Camp Unsafe Isn't Safe Anymore
The characters have found and occupied a place to rest, recuperate and plan without interference from their enemies. They consider the location as safe and secure as your average bank vault... until suddenly something happens and someone says, "We're not safe here anymore." The irony is that the site was never that safe and secure, despite what the characters thought. The location has been the site of zombie invasions and vampire attacks, there have been frequent murders, the place gets robbed on a daily basis, terrorists infiltrate, and the main characters have nearly died a dozen times.
But it's only now, with the latest incident, someone finally says, "I think this place isn't safe anymore." The other characters react to this fell declaration with shock and horror as if it surprised them to find their asylum to be penetrable.
Not to be confused with Safe Zone Hope Spot, where the characters never thought their location was all that safe in the first place. Will often be the result if you Failed a Spot Check. Also, this trope doesn't apply if the characters never realize the danger they were in.
Film
- In at least two of the Harry Potter films (Chamber of Secrets and Goblet of Fire), different characters state outright that "Hogwarts isn't safe anymore", which naturally leads to the question "When the hell was Hogwarts ever safe?" Later in the series, during Half-Blood Prince, Harry actually says, "This is Hogwarts we're talking about. It's Dumbledore. What could be safer?" as if he hadn't been living through the previous five years. Hogwarts has been the site of murders and violence, the framing of innocents along with the permanent derailment of their careers, the attempted wrongful execution of the innocent, and the near deaths of many characters.
- Assuming that Hogwarts is still the safest place, that would mean the rest of the world is even worse. This was generally the case, up until the seventh year. Once it becomes the absolute least safe place, attendance is mandatory.
- Of course, most of the time the reason of Hogwarts's unsafeness is because Voldemort is targeting it. Usually because something he wants is there. And it's there because Hogwarts is the safest place, which makes it a self-defeating safety (quite like in Panic Room where said room turns out dangerous because what the intruders want is inside).
- In Dawn of the Dead and |its remake, the characters begin the film believing that a mall is the perfect hiding place, but later discover they cannot stay there forever because eventually they're going to run out of food.
Literature
- In the second Percy Jackson book, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, Camp Half Blood is "no longer safe" because someone has poisoned Thalia's pine tree, which usually keeps the camp safe from outside monsters. However, the camp was never safe from anyone on the inside who wanted to hurt anyone else on the inside, as demonstrated by the ending of the first book.
- In A Series of Unfortunate Events, the orphans must send a message that "The Last Safe Place is safe no more". Given the kind of world they live in, it should come as no surprise that the Hotel Denouement wasn't all that safe to begin with.
Live Action TV
- The Walking Dead: The main characters are investigating an old department store when the sheriff's deputy arrives and basically alerts all the zombies in the city to their presence by shooting at some of them. One of the characters says something like: "You just rang the dinner bell," as if the zombies pounding on the department store's glass doors already wouldn't have made them unsafe anyway. No, no... the sheriff got them in trouble when they would have been perfectly and completely safe otherwise.
- The survivors are basically camping out in the open, on top of a hill, with almost no fortifications, and are shocked and dismayed when a zombie finally invades their campsite.
- The original comic has the campsite thing, along with the survivors setting up shop in an apparently abandoned, gated subdivision. Very temporarily.
Video Games
- In Gears of War 2, a stranded soldier claims "the surface wasn't safe anymore". Yes—all of a sudden the surface, which is crawling with locusts, infested with flying piranha krill at night, and goes through regular bouts of razor hail, is not safe!
- In Resident Evil Outbreak, the level "The Hive" opens in Raccoon City Hospital. There are zombies bashing on the front doors, the doctors are gone, the halls are filled with bloodstains and corpses. The first thing the last surviving doctor says is "This hospital is not as safe as it may look or sound." Thanks.