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{{trope}}
[[File:rope bridge.jpg|thumb|400px| Potentially more dangerous than what's chasing you. (Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.)]]
Any foot-based [[Chase Scene]] in the outdoors inevitably comes to a broad and incredibly deep chasm spanned only by a rickety rope-and-plank bridge. Naturally, the ropes on one end ''must'' be cut (or break due to their age) when the hero(es) are half-way across, so that they must hold on for dear life as the bridge swings down and slams into the side of a cliff. Never mind the [[Not the Fall That Kills You|predictable results]] of slamming into the cliff that fast.
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== [[Anime]] ==
* ''[[Futari wa Pretty Cure]]'', episode 6, offers a subversion: The bad guy chases the girls onto the bridge, but he is too heavy for it; his first step snaps the ropes and breaks the planks, plunging him into the river below just as the girls reach the other end.
* Subverted in ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', episode 171. Sailor Venus and Pluto are being chased by [[Mooks]] across a Rope Bridge, which (predictably) fails before they reach the other end, causing the mooks to plummet down. Sailor Venus conjures a magical chain to support the two of them, and it seems that all they have to do is to climb up... but a [[Reveal Shot]] follows, showing that the other end of the chain is being held by the [[Big Bad]], who happily releases it, causing the heroes to fall to certain doom. (They survive, of course
* [[Lampshaded]] in episode 33 of ''[[Detective Conan]]'': The kids get to the other side a rope bridge without a problem and Conan [[Tempting Fate|comments that this kind of bridge would always fall if it was in a movie]]... at which point, the old ropes suddenly come apart and the bridge completely collapses, leaving them with no way back.
** In the seventh movie, Hattori Heiji ''rides a motorbike'' over a collapsing rope bridge.
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* ''[[Romancing the Stone]]''
** Though that was really a trestle bridge. It was a hazard anyway.
* ''[[The Amazing Panda Adventure]]''{{context}}
* Averted in ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: Dead Man's Chest,'' where the rope bridge does not sway dangerously, snap, or get cut. It's just a bridge.
* ''[[The Phantom (film)|The Phantom]]'' movie had a rope bridge the bad guys have to drive a truck over. Unsure if it will support the truck's weight, they force a native child to drive it over for them. It collapses while the bad guys are fleeing, allowing them to escape as the Phantom is forced to save the boy.
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* ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'': The Bridge of Death. Although old and rickety it's perfectly functional.
* ''[[Pandorum]]'' has a sci-fi take on this trope, with the old and damaged platform leading to the reactor. But instead of a ''[[Star Wars]]''-type abyss the platform passes low over a horde of sleeping carnivorous mutants.
* A rope bridge over a river of lava serves as the entrance to Atlantis in Disney's ''[[Atlantis: The
== [[Literature]] ==
* Subverted but [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in ''[[Narnia|The Silver Chair]]''. Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum come to a giant stone bridge spanning a canyon. Puddleglum, who [[The Eeyore|sees a down side to everything]], is reluctant to take it, theorizing it's just too convenient and will probably vanish into thin air or something when they're halfway across.
* Subverted in ''[[
* ''[[His Dark Materials|Northern Lights]]''{{context}}
* In ''[[Kushiel's Legacy|Kushiel's Chosen]]'', island prison [[The Alcatraz|La Dolorosa]] is connected to the mainland only by a rope bridge, which has two guards on the island side armed with axes, who can cut the bridge long before anybody gets across. Joscelin's solution? [[Badass|Climb along the underside of the bridge]].
* One of the first signs that something's up in ''[[Matthew Reilly|Temple]]'' is the existing, already cut rope bridge. Several characters note that it's new, but Incan rope bridges rarely lasted more than three years. Not only is there a native tribe in the area, but they want to keep ''something'' on the tower of rock the temple is on.
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* There ''used'' to a rope bridge spanning the great gorge in the ''[[Redwall]]'' series, but [[Big Bad|Slagar the Cruel]] burns it once he's finished crossing. The heroes then cross the gorge with a makeshift zipline, and later in the series a gigantic tree trunk is used as the bridge.
* ''[[Ketrin]]'': The entire (non-erotic) second half of [http://www.p-synd.com/ketrin/ketrin7.htm Part Seven] involves Ketrin's friend Sherinel having to cross a bridge with four lupinoid companions to get to the side of the river where he thinks Ketrin is. Subverted to the extent that it's not a rope bridge but a huge decaying wooden structure, but that just means that a) it takes a lot longer to get across, and b) it's slowly falling to bits while they're crossing it. And yes, it's hundreds of feet above a raging river.
* In the ''[[The
== [[Live
* ''[[Lost]]'' featured a rope bridge that didn't collapse when (very large) Hurley crossed it, but did when the much smaller Charlie followed him.
** It is possible that Hurley strained the bridge enough to weaken it so that it could break when Charlie tried to cross it.
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** In ''Voyage of the Damned'' they have to cross a sort of rickety-bridge. It's not made of rope, but {{spoiler|one of the people shocks us by falling off before he gets on the bridge, and one jumps off voluntarily, taking the host with her}}, so it seems to fit the trope, or at least subverting it.
* The ''[[Hercules: The Legendary Journeys]]'' episode "Hero's Heart" starts with Iolaus having a crisis of confidence after failing to save a woman from falling from one of these.
*
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Dusky Bridge in ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney]]: Trials and Tribulations''.
** Which, unlike most examples of the trope, it actually stood up despite missing large gaps...
* ''Original Adventure'' (''[[Colossal
* The cast of ''[[Eternal Sonata]]'' make quite a scene about going across a fairly sturdy bridge that comes to nothing until a boss a little later in the game destroys it in a final blow.
* ''[[Prince of Persia]]: The Shadow and The Flame'' had a fight with an invincible skeleton on a rope bridge. The ropes hold, but the planks don't.
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** It's also possible to cut the rope bridge yourself. Here's a hint: don't cut the rope bridge yourself, or wait until you're off the bridge and shoot the ropes. Makes a good ambush tactic because when the bridge falls or wobbles it'll send the enemies on it flying to their deaths.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' has a rope bridge incident {{spoiler|in Cloud's past}}; however, it isn't part of a chase scene; some adventurous kids just fall afoul of a rickety old bridge.
* Used for dramatic effect in ''[[X-Men
* [http://blockland.us Blockland]: This is true of virtually every rope bridge. Ever. It actually got to the point where a rope bridge was built and advertised simply because it ''didn't'' collapse.
* ''[[Super Mario Bros. (video game)|Super Mario Bros.]]'' features two giant rope bridges infested with jumping Cheep Cheeps.
** It's debatable whether they're meant to be rope bridges, since they're always parallel to the bottom of the screen and they never sag or sway, although this may be due to gameplay limitations. The graphics leave a lot of ambiguity as to what material they're made of. At any rate, definite rope bridges appear in ''[[Yoshi's Island|Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island]]''.
** And Hightail Falls from ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2]]'' composes entirely of planets held together by a planet-sized rope bridge.
* ''[[Donkey Kong Country]]'' and its successors get lots of mileage out of this trope (although the bridges are usually sturdy).
* Unsurprisingly, the last levels of ''Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'' and the "Temple of Doom" segment of ''[[Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures]]'' have Indy walking along a rope bridge.
== [[Web Original]] ==
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Mercilessly
* ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'':
** Parodied and subverted in
** In the episode "The Boy Who Knew Too Much," Bart crosses then tears down a rope bridge while playing hookie, in a futile attempt to evade Principal Skinner.
** Played around in "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" when the Simpsons went on a Japanese game show to win plane tickets back to Springfield. After humiliating and painful tasks, they family must grab the tickets off a rope bridge suspended over a volcano. The bridge snapped and the family fell into the lava, which turns out to be orange juice loaded with wasabi.
* For no apparent reason, one episode of ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (animation)|Dungeons and Dragons]]'' starts with the kids crossing one of these in a ''thunderstorm''; naturally it fulfills the trope by collapsing halfway through. (Heaven only knows how they got Eric onto the thing in the first place.)
* In ''[[The Emperor's
* On ''[[Beavis and Butthead]]'', an angel comes to Butthead on a stormy night and tries to kill him by goading him into walking over one of these. In an inversion of the [[Stock Parody]] of "It's a Wonderful Life." he shows Butthead how much better the world would be without him, which bores Butthead so much he ignores the bridge and goes home.
* ''[[Jonny Quest]]'' TOS episode "The Devil's Tower". While making their escape from the title place, our heroes have to cross a rope bridge while an insane World War I German war criminal is throwing grenades at them from a biplane. One of the grenades hits the bridge and breaks it while Dr. Quest is crossing it, requiring him to be pulled to safety.
* ''[[The Flintstones
* In one episode of ''[[X-Men (animation)|X-Men]]'', a depowered Magneto and Professor X stumble across one of these in the Savage Land while fleeing a vertigo-inducing supervillainess; eventually they just grab on tightly and cut the thing, which gets them out of her area of influence.
* Subverted in ''[[Futurama]]'', where a rickety rope bridge turns out to be a perfectly safe conveyor belt.
* An episode of ''[[Gummi Bears]]'' centered around replacing an old rope bridge. The replacement is ''too'' durable, and leaves the Gummis open to an invasion.
* These popped up all the time on ''[[DuckTales (1987)]]''.{{context}}
* An episode of ''[[Captain N: The Game Master]]'' had a scene with a deteriorating rope bridge. Fortunately there was a stalactite handing just above the unstable post on the far end, which, when blasted loose by Kevin, impaled the rope and pinned it safely to the cliff.
* The ''[[Duckman]]'' episode "Short Plush and Deadly" manages to feature one of these ''and'' an [[Inevitable Waterfall]]
* In the [[Batman: The Animated Series]] episode ''Tyger, Tyger'' [[Batman]] fights [[The Dragon|Tygrus]], a giant [[Half-Human Hybrid|half-human]] [[Catgirl|cat man]], on a decaying rope bridge. The bridge snaps with Tygrus deflects one of Batman's batarangs, cutting the rope.
* ''[[My Little Pony]]'': Shows up in the pilot. Part of the first route the focal ponies and their human ally Megan attempt to take to Midnight Castle involves a rope bridge that collapses with Megan and Applejack on it, dropping them into the river mouth below. They are rescued (and treated to a [[Busby Berkeley Number]]) by the Sea Ponies.
* In homage to the above, in the second part of the pilot to ''[[My Little Pony:
* ''[[George of the Jungle]]'': George has to cross one of these but Ape doesn't think it's sturdy enough to hold Shep<ref>George's pet elephant who he thinks is a dog</ref> - so George carries Shep over instead.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]
[[Category:Chase Scene]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity]]
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