Balloonacy: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

See also [[All Balloons Have Helium]] when a character simply blows up a balloon with his/her breath and it automatically floats.

* A variation appeared in ''[[Doki Doki School Hours]]'', where an extremely short school teacher was teased by one of her students that this would happen to her. A few of the students proceeded to tie a bunch of balloons to the teacher's obi (they were at a summer festival) and the first student lifted the teacher up so it looked like she was floating away.

* In the first ''[[Lupin III]]'' feature-length TV special, ''Goodbye Lady Liberty'', Lupin uses a giant balloon to steal the Statue of Liberty, which he then pilots all the way to the Grand Canyon in order to hide it.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* [[Gaston Lagaffe]] once left a leaking helium bottle in his car. The gas filled up the car, caused the canvas roof to bulge... and up into the air went the car.

* A cover to an [[Archie Comics]] digest features Jughead as a balloon seller. He begs people passing by to buy a couple, because he's having to hold onto the ground to avoid floating away.

* The usual gang of idiots at ''[[Mad Magazine]]'' once (October, 1964) suggested that a large enough balloon filled with helium could lift a big sedan a couple of feet off the ground, enabling the owner to float it into a parking spot.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* Gonzo is carried aloft in ''[[The Muppet Movie]]'' when he buys all the balloons from a fair vendor.

** It also seems to apply to normal sized ones. In the prologue, we see Carl selling balloons at the zoo. He lets go of his cart for a moment, and needs to grab ahold of it before it floats away.

* ''[[The Red Balloon]]''. See [[wikipedia:The Red Balloon|here]] and [http://the-haunted-closet.blogspot.com/2009/05/red-balloon-1956.html especially, here].

* This was done in ''[[The Three Stooges]]'', in an odd variation of this trope, where Moe himself ''became'' a balloon. In ''Dizzy Pilots'', Moe falls into a tub of tar, and to get the tar off of him, Larry and Curly cut a hole in his clothes and begin filling it up with gas. [[Hilarity Ensues]] as Moe begins to float away when Larry and Curly aren't looking, and they spend the next sizable chunk of the episode trying to get Moe down. He eventually floats through an opening in the ceiling and into the sky. Hearing Moe cry during the ordeal makes this a candidate for [[Crowning Moment of Funny]].

* At the climax of ''[[The Great Mouse Detective]]'', Basil tied the Union Jack flag with balloons underneath to a box of matches in order to chase Ratigan fleeing on his blimp. Helps that they're mice.

* In ''[[The Pink Panther]] Strikes Again'', Clouseau is floated out of his apartment window by the inflatable hump in his hunchback costume, thereby causing him to miss the bomb Dreyfus sets off.

* In ''[[The Three Stooges]]'' movie, a little girl gets lifted by a bunch of balloons. When a bullet pops them and she falls onto a big cake, she says "That was awesome!".

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* Happens to the titular old lady, a balloon seller, in ''Mrs Cockle's Cat''.

* ''[[The Twits]]'' by [[Roald Dahl]]. Mr. Twit, having already convinced Mrs. Twit that she's shrinking, ties her to a couple hundred balloons, and her feet to a ring in the ground, and leaves her there to 'stretch'. Then Mrs. Twit accidentally gives him the idea to cut her loose...

* Happened to one of the characters of ''Caroline visite Paris'' from the French youth book series ''Caroline''.

* Some stories use Chinese Sky Lanterns to achieve lift rather than balloons.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

'''Murdock:''' I don't know: I have intermittent memory loss! [[Funny Moments (Sugar Wiki)|*floats away cackling*]] }}

* On ''[[Fraggle Rock]]'', Wembly uses a bunch of balloons tied to a basket to return a bird to the Gorgs' Garden in one episoide.

* In one ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' episode, during one of Terry Gilliam's animations a man grabbed a bunch of balloons and floated away. He was then attacked by a bird with a cannon where its head should be, which was trying to burst the balloons.

** Don't forget "The Golden Age of Ballooning" episode, riffing on the Montgolfier Bros. and Ferdinand Von Zeppelin. Notably a scene where Zeppelin's brother(Terry Jones) tried to blow up a giant balloon, only to have the air rush back into his lungs, inflating himself(and tearing off his clothes), turning himself into a giant balloon.

** Kermit the Frog is demonstrating a Rube-Goldberg device to turn on a radio: the last step involves using a balloon to turn on the radio. Of course nothing works the way it's supposed to, and at the very end Kermit sees the balloon float away taking the radio with it.

** Kermit and Grover are demonstrating light and heavy objects; the final light object is a large balloon, and Grover picks it up and promptly floats away.

** On one of the baker segments, a man is holding four balloons, and this causes him to start floating away.

* ''[[Mr. Bean]]'' once put some ballons on a baby's pram, and it flies off and he has to make chase.

* Pretty sure they did this to Graham Norton during a ''[[Comic Relief]]'' one year.

* Happened in ''[[The Lucy Show]]'' episode "Kiddie Parties Inc.": Lucy tries to bring a batch of helium balloons to a party, which leads to her floating away, flying through a flock of geese and crashing into a church steeple.

* ''[[MacGyver]]'' used a big bunch of balloons tied to a police radio and a tape player and set them free to jam the police communications and enable a family of Roma to defect to the west from Hungary.

* The final episode of ''[[Green Wing]]'' ends with Caroline being carried up into the sky by a mass of helium filled balloons at her wedding reception. The DVD boxset extras shows an alternate ending where Guy and Mac grab onto Caroline's ankles and are taken up with her. It ends with Mac saying, "Caroline, there's something I've been meaning to tell you."

** "The Impossible Astronaut" mentions an off-screen [[Noodle Incident]] where the Eleventh Doctor escaped from the Tower of London in a balloon he [[Gadgeteer Genius|apparently constructed in two days]].

* The opening credits to ''[[Webster]]'' had a sequence of still photos showing the title character being lofted by a bunch of balloons before being caught by his adoptive parents.

* In the third season of ''[[Arrested Development]]'', George tries to escape from house arrest by attaching weather balloons to a deck chair (apparently inspired by the "Larry Lawnchair" example below). {{spoiler|Given that he's a Bluth, it ends about as well as you'd expect.}}

* An old ''New Yorker'' magazine cartoon by George Price depicts a policeman talking on a street-corner call box while handcuffed to a man who's held aloft by a handful of balloons: "Vending without a license...and get over here quick!"

* Deconstructed in ''[[Baldo]]''. Hundreds of balloons raise a boy and a chair off the ground just as high as the first-story window of his house, which the wind immediately smacks him into, breaking it and knocking him off the chair and into a thorny rosebush.

 

== [[Theater]] ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* The entire conceit of ''[[Video Game/Balloon Fight|Balloon Fight]]'', which is essentially ''[[Joust]]'', except with kids and... bird thingies flying using a pair of balloons.

* The Balloon weapon in ''[[Makai Kingdom]]'' - single use, lifts the user out of the stage for the rest of the level. This makes it nearly useless for your own characters, but deadly in the hands of an enemy, as any enemy removed from the stage adds their levels to every other enemy left on the battlefield.

* [[Pitfall]] Harry uses a balloon to traverse a large open area in ''Pitfall II: The lost Caverns''

** There's also the Air Balloon, an item that allows Pokemon to float and avoid Ground-type attacks. A single red balloon is enough to lift even the monstrous, half-ton Snorlax into the air!

** That's also how promotional Pikachus are able to use the move Fly, according to the card game.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* Happens once in ''[[Beethoven the Animated Series]]'': Mr.Huggs floats off when a bully ties balloons to him.

** In a first-season episode, a ''single'' balloon is enough to lift Maggie about six inches off the floor.

** Also when he and Bubble Buddy are trying to escape his friends; they don't get far.

* The [[Dreamworks Animation]] logo, anyone?

* This is part of the premise of the [[Don Hertzfeldt]] cartoon ''Billy's Balloon''. (The other part is that balloons are sadists.)

** Happens to Claude Cat as part of Hubie and Bertie pretending that he's dead and heading for Cat Heaven in the short ''Hypo-Chondri Cat''

** Happens to Bugs Bunny in ''Bushy Hare''

** Happens to Sylvester in ''Pizza Tweety Pie''

* Happened at least a few times in various [[Winnie the Pooh]] episodes, such as [http://pooh.wikia.com/wiki/Balloonatics "Balloonatics" (season 1 episode 5)].

* Happens to George in ''[[Curious George]]'' when a group of children each gives him their balloon. Ted aka "the Man in the Yellow Hat" then grabs the rest of the balloons from the vendor and flies off in pursuit.

* In the ''[[Regular Show]]'' episode "Just Set Up The Chairs", a depressed Pops floats off on a bunch of balloons when Benson reminds him the birthday party they're holding isn't for ''him''.

* In ''[[Birdz]]'', [[Fat Idiot|Tommy the turkey]] is held aloft by a single balloon concealed in a backpack. This becomes a plot point in one episode, where his friends try to convince him to ditch the balloon, only to realize that turkeys can't fly.

* In a variant of this trope, ''[[Get Muggsy]]'' has Carl and Tred inhale helium and tie strings to themselves to sneak into a park, with obvious results.

 

== Real Life ==

** Specifically, it takes 3,500 party-size balloons to lift a 40 pound child.

* A guy named [[wikipedia:Larry Walters|Larry Walters]] did it, and there's a movie based on his story, called ''[[Danny Deckchair]]'' (the real dude was nicknamed Larry Lawnchair) Friends of mine also made a couple gigantic balloons in the backyard of their cafe, and launched customers a few feet up (safely secured by a rope).

* On October 15, 2009, in Fort Collins, Colorado, it seemed that a child climbed into an experimental helium filled weather balloon, which slipped its mooring and floated away, thus causing a huge media sensation. When the balloon landed near Denver International Airport, rescuers discovered that the kid was not inside, and soon after, an ominous photograph surfaced showing the payload basket apparently falling off the balloon. What ''really'' happened is that it was a hoax planned by [[What an Idiot!|the kid's father]] to publicize a [[Reality Show]].

** Even before the hoax was revealed, there were a number of knowledgable people pointing out that the craft in question wasn't large enough to carry the child.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]

[[Category:Vehicle Tropes]]

[[Category:Just for Pun]]