"No Rules" Racing

It has the basic parameters of a race: two or more competitors, each trying to be the first to reach a given destination. What it lacks are any of the other rules common to races.

There's no set route racers have to follow. There's no limit on what vehicles they can drive, or on changing vehicles at a whim. No penalties for sabotaging other racers, and nothing to stop new racers from joining in partway through. Even breaking the law is allowed - it might still get you arrested, but as long as you evade capture long enough to reach the finish line, it still counts as a win.

All that matters is getting there first - anything else goes.

Such races are rarely an official, organized competition. Most often they occur because a group of characters realize they're all after the same MacGuffin, and whoever gets to it first will keep it for themself: cue a mad scramble for the finish line. Often happens whenever a Treasure Map enters the plot. If the race has been deliberately organized by someone, expect them to tell the racers There Are No Rules.

Due to their chaotic nature, these races frequently lead to lots of Wacky Racing. They can be fairly short affairs (just racing from one end of a building to another could qualify) or they can be lengthy sojourns worthy of being an Epic Race.

Compare with Calvinball, which is a contest (race or otherwise) that theoretically has rules, but the audience isn't filled in on what all the rules are.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Red Line: The contestants are air-dropped onto the race area while dodging anti-air fire from a "host" that objects to being the track location, and given a destination. The finish line doesn't even exist until the surviving racers approach the end.
• Sk8 the Infinity: "S" is a secret downhill skateboarding race held in an abandoned mine in Okinawa. Pretty much anything goes so long as someone reaches the finish line. Over the course of the story, the skaters punch other skaters, throw them, drag them, scrape them against the walls, among other acts of harm.

Films — Live Action

• The Cannonball Run: Speed demons convene in upstate New York for a road race across the continent to Los Angeles. It's a timed event, with participants clocking in at the start, then clocking out at the finish; shortest time interval wins. How the teams (driver and relief) get there is unregulated, with all manner of vehicles entered - in fact, the winning team finishes the race on foot. Nor is it legal, as many speed limits are going to be ignored.
• Grease establishes this for the Thunder Road race scene:
  Leo: The rules are: there ain't no rules. It's to the second bridge and back, and the one who makes it back first wins.
• The Gumball Rally is based on the same real life underground race as The Cannonball Run, and is a similar free-for-all: the racers are outright told There Are No Rules. One guy who wasn't even invited to the race decides to compete anyway, saying, "This whole race is unofficial, so I'm as unofficial as you are."
• Ice Station Zebra: When an orbiting spy satellite falls to Earth in the arctic circle, a race ensues between the United States and the Soviet Union to get to the satellite first. The Americans travel by the Tigerfish submarine, while the Soviets send a planeload of commandos and two fighter jets. The wealth of images captured on that film canister drives both teams to their utmost to preclude that film from falling into "the wrong hands."
• It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World begins with a dying crook using their Last Words to tell some random motorists where they buried their loot. The motorists discuss going together to get the money and dividing it fairly among themselves - except no one can agree on what a fair division would be. This soon leads to the battle cry "It's every man for himself!" and them all racing across California, any which way they can, to get to the treasure first. Along the way, they keep spilling the beans about the treasure to more and more people, till by the end, the number of racers has almost doubled.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides concerns British privateers, the Spanish navy, and Blackbeard's pirate crew all racing to reach the Fountain of Youth before any of the others do. Naturally, none of them observe any rules or sense of fair play towards their competitors
• In Rat Race, a casino magnate deliberately orchestrates one of these, putting two million dollars in a train station locker, and handing keys to the locker to eight people at random, with the instructions "First one there keeps it all" and "There Are No Rules".
• Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over: The announcer of the Mega Race in Game Over outright states "There are no rules in this race except win at any cost!". Because of this, contestants are free to sabotage each other or knock other racers out of the race using any methods they have available.

Live Action TV

• On How I Met Your Mother, the episode "Subway Wars" has the Gang debate the fastest way to get across town to Gregor's Steak House. This turns into a debate about who knows their way around New York City the best, and the only way to settle the matter is to race across town and see who can get there first - using any route they want, and any mode of transportation they want, from car to train to their own two feet to a misappropriated ambulance.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Tin Man" has the Enterprise venture to the remote Beta Stromgren system. Aboard is the mercurial but gifted telepath Tam Elbrun, who reveals that an advanced Living Ship orbits the system's dying star, which is code-named "Tin Man." While traveling at maximum warp speed, the Enterprise discovers a Romulan warbird is tailing them, and the Romulan fires upon the Enterprise, which slows it down. Although the warbird attains the Beta Stromgren system first, it burned out its warp coils doing so; the Romulans will be effectively marooned near a dying star just to attain Tim Man first.

Video Games

• Burnout Paradise: When racing, whoever reaches the goal first in the open world is the winner. No set paths to take, and wrecking your opponents' cars is encouraged.
• In Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy encounters groups of Tenakth racing machines in the desert. She joins a race in order to learn how they got the machines in the first place. The Tenakth being a Proud Warrior Race, they naturally eschew any form of restraint or safety in their sport.
  Aloy: What are the rules?
  Attah: Don't die.

Western Animation

• American Dad!, episode "100 AD", has Stan and Francine offer $50,000 to anyone who can stop Hayley and Jeff from eloping in the Chimdale Mountains. Over a hundred Langley Falls residents go after the money, racing each other to reach the Chimdale Mountains and stop the wedding first, and (at least for Principal Lewis, who steals cars and shoots out other people's tires) it's an anything goes affair.
• On Archer: Danger Island, after everyone learns the location of the lost idol, various groups start trekking across the jungle, doing anything they can to reach it before the others. That only lasts a couple episodes, though - as everyone keeps stumbling across each other, they all end up either banding together or fighting to the death.
• The Beetlejuice episode "It's a Big, Big, Big, Big Ape" is an Homage to (no surprise) It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and replicates that film's premise of everyone doing whatever they can to reach the treasure first. Except, instead of a pile of cash, the treasure is (no surprise) a big, big, big, big ape.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "Ed or Tails", Rolf holds a footrace of this sort to determine which of the Eds gets the one jawbreaker between them. Edd relies on his plethora of Homemade Inventions while Eddy tries all sorts of underhanded tricks; when the spectators call foul, Rolf deigns such tactics as "a fine performance". More-so, Rolf doesn't even see the need to enforce the only two conditions he set (complete the U-bend course and hold on to a ladle of eggs); Ed simply hopped to the finish line without fulfilling either term (due to Eddy having his shoelaces tied together) and was declared winner anyways!
• Subverted in LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes Attack of the Legion of Doom. Villains are chosen to join the titular team via an obstacle course race; Lex proudly states there are no rules... until they see Giganta and say there is one rule: applicants must fit inside their headquarters for meetings.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) special "The Powerpuff Girls Rule!" briefly features one of these, when the Girls realize the Key to the World is sitting in the Mayor's office ... and happen to blurt out this information in front of a bunch of supervillains. Cue a madcap race across town, with every villain trying to be the first to reach the Key that will let them Take Over the World.
• The ending to the episode "Homer The Vigilante" from The Simpsons has the entire town of Springfield racing wildly to reach the cat burglar's hidden loot, all done as an Homage to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
• On Teen Titans, "Revved Up" has the villain Ding Dong Daddy steal a MacGuffin and promise to hand it over if the Titans beat them in a race across the desert. Anything goes in this race: racers attack each other with fists and swords and ray guns, Raven and Starfire plan to skip the road entirely and just fly to the finish line, and when a bunch of other villains hear about the contest, they join in part way through.

Other

• Theme park ride Mad Racers: In the pre-showing for the ride, the host goes into detail on how their race has no rules. Sure enough, in the race itself, everybody fights dirty.