My Car Hates Me: Difference between revisions
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[[File:carthrash.jpg|link=Fawlty Towers|right]]
{{quote|''"My car won't start!" "Well, maybe there's a ''killer'' after you."''
|'''[[Mitch Hedberg]]''', ''Mitch All Together''}}
The [[Big Bad]], [[The Dragon]], and everything with teeth are just outside the character's locked car door, salivating and howling to get in. Naturally, the car will not start. No doubt the character is thinking "My car hates me."
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Note that even if the car is stalled during an earthquake on a burning railroad track with two trains coming and a nuclear warhead heading toward the area, the driver will keep turning the ignition key, hitting the gas pedal, and praying, "Please start, please start..." but not simply get out of the car and run for it. Chalk it up to either [[Genre Blindness]] or being horrifically attached to personal property. Some may even get out only to apply [[Percussive Maintenance]] to the hood, which has a higher success rate than you would guess.
A favourite device of [[Slasher
[[Plot-Driven Breakdown]] is the supertrope to this.
{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==▼
▲== Advertising ==
* Parodied in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BcjWMvwKXg this] Volkswagen ad.
* ...and in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-7gb0jU0WU&feature=related this] Chevrolet ad.
== [[Film]] ==▼
▲== Film ==
* The French-Canadian movie ''Elvis Gratton'' [[Playing with a Trope|spoofs this trope]] with a literal version of it. It involves a [[Cool Car|talking limousine]] which actually ''insults'' the titular character. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cood3ZnRJk8 See for yourself] (in Québec French with lots of swearing). He has a pretty bad record with [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJWQCN5BKfc talking limousines] anyway.
* ''[[Into the Night]]'': Inverted. Insomniac [[Jeff Goldblum]], who drove to the airport after finding his wife in ''flagrante delicto,'' has decided to go back home, but he can't get his car started. Enter Michelle Pfeiffer, being chased by Iranian diamond smugglers. She jumps into his car and tells him to go—and the car starts right up!
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* In ''[[Poltergeist]] 2'' when the father is cursing his car, Taylor tells him that his car is literally angry at him and refuses to work properly because of that. This of course leads to a dramatic situation when the family is trying to escape.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Cujo]]'', mom and son are trapped for several days on a yard in a Ford Pinto by the eponymous dog. It's a Ford Pinto. They're (un)lucky the car got them there in the first place, (they went there to get it fixed) and it's surprising the dog jumping on the back of the thing didn't [[Every Car Is a Pinto|cause it to explode]]. As King himself owned a Ford Pinto at one time, the choice of car is probably a [[Take That]] at Ford.
* ''[[Needful Things]]'': Later called back, as one of the characters ends up next to the same house where the events of ''Cujo'' happened. Then she thinks she hears a dog growling. Then she thinks she sees glowing red eyes to match the growling. Then her car won't start. Then, as whatever it is starts moving towards her...{{spoiler|the car finally starts and she gets away. Phew.}}
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** Justified, in that a side effect of Harry's magic is that he is a [[Walking Techbane]]. His abilities (and consequently, his anti-tech aura) are enhanced by emotion, and this trope practically requires that the victim be upset/frustrated/scarred out of their wits when trying to start the car.
*** Also in that his car has been shot at, spun out into a wall, run into ''and'' over a chlorofiend, infested by mold demons, jumped by werewolves, and clawed by something Harry either can't or won't name. He freely admits the only reason the Beetle is still moving is courtesy of his ridiculously talented mechanic.
* The legendary turquoise Ford Anglia from ''[[Harry Potter and
** [[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)|The movie]] has a straighter example. When Harry and Ron are trying to escape the spiders, the flying gear happens to be jammed until Ron manages to unjam it at the last moment.
* Parodied in ''Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask).'' In a segment parodying horror movies, Woody Allen discovers at an inopportune time, "The battery's dead and we're out of gas, oil, and water."
*
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
▲* The ''[[The Twilight Zone|Twilight Zone]]'' episode "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" (first aired February 4, 1960) is perhaps the earliest instance of this trope on TV. Twilight Zone has done this more than once, with "A Thing About Machines," featuring a man who hates machinery being murdered by his car, and "You Drive," where after a hit-and-run accident the car won't stop honking, running the radio, and attempting to kill him until the owner gives up and sits in the car... and it drives him to the police station.
* In the ''[[Fawlty Towers]]'' episode "Gourmet Night," Basil shows not only that his car hates him, but he hates his car in return and promptly gives it a damn good thrashing. This scene won the series a BAFTA award. They tried it with branches of varying size, until they found the funniest one.
* Arrived at serendipitously in an episode of ''[[Seinfeld]]''. After the characters spend the entire episode looking for their car in a mall parking garage, the intended ending was for them to just find the car and drive off. No one was happy with it, but none of them could think of a better ending. Then they actually shot the scene, and the car wouldn't start. Everyone knew they had found their better ending.
* Subverted in the ''[[Firefly]]'' episode "Jaynestown". Wash can't seem to get Serenity up in the air when the crew needs to make a quick getaway, until Inara walks into the cockpit and asks if there's a problem, when Wash gears up to yell at her - and the engines finally turn over. Subverted because there was a legitimate reason it wouldn't start; {{spoiler|the magistrate had a landlock put on Serenity to keep Jayne hanging around long enough to bring him to "justice", and it finally started when the magistrate's son put a call into port to lift the landlock - Inara's pep talk about what really makes a man made more of a man out of him than losing his virginity ever could, and he says so. His father actually backs out of the room, baffled and angrily mute, unable to fathom that his own son might object to the way he runs his mud farm}}.
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', this has happened to the TARDIS at least once.
* Mitch Hedburg references it in one of his shows - "I'd be a terrible mechanic. If someone told me their car didn't start, I'd say 'Maybe you're being followed by a crazy killer!'"
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** In South America the trio travels along the Yungas Road aka ''El Camino de la Muerte''—the Road of Death. A dead battery caused by a non-functional alternator means that James May has to swap batteries with Richard Hammond (who's alternator is [[The Alleged Car|one of the few things on his car that does work]]), strap a pair of torches/flashlights to the front since using the headlights drains the battery too fast and follow Hammond so closely their bumpers are almost touching. Genuinely terrifying.
* In an episode of [[ER]], as Doug is driving to a benefit that he doesn't want to attend, his car suddenly blows a tire. Suddenly, the trope is subverted as this results in a young boy coming to him for help in saving his trapped brother, in one of the show's best episodes.
* It's pretty much a [[Running Gag]] that the cast and crew of ''[[Destination Truth]]'' are simply incapable of using a vehicle without having it break down or otherwise run into trouble. Pretty much every vehicle they've used on screen over the course of multiple seasons has had these troubles. They've lampshaded it recently,{{when}} as it's now fairly common to hear somebody say "Can't we just get a car that works? Just once?"
== [[Music]] ==▼
▲== Music ==
* The narrator in the song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDy3kV8Kuu4 ''Two Ton Paperweight'' by Psychostick] is under the impression this is the case ("You never get me very far, when you decide driving to the store is a mortal sin"), and assures that, like in Fawlty Towers, the feeling is indeed mutual ("I guess I'm just a little angry, but for some reason getting stranded kinda chafes my hide").
* Referenced in "Stuck In A Movie!" by the Aquabats:
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{{quote|1985 Dodge Aries hand-me-down freebie [[Cluster F-Bomb|piece-of-fucked-with-shit with the fucking yellow plates]], you are going to '''start''' for me... Do NOT do this to me today. Look, man, look...you have been a very good car to me, okay? I'm going to point you in one direction, all you have to do it go - Look, I'm not even going to steer, man, '''please'''!}}
* [[Adam Sandler]] sings about this in the song "Ode to my Car", complaining about how the car that is so busted up that it barely runs a few feet.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* ''[[Dead Rising]]'': The intro scene features a young mother and child attempting to start their car, to find themselves surrounded by zombies and their car hates them.
==
* ''[[Loserz]]'': Eric's car is an especially bad case. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110417174800/http://bukucomics.com/loserz/go/200 See here.]
{{quote|Eric: Aah! It's got a gun!}}
* In ''[[Freefall]]'', Sam's spaceship [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff800/fv00758.htm quite] [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff800/fv00759.htm literally] [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff800/fv00762.htm hates] him. It hasn't refused to start when he needs to escape, but it's certainly found other ways to make its displeasure clear.
== [[Web Original]] ==▼
▲== Web Original ==
* ''[[The Gmod Idiot Box]]'': Episode 7 up with a guy (presumably [[This Loser Is You|a parody of YouTube visitors on DasBoSchitt's profile]]) not bothering to read the video description. A Combine soldier then attacks his house. His first instinct is to escape in his car, but it does not start and is promptly taken to the air by the soldier. Next the guy attempts starting the ''door knob'' and then a ''home telephone'', both times failing, and finally gets hit hard in the ear by the soldier.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[
* On
* While ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar]]''{{'}}s car is usually pretty nifty, in "Driven To The Brink" Rico accidentally trashes it and hastily rebuilds it on his own. Afterwards, it ''literally'' hates him, to the point of actively trying to kill him.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]
[[Category:Vehicle Tropes]]▼
[[Category:Chase Scene]]
[[Category:Finagle's Law]]▼
▲[[Category:Motor Vehicle Tropes]]
[[Category:Truth in Television]]
[[Category:
▲[[Category:Finagle's Law]]
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