Appliance Defenestration



"If ever you're not satisfied with one of our tires, please feel free to bring it back. [old woman throws tire through window] Thank you."

- Discount Tire Co. commercial

A Comedy Trope. There are few visual images that better convey a character's explosive anger with an alarm clock, videogame, phone call or TV set than said character hurling said object through a closed window. Crash!

Said action is most always viewed from the outside, only indirectly showing the violent pitch or punt that launches the object. It's funnier that way, especially if the appliance is illogically heavy. (See Offscreen Crash.)

While it usually applies to household appliances, other objects can also be featured, as long as someone is propelling them through the window.

Doesn't count if the character's main intention was to break the window. The focus of the destruction must be on the object.

Sister trope to Ring Ring CRUNCH.

Advertising
""I hate set-in stains!""
 * Used in a commercial for Shout, in which an angry housewife somehow manages to pitch her washer and dryer out a second story window to the driveway below.


 * Her across the street neighbor one-ups her by throwing the washer THROUGH THE ROOF!
 * Tossing the washing machine out the window. Think it was a Maytag or Sears commercial. Having bought the right kind of washing machine, the woman and her mate are happy again... then see a washing machine fly out of a neighbor's house and say they better go tell Sue (or whatever the name was) about the brand they just bought.
 * The Discount Tire Co. commercial quoted above, featuring a disgruntled old lady hurling a tire through their shop window.
 * Happens in an ISP commercial when a computer is implied to spend an entire day near 40% and actually jumps back a small percentage.
 * This Gamefly commercial shows a man hurling a TV out of his bedroom window after he discovered that he had bought a bad game.
 * An ad for Compaq computers shows people walking in the streets wearing helmets, because people throw away all the stuff that their brand-new Compaq computer replaces: typewriters, filing cabinets, older computers...

Fan Fiction
""Vance counted it as a win that the window had been open.""
 * Parodied in an NCIS parody. Gibbs goes storming into Vance's office (as per usual), but Vance's weary resignation towards the interruption leaves Gibbs unable to express how angry and passionate he is. So he opens a window and chucks a random appliance out.

Film

 * A scene in A Streetcar Named Desire involved Stanley dunking a radio through a window.
 * Played seriously in Pink Floyd the Wall, where Bob Geldof a) throws a TV out the window of his hotel room and b) smashes another one in with an electric guitar.'
 * In the Rolling Stones' never-to-be-released-until-everybody-in-it-is-dead movie, Cocksucker Blues, a chronicle of their infamous 1972 American Tour, Keith Richards and sax player Bobby Keys are shown, to much hilarity, throwing a hotel's TV out the window to an alley below.
 * During Johnny's rampage at the end of The Room, he throws a television out of a window. The scene is not meant to be comedic, but is because of Narm. He lifts the television with little effort, making no attempt to handle it as a real television and not a lightweight prop.

Literature

 * The War Against the Chtorr. The protagonist finds himself imprisoned on a Missing Floor by the mysterious Uncle Ira group. To protest he throws all the furniture out the window.
 * Dave Barry and his roommate once pitched a guitar amplifier out their dorm window while shouting "The Who! The Who!", just to see how it would sound.

Live Action TV

 * Happens in the title sequence to Charlie Brookers Screenwipe.
 * On Scrubs, Dr.Cox does this when an old hospital computer is giving him trouble.link
 * The opening credits for SCTV include a montage of people defenestrating their TVs in rage because the station is on the air. Buildings the TVs were thrown out of include high-rises, suburban tract houses, mansions, and a grass hut (probably referencing the African nation of Togo, a running joke on the show).
 * Deconstructed in Noob, where someone is killed by this, landing the thrower in prison.

Music Videos

 * Happens in the music video for Green Day's "Basket Case."
 * Also see Pink's music video for "There You Go," in which a motorbike goes crashing through the window.
 * Which is funny, and awesome, but is not focused on wrecking the bike, but on blasting the bike into her Jerkass ex's apartment and trashing the place. So it may not be this trope, but rather a Super Window Jump.
 * Played hilariously in Kelly Price's video for "Should Have Told Me," where she's dating a man who wishes she were thinner. The video ends with her throwing a treadmill out the window where it lands on his car.

Newspaper Comics

 * One episode of The Far Side, where a scientist is launched out of the window of the Stress Institute. From inside: "Hey... I feel better already."
 * Played straight in page 1 and page 2 of the What's New with Phil and Dixie comic in Dragon magazine #63 (July 1982), in which computers are hurled through open windows by owners frustrated with fantasy RPG programs.
 * In one Dilbert strip, Dogbert gives a variety of strange solutions to problems with everyday life. For the problem of television evangelists, he suggests throwing your television out the window. His theory is that if everyone does it, someone will get lucky and brain a passing evangelist.

Other

 * Dave Barry wrote of how his college band, the Federal Duck, ended. He and his roommate threw his amplifier out the dormitory window while chanting "The Who! The Who!" As much as he'd love to believe it was a meaningful gesture, he really just wanted to know what it would sound like. It sounded OK.

Web Comics

 * An adding machine is defenestrated in this Lackadaisy Cats strip.
 * Twice.
 * One Penny Arcade strip has someone throw his computer out the window just as Gabe and Tycho are walking by. Gabe finds a CD in the ruins and remarks "Myst V. Yeah, that's about right."
 * In Homestuck, this is actually a science called Dark Fenestrology.

Web Original

 * This quote from bash.org.

Western Animation

 * In The Simpsons, a bedside lamp suffers this fate when Homer is flummoxed by its inability to respond to his clapping, immediately after his claim that fighting a nuclear war is as easy as turning off a light.

Real Life

 * Pranksters in Whitehorse, Yukon managed to convince a guy to throw the TV and the fridge in his hotel room out the window - in the middle of the winter.
 * According to The Other Wiki Who drummer Keith Moon was leaving a hotel then he told the limo driver, "I forgot something. We've got to go back!" Back at the hotel, Moon went to the room and hucked the TV out the window into the pool. As he got back into the limo, he told the driver, "I nearly forgot."
 * Rock stars in general tend do this. Ozzy Osbourne pushed a hotel TV out the window simply because he had never done it before.