncovered because they would interfere with the engines) and need some time to recharge after taking a hit. They don't block missiles or other physical objects, though there is an aggressor shield variant in Independence War 2 that can be used for ramming attacks. Because of these limitations, you can't really rely on them instead of dodging every shot that comes your way, but a few blocked PBC projectiles may very well make the difference between life and death.
In StarCraft, anything built by the Protoss comes with a deflective shield that wears off after absorbing a certain amount of damage; although these shields slowly regenerate over time, the player can use Shield Batteries for a quick recharge. The Terrans also have a special skill, the Defensive Matrix, that surrounds a unit in a mostly impenetrable shield (the unit still takes a little bit of damage).
- Also lampshaded when the commander of a Terran battlecruiser (a powerful yet unshielded warship) says: "Shields up, weapons online!"—only to correct himself when clicked again -- "... not equipped with shields? Well then, buckle up!"
Mass Effect: Heavy-duty force fields, of both Prothean and geth vis-a-vis Reaper origin, pop up throughout the game. An amusing interlude occurs when you first find Liara, who has managed to get herself locked inside a Prothean force-field bubble while trying to avoid a small army of geth and krogan mercenaries.
- Starship-scaled Kinetic Barriers are far more common applications of the large-scale version. They allow deflection of debris and mass accelerator rounds, but only up to a certain point. As their name also implies, they're kinetic barriers; laser-based weaponry can bypass them completely but has yet to be developed beyond defensive weaponry.
- Hell, kinetic shields based on the title element zero mass effect are a standard part of a soldier's combat armor. Keeping an eye on your shields is a major part of the game's combat mechanics.
  - They also provide a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Shepard in the DLC "Bring Down the Sky", where s/he startles an armed civilian, who shoots him/her... Only for Shepard to give an amused look at the shot being dissipated by the armor's shield.
The Covenant in the Halo series use energy shields for all sorts of things, from their Elite warriors to their massive starships. The humans also managed to reverse-engineer this technology for their MJOLNIR armor project.
- In the Expanded Universe, deactivating a certain part of a Covenant ship's shields is handy for infiltrating said ship. For example, a common boarding strategy is to blast the shields, then blast the newly exposed ship, destroying that section's shield generator. The Spartans then fly in through the shield hole, and find an opening.
  - This is for like moon-sized ships though. Most ships are small enough that one shield-battery will suffice. Even those however can usually only be overpowered by the EMP of a nuke... poor humanity.
Master of Orion has shields substracting their level from damage dealt by each weapon.
- The series as a whole has the standard deflector shield technology that you can research for your starships, but also lets you build artificial magnetic fields for irradiated planets. Of course you can later upgrade those into full-blown planetary deflector shields.
- In Master of Orion 2 ship design allows devices buffing shield properties, like "Hard Shields" (resists shield-piercing weapons and nebulae, increases level), "Shield Capacitors" (increases recharge rate between combat turns), and "Multiphased Shields" (50% greater shield strength). The shields are segmented into 4 arcs and each turn they regenerate an amount based on the strongest arc, though enveloping weapons hit all four at once. There's also "Personal Shield" technology that gives major bonus in ground combat and boarding.
- Exotic technologies include "Damper Field", which replaces standard deflector shields with an energy field that reduces any incoming damage by 75% and has 50% chance to kill teleporting boarders. "Reflector Field" is compatible both with shields and Damper Field and gives a chance to reflect weapons fire back at the shooter.
The Wild ARMs RPG series features the golem Asgard who seems to specialize in deflector shields. Notably, its shields completely disintegrate anything that touches them when they're on. In the original game, the characters realized that this meant that the golem who supposedly had the Ultimate Defense also had the Ultimate Offense and used the golem to break through another force field around the enemies' base. Later games simply took it for granted that Asgard would be attacking with moves like Barrier Fist and whatnot, and Wild ARMs XF gave Asgard the ability Barrier Storm, which instantly killed anyone standing next to it by doing more damage than your maximum HP.
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time explains ship-based deflector shields has shunting energy to a theoretical dimension based on imaginary numbers.
Shields feature prominently in Supreme Commander, where they were originally reverse-engineered from an alien race by the Aeon, then stolen and copied by the UEF and Cybran Nation. All three factions have powerful stationary shield generators that project a spherical shield around their area, but the Aeon take things a step further with a number of units sporting personal shield generators that conform over the unit. The UEF also gets in on the personal shield idea with their siege bot and Fatboy-class Military Mashup Machine, then adding in a naval-based shield generator in Forged Alliance. The sneaky Cybrans only use shields in stationary defensive installations.
In the old video game Scorched Earth, you have choice between barriers absorbing incoming fire without explosions and bouncy one; the latter deflects missiles away from your tank, but slowly falling ones may still get you - sometimes the shield bubble even ends up filled with napalm. There's also antigravitic umbrella, which blows off course munitions falling from above, but not any good against shots to a side.
Magical force fields protect Ganondorf's castle in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. The only way to get by them is by destroying their corresponding core.
- The trope started with Zelda II the Adventure of Link, in which the final temple was sealed by a magic barrier that wouldn't lower until you had cleared all the other temples.
- The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess also has energy barriers, generated by twilight realm beasts. In certain battles, they prevent you from leaving the Mini Boss arena until you defeat all the creatures attacking you. Sometimes they make it impossible to actually defeat them all at once, requiring that you defeat the out-of-the-way one before taking on the remaining two.
- The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past also had an energy barrier protecting the door to the lair of Agahnim (either Ganondorf in disguise, or a part of him, or just The Dragon), for which the Master Sword was needed to break.
- In The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, the pathway leading to Ganon's tower was blocked by an invisible wall of energy that could only be broken by the fully restored Master Sword.
Similarly, Final Fantasy V has Exdeath's Castle protected by barrier towers. Using slightly more common sense than usual, you only need to shut off one of them to shut down the barrier, not all.
- Final Fantasy XII's cities are protected by a "Paling," a Magick force field projected by a massive crystal in the center of town, that lets travelers pass through but keeps hostile creatures (or attacks) outside. Once the Paling falls, the city becomes vulnerable to assault and invasion—or the stray airship that was just shot out of the sky.
  - Actually the paling was up in that particular event, it's simply that even a paling can't provide adequate protection from a city-sized battlecruiser falling on it.
- Final Fantasy Type-0 is continuing to up the ante, this time with a shield that protects an entire country. Naturally, the barrier generator (a crystal, of course) shatters, kicking off the main plot.
- In Final Fantasy VIII, Lunatic Pandora is protected by a massive energy field... which is promptly pierced by the Ragnarok ramming it. May be justified in that it's possibly an anti-magic or anti-energy weapon shield, and the Ragnarok did have to struggle just to get through it.
- In Final Fantasy VII, the Northern Crater is engulfed by an energy dome that repels any attempt to break in (the Highwind even bounces off violently if you fly into it). It's brought down by a titanic shot of Mako from the transplanted Sister Ray.
- Final Fantasy X's Sin can protect itself with a gigantic spherical force field, which is effective enough to repel, overload, and destroy the Al-Bhed Wave Motion Guns and then expand to disintegrate anything in the vicinity. Strangely enough, Sin fails to use this shield when engaging the party and their airship—though it may have been holding back willingly at that point.
A common feature in the universe of Beyond Good and Evil. There are both large Deflector Shields, designed to protect buildings from airborne attacks from the Alien Invasion, and smaller, personal shields used by both good and evil soldiers to prevent you from damaging them.
Deflector shields, both ship-mounted and man (animal?) portable versions, occur frequently throughout the Star FOX game series.
- In Star Fox Adventures, there are two mazes involving force fields, which basically behave like near-invisible walls (there's a little sparkle to them). One is found in a room after you activate the Quake Pad in the center, and the force field makes up the inner walls of the maze. Your challenge is to get to the exit before time runs out. Another maze also has regular walls, but force fields block your way to the end when you activate the Quake Pad. You have to turn off each one at a switch or by shooting a Blast Board, and most switches are blocked somehow. Again, a timed challenge.
  - Also, floating robots commonly have shields. The ones in Dragon Rock require you to use an Earthwalker horn to disable the generators, and the one in the Krazoa Palace has the unusual disabling method of shooting colored gems through color-changing flames.
Sections of Metroid Prime are sealed off with force fields, especially when it comes to the research stations and the Phazon Mines. Most disabling is accomplished by scanning somewhere, but one goes down when a Phazon Elite punches it.
- Some fields are used to reinforce the glass walls of the Metroid cages. This allows the Pirates to study the Metroid while still being protected from the monstrous life-sucking jellyfish alien. Once you cut the power, however, they start breaking through the glass to attack both you and the Pirates. This happens in all three Prime games.
The World Ends With You has invisible walls that cut you off from certain paths. Some can be disabled by meeting a Reaper's condition; others are just erected, and no condition will satisfy.
In Wing Commander, energy shielding is a regular part of space combat, though unlike many other universes shielding hasn't been miniaturized enough to protect personnel. There's a constant struggle between shields and weapons to penetrate them, with some games having shields impenetrable by anything other than a special torpedo on the larger warships, while other games allow any weapon to cause damage. This is averted in the capital warship game of Wing Commander Arena, where the players are flying fighters that are either attacking or defending huge battlecruisers that have massive amounts of armor, but no shielding to free up energy for their guns.
EVE Online has these on all ships. The Caldari and some Minmatar ships, rely on shields as their primary means of defense (as opposed to the Gallente and Amarr, who rely chiefly on armor plating).
In Sins of a Solar Empire, most ships have this, with absence being the exception.
In Free Space, the Terran and Vasudan ships initially have no deflector shields, and the shielded Shivan fighters are nigh-invulnerable to their weapons. Fortunately, observation of Shivan technology allows the good guys to develop both shields and more effective weapons in short order.
- However, shields do not work in subspace, and the Shivans share this disadvantage. However, it come sup exactly once in the entire single player campaign, so it's not something that can be counted on.
- The Shivan Destroyer Lucifer takes this Up to Eleven. Not only is it the only Destroyer-class warship ever to be equipped with shields, but it's also completely invulnerable against all forms of weaponry.
In Air Rivals, all player-piloted craft have a passive version that basically just gives more Hit Points. There is also a class-specific version that temporarily blocks all damage from missiles, bombs, and rockets.
In Vega Strike, "GraviElectroMagnetic" shields are necessary for any ship, and consume lots of energy, setting the low limit for reactor power. Segmented into 2, 4 or 8 sectors depending on the ship, station or turret type. The main limitation is that shields are disabled by activation of either spatial distortion drive, jump drive or cloak, thus a cheap shot with missile (if it's lucky to not get knocked silly by ECM) or two may kill or cripple a strong enemy who just arrived and didn't recharge shields yet. However, while shields absorb point-for-point disruptors (working on the same principle) and plasma, many weapons (including all kinetics and otherwise weak lasers) partially bypass them.
In the turn-based strategy game Mission Force: Cyberstorm, both HERCs and Cybrids mounted energy shields. An active shield would stop projectiles entirely, but could be defeated with directed energy weapons, notably EMP-based systems.
The Enclave apparently has access to "Photonic Resonance Barriers" in Fallout 3, which they use to block Project Purity and obstruct Liberty Prime during the final mission. "Probability of mission hindrance: ZERO PERCENT!"
Shields are a major branch of research in Sword of the Stars; ships with a "shield" section get a rechargeable bonus to their health. The Liir and Morrigi are experts in their use, while Hivers and Zuul usually have less than 20% chance of getting even the most basic of shielding.
- It should be noted that it may not always be the best solution, as a shield/deflector generator takes up a full third of the ship, making it impossible to place weapons on the front of a shielded ship.
- There are also several different variations of shields. Deflectors create a forward-facing hemisphere that blocks almost any ballistic and missile weapon. Disruptor shields are the reverse - they create a hemisphere that blocks any energy weapon. Torpedoes are stopped by both deflectors and disruptor shields. Standard shields completely envelop the ship and protect against most types of attack but can be overloaded by too much damage (unlike deflectors and disruptor shields). There are other types of shields, including small directed shield projectors, automatically facing the strongest enemy weapon and mounted on heavy weapons hardpoints. Cloaking generators are also in the same research tree, as the principle is similar.
In Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, some units come with shielding. Essentially, this doubles their health, and the shields (unlike, in most cases, the actual health) regenerate.
Freelancer has deflector shields as standard equipment on all small ships. The difference between taking shield damage and hull damage, apart from a loud "CLANNNNNNNGGGGG!", is that taking hull damage also hurts your weapons and equipment, eventually destroying them.
In Elite games, shields are a necessity. Generators are stackable, not segmented and absorb even collision damage.
Super Robot Wars has many, the main ones being Telekinesis Field, which is hard to explain (Basically, it uses the pilot's Psychic Powers to create it), and the Gravity Wall, which erects panels of "hard gravity pockets" which either stops an attack in its tracks, or just takes the edge off of it.
- Ironically, one of the few beam weapons in the Gundam universe that is canonically designed to bypass beam shielding entirely does not exhibit such behavior in SRW.
Used by the aliens in Defense Grid the Awakening: the Bulwark uses them to protect itself, the Spire uses them to protect other aliens near it, and The Juggernaut (no, not that one) uses them to make you cry. Fortunately, Gun and Cannon towers are Super Effective against shields.
X-COM: Apocalypse has shields for both vehicles and individuals.
- According to the UFO-paedia, the Sectopod is equipped with an energy shield that is resistant to plasma weapons, and since it is usually encountered lategame when plasma weapons replace laser weapons, this can be a problem.
- The Grav Shield base facility from UFO Defense and its Terror from the Deep counterpart, the Bombardment Shield. When a UFO attacks a base, the Grav Shield pushes the UFO away to allow the defense arrays to fire a second time.
Galactic Civilizations 2: Dread Lords and its expansion packs allow you to research and equip your ships with shields. However, while shields are great at protecting against various laser and particle beam weapons they provide very little protection against missiles or mass drivers and have a diminishing return on protection against anything other than beam weapons (The actual formula in game uses the square root of the shield power when hit by missiles or projectiles). You need countermeasures to protect against missiles and armor to protect against projectiles.
Star Control has temporary force fields for Yeehat ships (They drain a LOT of energy and go down quick, so you have to time it right), and an energy absorption field (which prevents damage) as the special ability for another race's ship. A third type of ship is surrounded by three smaller ships which are connected by a series of lasers which destroy any oncoming projectiles.
Most vehicles in Battlefield 2142 are equipped with a shield that can destroy rockets and missiles. The shield has to be toggled on manually, lasts for a second or two, and then is inactive as it recharges. It probably doesn't protect vehicles from EMP weapons.
Tyrian features recharging energy shields which draw power from the ships generator to recharge; choosing a weak generator can result in a slow recharge and your weapons cutting out.
Homeworld: Cataclysm, a game of questionable canonicity, features the Sentinel pods, which can project defensive shields when in groups. In order to form a complete "bubble" over the target, 12 Sentinels are required (the game has a max cap of 24 Sentinels). These shields come in three varieties: green (protects against kinetic weapons), yellow (protects against kinetic and missile weapons), and red (protects against kinetic, missile, and ion weapons). Each level must be researched first. Shield sections disappear when overloaded and take time to regenerate. The shields are of a one-way variety, so the protected ship can still fire its weapons. The Sentinels themselves are unprotected and weak, so it is easier to destroy them rather than the shield. Large objects (e.g. ships) can still pass through the shield.
- According to the manual, during the testing of the Sentinels, one of them accidentally sliced through a frigate with its shield, destroying it. Unfortunately, the game doesn't allow you to do that.
- The Homeworld series also features the defense field frigate, which projects a protective energy field for short amounts of time. Its usefulness is debatable though, as it requires a fair bit of micromanagement to actually shield other ships from enemy fire.
The eponymous Perimeter is a dome-like force field players can raise over parts of their bases (or whole bases). It's virtually impenetrable to attacks and incinerates everything that trying to pass through but has a very high energy cost. It also has a unique ability to steal enemy buildings - erect a field-generator close to them, raise the field - vois la!
In the X-Universe series, shields are the only viable defense—hull is very weak and damage translates to very expensive equipment getting destroyed.
A strategic aspect in the original Star Raiders. Although a single hit when the shields were down would instantly kill the player, daredevil pilots would engage the Zylons with damaged (flickering) or destroyed shields anyway just to avoid a time-consuming trip to a starbase.
In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, all of the Schwarzwelt Investigation Team Cool Ships—the Red Sprite, the Elve, the Blue Jet, and the Gigantic—are equipped with a so-called "plasma shield." It's never made clear whether it's a shield composed of plasma or one that protects from plasma (seeing how the Schwarzwelt is, itself, surrounded by a plasma wall that disintegrates whatever it touches,) but not only is it explicitly enabled every time the Red Sprite jumps between dimensions within the Schwarzwelt, but presumably it's what keeps demons from tearing the ship to pieces while the Strike Team commandos are on a mission.
Space Colony has the Space Defence Shield, which protects against meteor showers and volcanic debris.
Project Eden and Descent (1,2 and 3) have shields, but no separate health or armor, meaning the character/player dies when the shield fails.
In War Front Turning Point, one of the Allies' response to Stupid Jetpack Hitler and Soviet Superscience are force field tanks.
Starflight allows the player to manually raise or lower shields, if installed. The reason you don't leave shields raised all the time is that doing so may be seen as a hostile gesture, just like having your weapons constantly armed.
Stars! has shields that recover only between battles ^[3]. Shield generators are very light, but far weaker than armor of comparable Tech Level - of course, often slots are shield-only or armor-only anyway. Beam weapons have lesser range, but are light (allowing greater mobility), always hit and have greater damage - which shields absorb point by point. Conversely, missiles are long-ranged, miss a lot, but shields absorb only 1/2 of their damage (plus 1/8 of damage from missed ones).
- The main advantage of shields is stacking from the whole token (all ships of the same type in a fleet), thus if ship type has shield and if there are enough of them, it takes twice as much to destroy the first one even with missiles. When there are few ships, shields are inferior to armor, which in turn usually is inferior to mounting more weapons (if the slot allows). This have obvious strategical implications: e.g. 1x shield + 2x torpedo destroyers are cheaper and stronger than their 3x torpedo counterpart... but only if you keep them in big enough packs: e.g. with TL 0 shield against TL 0 torpedo (but hull and armor at Construction TL 3) it takes 18 ships to fully use this advantage - neither you nor enemy are likely to have such fleets before a better design ^[4] is available; with shields on the same TL 3 (in Energy) it's 12, and with everything at TL 6, it's only 9 ships. Later in the game both shields get better and fleets grow, so missiles become the main weapon again, despite introduction of both missile jammers and "shield sappers" that inflict even greater damage, but only to shields (and fire before other weapons, of course).

Web Comics

In A Miracle of Science, Mars' "vector technology" functions like this (as well as being able to hold unconnected objects into a rigid frame).
Schlock Mercenary has "unifield shields" that use Artificial Gravity to distort the paths of incoming attacks. Warships invariably use "breacher missiles" that emit a gravity pulse to try and push back. The author expounds at length in a Foot Note about how shields would realistically be best portrayed,^[5] and how he portrays them with a distinct amount of artistic license. He's also suggested that, if he doesn't have time, he would portray them realistically...
The current Inexplicable Adventures of Bob story involves Galatea inventing a force field powerful enough to deflect borfomite beams.
In Drowtales the Sarghress have developed this technique to compensate for being indvidually fairly weak barrier warriors. Done with a more powerful individual here. Although powerful, even she has to upgrade from personal barrier to deflector shield with the help of the two mana specialists behind her (white cloaks) to deflect a cannon ball.
Drive: Mostly averted, but armada ships do have an energy field which vaporizes small debris.

Web Original

Averted in Orion's Arm. Although some in-universe fictional stories refer to clarketech delflector shields which work like this, the jury is out on whether such things actually exist in-universe. Most relativistic interstellar ships are covered in a thick layer of rock in front to deflect debris when traveling at high speeds.
- There are deflector shields but they're active systems that use a powerful laser to ionize particles in front of the ship and then magnetic fields to deflect the ions.
Mostly averted in Tech Infantry, although all starships have standard electromagnetic deflector shields that protect them from micrometeorites and induced cosmic rays when traveling at a substantial percentage of light speed. Some of the larger warships have gravity-based shields created by their gravitic drives, but these are of limited utility, as it's hard to shoot out through a zone of such intense gravity that it can bend weapon beams away or crush incoming missiles.

Western Animation

In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the entire city of Canterlot has a massive magical protective dome.
In Danny Phantom, the ghost shields are used to surround buildings or machines on numerous occasions, but only works against ghosts. Danny, as a half-ghost, has a special advantage against ghost shields in that he can pass them while in human form.
- Which doesn't quite make sense when you consider that he still registers as "ghost" on various equipment whether he's in human form or not... and that he can seemingly use almost all his ghost powers (minus flying) while in human form also.
In Code Lyoko Season 4, the Skidbladnir and Navskids are protected by deflector shields.
The upgraded Technodrome in Turtles Forever has a deflector shield that easily absorbs all the firepower that the military hits it with.
In Transformers Animated, Sumdac Tower has a force-field that can be activated if the building is under attack, though it only comes up a few times throughout the series. While it is the 22nd century, and Professor Sumdac did have Megatron's head in his lab for a while, this is still pretty impressive. The Elite Guard ship can also create one.

Real Life

The British Ministry of Defence is seriously pursuing the development of real deflector shields for tanks. The tanks' armour would contain super-capacitors that store large amounts of electrical energy, and then release it in a brief, powerful blast when an incoming projectile approaches. The incredibly powerful, localized EM pulse would physically deflect the projectile. The capacitor would then rapidly recharge to prepare for another attack. Projectiles as large as rocket-propelled grenades and small missiles could be protected against in this way. The only difference from Star Trek—style forcefields is that these deflectors would work in pulses, rather than running continuously. And they probably wouldn't do much against Death Rays...
It has become apparent that DARPA employs Red Alert fans. You know the Iron Curtain force field from that game? They've made it a reality.
- HOWEVER, Red Alert had it right: the Soviets invented the system in the 70s, and even fielded it in Afghanistan (w/disastrous results - it worked too well, protecting the vehicle, but consistently blowing up shit'n'people all around it). Recently, the Russian army got its hands on version 2.0 (well, more like "dash-M", but that seems to be Russian military speak for 2.0 these days).
Will always come up eventually during playtime for children, going something like this:

Child 1: [Makes a missile sound effect and a boom, imitating it hitting the other child's toy tank/plane/etc]
Child 2: Force field!
Child 1: No force fields!

Personal Shields

Anime & Manga

In Fullmetal Alchemist, one of Father's powers after eating God is to create a spherical barrier around himself which can instantly transmute anything that touches it.
Yomi of Yu Yu Hakusho has a barrier that deflects, and in some forms absorbs demonic energy, although Yusuke gets around this by finally realizing to turn off the demonic transformation and use HUMAN Reiki. I guess Yomi didn't figure humans to be enough of a threat. Also Luka/Ruka in the Dark Tournament arc, when after some foul play by a team owner, she poses as a nurse and traps Hiei and the Masked Fighter behind a powerful, painful-to-the-touch barrier; her main mistake is that the barrier works with her nurse masquerade by HEALING the people inside it, who at this point want to throttle her. It most notably heals Hiei's arm that was damaged in the first round, so she actually tips the entire tournament in the Urameshi team's favor by this accident. She almost dies when Hiei tries to bust out, and wisely leaves the force-field for hire business soon after.
- And technically Sensui's Holy Chi, which morphs into armor after he enters the Demon Plane.
The Mages of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha have Barrier spells which surround their body and absorb incoming attacks. Shield spells also exist, which cover only one side but could deflect attacks that would pierce barriers. There's also "Field" spells that dissipate magic energy within them, as well as magically hardened armor in their Barrier Jackets. Figuring out the right combination of percentage of each at any second during a battle requires an inhuman amount of mathematics and quick thinking. Nanoha spent most of her elementary school time in a DreamScape just for training how to figure the equations required for this and massive, massive Beam Spam.
- And there's AMF. Anti-Magic Field. Dissipates every spell cast inside it or entering it. Practically makes every mage inside it a sitting duck. Only the really strong ones can keep their power inside it, and even they had to improvise to keep their effectiveness.
  - Or the really, really powerful ones can just Wave Motion Gun their way through with brute magical force. Even if the antimagic field is a uniquely powerful one capable of holding off dozens of mages at a time, built onto an anti-planetary spaceship. Especially if the resident villanous Smug Snake is hiding on the other side of the ship (with assorted blast doors and Elite Mooks blocking the way also) while making you fight your adopted daughter. Can you say Dungeon Bypass? One of Nanoha's greatest moments.
Various characters in Dragonball Z can do this using their Ki.
Shows up a few times in later episodes of Magical Project S. Sammy "M-Shield" basically acts as a way to prevent Mana Drain, but the same term gets used for a shield that Romio uses to protect both herself and a device.
The whole idea behind the offensive and defensive moves, used by protagonists of the Kekkaishi anime is force field creation and manipulation. In fact, Kekkai means "barrier".
In Mahou Sensei Negima!, magic shields are depicted as a basic preemptive in combat. Naturally it's sustained by the user's will. That also unfortunately means that (because most force-emitting spells are energy based) psysical type spells require the barrier to be lowered before the spell is activated, that in itself requiring further chanting atop the obligatory barrier-breaker spell arming the already-activating spell.
- Later in the series, mysterious boy-like character (Filius Zect?) was revealed to essentially be the previous group Ala Rubra's Barrier Warrior.
- But it's of little use against Asuna, as first Evangeline, then Fate, then Takane and Gandolfini found out:

Kuu Fei: Asuna's barrier break and my combo are super effective against mages arune.

Magic Knight Rayearth has the spell Cresta, which projects a clear spherical barrier around the caster. Furthermore, Fuu could use her Wind magic to cast Barrier Wind, a shield strong enough to withstand nearly any assault... as long as she's prepared for the attack.
Soul Eater: Shinigami uses skull-shaped shields to defend against Asura, and at one point attempt to crush him into the ground. Kid gets a smaller version through Brew, which he uses to defend against Mosquito's attacks. Stein has a technique—experimental spirit body—which creates a human-shaped shield around himself. Used only once, but it's an example of soul wavelength being used to block attacks. Such is the versatility of souls in the series, it'd be unsurprising if the idea gets used again.
- Also Black*Star and Tsubaki have Shield Star.
Light Shields in Outlaw Star are usually used only by individual people.
This turns up in Inu Yasha to stop his magic sword from slicing and dicing the bad guys. Sometimes he's able to break the barrier with one of Kagome's arrows.
Some Kidou in Bleach are these. Also Orihime's Souten Kashun and Urahara's Bloody Mist Shield.
In Naruto the Hyuuga have the Kaiten (Rotation).
- Pain/Nagato has two similar abilities, one destroys any jutsu by spinning energy and the other is a gravity blast.
Komachi/Cure Mint gains the Emerald Saucer when she gets her power upgrade in Yes! Pretty Cure 5. Yuri/Cure Moonlight has something similar in Heartcatch Precure.
Witches create personal shields in Strike Witches. This becomes an important plot point when Mio can no longer create them due to her aging as a witch.

Comics

Sue Storm from the Fantastic Four was originally just invisible, but she quickly gained the ability to produce force fields as well, making her extremely powerful.
Brainiac 5 of the Legion of Super-Heroes compensates for not technically having any offensive powers by having an impenetrable personal force field which he invented for himself. The animated version doesn't have one, but as he's a transforming robot he probably needs it less.
- In the original, '60s comic Legion, Brainiac 5 didn't so much create the force field belt as recreate the force field technology used by his "ancestor", the original Brainiac. Said shield was so powerful that even Superman couldn't punch through it, making Brainiac one of the first villains to be effectively capable of going toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel.
- Vril Dox, or Brainiac 2, also has a force field belt, albeit a much less advanced one.
Deflector shields are one of the many many things a Green Lantern Ring can create.
Songbird from the Thunderbolts can create pink solid-sound energy constructs and often use them to shield herself and others.
One of many explanations for Superman's Nigh Invulnerability is that he somehow has an invisible force field just above his skin. This also handily explains all the spandex. If he wore regular clothes, they'd just get shredded when he fights. This goes double for Kon-El Superboy, who uses Tactile Telekinesis to deflect anything that comes his way.
- This was explicitly the defense of Starbrand of Marvel's New Universe, but he can control how far out it extends or turn it off, which meant he didn't have any problem getting his hair cut, or need a special costume.
Jean Grey of the X-Men commonly use telekinetic force fields to protect herself and her teammates. Presumably other telekinetic mutants are capable of this, as well. Magneto is capable of creating powerful force fields using his powers of magnetism that are strong enough to protect him against attacks from multiple superheroes, nuclear weapons, and allows him to survive in the depths of space.
Thor can create "dimension disruptions" with Mjolnir to protect himself or his allies.
Nick Fury's tech division experimented with personal energy fields during the late sixties, always with near-disastrous results for the volunteers involved. Oddly enough, most of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s opponents seemed to have perfected the technology without any casualties whatsoever.
During a time when his iconic shield was lost in the Atlantic, Captain America (comics) was provided with a photonic energy shield by Sharon Carter. Said shield, in addition to being an energy facsimile of his regular shield, could even be converted into various other forms, which included: a bo staff, sword, and even a larger force-shield. Unfortunately, the photonic shield didn't have the ricocheting ability that the regular shield had.