History Main / MissingFloor

* ''Film/{{Red}}''. BruceWillis' character is sneaking into a CIA Records Room that's so secret most agents don't know it exists. He gets into the elevator and presses the bottom button marked P2, holding his finger there as the floor indicator goes past that number to P3, B1 and finally B2 before the doors open.

** Due to its history, Hong Kong buildings can occasionally defer to [[ThirteenIsUnlucky BOTH]] [[FourIsDeath superstitions]]. The result? Well, see the photo at the top of this page.

* In both ''Anime/ReadOrDie'' OVA and the sequel ''R.O.D the TV'' series, there's a secret bookstore that plays a role in the plot. It's hidden in the basement of a skyscraper, and can only be accessed by hitting the buttons in a specific order -- unlocking a card-slot where the 'members only' card-key can be inserted.

* In ''OnePiece'', the World Government's great prison Impel Down has multiple underwater floors, with the prisoners assigned to a level based on how dangerous they're considered to be. Level 1, the closest to the surface, is for the least dangerous prisoners, while the most dangerous go to Level 5. When [[TheHero Luffy]] sneaks into the prison to rescue his older brother, the infamous pirate Ace, naturally he's assumed to be on Level 5. It turns out that Ace was actually being held on Level '''6''', a secret level where the World Government places even more dangerous prisoners [[spoiler: such as Crocodile and Jimbei]]. There's also Level 5.5, located between Levels 5 and 6, that was created by prisoners who escaped from their cells but had no means to escape from the prison itself.

* In ''EdenNoOri'' while Akira and co. were in [[spoiler: the pyramid]], they encountered a staircase which had a missing floor. It ended up being a double-floor room for [[spoiler: huge generators]].

** Some Chinese buildings go as far as to skip any floor number with 4 in it — having the effect that you can buy a 50th-floor Chinese apartment in a 36-storey building.
** This custom makes it a little more convenient for fictional entities wanting to make a "real" missing floor -- since no-one ''expects'' to visit a floor numbered "13", they won't be surprised when the ordinary everyday elevators skip by that floor.

* The Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA has no sixth floor in its main wing. Or at least none that can be easily gotten to -- none of the public elevators go to it, and its door is locked from the stairwell. It's mostly maintenance and engineering stuff.

* It's common for ships not to have a deck numbered 13 -- maybe to cater to the superstitious clientele, maybe due to the traditional superstitiousness of sailors.
* In Brazil, there is a TV station/college building (the Gazeta Building) that actually has a 3 1/2 floor. It can only be reached by one of the stairs, and no elevator stops there. Disappointingly, on that floor are a few [=ATMs=] and a small bank agency.

* It's common for ships not to have a deck numbered 13 -- maybe to cater to the superstitious clientele, maybe due to the mild superstitiousness of sailors.

* * Ogden Nash wrote a poem "A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor" in which a would-be murderer gets into an old-fashioned elevator, with an operator, in a hotel. The operator chooses to stop at the 13th floor -- to show him murderers chained to the corpses of their victims in a ghastly dance of damnation. (The whole hotel is kind of hellish, but the 13th floor is true Hell). The point is made, the plan abandoned.

-->--'''Creator/MitchHedberg'''

* In the ''{{Necroscope}}'' saga by Brian Lumley, the [[PsychicPowers ESPionage]] group [[TheMenInBlack E-Branch]] has their base on the top floor of a hotel. Although people working at the hotel -- and anyone who cared to count the hotel's floors, go inside, and ask for a room on the top floor, and look at the floor number -- know that there is a top floor, it has its own elevator and fire escape, and is stated to belong to a group of "International Entrepreneurs"[[note]]This is a ShoutOut to the JamesBond novels where 007 worked for a front company for the UK Government called "Universal Exports".[[/note]].

* In Brazil, we have a TV Station/College building (the Gazeta Building) that actually has a 3 1/2 floor. It can only be reached by one of the stairs, and no elevator stops there. Disappointingly, on that floor are a few [=ATMs=] and a small bank agency.

** This is quite common in Moscow. Because button panels were manufactured in a limited variety of sizes, elevators would often be installed with panels with more buttons than necessary. For example, the building this troper lives in has 10 floors, but only nine if them are served with the elevator. The panel in elevator has 10 buttons, however....

* The office building where this troper works has 7 floors, two subterran parkings and a floor called "AC" between the first floor and the first parking. Only one elevator leads to it and nobody likes to go down there due to the fact that there is no light at all and the place is completely abandoned. Oddly enough, every building around (there are 6 or 7 of them) has one elevator with access that floor too. It's theorized that since the buildings were factories before, this floor used to be a subterran warehouse or something, but nobody really knows.

* ''TheDayOfTheJackal''. The OAS leaders hiding out in a hotel in Rome create one by renting the top floors and [[WeldTheLock welding shut the lift doors]] on all but one floor, which is guarded by their men.

Every building housing a top secret operation seems to have a "beyond top secret floor". There's no obvious button for it in the elevators, you can't reach it by stairs, and of course nobody has ever heard of it. Most realistic is a sub-basement, but it could also be higher than the highest official floor, or even squeezed in between floors - though in the last two cases, it's questionable how they've managed to keep it hidden at all, since anyone looking out a window could get suspicious. Finding it is a major plot point. It might have been closed off long ago (since it houses a Dark Secret) or it's still being used by the Beyond Top Secret club. In any case, don't expect to just walk in here, not even if you ''do'' have security clearance.

* Comedian Creator/MitchHedberg commented that some hotels don't have a thirteenth floor due to superstition and hates to break it to them but the fourteenth floor is the thirteenth floor - it makes no difference.

* It's common for ships not to have a deck numbered 13 - maybe to cater to the superstitious clientele, maybe due to the mild superstitiousness of sailors.

* The office building where this troper works has 7 floors, two subterran parkings and a floor called "AC" between the first floor and the first parking. Only one elevator leads to it and nobody likes to go down there due to the fact that there is no light at all and the place is completely abandonned. Oddly enough, every building around (there are 6 or 7 of them) has one elevator with access that floor too. It's theorized that since the buildings were factories before, this floor used to be a subterran warehouse or something, but nobody really knows.

* O'Hare International Airport has four terminals, numbered 1, 2, 3, and 5. Apparently there used to be a temporary Terminal 4; TheOtherWiki goes into further detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Hare_International_Airport

* In ''Literature/StalkingTheUnicorn'' by Mike Resnick, ''every'' building in New York supposedly has one of these for its 13th floor, reachable by climbing stairs in the surrounding floors in an elaborate sequence ("It depends on the weather and the day of the week.").

* Creator/OgdenNash's ''A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor''.

* The fifth ''KaraNoKyoukai'' movie contains a variation in that it's an entire half of a building that's hidden through the use of an elevator that slowly rotates as it ascends and deposits you on the opposite side of the building than you expected. This is so [[spoiler:Araya Souren]] can carry out a magical experiment [[spoiler:with {{Artifical Human}}s in one half the building reenacting their last day alive and their original (dead) selves in the other, with their original brains located in the basement powering the whole system]].

* The fifth ''KaraNoKyoukai'' movie contains a variation in that it's an entire half of a building that's hidden through the use of an elevator that slowly rotates as it ascends and deposits you on the opposite side of the building than you expected. This is so [[spoiler:Araya Souren]] can carry out a magical experiment [[spoiler:with ArtificalHumans in one half the building reenacting their last day alive and their original (dead) selves in the other]].

* In the ''{{Necroscope}}'' saga by Brian Lumley, the [[PsychicPowers ESPionage]] group [[TheMenInBlack E-Branch]] has their base on the top floor of a hotel. Although people working at the hotel -- and anyone who cared to count the hotel's floors, go inside, and ask for a room on the top floor, and look at the floor number -- know that there is a top floor, it has its own elevator and fire escape, and is stated to belong to a group of "International Entrepreneurs"[[hottip:*:This is a ShoutOut to the JamesBond novels where 007 worked for a front company for the UK Government called "Universal Exports".]].

* The thirteenth floor in the Macintosh ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' clone ''VideoGame/SensoryOverload'' has no button in the elevator, and can only be accessed via ventilation ducts. Beyond that is the sub-basement, only accessible via the hidden express elevator in the BigBad's office.

* In the forgettable 1994 adventure game ''VideoGame/HellCab'', pushing a red button on the elevator in the Empire State Building would take you down to hell.

* ''Literature/TheDayOfTheJackal''. The OAS leaders hiding out in a hotel in Rome create one by renting the top floors and [[WeldTheLock welding shut the lift doors]] on all but one floor, which is guarded by their men.

* ''{{Dollhouse}}''. Agent Ballard locates the building containing the Dollhouse, but after going on site can't find anything suspicious. So he does some research into the building and discovers that in addition to the usual contractors they hired an environmental systems consultant, an expert in buildings that recycle their own air, water and power -- which you'd need for an underground floor that you're trying to keep secret from anyone else in the building.

-->-- '''MitchHedberg'''

* Comedian MitchHedberg commented that some hotels don't have a thirteenth floor due to superstition and hates to break it to them but the fourteenth floor is the thirteenth floor - it makes no difference.

* In the pre-Crisis ComicBook/{{Superman}} comics, the Daily Planet building supposedly had no 13th floor. In reality, the 13th floor existed and was secretly used by an alien tourist bureau dealing in vacations to Earth.
* In {{New 52}} ''{{Batman}}'' comics, it turns out the [[ComicBook/NightOfTheOwls Court of Owls]] has secret bases between the floors of various buildings in Gotham City, including several owned by the Wayne Foundation.

[[caption-width-right:175:[[ThirteenIsUnlucky No thirteenth floor here.]] [[FourIsDeath Or fourth. Or fourteenth]]. [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Or zeroth.]]]]

* O'Hare International Airport has four terminals, numbered 1, 2, 3, and 5. Apparently there used to be a temporary Terminal 4; TheOtherWiki goes into further detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Hare_International_Airport