Ouch.
A character (or group of characters) are either running from something very bad (like a large boulder or a very angry and relentless enemy), or chasing after someone. They are totally focused on this act, so much that they don't notice someone coming from the other direction doing the exact same thing, and as a result they run right into each other, usually being knocked unconscious in the process and often resulting in seeing stars or birds or planets in their field of vision. In some cases, they'll be knocked off their feet, hover in the air for a few seconds, and then fall to the ground. In some cases, they might see the other coming at the last moment, but momentum makes it impossible to stop in time, so there's nothing they can do but watch the other barrel towards him/her. At times, the third party is able to make them Put Their Heads Together without ever laying a hand on either of them.
This is a humor trope from old Looney Tunes cartoons, with the being-chased version often being employed by the hero to get enemies to defeat themselves.
See also Crash-Into Hello, for a version with romantic undertones (and Suggestive Collision for the more lurid version), Human Traffic Jam if the characters are all moving in the same direction and the collision comes from one of them stopping, and Watch Out for That Tree! for a comedic variation with just one person and a stationary object. Punched Across the Room might be a more violent variation.
Examples:
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Advertising
- This was Bullwinkle the Moose's tagline in a series of Cheerios commercials in the 1960s. He would be performing an athletic feat with great ease after having a bowl of Cheerios but winds up running into an object that he didn't see.
Anime & Manga
- Pretty Cure:
- This happens twice in Suite Pretty Cure ♪ with the two main Heroines: once at the beginning of episode 2, and again in the Cold Open of episode 5. The former sends them crashing into a tree, while the latter could easily be reinterpreted as an Accidental Kiss.
- In another Pretty Cure example, this happens in episode 24 of Futari wa Pretty Cure between Nagisa and Honoka.
◊ This also looks like an Accidental Kiss.
- The Manga Change 123 has Motoko (in her Hibiki personality) do this with Ginga.
- Fairy Tail chapter 183 and the corresponding anime episode 87 between Lucy and Coco.
- In The Mysterious Cities of Gold season 2, Sancho and Pedro are running around in a bamboo forest trying to lose a Chinese pirate chasing them, only to finally end up smashing into each other, knocking themselves out.
- In the Pokémon: The Series episode "The Song of Jigglypuff", Ash accidentally bumps into someone in Neon Town, a city where most of the populace is easily agitated, and refuses to apologize. A fight almost breaks out between the two before Officer Jenny comes over and breaks it up. Jessie and James later make the same mistake and get their asses handed to them.
- The Galactic Adventures series makes a Running Gag of Barry making his appearance by bumping into Ash.
- Episode 2 of Keijo!!!!!!!! has this occur almost constantly during Room 309's "Hip Toss" training (essentially volleyball practice but using butts). Since their teamwork is so shoddy at this stage, the girls are either bumping butts at best or crashing into each other and winding up in lewd positions at worst.
Comic Books
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: As their test to get into the Holliday Girls two gals are blindfolded, put in a room and told to make their way back to the dorms. They run into each other and knock each other down before they decide to remove the blindfolds.
Films — Animation
- In Hercules and Xena – The Animated Movie: The Battle for Mount Olympus, Iolaus manages to get the Water Titaness and Fire Titaness into doing this. The resulting collision is... well... just what you'd expect.
- Disney Animated Canon examples:
- The Aristocats has Berlioz and Tolouse get into a piano duel at the end of Scales and Arpeggios, which ends when they collide in mid-air and fall onto the keys. Later on, Napoleon and Lafayette accientally scare each other and run around opposite sides of a tree, crashing into each other in the process.
- The Jungle Book (1967): Mowgli and Hathi Jr. bump into each other face-first when the former tries to march along with the elephants. Mowgli didn't understand Hathi's military command to turn around, and Hathi Jr. has to explain it to him as they march face-to-face, with Mowgli going backwards:
Hathi Jr.: The other way! Turn around!
- Robin Hood (1973) has this between a disguised Robin Hood and Little John when they rob Prince John's coach. The collision spills all the money everywhere, and the duo rush to hurriedly scrape it up again. The delay means that a suspicious Prince John, sticking his head out of the coach, catches them running off and realizes what's just happened.
- During the football-inspired clash between Lady Kluck and Prince John's rhino guards at the archery tournament, Kluck gets two of the guards to do this to each other in a form of Deadly Dodging.
- Meet the Robinsons: Lewis, fleeing from the eccentric Robinson family, and Wilbur, frantically searching for the former, run smack into each other in the middle of the corridor, both of them ending up on their butts.
Films — Live-Action
- This takes place in Clue, with multiple characters crashing into each other when coming down the stairs to investigate some screaming they heard.
- In Home Alone 3, one of the spies chasing the remote control car jumps a hedge the same time another spy jumps from the other side. Their heads collide.
- Kingsman: The Secret Service: In the bar fight, two of the thugs go down this way.
- Mary Poppins: During the "run on the bank" scene, two bankers carrying huge chests of money crash into each other, spilling money everywhere.
Literature
- In the Warrior Cats novella Redtail's Debt, Tigerclaw and a WindClan apprentice named Sorrelpaw are both chasing the same rabbit without realizing it, and end up colliding with each other.
Live-Action TV
- Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp: In The Teaser for "The Chilling C.H.U.M.P. Chase," Dr. Strangemind and the Baron mistakenly take some nuclear power capsules rather than the headache capsules right next to them. This causes them to generate so much velocity and momentum as they run around the laboratory that they're unable to stop moving around — until they run headfirst into each other. ("Vell, I learned one thing; never open a bottle of capsules without reading the label!")
- Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Mimmi and Ondina's Absurd Phobia of cats leads to the two of them screaming and running straight into each other when they first see Poseidon.
Pro Wrestling
- Happens often in Pro Wrestling, whenever Double Clotheslines are attempted, or both contestants go for a Flying Crossbody attack.
Puppet Shows
- Mildly Played for Drama in the The Book of Pooh episode, "A Wood Divided". When Rabbit and Tigger run into each other at a bridge, the former's prize tomato and the latter's tail-bouncing record are victims of it, and both of them keep calling back to it over the course of the episode as their feud escalates.
- Also happens with Tigger and Pooh in "The Rumor Millstone", where Tigger accidentally runs into Pooh while trying to get away from Rabbit's garden. In explaining why, though, Tigger gets some details of Rabbit's original fib wrong, which sets up the escalation of said fib to the point of it being about a monster coming to smash the wood.
Video Games
- A recent content update to Dungeon Fighter Online adds a Dual Boss you can inflict this on to create a large opening. Two players in the party are targeted by each boss with trajectory markers. By maneuvering themselves such that these markers cross at the right location, the two bosses crash into each other, instead. This creates a long groggy phase where the party can dump prodigious damage onto the pair.
- In the Classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, whenever you're fighting Rocksteady and Bebop at the same time, you can pull this off by waiting for them both to charge, and then jump at the last second. It does at least a bit of damage and leaves them both stunned for a while, leaving you a chance to get in a few free hits.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Rescuepalooza also features a Dual Boss against Bebop and Rocksteady. Whenever they go to charge across the screen, either one is capable of harming the other during said charge, and it is entirely possible for the two knuckleheads to crash into each other should they charge at the same time. One fun challenge comes from lowering their health bars enough so that they can knock each other out and end the battle.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (See a pattern here?) has Bebop and Rocksteady confront the player(s) at the end of stage 7. Once again, it is possible to make them collide with each other, stunning them and opening them up to some free potshots.
- Street Fighter IV has the Rival battle for Sakura and Ibuki. You don't see the collision, but you hear it, and when they are both shown later, they're both on their butts.
Web Animation
- Milk Chocolate vs. The World: We Want Elena! has such a collision between Elena and Christie Monteiro. With an extra helping of unintentional Breast Attack on both ends. Starts at 0:37.
- In "Shake Your Tail!", a Rainbow Rocks short, Pinkie and Twilight smashes heads when they're both trying to catch a basketball and ends up too focused on it.
Web Comics
- The Order of the Stick: In "When Plotlines Collide!", Roy and Haley smash into each other while fleeing, respectively, from a trio of ogres and a group of goblin ninjas.
- This is how Kell's parents, Franklin and Elanor, met in Kevin & Kell. They were chasing the same rabbit (Bentley, who would later become Kevin's father) from different directions and smashed into each other as Bentley dove down a hole and got away.
- In El Goonish Shive, Grace smashes into a raider bandit while fleeing from a giant cockroach.
Western Animation
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): The newly-mutated Rocksteady and Bebop smash into each other when they try to attack the Turtles for the first time. Reused in the Video Game Adaptation, as noted above.
- The Tool Street Gang: Squirt and Fret are seen running smack into each other during the show’s intro sequence.
- The old '60s' Spider-Man cartoon has Spidey employ the second version when he goes up against the Mole men, tricking two of them into charging at him full tilt, then ducking out of the way at the last moment.
- It's also used in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, again by Spidey against the Lizard and the Scorpion, in the finale of the Neogenic Nightmare arc.
- The 2007 George of the Jungle animated series has this happen in one episode, with Ursula and Magnolia, with both fleeing to evade some death traps they triggered by accident. To both girls' credit, they not only stay on their feet, but shake it off quite quickly. Then again, look at who they're friends with.
- The Flintstones:
- In one episode, Fred and Barney are enjoying the new pool they had built (half in Fred's yard, half in Barney's), and they both take huge jumps from diving boards on opposite ends and smash right into each other in mid-air....twice.
- In another episode Wilma and Betty do this: they don't actually hit each other; rather, as they're running past, they hook arms and fall on their butts.
- In the episode "King for a Night", seven characters collide simultaneously during a Scooby-Dooby Doors sequence.
- In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Terry McGinnis uses this strategy against the DeeDees. In fact almost every time he defeats them, it's by slamming them into each other in one way or another.
- A staple gag in Scooby-Doo. Usually, it’s Shaggy and Scooby running from the monster crashing into the rest of the gang coming the other way, or the gang crashing into the monster which results in the monster getting exposed.
- Happens in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, with Shaggy and Scooby on one side and Flim-Flam and Scrappy on the other.
- Also happens with the main Mystery Inc. team in Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase. Velma and her Video Game counterpart do this again later.
- Tiny Toon Adventures:
- A group of Swan Alpha Bitches in Shirley the Loon's ballet class tried to kill her when they thought she was sabotaging the recital they were putting on (actually Babs Bunny doing it on Shirley's behalf since said Swan's had been bullying her). Shirley uses some Ballet inspired Deadly Dodging to trick two of them into doing this.
- In another episode, Montana Max and Babs Bunny were hit with Cupid's arrows. They did a Meadow Run towards each other but didn't stop and smacked into each other. Then started making out.
- In an Elmyra-centered episode, her mother and sister do this while trying to catch her baby brother.
- In Inspector Gadget, Gadget chases one of the villains into a cave while another one is running out. The villains run into each other, and then Gadget run into them.
- In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, episode "The Casket of Ancient Winters", Black Panther uses Deadly Dodging to get two of Malegrim the dark elf's Wolf Minions to crash into each other.
- Happens in two episodes of The Tick. First Arthur manages to crash in Leonardo Davinci... twice. There was also a collision in the first episode between two not-so BadassNormals on swing lines. One of them said he was sorry.
- In the TUGS episode, "Warrior", the Shrimpers say this to Warrior when he cuts across them. Warrior apologizes and tells them they should look where they're going, as he's in a hurry. The Shrimpers tell him they're not going anywhere, because they're busy shrimping.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "A Dog and Pony Show", Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle smacks into each other while trying to catch the Diamond Dogs right before they disappear in their burrow.
- In "A Bird in the Hoof", Twilight and Fluttershy are chasing down a phoenix they don't realize is at the end of her life cycle. They suffer this impact when coming at Philomena from opposite Scooby-Dooby Doors.
- In "Daring Don't" Twilight gets two of Ahuizotl's mooks to crash into each other by teleporting away at the last moment.
- In "The Washouts", as she's looking for Scootaloo all over Ponyville, Rainbow Dash stops watching where she is going and bonks her head against Twilight's.
- Danger Mouse: In "Quark! Quark!," the alien antagonist Quark collides with Penfold who admonishes him with "Why don't you look where you're going?!" (One look at Penfold and Quark goes into helpless fits of laughter.)
- A piece of stock animation on The Perils of Penelope Pitstop is the Ant Hill Mob splitting up then running back in and colliding with each other.
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog has Sonic and Tails employ this a lot against Scratch and Grounder, usually leaving the two robots in a pile of parts. There are some exceptions:
- "Full Tilt Tails" has Sonic and Tails, the latter under the influence of speed-enhancing chewing gum, crash into each other at top speed, ending up dazed and on their butts. Sonic even wonders aloud what hit him until Tails clarifies.
- "Spaceman Sonic" has Sonic and Tails, while fleeing from a space monster, slam into Scratch and Grounder, which alerts the former that the latter are chasing them too.
- "Submerged Sonic" has Sonic and Tails meet the merman Surff by crashing into him, knocking all three into the ocean.
