History Literature / TheRunningMan

* FlippingTheBird: Richards does this both at the start and end of his time as a contestant on the show.

** A solitary Humber is also mentioned. It was a British make built by the Rootes Group, but any Rootes cars sold in the U.S. were badged as Sunbeams to keep continuity with the Alpine and Tiger sports cars. Rootes were later taken over by Chrysler, whoses European operations were bought out around the time of the book by Peugoet/Citroen. For one dollar.

* PollutedWasteland: Most of America in 2025. The corporate networks have gained unrestricted license to pump out exhaust gases that cause a surge in bronchitis cases, to the point where the relatively well-off part of the population use special nose filters.

* WeCanRuleTogether: At the end, CEO Killian offers Richards a job at the network to replace the lead Hunter of ''The Running Man''. Richards responds to his offer in the most spectacular way possible, by [[spoiler:first accepting in order to put Killian off-guard, then flying the passenger plane he hijacked right into Killian's ivory tower office while flipping the bird at him through both the cockpit's windshield and the huge glass wall of Killian's office as Killian stares right back at him in disbelief.]]

The story, written by Creator/StephenKing under his PenName of "Richard Bachman", is [[AdaptationDisplacement better known]] for its 1987 [[Film/TheRunningMan film version]] with Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger and [[Series/FamilyFeud Richard Dawson]], which [[InNameOnly turned the story]] into one of a BloodSport played by condemned criminals and additionally changed Richards' reason for entering the contest -- he was framed for a massacre that he was actually trying to stop. In 2021, it was reported that Creator/EdgarWright is going to helm a new movie adaptation that will be TruerToTheText. It will be from Creator/ParamountPictures, which previously got the rights to the original version.

After being declared a public enemy on the show, Richards is given $4,800 cash and a pocket video camera and turned loose. His family will win $100 for every hour he stays alive; if he can survive for 30 days, he wins the grand prize of $1 billion. He also gets a 12-hour head start before the network sends out a team of trackers known as "Hunters" to find and kill him. He can travel anywhere in the world, and each day he must videotape two messages and courier them to the TV show. Without these videotaped messages, he stops racking up prize money but the Hunters will continue their search. Despite the producer's claims to the contrary, as soon as the Network receives a videotaped message, the Hunters immediately know from the postmark the runner's approximate location. Viewers can earn cash rewards by calling the network with tips on his whereabouts. To date, there have been no survivors - and the producer frankly states that he never expects there to be any. The survival record is eight days and five hours.

The story, written by Creator/StephenKing under his PenName of "Richard Bachman", is better known for its 1987 [[Film/TheRunningMan film version]] with Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger and [[Series/FamilyFeud Richard Dawson]], which [[InNameOnly turned the story]] into one of a BloodSport played by condemned criminals, and Richards' reason for entering the contest changes -- he was framed for a massacre that he was actually trying to stop. In 2021 it has been reported that Creator/EdgarWright is going to helm a new movie adaptation that will be TruerToTheText. It will be from Creator/ParamountPictures which have perviously got the rights to the original version.

Not to be confused with Series/RunningMan, the South Korean variety show. Or [[http://www.aol.com/article/2016/07/01/matt-damon-ben-affleck-the-runner-explainer/21420634/ The Runner]], an evidently unrelated 2016 series with a very similar premise (though presumably with nobody dying).

The year is 2025 (the film version is set in 2019). Ben Richards desperately requires money to get medicine for his [[LittlestCancerPatient ill daughter]], Cathy. To stop his wife Sheila from continuing to prostitute herself to pay the bills, Richards turns to the state-sponsored Games Network, which runs several [[DeadlyGame TV game shows]] that put contestants at risk of severe injury or death. Contestants win money by surviving challenges such as ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_stress_test Treadmill to Bucks]]'', where a person with a heart or respiratory condition runs on a treadmill while answering trivia questions, or the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin self-explanatory]] ''Swim the Crocodiles''. After an extensive screening process, Richards is selected for the country's most popular and dangerous game, ''The Running Man''.

** Richards is racist against black people at first in the book. He uses the words "Negro" and "nigger," the latter being the first thing that pops into his head when the word "doctor" comes up in a word-association test. However, he changes his opinion when a black family in the Boston ghetto gives him shelter and helps him get out of town.

After being declared a public enemy on the show, Richards is given $4,800 cash and a pocket video camera and turned loose. His family will win $100 for every hour he stays alive; if he can survive for 30 days, he wins the grand prize of $1 billion. He also gets a 12-hour head start before the network sends out a team of trackers known as "Hunters" to find and kill him. He can travel anywhere in the world, and each day he must videotape two messages and courier them to the TV show. Without these videotaped messages, he loses the prize money but the Hunters will continue their search. Despite the producer's claims to the contrary, as soon as the Network receives a videotaped message, the Hunters immediately know from the postmark the runner's approximate location. Viewers can earn cash rewards by calling the network with tips on his whereabouts. To date, there have been no survivors - and the producer frankly states that he never expects there to be any. The survival record is eight days and five hours.

* AllForNothing: Richards joins the Running Man contest, being pursued by groups of 'Hunters' and receiving money for every hour he stays alive, in order [[HealthcareMotivation to provide for his wife and his sick daughter]]. He survives longer than any previous contestant in the history of the show, eluding the Hunters for almost two weeks and managing to escape on a plane after he threatens to blow up the airfield with a fake bomb. [[spoiler:[[CorruptCorporateExecutive Killian]] then offers him a job, but reveals that Richards' family had been killed in a random home invasion only two days after the start of the contest. With nothing left to live for, he hijacks the plane and flies it right into the Games Tower, killing both Killian and himself, not to mention who knows how many Network executives. He couldn't save his family, but it wasn't truly all for nothing after all.]]

* MortalWoundReveal: [[spoiler: Ben Richards gets shot in the stomach when he hijacks the plane. He learned how severe his wound was when he took a step and feels a sharp agonizing pull around his midsection. He looked down and saw that he had trod on his own intestines, which had unraveled from the large wound in his stomach and were hanging to the floor!]]

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Richards gives a ''spectacular'' one to one of his examiners during the Games Corporation's screening process, breaking down how privileged she is and basically sees people like Richards as cattle. It has her nearly in tears by the end of it.

* MortalWoundReveal: [[spoiler: Ben Richards gets shot in the stomach when he hijacks the plane. He learned how severe his wound was when he took a step and feels a sharp agonizing pull around his midsection. He looked down and saw that '''he had trod on his own intestines, which had unraveled from the large wound in his stomach and were hanging to the floor!''']]

** Also, he makes himself feel better during the degrading application process by sexually harassing one of the examiners, SlutShaming her, and taunting her that she can only get herself fired if she tries to do anything about it. On the other hand, it's implied that he's entirely correct when he points out her privileged social status and the reason she dresses so provocatively in front of starving plebeians is because she feels nothing but contempt for them.

* KidsAreCruel: The kids who turn in one of Richards' fellow contestants.

* CopKillerManhunt: Richards kills five Boston police officers in a gas explosion during his underground escape from the hotel. He already had a target on his head, but now every cop in the city wants his blood.

* InherentInTheSystem: Similar to ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', the violent, corrupt world of The Running Man feeds off its own degeneracy.
* KidsAreCruel: The kids who turn in Richards while he's in Boston.
* KilledOffScreen: Richards briefly meets another contestant of the ''Running Man'' contest before they're separately sent out into the field. He later hears a news report that the other contestant was found in another town hiding in a container and killed by the Hunters.

* OhCrap: Richards thinks that he is one step ahead of his pursuers after taking refuge in a hotel room in Boston. When he looks out his window he starts to notice that there are ''way'' too many police officers in the area, and he realizes that he's walked into a trap.
* PetTheDog: Early in the novel, Richards manages to convince an asshole cop to give him some money for a phonecall to his family. The man adds that if he tells anyone that he's a "softy", he'll come back and kicks Richards' ass.
* ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything: The Stalkers. Although they are apparently tracking Ben Richards, he never encounters any of them until the very end, when their leader participates in a hostage exchange. Every time Ben is close to being caught, it's by normal police or ordinary citizens who want to turn him in for the bounty. (Possibly a result of King writing the entire novel within the space of a week.)
* PollutedWasteland: Most of America in 2025. The corporate networks have gained unrestricted license to pump out exhaust gasses that cause a surge in bronchitis cases, to the point where the relatively well-off part of the population use special nose filters.

* PragmaticHero: Ben Richards is forced to engage in some morally questionable actions to survive the DeadlyGame, such as killing off several cops in a gas explosion to avoid capture. At the end, [[spoiler:when he learns that his family is dead, he flies a hijacked airplane into the Games Tower.]]

* WeCanRuleTogether: At the end, CEO Killian offers Richards a job at the network to replace the head Hunter of ''The Running Man''. Richards responds to his offer in the most spectacular way possible, by [[spoiler:first accepting in order to put Killian off-guard, then flying the passenger plane he hijacked right into Killian's ivory tower office while flipping the bird at him through both the cockpit's windshield and the huge glass wall of Killian's office while Killian stares right back at him in disbelief.]]

* AnachronismStew: Curiously, while passing time counting cars, Richards mentions Studebaker automobiles. Studebaker had already been out of business for more than 15 years when the book was written; possibly this anticipated a situation like Cuba in which old vehicles were kept running indefinitely, but the book also shows hover cars...

** Also, he makes himself feel better during the degrading application process by sexually harassing one of the examiners, SlutShaming her, and taunting her that she can only get herself fired if she tries to do anything about it. On the other hand, it's strongly implied that his analysis of her privileged social status and that she dresses so provocatively in front of starving plebeians she feels nothing but contempt for is actually correct.

* PoliticallyIncorrectHero: Richards is racist against black people at first in the book. He uses the words "Negro" and "nigger," the latter being the first thing that pops into his head when the word "doctor" comes up in a word-association test. However, he changes his opinion when a black family in the Boston ghetto gives him shelter and helps him get out of town.
** Also, he makes himself feel better during the degrading application process by sexually harassing one of the examiners, SlutShaming her, and taunting her that she can only get herself fired if she tries to do anything about it.

The story, written by Creator/StephenKing under his PenName of "Richard Bachman", is better known for its [[Film/TheRunningMan film version]] with Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger and [[Series/FamilyFeud Richard Dawson]], which [[InNameOnly turned the story]] into one of a BloodSport played by condemned criminals, and Richards' reason for entering the contest changes -- he was framed for a massacre that he was actually trying to stop. In 2021 it has been reported that Creator/EdgarWright is going to helm a new movie adaptation that will be TruerToTheText.

The story, written by Creator/StephenKing under his PenName of "Richard Bachman", is better known for its [[Film/TheRunningMan film version]] with Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger and [[Series/FamilyFeud Richard Dawson]], which [[InNameOnly turned the story]] into one of a BloodSport played by condemned criminals, and Richards' reason for entering the contest changes -- he was framed for a massacre that he was actually trying to stop.

The year is 2025 (the film version is set in 2019). Ben Richards desperately requires money to get medicine for his [[LittlestCancerPatient ill daughter]], Cathy. To stop his wife Sheila from continuing to prostitute herself to pay the bills, Richards turns to a state-sponsored television network, which runs several [[DeadlyGame TV game shows]] that put contestants at risk of severe injury or death. Contestants win money by surviving challenges such as ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_stress_test Treadmill to Bucks]]'', where a person with a heart or respiratory condition runs on a treadmill while answering trivia questions, or the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin self-explanatory]] ''Swim the Crocodiles''. After an extensive screening process, Richards is selected for the country's most popular and dangerous game, ''The Running Man''.

* BreadAndCircuses: Everyone has access to "Free-Vees" which are free televisions airing stupid shows that keep citizens occupied and distracted. Ricards notes that it's still legal to turn them off, implying that may not last much longer at the rate things are going.

* NonActionBigBad: Killian is just an executive who pumps out horrible entertainment to the masses, so he just spends all his time in an office. [=McCone=], the head Hunter, is charged with tracking Richards down and killing him, even though they only run into each other at the end.

* {{Dystopia}}: Similar to the one seen in ''Literature/TheLongWalk''.