Basic Trope: Monster or assassin clinging to the ceiling scoops up victim while still hanging there.
- Straight: Carmine is walking through a dark hallway, searching for a monster... unaware that it's right above her. As she passes underneath, it reaches down and pulls her up.
- Exaggerated:
- The monster kidnaps Carmine from the top of the skyscraper she's walking by.
- The monster kidnaps her when she's walking under open sky.
- Downplayed: Carmine is walking down a staircase, and the monster lifts her up from a step behind.
- Justified:
- The beast has Super-Strength.
- And really, how many of us make a habit of looking up?
- Inverted:
- Carmine gets the literal drop on the creature, leaping down on top of it in an ambush.
- Alternatively, Carmine is dragged off from below.
- Subverted: Carmine doesn't notice that that the monster is right above her until it reaches down. However she reacts fast enough to shoot it.
- Double Subverted: Unfortunately for her it's Immune to Bullets.
- Parodied:
- The monster tries to snatch up Carmine, but she proves a little too heavy and it loses its grip instead, resulting in both going down in a tangle of limbs.
- The monster's grabbing limb is just a bit too short, so it constantly just misses Carmine whenever she passes below it.
- Zig Zagged: The first time the monster appears, it successfully pulls this on Carmine. Through the rest of the story, sometimes it works, sometimes the intended victim escapes, and sometimes the monster attacks from below if that's easier.
- Averted: The monster never clings to the ceiling, or its intended victims always look up in time to evade it.
- Enforced: "I loved this scene when it appeared in Ceiling Monster 2, so let's do a variant of that gag."
- Lampshaded: "How is that thing staying up there?"
- Invoked: Survivors find a mysteriously intact room, they roll in an explosive decoy, the ceiling creature's meal blows up, killing many and dropping the rest for the survivors to bullet sweep. The first comment: "Just like fishing."
- Exploited: Carmine's Uncle Evulz gives her a hat with a wide brim that will cut off her peripheral vision upward before sending her to visit a certain cave.
- Defied:
- While searching for the monster, the ceiling is the first place Carmine looks.
- Carmine is Properly Paranoid and wears a necklace and cowl with sharp spikes on it. She also keeps a handgun trained on the space directly above her, just in case.
- Discussed: "Judging by her wounds, the victim was yanked directly off the floor by something."
- Conversed: "You got Ceiling Monster 3? Isn't that 'yank the victim straight up' schtick getting old?"
- Deconstructed: The monster snatches Carmine by the head, but her body stays.
- Reconstructed: Carmine shoots the monster before it can render her fully defenseless. She has a few bruises from the fall, but at least she knows never to wear a baseball cap to an infestation, no matter how much the light stings her eyes.
Back to Vertical Kidnapping
