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magic buses

post #1 of 18
9/14/08 at 3:29am
Thread Starter 
Probably one of the most cringe-worthy visual gags imaginable: A character absentmindedly walks into the middle of the street, only to be mowed down by a bus or car traveling perpendicular to the camera. Its horn will only bother to sound after it enters the frame. Not particularly noteworthy, but it strikes me as odd how every single film made in the past ten years has included this joke. Off the top of my head, and in no particular order:

Bride of Chucky
Final Destination
Mean Girls
Meet Joe Black
The Ex
The Devil's Rejects
Hot Rod
Every single Scary Movie entry
Death Sentence

There are many more that I can't immediately recall. A recent ad for "Ghost Town" actually features this gag with the bus replaced by a critic's pull quote. How do these scenes keep happening? I'm far more surprised these days when a character is able to walk into a busy street WITHOUT being hit by a magic bus (see: Pineapple Express).

Can anyone name any more examples? I kind of want to make a YouTube compilation that I can play at my funeral.
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post #2 of 18
9/14/08 at 3:43am
The gag showed up in "Adaptation" as well.
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post #3 of 18
9/14/08 at 5:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by blunderbuss View Post
Can anyone name any more examples? I kind of want to make a YouTube compilation that I can play at my funeral.
This will only work well if you yourself die at the hands of a random bus.

Eh, who am I kidding, the Meet Joe Black clip alone is a crowd-pleaser of epic proportions.
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post #4 of 18
9/14/08 at 10:12am
it's a blunder made by the bus.
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post #5 of 18
9/14/08 at 10:42am
The first one that sprung to mind is the dude that gets railed by an ambulance in Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead.

And on my 10th birthday my grandmother met a magic Mack Truck. She stepped out into the street and didn't see the gigantic fucking vehicle headed right at her. Knocked her 20 feet into the air and laid her up into the hospital for awhile. Truck didn't get off that easy though; she broke the fucker's headlight.
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post #6 of 18
9/14/08 at 12:11pm
Yeah, my grandfather drove a magic train. The person he hit with it was drunk and possibly suicidal, and they found him in a tree.

I guess Mean Girls is the only one of those that deals with the consequences of the crash. We don't see the bus move up and we don't see the aftermath otherwise? It caught me off guard in Final Destination.
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post #7 of 18
9/14/08 at 12:39pm
Not a movie, but it happened in an episode of Lost. I saw that episode of Lost on the same day I saw Mean Girls and thought it was "Hit By a Bus Day"
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post #8 of 18
9/14/08 at 12:47pm
It also happened on an episode of Wonderfalls.
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post #9 of 18
9/14/08 at 12:59pm
I've seen it TONS of times in Looney Tunes.
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post #10 of 18
9/14/08 at 3:58pm
I was watching Night of the Comet last night, and I was sure this would happen at the end with the sister. It's not exactly a bus that almost hits her, but I was expecting it to be.
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post #11 of 18
9/14/08 at 4:18pm
There's a magic car near the start of Constantine.
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post #12 of 18
9/15/08 at 10:11am
I caught a bit of The Brothers Solomon a few weeks back and this gag is in there, too.
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post #13 of 18
9/15/08 at 10:54am
It was also used to dispatch a psycho stalker in "Nip/Tuck" and some guy in an episode of "One Tree Hill".
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post #14 of 18
9/15/08 at 1:58pm
I'm sure any forgotten ones could be found in this thread:

The Sudden Car Crash

Recently, I saw it happen in the "Groundhog Day" episode of SUPERNATURAL (season 3).

What about magic cows, like in the ad for DISASTER MOVIE?
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post #15 of 18
9/16/08 at 2:01pm
I want it, I want it, I want it
(you can't have it)

Quote:
Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 View Post
I'm sure any forgotten ones could be found in this thread:

The Sudden Car Crash

Recently, I saw it happen in the "Groundhog Day" episode of SUPERNATURAL (season 3).

What about magic cows, like in the ad for DISASTER MOVIE?
I was expecting that thread to specifically be about the "inside the car getting t-boned" shot, which is just as if not more overused than the magic bus/car/train etc phenomenon

but you know the magic vehicle thing his out of hand when I can't see someone walking out into the street in a tv show or movie without expecting them to be blindsided by a bus.
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post #16 of 18
9/21/08 at 8:15pm
Happens fairly well in Office Space, doesn't it?
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post #17 of 18
9/21/08 at 8:59pm
I'll never forget when that chick got hit by the bus in Final Destination, an African American guy in front of me jumped, turned around and shouted, "THAT WAS FUCKED UP!" I agreed. It was a fairly new gag back then.

Also, the evil god, Glory, got m-bussed on an episode of Buffy as well.
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post #18 of 18
9/22/08 at 10:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by blunderbuss View Post
Not particularly noteworthy, but it strikes me as odd how every single film made in the past ten years has included this joke.
a few dozen films perhaps, not all.
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