Bryan Dawe: Well, wasn't this built so that the front wouldn't fall off?
Senator Collins: Well, obviously not.
Dawe: How do you know?
Collins: Because the front fell off, and 20,000 tons of crude oil spilt into the sea, caught fire. It's a bit of a giveaway!
Senator Collins: Well, obviously not.
Dawe: How do you know?
Collins: Because the front fell off, and 20,000 tons of crude oil spilt into the sea, caught fire. It's a bit of a giveaway!
One of the standard tools to try to lose someone when driving.
When in a vehicle, simply push a button and the car somehow spills out oil behind, designed to make the person behind slip out of control. Sometimes, the slick may then be ignited to further cover their trail, or to burn things around.
When this happens in water, oil slicks represent a source of environmental pollution rather than a means of giving an enemy the slip.
Sub-Trope of Weaponized Car. See also Slippery Skid. Not to be confused with a certain Decepticon.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Comic Books
- Gotham City Garage: Dick Grayson's bike is equipped with this. Dick even calls it...
Nightwing: Deploying Oil Slick!
- Robin (1993): Tim Drake's Redbird has an oil-slick dispenser.
Fan Works
- In the Facing the Future Series, Burner, being a mechanic ghost, is able to generate ecto oil, which not gives him a slick getaway, but he's also able to set it on fire.
- In Hero Academia D×D, Momo defeats Iida this way in the sports festival, creating an oil slick with her Quirk, making him slip and sending him flying out of the ring.
Films — Animated
- At the very beginning of Cars 2, Finn McMissile does this to the Lemons while escaping from their oil rig, causing one of them to fall off the railing and into the ocean below.
Films — Live-Action
- The Cannonball Run: Roger Moore, driving the Aston-Martin DB V from the James Bond movies, uses the oil slick to ditch a pursuing police car, which dramatically spins round in circles while flying off the road. In the second movie, Richard Kiel and Jackie Chan drive their Japanese gadget car into a lake, so they release debris and an oil slick like a wartime submarine to make the police think they're dead.
- Early on in Captain America (1979), the villains try to use this to kill Steve.
- During the car chase scene in F/X: Murder by Illusion, Andy causes a pile-up and loses one of the pursuing police cars by dumping a barrel of oil out of the back of the van as they take a sharp corner.
- The Trope Codifier is James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger, which includes an oil slick among its defensive mechanisms. When he has to use it, it performs exactly as intended, sending two pursuing cars skidding off the road. Unfortunately, there was a third car back there.
- The Goonies: Data's "Slick Shoes" invention is essentially the vehicular version in a shoe-sized package. He successfully applies it to a log that crosses a river while being chased by the villains.
- Hopscotch features a pickup truck carrying a barrel of oil in its bed and a release mechanism in its cab, for this very purpose (the protagonist pretends it's for surfacing the driveway of a house he's building).
- Inspector Gadget (1999):
- The movie has the Gadget Oil Slick, which spread toothpaste on the floor. More traditionally, Sanford Scolex's limo has an oil slick sprayer, which he used against John Brown's Chevette.
- The second movie gives Gadget a bubble gum launcher that deploys from his hat and sprays bright pink, extremely sticky bubble gum. There is also an actual oil-slick gadget that pops out of his right hand and is only used for the sake of a Visual Pun: the bartender tells an undercover Gadget that he had to "grease a few palms" to find out where Dr. Claw was. Well, Gadget greased the guy's palm, all right—with top-grade axle grease! Cue Bar Brawl.
- Johnny English Reborn: A Deleted Scene has our hero noticing a button marked OIL and assuming that it's an oil gauge — he presses it and sends a carload of Mooks who are about to blow him up with a grenade launcher off the road.
- In The Love Bug, the Thorndyke Special (a souped-up Apollo 3500) is rigged with one that Thorndyke tries to use against the heroes during the climactic race at the end.
- Pee-wee's Big Adventure: One of many features of Pee-Wee's bike — "James Bond kinda stuff!"
- Speed Racer (2008) uses this once or twice.
- Terminator Salvation: Kyle Reese throws an oil drum off the back of their vehicle and shoots it with his shotgun, sending one of the pursuing Moto-Terminators hurling out of control — it had already shown an ability to use its Artificial Intelligence for collision avoidance, but the splash of liquid was too quick to react to.
- Wheels on Meals: David uses some of his cooking oil to give the henchmen the slip during the car chase.
Gamebooks
- In Freeway Fighter, your Cool Car, the Dodge Interceptor, comes armed with two canisters of crude oil, which can be used during chase scenes to make pursuing enemy vehicles skid out of control and crash.
Literature
- In Eagle Strike, Alex Rider's weaponized bike is equipped with a number of gadgets, including a water bottle that dispenses an oil slick.
- The Super Dictionary: The Penguin causes Batgirl to slip by squirting some oil from one of his umbrellas.
Live-Action TV
- An oil slick is one of the gadgets installed Cool Car the Stingray in Black Scorpion.
- In an episode of CHiPs, the officers fought 'the Stunt Car Bandits', who drove a movie stunt car equipped with gadgets like a smokescreen and an oil slick dispenser.
- Clarke and Dawe: "The Front Fell Off" skit revolves around an oil slick off Western Australia👁 Image
caused by the front falling off an oil tanker. - Father Brown: In "The Wheels of Wrath", the killer pours engine oil across the road in an attempt to cause Billy Turner to suffer a fatal motorcycle accident.
- Tested on MythBusters where the guys found that an oil slick made it very difficult but not impossible for the pursuer to maintain control of his car. Still, if used in a real-world situation with the element of surprise it would be more likely to work. It worked better in the 1960s, when most James Bond films were made, since most cars of the time, up to the magnificent Aston Martins or Ferrari Daytonas, had narrow tyres of poor quality and construction. And of course, no traction control or anti-lock braking.
- Thunderbirds: In "Brink of Disaster", when Lady Penelope is being pursued by two trigger-happy crooks, she deploys FAB 1's oil slick in an attempt to loose them after the smoke screen she released earlier fails to deter them. Unfortunately, the oil slick also fails so she is forced to resort to even more drastic measures and shoot her pursuers off the road.
Radio
- The Green Hornet's car the Black Beauty includes an oil slick amongst its gadgets.
Tabletop Games
- One of the standard vehicular devices in Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars.
- d20 Modern has an oil slick hazard. If you can't avoid it, you must make a Drive check or lose control of your vehicle.
Video Games
- Aqua Naval Warfare: Gothean "Oiler Hulks" can create these, which severely slow your ship if passed through.
- Featured in Auto Destruct. As a weapon, of course. Reduces top speed, acceleration and steering response for some time.
- In the Bonkers Licensed Game for the Sega Genesis, in Ma Tow Truck's stage, Bonkers can use oil slicks to run the enemy cars off the road.
- In Cars: Race-O-Rama, Stinger covers the racetrack with oil during the final race as a means to interfere with Lightning's race against Chick.
- The "Trick Arrow" powerset in City of Heroes includes an Oil Slick Arrow. The oil slick it creates can catch on fire.
- In Cro-Mag Rally, one of the powerups produces an oil slick that removes all adherence. It stays until the end of the race.
- Diddy Kong Racing: Oil Slicks are the first-level Green item. They'll send someone spinning, slowing them down, and, in the DS Video Game Remake, they also screw up their car's steering for a few seconds afterward.
- Dragon Age: Origins: The Grease spell allows the caster to create an area which slows down those within it, as well as making them slip unless they pass a physical resistance check. Said slick can also be set on fire, dealing fire damage to all those within its area of effect.
- Freaky Awesome: The "oil" form is a tiny, toddler-sized humanoid who can create these, and then ignite them with fireballs.
- In Get Amped, the Oil Shooter accessory can shoot an oil glob on the ground that can either be ignited for a big explosion, or be used to douse the enemy on oil, making them more vulnerable to fire attacks. The Pyromaniac accessory makes further use of this, allowing the user to spread lots of oil on the ground or throw oil canisters onto enemies which then can be ignited to cover a large area or people on fire.
- Can be used in GTA2 by the player to cause any vehicle make a sharp left or right turn, often crashing into a wall.
- Non-driving example: Blaze, the Firebat from Heroes of the Storm, has this as one of his abilities. As the game focuses on individual characters engaging in on-foot fantasy combat, the skill applies a movespeed slow to any enemy standing in it; it can then be lit afire to harm enemies and heal Blaze himself.
- An odd example in Hot Wheels: Velocity X. The Oil Drum weapon lobs an oil drum forward which explodes on contact, making any opponents caught in the blast radius spin out.
- Your starting "dropper" weapon in Interstate '76.
- Jak X: Combat Racing has these as rear weapon. It doesn't do any damage besides messing with control of vehicle ... unless it's upgraded, when it catches fire.
- James Bond:
- One of the gadgets in Agent Under Fire.
- The later Everything or Nothing had an acid slick as part of the V12 Vanquish's equipment. Its upgrade makes it catch fire, too.
- 007 Racing has James Bond's Aston Martin being given this exact feature, as seen in the movies, replicated directly into the game. They're useful in chase-related missions for slowing down pursuing enemies, and in the first mission's ending cutscene Bond uses it to crash two enemy jeeps pursuing him.
- Jet Force Gemini: The oil slick is one of the usable items in the racetracks (both the 3D ones which are the circuit in Mizar's Palace and the unlockable Greenwood Village from Diddy Kong Racing, and the 2D ones that can be played in the Game Within a Game from Ichor). Any driver that goes through it will spin uncontrollably and lose speed.
- Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival: Small puddles of oil can be found on the road during the Car Course. Animal's bumper car will briefly spin out of control if he runs over them.
- Post Apocalyptic Mayhem: The Childhood Dreams' Oil Fields weapon does this.
- Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers: City Circuit has some splayed throughout the track.
- RC Pro-Am: Especially annoying when going into turns and corners, which can lead to a crash.
- One of the bonuses in Re-Volt.
- While not a feature of the bike itself, in Road Rash 3, Lucky Luc's primary weapon is... an oil can. He stays just ahead of you, spilling oil on the road in hopes of making you spin out.
- Some characters in Silver Falls Gaiden: Deathly Delusion Destroyers and Ruby River have the Oil Spill ability, which causes an Area of Effect over all 4 rows, but only at close range. It also debuffs fire resistance by 40%, and speed by 2.
- The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (THQ): The Flinger enemies shoot out goo that messes up movement and leaves a puddle that does the same.
- This is one of the standard "weapons" in the Spy Hunter video game series. When in converted boat mode, the oil slick even ignites.
- One of the rear-mountable weapons in Streets of SimCity.
- In episode 4 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, one of the gadgets in Dangeresque's Cool Car is an oil slick.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario Kart: All over the place in certain circuits, which extends to their graphically-upgraded versions on later games. The players, however, don't actually use it as an item, preferring the more cartoony Banana Peel for a similar effect.
- Mario Kart Arcade GP: Sticky Oil serves this role as an item the player can throw backwards. Anyone that touches it will have a decrease in traction.
- Wacky Wheels has an oil slick pickup which when dropped makes anyone who hits it give a good spin on the spot, requiring them to waste time reorienting themselves to point the right way on the track.
- The Wacky World of Miniature Golf: The target on the Don't Mess With My Bike Hole is a conveniently-labeled oil can which, upon getting the ball inside, spits out oil all over the road that the biker gang proceeds to run over, slipping and crashing their bikes.
Webcomics
- Truck Bearing Kibble (source of the page image) parodies and deconstructs the trope when applying it to water👁 Image
. The third panel shows wildlife being affected.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: When Bessie the snail is fed a certain kind of berry, her slime trail becomes extra slippery.
- The Batmobile in Batman: The Animated Series was equipped with oil slick sprayers.
- Bob's Burgers: In "Food Truckin'", when the Belchers are forced to flee the festival, Bob gets Gene to empty the grease tank on the food truck in order to ward off the rowdy hipsters chasing them.
- Darkwing Duck uses one to shake his pursuers in "Darkly Dawns the Duck". One touch: he uses it shortly before making a right turn.
- Frequently used in the animated Inspector Gadget.
- Taz-Mania: One is installed in the family mini-van in "Yet Another Road to Taz-Mania", and is accidentally deployed to dispose of the trailing spies car.
- The Garbageman uses this on the turtles in an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003).
- In Transformers: Animated, one of Optimus' less-used tricks lets him spray "negative friction lubricant". Given the way "lubricant" was used in the live-action movies... Ewwww.
- Wacky Races:
- In "Real Gone Ape", Dick Dastardly used the trick and it backfired on him as the gorilla he had previously hypnotized tripped on the oil and fell on the Mean Machine, crashing it.
- Dastardly tried it again in a Fender Bender 500 race. It backfired on him because the oil was his car's fuel. He berated Muttley for making him press the wrong button.
- Welcome to Tonka Town: One of Turbo’s cheating schemes during “Race Day In Tonka Town” involves creating one to trip up Hook and Ladder.
Real Life
- Apparently this really is an option for VIP transports (the same sorts of vehicles that have armor added post-manufacturing). It takes a LOT of oil to do it properly.
- One option discussed to counter a German invasion in 1940 — wait for the German invasion fleet to get to sight of the British coast, then drop a large and deliberate oilslick into the Channel — and set light to it. Reluctantly dropped because of all the obvious difficulties.
- In reality, an oil spill on the road is likely to do the opposite of what it depicts in fiction: Instead of spinning you out, it significantly lowers the friction between the car and the ground, causing you to slide straight forward like you're on ice. In motorsport, many a pile-up has occurred because a damaged car spilled oil on the track, catching a huddle of drivers off-guard as they proceed to drive straight into a wall.