There's a door right there! A glass door!
"That's just like Clark. Perfectly serviceable door, and he makes a hole in the wall."
— Batman, Justice League Abridged
Some people just don't feel the need to follow social conventions. Like, using a door to enter a room. Instead, they prefer to simply burst through a wall or window in a dramatic fashion, even if it makes no sense or it would have been easier to go the conventional way. This is especially common when someone shoots through a door despite the considerable time and ammo this would take in Real Life. Use of this trope may be an indicator that the buster is really a Small Name, Big Ego and/or not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Also sometimes an action of the Leeroy Jenkins, who screws up his or her allies' plans for a stealthy entrance by doing this. Another variant is simply kicking the door open and then someone pointing out that it wasn't locked. Sometimes, a variant appears where the entire wall is destroyed except for the door, which the characters may or may not open anyway.
Also often happens in the form of a fake-out, where the audience is led to believe someone will enter through the door when the camera focuses on it, only to have them burst through the wall somewhere on either side instead.
Frequently lampshaded by someone shouting out the trope name, especially the Deadpan Snarker or the disgruntled owner of the building. Also, keep in mind the old joke about the stupid burglar: he breaks two windows, one to get in and one to get out. The gag can run loose if the person goes through a different place every time, or does it just as the hole is being repaired, much to the frustration of the owner.
Oftentimes this is committed because they forgot that We Have the Keys or they are simply Door Dumb. See also Impact Silhouette, Bullet Hole Door, Dungeon Bypass, Super Window Jump, Enter Stage Window, Car Meets House, Boarding Pod, The Exit Is That Way, and Dynamic Entry.
Compare Barrier-Busting Blow (where there wasn't a door), and "Open!" Says Me (where the door was locked). If the enemy manages to burst through a massive fortification, see Breaching the Wall. When going through the wall (rather than the door) is actually the easier solution, Myopic Architecture may be in play. Not to be confused with Right Through the Wall, which is about someone being entirely too loud about their... well... bedroom business.
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Other Examples:
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Advertising
- The Kool-Aid Man. OH YEAAAAHHHH!!!
Probably justified, as most buildings' entrances are not Kool-Aid Man accessible.
- One of the commercials lampshades this; it features his mother, who at first comments how proud she is of him for now having less sugar; the commercial ends with the house shaking and a "MOM! I'M HOME!" and her saying she'd only wish he'd learn to use the door.
- Referenced in the first episode of Family Guy, and then parodied in several later episodes.
- In "Peterotica," a car crashes through the wall of Kool-Aid Man's house, and he remarks "Wow! You know, from the other side, that's kind of annoying." After Kool-Aid has just finished repairing it, he says "Good as new!" — when Peter comes crashing back through the wall, and he shouts "OH, COME ON!!" Also in the courtroom, where the courtroom audience goes "Oh, NO!" and the Kool-Aid Man comes crashing through the wall, "OH YEAH!" When the Kool-Aid Man realizes where he is, he backs out in embarassment. The Judge tells everybody to stop doing that, "'Cause the f*ckin' Kool-Aid Man gonna keep showin' up."
- Later revisited in a Call-Back episode to the pilot — this time, Kool-Aid Man misses his cue and looks even more awkward than before. Worse, when he backs out of the room, he falls over on his face and shatters his glass body, causing him to bleed fruit punch and swear at Brian and Stewie for making him screw up.
- Done in Robot Chicken multiple times in one episode. Interestingly, the protagonists of the scenes (who are the same two guys) are intentionally invoking Kool-Aid Man even after witnessing his reign of terror.
- A crossover commercial with Progressive Insurance has him bursting through as usual... and provides a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome via electrical damage and the need to use said insurance to cover repairs.
- Dane Cook had a field day with this.
Dane: Fuck drinking out of him. If that was me, I'd be like, "You fix that fucking wall before my dad gets home from work! He's gonna beat me with a belt. He's not gonna believe a talking bowl of fruit punch came in here. You stupid idiot. Yeah, coming through the wall is real fucking cool! Using the front door is cool!"
- The Irate Gamer also got in on this gag, too.
- One time on The Other Wiki, someone vandalized a page on Kool-Aid saying that he was wanted for causing thousands of dollars of property damage and is still at large. While it wasn't kept, it was moved onto a section of the site dedicated to some actually funny edits.
- As The Critic's awful student film proved, the Kool-Aid Man breaking through a wall is highly symbolic of... um, something. We're not sure what. Just make sure you play O Fortuna in the background.
- Yo mama is so fat, when people yell Kool-Aid, the bitch comes crashing through the wall.
- Linkara grows increasingly annoyed with this over the course of Adventures of the Kool-Aid Man #1.
- Also referenced by Homestuck as noted below.
- A Captain Ersatz in the form of a giant glass was once used in an episode of Good Eats, as a form of Writing Around Trademarks. The glass cited budget reasons (as to why it was a glass instead of a pitcher) and offered to get the wall fixed later.
- Questionable Content: When Clinton was trying to help Eliot with his crush he tried suggesting getting Renee's help learning if said crush was into guys:
Eliot: I feel like that would ba a bad idea. I love Renee but she has all the subtlety of the Kool-Aid Man.
Clinton: Yeah, I could totally see her busting through a wall like "ohh yeah! Who here likes fuckin' dudes?" - Kitty Kitty Bang Bang crosses the Kool-Aid Man with another character known for Incoming Ham behavior, Macho Man Randy Savage, producing the bizarre abomination that is The Macho-Aid Man whose introductory scene consists of him crashing through a supermarket wall.
- *CRASH* "I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!"
- The ultimate example is certainly this commercial for Levi Jeans. Don't ask what it has to do exactly with jeans, though. Later parodied in a Lilt ad.
- One of the first Three Musketeers commercials (the ones with the eponymous badass trio) had two musketeers burst through the stone wall of the Princess' cell... while the third walked through the door.
- A Whiskas cat treats commercial has the cat bursting through the wall (which has several already patched holes in it) to get to the bag of treats.
- William Shatner does it by while referencing the idea of an Impact Silhouette. He carves a man shaped hole with a laser into a guy's living room in order to save him money on hotel discounts from his bearded Evil Twin.
- Done in this Alinta Energy commercial from Australia. Twice.
- Sir Mo Farah won't be deterred by solid brick walls in this advert for online estate agent Yopa. In a possible inversion, maybe the owner really should just fit some doors.
Anime & Manga
- Arcade Gamer Fubuki: In the second episode, Mr. Mystery jumps through Fubuki's window to give her a card. He then jumps out another window to make his exit.
- In Assassination Classroom, Itona introduces himself by plowing through the wall to enter class. When everybody complains, he says he wanted to show off his strength.
- In Baccano!, Nice blows up the wall of a warehouse when coming to Jacuzzi's rescue. "But Nice, the entrance was right there, why did you blow up the wall?" "Why did she blow up the wall? What kind of stupid question is that? Boss likes blowing things up, so she blew up the wall!"
- Banished from the Hero's Party: When Red goes to the ancient elf ruins, he finds that the door inside has been smashed through. He knows exactly who did it, and laments that they could have just used the mechanisms to open the door normally, something he knows they're capable of since they had gone through such ruins together before.
- Black Lagoon. In "Roberta's Blood Trail", Columbian cartel members burst into a hotel room expecting to find an American special forces unit only to find an empty hotel room and a series of holes blown through the adjacent walls. And a Booby Trap.
- Bleach:
- The enemy bases tend to have maze-like layouts, so most travel is done by either smashing through walls or jumping over them. This trend reaches its climax during the second Ichigo vs. Ulquiorra battle, where four characters separately bust into the same room through the floor, the inside wall, the outside wall, and from another dimension. (That last one might technically count as a door, since it can be opened and closed without inflicting structural damage).
- The design of one Hueco Mundo tower was openly mocked in an omake. The character explaining it claimed that the building was designed without stairs and multiple heavy pillars to allow people to smash through the floors without completely destroying the building.
- To save to Orihime, Grimmjow blew a hole in the wall when the door, which was destroyed by Loly and Menoly when they entered, was literally three feet away. He even acknowledges the door was open, but says he came through the wall because the door was "busted".
Loly: ...And how did you get in here anyway!?
Grimmjow: What do you mean how? Through the wall, of course.
Menoly: Why didn't you use the door, smartass?
Grimmjow: Well, I would have. But somebody must've blasted the thing to bits and ruined the entrance. I don't suppose you have any idea who might've done that? - Kenpachi loves this too, having busted through several walls and even a ceiling to get to where he needs to be. If he didn't, he might never get to where he's going.
- Yammy does this so often there's a listing on his character page calling him Kool-Aid Man.
- In Code Geass R2, when the UFN council is unwilling to admit Britannia among themselves since Britannia would get absolute majority due to its population and essentially hand the world over to the Britannian Emperor, Lelouch responds by pointing skyward. Seconds later, Suzaku crashes through the ceiling with the Lancelot, Dual Wielding VARIS rifles and announcing that he "will not tolerate any insolence towards His Majesty!"
- In Danganronpa 3's future storyline, Munakata always seems to make his own "doors". Makoto quickly realizes this isn't just personal taste — his NG code forbids him to open real doors.
- Dazzle: When asked how he got in, Shogetsu replied, "Through the door, of course." His servant adds that it took a while, since it was a heavy door (while holding what was left of it).
- Digimon:
- Piedmon from Digimon Adventure tears through several walls when hunting down the Digidestined through his palace. Likely at least some of them is likely because it's a quicker path. But in the end, when chasing TK and Kari, the only two he hasn't captured, he comes across the door to the outside were they'd be trapped. Instead of opening the door, he decides to blow it up to make a dramatic entrance. Large Ham that he is, he lampshades this:
Piedmon: I must stop this, it costs me a fortune in new doors!
- Also used in Digimon Adventure 02, when Greymon and Angemon fight a trio of digimon at Versailles Palace in France, who smash through a window to take the fight outside, causing TK's grandpa to cry "Hey, use the door next time!"
- Piedmon from Digimon Adventure tears through several walls when hunting down the Digidestined through his palace. Likely at least some of them is likely because it's a quicker path. But in the end, when chasing TK and Kari, the only two he hasn't captured, he comes across the door to the outside were they'd be trapped. Instead of opening the door, he decides to blow it up to make a dramatic entrance. Large Ham that he is, he lampshades this:
- The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.: During a fire drill, a shutter blocks off the nearest exit because it passes by the room that's "on fire". Hairo concludes that the obstacle was placed there to test their teamwork, so instead of turning around and walking out the front door, everybody spends 30 minutes tearing down the shutter to get outside. The P.E. coach chews them all out for being complete morons and because he had just installed that shutter last week.
- Dragon Ball:
- Dragon Ball: When Goku is laying siege on the Red Ribbon Army, he comes to a room with no stairs, but there's an elevator. Goku doesn't know what an elevator is, so since there's no stairs he gets up to the next floor by jumping and crashing the floor above him.
- Dragon Ball Z: There's a subversion when Cell arrives at the TV station and blows up the entrance, but the automatic glass door is still intact, and Cell uses the door, despite the big freaking hole around the door. Then it's played straight when he just crushes the floors to reach the right TV channel.
- Fairy Tail:
- Natsu does this often. Kageyama lampshaded Natsu's searching method during the Lullaby arc.
Kageyama: Has this guy never heard of a door?
- Gildarts has the power to destroy anything he touches and he's very absent-minded, which is a very bad combination when structures are involved. He's so accident-prone with his Crush powers that Magnolia actually has a Gildarts Shift that will automatically rearrange the city to have a straight road to the Fairy Tail guild hall, just so he won't accidentally destroy some buildings on his way over.
- Natsu does this often. Kageyama lampshaded Natsu's searching method during the Lullaby arc.
- Fighting Foodons: In the first episode, the team tries to get the Meal Cart outside of a prison.
Kayla: How we gonna get it out of here?
Chase: The window!
Kayla: There is no window!
Chase: There is now! - In the Fruits Basket anime it becomes a Running Gag that people keep destroying Harem Nanny Shigure's house, and he says this line at least once when someone bursts through the screen. In Shigure's case, he's probably good-naturedly remarking on that very fact. Kagura is later shown spending most of the night trying (and failing) to fix the screen after she wrecks it even more than usual.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- The Crimson Alchemist prefers blowing walls up as opposed to opening doors.
- Ed and his teacher Izumi might count as an inversion; on several occasions they transmute doors on walls that didn't already have them, so they can enter through said doors rather than smashing the wall.
- Sloth plays it straight during his grand entrance in the final arc.
- Sōsuke from Full Metal Panic! tends to do this. In one instance, he ends up blasting a hole in the wall to get to the classroom next door... Instead of, you know, using the door. When asked why he responds that it's more efficient this way, which from his point of view is entirely true: On an actual battlefield, using the door is generally a very poor idea since they're natural chokepoints.
- Shuichi Shindo of Gravitation seems to lose his ability to use doors whenever he is excited. This does not please Yuki. Nor is Tohma happy at the damages to his property when an exuberant Shuichi breaks down a wall to deliver his complete album. Yuki lampshades this.
Yuki: Learn how to open a door, you damn brat, I've just moved in here and you're already wrecking the place!
- In Gunsmith Cats, Bean Bandit hunts down some drugrunners after they shoot him in the forehead. They lock him in a room with an impenetrable door. After gloating about it, the boss's #2 gets promptly flattened by the wall Bean cut through with his combat knife.
- Parodied in Hetalia: Axis Powers. America (as Santa Claus) smashes through a window to get into a little boy's room. Apparently he just got back from Hollywood.
- Hunter × Hunter: The two main heroes evade an enemy in a subversion. They kick through wall after wall... then double back one room and simply leave by the front door. It works.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders: After Vanilla Ice is introduced, he uses the power of his Cream to phase a hole into the wall when he goes to attack Jotaro's group. Dio's response: "At least open the door when you leave..."
- Golden Wind: As Bucciarati and Trish are heading up a building via an elevator, Diavolo uses his King Crimson to discreetly break through the bottom floor and kidnap Trish to move elsewhere and attempt to kill her.
- Mr. Yotsuya of Maison Ikkoku frequently uses a log to break through the wall between his apartment and Godai's.
- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Elma's introduction has her smashing through the wall of Kobayashi's apartment (Kobayashi scolds her for this). She does use the door when she returns the next day (along with taking the time to ring the doorbell and remove her shoes before entering).
- My Hero Academia has the Pro Hero rescue mission to recover Bakugo from the clutches of the League of Villains. Having found their hideout, but knowing that a teleportation expert is among them, the Heroes know that they have to go in with the advantage of total surprise or they'll lose the League and their hostage. The solution? Have Edgeshot knock on the door and pretend to be a pizza guy, which works in that it confuses the absolute hell out of the villains, who spend several seconds looking at each other wondering who was stupid enough to order pizza to a secret hideout. The camera cuts to Spinner, as though ready to place the blame on him—only for All Might to crash through the wall and accidentally deck the hapless lizard in the back of the head.
- In the My-HiME manga, Mai and Mikoto smash into Natsuki's apartment through the window to rescue Tate. Natsuki's response? "You guys are going to owe me for that window. Why didn't you use the DOOR?" Apparently window-smashing is Mikoto's stock in trade.
- The Raikage in Naruto takes "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line" to a new and completely awesome extreme, starting with his own office window. Judging from his assistant's response, he apparently does this a lot. Whether it be a wall, a person, a table, Amaterasu fire and the Susanoo absolute defense, and even the ground, god help whatever happens to be between the Raikage and his goal, because by the time he gets there, it no longer exists. At one point he does it to a wall in a room that was being used for a diplomatic meeting. Granted, he was in a hurry. It has now become a Running Gag for the Raikage to break a wall and exit, after which Darui apologizes for it and remarks to C that he will just use the door.
- One Piece:
- Garp bursts through a wall to beat Luffy's head. When his men ask him why he didn't use the door, Garp claims that his way was cooler. He then puts his men right to work on repairing the hole, though at least he's polite enough to help out with it when it's requested of him..
- Gedatsu is prone to this as well due to his cloud-cuckoolander-ness.
- The end of chapter 346. Zoro cuts through a door while Luffy kicks through a wall.
- Charlotte Oven introduces himself in the anime by just walking through the Chateau door, melting it on contact thanks to his powers, because he was in a hurry and didn't want to wait for the servants to open it.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: In Season 2 Episode 2, the Anarchy and Demon sisters crash through the restaurant's wall with their vehicles instead of using the front entrance.
- Pokémon the Series: Officer Jenny drives her motorcycle directly into the lobby of the Viridian City Pokémon Center. Nurse Joy scolds her for doing so, but the issue is immediately pushed aside when she sees Ash's injured Pikachu. After Pikachu's treatment is discussed, it becomes a Brick Joke when Jenny suddenly remembers she parked in the lobby.
Joy: "Next time, use the driveway!"
- In Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General, Marshmallow Head blasts through a wall to enter a room because he's in a hurry. He doesn't quite seem to have got his head around doors just yet.
- Princess Tutu contains a scene where Fakir dramatically crashes through a window to gain entrance to a building... even though both Mytho and Tutu were able to easily enter using the door.
- Ranma ½:
- Shampoo tends to burst through walls in her appearances. When asked why she doesn't use the door, she replies "Door take too long!" From observation, it appears that whenever she's chasing someone (usually Ranma), she focuses on the chase to the exclusion of the building's floorplan. If there happens to be a door in her way, she'll open it, but she won't take an alternate route just because there's a wall in her way. On at least one occasion, she is seen to exit the room by smashing a new hole in the wall, right next to the one she made coming in. When given a hypnotic suggestion to "go home peacefully" she still smashes through a wall as she leaves. It may be a case of Does Not Know Her Own Strength — walls are like crackers to her, so it's hard for her to think of them as "structures" so much as "obstacles".
- Ryōga Hibiki is just as often guilty of this as well, but considering that this is Ryōga he can be excused because he couldn't find the door.
- Ryū Kumon, from the late manga, also walks through walls (he's just that strong) in order to intimidate people. Worse, he breaks through an entire wing of walls at Fūrinkan High School, from the ground floor and up to the third floor, completely ignoring the stairs and the doors. Ranma's classmates even feel the tremors and think it is an earthquake.
- From the first movie, after Kunō thrusts his way into the living room with his wooden sword:
Nabiki: [sarcastic] Hey, Kunō-baby, the door...
Kunō: Be silent, woman! - Pantyhose Tarō also bursts through walls a lot in monster form — but then again, he doesn't fit the door.
- Rebuild World: After taking shelter in a ruined skyscraper, Akira thinks to himself that his pursuer really should have used the stairs, when having to jump away from the floor being blown out from under him.
- Rozen Maiden: Suiseiseki is known for entering Jun's house by flying her case through Jun's window, shattering it. She even does this when the window right next to it was open, as Jun angrily pointed out.
- In Saiyuki Reload, Gojyo's old friend Banri says hi by kicking down Gojyo's door:
Gojyo: I've told you over and over again, that door opens outward!
- Rebecca Reed in Shakugan no Shana tends to blast through doors rather than opening them. Even in her own headquarters.
- The Speedrunner Can't Return From The Game World: In an early chapter, it's revealed thanks to Shachiku's use of glitches, some buildings have an Invisible Wall blocking the entrance. This forces him to get in via wall-clipping, usually freaking out whoever's on the other side of the wall.
- takt op. Destiny: Destiny has a one track mind and will often bust through walls or windows with her Super-Strength in her haste to charge into battle. Anna complains and asks why she never uses a door.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: In the High School AU manga, Kamina constantly breaks into Simon's room through the wall or window just to wake him up for school. Simon is shown boarding up the hole in his wall and asking why Kamina won't use the door.
- In Tiger & Bunny, Kotetsu has a known habit of taking the most direct route in or out of a dangerous situation — walls or windows be damned. Ben chides him for it in the first episode, reminding him that entering monorails through the front window will just up the premium on his Hero Insurance.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Edo Phoenix has a taste for dramatic entrances, i.e. skyboarding into school, jumping from a helicopter through a closed skylight. Would it have been such a tragedy to wait for the chopper to land?
Comedy
- Musician Wendy Bagnell's "Here Come the Rattlesnakes" features a hypothetical example. Once, when performing at what turned out to be a church of snake-handlers, he relates his and his backup singer's reactions when the eponymous reptiles are produced:
''I said, "Just take it easy! Don't panic. Just look around, and figure out where the back door is." She said, "I already looked, and there ain't none!" I said, "Reckon where do they want one?"
- On Another Monty Python Record, the Gumby Theatre version of Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard begins this way:
[knock on door]
GUMBY #1: COME IN!
[huge crash]
GUMBY #1: NO, OPEN THE DOOR AND COME IN!!
GUMBY #2:' SORRY!!
Comic Strips
- Bananaman: The title character often enters Chief O'Reilly's office via smashing through the wall. Became a Running Gag at times, such as O'Reilly preparing for this only for Bananaman to enter through the ceiling or floor instead.
- Garfield:
- In the February 14, 1981 strip, Jon calls Garfield to dinner. Garfield comes bounding up to Jon from off panel. Jon says, "I appreciate your promptness, Garfield...." and finishes in the last panel, "... BUT NEXT TIME, OPEN THE DOOR!", revealing that Garfield broke through the (closed) door. Could be justified in that Garfield is a cat and can't work a doorknob (at least at that point in the strip's history; he's seen opening doors plenty of times later on), but....
- There's also one where he comes through the pet door, but gets stuck inside because he's too fat and thus rips the normal door from its hinges anyway. Also, he repeatedly kicked Nermal out the front door without opening it first.
- And there's the April 14, 1980 strip wherein Garfield knocks on the front door for Jon to let him in. Unfortunately, Jon doesn't make it in time before Garfield smashes the door open while saying "When I want in, I want in now."
- Happens in the September 04, 1983 strip when Jon yells "FIRE!" to test his pets' fire drill knowledge. Both run straight through the wall — or, rather, we assume they did, thanks to the hole.
- In the March 25, 1984 strip, tired of the mess Garfield and Odie are making, Jon opens the door and tells them to go outside. They jump through the window. Berating his pets, Jon tells them to use the door next time. Of course, they do so — breaking through the closed door while reentering. Jon sarcastically thanks them.
- Thimble Theater: One arc has Popeye sign up for a boxing match. Then, for no other reason than to screw with his opponent's manager, proceeded to march right through the building's brick wall to leave. In the next strip, he came back, making a second hole in the wall, to tell his opponent not to train because Popeye's obviously a weakling.
Fan Works
- In Amber Night and the Curse of the Diabolical Pastry Thief, it is implied that Princess Luna did this.
Amber Night's eyes dilated as she glanced in the direction of the all-too-familiar voice that came from the new doorway in the wall.
- In the Bleach fic The Black Wrangler, Kenpachi smashes through one of the walls of Byakuya's house in the second chapter.
- In Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, Calvin attempts this while trying to escape a ghost. It doesn't work.
- In Batman fanfic Dance with the Demons, Kobra's troops have invaded Wayne Manor and are rapidly closing in on Alfred, Robin and other masked heroes when Superman crashes through the manor's ceiling and starts delivering a beatdown.
- In the Discworld fics of A.A. Pessimal, student Assassins are explicitly discouraged from the direct approach via any convenient door and are actively taught to seek alternatives that give them the advantage of surprise. Even when the door is unguarded and undefended. Of course, sometimes students trained by Johanna Smith-Rhodes might associate "ensure the doorway is clear" with "use lots and lots of explosives as a lockpick". Johanna herself is no stranger to creating access doorways where hitherto none previously existed. The non-Guild inhumation that brought her a career offer from the Guild is a demonstration of this character quirk. note
- Double Rainboom: Was smashing through the ceiling really necessary, Rainbow Dash?
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Cornering The Duke:
Metal crumpled and bent under her fingers, and with a short yank, she almost ripped the door off its hinges. Purplish smoke escaped from the opening.
"It wasn't locked, you know," the figure on the throne commented dryly, far less impressed than his court wizard. - Lampshaded in the Elfen Lied Abridged Series:
Bando: Thanks for the new arm and leg, but I gotta run! (jumps out a third story window)
Scientist inside building: You could have used the door, asshole. - In Power Girl fanfic A Force of Four, a Kryptonian criminal bursts through a wall purely because it amuses him.
She was interrupted when Kizo smashed through the outer wall of the building.
The Kryptonian deliberately avoided crushing the communications board against the wall. He thought he might have use for that. But it was fun to make an entrance like this, and note the fear and surprise in his enemies' eyes. Superman must have done it like this. - Inverted in a Final Fantasy Type-0 fanfic, where Eight kicks open the door... to a room where a chunk of magicite had just gone off.
Ace sighed as his Classmates rushed into the room. "There's a hole in the wall," he told the brawler in a why-didn't-you-take-the-easy-way-in tone."
- Harry Potter and the Boiling Isles: When Eda goes to talk to Principal Bump about enrolling the kids in Hexside, she enters his office by means of a Super Window Jump, to which he asks why she did that when she had an appointment and thus no reason to break in. She responds by saying that she always wanted to do that, and figured that it was safer now that he's Principal instead of Faust.
- Hellsister Trilogy: At the climax of "The Apokolips Agenda", Superman and other heroes forgo any semblance of subtlety and restraint and tear their way through the roof and walls surrouding Darkseid's chamber. Justified because they were almost out of time to save the universe.
The second thing that happened was the arrival of Superman, Dev-Em, Captain Action, and Action Boy, tearing apart what remained of the roof and the rooms above Darkseid's chamber. Kal and Dev had used their X-ray visions to pinpoint his location, and smashed their way to his darkened room. A few seconds beforehand, they wouldn't have been able to breach the force-field with all their combined strength. Now, four fists struck, and the door and wall around it crumbled. Power Girl got there an instant afterward.
- Here Comes the New Boss: Despite the existence of a door and an Elpis-sized hole in the wall, Assault and Gargoyle make another hole for their Dynamic Entry — only to find that Elpis has already finished the fight and tied everyone up.
Elpis: Did you have to go through the wall?
- Hero Academia D×D: Mirko is apparently a repeated offender of this trope when she visits Ryukyu's office, as her sidekicks have dubbed Mirko's arrivals as "Code R". In fact, when she arrives kicking the doors down, Ryukyu takes a small solace in the fact that at least she used the door, this time.
- An Insider's Look: As wandering around a surreal mindscape and exploring a spooky abandoned hospital, Shinji runs into a living armor suit when it explodes a door off its hinges. Shinji fears the animated armor is going to attack him, but it runs past him and smashes its way through one wall.
- The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction Jericho (MLP):
- In chapter 10, it is played straight, averted, and lampshaded at the same time when four police offers ambush Jericho and Lightning Dust, which then later gets justified and invoked. Jericho does not like it.
The windows exploded, showering the whole store with glass. "Freeze!" a stallion barked as a griffon and three lightly armored ponies charged into the building, only one of them having the civility to actually go through the front door.
- When Jericho is interrogating one of the officers, this happens:
Jericho: Then why did you burst through the windows? That was needlessly destructive for security.
Officer: Little fetus creepy thing told us to. [forced chuckle] It scares perps, ya know? Songnam Security chargin' through the windows is enough to make most pony folk just give up, yeah? He told us he could repair the windows on his own, so it weren't no problem!
- In chapter 10, it is played straight, averted, and lampshaded at the same time when four police offers ambush Jericho and Lightning Dust, which then later gets justified and invoked. Jericho does not like it.
- The pegasus Gray Ghost in Manehattan's Lone Guardian regularly tries to enter her apartment through a window, only to get a bruise on her forehead when she forgets that it's closed.
- Marionettes: When the Mane Six hear Trixie screaming from the Castle of Friendship's bathroom, Rainbow Dash knocks the door down. Twilight gets annoyed and points out she had the key.
- Justified in Princess of the Blacks. During the Final Task of the Triwizard Tournament, Jen spends several minutes stumped by the charms on the door to reach the next room. Eventually she turns the wall next to the door into mud and simply walks through.
- The Jackie Chan Adventures fic Queen of All Oni:
- In one chapter, Jade is at a shrine, going after a Shadowkhan tablet version of a Tome of Eldritch Lore, and is attacked and thrown through the wall repeatedly by the monk guarding the tablet, and when she says she is tired of it, he throws her through the roof instead. After that, though he doesn't say anything, she just bursts through the wall.
- In the second Interlude's Big-Lipped Alligator Moment Dream Sequence, Jade bursts through the door of Shendu's palace, smashing it, and he says "I have a door gong."
- Queen of Shadows:
- When Ikzauki senses a disturbance around Jade (namely the chi surge preceding her accidental creation of the Leech Khan), he's in such a hurry to reach her that he doesn't bother opening any of the doors in his way, just bursting through them all.
- Himitsu quotes this trope when Gurando breaks down one of the walls of his hut.
- Doubles as a Continuity Nod in the beginning of chapter 6 of Port-Ed, as Ed once again sticks his foot through the door instead of using the knob. "Ed, there's a thing called a doorknob, you might wanna use it!!"
- A Red Rose in the Blue Wind: As a Running Gag, whenever Sonic and/or Shadow visit or leave Ozpin's office, they use the window instead of the door. He questions this, pointing out that the door is never locked.
- Renegade:
- "Spectre" Garrus Vakarian demonstrates his disdain for the traditional methods of entry by repeatedly knocking down walls with a cargo hauler to surprise groups of mercenaries. In his own words:
Garrus Vakarian: I've yet to encounter a potentially dangerous situation that can't be defused by smashing through a wall.
- This backfires a bit when he revisits the first warehouse (going through another wall of course) and finds the guy he needs to talk to has gone through the first hole and stole a car. Garrus's response to this? Borrow a tank from C-Sec.
- Later on, the Scrin Battlemind routinely slams through walls so much that Garrus gets annoyed that it's stealing his moves.
- "Spectre" Garrus Vakarian demonstrates his disdain for the traditional methods of entry by repeatedly knocking down walls with a cargo hauler to surprise groups of mercenaries. In his own words:
- Enso Ureshi, a Captain Ersatz of Izuru Kamakura from the My Hero Academia fic "To Be A Hero", has a chronic aversion to entering or exiting locations the normal way. He regularly avoids using the stairs in favor of climbing in and out of windows regardless of how high up it is, jumps across rooftops rather than take the streets or trains, and regularly exasperates everyone around him to the point they have to force him to do things the normal way, Izuku and All Might in particular.
Izuku: (After he dives headfirst out a window) What's with him and windows!?!
- The Unfantastic Adventures of Bizarro No. 1: Unsurprisingly, Bizarro doesn't understand what doors are for. He always smashes through a wall or roof, whether he's in a hurry or not.
Me get up, crash through roof.
Me am hear her yell, "Number one, wait! You am not go out naked!"
Oops!
Me crash back in through roof, embarrassed as all heaven. "How me am remember that? Sorry, sourbunch."
Helpfully, her am hand over Bizarro No. 1 medallion. Her am so unthoughful, that am why me love her.
Then, medallioned, me crash through another part of roof. Me figure out that, at end of this gig, me got to put on new roof so me have some part left to crash through next time. - In Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Supergirl crossover The Vampire of Steel, two vampires are attempting to kill Buffy when Kara bursts into the place through a window.
Films — Animation
- In Cats Don't Dance, our first introduction to Max is the Max-shaped hole in the wall he'd left as he slowly stalked into the studio. He at least has the decency to go back out through the same hole rather than make another.
- In The Croods: A New Age, The Bettermans let the Croods stay in their treehouse with them. Unfortunately, they are unfamiliar with wooden homes, and Grug is too strong to take any notice of the woodwork, leading him to walking straight through it repeatedly.
Phil: The poor things do seem to struggle with the concept of...walls!
- Despicable Me 2:
- In the flashback showing just how macho "El Macho" was, after drinking rattlesnake venom said Macho Latino exits from a bar through the wall.
- In the "fire alarm" scene, a Minion tears through the wall with a pair of axes, right next to the door. Another follows through the hole with a hose, and then a third (carrying a megaphone and saying Bee-Do) does use the door.
- In Freaknik: The Musical, this is how The Perminator tends to enter a room. CRASH, bitch!
- In JLA Adventures: Trapped In Time, Dawnstar and Karate Kid arrive from the future and try to enter the Hall of Justice. When they are unable to figure out how to open the glass doors, they blast their way inside.
- Kung Fu Panda 2. The Furious Five go to bust out Masters Storming Ox and Croc out of their prison cell.
Po: We're going to free you from the bonds of injustice, no problem! [shakes bars] There's got to be a key around here... no, they wouldn't leave the key around here... [Tigress knocks the cell door off its hinges with a single palm strike] Oh good, you found it!
- Happens twice in Megamind, both at Hal's apartment.
- Megamind blasts the apartment door to splinters as part of his big entrance. Hal had previously told Roxy he was going to leave the door unlocked. Immediately afterwards, as Megamind starts his big speech, Minion busies himself with carefully mounting a new door in its place.
- Later, Megamind busts through the wall with the fist of his giant robot, this time out of frustration. Bonus points for the fact that there was already a hole there, thanks to Hal himself, and Megamind just enlarged it.
Hal: Hey, Megamind! You're actually the guy I wanna see! Also, there's a door here.
- Inverted in Over the Hedge. The main characters escape through the door even though that's the only part of the wall left.
- Wreck-It Ralph:
- Ralph crashes through a wall himself on the kart he and Vanellope baked together. Justified as the door is blocked by the cops, and they need a speedy exit. A few feet in either direction, however, would have yielded Destination Defenestration instead.
- Earlier in the movie, Ralph shatters the cupcake he's stuck in by jumping out of Sugar Rush's castle. There are two large double-door-style windows on either side and he instead plunges straight through the sugarcube/brick wall.
- And later, he bursts through the walls of the Fungeon cells where both Felix and Vanellope are detained. Sure, the door was certainly locked in both cases; not that it make any difference...
Films — Live-Action
- Alone in the Dark (2005) sports large swaths interspersed with accidental lulz. In the fight scene near the beginning, the snarling Implacable Man insists on leaping headlong through every plate glass window that crosses his path.
- Ballerina (2025). Eve Macarro grenade tags a mook and shoves him behind a steel door to protect herself from the blast. She then locks the door to block off the other mooks, while the explosion has conveniently blasted a hole in the wall for her to escape through.
- Reversed in Balls of Fury: In a brief scene, a team of soldiers attempts to break through an armored door with a battering ram. Another soldier off to the side simply takes his gun and smashes through the window right next to the door.
- Justified in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Batman crashes through a window in the second floor of the warehouse where Martha Kent is being held hostage; on the third floor, two dozen mercenaries all have their guns trained on the only door - so Batman blasts a hole in the floor instead.
- In Beverly Hills Cop I, Maitland's henchmen remove Axel from the premises by plunging him through a window, when the exit door was right next to it. Then the police arrives to take Alex away, while he tries to make the case that he was "thrown out of a fuckin' window!".
- Black Adam (2022): Teth-Adam constantly busts through walls, leading people to ask him if doors existed during his original time.
- Blade Runner 2049:
- When the Wallace Corporation are attacking Deckard's hideout, he locks a door behind him as he flees. Soon enough that he likely never touched the door, K bursts through the solid concrete wall next to it like it was made of paper.
- Immediately after the above, an Attack Drone fires a missile through the window, blowing up Deckerd's spinner as he's running to it. To stop Deckard from being killed in the explosion, Officer K smashes straight through the wall and tackles him. Then a Wallace spinner flies through the broken window into the building and offloads their mooks.
- The car deliberately smashes through a wall into a building to kill Henry in The Car: Road to Revenge.
- Carry On Screaming!: The monster Junior hasn't got the hang of using doors yet, and prefers to crash through walls.
Dr. Watt: I do wish Junior would learn to use the door!
- S.MJR MacNutt squeezes through a thin man-sized crack in the wall of Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond's dining room in Carry On Up the Khyber during a war outside the house. Sir Sidney points out that the hole is right next to large double doors that could've been used instead but MacNutt states that his news is far too important to care about something like that.
- James Bond in Casino Royale (2006) — Bond smash! For context: Bond is chasing after a bomb maker through a construction site. The bomber parkours his way through a vent hole(?) near the ceiling. Bond, not nearly as agile, opts to bash his way through the dry wall.
- Edge of Tomorrow: The protagonists are wearing Powered Armor, so when they need to make use of an abandoned car quickly (knowing that the enemy is waiting in ambush) they just rip the doors off, which also gives them room to dive inside wearing said armor. While they're driving off, an announcer on the radio is advising citizens, "If you are in a vehicle, please lock your doors and stay inside." A Mimic then ambushes them, forcing Cage to tear off the roof so he has a clear field of fire.
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Duke is told the bad guys are driving along the next street over, but there's no door through to them. He's told, "Make one" and so smashes through the building in his Powered Armor.
- Iorek Byrnison in The Golden Compass does this after getting back his armor, though in this case it's probably symbolic of him no longer being subservient to humanity (or its etiquette) since he is a giant Ice Bear. Or he opted not to use the door because he knew there'd be guards pointing rifles at it.
- A Good Day to Die Hard: An FSB Alpha Team attacks the CIA safehouse, so Jack McClane whacks a frame charge against the wall and blows a nice rectangular exit. For the rest of the movie however they just jump out the window.
- In the 1990 TV movie The Great Los Angeles Earthquake, the titular quake blocks the entrance to an underground bunker. However realising the equipment in the bunker is wider than the door, those trapped inside go looking for a service entrance that has been bricked up. They then create an improvised ram to break through the bricks.
- Hotel Artemis:
- In the opening bank robbery, the robbers use some kind of laser device to blast through the back wall of the bank into an alley, planning to escape into the chaos of the surrounding riot. Unfortunately the riot police see them instead.
- When Crosby Franklin realises his father has been murdered while inside the hotel, he disables the security cage and orders his goons to start breaking through every possible access—walls, door or floor—to get inside.
- In Hot Fuzz, Nicholas Angel breaks a glass storefront and jumps through it to pursue a killer. Keep an eye on the writing on the glass panes. He throws his baton through the window, then jumps through the door.
- John Carpenter's Vampires. In the opening scene the mercenaries are investigating a derelict house being used as a vampire nest. Rather than kick down the door, one presses a round device up against the lock which neatly removes a large circle in the wood. The merc then reaches through the hole and unlatches the lock.
- King of the Rocket Men (and some other Film Serials thanks to Stock Footage recycling). The Jet Pack-wearing hero has to rescue a Damsel in Distress who is in a light aircraft that's plunging towards the ground, so he just smashes through the side of the aircraft as he doesn't have time to open the door. Presumably the bullet-shaped full-face helmet he's wearing made a good battering ram.
- Parodied in the final scene of Malibu's Most Wanted when the epic battle between B-Rad's crew and the bad guys happens in the head Bad Guy's house. Two different cars smash through the wall of his house, causing him to shriek: "Doesn't anyone know where the damn driveway is?!" To add to the hilarity, Bad Guy is later seen yelling at the cops to fix the house before his mother gets back.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Cap goes through just about every window shown for one reason or another (usually shield-first).
- Captain America: Civil War gives us an interesting Lampshade Hanging. The Vision, being able to phase through solid matter, enters Wanda's room through the wall. When Wanda objects, he says that he thought it was okay to come in because the door was open. Cap and Wanda quickly point out that the door being open isn't enough, you have to use it. He promptly exits through the door.
- Thor: Ragnarok: Hulk gets angry waiting for the door to rise on his way into the gladiator ring, and so elects to smash the entire door and its frame a few seconds before it would have been open enough for him to just walk through it.
- Men with Brooms: Cutter is laying on his bed in his motel room while next door, his former curling team mate Lennox is trying to avoid being beaten into a new reincarnation by a very large, very angry loan shark. At one point, Lennox abruptly gets sent head-first through the wall over Cutter's bed, before being sent through the wall entierly, followed by the giant loan shark. Cutter ends up having to knock the loan shark out by smashing his head in with a curling stone.note
- Lampshaded in The Mummy Returns, while fleeing Imhotep's mummified soldiers, Evie tries blocking the entrance with a nearby chair. Rick, however, having learned a thing or two in the previous film pulls his wife along reminding her that "these guys don't use doors." Sure enough, a few seconds later, the mummies are busting through the wall above the door.
- Averted in Once Bitten:
Countess: Wait! I have to replace every door you people smash. Can't you at least try the knob first?
Sebastian: (vampire in front tries the knob and it opens easily) Jocks. - The Professional: Léon shoots and hacks out the hotel's ventilator fan so Mathilda can do an Air Vent Escape. However he's too big to follow.
- In Richard III, the title character makes his Big Entrance by smashing a tank through the wall of the mansion being used by King Henry as his headquarters, followed by a squad of Gas Mask Mooks.
- Interestingly, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dr. Scott enters the lab through the wall, but not because it was in the script. It was because the set builders had forgotten to build an extra door!
- Royal Flash (1975): Flashman makes a token attempt at waving his saber at the Afghan attackers, then tries to flee back into the fort, only to find the gates have been locked behind him. Fortunately an explosion blasts a door-shaped hole in the wall next to him.
- Reversed in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, by the same director: After throwing Scott through several walls, Todd looks as though he's about to fly through the holes he's made... but then he teleports to the last wall and calmly opens the door next to the hole in it.
- David in Shaun of the Dead smashes the window of The Winchester to get in (causing security problems later) before Shaun has a chance to tell him there's another, unlocked door round the back.
- Siege of the Dead: The protagonist constructs a rammbock to break through the walls of the apartment building he's trapped in during a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Inverted in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. While Joe is trying to devise a way to get into the professor's lab through an upper-story window, Polly picks up a rock, breaks the glass on the front door, reaches in and opens it.
- Spider-Man 1 has Green Goblin bursting through a window to enter a room twice. And both weren't at ground level!
- In Superhero Movie, Hourglass dramatically blows a hole in a wall to exit, only a few feet from the separate hole he blew in the wall to enter.
- Superman (Film Series):
- Superman (1978): Superman breaks into Lex Luthor's underground lair by smashing down a thick steel door, causing Lex to quip "Come in, it's open!" and then threaten to have his lawyer bill Superman for the cost of replacing it.
- The villains in Superman II do this a lot, especially when they take over the Daily Planet office, with Lex Luthor delivering the line. In a Call-Back to the first incident, Lex mutters to himself that not knowing how doors work seems to be a problem for Kryptonians in general.
- In Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Nuclear Man is no better, although he seems to enjoy bursting through floors and ceilings suspended by incredibly obvious wires.
- Superman (2025): Played with at the end. There is the sound of a very drunk Supergirl smashing through the wall. She then appears, drunkenly demanding "Why did you move the door?!!" (She tried to use the door but missed.)
- In S.W.A.T. (2003), the team uses a huge grappling hook attached to a truck to smash through a house's outer wall and pull out a large chunk. This allows the team to get the drop on the crazy armed man inside. Somehow, the crazy man failed to notice the big truck engine roaring outside, the noise of the winch, etc. (The original TV series was also noted for such lapses in story logic.) In this case, it is marginally excusable, however, as in addition to his schizophrenia, the guy is as drunk as a lord.
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), when they reach the Sacks estate, Raphael elects to simply tear a hole in the side of Vernon's van and jump out.
- Top Secret!:
- Done in a way where during a gun fight, one of the defenders breaks a small window in a 5x4 window frame. The next defender breaks a new window and so forth. In the end a very small man shows up and he jumps in front of the window while under heavy fire for about 15 seconds before he manages to break and fire out of the last window, which was on the top row.
- Then done again with a 3x3 window, only this time with only two defenders who smash "X" and "O" shaped holes in the windows, when one of the defenders manages to get three "O"-es in a row, the window gets blasted out.
- Then again with the black defender "Chocolate Mousse" who grabs a cannon, lights the fuse and rams the muzzle through the window to shoot.
- Total Recall (1990): Several goons do an explosive entry right after Lori tells Quaid he's really blown it now.
- Combined with The Door Slams You in X-Men: First Class. Magneto has to get into a submarine guarded by Riptide, so Magneto tears out part of the metal hull on top of him.
Literature
- In And Another Thing..., Thor leaves through the ceiling, causing Hillman to complain to Zaphod that ceiling tiles are so expensive, and why Thor "just couldn't use the door". Zaphod replies: "He's a God. He doesn't do doors". (Or something very similar).
- Animorphs: In The Warning Jake morphs into a rhinoceros to charge through a compound. He tries to charge his way through doors as those are weaker and easier to get through, but his vision in that shape is so bad that at one point he has to back up and try again. When he comments that that door was tough his friends tell him he missed the door entirely and plowed through a wall.
- Averted later in the same book when Jake (now a tiger) tells Marco (a gorilla) to open a door. Marco prepares to knock the door off its hinges, for Jake to tell him to try the knob first. He does.
- The Belgariad/The Malloreon
- Sorcerers tend to disregard niceties such as doors when irritated or in a hurry, frequently using their powers to blast through doors, walls, or in Garion's case in the second series, entire buildings, making this a crossover with Dungeon Bypass. Which is promptly lampshaded by Deadpan Snarker Liselle:
- Garion makes a point of threatening the pre-Heel–Face Turn Zakath with a broken city when he finally decides he's been delayed long enough... and smashes through a few walls while going to make this threat.
Garion: Take me to the library, now!
[Garion points his sword at the wall and it blasts outwards; he re-aims while the emperor looks on in terror]
Garion: Now... the library is about that direction, isn't it?
Velvet: [chiding him gently] Belgarion, now really, that's no way to behave. Kal Zakath has been a very courteous host. I'm sure that now that he understands the situation, he'll be more than happy to cooperate, won't you, your Imperial Majesty? [smiling winsomely at the Emperor] We wouldn't want the Rivan King to get really angry, now would we? There are so many breakable things about — windows, walls, houses, the city of Rak Hagga — that sort of thing. - Played straight and then inverted (and almost literally invoked) when Garion smashes down Senji's locked door, and then Belgarath makes him fix it, which Garion does by pointing at the shattered doorframe and creating a new door via sorcery by saying "Door." Belgarath is not amused by his choice of Word.
- Between Worlds Two. Jason Linford is in a Mini-Mecha outside an enemy spaceship, and is told there's no way he can get to The Bridge or anywhere else vital via the airlocks. Fortunately a previous battle has left sizable holes in the hull, so he gets in that way. He gets a shock when he uses his mecha to rip open an internal bulkhead and a female crewmember who isn't wearing a spacesuit goes flying past him into outer space.
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: More like "There Was a Hole". Willy Wonka picks up Charlie Bucket's family in the Elevator and then takes off into the sky in order to reenter the factory by punching a hole in the roof... next to the hole he already made exiting the factory. (Two holes are better than one, as any mouse will tell you.)
- Discworld:
- In Thief of Time, Myria Le Jean is talking to some fellow Auditors. When they want to go through a door, one glances at it, and the door disintegrates. Ms. Le Jean observes this and says "Doorknob was simpler."
- In Interesting Times, the Silver Horde quickly realise that, if all the interior walls in the Emperor's Palace are made of paper, you can just learn the general direction of the throne room and walk there in a straight line. Because Agateans are so conditioned to believe you don't do that, Gossip Evolution gives them the ability to walk through any walls, as befits vampire ghosts.
Mr. Saveloy: Ghenghiz is quite good at a certain kind of lateral thinking.
Six Beneficient Winds: What's a lateral?
Mr. Saveloy: Er. It's a kind of muscle, I believe.
Six Beneficient Winds: Thinking with your muscles... Yes. I see.
- Doc Savage: In The Meteor Menace, Doc goes through a ceiling by grabbing a rafter with one hand and punching a hole in it with the other.
- The Dresden Files:
- Harry does this by pulling a door outward (to avoid deadly shrapnel hitting those inside the building) in order to make a dramatic wizard entrance.
- Marcone, being Genre Savvy, starts using cheap doors because of the regularity with which Harry does this.
- In The Eight Reindeer Of The Apocalypse by Tom Holt, paranormal adventuress-for-hire Conesuela Teasdale contemplates getting onto the other side of a very secure strongroom door, and considers the option of bypassing the door completely.
The easiest and best way of dealing with walls that turn out to be doors was to smash great big holes in them. This can be done quickly and efficiently with a wide range of demolition spells, high explosives, or a steel ball on a chain.
- Everest (2002): Mrs. Alexis is annoyed at how her mountaineer husband and sons like to climb out second-floor windows to reach the ground rather than going down the stairs and out the door.
- The Executioner. In "Crude Kill", the Big Bad traps Mack Bolan in a room filled with Booby Traps, with a Time Bomb that will explode if he doesn't defuse them all within a certain time. Rather than play this game, Bolan just uses his combat knife to cut a hole in the wall and escape.
- Five Little Kittens: When Ginger accidentally assaults a passing policeman by shaking his mop out of the window, the angry policeman then climbs in through the window. Just at that moment, mummy comes back from shopping, is horrified to see this, and pulls him back out by his feet, believing him to be a thief.
"Out you come!" said Mrs Tibbets. "Honest folk go through the door!"
- Ghosts of Tomorrow: When Archaeidae comes across a metal door that he can't quickly punch through, he smashes through the concrete next to it instead.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows gives us Snape jumping out a window to flee Hogwarts, complete with "a Snape-shaped hole in the window."
- Uttered word for word in The Fourth Power, from the Kadingir series. The heroes find a village lost in the jungle and immediatelly assume the natives will eat them, so they attack on sight. The villagers's answer is to stun them and leave them in a hut to cool down a bit, but the head explorer and Shell-Shocked Veteran Sura just starts panicking and convinces the others that they must kill or be killed before bursting through the bamboo wall into freedom.
Ishtar: There was a door! Right here! It's not even locked...
- The Magician's Nephew: She doesn't make any holes in the wall, but Jadis gets into a walled orchard by climbing over the wall, despite the fact that there was a gate, and it was unlocked — the point here being that she's too Übermensch to be bound by any rules.
- In Paper Towns, Q and his friends end up breaking through the boarded-up windows of the mini-mall when they couldn't get the doors open by pulling. Later on, Q realizes the doors open inwards and finds that they weren't locked at all.
- During his vigilante spree in Shadow of the Conqueror, Daylen plows right through a wall before performing a Neck Snap on a woman torturing her husband. He also crashes right through a ceiling to interrupt a man in the process of raping his own daughter, and gives him a much more gruesome punishment before throwing him straight through a brick wall.
- The Riftwar Cycle: In Shards of a Broken Crown it occurs when Tomas breaks into the temple of the Big Bad. His companions comment:
Nakor: He seems a bit angry.
Pug: Just determined. If he'd been angry, he'd have gone through the wall. - Skulduggery Pleasant. Skulduggery and Valkyrie tend to use windows, even when it's unnecessary, because "Doors are for people with no imagination."
- In Star Wars: Annihilation, Theron Shan's superior criticizes his methods as overly stylish: "He prefers to go through the window instead of a perfectly good door." A few chapters later, Theron proves the point by opting to break into Jedi Grand Master Satele's apartment even though he's coming there at her invitation, partly because he doesn't want people making any connection between them, but partly just to prove that he can.
- In the Terrance Dicks novel Roboworld, a Mad Scientist intends to foil the escape of our heroes by blowing up the Self-Destruct Mechanism on his asteroid base. Fortunately he decides it will be amusing to wait till just before their spaceship is about to launch. However, the heroes blast their spaceship straight through the hanger doors without waiting for them to open, so the asteroid blows up too late.
- Vorkosigan Saga: Used as a threat by Miles Vorkosigan in Komarr when conducting hostage negotiations with Komarran terrorists on a space station.
Miles: My word is all that's keeping ImpSec's aspiring heroes from coming through your walls. They don't need doors, you know.
- Les Voyageurs Sans Souci: When Sébastien arrives at his aunt Ursule's house, he decides to look through the living room windows before knocking on the door. When leaning against the large window panes, though, he accidentally pushes it open, so he decides to jump inside...to his aunt's annoyance, who protests her family uses doors like civilised people.
- In "A Woman's Work", one of the stories in If I Were an Evil Overlord (a collection of short stories inspired by the Evil Overlord List) the royal family is barricaded behind a magical door. The invading empress orders her men to tear down the wall instead. Apparently no one ever puts anti-entry spells on the walls.
- In the Zachary Nixon Johnson series, the genetically engineered superhuman Twoa Thompson enjoys acting like a superhero, which includes smashing through walls even when it's not necessary.
Zach: Twoa, you do realize I have a perfectly good door?
Twoa: I'm a mega-human superhero! I need no door!
Music
- The video for "Without Me" has Eminem doing a Batman (1966) style rope climb up the side of a building. When he climbs through the window, Dr. Dre walks in the door and gives an annoyed shrug.
- Ray Stevens song "Sitting up with the dead" has the line "Rev, that kitchen ain't got a door in it | He yelled, 'Don't worry son, it will have in a minute.'"
- The Young Ones again, featuring Cliff Richard in a comedic re-recording of "Living Doll":
[cue shattering glass]
Neil: Look out everyone, he's coming through the doors...
Vyvyan: BRILLIANT! HE DIDN'T EVEN OPEN THEM! - The Jam's Down In A Tube station At Midnight is about a guy who gets beaten up late at night on the London Underground by knuckle-dragging skinheads who don't like his face.
Pinball
- In Medieval Madness, when you attack Sir Psycho's castle, he'll say "There *is* a doorbell!"
Pro Wrestling
- Parodied by the WWE tag-team The APA, whose "office" consisted of a door, a card table, a cooler full of beer — and no walls. Anybody who walked around the door to try and talk to them was admonished in this manner.
- This trope was a part of one of the most infamous moments in Pro Wrestling and for all the wrong reasons - back in 1993, Fred Ottman (most famously known as Typhoon of The Natural Disasters) was chosen to portray "The Shockmaster", a mystery teammate brought into WCW to team with Sting, Davey Boy Smith and Dustin Rhodes against Vader, Sid Vicious and Harlem Heat. However, not only was this gimmick incredibly half-assed to start with (the "costume" consisted of jeans, a black vest, and for some unknowable reason, a Stormtrooper helmet that had been covered with glitter paint), the Shockmaster was meant to make his debut by bursting through the wall of the interview set... and promptly tripped over a wooden board that hadn't been removed properly, causing Ottman to fall on his face, lose the helmet, and destroying even the slightest hope of salvaging the gimmick.
Puppet Shows
- The Muppet Show: Luke Skywalker, R2-D2 and C-3PO enter the episode by smashing their way through the wall of the guest star dressing room.
Radio
- In The BBC's 1980 sci-fi drama Earthsearch, the Killer Robot Fagor is heading for the Challenger's control room, and rather than waste its time navigating the corridors of the ten-Mile-Long Ship, Fagor just uses its wide-beam lasers to cut through every bulkhead in a direct line to its target.
Roleplay
- Cerberus Daily News has a justified example. During the "Down with Discord" storyline, the battle converges on Discord's personal quarters. He has his guards with him, and they are covering the door against a small army of mercenaries. Then Desta T'Res takes out a demo charge, and blows a hole in the wall. Justified by the fact that the door was heavily guarded.
- In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Hyeon and Ciro try barricading a door to stop the snake apparitions that are hounding them. The snakes respond by smashing through the wall right next to the door.
- In A Tinker's Way, During the mission to rescue Akio, you decide your armour isn't good enough to protect you both while fighting Oni Lee, but it does have enough juice to break through the old building's wall and teleport away.
Tabletop Games
- Can arise in Earthdawn due to the Questor for Garlan "Seal Home" power. Garlan grants her questors the power to seal a certain number of windows and doors and keep out any intruders using her magic. Given that, an enemy going up against a sufficiently powerful Questor for Garlan can be better off trying to break through "those flimsy stone walls" rather than a door that has Garlan's power keeping it closed.
- This can also happen in Numenera courtesy of a high-tier ability for Glaives called Run Through Walls, added in the Numenera Character Options book. The ability works like this: use an action to move, make a Might test to bust through any physical obstacles and leave a hole big enough for your party mates to use.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: At the Walter Raleigh, the Warden initially walks through a door after leaving a mook for dead via torching. When Ann is about to rescue a trapped prisoner, the Warden does a Crash in Through the Ceiling by smashing into the room from above instead of using the door.
- Battlefield:
- Began in Battlefield: Bad Company and has been a series staple since. The first iteration of the Frostbite engine allowed for 90% of maps to be leveled. It's often the best way to get to snipers or MG nests.
- Invoked a LOT in Bad Company 2. The walls and doors are all destroyable by rockets and grenades and the like (and doors and fences can be shot and knifed). There's one level in single player where you're trying to spend very little time outside for risk of freezing to death, and you need to run from house to house to get warm. Typically the fastest way to do this was to take a rocket launcher and blow a hole in the next building. How the buildings don't lose their heat after this you'll never know. If you're playing multiplayer, and moving at all, odds are you'll end up doing this a few times in just one match!
- Battlefield 4 took it up entire notches with whole buildings able to collapse or dams being destroyed and water bursting through as a result of player actions as part of its "Levolution" mechanic.
- Call of Duty:
- Due to Insurmountable Waist-Height Fences, a number of games may allow you to break through doors, but never allow you to just open them. Some, such as Call of Duty, have doors that can be opened by NPCs, but not you, or only unlock after a certain Scripted Event. May be used as a Dynamic Loading barrier.
- There are a few straight examples in the Call of Duty series. In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Soap and company need to go through the showers in a gulag by bursting through the wall. (If the player tries to plant the breach charge on the door, Soap will note that the enemies are watching it.) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has a sequence where hostage takers grab a VIP and take him behind a reinforced blast door. Delta Force responds by placing breach charges on the floor above and breaching through the ceiling.
- In Cave Story, Balrog is first introduced doing this. Amusingly, he did enter exactly where the door was, but since he's way too wide to use it, he just busts through the door and the door-sized bits of wall on either side of it. That scene is probably why his catchphrase of "Huzzah!" was changed to a Kool-Aid-Man-style "OH YEAH!" in the re-translation of the console and handheld versions. Later in the game, he tends to make his entrances by crashing through ceilings.
- While never seen occuring onscreen, there are a few mission maps in City of Heroes that suggest this method was used by the villain groups to invade the map. In some of these maps, you'll encounter walls with gaping holes blasted through them and a doorway left untouched. One notable example has you following the very obvious trail of, and eventually catching up with, a huge fire demon.
- In Crusader, if you don't have the keycard or lock combination, you can blow open just about any door in the game with explosives instead. This will set the alarm off, however.
- In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, there's an augmentation which lets the player punch through walls. If a guard is positioned behind it, Adam (the protagonist) will snap the guard's neck in the process. This can be annoying if you're trying to do a Pacifist Run.
- Diablo III added this in the form of a potion update, allowing you to burst through enemy-summoned walls. Justified, as the "door" may be a yard-long gap filled with lethal toxic puddles, arcane sentry turrets, exploding ice bubbles, lava, or a really angry monster, and your normal teleport ability might be on cooldown or out of gas. So grab your Kulle-Aid and scream "OH YEAH"!
- In the arcade version of Double Dragon, Abobo makes his debut by punching his way through a brick wall... right next to the actual door of the building.
- During Penthesilea's Interlude in Fate/Grand Order, Penthesilea smashes right through the wall of Chaldea's library where the other Servants are having a secret meeting because she heard Achilles's name.
- In Fortnite, since Everything Breaks, it's trivial to break down a wall to get into any building you like. However, it's also a Stealth-Based Game, and breaking down walls is noisy, so it's best to know where the doors are — if there's a door nearby that you don't know about, and an opponent behind that door, they can slip out (opening doors is also noisy, but much less so!) and blast you in the back of the head before you even figure out what's happening.
- In Friday the 13th: The Game, Jason can break through certain walls in the camp with his "Rage" skill, either by tearing them down with his bare hands or walking through them like a malevolent Kool-Aid Man.
- The Godfather 2 has various options for this. Do you:
- Let an Arsonist burn down something?
- Make a Bruiser knock down a side entrance?
- Order a Demolitions guy to blow up a weak wall?
- Get an Engineer to cut through a fence?
- You can technically open doors in God Hand, but it's usually easier to kick them in. That's just the way Gene is.
- In Granblue Fantasy, Medusa frequently ignores doors on the Grandcypher when making her entrance, leading Vyrn to complain about how she'll eventually break the ship if she keeps this up.
- In the Half-Life mod Afraid of Monsters, the enemies attack by running into the rooms via doors. However, when the player reaches the City Level, they start coming through the walls instead. It effectively makes them jump scares in the process.
- Injustice: Gods Among Us has Superman smashing through the wall of the interrogation room Batman has Joker in to confront the latter about drugging him and costing him the lives of Lois, his unborn son and everyone in Metropolis, which ultimately leads to Superman killing him.
- Investi-Gator: The Case of the Big Crime: The Chief enters Mr. Crime's house by smashing through the wall. Mr. Crime says he would be upset, but he found it really cool.
- In Jagged Alliance, this is one of the recommended ways to deal with buildings where the enemy is lurking inside. You could go through the doors, wasting AP and leaving your pointman vulnerable to enemy fire, or you could have your demolitions guy plant a couple of blocks of C4 on the wall, blast open a hole, and then storm in through the back, or even just open a hole to let your snipers with their armor-piercing anti-tank rifles start picking off the enemy.
- In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Mandalore and his soldiers board an enemy ship. The Sith set up at the airlock ready to shoot anything that comes through, in a direct Shout-Out to the opening scene from A New Hope. The Mandalorians blow a hole through the wall on their flank, and massacre them.
- Lapis Re:LiGHTs has Salsa of the group IV KLORE. As a werewolf, she has incredible speed and strength, and as a highly excitable young child, she does not have the best control of it. If she's stopping by to say "Hello!", you can count on there being a new hole in the wall or needing to install a new door.
- The infected in Left 4 Dead can go through doors via smashing them to bits, but it takes time to do so unless there's a lot of infected banging on the doors and special infected can break down doors faster. However, the infected will also have no trouble just smashing through certain walls to reach you and forego doors entirely.
- In both the original The Legend of Zelda I and Oracle of Seasons/Ages, Link is occasionally forced to pay for bombing or burning down the door to some Grumpy Old Man's home.
- Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is a funny inversion. You can only open doors without excessive amounts of force, even when that would be faster.
- Subverted in the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC. Upon meeting a closed door, Shepard prepares to blast through the window. The love interest then puts Shepard's hand down and knocks on the door. And it works.
Shepard: (defensive voice) I could have done that.
- The Matrix: Path of Neo has Neo do this to a brick wall in an in-game cutscene once, when there was a door a few feet away.
- Hilariously inverted in Max Payne, where at one scene you overhear two mafia mooks arguing over how to disarm a bomb planted by the Russians. During their argument, they accidentally set off the bombnote , killing themselves and severely damaging the wall surrounding the door. The door is untouched, and when Max tries it, the whole wall comes down but leaves the part with the door still standing, with the door still locked.
- At one point in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, you come to a wall with windows that you can't climb through, and you can't blow it up with your Panzerschreck either. You have to lure a Tiger Tank into destroying the wall. In a later level, there's a gate that can only be opened with a bazooka.
- In Metroid: Other M, after getting his ass handed to him by Samus yet again, Ridley ends up so freaking scared of her that he crashes through a wall in a frantic attempt to get away.
- Minecraft being Minecraft, there is no wall in the game that a determined player can't break through. Thankfully averted with Creepers — while they'll follow you relentlessly once they spot you, they won't actually explode if they don't have a direct line of sight.
- Easily done to any door in NetHack. Bash it down, kick it down, whatever. Not to mention you can do the reverse: you can create a door where there wasn't one before.
- In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, DLC companion Ulbrig introduces himself in griffon form by divebombing through the roof of the tavern the forces of good are using as a base early in the story. One of the first things the Player Character can say to him is ask why he didn't just land and walk through the door; Ulbrig sheepishly responds that he was being impatient.
- PAYDAY: The Heist does have SWAT units going through doors to reach you, but they'll eventually start blowing up walls and breaking windows to ambush you by surprise.
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky has a Ludicolo and his team of Bellossom crash through the wall of Spinda's cafe whenever you win a jackpot at the lottery. Then comes the most hilarious Big-Lipped Alligator Moment Ever.
- In [PROTOTYPE], it is possible to break the walls surrounding the courtyard of a military base, but there are doors on both sides and they are always open.
- In the character creation screen of Quest for Glory IV before you pick the class the fighter and the mage make dramatic entrances by breaking their respective doors with a kick and with magic. Then the thief cautiously opens his door.
- In Rainbow Six Siege, most walls and floors are breakable and since waltzing through the front door would be tantamount to suicide, blowing down someone's wall and waltzing through it is the next best thing. Of course, there's also the chance that someone would blow a hole right beside an actual doorway.
- Red Faction
- Red Faction: Guerrilla provides the player with a sledgehammer of unlikely power. You have the option of bashing your way through walls and windows rather than use the door. This can be a lifesaver when rescuing hostages, running from a horde of drones, and so forth.
- In the original: "Don't have a key? Create your own door." Generally only works where the plot requires it.
- Yet why exactly walls can get shredded by grenades and yet doors remain unscratched in the face of multiple rockets remains a complete mystery.
- Resident Evil
- After solving the carriage wheel puzzle in Resident Evil 2's second scenario, Mr. X comes crashing through the wall. Then when you're back in the hallway, he smashes back through the same wall.
- Justified in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis if you choose to run inside the police station instead of battling your titular new best friend. Although he could easily get through that door he just pounds on it for a bit and then leaves, only to come crashing through a window later: He left to get his rocket launcher.
- If there is both a door and window into a building in Resident Evil 4, you can always dive through the window instead of taking the door. However, this isn't usually a good idea, since an intact window will slow down Ganados for a second and give you an advantage.
- Also once used in Return to Zork in which a form of Copy Protection appears. If you succeed, you're told "Next time you should use the door."
- In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey's Sector Fornax, both Orcus and Mithras do this, ironically opening sections you could not leave out of besides.
- Sleep Tight (2021): The enemies that are introduced on Night 2 can choose to enter the room by bursting up into it through the floor.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Shadow breaks into Eggman's lair through the ceiling. Without turning, the Doctor tells him, "Wouldn't the door have been easier?"
- In one level of Superman Countdown To Apokolips for the GBA, Superman breaks into an Intergang hideout by crashing through a brick wall.
- Super Mario RPG:
- Lampshaded by Toad when Mario enters his house through the pipe that serves as a chimney. Justified in that Mario was thrown about 1,000 feet into the air and landed in his fireplace.
- In another (also not voluntary) instance later in the game, Ma Mole remarks that she thinks Mario and her kids are about to drop in, while Pa Mole says they have to use the door like everyone else. Cue Mario and kids dropping through the roof on a mine cart.
- Still later, Mario and his allies have to break down two doors in the Marrymore chapel to crash Booster's wedding ceremony.
- Collette from Tales of Symphonia has a nasty habit of going through walls instead of using the door, though this is more a testament to her clumsiness than anything else. Lampshaded when interacting with a human-shaped hole in Raine's classroom earns Collette a title.
- Tanino Gimlet from Umamusume: Pretty Derby has a habit of destroying fences as part of a running gag, a trait based on the real Gimlet. This isn't exclusive to fences either, as she has destroyed similar obstacles such as a wall during a billiards game against Symboli Kris S.Explanation
- In Wolfenstein (2009), it is extremely common for scripted battles against Heavy Troopers to begin with them crashing through a nearby wall - the game's initial fight with this enemy type plays out this way, setting the stage for future encounters. Special mention goes to one particular Heavy Trooper in the Cannery level, who is programmed to not only make his entrance via smashing his way out of a train car, but also smash through a second wall to enter a nearby building should the player take cover inside.
- This is simple expedience in X-COM, especially on terror missions, where civilians are apt to be standing behind doors blocking your way. As one online guide says, "That farmhouse was probably insured anyway."
- The game can force you to invoke this from the inside, no less - having half your team inside a UFO and pinned down with the other half outside and unable to reach a doorway in time can be...aggravating. Tossing a grenade against the inside of the exterior wall will give your guys a clear line of fire.
- The remake also allows for this-Yahtzee even mentions it: "I got the Heavy to blow a hole on the side of the UFO, leaving the Sniper to Double-Tap the problem out of existence."
- The path finding can sometimes result in soldiers deciding to use a window to enter a building even if using the door would result in them traveling the same distance.
- In XCOM 2, Andromedons, Sectopods, and Gatekeepers will crash through walls rather than use doors (even big ones), even while idly patrolling their own building if they haven't noticed you yet. It's even worse once they actually notice you and get in attack position, the Sectopod raising several stories tall to wreak even more destruction as it moves.
- In XCOM: Chimera Squad, the combat is distilled into "breach a room, achieve an objective, rinse & repeat". The main door is usually not the best entrance; you often get the option to go through walls, windows, vents, secured doors, etc. for various advantages. Even the tutorial mission has you breaching through a wall.
- In some areas of X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, the doors will be the only interior sections that you can't simply smash your way through. After a big fight, you can easily end up with a forlorn door standing uselessly in the middle of a room with 20 feet of hole on either side of it.
- This is always an option in Zombies Ate My Neighbors so long as you have a Bazooka to spare. Don't have a key or don't feel like wasting one, or just want a shortcut? Just blow a hole in the wall or fence.
Web Animation
- In Arfenhouse the Movie, Good Kitty likes to enter the scene by crashing through a window, even when she's already there or when the scene is the surface of the moon.
- Baman from Baman Piderman rarely uses the door, usually just smashing through the wall, and using that hole.
- Dad's at Work is this trope, since the title character constantly smashes stuff. In the first scene of the first video, Dad smashes through the front door of the house, even though it is his own home.
- Danganronpa But Really Really Fast:
- Parodied in Chapter 2's segment: After barring Makoto from the police file room, Togami finally lets Makoto in... by throwing him directly through the door before following behind him, admonishing him for his method of entry because "there is a door, you know."
- Played straight in Chapter 4's segment. After Kyoko barges into Makoto's room (opening his door all the way), Aoi very quickly makes her own entrance by charging her way through the wall (smashing through the door in the process)
- Dinosaur Office: A minor Running Gag is that dinosaurs will never go through doors, in the office or anywhere else, choosing instead to crash through walls spectacularly. This is never commented on by anyone.
- Helluva Boss:
- Happens four times in Blitzo's office in the fourth episode. While Loona points out the door would be easier the first time, the fourth time results in Blitzo yelling at everybody to stop breaking his walls as he'd be having Moxxie fix it all. In the same episode, Blitzo jumps through a window to convince his target to go through with suicide while Moxxie and Millie enter through the door next to said window.
- It happens again in Season 2's third episode, this time with the hole being made by a helicopter. Blitzø, Moxxie, and Millie later return to the office in the same copter (through the same hole, however).
Blitzo: Satan's asscrack! Enough with the wall shit! WE HAVE A DOOR!
- In hololive, Kaela Kovalskia enters her 3D debut by smashing a hole in her house despite there being doors. She says that's just how she leaves her house, and that the doors don't even work at all.
- In Madness Combat 8: Inunduation, Jesus brandishes his magnum revolver as he flies at Mach 2 through a wall while dodging a barrage of minigun fire. As an additional joke, the automatic door two feet to his left timidly opens a couple of seconds after he's punched a savior-sized hole through the wall.
- Something About Kirby 64 has several instances of Kirby & co crashing through a wall right next to a door.
- Niji ENchanted: Luca makes his escape after yet another one of his pranks on Willerton (in which he drank an invisibility potion and placed wooden poles on storage bins in his attic) by breaking out part of Willy's roof and going out that waynote .
Willerton: There's a door for a fucking reason!
- In the season 2 finale of Sonic for Hire, both Sonic the Hedgehog's enemies and his allies burst through the walls into his apartment to fight... Except Earthworm Jim, who actually uses the door. Sonic complains about losing his deposit, of course.
Webcomics
- In the Accidental Centaurs/The Wotch Crossover, Robin announces his desire to smash through the wall instead of using the window. Of course, the hole he made wasn't big enough.
- Used, nearly word-for-word, in Antihero for Hire.
- In the Archipelago side-comic here.
Noemi: You didn't have to break in y'know.
Snow: But it's no fun to just knock on the door. - Bar'd: One time we see Roby the Biker crash into the front door of the Leafy Bar, just narrowly avoiding slamming into Vas. The rest of that day, the bar had a gaping hole that needed repairs.
- Discussed in Batman: Wayne Family Adventures comic "No Doors Allowed". Jason and Cassandra get on Duke's case because he's defying the trope and it's an unspoken Bat-rule to not use a door. They proceed to showcase iconic Bat-entrances before Duke ultimately tells them if that their enemies are expecting them, just use the door and they won't expect it. It works.
- Parodied in Bear Versus Zombies when Bear scares Jack the rabbit's children, prompting the entire survival group to crash through each and every window in the house one at a time to attack Bear, much to Jack's dismay, and ending in Bear leaving by crashing through the wall in disgust. Despite the fact the front door was open.
- In Beyond the Canopy, there is a window in the room, but it's too low for Chief Redwood. So he enlarges it. With his fists.
- Dominic Deegan:
- Siegfried is introduced as thus.
Siegfried: DOMINIC DEEGAN! I REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE!... You, however, require a new door.
- In the same comic, Dominic's older brother Jacob is fond of coming up through the floor to make his entrances. When he tries this on Dominic's house (which was made to prevent such magic entrances), a loud thud is heard, then Jacob is seen knocking on the door and rubbing his head.
- Siegfried is introduced as thus
- Has come under Memetic Mutation when it comes to Quain'tana of Drowtales, who is seen doing this once in a chibi-strip. When she appeared in front of a "window" that is literally nothing more than a hole in the wall the joke, naturally, was that she needed to see and made a window for herself right then and there. Her (out of context) comment that she needed a new fortress door after a failed invasion smashed it helped too.
- In El Goonish Shive, Raven calls Noah out on this once when he pops up to talk to him through an air vent, and then has to ask for help climbing back into the vent so he can leave.
- Freefall:
- Sawtooth Rivergrinder, a VTOL bulldozer and as such one of the toughest robots around. Who tends to "plot the most efficient route" when humans aren't nearby. When others in the team were stopped by an automated and shut down door...
Bennie: Now, if I were a ten-tonne terraforming robot, the answer would be obvious. [cut to Sawtooth already inside the building]
Sawtooth: Doors are for the weak. - Although at least he cleans up after himself. He also threatens to do this as a means of gaining entrance without actually having to.
Sawtooth: Oh look. There is another wall in my way. Temporarily.
- Sawtooth Rivergrinder, a VTOL bulldozer and as such one of the toughest robots around. Who tends to "plot the most efficient route
- Girl Genius:
- During the Siege of Mechanicsburg, at least twice random Sparks send their clanks crashing in through walls to rant at and attack people.
- This is how The Storm King decides to leave an underground chamber to go settle some matter, just burning straight through everything in his way including stone and metal. In Zeetha's words, his route is very direct.
- In Gunnerkrigg Court, the robot resurrected by Kat crashes through a wall looking for Jeanne's "tomb." As usual, this is lampshaded by Tom in The Rant:
"Free door!"
- Homestuck: From the Midnight Crew intermission:
"Suddenly the whole vault room is shaking... It sounds suspiciously like Cans is about to plow through the wall Kool-Aid Man style. You pray to God that it is not Cans about to plow through the wall Kool-Aid Man style.". Predictably, on the very next page: All of a sudden Cans plows through the wall Kool-Aid Man style.. Oh No!
- A variation in Insecticomics has Vector Prime teleporting rather magnificently into the apartment... only for Kickback to deadpan "Yo buddy, we got doors."
- Sal Walters, of It's Walky!, may as well be the Anthropomorphic Personification of property damage. When she uses the door, it's usually as a melee weapon.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Summer Break, Vanilla Ice routinely navigates through the mansion by making holes in the walls, as an expansion of the one time he left Dio's room by disintegrating the door (Much to Dio's annoyance).
- In Misfile, 2/5 of the angels that ever enter Ash's house do so through the window on their first time.
- Parodied in Oglaf, when an assassin uses Le Parkour to scale the walls of the Mistress's stronghold. They then slip off due to the guards coating the battlements in lard, prompting annoyed lampshading.
Guard: The gate's open! Why the fuck can't assassins just go through a gate?
- The Order of the Stick:
- Occurs several times, once with Elan, the resident Cloudcuckoolander, bursting through the window with the "the door was open" gag added in. His Dashing Swordsman Prestige Class prevents damage from glass.
- It occurs three times in the same scene, with the third one being much more unexpected and lampshaded.
- In the prequel Start of Darkness, Xykon, after being transformed into a lich, kicks off his Look What I Can Do Now! sequence by surprising Lirian this way.
- In one case, a monster chooses to smash through a wall framing an open door. Given that it's a flesh golem, and formerly Crystal, it's possible that it's just that stupid. Later, she bursts right through the wall of Bozzok and Grubwiggler's abode, intent on revenge.
- Occurs several times, once with Elan
- From Problem Sleuth:
- In Rusty and Co., the barbarian Robespierre exits the Proverbial Hook tavern right through the side wall in level-8-66.
Roxanne: And he's leaving.
Stabs: Leaving? He's not heading for the door, he's heading for...
[SMASH]
Stabs: ...my wall! Aw c'mon, I'm still paying off the ceiling repairs. - Schlock Mercenary:
- The title character tries to burn through a bulkhead with his Plasma Cannon. It doesn't quite work and he ends up very briefly getting stuck halfway through. Fortunately the enemy is more incompetent than he is.
- Then Captain Tagon ends up blowing a massive hole in the space station so he can take his entire ship inside!
- The title character tries to burn through a bulkhead with his Plasma Cannon. It doesn't quite work
- Strong Female Protagonist:
Mega-Girl: [smashes through wall] I've got you now, Menace!
Menace: Ah, Ms. Green. I take it the front door was locked? - The giant robots in Titanzer have a bad habit of doing this.
- Used twice in the same scene in TwoKinds. Lampshaded in that someone else enters through the door, pointing out that it was unlocked.
Trace: Um... could I get a new room? Mine seems to have a few holes...
Web Originals
- How to Succeed in Evil. Time after time, frustrating the hell out of the main character.
- The Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters has a story where Peter Perfect tries to break out of jail, but can't break through the adamantium cell door — so he uses his sword's telekinesis to punch through two stories up to him and then proceeds to saw a hole through the floor to let himself out. Later on, other disgusting characters note that they should build their structures with adamantium-laced mortar, or else any two-bit disgusting character can punch their way out.
- Agent Delacroix in the SCP Foundation tale Pulsar. He was delivering flash drives.
Web Videos
- Dad's at Work and his rampage will not be stopped by a door being four feet to his right.
- Throughout the 3rd Life SMP, most people opt to break through Dogwarts' wall rather than use the door, much to Rendog's annoyance.
- In Honest Trailers' video of Dragon Ball Evolution, after Goku and the other gave their exposition on the film. They fly out through the narrator's roof.
Narrator: Hey, my roof!
Goku: Sorry! - The Music Video Show has this as a Running Gag.
"Uhhhh... there was a chimney!"
- QSMP: An hour after the funeral of the three eggs, Slimecicle frequently visits and leaves Roier's house to see Quackity by breaking the window glass instead of using the door, causing Roier and Bobby to frequently knock him down in various ways.
- Narrowly averted in Suburban Knights. One of the teams breaks into a stranger's house and realizes the Voice of the Ancients that they've been looking for is under the floor. They nearly start ripping it up until the woman they tied up points out that there's a basement.
- Super Therapy!: At the end of the session "Avengers Therapy!", Hulk smashes through the wall to exit... despite the doctor having asked the Avengers to stop breaking things a minute ago.
Dr. Lynn Matthews: F*ckin' superheroes...
Real Life
- Police and military units will often avoid using the front door of a target building, to gain the element of surprise and to avoid the chance that whoever's on the inside is aiming right at the door with a finger on the trigger.
- Case in point: "Operation NIMROD", the SAS assault during the Iranian Embassy Siege, London 1980. Some of the most famous images of the SAS are of officers breaking into the embassy through windows◊ and balconies◊.
- Standard practice in urban warfare is called mouse-holing: cutting (or blasting) a hole to move from room to room and building to building. As often as not, this is done because the needs of the military are different than the needs of the previous occupant, so even if there actually was a door, there still wasn't a viable entrance. Practiced by the Red Army during the house-to-house fighting in the battle for Berlin.
- In a fortified building there is a good chance that the occupants have boobytrapped any obvious entrances. Making your own entrance is not only the quickest, but also the safest, option.
- Case in point: "Operation NIMROD"
- Keith Moon of The Who had a few instances of this:
- Alice Cooper told a story where Keith left his tape recorder in Pete Townshend's room. Unable to wake Pete, Keith dug a hole through the wall to retrieve it. When the hotel manager saw it, Keith claimed rats did it.
- During a tour with The Small Faces, he dug a hole through the wall to ask their drummer, Kenney Jones (who would take Keith's place in The Who after his death), if he wanted to go for a drink.
- Once, Keith arrived at a hotel in his Rolls Royce. When he and his driver got out, they were told they couldn't park there. Keith took the keys, got behind the wheel and drove the car through the front of the hotel, right up to the front desk. He then tossed the keys to the shocked desk clerk and asked him to have it parked.
- There's the briefly fashionable criminal enterprise known as ram-raiding; ram a stolen SUV or backhoe through the wall of an electronics or jewelry store, help yourselves to as much valuable loot as you can carry and run like hell for the getaway car parked in a handy side street. Something of a lost art these days, because most storefronts positioned in such a way that you could get enough speed up to ram through the frontage now have waist-high bollards in front of them. These bollards can stop anything short of a main battle tank. The placement of these bollards in front of federal buildings became standard practice after 9/11.
- In some office buildings, the doors are solid wood in a metal frame, which is a nuisance for firefighters trying to get through if the door is locked. On the other hand, the wall next to the door is usually simple drywall and can easily be punched through in order to reach in and unlock the door. Even better, some of those building will have ordinary glass windows next to the door.
