A remote control toy (most commonly a car or a plane) is used as a weapon in an attempt to murder someone. Most commonly, the toy is packed with explosives and detonated close to the target, although in more fantastic settings, the toy might have functional weaponry mounted on it.
As a murder method, it allows the killer to toy with their victims by having the vehicle chase them, while remaining close enough to see their panic but far enough away to remain safe. From a storytelling perspective, it allows for a highly unusual Chase Scene.
One of the many weapons available to the Wicked Toymaker.
The (slightly) more realistic Sister Trope to Murder by Remote Control Vehicle.
Compare Creepy Doll, Demonic Dummy, My Little Panzer and Perverse Puppet.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Big O: The antagonist of "Winter Night Phantom" has been using remote controlled toy robots packed with explosives to assassinate the officials involved in her mother's death. For her final target she uses a remote-controlled Megadeus which looks like the smaller toys.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: Narancia's Stand, Aerosmith, takes the form of a remote-controlled toy plane. It can fire bullets, drop bombs, and track enemies with its radar by monitoring their breathing.
- The warden, a villain from Lupin III, uses remote-controlled torpedoes on wheels called "Iron Lizards" to keep his prisoners in check, sending these vehicles to pursue and blow up any prisoners who attempts a getaway.
Comic Books
- A standard part of the Toyman's arsenal in Superman comics: ranging from exploding toy planes and flying action figures to toy tanks which fire live rounds.
Film — Live Action
- Aces Go Places (a.k.a. Mad Mission) has the protagonists use a controller capable of controlling multiple toy cars at once to blow up enemies.
- In Bad Boys 2, the climactic Storming the Castle sequence begins with the good guys killing some of Johnny Tapia's goons by driving a remote-controlled model truck loaded with C4 right to where they are playing soccer and blowing it up.
CIA Operator: [seeing though the truck's mounted camera that there's a lot of puzzled goons surrounding the truck] Oops! Sorry!
- In Death Wish V: The Face of Death, one of Kersey's kills during his Roaring Rampage of Revenge is performed with a remote-controlled soccer ball full of explosives. The goon he kills picks it up puzzled when he notices it rolling on its own towards him and has a few seconds to crap his pants when he sees Kersey holding the remote control.
Paul Kersey: Hey, Freddie! I'm gonna take care of your dandruff problem for you!
Freddie "Flakes": NOOOOOO-! [explosion sets him ablaze] - In The Dead Pool, Rook kills talk show host Nolan Kennard, another person on the dead pool list, using a radio-controlled car filled with C4 explosive under the victim's vehicle. Dirty Harry Callahan finds a toy car wheel at the crime scene, and later sees another toy car following him and Quan. Recognizing the threat, they flee through the city pursued by the toy car and Rook himself controlling it from his car, in a dramatic riff on the car chase scene.
- Variant in Runaway - small cars with bombs attached are used to attack a police car carrying a witness on the freeway but they are autonomous rather than remote controlled, homing in on a bug in the witness's bag.
- A 1992 German film The Terrorists has the Big Bad Wannabes using a bomb in a remote-controlled car to attack a politician's limo, but it gets accidentally run over instead, leaving the would-be terrorist futilely pushing the detonator button while a bodyguard gets out of the limo and hands him some money in compensation for destroying his toy car.
- Remote-control miniaturized vehicles of war unwittingly operated by children are the Evil Plan of General Zevo in Toys. He gets the idea after inheriting his much more whimsical brother's toy factory and, while visiting a shopping mall arcade by chance, observing how all the kids playing these games have such honed reflexes that they could theoretically outfly a trained military professional. He then puts two and two together and realizes that the only reason they have to make tanks and fighter planes so big in the first place is to make room for the pilots; but if they were remote-controlled, why, they could be made as small as a toy. And General Zevo now owns a toy factory... Of note is that Toys came out in 1992, roughly a decade before unmanned drones would be put into regular use by the military, and Zevo's plan is considered insane by all who hear it.
- Weaponized RC cars are used to deal with the Graboids in Tremors 2: Aftershocks. As Graboids hunts by detecting motion, the protagonists uses RC cars strapped with C4 to trick Graboids into ascending out of the earth and swallowing the cars, and then remotely detonating the C4 seconds later. At least 30 Graboids end up blown to bits onscreen via this method.
- In Vigilante Diaries, The Geek begins the assault on the Cartel base by buzzing two sentries with a miniature drone and then landing it on ground in front of them. When they move forward to examine it, it explodes.
- Just about every movie Andy Sidaris has ever made. Mostly toy helicopters armed with real missiles, but exploding RC cars and toy boats also get their day.
Live-Action TV
- In the Tv adaptation of David Morell's Brotherhood of the Rose, a remote control airplane packed with explosive is used to blow up a member of the Abelard conspiracy in his greenhouse, despite his armed bodyguards who futilely try to destroy the small flying object before it hits the target.
- Inspector Rex once featured an author whose story about a criminal toymaker was rejected by a publishing company, so he used toys to hunt down and destroy the editors who rejected his work, one by one. Much use was made of radio-guided vehicles/aircraft, with simple plunger-triggered bombs on board.
- The Magician: In "The Illusion of the Lethal Playthings'', Tony is chased along a country road a remote control plane packed with plastique. He eventually manages to escape it by driving Under the Truck. The plane slames into the side of the truck and explodes.
- Remote-controlled model airplanes appeared in two episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. television series:
- In "The Mad, Mad, Tea-Party", a mysterious man uses a model airplane to bypass the security measures at the headquarters of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. The remote toy manages to drop a harmless bomb containing a taunting message.
- In the appropriately-named "The Deadly Toys Affair", a remote-controlled model airplane designed by a boy genius (Jay North) provides the Macguffin to start the plot, as Solo and Kuryakin need to protect the boy from being recruited by THRUSH.
- Midsomer Murders:
- In "Shot at Dawn", a remote control toy car filed with explosives is run up alongside an old man in a wheelchair, although his friend manages to hurl it away before it explodes. The old man was actually the killer and was faking an attempt on his life to divert suspicion. As he had the remote control, he was sure not to detonate the bomb until it was well away from him.
- Not strictly speaking a toy, but in "Death by Persuasion" one Victim of the Week is murdered when a remote control delivery drone drops a razor sharp carving knife on him.
- In the short-lived Quiller series, Quiller is watching some people flying remote-control model planes when the Villain of the Week tries to crash one packed with explosives into him. Fortunately Quiller sees the plane diving towards him and jumps behind cover.
- Robot Wars (or BattleBots) featured teams making their own battle drones and fighting each other in an arena. Similar contests are seen on an episode of Zoey 101, Weaponizers and Top Gear:Apocalypse, in the latter two basing the drones on full-sized vehicles.
- Mexican telenovela "Muchachitas" main villain, Federico Cantú, uses remote control toy car filled with explosives as his signature attack. He was obsessed with cars, both real and toys, since in his childhood he was very poor and his first toy car was stomped by Oscar, a bully in his school. Then later, he killed some people with these bombs, the most significant one was, precisely, Oscar, now a business rival, who he pursues using the RC bomb and cornered in a place where, finally, he tried to stomp on the car just as it explodes.
Tabletop Games
- One of the weapons in the Gaslands rules is a remote-controlled car strapped with explosives, which you can launch from another vehicle and drive around until detonating it.
- One Thousand And One Science Fiction Weapons for D20 has a chapter on man-portable drone-type weapons, ranging from a robotic "deady bear" with a big knife to ground and flying vehicles with a variety of aerosols, lasers and powered blades. More insidious makers often make them resemble toys.
Video Games
- Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War have the RC-XD, a remote-controlled car armed with explosive charges that appears as a killstreak or scorestreak in the multiplayer mode. In Cold War's campaign mode, Alex Mason ends up using one to stop the plane of Arash Kadivar from taking off, using it to blow the plane up. Call of Duty: Black Ops III features the similar HC-XD, which functions similarly to the RC-XD, but can also climb up walls, Double Jump, and speed boost itself temporarily.
- Grand Theft Auto:
- The first game had explosive remote-controlled toy F1 cars.
- There's a series of side-missions in Grand Theft Auto III where Claude must use remote controlled toy cars to destroy gang cars as they pass. The missions are triggered by climbing into the Toyz van.
- There are two missions in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City where Tommy uses a remote control toy aircraft to cause destruction. One has him using a helicopter to plant explosives in a building under construction while the other has him using a biplane to gun down gang members.
- A mission in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has Carl using a remote control toy airplane to destroy delivery vans for a remote control toy shop. The mission giver is the owner of a rival remote control toy shop.
- Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? has Sabercats using remote controls to send miniature Driller-G vehicles after the player. The Driller-G vehicles are totally indestructible, and if you try to get to higher ground they can burrow underground to come after you (assuming you're not on a floating platform). Defeating the Sabercat will get rid of the Driller-G, and you can try to drop the machine down a pit.
- The RC Bomb Car, also referred to as RC-XD (Remote Controlled EXplosive Device), is a quick-use item featured in Rage (2011). It is a small radio-controlled car loaded with explosives. Nicholas Raine, as well as other people using them, can drive a bomb car through ventilation shafts or behind cover and then detonate the car.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: In "Beware the Gray Ghost", a terrorist called 'The Mad Bomber' uses remote control toy cars to deliver explosive charges powerful enough to demolish buildings. Ironically he turns out to be a toy collector who turned to crime to finance his hobby.
Real Life
- The military already have heavily armed drones, packing anything from machine guns up to anti-tank missiles but people have already managed to arm civilian drones with handguns and flamethrowers
and fired them while remote controlling the drone. Authorities have been scrambling to update legislation to deal with the frightening possibility of remote control drones with guns and cameras being used as potential murder weapons.
