History Main / EveryCarIsAPinto

** Could be {{handwave}}d away by saying that, since the main characters are capable of bending the laws of physics while inside the Matrix, they made stuff blow-up-able.

* ''Manga/BlackLagoon''. Certain cars there will explode if they ''tip over''.

* Subverted in ''Manga/GunsmithCats'': A villain drives off a raising bridge and her car explodes in midair. Two of the protagonists stare slack-jawed in amazement for a moment before suspecting that the [[MadBomber third one]] had something to do with it. She smiles and shows that she's holding a remote detonator.

* ''Anime/FutariWaPrettyCure'': In the 42nd episode, a variation of this trope results from a bad guy pressing Cure Black's BerserkButton, leading her to destroy an entire subway car with her BattleAura, making this instance Every ''Subway'' Car Is A Pinto.

* In ''Anime/SpeedRacer'', there was a car that flew off of a cliff in ''every episode'', which exploded in a violent manner. Since racing is the whole point of the show, one would think that they'd have the tracks a ''little'' bit further away from cliffs. Or active volcanoes, for that matter.
** The intro also depicted a car crashing through a railing and flying through the air before crashing to the ground in a massive explosion.

* In ''Anime/SailorMoon'', [[spoiler:Mimete]] tampers with the brakes of [[spoiler:Eudial]]'s car, which sends both car and driver off a cliff. The first explodes, killing the second, and causes a LARGE water column to rise.
* In ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'', most non-Gundams are MadeOfExplodium (when not piloted by a main character), but Leos in particular appear to be designed with their fuel or ammunition evenly distributed around the entire body. Shot in the arm? Kaboom. Same for a lot of mobile suits across the franchise, really. The [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam original series]] at least justified this by way of said suits being powered by fusion reactors - touch them wrong and the entire suit goes up. This makes mobile suit combat in space colonies a generally bad idea, as these explosions are large and powerful enough to punch holes right through the walls of the colonies and open them to space.
* {{Exaggerated|Trope}} in ''Anime/PaniPoniDash'' In episode 15, after being stuck on the edge of a cliff all episode long, a bus that the girls are trapped in falls into the water, and then blows up like a friggin' ''A-bomb''! (Right afterward, though, Becky mentions that everyone was rescued safe and sound.)
* Parodied in ''Literature/ACertainMagicalIndex'' when Touma and Misaki were once attacked by a street gang called Deadlock, whose gimmick is that they ride around on rocket-powered roller skates. Touma throws a remote control at one gang member's head and makes him crash, and the man's skates explode in a massive fireball. Touma and Misaki incredulously ask what kind of shoddy design that was.
* In ''Manga/GTOTheEarlyYears'', Eikichi blows up a bunch of motorcycles by driving another motorcycle into them.
* In ''Literature/HeavyObject'', during a raid on poachers a truck is shot in the tank but fails to explode. When Qwenthur complains about this, Havia points out [[ThisIsReality shooting a vehicle's gas tank only blows them up in movies]]. [[InstantlyProvenWrong The truck explodes immediately after]] due to static elecricity igniting the gasoline vapor.
* ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders'': In the OVA, Senator Wilson's car instantly bursts into a spectacular [[EverythingMakesAMushroom mushroom cloud explosion]] after crashing into a train. While the car was badly damaged at this point, it's still unrealistic for the impact to cause such a huge explosion.

* In ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' comic, Alain blows up a large number of oil tankers by shooting them with a machine gun. In the books, however, this trope was {{averted|Trope}}; when Susan suggested that plan of action, Roland explained that crude oil isn't nearly as volatile as most people think.

* In "Half-Baked", in ''Tales from the Crypt'' #40, the main character's car flipped over after a blowout and caught on fire almost immediately.

* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': Calvin once imagined a car falling into the Grand Canyon and exploding — in mid-air. Apparently a Mercedes is even worse than a Pinto.

--> '''Calvin:''' [[LampshadeHanging Now really! How often do you get to see a car explode in real life?]]\\

-->'''Gaz''': [[LampshadeHanging How did that happen?! Even if the gas tank combusted, why would the whole damn bus explode? It's not a fucking Pinto!]]

[[folder:Film — Animated]]

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/{{Rango}}'', when the bats that are used for transportation inexplicably explode upon crashing or when shot.
* Lampshaded in ''WesternAnimation/{{Frozen|2013}}''. When Kristoff and Anna jump a ravine in the sled, the sled doesn't make it, crashing into the ravine. Kristoff looks down at it dismally, and the oil lamp explodes, despite the sled landing in thick snow. Somewhat justified in that the sled was coated in fresh lacquer, which is potentially flammable, and there IS an ignition source, but still...
--> '''Kristoff:''' But I just paid it off...
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Anastasia}}'', this is done with a train.
* At the very end of ''WesternAnimation/AGoofyMovie'', there is a hilarious use of this. This movie had not used a lot of slapstick comedy before this moment, so it comes as a complete surprise when Goofy kicks his car, which was a little broken and he smiles and points at it, resulting in a {{beat}} after which the ''entire'' car ''BLOWS THE HELL UP'' and knocks Goofy straight up out of his socks until he crashes through Roxanne's roof.
* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians''. When Horace and Jasper's truck crashes into Cruella's car at the end, both vehicles get smashed to bits as they fly off the edge of a cliff, but there's no explosion. Of course, the fact that Cruella, Horace and Jasper all survive this is with absolutely no injuries is somewhat improbable, but it has nothing to do with this trope.

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]

* ''Film/{{Cherry 2000}}'': Subverted, intentionally or otherwise, when a gang of wasteland marauders pushes a captured van off a cliff into a deep pit. The mangled van crunches to earth, the camera lingers, and... nothing happens. Perhaps the FX crew's explosives failed to detonate?

* ''Film/DeathRace2000''. When the Resistance car chasing Frankenstein rolls over, it immediately explodes into flames for no apparent reason.

* In ''Film/DejaVu2006'', Creator/DenzelWashington [[spoiler:drives the car with the bomb in it off of the ferry]]. Every car his car bumps into on the way off explodes massively.

* It's actually a surprise in Der Clown ? Payday that only one police car explodes under machine gun fire, and that none of the police cars in the [[spoiler:hand grenades on the Autobahn]] scene explodes upon impact on the tarmac.
* ''Film/DerWixxer'': The German [[Film/EdgarWallaceFilms Edgar Wallace]] spoof has a scene where two ''bicycles'' collide in mid-air (''[[Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial E.T.]]'' reference included) and explode. The sequel even features ''stairlifts'' exploding on impact.
* ''Film/DieHard2'' had a plane crash and explode in a fireball... despite one of the reasons it tried to land in the first place was because it was running out of fuel. However, a nearly empty tank is actually more dangerous than a full one, as it's filled with fumes.
* In ''Film/{{Doomsday}}'' every car is a Pinto... except the [[CoolCar Bentley]].
* Dates at least as far back as 1922 and ''Film/DrMabuseTheGambler.'' A car plunges into a quarry and "explodes" via a very unconvincing smoke bomb.
* Subtly parodied but ultimately averted in the Creator/DannyDeVito[=/=]Creator/BetteMidler film ''Film/DrowningMona''. [[EveryoneDrivesAFord Every car in town is a Yugo GV]], but there isn't a single one that explodes.
* Brazenly inverted in ''Film/{{Duel}}''. A tanker truck (with "Flammable" prominently displayed on the side), after [[spoiler:attempting to ram the protagonist off the road for the entire movie, is itself run off a cliff. The protagonist runs to the cliff, waiting for the inevitable explosion. And... nothing happens. Fade to black, roll credits]] - this despite the original story and the movie script (both written by Creator/RichardMatheson) actually featuring the explosion. Whereas David's ordinary car actually bursts into flames.

* ''Film/EscapeToAthena'' (1979). Telly Savalas sabotages the brakes on a Nazi officer's car. It not only slams into a wall and explodes, it also blows up a German ammunition dump in the process. Results!

* ''Film/FinalDestination'' film series:

--->'''Mike''': Wow, big explosion for a tiny electric cart.\\
'''Crow''': Yeah he shouldn't have been carrying that case of cleaning fluid and nitroglycerin and gelignite in there.\\
'''Tom''': Plus he microwaved an egg at the same time.

--->'''Joel:''' (''noticing that the only labels on the bottles have XXX on them'') He must be using the [[BrandX other leading brand of nitroglycerin.]]\\

--->'''Crow''': Oh no, it turned into a sedan and crashed and exploded!
** In ''Film/{{Escape 2000}}'', vans explode in giant balls of flame after being hit by mere shotgun shells and pistol bullets. Not even high explosive rounds would do the amount of damage these bullets do. The trope even extends to a helicopter in the movie, as the hero Trash is able to blow it up with a regular pistol. At least American movies generally use high caliber bullets when they cause cars and helicopters to blow up.

* Averted in Creator/WoodyAllen's ''Film/{{Sleeper}}'', wherein Woody Allen's character pushes a Volkswagen Beetle he'd used as a getaway car off a tall cliff into a lake to throw off pursuit. The car lands almost completely intact and the water turns out to be only a few inches deep.
* ''Film/{{Speed}}''; when Annie gets asked if she can drive the bus (which is wired up to explode if it drops below 50mph) she replies "Yeah, it's just like driving a really big Pinto." And it explodes like a really big Pinto, along with the plane it collides with. Which was filled with fuel in anticipation of a scheduled takeoff. It doesn't help that the bus was rigged with a bomb that, due to flagging sleep, was about to go boom anyway. Yay pyrotechnics!

* ''Film/{{Super 8}}'':

** We also see a tank headed straight toward a parked Ford Pinto, but the scene is cut away from before any impact and the total lack of sound effects in the next shot (indoor, in the house the car's in front of) leaves the presumption the [[DefiedTrope tank driver swerved in time]].
* ''Film/TheSwarm1978'': This disaster movie had one scene where an ambulance crashed through a plate glass window, at which point it promptly exploded. Also a train overturns, and not just the engine, but the ''carriages'' explode.
* ''Film/{{Tangerines}}'': DiscussedTrope, and averted. Ivo, Magnus, and Juhan push one of the army jeeps off a bluff. It rolls and tumbles a good hundred feet into a ravine. Nothing happens.

* The Literature/MissMarple film "They Do It With Mirrors" features an especially egregious example, when the cornered culprit makes a getaway [[LaserGuidedKarma only to crash]] into a [[SlowDoors closing pair of iron gates]]... on which the car ''instantly'' explodes into a roaring inferno. God only knows what [[MadeOfIndestructium they made those gates out of...]]
* In the {{Blaxploitation}} film ''Film/ThreeTheHardWay'':

* ''Film/ThunderbirdsAreGo'' mixed this with MadeOfExplodium--both the first Zero-X and [[spoiler:the chopper on which the Hood escapes]] explode ''when they hit water''.
* In the original ''Film/TotalRecall1990'', Arnie uses a taxi ("[=JohnnyCab=]") to flee from the bad guys. He has to sabotage the robotic driver, though, and drive the car himself. Once he arrives at his destination, he leaves the taxi, but the robotic driver shorts out and the car starts moving forward. It narrowly misses Arnie, then hits a wall at a very moderate speed and blows up. This has plot consequences, as the bad guys are informed a car has blown up and show up at the place, thus discovering Arnie is headed for Mars.
* ''Film/TopSecret'': Parodied -- an East German army vehicle is wildly out of control, until the driver realizes he's on a collision course with a Pinto that is inexplicably standing out by itself in the middle of an open field. In UsefulNotes/EastGermany. ([[TheAllegedCar In a land of Trabants, the man with a Pinto is king]]?) Through dint of heroic effort, the driver wrestles his vehicle to a stop -- almost. His front bumper ever-so-gently ''pings'' the rear bumper of the Pinto -- the contact depicted aurally with a small bell -- upon which the car promptly explodes. The German vehicle drives away from the accident, apparently running just fine, even though it's still got a few spot fires on it.

* In ''Film/Tremors2Aftershocks'' this is averted, Burt shoots a shrieker with his last bullet, from a [[{{BFG}} LAR Grizzly Big Boar rifle]], blowing it in two. The bullet then penetrates several brick walls and oil barrels, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero before ripping a hole in the engine of the escape vehicle they were trying to reach]]. (The car is still rendered undrivable, but it doesn't explode.)
* In ''Film/TrueLies'', a van carrying a group of terrorists is attacked on a bridge by Marine Harriers, leaving it teetering at the end of the destroyed bridge. The van finally tips over (with help from a [[TheLastStraw little birdie]]), and barely hits the water before exploding in a massive fireball. It falls a whopping ten feet. The film also has the scene where snowmobiles explode massively after hitting trees.
** The terrorist van exploding could be explained from the large number of explosives it was carrying. One has to remember that that van DID shoot at the harriers with a Stinger. Odds are, there may have been more explosives in the van.
*** However, military ordnance is designed to be very difficult to set off, except as intended; unless the weapon is armed, generally it will only explode if triggered by another explosive, such as a bomb. Compounds like TNT and C-4 are almost impossible to detonate without a proper trigger-- even if tossed in a fire they'll simply burn without going off.

* In the WWII movie ''Film/WhereEaglesDare'' a car bursts into flames in mid air and another does so just rolling down an incline before reaching the cliff, and it was rolling on its wheels.
* In ''Film/TheWraith'', every car that is crashed into the Turbo Interceptor blows up in a spectacular fireball. Makes sense due to the car's supernatural origin, but the only thing that are intact are the bodies of the opponent drivers...[[EyeScream well mostly]]
* If you look close enough, the Corvette in ''Film/XXx'' explodes a split-second ''before'' hitting the ground.

* Parodied in a scene in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/SoulMusic''. [[spoiler:Mort and Ysabell]] go round a hairpin bend and go over the edge of a cliff. Upon landing, there is a large explosion, and "because there are certain conventions, even in tragedy" a [[FreeWheel burning wheel rolls out of the wreckage]]. The only thing is that they're not in a car, with petrol and electronics and other vaguely explodable things - this is the Discworld, so they're in a ''coach''. It's suggested it was triggered by the oil lamps, but really it just happens because [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality that's what happens]].
* The HumongousMecha in ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' novels explode, despite being powered by fusion reactors which in real life would shut down cleanly rather than going up as they'd no longer be able to sustain the nuclear reaction. The phenomenon is referred to as "stackpoling" after Michael A. Stackpole, who was particularly fond of it. (Ironically, fusion engines in the board game itself do ''not'' normally explode... except when explicitly using an optional rule intended to mimic the novels in turn.)
** This actually became such an issue it was discussed at length in a source book which vainly attempts to explain how this could possibly happen. One explanation was that if the reactor was penetrated rapidly while still running air would get into it and then expand explosively... it came off as very VoodooShark'ish. In one particularly hilarious example they used they totally retconned one incident where some ships bombed a fusion reactor. (Which of course exploded like a nuclear bomb...) See what "really" happened was that the ships bombed the plant which had snow on the roof which then fell into a giant vat of liquid sodium that happened to be next to the reactor and THAT exploded like a nuclear bomb... Because that's way more plausible!
* ''Literature/StephaniePlum'': Steph is very hard on cars. She seems to get them shot up, wrecked, set on fire, or blown up approximately once a book (on average). Uncle Sandor's 1953 Buick, on the other hand, is seemingly indestructible.
* ''The Takers'': Lampshaded in the Jerry Ahern novel where the hero Josh Culhane (a writer of action adventure novels) witnesses his brother shotgunned off the road.
-->"His car went over the embankment and it caught fire. Big fallacy in movies and books like I write? Cars don't always explode and catch on fire when they do a nosedive, you know but, uh, but his did..."

* Called out in ''Lady Slings the Booze,'' one of the ''Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon'' novels, when private investigator Joe Quigley notes that even driving a car off a cliff won’t make it blow up: “Only a dissatisfied business rival or a stunt coordinator can do that.”

* Creator/HarryTurtledove does this in his AlternateHistory WWII novels- there are multiple instances where truck convoys or civilian cars are set on fire by machine gun fire (which should just stop them or kill the occupants). Of course, as mentioned above, this also realistically happens when vehicles are strafed by fighters, which fire ammunition designed to turn Every Car into A Pinto.
* Lampshaded and subverted in the Creator/TomClancy novel ''[[Literature/JackRyan Debt of Honor]]''. When two cars involved in a highway traffic accident explode and burn, killing most of their passengers, an NTSA investigation is immediately called because, unlike in Hollywood, cars usually don't burn. When the investigation results in the discovery of a serious safety defect in a popular brand of Japanese automobile, the public outcry and resulting Congressional investigation set off the main plot of the story.
* Cars in ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfFoxTayle'' explode occasionally, but especially notable is a Honda Accord that gets flipped over before leaking gas and exploding.
* ''Literature/FullTilt'' justifies this via AmusementParkOfDoom--the bumper cars in an early ride are ''designed'' to kill their occupants. Later on it takes this to the point of RefugeInAudacity with [[spoiler:thousands of actual Pintos made to float in space as a sort of 3D minefield]].

* Justified in Creator/CoryDoctorow's novel ''Literature/EasternStandardTribe'', because the car in question is a methane-powered "fartmobile".
* {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''Literature/TheGodsOfGuilt''. A GoodSamaritan helps Mick out of his crashed Lincoln after he gets [[CarFu run off the road]], noting that he smells gas leaking and citing the risk of the car catching fire/blowing up. It doesn't.
* A straight example in the final act of ''Literature/{{Christine}}''. [[spoiler:Arnie and Regina are killed in a freak accident,]] during mild winter weather on the turnpike. The car hits the guardrail, going no more than 45, and explodes. In reality, there would be significant body damage to the car (especially a 70s-era Volvo, which were built like tanks), but it's unlikely there would even be any injuries if everyone was wearing seatbelts.

* Lampshaded in ''Series/TheListener'', first episode. Title character says that cars don't explode when on fire, and then it did.

* ''Series/{{Mindhunter}}'': Averted when the FBI protagonists get into a car accident with an actual Pinto. However this is a front-impact collision, not a rear-impact collision which risked damaging the fuel tank.
* ''Series/MythBusters'' thoroughly disproved this trope's real life existence when they shot up a car in an attempt to deliberately set off the gas tank — to no avail. In a later episode, they revisited the myth and were able to set the fuel on fire with a tracer round (eventually), though it still did not explode.

* This trope is actually fairly common in Latin American {{Soap Opera}}s. One of the most common deaths for the villains towards the end of the run tends to be losing control of a car (usually while trying to avoid capture), driving it off a cliff and then exploding into flames.

* {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d rather neatly by ComicBook/{{Cyclops}} of the ''ComicBook/XMen''. "Blowing up a car is a lot harder than it looks in the movies. Puncturing both sides of a fuel tank to draw in the proper amount of oxygen is a million-to-one shot. Thankfully, I'm a pretty good shot." He zaps the fuel tank with his EyeBeams: kaboom. Then he makes a mental note to send a check to the owner.

* Towards the end of ''Film/AmericanPsycho'' (the movie), Patrick is involved in a shootout with the police. He shoots at them and misses, hitting their squad cars, which explode in a humongous fireball. Patrick just stares at his gun with an utterly confused expression, giving evidence that the incident was just another product of his insane mind.

* At the end of ''Film/{{Battletruck}}'', [[spoiler:the titular rig is run off a cliff and into the nearby ravine, in the process going up like a tinderbox.]]

* ''Film/BillyMadison'': In one of the most well-remembered scenes from the movie, the entire O'Doyle family is driving down the road chanting "O'Doyle rules!" over and over again. The car hits the banana peel that a guy threw out the window of a bus earlier in the movie, inexplicably causing the car to skid out of control and fly off a cliff (all while the family continues to chant "O'Doyle Rules!"). Though it isn't shown directly, the car inexplicably explodes in a loud explosion off screen.

* ''Film/TheCar'': At the end of this horror flick when the eponymous vehicle goes over a cliff, [[spoiler:it ''really'' blows up, belching forth a devil's head mushroom cloud]]. In this case, at the bottom of the cliff was a very large pile of dynamite.
** Practically every vehicle that fell victim to The Car also did this. In one scene, a police car rolls gets pushed off a cliff by The Car, and you can actually see that the fire starts from within the police car's passenger compartment as it starts rolling down.

** In ''Film/{{Laserblast}}, there was a chase scene that ended with the bad guy's car going over the edge of a cliff, at which point it cut to footage of an entirely different type of car which exploded before it got anywhere near the ground.

* Everything in ''VideoGame/{{Starcraft}}'' [[StuffBlowingUp blows up]] when [[CriticalExistenceFailure it dies]]. ''Everything''. Every Terran and Protoss building or vehicle (even [=SCVs=] and Probes) exploded either red/orange (Terran) or ''blue/white'' (Protoss); biological units might as well have, for all the [[LudicrousGibs blood involved]]. About the only exceptions were Zealots (Protoss soldiers in armored suits), which turned into little blue flares, and Dragoons (giant-spider Mecha), which cracked open when they died. Heck, if you killed a worker unit while it was carrying resources, the Vespene containers or minerals would go up in ''their own'' explosion.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'':
** An obligatory parody had Meg race a man on a horse-drawn carriage. The man loses control on a sharp turn and crashes through the guard rail. The carriage bursts into flame and the horse lands upright, notices what happened to the carriage, and flashes a nervous look to the viewer just before he too explodes. [[StealthPun Maybe the horse was a 'pinto'.]]
** Also parodied in the ''It's a Trap!'' spoof of ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' with the famous speederbike chase, except with regular bicycles. And yes, they explode when hitting a tree. Additionally, a bicycle crashes, and a hurt stormtrooper gets up and limps a little before he blows up.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'', it was almost easier to count the number of plot-relevant vehicles that did ''not'' explode on impact. A motorbike exploded and burst into flames from a fairly slow impact with a wall in the opening arc of the series, and not long after a motorcycle exploded violently after being shot in the front fender.

* Spoofed in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Fillmore}}'', in which a floor waxer that had been subjected to a FlashedBadgeHijack explodes when it hits the stairs.
* ''WesternAnimation/JonnyQuest'' TOS episode "The Quetong Missile Mystery". When Lieutenant Singh's car falls into a gully and is smashed up, it bursts into flames seconds later.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' does this in the episode "The Sting" when running from the giant space bees, several of them crash into the walls of the beehive and instantly burst into flames and explode.
* Spoofed in the ''WesternAnimation/DuckDodgers'' episode "Diamond Boogie", set on a planet that's a pastiche of [[TheSeventies seventies]] action movies. The bad guys' cars explode ''before'' they hit the ground.
-->'''Cadet''': W-w-why did those other cars burst into flames [[LampshadeHanging for no reason whatsoever]]?\\
'''Paprika Solo''': Not sure. Now that you mention it, that happens a lot around here.
* According to WesternAnimation/{{Daria}} and Jane, Trent's car averts this. You have to ''hit'' a Pinto first before it bursts into flames. Tom's first car, however, actually ''was'' a Pinto; his mother had it towed away in the middle of the night before it could ever explode for any reason.
* ''WesternAnimation/GeneratorRex'': In "Deadzone", Rex and company attempt to escape from Providence at an airport by stealing a mobile stairway. The mobile stairway explodes when it crashes into a hanger wall.
* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/LittlestPetShop2012'' after Roger leaps off a tricycle careening down a hill, and it explodes crashing into a nearby building.

* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/PennZeroPartTimeHero'' episode "Chuckle City", where the heroes and villains are in a dimension inhabited entirely by clowns and therefore runs entirely on clown logic. When a police cruiser crashes into a canyon, it deploys a [[BangFlagGun "Boom!" flag]].

** Averted in the [[Film/BackToTheFuture1 first film]] with the Libyans' van, which merely tips over after hitting the photo booth. On the other hand, this does create a bit of a PlotHole, since the terrorists are treated as no longer being a threat after this even though they apparently survived. (Granted, it's highly plausible that Doc and/or Marty called the cops on them since the radio next morning mentions their arrest.)

* ''Film/TheSwarm'': This disaster movie had one scene where an ambulance crashed through a plate glass window, at which point it promptly exploded. Also a train overturns, and not just the engine, but the ''carriages'' explode.

** One particularly stunning and breathtaking example of this trope played straight was Tetsuya Ota's crash at the 1998 JGTC Fuji Speedway race. A T-bone collision between his Ferrari and another racers Porsche sparked a tremendous explosive fireball that engulfed both cars. The Porsche driver was able to get out of his quickly and receive assistance, but Ota was trapped in his burning Ferrari for a full minute and a half, and his visor literally melted in the heat and sagged onto his face. The footage of the impact is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS2k0JbOpDQ not for the faint of heart.]]

* ''Film/TheKiller'': At one point during the big shootout in the beach house, Chow Yun-Fat's title character blasts the hell out of a car to cover the escape of his maverick cop partner and his love interest. Eventually, the gas tank goes up and the car goes kaboom.

* ''VideoGame/TheSimpsonsHitAndRun'' ups the ante with ANY vehicle being set to explode at some point. Since you can commandeer almost ''any'' vehicle, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools it's a lot easier to get the coins you need for purchases]].

** Averted in the [[Film/BackToTheFuture first film]] with the Libyans' van, which merely tips over after hitting the photo booth. On the other hand, this does create a bit of a PlotHole, since the terrorists are treated as no longer being a threat after this even though they apparently survived. (Granted, it's highly plausible that Doc and/or Marty called the cops on them since the radio next morning mentions their arrest.)

* Invoked near-verbatim in ''Bride of Dark and Stormy'', a collected volume of entries in the annual [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulwer-Lytton_Fiction_Contest Bulwer-Lytton contest]]:

* ''{{Film/Transformers}}'' (2007) has an exploding bus. Bonecrusher (one of the baddies) [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome rollerblades through a bus]], causing it to split in half and explode in flames. The bus is labeled as being hydrogen powered. The rest of the film seems to avert this trope. Any damaged car simply is smashed, and doesn't explode. Also averted later in ''[[Film/TransformersRevengeOfTheFallen Revenge of the Fallen]]''; the car the heroes are in is dropped 20 feet into an abandoned warehouse by the Decepticons, but it doesn't [[StuffBlowingUp blow up]]. Not surprising, considering they ''are'' the main characters. How they survive the fall and subsequent crash without [[MadeOfIron getting any serious injuries]], however...