Indy Escape

Indiana Jones can't stop the rock.

Prof. Jones: [chased by a boulder] Why build a trap that destroys what you're trying to protect along with the people trying to ransack it?
Monty: It's traditional!

— Irregular Webcomic!

The character is chased down a tunnel by something very large, clichédly a boulder or a giant monster or even a Ferris wheel. There's only one thing to do: RUN!!

There's no stopping the rolling boulder. You cannot avoid it or reason with it. It will just keep rolling towards you, destroying everything in its path until it makes sure you are a steaming, bloody pancake on the floor. The only way out is to race down the corridor as fast as you can, and finally dive into some passageway that is too small for it to enter when you reach the end. Alternatively, clearing a pit which the obstacle will fall into will also do the trick.

In the event that the chase takes place outside in open space, it sometimes seems that the characters can only run forward.

Closely related is a bridge that collapses in the hero's wake.

While often an extended sequence, an Indy Escape scene can also be used as part of a Death Course.

In video games, it is sometimes possible to get behind the rolling obstacle of doom, making the whole stage much easier. In 3D video games, the camera will often fixate on the boulder and obscure the path you have to run, making the whole stage much harder.

Compare with Rise to the Challenge, Escape Sequence and Descending Ceiling. When the pursuing object or creature is full-screen height, it's an Advancing Wall of Doom. After the escape is over, expect someone to quip "Wasn't That Fun?"

Unrelated, despite the name, to the Indy Ploy. In order to turn an Indy Escape into an Indy Ploy, the character would have to improvise pretty quickly.

If there are some nooks and crannies along the way, but a neverending supply of hazards as well, it's a Corridor Cubbyhole Run. If it's actually possible to evade the danger by moving sideways out of the way, but our character never does, they have fallen prey to 1-Dimensional Thinking.

See also Raiders of the Lost Parody.

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Examples:

Animation

• Mechamato: Amazeey's "Rolling Globe Challenge" has a giant model of Earth rolling down the staircase the main characters are on, and they evade it by running down as fast as possible.

Anime & Manga

• During the SSS's first in-show trip to the Guild in Angel Beats!, the second trap they encounter is exactly this: the giant rolling boulder of doom. In a parody of the trope, all but one of the group being chased survives.
• Bleach:
  • Subverted during the Hueco Mundo arc, when Chad stops the boulder with one hand. And then pulverizes it with one punch.
  • Anime episode 287. While exploring Uravira's mansion in search of the Snow Crystal, Ichigo and friends are caught by Uravira himself. Uravira pulls a cord and releases a giant ball from a hole in the ceiling, which rolls toward our heroes. They run away from it at high speed. It's Lampshaded when Ichigo says "A giant boulder! That's such a cliché!"
• A momentary gag in one episode of Classicaloid has the residents of Otowa Mansion (bar Motz) being steamrolled by a large boulder that comes out of nowhere. This is blamed on "Motz Panic" — a troublemaker aura of Motz's that causes bad things to happen to people who are not Motz.
• In the early stage of Dragon Ball, such a trap appears in the form of a giant pinball machine in Pilaf's Palace. Pilaf has some fun launching giant pinballs at the heroes, though more to frighten them than in any real attempt to crush them. The gang tries to escape from one boulder by ducking into an alcove. The boulder, instead, rolls back up and chases them into the alcove! Yeah, a boulder with an I.Q.
• Both used and subverted in Fullmetal Alchemist. After breaking into Lab 5 and getting past all manner of traditional Indy traps, Ed steps on a button tile and unleashes a giant, rolling boulder, apparently from nowhere. He runs a few feet, trips, and then simply squeezes himself into the corner where the wall meets the floor. The boulder, being round and thus unable to do jack with corners, misses him by inches. Afterwards, he remembers that he can just transmute the corridors to get rid of traps. Amusing since he almost thanks his short size, then realizes what he was about to say. (Ed's Berserk Button is being called small. He's also skinny, not just short. Had he been larger he wouldn't have fit in the small space between the boulder and corner.)
• In the 8th episode of Granblue Fantasy, Mary and Karva had to run away from a boulder after activating a trap switch.
• Hanaukyō Maid Team:
  • Episode 1. While Taro is walking down some stairs he accidentally steps on a trap trigger and a giant ball drops from above and starts rolling down the stairs after him.
  • La Vérité episode 7. While exploring an underground area below the mansion, Taro, Ryuuka, and Ikuyo Suzuki have to run from a giant ball after Ikuyo presses a button she shouldn't have.
• In Episode 4 of Kill la Kill, one of the obstacles to keep the students from getting to school is a giant boulder that rolls all the way down the spiral road that passes through the city.
• Naruto:
  • A filler arc includes a boulder that Naruto barely escapes from. Afterwards, one of the antagonists appears and complains that the trap was too cliché.
  • In the first film, Naruto is in a railway tunnel (well, cave) when a train appears. He has no option but to run straight down the rails and through the tunnel. While carrying a princess on his back.
• Negi, Yue, and Nodoka's return to Library Island in Negima! Magister Negi Magi after the Kyoto Arc has them flying down a corridor as fast as Negi can after Yue steps on a floor trigger that releases the boulder.
• In the Pokémon: The Series episode "Battling the Enemy Within", Ash finds an ominous stone Pikachu idol on a pedestal. No prizes for guessing what happens next. Let's just say that Ash has probably not seen the Indiana Jones films. Ash's manner of escape is somewhat different, though. The boulder gets smashed to pieces by a Big Damn Regirock! Team Rocket ain't so lucky.
• Ranma ½:
  • In the story arc where Happōsai rediscovers his "ultimate secret technique", the Happōdaikarin (in fact a big firecracker), after a pair of demonstrations against Ranma aren't that conclusive, the old master ups the ante with a giant-sized firecracker, which he rolls by running on top. Female Ranma has no choice but to run, pursued by the pervert and his giant ball of doom, until he gets distracted, and she pushes both down a cliff.
  • In the manga, book 30, "Angry Hair Heaven" chapter, female Ranma gets pursued in the streets of Nerima by a giant black-and-white spiky ball... which is in fact her father turned into a panda and affected by a magic hair growth lotion. It Makes Sense in Context — though it's just as ridiculous as it sounds.
• In one of Urusei Yatsura's Beach Episodes, Shinobu wants to play Smashing Watermelons, but nobody in the village is willing to sell them because of a curse from the Watermelon God over this specific holy day. Later, the gang stumble over a temple with a gigantic watermelon, which Ataru and Lum make fun of. This results in the angry spirit within it to chase them, making the huge watermelon roll down the temple steps, and later in the streets, all the way to the beach. In this case, swerving is of no use since the watermelon does follow them. Lum could have just flown away, though, but she likely didn't want to leave her Darling.
• Subverted in an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh!: the gang is trapped in a cave and reach a dead end while fleeing from a rolling boulder that turns out to be just a giant balloon with a speaker inside.

Comic Books

• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Uncle Scrooge #7 story "The Seven Cities of Cibola" by Carl Barks (1952) is an early example. The scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by a segment of this work.
• Along with every trap possible and imaginable, this appears sometimes in the French comic Game Over. Unlike other examples of this trope, here the protagonist never escapes the boulder. The Little Barbarian once gets slowed down by spiderwebs until rolled over. At another time, he finds a hole in the ground where to dive, but the boulder bounces off of a wall and covers the hole, leaving the hero starving to death.
• Star Wars:
  • Star Wars: Darth Vader: Our introduction to Dr Aphra, an Adventure Archaeologist who is an Evil Counterpart to Han Solo plus Harrison Ford's other famous role, involves a scene where she's running from a Destroyer Droid using its ball-shaped forcefield to roll down a ramp after her.
  • The Star Wars: Doctor Aphra spin-off begins in a similar manner, with a masked Adventure Archaeologist acquiring an ancient artefact only to be pursued by an ancient defense mechanism that looks similar to the rolling ball. The archaeologist escapes only for the artifact to be stolen by a rival a.l.a. Belloq. The twist is that Aphra is the rival and she shoots him In the Back as an Establishing Character Moment.

Comic Strips

• In a Garfield comic strip, Garfield stumbles across (for reasons unbeknownst to everybody) an enormous ball of yarn on a hill. Unwittingly, Garfield removes a stake that keeps the ball in place, causing it to start to roll down and nearly squash him. As he runs away, the ball of yarn grows smaller and smaller, until he's made it back to the house and what's left of the ball has all but unraveled at his feet.
  Jon: Don't worry, Garfield! I'll protect you from that fierce piece of string!
  Garfield: I hate him.

Fan Works

• Between Minds, a Half-Life/Portal story, features a collapsing underground ice tunnel, which would make anyone run.
• Outright defied in the Cynthia Gaiden sidestory of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines. As soon as Cynthia triggers the rolling boulder trap, her Riolu jumps in and destroys it with a single punch.

Films — Animation

• Happens near the beginning of Chicken Little, where a water tower collapses and starts rolling toward a movie theater that was coincidentally showing Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• In Chicken Run, just following another Indiana Jones shout-out (an Indy Hat Roll), Ginger and Rocky make their escape from the crumbling pie-making machine pursued by some large rolling gears.
• Dorbees: Making Decisions has a giant rolling ball as one of the traps to keep students from leaving school during class hours.
• The Great Mouse Detective: Basil and Dawson running away from a large Ferris wheel toy rolling in their direction in a toy store.
• The Incredibles: When Mr. Incredible fights the Omnidroid for the first time on the island, the robot shortly tries to crush him by retracting its members into a perfect sphere and rolling through the jungle. Mr. Incredible does the sensible thing and jumps out of the way, but the Omnidroid is a learning robot, and so somehow steers its sphere form towards him.
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): The Mane Six escapes from Capper's windmill abode by breaking its wheel and letting it roll away. When they jump from it, though, the wheel keeps rolling behind them and they have to flee as it is destroying the scaffolding they're running upon.
• Parodied by The Rugrats Movie: When the babies try to grab some ice cream from the kitchen, they imagine the kitchen as an ancient temple, the ice cream as an artifact, and Tommy's pregnant mother as the boulder.
• In Toy Story, when Woody tries to knock Buzz behind the cupboard with RC, Buzz ends up being chased by a rolling globe that gets knocked loose, not long before he falls out the window. For extra points, Disney and Pixar used the exact sound effect of the boulder rolling from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Films — Live-Action

• In Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, Jeanette the Chipette has to escape from a rolling basketball (with an evil face drawn on it) by running and finally diving in a hole. The basketball then stops over the hole entrance, blocking it.
• In the 1979 Disney Sci-fi The Black Hole, a gigantic (and suspiciously-spherical) red-hot meteor comes rolling down the Cygnus's central shaft as the heroes rush across a small footbridge in its path, complete with Dramatic Slip. It predates the trope maker by a year.
• In Die Hard with a Vengeance, McClane flees the water gushing through the aqueduct in a dump truck when the villains attempt to drown him.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: At one point during his pursuit of the intruders to his lair, the obese red dragon Themberchaud slips and starts rolling on his side, threatening to crush the protagonists who have to run for their lives.
• In another Harrison Ford movie, The Fugitive, the bus carrying Dr. Richard Kimble to prison drives off the road and rolls onto a railroad track just as a train approaches. Kimble escapes the bus through a window and jumps off just as the train crashes into it. The train then derails and chases after Kimble (whose hands and feet are still in shackles) frantically runs away from it. Kimble jumps into a ditch as it goes overhead.
• The Indiana Jones series is the trope namer. Dr. Jones frequently has to come up with plans on the fly, most of which involve a step in the neighborhood of "run like hell."
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark is the Trope Maker, in which Indy thinks he's successfully stolen a treasure from an ancient temple, only to be confronted with a giant rolling rock trap that he has to sprint from in order to avoid being crushed. It's easily the most-parodied scene of the entire film franchise, and the one most people think of when they think of Indiana Jones.
  • Temple of Doom features a rushing torrent of water coming down a mine shaft and going after the heroes.
  • Subverted in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy and his dad are in a car being chased by a German fighter plane. They drive into a tunnel and the plane follows them, knocking its wings off on the tunnel's entrance. The plane is now in flames but still following them, with Indy's dad telling him to drive faster. The plane just goes past them with the pilot looking with astonishment at his plane on fire, and it explodes after it leaves the tunnel.
  • Subverted again in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, at the end. Indy, Marion, Mutt, and Ox escape the ancient temple as it's being pulled into an interdimensional vortex. A huge deluge of water comes after them and it forces them up, the only way out of the underground city.
• Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) features some pre-Indy giant rolling boulder action.
• Ludo from Labyrinth uses his Dishing Out Dirt power to fill the Goblin City with boulders, causing them to run all over the place.
• The Ur-Example is likely the unabridged original version of the 1914 serial The Perils of Pauline. A Sioux tribe, wanting to confirm that the heroine is a goddess, subjects her to the test of the "Death Stone": she runs down a path pursued by a giant boulder.
• Another early example is Seven Chances (1925), where the hero is chased down a hill by an avalanche of Styrofoam Rocks.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), Robotnik and Knuckles go through several typical traps of ancient temples, including a rolling (spiked) boulder. As they run from it, Robotnik throws a Lampshade Hanging by saying, "I don't want to die like this! It's derivative!"
• In Stand by Me, the boys are taking a shortcut along a train bridge. Of course, they're halfway across when a train starts coming for them, evoking this trope.
• Star Wars: In The Empire Strikes Back, during the duel between Vader and Luke, the latter is searching around the facility for Vader and ends up in a very narrow hallway. Vader pops out of a niche (he was holding his breath) and starts swinging at Luke, who can barely defend himself. The angle in which its shot shows just how massive Vader is and his relentless assault mimics the unstoppable boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• UHF opens with an Indiana Jones spoof, including a parody of the famous boulder, which chases the protagonist all the way out of the temple and around the world. Interestingly enough, here the character being chased does think to swerve aside — but since this is parody, the boulder also swerves to follow him.

Literature

• Old literary example: near the end of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, the protagonists were chased through the Antarctic tunnels by a shoggoth. The rampaging beast so much resembled an oncoming train that one of the characters recited the names of subway stations as they fled.
• In Diamond Dogs, the explorers of a hyper-lethal Big Dumb Object receive a training dream that depicts several old Earth movies, including a man with an irresistible urge to rescue their hat escaping from a boulder and a series of endless cubic rooms containing lethal surprises.
• Subverted and lampshaded in Matthew Reilly's Seven Ancient Wonders. Instead of one smooth boulder, three nail-studded boulders chases the heroes down a flight of stairs.

Live-Action TV

• One of the challenges on Escape From Scorpion Island involved the contestants running downhill away from a large fake boulder. If the boulder caught them, they were eliminated. To make things more challenging, they had to crawl under a cargo net at one point.
• The Christmas special of season four of Eureka has Carter running from a gigantic Christmas ornament.
• The Good Eats episode "Great Balls of Meat" begins with a diner trying to escape a giant meatball, only to get trapped in a blind alley and get run over by it.
• Jessie:
  • Ravi sets up an Indiana Jones-like booby trap course to stop Luke from stealing the baseball that he wanted at the stadium, mirroring the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • An accidental one where Ravi accidentally knocks a boulder down a hill in the park and it rolls towards Luke. Fortunately, Luke is saved ironically by Creepy Connie.
• Played for comedy in Shake it Up. In "Match It Up", Deuce is dating a Gold Digger named Savannah who is conning him for the money he is gathering during the Cash Tornado tournament and Rocky dresses up Ty as a famous billionaire to expose her true colors. When Deuce sees Savannah flirting with Ty, he gets jealous to the point where he rips the tornado ball out of place rolling whilst still inside it like a hamster wheel trying to run Ty over.
• In the Japanese superhero series Space Sheriff Gavan, the hero escapes from a boulder in every opening credits sequence — at least in the French version of the series, which is better known as X-Or.
• Strange Hill High: In "Health & Safety", Tanner, Becky and Templeton are chased along a corridor by a giant papier-mâché head of Winston Churchill.
• Super Sentai: In episode 3 of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Captain Marvelous and Doc are chasing a mysterious man in black^*Who seems to know a lot about Super Sentai... and they end up in a cave where a giant boulder starts chasing them. Marvelous' solution is to throw his sword into the ground, then get down behind it, while the boulder goes over their heads due to the sword acting as a ramp.
• Avalanche, one of the challenges in Takeshi's Castle, features this, and it involves the contestants running up a narrow tunnel and then running back into cubbyholes to avoid the polystyrene boulders.
• Recklessness with this trope was what got Unbeatable Banzuke (Known in Japan as Kinniku Banzuke or Muscle Ranking) cancelled. In May 2002 there was a new challenge called Power Island that featured two very dangerous obstacles known as Rock Attack and Rock Valley. For Rock Attack, the contestants had to catch a ball weighing 47kg and 1.8m in diameter as it rolled down a slope, and push it to the top. The next part, Rock Valley, required the ball to then be pushed into a waterway to serve as a bridge that they would then balance over it to reach the other side. The first contestant, a Chinese student, fell off the ball in Rock Valley and later got diagnosed with cervical vertebrae injury. Because he didn't look too hurt as he left for medical care the staff just resumed the show. And then the next contestant, a Japanese student, was outright run over by the ball in Rock Attack and was paralyzed by the injuries.

Pinballs

• Invoked in Stern Pinball's Batman game, which features a teetering bridge that causes a small model Batmobile^note actually a Hot Wheels toy to race away from the pinball rolling right behind it.
• Indiana Jones:
  • In Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure, the opening animation for multiball shows Indy escaping from a rolling boulder.
  • Stern Pinball's Indiana Jones plays a similar clip when an extra ball is awarded.

Puppet Shows

• Parodied in the Sesame Street episode "The Golden Cabbage of Snufertiti": When the cave wall concealing the titular treasure is opened, the whole cave begins to shake and Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Bob, and his Adventurer Archaeologist brother Minneapolis (Jeff Goldblum) flee from what the shadows suggest is a giant boulder... but, upon their safely getting outside, turns out to be merely the treasure — which is the size of an actual head of cabbage. Big Bird turns to the camera and notes "Gee, I thought it would be bigger."

Roleplay

• In The Gamer's Alliance, the heroes of the Grand Alliance have to run from a giant boulder which does its best to smash them inside an ancient temple in the Ruined Kingdom. It turns out that the boulder and the descending ceiling traps are actually activated simultaneously and thus they end up cancelling each other.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons module B4 The Lost City. The PCs can encounter a Rolling Boulder Trap that acts exactly the same as the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It activates when the PCs open a door and pursues them down a corridor. The module advises the Dungeon Master to not allow the boulder to kill the PCs unless they act stupidly (e.g. by not trying to avoid it).
• The HeroQuest expansion The Fortress of Kellar contains a special rolling boulder token that's used in one level for exactly this trope — rolling down the length of one straight corridor (you can step aside through a door, though this brings its own problems), using the same dice as the heroes for movement, and inflicting heavy, even potentially lethal damage if it rolls over someone.

Video Games

• Aero the Acro-Bat 2 has this in all 3 acts of Boardin Zone. In acts one and three, it's a giant snowball (which you can jump over or otherwise end up behind), but in act two, it's a flying bull-like Mook dropping spike balls in the snow and trying to make you run into them (or have them fall on you - either way).
• Aladdin (Virgin Games) has several such boulders throughout the level "The Escape." Being a One-Hit Kill makes them extremely annoying, especially the one at the end.
• American McGee's Alice:
  • The first game contains a "flee from the rolling boulder" level. Actually, it's a rolling marble, and the circumstances that keep it following you are quite ridiculous. Completing the level without being squashed gets Alice the Ice Wand.
  • The sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, has a couple of similar levels (mercifully short), though the part of the boulder is played by the indestructible Executioner.
• Batman Returns (Genesis) also has this. The second Penguin boss fight starts off with him dropping a giant ball, which chases you down several flights of stairs. You have to keep ahead of it, and then finally jump a gap which the ball will then fall into before you can fight against Penguin.
• Battletoads for the NES (and its Sega Genesis and Game Boy ports) had the level "Clinger Winger," in which you are fleeing from a glowing, swirling "hypno-orb" thing while riding some kind of vehicle that resembles a unicycle. If it catches up to you, you get squished. The "Terra Tubes" level had several wheel-like things that have no problem rolling up a vertical shaft. The Game Boy Battletoads game that's not a port of the NES version has you running, on foot, from a boulder that actually looks like a boulder, although it can climb vertically too.
• Brave Fencer Musashi has this just before the first boss fight.
• Bug: The final part of the final scene in Insectia has Bug being chased by a giant, instant-kill boulder.
• Cannon Dancer has its hero Kirin forced to run down a steep incline while pursued by a rather nasty-looking truck, eventually going through a lot of colorful explosions as the vehicle falls into a pit.
• In Castle of Illusion, Mickey Mouse gets chased by a giant apple at some point in the first and fourth worlds.
• Castlevania:
  • In Dracula X: Rondo of Blood as well as its remake, Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, Stage 2 presents Richter with the unstoppable Behemoth, an enormous bull-like creature which will break through the outer wall and chase him relentlessly until he reaches a door to a different section. It's also present in the Super NES version, in Stage 1 instead.
  • Which gets revisited and done again by Jonathan Morris in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.
• Chip's Challenge: In some levels, Chip has to outrun one or more large pink balls through narrow corridors.
• Condemned 2: Bloodshot had this, only the boulder was replaced with a rabid grizzly bear. It didn't help that the only hint the game suggested for your objectives was "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!"
• Unlike most examples on this page, the two cavemen-like Ugga Bugas in Conker's Bad Fur Day fail to outrun the boulder pushed down by Conker. The first one is squished flat by the rock, the second one gets tossed right into a pool of lava.
• Every Crash Bandicoot game has at least one level like this, featuring boulders, giant polar bears and Triceratops. In the first one, if you glitch your way behind the boulder, It will (somehow) fly backward to fall on you.
• Dark Souls:
  • Dark Souls has this in Sen's Fortress. The area is a Booby Trap convention. One of the booby traps is a machine that launches giant boulders in various directions in various different directions throughout the fortress. The source of the boulder? A giant happily dropping the balls to a hole that feeds the entire mechanism. And in case you're feeling clever about pointing the boulder launcher out of the way so you can explore more freely, be advised that one room has a hidden tripwire that resets the launcher so that it points at you again. It isn't all that bad, however, since the mechanism also creates paths to otherwise inaccessible treasures. It is also one of the ways to gain access to Big Hat Logan's cell.
  • In Dark Souls III, there's a part with a long stretch of stairs over a Bottomless Pit. Once you start to descend it, a boulder comes rolling down from behind, which you have to dodge by moving aside. Then it's safe to descend further, right? Wrong! The boulder comes rolling back up (and then down again, and so forth). Turns out the "boulder" is a spherical pile of animated skeletons.
• The first Devil May Cry featured a fairly memorable scene: Dante walks out into the hallway and walks five feet from the door, at which point there's a short cut scene where he looks up... and the ceiling cracks open. Violently. Dante is then chased down a narrow hallway by the gigantic lava spider he just finished killing five minutes ago until he can find a door, at which point the spider forgets to care anymore. Made all the more fun by the face that you're running into the camera, leaving your hallway impossible to see. Makes it easier to see the spider shooting fireballs at you, though. (Which is about impossible to avoid.) Incidentally, players can run until the lava spider/scorpion gets stuck at a certain spot, then just turn around and kill him by hitting his fireballs back at him. Until then, however, this trope is played fairly straight.
• Parodied in the first Discworld; after obtaining an important item hidden in a deep cave, the camera immediately cuts to a giant boulder rolling down a long tunnel heading toward Rincewind. He proceeds to escape the cave, with the camera occasionally cutting back to the same shot to emphasize the chase... and when he finally gets out of the cave, a tiny marble-sized rock rolls to a stop along the floor. Guess it wasn't much of an escape. Obviously, someone had Bloody Stupid Johnson design the deathtrap.
• Donkey Kong:
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: The stage Rambi Rumble. The player had to flee from a giant wasp that chased them down a long tunnel. This can double as terrifying for some. The chase is started by falling down a hole, and with no forewarning, the giant wasp (about twice the size of your character) begins chasing you to an intense, heart-pounding soundtrack. The abruptness of the whole situation can catch even experienced players off-guard.
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns has Crumble Canyon, a level from the Cliff. Midway into the stage, you have to outrun an instant killing Tiki-Tak giant sphere until near the end. It's harder than it looks.
  • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze: The second level of Bright Savannah has many spiky fruits (implied to be durians) falling from baobabs. Near the end, the Kongs have to outrun a giant fruit that begins to roll onto them, and being touched by it spells insteant death.
• Dragon Quest IV: In Chapter 3, Torneko gets chased by a rolling boulder in his search for the Steel Strongbox/Iron Safe. Fortunately, he has to make the boulder fall into a pit, forming a bridge so he can move on. In the NES version, the boulder moves very slow, which can be easier for Torneko to run faster; the DS version, however, has the boulder move pretty fast, and almost at the same speed as Torneko. It won't run you over though, you just can't get past it.
• DuckTales features a rolling boulder in The Amazon Land, which forces you to run through a narrow passage and use your cane as a pogo stick to avoid jumping on spiked floors.
• Duke Nukem Forever does this a few times, such as when you are driving the Bigfoot up a narrow pass and boulders roll from above, or when you are scaling a staircase with explosive barrels rolling downstairs. Of course, this being Duke, you always have to dodge and push forward to survive.
• Dungeon Keeper allowed you to BUILD boulder deathtraps for use on unsuspecting heroes, as well as elaborate corridors to make the best use of them. The original game and Dungeon Keeper 2 allows you to set them off manually. They were a nightmarish platoon-killing trap in the first game but were seriously nerfed in 2.
• Dyna Gear have a stage in an ancient pyramid, which have collapsing boulders dropping from the ceilings as you tried jumping from one platform to another, as well as closing walls from behind, in an entire stage lifted from Indy's films.
• Earnest Evans:
  • Being quite the imitation of the original, the game this in its first level. Though, due to bad coding, it's possible to end up chasing the boulder that's meant for you.
  • Also, the credits show Earnest outrunning a boulder which runs over him in the end.
• Subverted in Final Fantasy II: a giant boulder is loosed upon the party by Borghen, of all people after his defeat. Three of them survive — the fourth, Josef, who stayed behind to hold the boulder back, does not.
• A favourite trope of the designers of the Guild Wars: Eye of the North expansion pack. The dungeons of GW:EN are crawling (or possibly rumbling) with any number of steamroller boulders, steamroller snowballs, steamroller fireballs...
• Two dungeons (the second's just a mirror image of the first though) in Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure have a weak wall you can drill through, then another weak wall at the end of a fairly long, narrow, upward sloping hallway. Drilling through it reveals a massive boulder, which proceeds to roll down the slope toward you; your only option is to run back down the slope and out of the hallway to avoid taking damage.
• Harry Potter games:
  • The PC version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has a nasty segment with a rolling boulder on the way to the bit with the basilisk and Lord Voldemort. Over a large area of small platforms that you have to be GOOD at jumping.
  • In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, you have to escape an angry troll at one point. The camera "conveniently" switches to show Harry's face from ahead, which effectively inverts the controls. That one is a little harder than the boulder mentioned above; what makes the level hard is the holes in the floor, which are there for no good reason.
• Hidden Dragon: Legend have these type of obstacles in the mountains, where you're in a cavernous tunnel sloping downwards and must outrun giant Buddha heads rolling after you.
• Indiana Jones licensed games:
  • Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures also features the boulder chase, but you must hug the right side of the screen, meaning that if you don't know ahead of time when to jump, you'll hit a trap, recoil, and get crushed by the boulder in an example of Trial-and-Error Gameplay.
  • Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb pulls this off with a Drill Tank.
  • Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine has a chase involving an enormous boulder at the end of the revisit to Peru. What makes this one different is that you have to dodge the boulder twice - once when it's released and it rolls towards you from the front (requiring a hasty retreat to the room you've just left, watching out for the steadily collapsing floor which eventually forces you to run forwards again), then a second time when it has rolled up a slope behind you and comes back the other way, thus commencing a more traditional Indy Escape. This escape is twisted when the only path brings you up against a solid wall, guaranteeing that the boulder will crush you... unless you use your whip on the horizontal pole at the top of the passage, letting you climb to a height where the boulder can pass right beneath you and smash through the wall.
• Jak II: Renegade:
  • Jak and Sig must run away from a massive Metal Head chasing them.
  • In the sequence of Mar's Tomb, its Daxter's turn to run away, from a giant spider rolled up into a ball. The first part of this plays the trope completely straight. (Feel free to play the "Raiders March" during this sequence!)
• One stage of Jumper Two has Ogmo running away from a mechanical ghost and his bouncing razor blade^*Or a boulder that blends into the background well enough to look like razor blade. that pulverizes everything on its path.
• Some levels in Kid Chameleon had you running from an oncoming wall of (instant-death) spikes.
• In a few parts of Kirby's Dreamland 3, you have to outrun several rocks going downhill, although it's one of the slowest examples of this trope.
• Fittingly, La-Mulana has one. The puzzle to get the axe involves freeing a boulder to roll down a slope so that you can get to the axe. You have to do this while standing next to it. If you fail to outrun the boulder and get out of its path, insta-kill! (Lemeza being a ninja, of course, he can also Take a Third Option and just cling to the wall to let the boulder pass, if he's found the Grapple Claws by then.)
• The Legend of Tian-ding has the underground mausoleum stage where you must outrun a boulder down a slope, jumping over pits along the way. Bafflingly, enemy mooks will sometimes try to impede you, ignoring the boulder — you can run past them and let the boulder squash them instead.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Link has to evade a boulder before he can access the boss room of the Earth Temple. Turns out, the boulder is the boss, summoned by Ghirahim so he can take his anger out on Link for Impa saving Zelda..
• LEGO Island 2 has one when you're doing a tomb searching mini-game in a desert. But then again, The Johnny Thunder series was created to be an Expy of Indiana Jones anyway.
• The Lion King has a particularly nasty one during Simba's escape, with a hedgehog in the way. Though it's possible (but frustratingly difficult) to brute-force one's way through, the trick is to remember that hedgehogs are vulnerable to Rolling Attacks.
• Max Payne has one of these where he's trapped inside a burning building and must escape before fire blocks his escape route.
• Subverted in the online MechQuest game. The Museum at the far west end of town includes three quests for dinosaur bones. The Desert quest seems to trap you in an Indy Escape from which escape is apparently impossible...
• Armored Armadillo's stage from Mega Man X had a few Mole Borers that would chase you down tunnels.
• Metal Slug 7 does this in the second stage, but with the added bonus where the boulder is burning hot and incinerates you (and any unfortunate mooks) on the spot.
• The temple of Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom has a sequence with a very persistent boulder of questionable physics. There is a point where the boulder can be dodged, which allows accessing a chest without having to revisit the area.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Monster Hunter Freedom 2: The opening features this with a hunter running away from a Tigrex through a snowy cave, since he's carrying a piece of ore that needs to be taken to Pokke Village and met the Tigrex by accident (he ultimately has no option but to drop the ore and run for his life, only being able to fight the monster outside the cave when other two hunters come to help him).
  • Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): The Uragaan Ecology video does this with a Felyne and two Uragaan. You can tell precisely what the poor kitty is thinking shortly into the video.
• The Xbox Ninja Gaiden had this. Of course, being Ninja Gaiden, the camera was in front of you, facing your character, and you had to dodge spikes shooting out of the ground and walls (they didn't kill you outright but often slowed you down enough for the boulder to catch up)
• Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition has a boulder chase sequence in the Black Root Burrows. The achievement for surviving this is appropriately called "Raider Run". Both versions also have a lava chase in Mount Horu. The sequel has many more Indy escapes, four of which are incorporated into boss battles.
• The cave level of Out of This World has you run from a wall of water that you unleash to flood the cave so you can progress later.
• In Penny's Big Breakaway, the final stage of the first world has Penny get chased by a giant boulder of penguins. The boulder zig-zags through the city, smashing through several walls to try to squash her.
• Penumbra: Overture has the classic giant boulder escape. Turn the wrong way at the end, and instead of safety, you'll find a nest of enemies . It also has two scenes where giant worms act as stand-ins for the boulder — just that they can go around corners.
• In Pepsiman, every stage ends with Pepsiman running towards the camera away from some unstoppable object, including giant Pepsi cans and the "Cave Pizza" truck (whose logo looks suspiciously like Coca-Cola's) that chases him in one of the commercials.
• Persona 5: The game's Pyramid dungeon has a set piece where the team has to run down a staircase as a giant boulder pursues them.
• The temple levels in Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame feature a new death trap: an ordinary-looking wall block which comes out on screws and tries to squash you against the opposite wall. You can avoid triggering all but one, which you'll have to escape by running toward it so you can drop down to a lower level (since it won't fall after you).
• Professor Layton and the Curious Village and its remote-controlled Ferris wheel of DOOM. Yes, it can turn corners.
  Luke: Professor! I think it's chasing after us!
• One of the Quake expansions has an example of this. If you die from it the Have a Nice Death message is: "Charname has been Jones'd."
• The Guardian of the Cave of Bad Dreams pursues Rayman in this manner in Rayman 2: The Great Escape.
• Resident Evil:
  • This was done in the first Resident Evil game.
  • Played 100% straight a couple of times in Resident Evil 4, with the twist of being interactive cutscenes: if you didn't mash a button to get Leon running, the rolling boulder would turn you into a Leon sandwich. A variation later occurs with a giant Living Statue that chases Leon and falls over forward, taking out the bridge behind him.
• There's a freely downloadable game called The Rolling Boulder, in which you play this trope from the boulders perspective. You have to run over all the Indiana Jones sprites to keep them from violating the sacred fertility statues...
• Savage Halloween ends the temple stage with you triggering a rolling boulder trap... with the boulder as tall as the screen itself. You'll need to rush like crazy ahead to the nearest exit, and any mooks behind you will get crushed by the boulder.
• The Secret World has its 'Last Train To Cairo' expansion, an Indiana Jones pastiche which, naturally, includes outrunning a giant boulder. Hope you've upgraded your sprint skill.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In the original game's Marble Zone, the player had to outrun some lava. In later games, Rise to the Challenge was more common.
  • The original Sonic Adventure has not one, not two, but three of these; first in Sonic's version of Emerald Coast, where you have to run from an Orca smashing through the water bridge you're on; second is in Ice Cap, where Sonic and Tails have to stay ahead of an avalanche; finally, in Sonic's version of Lost World, you get a Sonic remake of the infamous boulder run.
  • The introduction level to Sonic Adventure 2 featured a sequence where Sonic had to flee from a crazed Big Rig in this manner. It's later revisited in one of the last levels, where Sonic has to Outrun the Fireball of the Eclipse Cannon's explosion.
  • Sonic Heroes:
    • The game has one too in Ocean Palace, with first one, then two, and then finally three rolling demonic-looking boulders that chase you at the same time. You can just run towards the camera in Speed formation as fast as you can for several seconds and outrun it, though. But if you're not in Speed formation when you hit the spring that takes you there, and you don't hit the switch formation button before you even land...
    • Lost Jungle has a giant alligator that chases you to the end (you have to jump from swinging vines instead of run). And right before that, there's some of the black frogs that summon rain that kills plants. Said rain is killing the lily pads you're on. Thankfully, if you choose to play as Team Rose, the level ends long before this.
  • Sonic and the Secret Rings has a variant involving escaping from a rampaging Triceratops herd.
  • Sonic Rush has some levels (specifically Leaf Storm and Night Carnival) where you run down a steep slope while a big rolling ball with Eggman's insignia on it chases you down those steep slopes.
  • Yet another one is done in Sonic Colors DS this time with a Ferris wheel chasing you at the very start of Tropical Resort Act 2, though it only last a few seconds and there's a floor you can use your pounding move on to skip it if you're fast enough to break the floor and the Ferris wheel will pass over you.
  • Sonic Generations has a few in both Classic and Modern Sonic's stages. One standout example is City Escape featuring said truck from Sonic Adventure 2 only this time it has SAWBLADES, and can drive through buildings like they were made of foam. But don't worry, as long as you're wall-running, you should be sa- HOLY CRAP IT'S DRIVING UP THE SIDE OF THE BUILDING!!
• Not necessarily a sequence, but there's a cutscene in Space Quest VI: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier in which a shrunken Roger Wilco outruns a kidney stone rolling out of Stellar Santiago's liver.
• Spider-Man:
  • Spider-Man (2000): The final stage has the webslinger attempt to escape Doctor Octopus' underwater base while being chased by Monster-Ock, the hideous fusion of Doc Ock and Carnage.
  • Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge:
    • It tosses Gambit into a side-scrolling stage where he's pursued by a spiked metal ball which fills the entire height of the screen.
    • Another stage has Wolverine chased by the Juggernaut and he has to drop anvils on his head to defeat him or it's an instakill.
• Parodied in SPY Fox: Operation Ozone with a giant piece of chicle. He gets stuck to it on the way out.
• Affectionately spoofed and lampshaded in StarTropics with the Megatons, giant boulders that are in fact giant bowling balls. One of the end credit montages shows Mike running from a Megaton Indy-style.
• Star Wars: One level of Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy had you fleeing from a giant cyborg rancor in a series of enclosed warehouses.
• Strider:
  • In the Amazon stage in Strider 1, there's a part where Hiryu must run down an incline while pursued by a boulder. Going all the way down is not leads to a piranha-infested river, so Hiryu has to jump mid-way into a nearby branch. Also, the boulder can be easily jumped over, but a new one will roll down from above almost instantly.
  • In Strider 2, there's one part in the fortress stage where Hiryu must run away from a heavily-armored bulldozer through a drawing bridge, ending in a pit Hiryu can easily jump across. The bulldozer, on the other hand...
• Super Cyborg have a variety that borders on Squick. As you escape the bio-lab by jumping down some slated platforms, you're pursued by a rolling boulder made of naked corpses fused together.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Galaxy 2: Part of the "Slipsand Galaxy" level involves Mario/Luigi attempting to escape from several Rhomps that are launched out of a pyramid just right before fighting the level's boss, Squizzard.
  • Super Mario 3D Land has a section in W8-1 where you're outrunning spiked metal balls, as well as the last part of the final Bowser fight.
  • Paper Mario has two parts in Chapter 5 where you need to spindash to outrun Spiny Tromps in Mt. Lavalava. Of course, the easier solution would be to use Bow's field ability to allow the boulders to pass harmlessly through Mario, but it (and the fact that the few true field hazards in the game only take one hit point from your health; far from lethal, especially by the time you reach Chapter 5) kinda takes the fun out of it.
  • Mario Party 6: A minigame called Granite Getaway uses the run toward the camera variation, as the characters are chased by a boulder. The finish line consists of a wooden floor over a Bottomless Pit — the characters run over it, and the boulder crashes through it.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: In Subspace Emissary, during Lucas's introductory stage, he must run from the invincible Pig King statue while avoiding or defeating enemies as the statue continuously advances on the left side of the screen. At one point, the statue falls in the water and sinks, and you think you're safe, but then it (or another one) falls from the sky and you must keep going. If you're not expecting it, the statue can easily kill you when it lands.
• Appeared in Sweet Home (1989) as an Instant Death Trap — if the boulder touches any of your team, they're Killed Off for Real. To even reach the platform where the item that triggers the boulder drop is being held, the player has to lay down several boards... boards which break if crossed over too many times.
• In Temple Run, you spend the whole time futilely running away from a large group of demon monkeys.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure has several boulders chasing Buster throughout the cave levels. While they are very fast, Buster can easily bypass them by jumping over them.
• In the Tomb Raider series, rolling boulders were a standard trap in level design, but only in a few places was this actually an Indy Escape:
  • Tomb Raider: Legend. Lara is chased by a giant boulder while dodging obstacles. At the end, the boulder opens a shortcut back up to the current level.
  • Tomb Raider: Anniversary. In the "Atlas" room, you have to activate two switches to retrieve the key, which also causes the giant statue of Atlas to release the giant metal globe he was previously holding up. There are no nooks to hide in, and the pit at the far side is too wide to jump across without help.
  • In Lara Croft GO, one of the hazards in the game are rolling boulders. Since it's turn-based, the boulders only roll after Lara moves to the next tile, but you still need to make sure you don't waste any turns escaping them.
• Some versions of Treasure Island Dizzy feature an extended cave area where you grab an item from a pedestal and have to run from a giant boulder. The Shout-Out is made funnier when you realize that Dizzy wears a hat which rather looks like Indy's fedora in the cover art of several other games.
• The Jungle Temple stage in Ultimate Chicken Horse features a special coin on an altar to the right, which, if one of the players can grab and successfully take it to the end, offers a point bonus. However, the moment the coin is taken, a boulder will crash from beyond the altar and roll to the left, which is where the exit is located. The coin itself respawns every round whether taken or not.
• Uncharted:
  • Befitting its status as the Indiana Jones' Spiritual Adaptation, there is a rather nice one in the first game, with Nathan Drake running down a hallway chased by monsters, and firing over his shoulder as he runs.
  • The sequel pares it down to its basic premise — "Run Forward Fast Or Die" — and reinvents it not once but five times. The game begins In Medias Res with Drake trapped on a train dangling over a cliff — get to solid ground or go down with it — and everything on it breaks in just the right way to annoy, yet not quite kill Drake. The next example is a jeep chasing Drake down a tight alley. Then the jeep is traded for a Big Damn Gunship — during a Traintop Battle. Run along the cars as fast as you can or get blown to salsa. Then the gunship is traded for a main battle tank — that smashes through walls in its attempts to squish Drake to a fine paste, and will not stop until Drake blows it to hell with conveniently located RPG launchers. Then there's a collapsing bridge with a similar sadism to the train. The climax of the game is a bridge collapsing in an explosion of blue flame.
  • You'd think they couldn't get bigger in Uncharted 3, right? Flesh-eating bugs, collapsing chateau roofs, wall of water — yeah, they got bigger.
  • For Uncharted 4: A Thief's End you get chased by a truck that is like the one from the second game but with the personality of an Ax-Crazy raving fangirl willing to drive through buildings to get him.
• "The Ball" mod for Unreal Tournament III has a massive boulder as the primary weapon and tool. Until you get control of it, it could just as likely roll at you. But more often than not, Indy Escapes are attempted and failed by those you aim it at.
• Warhammer Online has a potentially catastrophic version of this in one of the Land Of The Dead tombs. The party has to sprint down a winding series of corridors, whilst constantly being chased by a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs. The really nasty element is that players are randomly snared and cannot move unless a teammate uses a special granted ability on them to free them. Whilst the swarm is closing in on them. However, as long as there is a healer who makes it through, they can wait for the swarm to recede and then resurrect their party. If all the healers die, however, there's nothing more to do other than start over.
• Wario Land:
  • One rather interesting version is one level where Wario is being chased by a Pouncer, a Thwomp-like creature through corridors just big enough to fit it. Of course, running into it kills Wario, making it like this, but there are also parts where you have to jump on the Pouncer's head and ride it around the level, before getting off and being chased again. A later level does include a scrolling wall of lava that is more typical.
  • Wario Land: Shake It! also has giant boulder chases in Mt Lava Lava and Sneak Peak. The boulders don't actually hurt Wario, he just gets stuck to them and misses out on a ton of secrets along the way, so to get 100% completion you have to outrun them either long enough to get the treasure or somehow jump over the boulder. There are also sections with all these small boulders rolling down a path at certain intervals, which again must be avoided/jumped over.
• WarioWare:
  • WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$: The Final Boss microgame spoofs this trope, along with many other action game staples. Near the end, Wario has to outrun a large boulder after having claimed a cave's treasure.
  • WarioWare: Smooth Moves: A framing device for the introductory level to the game has Wario outrunning a giant boulder after stealing a "Form Baton" (a Wii Remote set in stone) from a temple somewhere in Diamond City. Run out of lives, and the boulder crushes him.
• A trap in the Egyptian level of Waxworks is a giant boulder that the player must dodge or be crushed.
• Choosing Jack Van Burace in Wild ARMs gives you not one, but TWO of these directly after each other. Thankfully it was just in the cutscene.
  Jack: [afterwards] Damn, that was cool!

Web Animation

• FANFICTASIA, "The Phantom-like Menace": Played with in the Temple of Doom: a boulder starts rolling Raiders of the Lost Ark-style, but Lara Croft stops Indiana Jones from running, just letting it pass overhead them on its ramp. She then wonders why he didn't do that in his movie, but Indy testily answers that's because the boulder is rolling toward the exit, and that it'll be blocking it and imprisoning them inside if they don't run after it.

Webcomics

• The webcomic Adventurers! has a strip with one of these. Subverted in that the heroes actually get hit by the boulder, but it only takes away a mere two Hit Points damage.
• A typical Raider of the Lost Ark setting is lampshaded in one strip of Dawn of Time.
  Mantell: I guess the oldest tricks are still fresh right now.
• Girl Genius:
  • As can be expected, this can be found amongst the many, many traps of Castle Heterodyne. The heroes react a bit unusually to the huge boulder covered in spikes, however. Gil runs toward it before jumping atop the boulder (with Zola in his arms, to boot), and Agatha flies above it with one of her little clanks. Professor Tiktoffen ("I wondered where that went on Tuesdays.") and a sign on the wall both imply that The Happy Fun Ball of Death is always in motion and has a pre-programmed course through the castle.
    Agatha: Why do I even have one of those?
  • Tarvek gets to do the "pursued by giant monster" variation... while carrying an injured woman, an injured Jäger, a dozen baby wasp weasels, and some precious notes.
    Tarvek: What are you people doing? RUN!
• The Handbook of Heroes: Parodied in "Roll Hard", where the rolling boulder is... a giant 20-sided die. And it threatens not so much Thief and Cleric than their figurines. Used to illustrate the trouble with D&D players rolling their dice too hard and causing havoc on the gaming table.
• Subverted and Lampshaded (as quoted above) in an Irregular Webcomic! mini-arc in the Vatican.

Web Original

• In Tails' Nightmare 2's fourth area, you are chased by a boulder made out of flesh.

Web Videos

• Critical Role: The mini-dungeon under the Velvet Cabaret in episode 21 features the classic sloped tunnel and rolling boulder.
• Needless to say, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series has fun with the Yu-Gi-Oh! example above:
  Tristan: My voice gives me super strength! [boulder explodes] Holy <bleep> it really does!

Western Animation

• Alfred J. Kwak: Alfred and Professor Paljas have to deal with a giant boulder threatening to crush them while exploring a pyramid.
• The scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark is parodied in American Dragon: Jake Long: as Jake, Trixie and Spud enter a cave, Spud activates a trap and a rock rolls toward them... Only to pass between Jake's legs. Then the rock activates the REAL trap, and that part of the cave starts collapsing and burning.
• Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse has Barbie and her friends try to outrun a bald Barbie styling head.
• Happens to the villain of the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Prophecy of Doom", during the confrontation at Gotham Observatory. Unable to save the girl and still stop the bad guy from fleeing down the planetarium's main aisle to the exit, Batman drops a huge hollow globe of the Earth from a giant orrery, which rolls down the aisle and collides with the villain. It shatters, but it knocks him down long enough to be caught.
• Camp Lakebottom: McGee and Buttsquat are chased by a giant boulder while raiding an ancient temple at the start of "Being McGee".
• The Raiders of the Lost Ark scene was parodied in the Class of 3000 episode "Eddie's Money", with Sunny Bridges as Indy. The boulder is just one of the hazards involved in accessing what turns out to be the world's most inconveniently located gift store. (Turns out they do most of their business on-line.)
• The Megatanks in Code Lyoko sometimes act as such rolling boulders of doom. Ulrich gets pancaked (and thus devirtualized) once.
• One episode of Codename: Kids Next Door ("operation F.L.A.V.O.R.") has Numbuh Five being chased down a hallway by a giant rolling ball of ice cream.
• An episode of Dexter's Laboratory has a scene spoofing the temple escape from Raiders. Dexter exchanges the atomic power he was looking after with a doll, and it still doesn't stop a giant yarn ball from coming after him. It's only stopped by the doorway of Dexter's room.
• DuckTales: Scrooge escapes a giant rolling potato in "Luck o' the Ducks". Fitting, as Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge story, "The Seven Cities of Cibola" (see comic books, above).
• The Fairly OddParents!: When Timmy wishes his life was an action movie, he wakes up to several action movie tropes, ending with one of these.
• Happens all the time on Inhumanoids, in which a majority of the action sequences are underground and involves Kaijus with lousy aim.
• Towards the end of the Little Golden Book Land special, Tootle and his friends get chased by the enormous rock they intended to use to plug up the hole in the breakwater to save Harbortown from being flooded by an incoming storm. The rock eventually lands in Scuffy's bathtub car.
• Baby Kermit (as "Indiana Frog") is seen doing this in the opening credits of Muppet Babies. It also frequently crops up whenever Kermit imagines himself as Indiana Frog in an episode.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "Baby, It's Cold Outside, Part 2", while navigating the corridors of King Charlatan's Ice Palace, the heroes get chased by a giant snowball. They escape it by jumping over a spiked pit that opens in their path, causing the snowball to fall in.
• In Robot Chicken, there is a segment showing construction workers of the original temple trap from Raiders of the Lost Ark, as they do a run down on the design to the owner, who seems completely flabbergasted at how ridiculous it all is, as they enthusiastically explain it will look awesome.
• The Raiders of the Lost Ark scene is then parodied by The Simpsons, casting Homer as the boulder and Bart (complete with trademark head-wear) escaping down the stairs with a jar full of change.
• Thomas & Friends:
  • The second half of the episode, "Rusty and the Boulder" involved a boulder being dislodged from a mountain and chasing Rusty, Skarloey, and Rheneas. At times, it seemed like the boulder had a mind of its own as it often wound up ahead of or behind the engine it was chasing, even if, logically, it shouldn't have been able to get there. The boulder finally stopped rolling when it crashed into a shed, barely missing Percy.
  • In the episode, "Emily Saves the World", after the giant globe Emily tries to deliver to the Sodor Animal Park falls off her flatbed and starts rolling around Sodor, it chases Thomas, Annie, and Clarabel. They manage to escape it by switching lines.
• The title sequence for the fourth, fifth and sixth The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald videos features a clip of Ronald McDonald running from a giant bowling ball.
• Wakfu:
  • The classic boulder appears shortly in the episode "The Dragon-Pig", along with most typical Temple of Doom traps. Note that here the tunnel is perfectly circular, hence there's no corners where to hide from the boulder, even if you're a small piglet.
  • The special The Legend of Ogrest also has such a trap; for some reason, Ogrest ends up running atop the boulder while the Ecaflip pirates are running from it.

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