Just another day at the office.
A
Stock Phrase you have certainly
heard a million times. Insert in nearly any situation where the characters have to traverse some area where the penalty for a misstep or equipment failure is a one way trip courtesy of gravity. Or, they're hanging over such an area by their fingernails or a very unsteady rope, branch or other dubious support. "Just stay calm, and don't look down" or some variant is uttered.
Why? Because you really don't want to know what's down there.
However, sometimes the person won't listen and they will look down anyway. Cue
Freak Out. A massive source of
Schmuck Bait.
When invoked in a comedy or an animated work, may lead to the realization that
Gravity is a Harsh Mistress... two seconds before you start falling.
Plummet Perspective describes one of the things that might happen if the character
does look down.
Examples:
Anime & Manga
- Inverted in The Castle Of Cagliostro: Lupin tells Clarisse to look down in order to calm her so she realizes they're hanging several hundred feet in the air from a thin line and screaming and flailing at the strange man holding her is a really bad idea.
- Inverted in a different manner in an episode of Slayers. The gang is clinging to a rope across a chasm, and Filia tells Gourry to not look up. This is because he's holding on to her legs and she's wearing a dress.
Film
Literature
- In So You Want To Be A Wizard, precognitive macaw Macchu Picchu offers Nita and Kit three pieces of advice: don't be afraid to make corrections, don't be afraid to lend a hand, and don't look down.
Live-Action TV
- Neverwhere: The Marquis de Carabas says this to Richard, who, predictably, doesn't listen.
Music
- The 80s music group Go West has the trope as the title as well as the lyrics:
Don't look down, girl! (Don't look down!)
You know you're holding aces
Don't look down, girl! (Don't look down!)
Don't give the game away!
Video Games
- Shadow the Hedgehog: Eggman says it to Shadow when he passes through a Chao room.
- During the sequence on the outside of the Shadow Broker's ship in Mass Effect 2, Liara mistakenly looks down and then tells herself not to.
- Portal 2: It seems that the older parts of the Aperture Science facility are full of fathomless drops, and when Wheatley is carried over one of them by Chell, he says this to her. She doesn't react, naturally, but he immediately takes his own Schmuck Bait and regrets it - twice.
Web Comics
- The Order of the Stick #647
:
Elan: Woooooo! Wind Walk is the best cleric spell ever!!!
Durkon: Dinnae look down, dinnae look down, dinnae look down...
Western Animation
- Done in an episode of Animaniacs. Also used in Wakko's Wish:
Yakko: Now don't look down.
Wakko: Do you get vertigo?
Yakko: No.
Wakko: Me neither.
Yakko: Yeah, I watched
that movie six times and I
still don't get it.
- Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which combine Toon Physics with Gravity is a Harsh Mistress. The classic case: a cartoon character can run over or stand on thin air untill he realizes something is wrong and looks down. Only then does gravity take over.
- The Simpsons in "The Neptune Adventure"
Lenny (on the ladder; panicking): Whatever you do, don't look down! I mean up! I can't do this anymore! It's too confusing! (falls to his death)
Carl: It's not that confusing.
- The Magic School Bus: in "Under Construction" (about engineering), Wanda says this to Arnold as he's slowly crawling across a suspension bridge made of Q-tips, dental floss, and bandages over a bathtub with a baby alligator in it. He looks down, alligator snaps jaws shut, and Arnold books it to the other side.
- In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, after Pinkie Pie's antics allowed Fluttershy to temporarily get over her fear of heights in "Dragonshy", she finally attempts to jump over a mountain chasm only for Twilight Sparkle to say this phrase as words of encouragement. Sure enough, Fluttershy does just that and immediately loses her momentum in fright, causing her to drop like a rock... on top of a narrow gap that she could have just walked over.
- In one episode of Kim Possible, Ron says this to himself as he's being chased through a towering collection of machinery in Drakken's lair, and promptly steps on and breaks through a flimsy grillwork, falling into the tube it is covering.
