In the real world, explosions are lethal. Let's assume, for a start, that the blast doesn't vaporise you or blow you limb-from-limb. If the pressure-wave doesn't kill you (instantly) by turning your organs to mush or dashing you to pieces against something, all the things and bits of things (shrapnel) thrown by the blast can kill you all the same. These aren't usually chunks of rubble big enough to punch your guts out through your chest^note those can smart a bit, mind but rather little shards of (sharp) stuff travelling fast enough to bury themselves in your brains. Even if you survive the pressure-wave and the shrapnel, there's a real chance you'll just plain bleed to death from the internal and/or external wounds those two gave you. That's assuming the heat-wave isn't enough to (instantly) cook your internal organs either or sear enough of your flesh from your bones that you'll die of blood loss. Never you mind the effect of all this on your hearing, i.e. perforating or just plain damaging your eardrums (perforation may well render you [totally] deaf for life). Merely seeing an explosion can be harmful, as some (e.g. thermonuclear) explosions are so bright they cause blindness — which can even be permanent if you're close enough.

It should come as no surprise, then, that their lethality means that explosions are used in modern warfare. Numerous explosive weapons are used to kill infantry; there exist anti-personnel grenades, anti-personnel mines, mortars, and shrapnel/high-explosive artillery shells. These blow people apart and/or pulp them with shrapnel, which causes them to die of shock or blood loss. Most countries don't bother stocking less-lethal or non-lethal explosive weapons, e.g. stun ('flash-bang') grenades — such weapons are only useful in very specific situations which involve Special Forces (such as in hostage situations).

In fiction, however, an explosion just gives you a bit of a push or shove and may cause a bit of singeing. Also, if you fall over, your clothes might get dirty.

Cartoons aimed at children are the most blatant offenders (with Looney Tunes characters able to survive dynamite going off in their hands) but this shows up in almost every medium and genre. This raises the question of why anyone even tries to use them (or, anything, for that matter) as weapons at all, if they're so harmless.^note The answer, of course, is because explosions are pretty.

An interesting variation occurs in more serious but still censor-neutered cartoons where airplanes and helicopters explode. They'll have people in parachutes coming out of the explosion, completely unharmed. A piece of advice: in Real Life, you have to eject before it explodes.

Some movies will feature similarly neutered explosives; rather than killing people in the blast radius, they transform people into stuntmen who are then pulled into the air by cables while going Aiiieee! Often it's possible to survive such a device even if standing a few feet from the detonation point, as long as you're jumping through the air in the opposite direction.

A similar behaviour can be seen in many video games, where fragmentation grenades typically have an incredibly small blast radius after which the lethal wall of burning-hot shrapnel they create simply vanishes. Some games (mainly multiplayer ones) even allow players to survive grenades going off right in their faces or even direct hits from rockets — albeit just barely — as a way to prevent explosives from being Game Breakers. It goes even further in games where every enemy and object dies with an explosion and where Post-Defeat Explosion Chain phenomenon is common as the explosions caused in that manner are outright harmless. Sometimes explosions are so harmless they can be actively invoked as a propulsion system. In strategy games, explosives may deal less damage to infantry than they do to vehicles as a form of Competitive Balance.

Often a source of Amusing Injuries. Compare to the Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke, for a bomb that should be much more destructive than it actually is.

Sub-Trope of No One Should Survive That!. A Super-Trope of Ash Face, where an explosion leaves a character with nothing worse than a blackened face, and Explosion Propulsion, where they're harmlessly Blown Across the Room.

See also PG Explosives, where explosions are fatal, but don't result in gory messes like they otherwise would.

Examples: