"Man... is only separated from heaven by that which he will not ramp."
— Dr McNinja, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
A character operating a vehicle is in a tight spot; there's something blocking the path, someplace too high and/or far to reach, etc. What to do? Look for something that could remotely be used as a ramp, or just build one, to perform a Ramp Jump.
A Sub-Trope of Theme Park Landscape. Not to be confused with Use Your Head, which covers improvised ramming. Compare Benevolent Architecture.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Black Lagoon: Rock uses a derelict ship to ramp the titular boat, then fire a torpedo directly into an attack helicopter.
- In Venus Wars, Hiro is being chased by police and surrounded. So he lifts the monobike onto the side of the highway guardrail to make an escape.
- Girls und Panzer der Film has Duck Team's plan to defeat the University Team's Morser-Karl siege mortar. Turtle Team uses Anzio's CV 33 to allow their Hetzer to jump a bridge gap and be able to shoot down the Morser-Karl's barrel.
Fan Works
- In Kenya Starflight's "Star Wars characters are trapped on Earth" story Eye of the Storm
, Darth Vader takes over during a car chase with stormtroopers and uses the Force to pull an under-repair sign across the roadway and use it to ramp over a train, using the Force once more to keep the car stable. It still doesn't handle the landing well, though.
Films — Animated
- Cars: Lightning McQueen uses a wrecked competitor during a race.
- Sherlock Gnomes: While trying to escape from the hound in the park, Juliet drives the ride-on lawnmower up a stack of deckchairs that launches the mower into a tree.
- Wonder Park: After June and Banky pass through their first ramp, they then jump a treadmill as part of the Grand Wonder in their backyard.
- In Hey Arnold! The Movie, while driving a bus down a broken bridge, Arnold tells Gerald to use a crashed semi-truck as a ramp.
- In The Lorax (2012), Ted attempts to jump a gorge by making a ramp from a rock and an abandoned board, but the board fails to hold his scooter's weight, sending him hurtling down in to gorge instead.
Films — Live-Action
- James Bond
- Diamonds Are Forever: while in a chase with police cars in a parking lot, Bond uses an overturned car as an improvised ramp to jump his car to safety.
- The Man with the Golden Gun has a cool broken-bridge improvised ramp that leads to the car making a 360 degree jump.
- In Octopussy it's Station I agent Vijay who does this in a souped-up autorickshaw, driving up some planks right over the head of a startled camel.
- In No Time to Die, Bond uses this trope several times; not only to jump his own vehicle but to take out enemy vehicles or avoiding being run over by them. He's caught unarmed on top of an ancient Roman aqueduct with a SPECTRE car about to run him over, so throws himself behind a buttress that's just big enough to cause the car to jump over his body. Moments later, he rides a motorcycle up a staircase, launching it past the landing and onto the next terrace above. Later on in Norway, Bond is being chased by enemy SUV's and uses his environment to cause several of them to crash via this trope, including an SUV driven by Ash that he tricks into driving into a sturdy log hidden by fog and foliage, causing it to flip upside down.
- Speed: a Broken Bridge is used as an improvised ramp (busted by the MythBusters ... turns out the filmmakers cheated and used CGI).
- Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) used an improvised ramp near the end to bring to a close the big chase scene.
- Live Free or Die Hard (aka Die Hard 4.0) has a Ramprovisation so unusual that the hacker lead notes how improbable it is.
- At the end of Jackie Chan's First Strike, Jackie uses a conveniently-placed car display ramp to jump a Mitsubishi onto the boat carrying the Damsel in Distress.
Gerald: Jump the hole? Arnold, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Let's do it!
- In The Cannonball Run, Mad Dog and Batman use a conveniently placed trailer to jump over a train after the brakes in their truck fail.
- With much of Quick being an extended chase sequence, the film contains multiple examples of Ramprovisation. The first use is when Ki-su, uses an overturned car as a ramp to jump over the pile-up he has just caused.
- In Firestorm (1998), Jesse uses the collapsed roof of the trading post as a ramp to jump a trail bike out of the burning building.
Literature
- In The Zombie Knight, this is easy for Hector, whose power allows him to materialize iron.
- Chapter one of Feed ends this way. George uses a hill as an improvised ramp.
- Matthew Reilly's books do it every so often. Avoid torpedoes, drive a truck into a fighter plane... He also figured out that the only way to make this trope more awesome is to blow up the improvised ramp behind the vehicle.
Video Games
- In Midtown Madness 2, you can jump from one embankment of the Thames to the other by use of strategically placed ramps in the Tower of London, and a (convenient) boat in the middle of the river.
- Used for many Insane Stunt bonuses in Grand Theft Auto, as far back as GTA 2.
- Appears frequently in Total Overdose. Ram's first mission doesn't exactly require one, but strongly encourages it to flee the top of a parking garage.
- Just Cause 2: There are absolutely dozens of conveniently placed piles of building materials, collapsed road signs and so on spread around for ramping.
- Driver: San Francisco has lots of single-car carrier trucks driving around San Francisco, none of them carrying cars. They make for perfect mobile ramps.
- Finding suitable launching-off spots is half the fun of offroading with the Regalia Type-D in Final Fantasy XV. Note that hardly any of these were planned as such when the game was first released, but environmental landmarks and hazards like meteor craters, cliffs, scenic rock formations, and even campsites suddenly became instant-ramps for the monster truck's slo-mo "Big Jumps."
Webcomics
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja has these three examples and gives us the page quote.
- Dead Winter shows us our heroes' mode of exit from the park.
Western Animation
- Craig of the Creek: In "The Ice Pop Trio", while riding their bikes to the Duck Mart, Craig, Sparkle Cadet, and Cannonball run into the creek, and Craig builds a makeshift ramp to jump across it with rocks, twigs, and a wooden board. It breaks after Cannonball—the last to use it—uses it.
- Jonny Quest episode "Mystery Of the Lizard Men'': while escaping enemy agents in the Sargasso Sea, Race Bannon and his pursuers both use an overturned boat as a ramp to jump their boats high in the air. The 2nd time, Race uses it to turn his hydrofoil into a deadly weapon.
- Gwen in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien makes her own ramp out of Anodite magic.
- In the Justice League Unlimited episode, "Double Date",'' during a car chase The Question and Huntress (in The Question's GTO) jump up to a raised section of road using the ramp of a car carrier trailer and Black Canary and Green Arrow follow suit on Canary's motorcycle.
Green Arrow: This is so unnecessary.
