"The music [in the game] is right out of the movie! I don't know which movie, because this level sounds like I'm being attacked by Danny Elfman and Tim Burton."
Nothing quite beats an orchestra for a battle, especially an aerial one. It may involve Ominous Latin Chanting or Autobots, Rock Out!, or both. Due to the feeling of epicness such music gives off, it is often reserved for the Final Battle/Final Boss; you are far less likely to hear it used for the Warmup Boss.
Compare Music to Invade Poland to, Fanfare, and Classical Music Is Cool. Contrast with Classical Music Is Boring. If the music is too loud, better hope you have Steel Ear Drums.
See Xylophone Gag for when someone makes an actual bomb out of a musical instrument. Has no relation to Explosive Instrumentation.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Haruhi Suzumiya had its space battle episode (the Shout-Out to Uchuu Senkan Yamato) employ this trope with Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony. Fittingly, the "training" course that they went through was set to the almost-comical, waddling march at the end of the first movement.
- High School D×D's soundtrack is surprisingly full of this. Highlights include Vali Lucifer's leitmotif "Saikyou no Sonzai"
as well as some of Issei's heroic themes such as "Ishi", "D No Ishi", and "Shouri".
- In turn, the Jupiter part was used in Hunter × Hunter when Bonolenov uses his "Jupiter" attack—as Bonolenov is a Dance Battler, there is perhaps no better song to use.
- Invoked in Kill la Kill, wherein Nonon decides that the upcoming battle between Ryuko and Tsumugu is a perfect opportunity for band practice. Later, in her one-on-one fight with Ryuko, she takes this trope as literally as it possibly can be, right down to nuking the battlefield with weaponized music.
- Legend of the Galactic Heroes lives and breathes this trope. Of course, it helps that the entire soundtrack is made up of classical orchestral works.
- The first movie has an entire battle set to Ravel's Bolero.
- Macross initially averted this trope, but later installments went really wide with it. Examples include Horobi no Uta from Macross Zero's final battle and several other tracks from Macross Frontier.
- This musical style is in full effect during Nanoha's final battle with Fate in the first Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha movie. Better yet, the first half of the heroine's revised Leitmotif is strongly reminiscent of Gustav Holst's Mars, the Bringer of War. Specifically, the part which John Williams also borrowed for the very first space battle in Star Wars: A New Hope...
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 REALLY likes orchestral music during major battles. Sometimes with Ominous Latin Chanting and/or a One-Woman Wail, sometimes without them.
- After War Gundam X does it in the Cold Open of its very first episode, as background to the Class 3a Apocalypse How that sets up the rest of the series. One-Woman Wail and Ominous Latin Chanting included.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn has the eponymous Unicorn's leitmotif.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion loves this trope, so much so that it has fell victim to Memetic Mutation: "[stuff happens] while Hideaki Anno plays unfitting music". Two examples are Shinji vs. Kaworu (Ode to Joy) and Asuka vs. MP Evas (Bach - II Air).
- There's also Asuka getting Mind Raped by Arael while Hideaki Anno plays Handel's Hallelujah in episode 22. Also, the end of said scene in the Director's Cut has Rei nailing Arael with the Lance of Longinus with the end of Handel's Worthy is the Lamb in the background.
- And it's still not done yet: while the original series was no slouch in that department either, Rebuild 3.0's use of Ode to Joy is FUCKING EPIC.
- In One Piece, when Luffy finally gets to multi-punch the ever-living crap out of Crocodile, part of Antonin Dvorak's New World Symphony (specifically, the first part of the fourth movement, "Allegro con fuoco") plays. It fits the scene surprisingly well.
- Shakugan no Shana pumps out a booming orchestral score often mixed with Ominous Latin Chanting to give it an unbelievable powerful presence. This got especially true in the third season. Being hammered out by the same guy who did the Shadow of the Colossus soundtrack, this is to be expected.
- The music is as important a character as any other in Space Battleship Yamato. The various series and movies do not hold back on the score during battles.
- The Strike Witches OVA has the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin play during the training battle. The song is also used as background music in some promotional videos. In the show itself, there's Battle of the Witches (Witch no Tatakai) from the first season and Attack! (Shutsugeki) from the second.
- The Vision of Escaflowne loves this trope to itty-bitty little pieces, usually combining it with Ominous Latin Chanting.
Fan Works
- Parodied in the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, when it is revealed that a long-ago Quirmian general, when he got round to launching an invasion of Far Überwald shortly after ten past six one evening, took an orchestral composer with him to chronicle the glorious invasion in music. Public performances of this piece were generally very lively indeed, until the percussion sections realised it was perhaps best not to load the siege weapons and to only charge the Barking Dogs with blank rounds. One conductor lamented the slaughter and destruction done to lots of expensive and hard-to-replace musical instruments during one early performance, when the technical problems of the production were still being ironed out. The Just After Ten past Six Overture is still played on the Disc - but very carefully.
- Contact at Kobol has an has an Invoked version, in which the Tau'ri set a propaganda video of their bombings to the 1812 overture and send it to the Colonial brass. Except that the last bombing is a live missile feed of the Colonial government's secret bunker.
Films — Animated
- In the canyon chase sequence of Rango, Ride of the Valkyries is played. On banjos. Note that the banjos are in-universe: they're being played by an army of hillbilly shrews as they chase the heroes on the backs of bats.
- Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave does this with the porridge shooting run, as an homage to films like The Dam Busters.
- The War to End All Wars – The Movie: In several of the film's battle scenes, gunfire and artillery shots are timed to the drumbeats of the song in question.
Films — Live-Action
- 633 Squadron, possibly the Trope Maker. Scored by Ron Goodwin.
- Aliens uses this a lot, particularly in the ambush of the Marines as they enter the hive and Ripley's escape with Newt from the exploding atmosphere processor.
- Apocalypse Now has a quite literal example, where "Ride of the Valkyries" is blasted over the speakers of the choppers as Kilgore's forces attack a village controlled by Viet Cong.
- Literally in A Song Is Born, as a rousing rendition of "Flying Home" manages to cause a drum to fall on one of the villains, knocking him out (after "The Anvil Chorus" failed to work).
- Avengers: Endgame provides the best example in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though the orchestral Avengers theme had been used in the previous three Avengers movies during climactic moments, when past Thanos's forces invade Earth for the Iron Gauntlet, the ultimate version of the theme plays as heroes arrive through portals to aid Captain America in fighting against them.
- The Battle of Britain has William Walton's Battle in the Air
- Although Ron Goodwin's main theme and his "Luftwaffe March" from that movie fit the trope much better.
- Jerry Goldsmith's epic score for the war film,The Blue Max, highlighted with the cue, TheAttack.
- Goldsmith probably outdid himself with another epic one for the medieval film First Knight: Never Surrender.
- Goldsmith probably outdid himself with another epic one for the medieval film First Knight: Never Surrender
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe used this, though that was part of the movie's proper score.
- The Dam Busters, with music by Eric Coates.
- Used during the Earth-Shattering Kaboom at the climax of Damnatus.
- Several examples from Starship Troopers, most notably Klendathu Drop, from the scene where the Fleet and the Mobile Infantry launch their first assault on Klendathu.
- Star Trek examples:
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture gives us the Klingon theme in its opening scene ("Klingon Battle") contributed by Jerry Goldsmith. V'Ger's theme, played on an instrument called the Blaster Beam, also features in the same scene.
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan has both the new Trek theme by James Horner, along with Khan's, both of which come to a head in "Surprise Attack" and "Battle in the Mutara Nebula''.
- Star Trek III: The Search for Spock reprises the theme from the last movie and features the new, percussion-heavy Klingon theme by James Horner, which would return for a Moment of Awesome in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Defector".
- Averted in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home which features no aerial or space battles, and no shots fired in anger. Besides, the music by Leonard Rosenmann was decidedly Lighter and Softer.
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, for all its faults, has the return of Jerry Goldsmith and his Klingon theme, with the screech of a real Bird-of-Prey mixed in, mainly heard in the track "With Out Help".
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country brings Cliff Eidelman, who contributes yet another Klingon theme, which provides the score for "The Battle For Peace", where the crew of the Enterprise frantically try to stop a conspiracy from destroying the last hope for universal peace.
- Star Trek: First Contact has "Red Alert", where the Federation fleet takes on a Borg Cube headed straight for Earth. Jerry Goldsmith reprises his Klingon theme as Worf's Leitmotif.
- Generations calls extra attention to the score as the scenes repeatedly shift between barely audible soft music as Picard tries to sneak into Soran's work area on the surface, and the blaring battle music as the Enterprise battles the Klingons in space, and the resulting crash landing due to damage.
- Used in Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie. With tons of Ominous Latin Chanting. More than justified, since it has an hour of nuclear explosion footage.
- Happens quite literally in V for Vendetta, where the titular V plays Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" over London's public address system when he blows up the Old Bailey and the Houses of Parliament.
- The World's End has a unique variation during the brawl at The Beehive, when the epic orchestral fight music gradually kicks in, in sync with Silver Bullet's "20 Seconds to Comply".
Literature
- This shows up a few times in Honor Harrington:
- In Honor of the Queen, Honor has Hammerwell's 7th symphony played shipwide during the first battle of Yeltsin.
- One of the Havenite commanders uses "Ride of the Valkyries" as their general quarters signal.
- In Small Favor, Hendricks and Gard (who happens to be an honest-to-god Valkyrie) perform a Big Damn Heroes with an attack helicopter to "The Ride of The Valkyries", with Hendricks riding shotgun... with a Mini Gun.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5 used this in every space battle, to cover the (unique for SF shows at the time) absence of sound in space. The opening and closing themes also count.
- Farscape: The destruction of Scorpius' command carrier featured orchestral music and Ominous Latin Chanting.
- The Pilot Movie of JAG has this in its final aerial battle scene.
- Spoofed on Monty Python's Flying Circus in a sketch that shows an orchestra in a field playing the "Blue Danube Waltz." For no particular reason, in each successive musical phrase another musician blows up. A long sketch on a recorded comedy album, Monty Python's Matching Tie and Hanky, builds on the TV sketch and escalates it into all-out insurrection causing a major air force to be sent in to bomb the orchestra into submission.
- Mythbusters recently had some fun with this trope in their Top 25 Special showing off their various explosions to the 1812 Overture.
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- Whenever there was any kind of fight sequence, whether it was between people or spaceships, it would be accompanied by the most over-the-top, bombastic music imaginable. In fact, they often did this even when there was no fighting happening, like say when an ambassador boards the ship. This was a critical element of the series' Narm Charm and really complemented the acting style. It was sadly missing from most of the later series - compare the scoring to the very same fight scene in "The Trouble With Tribbles" and DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations" for a perfect example of this.
- No Original Series score exemplifies this trope quite like the scores for "Amok Time" (by Gerald Fried) and "The Doomsday Machine" (by Sol Kaplan). Cues from both scores would go on to be reused throughout later episodes, with the cue "Ancient Battle" from the former being commonly known as the Star Trek Fight Music. The music from both episodes was even included together on one soundtrack album.
- Ron Jones was probably the best among the composers for the sequel series at using this in his scores (see "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2" in particular the track "Intervention", for a perfect example). Too bad he left TNG during the fourth season. The main reason was that Rick Berman hated this trope, and wanted the music to be strictly part of the background of the show, like wallpaper.
Music
- The 1812 Overture itself! To quote Calvin and Hobbes:
"Gee, and I thought classical music was boring!"
- Two words: Cannons firing. That's not a glib comment; that's actually part of the musical instruction. Yes, the piece, when properly performed, actually uses cannons as part of the orchestra. Ya know, since the 1812 Overture was originally written to mark Russia valiantly defending Moscow against Napoleon's seemingly unstoppable horde. Which makes it even more awesome!
- Richard Wagner's Prelude to Act III of ''Lohengrin'', has become something of a Standard Snippet for air raids. Likewise, Ride of the Valkyries for a bombastic assault. It was used in Apocalypse Now for a very good reason.
- Gustav Holst wrote the "Mars, Bringer of War" segment of The Planets suite before World War I had started, but it depicts the brutality and scale of its mechanized warfare brilliantly. John Williams certainly had it in mind - see the ship chase at the opening of Star Wars Episode IV.
- Ludwig van Beethoven was probably the first one to use the trope. His Eroica Symphony opens with two full orchestral chords, to underline this point (Timpani included). His overture "Wellington's Victory" plays it even more literally, with the score calling for muskets and artillery sound effects to represent the battle.
- Richard Strauss's "Ein Heldenleben" ("A Hero's Life") has an impressive battle sequence, beginning with a hostile fanfare and leading to leitmotifs dueling amid assorted orchestral fireworks.
- Symphony No. 1 (In Memoriam Dresden, 1945) is a piece written to represent the firebombing of the German city of Dresden by the Allies in 1945. The first three movements are fairly slow and ominous, but the fourth, aptly entitled "Firestorm", pulls out all the stops. Trombones are made to imitate the sound of bomber engines, an air-raid sired blares, drums placed all around the stage are slammed to mimic the impact of the bombs, band members scream in German - it gets intense.
Recorded Comedy
- Monty Python's Flying Circus develops a sight-gag TV sketch into a longer piece on a recorded comedy album, Monty Python's Matching Tie and Hanky. This builds on the theme of a TV sketch and escalates it into all-out insurrection causing a major air force to be sent in to bomb the orchestra into submission. The sketch is based on a typical somewhat stuffy and highbrow Radio Three presentation of an orchestral concert. It involves a prima donna violinist who persists in doing to his instrument - and other people's instruments - what Peter Townsend did to guitars. Then the violence starts to cascade as the Radio Three announcer (Michael Palin) dutifully commentates.
Theatre
- Cirque du Soleil:
- KÀ has its iconic Battlefield number.
- Volta has the aptly titled "Battle of the Man", played during the climactic aerial straps duel in the Hall of Equals.
- KÀ has its iconic Battlefield
Video Games
- Ace Combat uses this trope repeatedly:
- Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere uses Ominous Latin Chanting whenever you fight an XR-900 Geopelia or an X-49 Night Raven. Yes, these planes are just that superpowered.
- Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies uses Agnus Dei (preceded by a brief verse of Rex Tremendae) for its final mission. The result? Pure awesome.
- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War also creates a uniquely fresh trope from this; the Ominous Latin Chanting from the game's Razgriz theme "The Unsung War" are in fact a Vulgate Latin translation of the Razgriz prophecy, quoted earlier in the game.
- Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War (the final mission music of the game of the same name) combines that with Spanish flamenco. Seriously. One of the few sightings of Ominous Latin Chanting's elusive cousin, Ominous Spanish Castanets.
- Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation departs from this to a degree, through the use of a Rather Depressing Boy's Choir. It also plays it straight at the same time, however, with the Liberation of Gracemaria.
- Ace Combat: Assault Horizon gives us Release.
- In Asura's Wrath, the battle between Asura and Augus is accompanied by the final movement of Antonín Dvořák's "From the New World".
- The World War II Battlefield games, first with 1942, and then 1943.
- Bayonetta 's later levels go all out on orchestral music and choir, to match the scale of what's going on.
- Beyond Good & Evil has a powerful soundtrack that is completely downloadable on the web. The very first fight that Jade has involves a big stick, several aliens and a choir of pissed-off angels singing background for her. The final fight took it to the next level.
- BioShock. When you place the third (out of four) picture in the art collab, the already unstable Sander Cohen freaks out and, in a fit of instability, orders his henchmen to kill you. Cue the Moment of Awesome as you beat the living crap out of splicers who seem to come out of Hammerspace. You'll be symphonizing a bloody massacre while Waltz of the Flowers blares throughout the studio for minutes, though odds are that you'll be done by 2:44.
- Bramble: The Mountain King uses this to great effect in its Final Boss fight against the titular monarch, playing the titular music. It utilizes Variable Mix as well, with the music's tempo, complexity and bombast picking up as the battle progresses and the fight grows more frantic.
- Bungo to Alchemist's OST consists entirely of orchestral, classical-like music and this extends to battle themes, which are as energetic and pounding as they're elegant and classy, and can get pretty intense in the case of the boss theme. To and chi shelf themes subvert this by starting to incorporate the koto, a decidedly non-orchestral instrument.
- No matter how bad the Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight was, and how the soundtrack is completely different from previous installments, anyone had to admit this: When you playing as GDI, and some action starts, THIS is freaking epic. Too bad it's just about only epic thing from game officially entitled "epic conclusion of the saga".
- Company of Heroes does this on a regular basis, one minute the music can barely be heard as your troops move around the village or pass a few bushes and blaring you with Trumpets and a wide assortment of instruments the next as your tanks get blown to pieces by rockets or shells raining down from heaven as if the sky was crashing down.. In short, as the action heats up the orchestra start doing their thing, and it is Awesome.
- Every Dark Souls game ever. Fighting fallen champions and ancient gods will warrant some Ominous Latin Chanting and intense orchestralised murder.
- This is the music during the Exterminatus scene in Dawn of War II.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has the themes "One They Fear" and "Watch The Skies", which play every time a dragon shows up. The former in particular is an insanely epic reworking of the main Elder Scrolls theme featuring Ominous Dovahzuul Chanting and bombastic brass.
- The soundtrack of Elemental Gearbolt is all orchestral, all the time and the gameplay is all aerial battles, all the time.
- Several of the battle themes from Fallout 3, especially Battle 5, aka "Behemoth", which plays, as its name suggests, when you’re battling one of the five Super Mutant Behemoths.
- Fallout 4 goes ahead and just gives you a classical music radio station so you can make just about any situation in the game run on this trope.
- The Hoover Dam theme in Fallout: New Vegas. Double points when the Boomers commence their bombing run on whichever faction you're fighting against.
- Every Final Fantasy game ever.
- Advent Children's version of One-Winged Angel has this, Ominous Latin Chanting, and Autobots, Rock Out!!
- Bhunivelze's theme in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is an orchestral air raid.
- Final Fantasy VII Remake reimagines the original game's boss theme, which was an example of Autobots, Rock Out!, as an orchestral piece that is utterly bombastic in comparison.
- Fire Emblem:
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses has "God Shattering Star", one of the series' most bombastic final boss themes with thunderous orchestration and operatic vocals for the Golden Deer route's final fight against Nemesis.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses has "God Shattering Star"
- Guilty Gear is more well-known for its heavy metal than orchestral music, yet Guilty Gear Xrd's rendition of Ky's classic theme "Holy Orders" (which only plays when Ky's ponytail is undone) proves that not only does the series do orchestral music well, but that pairing it up with heavy metal makes it even better.
- In Guts & Blackpowder, 1812 Overture plays during Catacombes de Paris' finale, as an absolutely massive horde of undead approaches an evacuation site. The supporting cannon fire and Notre-Dame's bell ringing are even in beat to the music.
- Halo. The original trilogy has some particularly notable examples, such as "Brothers In Arms/Follow Our Brothers", "On/Behold A Pale Horse", "Drumrun" (during the escape from Halo: Combat Evolved's "The Maw"), "Earth City" (its rollicking and irregular rhythm fits with the movements of the Scarab Walker in Halo 2), "Delta Halo Suite: Leonidas" (heard in Halo 2 during the gondola rides on "Regret", and again in Halo 3 during the air battle on "The Covenant"), "Blow Me Away"(during the climactic battle on 2's "Gravemind" mission), "This Is Our Land", "This is the Hour" and "Finish The Fight" (the music in the original Halo 3 advertisement).
- The Halo Theme, naturally. It becomes even more bombastic in Halo 3 as "Greatest Journey" (the final escape theme) when Martin O'Donnell swapped out the first game's synthesizers with a live orchestra.
- Homeworld: The Burning of Kharak is set to a choral version of Adagio for Strings, with the lyrics to Agnus Dei. A double-whammy. Click here for the version used in the game.
- If you can play through that part of the game without crying you aren't human.
- Then it comes back during the truly epic battle of the final mission. Rebel reinforcements arrive to take the pressure off your fleet and start driving a hole through the Emperor's defenses, sacrificing themselves while giving you the chance to strike back For Great Justice. Hell yes.
- Kessen and its sequel Kessen II. Kessen in particular was one of the first games ever to have a full orchestral soundtrack, performed by the Moscow International Symphonic Orchestra, so it was almost nothing but Orchestral Bombing. Kessen III, the last of the series, also has some bombing but uses Genre-Busting for most battle themes.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising, in just about every flight sequence and several land sequences as well. Boss fights lean more towards Autobots, Rock Out!, though.
- Kirby:
- Kirby Super Star is the first non-spinoff Kirby game released on hardware capable of handling this trope, and the composers leapt at the chance with Marx's battle theme.
- Kirby's Return to Dream Land has the theme of the final boss fake-out, Landia, doubling as Sad Battle Music. The actual final boss, Magolor (Soul), uses this for his second phase's theme, CROWNED. The former also serves as the first phase of Galacta Knight, before switching to a remastered version of his own theme.
- Kirby: Planet Robobot plays with this with VS. Star Dream, used for the first phase of the final boss in question. It only seems to be partially orchestral, as Star Dream is struggling to emulate previous final bosses.
- Kirby Star Allies has Void Termina's theme, "The Star-Conquering Traveler," which is an orchestral remix of the Recurring Riff ''Song of Supplication.''
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a subversion. Fecto Elfilis's theme, "Two Planets Approach the Roche Limit", starts out with Ominous Pipe Organ, choir, and soaring strings... but after a minute or so, it turns into an elaborate jazz fusion piece that combines all the orchestral elements with pianos, intricate percussion, slap bass, and even electric guitars as Kirby gets closer to defeating the boss.
- Kirby Super Star is the first non-spinoff Kirby game released on hardware capable of handling this trope, and the composers leapt at the chance with Marx's battle theme
- The soundtrack to Legacy of the Void makes liberal use of this trope. Standout examples include:
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Much of the soundtrack is quiet and understated to fit the theme of you wandering a huge, mostly empty world all on your own. Whenever you're in combat (particularly with a boss monster), trying to shut down a Divine Beast, or especially storming Hyrule Castle, things get much more rousing.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has this trope in spades, fittingly enough coming from the same music team behind the Galaxy games. While the overworld themes are surprisingly low-key (with the exception of the Sky theme), the boss themes in particular are particularly bombastic. The overall theme, Ballad of the Goddess, starts with a solo Harp of Femininity (appropriately enough), and after about 45 seconds launches into epicness.
- In the final mission of Mass Effect 2, the score goes all out. First, there's the epic uplifting music during the space battle, then the score goes all out for the finale to bring the already awesome mission to a breathtaking close.
- In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the final boss fight takes place in a field of white flowers and has a 10-minute time limit. If you have not defeated your opponent by that point, you both get killed in an airstrike. The fight starts with no music at all, but after 5 minutes an instrumental version of the games main theme, which you have heard several times at that point, starts playing and you know that if you haven't won by the final note, you'll be dead.
- In Monster Hunter: World, Bazelgeuse's theme is a bombastic piece evocative of old warplane and bombing propaganda videos. Considering its main method of attack being carpet bombing its preys with exploding scales, this fits all too well.
- Mount & Blade: In the Napoleonic Wars mod, you get artillery to fire at the enemy. You also get troops that carry nothing but musical instruments to play for morale. The rest of the equation is up to you.
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps prominently uses this during its escape sequences and boss battles, notably Mora the Spider, Corrupted Kwolok, the Sand Worm chase, and the Final Boss Shriek.
- Pikmin 3 uses orchestral music for particularly large-scale boss battles, a pretty sharp contrast from the lower-key, atmospheric themes heard in the rest of the game (and series).
- Subverted by Psychonauts, which has the lighter portions of the 1812 Overture playing during the Napoleonic board game level.
- Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time allows the player to invoke this at will once they come across the game's Infinity +1 BFG, the RYNO V, as the gun in question plays the finale of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture for as long as it's fired.
- Resident Evil 5 has a full orchestra for Excella as Uroboros Aheri's boss fight, Jill's boss fight, and Wesker's boss fights.
- In Senran Kagura, the Gessen girls' themes are arrangements of classical music:
- Yumi: Requiem Mass in D minor, by Mozart and Piano Sonata No. 8 (Sonata Pathétique) by Beethoven for Shinovi Versus, and Requiem Mass in D minor (the Lacrimosa portion) and Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals (Aquarium) for Estival Versus.
- Murakumo: Scythian Suite Op. 20 (Dance of the Pagan Monster), by Sergei Prokofiev.
- Tozakura: Piano Sonata No. 14 (Moonlight Sonata), by Beethoven.
- Shiki: The Four Seasons, by Vivaldi. Interestingly, "Shiki" literally means "Four Seasons".
- Minori: The Nutcracker Suite Op. 71a, by Tchaikovsky (Specifically, "Russian Dance") for Shinovi Versus, and Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals for Estival Versus.
- Serious Sam: The Second Encounter has you traversing the game to various music score ranging from atmospheric ethnics to rock remixes of Jingle Bells. However, the final level is a massive showdown set to this.
- In Shadow of the Colossus, all of the music is orchestrated. It also only starts playing when you encounter the Colossi.
- In the helicopter rail shooter level of Soldier of Fortune II, the pilot decides to play "Ride of the Valkyries" as a Shout-Out to Apocalypse Now, but the stereo is destroyed by gunfire.
- Later games in the Sonic the Hedgehog series have embraced this trope for their final boss battles, using orchestral versions of the games' main themes. These include Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)’s arrangement of His World, Sonic Unleashed’s arrangement of Endless Possibility, and Sonic Colors’ arrangement of Reach for the Stars, all of which also add electric guitars for good measure. While it's been noticeably absent for most Sonic final bosses post-Colors, this trope came back with a vengeance in the The Final Horizon update for Sonic Frontiers, with THE END's first phase blasting an intense orchestral rendition of I'm Here.
- Splatoon 2 busts out the live orchestra for the final battle against DJ Octavio and a Brainwashed and Crazy Callie.
- Spongebob Squarepants Battle For Bikini Bottom's Final Boss music is this.
- Every single Star Fox game. The original game and Star Fox 2 distinguish between stages on planets (except for Venom) and stages in outer space with techno for the former and orchestra for the latter, but later games drop these contrasting styles.
- Super Mario Galaxy's soundtrack is 90% orchestrated (same for the sequel), and has this all over the place in varying degrees, but the best examples would have to be every single Bowser battle theme. Melty Monster Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy 2 is downright magnificent in all its orchestrated glory.
- Given the huge number of remixes and styles incorporated in the Super Smash Bros. series, pure statistics alone dictate that a ludicrously epic orchestral piece will be playing in the background at some point. Super Smash Bros. Brawl has Final Destination, which is both this and Ominous Latin Chanting.
- The action themes in the later Syphon Filter games.
- The Tales Series is full of them.
- TinkerQuarry's battle music is an epic orchestral theme simply titled "Attacked".
- In Transformers: Devastation, the Final Boss battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron is an arrangement of the game's main battle theme — itself, an example of Autobots, Rock Out! — with an orchestral backing.
- An orchestral version of Beyond The Bounds plays during an epic air siege in Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner.
Web Comics
- Freefall has a literal Orchestral Bombing. Orbital Bombardment in D Minor.
- High School Lessons: The Basketball Chamber Orchestra specializes in playing horror music to psyche out the opposing team.
Web Video
- Joueur du Grenier tends to use the finale of the 1812 Overture to accompany scenes of Stuff Blowing Up, such as blowing up a bar in Terminator II (commenting on how time-travel movies usually make an effort to minimize violence in the past) or the Difficulty Spike in Rambo.
Western Animation
- The intro theme music for Batman: The Animated Series does this perfectly, with the booms and flourishes matching up perfectly with the action on-screen.
- Castlevania (2017) does this with the second season's siege on Dracula's castle. For bonus points, the theme used is an orchestral arrangement of "Bloody Tears" from the games.
Real Life
- During the first BLACK BUCK mission during the Falklands War, one of the crew of the Vulcan wondered where the orchestra was. They did play the theme from Chariots of Fire on the way home.
