Follow That Car - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Follow That Cab; Follow That X

The villain speeds off in a car. The hero, close behind, flags down the nearest taxi, gets in and, pointing at the car, says "Follow that car!". And thus, the Chase Scene begins. This is an alternative to Flashed Badge Hijack, available to civilians as well as the police.

The phrase can also be "Follow that cab!"

If the villain is into the Xanatos Gambit, expect the cabbie to be Not My Driver.

This is a Discredited Trope, or even a Dead Horse Trope, unless:

Someone says, "I Always Wanted To Say That," or,
"Car" is substituted by something like, "Follow that Humongous Mecha," or, "Follow that space ship!"

A common subversion is for the speaker to make the mistake of saying this before they get in, and the cab taking off without them.

See The Taxi.

Examples

A ceertain ad for cable TV showed several roughnecks forcing themselves into a car and yelling at the driver to Follow That Car... but both cars were stuck in a traffic jam. The punchline: TV has more action than Real Life.

Anime

Mai tells the taxi driver to "follow that bus" in Mai-HiME.
Used sans chase scene in Monster.
Used in the Very Special Episode of Digimon Savers. There was, however, no chase scene.

Film

In The Naked Gun, Frank Drebin does this, but discovers that the car he has flagged down is part of a driving lesson.
In Shadow of the Thin Man, Nora, with Molly, says, "Follow that car, Quick!" The taxi driver drives off without them.
In Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Steve Martin thinks he's being followed, and decides to dash away in a taxi. There are two cabs in line. He gives a wad of cash to the first driver and tells him a destination; the driver speeds off without him. Momentarily nonplussed, he then hops into the second taxi and tells the driver to "Follow that cab!" He settles back into the seat with a smirk on his face, congratulating himself on taking both cabs so the man following him would be stranded.
Parodied in The Return of the Pink Panther: the cabbie responds to Inspector Clouseau's command by climbing out of the cab and chasing the car on foot.
- Another spoof was in one of the earlier entries, A Shot in the Dark: Clouseau instructs the police car that brought him here to go back to town. He should have remembered to get in the car first...
While the title of the film eludes him, this Troper remembers an old black and white film where a character got into a cab and told the driver to "follow that car" to which the driver responded "I've been waiting years for someone to say that!"
The Philadelphia Story has James Stewart's character Mike, drunk on champagne, wake up a waiting cabbie with this line, admitting immediately after that there never was any cab to follow ("Some joke, huh?").
In Taxi, a Cowboy Cop says this to the cabdriver... who happens to be an aspiring stock car racer with a Cool Car, and has, of course, been waiting for someone to say that.
Played dead straight in Nick And Norahs Infinite Playlist. "Follow that van!"
In Shakespeare In Love, Will gets to say, "Follow that boat!"
Parodied in the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup: twice Groucho hops into the sidecar of a motorcycle driven by Harpo, saying some form of "Follow That Car!" and twice it drives off without him. The third time, he promises not to have that happen, puts Harpo in the sidecar and gets on the motorcycle— and Harpo drives the sidecar off without the motorcycle.
Groucho: "It's the only way to travel."
Shows up in The Muppet Movie, with Doc Hopper and his right-hand man Max. "Follow that frog with me in the car!"

French Belgian Comic Books

Gaston Lagaffe: Fantasio's coat is thrown by Gaston out of a top floor window, and a gust of wind sends it flying away. Fantasion gets in a cab and says "Follow that coat!" The cab driver replies, "You should get yourself a helicopter."

Literature

In Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride, Charis tries this line on a Toronto cabbie, who is less than impressed.
In Anonymous Rex, the protagonist detective refuses to use this line and instead gives detailed step-by-step instructions, such as "Turn there, where that other cab went." Eventually, the cabbie tires of it and just asks "You want me to follow that cab?"
Parodied in Douglas Adams's unfinished book, The Salmon Of Doubt: Dirk Gently meets a cabbie who has never had anyone tell him to "follow that cab". Thus, he infers, his must be the cab that everyone else is following.
Lampshade Hanging in Hugh Laurie's novel The Gun Seller, in which the driver is quite used to this sort of thing, and does it quite well, asking "Is he sleeping with your wife, or are you sleeping with his?"
In a low-reading-level Spanish book called La Momia Despierta ("The Missing Mummy") which gets read in high-school Spanish classes, at one point the main character (a detective) dashes into a taxi and asks the taxi driver to follow another car. The taxi driver is amused and asks him if he thinks he's James Bond.
In the Lord Peter Wimsey novel Murder Must Advertise, Lord Peter gets followed by a definitively Wrong Genre Savvy co-worker. The chase ends "in the most tame manner possible" (quoting from memory) when both cabs arrive at the restaurant where Lord Peter plans to have lunch.
In Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston, the central character does this. He's quite aware of what a cliche it is, but in the Pulp action elfland he's in, it works.
- Don't forget that the way the driver and passengers cheered when he said it startled him so much he nearly fell off the car.

Live Action TV

In the Doctor Who episode "The Unquiet Dead", after Rose is abducted in a hearse, the Doctor leaps into a nearby carriage and instructs the driver to follow that hearse. However, the carriage turns out to be a privately-owned vehicle, and the driver refuses to go anywhere without the say-so of his employer. (Charles Dickens, if you were wondering).
- The police officer in "Planet of the Dead" tells his men to "Follow that bus!"... then the bus disappears into a Negative Space Wedgie.
Comedian George Carlin once suggested this scheme for having fun on a day in the city; "Hail a cab. Give the driver $50 and tell him to drive to the airport and wait for you there. As soon as he pulls away, hail the very next cab. Jump in and tell the driver, 'Follow that cab, and no matter what, make sure it DOESN'T get to the airport!'"
On Get Smart, Larabee was once disguised as a chauffeur, standing by his car. As a KAOS agent escaped in his own vehicle, Max yelled, "Larabee! Follow that car!" Larabee promptly ran after the KAOS agent's car, revealing for the first time that Larabee was Ralph Wiggum's real father. (Incidentally, this predates the same gag in The Return of the Pink Panther above by about seven years.)
- Although Peter Sellers had earlier used it in the 1967 Casino Royale, with race car driver Stirling Moss in a cameo as the running chauffeur.
In the final episode of season 2 of The Amazing Race, each pair had to board an airplane to a target designated by their clue card. One of the pairs lost their clue, prompting them to tell the pilot to "follow that plane!"
- In fact, just about every episode of the show has some variant of this trope.
Detective DeeDee McCall did this in an episode of Hunter, with the grizzled cab driver replying "I've been waiting twenty years for someone to say that!"
An early M*A*S*H episode has a variant of the common subversion: Henry Blake instructs Radar to drive their jeep back to camp. Radar does so before Blake can climb aboard, leaving him stranded. The gag is repeated later in the episode.
Code Name Eternity "Making Love" Laura pursues the mind control Ethaniel , she gets in the cab and says "I can't believe I'm saying this, but follow that car."
Sex and the City parodies this in one episode:
Samantha: Follow that cab!
Cab Driver: You gotta be kidding, lady.
Samantha: Oh, just drive.

Western Animation

In one episode of Extreme Ghostbusters, a character hops into a cab and shouts, "Follow that car!" The cabdriver responds "I've always wanted someone to say that!" before doing so.
Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood has the classic subversion:
Wolf: Follow that cab!
Driver: Yes, sir! (*speeds off*)
In one Daffy Duck cartoon, The Great Piggy-Bank Robbery, Daffy runs up to a cab and says, "Follow that car!" The cab zooms off by itself, and Daffy remarks to the audience, "Keeps 'em on their toes."
In the "Adventure in China" episode of Jem, Jerrica says, "Follow that rickshaw!"
Played with in one episode of Family Guy. Stewie and Brian get into the taxi with a cry to "follow the truck." After a pause, "Didn't you hear me? I said follow that truck!" Adam West respsonds, "Oh I heard you. What I didn't hear was please." "Please follow the truck."
In the first Futurama movie, Bender's Big Score, Bender, in the past, hails a cab (driven by Al Gore). He tells Gore to "Follow that guy. There's an extra hundred in it for you if you follow him so close that you run him over." After failing to do so, Gore comments "Dang. That hundred dollars could have bought me one gallon of gas."
- Complete with dramatic music and zooming in on Al's face as he says it.
Another old Looney Tunes short, 'Baseball Bugs,' has Bugs call a cab and shout 'Follow that ball!' to chase down a long hit.
Pictured above is Goofy in the Classic Disney Short How To Be A Detective hailing a cab to chase a crime suspect. Two more characters follow suit, leading to a four-car chase.

Other

Arthur's Reading Game, if this troper recalls correctly, had one scene where one could click on a taxi to play a mini-cutscene featuring a gag based on this. A car passed by, then a harried-looking man ran up to the taxi, said the line - and then the taxi driver obeyed, driving off without the passenger.
This happens in the example of play in Classic Traveller Book 0.
This is used once on the second day of shopping on What Not to Wear, though this troper forgets if it was Stacy or Clinton who said it. It was immediately followed by the "I Always Wanted To Say That" line.
Inverted in Adventures In Odyssey, "Plan B" — after getting into a cab, Jack Allen realizes that they're being followed, and...
Driver: (starting to sound excited) They're followin' us? D'you want me to lose 'em?
Jack: (shakily) Uh-h-h, y-yes! Yes! Put the pedal to the metal!
Driver: I've waited my entire life for someone to say that!