History Main / GravitySucks

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' has multiple cutscenes of Sin manipulating gravity. One of them is actually listed as "Gravity Sucks" if you view it again in the Sphere Theater in Luca. Rocks are actually shown floating off of the moon in a roughly straight line toward Spira, implying this trope is somewhat in effect.

* ''VideoGame/{{Unreal}}'' features Na Pali, a planet that is notorious for puling ships into its gravity field.

* Played straight with black holes in ''VideoGame/Solar2''.

* The orbital mechanics in the mobile game ''VideoGame/SpaceAgency'' are a little strange. On the one hand, objects orbiting a planet are not going to fall as long as their orbital speed is in the "green" range. If it drops to the "yellow" range, the orbit will rapidly decay until the object either impacts the planet or lands (this is how you land on LUN and splash-down on HOM). Within the "green" range, your speed can change any which way, but your orbit won't change. To escape a planet's gravity, you just accelerate prograde until the "red" range, at which the craft will shoot off out of its orbit in a straight line. Each planet has a ring shown around it, marking the limit of its gravitational pull. If you enter the "ring" at speeds in the "green" range, your craft will be instantly placed in a stable orbit. It's also entirely possible for objects to move at very different speeds in the same orbit.

* In the 2009 ''Film/StarTrek'' film, Kirk, Sulu and [[FamilyGuy Ensign Ricky]] drop straight down toward Vulcan's surface as soon as they jump out of the shuttlecraft.

* ''The Astronaut Farmer'' has loads of horrible physics, but one shining example is the eponymous character's reentry. After a de-orbit burn lasting less than a few seconds, the craft appears to stop, and just drops straight down.

* The logical (illogical) extension of this occurs in ''TreasurePlanet''. The absence of gravity is the presence of antigravity. When the ship's gravity generators fail, everything falls up immediately -- and continues to accelerate upwards, even if it isn't touching anything else. [[FridgeLogic Which begs the question of why they didn't just build everything on the ceiling and forgo the gravity generators.]]

* In ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'', Alex knocks out the engine of the Ko-Dan command ship and a nearby planet does the rest:
-->'''Ko-Dan Lieutenant:''' Star Drive out. Thrusters out. We're caught in the planet's gravitational pull. ''What do we do?''
-->'''Ko-Dan Captain:'''(matter-of-factly) We die.

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* An example of failing to recognize what an orbit is shows up in ''StargateAtlantis''. In "Inferno", they jump a ship to "orbit" using the hyperdrive and magically going into orbit (their sublight propulsion/maneuvering system was inoperable at the time). In reality, the ship would start to fall. Fast. Usually the problem of orbit vs. altitude is {{handwave}}d via the same mechanism which brakes the ship as it goes sub-light. That's the kind of thing which makes it so hard to make an actually realistic space simulator appear as realistic to the layman.
* In an early episode of ''MysteryScienceTheater3000'', a number of space dog skeletons (or whatever they were called) were piling up onto the space station in such numbers that they were weighing the station down to the point where it was dropping the orbit. Remember the {{MST3K Mantra}}.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode ''Breaking the Ice'', Reed and Mayweather are taking mineral samples on the surface of a comet. Mayweather injures himself when a slope gives way underneath him and he falls several feet. It would be a rather nasty fall on Earth, but they're on a comet and probably weigh all of six ounces. They later seriously damage their shuttle when it falls through weakened ice on the comet's surface...''twice''.

* ''VideoGame/MegaMan5'' and ''VideoGame/{{Mega Man X}}3'' actually avert this with the Gravity Hold and Gravity Well- both of them affect the ''entire screen''. Played straight with Black Hole Bomb from ''VideoGame/MegaMan9'' and Squeeze Bomb from ''Mega Man X8''- only enemies near the black hole get sucked in.
* ''VideoGame/{{Unreal}}'' features Na Pali, a planet that is notorious for puling ships into its gravity field.
* In ''[[VideoGame/GalaxyAngel Galaxy Angel II Zettai Ryouiki no Tobira]]'', Kahlua loses control of her ship because it will only respond to her SuperpoweredEvilSide, and it plunges toward a planet.

* The actual phrase appears as a graffiti in a prison cell in ''SpaceQuest 6''.

* ''{{Recca}}'' has [[http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/recca/recca-15.png this boss]] who fires out two kinds of gravity wells, blue ones which suck your ship towards them and white ones that repel your ship. This is an NES game...
* In {{Halo}}, Pelican dropships are shown dropping like a stone the second they are released from the ship suspending them above the surface of the planet below. Possibly justified if the parent ship deliberately flies low enough before releasing its cargo, but that's certainly not how it looks in the game. Like a lot of ''Halo'', it is cribbed from ''Film/{{Aliens}}''.
** Justified in that the dropships aren't just released, there is a minor propulsive force to put distance between the Pelican and the ship. Even then, they don't fall - they drift along until they engage their own propulsion. A more extreme mechanism is used for the ODST drop pods - they aren't dropped, they're shot out of the ship.
* In ''VideoGame/DeadSpace'', the ''Ishimura'' ends up in a decaying orbit, and you have to restart the engines, and later [[spoiler:Kendra tries to kill you by [[ColonyDrop dropping a piece of the planet on you]].]]
* VideoGame/FinalFantasyX has multiple cutscenes of Sin manipulating gravity. One of them is actually listed as "Gravity Sucks" if you view it again in the Sphere Theater in Luca. Rocks are actually shown floating off of the moon in a roughly straight line toward Spira, implying this trope is somewhat in effect.
* Played straight with black holes in Solar2.
* In [[VideoGame/{{Gradius}} Nemesis]] 3, stage 3, a gravity field pulls you towards the walls of [[OneHitKill Instant Death]]. At the end of the stage, several black holes try to suck you in the same way.

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* In [[VideoGame/{{Gradius}} Nemesis]] 3, stage 3, a gravity field pulls you towards the walls of InstantDeath. At the end of the stage, several black holes try to suck you in the same way.

** In "The Name of The Doctor" The TARDIS drops like a stone towards the planet Trenzalore the very second The Doctor turns off the anti-gravs.

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/treasure-planet-5_movies1_2374.jpg]]

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[[caption-width-right:[[IncrediblyLamePun Black holes really suck]]]]

%% Animated film examples go in the FILM section, NOT the western animation section.

->''"You win again, gravity!"''
-->-- '''Zapp Brannigan''', ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''

->''"{{Gravity is a harsh mistress}}".''
-->-- '''The Tick''', ''TheTick''

** In the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' episode ''Breaking the Ice'', Reed and Mayweather are taking mineral samples on the surface of a comet. Mayweather injures himself when a slope gives way underneath him and he falls several feet. It would be a rather nasty fall on Earth, but they're on a comet and probably weigh all of six ounces. They later seriously damage their shuttle when it falls through weakened ice on the comet's surface...''twice''.

* In ''StarWars'', the Star Destroyers fall (into a planet, moon or even Death Star) immediately after being severely hit. FridgeLogic hits when you realize [[NoEndorHolocaust this doesn't happen to the Death Star at Endor]].
** Very clear example of this in ''{{Revenge of the Sith}}''. The Separatist flagship gets shot once too often and promptly plunges straight down. The massive deceleration that would have been needed to allow this would probably have flattened everyone on board the ship.
*** That ''would'' be an issue, [[AllThereInTheManual if the battle were taking place in orbit rather than the upper atmosphere]], where the ships were more or less at sub-orbital speeds anyway.

* In ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'', Alex knocks out the engine of the Ko-Dan command ship and a near-by planet does the rest:

Obviously not TruthInTelevision. Gravity is what enables stable orbits to exist -- without gravity, Earth would just fly away from the Sun (disregarding for a minute that without gravity, both would fail to form in the first place). Even increasing gravity, until a certain point, would not cause an orbiting body to fall onto the planet, but would simply shift it to a different orbit.

** Perhaps [[JustifiedTrope justified]] since the BigBad's ship is clearly not orbiting the planet either and the shuttlecraft is approaching much slower than orbital velocity. It is likely both are using antigravity technology.

When it is mentioned at all, the force of gravity is often portrayed as a sort of cosmic {{quicksand|Sucks}}, an intractable mire that can yank spacecraft out of the sky without any consideration of inertia. Frequently accompanied by exclamations like, "We're caught in the planet's gravitational field!" or "We're being sucked in!"

UsefulNotes/BlackHoles are particular offenders of this nature, not only in fiction but also in many people's perceptions in the real world.

UsefulNotes/BlackHoles are particular offenders of this nature, not only in fiction but also in many people's perceptions in the real world. Few people seem to understand that a black hole will exert (roughly) the same amount of gravitational force as the star it was formed from[[hottip:*:When you're at the same distance from the center of the black hole as you were from the center of the original star, that is, assuming that distance is greater than the radius of the original star itself. If you go to a spot near the black hole that would have been inside the radius of the original star, the gravitational force will exceed that for the star at the same distance. And if you pass the black hole's event horizon, you can only go inwards, no matter how hard you try not to.]]. So if say the Sun magically collapsed into a black hole, all the planets would keep orbiting just as before.

The trope stems from a naive Aristotelian view of gravity, coupled with SpaceFriction. After all, a baseball falls to the ground; why shouldn't a spaceship? The answer, of course, is that the ship ''is'' falling, it's simply missing. If the ship is moving at any significant speed relative to the planet, in a direction other than straight up or straight down, its momentum will carry it past and it won't actually hit. This is an application of Newton's First Law of Motion (Inertia): an object will not move unless a force acts upon it, but also an object will keep moving unless a force acts to counter it. Unless something like a gas cloud acts on the ship to counter this inertia and slow it down (friction), it will continue to miss the planet until slight variations in the path happen to bring it into the planet itself, which can take quite a long time. This is why the moon doesn't crash into the earth, because of such centripetal forces balancing the pull of gravity - as ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' tells us, flying is simply the art of throwing oneself at the ground and missing...

Despite this, fictional spacecraft have the nasty habit of plummeting from the sky like bricks the moment their engines go off-line.

A related subtrope involves a spaceship trying to escape a Black Hole or other gravitational BigBad by pointing the ship straight upwards, with the implication that it will fall back and be destroyed if the fuel runs out or [[PhlebotinumBreakdown something breaks]]. A more sensible approach would often be to thrust laterally, setting up a stable orbit and buying the Good Guys time to fix things. But that's not as dramatic, is it? [[hottip:*: Not a good idea if inside 3x the critical radius of a black hole, however, as thrusting laterally will have a 50:50 chance of pulling the ship even closer to the event horizon if you thrust the right way, that is, in the same direction as your rotation. Thrust the wrong way and you wind up plummeting toward the event horizon, crossing it in a matter of seconds or less. Inside 1.5x the critical radius, ANY horizontal thrust will cause you to be pulled toward the horizon because gravity will increase by a factor greater than your rotation can resist.]]

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* This trope is mentioned several times in the following 'Cracked' article: [[http://www.cracked.com/funny-6051-6-awesome-facts-about-black-holes/ 6 Awesome Facts About Black Holes]]

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