You're gonna need to pony up some liquid assets quickly, Foxie.
Maintenance worker: Are you going to dive into the pool?
Diver: No, I'm going to dive into my martini glass over there.
Diver: No, I'm going to dive into my martini glass over there.
Maintenance worker: [putting up "Pool Closed for Repairs" sign while diver dives] Good. At least that's not empty.
— MAD: Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions
You know the gag. A person makes a masterful dive into a swimming pool, discovering too late that the pool doesn't have water in it. Amusing Injury ensues. It's fairly popular in comedy, and typically Played for Laughs, although more dramatic examples do exist.
A common subtrope of High-Dive Hijinks.
Examples:
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Advertising
- This
anti-drug Public Service Announcement from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America is a rare serious take on the trope.
Before you go and do something you've never done before, you'd just better know ... what you're jumping into.
Comic Books
- Les 4 As: The Franco Belgian Comic has a more serious example: In one book, a mafia gang used that as a method of execution. By the end of the book, they're using "empty the pool" as a Deadly Euphemism.
- Archie Comics:
- One strip has Archie hanging out at the Lodge's residence just as Mr. Lodge is about to take a dive... before realizing Archie had drained the pool to find a dime. Since this is a comedy, the pool isn't too deep and Mr. Lodge survives via Unexplained Recovery.
- In another story, Archie arrives at the Lodge's and makes a beeline for the pool...unaware that Mr. Lodge emptied it to be cleaned. Archie is able to avoid serious injury by grabbing the diving board, and throughout the story continues to have more near-misses. Mr. Lodge resorts to having Archie tied to a chair for the rest of his visit.
- Played with in the Asterix series: whenever a pool comes up, Obelix will usually want to take a dive. But because of water displacement and the fact that he’s so faaabulously well-covered, it’ll be empty pretty quickly.
- Not Brand Echh: In a splash page featuring Marvel's self-parody characters working at a carnival, the Sub-Moron is diving into a teacup, when someone tells him it's empty. "Never mind that, who left in the spoon?"
- The Smurfs: Hefty in the comic book story "The Smurf Menace" makes a masterful dive into an empty river bed. A few Smurfs also make empty swimming pool dives in "The Smurf Garden" when Gargamel designs it to drain all the water from the pool and trap the Smurfs in it.
Comic Strips
- The Far Side had a comic where a man is performing a stunt where he dives into a bucket of water, but a passing janitor moves the bucket, causing the man to go Oh, Crap! as he is about to hit the ground face first.
Films — Live-Action
- During Frankie's pool party in High Risk, Frankie took a jump... and complains where's the water after hitting the bottom face-down, in one of his many Amusing Injuries moment.
Frankie: [deadpan, before passing out] I'm okay...
- In the backstory of the Hulk Hogan film Mr. Nanny, this happened to the Big Bad. While fighting Hulk's character, the villain accidentally ran off the roof of a building and landed head-first in the empty pool of the nextdoor hotel. It would have killed him, but his afro cushioned the fall. Nonetheless, he needed to have a metal plate put on afterwards.
- In Scanners III: The Takeover, this is faciliated by the villainess through Psychic-Assisted Suicide, as she eliminates one of her rivals by forcing him to dive headfirst into an empty pool at his mansion.
- The main character of Massacre at Central High tricks one of the bullies to do this by turning off the lights at the school swimming pool. The guy doesn't even bother to check if there's any water, he just goes for it.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child: When Yvonne does her swimming pool dives at night, Freddy attacks her by turning the swimming platform into a giant hand to crush her. She jumps off the platform to escape, but the pool morphs into an empty one in mid-jump.
- Kinds of Kindness: Played for drama. Rebecca is convinced that her twin Ruth is the prophesied healer of the cult in "R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich" and tells a story where she drunkenly fell into her family's drained pool and was seemingly severely injuerd, but later awoke right as rain, as evidence of Ruth's healing powers. Later, to ensure that Ruth fulfills the apparent requirement of having a dead twin sister, Rebecca willingly kills herself by jumping into the same empty pool.
Literature
- Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic: The punchline of "Fancy Dive" is that the swimming pool that Melissa is diving into turns out to be empty.
- This fatal conclusion from a CYOA book.
- Clue: Discussed in book #11 (Death By Candlelight), chapter 9 ("In the Swim").
Professor Plum: Water is such a nuisance sometimes. I think someone should invent a waterless swimming pool.
Mrs. White: Given the way that his mind works at times, I think Plum once dived into a waterless pool! - Dial-a-Ghost: Basil Snodde-Brittle (who is described as not very bright) died from diving into a swimming pool without making sure it was full of water.
Live-Action TV
- Featured in a hilariously done safety message skit in one episode of The Electric Company (1971). Jim Boyd (who portrays a swimmer) is about to head in to a swimming pool watched over by Luis Avalos (playing a lifeguard) who tries to run through the pool's safety rules on Jim, who brushes off the former as he already "complied" with most of the rules. Before Luis talks about the last one, Jim dives in, and the typical "crash" sound is heard (the camera stays focused on Luis' location so what happens to Jim is off camera). Then Jim clamors back up, feeling dazed, before Luis points out the final rule meant to prevent the trope from happening.
- In the Angel episode "The Trial", the entrance into a mystical gauntlet involves jumping off a diving board into an empty swimming pool and take a literal Leap of Faith.
Angel: Well, [The Host] said I had to take the plunge.
Darla: Into an empty pool?
Angel:' Sure. 'cause if you had water, you'd get all wet and miss out on all that skull crushing.
(...)
Angel: I'm either coming back with a cure — or you're about to see something kinda funny. - Bill Nye the Science Guy: The episode about fluids has a skit depicting what life would be like without any fluids at all. The lack of water, presented as this trope, turns out to be just one of the many, many downsides of living in what's essentially a Death World.
- In one episode of The Munsters, it was mentioned that the family's pet dragon Spot drunk all the water in a neighbor's pool, leaving it empty when he went to take his morning dip.
Gamebooks
- One of the many bad endings in Checkout Time at the Dead-End Hotel have you taking a dive in the titular Hell Hotel's pool. Unfortunately, the ghosts casts an illusion to make you think it's filled with water, when it isn't. CRACK
Music
- The video for Bryan Adams' "Cuts Like A Knife" takes place in an empty swimming pool — Adams and his band are performing at the bottom of it, to be specific. The performance is intercut with shots of the requisite video babe changing into a bathing suit in a stall. At the end she mounts the diving board and jumps ... and reappears at the other end of the pool, wet.
- The video for "Move Along" by The All-American Rejects starts with Tyson Ritter falling backwards from a diving board to an empty pool, presumably being Driven to Suicide. After the montage throughout the video showing how he got to that point, it cuts back to Tyson falling in the pool only to be saved by a group of fans who crowd surf him to the rest of the band in the pool as they finish the rest of the song.
- In Sylvester the Cat's Nine Lives by The Sandpipers, Sylvester sings about how he lost eight of his nine lives. When he gets to his fourth life, he sings "I jumped on a springboard and did a high dive, the swimming pool was empty, and then there were five."
Mythology & Religion
- There is a story about two boys who live next to a neighbour who has a swimming pool. The neighbour forbids the boys from swimming in his pool. One day, the neighbour goes on holiday, so the boys decide to sneak into the pool under the cover of night. One boy goes to enter the pool from the diving board, the other decides to go in from ground level. The latter boy discovers that the neighbour has drained the pool of water, but he is too late to warn his brother who dives in and has to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
- There's a story of a boy who practiced diving into a public pool at nighttime. One time as he was about to dive, he noticed he was casting a shadow in the shape of a cross. Feeling a pang of religious conviction, he stopped and began to pray. Moments later, the lights came on... revealing that he'd just barely avoided this trope. Snopes has an article about it here.
Video Games
- Big Boy Boxing: During his introduction cutscene, Titanic 5000 slurps up all the water from a swimming pool fast enough to cause this to a diver who leapt while the pool was full.
- Cartoon Cartoon Summer Resort: In Episode 1: "Pool Problems", Mojo Jojo will tell you that he injured his head as a result of trying to dive in the hotel's swimming pool when it had no water in it, and now he needs a first aid kit.
- Used as the murder motive in the fourth case of Criminal Case: The Conspiracy. The Asshole Victim tricked the killer into jumping into an empty pool during a party, and ends up severely injuring them. The resulting injuries ruined the killer's dreams, and they eventually murdered the guy when they happen to run into him later.
- You can do this deliberately in one stage of Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure. In fact, you have to in order to get a certain achievement.
Western Animation
- Bernard: In "The Spa", Bernard finds a spa and decides to enjoy the amenities. His attempts to relax are consistently thwarted by his own bumbling actions. Bernard tries various facilities, often failing comically to use them correctly. He eventually prepares for a final, grand dive into the main pool. As he jumps, he accidentally dislodges the large drain plug at the bottom of the pool. He dives in just as the water rapidly begins to drain away. The episode concludes with the pool completely empty, and Bernard typically ends up in a comically unfortunate predicament or knocked unconscious at the bottom of the dry pool, due to the calamity caused by his actions.
- Happens in the Classic Disney Short "How To Swim", when Goofy is demonstrating the high dive. He leaves a Goofy-shaped hole in the floor.
- In another cartoon, "African Diary", Goofy goes swimming in a watering hole, just as a hippo is getting out, displacing all the water. Goofy dives into a now dry waterbed, but fails to notice and ends up bathing in dirt.
- The Fairly OddParents!: In "Just Desserts!", Timmy wishes that all the food in the world was desserts, which results in everyone (except for Mark Chang, who eats healthy food for dessert) becoming morbidly obese and the Earth to hurtle towards the sun. When Timmy is about to wish for everything to be back to normal, Mr. Bickles is about to dive into his pool, when the sun's heat causes the water to evaporate, and his weight causes the diving board to break and him to fall into the empty pool. When Timmy wishes that everything is back to normal, Mr. Bickles' pool is filled with water again and Mr. Bickles, thin and unharmed, is shown swimming in it.
- Family Guy: Parodied at the end of "Adam West High", in which Brian attempts to jump into Quagmire's pool — except he doesn't have a pool and Brian just ends up crashing on the pavement.
- The Flintstones: The 3rd episode of the show (actually the first one produced) was titled "The Swimming Pool", where Fred and Barney build a pool in their adjoining backyards. This gag appears at least once.
- In Garfield in Paradise, Jon and the pets go to the pool at their motel, only to find there's no water. Then the diving board breaks when Jon's laying on it, causing him to fall into the empty pool.
- Garfield and Friends: Jon shows the World Records representative his vacation slides to make more time, in which he mentions he took a dive in the empty pool of the resort. Then he was drowning in the empty pool. And then a lifeguard went to save him from the empty pool. And then the lifeguard realized the pool was empty.
- In a different episode based around a heat wave, Garfield fills a kiddie pool with water, goes to put the hose away, and then jumps in...only for all the water to have completely evaporated in the interim.
- In the animated version of The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, one of the lines from the Cat's song speculating about why the Grinch is so grinchy is "Did you dive in an empty swimming pool?"
- This happened with The Inspector during one of his safety lectures in an early 1970s bumper on The Pink Panther Show.
Inspector: Deux Deux, where is the water?
Deux Deux: Holy frijoles! Didn't you know I was cleaning the pool? - Whenever a Looney Tunes or Tex Avery short features a pool with a diving board, you can bet this trope will appear in one form or another:
- A variation in the Droopy short "Wags to Riches" (1949) in which Butch tries (and fails, of course) to kill Droopy in various ways to claim an inheritance, one attempt is by painting a tennis court to look like a swimming pool and adding a high-diving platform. Droopy does the dive and lands in actual water instead, so Butch dives but hits headfirst into concrete and he shatters like a vase.
- In the short "High Diving Hare", Bugs Bunny tricks Yosemite Sam into jumping off a high dive into a tank of water, except there's no water in the tank. Bugs dumps a bucket of water after Sam, and Sam tries to get the water to fall faster than he so it'll be there for him to land in. The water lands in the tank in time... just before Sam misses the tank entirely.
- At the very end of 'Terrier Stricken', Claude cat is thrown into an empty swimming pool after being dragged through various obstacles in a house.
- In "Bear Feat", Pa Bear performs a high diving act for the Mingling Bros. Circus. As he prepares to dive into a pail of water, his son Junyer eats from a box of salted crackers and drinks all the water from the pail. Cue Pa landing in the empty pail and Junyer telling Ma to call for a doctor.
- In "Tweety's Circus", Sylvester dives into a tank of water as part of his plan to catch Tweety. Tweety leads an elephant to the tank for a drink. The elephant drinks the tank dry, and Sylvester crashes into the empty tank.
- The Looney Tunes Show: Daffy Duck literally falls victim in "Casa de Calma", jumping into an empty pool drained by Bugs and shattering to pieces on the floor.
- Miraculous Ladybug: In "Derision", Kim gets akumatized into Dark Humor, who fires magic arrows that turn people into evil pranksters. The first person he shoots with an arrow is a swimming pool’s lifeguard, who then says he’ll pull a "hilarious prank" by draining the pool and waiting for people to dive in.
- Candace Flynn of Phineas and Ferb almost accidentally attempts this because Doof's -inator-of-the-week got rid of the water in the pool. Luckily the others around her end up making the empty pool into a skateboard bowl.
- There was a Pink Panther cartoon short that consisted of a series of unrelated gag clips. In one, the Pink Panther climbs a diving board ladder and dives into a pool (with irrelevant results). Then he ascends the ladder again but continues on past the first board to a (much) higher dive platform. Between the time he jumps off the board and reaches ground level, the filled pool suddenly and inexplicably drains completely. Elapsed time: about 2 seconds.
- Rocky and Bullwinkle: The "Rue Britannia" storyline opens with an extreme example. The absentminded Earl of Crankcase not only doesn't have water in his pool, he doesn't have a pool at all — though he does, for some reason, have a diving board. Going for a quick dip before tea results in his demise.
- At the end of the SpongeBob SquarePants short "The Endless Summer", SpongeBob dives into a swimming pool that was full when he dived, but due to the really hot weather caused by global warming, all of the water evaporates before he lands.
- Tiny Toon Adventures:
- In the short, "Home Wrecker" from the episode, "Stuff That Goes Bump in the Night", when Buster tricks Montana Max into thinking he's a ghost after Monty drops his summer house on top of him, Monty screams and launches himself in the air, hoping to land in his pool. He does, but not before Buster drains it of its water.
- The short "The Re-Return of the Toxic Revenger" from the episode "Looking Out for the Little Guy" involved Montana Max stealing water from Plucky's pond for his own pool. Plucky makes such a dive when it first happens, and in the end inflicts an epic one on Max (by catapulting him into the stratosphere before draining all the water back).
- In the short "Lifeguard Lunacy" from the episode "Pledge Week", Calamity Coyote is the junior lifeguard and is assigned to keep little children off the high dive. He suddenly sees that Li'l Sneezer has climbed to the top of the high dive (which is revealed to be in space), and is allergic to heights, so naturally, Sneezer sneezes and falls off the board. To make matters worse, Elmyra presses the button that unplugs the drain plug and drains the pool of its water. Calamity saves Sneezer by using an inner tube as a trampoline, but since it is taken away from him, Sneezer lands in the drain.
- In "Son of the Wacko World of Sports", after Roderick Rat sabotages his high dive, Buster retaliates by dressing like Moses and parting the water in the pool when Roderick is doing his dive, resulting in Roderick eating linoleum.
- In "Rock N' Roar", Plucky is about to dive into his swamp when Rover, Buster's pet dinosaur drinks from it.
Plucky: Hey! My water's gone! Oh, the ACME Water Authority is going to hear about this!
- Brainy makes a dive into an empty river bed in The Smurfs (1981) episode "The Patchwork Bear".
- Turns up in many a Tom and Jerry cartoon, usually to Tom:
- "Salt Water Tabby", when Tom excitedly runs at full speed to dive into it, only for the tide's current to pull the water and make Tom impact against the sand (plus the polluting garbage around).
- "Jerry-Go-Round", when an elephant drinks all the water from the bowl Tom was aiming to dive into.
- "Cruise Cat", when Jerry removes a plug to dry up the pool he wanted to swim in so Tom crashes against the hard bottom.
- In the T.U.F.F. Puppy episode, "Cruisin' For a Bruisin'", Kitty lies to Dudley about a villain trying to ruin T.U.F.F.'s cruise so he can leave her alone. When Kitty is about to dive into the pool, Dudley drains it to look for clues, resulting in Kitty getting injured.
- Viva Piñata: "Hudson Tells All" starts with Hudson falling victim to this trope, resulting in his angry rant about the construction workers he hired that sets off the episode's plot. It's only after he's splatted against the floor of the pool that Simone tells him said workers built a dam blocking off half the pool instead of the gazebo he ordered.
Real Life
- Proving once again that a little stupidity goes a long way, here's two idiots deciding to go down an empty water slide. Judging by the Sickening "Crunch!" that occurs when the guy leading the way makes contact with the stairs at the end ass-first, this one's going to sting. Don't Try This at Home, kids!