Ejection Seat: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|"Eject! EJECT! I can't shake him!"

 

Distinct from just Abandon Ship; rather than just getting the heck out of (the) Dodge, a machine's helping you out (the door).

 

* ''[[Code Geass]]'' has ejector seats as a major feature of the Knightmare Frames. In fact, according to [[All There in the Manual|the backstory]], this trope is the very reason Knightmares exist to begin with.<ref>Britannia looked into putting Ejector Seats in traditional war machines like tanks, but then they added legs so they could escape the battlefield and it kind of snowballed from there</ref> The fact that the [[Super Prototype|Lancelot]] doesn't have one is made out to be a big deal.

** [[Failsafe Failure]] is mostly averted, but there are a couple of moments. In one episode, we see a character ({{spoiler|Kewell}}) die when the [[Super Prototype|Guren Mk-II's]] radiant wave fries his machine's internal computers. In another, Lelouch is badly injured because the seat activates when he doesn't have a clear vector of escape, making it bounce off the ground and nearby objects like a rubber ball; it's frankly quite amazing that he didn't get whiplash.

* [[Axis Powers Hetalia|Italy and Poland]] both of them used it in different moments. Sadly, they got stuck in a tree immediately after.

 

* Given its appearance in no fewer than two other media, it is a pretty safe assumption that every iteration of [[Batman|the Batmobile]] has an ejector seat.

** The same goes for the [[Cool Plane|Batplane/Batwing]].

* In ''[[Green Lantern]]'', an airplane went down and Hal Jordan thought that maybe the pilot had forgotten where the lever was. He himself had managed to persuade Kyle Rayner to take a flight—without his ring—and after Kyle had double-checked everything, he had asked how to trigger the ejection seat, and Hal hadn't remembered.

* In one ''[[Archie]]'' comic book, Jughead as Captain Hero faces a courteous villain who left his own car via ejection seat, while the car is in motion.

 

== Films -- Animation ==

* At the beginning of ''[[The Incredibles]]'', Mr Incredible uses the ejector seat to get Buddy out of his car.

* ''[[Yellow Submarine]]''. Ringo is steering the sub as they pass through the Sea of Monsters. Old Ferd tells him "Whatever you do, [[Schmuck Bait|don't touch that button]]." Of course Ringo does so, and is ejected out of the submarine.

 

== Films -- Live-Action ==

{{quote|"This is the end of Devil 505, say goodbye asshole! Eject eject eject!"

"Goodbye asshole!" *ejection seats fire* }}

 

== Literature ==

* Averted in ''[[The Laundry Series|The Jennifer Morgue]]'' by [[Charles Stross]], which goes into some detail as to why an ejection seat in a car is an insanely bad idea; when Bob Howard presses the eject button on his [[Cool Car]], the ''entire car ejects'', which is only slightly less so. It's made clear that only time you should press the button is if ''not'' pressing it is ''definitely'' going to kill you. The explanation also deflates the idea of the "easy eject"; Bob describes how, due to the G-forces involved, the pilot is likely looking at weeks in traction ''at best''.

* As in the games on which they're based, the ''[[Wing Commander (novel)|Wing Commander]]'' novels occasionally feature ejection seats. In ''End Run'', it's noted that there's a mechanism that's supposed to prevent an ejection while on the carrier, but that has a reputation for not always functioning. [[Chekhov's Gun|Later in the novel]] it fails for one pilot, smashing him against the landing bay overhead.<ref>for those not familiar with naval terminology, the ceiling</ref>

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* When Wendy Watson flies to rescue ''[[The Middleman]]'', [[Ridiculously Human Robot|IDA]] triggers the Middlejet's Ejection Seat remotely, much to Wendy's horror.

* Fighters in ''[[Babylon 5]]'' are often equipped with ejector seats, though rescue is a bit of a crapshoot in space.

{{quote|'''Harm:''' "Punching out is the last thing a pilot ever wants to do. People think you get in trouble, pull the magic handle, and float safely to the ground? Every time you punch out you end up an inch shorter."}}

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

*** Production Airacobras didn't have sliding canopies, they had ''doors'', but that didn't make them easier to bail out, for a different reason. The relative positions of the cockpit door and the stabilizer effectively made sure that if any pilot taller than a midget would forget to take a fetal position after bailing out, his legs will be broken by a stabilizer, this usually being a career ending injury even if the pilot managed to land on his own territory and was saved by the groung troops. More than a few pilots suffered such a misfortune, the most famous of them being a Soviet ace Boris Glinka (29 victories).

*** The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, likewise, had a nasty habit of killing or permanently injuring anybody attempting to bail out of it. The plane basically had 2 fuselages, with a boomlike horizontal stabilizer stretching the entire width between them. Bailing out of the cockpit (located in the middle between the 2 fuselages) would likely slam you into the boom, whether you curled into a fetal position or not. Rumor has it that it was this plane that inspired the invention of the ejection seat in the first place.

* Ejection system are attached to manned space launchers to blast the manned bit clear if the launcher is danger of exploding on the launchpad. This has only ever been used once for real, when the two-man crew of Soyuz T-10-1, waiting for a trip to Salyut 7 in 1983, were ejected clear of their launcher just before a fire destroyed it.

* In 1975, another Soyuz mission had its capsule ejected while heading for orbit as the third stage was deviating too much.