A Chase Scene Trope. Our hero flees the pursuing bad guys through a back door which leads to a kitchen, usually a commercial kitchen, like the kind you see in restaurants, though writers have used an ordinary home kitchen or the kitchen set of a cooking show. Danger is escalated as not only do you have to escape the gaining henchmen, but dodge prep cooks, flaming stoves, and the occasional angry chef waving a meat cleaver or big knife yelling "Hey! You can't be back here!"
This setting will also turn up the heat (no pun intended) because a kitchen will have knives, glass, cleaning agents and boiling liquids - all of which can do a lot of harm to the human body, making it a veritable arsenal of improvised weapons for everyone involved.
Bottom line: if you can't stand the heat, escape through the kitchen.
Usually ends with them chasing each other through the backdoor into some shady alley, where the fight goes on.
But whatever you do, just don't stay in there.
Subtrope of Excuse Me, Coming Through! and sister trope of Crashing Through the Harem. See also Improvised Weapon. Not to be confused with Cooking Duel. This trope may also appear after a Diner Brawl or a Wok Fu scene. Can involve Frying Pan of Doom.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Used in an ad for AT&T cell phones, as the hero runs through the kitchen in order to head them off at the pass (in this case, the back door of the restaurant/kitchen).
- This
Gillette Deodorant commercial features an escape through the kitchen, it just isn't very fast paced like other examples.
Anime and Manga
- An early episode of Darker than Black has Hei and Chiaki escaping from two hostile Contractors through the kitchen of the restaurant they were just eating at.
Fan Works
- In the Star Trek: Voyager fanfic "The Flux of Mortal Things", B'Elanna and Seven run through an animal slaughterhouse to escape an assassination attempt.
Films — Live-Action
- Cast a Deadly Spell. After a restaurant owner tries to put a written curse on him, Philip Lovecraft goes after him into the kitchen to return it. The curse manifests when a demon comes out of a pot on a stove. Philip joins forces with a cook to defeat it.
- Cleanskin: At the hotel, Ewan spots Ash and chases him into the hotel kitchen where they get into a brutal fight.
- Enemy of the State: Daniel runs through a the kitchen of a club to escape the pursuing federal agents.
- In Final Destination 5, Sam reserves the restaurant for an after-hours date with Molly. Peter, who has become unstable after Candice's death, interrupts the date and tells them that he will kill Molly to take her lifespan. After Peter draws a gun, Sam and Molly both escape to the kitchen. Peter pursues and running chase/battle ensues.
- In Freebie and the Bean, a shooter crashes his van and flees into a restaurant kitchen, pursued by Bean. Dozens of plates are destroyed, and a giant pan of of sauce is emptied onto him. Bean uses a Frying Pan of Doom to knock him back, then shoots him, causing him to fall onto a lit grill.
- Fright Night (1985): Charlie and Amy run through the kitchen of a club to escape the vampire.
- The Fugitive: During the confrontation between Kimble and the villain at the hotel.
- The flashback in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, with Kid!Snakeeyes and Kid!Stormshadow.
- In the Line of Fire, though they're actually not chasing anyone, just rapidly evacuating the President after an assassination attempt.
- James Bond
- Never Say Never Again. The assassin trying to kill James at Shrublands follows him into a kitchen and a fight breaks out, complete with a terrified female chef.
- One scene in The Living Daylights involves a full-on fight between a British intelligence mook and a KGB hitman in the kitchen of an MI6 safehouse.
- Quantum of Solace. The gunfight in the opera house between James and several bodyguards leads from a restaurant and passes through the kitchen.
- Juncture: After filing to kill Shaver, Anna flees through the hotel's kitchen.
- Jurassic Park. Two velociraptors pursue the children into a kitchen and try to hunt them down inside it.
- The Karate Kid (1984) - Daniel sneaks into a country club's kitchen in hopes of meeting Ali. But when he notices her dancing with her former boyfriend he turns to leave, colliding into a waiter carrying a tray.
- Kung Fu The Legend Continues: The Ancient One just won a lottery and was rich. Caine and The Ancient One get in a fight in the kitchen against some Kung Fu punks who want the ticket while escaping a golddigger at a formal dinner in a hotel.
- Leonard Part 6: Monroe is shooting at Leonard with a revolver, switches to an uzi, then switches to another revolver, and his shooting "accidentally" opens a bag of coffee beans into a coffee grinder, breaks a couple eggs for frying, and punctures a carton of oil which some eager chefs help themselves to for cooking.
- Nikita is cornered in the kitchen by several bodyguards after making a hit in a restaurant, and dives down the garbage chute to escape being blown up by a rifle grenade.
- Outland. A lengthy Chase Fight through the colony ends up with a brutal fistfight in a kitchen. At one point, the criminal O'Niel is chasing throws drugs in a pan of boiling oil to destroy the evidence, but our hero plunges his bare hand in and fishes it out.
- The hotel chase in The Rock goes through a kitchen before heading outside.
- The Rocketeer: Cliff Secord is chased by Lothar and other gangsters through the kitchen of the South Seas Club. Justified as Cliff was disguised as a waiter.
- Rush Hour: The two heroes run through a kitchen and an explosion scares off the Mooks.
- Sister Act: Dolores witnesses a mobster committing a crime, and she makes a hasty getaway through the kitchen of the Reno casino where she performs.
- During the lengthy foot chase in Takers, Welles and Hatch pursue Jesse through the restaurant kitchen in the Munroe Building. This is where Hatch is shot and killed.
- In Tamara, Chloe and Jesse have to fight a Brainwashed and Crazy Kisha in the deserted kitchen of the hospital (although, oddly, one the deep fryers is still running).
- The Thing (2011). When a human is exposed as the shapeshifting alien it's torched by a flamethrower, and thoughtfully staggers into the kitchen where it can be incinerated within the stainless steel walls without burning the entire base down (that comes later).
Literature
- The Bartimaeus Trilogy: In book 1, when Bartimaeus tries to evade the Big Bad's guards by running through the kitchen, the "chef" turns out to be his old enemy, Faquarl.
- In the Stephen King story Lunch at the Gotham Cafe (found in the collection Everything's Eventual), two characters flee the insane maitre d' by going through the kitchen.
Live Action TV
- Booth chases a suspect through one in Bones. Brennan tried to help by throwing a head of lettuce at the guy and Booth uses a Frying Pan of Doom to knock the guy out. It is extremely funny.
- The Book of Boba Fett. Played for laughs when Boba and Fennec Shand sneak into Jabba's palace via the kitchen, only to be confronted by a chef droid swinging six cleavers simultaneously. Boba is squaring off to fight only for Fennec to pop up behind it and cut its head off. A rat catcher droid actually gives them more trouble, as Boba struggles to catch the small droid as it scrambles through every tight space in the kitchen.
- Daredevil
- Season 2 opens with Matt Murdock chasing down some diamond thieves who are evading the cops that are pursuing them. He manages to corner one of the thieves in a Japanese restaurant kitchen and beats the guy senseless. Once Matt is gone, the kitchen staff get their turn to beat the shit out of the thief.
- In ".380", Frank Castle gets into a Diner Brawl with a couple of hitmen. They end up behind the bar and make use of the various cooking implements there as per this trope.
- In Dollhouse, Paul and Echo's fight starts in a kitchen.
- Forever: In "Social Engineering" Henry and Jo first encounter hacktivist Liz while she is working in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant, a job she took in order to record a political event held there. When Henry recognizes Boltzmann's entropy formula tattooed on her shoulder, she pulls down a shelf and makes a break for it, and Henry and Jo give chase.
- Game of Thrones. During the climatic battle in Season 4, several wildlings burst into the mess hall of Castle Black, where they're handily butchered by the Nights Watch cooks. Special mention goes to a cook who hits a wildling in the face with a pot of boiling water, then bashes his skull in with the same pot, and another (whom astute book readers will recognize as Three-Fingered Hobb) who hacks a guy to death with a giant cleaver!
- Gotham: In "Pilot", when Mario Pepper flees from Jim Gordon, the last place he runs through is a commercial kitchen, where he snatches up a knife he later uses to try to kill Jim.
- Harrow: In "Sub Silentio" ("In Silence"), Fern sends Callan a photo of Serial Killer Francis Chester. Callan looks at it and realises that Francis is his fellow kitchen hand. Francis then chases Callan through the restaurant kitchen; a chase that ends when Callan runs into the street and gets hit by a scooter.
- Person of Interest. Played with in "Booked Solid", when Hersh captures Reese and takes him at gunpoint into the kitchen where there's plenty of Noodle Implements for a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique. Reese frees himself and they end up fighting with kitchen knives.
- In the Vega$ (1978) pilot, Dan Tanna chases a rapist through a casino kitchen.
- Treadstone. The home kitchen version happens in "The Berlin Proposal". Petra returns to her old apartment in Moscow, and a woman living opposite lends her a fuse to get the lights working. Petra invites the woman inside and puts on a kettle...which she then smashes across her face, leading to a brutal fight to the death between the two women, both former KGB agents.
Video Games
- Little Nightmares: Many sequences of this in the Kitchen area, with Six running from one or both of the Twin Chefs while jumping on tables, throwing food, and generally causing havoc.
Western Animation
- Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: An episode has a chase scene in a TV studio - they bump into a TV show chef, just as he is in the middle of explaining how much care today's dish requires.
