"Riding on a rocket, I wanna go to Pluto..."
— Shonen Knife, "Riding on a Rocket"
Speculative Fiction's answer to the Flying Broomstick, in which a character rides on - as opposed to in - a rocket or jet engine.
Not to be confused with Riding the Bomb, as this trope involves flying and being able to navigate the projectile rather than just having it fall.
Also comes in the form of a Rocket Bike, a Cool Bike without wheels. Unwilling versions involve being Strapped to a Rocket.
See also Gas-Cylinder Rocket.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The opening credits of Paprika.
- The Rocket Bikes in the sewer in AKIRA.
- One of the last episodes of Grenadier has Touka riding a missile.
- In Shin Mazinger, Juzo Kabuto rides a Rocket Punch to snap Kouji out of a Heroic BSoD.
- The Halo Legends short The Package features Spartans riding Booster Frames, which are basically just rockets with lots of guns and missiles attached to them.
- While not quite a rocket, Donald gets to "pilot" a Magnum Loader in Kingdom Hearts II; this happens by accident, and against his will.
Comic Books
- The Green Goblin's initial introduction in Spider-Man has him riding a rocket powered broomstick before upgrading to his famed Goblin Glider
- The Penguin has ridden on a number of rocket powered Umbrellas in the Batman comics. They are referred to as "Umbrella Jet Packs" in Batman: The Movie.
- Leni "Sky Witch" Muller from Top 10 rode a rocket powered broomstick.
- Not to mention Stefan "Saddles" Graczik, who rode a rocket powered saddle.
- Sensation Comics: In issue #74 Diana fights Spud Spangle and his gang of smugglers, who get around on riding what look like modified torpedoes as their transportation.
Film
- Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (1953 Film Serial). When hostile aliens from Venus start bombarding Earth with missiles, Commando Cody surrounds the planet with a radioactive dust cloud that will explode the missiles or any invading rocketship. In "Atomic Peril", a Venusian uses a one-man rocket small enough to penetrate the cloud to land on Earth for his mission. Though that only raises the Fridge Logic as to why the missiles aren't small enough to do the same.
- The Devil at Your Heels involves a real-life attempt by a stuntman to leap the St. Lawrence River in a rocket-propelled car.
- The Speeder Bikes of Star Wars fame, as seen in Return of the Jedi and Attack of the Clones.
- Cloud Atlas has such vehicles in the Neo Seoul subplot.
- The Martian flyers in Princess of Mars are essentially rockets with handlebars.
- Wonder Woman 1984. During the fight with Maxwell's security convoy, Diana Prince has to get ahead of the convoy fast to protect some children who've wandered out onto the road. Steve Trevor sticks an RPG warhead in the smoke grenade launcher of the armored car he's driving, firing it into the air where Diana can lasso it and be pulled along behind. She then flicks the warhead out into the desert and uses her momentum from there.
- Pinocchio (2022, Disney): While trying to find Pinocchio on Pleasure Island, Jiminy falls down a grate leading to an underground lair, where he finds out that the kids who go to the island are turned into donkeys. While they're being loaded into crates, a lone firework falls from one of their pockets, giving Jiminy the idea to light it and ride it back up the grate to warn Pinocchio, hopping off right before it explodes.
Literature
- A Princess of Mars, which makes them Older Than Television.
- Rocket-powered rideable craft much like broomsticks are used in asteroid mining in The Rolling Stones (1952) by Robert A. Heinlein.
- At least one Star Wars Legends book took a speeder bike and welded the controls of a bike to a podracer engine. Han commented it must shake considerably when it breaks the sound barrier. The owner answered that it did. He later experienced it first hand.
Live-Action TV
- Power Rangers Mystic Force had Mystic Racers. Like other examples mentioned here, they're high-tech versions of the Flying Broomstick. (Well, they're wizard Rangers - what else would they ride?)
- The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.: In order to catch up with some bad guys on a speeding train, Brisco rides a prototype rocket which he has mounted on the train tracks and uses his saddle to stay on.
- The Mandalorian: hoverbikes are present everywhere as is common in the Star Wars universe, but the Marshal goes a level above and rides one made by welding a crude seat to a podracer engine, much like the Literature example above.
Music
- A cretin rides a rocket to Russia on the back cover of The Ramones album, err, Rocket to Russia.
- Edguy has an album (and its title track) appropriately named Rocket Ride, and its front cover
◊ pretty much illustrates it.
- Geri Halliwell's video for Scream If You Wanna Go Faster appropriately enough features her riding a transforming jet-powered hoverbike around the desert.
Pinball
- In Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball, Wile E. Coyote rides a rocket to chase the Road Runner.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The Eldar and Dark Eldar have some pretty cool jetbikes .
- Ork Stormboys take a remarkably simplified approach to jetpacks: Take a larger-than-average rokkit, strap it to your back, and you can now fly. One stormnob even had his legs replaced with bionic claws so he can live up to his nickname of "Da Vulcha".
Video Games
- One chapter of Bayonetta has you riding a heat-seeking rocket towards a distant island and shooting down enemies in the style of Space Harrier.
- Vultures in StarCraft are of the "Rocket Bike" variety. They're apparently a lot smaller than their unit appearance suggests.
- Dante from Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening plays this for laughs, sort of, by jumping on Lady's rocket and riding it like a surfboard.
- In Devil May Cry 5, one of Nero's eqippable arms lets him fire off a Rocket Punch that he can surf on much like Dante above.
- Hikaru and Akane from the Parodius series.
- Wizpig does this in Diddy Kong Racing, in the second race against him.
- If you're very, very, very lucky, you can get one in World of Warcraft. They're rewards from the TCG.
- You can also get one from getting someone else to join the game, and there are several in-game rides to be had. There's the Rocketway in Azshara, The Uncrashable that carries one from Light's Hope Chapel to Fuselight Landing, and the taxi mount departing from Cliffwalker Post in the Stonetalon Mountains.
- Heroes of the Storm lets Junkrat do this as one of his Heroics. He flies into the air on his rocket, crashes it onto an area (dealing heavy damage in the process), and respawns a few seconds later. He can then ride his rocket around the arena until dismounting (the rocket gives him 150% more movement speed). His LV20 Talent "I Hate Waiting!" makes the rocket his default mount.
- Earthworm Jim did this in a few games
- The Gemeinschaft in Mega Man Legends 2 launches Servbots riding Missiles. To defeat the boss, you must throw these missiles back at it.. It comes across as cute and hilarious, especially thanks to the facial expressions of the servbots.
- Contra
- Contra III: The Alien Wars' 4th boss involves riding a Macross Missile Massacre while disabling the boss's anti aircraft weaponry and shields. This fight is a Rule of Cool and takes Refuge in Audacity.
- Contra: Shattered Soldier had Mooks riding missiles in the second stage. And in the fourth stage, you ride one again.
- All vehicles in Jak II: Renegade are jet bikes, and can be jacked in midair. Doing this to the Krimzon Guard brings down the wrath of the Demonic Spiders and is best avoided.
- In Jak 3: Wastelander, Daxter occasionally has to ride a missile in order to send it to a target.
- At the end of Just Cause 2, you have to ride on not one but four nuclear missiles and disable them in midair while fighting the boss, who, naturally, is also riding one.
- This comes up a few times in Rayman 2: The Great Escape. The first few rockets you get to ride have legs, but in the final level you get to actually fly one. It is very difficult.
- In Action 52, main character and some enemies in Rocket Jockey ride on a rocket.
- It happens in both NES and Wii versions of A Boy and His Blob to reach Blob's home planet and to navigate the levels.
- The last non-boss level of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!. Also a frequent form of Auto-Scrolling Level on Donkey Kong Country Returns.
- In Donkey Kong 64, there are two missions involving Diddy Kong using his rocketbarrel to pass through a series of rings. They're quite hard, but at least the rocket's magical fuel (Crystal Coconuts) is unlimited in these cases.
- Kerbal Space Program added external seats in an update. They were intended for use with rovers, but... Well, it was inevitable, really.
- Guilty Gear Xrd has Sol Badguy riding an ICBM... Nuff said, really.
- One of the powerups in Pizza Tower are rockets that will fly Peppino around. In his case however, it's less that he's riding it so much as it's flying while he's caught in front of it.
- Rocket Jockey by Rocket Science Games had this as the primary form of conveyance in a sports game of the future.
- Worms 4: Mayhem added a weapon to the arsenal: the Firework. It works almost the same as the Flying Sheep, but it is more powerful, harder to control, and there is also a worm attached to it.
- Kao The Kangaroo: Round 2 has you riding on underwater torpedoes in order to destroy cages that contain friendly turtles.
- Actually doable in Fortnite Battle Royale with anyone's rocket-propelled grenades with proper timing. A player can time a jump so they land on top of a rocket and fly for a good distance before jumping off... usually before the rocket hits something. It can let players get a drop onto another if the target is on a high hill or vice versa.
- A mission in A Hat in Time is to race against a mafia goon who is riding a rocket. Due to Hat Kid's fastest movement options being obviously slower, the intended way to win the race is by cheating, as indicated by the mission's title, "Cheating the Race".
- ULTRAKILL has a rocket launcher with the ability to temporarily freeze rockets. During this time, the player can jump on a rocket and unfreeze it afterwards. The player can steer the rocket as well.
Web Animation
- The protagonist duo of Indigen goes on an involuntary ride on a ballistic nuke launched by one of them from a military cruiser moments before.
Western Animation
- Roxy Rocket (pictured above) from Batman: The Animated Series.
- The character makes a return in Justice League Action and starts her own intergalactic transportation service.
- A common mode of transportation for Wile E Coyote, which turns out as well as you might expect. He returned with the rocket in Road Runner's Death Valley Rally. Also, Daffy Duck closed out "Stupor Duck" in this manner.
- The Coyote also rides life-sized fireworks in this manner.
- Baloo from TaleSpin flies a jet engine in "Mach One for the Gipper". (Literally just the jet engine.)
Other
- Huntsville is awesome. https://www.deviantart.com/torsoboyprints/art/PRINT-von-Braun-102883305
- The Key of Awesome. The buxom Space Girl rides Dr Brain's doomsday rocket with the usual Freudian implications.
Real Life
- The Me 163 Komet and Ba 349 Natter probably came closer to this trope than anything else in real life. While the Natter is very close due to its small size, both were aircraft with enclosed cockpits in which the pilot sat. There was also the Fi 103, the manned version of the V-1 flying bomb, intended for use against American bombers in extremis. The pilot (mostly recruited from the Hitler Youth) was allegedly supposed to bail out in the final seconds before collision, but it was fairly obvious that the chances of him doing so were minimal.
- The Japanese MXY-7 Ohka suicide missile also came pretty close. Of course, while surviving a flight in the Fi-103 was merely unlikely, it was impossible in the Ohka, which was designed to kill its pilot upon colliding with its target.
- The Japanese MXY-7 Ohka
- There is a (VERY) tall tale told about the B-17 bomber, in which an overdue aircraft is awaited... and awaited... Finally a sole engine falls from the sky onto the runway, with a pilot atop it, clutching a .50-calibre machine gun and saying "That was one hell of a mission!"
