Quotes / Air-Vent Passageway

"2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through."

— The Evil Overlord List

"Air ducts in a modern office are 18 inches wide. So if you need to make a quick escape and are older than 4... you won't fit. A more viable option is the subceiling. Once you're in the subceiling, you can get to a bathroom or closet, and make your way out from there."

— Michael Westen, Burn Notice

"There's Nazis in the walls!"

— Danger 5

"I love 1958, no-one's seen Die Hard. Or Alien. Or Die Hard 2, or Aliens. [...] There's always a ventilation shaft!"

— The Doctor, Doctor Who, "Dreamland"

"Why, Thor, god of thunder, is trying to enter my building!"

— The Mythbusters busting this trope (or, at least, doing it without being noticed...)

"In the movies, ventilation shafts are the escape route of choice for heroes trapped in industrial buildings. They're clean and roomy and soundproof, and will take you anywhere you want to go all, like a Habitrail system for the beleaguered protagonist on the run. I don't know where Hollywood buys their ventilation shafts, but they don't use the same supplier as the museum."

— Hope Adams, "Chaotic"

"Attention test prisoners attempting to escape though the air ducts: I don't know what nonsense you learned on TV, but in real life, air ducts just lead to the air conditioning unit. It's also pretty dusty, so if you've got asthma, chances are you're gonna die up there and we'll be smelling it for weeks because — again — the air ducts aren't a secret escape hatch. They're how we ventilate the facility."

—Warden Cave Johnson, Portal 2

Breaking out, huh? Try the ventilation shaft, it leads right out of the cellblock.

—Random Helpful Prisoner throwing a lampshade in Sniper: Path of Vengeance

"Oh yeah, no one would think of looking for us in THE VENT!"

— Cale Tucker, Titan A.E.

Hermes: I thought we installed alien-proof air vents!
Scruffy: It's on ma list.

— Futurama, "Murder on the Planet Express"

Hondo Ohnaka: Well?
Gwarm: We've secured the ship, but she seems deserted.
Hondo: Imbecile! That is the oldest trick in the book. The runts are probably hiding in the VENTILATION SYSTEM.
Gwarm: Oh, right. Didn't think of that.
Hondo: Why does that not surprise me?

— Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "A Test of Strength"

"Looks like Parker's going to have to climb through the air duct again..."

— Parker, Leverage

It's the law that all ventilation shafts be at least large enough to fit a single Adam Jensen in them.

— Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive, the rant on this page.

The grill made a tremendous clanging sound as it crashed onto the floor. Kurumi, in her UNIPF combat fatigues, emerged from the ventilation shaft. "Terminal Dogma is off-limits, my ass."

— HERZ, chapter 4

I've never actually seen a vent shaft a man could fit through. But, I assume they are, at all times, occupied by Special Forces commandos, lab technicians, children, or Bruce Willis.
...
I never want to see the inside of another air duct again. Unfortunately, I enjoy playing video games and that wish is a literal impossibility with that hobby.

— The Dark Id, regarding Resident Evil and Metal Gear: Ghost Babel respectively

BE ADVISED: the vent is being blocked off until it is permanently sealed. Do not un-block the vent. Custodial service had a pull a couple out after Friday beers. There will be no more "Mission: Impossible Runs."

Decorum, people!

— A memo from the Orochi Group, The Secret World

"Vents are so much bigger in films."

— David, Hilda episode 5

Marco: How am I gonna get out of here?
River: I know! You can use the AC vent!
[camera pans to show a vent in the corner of the ceiling]
Marco: The dungeon has air conditioning?
River: It's a dungeon, not a torture chamber.

— Star vs. the Forces of Evil

If I'm not mistaken, one of the main purposes of these rooms was to stop SCP-173 from moving further in the event of a containment breach. So, whose brilliant idea was it to put A GODDAMN MAN-SIZED VENTILATION DUCT in there?!

—A very annoyed researcher, SCP – Containment Breach

"If I owned a castle, first thing I'd do: put padlocks on the human sized grates that clearly lead somewhere else!"

—Crow, Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffing Wizards of the Lost Kingdom 2

It was a completely different world, a world within a world, a world of darkness and silence, of a thousand curving and intersecting tunnels, some large, some small. For hours it seemed to him that he had been wandering through a tomb, moving through the corridors of a dead ship, the lone surviving crewman. There was some contact with the other world, of course, the world of the spaceship outside...each compartment had its metal grill, and he passed many of them. But there were like doors that only he knew existed. He met no one in these corridors, there was no danger of sudden discovery and arrest in these dark alleys....
His boots had made too much noise as he started out, so he had slipped them off, hanging them from his belt and moving on in his stocking feet. As he went from duct to duct, he had an almost ridiculous feeling of freedom and power. In every sense, he was an invisible man. Not one soul on this great ship knew he was here, or even suspected. He had the run of the ship, complete freedom to go wherever he chose. He could move from compartment to compartment as silently and invisibly as if he had no substance at all.

— Gold In The Sky, by Alan E. Nourse.

"WELL. DON'T YOU JUST FEEL SO PROUD OF YOURSELF. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU EXPECT TO ACCOMPLISH BY CRAWLING THROUGH THE VENTS. EXCEPT A FACE FULL OF HOT FUMES FROM THE FURNACE. SPEAKING OF WHICH, WHY DON'T YOU JUST KEEP CRAWLING THROUGH THESE VENTS AND JUST BURN YOURSELF UP FOR ME? IT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE MUCH EASIER."

— The Antikythera Supercomputer, Wynncraft

Leader made her way through the ventilation ducts of the apartment complex, following a path that was not on any blueprint to a location that did not exist on any NERV database thanks to some persuasive efforts towards the MAGI. She exited the final ventilation grate and emerged into a cavern of metal.

— Rise of the Minisukas

Jean-Bob: Who knew there were little hallways for frogs above the hallways for people?
Rogers: It's called a ventilation system.
Jean-Bob: What's it for?
Rogers: Spying, of course!

— The Swan Princess: Royally Undercover

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