Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom - Television Tropes & Idioms

All that running through scenes like this in all his games and he hasn't lost a pound...

Gwen: What is this thing? There's no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway!
Jason: Gwen —
Gwen: No! I mean, we shouldn't have to do this! It makes no logical sense! Why is it here?!
Jason: Because it's on the television show.
Gwen: Well, forget it! I'm not doing it! This episode was badly written!

— Galaxy Quest

This is a Booby Trap in which big stone blocks, spiked walls or sharp blades repeatedly ram into each other in a narrow hallway. The way past them is to either immediately run through when they separate or find a way to jam them. Multiple traps lined up may require some pattern memorization.

Extremely common in video games as a standard obstacle, especially in medieval settings.

Having large items appear on a conveyor belt that crush down are also common... which makes one wonder what these factories are supposed to be making that require so much repeated crushing to make. It also sometimes appears in settings that are within giant monsters, which could be justified because you're within the monster's digestive tract and that the smashing/pounding things are part of its pre-digestion chewing process.

When devices commonly found in this trope are implemented as Death Traps and won't retract, they're usually either a Descending Ceiling or The Walls Are Closing In.

A one-stop Death Course.

Examples:

Film

Part of the Death Course parody in Galaxy Quest.
In Attack of the Clones the stamping presses on the conveyor belt of the droid factory qualifies. It also has the bladed kind later on. Also, one wonders how a machine designed to stamp metal plates into a flat shapes actually molds said metal around his squishy squishy non-robotic arm.

Folklore and Mythology

The Argonauts from Greek mythology had to avoid a similar obstacle on their way to Colchis — the Symplegades, a pair of rocks clashing together to destroy ships attempting to cross the Hellespont. This, of course, makes this Older Than Feudalism.
The Filipino Strong Man Bernardo Carpio was trapped for eternity between two mountains who had nothing else to do but bounce their bodies together.

Live-Action TV

The Warehouse 13 episode "Buried" had a Death Course with swinging blades and blasts of fire. Instead of jumping through it, the team gets by it by zip-lining over the top.

Video Games

Resident Evil 4.
God Of War. Oddly, they didn't do much damage if they slammed on the player. This, of course, could be Hand Waved by saying that Kratos is half-god.
- In Ghost of Sparta, there is an underwater section of Atlantis that features these. They cause instant death, thus setting you back a few seconds to right in front of the trapped area.
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Same as above, but less justification.
The Legend of Zelda series. Most memorably, in the Shadow Temple of Ocarina of Time, where you had to block the falling trap with a block hidden behind a fake wall, which a sign referred to as "the stone umbrella".
Tomb Raider games make a science of this. In the first level of Legend, you have to push a block through to stop the smashing walls, like the Zelda example above.
Hexen. Oh so very much.
- Not to mention the revolving doors that can crush you, the bottomless pits, the earthquakes, the cave-ins, the collapsing bridges, the impaling spikes...
The Thwomps in the Super Mario Bros. games. Oddly enough, though, the Thwomps were cognizant villains, with eyes and a mouth. Usually, rather then constantly moving up and down, Thwomps would see Mario approaching, and slam themselves down when he was near. It would take them a while to raise themselves again, during which time Mario would be able to pass through. Also, depending on which Mario game you happen to be playing, the Thwomps may deviate from their up-down-up-down pattern of moving; the most recent example being Super Mario Galaxy, in which certain levels had Thwomp-shaped cubes called Tox Boxes actually rolling around the landscape like gigantic dice. These cubes also appeared in the Shifting Sand Land level of Super Mario 64.
- The castle levels of Super Mario World also had big crushers and spiked pillars which repeatedly crashed into the floor.
- Taken to extremes in New Super Mario Bros Wii, where every other castle has a spiked pillar or falling spiked object trap of some sort, culminating with World 7 Castle's hallway of pillars that only give you a one-square-high gap in a certain spot to dodge them.
- And probably impossible to pass in Super Paper Mario in one scene, they move up and down faster than you can pass through! Though flipping into 3D reveals you can just walk behind them.
The guillotine-like crashing blades in the original Prince of Persia.
- The Shadow and the Flame has (slow-moving) crushing walls in its Temple of Doom.
- Deconstructed in Sands of Time, where a soldier instructs the Prince to do a puzzle to activate the castle's "defense system." During the puzzle, the Prince asks, specifically, what the system does, and the soldier reiterates that it's for the "defense system." Turns out it activates the various traps in the castle, which are actually more dangerous to the Prince than the creatures he's facing. (Incidentally, activating the system lets in a creature that kills the guard.)
  - Justified in Warrior Within, when the Prince is using a castle whose owner is actively trying to kill him.
  - Used in the palace segments of Two Thrones, which take place in the Prince's home. You'd think he'd know how to bypass the traps, except for the completely inexplicable ones in the palace well. One possible explanation is that the traps had never been activated during his lifetime, and/or he hadn't really been paying attention when instructed about the bypasses, being kind of an arrogant jerk before SOT. "Who on Earth would dare to attack Babylon?", he may have said.
- In the Next-Gen PoP, the traps are actually The Corruption, sentient, and can sometimes actively move toward the Prince.
Various inexplicable crushing traps in Duke Nukem 3 D. In some places, you can be reduced to Ludicrous Gibs by getting caught in a door.
Grunty Industries in Banjo-Tooie has several, including a pair of crushers that span the entire hallway.
Subverted in Portal where an impossible to pass series of pistons can simply be portalled around.
- Of course, in the Portal: The Flash Version map pack, the trope is played straight.
  - Only because the trailer for Portal featured rectangular Descending Ceiling traps and they weren't in the final game.
- The Propulsion Gel video and the co-op trailer for Portal 2 show off what appear to be hydraulically-powered spike-encrusted hallways which spring forward from their panels in the wall to crush the player. Needless to say, not being turned into instant hamburger is another fine motivator to quickly learn how to mess with physics as we know it.
  - "Ooh! Did that kill you? It would be so awesome if it did!'" This appears all over the second half of the game, when Wheatley is trying to kill you.
In Dark Messiah, you use a rope bow to climb above the walls.
One appears in Doom 3: The Resurrection of Evil expansion right after you gain the ability to slow down time in respect to yourself. It more or less serves as a tutorial for using that power.
Quake II has this in at least one level.
- So had the original Quake, although this dates all the way back to Doom. Come to think of it most FPS by id and Raven are fond of this trope.
Any Devil May Cry game. Because of Dante's near-instant healing reducing this trope to a mere annoyance, this is usually complimented with a healthy serving of demons.
The Metroid Prime series has a few of these. It's worth noting that with the exception of the Hunters installment, these traps would merely do approximately ten damage and screw with your morph ball's momentum for a few seconds.
- This being said, in Hunters these are absolutely horrible. These alone make the second run through the planet that they are on unbearable. Going through not 1, not 2, not even 3, no, 4 sets of these. With no checkpoints. And you die instantly if they even GRAZE you.
Occur every so often in the classic Sonic the Hedgehog games, and one of the few ways in which he can die instantly regardless of rings, shield, invincibility or even Super form... less common in the modern Sonic games, but that's just as well given the rise and rise of the Bottomless Pit.
- Which isn't to say they're entirely absent, of course. The Evil Foundry level in Secret Rings has vertical crushers bordered on either side by Bottomless Pits, establishing that it is, in fact, an evil foundry.
- Sonic CD has some blocks in Wacky Workbench that look like these, but will actually just drop you into the area below if you let them "crush" you. This is actually necessary to reach a Robotizer.
  - There are some real crushers that look almost identical to the fake ones in the later level Metallic Madness.
- The Sonic Generations reprise of Rooftop Run has a long corridor with a spike-laced Descending Ceiling. Modern Sonic must boost through this corridor in order to avoid getting flattened.
Konquest mode in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon has quite a few of these.
The Waste Disposal section of Half-Life 1 had the crushing piston variety.
- The moving walls in Half-Life 2 just as you go from the old Nova Prospekt building to the new one also count, although they're slow-moving enough to get out of the way in plenty of time if you don't panic.
- In Freeman's Mind, Gordon thought some of the walls at Black Mesa look like they're designed to do this. They don't, of course.
Painkiller also features the "series of stone blocks smashing down" variety. The trap can be subverted with a physics bug, though - they can be stopped and pushed away using the Painkiller like they were chunks of styrofoam gliding on ice.
Not so smashy in the Crusader games. Like most of everything else in the game, more explody.
Gears of War 2, inside the giant worm. Possibly justified because you're inside its digestive track, so it would naturally have to grind stuff up in there.
Inside the giant worm-body of the Many in System Shock 2, you also see smashing grinding pillars, which are explicitly supposed to be part of its way of digesting organic material.
Similarly, the interior of the Zone Eater in Final Fantasy VI leads to a cave with smashing ceilings, which have convenient gaps for the party to use as safe spots.
Appears here and there in Mega Man's world, from the trash compactors in Dust Man's stage to the death-traps set up specifically to stop him.
Orcs Must Die has both of these, both the 'coming down from the ceiling' kind and the 'coming out from the walls' kind are avaiable for purchase, in unlimited numbers.. - Video Game Cruelty Potential anyone?
The Spellhold asylum in Baldur's Gate 2 has one corridor that randomly smashes shut anyone who wants in there.It is the only trap of this sort in the game, and there is nothing to indicate it will happen. There's also a group of enemies nearby that casts Confusion, causing you to wander around randomly.
This is very common in Castlevania. Earlier entries featured instant-kill versions, but in interests of accessibility, they were toned down to dealing heavy damage by Symphony of the Night.
Cave Story had the Presses, which are Thwomps in all but name. The most notable uses of them are found right before and right at the end of the Last Cave, the latter of which had a string of Presses one had to make carefully controlled Boosts past. Heavy Press the penultimate boss in Hell/the Sacred Grounds is a minor deviation, in that it doesn't fall on you until you kill it, which happens to be the world's most blatantly-telegraphed Kaizo Trap.
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion has lots of these. In one Escort Mission, the NPC you're escorting charges straight into one, dying instantly.
You can build these in Dwarf Fortress. In addition to old standbys like the "stone-fall trap" and weapon traps loaded with ten +iron warhammers+, a bit of creativity leads to things like the Dwarven Atomsmasher (a drawbridge that slams down on an enemy, obliterating them from existence due to a Good Bad Bug) or artificially-engineered cave-ins.
The Earth Shrine in Final Fantasy IX is booby-trapped this way, forcing Zidane and Quina to jump past the traps in order to get to the inner sanctum:
Quina: Aiya! We almost flat like pancake!
Serious Sam - The Second Encounter has smashing ceilings in quite a few places. Most notably, in the first level.
Contra games have them making rather frequent appearances. For an example, in area 7 of the first game on the NES.
Evil Genius allows you to fill your hallways with deadly devices that can comically grind anyone who falls into them. These are explicitly traps, however, rather than something that has a flimsier justification.
An Untitled Story has Thwomp-like enemies which come crashing down when approached. They even come in three flavours.
The first screen of I Wanna Be the Guy features four spiked walls that quickly zip across about 90 percent of the screen, resulting in the usual messy demise of The Kid if he's not already in the safe 10 percent when that happens.
Bug! has them. Interestingly enough, there were two kinds- stomper-looking things (non-fatal, does 1 hp damage) and moving terrain (fatal). Later levels would remove the former and use the latter, upping the difficulty. Both would make Bug get Squashed Flat, of course.
In Miner 2049er, one station has a whole row of these traps to walk through.
Marathon occasionally uses these, such as the final gauntlet in Defend THIS!. In a few levels, such as By Committee in Infinity, the doors can crush you.
One level of the unlicensed Famicom/NES game Thunder Warrior has Thwomp expies.
The crush pillars in the Monty Mole series.