Yeah! Shot



A common trope in animation, but known to occur in live action. The main characters of the cartoon run towards the camera and jump in unison, putting on their most ridiculous smile and holding their hands in the air. Sometimes a bright light inexplicably appears behind them. The scene freezes while they're all in midair and is used as a splash screen for something. May or may not combine with a Pastel-Chalked Freeze-Frame. Frequently an ending. In more realistic works, the characters might freeze while doing something we would actually expect to see in our own lives, like joyously hugging or throwing their hats in the air. (Or, at the other extreme, the characters might self-consciously milk the trope for all its humor by doing something funny, such as flashing the "Ta-da!" or "jazz hands" gesture at the audience.)

This trope was ridiculously common in movie endings in The Seventies. Rocky did it most famously, but it managed to sneak into the endings of more serious films too.

Likely as often as not nowadays to be parodied or deconstructed, usually with Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress coming into play.

Not to be confused with the YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Shot.

Advertising

 * Used in a Toyota ad from The Eighties.

Anime

 * The opening of Burst Angel ends with a freeze frame of Amy, Jo, Meg and Sei jumping from a building.
 * This is also how Haunted Junction ended.
 * Ganbalance de Dance in Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, twice. This was repeated when Yes! Precure 5 redid the song, again twice.
 * Speed jumping out of the Mach 5 in Speed Racer.
 * Used in at least one One Piece ending.
 * The opening of Daimos.
 * Ojamajo Doremi was fond of those.
 * Haruhi-chan's opening and ending have these.
 * Gundam Seed Destiny ends with one of these, nicknamed "Flawless Victory" by fans who were miffed that Kira Yamato and friends managed to defeat the military force of an entire nation without so much as scratching their Humongous Mechas' paint jobs.
 * Pokémon used this in the Battle Frontier season twice: once at the end of the intro song, and again at the episode splash screen.
 * Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle does this in the final shot of the second season.
 * Used in a few episodes of every season of Digimon.

Film - Animated

 * Shrek 2 ends with one of these.
 * The Tom and Jerry movie of 1992 ended with a circle freeze of the two title characters.

Film - Live-Action

 * Rocky, when Rocky and Adrian hug, the crowd around them cheers, and the Crowning Music of Awesome plays.
 * The first Charlie's Angels movie
 * Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
 * Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy plays with this by not freezing and just showing what this looks like in action.
 * A somewhat less-cheery variant shows up at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
 * Every single title picture of High School Musical features one of these.
 * The Breakfast Club features one of these from Bender at the end.
 * Flash Gordon ended with one of these.
 * The Jean-Claude Van Damme Street Fighter movie does this as a Shout-Out, which each character doing a version of their Win Pose from the game, just after Bison's castle collapses.
 * The Langoliers by Stephen King. The book ends with one as well.
 * Slight subversion at the end of Newsies, the final song of the movie, with the beginning of the credits rolling, is a series of groups of news boys dancing in front of the camera before clearing the stage for the next group. At the end, a lone Newsie runs out and does a big leap into the air, freezeframe, several minutes of credits pass... and then at the very end, Gravity ensues as the kid lands like a sack of potatoes. THUMP
 * Big Daddy: The former ne'er-do-well protagonist, now having reformed his childish ways and become a responsible adult, gets treated to a buffalo-wing buffet for his birthday by his wife, sister-in-law, former roommate (the sister-in-law's husband), and two college buddies. The final shot freezes as all these characters grin over the spread, giving the impression of a boisterous family portrait. (And just for laughs, the sister-in-law greedily reaches for a wing just before the freeze.)

Live-Action TV

 * The made-for-TV-movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Langoliers.
 * Season 1 finale of Robin Hood (BBC).
 * Miami Vice.
 * Parodied in Thirty Rock.
 * Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had this at the end of the first episode and at the end of the two-parter "Doomsday" saga, with the team putting their hands on top of one another's hand, then jumping up, shouting "POWER RANGERS!". Granted, the "Doomsday" one was meant to have been the end of the series, but you all know how that went...
 * Parodied at the end of A Bit of Fry and Laurie's Australian soap opera sketch, where instead of freezing the frame both actors hold their wacky poses and facial expressions throughout the episode credits, visibly wobbling as they get tired.
 * Done by Sherlock Holmes of all people, at the end of Granada's adaptation of The Second Stain, but with skipping and "wa-heey!" instead of "YEAH." He then turns into a drawing of himself.

Tabletop Games

 * Magic: The Gathering: Used in a photo from the official coverage of Day 3 of the Pro Tour: Dark Ascension tournament; it's a group shot of the Top 8 all in mid-jump.
 * Not shown: Kibler's infamous tiger hat.

Video Games

 * The First-Person Shooter Wolfenstein 3D did this at the end of the first boss level after you beat the big chaingun dude Hans Grosse, and again after you beat Gretel Grosse, Hans's sister, as well as on any custom map including an endgame tile.
 * Used in the Subspace Emissary in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, mainly by Mario, Link, Kirby, Yoshi and Pit. They appear up a cliff when some Mooks try to attack some other smashers, and after an Asskicking Pose they all jump and the camera freezes. This image of the characters (still looking triumphant) becomes the character selection screen. There are similar shots during the entire storyline, but this one is the most notable.
 * Preceded by the intro of Melee, which included a fast camera pan and Yeah! Shot of all of the Pokemon up to Pokémon Gold and Silver.
 * The MMORPG Asheron's Call is a unique case that lets you make your own: by using the emote command @atoyot, your character jumps into the air with a raised arm, and freezes there indefinitely until you press any movement key.
 * Sonic Heroes has this as its title screen and, disappointingly, its ending. Which is likely a reference to the old Genesis / MegaDrive games, where the character would do this at the end of the game. It also got used in Sonic's story of the first Sonic Adventure.
 * Beating an opponent in Xmen vs. Street Fighter will cause the background to fade to black, your character to freeze frame on whatever animation they're doing at the moment, and a large X or Z to frame around them. Particularly cool if you are Cyclops or Wolverine.
 * Golden Sun: The Lost Age does this prior to the end credits with the two main characters and Kraden.
 * Jabless Adventure ends with Jables giving the princess a high-five. Iris Out, roll credits.

Web Comics

 * Appears in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, with the Doctor and Judy using an explosion to highlight their high five.

Web Original

 * The short-lived video series Captain S had one of these at the end of its first two episodes, following the line "Let's all get shakes!"
 * Pictured above is a machinima of Half-Life: Hero Beggining, proclaimed by La Résistance after their leader declares war on the Combines.
 * The second episode of Mega 64 ends with one of these.
 * Seems to be a common theme in wedding pictures that appear on Wedinator.
 * One Rooster Teeth Shorts sketch revolved around one of these, followed by the participants' increasingly panicked reactions to the fact that they're all frozen in midair
 * Lyle and Dexter in Sanity Not Included's Season 1 finale, only with a High Five instead of a "Yeah!"

Western Animation

 * Filmation's Ghostbusters did this on a regular basis.
 * "Go, Team Venture!" (Both Lampshaded and played straight, depending on the episode of The Venture Brothers.)
 * Used at the end of the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Band Geeks" with Squidward, and at the end of The Movie with Spongebob.
 * Lampshaded by South Park in "Chickenlover", when it happens twice with Officer Barbrady. The first is the apparent culmination, when Barbary has learned to read and delivers a one-liner that now that he's solved the case, he's going to "curl up with a good book", and he gives a thumbs-up and freeze-frames, cheesy music blaring. But no one else is freeze-framed, and they all stare puzzled at Barbrady before eventually all just wandering off. Later, in the actual conclusion, Barbrady comes to the conclusion that reading is awful after plowing through Atlas Shrugged and deigns to never read again, causing a cheer among the boys, and on this, they DO genuinely freeze-frame in the Yeah Shot.
 * Family Guy:
 * Parodied in one episode, where at the end of an instructional video the pair of newscasters said "yeah," jumped in the air and froze at the appropriate moment.
 * Parodied again in the episode "Stewie Kills Lois" where three people jump merrily and freeze after hearing healthy facts about Total cereal.
 * In "Business Guy", Peter does the Yeah! Shot, can't get down, freaks out, and tells Lois to call a scientist.
 * In the A-Team episode, Peter and his friends, after shooting down a tree to rescue a kitten, have a celebratory freeze frame...until the owner of the tree screams at them to get off his property.
 * When the censors told the staff of Invader Zim they couldn't just kill a kid at the end of a certain episode, they had him awaken from his wreckage and do one of these instead. Complete with cheesy guitar riff.
 * Done with the Darings at the end of The Replacements episode "The Majestic Horse".
 * Fish Hooks: FRIENDS!
 * Tuff Puppy does this at the end of each episode. In the pilot, the characters are flung into the air by an action-y event, and freeze in mid air to put goofy faces on. This then becomes a photo on a case file/end title.
 * Jimmy Two-Shoes: Jimmy does this twice in one episode, freezing in mid-air. However, no one else does, and they're left wonder how he does it.
 * Fairly Oddparents: Lampshaded in an episode, when they do the shot, someone asks when they are going to unfrezee, and someone else says "a few more seconds..."