History Main / GravitySucks

* In ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'', Pelican dropships are shown dropping like a stone the second they are released from the spaceship suspending them above the surface of the planet below. Justified in that the spaceship itself is actually using its own systems to propel the Pelicans a bit; in fact, the Pelicans 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 literally shot out of the ship.

* In ''Franchise/{{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.

->'''Ko-Dan Officer:''' Star Drive out. Thrusters out. We're caught in the planet's gravitational pull. ''What do we do?''\\
'''Lord Kril:''' ''[matter-of-factly]'' We die.

** Also Utsuho and her last spell card in TH11. Koishi of the same game has a similar spellcard, but it pushes you away instead -- to a wall of danmaku with KILL written all over it.

* Actually averted in the StarWarsExpandedUniverse novel ''Vector Prime'', where the weird gravity device used by the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Yuuzhan Vong]] to ColonyDrop Sernpidal's moon onto the planet does not cause a "sucking" effect, but instead the moon's orbit decays more or less realistically every time it passes over the device. Not that there's anything realistic about a superweapon that produces a gravitational force greater than a planet's.

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* When Mike crashes into, then attempts to save, the Hubble telescope in ''[[MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K: The Movie]]'', it immediately drops away and falls to Earth. An incredulous Mike [[LampshadeHanging points out]] that it couldn't possibly do that.

* 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 because he wasn't saying it was impossible to orbit a black hole, he was saying that the orbit of the planet was "impossible", meaning that there was no way for an object to maintain a stable orbit at that distance. Inside the ergosphere of a rotating black hole, spacetime itself is actually dragged faster than light in a phenomenon called "frame dragging", and it would indeed be impossible for a planet to have a stable orbit in this region, without some sort of antigrav technology (which the planet had). The ship was actually making use of this antigrav technology while escaping, so when it suddenly shut down they were still in a region where it wasn't possible to escape with the power their engines had.

*** Justified with respect to the planet because he wasn't saying it was impossible to orbit a black hole, he was saying that the orbit of the planet was "impossible", meaning that there was no way for an object to maintain a stable orbit at that distance. Inside the ergosphere of a rotating black hole, spacetime itself is actually dragged faster than light in a phenomenon called "frame dragging", and it would indeed be impossible for a planet to have a stable orbit in this region, without some sort of antigrav technology (which the planet had). The ship was actually making use of this antigrav technology while escaping, so when it suddenly shut down they were still in a region where it wasn't possible to escape with the power their engines had.

[[folder: Film ]]
* ''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.

* ''Supernova'' has one scene where the medical ship Nightingale drops like a rock toward a moon as soon as it completes its FTL jump. Most of the movie's physics are accurate, but the ship would have retained the velocity and momentum it had before the jump. Even if the ship's velocity relative to the moon was below the moon's escape velocity, it would not have plummeted straight down.
* The logical (illogical) extension of this occurs in ''Film/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 ''{{Dragonball}}'', the gravity from King Kai's miniature planet, which manages to be pull at 10 times the force as on Earth despite its size, doesn't affect anything unless it gets within a few hundred feet, then you immediately get pulled toward it. To be fair, that ''is'' in the afterlife, so there's no reason the physical laws would be the same, or even exist.

* This is one of the aspects of Blackbeard's Devil Fruit power in ''Manga/OnePiece''. He essentially becomes a black hole that draws everything into it. One downside to this is that he cannot dodge anything because of this.

** 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.

** Let's not forget "The Impossible Planet", where the Doctor repeatedly says that it's "impossible" for a planet to be in orbit of a black hole - and when the artificial gravity machine fails, the planet gets sucked straight inward, as is the spaceship in which the humans are trying to escape.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[IncrediblyLamePun Black holes really suck.]]]]

* ''Film/WingCommander'' gives us [[SchmuckBait Beacon 147]], a NegativeSpaceWedgie also known as [[MeaningfulName Scylla]]. Apparently, it's a powerful gravity well in the Solar System which we've somehow never noticed.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[IncrediblyLamePun Black holes really suck]]]]

->'''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.

UsefulNotes/BlackHoles are particular offenders of this nature, because everyone knows that their gravitational pull is so powerful even light cannot escape and the subatomic particles that constitute you will be ripped apart. Scientists even called this effect "spaghettification", although this only applies to the event horizon inside the black hole, not the orbiting accretion disk around it. See also [[Analysis/GravitySucks Analysis]] for cases on when this trope does not apply and when it does.

->'''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.

* {{Justified}} via AWizardDidIt in ''Literature/TheStormlightArchives''. Windrunners can create what's known as a Reverse Lashing, a bubble of folded gravity that pulls projectiles towards it. Works much better on things that aren't touching the ground, for some reason.

* ''Film/WingCommander'' gives us [[SchmuckBait Beacon 147]], a NegativeSpaceWedgie also known as [[MeaningfulName Scyllia]].