...the lengths a person has to go to try to impress Simon Cowell.
The stunt performer is a character archetype that appears in fiction. They are daredevils who perform stunts for the entertainment of the masses. These stunts they do tend to be dangerous, but that's the point. If the stunts were safe and easy, there's no entertainment to either the audience or the stunt performer themself. If the stunt performer actually gets injured, they have a particular tendency to recover, get back on their feet, and keep performing stunts.
The stunts they perform include, but are not limited to:
- Escape Artist: Escaping death traps.
- Human Cannonball: Being fired out of a cannon.
- Ramp Jump: Riding a vehicle, typically a motorcycle, over a large gap.
- Tightrope Walking: Walking across a rope or thin wire while high above the ground.
Because of how iconic the real-life stunt performer Evel Knievel is, a lot of fictional stunt performers in western media tend to be modelled after him, down to wearing something based on the American flag and focusing on ramp jumps. Some media are less subtle in the homage and outright give their own stunt performers clothes that look a lot like that of Knievel's. The examples that are blatant imitations of Evel Knievel tend to overlap with No Celebrities Were Harmed.
Not to be confused with Stunt Double, where the profession is about doing stunts in place of actors instead of doing daring stunts for an audience.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Rurouni Kenshin: Girl of the Week Marimo is a stunt performer at a circus, and her act involves her being fired out of a cannon.
Comic Books
- Batman: Both Dick Grayson and the pre-Crisis Jason Todd were part of circus performer families: Dick's were trapeze artists while Jason's were tightrope walkers.
- Deadman: Boston Brand was a trapeze artist who would perform death-defying stunts, giving him the nickname "Deadman"… then, he was shot in the air.
- Ghost Rider: Johnny Blaze started out as a stunt performer who did motorcycle stunts, and continued to perform stunts even after he gained his Ghost Rider abilities. Superpowers or not, the bills still need to be paid.
- New Gods: Mister Miracle is a hero of New Genesis and the greatest Escape Artist in The DCU, and on Earth, he periodically pays the bills by making public appearances doing increasingly improbable escapes from Death Traps for the masses. The Mister Miracle (2017) miniseries depicts stunts including escaping a tube of water with spikes ready to impale him, entering a wooden crate atop a crane before it's dropped onto the ground below, and getting in a wooden barrel on train tracks right before the train crashes into it. Despite the comic not depicting their explicit outcome, he somehow survives all of them.
Films — Animation
- Toy Story 4: The movie introduces Duke Caboom, who is pretty much a Canadian Evel Knievel. He is specifically a motorcycle stunt toy, with maple leaf motifs in line with the Canadian flag, but his owner abandoned him when it turned out he couldn't actually perform the stunts he was depicted as doing in the commercial.
Films — Live-Action
- The Great Race: Near the beginning of the film, the Great Leslie and Professor Fate are shown performing dangerous stunts to entertain the public. Professor Fate has himself snatched into the air by a Wright Brothers-style airplane and rides a rocket car, in addition to trying to sabotage Leslie's stunts. Leslie escapes from a straitjacket while hanging from a balloon and pilots a fast-traveling speedboat (these are made more dangerous by Professor Fate firing an arrow at the balloon and sending an acoustic-homing torpedo after the speedboat).
- The Rocketeer: Cliff Secord is a hotshot stunt pilot preparing for a national air-race (and isn’t above doing aerial stunt shows dressed as a clown for extra money). His skills and daredevil attitude come in handy when he mistakenly obtains an experimental rocket pack, allowing him to become the heroic Rocketeer.
Live-Action TV
- Bizarre: Parodied with the character "Super Dave" Osborne (who has since moved on to other shows). Osborne is frequently lauded as a brilliant daredevil whose stunts are remarkably sensational. However, whenever we see him perform a stunt, it inevitably ends in an over-the-top disaster. Super Dave would later have his own Spin-Off show named for him.
- Hudson and Rex: In "Fearless Freaks", the murder victim is a member of an online masked daredevil group who seemingly died mid-stunt while streaming. This is revealed to not be the case — Birdy was in fact accidentally murdered out of self-defense in an argument. His daredevil friends, thinking he had gotten like that himself, impersonated him on the death video so he could have a more epic death in the eyes of the public.
- jackass: Jackass is a TV series dedicated to showing people doing ridiculous and dangerous stunts, among others. One stunt is the "Fire Hose Rodeo", where Dave England rides a powerful fire hose as if it was a bull at a rodeo show.
- Monk: In "Mr. Monk and the Daredevil", the Frisco Fly is a mysterious figure known for scaling buildings and escaping the police. When the Fly barely survives flubbing a stunt in public, he's unmasked as Monk's rival Harold Krenshaw, to Monk's shock and dismay — last he knew, Krenshaw was even more afraid of heights than Monk is. As Monk investigates a seemingly unrelated arson case, however, it's revealed the real Frisco Fly died in a mundane car accident, and Harold's cousin happened upon the wreck and the costume. He drugged Harold and dressed him up as The Fly, invoking the trope to kill him without suspicion and secure his share of their dying uncle's money. Harold, happy for the attention, went with it without realizing his cousin's intentions.
- Psych: In "Daredevils!", Shawn and Gus investigate the attempted murder of Dutch the Clutch, a circus performer who does stunt jumps on his motorcycle. The culprit turns out to be Dutch himself; he found out he was dying and hoped that sabotaging one of his stunts would result in a big life-insurance payout for his family.
Music
- Kanye West: The music video for "Touch the Sky" features Kanye West attempting to jump a canyon in a rocket car in front of a live audience. The suit he wears is almost exactly like Knievel's.
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering: The card Devil K. Nevil features a devil daredevil with a name obviously based on Evel Knievel. The card art depicts it riding a rocket-propelled cycle of some sort. Its card effect is that when it enters battle, it can jump over any number of creatures, and if it successfully clears the jump, it gets a proportional stat bonus.
Video Games
- Daredevil Dennis (or Dare Devil Denis according to the title screen) was a platform game for the BBC Micro in which the title character is a stuntman whose stunts involve jumping over hazards on his motorbike.
- Far Cry 5: Clutch Nixon was a daredevil based in Hope Valley who performed stunts around the area. His final stunt was jumping off a mountain in a wingsuit and he was never seen again, and he would later be declared dead after the fact.
- The Secret of Monkey Island: The local circus has a stunt show involving being shot out of a cannon. Naturally Guybrush has to take a shot, but not without a helmet, they are insistent on that point.
Western Animation
- Devlin: Ernie Devlin performs Ramp Jump stunts on his motorcycle for a circus. His younger brother Tod acts as mechanic and coordinator, and little sister Sandy is a Circus Brat. All three are full-time students during the winter and pull together enough revenue with their stunt jumping act in the summer to carry them through the year.
- Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil: The titular Kick Buttowski is a young aspiring stunt performer who dreams of being the world's greatest daredevil when he grows up and doesn't let the fact he's ten years old stop him from starting early.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The Wonderbolts are a team of elite stunt flyers featured throughout the series, which Rainbow Dash dreams of joining. Rainbow eventually attends the Wonderbolt Academy in Season 3, joins their Reserves in Season 4, and becomes a full-fledged member in Season 6.
- In "The Washouts", Lightning Dust is revealed to have started her own extreme stunt team, The Washouts, made up of other ex-Wonderbolts who like to get more dangerous. Since not all the stunts require flying, Scootaloo is allowed to join, though she quickly backs out when she realizes how little oversight Lightning Dust has given to the stunts, almost getting Scootaloo killed.
- Phineas and Ferb: The episode "Phineas And Ferb The Flying Fishmonger" reveals that Grandpa Reginald Fletcher used to be a stunt performer known as the Flying Fishmonger, doing stunts such as riding a motorcycle to jump over a whale and the Queen of England. His last stunt, done during the episode, is to jump a large gorge with Phineas' and Ferb's help.
- The Replacements (2006): The patriarch of the family is Dick Daring, and he does stunt performances for a living. He tends to get injured doing these stunts, but he doesn't let it stop him.
- The Simpsons has recurring character Lance Murdock, first introduced in "Bart the Daredevil" and based on Evel Knievel in all but name. Bart is inspired to become a stunt performer himself in said episode, eventually deciding he wants to jump over Springfield Gorge with his skateboard, and while everyone else warns him against it, Murdock encourages Bart to go for it despite his most recent stunt having landed him in the hospital (and he doesn't fare much better in his future stunts either).
- Squirrel Boy: Rodney’s cousin, Eddie, is a flying squirrel who works at a traveling circus as an aerial acrobat.