Soft Particles

Not too much actually coding knowledge here, but I do think that the actual coding physics of making a shader that looks for fast "particle-esque" changes in the screen space and attempts to soften, squish and mirror the bottom AKA horizontal plain (most importantly, although this would make a good setting toggle if you want to bother with calculating vertical probably causing more false triggers) of what it thinks would be a particle effect that is clipping could be easily achievable with nothing but screen space, with some occasional false triggers as a worst case scenario.

Thus effectively creating "soft particles" in games that have none.

Feel free to berate me for being a coding idiot and how this absolutely would not work...