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Soft Glass: Difference between revisions
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** Averted: the cops investigating the Comedian's death conclude it couldn't have been suicide, because nobody could have smashed that window by merely running at it -- he had to have been picked up and thrown by someone extremely strong.
** 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.
** Averted again later in a bar Rorschach frequents for information, where he brutally pumps information out of a guy by breaking a glass cup in his hand, then proceeding to ''squeeze'' it.
* ''[[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.
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** 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.
* And yet ''another'' glass-proof Angel -- Nicholas Angel in ''[[Hot Fuzz]]'', who managed to jump through a glass door without hurting himself. However, he threw a truncheon through it first so it shattered -- but still... That's actually played fully straight -- the truncheon goes through the ''window,'' and Angel then jumps through the ''door.'' He also gets straight-up thrown through another window later on, and is none the worse for wear even after hitting concrete. Then again, given the fact that the whole film is an [[Affectionate Parody]] of several genres, realism wasn't high on their list of priorities.
** Subverted shortly after the part where Angel runs through the door when the criminal dives through a pane of glass and gets a bad cut on their leg leaving blood on the glass.
* 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.
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** 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 ''[[Lethal Weapon]]'', Riggs takes a shotgun blast from Mr. Joshua and flies back through a window without any injuries worse than getting the wind knocked out of him. Of course, Riggs is crazy enough to ignore many injuries.
* 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."}}
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* 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.
* ''[[Beverly Hills Cop]]'': Axel Foley got thrown out of a [[Crowning Moment of Funny|fucking window]].
* 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.
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* 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.
* ''Pan's Labyrinth'': Averted in that Vidal beats a man's face into hamburger with a wine bottle without breaking it.
* In ''[[The Mummy Trilogy|The Mummy Returns]]'', Rick and Jonathan jump out a window, and land unharmed on the awning beneath.
* Used in ''Boondock Saints 2'': All Saint's Day. The brothers swing from a window washer's platform, and through the window of a skyscraper in order to get at the guys inside. They do fire several .357 Magnum rounds through the window first to weaken the glass, but right after landing, they slide on their knees across a floor that should have been covered in razor sharp shards.
* 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.
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** 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.
* Subverted in [[Patricia C. Wrede]]'s ''[[Mairelon The Magician]]'', where a thief throws a chair through a window to escape. He then tears the curtains down to protect himself from what's left of the glass.
* 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.
* In ''[[The Catcher in The Rye]]'', when Holden, the main character, finds out that his brother died, he breaks all the windows in the garage with his fist. He messes up his hand so badly that he can never make a proper fist again.
* [[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.
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== Live-Action TV ==
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Rawhide]]'', where Rowdy Yates goes through a pane of glass and is ''seriously'' cut up by it.
* ''[[Myth Busters]]'' (partially) covered this one.
* ''[[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.
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* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''
** Notably averted in season 6: someone is clubbed and (unintentionally) killed with a wine bottle that never even cracks.
** Played straight ''and'' subverted in "Homecoming". Buffy, Cordelia, and a demon need to get out of a house that's about to explode. Buffy and Cordelia dive through a window, which shatters with no great hello. The demon dives through another window... except it's boarded shut and he just bounces right back onto the grenade. Buffy is a powerhouse, though, smashing through glass is much less of a problem for her.
* ''[[CSI]]''
** Averted (though not [[Lampshade|lampshaded]]) by the second-season episode, "You've Got Male": a woman dies from injuries sustained by being pushed through a sliding glass door in her house. Not only did she bleed to death, she sustained fractures from the impact.
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The show in general seems to take great pains in making sure this trope doesn't occur, at least in major scenes. Eric Kripke has been known to say that it bugs him. Examples include:
** 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.
** Partly averted in another episode. Sam and Dean dive through the window of a church in order to flee from Alastair, and apparently manage to run away surprisingly quickly. However, a later scenes shows them taking care of their injuries; Sam [[Nausea Fuel|stitches up a pretty nasty cut on his arm]], while Dean sports a dislocated shoulder.
** 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.
** In the episode where they end up in the dimension where Supernatural is a TV show, they break through stunt glass at the beginning when they are transported. It's [[Played for Laughs]] later on when the boys try to use a spell to return home, running at the glass window on the set.....and failing to crash through in spectacular fashion.
* 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.
* The [[The Daily Show|Stewart]]/[[The Colbert Report|Colbert]]/O'Brien [[Melee a Trois]] includes a scene where all three smash beer bottles over each other's heads -- this is where the Stewart-Colbert alliance breaks up and it becomes a true [[Melee a Trois]], as Jon accidentally breaks a bottle over Stephen. The [[Hilarious Outtakes|blooper reel]] shows Conan going to hit Jon and hesitating at the last minute, disturbed by how real the sugar glass bottle looks, and the weight of it -- sugar glass is usually much lighter than the real thing.
* ''[[The West Wing]]''
** Averted in episode "Noel". Josh, {{spoiler|suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after being shot, puts his hand through the window of his apartment}}; this results in a nasty cut that requires stitches. Doubly averted, as Josh tries to hide his injury as the result of accidentally putting a drinking glass down too hard on the table -- and everyone knows that this isn't even vaguely plausible.
** 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.
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* 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.
* Played straight in ''[[The Cape (trope)]]''; the second episode starts with the main character jumping through a plate glass window, out of a skyscraper, onto a car (whose window also shatters) and the only injury he suffers is from being stabbed before jumping out the window.
* ''[[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"
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== Web Comics ==
* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]''
** [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2002-08-08 Subversion].
** Also painfully averted recently in the fight between {{spoiler|Raven and Abraham, where Raven gets blasted through a window by Abraham's attack. We see just his hand on the ground, covered with gashes next to some glass.}}
* ''[[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.
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** 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.
* ''[[Rocket Power]]'' actually ''explained'' this trope. When a film crew is in town for a movie, they explain that the fish tank is actually made out of sugar and not glass, which Sam then proceeds to give a lick.
* 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''.
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* ''[[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.
** Later, in two episodes of the "Imaginationland Trilogy" this happens three times in order to break into the same room in the Pentagon. Twice by Cartman, once by Kyle. Part of the window was broken the first time; the second time the window was put together with tape and broken again; the third time Kyle simply dove into the non-broken part of the window.
{{quote|[[Fridge Logic|"Why is it so easy for children to break into the Pentagon?"]]}}
* ''[[American Dad]]''
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