There Was a Door/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Someone enters the room dramatically by not using the door.

  • Straight: John Strong leaps through a window into the evil lair.
  • Exaggerated: John runs through a wall made of wood/brick/cement/metal/lasers into the evil lair.
  • Downplayed: The wall is weak around the door, and all it takes is a touch to make it crumble, making the entry through the wall easy.
  • Justified: John wants to take the enemy by surprise by not using the door.
    • The door has been rigged with a deadly trap, so using it is out of question.
    • John is big enough to where using the door would have caused collateral damage anyway.
  • Inverted: John finds a locked door and he blasts it using high-powered explosives in order to enter a building... Despite the fact that there was a conveniently open window a few feet away from said door!
    • John needs to take the enemy by surprise. Unfortunately, the doors have all been bricked up. What does John do? Bust through the wall? No! Using Art Initiates Life, he simply draws a door on the wall and uses that!
  • Subverted: John gets a good, long running start...and simply goes through the door.
  • Double Subverted: ...but it's locked tight and he has to go through the windows anyway.
    • ...literally.
    • ...by smashing through.
    • He smashes through the doors.
  • Parodied: John is incapable of using doors, and as a result everywhere he goes has gaping holes in the walls.
  • Deconstructed: John ends up in a pile of broken glass and covered in cuts, or bruised and stunned at the foot of the wall.
    • John has to pay for all the damage he causes. Bashing through walls is not known to be cheap.
  • Reconstructed: John is Made of Iron and is unharmed.
    • The people trying to get damages from him are villains. Are they really going to go into a courtroom and demand payment for a hole in the room leading to the orphan furnace?
  • Zig Zagged: John enters through the door, exits through the window, enters the next through the wall, exits through the door...
  • Averted: John simply uses the doors.
  • Enforced: "He HAS to go in through the skylight. It just looks cooler that way."
  • Lampshaded: John slams through the wall and one of the villains laments that There Was a Door.
    • "And now you can have two!"
  • Invoked: The villain gets a heavy, clearly reinforced door for his evil lair, but leaves a window open right beside it...because the window is booby-trapped and will kill/capture/maim anyone who tries to enter through it.
  • Defied: The room has thick walls and no windows; the door is designed to be John's only option.
  • Discussed: "But if he jumps in through the windows, won't he get cut up pretty badly?"
  • Conversed: "John always comes in through the windows, doesn't he? It's getting a bit ridiculous; it's starting to strain my Willing Suspension of Disbelief."
  • Played For Laughs: John carries around a window with a stand and only enters doorways by jumping through it.
    • Alternatively: John tries and fails spectacularly to enter through a simple screen door, but has no trouble bashing through the walls instead.
  • Played For Drama: John tries to run through a wall, fails, and lands up in the hospital.

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