Run for the Border: Difference between revisions

 

== Films ==

{{quote| '''Sundance:''' Let's go to Mexico instead.<br />

'''Butch:''' All they got in Mexico is sweat. There's too much of that here. }}

* 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| '''Disguised Patrolman:''' You boys like Mex-E-Co?!?}}

* ''[[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.

* 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.

 

 

== 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.

 

 

* 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.

* 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.

* {{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.

== 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.

 

 

* 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| '''TV NEWS:''' ''In other developments tonight, millions of Americans are evacuating to Mexico, which briefly closed the borders while drunk on the incredible irony of the situation, but then the administration forgave all Latin American debt. ¡Buenos días a nuestros nuevos amigos!'' }}

* ''[[The Sound of Music]]'', though here it's because Austria has been taken over by [[Nazi Germany]].

{{quote| '''Hannibal''': General Tuco. You are engaged in unauthorized combat with United States military personnel... OVER U.S. AIRSPACE.<br />

Cue [[Oh Crap]] looks from the Mexicans... followed by an air strike. }}

* 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.

 

 

== Music ==

* 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'').

 

 

== Western Animation ==