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"Attention mafia types. Stop hanging out in buildings with skylights. They'll only get broken."
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The modern spin on the Sheet of Glass. An example of the Rule of Cool.
Supernatural beings (especially vampires) love this one. Simply put, to get to or from the scene in a hurry, they jump through a window. A closed window. The shards of glass flying everywhere make it very dramatic.
Human heroes can do this too, but usually have the benefit of a motorcycle taking the impact. Ninjas and Special Forces do it via skylights from the ceiling, the latter normally using rope.
The power of the supernatural, body armor, being Made of Iron or Nigh Invulnerable, or dramatic entrance/exit is required to prevent one's skin from being torn to ribbons by this maneuver. Wrapping a cape or long jacket around yourself in a tumble helps too. In television and film, this visual effect is achieved thanks to using carefully crystallized sugar to stand in for glass.
Truly cool people never need to use the door. May cause Efficient Displacement. See also Window Pain, compare Dangerous Windows. Compare Fast Roping. Contrast Destination Defenestration, where someone is thrown through a window against their own will. A sub-trope of No Escape but Down (when used to exit the scene) or Big Entrance (when used to enter it).
Anime & Manga[]
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Having a cyborg body helps.
- In the first episode of Murder Princess, a group of bounty hunters bursts through a palace window on a motorcycle with balls of fire for wheels.
- Hayate jumps through (or is thrown through) windows without any protection, as just one of his near-superhuman abilities. Klaus does this later on, as well, but he was spoofing an immortal vampire at the time...
- Seto Kaiba did this once in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime; so did Edo Phoenix in GX.
- Spoofed in the "New Year's Cleaning" episode of Keroro Gunsou, where Keroro does a Super Window Jump into the bathroom to tell Natsumi she's not cleaning the bathtub properly... only to get knocked back out the window for getting broken glass all over the floor.
- In one episode, Keroro is watching a movie where a hero jumps through a window into the villains' lair. He actually thought it was open, though.
- In Sumomomo Momomo, Uma Kamen bursts through a stained glass window in an outfit FAR too small to avoid the death of a thousand razors. None of the debris even reaches the ground to harm the non-martial artists in the wedding ceremony.
- Matsuri busts through a stained-glass window early on in Sola, but she's immortal, so whatever.
- Anita does this to rescue Nenene in ROD the TV Series, she does, however, cut a little "X" in the glass before impact.
- B-Ko smashes a window in the palace section of the alien ship in Project A-ko to get in. She's protected by her special (and skimpy) armour but somehow C-Ko, sitting motionless in the room, is unsliced.
- In the Cowboy Bebop Movie, Spike jumps through a train window to get to the villain. He shoots the window first, so it'll shatter easily, and is apparently protected from injury by just being that Badass.
- In the CG-animated Appleseed, several cyborgs bust through the stained glass windows of a church to surround Deunan. In the sequel film, Briareos does it. Twice.
- Zelgadis in Slayers does this as his stylish return to the series, also providing some much-needed reinforcements for the heroes.
- Used totally straight in the Princess Tutu episode "Black Shoes", when Fakir jumps through a window to face the Dark Magical Girl--and then proceeds to pick up a glass shard from the window to use as a weapon. He has no powers that would protect him from the glass, and he's only wearing his school uniform...he's just fond of being very dramatic and Badass.
- The various MADMs from Ranma ½ would indulge in this from time to time, but there was a subversion early in the story: after being tossed out an open (third-story) window, Ranma bounces back up from a tree branch to get back inside... only to smack solidly on the pane of glass when Akane closes the window on him.
- In the anime version of Ouran High School Host Club Nekozawa jumps through a second story window to save his little sister. Just from a cat, but it was still cool.
- Subaru of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha jumps through glass windows at times, but it is eventually justified since she's revealed to be a cyborg
- Mori the Ninja Maid does this in Haruhi-chan. Just for this trope, she and her butler partner get out a trampoline so that she can do this on the second floor of the school. "I'm just a passing maid!" Kyon: LIAR! Given her later abilities, she probably didn't need the trampoline.
- Phantom Renegade from Medabots pulls this off occasionally.
- In Tom Sawyer no Daiboken, the scene described below in Literature is quite dramatic. During Moff Potter's murder trial, Tom finally confesses to witnessing Injun Joe commit the murder. Joe tries to kill Tom, but is forced to flee by the sheriff and he leaps through the courthouse window, in slow-motion, with nary a scratch. But then Joe is pretty strong, not to mention huge ...and therefore invulnerable.
- Otcho in Twentieth Century Boys does a very impressive one, not in the least because he's over 55 years old.
- In their climatic fight scene in Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino Pinnochio throws Triela through a (closed) window, only to have her smash through another window after him just moments later.
- Completely random example in Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya.
- Abel Nightroad, from Trinity Blood does this twice, and even says something about it. "This is becoming something of a habit for me, it seems.
- Lupin III has bailed through several windows, open and closed alike, in the course of his career.
- An immortal leaps out a window in Baccano to escape the one thing that can truly kill him.
- Berserk's Skull Knight does this to a solar eclipse when he rides in to save Guts and Casca during the Eclipse.
- Nichijou - When Mio sees her crush walking arm-in-arm with another girl, the first thing she does is jump headlong out the window and start running. And that's only the beginning.
- In Detective Conan, a killer of the week tries to kill one of their targets when he's hospitalized after suffering an Angst Coma. As the police foils the attempted murder, they jump out of the hospital room's window.
- The third OP of the series starts with a suspect doing this, only to be surrounded by the police and then have Conan approaching him almost menacingly.
Comic Books[]
- Various incarnations of Spider-Man comics have Spidey regularly performing the trope as an entrance to shake up goons.
- Subverted in an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man, where Spidey attempts to enter Kingpin's skyline headquarters in this manner, only to discover the hard way that since his previous visit, Kingpin has had shatterproof glass installed. The three panels of Spidey hitting it then sliding down are tremendous.
- Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of 2099 tries to just open a window to slip out of his high rise apartment, but the windows are "sealed for [his] safety".
- Characters from The Trigan Empire used to get away with this, despite the bare arms and legs exposed by their pseudo-Roman outfits. Trigo, for example, once escaped a room full of baddies by leaping through a window with his bare arm covering his eyes and his sandaled foot leading and maybe kicking the glass. Not a drop of blood anywhere!
- Batman. At least he typically has an armored costume to handle the glass.
- Worth noting that in one story in the Batman Black And White collection one-shots, Batman comes crashing down through a glass ceiling while the Joker is mid-speech. It turns out they're actors (...in a comic book), and as they head to the canteen after the shoot, Joker points out that Batman always gets the big dramatic splash pages, while Batman admits he wishes that he got to make speeches.
- Like his mentor, Robin usually plays this one straight, but in one of the last issues of his own comic, the Boy Wonder tackles someone through a large window, and the internal monologue mentions, "I'm going to be picking glass out of my hair all night. Remind me why I just wear a domino mask again?" This becomes a Funny Aneurysm Moment later on, when half of his head is horribly burned in an explosion because of the lack of protection.
- Rorschach from Watchmen jumped through a window to escape a building he had set on fire. Of course, it ended up pretty badly for him because he landed in a trash can, preventing escape from his pursuers, but still, he didn't seem to have any injuries from actually jumping through the window.
- Although later we see that he has sustained some lasting damage to his ankle because he "landed on it badly" during the jump, and consequently injures it again when the Owlship crash lands in Antarctica.
- Lucky Luke expects to have to get out this way when he enters a building, so he always parks his horse under the window. The only time it ever inconvenienced him in any way was when he did it through the wrong window and, instead of a dramatic horseback escape, got a painful stomach landing.
- Once, he landed on a horse that wasn't Jolly Jumper. When JJ arrived, he explained to readers he put friends in each of the saloon's windows as he couldn't know which one Luke would escape through.
- Subverted early on in Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol - Crazy Jane telekinetically smashes through a plate glass window, then ends up with shards in her hair and blood streaming down her face. Cliff then gives the shop owner the Doom Patrol's address so he can send them the repair bill.
- The minor Marvel villain Mad Dog had what was largely considered his Crowning Moment of Awesome when he attacked his ex-wife Hellcat's wedding; Just as they get to the part where the priest asks if anyone objects, he bursts through the stained glass of St. Patrick's Cathedral.
- The National Lampoon did a parody of Nick Fury in the Nixon years - G. Gordon Liddy, Agent of C.R.E.E.P. - where Liddy entered every room in this fashion.
- Lampshaded by Shiva in an issue of Birds of Prey when Cheshire jumps out of a window and Black Canary jumps out after her.
Shiva: Perfectly good set of stairs... |
- Ethan, Ashleigh & Skink do this from the Raven castle in Scion to escape from Bron. They land in water.
- This is how the protagonists enter and exit a rather badly damaged building in the first Gemini Storm issue.
- Made explicit in Dynamite's Lone Ranger comic.
Tonto: You could have used the stairs. |
- Iron Man once used this trope on a skylight when stopping a hostage situation, while using his repulsors to destroy the glass shards to make certain he didn't accidentally kill the hostages himself.
- In Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe, Superman jumps through a window to enter a building, leaves momentarily, then jumps through a different window when he comes back.
- In Bookhunter, the Library Police's SWAT teams regularly smash through windows during arrests, and Agent Bay does likewise when he needs to get to the roof via fire escape in a hurry.
- Sin City windows are made of Soft Glass since Marv and other characters have jumped out of windows in order to escape multiple times. In fact, in at least one instance, Dwight escaped by being thrown through a window. They are always unharmed, of course.
- Scrooge McDuck did it with a horse. Twice.
Fanfiction[]
- The skylight variation is used in Kyon: Big Damn Hero when Kyon interrupts a meeting whilst holding a spy.
- The Dark Knight continuation fanfic A Piece Of Glass has OC Breech Loader throw a chair at a window, which only cracks. She uses the weakened glass and her running momentum to smash through it and drop three stories to the ground, to escape Arkham Asylum. The Joker, who was using her much louder escape as a diversion for his own, is very impressed.
- As demonstrated in the second page quote, L does this at one point in Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami. It is completely insane.
"I will have to use stealth instead" said L and jumped in the broken window screaming. All this from the world's three greatest detectives. |
- In the My Little Pony fanfic Article 2 it is subverted and deconstructed at the same time. Shane shoots the glass panel first to only then dive through it, and the cuts he suffered are very frequently mentioned.
Film[]
- Highlander. Justified twice: Immortals are immune to most injuries, and often wear big trenchcoats too.
- In Die Hard, John McClane does this and doesn't hurt himself, even though the rest of the movie realistically depicted him getting his feet horribly mangled due to the broken glass everywhere he had to walk on.
- The first kick didn't break the window, though, forcing him to shoot the glass.
- In the original Gremlins, Billy jumped inside a window, because the door was locked and he needed to kill the last gremlin. First, however, he broke through the glass with a toy vacuum cleaner.
- Near the end of the movie The Game, Nicholas, who thinks he has just killed his brother, decides to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of the skyscraper he's on and falling through a glass ceiling. However, it's quickly revealed that the entire movie was one massive Xanatos Roulette and Nicholas' brother predicted that he would jump off the roof (another person later thanks him for jumping, since he was supposed to push him if he didn't). Thinking ahead, he places an airbag on the ground and replaces the glass ceiling with safety glass, keeping Nicholas from hurting himself. He is even told to keep his eyes shut while they remove the glass from him because: "even if it's fake glass, it can still cut".
- The Bourne Ultimatum film is guilty of this, where Jason Bourne leaps across an alleyway, through a closed window, jumps up and immediately starts fighting the assassin sent to kill him.
- Superman II, when the three Kryptonian criminals invade the Daily Planet: "When are these people ever going to learn to use a doorknob?"
- Undercover Brother, film version, uses this in place of a Transformation Sequence.
- Miss Piggy via motorcycle in The Great Muppet Caper.
- Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Alice, into the church, with the motorcycle. Slightly justified in that Alice is supposed to have weird uber-kick-ass powers.
- Prince Septimus does this during his Prisoner of Zenda Exit in Stardust.
- Played straight in Minority Report, though the people coming through the skylight were armored police officers who, impliedly, do this sort of thing on a regular basis. However, they were coming down into someone's bedroom, where they knew two people had just been having sex.
- Flying glass was also somewhat less of a concern than the cuckolded husband mere seconds from bursting in and stabbing them a dozen times each with a pair of scissors.
- The titular character in Spawn. Justified with his costume and cape acting as armor and Spawn being undead and thus unharmed even by bullets. That, and the fact that the movie hardly takes itself seriously.
- 1994's The Shadow does a variation on this. Villain Shiwan Khan jumps out a window, to be sure, but he first breaks the glass telekinetically.
- Farley Claymore later ends up diving through a window overlooking the lobby (three floors up) while trying to flee from the Shadow, notably after the Shadow used his powers to make him believe that it really was an exit. Well, at least the glass isn't gonna be an issue for long...
- James Bond smashes through a window unaided in a highly dramatic fashion in Goldeneye as he escapes interrogation.
- In Quantum of Solace, both Bond and one of the fellows from Quantum manage to fall through a skylight after scrapping with one another, fall onto some scaffolding, and scrap for a single pistol in order to shoot the other bastard.
- In The Wizard of Oz, Cowardly Lion turns away from the fake Wizard effect, sprints down a hallway screaming, and jumps out a glass window into some bushes.
- Played straight in The Addams Family, when Gomez comes back to the house to rescue Morticia. Justified in that, well, if you can survive electrocution and consider torture foreplay, a little glass isn't gonna be much of an issue.
- In The Mummy Returns Rick and Jonathan jump through a window, land on an awning, roll off that awning onto another one, and finally jump to the ground.
- Subverted in The Parole Officer, when a character attempts to escape from a police officer in the bank he has just robbed by swinging out through a window, only to bounce off of it. He picks himself off the floor and sheepishly says "toughened glass" to which the officer replies "Its a bank!".
- Wanted LOVES this trope.
- Subverted in the Made For TV The Wild Wild West movie. After knocking down the British agent who had captured them, they try crashing through the window to escape. Unfortunately, the window features a new invention - bulletproof glass. They bounce.
- . . . and later on use a different trope to get away.
- Done by the Bug to effect a dramatic escape in Men in Black.
- John Candy's character in Delirious writes a stained-glass window into existence just so he can crash through it on horseback into the bad guys' lair to save the girl.
- In Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan jumps through the window to grab the killer-bug carrying droid. (although, as the Darths and Droids annotation points out you'd expect Anakin to do this instead of him)
- The titular bunny from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, complete with Roger-shaped-silhouette.
- Help - the Beatles dive out the window in a pub to get away from bad guys.
- And earlier, bad guys dive in the window of the Beatles' flat, taking them by surprise.
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly starts off with one. The introduction of Tuco (the ugly) consists of him crashing through a window to get outside after the building he's hiding in gets stormed by his enemies. In this case, he couldn't use the door because said enemies were blocking it.
- The 1977 Universal version of Dracula has Mina, now undead (Lucy and her roles were switched in this film) escaping from a insane asylum like this after feeding on a baby and being discovered by the horrified mother.
- Done to hilarious effect in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. And Scott reaches back through the open window to grab his coat. The scene alone is worth price of admission.
- Averted in the Tony Jaa movie The Protector. Tony's character is being chased by a four-wheeler down a hallway with large window at the end. Instead of jumping through, Tony runs vertically up the glass, and the four-wheeler crashes through below him.
- Waring Hudsucker, in The Hudsucker Proxy, sets off the events of the film by impulsively leaping to a spectacular death through the window of his company's boardroom.
- The Matrix: Deconstructed. Trinity jumps through a glass window and gets her face cut for it.
- Deconstructed again in Reloaded. Bane and Malachi jump through a skylight simultaneously. Even though they have shades on, Bane waits until the glass has settled before looking back up.
- Done during the climax of Transformers: Dark of the Moon Sam, his girlfriend Carly, and the marines they're with have to jump out of a window of a tilted building, hundreds of stories up to escape a Decepticon chasing them they don't land on the ground per se but slide along the building till they're force to shoot the glass to drop to a lower floor or else fall to their deaths.
- Used in the climax of Black Moon Rising, when Quint and Nina jump from a skyscraper to another with the eponymous super car.
- Kane escapes from the Devil's Reaper by jumping thrpugh a stained glass window in Solomon Kane.
Literature[]
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, believe it or not: Severus Snape does this. With Efficient Displacement, no less.
- In the Whateley Universe, Tennyo does this during the Halloween invasion of Whateley Academy, to get two students she's carrying out of the line of heavy machine gun fire aimed at her.
- Injun Joe's running away from the Muff Potter's trial in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
- Interestingly, in light of the notes on vampires above, Dracula, in the Bram Stoker novel of the same name, only does this once despite his preference for windows above doors. In other instances, he either slides into cracks between the window and frame, or he has something else break the glass for him. In the example of this trope, however, it's daytime and he can't change forms, but is still tough enough to just leap through the pane.
- Allegiance has Mara Jade performing this trope, though she uses fancy Force-assisted acrobatics to cut a round hole before she actually hits it. She does this to both a stone wall and a window, and notes that the window was much easier.
- Butler does something similar when he crashes through a (supposedly) impenetrable glass door.
Live Action TV[]
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel heroes and villains are fond of this (the original film had an especially good one-take example).
- Buffy and Faith actually use this as a weapon in "Bad Girls" when they burst into a vampire nest in broad daylight setting one vampire on fire and causing the rest to flee in panic.
- Forever Knight
- The Crow Stairway To Heaven TV series.
- Smallville
- Spaced had a brilliant moment with Simon Pegg and a surprise window exit.
- The Doctor from Doctor Who did this once. On a horse, no less.
- In The Adventures of Superman, George Reeves as the title character wouldn't bother finding a window — he'd just break through a wall. (One, he's Superman, dammit — and two, foam and papier mache debris was cheaper and safer than stunt glass.)
- Ray Kowalski on Due South did this on a motorcycle once.
- Claire Bennet does this on Heroes to get away from the Petrelli clan. And honestly, if Mama Petrelli cornered me in my real father's office, and he were on her side, and I knew I'd regenerate from any wounds I suffered anyway, I'd jump out a 10-story window, too.
- John does this in the pilot of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Granted, he's trying to get away from a Terminator.
- He does this again in the season 2 premiere, when he's trying to escape from Cameron after she'd temporarily gone rogue.
- Omar Little did this to escape certain death on The Wire. Unusually for the trope he is badly injured by this move.
Marlo Stanfield: That's some spider-man shit right there. |
- Col. Flagg tries this in an episode of M* A* S* H, after telling the others in the room to look away since he has to leave like the wind, traceless. Crash. 'The wind just broke his ankle.'
- In Father Ted, Father Jack repeatedly exits the parochial house by jumping through the window, whether it's fleeing in terror from a nun or just because he can't be bothered to use the door. Subverted when they install the Plexiglass. The window remains undamaged as Jack bounces to the floor.
- When Seth Green gets ~Punk'd~, the setup involves a supposed raid on an illegal casino, requiring at least one federal agent to enter by somersaulting through a window. In the post-prank interview Seth Green recalls thinking "that was really unnecessary".
- Happens in the last episode of Birds of Prey when Barbara and Dinah swing into their villain-occupied headquarters through the gigantic clock tower window.
- Done a couple of times in Highlander the Series. It helps when you know you're immortal and will heal within minutes.
- Slan Quince both enters and leaves this way when he first introduces himself to Duncan. (Complete with rubber sword blade hilariously boinging around in the slow-mo exit after hitting the window frame.)
- Richie Ryan escapes out a second-story warehouse window on a motorcycle.
- Mika, Pete, and Claudia of Warehouse 13 all get trapped inside a house stored at the titular Warehouse. If they try to leave, the house simply warps space so that they are instead entering the house again. So Pete does the (semi) logical thing to do and jumps through a window instead. ...Which causes him to jump in through the window right next to it.
- SCTV - hippie tv show host Dr. Braino (John Candy) gets too high and does it - then does it again in the only other skit he's in.
- In the second episode of Third Watch, Maurice "Bosco" Boscorelli tackles an armed felon and they both go through a second floor window.
- Daniel Jackson pulls this in an episode of Stargate SG-1. He has to shoot the glass ahead of time, but manages to get through without injury (of course, the radiation on the other side was not so accommodating).
- Sam and Dean in Supernatural do this to escape from the demon Alistair. Unfortunately for them, they aren't made of steel -the following scene has them pulling shards of glass out of their bodies, and Dean even dislocated his shoulder from the fall.
- Season 2 Opener of Sanctuary has Ashley and her squad of near-vampires entering through sanctuaries throughout the world through their skylights and proceed to tear things apart.
- A 24 Day 8 episode deconstructed this; a suicide bomber broke out of the window when he was surrounded by Jack Bauer and his crew, but ended up limping as he walks into the oxygen chamber.
- The A-Team does this frequently. Usually by Murdock.
- In Danger 5, this is done Once an Episode by no one other than Hitler. The Danger 5 team, having fought their way through another slew of improbably freakish bad guys, will confront Hitler only for him to escape through the nearest window. Head first. Sometimes while he's duel-wielding machine guns.
Music Videos[]
- Tori Amos executes a particularly random one a few seconds into the music video for "Pretty Good Year," jumping into a building. The scene replays in reverse at the end. Chalk it up to the 'supernatural creature' category.
- Billy Idol rides a motorcycle through a stained glass window in the video for "White Wedding".
- Harsher in Hindsight: While it didn't involve crashing through windows, he would later be injured in a motorcycle accident several years later.
Newspaper Comics[]
- Eduardo Baretto raised Judge Parker above the other soap-comics with his artwork, his rendering of misandrist killer/stripper Dixie Julep diving out a window being a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
- In the Nixon years, the National Lampoon did a comic book starring G. Gordon Liddy as an Agent Nick Fury parody - going through windows was the only way he entered or left a room.
Video Games[]
- Lampshade hung in the Game Boy Game SaGa 2 (aka Final Fantasy Legend 2 in the west): The main character's father always leaves buildings through windows, leaving the other characters wondering aloud what the point is.
- In Resident Evil 4, Leon is capable of jumping through windows without injury, simply by covering his face, which is good, because he tends to exit buildings this way. He also almost never climbs down a ladder.
- Leon really takes it to the extreme in this game. Almost any window you can walk up to can be leapt through with no consequence (and thanks to the giant flashing button on the screen, it's encouraged). Leave a house through the door? NEVER; OUT THE SECOND FLOOR WINDOW! Climb down a ladder in the three story tower? NO, JUST JUMP STRAIGHT DOWN! It's worth noting you can break a window and still jump through it, but it often just has Leon hop over the windowsill instead of diving through it.
- Marle in Chrono Trigger does this (in slow motion) to rescue her father on trial. Bonus points, though a stained glass window.
- Call of Duty Black Ops: Double points here.
- Once during the campaign, while zip-lining INTO a window.
- In multi-player, diving through a window into a prone position, then offing an opponent within 2 seconds or so will get you a gamerscore achievement.
- Averted in the old click and drag game Uninvited, any attempt to break the windows to get out of the haunted house lead to you bleeding to death; no you can't clear the shards with a chair or something; it just doesn't work.
- Possible in Deus Ex, but only with ceiling glass, and unless you have something soft to break your fall or the right augments it will likely result in broken legs.Impossible to do with windows, as they have to be shot or otherwise broken before making the jump.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link, in wolf form, has to break through a window to get into one of the buildings. It's not particularly dramatic, but it is effective without being harmful to Link.
- Played to the hilt in Mirror's Edge, where Faith goes through windows just like she goes through doors: with a hefty kick or shoulder charge and nary a pause. This is a Dystopia with a giant nanny state and a very overworked janitorial staff, so presumably safety glass has been mandated by law everywhere.
- In Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame, a Super Window Jump marks the moment the gameplay starts.
- Similarly, level 4 of the first Prince of Persia had a Super Mirror Jump.
- The intro to Jak X: Combat Racing has Jak drive through an aquarium and into a bar in order to rescue Daxter.
- Die Hard for the NES allows you to jump through a window, out of a building from thirty stories up. This kills you.
- Half-Life: a scientist does this rather awesomely, only do die moments later. This is commented on in Freemans Mind.
- It's entirely possible he'll run toward you, and even if he doesn't, you can save him by killing the zombies before they can hit him.
- Team Fortress 2: This is Saxton Hale's preferred way of entry. To top it all off, he manages to succeed doing this while jumping from a plane without a parachute!
- The original Syphon Filter has Logan jump through the Expo Center lobby's glass ceiling 50 feet up. He jumps through another window to enter Rhoemer's cathedral stronghold.
- In Resident Evil Code Veronica, Steve jumps through a window in Bullet Time, a Shout-Out to the opening of The Matrix, to save Claire from a Bandersnatch.
- The NES game Rescue: The Embassy Mission had your rescue operatives do this, as shown on the cover.
- Used as one of many possible takedowns in Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequel.
- Possible by crouch-jumping through a window in Postal 2, though realistically you take a bit of damage. The police also tend to get very perturbed when you do it around them.
- Assassin's Creed Revelations: Altaïr crashes through the big window behind the Mentor's chair during his escape from Masyaf. It's a bit of a Despair Event Horizon since he's forced to leave the castle he called home in the hands of the Big Bad, not to mention the fact that he's leaving his wife's corpse in the garden.
Web Original[]
- Homestar Runner features its own take on this, with Strong Bad's action hero alter ego Dangeresque, who often goes out of his way to make this exit (preceded by his Catch Phrase "Looks like I'm gonna have to jump!")
- CRASH! "JO'Z HEER!"
- The Nostalgia Critic ran off-screen and did this upon learning that the kid in Jingle All the Way was played by Jake Lloyd, the same actor as Anakin "Annie" Skywalker:
Critic: * crash* Aaaaaahhhhh....! * thud* My God what a tall building! |
- Adam Dodd in v3 of Survival of the Fittest escaped a grenade thrown into the barracks he was hiding in by jumping off a cot and through a window, somehow avoiding injury.
- Parodied in Code Ment. When Lelouch jumps out of a second story window, a corresponding clip from Resident Evil 4 plays as a sort of "stunt double".
Webcomics[]
- Dominic Deegan ends up doing one here. Sorry, haters, but it's just an Imagine Spot; he's not leaping to his death.
- Sal Walters, one of the alien-enhanced abductees in ~It's Walky!~ jumps in and out through upper story windows more often than not, leading comments from her boyfriend about all the broken glass. The Big Bad eventually gets to cause an excellent anticlimactic moment with Sal-proofed windows. (She then promptly bursts through the floor, but it was a good try.)
- Plasma-Man has done this at least twice in The Incredible and Awe Inspiring Serial Adventure of The Amazing Plasma-Man.
- In Order of the Stick, this is one of the special abilities of the Dashing Swordsman prestige class, which is demonstrated right after Elan takes a level in it.
- The trope is further lampshaded in this strip, where Elan explains that the Dashing Swordsmen are immune to damage caused by sharp glass.
- This happens again, but it's the third dramatic entrance on the whole page.
- Happens to not just Elan, but to Belkar and Miko too.
- Subverted in Megatokyo: "Great Teacher Largo" jumps through a window to escape Ping, and badly hurts his leg. It later bites him in the rear in a DDR match.
- Of course, he does heal astonishingly fast.
- Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Dan did this off-panel.
- Ellen tries this in El Goonish Shive shortly after her creation and subsequent Cloning Blues, with added coolness from making her duplicate (or original?) throw her at the window. The coolness factor is negated when the window lacks any glass. And is a story up. THUMP.
- In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Dr. McNinja gets the jump on some thugs by entering the warehouse via the skylight. This comes immediately after he asks himself "What would Batman do?"
- A few pages later, Ronald McDonald pulls one.
- In Xkcd, this is the logical conclusion to worrying about relationships.
- In Stick Man Stick Man, a Corrupt Corporate Executive pulls one to escape. The height aspect is Lampshaded.
- Invoked in this Least I Could Do strip ... and immediately subverted in the next one.
- Panthera uses this here when the Ovid building is collapsing because of Oosterhuis and they all need to get out immediately.
- In Magick Chicks, Tiffany pulls one on a glass door and is promptly informed that there was a doorbell.
Western Animation[]
- Casey Jones makes a dramatic entrance this way in one episode of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- Mr. Slave does one of these in the South Park episode "South Park Is Gay!". Unfortunately, because it wasn't safety glass he ends up a bleeding mess on the floor.
- Despite the Joker being Genre Savvy enough for the above quote, he does a super window jump (from a considerable height) of his own in Mask of the Phantasm. But then again he IS Genre Savvy enough to be aware of his own Joker Immunity.
- In the Futurama episode "Less Than Hero", the mayor attempts to summon the New Justice Team - Actually Fry, Leela, and Bender - while they're right in front of him in his office. In order to not blow their identities they quickly make up excuses; Fry declares that he can't take life anymore and jumps out through a window, and instantly returns in-costume through a different window.
- When Billy is scared by Grim and Mandy dressed as clowns, he throws himself out the window to escape, then immediately reenters the house, only to be scared again and jump out the other window. This continues until every window is broken. When Billy realizes he's run out of windows, he runs over to a neighbor's house, politely knocks, enters the house and jumps out their window.
- When Stewie does this he's replaced with a very noticeable Stunt Double.
- Spider-Man: The Animated Series, forbidden (among numerous heavy restrictions) to depict anyone breaking through glass, caused Spidey to leap through always open or conspicuously, utterly windowless spaces.
- Subverted for laughs at the start of the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode, "Dragon Quest". Fluttershy rushes towards a closed window in panic, enters a 'ready to jump' pose, and... gently opens the window in an exaggerated manner before continuing her jump.