Basic Trope: A person being chased escapes in an elevator.
- Straight: Alice is being chased by Bob, a Serial Killer. She jumps into an open elevator, and the door closes with Bob just an inch away.
- Exaggerated: The elevator closes abruptly on its own without Alice pressing any buttons.
- Downplayed: The elevator has glass doors that Bob could conceivably break, but for whatever reason, he never tries.
- Justified: There is no staircase she could use.
- Inverted: Alice takes the elevator to Bob.
- Bob's ghost haunts an elevator that Alice was using... But just as he has materialised in front of her in an attempt to kill her, the doors open and she escapes.
- Alice just needs to escape from a malfunctioning elevator.
- Subverted:
- Bob shoots Alice through the closed elevator door.
- For whatever reason, the elevator door doesn't close in time.
- Just as the door is about to close, Bob sticks his hand in between them, activating the sensors and causing the door to reopen.
- Alice escapes, only to find Bob waiting in front of the elevator doors when she reaches her floor.
- Bob manages to open the outer doors leading to the elevator shaft and cuts the cords holding the elevator up, causing Alice to plummet to her death.
- Double Subverted:
- The elevator has already left, so Alice is unharmed.
- Alice pushes Bob out of the way so the door can close.
- The elevator is an old model without sensors; when Bob sticks his hand between the doors they start crushing his fingers, incapacitating him for long enough that Alice can escape unharmed after all.
- Alice anticipated that Bob would be waiting for her, so she pushes the emergency stop button and calls the police to rescue her.
- ... Or so he thought. In fact she had already gotten out by the time he managed to cut through it.
- Parodied: Bob is no serial killer, just a really annoying coworker. Whenever she reaches the elevator first at the end of the day, she starts pressing the buttons as if her life depended on it just because she would rather not listen to his inane rants on the way down.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice takes the elevator from one floor to another, other times she takes the stairs, for a variety of reasons.
- Averted: Alice takes the stairs, not the elevator.
- Enforced:
- Product Placement by the company that installed the elevators in the show's network's building.
- An homage to one of the writer's favourite films that featured a particularly memorable one of these.
- Lampshaded: "Did nobody tell you to always use the stairs in an emergency, Alice?"
- Invoked:
- Alice notices an elevator is (about to stop) on her floor and dives in.
- Alice knew that the fourth floor could be dangerous before she went upstairs, so made sure all elevators in the building that could reach that floor would be there in case things went wrong.
- Exploited: Alice was escaping together with Claire. They immediately start planning what to do next now that they don't run the risk of Bob hearing them.
- Defied:
- Bob disabled all the elevators.
- Bob has a partner wait in the lobby, just in case Alice attempts this.
- Alternatively, Alice realizes that this isn't a very smart plan and takes the stairs instead.
- Discussed: "I was too scared to think. Just saw the thick metal doors and hoped they would put enough distance between him and me..."
- Conversed: "Why do they always go that way? What if the elevator stops halfway down or something?" "But it looks cooler than just running down the stairs, right?"
- Implied: We don't see how Alice escaped... However, attentive viewers would notice that an elevator which was on Alice's floor in the escape scene suddenly is back on the first floor when the police investigates the area in the next scene. She also has shoes with a unique footprint that can't be found on the stairs.
- Played for Laughs: Loud and unfitting (or even torturous) elevator music starts playing as Alice escapes. Cut to Bob, who somehow can hear it outside the elevator shaft, dancing as Alice covers her ears in dismay.
Back to Elevator Escape
