History Main / MissingFloor

While it could technically be any number, {{thirteen|IsUnlucky}} and {{four|IsDeath}} are fairly common choices.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': The basement of the sciences building at Holliday College is not on the regular floor plan nor meant to be accessed by regular faculty and students and houses lots of maintenance things. Paula von Gunther's post-HeelFaceTurn laboratory is also hidden there behind a panel in the wall.

* In ''Manga/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]].
* The fifth ''LightNovel/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 {{Artificial 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]].

* 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 ''Manga/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]].
* The fifth ''LightNovel/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 {{Artificial 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 entire premise for the movie ''Film/TheThirteenthFloor'' hinged on this.

* ''Film/TheMatrixReloaded'': "There is a building. Inside this building there is a level where no elevator can go, and no stair can reach. This level is filled with doors. These doors lead to many places. Hidden places. But one door is special. One door leads to the source."

* When Neal starts to actively seek the mystery girl who has been appearing to him in dreams and on billboards in the movie ''Film/{{Interstate 60}}", he's directed to an appointment on the 13th floor of a building. When he gets in the elevator, however, there is no button for the 13th floor. Luckily, there's a new poster from his dream girl on the wall of the elevator. This poster reminds him that 10 + 3 = 13. He pushes the buttons for 10 and 3 simultaneously, and the elevator takes him to the missing floor.

* The corporation running the hotel in ''Film/FourteenOhEight'' believes that ThirteenIsUnlucky, so they pretend there's no 13th floor. Hence the thirteenth floor is re-numbered as 14 (just as is the case in many real-world hotels).
* In ''Nightmare on the 13th Floor'' the hotel floor has been closed after a maniac murdered several guests many decades ago. On the outside the windows have been hidden with statues and other decorations. It's only accessible by using a special key in the elevator. [[spoiler:A cult worshiping said maniac continues to murder people there.]]

* ''Hidden Floor'', a Korean horror film, takes place in an apartment building haunted by spirits that dwell on the supposedly non-existent [[FourIsDeath fourth floor]].
* There are several missing floors in ''Film/{{Mirage 1965}}'':
** On his way down the stairs of the Unidyne building (Manhattan), the hero notices that the 13th floor is missing. His LoveInterest remarks that this is because [[ThirteenIsUnlucky the natives are superstitious]].
** Later the hero uses a special key to get to the Major's office on the otherwise inaccessible 65th floor.
** There are four other missing floors. At the beginning the hero chases a woman down the stairs in the dark (the power has been shut off) and goes down four sub-basements to emerge in the boiler room. Later those floors aren't there. [[spoiler: He has amnesia but doesn't know it yet. Those four floors below ground is where he worked in a lab in California. It's a random memory.]]

* In the short story/prose poem "E is for Elevator People", author Harlan Ellison describes certain elevators via which, if you accidentally press the Basement button too many times, you are taken down to "the caverns". Awful things happen there.
* The ''Literature/WaysideSchool'' book series takes place in a 30-story school building. (It was supposed to be one story, with thirty rooms... The builder was very sorry.) Miss Zarves teaches on the 19th floor. The nineteenth floor doesn't exist. How can that be? The builder forgot to include it. Each book is thirty "stories" long, and in each book the nineteenth story is about Miss Zarves.
** In the first book, the nineteenth chapter is simply "There is no Miss Zarves. There is no 19th story. Sorry."
** In the second book, one character {{Lampshade|Hanging}}s this and wonders why the numbering isn't just shunted down after floor 18. She ends up stuck on the nineteenth story for three chapters, which are naturally chapters 19, 19, and 19. While there, she meets students that other characters made up in previous chapters. The next chapter fixes the numbering by being "Chapter 20, 21, & 22".
** In the third book, the nineteenth chapter features Miss Zarves complaining about never being noticed, as well as a cow who won't leave her room (which is a CallBack to the beginning of the book).
* In ''Literature/MirrorDance'' by Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold, the Durona Group has a set of secret subbasements (in which [[spoiler:they store the protagonist while they're resurrecting him after cryogenic suspension]]).

* 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.
* In ''[[Literature/AFableOfTonight Stalking the Unicorn]]'' 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.").
* In the children's book ''The Thirteenth Floor'', the building is supposed to be one of the ones where the numbering just skips from 12 to 14... but when the protagonists manage to get into the thirteenth floor, it turns out to be a TimePortal.
* ''Literature/TheWarAgainstTheChtorr''. The [[GovernmentAgencyOfFiction Uncle Ira Group]] is located on the 13th floor of a hotel in Denver, reached by a private elevator. The first-person protagonist mentions that "controlled-access architecture" is nothing unusual in this TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture world, as hotels use them for guests who need extra security and privacy. You'd only realise it was there if you walked the fire stairs, and if asked the hotel would claim it was a service floor. They just wouldn't mention what service.

* ''Fire World'', the sixth book in the ''Dragons'' (a.k.a. Last Dragon Chronicles) series, features a massive Librarium, in which the only way to navigate between floors is to imagine your destination. Floors beyond the 42nd floor are inaccessible to all but the very best.
* ''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.

* ''Franchise/SilentHill''
** The [[FourisDeath fourth floor]] of Alchemilla hospital.
** Similarly, in ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'', after the phone call in the hospital, you go through a Missing Door that wasn't there before, that leads you to the alternate hospital.
** Several floors of the Office Building in ''Silent Hill 3'' only exist, or at least can only be accessed in the DarkWorld. The sixth floor is not accessible at all.
** The Evil Brookhaven Hospital in part 3 has three basement floors (two of which don't exist in the normal world), but only B3 is accessible.

* In ''VideoGame/GhoulSchool'' for the NES, the left half of the school can only be accessed via the roof. To get there, you must get on the elevator, press up, and hold it down, at which point the elevator will shake as though resisting, then rise to the unmarked ceiling. [[GuideDangIt There's no indication that you need to do this.]]
* ''Tower of the Sorcerer'' has '''three'''. The first one is obvious, since the stairs from floor 42 go direct to floor 44. The intervening floor 43 can only be accessed by obtaining the "wings to fly up", which move you up one floor wherever you use them. There are also "wings to fly down", and one puzzle depends on using these to access [[spoiler:floor 0]]. Finally, the floors come in groups of ten, but the highest floor accessible by stairs is floor 49. There ''is'' a floor 50, which you reach during the game's ending.
* In ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest II'', the elevator in Vohaul's space station has no 2nd floor button. To reach that area, you must solve a gauntlet of puzzles that require items from the other floors.
* In ''VideoGame/GrimFandango'', Maximino's High Rollers' Lounge has an extra floor between its main area and the wine cellar. You need to figure out how to stop the kitchen elevator at the right point in order to get there. Also you can't {{Sequence Break|ing}} by getting in there before you know about it.

* In ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'', the Ducklair building has 150 floors, officially. In reality, there is a 151st.

** Another example is in the concourse letters: they have concourses B, C, E, F, G, H, K, L, and M. There actually used to be a Concourse D at O'Hare (which can be seen [[http://airchive.com/galleries/13511.jpg here]]), which was used by carriers like [=AirCal=], Braniff, Continental, Eastern, Northwest Orient, Piedmont and United Express, but it was demolished as well to make room for the current Terminal 1 concourses. ORD, however, has never had a Concourse I or Concourse J.

* The home base of the Moscow Literature/NightWatch is in a hidden floor, not normally accessible and [[AWizardDidIt not noticeable from the outside by non-magicians]].

* In an episode of ''Series/TheAvengers'' a hotel actually has an unlisted 13th floor which is used to capture and brainwash scientists. No one expects there to be a 13th floor so they don't suspect there are two "12th" floors.

* The ''Literature/WaysideSchool'' book series takes place in a 30-story school building. (It was supposed to be one story, with thirty rooms... The builder was very sorry.) Mrs. Zarves teaches on the 19th floor. The nineteenth floor doesn't exist. How can that be? The builder forgot to include it. Each book is thirty "stories" long, and in each book the nineteenth story is about Mrs. Zarves.
** In the first book, the nineteenth chapter is simply "There is no Mrs. Zarves. There is no 19th story. Sorry."

** In the third book, the nineteenth chapter features Mrs. Zarves complaining about never being noticed, as well as a cow who won't leave her room (which is a CallBack to the beginning of the book).

* ''The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathon Hoag'' by Creator/RobertAHeinlein. A husband-and-wife team of private detectives are shadowing the title character, only to find their memories of what happened are completely different. The husband remembers following Hoag to his office on the thirteenth floor of the Acme Building, but when they return they find that floor doesn't exist, even after they check the fire stairs and the time the elevator takes to pass between the floors.

** Then there's the oddity of the U-Bahn having a line 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, but no 5...

* The US Coast Guard has the country divided up into districts for organizational/command purposes. However, due to various reorganizations over the years, the district numbers that exist today are 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, and 17.

[[folder:Comics -- Books]]
* In the pre-Crisis Franchise/{{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.

** [[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride "The Runaway Bride"]]: The elevator of the H.C. Clements building has a button for the "Lower Basement", which is curiously absent on the official floor plans.
** In a rare example involving stairs instead of an elevator, in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E11TheLodger "The Lodger"]], people who go up the stairs to the second floor loft above Craig's flat tend to disappear. When Craig's best friend/secret crush Sophie visits the second floor loft, Craig and the Doctor follow her. Meanwhile, Amy (who is stuck in the TARDIS outside of space and time) contacts the Doctor and informs him that she was able to find the plans for Craig's apartment building. "[[OhCrap There is no upstairs!]]" Turns out [[spoiler:there was a spaceship parked on top of the building, disguised as a second floor and using a PerceptionFilter so people wouldn't notice the building only used to have one floor]].

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* On ''Series/BabylonFive'', all the levels in sector Grey beyond 16 are mislabelled, with Grey 17 actually being the 18th level and so on. The actual 17th level had been sealed off during construction of the station and the elevators programmed to stop according to the new numbering system. Since sector Grey consisted entirely of the station's industrial facilities that were only visited by maintenance crews, it took four years before anyone noticed that the elevator takes twice as long to get from level 16 to 17 than between all other levels. [[spoiler:The hidden level was used as a hideout by a doomsday cult who sealed themselves in with an alien monster.]]

** for this reason, Edgeley Station in Stockport has a Platform Zero and not a Platform Five.

* The former Hotel Alexandria in Los Angeles has a "ghost wing" that was sealed off due to a rent dispute in 1938, and no elevators or stairs were built in that wing. While the lower and top floors can be reached from the ground and nearby rooftops, floor 3 through 6 remain completely sealed off and inaccessible.

** As do some surface stations; Stratford Regional has no platform 7. In general, it's because renumbering a platform requires the signalling system to be redesigned, and it's much simpler just to stop using the number if the platform closes. Thanks to repeated rebuilds of Stratford, its platforms are now numbered in the order 4A,4B,3A,3,5,6,8,9,10,10A,11,12,2,1, with 13-17 in a group on their own.

** [[UsefulNotes/PhiladelphiaSubways Philadelphia's rapid-transit network]] has two "ghost stations": Spring Garden Station on the little-used SEPTA Broad-Ridge Spur, and Franklin Square Station on the more-used PATCO line between Center City and New Jersey. The Broad-Ridge Spur is so little used that there's little chance Spring Garden will reopen, but reopening Franklin Square is an idea that is periodically floated, considered, and then withdrawn. (As of PATCO's December 2014 agenda, it is being considered.)
** Then there's the oddity of the U-Bahn having a line 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 but no 5...

* the Netherlands:
** The office block on top of The Hague central train station passes over one floor. This is used by the railroads... as far as we know.
** A building in Rotterdam, used by Dutch insurance company Nationale Nederlanden, has several of these. Certain elevators do not have a 1st or 2nd floor (ground being 0th in the Netherlands) because the entrance hall is three regular floors high, and some of the building's towers have service floors only accessible by a special separate staircase. Makes for fun times for an engineer who needs to service something but is unfamiliar with the building's layout.
* O'Hare International Airport in Chicago has four terminals, numbered 1, 2, 3, and 5. They skip Terminal 4.
** An explanation for this: Before the 1980s, there were just three terminals at O'Hare - Terminals 1, 2 and 3. Terminal 1 was for international flights and the other two terminals housed domestic airlines. However, in 1985, the original Terminal 1 was demolished and replaced by the current one (which today is used for United Airlines flights). So while the new United terminal 1 was being built, and until the current International Terminal opened on the east side of the airport, a temporary "Terminal 4" was erected on the ground floor of the main parking garage. International passengers would check in for their flights there and be taken directly to their aircraft by bus. It was used from 1984 to 1993 prior to the opening of Terminal 5 as the International Terminal. There is rumor that Terminal 4 might return if expansions and increases in air traffic at O'Hare justify the need to build additional terminals.
** Another example from O'Hare is in the concourse letters: they have concourses B, C, E, F, G, H, K, L, and M. There actually used to be a Concourse D at O'Hare (which can be seen [[http://airchive.com/galleries/13511.jpg here]]), which was used by carriers like [=AirCal=], Braniff, Continental, Eastern, Northwest Orient, Piedmont and United Express, but it was demolished as well to make room for the current Terminal 1 concourses. ORD, however, has never had a Concourse I or Concourse J.

* The former Hotel Alexandria in Los Angeles has a "ghost wing" that was sealed off due to a rent dispute in 1938, and no elevators or stairs were built in that wing. While the lower and top floors can be reached from nearby rooftops, floor 3 through 6 remain completely inaccessible.
* Box Hill train station in Victoria, Australia, has platforms 2, 3 and 4. Platform 1 for whatever reason has been made inaccessible from the shopping center, and has had its tracks stripped.
** Similarly, for many years the platform numbers at Clapham Junction in London started with 2, after the 'banana arches' supporting the trackbed for Platform 1 became structurally unsound. It now has a new Platform 1, created by splitting Platform 2 in half; if the original platform 1 were to be repaired, it would have to be numbered 0.

* The city of UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} is averting this trope. A law was passed in 2016 that bans new towers from omitting floor numbers so there's no floor 4, or 13, or what have you. However, existing buildings can keep their oddly numbered floors.

While it could technically be any number, [[ThirteenIsUnlucky thirteen is a fairly common choice]].

* In ComicBook/{{New 52}} ''Franchise/{{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.

* In ''Film/{{Brazil}}'', the protagonist reaches a hidden floor by entering a sequence of buttons that play the recurring title motif.

** Similarly, in ''SilentHill3'', after the phone call in the hospital, you go through a Missing Door that wasn't there before, that leads you to the alternate hospital.

* A building in Rotterdam, used by Dutch insurance company Nationale Nederlanden, has several of these. Certain elevators do not have a 1st or 2nd floor (ground being 0th in the Netherlands) because the entrance hall is three regular floors high, and some of the building's towers have service floors only accessible by a special separate staircase. Makes for fun times for an engineer who needs to service something but is unfamiliar with the building's layout.

* In ''GhoulSchool'' for the NES, the left half of the school can only be accessed via the roof. To get there, you must get on the elevator, press up, and hold it down, at which point the elevator will shake as though resisting, then rise to the unmarked ceiling. [[GuideDangIt There's no indication that you need to do this.]]

* In ''OhGod'', protagonist Jerry Landers first talks to God on the 27th floor of a building that has only 17 floors.