Helpless Window Death

Unfortunately for Eugene, he doesn't currently know the spell 'Shatter'.

"...anyway, he saw Maggie Lyndon torn to pieces by Scip Six-Eight-Two, and he couldn't do a damn thing about it because she was on the wrong side of an emergency partition, and if I ever find out who decided to make those things out of reinforced nine-inch plexiglass so you can see the horrible things that happen to people trapped on the other side, I'll murder them..."

— 085-Romance-Adult, SCP Foundation

A trope common to horror stories and its imitations in other genres, the premise of the Helpless Window Death is simple: the protagonist is trapped behind a window or door made of glass, or at the very least, a material just transparent enough to see through; they witness a character die — usually a Red Shirt and often in an extremely painful way; and for whatever reason, they are unable to intervene.

Scenes such as these frequently end with a blood-splattered window, and perhaps the aforementioned Red Shirt's Hand Sliding Down the Glass (if not their entire body), especially in horror works. Also, for reasons unknown, it's very rare for the glass to be broken at any point during the carnage on the other side, no matter how brutal things get.

Please note that the key elements of this trope are proximity and urgency: the observer has to be close and willing to help the victim, but unable. If this is occurring over an extreme distance, if the incident was deliberately caused by the observer, or if the observer is demonstrably indifferent to the suffering, then it doesn't count.

Also, it doesn't necessarily have to be a glass window: as long as it's a barrier that can be seen through and prevents the character from interfering in some way.

Can overlap with "Rear Window" Witness when used in mystery stories, though this trope allows more distance than the Helpless Window Death. Can overlap with Forced to Watch, especially if a villain has deliberately set this up to torture the main character.

See also Trapped in Containment. Also compare Dangerous Windows, when the killer turns his attention to the person on the other side of the glass.

Not to be confused with Destination Defenestration or Super Window Jump, when someone dies by falling out a window.

As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• In the Emily Carroll short story collection Through the Woods, the story "My Friend Janna" climaxes with Yvonne watching helplessly from outside Janna's house as Janna is apparently murdered in front of her window by the "ghost" that has been haunting Janna.
• Watchmen: Dr. Osterman's first death occurred when he hastily returned to the Intrinsic Field Chamber to get the watch he'd left behind. When he turned to leave, he found the door closed and his colleagues staring at him in horror through the observation window: with the experiment active, the door couldn't be opened until it was complete, leaving the other scientists watching helplessly as Osterman gets disintegrated.

Film — Animated

• In Astro Boy, Dr. Tenma's son Toby is trapped behind a protective glass wall with a rogue peacekeeper robot. Despite assuring Toby that he'll be fine, poor Tenma is powerless to watch the peacekeeper fire a massive energy beam in an attempt to break through the glass wall, resulting in Toby's complete disintegration.
• In Monsters, Inc., Sully can only watch in growing horror as the garbage pulverizer reduces the human toddler Boo to a compact block. Subverted when it's revealed that only Boo's disguise went through the machine; Boo herself is alive and intact, much to Sully's relief.

Film — Live-Action

• The Abyss: When the disaster occurs, Bud tries to tell the men trapped inside a flooding room to cut a hose so they can open a door. They don't and swiftly drown as Bud watches them through a glass window in the door.
• In The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Sam is trapped between the glass doors when he witnesses the murder attempt on the girl.
• In Black Rain, New York City cops Nick and Charlie transport a Yakuza gangster, Sato, that they captured back to Japan. After Sato's gang helps him escape, Sato and company later separate Nick and Charlie and attack the latter while the former can only helplessly look on from behind a security gate.
• Subverted in the finale of The Cell: after finally tracking down Stargher's hidden base brain, Agent Novak arrives on the scene to find the serial killer's most recent victim in the nearly-full drowning tank, breathing through an air pocket. For a moment, it looks as though Novak's too late and he'll have to watch her drown through the glass... but then Novak draws a gun and starts blowing holes in the tank, letting out the water just in time.
• The China Syndrome: Jack Godell has taken a nuclear power plant over until he, with the help of Intrepid Reporter Kimberly and her cameraman Richard, can go on TV and talk about the incident that occurred at the plant days earlier. While he's doing that, the owner of the plant arranges for security guards to break in so they can cut Jack off the air and then shoot him. When that happens, Richard, who's in a contained room photographing what's happening, can only stand there shouting in anger and sorrow at everyone.
• Cold Prey: Mikal steps into a bear trap and gets killed by the Mountain Man while Jannicke and Morten Tobias watch from a window, unable to help.
• The Deluge: Michał Wołodyjowski and the other officers who refused to support the traitorous duke Radziwiłł have been locked in a basement dungeon, but their men have shown up outside the castle gates. Unfortunately, all Michał can do is look through the bars in horror as their men are wiped out by cavalry commanded by Kmicic.
• Equilibrium: When John Preston learns that Mary O'Brien is about to be executed by incineration, he runs to intercept it, but gets there seconds too late and can only make eye contact through a window in the crematorium door. It provokes a Heroic BSoD and aligns him firmly with La Résistance.
• Godzilla (2014): When Joe's wife Sandra goes to check up on the reactor at the Janjira Nuclear Power Plant following suspicious "seismic" activity, another earthquake critically damages the plant, causing radioactive material to spill out. Sandra and her team run for their lives and Joe tries to hold the protective shield door open long enough for them to escape, but he is forced to seal it moments before the team would have made it out. Joe can only watch through the window as his wife is overcome by a cloud of deadly radioactive steam.
• Independence Day: The "release me" scene, in which the alien being autopsied regains consciousness and slaughters its way through the laboratory while the President and his retinue look on through the observation window in horror. For good measure, Professor Okun is eventually slammed against said window and used as a mouthpiece for the alien. However, in a subversion of standard fare, the guards realize they can do something as the glass is not bulletproof and open fire.
• In It: Chapter Two, Bill tries to save a young boy from Pennywise in a hall of mirrors, but though Bill technically finds him first, they're on opposite sides of the glass. He ultimately fails as Pennywise gets on the kid's side first and chomps down on his head, splattering the other side of the mirror with blood.
• At the beginning of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Ethan is trapped in a booth that is slowly filling with sleeping gas. Outside before passing out, he witnesses a woman being executed by Solomon Lane before his eyes as he futilely tries to break out.
• The Mist: After Ms. Carmody's religious group throws Jessup out of the super market, David and the others can only watch when a giant mantis-like monster reaches out and snatches Jessup, leaving a Bloody Handprint on the store's window.
• Moonraker: James Bond accidentally (or not) causes a couple of scientists working for Drax to be Trapped in Containment when a vial of nerve gas he moved rolls off a bench and shatters. He watches through the lab window as the scientists succumb to the gas.
• The One: Just prior to the final confrontation, Gabe Law witnesses his evil alternate-dimension twin, Yulaw, execute his wife — which Gabe is unable to stop and can only watch while letting out a Big "NO!" from behind a window.
• Psycho II: A teenager watches helplessly through a cellar window as the killer stabs her boyfriend to death.
• During the rocket theft scene in The Rock, VX gas is accidentally released from containment, forcing the marines to evacuate the area as quickly as possible; one of them doesn't make it to the door before it's sealed shut, and the marines can only watch through a window as the poor bastard dies from exposure to VX.
• Scream likes this trope:
  • Scream (1996): Casey watches helplessly through the windowed sliding doors as Ghostface kills Steve, who is tied up on the porch.
  • Scream 2: Gale watches helplessly through the window of the soundproof studio as Ghostface stabs Dewey in the back, so close that they are almost touching and only separated by the glass. Subverted, as Dewey doesn't actually die.
  • Scream 4: Jill and Kirby are on the phone to "Ghostface" when he threatens to gut them from inside her closet... but they're not in Jill's closet. They're in Olivia's closet, who lives next door to Jill. Jill and Kirby run to the window in time to see Ghostface eviscerate Olivia.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: In the climax, Spock sacrifices himself to repair Enterprise's damaged warp core, taking a lethal dose of radiation from the core in the process. Once Kirk arrives in Engineering, he's forced to speak to Spock through the clear wall of the warp core chamber, as opening the chamber would flood the area with radiation, and can only watch as Spock succumbs to his injuries and dies.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness reimagines the famous death scene from Wrath Of Khan but this time Kirk is the one sacrificing himself while Spock is the one watching helplessly from behind the glass.
• Star Wars:
  • A variation occurs in The Phantom Menace during the climactic battle: Obi-Wan is temporarily separated from the duel between Qui-Gon and Darth Maul by a series of transparent forcefield doors, leaving him to watch helplessly as Maul runs his master through.
  • In the finale of Rogue One, Darth Vader mows down an entire room of rebel soldiers, leaving the one holding the Death Star plans hammering frantically on the window of the only exit. A soldier on the other side of the door rushes to his aid, but the door's jammed and can't be opened more than a few inches, leaving him helplessly watching the carnage play out for the next few seconds — until the trapped soldier gives him the plans through the gap just before Vader cuts him down.
• Warcraft: Lothar, while in battle with the Orcs, is trapped behind a barrier and is forced to watch as Orc leader Blackhand kills Lothar's own son.
• Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan was created when Dr. Osterman ended up being accidentally locked inside an Intrinsic Field Subtractor, leaving him to be disintegrated before the eyes of his horrified colleagues.

Literature

• In Date A Live, Tohka is forced to watch Shido get stabbed through the back from inside a transparent cell in order to push her beyond the Despair Event Horizon and make her go inverse. It's successful, and she causes a lot of damage to the building before Shido (who has a healing factor), is able to calm her down and reseal her.
• The Hunger Games: Katniss is forced to watch from within a glass pod as Cinna is pretty much beaten to death.
• Jedi Academy Trilogy: Admiral Ackbar's ship is sabotaged to turn a landing into a crash —specifically, a crash into the Cathedral of Winds, a cultural monument made of glass and full of people. Despite his best efforts, he can't override the controls, but he does manage to eject his passenger Leia to safety, where she watches helplessly as the structure comes crashing down amid hundreds of screams. Ackbar himself remains on board, but activates a crash shield around the vessel, giving him an equally helpless front row seat to the carnage. Upon returning to Coruscant, he promptly resigns in shame.

Live-Action TV

• 24: In the season 5 episode "6:00-7:00 PM", Chloe watches in horror as Edgar dies from exposure to nerve gas through a window on the other side of a sealed-off room, which he didn't get to in time.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Utopia", Captain Atillo is keeping an eye on technician Jate via a window while he works in the coupling room. However, one of the Futurekind has been able to sneak into the facility and sabotages the system, resulting in the stet radiation in the room skyrocketing so violently that not even Jate's hazmat suit can save him. Atillo can only watch helplessly as Jate is disintegrated.
  • In "Kerblam!", Charlie is forced to watch as his crush Kira is killed by one of the bombs he has been producing, seeing her open the package behind a window but being unable to break through to save her.
• In season 2 of The Expanse, Prax Meng and his partner are forced to part ways when the crew of the ship carrying them from Ganymede asked all the Earther passengers to head to the airlock for transfer to another ship heading to Earth. Prax gets one last chance to see her and other Earthers through the airlock's inner door window... and see that there was no other spaceship; the supposed transfer is in fact execution by depressurization.
• Lost: At the end of Season 3, Charlie becomes trapped in a room in the underwater Looking Glass station after Mikhail pulls a Taking You with Me and detonates a grenade outside the room's exterior window. Desmond, who's on the other side of the door, is unable to get it open and can only watch Charlie pass on his final message by writing on his hand before he drowns.
• Red Dwarf: Parodied in "Waiting For God" when Lister decides to investigate the mysterious alien pod that's just been brought on board; the pod is inside a glass quarantine booth, but Lister walks in anyway, staying even as Rimmer screams at him to get out before something "gets stuck to your face." Lister is halfway through insisting that everything's fine when he appears to choke, collapses against the window, and slides down... but it's just Lister screwing around. For added fun, the pod turns out to be just one of Red Dwarf's garbage pods, so it's completely harmless anyway.
• The Sandman (2022): When Dream of the Endless is trapped by a Summoning Ritual, his raven companion Jessamy works for years to rescue him. She finally reaches his glass prison, giving him one brief Hope Spot before she's shot dead in front of him.
• In Sons of Anarchy, Jax is forced by corrupt prison guards to watch as his best friend, Opie, is murdered by other prisoners. Throughout this scene, Jax is pounding against the shatterproof observation window with all his might but is ultimately helpless to aid his friend.
• In the season 3 premiere of Star Trek: Picard, Raffi is on an undercover mission to learn the whereabouts of a stolen quantum tunneling device. She discovers evidence that the device may be used in a terrorist attack against a Starfleet recruitment center and flies straight there to warn Starfleet... but she arrives moments too late, and watches on her viewscreen as the facility is pulled into a quantum tunnel and dropped onto the surrounding city.
• In The Walking Dead, Glenn, Noah and Nicholas find themselves trapped on opposite ends of a revolving door, (Nicholas pinned on one side, Glenn and Noah on the other), with walkers on the side of the building. Rather than giving Glenn enough time to break the glass, Nicholas squeezes out on his side to save himself, which leaves an opening for Noah to be grabbed by walkers. Though Glenn manages to re-secure the door, he is forced to watch helplessly as Noah gets torn apart just inches away from him.
• Westworld:
  • In the season 2 finale, Elsie issues stop command on Bernard so that she can negotiate with Charlotte for a way out of the park. By then, Bernard is on the top balcony, witnessing Elsie's attempt to talk with Charlotte through the window. Unfortunately, he watches Charlotte gunning down Elsie to death because she knows too much about the Delos project.
  • In the season 4 episode "Generation Loss", Caleb is behind the window of a control room at a quarry, from where he has to watch Maeve killing herself and the Man in Black with explosives.

Video Games

• Alien: Isolation:
  • Variant; not long after meeting the Working Joes, Amanda Ripley finds herself looking out from behind a grating as a survivor attempts to reason with one of the Joes maintaining Sevastopol's current lockdown. The conversation ends with the Working Joe slamming the survivor's head against a wall until his skull audibly cracks. For good measure, this sight prompts Amanda to let out a horrified mutter of "oh my god."
  • During the mission to the Medical Facility, Amanda is guided through the area by Dr. Kuhlmann, who's apparently safe from the prowling Xenomorph inside a glass-windowed booth. After Amanda's work in the area is done, Kuhlman attempts to leave the booth by a back door... only to find himself face-to-face with the Xenomorph. With no way of getting into the booth, Amanda can only watch in horror as the alien drags Kuhlman into the shadows and kills him.
  • Subverted during the visit to Seegson Synthetics: here, Amanda ends up in another vent and witnesses Samuels being accosted by one of the Working Joes... only for Samuels to unexpectedly fling the Joe aside and pound its skull into mush, confirming that he's actually an android himself. Though the game plays this for ominousness and a sign that the newly-revealed android may be up to no good, it soon turns out that Samuels was Good All Along.
  • When Samuels attempts to link up with APOLLO in order to lift Sevastopol's lockdown, Amanda is separated from him by a locked door, leaving her watching on from behind a large glass window. Unfortunately, the computer retaliates against the interface, and despite Amanda's best efforts to fix the machinery in his favor, Samuels is damaged beyond repair while opening a path for her to reach APOLLO. Amanda can only watch as he slumps to the ground and slowly dies.
  • In the finale, Amanda ends up aboard the Anesidora in a desperate attempt to stop Marlow from using the ship to destroy Sevastopol and its Xenomorph infestation. Unfortunately, Ripley ends up on the wrong side of a safety window outside the machine room as Marlow (with Taylor held hostage) begins turning the engine into a bomb; fortunately, Taylor is able to knock Marlow out and tries to undo the sabotage. Unfortunately, she fails, and Amanda is left watching helplessly as Taylor is killed by an energy blast that sends her flying across the room.
• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum: At the start of the game, Batman is watching from a control room window as the Joker is moved through to processing, only for the new patient to suddenly free himself and kill both his guards. Batman is eventually able to batter his way through the security glass, but by then, the Joker has already escaped the area and released the rest of his gang from their cells.
  • Batman: Arkham Origins: Commissioner Loeb is killed in the gas chamber by Black Mask really the Joker in disguise while Batman watches helplessly behind a two-way mirror, unable to intervene due to the number of henchmen and the imposing presence of Killer Croc.
  • Batman: Arkham Knight: After being kidnapped on Scarecrow's orders, Barbara Gordon is taken to a locked observation chamber with a bulletproof glass window. With Batman unable to get in, he can only watch as Scarecrow pumps in Fear Gas, driving Barbara into such a fit of terror that she ultimately shoots herself in the head rather than face whatever she's hallucinating. Except it's ultimately revealed that Batman was the one hallucinating the whole time, courtesy of his earlier exposure to the gas, and Scarecrow just let him think that Barbara was dead.
• In the finale of Beyond A Steel Sky, Foster has to watch on helplessly from the control room window as Joey performs a Heroic Sacrifice by distracting the sentry guns so that the truck with the kids can safely exit the city.
• BioShock:
  • Bioshock 1:
    • Less than ten seconds after you arrive in Rapture, you witness a Spider Splicer corner Johnny, one of the few non-splicers in the city; because you're still waiting for the bathysphere to open, you can only watch through the window as the Splicer brutally eviscerates Johnny and flings him into the water below.
    • Your attempt to seek help from Julie Langford in Arcadia goes awry when Andrew Ryan remotely gasses her office, leaving you to watch through the office window as Langford chokes to death — but not before she helpfully scrawls the combination to her safe on the fogged-up window, Hand Sliding Down the Glass as she finally expires.
  • Bioshock 2:
    • When player character Subject Delta finally reaches Persephone, you find Eleanor Lamb unconscious and sealed inside a huge glass quarantine chamber. After defeating the Big Sisters guarding her, you enter the chamber airlock, only to be delayed by the decontamination... and it turns out that Sofia Lamb is in the chamber as well. After revealing that you and Eleanor have ruined her plans, she smothers Eleanor with a pillow while you pound futilely on the glass door. However, Eleanor is quickly revived soon after; Sofia's real intent was to sever your pairbond with her so that you'll die permanently without Eleanor's connection... and sure enough, you're dying from this point onwards.
    • At the very end of the game, you end up clinging to the outside of Sofia Lamb's escape pod as it ascends to the surface. Peering in through the pod windows reveals that, ironically, the inside of the pod is flooding with water, leaving Sofia frantically swimming to an air pocket. If you've been killing certain characters given the choice, you get to witness the last Big Sister AKA Eleanor grabbing Sofia by the leg and dragging her back underwater, holding her there until she drowns. For good measure, it's possible to play Delta as being helpless and remorseful in this occasion if you pick the neutral ending.
• Call of Duty:
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops:
    • In a flashback level, Reznov is forced to watch on the other side of a gas chamber's porthole as the Previous Player-Character Cameo Dimitri Petrenko dies a horrifying death from Nova-6 nerve gas.
    • Hudson and Weaver go to Rebirth Island to find Dr. Steiner, who wants to defect to the United States. However, Mason and Reznov get to him first, and he's shot before Weaver and Hudson can break through the bulletproof glass window between them.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops II: The first level opens up with a man trapped inside a burning Humvee, and Mason trying and failing to break the window to get him out. Jonas Savimbi approaches Mason and consoles him saying that "Sometimes it's too late to save a man."
• In Close to the Sun, Rose's happy reunion with Ada is interrupted when a monster appears in the lab, and with the room sealed off, Rose is left helplessly thumping on the window as the monster advances. Ada has just enough time to instruct her on where to find her research and say goodbye to Rose, before being killed and flung at the window.
• Cyberpunk 2077: In the prologue after doing their heist,V and Jackie stay hidden behind a glass pane only to witness Yorinobu Arasaki strangling and killing his own father, Saburo. Then, Yorinobu orders security to lock down the tower, forcing V and Jackie to escape. Unfortunately, Jackie is killed making V the only one who knows the truth behind Saburo's murder.
• The Darkness: During the mission to the orphanage, The Darkness takes control of Jackie's body and prevents him from rescuing Jenny from her kidnappers, instead forcing him to watch through a window as Paulie shoots her in the head.
• Dead Space:
  • Dead Space:
    • Minutes after arriving aboard the USG Ishimura, Isaac is sent into a darkened room behind a window to get local systems up and running, only to end up watching helplessly as the Slashers burst in and slaughter half the boarding party before Hammond and Kendra have the good sense to run for it.
    • During the visit to the medical deck in Chapter 2, Isaac finds a survivor trying to escape from the Biological Prosthetics Center and pounding on the window to be let out... only for a Lurker to crawl up the wall behind him, blast his hand with a launched projectile, then nail him through the head. By this time, Isaac has weapons, but cannot help at all.
    • In another medical deck encounter, a woman is found butchering a dying victim inside a sealed glass operating theater, giggling insanely. Not only is it impossible to break in despite Isaac's impressive armory, but as soon as the woman notices you, she slits her throat with a surgical saw.
    • Hammond meets his end when a Brute manages to corner him in front of a huge bay window, and though he tells Isaac not to wait up for him, Isaac can't escape the area and is left watching through said window as the Brute pulps Hammond to death. However, the Brute then smashes through the window and attacks anyway.
    • In one of the few examples that doesn't involve Necromorphs, Chapter 10 features Jacob Temple being captured by Dr. Challus Mercer and being forcibly prepared for Necromorph conversion. Isaac, looking on through the mess hall window, can only watch as Mercer rams a metal spike into Jacob's skull.
  • Dead Space 2:
    • During the visit to Titan Elementary, Isaac happens upon a window looking into one of the nurseries, through which he witnesses a woman (apparently driven insane by trauma) beckoning over what she believes to be her baby... but unfortunately, the baby is actually a Crawler — an Undead Child swollen with explosive pus. With Isaac unable to intervene, the woman lovingly gathers the Crawler into her arms, whereupon the little Necromorph lets out a giggle and self-destructs, killing the woman and spraying the window with blood.
    • During the finale, Isaac has to sabotage the Government Sector's defenses in order to get in without being gunned down by all the troops guarding it... only to find that he's accidentally let in all of the Necromorphs, all of whom will now be on their way to the Marker to trigger a Convergence Event. He's left watching through the windows overhead as a veritable horde of Necromorphs surge into the building and obliterate the screaming defenders.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution:
  • During the introductory terrorist attack on Sarif Industries, Adam can witness Lawrence Barrett murdering two scientists through a window — one being flung headlong into the glass, the other being shot dead with Barret's Arm Cannon.
  • Subverted near the beginning of infiltrating Tai Yong Medical's headquarters. You can come across a technician with a Broken Faceplate trapped in a room filling with Deadly Gas behind a window very much like a typical example of this trope, but if you have the right skills unlocked, you can rescue him.
• Taken to the next level in The Devil in Me when two characters find themselves trapped in a deathtrap with a large glass wall between them that is slowly moving to crush one of them. One person can stop it by pushing a button... that makes the glass go the other way and crush the other person. Your choice is either Heroic Sacrifice or murder your friend to survive, and no matter what you do both of them get plenty of time to reflect on your choice before one of them dies. Unless you happen to have a certain item which allows you to take a third option.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 3: During the main plot, your attempts to get the water purifier at the Jefferson Memorial leave you outside the facility when the Enclave attacks. As such, when you arrive to help, you find that Colonel Autumn has cornered James in a sealed room behind an unbreakable window and is trying to force him to surrender the purifier by shooting any of his fellow scientists left inside. James retaliates by sabotaging the machinery to flood the room with radiation, leaving you watching in horror as your father dies... and to add insult to injury, Autumn survives.
  • Fallout 4: After narrowly managing to escape a nuclear bombardment in the game's intro, you, your spouse, and baby Shaun are brought into Vault 111 and ushered into glass-windowed pods for decontamination; in reality, they're cryo-pods. When you finally awake, it's two centuries later and you've been thawed out by the current villainous faction, who want to kidnap Shaun for their own mysterious purposes. Because Shaun was being held by your spouse when you were frozen, the villains only open their pod, leaving you to watch helplessly from behind the glass as your spouse tries to keep them from taking the baby away — only to be shot in the head at point-blank range by Conrad Kellogg.
• Half-Life:
  • The original game has a couple notable examples.
    • The first involves a scientist fighting off headcrabs in an inaccessible room; he manages to squash one with a filling cabinet but another one jumps onto his head from behind and incapacitates him, and Gordon can only watch on from behind the unbreakable windows.
    • In the second, a security guard in a locked-off security station gets grabbed by a zombie emerging from an air vent behind him, dragged in, and torn to shreds.
  • The first Shock Trooper in Half-Life: Opposing Force is shown teleporting into a locked room with a guard and scientist inside. Shephard can only watch as it kills the guard and abducts the scientist, the latter of which breaks the window that was blocking him from intervening.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect 2:
    • Shortly after awakening on a Cerberus base and finding that the security mechs have been hacked as part of a massive assassination attempt, Shepard watches through an observation window as an ATLAS Mech kills a Cerberus crewmember with a missile. Astonishingly enough, this doesn't break the glass.
    • In the finale, the attack on the Collector base eventually reveals the fate of the abducted colonists: they're placed in glass tubes and painfully melted down into liquid while Shepard and his teammates futilely try to free them; the crew kidnapped from the Normandy are also here, but they can be broken out of their tubes before they're liquefied... provided you didn't delay the mission to the base.
  • Mass Effect 3: During the rescue mission to Grissom Academy, Shepard witnesses two Cerberus soldiers dragging away a screaming student through a huge window; Shepard cannot rescue the unlucky victim, and the soldiers won't look up even if you open fire on the unbreakable glass.
• In the original Max Payne, during one of the Deep Six levels, Max witnesses unlucky scientists being slaughtered by commandos from behind a bulletproof glass window.
• Myst IV: Revelation: Played with. You're forced to watch Achenar break a glass container holding fatal botanical gasses inside a secured vault in a desperate attempt to save Yeesha from being possessed by Sirrus — and you can't get in because Achenar's broken the opening handle and mechanism. He survives just long enough for you to save the day before finally expiring.
• The Obscura Experiment: Near the start of the game, as Priya is walking through the ship, she sees another scientist behind a window, pounding her fists against it. As she's doing this, the black hole forms behind her and sucks her in.
• Outlast:
  • Early in Whistleblower, Waylon is ordered to do some troubleshooting on the Morphogenic Engine while a new test subject is forcibly hooked up to it; halfway through, said test subject manages to escape the guards and take a flying leap at the control room window, giving Waylon an uninterrupted view of the man screaming for mercy before the guards drag him away. For good measure, it's clear that Waylon wants to stop this from happening, given that he's the eponymous whistleblower, but can't while his superiors are watching. Unfortunately, the test subject — a Serial Killer by the name of Eddie Gluskin — survives the experiment and becomes even worse.
  • During his escape from Mount Massive, Waylon encounters a doctor trapped in a decontamination chamber, visible through the control panel window. As it's the only way to escape the area, Waylon opens the door — only for an enraged Variant to enter through the now-open entrance and beat the doctor to death while Waylon looks on in shock (as indicated by the anxious breathing).
  • Waylon later finds another decontamination chamber blocked, with the Variant trapped inside visible through the glass doors. Worse still, the decontamination gas has not been switched off, and has built up to fatal levels: the poor guy can be seen screaming for help as he slowly suffocates, eventually dying with a Hand Sliding Down the Glass. Once again, Waylon is left suitably horrified.
• Outlast II:
  • Variation; relatively early in the game, Blake is given shelter in the cellar of Ethan, the Token Good Teammate of the Temple Gate cultists; unfortunately, this results in Marta being sent after him, leaving Blake watching through a hole in the floor as Ethan is fatally impaled.
  • Later, Blake strays into one of the churches held by the Temple Gate cult and finds that a Heretic by the name of Josiah has been tied up and mutilated. Unfortunately, Sullivan Knoth and a retinue of cultists then enter the church, forcing Blake to hide inside the nearby confessional booth. Soon after, he's left watching through the confessional's window as the cultists stretch Josiah's wife on a rack until Josiah reveals where the Heretics took Lynn; immediately afterwards, both Josiah and his wife are murdered.
• Prey (2017):
  • Early in the game, you're put through a series of confusing but relatively benign tests, while scientists observe you from behind glass windows. However, during the final test, a Mimic unexpectedly replaces Dr. Bellamy's coffee cup; the moment he picks it up, it reveals its true form and attacks him. Because you don't have anything that can break the glass, you can only watch as it kills him — before the remaining scientists gas you unconscious.
  • Not long after escaping the apartment simulation, you enter the decontamination chamber; while you're waiting to be allowed into the Neuromod Division, a screaming crewman runs up and begins pounding on the door, just in time for another Mimic to latch onto his face. By this point, you have a wrench, but it can't break the glass, so you can only watch as the Mimic rams a tentacle down his throat and sucks him dry — and then splits into four new Mimics.
• Quake IV:
  • At one point, when disabling the lasers in "Perimeter Defense Station" so the convoy can continue into the Aqueducts, Kane witnesses a Marine congratulating him on a job well done from the other side of a glass window, when a Grunt approaches the Marine from behind and kills him, Kane being unable to do anything because there was no way to get to the Marine's location.
  • Right after Rhino Squad saves Kane from fully becoming a Strogg, Kane is left with medic Jeremiah Anderson, the two of them being unable to leave Stroggos due to their escape ship being blown up. They're forced to go through the medical facilities. At one point, Anderson's curiosity leads him to be trapped behind a reinforced glass trap, and in the middle of the silent screams, he's killed by a Strogg Medic.
• Resident Evil – Code: Veronica: Claire comes upon a scientist locked in a room. He pounds on a window begging to be let out, but Claire doesn't have any way of opening the door. Then a creature, the Bandersnatch, grabs the scientist by the head and slams him into the window, crushing his head.
• Shadow the Hedgehog's backstory in Sonic Adventure 2 features him trapped within an escape pod shaped like a glass tube while his best friend, Maria Robotnik, bleeds out in front of him and activates the mechanism to eject the escape pod. This memory haunts Shadow for the rest of his life and is often revisited in adaptations or flashback scenes, like in Sonic X and his own spinoff game Shadow the Hedgehog.
• In Spider-Man: Miles Morales this happened in Phin Mason/The Tinkerer's back story as she had to watch her older brother Rick die, during a overload at The Roxxon Corporation. They were both there to destroy the reactor as the supposedly clean energy it produced was toxic and killing people, and when doing so Simon Krieger activated a force field trapping her outside whilst all she could do was watch helplessly as the reactor exploded taking her brother with it.
• Early in The Suffering, Torque finds that one of the prison guards has been captured and strapped into the old gas chamber. Assuming you aren't playing for negative karma, you enter the room to help him... only for Hermes Haight to turn on the gas. With the door locked behind you and the gas chamber sealed shut, all you can do is watch helplessly through the chamber windows as the guard dies in agony.
• Timesplitters Future Perfect
  • In level 6 of the single-player campaign "What Lies Below", Sgt. Cortez and Jo-Beth Casey are in the cellars of the zombie-infested mansion, where the lab where the zombies were created is located. At one point, Cortez and Jo-Beth see a scientist cornered by two zombies. He bangs on the window, crying for help, and the zombies drag him below the window to eat him. Unfortunately, despite Cortez and Jo-Beth being armed at that point, the glass is too thick for bullets to penetrate it, so you can't shoot the zombies through the window to save him.
  • In level 8, Cortez and Amy Chen pass by a lab overrun by mutants, which security has decided to handle by "sterilization" (read: sealing off the room and pumping in toxic gas). One scientist is thrown against the window by a mutant, while another is heard suffocating as he futilely pleads with the guards to be released.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron: During the Decepticon push against the Autobot capital of Iacon, Megatron, Breakdown and Soundwave track down Autobot leader Zeta Prime. When they arrive at the Vaults where he's taken shelter, they find a Decepticon soldier trapped behind an impenetrable wall. Zeta activates crushing machinery to try to intimidate Megatron into retreating, and the hapless Decepticon soldier manages to dodge a few of the crushing machines before his luck runs out. Needless to say, against Megatron it's a complete failure as an intimidation tactic.
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron: In one of the early levels, Optimus Prime encounters a group of Autobots holed up in a checkpoint to hold back the Decepticons. Starscream suddenly breaks in, and despite Optimus Prime's frenzied attempts to get inside by the time he manages to do so Starscream has already slaughtered the Autobots and fled. When he's later trapped in a similar checkpoint with a group of very unlucky Decepticons, he responds to the taunt of "No mercy, Autobot!" with a quiet "I wasn't offering any."

Visual Novels

• In Zero Time Dilemma, this occurs no matter what a player chooses during a Sadistic Choice. Phi is trapped inside an incinerator and can see her friends Dianna and Sigma through a small window. Dianna has a choice between letting Phi be incinerated or shooting Sigma in the head. To make it worse, both plead for her to save the other instead of themselves, and the one Dianna chooses to save is forced to helplessly watch the other die through the window.

Webcomics

• It's Walky!: Dina dies when she accidentally traps herself in SEMME HQ's nigh-indestructible glass steel test chamber with an active bomb while two Britjas are blocking the way out. If she stays, she'll die when the bomb explodes. If she tries leaving, she'll die at the hands of the Britjas, and if she throws the bomb back out through the entrance, there's a chance of it killing Joe and Professor Doc along with the Britjas. Walky and Mike end up being Forced to Watch as the bomb explodes, killing Dina before either can even attempt to do anything about it.
• The Order of the Stick: As an apprentice wizard, Eugene was present when his master Fyron was attacked by the sorcerer Xykon. Xykon trapped Eugene within a force bubble to prevent interference and killed Fyron in front of him.

Web Video

• Outside Xbox has "7 Tragedies You Couldn't Prevent Because They Happened Behind Glass, Damnit," which lists seven examples of this trope from video games.

Western Animation

• Big Mouth: Missy watches helplessly as her personalities from previous seasons all kill each other gruesomely from behind mirrors.
• In Season 1, Episode 8 of Final Space, Gary intends to join his father John Goodspeed, to close the breach to Final Space. However, John locks Gary in the ship to prevent this, and Gary looks on tearfully as John pulls off his Heroic Sacrifice by himself.
• In the Looney Tunes cartoon "Feed the Kitty", the bulldog Marc Anthony watches in horror through the kitchen window as the housewife starts making cookies with an electric mixer where Marc had hidden his adopted kitten, Pussyfoot. The batter gets power mixed, rolled flat, cut into shapes, and baked. The housewife then presents Marc with a cat-shaped cookie, which triggers tears of regret. Subverted in that Pussyfoot had hopped out of the mixer while the housewife shooed Marc Anthony from her kitchen.

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