Oil Slick

Talk about a slip-up.

One of the standard tools to try to lose someone when driving.

When in a vehicle, simply push a button and the car somehow spills out oil behind, designed to make the person behind slip out of control. Sometimes, the slick may then be ignited to further cover their trail, or to burn things around.

Subtrope of Weaponized Car. See also Slippery Skid. Not to be confused with a certain Decepticon.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• In Gotham City Garage, Dick Grayson's bike is equipped with this. Dick even calls it...
  Nightwing: Deploying Oil Slick!
• Robin (1993): Tim Drake's Redbird has an oil-slick dispenser.

Fan Works

• In the Facing the Future Series, Burner, being a mechanic ghost, is able to generate ecto oil, which not gives him a slick getaway, but he's also able to set it on fire.

Films — Animated

• At the very beginning of Cars 2, Finn McMissile does this to the Lemons while escaping from their oil rig, causing one of them to fall off the railing and into the ocean below.

Films — Live-Action

• The Trope Codifier is James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger, which includes an oil slick among its defensive mechanisms. When he has to use it, it performs exactly as intended, sending two pursuing cars skidding off the road. Unfortunately, there was a third car back there.
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure: One of many features of Pee-Wee's bike — "James Bond kinda stuff!"
• The live-action Speed Racer film uses it once or twice.
• Inspector Gadget (1999):
  • The movie has the Gadget Oil Slick, which spread toothpaste on the floor. More traditionally, Sanford Scolex's limo has an oil slick sprayer, which he used against John Brown's Chevette.
  • The second one gave Gadget a bubble gum launcher that deploys from his hat and sprays bright pink, extremely sticky bubble gum. There is also an actual oil-slick gadget that pops out of his right hand and is only used for the sake of a Visual Pun: the bartender tells an undercover Gadget that he had to "grease a few palms" to find out where Dr. Claw was. Well, Gadget greased the guy's palm, all right—with top-grade axle grease! Cue Bar Brawl.
• The Goonies. Data's "Slick Shoes" invention is essentially the vehicular version in a shoe-sized package. He successfully applies it to a log that crosses a river while being chased by the villains.
• The Cannonball Run. Seymour's car (which was actually the Aston-Martin DB V from the James Bond movies) uses an oil slick to ditch a pursuing police car.
• Hopscotch features a pickup truck carrying a barrel of oil in its bed and a release mechanism in its cab, for this very purpose (the protagonist pretends it's for surfacing the driveway of a house he's building).
• A deleted scene in Johnny English Reborn had our hero noticing a button marked OIL and assuming it's an oil gauge — he presses it and sends a carload of mooks who are about to blow him up with a grenade launcher off the road.
• Terminator Salvation. Kyle Reese throws an oil drum off the back of their vehicle and shoots it with his shotgun, sending one of the pursuing Moto-Terminators hurling out of control — it had already shown an ability to use its Artificial Intelligence for collision avoidance, but the splash of liquid was too quick to react to.

Gamebooks

• In Freeway Fighter, your Cool Car, the Dodge Interceptor, comes armed with two canisters of crude oil, which can be used during chase scenes to make pursuing enemy vehicles skid out of control and crash.

Live-Action TV

• Tested on MythBusters where the guys found that an oil slick made it very difficult but not impossible for the pursuer to maintain control of his car. Still, if used in a real-world situation with the element of surprise it would be more likely to work. It worked better in the 1960s, when most James Bond films were made, since most cars of the time, up to the magnificent Aston Martins or Ferrari Daytonas, had narrow tyres of poor quality and construction. And of course, no traction control or anti-lock braking.
• In an episode of CHiPs, the officers fought 'the Stunt Car Bandits', who drove a movie stunt car equipped with gadgets like a smokescreen and an oil slick dispenser.
• An oil slick is one of the gadgets installed Cool Car the Stingray in Black Scorpion.

Radio

• The Green Hornet's car the Black Beauty includes an oil slick amongst its gadgets.

Tabletop Games

• One of the standard vehicular devices in Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars.
• d20 Modern has an oil slick hazard. If you can't avoid it, you must make a Drive check or lose control of your vehicle.

Video Games

• 007 Racing has James Bond's Aston Martin being given this exact feature, as seen in the movies, replicated directly into the game. They're useful in chase-related missions for slowing down pursuing enemies, and in the first mission's ending cutscene Bond uses it to crash two enemy jeeps pursuing him.
• Oil Slicks are the first-level Green item in Diddy Kong Racing. They'll send someone spinning, slowing them down, and, in the DS Video Game Remake, they also screw up their car's steering for a few seconds afterward.
• All over the place in Super Mario Kart as well, and obviously in the graphic upgraded versions on Wii and DS. The players, however, don't actually use it as an item, preferring the more cartoony Banana Peel for a similar effect.
• This is one of the standard "weapons" in the Spy Hunter video game series. When in converted boat mode, the oil slick even ignites.
• The "Trick Arrow" powerset in City of Heroes includes an Oil Slick Arrow. The oil slick it creates can catch on fire.
• Can be used in GTA2 by the player to cause any vehicle make a sharp left or right turn, often crashing into a wall.
• Your starting "dropper" weapon in Interstate '76.
• One of the bonuses in Re-Volt.
• Also featured in Auto Destruct. As a weapon, of course. Reduces top speed, acceleration and steering response for some time.
• One of the rear-mountable weapons in Streets Of Simcity.
• James Bond
  • One of the gadgets in Agent Under Fire.
  • The later Everything or Nothing had an acid slick as part of the V12 Vanquish's equipment. Its upgrade makes it catch fire, too.
• In episode 4 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, one of the gadgets in Dangeresque's Cool Car is an oil slick.
• Wacky Wheels has an oil slick pickup which when dropped makes anyone who hits it give a good spin on the spot, requiring them to waste time reorienting themselves to point the right way on the track.
• Jak X:Combat Racing has these as rear weapon. It doesn't do any damage besides messing with control of vehicle ... unless it's upgraded, when it catches fire.
• In the Bonkers Licensed Game for the Sega Genesis, in Ma Tow Truck's stage, Bonkers can use oil slicks to run the enemy cars off the road.

Web Comics

• Truck Bearing Kibble (source of the page image) parodies and deconstructs the trope when applying it to water. The third panel shows wildlife being affected.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers: In "Food Truckin'", when the Belchers are forced to flee the festival, Bob gets Gene to empty the grease tank on the food truck in order to ward off the rowdy hipsters chasing them.
• Wacky Races:
  • In "Real Gone Ape," Dick Dastardly used the trick and it backfired on him as the gorilla he had previously hypnotized tripped on the oil and fell on the Mean Machine, crashing it.
  • Dastardly tried it again in a Fender Bender 500 race. It backfired on him because the oil was his car's fuel. He berated Muttley for making him press the wrong button.
• Welcome to Tonka Town: One of Turbo’s cheating schemes during “Race Day In Tonka Town” involves creating one to trip up Hook and Ladder.
• In Transformers: Animated, one of Optimus' less-used tricks lets him spray "negative friction lubricant". Given the way "lubricant" was used in the live-action movies... Ewwww.
• Darkwing Duck uses one to shake his pursuers in 'Darkly Dawns the Duck'. One touch: he uses it shortly before making a right turn.
• Taz-Mania: One is installed in the family mini-van in "Yet Another Road To Taz-Mania", and is accidentally deployed to dispose of the trailing spies car.
• The Batmobile in Batman: The Animated Series was equipped with oil slick sprayers.
• Frequently used in the animated Inspector Gadget.
• The Garbageman uses this on the turtles in an episode of 2003 TMNT

Real Life

• Apparently this really is an option for VIP transports (the same sorts of vehicles that have armor added post-manufacturing). It takes a LOT of oil to do it properly.
• One option discussed to counter a German invasion in 1940 - wait for the German invasion fleet to get to sight of the British coast, then drop a large and deliberate oilslick into the Channel - and set light to it. Reluctantly dropped because of all the obvious difficulties.
• In reality, an oil spill on the road is likely to do the opposite of what it depicts in fiction: Instead of spinning you out, it significantly lowers the friction between the car and the ground, causing you to slide straight forward like you're on ice. In motorsport, many a pile-up has occurred because a damaged car spilled oil on the track, catching a huddle of drivers off-guard as they proceed to drive straight into a wall.

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