Captain Crash: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

Everyone's encountered or at least heard of this fellow. He's the [[The Red Baron|Patrician of Demolition]], the [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|Czar of "Fubar"]], and the [[Rhymes on a Dime|Master of Disaster]].

 

 

Even if he's in the desert with nothing to crash ''into'', he'll somehow find a way. To his credit, the crashes are survivable, so he does have that going for him. 

 

{{examples}}

* Hikaru Ichijo/Rick Hunter of ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]''/''[[Robotech]]'' gets his Valkyrie trashed a lot.

** It's so bad, that even his ''[[Beyond the Impossible|coma delirium]]'' mocks him for it repeatedly (and even has him crashing a bicycle!) in the episode ''Phantasam.''

** Though not nearly as much as Alto in ''[[Macross Frontier]]'', who trashes a new plane every other episode or so. {{spoiler|In the epilogue, he managed to set his perfectly-undamaged Valkyrie on fire, ''after'' the battle was over, and scuttled it as it was breaking apart.}}

* Seta in ''[[Love Hina]]'' usually enters a chapter by crashing his van, but emerging without major injury. His protégé Keitaro picks up the trait by the final chapters.

** Cars, trains, boats and ''submarines'' have a similar tendency to crash somehow when a Joestar is near. Oh, and an helicopter, but that was highly intentional.

* ''[[Area 88]]'': While very much an [[Ace Pilot]], Shin Kazama manages to get at least three or four planes shot out from under him, depending on the continuity. His luckier comrades also have tendencies in this directions. The rest, well, [[Anyone Can Die]].

* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam Wing]]'': Heero Yuy. Utterly lethal in mobile suit combat, but the number of suits he's totalled or seriously damaged defies belief. He has had at least two Leos and the Mercurius shot out from under him, as well as wrecking Wing Zero in Endless Waltz (although that [[Rasputinian Death|took some doing]].) And then there is Wing Gundam. Poor, poor Wing Gundam. To date, Heero has crashed it into the ocean, attempted to self-detonate it, attempted to blow it up with torpedoes, actually self-detonated it, then finally had it shot out from under him before getting his [[Mid-Season Upgrade]]. One has to wonder what Trowa was thinking when he lent him Heavyarms...

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* [[Green Lantern|Hal Jordan]] is a test pilot for the Air Force, and constantly crashes planes by taking them well beyond test parameters.

* Whenever we meet Spaceman Spiff in the ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' comics, he's crash landing on some planet.

** There's a [[Shout-Out]] to this in the card game ''[[Cosmic Encounter]]'', with the "Spiff" race, who have the power to "crash-land" when they lose a battle.

* Almost everyone in ''[[Sin City]]'' crashes his or her car, often due to [[Car Fu]].

* In the ''[[Lucky Luke]]'' episode ''Going Up the Mississippi'' the machinist, [[Meaningful Name|"Bangs"]], is stated to have exploded fourteen river boats. {{spoiler|Subverted in the end: This time the other boat explodes, much to his surprise.}}

 

 

== [[Film]] ==

** The [[X Wing Series]] gives us [[Ascended Extra]] Derek 'Hobbie' Klivian and his much-lampshaded tendency toward spectacular crashes and long periods in a bacta tank. Despite this, he's unquestionably an [[Ace Pilot]] and even seems to make it work for him: no matter what violent fate befalls his vehicle, Hobbie will ''always'' eject, survive and be back kicking ass within the week.

* A running gag in ''[[Indiana Jones]]''. Quoth [[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade|the third film]]:

{{quote|'''Henry Jones Sr.:''' You know how to fly this thing?

* The absent-minded Admiral Benson in ''[[Hot Shots]]!'' gives us this line:

{{quote|''You know, I've personally flown over 194 missions and I was shot down on every one. Come to think of it, I've never landed a plane in my life.''}}

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* [[Sinbad the Sailor]] had a bad habit of getting shipwrecked in his stories.

* Callista Carmel of ''[[Tour of the Merrimack]]'' earned the nickname "Crash Carmel" for totaling a number of shuttles.

 

** Racetrack and her co-pilot Skulls fall into the bad-luck variety. There is nothing to show that [[Deadpan Snarker|Racetrack]] is a bad pilot. That doesn't change the fact she seems to attract errors, breakdowns, sabotages and attacks. Did the striking workers spike the fuel, casing a Raptor to spin out of control and crash into Colonial One? It'll be Racetrack's. Did chief mess up the repairs and caused a Raptor to crash on the landing deck? It's Racetrack's. Did a saboteur plant a bomb in a Raptor to kill Baltar's attorney? It's Racetrack's Raptor. Did the experimental jump drive cause a mis-jump? It was Racetrack and how she discovered New Caprica.

*** Skulls lampshades it in the [[Grand Finale]].

*** {{spoiler|And yet she manages to perform a post-mortem [[Deus Ex Nukina]], taking out the Cylon Home Colony with her}}.

** Lee "Apollo" Adama should also bear mentioning. He doesn't necessarily wreck a lot of stuff, but he has a penchant for wrecking important stuff. From the mini-series he manages to first disable his father's old fighter and then utterly trash it before the the end. He goes on to wreck the only stealth fighter another character spend an entire episode fabricating. And then he wrecks {{spoiler|The Pegasus, the more advanced of the pair of battlestars.}} It's a wonder why Daddy keeps giving him the keys. 

** Actually a case of [[Writer Revolt]]. [[Dolled-Up Installment|Hibiki wasn't supposed to be a]] [[Kamen Rider]] show, since it was based on a completely unrelated manga by KR's creator, [[Shotaro Ishinomori]]. [[Executive Meddling|The sponsors just wanted to shoehorn it into the Kamen Rider series due to brand recognition]]. The show's original writing staff had nothing but contempt for them and would subvert the living hell out of the various Rider cliches they were forced to add every chance they got... which is probably why they were all fired & replaced by corporate meatpuppets and the show promptly [[Jumped the Shark]].

* For Jake Cutter, of ''[[Tales of the Gold Monkey]]'', crash landings were routine and accepted as such on Bora Gora.

* Richard Hammond of ''[[Top Gear]]'' has a... not-undeserved reputation for being accident-prone.

* This was a running joke when referencing Uncle Albert in ''[[Only Fools and Horses]]''.

 

* Captain Jet Morgan of the old BBC radio serial ''[[Journey Into Space]]'' could fit this trope. He captains the spaceship Discovery, and when it's required that the ship lands, Jet is always the one who pilots her down. Unfortunately he tends to crash, or at least make hideously bumpy landings, more than he manages to bring her down smoothly. Of course, one of those times he had actually been knocked out before the ship was quite fully landed, but most other times it's just Jet. Nobody ever really comments on this.

* A naval example in ''[[The Navy Lark]]'', Mister Phillips's standard method of docking is this trope. He caused more damage to Naval property than both world wars.

** Ironically, the ''one'' time he was ''asked'' to deliberately crash HMS Troutbridge into another ship (as part of a ploy to allow Captain Povey to escape his overbearing mother-in-law and join the rest of the crew at a pub) a fault in the steering mechanism ensured he ''couldn't'' hit anything... 42 times in a row!

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** Even more amusing is that his gang acts like he isn't blind at all. It is rather confusing especially since you meet him during a high speed race. Through the countryside. The [[Crowning Moment of Funny]] is when he confesses to CJ that he is blind. No shit, homie.

* ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'' showcases the former of the two protagonists destroying every single starship he pilots in the series, at one point or another.

* More of a player Captain Crash than anything else, but in ''[[Saints Row|Saints Row 2]]'', if the Boss is driving in a car with Johnny Gat and s/he crashes into something, Johnny is liable to muse, "Just like old times."

** Also, <s>me</s> the Boss behind the metaphorical wheel of a helicopter. [[Heroic Resolve|I don't care]] [[Selective Obliviousness|what you say]], [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|those controls are impossible]].

{{quote|*Player awakens {{spoiler|on a ship and looks up to see the plane burning on top of the mast}}*

'''Flintlocke''': [his head popping into view, and looking down at the player] What? Like ''you'' could have done any better! }}

* The hero of ''[[Grandia (video game)|Grandia]] III'' has designed, built and crashed over a dozen planes before the game even starts. After his personal hero builds him a new plane, he stops crashing. Maybe it was just that he couldn't design a plane that would stay in the air.

** [[Sarcasm Mode|Vega learned from the best.]] Shepard crashes the skycar no matter who is in the backseat with them. And when chasing {{spoiler|Tela Vasir}} in the last game's DLC missions, Shepard used another skycar to sideswipe {{spoiler|her}} into crashing. And let's not get into [[Drives Like Crazy|all]] [[Car Fu|those]] [[Good Bad Bugs|shenanigans]] with the Mako in the first game. One thing's for sure; if Shepard's driving, ''something'' is going to [[Stuff Blowing Up|end up in a fiery wreck]].

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** [[Subverted Trope|Hilariously subverted]] in "The Golden Goose" when Launchpad attempts to crash on purpose, [[Springtime for Hitler|only to land perfectly]] - Launchpad may crash all the time, but he's so good at wrecking his planes that he's an expert at crashing ''safely''.

** [[Deconstructed Trope|Deconstructed]] in one episode where a Scrooge orders Launchpad to pilot a sabotaged blimp that's about to crash on its own. With Launchpad at the control, they still crash, but everybody survives with minor injuries.

** Received [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] at least twice on ''[[Gargoyles]]'', with the drivers of crashed helicopters musing, "Any landing you can walk away from..."

* Ace in the ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' cartoon and comic. Lampshaded in one instance when he says over the radio, "I'm going in!", to which Duke replies, "Every time you say that it gets expensive!"

** Cobra troops often joke about their own Air Devil pilots. "What's the last thing to go through an Air Devil's head when he hits the ground? His engine."

** Also the notoriously clumsy and oafish Wildcard, who seems to break everything he comes in contact with by random chance ''except'' for his vehicle of choice. His filecard says that they put him in that thing because siccing him on the enemy personally is probably against the Geneva Convention.

* [[Batman]] in [[The DCAU]]. IIRC, the Batwing was destroyed in every appearance it made in JL/JLU. I'm not even sure the thing has landing gear.

** It does. It lands once in the very first JU episode, although [[Superman]] has to catch it and land it for Batman because a wing was shot off.

* Whistler the heron in ''[[The Animals of Farthing Wood]]'' is bad at landing in later episodes and falls on someone before able to take cover.

* The old ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'' cartoons featured the world's most incompetent sailor, Captain Peter "Wrongway" Peachfuzz.

 

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Vehicle Tropes]]