Acrophobic Bird: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Raditz:''' Damn it... And there was no way I could've gotten out of there...

'''Piccolo:''' You know, you could've flown.

 

While escaping danger, a character who can fly will never think of the quickest way to avoid a pursuer: fly ''up''. They will just fly very quickly... right in front. Worse yet, they may ''run'' instead of flying at all.

This is more frequent if a character is around others who can't fly, as it's [[Forgot About His Powers|the only way to create a real sense of danger]]. Flying up only occurs when the danger does likewise.

 

 

Compare [[2-D Space]] and [[Water Is Air]].

 

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Nagasarete Airantou]]'' a bird being chased realizes that he can fly and the humans can't and promptly goes airborne. He muses over why he didn't think of that earlier when he looks down and remembers that ''[[Double Subversion|he is acrophobic]]''.

* Mew Mint in ''[[Tokyo Mew Mew]]'' occasionally fell victim to this, but she usually did fly up, probably because the enemies could too. We do, however, have the water-controlling, underwater-breathing porpoise-girl Mew Lettuce, who rarely ''uses'' these powers, unless she has no other choice... because she really is afraid of drowning.

** Worse would be Misty's Psyduck, a Water-type platypus that doesn't know how to ''swim''. Likely for the [[Rule of Funny]], as it's implied this specific Psyduck is just that stupid.

* In ''[[Peter Pan no Bouken]]'', the characters are unable to fly once they reach Neverland, making it that much easier for the writers to put them in danger. The exception is Peter Pan himself, who completely averts this trope by flying ''all the time.''

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* [[Image]] Comics heroine Blacklight has flight powers—and acrophobia.

 

== [[Eastern Animation]] ==

 

* The 1998 movie version of ''[[Godzilla (film)|Godzilla]]'' featured the eponymous lizard chasing attack helicopters through the streets of New York. The helicopters fly around the streets, being caught one by one, but never pulling ''up'' and flying away from it...

** Helicopters fly forwards faster than they can climb, due to the added push from the forward momentum. Climbing not only taxes the engine more, but it bleeds off your forward momentum and slows you down. If you are trying to climb straight up, from a stationary position, the ascent is slower still. Bottom line, if you have a 300 foot mutated iguana chasing you at 200 mph, moving forward is the fastest way to put distance between you and him/her (or whatever they determined that thing was). However this doesn't excuse the fact that they flew that low to begin with, in fact it would be easier to get a shot on the monster from a high angle where buildings wouldn't give it so much cover.

* ''[[Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus]]''. A fighter is ordered to fly lower so its equipment can pick up the giant octopus. The pilot has time to give a [[Big No]] before [[Helicopter Flyswatter|a tentacle swats him out of the air]].

* ''Stealth'' features an extremely silly scene where two of the super-stealth fighters are chasing the rogue UCAV through a dangerous canyon; the end result is that one of them crashes, killing the pilot and damaging the other. The third plane? It was flying ''above'' the canyon watching this. Apparently nobody thought the other two planes could just do that too, and since they weren't juking around avoiding the canyon walls, would be going faster by doing so. The UCAV was probably attempting a [[Aerial Canyon Chase]], which is a legitimate but very dangerous tactic.

* In ''[[The Mummy Trilogy|The Mummy Returns]]'', Imhotep reprises [[Advancing Wall of Doom|his sandstorm trick]] from the first film with the water from a river instead. The heroes, approaching in a dirigible through the twisting pathways of a canyon, are forced to flee when the water surges up and chases them. Their initial reaction—firing up the booster rockets and outracing the wall of water—is understandable because of the element of surprise, and even with rockets they could barely keep ahead of the water, so there really was no time to fly up. However, after they've (temporarily) escaped, they hear the water ''again'' and just float there, waiting for it to hit them, instead of ''flying up and out of the canyon where the water can't reach them''.

** Dirigibles can fly, but they gain altitude only slowly.

** Considering they're the same characters who'd previously encountered Imhotep as a ''sandstorm'', they may simply have realized that up wasn't really a viable escape route from him. What's to stop him shifting from water to storm again? At least being hit by water doesn't abrade your flesh down to the bone.

 

* In [[Robin Hobb]]'s ''[[Dragon Keeper]]'', the titular dragons are misshapen and think themselves incapable of flight. {{spoiler|The second book proves them wrong, as Heeby learns to fly. It is implied that Sintara and winged human Thymara can also learn.}}

* [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in ''[[Peter Pan]]''. When Peter gets "wounded" by Hook, he believes himself unable to fly off Marooner's Rock. The truth is that he's fine and could fly if he really wanted to, but he takes his own imagination so seriously that there's nothing to do but leave him there.

 

* Averted (and possibly [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in Firefly. When Wash flies into a canyon to avoid chase... only for his pursuer to fly ''over'' the canyon.

 

* [[Justified Trope]] in the comic strip ''[[Peanuts]]'' with Woodstock, a ''literally'' Acrophobic Bird. Going too high gave him beakbleeds, among with several other flight-related neuroses. He had a hard enough time flying forward.

** In one Sunday strip, Snoopy questions Woodstock on why it is that birds in the path of moving vehicles will hop around on the ground and not just fly away until the very last possible moment. Woodstock replies with several panels full of [[The Unintelligible|his unintelligible speech]], to which Snoopy responds "That's the worst excuse I've ever heard!"

* Guard Duck from ''[[Pearls Before Swine]]'' never learned to fly. This unfortunately means that he couldn't go with his flying duck girlfriend Maura when she flew away.

 

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has flying creatures, such as hippogryphs. However, prior to Cataclysm - at least in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms - the "flying" enemies acted like they had invisible feet. For example, you spotted one on top of a short cliff, and shot it - and instead of flying straight at you, it took a very jerky path off to the side and down along the route you'd have had to walk if you were earthbound. There may still be a few mobs like this, but for the most part the flying enemies actually ''fly'' now.

** Outside a few specific quests (bombing runs and such) you can't engage in 3-dimensional combat even with a flying mount (as attacking causes you to dismount). However, killing somebody, getting on your flying mount and hovering above the corpse out of enemy reach is a common method of ganking.

** Druids, who can enter flight form instantly (and thus can do this while falling) sometimes engage in aerial combat, but they don't really have enough spells they can use in the air to do it very much. Mages have more, but they can't remount—but, on the other hand, they have the Slow Fall spell.

** An old druid game is "Aerial Chicken," which consists of flying really high, dismounting, and the one who re-mounts first (or splats into the ground) loses. Bonus points for convincing non-druids (who cannot re-mount while falling) to play.

** Also, there are so many ways to knock somebody out of the air or just plain ''ground'' them that virtually anybody with access to ranged attacks (and many people without them) can bring you down. As long as there's some ground around, jumpers are actually better at aerial combat than flyers.

* Played annoyingly straight in the badly written first Gameboy version of ''[[Winx]]''. At several parts of the game, you are arbitrarily stopped by rocks on the path or falling down pits, even though the protagonists are, as the title suggests, more than capable of flight.

* ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' has the prestige class "red dragon disciple", wherein you draw strength from your draconic heritage and become more dragon-like, finally acquiring the half-dragon template. In the original RPG, this included flying ability, but due to the computer game's limited engine, flying just isn't an option. Which means that at higher levels, your character acquires a fancy pair of wings... that do nothing besides flap a little when you run.

*** The tabletop version of this class, along with the Half-Dragon racial template, has the wings be not quite perfectly formed on smaller creatures - they're not "draconic" enough. Flight is only possible for size Large creatures or larger with this template or class., contrary to physics.

* Played straight in ''Pokémon''. Charizard and Dragonite, both of which have fully functional wings, could not learn the move Fly until the releases of ''[[Pokémon Red and Blue|Pokémon Yellow]]'' and ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver]]'', respectively. Oddly enough, Doduo and Dodrio, who seem to be based upon ostriches, have always been able to fly.

** Inverted by way of [[Plot Tailored to the Party]] in ''Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon 3''. Several chests are blocked away on islands over bottomless pits or hot magma. The only way to get to them is by leading a party with Arche, the above [[Cute Witch]], or Calo in the Witch or Arche costumes. (And no, you ''can't'' do it with [[Tales of Symphonia|Collette or her costume]]. Go figure.)

** In fairness to ''[[Fire Emblem]],'' winged units can and will go over quite a few obstacles in the game, and take extra damage from bows, which would ostensibly be a better weapon against flying enemies than standard melee weaponry. So it's not completely ignored, it's just not taken advantage of to the fullest.

* The Hind-D in the original ''[[Metal Gear]]''. It remained on the ground firing only its main gun. To add injury to insult there's a spot on the map where Snake can stand and hit the Hind but it can't hit him.

* Played straight with [[Donald Duck]]'s bird form in the Pride Lands in ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]''.

* MOBA game ''[[League of Legends]]'', which is played at ground level, nevertheless has a champion that is a bird, two champions with wings (one of which flying), a levitating champion and even one piloting a helicopter; with the appropriate skin he turns into a Red Baron biplane or flying saucer. These can all be attacked with melee weapons from the ground. As a double whammy, the bird is the slowest champion in the game.

* Averted somewhat in ''Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas''. Once C.J. becomes pilot-trained he can fly any plane wherever...except when the plot says 'No' or he tries to fly over the missile-equipped Area 69.

** Early in the story, [[Our Angels Are Different|Pit]] leaps (with a boost from Mario) towards the airborne Ancient Minister and falls when he misses. It looks like a case of [[Cutscene Incompetence]] and Acrophobic Bird, [[Subverted Trope|but it's not.]] [[All There in the Manual|Pit normally can't fly,]] unless he is powered by Palutena, and then it's only for 5 minutes at a time. [[Fridge Logic|Of course, that makes one wonder why she didn't help]] and why [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|he can fly when controlled by the player.]]

** Later on, [[Genre Savvy|Meta Knight]] subverts this by actually flying up high, and then immediately averted when [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|the Ancient Minister shoots a dead-accurate laser shot right through Meta Knight's wing, forcing him to land]] and tend to it.

* Flying units in ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' can be intently moved along the ground by the players in case they need terrain bonus, like, say, make a unit move into a forest to increase chances to evade. This is useful because most of the ground enemies can attack even if your units are in the air.

 

* In ''[[Unicorn Jelly]]'', Lupiko is a witch who can fly on a broomstick - and is also afraid of heights.

 

* [[The Nostalgia Chick]] took the [[Don Bluth]] movie ''[[Thumbelina]]'' to task on how the heroine never uses her bird sidekick's flight to solve any of her problems (until, of course, the climax):

{{quote|"Get on the bird... Get on the bird... ''Get on the fucking bird!''"}}

* Starshine, a superheroine from the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'' often sniped at villains from a seemingly unassailable height (having both super-acute sight and a laser blast with no effective range limit. The one time she fought a villain who could match her for accuracy and range, however, she forgot she could ''gain'' altitude (going into orbit, if necessary... she could survive vacuum exposure, too) and instead dove and zig-zagged to avoid his fire.

 

* In cartoons, this is often caused by replacing a generic animal in [[The Chase]] with a bird. It's especially and ''extremely'' evident in any Tweety and Sylvester cartoon.

** Granted the earliest incarnation of Tweety was colored ''pink'' because he was supposed to be a baby bird, thus unable to fly. His color change came about due to ''censorship,'' not any implications of him growing older.

** In ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]'', when Daffy gets on a hang glider:

{{quote|'''Daffy:''' Wow! I'm flying! ''I'm like a bird!'' Wait, I ''am'' a bird. I'm...[[Superman|like a plane]]!}}

** Even worse off is the Autobot Triple Changer [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Broadside_(G1) Broadside], whose alt-modes are jet fighter and aircraft carrier. Not only is he acrophobic, but he gets ''seasick'' on the water.

** In addition, the majority of the Decepticons in [[The Transformers (animation)|the original series]] could fly. However, they still chose to run on foot most of the time, even in the title scene--in which the [[Mooks|seekers]] transform out of their jet modes, land on the ground, and ''then'' rush the Autobots with guns blazing.

** Of course Starscream doesn't require much provocation to high-tail it out of there and make use of his aerial superiority. [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Image:OutOfHisHead-grabby.jpg That doesn't mean it'll actually work though].

** One episode of ''[[House of Mouse]]'' was actually about [[Peter Pan (Disney film)|Peter Pan]] helping Donald learn to fly.

* In ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]],'' Beast Boy seems to forget that he can change into a flying creature to get out of trouble (notably in the first episode with Mad Mod). Much of this is played for laughs or can be explained by remembering that Beast Boy isn't the brightest tool in the shed.

** On occasion, he has tried to fly away and promptly been shot down by a ray-gun, force-field, or what-have-you.

** He mentions at one point that transforming into a flying animal is very tiring.

* Despite being explicitly shown to be capable of flying into the clouds, Appa from ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' frequently is forced to dodge projectiles launched from catapults that couldn't be reaching heights of more than a couple hundred meters instead of just staying out of their range.

* Superman tends to forget he can fly in ''[[Justice League]]'', whenever he is fighting a ground-based foe like Solomon Grundy or Darkseid. The most ridiculous example is in "War World", in which he is captured by Mongul and forced to fight Draaga, another alien, against Superman's will. Despite making it very clear that he doesn't want to fight, Superman never thinks to just fly out of Draaga's reach and stay there.

* Blu from ''[[Rio]]'' is an orphaned Spix's Macaw who, although he was adopted by a very caring person, was never taught how to fly. He's still a good climber, but takes a long while to get over his fear of actually flying.

* The "forgot I could fly"-variant of this trope occurs in the ''[[Regular Show]]'' episode "Death Punchies." [[The Chew Toy|Rigby]] abuses a forbidden kung-fu technique and ends up sending Mordecai and himself to a pit that's steadily filling with lava. After the two wail and moan and blame each other for their situation, Mordecai says he was smart enough to learn a way to escape, and uses another forbidden kung-fu technique to fly to safety. This is the only instance in which Mordecai has been able to fly, despite being a bird (specifically a blue jay, a species perfectly capable of flying).

* Lampshaded in ''[[Winnie the Pooh]]''. The gang -including Owl- has fallen into a pit and they try to get the anxiety-ridden Piglet to rescue them. Since Piglet is too terrified, Owl flies up to give the little guy a rousing speech, then flies back down into the pit once Piglet's confidence is up. The look on Rabbit's face after all this is priceless.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:Chase Scene]]

[[Category:Flying Tropes]]