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There's a door right there! A glass door!

"That's just like Clark. Perfectly serviceable door, and he makes a hole in the wall."

Some people just don't feel the need to follow certain rules. Like, using a door to enter a room. Instead, they prefer to simply burst through a wall or window in a dramatic fashion, even if it makes no sense or it would have been easier to go the conventional way. This is especially common when someone shoots through a door despite the considerable time and ammo this would take in Real Life. Use of this trope may be an indicator that the buster is really a Small Name, Big Ego and/or not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Also sometimes an action of the Leeroy Jenkins, who screws up his or her allies' plans for a stealthy entrance by doing this. Another variant is simply kicking the door open and then someone pointing out that it wasn't locked. Sometimes, a variant appears where the entire wall is destroyed except for the door, which the characters may or may not open anyway.

Also often happens in the form of a fake-out, where the audience is led to believe someone will enter through the door when the camera focuses on it, only to have them burst through the wall somewhere on either side instead.

Frequently lampshaded by someone shouting out the trope name, especially the Deadpan Snarker or the disgruntled owner of the building. Also, keep in mind the old joke about the stupid burglar: he breaks two windows, one to get in and one to get out. The gag can run loose if the person goes through a different place every time, or does it just as the hole is being repaired, much to the frustration of the owner.

Oftentimes this is committed because they forgot that We Have the Keys or they are simply Door Dumb. See also Impact Silhouette, Bullet Hole Door, Dungeon Bypass, Super Window Jump, Enter Stage Window, Car Meets House, Boarding Pod, The Exit Is That Way, and Dynamic Entry.

Compare Barrier-Busting Blow, "Open!" Says Me. If the enemy manages to burst through a massive fortification, see Breaching the Wall. When going through the wall (rather than the door) is actually the easier solution, Myopic Architecture may be in play. Not to be confused with Right Through the Wall, which is about someone being entirely too loud about their... well... bedroom business.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • The Kool-Aid Man. OH YEAAAAHHHH!!! Probably justified, as most buildings' entrances are not Kool-Aid Man accessible.
    • One of the commercials lampshades this; it features his mother, who at first comments how proud she is of him for now having less sugar; the commercial ends with the house shaking and a "MOM! I'M HOME!" and her saying she'd only wish he'd learn to use the door.
    • Referenced in the first episode of Family Guy, and then parodied in several later episodes.
      • In "Peterotica," a car crashes through the wall of Kool-Aid Man's house, and he remarks "Wow! You know, from the other side, that's kind of annoying." After Kool-Aid has just finished repairing it, he says "Good as new!" — when Peter comes crashing back through the wall, and he shouts "OH, COME ON!!" Also in the courtroom, where the courtroom audience goes "Oh, NO!" and the Kool-Aid Man comes crashing through the wall, "OH YEAH!" When the Kool-Aid Man realizes where he is, he backs out in embarassment. The Judge tells everybody to stop doing that, "'Cause the f*ckin' Kool-Aid Man gonna keep showin' up."
      • Later revisited in a Call-Back episode to the pilot — this time, Kool-Aid Man misses his cue and looks even more awkward than before. Worse, when he backs out of the room, he falls over on his face and shatters his glass body, causing him to bleed fruit punch and swear at Brian and Stewie for making him screw up.
    • Done in Robot Chicken multiple times in one episode. Interestingly, the protagonists of the scenes (who are the same two guys) are intentionally invoking Kool-Aid man even after witnessing his reign of terror.
    • A crossover commercial with Progressive Insurance has him bursting through as usual... and provides a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome via electrical damage and the need to use said insurance to cover repairs.
    • Dane Cook had a field day with this.
      Dane: Fuck drinking out of him. If that was me, I'd be like, "You fix that fucking wall before my dad gets home from work! He's gonna beat me with a belt. He's not gonna believe a talking bowl of fruit punch came in here. You stupid idiot. Yeah, coming through the wall is real fucking cool! Using the front door is cool!"
    • The Irate Gamer also got in on this gag, too.
    • One time on The Other Wiki, someone vandalized a page on Kool-Aid saying that he was wanted for causing thousands of dollars of property damage and is still at large. While it wasn't kept, it was moved onto a section of the site dedicated to some actually funny edits.
    • As The Critic's awful student film proved, the Kool-Aid Man breaking through a wall is highly symbolic of... um, something. We're not sure what. Just make sure you play O Fortuna in the background.
    • Yo mama is so fat, when people yell Kool-Aid, the bitch comes crashing through the wall.
    • Linkara grows increasingly annoyed with this over the course of Adventures of the Kool-Aid Man #1.
    • Also referenced by Homestuck as noted below.
    • A Captain Ersatz in the form of a giant glass was once used in an episode of Good Eats, as a form of Writing Around Trademarks. The glass cited budget reasons (as to why it was a glass instead of a pitcher) and offered to get the wall fixed later.
    • Questionable Content: When Clinton was trying to help Eliot with his crush he tried suggesting getting Renee's help learning if said crush was into guys:
      Eliot: I feel like that would ba a bad idea. I love Renee but she has all the subtlety of the Kool Aid Man.
      Clinton: Yeah, I could totally see her busting through a wall like "ohh yeah! Who here likes fuckin' dudes?"
  • *CRASH* "I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!"
  • The ultimate example is certainly this commercial for Levi Jeans. Don't ask what it has to do exactly with jeans, though. Later parodied in a Lilt ad.
  • One of the first Three Musketeers commercials (the ones with the eponymous badass trio) had two musketeers burst through the stone wall of the Princess' cell... while the third walked through the door.
  • A Whiskas cat treats commercial has the cat bursting through the wall (which has several already patched holes in it) to get to the bag of treats.
  • William Shatner does it by while referencing the idea of an Impact Silhouette. He carves a man shaped hole with a laser into a guy's living room in order to save him money on hotel discounts from his bearded Evil Twin.
  • Done in this Alinta Energy commercial from Australia. Twice.
  • Sir Mo Farah won't be deterred by solid brick walls in this advert for online estate agent Yopa. In a possible inversion, maybe the owner really should just fit some doors.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Arcade Gamer Fubuki: In the second episode, Mr. Mystery jumps through Fubuki's window to give her a card. He then jumps out another window to make his exit.
  • In Assassination Classroom, Itona introduces himself by plowing through the wall to enter class. When everybody complains, he says he wanted to show off his strength.
  • In Baccano!, Nice blows up the wall of a warehouse when coming to Jacuzzi's rescue. "But Nice, the entrance was right there, why did you blow up the wall?" "Why did she blow up the wall? What kind of stupid question is that? Boss likes blowing things up, so she blew up the wall!"
  • Banished from the Hero's Party: When Red goes to the ancient elf ruins, he finds that the door inside has been smashed through. He knows exactly who did it, and laments that they could have just used the mechanisms to open the door normally, something he knows they're capable of since they had gone through such ruins together before.
  • Black Lagoon. In "Roberta's Blood Trail", Columbian cartel members burst into a hotel room expecting to find an American special forces unit only to find an empty hotel room and a series of holes blown through the adjacent walls. And a Booby Trap.
  • Bleach:
    • The enemy bases tend to have maze-like layouts, so most travel is done by either smashing through walls or jumping over them. This trend reaches its climax during the second Ichigo vs. Ulquiorra battle, where four characters separately bust into the same room through the floor, the inside wall, the outside wall, and from another dimension. (That last one might technically count as a door, since it can be opened and closed without inflicting structural damage).
    • The design of one Hueco Mundo tower was openly mocked in an omake. The character explaining it claimed that the building was designed without stairs and multiple heavy pillars to allow people to smash through the floors without completely destroying the building.
    • To save to Orihime, Grimmjow blew a hole in the wall when the door, which was destroyed by Loly and Menoly when they entered, was literally three feet away. He even acknowledges the door was open, but says he came through the wall because the door was "busted".
      Loly: ...And how did you get in here anyway!?
      Grimmjow: What do you mean how? Through the wall, of course.
      Menoly: Why didn't you use the door, smartass?
      Grimmjow: Well, I would have. But somebody must've blasted the thing to bits and ruined the entrance. I don't suppose you have any idea who might've done that?
    • Kenpachi loves this too, having busted through several walls and even a ceiling to get to where he needs to be. If he didn't, he might never get to where he's going.
    • Yammy does this so often there's a listing on his character page calling him Kool-Aid Man.
  • In Code Geass R2, when the UFN council is unwilling to admit Britannia among themselves since Britannia would get absolute majority due to its population and essentially hand the world over to the Britannian Emperor, Lelouch responds by pointing skyward. Seconds later, Suzaku crashes through the ceiling with the Lancelot, Dual Wielding VARIS rifles and announcing that he "will not tolerate any insolence towards His Majesty!"
  • In Danganronpa 3's future storyline, Munakata always seems to make his own "doors". Makoto quickly realizes this isn't just personal taste — his NG code forbids him to open real doors.
  • Dazzle: When asked how he got in, Shogetsu replied, "Through the door, of course." His servant adds that it took a while, since it was a heavy door (while holding what was left of it).
  • Digimon:
    • Piedmon from Digimon Adventure tears through several walls when hunting down the Digidestined through his palace. Likely at least some of them is likely because it's a quicker path. But in the end, when chasing TK and Kari, the only two he hasn't captured, he comes across the door to the outside were they'd be trapped. Instead of opening the door, he decides to blow it up to make a dramatic entrance. Large Ham that he is, he lampshades this:
      Piedmon: I must stop this, it costs me a fortune in new doors!
    • Also used in Digimon Adventure 02, when Greymon and Angemon fight a trio of digimon at Versailles Palace in France, who smash through a window to take the fight outside, causing TK's grandpa to cry "Hey, use the door next time!"
  • The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.: During a fire drill, a shutter blocks off the nearest exit because it passes by the room that's "on fire". Hairo concludes that the obstacle was placed there to test their teamwork, so instead of turning around and walking out the front door, everybody spends 30 minutes tearing down the shutter to get outside. The P.E. coach chews them all out for being complete morons and because he had just installed that shutter last week.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • A hilarious subversion when Cell arrives at the TV station and blows up the entrance, but the automatic glass door is still intact, and Cell uses the door, despite the big freaking hole around the door. Then it's played straight when he just crushes the floors to reach the right TV channel.
    • Done earlier in the original series. When Goku is laying siege on the Red Ribbon Army, he comes to a room with no stairs, but there's an elevator. Goku doesn't know what an elevator is, so since there's no stairs he gets up to the next floor by jumping and crashing the floor above him.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Natsu does this often. Kageyama lampshaded Natsu's searching method during the Lullaby arc.
      Kageyama: Has this guy never heard of a door?
    • Gildarts has the power to destroy anything he touches and he's very absent-minded, which is a very bad combination when structures are involved. He's so accident-prone with his Crush powers that Magnolia actually has a Gildarts Shift that will automatically rearrange the city to have a straight road to the Fairy Tail guild hall, just so he won't accidentally destroy some buildings on his way over.
  • Fighting Foodons: In the first episode, the team tries to get the Meal Cart outside of a prison.
    Kayla: How we gonna get it out of here?
    Chase: The window!
    Kayla: There is no window!
    Chase: There is now!
  • In the Fruits Basket anime it becomes a Running Gag that people keep destroying Harem Nanny Shigure's house, and he says this line at least once when someone bursts through the screen. In Shigure's case, he's probably good-naturedly remarking on that very fact. Kagura is later shown spending most of the night trying (and failing) to fix the screen after she wrecks it even more than usual.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • The Crimson Alchemist prefers blowing walls up as opposed to opening doors.
    • Ed and his teacher Izumi might count as an inversion; on several occasions they transmute doors on walls that didn't already have them, so they can enter through said doors rather than smashing the wall.
    • Sloth plays it straight during his grand entrance in the final arc.
  • Sōsuke from Full Metal Panic! tends to do this. In one instance, he ends up blasting a hole in the wall to get to the classroom next door... Instead of, you know, using the door. When asked why he responds that it's more efficient this way, which from his point of view is entirely true: On an actual battlefield, using the door is generally a very poor idea since they're natural chokepoints.
  • Shuichi Shindo of Gravitation seems to lose his ability to use doors whenever he is excited. This does not please Yuki. Nor is Tohma happy at the damages to his property when an exuberant Shuichi breaks down a wall to deliver his complete album. Yuki lampshades this.
    Yuki: Learn how to open a door, you damn brat, I've just moved in here and you're already wrecking the place!
  • In Gunsmith Cats, Bean Bandit hunts down some drugrunners after they shoot him in the forehead. They lock him in a room with an impenetrable door. After gloating about it, the boss's #2 gets promptly flattened by the wall Bean cut through with his combat knife.
  • Parodied in Hetalia: Axis Powers. America (as Santa Claus) smashes through a window to get into a little boy's room. Apparently he just got back from Hollywood.
  • Hunter × Hunter: The two main heroes evade an enemy in a subversion. They kick through wall after wall... then doubles back one room and simply leave by the front door. It works.
  • After Vanilla Ice is introduced in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, he uses the power of his Stand to phase a hole into the wall when he goes to attack Jotaro's group. Dio's response: "At least open the door when you leave..."
  • Mr. Yotsuya of Maison Ikkoku frequently uses a log to break through the wall between his apartment and Godai's.
  • Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Elma's introduction has her smashing through the wall of Kobayashi's apartment (Kobayashi scolds her for this). She does use the door when she returns the next day (along with taking the time to ring the doorbell and remove her shoes before entering).
  • In the My-HiME manga, Mai and Mikoto smash into Natsuki's apartment through the window to rescue Tate. Natsuki's response? "You guys are going to owe me for that window. Why didn't you use the DOOR?" Apparently window-smashing is Mikoto's stock in trade.
  • The Raikage in Naruto takes "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line" to a new and completely awesome extreme, starting with his own office window. Judging from his assistant's response, he apparently does this a lot. Whether it be a wall, a person, a table, Amaterasu fire and the Susanoo absolute defense, and even the ground, god help whatever happens to be between the Raikage and his goal, because by the time he gets there, it no longer exists. At one point he does it to a wall in a room that was being used for a diplomatic meeting. Granted, he was in a hurry. It has now become a Running Gag for the Raikage to break a wall and exit, after which Darui apologizes for it and remarks to C that he will just use the door.
  • One Piece:
    • Garp bursts through a wall to beat Luffy's head. When his men ask him why he didn't use the door, Garp claims that his way was cooler. He then puts his men right to work on repairing the hole.
    • Both Gadetsu and Admiral Garp are prone to this, though Garp is at least polite enough to repair the hole later.
    • The end of chapter 346. Zoro cuts through a door while Luffy kicks through a wall.
    • Charlotte Oven introduces himself in the anime by just walking through the Chateau door, melting it on contact thanks to his powers, because he was in a hurry and didn't want to wait for the servants to open it.
  • Pokémon: The Series: Officer Jenny drives her motorcycle directly into the lobby of the Viridian City Pokémon Center. Nurse Joy scolds her for doing so, but the issue is immediately pushed aside when she sees Ash's injured Pikachu. After Pikachu's treatment is discussed, it becomes a Brick Joke when Jenny suddenly remembers she parked in the lobby.
    Joy: "Next time, use the driveway!"
  • In Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General, Marshmallow Head blasts through a wall to enter a room because he's in a hurry. He doesn't quite seem to have got his head around doors just yet.
  • Princess Tutu contains a scene where Fakir dramatically crashes through a window to gain entrance to a building... even though both Mytho and Tutu were able to easily enter using the door.
  • Ranma ½:
    • Shampoo tends to burst through walls in her appearances. When asked why she doesn't use the door, she replies "Door take too long!" From observation, it appears that whenever she's chasing someone (usually Ranma), she focuses on the chase to the exclusion of the building's floorplan. If there happens to be a door in her way, she'll open it, but she won't take an alternate route just because there's a wall in her way. On at least one occasion, she is seen to exit the room by smashing a new hole in the wall, right next to the one she made coming in. When given a hypnotic suggestion to "go home peacefully" she still smashes through a wall as she leaves. It may be a case of Does Not Know Her Own Strength — walls are like crackers to her, so it's hard for her to think of them as "structures" so much as "obstacles".
    • Ryōga Hibiki is just as often guilty of this as well, but considering that this is Ryōga he can be excused because he couldn't find the door.
    • Ryū Kumon, from the late manga, also walks through walls (he's just that strong) in order to intimidate people. Worse, he breaks through an entire wing of walls at Fūrinkan High School, from the ground floor and up to the third floor, completely ignoring the stairs and the doors. Ranma's classmates even feel the tremors and think it is an earthquake.
    • From the first movie, after Kunō thrusts his way into the living room with his wooden sword:
      Nabiki: [sarcastic] Hey, Kunō-baby, the door...
      Kunō: Be silent, woman!
    • Pantyhose Tarō also bursts through walls a lot in monster form — but then again, he doesn't fit the door.
  • Rebuild World: After taking shelter in a ruined skyscraper, Akira thinks to himself that his pursuer really should have used the stairs, when having to jump away from the floor being blown out from under him.
  • In Saiyuki Reload, Gojyo's old friend Banri says hi by kicking down Gojyo's door:
    Gojyo: I've told you over and over again, that door opens outward!
  • Rebecca Reed in Shakugan no Shana tends to blast through doors rather than opening them. Even in her own headquarters.
  • In Tiger & Bunny, Kotetsu has a known habit of taking the most direct route in or out of a dangerous situation — walls or windows be damned. Ben chides him for it in the first episode, reminding him that entering monorails through the front window will just up the premium on his Hero Insurance.
  • Edo Phoenix of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has a taste for dramatic entrances, i.e. skyboarding into school, jumping from a helicopter through a closed skylight. Would it have been such a tragedy to wait for the chopper to land?

    Comedy 
  • Musician Wendy Bagnell's "Here Come the Rattlesnakes" features a hypothetical example. Once, when performing at what turned out to be a church of snake-handlers, he relates his and his backup singer's reactions when the eponymous reptiles are produced:
    ''I said, "Just take it easy! Don't panic. Just look around, and figure out where the back door is." She said, "I already looked, and there ain't none!" I said, "Reckon where do they want one?"
  • On Another Monty Python Record, the Gumby Theatre version of Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard begins this way:
    [knock on door]
    GUMBY #1: COME IN!
    [huge crash]
    GUMBY #1: NO, OPEN THE DOOR AND COME IN!!
    GUMBY #2:
    ' SORRY!!

    Comic Books 
  • Asterix:
    • Obélix does use the door. Of course, by "use the door", we mean "punch the door out of its frame, then trample whoever was behind it."
    • In the animated version of Asterix and Cleopatra, a soldier tries to prevent this by rolling a large stone in front of the door — only to have Obelix crash through the wall right next to it.
    • He sometimes tries to knock, but even a gentle tap with his superhuman strength is enough to shatter stone, so it doesn't do much good.
    • He also resizes the door every now and then. And sometimes he doesn't bother punching the door — just walking through it as if it weren't there. He once rips open a cell door just with a belly push.
    • This frustrates the prison guards to no end. To whit, in "Asterix and the Goths":
      Gothic Guard: [after the door has been broken five times] WILL-YOU-KINDLY-LEAVE-THAT-DOOR-ALONE!!!
  • Batman:
  • In Before Watchmen: Comedian #6, Rorschach and Nite-Owl smash their way through a barroom window, causing the Comedian to snark "Door was open, you morons..."
  • Fantastic Four:
    • Lampshaded in issue #286, guest-starring The Avengers, where the two teams help Jean Grey get back into her old life after being replaced by the Phoenix for so long. They take her to parents' house but they weren't home, so Hercules breaks down the door and is chewed out by Jean, who points out that there was a key beneath a paving stone meant for her and her sister. Captain America assures her they'll write her parents a check.
    • This is a common problem for Ben Grimm The Thing in most universes, due to being a giant rock-man. In fact, his first appearance had him involuntarily smashing through a wall and muttering, "Why must they build doorways so narrow?"
    • In the Ultimate Fantastic Four/Marvel Zombies crossover, Ultimate Reed Richards finds himself trapped in the Marvel Zombie universe with Magneto and a handful of human survivors. They are found by the rest of the Ultimate Fantastic Four and hurry to escape the building. Ben heroically breaks down a wall so they can get out and Reed points out that the door was right there.
      Reed: Ever heard of a door, jackass?
      Ben: Okay, now I feel stupid.
  • Gravity Falls: Lost Legends: Instead of using the door, Ford Pines leaves Dipper and Mabel’s room in the Mystery Shack by somersaulting out the window and doing an impressive flip.
  • The Incredible Hulk:
    • During Peter David's run on The Incredible Hulk (1968), when he had the brains of Banner in the Hulk's body, he decides to sneak out the back way by creating a back way. Subverted in a later punch up with Captain America, where despite being inside a fragile house, nothing is damaged. He's thrown cleanly out the front door thanks to Cap's judo skills.
    • Broken subversion in Earth X: Bruce Banner (separated from the Hulk) appears to be telling Hulk to be careful with Dr. Strange's walls. But he tells Hulk "We don't need to use a door here", apparently a typo for "We need to use a door" or "We don't need to make a door". Hulk uses door anyway.
  • Johan and Peewit: In an album, the King locked himself in his private cellar to escape the treacherous aide of a baron who was after his crown. The traitor ordered his goons to break down the door. The King just laughed it off saying the oaken door is heavy and reinforced with iron. Soon after, the goons broke their tools and the door didn't had any dent. After many hours of trying and failing, the goons just tore down the stone wall next to the door.
  • Lucky Luke: Justified in the case of the Daltons, since they're always breaking out of prison. Less justified is the fact that they blast four doors (tailored to their sizes no less) from the walls.
  • In the Marvel Adventures take on The Infinity Gauntlet story, Doctor Doom's idea of a casual entrance involves blowing up a wall of the Baxter Building and telling all the heroes present to "Behold the grim visage of DOOM!". When Spider-Man points out that most normal people would use the door, Doom simply brushes off such methods as beneath him.
    Doctor Doom: The DOOR? Like a PEASANT?
  • Mortadelo y Filemón:
    • Played with. The two protagonists find themselves in a cell with a steel door. Filemón starts making a hole in the wall, all the while brushing off Mortadelo who's trying to tell him something. When, after considerable time, he finally breaks through the wall, he finds Mortadelo there waiting for him — it turns out that the bad guys forgot to lock the door...
    • In another case, a number of prisoners are discovered to have escaped through an equal number of Man-Shaped Holes, from the same cell. Lampshaded when Filemón comments on how stupid one would have to be to not just use the same hole for everybody... only to find out that the thought hadn't occurred to either his partner or his boss, either.
    • Yet another case was an inversion of the standard scheme: Filemón attempts to pick the lock on a door but eventually has to give up, only to find that in the meantime, Mortadelo has made a very artistic new door by "having some fun with [his] penknife".
  • In normalman, one has to wonder why they even have doors on Levram, where everyone has a superpowers, and few inhabitants use doors; Captain Everything is especially bad at this.
  • PS238, here.
    Victor von Fogg: Now, now, no need to get all upset. Though I must apologize for your wall, Alternate-Zodon.
    Alternate-Zodon: What's wrong with my—
    Victor von Fogg: SMASH! Farewell, lesser beings!
  • Radioactive Man: A running gag is that the titular character insists on breaking through a wall every time he enters or leaves a room. Even if he's already made a hole.
  • Scooby Apocalypse: In Issue #32, Scrappy Doo bursts into the safe zone at the Henry Hudson Mall by smashing through a skylight. An annoyed Scooby points out that he could have just as easily used one of the many doors.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Lindsey Naegle leaps out of a window when Lisa accuses her of stealing her ideas.
    • A characteristic of Radioactive Man, who will smash through a wall when there was a perfectly good window available. Sometimes he even smashes a separate hole on his way out.
  • Sin City: In his first appearance, Marv invokes this trope and subverts it... by running straight through a door instead of the wall.
  • Spider-Man:
  • Superman:
    • Superman is super strong, super fast, can fly, is invincible, has X-ray vision, heat vision, can time travel, can't work a doorknob. Supergirl is a headstrong, impatient teenager with his same powers. So who cares if there was a door? They are trying to save people and that wall/ceiling was in the way!
    • Superman does it so often, in fact, that Jimmy Olsen once caught him with the "bucket over the door" gag by putting the bucket over a random spot in the wall, which Supes of course broke right through.
    • Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?: Superman flies through the wall of the base of Toyman and Prankster. Since they had just murdered one of his oldest friends you cannot blame him for wanting to find them as soon as possible.
    • Krypton No More: It happens the whole time. Villain Protector breaks into the Fortress of Solitude by blasting a wall (and an armored door). Later Superman bursts in Protector's partner Radion's base by flying through the floor. And in the first panel of the third issue, Superman bursts in mob boss Simeon's lair by demolishing a wall.
    • Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man: When Spider-Man and Superman break into Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus' lair, Spidey sneaks in the place, but Supes directly bursts through the main door.
    • War World: Superman bursts through thousands of walls and ceilings when he hurriedly flies inside the eponymous weapon satellite.
    • Several examples in Kryptonite Nevermore:
      • In issue #240, a mother and two kids are trapped on the top floor of a burning skyscraper. Superman leaps upwards, falls on the building's roof, breaking it, and lands inside the top floor.
      • In issue #241 Superman bursts through the wall of the Edge's apartment. This time he had not a good cause.
        Superman: I don't feel like using doors — or windows either! The wall is good enough for me!
    • Doomsday won't go anywhere, unless there's something in his way to smash to pieces. Granted he's basically violence incarnate, so he may just smash stuff because he likes to.
    • Parodied by Kyle Baker in his Plastic Man's run. Superman is nearly kept from his face-off with (then-president) Lex Luthor because the recent crisis had him rethinking his disregard for public property, and the little old lady receptionist guarding the door wouldn't let him in. Later, it's exaggerated by Superman's imperfect duplicate Bizarro, who refuses to use, not just the door, but the hole he left in the wall the first time.
    • In the first issue of Supergirl (1972), Supergirl is trying to prevent a murder and she is running out of time, so she flies through a wall to save the would-be victim.
    • In the first issue of Supergirl (1982), Kara flies in a factory through a smokestack and bursting through a furnace's hatch.
    • In the 2010 story arc Day of the Dollmaker, Supergirl flew through the wall of the lair of Dollmaker to rescue Cat Grant.
    • In Last Daughter of Krypton, Simon Tycho is looking for Supergirl as she's tearing his base and his troops down. Right when he is demanding that someone shows him where she is, the ground in front of him explodes and Supergirl flies in through the gap.
    • In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl Supergirl breaks through several ceilings when she goes after Luthor.
    • Demon Spawn: Supergirl bursts through the walls of a burning building to find people, move them to a safe place, and put the fire out.
    • The Supergirl from Krypton (2004): In the second chapter, Kara bursts through a reinforced door as she runs away from Krypto.
    • In Bizarrogirl, Supergirl bursts into Bizarrogirl's lair through the ceiling, disregarding the huge hole nearby.
    • In Who is Superwoman?: Supergirl violently smashes through several walls to save Inspector Henderson from Superwoman. Thanks to her hyper-destructive approach, she arrives just in the nick of time.
    • Superman: Brainiac: At the climax, first Supergirl breaks through the hull of Brainiac's ship to chase after a missile aimed at the Sun. Then Superman smashes Brainiac through his ship's hull and out into the sky.
    • Early on, Kon-El had a bad habit of entering and exiting buildings through walls, though he only really did so during fights when he was in a hurry.
    • In the Wonder Woman Judgment In Infinity story arc, Power Girl bursts into the hotel's lobby where Pestilence is causing mayhem by smashing through a skylight.
    • The Killers of Krypton:
      • When Krypto comes to Supergirl's help, he bursts through a bar's ceiling, alarming all patrons.
      • Kara smashes her way through a starship's hull to capture Harry Hokum.
    • Strangers at the Heart's Core: When super-villain Shyla Kor-Onn wants to break into the Fortress of Solitude, she literally breaks through the door, even though the key is lying next to the entrance.
    • Superman vs. Shazam!:
      • When Supergirl finds the pyramid where Black Adam is crawling, she smashes her way through several dozens of meters of rock until bursting into the pharaoh's chamber.
      • Later, Supergirl and Mary Marvel burst into Karmang's castle through a wall.
    • Starfire's Revenge: As running away from Supergirl, Starfire slams a thick oaken door into Kara's face. Instead of wasting time opening it, Kara opts for punching the door off its hinges.
    • In Reign of Doomsday, Superman bursts through the hull of the spaceship where the Superman Family is imprisoned.
    • The Girl with the X-Ray Mind: When Lex Luthor is given powers, he does not bother opening his cell's door. Instead, he smashes his way through the wall. Shortly later, he decides to loot the Superman Museum, and he literally bursts into through a wall. When he leaves, he breaks another wall instead of using the hole he has just done.
    • The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor: After figuring out the secret of the labyrinth of death traps where she has been dumped into, Supergirl uses her X-Ray Vision to locate her kidnappers and crashes her way through several walls as making a beeline for their room.
    • In Death & the Family, Silver Banshee shouts a hole through the wall of Inspector Henderson's office to attack the man by keeping her clan's relic.
    • The Phantom Zone: When Superman's X-Ray Vision tells him Charlie is assembling a Phantom Zone Projector, he smashes himself through his friend's apartment wall to stop him.
    • The Day the Cheering Stopped: Superman does not waste time when his X-Ray Vision locates Jimmy Olsen tied up and gagged inside a private yatch. Instead of looking for an entryway, he smashes his way through the ship's hull.
    • The Plague of the Antibiotic Man: When Superman and his cousin spot Amalak's spaceship, the Man of Steel is definitely in a bad mood -what with an incurable plague spreading, Lois falling sick, and him being fooled into believing he killed someone-, so he enters the ship deck by furiously plowing through the hull.
    • The Death of Luthor: When Supergirl is attacked by a hostile warship as leaving an alien world, she crashes herself through the hull to swiftly tear apart the robots manning the ship.
    • The Earthwar Saga: Superboy crashes through the hull of a pirate spaceship to rescue his teammate Chameleon Boy.
    • The Dominator War: When Supergirl's X-Ray Vision finds the Wanderers' secret hideout, the Legion of Super-Heroes crash through one wall and into the place.
    • Brainiac's Blitz: When Brainiac's ship has used up too much energy to keep its fore-field up, Supergirl smashes herself through the hull to attack Brainiac.
    • "The Super-Steed of Steel": Subverted. When an alien spaceship strikes Earth, Supergirl's X-Ray Vision cannot pierce through its hull, so she decides to ram herself through a wall into the ship. It turns out that the aliens were ready for that tactic, and fire at Supergirl with Kryptonite-powered ray guns when she bursts through the wall.
    • Supergirl (Wednesday Comics) starts with Streaky crashing through one window, Krypto smashing his way through the same window, and Kara demolishing the last remnants of window when she flies through the hole in pursuit of both super-pets.
    • DC Retroactive Superman: Subverted in "The 70's" issue whem Superman and Supergirl believe to see Metallo breaking through a wall into the Fortress of Solitude. However, it turns out to be a hallucination suffered by Superman.
    • The Life Story of Superman: When Superman frees himself from Luthor's trap, he is in a hurry to defuse a bomb before it explodes, so he smashes his way through the underground lair's ceiling rather than looking for the exit.
    • "The Super Dog from Krypton": When Krypto is locked up in the dog-catcher's van, he smashes himself through the car's rear to escape.
  • Watchmen: Rorschach does use doors. They're just usually locked. The sequence of events goes something like this: Rorschach breaks into his old partner Dan Dreiberg's apartment by smashing the lock. Dan has the lock replaced. Rorschach breaks the new one effortlessly. Dan has the lock replaced a second time. Then the police try to break in, and the lock holds, but the door itself smashes to pieces. But really the lock makers were asking for this. After all their company is called Gordian Locks.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): While Diana can easily crumple even the doors of safes she does on occasion go through the wall next to the door instead. In "The Return From the Dead" she realizes the Holliday Girls are unconscious behind the steel door Steve Trevor is trying to pick the lock to and quickly steps through the wall next to the door to rescue them from the room behind it which is quickly filling with toxic gas.
  • X-Men:
    • In one of the X-Babies appearances (perhaps Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem), there's a sequence where — of course — the door is not used.
      Kitty Pryde: [exasperated] Classic X-Men style, guys: Never use a door when you can make one of your own!
    • Note that the above remark is from someone whose power allows her to walk through walls. On that note, while Kitty does phase through walls, she at least has the courtesy to phase through the door.
    • From Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run, Danger has teamed up with Sufficiently Advanced Alien Ord of the Breakworld to invade the X-Mansion (again). The superstrong and mildly berserk Ord is bashing through everything in his path, ripping doors off their hinges and generally making a mess.
      Danger: I'm assuming that Breakworld technology never evolved doorknobs?
    • In an issue, the X-Men are imprisoned in Murderworld. Cyclops faces three doors, and Arcade tells him one of them leads to life, the two others lead to death. Cyclops takes a fourth option and just blasts through the side wall, which turns out to be the right move because all three doors were trapped. (There's a reason Arcade calls his personal amusement park "Murderworld"...)
    • Heck, the X-Men were doing this as far back as the fifth issue. Professor Xavier has been depowered, so the X-Men have to break him into his own house to get him some rest. Cyclops blasts the front door despite the fact that the key was right there.
    • The Juggernaut is fond of this means of travel. What good are doors for a person larger than the door frame?
  • In an issue of Young Justice, former heroine Cissie King-Jones has been captured at her school. As Red Tornado breaks down the wall, and Wonder Girl smashes through the window, she says "We have doors here, you know! Only superheroes could turn entering a room into a 'who is muy macho?' competition!"

    Comic Strips 
  • Bananaman: The title character often enters Chief O'Reilly's office via smashing through the wall. Became a Running Gag at times, such as O'Reilly preparing for this only for Bananaman to enter through the ceiling or floor instead.
  • Garfield:
    • In one strip, Jon calls Garfield to dinner. Garfield comes bounding up to Jon from off panel. Jon says, "I appreciate your promptness, Garfield...." and finishes in the last panel, "... BUT NEXT TIME, OPEN THE DOOR!", revealing that Garfield broke through the (closed) door. Could be justified in that Garfield is a cat and can't work a doorknob (at least at that point in the strip's history; he's seen opening doors plenty of times later on), but....
    • There's also one where he comes through the pet door, but gets stuck inside because he's too fat and thus rips the normal door from its hinges anyway. Also, he repeatedly kicked Nermal out the front door without opening it first.
    • And there's another wherein Garfield knocks on the front door for Jon to let him in. Unfortunately, Jon doesn't make it in time before Garfield smashes the door open while saying "When I want in, I want in now."
    • Happens in another strip when Jon yells "FIRE!" to test his pets' fire drill knowledge. Both run straight through the wall — or, rather, we assume they did, thanks to the hole.
    • Tired of the mess Garfield and Odie are making, Jon opens the door and tells them to go outside. They jump through the window. Berating his pets, Jon tells them to use the door next time. Of course, they do so — breaking through the closed door while reentering. Jon sarcastically thanks them.

    Fan Works 
  • In Amber Night and the Curse of the Diabolical Pastry Thief, it is implied that Princess Luna did this.
    Amber Night's eyes dilated as she glanced in the direction of the all-too-familiar voice that came from the new doorway in the wall.
  • In the Bleach fic The Black Wrangler, Kenpachi smashes through one of the walls of Byakuya's house in the second chapter.
  • In Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, Calvin attempts this while trying to escape a ghost. It doesn't work.
  • In Batman fanfic Dance with the Demons, Kobra's troops have invaded Wayne Manor and are rapidly closing in on Alfred, Robin and other masked heroes when Superman crashes through the manor's ceiling and starts delivering a beatdown.
  • In the Discworld fics of A.A. Pessimal, student Assassins are explicitly discouraged from the direct approach via any convenient door and are actively taught to seek alternatives that give them the advantage of surprise. Even when the door is unguarded and undefended. Of course, sometimes students trained by Johanna Smith-Rhodes might associate "ensure the doorway is clear" with "use lots and lots of explosives as a lockpick". Johanna herself is no stranger to creating access doorways where hitherto none previously existed. The non-Guild inhumation that brought her a career offer from the Guild is a demonstration of this character quirk. note 
  • Double Rainboom: Was smashing through the ceiling really necessary, Rainbow Dash?
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami: Cornering The Duke:
    Metal crumpled and bent under her fingers, and with a short yank, she almost ripped the door off its hinges. Purplish smoke escaped from the opening.
    "It wasn't locked, you know," the figure on the throne commented dryly, far less impressed than his court wizard.
  • Lampshaded in the Elfen Lied Abridged Series:
    Bando: Thanks for the new arm and leg, but I gotta run! (jumps out a third story window)
    Scientist inside building: You could have used the door, asshole.
  • In Power Girl fanfic A Force of Four, a Kryptonian criminal bursts through a wall purely because it amuses him.
    She was interrupted when Kizo smashed through the outer wall of the building.
    The Kryptonian deliberately avoided crushing the communications board against the wall. He thought he might have use for that. But it was fun to make an entrance like this, and note the fear and surprise in his enemies' eyes. Superman must have done it like this.
  • Inverted in a Final Fantasy Type-0 fanfic, where Eight kicks open the door... to a room where a chunk of magicite had just gone off.
    Ace sighed as his Classmates rushed into the room. "There's a hole in the wall," he told the brawler in a why-didn't-you-take-the-easy-way-in tone."
  • Harry Potter and the Boiling Isles: When Eda goes to talk to Principal Bump about enrolling the kids in Hexside, she enters his office by means of a Super Window Jump, to which he asks why she did that when she had an appointment and thus no reason to break in. She responds by saying that she always wanted to do that, and figured that it was safer now that he's Principal instead of Faust.
  • Hellsister Trilogy: At the climax of "The Apokolips Agenda", Superman and other heroes forgo any semblance of subtlety and restraint and tear their way through the roof and walls surrouding Darkseid's chamber. Justified because they were almost out of time to save the universe.
    The second thing that happened was the arrival of Superman, Dev-Em, Captain Action, and Action Boy, tearing apart what remained of the roof and the rooms above Darkseid's chamber. Kal and Dev had used their X-ray visions to pinpoint his location, and smashed their way to his darkened room. A few seconds beforehand, they wouldn't have been able to breach the force-field with all their combined strength. Now, four fists struck, and the door and wall around it crumbled. Power Girl got there an instant afterward.
  • The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction Jericho (MLP):
  • The pegasus Gray Ghost in Manehattan's Lone Guardian regularly tries to enter her apartment through a window, only to get a bruise on her forehead when she forgets that it's closed.
  • Marionettes: When the Mane Six hear Trixie screaming from the Castle of Friendship's bathroom, Rainbow Dash knocks the door down. Twilight gets annoyed and points out she had the key.
  • Justified in Princess of the Blacks. During the Final Task of the Triwizard Tournament, Jen spends several minutes stumped by the charms on the door to reach the next room. Eventually she turns the wall next to the door into mud and simply walks through.
  • The Jackie Chan Adventures fic Queen of All Oni:
    • In one chapter, Jade is at a shrine, going after a Shadowkhan tablet version of a Tome of Eldritch Lore, and is attacked and thrown through the wall repeatedly by the monk guarding the tablet, and when she says she is tired of it, he throws her through the roof instead. After that, though he doesn't say anything, she just bursts through the wall.
    • In the second Interlude's Big-Lipped Alligator Moment Dream Sequence, Jade bursts through the door of Shendu's palace, smashing it, and he says "I have a door gong."
  • Queen of Shadows:
    • When Ikzauki senses a disturbance around Jade (namely the chi surge preceding her accidental creation of the Leech Khan), he's in such a hurry to reach her that he doesn't bother opening any of the doors in his way, just bursting through them all.
    • Himitsu quotes this trope when Gurando breaks down one of the walls of his hut.
  • Doubles as a Continuity Nod in the beginning of chapter 6 of Port-Ed, as Ed once again sticks his foot through the door instead of using the knob. "Ed, there's a thing called a doorknob, you might wanna use it!!"
  • A Red Rose in the Blue Wind: As a Running Gag, whenever Sonic and/or Shadow visit or leave Ozpin's office, they use the window instead of the door. He questions this, pointing out that the door is never locked.
  • Renegade:
    • "Spectre" Garrus Vakarian demonstrates his disdain for the traditional methods of entry by repeatedly knocking down walls with a cargo hauler to surprise groups of mercenaries. In his own words:
      Garrus Vakarian: I've yet to encounter a potentially dangerous situation that can't be defused by smashing through a wall.
    • This backfires a bit when He revisits the first warehouse (going through another wall of course) and finds the guy he needs to talk to has gone through the first hole and stole a car. Garrus's response to this? Borrow a tank from C-Sec.
    • Later on, the Scrin Battlemind routinely slams through walls so much that Garrus gets annoyed that it's stealing his moves.
  • The Unfantastic Adventures of Bizarro No. 1: Unsurprisingly, Bizarro doesn't understand what doors are for. He always smashes through a wall or roof, whether he's in a hurry or not.
    Me get up, crash through roof.
    Me am hear her yell, "Number one, wait! You am not go out naked!"
    Oops!
    Me crash back in through roof, embarrassed as all heaven. "How me am remember that? Sorry, sourbunch."
    Helpfully, her am hand over Bizarro No. 1 medallion. Her am so unthoughful, that am why me love her.
    Then, medallioned, me crash through another part of roof. Me figure out that, at end of this gig, me got to put on new roof so me have some part left to crash through next time.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Supergirl crossover The Vampire of Steel, two vampires are attempting to kill Buffy when Kara bursts into the place through a window.

    Films — Animation 
  • In Cats Don't Dance, our first introduction to Max is the Max-shaped hole in the wall he'd left as he slowly stalked into the studio.
  • In The Croods: A New Age, The Bettermans let the Croods stay in their treehouse with them. Unfortunately, they are unfamiliar with wooden homes, and Grug is too strong to take any notice of the woodwork, leading him to walking straight through it repeatedly.
    Phil: The poor things do seem to struggle with the concept of...walls!
  • Despicable Me 2:
    • In the flashback showing just how macho "El Macho" was, after drinking rattlesnake venom said Macho Latino exits from a bar through the wall.
    • In the "fire alarm" scene, a Minion tears through the wall with a pair of axes, right next to the door. Another follows through the hole with a hose, and then a third (carrying a megaphone and saying Bee-Do) does use the door.
  • In Freaknik: The Musical, this is how The Perminator tends to enter a room. CRASH, bitch!
  • In JLA Adventures: Trapped In Time, Dawnstar and Karate Kid arrive from the future and try to enter the Hall of Justice. When they are unable to figure out how to open the glass doors, they blast their way inside.
  • Kung Fu Panda 2. The Furious Five go to bust out Masters Storming Ox and Croc out of their prison cell.
    Po: We're going to free you from the bonds of injustice, no problem! [shakes bars] There's got to be a key around here... no, they wouldn't leave the key around here... [Tigress knocks the cell door off its hinges with a single palm strike] Oh good, you found it!
  • Happens twice in Megamind, both at Hal's apartment.
    • Megamind blasts the apartment door to splinters as part of his big entrance. Hal had previously told Roxy he was going to leave the door unlocked. Immediately afterwards, as Megamind starts his big speech, Minion busies himself with carefully mounting a new door in its place.
    • Later, Megamind busts through the wall with the fist of his giant robot, this time out of frustration. Bonus points for the fact that there was already a hole there, thanks to Hal himself, and Megamind just enlarged it.
      Hal: Hey, Megamind! You're actually the guy I wanna see! Also, there's a door here.
  • Inverted in Over the Hedge. The main characters escape through the door even though that's the only part of the wall left.
  • Wreck-It Ralph:
    • Ralph crashes through a wall himself on the kart he and Vanellope baked together. Justified as the door is blocked by the cops, and they need a speedy exit. A few feet in either direction, however, would have yielded Destination Defenestration instead.
    • Earlier in the movie, Ralph shatters the cupcake he's stuck in by jumping out of Sugar Rush's castle. There are two large double-door-style windows on either side and he instead plunges straight through the sugarcube/brick wall.
    • And later, he bursts through the walls of the Fungeon cells where both Felix and Vanellope are detained. Sure, the door was certainly locked in both cases; not that it make any difference...

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Alone in the Dark (2005) sports large swaths interspersed with accidental lulz. In the fight scene near the beginning, the snarling Implacable Man insists on leaping headlong through every plate glass window that crosses his path.
  • Reversed in Balls of Fury: In a brief scene, a team of soldiers attempts to break through an armored door with a battering ram. Another soldier off to the side simply takes his gun and smashes through the window right next to the door.
  • Black Adam (2022): Teth-Adam constantly busts through walls, leading people to ask him if doors existed during his original time.
  • Blade Runner 2049: When the Wallace Corporation are attacking Deckard's hideout, an Attack Drone fires a missile through the window, blowing up his spinner as he's running to it. To stop Deckard from being killed in the explosion, Officer K smashes straight through the wall and tackles him. Then a Wallace spinner flies through the broken window into the building and offloads their mooks.
  • The car deliberately smashes through a wall into a building to kill Henry in The Car: Road to Revenge.
  • Carry On Screaming!: The monster Junior hasn't got the hang of using doors yet, and prefers to crash through walls.
    Dr. Watt: I do wish Junior would learn to use the door!
  • S.MJR MacNutt squeezes through a thin man-sized crack in the wall of Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond's dining room in Carry On Up the Khyber during a war outside the house. Sir Sid points out that the hole is right next to large double doors that could've been used instead but MacNutt states that his news is far too important to care about something like that.
  • James Bond in Casino Royale (2006)Bond smash! For context: Bond is chasing after a bomb maker through a construction site. The bomber parkours his way through a vent hole(?) near the ceiling. Bond, not nearly as agile, opts to bash his way through the dry wall.
  • Edge of Tomorrow: The protagonists are wearing Powered Armor, so when they need to make use of an abandoned car quickly (knowing that the enemy is waiting in ambush) they just rip the doors off, which also gives them room to dive inside wearing said armor. While they're driving off, an announcer on the radio is advising citizens, "If you are in a vehicle, please lock your doors and stay inside." A Mimic then ambushes them, forcing Cage to tear off the roof so he has a clear field of fire.
  • GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra: Duke is told the bad guys are driving along the next street over, but there's no door through to them. He's told, "Make one" and so smashes through the building in his Powered Armor.
  • Iorek Byrnison in The Golden Compass does this after getting back his armor, though in this case it's probably symbolic of him no longer being subservient to humanity (or its etiquette) since he is a giant Ice Bear. Or he opted not to use the door because he knew there'd be guards pointing rifles at it.
  • A Good Day to Die Hard: An FSB Alpha Team attacks the CIA safehouse, so Jack McClane whacks a frame charge against the wall and blows a nice rectangular exit. For the rest of the movie however they just jump out the window.
  • In the 1990 TV movie The Great Los Angeles Earthquake, the titular quake blocks the entrance to an underground bunker. However realising the equipment in the bunker is wider than the door, those trapped inside go looking for a service entrance that has been bricked up. They then create an improvised ram to break through the bricks.
  • And in Hot Fuzz, by the same creative team, Nicholas Angel breaks a glass storefront and jumps through it to pursue a killer. Keep an eye on the writing on the glass panes. He throws his baton through the window, then jumps through the door.
  • Parodied in the final scene of Malibu's Most Wanted when the epic battle between B-Rad's crew and the bad guys happens in the head Bad Guy's house. Two different cars smash through the wall of his house, causing him to shriek: "Doesn't anyone know where the damn driveway is?!" To add to the hilarity, Bad Guy is later seen yelling at the cops to fix the house before his mother gets back.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Cap goes through just about every window shown for one reason or another (usually shield-first).
    • Captain America: Civil War gives us an interesting Lampshade Hanging. The Vision, being able to phase through solid matter, enters Wanda's room through the wall. When Wanda objects, he says that he thought it was okay to come in because the door was open. Cap and Wanda quickly point out that the door being open isn't enough, you have to use it. He promptly exits through the door.
    • Thor: Ragnarok: Hulk gets angry waiting for the door to rise on his way into the gladiator ring, and so elects to smash the entire door and its frame a few seconds before it would have been open enough for him to just walk through it.
  • Men with Brooms: Cutter is laying on his bed in his motel room while next door, his former curling team mate Lennox is trying to avoid being beaten into a new reincarnation by a very large, very angry loan shark. At one point, Lennox abruptly gets sent head-first through the wall over Cutter's bed, before being sent through the wall entierly, followed by the giant loan shark. Cutter ends up having to knock the loan shark out by smashing his head in with a curling stone.note 
  • Lampshaded in The Mummy Returns, while fleeing Imhotep's mummified soldiers, Evie tries blocking the entrance with a nearby chair. Rick, however, having learned a thing or two in the previous film pulls his wife along reminding her that "these guys don't use doors." Sure enough, a few seconds later, the mummies are busting through the wall above the door.
  • Averted in Once Bitten:
    Countess: Wait! I have to replace every door you people smash. Can't you at least try the knob first?
    Sebastian: (vampire in front tries the knob and it opens easily) Jocks.
  • The Professional: Léon shoots and hacks out the hotel's ventilator fan so Mathilda can do an Air Vent Escape. However he's too big to follow.
  • In Richard III, the title character makes his Big Entrance by smashing a tank through the wall of the mansion being used by King Henry as his headquarters, followed by a squad of Gas Mask Mooks.
  • Interestingly, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dr. Scott enters the lab through the wall, but not because it was in the script. It was because the set builders had forgotten to build an extra door!
  • Royal Flash (1975): Flashman makes a token attempt at waving his saber at the Afghan attackers, then tries to flee back into the fort, only to find the gates have been locked behind him. Fortunately an explosion blasts a door-shaped hole in the wall next to him.
  • Reversed in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, by the same director: After throwing Scott through several walls, Todd looks as though he's about to fly through the holes he's made... but then he teleports to the last wall and calmly opens the door next to the hole in it.
  • David in Shaun of the Dead smashes the window of The Winchester to get in (causing security problems later) before Shaun has a chance to tell him there's another, unlocked door round the back.
  • Siege of the Dead: The protagonist constructs a rammbock to break through the walls of the apartment building he's trapped in during a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Inverted in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. While Joe is trying to devise a way to get into the professor's lab through an upper-story window, Polly picks up a rock, breaks the glass on the front door, reaches in and opens it.
  • Spider-Man has twice Green Goblin bursting through a window to enter a room. And both weren't at ground level!
  • In Superhero Movie, Hourglass blows a hole in a wall to exit, 10 feet from the hole he blew in the wall to enter.
  • Superman Film Series:
    • The villains in Superman II do this a lot, especially when they take over the Daily Planet office, with Lex Luthor delivering the line. This is a Call-Back to the first movie when Superman tracks Luthor down to his hidden lair, and dramatically smashes through the wall rather than use the door, causing Lex to quip "It's open! Come in!". In the second movie, then, he's muttering to himself that not knowing how doors work seems to be a problem for Kryptonians in general.
    • In Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Nuclear Man is no better, although he seems to enjoy bursting through floors and ceilings suspended by incredibly obvious wires.
  • In S.W.A.T. (2003), the team uses a huge grappling hook attached to a truck to smash through a house's outer wall and pull out a large chunk. This allows the team to get the drop on the crazy armed man inside. Somehow, the crazy man failed to notice the big truck engine roaring outside, the noise of the winch, etc. (The original TV series was also noted for such lapses in story logic.) In this case, it is marginally excusable, however, as in addition to his schizophrenia, the guy is as drunk as a lord.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), when they reach the Sacks estate, Raphael elects to simply tear a hole in the side of Vernon's van and jump out.
  • Top Secret!:
    • Done in a way where during a gun fight, one of the defenders breaks a small window in a 5x4 window frame. The next defender breaks a new window and so forth. In the end a very small man shows up and he jumps in front of the window while under heavy fire for about 15 seconds before he manages to break and fire out of the last window, which was on the top row.
    • Then done again with a 3x3 window, only this time with only two defenders who smash "X" and "O" shaped holes in the windows, when one of the defenders manages to get three "O"-es in a row, the window gets blasted out.
    • Then again with the black defender "Chocolate Mousse" who grabs a cannon, lights the fuse and rams the muzzle through the window to shoot.
  • Total Recall (1990): Several goons do an explosive entry right after Lori tells Quaid he's really blown it now.
  • Combined with The Door Slams You in X-Men: First Class. Magneto has to get into a submarine guarded by Riptide, so Magneto tears out part of the metal hull on top of him.

    Literature 
  • In And Another Thing..., Thor leaves through the ceiling, causing Hillman to complain to Zaphod that ceiling tiles are so expensive, and why Thor "just couldn't use the door". Zaphod replies: "He's a God. He doesn't do doors". (Or something very similar).
  • Animorphs:
    • At one point in the series, Jake morphs into a rhinoceros to charge through a compound. He finds that it's easier to rhino through doors than walls, but his vision is so bad in that shape that he has a little trouble seeing which is which in time.
    • Averted later in the same book when Jake (now a tiger) tells Marco (a gorilla) to open a door. Marco prepares to knock the door off its hinges, for Jake to tell him to try the knob first. He does.
  • The Belgariad/The Malloreon
    • Sorcerers tend to disregard niceties such as doors when irritated or in a hurry, frequently using their powers to blast through doors, walls, or in Garion's case in the second series, entire buildings, making this a crossover with Dungeon Bypass. Which is promptly lampshaded by Deadpan Snarker Liselle:
    • Garion makes a point of threatening the pre-Heel–Face Turn Zakath with a broken city when he finally decides he's been delayed long enough... and smashes through a few walls while going to make this threat.
      Garion: Take me to the library, now!
      [Garion points his sword at the wall and it blasts outwards; he re-aims while the emperor looks on in terror]
      Garion: Now... the library is about that direction, isn't it?
      Velvet: [chiding him gently] Belgarion, now really, that's no way to behave. Kal Zakath has been a very courteous host. I'm sure that now that he understands the situation, he'll be more than happy to cooperate, won't you, your Imperial Majesty? [smiling winsomely at the Emperor] We wouldn't want the Rivan King to get really angry, now would we? There are so many breakable things about — windows, walls, houses, the city of Rak Hagga — that sort of thing.
    • Played straight and then inverted (and almost literally invoked) when Garion smashes down Senji's locked door, and then Belgarath makes him fix it, which Garion does by pointing at the shattered doorframe and creating a new door via sorcery by saying "Door." Belgarath is not amused by his choice of Word.
  • Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: More like "There Was a Hole". Willy Wonka picks up Charlie Bucket's family in the Elevator and then takes off into the sky in order to reenter the factory by punching a hole in the roof... next to the hole he already made exiting the factory. (Two holes are better than one, as any mouse will tell you.)
  • Discworld:
    • In Thief of Time, Myria Le Jean is talking to some fellow Auditors. When they want to go through a door, one glances at it, and the door disintegrates. Ms. Le Jean observes this and says "Doorknob was simpler."
    • In Interesting Times, the Silver Horde quickly realise that, if all the interior walls in the Emperor's Palace are made of paper, you can just learn the general direction of the throne room and walk there in a straight line. Because Agateans are so conditioned to believe you don't do that, Gossip Evolution gives them the ability to walk through any walls, as befits vampire ghosts.
      Mr. Saveloy: Ghenghiz is quite good at a certain kind of lateral thinking.
      Six Beneficient Winds: What's a lateral?
      Mr. Saveloy: Er. It's a kind of muscle, I believe.
      Six Beneficient Winds: Thinking with your muscles... Yes. I see.
  • Doc Savage: In The Meteor Menace, Doc goes through a ceiling by grabbing a rafter with one hand and punching a hole in it with the other.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • Harry does this by pulling a door outward (to avoid deadly shrapnel hitting those inside the building) in order to make a dramatic wizard entrance.
    • Marcone, being Genre Savvy, starts using cheap doors because of the regularity with which Harry does this.
  • Everest (2002): Mrs. Alexis is annoyed at how her mountaineer husband and sons like to climb out second-floor windows to reach the ground rather than going down the stairs and out the door.
  • Five Little Kittens: When Ginger accidentally assaults a passing policeman by shaking his mop out of the window, the angry policeman then climbs in through the window. Just at that moment, mummy comes back from shopping, is horrified to see this, and pulls him back out by his feet, believing him to be a thief.
    "Out you come!" said Mrs Tibbets. "Honest folk go through the door!"
  • Ghosts of Tomorrow: When Archaeidae comes across a metal door that he can't quickly punch through, he smashes through the concrete next to it instead.
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince gives us Snape jumping out a window to flee Hogwarts, complete with "a Snape-shaped hole in the window."
  • Uttered word for word in The Fourth Power, from the Kadingir series. The heroes find a village lost in the jungle and immediatelly assume the natives will eat them, so they attack on sight. The villagers's answer is to stun them and leave them in a hut to cool down a bit, but the head explorer and Shell-Shocked Veteran Sura just starts panicking and convinces the others that they must kill or be killed before bursting through the bamboo wall into freedom.
    Ishtar: There was a door! Right here! It's not even locked...
  • The Magician's Nephew: She doesn't make any holes in the wall, but Jadis gets into a walled orchard by climbing over the wall, despite the fact that there was a gate, and it was unlocked — the point here being that she's too Übermensch to be bound by any rules.
  • In Paper Towns, Q and his friends end up breaking through the boarded-up windows of the mini-mall when they couldn't get the doors open by pulling. Later on, Q realizes the doors open inwards and finds that they weren't locked at all.
  • During his vigilante spree in Shadow of the Conqueror, Daylen plows right through a wall before performing a Neck Snap on a woman torturing her husband. He also crashes right through a ceiling to interrupt a man in the process of raping his own daughter, and gives him a much more gruesome punishment before throwing him straight through a brick wall.
  • The Riftwar Cycle: In Shards of a Broken Crown it occurs when Tomas breaks into the temple of the Big Bad. His companions comment:
    Nakor: He seems a bit angry.
    Pug: Just determined. If he'd been angry, he'd have gone through the wall.
  • Skulduggery Pleasant. Skulduggery and Valkyrie tend to use windows, even when it's unnecessary, because "Doors are for people with no imagination."
  • In Star Wars: Annihilation, Theron Shan's superior criticizes his methods as overly stylish: "He prefers to go through the window instead of a perfectly good door." A few chapters later, Theron proves the point by opting to break into Jedi Grand Master Satele's apartment even though he's coming there at her invitation, partly because he doesn't want people making any connection between them, but partly just to prove that he can.
  • Vorkosigan Saga: Used as a threat by Miles Vorkosigan in Komarr when conducting hostage negotiations with Komarran terrorists on a space station.
    Miles: My word is all that's keeping ImpSec's aspiring heroes from coming through your walls. They don't need doors, you know.
  • Les Voyageurs Sans Souci: When Sébastien arrives at his aunt Ursule's house, he decides to look through the living room windows before knocking on the door. When leaning against the large window panes, though, he accidentally pushes it open, so he decides to jump inside...to his aunt's annoyance, who protests her family uses doors like civilised people.
  • In "A Woman's Work", one of the stories in If I Were an Evil Overlord (a collection of short stories inspired by the Evil Overlord List) the royal family is barricaded behind a magical door. The invading empress orders her men to tear down the wall instead. Apparently no one ever puts anti-entry spells on the walls.
  • In the Zachary Nixon Johnson series, the genetically engineered superhuman Twoa Thompson enjoys acting like a superhero, which includes smashing through walls even when it's not necessary.
    Zach: Twoa, you do realize I have a perfectly good door?
    Twoa: I'm a mega-human superhero! I need no door!

    Live-Action TV 
  • The 3rd Rock from the Sun episode "Dick is from Mars, Sally is from Venus" has Sally going out with a student at the college, only to be unceremoniously dumped. After waiting by the phone overnight, thinking he's going to call, she ends up paying a visit to his apartment....
    [Brad sitting on a couch in his apartment; suddenly, the door is kicked inward, revealing Sally]
    Sally: Hello, Brad.
    Brad: Sally!
    Sally: I've come to check your phone.
  • On The A-Team, there was a first season episode where Hannibal, BA and Murdock were trying to get arrested so they could look into a prison fight ring. They tried pretending to be drunk, but the police let them go. To make sure they got arrested, they drove a car through the front wall of the police station. The clip made it to the opening credits.
  • The Adventures of Superman:
    • Superman bursts through a wall to rescue Lois and Jimmy, and Jimmy comments that he "could have come in through the door."
    • Averted in a case where it actually would have been useful in "The Defeat of Superman": Instead of breaking down the door to the basement where Lois and Jimmy are being held, Superman unbolts it and walks inside. The villains quickly close and re-seal the door, and while a confused Superman is wondering what they think that will accomplish, they drop a hunk of kryptonite in through a hole, leaving him too weak to stand, let alone break out. Had he smashed through the door in the beginning, such a plan wouldn't have worked.
  • One Pit Stop on Season 5 of The Amazing Race was located on a small island, which Kami & Karli swam to. Upon arriving, they were told by Phil, "That was quite an entrance. Everyone else just walked through the shallow water over there."
  • Angel:
    • Frequently in the first season, instead of merely opening a door, Angel would kick it open dramatically (often breaking it). The recapper on Television Without Pity speculated that Angel just really hated doors. Sometimes doesn't quite work the way a normal person would use it. Being a vampire, he can't enter a home where he hasn't been invited. That's why he brings a human partner, who can enter an apartment uninvited.
    • In one early episode, he bursts through a window... and later gets a bill for it.
    • In another episode, Wesley and Gunn break into a house to steal a MacGuffin. Wesley makes a big deal of cutting a perfect hole in a window. Gunn simply opens the unlocked door.
  • Even more common for Batman in the Batman (1966) series than for his comic book counterpart.
  • A variation in the short lived western parody, Best of the West, the heroes are in the town saloon and get in a shootout with villains outside. Sheriff Best breaks a window pane to be able to shoot out the window, and the Deadpan Snarker saloon owner walks over and casually opens the window. Glass is expensive, you know.
  • Blackadder:
    • The sound of wood splintering, followed by Baldrick dragging the front door in to Lord Blackadder's Breakfast Room.
      Edmund: Baldrick, I advise you to make the excuse you are about to give, phenomenally good!
      Baldrick: You said "Get the door."
      Edmund: Not good enough, you're fired!
      Baldrick: But my lord! I've been in your family since 1532!
      Edmund: So's syphilis, now get out!
    • Also the Baby-Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells throws Baldrick through two separate doors in Blackadder's home.
    • Lord Flashheart punches Percy through the door of the throne room for daring to stand in his place at Blackadder's ill-fated wedding.
  • Boy Meets World:
    • Windows were usually Shawn Hunter's choice of entry in earlier seasons.
    • Eric did it once or twice as well, most notably in the graduation episode when he was trying to persuade Mr. Feeny not to retire.
  • In the opening of one episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine Jake elaborately plans smashing through a window to catch a perp, despite there being a single door to the apartment he was using as a hideout. He thinks he's incredibly cool, but his superiors are frustrated because they have to fill out extra paperwork.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Glory once decides to make an entrance by ripping out the entire wall.
    • Bad guys liked to smash through the windows all the time. Thank goodness Xander develops carpentry skills. Oddly, despite repeated instances, the windows are never armored. To his credit, Xander does eventually realize the futility of repairing windows that were smashed through on a weekly basis and just gives up. What makes it funnier? Once he gives up on fixing the picture window (which at that point was getting smashed in seemingly every other Tuesday, he just boarded it up with cheap particle board. From that point on, nobody ever tried to break into the house again.
    • An inversion in a halloween episode: A "Haunted House" has turned into a real haunted house and the front door had disappeared. Luckily Giles shows up with a bag of tricks to create a door and pulls a Boring, but Practical chainsaw from the bag.
    • The Nerd Trio like to get into buildings at night by fast-roping down from a ceiling entrance, because that's what happens in the movies.
  • Burn Notice likes justified versions of this.
    • In the pilot, Michael marks areas on a drug dealer's wall with duct tape as targeting for where he'll a) shoot him in the leg with a gun and homemade suppressor, and b) crash through the wall.
      Michael: [voiceover] Any two-bit thug has a bulletproof door, but they rarely realize that a wall is rarely more than drywall and plaster. [a little later...] I don't like guns, guns make you stupid. Better to fight your battles with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart.
    • In "False Flag", Sam and Mike kick an air conditioner out of a wall so they can escape some gunmen through the resulting hole.
      Michael: [voiceover] People watch doors and windows. They don't watch air conditioners.
    • The season 1 finale "Loose Ends" has Michael drive his brother's pickup truck through a warehouse wall. They were in a hurry to rescue Fiona from more gunmen and Mike's voiceover notes that warehouse doors are often reinforced:
      Michael: [voiceover] A warehouse door is going to be reinforced, but the walls aren't. And the areas under the windows don't have load-bearing beams.
    • The season 3 finale has Sam and Fi drive her coupe through the front of a house. This was purely to scare the living daylights out of the small-time arms dealer on the opposite side prior to interrogation. Remarked on by Sam in the next scene:
      Sam: You know, you never really know a car until you've driven it through a wall. This little baby did good!
    • In a season 6 episode, Sam uses a washing machine and a pipe to rip a hole in a laundry room wall to escape a gang.
    • The series finale has the team set up a bomb between a dumpster and a wall to blow their way into a building because all of the windows and doors have been mined.
  • Double Subversion in an episode of El Chavo del ocho. Doña Cleotilde gives El Chavo a cake she baked for Don Ramón, and tells him to enter Don Ramón's house through the window to leave it on the table. El Chavo enters the house through the door (which wasn't locked as Doña Cleotilde assumed) to open the window, then exits again to grab the cake and enter again through the window.
  • The Chosen: Justified when the paralyzed man's friends tear a hole in Zebedee's ceiling, as the entrances to the building are crowded with people blocking the way to the person they knew could heal their friend. Not that Zebedee was particularly thrilled about the hole in his roof.
  • Chuck:
    • First episode has Bryce jumping through the window above an open door.
      Ellie: How did you get in here?
      Morgan: Chuck's window, or as I like to call it, the "Morgan Door".
      Ellie: I'm gonna go close the window.
    • In yet another episode, Casey crashes his car through the wall of a restaurant to rescue Sarah. Complete with Bond One-Liner: "Anyone order drive-thru?"
  • Clarissa Explains It All: Sam always enters the Darling household through Clarissa's upstairs bedroom window via a ladder. Even on the rare occasions he comes through the first floor, generally after finding that Clarissa isn't in her room, he comes in through the window beside the door. There's a specific reason why he chooses to go to Clarissa's window: he hates her younger brother Ferguson so much he uses the ladder to avoid him. Lampshaded in one episode where, after Sam leaves, Clarissa's father asks "Why doesn't that kid ever use the door?"
  • On the March 25, 2014 broadcast of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a clip was shown talking about Russia's invasion of Crimea, including the fact that tanks were smashing through walls — prompting Stewart to make a Kool-Aid Man joke and complain about their not having just used the door.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "School Reunion": Children are in trouble, but the doors are locked, and Mickey is desperately trying to think of a way to get in. K-9 just says "We are in a car."
    • "Rise of the Cybermen": The Cybermen crash the party at the Tyler estate by smashing through the ground-floor windows.
    • "A Christmas Carol": Upon being asked why he entered through the window, the Doctor answers "Because if I was going out the window, I'd be going the wrong way. Pay attention."
    • ""The Pyramid at the End of the World": The Doctor walks out of his TARDIS to find that it's been loaded onto a UN aircraft flying to the crisis area. When he asks how they got his TARDIS out of the room it was stored in, as the windows aren't big enough, he's told: "They are now."
  • The Drake & Josh episode "Megan's New Teacher" has Drake struggle to climb up a rope to get into Megan's school to help Megan sabotage Josh's teaching evaluation. He then yells for Megan to come up, only for her to come in through the classroom door seconds later.
    Drake: How did you get in?
    Megan: Through the front door. It's a school, Drake, not a bank.
  • Due South: Benton Fraser does not bother with little things like doors, when windows are so much faster.
    Det. Vecchio: Do they not have doors in Canada?
  • A variation of the trope occurs on an episode of Eureka when Carter retrieves a Nobel Prize by smashing the glass pane of a display case.
    Stark: It was open.
  • Invoked by accident in Everybody Loves Raymond: Ray and Debra suddenly hear a loud noise approaching their house... Seconds later, a car comes blazing into the living room and totals the front entrance of their house. The car stops, and two people get out — Frank, who was just an unwitting passenger, and the real culprit Marie. The poor woman had no idea that the brakes were out on the car.
  • Happened at least twice in Family Matters:
    • Eddie, being the designated recipient of each week's Anvilicious Aesop, tries to drive a car after failing his license exam, guilty of the classic cliché, "I did it to look cool and impress my girlfriend"- and promptly wipes out half the front entrance of the Winslow household.
    • Another episode has Eddie and Waldo trying to make sense of a snowmobile — hilarity ensues.
      [ominous sounds of the snowmobile engine groaning can be heard outside the Winslow household while Carl is in the living room, confused and concerned]
      Eddie: TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF!!
      Waldo: I CAN'T, I CAN'T! I'M TRYIN'!!
      Eddie: WALDOOOOOOOO!!! (snowmobile crashes through the front door in slow-motion with Eddie and Waldo hanging on for dear life, pulverizing the living room; Carl gets bowled over, Eddie and Waldo are flung off the snowmobile to the living room floor; snowmobile roars into the kitchen, crashes through the backdoor and wrecks outside; Harriet and Steve's Aunt Oona dash into the room to find it in utter shambles; long pause as everyone tries to make sense of what just happened)
      Carl: [gets up, dumbfounded, assesses the damage, then sees Eddie struggling to get up] ... Edward?
      Eddie: [dazed] ... Yeah??
      Carl: Can you move, son?
      Eddie: [pauses] ... Yeah....
      Carl: [growling] THEN I SUGGEST YOU RUN. [Eddie leaps up and bolts out the door for his life as Carl chases him down the street]
      Harriet: [at a loss for words after seeing the carnage inflicted on her house; turns to face Waldo] Waldo?
      Waldo: 'Sup?
      Harriet: Is this your snowmobile?
      Waldo: Yup. What do I owe you for parking?
      [Harriet begins to approach him ominously; Waldo freezes with fear]
      [Waldo panics, flees in terror]
      Harriet: COME HERE, WALDO!! COME HERE!! [chases after him]
  • A Forever Knight episode had a perp do a window jump once after Nick vamped out at him... but Nick used his vampire speed to grab him before he fell. He, unlike Angel in the earlier example, does *not* have that pesky uninvited vampire problem.
  • In the 2006 Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, martial artists Wu Yidao and Miao Renfen smash through three walls in a row when kicking off their Interesting Situation Duel.
  • On Friends Chandler apologises to Monica for an argument by proposing. Monica assures him he didn't need to propose and asks what he'd have done if she'd said yes. and Chandler says he would have been happy, or "there would have been a Chandler shaped hole in that wall."
  • There is a Gilligan's Island episode where the title millstone dreams of being a swashbuckling hero. He breaks through the door to meet the Damsels in Distress, then closes a second door in the same frame and breaks through it.
  • On The Golden Girls, the man Sophia is dating sneaks over the fence to their porch to spirit her away, since Dorothy disapproves. He then notices there is a gate.
  • The Goodies. In "UF-Friend or UFO" Bill is being chased by what he thinks is an alien, but Tim won't let him in the door, so he orders Graham's robot to open it. The robot promptly disintegrates the door, so Bill can't lock it after him.
  • In the Helix episode "Vector", a lab rat infected with The Virus breaks through the glass walls of its own cage and that of a neighboring uninfected rat in order to attack in and spread the virus, even though its Super-Strength could've dislodged its cage's lid quite easily.
  • Highlander has Richie crash through the second-floor window of an abandoned warehouse on his motorcycle, from the second floor. Justified, probably... he was immortal by then and a sword-swinging immortal was after him.
  • In the short-lived US run of Hole in the Wall, if players didn't successfully contort themselves to fit through the cutout shapes in the wall, chances are they'd end up destroying part of the foam walls by accident.
  • In the I Love Lucy episode "Lucy and Superman", Lucy (who is going to pose as Superman) plans to use the (several-story) window. Ethel asks her to find some other way, and Lucy responds that the other way would cause unacceptable property damage.
    Ethel: Isn't there any other way Superman enters a room?
    Lucy: Well, sometimes he comes bursting through the wall, but you know how Fred would feel about that.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
    • The show features an escape from Charlie's apartment:
      [Charlie screams and throws a chair through the window]
      Mac: Why would you do that?
      Charlie: Huh? I don't know, it's all happening so fast, man!
      Mac: You could have just opened it!
      Charlie: That's true.
    • As well as in the fifth season, where Frank throws a heavy object through a gate wall screaming "ABORT":
      Dee: THERE'S A GOD DAMN GATE!
  • One of the episodes of It Takes a Thief (2005) features a store with a massive steel door, multiple locks and one smug store-owner who was sure they wouldn't be able to get in through it. He was right, they just smashed through the brick wall.
  • Done on Knight Rider more times than anyone would care to count. Often justified in that there isn't a door, at least not one that KITT can fit through, anyway. But sometimes, even when there's a proper exit, walls are sacrificed for the sake of speed, or perhaps just because KITT busting through a barrier makes for a really awesome shot.
  • This happened at the end of the KYTV episode that spoofed the opening of the Channel Tunnel. A Running Gag through the episode was a reporter standing next to the tunnel, waiting for the first train to arrive. Which it eventually did, bursting out of the wall ten feet to the left of the tunnel.
  • M*A*S*H: It's Colonel Flagg's trademark that nobody ever sees him leave: "I am like the wind." So he demands that everyone cover their eyes. A few seconds, then:
    (tinkling sounds)
    Hawkeye: (peering out the newly-broken window) The wind just broke his leg.
  • Gene Rayburn once made an entrance by tearing down a prop door in Match Game to show off and pretend he was the Hulk.
  • Merlin (1998) had this memorable exchange:
    Mab: We thought we'd enter the traditional way, through the door.
    Merlin: It's traditional that you open it first.
  • When the Monkeemen burst in in The Monkees' episode "Monkee Chow Mein", the Yellow Peril villain Dragonman (Joey Forman) protests: "The door was open!"
  • In Monty Python's Flying Circus, during the "Gumby Brain Surgery" sketch, the Gumby with the anesthetic comes crashing through the wall.
  • The season two opening credits of The Munsters starts with Herman walking out the door to his house, not bothering to open it first.
  • Person of Interest. In "Mors Praematura", Vigilance traps Sameen Shaw in the cabin of a truck by drilling bolts into the doors. Shaw escapes by kicking out the windscreen.
  • The Professionals like to kick down doors all the time, but in "The Female Factor" Doyle insists on investigating the suspicious death of a High-Class Call Girl. The door to her house has a security lock, so Doyle climbs up to the window, casually stands with his back to it and kicks in the glass with his heel, setting off the alarm—which is only just being shut off by an alarm technician when Cowley turns up to give Doyle a roasting.
  • In a sketch on The Red Skelton Show, Red was trying to keep a bad guy out by locking the door. Said bad guy broke through the wall, went over to the door, unlocked it, walked back out through the hole in the wall, then opened the door from the outside and came in.
  • The Title Sequence to RoboCop: The Series shows a montage of scenes from the show, interspersed by someone trying to punch through a giant reinforced door from the other side. Finally as the music reaches the climax, the last punch sends the door flying, revealing everybody's favorite cyborg lawman.
  • Scrubs:
    • One episode has an obnoxiously intelligent patient lock the door on Dr. Kelso. He enters the room anyway by stealing Janitor's electric screwdriver and removing the hinges and kicking the door down. He does this again on the same patient, despite the door being unlocked, because he likes the dramatic entrance (watch the scene).
    • Laverne once punched through the window of Turk's car before Carla could tell her We Have the Keys.
      Laverne: LAVERNE ROBERTS! [punches window]
      Carla: What are you doing!? I had the keys!
    • In season five episode eight ("My Big Bird") J.D. gets kicked through the window of a former patient's window. Turk later comes crashing through as well, with the patient yelling that "There is a door!"
  • In Seinfeld, Jerry jokes during one of his stand-up bits that this is why superheroes have secret identities: not wanting to face complaints after doing this (or potential lawsuits).
  • In the season 10 finale of Shameless (US), Frank is talking with Liam at the front door of Faye's house, and when he's done, he exits through the window.
  • Smallville:
    • Clark does this on occasion, but you are not an evil kryptonian if you break down every door you see.
    • "Kara": Kara pulls an elevator's doors apart. An annoyed Clark says if she had just waited a few seconds, they would have opened. Kara retorts that this "inferior Earth technology" is too slow.
    • "Absolute Justice, Part 1": Hawkman smashes through the windows of the Watchtower to dump Oliver in front of Chloe.
    • And in the Grand Finale, Clark crashes through the top of the Fortress and flies into the sky as he changes into Superman. Who cares, it is awesome.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: In "Charlie X", Kirk and Spock try to trap the title character behind a Forcefield Door, but he just uses his Psychic Powers to vanish the surrounding wall.
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In this case it is actually justified, since the door is made from reinforced steel, whereas the wall is "merely" concrete.
    Sarah: Can you get through the door?
    Cameron: Yes.
    [beat]
    Cameron: But the wall will be much faster.
  • The Thundermans: Hank has a habit of exiting buildings with "Thunderman, away!" and flying through the ceiling. His family occasionally remember that they have dozens of man-shaped holes in their roof.
  • In one episode of The Umbrella Academy (2019), Five, Allison, and Diego need to break into a house. Diego promptly dives through the window, spraying shards of glass all over the floor. Five can teleport, and could have simply let him in if he'd waited two seconds. Then Five and Allison point out that the front door wasn't even locked.
  • In the Victorious episode, "Wifi In The Sky", Jade turns up at Beck's house demanding an explanation as to why he's doing favours for his cheerleader neighbour. Beck points out that the door is locked, and then there's a crunch of metal and Jade storms in.
    Tori: She has a key?
    Beck: No, she has a foot.
  • The phrase "drive-through convenience store" has become infamous on shows such as World's Dumbest... or similar series that show police archive footage or viewer submissions of crimes caught on tape. Simply put, someone drives their car through the front entrance (sometimes side) of a convenience store, strip mall entrance, or any place that has parking in front. This can range from being just a simple accident caused by a doddering 94-year old lady named Gertrude who floored the car by accident when she was trying to brake and park, drivers falling asleep at the wheel and running off the road, a drunken dumbass at the wheel, or a flat-out breaking-and-entering robbery. If the latter case is true, it's also often used as a means to try and hitch something like a chain from the car to an ATM machine so the robbers can try to uproot it from its post the moment they step on the gas. And if it involves actual people having to run for cover to avoid being hit by the car or flying debris, it turns into something in the same vein of Grand Theft Auto — especially if a gas station pump also gets nailed and bursts into flames, along with any unfortunate vehicles nearby.
  • The Young Ones:
    • Vyvyan's first entrance:
      Mike: How about a bit of consistency? Some days you come through the door... some days you actually open it...
    • Subversion, all thanks to Vyvyan again, when a messenger wanted to come through the door normally...
      Rick: Oh, no! The front door's exploded. VYVYAN!
      Mike: VYVYAN!
      Vyvyan: Vyvyan! Vyvyan! Vyvan! Honestly, whenever anything explodes in this house, it's always blame Vyvyan!
      Mike: Well who do you suggest we blame?
      Rick: Thatcher!
      Vyvyan: No, blame whoever rang the front doorbell, 'cause they obviously triggered the bomb I'd set up.
      Mike: What bomb?
      Vyvyan: Well, I was a bit worried we wouldn't be able to hear the front doorbell, so I thought I'd pep it up a bit!

    Music 
  • The video for "Without Me" has Eminem doing a Batman (1966) style rope climb up the side of a building. When he climbs through the window, Dr. Dre walks in the door and gives an annoyed shrug.
  • Ray Stevens song "Sitting up with the dead" has the line "Rev, that kitchen ain't got a door in it | He yelled, 'Don't worry son, it will have in a minute.'"
  • The Young Ones again, featuring Cliff Richard in a comedic re-recording of "Living Doll":
    [cue shattering glass]
    Neil: Look out everyone, he's coming through the doors...
    Vyvyan: BRILLIANT! HE DIDN'T EVEN OPEN THEM!
  • The Jam's Down In A Tube station At Midnight is about a guy who gets beaten up late at night on the London Underground by knuckle-dragging skinheads who don't like his face.

    Pinball 
  • In Medieval Madness, when you attack Sir Psycho's castle, he'll say "There *is* a doorbell!"

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Parodied by the WWE tag-team The APA, whose "office" consisted of a door, a card table, a cooler full of beer — and no walls. Anybody who walked around the door to try and talk to them was admonished in this manner.
  • Attempted with the Shockmaster to hilarious results.

    Puppet Shows 

    Radio 
  • In The BBC's 1980 sci-fi drama Earthsearch, the Killer Robot Fagor is heading for the Challenger's control room, and rather than waste its time navigating the corridors of the ten-Mile-Long Ship, Fagor just uses its wide-beam lasers to cut through every bulkhead in a direct line to its target.

    Roleplay 
  • Cerberus Daily News has a justified example. During the "Down with Discord" storyline, the battle converges on Discord's personal quarters. He has his guards with him, and they are covering the door against a small army of mercenaries. Then Desta T'Res takes out a demo charge, and blows a hole in the wall. Justified by the fact that the door was heavily guarded.
  • In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Hyeon and Ciro try barricading a door to stop the snake apparitions that are hounding them. The snakes respond by smashing through the wall right next to the door.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Can arise in Earthdawn due to the Questor for Garlan "Seal Home" power. Garlan grants her questors the power to seal a certain number of windows and doors and keep out any intruders using her magic. Given that, an enemy going up against a sufficiently powerful Questor for Garlan can be better off trying to break through "those flimsy stone walls" rather than a door that has Garlan's power keeping it closed.
  • This can also happen in Numenera courtesy of a high-tier ability for Glaives called Run Through Walls, added in the Numenera Character Options book. The ability's Exactly What It Says on the Tin; use an action to move, make a Might test to bust through any physical obstacles and leave a hole big enough for your party mates to use.

    Video Games 
  • Battlefield: Bad Company
    • The same thing is possible in this game, which allows you to blow holes in almost everything. It's often the best way to get to snipers or MG nests.
    • Invoked a LOT in Bad Company 2. The walls and doors are all destroyable by rockets and grenades and the like (and doors and fences can be shot and knifed). There's one level in single player where you're trying to spend very little time outside for risk of freezing to death, and you need to run from house to house to get warm. Typically the fastest way to do this was to take a rocket launcher and blow a hole in the next building. How the buildings don't lose their heat after this you'll never know. If you're playing multiplayer, and moving at all, odds are you'll end up doing this a few times in just one match!
  • Call of Duty:
    • Due to Insurmountable Wast-Height Fences, a number of games may allow you to break through doors, but never allow you to just open them. Some, such as Call of Duty, have doors that can be opened by NPCs, but not you, or only unlock after a certain Scripted Event. May be used as a Dynamic Loading barrier.
    • There are a few straight examples in the Call of Duty series. In Modern Warfare 2, Soap and company need to go through the showers in a gulag by bursting through the wall. (If the player tries to plant the breach charge on the door, Soap will note that the enemies are watching it.) Modern Warfare 3 has a sequence where hostage takers grab a VIP and take him behind a reinforced blast door. Delta Force responds by placing breach charges on the floor above and breaching through the ceiling.
  • In Cave Story, Balrog is first introduced doing this. Amusingly, he did enter exactly where the door was, but since he's way too wide to use it, he just busts through the door and the door-sized bits of wall on either side of it. That scene is probably why his catchphrase of "Huzzah!" was changed to a Kool-Aid-Man-style "OH YEAH!" in the re-translation of the console and handheld versions. Later in the game, he tends to make his entrances by crashing through ceilings.
  • While never seen occuring onscreen, there are a few mission maps in City of Heroes that suggest this method was used by the villain groups to invade the map. In some of these maps, you'll encounter walls with gaping holes blasted through them and a doorway left untouched. One notable example has you following the very obvious trail of, and eventually catching up with, a huge fire demon.
  • In Crusader, if you don't have the keycard or lock combination, you can blow open just about any door in the game with explosives instead. This will set the alarm off, however.
  • In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, there's an augmentation which lets the player punch through walls. If a guard is positioned behind it, Adam (the protagonist) will snap the guard's neck in the process. This can be annoying if you're trying to do a Pacifist Run.
  • Diablo III added this in the form of a potion update, allowing you to burst through enemy-summoned walls. Justified, as the "door" may be a yard-long gap filled with lethal toxic puddles, arcane sentry turrets, exploding ice bubbles, lava, or a really angry monster, and your normal teleport ability might be on cooldown or out of gas. So grab your Kulle-Aid and scream "OH YEAH"!
  • In the arcade version of Double Dragon, Abobo makes his debut by punching his way through a brick wall... right next to the actual door of the building.
  • In Fortnite, since Everything Breaks, it's trivial to break down a wall to get into any building you like. However, it's also a Stealth-Based Game, and breaking down walls is noisy, so it's best to know where the doors are — if there's a door nearby that you don't know about, and an opponent behind that door, they can slip out (opening doors is also noisy, but much less so!) and blast you in the back of the head before you even figure out what's happening.
  • In Friday the 13th: The Game, Jason can break through certain walls in the camp with his "Rage" skill, either by tearing them down with his bare hands or walking through them like a malevolent Kool-Aid Man.
  • The Godfather 2 has various options for this. Do you:
    • Let an Arsonist burn down something?
    • Make a Bruiser knock down a side entrance?
    • Order a Demolitions guy to blow up a weak wall?
    • Get an Engineer to cut through a fence?
  • You can technically open doors in God Hand, but it's usually easier to kick them in. That's just the way Gene is.
  • In Granblue Fantasy, Medusa frequently ignores doors on the Grandcypher when making her entrance, leading Vyrn to complain about how she'll eventually break the ship if she keeps this up.
  • In the Half-Life mod Afraid of Monsters, the enemies attack by running into the rooms via doors. However, when the player reaches the City Level, they start coming through the walls instead. It effectively makes them jump scares in the process.
  • Investi-Gator: The Case of the Big Crime: The Chief enters Mr. Crime's house by smashing through the wall. Mr. Crime says he would be upset, but he found it really cool.
  • In Jagged Alliance, this is one of the recommended ways to deal with buildings where the enemy is lurking inside. You could go through the doors, wasting AP and leaving your pointman vulnerable to enemy fire, or you could have your demolitions guy plant a couple of blocks of C4 on the wall, blast open a hole, and then storm in through the back, or even just open a hole to let your snipers with their armor-piercing anti-tank rifles start picking off the enemy.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Mandalore and his soldiers board an enemy ship. The Sith set up at the airlock ready to shoot anything that comes through, in a direct Shout-Out to the opening scene from A New Hope. The Mandalorians blow a hole through the wall on their flank, and massacre them.
  • Lapis Re:LiGHTs has Salsa of the group IV KLORE. As a werewolf, she has incredible speed and strength, and as a highly excitable young child, she does not have the best control of it. If she's stopping by to say "Hello!", you can count on there being a new hole in the wall or needing to install a new door.
  • The infected in Left 4 Dead can go through doors via smashing them to bits, but it takes time to do so unless there's a lot of infected banging on the doors and special infected can break down doors faster. However, the infected will also have no trouble just smashing through certain walls to reach you and forego doors entirely.
  • In both the original The Legend of Zelda and Oracle of Seasons/Ages, Link is occasionally forced to pay for bombing or burning down the door to some Grumpy Old Man's home.
  • Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a funny inversion. You can only open doors without excessive amounts of force, even when that would be faster.
  • Subverted in the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC. Upon meeting a closed door, Shepard prepares to blast through the window. The love interest then puts Shepard's hand down and knocks on the door. And it works.
Shepard: (defensive voice) I could have done that.
  • The Matrix: Path of Neo has Neo do this to a brick wall in an in-game cutscene once, when there was a door a few feet away.
  • Hilariously inverted in Max Payne, where at one scene you overhear two mafia mooks arguing over how to disarm a bomb planted by the Russians. During their argument, they accidentally set off the bombnote , killing themselves and severely damaging the wall surrounding the door. The door is untouched, and when Max tries it, the whole wall comes down but leaves the part with the door still standing, with the door still locked.
  • At one point in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, you come to a wall with windows that you can't climb through, and you can't blow it up with your Panzerschreck either. You have to lure a Tiger Tank into destroying the wall. In a later level, there's a gate that can only be opened with a bazooka.
  • In Metroid: Other M, after getting his ass handed to him by Samus yet again, Ridley ends up so freaking scared of her that he crashes through a wall in a frantic attempt to get away.
  • Minecraft being Minecraft, there is no wall in the game that a determined player can't break through. Thankfully averted with Creepers — while they'll follow you relentlessly once they spot you, they won't actually explode if they don't have a direct line of sight.
  • Easily done to any door in Nethack. Bash it down, kick it down, whatever. Not to mention you can do the reverse: you can create a door where there wasn't one before.
  • PAYDAY: The Heist does have SWAT units going through doors to reach you, but they'll eventually start blowing up walls and breaking windows to ambush you by surprise.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky has a Ludicolo and his team of Bellossom crash through the wall of Spinda's cafe whenever you win a jackpot at the lottery. Then comes the most hilarious Big-Lipped Alligator Moment Ever.
  • In [PROTOTYPE], it is possible to break the walls surrounding the courtyard of a military base, but there are doors on both sides and they are always open.
  • In the character creation screen of Quest for Glory IV before you pick the class the fighter and the mage make dramatic entrances by breaking their respective doors with a kick and with magic. Then the thief cautiously opens his door.
  • In Rainbow Six Siege, most walls and floors are breakable and since waltzing through the front door would be tantamount to suicide, blowing down someone's wall and waltzing through it is the next best thing. Of course, there's also the chance that someone would blow a hole right beside an actual doorway.
  • Red Faction
    • Red Faction: Guerrilla provides the player with a sledgehammer of unlikely power. You have the option of bashing your way through walls and windows rather than use the door. This can be a lifesaver when rescuing hostages, running from a horde of drones, and so forth.
    • In the original: "Don't have a key? Create your own door." Generally only works where the plot requires it.
    • Yet why exactly walls can get shredded by grenades and yet doors remain unscratched in the face of multiple rockets remains a complete mystery.
  • Resident Evil
    • After solving the carriage wheel puzzle in Resident Evil 2's second scenario, Mr. X comes crashing through the wall. Then when you're back in the hallway, he smashes back through the same wall.
    • Justified in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis if you choose to run inside the police station instead of battling your titular new best friend. Although he could easily get through that door he just pounds on it for a bit and then leaves, only to come crashing through a window later: He left to get his rocket launcher.
    • If there is both a door and window into a building in Resident Evil 4, you can always dive through the window instead of taking the door. However, this isn't usually a good idea, since an intact window will slow down Ganados for a second and give you an advantage.
  • Also once used in Return to Zork in which a form of Copy Protection appears. If you succeed, you're told "Next time you should use the door."
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey's Sector Fornax, both Orcus and Mithras do this, ironically opening sections you could not leave out of besides.
  • Sleep Tight (2021): The enemies that are introduced on Night 2 can choose to enter the room by bursting up into it through the floor.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Shadow breaks into Eggman's lair through the ceiling. Without turning, the Doctor tells him, "Wouldn't the door have been easier?"
  • In one level of Superman Countdown To Apokolips for the GBA, Superman breaks into an Intergang hideout by crashing through a brick wall.
  • Super Mario RPG:
    • Lampshaded by Toad when Mario enters his house through the pipe that serves as a chimney. Justified in that Mario was thrown about 1,000 feet into the air and landed in his fireplace.
    • In another (also not voluntary) instance later in the game, Ma Mole remarks that she thinks Mario and her kids are about to drop in, while Pa Mole says they have to use the door like everyone else. Cue Mario and kids dropping through the roof on a mine cart.
    • Still later, Mario and his allies have to break down two doors in the Marrymore chapel to crash Booster's wedding ceremony.
  • Collette from Tales of Symphonia has a nasty habit of going through walls instead of using the door, though this is more a testament to her clumsiness than anything else. Lampshaded when interacting with a human-shaped hole in Raine's classroom earns Collette a title.
  • In Wolfenstein (2009), it is extremely common for scripted battles against Heavy Troopers to begin with them crashing through a nearby wall - the game's initial fight with this enemy type plays out this way, setting the stage for future encounters. Special mention goes to one particular Heavy Trooper in the Cannery level, who is programmed to not only make his entrance via smashing his way out of a train car, but also smash through a second wall to enter a nearby building should the player take cover inside.
  • This is simple expedience in XCOM, especially on terror missions, where civilians are apt to be standing behind doors blocking your way. As one online guide says, "That farmhouse was probably insured anyway."
    • The game can force you to invoke this from the inside, no less - having half your team inside a UFO and pinned down with the other half outside and unable to reach a doorway in time can be...aggravating. Tossing a grenade against the inside of the exterior wall will give your guys a clear line of fire.
    • The remake also allows for this-Yahtzee even mentions it: "I got the Heavy to blow a hole on the side of the UFO, leaving the Sniper to Double-Tap the problem out of existence."
    • The path finding can sometimes result in soldiers deciding to use a window to enter a building even if using the door would result in them traveling the same distance.
    • In XCOM 2, Andromedons, Sectopods, and Gatekeepers will crash through walls rather than use doors (even big ones), even while idly patrolling their own building if they haven't noticed you yet. It's even worse once they actually notice you and get in attack position, the Sectopod raising several stories tall to wreak even more destruction as it moves.
    • In XCOM: Chimera Squad, the combat is distilled into "breach a room, achieve an objective, rinse & repeat". The main door is usually not the best entrance; you often get the option to go through walls, windows, vents, secured doors, etc. for various advantages. Even the tutorial mission has you breaching through a wall.
  • In some areas of X-Men Legends 1 and 2, the doors will be the only interior sections that you can't simply smash your way through. After a big fight, you can easily end up with a forlorn door standing uselessly in the middle of a room with 20 feet of hole on either side of it.
  • This is always an option in Zombies Ate My Neighbors so long as you have a Bazooka to spare. Don't have a key or don't feel like wasting one, or just want a shortcut? Just blow a hole in the wall or fence.

    Web Animation 
  • In Arfenhouse the Movie, Good Kitty likes to enter the scene by crashing through a window, even when she's already there or when the scene is the surface of the moon.
  • Baman from Baman Piderman rarely uses the door, usually just smashing through the wall, and using that hole.
  • Dad's at Work is this trope, since the title character constantly smashes stuff. In the first scene of the first video, Dad smashes through the front door of the house, even though it is his own home.
  • This happens all the time in Dinosaur Office.
  • Helluva Boss
    • Happens four times in Blitzo's office in the fourth episode. While Loona points out the door would be easier the first time, the fourth time results in Blitzo yelling at everybody to stop breaking his walls as he'd be having Moxxie fix it all. In the same episode, Blitzo jumps through a window to convince his target to go through with suicide while Moxxie and Millie enter through the door next to said window.
    • It happens again in Season 2's third episode, this time with the hole being made by a helicopter. Blitzø, Moxxie, and Millie later return to the office in the same copter (through the same hole, however).
    Blitzo: Satan's asscrack! Enough with the wall shit! WE HAVE A DOOR!
  • Vivienne Medrano seems fond of this joke; in the companion show to Helluva Boss, Hazbin Hotel, the hotel's south wall is repeatedly destroyed.
  • In Madness Combat 8: Inunduation, Jesus brandishes his magnum revolver as he flies at Mach 2 through a wall while dodging a barrage of minigun fire. As an additional joke, the automatic door two feet to his left timidly opens a couple of seconds after he's punched a savior-sized hole through the wall.
  • Something About Kirby 64 has several instances of Kirby & co crashing through a wall right next to a door.
  • In the season 2 finale of Sonic for Hire, both Sonic the Hedgehog's enemies and his allies burst through the walls into his apartment to fight... Except Earthworm Jim, who actually uses the door. Sonic complains about losing his deposit, of course.

    Web Comics 

    Web Original 
  • How to Succeed in Evil. Time after time, frustrating the hell out of the main character.
  • The Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters has a story where Peter Perfect tries to break out of jail, but can't break through the adamantium cell door — so he uses his sword's telekinesis to punch through two stories up to him and then proceeds to saw a hole through the floor to let himself out. Later on, other disgusting characters note that they should build their structures with adamantium-laced mortar, or else any two-bit disgusting character can punch their way out.
  • Agent Delacroix in the SCP Foundation tale Pulsar. He was delivering flash drives.

    Web Videos 
  • Throughout the 3rd Life SMP, most people opt to break through Dogwarts' wall rather than use the door, much to Rendog's annoyance.
  • In Honest Trailers' video of Dragon Ball Evolution, after Goku and the other gave their exposition on the film. They fly out through the narrator's roof.
    Narrator: Hey, my roof!
    Goku: Sorry!
  • The Music Video Show has this as a Running Gag.
    "Uhhhh... there was a chimney!"
  • Narrowly averted in Suburban Knights. One of the teams breaks into a stranger's house and realizes the Voice of the Ancients that they've been looking for is under the floor. They nearly start ripping it up until the woman they tied up points out that there's a basement.
  • Super Therapy!: At the end of the session "Avengers Therapy!", Hulk smashes through the wall to exit... despite the doctor having asked the Avengers to stop breaking things a minute ago.
    Dr. Lynn Matthews: F*ckin' superheroes...

    Western Animation 
  • The Amazing World of Gumball has this as a common Running Gag, usually involving somebody jumping out of a school window.
  • Amphibia: In "Toad Tax", Sprig exits the house through the window, despite Hop Pop's insistence on him using the door.
  • Ignignokt and Err of Aqua Teen Hunger Force regularly crash through the windows of the main trio's house whenever they arrive.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes:
    • Tony Stark moans about this one more than one occasion, like when Thor bursts through the floor rather than coming up the stairs, or the Hulk kicks a hole in the door (even though they open automatically). Understandable, given that it's usually Tony's private property that's getting smashed up.
    • Hank Pym makes a similar complaint when Ulysses Klaw and his henchmen smash down the door of his lab. "You know, that door didn't have a lock on it. You could've just opened it."
  • Avengers Assemble: Following an alarm, Hulk rushes to the Stark Tower gym, bursting in through the wall:
    Iron Man: You know, Hulk, when I built this place, I designed it with doors.
  • Beavis and Butt-Head actually subvert this trope: the title characters watch a RoboCop-like series and Butt-Head gets the idea to imitate that. Beavis runs into their house head first... and proceeds to knock himself out, upsetting Butt-Head that he screwed it up.
  • Ben 10: Ultimate Alien:
    • Kevin himself is not above using unnecessary force instead of a more mundane method of entry:
      Ben: How'd you get in here?
      Kevin: The usual way. By the way, you might wanna fix that hole I punched in your door.
      Ben: You could have knocked!
      Kevin: I sorta did.
    • In "Andreas' Fault" The Forever Knights blast a hole in a building where Ben is signing autographs despite a double door being not three feet from one side of the hole. They apparently felt that they needed to enter in formation.
    • Referenced in "Fused" when bad guy Agregor crashes through the ceiling... twice. The second leading a rather annoyed Kevin to tell him there's a door.
  • Biker Mice from Mars: The title mice never use the door. They lampshade it in "Back to Mars", when Limburger is using Charley as a bait in a trap that relies on them using the door.
  • In Centaurworld, the Mysterious Woman never uses a door onscreen, because she has long since reverted to her primal instincts and has a bad habit of losing her keys. When the latter delays her and the Beartaur's attempt to infiltrate a palace, he impatiently smashes its door down.
  • In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "A Case of Stage Blight", an opera is shown where the hero bursts into the room via Super Window Jump. Later, when the opera is repeated (only with an alligator now in the lead role), the camera focuses on the window, only to have the alligator burst through the wall right next to it.
  • Nanny from Count Duckula, in a lethal combination of absent-mindedness and not knowing her own strength, much to the frustration of Duckula. Hell, in the first episode, she knocks on the door, then smashes through it.
    Duckula: Now look what you've done, Nanny!
    Nanny: Oh but duckie-boo, you said to come through the door!
    Duckula: I give up, I just give up.
  • The Critic: Jay enters his apartment to find Duke waiting for him and asks how he got in, to which he responds, "I have my ways." Jay then notices a Duke-shaped hole in the wall. Duke later leaves the same way. Apparently using Jay Sherman as a weight is a great way to get Super-Strength!
    Duke: I'll show myself out. (CRASH!)
  • In one episode of Cyberchase, the Hacker hires a group of gargoyles to help in his latest evil plan. A Running Gag in the episode is that they keep crashing through the walls of his base of operations whenever they leave or exit.
    Hacker: Use the door next time!
  • An episode in Danny Phantom has Jack and Maddie bursting through the wall of Sam's bedroom in order to ask her and Tucker if they had seen Danny. They leave by busting open another part of the same wall. Knowing this to be a common occurrence, Maddie disappointingly tells Sam to send the bill their way.
  • Lampshaded on Darkwing Duck.
    Launchpad: Uh, D.W., why couldn't we go through the gate like everyone else?
    Darkwing: Because I am not like everyone else.
  • DC Animated Universe:
    • Lampshaded by The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series when Batman and Robin crash through a glass ceiling to face him.
      Joker: Nice entrance. Either you've never heard of a door or you just like pulling glass out of your shorts!
    • Superman: The Animated Series:
      • Bizarro isn't the smartest tool in the shed. He smashes through a wall to yoink Lois Lane.
        Lois: Can you please use the door?
        Bizarro: Okay.
        [smashes door to pieces]
      • The evil Kryptonians Jax-Ur and Mala just fly through any building they meet in a straight line. This is used to emphasize how they don't care about humans at all. In the same fight, Superman flies around the buildings.
    • Justice League:
      • "Injustice for All" ruins a Big Damn Heroes moment when five of the heroes bust into the villains' lair. Hawkgirl breaks down the door, Superman breaks the wall next to the door, and Green Lantern goes through the window next to the hole Superman made.
      • In "Fearful Symmetry", Green Arrow arranges for a security guard at STAR Labs to win a holiday, borrowing his keycard and posing as a replacement. Shortly afterwards the Question ambles up to the same door, studies the keycard lock, casually fetches a potted plant and throws it through the glass door.
  • In Denis and Me, Sir-Meows-A-Lot frequently leaves and re-enters the house by jumping through the window. Denis is understandably annoyed enough by this that he tells him to take a job so he can pay for the window, in one episode.
  • In one of Doug's Quailman fantasies, Dr. Rubbersuit lures Quailman into his lab and then splits him up into a good and evil half in the hopes of enlisting the evil half's help. This backfires when the evil half simply wants to cause wanton destruction without anything to do with Dr. Rubbersuit, and he breaks out of the lab by flying through the roof. The good half then goes after him by flying through another section of roof, causing Dr. Rubbersuit to cry "Hey! At least use the same hole!"
  • Dudley Do-Right frequently does this when he is called into Inspector Fenwick's office.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy:
    • Hilariously used in an episode of in which Ed knocks on the door to Edd's room THEN kicks his foot through it, causing Eddy to reply in annoyance, "There's a KNOB, Ed!"
    • He also keeps ripping through Edd's screen door. "Not the screen door AGAIN, Ed! Father hasn't recovered from the last time!"
  • One The Fairly OddParents! episode, "Information Stupor Highway," had "parental battering rams", which are used by parents to break into their kids' rooms. They always say "(child's name), I'm respecting your privacy by knocking, but asserting my authority as a parent by coming in anyway" before doing it, and it's transparently obvious they just want to break something because they never give a kid the chance to open the door. Timmy's Dad also did the "never go through the same hole" joke, and mentioned he needs to remember to hire a contractor to repair the wall. Good thing that Timmy can just wish the wall fixed. The same cannot be said for other kids' poor, battered walls. And That's Terrible.
  • One episode of Fanboy and Chum Chum has Oz doing this to the wall of the Fanlair. When the boys ask why, his reply is met with more than a good laugh.
    Oz: It's called making an entrance.
  • The Fantastic Four:
    Diablo: [runs into a panic room] He'll never get me now! This door is made of titanium! And with this timelock— [the Thing bursts through the wall] No!
  • In the Freakazoid!! episode "Dexter's Date", Freakazoid crashes through a wall full of TV monitors while trying to stop the Lobe. The Lobe immediately scolds him for causing damage and not using the door instead.
  • Futurama:
    • Destructor, in the episode "Raging Bender", does this when first introduced. Though it's not like he could have actually fit through the door.
    • Calculon also does this in his haste to propose to a gender-bent Bender in "Bend Her" (It Makes Sense in Context).
    • Roberto once breaks himself and Bender out a robot asylum using this technique. He has Bender on a table, and the two have a conversation while Roberto is smashing through walls. When asked when they plan to escape, Roberto responds, "About five seconds ago." Zoom out to them on the lawn, and a hole punched in the building.
  • G.I. Joe, during the "Arise Serpentor, Arise" arc. In his attempt to arrest every one of his treacherous underlings, Cobra Commander blows up a perfectly functional door in order to make a flashy entrance. He even orders the people he intended to arrest to fix it when he leaves.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
    • There is one episode where Billy repeatedly exits his home by breaking through the doors and windows. He doesn't stop until he realizes, in dismay, that he's broken through them all. At which point he's trapped, as apparently leaving through the holes was completely out of the question. Then again, this IS Billy we're talking about...
    • And after that, he does leave through the door, so that he can go to his friend's house and jump through his window!!
    • Not to mention the fact that, after jumping through a window, he kept returning into the house where Mandy and Grim were still dressed as clowns (in an attempt to scare out Billy's fear of them), apparently having forgotten why he ran away in the first place. He'd then see them again and repeat the process.
    • Given his comment during that gag, he actually forgot where he ran away from as well.
    • In "Bearded Billy" Billy accidentally turns himself into a Sasquatch (by using too much hair tonic). He hides in his room. Later, Mandy kicks the door open.
      Grim: Uh, that door wasn't locked.
      Mandy: I know.
  • Harley Quinn (2019). Superman breaks through the wall to rescue Lois Lane, but his Big Entrance is ruined by him having to spit grit out of his teeth. "I need to remember to keep my mouth closed when I bust through walls."
  • Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law:
    • Captain Caveman introduces himself in this way. After talking to Birdman, he vaults through the wall a workman had just finished patching.
    • Birdman himself did it when he was a superhero, in the Flashback Episode. He melts Reducto's door with his powers:
      Reducto: That was an automatic door. All you had to do was step in front of it and it would have slid open.
      X the Eliminator: Here he comes! I'll open the door for him. [Birdman blasts his way through the roof] Or he can use the ceiling.
  • In the Hey Arnold! episode "Field Trip", Arnold and Grandma go to break into an aquarium to free an unhappy turtle named Lockjaw. At one point, Grandma uses a rope and grappling hook to climb over a barrier maybe five feet high, while Arnold simply walks around it.
  • The Incredible Crash Dummies takes this to silly levels with the bad guy leaving a person-shaped hole though a door.
  • The Incredible Hulk (1996) has the Hulk leaping towards Doctor Doom's lair, and after smashing up his enforced cage, he makes for the door to do the same thing, until it opens by itself, to which the Hulk simply says: "Oh." Doctor Doom then says "There was a door, you destructive brute."
  • Invader Zim once features a floating screen... thing bursting through a wall to deliver a message to Dib. When it was done, it turned around, moved aside, and proceeded to blast another hole to exit.
  • Kim Possible has a couple of examples where somebody does actually go through the door, but by smashing rather than opening it:
    • In "Bonding", Ron uses a pair of oversized dogs to bust down the door of Professor Dementor's secret lab. Dementor is the one Straight Man in the show's rogues gallery.
      Dementor: Vhy did you have to break down ze door? It vasn't locked, and I JUST HAD IT PAINTED!
    • In "Mad Dogs and Aliens", Drakken instructs Warmonga to get rid of Shego, first saying "Show her the door," and then (after she simply tells Shego where to find the door) "Make her leave through the door." The latter instruction is also followed a bit too literally.
      Drakken: Yes, well... I didn't mean literally through the actual door, but...
  • In the Legion of Super Heroes (2006) episode "The Man from the Edge of Tomorrow; Part 2", Kell-El flies up through the roof, leaving Superman to look through the resultant hole and remark, "I'm guessing they don't have doors in the future." (Kell-El is from the 41st Century.)
  • Played with in Lilo & Stitch: The Series. The roof is on hinges due to Captain Gantu lifting it off regularly.
  • The Looney Tunes short "An Itch of His Own" starts with the Mighty Angelo the Flea breaking down the door to his dressing room of a flea circus; inside he leaves a note to his manager that he's going on vacation, with a P.S. saying, "I'll fix the door when I get back."
  • Done in a parody of Transformers in the MAD TV series:
    [notices all the Transbormers partying in his house]
    Sam: How did they get in my house?
    Optimus: Maybe they found the spare key?
    Sam: I don't have a spare key.
    Optimus: Then maybe from that huge hole in the wall.
    [screen pans out to show a giant hole in the wall]
  • In an accidentally hilarious way in Mister T. In one episode a door spontaneously explodes to reveal Mr. T behind it. Supposedly he kicked it down like he always does, but the animation didn't suggest any kicking.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Rainbow Dash likes to do this every so often, bursting in from windows or dropping through the roof. Not always intentionally, though.
    • In "Hearts and Hooves Day", at several points Cheerilee (while under the effect of a Love Potion) opts to break down the doors rather than opening them.
    • "Games Ponies Play": When Ms. Peachbottom has had as much being indoors as she can take and bolts, and eventually runs through the racetrack, she hops two hurdles but just busts through three more. When a jar of some sort winds up over her head and ramps up her panic, she breaks through a door.
    • In "Castle Sweet Castle", Bulk Biceps plows through the wall to enter the spa, then plows through it again to exit. Annoyed, Aloe remarks, "I hate it when he does that." Bulk does it again in "On Your Marks", breaking through the Cutie Mark Crusaders' treehouse's floor several times.
    • "The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows": After Rarity tells Pinkie how horrible it would be to spoil a surprise for someone and living with the guilt FOREVER, Pinkie decides to take her leave... by pinball-ing out of the room and through a wall.
    • When cheering up Rainbow Dash in "Tanks for the Memories", the Mane Six enter her room the conventional manner, except for Pinkie, who simply hops in through a wall (while saying "Knock knock!"). It's a far less destructive example than most — as Rainbow Dash's house is made of clouds, the hole immediately seals itself.
    • "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place": To be fair, Rockhoof does use the door to the classroom... it's just that with his large bulk and the shovel on his back, he also resizes the doorframe at the same time. He later bursts through the wall of the same classroom when he believes there's a fire on the second floor, and evacuates the students through the hole.
    • "Between Dark and Dawn": Celestia and Luna could've went through the door to Sugarcube Corner like anypony else, but they instead decide to destroy the entire doorway.
  • The Owl House: Eda surprises Luz with a log of palistrom wood in "Hunting Palismen" when she comes in through the window of her bedroom. Which is on the second floor of her own house.
    King: [struggling to climb in] We could have used the door!
  • Phineas and Ferb:
    • Perry the Platypus breaks down the door to Dr. Doofenshmirtz's apartment a few too many times. Given the openness of their relationship, Doc doesn't even bother locking it. He even gave Perry his key. So whenever Perry bursts through the wall/door/ceiling/etc., Doofenshmirtz is justifiably annoyed.
    • At least once, Perry bursts in and Doofenshmirtz declares, "Perry the Platypus! You will PAY!" Perry takes out his wallet and pays for the broken door, and even gives extra when Doofenshmirtz asks if he thinks that door was plywood, not oak. "That's right, fork it over."
    • Taken to a ridiculous extreme when Doofenshmirtz builds a trap consisting of a door with a Perry-shaped hole in it, claiming to have been inspired by Perry breaking through the door... and the wall... and the ceiling... and the fridge door (apparently Perry was extremely hungry on that occasion).
    • In "Chez Platypus", Doofenshmirtz reinforces the lock on his door, but not the door itself, so when Perry goes to kick it down, he gets his foot stuck in the hole he made.
    • In "S'winter", Doofenshmirtz prepared a trap at the front door, but Perry evaded it because the maid forgot to lock the back door.
    • In "Tri-Stone Area", set in 27,000 B.C.E., Doofenshmirtz's ancestor only grunts and laughs, but when a platypus-like animal breaks through a hole in his cave, he makes primitive noises while pointing to the giant cave entrance, which is about two feet from where Perry broke in.
    • And when Perry knocked and Vanessa opened, she said Perry would have broken down the door anyway. And sure enough, Perry walks in with a bazooka over his shoulder, probably about to blow up the door anyway. Then the bazooka fires while setting it down, blowing up the wall like some of his other entries do. Doofenshmirtz is understandably upset.
    • In "The Mom Attractor", Perry must use a giant ape to break in and out leaving Doofenshmirtz even more annoyed than usual.
    • Norm the Giant Robot Man sometimes enters and exits by crashing through the walls. Doofenshmirtz claims he learned the habit from Perry.
  • The Powerpuff Girls:
    • It is a Running Gag that the Powerpuff Girls always leave the building they are in by smashing through the ceiling.
    • In their origin story, it was revealed that the Professor's house did not originally have the three large circular windows on the top floor. The Powerpuff Girls cut them out with their laser vision so they could leave easily and quickly without (relatively) damaging the house.
    • Mojo Jojo complains a few times that the Girls smashing through the walls of his evil lair has cost him a lot of money in repairs. Mojo lampshades this in the comic book story "Micro Managing" (DC run, issue #68) when Blossom arrives to discuss a matter with him and she knocks on the door:
      Mojo: Powerpuff Girl Blossom, what are you doing politely knocking on my door when you usually and rudely burst through my ceiling in an unwelcome and uninviting manner?
    • A commercial for The Powerpuff Girls (1998) showed them smashing through the ceiling, only for the hole to be patched with wood, then bricks only to get destroyed each time. The last shot finally shows the hole turned into an opening with an "Exit" sign...only for the girls to break through the wall.
    • Lampshaded in one episode where a Hollywood producer making a movie starring the girls has a breakaway wall ready for them to smash through, not that they really need a wall that breaks easily.
  • Regular Show:
    • "Jinx": After Mordecai locks the door to escape Ybgir, Rigby says that won't do any good — there's a big hole in the wall from when Ygbir escaped.
    • "Rage Against the TV": When Mordecai and Rigby finally get to The Hammer in the video game they're playing, Rigby assumes the Hammer will come bursting through some double doors in the arena. He breaks down the wall next to it instead.
  • Rock, Paper, Scissors: Within her debut episode, "Key Limes", Sandpaper makes her dynamic entrance by riding her motorcycle through the window into the titular trio's room, tearing down a portion of the wall. Paper tells her that they have a door that she could have used instead.
  • In the dream sequence Rugrats episode "Visitors from Outer Space", Angelica, after being abducted, steals a high-tech alien device and uses it to blast through several doors to escape from the ship. Finally, a prisoner who's escaping with her says, "You know, these doors do open automatically."
  • Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!;
    • Shaggy and Scooby are trapped in a cabin with the only door locked and the key on the outside (and no manual lock on the inside), so naturally, the two of them HAVE to break out some other way. Shaggy chooses to leap through the window—in order to grab the key, unlock the door, jump back through the window he busted, and open the now-unlocked front door.
    • As Shaggy and Scooby escape a villain (a supposed ghost of a Chinese emperor), this exchange occurs as they board up a door to hide behind:
      Shaggy: Ha! He won't be getting through that door!
      [the entire wall the villain's behind lifts up like a curtain]
      Shaggy: ...And wouldn't you know he comes through the wall?
    • This also happens when the gang thinks they have trapped Charlie the Funland robot, only for him to bust through the back of the crate they caught him in, and then through a wall behind that. This clues the gang in that this time they are not dealing with a mere human in a mask. Fortunately for them, at this point Charlie's creator arrives to lend a hand.
  • Secret Squirrel:
    • Secret Squirrel (at least in the original series) would always dismay his boss by never leaving through the door.
    • In Super Secret Secret Squirrel, it's his method of entrance. Usually non-destructive, though. Morocco Mole's attempt at the same — well, that varies.
    • Subverted in one episode where Secret actually enter the office through the front door. The same episode that showed the only time the chief was worried where Secret would pop up from today.
  • Sheep in the Big City had an episode where Big Bad General Specific is given superpowers by the Angry Scientist, and keeps leaving and entering the Secret Military Base through the ceiling, creating a new Impact Silhouette every time...except when he returns for the last time, and just walks through the door, even though this time the camera anticipated him smashing through the ceiling and has to pan down.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Referencing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, there's a scene in "The Old Man And The C-Student", where an elderly Native American man dramatically throws a water fountain through the window and jumps out, prompting the Old Jewish man to yell after him. Later in the scene, the man throws the fountain back through another window and jumps up again because he forgot his hat.
      Old Man: You know, the door was open, Chief Break-Everything!
    • Barney actually pulled off the parody in "So, It's Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show" — after Homer refused beer after being hospitalized from an exploding Duff can, Barney (unsuccessfully) smothers him with a pillow and does the fountain-through-the-window gag.
      Moe: He really needs a girlfriend.
    • In "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", when the family travels to Japan, Homer does this repeatedly by walking through shoji doors, apparently not getting the concept that they slide, insisting "I don't have time for that!". He even does this when he and Bart go to prison! (But only after the bail is paid, and the door is actually opened.)
    • Subverted for laughs in "The Springfield Connection", where Marge becomes a cop. One obstacle was a brick wall that she thought she had to climb. Chief Wiggum remarks "Huh, women. Always having trouble with the wall. They can't seem to use the door." The shot then goes to the rest of the recruits (all male) walking nonchalantly through a door.
    • In "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part 1", a furious Homer rams his car against the power plant's parking gate, smashing it. The apathetic security guard nonchalantly looks up and opens the remains of the gate.
  • Played with in Sonic Underground:
    Sleet: Go!
    Dingo: Y-you mean, through the door there?
    Sleet: No, through the wall, genius.
    Dingo: Okey dokey!
  • In the Imaginationland trilogy of South Park, this becomes a Running Gag, with Cartman always breaking through the window in the room, in a different spot if necessary.
    "Why is it so easy for children to break into the Pentagon?!?"
  • Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends went through this in the "Swarm" episode. Iceman blasts a wall, and Spidey opens the door beside the just-formed hole, adding, "The door WAS open."
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: In the "I Was a Teenage Gary" episode, when the bus for the convention arrives to pick them up, an overly excited Patrick smashes through the wall in SpongeBob's house, leaving a star-shaped hole right next to the open door. And also through the bus itself.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks: "No Small Parts": Not only does Shaxs ram into the side of the Pakled ship, he phasers his own exit from the Cerritos rather than wait for the doors.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Downfall of a Droid", instead of waiting for his rather incompetent replacement astromech droid to open a door, Anakin cuts through it. Most Jedi seem to prefer cutting holes in walls, even when a door is in plain sight.
  • Star Wars Rebels: In "The Wynkahthu Job", Ezra cuts through a door on board a derelict Imperial freighter. This bites him in the ass later when they need the now-nonexistent door for cover in a firefight.
  • Steven Universe: In "Onion Gang", Onion jumps through the screen-door at Steven's house.
  • Stroker and Hoop: In one episode, Coroner Rick thought Hoop's mom killed herself in prison, so he tried to climb the fence with barbed wire at the top to get into the yard. he's standing about two feet from a guard on his left and a door on his right.
    Guard: What the hell are you doing? You can use the door, you work here!
    Coroner Rick: [hands covered in his blood] I know, I know! Dumb idea.
  • In The Super Hero Squad Show, the Hulk is... about as bad with doors as the other versions. At one point, he's told to use the door, so he rips the doors off of their hinges, and smashes them to pieces. Afterwards, he decided he preferred his way.
  • In Superjail!, Jailbot only appears by crashing through walls, ceilings and even doors themselves. He'll inevitably destroy anything and everyone in his way, flying in a straight line with a wicked grin on his LED face. He will create far more chaos catching Jacknife than the small-time crook created in getting Jailbot's attention.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
    • In an episode, the now-addleminded Baxter walks through the wall five feet to the left of the door to April's office. April manages to trick him into leaving. When he realizes this and comes back, he walks past the hole he made earlier, past the door, and breaks through the wall on the other side. This is made funnier by the fact that the door was open at the time. Later in the episode, the Turtles run past both the first hole and the open door to go through the second hole.
    • He does this in a later appearance as well, breaking into a lab and leaving a Baxter-shaped hole in the wall to the left of an open door, which tips Raphael off as to who the culprit is.
  • Teen Titans (2003):
    • Virtually no-one can be bothered to use doors. They just break through windows, walls, and even the doors themselves! It's made even funnier by the fact that most of the doors open automatically.
    • This is more Robin's schtick in Teen Titans Go!, as he regularly leaves (and enters) Titan Tower through the windows rather than take the elevator down to the front door. Many examples are caused by him being a drama queen. The rest are likely him following in Batman's footsteps (as mentioned in the Comics section above).
  • Like the Powerpuff Girls, Underdog almost always smashes through a wall or ceiling when entering or leaving a building. One episode sees Underdog smash through a ship this way, leaving it to take on water. After giving his Hero Insurance catchphrase ("I'm a hero who never fails; I can't be bothered with such details."), the ship's crew calls him on such and insist he fix the hole, which Underdog does.
  • The Venture Bros.:
    • A classic example, where Orpheus opens a portal on the ceiling of the room Doc is stuck in (don't ask) and falls onto the floor covered in ectoplasm, causing Doc to deadpan "We have a door, Orpheus."
    • In the fourth season finale, Brock does a variation on this trope. He used a grappling gun to get into the ceiling of a building, despite there being a ladder five feet away from him.
      Shore Leave: Oh, there's a ladder right there!
      Brock: Yeah, that's a lot of fun.
  • In one episode of The Wild Thornberrys, Eliza, Darwin, and Donnie, are trying to cross an island as quickly as possible to catch a boat on the other side. On the way there, they have to climb a mountain. Eliza does it the hard and dirty way, while Darwin and Donnie simply take the visitor's trail that Eliza never sees.
  • When the first trailer of Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) came out, fans quickly began to joke about Wolverine's obvious problem with opening doors normally, since the trailer contains at least three scenes of him kicking a door in, with a few more by MRD soldiers. While the first episode does then indeed contain several scenes of Wolverine kicking doors, the second one actually shows him opening a door in Magneto's Citadel. However the same episode also contains a scene of Cyclops blasting dozens of doors open, apparently too lazy to open them by hand. During the rest of show, there seems to be a competition between Wolverine and Cyclops on how many doors to crush in or how many new entrances they can create.

    Real Life 
  • Police and military units will often avoid using the front door of a target building, to gain the element of surprise and to avoid the chance that whoever's on the inside is aiming right at the door with a finger on the trigger.
    • Case in point: "Operation NIMROD", the SAS assault during the Iranian Embassy Siege, London 1980. Some of the most famous images of the SAS are of officers breaking into the embassy through windows and balconies.
    • Standard practice in urban warfare is called mouse-holing: cutting (or blasting) a hole to move from room to room and building to building. As often as not, this is done because the needs of the military are different than the needs of the previous occupant, so even if there actually was a door, there still wasn't a viable entrance. Practiced by the Red Army during the house-to-house fighting in the battle for Berlin.
    • In a fortified building there is a good chance that the occupants have boobytrapped any obvious entrances. Making your own entrance is not only the quickest, but also the safest, option.
  • Keith Moon of The Who had a few instances of this:
    • Alice Cooper told a story where Keith left his tape recorder in Pete Townshend's room. Unable to wake Pete, Keith dug a hole through the wall to retrieve it. When the hotel manager saw it, Keith claimed rats did it.
    • During a tour with The Small Faces, he dug a hole through the wall to ask their drummer, Kenney Jones (who would take Keith's place in The Who after his death), if he wanted to go for a drink.
    • Once, Keith arrived at a hotel in his Rolls Royce. When he and his driver got out, they were told they couldn't park there. Keith took the keys, got behind the wheel and drove the car through the front of the hotel, right up to the front desk. He then tossed the keys to the shocked desk clerk and asked him to have it parked.
  • There's the briefly fashionable criminal enterprise known as ram-raiding; ram a stolen SUV or backhoe through the wall of an electronics or jewelry store, help yourselves to as much valuable loot as you can carry and run like hell for the getaway car parked in a handy side street. Something of a lost art these days, because most storefronts positioned in such a way that you could get enough speed up to ram through the frontage now have waist-high bollards in front of them. These bollards can stop anything short of a main battle tank. The placement of these bollards in front of federal buildings became standard practice after 9/11.
  • In some office buildings, the doors are solid wood in a metal frame, which is a nuisance for firefighters trying to get through if the door is locked. On the other hand, the wall next to the door is usually simple drywall and can easily be punched through in order to reach in and unlock the door. Even better, some of those building will have ordinary glass windows next to the door.

Crash!!!
...
''Oops, my bad.''

Alternative Title(s): Bursting Through A Door, Breaking Through A Door, Kicking A Door Open, Kicking Open A Door, Kicking Down A Door, Kicking A Door Down, Kicking A Door, Dynamic Exit

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Itona vs. the Classroom Wall

In demonstration of his strength, new student Itona makes his entrance by demolishing the rear wall of Class 3-E, much to the students' chagrin.

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Main / ThereWasADoor

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