Louise: Yeah.
Nat: Decapitation. It happens all the time.
It's not recommended or condoned, but characters in the media just love sunroofs. Maybe it's the open air, the garnered attention or the fabulous view. Regardless, if a limousine is in a scene, someone is sticking themselves out of it.
Sunroof Shenanigans is when someone uses a sunroof to misbehave or have fun. The limousine is a mythical thing to some. Most people never see the inside of one, which could contribute to their allusiveness. As a result, limousine fanatics seem to go ham for sunroofs. This silliness can lead to injury or even death, or end with a cynical punchline where the driver asks them to sit down.
Interestingly, it's mainly women who engage in Sunroof Shenanigans. Typically in large groups of friends, the characters are on a girls night out enjoying themselves when the Hard-Drinking Party Girl of the group stands up in the sunroof to sing or scream. For anyone viewing the event, it's probably annoying or embarrassing, but for the person in the sunroof, it's an act of liberation. Limos are often used for school dances, weddings and stag or hens parties. As a result limos have positive connotations, as well as associations with wealth and class.
The trope is so common that if a limo has a sunroof, someone will use it. We could even regard it as "Chekhov's Sunroof". The cliche of the trope is occasionally Lamp Shaded, and the character may do it merely because they Saw It in a Movie Once. Usually, their ignorance towards the danger of sunroofs comes back to bite them. Note that the trope doesn't always involve standing up in a sunroof; characters may enter a vehicle or pass things through the sunroof.
Obviously the trope is most common in limousines because cars have less space for standing. For this very reason however the trope can also involve automobiles, and the lack of room may distract the driver or even cause an accident.
In real life, this act is advised against. It's dangerous for everyone involved. Due to the risk of decapitation, drivers have to be advised first so they can drive at a reasonable speed. The laws of physics mean that if the vehicle is travelling too fast and the person standing up hits something... well, you get the picture.
Compare Television Is Trying to Kill Us, Absurdly-Long Limousine, Help, I'm Stuck!, Drunk Driver, Life of the Party.
Examples:
- Dracula plugs for the advertised car window tinting that enables him to drive around in daylight, until...
Renfield: Look master, a sunroof!Dracula: Renfield, you idiot! (goes up in flames)
- Big: While on his date with Susan, Josh takes her for a limo ride across the city. In one scene, he stands up in the sunroof and encourages Susan (a workaholic who doesn't have fun) to join him.
- Boys on the Side: Robin puts her feet out of the sunroof of their car while it's in motion to dry her toenail polish in one scene.
- Caddyshack: Spalding drunkenly vomits through a Porsche sunroof. It actually belongs to the villain of the film, Beeper. He returns to his car and unintentionally sits in the vomit.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul: In one scene, Greg sees a seagull standing in the open sunroof watching him eat cheese puffs. He throws one to the seagull and it eats it. He turns away, he when he looks back, there's another one. He throws two more at them, which they eat. The next time he looks, there's about ten of them all waiting. One flies in and grabs his bag of cheese puffs, then flies away but empties the contents into the car. The birds then fly through the roof into the car and flock around the family.
- The Final Destination: Janet is stuck in a carwash and water begins to pour through her sunroof. While attempting to climb out via the roof, the window closes and traps her neck. The car starts to roll forward and she fears her head will get crushed or cut off, but she's thankfully saved.
- I Know What You Did Last Summer: Following a night of festivities, Barry turns up the music and stands in the sunroof while Ray drives. He drops a bottle of whiskey in Ray's lap and they all get distracted from the road. Barry yells "watch out!" and they hit someone. This kickstarts the plot, as they assume the man they killed is a drifter and decide to dump the body in the ocean.
- Never Been Kissed: Josie has a terrible memory of her high school prom. She was invited by the most popular guy in school, but it turned out to be a Prank Date. While waiting on her porch, he drove by standing in a sunroof holding a rose. At first she is enchanted, until he starts hurling eggs at her.
- Scary Movie parodies the I Know What You Did Last Summer example above. The difference is that Greg (the Barry Expy) gets hit in the face with tree branches, and even gets his head trapped in a bee hive.
- Vegas Vacation: In the fourth film of the National Lampoon's Vacation series, the Griswalds go to Vegas. They take a limo around the city, and Audrey stands up in the sunroof to admire the sights. Clark wants to put his window down and starts Button Mashing, unaware that he has closed the sunroof. Audrey meanwhile begins to suffocate, but it's Played for Laughs. She tries waving down other drivers and passengers for help, but they think she is dancing and respond with excitement.
- 1000 Ways to Die: The segment "Bird Brained" features a Blonde Republican Sex Kitten who hops onto a limousine with her friends at her bachelorette party, and gets drunk on absinthe despite being a teetotaler. The bachelorette meets her demise when a low-flying pigeon falls into her mouth while she stood in the sunroof, snapping her neck and shutting down all her brain function.
- Better Call Saul: Initially a Noodle Incident, Jimmy was arrested for committing what he calls a "Chicago Sunroof". The event involves defecating through someone's sunroof, but when Jimmy did it there were children sitting in the back of a car. He was almost registered as a sex offender, but his brother helped him get out of some of the charges.
- Discussed in an episode of The Golden Girls, wherein Sophia gets a ride home from Blanche's current squeeze's chauffeur. Sophia being Sophia, she decides to have a little fun on the drive back.
- Saturday Night Live's "Prom Limo
" sketch has four high school students do this under the impression that it's something novel and amazing. They drunkenly try to banter with unimpressed passersby and then sing an impromptu showtune. Then Will Ferrell's character gets his head knocked off by an overpass... so, of course, they have to finish the song without him.
- Six Feet Under: In the cold opening of "Crossroads", a woman is on a girls' night out following her divorce. They sit in a limo to go clubbing and she stands up in the sunroof to express her joy. The limo drives under a cherry picker and her face hits it. It is one of the most gruesome deaths of the series. Diaz is later praised for the woman's facial reconstruction.
- Wiseguy. A more serious version (appearing in the Title Sequence) occurs when Vinnie Terranova stands in the sunroof of the Mafia limo he's riding and uses a shotgun against an ambush.
- The ClickHole article "We Asked 22 Limo Drivers About the Worst Time Someone Got Sucked Out of Their Car After Opening the Sunroof" satirizes this trope. While a few of the drivers have gruesome stories, the others are confused about what exactly they're being asked in classic ClickHole fashion.
- In the CollegeHumor series Precious Plum (a parody of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo), the two leads Mama and Plum drive around in a car with a sunroof. We see them use it inappropriately multiple times. In the first episode, Mama gets itchy from the loose ticks in the car and has to stand up in the "moon top" to stretch and get some air. She has Plum drive despite her age of six, but Plum accidentally hits a dog. In the episode "A Bat Named Dog", Mama locks her keys inside the car and has Plum go through the sunroof to unlock the car. She gets stuck and has to perform for the pageantry with her legs hanging out the top of the car.
- Bob's Burgers:
- In "Two For Tina", Bob and Linda try to recreate their experiences from school by going to the kids' school dance. They take a limo to the event so that Linda can stand in the sunroof and yell "bwah!".
- In "V For Valentine-detta", Tina's girls' night out ends with everyone standing in the sunroof. The limo driver let them do it on the grounds they didn't sue her if something went wrong.
- At the beginning of The Incredible Crash Dummies, Spare Tire is crash testing a limo meant for the president. "It's supposed to be indestructible!" "Supposed to be?" The limo survives the bomb test, but the force of the explosion sends Spare Tire flying through the open sun roof.
Bull: Guess we'll have to take out the sun roof...
