Bowled Over

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A group of people are standing around, possibly in the same formation as bowling pins, and a large, often spherical object crashes into them and sends them flying. A strike sound effect is optional.

Penguins seem to be a favorite for this.

Related to Foe-Tossing Charge. Compare Human Chess.

No real life examples, please; this doesn't work in Real Life.

Examples of Bowled Over include:

Anime and Manga

  • There was an Officer Jenny in the Pokémon episode "I'm Bowling For Thieves" who carried around a bowling ball and used it on criminals like this.
  • Excel Saga literally did this. On a mission to discover what the most popular sport in the country is, Excel and Hyatt get a job at a bowling alley right before it gets taken over by an evil terrorist group that wants to prove bowling is the world's greatest sport. Hyatt, a pair of TV hosts and Excel and Hyatt's idol singer doubles get held hostage in one of the lanes, in giant bowling pin costumes waiting to be knocked down by the evil group's balls. Until Excel uses her bowling balls to save them all and beat the bad guys.
  • There was one episode in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Pure that played this trope for laughs. In this episode, the main characters where trying to rescue Hippo, who was imprisoned at the top of a tower where they have to get past a couple of their adversaries, who are stationed on one floor each. At the second floor, the three heroines confront Lanhua, who then splits into twelve chibi versions of herself, ready to play their music. For no reason at all, a bowling ball lands on Hanon's hands. After a brief imaging of the chibis as bowling pins, she rolls the ball, and… you know what happens next.

Comic Books

  • Tintin does this with half of a wooden dumbbell on the second-to-last page of Tintin in America, complete with bubble showing imaginary bowling pins knocked over.

Live-Action TV

  • In Rescue from Gilligan's Island, the Skipper and Gilligan rescue Mary Ann from a wedding that neither she nor the groom wants to go through with by scooping her up in a wagon full of watermelons just before they get to the "I Do"s. A bunch of people run after them, and they throw the watermelons at the chasers to make them stop. Comes complete with bowling SFX and Gilligan Lampshading "Hey Skipper, I got a strike!" (Apologies for the ads.)
  • In My Name Is Earl, Earl is trying to convince a policeman that he should be a bowler. He shows the officer the list of misdeeds he is trying to fix, but the policeman immediately arrests Earl as it's more or less an evidence of his numerous crimes. Earl tries to run away, and the officer knocks him down, but lets him go afterward, because he did that with a bowling ball, thus proving Earl's point.
  • One of the stages of the Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle involved dressing the contestants as bowling pins and rolling a giant ball at them.

Newspaper Comics

  • A Peanuts Sunday Strip has Lucy making a very large snowball the size of a bowling ball. Many other characters taunt her for this and walk off. Lucy proceeds to roll the ball down the sidewalk, scattering everybody (except Charlie Brown) like proverbial tenpins. Lucy has another ball in reserve, and the final panel shows Charlie Brown getting bowled over, commenting about "picking up the spare".

Video Games

  • The upcoming Massively Multiplayer Crossover Playstation Move Heroes has "Bowling" as one of the five weapons classes, joining the Frisbee of Death as Improbable Weapons.
  • Both Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Donkey Kong Country Returns feature Mooks shaped like bowling pins for you to run over with Rolling Attacks.
  • In Day of the Tentacle, there's a bowling ball that you see for nearly the entire game, but which is too heavy to pick up. In the climax, our heroes are merged into one body, and the Evil Minions guard their captive in bowling-pin formation. Guess what? The three heroes together are now strong enough to pick up the bowling ball. If you can get past the Big Bad who's now guarding the room it's in...
  • Metroid Prime 3 has an area where ten enemies are lined up like bowling pins and marching forward. Players who see this for what it is and run into them as a morph ball are rewarded with an achievement.

Web Comics

  • In Cyanide & Happiness #4659, a man at a "Bowling Pin Impression Contest" rolls into a ball and spin-dashes into several people dressed as bowling pins.

Western Animation

  • Happens to the protagonists in The Penguins of Madagascar.
  • The Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon "Oh, What a Knight" featured Oswald bowling over the Big Bad and his knights.
  • The Phineas and Ferb episode "Bowl-R-Ama Drama" has P&F try to set a record for the world's biggest bowling ball. Meanwhile, Dr. Doofenschmirtz's minions are giant penguins, suspiciously shaped like bowling pins, attacking the town in a triangular formation. The ball gets away from them, and... well, you can guess what happens next.
  • A Couch Gag in one episode of The Critic had Indiana Jones running from that boulder, which then hits a bunch of Nazis who just happen to be there, and, well, you know...
  • Popeye does it to the Forty Thieves.
  • Donald Duck does it to his own nephews in "Donald's Snow Fight".
  • It happens in ChalkZone to a group of cartoon penguins who enjoy being knocked down.
  • In The Lion King, we first see Timon and Pumbaa playing "bowling for buzzards".
  • Pac-Man did a variation early in the episode "Around the World in 80 Chomps". The Ghost Monsters were arranged like bowling pins, and Pac-Man approached them like a bowling ball. Instead of knocking the ghosts down, he chomped them in his usual manner.
  • In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Schnit-Heads", a religious cult based on sausage wants to go "bowling for sinners" with our heroes.

Rocko: You can't chuck bowling balls at us!
Cult Leader: Yes we can. Says so in the Great Book of Bratwurst. "And if there is one among you who does not follow the ways of the Schnitzel, let that one go, and do not throw bowling balls at them."
Rocko: You see? It says let us go.
Cult Leader: It's a matter of interpretation.

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