It's a tense moment. You know the other guy is three or 30 floors down/up. The only way to here from there is the elevator. But LOOK! The elevator! The lighted numbers show it's MOVING! The other guy is headed right this way! Suspense builds. The elevator approaches. It stops here. There's a pause. Possibly a bell rings. Then... the doors open to reveal... nothing. There's nobody inside.
It's at this point it's revealed that the other guy is:
A. On top of the elevator
B. Under the elevator
C. Doing a Ceiling Cling
D. Already on this floor by another route (possibly right behind you)
E. Something even worse.
Depending on the context, the supposed occupant of the elevator may be the hero (in which case there'll be at least a platoon's worth of bad guys' weaponry pointed at, or possibly already emptied into, the door when it opens), the villain or the monster. A variant is for the elevator door to open to reveal a comrade of whatever side is waiting, either dead or tied up, thus sending a message.
Subtrope of Inexplicable Cornered Escape. Empty Elevators are the subversion of an Elevator Snare, when the chaser outruns a chase-ee who took a lift.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: In the first episode of 2nd Gig, a terrorist has a look of surprise when the lift opens to reveal an empty elevator, only to be shot in the face by Batou who's wearing thermoptic camouflage. Incidentally, Batou isn't happy at being ordered to go up in the elevator; the only reason the Major told him to do so was because the terrorists were expecting the attack to come via the roof or stairs, and had the hostages there as a Human Shield, plus she used a ghost-hacked terrorist to kill most of the other terrorists waiting in ambush. The scene serves as Bookends when Batou and the Major use the empty elevator trope to assassinate the Big Bad in the final episode, sniping him from an unexpected direction when he's surrounded by CIA bodyguards.
- Gunslinger Girl
- In the anime, Elsa does this during her introductory action scene; as a Child Soldier it's easy for her to hide off to the side of the elevator before jumping out and shooting the guard with an assault rifle.
- In the manga when Hilshire has to do an assassination without his cyborg Triela, he tapes down a button on the elevator control panel so he can take the bodyguard guarding the lift lobby by surprise, shooting him in the back of the head when he goes to investigate the empty lift. The lift stays on that floor until Hilshire rips the tape off so he can take it to the ground floor again to make his getaway.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: In the Whole Episode Flashback epilogue, Mista is about to enter an elevator when he sees its coming down, and takes cover when it opens to find nobody inside except a boulder in the corner. Then he realizes Scolippi is hiding to the side of the elevator.
Film — Live-Action
- The Art of War: The villain is in a hall of elevators, which start opening at random around him one by one. The hero then steps out from the end of the corridor, not having been in the elevator at all, so it was apparently just done for Mind Screw.
- Batman Forever: Two-Face's men blast away at the elevator which arrives at their floor, perforating the door and riddling its interior with bullets. The doors open to reveal — nothing. Three seconds later, Batman bursts out, starting the first fight scene. It's not explained how he avoided the gunfire, although he probably just hid above the car.
- In Deep Rising, the mercenaries are searching through the abandoned cruise ship looking for any passengers or crew members, but none can be found. Then the elevator activates, and they can see it moving to their floor. They keep their weapons aimed at the door, but it's empty. Except for the blood-covered walls inside the elevator, that is.
- Evolution: The military points their guns at an elevator that turns out to be empty. Then ape-like aliens ambush them from an alternate opening.
- Played with in GoldenEye. The elevator reaches its destination and the doors open, revealing Natalya apparently unconscious on the floor as a guard walks in in confusion. Cue James Bond dropping down from the ceiling and smashing him into the wall while Natalya gets up.
- High Risk has Li driving a van into an elevator after crashing through a lobby full of enemy mooks, before sending the van upwards to the penthouse. More mooks on the penthouse prepares firing into the main elevator, only to find it empty before Li comes driving out from an alternate entrance.
- Jason Bourne. A hit team is climbing a stairwell around a cage elevator. They peer closely at the elevator as it passes and see Bourne isn't there, not realising that Bourne is actually riding the elevator counterweight.
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. While the Indoraptor is busy eating someone, Eversoll is able to sneak past to where an empty elevator is waiting. Turns out there are people inside, but cowering up against the sides of the elevator out of sight. As Eversoll knows the security code to use the lift he shoves a woman aside so he can enter it into the keypad. Unfortunately she responds by screaming at the top of her lungs, alerting the predator to their presence.
- Men in Black II: J, K and the worm guys arrive back at MIB Central, and the garbage can robot neatly peppers the elevator they arrive in with bullets... but they're all doing a Ceiling Cling.
- Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz. A corridor full of German guards wait nervously for Dolokhov to come up to their level, but the doors open to reveal a huge Berserker zombie who immediately attacks them. Dolokhov had ducked into the roof hatch to escape the zombie, so he just drops back into the elevator when the shooting stops, and finishes off the zombie who's now crawling after having killed everyone in the corridor and soaked up all their bullets.
- The Professional: "Someone's coming up. Someone serious." (The hero's not in it, but as in Die Hard he has placed one of the bad guys in there instead.)
- Raw Deal (1986). After the mobsters use up all their ammo shooting up the empty elevator, Arnold Schwarzenegger enters by sliding down the ventilation shaft.
- Resident Evil: Afterlife. The Umbrella Corporation mooks are pointing their guns at the elevator while Alice slips out of a roof vent behind them. In Resident Evil: Retribution as the elevator pad descends to the level of the waiting mooks, a round frizbee-like gadget is tossed out which fires bullets in all directions. The infiltrators turn out to be lying flat on the pad so the bullets don't kill them.
- Played with in The Silence of the Lambs. In search for Lecter, the police find an already empty elevator.
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: In 20th Century San Francisco, Kirk et al. are being chased through a hospital by cops. Our heroes beat the cops to the elevator. In an attempt to head them off, the cops rush down the stairs and wait for the elevator to arrive on a lower floor. As the elevator doors open, the cops draw their guns and yell "freeze!" But the elevator is empty; Kirk and co have been beamed away by Scotty in the nick of time. (The incidental music is very proud of their implementation of this trope.)
- The Stone Killer: The mercenaries sent to kill several mobsters are hanging beneath the elevator using abseiling gear. Once the mobsters have reached their floor and the doors close, they climb in through the service hatch, enter the room and kill everyone. The mercenaries are shown rehearsing for the attack using a dummy elevator in their training camp in the desert.
- In Time Chasers, Nick and Lisa evade the bad guys this way. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew are not particularly impressed: "They took the stairs! They're masters of evasion!"
- Averted in X-Men Origins: Wolverine - they're in the elevator, right in the firing line of two dozen mooks with automatic weapons. So they send in the Merc with the Mouth to "clean up" first.
Literature
- Discworld: In Thief of Time, the Auditors are waiting for their adversaries to come to them in an elevator.
- The Executioner. In "Tiger War", some drug soldiers are on the top floor of a warehouse, and the only way up is a slow service elevator. Mack Bolan sends up a wheelbarrow packed with explosives, with a large sign saying ULTIMATUM attached to it. When Bolan hears the elevator reach the top floor, he activates the detonator.
Live-Action TV
- In the second season finale of Being Human, Kemp and one of his men watch the elevator descend expecting Mitchell to be there for them to kill. The door opens to reveal a dead body while Mitchell reveals himself elsewhere in the compound.
- Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor does this to fool the guards in "The Deadly Assassin". Quoth Castellan Spandrell (basically a police commissioner):
- In Heroes episode "Five Years Gone", Matt Parkman and a group of guards wait with guns pointed for Hiro to come out of the elevator, but when the doors open, Hiro is nowhere to be found.
- Person of Interest.
- In "Last Call", a gang of kidnappers start shooting the moment the lift doors open to reveal a suit...on a coat hanger. Cue Knee-capping by the Man in the Suit, who came up the stairs.
- In "Prophets", several mooks are waiting for Root in a hotel lobby. First the L appears in one lift indicator, then in all the others. After several lifts open at once a smoke grenade rolls out, eventually followed by Root when the lobby is full of smoke.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation. In "The Hunted", Worf and a security team are waiting to detain a Super-Soldier who is in the turbolift. They find it empty except for a phaser set on overload.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: One side-quest at Skopp City involves searching for a suspect who is shown entering an elevator on surveillance footage and suddenly disappearing when it arrives at the next floor.
- Batman: Arkham Series:
- Near the end of Batman: Arkham City, Batman rides an elevator up to the observation deck of Wonder Tower. The Big Bad's henchmen are waiting at the top with guns pointed at the doors. Fortunately, the access hatch is open, allowing Batman to climb out of the car and walk out onto the glass canopy above the armed henchmen and perform a takedown.
- Batman: Arkham Origins: Batman also attempted this trick earlier in his career; unfortunately, Bane was Genre Savvy enough to reach up through the ceiling and grab him.
- Hitman: Blood Money has a specific mechanic whereby you can climb onto the roof of any lift in the game to achieve this effect, in probable homage to Leon/The Professional.
- During the Asgard Manor section of Max Payne, there is a point when Max sees an elevator coming up, the doors open, and it's empty. And then a grenade flies out of it. The enemy is actually on top of the elevator carriage, and jumps down through the trapdoor after the grenade explodes.
- The opening cut-scene in Perfect Dark's second mission shows a soldier guarding an elevator. Suddenly the door opens... but the guard doesn't see Joanna hiding on the ceiling, and when he goes to investigate, she knocks him out.
- In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, Michael has to thwart Cipher's raid on ONBS. During this, he gets on an elevator and rides it up a level - the elevator is completely empty when he boards, but when he leaves, there's a Peon right behind him!
Web Comics
- In Sam & Fuzzy, the Elevator Snare ends with the door opening and Sam having escaped through an opening in the ceiling.
