If you ever need a ride, just stick out your thumb!
Things are getting crazy. Maybe you're being followed and tormented practically anywhere by the Big Bad, the Implacable Man, some fearsome creature, or something else. Maybe you set a bomb for that pursuer and need some way to get yourself out of there before you blow up along with the bomb. Whatever the situation, there is one word you can yell out to solve your problem:
We all know taxi cabs are indigenous to big cities like New York or Los Angeles. But in works of fiction (more likely in animation), it doesn't matter whether you're in a big city, a small neighborhood, the middle of the desert or a mountain range. You need to haul your butt out in a hurry? Just give a whistle, say the word, and a cab will rush right to you in that very second for your great escape. It works in an almost Deus ex Machina sort of way.
Just hope that the guy you're trying to get away from isn't the one driving the cab.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Dropkick on My Devil: In season 2 episode 2, Pino gets her halo shattered by Poporon. She quickly hails a taxi to get away from her and Pekola.
Films — Live Action
- In Juncture, Anna flees then hotel after failing to kill Shaver and immediately flags down a cab to take her to the airport. Justified as it is a luxury hotel where cabs would be plentiful.
- Sister Act: When Dolores was escaping from Vince's henchmen early in the movie, a cab was there just in time to aid her escape!
Dolores: Now just go! Just go! Go! GO! GO!! GO!!!
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Whenever you need a ride from Benny the cab, just stick out your thumb. Eddie Valiant does this involuntarily when he and Jessica escape from the Weasels (used as the page image).
- In the opening of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, John is racing to gather supplies and find help before his excommunicado takes effect. He happens to find a cab that's part of the the series' vast underground society. However, they're stuck in New York City traffic so John pays the cabbie to take his dog to safety and decides to take his chances on foot.
Tabletop Games
- In Don't Rest Your Head, an anywhere-anytime taxi is one of the Madness Powers a character can develop. There's just always a cabbie nearby who will take you anywhere, getting you out of harm's way — for a bizarre, arbitrary, and more often than not abstract fare.
- In Toon, this is one of the standard-issue "cartoony things". If you are in trouble or danger and need a taxi, no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, raise your hand and yell the magic word and a vehicle will pull up immediately. Whether that vehicle is a taxicab, a tandem bicycle, or the USS Nimitz is up to the Animator's whim or a random table.
Video Games
- In Earthworm Jim 2, Jim calls a cab to exit a level when the plank-on-a-stone seesaw he usually uses breaks.
- In Quarantine (1994), you play as Drake Edgewater, who drives an emergency Hover-Taxi in KEMO City. Half the population has gone bonkers due to a drug in the city's water supply, and the rest are relying on being picked up by you just to survive. The majority of the gameplay consists of taking passengers where they need to go while killing as many enemies as possible along the way. Your cab can get blown up if it takes too much damage, though.
Western Animation
- Animaniacs: One of the ways Dali Llama tries to escape the Warner siblings is hailing a cab (keeping in mind he lives in the mountains of India). However, the Warners were also in the cab with Dot driving.
- Baseball Bugs has a Gashouse Gorilla belt one of Bugs Bunny's pitches out of the ballpark, which would have won the game for the Gorillas. Zooming out of the park, Bugs hails a taxicab that stops immediately for him. "Follow that ball!" he directs. Subverted when the driver starts going the opposite way; the cabbie is another Gorilla. Bugs leaps out of the taxi, and catches a metro bus instead.
- Garfield and Friends:
- The last vote in "The Multiple Choice Cartoon" determines how Garfield and Odie deal with a finark (a large, multicolored, carnivorous bird). The choices are A) hail a cab, B) get rescued by a forest ranger or C) fight the thing. The audience picks C, but Garfield and Odie hail a cab anyway.
Garfield: Yeah, I know you all picked "C". But if you want to go count the vote, get your own show.
- Garfield does this again to escape the Buddy Bears and their constant educational tidbit sprouting. It doesn't work, since one of the bears is driving the cab he's in. (His driver's license is even place on the back of the driver's seat!)
- The last vote in "The Multiple Choice Cartoon" determines how Garfield and Odie deal with a finark (a large, multicolored, carnivorous bird). The choices are A) hail a cab, B) get rescued by a forest ranger or C) fight the thing. The audience picks C, but Garfield and Odie hail a cab anyway.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In the episode "Him Diddle Riddle", one of the challenges is to defeat a large monster without superpowers. The girls do this by tripping the monster over, Buttercup calling a taxi which shows up just in time for the monster to land on it, and having the taxi drive the monster away.
- The Simpsons has this done in-universe in an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. When Scratchy finally catches Itchy and blows him up with more dynamite to eliminate a small town, he whistles for a cab to immediately escape the mouse's demise.
