Ramprovisation

Man is only separated from heaven by that which he will not ramp.

—Dr McNinja, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

A character operating a vehicle is in a tight spot; there's something blocking the path, someplace too high and/or far to reach, etc. What to do? Look for something that would be remotely be used as a ramp, or just build one, to perform a Ramp Jump.

A Sub-Trope of Theme Park Landscape. Not to be confused with Use Your Head, which covers improvised ramming.

Examples of Ramprovisation include:

Anime and Manga

• Black Lagoon: Rock uses a derelict ship to ramp the titular boat, then fire a torpedo directly into an attack helicopter.
• Happens in Highschool of the Dead.
• In Venus Wars, Hiro is being chased by police and surrounded. So he lifts the monobike onto the side of the highway guard rail to make an escape.

Fan Fics

• In Kenya Starflight's "Star Wars characters are trapped on Earth" story Eye of the Storm, Darth Vader takes over during a car chase with stormtroopers and uses the Force to pull an under-repair sign across the roadway and use it to ramp over a train, using the Force once more to keep the car stable. It still doesn't handle the landing well, though.

Film

• Diamonds Are Forever: while in a chase with police cars in a parking lot, James Bond uses an overturned car as an Improvised Ramp to jump his car to safety. Watch it here, 0:10-0:15.
  • The Man with the Golden Gun has a cool broken-bridge improvised ramp that leads to the car making a 360 degree jump.
• Speed: a Broken Bridge is used as an improvised ramp (I believe the MythBusters tried it ... turns out the filmmakers cheated and used CGI).
• The 2000 remake of Gone in Sixty Seconds used an improvised ramp near the end to bring to a close the big chase scene.
• Live Free or Die Hard (aka Die Hard 4.0) has a Ramprovisation so unusual that the hacker lead notes how improbable it is.
• At the end of Jackie Chan's First Strike, Jackie uses a conveniently-placed car display ramp to jump a Mitsubishi onto the boat carrying the Damsel in Distress.
• In The Lorax, Ted attempts to jump a gorge by making a ramp from a rock and an abandoned board, but the board fails to hold his scooter's weight, sending him hurtling down in to gorge instead.

Literature

• Chapter one of Feed ends this way. George uses a hill as an improvised ramp.
• Matthew Reilly's books do it every so often. Avoid torpedoes, drive a truck into a fighter plane... He also figured out that the only way to make this trope more awesome is to blow up the improvised ramp behind the vehicle.

Live Action TV

• Once an Episode (or more) on The Dukes of Hazzard as they perform their Slo-Mo Big Air.

Video Games

• In Midtown Madness 2, you can jump from one embankment of the Thames to the other by use of strategically placed ramps in the Tower of London, and a (convenient) boat in the middle of the river.
• Used for many Insane Stunt bonuses in Grand Theft Auto, as far back as GTA 2.
• Appears frequently in Total Overdose. Ram's first mission doesn't exactly require one, but strongly encourages it to flee the top of a parking garage.
• Just Cause 2: There are absolutely dozens of conveniently placed piles of building materials, collapsed road signs and so on spread around for ramping.

Web Comics

• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja has these two examples and gives us the page quote.

Western Animation

• Jonny Quest episode "Mystery Of the Lizard Men: while escaping enemy agents in the Sargasso Sea, Race Bannon and his pursuers both use an overturned boat as a ramp to jump their boats high in the air. The 2nd time, Race uses it to turn his hydrofoil into a deadly weapon. Watch it here, at 2:10-2:20 and 4:25-4:30.
• Gwen in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien makes her own ramp out of Anodite magic.
• Cars: Lightning McQueen uses a wrecked competitor during a race.