Car Fu

We could make this picture more awesome, but we're really not sure how.

"Captain Hammer threw a car at my head."

—Dr. Horrible

"We are in a car!"

—K9, on how to enter a school in lockdown.

Sometimes, the best weapon you could possibly use isn't the one you hold, it's the one you ride around in. Which kind of makes sense, considering that getting hit by at least a metric ton of metal moving at several kilometers per hour is bound to be painful.

Automobiles are, in fact, the most efficient killing machines on the surface of the planet. To date, the kill count of this invention is totally unmatched. And no, not even guns can be remotely compared. Being killed by a car is a very common cause of Death by Origin Story. How he/she was killed? Car accident. How convenient.

Car Fu is when someone, generally the hero but not exclusively so, uses the car (or van, or bus, etc.) they're driving as large, improvised, moving weapon. More often than not, it's in an attempt to mow down the bad guys, but sometimes it's a bid to make them scatter in an attempt to avoid getting run over.

In a rarer form, Car Fu can also include a car being thrown as a weapon. Or used as a giant club. This version is most often used by superheroes.

See also Toyota Tripwire. If done with ships or spaceships, it's Ramming Always Works. If the car explodes on impact, it's a Molotov Truck. For murder attempts with heavy machinery, see Forklift Fu.

Examples of Car Fu include:

Run'em down, Run'em over

Anime and Manga

• In One Piece Oven stood in front of the amphibious vehicle Nostra Castello and told said "Come out me! I'll take everything you got" and was run over.
• Black Lagoon: Roberta, the Meido/Terminator, who somehow manages to drive a car over the roofs of several buildings and land on the protagonists' car—and keep running after them. Implacable Woman, indeed.
• In the last episode of Daimos, Kazuya uses the truck form of the Super Robot to smash his way through a hallway protected by laser guns in an attempt to reach the control room at the end.
• In Death Note, Soichiro Yagami commandeers a city bus and rams it into the main lobby of Sakura TV to gain access into the building without the Second Kira seeing his face.
• The final episode of Kure-nai features Car Fu in the snow. Even better, it ends with the driver, Benika, calling attention to her parking.
• The final episode of Crystal Blaze. Akira and his brother Shu jets a car off a building top to collide with a helicopter. Just before the impact, they dive out from it, and one of Shu's bullets sets the car on fire, causing a mighty collision explosion. Naturally, just before it happens, Akira drops a comment about how such kinds of things only ever happens in movies.
• Almost every major character does this in Silent Moebius. It's not all that effective since they're usually fighting interdimensional aliens with magical powers.
• In Riding Bean, the effective Pilot Episode for Gunsmith Cats, Bean Bandit gets a security guard who calls his car a piece of shit by pinning him to a tree with his front tire, nearly running him over up the trunk, then using the tire to scrape him off the trunk and over the car. If you're wondering how the hell Bean can do that, keep in mind his car is absurdly modified, and built that he can turn the wheels 90 degrees and drive that way.
  • Subverted later in the OAV where the Big Bad tries to ram an on-foot Bean with her car. What does Bean do? He shoulder-checks it head-on and lifts it right off its front wheels! Did we mention that Bean is REEEEALLY tough?
• Done very humorously in the end of Baccano! where Isaac and Miria are driving like crazy and take the time to purposely run down Dallas Genoard and his gang, people who were threatening their friends. They also accidentally run down Szilard, who is pretty much the Big Bad of the show.
  • ...And then back up and hit Dallas again.
• In a recent chapter of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, Cowardly Sidekick Yoki runs down the homunculus Pride and gloats about proving himself useful.
• Sailor Moon has Sailors Moon, Mercury, and Mars using Plane Fu on Jadeite in an attempt to kill him to stop him from burning Tokyo to the ground. It started with him magically animating the planes to run them over, but Mars made the spell backfire and target him instead by sticking one of her "Begone, Evil Spirits!" talismans to him. Arguably veers into Forklift Fu territory.
  • And let's not forget how Haruka and Michiru make their badassery known on a motorcycle in their debut episode (as themselves, at least).
• Karas has the title characters doing things in their plane and tank forms that should not be possible.
• This listing is not complete without mentioning All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku. "Land rover attack!"
• Ga-Rei Zero features Natsuki Kasuga using her motorcycle as a weapon against demons.
• Durarara!!: Celty's very first action is to wedge some poor bastard's face in between a parking complex column and the front wheel of her motorcycle.
• F-Zero: In the first episode of the anime, resident psychopath Zoda gets into a high speed car chase with main protagonist Rick Wheeler/Ryu Suzaku. What does Zoda do? He uses a machine gun to saw off his car door which then hurtles backwards and crashes through Rick's/Ryu's windshield.
• Done ridiculously literal in Kongou Banchou. There are passengers so he doesn't swing the car though.
• In one episode of the Future GPX Cyber Formula TV series, Asurada GSX collides with Smith's helicopter which was followed by Bootsvorz performing a Heel Face Turn by crashing his Missioner VR-4 into his evil boss' said helicopter, killing Smith in the process.
• Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt takes this trope Up to Eleven with Chuck and Fastener battling with See-Through and G-String inside and up the side of Daten High. Chuck and Fastener are pets.
• Area 88: Rocky takes out a tank by ramming it with a Jeep in the manga. He survives, but loses an arm and an eye.
• In Until Death Do Us Part, one character's entire style of fighting is pretty much just "hit opponents with souped-up motorcycle".
• Highschool of the Dead: Shizuka can't use guns very well. Fortunately, she is skilled in the arts of vehicular homicide.
• Almost always done in Supercar Gattiger when the team combines their Machines into the eponymous vehicle.
• In Transformers Armada Megatron's first appearance has him giddily chasing small children in a tank-like alt-mode. Then you hear a 18-wheeler truck's horn and Optimus Prime rams into Megatron's side. Their first Earth battle thus begins. Megatron learns his lesson and stays behind the front lines where his Decepti-behind belongs.
  • Another character is called Motormaster. He was rather specifically described as "being able to survive in a head-on collision with any road-based Transformer other than Optimus Prime", as well as liking the tactic. Motormaster is the leader of the Stunticons, a Decepticon Combiner Team. Every member of said team was heavily reinforced for ramming and stunt driving, and often engaged in acrobatic flips, rollovers, and bouncing off walls to change direction, all in vehicle form. And of course they can combine into the really big robot Menasor.
• Does Tank Fu count? Because in Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO, the Mobile Weapon Hildorfr, when its cannon and transforming arms have failed, will fire a lateral shot to lift one of its sides and smash right into a nearby Zaku with the full brunt of its 220 metric-ton self.
• The first OVA of Ai no Kusabi has Riki performing Bike Fu in his Big Damn Hero Entrance into a squad of police cars to save his old gang.
• All over the place in Speed Racer.

Card Games

• In Jyhad (a.k.a. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle), the Card Game, there is an attack card named "Well Aimed Car".
• The comedic Lovecraftian game Creatures and Cultists has a Big Honkin' Truck as an attack card that is capable of wiping out three targets in a single charge.
• Zombie Fluxx has the Car, one of many Keepers that can be used to kill zombie Creepers if the right New Rule card is in play.

Comic Books

• Empowered plays with this one. After a not very successful attempt at the superpowered version in Volume 1 (see below), Emp later defeats a supervillain who's already flattened the other Superhomeys by running him down with a large SUV, at 110 km/h -- and noting that to be more effective than simply throwing a car. Sadly, the others are out cold and she gets no credit for the knockout. The author even refers to this trope on the back of the book jacket as 'Hummer Fu'.
• Preacher (Comic Book): Coming back to save his mate, Cassidy rams his pick-up truck into the Saint of Killers at full speed. Who doesn't even flinch.

Custer: Ugly fella there just drove a truck into you. Ain't you pissed at him at all?
Saint of Killers: I'll get to him.

• Nextwave: Elsa Bloodstone provides an excellent example when she drives her jeep into the face of an eight-foot car-eating cyborg. Then she blows it up.
• Batman loves this one. Often, he's used the Batmobile to take down someone he can't beat (or who would be extremely difficult to beat) hand to hand, by either using its various weapons or by simply running them down. The most prominent example I can think of is when he used this to blast Amazo into the Gotham Bay.
  • A fight between Batman and a mind-controlled Superman ended with Supes about to painfully use the car-club variation on Bats, before his attention was distracted elsewhere.
  • Another example, which may have been in All-Star Batman and Robin, is Batman using the Batmobile to slice through a police vehicle, defying the laws of physics and sheer common sense.
• In (original) Deadpool #6, Weasel makes a big entrance by driving an ambulance in through a window and slamming into Animus.
• In (Vol 2) Deadpool #12, he dodges a RPG shot from Bullseye by opening his Monstertruck's windows, letting the shell fly through without hitting (which makes Bullseye admit that this was "#@$%ing awesome"), then parks on Bulleye's legs and pulls out a Chainsaw for the final.
• As evidenced by the page quote, Atomic Robo is very aware of the effectiveness of a Buick for clearing out giant ants, or whatever other bit of mad science you might have to deal with.
  • In fact, cars are 'scientifically proven' to be one of the most efficient monster destroying weapons in his universe.
• In The Walking Dead, when The Governor is desperate to win against the title characters, he orders the Bradley Fighting Vehicle to smash through the prison fences. Though the Woodbury Army wins the battle shortly afterward, with the fences gone, zombies tear through all the survivors.
• Scans Daily has an entire "Carol vs Car" tag to denote the unending enmity between Carol "Ms. Marvel" Danvers and the various malicious automobiles of the Marvel universe.
• Spike: After the Fall: Spike rams a truck at pretty-faced demon Non. The truck loses.
• In Sin City: The Big Fat Kill, when Dwight tells Dallas they're going to stop the car with the mercenaries who have Jackie Boy's head, her nerves are so shot she slams on the gas and rams into it. To her credit, it does do an admirable job of stopping the other car.
• Long before Empowered, Psylocke had the bright idea of driving a truck into the Juggernaut. It barely even slowed him down, but ripping open the cab left him a sitting duck for her psychic attack.
• Miracleman uses and somewhat averts this by having the eponymous hero throw cars at the Big Bad, Kid Miracleman. The cars still have people in them.
• In their first fight,Paperinik smashed his Pi-kar several times into Trauma.It barely slowed him down.

Films -- Animation

• Optimus Prime mowing down a line of Decepticons in his vehicle form in 1986's Transformers: The Movie. Used again later when Hot Rod knocks around Galvatron a bit by switching into car mode and plowing into him.
  • Was there even a single scene in that whole movie than didn't qualify as some sort of Vehicle Fu? There's even a scene in which two characters, vastly outnumbered and running low on ammo, decide that the best way to deal with their foes is with a demolition derby. Car Fu turned up to eleven ensues.
• Done with a train in Meet the Robinsons.
• Cars 2 features a literal version of this trope, when super-spy Finn McMissile uses martial arts to attack a group of thugs... while standing in front of a sign advertising "carate" and "car-fu" lessons.
• Done by Megamegamind in the Megamind: The Button of Doom short by loading cars into a wrist-mounted crossbow and firing them.
• Another villain example: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, when a mob boss tries to run over Phantasm in the opening scene. Not so much...

Films -- Live-Action

• The Little Rascals: Not intentionally, but movie Spanky and Alfalfa end up running over a few shoppers at a strip mall during the go-cart race. The pedestrians end up fine, and one of them shouts, "You little rascals!" as they drive away.
• Live Free or Die Hard has two:
  • A very cross McClane drives a police car into a helicopter. While it's in the air. (He was out of bullets).
  • Later, after having been beaten by a Dark Action Girl and thrown out a window ending up several stories down below, he then gets in a car, drives it up a car ramp back up to the floor he came from, and hits her with the car pushing them both into an open elevator shaft. That's our McClane! He just doesn't give a damn about fair.
• In the first Terminator film, the title character proceeds to drive his vehicle into the police station after delivering a certain famous line. He also uses this move on the Terminatrix early on in the third film. In point of fact, every time he says the line, he seems to mean "In a vehicle, at eye-height". It's a police van in the second film.
• In the first Fantastic Four movie The Thing bitchslaps Dr. Doom with an SUV.
• Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse. It even involves jousting.
• Parodied in the first Austin Powers movie, where he is driving a steamroller (extremely slowly) toward an enemy Mook, yelling at the man to get out of the way. The henchman stands in place for at least ten seconds, waving his arms and screaming in horror, until the machine runs him over.
• 1988 was a great year for using steamrollers against villains:
  • The Naked Gun—along with an entire marching band.
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit?—didn't work.
  • A Fish Called Wanda—only delayed Otto. But did wonders for Ken's stutter.
• In Raw Deal, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character proceeds to beat up some mob types, before leaving and driving a truck through the building where his victims are getting back to their feet.
• The live-action Spawn movie has the Violator drive a truck into Spawn, who protects himself with his cape.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger's partner gets run down by a villain in Kindergarten Cop. Who then comes back and beats said villain with a baseball bat.
• In Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet, this is how Romeo takes down Tybalt for killing Mercutio, right before gunning him down.
• In Pulp Fiction, Butch runs down the crime boss who wants him dead after seeing him at a crosswalk. Unlike most, he doesn't get to full speed; he hits him after only going about ten feet.
• Shoot Em Up: Smith indulges in some of this.
• Death Race 2000
• In the movie Army of Darkness, Ash turns his Oldsmobile into the Car of Doom.
• In the film Ultraviolet, the eponymous Action Girl pulls off an awesome stunt, driving up to a row of stormtroopers, braking, turning 90 degrees and smashing them all against the wall (it's in the trailer, too).
• Accidental example: in The Spiderwick Chronicles a man runs over a bad fae creature and is alarmed he's harmed someone.

Driver: Did I hit something?
Jared Grace: Yes! Thank you!

• Inverted in Quicksilver: the villain used his car as a weapon while the heroic Kevin Bacon beat him with a mountain bike.
• The Matrix opens with one of these, as the Agents use a garbage truck to smash the phone booth where Trinity is trying to escape.
  • The Matrix Reloaded: has a villain example. Ends with an example of the rare Semi Fu Chicken. That movie also has Trinity "throwing" her motorcycle into a guardhouse, generating a massive explosion. Perhaps the 'cycle was rigged to divide by zero.
• In The Lost Boys the sire of the entire vampire gang is killed when one of the characters crashes his jeep in through the wall of his house, with the hood loaded with fence posts.
• Duel is essentially one long episode of Car Fu between Dennis Weaver in a 1970 Plymoth Valiant and a Demon Truck.
• In the recent live-action Speed Racer movie, this trope is taken to its literal extreme, including choreographed battle scenes, somersaults, parries, and even "throws"; all done in racing cars. The video game of the movie even calls it "Car Fu".
  • Let's put it this way: You know how the page for Martial Arts Do Not Work That Way points out how in Hollywood, fights always involve ridiculous flips and spins and mid-air kicks? Speed Racer does that...with the cars.
• Blade did it, in the first movie, using a bike to smash through the window of the Big Bad's office-building, instead of entering through the door as the waiting goons had expected.
• Used oddly in the Johnny Mnemonic movie; one of the traps used by the Lo-Teks is setting an ancient VW bug on fire and then dropping it from their fortified bridge onto attackers down below. They have a whole mechanical system that loads a new one each time they do this, and it happens several times throughout the movie.
• The Mad Max movies, of course.
• In Beethoven, one of the kids drives the family station wagon through a wall and right into the center of the bad guys' warehouse, impaling the main bad guy with several syringes in the process.
• Wanted uses Car Fu liberally, from scooping someone up through an open passenger door to flipping overtop of a limousine in order to kill the guy inside.
• The first Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. A fight scene that takes place in the garage of her mansion culminates in Lara driving a motorcycle up to a goon, slamming on the brakes, spinning around on the front wheel and decking him in the head with the rear tire as it comes around.
• Pineapple Express: "You just got killed by a Daewoo Lanos, motherfucker!"
• Attempted by Biff Tannen in Back to The Future Part II when he tries to run Marty down in the tunnel. (You have to wonder if Biff is a sociopath considering this means he's apparently capable of remorselessly committing murder at the age of eighteen.)
  • He also tries it in the first film, whilst chasing "Calvin" (Marty) through Courthouse Square. Both times he crashes into manure.
• In Free Willy, the good guys take Willy to the ocean in a truck, only to find the bad guys there with the beach gated off. Of course, they step on the gas, causing the bad guys to scatter, and smash through the gate.
• In Jackie Chan movie Mr. Nice Guy, the eponymous hero destroys the mob boss's mansion and large collection of expensive cars and scatters his army of Mooks with an one hundred and twenty ton dump truck.
• In Rumble in The Bronx, the hero uses the bad guy's very large hovercraft against him.
• Dawn of the Dead has the armored buses.
• I Am Legend: At one point the hero Robert Neville tries to run down as many Infected as he can with his car.
• In Resident Evil Apocalypse, Alice rams a licker with her motorcycle, then shoots the gas tank to blow them both up.
  • In Resident Evil Extinction, Carlos makes a Heroic Sacrifice by driving a gasoline truck into a mob of zombies and blowing it up to clear a path to the Umbrella Base.
• Both of The Blues Brothers films involve chase scenes where the eponymous brothers are pursued by armies of no less than fifty cop cars. Both times, said armies of cop cars are brought down in scene-stealing pile-ups, all while the Blues Brothers' theme plays.
  • Also the bridge scene in the first film. "Illinois Nazis! I hate Illinois Nazis!"
• The Dark Knight Saga:
  • The Joker uses well-timed Bus Fu to take out the second to last henchmen in the bank heist scene.
  • The Tumbler kicks the shit out of a garbage truck before Taking the Bullet for a police vehicle. And by bullet we mean rocket launcher.
  • Bruce Wayne intercepts an attempt at Car Fu by blocking it with his Lamborghini.
• The Inspector Gadget movie has the Gadgetmobile (a sentient car) use itself for Car Fu, slamming into the back of Claw's limo at high speed.
• John Woo likes doing this: happens both in Hard Boiled and the Blackjack TV movie.
  • One of the more memorable Hard Boiled moments was during the warehouse shootout where one poor mook ended up eating bike. As in motorcycle. Ouch.
  • Bullet in the Head ends with the archetypal car duel where two former friends just end up destroying each other's cars with head-on collisions and .45 bullets.
• The Heroic Trio has one of the greatest examples of motorcycle-fu. One of the heroines uses the back wheel of her motorcycle to catapult it off the wall, and send it spinning sideways as she jumps off across the room, essentially turning it into a five-hundred-pound shuriken to send at The Dragon. The bad guy's response? He catches it in midair and rips it in half!
• Aliens. Ripley manages to kill an alien with nothing but the APC.
• Toward the end of RoboCop, one of the bad guys is exposed to some toxic waste, RoboCop's primary target, Clarence Boddicker uses a car to reduce him to a red smear....
  • Actually that's a two-for subversion. 1. Goon attempts to use Car Fu on Robo (extra strength version, the goon is driving a panel van), but Robo distracts him by firing into the windshield (forcing the goon to duck, pulling the steering wheel with him and thus heeling to the left) and dodges. Goon wasn't watching what was behind Robo-it's a tank of toxic waste, which he plows into. Goon stumbles out, melted and screaming, 2. right into the way of a car chase featuring a second cop chasing Boddicker: Boddicker's use was completely unintentional.
• Day Watch has a very interesting scene in which Alisia, a "Dark" witch, drives a sports car hundreds of feet along the side of a building, then makes the car fall into a wall window, then drives through a corridor on the hundredth (or so) floor and into the Big Bad's office for a meeting.
• Shaun of the Dead has the characters run over someone with their car. Unsure if it was actually a zombie, they quickly back up to check on him. Once they're assured it was a zombie, they drive off.
• Subverted in Just Married: Ashton Kutcher rams his car into a gate... and the car crashes. Causing his friend to comment, "That is one strong gate."
• In G.I. Joe the Rise of Cobra, one of the weapons on the Baroness's Hummer is a ram that flips other cars out of its way, conveniently sending said cars flying towards the pursuing heroes.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Movie, when Pike barely manages to survive a run-in with a group of vampires using his van... and rip off Amilyn's arm... leading to Amilyn's line: "You ruined my new jacket." (Addressing vampire cohorts) "Kill him a lot!"
  • In fact, Amilyn is referred to solely as 'Lefty' on the DVD cover because of this.
• In Die Another Day, James Bond and the freaky villain with diamonds stuck in his face have a Car Fu Duel, where BOTH characters are driving tricked-out spy cars and trying to kill each other with their various on-board weapons and gadgets. This scene ends with a (failed) ramming attempt.
  • Played with in Goldfinger. Bond's Weaponized Car proves effective in scattering the mooks in Goldfinger's factory, but as he's driving down a corridor between two buildings he's confronted by another vehicle driving head on towards him with its headlights on full. Bond fires his built-in machine guns, but the car doesn't swerve and at the last second he's forced to, crashing into a wall. It's then revealed that Bond was firing at his own reflection in a steel mirror, set up to reveal oncoming cars at a junction.
  • GoldenEye: "Use ze bumper! Zhat's vhat it's for!"
• The Russian Superhero Movie Black Lighting is this trope as in his flying car is his superpower
• District 9 has Wilkus' Powered Armor getting worn down in battle by a combination of More Dakka and a pickup truck running into him head-on. Terrifying alien technology it surely is, but it's just made of metal: it can be bent, busted and broken.
• The "Delta Deathmobile" from Animal House.
• In Forrest Gump a group of high school students decide they want to run Forrest over with their pickup because he's stupid. Fortunately, Forrest figures out he can cut across a nearby field, which ends up getting him a football scholarship to the University of Alabama.
  • Small point: Forrest is Inspirationally Disadvantaged. His classmates are "stupid." "Stupid is as stupid does," after all.
• In Ernest Scared Stupid, Ernest backs a large pickup truck (at full speed) into a super-strong, evil troll. The troll survives without a scratch, but it certainly left him dazed!

"How about a bumper sandwich, booger lips?!"

• John Lymangood, in Blue Thunder, is killed by being run over with a car, when trying to escape captivity.
• Iron Man 2 has Happy Hogan trying to take out Ivan Vanko with a car. In a deleted scene of the first Iron Man, James "Rhodey" Rhodes saves Tony's life by ramming a car into Iron Monger.
  • Also in the first film, the Iron Monger whacks Iron Man over the head with a motorcycle.
• The Bourne Supremacy. In a lightweight taxi, Jason Bourne manages to do a PIT maneuver ^[1] on a bigger, heavier vehicle.
• The Hitcher: In the remake, the villain misses the protagonists by a hair after sending a car towards them from the top a cliff. Judging by the precision aim, the only logical conclusion can be that Sean Bean somehow threw it at them.
• In Super, Libby comes to the rescue by ramming her car into a thug trying to off Frank.
• In Halloween: The Return of Michael Myers, Rachel uses her car to run Michael Myers over. But since Michael is Michael, it doesn't faze him in the slightest.
  • Also, in H20, Laurie hijacks an ambulance van with Michael in it, and runs it off a cliff in order to kill Michael once and for all.
• Happens a lot in Drive Angry. Milton drives into the middle of a satanic gathering, mowing down anyone who gets in his way. The Accountant uses this trope when he smashes a hole through a cordon of police cars with a hydrogen truck, while humming along to the tune of 'That's the way I like it', catches a police car on the side of the truck, swerves, then calmly steps out of the cab and onto the hood of the car in time to watch the truck slide away, flip over and explode.
• Bad Boys 2 has Mike and Marcus up against some bad guys in a furious chase sequence, who attempt to smash their vehicle to bits by sending cars off a car carrier at them.

Marcus: Did you see that?!
Mike: They're throwing cars! How can I not see that?!

• This scene from Blood Diner.
• Torque features a fair amount of motorcycle-fu during the Designated Girl Fight at the movie's climax.

Literature

• In Larry Niven's short story "The Deadlier Weapon", a hitchhiker pulls a knife on the protagonist driver, who makes it very clear how badly outgunned any hitchhiker trying this stunt is. The Driver buckles his seatbelt, accelerates to over a hundred miles an hour, and tells the would-be car-jacker that he's going to ram the right side of the car (where the car-jacker is sitting) into the nearest underpass support pylon unless the guy tosses the knife out the window.
  • Niven later wrote that a couple of people told him they'd done this in real life, and it worked.
• The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden has thrown a car magically at a mystical nasty. It only slowed them down. A Bartender in the know tells Harry that other wizards tend to avoid him because they can't defend themselves that way from the horrors that target him.
  • He has also driven his Beetle into another supernatural nasty. In a subversion, the beetle was more phased than said nasty. This is because said nasty was of Faerie, and the Beetle's steel bumper was its Kryptonite Factor.
  • And he flipped a car onto Cowl during their first battle. The fact that Cowl blocked it was what caused Harry to reevaluate him to more powerful wizard. Well they're in a city. Cars are convenient.
  • Harry's not the only one to do this, either; Madrigal Raith attempts to kill Mouse by driving a car into him. Again, subverted in that it doesn't work too well; Mouse turns out to be Only Mostly Dead].
• The pulp series The Spider featured this several times, at least once with a bus.
• Harry Potter features this—by way of a magically enhanced car achieving sentience and fighting off giant spiders to deliver the title character (and Sidekick) to safety.
• The Zombie Survival Guide specifically subverts this trope—saying that it's a good way to ruin your car, spread virus-containing blood everywhere, and turns a fairly easy-to-see walking zombie into a much-harder-to-spot crawling zombie.
  • Although it does go on to say that larger vehicles like semis and armored trucks have some decent applications as mobile forts.
• Sookie Stackhouse of The Southern Vampire Mysteries uses this method to rescue her Love Interest, her boss and her Love Interest's boss from a large, vengeful vampire. It works, but her car is totalled in the process.
• In one of Mercedes Lackey's SERRAted Edge novels, Tannim takes out an Unseelie Fae with a classic Mustang.
• In To the Vanishing Point, by Alan Dean Foster it's a two-bedroom Winnebago [RV] versus the elemental Chaos-thing "the Anarchis".

"You have done well," the other orange fish told him. "Steel is good for weakening Chaos. Aluminum is better still."

• Averted in The War Against the Chtorr where trying to ram a Chtorran gastropede with a vehicle is a good way to commit suicide. They just peel it open like a tin can and eat whoever's inside.
• Madam, Will You Talk?: The heroine of Mary Stewart's mystery uses a car in much the same way as in the Larry Niven example at the top of this section. Threatening to kill a woman while she's driving along a mountain road at high speed is not particularly well-thought-out. By the time she pulls to a halt, her attacker is a whimpering wreck, too nerve-shattered to put up a fight even though he's no longer in danger.
• In one of the Stephanie Plum books, "good girl" sister Valerie, who's just too Stepford to handle her sister's life, blasts a van through the wall of a house to rescue Stephanie from their mutual kidnappers. Considering that Val is doing this while in near-hysterics over the kidnapping and her hands are duct-taped together, she does a quite creditable job.
  • Stephanie's mother once hit a man in a bunny costume while he was chasing Stephanie.
• Not quite, but close enough. In the book Point Blanc of the Alex Rider Series, Alex, near the very end of the book, uses a ski-jump ramp to launch a snow mobile he was riding to annihilate a helicopter the villain was trying to get away in.
• In one of the Shadowrun books, there is a Wolf Shaman who mentions that he hates driving while under any spells, as his totem tends to see the car he's driving as nothing more than a large, steerable bullet.
• Commissarial Aide Ferrik Jurgen may drive like crazy but he's also a master of this.
• In Eye Of The Needle by Ken Follett, David tries to kill Henry this way.
• In Wise Blood, Hazel Motes confronts his Identical Stranger, then runs him over with his car to kill him.
• The Hugo Bishop novel Rook's Gambit has a virtuoso performance by Miss Vera Gorringe in the "driver threatened by passenger" mode. She notches the speed up to seventy and dares the fellow to shoot, but she doesn't stop at that: once she knows there's a police car trying to pull her over, she deliberately rolls the auto, incapacitating the gunman (he wasn't buckled in, tsk). Gorry is in her early sixties.
• One of the later Animorphs books has several of the team creating a distraction by flatting the house of their vice principal-slash-Yeerk host Chapman-with a tank. And they total Cassie's father's old truck using it as a weapon in Megamorphs #1.
  • Elfangor uses a car recovered from a wrecked Skrit Na starship this way in The Andalite Chronicles.
• The cover of Eric Flint's novel 1632 implies that this will happen, but sadly not.
• In Warrior Cats, there's a scene where the main character is trying to cross a road when a car suddenly drives off the road and heads straight at him, That's right - they swerved off a presumably 55 MPH road, drove on the grass, and leaned out of their window, jeering, just to hit a cat.

Live-Action TV

• Top Gear does this once in a while and with almost every type of land vehicle you can imagine. Notable examples: "no contact" wacky races (minivans, motorhomes, city buses!) which turn into "full contact" before the end of the first lap; car football using small city cars and a giant inflatable ball; and extreme destruct testing (evaluating a car maker's durability claims by crashing said car into something).
  • They also have a channel on YouTube (currently over 300 crunch-tastic uploads).
• In the Doctor Who episode "Planet of the Dead", the Doctor uses a flying double-decker bus to hit a flying alien.
• Oz rescues Angel in a first season episode by driving through the wall of the villain's hideout and squashing him with his band's van.
  • Another episode has Fred's mother rescue Angel by running over a demon in a bus.
  • Before the Just Married example given above, the first episode of Angel had Doyle attempting to ram his way through the gates of a mansion. Didn't really work. (He even said something to the effect of, "Good gate.")
• The Terminators seem to have a thing for Car Fu. It happened about, oh, five times in the first couple of episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
• Greg in CSI, which led to an internal investigation and a fairly severe beating from the roadkill's cohorts. He did it to stop the group from severely beating up a tourist.
  • Another episode of CSI has a terminally ill granny program her GPS so she will crash into the office of the insurance company who won't pay her medical expenses.
• CSI: NY has a non-lethal version with Lindsay using her Avalanche SUV to stop a fleeing suspect in his car. They were in a parking garage, so neither of them were driving extremely fast, and although she dinged up the vehicle, neither she nor the perp were seriously hurt.
• One of the moments that brings Cordelia around to side of awesome in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is when she drives her car straight through an amassing horde of vampires and right into the high school, plowing through the halls until she pulls up in front of the library.
  • Mildly parodied when Buffy lures Glory into the path of a Mack truck; when Buffy explains how she got away, Willow immediately jumps to the conclusion that Buffy threw the truck.
  • Xander rescues Faith by taking out one of the Sisterhood of Jhe demons with the 57 Chevy Bel Air that he had borrowed from his uncle Rory.
• In Lost, Hurley breaks into a hostage situation by driving over some of the Others using a Volkswagen Minibus.
• The poor, abused Mule in Firefly gets used as a weapon so often. In "The Train Job" Wash uses it to run over one of Niska's goons in the cargo bay shootout. Later, in the episode "War Stories", it gets used as a rolling car bomb to clear the hallway when Serenity's crew starts Storming the Castle.
• Power Rangers seems to like throwing in some Motorcycle Fu a lot lately.
  • Martial arts battles atop unmodified (i.e.: not Battlizer weapon component) motorcycles began in earnest in Dino Thunder, reaching their apex in Mystic Force where Nick's standard tactic when backed into a corner is to smash a motorcycle into Koragg's face. He does this with both his normal civilian bike and his Mystic Racer. Needless to say, "Bike to the Face" became one of the memes for THAT season...
  • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue's Carter Grayson attempted to run down a Monster of the Week with the team car in the first episode. Didn't quite work, but Linkara approved either way.
  • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: In "Enter... The Lizzinator!", this is attempted on Jason. By a Putty. Jason's reaction is priceless.

Jason: Putties can drive?!
*Putty Patroller floors the gas and drives towards him*
Jason: Whoah, yup, they can drive!

• • • An earlier episode had the Rangers knock Goldar over with the Megazord's tank mode.
• In an episode of the second season of Coupling, we learn how one of Patrick's past relationships ended:

Steve: (referring to a wedding invite) In the field of human relationships, what is the most frightening thing that can come through your door?
Patrick: A Volkswagen.

• In one episode of Stargate SG-1, an alien Bounty Hunter succumbs to the accidental version of this. Tip: before coming to Earth, learn about crosswalks.
• An episode of Stargate Atlantis has a mild bit of Jumper Fu; when the Replicators take the city and Sheppard flies a Jumper into the gate room, he runs over two human-form Replicators.
• In the new Knight Rider series, KITT pulls off a Car Fu Fatality.
• Jimmy Palmer Took a Level in Badass when he runs down a bad guy in an episode of NCIS, following Gibbs' orders not to leave the car.
• During the second season finale of Burn Notice, Michael uses unmanned Car Fu to clear out a crowd of agents waiting for him. He puts a brick on the gas pedal and aims the Jeep at the bad guys, using it as a battering ram to clear their blockade, and knock down the spike strip that would have punctured their tires if they had tried to drive out first.
  • In the third season's midseason finale he pulls an even more dramatic stunt, sending Sam's girlfriend's Buick sailing off the third story of a parking garage to distract a gang that's trying to ambush Fiona. This is why Sam doesn't let Michael drive.
• On The Office, Andy traps Dwight with the silent at less than 5 mph Toyota Prius.
• Kamen Rider used to be built on Motorcycle Fu (he's called Kamen Rider for a reason), but more recent entries in the franchise have all but forgotten about it.
  • Happily brought back into the show by Kamen Rider Double.
    • And then forgotten about for a while, until their secondary rider shows up, and his gimmick is that he is a bike.
  • Rare, but still happens in Kamen Rider OOO on occasion.
• In an episode of Junkyard Wars, the two teams are tasked with building vehicles to demolish a wall. They build two trucks, one with a wrecking ball and one with a hydraulic pick. After getting frustrated with the slow progress of their chosen tool, the wrecking ball crew decides to just ram the wall down, and it becomes an awesome ramming contest.
• In Chuck, when Chuck and Sarah are surrounded by bad guys, Casey drives his Crown Vic in to the middle of the standoff.

Casey: Hey! Somebody order drive-thru?!!
Chuck: Somebody order drive-thru huh?! Did you think that up as you were racing over to save us?! "Hey! Maybe I'll say this after I crash into the restaurant!!"

• On Third Watch head paramedic Doc did this with an ambulance. Arriving at a scene to find an AK-47 wielding criminal pinning down two officers, he proceeds to tell his partner to buckle up, and step on the gas. After hitting the criminal, he leaps out and begins treating him.
• In the last episode of season one of 24, Jack drives an SUV into the warehouse where the bad guys are waiting to ambush him. He proceeds to take them all out single-handedly.
• There was a rather beautiful example in the White Collar episode "Flip of the Coin."
• The Criminal Minds episode "Roadkill" featured a serial killer whose MO was vehicular homicide.
  • Several episodes feature either members of the BAU or local police officers using their cars to disable an unsub's vehicle. The latter's tactics are valid but the results tend to be more dramatic than in Real Life (car-flippity-wise).
• In Dark Angel there is a scene where Max pivots her motorcycle and knocks down an opponent with the back wheel.
• The Good Guys: A favored tactic of Dan Stark, used too many times to count. When in doubt, drive a car through the building. Conveniently, it's almost never his car, because Dan's car is too cool to get totaled.
• Used twice in Breaking Bad.
  • In "Half Measures," Walt mows down the thugs Jesse predictably sets out to kill.
  • In "One Minute," Hank backs his car into one of the Cousins, effectively crushing Leonel's legs.
• Richie attempts bike-fu on the lady immortal who's trying to take his head in one Highlander episode, but she ends up knocking him off it. Although making his escape by smashing through the glass windows on said bike a bit later may count.
• In NCIS: Los Angeles, Callen and Sam find a group of civilians trapped in a warehouse that the bad guys have set on fire. The door is reinforced steel. Sam then tells Callen to ask their translator how to say "Get back or you'll die" in Vietnamese, and once everyone is away from the outer wall, proceeds to ram their car through the door.
• In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk's Other Brother", Jack Monk Jr. nearing the ending of the episode proceeded to run over the Murderer Of The Week with Natalie's car just before the latter could deliver the coup de grace. Bonus points with the earlier implication that he was going to leave them to die while he headed to Paraguay.

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech: An interesting take on the concept, this is the premise from the popular lighter class mech urban tactic "Death-From-Above". Step 1: Realize your 40-ton mech can't go head to head with a 80-tonner. Step 2: Flee between skycrapers. Step 3: Jump-jet onto top of building, one that's taller than your opponent. Step 4: Wait until opponent is in jump range. Step 5: Gain as much altitude as possible before letting your "light" 35 tons of steel and armament come crashing down on top of your opponent. This is usually considered a last ditch tactic, as even a successful DFA is likely to cause some damage to the attacking unit.
  • Not just light mechs, either. The Highlander, a 90 ton Assault class mech, has jumpjets that allow it to DFA. Doing so is called the Highlander Burial, and can easily result in an instant kill by crushing the targeted mech's cockpit.
• This trope is pretty much the whole premise of Car Wars.
• Warhammer 40,000: Tank Shock and Ramming are techniques that fit this trope. Until the FAQ confirmed that ramming has the same strength cap as every other attack, it was theoretically possible for an Eldar Falcon to cause an automatic penetrating hit by moving at full speed and ramming.
  • The Orks have a giant steamroller attachment to their tanks. With spikes.
  • Gorkamorka encourages this trope.
• The Feng Shui supplement "Golden Comeback", an invaluable addition to the game in general, has rules for not only fighting from vehicles, but fighting with vehicles. It has several driving schticks that can, amongst other things, give you a signature vehicle that can't be destroyed.

Video Games

• The recent entries into the Midnight Club series includes a power up called Aggro that renders your car invincible, allowing you to literally plow through traffic with aplomb. Using Aggro while riding a motorcycle, though, induces massive lulz...
• A signature of the Command & Conquer series of video games is that vehicles can crush infantry by rolling over them. For many vehicles, it's actually their most efficient way to kill enemy infantry.
  • Which can help make up for their Crippling Overspecialization.
    • Not to mention that the splat of running over infantry definitely counts as a Most Wonderful Sound, which in of itself encourages the player to use this form of offense.
• Likewise in its predecessor, Dune 2. Do not send an infantry squad to take down an otherwise defenseless Harvester.
  • There's a reason the Harkonnen scout vehicle in Emperor: Battle for Dune is called the Buzzsaw.
  • In Tiberian Sun, at least, a squad of infantry can destroy a harvester. But they can only do this if the player micromanages them, and tells them to get out of its way.
    • Excess harvesters can also be used as damage soaks during an attack. This trick only really works with AI opponents, though.
• The Command & Conquer: Red Alert series. The series with the Soviet Apocalypse tank, a tank so big it can crush other tanks. Or the Allied Assault Destroyer, a literal battleship on tank treads which can do the same. Or the Allied Battle Fortress, in which running over things, including other tanks, is its primary means of attack.
  • The Mammoth tanks can't crush other tanks, at least not in the first two games.
    • Starting Command & Conquer 3, they do, including stealthed harvesters the player can't see.
  • The otherwise harmless(at least to ground units) Slingshots and Mantis drones in Kane's Wrath can kill infantry by running over them despite they can only attack air units.
  • While the Soviet Sickles mainly use their machine guns to take out infantry, they can also use their Flea Leap ability to land on and crush them.
• In the old Silent Scope game, one of the bosses is fought during a highway chase. Once you shoot him a few times, however, he falls out of his car, and then proceeds to hijack an 18-wheeler truck, which he then tries to ram you with. Whether you LET him is up to you, and your steady aim, of course....
• Crackdown features both the standard run-the-baddie over and club/thrown varieties.
• The whole point of the Takedown in the Burnout series of games since 3.
  • Traffic Checks take this to another level: not only can you use your car as a weapon, you can use other cars as weapons.
• Devil May Cry 3: In a cutscene Dante used Lady's motorbike to beat monsters.
• In Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, the car is almost a Game Breaker. If you are allowed to drive it on a mission against normal thugs, you are indestructible. The mission in the harbor is the most obvious example.
  • Depending on how lucky you are, as Tommy still takes damage from inside the car. The car itself also takes damage, and a shot to the gas tank will end your mission fairly quickly. The use of a car is especially problematic in "A Great Deal!" when attempting to access the ground level.
• "No, Bane... THIS TIME, I BREAK YOU!!!"
• Halo made Car Fu especially fun for drivers, considering getting hit by a vehicle was almost guaranteed to kill you, regardless of its speed. Halo 2 and 3 kind of nerfed it, though. In more ways than one.
  • That said, Halo 3 did encourage Car Fu for having achievements for running over and killing someone with a Mongoose (a light, small ATV) and killing someone with objects placed in Forge. (The Achievement is called "Dropped a Tank on Him.")
• Half-Life 2 is in love with this trope. Between running people over with your air boat, dropping cars on zombies, and running people over with your scout car, you do a lot of this. It's also possible to use the Gravity Gun to punt cars, including your own (if you're not in it at the time), at enemies.
  • Half-Life 2: Episode One also features several sections where you have to move cars with the gravity gun in order to cover up antlion dens.
  • And then there's the car in Episode 2 which has no built in weapons (besides the bumper), but still manages to be far and away the best way to kill the Hunters in the big battle at the end.
  • In at least one point in the series you can drop your car on your enemies with a crane. In fact, there's an achievement/trophy for it.
• Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament III have the Onslaught/Warfare and Vehicle CTF gametypes, all of them which, of course, allow this trope to happen. You have up to 7 to 20 vehicles and, being a competitive game, Car Fu is a very important skill in these games. You can also find some vehicles in a few Assault maps as well in 2004, and a Darkwalker in a Deathmatch level in III.
  • The announcer will yell "Roadkill!" or "Hit and run!" when you run over a player on foot; "Pancake!" in the rare case you manage to drop a vehicle directly on top of an infantryman; and "Vehicular Manslaughter" and "Road Rage" when running over several players in vehicles, without being killed. The Scorpion even has extendable blades designed to chop up infantry as you zoom past.
  • In UT3, the Necris Viper and the Scorpion can be set to self-destruct. If a player aims a vehicle at a given target, sets it to self-destruct, jumps out just as they're about to hit the target, and manages to kill someone with the resulting explosion, the "Bullseye" distinction is granted. Earning Bullseye twenty times grants the "Deathwish" award. Getting roadkill/pancake fifteen times in a match equals a "Road Rampage", ten of which bestow the "Armadillo" award, and killing a player in an aerial dogfight makes you a "Top Gun", twenty of which bestow the "Ace" award. A player who has killed at least one player with each vehicle earns the "Jack of All Trades" award. Destroying certain vehicles with the main gun on the Goliath tank produces a declaration of "Eagle Eye". Many of these can also be found in UT2004.
  • The below examples in Star Wars Battlefront also apply here, from a Manta or Scorpion loaded with spider mines or sticky grenades, to flying a severely damaged aircraft of any sort above a large plateau or cliff face, abandoning it, filling it full of mines, then using its momentum to drop it in the middle of the crowd below. A good way to begin the assault on the enemy powercore when repairs would take too long. Idle this with the player in question also having a redeemer, or having set the time-delay superweapons to fire right before. Works better in larger games as there's more chaos to cloak your move.
  • "Pancake!" is actually fairly easy to get in the right vehicle; the Manta sharply descends if one uses the alt-fire, at least in UT2004. Fly/hover above/over some poor schmuck and hit it. Watch the Manta descend like a meteor and the giant fan blades will pulverize your victim quite thoroughly and incredibly messily. Give yourself bonus points depending on how far up you were when you started the dive, assuming you actually hit your target, given that looking down is not easy with the camera setup.
  • If you want to see this in action, look no further.
• In Starsiege: Tribes, running players over with tanks or the Shrike VTOL fighter is one of the easiest ways to dispatch infantry. In Tribes 2, ramming vehicles usually either blows them up (in the case of Shrike versus Shrike), blows up the smaller one (grav cycle versus tank), or just gets both vehicles stuck (tank versus tank)
• It is a proven fact that one of the best ways to destroy a building in Red Faction : Guerilla, is to drive a car through the building, park it inside, and then blow it up, possibly setting additional explosives to weaken the building structure, or just taking it out with the much-loved Sledgehammer.
  • If you're on ground, the enemy use this as their modus operandi: crash the car into you then get out and start shooting.
• This trope is the heart and soul of the Grand Theft Auto series.
  • Especially fun when you use the car as a projectile. Drive at target in police view (say, said police). Accelerate. Abandon vehicle. If the target doesn't dodge... squish. And no wanted levels! Another less than realistic piece of fun from Vice City was the old standby, the chopper blades of chopping, which I don't think really ticked off the cops in that game, either (they wise up for San Andreas's sequel, though.).
  • Car Fu is particularly helpful in Grand Theft Auto III's "Waka-Gashira Wipeout", in which the player is tasked with eliminating the mark from inside the vehicle. Sure, you can do a drive-by...but it's a lot simple just to throw the Cartel Cruiser at him.
• In Star Wars Battlefront and its sequel, a player can ram ground troops with their vehicles, although this is usually ineffective as most ground vehicles are quite slow. However the swoop bikes can be used to kill an enemy by running them over, although careful timing you will need. The droid AAT, while moving slowly (especially in the first game, with no boost), is rather pointy and will take out clones pretty fast if you ram them.
  • In addition, many players have discovered a tactic in that they can place mines on the front of their vehicles as they will detonate the moment they come into contact with an enemy unit. As a result, ram tactics can result in a spectacular, albeit suicidal if you don't jump out quick enough, victory.
  • If you're really good, you can also kill people by landing on them with starfighters. This is the only consistent method of killing hero characters in Battlefront 1 along with running them down with Speeder Bikes. The other consistent methiod is using a vehicle to drive them into envirnmental death traps, though bombs still work for that, it's just much easier with a vehicles.
  • Sweeping up enemy infantry is particularly potent in levels like "Theed", which afford little room for troops to scatter.
• Eva rides a motorcycle up Ocelot's face the first time they meet on-screen in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. He somehow survives.
  • Time Paradox!
  • Not something one can do in gameplay, but Raiden gets caught at the end of act 2 in MGS4 by the manipulator cords of two of the Gekko mini-metal gears. He proceeds to spin around like a breakdancer and use the 5ton machines as a pair of flails. With his feet. A hugely immersion-breaking CyberNanobotsDidIt moment.
• In the game Total Overdose you can do a Bullet Time-style dive out of a car before it crashes into something, also if you jump out of the car just before an impact, no matter how soft this will be, the car will explode.
• Used in KKND by certain vehicles, the robot faction in the sequel are immune to it.
• Carmageddon. Not just the core of gameplay -- all of gameplay, which made it a very early target for Moral Guardians and for which it was constantly demonized even though it was not a terribly successful game.
• Interstate76
• In the early days of PlanetSide, the most common use for tanks and other heavy vehicles was ramming infantry, which generally instantly splattered them. The hover vehicles were especially notorious for this, with the hover tank Magrider earning the nickname Magmower (and other less savory names). Eventually, this tactic was sharply reduced in effectiveness, to the great dismay of tank drivers everywhere.
  • The New Conglomerate's Vanguard battle tank is still horrifically effective at mowing down infantry, as it can instagib any non-MAX player; combine that with the tank's sheer hugeness and instagibbing 150 mm cannon and you get a giant lawnmower of death.
  • The Terran Republic's Prowler can also squish infantry very nicely, but given its slower speed and dual 100 mm cannons that also kill infantry in one shot but at over twice the rate of fire of the Vanguard's single 150 mm, the driver rarely gets the chance to actually claim any kills.
• Two vehicles, the buggy and the dumptruck in N64's Blast Corps, also work on this same principle. It helps others destroy a little bit faster, but it's the key to beating these vehicles' missions.
• While there's mostly ranged weapons involved, the Twisted Metal series has plenty of Car Fu moments; any vehicle can engage in Car Fu against other vehicles and the occasional pedestrian or enemy driver; there's even damage bonus for T-boning an opponent (colliding with them in their side) in some versions. And certain other vehicles (especially in Twisted Metal Black and not just Darkside) have Special Weapons that emphasize Car Fu. For example, Yellowjacket's omnidirectional spike launcher has a secondary attack mode where turbo-ramming an opponent with them deployed but not fired will increase the collision damage. Grasshopper's special has her launch into the air to 'squash' other vehicles. Axel's hidden secondary Special Weapon retracts him inside his torture wheels, turning it into a single, humongous tire that decides it doesn't need be on a Monster Truck to crush cars and people. And let's not forget Mr. Slam (Exactly What It Says on the Tin -a modified backhoe), the only vehicle that can Car Fu with a grappling attack. Over and over.
  • Though any large vehicle does acceptable damage when ramming smaller vehicles, this is Twisted Metal's Darkside's raison d'être. You even get damage bonuses for hitting them with the side of your truck, or the back of their vehicle with YOUR back.
• Although no damage is dealt, you can use collisions to throw off enemy aim in Battle Tanx, especially once the flippy hovertank is introduced.
• Battlezone, the PC game update anyway, features hovertanks galore, some stupid fast. About the only advantage to an infantryman who's lost his vehicle is that he can attempt to use the sniper rifle to shoot the other guy out of the vehicle before the big squish.
• In Mass Effect, one of the best ways of dealing with Geth Armature and Collosus walking tanks is to knock them down by ramming them with your Mako APC. An even better way is to park said Mako on top of the felled walker and dismount to punch it full of holes.
  • Another example can be found later on when the Mako is driven through a miniature mass relay in a cutscene. It plows through a couple of Geth mooks before stopping.
• In the trailer for the newest Tekken installment, Jin Kazama uses motorcycle-fu against some of his dad's bodyguards before Kazuya slices the bike in half with a heel drop.
• In Battlefield 2142, one notable tactic for annoying the hell out of enemy infantry is to approach them in a jeep, beep the horn, and then run them down when they turn to investigate the sound. This tactic also extends to killing tanks and APCs by loading a jeep full of plastic explosives, driving full throttle toward the vehicle, jumping out, and hitting the detonator. This is known, for good reason, as "jihad jeeping".
  • The tactic runs all the way back to Battlefield 1942, where using light vehicles as suicide bombs against tanks proved to be a viable tactic.
  • Some servers don't like you doing it though. They usually put a warning up front: "No jihading please!"
  • In Battlefield 3, this tactic comes back with the c4-packed jeep.
    • Jeeps are also used to grief friendly players. Since vehicles still have momentum after you jump out, many a jet-camper has died an unexpected death.
    • C4-packed skid-steer loaders (a vehicle added in Back to Karkand) may become quite popular now after this TV ad for the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo5-Xp Q 5 Jkk
• Opening scene of Mega Man X 2 has X riding a hoverbike, jumping off of it and it crashing into a mechaniloid.
• Midway games' Wheelman centered its entire gameplay around improbable "Car Combat"
• Like the Command and Conquer and Star Wars Battlefront examples, certain vehicles in Star Wars: Empire at War can crush infantry, or in the case of the AT-AT, small vehicles. Hover vehicles cannot, but any tracked vehicle or walker can. Averted, however, because usually troops and the T2-B light tanks will move out of the way. The AT-AT can also crush low walls, but will normally just go around them. Used straight, however, with the TIE Mauler, a light tank for the Empire whose main attack (despite 3 laser cannons) is to just run over infantry. With the Mauler, infantry will not move out of the way automatically.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, an easy way of taking out enemy Mooks is by simply running into them while riding on Epona in the midst of a gallop.
  • An even better Zelda example is how in both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, not only can you run into enemies with Epona, but while riding her you're invincible.
• In Super Smash Bros Brawl, Wario can ram into opponents with his motorcycle, dealing damage and knockback based on its velocity (Potentially up to the point of being a One-Hit Kill due to to an amusing glitch). After he falls/jumps off, the motorcycle can be thrown around by anybody, and after it explodes from the abuse, the tires can be weaponized, as well.
• In Jak II, one easy way to carve some health off KG Blast Bots was to steal a vehicle, gun the engine, accelerate to maximum, and jump off at just the right time to drop the flying car/bike onto the Blast Bot's swollen metal head, before shooting the frak out of it with your collection of guns. Then came the gun-toting vehicles of Jak 3 and Jak X...
• Dead Rising features cars as the most powerful zombie-killing tools in the mall. They're more or less required if you want to get Zombie Genocider - 53,594 splatters on your windshield in less than 6 hours!
  • Promotional trailers for the sequel show Chuck Greene heading into a zombie mob riding a dirt bike -- with running chainsaws strapped to the handlebars.
• The superhero RTS/RPG Freedom Force when it was first released, prior to a patch, had involuntary NPC Car Fu. If a character ran into the street in front of a car, it would hit him, and knock him away a little bit... then hit him again before he got up, knocking him away a little bit... then hit him again before he got up, knocking him away a little bit, and so on, until either the car turned, or the character died.
  • In the second game, Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, you can easily bludgeon someone to death with a car, hell, it's necessary to complete some maps without taking advantage of El Diablo's brokenness.
• There are a couple examples of this in the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, on the very first level, an absurdly MASSIVE semi-truck tries to flatten Sonic into road kill. One wonders how this truck got around the sharp corners without smashing the buildings. Mind, this truck was operated by G.U.N. -- the military! All just to squish Sonic.
  • And it comes back in Sonic Generations, same stage and this time, it's trying to squash TWO Sonics!
    • Did we mention the truck's now equipped with saw blades and rocket boosters?
  • In Shadow the Hedgehog, you can do this. Convertible, motorcycle, jeep, or Humvee, you can do this.
    • Some levels have large objects that Shadow can flip over. In the first level, the burning city of Westopolis, the large object in question is a fire truck. Even better, Shadow flips over said objects with one hand. The end result is a foul-mouthed amnesiac furry black hedgehog that can flip over a fire truck with one hand while holding an assault rifle in the other. Ultimate Life Form much?
• MadWorld has a motorcycle example. Jack has a Bloodbath Challenge where he spins his motorcycle around to knock aliens into various deathtraps. The boss fight in that same level involves both of you on motorcycles, with the final QTE having you smash your motorcycles into each other to try to beat the other's ride into submission.
• You get the Road Rage Execution Style in The Godfather: The Game the first time you run over an enemy gangster with a car, while the Traffic Accident Execution Style is collected by shoving an enemy so that someone else runs him over for you.
• The methods of travel used by the protagonists of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep might be counted as a rare inversion—since Gummi Ships haven't been invented yet, the characters get around by use of a hoverbike, a hoverboard (?) and a glider resembling Nausicaa's, all of which are actually non-standard forms of their Keyblades.
• The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games have several examples of these. One of them in Modern Warfare 2 is a pickup controlled by Shadow company running into a minigun-equipped Ultranationalist Humvee.
• Occurs during a cut scene in Red Steel 2, when the villain Payne tries to run over the player with a tanker truck. The game then starts a series of quick-time events where you have to fight Payne while avoid being thrown from the runaway truck.
• In Left 4 Dead 2 You drive a stock car through a plate-glass window... and get quite a number of Zombie skulls jammed in your tires.
• In the laserdisc arcade game Road Blaster (later released for the Sega CD as Road Avenger, and not to be confused with the later Road Blasters by Atari Games), the player is a man taking revenge on a gang that ran him and his newlywed wife off the road, killing her. He achieves this by taking a surprisingly durable Cool Car and returning the favor over the course of a single day and night, up to and including ramming a helicopter while jumping a canyon.
• For video games, the Ur Example would have to be the controversial 1976 (yes, you read that right) Arcade Game Death Race by Exidy. Apparently inspired by the movie Death Race 2000, the game involved running over human sounding "gremlins" to turn them into grave markers and thereby score points within a time limit. Word has it that several of the machines were destroyed as a result.
• The Hornet car in Fighters Megamix is a literal example. The car stands on its back tires, and boxes with its front ones.
• Early in Devil Survivor 2, the protagonists run into Dubhe, who is impervious to all of your attacks. The level at first seems to be an "escape" level, but the escape is blocked off before you can reach it. Then Daichi runs a truck off of a bridge and into Dubhe, turning most of its immunities into weaknesses and taking out about half of its HP in one shot.
• In the later Mechwarrior games (the simulator mech combat game set in the BattleTech universe), ramming an enemy mech with your mech does contact damage based on how fast you're going. It's entirely possible to ram an enemy mech to death, then have them blow up in your face. In Mechwarrior Living Legends, it's possible to do Car Fu with tanks and jet fighters - which until recently, caused the rammed vehicle to go flying off into the distance, spinning wildly.
• Dwarf Fortress has recently implemented minecarts. The fanbase have already begun producing minecartillery tracks to fire them at incoming hostiles.
• In the first Yakuza, Psycho for Hire Goro Majima literally crashes the party at the Shangri-La soapland with a truck.

Majima: LET'S FUCK THIS SHIT UUUUUUP!!

• Promotional material for the remake of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis shows one scene where Jill can try to ram into Nemesis with a car.

Web Comics

• Used by the year "MMX" against the death in this Sinfest strip
• According to Nobody Scores, the car is a legitimate weapon in a Drunken Master's arsenal. Which Jane Doe goes on to prove.

Web Animation

• The machinima series Red vs. Blue has a sequence where the Blue team inadvertently remote-controls the Red team's Warthog jeep, causing it to pin Sarge to a wall. The Reds later use the same vehicle in the penultimate episode of the Blood Gulch Chronicles to ram over an army of time-cloned Agent Wyomings.
  • The series makes its intro to CGI in Revelations by having Grif drive the Warthog straight through a wall. He then barrels into Agent Washington with his ride.
• This Cyanide & Happiness short.

Web Original

• The Everyman HYBRID crew try to run down the Slender Man in "Ashen Waste". They get teleported back to their basement for their troubles.
• Akiko Yamaguchi from Battle Fantasia Project, by the time the story starts, had resorted to using cement trucks as a standard weapon against the Monster of the Week.
• In the Whateley Universe, Aquerna was once rescued from a (superpowered) bully by Skids, who spun out a snowmobile just right to smack the guy in the butt and launch him headfirst into a snowbank.

Western Animation

• In an episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man, Hammerhead's unnamed chauffeur engages in some Car Fu against (especially) Silver Sable. Even earlier in the series, Hammerhead's car door is used to knock the Green Goblin off his glider.
• Subverted in Transformers Animated. A mysterious car that was probably Blurr ramped off a highway bridge to crash into Blitzwing (a jet), but Blitzwing pulled up and just narrowly avoid crashing into him. It may be a Double Subversion considering the fact that pulling up made him crash into a building.
  • In an episode of Transformers Prime, a terrorist organization, MECH, is trying to steal a nuclear device from an unarmed group of civilian vehicles. It doesn't end up so well for them.
• Lois Lane saved a weakened Superman from Metallo this way in Superman: The Animated Series.
• In "The Big Chill" episode of The Batman, Bats uses remote Car Fu to bring Mr. Freeze down; the car misses him and then Batman uses the jets on the car to melt Freeze.

Freeze: Two words, Batman: Snow Tires.
(cue activation of jets)

• • A later episode sees the technique used on Metallo to save Superman.

Metallo: I'm not moving an inch.
Batman: Your choice.
(cue Batmobile driving into Metallo)

• The Question's final appearance in Justice League Unlimited features him running over Darkseid's minions with his car.
• The Venture Brothers
  • Brock Samson does it often.
  • In "Dia de Los Dangerous!", he drives his Dodge Charger into the Monarch's lair, rolling over the Monarch's henchmen casually. The best part is that he uses the windshield wipers to clear away all the blood. Earlier on in the episode, Brock is actually knocked out by the Monarch's Henchmen running into him at full speed with the Monarch-Mobile. After being revived by Dr. Venture, he then proceeds to drop his Charger out of an airplane into the Monarch's lair, where the aforementioned massacre ensues.
  • In "Return to Spider-Skull Island", he has the robot H.E.L.P.eR. drive his car into a window, onto the episode's villain, while he himself is tied up to the car's roof.
  • In "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills", a villain attempts to drive over Brock with her car, which only makes him madder. Brock's counter attack is too awesome to be described in mere words. To give some idea; she hits him at full speed. Which is exactly what Brock wants....
  • It's later revealed that the first attempt The Monarch made on Venture's life under his super-villain persona involved driving his car all the way through the Venture compound and into the lab, Blues Brothers style. Had he not gotten out of the car and gotten his ass kicked by Venture's then bodyguard, he probably could have succeeded.
• Subverted in Stroker and Hoop. C.A.R.R. tried to drive through a building's wall to make a dramatic rescue, but as Stroker pointed out it was reinforced concrete and he failed to go through.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has Frankie bash the doors down with the bus in the Halloween special after she has trouble finding the right keys. That and there was a creepy man with a hook...
• In Code Lyoko, starting Season 2 Ulrich is fond of using his Overbike to ram against XANA's monsters, destroying the smaller ones or pushing a Megatank into the Digital Sea.
  • And in episode "A Bad Turn", William uses Car Fu in the real world against a materialized Krabe in the Factory. After slamming into the Krabe, it is snagged by a rope linked to the car, which is then thrown down the elevator shaft, dragging the monster along.
  • The earliest example of this trope in Code Lyoko occurs in Episode 4, "Log Book". XANA attempts to use a bus to blow up an oil refinery.
• Disney's Doug: "Ow He hit me in the nose with a car! Why did he do that?" "Because he's pure evil."
• Glenn freakin' Quagmire of all people does this in "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q.", when after being seemingly choked to death by his sister's abusive boyfriend, Jeff, he gets into his car, to Jeff's suprise, and squashes Jeff against a tree, killing him.
• In Lilo and Stitch Stitch throws a VW at someone.

Real Life

• Suffice it to say that armoured fighting vehicle crews refer to infantry as "Crunchies" for a reason.
• During some engagements in World War II, like the Battle of Kursk, Russian tank crews would sometimes ram German Tiger tanks. The hundred-ton pileup would disable both vehicles, but it was a worthwhile tradeoff as the Russians had a lot more tanks to spare—and the Tiger far outclassed the Russian T-34 in a head-to-head fight anyway.
• The 1997 street brawl in Amarillo, Texas resulting in the death of Brian Deneke is a particularly tragic (or infuriating) example of Car Fu.
• A police officer in Arizona, having to stop a suspect firing wildly into the air and threatening the neighborhood, decided that his patrol car would be more useful than his service firearm. It worked.
• Some crooks use cars to break into stores. It's rarely very effective, as it alerts everyone to the crime immediately.
  • It depends on how busy the area is at the time, and how quickly they can grab and run...
  • In the late 90s, at least (unsure if it's still as prevalent) ram-raiding was endemic in Sydney and Melbourne. The perpetrators would typically use two [stolen] cars: an old tank such as an XD Ford Falcon to do the ramming, and a fast getaway car. The getaway car was often the newly-introduced Subaru WRX, a car that would leave police pursuit cars of the time standing, under any and all conditions...
  • The phenomenon dates back to the late 1970s, according to The Other Wiki, and was invented in Belfast of all places; Cosworth-engined Ford Sierras were the preferred getaway car in the UK for a while.
• During his June 8, 2008 knife rampage Tomohiro Kato first drove a truck into the crowd, and only then proceeded to knife people down.
• Marvin Heemeyer covered a bulldozer in armor and proceeded to drive through a Colorado town, destroying everything in his path. Police tried to combat the "killdozer" with an earthscraper, but it was easily brushed aside. Amazingly, there were no (bystander or police) injuries sustained, although he did cause several million dollars worth of damage.
  • A close second would be of a similar deed done by Shawn Nelson, who rampaged in San Diego with a stolen M60 Patton main battle tank.
• For the Ramming Always Works version of this trope, when facing a roadblock made of vehicles it's recommended you aim your car at the boot of the vehicle (not the heavy engine compartment) and push through at slow speed.
• Related example: A livestock and antique vehicle rally a couple of years ago^[when?] featured "Tractor Football" as a top-billed event. Whether it was some kind of Stealth Parody or if playing football on your tractor is Serious Business in the depths of rural Northamptonshire is a matter for conjecture.
• Bumper cars, anyone?
• Demolition Derby. Take a bunch of rednecks who have modified the hell out of some old junkers, and put them in a pit where they intentionally ram one another. Last car running is the winner.
• The popularity of car bombs (suicide or otherwise) probably falls into this category.
• A rare female mass murderer, Priscilla Joyce Ford sped down several sidewalks in Reno, Nevada, killing seven and maiming over twenty. During interrogation, she boasted about her desire to kill at least seventy-five.
• Similarly, in 1973 Olga Hepnarová borrowed a truck and deliberately ran it into people waiting at a tram-stop, killing eight; she became the last woman to be executed in the former Czechoslovakia.
• In cases of people who are extremely Anxious about driving, their anxiety often stems from the fear that they will accidentally kill someone.

Superpowered Car Fu variant

Anime and Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
  • Dio Brando effortlessly throws two cars at Jotaro in their climactic battle. Jotaro later counters with Tower Fu.
  • Dio Brando also effortlessly tries to squish Jotaro under an oil tanker. While time was frozen, no less.
  • This is one of Dio's gigs, really. His typical Genre Savvy response is to freeze time, shower the opponent with knives thrown during the time freeze so they hit all at once, and then to make certain the guy stays down, flatten him with a steamroller.
    • And then listens for JoJo's breathing... and then his heartbeat. And then sets out to decapitate the "dead" body with a Stop sign. He's one thorough son of a b**** . As dangerously genre-savvy as they can get without actually winning.
• Despite it being unintentional, One Piece goes the extra mile by using Train Fu to take down a giant.
• More recently, we can see Little Oars Jr., the giant, using one of the government's battleships to open a breach through one of marineford's walls.
• The illusionary Evangeline of Mahou Sensei Negima against Negi in his Battle in the Center of the Mind: kicking the Chao Bao Zi Dining-Car Restaurant right into him—after he barely escaped its falling frame when she had thrown it into the air with one of her earlier attacks.
• Being both a gratuitous user of Improvised Weapons and an individual with Super Strength, Durarara!!'s Shizuo Heiwajima has done his fair share of this.
• In Yu Yu Hakusho Sniper has Improbable Aiming Skills and can mark opponents so objects hone in on them. Yusuke isn't worried as he is able to avoid rocks and knives. Then he sees a truck heading for him.

Comic Books

• Classic Superman stuff. The classic image of Superman smashing a green car into someone, as well as the Infinite Crisis repeat of Superman from Earth-2 beating down regular Superman with a similar-looking green car.
  • Superman tries to pull this with a ship on The Parasite in one JLA comic.
  • Also, any homage to the cover of his first appearance, Action Comics #1. In that case he's shaking the villains out of their car and smashing it.
  • The only bright spot in the otherwise unfortunate Hush arc was Jim Lee's depiction of Supes' Street Cleaner Fu (against Batman, no less).
• The Authority: The Midnighter realizes that the Evil Overlord's Evil Tower of Ominousness is a gigantic Mook Maker, and since The Authority's heavy hitters (and Swift) are all busy trying to save LA from the mooks that have already been dispatched there, it falls to Midnighter to take out the tower, which he does by crashing into it with the team's spaceship.
  • He's been on the receiving end, too. On one occasion, a pissed off bad guy challenges Midnighter to dodge a hurled car. Instead, Midnighter jumps, tucks, and rolls right through the car's windows. His verdict, as the car crashes into a heap behind him: "Dodging is for amateurs."
• Brit #7 contains several variations of this during a fight against the Body Snatcher inhabiting Invincible. First, Brit looks like he's going to crash into the Body Snatcher, but instead drives past it and uses the car to pull a building onto it. When the Body Snatcher's recovered from that, then Brit crashes into it, and to keep the onslaught going, his friend uses her teleportation powers to drop every car on the block on its head. The Body Snatcher maintains control just long enough to pick up a car and hit Brit over the head with it.
• Writers tend to forget this, but Spider-Man is strong enough to throw Cadillacs. ^{[dead link]}
  • They remembered this in—of all places—the videogame adaptation of the first movie. It kills your agility, but you can hoist up cars. One of the more annoying levels takes place in a multi-storey garage. Beaning Oscorp's little spider-drones with a handy car is very satisfying... as is doing it to the Green Goblin himself on the bridge.
  • At one point, Doc Ock tries to crush Spidey with a pair of cars he picked up from the street. Spidey dodges by jumping in a side window, notices the key is still in the ignition and proceeds to ram the car into Ock.
    • The second movie has Doc Ock throwing a car at Pete and Mary Jane's date, only being saved by the Spider Sense. (Although as someone pointed out, it wasn't a wise thing to do.)
  • Who can forget him sending a semi on collision course with the Juggernaut? Didn't work, though.
• Ms. Marvel does it so often it has acquired Memetic Mutation status (at least on Scans_Daily) most famously perhaps using one to slap a mind-controlled Stature.
  • Yet she was surprised when Arachnne did it to her.
• In Miracleman when Miracleman fights Kid Miracleman and they end up amongst the refugees from London, he throws a car at him.

Miracleman: I'd like to say the car was empty, but that would be a lie.

• During Civil War, Hercules used Oil Tanker Fu on Iron Man.
  • Later in his own series, he employs jeep-fu on three dark elves and a troll.
• Empowered: In Volume 1, the title... heroine(?) tries lifting a car to lay a smackdown on a monster, but ends up: a) accidentally ripping the bumper off first, b) spraining a muscle in her back, c) not fazing the monster any, and d) causing lots of colateral damage. And naturally, the owners of the car weren't too pleased to find out what happened. Probably one of the few instances where this was addressed.
• In Ultimate Spider-Man, this is how Peter finally gets the upper hand against Norman Osborn - Mary Jane steals a Semi and rams it at full speed into the Goblin, incapacitating it for a few moments. When the Green Goblin comes to, Peter lifts the Rig over his head and beats him with it until it explodes, ending the fight.

Films -- Animation

• Tossing around motorcycles is basically Loz's way of fighting in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
• The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible takes out Syndrome by throwing his convertible at him.
• In the movie Lilo and Stitch, Stitch whacks one of the villains with a Volkswagen while quipping, "Blue punchbuggy! No punch back!"

Films -- Live-Action

• In Jumper, Griffin invokes Car Fu with his teleportation abilities to drive at a constant high speed and be unimpeded by traffic (he just jumps the car around). He later invokes Double-Decker Bus Fu by jumping said double-decker bus from a busy urban street straight into his desert lair in an attempt to kill Roland.
• Another hand-held version: The One, with motorcycles. Jet Li's villain character picks up two motorcycles, one in each hand, and smashes them together with a poor cop between them.
• Fantastic Four: The Thing chucks a car at Dr. Doom.

Car owner: The clutch sticks!
Thing: It's not gonna be a problem. (toss)

• In the 2008 Iron Man film, Iron Monger grabs a motorcycle as its driving down the highway and smacks Iron Man with it. Motorcyle Fu, more specifically, but Tony still had a van drive over him only moments beforehand.
  • In a deleted scene from the same fight, Stane has Tony on the ropes until Rhodey drives into him with Tony's earlier heavily-featured Audi, knocking him over into a hydrogen-fueled bus, which then explodes.
• In the 2008 The Incredible Hulk film, the Hulk turns a police car into a pair of boxing gloves to pound the Abomination into submission.
  • This is taken from the video game that actually came out well before the movie, as seen below.
• The end of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: Albrecht drags an entire fleet of sunken derelicts out of the ocean by their anchors, swings them around in the air, and flattens an army with them.
• In X Men the Last Stand, Magneto uses his magnetic powers to throw cars (set on fire by Pyro's powers) at the US Army.

Tabletop Games

• The Nosferatu from Vampire: The Masquerade are known for using their Super Strength to wield and throw ridiculous objects as weapons. Because of this their clanbook contains rules for wielding such things as gates, cars and 40-tons trucks (just don't bother with the last one unless you don't have a choice, okay?). The most ironic part of this is that the game has no rules for actual Car Fu. If you crash a 40-tons truck into a werewolf at 120 km/h, the gamemaster just has to make up what happens.
  • The latter problem lead to a fully outfitted system for Car Fu in the nWoD, including statistics for vehicles, damage based on speed and weight of both "participants", and examples of when Car Fu is a really bad idea (using a small compact to try to ram a Death Raging Werewolf, for example).

Video Games

• Captain Falcon's Final Smash, the Blue Falcon in Super Smash Bros.. Brawl.
  • Also Wario's motorcycle. After he's done running fighters over with it, any character can pick it up and throw it.
    • Wario Man's bike is, like the Blue Falcon, a One-Hit Kill.
  • Also, in an example of Tank Fu, the Star FOX characters' Final Smash summons a Landmaster Tank, which you can drive around the stage, running over your opponents and blasting them with the cannon. Pro Tip: The Landmaster can also carry opponents off the top of the screen to knock them out.
  • If you want to extend it to flying vehicles, you could include Olimar's Final Smash, or at least the end of it when his ship crashes back onto the stage, the Warp Star, and the Dragoon.
• For a more literal Car Fu (or Motorcycle Fu), see Devil May Cry 3. Beating up mooks with a motorcycle while swinging it around as a weapon!
  • Too bad it's only available during a cut-scene...
• Various "telekinesis" style attacks in The World Ends With You are extremely effective if there's a car or SUV in the battle you can chuck at The Noise.
  • Joshua's primary form of attack (when he's not in God Mode, anyway) is to conjure cars and other large metal objects to drop on opponents.
• Some of the stronger characters in Freedom Force can pick up cars to throw them at their enemies.
• The swinging cars around version is a major gameplay feature in The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, to the point where turning vehicles into more practical weapons is one of the big selling points of the game. Car fists, anyone?
• The Transformers: The Game game deals with a fair amount of car-throwing.
  • Does it count as car throwing if it's in robot mode when you throw it?
• City of Heroes arms the giant monster Jurassik with a club made of two rusted saf38 girders with a car wedged inbetween. Smush.
  • The "Propel" power of Gravity Control, which conjures and hurls a random large object, occasionally summons a car.
• The Tank from Left 4 Dead can utilize Car Fu by PUNCHING the vehicle in question towards the unfortunate Survivor that has attracted its ire. Being struck by a car soaring through the air is an instant incapacitation on any difficulty level. The Tank can also throw enormous chunks of masonry as well as cars.
  • Tank + car + alleyway = "survivor bowling"
  • Any other similar large objects like forklifts and dumpsters can also cause instant knockdown.
• In the gore extravaganza video game Prototype, various vehicles can be used in imaginative ways. The ever-present cars of New York City can be used both as projectiles or literal battering rams if the player keeps the item held when moving through a crowd of civilians, enemies or even other cars, knocking everything out of the way. Significant upgrades to throwing damage are available and the game even provides hints on how to most effectively deal damage with thrown objects. It is very possible to finish the game with cars as your main weapon.
  • Also, you can kill a helicopter with a car
• In Crackdown, not only can you run gangsters down with your vehicle, but by bulking up your strength, you can progressively throw a car door, a car, and a semi at enemies. There's an achievement gained for killing gangsters with a giant bronze globe, a la Atlas.
• A Giant Monster wielding a car on a girder as a giant hammer in City of Heroes? You bet Jurassik! Sadly, Player Characters don't get to wield cars of their own. (That's one of the few things Champions Online has on 'em.)
• In Wild ARMs 4, a member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad is a demon who has complete mastery over space and can thus teleport tanks above your characters and drop it on their heads.
• In the original Command & Conquer, you were able to run over Nod Attack Cycles with GDI Medium Tanks.
• Yukari Yakumo takes this to a whole new level with one of her spellcards in the Touhou fighting games, when she literally summons a TRAIN out of nowhere to hit her opponent.
• War of the Monsters naturally features Car Fu, being a giant monster brawl. Just don't try punching an enemy with a fuel tanker in your fist...
• Plants vs. Zombies has the Final Boss, a zombie in a Humongous Zombie Mecha. Once his health drops below half, he gains an attack where he drops a winnebago onto six of your plants, instantly squashing them.
• Final Fantasy XIII: Sazh can command Brynhildr to transform into an extra-hot ride to utilize this form of combat, especially if it involves exhaust pipe-delivered burnination.
• A mainstay of the Mario Kart games. Bumping your opponent off the road and into trouble is part and parcel of the game, especially with the different vehicle/driver weight classes in the later titles. Several of the power-ups play the trope even straighter: the Bullet Bill rockets the player further ahead, knocking aside anyone it hits, while the Mega Mushroom turns the player into a giant who squashes flat anyone he runs over.
• SuperTuxKart. Aside from bumping the opponents, the gift boxes include weapons such as bowling balls and cupcakes, which can be thrown to the opponents.
• In Phantom Brave, one of the weapons that can be equipped is a minecart. Some skills involve riding a ghost train through the target.
• The main gameplay of Taito's Chase HQ. Nothing stopping criminals with vehicles.
• She Hulk's level 3 super move in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 involves grabbing a car out of nowhere and throwing it on top of her opponent. Naturally, it explodes.
• In Ultimate Spider-Man, the first boss fight (not counting the prequel fight with Venom) is against the Rhino, and ends in a car lot. Naturally, he throws cars at you.

Rhino: Let's see how you deal with a car upside the head!

• Vehicular homicide is one of the safer ways to kill people in Saints Row 2. The "FUZZ" minigame even keeps track of how many enemies you run over and starts penalizing your score if you do it too often. On the other hand, enemies or even civilians can also do serious damage with their own cars, so be careful going too far on food.
• The third Mini Boss of Contra: Hard Corps throws cars at your character. Thankfully, it's pathetically easy to avoid, as long as you stay on the left side of the screen.
• Once you get the first telekinesis upgrade in Destroy All Humans! 2, you can pick up a car telekinetically and bounce it against someone's head. This won't kill them until the car turns out to be a Pinto and explodes, but when this does happen, it's usually fatal. (Although this can lead to some Fridge Logic where sitting a ton and a half of metal on someone isn't fatal until it blows up.) With the second upgrade, you can move to Tank Fu.
• Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune is infamous for this when players start playing dirty (i.e. ramming other players off, or punting traffic cars around), while it's the staple gameplay in the lesser known Wangan Midnight R.

Web Animation

• In Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction, The Meta first demonstrates its super strength by throwing the Red team's Warthog jeep at Grif.
• In Red vs. Blue: Revelation, Grif owned Wash with the same jeep while half way out of his seat and taking fire.

Web Comics

• Antihero for Hire:

Baron Diamond: Johnny says you win a car!

• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Substitute a motorcycle for a car, and you get this.
• Captain Broadband threw car at Imaginary Cat. It was unsuccessful. Innocent bystander standing in car's path at time loses 50HP. Innocent bystander is destroyed.
• Panthera's Leo and Pardus use their earth- and air-powers to throw a car at Oosterhuis. It is glorious.
• In When She Was Bad, Gail has broken an opponent's arms only for them to quickly heal. Ben suggests they take off—a fight like this will be unproductive. Gail has a different idea.

Web Original

• "Captain Hammer... threw a car at my head."

Western Animation

• Villains will frequently use cars as weapons in Justice League. In one episode, Lobo took this to the extreme by burying Kalibak under a veritable mountain of cars. He's about to add another to the pile, when Hawkgirl admonishes him with "He's beaten. Put the car down!" Lobo mutters, "I was gonna..." and throws the car into a building. Also, one time Superman smacked around Captain Marvel with a bus... and when that wasn't enough, resorted to Bank Vault Fu.
  • Heroes use them, too. The Big Seven came to fight Luthor/Braniac in a Javelin, one of the JL's shuttles for earth-to-Watchtower transport. When they're starting to lose, Wonder Woman wields it just as one would its namesake.
  • Don't forget Batman's satellite fu at the end of the "Starcrossed" arc.
  • Later in Justice League Unlimited: it's a good thing Hawk and Wonder Woman are Made of Iron. In its debut episode, the Annihilator decides to smack them both with a tank. Ow.
• The Simpsons had a death-match between Homer and a biker that eventually ended with them each picking up a motorcycle and dueling with them like swords.

Biker: We both knew it would come to this!

• Teen Titans: The not-yet-assimilated Starfire drop-kicks a car at Robin.
  • It's evidently not as effective in Japan due to the absence of gas guzzlers.
• In the Transformers Generation 1 episode "A Plague of Insecticons", Optimus Prime yells "Megatron, catch!" and throws an oil tanker at his foe.
  • There is also an episode where the MacGuffin weapon has froze all the Autobots in vehicle mode. They prove to be not as defenseless as the Decepticons thought.
  • An example of being used not as weapons but in combat, Optimus Prime uses two Autobots in their car modes as rollerskates so their rubber tires will ground out Shrapnel's lightning blasts.

Real Life

• A variant of Car-fu happened in China when a guy used his bicycle to knock down two muggers on a motor scooter.

1. ↑ Pursuit Immobilization Technique or similar: whacking your car into the side of the back of a car you are pursuing to make it spin out and force it to stop.