Shoot all four buildings for the Jackpot!
Most frequently seen in Looney Tunes cartoons, this is a visual gag which reproduces the look and action of a Pinball game. A ball or other spherical object (sometimes a character forced to curl into a ball) careens wildly about, rebounding off of numerous objects and/or persons, producing glowing "scores" over each one. The gag ends when either it leaves the "playing field" (often by dropping into a hole), ends up hitting one thing so hard it stops them from moving or one specific target lights up with a "TILT!" indicator.
"TILT!" — the indication that an attempt to cheat at pinball by lifting or shaking the machine has been detected — is a subtrope in its own right. Tilted machines shut down immediately, ignoring player input and ending the current game, sort of an early-to-mid-20th century BSOD, with the added element of "you brought this on yourself, cheater!"note In a similar manner, a character subject to "TILT!" is usually stunned or unconscious, although whether this is because of or simply indicated by the "TILT!" varies from instance to instance.
Bonus points if Pinball-related sounds are included, such as target bells and flippers striking the moving object.
Also see Be the Ball and Bouncing Battler.
Examples
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Asian Animation
- Lamput: In "Alien", the alien spacecraft launches into space and ricochets off the planets of the solar system, with pinball sounds as it does so. All the planets it hits end up with rings of stars circling around them (except for Saturn, the one planet it doesn't hit - it had a ring already).
Fan Works
- This happens in Double Rainboom when Rainbow Dash drinks the potion that allows her to fly faster. There is even a scoreboard adding up points.
Film — Animation
- In Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars, Peep, Tom, and Jerry have this happen to them as they're taking off in their space ship when it hits some of the martian buildings.
Film — Live-Action
- This animated trope actually showed up in the live-action film Freddy vs. Jason. When Freddy and Jason are in the dream world, Freddy causes Jason's body to fly through the air around his boiler room, bouncing off of various pipes and tanks with pinball-machine sound effects accompanying every carom. Eventually, the action stops, causing Jason to drop straight back down to the floor and Freddy to say "Aw. Tilt."
- The second time the protagonist in Hoomania fails to Stay on the Path as instructed, he receives a rocket car to help him complete the game faster, but almost immediately drives it into a giant pinball machine out of curiosity, which he really should have known was a trap, resulting in him getting bounced around the machine, completely wrecking the rocket car, which finally crashes into a tree after being ejected from the machine.
- Done for laughs in the climax of Kung Fu Hustle, complete with electro-mechaniccal pinball sounds and chimes.
- The Man with Two Brains. They specifically set up the whole Mad Scientist lab just so Steve Martin can do the pinball routine near the end of the movie.
- During the car chase scenes in THX 1138, where the title character is pursued by the robotic police officers on motorcycles. In the scene immediately following the wipe-out of the first officer, "TILT//" can be seen flashing on a mainframe panel.
Live-Action Television
- The "It's" Man in episode 12 of Monty Python's Flying Circus in no way resembles a ball, but produces the characteristic sounds bouncing off trees.
- In the dodgeball episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Moze takes out four people with one throw of a ball, including pinball sound effects.
- One playing of Party Quirks on Whose Line Is It Anyway? had Wayne Brady acting like he was a pinball in a machine.machine.
Pinball
- Mario Pinball Land is a pinball video game built around this trope.
Radio
- I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue: Referenced in a round of "Limericks" on a show from Edinburgh:
The thing about wearing a kilt
Is it tends to reveal how you're built.
But should you chance your arm,
It has an alarm,
And your sporran lights up and says: "TILT!"
Web Original
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: At one point during their brawl on Namek, Frieza bounces Goku around enough that he gets the high score and three-letter name. He names himself "ASS".
Western Animation
- The Avatar: The Last Airbender super-deformed short Bending Battle
has Toph demonstrating Earthbending by turning a cliff face into a pinball machine, complete with Sokka as the ball.
- In one episode of Beast Wars, Rattrap is in a spherical submersible that gets knocked around, ending with him looking dizzy and his eyes reading "TILT"
- A variation of this is found in Family Guy, in one of their random referential gags: In "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz", Stewie has been forced to live in a bubble for a while, and at one point complains about the morning he's had: Somehow getting caught in Sesame Streets Funky classic "Pinball Number Count" short (123 4 5 678 9 10 11 12!).
- Another episode had Cleaveland ride a pachinko token.
- The Ghost And Molly Mcgee: In "The Turnip Twist", a giant turnip-shaped piñata goes careening around town, making "ping" noises as it bounces off lamp-posts. Then a truck drives by with the word "JACKPOT" on the side in lights.
- Literal: The opening titles of Inch High, Private Eye has the title character on the surface of a pinball machine chased around by a pinball.
- Happens on Jimmy Two-Shoes, when Jimmy and Beezy are knocking themselves around.
- In the elephant race event of Laff-A-Lympics from India, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy's elephant bounces off city pillars with accompanying pinball noises after getting a trunk full of curry (thanks to the Really Rottens).
- Several Looney Tunes shorts have some variation of it, including "Baseball Bugs" when Bugs hits a line drive that bounces off of all the outfielders.
- Mickey Mouse (2013): In "The Big Good Wolf" Mickey forces The Big Bad Wolf to hack up his eaten friends while he's Stuck in the Doorway by tugging and releasing his tail. The living room turns into a pinball game as his friends come out the wolf's mouth, bouncing off the furniture and walls.
- In Miraculous Ladybug, A Lame Pun Reaction from Stormy Weather sends Cat Noir careening across the city and bouncing off cars with the appropriate sound effects.
- One episode of Phineas and Ferb goes from a giant bowling to a giant pinball game all around town, then back to bowling with an army of giant robot penguins.
- One of the couch gags on The Simpsons.
