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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Better run for the border
''He's never gonna understand
''Better find a place to hide
''On the other side of the Rio Grande"''
|'''Johnny Rodriguez''', "Run For The Border"}}
A character desires to escape something in his home country, and resolves to flee or relocate to a neighboring one.
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This usually manifests itself in one of two ways:
Type A is your standard getaway for criminals and malcontents after they rob a bank or engage in a crime spree, to escape arrest and prosecution. This can even include travel ''within'' the same country. In the US for instance, the criminal will cross a "state line" (border between states) because the police of the state they were in has no jurisdiction in adjoining states. Especially common in [[Western
Type B is the sufficiently more noble version, where a character's home country is either going [[Crapsack World]] by way of [[After the End]], or is [[Day of the Jackboot|taken over by a totalitarian movement]] which quickly brings an end to the previous civil liberties, and escape is the only sane alternative. Fleeing the country is usually the end goal, and they'll likely either have to escape or avoid capture by the roving death-gangs or evil repressive authorities to leave.
May end in a [[
{{examples
=== Films ===▼
▲'''Type A:'''
▲== Films ==
▲* ''[[Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid]]''. While fleeing from their pursuers:
▲{{quote| '''Sundance:''' Let's go to Mexico instead.<br />
'''Butch:''' All they got in Mexico is sweat. There's too much of that here. }}
** They eventually decide to go to [[Bolivian Army Ending|Bolivia]].
* In one version of ''[[The Shawshank Redemption]]'' the heroes flee to Mexico.
* Spoofed in ''[[Super Troopers]]'', where one of the highway patrolmen scares three stoners by pretending to get shot by a criminal (another patrolman in disguise), who hijacks the police car they're in the backseat of, and is intent on escaping to Mexico, despite Canada being only a few miles away.
{{quote|
* ''[[
* Mexico is Charlie Sheen's destination in ''[[The Chase (
* ''[[The Great Escape]]''
* ''Von Ryan's Express''
* The famous lovers (in real life, too) of Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw in ''The Getaway''
* The big ending of ''[[Blue Streak]]'' starring Martin Lawrence as an ex-con posing as a cop to get into a police station to recover a diamond.
* The majority of ''[[
* Subverted in ''Going South'' in that the 'hero' stops on the farside of the Rio Grande to taunt the pursuing posse... only for his horse to keel over on him. He is promptly captured by the posse, who simply rode over the border and dragged him back.
* In ''[[Young Guns]]'' Billy the Kid constantly promises that he'll take the gang over the border into the relative safety of Mexico. He never leaves New Mexico however, and gets everyone killed for it.
* Spoofed by a [[Top Gear]] segment that didn't make it into the final cut. After "escaping" from Colditz (now a hotel, and Jeremy checked out with his credit card), they make what ends up being an ''economy'' run for the Polish border on [[Unit Confusion|11.3562354 liters]] of fuel. {{spoiler|James May}} is taken out and shot when he fails to make the border.
* One [[Charlie Chaplin]] short ended with him escaping authorities by crossing over to Mexico... where he's almost caught in the crossfire of a bandito shootout. He decides to just straddle the borderline instead.
* ''[[From Dusk
* In ''Tank'', the hero must drive his son across a state border in order to escape the jurisdiction of a corrupt sheriff who'd framed his boy for drug dealing. In a [[Exactly What It Says
=== Literature ===
* In the first ''[[Riftwar Cycle|Serpentwar Saga]]'' novel, Rupert and Eric try to flee to the Sunset Isles after killing Eric's half-brother due to a law there that said that criminals who stayed there without causing trouble for a year had their records cleared. They didn't even get close.
* [[Played for Laughs]] in ''[[Jeeves and Wooster (
=== Live-Action TV ===
* Andrew and Jonathan flee to Mexico at the end of season 6 of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''.
* See ''[[CSI]]'s'' Season 9 opener for an example of A.
* ''[[CSI:
* Referenced occasionally in ''[[Friends]]''. Phoebe's future plans tend to end up with her and an accomplice fleeing to Mexico for some reason. Which is odd, considering that Canada is much closer...
* In an episode of ''[[The Closer]]'' a murderer fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution. But because his victim, an illegal immigrant, was a Mexican citizen, Brenda smiled, got him to sign a paper stating that he had no intention of leaving Mexico, then told him that he was now under Mexican jurisdiction. And Mexico takes a dim view of people murdering its citizens. Just as two Mexican cops haul him off.
** The murderer only steps into this trap because the victim's mother had claimed to be from (IIRC) Costa Rica, not Mexico.
* Spoofed in ''[[
* {{spoiler|Shane Vendrell}} wants to do this in Season 7 of ''[[The Shield]]'', but needs to hang around Los Angeles trying to wait for the heat to cool off and to get some money to do so. {{spoiler|Lem was going to do the same thing, until Shane murdered him.}}
* ''[[Due South]]'' had a rather interesting variant of type A. Ray was accused of killing a perp, though he actually didn't, and it looked worse because he had GSR on his hands from spending the morning at the range. Ray runs into the Canadian consulate and because it's technically Canadian territory, extradition proceedings have to be done before he can be removed. That gives Fraser time to find the evidence to clear him.
=== Music ===
* Burl Ives song ''"One Hour Ahead of the Posse".'' A murderer tries to reach the Rio Grande river and cross into Mexico.
* Similarly, Christopher Cross's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur8ftRFb2Ac "Run Like the Wind"] is also about a murderer making a run for the Mexican border.
* Inverted in the Johnny Rodriguez song "Run For The Border," where the narrator is running for the border to get the hell ''out'' of Mexico so he can get away from the irate knife wielding husband of a woman that he spent the night with.
* Subverted in Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money" - he makes it to Honduras, but the trouble has followed him. "Send lawyers, guns, and money/The shit has hit the fan."
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=== Tabletop Games ===
* ''Border Crossing'', an adventure for ''[[Hero System|Espionage]]'' and ''Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes'', is closest to a Type A. The player characters are Western spies who infiltrate East Germany during the [[Cold War]] to investigate a mysterious "factory", and then have to get themselves '''out''' of East Germany. Unless the players have done an incredible job (or the GM has incredibly lousy die rolls), the secret police will be coming after the characters at some point in the mission.
* In ''Spycraft 2'', if you find yourself the subject of a manhunt you can escape by invoking this trope to initiate a chase scene: the manoeuvre is actually called "
=== Real Life ===
* Averted in real life: During WWII, German [[POW
** When was this? Because if it was after May 22, 1942, Mexico wouldn't have been too welcoming.
** There was a
* [[Truth in Television]]. Partly the reason why the FBI was formed was because during the Prohibition era, the lack of any centralized police force meant that gangsters could commit their crimes and cross state or county lines without fear of pursuit.
* The reason why many American criminals (especially serial killers and murderers) escapes to Mexico is because the Mexican Constitution forbids to deport people who are going to face death penalty in their home countries. That law was created during the [[Cold War]] and during the time period when almost all Central and South America were controlled by military dictatorships, but the law doesn't have exceptions for criminals for democratically-elected countries (like the U.S), and while they can be deported back to the U.S., they can't face death penalty due to a treaty with the Mexican government.
** Ironically, this law ended biting the Mexican government in their ass, thanks of the [
==Type
=== Comic Books ===
* In Marvel's ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]'', [[Fantastic Four|Ben Grimm]] took off for France when the government passed a [[Super Registration Act]], forcing him to take up sides against friends and colleagues. He decided the hell with it and [[Take a Third Option|took a third option]].
=== Films ===
* Happened in ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]'' because Mexico was far enough south that the new ice age would be less deadly to people from northern United States. One especially snarky [http://community.livejournal.com/m15m/2025.html#cutid1 web review] put it thusly:
{{quote|
* The movie ''[[
* ''[[The Sound of Music]]'', though here it's because Austria has been taken over by [[Nazi Germany]].
* Inverted in the opening of ''[[The
{{quote|
Cue [[Oh Crap]] looks from the Mexicans... followed by an air strike. }}
=== Literature ===
* The implied ending of ''[[
=== Live-Action TV ===
* Americans flee to Mexico in the [[Made for TV Movie]] ''Super Volcano'', where Yellowstone Park erupts, covers much of the US in ash, and plunges the world into a nuclear winter. They are forced to close the border here too.
* After painting their cars with the most anti-Southern slurs they could think of, driving through Alabama and subsequently getting rocks thrown at them, the members of ''[[Top Gear]]'' made a run for the Louisiana border. Why they thought it would be any better on the other side is up for debate.
** If they didn't know Mississippi was in the middle, the idea that they didn't do any research seems beyond the point of debating.
** They were trying to reach New Orleans, which was the designated 'finish line' for the challenge. And by the way, they just didn't have rocks thrown at them, the guys and their camera crew nearly got ''beaten up'' by some Alabama locals, making this a [[Chased
=== Music ===
* The [[Billy Joel]] song "Miami 2017" tells of a future in which New York City is destroyed and everyone flees to Florida. They can't literally
* Chris de Burgh's song ''Borderline'' is about this (probably the Nazi takeover of Germany, judging by the context of the sequel song ''Say Goodbye to it All'').
=== Video Games ===
* ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' begins with this version, as [[Player Character|Hawke]] and his/her family flee the monstrous invasion of darkspawn. {{spoiler|It potentially ends with Type A, as Hawke goes on the run with his/her [[Love Interest]], who may be a highly wanted criminal.}}
=== Western Animation ===
* Amusingly inverted in ''[[
* In ''[[Alfred J Kwak]]'', Alfred and his friends flee to neighbouring Broad Reedland when their home Great Waterland is turned into a fascist dictatorship by Dolf and his [[A Nazi
=== Real Life ===
* The southwestern United States play host to a ton of illegal immigrants who fled Mexico due to higher wages.
** With the new immigration laws passed by Arizona recently, there's been a lot of news hubbub about Mexican immigrants moving back to Mexico (or at least out of state).
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[[Category:The Wild West]]
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:Run
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