Painting The Medium / Pinball

• A common one in pinball machines with an autoplunger is to replace the launcher button with a prop relevant to the game's theme:
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day started the trend, with the launcher being a gun handle and trigger.
  • The plunger in Fish Tales is modeled after a fishing rod.
  • Similarly, the plunger in Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure (also by Mark Ritchie) is Indy's pistol grip.
  • The plunger in Star Trek: The Next Generation is a phaser handle.
  • Batman Forever uses it as the firing grip for the Batwing.
  • GoldenEye has the pistol grip for James Bond's Walther PPK.
  • Apollo 13 uses the Saturn V launch handle for a plunger. It's also used as part of the "Lunar Lander" Video Mode.
  • Lethal Weapon 3 has a gun grip and trigger.
  • In Sega Pinball's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the launcher is Frankenstein's Big Electric Switch.
  • Last Action Hero uses the pistol grip of Slater's Desert Eagle.
• Whirlwind and Twister both have a fan on top of the backbox that blows at you during gameplay (though the former only activates it when a lock is lit and during multiball).
• Instead of the amber-orange dot-matrix display used in other pinball games, Bram Stoker's Dracula uses a medium-red screen instead.
• The Earthshaker! cabinet vibrates when an earthquake occurs (in the game).
• No Good Gofers has "Short Circuit" mode, when one of the gophers begins nibbling on the wires inside the game. During that time, the prize wheel spins erratically back and forth, and the playfield lights flicker.
• Black Rose uses the ball as a cannonball that is fired at things on the playfield.
• Stern Electronics' Meteor uses an oversized playfield bumper to represent the titular projectile.
• At random intervals, The Brain shuts down everything for about fifteen seconds to show the player what an epileptic seizure is like.
• In Monster Bash, the various game modes are also the names of the band's musical tracks.
• Jersey Jack Pinball's The Wizard of Oz has Dorothy's ruby slippers as the bottom two flippers.
• The flippers in Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball are a pair of large carrots held by Bugs Bunny.
• On The Flintstones, the game apron (just below the flippers, where the player's hands sit) is molded to resemble carved rock.
• In Checkpoint, the player starts a game by turning an ignition key.
• Lights... Camera... Action! has a pair of spotlights (red and blue) which shine down on the player at key points of the game. In addition, most of the lights on the machine are out when the game begins until the director calls for "Lights."
• The leg fastener bolts on Magic Girl are capped with (dulled) Spikes of Villainy.
• Dutch Pinball's The Big Lebowski has a miniature rug that needs to be unrolled, along with a (fake) glass of White Russian sitting on a napkin inside the cabinet.
• Total Nuclear Annihilation shuts down the flippers and voids any further balls once you complete the game's ultimate goal. Namely, destroying all nine reactors, which in turn leads to everything being destroyed - including you.
• Stern's Jurassic Park does the same thing to emphasize the finality of the Wizard Mode, which depicts a volcano erupting and ultimately consuming the entire island.
• Stranger Things:
  • During an Upside-Down hurry-up, the game's lights imitate the perpetual darkness of the Upside-Down itself. The Premium and Limited editions further this by projecting simulated spores onto the playfield and backbox.
  • The Premium and Limited editions of the game also translate Eleven's Psychic Powers into the telekinesis ball lock.
  • The Upside-Down hurry up implicitly references Will's "hallucinations" in the second season, as it happens completely randomly and primarily displays stills from scenes involving his visions.
  • The center shot is subtly tied to the Upside Down and the Demogorgon beyond their dedicated modes. For instance, "Monster Hunting" and "Get Me Out" (both based on moments explicitly involving the Demogorgon) center around it, and the super jackpot in "Total Isolation" (which displays the moment Eleven first made contact with it) is awarded by shooting it.
• Jersey Jack Pinball's Pirates of the Caribbean pairs this with a Mythology Gag. The small LCD screen near the action button emulates Jack Sparrow's compass most of the time. Just like it points towards whatever its user desires most in the source material, the screen points towards the most valuable shot available on the playfield.
• Rick and Morty:
  • One Adventure can't be started at the scoop like all the others; instead, it begins when the player shoots the garage (indicated by Rick repeatedly urging your Morty to come there). Fittingly enough, this Adventure is based on "Pickle Rick", which opens with Rick urging Morty to come to the garage to see him (having turned himself into a pickle).
  • "The Blood Dome", which is based on an episode where Rick inadvertently causes Morty's left arm to start acting on its own, limits the player to 25 uses of the left flipper.
• The backbox speakers in The Beatles are designed to look like the Vox amplifiers the Beatles themselves used.
• Dialed In! has a phone with a smaller LCD display prominently displayed on the playfield. Tilting causes it to appear cracked, as though you'd dropped it.
• Guns N' Roses (Jersey Jack):
  • The rock band theme is hammered in by various parts of the playfield resembling instruments or other relevant objects, including spinners shaped like guitar picks and the higher-tier versions' bass neck ramp.
  • When certain targets are hit during modes where they aren’t lit, they will make sounds appropriate to the current objective. During Tour Multiball, they sound various horns representing the different types of vehicles, while they play audience applause during song modes (represented by live performances).
• Godzilla (Stern): Starting Powerline Attack causes the game's many lights to partially power off, as though it were being affected by the sudden interruption in electricity. Likewise, starting Tesla Strike causes every light on the playfield to briefly, sequentially turn off.
• Alien (2017): The playfield lights sometimes turn a single color to reflect the events of a mode.
  • Near the end of Save Newt Multiball, the lights turn yellow and then red in tandem with an on-screen explosion.
  • During "Self Destruct," all the lights emulate a spinning emergency beacon by turning yellow and "swiveling" (by sequentially turning on and off in a specific pattern).
• Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (2023):
  • The playfield lights will often change to fit the visuals being shown on the display. For instance, the mode based on "Foul Play in Funland" opens by making each light flash either blue or yellow, reflecting the many blue and yellow lights used to decorate Funland's rides.
  • One Collector's Edition-exclusive feature is a model of Scooby hiding in a barrel, his head sticking out. If the player picks Scooby as their character, this model mirrors to reflect the Bravery Meter's status — his head will slowly sink back into the barrel as it decreases, representing his waning courage.
• James Bond 007 (Stern): The lone vertical up-kicker^note a device on the playfield which, as its name suggests, kicks the ball upward onto a ramp is contained within a miniature Aston Martin model, representing the car's Ejection Seat (as seen in Goldfinger).

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