Alice has something that is very important with her that she trusts Bob will keep safe. Bob, however, is a klutz or just an asshole, and the second Bob is handed Alice's MacGuffin, he lets it fall onto the street, where it is immediately run over by an oncoming car.
But maybe it doesn't look so bad. Maybe there's small hope that what has been broken could be salvaged...
Just as Bob is about to suggest to Alice that it might not be so bad, another car comes by and runs over the MacGuffin again... and another... and then an 18-wheeler truck! By the time the steam rollers show up, you absolutely know for certain that Alice's item is completely wrecked.
Next, a marching band heard in the distance comes by and tramples over the crushed mess as they pass... followed by parade floats, a row of elephants, and a row of army tanks.
Finally, something considerably smaller compared to what came before (such as a man on a tricycle or an old lady with a cane) runs the fragments of the MacGuffin over one last time just to sprinkle one last pinch of salt in the emotional wounds.
Crush Parade is essentially an exaggerated form of Squashed Flat where an item that's either highly valued or greatly needed by a character that winds up falling into a street to be predictably crushed and flattened is Played for Laughs in an over-the-top, absurdly comedic fashion, usually at the expense of The Woobie or The Chew Toy.
When this happens to actual characters, this can be a more literal form of a Mutilation Conga or a variant of Rasputinian Death.
This is very common in Animation genres where a gag like this is more of an Acceptable Break from Reality.
Examples:
Advertising
- An animated for the Android phone has a figure dropping his phone in the street where it gets run over several times, jackhammered by a road worker and eventually trampled upon by the rock group KISS.
Anime and manga
- Cowboy Bebop: The fate of Pierrot, after being wounded in the leg by Spike's flung knife, which causes him to collapse in the path of a bunch of marching animatronics. Firstly from a giant animatronic dog's Giant Foot of Stomping, and then the rest of the band.
- One of the most letter-accurate examples was in the Don Martin story (published in the paperback Don Martin Steps Out!): a man declares to his wife that the anesthetic his dentist had just given him worked so well he was completely numb, and let his wife experiment with a head tap with a hammer - just as a safe drops from a high building onto his head. His tongue unfurls all the way across the street - just in time for a big military parade with marching troops and tanks to trample it - and as the dust settles, a kid on a pogo stick bounces on it. The man blithely says "I didn't feel a thing!"
- In "Space Vixens!
", an anime-esque Doctor Who elseworld, the protagonists' ship is almost sabotaged by two insurance agents — until the vital control unit gets a lump of shrapnel through it. Fortunately (from their point of view), that only breaks the screen. Unfortunately, what's left promptly gets trodden on by two different people, and shatters into a dozen fragments.
- This tactic is weaponized by Ash's Tauros in Ashes of the Past with a tactic called the Bull-Dozer. It involves Squirtle riding all five of them at once , and the Tauros running directly forward crushing everything underneath them. Anything that survives then gets attacked by whatever was behind the Bull-Dozer (read: Ash and his team).
- At the end of The Naked Gun, Vincent Ludwig falls off a high ledge into the parking lot below where he gets hit by a bus, flattened by a steam-roller, and then trampled by a marching band playing "Louie Louie."
Ed: Oh, Frank! It's horrible. It's so horrible!
Frank: (pads Ed on the back) I know, Ed...
Ed: My father went the same way... - The chalk-drawing fantasy come to life in Mary Poppins has an (animated) fox hunter and his horse fall into a puddle and then get bopped on the head by the bottom poles of the merry-go-round horses ridden by Mary, Bert, Jane and Michael.
- In another Disney example, also happens to Alice in Alice in Wonderland.
- In Turning Red, Tyler's basketball ends up in the street thanks to Mei where it is promptly run over, popping and deflating it.
- In Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser, an animated short included as a bonus on the 2006 print of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, Raiden is trampled by a large amount of troops and the Shagohod, and not a single scratch to show for it.
- The Simpsons
- "Lisa's Sax" sees Lisa's prized saxophone sail out her bedroom window and into the street where it's run over by a car, a truck, stamped on by Nelson (who then points at it and mocks, "Ha ha"), and concludes with Hans Moleman on a tricycle who falls over to the side when his front tire hits what remains of the flattened saxophone.
- And to top it all off, the Sax produces a "Wah Wah" sound after all that.
- Another episode sees Milhouse crushed by an actual parade, featuring an endless number of marching bands, parade floats, elephants, etc.
- Sideshow Bob is run over by parade elephants in "Cape Feare" right after he said, "Surely there's no harm in laying the middle of a public street."
- "Lisa's Sax" sees Lisa's prized saxophone sail out her bedroom window and into the street where it's run over by a car, a truck, stamped on by Nelson (who then points at it and mocks, "Ha ha"), and concludes with Hans Moleman on a tricycle who falls over to the side when his front tire hits what remains of the flattened saxophone.
- In the Rocko's Modern Life short "Eyes Capades," Rocko's new glasses end up getting run over by a truck, a motorcycle, a roller skater, and an old lady with a cane.
- In "Power Trip", Rocko is left in charge of Kind-Of-A-Lot-O Comics and hires Filburt as extra help. But after Rocko goes crazy with power and fires his friend, Filburt ends up in the street, where he is run over by a marching band, cars, a cruise liner, a bullet train, and a stray moon.
- In the episode where they go on a cruise ship to The Bermuda Triangle, Rocko gets run over and flattened by the elderly wolves.
- In an episode of Camp Lazlo, Scountmaster Lumpus realizes that his badge sash is incomplete, and he needs to earn a "Handy Helper Badge" to finish it. Being a Grade A Jerk Wad, Lumpus refuses to even consider helping someone else and tries to quit instead, walking out into the middle of the road and announcing his departure to the Real World. Cue him being run over by five vehicles, a herd of elephants, and a flock of ducks. This gag repeats itself during the episode's credits.
- Kenny's first ever death on South Park sees him blasted onto a road by an alien raygun, trampled by a herd of stampeding cows, and the killing blow comes when he's run over by Officer Barbrady's police cruiser. After that, his body is eaten by rats.
- A variation occurs in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, after Billy's bike crashes into a tree, it is hit by a meteor and swallowed up by the Earth.
- Happened in one episode of Chowder with the object being Mung's childhood bicycle, I mean Dice Cycle.
- Happens to Candace on an episode of Phineas and Ferb when she's given her new cellphone, told if she loses this phone she won't be getting a new one. Cue Candace tripping on a rug, her phone flies out of her hand, out the window, onto a branch, onto a sunflower and landing seemingly safely in a bunch of leaves. In comes the delivery man for Phineas and Ferb's project of the day, puts down a heavy box on the phone, drives over it, backs over it not two, not three... but EIGHT times.
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Squid on Strike, when SpongeBob holds up a sign that reads "Krusty Krab Fun Fair", everyone stampedes Squidward, turning him into a big, flat, squishy mess covered in footprints.
- Happens to Plankton at the end of The Movie.
- In one episode of Get Ed, Ed's hover board gets flattened by an hours-long surprise robot parade.
- In The Amazing World of Gumball, the trash can that Gumball and Darwin chase episode "The Tag" ends up knocked around by a bunch of passing cars, squashed by Hector's foot, struck by lightning, and has a satellite dropped on it. Good thing Mr. Watterson and Mr. Robinson were in the other trash can!
- In one episode of Evil Con Carne, Con Carne's brain ends up trapped outside his usual container, and as it crawls along, the bugler announces mess call. Cue Con Carne realizing he's in between his troops training area and the mess hall! This trope follows as he ends up trampled by his entire evil army ending with an elderly soldier using a walker walking over him.
