Top Secret! - A Ford Pinto, tapped ever so gently by another car, explodes (yes, I know the history behind the gag).
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie - Patrick Star, gliding into the backdrop during the Krusty Krab II opening ceremony, knocks it over, after which it bursts into flame.
Shrek the Third - Shrek, christening a new sailing ship, throws the bottle of champagne when the ship slides out into the sea too soon. Its sails burst into… well, you get the idea.
Any other movies or shows in which you’ve noticed this?
I often refer to this as Gotham Technology. In Batmans world, there’s often a fight going on in a room with consoles or machinery. Invariably, someone throws a chair at the good guy, who ducks. The chair will hit the controls, generator, or what have you, and BOOM! Sparks and flame everywhere. Apparently, neither Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark believe in UL-tested equipment.
They’ve done this a few times in Family Guy, including once where a horse-drawn carriage goes over a cliff, smashes at the bottom, then explodes. The camera pans over to the horse, still alive, standing splay-legged and shocked, which promptly explodes as well.
You know that this is a running gag on the Simpsons (and has been for quite a while)? Pretty much any time a vehicle crashes, it immediately bursts into flame. Doesn’t matter what kind of vehicle: cars, boats, airplanes, bicycles, wooden barrels, desks, you name it.
On Buffy the Vampire Slayer a character once threw a computer off a desk and smashed it, whereupon it caught on fire. (And later, somebody claimed to have gotten a bunch of data off the Incredible Flammable Computer.)
It’s probably happened more than once on South Park, but the only time that comes to mind is in the Cartoon Wars Part 1.
There’s a chase scene where Kyle is going after Cartman - both of them driving Big Wheels. Cartman is tossing all sorts of obstacles Kyle’s way, causing him to lose control of his Big Wheel. As a result, Kyle abandons his Big Wheel, as it goes careening over the edge of a cliff… where it promptly explodes.
LilShieste
My personal favorite is a scene in which Chief Wiggum is inside a costume made to look like a beer stein and rolls down a hill- at first frightened, but then happily humming. When he gets to the bottom of the hill, he hits a tree, which catches on fire.
No, they’re inflammable. However, much like Dr. Nick Rivera, the people of Springfield learned too late that “inflammable” means the same thing as “flammable”- probably around the time they built that giant magnifying class next to the Popsicle®-stick skyscraper.
How about Martin’s go-cart crashing, bursting into flames, and leaving Martin scurrying away in flames as well? Gotta earn some kind of points for the meanest gag ever.
This only comes close, but there’s Airplane II, where Chuck Conners’ character The Sarge tosses his cigar behind him into a stack of barrels (where there’s a clear “no smoking” sign), but nothing happens. Then, a little later, he spits into it (where the clear “no smoking” sign also says “no spitting”).
I thought that was in Airplane(I), and it was Rex Cramer (Robert Stack), and it was a cigarette, not a cigar. And I thought he threw it out a window of the terminal.
Did they do it in both movies?
I don’t know whether it’s intended as a joke, or is an example of the sort of thing being spoofed by the Simpsons, but in Total Recall an electric cab bursts into flames upon impact.