Soft Glass: Difference between revisions

[[File:Glasss.jpg|frame|[[Don't Try This At Home|Don't try this at home.]]]]

 

 

[[Reality Is Unrealistic|Glass is harder than you think it is.]] It takes a lot of force to break a glass window, and, even if you succeed, you have many shards of sharp glass all over the place that are very likely to injure you. However, [[Rule of Cool|that isn't cool.]] It's so much cooler to have your [[Badass]] [[Action Hero]] effortlessly leap through a window and come out unharmed.

 

See also [[A Glass in the Hand]], and [[Grievous Bottley Harm]] where the strength of glass is also underestimated.

{{examples}}

== General ==

* Virtually all bar-fights in any [[The Western|Western]] series result in at least one cowhand going through a saloon window, often followed by him getting up and running back into the fray.

 

 

* Subverted in the first episode of ''[[Welcome to The NHK]]'' where Satou tries to break a beer bottle with a karate chop and cuts open his hand doing it.

* Subaru of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' has a tendency to smash through windows both intentionally and unintentionally, though {{spoiler|being a [[Hollywood Cyborg|Combat Cyborg]]}} certainly helps the plausibility of her doing this. Also, she's wearing a Barrier Jacket (essentially clothing with magical [[Deflector Shields]]), which have been shown to withstand some seriously impressive impacts with no damage to the wearer at all.

* Aversion in ''[[Naruto]]'': Kabuto does the preventive glass-breaking thing using shuriken when escaping Kakashi through a hospital window.

* So does Spike in the ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' movie in a subway.

* ''[[Futaba-Kun Change!|Futaba Kun Change]]'': Futaba goes through glass windows several times, including once nearly-naked, without so much as a scratch. The Justicemaker, on the other hand, can get plenty of shards in his huge head along with comical spurts of blood.

* ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]'' has a few scenes where the Major either busts through or is tossed out a window without acquiring any serious injuries, but this is justified since she's a full-body cyborg. The trope is also averted when the Major has to track down "Angel Feathers", a terrorist who's infamous for bombing glass skyscrapers and causing heavy casualties from the glass shrapnel.

* Averted nice and hard in ''[[Honey and Clover]]'': {{spoiler|a pane of glass breaks over Hagu's head and results in a [[Game-Breaking Injury]] that leads to her being [[Put on a Bus]] at the end of the last book.}}

* Somewhat averted in the ''[[Fruits Basket]]'' manga, in that when Kyo punches a school window in anger, it does break, but he also is visibly injured by it.

 

* ''[[Spider-Man]]''

** Hilariously subverted in an issue of ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'', where Spidey, trying to make a dramatic entrance into the Kingpin's office, finds that Fisk has installed much stronger glass than last time Spidey was around.

* [[Averted Trope|Averted]] in ''[[Thieves and Kings]]''. While Rubel does go through a couple windows, in the first case he is just ''opening the window'', not breaking it, and in the second case, [[Discussed Trope|recognizing that going through a window can kill you]] but having no choice, he hides in a large iron pot.

* ''[[Watchmen]]''

** Played straight(-ish) later when Rorscharch is escaping the set-up at Moloch's home: he leaps through the window to escape the cops, and doesn't appear to be cut by the glass. He is damaged by the fall, however, and is quickly arrested. It's possible that his long-coat and mask protected him from the glass but, since they don't appear to be armoured at all, this is improbable.

* ''[[Bookhunter]]'' is all over the place on this one. Library Police SWAT teams are shown crashing through windows and are naturally unharmed, because they're wearing full armor. Then Agent Bay, a plainclothes [[Cowboy Cop]], leaps through a closed window onto a fire escape and isn't injured at all. And then Chief Spencer gets flung through a plate glass window and gets cut and bloodied in the process. Apparently volition determines whether or not breaking glass injures you.

* The Defenestrator from DC Comics. Carries a portable window to put people through. Since he's a good guy hopefully the intention is just on his pyschosis (through the window!) and not the shredding from dangerous glass.

** Another glass-proof Angel is Warren, who is able to jump through a skyscaper window without attaining so much as a scratch, ''shirtless''.

** And then there's Storm, whose face is slammed through a glass table during a fight scene and yet she doesn't suffer the slightest scratch.

* Averted in ''[[Memento]]'', Leonard knocks a guy out with a wine bottle without breaking it, and specifically choosing it for this earlier when he needed a weapon.

* Believe it or not, ''[[Commando (film)|Commando]]'' averted this trope. A friend of Jon Matrix (Schwarzenegger's character) died after being driven on the hood of a stolen car through a window. The close up of the guy shows him badly cut from the shards.

* ''[[Last Action Hero]]'', as part of the premise, subverted this and many, many other tropes. After [[Trapped in TV Land|coming out of movieland]], Jack Slater takes control of a car by punching through the window. Shortly thereafter, he says that doing that "really hurt".

* During the shooting of another film of his, ''[[True Lies]]'', Arnold accidentally smashed a real car window instead of the one made out of sugar.

* ''[[Die Hard]]''

** Also in the first movie, Willis' character has a lot of trouble breaking glass to alert a cop 30 stories below. He eventually uses a chair and while it succeeds enough to use, it only creates a relatively small hole.

** He does manage to throw a body through the same glass only moments later, though we don't see how much effort it took, or if the body took any damage from the glass.

* In ''[[Gremlins]]'', Billy smashes open a glass window with a children's toy. The kind that looks like a lawn mower full of little popping balls. Aside from being weird, it's fairly believable. He and Kate manage to climb through the hole without cutting themselves at all, although they don't make it look easy.

* Subverted at the end of ''[[The Game (film)|The Game]]'': [[Michael Douglas]]' character falls through a skylight {{spoiler|and lands safely on a large air cushion. <s> Several technicians</s> Spike Jonze tells him to stay still while he brushes the "glass" fragments away, informing him that "It's stunt glass, but it can still cut."}}

* Averted gruesomely in ''[[A Home At The End Of The World]]'', where a character's brother runs through a sliding door he thought was open. The jagged shards of glass puncture his neck, making him bleed to death in seconds.

* Averted, humorously, in the film ''Love, Honour & Obey''. A gang enforcer tries to punch through a car door's window to grab someone who owes money. He punches it, hard, and keeps punching it again and again with the gang standing around discussing whether they think he will give up before it breaks. {{spoiler|you hear it shatter offscreen after a few minutes of conversation}}

* Subverted in ''[[I, Robot (film)|I Robot]]''. Detective Spooner attempts to debunk the theory that Dr. Lanning defenestrated himself to commit suicide. He does so by throwing a desk chair at the next pane of glass, and noting that, as safety glass, it shattered in place but did not break.

* ''[[RoboCop]]''

* In ''[[Beethoven (film)|Beethoven]]'', Charles Grodin enters the bad guys' headquarters through the skylight.

* Subverted brutally in the opening scenes of the Japanese movie ''[[Hypnosis]]'', where a character kills himself by jumping through a window. His corpse is later shown with the glass still embedded.

* Played straight near the end of the French movie ''[[The Fox And The Child]]'', when the fox jumps through a window with thick wooden framing as though it was nothing. Subverted because {{spoiler|she nearly bleeds to death on the ground below}}.

* [[Throw It In|Accidentally]] [[Double Subversion|Doubly Subverted]] in ''Stark Raving Mad'', in the "knock them out with a wine bottle" variation.

* Averted in ''[[Maniac Cop 2]]'' where Officer Cordell fights off two officers, throwing one through a mirror. It's mentioned a little later that the thrown cop actually died.

* Even animals sometimes get in on this act, as in the velociraptor's crash through the laboratory window in ''[[Jurassic Park]]''. While scales might offer some protection against being cut, it really ought to have shown at least some damage from the collision.

** Batman in the ''Dark Knight Trilogy'' is covered in armor. As long as he doesn't dive face first, it should protect him.

** Averted in "The Dark Knight" when he fires explosive sticky charges onto a skyscraper window and detonates them before gliding through. Again, his armor likely would protect him from glass shards.

* Averted in ''[[The A-Team (film)|The a Team]]'' film as B.A. falls some distance and lands on a glass pane, which is only dented and he has to shoot the plate to break the glass.

** In addition, he visibly winces in pain and hobbles for the rest of the sequence.

* Made into a subtle hint of future plot development in the French supernatural thriller ''Vidocq'', where the villain called the Alchemist cheerfully breaks the laws of physics in his every appearance, once jumping through a large window and several stories to the ground, walking away unharmed. Later on, another character does the same with no explanation. Coincidence?

* Unintentionally averted in ''[[The Way of the Gun]]'', when Benicio del Toro's character breaks into a car and has to elbow the window several times before it shatters. The glass was supposed to break on the first try but didn't, so del Toro just kept hitting it until it did. Possible double subversion: he had a screwdriver in his sleeve, and it still took him 3 hits to break the window.

* Another painful one from Hong Kong- during the filming of ''[[Enter the Dragon]]'', [[Bruce Lee]] got quite badly lacerated during a take of his fight with O'Hara (Robert Wall), as the glass bottles Wall smashed to make his ersatz daggers were quite real

* Averted in ''[[Daredevil (film)|Daredevil]]''. Kingpin throws Daredevil full force at a glass window that cracks a lot but doesn't break. Bullseye is also thrown from a huge height onto a car windshield that doesn't break.

* Played dead straight in ''[[Attack of the Clones]]'' when Obi-wan jumps headfirst through Padmé's window. This is particularly [[Egregious]] because according to the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] Coruscant's windows are made of [[Unobtainium|transparisteel]], not glass. This is a transparent material that is much tougher than glass (they use it for viewports on starships among other things). Of course, Obi-wan's a Jedi Master, [[A Wizard Did It|so check your assumptions at the door]].

 

* Averted in [[Jack London]]'s ''[[White Fang]]''. The title dog breaks through a window to reunite with his master and is badly cut up along his stomach for it.

* [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld]]''

** Also averted several times in ''Witches Abroad'', as Granny Weatherwax smashes several mirrors during the course of the story, and almost gets killed by a shower of broken glass. (The ever-patient Nanny Ogg patches her up, lamenting, "Oh, Esme, you do take winning hard.")

** In Maskerade a panicked lady clobbers Nanny Ogg with a ''full'' bottle of champagne to try and knock her out so as to make an escape. The bottle doesn't break, but the book takes this moment to point out that somewhere in the Ogg family tree is a bit of dwarf, meaning Nanny has a skull you could break rocks with, so all getting hit really does is stun her momentarily.

* [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]

** Both averted and lampshaded in the novel ''[[X Wing Series|Wraith Squadron: Iron Fist]]''. A team of New Republic spies instigate a bar brawl with a group of Imperial pilots by having one of their members hitting a fellow teammate in the head with a glass bottle. The bottle shatters because it is made out of stage glass. After the fight, the team member who took the bottle to the face stated that the first bottle didn't hurt him but complained that he was hit by a second bottle and that one was made out of ''real'' glass (the bottle didn't even break). Earlier in the book, in their inspiration for setting up the scene later, a person who instigated a bar brawl for similar reasons smacked a member of the team on the head with a bottle, which not only didn't break but gave him a minor concussion and was unable to fight for a while.

** Also averted when Corran has to break a glass display case in {{spoiler|the sealed-off Jedi exhibits}} at a museum in ''The Krytos Trap''. He takes some precautions, such as wrapping his hand in as much cloth as feasible. It still hurts, but seeing as he needs the {{spoiler|lightsaber}} inside, he didn't have a whole lot of choice.

** Also also averted in ''Wedge's Gamble'' when Corran flings a speeder bike sidecar through a window (long story). The flying glass injures the people on the other side, including Wedge.

* Used in ''Thieves Like Us'', when a girl escapes her captors by going into the bathroom, locking the door, and breaking open the window with a shampoo bottle. Subverted in that she wrapped her hand in a towel to pull out the larger shards still in the frame afterwards and gets a deep cut in her side while climbing out.

* [[Nightmare Fuel|Horrifyingly]] averted in ''The Higher Realm'' by James Friel, in which a little girl accidentally runs into a glass door, is wounded by the shards and quickly bleeds to death.

* Averted in ''Martians in Maggody'', when Arly breaks a window with a rock and suffers numerous superficial cuts from the glass fragments. Justified, as she'd overheard the sounds of a sexual assault from inside and couldn't waste time looking for something to wrap her arm with.

* Mostly averted in ''[[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest]]'': when McMurphy punches through the nurse's station's window, he severely injures his hand and has it bandaged up for a long time (however, he's able to break one of the replacement windows with a basketball). The ward windows are made of a durable safety glass that can only be broken if an enormous <s> water fountain</s> control panel is thrown into them with full force.

* Averted in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Mostly Harmless|Mostly Harmless]]'', when Ford Prefect finds himself sitting on the window ledge outside the thirteenth floor of the Guide offices:

* Averted in ''[[Mercy Thompson]]''. A werewolf in a hurry jumps through the porch window, covering himself in numerous deep cuts. His exasperated alpha points out that he could have died even despite his [[Healing Factor]] due to the sheer number of the cuts. Even worse, though, is that a naked woman with normal human healing was standing beneath the window, and she ends up covered with broken glass.

* Averted in a major way in [[Ann Rice]]'s ''[[Queen of the Damned]]'', where {{spoiler|Mekare}} pushes {{spoiler|Akasha}} through a plate glass window. One of the larger shards decapitates {{spoiler|Akasha}}.

 

 

* ''[[Angel]]'' was rather fond of crashing through skylights. He also smashed through a lot of windows. The fact that he's a vampire might account for his ability to survive such an impact, but not the fact that he never gets cut. Subverted in one episode in which he's thrown out of a Skyscraper window. He recovers shortly after but is shown to be in extreme pain and spitting up Blood upon impact.

* Simultaneously subverted and double subverted in an episode of ''[[Bones]]'': It is known that a wine bottle was broken over the victim's head, after which the intact end was shoved into the victim. As it turns out, good quality wine bottles (such as those used in the winery where the body was found) [[Subverted Trope|don't break that easily]]. [[Double Subversion|A cheap knock-off of said winery's bottles, filled with cheap knock-off wine, sold as if it were from that expensive winery, though...]]

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''

** Notably averted in season 6: someone is clubbed and (unintentionally) killed with a wine bottle that never even cracks.

* ''[[CSI]]''

** Averted in another episode, where one of the Miniature Killer's victims dies when her head goes through a plate glass window and the sharp shards essentially turn her into a Pez dispenser.

* [[CSI: NY]] had an aversion in an ep where the victim was killed after he fell backwards into the glass of his aquarium, shattering it and cutting himself to shreds.

* In an episode of ''[[My Family]]'', Ben and Susan house sit an extremely hi-tech apartment, where they do not know how to operate anything or open the windows. A fire starts and they break the glass (which looks pretty damn thick) by throwing a DVD player at it.

* A version of this happened on the ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' episode ''Puma Man'', where the title character effortlessly punches his way through a roof. Mike comments "Thank goodness they made their house out of peanut brittle!"

* Averted in the ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' episode "Pigeon": Bradan Caden is killed by glass shards upon crashing into a building.

** Carla has to get into Turk's car and brings fellow nurse Laverne along with her. The car's locked, so Laverne shouts a battle cry ("[[Leeroy Jenkins|Lavern Robaaaaaarts!]]") and punches out the window with nary a scratch. Carla is taken aback and cries "Laverne! I have the keys!"

** Averted in another episode, where J.D. tries to break a car window with a heavy object to prove a point. It takes him several minutes of repeated bashing before the glass eventually breaks.

** Near the end of the third season, J.D. and Elliot get [[Will They or Won't They?|back together]], then JD tells her he doesn't love her at the reception dinner. She shoves him onto the table, where he crushes several wine glasses. No injury occurs.

* Subverted in an episode of the original (black and white) ''[[Superman]]'' TV series. The Man'o'Steel has just deflected an asteroid and is feeling a bit woozy. Jimmy Olsen is over and thinks Clark is sick and puts him in the shower. We hear the crash of breaking glass as Clark falls through the shower door. Jimmy later comments on how lucky Clark was as "there wasn't a scratch on him."

** Averted when a woman is "attacked" by spiders in her shower... and in the flailing to get them off, puts her arm through the shower door and bleeds to death.

** Also averted when Castiel tries to "speak" to Dean in his angelic voice, shattering every window in the process. Dean tries to hide, but still can't avoid a few cuts. This was mirrored in Real Life. When the fake sugar glass being used didn't look visually stunning enough, real glass was used. [[Jensen Ackles]] received a cut as a result. In the same episode, Dean is shown to break into a deserted store, taking pains to wrap up his hand and sweep the frame to keep it from being turned into hamburger meat.

* Averted in ''[[True Blood]]''. Tara's mother hits her with an empty liquor bottle. It didn't break at all and in fact left a nasty wound on Tara's forehead.

** Very much not averted when Will Bailey breaks the "glass" between his and Toby's office. The scene showcased the extent of his frustration, as Toby has never been able to break it with his rubber ball no matter how hard he threw it. Funny thing is, the ''thump'' of the ball against the window always sounded like plexiglass before this incident. Go figure.

* Oh mercy, ''[[Doctor Who|The End of Time]]''. {{spoiler|Watching the Doctor plummet through Naismith's stained glass ceiling and land very painfully. He's cut up, but not as badly as the fall should have made him. (Of course, he probably broke most of the bones in his body on the landing, which wouldn't be quite so noticeably bloody and graphic, but still....)}}

** "Closing Time" - the Doctor jumps through a window to rescue Craig, and doesn't get so much as a scratch. ''Fixing'' the window before Craig's wife gets home is more of a problem (apparently, finding a glazer on a Sunday isn't easy even with a time machine.)

** Oddly averted in ''Partners In Crime''. Donna was even hitting that window with a wrench and nothing was happening. Maybe deadlocking windows to make them sonic screwdriver proof also strengthens the glass.

* In the HBO show ''OZ'', characters repeatedly break through glass walls. Which is even more bizarre considering the fact that it's set... in a maximum-security prison. A maximum-security prison where the walls are made out of glass. Not Plexiglass or even safety glass, but regular, breaks-into-nice-sharp-pieces-perfect-for-shanking-someone glass. Justified in that Em City is designed specifically like that. Also averted in that when Beecher smashes a glass window with a chair, a shard nearly blinds Schillinger

* Averted in the British police-drama ''[[Backup]]''. A policeman breaks a window and quickly enters a building through it. The next in line (the show is about an operational support unit who travel to incidents together) stands in front of the window and spends some time breaking the sharp fragments out of the frame with his baton.

* The season one midseason finale of ''[[White Collar]]'' has Neal Caffrey swinging into a locked room of an art museum this way. Well, technically the window was made of panes of glass separated by wood, which is what he actually breaks, but he should've gotten a few cuts at the very least.

* The fifth season finale of ''[[Psych]]'' managed to avert this. Juliette and a psycho crash down onto a coffee table whose glass top breaks. The psycho is underneath Juliette and is seen immediately to be bleeding. By the end of the episode, though, the injuries appear not to have been severe.

* ''[[Lost]]''. Locke gets shoved out a window and falls eight stories. He lives. However, much of ''Lost'' is about characters surviving/healing from stuff they should not.

* Averted in ''[[My Name Is Earl]]''. To appear threatening the quite strong Joy tries to break an empty liquor bottle which doesn't budge after two blows to a table. Giving up, she states "It will still hurt if she hits Catalina with it"

* There were several instances in ''[[Highlander the Series]]'' where Richie crashed through a glass window. Justified at least once in that in the scene, he hit the glass at full speed on his motorcycle (though it's a surprise he wasn't cut, unless the motorcycle gear was heavy enough to protect him.)

** In the pilot, he averts the trope, cutting Mac's antique shop window with a glass cutter.

 

* For an angle in [[WCW]], Bill [[Goldberg]] was required to punch through a real glass window of a limousine. He was originally supposed to conceal a small piece of pipe in his hand to aid with the punching, but after the cameras started rolling he lost it and decided to punch through the window with his bare fist. A shard of glass caused a huge gash down his forearm and he was out of action for months. [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3i5Ju0mhjAE Watch it here.] Watch for him checking his arm after smashing the third window and the subsequent splatter of blood when he pounds on the white hood.

** If you listen to the match commentary on the DVD with Shane and Kurt they talk about this, and proving that he's actually got a bit of badass in him, Shane apparently told Kurt once they were through the first one to just fling him head-first through the glass on the way out. He did, and it looked awesome.

* Sabu and [[Mick Foley|Cactus Jack]] had a match in [[ECW]] where they brawled through the crowd and backstage area. Sabu got hold of a bottle, which he proceeded to break over Jack's head. Except that it was a real, non-gimmicked bottle, and took several attempts...

* The set for Brutus Beefcake's [[Talk Show With Fists]], ''The Barber Shop'', has a big glass window that was just begging for someone to be thrown through it. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCljiGVZ5fE That someone was Marty Jannetty,] courtesy of his tag-team partner [[Shawn Michaels]], in a move that solidified Michaels's [[Face Heel Turn]] and launched his singles career. Note that in [[Real Life]], the window was not real glass, and Jannetty was applying the blood while he was draped over the windowsill and his face was out of sight. (Interestingly, many people misremember this as "Michaels superkicking Jannetty through the glass," when what actually happened was Michaels superkicking Jannetty to the floor, then picking him up and ''throwing'' him through the glass.)

* This happens a lot in Japanese and American "Death Match" or other [[Garbage Wrestling]] venues. The lucky ones work for a league that invests in prop beer mugs and break-away panes of glass that, like most pro wrestling, looks horrid but is relatively safe. The unlucky ones get dropped through actual, thin window panes, have actual glasses and bottles busted over their heads, and get hit with/thrown through actual fluorescent tubes. The latter of which, btw, shatter into countless razor-sharp shards, tend to [[Nausea Fuel|turn the upper layer of skin and flesh into hamburger]], and [[Too Dumb to Live|contain potentially carcinogenic chemicals]].

 

== Video Games ==

 

== Web Comics ==

** [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2002-08-08 Subversion].

* ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]''

** Lampshaded: Elan mentions that Dashing Swordsmen get reduced glass damage precisely so they can make dramatic window entrances. It doesn't even have to be dramatic, so he can apparently just break glass by touching it.

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]''

** During the McDonald's arc, Dr. McNinja interrogates three workers to learn Ronald's whereabouts. After they refuse to talk, he "super sizes their pain" by throwing one of them out the window. They were robots, but still... and then there's this line.

** The plate glass windows of Doc's office have also been emergency egresses (and ingresses!) to the point where Doc's got a "wall and window man" on call.

* Averted in ''[[Dominic Deegan]]: Oracle for Hire'', where a man is thrown through a window and ends up cut half to ribbons (and [[Bar Brawl|possibly]] broke some bones in the process). Still, [[You Fail Biology Forever|Biology Is Failed Forever]] since it supposedly cut an artery lengthwise (with no cover or pressure) and he was [[Made of Iron|still alive over a minute later]].

** Homer does this by accident when trying to hit the jukebox and make it start playing a la [[Happy Days|Fonzie]]: "'aaaayyy....* smash* AHH!! HEMORRHAGE-A-MUNDO!!!"

** In another episode Bart throws a brick against a store window only for it to bounce back and hit him in the head without cracking the window.

* One episode of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' had Wonder Woman stop a fast-moving car by ''punching it''. This is essentially the same as it hitting a wall, and sending the drivers and passenger flying through the windshield (instead of just knocking the thing straight out) and ''into another car'', yet the guys not only survive, but weren't even unconscious.

* In ''[[Batman: The Animated Series]]'', "The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy", like most times, Batman can send a grappling hook through a glass window like it was nothing. Then it was subverted this when Batman was unable to break a large lightbulb by just throwing his utility belt at it, and had to throw a pole at it like a spear. Then, two minutes later, he throws the belt at a glass wall, ''and it goes straight through it''.

* ''[[South Park]]''

** Subverted in the episode "South Park Is Gay": Mr. Slave attempts to assassinate the cast of ''Queer Eye for the Straight Guy''. He manages to crash through their hotel window... and then lies bleeding on the hotel room floor.

* ''[[American Dad]]''

** Half-averted in the episode "Bullocks to Stan". Bullock, attempting to placate Stan's wrath, tries to convince him that their fight was an elaborate test. He then laments not getting to use the "breakaway glass window." It's real, so when he hits it, it doesn't break. He puts a few bullets in it then repeats the act successfully, though he still might have been injured by the glass.

** Averted when Stan and Francine spies on George Clooney to get to him. In a fit of rage Francine punches a glass window, her hand gets bloody, and has shards of glass stuck in it.

* Averted about three minutes into the first episode of ''[[Clone High]]'', when Abe Lincoln, trying desperately to look cool in front of Cleopatra, leans against the high school's glass trophy case; his arm crashes through it and he immediately starts bleeding.

* ''[[Star Wars: The Clone Wars]]'' ironically averts this when there was no need to. In one scene Anakin slashes a window with his lightsabre, presumably to weaken it, then uses the Force to smash the glass. So...what was the lightsabre needed for? Considering the Jedi frequently send large metal robots flying across a room, surely this would be one scenario where the glass shouldn't ''need'' weakening.

* Happens all the time on ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]''. Though, given [[And I Must Scream|some of]] [[Buried Alive|the other]] tropes these characters are subjected too, it might be a mercy move.

** In a mall scene of ''Police Story'', the glass is made thicker than usual so it'll look more real. This had a rather unfortunate (or fortunate) side effect of visibly cutting the actors. In fact, Jackie has gone on record in his documentaries saying that his team uses real plate glass anytime it's possible, because fake glass looks too, well, fake. There's a very good reason his stunt team is considered some of the most badass people on the planet (and why they can't get insurance).

** There is a rumor that during the filming of the car window punching scene from ''Terminator'' Arnold broke his his hand punching out the wrong window, which hadn't been replaced by breakaway glass.

* [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205737/Man-killed-shards-glass-hurling-girlfriend-shop-window.html??88 An abusive man in England killed himself by accident] when he hurled his girlfriend into a plate glass window several times. A shard of this broken glass apparently impaled him and severed an artery. [[Laser-Guided Karma]], anyone? At least one internet forum reported this story with the thread title "[[A Worldwide Punomenon|Windows: Fatal Error]]".

* Behold the insane true story of [[wikipedia:Alan Magee|Alan Magee]], a [[WW 2]] B-17 gunner. His plane was shot down in 1943 (receiving 28 shrapnel wounds in the process), and after bailing out discovered his parachute wouldn't work. Magee free-fell 22,000 feet, through a train station's glass ceiling... and lived. It's speculated that the glass may have broken the fall.

* Before reinforced glass became common, there were quite a few instances of people not seeing glass sliding doors, walking into them, and the ensuing horrific consequences. Even now this can still happen, you just have to hit it extremely hard (usually by running).

** Shower Screens and Enclosures as well as vehicle windscreens are made of this glass, too. Slipping in a shower is common enough, so being surrounded by glass that could shatter and slice you to ribbons is not the best idea in the world. Neither is having a huge sheet of glass in front of your face that could impale you with shards in the event of a car accident.

* In ''Tosh.0'', Tosh interviews a news reporter who had trouble breaking car door glass with a hammer. He gets it this time around, since the trick is to hit the corner of the car window. Hitting center of the window full-force with a tool designed to shatter said windows resulted in a loud noise and a tiny ding in the glass. However, when applied about an inch in from the corner, a swing from the wrist, not even elbow or shoulder, breaks the entire window.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Television Is Trying to Kill Us]]

[[Category:Artistic License Physics]]

[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:Tropes Examined by the Mythbusters]]