Eject! Eject! Eject!

This will flash somewhere on your instrument panel (or will be shouted at you in dialogue by another character over your com) whenever your jet fighter, Space Fighter, Humongous Mecha, etc. sustains critical damage and is about to crash or come apart on you. Better hope your Ejection Seat is working properly or you may be screwed... not like that, you pervert. It is frequently accompanied by a loud alarm, siren, or buzzer.

Outside of video games, expect to see the trope title used as a stock phrase when the Ace Pilot needs to bail out.

Not to be confused with the usual utterance of Soundwave.

Examples of Eject! Eject! Eject! include:

Anime and Manga

• Inverted in Code Geass. The Knightmare Frames automatically eject the cockpit block when dealt crippling damage; only time we see bright flashing messages is when the pilot can't eject because of a system malfunction.

Film

• Seen at least twice in 80s action film Iron Eagle.
• Star Wars:
  • This is done in dialogue in A New Hope, when other pilots tell Porkins to eject.
  • Notably, Imperial TIE pilots are not given this option in the standard model.
    • One might wonder how ejecting themselves into space might help anyone.
      • According to the manual, their flight suits contain a force field system to keep in atmosphere.
        • This would still be of limited use when ejecting over an enemy vessel (such as the Death Star) that your partners are in the process of trying to blow up.
• Another dialogue example in Buckaroo Banzai. During the jet car test one of the mission controllers tells Buckaroo to eject.
• Maverick to Goose in Top Gun: "Eject! Eject! Eject!" It's actually military protocol, but expecting your vehicle to tell you when to eject is a bit much.
• This instruction given in dialogue to a pilot who is Coming in Hot in the film version of The Hunt for Red October.
• Parodied in Hot Shots. When a plane is going down, the pilot screams "Eject! EJECT!" Then a videotape pops out.
• Parodied in Superman Returns: Superman saves the crashing jumbo jet after freeing the space shuttle it was carrying, and brings the jet down in the middle of a football stadium. After it has safely touched down, we see the pilots dazed in the cockpit, as a mechanical voice warns them to "fly up...fly up...fly up..."

Literature

• Since it's a series about pilots, this happens very often in the X-Wing Rogue Squadron series. Hobbie Klivian in particular gets it a lot.

Video Games

• In Wing Commander, a light labeled "EJECT" will flash accompanied by a siren sound if your ship is damaged so badly that one additional hit would most likely destroy it, prompting you to press Ctrl+E to eject from your ship. May stop flashing when your shields recharge. However, it's not uncommon to be destroyed anyway by a volley of enemy fire which destroys you faster than the EJECT warning can react, taking you from good shape to death almost instantly.
  • And in Wing Commander Prophecy, doing so will get you captured by the new alien threat, leading to a caption informing you of a literal Fate Worse Than Death and game over.
• Overly expensive videogame Steel Battalion combined this with a Roguelike twist. If you didn't eject in time and died with your mech, your game data was erased.
• Mechwarrior and Mech Commander series feature it often in cinematics:
  • Mech Commander 1: The Hunchback finds itself on the wrong end of a Mad Cat's long range missiles and ER Large Lasers. With smoke rising in the cockpit and alarms sounding, the pilot gives the triple call over the comm as he straps down and hits the lever.
  • Mechwarrior 3: Catapult vs. Atlas. Atlas winning handily-but too close to survive the resulting core breach. Seeing the characteristic flash, the Atlas pilot ejects.
  • Mechwarrior 5: Warhammer vs. Atlas. In a close match, the Warhammer loses. The mech computer advises ejection, and the pilot complies. Unfortunately for him, where the other two got to eject inside armored cockpit modules, he got the standard seat-only ride. This doesn't help when his 'mech explodes directly beneath him, and the fireball rises to meet him.
• Escape Velocity starts playing a loud klaxon sound when your ship is doomed.
• In Battlefield 2 the bots will helpfully tell you to bail out of two place aircraft if they are critically damaged. Even if the damage is survivable. It's definitely not annoying.
  • More straightly, if your vehicle is at very low health, an alarm will sound. Usually it's a good idea to bail out, because your vehicle has probably caught fire and will soon explode.

Real Life

• This device mentioned in the Superman Returns example actually exists. It is a radio altimeter that sounds a klaxon in a variety of situations such as excessive height loss rate and terrain proximity (the well known TERRAIN! PULL UP! warning). It would probably be going berserk in this situation.
• As for Real Life, if the vehicle's computer system was advanced enough to be able to know the situation is truly hopeless and tell the pilot to eject, it would probably just activate it for him.
  • Maybe, maybe not: A pilot might decide that continuing his mission for as long as possible is more important than ejecting, or he might want to slow down or make other adjustments before ejecting, even if doing so means delaying beyond when the computer might determine is the best time to eject.
    • Pilots have died because they decided to ride their exploding jet down and try to steer it towards an empty field instead of buildings or a crowd of spectators.
    • Best option in this case would be to make it so the pilot can give a verbal command to 'agree' with the computer on the ejection, faster then punching a button, avoids malfunctions sending pilots out of perfectly good airplanes and gives them the option of riding it out.