Trampolines are usually viewed as fun places to play in the backyard. They're used for stunts, slam dunks, and a guaranteed submission to
America's Funniest Home Videos. Sometimes, however, in both
Real Life and fiction, trampolines are used for a much more serious purpose. These fall into two main categories: a character is depressed and tries to commit suicide, or a character is in peril and needs to jump to safety.
See also
Interrupted Suicide and
Heroic Fire Rescue. In a comic setting, can be subverted with
The Not Catch.
Examples:
Advertising
- Subverted in a commercial for Glad garbage bags. A piano breaks loose from the rope used to pull it up to a third-story window. Two workers use a Glad bag to make a fireman's trampoline. The piano completely misses, it breaks into a hundred pieces, and the workers use the trash bag to deliver the pieces to the piano's owner.
Anime and Manga
- Kiki's Delivery Service has a charming use of this trope at the end of the film. After Kiki saves Tombo, firefighters rush a safety tramp below the kids as they slowly descend, just as a safety precaution considering the weight Kiki had to manage with her flight power.
Film - Animated
- The clown firemen routine in Dumbo ends with the clowns catching Dumbo with a trampoline, but he falls through it and into a vat of whitewash.
- In Monsters vs. Aliens, a trampoline is provided to catch Derek when he's dropped by the newly giant Susan. He bounces off it and hits the ground.
Music Videos
- In the Rammstein Music Video for "Benzin", the other band members (as firefighters) try saving Flake as he jumps off a building, using a trampoline. It rips.
Video Games
- The main premise of the Nintendo Game & Watch game Fire was to save people jumping out of a building with a trampoline.
- In Super Smash Bros.., this is Mr. Game and Watch's recovery move.
- It's based off an old Game and Watch scenario involving bouncing people jumping from a flaming building into a waiting ambulance.
- At the beginning of Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sail, Larry jumps into one of these to escape a burning condo. He bounces out and ricochets around the scene before finally ending up on a cactus.
Western Animation
- In Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin improvises one of these using his jacket to help Roo jump down from a tree. Tigger, on the other hand, is unwilling to use it.
- Used by Screwy Squirrel in one of his cartoons. At the last second he pulls it away, because that's just the way he is.
- Phineas and Ferb, "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!": The Fireside Girls save Phineas in this manner with an improvised trampoline made from their sashes when he falls out of the haunted house being lifted into the air.
- In The Simpsons, Ned throws Homer from the second-story window of a burning building onto a mattress. When he lands, the mattress bounces him back into the house through the ground floor window.
- In Rocky and Bullwinkle. Boris Badenov persuades Bullwinkle to jump into a firemen's net (twice!) as a publicity stunt. The second time, the net is lying on the ground with no one holding it.
- One episode of Ren and Stimpy involved the two working at a fire station. They end up manning the trampoline; Ren ends up getting crushed by everyone who jumps.
