History Main / GravitySucks

* ''Film/{{Star Trek III|The Search for Spock}}''. When the ''Enterprise'''s SelfDestructMechanism activates, the explosions in the saucer section are sufficient to knock it out of orbit and plummet dramatically as it burns up in the atmosphere.

* In ''[[VideoGame/Galaxy AngelII Galaxy Angel II - Zettai Ryouiki no Tobira]]'', Kahlua loses control of her ship because it will only respond to her alter ego Tequila (who at the time is afflicted by a curse and turned into a SuperpoweredEvilSide), and it plunges toward a planet.

* In ''[[VideoGame/GalaxyAngel Galaxy Angel II Zettai Ryouiki no Tobira]]'', Kahlua loses control of her ship because it will only respond to her SuperpoweredEvilSide, and it plunges toward a planet.

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' has Suika and her ability to manipulate density. As this includes the creation of Black Holes, this trope is naturally present in the games she appears in.
** Also Utsuho and her last spell card in [=TH11.=] Koishi of the same game has a similar spellcard, but it pushes you away instead -- to a wall of danmaku with KILL written all over it.
** Koishi's ''Suppression "Superego"'' spellcard in 13.5 plays it straight. Get too close to her and you get damaged.

* ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'': Alex knocks out the engine of the Ko-Dan command ship and a nearby moon does the rest "sucks" it in.

* ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'' provides the page quote. Alex knocks out the engine of the Ko-Dan command ship and a nearby moon does the rest.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Osmos}}'', which revolves around controlling and [[TheAssimilator expanding]] a primordial cell in an aquatic environment. Since cells are too early in their evolution to have limbs, the only way to propel onself is through inertia from ejecting pieces of itself, and once started, the cell will keep going due to inertia.

* Averted in the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode, "Courtmartial". Finney sabotages the Enterprise, causing it to lose power. The Enterprise remains in orbit and they have time to correct the issue before it decays.
** Also averted, though more fantastically, in the earlier TOS episode "The Naked Time". Once security breaks into Engineering and allows Scotty to regain control of the ship from the deranged, infected Lieutenant Riley, he finds the engines are "out cold", and there isn't enough time to restart them before the ship's orbit decays. So ... Kirk and Spock order him to try a last-ditch untested procedure which saves the ship by ... ''sending it back in time''.
** In the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode ''Breaking the Ice'', Reed and Mayweather are taking mineral samples on the surface of a comet. Mayweather injures himself when a slope gives way underneath him and he falls several feet. It would be a rather nasty fall on Earth, but they're on a comet and probably weigh all of six ounces. They later seriously damage their shuttle when it falls through weakened ice on the comet's surface...''twice''.

*** Justified because he wasn't saying it was impossible to orbit a black hole, he was saying that the orbit of the planet was "impossible", meaning that there was no way for an object to maintain a stable orbit at that distance. Inside the ergosphere of a rotating black hole, spacetime itself is actually dragged faster than light in a phenomenon called "frame dragging", and it would indeed be impossible for a planet to have a stable orbit in this region, without some sort of antigrav technology (which the planet had). The ship was actually making use of this antigrav technology while escaping, so when it suddenly shut down they were still in a region where it wasn't possible to escape with the power their engines had. So the Doctor wasn't saying that it was impossible to orbit a black hole, he was effectively saying "this planet is in an impossible orbit because it's too close". The "winds" blowing over the surface of the planet were explicitly pointed out as being the material of the hole's accretion disk: ''it'' was behaving properly, the planet was ''not''.

A subtrope of SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay and the cousin of SpaceFriction. See also GravityMaster, when a character has the power to control it. JustForFun/NotToBeConfusedWith ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls''.

* Justified in Creator/AndreNorton's ''Literature/SargassoOfSpace'', where the entire planet was turned by ThePrecursors into a superweapon capable of generating a very powerful gravity-like field that pulls spaceships from afar (possibly even from hyperspace) and crashes them on the surface of the planet.

UsefulNotes/BlackHoles are particular offenders of this nature, because everyone knows that their gravitational pull is so powerful even light cannot escape and the subatomic particles that constitute you will be ripped apart. Scientists even called this effect "spaghettification". This only applies ''past the event horizon'' of the black hole, not the orbiting accretion disk around it. From a distance, the gravity of a black hole is no different than that of any other massive body like a star, and it's even theoretically possible to have planets orbiting them. See also [[Analysis/GravitySucks Analysis]] for cases on when this trope does not apply and when it does.

* ''WebAnimation/{{Dreamscape}}'': [[YinYangBomb Keedran]], in her monster form, can open up a miniature vortex in her body, close it up, and then crush whoever is trapped within her.

[[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/ThePerryBibleFellowship https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_pbf097_astronaut_fall.png]]]]

%% Image removed per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1600245811055538100
%% Please see thread to discuss a new image.

A subtrope of SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay and the cousin of SpaceFriction. See also GravityMaster, when a character has the power to control it.

'''Lord Kril:''' ''[=[=][[FaceDeathWithDignity matter-of-factly]][=]=]'' We die.

%%This page's examples section is sorted alphabetically. It would be lovely if you'd maintain this, thanks.

[[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/treasure-planet-5_movies1_2374.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Pun}} Black holes really suck.]]]]

UsefulNotes/BlackHoles are particular offenders of this nature, because everyone knows that their gravitational pull is so powerful even light cannot escape and the subatomic particles that constitute you will be ripped apart. Scientists even called this effect "spaghettification". This only applies ''past the event horizon'' of the black hole, not the orbiting accretion disk around it. From a distance, the gravity of a black hole is no different than that of any other massive body like a star. See also [[Analysis/GravitySucks Analysis]] for cases on when this trope does not apply and when it does.

*** Justified because he wasn't saying it was impossible to orbit a black hole, he was saying that the orbit of the planet was "impossible", meaning that there was no way for an object to maintain a stable orbit at that distance. Inside the ergosphere of a rotating black hole, spacetime itself is actually dragged faster than light in a phenomenon called "frame dragging", and it would indeed be impossible for a planet to have a stable orbit in this region, without some sort of antigrav technology (which the planet had). The ship was actually making use of this antigrav technology while escaping, so when it suddenly shut down they were still in a region where it wasn't possible to escape with the power their engines had. So the Doctor wasn't saying that it was impossible to orbit a black hole, he was effectively saying "this planet is in an impossible orbit because it's too close".

[[quoteright:350:[[Disney/TreasurePlanet https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/treasure-planet-5_movies1_2374.jpg]]]]

* The logical (illogical) extension of this occurs in ''Disney/TreasurePlanet''. The absence of gravity is the presence of antigravity. When the ship's gravity generators are turned off temporarily, rather than simply hovering in the vacuum of space, everything loose starts falling ''up'' - and continues to accelerate upwards, even if it isn't touching anything else.

* {{Justified}} via AWizardDidIt in ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive''. Windrunners can create what's known as a Reverse Lashing, a bubble of folded gravity that pulls projectiles towards it. It works much better on things that aren't touching the ground, for some reason.

* The orbital mechanics in the [[IOSGames mobile game]] ''VideoGame/SpaceAgency'' are a little strange. On one hand, objects orbiting a planet are not going to fall as long as their orbital speed is in the "green" range. If it drops to the "yellow" range, the orbit will rapidly decay until the object either impacts the planet or lands (this is how you land on LUN and splash-down on HOM). Within the "green" range, your speed can change any which way, but your orbit won't change. To escape a planet's gravity, you just accelerate until the "red" range, at which the craft will shoot off out of its orbit in a straight line. Each planet has a ring shown around it, marking the limit of its gravitational pull. If you enter the "ring" at speeds in the "green" range, your craft will be instantly placed in a stable orbit. It's also entirely possible for objects to move at very different speeds in the same orbit.

* In ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', the gravity from King Kai's miniature planet, which manages to be at 10 times the gravity as on Earth despite its size, doesn't affect anything unless it gets within a few hundred feet, then you immediately get pulled toward it. To be fair, that ''is'' in the afterlife, so there's no reason the physical laws would be the same, or even exist.[[note]]As [[https://what-if.xkcd.com/68/ this]] WhatIf article illustrates. Small but dense objects (like King Kai's planet) do display "odd" gravity near their surface due to gravity being a function of mass and distance squared to the mass's center. No, their gravity wouldn't "turn off" a short distance away, but there would be a sever gravitational gradient and tidal forces present.[[/note]]

** A strange example in ''The Last Jedi'', is at the beginning when the rebels mount a bombing run on an attacking Star Destroyer. The bombers have bomb racks straight out of WWII, in which the bomb bay doors open and the unguided bombs simply drop onto the target. In space. It helps that they're aided in their fall by the ship's artificial gravity, and simply retain that motion once they enter space.

'''Lord Kril:''' [=[=]''[[FaceDeathWithDignity matter-of-factly]]''[=]=] We die.

* When Mike crashes into, then attempts to save, the Hubble telescope in ''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K: The Movie]]'', it immediately drops away and falls to Earth. An incredulous Mike [[LampshadeHanging points out]] that it couldn't possibly do that.

* In ''Film/StarshipTroopers'' a fleet of spaceships is being attacked by bug plasma from the surface. Once hit the ships start to drop towards the surface at alarming angles and speeds.