A classic move for the giant-monster genre, from King Kong to Clover, this is when a gigantic creature or similar menace lashes out and destroys a helicopter or other low-flying aircraft. The aircraft might be attacking the monster, circling too close to capture footage of the creature (news crews, beware this trope!), or simply passing by and/or trying to get the hell away from it. One of the many hazards of being an Acrophobic Bird, and a standard tactic for filmmakers to justify a monster not simply being blown away by an air-to-ground missile. Of course if the threat is groundbased, and the pilots would logically know it possessed no ranged weaponry, this may be a case of Too Dumb to Live.
Often overlaps with Hellish Copter. Bonus points if we see someone reporting from the helicopter as it gets swatted, making it Deadline News as well.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In End of Evangelion, Asuka drop-kicks a VTOL craft using Unit-02.
Board Games
- The board game The Creature That Ate Sheboygan, which simulates an Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever, includes rules for having the monster destroy helicopters that fly too close.
Fan Works
- In Attack of the 50-Ft. Half-Klingon, the giant B'Elanna Torres is introduced striding across a Zee Rust city "swiping at the gyrocopters that buzzed about her like angry gnats". When a giant Tom Paris appears at the end of the fanfic, he's surrounded by a similar swarm of tilt-rotor gunships.
Film — Animated
- In Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Batman does this with small radio-controlled choppers in the old "Gotham of the Future" miniature diorama, which now serves as the Joker's home base.
- In Monsters vs. Aliens, Ginormica does it by accident, while trying to explain how she's not dangerous at all.
Pilot: Don't let her get me!
Ginormica: Sorry.
Film — Live-Action
- Near the end of Cloverfield, the monster takes down a helicopter full of evacuees the protagonists.
- Godzilla and his kaiju colleagues do this all the time.
- In the 1998 Godzilla movie, the titular 'zilla does this to a helicopter that's tracking him though the city by sneaking up on it from below.
- Especially notable in Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!, in which Godzilla THROWS Baragon into a news chopper. What a way to die.
- King Kong: King Kong swats at attacking aircraft at the climax of the movie. He manages to take down three, but unfortunately it's not enough to save him.
- Kong: Skull Island continues the tradition with actual helicopters, and uses enough of them that Kong not only swats them, but grabs them to toss at other helicopters. The largest, he snatches out of the air and twists apart with both hands.
- Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus uses the standard version when the octopus swats a fighter plane, and takes it far beyond credibility
when the shark leaps 30,000 feet up to nom an airliner.
- Pacific Rim shows the first kaiju doing this to the fighter jets attacking it.
Literature
- The human protagonist of Stephen King's Battleground swats one of the attacking mini-choppers out of the air barehanded (suffering appropriate injuries to his hand), then throws a blanket over the other and stomps on it.
- The 50-foot Ginger that climbed up the Tower of Art in Moving Pictures tried to play out this trope when two wizards started strafing it from a flying broomstick.
Music
- This is actually in music. The intro to Arockalypse by Lordi is a spoken news bulletin about a zombie invasion, including a snippet from a reporter who gets knocked out of the sky by a monster climbing a building.
Video Games
- Can be done in Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!, though it's actually somewhat difficult. The helicopter units are fairly good at keeping their distance from the monster, and good at evading the monster's "grab" attack.
- The Tyrannosaurus rex in Dino Crisis does this to Regina's extraction chopper.
- Your first kaiju form in Hakaiou: King of Crusher as a Not Zilla have you dealing with military helicopters by swatting them out the air. Of course, that's before you grow wings and gain the ability of flight.
- The monsters in the Arcade Game Rampage could do this to attacking helicopters.
- This is possible by many ways and is greatly recommended in War of the Monsters, as helicopter gunships are, like those in CCAC, fairly good at evading the player, while at the same time peppering you with their cannons. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to beat them, including by throwing items at them, shooting them with your projectile weapon, close-range special attacks, swatting them, jumping into them, or even grabbing another helicopter and using ITS guns to down the others.
- They are especially dangerous in the 4th mission, where you not only have to face helicopters, but also a Mecha-Kong and the mantis Preytor, who exhibits all the traits of the aforementioned choppers.
Web Comics
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Hellish Copter vs. Giant Enemy Crab: 0-1 As the Alt Text says: "Helicopters only exist in this comic to get exploded. They serve no other purpose."
Web Videos
- This hamster demonstrates why you shouldn't make your Kaiju-battling aircraft out of hamster treats.
- Lampshaded by Yotobi during his review of Megapython vs Gatoroid: "Since this is an Asylum movie, if you're riding a plane or a chopper, chances are something will try to eat you."
Western Animation
- Parodied in the opening scene of Beavis And Butthead Do America.
- In Futurama episode "Benderama", a Giant human boy is destroying the city. Zapp Brannigan shoots at him from a helicopter but then the Giant grabs the helicopter and uses it to give himself a shave.
- Miraculous Ladybug: In "Stoneheart - Origins, Part 2", Stone Heart swats at the pursuing helicopters as he climbs the Eiffel Tower carrying Mylène.
- In The Simpsons episode "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo" the plane that the Simpsons are on going home gets attacked by Godzilla.
Pilot: Uh, folks, we're experiencing some moderate Godzilla-related turbulence at this time, so I'm going to go ahead and ask you to put your seat belts back on. When we get to 35 thousand feet, he usually does let go, so from there on out, all we have to worry about is Mothra, and, uh, we do have reports he's tied up with Gamera and Rodan at the present time. Thank you very much.
- Taz-Mania: In "Taz in Keeweeland", Taz becomes a giant atop a skyscraper, swatting at the Keewee in a biplane.
Real Life
- The Trope Namer is the now-famous tweet joking about using a flyswatter to get rid of an annoying helicopter that was flying around town in the middle of the night. The town was Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the helicopters were carrying Navy SEALS on their way to take down Osama bin Laden. One of them did crash during the raid, but so far there have been no reports that giant monsters were involved.
