The 8 Most Ridiculous Moments In 'Fast And Furious' History

Narrowing down the most ridiculous moments of the Fast & Furious franchise proved to be a difficult task, considering how, you know, the entire damn franchise is comprised of ridiculous moments. But that's a big part of the reason I love these movies. With the series' eighth film, The Fate of the Furious, arriving this Friday, there's no better time to glance in our rear view mirrors and take a tour through the most ridiculous moments in Fast history. Fill your NOS tanks, grab yourself a Corona, and prepare to race through this list a quarter mile at a time.

We've established that 2 Fast 2 Furious is the worst Fast movie so far, and John Singleton's flashy approach here is all style and no substance. But aside from the absurd "stare and drive" scene, there's one moment worth singling out in this uninspired sequel: when Brian (Paul Walker) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) pull a Starsky and Hutch and ramp their car onto a moving yacht. Brian seems unfamiliar with the roads, and it appears he had no clue there was a ramp at the end of the street he was on, let alone the exact speed to be traveling that would allow them to land on that boat. To the film's credit, though, the characters actually seem like they're experiencing some pain after their vehicle crashes, and characters reacting to pain becomes more and more rare as the series progresses. Of course, they're still well enough to shoot the bad guy seconds after landing.

2009's Fast & Furious opens with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), and a proto-version of their "family" hijacking fuel in the Dominican Republic. But one theft nearly ends in catastrophe when Dom and Letty find themselves boxed in, with a burning tanker blocking the road behind them and another bearing down on them. But look at Dom's face at the 2:12 mark in that video. He's not worried in the slightest. And why should he be? Dominic Toretto can do just about anything as long as he's behind the wheel of a car – and that apparently includes doing some genius-level calculus in his head, timing the tumbling tanker's bounces so perfectly he and Letty simply slip underneath. This is one of the first moments in which we see Dom shift from just a guy who can drive into a full-fledged superhero.

It doesn't take long for Fast Five to crank up the insanity and let the audience know that five movies in, the filmmakers are operating on an entirely different playing field. I'm not a physicist, but I don't think a bus could slam into the back of Brian's car like that and go flying without Brian experiencing little more than a scratched bumper. That alone wouldn't have been enough for this moment to make this list, but the aftermath is where things get totally outlandish. I count five full rotations on that crash – clearly enough to kill everyone on board multiple times over – but as we instantly discover from some expository news reports, not only did Dom escape, but literally everyone on the bus survived that crash. I remember laughing out loud at that moment in the theater; it's the most brazenly ridiculous opening in the franchise's history.

This franchise utilizes some classic soap opera tropes by employing a fake murder and amnesia as major plot points, and that whole mess begins in Fast & Furious when Dom hears Letty has been killed. (Don't worry, she's fine.) Dom and his sister Mia (Jordan Brewster) visit the crash site where Letty supposedly died, and Dom displays Sherlock Holmes-esque abilities of deduction, constructing the crash in his head based solely on the skid marks he sees on the street. This may not seem that ridiculous for these movies, but the fact that this is the one and only time in the entire franchise in which Dom demonstrates these abilities puts it in a class all its own. The dude's since been in some serious scrapes where these powers might have come in handy. What gives?

When Dom – who, let's remember, is just a former mechanic – gets into an all-out brawl with Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), a trained member of the Diplomatic Security Service, it should be a miracle that Dom survives the encounter. The fact that Dom actually wins, and comes within inches of beating Hobbs to death with a wrench, is maybe the most laughable thing in all of these movies. I mean, have you seen The Rock? The guy is jacked beyond belief. In a real fight between the two actors, Vin Diesel would end up like Biff Tannen at the end of Back to the Future, dressed in a jumpsuit and waxing up The Rock's car. ("I'm sorry, Mr. The Rock. I meant I was just starting on the second coat.") But since Diesel is a producer on these films and has a great deal of control over the storytelling, he's able to constantly make himself look like the ultimate badass...even at the expense of any shred of realism this series had left.

It's not enough for Fast Five to crash a car into a moving train. It's also not enough to have Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner leap from that metal heap onto a moving car at the last second to avoid being obliterated by a bridge. Nope, this movie tops it off by having Dom drive the rescue car off an enormous cliff, and the two bros leap out of the vehicle as it hurtles toward the water. Despite the two experiencing a 500 foot drop (and that's a conservative estimation!), they plunge into the water and bob back to the top just a couple of seconds later, seemingly unfazed. Sure, these characters have been known to do crazy stunts before, but this is unhinged even by their standards.

On a pure action beat level, this is the absolute height of the whole Fast series. This is the one future directors are going to have to top, and the one that likely comes to mind for a majority of Fast fans when they think about the series' most ridiculous moments. The word "iconic" gets thrown around a lot these days, but the image of a red supercar backlit by the sun and soaring between two buildings instantly reached iconic status...and rightly so. This sequence is bonkers in the best way. Forget plot, physics, or plausibility – this is Furious 7 making a statement, pure and simple. And that statement is, "Come at me, other franchises. I dare you to top this."

The most ridiculous moment in the entire franchise comes courtesy of Fast & Furious 6, when Dominic Toretto's superpowers are at their peak. A crushed Mercedes is dragging behind the villains' tank on a highway bridge, and Dom suggests Brian and Roman knock it over the edge to serve as an anchor that will slow down their competition. But that competition includes an amnesia-stricken Letty, whom Dom still loves. Brian and Roman knock the anchor off the bridge, but Letty gets out of the tank to try to cut the tie between the two vehicles. Uh oh. So naturally, Dom calculates the exact length of the cable between the tank and the Mercedes, the weight of the Mercedes, the moment it will make contact with the bridge pylon below, the impact it'll have on the tank, and the precise angle at which Letty will be launched into the air. No big deal. Timing his movements perfectly, he speeds alongside the tank, crashes his car into a guardrail, and uses the crash as a launchpad for himself so he can catch Letty in mid-air and land on the windshield of a stationary car. Whew.

The sequence is a microcosm of the whole franchise: preposterous action with the idea of family at the center. Even Chris Morgan – who's written every Fast movie from Tokyo Drift all the way to The Fate of the Furious – agrees with this placement (and I created the slots on this list before I spoke to him).

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Now let's open it up for you to continue the discussion. What do you think is the most ridiculous moment in the franchise thus far? Sound off in the comments below.