Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,523
edits
Sticky Situation: Difference between revisions
fix redlink
m (update links) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (fix redlink) |
||
| (13 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:coyote-
{{quote|''"Now, that's what I call a sticky situation."''|'''Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny''', ''[[South Park]]''}}
Line 7 ⟶ 6:
A classic [[Comedy Trope]]: someone comes in contact something sticky (flypaper, glue, gum, molasses, tape, tar, wallpaper paste, etc.) and [[Hilarity Ensues]].
If it's not actually [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|superglue]], the substance tends to act as a far stronger adhesive than it is in reality. When bad guys use this stuff, it's almost an [[Obligatory Joke]] for them to [[Hoist by His Own Petard|trap themselves with it.]]
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* The ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' anime had several villains employ this as an attack, including one in the second season seemingly made of goo, Eudial in season 3, and the Amazoness Quartet in four. Strangely, they never seem to have trouble cleaning it out of their hair.
* One ''[[Lupin III]]'' movie had the title character using a bazooka loaded with a sticky bomb to immobilize several pursuing ships (gluing them to each-other, not the water).
* ''[[Ranma ½
* The ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'' manga had a pair of alien criminals breaking into the Masaki houehold to steal a priceless artifact nobody knew was valuable, easily bypassing [[Mad Scientist|Washu's]] most ingenious security traps. When they try again the next day, she's augmented them with [[Rock Beats Laser|tiger pit traps, swinging spiked balls, and a floor coated in glue, none of which the pair had gadgets to deal with]]. This is all in the Masaki's ''living room''.
== Comic Books ==
Line 25 ⟶ 22:
* ''[[Empowered]]'' features Sistah Spooky coming upon the aftermath of the title character's disastrous encounter with Glue Gun Gil, considered to be the all-time lamest villain in the city next to Ladder Master.
* In a comic book story of [[The Smurfs]], Gargamel creates a treat that ends up trapping a Smurf that touches it, but as Gargamel runs over to where he has set the trap, he also gets stuck in the trap, and so do birds, a cow, and several other things on his way home. Papa Smurf makes a potion that frees everything that got stuck in the trap — everything, that is, except for Gargamel, which Papa Smurf has no more potion for, but he does leave a recipe for the formula for Gargamel to make up.
* In ''[[PS238]]'' Centurion [[Powered Armor|armor suits]] have integrated glue guns that spit substance strong enough to hold even metahumans with [[Super Strength]], though it decays after a few minutes.
* ''[[The Smurfs]]'' In one of Peyo's original comics, Gargamel sets a trap for the Smurfs, a sundae made of glue. He catches one of them, but trips mid-gloating, falling onto it a getting himself stuck. Then, when he tries to get home to get unglued, two birds become stuck, and by the time Papa Smurf and the others show up with an "ungluer" to save the trapped Smurf, a beaver, two chipmunks, and even a cow are stuck to it, Gargamel clearly having made it worse in his rage to free himself.
* [[Spider-Man]]'s webbing. It's a chemical which, when shot from his web-shooters, can restrain foes even stronger than he is.
* Adhesive-X is an invention of [[Captain America]]'s foe Baron Zemo, that can glue anything together and is practically indissolvable. The Avengers had to consult the currently-jailed Trapster in order to create a solvent. The stuff can also be corrosive when it's too concentrated, and is what caused the horrific scars on Zemo's face. Zemo eventually considered it a failed experiment.
== Film ==
Line 33 ⟶ 34:
** In ''[[Sherlock, Jr.]]'' he runs afoul of a sheet of flypaper.
* One of the best remembered segments in ''[[Song of the South]]'' is about the Tar Baby. ([[I Thought It Meant|You thought it meant something else?]])
* ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'': Judge Doom punches a container of glue and gets it on his fist. He then accidentally hits a steam roller and gets stuck to it. He steps in the glue and when he tries to push off the steamroller with his foot, gets that stuck to it as well. He's eventually run over by the steamroller, but he survives because he's a toon. Watch it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVCtlYxD0XE here, starting at 1:40.]
* In ''[[Dirty Rotten Scoundrels]]'', Jamieson delivers Freddy to a party of sailors on shore leave who Freddy had earlier attempted to deceive. The next morning, we see that he has apparently gotten along with them just fine, casually leaning with his hand against a doorframe as the last of them leaves the room. He then asks Jamieson to get his hand un-superglued from the door frame.
* In ''[[The Man With Two Brains]],'' Dr. Hfuhruhurr consults with his boss, who spends the conversation with his index fingers placed pensively against his upper lip. At the end of the conversation, the doctor asks when the operation to separate his fingers from his lip will happen, and notes that superglue is something you have to be careful with.
* In ''[[National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation]],'' Clark and his wife go to bed after he just cut down a pine tree, coating his hands in sap.
* IIRC one of the GIs in ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'' gets a sticky bomb stuck to his hand just before it's about to detonate. YMMV on how funny that is.
* ''[[American Pie]] 2'' has this with Jim's hand and a pornography tape.
** Actually, as Jim's mistaken superglue for lubricant, he's more worried about what his '''other''' hand is glued to... The tape is just an embarrassing bonus.
* In ''[[The Simpsons Movie]]'', Homer's hand gets stuck to his pants with super glue during a [[Badass Boast]].
* Happens to [[The Three Stooges]] in the movie ''The Outlaws Is Coming''.
* In a promotional web short for ''[[Up]]'', Russell has problems handling Band-Aids, which keep getting stuck to his fingers.
* The third ''[[Nightmare On Elm Street]]'' had a girl deathly afraid of roaches start to turn into one, which led to her walking into a giant roach motel. Most definitely not played for laughs ([[For the Evulz|unless you're Freddy]]).
* Cactus Jack does this in ''[[The Villain]]'' (which is, in places, basically a live-action Roadrunner cartoon). He paints the railroad tracks with glue, and his targets roll over it in their wagon to no effect. Furious, he runs after them... only to be stuck in the glue and hit by a train.
* In ''[[Honey We Shrunk Ourselves]]'', the direct-to-video sequel of ''[[Honey I Shrunk the Kids]]'', Wayne manages to accidentally shrink himself, his brother, and their wives to the size of cockroaches. Of course, they end up fleeing from a real cockroach into a Roach Motel-like glue trap. [[Mad Scientist|Wayne]] has made a hobby of disassembling these traps for [[For Science!|some reason]], and knows there's a clear path through which they can safely pass to the other side. His wife, freaking out over being attacked by a giant cockroach, manages to step in the glue and get stuck, with the cockroach biting at her, until [[Big Damn Heroes|Wayne comes back and pulls her free]].
== Literature ==
* The title character of the [[Roald Dahl]] book ''[[Matilda (novel)|Matilda]]'' glues her father's hat to his head. She also mentions the boy down the road who got Superglue on his finger and then tried to pick his nose, with disastrous results.
* [[Adrian Mole]] ends up with a model aeroplane glued to his nose at one point, prompting accusations that he was trying to sniff it.
== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[I Love Lucy]]'': In the episode "The Moustache," when Ricky grows a mustache that Lucy dislikes, she dons a false beard in protest. It's accidentally attached with Bulldog Cement ("Holds fast forever. Will not let go. Can only be removed with Bulldog Cement Remover Number Three") instead of spirit gum.
** In [[Lucille Ball]]'s later sitcom ''Life With Lucy'', her character ([[The Danza|yet again named Lucy]]) becomes stuck to Curtis after a mishap while trying to glue a lamp back together.
* An episode of ''The Captain and Tennille'' (a 70's variety show) had a superglue salesman demonstrating his product then accidentally getting his hand stuck to the hand of a pretty housewife. Then her husband came home and his hands got stuck around the salesman's neck.
* ''[[The Muppet Show]]'': In the Gilda Radner episode, Dr. Honeydew's superglue spills all over the stage and characters keep getting glued to everything. By the end of the show, everyone is stuck in one big ball.
* Deputy Andy Brennan runs afoul of a roll of Scotch tape in ''[[Twin Peaks]].''
* Done with a zombie mask on ''[[Victorious]]'', when Tori's ditzy friend uses the wrong glue. She is supposed to be the lead in the play that night, and ends up performing her entire (serious) part wearing the zombie mask. With the author of the play in the audience.
* Tim gets his head stuck to a board while demonstrating Binford's Miracle Glue on ''[[Home Improvement (TV series)|Home Improvement]]''. In a different episode, he gets ''both'' of his hands stuck to a toilet tank's interior wall.
* Happens in an episode of ''[[Samurai Sentai Shinkenger]]'' when Chiaki and Ryuunosuke become glued together by the [[Monster of the Week]].
** Which naturally carried over into the ''[[Power Rangers Samurai]]'' version of the episode. Which, given ''[[Power Rangers]]''' predilection for puns, was naturally titled "A Sticky Situation".
Line 66 ⟶ 69:
** In the episode [[Beauty Contest|"Beauty Is As Beauty Does"]] the group holds a beauty contest between the three women. During the talent portion Mary Ann is to perform a dance routine, and Mr. Howell tries to sabotage it by pouring glue onto the stage. Mary Ann, of course, [[Captain Oblivious|steps right in it]], becoming instantly stuck and loses her shoe ([[Brick Joke|which is still stuck in place in a later scene]]).
* Happened in the ''[[Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em]]'' episode, "Wendy House".
== Newspaper Comics ==
* In one ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' strip, when trying to assemble a plastic model Calvin got glue on his hands while Hobbes obliviously mused about the tri-lingual instructions.
* A week long arc in ''[[FoxTrot]]'' involved Paige and jason having their faces stuck together by experimental bubblegum.
* For their pranks, ''The Katzenjammer Kids'' tended to used an extremely effective superglue which would always get their victim stuck immediately and completely. However, the kids' [[Genre Savvy]] rival Rollo would often happen to be nearby with a kettle of hot water.
* In a ''[[Garfield]]'' strip [https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1989/06/21 (seen here)], Jon has to go to the hospital after picking his nose while trying to assemble a model airplane.
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' has a few ways to do this, such as Sovereign Glue. There's also Wand of Viscid Globes that shoots glue-y blobs.
Line 78 ⟶ 86:
* One of the myriad of weapons in ''[[Monster Madness]]'' was the Glue Cannon, which fired a puddle of goop onto the ground in which ground-based enemies, as well as your fellow players, can get caught (though it mostly only slows them down). As long as the player has the weapon equipped, he/she [[Required Secondary Power|wears boots that makes him/her immune to becoming stuck in glue]].
== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' immobilizers that shoot sticky "goober rounds" are common security weapons. Advantages over other [[Stun Guns]] is that goo doesn't care much about target species and body armor - with right sort of gum (and enough of it), even [[Powered Armor|powered exosuits]] can be slowed down for quite a while. The goober-goo is ''not'' just passive glue, thanks to [[nanomachines]] it's motile and can stick well, yet avoid suffocating the target, as it [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2002-09-28 moves away from breathing openings]. Even though it ''can'' hold a lot of weight, using more elastic <ref>inelastic material, by definition, would stretch without increasing tension past threshold - until it either breaks or becomes elastic</ref> goo [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-12-15 for emergency grapple "web-shooting"] is a bad idea, however.
== Wen Original ==
* From ''[[SCP Foundation]]'', SCP-170 is super-sticky super glue.
== Western Animation ==
* There was an episode of ''[[The Flintstones]]'' (and every other cartoon in existence, I'm sure) dealing with Fred's attempt to invent a new, unbreakable superglue, and getting stuck to Barney (as I recall) in the process. In the end it turns out the secret ingredient was {{spoiler|superglue}}.
* In ''[[Family Guy]]'' Stewie and Bryan spent [[wikipedia:Stuck Together, Torn Apart|most of an episode glued together.]]
* In the ''[[Tale Spin]]'' episode "Stuck on You", Baloo and Don Karnage are stuck together by an experimental superglue.
* In the ''[[Squirrel Boy]]'' episode "The Rod Squad," an escalating situation involving sticky buns ends up with most of the cast stuck together in a huge ball.
* One of many traps [[Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner|Wile E. Coyote has used to catch the Road Runner]].
* ''[[Totally Spies!]]'' used this trope several times, involving everything from glue guns to a human sized roach-motel when one of the girls became an insect hybrid.
* ''[[Animaniacs]]'' had a character recounting an incident where the Warner Kids made a movie themselves where they use the flypaper gag, which the person admitted was funny, but ran ''[[Overly Long Gag|several hours]]'' too long.
* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' had a minor villain getting hold of some [[Reality Warper]] powers, and Raven, having been knocked into the ocean, discovered the hard way that the water had turned into glue.
Line 94 ⟶ 108:
* The plot of an entire episode of ''[[Kick Buttowski]]'' called "Hand in Hand" where the titular character gets stuck together with Kendall due to cave sap... the only way to get them unstuck is by using the anti-sticky agent in Kendall's boyfriends garage.
* In an episode of [[Danger Mouse]], the heroes are superglued to a roller coaster of doom. [[Hilarity Ensues]] when they describe to Colonel K how they escaped it.
* The Pieman from the original ''[[Strawberry Shortcake]]'' specials is such a [[Lethal Chef]], his pies are glue-like to begin with, so in of the specials he tries to use them as such, to set a trap for the heroine. Naturally, given his rotten luck as a cartoon supervillain, she takes a shortcut (riding her tricycle over the tarp he is hiding under) and predictably, he gets snagged in his own trap.
== Real Life ==
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZB7sO5ZoV8 This Krazy Glue ad] is not an
* Apparently, it's not unheard of for people to visit an emergency room after mistaking a tube of superglue for personal lubricant. (OW.)
* The [[Sticky Bomb]] was a real ally weapon in [[WW 2]]. It resembled a German stick grenade but with the end coated in glue, to be tossed on the weak-parts on enemy tanks. Pulling the pin would pop the end off, revealing the sticky end and arming the device, and having one where the glue leaked onto the handle was a ''very'' real possibility.
* Police have experimented with a sticky foam gun as a method of non-lethal urban pacification. Besides the obvious cleanup issue is the risk of accidentally (or not) shooting someone in the face.
* Velvet worms, soft-bodied primitive cousins of arthropods, hunt by spraying streams of glue at smaller invertebrates to stick them to the ground.
* The Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919, when a molasses tank burst and a wave of molasses traveling at 35
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
[[Category:Disgust Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Sticky Situation]]
| |||