Fireman's Safety Net

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Trampolines are usually viewed as fun places to play in the backyard. They're used for stunts, slam dunks, and a guaranteed submission to America's Funniest Home Videos. Sometimes, however, in both Real Life and fiction, trampolines are used for a much more serious purpose. These fall into two main categories: a character is depressed and tries to commit suicide, or a character is in peril and needs to jump to safety.

See also Interrupted Suicide, Heroic Fire Rescue and Burning Building Rescue. In a comic setting, can be subverted with The Not-Catch.

Examples of Fireman's Safety Net include:

Advertising

• Subverted in a commercial for Glad garbage bags. A piano breaks loose from the rope used to pull it up to a third-story window. Two workers use a Glad bag to make a fireman's trampoline. The piano completely misses, it breaks into a hundred pieces, and the workers use the trash bag to deliver the pieces to the piano's owner.

Anime and Manga

• Kiki's Delivery Service has a charming use of this trope at the end of the film. After Kiki saves Tombo, firefighters rush a safety tramp below the kids as they slowly descend, just as a safety precaution considering the weight Kiki had to manage with her flight power.

Film

• In Monsters vs. Aliens, a trampoline is provided to catch Derek when he's dropped by the newly giant Susan. He bounces off it and hits the ground.

Literature

• In Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin improvises one of these using his jacket to help Roo jump down from a tree. Tigger, on the other hand, is unwilling to use it.

Music

• In the Rammstein Music Video for "Benzin", the other band members (as firefighters) try saving Flake as he jumps off a building, using a trampoline. It rips.

Video Games

• The main premise of the Nintendo Game and Watch game Fire was to save people jumping out of a building with a trampoline.
• In Super Smash Bros.., this is Mr. Game and Watch's recovery move.
  • It's based off an old Game and Watch scenario involving bouncing people jumping from a flaming building into a waiting ambulance.
• At the beginning of Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sail, Larry jumps into one of these to escape a burning condo. He bounces out and ricochets around the scene before finally ending up on a cactus.

Western Animation

• In one episode of The New Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, a fire drill fails when Pooh is not there to help hold up the trampoline.
• The clown firemen routine in Dumbo ends with the clowns catching Dumbo with a trampoline, but he falls through it and into a vat of whitewash.
• Used by Screwy Squirrel in one of his cartoons. At the last second he pulls it away, because that's just the way he is.
• In Phineas and Ferb, the Fireside Girls save Phineas in this manner with an improvised trampoline made from their sashes when he falls out of the haunted house being lifted into the air.
• In The Simpsons, Ned throws Homer from the second-story window of a burning building onto a mattress. When he lands, the mattress bounces him back into the house through the ground floor window.
• In Rocky and Bullwinkle. Boris Badenov persuades Bullwinkle to jump into a firemen's net (twice!) as a publicity stunt. The second time, the net is lying on the ground with no one holding it.
• One episode of Ren and Stimpy involved the two working at a fire station. They end up manning the trampoline; Ren ends up getting crushed by everyone who jumps.