It's All Upstairs From Here/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: No matter the setting or plot, The Hero and team will have to climb a large tower.

  • Straight: The Big Bad's lair is a tower.
  • Exaggerated: The entire story involves a tower climb.
  • Justified: A tower is the most defensible structure given the setting.
  • Inverted: The good guys start at the top of a tower and have to make their way to the ground.
    • Alternatively, the lair is a dungeon or a bunker. It's all downstairs from here.
  • Subverted: There's a helicopter that can take the heroes to the top of the Big Bad's tower, or the tower has a lift installed.
  • Double Subverted: ...except that the helicopter is at the top of a different tower and the lifts are out of service.
  • Parodied: The tower is a Space Elevator that the heroes still have to walk up.
  • Deconstructed: The heroes parachute onto the top of the tower or fly up using the aforementioned helicopter, defeating most of the purpose of the tower.
  • Reconstructed: The tower has extensive defenses to stop them using a helicopter or Grappling Hook Pistol, and it has no elevators. The heroes are forced to slog up all the stairs to get to the top of it.
  • Zig Zagged: The tower has extensive defenses to prevent an unauthorized helicopter landing on its only helipad, and a pointed roof they can't parachute onto, so the main group of heroes send their backup team in to disable the defenses. With those out of the way, they can land on the tower safely. One problem; the helipad is only two thirds of the way up the tower. The heroes don't have to climb as far, but it's still a slog to the top.
  • Averted: The heroes enter the tower and head down into the bunker in the basement where the big bad/treasure/princess/whatever is located.
  • Enforced: Acme Tower Inc is a major sponsor of the network, so they demand that one of their towers is featured in tonight's episode.
  • Lampshaded: The hero doesn't even bother checking the rest of the castle because they know the princess is going to be in the highest tower.
    • "Biggs Mc Evil sure likes his towers, huh?"
  • Invoked: The Big Bad wants to be a classic villain, so he builds a tower, because "that's how it's done".
  • Defied: The Big Bad makes his tower look like his headquarters, but is really running the show from a unimpressive building on the other side of the city.
  • Discussed: One archaeologist to another archeologist "You know, if we were in a fairy tale, that huge tower would probably have some kind of treasure at the top."
  • Conversed: "Oh look, the heroes just entered a city with a single massive tower in it. I wonder where they'll end up".
  • Played For Laughs: The heroes are exhausted from fighting and having to climb the tower. The villain very obligingly allows them to get their breath back before they begin fighting.
  • Played For Drama: Exhausted from, not only the fighting, but from having to climb a 50 story building, the heroes have a much more difficult time defeating the villain and barely survive what would have otherwise been a Curb Stomp Battle.

Keep walking, fellows, I know the trope is up there, so It's All Upstairs From Here.

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