Now that's what I call springing into action!note
"When a mallet hits my head, my long, toned legs turn into a spring! Not great, but it lets me jump amazingly high!"
— Wario, Wario Land 4 manual
Want to have incredible jumping powers without having any superpowers in the first place? Why, look no further than wearing the good old spring coil.
In fiction, the spring coil is a guaranteed way to reach high places, among other things such as a powerful attack or pushing back enemies. A Rubber Man may be able to reshape himself into a spring coil. Sometimes part of Tricked-Out Shoes.
Often accompanied by a notable Stock Sound Effects from string instruments.
See also Springs, Springs Everywhere for when springs are part of the background, Spring Jump, and Hopping Machine.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Played with in One Piece, Bellamy's Devil Fruit Power is being able to turn his body into springs, which he uses to jump around and increase the power of his attacks.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Lagann used springs from its legs in the first episode to move around quickly. They seem to be drills stretching.
- Played for Horror (predominantly, anyway) in a chapter of Uzumaki, using the spring as another form of the omnipresent spiral shape as a source of scares. After Jack gets killed in a horrific car accident, Kirie and Shuichi dig up his grave to stake his corpse, only for it to suddenly come alive and bouncing after them as his entire lower half disintegrates, using a spring stuck in his spine to chase after them. However, once he completely falls apart, the two realize the spring was part of the car suspension that wasn't removed from his body — it's left unclear if his corpse was merely propelled by escaping gas or if it was the result of something supernatural turning him into a literal Jack-in-the-box.
Comic Books
- The Smurfs: The Flying Smurf tears another Smurf's couch to tie the springs under his shoes in one of his several (failed) attempts to fly.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Spring boots are one of the trademark gadgets of Donald Duck's Italian superhero identity Paperinik.
- Spider-Man: While he rarely does it, The Scorpion can coil his mechanical tail to use as an improvised spring.
Fan Works
- All For Luz: The Quirk "Springlike Limbs" allows Darwin to coil his bones and muscles like springs, giving them heightened resistance to drawback, knock-back, or kickback to any of their attacks. He can also launch his limbs outward around 5 feet from his body, and recall them back. His power can also be used to jump high altitudes. Luz steals this Quirk before killing him.
Film
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit: after Judge Doom is revealed as a Toon, he uses Toon springs on his feet to jump after Eddie Valiant.
Folklore
- The mysterious figure Spring Heeled Jack
was given that name due to his incredible jumping ability. Fortean Times has revisited these stories frequently.
Literature
- In The Anubis Gates, Doctor Romany wears spring-soled shoes, which let him move rapidly and also keep him from coming into contact with the ground — as a sorcerer he's basically become allergic to the ground, so minimizing the time he spends in contact with it is a good idea..
Live Action TV
- In The Three Stooges short "Hoi Polloi" (1935), Curly gets a spring stuck on his rear end while he's dancing. Every time one of the other dancers would bump into him and knock him down, he'd spring back to his feet again.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 ran the institutional short "A Case of Spring Fever" featuring Coily the Spring Sprite who...pretty much does nothing but admonish some poor shlub about the importance of springs.
Newspaper Comics
- In a couple of issues of Heathcliff, an experimental cat treat allows Heathcliff to become the incredibly bouncy and flexible Elasticat! A springy coil is, of course, one of the things he shapes himself into.
Puppet Shows
- The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss: In the first Seuss story in "Walkin' With the Cat", The Cat in the Hat observes the various creatures in the Wubbulous World and how they move around. The first creature he observes is the Spring-a-Ling Snake, a snake that uses its coils to bounce to high places.
Theme Parks
- One of the Things in The Cat in the Hat ride at Universal's Islands of Adventure uses a coil from inside a sofa to bounce around.
Video Games
- Wario Land: Wario can turn into a spring that allows him to reach high areas.
- Banjo-Tooie has spring boots used for jumping.
- Portal: The protagonist, Chell, has a different type of spring (linear-flex) attached below her knees (via a brace). Rather than assist with jumping, these are meant to explain why the player never takes Falling Damage.
- Jevil of Deltarune has a spring instead of a neck attaching his head to his body, which is only revealed when he takes damage.
- In Portal 2, these springs have been incorporated into her boots, highlighted by this advertisement.
- Splatter Master have imps with spring coils in place for feet in later levels, who bounces all over the area.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario Galaxy has the Spring Mushroom, which encases Mario's whole body in a spring. Notably, while it's active, Mario's only way of moving is bouncing around.
- Mario Party 8: Upon being eaten, the Springo Candy turns a character's lower body into a spring that allows them to bounce in one huge leap onto another character's location.
- In the first Commander Keen game, Marooned on Mars, you can only jump normally until you find the pogo stick. Then you can "jump" while on the pogo stick to jump really high, at the cost of horizontal mobility. You get to keep the pogo stick in future games.
- Mega Man:
- Spring Man from Mega Man 7. In the Japanese version, when you get Spring Man's weapon, Auto makes a joke about attaching the coils to his feet so that he could be "Super Auto".
- The first Mega Man Legends game has the hero use a set of coils on his leg armor to power up his jump.
- In the final stage of Plok, the "Secret Super Weapon" you have to fight the Flea Queen with a helmet, a can of Flea spray and a pair of spring boots. While they do boost your jump height, they have the problem of turning every step into a jump.
- The Pokémon Spoink has this as its tail. Taken further in its Pokédex entry, in that the bouncing regulates its heartbeat. In other words, if it doesn't keep bouncing all the time, it will die. Its evolution Grumpig has one as its tail as well.
- Thing On A Spring: An obscure Commodore 64 platformer featuring a little frog-headed slinky toy thing. Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- In Gruntz, this is one of the tools your gruntz can get. It allows them to jump over small obstacles.
- Donkey Kong Country
- Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest features Rattly the Rattlesnake, an animal buddy that's a permanently coiled-up snake. It moves around by bouncing in short hops, can jump very high as a normal jump, and with a charged-up leap, it can reach even higher.
- Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! has the Re-Koil enemy, an orange crocodile who bounces on his springy tail, not unlike Tigger.
- Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: The Spring Bean bounces a zombie back once before needing to recharge. In the Pirate Level, it is able to launch zombies into the water to instantly kill them depending on their position.
- In LittleBigPlanet 3, the Springinator◊ powerup that OddSock can use, which is a spring that attaches to his butt.
- One of the five types of feet in Logical Journey of the Zoombinis is a bright orange spring. Zoombinis that have it will bounce forward instead of walking.
- The Bouncy enemy from the Kirby series moves around by bouncing on its spring. A similar enemy named Boinger appears in Kirby's Epic Yarn, which are Helpful Mooks whose bounciness causes Spring Jumps when the player character lands on it.
Web Original
- DSBT InsaniT: This is one of the power-ups in the game Frog and Andy play in 'VRcade'.
Western Animation
- One of the many Acme Products used by Ralph Wolf (Wile. E. Coyote's progenitor in Looney Tunes), in the cartoon "Ready, Woolen and Able." Wile E. himself used this gimmick once or twice, and Bugs Bunny also used it at least once.
- "Coil Man" from Hanna-Barbera's The Impossibles.
- In the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon, a cosmetics robot had springs built into her ankles.
- Spring coils from the shoes, legs, and hat are some of the many, many gadgets in the arsenal of Inspector Gadget.
- In the Super Friends (1973) episode "The Ultra Scam", one of the villain's has shoes with springs in the sole that he uses to bounce around.
- Tigger's tail has a spring inside, enabling him to bounce on it.
- And then there's Wubbzy from Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, who can coil his Prehensile Tail like a spring and bounce on it, quite similar to Tigger.
Real Life
- Rob Cockerham from Cockeyed.com built a real-life pair of spring shoes out of mattress springs and Chuck Taylors.
- The Powerbocks, Airtrekkers and all of the other spring-based jumping stilts.
