For Sale or Rent: 4 bedroom brick house, 3.5 bathrooms, central heating and air conditioning, two car garage. Great location, unbeatable view of the night sky thanks to a Captain Collateral shaped hole in the ceiling.
It's pretty, it's homey, and it has a great view...thanks to the huge, gaping hole in the wall and/or ceiling.
A comedy trope, in which—whether because of a natural disaster, super heroics, stranger shenanigans, unnecessarily dynamic entry, vehicular mishaps, etc.—the characters have their home or place of business partially carved out and exposed, and are forced to live that way for at least a scene or two. Expect some bad weather to naturally show up at some point.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A commercial for NJM Insurance has a couple cloudgazing, only to reveal that they're doing it from their bed through a hole in their roof because the other insurance company they went with still hasn't called back with a quote. But hey, That Cloud Looks Like... the company's mascot, the Policy Puffin!
Anime and Manga
- Call of the Night: After Susuki accidentally triggers Yamori's vampire powers, he reattaches his severed arm and tries to punch her. Unfortunately he misses and punches a hole in every floor of Nazuna's apartment building. When witnesses start asking questions later, Azami convinces them that the building collapsed due to age degradation.
- In Chronicles of the Going Home Club, Botan managed to knock out an entire wall while opening a bottle of soda. She later cracks the ceiling doing the same thing.
- In Fruits Basket, Shigure is always complaining how people are always destroying his house whether it's Kagura bursting through a door or Kyo coming through the roof.
- Mayuko's room in Niea_7 has a large hole in the roof for a while because of Niea's failed UFO construction experiments.
- One Piece:
- Luffy's battle with Arlong culminates with Luffy kicking Arlong through all the floors of his base, down to the ground level. To add insult to injury, Arlong Park collapses shortly after, leaving Arlong buried in the rubble.
- After two of his underlings innocently advise Kaido not to underestimate Luffy and Law (since they were able to defeat Doflamingo), Kaido grabs his kanabo and smashes the poor sops into the horizon, leaving a large hole in the ceiling of his castle.
- This happens all the time to the Tendo home in Ranma ½, usually caused by one of Ranma's martial artist rivals. The worst incident was caused when Rouge, a Chinese woman cursed to transform into an Asura, blew away half the roof with a fireball attack.
Comedy
- Part of Les Dawson's standup routine:
The other day I was gazing up at the night sky, a purple vault fretted with a myriad points of light twinkling in wondrous formation, while shooting stars streaked across the heavens. In awe I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebon void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought: I really must repair the roof on this toilet.
Comic Books
- In Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire this happens to the bar Asteroid Al's at the conclusion of the PSmith arc, and despite bemoaning this fact Al, the owner of the newly open roof, has his girlfriend suggest that they put in a skylight.
- Phineas of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers tries growing marijuana on the roof of the old building he and his pals live in, hauling a bunch of soil up and installing a self-watering system. The trio go off on a long road trip, and when they get home, they look up and think someone left the lights on, then realize it's the sky - opening the door they see the roof has collapsed into the basement.
Films — Animation
- Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph breaks the Niceland apartments from above before Felix Jr. fixes them.
Films — Live-Action
- A major subplot in Stephen Spielberg's 1941 (1979) is all about this trope happening to a house on the Californian coast courtesy of a hung-ho man trying to take out a Japanese submarine with an AA gun the Army installed on his backyard and being a borderline Lethal Klutz with its handling. By the time of the final scene, the house is so badly damaged that nailing a flower arrangement to the front door makes it fall apart into the sea.
- Hancock had this after the "lovers' spat".
- And some holes in his own roof after "Climbing the Mountain"
- In The King Of The Golden River, Gluck is nice to the odd man who visits them but his brothers are rude to him, so the odd man returns that night in his true form (the North Wind or something) and destroys the roof to the brothers' room (in a rainstorm no less), forcing them to bunk in Gluck's bed. (I wonder whether this was really such a great favor to Gluck.)
- A running gag in the Lethal Weapon movies, as Murtaugh's house got a large hole on its front wall courtesy of Mr. Joshua ramming a patrol car through it to try to kill the Murtaugh family in the first and was partly blown up by an exploding toilet in the second (to worsen the renovation that was already being done, shown in several scenes). This leads to a scene in the third where Leo, in an inversion of Shady Real Estate Agent, provides way Too Much Information about the house's repairs and why they happened and scares off the people Roger was trying to sell it to.
- In the end of Mars Attacks!, the boxer's family had their apartment building partially destroyed, but otherwise still standing.
- G-Girl crashes through her ex's penthouse roof on a couple of occasions in My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
- Happens to the lead character, Harold, in Stranger Than Fiction.
- A fight between Tom, Jerry, and Spike in Tom & Jerry (2021) creates a Big Ball of Violence that eventually breaks through the skylight of the hotel's lobby.
- Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen has Bumblebee unfortunately do this while destroying a small army of Transformer-ized household appliances. Even though part of the house is destroyed the Witwickys aren't really worried, due to the government promising to cover any damages to their property because of the Autobots and even think of it as a good start to planned remodeling.
- In Warm (1978), the "workers" drill huge holes into the building's walls and leave. All tenants are outraged, but also learn to use the holes for easy communication or passing commodities to each other, which ends up both improving their relations and worsening them. Snegov also drops his dentures into his neighbor's room when he's poking his head into a hole to bicker with him.
Snegov: Liffle girl, giffe my teetf back!
- Cyclops accidentally destroys the roof of the train station in X-Men with his optical blasts. When he later chides Wolverine for something else, Wolverine counters "I'm not the one who gave the train station a new sunroof!"
Literature
- Happens to Dirk Gently at the end of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul when an eagle in his house is abruptly transformed back into a fighter jet.
- The main burrow in Watership Down has a hole in the roof after the climactic battle with the Efrafan rabbits (who dug through it to get at them). The Watership rabbits can do nothing except wait for it to close on its own.
Live Action TV
- One episode of Gilmore Girls has Lorelai's house being renovated by Luke's brother in law, who's so comedically enthusiastic (and incompetent) that as soon as Luke agrees to let him be their contractor he runs over to her place and makes a hole in her bedroom wall on the second story. Lorelai wanders in a state of shock to Luke's Diner to ask him for help and coherence. They get it fixed it in a jiffy, though.
- The Douglas' home in Green Acres is in a semi-permanent state of disrepair, thanks to the general incompetence of their contractors, the Monroe brothers. (In their defense, they had only done chicken coops previous to this.) They have to make do with a bedroom closet that doubles as a back door.
- Horrible Histories: A sketch shows the marriage between Edward III and Philippa of Hainault in the still unfinished Yorkminister. The builder is trying to remember what it is he still has to finish. He remembers it is the roof when it starts snowing.
- Lampshaded in the House episode "Que Sera Sera" by the patient. Because of his extraordinary obesity, emergency personnel removed much of his exterior bedroom wall so they could get him out of his apartment. At one point he jokes that at least he won't be alone for the week while this is repaired. It's not so funny anymore when he's later diagnosed with lung cancer.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
- Taken to its most extreme conclusion in "The Gang Gets Extreme Home Makeover" when Dennis and Charlie end up reducing the house to little more than a pile of rubble.
- In "Mac And Dennis Break Up", Charlie smashes a massive hole in Dee's wall in an attempt to get her cat out.
- This lasts for practically a whole season on Malcolm in the Middle, after Hal and an old friend of his tear a wall off the house.
- During an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina is scoping out places to stay while she goes to college. Her aunts, desperate to have her stay home, use magic to cause all sorts of deformities to the places she visits, including removing the roof from one. Another time has a roof removed due to an "as long as you live under our roof" line.
- The Thundermans: The Thundermans' home always has man-shaped holes in the ceiling from whenever Hank decides to fly through it. The family is so used to this it rarely comes up, and one episode sees some of the holes shoddily patched.
Myth and Religion
- The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell of Jesus visiting someone's home while one of the locals, a paralytic, wanted to be healed. Jesus had drawn such a large crowd that the house was packed and the man's friends couldn't get him through the door... so they made a hole in the roof and lowered him down through it.
Puppet Shows
- The Muppet Show episode with Gladys Knight has the theatre's leaky roof being serviced, only to have the repair crew insist on "taking it in to the shop." Thus the gang has to deal with all sorts of bad weather climaxing with snow during the closing number.
- The aforementioned Bible story was adapted into a sketch on some Christian children's show from the '90s starring puppets. Turns out the owner of the home was none too happy about having a person-sized hole in his roof, and he sings a song about it while we get a flashback of what happened. In the end, it starts raining. But then who should show up but the healed man, who turns out to be a carpenter and offers to fix the hole.
There's a hole... in my roof
It's the truth... I wouldn't spoof
It was chopped there for a man with diseases
And they lowered him down to Jesus
Webcomics
- The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has a running gag of spaceships and other large objects continually crashing into Bob's roof. It's gotten to the point that whenever something big goes flying into the air, Bob just sighs and rolls with it.
Web Original
- This
◊ poster.
Couldn't you have thrown him somewhere else but my living room?Sorry, I'm a player character. Since when did PCs care about anyone else? - Strong Bad has fallen through his own roof at least twice, though we never see the hole itself. First when Pom Pom beat him up so hard he flew through the air all the way from Bubs', and then when Strong Mad's cannonball dive caused a "total wave" that exploded everyone out of the neighborhood pool.
Strong Bad: I should really just stop patching that hole.
- Happens so often in Nostalgia Critic episodes several characters reference the ceiling getting more and more holes from people constantly busting in/out of the studio through it.
Western Animation
- In one episode of Family Guy (The One With Wall-Mart wrecking Quahog) Peter buys a tank, complete with shells. He blows the entire front half of Cleveland's house right off, leaving a cross-section view of it. Cleveland rides down the debris in his bathtub with his signature Rapid-Fire "No!", and asks Peter if he can shoot him down the towel rack so he can go get dressed.
- The Powerpuff Girls hardly ever leave a building besides their own house by a door or even a window. Lampshaded in the first regular series episode.
PPG: Teacher, may we please be excused to save the world?Ms. Keane: Yes you may. BUT NOT THROUGH THE *CRASH* roof...
