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The trope namers ( and a guest) showing us how it's done. A very standardized visual comedy sequence. A static shot down a hallway lined with doors, like a hotel or mansion corridor, comes up in the middle of the chase scene. The chaser and one or more groups of chasees enter a door. Then they emerge from a different door. Or opposite doors. Or in the wrong order. Or in dresses. Or some unrelated character makes a cameo. Or more than one of the character is visible at the same time. Basically, the characters run in and out of doors doing crazy stuff for a while, adding to the zaniness, one-upping themselves for about a minute. Rarely, a shot inside one of the rooms will be cut in.
A Running Gag, literally and figuratively, this one is unique for one reason; every instance of the trope subverts itself by the time the scene is over. Thus, this trope was discredited as soon as it was created, yet still good for a laugh.
Usually animated, but can be done in live action by locking off the camera at the end of the hallway to hide edits and allow room switches. In animation, allows tremendous savings on budget, since the same cross-frame run-cycle cels can be used over and over and over for the entire sequence.
In video games, this could lead to an Urban Legend Of Zelda that going into certain doors in the right order will transport you to a secret room. Or something.
Examples:
Advertising
- In a rare use, a series of Cartoon Network gag commercials poking fun at the Blair Witch Project have one of the Scooby Doo gang holding a camcorder during a chase scene and running into a few rooms shouting that she (almost certain it was Daphne) hates these door sequences before placing the camera down on an end table so it can resume the familiar angle as they go through the switch.
Anime
- A similar gag shows up in an episode of One Piece during the Thriller Bark arc, during a Chase Scene where Perona's minion Bearsy chases Ussop through a forest of pillars.
- A Mental World version showed up in the fourth episode of Kaiba.
Film
- Done in live action outdoors using a long series of paired signboards in the film version of Godspell.
- In the Jackie Chan movie Mr. Nice Guy, there is a brief door scene where two goons pursuing Jackie Chan's character pop out of two different doors, see each other, scream in surprise, and slam the doors. The first thug then hesitantly opens his door. The other door pops open and out comes Jackie Chan with the second thug in a headlock.
- The scene can be found here
 , the above mentioned part at 1:35.
- Appears, of all places, in the Show Within A Show in the movie version of V For Vendetta; though there's no doors, the music makes it perfectly clear they were going for this.
- This music was actually the main theme of the English comedic show Benny Hill, which always ended with a burlesque chase sequence.
- The Leslie Nielsen movie Wrongfully Accused features such a chase in a sewer.
- Done with slight variation in the film adaptaion of Little Nemo. Flip and Nemo run between two rows of large pillars while being chased by guards.
Literature
- The "world's funniest puppet show" in Barry Hughart's Eight Skilled Gentlemen is a very slight variation (and a massive elaboration) on this.
Live Action TV
- The Benny Hill Show. Examples based off Benny Hill rather than Scooby Doo can usually be identified by the music. "Yakkety Sax" by Boots Randolph.
- Homaged in live-action with the Doctor Who episode "Love and Monsters". Some considered this overly cartoonish and silly, while others thought it was all part of an enjoyably offbeat Something Completely Different episode.
- Some however, have cited it as evidence that Elton, the episode's focus and narrator is an unreliable one.
- A live action variant appears in an episode of It Aint Half Hot Mum. Through various misunderstandings, several of the main cast arrange secret trysts with two different women in the same house. Hilarity Ensues as they burst in and out of the various doors to the same room, all miraculously managing to just miss each other.
- Neds Declassified School Survival Guide used a chase scene like this in one of the episodes, involving Ned and his friend Cookie being chased by Loomer (the leather jacket-sporting bully). It involved going up and down staircases, whirling in an out of a classroom, and even the three stopping at an intersection with Loomer patting Ned on the back.
- The live-action series The Ghost Busters uses this frequently.
- Used at the end of a video for PBS's Square One TV, "Ghost of a Chance"
Video Games
- In Grim Fandango, all of the tunnels in the Petrified Forest clearing lead to one another. Glottis notices the first time and says, "Hey, wait a minute."
- Most of the doors in town in The Secret of Monkey Island work this way, to keep you from being arbitrarily locked out of buildings you can't actually access. There are a few in The Curse of Monkey Island too, which are actually handy shortcuts from one end of the town set to the other.
- In Silent Hill 2's Nightmare Hotel, one of the most nightmare fuelish and Mind Screwy locations in the series, going in a room door dumps you out at a certain other door in the hallway, and one of the doors transports you to the otherwise-inaccessible east wing of the building.
- One of the Scooby Doo video games actually uses this gimmick as a puzzle; you go through three doors, then have to choose a fourth door that leads to a secret room. The secret? The key door is whichever door the second door was.
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance had a more sinister version where an Odin empowered Dr. Doom uses his powers to create a hall of doors like this, with the simple task of finding a way out. The trick is to go back the way you came in.
Web Original
Western Animation
- This trope originated in theatrical cartoons during the 1930s and '40s. Tex Avery (creator of the cartoon character Droopy Dog) was fond of this during his days at MGM, and its occurrence in the Screwy Squirrel cartoon Lonesome Lenny was not only over the top (with additional chasers and chasees being added at random, including a cow, a lech chasing a screaming woman, and various clones of Screwy and Lenny), but self-referential, as the cow briefly stopped in the middle of the chase to hold up a sign reading "Silly, isn't it?"
- The first use this troper knows comes in Flip The Frog cartoons (early 1930s). It also pops up in Frank Tashlin's Looney Tunes short Porky Pig's Feat (1943).
- Tex Avery himself provided an interesting variation, rarely re-used these days: the chase sequence would happen in an originally seemingly normal room (with only two or three doors), but then additional doors would be quickly created as needed – the trick was to open a door violently, and a new opening was instantaneously created where it had hit the wall; this worked completely regardless of the door's hinges, so that when there was no room left on walls, doors were created on the floor and ceiling as well (an example of this, from Little Rural Riding Hood, can be found here, at 1:39)... These scenes tended to be accompanied by the song "In and Out the Window".
- Used toward the end of Disney's Alice In Wonderland when she gets stuck in the maze and tries to run away from the Queen Of Hearts's guards.
- Happens in Atlantis The Lost Empire when the professors at the Smithsonian try to get away from Milo.
- The Donkey Kong Country episode "Raiders of the Lost Banana" has Donkey and Diddy briefly chase Polly Roger into this trope.
- Done in the Family Guy episode "McStroke", with Peter, Brian, Mr. Cow and two McBurgerworld security guards.
- And also in the much earlier episode "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1" during the Little Rascals spoof (the actual Scooby Doo gang makes a brief appearance).
- Subverted in Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends - the camera is at the right angle, the hallway is full of doors, and the characters are being chased at the time. They run through the door, followed by what's chasing them, then... nothing for about one second, then the scene changes.
- Johnny Bravo used it during the self-referential Scooby Cross Over episode "Bravo-Dooby Doo". Eventually, it gets to the point where there are multiple Johnnys running through the doors at the same time.
- The whole door chase sequence in Monsters, Inc. must have been inspired by this, those that might be the most unique variation of this trope in existence.
- Disney's Robin Hood had a sequence using the fair tents between Robin and Little John, the guards, and Lady Cluck; it ended up with the large guards propelling one tent like a train with the appropos sound effect and a mock American football run!
- Scooby Doo made the trope enough of an institution that it became intimately associated with the various series, hence the name. Every modern usage includes at least a nod to the canine detective and the gang, if only in the music chosen. Even Scooby Doo itself can't use it straight anymore.
- The Simpsons has, of course, spoofed this one.
- Used in Snoopy Come Home, when the annoying girl Clara who kidnaps Snoopy and Woodstock chases them through her house.
- South Park used it during the episode "Cartman Joins NAMBLA", in a Scooby-esque chase scene between a large group of young boys, a gang of naked paedophiles (NAMBLA), the North American Marlon Brando Look Alikes (the "other NAMBLA"), the police and the FBI, and Kenny chasing his pregnant mother with a plunger.
- Pops up in the Teamo Supremo Halloween Episode.
- Done in the Teen Titans episode "Mad Mod", during a Scooby Doo-inspired musical chase scene with the Titans pursuing Mad Mod through his surreal, trap-laden lair. This also contains a number of references to the Yellow Submarine doors, with Beast Boy doubling as the animals.
- A later episode, also featureing Mad Mod, had them do it with cars in the middle of a street. Though the camara panes across the street the effect is the same.
- A sequence early in the Beatles film Yellow Submarine features a variant on this, where creatures and things ran back and forth between doors in a long hallway only when the main characters were not present.
- Spoofed in the Drawn Together episode "Clara's Dirty Little Secret", which first showed a similar situation with the house guests chasing each other and emerging from random doors, then zoomed out to reveal that the doors were all connected by a series of tubes, which the characters swam through.
- Rockos Modern Life had one, but near a French canal instead of in a building. The chase involved Rocko trying to find and impress a female wallaby, Heffer following a truck advertising a Chewy Chicken restaurant, and an insane tour guide hunting them down in his bus. At one point, the characters start walking up and down the sides of buildings and riding boats through the canal.
- Used in BB3B when the kids take their grandmother whist she is still on a hospital bed and run away from the robots. However, the order of who is chasing who doesn't change.
- Hilariously parodied in the Fairly Odd Parents episode where Timmy sneaks into Cosmo and Wanda's home in the fish bowl. With each door switch Timmy, Cosmo and Marianne (an escaped bad godchild) would change clothes. And that was the least weird detail...
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