This week is the 4th of July, which means Americans all around the world will be celebrating AMERICA DAY! This timeless tradition is filled with firing explosives into the air and then hiding as they rain down from the sky while drinking a bunch of alcohol, and, of course, roasting the flesh of dead animals on charcoal until the skin is crispy enough to tear through with our flat, herbivorian teeth.

Naturally, this is as good of an excuse as any to count off our favorite flamethrowers in gaming. Because freedom. Because grilling. Because America.

Well, obviously we'd need to include a flamethrower from a Wolfenstein game, and though the one found in the most recent supernatural Nazi-killing shooter was neat (and sported the name Flammenwerfer), it's not as memorable as the one from 2001's Return to Castle Wolfenstein. This fairly traditional flamethrower is one of the oldest ones on our list, and though it really doesn't have any special qualities, it does allow us to roast us up some Nazis. That's not a unique characteristic, mind you (it's not even the only one on this list), but it certainly helps its credentials.

Also helping their case is that fact that, for some reason, they're considered "silent" weapons, which means you're able to take down enemies without attracting the attention of nearby foes . This makes sense, in theory, but that all falls apart when you imagine the horrified screams of the person you've lit ablaze. Sure, it's not a "bang," but we wouldn't describe it as a whisper, either.

How do you want it cooked: Medium.

Treyarch decided to take a "war is hell" approach to the campaign for Call of Duty: World at War, which meant bringing the gritty, disturbing side of the Pacific theater to life in digital form. Part of said Pacific theater involved soldiers running around islands with tanks of gasoline strapped to their backs, melting the flesh off of their enemies. One mission, entitled Burn 'em Out, attempts to replicate this, with the player going from nest of enemies to nest of enemies, torching their foes with powerful blasts of death.

The Greatest Generation sure got their hands dirty.

It works its way into the multiplayer, too, as well as showing up in the Nazi zombie levels as a powerful one-hit-kill attack.

How do you want it cooked: Medium-well.

StarCraft's firebats are some of the coolest units in the game, trotting around the battlefields in giant mechanical suits of armor and sporting dual Perdition flamethrowers. Now we know what you're thinking: two flamethrowers? Is that really necessary?

Ha! Just kidding. We know you're not thinking that. No one has ever thought that, because their dual torches are absolutely awesome.

Besides simply looking cool, their insane obsession with fire makes them hard not to love/be frightened for. Blizzard wrote some disturbing dialog for the Firebats, including some lighthearted phrases like "Need a light?", and, well, stuff like this: "Fire washes the skin off the bone and the sin off the soul. It cleans away the dirt. And my momma didn't raise herself no dirty boy." Um. Ok. We're... going to go over here and hide now.

How do you want it cooked: Medium, but two at once.

One of the initial hooks for the original Dead Space was the game's improvised weapon system. The protagonist didn't fly into space locked and loaded with rockets and machine guns to battle alien-zombie-monsters with - he thought it was just another day on the job - so he'd sort of had to make due with whatever he could find on site. This meant using a weaponized plasma cutter to blast enemies from afar and a spinning blade to cut them down at medium range.

And up close, Isaac could use the PFM-100 Hydrazine Torch flamethrower, because apparently flamethrowers are super important on futuristic mining spaceships. Lucky, right? Otherwise Isaac would have been screwed when attacked by a swarm of small foes trying to climb into his suit and eat his flesh.

How do you want it cooked: Seeing as it's typically used for welding, we're going to say "well."

It was only recently that we got a glimpse behind the mask of Team Fortress 2's mysterious Pyro - the last class to get the "Meet the..." treatment. Apparently, inside of his (or her) head, everything is sunshine and rainbows. But even before we knew about the Pyro's strange mental state we loved it for what it was: a crazy psychopath with a bunch of awesome flamethrowers.

And yeah, we're sort of cheating here by choosing all four of the Pyro's flamethrowers, but whatever - they all serve the same purpose: allowing us to now only burn enemies to a crisp, but to torch our allies as well. No, we're not teamkilling, we're "spy checking," a time-honored tradition where Pyros will blast supposed allies with a gentle puff of flame in order to expose them as either a friend or a a spy in disguise.

How do you want it cooked: Medium is fine, but... oh, you're just going to keep burning it? You are. It's actually just gone now. So...yeah. Um... so...

There's nothing special or supernatural about the LPO-50 flamethrower in Far Cry 2. It doesn't have some mysterious cool ability or awesome function - it is as plain a flamethrower as it can be. But while the item itself isn't special, the world it exists in is. Far Cry 2's world is flammable, from the dry, windswept grass to the wooden shanties that populate the world. Usually, video game flamethrowers are just light enemies on fire. In Far Cry 2, they light the world on fire, too.

And because of the openness of the game, you're able to do amazing things with some gas and a match. You can light a brush fire near a building and swing to the other side, waiting to flank the now-trapped enemies. You can also light a fire near a box of ammunition, causing the bullets to heat up and discharge, firing every which way (usually into the chests of enemies). It's likely the most realistic flamethrower in the game, and using it is both frightening and awesome.

How do you want it cooked: Medium rare, but it might light the yard on fire, too.

No, we're not stretching the rules, you're stretching the rules. Seriously, how could you look at the Fireflower power-up and now consider it to be a flamethrower? It literally gives Mario the ability to throw flames! It counts! Shut up! You're stupid!

Anyway, yeah, Super Mario Bros. (and every other Super Mario _____s) Fireflower makes the list for a bunch of incredibly obvious reasons. It's one of the first flamethrowers in gaming, it's the most unorthodox (seriously, bouncing fire?), and it's the one we most wish we had access to.

Yeah, a giant, gasoline-filled backpack with a lighter seems fun, but that's an enjoyment we could technically have in the real world. A magical flower that gives us clean-as-hell white duds, fancy gloves, and the ability to toss orbs of magma the size of our head at people that piss us off? That's a flamethrower we can get behind.

How do you want it cooked: Actually, could we make it a portobello burger? We're feeling like mushrooms all of a sudden.

Odds are you have a few flamethrower favorites of your own that didn't make the list. Hell, you might even think we forgot about them, or *gasp* left them off intentionally just to troll you! Rest assured that isn't the case, but if you feel adamant enough about missing flamethrowers than please, by all means, leave us a note in the comments below. Go ahead, don't be shy.

And if you want to hear more patriotic yarns, check out the top 7 games that kicked America's ass and the top 7 worst video game presidents.