Running Into the Window

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A character is walking along when he notices a window that is apparently open. He wonders aloud who left the window open as he walks over to close it, only to run directly into the glass, revealing that the window is so clean that it gave the impression that it was open. Or a character looks over at the kitchen area to see an open area so they run over to it, only to run into the glass again, revealing it to be a sliding glass door that also gave it the impression of being an open door.

This is a Comedy trope where a character will mistake a clean window or a sliding glass door for an open door then run into the window or door when they try to go through it.

Examples of Running Into the Window include:

Advertising

• A series of Windex window cleaner commercials featured a pair of birds who were musing about how said cleaner is so bright that birds could get hurt flying into the windows that were cleaned.
• Inverted in this Super Bowl Doritos commercial.

Film

• Over the Hedge: Verne and the other animals try to escape from Gladys' house after trying to get food from her house, only to run into a sliding glass door.
• Happens in the chase sequence at the beginning of Cats and Dogs. Buddy sees the cat he's been chasing sitting just outside an open door, dives at it...WHAM.
• Played straight in Battlefield Earth, when Johnny enters a long-abandoned mall and runs into a plastic display case, apparently not being able to see through the frosted, moisture-covered glass.
• In Antz, Z walks toward a sandwich in a picnic but ends up walking into the plastic wrapping, which he thinks it's Some Kind of Force Field.
• A frightened Nemo keeps running into the aquarium walls in Finding Nemo.

Theatre

• In the play What I Meant Was by Craig Lucas, a mother forgives her son for (among other things) pretending he didn't know her when she walked into a plate glass window at his grade school and broke her nose.

Newspaper Comics

• This was used four times in Garfield:
  • Garfield tried to sneak up on Odie, only to run into a patio door. ^{[dead link]}
  • A bird runs into the window while Garfield was explaining about windows. ^{[dead link]}
  • Jon mistook a window that Garfield cleaned for being left open. ^{[dead link]}
  • Jon ran into the sliding glass door after noticing a dead bird on the lawn from flying into said door. ^{[dead link]}
• Happened to the Crocodiles in this recent Pearls Before Swine strip.

Live-Action TV

• On Modern Family, Claire is worried that a dog Phil's father brought will walk into the back door. The dog doesn't, but their son Luke does.
  • In another episode, Cameron walks into the back door screen on Jay's home.
• iCarly Spencer invokes this in the episode "iPrank." He pranks Sam and Freddie by having a clear, nearly invisible plexiglass wall placed in front of the elevator so whoever exited it would smack into it.

Real Life

• Birds are prone to flying into windows because they don't know that they're actually glass, so they end up hurting themselves real bad.
  • There are a few instances of birds having left clear impressions of their bodies on windows after flying into them (apparently due to residue from their feathers).
• One fatal real life example proved crucial to proving the existence of necrophilia among ducks.
• Several types of insects who follow the lightsource (for an example, flies and bees) are known to repeatedly run into glass and they can even starve to death trying to fly through it even if there is an obvious way out of the house.