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Over-the-Top Roller Coaster

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"Corkscrewin' round the interstate, with peanut butter and rubber snakes..."

Roller coasters are very popular rides, mainly because they give you the thrill of high speed and danger, while actually being relatively safe (depending on where you go). And to capture this thrill, designers try to make them as tall and/or crazy as they can.

Now imagine what you can do without having to follow any laws, not even physics.

In fiction, roller coasters tend to be a lot more extreme and dangerous, often times they go so high that the riders take forever to get to the top, and once there, they're high above the clouds! (Or all the way in low Earth orbit!) The turns tend to be really continuous loops, sharp turns, and impossible corners that would derail any real life cars.

This is purely a Rule of Funny (or Rule of Cool) trope, since this sort of thing could never happen in Real Life (or can it?).

Compare Absurd Altitude.


Examples:

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    Comic Strips 

    Fanfic 
  • In My Ridonculous Race, while in Japan, the Ice Dancers ride the famous Fujiyama coaster at Fujikyu Highland Theme Park. The ride to the top is described as going so high that they pass demoiselle cranes, bar-headed geese, and two people in a hot air balloon.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • "Devil's Flight" from Final Destination 3 is insane. A 400-foot high coaster with loops, corkscrews, hills and dives that would make anybody sick. It's also poorly maintained and ends up derailing, setting up the events of the film.

    Literature 
  • One of the Phule's Company books takes place on a world whose hat is really liking roller coasters, with an unfriendly competition between theme parks to build the one with the highest drop. Corrupt Politicians pass a law that no coaster can go higher than x off the ground (allegedly for safety reasons but really to preserve one park's claim on being the highest). Phule & co. build one bigger anyway - Ain't No Rule that the bottom of the roller coaster's drop has to be above ground, so they build one where the drop ends in an underground tunnel.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Series 15 of the UK version of The Apprentice the teams are given the task of designing and marketing a roller coaster. Unison design an over-the-top roller coaster that breaks the world record for the fastest launch speed and the most loops, and use this as a selling point. However, when they present their idea to roller coaster experts they think that it wouldn't be enjoyable to ride, with one person commenting that the simulation they put together made them feel sick. In contrast, Empower design a more plausible roller coaster with an unusual gimmick in that it goes backwards, which is much more well-received by the experts.

    Video Games 
  • At the Carnival: The aptly named "Colossal Coronary" is the biggest coaster at Hazard Park, big enough to pass clouds and an airplane. It's so big, in fact, they ran out of money to finish building it, which doesn't stop them from letting passengers on!
  • The Disney's Ultimate Ride series of games is a PC roller coaster simulator that lets you build your own coasters. Technically, it's supposed to teach you how real life roller coasters work and how to follow the same constraints that actual designers use, but nothing is stopping you from making a death trap with fifteen loops in a row and enough G-force to kill a person as well.
  • In the game Epic Coaster, the roller coaster must jump over large gaps in the track. Fail to do so, and the roller coaster will plunge to the ground.
  • Mad Panic Coaster for the original Playstation is made of this trope. You spend the entire game in a roller coaster, navigating it left and right as it speeds along, and trying not to fall over the side (thanks to an extreme case of No OSHA Compliance where the coaster literally doesn't have security railings), occasionally jumping to avoid obstacles and collecting coins. The twists and curves becomes increasingly hectic as the level progresses expectedly.
  • Can be done to an extent in RollerCoaster Tycoon. There are limits such as the track consisting of certain, realistic pieces, and the grid-based building system, but anything goes as long as the Roller Coaster reaches back to the station safely. Of course, if you do decide to make a ride over the top, it may suffer from high intensity and nausea ratings, which can lower its excitement rating, so nobody would want to ride it.
  • In Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland, Babs Bunny's stage takes place on one. This stage costs four tickets, and requires a great amount of memorization of when to jump, duck, and flip the car around to avoid having Babs get hit.

    Web Animation 
  • Lumpy builds one of these during the Happy Tree Friends episode Wrong Side Of The Tracks, but less on purpose and more because he doesn't understand instructions. Due to the fact that he's not the brightest, nearly every character in that episode ends up dying, even himself.

    Western Animation 
  • Danger Mouse: In "The Duel", Baron Greenback tricks DM and Penfold onto an insane roller coaster that launches their car into outer space at its apex.
  • In The Fairly OddParents!, most of the games in Adrenaland are like this, but the main attraction is 'The Heart Stopper', a roller coaster that extends to outer space and literally has ambulances waiting for the passengers at the end.
  • Subverted in Johnny Test. Johnny wants to get into a roller coaster, and waits literally 12 hours to ride it. When his turn finally arrives, the roller coaster is so tall that it goes into the atmosphere, but when he falls the ride abruptly stops at the bottom of the peak and nothing else happens.
    Johnny: 'That's it?'
  • Phineas and Ferb: The titular characters build one of these in their backyard and into the city in the very first episode with a lot of impossible turns. And then it goes even further since, due to outside forces, the ride gets moved from its original position and they end derailing and bouncing around, ending in France, and even outer space.
  • The Rick and Morty episode "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy" centers on a roller coaster that exists in a theme park protected by an immortality field, meaning no one in the park can die as long as the field is operational. Aside from the fact this means the coaster can be incredibly outlandishly dangerous, it has an added threat: the apex of the highest peak actually barely extends past the immortality field, a fact utilized for an assassination attempt.
  • In the first episode of Rocko's Modern Life, Rocko and Heffer ride a roller coaster at the carnival that goes through the clouds all the way into space (is there a trend here?), and when they come back down, the coaster is still under construction.
  • The Roger Rabbit Short "Roller Coaster Rabbit" has Roger and Baby Herman riding a roller coaster whose first drop is so high the entire globe is visible below. It then has a lot of insane turns and loops, and seems to last twice as long as the average roller coaster ride.
  • In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Roller Cowards", SpongeBob and Patrick ride on the Fiery Fist O'Pain at Glove World, which goes just above the surface (next to the island) and when it gets to the ground, it explodes. It also has a list of side effects: Crying, screaming, projectile vomiting, amnesia, spine loss, embarrassing accidents, uncontrollable gas and explosive diarrhea.

    Real Life 
  • Only hypothetical, but Lithuanian artist Julijonas Urbonas designed the Euthanasia Coaster, a coaster with a 500 meter drop followed by 7 loops that would kill its passengers by limiting the oxygen supply to the brain.

 
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Super Silly Fun Land

Gru and the girls go to a theme park with your average roller coaster.

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