Motorcycle Jousting



Motorcycles are often treated as the modern day equivalent of horses. Some works take this an extra step and have the protagonist engage in jousting from the back of a motorbike. While a motorcycle goes much faster than a warhorse (~12 MPH in a charge), characters doing this virtually never have a lance rest (or even have a lance equipped with a grapper) and will lose about half the energy it could have delivered into the target, so the actual damage on target isn't that much greater. This is probably just as well as properly couched lances tend to break fabulously even at horse speeds, not to mention the toll of forcing that impact into the human body in the first place.

Sister Trope to Air Jousting.

Anime and Manga

 * In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, Shigure once does a motorcycle joust against an armored horseman.

Comic Books

 * In keeping with their theme, the Knight and the Squire (England's equivalent of Batman and Robin) have lances they use from the back of their motorcycle steeds.

Film

 * The movie Knightriders is all about this.
 * Fred in the live-action Scooby Doo movie rides a motorcycle to duel a knight ghost.
 * Indiana Jones charges a Nazi motorcyclist using a flagpole as an improvised lance in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
 * Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer do it in Watch Out, We're Mad
 * In a variant involving cars, in Herbie Rides Again there are people who are called Knights and who dress in wacky costumes who joust in one scene.
 * In another variant, Quick Change gives us a bizarre (and apparently lethal) bicycle jousting scene. Loomis panics and yells that "it's bad luck just seeing a thing like that!"
 * At the climax of Mission Impossible II, Ethan and the Big Bad do this.
 * RoboCop 2. Alex Murphy has a joust with Cain: Murphy on a motorcycle, Cain in an armored car.

Literature

 * Used for an Establishing Character Moment for one of the Bohemians in Matt Ruff's Fool on the Hill.

Live-Action TV

 * Doctor Who: The Doctor has a motorcycle jousting match against one of the Bannermen in "Delta and the Bannermen".
 * Disney's Jessie did this as well.
 * Happens in the Wizards of Waverly Place episode "Graphic Novel".
 * One American Chopper episode had them doing this in pairs, though one was on a scooter.
 * An episode of Sliders features this as part of a parallel universe that seems heavily inspired by Mad Max.

New Media

 * Unconfirmed Darwin Awards nominee: two guys, fighting over a girl, jousted on motor scooters and died.

Tabletop Games

 * Shadowrun 1st edition supplement Shadowbeat. In the Combat Biker game the Lancebiker player carries a 2 meter long lance that he can use against other players.

Video Games

 * This occurs as a minigame in Full Throttle.

Western Animation

 * The Simpsons did this once, in an episode where Homer won a motorcycle in a steak-eating contest.
 * There's a pair of Star Wars: Clone Wars episodes (Chapter 4 and Chapter 8) in which Obi-wan Kenobi and a platoon of clone lancers do this against IG lancer droids and the bounty hunter Durge, on speeder bikes.