Open the Door and See All the People

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The scene where someone innocently opens the front door (frequently naked, or wearing boxers or something) and there's a raging/screaming/lusting/photographing mob on the other side. Usually the intruder then slams the door and looks around with shock.

Examples of Open the Door and See All the People include:


Anime and Manga

  • In Baccano!, one of the delinquents walks into the buffet cart armed with a knife. At the same time, representatives from the two groups of mobsters turn up with guns. He apologises and withdraws.

Comic Books

  • In one Punisher story, a Corrupt Corporate Executive is told that there's a bunch of journalists waiting outside the building. So he goes to meet them, reasoning that there's No Such Thing as Bad Publicity, unaware that his plan to cause random power outages in Florida to keep electricity provided by his company at a premium was leaked to the press. The next panel has him running like hell from the baying mob.
  • An inverted case occurs in Justice League International #24. A group of alien conquerors had been shrunk and imprisoned in a Roach Motel, in the JLA's kitchen. The shrink ray wears off, the invaders gather some weapons, and then they bust down the kitchen door to ravage and pillage... but discover that the JLA was holding a membership drive that day. Quoth the alien leader: "Very very quietly, pick up the door."

Film

Jack Burton: We may be trapped.

  • Star Wars: Han Solo running toward the room-fulla-stormtroopers.[1]
  • St Trinian's, near the end. Reporters are at the school and Colin Firth's character stands nude at the window of the headmistress' room.
  • Inverted in Mambo Italiano, when the family of the main character step out of the confession booths, the parents ready to proudly stand by their gay son in front of the entire congregation—but they find the church empty.
  • This happens to Spike in Notting Hill.

Music

  • In the song "Splish Splash", the narrator walks out of his bathroom smack into a dance party.

Video Games

  • In Heavy Rain, after Ethan's son is kidnapped by the Origami Killer, a mob of reporters shows up outside his door almost immediately.

Web Original

Western Animation

  • The episode of The Simpsons where Homer has been accused of sexual harassment.
    • As well as the episode featuring Mulder and Scully. Immediately after Lisa argues that the townspeople aren't going to take three seconds of blurry video as proof that Homer met an alien, Homer opens the door to find half the town on his lawn.
  • In an early episode of the Disney revamp of Doug, Doug discovered that his new middle school (which had been constructed over the summer) wasn't quite finished as he went into a bathroom stall and began to unzip only to find that he was now standing on stage in the school auditorium filled with kids. When he pointed this out to a construction worker, the construction worker merely replied, "We're working on it."
  1. but only in the Special Edition.