Elevator Failure: Difference between revisions

But sometimes, that's exactly what happens. Because of tampering, inadequate maintenance, or unusual environmental conditions, something goes wrong with an elevator, with very bad results.

 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* Nephrite tries to kill [[Sailor Moon]] by sabotaging an elevator. Zoicite tries to do it to get rid of both her and Tuxedo Mask.

* The Teddy Bomber tries to kill Spike and Andy in the ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' episode "Cowboy Funk" with a sabotaged elevator; instead of plummeting to the bottom, it's rigged to go to the ''top'' of the building, causing a bomb to explode. Andy anticipated this scenario and changed the codes on the elevator controls so he could stop it; unfortunately so did Spike, making them what the bomber set originally.

 

 

== Films -- Live Action ==

** Because {{spoiler|a bomb blew up the roof of the building}}, an elevator stops on the floor John McClane is on, with a little "ding", and instead of the doors opening the elevator explodes.

* In ''[[Earthquake]]'':

** An elevator in a highrise fails, and an aftershock knocks it off the rails, causing it to plummet, killing the passengers.

* The aptly named Romanian film ''Elevator'' is about two teenagers that get trapped in an abandoned warehouse elevator, with no one who can hear them and rescue them. {{spoiler|The movie ends with both characters hopelessly expecting to die inside.}}

* ''[[The Towering Inferno]]'' has:

** Several firefighters have to climb out of an elevator and rappel down after power fails.

** In ''Overload'', {{spoiler|a nurse and a janitor get stuck in an elevator during the climactic power outage. Problem is, the nurse works for a paraplegic woman whose wheelchair got drained of power when they were shopping earlier, and the nurse forgot to change it for the charged one before she stepped out, simply plugging in the chair. The pair even try to go out through the hatch, and fail. [[Deconstructed Trope|The narration points out that even if they had made it out, they'd still be stuck in the shaft.]] The nurse starts crying when she remembers the battery, and the woman eventually asphyxiates.}}

* The [[Father Brown]] story "The Eye of Apollo" deals with the mystery of a body found at the bottom of the elevator shaft. The solution is that {{spoiler|she was blind, and the murderer tricked her into thinking the elevator was there, and she fell down the shaft}}.

* Occasionally used in the ''[[Give Yourself Goosebumps]]'' series. The books were fonder of [[Evil Elevator]], but there were a few endings where you would fall down an elevator shaft while running from a monster, or similar.

* ''Sweet Valley University'', a spin-off of ''[[Sweet Valley High]]'', had a book called "The Roommate" that copied the plot of ''[[Single White Female]]'', where Isabella acquires a roommate who begins imitating her and taking over her life. At the end of the story the roommate falls to her death down an elevator shaft during a psychotic episode.

 

== Live Action TV ==

'''Reid''': I'll get back to you on that. }}

** In another episode the Enterprise encounters a cosmic string fragment, causing massive damage throughout the ship. When it hits [[The Captain|Captain]] [[Patrick Stewart|Picard]] is in the turbolift with three children (a situation he wasn't exactly thrilled about to begin with), and the impact is so violent he breaks his leg. Later on they discover that one of the safety clamps has been damaged, forcing all four to climb out before the turbolift plummets to the bottom of the shaft.

* In one episode of ''[[Boy Meets World]]'', Cory has a nightmare where he pushes all of his friends down an empty elevator shaft.

* ''[[Jam]]'' had a sketch where an office elevator breaks down, but because the security guard has a speech impediment, he isn't able to warn people in time and they all plunge screaming to their deaths.

* One episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show has Rob and Laura (pregnant in a flashback) mugged while in an elevator. The mugger simply pressed the stop button on the elevator so he could hold them up, but pressing the resume button does nothing. The entire episode is devoted to Rob, Laura, and the mugger trying to find a way out and hoping Laura doesn't go into labor while in the stopped elevator. At one point the mugger reads the inspection record of the elevator and finds that just this year they switched inspectors. Dick even climbs out the top of the elevator but only reads a sarcastic comment left by the building workers.

* Bud takes the elevator not realizing it is malfunctioning in the ''[[JAG]]'' episode "Yeah Baby".

* Happens to Chuck in the ''[[Early Edition]]'' episode "Baby".

* In ''[[Modern Family]]'''s third-season episode "Tableau Vivant", Mitchell is stuck in an elevator with its doors not quite closed right after Phil finally tells him he's fired.

* In ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'', the elevator in Sheldon, Leonard and Penny's building is always out of service. In the flashback episode, Leonard reveals that he accidentally blew it up.

* ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' had this in {{spoiler|Balamb Garden during the evacuation}} and your party had to use the hatch on the bottom to advance {{spoiler|The elevator will fall down immediately after they leave.}}

* At one point in ''[[Red Faction]]'', an elevator malfunctions and falls into a [[Bottomless Pit]], forcing you to find an alternate route.

* [[Gears of War|Marcus Fenix]] lampshades this tendency in his [[Deadpan Snarker|typical style]] at around the end of ''Gears Of War 2''.

* In ''[[Dead Rising 2]]'', during the beginning of the zombie outbreak, {{spoiler|Somebody disguised as Chuck Green places an explosive device on one of the zombie gates that goes off releasing yet another zombie outbreak}} and when Chuck is on the elevator it suddenly stops in the overtures to the outbreak. Upon forcing the doors open, he almost gets stuck in front of a rampaging zombie coming right at him, but as luck would have it somebody runs right into it and becomes the new target of the zombie, saving Chuck.

* This happens in ''[[Dead Island]]'' at the start when you're escaping from the hotel.

* This can happen in ''[[The Sims]] 2'' - the elevator a sim is in can crash to the bottom, and the unfortunate sim gets a rather large penalty to needs.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Elevator Tropes]]