Home Run Hitter

Home Run Hitter describes the act or capability of one character to strike a blow so powerful that it literally knocks the opponent or target Out of Sight, Out of Mind, usually leaving A Twinkle in the Sky. Usually reserved for The Big Guy but occasionally other characters may have this trait, especially cute little girls. Named of course for the ability of many baseball players to knock a few outta the park!

Compare Megaton Punch, the unarmed version of this type of attack.

Not to be confused with Batter Up, which may or may not be related. Not at all related to a web cartoon with a similar name.

Examples of Home Run Hitter include:

Video game examples

Adventure Games

• During the final sequence of The Secret of Monkey Island, LeChuck's punches send poor Guybrush flying up into the sky. An over-head "Blimp Cam" shows Guybrush at the peak of the arc.

Fighting Games

• The Home-run bat in the Super Smash Bros. series has this effect when used with a Smash attack, complete with a very satisfying "KRIIIIIING!" sound upon a successful hit.
  • Although Smash attacks in general can have this effect if the target has suffered enough damage.
    • Arguably, this Trope is the whole point of the entire game.
    • It is the entire point of the game. You don't win by hitting your opponent, you win by hitting them so hard that they fly off the edge of the screen!
  • Actually, you don't even have to hit them hard. Just make it impossible to get back to the stage. It's the entire philosophy behind shine-spiking.
• Gamof Gohgry from the games Star Gladiator and its sequel, Plasma Sword, has a super move that will knock his opponent off into the extreme distance as well, and ending with A Twinkle in the Sky, though some timing is required to master the move.
• Featured in the Street Fighter EX games, with Cracker Jack and his baseball bat. The victim bounces off the moon and lands behind you.
  • Makoto's Seichuzen Godanzuki in Super Street Fighter IV.
  • Pocket Fighter not only allows you to bounce your opponent around the screen, you could hit them so hard, they'd orbit the Earth before crashing back into the arena.
• In Eternal Fighter Zero, this is one of Rumi Nanase's Final Memory moves, the "Big Bang Hitting Method", in which she tosses her opponent in the air and delivers a huge home run hit. It's potentially the game's most powerful attack. She also has a normal version called the "Rapture Full Swing."
• Rival Schools' Shoma, as a baseball player, naturally has this move. He has two variations of it; a simple wind up and swing super move, and a Combination Attack where his partner sets up the victim for the swing instead.
• In Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 the version of Naruto wearing the green suit of Gai and Lee has an ultimate Jutsu which shows him punching his opponent through some clouds to twinkle in the sky.
• Power Stone 2 has this with the tennis racket weapon. One smack is powerful enough to send people flying high into the air and bouncing all over Invisible Walls.
• Quite a few moves that score a counter-hit on an opponent in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody either send them flying across the arena in roughly a half a second or send them roughly 50 feet into the air. Yes, there was an notable knock-back boost in IaMP, but here it's just plain absurd.

Beat Em Ups

• The PS2 beat-'em-up God Hand has several of these attacks, such as Dragon Kick, 100 Fists, and the aptly named Home Run God, in which the main character Gene summons a divine baseball bat and swings for the bleachers. Unfortunately, enemies return just as quickly as they disappear if they still have health left, making these techniques best used for finishing blows.
  • Hell, it's even in the game's theme song: Dragon kick your ass into the Milky Way!
• The mace in the old Beat'Em Up game Vendetta would do something similar, especially if there was a back wall opposite the fourth to send the victims into.
• In Dungeon Fighter Online, the Exorcist skill "Star in the Sky" tosses the opponent into the air, catching them on the way down with a powerful swing of his giant weapon. At full charge, the user screams out "Home run!" on impact and any poor soul caught in the attack is knocked well off-screen.

First-Person Shooters

• In Fallout and Fallout 2, if you hit an enemy hard enough, he'll get knocked backwards and slide across the ground. If he goes far enough, he'll slide right off the visible map.
  • In Fallout 3, people's heads can fall off rather far. Potentially by bullets.
  • Fallout 3's downloadable content adds the Gauss Rifle as a weapon. It's horrifically slow to fire compared with a lot of the other energy weapons, but on a reasonably strong hit it will knock any opponent in the game a long way back and throw them to the ground so hard it takes them several seconds to get up. That includes twenty-foot-tall Behemoths.
• Knock-back effects are common in Team Fortress 2. Engineer sentry guns have a heavy knock-back on hit; an enemy that jumps over one can be propelled so high into the air they'll leave the sentry's range, or at least their body will. The Pyro's flamethrower has a compressed-air blast that will knock enemies back considerably, which has a few tactical uses. The straighter example of the trope is the Scout's unlockable "Sandman" bat. Its taunt is a One-Hit Kill, and one that launches the victim's rag doll a fair distance. There is even an achievement for sending the corpse hurtling 25 meters! The normal strikes with the bat don't do such a thing.
• Potentially available in the Mass Effect games, particularly to the Adept class. Hitting an enemy with a Lift/Pull followed by a Throw (with maximum boosts to biotic power and Throw) can send the hapless enemy literally out of sight. Particularly impressive and useful in outdoor combat environments, especially on Illium in Mass Effect 2.
• Dead Island is more a FP Survival Horror than a standard FPS, but it does have the Homerun Bat developer's mod weapon, which if properly aimed will literally hurl zombies in the great azure - or at least far enough away you'll have trouble seeing them.

Platformers

• Princess Peach of all people does this to Bowser at the end of Super Princess Peach. With an umbrella. Why did she need Mario to save her in the first place?

Role-Playing Games

• Auron from Final Fantasy X has as one of his earlier learned Overdrives "Shooting Star" which if performed correctly is a Home Run Hitter and will knock most opponents out of the fight.
  • Barret from Final Fantasy VII has a similar limit break.
  • Final Fantasy also has plenty of monsters that can remove party members from battle, although most often it isn't a physical hit that does it. In fact, in Final Fantasy VI, the most common example was... "Snort", which blew the hapless party member away, with Typhon/Chupon being the most known user of the technique. Final Fantasy VII has Midgar Zolom perform a tail smack which knocks party members out of battle, and that's one of the two instances in which it happens in that part. Quistis in the eighth part has a spell Degenerator which also banishes enemies from the battle, although by throwing them into some kind of a portal or something.
• Joachim from Shadow Hearts: Covenant can learn an ability like this from The Great Gama, which blasts his opponent into the stratosphere. In order to keep it from being used against him, the player has to equip an item that protects from instant death attacks.
  • From The New World lets Curvy Hilda learn the same attack... and when facing Bonus Boss Q the Great (Joachim himself), protection from instant death is again required.
• In Persona 4 Chie Satonaka has a follow-up attack named "Galactic Punt" which can launch enemies into the sky. It is a one-hit kill for regular enemies.
  • And bosses! While most bosses fight alone, a handful have sidekicks that fight alongside them. If you knock over these, either by pinging elemental weakness or getting a lucky critical hit, there's a chance Chie can use Galactic Punt on the boss, instantly winning the fight. It's the best follow-up attack in the game, but it's not quite a Disc One Nuke, as only a couple of early end-of-dungeon bosses have sidekicks, but you can bypass some arduous early-game fights that way.
  • Actually, all main bosses get the attack Galaxy Kick, which is the same move, sans launch.
• In Skyrim, giants are usually peaceful, but won't hesitate to smash players who mess with them into orbit with their clubs

Third-Person Shooters

• In Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels, the adrenaline pill would turn the player into this.

Turn-Based Tactics

• The Baseball Bat from the various Worms games. It's even accompanied by the Charge music and Baseball-themed Bond One-Liner if you knock 'em into the drink.
• This is how Mao loses the keys to the Getter Mao to Fuka in A Promise Unforgotten. Then again, he was trying to get his hands on Desco...
  • Fuka also has two unique skills, usable in battle, that play with this. One where she uses a baseball bat to smack a bomb into someone's face, and the second involves placing three targets onto the bases of a baseball field and tackling them out of the park. (and then she casually walks from third to the home plate, scoring an actual home run)

Non Video Game Examples

Anime and Manga

• In Naruto, Tsunade can do this with a flick from her finger.
• Asuna does this to Evangeline using a thrown boat as the bat in Negima!?, the Gag Series of Mahou Sensei Negima.
  • The Manga has Kotaro launching Mei out of the Tournament Arc arena by using the air pressure generated by his punch.
• Fate does this to Jail Scaglietti at the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, swinging her BFS like a baseball bat and sending Jail flying hella far with the flat of her blade until he crashed into a wall. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese fanbase gave the scene the Fan Nickname of "Home Run".
• In the third season of The Slayers, Filia launches both Gourry and Zelgadiss into a ricochet up a bell tower/up a street of houses, respectively, using her massive mace. They, of course, fade into A Twinkle in the Sky.
• Excel Saga has a lampshaded example that included the victim shouting, "I'm heading for the Vanishing Point! Look for the twinkle!!"
• Dageki Joi Saori is a Manga where the Doctor combines this trope with Healing Shiv. Get knocked a few miles away and fix whatever's ailing you!
• In Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!!, Sento, the male protagonist, often hits Plug and Arresta with a baseball bat. Like the trope mentions, they often go flying when he does it.
• Orihime Inoue, from Bleach, pulled this off on Kon, leaving him a twinkle in the sky. Though it wasn't intentional, since she was busy playing a game of her own invention, named "Yakka", a baseball/soccer combo.

Comic Books

• Occurs in a Hulk standalone mini-series, where Doc Samson dares Hulk to hit him, offering him the first punch. The path his flying body describes could best be called a projectile arc...
  • He does it again during the World War Hulk arc. Hulk's response to an annoying D-lister who describes herself as "practically invulnerable"? Punting her like a football and deadpanning "Go be invulnerable in Jersey."

Web Original

• The website Busy Street invoked this trope in the first of their videos dedicated to adding tropes to their page; the person in question launched was a 6 inch high Batman action figure.