Pinball Gag

• Main
• All Subpages
• Create New

Most frequently seen in Looney Tunes cartoons, this is a visual gag which reproduces the look and action of a pinball game. A ball or other spherical object (sometimes a character forced to curl into a ball) caroms wildly about, rebounding off of numerous objects and/or persons, producing chiming or beeping noises and glowing "scores" over each one. The gag ends when either it leaves the "playing field" (often by dropping into a hole) or one specific target lights up with a "TILT!" indicator.

"TILT!"—the indication that an attempt to cheat at pinball by lifting or shaking the machine has been detected—is a subtrope in its own right. Tilted machines shut down immediately, ignoring player input and ending the current game, sort of an early-to-mid-20th century BSOD, with the added element of "you brought this on yourself, cheater!" In a similar manner, a character subject to "TILT!" is usually stunned or unconscious, although whether this is because of or simply indicated by the "TILT!" varies from instance to instance.

Examples of Pinball Gag include:

Anime and Manga

• An early episode of the Love Hina anime has a scene where Naru belts Keitaro with a Megaton Punch, and he goes caroming off everything in sight, including, briefly, the lintel, doorposts and threshold of a door he goes flying into and eventually through.

Fan Works

• Early in Drunkard's Walk II, Doug Sangnoir defeats a pair of boomers (combat robots) with a magical effect that turns a city plaza into a functional pinball machine, complete with score display on a nearby electronic billboard.

Film

• This animated trope actually showed up in the live-action film Freddy vs. Jason. When Freddy and Jason are in the dream world, Freddy causes Jason's body to fly through the air around his boiler room, bouncing off of various pipes and tanks with pinball-machine sound effects accompanying every carom. Eventually, the action stops, causing Jason to drop straight back down to the floor and Freddy to say "Aw. Tilt."
• The Man With Two Brains. They specifically set up the whole Mad Scientist lab just so Steve Martin can do the pinball routine near the end of the movie.
• During the car chase scenes in THX 1138, where the titular character is pursued by the robotic police officers on motorcycles. In the scene immediately following the wipe-out of the first officer, "TILT//" can be seen flashing on a mainframe panel.

Live-Action TV

• In the dodgeball episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Jennifer/Moze takes out four people with one throw of a ball, including pinball sound effects.
• The "It's" Man in episode 12 of Monty Python's Flying Circus in no way resembles a ball, but produces the characteristic sounds bouncing off trees.

Web Original

• In what looks like a deliberate Shout-Out to the the Love Hina example above, Volume 5 Episode 1 of RWBY has a sequence where Yang belts a creep who's been coming on to her, sending him caroming off everything in sight, including, briefly, the lintel, doorposts and threshold of a door he goes flying into and eventually through.

Western Animation

• As noted above, the Trope Maker and Trope Codifier are the various iterations of the gag seen in Looney Tunes cartoons made in the 1930s and 1940s.
• A variation of this is found in Family Guy, in one of their random referential gags: Stewie has been forced to live in a bubble for a while, and at one point complains about the morning he's had: Somehow getting caught in Sesame Street‍'‍s Funky classic "Pinball Number Count" short (123 4 5 678 9 10 11 12!).
• One of the Avatar: The Last Airbender chibi shorts Bending Battle has Toph demonstrating Earthbending by turning a cliff face into a pinball machine, complete with Sokka as the ball.
• Happens on Jimmy Two-Shoes, when Jimmy and Beezy are knocking themselves around.