History Main / AbsurdlyLongStairway

* In episode 154 of ''Manga/UruseiYatsura'', the gang has to reach a temple situated at the top of stairs. [[https://twitter.com/i/status/1498017091466629120 Very, ''very'' long stairs]]. When the camera pans out and goes up them, it just keeps going and going. Finally, the [[{{Beat}} stairs plateau...]] only for a second, even ''longer'' set of stairs to come into frame and the scene continues. The whole time the music gets higher in pitch, as if losing breath. Finally, after an ENTIRE MINUTE of the camera going up those stairs, all in [[TheOner one take]], does this OverlyLongGag come to a close.

* ''Manga/DragonBall'', during Goku and Krillin's TrainingFromHell under Master Roshi, one exercise to deliver milk on foot to an entire island. At one point, Roshi tells the boys that their next house is up a flight of stairs that they should just walk, not run, up. Krillin's relieved...up until that the stairs go up an entire ''mountain''.

* ''VideoGame/MyHouse'' has a looping spiral staircase, a likely ShoutOut to SCP-087, with doors exiting from all of the "otherworld" areas, including the Backrooms and closet labyrinth, and back to the main house.

** .''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'': The stairway in Communications Tower A is by far the longest in the game, and requires Snake to avoid both security cameras and soldiers.

* The Tower of Fanatics in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' is nothing but identical flights of stairs with random encounters in which your characters can use nothing but magic. Every twenty flight of stairs or so there's a treasure room, but there's nothing else to break the monotony, and the atmospheric music adds to the repetitive, endless dread. Overclock Remix's dark, brooding rendition is even called [[http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02721 The Endless Stair]].
* During the raid on the Shinra HQ in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', you can either fight your way through the guards, or [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MhEm5fYPmo climb your way up 59 flights of stairs.]] Barrett whines and complains the whole way up, while Tifa tells him to "[[MemeticMutation stop acting like]] [[ValuesDissonance a retard]] [[MemeticMutation and climb]]!" At the end of the stairway, Barrett says [[ImNotDoingThatAgain he never wants to see any stairs again for the rest of his life]]. In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIIRemake'', the staircase returns, with the same basic premise, but a new spin on the scene and dialogue for the player's entertainment.

* ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' has a looping staircase leading to the final stage, with accompanying music[[note]]It is an auditory illusion known as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone Shepard Tone]], which seems to continually rise without escaping the upper limits of human hearing[[/note]] that keeps going up as you did. You can climb it forever if you don't have enough stars, but the staircase itself is not actually very big. (The game accomplishes this by silently warping you to a lower position on the stairs once you've ascended enough steps; however, since the game is programmed to do this based on Mario's forward movement cap, and earlier versions of the game have no ''backward'' movement cap, [[SequenceBreaking you can use glitches like the Backwards Long Jump to rocket up the stairs so quickly it freaks out the code and bypasses the "infinite" staircase effect.]])

A notable subset of Absurdly Long Stairways are Absurdly Long ''Temple'' Stairways. In RealLife, a somewhat tamer version of this trope is relatively common in temple architecture, and may be observed in various Buddhist, Hindu, and Mesoamerican temples. Sometimes in fiction[[note]]and rarely, in real life too[[/note]], this is taken to extremes by placing the temple on the slopes - or even the summit - of a mountain, with stairs leading all the way up. The symbolism of ascending to the temple should be obvious; sometimes, as with the Aztecs, the long temple stairs were also used for a StaircaseTumble when they tossed the bodies of sacrificial victims down them.

* A stairway leads from the village of Kilpisjärvi, Finland, [[https://www.rantapallo.fi/marikaworld/2015/09/06/saanan-valloitus/ to the top of mount Saana]] (altitude 1029 m). It is the longest stairway in Finland

* Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, Japan, one of the holiest shrines in Shinto, is known for its many thousands of ''torii'' and the many, many more steps that lead up Mount Inari. While the stairs are not continuous, there are so many of them that small teahouses have been set up for people to rest their legs.

* Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, one of the holiest shrines in Shinto, is known for its many thousands of ''torii'' and the many, many more steps that lead up Mount Inari. While the stairs are not continuous, there are so many of them that small teahouses have been set up for people to rest their legs.

* ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'', in Caer Bocram there is a absurdly long stairway where you must enter a password to continue, if you found at least one of the first 3 clues.

* At some of deepest stations on the UsefulNotes/LondonUnderground, the stations are accessed by lifts, instead of escalators. Such stations have an emergency spiral staircase, with announcements warning passengers not to use it, except in an emergency, often mentioning the number of steps. A notable example is Covent Garden station, with 193 steps, and the less well-known Hampstead station, with 320 steps.

* The penultimate battle in ''Film/JohnWickChapterFour'' has John having to fight his way up the Rue Foyatier, a 100m long series of 222 steps before dawn. At one point he gets kicked down a good part of the stairway and has to start over.

-->'''Kaiba:''' Oh, my God! So many stairs! I'd like to find whoever invented the stairs, and push him down ''these'' stairs, just to show him how stupid stairs are! Then his legs will be broken, and he will no longer be able to climb the stairs anymore! It'll be ironic, and then his wife will leave him and go be with the man who invented the elevator, because everyone knows that elevators are much sexier than stairs! And oh my God, I'm not even close to being at the top yet, ''why are there so many stairs!?''